#this fight is too chaotic for proper shots but i’m proud of these

[soloavengers]

the man the myth the legend …

[retvenkos]

“are you always this chaotic?”

A/N: i have an inquisitive anon in my ask box that deserves the whole world, and i decided their amazing (sometime hilarious) ask deserved better formatting, so here we are. sweet anon, this is for you.

tw: language

@bladesappreciationweek​​ A COLLECTION OF RANDOM HEADCANONS AND MEMES FOR THE INCOMPARABLE BLADES COMPANY...

who reserves the right to say “fuck”?

mal does not deserve the right. 10/10 he would use it every other word just for the effect of it all (scandalizing tyril who is upper class and thinks there are “better, more intellectual insults” and upsetting nia who tries to play it off like it doesn’t bother her, but she doesn’t like it). no rights, we’re censoring mal.

nia deserves the right, but she would never use it. not even in her dreadlord state did she utter it (the dreadlord is also an upper class elitist, fight me) but she argues with mal that she can say it and she would, but scholar vash is watching over her right now and she can’t disgrace him (scholar vash would be vvv proud if she said it, though, don’t even lie). olinda egged her on one night and she whispered it, dissolving into a fit of giggles afterward, but neither of them speak of it afterward.

tyril does not deserve the right. he believes himself too good™ for such a word, so he doesn’t get rights. he says he’s better than banal vernacular, thank you very much, but that’s awfully presumptuous of him and fails to take into account that, at all times he’s 5 seconds away from saying it, now that mal has entered his life. 100%, mal is trying to get tyril to say it by startling him at unnecessary times or just being generally irritating, and he never gets tyril to crack. i imagine tyril does end up saying it, though. aerin turns out to be the bad guy and nia falls into the portal or whatever and tyril is just like “...... fuck.” mal is bitter he wasn’t the one to make it happen, but he doesn’t whine about it until after the dreadlord has been defeated. nia is slightly upset that she was the reason tyril broke his solemn vow, but she also laughed thoroughly at mal’s rendition of the moment and regrets that she wasn’t there to see it.

imtura deserves the right and uses it. imtura curses like a sailor. .....get it? because she’s a— alright, you get it. but yes, imtura gets to the right to say fuck and she says it enough for everyone. if mal ever wants to express himself using the expletive, imtura will gladly say it for him. solidarity. but she’s also sweet, deep down, and she keeps her swearing to a minimum when nia is around. 

olinda deserves the right, 100%. she doesn’t say it often, but when she does, it has such power. mal wishes he had the commanding presence. olinda is generally too intent on finding a solution to the problem to ever dwell on failure, but when she goes into battle and realizes her group is terrible outnumbered? oop, there it is.

kade. oh, my sweet summer child, who swears often enough to rival imtura. 100%, he deserves the say “fuck” because every bard deserves free access to every word they can get their hands on. it’s rather funny that kade has a terrible mouth, since he’s like the golden retriever of the group (barring nia, ofc), but it’s also rather fitting. imtura was taken aback and mal had mad respect after hearing one of his tirades (directed at threep, ofc) and tyril is just like,,,,,, will i ever rEsT? anyway, let kade say fuck.

threep does not, under any circumstance deserve the right. threep will go off if given the right to swear, and it’s terribly annoying. everyone is trying to travel through a small town and then, out of the priestess of light’s travel bag you hear the worst string of curses you’ve ever heard - so many outdated and upper class curses picked up through the millennia and then you hear the most country, farmer swears (thanks, kade). it scandalizes everyone and nia is the poor girl who has to carry threep around. don’t let threep swear, whatever you do. it’s a power far too strong for this world.

what they get a tattoo of...

mal tries desperately to have the ~aesthetic~ so you know he gets something like a compass or a dagger or something equally as wanderlust and vague. it’s hella intricate and it’s probably on his forearm or something. i feel like mal is 100% that guy who has a tattoo for his mom on his chest but is also deeply terrified of commitment so the mere idea of getting a tattoo for someone else paralyzes him with intense fear. i don’t feel like mal is the guy to have writing for tattoos - he’s much more open to drawings than words. he’s all about the imagery. mal probably has a couple of tattoos though - he might be starting a sleeve or something, idk.

nia would deliberate long and hard before getting a tattoo - it’s permanent, after all, so she wants it to be something special. she 100% puts it on her lower back, which she grows to regret because she can’t actually see it? it is probably a flower a drawing of the temple of light, or a light crystal or something. i have a feeling there’s a prayer written in cursive that kind of wraps around the image she has tattooed. mal took her to get her tattoo and he was a proud brother™.

tyril was 100% that emo kid who wrote angsty song lyrics in a notebook, and that has not changed. i 100% guarantee that his first tattoo is a poem or something that he either wrote himself or desperately wishes he had written. he probably has it tattooed on his side or something equally as dramatic. mal wishes he had the flair that tyril just naturally carries. he’s iconic™ without even trying. he probably only has a few tattoos and most of them are small. he was one big tattoo on his back - it’s elaborate and kind of works like a family tree. it’s unique to him - he likes the idea that he carries his ancestors with him, no matter where he goes. nia notices one night that the company is on it, too, and she never says anything, but she’s touched.

imtura gets all the NAUTICAL IMAGERY. she 100% has one of those bands wrapping around her bicep, made of waves. i also imagine that imtura has a lot of ink? it’s what she deserves, and i feel like orcs are really artistic with their tattoos - their tattoos are culturally relevant and she has a story for every single one. mal knows every single story - they get sentimental on night watches. i imagine that imtura also knows how to give tattoos, so i headcanon that she gave olinda one that represents the company. imtura thought it was very sappy, but deep down, she was honored to do it.

olinda. similar to imtura, olinda has a lot of ink. the only difference is that she gets hers later on. there is one (1) person who knows how to tattoo in riverbend, and olinda got a few from them, but once she goes out to see the world? she’s going to the good™ tattoo artists and she’s fulfilling her dreams. i feel like olinda get’s her tattoos in very pointed spots - she definitely has a sleeve and you can “read” it from top to bottom - the story of her life. kade jokes that olinda’s memory is shot and so she has to get tattoos to remember her story, but he also really admires them. olinda has a lot of constellation tattoos, including some of the ones that kade made up. she’s very sappy, tbh.

kade got one (1) tattoo when he and olinda were piss drunk. it’s a matching tattoo with olinda that’s very weird and makes no sense at all. you had to be there, and tbh, even if you were there, it doesn’t make sense. to top it all off, it’s on his bicep so that when he flexes, it wiggles. at the time, olinda and kade thought it was the funniest thing and they died of laughter. does he regret it? kade maintains that he doesn’t. does he know the story behind it? he likes to say he does, but he actually doesn’t. olinda knows, and sometimes she’ll drop vague hints to see if it jogs his memory. kade maintains that he’ll never get another tattoo. once was enough.

modern! au ethnicities

disclaimer that there are a lot of great headcanons out there, and i’m here for most of them, these are just my ideas..

i imagine that mal is indian or pakistani, nia is brazilian or dominican, tyril is japanese or mongolian, imtura is maori or samoan, olinda is latina, and kade is half hispanic, half filipino.

when texting.... (and some handwriting thoughts)...

a modern! au? idk, maybe just an au where they somehow have modern technology? anyway...

mal grossly overuses emojis. his favorites are these: 🤑🔪😎😏. he also never uses proper capitalization and punctuation, and he uses abbreviations far too often. you need a key to figure out some of his texts, but imtura and olinda just know what he means. his philosophy is style and speed over substance. when he writes handwritten notes, though, his handwriting is a very fancy cursive and the care he puts into each letter is amazing. he only ever handwrites love letters to olinda and “i hate you <3″ letters to tyril, though. he did write a heartfelt birthday letter to nia, once. she framed it.

nia is my favorite because she texts like a grandparent, where they format texts like a letter and have perfect punctuation and capitalization. when she got a text from mal, she was very confused by what he was trying to express, but she wanted to know how he got the “cute faces” and mal immediately dropped everything to teach her how to use emojis. she loves them and probably uses a string of emojis at the end of her text as a part of her signature, like: [ the body of the text ] Best, Nia 😇🥰👑💖🌸 but her handwriting! it’s very nice. the temple of light had penmanship classes and nia excelled. ngl, she probably does caligraphy.

tyril uses no capitalization. punctuation only. you can hear the sarcasm through his text. he also hates emojis and memes with a burning passion. he has used this, though: -.-  he did it for nia. she loved it and now every time they text, he ends his texts with his “emoji”. mal teases him because it’s dumb and now it’s a running gag that everyone send the weird emoji to each other. it’s the tyril face! tyril wants to jump off a bridge, but also finds it very sweet? he has people giving him emoji’s? is that like.... friendship? anyway, his handwriting is terrible. glorified chicken scratch. it’s efficient and nearly illegible. perfect.

imtura, on the other hand texts the most “traditionally”. she doesn’t really adhere to capitalization, and she never has the ending period, but you know what she’s saying. it’s decent. she doesn’t like to complicate things, but kade introduced her to memes and now she and him communicate together solely using low resolution memes that no one else likes. it’s very annoying but very endearing. her handwriting is nice - simple and easy to understand. she uses a lot of shorthand and a lot of sailor jargon that goes over some people’s (read: tyril’s) heads, but is smart and to the point.

olinda, actually, is the one to have proper punctuation and capitalization, with little flavor to her texts. occasionally she’ll send an emoji or two, but mostly it’s just... communication. she much prefers calling, and will call you 20 times in a row until you answer. she forces tyril to facetime her and he rolls his eyes but secretly loves it. communication is much more efficient when you can see each others facial expressions, and boy, does context go a long way when talking with tyril. oH! I FORGOT TO MENTION - olinda grew up on a rural farm. olinda chronically says “y’all” and has all of those weird, farm related sayings. kade doesn’t have this problem because he “trained himself in verse” and said that he had to be “worldly” not “farm chic.” anyway, her handwriting is kind of careless in nature - not especially nice, but not especially terrible, either. it’s a hybrid between cursive and print (whatever is fastest is best).

kade texts solely in dank memes and lengthy prose. he is the most chaotic person in the group chat, either bidding the company to draw near by sending them four stanzas of incredibly vague meaning (only tyril and olinda understand) or he’s sending “vroom vroom bitch” memes that mal and imtura adore. the blades book may not have given kade flavor, but on GOD i will give it to him because a bard requires chaotic vibes, even if he has a tragic backstory. you know what? especially because he has a tragic backstory, kade deserves some chaos. give me chaotic kade or give me death. as for handwriting, i like to think that kade has two modes: “drafting” handwriting (chicken scratch to rival tyril) and “final product” handwriting that is purposefully and beautifully penned. he had a lot of time to perfect his writing, being sick, and boy did it pay off.

threep deserves to be in this line up, despite not being able to write. in this chaotic technology au, nia has created an instagram page for threep, and because he’s one of the last living nespers, it goes viral. when olinda and mal stumble upon it they have to laugh because it’s full of really expertly done ~aesthetic~ photos with really sweet captions - things threep wouldn’t say in a million years. the account is only up for a few months and at first the posting is really consistent, and then it suddenly falls apart and the account is deleted soon after. apparently, threep didn’t know the instagram account existed and when he found out, he and nia had legendary fights and wouldn’t speak for like, 2 weeks after. nia made a very shady and slightly vague call out post and it was the first time the company really saw her get petty. the instagram page was the perfect fuel for kade’s scathing and petty remarks at threep, and threep came out hard, making a dig at kade’s writing and his stupid tattoo. threep nearly died at the hands of the two sweetest - kade and nia. it was certainly one for the books.

high school! au

(you are right, anon, a high school au would be iconic™)

mal is 100% a band kid. he has the “i play the guitar to be cool” vibes. and besides, the guitar player in the band is always a little more ~rebellious~ than the other band kids (superseded only by the standing bass kids in orchestra, who had unrivaled chaotic evil energy). plus, mal has a flair for the dramatic, which the band kids have in spades. mal is a little too much of a rule breaker to have been on any teams or anything super structured like that, and while we all know that he’s a heartbreaker, he’s not a popular kid™ because (at least in my school) the popular kids are always rich kids who run in the “right” circles. mal is too cool for that.

nia on the other hand is the smart prep that’s really sweet. like, the girl who’s friends with the cheerleaders and could have been one, too, if she wasn’t so shy™. she’s mostly overlooked in favor of the more glamorous, but everyone knows nia and they’re all like, “yeah! she’s cute! and smart, and nice.” she’s probably in like, robotics club or something equally as estranged but smart. 100%, nia is the gabriella montez archetype. she’s in a few clubs, including choir, where her angelic voice earns her a few solos. people are always trying to give her positions of power in their clubs, but she graciously declines because she’s stretched too thin and stress is a thing.

tyril. i know you all want him to be like, the smart one who’s in debate club and is really charming, but tyril’s social skills are not cut out for that. tyril is like that smart kid who sits at the back of history class and knows all the answers but never raises his hand. he has one (1) popular friend who has been close with him since they were both in diapers, but he doesn’t feel comfortable with their friends so he just kinda sits alone for the most part. he was picked up once by the emo artsy kids, but it didn’t really stick. he likes poetry class and does a metal working class because he can be alone with his headphones and thoughts™. in high school he’s just brooding without the mystery. tyril cringes at his youth. he’s too strong and iconic in his current age, so he had to be cringeworthy in his teen years. perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

imtura was 100% that cool, slightly edgy girl on the volleyball team. she was popular with the students and the teachers - like, this is the student that the school mentions is going places, and yet are also like,,,, “let’s try to guide you over here, imtura. you have such potential! don’t squander it!” and imtura hates nothing more than their incessant pleas for her to be the model student. she just wants to travel the world, maybe join a punk band, and get lost at sea. that’s not too much to ask, right? she’s also on the football team, and she’s team captain. she lives in sweatpants and workout clothes, and they actually really suit her? definitely crush material, this one. she’s probably also throws some killer weekend parties with mal’s input.

olinda was harder to place, but i imagine that she’s one of those hands on kids, taking woodworking, metal working, and auto mechanics classes. maybe she was on the soccer team, one year, but that didn’t really work out. she’s a team player and all, but she likes something with a little more purpose. she met tyril in metalworking, she met mal when helping with sets for the school play (he was annoying the theatre kids, as per usual), she met imtura in gym class because imtura picked her to be on her flag football team (which was a great choice, really), and she met nia when she went to the choir room, looking for kade. she’s not popular, per se, but people know her face and they think she’s pretty cool.

kade on the other hand, is 100% an artsy theatre kid. he’s not the super obnoxious theatre kid, and he’s not the snobby theatre kid either, he’s kind of like the older sibling theatre kid who’s infinitely cooler than you, incredibly talented, but also really down to earth and ready to create an elaborate inside joke with you over the course of the year. he has it all: the tragic backstory that adds flavor and depth to his writing, the kind personality that gets him friends wherever he goes, the amazing vocals that make him a shoe in for every performance..... but he often gets overlooked. why? it’s one of those injustices that just don’t make sense. he’s decently popular among the art nerds, and everyone wonders why he doesn’t get lead roles. a real ryan evans, if we want to go with a hsm reference.

