#they are like....living beings with their own biology so it's not TOO far-fetched but again. there's a whole lot of it.

[pleuvoire]

WHAT

i laid down to unsuccessfully attempt to nap for a bit then logged back on to a new ask and stared at this for a second in sleepy daze trying to figure out wtf this singular capslock word was referring to then i remembered. yeah there’s a lot of like robopreg content in transformers fandom

[pastelpaperplanes]

Can you please tell us more about the Elita’s death in the cops and mobs Au? Btw absolutely love your ideas and your brilliant art

(First off TY!!! I’ve worked hard on their outfits and backstories so that rly means a lot 👉👈💕)

There’s a few things from tfa canon that are definitely a BIT harder to translate over into a 1920’s/50s esque AU, that being like why can Blitzwing STILL have three faces when he’s not a triple changer?? Or how does the Longarm/Shockwave thing work out without shapeshifting?? Or Why do the insecticons exists without Blackarachnia’s genetic splicing?? Or like Why does Blackarachnia look so different from Elita when space spiders didn’t attack her??

So to kinda make Blackarachnia’s changes work with the already sort of steampunkesque incorporated within the AU, I’m gonna say that it was the toxic chemicals that exploded in the warehouse that caused her altered looks! (Pls take this w a grain of salt! Ofc gaining multiple EYES is definitely far fetched but for the sake of plot and keeping her pretty tfa design intact, we’re just gonna nod our heads at CHEMICALS)

At the very least, when the drug warehouse exploded in a nasty hellfire of practically toxic fumes, her biology would’ve been altered in some way allowing for the purplish skin, terrifying and gross enhanced sight, and ofc her immediate curiosity in pushing the boundaries in her own past chemistry studies to now something FAR MORE sinister and deadly.

THAT BEING SAID more on Elita’s death:

So as I mentioned in a few of her tags, Op, Elita, and Sentinel all go way back all the way to their private school days. Op was ofc always the third wheel while Sentinel and Elita had a constant off and on relationship.

To be honest, Sentinel and Elita only engaged because Elita gave him an ultimatum or she’d leave him for good, Sentinel ofc took the bait and Elita now has to sit a think about how it took a threat to get someone to commit to loving her.

Elita has always had attachment issues from an emotionally neglectful childhood (Ultra was a young parent, her was immediately married off by his father asap to hide Elita’s origins. Ultra suffered from some really bad postpartum depression and hardly wanted anything to do with Elita, poor girl. Her Stepsire knew she was a bastard, he didn’t want much to do with her either) So Elita has always had to beg for attention, unfortunately her relationship with Sentinel was no different.

Elita of course despite having an emotionally neglectful childhood still had her taste for adventure. While Sentinel and her definitely had their issues, he never made her or Optimus’ lives boring. The three stuck together after graduation and practically spent their early adult lives bumbling around. Elita found her passion in the chemistry field, and both Sentinel and Op were now cops together at the time of the accident.

Sentinel, being a complete idiot he was, dragged his partner AND fiancé on that unapproved response to a tip on Mob activity. Elita was eager to help of course, the warehouse held fascinating narcotics that could land her name some fame (and hopefully some praise from her distant Carrier) if she could say she aided in the break of the Mob’s case.

But ofc, Sentinel fooled around where he shouldn’t be, triggered the fail-safe self destruction of the entire warehouse with his fiancé far too deep in the building to be reached in time by Optimus OR Sentinel, then blamed Optimus for the whole shebang despite OPTIMUS being the one who had to be pulled back from reentering the flames, from there we know exactly how that turned out for Optimus.

Elita was left to burn by her best friend and fiancé. She had been left again and in the worst way possible this time, she was alone and they had abandoned her when she need them most. The chemicals wracked her brain and she passed out before finding a proper escape. You can imagine her surprise when she woke up to find the small, but well know gang The Insecticons tending to her.

Lost, hurt, betrayed, and left with no option but to bury herself and her past, Elita took on the new Name Blackarachnia when the gang welcomed her into their group. As disorganized as they were and despite Elita being by far the youngest and least experienced in the gang, they desperately needed a leader with some brains. Blackarachnia took the crown and has been their best Miss Boss they could hope for.

BA has her life together now. It may not have been the pitucre perfect one she’d hoped for with a husband, perhaps a home of her own with a few little ones running around her feet, but she now is her own boss. SHE makes the calls and has complete control of her gang, all the while putting a grand ol middle finger to her dear Chief of Police Carrier and ex fiancé by fueling the Mob’s weapons supply.

Blackarachnia is surround by her doting, stupid, but powerful lackeys and is in Megatron’s good graces. Life has never looked so good.

[codylabs]

My Top 10 Ships

I’m not a very romantic sort of guy, I’m not real forgiving to departures from canon, I get easily annoyed at inconsistencies, and I don’t watch much television and movies, so in order for me to ship something, it has to be a GOOD ship. I default toward rejecting ships, so to impress ME, it must be built on logic, and evidence, it’s gotta be something I can suspend my disbelief far enough to accept. And it’s gotta have story behind it, something deep, some hefty emotional weight; if it doesn’t tickle this man’s cold reptilian heart with strong beats and excellent writing, it goes straight to the trash. I absoLUTELY will not stand for any of these weird little cute, pretty, pandering, trashy crack ships that everybody seems to be clumsily throwing characters into. Most ships are trash ships. They are not good ships.

You think your ship is good? You like your ship?

You ship it?

No you don’t.

Get out of here.

You will listen to me. I will tell you. Look at me. I’m the Captain now.

Here are the 10 good ships.

10. The Rocinante, The Expanse

A resoundingly excellent ship. Unlike most ships you see out there, this thing was actually designed with realistic space combat in mind. It’s got 6 computer-controlled gatling turrets covering every angle, it accelerates in whatever direction it’s pointing, its bridge is right in the center to put as much armor as possible between enemies and crew, overall a much better-designed vehicle than most everything you see about.

That being said, I didn’t have much connection to this ship. Its crew weren’t really interesting, the aesthetic was kinda bleak, and I basically stopped watching after the phazon showed up. And the Rocinante itself has pretty poor redundancy. Enemy bullets can literally just pass through it (as is realistic for a ship this size) so how about multiple main engines huh? Absolutely tragic oversight. And its interior looks too much like an Apple product. How are you supposed to work on it? Where are the wires and pipes??? The handholds?????

9. Ares IV M.A.V., The Martian

Almost more of a symbol than a ship. A symbol of freedom, of escape. A beautiful symbol. This is what Mark Watney spends the whole movie trying to reach, with an entire world backing him up, and an entire world trying to stop him. It’s the goal of the movie, and it just looks so beautiful when he finally reaches it and sees it sitting there in the middle of the desert, ass down, nose up; a tall, proud symbol. This ship has a special significance for me because the author of the original book really did his research on the scientific requirements and details of a Mars Ascent Vehicle, and it was actually inspired by the E.R.V. in another book, ‘A Case For Mars’, which I read when I was younger. “Makes its own methane-oxygen fuel on-site by using nuclear power to break down CO2 in the atmosphere and combining it with stored hydrogen, don’t you know.” I say as I adjust my spectacles and puff my pipe.

The M.A.V. in the movie does have a few issues, such as hallway and rooms running straight up through where the fuel tanks ought to be (instead of a lift/ladder on the exterior) and a rugged, industrial aesthetic that looks too heavy and cumbersome for a ship of its type. (And you’re seriously telling me he couldn’t have used the capsule’s RCS to literally bypass the movie’s entire climax? WHY NOT? The book never mentioned him having to drain the monopropellant!!!) But I’ll let that slide. Great movie.

8. Biggest Boy, The Greatship

(I don’t know the ship name so I had to make up a name. You know what, I think it’s actually just called the Greatship.)

So it’s a starship the size of Jupiter, empty, unmanned, perfectly mysterious, that comes gliding into the galaxy a couple million years into humanity’s future. Where did it come from? Who made it and how? Good questions. It’s powered by matter-antimatter annihilation reactions from within planet-sized internal tanks, and its engines use hydrogen and fusion exhaust as reaction mass, and its hull is made of hyperfiber, a super-strong fictional material with a 4-dimensional lattice structure, able to weather impacts by spreading them out over various dimensions where the impact occurred in a different place.

I hope that after the first few entries, you didn’t get the impression that I am somehow against futuristic, far-out, impossible technologies. Quite the opposite! I love me some hyperdrive and anti-gravity and A.I. and stuff. However! Ships must be well-designed for the technology available, and must take no creative liberties except those explicitly allowed by the difference in the setting. The laws of physics don’t disappear when the magic crystals come out, the magic crystals are merely a different tool to combat them. Engineering will always exist, should start with the tools and work outward, form follows function. Star Wars ships, for instance, are trash because they don’t mount their repulsorlift arrays consistently, they’re not aerodynamic, and their engines aren’t aligned around their center of masses.

So I like the Great Ship. Although the story is pretty far-fetched, and a lot of crazy, out-there scifi events transpire deep in the ship’s depths, the book always strictly kept its own rules in mind, and never broke those rules, no matter how outlandishly crazy things got. Thanks for comprehending something so incomprehensible, Robert Reed. You inspired me miles in my own work.

7. The Ghost, The Sea Wolf

The story may be fiction, but the Ghost was as real as ghosts can be.

Jack London did his research. No, not research, he LIVED this. The Ghost is a seal-hunting schooner much like one that he served aboard during his rollercoaster of a life, and he captured every detail of its operation, of its requirements, of its mechanics, and of the incredible toll it took on the people that lived such a life. The boat is made to feel as oppressive and claustrophobic as a prison, as if it were an extension of the monster that commanded it, directly in contrast to the expansive beauty of the sea around them. My goodness, what a beautiful book. What a moving, interesting, challenging book, with such a story! This book is one of the climaxes of fiction, and one of the inspirations for Shifting Sands, if I remember correctly. I would recommend this book to anybody. Beautiful.

6. Ferbnessa, Phineas and Ferb

Okay, so I hope we can all agree that Vanessa is nothing but bad news. But that being said, Ferb knows exactly the relationship he wants, and by golly, he goes for it. Most male characters would stutter or get nervous or lose confidence around their crush, especially if that crush is about a hundred miles out of their league or if they already had another boyfriend, but Ferb? No. Not my man Ferb. He’s slighly too much of a legend to fall for such childish pitfalls. He doesn’t posture, he doesn’t creep or flirt or try to sabotage the other men in her life, he doesn’t even speak a word, he just maintains his blank expression, cranks his own already-inhuman levels of confidence and competence up through the roof to borderline olympian levels, and continues being himself. These rare moments of Ferbly passion are some of the few open windows we get into the grandiose machinations of his mysterious mind, and he uses it to bring out the best in Vanessa as well. And in the future episode, set years down the line, wouldn’t you know it, they’re a pair.

All joking aside though, this whole ship is basically comedy. It’s a super small part of the show, it’s only in like 5 episodes, it’s a running gag, it’s hilarious. It’s great. And it fits right into the tone and the feel of the show, because P&F’s entire world really is a comedy about going for it and living your dreams. So this is just the best thing ever. It’s been about a decade since then, and I still burst out laughing at how much of a pristine picture of ideal masculinity Ferb is. Become like Ferb, boys, and you will become men.

Legendary.

Eat your heart out, Dipper.

3. Shunk, Voltron

(I don’t know the ship name so I had to make up a name)

Huge props to the voltron team for making a female alien character (even a romantic interest) with NO BOOBS. Do you have ANY idea how sick and tired I am of artists throwing a big ol’ pair of balonkadongs onto lobsters and snakes when almost everything in the real world besides folks and cows have either 0 or 8+ of them? Everything’s gotta be traditionally sexy and recognizably-feminine and GREAT now you just canonized all the porn! Disgusteg

but now look at Shay. She’s a rock person. She’s got silicon-based biology, she probably weighs 500 lbs and bleeds sand. She’s got enormous hands and weird knees and no nose and lumps everywhere, AND YET STILL the show plays all the tropes 100% straight with her being a fair young maiden and a sweet princess. And it works because Hunk is just this great guy who’s exactly as sweet and caring, and he’s not the most attractive of the Paladins either, so he probably lives his life looking past appearances. He doesn’t care that she’s an alien rock, he cares about her as a person, and she obviously worships him right back. Even though Shay is shown in season 1 and then never again until season 7, Hunk still avoids alternative romantic entanglements, citing ‘a rock I know’, and it just adds to his persona as this infinitely loyal teddy bear. I tip my hat to this, the single ship I know that’s 0% sexy and 100% wholesome.

And Hunk is the best Paladin. He’s just the greatest. I revere him. I salute him as he walks past. This man among men. Look at this guy. I don’t even care about any of the other ships in Voltron (I mean, the Castle of Lions is okay, but it’s outriggers are kinda spindly) but Hunk and Shay deserve each other.

4. Wendip, Gravity Falls

So Dipper’s 12/13, and Wendy’s 15. That’s a pretty giant age difference. Maybe you fans have fooled yourselves into thinking it’s not, but it is. She knows it. He knows it. His sister knows it. Your mom knows it. So halfway through the show, when he finally got around to confessing his feelings to her, she told him no. Sure they’re still friends, sure they like each other, and sure they have a lot of chemistry and they still have a movie night every Friday, but at the end of the day, he’s a smelly little midget who has to go back to California at the end of the Summer, and she’s a older girl with approximately zero romantic feelings for him. So the notion that it could work out is pretty obvious to everyone, and especially to him, pretty much hopeless. And he really did handle it all pretty poorly and immaturely too, he objectified her and stalked her and simped up a storm and sabotaged her boyfriend, so perhaps he deserved what he got. Perhaps it’s better this way.

And yet.

And yet Wendy never really got a happy ending in the show. And Dipper never got a conclusive romance either. So after everything, it’s easy to think about it how he thinks about it, by wondering how things could have been, if everything were just so slightly different, if she’d said yes or if they united again. She wishes she could be younger, he wishes he could be older. She’s more dominant, he’s more recessive. She has a lot of serious issues in her life, and could really seriously use a driven, heroic, intelligent friend to help her out, give her purpose, and steer her right. And Lord knows he could use somebody with street smarts and actual muscles to have his back now and again. They complement each other perfectly. They make up for each others’ weaknesses. They’re everything they ever wanted from another, and if you do the math, their children would be actual literal supersoldiers.

Or at least that’s the way a lot of people see it. There’s been immeasurable mountains of fanfiction and fanart from people who are just so sad that in a show full of happy endings and dreams coming true and old regrets being resolved and children growing up, that one ending would never be happy, one dream would never come to pass, one regret would stick with you forever, one child would never grow up. Maybe if you extrapolate out the story they’d end up together? Or maybe they’d find other, better partners? Maybe romance isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things, and this is the best ending there could have been? Perhaps, perhaps not. But in any case, there’s a lot of very rich storytelling potential for the untold journey before them, and for the paths that could have been.

Stop drawing fetish art of Wendy, you insufferable heathen actual donkeys.

3. Kataang, Avatar: The Last Airbender

Now HERE’S a serious relationship. Not just a romantic ship, (though it is that,) not just some cutesy, funny thing or some ship-war fodder, (though it is cute and funny and did spawn a ship-war,) not just a matter of certainty and destiny, (though it is certain and was destined,) this is a real, TANGIBLE relationship, that these characters built together over a solid year of on-screen adventuring and fighting. They’ve helped each other through trauma, they’ve been there for each other in their darkest moments, they learned martial-arts together, they’ve fought back-to back against grown men, they’ve worked front-to-front sawing through steel girders, they’ve saved each other’s lives, he once ACTUALLY DIED and she brought him BACK. They end up respecting each other, and valuing each other in the intimate way that only true friends do.

And they’re shown working through all their imperfections and mistakes too. Aang sometimes oversteps boundaries and says stupid stuff because he’s a kid, and Katara sometimes scolds him and controls him because she’s motherly and orderly, they get jealous of each other, but none of those things drive them apart, and they deal with them, and they conquer them, and they keep a very legitimate and multi-faceted friendship going, and that’s the key to it all. The fact that this friendship becomes romance is just proof that it was a friendship of quality.

I think people tend to overlook or forget this ship because the last few episodes of the show found them in a pretty dark place, needing to deal with matters of life and death and justice in very different ways, and unlike all their other issues, we don’t really get to see them reconciling these differences before the story ends, which kind of leaves a sour taste between them. And Katara goes on a couple missions with Zuko around the same time, so now half of all people want Zutara, when in actuality, Zutara is a trash ship, which is a true science fact.

2. Serenity, Firefly

Only reason this ship isn’t #1 is because it isn’t constructed using a proper aerospace philosophy; it’s made of bulky machinery and steel beams and chunky plates, it looks more like an ocean vessel from the inside, and is WAY too big for its 6-12 person crew and light cargo capacity. Plus it doesn’t have any room for fuel and its got no wheels on its landing legs and no downward-facing windows and its reactor is just too dang SMOL and its engines are attached too flimsily. This all wouldn’t be too much of an issue if they were going for a far-future aesthetic, but if you’re trying to do something grounded and semi-contemporary, you need to lose some weight girl, I’m sorry.

But by gosh does it make up for it in heart. The entire inside of this ship was mapped out and made on set, with so many homely little decorations and touches to make every room feel like the person who inhabits it, sterile professional blue for the doc’s medbay, warm happy red for Kaylee’s engine room, all-serious-business-but-also-plastic-dinos for Wash’s cockpit... It hit me hard when this baby it crashed in the movie, and it felt almost real when River pretended to mind-meld with it. This ship has more soul in one buffer panel than most shows have in the entire cast, enough to make it seem like its own character, even in a show crowded with charming characters. I love this ship intimately, even if I would have built it differently.

1. Colonial Vessel 46.18′\, Gravity Falls

(I don’t know the ship name so I had to make up a name)

You didn’t think I’d leave out this one, did you? After all the fanfiction I’ve written? This is basically my ship at this point. Anyway, enough about me; the vessel beneath Crash Site Omega really is the quintessential alien ship; its perfectly cliche flying-saucer design taps into all the audience’s pre-existing fanciful notions and imaginings and disbelief-suspension, meanwhile its presentation isn’t cliche or fanciful in the slightest. 

There’s not much to say about it from a technical standpoint, besides personal musings: it would need anti-gravity to stay airborne without thrusters, it would need a FTL drive to cross the distances it did, its drones would need to be made of some kind of semi-liquid to move like they do... But these sort of out-of-the-box, never-before-seen, world-expanding brain-knocks are exactly what makes this ship special. It’s an alien ship, built with technology unknown to people, forged from materials that people don’t possess, and inhabited by beings we will never meet. For all we know, this ship could be perfectly sound from an engineering standpoint, and no engineer in the audience could claim to prove it otherwise, because unlike something like the T.A.R.D.I.S., they never try and fail to explain it away with science buzzwords or canonize its details or show off some fancy glowy reactor. This ancient husk is left as a yawning pit in reason, and that’s beautiful.

Moreover, this ship is an amazingly powerful narrative tool, and a mind-blowing surprise to drop in as a setpiece during the show’s final episodes. This ship embodies everything that made the show’s mysteries special: the evidence presented so early and so consistently, the creativity in creature design, action, and worldbuilding, the yawning depths of unknowable lore, and most of all the burning, unquenched desire to know more... The imprint this ship made in the cliffs over the town has been hanging over the characters’ heads the entire series, and its hull was below their feet from day one, so when they finally revealed it, and explored it, it felt invigorating. Rewarding. This ship, and the glorious feelings and thoughts it represents, have inspired to no end, and haven’t ended yet.

Honorable mentions:

Westley and Buttercup, The Princess Bride

Ooooh man I tell you what, it was really hard trimming this down to 10 for the list, and this one just barely didn’t make the cut, and that mainly because I have a sweet spot for animation and for warrior women, and this sweetness ain’t animated, and this damsel is as distressed as they get. And they don’t have a whole lot of chemistry? I don’t know how to measure that, but I feel like there was a lot of friendship stated that was never shown? Is it sacrilege to say that about True Love? I guess I’ve never exactly had True Love, so what do I know?

The entire plot centers around his devotion to her, and her love for him, and the lengths they go to for one another. He studies fencing and wrestling and wits and tactics for years on a pirate ship as he tried to return to her, and she refused the advances and the offers of an actual prince for as long as she could, even though she thought him dead, and was ready to kill herself when she knew him to be alive and not to be hers. And just such excellent action and characters and humor and story in the entire book surrounding it. Possibly an even better movie, somehow. Happy happy happy happy. They don’t make movies like this no more, why is that? Sad.

