#today someone told me i dont understand why you feel so deeply about his death and they dont understand what these boys mean to me

[lukesdefenceless]

how many nights does it take to count the stars?

thats the time it would take to fix my heart.

[cracklingbooks]

hi so i have a fic request, but honestly i just want soldezangelo content so its fine if u dont feel like writing that haha

prompt: after nico wakes up from a terrifying nightmare, will and leo goes to comfort him and let him know how much they love him. :)

idk im just in a mood for fluff haha, but this also works for solangelo <3 thank you again!

Thank you very much for trusting me with your prompt, I hope you'll like how it turned out! I’ll be honest, I didn’t know that soldezangelo was a thing till today, so I wasn’t sure whether it was like a proper ship or a bromance or whatever... I’m sorry! So basically I made a solangelo + Leo thing! :)

I truly hope you like it, since it’s my first ever prompt! Ugh

I posted it on ao3 too 

He had no idea how he had arrived there, all he could remember were bits and pieces of the journey; long gaunt hands, dead trees with broken branches, darkness all around him. And oh, the feeling of complete solitude. It was encompassing.

Nico was the only one in that lonely land and he felt completely lost.

And then he saw it, like a beacon in the night: the faintest light in the distance and it was calling his name, like a sweet lullaby. It looked like the sun, but it was overshadowed by that thick foggy darkness; it looked impossibly far, but it was calling his name! It had to mean something, Nico was sure.

He started running, running, running, till his heart was about to explode and his lungs were imploding. The light didn’t look closer at all, but the voice kept shouting his name, always louder, till Nico thought it was going to break its voice.

That’s when he recognized it. Will. That was Will’s voice and he sounded incredibly pained.

Nico stumbled and while he was falling to his knees, he cried out Will’s name, holding his gaze fixed on the light like it was the only thing able to keep him together. He was falling and his pieces were crushing to the ground in a loud noise of clattering. He seemed to keep falling for centuries, because his body didn’t hit the soil right away.

His voice was scratched, broken like he was, “Will!”

He kept falling and falling, till the darkness swallowed him whole. That’s just what happened to lost boys.

He didn’t know how much time passed, but at some point, he was laying on the ground. It didn’t happen with a loud crush; he knew he was laying down because he felt the cold grass tickle his neck. His body was shivering impossibly and he felt nauseous, but above him there was the brightest starry sky he’d ever seen. He was back at Camp Half Blood.

He breathed deeply, trying to take everything in, but his lungs were hurting, so he started coughing convulsively.

“What…?” He heard a voice, but it was barely more than a whisper over the thundering blood in his ears. “Nico!”

Then there were two faces over him, hands running over his arms, looking for injuries.

You won’t find any scar, Nico wanted to say, I’m a broken boy, but there is no proof of that on my skin.

He tried to back away from those preoccupied touches, but his limbs were to heavy to be moved, much less controlled. He was trembling and colliding, he didn’t know how to stop. He just wanted everything to stop spinning so fast.

A light appeared from somewhere above him and was pointed at his face; he couldn’t see anything anymore over that terrible brightness, but the voice spoke again, sounding a little panicked, “He doesn’t seem hurt, but I don’t know if we can move him.”

There was a shy answer, but Nico couldn’t make the words out, because the newly appeared light brought back to his mind the light he’d seen earlier and he just needed to know that Will was okay. It took him a couple of tries, but in the end, he managed to croak out, “Will… please.”

There was a hand in his hair, pulling it back from his eyes. “You’re right, Nico.” The voice said, “Go call Will, and tell him to come here as fast as he can. Tell him Nico needs help, he’ll be here in no time. Go!”

The light disappeared immediately. A gentle hand helped him to sit up and suddenly he was staring right at Leo, his cheeks almost completely covered in grease, and his eyes were big and worried. He felt immediately relieved at the sight, because it was so familiar that he almost felt like he wasn’t completely lost. Just a little.

He swallowed the dump in his throat and Leo’s gaze never left his face.

“What happened?” Nico asked, squeezing his eyelids for a second, trying to make his eyes focus. He was seeing a blurry world.

“You should tell me, mate.” Leo replied, kindly. “We were going back to our cabin when we heard you shout and cough. Did someone hurt you?”

Nico shook his head.

Leo whispered the next question, like he wanted to give Nico the chance to pretend he didn’t hear his words, “Why are you crying, then?”

Nico hadn’t realized he was crying, but now that he knew he was doing it, he couldn’t stop. He tried to hide his face, letting his hair fall in front of his face. “I don’t know.” He said, honestly. “I’m just defective, I guess.”

Leo wasn’t having any of that. He shook his head and cupped Nico’s cheeks, tilting his head back to make him meet his gaze, “You aren’t, Nico. Not even a bit.”

Nico sighed and wrapped his arms around his own body, trying to stop the tremors. “You are a mechanic, Leo. You can fix anything.” He squeezed his eyes, trying to breathe, but it wasn’t working. “Fix me, please. Just fix me. I don’t want to be like this anymore.”

He sounded desperate and pathetic, he knew that, but the world was spinning and blurry and he just wanted it to fucking stop.

Without notice, Leo pulled him in his arms, clenching him in a bone-wrecking hug. Nico buried his face in the crook of his neck and let himself be rocked gently; Leo smelled like grease and steel and fire. Nico tried to let that scent warm him up.

Leo said, “You aren’t broken, Nico. Your heart may be a little chipped because of all the things you’ve been through, but each time you filled the cracks with gold. It may be heavy now, but it’s strong and beautiful and beating. You are alive, Nico, and if there is air in your lungs, it means you aren’t broken. So I need you to focus; breathe, please.”

And he did. He took in a deep breath and another and another, till eventually his lungs remembered how to work on their own.

There were loud footsteps and branches breaking and then Will was there, running toward them at full speed. He crushed by Nico’s side on his knees and Leo let him go, sitting back on his heels.

Nico’s relief rolled off of his body in hot waves at the sight of that messy blonde hair and those damn freckles of his, because Will was there and he was okay. He was okay okay okay. That was the most important thing.

Nico could deal with being broken, but he could’ve never been able to see Will being hurt or lost. Never. He could bear his own pain as long as he knew Will’s heart was happy and pumping blood in his body.

Will’s hands were everywhere. On Nico’s cheeks, his arms, his hair, his chest, his thighs, his neck. In that moment, Will wasn’t wearing his boyfriend face, no. He was full-on doctor. “Are you hurt? Do you have wounds? Did you hit your head?”

Nico shook his head three times, one for each question. Since Will didn’t even flinch, he added, “I’m okay.”

Will took in a sharp breath and held Nico in his arms so tightly that it was like he was trying to hold all of his shattered pieces together. It was with that smell of home and that familiar warmth, that Nico’s body family stopped trembling. He rubbed his forehead against Will’s neck and he felt like coming back to life.

Ah, Gods. He wasn’t sure whether he was listening to his own heartbeat or to Will’s or to a mix of both, but he felt completely filled with love. The darkness dissipated slowly, one steady beat after the other.

After a time – three minutes or maybe three centuries – Will eventually pulled back to look at his face, but kept his hands securely on Nico’s arms, almost as if he was worried that he could disappear at any moment right in front of his eyes.

Nico saw the exact second when Will’s face went from doctor to boyfriend. “Oh, you scared me to death, Nico! I’ll lock you in your cabin for the rest of the summer and you’ll never ever be allowed to be out of my sight ever again. You are an absolute menace, I almost had a heart attack! If I’ll have white hair by my mid-twenties, it’ll be your fault, damn you!” He was mumbling quickly; too many words to say in so little time. Relief was now rolling off of Will too, even if it was mixed with a lot of other feelings.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know… I’m not sure how I got here.” Nico’s mind was a little blurred and he couldn’t remember much of that day.

“You shadow-travelled in your sleep, Nico. You were having a nightmare and I tried to shake you awake and call your name, but you didn’t wake up. And then you just disappeared. I looked for you everywhere, but couldn’t find you anywhere. Then Leo’s brother found me and told me where you were. Thank the Gods they were here.” He turned to look at Leo and hugged him too, “Thank you, Leo. Gods, thank you.”

Leo shrugged and offered a little smile, “Boys with chipped hearts have to stick together.” He says and even if Will couldn’t really understand, Nico did.

What Leo meant was that Nico wasn’t alone. Not alone at all.

Leo stood up and grinned at them, before running his fingers fondly on their hair, “It’s better if I go to sleep. You’re in good hands now, Nico. I’ll see you both at breakfast, try to get some sleep, huh?”

Nico barely had the time to thank him, before he disappeared with a yawn in the trees, where one of his brothers were watching us curiously.

Soon, Nico and Will were alone and even if it took them quite some time, they managed to get to Nico’s cabin. He was leaning almost completely against Will’s body, because he was so knackered that his legs weren’t bothering working more than he strict necessary, but Will didn’t seem to mind at all; if anything, he held Nico closer with every step.

Will helped him change his pyjama, that was stained with grass and mud, and then changed his own (because of course he kept some of his clothes at the Hades’ cabin).

They slid under the blankets, in those sheets that smelled both like light and darkness, like Will and Nico. It had been a while since they had smelled just like Nico, since for the whole summer Will had slept with him.

Will pulled him closer and Nico placed his head on that spot on his chest, where he could feel both Will’s heartbeat in one ear and feel his warm breath caressing his opposite cheek. That was Nico’s favourite place in the whole world. Screw that, in the whole universe.

“I could’ve accidentally taken you with me when I shadow-travelled, I’m sorry.” Nico whispered, feeling guilty.

“I don’t care.” Will replied, softly.

“But you could’ve been hurt.” He insisted. The thought was almost unbearable.

“I don’t care,” he said again, rubbing circles on Nico’s back with his hands, “Besides, if you’d taken me with you, I could’ve made sure that you were okay sooner. So, please, next time take me with you. I’d like it better if you didn’t go away at all, but if you do, take me with you.”

Nico couldn’t really find any word to tell Will just how much in love with him he was, so he kissed softly his chest and hoped it was enough.

“Are you okay, by the way? Do you want to tell me about your nightmare? It could help.” Will whispered, holding Nico closer.

Since he barely remembered his nightmare, Nico shook his head a little. The only memory embroided in his mind was the feeling of losing Will in the darkness, so he said, “Just… don’t ever leave me, okay?”

“How could I ever? You own my heart, Nico; you know that.” He whispered; then, “I don’t say it often enough, but I love you. I love you.”

Nico tilted his head back a stole a kiss from those soft lips, “I love you, too.”

Then, safe from that blinding darkness and that feeling of solitude, Nico managed to fall asleep in the arms of his boyfriend, who held him tightly. The last thing he heard before drifting off was Will’s low sleepy voice murmuring a lullaby in his ear, like he always did whenever Nico had a nightmare.

His dreams were filled with kisses and rays of sunshine and home home home.

[alreadyblondenow]

King Taeyong | 3

Taeyong x ballerina!reader // SMUT, FLUFF, ANGST, fantasy!au Summary: You welcome back Taeyong in your life after he left you for almost a year. Maybe its because your feelings never left in the first place. Now that he’s back, he’s more transparent and honest with you. Promises over promises, is he going to keep his promises this time?  Word count: 5k Warnings: Unprotected sex, swearing, mentions of other idols, pairing of other idols but not too much, death of someone  Note: -The fantasy part is already here. I tried to keep it short and simple, didn’t want to overdo it.  -Imagine a Narnia kingdom setting hihi Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Seeing Taeyong again after for so long was something you’re not looking forward to happen. Even though you imagined him coming back to you, now that its real you’re like a statue. You have million things to say to him but non came out in your mouth. You wanted to yell at him, curse at him but you can’t. It’s been a long time but what you feel for him never left.  

You made coffee for the both of you still trying to escape the gaze from Taeyong’s eyes.  Those beautiful eyes that will make you fall in love with him again any second. Those beautiful eyes you used to lock eyes with while he’s making love with you.

“Y/n, I’m sorry�� he broke the silence but his voice was almost a whisper. It made your heart sink, suddenly you’re hurt again. Tears falling because you don’t know what he’s sorry for. Are you sorry because you went away? Are you sorry because you’re breaking up with me?

“But can you please, come with me?” he added. You were so confused because you thought he’s here for closure.  “Baby please, just please. I’ll explain later. ” the pet name gave you shivers, hearing him call you with fondness again makes your heart warm. Out of respect and curiosity, you grabbed any coat you could find. Putting the cupcakes to the fridge, and leaving a note to Jaehyun, ‘I went out with Taeyong.’

Seeing Taeyong with his two bodyguards Jungwoo and Lucas is something normal, but seeing more than two bodyguards in front of your apartment sure is not. You try to count them in mind and they were at least eighteen. Why does Taeyong has eighteen bodyguards today?

His bodyguards addressed him as “Your highness,” as if he’s really a king or someone from a royal family. “The car is at the back of the building” a man in black suit informed Taeyong without any expression. Just a stern look in Taeyong’s eyes. What is happening. Is this some kind of joke.

All is settled inside the car and you sit as far from him crossing your arms and biting your lip from time to time. He came closer to you touching your knee with full bravery but you moved it away. “I promise all will make sense later” he said, keeping his hands to himself not trying to touch you again. Everything thats happening right now looks like a joke to you, some sick prank.

“I missed you. so much” he started talking again, annoying you with his sweet gestures.  You still gave him the silent treatment that he deserves but deep inside you wanted him to know how much you missed him too. And that you waited for so long but he never came back.

Finally, the car stopped. When Taeyong opened the door, the light coming from the outside was weirdly different from your perspective. You got out of the car still squinting trying to recognise where on Earth did he take you.

