#threat to all those around them type trio. power trio and not in a good way
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ok fine i'll do the meme
#grayy art#fnaf#the amazing digital circus#welcome home#dca fandom#wally darling#tadc caine#tadc#unholy trinity of blorbos. those three would get along in a nuclear way.#threat to all those around them type trio. power trio and not in a good way
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So I came up with this conclusion after analyzing jingrenheng trio in your writing, which include unconventional darlings that might suit them.
Dan Feng: I honestly can see a scholar!darling suiting him. Historical-wise the women around Chinese emperors were more than pretty faces, they're smart because the selection requires virtue and knowledge of philosophies as well. So a scholar darling will be good for his image, and you're also less likely to be bullied by high-ranking vidyadharas because you're educated. It's also more likely that Dan Feng will listen to your input because of your education, but he's the one making the final decision duh.
Blade: I've seen Blade with darling who are on the victim side, like him kidnapping Dan Heng's darling and so on. But considering how he's a Stellaron Hunter I can see him with a darling who's powerful BUT is seen as a weapon by people. As in powerful enough to destroy but doesn't exactly rebel a lot; being used to be directed by powerful people. Maybe you're a powerful thing fully controlled by a planet's government that the Stellaron Hunters happened to have a mission on and Kafka offered for you to join the hunters because your powers are too good to waste.
Jingyuan: I've also seen Jingyuan with a darling who's more vulnerable than him, so how about a darling who's a financially powerful ally to him? Imagine that during a long expedition to defeat barbaric enemies that are a threat to the Luofu, one of the stops was this planet under the Luofu enemies' occupation; your planet. You, knowing how barbaric those enemies were and how the weaker cloud knights would definitely be brutally harmed took in a lot of members of the cloud knights inside your estate. That also included an injured Jingyuan. So this kind of darling has the upper hand because Jingyuan owed her the lives of the cloud knights, he can't just do as he likes.
never thought that someone would use the word "analysis" for my hsr stuff, thank you very much!! these are indeed the types of readers I have not considered👀
Dan Feng: If you were a scholar before you met him, Dan Feng would have heard about your reputation from people. Dancing on the path of "Erudition", you pursue knowledge and strategy. Maybe you’ve published some research?
Dan Feng is just traditional, which definitely does not mean that he cannot accept his spouse being smart and accomplished. He appreciates your wisdom and discusses history, culture, and Aeons with you. It's like discovering a treasure, he always finds surprises. In this case, Dan Feng respects your opinion and imagines how smart the dragon cub will be.
Blade: The companion type Darling is an equal to Blade. He is the type of person who respects his companions. Even in a state of mental breakdown, Blade could observe Kafka's sadness. From his first comment on Kafka, we can tell that Blade has a soft and gentle heart.
"Listen, Bladie, loosen up." "Listen, don't think about anything at all." He nodded. The woman walked to his side, smiling. Yet he thought her smile looked very sad. "Maybe someone left her before they could listen to everything she had to say," he thought.
But if you have been abused as a "weapon" before, Blade will treat you more gently and carefully. If those who have abused you are not on the script, Blade will support some… more extreme plans to destroy those people.
Jing Yuan: 😹Oh, you can see what a painful experience this is for Jing Yuan. He is grateful to you for saving those Cloud Knights and for being an ally. You are too sweet for him. General sometimes wanted to pull you into his lap, but those favors stopped him. He can't do this to you…at least not yet. That would be very ungrateful of him. He's pursuing you in a decent way - you might think it's still too pushy though.
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Ohh the more I hear about her, Rai has an absolute tragic past. :( I'm guessing she has to feed on dreams as a necessity, and not out of malicious intent. How were they able to hide Newmoon Island away with mortals already knowing its location? Do they have a type of power to allow it to be more hidden from sight? What do the other legendaries or immortals overall think about them other than Lia? Sorry for all the questions in one go, but the lore's interesting!
Rai has had a tragic past, but I also wouldn't describe them as wholly innocent; after all, in acquiring their powers to begin with, they killed the original cresselia--and, since then, besides just feeding off organically occurring nightmares, have caused nightmares in instances when shes fixated on a specific person who has proved to be a good energy source (will expand upon that lol).
As for hiding the island, they didn't move it or anything. They more so obscured it, and anyone who tries to find it usually ends up turned around or lost (in the direct of fullmoon island in some instances) in the best case scenario--in the worst case scenario, there have been shipwrecks. Her ability to do this is illusory and she can't actually change anything physically.
Rai doesn't actually have much contact with other legends besides Lia--I think they still feel like the odd one out since they were never really destined to be in the position that they're in. Lia is really her only connection to the other legends, and she feels like everything she is, is just secondhand from what he possesses. I think her reputation among mortals is pretty similar to that she has with other legends, (mostly those who, like her, remain in the human realm) where she's generally avoided. She's actually a bit of a threat to most of them--being she's a dark type, and a lot of the legends are psychic (Cresselia, lake trio, ect.) so they don't usually willingly seek her out. When I make a shaymin, they'll definitely have some sort of relationship though .... :-)
They do have somewhat of a relationship with a mortal...Kirsi. Not that Kirsi knows this--but Kirsi is one of Rai's favorite people to feed off of. While Kirsi has plenty of organic nightmares, which was what Rai was originally drawn to (relating to aspects of her story, seeing herself a bit in her...), as Kirsi's life / mental health began to improve and she became less useful, instead of moving on, Rai has stuck around and started creating nightmares of their own. This will be explored at some point in time, I'm just working on when would be appropriate :)
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just recently i re-did the kid’s reference sheets since the last one was out dated as FUCK and it was bothering the hell outta me. so these are a lot more refined and with an actual solid idea of how they are as characters instead of playing a guessing game of “maybe this is how they’ll be????”. ill probably be updating this later with more refs of their alternate outfits but for now have the overall refs :D full transcripts are under the cut cuz i know the last drawing i posted with a lot of text was near unreadable dfbjsvfkdn
OVERALL NOTES
-Segmented limbs to show under-development -All gems have a different type of inclusion due to excess of incorporated organic elements (cremation ashes) --This also means that due to unmonitored and nonspecific growing conditions they are extremely brittle when compared to a perfect-cut diamond -Gems are rough-cut all mimicking the shape of the Pink Diamond -Because of the genetic coding their forms are based around, each of their inclusions condense around their navels. -Mimic human like qualities and behaviors although not needing them (gem coding based around human instinct) --Physical Traits: ears, finger/toe nails, navels, full rendered anatomy under light-projected garments. --Behaviors: instinct of familial connection, as well as instinct to eat and sleep.
SLUG
- Gold Diamond - First to emerge - Pronouns: He/Him - Flaw: Black Inclusions --Symptoms: Dark spots covering physical form - Representative Stage of the Pink Diamond: Steven -Default Inclination: Body -Developed Inclination: Emotion -Powers: -- Diamond derived: Electricity based form disruption/alteration proficiency -- Steven derived: Destructive Shout -- Self Derived: Heat Production ---Drawbacks: Little to no resistance to own abilities, this means that any power that Slug may use can affect himself as well. -Personality: Protector (ISFJ) --Slug, as the eldest sibling, took on the role of protector over his younger siblings/family, he holds his self assigned responsibility to his highest priority, willing to put himself between those he cares about and what ever he may perceive as a threat at a moments notice. --In a Fight or Flight situation, Slug chooses Fight, using aggression and brash reaction as a defense mechanism, thinking that being assertive and "intimidating" means that he will be taken seriously, even if most of his motivation to protect himself and others derives from overactive paranoia
SKY
- Cobalt Diamond - Second to emerge - Pronouns: She/her - Flaw: Clouding --Symptoms: Poor vision due to iris colomba and splotches of discoloration around eyes and other parts of form - Representative Stage of the Pink Diamond: Rose Quartz -Default inclination: Emotion -Developed inclination: Mind -Powers: -- Diamond derived: Emotion projection via aura/vapors/touch (touch is easiest) -- Steven derived: Dream walking -- Self Derived: Invisibility ---Drawbacks: When emotion projection is being used, Sky will directly link her gem to the one she is affecting, creating a temporary synchronization thus letting the energy flow to and from the gem. This however leaves herself vulnerable to whatever may be wrong with the other gem (glitching, corruption, low energy, ect.) to flow back to her. This is the same with dream walking. -Personality: Grounding Force (INFJ) -- Compared to her brothers, Sky has the most control over her emotions, which mean she easily balances out the other two's clashing personalities, being their voice of reason and the foundation to the trio's dynamic. -- Although her eyesight is her weakest trait, her auditory observation skills and mental cataloguing are near unmatched (her father has her beat on that). This means that her memory recall is the best out of the three, making her to be the one the boys will always turn to in case they’re in need of remembering something from their researching sprees. This paired with her natural emotional inclination means she is very emotionally attentive.
CLOUD
- Silver Diamond - Last to Emerge - Pronouns: He/They - Flaw: Twinning Wisps --Symptoms: Underdeveloped light projected form due to contamination of foreign elements - Representative Stage of the Pink Diamond: Pink Diamond -Default Inclination: Mind -Developed Inclination: Body -Powers: -- Diamond derived: Mind controlling/marionette-ing (via eye contact) -- Steven derived: Floating -- Self Derived: Pressure Point Locating ---Drawbacks: Cloud runs on a very weak energy supply as far as when it comes to his use of his powers (which is not often). When exerted energy is pushed his powers can completely shut off. Though this effect can be more instant in a different way; the clustering on the left side of his body is an entire weak point for him. One good hit on any part of that clustering can completely block off that energy flow, leaving him incapacitated for several hours. - Personality: Communicator (ENFP) -- When compared to his siblings, Cloud is the most forward and extroverted when it comes to his curiosity about the world. Cloud is the first to ask questions and strike up conversation when he wants to know more about something, and thus being the door for his siblings to learn more and interact with others, bringing them out of their respective shells. -- Cloud is a very physically oriented person, making
him very drawn to physical affection and expression [and kinesthetic learning and processing].
This makes him very physically aware of his immediate surrounding and is often prone (at least in
his earlier years) to invade personal spaces given
that he thinks and interacts physically. This trait
however works in his favor in his later years when he learns to fight, taking quite easily to more close range
combat as well as being dexterous and flexible in his
fighting style
#steven universe#steven universe au#su#ForgetMeNot AU#FMN AU#moon ocs#Cloud#Sky#Slug#moon art#digital#reference sheet
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it’s okay; stay
armin arlert x reader
wc: 4k
cw: angst, comfort, pain, childhood flashbacks? armin getting beat up </3 not proofread
note: yes i cried while writing this.
do you remember the days when things were so hopeless that not even he had a way out of it, and all he could do was offer eyes as big as sky-blue plates, and a hand under the table to hold, to anchor you to something when you so badly wanted to drift away. to anchor you to him.
this was how it was, and this was how it continued to be, and as the feeling of impermanence faded, as your bunk bed in the girls’ quarters filled with more personal belongings and you subconsciously scooted backwards from the edge of your seat, stopped standing on tip-toes, you sunk back into your life, and somehow, into armin. as you found more ways to manipulate your daily routine to fit in more time alone with him, you found that you were your most lucid when you were staring down at a pale palm that you held in both hands, tracing the countless ravines of warm skin and looking for patterns or shapes or words. sometimes his fingers twitched when it tickled, and sometimes you’d tell him what word you had spelled out into his flesh and he’d laugh before continuing reading whatever book his nose was so attached to.
the memories move too fast and are too painful. you try your best to maneuver away from the ones that most ache, but each path seems worse than the last.
you’d met him when you were wearing a pale blue dress that stopped at your knees. you only remember this fact because you remember the way it felt as you gripped the fabric close to keep yourself from crying out at the sight of your older brother and his friends kicking at a smaller boy behind a house. you were hidden away after a prompt threat from your brother to go unseen and unheard, because if you interfered or got the bullies caught, he’d make your life an indefinite hell. he’d done it before and he’d do it again, so you stayed out across the road in an alley, your dress turning into a wrinkled wreck between your tiny fingers. there you stayed until the toothless brainless boys had their fill, backing up and shoving shoulders in kudos before running off in a hurry. characteristically, your brother had forgotten to come back for you. you didn’t care. you hated his presence.
a tiny blond heap sputtered and coughed on the floor some distance away. tears sprung to your eyes. you didn’t care. you hated him.
the lump on the floor moaned and rolled over in an attempt at a first step to mobility, which was to no avail as he—the young boy whose scuffed face you now saw—stared up at the sky. it lasted all of two seconds before he gasped and scrambled onto all fours, injuries forgotten as his eyes whipped around the scene of the assault. they landed on something and scurried to it. you narrowed your eyes and watched him dust off a half-wrecked book, sighing and pressing it to his chest. a tear curled over your eye and fell down your chubby cheek. he was a good boy. he laid back against the back of the tall house, and you tucked yourself further down the alley to avoid sighting, but you still watched him, feeling like you’d discovered something sort of very precious.
the next time you saw him was when your mom sent you to the market with a basket and a few coins to buy vegetables for dinner. you were happy to be allowed on your own without the “protection” of your deceptively polite brother. you were confident and unbothered as you took your time to stroll through the vendors. and then you saw him, and some part of you short-circuited. somewhere on the other side of your brain, something launched into overdrive, and you suppose this is what brought your feet forward to stand before him as he eyed a booth of crystals.
“what are you looking at?” you asked dumbly. your voice and presence scared him out of his skin for a good few moments and he froze for a good five seconds before stammering his answer.
“um, i’m looking at, at crystals,” he said. you smiled a little, deciding you liked how he talked. you looked at the table before you, tilting your head curiously.
“why would someone pay for these? couldn’t you just go into the forest and find them yourself?” your tone was incredulous, but when you looked back at armin, he was bewildered to see genuine wonder in your eyes, expecting an answer. an answer from him.
he fiddled with his fingers. “well, these are different, i think. they come from all over the walls and they all have different names and stuff. you wouldn’t be able to find them around here, i think.”
you nodded in comprehension, again looking at the assortment before bending down and pointing to a particular one.
“i like this one,” you said, suddenly sheepish. you clasped your hands to the handle of your basket and looked down.
“that’s called amethyst,” he said shyly, eyeing the deep purple rock with white flecks as it sparkled in the sun. his eyes shifted to you and stayed there for a few seconds before he decided what to do next.
“i’m armin,” he said, and you looked up to see a small hand extended to you. your momentary hesitation had him stuttering, “um, my grandpa said it’s polite to shake someone’s hand when you meet them.”
you really smiled this time, and armin smiled with you. you put your hand in his.
“i’m y/n.”
even at your fresh age, you knew that what you found in armin was different. even when he introduced you to his friends eren and mikasa, who welcomed you without reserve and taught you about love different from that which was familial, compulsory, you knew armin was like no other. you were too young to make sense of it, but it felt like in some way you’d been friends all along but hadn’t met yet; as though it was only a matter of time before you met or maybe you’d met before and forgotten. a ridiculous notion, but you were young, and happy.
things were wonderful.
until, weeks later, as you trudged behind your brother and a few of his friends, who were bored and lazy for the day, you smacked into your brother’s back by accident, not having been looking in front of you. he barely acknowledged you, instead bumping you off his shoulders as he and his friends pointed at a grounded nest of baby birds. interested, you stood on tip toes and peaked over your brother’s shoulder.
“y/n?”
you froze at the soft, questioning voice that called on you from your left. of course it was him, this you didn’t need to look to confirm, but you did anyway. his face sunk in a way that tore at your heart, but still he looked at you with questioning eyes that fell between you and the bullies you now stood amidst, asking for an explanation.
you couldn’t give him one, but you mouthed an “i’m sorry” before armin gathered his wits and silently backtracked his steps before the boys saw him and found something to satiate their boredom.
you didn’t see him for ages, half because he was never around and half because of the shame that paralyzed you. how selfish of you, to accept armin’s friendship when you’d been a person who enabled his suffering?
it wasn’t until almost an entire week later that you saw eren by the river near the market. he sat with a bored expression on his face, head thrown back. he was the most prickly of the trio, and even though you were sure he wouldn’t be pleasant to you, your feet sped towards him.
“eren!” you called, but when his eyes met yours, they turned cold, and immediately he got up to leave. “please wait! please! let me explain!” you stopped a few feet away from him, and he looked over his shoulder at you, and the look on his face made you crumble slightly.
“there’s nothing to explain. if those are the type of the people you hang around, then we don’t want anything to do with you. do you even know half the things they’ve done to armin?” he sneered.
“i do,” you said quietly. eren scoffed, just about ready to leave, until he heard the next bit. “…because they do it to me too.”
from there on, really, it was easy to win back eren’s loyalty, as he had barred you from seeing armin until you put some sort of stop to the abuse he suffered at the hands of your brother. he had said that it wasn’t enough that you were helpless, and that you needed to find a way to help armin out of this, because you’re in a unique position to help and because that’s what friends do. and he was right, and you did it.
on one of those evenings when your brother’s irritating snores didn’t fill the room you shared, you sat upright in bed until the boy himself attempted to sneak back through the window—he was about as subtle as a loosed horse.
he almost jumped out of his skin when he saw your moon-illuminated figure.