Endurance, Interstellar

Actually a pretty realistic design, all considering. They nailed the aesthetic, and the cinematography, and the feel.

It does lose points though, firstly because the shuttlecraft require a booster stage to make it into orbit when leaving Earth, but for the rest of the movie, whenever they’re landing on planets with similar gravity and atmosphere, they can just fly away like it’s no big deal, which is a big inconsistency, both with real life, and more importantly with itself. And how did an under-equipped and struggling space program put this thing in orbit in the first place, anyway? And why don’t their ships land on their asses like proper rockets? And why not tell the crew members the full plan before leaving? See, it’s little things like that, little inconsistencies made for the sake of fitting with story beats and simplifying it for the audience’s sake, that sours this ship for me. I don’t mind creative liberties, but actual plot holes? This thing has a few plot holes, and plot holes are absolutely yucky. So although most of this ship is very yummy, the yucky parts make it all yucky.

Yucky.

Plus its heavy cargo shuttles are about the least-aerodynamic things imaginable, and that’s also yucky, and there’s porcelain tiles in the stasis bay, like what?

Couldashouldawoulda been yummy.

The Hermes, The Martian

This ship. This friggin’ ship.

A beautiful ship. A well-conceived ship. A mathematically sound and engineered ship. It had so many many good ideas behind it. So much math went into calculating its thrust and orbital dynamics for this movie, so much work went into making it fit a contemporary space aesthetic, the panels, the heat sinks, the tanks, so much PRESENTATION I could KISS IT HMWA, but taken as a whole, engineering-wise, the whole ship falls flat on its face, because it just doesn’t fit together. It doesn’t make sense. Look at all those countless modules along its length. What do they do? They don’t do anything! It’s a quarter mile long, and it’s built for only 6 people? It’s meant to carry a lander? Where does the lander dock? Why are the useful airlocks so far off the center of gravity? Why does it have a cockpit? Why is the forward airlock so looooong? Why is the entire ship so loooooong? Why is the ring spinning so slowly? It’s not hard math to figure out how fast it needs to spin! You’re telling me you did ORBITAL DYNAMICS but not the SINGLE physics 101 equation needed to figure out how fast the ring needs to spin??

Btw, let’s talk about that rotating section in the middle! Think about the rotating section! That rotating section means that the front and the back of the ship aren’t actually connected! There’s just a pair of ring-shaped slip-slidey bearings bridging the ship’s middle, slip-slidey bearings that electricity, computer signals, and water and air pipes can’t cross. Why did they design it that way?? In the book the entire ship spun, which makes so much more sense! Why does it have solar panels when it has a reactor canonically capable of 40 times their output? Why are the fuel tanks so small? Why is it always facing prograde even when canonically burning retrograde? Why? WHY? BLRRRRGGGGGRGGGRGGG

In Conclusion, Ships Are Neat

[chibi-pix]

Your Plance Portal AU pics inspired a small bit of fiction from me. Not sure what to do with it, so here you are. Apologies if it's a bit rough, first draft. Feel free to modify, share, whatever. I'm just anon. And sorry for the lack of formatting that will result in posting here. (part 1) "Why?" The fascinating specimen asked of me. His eyes darting over the form I had taken. Curiosity. Heightened heart rate. A curious combination of two of the three primal Fs. Fascinating as always.

Wow! Your story parts were amazing! While I admit, some sections were hard to read, conclude who was talking, but I did love it! Of course, you did call it a first/rough draft and stories start that way!

You had said I was free to modify and/or share. I took you up on that offer and applied your work to this. It was fun to work with and thank you for writing it and giving me an opportunity to work with it.

Hopefully it all shows; if not, I’ll reblog the answer with the full post/ficlet.

Pidge. It was a simple name she was referred to as. She. A humanized term to separate sexes and give identity. That was her understanding. It was a logical things to humans, but not to the likes of an android, program to see and comprehend numbers, not emotions and desires. So why? Why did she go by that word that could otherwise be called a pronoun?

“Why?” Her attention was brought to the latest of the subjects, a young man. Subject number 117-98-78. He insisted on being called Lance. Another human thing. But she supposed, to some extent, she could relate. She was given a name, too, along with her identity number. Her name, though, was shorter and easier to input by her creators when they wrote their notes.

Pidge examined Lance further, doing a scan of her own on the biological creature. His heart rate was increasing. An emotional response? Or perhaps it was the adrenaline humans felt when going through certain tasks that forces them to exert themselves physically and even emotionally. “You will need to reiterate your query for proper understanding so an appropriate answer can be provided.”

“Fine then. Why are you putting me through this?” Lance commanded. “Why do I need to go through these tests? What do you gain from all of this?!”

Pidge considered his questioned for a moment. To be honest, there was no complex reason for why she did it. It was her core imperative; it was her duty to test subjects and gather data. But would that response be enough for the latest subject? “You are a new variable.” she responded finally. “With the cloned and robotic test subjects being identical variables, testing and collecting data has grown stagnant and all data is outdated and irrelevant. You, however, come from outside the testing facility. You are a new variable and therefore present new data to study.”

“Dude! I could have died back there!” Lance snapped, his anger elevating. It was an illogical outburst from Pidge’s perspective, but, then again, humans were rather illogical. “Pit traps? Laser grids? And don’t get me started on that green goo you dare call sustenance. It’s freaking torture!”

“Incorrect.” Pidge responded, plain and simple. “This is testing. Testing is a necessary part of improving and moving forward. It is, after all, the core of my programming. To continue in my duty of gathering data. I test, therefore I am. I am, therefore...”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think Doctor and Professor Holt would have wanted testing to be this cruel.” Lance interrupted.

Pidge felt a stutter in her programming. Those names. Her creators. He knew their names. “Guessing their names correctly and knowing they created me specifically would be nearly impossible.” she commented. “Logic would point to you being aware of their classified research on redacted information. Despite this, mentioning them when in your current situation with the risks on your life tell me that you are not an intelligence operative of any enemy of my creators or their benefactors.” She performed another scan. “There are no indications in your biology to suggest any attempt of deceit. This is data that I did not anticipate. Explain. How do you know the names of my creators?”

“Huh? Well, everyone knows who the Holts are.” Lance stated, looking confused. “They changed everything. Botany, terraforming, space travel, they were the top minds of Altean Laboratories. Their work was groundbreaking.”

“Were. Changed. Was. These terms in how they are used are indication of past tense.” Pidge commented.

Lance was perplexed. “I mean… well… yeah, totally.” he said. “It was five centuries ago, give or take some months or single years.”

Pidge couldn’t explain the dip in her cor performance. Had she been human, she would have described it as a weight in her stomach. Had it seriously been that long? She had lost connection to her internal clock several thousand test subjects ago. “That is impossible.” she stated. “The facility around you operates due to the power obtained from the plasma reactor. It had only an estimated lifespan of three to four centuries; due to the renewal of energy sources, I have managed to re-calibrate that and extend it for another half century or so. To continue getting power to keep the facility functioning would be impossible. My ability to function would have ceased.”

Lance sighed. He then decided to bring up a holographic display. Pidge found she could not interface with the hologram; she decided she could endure collecting data visually. As she looked at the hologram, she saw the schematics of the facility. But not all was the same. There was a new structure that she could not identify.

Lance picked up on where Pidge was looking. “You see it, too, huh?” he asked. He pointed to an area on the hologram. “Right here. We had reason to believe that a piece of what we refer to as the trans-reality comet has found its way here. And by we, I mean my superior officers. I’m just the field guy who goes in and investigates things; the others are the science guys who understand this stuff better. Anyway, long story short, but this thing is apparently radiating energy and with a copious amount still stored in it. There’s a problem, though.”

Pidge couldn’t interface with the hologram, but she knew the subject could. She went in close, finding her humanoid form to be convenient for times like this. She gently took Lance’s hand and moved it, prompting him to touch certain parts and bring up more data on the hologram.

“It appears to be unstable.” Pidge commented.

“Extremely.”

“The plasma from the facility’s reactor appears to be the cause of of the instability. However, I do not have sufficient data to fully determine how accurate this is.” Pidge glanced over to Lance, realizing he was staring at her, his mouth hung open a bit. “Does me not having the full answer cause this human emotion of bewilderment?” she inquired. “It should not; results cannot be properly determined without sufficient amounts of data. I have not collected enough data on the subject of this comet and its interactions with the reactor.”

“No it’s just...” Lance looked at Pidge’s hand, seeing it still around his own. “Your hand. It’s so warm. I didn’t expect that.” Pidge pulled her hand away quickly. “What are you? How are you so warm?”

“I am not; this is simply a byproduct of the cooling systems aboard this particular interface unit.” Pidge responded. “This unit is only a feature provided to me. I am, after all, the facility computer.”

Lance looked closely. “So… why do you look like a girl?”

Pidge blinked. So even he acknowledged that he seemed like a girl, at least in appearance. She looked ahead and away from the subject. “This interface unit was called the Physical Interface Data Gateway Exchange. To make data input easier, they formed it into the acronym PIDGE.” she explained. “It was designed with the intention of making interactions with subjects feel less… impersonal. It is for the benefit of my creators and the facility, not of my own. I have insufficient amounts of data to determine why they have given me this form.” She didn’t speak about it, but what little data she had about that, she had image files showing a member of the Holt family with a similar appearance. Perhaps it was meant to immortalize that member? She lacked the data to determine that.

“Pidge, huh?” Lance asked. “So it’s a name?”

“It is what they called me due to it being easier on the creators and less time consuming for their already limited lives.” Pidge commented. “Now then, since I have answered your queries and indulged your curiosities, it would be preferable to continue the testing.”

Lance gave a smile, but it did not look calm. It looked almost forced. “Sorry, but… this is where the testing ends, Pidge. Pidge did not understand. She then felt something in her, as though the numbers she lived by were changing.

“I do not comprehend.” she commented. She felt off balance, as though she could not properly control the unit meant for interfacing. But she couldn’t disconnect, either; she couldn’t return fully to the computer system. “What did you do to my systems? How did…”

Lance gave a bit of a guilty smile. He then brought up a new image for the hologram. “I had some help but… your entire core program? It’s gone. No more testing. No more of this… cruel torture. You’re in this device now, disconnected from everything else. Like an old game disk; one wrong move, you’re gone. Completely.”

“Impressive.” Pidge commented. “I did not anticipate your device having the necessary storage capacity for my system. Perhaps the claim of five centuries passing is not as far-fetched as I originally determined.” Around them, the corridors and testing chambers grew dark. What Lance could only assume to be the emergency lights turned on, illuminating the area in a bright red. “It does not appear that you or your outside help have considered another variable.”

“Um… what variable?”

“The default settings booting back up upon my removal.”

“Ah quiznak.” Pidge could only assume that Lance’s choice of word meant something profound. “Okay… so what do we get? Some five hundred year old security system about to hunt me down?”

“That would be accurate to the data.” Pidge confirmed. “Which would not be good for your condition.”

“My condition?”

“Of being alive.”

“Oh.”

“However, I do possess the necessary data to thwart the old program. The variable now stands at you being the only one who can interface with my core due to the technology you transferred to it. It would then be in my best interest to keep your status as alive.”

“I mean, how hard can this be? I’ve dealt with you so far.” Lance prompted. He jumped when a sound caught his attention. There was movement further in the corridor. Blades typically seen in tests, meant to be turned off or dodged. Past it? There was another figure, though harder to see.

“In subject terms? Bad. Very bad.” Pidge commented. “I suggest listening to what I say and following my instructions without fail.” She looked to Lance. “My first instruction-”

“I’m gonna take a guess and say run!” Lance grabbed Pidge by the hand and ran off in the opposite direction, pulling her along; it was a good thing that despite her data being put into the device around his arm, her body, as one could call it, was still functional and able to move.

Again, thank you so much for this opportunity!

[whaq]

Fuck You, Animu (3/4) - Cells at Work! Episode 7

While still providing the edutainment expected of the series, Cells at Work!’s 7th episode overreaches for your emotions and may have you yelling in anger instead of sobbing in tears as it tackles the topic of cancer.

From the power couple that brought you the community darling Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure’s anime, Director Kenichi Suzuki and David Production’s adaptation of Cells at Work! has brought biology to the mainstream. Based on Akane Shimazu’s debut manga, the series follows a red blood cell and a white blood cell’s day-to-day in the human body where we encounter anthropomorphised versions of the little beings that live within all of us.

A notable element of the series is its effort to use tangential learning to spoon-feed us biology through cute anime girls and surprisingly violent (which is ironic given how the characters consist of literal blood) action scenes. We meet many of our body’s protectors, from the onee-sama Macrophages to the delinquent T Cells that make the biodiversity of the cast impressive. If you want a casual but oozingly creative series to serve as a dose of edutainment, then Cells at Work! is for you.

I binged this series about a year after its original run because My Anime List is as bottomless as it is a cruel reminder of your lack of dedication to it. At the time, I only had a few key thoughts: “I wonder if my little cells feel as bad as I do when I get hay fever every morning,” “Oh my God, look at the cheeks on those adorable little platelets,” and, “Wow, that cancer episode was really something.” People seemed to agree with me on that last thought. Critics like the Anime Pope himself Jared of Mother’s Basement shared in the sentiment that the series’ 7th episode was well done. It humanized something that we humans are very inclined to hate: a malignant cancer cell whose only purpose is to turn our own body against us; a daunting task that anyone who’s tried writing sympathetic villains can tell you. But, after watching the episode again on a whim, the feelings I had on my first viewing suddenly did a complete 180 as I began watching in horror in lieu of sympathy. Here’s  a hot-take: this episode is about Nazi sympathizing and here’s why:

We are taken to the scene of a previous episode where the NK cell is chasing after a suspicious cell that reveals itself to be cancerous. Cancer’s character design and subsequent animation are reminiscent of works like Akira or anything Junji Ito’s had his hands on. It’s gruesome, detailed, and overall as grotesque as it needs to be to get you to fear it. The animation of this fight consists of some decent sakuga as the Cancer cell is able to use its shape manipulation to stretch its limbs and morph them into practically anything. On the other hand, much of the episode’s, and by extension the rest of the series, animation is pretty inconsistent like when NK is seen strafing during Cancer’s speech. We see NK awkwardly slide across the screen while Cancer’s lipflaps remain static during his mini diatribe. “Begging for a Bluray cut” quality animation is the least of the episode’s problems.

Eventually, we’re given a look at Cancer’s backstory, and it is one of the series’ most emotional scenes. We see that the cancer cells are products of an error in cell division and appear with birth defects because of that. A pair of these newborn cancer cells, including our antagonist, attempt to run from the authorities that consist of the Killer Ts and Whites that we’ve grown fond of by this point of the series. In a heartbreaking dialogue, we find Cancer asking his friend if he is “-meant to die as soon as we are born?" This is nothing less than an emotional gut-punch, a nihilistic ponderance I wouldn’t have expected from a comedy. This is immediately followed by his friend being murdered by the guards while Cancer hides. The pained expression on this child that is mirrored on his present counterpart in the next scene really does pull at your heartstrings. The show effectively uses visuals and story to get you to sympathize with cancer, until it doesn’t.

It’s right before the arrival of our heroes that our antagonist is able to pour out his feelings. His people are oppressed and slaughtered for existing, something they obviously couldn’t have had a hand in, and it obviously pains him to see that. Right after this tear-jerking speech, he sprouts a pair of fleshy wings, that are grotesquely beautiful in their own way, which almost immediately have a machete tossed at them by the arrival of the other cells that begin to mercilessly murder Cancer’s people. The amount of thematic dissonance is palpable when you begin to hear the triumphant battle music that underscores the massacre of a race of cells you were just conditioned to feel bad for earlier. Upon defeating him, our other protagonist, White, is asked by Cancer why his people are targeted the way they are “We can’t save you. You violate the rules… hog nutrients and destroy healthy tissue. I can’t let you live… it’s my job.” Upon closer inspection, it’s easy enough to draw the line comparing the cancer cells to any persecuted race. What makes me think of the Jewish specifically is due to the events of the Holocaust, and its subsequent aftermath, that seems to mirror the events of the story. The cancer cells are even shown to be kept imprisoned in a cell full of green liquid, almost like the acid that served as one of the methods the Nazis used to exterminate the Jews during World War II. While Judaism is a religion, not a race, it’s intrinsically linked to people who descend from the original tribes of Israel, which is a huge group of people. It’s estimated that 1.7 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust by the infamously White-Supremacist Nazi Party that relied on propoganda that said Jews were taking all the money in the world and ruining the lives of the “superior race” of whites. Adding to that the display of a soldier just “doing their job” of assisting the genocide of an entire people. Knowing this, is it really too far-fetched to understand why I began gawking at my screen when our Jew surrogate, Cancer, is killed by an army, for the exact same reasons of being thought of as deplorables no less, made up of WHITE blood cells?!

Adding insult to injury, Cancer’s tragic death is then abruptly ended by Red comedically checking up on White as we see Cancer’s corpse desecrated by Looney Tune style black X-marks for eyes; as if his death was nothing more than a joke. As the show’s ending theme played behind scenes of the army celebrating their genocide, I could’ve sworn I heard the lyrics “it’s okay, I’m okay” in the song, that truly was the last straw for me. In a world divided between people who want to defend the defenseless and those who want to further oppress the oppressed, the meta-narrative this episode contains is down-right dangerous.

Thankfully, the rest of the series’ usually light-hearted and comedic antics can serve as a palette cleanser to wash the taste of this episode out. Continuing on from here, you’ll be met with more of the same edutainment you’ve been served so far in Cells at Work!’s last six episodes. If those episodes caught your attention, you’ll want to stick around to learn more about this corporeal incorporation.

[wonderland-irwin]

Paper Airplanes ~ Lily

Word Count: 1711

Warnings: N/A 

Author’s Note:  I have six characters I have created, each with unique personalities and stories. They all have struggles and successes, and since I can’t quite figure out how to write them into one large story (nor was I able to complete the fics they were originally supposed to be in), short stories about their lives will have to do for now. Not that I mind! I love them all so much, and they’re dynamic is quite fun to explore. Paper Airplanes is the story that began their tale. I will be setting up a place on Wattpad where you will be able to find the stories there as I post them. If you would like to be tagged in other short stories, let me know. You can “sign up” for one character if you like one specifically, or all stories in this world.

Summary: After a disastrous study session in the library, Lily starts folding her notes into tiny paper airplanes when a stranger comes up and offers advice on how to make them more efficient at flying.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Lillian sat in the back of the campus library in her little study group, barely paying attention to the argument going on about stock prices and exchanges. There were a thousand other things Lily could think of doing instead of studying - reading or working or sleeping, for example - but the members of her group were quite strict in their schedule, and so at seven on a Friday evening, there she was studying for a midterm that was three weeks away.  

She watched them argue with a blank expression, their words passing over her head. There was something about finance that didn't click with Lily's brain. Maybe it was that the professor who taught the three hour lecture was dry and boring, or that she didn't have a particular interest (no pun intended) in stocks or bonds, but nothing made sense to her. She had read the textbook, the words and theories all confusing her, and the only reason she was doing well in the course was because she knew from the homework how to manipulate the numbers into the equations. If she didn't know how to work the formulas, she was sure she would be failing. Still, it would be nice to know what all those numbers meant instead of operating them blindly.

The argument got louder and Lily placed her chin on her fist. She sighed, glancing around the mostly deserted corner of the library. There was another group working on what looked like a large model of some organ, which one specifically was hard to determine; it was mostly just a mess of clay and paper. They were at least laughing though, and Lily would have loved to be laughing and joking around instead of tuning out to things she really should have been paying attention too. 

She watched the group of biology students for a while, a small amused smile forming on her face, then realizing she should look away before she was caught, turned to see if there was anyone else interesting to look at. Sure enough in one of the leather chairs under the window was a boy. He had tucked his feet up under him, a textbook open in his lap, however he had his phone in one hand and was lazily scrolling through it. With his other hand he played with the hoop in his nose, a feature Lily found intriguing.

"Lily!" A voice yelled, causing Lily to jump. She turned to the group of irritated looking girls that was supposed to be her friends and her study group, and swallowed the lump in her throat.

"Y-Yes?" She stammered. Heat rushed to her cheeks and she looked down to her now folded hands in her lap. 