Everywhere you look seems so foreign in your eyes, you’re positive that you’re not in your own country. Impossible, you cant believe what you’re seeing right now. Is this a dream? A castle is right in front of you, one that looks like it came from a storybook. Tall, wide and overwhelming for your eyes but nonetheless it welcomes you. Seeing people bow before Taeyong, convinced you that this might be a dream, or a nightmare because Taeyong is in it.

This cant be real.

When the two of you are finally alone in his so called office... in his kingdom, you wanted to wake up. Thinking about opening your eyes over and over again, forcing yourself to wake up. Seeing Taeyong in a dream hurts so bad it makes your heart heavy, you cant take it anymore.

“you’re not dreaming” Taeyong surprised you with a kiss being brave again. You slapped him in the face, hard. Your hand burns from the slap “it’s hurts right?” Taeyong asked, “That means you’re not dreaming”

No, it cant be. Taeyong? A king?

Everything that’s happening right now is like a big pill that’s hard to swallow. The moment you saw Taeyong on your doorstep, asking you to come with him, his kiss, the castle, is all too much and hard to believe. You asked Taeyong again what is this place but you get the same answer, “My kingdom.”

“Oh please Taeyong, not that bullshit again” you said hard and stern. He rolls his sleeves and let out a heavy sigh. He’s not forcing you to believe him but he wants you to believe on every word he’s about to tell you now. He clears his throat, and made you sit on the couch with him.

“I was away for a friend’s wedding. He’s a good friend of mine and I couldn’t miss his wedding” he breaths in and exhales sharply,  “the wedding was perfect and everyone was having a good time, until… someone shot the groom, my friend, Taemin, right before my eyes. His wife... died too” his steady voice is not so steady now, you see his hands shaking while telling you more of what happened and to be honest you dont know if you should believe it.

“It was a fucking massacre we should’ve known better. Johnny lost his girlfriend too” he reaches for your hand and smiled when you didn’t nudge. “I was thankful… Really thankful that you were far from me during that time. Many people died that night. A lot of kingdoms right now are facing big problems. My kingdom needed me y/n, thats why I couldnt go back to you.”

Feeling his touch again made you want to wake up more. Praying that you really wanted to open your eyes now. Too much, everything about this dream is too much. “Doyoung, Johnny and Yuta are now looking for the last assassin, and it’s in your world. We figured, its there to hurt me, to kill you” there was a moment of silence, he came closer to you, his lips touched yours again. You didn’t slapped him this time. His soft lips made you want to stay in this dream more, if this is a dream might as well drown in it.

You hugged him tight, you both fell on the floor with a loud thud. He chuckled but you see tears in his eyes, “look babe were on the floor again” you dried the tears on his eyes with your thumb and laughed with him. Suddenly happiness hits you like a truck again just like the day you met Taeyong for the first time. “Can I kiss you again?” this time its you who initiated the kiss, you kissed him deeply with love.

He asked you to changed your clothes so people in his kingdom wont think your clothes are weird. The maids picked a simple beige garden dress for you though It was kind of long for your liking but it was surprisingly lightweight and beautiful. In other words, you looked like a princess. Get it together y/n, you’re a ballerina for goodness sakes think of it as a costume.

The place looks exactly how fairytales described it. High ceilings painted with clouds and angels, open roof for the everyone to admire the beautiful sky, fresh breeze, people wearing fancy dresses, knights guarding every corner of the palace and Taeyong....looking like a prince fresh out of a story book. You wait at the big balcony watching the sun set in front of you almost looking like a painting. “Im sure you have a lot of questions” Taeyong interrupted your thoughts.

You scoffed, “Lee Taeyong, you have no idea”

“Im sure I can answer them all. Fire away”

“Well, you can start by telling me the truth and tell me stuff I need to know. Parents? Siblings? ....Allergies?” You shook your head, “personal stuff Taeyong”

He’s calm expression melts your heart, he’s always like that. You felt him kiss your exposed shoulders his arms encircled on your waist. “I’m still your Taeyong. Just add the word king” he let out a soft chuckle but you gave him a look telling him you’re serious. “Okay, tiger. chill” he hugged you tighter letting his warm breath hit the shell of your ear, “I lost my parents when I was 8 from the same assassins that killed my friend Taemin. I have a sister but she’s in your world living peacefully without any memory of this world. I dont have any allergies” he turned you around so you’re facing him, he missed being this close to you. He doesn’t say it but he’s so turned on right now, his gaze never leaving yours.

“In your world, you call my world... a fairytale. There is magic lurking in this world but nothing too crazy don’t worry. No harry potter type of situation.” He winks.

“I want you to meet someone very important to me, one of these days I’ll bring you to her. She’s someone special and she helped me shaped my life and with my duties as king” you nod silently.

Taeyong secretly worries about you, to be honest he worries for you and your mental state while living with him here in his kingdom. Is it really okay with you? Do you still see him as the Lee Taeyong as your number one fan and not as the highest king in this world?

“Y/n.. please be honest with with me. Dont hide what you really feel right now.”

“Baby. You were gone for almost a year, it was a lonely time for me. I appreciate your effort for explaining everything even though its too much. I’ll get there. I hope you understand that.” he nods changing the subject and showering your face with kisses.

“How are you?” Taeyong asked sweetly like how he usually do.

You let out a small laugh, and told him everything he missed. That you were devastated, sad and lonely when he was gone and that he missed the opportunity of meeting your parents during Christmas eve. “Im sorry. Im sorry for not being normal enough to make you happy and provide normal stuff-“

“Dont say that” you cut him off, “You’re more than enough for me Taeyong. Dont say stuff like that” he’s still guilty but you comfort him nonetheless you never want to feel sad anymore. Not now that you’re in each others arms again.

Taeyong prepared dinner for the both of you while you’re out roaming the castle grounds. He made a picnic style dinner setup at the balcony of his chambers making you comfortable on your first night here in his kingdom. “Yum!” you let out a groan out of excitement and told him you missed his cooking.

“You know, I planned to have my own bakery. I already took care of the loan and the bank will help me make my dreams come true” you sounded really excited while telling him what you’ve been up to while he was away. He was happy that you had everything under control and you made the planning all by yourself. “Actually I could help you out. Forget about the bank, I can help you. Let’s find a decent place for your bakery when we get back” Of course your super rich boyfriend will help you out because he loves you so much.

You knew Taeyong loves seeing you do what you love, and you know Taeyong offered help because this is his way of taking part in your life. Again. And you love him more for it. “Yeah. Lets do that” you accepted his offer with a smile, feeding him a potato chip with a mouthful of guac. Just how he liked it. “How about you Taeyongie, whats new?” you made him think hard. “Hmmm. Well, do you accept interns?” You laughed hard and loud your giggles echoed in his room.

“What Im serious! I can taste everything you make, clean tables, anything you like me to do” There’s the Taeyong that you know. The simple man with a great sense of humour that you fell in love with. Now that you’re talking about dreams, you confidently told him about the life you wanted to build with him when all this is over, telling him you cant wait to go back and be with him again.

“If you’re going to marry me someday. I want a baby girl... now, I know you need a prince as an heir....” Taeyong laughed so loud enough for the whole castle to hear. Brave of you to tell him that you want kids in the future.

“But I want to have my own mini me. And maybe if we get lucky, you can have your own mini you” you continued and Taeyong is still laughing.

“I’ll help you buy our house when I save enough from the bakery. We will make love from sun up until sun down. Never ending happy mornings with you. Tie my hair until we grow old and everything in between, I just want to be with you until I die” Even though it made Taeyong laugh so hard, he can’t help but have butterflies in his stomach the whole time you were talking. He wanted the same thing too.

“I promise. We will have a normal life.” he kissed you to seal his promise.

After dinner you took a shower in Taeyong’s garden bathroom. Never getting used to what this castle can do, it really surprised you how a bathroom can be so magical. Taeyong’s bathroom smells like fresh flowers everywhere, maybe thats why Taeyong smells good all the time. It feels good to be in Taeyong’s comfortable clothes again. He gave you his favorite sweater and a pair of comfortable sweatpants. You only wore the sweater and underwear, not bothering to wear sweatpants.

As you got out of the bathroom you see Taeyong laying in bed with a book on his hand, topless and flashing his wide broad shoulders. You remember nights at your apartment when he waits for you in bed while he’s playing games on his phone. He looks so handsome. You crawl towards him feeling his soft bed and snuggles beside him comfortably. “Finally. Some alone time with you” he kisses you softly, carefully nibbling your neck and slowly tugging the sweater that he gave you as if he’s testing waters.

You were impatient so you removed it already showing off your breast to him. He gently kisses your body marking it like how he used to. His touch and kisses are still the same you thought. Oh how you missed this feeling. You crave for Taeyong and he can see that you’re eager “Slow down baby. We have all night” he says while drawing small circles on your thigh. It makes you crazy how he’s taking time with you and how he slowly devours your skin while you crave for him entirely.

He quickly switched positions with you, now kissing your lips slowly going down to face your pussy. Gently spreading your legs in front of him, you let out a gasp and a choked  moan when Taeyong blows cold air at your slit, making you shiver. He smiles at you before he finally licks your pussy, slow and deep. His tongue starts from the bottom slowly goes up to your clit and gently kiss it. Catching your first orgasm for the night, Taeyong overstimulates you while you ride your high. Your moans are load and sharp he cant help but smirk and feel proud of his work.

“Baby are you planning to wake up the whole castle?” leaving wet kisses on your left breast and bites your nipple.

“Babe just fuck me already” you beg, feeling his hands kneading your breast, playing with your nipples with his thumb. You’re so focused on what he’s doing with your breast, you didn’t notice he’s spreading your legs wide for him preparing you before he finally fucks you. Without warning he inserts two fingers already to stretched your cunt. You yelped and tried to grasp anything from bed, you feel like your energy was slowly fading until you surrender in his touch. He chuckled.

This is not funny Taeyong. “Lee Taeyong im almost the-“ you warn him but he lets you cum on his fingers. You whisper sweet words to him expressing how much you missed him and it made the sexual tension more intense. Lining his cock on your pussy, coating it with your essence and slowly he gets deeper and deeper inside you. It feels so good. He fucks in slow pace, taking his time before going faster. You let out a string of moans, encircling your arms on his neck feeling his back muscles.

Slow, fast, deep and sharp thrust. He’s taking his time, fighting his urge to cum before you. Little did he know you cant take it anymore, you’ve cum so many times when he was fucking you slow. You tried pushing him away but you’re too weak. Taeyong fucked you again and again until you don’t respond to him and he let’s you sleep. He took care of you before joining you, made sure you’re clean. “I love you y/n” he whispers before sleeping beside you.

Taeyong slept like a baby beside you. It was his first time getting a good sleep from months of longing you. Telling himself he will never let anything come between the two of you ever again.

And it went on like this for days, weeks, even months while you’re stay in his kingdom. You became used to the castle grounds already, roaming around as if you’ve live there for a long time. On your way to Taeyong’s office, you see Taeyong with a beautiful woman almost your age wearing a beautiful dress, she has gorgeous long straight blonde hair and her skin is as fair as Taeyong’s. You got jealous for a second but maybe he’s Taeyong’s cousin or whatever.

Taeyong saw you and quickly introduced you to the beautiful princess in front of you.

“Y/n, this is Sorn. My fiancé”

Your what Lee Taeyong?

You gave him a look. A look thats saying you’re confused, mad and at the same time you want to punch him. Then you remembered the time when Jaehyun introduced himself as your future husband, you think this is his way of getting even. But he wasn’t kidding at all.

“Arranged marriage when we were both still young. I hope you understand” the princess speaks and reached out a hand full of sparkling rings. You wonder which ring Taeyong gave her. You didnt have a choice but to be nice.

Taeyong and Sorn are now talking inside his office about some royalty shit you thought and you can’t help but sulk. Yuta noticed that you’re bothered by the thought of Taeyong having a fiancé, hoping he could help you feel better he explains the situation further.

“Don’t worry y/n, it’s only for formality. This royalty shit is crazy and Taeyong needs a “queen” to rule here so he can be with you from time to time in your world” you thought that the idea was fucked up. “What was he thinking?” You almost shout but Yuta laughs at you.  “I told you. This royalty shit is crazy. A lot of sacrifices needs to be done”

“I love her y/n” Yuta finally confess. “To protect this world. To protect my kingdom, I have to let go of Sorn” your heart aches for what Yuta just told you. How can the world of royalties can be so cruel to good people?

Yuta and Sorn were young and in love for as long as they can remember. So deeply in love, that they plan to help each other’s kingdoms by marriage someday. But Sorn’s family faced problems and they needed help immediately, so the royal court’s decision is to arrange her for marriage. The royal court is so obsessed with finding Taeyong a queen and they saw Sorn as a good opportunity. “Duty before self” Yuta explained.

“Why didn’t you volunteer your kingdom? Is that too selfish?” You asked, trying not to sound rude.

“My kingdom is not that rich to solve her kingdom’s money problems. Thats why I’ve been  saving money in your world and be as rich as possible. That’s how I help my father with being king for now “

You cant believe this tragic love story that you’re hearing from Yuta. Just the thought of it makes you scared, that even though two people deeply love each other if fate is not in their favor, you can’t do something about it. Feeling bad about oversharing his feelings, Yuta told you not to worry, for Taeyong loves you so much and his kingdom equally.

You didn’t notice that you fell asleep while waiting for Taeyong to join you in bed. You felt soft kisses on your cheek, Taeyong waking you up in the middle of the night. Softly stroking your hair telling you to shush and follow him. Guiding you as you follow him to dark places that you’re not familiar with, you finally arrived to where he’s taking you.

You squint a little, seeing candles lit up, different flowers scattered on the floor, you’ve guessed you’re walking on an aisle with Taeyong. Doyoung, Yuta, Johnny and....a priest is waiting at the end of the aisle. Gasping as you realised, you’re about to get married.

“I was actually going to ask you to marry me over dinner tonight but-“ you cut him off and kissed him. “I’ll marry you.” You sad with a smile and hugged him tight. Crying tears of joy already.