“what are you doing!?” he whisper-yelled. your voice was small enough that you didn’t need to whisper, and this way, you were able to fein strength in your voice. part of you thought about how maybe the power was there all along, but your passive nature put not use to it until you made your own friends. armin introduced you to courage, you realized, and you couldn’t help but smile in the dark.
“i know that you sneak out to wreck the farm fences next to jonah’s house,” you said. even in the dark, you could sense his hackles rise.
“so?” he replied, daring you to say the words he thought you might.
“pa said if you did one more bad thing he’d send you to uncle’s ranch to work for the entire summer.” you saw his shoulders tense at perhaps the only thing that scared him.
“there’s something i want from you…”
“and?” he said, seething.
“…and if you don’t do it, i’ll tell mama and pa all the bad things you’ve been doing.”
—
“this really isn’t necessary…” his soft voice spoke, and your heart ached a little at hearing it. eren shushed him while mikasa stood silent as usual, and you stood some distance away from them and waited.
it wasn’t long before your brother’s gang came trudging down the path before the four of you. you could see your brother angrily muttering at one of the other boys who looked displeased. when they spotted you and the others, they made a small ruckus of shoving and incredulous sounds, but your brother had them under control in a moment before looking in front of him.
his eyes met yours first, and you saw the hatred. for once, you didn’t care, and even returned it gracefully, hands clasped in front of you and shoulders tall. he held your gaze for only a few moments longer before conceding and looking at the trio that stood in the middle of the path. eren and mikasa stood in front of armin, but not in his field of vision, ready to defend him. but it wasn’t necessary. after a few moments, your brother shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded begrudgingly, aggressively, at armin, without meeting his eyes. armin’s chest seemed to deflate slightly with relief, tension in his fists gone at the sight of his bully surrendering.
and then they left.
and as soon as they did, armin pushed past eren and came towards you with a smile. you spoke the words that had been close to bursting for the past week, that you wanted to say a million times over to him if it meant he could believe them to be true.
“i’m sorry,” you blurted, and armin blinked in slight surpise before he made eye contact with you, now right in front of you.
“it’s okay,” he said. the words were slow and soft as if he wanted them to materialize in the air for you to see. you couldn’t help it when your eyes teared up as you stared at his blue ones, so impossibly untainted and unnatural in their own right, different than the river or grass fields or pretty crystals or anything at all. for a moment you had a silly thought about all the crazy things armin had told you about the outside, none of them making sense and sounding so supernatural that they surely couldn’t be real, and for a moment you thought that if somehow they were real, these eyes, these impossible orbs were made from the same stuff. supernatural stuff, stuff of nonsense, and that they belonged out there and not in here.
and then he offered you his hand, and you cleared away the mess of over-mature thinking by resolving that he was here now, and you’d be by his side while you had him. for as long as you could.
you look upon him now. you look at supernatural eyes that peer down at mikasa, quiet, powerful mikasa, holding her back from the sound of boot hitting bone. his eyes tell her that this is what needs to happen.
you stand close to the wall, not innocent in the eyes of the soldiers around you but not as guilty as the titan shifter who sits on the floor with blood seeping into his mouth, a disappointed captain before him.
you haven’t been restrained—yet—because of eren’s claim that he more or less forced your hand, as he had done to everyone else when he planned his scheme. it wasn’t entirely untrue. eren told you what he hoped to do all that time ago, because he needed your help. he wouldn’t go to mikasa because of her priority for his safety nor to armin for his priority on peaceful resolve. eren knew you were neither emotionally attached to his wellbeing nor against necessary violence. you didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to act as a spy who gathered information for eren on his best means of communication, the weakest link the command for him to access, and all other needs. but eren told you he’d do it whether you joined him or not, and he wouldn’t ask anyone else, and that having a second hand to facilitate his intelligence would drastically increase his chances of seeing his plan through, therefor the chances of the survey corps making it out of this alive.
no one has come to talk to you yet, but you know that you’ll be dealt with, and you could already predict the questions. when they ask you why you didn’t find another way, you won’t have an answer. you’re sure armin would’ve found a better way and convinced eren of it, or that mikasa would’ve never allowed him to sneak out like he did. but you’re not either of those people, and so when they ask, you won’t have an answer.
for now, all you can do is memorize the faces and figures of your friends whom you haven’t seen in so long. you note mikasa’s hair that’s even shorter than before. the titan markings beneath armin’s eyes. eyes that you avoid desperately because they hurt to look at. they’re just as entrancing, but it’s different now. he finally made it outside the walls. and all that used to be nonsense isn’t anymore. now it’s just the way the world goes, vast and cruel and sometimes beautiful, and those blue catastrophes fit right in.
when he stood at the door of the aircraft and didn’t wait longer than seconds, mere seconds, before he reached out a hand to take his best friend’s, the man who’d turned him into a killer. a crushing truth for you to realize, and as such you can’t even bear to think of armin’s own feelings about it. and yet, he looked him in the eyes. and yet, he took eren’s hand, and in the way only soulbound people can, he spoke words into eren’s heart that only they two could know.
the knowledge of this alone is so much to bare that for the next night and day, you don’t dare go near them.
almost twenty-four hours pass and still all you can do is stare ahead at food rations on the table before you. the aircraft kitchen is small and has exactly three tables lined up for seating. two soldiers sit at the table furthest from you and talk in quiet murmurs while you sit alone, unable to eat.
the door opens and before you can even command your sluggish mind to take note of it, armin is sitting beside you. once you realize it, your whole body tenses. your head instinctually moves to look in his direction, but you stop it before it can, casting a sidelong look in his direction. there’s a book in his hand that he places on his other side. from your peripheral, he doesn’t look at you either. he stares ahead, but you can’t see his face to read what he wants.
“i’ve given you space.”
your entire chest tightens at the sound of his voice. he’s a man now, but somehow the soft timbre is as clear as it was so that “i’ve given you space” sounds not so very different from “i’m looking at crystals.”
“i thought maybe that’s what you needed. but now i don’t know. now i feel like you’re just avoiding me.”
breathing becomes near impossible. you watch you own chest rise and fall heavily and wonder how you can still feel no air in your throat. you can’t look at him. you don’t dare.
“y/n.” don’t say that, you think, the first thought you’ve managed since he got the jump on you. he turns to you then, and still you don’t look. “are you avoiding me?”
you tell yourself you won’t look, won’t talk, won’t acknowledge he’s there, but as soon as he asks you the question, you feel a reply formulating. you don’t have the ability to refuse him. you’re at his mercy, even if it’ll break you.
“i don’t know how to be around you,” you say in a choppy, breathless whisper. armin leans in to hear it, and now you can feel his breath, smelling of brown sugar and fruits from his lunch. at feeling him so close to you after so many months, you suck in your top lip as if it’ll keep you together.
“why not?” and he’s hurt. you can hear it. all his hurt seeps out his pours and all the holes in his body so that even if you don’t look into his face, you can feel it stabbing at your heart. guilt. guilt.
“i’ve caused you pain.” the words are too much, and your chin trembles uncontrollably. the door opens to let in two more soldiers who turn into the kitchen and begin rummaging through a drawer. you bow your head to hide the evident grief on your face. armin breathes onto your cheek and thinks and thinks.
“eren made you do it, y/n. it wasn’t your fault.”
you shake your head lightly.
“‘should’ve done more.” the two soldiers mull over their options of snacks for awhile.
“y/n.” how you wish he’d stop saying your name. “y/n, look at me.” deviantly, you shut your eyes, stiffening your face as much as you possibly can, because you can’t hold on much longer, not when he keeps pushing you like this. not in front of other soldiers, you beg him in your mind. and maybe in a way he understands, because it’s not until the pair in the kitchen have selected a food and walked out that armin raises a hand to your chin and delicately guides your head to face him. you suck in a breath and squeeze your mouth shut to hold onto the anguish inside you, and then you’re looking at him. the first of your tears falls when you see the concerned, pained set of his brow, his soft lips downturned like a sad pup. his eyes. they burn into you. they wither the fabric of your soul.
“y/n,” he says again, letting go of your chin. you know he can’t find words to say, because there are no words. no words for all that’s happened and all you’ve done. rather than speaking, he does something much worse.
he reaches into your lap where your hands are clasped by the fingers in an iron grip. panic fills your features as you shake your head fearfully at him, but he doesn’t exercise mercy on you as he takes your two hands into one of his, warm and scarred and you can’t breathe.
he pulls your hands to his own lap, and in a stroke of—all you can call it—madeness, he delicately pulls your hands apart and places one of his own on his lap, palm facing the ceiling. he settles one of your hands on his palm and nestles the other one underneath, as if guiding you to hold one of his hands with yours. immediately, you understand the words he’s delivered to your heart. your face crumbles, shoulders sag. you stare into his palm and trace shaky fingers across ridges where beneath skin lies bones. you feel each line that builds to make peculiar images and spell all kinds of words, that forms the illustration of a boy filled to the brim with pain and somehow exhuming only love. a beaten boy lying behind a house and staring into the sky, a boy whose eyes don’t really resemble anything at all because maybe they’re unearthly, an entire world unto themselves, a boy whose mere existence pains you because you can’t take his pain away and he’s far too pure to have endure so much. a good boy.
tears drip onto your pants and take over your cheeks in silent anarchy, because you can’t take whatever it is this boy is made out of. because he offers his hand to you and still meets your eyes after everything, and because his palm spells forgiveness.
your eyes find his, and say there in silent grief as your hands touch. his gaze is calm, peaceful, assuring. in it you see refuge. redemption. you think that maybe your soul can take it. you bare all of yourself to him in one look, but you trust him completely.
after some time, the two soldiers remaining get up and dispose of their dishes in the sink, casting side glances at the colossal titan and the rogue soldier who hold hands on the eating table. they take their leave.
you try to put it into words. and of course, of course there are none.
“armin,” you breathe. you inhale sharply, because finally it comes. “oh, armin…” you sob, slowly descending into his chest. his arms come around you, and he cradles the back of your head and holds your upper body against himself. you grip his shoulders for dear life and lay your face into his neck, finally, finally, weeping.
“i’m sorry,” you choke. your tears are hot and wet on his neck.
“it’s okay,” he murmurs, stroking your hair. “it’s okay.” you shake your head as if to say it’s not and he runs a hand up and down your back as if to say it is. i promise it is.
he reaches behind him to pull one of your hands off his shoulder and hold it in his own, bringing them to his chest. your close contact makes it so both your hands press against both your ribcages at once, and astonishingly, you can hear two heartbeats.
“armin,” your body shakes in his embrace.
he squeezes your hand hard enough to hurt, but you squeeze back just as tight. as if to say to you, stay with me, and as if to tell him, i will. i will.
#this fic was written over the duration of like 2 weeks so sorry if it’s choppy!#nia.txt#nia.armin#aot#attack on titan#attack on titan x reader#eren yeager#attack on titan season 4#eren yaeger headcanons#attack on titan spoilers#eren jeager x reader#armin arlert#armin arlet x reader#armin smut#armin headcanons#armin x reader#armin arlert imagine#armin attack on titan#armin aot
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I made a post a few days ago about making some fixes to the Rise of Darkrai by just removing Mr. Nightmare Guy's ability to speak, and I've been thinking about other changes I would make to it, which I ended up compiling here in a timeline.
I would really love to either find a good fanfic rewrite of that movie or to make one myself, even if that would be effort.
Warning: it's kinda long.
General changes:
• Take away Darkrai's ability to speak at all. It makes 100% of all misunderstandings in this make sense and doesn't make him seem just dumb.
• In general, have Alice be both admirative of Alberto throughout while sympathetic to Tonio, some type of overworked town serviceman whose ingenuity the Baron leeches off of.
• If you want to have the plot be more of an intrigued, you'd probably need to redo the Palkia and Dialga fight scene at the start, either by removing it and doing the exposition in the Arceus movie (with the mystery around why they were fighting being clearly pointed out by the characters by the end of this one) or by having the relation between both events be murky at the start, which would be harder to accomplish.
• Ideally, Ash and Co. should just totally be removed from the plot. This is a secret technique that makes 90% of all Pokemon movies better. But it would require too many changes here.
As for a partial timeline:
• Have the contest going on later be an actual issue for the plot, establish Baron Alberto as a character earlier by maybe having him greet future contestants. In general, I'd want him to actually be shown to care about the image of *his* town around the world.
• Have Alice be a tour guide or something here, explaining the town's history, says that she had a grandma who lived here before her mother moved out and now she came back (admittedly you could probably do more with her lore here, but I don't have any ideas atm).
• While she explains the Towers, I'm going to be bold and have the Time Space Towers be renamed to something else and remove the prophetic dream that lead to them. Godey just wanted a musical tower to play Oracion, which is said to have soothing and healing properties, something along those lines.
• They go to the gardens, spend the time with their pokemon and leave once they see the deformed structures. Alberto comes and drops the Darkrai exposition, but tells them not to fear, as he is there to protect them and they'll find a solution. Alice mentions the townsfolk experiencing chronic nightmares for a few days. A vital point is that they now believe that Darkrai only arrived recently to torment them with nightmares.
• Here, have Alice actually feel safe because of Alberto and, somehow, make this romantic triangle actually seem worthwhile and not be resolved within the first two seconds of the characters meeting.
• Nightmare Sequence: They go to sleep and get nightmares about Palkia's oncoming attack.
• Alberto promises a solution, a part of which is just delegating to Tonio.
• They run to the gardens, accidentally enter an uncharted section devoid of other Pokemon, where Darkrai attacks them and chases after the human trio. Alberto and Gallade come to their defense and are just as successful as expected, with Gallade being put to sleep. Darkrai leaves and the Baron gloats about having scared it off to Alice, who believes him for the most part, but would rather go and heal Gallade.
• Nightmare Sequence: Gallade is woken up at the Pokemon center and gives them images of his nightmare with psychic powers. Broken up scenes of the garden getting destroyed and the Pokemon there getting eaten up by darkness. Everyone interprets this as a threat.
• After this, a bunch of trainers there specifically for the event start to leave, but Ash and Co. stay, wanting to protect the place and go through with the contest.
• While the contest does happen Dawn almost wins quite handedly because everyone else is half asleep now. They get pissed at Mr. Nightmare Guy for ruining the occasion.
• On command, Darkrai crashes the contest and tries to put specifically Ash, Brock and Dawn to sleep. After a short fight between Darkrai, Pikachu and a few others, the first is repulsed but Ash gets nightmare'd.
• Meanwhile, trying to find a solution since the morning, Tonio has been looking through the library and eventually finds Godey's diary. Because, if the tower legitimately can soothe the soul or whatever, then it should be able to solve Darkrai's hostility or at least stop the nightmares, right?
• Reading the journal, Tonio discovers that the former got the idea of Oracion soothing the soul when it healed Pokemon from Darkrai's nightmares. The apparent discrepancy here being that Tonio only knew that Darkrai had arrived in the garden recently, which is seemingly not the case.
• While he reads on the journal and about how Alicia actually met Darkrai, have more extended flashbacks, with Mr. Nightmare Guy (TM) and Small Blonde Child (TM) interacting more (this is perhaps, no, this is definitely the most necessary change). He runs back once he reads these.
• Nightmare Sequence: Here, Pikachu gets swallowed up by the ground, as does everyone around Ash, who interprets it as a threat as well.
• Ash wakes up at the Pokemon center and is livid.
• Trainers who tried to leave before the contest come back to say that they can't leave the town. Scene at the bridge happens and the Baron forms a mob.
• Ash is ready to join but they all get picked up by Tonio, who starts infodumping everything he's learned to the main cast minus Alberto.
• Darkrai had lived isolated in his corner of the garden this whole time, undetected.
• Ash deduces that the reason Darkrai was specifically targeting them was because they, unlike the Alamosites he had been tormenting before, were perhaps willing to listen and understand.
• They start to think that it was sending warnings to them and agree that they need to try and hear Darkrai out somehow before attacking it.
• While the mob is returning through the now warped and mangled town, the sky gets ripped apart and the place gets shrouded in darkness. They see Darkrai and do their best to fight it, not doing much in the process. He almost gets hit once but Ash and Co. come to stop the attack. Darkrai disappears off into the sky and Alberto gets all pissy about this, Alice getting pissed off at him in turn for not wanting to take precautions while trying to protect the town.
• Alberto wants to go after Darkrai, but gets transformed into a Lickilicky and then scared by the dream ghosts of all of the Pokemon put to sleep.
• They get all of these pokemon to the center, where Tonio is and he tries to explain what's happening. Notices that all of the dream ghosts are trying to get their attention to something (this is about as useful as I could make those, really).
• One of the ghosts, probably a Pokemon of the bunch, maybe Alice's Chimchar, leads them to this place and the center of the town. They see Darkrai circling there and he attacks them. They try and explain that they understand he isn't evil but he won't stop trying to drive them away. Baron Alberto says that he knew that they were mistaken and tries to attack, with little success once more, before Darkrai is driven into the ground by a Spacial Rend from an emerging Palkia.
• They try and fight it off to protect the injured Darkrai, but can't do much against Palkia, leading to Darkrai then saving them by blasting the Pink God Lizard (?) away.