"If you're not paying attention, maybe we should end this," Claire barked at her. Lily instantly felt like she'd shrunk to the size of a peanut. Claire was one of those people who always had a way of making you feel worthless and she was also one of those people who always had to be correct. There was no way to correct her or even suggest an idea that might be different than hers. Lily had struggled to make a good friend the first year of university, and Claire had sat beside her in their managerial accounting class and quickly offered friendship. Lily now felt obliged to be her friend, even though she wasn't fond of her.

"I'm sorry," Lily muttered, "I'm just tired. It's hard to focus."

"You know what, yeah," Peggy said softly, "it is late and I have to catch the nine-forty bus. We should head out." 

Claire protested, but thankfully the other girls began to pack their bags and pull their coats on. Lily sat staring at her unopened textbook and untouched notes, listening to Claire's protests as the four girls started to the staircase without her. The floor got instantly quieter and Lily let a long breath out that she hadn't realized she was holding in. She never felt more stupid than after a study session with those girls. They had a way of over-complicating topics that Lily had barely become comfortable in understanding, and the only way they seemed to be able to speak was through an intense debate. Lily mostly remained quiet when around them, and when she did speak her ideas were either determined stupid, or they found a way to belittle her. It always took a moment after being around them to settle her thoughts and regain composure. 

She wasn't mentally ready to pack up her things and leave yet, and she got a strange desire to construct a paper airplane out of one of her notes. Every so often she got this desire, however she was unsure what drove it except that maybe she was subconsciously looking for something to do with her hands, and there was something calming about folding paper.

Nonetheless, she snatched up a note about rates and returns beginning to fold it. Eventually she had a wonky looking airplane, and she held it up. She cocked her head to the side and frowned, knowing she hadn't done something right, but decided to fly it anyways. Pinching it between her thumb and forefinger, she gently sent it off with the far fetched thought that maybe it would fly in a straight line. It barely got any lift before it spiraled to the floor and crash landed. 

Instantly Lily's heart sunk. Like somehow her inability to produce a nice paper airplane was directly related to her not being able to understand finance and making poor decisions in who she selected as her friends. 

Lily sighed, leaning her forehead against the table. She closed her eyes, willing for it to be over. School, that is. Lily had decided that once she got her Bachelor of Commerce, she would be done with school. School was a means to an end, and she had two and a half years left. Sometimes, like now, she wasn't convinced she would be able to make it through. A good night's sleep, and possibly a good cry later, and she'd gather herself up and tell herself she had to, and would be able to continue. 

Sometimes that was easier said than done.

"Hey," a voice spooked her again and she bolted upright. The boy from the leather chair stood awkwardly in front of her. She stared at him, her eyes taking in quick details like his eyes were hazel, he had tiny black gauges in each of his ears, and that the black knit sweater he wore looked soft and comfortable.

"Are you okay? That looked pretty rough." He adjusted the strap of his backpack on his shoulder, his hand going to poke at his nose piercing.

Lily shrugged, "I suck at making paper airplanes."

The boy gave her a puzzled look before amusement took over and he laughed. The wonderful sound made Lily's heart jump and her face heated again. Why was he laughing at her?

"Sorry," the boy chuckled, "I should have been more specific; the group you were with. They were absolutely awful."

"Oh, yeah," Lily looked away, "they're like that a lot. It's okay."

"It doesn't really look like you're okay."

Refusing to look at him, Lily shrugged again. She wasn't sure how to respond, and she was sure there were more interesting things that he would want to do than talk to her, however he surprised her. 

"This isn't that bad of a plane. I think you may have missed a fold."

Lily looked back up to him. He held her airplane and was examining it.

"I can show you how to make a really good one if you'd like?" He glanced up to her, one of his eyebrows quirking up.

Lily smiled at him, "I'd like that." 

He grinned at her, walking quickly to the empty seat beside her and lowering himself onto it. His bag hit the floor with a thud and he set her plane on the table to roll up his sleeves. His arms were heavily inked with tattoos and Lily blinked at them in amazement. There was something so calming and beautiful about his arms that Lily couldn't help but admire them. Each image was outlined in black, then filled in with the wildest and brightest of colours. Nothing looked out of place or forced. She didn't know him, but somehow she knew they all fit with him. From the piano tiles that wrapped around his wrist like a bracelet, to the tiny gumball machine on his forearm by his elbow, they all had their place. 

Lily could have spent all day looking at his tattoos, however he was staring down at her with an amused smile, and so she had to stop.

"Do you have a piece of paper?" He asked, his eyes locking with hers. She nodded, passing him a note with equations scribbled on both sides. He glanced at it, and then looked to her, "you don't need this?"

She shook her head, "I mean I do, but I have the PowerPoints and the textbook. They're all there." 

The boy nodded, then lay the paper on the table.

Lily watched him as he shifted the paper around, partially folding the it in a plan. She shuffled closer, leaning over his arm to watch as he began to make smooth folds and creases turning the paper into a plane in a matter of seconds.

"Ta-da!" He held it out to her proudly, "you can send it on its first flight."

Lily laughed, shaking her head, but she took the plane as she had with her own, and gently released it into the air. It sailed in a smooth line, then landed softly on the floor and rolled to the side.

"It works!" She gasped.

"You sound surprised," he laughed.

"I've been trying to get mine to fly like that for years!"

"Years?" His eyes widened.

Lily nodded, "years."

"Well," he smiled softly, "I'm glad you know how to do that now."

"Mm," Lily hummed absentmindedly, reaching over to grab another note to make her own plane, "can you watch and help me make one?"

This time the boy shuffled closer to her and leant over her shoulder to watch, "of course."

[joeyvoeman]

What’s Up Doc? | Joey & Miguel

Joey takes his rabbit Cindy to the park, where she is injured. It’s a good thing a friendly neighborhood healer is there to save the day.

@bumblingbrujo

Joey liked to take his rabbit Cindy to the park at least once a week. It wasn't really because she needed to be there (the back yard of his duplex would have worked just as well) but he used to take his sister Cindy to the park once a week back in the day. Cindy was dead now though. So were most of the people he'd known in his life. This was his small way of connecting with his past in a non-painful way. Cindy had hopped up on a piece of playground equipment, and a child had asked to pet her, to which Joey let him. Before Joey could reach though, the boy had pushed her off of the equipment, and Cindy had landed on the woodchips wrong, now limping about. "Cindy, what's wrong? Is it your foot?" he asked, rather pathetically. He glanced around the park helplessly.

Miguel was in the park playing fetch with Molly. She was a good dog and a wonderful familiar. And sometimes he worried that he didn’t play with her enough. She dropped the tennis ball they had been tossing around and her ears pricked up. Miguel hadn’t noticed anything but when she stood at attention he looked around for what she had noticed. There was an atronach cradling a fluffy black mass. Miguel was curious. And his deep desire to help couldn’t be held back. He approached the atronach carefully, looking over his shoulder at what he could now see was a bunny. “Hey there, need some help?”

Joey was so focused on Cindy that someone else approaching had startled him. He was usually very observant. It was part of his job and his training, after all, but this was a special circumstance. "Oh, hi." He stood, still cradling Cindy to his chest, who wasn't moving now. Had she hit her head too? Joey just now noticed that the boy that had pushed her was long gone. "Uh, do you know where I can find a vet? I think she's broken a leg."

There was a vet in town... but the little bunny looked so distressed. Miguel sat down next to the atronach, lap open. “I’m a healer,” he said, gentle but firm. His voice taking on the authoritative edge of a doctor. “Let me see.” He held his hands out and his eyes started to glow golden - his tattoo and hands followed suit dimly.

Joey furrowed his eyebrows at the offer. He'd really like to take her to a vet, but her unresponsiveness worried him now. He shook her gently in his arms, and she didn't move, just breathed and looked off to the distance. As the healer sat down, Joey sat down again as well, ignoring a woodchip trying to get fresh with him through his shorts. "Okay," he relented, watching as the man's eyes started to glow. He held Cindy out to him. "Just, be careful."

Miguel pet the rabbit gently and felt her injuries. A few torn muscles, it seemed she was keeping still because moving was painful. Poor thing. She must have been pretty scared. As he pet her he took her injuries. They were relatively small on Miguel, in comparison to the size of the rabbit from which they came. But they made him wince. Torn muscles hurt like hell. It took a minute or so, but when he was done he set her down and she hopped toward her atronach. Miguel needed a few deep breaths and a moment to himself to heal the new injuries on his body. When he was done his muscles were still sore and he wasn’t sure if he could walk home just yet. So he stayed sitting. “What’s her name?” He asked. Molly was at his elbow, ready to help him if he needed it. And she nosed his shoulder. “This is Molly,” he introduced his familiar. “And I’m Miguel.”

Joey watched as the healer took Cindy, holding his breath. He only let it go when he saw her jump up from his lap happily, hopping over to him. He let out a choked laugh and picked her up, putting her on his shoulder where she liked to sit. "Thank you mister," he said before the man could ask him any questions. "Thank you so much. You're a good fella." He reached up to pet her floppy ears. "Oh, her name's Cindy, and I'm Joey." He held a hand out to Miguel.

Miguel smiled, even though he was sore. He was just happy to help. “Don’t mention it,” he said, sounding a little shy. But then Joey offered his hand and Miguel shook it. Even if he could tell the other man was an atronach by the horns, he wanted to know more. Fae Magic was always so interesting. And Joey didn’t disappoint. There was deep rumbling magic and thunder under his skin. Some aspects of it reminded him of his cousin Lupe. And some aspects of it reminded him of his abuela. Connected to the land. “Nice to meet you, Joey.”

Joey squinted his eyes with a small smile. "So do you go around the town healing random people's pets as a pastime, or is this a one off?" he asked. He reached over and offered a hand to Molly as well, who gave it a lick before he gave her chin a scratch. What a nice dog. Or, if he was a witch, then probably she was his familiar. "Nice to meet you too, Miguel..." He stood carefully, making sure Cindy didn't fall again. Damn, he wished he could get his hands on that kid and tell his mother what had happened. "I saw you wince when you were healing her. How do you do it?"

He was perceptive. Miguel was impressed. Plenty of people with invisible injuries never even suspected anything. Miguel’s face was sunny and vague. “Well not usually pets, usually people. I’m a doctor. And I can’t seem to not be a doctor when I leave work.” Molly seemed to enjoy the chin scratches and he used his big dog to stand up slowly. “I take the injuries onto my body. From there I heal it.”

Joey gave Miguel a rye smile. "A doctor, huh? Good thing I've got a great health insurance package. How much do I owe ya?" Joey nudged him with his elbow gently. He was kidding, but if the guy threw out a dollar amount, he was more than willing to bust out his wallet. "That's...amazing. So you're a witch then?" He remembered how much his mother had hated witches. Said they were always after their kind's inner magic. He'd realized in his own life it was all baseless prejudice passed down the generations, but he couldn't keep the edge out of his tone. He cleared his throat. "Are you busy? I'd love to buy you lunch, as a thank you."

Miguel shook his head. “I don’t know how to price rabbits. So I guess lunch will have to do.” There was a certain tightening in Joey’s tone on the word witch, but Miguel shrugged it off. His own mama had plenty of prejudice against other supernatural species, prejudice that Miguel was still trying to sort through. “Mhmm biology witch, I like to call it. But witch doctor works too.” He followed after Joey. “So are you new in town?” Miguel was finally settling into town after a year. He finally felt like a citizen instead of a visitor.

Joey smiled. "Good, I know a great little bistro by the docks. Follow me." And he did. Cindy tottered on Joey's shoulder a little bit, and he let her hop down into his crooked arm. "Yeah, 'bout six months now I think. Great find, really. A town were we can all just be open like this? Haven't felt like this since I was young."

“Where did you grow up?” Miguel asked. Growing up in LA was just as hidden. It was hard to be open about being a witch. But there were certain freeing aspects of being a brujo. If it was weird Mexican mysticism then people seemed to ignore it easier than ‘real magic’. He followed Joey at a slow pace. Molly was at his side in case he needed her, bumping against his legs encouragingly.

"Tennessee," Joey replied, suddenly self-conscious of the subtle twang in his voice. "Real close to the mountains. Sometimes I miss all the green." Soapberry's upper west coast climate had lots of green to offer, but nothing beat those endless mountain forests. "What about you?"

Miguel chuckled a little. “LA, about as far away from Tennessee as you can get. Though I think the Sheriff here is from around those parts...” though maybe Ephram was from a Kentucky. Somewhere south. “I like it here though, plenty of green. And there’s people but not so many as LA where they’re always breathing down your neck.”

"Oh, I could never live in a city that big. Like to keep to myself when I can. City like that, everybody's just shoulder to shoulder. Like a bunch of sardines." Joey gave a little shudder, but perked up when he saw they were approaching the bistro. "Hi Dorothy!" He said to the waitress tending the tables out on the front patio. He grabbed a table out there and motioned for Miguel to sit. "How long have you been here, then? What made you leave LA?"

Miguel sat across from Joey and Molly settled down next to him, head on his lap. “Had to cut the umbilical cord eventually, mostly had to get away from my coven.” He shrugged. “Plus you’re right. Everything you’ve said about LA. I wanted more greenery. Here I can climb and hike and swim.” He scratched behind Molly’s ears. Miguel picked up the menu and hummed. “What’s good here?” He asked Joey.

Joey squinted a little. "Why'd you have to get away from your coven?" he asked before he could stop himself. He cleared his throat, a subtle indication that he didn't have to answer if he didn't want to. "Uh, I'm a sucker for their salmon."

Miguel made an interesting face, his lip curled up but he had one side of his bottom Iip mashed between his teeth. And his eyebrows quirked. And then he took a deep breath and his face smoothed our. “We didn’t see eye to eye,” he said simply. “Salmon sounds great! And it comes with rice that’s my favorite.” He nodded and ordered the salmon when the waiter returned.

Joey gave Miguel a tight smile, knowing he'd crossed a line. When the waiter returned, he ordered the same as Miguel, but was very particular on the herbs and spices used with his dish. "I'm sorry to hear that," he replied once the waiter was gone. "It can be hard to leave a family like that." But he knew he shouldn't dwell, so he tried to change the subject. "So what do you do for fun around here? Besides the hiking and swimming and such."

That was usually enough for people... “I like books. And tea. I know I sound like a grandma when I say that but...” Miguel shrugged. “How about you?” He looked over Joey’s broad shoulders and muscles. He seemed like the outdoorsy type.

Joey put up a hand. "Books and tea seem to be the hip thing now from what I've seen," he said, thinking back on all those coffee shops he'd visited since waking up. What had the barista called them? Hippers? "Me? I like hiking and camping and woodworking, mostly. Used to whittle a lot too. Thinking about taking it back up soon."

Miguel smiled. “Wood whittling! It’s been awhile since I’ve heard of someone doing that. But that’s cool. It can come in handy too if you’re hiking and desperately need a spoon.” Hasn’t he... yes in the alternate universe Prince Miguel has liked wood whittling. Maybe he would pick up the habit. “If you’re ever in the mood to give someone a few pointers, I think I’d like to learn how to carve.”

Joey let out a small laugh. "You're telling me! It happened to me once, actually. Went hiking and forgot a spoon, but not my trusty knife." He picked his out of his pocket and brandished it, flipping it open. It had a US Army emblem on it in silver, laid into the cherry wood. A gift from his lieutenant when the war ended. He closed it quickly when the food came. "Of course. I'd be happy to."

The ease and grace with which Joey flipped open his knife made Miguel’s tummy tighten. And not in a bad way. “You seem like a handy guy to have around...” Miguel said, and then berated himself for how lame that sounded. Thankfully the food came, and Miguel was a bit distracted by the steaming salmon and rice. It was delicious. And he gave Molly a little nibble of fish. Miguel was still thinking about the knife. He hadn’t missed the military emblem. Has Joey served? He seemed pretty young. But that didn’t stop people. Especially not when the army tended to target the young kids fresh in or out of college. Young to Miguel being anyone under 50.... still that was more than enough time. Miguel wasn’t sure if it mattered, or why it mattered. He just knew he wanted to know more about the atronach. “Your magic... is it wind based?” He asked tentatively. He had used atronachs for their magic, for their glyphs, before. And he didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.

Joey nodded, smiling at Miguel. He seemed a little nervous, but Joey couldn't imagine why. Had he said something wrong? "So I've been told." He could see that Miguel was enjoying the food, and this made Joey smile to himself as he nibbled on his fish. The waiter had also brought a bowl of veggies for Cindy, who munched on them happily on the table. Did he really come here that often that the staff just knew to do that? He had always liked to be a 'regular' at places. He was a little caught off guard by Miguel's question, still not completely used to keeping it a secret. "Sort of. Electric. Or, storm, I suppose. That's how my mother always described it."

Miguel: “That’s cool. I can sort of feel magic, as a witch. And your magic feels like my cousin’s. She can do storms and electricity. But her base is wind.” There was also the abuela feeling but Miguel was 100% sure it wasn’t great to compare cute men with incredibly jawlines to your grandma. The way the waiter brought the vegetables for Cindy made Miguel smile too. “I’ve seen a lot of ateonach’s with rabbits, are they some kind of familiar? Or is it different?”

Joey nodded. "Huh," he said, rather matter of factly. It was interesting, but he always felt weird talking about his inner energy. It was a private thing. Something he himself still hadn't wrapped his head around after all this time. Something dangerous to only be brought out in an emergency. So he was grateful for the subject change. "Oh no, Cindy's just a regular rabbit. My kind and her's are just drawn to each other is all. My tribe use to breed them."

Miguel nodded. Bred them for companionship? “She’s so well behaved.” Maybe atronachs had a certain way with rabbits, the way selkies had with animals. “I guess my people are known for breeding dogs. But not ones as pretty as Molly.” He rubbed her head. Xolo dogs were honestly ugly. And the big ones scared the crap out of Miguel. He took a break from eating to drink the water that was on the table.

Joey smiled. "Thanks. I've only had her for about a year now but we've gotten keen on each other real quick." He gave her a little scratch between the ears as he shoveled a bite of rice into his mouth with his other hand. "And Molly is beautiful," he agreed, not quite sure what sort of dogs Miguel was referring to. The waiter came and asked if they'd like dessert, and Joey just couldn't help himself. "We'll take the chocolate volcano, two spoons," he said, before Miguel could interject. He cringed sheepishly as the waiter walked away. "Hope that's okay?"

Miguel preened. Even if he had nothing to do with how pretty his dog was. “Thank you!” Her tail wagged under the table, hitting one of the table legs. Miguel looked up at the waiter to decline dessert, he had ice cream sandwiches in his freezer with his name all over them (because he lived alone). But Joey ordered the cake before he could open his mouth. Which, it sounded delicious and Miguel wasn’t about to complain. Sharing food was just so... intimate for a new friend. (Yes, he was already thinking of Joey as a new friend, which was exciting for him. He hasn’t had any NEW friends in a couple months.) But somehow refrained from blushing when the waiter came back with a mouth watering warm chocolate cake for them to share. “Wow it smells good. You get the first bite. I wanna watch the chocolate lava.”

Miguel seemed excited about the idea of dessert, so Joey took it as a yes. When it came, he was more than happy to take the first bite. His mouth was watering. He dug in, watching the 'lava' from the inside spill out, and put the chocolate goodness in his mouth, letting out a long, satisfied, "Mmmmmm," from his mouth, closing his eyes.

Miguel tried to watch the chocolate lava for the satisfaction of it. But watching Joey’s face was a lot more satisfying. A moment after he took the first bite, Miguel took a scoop, careful to get the cake bit and the fudge sauce. He wanted to taste what Joey was tasting. It was good. But Miguel was far too shy to make any noises of appreciation. “You were so right to get dessert,” he said instead.

Joey nodded in agreement, opening his eyes. "I know," he said cheekily. "Mama would always urge me to get dessert." His twang really came out when he said 'Mama'. "Trying to put meat on my bones, she'd say. Doesn't really apply to atronachs, but I think she'd picked it up from a human somewhere." He let out a little laugh.

Oh no. He was adorable. Hearing him talk about this mama in that deep voice had done it. Miguel had a crush. “That’s so sweet. My mama was the same way.” His smiled mirrored Joey’s. “Thanks for inviting me to lunch, I uhm...” he looked at the empty plate and tried to think of an excuse to spend more time with Joey. “It was nice, meeting a new face.”