AND FLUFF ENSUES.

-- taglist: @musicallisto​, @missameliep​ // message me if you want to be added!

[the-ss-zemyx]

PVP(umpkin Spice Lattes)

Zexion and Arpeggio are Discord friends. They chat in private messages, raid in Verum Rex together, and may or may not have feelings for each other.

Ienzo and Demyx are college roommates. They hate each other, for the most part. At least they can both agree on pumpkin spice lattes.

Happy 2nd Zemyx Day of 2020!!

Specifically for today, the S.S. Zemyx Discord Server hosted a collaborative fic-writing event! Over the course of the past five days, four of our writing members teamed up on a Google Doc in one glorious, inspirational, chaotic, frankenstein-esque fic-writing bonanza! That's right, the fic you're about to read is the product of -four- people's efforts!  Enjoy!! :D

(A HUGE thanks to my co-writers: Aliceslantern, Ennarcia, and Carbonpixel. This was a hell of a lot of fun to do and I'm immensely proud of us!! - Mod Arxsia)

Also available on AO3!

__________

      Demyx hated his roommate. Okay, no, hate was a strong word, and Demyx did his best to be a friendly, outgoing sort of guy, so ‘hate’ was definitely too strong a word. He liked to make friends. Having friends was nice. Having friends was very nice, and so, he tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But his roommate was a different story, and Demyx did not like his roommate very much at all.

At least he was easy on the eyes, because everything else about him got on Demyx’s last nerve. His name was Ienzo, but his name might as well have been "Jerk," with a capital J. When he wasn't hogging the Internet bandwidth doing God-knows-what on a chunky Alienware laptop, he was lecturing Demyx on the virtues of keeping the floor free from dirty clothes and giving empty soda cans a proper burial in the plastic wastebasket by the door. Lame. Also, he was a little condescending. That jerk . 

One day, Ienzo burst into their dorm room with the gusto of a hurricane aiming to speak to a manager about a botched coffee order. He swung his laptop bag onto his mattress. It bounced when it landed. "Out," he commanded.

Demyx looked up from his phone. He sat with his legs crossed on his own bed, his Discord app open to a private message thread on his phone. In a few minutes, one of his server friends, a guy with the display name "The Cloaked Schemer" but going by his Discord handle, Zexion#1309, would be starting a voice call with him. It was kind of a big deal--they had been chatting in their shared server for almost a year, and in private messages for almost as long, but they had yet to actually speak to each other. "I'm actually busy," Demyx said.

"I don't care. Out."

It turned into an argument, of course, neither yielding and probably disturbing their neighbors with the yelling. Yep, Demyx didn’t like his roommate one bit. 

He ended up in the lounge by the kitchen, utterly fuming, cursing his idea to “go rando” with a roommate all the while. It’s the best way to make friends, Demyx , his mother had told him. What better friend than a roommate?

Very funny.

At least he’d been able to grab his phone. Of course, Zexion was wondering where the hell he was. 

The Cloaked Schemer: Do you need to reschedule?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: roommate’s being a dick and kicked me out. Sorry!

The Cloaked Schemer: Ah, I too am having roommate troubles. I can sympathize. I know too well what it’s like when one’s privacy is denied.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: he’s driving me NUTS! 

The Cloaked Schemer: Have you tried talking to him about it?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: He didn’t exactly uh seem receptive to talking

The Cloaked Schemer: It’s always a good idea to try for maturity first.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I did! Not my fault the guy wasn’t having it.

Anyway. Id hate to let that guy take up any more time.

Hru?

The Cloaked Schemer: Doing as well as I can, I suppose. I’m enjoying my classes so far. It seems a little easy, but then again, it is only one of the first weeks. Things should pick up more by midterms.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: ure too smart zexy. And didnt you skip a grade?

The Cloaked Schemer: A year, yes. I don’t think they call them grades in college.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Considering some of the people ive met, couldve fooled me.

The Cloaked Schemer: If I’m hoping to have a grad degree within five years, I have to fast track it. I’d rather not spend much more time in undergrad than necessary.

Though I am especially resentful that, despite the fact that I am technically a sophomore, I’m considered enough of a freshman to still be required to dorm.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: That blows

But dude, ure here. Might as well try to enjoy the journey, yaknow?

The Cloaked Schemer: Oh, Arpeggio. Your naivete is too obvious sometimes. It’s sweet, I think.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: har har

The Cloaked Schemer: I am disappointed though. I was looking forward to meeting you--in a manner of speaking. You’re probably one of the most sane people from our Verum Rex server.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Issa game, bro. Some of them, idk, take it a little too seriously

The Cloaked Schemer: Well, aspects of it are worth being taken seriously, but I understand what you mean.

Though the ship wars are grating.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: ha! Yeah.

The Cloaked Schemer: We’ll have to find some other time, then.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Mann i was hoping to see if you sound as smart as you type

The Cloaked Schemer: You flatter me.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Do you think if we lived near each other we would hang out?

The Cloaked Schemer: If it’s all the same, I’d prefer to keep my location anonymous.

At least for now.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I know. Just a hypothetical question

The Cloaked Schemer: I’d like to say yes.

But for all I know, you’re actually a forty year old serial killer who lives in his mother’s basement.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: harsh

You listen to 2 many true crime podcasts 

Anyway, I g2g. See if the roomie will let me back in. Got homework.

The Cloaked Schemer: Enjoy your night, Arpeggio.

Hopefully one of us has a good one.

Demyx closed the app and repocketed his phone. He flopped back on the lounge couch, eyes squinting at the fluorescent lights above and his limbs ragdolling in uncomfortable directions. A good night, huh? It’d be better if he could spend time in his own room without having to engage in guerilla combat whenever he wanted to exist in his own space. Wishful thinking, he thought.

__________

      Ienzo stared at the chatlog open on his computer screen. The circle next to Arpeggio’s icon turned a dull gray, and the remaining bits of Ienzo’s hope for decent conversation dulled with it. He had finally caught up enough with his classwork to have some free time to spend, finally arranged to voice chat with Arpeggio, finally gotten Demyx to leave the god-forsaken room so he could have the one conversation he’d been looking forward to for weeks , and now… nothing. All that planning, gone to waste. Another wave of irritation hit him, and suddenly he was out of bed and grabbing his keys. He needed some tea.

Ienzo didn’t get tea at the coffee shop, despite his plans. The alluring, hipster scent of pumpkin spice hit his nose instead, and he caved before he could stop himself.

The college employed students as baristas in the campus coffee shop, as part of the work-study financial aid, so it wasn’t uncommon to see one’s peers at the shop. “Hey, Ienzo,” Riku said. It was getting late; chairs were already on top of all the tables. They’d met in Ienzo’s anthropology class.

“I’m not too late, am I?”

“I can bend the rules for you.” He went back behind the counter. “What’ll it be? Your usual?”

He blushed guiltily. “Pumpkin spice. Please.” Curse that glorious, wonderful scent.

He smirked. “Coming right up.”

“I know it’s dreadfully popular.”

“Yeah, cause it’s good ,” Riku said. “As long as you’re not one of those “half-caff, no whip, vanilla and almond, five shots” type of people.”

“Why complicate coffee so much?”

Riku handed him the paper cup. “At that point, just drink coffee-flavored syrup.” There was a pleasant lull for a moment. Riku began cleaning the espresso machine. “So why are you out so late? Don’t you have an early class tomorrow?”

Ienzo grimaced. “My roommate and I got into a fight.”

“...Again?”

“We are not well suited for each other.” A sigh. “I went to the Residence Life office to try and apply for another room, but the period for that is over. I was told, and I quote, “unless he’s hurting you, tough it out.””

Riku chuckled. 

“He is simply-- obnoxious ,” Ienzo continued, the pressing need to vent taking over. “Slobby, loud, and always around at precisely the most inopportune times. I was supposed to have a call with a good friend of mine, and it took some doing just to get him out.”

“Right, your Discord friend.”

“You have a good memory.” Ienzo swished the coffee around a little; it was slightly too hot to drink.

“The one you have a crush on,” Riku said with a grin.

Ienzo flushed painfully. “I do not have feelings for him,” he said.

“Dunno. You managed to bring that call up in almost every conversation we’ve had. If he was really just your friend, would you be that excited? Enough to hype about it for weeks?”

Ienzo shrugged. “I do not know where he’s from, I don’t know his real name, I don’t even know what he looks like. For all I know, he only uses he/him pronouns online.”

“And?”

“I just… see no reason to desire something I cannot have.”

Riku wiped at the counter. “Oh, don’t be so doom and gloom,” he said. “If the call matters so much, it’s going to happen eventually.”

“I know.” He smiled. “Well, thanks for the tea and sympathy. Er, coffee and sympathy.” 

“Any time.”

“Enjoy the rest of your night.”

“You too. Play nice.” 

“Just promise to bail me out if things go awry, will you?”

“Ha, on my salary?” Riku winked.

Ienzo left the coffee shop. He didn’t want to return to the dorms yet, but the fall night was calm and quiet. He checked his phone (maybe Arpeggio was free? Though he did say he had homework…).

As a stroke of luck, he had a message waiting for him.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I have a room again! \o/ 

the jerk was gone when I got back!

The Cloaked Schemer: How fortunate for you. I assume you’re flying through your homework now?

Mel0d10us N0cturn3: nope! :p 

this science paper is kicking my ass!

Im really no good at this sort of thing

The Cloaked Schemer: Do you have any tutors available? Ordinarily I’d love to help but it might be easier and more private to go there instead.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: \o/

We actually do have one of those tutoring centers I think! Thanks for the idea!

Don't want you to waste your special brain-powers on little ol’ me lol

The Cloaked Schemer: I’d hardly call helping you a waste of my “special brain powers.”

It’s not a bad idea to check your local resources though.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: o7

Don’t think I’m gonna make any progress on this paper tonight tho lol

The Cloaked Schemer: Giving up already? I didn’t have you pegged for a quitter.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Awww, come on! Don’t guilt meeee

My poor brain!

It’s mush!

;-; will you not spare some mercy for my poor mushy brain?

The Cloaked Schemer: I suppose just this once, provided you use your resources and go to the tutoring center.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: o7 Yes sir !

First thing in the morning!

My mushy brain thanks you for your mercy and endless kindness!

Ienzo’s cheeks grew warm, but whether it was from the message on the screen or the sip of pumpkin spice coffee currently running down his throat, he neither knew nor was willing to explore.

Despite the late hour, there were plenty of students milling about campus, taking up their little spaces. It had taken him some time to find an empty bench to sit on, but one eventually caught his eye and he claimed it immediately, sitting down with his coffee in one hand and phone in the other.

The sky was inky black, dotted with stars, the sun long gone by now. Nights were starting to grow just a tad chilly, the beginnings of autumn seeping into the atmosphere. It was Ienzo’s favorite season and the aroma of pumpkin spice wafting past his nose was just what he needed to make up for the disappointment of having his voice call with Arpeggio abruptly cancelled.

Well, maybe not entirely. He’d been really looking forward to hearing Arpeggio’s voice for the first time, but this did nicely enough, he supposed. It was better than sitting around stewing in annoyance over his damned roommate anyway.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: so what are you up to right now?

The Cloaked Schemer: It’s a lovely night out. I needed some tea. Got coffee instead.

What is it about pumpkin spice that’s so irresistible? 

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Never wouldve pictured YOU as a devotee of the PSL.

The Cloaked Schemer: Guilty pleasure. 

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: theyre so good. I can’t have that many of them cause caffeine makes me SLEEPY

The Cloaked Schemer: Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me at all.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: whats that supposed to mean?

The Cloaked Schemer: Nothing derogatory, I assure you.

Though the idea of you being hopped up on caffeine amuses me.

You seem like one of those people who has energy all the time.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: i wish

The Cloaked Schemer: I should--begrudgingly--head back to my room.

You should try working on that paper.

I mean it about the tutor.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: yeah, yeah. I hear ya

Hopefully your roommates not being a dick anymore

The Cloaked Schemer: Fat chance. M3l0d10us N0cturn3: enjoy your coffee~~

__________

      Demyx sat for a long time looking at that exchange. He could’ve heard Zexion say those words. He was just so painfully smart, but Demyx could listen to him say anything. About anything. For hours.

He showered and got ready for bed, hoping that Ienzo would stay gone. But as it was, he was back. Ienzo scowled in greeting.

“Nice to see you too,” Demyx muttered. He noticed the coffee cup Ienzo had set down. Ienzo seemed to live on caffeine and spite. 

“I needed to clear my head, as I do not have the luxury of privacy.”

“Well I gotta sleep somewhere,” Demyx said. He crawled into bed. Ienzo rolled his eyes. Demyx saw him grab his own shower caddy and head out to the communal bathroom. He thought he smelled--he blinked. Slowly, ever so slowly, he got up, crossed over to the cup, and sniffed it.

Of course he likes pumpkin spice lattes, Demyx thought bitterly. Ugh.

He went back to bed and fell asleep listening to music.