From here on, my ideas for what happens next get really fuzzy, but things that probably should happen are:
• Tonio saves Alice and cements that couple. There was no memory of him saving her from falling off a cliff here.
• Darkrai saves Alberto specifically, with the latter not knowing how to feel about that. Maybe at least telling him to go and protect *his* town.
• An idea not my own (from the Conqueror AU by Witchysolfan on here, who has a lot of great ideas for a Lovecraftian Alamos) but way too good to ignore: to mirror the dream ghosts from the melding of dimensions, have time ghosts that start to appear as heralds of Dialga's arrival, one of which is Alicia, a distraction Alice needs to avert Darkrai from. Play the sentimental and necessary flashbacks of both of them playing in the garden.
• Darkrai does his thing where he forms the bubble of darkness to hold them both off while the cast climbs the tower, but when he gets struck by both of their attacks at once, he just tumbles to the ground but doesn't die. Instead, Alice comes over to help him, while Alamosites give their excuses and maybe heal him up with some moves.
• Here, Ash saves the day, Oracion stopping the fighting and alleviating Darkrai's pain, as well as the fear of the Alamosites. The light bird thing can be removed.
• The following day, the contest gets a rerun with viable contestants (and Darkrai making a timid appearance? Maybe not, he should probably continue to be secretive)
• Someone points out the mystery surrounding why Dialga and Palkia were fighting, as stated above.
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Demigod Dossier: Velstrac Demagogues, part 1
Pictured: Aroggus, the Abbey-Maker
Lawful Evil Mad Artists of the Shadow Plane
The Complete Book of the Damned, pg. 120~121 Additional information is also present in Adventure Path: Return of the Runelords: The City Outside of Time, pg. 74~79
Our second-ever Demigod Dossier, now fully in-swing! The Velstrac Demagogues are the rulers of the Shadow Plane and all the lives within, though many of said lives within aren’t really fans of them. Natives to the Netherworld find the presence of the Velstrac an annoyance at best and a threat to their lives at worst, and would much prefer if they went back to Hell where they came from, but unfortunately for everyone everywhere they don’t appear too eager to throw themselves into the jaws of the inferno just yet. Instead, they’re busy throwing themselves into the jaws of one another.
The Demagogues represent the pinnacle of a specific subset of the Velstrac’s twisted senses of ‘art’ and ‘perfection,’ either because they’ve mutilated themselves into something wholly unlike anything else that can, did, or could exist, or they’ve pioneered a form of artistry that other Velstrac couldn’t even conceptualize in the first place and gathered a fandom. It takes some very twisted, alien forms of thinking to become a Demagogue and get others rallied behind you, even moreso because the Velstrac themselves are, putting it kindly, completely out of their gourd. When your audience already expects the insane and outlandish, you have to go even further, and many of the fiends you’ll soon see have.
We’ll only be covering four in this initial post, with the rest to be saved for later...
Demagogues view mortals as little more than primal clay to be shaped, and thus see little worth in investing true divine power into them, worshipers receive Boons that are are relatively simple: a trio of spell-like abilities, each of which may be used 1/day. Boons are normally gained slowly, at levels 12, 16, and 20, however entering the Evangelist, Exalted, or Sentinel Prestige Classes can see the Boons gained as early as levels 10, 13, and 16. Note that while they are Lawful Evil fiends originally from Hell, they are not devils, thus you cannot enter the Diabolist Prestige Class to obtain their Boons without DM fiat.
Aroggus, the Abbey-Maker
Demagogue of Possibility, Revenge, and Sanctuary Domains: Evil, Law, Protection, Trickery Subdomains: Deception, Defense, Fear, Tyranny
Obedience: List the names of those who have wronged you until the writing covers a page, then consume the parchment. Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws to resist compulsion effects.
What a completely normal, sane, and healthy thing to do! As the first of the Demagogues to flee from Hell, Aroggus is EXTREMELY angry at the devils for locking them up in the first place. Angry enough to want revenge on the whole of the diabolic race, as well as the Asura... Angry enough that he hasn’t yet even started getting around to enacting his revenge, instead just constantly thinking about and refining it as if no iteration of suffering is perfect enough to match his fury.
True to form, he wants you to ruminate in your anger rather than doing anything to enact your vengeance, blacking out a page with the names (or just one name) of all who’ve wronged you no matter how petty or insignificant the inconvenience they may have caused. Unfortunately, no two ways about it, you’re going to look insane (in the literal definition of the term) doing this every day, especially if you only have one or two people who’ve wronged you enough to get onto your list. Scrawling their name, front AND back, until the page is filled and then eating it is behavior that will raise eyebrows no matter who you’re adventuring with. Best to keep this one behind closed doors. Make sure you have a glass of activated charcoal after, because all of that ink day after day (unless you write with, I don’t know, berry juice or blood) is going to do amazingly terrible things to your constitution.
The benefit is good. Compulsions are typically Save-Or-Suck effects, so having more Save means less Suck for you later on. It’s useful at any point in your adventure, so I can’t say anything bad about it! My only wish is that it was a little stronger, since some other gods give +4 vs compulsion and charm effects.
Boon 1: Nondetection Boon 2: Forcecage Boon 3: Imprisonment
Nondectection is a good spell for those times when you need to sneak by diviners, hide magic items from scrutiny, avoid the gaze of a Paladin who’s a little too judicious with Detect Evil, or to add another layer of shroud over Invisibility and the like. It’s a spell that’s a pain to prepare every single day, but useful to have when you need it... but you only have one casting of it per day, so using it wisely is paramount. Ironically, it combines well with your own Divination to find out if you’ll even need it later. More often than not you won’t be using it at all except to idly ward yourself when going into town or diving into a dungeon.
Forcecage is a completely different animal, the offensive and defensive applications of the spell simply mind-blowing, to the point that keeping this to just one paragraph to save space is going to take some herculean effort on my part! So, the basics: Forcecage has two versions, both of which halt all movement through them: A 20ft square of force bars that allow spells, projectiles, and line-of-effect through, and a 10ft cube that blocks line-of-effect and all forms of magic and supernatural abilities. A Forcecage is effectively invincible (having Hardness 30 and 20hp/level) and impossible to move, so anyone trapped inside without the ability to teleport is likely to stay there for the spell’s duration. Also, to put it simply, shoving enemies in the cage is the main point, but if you cannot, a 10ft/20ft square is an enormous roadblock to stop up narrow passages with.
Which leaves Imprisonment, a portable hole you can shove all sorts of problems into, which will likely create new problems down the line if the target had anything you needed on them. I recommend knocking out a foe, stripping them of their valuables, and then shoving them into their baby jail for all eternity! With the Freedom spell being the only means to undo Imprisonment (even Wish and Miracle fail), you’ll have no actual way to undo the spell against any target you cast it on for one or two more levels, if at all (depending on the party composition). Make sure to use it only when the villain has no MacGuffins, or is a powerful recurring threat. Imprisonment works on anything and everything capable of failing the Will save (take note, anyone wanting to fight Kaiju, Great Old Ones, or Spawn of Rovagug), which gets a -4 penalty if you know the target’s name and some facts about its life, so famous villains are even more vulnerable to being thrown into the Eternity Marble!
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Barravoclair, Lady of the Final Gasp
Demagogue of the Elderly, Fatalistic Insights, Resurrection Domains: Death, Evil, Healing, Law Subdomains: Murder, Restoration, Resurrection, Undead
Obedience: Practice breath control, holding your breath until you nearly pass out. Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus on checks to resist drowning and on saves against inhaled poisons.
A hell of a step down in terms of unhealthiness in terms of Aroggus, and significantly less suspicious, too. Breath control is practiced by people of all stripes, from athletes to explorers to simple monks attempting more profound meditation. While ‘nearly passing out’ is skirting an edge most people won’t approach, it’s not exactly as dangerous for you as, say, inhaling water or eating poison every day. Without any materials needed, the Lady of the Final Gasp is one of the simplest and probably the single cheapest Obedience ritual one could ask for! There is a minor caveat in that races who can’t breathe can’t technically do this Obedience at all, but those aren’t the audience Barravoclair wants anyway.
Unfortunately, the benefit is as weak as the Obedience is easy to do. Drowning is unlikely to come up as a danger unless you’re physically dragged into the water by a monster (which means holding your breath likely isn’t an option anyway), and inhaled poisons are the least common poison type in the game. Against the odd Catoblepas or Green Dragon it will come in handy, but it’s protection from injury poison you really need, which the Lady of the Final Gasp doesn’t provide.
Boon 1: Speak With Dead Boon 2: Resurrection Boon 3: Soul Bind
Alright, let’s face it. Some days, you need Speak With Dead to keep the plot running smoothly. Whether your overzealous DPS kills everyone in the room, your Fireball-lobbing Sorcerer kills everyone in the room, or your summoner’s unchained beasts kill everyone in the room, chances are at some point in your career you’re going to save the party a lot of headaches by being able to pull answers from a corpse. Having Speak With Dead available every day will likely not matter 80% of the time (meaning you can typically use it at your leisure just before going to bed), but much like with Water Breathing and spells like Remove Curse and Neutralize Poison, having it for those 20% of times you need it can keep the wheels spinning and stop unneeded side quests.
... And speaking of side quests and things you’ll need once in a blue moon, Resurrection? For free? Even 1/day? With the hefty cost of 10,000gp for the normal spell, even a well-off party will feel the impact every single time they have to use Rez, but the removal of the cost ups the power level of the spell by a margin so enormous that it doesn’t really matter what Boon you get before or after this one; THIS boon rewards worship of Barravoclair enough to justify putting up with her empty benefit. Even without factoring in the ability to raise party members, you can now curry favor with people of all stripes and demand all forms of insane payments for your ability to raise centuries-old dead at no cost but time... or do your work for free and call in favors at a later date. Do note, however, that you’ll also need someone else on standby to remove the negative levels/stat drain caused by the resurrection process.
I said it didn’t matter what the third Boon was and I stand by it. Unlike with the free Rez above, Soul Bind’s enormous cost still makes its use as anything but a once-per-campaign finisher of an annoying enemy irritating and unfeasible. Spell-likes normally require no components, but Soul Bind operates in a gray area of the rules in that its focus component becomes the subject for the spell, meaning that a DM can very easily and very rightly say you DO require the gemstone whose value must equal or exceed the target’s HD x 1,000. Binding even a simple 5 CR creature requires the tall order of a 5,000gp gemstone, and if you want to use it on a target that’s worthwhile, it gets expensive fast. It’s way cheaper and easier to just hire a Cacodaemon.
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Fharaas, the Seer in Skin
Demagogue of Experience, Murder, and Patterns Domains: Evil, Knowledge, Law, Repose Subdomains: Ancestors, Fear, Memory, Souls
Obedience: Study the interior of a freshly severed limb. Benefit: You are immune to bleed effects that deal 6 damage or less.
This Obedience is deceptively simple for what its implication is. You’d best get yourself a Sack Of Rats or have access to a lot of disposable prisoners (or the Regenerate spell)! But thankfully, there’s some wiggle room in the wording: ‘freshly severed’ means no cheating and using Gentle Repose on the same arm over and over, but it ALSO means you can carry around a single corpse and slowly slice it apart, as the limbs themselves don’t have to be fresh, just freshly cut off for the purpose of the ritual. Also, you can use the bodies of Undead, Constructs, and any other creature that technically has severable limbs! Though Fharaas, the Seer In Skin, will likely punish you if your ritual doesn’t involve the examination of actual flesh.
You’re going to look really weird, is what I’m saying. At least if someone barges in on you, you can claim you’re inspecting them for something or other. Infection, signs of magic, etc, whatever you can come up with to blunt the blow. You can cover yourself moderately well by being a butcher or a hunter in your day job, as the severed limb doesn’t have to be human, or even sapient (hence why I suggest a Sack Of Rats), letting you freely slice up and examine your kills.
Bleed effects are fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of things but are also a pain in the neck to deal with in the middle of battle, so this giving a +4 bonus aga--wait, sorry, hold on no, this isn’t a bonus to saving throws? Or skill checks to heal bleed? It just... Stops them if they deal 6 or less damage? You don’t even have to make a save?
Okay. Okay, alright. So you’re just immune to bleed, then?
More or less, really. There are very few monsters that deal more than d6 bleed damage with their attacks (be warned that higher-level ones can sometimes stack their bleed!), and this ability also works on the rare but dreaded stat bleed, and off the top of my head there are NO monsters that deal more than a d4 dice in stat bleed damage. My main problem is that it doesn’t reduce the bleed damage you take by 6, so taking even 1 more point of bleed damage makes this ability useless. Still, though it’s fairly narrow, being effectively immune to a dangerous and irritating status ailment at level 3 or so (when bleed is at its most threatening) is well worth taking up butchery.
Boon 1: Keen Edge Boon 2: Vision Boon 3: Foresight
Keen Edge is a spell you absolutely want to slap onto any vaguely pirate-y or hoity-toity party member you may have, as cutlasses, rapiers, and scimitars all leap from a dangerous 18~20 critical range to a terrifying 15~20, meaning they threaten to critically strike 1 out of every 4 attacks instead of just once every other fight or so. With a duration of 10 min/level, the enchantment will likely last multiple fights even if you only have it 1/day, but unfortunately it refuses to stack with any crit-boosting enchantments or feats the wielder may already possess, lessening its usefulness as your adventure goes on and your martial party members pick up increasingly fancy gear and pad out their collection of feats. Still, it’s useful for when you get it, and will remain useful for several levels after.
Vision is a whole different beast, and a dangerous one at that. It operates as the Legend Lore spell but vastly accelerated, allowing you to scrape the public consciousness for any information it may have on a specific person, place, or thing. I’ve complained about the general niche uses of Legend Lore before, but Vision grants the information in a much shorter time (a single standard action) at the cost of a potential for failure and a slap of fatigue whether you succeed or not. I don’t like 1/days that do nothing on a failure, but since Vision is purely a downtime spell (unless you need to know the boss’ weakness or info on the Evil Doom Artifact right now immediately), it’s not as much of an impediment to lose out on whatever information it could give you. That being said, the DM will likely have ways for you to do whatever plot-relevant research you need anyway, so Vision is more of a way to speed up the process than anything.
Which leaves Foresight, a spell whose main benefit relies intensely on DM cooperation, as I’ve ranted about here. Mechanically it’s fairly unimpressive, but if the DM reads the spell carefully, they should realize it gives whoever you cast it on a 6-second glance into the future at all times. Whatever horrors befall the victim 6 seconds from now should spring into your mind before they happen, making you the best trap radar on the planet, and the spell’s warnings for the best ways to protect yourself will urge the DM to grant you information about the enemy’s capabilities you may never otherwise know... but what do you expect from 9th level magic? It SHOULD be filling you in with details you’d never figure out!
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Inkariax, the White Death
Demagogue of Preservation, Absolute Cold, and Solitude Domains: Evil, Law, Void, Water Subdomains: Fear, Ice, Isolation, Slavery
Obedience: Inventory your collection of hoarded knickknacks, reciting your unique name for each item as you do Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws to resist effects that would petrify or paralyze you.
God, finally, someone normal. At worst you’ll look like someone with a few obsessive issues, but at least you won’t look like a menace to society as you lay out your, I dunno, marbles or bone dice or dolls or what have you and make note that they’re still there, cooing to them with names only you know. It’s fitting for Inkariax, of all the Demagogues, to have an Obedience that requires no self-harm, physically or psychologically; unlike all the rest, he was born perfect and doesn’t need to chase after it. Instead, he pursues finding perfection in others, freezing and collecting people and items he believes represent perfection in whatever unusual way he desires that day (having perfect posture, or a perfect scream, or a perfect pair of eyes, etc). Much like him, you’re encouraged to expand a collection of whatever you deem perfect and desirable, which you’re often going to do just over the course of normally adventuring. I’ve yet to see a player character that doesn’t start amassing all sorts of junk in their pockets the moment they get a Bag of Holding or similar.
Indeed, you can just pick up whatever catches your fancy, be it stones, sticks, or severed bits of an enemy, though I’m sure Inkariax will ever-so-slowly raise a disapproving eyebrow if you just pick up any old junk. Make sure to curate your collection now and then! Being able to perform this Obedience with anything you happen to gather is especially helpful if you’re ever separated from your collection (always a danger) and need to start again, but note that each item you gain in your collection must have a completely unique name. That’s only really a danger for especially RP-heavy campaigns, but in such campaigns Worship of the White Death isn’t for everyone who just names all their collected bird feathers Jeffery. Start getting in the habit of stretching out your inventory sheet with names for all your items!
The benefit you get from lovingly counting up all your stolen statuettes and dusty books is resistance to two of the worst status effects in the game. While petrification is relatively rare it typically appears in Save-Or-Suck form, which makes protection against it far more valuable than, say, protection against something like the far more common fatigue or exhaustion. Paralysis is an ailment just short of a death sentence by itself, costing the victim their turn at best and their life at worst, so even a +4 between you and that is something you need to cling to with your entire being.