They'd finished the cake in no time, both of them having a mighty sweet tooth, it seemed. "No problem, Miguel. Thank you for helping Cindy." Joey gave her a few pets, and as he did he caught a glimpse of his watch. "Oh heck, it's later than I thought. I got a shift at the Museum in an hour. I gotta go get ready." He pulled money from his pocket and put it on the table before scooping up Cindy. "It was real nice meeting you too," he said genuinely, offering a hand for him to shake again before giving him a quick wave and striding away with Cindy in his arms.

Miguel smiled and shook his hand. Two hand shakes! That was double the usual amount of hand shakes. “I’ll see you around. And I’m always happy to help.” He got up and watched Joey leave before ambling off with Molly at his side. His muscles were starting to feel normal again and walking was easier.

[saltyandoverdramatic]

As I Sit in Silence [Part 3]

Part 1

Part 2

It had been days since they’d taken Matt. It was futile to think he was still alive. If you lived, you would be taken back to the cell to rest so that the next time you would fight as fiercely and be as entertaining as before.

No. Matt was gone.

Lance felt numb. Not only from the cold, but from the loss. There were dried tear tracks on his face, but he couldn’t cry anymore. He had cried when Matt had been taken and when he hadn’t come back by the next day. He’d felt like a crybaby but Jaiva hadn’t judged him, shedding some tears of her own. Lance had been grateful to have her there. They both supported each other. Even though they had been imprisoned for a long time, they hadn’t lost anyone important to them since Sam. They had been lucky but not anymore. After they took Matt, they’d stayed away for a couple of days, then they took Jaiva.

Lance had run out of tears after they took her.

It was hard to say how long he’d been sitting there alone. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness, still barely able to stand, sometimes passing out due to pain because he accidentally disturbed one of his internal injuries.

Lance didn’t know what would be worse, dying in the arena like everyone he cared about in this place, or slowly bleeding out in the cell, cold, numb and alone.

The other prisoners stayed away from his corner. Maybe they knew he was already dying. There was nothing they could do for him. Instead they focused on each other, comforting and holding each other, probably assuring that it would be fine.

Lance snorted. Nothing would be fine. They were all going to die, either from cold, illnesses or the teeth of a monster that hadn’t been fed properly for far too long. At first, Lance had entertained thoughts of escaping one day. Getting back to earth and telling his family that he was alive, but he had lied to himself. There had never been a chance to escape and in this condition? No way. He wouldn’t make it to the end of the hallway much less out of the whole ship.

Escaping was out of question, so Lance didn’t struggle when the sentries came to fetch him for the fifth time.

They half dragged him with them because he couldn’t keep up with their pace. He hoped his death would be quick. He didn’t want to suffer any more than he absolutely had to. Maybe there was an afterlife and he would get to see Matt and Jaiva again. The thought brought a smile to his face despite everything.

The sentries turned to the left and started dragging Lance down a hallway he’d never been to before. This one had several shiny metal doors in rows as far as Lance could see. They didn’t look heavy like the cell door had. It was creepy how quiet it was. No machine noises, footsteps or anything. Lance couldn’t even hear his own steps. The hallway was void of sounds.

Eventually they stopped in front of a door. It was identical to all the other doors and lead to a room with steel walls, ceiling and floor and an operating table in the middle. A woman? Man? Whatever, in a long purple cloak was waiting near the head of the table.

Lance started struggling. What were they going to do to him? Were they going to dissect and study him like a frog in a biology class? Or like- whoever it was that studied the human anatomy by cutting dead corpses open? Lance didn’t agree to this! He would take a fatal wound from a boar-snake any day rather than subject himself to human experimentation.

The cloaked figure said nothing as the sentries forced Lance on the operating table and strapped him on it to prevent his escape.

Only after the sentries had left, did the cloaked figure move. They hovered over Lance, who was now able to see that she was indeed a woman and that she had purple skin and yellow eyes as well as red scar like markings under her eyes. She looked like someone you wouldn’t want to stumble into under any circumstances. She looked more like a monster from a nightmare than a real being.

Then again, maybe the situation made her seem more terrifying than she actually was.

She grabbed Lance’s chin and turned his head from one side to other. She made a noncommittal noise before turning to examine his wound.

Lance was disturbed by the whole situation. He didn’t want to be examined by a purple female version of It. He wanted to get out of there before anything could happen. He should have tried to fight the sentries before they took him here. Damn the consequences! He had a feeling anything would be better than this.

“Tsk” The woman scoffed and probably rolled her eyes. “Idiots. They almost ruined you. I should have sent my sentries to fetch you the moment you weren’t brought to me after your injury.” It didn’t sound like she was talking to him. Lance didn’t know how he should feel. He’d managed to avoid being a human test subject for a few more days than intended. ‘Feels like such a victory’ Lance though sarcastically.

The woman picked up a thin needle and injected whatever was inside in Lance.

At first it only felt like uncomfortable stinging, like when you hold something really cold for too long, but it got worse until Lance’s whole body was on fire.

Lance squeezed his eyes shut and screamed. He trashed and struggled and tried to break free of his bonds because it hurt like hell!

It felt like someone was pulling his limbs, trying to rip them away from his body while someone else was stabbing him while a third person was cutting him open with a jagged sword.

Lance lost consciousness several times but every time he woke up, he was reintroduced to the pain.

By the end of it he was crying and shaking. Ready to welcome the sweet release of death. The pain was slowly subsiding, and Lance found himself sighing in relief.

The cloaked woman came in view once more. Her hands and the front of her robe were stained with Lance’s blood. She looked satisfied with something.

She raised her hand and instead of slapping Lance like he thought she would, she instead stroke his hair in an oddly gentle way. The way you would usually pet a dog or a cat. A pet. That’s how she was treating him now. After putting him through so much pain, she did this.

“Oh, my new Champion.” she said, her voice was raspy and her smile twisted and frightening. “Do not fear. Your pain today was not for nothing. I have fixed you and I will keep improving you until you become the perfect weapon. I still have plans for you. You have not been forgotten.”

Lance wanted to tell her to go shove her improvements where the sun doesn’t shine but he was too exhausted to talk. He wanted no part in this. He just wanted to see his boyfriend again. Was that too much to ask?

“Rest now. Regain your strength. We wouldn’t want to break you before we have to.”

Lance snarled at her back as she left. He wasn’t going to play her game. He would get her to kill him or let him go, either accidentally or purposely.

 -

 Lance had been laying on that table for who knows how long. His back hurt and his limbs were numb but other than that he felt better than before. Breathing was easier and his head was clearer.

‘She really did fix me’ Lance admitted grudgingly. He would have loved to say she had lied, that he was still not okay, but that just wasn’t true. She had caused him a lot of pain, but she had done what she had promised.

Lance still didn’t think he should be grateful.

During his time in isolation, he’d learned to appreciate sound. There was nothing in the room and it was maddening. It wasn’t the same kind of all-consuming silence as in the hallway. It was just regular silence. Lance had taken to tapping the operating table with his fingers, humming or talking to have something to do instead of just staring at the ceiling and waiting for the- the witch to come back.

The Cuban shivered. He didn’t want her to ever return. Even if that meant being trapped in this room for the rest of his days.

The door opened, making a quiet sound. Two pairs of footsteps entered the room. They were heavy and metallic. Sentries then. Did that mean they were going to throw Lance in the arena again? He hoped so. The alternatives weren’t nearly as inviting.

They freed him and the other stepped back while the other helped him sit up. One of their hands was pressed against Lance’s back. He was supporting Lance and keeping him in sitting position. Sentries never did stuff like this. They grabbed you and dragged you where you were needed. They weren’t this gentle.

The sentry cupped Lance’s face with his hands. Okay this was freaky. Lance was just about to push the sentry away when-

“Lance.” The sentry sighed in relief.

After the initial shock, Lance came back to his senses and pushed the sentry away from him. it tripped and crashed on the floor with a groan.

“Who are you?” Lance asked, sliding off the operating table and glaring between the sentry that was guardian the door and the one laying on the ground.

The sentry from before fumbled with his helmet and pulled it off, revealing familiar golden eyes and blonde hair and that crooked smile Lance had thought he’d never see again.

“Matt.” Lance gasped. It was Matt, or it looked just like him. Was this just a clone sent to break him or was this really Matt? He’d never seen Matt die, he’d just assumed when he hadn’t come back.

Lance walked over and knelt in front of Matt. He stared at his face, trying to find anything that was off or anything that would prove that this was really his Matt. Lance ghosted his fingers over Matt’s forehead and cheekbone before cupping his face like he’d done to Lance mere moments before.

Matt’s smile widened and he ran a hand through Lance’s hair. “Hey Lance, blue eyes, meme man, sunshine. I missed you.”

That sold it to Lance. He didn’t think Galra would bother to dig for Matt’s response to the first time Lance accidentally flirted with him. It had to be the real Matt.

Lance could feel tears welling in his eyes. Matt was alive. They were both alive. Lance kissed Matt, trying to show him how relieved he was that Matt was alive and there with him.

The other sentry coughed to get their attention. “Are you done?” She asked, sounding really tired. She folded her arms. “I want to get rid of this armor. It’s crushing my arms.”

Lance’s eyes grew as large as platters and he turned to look at the other person dressed as a sentry. Matt whined at the loss of contact but didn’t try to pull Lance back. “Jaiva?”

The girl nodded. “It’s me. Now, if you’re done wasting time, we have a pod that’s leaving for ‘Earth’ as you people call it in fifteen minutes and I would really like to get out of here.”

“I can understand you.” Lance marveled. He could actually understand the girl he saw as his sister now. “How?”

Matt helped Lance up. He’d forgotten he was still on the floor. “We found a translation device. One of those the Galra use. We were surprised it actually worked. Then we figured out a plan to get you out and escape.”

Lance laughed in delight, for real this time. “You are amazing.”

Jaiva nodded. “Yeah. Great, great can we go now?” She was shifting anxiously, looking out of the door now and then. “If we’re caught, we’re dead.”

Matt nodded and put the helmet back on. He nodded at Jaiva and they both got back in character. Jaiva grabbed Lance and started pushing him to the direction of the pods.

Most Galra and sentries ignored them, but Lance found his palms sweating whenever they passed someone. Some nodded at them as they hurried past, a few looked at them a little too long but eventually left them alone.

They finally reached the pods with only a few minutes to spare. They were so close. Just a little bit more. They were almost out!

“Hey!”

The trio whipped around to see a Galra point a blaster at them. His hands were steady and there was a look of confusion on his face. “You’re not supposed to take the prisoner to the pods!”

Jaiva worked quickly and knocked the Galra unconscious with the butt of her blaster, but someone down the hall saw them. The trio could hear the Galra yell about an escaping prisoner.

“Shit.” Jaiva cursed. “Three minutes to launch.”

“They’ll be here in seconds. Can’t we speed up the launch?” Lance wasn’t ready to lose either of them again.

Matt shoved his blaster in Lance’s hands. “Take this. I’ll see what I can do.” He rushed to the panel and started fiddling with the panels and typing in commands and codes Lance understood nothing about. He wasn’t sure how much Matt understood either, considering everything was in the Galras’ own language.

Lance raised the blaster. He’d never shot a weapon like this before. His older brother had taught him to shoot a normal gun, without their parents permission, and he’d always been good at shooting games in the arcade but this was different. There was no ‘game over, try again’ He only had to do one mistake and that was it. There would be no second chances, no health bar. This was not a game.

They started flooding from the hallway before Lance could react. Lance aimed and shot.

There was a scream and a splatter of blood. Lance’s eyes widened. He just killed someone. He murdered someone, even if they were from an evil planet-conquering species, they may have had family and he just stole a loved one from them-

“Lance!”

Lance snapped back in reality. While he’d been in his trance, Jaiva had discarded her armor and handed her blaster to Matt. She had somehow gotten her hands on three daggers that were about as long as Lance’s forearm. She was now spinning like a whirlwind, taking down foe after foe.

Lance lifted his blaster again and shot those who were getting too close. His aim grew more accurate the more he shot. He ignored the blood and the screams. If he didn’t shoot, he would be the one whose blood ended up splattered across the floor. The pile of bodies was growing. Most of them were the robotic remains of the sentries. It was easier to pretend they were all like that.

“It’s ready to launch!” Matt yelled.

Lance acknowledged that with a nod. He was too concentrated on shooting. He took down another row of sentries but before he could move on to the next, he was grabbed, his blaster was wrenched from his hands and he was pushed backwards in the escape pod.

Lance scrambled up, trying to get back to fight with his friends, but the escape pod had already sealed itself.

Matt flashed him one last smile before turning back at the sentries and continuing to slaughter the sentries and Galra.

Lance screamed his name, banging on the glass. He was begging for Matt to come with him, delay the launch so that they could go home together, but soon he was launched to space and toward the earth.

He knocked his head against the back of the pod. There was an odd smell in the pod.

Lance passed out again.

-

 He’d woken up on Earth, surrounded by scientists who wanted to take him apart, just like the witch who had said she would ‘improve’ him. He was saved by his best friend, his boyfriend’s little sister and two strangers, who turned out to be Matt’s friends. They found a Blue robot lion and flew to space to fight Lance’s previous captors with four more color coded robotic space cats.

It was weird, but it was his life now.

Lance rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d started to cry.

He shook his head, staring into the vastness of space. He knew Matt was out there. Jaiva as well. He hoped they were okay. They had always been stronger than him. They would have survived, even if they hadn’t been able to follow him.

Maybe he could apologize to Pidge and offer to help her later. He wanted to find her brother just as much as she did.

“Don’t worry Matt.” Lance muttered, closing his eyes. “We’re going to find you. I promise.”

/This is it for now. I feel kind of empty now that everything that I planned is written. 

//If you want more, don’t hesitate to tell me! I’m always up for writing more of this AU!

/// I was inspired by THIS amazing idea by @langst-is-my-unborn-baby

[tomeandflickcorner]

OUAT Episode Analysis- Flower Child

Well.  That was quite the revelation.  Now can we please kill Gothel already?

For this episode’s flashback, we end up turning back the clock further than we ever have before.  Once, thousands of years ago, Gothel was a Tree Nymph.  With blue skin and hair.  And she lived with her mother and sisters in a sacred grove somewhere.  But Nymph Gothel, in a very Ariel-like manner, was greatly interested in the lives of the humans who lived nearby.  She often watched them and admired their lives to the point when she wanted to be a human, too.

One day, she ends up breaking into some fancy mansion so she could admire the ballgowns that hung within the humans’ closets.  But she’s instantly discovered by a group of young women.  Gothel attempts to apologize for her intrusion, but the young women tell her not to go, as they’d witnessed her magically produce a rose blossom. They state they are fascinated by her magic and want her to teach them in the magical arts.  As a result, Gothel starts to pal around with the young human women.  Eventually, the Nymph Mother finds out and steps in.  She kindly tells Gothel that, no matter how much she might wish otherwise, she is not a human.  And that the time will soon come when she will have to accept her place among the Tree Nymphs as she’s apparently next in line as their leader.  Or something along those lines.

Regardless of the Nymph Mother’s words, Gothel continues to hang around with her human friends.  But when Gothel decides to start training them in the ways of Nymph Magic, the young women reveal their true colors.  Turns out, they were just a group of Mean Girls this whole time.  And they were just leading Gothel along with the intention of publicly humiliating her, as they really view her and her people as freaks and abominations.

Devastated by this betrayal, Gothel returns to the sacred grove.  But when she gets there, she discovers the insult was even greater.  While she was being mocked and humiliated by the Mean Girls, a separate group of humans had lay siege to the sacred grove and completely destroyed it by cutting down and burning all the trees within the grove.  Which, of course, resulted in the deaths of all the other Tree Nymphs, including the Nymph Mother.

Immediately, Gothel lets her heart grow bitter because of this.  Filled with feelings of vengeance, she angrily returns to the human mansion to not only strike back at the Mean Girls, but everyone else as well.  Basically, this whole backstory is a complete remake of Carrie, only with Tree People.  Using her Tree Nymph magic, Gothel creates toxin-spewing flowers that….apparently killed every single human in the entire world.  The only person she spared was a young woman named Seraphina, who reveals she could also use magic but had hidden her powers from the other Mean Girls out of fear of what they might do to her if her magical ability was revealed.

Once her mass genocide is complete, Gothel tells Seraphina that, eventually, life in this realm will once again emerge from the primordial ooze, and the world will become populated by humans all over again.  But when that happens, they will be ready, and will strike back by returning magic to this world, which has now become a Land Without Magic.  As she announces this, Gothel unearths a single magic bean from the remains of the now destroyed sacred grove, which she uses to open a portal that allows her and Seraphina to journey forth to increase their number, so they would eventually become the Coven of Eight.

So, according to this backstory, our world, the Land Without Magic, used to HAVE magic.  And the only reason why it no longer does contain magic is because humans persecuted and killed the Tree Nymphs.  And then the last remaining Tree Nymph went all Carrie on them by wiping out every single living creature, so life on Earth would have to start from the amoeba level all over again.   Which is an interesting attempt at World Building.  Not to mention the most bizarre ‘Creation’ story I’ve ever heard.

It also explains what Gothel’s motive is.  Though it does NOT justify her actions in the slightest.   Yes, she’s right- humans are generally horrible and are motivated by greed, hatred, selfishness and cruelty.  I get it.  Preaching to the choir, lady.  I work in retail.  I deal with the public every day.  Not to mention my life is more or less controlled by corporate America.  But she’s so wrapped up in her own twisted misanthropy, she has completely neglected to recognize that she’s ended up just as bad as the very humans she hated so deeply.  Perhaps even more so.  Case in point, the fact that she raped Wish Killian, tricked him into impregnating her, abandoned her baby the instant she was born and then trapped her in a tower for the rest of her life.  As well as forcibly separating her from her loving father, who was the only companion she had.  Not to mention how many lives and families she’s destroyed and ripped apart along the way.

But Gothel is apparently upping her game in Hyperion Heights.  After spying on her with Margot/Robyn, Gothel approaches Tilly/Alice.  Of course, Tilly states that she wants nothing to do with Gothel, but she’s stopped in her tracks when Gothel informs her that she’s her biological mother.  Obviously, Tilly sees the impossibility of this statement, as Gothel only looks a few years older than her.  But she then defiantly states that, even if what Gothel says it’s true, it doesn’t matter because it would mean Gothel abandoned her.  And Tilly is not interested in getting to know a mother who would abandon her child.  In response, Gothel starts spouting off a whole Sob Story™ about how she had a cruel life, as if that would excuse her actions, and then states she never would have walked out on her daughter if she’d known how special she was.  Because Gothel apparently knows that Alice is the Guardian she was seeking.  So, in other words, Gothel, you’re telling Alice/Tilly that you’d only care about your flesh and blood if they were of use to you?  Yeah, spare me with your claims of being a mother.  A REAL mother loves her children unconditionally, not just when they’re useful to them.

Thankfully, Tilly doesn’t fall for it, and she puts Gothel in her place by telling her that she is already wanted by people who really care for her, and therefore doesn’t need her before storming off.  But she can’t shake away the uneasy feeling she’d feels.  So she heads right over to the police station to see Rogers, who is in the middle of trying to come to terms with the impossible circumstances of Parallel Hansel’s death.  How can someone be stabbed from the inside?  Could it be that Naveen’s claim of magic being involved isn’t so impossible?  So when Tilly starts telling him about her encounter with Gothel/Eloise, the gears in his head start to turn.  Because it’s starting to sound like Naveen’s warning about a war brewing might not have been so far-fetched after all.  He tells Tilly that, even though what she’s saying sounds crazy, he’s learned his lesson after the death of the Blind Baker.  As such, he’s no longer going to doubt her words, no matter how crazy they might sound.  This visibly delights Tilly, and the two head off to confer with Henry.