__________

      The universe thought it was just so funny. Demyx had taken Zexion’s advice and the tutor he’d met with was his jerk of a roommate. At least Ienzo was unhappy too, if the scowl on his insufferably nerdy face was anything to go by.

“What are you doing here?” Demyx blurted before he could stop himself.

“I work here,” his jerk of a roommate answered in response, “as a tutor, for my work study. I take it your procrastinating finally caught up to you and you need some last-minute help?” Did he really have to be so damn condescending though?

Demyx hiked his backpack strap a bit higher on his shoulder and rapped his fingers on the tutoring center's reception desk. Ienzo could glare daggers at him all he wanted from his seat at the computer behind the desk, but the curious eyes of the other tutors and students around meant that he would have to maintain decorum. They both would, lest Ienzo lose his job and Demyx lose his tutoring privileges. He took a deep breath. "I need help with a biology paper."

Ienzo's expression tightened. "Would you like to make an appointment?"

"No? You said it yourself: this is last-minute." Demyx tapped on the desk. "I need to talk to the science tutor on duty, please."

"It seems like we're both out of luck tonight, then," Ienzo replied dryly, absently clicking at something on the computer monitor. "I'm the science tutor on duty at the moment."

"You? Gross." 

"I'm not particularly happy about it right now, either."

Demyx considered his options, and cringed at his conclusions. His paper was due in two days, and it was only half-drafted. Without a passing grade on the assignment, he would set himself up to fail the class. Petty squabbles were not worth the hit to his GPA. He sighed. "Well, can you help? I'm kind of desperate, here."

Ienzo returned the sigh. "Fine. Follow me."

Demyx followed Ienzo around the reception desk to a square table in the far corner, a plastic chair on each side. Ienzo alighted onto the seat closest to the wall. "This better not be a waste of time."

Demyx pulled his laptop out of his backpack before sitting down across from Ienzo. "Has anyone ever told you that you have excellent people skills? Because if they did, they lied to you."

Ienzo rolled his eyes. Yep , Demyx thought, amazing people skills. They were off to a great start. Getting through this paper was going to be agony. "I'm paid to tutor, not practice social niceties."

The laptop screen lit up as Demyx swiped one finger over the trackpad. A screenshot from one of his more memorable raids in Verum Rex guarded the rest of his files behind his login password. Demyx typed his password as quickly as he could, shooing the image of his and Zexion's avatars away before Ienzo could ask any unwanted questions. Evidently, he did not type fast enough. 

“Verum Rex? You're familiar with it?” 

Demyx nearly jumped, shoulders tensing. He knew Ienzo was there; that shouldn’t have startled him as badly as it had.

“Duh? It's only the best MMO on the market right now. Not that you would know, since you're so committed to the whole 'smug asshole' thing,” He snarked on reflex, feeling slightly guilty about it afterwards. Ienzo was being friendly for once, or was at least making something of an attempt at it. Yikes. Demyx wasn't usually one to make low blows like that. He opened the Biology folder on his computer and selected the draft of his paper, making an effort to get along with Ienzo while they were forced to sit together. "Please help me with this? If you would be so kind, please?" Demyx made praying-hands in Ienzo's direction in apology.

Eyebrow rising - was it just one, or both? - Ienzo shot him a look, obviously unamused in the slightest. “If you’re trying to be cute, it’s not going to work.”

Demyx pouted and opened up his biology paper, turning the laptop toward Ienzo. “Fine, fine, just help me?”

Rolling his eyes yet again, Ienzo was just about to lean in to read what Demyx had so far, when the familiar sound of a Discord ping had Demyx scrambling to turn the laptop back toward himself. Shit. He’d forgotten to close his Discord window before showing up at the tutoring center.

While Demyx closed the Discord app, Ienzo watched him carefully, contemplative. “You use Discord?”

Turning the laptop back, Demyx gave him a look, half in disbelief because surely Ienzo was too much of a nerd, but not in the cool way, to know what Discord was, and yet he did. Shit, it would be really awkward to end up in a server together. “Yeah, who doesn’t use Discord these days? I mean, especially if you play games or are into, I dunno, any fan community stuff.”

For a moment, Ienzo said nothing, slowly turning to look at Demyx’s biology paper on the screen. “Alright, let’s see what we have to work with so far, if anything.”

Demyx sighed. Asshole.

__________

      Was this some kind of joke? Ienzo was being pranked, wasn’t he? Any moment now Demyx would start laughing about wasting his time and walk out, like the lazy slacker he was. Halfway through, he half collapsed on the table.

“This is impossible,” Demyx whined. “You don’t really understand this stuff, do you? You’ve gotta be lying.”

Ienzo felt his eye twitch. “Not all of us are lazy fools who give up after 15 minutes. Why are you even here?”

“Because my friend said I should, and I trust his advice. He never leads me wrong, so even if I have to spend time with you , I’m gonna do this.” 

"Your friend sounds like he has the sense that you very much lack," Ienzo deadpanned, scrolling through Demyx's paper. He took stock of the misformatted section headings, missing in-text citations, and the off-center data table in the middle of the mess. The topic of the paper did not appear in any of Demyx's written work. "Can you tell me what this assignment is supposed to be? I can't tell from what you've given me."

"It's…" Demyx shrank back in his seat. "I don't know what it's supposed to be. My professor gave us all a table of data-results-things and told us to organize and analyze them. I don't know what he wants, exactly."

Ienzo huffed, and almost slammed Demyx's computer closed on the spot. Thankfully, his better faculties kept him from breaking Demyx's laptop. "There's your problem. You can't complete an assignment if you don't know what the assignment is . Email your professor for clarification and request an extension. If you do it early enough, they might grant you leniency."

"Really? That's your advice? Beg my way out of it?"

"Not begging. Requesting. It shows forethought, self-awareness, and emotional maturity, even if you don't actually possess any of those things. The adage of faking proficiency to gain proficiency has some truth to it." Ienzo pushed the laptop over to Demyx. "Is there anything else I can help with?"

Demyx's arms crossed, and his expression took on the quality of a betrayed toddler. "You didn't even help me with what I came in for, asshole."

Ienzo waved away Demyx's indignation with a dismissive hand. "There's only so much I, or any tutor, can do without having a good idea of what your professor expects. Emailing is the best advice I can give right now."

"So if I email my professor, you’ll help me?” 

“I give you my word.” A promise made in haste, if only to appease the barest responsibilities of his job. Hopefully Demyx wouldn’t make him live to regret it.

Not long after Demyx was gone, Ienzo checked his Discord app, surreptitiously on his phone behind the reception desk, to find a message from Arpeggio.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Zexy, this worst thing ever just happened!

My roommate is my tutor!

Save meeeeeee

The Cloaked Schemer: That is peculiar. Though colleges are small worlds, so I hear.

What did he have to say re: the paper?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Ugh he couldn’t even help

Because I had licherally no idea what the professor wants

I mean, the dude has an F on ratemyprofessor so

He said to email and beg for clarity and an extension

The Cloaked Schemer: ...That is sound advice, actually.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Youre taking his side???

The Cloaked Schemer: Not exactly.

But in academic situations, it always looks good on you to take the initiative and seek help when you need it.

I guarantee the professor will work with you, and perhaps be able to refine that same assignment in the future.

If he’s worth his salt, he’s seeking to improve himself the way you are.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I GUESS

You wanna do a raid tonite? 

The Cloaked Schemer: Alas, I, too, am a college student with coursework.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: RUDE

Ienzo leaned back in his chair in the campus library. How coincidental, he thought. He’d just given Demyx the same advice. Then again, college papers--especially in the sciences--were not always diverse on the gen ed level. He recalled Demyx’s paper; he should’ve asked him to see the email, or post, or handout with the assignment on it. Chances are the moron had merely misunderstood.

Demyx liked Verum Rex. Perhaps they could have this to talk about. Ienzo wondered who he mained. Probably Yozora, he thought with a sneer. 

The Cloaked Schemer: Actually, I can do one raid.

ONE. Brief. Raid.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Thats more like it! \o/

One raid turned into two, then Ienzo ended up staying in the library, at the tutoring center, until it closed.

__________

      Demyx begrudgingly took Ienzo’s advice. After his marathon raid session with Zexion, he sent a brief email--agonizing over the wording--to his professor, who responded almost instantly with an apology. Several students had already asked him about the assignment, it turned out, so he was going to extend the entire class’s deadline. But if Demyx needed a few days after that, he could have it.

“You were right,” Demyx murmured out loud, as he read the email the next morning. 

“Of course I was,” Ienzo said, not looking up from his desk. “See? All it takes is a little maturity.”

The irony. Demyx grimaced. He looked over at him. “So you’ll help me?”

“When--and only when--I am on duty,” he said. “I have a life outside of work, you know.”

Demyx wondered how true that was. Ienzo spent a lot of the time in the room if he were not in class or in the library. Did he have friends? Did he go to societies? He nearly asked. Then he looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time in weeks. He had bags under his eyes, and was washed out, books spread in a circle around him. “Outside of studying, too?”

Ienzo opened his mouth, then shut it. “I am not here to socialize. I am here for a degree.”

“But don’t you… have any friends?”

“Of course I do,” Ienzo said, just a little too quickly. 

Like he would honestly tell Demyx. “Sure,” he said, shutting his laptop and tucking it into his bag. “Well. I got class. I’ll see you at the center later?”

“Much to my chagrin,” Ienzo responded evenly.

Demyx’s day was ordinary other than that. After the professor clarified what he wanted in class (and, to Demyx’s immense relief, it was much less daunting than what he’d thought), he stopped by the library to check out some books which might point him in a vague direction. Ienzo could tell him if they were any good. He stopped by the coffee shop to grab a croissant and a coffee, and, on impulse, got one for Ienzo as well. The idea of it made him nervous. Maybe I’ll say they made an extra by mistake, he thought. He already knew Ienzo drank them.

There Ienzo was, sitting in the office. “It’s you,” he said in an unreadable tone.

“It’s me.” He cleared his throat. “Um…” He thrust out the coffee without saying anything else.

“Is this for me?”

“Uh, yeah.” He felt his face heat--though why? 

Ienzo took it, looking confused, and sniffed the small hole in the lid. “Oh,” he said softly.

“I wasn’t sure if you liked--”

“No. I do. That was kind of you.” He blinked, his expression odd, slackened; Demyx realized it was without malice. “Let’s get to work, shall we? I don’t want this to take any longer than it has to.”

Ienzo helped him structure the paper, and reviewed proper citations with him. It would take a little work, but seeing it outlined, Demyx felt a lot less overwhelmed. Something he thought was a mammoth project would maybe take an hour or two to write.

“Once you have it written, come back and I can help you with grammar and syntax,” Ienzo said.

“Awesome.” He took a deep breath. “I feel… a lot better now.”

“One typically does when one stops procrastinating,” Ienzo said. He leaned back in his seat. For a second--but just one--he sounded like Zexion, all firm and proper, genteel without being rigid.

__________

      "You got your grade back already?"

Demyx beamed as he held his laptop screen-out, his browser logged into the university's online grading system. One score was listed under BIO 101, labelled "Paper 1." The percentage displayed next to the assignment name was higher than Ienzo expected from Demyx. "I didn't completely fail!" he practically cheered.

"So you didn't," Ienzo agreed, nodding slightly at the number from his desk. "It's amazing what a bit of work will do."

Demyx dropped himself onto his bed and turned his laptop. He bounced on the mattress a few times while he looked at the number. "This is the best news I've gotten all semester and it's the best feeling. Is this what it's like to be a genius and get good grades all the time?"

Ienzo returned his attention to his own laptop, where a half-drafted essay mocked him with its blinking text cursor and nonsensical thesis statement. He clacked another line of bullshit into the document. It was for English class, he reminded himself. Any answer was correct if it could be argued well. "No, not really. You get used to it."

"I… I should thank you," Demyx said, after a beat of silence. "For your help. I wouldn't have had anything to turn in at all if you hadn't told me to email my professor."

Another line of bullshit trailed across the screen. Ienzo squinted at it, unsure of what he had typed. "Don't mention it. It's my job."

"But still. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Ienzo could hear Demyx shuffling on his bed. "So… you play Verum Rex?"

"Fairly regularly, yes."

"Do you do raids or multiplayer at all?"

Ienzo shot Demyx a warning glance. "I already have a raiding group. I'm not looking for another one."

Across the room, Demyx had tucked himself into bed, his Star Wars sheets pulled all the way up to his chin. He blinked at Ienzo unceremoniously. "Jeez, forget I asked. No need to be snippy about it."

Demyx's head disappeared under the covers, and Ienzo returned his attention to his essay. At least, he tried. The Discord notifications in the corner of his screen kept distracting him.

Eventually, Ienzo admitted defeat and opened Discord. All of the messages were from Arpeggio.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: hey, do we have an opening on our raiding party?

Zexion?

Oh nvm he said no

What are you up to?

I'm taking a victory nap after getting a good grade on that paper I had to 

write a while back

My roommate is typing something and he's so loud

What is he writing that makes him so angy

The Cloaked Schemer: I am also typing angrily at something

It is a universal collegiate experience

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: still so angy tho

Are you angy atm?

The Cloaked Schemer: I am… frustrated

I'm meant to be dissecting the themes in a short story but I feel like I'm only spewing garbage on the page

Perhaps if I present the garbage with enough conviction, I will be able to maneuver through this class

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: if youre writing it, it's definitely not garbage :P

you need to have more confidence in yourself, Zexy

The Cloaked Schemer: Ha. I think my roommate would disagree

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: well then he's a bum

Tell him that

Arpeggio says so

Ienzo looked back at Demyx, cocooned in spaceship bed sheets and doing who-knows-what under the cover of bed linens. He thought he saw the flash of a phone screen through the fabric, but the light disappeared as quickly as he caught it.

The Cloaked Schemer: I'll pass. He seems busy.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Busy doing what? Bum things?

The Cloaked Schemer: I certainly hope not. We're in the same room right now.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: oh. Awkward

The Cloaked Schemer: I’ll say.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: so you know ive been thinking

The Cloaked Schemer: Have you? What a concept.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: ha ha.

Its been a while since we tried voice chatting

Maybe we could try again?