Boon 1: Sleet Storm Boon 2: Sequester Boon 3: Microcosm
Sleet Storm is a very simple spell with a decent number of functions. Its Long range means that any enemy in your line of sight can potentially be a target, letting you lash out easily at ranged enemies or dangerous casters by creating a 40ft-wide and 20ft-tall area of concealing sleet that’s impossible for any vision to pierce (except the rare and niche Snowsight or Fogcutter Lenses). Anyone inside will have to rely on Tremorsense or Blindsense (though the jury’s out on if the splashing of the sleet would confound those, as well) to navigate it, and 40ft of difficult terrain can feel impossible to clamber through when you start right in the middle of it with no idea which way is the way you need to go. It’s one of the strongest vision-blockers in the game due to its immunity to common tactics that thwart lesser spells (Gust of Wind, True Seeing, etc), forcing enemies to either blow their valuable uses of Dispel Magic or suffer for its entire duration. My only complaint is that you only get it 1/day and that it screws over your party just as hard if you use it incorrectly.
Sequester is as niche a use spell as there ever was for players, requiring a bit of forethought about what or who you’d want to hide with it. The target must be willing or inanimate to be affected, so tricking an enemy via Charm or Dominate into accepting the spell can keep them fresh as a daisy for weeks at a time if you ever have a reason to do such a thing. More often than not you’ll use it to conceal items you seriously don’t want seen or detected, such as a Bag of Holding or similar loaded with your collection of knickknacks or emergency supplies, a particular hostage, an NPC you need to keep alive, or your phylactery if you’re a Lich. If you’re especially sadistic, using it on an item someone else needs and throwing it into a well or a hoard of other objects will keep them occupied for a while. If you’re a more martial character, using it to hide your armor is viable, making it seem as though you’re invincible when enemy blows bounce straight off, or even your weapon to confound your enemies who seem to be taking wounds from an unseen item. Your mime routine will be killer, literally! Just... Just don’t drop the thing, because in the heat of battle you’re never going to find it.
Microcosm is one of the best spells you can hurl into a crowd of commoners or a swarm of foes meant to gum you up instead of actually threaten you. Its 30 HD limit will mean it likely will only strike one or two creatures capable of actually threatening you, but it’s brutal even then. The spell is permanent, trapping your victims in an illusory world in which everything goes right for them even as their bodies starve to death in the waking world. Anything with less than 10 HD is automatically affected with no saving throw, the spell easily mopping up mobs, while anything with 11~15 HD escapes automatically after 10 min... per level you have. On a successful save. There’s Save-Or-Suck, and then there’s the immensely rare Save-And-Suck! No wonder Microcosm is ONLY on the Psychic’s list! Anything with more than 16 HD is unaffected if they succeed their save, but all their allies are likely in an everlasting dreamland now. The big issue is that the HD restriction is way tighter than you may think; creatures, especially at higher levels, usually do NOT have HD matching their CR, but if you’re mainly battling level-appropriate Humanoid or Monstrous Humanoid creatures, Microcosm is fairly reliable in such battles, as those foes typically have HD that roughly matches their CR. But if you’re up against, say, Dragons or Outsiders, good luck bud.
Side note: Microcosm and Sequester used in combination make for excellent ways to start your own morbid collection of living creatures, just like your icy master! Just make sure you have some non-Divination means of seeing them, as Sequester blocks even True Sight.
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P1-Looking at how great your posts on how Anne,Sasha,&Marcy would interact with both the Duck nephews and Team Magic, I thought I may as well do one on them interacting with Owl House kids and add Sprig & Polly in there too to even it out. Who do you think the Calamity trio, Sprig, and Polly would get along with the best individually between Luz, Amity, King, Willow, and Gus? I'd assume Luz with Marcy (both fantasy nerds), Amity with Sasha (both not so good friends and maybe not so good parents)
First off, thank you I'm glad you enjoyed my posts about the duck crew! Secondly, I am so sorry it took so long to get to this ask, given how much I loved doing the stuff with the duck kids and amphibia girls the first two times around, these types of asks are my absolute favorites to get, so I decided to wait till I had the time to really put some thought into it and give it the response it deserves! That being said, lets get to it! (rest of the post under the cut cause wow this is long)
Ok so I do agree that Luz and Marcy would get along splendidly but I am saving Marcy for later because I have plans for her, along with a few factors that lead me to believe there's some interesting fun to be had with another combination. While Marcy and Luz both share the "enamored with another world" aspect, Marcy's approach is to enjoy diving into studies and making herself useful on commanded missions and such. Luz can't study for longer than a few minutes at a time, and while she's always down to help her friends, she's also perfectly content causing chaos in the home of a known criminal. However, there is a character from Amphibia who loves to engage in the daring adventure side of the world of amphibia, diving headfirst into whatever trouble they can find, regardless of how much they do or do not know what they're getting into.
Luz is a perfect match to go on chaotic adventures and have massive amounts of fun with Sprig. Sprig, especially at the start of Amphibia, is always the one dragging Anne along on all kinds of adventures in the wilds of amphibia, and Luz is the driving force behind exploring the boiling isles and finding new adventures and places to see, exciting things to do. Whether Sprig ended up on the boiling isles or Luz ended up in Amphibia, I'm certain one of the pair would immediately ask if there were any cool and potentially dangerous places to explore, and the other would be the first one to take them up on it. Sprig would get the chance to see more of what the people from Anne's world are like, and Luz would get the chance to see a little glimpse of that "PG fantasy adventure" she was looking for in the first place. Overall the two of them would have so much fun together, on that I am certain.
Next up, I will admit there are probably better characters for each of these two to get matched up with, so this is admittedly a bit of the two being leftover, but I do think I can buildup a pretty solid argument for the pairing. Willow and Polly is a strange duo on the surface. Polly is bold, loud, and aggressive. Willow is calm, quiet, and gentle. However I think there's some potential there. I think Willow is a really great person to keep Polly out of trouble, in the hypothetical scenario Polly is let loose on the boiling isles that would be a complete disaster(for the isles, Polly would come out of a fistfight with the entire emperors coven unscathed) unless someone was there to reign her in. At first Polly might be a little reluctant to be looked after by someone who is just another kid in her eyes, but we've seen bits and pieces of Polly where we're reminded that, as aggressive as she can be sometimes, she's still just a kid. She's not immune to love and affection, and I think Willow is just the kindhearted, loving person to help Polly feel a little more okay with not always being the strong brave kid she tries so hard to be. As a little bonus I think it would be pretty great for Polly to think she's got Willow and her softhearted nature all figured out after some time only to be taken completely by surprise by the sudden realization the moment Willow uses her magic that "oh hold up this girl is insanely powerful." To be honest that might be a pretty great experience too for her to see that power comes in many shapes and forms. (A lot of the people who are able to fight in amphibia are more agressive about it than willow is so it would be new for polly). This goes double if Willow meets Polly in Amphibia because I mean have you seen how much foliage is in that world? Dear Lord Willow would be a god.
(it is at this point that I realize how long this post is gonna be, maybe I should go put a cut up there somewhere)
For the third pairing I will now reveal where I decided to send Marcy. I would absolutely love to see interactions between Gus and Marcy. Just imagine it. I would argue that Gus is the most curious and inquisitive owl house kid, as well as the most inclined to actually be constantly studying new things instead of jumping right into them. Gus is a dedicated investigator (perhaps too dedicated) and Marcy can absolutely get behind that. Beyond that I think Gus would lose his mind to find another human in the first place, let alone one who can probably recite all of human history off the top of her head. Meanwhile with Marcy, she would be absolutely fascinated by everything and everyone in the boiling isles, and I can just imagine right now that every time she had a new question she'd pose it to Gus and Gus would be like "I... I don't know. *excitedly* I don't know! Let's go find out!" cue the two of them rushing off to investigate:tm:. Also! More than anything else i want Marcy to help provide suggestions to Gus on how to improve/expand his tunnels under hexside because I NEVER FORGOT THE TUNNELS.
With only two pairs leftover y'all can probably guess who's going with who. Unless you can't that would also be fair. I am kinda throwing a curveball with Sasha's I suppose, but I think it actually works out pretty well. Sasha and King have incredibly similar ideas about just about everything. While I think initially King would try to order Sasha around and it would get on Sasha's nerves severely, once that toned down, the two of them would get along really well. Sasha wouldn't see King as a threat due to his size and overall lack of power, and King would just continue seeing Sasha as a very strong pawn, though not out loud so she doesn't yell at him. I mean, we've seen what King would act like provided he became a teenager and it's honestly pretty in line with how Sasha would take over and be in power. I can absolutely see the two of them conspiring to run the whole isle, whether or not those plans ever actually come to fruition, I think she'd develop a soft spot for him.
And finally, I think there's a lot of untapped potential with Anne and Amity. While Anne is more coming from the past of the person who got pushed around and Amity is more the one who did the pushing, the two of them have more to bond over than it would seem. The core concept at the depths of each of their characters, is a chance for them to finally figure out who they are and what they want to be. With Anne it's been Sasha's presence and her need to be socially connected at all times that drove her to have a messed up view of friendship (friends are there to do stuff for other friends, like an exchange for their love), and the feeling she should just be quiet and let everything happen to/around her. With Amity it's the constant pressure from her parents to let them define her along everything she does and all of her relationships. Both Anne and Amity are in a place where, after spending so much time missing out on the chance to form their own identities and become their own people, they're finally starting to realize they can decide who they are. They're finally going to find themselves, and it's gonna be beautiful.
#Amphibia#the owl house#toh#Anne Boonchuy#Marcy Wu#Sasha Waybright#Polly Plantar#Sprig Plantar#Luz Noceda#Willow Park#Gus Porter#King#Amity Blight#ok listen I love these kids so much#I'm sorry the ask took this long to address but I like#Really Wanted to think about it#this took like an hour to write out#I cherish all of these characters and theres so much potential in these pairings#maybe someday I'll address the potential in pairs I didn't go wiht#cause there really is some#ask#thanks for the ask#citadel writes
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All the petty things I hate about fate!winx and their shitty universe/world building because
I'd added most if these in tags of other posts but I'm still so mad lmao
The way characters, Aisha and Mrs Dowling specifically make references to explicitly human or American things like instagram and Harry Potter
These people are from a different dimension for ffs why are they concerned with or are even aware of this very earth-specific shit? Do they teach earth classes at school over there?
I understand not wanting to have them be oblivious so Bloom wouldn't have to explain it to them, but it simply could be ✨omitted✨
Why would you go out of your way to date your work like this lmao ew
Ms. Dowling calling Tinkerbell an air fairy.. I cannot breeve with the stupidity why did they keep that in there
Why is Ms. Dowling.. the headmistress.. teaching classes? Where are the other teachers?
We ended up with a trio of antagonists (I guess you could call them that?) by the end of the season anyway so why not give us the trix, why have the characters play double roles as friends of our protagonists and also the villains/bullies? They clearly wanted a delinquent trio, in which case they could've gender bent the trix if they wanted to keep all the unnecessary sexual tension.
It just feels like the production team was lazy, they didn't want to hire more actors, they didn't want to bother with making the world immersive or lived in or believable at best, they just didn't give enough of a fuck
They wanted to make this show and attatch Winx to it for.. what? Like did you even google the main plot points? The abridged version or sparknotes to get details on the very literal, basic characteristics of our main characters or their roles or the world they inhabit????
It lacks wonder and intrigue.. I mean Bloom moves to another dimension, a school for fairies and we don't see her marvel once at anything.. and that's because she might as well have been in Switzerland because she's in exactly the same environment she would've been in over there anyway.
They could've said Alfea was in Europe and I'd believe it because nothing about the setting makes it feel otherworldly. I'm sorry but I'm not impressed.
Why do the teachers and graduated specialists communicate via facetime ?? In the magic dimension. ??? Why do they text each other and those texts then appear on screen like .. oh look, like a bad netflix teen movie ????? HELLO ??? it's the way technology and magic could've blended in so seamless into the world THE WAY IT WAS ALREADY DONE/SHOWN. Missed opportunity. it just takes you out of it imo every time you see the ugly, bland, gray text bar. Some fucking flavour pls I'm begging
How stupid the specialist must feel clonking around with the skinniest shreds of armor, plastic swords on their backs and battery powered flashlights and cellphones in their bags. R we larping?? I know I'd be laughing and asking why we hadn't already come up with something more effective .. idk like guns. I'm surprised I ain't see one gun in there.
In the beginning Ms. Dowling says some nonsense about fairies having lost the ability to transform to explain why there are no wings, which means they could've transformed before. So are we to assume that this supposed to be set in the time proceeding the original then?? Because something is not adding up with where they should be as a magical society technologically if that's the case
How does the production team want to keep the dark academia vibes with torches lining the walls and also want them to be face timing each other, presumably from miles and miles away in the dark forest???
Pls pick an aesthetic and stick to it everything was so unnecessarily dark. Where do they charge their phones since it's the only device we see that is the slightest bit modern and dont fucking tell me they charge it with magic I will punch you in the face
Why is there only one major monarchy that we are shown? Why are Solaria the only ones contributing to the efforts to defend the school and where is this mysterious battalion we never see lmaoo it's all so bad its laughable.
Is this set in the kingdom of Solaria? And why does the queen of an alleged interdimensional superpower monarchy pull up in black SUVs??????????? Why does she pull up with Andreas?? Is he not the king of Erakleon?? Where are his soldiers and his battalion and just?? Huh!? The world just feels empty like nobody lives here fr
Are we supposed to believe that the specialists get paired up with fairies just as a normal occurence and that they have to 'trust each other' and not because the plot demands it suddenly half way through when all we've seen so far are the fairies doing normalish school and homework, and the specialists outside, being physical everyday all day. This was never even implied that they'd have to work together apart from when we see the faculty as youngins with Rosalind. But even then.. it's like well why are they even together lmao? Is this a special team formed from Rosalind’s protégées? Were they formed after graduating from Alfea or what is this?? Are they the ONLY team of specialist/fairies hunting every single burned one?? What?
Are we now supposed to buy that Musa is being switched to 'support' because that's where her strengths lie and not in combat?? Are we supposed to believe that these girls know hand to hand combat?? When was this established? We see Terra wrapping some baby vines around a dude and I'm sorry is that the practical application of her power? Is this what the fairies are supposed to do once they graduate? Or is it just a switch in curriculum because of the threats outside the barrier?? This is never made clear.
Because if not then what's the point of this?? Why do they suddenly have endless classes together when the expectation was never set for the fairies to be like soldiers or out in the field fighting ?
Where exactly are they supposed to be what was the purpose of including Aster Dell and why is it a joy ride away from Alfea lmao?? Where Bloom is from and also not from?? Plot pls make it make sense
Why are fairies from another dimension vaping or smoking weed?? They are not human so why are they engaging in specifically human vices, yol couldn't come up with anything else to characterize 'delinquents'?? Very lazy very como se dices.. no effort. Nothing a little more spicy yol could invent, at least change the name and some properties holy shit did yol even try ??
So its fairies everywhere, having a lil party in the east wing of a phat castle.. and they are playing beer pong and dressed in t shirts and jeans..
Can you hear me screaming? Can you hear me vibrating with rage?
Not one floating decoration or magical anything in sight. Just purple lights and subpar vibes
Stella's costume design: tragic. I won't discuss further because we don't have the space or time but just know that it was absolutely atrocious and I hated it. Giving very debutante vibes
The entire budget going to that lame transformation sequence that was not a transformation sequence and those horrible, barely-there fire wings
Edgelord bloom and all her fucking leather jackets. Why do 30 yo, white cis men think girls exist in a binary? They could keep her earlier characterization and make her a hothead.. Bloom literally screamed herself into a couple power upgrades in the original come ooonnnn
Let girls be feminine without it being a character flaw what is wrong with yol its 2021. They could make her more mature, more angsty or whatever the hell else and not style her like that
The way Aisha's abilities flipflop between episodes and scenes. Very inconsistent. One minute she's struggling with a drop of water and the next she is moving an entire body of water for her bestie Bloom to fake transform because the plot demands it. Why even add in her struggles at all if you're just going to ignore it?
Why was Stella with them in that scene? She didn't do anything literally.. Aisha pulled the water and she did .. nothing.
Who the fuck is Rosalind? Why would they add her in,, to add nothing to story? The company of light was a thing, they could've plucked one of them hoes to be the antagonist. Why did the winx club need their own Delores Umbridge? Valtor was right there if you wanted an evil educator type character.
The camera work was so bland during the down beats, stagnant and fixed during a fairy party and erratic and ugly and disorienting during the fight scenes
I'm not getting over the fairy party because it was a good opportunity for the production and everyone else to show the differences between where Bloom was and where she is now but instead it just looks like a regular teen high school party?? This could have been set in Switzerland fr.
Everyone's just kind of standing?? You mean to tell me these people are from all different places in the magical dimension and their customs are all the same? They all throw parties like this ??
White and flavorless I am very bored
I guess the main question or takeaway I have is just.. who is this for? Because everyone, including the showrunners keep saying that it's for us, the fans of the original. But apart from the characters sharing some names, there are really no other similarities. So again, who was this supposed to appease or placate or satisfy? Because it sure as hell wasn't the winx club fans.