You both proceed to this secret wedding that he organised. It was simple, just like you’ve always wanted. Genuine like him and sincere like his love. Taeyong promised to give you a proper wedding when you both get back to your world, but you told him you wouldn’t trade this wedding for anything.

Doyoung, Yuta and Johnny are happy for the both of you. They’ve seen Taeyong suffer enough without you and they all think that you both deserve to be happy. The three princes congratulates the both of you and telling them they’re more than happy seeing their Taeyongie marry happily someone he loves.

“Just dont be too loud fucking tonight or the castle will know somethings up” Johnny jokes making Taeyong punch him on his arm.

You spend your honeymoon enjoying the cold breeze around the palace. Sitting on the grass while watching how the castle turn yellow because of the soft sunrise. Taeyong got you beautiful flowers from his garden, tying it in a perfect knot making a small bouquet. He told you that the last assassin is dead and finally you can go back to the human world.

Just like the sunrise, you watch Taeyong be happy beside you. Remembering every detail of this beautiful moment. He noticed you were staring at him for a while now and he cant help but make you laugh by showing his wedding ring. Reminding you that he’s your husband from now on. Taeyong completely changed your life.

It was almost afternoon when you finally wake up from your sleep and still couldn’t believe that you’re married to this handsome guy kissing you. For the second time, Lee Taeyong is waking you up from your beautiful sleep by kissing you until you acknowledge him. “Lee Taeyong what do you want?” You asked him forcing yourself to open your eyes.

“Good morning... wife” and that alone made you smile. Taeyong thought your smile was so bright but it never hurts his eyes.

“I need you to meet someone important today” he’s now kissing your neck. Seriously this guy. “Last three days before you leave this kingdom by the way” he chuckled. “Everything will go back to normal once we go back. I promise.” He gave you one good kiss before leaving to prepare for breakfast.

He told you that you’re meeting the kingdom’s witch, a nice witch who helped him to be the king that he is.  “Ruby is like my secret weapon. She warns me and gives me knowledge with all the decisions that I make for the kingdom.”

Ruby is a witch that tells Taeyong what the future holds for his kingdom. She never tells what will happen entirely. She didn’t want to ruin the natural order of the universe, she can only warn his king and give him choices to make good decisions.

When you arrived at where you believed Ruby lives, a pond inside a cave, you thought that maybe Ruby likes fishing. You peeked at how deep the pond is and you see coins and, random things under the water that are all solid gold.

“Anything you throw in this pond turns into solid gold” he winks after he explains.

You saw the water shine as Ruby comes out of the pond with all her glory turn into this gorgeous human in front of you. From being a mermaid with golden fishtail. A mermaid witch, you thought. And she is naked in front of your husband with only her golden hair covering her boobs. Wow.

“Y/n, this is Ruby.” Taeyong broke the silence. When Ruby took a step further out from the water, she turned in a much decent human, “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you y/n. Congratulations.” She smiled sweetly to you.

Ruby was nice to you and she offered to read your future. You didn’t want Ruby to show you your future to be honest, but you did it for Taeyong. She asked for your hand, holding it while she looks directly in your eyes. You saw what she saw. And there’s no need to tell Taeyong about it. You both giggle like little girls after you both saw your future, leaving Taeyong really curious.

In the future that Ruby showed you, you will have a little girl. And you will live like how he always promised for the both of you. Its pure happiness. “Thank you Ruby. It really means a lot” you told her with sincerity.

But little did you know, Ruby just showed you the future that you wanted to see. Not showing you your true future. She asked to speak to Taeyong privately and you respectfully left them talking.

Ruby did the same thing to Taeyong, but without the filter.  She showed Taeyong the challenges and pain he will put you through if he continue this married life with you.  “Your highness, Im afraid you’re not going to be the father of the child” Ruby showed Taeyong what you saw in her eyes earlier. It made him smile but he felt a pang of pain at the same time.

“Don’t get me wrong your highness, the child will come from you. But you will not be present as her father in her life.” Taeyong was confused. Ruby continued showing him more, and his world crashed. His heart feels heavy, he feels broken than ever. Taeyong is scared to the bone right now, but he trusts Ruby with his life and he is positive that Ruby wants what’s best for the kingdom and him.

Taeyong saw how his kingdom suffered from a famine while he was away from the kingdom living his life with you in the human world. He will have no other choice but to leave you again for the kingdom needs him. The famine will last for a year, and your pregnancy will not be the healthiest. You will lose the child and it will drive you to killing yourself. He saw how Doyoung told him the news that you passed away and it made him crazy. Taeyong turned into a mad king and the whole kingdom suffered in other words.

“Your highness now I ask of you.... to do the same thing as we did to your sister and prevent everything whats about to happen. We will create a life for y/n, a beautiful life without you in it” Ruby explains with a heavy heart.

Taeyeon. Taeyong’s sister is living well in the human world without any memory of the kingdom. Taeyeon was with their parents when they were killed and the incident traumatised her. To save her from being crazy, they gave her a potion for forgetting everything about the incident, the kingdom, Taeyong, everything.

Taeyong didn’t have much choice. He didn’t want to hurt you and kill yourself that will indeed make him crazy for good. Although its wrong for him to decide on his own, he still agreed to Ruby. He told her all about your dreams, the normal life you long with him, and the bakery you wanted to be successful with.

“I want her - I want her to have a peaceful life when she wakes up. A life without sadness, make sure she’s never alone or lonely. Be sure to never let her give up dancing because she loves her craft so much. Let her explore new things” Taeyong sniffs and continues to instruct Ruby. “She wants a bakery, let it be so successful customers will always buy every masterpiece she bakes. Please let her be with someone who truly loves her the same way I will.”

It really hurts him to pass you on to someone, it breaks his heart thinking of another man having you. “Please let that man be Jaehyun” he could only trust you with Jaehyun. Ruby hands the potion to Taeyong with a heavy heart. “I know you just got married. I’m sorry my king”

Your husband cant look you in the eye right now, but he stayed brave and put the small bottle in his pocket. “I’m still curious on what she showed you babe” Taeyong said, faking a smile. You let out a loud laugh without knowing what he really feels.

“Oh its a secret” you told him with a big mocking smile.

“I love you, y/n” he smiles ever so sweetly before your eyes.

Noticing his beautiful rose scar, and gently stroking it with your thumb. “I love you too, Lee Taeyong.”

[dirt-cup-draco]

Platonic!Fred x Reader- Spark

Hey can u do a post war ,platonic angst list 45 24 an 17 w/ fred weasley ?

Fred sighed deeply after another long but fulfilling day spreading whatever joy he could with George there to be the positive one when he couldn’t quite manage it. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy, for Merlin’s sake he should be dead! He was thanking the gods every second of the day, yet he couldn’t help but feel like something was missing. 

“You missed a spot,” George poked fun as Fred drifted into his own mind. Fred rolled his eyes but his grip tightened on his cane as he leaned against one of the shelves, using the rag attached to the bottom of his cane to wipe at the window where some kid had put their sugary fingers all over. 

George watched Fred as he slouched, cleaning halfheartedly. “What’s been going on with you lately? It’s like you’re not really here...” George’s voice was soft and loving and Fred was grateful for his twin’s strength and compassion every day. 

Fred shook his head, shrugging his shoulders as he hobbled to his brother. His leg ached more than usual today and it had put him in a sour mood. “Just been thinkin’ about when we were in school...” 

“Good times,” George smiled fondly, a glint in his eye that had never left. It was hard to find that same spark in Fred these days. 

Fred hoped that he had placated his brother’s worries and he was certain he had, as he had made it halfway up the stairs before George surprised him. “Is it Y/N?” 

Fred’s cane rattled out of his hand and clanged against the swirling stairs. Cussing he gripped the rail, trying to move his trick knee so that he could begin his descent but George jogged easily to the steps and grabbed his twin’s cane, bringing it up to him. With a flick of his wand, that was more for show than necessity, the doors locked and the lights went out as they finished ascending the last few steps into their shared apartment. 

“I take your silence as a yes...?” George asked cheekily as Fred sank into the nearest recliner with a huff. 

“No,” Fred said but George raised his eyebrows in a look that told him: I know better you git, tell me the truth. “Fine, maybe. Yes. I don’t know! She keeps sending letters...” 

“And you haven’t answered any of them,” George pointed out, making his way to their cluttered dinner table, lifting a stack of letters that got larger everyday. Guilt coursed through his veins. 

“I just-” 

“Can’t deal with how you broke her heart?” 

“Seriously, George?” Fred had to ask as his brother drove in the point. He was right though. It’d been months since he’d last seen you and you had tried reaching out every day after. 

“I love you Freddie, but she’s been everything to us, to you, and you broke her heart...” 

“Why do I have to be the one to make things better?” Fred scowled. “Dont act like you can’t reach out either,” 

George’s eyes lit up with an untold secret and a sly smile worked it’s way onto his face. “I have, actually,” He admitted with pride. “We get tea, you know the place, every other week,” 

Fred’s eyebrows scrunched together in the center of his forehead as he thought of George sitting across from you with tea in your hands. Did you still blow on the tea before every sip in the hopes you wouldn’t burn your tongue? Did you still trace the patterns on the teacups because you found them pretty? Did you still try to give mock lessons about the grounds in the bottom of your cup like you did after you’d grown tired of Trelawney’s  classes? 

“H-how is she?” He asked, sitting up in his chair as it groaned beneath him. 

“You’d know if you checked her letters,” George pointed out, tossing one of the neatly addressed envelopes into his brother’s lap. “She asks about you a lot, but she also tries to hear it from you. It breaks her heart that you’re shutting her out like this...” 

“She’s better off-” 

“Without you?” George scoffed. “Being a fool is a part of you and me but I didn’t think you were daft Freddie,” 

Fred frowned that same frown that seemed to take up more time on his face than his smiles did and it hurt George to see how his injury and PTSD from the war had changed him. Fred was still a child at heart and George knew it but he had aged incredibly fast in the past few months. It had been two years since the war but something had happened and it was like a switch went off. 

“We were doing so well,” George explained, kneeling before his brother, hands gripping the arm rests. “All three of us... What happened that ended all of that? What happened to you?” George begged softly with Fred. His brother’s pain was his, yet it seemed Fred was determined to shut him out.

Fred stared at the wacky pattern of his neat slacks, not knowing what to say. What could he say? He was worried about your safety because one night you’d woken him from a nightmare and he’d thought you were a death eater? That he’d held his wand to your throat and it had taken him crucial minutes to realize that it was you? That he’d left you crying in your bed while he laid on the couch unable to sleep? That the very next day he’d broken up with you, forced you out of the apartment? 

“Right after you were injured... and the months following- Y/N she never gave up on you. Even when you wouldn’t wake up, even when mom started to lose hope. Even when they wondered whether it’d be better to take your leg. Y/N knew what she was signing up for and she stayed Fred.  She never gave up on you. So why did you give up on her?” 

“I’m going to bed,” Fred decided. The questions were too much and the guilt was much worse. When George called his name in exasperation, he shut the door a little louder than he normally would. 

--

George found you sitting in your spot, already sipping at your tea. When you found him coming your way you gave him a grin and waved him over, pointing to the drink you’d already ordered for him. 

“In a rush?” George asked, lowering himself into the booth seat across from you. You shrugged, a gentle flush coloring your cheeks. “I have some...news. Thought it might be nice if we could get right to it without being interrupted,” 

George’s brow wrinkled and he fixed you with a long stare. “Everything okay?” His stomach was immediately in knots. He didn’t like surprises, hadn’t in ages. He loved surprising others but he didn’t respond very well to them himself. His mind kicked into overdrive when he wasn’t aware of something and his anxiety got the best of him. 

You reached forward, hand finding his as you gave him a reassuring smile. “Yes Georgie everything is fine. Everything is better than fine actually.” You grinned and it was the most radiant George had seen you since you and Freddie had ended things. “I’ve found someone,” 

George didn’t mean to choke on his tea, but how else was he supposed to react to such news? He hadn’t even known you’d been dating! “Wow!” He settled on, still trying to gather his bearings. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t hoped you and Fred would fix things. “I’m happy for you,” 

And you knew he was. George was one of your best friends, and you wanted him to know that you were doing well. You’d only hesitate because you didn’t want him thinking he wasn’t happy with him, or Fred. You loved them both dearly, even if the latter refused to speak with you. “He’s so great,” You gushed. 

“When do I get to meet the guy? I think he needs the Weasley stamp of approval first,” George pretended to look stern and tough but he couldn’t quite manage it. You smiled and he did too. George liked seeing you happy, no matter who it was with. 

You wrinkled your nose. “I don’t want to scare him off so meeting him might have to wait a while...” 

George scoffed playfully. “You’re embarrassed of lil ol’ me?” His mind twirled about for a moment longer and he felt more subdued when he asked, “Are you going to tell Fred?” 

“I-I... Well I don’t know,” You answered honestly, biting your thumbnail as a server came over and offer a refill which you gladly accepted. “Do you think he’d even care? The guy, he’s a muggle and well, I just don’t know when is a good time to introduce him to anyone, let alone my two- my only best friend,” You sighed, feeling glum.

Could you consider Fred your friend? You had no ill feelings towards him, you understood the war had changed him in a way you couldn’t understand. Your relationship had been a casualty of the last battle and you had come to terms with it. That didn’t mean you had come to terms with losing him completely. You wanted to be close to him like how you and George were. 

“Y/N, he cares,” George squeezed your hand, understanding where your mind was wondering. Suddenly he perked up. Why hadn’t he thought of this before?” “Come ‘round for dinner this Sunday, yeah? I’ll talk to him,” 

George could sense your hesitation, and you were very hesitant, but you knew that you’d have to see him. You wanted to see him for Merlin’s sake! You just thought he’d have answered one of your letters by now. 