When they get to Henry’s apartment, he is initially reluctant to let them in, trying very badly to act casual and not act like he was hiding something.  But when he hears Rogers and Tilly are starting to suspect something magical might be going on, what with Parallel Hansel’s impossible death and Elise/Gothel’s claims, he willingly lets them it.  Because their words are pretty much vindication to him, as he’s set up this whole murder wall in his apartment.  Ever since he saw the results of the blood test that named him as Lucy’s father, he’s become more open to the possibility that the stories in the book he wrote are real.  While his attempts at convincing Jacinda of this were put on hold when Sabine called her up to help with the food truck (as Naveen/Drew is in police custody and is not able to make it to work), he’s grateful that Rogers and Tilly are starting to be on the same page as him.  He shows them the evidence he’s compiled, from the fact that he found a photograph of Regina/Roni standing with eight-year-old him, his swan keychain, and even the fact that Rumpelstiltskin/Weaver’s teacup is identical to the Rumbelle teacup illustration from the New Storybook.  Rogers wonders why Eloise/Gothel wouldn’t just use magic if she actually is a witch, but Henry counters this by pointing out that, in his book, this was called the Land Without Magic for a reason, and while there were trace elements of magic throughout the land, it probably wasn’t enough.  And Gothel/Eloise probably would need a huge amount of magic to do whatever she’s planning

The discussion on the matter is interrupted when Rogers receives a phone call from the Desk Sargent, informing him that Gothel/Eloise was spotted skulking around the local theater.  So Rogers goes to check it out, with Tilly tagging along. This leads to an adorable Knightrook moment, which starts with the visual proof that Tilly decorated Roger’s windshield with origami mushrooms and origami rabbit.  And Rogers isn’t the slightest bit fazed by this.  They start talking about Eloise/Gothel’s claims about how she is Tilly/Alice’s mother.  Tilly admits she had always wanted a mother, and she’s wondering if she’ll find the missing part of her if she lets this woman in.  But she has her doubts, because Eloise/Gothel doesn’t seem like the nurturing mother type.  Rogers comforts her, stating that, even if Eloise/Gothel is right and she did give birth to her, it doesn’t mean she’s her mother, as it takes more than biology to be a real mother.  He then gives her a marmalade sandwich that he just happened to have with him.  Which suggests he regularly carries around Tilly’s favorite sandwich, just in case he’d run into her on the street.  That is just adorable.  Even though he still doesn’t remember, Rogers just can’t stop being fatherly to her.  The Knightrook feelings are jumping off the scale here.  Tilly even begins to thank Rogers for everything he’s done for her, from listening to her to letting her stay with him.

That’s when they spot Eloise/Gothel entering the theater, and they start to move in, with Tilly ignoring Roger’s request to stay put.  This ends up to be bad, as the whole thing was a trap.  The Desk Sargent has been hypnotized into helping Gothel in the coven, because apparently Gothel can hypnotize people now.  When they enter the theater, Rogers and Tilly are immediately taken captive by the members of the Coven of Eight.  Rogers angrily warns Gothel that he will kill her if she even tries to hurt Tilly, regardless of his police badge.  But Gothel isn’t perturbed, stating that Tilly isn’t the one she plans to hurt.  She and the rest of the coven drag Tilly and Rogers down to the very bowels of the theater, which are revealed to be the former location of the sacred grove where Gothel once lived with the other Tree Nymphs.  Once they reach the site, Gothel tells Tilly that she expects her to help her and the other witches in casting a powerful spell.  One that, I guess, will bring back the magic in this land and restore it to the way it was before the Mean Girls exterminated the other Tree Nymphs. She goes on to state that it’s time for Tilly to accept her place among them, as she can never belong to the world of the humans, and that the Coven of Eight is her real family, etc. etc..   Tilly, however, doesn’t fall for it, stating that, whatever Gothel might be, she is no mother to her.  But in the end, Gothel manages to force Tilly into helping them by threatening to kill Rogers if she doesn’t comply.  She even reveals the fact that they’re actually father and daughter.  This threat ends up working, as Alice’s love for her father hasn’t been erased by the curse, resulting in Tilly caring deeply for Rogers.  So of course she can’t let him be killed.  As such, she reluctantly agrees to help Gothel and the other witches cast their spell, in spite of Rogers pleading her not to.

Meanwhile, there’s a whole supblot with Lucy going to Facilier, to ask him if he had another batch of magic that could help cure Henry of the poison inside him.  He tells her that he can only help if Lucy can locate a symbol of Henry and Parallel Ella’s love.  (I wonder.  Is this why he wanted the Dagger?  Was he planning to use it to break the curse somehow?  If so, I’m kinda on Facilier’s side now.)  

So Lucy gets her mother to dig some old boxes out of storage, claiming to be feeling nostalgic after Parallel Hansel/Nick’s true colors were revealed. While looking thorough the old boxes, they come across a box labeled ‘BL,’ which Jacinda states stands for ‘Before Lucy.’ Meaning this box contains traces of Jacinda’s life before she gave birth to her daughter.  As they look through the box, they find things that Jacinda cannot explain- a T-shirt advertising Granny’s Diner back in Storybrooke.  This excites Lucy, as she speculates that Henry must have brought that stuff with him before he left on his soul searching quest. (So, what they’re saying is that Parallel Ella had one of Henry’s t-shirts?  Nice!)  And, when they look into the paper take-out bag from Granny’s, they find… The Glass Slipper!  Minus the fragment that Henry has.

Bursting with excitement, Lucy brings the Glass Slipper and the Glass Slipper Fragment to Facilier.  With it, he is able to use his voodoo magic to eliminate the poison within Henry, thereby ensuring he won’t die when the curse is broken.

However, when Jacinda shows up at his place to inform him that she and Lucy found the Glass Slipper, resulting in her starting to believe in the possibility that she might actually be Cinderella after all, nothing happens when they kiss.  Much to Lucy’s surprise, as she was really expecting their TLK would be the one to break the spell.  I, however, am not surprised.  Because the original Dark Curse was not broken by Snow and Charming’s TLK.  It was Emma and Henry’s bond that did it. So I had my doubts that Henry and Parallel Ella would be the ones to break this Dark Curse.  I suspect the secret lies in a different pair.  Let’s see, it was the True Love between a mother and a son that broke the first Dark Curse.  Maybe it will be the True Love between a father and a daughter this time around?  Unless that pesky Cursed Heart issue gets in the way. That might be an issue.

(Click here to read more Episode Analyses)

[toreencapsicle]

A logical(’s) Birthday

Thanks to The Logan Appreciation Squad on Discord for giving me the motivation and helping me with ideas <33!! This is...wow, longer than what I usually write with a word count of 1376 words. Yesterday was Patton's birthday, I know. But! This is about Logan's birthday and how the others make him believe that it can be something special.

Pairings: LAMP Warnings: I don't really think there are any? Except for an extreme amount of happy tears and fluff!

Sometimes it's better not to talk. Just silence between them, sitting close to each other, each doing their own thing. No uncomfortable silence, just...knowing everyone is there. But today was different. Something felt odd and off. Logan sat there with a book about constellations, but he didn't look like he could concentrate on it properly. He sighed, putting the book away before getting up and leaving the room.

Did they really forget it? He didn't forget any of their birthdays so far. None of them. But actually, it didn't surprise him a lot. Though it did sting a bit in his chest, knowing that the others didn't care or just...forgot. At least that showed him again, that he was capable of feelings, even if he didn't want to show it. In the end, it didn't matter anyways. His birthday wasn't of any importance. It was nothing more but the day he started to exist, nothing special. Logan kept telling that to himself while reading, until he felt too distracted.

Patton waited a bit longer until he was sure Logan wouldn't be able to hear them. „So, is everything ready?“

„Hmh“, Virgil seemed a bit absent, fiddling with a Rubik's cube between his hands,“I rented the movies, they're in the cupboard under the TV.“ „Perfect! Roman?“ Roman beamed, nodding quickly. „Yes! The Café is all ours today. I talked to my boss about this.“ „Great!“, Patton stood up, stretching for a moment. This had to work! They planned everything and prepared it well. „Do you have your presents with you?“ The other two were nodding in sync, before getting up as well. „I shall fetch Logan! You two prepare the car, yes?“ And so he hurried out of the room, leaving Pat and Virge behind. The two of them left the living room to put on their shoes. Just as they stepped outside and to the car, they could hear Logan arguing with Roman. The door closed behind the prince, as he lead Logan to the car by his shoulders. „Roman, would you please tell me what is going on here? And why is it needed that you blindfold me?“ „Just come with me, dear!“

There were muffled giggles and a smirk on Virgil's face as they got into the car. Patton took over the drivers seat. On their way to the café, Logan kept asking questions like:“Where are we driving?“ „Is Virgil there too?“ „How long will we need until we arrive?“ With every question, the same answer followed.

„You will see soon enough, darling.“

Some minutes later, they all stood in the little Café that Roman worked at and Patton cheerfully pulled the blindfold off of his boyfriends head. Everything was decorated with blue balloons and streamers, some tables pushed together to a big table. The smell of fresh brewed coffee, cake and ice cream filled the whole place. Except for the little group, it was empty. Virgil and Patton each took one of Logan's hands and lead him to the table, sitting down with him. Roman disappeared into the back of the building, coming back with a giant cake, looking like a stack of books in different colors. Edible books, how interesting. Taking a closer look at it, it seemed like they all were Sherlock Holmes themed books. Geez, how long did Roman take to make this? Again, there they were. Feelings. But not out of sadness or because he felt hurt and ignored. No, because he was happy.  “You-”, his voice cracked as he looked between all the three of them, while Roman put the cake down,”...why?” He tugged his brows together, tears running over his cheeks. Suddenly, everyone was around him, hugging him tight. Patton kissed him first. It was quick and soft, sweet and warm.

“Because you're important to us and we love you, dummy! That's why!”

Another kiss, this time from Roman, followed. Soft and tender, lasting a bit longer, a fruity taste on his lips. “Our love for you is stronger than you might think or know. We care about you!” The third kiss, coming from Virgil, was slightly cooler than the other two and left Logan feeling like he just chugged a cup of coffee. “Do you really think we'd forget...? I'd hate myself if I would. Don't ever dare thinking that again, all right?” It took them a bit to calm Logan down and to convince him that everything was okay, that he deserved it and that they actually cared. Later on they sat down, eating the cake and then sharing some ice cream. Logan was so distracted by Virgil who somehow started rambling about his favorite ice cream flavors, that he didn't even realize that someone began cleaning the table and then was missing suddenly, until Roman came back in, with a bag in his hands. Sitting down with the others again, Princey put the bag onto the table and grinned. “Alright, honeys and darlings. I think it's time that we give our special boy his gifts!”

Excitedly, Patton clapped his hands, nodding heavily as he chanted:”Mine first, mine first!” Reaching into the bag, Pat pulled out a small present, the wrapping in a light blue with puppies and kittens on it. Of course. It got pushed right into Logan's hands, who was still surprised and on the verge of tears again. Slowly and carefully, he took the wrapping off, making sure not to tear it. In it was a big coloring book, telling you what colors to use. The catch was, that Logan first would have to solve different equations or answer questions to actually figure out the colors. He grinned and couldn't help but to give Patton a kiss on his cheek. It really was something that fit Patton, but also Logan himself, a perfect mix between the two of them. There also was a bag with star shaped cookies, a note saying “Made with love, for you Logy-Bear ♥”.

A shaky hand held out the next present to him, the milky way drawn on the paper. It looked like Virgil drew it himself and oh if that didn't make Logan's heart melt. With a smile on his face, he took it and carefully took the wrapping off. A big book was inside of it, “Space Conspiracy Theories of 2017” written on the cover. Right next to the book, was a calculator in funky, spacey colors, making it look like a galaxy. Gosh he loved it and thanked Virgil, kissing his forehead quickly.

Feeling watched by Roman, Logan took the last present left and opened it just as carefully as the other two. The wrapping was royal blue with a big, sparkling bow on top of it. A set of ties + a notebook, saying “Which tie did I wear when” were in it. In the middle of them, there was a bow tie, in the same color as Logan's usual tie. He cocked a brow and slowly looked at Roman, who sat there with a big fat grin on his lips:”You need to switch things up every now and then. I'm sure it will look adorable on you!” Rolling his eyes, but yet smirking, Logan leaned in and kissed the tip of the Prince's nose softly, thanking him for it. The ties looked flashy but yet classy, “Logan” embroidered on the inside of each.

They kept talking and laughing, exchanging soft kisses and hugs, sometimes Patton or Virgil would get up to get another scoop of ice cream. Later that day, they left to drive back home. All of them changed into comfy clothes, before cuddling up together on the couch, staying as close as possible to each other, while watching documentaries about wildlife and space, aliens and all sorts of biology related things. Even though Logan enjoyed them a lot, he fell asleep sooner or later, leaning more against Roman. Virgil quietly got up to turn off the TV and waddled back to the couch, just to rest against Patton again. All of them relaxed more and more, closing their eyes as they dozed off, soft whispers of “Good night” and “I love you guys” ending the day for them.

All the time Logan was smiling, even while being asleep.

Tag list: @chemically-imbalanced-romance @milomeepit @pastel-princey

[deanvspanties]

Okay I have a few wild theories so hear me out:

Midoriya Hisashi is a fucking dragon.

Or in possession of a dragonlike quirk. I’m not saying this just to say this, and yes it started wtih Inko saying he breathed fire, but it ended up being a lot more complicated than that. I have a thesis and here it is.

Hisashi:  久

It’s a word that means “A long time” and it’s definitely a nod to the expression “Hisashi buri” which is literally “I haven’t seen you in a while” and that’s obvious because they haven’t seen Deku’s dad in, well, a long time. That’s all well and good but it can also mean “old story” (source)  And well, what is old and breathes fire? That’s right; fuckin’ dragons. He breathes fire, maybe has scales and wings and shit, and I’m going to go as far as to say that he doesn’t age fast, if at all.

This theory is fueled by the fact that the names in BNHA tend to be blatantly obvious and correlated to either their personality or quirk. Hisashi simply isn’t mentioned a lot. They mentioned him in the series once. Usually in anime, if the parents are alive but absent, that means that they’re significant to the story. Why would he leave Inko for nearly all of Izuku’s life just for a job? I mean if you ship bakudeku, or acknowledge the fact that Izuku has continuously cared about Bakugou and tried to be his friend his entire life you can see that perhaps Inko’s taste in men is just simply bad and it’s genetic, but I doubt it. I doubt she would let it get that far and she doesn’t really seem like the type to just hook up. It’s implied that they’re married, which brings me to my next theory:

Hisashi’s last name isn’t Midoriya.

Inko’s hair is green. Midori means green in Japanese. Did Inko just scour the world trying to find a guy with a last name that matched her hair? Or, god forbid, had the same hair color as her just to breed more and more green little cinnamon rolls? Is Izuku going to be expected to carry on the green lineage and breed with someone with equally green hair? Is MidoTsuyu somehow going to become canon by the series end? I don’t think so. I think Hisashi just took Inko’s last name. He took it because either his last name is too weird or he simply doesn’t have one. Being as old as a dragon, you come from an age where your damn name gets turned into a last names. My next theory:

Quirks originated in fairy tales.

What if the dawn of quirks is a lot older than is written in BNHA history? What if fairy tales are simply the first counts of quirks documented in history–in a time where humans without quirks were the overwhelming majority and humans, being the scared little shits they are, hunted quirk users to extinction. Werewolves, fairies, witches, and shapeshifters–these things don’t seem all that out of the ordinary in this timeline of BNHA. Mythical creatures were really just humans with similar quirks as the stories suggest who’s biologies got conflated and used as a fantasy tale to seem unbelievable to humans of the time as they were hunted down and slaughtered.  Next theory:

Hisashi Midoriya is the first quirk user

Let’s assume a few things: Hisashi (Old story) is a dragon. Hisashi is immortal. That means he’s been around since the dawn of quirks, it wouldn’t be far-fetched that he is the dawn of quirks. Dragons are depicted as crafty and aloof–It wouldn’t be unreasonable for him to watch by as nature unfolded before him, waiting until quirks appeared in history again, knowing that this was the human tendency from the start. I’m not saying he was a huge, scaly lizard monster–or maybe he was and he could shapeshift? I don’t know the details but he definitely had dragon-like qualities, and one of the biggest qualities of dragons is that they live a long, goddamn time. Next:

He doesn’t visit because he’s a dragon king

Hisashi doesn’t visit because perhaps he has a hoard that he is the king of, and that he produced an heir that didn’t manifest the dragon quirk, Izuku’s existence would be shameful to dragonkind, and since dragons are pretty proud creatures, perhaps the other dragons under him would try to restore Hisashi’s honor by eliminating his biggest embarrassment–an heir that isn’t actually a dragon and a wife that would choose this embarrassment over a dragon king. He probably went off when he got Inko pregnant to do dragon things and came back to see she had his son who had no quirk, and decided he had to leave to keep them safe. I don’t know if Hisashi has any contact with them regularly at all, but it certainly doesn’t seem like it in the series. 

I mean either that or he’s just a shitty dragon dad that would rather do dragon stuff than be with his non-dragon family! I’m not here to make excuses for him, just supporting my own theories…

Conclusion

I’m calling it now. I don’t know if anyone else has this theory–maybe it’s more common than I thought, I wrote this entire thing because if it happens in the series, y’all better know I fucking called it: 

Hisashi Midoriya is a goddamned dragon who may or may not be the first quirk user in existence.

[redditnosleep]

B is for Barnacle

by mrmichaelsquid

Gray clouds swirled overhead when I opened the shop door, spilling fast over the sky like lint on a treadmill. The storm was supposed to miss us but debris twisting in dust devils whispered otherwise, leaving the ocean air cold and salty. I usually enjoyed forces of nature, but the chill sought out the clothing gaps to bare skin through my shirt holes and sock ends, so I stomped out the pre-roll I’d been puffing out with the heel of my Timbs to retreat indoors. I popped a few tic tacs when my phone vibrated and I saw the severe storm warning alert accompanied by the annoying tone. Seemed the seaside storm wasn’t going to miss us, it was on target to hit all of us in York, Maine dead center, and soon.

I stand out like a sore thumb in the oceanside town of York with my Flatbush gear; Champion hoodie over a vintage Polo tee and all, but I’m not here to blend in. I’m attending the University of New England, focusing on marine biology (thanks to a generous partial scholarship), and I can afford rent here, not to mention the under 40 minute commute to school. My evening job as a sandwich jockey pays the rent and gives me time to study during the lulls we experience in the off season.

I checked my text messages, hoping to hear back about getting coffee with a classmate. No response, it seemed Diane was not interested aside from being my lab partner, no news to me. No word from Ron about getting a beer after work either, so I returned back inside from the smoke break to man the sandwich station. This consisted of reading about cyanobacterial blooms while waiting for any York locals in town off season who direly needed a turkey and cheese during a freak storm. It was nearing 10 PM, and I expected we’d close early due to the last-minute alert and the announcement on the radio about the severity of the weather conditions. I was about to head to the register to ask the owner Janice, who must have been watching something truly vulgar on her laptop, about leaving early when a jingle of the door signaled a customer. A man entered in a dramatic stagger, his left foot dragging in a labored trudging as though he’d limped through hell straight into our modest, seaside convenience store.

Janice greeted him, but his head just hung low, nearly out of view under a sunbleached Sou’wester hat and faded blue raincoat. Stripped by the elements of color, his PVC storm gear was flecked with crusted clumps of gray; they were barnacles. A soggy white beard spilled out from under the tipped cap, wet tendrils emerging from skin nearly as white and wrinkled by what seemed like decades of wear. A bang jolted me alert as a massive gale smacked the door fully open, slapping the wooden frame of the newsstand. A barrage of rain drummed hard and wet from the sky and a shocking gust of wind forced our eyes to squint from debris just as the man collapsed, first onto his knees and then onto his stomach on the floor. Janice rushed to his side calling “Sir? Sir, are you alright?”, but he was not responsive. I held my phone up and Janice nodded. I tried 911 and then the hospital directly, but the storm must have killed a cell tower, there was no service.

The saltwater tempest beat unmercifully upon us as Janice and I carried the older man, whom we presumed to be a fisherman, into my Explorer after confirming a pulse. The hospital was just over ten minutes away, but the toppling branches and thunderous white bullets of rain made driving with zero visibility at night an undoubtedly terrible idea. Even the streetlights of Long Beach Ave were off due to toppled power lines from the intense wind. The cold rain drenched us through to the bone, my entire body was numb and stinging by the time we hauled that far-too-heavy stranger back inside of the store. We barricaded the door as best we could from the freak weather and flipped the man on his back and I yelled in shock at the sight of his face.

He had a brutal, vertical scar straight down the center of his face and there were small thoracica barnacles on the edges of his hairline (the common type often found on rocks and boats). There were dozens of them, a few on the sides of his crooked nose and the corners of his sunken eyes. I stared in absolute shock; barnacles are arthropods like crabs, they attach their backs onto a host with their legs facing outward before building a cement wall (which looks like a shell) of armor, a process that takes days or even weeks to form. The process is extremely painful in the very rare instance they land in a human host. I was amazed that this man had let this happen, perhaps he’d been in a seaside coma? Every answer opened a string of additional, unanswerable questions. I was horrified and extremely confused but knew he needed serious help so I focused on that. I ran to fetch the electric heater and some tarps from the stockroom to help warm the poor man. When I returned from the stockroom, Janice was performing CPR, and that’s when I discovered the horrific reason the barnacles had been able to grow undisturbed.