Overall, this feels very much like something I wrote and probably published on ff.net when I was 13 because I thought girls couldn't be taken seriously if they liked pink, and injected angst into everything that didn't need it and had no idea how to structure scenes or dialogue. It's just bad, objectively and N*tflix will keep making shit like this because apparently some people have bad taste??? Idk yol, be easy
#im never gonna stop i dont care i dont care#and i dont even usually make my own posts i just be reblogging and vibing#but im passionate abt this because he originak was the reason i wanted to learn how to draw#it was the reason i wanted to learn how to write and tell stories#it shaped a lot of shit for me because it was the very first one of its kind id ever seen#i ran home from school to watch it and argued with my friends about who got to be flora#i forced them to make cardboard wings with me and to perform the opening song during a school talent show#thank god we didnt get to perform otherwise we would all have died of embarrassment in hindsight#but ye i just hate to see things that obviously are very dear to a lot of people be treated with such casual indignity and its a disservice#a disservice to the fans and to the people who had probably want to create it as a passion project#to the people who spent hours and hours in rewrites and fanart amazing fanart and post series continuations#no one is saying the original is sacred and cannot be touch#this fandom actively calls out the bullshit rainbow has done and continues to do to the characters we love.. i havent spoken to one fan who#doesnt have an alter dedicated to their downfall. we found a piece of ourselves in these gorls and they were stripped and caricatured and#played for laughs so netfilx can make money and its just very upsetting to see.#so again fuck you brian young fuck you ignio and rainbow and fuck whoever the costume designer was#mine#text#fate winx club#fate: the winx saga#f:tws#winx club
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LOKI SHOW AU:
Sylvie is a 16/17 year old character called “Nokka” (which is Norse feminine for No One). Loki reluctantly takes her under his wing when he meets her. After some time running from the TVA, and dealing with issues where Nokka “wants revenge” but struggles with hurting people when it comes down to it (esp from the TVA because she knows they’re all mind-controlled variants) Loki sits her down and demands to know the truth “because for a Loki you’re a terrible liar”.
Nokka admits/reveals that she’s NOT a Loki at all, just an Asgardian orphan who messed with the time-stream by accident (overhearing Loki tell a guard to inform Odin Thor was going to Jotunheim and running ahead to tell the Allfather when the soldier sneered at Loki’s back or smth else trivial). Loki asks her why she never chose a name for herself aside from what others gave her, and she says she didn’t really have time while being on the run to think of anything but Loki.
Loki is semi touched by this (but says nothing). (Nokka wistfully mentions in passing that while hiding on Midgard she heard the name Sylvie and thought it was nice too). Loki comforts her with a bit of awkwardness, then announces he’s going to help her with her powers and how to fight “less like an alley cat and more like a warrior from Asgard”. He also tells her that if she truly wants vengeance, she’s going to have to kill people. Nokka rebuts this with the declaration that she’s already killed people—citing those she’s had to kill to survive. Loki acknowledges that, but states that those killings are different from what she’s going to have to do if they want to win and get out with their lives.
(Aside: Kang wants Loki captured because OG Loki is different from the rest of his variant selves because he ADAPTS and grows his personality and character—whereas other Lokis do not. Kang feels OG Loki and Nokka are a threat to his rule, and he wants to permanently erase them to keep his rule over the Timeline secure)
Loki and Nokka make their way through the worlds and pull off a heist and crash the TVA with Mobius’s help. Ravonna prunes Mobius and Nokka out of rage and bitterness for destroying the order/TVA she loves—Loki, though he could escape, prunes himself too (showing how he can change his character from the other variants of himself).
In The Void, Loki stumbles among other loki variants, and finds Nokka moping by herself in one corner of Kid Loki’s underground palace. At the same time, Mobius arrives and busts them out of “Loony Loki Jail”. Impressed and amused, once they’re safe Loki asks how Mobius found them. The TVA agent declares that he found a trail of “complete and utter chaos, and followed that”. The trio share a laugh over this before growing solemn and trying to figure out what to do. Loki discusses Alioth and the strange energy the monster gives off, as well as the malevolent eternal purple mist. Mobius makes the offhand remark about going into it, or Nokka using her “wacky mind-controlling powers” on Alioth to get passed the giant to explore the mist.
Nokka hedges, nervous because she’s never controlled anything that big before. She walks away to sit by herself, staring out at the undulating violet mist. Loki likes the plan and irons out some details with Mobius before wandering down to Nokka. He sits beside her silently. Nokka announces “you can’t manipulate me like Thor—no Jotunheim trip 2: This Time Alioth.” Loki agrees that he can’t. Nokka smiles but hugs her knees to her chest with a shiver, rocking slowly. Loki asks what’s wrong—if she’s scared. Nokka shakes her head “just cold”. Loki magicks a blanket and gives it to her kindly, petting her hair (in a dad way lmao). They sit in silence staring at the mist. Loki quietly messes around beside her, magicking knives and bracers and other small pieces of armor for himself (we’ll give him an Asgardian tunic somewhere along the line because BURN the fugly TVA clothes). Nokka glances at him as he does this. Loki catches her and they share Looks.
Nokka shrugs and turns away. Carefully, as he cleans a dagger with a cloth, Loki wonders about two people controlling Alioth. Nokka eyes him warily. Loki briefly demonstrates/elaborates on how he can reveal or illuminate thoughts and parts of the mind, but can’t control it like she can. He quietly declares that if she shows him how, perhaps they can do it together. Nokka hesitates, but agrees.
So Mobius goes to distract Alioth. Classic Loki sees this (and as the only one actually paying attention to Nokka and OG Loki, runs in to help, doing the same thing he did in the show, allowing Mobius to escape). Nokka falters with the mind control, but Loki takes her hand and encourages her (insert some witty line about “only learning that day himself, after all”) and Nokka presses on. They succeed, and stare at a pathway through the mist.
Loki glances at Nokka, and tells her to “lead the way”. Grinning, but quickly sobering, Nokka heads toward the path. Mobius catches up to Loki then, and informs Loki he’s going back to the TVA to “raise more hell”. Loki grins, and Mobius “thanks him for the spark” like in the show. They embrace (to Loki’s surprise) before Loki follows Nokka. Mobius watches them until they disappear into the mist and then summons an orange portal and vanishes himself.
Walking through the mist, Nokka declares something “off”, and Loki agrees “like being laid in ambush”. Unsettled, they continue—but draw blades. At last they reach a half-burned and dilapidated castle at the edge of a cosmos. They come up to the black doors but nothing happens. Nokka blasts the doors off their hinges, increasingly paranoid. Loki criticizes the action but they proceed anyway. (Everything basically happens as in the show, but Kang is Not Friendly—menacing and ominous (think horror movie character—something off but not obvious) due to him wanting to destroy both Loki and Nokka). Loki catches on before Nokka to Kang’s intentions, and stands, lashing out at Kang. Nokka is confused and feels lied to (let’s say there’s some truth twisted into lies Kang said about Loki “and his lust for power” so she feels uncertain). A fight ensues between Kang and Loki but Kang uses Loki’s Frost Giant heritage against him. Kang says he’d accept Nokka as a protégé “because I’ve watched you—you’re teachable” but wants her to kill Loki “to prove she’s not as worthless as he is”.
Loki looks at her as she walks up to him, and he tells her “you only grow as far as you allow people to cage you” (or some other philosophical elegant line). Making the realization that Nokka will truly be just an imitation of all the other Loki variants if she kills Loki for her own self-succession, she drops the knife and instead frees Loki from whatever magical/enchanted snare Kang got him into. Kang lashes out, but Loki jumps up in front of Nokka, and takes whatever blow it was (maybe permanent obliviation, maybe transport to another timeline idk yet). Looking triumphant at the empty room, Kang turns around and wanders back to his desk “another mess all cleared up” he hums to himself.
Nokka appears out of the shadows and grabs his arm as he moves to sit, whirling Kang around. Angrily, tears in her eyes, she stabs him twice in the chest with one of Loki’s daggers he’d dropped. Kang collapses back into his chair, and laughs at her. He says some things about his alternate selves being even more cruel than him, that he’s “a kitten” in comparison, and she’ll never defeat them—“just a little nobody. Doomed to fail because you don’t have a name to be remembered by. A No One.” Nokka stoops over him, wielding Loki’s knife.
“I’m not no one—I’m Sylvie. Lokidottir.” She stabs Kang. After he dies, she wanders to the window, staring out at the splintering multiverse. She collapses, crying, because she’s alone. “You promised we’d win together,” she whispers to herself, a little broken.
(Opening to Consider for a potential Part II: a large flash of green out in the multiverse. Sylvie jerks her head up and stares—before grinning.)
Some notes:
The whole “love yourself” angle in this AU of the show is Loki learns to care for Sylvie even when she lashes out—and treats her as he would have wanted to be treated when he lashed out.
Kang is Not Nice. He’s not as bad as other versions of himself, but he is absolutely the bad guy in this AU.
Loki isn’t an idiot. Full stop. And he uses magic A LOT.
Loki takes a mentor role in this. HE IS THE MAIN CHARACTER, and Sylvie is a secondary role that morphs into an MC. He doesn’t get run over by Sylvie’s girl!pain backstory.
Sylvie isn’t a shitty annoying asshole kween. She’s a scared teenager. She’s not capable of huge fights or dumb shit like the canon shitshow.
This is Very Much a sibling or father/daughter relationship between Loki and Sylvie. No romance. PLATONIC ONLY!!!!
The TVA is EVIL. Not “a necessary evil” but completely, absolutely, reprehensibly evil. Autocratic and fascist, if you will. The interrogation Loki endures in the first episode (and then with Sif in episode ???) will be framed as torture.
Can’t really think of a faceclaim to the Nokka/Sylvie character (cuz DiMartino would be WAAAY too old for this one). But I’m thinking like a young Maia Mitchell or Mackenzie Foy type teenager. Gotta be brunette—cuz the blonde is stupid as shit and makes no sense. We want a Lady Loki lookalike here, folks (even if she’s NOT Loki; Nokka made herself APPEAR like him after taking his name so she could to be called one of his variants).
This makes room for a Loki “replacement” so Hiddleston could bow out, AND makes it “feministy” for the ladies; but ALSO allows for GOOD WRITING and Loki to keep his dignity/agency as a main character/antihero.
This whole thing was fully and completely inspired by this song while I drove home from work:
youtube
@fast-and-the-curious what say u to this AU?
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Basic Training Headcanons
I don't know why but after reading @jennifer-10nyson post , ( here ) , I wanted to write this down.
This was supposed to be a small paragraph but then I got carried away and then OCs started coming in and well, it got long and ended up being this. Also I didn't re - read after it was done so sorry for the grammatical mistakes. Also sorry if things aren't Canon, I wasn't exactly thinking about it much when I was typing it out.
This is how the Basic Training episode [ or story arc ] should've gone in my opinion.
The trio is taken to the academy as usual
Ben complains , Tack is introduced
Brannigan is still a jerk, but still is head of the alpha squad.
They are the best ranking team in the academy
Ben and co will not be fighting with them or against them throughout their stay.
They've been training for a while and are on a whole other level. Ben and Co. are considered newbies to the program so it doesn't make sense for them to be together.
When they arrive , they are taken to the main hall.
Ben, even Gwen and Kevin don't really think the need training. They have saved the world a lot.
There are more aliens besides them , not just the 4.
Hulka informs them that they will have specific training to help them develop their own capabilities.
They will then also have common classes like what were mentioned in the episode about space ships n alike, and stratergy making sessions
One of the classes is a common combat class like using weapons and stuff we saw in the episode, for times when they can't use their powers for some reason [ like how anodites cant use mana on geochelones]
They have dinner and go to bed.
Next day they start their traning.
Besides Gwen , there are only 2 other anodites present, Josephine and Celeste.
Josephine is an anodite- petrosapien hybrid and Celeste is a splixson-anodite hybrid [ why are they like that? Lol idk, just thought I explore the whole anodites can have kids with any species aspect and these were the first aliens that popped into my head so I'm going with them]
The first session is to show what they are capable of by going through a stimulation.
Neither of them make it to the end, though Gwen puts up a good fight compared to the others.
Gwen's pretty irked because she's worked hard yet she's not much better than the other 2. Then again she's self taught, there wasn't really much she could learn on her own.
The magsiter in charge of them is anodite as well, a pure anodite.
He makes a plan. By the end of the program, each of them would be able to fly to a degree and cast "spells".
Nothing too major since proper anodite training lasts for like 60-70 years.
Plumbers just train them enough so they can put up a good fight.
Their powers are further specialised due to being hybrids. Josephine's mana is bulkier and doesn't flow as smooth. The shields she puts up are pretty crystalline looking. She treats her mana like it's taydenite , by forming it into spears (?) and such.
Celeste doesn't really focus on shields much but instead focuses on making multiple copies of her self. They don't all share feelings, their kind of like echo - echo but without with sonar.
Both of them do dual training , but major in mana manipulation and minor in the others because their anodite abilities are their weak point.
Gwen's human so nothing special for her :(
Now moving on to Kevin.
There are 5 osmosians , including Kevin
" aren't you the guy that destroyed the academy 2 months ago?" - uhh ..yes ? - awesome dude, up top"
Amanda and her twin sister Stacy grew up on a space ship in space. Their father was an osmosian plumber that constantly got relocated to different planets.
Jeremy is one of those stuck up dudes who thinks he's better than everyone.
Kevin scoffed him off initially but is amazed when he saw him absorbing and using electricity during the stimulation with great control.
Phineas is pretty much like Kevin. Chill and all about the tech.
Their Magister is one of Osmos V's elders. She exclaims her delight when she learns Kevin is Devins son, talking about what a great plumber he was.
Jeremy and Kevin finish the stimulation neck to neck.
Kevin's not as great as Jeremy, but he's been in enough difficult situations to cope well during battle.
The plan for them: learn to absorb and control small amounts of raw energy and learn how to absorb enough of the opponents energy to equal the playing field for a while.[ idea from the @theangrycomet ]
Now Ben
Ben has the most difficult time because he needs to learn basic fighting skills for not one, but over 10 different aliens.
Poor guy is all over the place.
He needs extra training to strategise what aliens would work best in sequence of attack, know a lot about their main strengths and weaknesses
Ben gets a shock of realisation that he doesn't know much of anything lol.
" how was I supposed to know big chill is allergic to vanilla, and why would that ever be important?!! - what if you get attacked by a giant vanilla alien one day huh? You choose big chill and youre out of the game for the next hour - wow.... there are vanilla aliens? Are there chocolate ones ? - focus tennyson!
Of course there's tons of other alien species ad well.
Over all, there's around 32 aliens in the given cohort.
This whole program lasts for the whole of summer , not like 5 days. You can't train properly in 5 days.
Gwen and the others get along pretty well. It's nice to spend time with people besides Ben and Kevin.
Kevin's good too. He's surprising himself everyday with what he can do.
He and Phineas are the cool guys of the cohort, throwing random dorm room parties and just having a good time.
Kevin has a rivalry with Jeremy , but its not personal or anything.
The trio are still kind of a big deal.
Initially there was some autograph signing and picture taking but after a while the excitement died down a bit.
At the end they have 5 tests.
One is the written exam on what they've learnt about space craft and Weaponry, different alien cultures and their planets, basic alien science [ strengths and weaknesses], a personalised obstacle course , and then a team [ teams of 4] obstacle course like the hostage situation thing in the actual episode.
No ones breaking out of the null void in this AU, no major enemy threat.
It's about training and it's going to stay about training.
Of course , enemies still attack Ben but since its at a training academy, there's lots of plumbers around so the situation simmers down pretty quickly.
Gwen gets a 97, Kevin gets a 100 , Ben gets a 85.
It's not like Ben wasn't paying attention. He was just really exhausted from everything.
#ben 10#kevin levin#ben 10 alien force#ben 10 au#ben tennyson#gwen tennyson#ben 10 classic#ben 10 series#b10#ben 10 headcanon#my take#headcanon#ben 10 analysis#anodites#au#fanfiction
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“I can believe in spandex-clad superheroes, aliens and mayhaps some demons but I draw the line hard at phantoms.”
Clearly these are the Flat-Earthers of the Power Rangers universe.
Dino Fury has arrived and a new showrunner in the form of Simon Bennet with Chip Lynn stepping down. So far, it’s made a good first impression with the theme song. I’m not opposed to “Go Go Power Rangers” being a consistent leitmotif of the series. I only wish the song was just longer to appreciate it more.
Buzzfe- I MEAN, Buzzblast reporter Amelia Jones reports in with her editor-in-chief to insist on a change of pace from the usual celebrity gossip and investigate Dinohenge out in the woods. Rather than a Gym or a Juice Bar, we get ourselves a Social Media outlet that’s pretty crowded with plenty of hussle. I’m actually reminded of VR Troopers with the whole newspaper angle they got.
As Woody use to say, “What an ideeeeee-ah!”
Jane allows Amelia to go off on her little ghost hunt, not being one for the paranormal. Somebody’s clearly never been to Briarwood before. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that those in the Power Rangers universe would be more open to the supernatural going down. Unless it’s a matter of what’s been scientifically proven such as new aliens regularly coming down to screw us Earthlings over.