“Alright,” You tried to smile. “Sunday then,” The things you did for George. 

--

“Y/N’s in a relationship,” Was the first thing George announced upon coming home and Fred didn’t think he’d heard his twin right. 

“With who?” Fred asked, sitting up straighter in his seat. “I mean that’s great! But still, who?” 

George shrugged, tossing his jacket over the back of the recliner Fred was seated in. Fred swatted it away onto the ground. “Don’t know. Some muggle guy, I guess,” 

Fred thought for a long second. Would you be happy with a muggle? You adored magic and the magical world, would a non magical partner be the best for you? He supposed if the muggle took it well then it didn’t matter... “Is she happy?” Fred asked, standing on quaking legs as George busied himself with tidying the kitchen. 

George paused in his busy work and looked to his brother, a smile playing at his lips. “Yeah Freddie, happier than I’ve seen since- y’ know,” It hurt, but not as much as Fred thought it would. It was good to know you were happy. Fred cared a great deal about you but he had laid awake for endless nights wondering what would become of you two if he looked at your letters and replied. Maybe you two would have gotten back together if he’d done it months ago but now he didn’t know. Now, he wasn’t sure what he wanted from you. For starters, he wanted to see you.

“She’s coming for dinner Sunday night,” George suddenly declared. 

“What?!” Fred stumbled over his feet for a moment, taken off guard. Yes he wanted to see you, but that didn’t mean he was ready to!

“It’s been forever!” George whined. “I want my two best friends back. I don’t care if you’re dating or not... I just want you to be friends again,” 

Fred pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long sigh. “Alright, Sunday is fine,” The things he did for his brother.

--

You stood in the shop with sweating palms while George finished up the grunt work before locking the doors. He’d sent Fred up earlier to check on dinner and so you would be a bit more comfortable upon arriving. 

“You can go up if you want,” George commented as he tossed the last few sickles from the register into the safe for the night. 

“That’s alright,” you deflected, looking around the joke shop that you hadn’t been in since Fred had broken up with you. It was bittersweet being back. There were a lot of good memories and a few not so great ones. If you could go back... You weren’t sure you’d change anything. You loved Fred, that was true, but somewhere along the line you’d realized that you two had done your time and you simply weren’t meant to be. That didn’t make it any easier being here, however. 

“I’ve finished up, do you want me to go up first?” George asked, wrapping his arm around your shoulder so he could rub your arm. 

“That’d be great,” You smiled as George took the lead. You ran your hand up the railing as you went, relaxing at the familiarity of it. 

When you got upstairs you were met by a sight that had you gnawing on your lip in an effort to keep your laughter bottled up. Fred was surrounded by a few pots, which were all boiling quite violently, and a steady stream of smoke was beginning to rise from the stove. The windows were open but it did nothing to mask the smell of burnt food.

“I leave you alone for ten minutes-” George began, rushing to Fred’s side. 

“That was your first mistake!” The frustrated boy interrupted and you rolled your eyes as you tried to fight your smile. You shooed them to the side and turned off all the burners, opened the stove and turned it off. You removed everything from the heat and tossed them into the sink, the water from the faucet sizzling and popping against the extremely hot pots and pans. 

When all was said and done you stared at Fred with an amused grin. “How have you been managing without me?” 

“A mystery to us all,” George lamented. “Guess that means we’re getting take out?” 

--

Fred admired your constant calm, it was what had drawn him to you in the first place. He was always going, always laughing, always doing something. You, on the other hand were happy to just relax and take in the moment. You looked before you leapt and Fred needed someone like that in his life. You’d always been the reminder to slow down and he appreciated that as he watched you take care of his kitchen blunder. 

“Alright?” George asked, nodding to Fred as you all gathered at the table to eat the food he’d ordered. Fred found it hard to answer with your eyes on him. Especially when they drifted to the pile of letters that had been cleared off the table and now remained on their coffee table. 

“Y-yeah, thanks,” He tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “So! Y/N, how’s the new boy toy?” 

“Fred-” George began but Fred held his hands up in surrender. 

“I’m just curious! Really, I just want to know how you’re doing,” Fred looked you in the eye for the first time that night and you seemed suspicious of him for a minute before you seemed to realize he was being genuine. Your shoulders drooped in relief.

“I’m doing well and Marcus is really great,” You smiled softly, thinking of your boyfriend. “He’s been a nice reminder that there is magic in the world- even for muggles.” 

George fake gagged and you smacked his arm, your smile not fading in the slightest. 

“And you? How have you been doing?” You asked. There were a million things you wanted to ask Fred but this seemed to be the safest option. 

George felt relieved when the two of you spoke politely. There was an underlying tension, from unanswered questions and a past that Fred had run away from, but other than that dinner was smooth sailing and he was glad that his idea hadn’t ended up in ruins even if it had started off rocky with the burned dinner. 

“This has been lovely,” He announced, setting his napkin on his plate as he stood, walking to your chair so he could press a kiss to your cheek. “But I am exhausted, have a good night Y/N,” 

Fred looked panicked but George sent him a pointed glare. Talk to her!

“Goodnight Georgie,” You gulped and watched as your mediator vanished to his bedroom.

Fred took a steadying breath. “Want a drink?” 

--

“Did you mean to forget me?” You asked after three strong drinks and Fred shoved himself deeper into the recliner. You were sitting quite stiffly on the couch, a throw pillow in your lap. You fiddled with the tassles for a second before taking another swallow of your drink.  

“I never forgot-” Fred started.

“You never wrote me,” You interrupted. “Are you afraid to lose me?”

Fred narrowed his eyes and you blew a piece of your hair out of your eyes. He seemed to be reprimanding you for interrupting him. You thought you had the right to ask questions, he had been avoiding you for months after all. “I figured I’d already done a pretty good job of losing you after I’d kicked you out... George didn’t talk to me for a week after that. Then you started sending letters and I just felt so damn guilty I couldn’t bring myself to read them, still havent’,” 

“Clearly,” You remarked, topping off your glass and then his. 

“Y/N,” Fred sighed. “What do you want me to say?” 

You shrugged. “I don’t know... I don’t mean to seem bitter. I really am happy right now, I just still have a lot of hurt from how things ended between us I guess,” 

“I admit that I probably handled it the worst way possible,” Fred conceded. “All I could think about was how scared you looked and how I didn’t want you to ever feel fear like that again. I’ve been seeing someone to help me work through all the damage the war did and it helps but George wakes me from nightmares still and I haven’t stopped lashing out. I care about you a lot, that hasn’t changed, but I think the way I care about you has- if that makes sense,” 

Fred was rambling a bit, but you understood what he was saying and where it was all coming from. You had been scared shitless that night, no matter how many times you’d reassured him it was you he hadn’t seemed to understand that until George had been woken from his sleep and calmed his brother enough that he could come back to reality. It hadn’t been a deal breaker, but Fred had made it clear you weren’t going to be coming back. 

“It does... I feel the same.” You agreed, running your fingertip along the rim of your glass as you avoided looking at Fred. “I was mad at you, did you know that? Not because what happened, but because it didn’t seem to matter all we’d been through- you just kicked me out and didn’t speak to me again... I wouldn’t be here right now if George hadn’t done something,” 

“That isn’t-” 

“True? Fred please, I know you better than you want me to. I know you arent thrilled, I’m not either... But I am glad this is happening. We need to talk about this. George is right about wanting his friends back because I want my friend back too,” 

Fred lit up a little bit. “You want to be friends? Do you think we could? Can you still love me?" 

You stood and Fred followed. You grabbed the hand that wasn’t gripping his cane and squeezed affectionately. “I don’t know,” You answered honestly. “But I do still love you, even if that love has changed. You’re an idiot Fred but you’re my kind of idiot and I’d like for us to be friends again” 

He smiled a smile that reminded you of when you two had been in school, running around and getting into trouble with hands linked together and hearts beating in unison. It was a smile that gave you hope that you two could be friends again and that the past would simply stay put. 

“I’d like that too,” Fred pulled you into a hug and you could feel him leaning against you as he let himself relax for the first time all night. 

The spark between you was gone, no fireworks to be had when you brushed your hands together or made eye contact. Despite that, there was still a glowing ember in the fire of your friendship and as you two embraced and healed old wounds it grew brighter, igniting once again.

It was good to have your friend back. 

Tag List: @angelinathebook @thehumanistsdiary @cleopatera 

Requester (is that a word?): @slytherinlovesgryffindor

[spnsmile]

"I believe in her."

Cas couldn't take his eyes away from Dean. Even when Sam left, all he could do is stare and when Dean notices, he returns it with intent.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"You don't really believe her, right? Billie?"

"Why the sudden change of mind?" Dean takes a sip of his beer. Castiel looks at him thoughtfully.

"Sam's just... Asking the right question, I mean. What's her end game? What happens if Jack succeeds? What's next...?"

"Ain't it paradise?"

Castiel pauses. He didn't think Dean would remember so continues frowning and watched Dean straighten himself as much as his bowlegs would allow.

"Well, no choice but go with the greater of the two evils, Cas. And right now the guy who's planning the old comedy "wipe out the world" takes the cake."

"Dean, she's Death. As far as I'm concerned if any entity out there wants you dead for good, it's her. You're not worried she could use this opportunity to get you? Like killing two birds with blunt force of one stone... in one very violent throw... Don't laugh, she of all people wants you dead."

Cas swallows hard, the idea cementing in his brain now he's vocal about it.

And Dean just chuckles?

"She could. But if she's using us to get rid of Chuck, then that means wanting me dead also takes the back burner. For now we see eye to eye. Chuck has to go first dibs. If she needs to use us then we gotta hold hands, run up to the sunset and see where she takes us."

"That is highly optimistic view, even for you, Dean. Considering she's been trying to get you killed

"She's death, it's her obsession, Cas. Talking about death." the hunter smirks, making the angel bristle.

"This isn't funny, Dean."

"I know, Cas. You know I get it, okay. But whatever she's got drawn up her blue print, doesn't change the fact that she still gotta line up the queue." Dean shrugs and it's not nonchalance that Castiel sees in his eyes.

It's absolute faith for this cause. One where Dean will be fighting with him until the last battle.

Until his last breath. After that, what?

Castiel closes his eyes.

"I'm saying I don't want you to die." he finally says, all raw emotions out. He feels Dean look his way, know the startled expression is in there without needing to look and hates it.

Why Dean always need to be surprise when someone tells him they don't want him dead never ceases to anger him.

Like Dean believes everyone wants him dead. Then again, considering things he's been through...

"Hey, Cas?"

Castiel engages the man with a look.

And like its not enough that they've been throwing furtive looks at each other in the presence of Sam, the man has the gall to stand and seat in that distracting position where he can fully see the man's lips and thick bowlegs presenting just within his reach while smiling like he know what he's doing.

The way Dean can look so full of affection with green eyes that just flickers expressively towards his direction with long lashes dusting his freckled cheeks. The way he opens his emotions to Castiels without restraint, letting him glimpse the soul so bright in its form he once rebuilt

I want closer

But he stays where he is, even when Dean openly invites him silently to come closer, his eyes expectant and soft and full of love.

Cas remains where he is perched.

Control. He gives it seven seconds count to take over the reel of feelings pulling him to Dean. The same way when Dean's eyes were grateful and bursting and happy, almost singing praises when they reconciled after his solemn prayer. Dean is gazing at him with the same adoration same loving affection overflowing and so full of hope.

So full of love. Something Castiel knows he cannot accept so he ducks his eyes. He knows exactly why the pull is strong this time. It's Dean. Dean's longing.

Dean's prayers.

So loud and intense. It wants him.

It's madness how the tables have turned. Unlike before where the boat is tipping on his side, this time, Dean's the one putting the weight. Dean's the one screaming in silence of his love.

But he can't. Not yet.

He has a mission here otherwise... He thinks of Jack and the mission.

Focus...

But it's too late when he looked up, he only sees Dean smile sadly and nod, before finishing the last whiskey on his glass, the sparks in his eyes dimming.

Dean wipes his chin with the back of his hand, his lips making smacking sound too loud to ignore.

"See you later, Cas." he says quietly, monotone and Castielf, angel that he is feels the swift slap of coldness on his skin. The worst was when Dean turns to go without meeting Castiel's eyes even when the angel has pushed himself off his wall and was waiting, but Dean goes- moves away.

Dean is leaving him and thwe sharp jab on the organ functioning as his heart makes Castiel call Dean back.

"Wait." He finds his hand curling on Dean's elbow, pulling him back.

"Dean." he hesitates, unable to pluck up the courage to say in fear that he might say too much. But ever as it happens, it's Dean who easrs him out of his misery with a simple flicker on his eyes and careful smile.om his lips. Castiel relaxes. Dean is still looking deeply in his eyes. "I want some."

"Want something from me?" Dean licks his lips, then raises both eyebrows when Cas eyes empty glass he's holding. "Oh." and Dean laughs in embarassment for some reason, the flush color on his cheeks gives Cas a wonderful view of his tanning freckles.

"Wanna drink with me?"

"Yeah, so bad, I'm thirsty for you."

Dean is in love with him and the hunter isn't even trying to hide it anymore. These are the thoughts that played across Castiel's mind as he sit with Dean in the library, listening to Deam praise him, Dean giving him all his attention and Dean being just too endearing.

Tried as he might not to fall for it like when Dean was praying to him in Purgatory, Castiel can't help gazing back with the same contentment and joy. Overflowing happiness of just sitting here, talking and talking like they haven't spoken to each other in years.

And the best part?

Dean's smiling unbiddenly with eyes just taking in Castiel. He sees the way Dean catches him smile, the way Dean's cheeks blushes. Castiel was glad there was a table between them or he was afraid what his instincts might do on impulse with Dean being like that.