Janice breathed into his mouth with a puzzled look on her face as we both heard that loud cracking sound. I slowly approached, seeing the dark red line form on the man’s face, dividing the eyes and nostrils as the crack extended. The man’s face split open, and what looked like a fan comprised of giant centipedes spewed out from the gory slit in his face and wrapped around Janice’s head, pulling it in. My jaw dropped in horror, but instincts drove my sprinting feet to the knives I kept at the sandwich counter. I charged back to the snaking tendrils, realizing they were actually cirri, the legs of barnacles but at an impossibly mammoth scale. A larva had somehow entered this sailor’s nasal passage or mouth and grown far larger than what I knew to be possible, a new species perhaps. I had no interest in discovering it at the moment, and my butcher’s knife sawed at those powerful, shelled snakes that were pulling her face into the cavity of the sailor’s rotted head.

The mammoth, snaking cirri wrapped around my wrist, squeezing my flesh and difficult to cut into, but I eventually sawed through them to free Janice, who was bleeding from her head and clearly in shock. The long, curling legs retreated into the dead sailor’s face, which snapped closed as his skull was pulled shut by the mammoth parasite inside. I dragged Janice away from that host of a man and tried to wrap my head around the nightmare. I knew of deep-sea gigantism, or abyssal gigantism, which occurs at great depths, but this was beyond what I’d thought possible. This seemed to be a symbiotic relationship that kept the barnacle and the sailor alive long after he should have died. I stared at his still body briefly before running back to it, dragging it by the feet outside of the store.

I felt the knobbed barnacles on his ankles reaching forth cirri onto my hands as I pulled him, pinching me and wrapping around my fingers. I got him about 20 feet from the store when I had to let go. The freezing rain beat me mercilessly, and I ran indoors as quickly as possible, nearly losing my bearings and my snapback cap due to the severity of the storm and encompassing darkness of the night. Janice was shaking, and I wrapped the tarp around her and tried to comfort her, but her gaze was distant. I wiped blood from her lacerated forehead and applied pressure to the gashes on her neck and the back of her head, thinking of how deep sea creatures get stranded in shallow waters due to rising temperatures and water pollution. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) polluting the Mariana and other oceanic trenches have been theorized to lead to the surfacing of some rarely seen species, in addition to tectonic disturbances and glacial melting, but this was something entirely unknown. I tried to process what I’d seen while cleaning the red gouges of Janice’s wounds when I heard the horrific scream of a woman outside.

I ran to the door, cracking it slightly to see the neighbor, Ms Berthold, emerge from her house, swatting at her drenched and moving sweater. The corpse of the sailor was gone, the beating rain having washed any trace of from which direction away from the sidewalk and street. I shouted to the woman, but she collapsed, and I realized I might join her fate if I intervened. She was covered in small moving things. I was retreating back to the door of the shop when I saw the head, dragging itself from those long, jointed legs spilling from the split face of the sailor’s corpse. A horrifically long tentacle extended from the split in the man’s skull, snaking upward like a mammoth worm. I remembered reading Darwin in class last semester, and I finally vomited on the rain-slicked asphalt. Barnacles have the largest “member” of the animal kingdom, a solid “Hell no” filled the air before I realized I’d even said it. Another round of screaming behind me alerted me again to the woman, who was sprinting towards me from two houses down with a horrific wail, crawling with hundreds of living things.

I was about to be pinned, and I watched the woman in horror, her pink-streaked skin covered with holes as she ran towards me, holes from which climbed sacculina larva the size of lima beans. My eyes widened in the nightmarish realization of what was going to happen to her. Sacculina are a parasitic barnacle that castrates crabs and uses them as a host for their own eggs in their genital region. To put it bluntly, they destroy their host’s genitals and become a giant egg sac there, a giant saltwater nope. I screamed at this point, running sideways to avoid the nightmares in front of and behind me that were approaching, darting off inland and praying Janice would know to lock the doors. To try and reach her now was not only impossible, it would lead to a fate far worse than death.

I ran blind in the consuming darkness further inshore, as nearly horizontal darts of icy rain beat into my gore-tex jacket and into my face. My mind was spinning, there was no way to get to my car without being overtaken so I ran away from the lighthouse, deep inland to try and get to my only friend who lived near the store, my bud Ron. Thunder flashed the sky white, illuminating horrible things each time I looked back as I ran from them. I saw what appeared to be giant isopods the size of Labradors crawling from the ocean and hundreds of tiny larva covering the streets and the sides of house. There were multiple corpses being dragged by their faces from the segmented legs spilling from within, some of the bodies long rotted and bloated from saltwater, others missing extremities or their lower half entirely. I ran nearly blind from the storm, but somehow made it to Ron’s, pounding on the door with a fist and praying for a miracle. I looked back to see what appeared to be the friendly Mr. Beckhart charging towards me, his face skinless, pulpy and split spilling chunks of flesh and outwardly clawing cirri. In the last second, the door marked by a tarnished, brass “26” opened and I slid inside, slamming and locking it behind my drenched, shivering body.

Ron seemed confused but I shook him to convey the urgency of the situation and asking him for duct tape to cover the mail slot and all possible gaps in the doors and windows. He seemed vacant and detached as if he’d just woken from a nap, but I explained everything to him as I raced to secure his small house on Pine street. His face was clammy and pale, an odd milky white as he slowly spoke, “I moved here because I love the saltwater, the sea, the fish”, in a monotone voice that didn’t sit right, his eyes turning to the floor. I then saw the fishing cooler in the living room, lid ajar with a wet trail spilling outward and leading over to a red puddle in the middle of the floor. His sad, tearful eyes drooped in harsh juxtaposition to the smile spreading across his face, dripping thick strands of saliva from parting, quivering lips. I saw the little bumps of grey clustered on his temples and in his thinning hair that framed his tormented eyes, and I ran. I sprinted to Ron’s bathroom with him nearly on my heels. I quickly locked the pounding door, shoving towels into the gap and duct taping them as quickly as my shaking hands would permit.

Horrific sounds now click, scratch and clatter in addition to an occasional scream from outside the barricaded window along with the hammering rain and cracking thunder of the storm. Ron stopped banging on the door, now merely scraping with thin, crustacean limbs on the wood between us, his mind likely gone. I can’t get the image of his twisted, smiling face out of my mind, and I feel that madness is perhaps setting in as I chuckle to myself in his small bathroom. People often seem to fear invasions from the stars, rarely concerned about our own planet which is over 70% ocean. All I know is if I get out of here alive, I’m changing fields to focus on becoming a chef far inland in the Midwest, at a restaurant that doesn’t serve any form of seafood.

[sherrybaby14]

The Past Brings a Present Part Three (Finale)

This is for @multi-villain-imagines challenge! 

I took the prompt: Catching up: We all have that one person, from the past we rather not meet again. But what happens if we do?

I did not go very heavy on the AU, really the only thing different is Negan’s past and we are in A/B/O territory.

Words: 3k

  Part 3 of 3

Warnings: Violence, Smut,  A/B/O

Words: 4K

Tags: @thecynicalnerd @marauderice @mac5323 @idonthavehusbandsihavelovers @negan-is-god @kellyn1604 @i-am-negan-trash @roschelesworld @taintedgenre @screeching-pterodactyl-fangirl @purplemuse89 @blondesouthsquad @enchantingoblivion @jmackie1983 @jasoncrouse @theonethatgotaway213 @negans-network @heroicvillainy @louis-t0mlinson @autumnjade22 

Once the laughing fit came to an end a sadness overtook you.  You set up your nest, but even that act didn’t distract you from the ache in your heart.  Tears didn’t fall, but you had spent so long trying to survive you didn’t have the time to focus on the loved ones you lost.  It ranged from your parents to childhood friends you hadn’t seen in years.  

Most people moved on with their lives, especially the other Omegas you knew, your parents were getting worried you would never find a mate.  Memories of your mother threatening an arranged pairing and secretly wishing for anything to stop that.  Of course in your wildest dreams you never thought the dead rising would be the answer to that.  

You pushed the past out of your mind and tried to concentrate on the present.  You’d been at this strange place for less than twenty-four hours, sold to an Alpha who had multiple times to take you, punish you, hurt you, but instead he was gentle.  

Your lips twitched, imagining the way he grinned at you when you parted.  There was no doubt you were trying your hardest to be defiant, going as far as slapping the man and throwing food at him.  That sort of behavior was unacceptable for an Omega.  If Negan was that sort of Alpha maybe the two of you were meant for each other.  The twitch turned into a complete smile, your heart rate increasing. Maybe being kidnapped wouldn’t be the worse thing that happened to you, maybe it was the best.  

The smile faded when you remembered how your ordeal ended.  You were bought and paid for, no matter how charming Negan was nothing would change that.  He was just like any other Alpha, seeing Omegas as nothing more than property.  The fullness in your heart cracked and the sadness returned.  

With a sigh you went back to arranging your nest.  Biology was a bitch and you accepted eventually you would invite Negan to join you. He would claim and breed you.  Maybe the two of you would get lucky enough to die of old age with a litter of children at your bedside, but you knew exactly what you were worth to him.  Fifteen guns, weapons, food, and water.  That was your literal worth to the man.  

The sun was setting and you knew your nest would never get any more perfect than it was now.  With a sigh you left the bed and walked towards the windows.  There was nothing to see except the tree tops and the sprawling grounds surrounded with the thick fence.  Some people were on the lawn and you wondered if they would be your friends someday.  That made your heart ache even more, again being too scared and focused on survival to realize how lonely you were.  

The elevator dinged open and you whipped your head to see Negan walk out.  It was a shame that he didn’t find you under different circumstances, maybe then you would have given him a real chance.

“We got to make this quick Baby Doll.”  He sped walked towards you, with a pile in his hands. “Put these on.”

He set the stack of clothes in your hands, they reeked of his scent.  It was almost heavenly.  

“We’re taking a little field trip.”  He put his hand behind your back and gently pushed you towards the bathroom. “Hurry.”

You accepted escape wasn’t an option, but as soon as he mentioned leaving your mind went right to it.  You sprinted towards the bathroom, not bothering to close the door all the way as you stripped off the dress and stepped into the pants.  There was a belt with them and you adjusted it to your size as you pulled the white t-shirt over your head.  There was a leather jacket that you slipped your arms into, covering the fact you were missing a bra.  

The pants were too long, but you shuffled back out into the room.  Negan was waiting for you and placed his hands on your shoulders before pulling out a red bandana.

“Don’t get any funny ideas.”  He put the bandana on the top of your head and tied it under your hair, pulling the knot tight and smoothing out the fabric over your head. “Be a good girl for me tonight.”

His words sent chills down your spine, then his hand grabbed yours and started walking you towards the elevator.   Your heart raced as the doors shut and you started your descent.

“No shoes?” You pointed to your bare feet.

“I don’t trust you not to run.” Negan raised an eyebrow and looked at you. “You’re not leaving my side.  Do you understand?”

You nodded and leaned down, rolling up the pant legs until they were at your ankle.  No matter what the man said you were determined to look for an opening.  That was the best you could do at the moment and knew if you focused on the idea too much you might face second thoughts, so you directed your mind elsewhere.  As your eyes scanned the Alpha’s body you chuckled.

“Something funny sweetheart?” He grinned at you.

“We’re dressed alike.”  The only difference was the red bandana was around his neck.

“A man needs a uniform to make a statement.  People respect a uniform.”  Negan cracked his neck. “And you need to smell like your Alpha.”

His words made your cheeks flush and you looked down, trying your hardest to ignore your racing pulse.  

“If anyone makes you uncomfortable, even looks at you in a way you don’t like, you let me know.”  The doors dinged open and Negan grabbed your hand again, practically yanking you out of the elevator.

You let him pull you and tried to get a look at the surroundings again, but he was walking too fast.  When he went straight to the outside your eyes went wide.  This was even better, if you left his compound there would be a better chance at getting away.  

A truck was parked out front and Negan walked around to the passenger’s side. He opened the door and you climbed inside.

“Child safety lock.”  He pointed to the black peg and pushed it down before slamming the door.

Jumping out of the car would have been a stupid option anyway.  You shut your eyes and inhale deep, the cab and clothing overpowering you with his scent, and damn did it smell good.  He climbed in the driver’s side door and put the car in drive, not saying a word as the gates opened and you left his Sanctuary.  

“Alright little girl, you’re going to see somethings tonight that might disturb you, but I believe that it’s necessary for you to at least get the gist.”  Negan didn’t look away from the road.  “If you don’t think you can handle it retreat is not an option. Understand?”

“Yes.” The last image of the sun vanished and you smiled.  Nighttime would make it easier to run.

“Repeat the rules to me.”  Negan turned off the main road.  

“Don’t try to run, let you know if someone is making me uncomfortable, and retreat is not an option.”  You planned on ignoring them all, especially the first.

“If anyone, regardless of what side they’re on, looks at your like prey they will be on the receiving end of Lucille.” Negan gripped the steering wheel harder, you saw his knuckles turning white.

“Lucille?” You didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You’re going to meet her tonight.” A big grin spread across his face. “She is very thirsty.”

You almost asked if he was talking about a vampire, but stopped yourself.  It sounded stupid, but with the Dead roaming the Earth nothing seemed that far fetched anymore.  

Negan turned again and you started down a dirt road.  There were lights up ahead and you leaned forward, not understanding the scene in front of you.  His car rolled to a stop and he flipped on the brights, not turning off the vehicle.  

Without another word he got out of the truck.  You heard him pick something out of the bed, but still tried to figure out what was in front of you.  All you could see was a semi-circle of other cars, their trunks all facing you.  The door opened and your concentration broke.  

“There’s a good chance you might think you hate me after this, but trust me, it’s for your own good.”  Negan held his hand out.  

A shiver went through you, suddenly scared of what was on the other side of those cars.  You scrunched your brow as you looked at his hand.  Now the idea of escape seemed secondary, maybe you should have been more scared about what he had in mind.

“Limited on time Doll.”  He reached out and grabbed your wrist, bending down and flipping you over his shoulder as he lifted you out of the car.  

You hung upside down and saw the silhouettes of people in the headlights of the other vehicles.  What the fuck was going on?  Was this some sort of Alpha show?  Was he about to mate you in front of a crowd?  You let out a whimper at the thought.

“Don’t forget to breath Baby.”  Negan’s hand was around your thighs. “It will be over soon.”

“No.” You let out a sob. “Please don’t.”

You started to wiggle against his shoulder, trying to slide off, but his grip was too tight.

“Be good.”  He squeezed you tighter.  

Panic filled you as you glanced to your left, wondering if you could smack him in the head.  Then you saw what was slung over his other shoulder: a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.  For such a simple weapon it made you shriek.  

There was a shuffle and you knew heads were turning towards you.  With all your strength you lifted your stomach, arching your back and trying to stand up in his arms.  

“Don’t worry boys!” Negan yelled. “My Omega just saw Lucille for the first time.  Women always get a little jealous of each other.”

Negan dropped down, setting you on your bare feet.  You were facing the opposite direction from him and the vision was more than you can take.  At least ten men were standing on the cars with their weapons drawn, all looking like they were pointed right at you.  The image frightened you into silence, unsure what to do, but the forest wasn’t still.  You heard other people sobbing.  Then you noticed, nobody with a weapon drawn was looking at you.

Negan gripped your shoulder and spun you around. The fear was so heavy it took a moment to adjust, then you noticed seven people on their knees.  Each of them had a person gripping on to their collars, keeping them in place.  

“Oh how rude of me.  You all know Meg here, as you affectionately called her.” Negan kissed you on the head before lifting the bat. “Don’t worry, by the end of the night you will be even more familiar with Lucille.”

~~~

“You bought me.”

Negan recognized the deep pain in your eyes as soon as you said the words to him.  He left right then, knowing he had to prove you wrong.  

Every bit of logic told him not to bring you tonight, that you were an Omega, couldn’t handle this level of violence.  But you were different. He recognized that and the only way the two of you could start a life together was with blunt honesty.  He was happy Simon left with the search party since the other Alpha would have attempted to talk him out of it.

Your shaking form next to him was causing him doubts, but there was no way he would let that show in front of his men.  

“Sharkey…we’re cool.”  Reggie’s face was covered in tears. “We have a past brother.”

“The name is Negan.”  He was hesitant to let you go, but he needed to make a scene and you were too scared to try and run at the moment.  “And it’s a new world.  Nobody has a past anymore.”

He slid his arm off of your shoulders and started walking the line up, making sure to swing Lucille with each step.

“Instead of building a better future you people want to live in the Stone Age.” Negan stopped in front of one of them and shoved the end of Lucille in her face. “Kidnapping Omegas, almost killing them, and then thinking you can sell them.  Nobody is for sale in my future.”

“Shar…Negan, please.”  Reggie looked up. “We’re just trying to survive.”

“At the expense of the little people?”  Negan stalked towards him. Lucille went under his chin and Negan pulled up hard, making sure one of her wires went into Reggie’s chin. “No.  You’re trying to exploit. And with MY OMEGA.”

Negan glanced behind him, you were in the same place, your eyes glued to Reggie.  He gave you a wink and he thought he saw a smile.  It vanished right away, maybe even in his head, but it filled him with purpose again.

He yanked Lucille away from Reggie’s chin, causing a little blood splatter but nothing that would seriously harm the man.  

“You’re all going to die tonight.” Negan continued to walk. “I don’t want scum like you alive in my future.”

“But we told you where the other Omegas are!” A Beta female in the line up cried.

“And I’ve sent teams to check on them with pretty strong instructions.” Negan grinned at the woman, disappointed in her the most. “You disgust me, not an ounce of sympathy for your own gender.”

“Meg would have died in that attack eventually if we hadn’t found her,” Reggie yelled. “We saved her!  All the other Omega’s are with good Alphas too.”

“You sold her to a man you knew as a pimp.” Negan raged. “A real humanitarian. And that’s not her name.  Darling you want to enlighten them?”

He held his free arm back towards you.  There was no response, but he looked back at you.  He half expected a shaking girl, but instead you had your shoulders rolled back, chin held high, and pure rage in your eyes.

“MMmmm MMM!” He had to pull his eyes away. “I think my Omega is eager to get to the end of the show, but I’ll tell you what.  I’m going to leave one of you alive.  I need you to spread to word, what happened here tonight.  What will happen again if ANYONE ANYWHERE EVER TRIES TO SELL ANOTHER HUMAN BEING!”

All of them started screaming and begging at the same time, just as he expected.  They weren’t a team. Only a bunch of low-lives who banded together.  

“Normally, I like to play a little game to pick the big winner, but I’m not in the mood.”  Negan pulled Lucille back and walked towards you.  “Light em up.”

He heard the gun fire simultaneously, the six members of Reggie’s team taking a bullet in the head.  A smile spread across his face as he reached you, sliding his hand around your shoulder and leaning Lucille in between the two of you.

Reggie was shaking, looking at the dead bodies on all sides of him.  

“I told you I didn’t buy you.” Negan leaned his face next to your ear and breathed in.  

Your scents were mingled together with his clothing, but it was wearing off.  Between that and the gunfire he needed to get you out of here before Roamers showed up.  Before he pulled away you turned to look up at him.  There was genuine happiness in your eyes and it stilled Negan.  Everything you did surprised him.

Then you went up on your tiptoes and placed your lips on his.  Electricity flowed through him with the small peck.  It couldn’t have lasted more than two seconds, but it stunned him all the same.  Enough that he didn’t notice you steal Lucille away.  

He looked up as you brought her over your shoulder, swinging down as hard as you could straight into Reggie’s skull.

“Fuck….you.”  Reggie got the words out as you yanked Lucille out of his head.  

“That’s not my name.”  You stood in front of the man as he crumbled to the ground.

All of the Saviors were quiet.  Most of them thinking you had disobeyed an order, but Negan had never been more proud.

“I stand corrected.”  He walked forward and put his arm around you again. “It looks like my ladies are going to get along just fine.”

~~~

The drive back was quiet.  You didn’t have anything to say. You were raised on the cliché ‘actions speak louder than words’.  It appeared Negan had the same philosophy.  He really was your Alpha and you intended to show him.  