Amelia meets Ollie by way of snagging him with her net launcher. I... guess you can just purchase them no questions asked, second amendment and whatnot. The comedic banter is pretty well grounded and less over the top compared to seasons prior. It helped that they’re among the Rangers as we get to know them and they learn of each other. Though I wouldn’t rule out comic relief yet...
Got my eye on you, Garcias. :P
Amelia leads Ollie to Dinohenge where his mother, Dr. Akana, is analyzing the circle of dinosaur statues just laying around. Her drone even picks up signs of an underground chamber only to be interrupted by Warden Buzzki- I MEAN, Warden Garcia. The copper tells them to pack it in while leading the doctor off.
Amelia and Ollie stay to clean up while having another ghost debate because again, nobody saw Mystic Force. Speaking of, a violet colored knight beams in with a scanner honing in on an energy source he seeks. The two hide while watching him blast open a way into the chamber below. As you’d expect, they decide to just walk away quick and call the ward-or they just rush ahead blindly.
Yep, they’re Power Rangers.
They follow Void Knight into the chamber where sentries are lined up one by one in a circle with a lot of advanced tech. The villain busts open a door to reveal a humanoid Solonasaurus and a Red Ranger in stasis. Our resident Alpha tries to reanimate his leader only for Void Knight to damage the controls.
Ollie rushes in with one of the Chromafury Saber along the wall before Amelia launches another net at Void Knight with maximum volts. Solon tries to toss a Power Key at them in order to command the Hengemen with their Sabers. However, Void Knight is quick to recover and seizes of the foot soldiers for him.
Amelia and Ollie are preoccupied by the enemy grunts while Void Knight localizes his exact target within a compartment nearby. Solon finally revives Zayto and brings the Red Ranger back to action. Amelia and Ollie soon even the odds by morphing with their Power Keys, psyched that they’re real superheroes. I love how Ollie claims that they’re get Zords based on the news.
I’m guessing Cassidy and Devin are the ones on the scene.
Void Knight retrieves a containing full of ooey-gooey slimeballs known as Sporixs, a no doubt topical type of villain, before Zayto engages him. The soundtrack has certainly gotten an upgrade this season with the brand new composer. The action leads to the Sporixs being unleashed from their containment unit. Void Knight cuts off the exit in order to pursue them outside.
Void Knight finds one that manages to grow into what will be first Monster of the Week and teleports off with the cretin while the other scatter. Back in the base, Amelia and Ollie demorph with their morphers camouflaging themselves as watches Beast Morphers-style. Zayto also demorphs in order to reveal himself as an alien human with antennae that can read minds. I smell a moral episode.
Zayto reads their character bio-I MEAN, their minds to assess if they’re truly trustworthy and confides his backstory in them. He lead an order of knights to defend his world from the Sporix, creatures born of pure destruction, in a neat mix of Ryusoulger footage and original footage. They drove them off Rafkon but soon learned that their next target was Earth when the dinosaurs still lived.
Zayto’s posse had the most metal idea of riding the Dinosaurs as their steeds against their foes. Now that’s one remake of Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog we need. However, they are visited by none other than the Morphin’ Masters who connect Zayto’s order to the Morphin’ Grid. Yes. They actually took a one-off lore tidbit in the Season One episode “Big Sisters” and really expanded upon it.
Zayto’s order was sadly lost in their efforts to contain the Sporix before he went into stasis for whenever a new threat arose to seize them. Now they’re loose and hibernating after being spread all across the surrounding area. This not only gives us a good reason that they’re sticking around their setting but also adds a bit more of a chaotic factor to the Monsters of the Day formula to come.
Void Knight is tough but not leading a motley crew of world conquerors. Rather he’s a lone wolf hunting for the Sporix for his own ends, making the Macguffin of this season one and the same as the Monsters of the Day. By proxy, the Sporix are individuals until themselves with an evil nature to them. Who knows when and where they’ll spring up or how they operate under their own devices?
Zayto gladly recruits Amelia and Ollie in his new order of Dino Fury Rangers, starting us off with a trio just like with Beast Morphers. I guess the tradition still carries on after the Disney Era. I love that Zayto’s the Red Ranger but also a mentor with Solon as his Alpha 5. It turns the Red Ranger rookie trope on its head and even makes everyone else on the team the Watsons to his Sherlock.
Alright, Simon. You hooked us. Now reel us all the way.
#Power Rangers#power rangers dino fury#dino fury#super sentai#kishiryu sentai ryusoulger#ryusoulger#nick#nickelodeon#nicktoons#hasbro#hasbro studios#allspark pictures#toei#toei company#void knight#sporix#zayto#ollie akana#amelia jones
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Doppelgänger (10/?)
Previously on Doppelgänger ~ Masterlist ~ Next time on Doppelgänger
Danny, Sam, and Tucker were just 14 when they took a look inside the portal Danny’s parents had built. From there, everything changed. They woke up with white hair, green skin, and powers they could learn to control. They were hybrids, halfas.
They were the hero Doppelgänger.
{Life Lessons, Part 2}
“Regretting your life choices yet?” Sam asked as Danny scowled down at the still crying sack of flour.
“I've been a parent all of one day and I’m probably already down to a C-.”
“Life could be worse. You could be that guy,” Sam said, pointing to where the Nasty Burger’s mascot was being terrorized by a bunch of kids.
“Oooh! Nasty Nat! Let's get a family photo with him.”
“You're taking this way too seriously,” Sam said as Tucker pushed her and Danny towards the mascot.
Sam glared off the kids while Tucker asked for a photo, which Danny took for them.
“You want me to take one of you? Family photos help boost your grade.”
“Not without Val here,” Danny said, passing Sam the camera and rocking his still crying sack. “I don’t want to give Tetslaff the wrong idea.”
“The wrong idea being the fact Valerie stuck you with all the work?” Sam asked.
“We talked about it. She has a job, Sam.”
“So she says.” When Danny shot her a look, she said, “Right, sorry. Giving her a chance.”
Danny sighed and looked down at the sack. “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a dad.”
“Try supporting its top more.” Danny looked up at the muffled voice to see Nasty Nat standing near him. He gestured awkwardly at Danny’s arms.
Danny shifted his arms so its head was held up by his elbow and it started to quiet down. “Wow, uh, thanks, dude.”
The mascot nodded and waddled off.
Just in time as the trio’s ghost senses went off.
“Beware!”
As one, they groaned and shouted, “Not it!”
“We should really learn that that’s not going to work anymore,” Tucker chuckled.
“I’ll go,” Sam sighed and headed towards the back of the restaurant. “You two can manage the sacks.”
“You sure you’re not sticking Tucker with all the work?”
She turned around to walk backward and pointed at Tucker. “That’d be a good burn if it wasn’t for the fact he actually likes this stupid assignment.”
Danny chuckled and rocked the baby, smiling as she finally quieted down.
Then the explosions started. They looked up to see Sam fighting Valerie.
“Oh no,” Danny said. “Tuck, can you watch the kid for me?”
“Only because I don’t want Sam to get killed. Go stop your baby mama.”
“Sam’s right, you are taking this too seriously,” Danny said, handing over his sack.
He started to run off, but an explosion in front of him threw him back.
“Danny!”
He looked up with wide eyes to see the Nasty Burger sign falling.
Valerie grabbed him and pulled him out of the way just as Sam swooped down to hide Tucker’s intangibility.
“You okay?” the ghost hunter asked.
“Yeah, maybe be a little more careful with the missiles next time,” he said, shifting so he could kneel on her board.
“Sorry. The ghost kid was in one of their slow moods so I wanted to try and take them out before they could pick up speed. Besides, I’m only on a five-minute break.” Val set down behind the Nasty Burger and Danny hopped down so she could fold up her board. She pulled down her mask and looked him over. “Where’s the baby?”
“Tucker has her. I was, uh, about to go to the bathroom so I asked him to watch her.”
“Alright. You sure you’re okay?”
He smiled and set his hand on her shoulder. “I’m fine, really.”
She smiled back.
“Valerie?”
“Oh crud, that’s my boss,” she whispered and retracted her suit.
He glanced at her uniform. “You work at the Nasty Burger?”
“Tell anyone and I end you,” she hissed as she stuffed her guns into her backpack.
“I won’t. But why the secrecy? What do you do?”
“None of your business,” she said, elbowing him playfully. She looked down at him as she stood up straight and there was mischief in her eyes. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Have fun with the kid, honey. I’m headed off to work.”
He rolled his eyes and opened his mouth.
“Well now, this is unexpected.”
The two spun around to see Skulker floating behind them, a gun charging. Neither could react before it fired.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Danny groaned and sat up. “What hit me?”
“That would be me.”
The half-ghost scowled and turned to see Skulker standing over him. His breath caught as he noticed the cage bars between him and Skulker. He looked around to see he was in a steel cage that was glowing dark blue. And he wasn’t alone.
“What’s with the cage? I thought you wanted our pelts. And why’s Valerie here?” Danny growled, getting to his feet and marching towards him.
“There’s been a change of plans. You should be grateful. I had planned to have one of you fight to the death with the huntress, but knowing she is your mate makes you far more appealing for my collection. The pelts of your other sides will have to do.”
Danny gaped at the hunter ghost. “Okay, first of all, no one is ever going to be grateful to be in a cage, you creep. Second, Val is my friend, none of us would have killed her. Third, please tell me you mean mate in the British sense, because if Johnny and Kitty have been telling people I’m dating Val I’m going to kick their butts. Forth, gross dude.”
Skulker just smirked at him. “You cannot hide your relationship from me, ghost child. I heard you speaking about your child with your mate.”
Danny hit his head on the bars. “We’re fifteen. We don’t have a kid. Our school just makes sophomores partner up to take care of a flour sack. Teach us responsibility and stuff. We were joking about the assignment because we got paired up. Val and I are just friends.”
Skulker eyed him for a moment, then frowned. “Really?”
“Yes!”
“Teenagers,” Skulker growled, running a hand over his face.
“Sorry to inconvenience you. Now if you could just let us go.”
Skulker snorted and turned to leave. “Welcome to your new home.”
Danny glared at his back and tried to push his hands through the bars.
“And before you get any ideas, that cage was made with you halfas in mind. No phasing through it for humans or ghosts.”
“You know Sam and Tucker are going to come to get us!” Danny yelled as the ghost moved out of sight.
Skulker didn’t respond.
“Stupid frog.” Danny turned to the bars and tried to summon the energy for an ectoblast, to no avail.
After trying and failing to use the rest of his powers, he sat down next to Valerie.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I’m going to tear that stupid ghost apart, then put him back together so I can take him apart a second time!”
Danny stared at the ceiling, not bothering to respond as it was the one hundred and thirty-seventh time Valerie had said those words, or at least that’s how many times she’d said it since he’d decided that counting would at least give him something to do.
And Sam thought zoos were bad. At least they gave the animals something to do.
They also gave them food.
“Hey Frogger, you do realize humans need food and stuff to survive right?” Danny yelled, cutting over Valerie’s one hundred and thirty-eighth rendition of her threats. “Also, do the words animal enrichment mean anything to you?”
“Don’t call us animals,” she huffed.
“Technically humans are still a type of animal. And I’ll call us whatever I have to to get something to eat. I know you feel the same.” If Danny -- who could partially sustain himself on the zone’s ambient ectoplasm even while in human form and had just eaten when he’d been grabbed -- was hungry, then Valerie -- who was fully human and likely didn’t have a chance to grab something after school with her job -- had to be starving.
“I won’t give in to a ghost.”
“Meh, I prefer to show rebellion through stupid nicknames and punny taunts rather than by denying myself the basic necessities.”
“You’re being far too calm about this,” she huffed, moving to stand over him.
He shrugged. “Panicking never helps and I already did the anger thing before you woke up so I’m mostly just bored now.”
“So you’re content to spend the rest of your life here?”
“You say that like it will be a long time, which it won’t because Skulker doesn’t seem inclined to feed or water us.” When she met his joke with a glare, he sat up. “We’ve already established neither of us has the skills or equipment to pick the lock or bend the bars, so escape’s not happening. Skulker wants to keep us, which is very creepy, but at least means we aren’t going to die. So all we can do is wait out our rescue.”
“You think someone will rescue us?” Valerie asked, sitting next to him.
Danny pulled out his phone. “It’s been fifteen hours since we were grabbed. Skulker can be sneaky, but someone still might have seen him bringing us to the portal. And even if no one human saw us, invisibility doesn’t work in the zone. We were definitely seen and gossip is crazy in the zone. Doppelgänger will hear about this soon enough.”
“So?” she snorted. “We’re Red Huntress and a Fenton. Why would they help us?”
“The ghosts might not know that,” Danny said, thinking quickly. “All Doppelgänger would probably hear is that two humans from their territory got taken.”
“I guess that makes sense.” She laid down and Danny followed suit.
He stared up at the ceiling, then his lips twitched up. “Want to know what I’m really worried about?”
She hummed.
“Is getting kidnapped by a ghost a good enough excuse in Tetslaff’s book for not taking care of the baby?”
There was a beat of silence then she laughed. “Oh my god! She’ll probably make us redo it from the very start!”
“I mean, I left her with a responsible sitter. That should count for something.”
“Tucker, responsible?”
“I mean, he’s working with Sam. She’ll kick his butt if he goes off the rails.”
“That makes more sense.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Valerie eyed the food the ghost had thrown into their cage suspiciously. Her stomach felt like it was eating itself, but…
“How do you even know it's safe?” she asked, looking over at Danny, who was halfway through his own Mighty Meaty Cheesy Melt.
“Like I said, he doesn’t want us dead, so it’s not poisoned. And there’s no ectoplasm in it. Even if there was, that whole eat of the dead, become of the dead thing only applies to specific ghost fruits, which aren’t on here because he clearly stole it from the Nasty Burger and, again, no ectoplasm.”
“How do you know there’s no ectoplasm?”
“Ectoplasm has this strong citrusy taste that can’t be covered up with anything but mounds of relish, and there’s no relish on the burger.”
“Ho-How do you know that?”
“My parents aren’t as careful with pure ectoplasm as they probably should be.”
“That’s…”
“I know. Sam and Tucker refuse to eat over anymore unless it’s takeout and we bring it straight to my room. Really though, the food’s fine. Nothing weird in it, promise.”
“I don’t know if I can trust you to know what’s weird anymore,” Valerie said, but grabbed her burger anyways.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Val closed her eyes as she sunk further into the water. “I don’t know if I should be impressed or concerned that you literally annoyed a ghost into giving us a bathroom.”
“Grateful?” Danny suggested from the other side of the curtain that hid the toilet and bath from the rest of the cage. “It’s a gift, really.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Danny snickered at Valerie’s glare.
“If I had my weapons…”
“Calm down, Val. They’re not doing any harm.”
“They won’t GET OFF!”
“They like you,” he chuckled and plucked off one of the blob ghosts.
He wasn’t sure how, but his usual swarm had found them and were now drifting about the cage. Some had attached themselves to the top like bats. Others had burrowed into their blanket nest. A few had made a home inside his jacket or atop his hair. A lot had decided Valerie was a very nice spot to sleep and had latched onto her.
The ghost in his hand vibrated, almost like it was purring except it sounded more musical.
“I’m going to smash them!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“How does your phone even still have power?” Valerie asked as they watched Thor cut Thanos’s head off.
They were cuddled close in their nest of blankets with Valerie’s head on his shoulder so they could both see the small screen.
“Tucker upgraded it so it would run on ectoplasm for convenience’s sake.”
“Ectoplasm is convenient?” she chuckled, idly scratching one of the blobs curled up in her lap.
“It is in my house.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Valerie gave the beast sitting on the other side of the cage a death glare.
“Yap!”
“You are so lucky I don’t have any weapons.”
Cujo rolled over onto his back and wagged his tail.
“Danny, make him leave with your annoying powers!”
The boy just reached over and rubbed the dog’s belly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Valerie was tossing the rubber ball Skulker had given Danny -- and by given, she meant the ghost had thrown it at his head after four hours of constant complaining of being bored -- for Blobert to fetch when a soft sound reached her, almost like someone was shushing someone else.
“Hello?”
There was quiet for a moment, then a blue-purple flash came from around the corner. A second later Doppelgänger poked their two heads out, smiling. “Valerie!”
“Yep. You here for the show or are you actually going to help us?”
They scowled and looked at each other. “Can’t we just leave her here? We’d never hear the end of it if we did. She’s the ghost hunter, let her figure her own way out.”
“I can hear you, you know.”
“We know,” they chirped.
Valerie sat up. “Listen here, you little -”
She cut off as she was reminded that Danny had been laying with his head on her stomach by a soft whine. She looked down to see him blinking up at her, his head now in her lap.
“Wha’s goin’ on?” he yawned.
“Ghost kid’s here. They’re arguing with themself about if they’re going to help us or not.”
Danny stared at her, processing, then sat up and glared at the ghost kid, who raised their hands with guilty smiles.
“We were only kidding.” They flew over to the cage and looked it over.