He wants to kiss him. Instead, grabs his glasses without really drinking. He just listens to Dean's voice. Listen to Dean talk to him and it reminds suddenly of his fear of losing everything.

He realizes there's too little time to be with Dean so he memorizes everything. He memorizes a lot, even the exact moment Dean throws that wonderful look and raises a glass in his direction.

Cas' heart leaps in the air and he too is smiling and loving Dean so much, the only pull back to his heart when they toasted is the fact he can't tell Dean.

He wouldn't think about it for now. He too has faith in his choice and that is Jack. He is choosing Jack. Jack who is the answer to Castiel's crumbling faith whenever he thinks of the number of ways he can lose Dean.

"Hey."

Castiel looks up. He didn't notice Dean already standing in front of him. The angel blinks.

"What?"

"I was just telling Jody good night. She just called, asking how everybody is... And i told her I'm a very good kid today. She told me I'm drunk." Dean pouts.

"You want me to detoxify you?" Castiel tilts his head inquiringly. Dean stares with heavy eyes.

"Yeah, may need to drive."

"Where are you going?" Castiel frowns, a hand already raised. Dean blinks then slowly levels his eyes on the angel sitting in the chair.

"Somewhere. I feel happy, you see... But sad too... So I already spent my happy here with you. Time to go crush the bad. So driving."

"Why are you sad?" he cups Dean's face in alarm, his little world on his hand. So he wasn't mistaken. Behind Dean's eyes...

"It's okay..." Dean smiles, "Everyone's a little sad inside."

"Why?" he insists.

A long pause. Dean blinks slowly.

"Can't be together, you and I... So i gotta... Uh... Have to deal the sad without you...if we can't be together..."

"But we're together here."

Dean shakes his head. "I'm choosing. So are you. In the end we're gonna... I'm gonna have to deal with myself alone. There's no you out there. I have to prepare."

"Dean, what the hell are you talking about?" he hears him but he cannot understand him. Dean kneels in front of him all of a sudden, both hands taking Castiel's hands and clasping them with his own. The look Dean gives him after that is pure and honest, like souls bursting of its true form.

"I'm saying I understand why you can't... We can't. I understand it's the world or us... And that's not even a choice. I'm saying I understand you're the only angel who can save the world. So i want you to do it without holding back. Without thinking about whether I live or die. I want you to do that, Cas."

Castiel gasps. He sees no doubt in Dean's eyes. Watches as Dean brings his hand to his lips gently.

"Me dying doesn't compare to the world, Cas. So dont worry about me or Billie or whatever hell. You got your hands full, I got mine. So... i gotta drive."

Castiel sighs, then kisses Dean on the forehead. Clarity returns in the green eyes that blinks at him in surprise. Then Castiel stands up, nearly knocking Dean on his feet.

"I'm going with you."

"No, Cas. This is not the point-"

"I don't understand the point alright. I don't." Castiel grabs Dean's collar, sharp eyes full of meaning. "Don't make me understand why after everything... why after everything I've done, I'm still not going to be allowed to stay with you. I won't understand. And if this universe insists that? They're going to have to make a different bargain because I want you at the end of the road, Dean. It's you I think about when I think of win. And when that happens, I'll tell you loud and clear. I'll tell you what you already know. What I can't tell you now. I will. And it's not goodbye. So hold on to me. I will always find you. Do you believe me?"

It takes one smile from Dean and their foreheads pressing together.

"I believe you, Cas." ✨

[mistersourwolf]

Dear Diary - Damon x Reader

Warnings!; Death mentioned, Compulsion? I guess that is technically taking advantage, minor violence like shoving, really not that mature or crazy so i think you’re good, ily 

Word Count: 1,615

Summary: Your grandmother left a journal when she dies, when you read it you are schocked to hear about Damon salvatore, the man whom you are being set up with. How is it possible he hasn’t aged a day since 1966

A/N: So i had an idea and when i put it together it turned out being kind of sloppy but i kind of like this. It is dark, and guys keep a look out for some possible bite!kink or feeding!kink, im weird whatever but i kind of want to write that like um hot. ik ik you’re judging. haha anyways yeah i hope somehow through the sloppiness you find a way to love this. 

When my grandmother passed away, she left a journal. A journal filled with her adventures; places she had gone to, things she had seen, and people she had met along the way. I can’t say my grandmother didn’t live a full life, she did. For 73 years, she maintained a heart of gold, refusing to have a mean bone in her body. And it wasn’t always easy for her, not with him around.

Dear Diary,

May 23, 1966

   Today, I sit in a local cafe with my favorite sundress on. It’s a beautiful day outside, far too beautiful to even think of staying in. On a list of beautiful things, I spot a man sitting at the table in front of me. He won’t look away and I can already feel the blood rush to my cheeks. A leather jacket, he wears. Bold choice. For someone who looks like he doesn’t want to be noticed, he sure brings a lot of attention. Oh no, perhaps I’ve been staring for too long, he’s on his way over. That’s all for now.

“Snap out of it!”  My best friend, Elena, tugged at my arm. “Are you up for it or not?”

“They’re brothers, right?” I asked, confused about the whole situation.

“Hot brothers.” She giggled. Elena had been trying to convince me to go on a double date ever since she met Stefan. Apparently, he had a brother who was just as good looking as he was.

“Okay, well what’s his name?” I groaned, partly joking. Elena froze up, searching her mind for a name. “Elena! You want me to go on a date with this guy and not even know his name?”

“No, no I’m sorry! I think his name was D-Desmond, I dont know!” She sighed, plopping down on the closest bench.

“Don’t worry, you can make it up to me tonight.” I laughed, pulling her back up to her feet. “Come over, we can study for tomorrow’s test and order a pizza!” She laughed, showing a look of relief before we headed back to the doorms.

Dear Diary,  

May 24, 1966

  Our guy is quite the mystery. Revealing nothing more than his name, he convinced me to spend the afternoon with him. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, I had a fantastic time with him. I’m sure you’re wondering two things: What did you do and What is his name? If you must know, we went back to his place, something I’d never do. He’s a stranger and every bone in my body told me I shouldn’t go with him but his stare. It was so captivating. And since we’re friends, I guess you should know his name. He’s a Salvatore. Yes! A member of one of the founding families! Okay, fine, you know his last name might as well know his first. Afterall, the infamous Damon Salvatore should not be kept a secret.

I squeezed into a black dress before putting on my heels. It was just dinner, so I was kind of annoyed about having to get all dolled up. But Elena said to dress fancy and I would hate to dissapoint. So, here I am, curling my hair for a guy whose name I do not know. Lovely.

I came down the staircase, watching the two men who stood at the bottom along with Elena. Stefan and her latched onto each other while the other brother stood a few feet away from them, staring intently.

“You must be Y/n, I’m Stefan. Salvatore, that is.” Stefan introduced himself, extending his hand.

You smiled, taking his hand. “Salvatore? I’ve heard many things about your family. Good things of course.” Stefan flashed a winning smile before you turned to his brother.

He had jet black hair and his eyes were an icy blue, sending chills down my spine as he stared down at me. Why did this seem so familiar?

“I’m Damon, I’ve heard many things about you as well.” He lifted my hand, kissing it gently. Damon? No...it couldn’t be. Did I hear him wrong?

I laughed lightly, confused. “Damon Salvatore? No, that can’t be.”

Elena and Stefan furrowed their eyebrows but Damon only stared blankly at me, not showing the slighest concern. His eyes studied every feature of mine, making me blush deeply, not used to this kind of attention.

“Welll,” Stefan said clearing his throat. “We should get going, wouldn’t want to be late for reservations.”

Dear Diary,

May 27, 1966

  I’ve just been dropped off at my doorm by the one and only, Damon Salvatore. Tonight we had dinner which went very well. He was so polite and I love how he makes me feel. I’m constantly on the edge of my seat. At the end of the night, we danced. His arms wrapped around my waist as we talked about all the things life had to offer. And if only life could be maintaned, a promise to last forever. But even in the most magical places, eternity isn’t certain.

“I’m sorry,” I interrupted, standing up from the table. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe. “I need some air.”

Damon watched as I walked towards the resturaunt doors, clutching my purse tightly. I broke through the doors into the cold night. A breeze ran down my arms, causing goosebumps to form.

I leaned back resting my head on the wall. What the hell was going on? How could that be Damon Salvatore? He looks just as she described him, my grandmother. So young, so handsome.

“Elena sent me to check on you.” Damon came through the front doors, walking up beside me. He reached out, touching my arm. I gasped at the sensation of ice against my skin.

Dear Diary,

May 30, 1966  

   I may have been wrong about Damon. Maybe he isn’t the perfect gentleman. There is nothing more I want than to be in his arms, he’s got the best of me but I just feel so....cold around him.  I hope no one ever reads this, for what I’m about to reveal isn’t easy to process. He took a life. Right in front of me. But somehow, I was able to remain calm throughout the whole thing. It seemed as if murder came natural to him. I shouldn’t be telling you this, if anyone finds this it could stir up unnecessary trouble. I’ve seen odd things happen around Damon and I pray that you never run into him.

“Is this some kind of joke?” I pulled back from his grasp, breathing heavily.

“A joke?” He questioned, raising an eyebrow.

“I know about you, what you’ve done.”  I pushed him back slightly beggining to feel dizzy. “You’re in the diaries.” Damon stepped closer to me, wearing an angry expression.

“Diaries? What diar–” Damon began but was soon cut off by realization. “That’s impossible, they were burned.”

Anger rushed throught me as tears filled my eyes. “You! You’re the reason she’s dead!”

Damon grabbed ahold of my arms as I lunged at him, “You need to calm down, you only know one side.” I struggled to break out of his grasp as tears poured from my eyes. There was no one I loved more than my grandmother. To come face to face with the man who started it all, I couldn’t help but be full of rage. I finally gave up, collapsing against him.

Dear Diary,

June 3, 1966

    I’ve been working more hours down at the hospital. The good thing is that I never really see Damon here. The last time I wrote in this journal, I revealed Damons secret. That he had killed someone in front of me. I may have not told the full truth. No, Damon killed many and I now understand what he is. He doesn’t show any mercy, he’s selfish. He is. I now understand that my morals mean nothing next to his compulsion. How cruel does someone have to be to compel someone to keep such a dark secret, never forgetting the brutal deaths but just losing sense of control. I hate being a slave to him, but still I can’t help but be intrigued.

“You’re a murderer.” I mumbled, exhausted from all of my emotions. Damon pulled back from me, staring down at me coldly.

“You’re grandmother wasn’t in her right mind when she wrote those, you know that.” He said, wiping a tear from my face.

My grandmother spent the remainder of her life in a psychiatric hospital. She had been diagnozed with skizophrenia and forced to been hospitalized. But how could she be crazy, when Damon Salvatore who hasn’t aged a day stood in front of me.

“She didn’t know what was good for her.” I breathed, surprised by my sudden realization.

“No, she didn’t. She stuck her nose where it shouldn’t be and she got herself into trouble.” Damon said, peering down at me. He held my face up, never looking away. My knees felt wobbly as I was drawn in by every word he said.

“You should leave,” He added, coldly but his eyes told a different story. A story filled with pain and sorrow. “Leave, burn the diaries, don’t come back and forget everything you know about me.”

I was finally set free from his grasp and could only think of leaving this town. Why was I even here? A man stood in front of me, with black hair and stunning eyes. He looked confused and sad, very sad.

“I’m sorry to bother you, what’s the quickest route out of here?” I cautiously asked, not wanting to disturb the handsome man. I felt my whole body shiver as he quickly directed me out of Mystic Falls.

[grayimperialcommander]

★RAVUS NOX FLEURET★ ☆→HC←☆ sleep, relationships (fluff), music, work, personality, sexuality, smell, fears, feelings on his arm, and past of waking realizing he has a magitek arm

(So I made this very ravus x reader but can imply with cannon characters too)

(Just admin thoughts at least..?) (..Tried to name as much as I can..)

•••••same height as gladiolus at the regalia scene. 6ft 6

•••••use to being alone romantically, not accustomed to courting since before annexation. Being a teenager the last time he ever courted. Has ALOT on his plate as a high commander.

••••••clueless (almost innocent) (very tsundere though as well as proper and noble)

•••••••"organized mess" ravus hires maids since he is a high commander, (married to his work, cant be bothered to clean) work consisting of: traveling to other niflheim nations that was conquered, staying up all hours of the night reading classified documents of warfare that he would test out by fighting (training)/ classified information on citizens or whatever it may be, documents on citizens; crime; missions; disappearances; whatever else minor things he is tasked by iodolas himself, and recruit training/sparing with other high ranking niffs in the army (aranea, loqui, versatile etc) doesn’t hardly eat as he gets quite lost in his work (forgets to eat), sometimes not aware he is spoken to even. Easily lost in his own thoughts. Sometimes if a flashback comes to his mind in those moments his face may show a hint of his feelings at that moment, whether good or quite saddening, if he notices snapping back to harsh reality he returns to stoic

••••••he often smirks or half smirks, a rare smile on occasion even

••••••would be rude at first, you have to establish yourself as a equal rather him being above you for him to accept you. He would want someone who is capable of handling themselves as well as him and his attitude. However, he won’t be extremely mean because he is no “monster,” rather a gentleman, you would only assume him to hate you at first meet by his stares or sighs or abrubtly walking away. He WON’T make you cry.

••••••you may have to be able to laugh at yourself at times if he playfully (yet serious faced) teases you. As he is able to as well handle being teased about himself.

You: “You are so hot headed ravus..”

Him: “and you are almost as dense as you are beautiful” (“I’m in love with someone as utterly insane yet gorgeous as you!” “IM NOT INSANE” “I said I’m in love with you as well as gorgeous and you ignored such except insane,”- I got that from a movie 😅) ~of course he wouldn’t mean any of the insults, often a compliment is within his statements and flash a small smirk at you as well, playfully yet evily. Dont mean any harm.