The Cloaked Schemer: You would want that?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I want to hear your voice. To see if youre actually as smart as you write

Maybe youve got, like, a transatlantic accent, or something. Thatd be cool

Ienzo blinked, staring hard at the screen. His heart beat a little faster. It was so hard to determine tone through text. 

The Cloaked Schemer: Maybe I’m not as cool as I seem.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: highly, HIGHLY doubt it

Youve kept me sane

I really appreciate our

Ienzo saw him type “thing” and then frenetically edit to “friendship.” He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

The Cloaked Schemer: The feeling is mutual.

A long, long pause. Ienzo did not know what else to say. His face was burning.

The Cloaked Schemer: Normally I’d rather be caught dead than admit this.

But it does get somewhat lonely here.

It’s nice to have someone to talk to.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I know what u mean

Sometimes i feel like i dont really know who i am

And like college is supposed to be about finding that

But its hard.

The Cloaked Schemer: You don’t have to tell me twice.

Part of why it’s so easy to exist in online spaces, in games. Appearance doesn’t matter. It’s like being a more concentrated version of oneself.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Do u feel like a more concentrated version of yourself?

The Cloaked Schemer: When I talk to you.

Ienzo’s heart was pounding. He thought he heard Demyx sigh across the room. Was he typing too hard?

Arpeggio started and stopped typing several times, just making Ienzo more nervous. What is he going to say? Did I push it too hard? Was I too forward?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Me too, Zexion

I wish we knew each other. Like, irl

Getting to do raids in person

That would be so fun

And i dunno, maybe do other things

Go out to eat. Go to the movies. Maybe go dancing.

Do u like clubs?

The Cloaked Schemer: I’ve never been.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: it takes some getting used to

But the energy of a crowd is electric

Especially with people you know

Oh god oh god oh god , Ienzo thought. His hands were trembling. 

The Cloaked Schemer: Where would we go to eat?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: anywhere you want

Well. on a college students budget anyway

-laughs in poor

The Cloaked Schemer: Ah, so, five star cuisine, then.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Just dont order the lobster

In all seriousness. We need to vc sometime

The Cloaked Schemer: Yes.

There’s going to be a raid event on Saturday. Perhaps then?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Depends on if i have the room :/ 

Wanna say yes so bad

The Cloaked Schemer: I know the feeling.

I suppose if I get desperate enough I can rent out a study cubicle in the library.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Awww you’d do that for little ol’ me?

The Cloaked Schemer: Yes, I

His finger slipped, hitting the enter key a moment too soon before he could even finish the thought in his head. His hands felt almost clammy, the inner mechanizations of his mind working on overdrive, as if trying to race against the pitter-patter beat of his heart. Shit. Perhaps… Riku was right after all? Had Ienzo, usually so level-headed, actually developed a crush on Arpeggio? It was utterly nonsensical, and yet he couldn’t deny that he felt a comfort with Arpeggio that he didn’t feel with anyone else he knew, online or offline. Was it possible to fall- ...to develop a smattering of feelings for someone based on typed text alone?

Well, wasn’t that a theme in literature? Two people falling in love over written letters? For all Ienzo knew, there could very well have been instances of it happening in real life, in the days of old, long, long before the age of technology and the internet. A pair of penpals, miles and miles of distance between them, communicating through the written word; it could happen, couldn’t it?

Hold on. When the hell did he turn into a sap ? Frowning, Ienzo ran a hand over his face, feeling like a lovestruck fool.

No. No, this couldn’t be a crush. Just because it was so easy to talk to him, just because they’d been talking for a year or so by now, it didn’t mean-

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Zexy?

You ok?

Shit, how long had he zoned out for? 

The Cloaked Schemer: Sorry. Got distracted.

But regardless, I think we should aim for Saturday.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Great!

Hoping we don’t get interrupted by our dick roomies

The Cloaked Schemer: Quite. It’s a date, then.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Yes :3

Ienzo took a deep breath. Regardless as to whether or not this was practical, it seemed that Arpeggio reciprocated his flirting.

Wait. Ienzo looked at the screen, cheeks heating up as he realized he’d typed the word ‘date,’ and Arpeggio said ‘yes .’ He couldn’t deny the little flutter of his stomach in that moment.

__________

      Demyx set his phone aside, his heart beating heavily in his chest, his face bright red. He swallowed. There was no way sleep would come easily now, and it probably wouldn’t be until Saturday.

He thought about the nature of crushes. He’d never seen Zexy’s face, or heard his voice, but he was so adept at weaving words in the way Demyx wanted to be with music. He tried to imagine him, what he might be like.

He rolled onto his back. Ienzo’s frenetic, noisy typing had stopped. Demyx sat up, rubbed his eyes, and pretended he’d been napping the whole time. “You good?”

Ienzo shut his computer quickly, like he’d been doing something questionable. “Yes. Fine.” He was a little out of breath. What the hell had he been writing?

Demyx blinked. “I’m gonna go get a coffee,” he said instead. “Want me to bring you one back?”

“Sure,” Ienzo said, his face flushed.

Demyx shook his head. Well. If Ienzo needed to take care of that he had at least a few minutes now. “Cool.”

The whole time he was at the coffee shop, he kept thinking about Zexion, all their little conversations. It was evolving, and evolving fast. Demyx knew from brief experimentation with dating apps that just because a person sent you some flirty words didn’t mean anything would come of it. For all he knew, Zexion lived in New Zealand, or something.

That didn’t stop him from wanting it.

He drew a deep breath, exhaled. Well. Saturday he would find out.

Demyx wasn’t going to let Ienzo ruin his chances of meeting Zexion. He decided to strike preemptively, pausing at the door of their dorm room and sucking in a breath, steeling himself. He could do this. He could ask his roommate for the room for one night, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Hey, so, I have a thing Saturday,” he said vaguely. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t coming off as strongly as he intended, but he could still try. “Mind if I hang here alone for a few hours?”

Ienzo glanced up. The flush was gone, and he seemed much more composed. “Yes, that’s fine. I was going to go study anyway.”

“Study? Don’t you ever have any fun?”

“Perhaps I find studying fun,” Ienzo said.

“Suit yourself.” As he passed on his way back to the bed, he saw out of the corner of his eye that Ienzo had Discord open.

__________

     Friday night, Demyx barely slept. He wasn’t sure why he was so nervous. Crushes didn’t usually… hit him this hard. It’s dumb. It’s so dumb. His loneliness was getting to him. Even Saturday morning, there were some hours until the events started. He looked at his DM history with Zexion. They’d spoken briefly, only to confirm a time and place for their characters to meet and chat. He sat at his desk, his hands trembling, as the game booted up.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: You ready?

The Cloaked Schemer: Of course.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Cool.

My mic isnt like great

But you can still hear me

He was shaking. He was shaking. “Get it together,” he muttered to himself.

The Cloaked Schemer: You’re a broke college student. I’m not expecting a professional setup here.

Though I will say my booth is pleasantly soundproofed.

Let me connect.

And Demyx thought his heart might stop. I’m so gay, he thought. A second later he heard that familiar call connection. He twitched a little, and his mic clattered loudly on the floor. Shit!

“Arpeggio? Are you alright?”

“I just dropped the--”

A long, long pause.

He knew that voice.

“Zexion?” He picked up the mic and set it down.

“Arpeggio?”

“I dropped the mic.” Demyx swallowed.

“You…” Zexion fumbled for words. “Speak a little more, please.”

“Is that really you?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re in a library right now.”

“And you had an event… Saturday.” 

“Ohh my god,” Demyx mumbled. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, just that he was feeling a lot of it. “Ienzo. You’re Zexion?”

“It’s an anagram,” he said, his tone numb.

“Seriously, this whole time--”

“Evidently.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but at the same time, there was something warm in his chest.

Wait, no. No. This was Ienzo, and they hated each other--

Demyx realized he was panicking. He also, vaguely, in the back of his mind, realized the call had disconnected.

Demyx spent the next few minutes desperately trying to control his breathing, trying to not focus on how Zexion- No, Ienzo- was so disgusted it was him that he’d immediately dropped the call.

Of course. Of fucking course. The universe hated him. The universe had it out for him, surely. Why else would this have happened? He finally meets this sweet, smart, wonderful guy who takes him seriously and actually likes talking to him, on a regular basis , and then… And then… It turns out to be the very same roommate who hates him. That would just be his damned luck, wouldn’t it?

Grabbing his pillow, Demyx face-planted into it, pressing it furiously against his eyes to stop them from burning, to stop the tears that threatened to spill. Of all the people it could’ve been. Why Ienzo ? 

Demyx had been nervous enough as it was, afraid the person on the other end would think him annoying - his voice, his tone, the way he just couldn’t fucking shut up sometimes when he got excited about something. Alternatively, the filter between his brain and his mouth was immensely weaker than the filter between his brain and his fingers, and he could’ve said the wrong thing, unable to stop himself in the same way his hand can catch itself on the enter key before hitting it, or quickly delete the message before Zexion could read it.

But this was so much worse, because Ienzo already knew him, already had an impression of him, and that impression was far from good. It’s no wonder he disconnected the call so suddenly. He likely couldn’t stand hearing the truth any longer, stomach churning with disgust, head filled to bursting with regret, and not just regret over the voice call, but everything .

An almost entire year’s worth of conversations, soiled now, because Demyx was, well, Demyx . A slob. A slacker. An idiot. He wasn’t worth Ienzo’s time, and now he knew he wasn’t worth Zexion’s.

A sharp ache spread over his chest, cold and numbing, all of him tense with it. He… liked Zexion. He very genuinely liked him, so excited to get to talk to him, his bristling nerves aside. All week he’d thought about it, daydreaming, wondering what the person on the other end would sound like, if he’d love that voice as much as he loved the text on his Discord screen.

It no longer mattered, not when it was now clear that Zexion - no, Ienzo , was utterly disgusted with him.

It was over. It was all over - their friendship, a year’s worth of personal conversations, these budding feelings he was beginning to have, or that he’s been having for a while now…

On the flipside, was Demyx disappointed that it turned out to be Ienzo? He… didn’t know the answer to that, still reeling in the fact that Zexion, his dear friend and crush, hated him. The pillow was starting to suffocate him and he instinctively pulled it away from his face, eyes still burning. He sucked in some deep breaths and just when he was finally on the cusp of calming down, his door swung open so fast Demyx feared it’d break off the hinges. 

Ienzo leveled him with a determined stare. “You.”

__________

      Ienzo sat.

And sat.

And stared, and sat some more.

He was dizzy. Slowly, so slowly, all the pieces clicked together. The coffee. The references to Verum Rex. How they were always just missing each other. The whole tutoring scenario. Good god . So this person he’d been harboring feelings for this whole time was--

He pressed a hand to his forehead. And yet, a small part of him… was relieved?

It could be…

No, it couldn’t be anything! They hated each other! They’d complained to each other about each other more times than Ienzo could count. They had--

Ienzo felt the walls of the study booth begin to close in around him, pushing the breathable air out of the room. His ribcage constricted around his lungs, and his heartbeat pounded at his temples. He gathered his laptop and microphone in his arms and burst out of the room, chest heaving.

He braced himself against the outer wall of the study booth and willed himself to breathe normally, his head tilted all the way back to rest on the door. This was real life, and he was fine. He would be fine, anyway, with a bit of finessing. Okay, perhaps a little more than a bit.

Ienzo retrieved his backpack and stowed his equipment inside as he analyzed the situation. Arpeggio and Demyx were the same person. A strange revelation, but not world-ending. He could find another raiding party. He could join another server. There was more than one person with whom to play Verum Rex.

But--

Ienzo caught himself zipping and unzipping the top pocket of his backpack, more forcefully than necessary each time. A new server didn't sound appealing. A new raiding party, even less so. He would have to chat with new people, learn their idiosyncrasies and fighting styles, learn their pseudonyms and remember how they differed from their usernames. It all sounded so… hard, and boring, and unnecessary. 

He zipped his backpack closed for the last time and held it at his side by its tiny top handle. Its back straps kicked at his calves as he raced out of the study area, through the main lobby, and into the courtyard. His mind was set. His choice was clear. The only thing to do was follow through.

Ienzo made a beeline back to the room. He found Demyx sitting cross-legged on his own bed, his computer accessorized with a small budget microphone and his face awash with something that looked like guilt. His eyes widened when Ienzo crossed the threshold. 

"You." Ienzo's statement rang out like a gong.

Demyx swallowed. "Yeah?"

"We need to talk." Ienzo shut the door behind himself. It slammed closed, though Ienzo had not intended for that. 

"...yeah." Demyx turned back to his computer, fiddling at the USB port where his microphone connected to the rest of the machine. "Ienzo, I--"

"Shut up." Ienzo stalked into the room, single-minded. He stopped at the edge of Demyx's bed. "Shut up and listen, for once."

Demyx's shoulders rose to his ears. He stayed quiet.

Ienzo dropped his backpack to the floor. Though his fingers trembled, his resolve held firm. The moment of reckoning was upon him. "Did you know?"

Demyx shook his head.

"Did you want to know?"

He responded in a whisper, pained and hushed. "I wanted to meet Zexion."

Ienzo's hands trembled faster. He balled them into fists to compensate. "And now that you know," he said, "do you regret it? Wanting to know? Learning the truth?"

A tear trailed down Demyx's downcast cheek. "No."

Something deep inside Ienzo wanted to reach out and wipe away the tears that followed, while Demyx's breath caught in gasps over his laptop keyboard. Ienzo steeled himself. "I… don't regret it, either."

"You don't?" Demyx looked up and met Ienzo's gaze with caution. Aside from the red tinge at their edges, his eyes looked almost hopeful. 

Ienzo softened, relaxed his fists. "I don't want to find a new server, or a new raiding party."

Sniffling, Demyx nodded. "I don't, either."

"I don't want to stop talking to Arpeggio," Ienzo continued, his heart playing timpanis in his chest. "He is a close friend of mine."

"He's also your lazy roommate." Another tear escaped, this time going down the side of Demyx's nose. Demyx wiped at it with the heel of his hand. "Ienzo, I--"

"We've had differences. We've also had commonalities, albeit in virtual space. There's no reason we cannot bring the two together."