“It’s ghost and human-proof,” Danny told them.
“How’re we supposed to open it then? It’s got a manual lock. We need to stop living in the digital age for once. Shut up.”
“They’re always like this,” Valerie whispered to Danny as he chuckled at their antics. “I don’t know if it's a ghost thing or if they’re just messed up in the head.”
“We think aloud, jerk,” they snapped as one came forward and pulled a pair of bobby pins out.
Danny moved closer as they knelt next to the cage’s door. “You know how to pick a lock?”
They smiled at him and pushed up their goggles to give him a wink before they squinted down at the lock and started fiddling with it.
Valerie was surprised their eyes were yellow. She’d assumed they’d be green like their goggles.
“That’s a lot of blobs,” they said, the one not picking the lock looking over the cage.
“Just over three dozen and they all have names,” Danny said cheerfully.
“They’re just random pun names based around the word blob,” Valerie chuckled.
“Blobbington. Blobby. Blobin. Blo-”
“We get it,” the ghosts snorted, cutting Danny off.
It took a few moments, but then the ghost kid was floating back and the door swung open.
“Freedom!” Danny cheered as they left the cage. He turned to the blobs and made shooing motions. “Alright, you lot, back home with you.”
The swarm made sad ringing sounds, but flew off in various directions.
Meanwhile, the ghost kid that had picked the lock fixed their goggles back into place and put away the pins as the other passed Valerie her backpack and pointed at the wall across from them. “Go straight that way. We’ll meet you on the other side.”
“You want us to go through the wall.”
“Humans can be intangible in the ghost zone. Just try, you’ll see,” they said before heading back the way they came.
Danny walked up to the wall and stuck his arm through. “They’re right.”
“I guess that’s what Skulker meant by human proof,” she said as she followed him over and tried it for herself. “He must have done something to the cage so we wouldn’t slip right through.”
“Guess so. Ladies first?”
She rolled her eyes and stuck her head through to make sure no one was on the other side. They continued like that until they reached a wall that only had a void on the other side. She put on her suit and they jumped through. She summoned her board before they could fall too far, then looked around.
“We should leave now while we have the chance.”
“Great idea. Which way do you think the portal is?” Doppelgänger asked with a snort as they flew up.
She sent them a glare.
“Thanks for the help,” Danny said, setting his hand on her shoulder. “Can you show us the way out?”
They turned to her, crossing their arms.
She crossed her own arms and stared back.
“Can we please save this for after we’re far away from the ghost who locked us in a cage for eight days?”
“We’re not the ones who got locked up,” Doppelgänger reminded them.
“Maybe so, but you are the ones who are going to be stuck in a thermos for an hour if you don’t knock it off,” he said. “Can we just agree to a truce until we get out of here? Please?”
“Fine,” they said and one held out their hand.
Valerie shook it. “For now. Get us out of this ghost zone, and we'll see how long it lasts.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm sorry this has been a while. Hyperfixations are a B. I'm going to post what I have and hopefully, that will rekindle enough for me to finish this.
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Trading Circle of Hell
@semi-slaughtomatic happy belated birthday doll! I will be cross posting to AO3 later as well but I wanted to get this out there now that its done!
-start-
"Welcome welcome! Females to the left and males to the right! Look for anyone with a purple butterfly mask to make your purchase or ask for more information on our unique invenitory! Rumor has it our esteemed kings shall be here today, make your selection quick for I fear even I wouldn't dare say no to them...."
Viperion scanned the room in disgust, cages with humans, demons, various kinds of fae and more supernaturals were lined and spaced very strategically. Only one or two people could view a 'selection' at a time and there were plenty to choose from.
"This is not what I was expecting." Chat Noir spoke up, teeth bared in rage at what he was seeing. They had been tipped off there was an underground market, an illegal one even by demon standards, and here was the proof right in front of their eyes.
"Easy Plagg, we have time to browse and choose carefully from the... Inventory."
"Yeah yeah Sass, kumbyyah and all. I want one with spirit."
"I want one with some brains, the traps keep killing people." Sass responded, sharing a smirk with his companion and drawing his hood closer to his face. The last thing they needed was for someone to recognize them as they were investigating this horrid black market before they could shut it down. The problem with the recon mission was that they needed to be stealthy and being the Snake and Black Cat made them the best choice, even if they had more favorable morals and senses of justice within them unlike many other demons. It was the secret that made them good rulers and their following loyal to them and them alone.
"Welcome gentleman! Forgive me I have spent too much time topside lately, is there anything specific you happen to be looking for? Someone for manual labor or more physical labor in the place of rest?" The Showrunner as he chose to title himself wisely decided to not touch either of them like he had for many of the other buyers.
"I need someone with a firey spirit and tough enough to withstand the Hell Fires."
"Oh, you must live under our illustrious leader Chat Noir then, pray tell would a dragon suffice good sir?" Beady eyes were shining in glee as Plagg exchanged a glance with Sass.
"Depends on the age and gender, perhaps you can direct me where I could find such one?"
"Of course, in the front row at the very end of the left side. A Longg follower that is quite the spirited miss. And for you fellow good sir?"
"I need someone smart and cunning, quick as a mouse if you will,"
"Ah I wish we could've acquried a Mullo follower but alas not this round... I do however have a special quiet thing that could fit the bill if you're interested?"
"Perhaps, show me your inventory and I may still need to browse, I have other stations that could be filled if I do not find someone to my liking." Sass followed the leader and hid his disgust with all of his being, he wanted nothing more than to poison the man with a quick strike. The cages had various states of captured folk in various stages of distress or anger, the collars adorning their necks were equipped to restrain their unique talents and powers, preventing any type of escape from their cages. Guards and hired demons of lower levels were mingling around the crowd should someone get lucky enough to successfully escape from behind the bars.
"Here we have a pretty little thing but awfully quiet. she does have a voice but her glare usually speaks for her, I have had some issues with one so she is at a discounted price, only 150 thousand."
Sass raised a brow at the price, many of the others were easily going for ten times as much for a starting bid. Either she was too much to handle for the ring leader or she was damaged in some way. Finally looking at the cage, his breath caught. He would know those blue eyes anywhere and was glad that his self control was damn good. Her resemblance to her parents was uncanny, even if they had not been seen by a single eye in over 200 years.
"She's a looker but anyone who dares to get too close suffers, unless that's your type of ah, fun shall we say?"
"I'll take her, she'll make an excellent addition to the baker's guild. If she turns out she can't bake well, I'm sure she could plead to Tikki for help before she became the next meal."
"Very well, as with everyone else I'll collect the payment before the next round and after inventory has been checked and secured, you can take it home with you. If anything else catches your eye, please let me know." With that, the Showman left to prey on other prospective buyers and Sass glanced around, noticing only a few other demons looking at the few cages with interest. It was safe enough he supposed.
"Tell me little one, do you like sweets or cheese?" Pulling carefully on his power, he let flow enough to touch his eyes, making them turn mint green and seeing her eyes flash a pale pink, drawing a gasp from that luscious mouth. "So you are a true Mullo follower then."
"Snake." She murmured and smiled sweetly, eyes flashing once more.
"Black cat is here too, the Longg follower is coming with us and this place is done for." Sass whispered, directing his gaze towards the other side where he could see Plagg was prowling and looking at everything with a calculating gaze, casing the entire space.
"Kagami?" She whispered so softly he nearly missed it, drawing his attention and she flushed pink as she shrunk down.
"Well then, even better. Plagg, if you're ready I am. Nothing else has caught my interest."
"Good, let's find the Showman and collect." The green of his iris was gleaming, a yellow tint coloring them acid and the barely concealed rage shining. Their aura made everyone scurry away from their path as they followed the twists and turns through the cages.
"Ah, is there a problem, good sirs?" The Showman was on guard, eyes narrowed and watching carefully for any signs of aggression.
"Ah, he's a devout follower of Lord Viper himself, very covetous this one is. Terribly sorry but it would be in everyone's best interest if we were to collect and leave the place in one piece." Plagg smiled, fangs fully on display which kicked up the tension a few notches.
"Ah we can certainly make an exception but the prices do change for those in a hurry to get to the breaking in part. Do you have your own collars for your purchases?"
"Now now, it's not nice to insult paying customers, good sir." A black gloved hand produced two simple collars, the scent of ash faintly stirring the air.
"Ah, this way then." With a couple of gestures, two lizard demons who posed at security moved through the crowds and collected the cages, going down a different hallway then the trio did. The lanterns glowed eerily with the Hell Fire flames, Plagg and Sass having to bite back their power to prevent a surge in the flames and revealing themselves to the scum they were forced to follow.
"Alright, very simple to do. I'll deactivate the collars and you can place yours, once secure then I'll remove the standard ones. Precautions you know…"
Sharing a glance they split and stood in front of their chosen. The slimey demon brought over two charged stem crystals and with a small fizz of power the collars were deactivated. Sass noted the little mouse seemed upset but not scared as expected, carefully he stepped closer and leaned down slightly to secure the 'collar', a small whisp of smoke puffed to signal the lock was in place. Taking the other charged stem, the Showman waved it nearby and the slave collars fell off into his hands.
"Thank you for your time and interest gentleman, enjoy your investments!" Waving them to follow one of the guards and the other bringing up the rear, the four made their way out of the illegal catacombs market. Continuing on for a few tense miles until they were sure the guards had indeed returned, they stopped.
"Alright, introductions! I would happen to be Chat Noir, ruler of all the darkness and destruction. For stealth purposes please refer to me as Plagg."
"Viperion, Lord of Time and Incubi. Code name Sass."
"Kagami, a devout Longg follower. I work under the name Ryuoko." The dragon dusted herself off nonchalantly, eyes piercing in their intent to gage how much of a threat the two lords were.
"Multimouse, a converted Mullo follower." Viperion ignored the sly grin and everything that it said from his fellow demon lord.
"So what's the plan?" Ryuoko asked, smirking.
"Well, do what we do best…" Blue eyes turned a shimmering green and emerald green took on an acid yellow green shine.
"Destroy those who break the Seven Hells contract." Each collar shifted into a choker, a reaction to the sudden leak of power from demon lords, this would boost both female demon's powers as well as protect them. The time of reckoning was at hand.
#marinette dupain cheng#luka couffaine#lukanette#miraculous lb#miraculous fanfic#miraculous au#miraculous ladybug#Fen's Plunny Corner
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What are the Sonic and Dragon Ball comparisons you agree with? What are the ones you feel that are a miss hit?
Ones I agree with:
Sonic and Goku: Because, they’re the main heroes who yearn for excitement and challenges, both fulfill an ancient prophecy of becoming Super, they hunt down magical jewelries, they even get carried away at times.
Amy and Chi-Chi: They were in love with the main hero after getting to know to them after a brief time, they have skills in cooking, they have troubles with the first once-threatening redeemed partner (that’s the best way to describe Knuckles and Piccolo), and even have short tempers.
Tails and Gohan: Because, they’re family to the main heroes, they are often seen with the main hero, hero’s love interest, and the first once-threatening redeemed partner. Not to mention they got screwed over... A LOT.
Knuckles and Piccolo: They were once threatening enemies to the main heroes until later on, they learn to become fully bond with their team, more specifically the main hero and the prodigal young hero. They also are the comically serious type in comedies.
Shadow and Vegeta: Once villains become anti-heroes, they did attempt to destroy the Earth especially with a suicide solution, they turn their backs on the conquest-seeking villains (Eggman and Frieza), they interact with the macguffin hunter characters after their revival (Rouge and Bulma), they later on appreciate those around them (Team Dark & other heroes, and family & Z-Fighters). They even have low tolerance for the main heroes’ behaviors. Not to mention they gotten exaggerated writing even after their heel-turn.
Rouge and Bulma: They are quite resourceful, they flirt with people, they even search for mystical items at times. They became close and caring to the 2nd once-threatening ally after their revival, they even treat them to heal and invite them to their house, and fully bond with them.
Silver and Trunks: I think it’s obvious since they’re characters came from the future to prevent an apocalyptic disaster. They fought the main hero and 2nd once-threatening ally. They lost their first friend to the threat of their timeline. They rather get the job than sit around.
Missed ones:
Eggman and Frieza: They seek conquest, they even use the mystical items for their benefits. They are recurring villains to the main heroes, even hate their guts. They even cause the said heroes to go Super in the first place. As well as they’re the villains with a losing streak, their plans have been foiled time to time. And have awesome laughs: OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!
Mighty and Krillin: They’re a year older than the main heroes and their close best friends, they have a sense of protection to the ones they care and value a lot. They can be daring when time has come, they get carried away once someone they care gets hurt or are in danger, so pissing them off is not a good idea. As well as they have shiny heads.
Mephiles/Iblis/Solaris and Goku Black/Zamasu: They’re deities that have the power to travel different timelines, have god complex, have hatred for mortals, and even became reality itself. They’re personal villains to the first Super trio. They result with fusion to get the job. They no longer exist.
Eggman Nega and Frost: Recolor and edit different dimension beings of the infamous villains we loved, except no charm at all.
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Burning Scars part VII
Previous | Chapter 7 | Next
Masterlist
not me studying ATLA maps when i should be studying for school oml
Summary: Y/n, a werewolf from a hidden village, comes across Zuko and Iroh after being exiled. How has fate intertwined the wolf into the avatar’s destiny?
MENTIONS OF BLOOD
*****this chapter takes place at Season 2 Episode 12*****
___
Oh boy... this is so rough.
It was quite crazy how everything could tumble down hill so quickly.
After the teen’s fight at the Misty Palms Oasis, Y/n and Zuko refused to talk to one another. It was a constant, petty competition between them; waiting to see who would crack first. It was astonishing how Iroh managed to keep himself collected when the two children he looked over were in a silent battle.
Iroh’s club had (thankfully) fetched the trio’s Ostrich-Horses from the stables and collected all of their things. After saying their thanks to the White Lotus, they hopped onto the saddles of their rides and set off toward their next town; Ba Sing Se.
Y/n refused to share seats with Zuko as she had previously and tried to convince Iroh to see her point of view. The uncle had shut-down her idea at first, but when noticing her ‘persistence,’ he agreed and let her ride on the back of his saddle. ‘Persistence,’ of course, being her threats of walking beside them and slowing down their estimated week-long trip. Ahh, the power of time.
They had wanted to go straight through the desert to save the days that it would take them to go around it, but the citizens of the desert advised against it. The Wi Shong Desert was impossible to cross. It would be unbearably hot, their water would disappear quickly, and it was easy to get lost when your surrounded by identical mounds of sand. Not wanting to take a chance, the trio followed the directions and traveled the edge of the taunting desert.
This new path was preferred by Y/n, as she didn’t have the appropriate coverings for the heat like the two men did. They were returning to the same terrain that they were in before, the foresty-rocky one. The werewolf was definitely more comfortable with this change.
The days passed slowly.
Iroh and Y/n talked a bit, but not as much as they had before. Of course, it wasn’t like they were mad at each other or anything, it was just that the tension between the two teens were still present and it made things... awkward. The werewolf didn’t want Zuko to hear her talk about things because it might give him the impression that she grew comfortable with him again when she 100% was not. Zuko never talked much, but now there was an ever-present scowl embedded on his face. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
When night came, the tension was even worse. They would sit, eat, drink, all in silence. Iroh, being the wonderful person that he was, tried to chisel at the quiet, but either neither would answer or one would release a snarky comment.
After the first couple of days, Y/n’s anger and annoyance had eased slightly. She wasn’t even mad at him anymore for what he had done, the only thing that continued to irk her was the fact that he never apologized. He never admitted that he was wrong or that he understood her reaction. Zuko just continued on with the trip acting like she was in the wrong.
There was one night in particular that set her off once again.
They were unpacking the food that they had; the supply was dwindling. Of course, the trio had enough to last them the entire trip, but the sight of their food becoming so minimal was affecting their morals. At least, it was for Zuko.
The boy made it his very job to complain about their supply almost every second. Iroh and Y/n learned to tune out his whines and pouts, but then he said something that triggered her anger.
The werewolf couldn’t even fully remember the words that he said, but the idea still lingered in her mind.
“Maybe we should quit wasting our food on dead-weight like Y/n.”
She honestly could’ve just let it go like she had done with everything else he had said. Perhaps it was the traveling that lowered her tolerance, but those words set her off the edge.
Y/n had stood up from her seated position around the campfire and glared at Zuko. Then, she simply turned around and left. No words exited her mouth, no reassurance that she was coming back, absolutely nothing. Iroh had jumped up from his seat and asked her where she was going, but he didn’t receive an answer. Just the silent crunching of her feet on the dirt path and her silhouette disappearing into the trees.
It wasn’t until twenty minutes later that the girl returned.
Her appearance was shaggy; her clothes were obviously put on lazily and her hair was slightly messed up. The one thing that was most prominent, however, was the very dead rabbit resting in her grip.
Blood was leaking from it into her hands and some of it was smeared on her face. She was still irritated as she skinned and cooked the animal across the fire; her glare piercing through the top of the flames straight into Zuko’s eyes. Y/n shared the meat with Iroh that night and he seemed glad to have some real food for once.
She felt as though she earned some respect after that night.