•••••if he likes someone he would ignore the feelings themselves, possibly not understanding them (most likely clueless), although would wish to talk with you about anything but if he has nothing to say he would be silent, becoming increasingly annoyed and stressed out (possibly angry at himself) but is so much happier in your company (you might misunderstand his facial expressions)

••••••he wouldn’t initiate first (kisses, the relationship, etc) unless you say you like him.. But he must feel its for the correct reasons. Being a prince 12 years ago, rising to his rank today, he needs to feel you are genuine about himself. Most being unkind the past 12 years, trust is hard to be gained. After being told he is liked by someone so dear to him, he would stiffen and stare in thoughtful silence, not realizing he is even staring and once he notices, he shakes his head abruptly breaking eye contact. Which often his actions are misunderstood, thus this may start a fight, you feeling as if he dont want you at all. But in all truth, he would destroy himself to protect you at all costs with every breath he takes.

••••••if chased for wrong reasons he might coldly walk around you with a annoyed sigh mumbling ‘he has no time for this’

••••••he might be pansexual, finding himself attracted to someone’s mind rather looks

••••••smells of sylleblossoms and some sort of a expensive cologne

••••••he is agressive and passionate (he been in niflheim for 12 years.. this man is filled with hatred HE WILL BE ROUGH) yet he tries hard to be soft for your sake.. Making many small efforts at first to let you know he truly genuinely cares. Asking if “he may” before any kiss, or abruptly pushing you against a wall kissing deeply yet softly. Yet… Hesitantly…Slowly becoming more aggressive and passionate. Perhaps hungry for good, VERY loving, attention..but he would never say so, he may not have realized how alone he was. Or even what happiness even was anymore till around you.

••••••ravus may not have any sort of normal idea on dates (awkward ravus), but he DAMN SURE WON’T ASK ARDYN, LOQUI, ARANEA, OR LUNA ON WHAT TO DO. He is very private, and as well independent. Expect him to dress up (much like ignis) taking you to a fancy restaurant, somewhere with fire works his hand ALWAYS placed between your lower shoulder blades ever so softly. Possibly a ball just so he may dance. Perhaps a walk. He would not settle for less. You are that important.

••••••enjoys his space

••••••he is afraid of fire.. After the events of tenebrae and lucii (he also somewhat fears the ring of the lucii when luna asked him to take it on her behalf abruptly declining)

•••••• loves fruits, deserts of any sorts, drinks too if he wished to replace tea. And enjoys wine or a rum of some sort but not too particular on drinks as long as its not a beer or something atrocious. Mixed drinks do quite fine.

••••••huge fan of classical because it calms him. The sounds so beautiful to him.

••••••loves the smell of coffee but rather not drink TOO MUCH

••••••fears loosing ones deemed important

••••••possesive

•••••• extravagant

••••••hard to know how he feels

••••••(My step dad fell years ago and has a bar plate in his wrist, no longer able to use his wrist he feels its robotic, with this in consideration.. And insight.. I’ll make random head cannons)

-is in never ending pain.. But hates to be looked as weak and doesn’t take anything for it in fear to depend on something (that was kind of two because he wouldn’t want to depend on people either…)

-wishes niflheim scientists never existed/just cut off his arm instead

-having magitek whole LEFT side outside screwed to his bone and within his body, magitek weapons used with deamons is why only half was deamonised and has super strength

-high pain tolerance level. Would never wish it on others the pain he endures.. As a war commander he may get harmed..but has no care if so..

-has nightmares about sylva’s death and death of the people in tenebrae

-talks in his sleep about things that concern him

-hard to sleep with the metal has to sleep on the right, wake up often if his right side goes numb..

••••••Ravus was operated on. Niflheim wanted a human expierament. What better than a soldier of theirs in the highest rank, a commander. They made weapons out of the deamons…

Ravus was their test subject for a few months.. His hair grew out.. Coming to.. he saw he looked different. A gauze in his mouth so he didnt bite his tongue while he was out, he knew it was him, but he looked different, his once blue eyes now heterchromia, one eye was now purple. His left side blackened vains from the tubes injected in him with deamons and scars from the burn.. Scars of past wounds on his back and torso being in the army since 16. Ravus then saw he had metal and his skin irritated a screw placed to his shoulder bones which rubbed as he moved. He winced, narrowing his eyes disgusted. ‘What have they done to ME’ now realizing that his hopes to be king and destroy niflheim are lost.. He yelled but his good arm locked behind him to the wall all he was able to do was look in the mirror at the weapon he became for niflheim his mothers murderer. Soon to be his last family relative, lunafreya..niflheim will want her dead.. He has to get out…. Ravus fought the nurses but often they sedated him with other soldiers aid to hold him down. He then knew he had to accept his change if he hoped to keep luna safe… his changes a reminder of the rejection causing more anger.. he thought possibly he could bring niflheims fall when the time is right, the ashes permienting the air. Only then he would rest in peace.

[trendingnewsb]

I could hear things, and Icould feel terrible pain: when anaesthesia fails

The long read: Anaesthesia remains a mysterious and inexact science and thousands of patients still wake up on the operating table every year

When Rachel Benmayor was admitted to hospital, eight and a half months pregnant, in 1990, her blood pressure had been alarmingly high and her doctor had told her to stay in bed and get as much rest as possible before the baby came. But her blood pressure kept rising this condition, known as pre-eclampsia, is not uncommon but can lead to sometimes-fatal complications and the doctors decided to induce the birth. When her cervix failed to dilate properly after 17 hours of labour, they decided instead to deliver the child by caesarean section under general anaesthetic. Rachel remembers being wheeled into the operating theatre. She remembers the mask, the gas. But then, as the surgeon made the first incision, she woke up.

I remember going on to the operating table, she told me. I remember an injection in my arm, and I remember the gas going over, and Glenn, my partner, and Sue, my midwife, standing beside me. And then I blacked out. And then the first thing I can remember is being conscious, basically, of pain. And being conscious of a sound that was loud and then echoed away. A rhythmical sound, almost like a ticking, or a tapping. And pain. I remember feeling a most incredible pressure on my belly, as though a truck was driving back and forth, back and forth across it.

A few months after the operation, someone explained to Rachel that when you open up the abdominal cavity, the air rushing on to the unprotected internal organs gives rise to a feeling of great pressure. But in that moment, lying there in surgery, she still had no idea what was happening. She thought she had been in a car accident. All I knew was that I could hear things and that I could feel the most terrible pain. I didnt know where I was. I didnt know I was having an operation. I was just conscious of the pain.

Every day, specialist doctors known as anaesthetists (or, in the US, anesthesiologists) put hundreds of thousands of people into chemical comas to enable other doctors to enter and alter our insides. Then they bring us back again. But quite how this daily extinction happens and un-happens remains uncertain. Researchers know that a general anaesthetic acts on the central nervous system reacting with the slick membranes of the nerve cells in the brain to suspend responses such as sight, touch and awareness. But they still cant agree on just what it is that happens in those areas of the brain, or which of the things that happen matter the most, or why they sometimes happen differently with different anaesthetics, or even on the manner a sunset? an eclipse? in which the human brain segues from conscious to not.

Nor, as it turns out, can anaesthetists accurately measure what it is they do.

For as long as doctors have been sending people under, they have been trying to fathom exactly how deep they have sent them. In the early days, this meant relying on signals from the body; later, on calculations based on the concentration in the blood of the various gases used. Recent years have seen the development of brain monitors that translate the brains electrical activity into a numeric scale a de facto consciousness meter. For all that, doctors still have no way of knowing for sure how deeply an individual patient is anaesthetised or even if that person is unconscious at all.

Anaesthetists have at their disposal a regularly changing array of mind-altering drugs some inhalable, some injectable, some short-acting, some long, some narcotic, some hallucinogenic which act in different and often uncertain ways on different parts of the brain. Some such as ether, nitrous oxide (better known as laughing gas) and, more recently, ketamine moonlight as party drugs. (If you have an inclination to travel, take the ether you go beyond the furthest star, wrote the American philosopher-poet Henry David Thoreau after inhaling the drug for the fitting of his false teeth.) Different anaesthetists mix up different combinations. Each has a favourite recipe. There is no standard dose.

Todays anaesthetic cocktails have three main elements: hypnotics designed to render you unconscious and keep you that way; analgesics to control pain; and, in many cases, a muscle relaxant (neuromuscular blockade) that prevents you from moving on the operating table. Hypnotics such as ether, nitrous oxide and their modern pharmaceutical equivalents are powerful drugs and not very discriminating. In blotting out consciousness, they can suppress not only the senses, but also the cardiovascular system: heart rate, blood pressure the bodys engine. When you take your old dog on its last journey, your vet will use an overdose of hypnotics to put him down. Every time you have a general anaesthetic, you take a trip towards death and back. The more hypnotics your doctor puts in, the longer you take to recover, and the more likely it is that something will go wrong. The less your doctor puts in, the more likely that you will wake. It is a balancing act, and anaesthetists are very good at it. But it doesnt alter the fact that for as long as anaesthetists have been putting them to sleep, patients have been waking during surgery.

As Rachels caesarean proceeded, she became aware of voices, though not of what was being said. She realised that she was not breathing, and started trying to inhale. I was just trying desperately to breathe, to breathe in. I realised that if I didnt breathe soon, I was going to die, she told me.

She didnt know there was a machine breathing for her. In the end I realised that I couldnt breathe, and that I should just let happen what was going to happen, so I stopped fighting it. By now, however, she was in panic. I couldnt cope with the pain. It seemed to be going on and on and on, and I didnt know what it was. Then she started hearing the voices again. And this time she could understand them. I could hear them talking about things about people, what they did on the weekend, and then I could hear them saying, Oh look, here she is, here the baby is, and things like that, and I realised then that I was conscious during the operation. I tried to start letting them know at that point. I tried moving, and I realised that I was totally and completely paralysed.

The chances of this happening to you or me are remote and, with advances in monitoring equipment, considerably more remote than 25 years ago. Figures vary (sometimes wildly, depending in part on how they are gathered) but big American and European studies using structured post-operative interviews have shown that one to two patients in 1,000 report waking under anaesthesia. More, it seems, in China. More again in Spain. Twenty to forty thousand people are estimated to remember waking each year in the US alone. Of these, only a small proportion are likely to feel pain, let alone the sort of agonies described above. But the impact can be devastating.

For Rachel, sleepless and terrified in her hospital room, it was the beginning of years of nightmares, panic attacks and psychiatric therapy. Soon after she gave birth, her blood pressure soared. I was in a hell of a state, she told me.

For weeks after she returned home, she would have panic attacks during which she felt she couldnt breathe. Although she says the hospital acknowledged the mistake and the superintendent apologised to her, beyond that she does not recall getting any help from the institution no explanation or counselling or offer of compensation. It did not occur to her to ask.

Things can go wrong. Equipment can fail a faulty monitor, a leaking tube. Certain operations caesareans, heart and trauma surgery require relatively light anaesthetics, and there the risk is increased as much as tenfold. One study in the 1980s found that close to half of those interviewed after trauma surgery remembered parts of the operation, although these days, with better drugs and monitoring, the figure for high-risk surgery is generally estimated at closer to one in 100. Certain types of anaesthetics (those delivered into your bloodstream, rather than those you inhale) raise the risk if used alone. Certain types of people, too, are more likely to wake during surgery: women, fat people, redheads; drug abusers, particularly if they dont mention their history. Children wake far more often than adults, but dont seem to be as concerned about it (or perhaps are less likely to discuss it). Some people may simply have a genetic predisposition to awareness. Human error plays a part.

But even without all this, anaesthesia remains an inexact science. An amount that will put one robust young man out cold will leave another still chatting to surgeons. More than a decade ago, I found this quote in an introductory anaesthesia paper on a University of Sydney website: There is no way that we can be sure that a given patient is asleep, particularly once they are paralysed and cannot move.

Last time I searched, the paper had been adjusted slightly to acknowledge recent advances in brain monitoring, but the message remained the same: just because a person appears to be unconscious, it does not mean they are.

In a way, continued the original version of the paper, the art of anaesthesia is a sophisticated form of guesswork. It really is art more than science We try to give the right doses of the right drugs and hope the patient is unconscious.

The death rate from general anaesthesia has dropped in the past 30 years, from about one in 20,000 to one or two in 200,000; and the incidence of awareness from one or two cases per 100 to one or two per 1,000. Obviously we give anaesthetics and weve got very good control over it, a senior anaesthetist told me, but in real philosophical and physiological terms, we dont know how anaesthesia works.

It is perhaps the most brilliant and baffling gift of modern medicine: the disappearing act that enables doctors and dentists to carry out surgery and other procedures that would otherwise be impossibly, often fatally, painful.

The term anaesthesia was appropriated from the Greek by New England physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1846, to describe the effect of the drug ether following its first successful public demonstration in surgery. Anaesthetise: to render insensible. These days there are other sorts of anaesthetics that can numb a tooth or a torso, simply (or unsimply) by switching off the nerves in the relevant part of the body. But the most widespread and intriguing application of this skill is what is now known as general anaesthesia.

The first public demonstration of the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anaesthetic in 1846 by an American dentist, William Thomas Green Morton. Photograph: Design Pics Inc/Rex/Shutterstock

In general anaesthesia, it is not the nerve endings that are switched off, but your brain or, at least, parts of it. These, it seems, include the connections that somehow enable the operation of our sense of self, or (loosely) consciousness, as well as the parts of the brain responsible for processing messages from the nerves telling us we are in pain: the neurological equivalent of shooting the messenger. Which is, of course, a good thing.