"Ienzo--"

"There's no reason we should be at each other's throats. We--"

"Ienzo!" 

He blinked. The drum performance in his chest missed a beat, then started from the top at full speed. "Yes?"

Demyx unplugged the microphone from his computer, sighed, and tossed it to the far edge of his bed. "I don't think that will work."

Ienzo frowned and crossed his arms. He was beginning to remember why he and Demyx didn't get along in meatspace. "Why, pray tell, is that?" he asked.

Demyx swallowed again, more conspicuously than before. "It's just… I…"

Ienzo leaned forward, his head cocked to the side. "You what?"

"I, um, I…"

"Go on. I don't have all night."

Demyx pushed his computer aside and drew his knees into his chest. "I… shit. I had a thing for Zexion." His shoulders hitched with sardonic laughter. "Shit. Fuck. This sucks." He reached behind himself for his pillow and buried his face in it. "This is so embarrassing," he whined, his voice muffled.

Ienzo's budding anger deflated. "You… you did?"

Demyx nodded into his pillow. "Uh-huh. And now you know, too."

Ienzo opened his mouth to respond, but couldn't make the words in his head form coherent phrases. His throat sputtered with half-formed consonants instead. Words. For fuck’s sake, wasn’t he good at words? Why was this suddenly so damn hard?

"This is the worst," Demyx groaned. "Just kill me now. Make it look like an accident. Tell my family I loved them. Don't let my sister take my bedroom at home."

Ienzo's faculties returned in the bumbling, clumsy way that drunkards stumbled home from dank local pubs. "I... don't think that will be necessary," Ienzo managed, through his own confusion.

"No?" Demyx put his pillow back in its place, and faced Ienzo with dried saline clumping in his eyelashes. "What, are you gonna torture me instead? Make me regret being born? Because you're a little late on that front, buddy, I already do."

Ienzo took a deep breath. His crossed arms dropped to his side, then held each other at the elbows. "I may have developed… similar feelings. For Arpeggio." Ienzo's mouth went dry. The drum performance upgraded itself to a full marching band drumline, twenty-five snare drums pounding paradiddles and rolls in synchronized sweeps. 

A silence consumed the space between them, interrupted only by Demyx's sniffling and Ienzo's heartbeat. It stretched into the abyss and the stratosphere in equal measure, and stung more acutely than the idea of never speaking to Arpeggio again.

Demyx broke the silence by clearing his throat. "So…"

Ienzo coughed. "So..."

"Are we…" Demyx unfolded his legs and swung them over the side of his bed. His hands grasped at his mattress, and his head hung from his shoulders  "Are we, y'know… do we still, like…"

"Do you want to be?" Ienzo shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Friends, cohorts, party members, server mutuals? Or…"

"Or what?" 

"Or…" Ienzo trailed off. Or what, indeed? Friends with benefits? Significant others? Boyfriends? The mere thought made Ienzo's palms sweat. "Or…"

In the moment between Ienzo's efforts to name his emotions and act on them, Demyx had sprung up from the bed and slipped his hands around the sides of Ienzo's face, his thumbs resting just below the apples of Ienzo's cheeks. His breath tickled at Ienzo's nose and lips. "Or… this?"

Heat seared at every inch of Ienzo's face. If he could feel Demyx's breath, Demyx could feel his as well. "...I suppose, yes."

"In that case," Demyx murmured, somehow purring and wavering at the same time, "tell me no." He rested his forehead on Ienzo's. "Tell me no, and we won't. I promise. Things can go back to normal."

A whimper, wholly undignified and unbidden, escaped from Ienzo's higher register. "I can't," he whispered.

Demyx leaned forward, and Ienzo followed. At some point, they met in the middle, and the world's axis shifted two degrees to the left. It was a tentative press of lips, but Demyx’s hands on his face kept him anchored. It didn’t feel like Ienzo thought it would, and self-consciousness invaded. Suddenly Ienzo felt very young and immature; vulnerable .

But… after a moment or so, not so much. Demyx was so warm against him, and Ienzo realized it was a learning curve, one he was picking up with his usual speed. He was shaking a little in disbelief. It was so-- nice.

Demyx pulled away and brushed his fingers across his cheek. "You're trembling."

"Forgive me. I--" He swallowed.

"No, it's cool." Demyx pulled away and smiled, brighter than Ienzo had ever seen someone smile before. "Do you… want to go again?"

Ienzo did, very much so. "I'm not opposed, per se, but I think we should… explore our relationship a bit. Perhaps starting with our mutual interest in pumpkin spice flavors." 

“Sounds like a plan to me, Zexy,” Demyx grinned.

__________

      Riku set the pair of pumpkin spice lattes down on the little square table in the back corner of the coffeeshop, glancing at Ienzo, then Demyx, then back at Ienzo, one eyebrow shooting up into his hair. “Is the world ending? Did I miss a memo on the corkboard in the back room?”

Ienzo coughed. He was vaguely aware of the heat rising in his cheeks. Damn it all to hell. Of course Riku was here, why would it have been anyone else? Sighing, he gestured to Demyx, bracing himself for the inevitable bit of humiliation, courtesy of the one friend who knew about his very apparent crush on his Discord friend. “Riku, meet Arpeggio.”

Riku’s other eyebrow shot up into his hair. “You’re shitting me.”

Demyx looked across the table at Zexion, clearly trying to fight the incoming of a shit-eating grin. “You talked about me to people?”

"Only the unimportant ones," Ienzo said, picking up his cup and sipping loudly.

“Psh,” Riku spat with a roll of his eyes. “Yeah, and every damn minute of the day. If I had a dollar for every time you made heart eyes at the ceiling while talking about him, I could quit this job and pay off my tuition.”

Ienzo balked at that, nearly choking on his latte. “It was not that often.”

Waving a hand, Riku corrected himself, looking pointedly at Demyx. “Wait, no, he’s right. I’m forgetting that half the time, he’d be complaining about his horrible room-”

“Shouldn’t you be behind the counter?” Ienzo hissed, glaring at Riku. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Demyx’s gaze flicking between him, like he was watching a game of ping-pong. “Or should I text Sora and Kairi about all those little hearts you like to draw around their names on the garbage receipts every time they come in?”

"Go ahead. I'm ninety percent sure they're both into me, anyway."

Ienzo pulled his phone from his pocket and brandished it at Riku. "Are you willing to test that theory?"

"Make sure you write it down," Demyx chirped, blowing into the hole in his drink's lid. "If you write it down, it's science. I learned that in Biology this semester."

"I'll do more than that," Ienzo said, tapping on his phone screen with both hands. After his phone played a short 'whoosh' sound, he placed it face-down on the table. "Images sent. Now we wait for our results."

Riku scoffed, then balked, then turned beet-red. "You're an asshole," he hissed through his teeth.

"Relax. I was just kidding,” Ienzo said with a glint in his eye that Demyx barely caught.

"Forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical." Riku scowled for a moment, but eventually softened into a smirk. "Whatever. Enjoy your Discord date, Casanova." He knocked on the table once before returning to the checkout counter.

"Discord date?" Demyx asked, taking a swig of his pumpkin spice latte. "I thought we were hanging out in real life."

"Let's not split hairs. We're about to see a show." Ienzo jutted his chin in the direction of the cafe's front door. As if on cue, Sora and Kairi burst through it like a duo on a mission.

“Oh Riiiiiiiiku!” they chorused in sing-song at the top of their lungs.

"Sometimes," Ienzo said, turning back to Demyx, "I like to watch the world burn."

“Yeah, I know. That’s actually kind of hot,” Demyx admitted, taking another sip of his latte. "Remind me not to piss you off again, though."

[chronicowboy]

Are We the Strongest? -

To Better Circumstances

masterlist

Their first encounter was less than ideal. There were no introductions, no handshakes, no greetings. It was life or death. Hero or villain. Relief or grief. And despite Carol's decades of singlehandedly saving galaxies and entire civilisations this short rescue mission felt like her most important one to date. A pressure like no other settled on her shoulders and she would come to wonder if that was what Tony Stark felt like on a daily basis. Ignoring the sense of make or break the fate of the entire universe that she was experiencing, Carol acted without hesitation. She strutted out of the compound and shot off into the void of space with one thing on her mind: find Tony Stark. This time, however, it felt different when she broke through earth's atmosphere. It felt as unknowingly important as the man himself was. Carol couldn't decide whether it was that knowledge or the lost group of heroes below that meant she could find the ship in under an hour.

When she encountered the gently drifting leaf on the ripples of a blue supernova, Carol swore she felt the weight fall from her sore muscles for a grand total of a second. Her heart froze with terrified agony as her eyes landed on the man with closed eyes, sunken cheeks and a chest that didn't seem to move. She willed herself to glow brighter, pushed the energy to every extremity of herself until even she had to squint if she wanted to catch the billionaire open his eyes with as much effort as it took her to lift the ship and steer it towards his home planet.

As he stumbled down the ramp a suffocating joyful relief thickened the air so much so that Carol found it hard to breathe until he embraced his fiancee, Pepper he had whispered into her neck.

Tony's arrival was chaotic to say the least. He refused to rest once his friend had connected him to a drip and pushed him into a wheelchair. Everybody fussed over him until he snapped at them and directed their attention to the other being that was starving and dying on that ship with him. He caught everyone up, they caught him up. And, although he refused to break, Carol saw the toll the battle had taken on him. Even when no one else did. It was insane, she thought, how everyone but his real friends could see his struggle. It was only when the man did a 360 on the captain who was anything but a captain that his broken insides were painfully visible for all to see. And, even though Carol had no idea what happened between them, she found herself smirking as the mortal man confronted the super soldier with no weaponry whatsoever but his words and cracks as if they were the deadliest bombs the man had encountered. The corner of her mouth sunk when he collapsed. She barely knew him and yet she reacted immediately, going to catch him before she realised it probably wasn't her place. Even so, Carol got the feeling that Steve would have done nothing if hed hadn't have been so close and it was tragic.

She didn't want to intrude. This wasn't her place to be. Her place was a comfortable bungalow in Louisiana, but it didn't feel like home anymore. However, there was a tug that told her she had to see Tony. Like it was calling her home. And it was strange. Incredibly strange. But real. So real. After he had woken up, he tired his soon-to-be wife and best friend out whilst proving to them that he was still him old self. Thinner and older and impossibly more traumatised. But still him. The pair had fallen asleep in their bedside seats, leaving Tony alone. But there was some nagging feeling that he didn't want to be, so Carol decided to go and check on him. One simple choice that would change a life or two.

She peeked around the door, waving a hand that no longer glowed.

"Hey, Carol, is it?" He tilted his head, fighting the smile that tried to make an appearance at the new captain. She nodded, closing the door softly behind her. "Thanks for saving me and all. Big fan of that whole photon glow thing you have going on-"

"You don't have to do that." Her tone was firm yet sincere at his obvious deflection. Sympathy washed over her as she wondered how many of his so-called friends overlooked it as plain and simple apathy. Even if he didn't want her, she'd make him feel understood. "Look, I'm not gonna ask how you are because I know you'll just say you're fine in the form of some snarky comment-"

"So you're me, if I was blonde, female and an alien?" Her voice was far too genuine for the fragile billionaire.

"I'm of the human disposition, unfortunately. Survived a blast from the tesseract, absorbed its energy and here we are." The corner of his mouth ticked up and Carol fought off her own smile. "I don't know what went on with you guys," she gestured to Steve who was examining a hologram outside with Natasha, "but I want you to know that I don't give a shit. That rant was the most satisfying and entertaining thing I've seen since 90's tv. And I know he deserved it." She dropped into the chair next to Rhodey as he chuckled. "I've seen the tapes. Of you fighting," and Tony was struck with the horrifying sense of deja vu. He wasn't ready for a new prospect in the friendship area to drag up his deepest insecurity and lay it all on the line. The line that he wouldn't lay down on and let someone else crawl over him, according to Rogers. "You're a good man. You fight for what's right, anyway you can, but you still take more precautions than the rest of them to preserve civilian lives." There was a beat of awkward silence as Tony mulled over her words and Carol let him before she clapped her hands. She winced, checking to see if Pepper or Rhodey had woken up. "Okay, well, that's the most emotion I've done for years." Tony laughed, it was loud — as loud as could be so his family wouldn't wake up — and glorious and it made Carol feel inexplicably proud.

"So besides turning into a glow worm because of the tesseract, what's your story?" He asked, shifting to get comfortable. She jumped up and held his arm as she rearranged his pillows. His gaze was intense as he examined her and she felt it burning through her so she cleared her throat.

"You know, not many people get to see that side of me." She admitted, running a hand over the back of her neck.

"I'm honoured?" He smirked.

"I was a pilot in the 90's. Couldn't fly for the army because I was a woman, so I tested planes. One day, I crash. Straight into some kind of alien mission. The Krees wanted the tesseract so I blew it up. Woke up and they turned me into their pawn. I didn't know what I was." Carol shifted, kicking her feet up onto the end of his bed. "My first proper mission goes wrong and I crash on earth. Fury meets me, you know Fury?"

"We've met." Tony cocked his head to the side. Did Fury really get himself everywhere?

"He told me a lot about you. Bitched about everyone in his confidential boy band." So she is a blonde, female version of him. "Anyway, he gives me a nice, warm greeting before I convince him of the Skrulls' existence. A shapeshifting alien race. Then, I find out I had a family. A best friend and her little girl. Maria and Monica." She looked at him and saw the realisation dawn on him. But it wasn't pity, it was understanding. She nodded and he interrupted for the first time.

"The kid," and Carol remembered his first words, "Spiderman. Queens' local vigilante. Teenager. Batshit crazy teenager, Peter. I tried to keep him safe. I did. I did everything, but it didn't work. I was ready to die for him, but that choice was taken from me by that stupid wizard." He stopped himself and looked to her, tears glistening. She could see the pleading in his eyes and she knew she should continue.