For the rest of the trip, Zuko didn’t complain as much. He didn’t say things that would purposely get on her nerves, he just remained silent. Not one word left him again.
His silence really helped Y/n get the time she needed to think. She thought about those feeling that she had for him in the flower shop, but she couldn’t see herself as that person anymore; as that love-sick teenager. It’s not who she is, it never was. It must’ve been the vulnerability that Zuko offered her; she fell for the soft side of him, a side that isn’t Zuko. They both had let down their guard and look where it got them; not even on speaking terms.
It was relieving when they made it to the boarding docks that would bring them to the gates of Ba Sing Se. They were at an underground place, a cave from the looks of it. There were many people formed in lines or waiting with their baggage beside them. All the way across the cove, there was a large wall stretched to each side. Y/n assumed that there was water hiding behind it.
Before they entered the docks (Full Moon Bay, as Iroh had called it), the trio tied their Ostrich-Horses to some stables and gathered their things. While the boys put on their bags and such, Y/n stood in front of their rides.
“Thank you,” she whispered and smoothed back both of their feathers. “You’ve done so much for us, I wish we could repay you.”
Their two steeds looked down at her with a look that showed their understanding of her words. But their expressions revealed something else too; like their was something she could do. She honestly didn’t know what it was, not until they began walking away from the stables.
“So, are we going to be coming back? What’s gonna happen to the Ostrich-horses?” Y/n asked just as her eyes saw the interior of Full Moon Bay.
Iroh shrugged his shoulders. “They will possibly be handed over to other travelers. We don’t have a use for them anymore; when someone goes to Ba Sing Se, they hardly ever leave.”
Y/n stopped walking as the words hit her. Quickly, she turned around and shouted to the duo about forgetting to get something. It wasn’t a great excuse, but she needed to do one last thing before she started her new life here.
She had talked to Iroh privately before they started on their trip to Ba Sing Se. He told her how Zuko and him were planning to stay there for a long time or at least until everything died down. Iroh gave her permission to leave whenever she wanted, but said that he and Zuko would love it if she stayed with them. Y/n, at the time, almost considered leaving because of the situation with the other teen in the group. She had spent a couple days thinking about it; about the pros and cons, the risks that she would be taking, etc. In the end, she decided that staying in the boy’s company could benefit her, especially if Ba Sing Se was as wonderful as everyone else made it out to be. If anything, she could leave their group when they made it inside the walls; if she really wanted to.
But she still needed to do this one thing first.
Y/n ran back to the stables and looked for their animals. There were quite a few there, but she quickly found the ones that she had been riding for the last week. They seemed happy to see her and she felt the same toward them; she finally understood what they needed from her.
The werewolf untied their straps and removed the saddles from their backs.
Then, she brought them to the edge of the forest, away from traveler’s eyes. Without a word, Y/n let them go out into the wilderness, free of the restricting fabrics that the humans had put on them. They almost didn’t run at first, just staring at her with large eyes, but after a moment they walked into the trees and their silhouettes blended with the shadows.
Y/n let out a sigh. She felt really good.
Quickly, she ran back to the entrance of the Bay and met up with Iroh and Zuko. The uncle greeted her while the boy just ignored her presence and continued walking. They followed Iroh to one of the lines and waited, explaining that they needed to get their passports checked first.
Y/n was pouting the entire time. She wasn’t used to waiting in long human lines; she didn’t see the point of it. Why didn’t they just get more people to look at their documents so everything would go by faster?
Both her travel buddies were silent the entire wait and she was fine with it. Y/n spent her time people-watching; something that she found herself doing quite often. She excused herself by saying that she needed to ‘study the human culture,’ but in reality she just found it interesting. There were so many types of people around; some with large amounts of luggage, big families, even a group of bald people wearing yellow and holding a stick! There were so many interesting characters here.
Finally, they made it to the front of the line.
A woman checked their passports, then handed them three tickets with a stamp. They each took one of the papers and headed over to the large wall that towered over the people.
There was a man there that asked for their tickets and directed them toward a very large boat. It marveled Y/n. She had heard stories of these large things that could float on water, but seeing it in person was something else.
How can this hold a bunch of people?
The werewolf had paused in her spot to think this and Zuko, who was walking behind her, shoved her shoulder as he pushed passed her.
“Watch it, you’re in the way.”
She huffed and crossed her arms. Iroh placed a hand on her should for comfort before he kept walking to catch up with his nephew. Y/n was getting a little sick of all this.
They walked across a board and entered the ferry. They were told to stay on the top deck until they landed at the boarders of Ba Sing Se. Y/n trailed behind the boys as they looked for a spot empty enough for them to rest; eventually settling near a railing on the side of the boat.
A kind lady went around the ship passing bowls of food to each passenger; the trio being included. Before Y/n took a sip, however, she looked over the edge into the the deep blue water. They were very high up.
“We’re going really fast.” She thought aloud.
Iroh joined her on the railing and looked at the water, ignoring her random words. “Who would have thought after all these years, I'd return to the scene of my greatest military disgrace,” he shut his eyes as he paused. “As a tourist!”
Y/n let out a small laugh at the old man’s silly words. But then, of course, Zuko had to come and ruin it.
“Look around. We're not tourists, we're refugees.” He said as he move to stand on her other side.
“Lighten up, Zuko.” Y/n replied while her eyes stayed on lake in front of her. Maybe she’d be able to see a fish jump out!
She could feel the boy glaring at the side of her head, but she chose to ignore it, just like she did when he would complain before. She heard Zuko take a sip of his bowl before spitting it out dramatically. “Ugh! I'm sick of eating rotten food, sleeping in the dirt. I'm tired of living like this!”
The werewolf rolled her eyes, but set the bowl down on the deck, taking his reaction to the food into consideration. I think I can wait until we make it to the city.
“Aren't we all?”
The trio turned around from their positions on the rail and saw three teens, all about the same age as Y/n and Zuko. One stood closer to the front, a boy, about the same height as Zuko, but with shaggier hair. He had a smirk etched across his face and a plant stuck out from between his teeth.
“My name's Jet,” The boy explained as he walked out from the covers that the Ferry had set up. He extended his hand behind him. “And these are my Freedom Fighters, Smellerbee and Longshot.”
Behind him, the two teens let out a greeting. Well, the shorter one did, but the tall, mysterious guy just nodded his head. Zuko let out a small "hello" while Y/n waved politely. This was the first time she personally met another set of human teens.
The first boy, Jet, began to walk up to Zuko as he spoke. "Here's the deal. I hear the captain's eating like a king while the refugees have to feed off his scraps. Doesn't seem fair, does it?"
Zuko wasn't answering the kid, wasn't even looking at him anymore, so Y/n almost did all of them a favor and declined the boy's advances for her travel buddies, but Iroh spoke before she could.
"What sort of king is he eating like?" The uncle asked. Y/n rolled her eyes; that's not what she expected him to say.
"The fat, happy kind." He smirked at Iroh before turning his attention back to Zuko. "Want to help us 'liberate' some food?"
The werewolf tugged on Iroh's sleeve. "I really don't think this is a good idea."
Trust her, if her instincts were telling them not to, then they really shouldn't. She knew all about stealing food (especially from the humans), but something was off about Jet. She didn't want her group getting mixed up with the "freedom fighters" if they didn't have to. All they had to do was wait until the next morning to buy food from the city.
Y/n looked at Zuko and met his eyes. She was pleading silently, don't.
But the boy didn't listen to her. He threw his bowl out into the water and turned toward the group of teens.
"I'm in."
Y/n placed her hand on her forehead in exasperation. Of course he would do his own thing. She decided to settle for glaring at Jet's welcoming smile.
The strange boy seemed to feel her eyes and turned to look at her.
"Don't worry, princess, we'll bring your boyfriend back in one piece." Jet spoke once Zuko made his way over to the group.
Y/n and Zuko both scoffed at his words. Jet looked between them quickly while his smirk grew.
"Ohh… I see." The boy took a step toward her. "Why don't you come too? I could use another lookout."
Y/n crossed her arms. Lookout?
Just as she was about to voice her opinion, Zuko stopped Jet's advancements with a stuck-out hand.
"She's not coming with us." Zuko looked at her sternly. "Stay here and watch my Uncle."
Y/n was about to let out a sarcastic comment, or even something slightly mean to say that he can't control her, but there was something about his eyes that made her rethink it. He seemed… cautious? Maybe he can see how shady these teens really are.
"Fine, but if you get caught, don't expect us to come and save you."
With that, she turned on her heel and faced the lake once again, hearing the four receding footsteps as they walked away.
The werewolf folded her arms and placed her head on them with a sigh. She really shouldn't be worried about Zuko, especially since they weren't on the best terms at the moment, but her heart couldn't help it. They had made it so far and it could all be ruined with this act of rebellion. Not to mention, if he let her go with him, Y/n could protect him if he needs it. Zuko has his bending, but that could only get him so far. She was trained for fighting.
"You look as though you have a lot on your mind."
She lifted her head and looked to where the voice came from. Iroh was sitting on the floor, his bowl of rotten food resting in his palms while his eyes shined the colors of the setting sun. The girl took the spot next to him and followed his line of sight.
The sunset was beautiful. The sky was a mixture of pinks and oranges all the way down to the giant ball of fire that glowed. Beams of light shined passed the small clouds that littered the sky, showing the power of the rays of sun. It was so pretty that she wished she could paint it to remember this moment.
“So much has been happening recently; it’s just a lot to handle.” Y/n whispered.
Iroh nodded his head in agreement. “I can understand that. You’ve gone through a lot at such a young age.” He paused for a moment. “And I’m sorry that my nephew has added on to your stress.”
“It’s not you that I need an apology from, it’s Zuko.” She shook her head dejectedly. “And what is up with him?! One minute he’s all friendly, like he cares, and then the next he’s just so... infuriating.”
The sun finally made it’s way past the tips of the mountains and fell out of sight. The orange took a deeper tone, but the view still left her awestruck. Iroh placed a hand on the wolf’s shoulder.
“I think there are some things that you need to learn about my nephew,” He began. “Zuko didn’t have many friends when he was a child, he was reserved and only ever talked to his sister and mother. And then after his incident when he was thirteen, he had taught himself to put up barriers, ones that not even I could break. But you must remember; Zuko is a child, just as you are. He may act cold-hearted, but underneath it all, he has a good spirit.”
Thirteen? He’s been out on his father’s mission for at least three years?
“So, what you’re saying is that him being rude is actually his way of showing he cares? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Iroh laughed a hearty laugh. Y/n joined in slightly, but couldn’t see what was so funny.
“I suppose that is a good way of putting it.” His laughter died down to a serious tone. “I just want you to know, Y/n, that although this does explain his personality, it does not excuse it. If you are having issues with him, then talk to him and let him know.”
Y/n sighed as the sky finally receded into darkness. Maybe he is right, she’s had plenty of time to think about everything, so the next step would just be to talk. The werewolf decided to point the topic in a different direction.
“So, Zuko told me about the four nations and what bending was. He thinks I’m part of the Earth Kingdom.” She smiled at the older man. “Do you think I can bend?”
Iroh shrugged his shoulders with the same laugh as before. “Maybe. If you’d like, I can teach you some techniques that I know.”
Y/n’s eyes widened. Wait, I might be able to bend?
“But I thought you could only bend one element? You can do two?”
“No, no, no.” He waved his hand out. “I just studied their techniques and memorized some. I can’t say that I can help you fully, but I can try my best.”
That was honestly good for her. After Zuko had told her last time that it probably wasn’t possible, she had felt dejected. But maybe there’s hope now?
Suddenly, she saw something moving around in the sky. It was hard to focus her eyes in the dark, but the sight of a large animal flying over head caught the duos attention.
“Uhh, what is that?” Y/n eyes with her eyes squinting.
It flew off past their boat and into the opposite direction of Ba Sing Se.
Iroh shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve only seen one like that before...” Then he looked at the girl next to him. “Don’t tell Zuko that you saw that. He... is scared of flying animals.”
She raised an eyebrow at his obvious lie, but promised to not tell the other boy. It was then that a smell hit her.
It smelled so warm and delicious that her mouth almost watered the second it hit her nostrils. She looked around until she saw the source of the aroma.
Zuko, Jet, and his two freedom fighters were back with two large bags. They were reaching into the sacks and pulling out bowls, passing them to the refugees on the ship.
When they were finished, they made their way back to Iroh and Y/n with their bowls in hand. Zuko had given a bowl to Iroh and completely ignored Y/n, so she had to get her food from Jet.
“Thank you, Jet.” She said with a smile as the sight of the food made her happy. Maybe the freedom fighters won’t so bad.
Iroh and Y/n shifted their seating arrangement until they formed a circle with the four other teens. Jet was going to take the seat beside the werewolf, but Zuko beat him to it, claiming that his bag was there, so it’s his seat.
They began to eat, Y/n almost scarfing down her entire bowl with one bite. She couldn’t deny it, she was hungry. They were surviving off of food that barely filled her, so now that she had the opportunity to eat, she wasn’t going to miss it.
Y/n was so invested in her bowl of food that she couldn’t even process the conversation going on around her, all she knew was that Smellerbee had stormed off and Longshot had gone after her. All that was left was her two traveling friends and Jet. She decided that now was the time to tune into the banter that was happening.
“From what I heard, people eat like this every night in Ba Sing Se. I can't wait to set my eyes on that giant wall.” Jet said as he leaned back into his arms.
Iroh nodded his head. “It’s a magnificent sight.”
“So, you’ve been there before?”
Y/n slowly lowered her bowl with wide eyes. Was he going to tell him about his life of a war general?
Instead, Iroh settled for a solemn look on his face. “Once, when I was a... different man.”
Surprisingly, Jet didn’t pry the way she expected him to. “I've done some things in my past that I'm not proud of, but that's why I'm going to Ba Sing Se: for a new beginning. A second chance.”
A new beginning? Is that what I need?
It hadn’t hit her until then, but this new life that she strove for, a life away from her pack, away from her shame, was something that she already had. The boys had given her this opportunity the moment they asked her to join their trip.
Ba Sing Se was this refuge for people who wanted what she had. It was a refuge for Iroh and Zuko, too. Did I really consider leaving them? It made her feel a bit of shame, she can’t just leave when things get tough.
“Hey, Zuko?” Y/n asked as she set her bowl on the ground in front of her.
The boy just hummed in response, not quite looking at her as he continued to eat.
“Do you think we could talk? Soon?”
Zuko stopped his chewing and looked at her questioningly. He set down his half eaten bowl and stood up. “Let’s go.”
She followed him to a separate area of the ferry. Most people were around the front of the ship, either eating the remains of the food or sleeping against the hardwood floor. There were some families around them at the back of the ship, but most weren’t paying attention. The duo stopped at the railings at the end of the boat.
They were silent for a second, Zuko waiting for the girl to say something while Y/n was trying to regain her thoughts. C’mon brain, you can do this.
“So, I guess I should start off with a ‘sorry’? I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you, especially since what you did was an accident.” She paused to let him talk, but he just continued to stare with a bored look on his face. “Uhh... I’m also sorry for insulting you. I was mad and didn’t think about my words. Everything else I said after that, though, I completely meant. You were a jerk to me.”
The corners of Zuko’s mouth lifted slightly at her words as he soaked them in. She didn’t really have much else to say, she hadn’t done much wrong. Y/n could only hope that the boy understood that.
He sighed and looked off to the side. “I guess... you not at total fault here.”
Y/n almost scoffed, almost, but held it back. This was what Iroh was talking about; Zuko had walls and this might be the best apology that she’d get out of him for now. She didn’t really know what else to say, so she was happy when he started to speak again.
“I-uh-maybe shouldn’t have gotten mad when you called me out. Should’ve just accepted it and moved on, but-uh-I’m still learning.”
Ok, this is going way better than I expected.
She half expected him to reject her apology and stomp off angrily, continuing to hate her for the rest of his life. She was glad that it’s going in the opposite direction.
Y/n couldn’t help the giddiness that she felt rise within her and wrapped her arms around the boy’s stomach. He didn’t hug her back at first, but when he realized that she wouldn’t let go, he awkwardly settled his arms around her shoulders. She could tell that he was slightly uncomfortable with the affection, so she eased herself off of him with a grin on her face.
They began their walk back to the group with much less tension than when they came.
“You know, Iroh told me that he’d teach me some earthbending to see if I was a bender.” Y/n spoke smugly.
“Really? He shouldn’t, it’d be a waste of time.” The boy replied as she pouted in response. “I hope you know that I had to tell Uncle to make sure you would stay during the travel to Full Moon Bay. Don’t make me regret asking him.”
Y/n smiled. So, that was why Iroh brought up her leaving? She was kind of confused on why he would mention it if he wanted her to stay, but not it make sense. His approach was wrong, but it made sense.
“So what I’m hearing is... you’d miss me if I left?”
Zuko just groaned out and sped up his pace, leaving her behind as their group came into view. For the rest of the night, the random cluster of six talked and joked around, the anger no longer being apparent between each teen.
It was finally back to the way it used to be; only ten times better.
___
There’s something so fulfilling abt writing a long chapter, I love it
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