I am one of the hundreds of millions of humans alive today who have undergone a general anaesthetic. It is an experience now so common as to be mundane. Anaesthesia has become a remarkably safe endeavour: less an event than a short and unremarkable hiatus. The fact that this hiatus has been possible for fewer than two of the 2,000 or so centuries of human history; the fact that only since then have we been able to routinely undergo such violent bodily assaults and survive; the fact that anaesthetics themselves are potent and sometimes unpredictable drugs all this seems to have been largely forgotten. Anaesthesia has freed surgeons to saw like carpenters through the bony fortress of the ribs. It has made it possible for a doctor to hold in her hand a steadily beating heart. It is a powerful gift. But what exactly is it?

Part of the difficulty in talking about anaesthesia is that any discussion veers almost immediately on to the mystery of consciousness. And despite a renewed focus in recent decades, scientists cannot yet even agree on the terms of that debate, let alone settle it.

Is consciousness one state or many? Can it be wholly explained in terms of specific brain regions and processes, or is it something more? Is it even a mystery? Or just an unsolved puzzle? And in either case, can any single explanation account for a spectrum of experience that includes both sentience (what it feels like to experience sound, sensation, colour) and self-awareness (what it feels like to be me the subjective certainty of my own existence)? Anaesthetists point out that you dont have to know how an engine works to drive a car. But stray off the bitumen, and it is surprising how quickly pharmacology and neurology give way to philosophy: if a scalpel cuts into an unconscious body, can it still cause pain? And then ethics: if, under anaesthesia, you feel pain but forget it almost in the moment, does it matter?

Greg Deacon, a former head of the Australian Society of Anaesthetists, told me about a patient who was waiting to have open heart surgery. Deacon had been preparing to anaesthetise him, he said, when the man went into cardiac arrest. The team managed to restart the recalcitrant heart, then raced the patient into surgery, where they operated immediately. It was only once the operation had begun, the mans heart now beating steadily, that they could safely administer an anaesthetic. It all went well, said Deacon, and the man made an excellent recovery. Some days later, the patient told doctors he remembered the early parts of the procedure before he was given the drugs.

That is a sort of incidence of awareness which was thoroughly understandable and acceptable, Deacon told me: he had not even known if the mans brain was still working, let alone whether he would survive an anaesthetic. We were trying to keep him alive.

This is not denial. This is the tightrope that anaesthetists walk every day. They just tend not to talk about it.

In 2004, and against a backdrop of growing public and media concern, Americas Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations finally issued an alert to more than 15,000 of the nations hospitals and healthcare providers. The commission, which evaluates healthcare providers, acknowledged that the experience of awareness in anaesthesia was under-recognised and under-treated, and called on all healthcare providers to start educating staff about the problem.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists subsequently acknowledged, in a 2006 practice advisory, that accidental intraoperative awareness, while rare, might be followed by significant psychological sequelae and affected patients may remain severely disabled for extended periods of time.

Before that acknowledgment was published, however, then ASA president Roger Litwiller made a small but telling observation. Despite his organisations concern about anaesthetic awareness, he did not want the issue to be blown out of proportion: I would also like to say that there is a potential for this subject of awareness to be sensationalised. We are concerned that patients become unduly frightened during what is already a very emotional time for them.

This is the anaesthetists dilemma. Under stress which affects just about everybody facing a general anaesthetic we lose our ability and often desire to process complex information. More than half of all patients worry about pain, paralysis and distress. High anxiety or resistance to the idea of anaesthesia may even contribute to anaesthetics failing, or at least increase the chances that we will remember parts of the operation. The more anxious we are, the more anaesthetic it may take to put us to sleep.

This creates a quandary for doctors: how much to tell? When we are anxious, our bodies increase production of adrenaline-type substances called catecholamines. These can react badly with some anaesthetic agents. So what does an anaesthetist tell a patient who, because of the type of operation, or their state of health, is at higher than average risk?

I mean, were trying to make people not worry about it, said one Australian anaesthetist I spoke with, but in the process I think we blur it so much that people hardly ever think about it, and thats probably not right either Should I be telling you that youve got a high risk of death? Is that going to frighten you to death?

Today the profession makes much of the emergence of a new generation of anaesthetists who are more attuned to the experiences of their patients. But the reality is that anaesthetists remain for the large part the invisible men and women of surgery. Many patients still dont meet them until just before or sometimes after the operation, and many, muffled in a fug of drugs, might not even remember these meetings. Nor do anaesthetists generally leave anything to show for their work: no scars or prognoses. When they do leave evidence, it is invariably unwelcome nausea, a raw throat, sometimes a tooth chipped as the breathing tube is inserted, sometimes a memory of the surgery. It is unsurprising, then, that by the time an anaesthetist makes it into the popular media, he or she is generally accompanied by a lawyer.

For the doctors who each day make possible the miraculous vanishing act at the heart of modern surgery, this invisibility can be galling. It is not surgeons who have enabled the proliferation of surgical operations numbering in the hundreds 170-odd years ago and the hundreds of millions today. It is anaesthetists. In hospital emergency rooms in Australia and other countries, it is not surgeons who decide which patient is most in need of and mostly likely to survive emergency surgery: anaesthetists increasingly oversee the pragmatic hierarchy of triage. And if you have an operation, although it is your surgeon who manages the moist, intricate mechanics of the matter, it is your anaesthetist who keeps you alive.

One of the first articles I came across when I started researching this subject was a 1998 paper by British psychologist Michael Wang entitled Inadequate Anaesthesia as a Cause of Psychopathology. Wang pointed out that pain even unexpectedly severe pain did not necessarily lead to trauma. Post-traumatic stress seldom followed childbirth, for example. What could be devastating, he said, was the totally unexpected experience of complete paralysis.

Even today, most patients undergoing major surgery have no idea that part of the anaesthetic mix will be a modern pharmaceutical version of curare, a poison derived from a South American plant, which causes paralysis. Few will be aware, either, that during surgery their eyes will be taped shut, that they may be tied down, and that they will have a plastic tube manoeuvred into their reluctant airway, past the soft palate and the vocal cords, overriding the gag reflex, and into the windpipe.

An anaesthetist checking a patients pupil to gauge the effect of an anaesthetic. Photograph: Cornell Capa/The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images

For the patient paralysed upon the table, said Wang, [t]he realisation of consciousness of which theatre staff are evidently oblivious, along with increasingly frenetic yet futile attempts to signal with various body parts, leads rapidly to the conclusion that something has gone seriously wrong. The patient might believe that the surgeon has accidentally severed the spinal cord, or that some unusual drug reaction has occurred, rendering her totally paralysed, not just during the surgery, but for the rest of her life.

As soon as anaesthetists explain to patients how the process works, it all starts to seem a lot less mysterious. And talk, it turns out, is not only cheap but effective: a preoperative visit from an anaesthetist has been shown to be better than a tranquilliser at keeping patients calm. I know from my own experience I had surgery on my spine how reassuring such a conversation can be. For me, it was not just the information; it was the fact of the human contact, of being treated as an equal, of being included, rather than feeling like an appendage to a process to which I was, after all, central.

Hank Bennett, an American psychologist, remembers a young girl whose mother brought her to see him some time after the girl had her adenoids removed. The surgeon referred the mother to Bennett after she had returned to him in a state of anxiety about her child. The surgery had been straightforward, but the mother felt that something was very wrong with her previously happy daughter: the child had withdrawn from her family and friends, and had stopped working at school. She could no longer fall asleep without her mother sitting with her, and was afraid of the dark.

Bennett spoke with the girl. He told her there must be a reason she had changed her behaviour, and asked if it might have something to do with the operation.

Bennett recalled: And she said, Yes. They saidthat they were going to put me to sleep, but the next thing I knew, I couldnt breathe. Now, she was only momentarily like that she does not remember the breathing tube going in but when I asked why she was doing these things differently at school and at home, she said: Well, I have to concentrate and I cant be bothered by anything. Ive got to make sure that I can breathe.

Bennett referred the girl to a child psychologist, and within weeks she was back to herself. Today she would be approaching middle age. But lets say that was just luck, Bennett says now. What if nothing had been picked up about that? Would she have been permanently changed? I think that you would say, yes, she probably would have been.

So if you were my anaesthetist and I your patient, there are some other things Id hope you would do in the operating theatre. Things that many already do. Be kind. Talk to me. Just a bit of information and reassurance. Use my name. Patients who remember waking are often greatly relieved at having been told what was happening to them, and reassured that this was OK and that they would now drift back to sleep.

The Fifth National Audit Project on accidental awareness during general anaesthesia states: The patients interpretation of what is happening at the time of the awareness seems central to its later impact; explanation and reassurance during suspected accidental awareness during general anaesthesia or at the time of report seems beneficial. Hospital staff could put a sign on the wall of the operating theatre: The patient can hear. Because one of the strange things about anaesthetic drugs is that they can exert their effect in each direction not just upon the patient, but upon the doctors and theatre staff performing the procedure.

After the teenage son of a good friend was badly burned in an accident some years ago, he had to endure weeks of intense pain, culminating each week in the agonising ritual of nurses changing the dressings on his chest and arms. They did this by giving him a dose of a sedative drug designed to distract him from the pain and prevent him remembering it. My friend would attempt to comfort her son as he yelled and as the nurses got on with their difficult task. What she observed was that while the drugs did give her son some distance from his pain, and certainly his memories of it, they also gave the nurses some distance from her son. It was an understandable, perhaps necessary, distance; but inherent in that tiny retreat (the lack of eye contact, the too-bright voices) was a loosening of the tiny filaments that connect us one to another, and through which we know we are connected.

It is a process inevitably magnified in the operating theatre, where the patient is silent and still, to all intents absent, and where their descent into unconsciousness is routinely accompanied by the sounds of the music being cranked up (one prominent Australian surgeon is said to favour heavy metal), and conversation. It need not take a scientific study to tell us that this deepening of respect and focus is good not only for patients, but for doctors, too. In the end, it might not even much matter what you say. During an operation, a soothing voice may be more important than what the voice says, writes psychologist John Kihlstrom, who still encourages anaesthetists to talk to their anaesthetised patients (about what is going on, giving reassurance, things like that) but acknowledges that he doesnt expect them to understand any of it not verbally at least.

Japanese anaesthetist Jiro Kurata calls this care of the soul. In an unusual and rather lovely paper delivered at the Ninth International Symposium on Memory and Awareness in Anaesthesia in 2015, he wondered if there might be part of our existence that cannot ever be shut down, which we cannot even conceive by ourselves a subconscious self that might be resistant to even high doses of anaesthetics. He called this the hard problem of anaesthesia awareness. I have no idea what his colleagues made of it. But his conclusion seems unassailable.

Any solution? Science? Yes and no. Monitoring? Yes and no. Respect? Yes. We must not only be aware of the inherent limitation of science and technology but, most importantly, also of the inherent dignity of each personal self.

Anaesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness by Kate Cole-Adams (Text Publishing Company, 12.99) is published on 22 February. To order a copy for 9.99, go to guardianbookshop.com

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/09/i-could-hear-things-and-i-could-feel-terrible-pain-when-anaesthesia-fails

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[elliotthezubat]