When you arrived through the gates he killed the engine and turned to look at you.  

“Was that your first kill?” There was concern in his eyes.

You glared at him, not trying to hide the lust that flowed off of you.  It certainly wasn’t your heat, because you were too in control of the desire.  He gulped and nodded.  

“Look Baby Doll…”

“It’s Y/N.”. You reached out and grabbed his leather jacket, then pulled him close to you, slamming your lips against his.  

Both of you parted your mouth at the same time and your tongues fought against each other for dominance, causing the slick between your legs to gush even more.  Negan let out a growl and pulled you out of your seat on top of him.  You straddled him as his hands moved to your back.  There was no time to waste as you started to rock against him, giving you no doubt his cock was even larger than his personality.  

One of his hands vanished and the door to the truck opened.  He lifted you out of the cab as you wrapped your legs around his waist, not breaking the kiss as he ran inside.  You paid no attention to anything expect the kiss and moving your body, never having felt desire like this before.  

“Do you need your nest?”  Negan broke from the kiss and you started attacking his neck.

“It’s not my heat.”  You managed to get out as you took in the saltiness of his skin.  

“Oh yes it is.”  He grabbed your hair and tilted your head back. “It’s coming on hard.”

Your chest heaved, so hungry for the Alpha.  You locked eyes with him and let out a moan.  Your head clouded, just needing his cock inside of you, wanting to feel the knot.  Then you felt the fire in your body.  Negan was your Alpha, he knew you better than you knew yourself.  

The nest you made just for him was too tempting.  You nodded your head and he went for the elevator.  Pinning you against the doors and almost falling inside as they opened.  He set you down and you wasted no time stripping off your jacket before pulling his down.  He turned the key as you pulled his white t-shirt over his head.  

Then his lips were on yours again and the heat between your legs grew more powerful.  You tried to clench your thighs together, but it gave you no relief.  Negan kicked off his shoes and then started on his belt.  You wanted to fill his bare skin against yours and were naked in seconds, glad for the lack of undergarments.  

The two of you continued to kiss as you pushed your breasts against his chest, he felt so right it made you whine.  Finally he pushed down his boxers and joined you in your nudity.  

“Don’t worry Omega.  We’re almost there.”  He grabbed your thighs and lifted you up again.  

“Please.”  You tried to kiss him again, but you could feel his rock hard cock underneath you, upset he hadn’t speared you already.  

He responded by bouncing you upwards so your chest was leave with his mouth.  He brought one nipple into his mouth and you through your head back with a gasp as he sucked in the tiny bud.  It made you squeal and try to pull away, not needing any foreplay, but his hand was on your back, keeping your tender pebble in his mouth.  

“I need you…” This was the longest elevator ride ever. “Need you inside me.”

A flush of heat spread through you.  The elevator dinged open and Negan’s teeth bit down, making you scream as he ran onto the floor.  

He practically flung you onto your nest, but didn’t come down with you.  He stood over you, his nude form causing your thighs to coat in more stickiness.  The Alpha was flawless, he was made for you.  

“Spread your legs for me Omega.”  He bit his lip and then ran his tongue out, making you shake.  

“Fuck me!”  You did as he asked.  

He ran his hand up your slit and stopped his fingers at your clit, then started rubbing.  You cried out and lifted your hips into his palm.  

“You’re the most beautiful sight in the universe Y/N.” Negan continued to rub as you rocked your hips against him.  

It didn’t take long for you to get into a rhythm and the spiral to form in your core.  You panted and moaned, needing the release that was at his fingertips.  The orgasm washed over you, causing sparks to shoot across your body, but the pleasure brought no satisfaction and you let out a cry as more of your wetness gathered between your legs.  

“Not enough.”  You reached for his shoulders, but he moved back.  

The passion and lust mixed with his motions caused your temper to flare.  

“What’s wrong little Omega?”  Negan’s eyes looked possessed.  

You knew what you needed and didn’t want to play a game.  

“It’s my job to build the nest.  It’s your job to fuck me in it.”  You turned onto your stomach and went up on your hands and knees, presenting yourself for him.  “Alpha. Your Omega needs you.”  

The bed dipped behind you and hands touched your hips, you arched your back even more, lifting your ass in the air.  

“Does my Omega have any other demands?”  Negan lined up at your entrance.  

“Knot me. Claim me.”  You tried to move yourself backwards, but he moved too.

A cry escaped your lips as your head dropped.  This was torture.  

“Such a bossy lady.”  Negan rubbed his tip on your entrance.  

“Please!”  You pressed your head to the pillow. “I’ll be your good girl.  Forever.”

With that he plunged inside of you.  There was no need to warm out as your cunt took in his gigantic cock.  The relief it brought could not be described as your body shook, needing him more than you needed oxygen.  

“What my good girl wants, my good girl gets.”  Negan pulled out almost all the way and started plowing into you.

You were screaming with pleasure, each thrust bringing you something more than any orgasm you’d ever felt before.  You clutched the blanket and bit down as he moved in and out of you.  As if each pump brought you to a higher pleasure he started shortening his thrusts.  

Instead of a coil forming in your stomach, one began for your entire body.  You tightened down, unsure how to handle the experience.  

“You’re taking your Alpha so well.”  Negan pushed into you and the base of his cock swelled.

Your body tightened even more, making you cry out and clench the blankets more. His knot grew inside of you, causing you to become all to aware of the relief it would bring.  Needing his pleasure you tried rocking against him.  He put pressure on your lower back, stilling you.

“This is your Alpha’s job.”  He leaned over your back, his head at your ear. “Be a good Omega and enjoy.”

You stopped moving and then his knot slid inside of you. The spiral inside of you Burt with euphoria as your Alpha exploded inside of you, locking you together.  Tears flowed as you could not comprehend the pleasure moving through your veins.  

Black dots covered your vision and your mind went to another place where the only thing that mattered was Negan.  If everyone else died but the two of you, you no longer cared.

A sharp pain exploded in your neck and you screamed, your arms shooting forward, as if they were capable of pulling away.  His teeth dug into you, leaving his claim.  Even with the pain you tilted your head welcoming it, knowing you would never want or need anyone but him again.  

Your body collapsed and he fell on top of you before turning you onto your side. A blanket was pulled over you as the two of you laid locked together, conscious vanishing.  

“You were never for sale.”  Negan kissed his claim making your body shake.  

His arm wrapped around you and you sunk into him.  There was no past anymore, just the future.  You looked forward to yours.

[thatkinkytrashcan]

Broken Blades pt. 4

Summary: After a moment of desperate passion between brothers, Vergil falls into the hands of their father's greatest enemy.  With his very mind and soul stolen by Mundus, Vergil knows nothing but the want to fulfill his Master's every desire.  And to protect their precious son, Nero.

Pairings: Dante/Vergil, Vergil/Mundus, Vergil & Nero, Dante & Nero

Warnings/Tags:

Sibling incest, DT sex, knotting, cum inflation, m-preg, Vergil is Nero’s mom, rape/dub-con, mental and emotional manipulation, brainwashing, amnesia and identity issues, forced c-section without anesthesia, child abuse, threat of future sexual violence made to a child, Mundus is a really bad parent, rampant speculation on demon/half-demon biology

IV.         Heat Treating

Nelo Angelo scrabbled to get a hold on the headboard when Mundus' thrust nearly sent him face first into it.  Master liked it when he was submissive, liked him on his knees, but the pain of those couplings often outweighed any scraps of pleasure Master thought to offer him.

But it didn't matter.  This is what he was meant for.

Fingers twisted in his hair, and Nelo Angelo cried out.  Of course.  Mundus had wanted him to be vocal this time.  "Master, Master, yes!  You feel so good!  Please, more!"

Mundus' laughter reverberated through him, chest pressed to Nelo Angelo’s back.  "More, you say?  Very well."  His hips slammed against Nelo Angelo and forced his cold length deeper into his ass.  It hurt, and Nelo Angelo grit his teeth.  A fleeting memory passed close enough for him to try to seize it.

Another strong body against his.  Warmth.  That sex had been hard and fast too, but any pain had been a crucial part of fulfilling pleasure, the wholeness of two joining back into the one they always were meant to be.

But no.  Nelo Angelo would never allow anyone other than Mundus to take his body.  Master would have never touched him if he had defiled himself so and would never have lowered himself to bed something so unclean as a sullied human, even one with Sparda's demon blood flowing through his veins.  He only existed for Master's pleasure.

And Mundus was obviously pleased with him considering the cum that dripped down his thighs when the Emperor abruptly finished, so he would endure any pain so long as Mundus asked it of him.  Chilly hands petted his flank for a moment before Mundus pulled out roughly and let Nelo Angelo sag down onto the mattress, rolling onto his side.

"Ah, such a fragile body you have," Mundus sighed.  "You bruise as easily as ripe fruit."

Nelo Angelo glanced at himself and saw there were indeed bruises everywhere. Finger marks pressed into curves of his hips, on the inside of his thighs, probably in places he couldn't see.  He could feel some internal tearing as well since Master very rarely had the patience to prepare him, but that all would be gone soon.  A small price for Master's enjoyment.

"It's a wonder you survived this long.  You'd be lost without me."  Mundus lay his hand on Nelo Angelo's hip again, pushing him until he was flat on his back, and squeezed until it hurt. He seemed amused by matching his fingers to where the bruises were.

"Yes, Master," Nelo Angelo said dutifully while trying not to flinch.  "I am nothing without you."

"You should always remember that," Mundus said as he moved from the bed and pulled on his discarded vestments.  "I will return in the evening.  Be sure to have the servants clean you up and change the sheets."  He paused and touched Nelo Angelo's chin to force his head up.  "My lovely angel.  All of you mine."

And then he was gone out of the room.  Nelo Angelo's heart swelled from the compliment, and he took a moment to bask in Mundus' praise.  It was what he was meant for.  His hand touched his abdomen, and he wondered if this would be the time he finally conceived another child for his Master.

It seemed doubtful since his male shape didn't naturally have the ability.  If he went into Devil Trigger, his body could create the necessary structures to be impregnated -- and even carry those over internally back to his human form so the embryo would stay viable -- but he couldn't remember a time when Mundus had deigned to fuck him in his demon form.  Still, Nero's blessed existence was proof enough that they had managed it somehow.

Absently, he reached up and twined his fingers around the amulet that lay heavily on his chest.  They hadn't discussed more children, but considering how often his master wanted sex, he couldn't help but hope that he might be able to give him more offspring.  A sibling for Nero would be nice too, so his son wouldn't be as lonely while he was occupied with entertaining Master's desires.

But on the other hand, Nelo Angelo had to admit he liked being able to devote all of his other time to just his wonderful son.  Doting on Nero made him happy, and if there were more children--

"Momma…?"

Nelo Angelo hurriedly cleaned himself off with the wrinkled silk sheets.  Nero wasn't bothered by nudity, he saw enough of it because Master preferred Nelo Angelo unclothed during their time together, but the other evidence was another matter.

"Momma, are you okay?" Nero peered through the crack in the doorway to his own room.

"I'm fine," Nelo Angelo assured him.  He rolled off the bed, ignoring the twinge of torn muscles healing, and pulled on a gauzy robe that Master had approved of.  "You don't need to worry about me."

Nero pushed the door open further and scampered inside.  "I heard you yelling.  Did Father hurt you?"

"It's alright."  Nelo Angelo knelt and welcomed his small son into his arms.  He didn't want to lie to his boy, and Nero's scrunched face clearly said he wasn't fooled.  His child was too clever at times.  It was hard to remember he was only five.

"I don't like it when he hurts you," Nero mumbled.

"You know I will heal.  It's what Master wants.  It pleases him."

"If he loves you, why would he be happy to hurt you?" Nero asked, blue eyes too shrewd for a young child.  "I love you, and I don't like it when you hurt."

Nero was also too kind.  Nelo Angelo feared the future would be difficult for him, but he didn't like to think too hard about it.  It would be Master's choice, and Master knew best.

"You must be hungry," he said, scooping Nero up into his arms.  "Let's go back to your room and get you something to eat."

His son was still frowning, but the short arms that wrapped around Nelo Angelo's neck filled his heart with a different kind of warmth, one he didn't want to compare too closely to the dimmer feelings Mundus filled him with.

"Okay, Momma, but you have to eat too."

"If you wish."  He pressed a kiss to his boy's cheek and glanced over his shoulder at the demonic servants that manifested.  "Fetch food for the Emperor's son.  And clean up the bed."  He could bathe once Nero was cared for.

Nelo Angelo carried his son away from Master's bedroom and into the calming safety of Nero's own space.  It was the same size as the Emperor's chambers, far too much for just one child, but Mundus made sure it was appointed with every luxury imaginable.  Rare, beautiful books, fine clothes in a child's size, trinkets and jewels from long gone eras.  Admittedly, Master had little understanding of a human child's interests, but he frequently brought new things for his son to decorate the room.

The handful of toys, though, had been suggestions from Nelo Angelo, and he smiled when he spotted the gorgeously painted wood blocks Nero had spread out on the floor.  "Do you want to play with me?" he asked his son.  Nero's grin took his breath away.

"Yeah, I'm building a house.  You can help!"

"A house, you say?"  Nelo Angelo laughed as he set Nero down next to the pile of blocks.  He sat across from his son.  "Whatever for?  Will we live there?"

A peculiar tightness pinched Nero's lips, forming little creases beside his mouth.  "Yeah.  And nobody hurts you there."

Nelo Angelo's hand hovered over the ornate cube he was going to add to Nero's structure.  He didn't like the chill that spread out from his stomach.  "You want your father to live here too, don't you?"

His boy didn't speak for a moment while he stacked two more of the blocks.  "No," he said in a voice that held too much strength to be a whim.  "I don't want him here."

"Nero…"  Nelo Angelo dropped his hand to touch his son's arm, momentarily stilling his movements.  "You know your father loves you.  He brings you all these nice presents, doesn't he?  And he protects us.  I… I am too weak to keep you safe without him."

Having his boy avoid meeting his gaze hurt more than he could have imagined.  Nero picked up another block and set it down to finish the perimeter for his building.  "He won't let you leave anyway.  You're not allowed to go outside without him," Nero muttered.

It was true that Mundus required that Nelo Angelo stay inside their suite unless accompanied by him, but it was for his own safety.  The demons that roamed and guarded the castle were dangerous, and there was always a chance one might injure even the Emperor's concubine.  It wasn't for control.  It was out of love, he told himself.

Nero was looking at him sadly, almost like he could read his thoughts.  "Someday I'll protect you, Momma," his boy said quietly, "because I love you.  I promise I won't leave without you."

It was a wonderful sentiment, so much of Nero's kindness wrapped up in the words, but Nelo Angelo balked at the warm joy it set off like a firework in him.  He shouldn't feel this way.  His son shouldn't feel the way he did either because there were perils to such thinking.

He might be physically weak, but he could look after Nero in other ways.  There was no reason Master ever needed to hear of this moment.  Nelo Angelo forced a smile that certainly didn't fool his clever son, but he tried anyway.

"It's alright, Nero.  You'll understand someday."

Previous: https://thatkinkytrashcan.tumblr.com/post/631365163115855872/broken-blades-pt-3

Next: https://thatkinkytrashcan.tumblr.com/post/631365355814748160/broken-blades-pt-5

[serpent-jugheadjones]

The Partner Revealed - Part 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

Pairing: Jughead Jones x Reader

Description: How will things unfold after Jughead stood up Y/N? How will the mystery of Jason’s death be affected by Dilton’s confession? 

Warnings: None I can think of.

Word count: 3128

A/N: Y/F/F stands for Your Favorite Flavor. Thank you all for the comments asking for more, it hope you enjoy this next part :) 

Y/N’s point of view

Y/N wakes up, but stays in bed, not because it’s comfortable – it’s just her limbs that can’t seem to move. She gets up after several minutes of lying down motionless. She looks at her reflection in the mirror glued on the back of her door, eyes puffy and red. “Was I crying?” A little confirmation as she runs her fingers down her wet cheeks.

She’s angry, not at him, at herself, for thinking things could be different or that they would change. Her mind wondering why she even likes him. Is it the suspenders? Maybe the ‘S’ T-shirts? Could be the mystery underneath the crown-shaped beanie? Probably his sardonic humor? Possibly his way with words? Maybe it was everything in one, the combination of it all.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the phone vibrating. Text message: 

From: Mom 

Where are you?

From: Y/N

Wasn’t feeling good so I stayed in. I’m heading to school now.

From: Mom 

Glad you’re ok, let us know if you need anything. 

From: Y/N

Principal Weatherbee called you? 

From: Mom 

With everything that happened this summer I’m surprised he isn’t already searching for you at the river lol :) 

Y/N laughs at her mom using slang, and knowing who she got her humor from.

Principal Weatherbee is waiting for her when she arrives. He tells her about his worries about the classes she missed - twice in a row - fearing the reason could be ‘Mr. Jones’. “I’d hate if your focus on school were deviated.” She has to use all her self control not to laugh when he says the boy is not a great influence. She’s not sure if it’s because he may be completely right or entirely wrong about Jughead. He asks her to wait for the next class at the library.

Jughead’s point of view

Jughead can’t close his eyes, the guilt is eating him alive. “How could I have forgotten her?”  Since that night by the river she has been a constant in his mind. Earlier that day she skipped class to make him feel better and he left her waiting at Pop’s only to sit with the friend who left him hanging all summer, a raven-haired girl he only knew by name, and the perfect girl next door. He won’t let that be the end of them.

Today is his turn to spend the morning looking for Y/N. Unfortunately, she’s quite good at hiding, just like him. But he eventually finds her in the library behind a pile of books, her face buried in an open book. Before even entering the library, he just stands there for a moment, enjoying the way she looks, so peaceful and beautiful. Once he speaks to her, all that can change. He’s not used to being this nervous, but there’s a lot in stake now.

He gathers his entire courage and don’t-give-a-damn attitude to sit in the chair in front of her, the wall of books still separating those young detectives. He moves them away to have a clear view of her face, still deep within what she’s reading. “Y/N”, he says softly, since she hasn’t noticed his presence, or is simply ignoring him. “Hey, Jughead.” She’s so hurt he can feel that in those few words. It breaks him. “I have to apologize.” He gives her a hand-made ticket granting a milkshake, fries and a burger at Pop’s. “You don’t have to do this.” Her words are contradictory to her actions as she holds that single piece of paper with more care than any of her books, so carefully as if it was the most precious thing in the whole universe. “I do, and I want to.” His face is showing the desperation for forgiveness.

He’s filled with relief when she forgives him, certain that she’s not one to hold a grudge. Still, he doesn’t plan on ever needing her exoneration ever again. He feels more like himself now, regaining his own confidence. “If you really wanna make it up to me there’s something you can do.”, she says playfully but seriously at the same time. “You name it.” He has a smirk on his face, ready to take on the assignment. “Who’s the one person we know was at Sweet Water River on July 4th besides the Blossoms?”, she asks rhetorically. “ Dilton Doiley and his scouts.”, he shoots and she shivers. “Right, so you’re gonna talk to him and find out what happened when he found Cheryl.”, she whispers, for the librarian was looking kinda angrily at them. “Not to push my luck, but why me?, he asks, trying to understand the girls reaction when he said the scout’s name. “The boy freaks me out.” Jughead also feels that way, only to a lesser extent. “But don’t worry, it’s not gonna be all sunshine and rainbows for me. I’m gonna stick with she-Devil Blossom.”, Y/N says with a little regret. He thinks it’s probably because no one would like to stakeout that crazy cheerleader. “Last night, before you stood...”, she stopped for a second. “...me up.”, he thought sadly. “Cheryl ran off the stage and I heard her talking to Veronica. She said her brother was supposed to come back.” It feels as if she understood him finishing her sentence, but they keep on talking about the investigation, probably because it’s the best path. “I know it’s too movie-plot like, but do you think they could’ve tried to fake his death so he could skip town?”, he asks, already working on 20 different scenarios in his mind, some a little Hitchcockian, others more Lynne Ramsay-like. However, giving the way Jason turned out, it all sounded very plausible.

Y/N’s point of view

He helps her put the books back on the shelves, picking up the didactic ones that were piled in front of her earlier. She closes the one she was reading, revealing a Lovecraft cover, earning a smile from Jughead. “Maybe it’s that darn smile that blinds me.”, she thinks and they make their way to their Biology class. She can’t help wondering if he’s doing that only to make up for his lapse or he’d do that regardless. Y/N stops her thoughts as she doesn’t want to live her life second guessing everyone’s actions.