"They helped me find my old self. The Skrulls, they were just trying to find a home. So I knew I had to help them. I got to break free from the Krees' control. And I did. Destroyed some missiles from a dick called Ronan. Then, just helped the universe. And listened to Fury complain about his superhero children." Tony laughed, wiping his tears away. "You know, the Avengers are named after me." She bragged.

"Is that right?" He removed his glasses and placed them on the bedside table.

"Captain Carol 'Avenger' Danvers." She clarified. "Except, I'm a real captain. Unlike America over there." She jabbed a thumb at the stern-looking man. "Before I got promoted to colonel." Tony chuckled again.

"Oh my god. Please pull rank. Please. I beg you." Carol joined in, shaking her head.

"Couldn't do that to his ego. Its bigger than your's." She joked, rolling her eyes. "I'll do it if he pulls any shit with you."

"Carol Danvers, are you my guardian angel?"

"Maybe." She shrugged. "But if I was, I would have protected you from them."

"So Maria," he began, "just your best friend, right?" Tony swore looks could kill as his breathing slowed down and his heart sped up. It couldn't be a good combination.

"You're a bit like me, right? Kidnapped, turned into something bigger than you should be. Lied to. Betrayed. All of the hero origins combined into one very fragile human. Apart from, your brain gave birth to Ironman and my stupid nobility gave birth to Captain Marvel." If an AI had eyes, Tony was sure that it would roll its eyes at the amount of eye rolling that had taken place in the small hospital room.

"Yeah, I'm a genius."

"Hey, me too." She cheered, hushing her voice as James' head lolled to his shoulder.

"Well, maybe, but-"

"You're smarter, I'm stronger." Her voice dripped with humour, but Tony thought it was a good compromise.

"I'm not gonna argue with you there, firefly." He held his hands up in defeat. "You're the strongest of us all." Carol didn't normally like compliments, but it felt special from him. "Because you're me if I had the physical strength."

The rest of the night was filled with laughter until Carol's wrist lit up with a red alert.

"Duty calls, but it was nice meeting ya, Tony." She announced, standing. "Tell me if the big boy gives you any trouble." Her childish voice and condescending tone made the man smile. She was one foot out of the door when,

"Hey, Carol? If you ever need a place to crash, I'll send you the coordinates of the place I wanna build my house." He winked at her as she left. Perhaps he'd just made a new friend.

@marvelficwriter @galaxy-parker @bi-marvel @theamazingschneiderman @underoosstark @delmars @confettidogs @dixiehellcat @lucious-has-heard @phoenixinferno1023 @grilledkatniss @marvelrose

[sseizonsha]

five times kissed ~

Disclaimer: this drabble features a lot of triggers. You’ve been warned.

one.

   Physics demands that moving objects remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. When he’s not in the thick of everything, it often feels like the sheer force of will alone keeps him going.

   The return flight from Greece makes a long and uneventful thirteen hours, but after the riots and discourse that saw him fetching the Economic Officer from a compromised location, doing absolutely nothing at all beats getting punched in the back by an M84. Turns out a bruised kidney and a number of fractured fingers are actually enough to earn a leave of absence.

  Mister Diplomat exits the plane first, all smiles and PR-worthy waves for the waiting cameras, and Leon steps gingerly out after him as the first of several protective agents in detail. It burns the question to know how the press would’ve played the narrative differently, were it public information that the rescued man pissed himself after a firebomb detonated close enough to ignite his jacket. But Leon’s lips are sealed: a matter-of-fact promise offered to soothe the hysterics out of a stumbling man coming up at twice his weight.

  “You live to fight the good fight another day, Sir. There’s no shame in that.” Pretty words for the sole benefit of a man who’d only ever been caught in the crossfire. Leon holds no truth in them for himself.

   It’s not a sizeable envoy of congratulations and well-wishes that greets him off the tarmac’s edge, but she’s more than a welcome sight. He sees her coming: spots the worry lining her brow and the red denim jacket that’s almost faded to pink in its age, and his pace quickens faster than is probably recommended. Rushing into a reunion hug is a pipedream when his back screams the way it does, but Claire shoulders that burden by meeting him more than halfway. She folds herself into his edges, mindful, and Leon groans in relief as she tugs his backpack from a white-knuckled hand.

   “You’ve gotten scruffy,” she says.

   He flashes a smile laced with aching and shoots back the reminder that ladies love the stubble. He’s gotten too old, too rough around the edges, to keep the boyish charm of a baby face. As for a full-on beard? Well. It’s not for lack of trying. “How do you like it?”

   Claire’s smile twists, unceremoniously flirtatious. “You’re a dreamboat. Who could possibly resist that jawline? Now give me a proper hug so we can get out of here, and maybe I’ll wax poetic on the drive back.”

   It’s an opportunity if he ever got one, and Leon seizes it—hungrily and with both hands. He slides his touch from her wrists and higher: along her bare forearms and up proud shoulders, to both sides of her neck.

   Claire’s hair trickles between his fingers, splashes over his knuckles. Her pulse ticks just this side of wild, and if he could he’d gather the rhythm in his palms and carry the memory of her back to a drab, empty apartment. She feels real. She feels warm. She feels here, welcoming, open—anything but mindless or hostile, and when he tips her head back to lay his mouth against her brow, Leon closes his eyes.

  And he breathes in a lungful of home.

two.

   Sometimes the force thrust upon an object is violent and sudden and out of anyone’s control, and the only thing left to do is rediscover ground zero, pick up the pieces, and heave it all straight into a fucking fire.

   Ten years to the day of Raccoon City’s destruction, the US government and subsequent do-gooders publicly announce the plans to construct a memorial site outside the quarantine zone. When Claire sends a resentful text about the entire thing sounding like a capitalization on “lessons learned” and “better tomorrows” before the upcoming election, Leon agrees in half as many words: that’s exactly what it is.

   Leon’s position as a government agent guarantees a secure place out of the spotlight, but Claire’s rising influence through TerraSave lands her right under the hottest beam of it. Tell us about the gravity of it all, Miss Redfield. What was it like, surviving Raccoon?  “It was…a nightmare,” she says at first, reluctantly agreeing to answer touch-and-go questions between public appearances. “I wouldn’t want to wish the experience on anyone. It doesn’t make a good story.”  

   The buzzards disagree. Demands for exclusive interviews swoop in every time she changes location and when one particularly chaotic pursuit resulted in a broken camera, Claire calls him mid-way through an anxiety attack. He’s on a plane within the hour.

   Adam grants him an official order to accompany her to and from every PR function that month. Press conferences called to discuss TerraSave’s latest global and local community cleanup projects derail off topic once Claire Redfield opens the floor. It’s all about Raccoon City and the final hours before the fire. Did anyone else escape? Did you find help any children? Did you have to kill—?  Claire stops answering questions after that.

   She takes a vacation. Leon’s orders still stand, but they’re nothing more than a letterhead: a favor granted with the knowledge that he wouldn’t have left her side—authorized or not.

   Despite the invitations, they don’t attend the ribbon cutting ceremony. Or agree to promote any of the sensationalized media plugs in the weeks following. Leon would’ve preferred to keep the tv off, but Claire insists they watch it beginning to end. Maybe she thought the anger would be easier to mute with a screen and several hundred miles of distance between.

   It doesn’t. She watches the tv, he watches her, and for the first time in a long time he worries that ghosts have finally clawed their way in to make a home.

   The program fades out on a sober but hopeful note that carries on as the shot pans into a cloudless sky and one lasting message: We survive. We remember. We endure. Remote in hand, Leon sends a picture of the American flag collapsing in on itself, and his chest pangs with the dread that she might end up doing the same.  

   Wordlessly, Claire unfolds from the couch and slips into the other room. Her silhouette spills across the floor when the bathroom light flicks on, and as the door closes, the light wanes into a needle-thin sliver. Then even that piece of her is gone.

   Five minutes pass. He checks his watch. Ten. Pushing a hand through his hair, Leon stands and paces to the kitchen twice and checks his watch again. He paces. Spins on his heel. He paces right up to the closed bathroom door, lifts a knuckle, and raps gently upon the wood.

   “Claire?”

   “Leon.”

   He lets himself in. Thick, warm air fills his mouth as he takes in a deep breath and glances about the room. Nothing looks out of the ordinary for a woman taking a bubble bath. He worried, God, but he worried—and that’s something he doesn’t apologize for. Even if he does feel like an idiot. “I thought you were…”

   “Making a break for it out the back window?” Claire smiles without teeth, and she tips her head back onto the water-speckled tile. Her hair, though damp and dark at the ends, sits in a messy knot at the top of her head. One stray piece falls loose along her collarbone. “No. I haven’t done that since I was fifteen.”

  Leon shakes his head and strides farther into the room. He tries again. “I thought you’d—”

   “Drowned in the tub?” Claire hums, thoughtful. When she inhales in preparation for a long, cathartic sigh, the bubbles froth and hiss around her bare shoulders. “Sometimes I think that might be easier. I’m doing what I can to keep my head above…everything.”

   Leon nods. He turns, sinks down to press his back up against the cool porcelain, and balances both arms on either knee. A splash and a trickle of wet heat spreads down the back of his shirt before Claire’s fingers curl into his hair. He turns into the touch—and freezes when her mouth brushes against his jaw.

   The idea of Claire floundering as she sinks into a place he can’t reach twists something ugly in his belly. It grabs and twists so hard that his dinner lurches and burns on its way up and gets stuck at the back of his throat. “You aren’t alone here.”

   “No,” she agrees, moving to settle her chin against his shoulder.  “It’s just you, me, and all the demons we forgot to burn.”

three.

   Real survival stories don’t nicely wrap up with ribbons and foiled edges trimmed in sunrise gold, and the people in them don’t walk into the horizon so much as into a space free of the darkness where monsters liked to hide.

   There’s always something to wear by the end of it: a smile for the picture, a medal for the commendation, a splint or two for the fractured bones. He never remembers how he gets there—only that the smile is the always first of those things to go.

   Smiles insinuate there’s something to celebrate; and living when others have died in his place never gave him much cause to pop the champagne. But guilt? Relief? One feels like being drawn and quartered, and the other like the release after waking up from that god-awful fucking dream, only to realize—no, no, it wasn’t. None of it was.

  It feels like being frayed at every seam and that smile is the last thing that needs stitching. At least the pieces that are left aren’t not sloughing off so badly that it’ll take a well-placed warhead to fix.

   For the first time in ten years, they drive to Raccoon City, and it feels like everything’s come leading up to this return—this inevitability. Only it doesn’t feel like they’re coming home; it feels like they’re walking back into the graveyard they’d crawled out of. If it wasn’t for the chain-link fence and the quarantine wall rising up behind that, maybe the city would’ve opened a hundred thousand pairs of fire-glassed eyes, gnashed a hundred thousand sets of teeth, and finally succeeded in swallowing them both whole.

   He parks his Jeep a few dozen yards from the memorial site. Kills the gas with a sharp turn of his wrist. Beside him, Claire releases a shaky breath.

   In the distance, a rainbow of sun-faded ribbons snaps and waves along the chain-link fence. The flowers planted there have already wilted and died in a cracked plot; nothing grows around the edges anymore.

   He wants to blast the whole granite slab from its base and tear it out of existence. He wants to smother this shining fucking beacon of hope—and the government’s greatest theatrical excuse for an apology along with it. He wants to crush each and every fucking one of those ribbons under his shoes and cut his hands on that rusted chain-link fence. That’s what the city wanted, right? Blood? Maybe then the ground would drink. Maybe then it’d take its fill and finally leave him—and Claire—alone.

   “We’re here.”

   “Yeah.”

   “Do you want to get out?”

   “No.”

   Slender fingers slide across his hand, and it’s only then that he realizes it’s been closed into a fist this entire time. He lets go. Color bleeds back into his knuckles, and feeling too, and then his seams are torn, ripped open. His eyes are burning—he’s blind, all but for the warm splash of red that turns him bodily and rises up to shoulder his brow.

   I’m sorry, he says, I’m sorry.

   Claire thanks him for the apology. She combs her fingers through his hair and presses her lips to his crown, and when she hums a soft, mindless tune, it reverberates behind his ribcage like she’s found all his cracks and poured herself between them. When he quiets, gradual and sputtering like the last dregs of a heavy storm, Leon wraps his arms around her, tightening his grip in a hungry, silent squeeze.

   Monsters aren’t the only ones who refuse to let him go.

four.

   Two objects can only gravitate closer and closer so many times before collision becomes the inevitable result. Leon counts his lucky stars for a well-recorded history of crashing into things, and for a while he believes it’s his experience in avoiding the pitfalls that keeps their relationship from steering off course.

   By the time Claire careens into him, welcome and without warning, Leon quickly realizes she’s been the one at the wheel from the start.

   Uninterrupted furloughs are so rare that when opportunity presents itself, it takes everything in his power not to board up the windows, uncork a bottle, and unplug the phone. The only variable stopping him from doing just that is respect to his councilor to get out there, get busy, get lost anywhere else but his own idle headspace.  But when Claire visits? When Claire visits, having a quiet, uneventful evening is the best thing he could hope for.

   Hope never feels more within reach than when he’s with her, and reach he does—mindlessly and often. When Claire curls up beside him on the couch, Leon frames his palm around the nape of her neck and works his fingers into the tenseness he finds. It bleeds out of her posture like ink across water, quietly bubbles up from her mouth in what he dares to call a sigh of pleasure.

   His mouth quirks up at one corner. “You need a massage.” Before she has a chance to point out the technicality, Leon adds, “A real one. From a professional.”

   She reaches up to pinch his chin between thumb and forefinger, and Claire gives him a little shake. “And you need more than one good of sleep. You’re starting to get eye bags.”

   “We could just call it a night right now.”

   She hums an insinuating note that twists up in question, and the sound draws his attention like the slide of a fingertip across his jaw. In the cool light spilling out from the tv, Leon fixes his gaze on her expression. Somewhere quiet, nestled between his breath and the allowance of a shrug, he hears himself say, “You make it easier.”

   Claire softens. Her mouth sets into the thoughtful, stubborn line he’s seen a million times before, but then she leans close—really close. Her breath warms his mouth, her lips are soft, and where her palm slides up against his chest, it feels like he’s taken a nosedive off a cliff and made a break for water. Except there is no water at the bottom; she keeps kissing him and he keeps falling, and it’s getting more goddamn difficult by the minute not to drag her over the edge with him.