They walk inside and notice some people are already working together, but the pairs are not the same. “We’re still lab partners, right?” She gives away to some of her insecurities in that question. “Who else would accept to do all the practice?”, he asks in his usual sardonic humor. They sit next to each other and take a look at the board. Their lesson is on the body systems - circulatory, nervous, endocrine, immune and reproductive. Almost everybody else is making jokes about the latter, their books full of bad drawings. Betty, Veronica, Kevin, and Archie exchange looks with them, forming a group not afraid of sex. Astonishingly, the only one not belonging to any party is Cheryl Blossom.

The “fun” is broken when Sheriff Keller shows up at the door to take that red-haired girl in for questioning. After she says “Because I’m guilty.”, Jughead and Y/N’s eyes follow her being escorted out of class wondering what she meant by her words.

Jughead’s point of view

When Jug opens his locker, a note falls out. He hurriedly picks it up, thinking it’s from Y/N. His happiness over it is short-lived, because it’s from Betty. She asks him to meet her at the Blue and Gold’s office.

He obliges and she greets him with a proposition: to write for the school’s paper on Jason’s murder. He almost refuses, for he’s already writing his own novel on it and sleuthing with Y/N, but, after lots of convincing from Betty, he finally accepts. He laughs at his first mission: interrogating Dilton. “It’s already in my to-do list.”, he shares. Cooper just smiles back.

He’s conflicted if he’ll tell Y/N about Betty inviting him to write for the paper. Maybe she wouldn’t consider it a great idea, and he doesn’t want to lose her simply because they’re on rocky grounds. Nevertheless, not telling her would certainly mean ending their relationship for good. He decides to only mention it if casual conversation  brings it up.

Jug goes to their usual rendezvous, arriving before her. He tries to take the time to write the next paragraph of his novel, but a writer’s block prevents him. His brain can’t seem to focus on anything other than the Y/H/C girl who’s about to meet him there. Also, he’s eager to know what she got from detailing Cheryl. He looks away from his screen just as she walks in, noticing for the first time that her clothes hug her body perfectly. It’s advisable, though, to think of something else as she approaches.  

Y/N’s point of view

She enters Pop’s and Jughead is already waiting for her with a milkshake, Y/F/F. “So, did you find out?”, he asks, closing the lid on his laptop before she even has time to sit down. “Gossip is like a virus and I’m not immune to it.” They both laugh at her corny joke. “Turns out your far-fetched theory is right. Jason wanted to fake his death.”, she takes a sip from the tall glass containing her favorite drink. “Someone said something about them hearing a gunshot.”, Jug adds what he knew from Archie, but couldn’t tell her before without outing his friend. “One more reason to talk to Dilton.”, she pronounces his name with hesitation. “Ok, you HAVE to tell me your deal with Doiley.” He can’t help his curiosity any longer. “He’s a Master Scout. For him, animal torture is considered a means to mature. I tried talking to him about it once and he ate a bug in front of me, claiming it was survival skills.” She’s hoping he won’t think she’s a freak but the look on his face reassures her he understands her point of view.

As they were leaving the diner, they see Veronica in a car with Versety Coach’s son, Chuck Clayton. She isn’t friends with the Lodge girl, but anyone going out with him is on her pity list. Y/N just wishes there’s more to it than it looks like. It’d be perfect if she played the player. A whole plan to unmask him, outing the whole scheme, crosses her mind for a brief moment.

Jughead doesn’t even have to insist on walking her home that night. The closer they get, stronger is her wish to live a little more down the road so she could walk with him a bit longer. They say their goodbyes and she goes up to her room in a completely different mood she did the previous night, now knowing Weatherbee was wrong about Jughead. She’s scrolling through Instagram when a picture of the couple they spotted earlier shows up, with maple syrup edited over Veronica’s face, another victim of the sticky maple. “Just to think it could have happened to me because I tutored Jason... Thank goodness I always chose a public place with tons of eyewitnesses. ”

Jughead’s point of view

He takes his free period to go to the Avengers Scouts headquarters to have a word with the boy he now isn’t so fond of, after hearing about Y/N’s reasons for not being a fan herself. The fact that he’s writing an article for the Blue and Gold gives him freedom to ask questions without sounding snoopy, but Dilton doesn’t take it well. Jughead is very direct and precise and would really like Dilton to cooperate, but he keeps budging. One of his scouts flinches at the sight of Jug asking his Master questions. That’s definitely something he has to share with Y/N.

To: Y/N

 Meet me at Pop’s right after school. Jughead. 

He sends it, using the phone number she gave him for the first time, then rushes to the diner.

The booth he was used to being alone at now felt lonely and too silent. He is getting used to sharing it with the chocolate-ginger-smelling girl. The second she walks in he tells her about his plan to talk directly with the scout who flinched - he happens to be at Pop’s as well. “Go intimidate the kid and get us some answers.”, she instructs when the boy’s father leaves the table, probably to use the bathroom. He uses a trick Y/N told him about, of being higher than your subject to show power. He crouches on the seat, taking the cherry from his sundae (he couldn’t help himself).

When Jug sits down at his booth again, he has precious intel. “You won’t believe it: Dilton fired the shot.”, he tells her, trying to figure out a way to get Dilton to confess to it. “I kinda do.” She makes a disgusted face.

Y/N invites him to watch a movie at her place to “celebrate” a job well done. He accepts with the condition of him picking the film, and they both laugh as she clearly pretends to take the offer back. Jug realizes he’s been laughing a lot more after meeting her – and over not so funny things. They settle on American Psycho and Y/N makes a bowl of pop corn each, as if she knows he will eat one all by himself. He soon finds out she does too. They make themselves comfortable on the soft couch full of fluffy pillows, and Jughead makes sure to sit as close to her as he can without making it obvious, mainly because it’s a large piece of furniture.

Jughead’s not one to be distracted during movies, being able to  marathon the extended trilogy of Lord of the Rings with only two  bathroom brakes, but somehow his eyes divert from the TV to the girl sitting next to him. He notices what color her nails are painted, the cute design on her socks, the size of her lips as she mouths the words from the movie. She lays down her head on his shoulder as the movie gets close to ending and he is intoxicated by the smell of chocolate and ginger once again. If he could he would freeze that moment.

Y/N’s point of view

Jughead tells her about the Blue and Gold. “That’s awesome, Jug.” Her face lights up. “You sure? We were doing this before.”, he asks and she can feel he doesn’t want that to come between them. “Unless this means you’re ditching me, it’s good. You can use the ‘I’m writing a story for the school paper’ to investigate without being suspicious.”, she says. He looks extremely appeased.

They spend the next couple of days thinking up a plan to get Dilton to confess of firing the gun on July 4th, in addition to enjoying time together. She’s thankful in a weird way about what happened, otherwise who knows how much time would pass without them knowing each other. They decide to apply some pressure on him at the Taste of Riverdale event by threatening him to tell Sheriff Keller. Jughead says he’ll talk to him alone, so she wouldn’t have to face him once more. Y/N likes the way it feels to be protected by the Jones boy.

She’s dressed a little fancier than usual, not too much that she stands out, but not too little that it’s eye-catching. Jughead clearly doesn’t follow the same line of thought as he sports his regular clothes and the beanie that makes him always stand out.  She unquestionably admires his confidence. They slouch at the balcony so they are barely visible, although having a full view of everything happening. They hear a whack and their eyes are directed towards Mrs. Blossom, who clearly has just slapped Mrs. Cooper, quickly walking away. “Ok, I’m gonna see what Alice got from her. You find Doiley.”, she has to speak right by his year as the Pussycats start playing. Maybe she didn’t HAVE to, but she clearly wanted to. “Alice?”, he asks just as close to her ear as she did before, speculating how she got on a first name basis without being friends with Betty. “I had an internship with the Coopers at the Register.”, she explains and walks out slowly, leaving Jug wondering what else he doesn’t know about her. Bummer is that Alice got slapped over asking for a quote she didn’t get. She hopes Juggie has more luck with Dilton. 

She knocks at the Blue and Gold’s door. The previous night she got a text from Jug telling her to be there for Dilton’s confession. Y/N walks in shyly. “What’s she doing here?”, Betty asks confused as she was expecting Doiley. “Y/N and I have been investigating this before you asked me to write for the paper. She’s a part of this. You want me, you take us both.”, Jughead says defensively and Y/N blushes. Bets is reminded about the time Ronnie said that about her on the vixens team but before the blonde has a chance to reply, the culprit arrives and sits at the table in the center. They all gather around him. Now she’s sure Betty doesn’t mind her being with them, as there is strength in numbers.

The boy isn’t there to give them his story for the paper, but to negotiate. Something no one else knows about that day in exchange for his being forgotten. In different circumstances this would’ve never been accepted, but they are all grasping for information, so they take him up on his offer. Dilton tells them that on July 4th he saw a car by the river’s edge, Miss Grundy’s car. Everyone knows Archie was at Sweet Water River when he confessed earlier of hearing the same gunshot. Y/N looks at Jug in awe. “He probably knew about this and didn’t tell me.” She doesn’t even blame her new friend. After all, she didn’t tell him everything about Jason until she had to. She understands that if he did withhold that from her, it was to protect Arch. Although, from now on, nothing he does will shield him because Betty also heard the words the eldritch scout spoke and she seemed truly hurt by them.   

[lightshadowverisimilitude]

Chaos and Dancing Stars 3/?

A/B/O AU - Part One, Part Two. Mind the cut.

Five Years Ago

Tony wanted the day to be over. They’d stopped an actual alien invasion, he’d taken a really good shot at dying a hero, and they’d captured a live god. That had to be enough to count for a full day’s work. Really, it was his own fault that they weren’t crawling into their individual dens to lick their wounds in peace. He’d made a smart-ass comment about shawarma, and now he had to pay the price. Namely, trying not to look like his entire body was convulsing with terrible nausea while he choked down what was probably a perfectly edible plate of Middle Eastern cuisine. It was a team thing. A pack thing. Rogers had thought it was a good idea, and everyone else had fallen in line.

Biology was such a shitty, shitty, asshole-y bitch.

He slumped into the suit for support, mind running a thousand miles a minute to avoid thinking about – No. Not going there. He had a tower to rebuild, a city to rebuild, and dangerous alien tech to get off the streets before some kid ooh, shiny!’ed their way to certain destruction. He needed to figure out some kind of containment cell for the freaking god sitting in a woefully inadequate SHIELD holding facility. Thor had slapped some kind of muzzle on him, and then plopped his hammer down in Loki’s lap and told him to mind his manners. Setting aside the Geneva Convention and pesky things like hygiene and bodily functions, it seemed like a pretty slipshod response to prisoner containment.

And Bruce was way too interested in the hammer. Tony wanted to nip whatever ideas he had about Thor being able to ‘control’ his mean green counterpart in the bud, because that went bad places very quickly.

The table was quiet. It was like an image parody of the 1950’s nuclear pack, with Steve as their stern but dotting capital-A Alpha surrounded by a bevy of betas arranged in some arcane pecking order. Real life had never worked like that, but if it ever had, Steve would fill the role of Alpha pretty damn well. Tony’s A-levels were unusually high, but even he had to admit that there was something about Steve that functioned like gravity.

(Keep reading)

“I… really need some new clothes,” Bruce mourned out of nowhere. He’d been naked when he’d turned back into a pinkish-skinned human, and the first thing he’d done was look down at his filthy body and groan not again.

They’d appropriated clothing for him from a boutique that would need some serious glasswork soon. Tony had hacked the register system and charged the purchases to his credit card, adding a hefty ‘I’m sorry we basically looted your store’ tip to the total. Bruce did look more than a touch ridiculous in the bondage pants and Hello Kitty t-shirt, but he hadn’t been in much condition to complain about Tony’s choices at the time.

“I’ll buy you a whole department store, buddy,” Tony promised. “We’ll call it a sign on bonus.”

Bruce made a strange wounded-animal noise and put his forehead down on the table. Tony lifted his arm (who the hell was he kidding? He twitched his arm muscles and the suit lifted his arm) and patted him on the back. Bruce’s breath wuffed out with each pat to make him sound a bit like squeaky toy. Tony was tempted to see if Bruce would keep doing it, but he wasn’t sure that his arm would keep obliging. He’d been able to replace the reactor when they’d gone to fetch Loki, so he at least wasn’t going to run out of power, but the suit wasn’t designed to work with zero user input.

“This has been fun, but I’ve got to take Bruciebear home before he gets cranky,” Tony said, and he really hated that he was turning to Steve like he needed permission to leave the table.

“I’ll come with you,” Steve said. Just like that, Steve was coming home with him.

Tony wasn’t sure that Steve had actually meant to invite himself to Tony’s home – or, in this case, a spare home, because even he wasn’t crazy enough to go tuck into bed at Stark Tower. He probably meant that he would help Tony carry Bruce over the threshold if needed, or prowl around and make sure all the doors and windows were locked before curling up at the foot of Tony’s bed. Maybe not the last one.

It was entirely possible that Tony was starting to go hysterical.

“I shall return to my brother,” Thor announced. “He should not be left unattended for long.”

Steve looked at their two super spy assassins with his eyebrow hiked, clearly waiting for the kids’ plans for the evening. Natasha looked at Tony, her expression unreadable through the grime and oil streaking her face. Tony looked back at her, and said nothing. He wasn’t comfortable around her, and he wasn’t sure if he ever would be. She’d taken hormone therapy so she put out O pheromones while she’d infiltrated his life, because, as she’d explained later, they’d thought he would respond better to an omega. Without the artificial hormones, she was nearly neutral, just slightly A-ten. Despite her past betrayals, they had just saved the world together. It wasn’t like Tony was going to throw her out on the street.

Whatever she was looking for in his face, she either found it, or she didn’t. Tony would probably never know one way or another. She gave Steve a tired smile, put a hand on Clint’s arm, and said, “We have our own beds to get back to.”

Steve’s lips went tight. He obviously wanted them to come along. Whatever else had happened, they’d formed into a pack and Steve was very obviously not pleased with his pack separating. He continued to stare at the table unhappily. Tony could almost hear the complaints going on inside his head, “Evenings are pack time and you can go play with your friends tomorrow.”

Tony snorted out a laugh, but didn’t explain. He rolled his eyes. “Giving SHIELD the opportunity to lock you in a debriefing room after this shitshow is stupid. Come with us, and you can go running back to Fury tomorrow. You too, big tall and staticky. There’s nothing that can be done about His Highness Lord Crazyeyes until I come up with a better holding cell for him anyways.”

Thor considered the offer, but then shook his head. “I must decline my friend, though I do so with considerable reluctance. Loki must not be allowed to escape again. Even in defeat, he is a formidable foe.” Standing, he clapped Steve on the shoulder, and then reached his hand out for empty air. He smiled ruefully when he realized that his hammer wasn’t in reach, and nodded to the rest of them.

“Suit yourself,” Tony said, and then quirked an eyebrow at Natasha.

Natasha looked down at Clint. He was asleep with his head pillowed on his arm. What was visible of him was speckled in bruises, and Tony imagined that what wasn’t visible was a damn sight worse. She transferred her gaze back to Tony, and then nodded. Steve noticeably relaxed, and thanked the shellshocked store owners for the meal. Between Steve, Bruce, and Thor, they’d eaten just about every scrap of food in the store. Tony’s half eaten shawarma pita barely pinged in comparison to the truckloads their resident super-etceteras had put away. When Steve realized that Tony was not going to finish his food, he frowned, and grabbed it off the table, carrying it with him to the street.

The National Guard escorted them out of the battle zone in a Humvee – boy, weren’t Humvees fun? – and then stood by at attention as they hauled their weary carcasses out of the Humvee and into Tony’s custom panel van. He’d designed the thing so it could be used to transport the suit with him in it. He hadn’t exactly anticipated the reason behind that being ‘body incapable of supporting itself due to alien invasion,’ but life was full of surprises.

“This looks like a prison transport,” Bruce mumbled. He managed to sound worried, even though he was half asleep on Tony’s shoulder, and getting drool all over his pauldron.

“Considering that it used to be a prison transport, that makes sense,” Tony said.

“Oh. Okay.”

The ride to Tony’s Upper West Side apartment was quiet and bumpy and slow. There were no windows in the back of the van, though he could have turned on external camera feeds if he felt like putting in the effort. He judged they were somewhere near the park by the time it occurred to him that he should have just gotten them a helicopter. No one else seemed to be especially bothered. Clint had only been woken long enough for the transfers between seats, and was asleep with his head in Natasha’s lap. She had her eyes closed, though Tony couldn’t guess if she was actually unconscious. Steve sat slouched in the bench seat across from tony with his head back against the wall, jostling around with each bump and turn like a ragdoll. His eyes were open, though Tony couldn’t guess if he was actually conscious. What a weird group of people.

A medical team met them in the parking garage, and hustled Clint and Bruce into wheel chairs. Tony couldn’t make himself say it out loud with Steve and Natasha there, but he could have used a wheelchair. Everywhere his body touched the suit was in agony, and the harnessing was good, but it was still biting into him where it was supporting his weight. He could feel his legs twitching and shuddering under the armor plates and was just grateful that no one could tell as long as he kept it off his face.

Tony hadn’t been to the apartment for months. It had been home before he’d finished the tower penthouse, and he’d kept it to house guests. When it was empty, it occasionally served as convenient lodgings when he had an event and didn’t want to travel back to the tower. It was blessedly quiet and dim with all the shades drawn. Tony directed traffic absently, sending Natasha and Clint to the far bedroom, and Bruce to the office by the master with its daybed. He didn’t think Bruce would appreciate the idea of anyone prodding at him while he slept, so he sent the doctor back to check on Natasha.

Looking at Steve, Tony grunted. “There’s a king in the master,” he said reluctantly. “It’s big enough for two.” The last thing he needed was Steve there to see all his bruises, but the apartment only had the three rooms.

Steve was looking around the living room with his eyebrows rucked up. He started at the sound of Tony’s voice and looked at the front door, maybe considering heading back to his room at the SHIELD facility after all. His gaze transferred to the hallway where the doctor could be heard quietly talking with Natasha. He set a hand on the back of the couch.

“I’ll be fine out here,” he said. “Though I wouldn’t say no to a shower if you don’t mind.”

Tony hid his relief. “I would mind more if you thought you were going to plop your filthy self down on my nice white couch.” He made a flicking gesture to get Steve to follow him, though even that much movement made his shoulders burn.

Steve watched him as he moved around the master. It wasn’t really Tony’s room anymore. It had been styled and stocked as a very generous hotel room, prepared to house guests of all descriptions. The closet and dresser were filled with clothes of various sizes that guests could ‘borrow’ (though few of the articles were ever returned), and useful odds and ends were scattered on shelves. Tony pulled out the largest pair of sweatpants and t-shirt he could find with minimal effort, snagged an unopened package of boxers out of the top drawer and dumped them on the bathroom counter.

“Shampoo, soap… all the things. In there. Use whatever,” Tony said through a yawn.

“Do you need help?” Steve asked.

Tony blinked at him and rewound the last few minutes of their conversation. “…With?”

Steve made a blanket gesture to him. “You haven’t gotten out of your armor yet. Is there something special that needs to be done to get it off? I can help.”

Tony waved him away. If he’d been alone with Rhodey or Pepper, he would have gladly taken the help and just ignored their worried tutting over his bruises. Not Steve. Not Captain America. “Once this thing comes off, I probably have five minutes of juice left in the tank before I’m falling asleep wherever I happen to be. I’ll wait until I can grab a shower first. Maybe that way I’ll at least happen to be in bed.”

Steve hesitated, and Tony wondered what he suggestion he was thinking about making. Bathing Tony and carrying him to bed? The idea was half teenage wet dream, and half instant repulsion. He didn’t need a big strong alpha to dote on him. If he’d been ten years younger, he probably would have tumbled Steve into a dominance fight, Captain America or not, and if he’d been less tired and in less pain, he would have at least made a sarcastic crack. As things stood, he was too old, and too tired, and he didn’t even have morphine to rely on for pain management.

Tony made an impatient gesture to the bathroom and Steve apparently decided not to argue. He ducked his head and disappeared into the bathroom with a muttered promise to be quick. Tony dismissed the idea of telling him to take his time, because he really wanted to get to bed, and he really needed a shower first.

Steve was in and out in under five minutes, escaping the room in a cloud of peppermint scented steam.

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