   When she pushes up and mounts his lap, Leon hisses in a breath between clenched teeth. He’s excited and they both can feel it, and fuck, he can’t decide if the worst thing to do right now would be to stop her or let her continue.

   “Claire—”

   “I’m here,” she says. “Aren’t you?”  

   He wonders if this is what feels like, coming alive a second time. His arms wind around her waist, and it’s all he can do not to tangle her hair between his fingers and tighten them into a fist. Claire rolls her weight down into him. Again. A firebomb goes off in his chest. Flames spread, licking up and over his eyes, in his mouth, across his tongue.

   I’m here, she told him. No. She isn’t—she’s not just here. She’s above him, on top of him, in his lungs every time he comes up for air. She’s shaking in his hands and arching against his chest, and her gasp shudders in his ears more than even his own pulse.  She says his name to warn of the head-on collision, and when he doesn’t get out of the way, Claire shatters—

   Everywhere.

five.

   Physics demands that objects at rest remain at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced, outside force. Given who they are: one rescuer, one fighter—two survivors trying to do more than just exist again? Leon suspects none of this ever will truly stop. Not until they do.

   He’s never liked the big cities; they serve too great a reminder that there are innocent people waiting to be trapped like rats in a goddamn science experiment—that there are too many variables and too many wild cards for one man to account for twice. But when he’s with Claire? When he’s with Claire, her smile lights up like a clear horizon free of nooks and crannies.

   When he’s with Claire, those skyscrapers look less like rows of jagged teeth and more like the fingers of an outstretched hand.

   She takes him to a cafe that’s got a good view of the cityscape before it wakes up. Claire corrects him on that note, reminds him around a mug of tea that New York never truly sleeps—in fact, it’s almost as restless as he is.

   Restless. A good word for a man who never stops moving long enough to enjoy a coffee on the government’s watch. His phone rings. Right on time.

   Claire turns her face toward the window and smiles into the sun, and something about that expression feels like surrender, like acceptance. Leon’s chest pangs. She never did like the finality of goodbye, and so they never say it, content to substitute it with temporary noncommittals. Call me later. Don’t be a stranger.

   “Gotta go,” he says. Leon dips his head into the unfolded frame of his sunglasses, chair scraping as he gets to his feet. Claire doesn’t rise to meet him. He doesn’t mind.

   Her mouth is warm where he presses a kiss to the corner of it, and Claire’s exhale quakes at the touch. She won’t cry. He doesn’t either. Tears are for the couch and for the car—you don’t pour them over coffee when it’s there’s already one bitter taste on your tongue.

   “Try not to get killed.”

   “You, too.”

[callie-the-snarky-geek-blog]

RvB16 Episode 15 (Season Finale) Review: Paradox

(Old Blog Repost)

Fifteen weeks ago, RvB16 began and all that we know going in was that it involved pizza quests, Donut the God, and time travel. Over these many weeks we’ve had sex adventures throughout time, the return of O’Malley, an in-universe Red vs Blue movie, the adventured of Grif and a sentient lens flare, Gus the Cyclops, Alien Gods who are actually AI, and buckets full of feels. Well, after all of that and so much more, it has all come down to this. Hoping to save Wash from his brain damage, the remaining Reds and Blues venture back to save him, but we discover that doing this will spark the end of time itself. So the question that remains is: what the FUCK are we in for?!

I got to see this yesterday as Rooster Teeth livestreamed it early. It… it… well I’ll be discussing it down below. Before I get to it though, I want to say thank you to Joe, Miles, Kyle, Josh, the animator team, David Levy and Trocadero, the voice cast, and everyone involved in this season if Red vs Blue. It has been an incredibly fun ride form start to finish and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. A lot of work went into this and I can’t even imagine how exhausting it all had to have been. But I.think that I speak for many of us when I say that we greatly appreciate every second that was put into everything, and again thank you for one Hell of a season.

Alright, well… lets do this everyone. Be afraid. Very afraid.

Overview

We begin with the Reds and Blues already back in the past inside the underwater base, going over the plan. They have 18 minutes before Wash gets shot and they are going to do their damnest to be careful and NOT cause anymore serious damage to the timeline. As they go over their plan, they get caught by a random Blue, provoking both Carolina and Tucker to beat him up. While Carolina does get seen on the security camera, the gang continues to stick to the plan. But their plan may have another potential snag as DOnut returns to Chrovos, The Hammer in hand.

As the guys move forward, they end up at a locked door and are forced to go around. Before they can however they’re forced to hide due to Locus, Carolina, and a delirious Wash about to pass by. Before he hides though, Grif smells something that alarms him. Once Carolina gets a delirious Wash to continue on his way, the guys get ready to resume before Grif calls their attention to the scent. He recognizes it as a Sammie Raphaello’s pizza. Why is this important? Well remember that by this point the restaurant had been destroyed, pizza got wiped out existence, and the Blues and Reds only ever had fish. All of these factors cause Grif to realize that another time traveler is there and he decides to go after whoever it is while the others focus on the mission. Simmons is reluctant, but Grif says that they don’t have time to debate and runs off. Simmons can only watch him go (anyone else have Season 15 flashbacks?) as he and the others press on.

The Reds and Blues make it to what they assumed was an empty hangar, but lo and behold it’s covered in guards. They have only two choices, go ahead and fight them off or chance waiting for them to leave and end up running into their past selves. Fortunately they get a little help when Simmons form a few minutes into the future contacts them. In the meantime, Chrovos tries to have Donut give him The Hammer, and as he talks about the guys being mean to him again, it looks like that Donut is indeed about to do as told. Back at the base, Grif follows the pizza scent and finds the mystery time traveler: Genkins. Grif aims his gun at him, even fighting off being tempted by the pizza, but Genkins says that he’s not here to fight and simply brought the pizza over as an apology. it better be for killing Huggins (even if I still refuse to believe it) you sick fuck!

Back with the others, future Simmons gives the guys advice: to use what they learned and that they’re going to do great. Carolina is confused, but Simmons tells her to let them handle things from here. Back with Grif, he pieces together that Genkins was responsible for Kalirama attacking them at Sammie Raphaello’s and was the one who wiped pizza out of existence. Genkins confirms this, trying to again tempt Grif with the pizza but he simply says that he doesn’t care and presses him to explain why he set them up. Genkins answer? Simple, he’s bored. That’s right guys, Genkins is Chaotic Evil. The Reds and Blues meanwhile fight off the guards. Highlights include Sarge luring two into a portal and onto Iris where they’re faced with the Female Gus Cyclops, Tucker dropping horses on them via the portal gun, and Simmons telling Caboose that the guards stole his penny to anger him enough to clobber them with the golf club. I’m so proud of my boys! So proud! They press on, but not before Simmons contacts his past self to set everything into motion.

Back with Donut, he hesitates and asks about Chrovos why he saved him. He says that he simply took pity on someone in trouble, again asking for The Hammer. He also explains that once freed, he’ll gain power that’ll allow him to kill the Cosmic Powers but promises to still spare the Reds and Blues. Donut points out how his friends are jerks to him more often than not… but that they are still his friends and that Chrovos was both responsible for what happened to him and has only been using him He decides to instead use The Hammer to reinforce the prison, but he’s stopped by O’Malley. They struggle and with Donut continuing to refuse to listen to him anymore, Chrovos orders O’Malley to kill him. It leads to one HELL of a fight scene across time. Due to it being a fight, I won’t go into details but guys it is AMAZING. The animation and choreography are perfect. It goes from on top of airliners, to Blood Gulch, to the moon, to a wrestling rink, and finally to a city. O’Malley tries to act as Doc to make Donut back down, but Donut doesn’t buy it. So how does Donut defeat O’Malley? Well during the Blood Gulch portion, he threw a grenade at him and seemed to miss. In the city however, he opens a portal and the grenade flies out, landing before O’Malley and blasting him away. Donut takes The Hammer and teleports away to take care of Chrovos.

All throughout this, Genkins reveals to Grif his motives. He’s grown tired of their current universe, finding that it has gotten boring as of late. So wanting to spice things up, he agreed to help Chrovos when offered power and wishes to become an actual God to change up the universe as he sees fit. Oh God, is Genkins one of those RvB fans who keeps sayin that the show has gone stale and wants to change everything?! Grif says that by now, the others are already in position to save Wash… to which Genkins responses positively. It causes Grif to realize that Genkins isn’t there to stop them, but to ensure that they succeed. If Wash doesn’t get shot, neither he nor Locus will leave and they’ll be able to take down Temple before he turns the time machine on. If it isn’t turned on, then Donut never gets zapped by Chrovos and therefore none of the events that caused the time travel to begin with will commence. Therefore creating a paradox, one that will have enough power to shatter the already weakened timeline.

Grif runs to reach the others and at the same time, Donut makes it to Chrovos and lifts The Hammer to trap him once more. But unfortunately… it’s too little too late. Grif arrives just as Carolina shoots down the soldier that hit Wash, causing time to freeze. Everything soon fades to white, the Reds and Blues realizing far too late what they have done. They all too begin to fade away, Tucker trying to talk to Sister one final time as Sarge tells them all, especially Grif and Simmons, that it has been an honor. Soon, everyone is gone and the screen cuts to black.

As a new Trocadero track begins to play (I believe that David Levy said that the title was Rush in the livesteam chat, love it by the way!) we soon get a panning shot of some grassy-like area before we see our new location: Blood Gulch. From what I’ve seen more Halo-savvy people say, they are now using the Halo 2 Anniversary engine. So why are we in Blood Gulch? Hell if I know, but we see Sarge calling Grif and Simmons, Grif asking if it’s because they wont he war. Sound familiar? Like that being the same dialogue from Episode 2 of the very first season familiar?! Yeah… from how it looks, time has reset and has sent the Reds and Blues back to the very beginning of their journey, their memories wiped.

It’s not long before we see that things aren’t quite the same however. When we cut to the Blues, we see Tucker with a cobalt-clad soldier… but the second he talks, it is very clearly not Church. For one he’s in a good mood and sees rather optimistic, so definitely not Church. He even offers to let Tucker hold the sniper rifle, to which Tucker days that he doesn’t like them. Yeah, things are NOT right Anyways, Not-Church (there’s speculation if this is Jimmy, Temple, or even Genkins currently) mentions that they’re getting ‘new recruits’ (unassumingly Caboose and maybe Sister) and maybe even a tank. Back with the Reds, we see Grif and Simmons on top of the base as we did back in the beginning so long ago. Grif starts to ask the “do you ever wonder why we’re here?” line… but stops due to the sense of deja vu, asking Simmons about it. When Simmons starts to comment about it being one of life’s great mysteries, he too pauses at the feeling. But they simply go back to standing and doing nothing, the camera panning down and giving us one more glimpse of the Red Base before cutting to the credits.

My friends, Season 16 has oficially ended. Ad ther eis only one proper way to express how I feel about it...

Review

HOLY

SHIT

I was in shock when I watched this the first time. This was my fifth time watching it and I am STILL in shock. This finale was incredibly well done. I think that we all knew, or at least thought about, that Wash was probably going to be saved and that in doing so, a paradox would happen. But even knowing it, I wasn’t ready for it. There’s a lot of questions. What happened to the timeline? What happened to Donut? Why is everyone back at Blood Gulch? Does Freelancer still exist since Church isn’t there? Who is Not-Church? Will the guys regain their memories? Joe left SO MANY things open, and we’re going to have to wait a year to find out the answers. Boy is hiatus time going to be fun…

I’m going to have a section devoted to speculation for the next season, but before we do lets discuss the finale. We’re going to do the Reds and Blues first, then Donut’s scenes, then Grif confronting Genkins, and finally a bit about the ending. SO beginning with the Reds and Blues, it was SO GOOD to see them working as one unit. It really shows us how far they have come since the Blood Gulch days. Everyone has their focus on the task ahead, Carolina remains calm and properly leads the team, Simmons essentially assumes second-in-command (a HUGE step for him) and handles it like a champ, being the one to put the plan to fight the guards into motion and unassumingly coordinates everyone’s efforts. While succeeding ended up a bad thin,t he fact that they DID succeed so flawlessly really shows how effective they all have become and how in-sync they truly are. I wasn’t kidding when I said that I was proud of them despite what ended up happening. It still shows how much they’ve progressed, and for that I am very happy.

Donut though is very much the MVP of this episode. Despite having every reason to not give a shit about the others, and even he point sit out, ultimately he realizes on his own that he’s being used and that his friends are still his friends. Before this season, Donut was easily my least favorite Blood Gulch Crew member and my least favorite Red. The past few episodes made me feel bad for him for the first time, and this one turned EVERYTHING around. Joe did such a good job at giving Donut a personality beyond just being a walking fountain of innuendos. He is smart. He is more than capable of holding his own. He can be hurt and does recognize how the guys treat him, simply wanting them to be nice to him. These are all things that a LOT of people have wanted to see out of the character for years, and Joe seemed to have listened and decided to do so. I’m really glad that he did. Donut feels like a much more layered character, keeping the comedic elements but having those traits that the audience can relate to and ultimately made him sympathetic and his actions understandable without overdoing it or making him look bad.

And int he end, Donut decided to be the better person and to stand up to Chrovos. Which led to the oh so AMAZING fight scene. It was done SO WELL. Like the animators experience with doing the fights over in RWBY really shines here. The usage of the portals was very clever and all the settings were used to both Donut and O’Malley’s advantage. They all felt unique and both parties were evenly matched. But Donut won by using his experience with the gun and cleverness with the portals, resulting in by far his best grenade throw since originally grenaded Tex. O’Malley was certainly no slouch though, even trying to revert back to Doc to try and throw Donut off. It failed, but that was still a clever move. It is one of the best fights in the series in my opinion and was well done by everyone involved. You can tell that Matt and Dan gave it their all with the performances (Matt sounded like he was having a LOT of fun doing O’Malley for that long again), and they did an excellent job.

Onto Grif now. I have made it no secret that Grif is my favorite character and imo the best done character in this season. That continued to shine through here. First, him being obsessed with food and his desire for pizza actually proved useful when eh deducted just through he scent that something wasn’t right. Like he pieced everything together all by himself, and even moreso when he discovered Genkins. And while going alone wasn’t the best option,t he fact that he was willing to do so to give the others time to carry out the mission shows just how far he’s come. Especially when he only gets tempted by the pizza for like three seconds before forcing himself to focus and outright telling Genkins that he doesn’t care. Yes, the one thing that Grif wanted all season? He doesn't are about it anymore. He cares about helping his friends and getting the job done. Despite their falling out, Huggins influence on him really shined through and shows us just how capable that Grif is when he actually does try. He’s smart, brave, and unwilling to back down no matter tempts him or what gets in his way. I could not be more proud of him.

Genkins plan was definitely brilliant. He set forth the events like destroying Sammie’s by telling Kalirama where the guys were and wiping pizza out of history to provoke Grif and Doc to try and remake it, provoking the events that resurfaced O’Malley and everything following. As he said, time traveling and changing history will weaken time, leaving it more than vulnerable to being shattered by a paradox. It was all clearly planned to happen, just as Jax said back in Episode 9. And because of how eccentric he is, the Cosmic Powers didn’t suspect anything even when Genkins outright said that he was the traitor back in Episode 5. He is absolutely Chaotic Evil, and for all intents and purposes he won. He distracted Grif long enough for the others to carry out the plan (which makes it interesting that he called away Grif specifically to ensure that happened since if he didn’t show up at all, chances are it still would have happened) and now time is screwed. If Chrovos keeps his word, Genkins can shape the universe into who knows what.

So yeah… that ending. I just remember everything fading to white and being in total shock. Chat was losing their collective minds throughout all of it, that I DO remember, I didn’t know how to process it, and I still don’t. As nice as it is to see Blood Gulch again, there’s that feeling that it’s just… wrong. Especially when we see the Blues and realize that Church isn’t there and that Tucker isn’t acting right. And when we got to :Do you ever wonder hwy we’re here”… I was gone. Every time that I’ve watched that part, I have cried. It is the one time that I didn’t want to hear it and just further emphasized how wrong things feel. It was an evil move by Joe, and he NAILED IT. I’ve never felt so weirdly satisfied but broken inside. Not even RWBY Volume 3 did that, and that broke me for days. SO yeah… the emotional blows all very much connected and waiting for April is going to be HARD. IDK if even RWBY V6 is going to help make the wait anymore bearable. But I’m positive that the wait will be worth it.

RvB17 Speculations

With this being the finale, and one Hell of a finale, I have a LOT of thoughts about what might happen next. So as we saw, things have been reset back to Blood Gulch. Going off the ‘deja vu’ bit, the guys memories are likely being suppressed and I assume that they’ll be triggered more and more next season. I guess in a weird way, it’s like in Season 9 with the Epsilon Unit int hat the’re going to relive Blood Gulch, but the events won’t be quite the same. This time it’s not because of Epsilon going through memories to meet Tex again though, plus this time no one remembers anything. It also raises the question about how the characters will behave. Likely the Reds are back to their old personalities (Sarge is murderous over the Blues and Simmons is an insecure kissass) but what about Caboose? With Church gone, the events that made him how we know him now won’t happen. Will he be like he was in Season 1 again? What about characters like Sister, Carolina, and Wash? And Donut? He was still in Chrovos’ domain, so will his memory be intact? Or since the Reds don’t mention a rookie, will he be there at all?

There’s a lot of questions, and we have a lot of time to think them over. So here is where I stand so far. There’s been a LOT of talk about who Non-Church is… but currently I’m going to say it’s Genkins. If only because the inflections int he voice sound very much like Genkins voice actor, plus it would mean that for now Genkins needs to keep the Reds and Blues in check while Chrovos does whatever he’s going to do. As for how the guys will remember… it’s hard to say. Enough similar-looking events may happen that it triggers their memories, or maybe Genkins will restore them to spice things up. It’s also possible that if Donut is at Blood Gulch, having been at Chrovos domain he may still have his memory and has to try and get everyone else to remember. If not, if I had to guess who’s gong to remember first… it’s probably gonna be Grif. I think that Joe built it up enough that we can assume that Grif is our main protagonist, plus he’s the only one who knows the true details over what happened. There’s also still that time loop theory due to Grif’s deja vu in Episode 14.

Which brings me to my next theory. I don’t think that the timeline necessarily reset. I think that Chrovos got free and placed the Reds and Blues in an alternate timeline, suppressing their memories since they would be the only ones who could interfere with him. This also means that Wash isn’t there since we last saw him in Chorus, so he’s back in the regular timeline. I think that the timeline is currently frozen outside maybe the Cosmic Powers, who Chrovos is going to try to kill as the timeline slowly shatters apart. Of we go with my theory of Grif eventually regaining his memory, he’ll figure out that Not-Church is Genkins (or even have a confrontation happen when memory-less that make sit impossible for him to ignore the deja vu so Genkins, wanting to see his reaction, grants him back his memory), confront him, and Genkins will shoot him into a Black Hole the same way that he did Huggins, which will lead to them reuniting and reconciling to fix everything. I don’t knwo how they’d escape, but it would lead them back to the broken timeline and Grif has to go through it to prevent the paradox from happening. Which will lead Chrovos to sending his forces, which if the Shisno thing still stand may include the Reds and Blues, to stop him. Bonus if Donut escapes and goes to help, and if the Cosmic Powers are alive they’ll likely also get involved if they see that Huggins survived.

But this is very much a long-shot and going off what we’ve seen so far and how the paradoxes work. I had a theory that all the scenarios may happen, which it looks possible. Chrovos creating an alternate timeline confirms that theory and if time hasn’t been fully destroyed yet, it creates a buffer period with the explanation that the process is still on-going. If all of them go back, it doesn’t change too much of the theory, it just means more people. Likely the mroe I watch the finale and speculate, the more that this will change. But for now, that’s all I’ve got. Will I be proven right? Probably not, but we won’t know until at least April so.. we’ve got time! Unlike the Reds and Blues, haha… and I made myself sad.

Final Thoughts

The finale was insane in all of the good ways. It had a great fight sequence, great character moments, and one mindscrew of an ending that I don’t think that anyone will ever forget. If I had to guess, we’ll probably start next season kind of like in Season 9, with some similar event splaying out and as they do, the guys memories will potentially be triggered. All we can do is wait for April to come and find out. But all in all, it was a great finale and I loved every second of it.

With that, I want to take this time to say thank you to everyone who has read these reviews. This is only the second season of RvB that I watched regularly and the first one that I reviewed as it was coming out. I had a lot of fun doing it and I’m glad that people really liked my silly ramblings! There will be one final review for the season coming up, an overall review of everything I liked and disliked about it, that should hopefully be out this time next week. After that, that’ll be a wrap for RvB16. If any of you guys are RWBY fans, I’ll be reviewing Volume 6 in the same format when it starts this Fall and I may also be doing Gen;Lock if I like it. I’m also going to be doing reviews of the other RvB seasons during the hiatus, so I’ll have plenty of RvB-related material until next season rolls around. Again, thank you all for reading and I will be back again to do RvB17 next year. So I hope to see all of you then!

[courfeyracs-swordcane]

You do the 'tag your oc' thing a lot if it's not too much trouble could you please describe your ocs a little bit to me? They seem interesting!

K so this is kind of long so quick, Celia is proper, Chaffinch is cute, Victoria is tough, Jack is struggling, Richmond’s a dick, Elliot is sweet and they’re the main ones

The Main Characters

Celia Jameson is from 1912, shortly after the Titanic sinks. She lives with her elder brother, Dan, and his daughter, Felicity, and takes care of the house since his wife died. She’s really good at it,and when Rich “borrows” her and plops her in front of Victoria in the present along with Chaffinch and Jack she becomes the mom of everyone. Including Victoria’s dad. She’s kinda harsh tho, and pretty Edwardian prim and proper and VERY scandalized at Victoria’s language.

Chaffinch is my genderfluid child and I’m very sorry for making them suffer. They grew up on the streets of London in the 1470s and 80s after their parents died of plague and left them to take care of their two younger siblings, Jilly and Kieran. They’re 13 years old, but second only to Celia in responsibility. They’re also a huge goof and once they learn to read and begin to trust modern technology they’re like really good at video games. Also, they are 100% the cutest.

Victoria Scannado is a little shit. (5'nothing) Her entire family is named after places in Canada bc why not. She has pretty bad social anxiety, but reacts surprisingly well (in her own opinion) to three complete strangers in weird clothes and various states of distress appearing in front of her in a park. She has a mouth like a sailor and a terrible sleep schedule and no self esteem. Also, she comes off as like really calm and nice and quiet but when you get to know her she’s really hyper and too proud for her own good and really loves Harry Potter. (She’s a Slytherin probably)

James Jeremy (Jack) Callahan is a big shit. (5'11) He was taken from a battlefield in the American Revolution like three seconds after his boyfriend was shot (he lives, but Jack doesn’t know that) and he arrives crying and covered with blood. He likes to be seen as a Manly Man (he’s not). He has a terrible sense of humor, and he’s incredibly stubborn and kind of an asshole sometimes. He also gets mad really easily and he’s got the mindset of his time period for a lot of things. So he’s ridiculously patriotic and pretty chivalrous and tries not to show emotion at all ever. He’s also really good with little kids.

Families and Friends

Victoria-

Edward Scannado is Victoria’s dad. He’s trying his best and they’ve gotten by pretty well since her mom left them. He’s a pretty good dad, just a tad overprotective and he can’t cook very well. He’s very excited when Victoria finally brings home friends, even if they are dirty/bloody/old fashioned and confused and upset.

Alberta Scannado is Victoria’s grandma. She’s 86 years old and has Alzheimer’s, and she’s convinced that her older brother, who disappeared in 1940 when he was fifteen and she was eleven, is still around and visits her and sends her flowers. She lives in New York though, so Victoria and Edward, her only living relatives, can’t see her very often.

Richmond Scannado is a chaotic neutral piece of crap with a peanut allergy who figures out the secrets of time travel at the age of twelve, and by fifteen has made a plan to go back and kill George Washington Carver before he did all of his work with peanuts that made them so much more common. He fails, but is noticed, and, in an attempt to cover up what he’d done, jumps to random points in history, kidnaps three people, and drops them in front of his grandniece, who he only knew about from pictures in his sister’s apartment in her Memory Care place. Nobody calls him Richmond; most people call him Rich, but Alberta calls him Ricky and Jack calls him Dick, after learning what that means in 21st century vernacular.

Jack-

Martha and Robert Callahan are Jack’s parents. They’re pretty good. Robert is a minuteman. Martha is a worrier, and doesn’t let Jack join the army like he desperately wants to, which makes him run away from home to do it with Henry. That makes her even more worried, but she can’t do anything about it except write to tell them to be careful.

Katherine, Margaret, Elizabeth, Amelia, and Mary May Callahan are Jack’s sisters. Kate is married and lives in the next town with her husband and sons, Teddy, age 8, Nathanial, age 6, and Jacob, age 5. Meg lives next door with her husband and her two children, Frederick, who’s 4, and Baby, who will be named Josephine if she lives past two. Then there’s Jack, then Betsy, who’s 14, then Amelia, who’s 12, then Mary May, the baby, who’s 8. I won’t go into too much depth since there’s so many of them, but feel free to ask!

Henry Greene is Jack’s best friend since birth and boyfriend since a little before they joined the army. He is one of The Friendliest, Kindest Human Beings, if a bit lazy and he has absolutely no pain tolerance whatsoever. He gets shot in his first battle, right next to Jack, and seconds before Jack is whisked away to 2017. He would have died if Richmond hadn’t been helpful for once in his life and grabbed him (at Jack’s request) to take him to a modern hospital, where they save his life.

Chaffinch-

Jilly is Chaffinch’s 9 year old sister. She’s the sweetest, quietest, most adorable thing, but she’ll do anything to get out of actually working. She is the master of sweet talking and puppy eyes, and she can actually be very helpful, if it’s something she wants to do.

Kieran is Chaffinch’s six year old brother. He’s basically the polar opposite of Jilly; loud, rough and tumble, will do anything he’s told to and most things he’s told not to. Very eager to please. He’s blind in one eye, due to an incident with the corner of a table when he was a baby.

Celia-

Celia’s parents are Alec and Jane Jameson. They don’t really come into the story very much, but they live near Celia and Dan, and Johnny still lives with them. They were pretty good, if a bit strict. Jane is an amazing cook, and Celia looks (and acts, for the most part) exactly like her.

Daniel (Dan) Jameson is Celia’s older brother. He’s 28, and has been struggling with depression since his wife died and left him with their daughter, Felicity. Celia moved in to help shortly after, and she hasn’t moved back yet. She probably never will. Dan is quiet, and reserved, but pretty friendly, and he really likes woodworking.

Daisy Jameson was Dan’s wife and Celia’s sister in law. She doesn’t really come into the story much, except that she dies. She was sweet and that’s about it.

Felicity Jameson is Celia’s niece and Dan’s daughter. She’s eight years old, does not remember her mother very well, but misses her. She’s really pretty, and she knows it. She’s also just the teensiest bit spoiled, but not that much. Celia has basically raised her, and now she’s teaching her to cook, and Felicity is very good at that.

Johnny Jameson is Celia’s younger brother. He’s 19 and kind of a hothead, but also very dedicated to his family and friends. He’ll take any excuse for a fight with anyone, even though he usually loses, because he provokes people twice his size. He dies in WWI and it’s the saddest thing that happens in the entire story.

Elliot Craig is Felicity’s great grandson, which makes him Celia’s great great great grandniece? Idk. He is Garbage and I love him. Also quite possibly the Sweetest person? Always references memes and song lyrics, sometimes both at once.

Tristan is Johnny’s boyfriend and he’s not very developed yet but he tries to keep Johnny from getting into fights and usually fails but yeah.

THANK YOU FOR ASKING IDK WHO YOU ARE BUT I LOVE YOU