DEATH CITY DAYS CHAPTER 58

fuuuck yoooou kohaku aanbaaaaa~

and the impure king

also papa chuuya is best chuuya

Stein: *sips* valentine: *writing down notes* Stein: "Okay..." *draws a line on the chalkboard* "That's it." valentine: hmm? *The chalkboard has a few symbols: a flame, a foot, a soul...* valentine: what's that? Stein: "Biology. An understand of so many abilities..." valentine: ah. Stein: "...Just about there...and then...then... valentine: hmm Stein: "...Something is missing. There is this connection between these abilities..." valentine: how so? Stein: *taps the chalk between the soul and the fire* "Weapons and fire users seem to draw upon similar energies in similar ways..." valentine: ah. like elemental alignment? Stein: "Yes..." *opens an exorcist book* "...There has to be a connection..." -elsewhere- Chuuya: "Hmm...What'd you get for #4?" ochako: great wall of china. Chuuya: "Yes. But I can't get the year on it..." ochako: what about you, iida? Iida: "7th Century BCE." ochako: ah. mikami: i-i guess that makes sense? ryuuko: hmm... Iida: "And who was blocked by the Great Wall?" sayu: the hunny nut cheerios! Chuuya: ._.; sayu:...sorry~ i forgot breakfast this morning. ^^; Chuuya: "Order something?" mikami: i-it's ok sayu. you can have part of our bento. sayu: awesome! thanks mikamika! mikami: ^^ *her smile is soft, almost like rain's had been...* Chuuya: Q\\Q *covers his face with his book* ryuuko: *staaaaare* Iida: "...Close reader." ryuuko:...*holding mikami close* mikami: eh? r-ryuuko? .///.; Chuuya: *sweating, still staring at the book covering his face* -elsewhere- Tsukiyo: "Commander still under the weather?" fang-hua: a bit. Tsukiyo: "D'aw, that's too bad...Doc saw him?" fang-hua: *nods* Tsukiyo: "Hope he recovers soon--Konro seems stressed." -elsewhere- rowena: well, that should be everything. Poe: "..." rowena: hmm? is something on your mind? Poe: "I-I don't know..." ???: well, look what we have here? freak one and freak two out an about~ rowena: ??? *turns* kohaku: heh. Poe: O~O kohaku: out in the middle of the day? im kind of shocked. rowena: you're that aanba girl i've heard about, arent you? kohaku: holy shit she got it. someone give this bitch a fuckin medal. Poe: "..." *stare* kohaku: nyeh? the fuck are _you_ staring at? trying to think up some riddle to stump me? yeah, from what i hear, you try to do that to that detective, but it never works~! rowena: ?! Poe: *opens a book...* kohaku: and what about that clerk? do you really think she gives a single ounce of a shit about you? you're just a pathetic loser who only has a raccoon for a friend! how about you do us a favor and just drop dead? Poe: "I-I could suck you into a world of your worst nightmares!" kohaku: oh? and what will that do? nothing. because you're still going to be a piece of shit who cant even beat one of the greatest minds he's ever encountered! Poe: "I-I-I can suck you in!" kohaku: i can see you trembling, and you're stuttering. you cant do a single thing to me. you're nothing. nothing but a waste. rowena: ....*gripping fist* Poe: "I-I-I am-" kohaku: you're a freak! a freak of nature who couldnt even win the attention of his childhood sweetheart. you're going to die alone and unloved like the filth you are. rowena: stop it... Poe: … *trembling* *drops his book* kohaku: look at you. a pathetic mess. do us all a favor and die <3 Poe: *falls to his knees* kohaku: heh~ rowena: *slams kohaku against the wall, strangling her* kohaku: grk- rowena: insult me all you like....*glare* but dont you _ever_ insult my brother... Poe: QWQ -after that- rowena: are you ok brother? Poe: *sniff* "I-I hurt..." rowena: .....lets get you home... Poe: *sniff* *holds her hand...* rowena: .... lana: ?? edgar, rowena, hey! rowena: !!...good evening. Poe: "Eep!" *hides under his cloak* lana:....?? edgar? are you ok? Poe: *shakes* lana: ??... rowena: .....some rude person said some rather cruel things.... Poe: "I-I-I-I'm worthless..." lana: ...edgar.....*holds his hand*.... -after dropping them off at his house, rowena went back to the dorm- lana: .....*holding his hand and patting his back* Poe: *whimper whimper* "So pathetic..." lana: you arent pathetic edgar. you're sweet, smart. Poe: "I-I-I couldn't even attack her..." *holds up his book* "I was going to pull her into this tome of ceaseless torment* lana: .... Poe: "Th-The old me would have trapped her in a book and let her die in it..." lana: *stroking his back* -you're no better than when you were young- Poe: "I-I-I should be alone...That's all I deserve." lana: ....you got it all wrong! just because some asshole told you that doesnt mean it's true. they dont know a single thing about you. who you are and what you want in life... to be fair, i dont entirely know either, but i want to. Poe: "...I thought I wanted t-to make the best d-d-detective story ever..." lana: you will someday. Poe: "I-I can't even make one that Ranpo can't solve..." lana: well, he did say it was fun, from what i recall. Poe: "...Is that really enough?" lana: i believe in you, edgar. *smiles and hugs him* Poe: o\\\\o "..." *pat pat* lana: .....was there anything else bothering you? Poe: "...I don't know...So much..." lana: im here if you want to talk. Poe: "...Have I gotten worse?" lana: ?? Poe: "I-I feel ill, I sweat more, I write more poetically..." lana: ?? edgar.... Poe: "...Since I met you, I...I..." lana: ??.... ./////. Poe: "...I have felt weird..." lana: .... *brushing his bangs away from his eyes* Poe: *stares at her* "...L-Lana?" lana: ...your eyes are... ./////////. Poe: "..." .\\\. "Y-Yes...They have been this way all my life..." lana: ..... beautiful. *blushing* Poe: "???" lana: *smiles* *kiss* i love you. Poe: o\\\\\\\\o "...I love you, too." (*screaming internally* "I JUST SAID WHAT I WAS FEELING WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!") lana: *blushing* >////////< Poe: "...Am I still alive?" lana: hehe, yes edgar, you're alive. Poe: "..." *smiles* "I am glad." lana: *smiles and hugs him* Poe: *hug, soft sigh* =w= lana: this is nice... Poe: *nods* "You hug well." lana: ^///^ Poe: "..." *closes his eyes, letting out small pleased murmur* lana: *nuzzle* u////u Poe: *lies back, letting her head rest on his shoulder* =\\\\= -elsewhere- Akitaru: *sips coffee* iris: late night? Akitaru: "Yeah...kinda nervous about this mission..." iris: hard not to be. Akitaru: "You got the supplies ready?" iris: *nods* Akitaru: "Awesome...Well, get some sleep. I have to finish these papers." -elsewhere- Kepuri: *inhales deeply* akaderu: doing better? Kepuri: *nod nod* "I'm fully over this stupid cold." *sips orange juice--then grimaces* >___< -morning- Kid: *sits up in bed, stretches* stocking: zzzzzz..... Kid: *smiles...grabs his robe...* stocking: *shivering* Kid: *tucks her in...* stocking: =u= Kid: *goes to the kitchen, turns on the stove* stocking: *yaaaawn* Kid: *enters with a tray* stocking: aww~ *The tray has a heart-shaped pancake* stocking: cute~ Kid: "Suits you~" -elsewhere- Poe: "Zzzz..." lana: *yawns and smiles* Poe: *small grumble noise* lana:... ^///^ (thinking: cute) *small forehead kiss* Poe: "Hu-wha?" *opens one eye* o///- lana: morning, edgar. Poe: "...Dream wraith?" lana: *small giggle* nope. just me. Poe: "...Oh. That's...pleasantly surprising." lana: sleep well? Poe: "Yes. My dreams were quite satisfactory. And you?" lana: yeah. same here. .///. Poe: .////. "...So..." lana: ....did you want breakfast yet? Poe: "..." *stomach growls* .////. -elsewhere- Akitaru: "Rise and shine!" shinra: *yaaaawn* Arthur: =-= "Kill all...*yawn* dragons." Victor: owo *shaking violently* tamaki: zzzzzz...... Relan: *nudges Tamaki* tamaki: n-nyeh?! whodat? Relan: "Commander said to wake up--" tamaki: im up im up! Takehisa: *cooking breakfast* Vulcan: *thumbing through phone* maki: mornin'! karin: mornin’! Vulcan: "Hey, Doc, Maki." yu: *yawn* nozomi: good morning. Victor: "MOAR COFFEE." -elsewhere- Meme: *singing to herself* "La la la..." mio: zzzz Meme: "???" *leans down* mio: *mumbling incoherently* Meme: *smooch* mio: O///////////O MIIIIIIIIII! M-m-m-mEME! Meme: "Good morning!" mio: ./////. m-morning... Meme: "Ready to start today?" mio: yeah. *streeeeetch* -elsewhere- mito: *licking chuuya's face* Chuuya: *small grumble* "Huh? ..." *pets Mito* mito: mew~ Chuuya: *yawn* "Some night..." *gets out of bed* mito: ^^ Chuuya: *drags himself to the kitchen, looking back to see whether Mito is following* mito: *yep, she's following him* Chuuya: *sets down plate with food, refills Mito's water* mito: ^^ Chuuya: *pets Mito before pulling out a bowl and pouring in cereal* *checks his phone* -one text from kouyou, one from naoya, and one from an unlisted number- Chuuya: *goes to Kouyou's first* kouyou: [did you sleep well?] Chuuya: [woke up exhausted but got studying done] kouyou: [that's good] Chuuya: [thanks] *looks at Naoya's texts* naoya: [not comin in today. feel like shit -_- bleugh] Chuuya: [sick?] naoya: [ya] Chuuya: [feel better. want anything while i'm out?] naoya: [nah. hirotsu's got it covered] Chuuya: [cool. feel better] *looks at text from unknown number* ochako: [hey ozaki! U hyped for the sports festival? \(^o^)/ ] Chuuya: "???" [hadn't thought of it] ochako: [it's gonna be epic! i can feel it!] Chuuya: [okay?] -elsewhere- Mori: *tossing half-asleep* miura: good morning, sir. Mori: *wakes up with a start* "DON'T PUT THE BOW ON ME!" miura: i had no intention of that, sir. Mori: .____. "...Thank goodness--it was just a dream..." miura: likewise. anyway, i have your schedule for today printed out. Mori: "What's on it?" *gets out of bed, shaking a bit* miura: the usual, executive meeting later at 4...sir? Mori: "What? What is it?" miura: you seem uneasy... Mori: "Just a...bizarre dream." miura: hmm. Mori: ("Why did I look like...that?") -elsewhere- Shotaro: *eating cereal* nea: *yaaaaawn* Yohei: "Long night?" -elsewhere- todo: mamushi. get up. it's time. Mamushi: *groans* "Wh-What?" todo: it is time for us to begin. i trust you know the way. Mamushi: "..." *points into the forest* "That way..." todo: *nods and follows* Mamushi: "..." *stares at the trees* "I used to play here." todo: *saying nothing* -up ahead is a deralict building- todo: is this goma hall? Mamushi: "...It's seen better days." *rubs her eye* todo: then we must hurry. we've been wasting enough time as is. Mamushi: "R-Right..." *pushes away a large plank of debris from the entryway* todo: *entering* Mamushi: *looking around* "It's...all demolished?" todo: *peeeeek* hmm? Mamushi: *spots a light underneath debris* "...Wait..." *moves aside some debris with a grunt* "...A flame?" todo: how peculiar...im sure there is a secret entryway somewhere.... ah! there we go. Mamushi: "I do not understand. Why is there a cellar down--*cough cough*" todo: are you alright, miss hojo? Mamushi: "It-It's nothing I can't handle." todo: perhaps let me hold onto the right eye? Mamushi: "What?! But, teacher...you said it was dangerous to have both in your body." todo: it's alright. we're just about there. right now, im more concerned with your well-being... Mamushi: "..." *reaches a hand to her eye* todo: there we go...*small smile* -after busting down the door- -inside the room, a strange thing is suspended by chains and ofuda- Mamushi: *stares in confusion* todo: so this is the 'impure king'.....in 1858, the monk known as 'fukaku' made a deal with karura, a spirit that possessed the kurikura blade. but even with that, he was unable to fully defeat the impure king, so he subdued him by removing both the 'eyes' and sealing them away... *smirks* so this is what the myoda has been hiding for all these years...i wonder....if we return the eyes....will that revive the impure king? Mamushi: "Wh-What? But that--that idea is monstrous..." todo: then again....i am a monstrous man. Mamushi: "...What the hell are you?" -FWOOOOOM- tatsuma: ... todo: well, i was wondering when you would show up… Mamushi: "High priest!" tatsuma: not to worry mamushi, we'll finish this and get you home safe and sound, ok? Mamushi: *stares in shock* tatsuma: i will make sure this ends with me, and i wont let it plague another generation. -a bird like entity appears besides him- todo: the vermillion phoenix karura....what a splendid familiar... Mamushi: "High Priest...?" tatsuma: now, put the eyes down...and begone! -several fireballs shoot at todo- todo: *rushing at him* -FWOOOOOOM- tatsuma:..... !!!!! todo: heh... *removing the left eye* wakey wakey~ tatsuma: NO DON'T- -too late- Mamushi: *shudders* tatsuma: hold on mamushi, we need to go warn the others! Mamushi: " 'Hold on'?" -BOOOOOOOOOM- juzo: ?!?!?! w-what the? tatsuma: right on time, get mamushi back to the inn. juzo: w-wha? -a cancerous blob bursts out of the shrine- juzo: ???!!!! w-what is.... tatsuma: the impure king. -back at the inn- madoka: *walking through the halls, but hears two members of true cross* ???: they're seriously gonna kill the kid? madoka: ?? *listening in* ???: "He released his power. What else can be done?" ???: not sure what to tell fujimoto... ???: "...Wait until the task is completed." madoka:.... *her heart sinks and she sneaks to rin's room* rin...rin get up! Rin: *sleep talking* "I can't eat another bite..." madoka: *shaking him* rin get up! we need to go, now! Rin: *eyes snap open* "...Madoka? Why aren't I at dinner?" madoka: come on, we need to go, it isnt safe here. *getting her jacket on* Rin: "..." *grabs his sword* "Explain on the way." madoka:.... -elsewhere- uwabami hojo:..... !!!!! is...is that-? kinzo: HOLY FUCK IT'S THE BLOB! Bon: "...Oh no..." izumo: i-is that.... shura: motherfucker! uwabami hojo: everyone! front and center now! Shima: Q~Q konekomaru: what do you think is going on? shiemi: *going to check on rin and madoka* rin? madoka? are you in he-.... !!!!! Shima: "...They doing the nasty?" izumo: SHIEMI DONT LOO-....where the fuck are they? -they flew the coop- shura:.....fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Bon: "...Damn it. What the hell did he do now?" shura: of all the times to go awol! *grumbles* did he find out about the execution notice? shiemi: EXE-WHAT!?! Shima: "Oh, man! If they weren't going to kill him before, they're going to now--" -shura's phone rings- shura: WHAT. IS IT? Mephisto: "Guess who it iiiiiiis~." shura: -_________- what the hell do you want? Mephisto: "I have a fun little document. Guess whose name is on it." shura: ....is this about rin? Mephisto: "Bingo! Give the lady a prize!" felisia: *clapping* shura: can you get to the point? we got kind of a situation here called THE IMPURE KING IS WAKING UP! D8< Mephisto: "Short version: Rin's gonna die." shura: I GOT THAT PART! and, spoiler alert, he and kaname flew the coop. Mephisto: "Oh! Where are they registered?" shura: we're trying to find that out! shiemi: w-we can help look for them! Shima: "Rin's pretty fast, though..." shiemi: he and madoka can help us fight the impure king, then that will clear his name right? Mephisto: "How am I supposed to know--I'm not Head Pope." "...Okay, sure." shura:.....we're on speaker mode, arent we? felisia: yep. shura: -__________________-;;;;; Mephisto: "So, have Rin defeat the Impure King, or kill Rin. Take your pick." shura:....*siiiighs* alright then kids, you heard the man. go find rin and madoka, then kick some impure king ass. shiemi: oh thank you miss shu- shura: just keep this under wraps for now, ok? shiemi: *nods* konekomaru: but....where are they? Bon: *stares at Shura* shura: that's the problem... *notices something on her phone*...............mephisto......why....DIDNT YOU TELL ME....there was a GPS tracker?! Mephisto: "I put those things on so often I lost track." *holds up his map--and sees 40 different color spots on it* "...Huh. Why did I put a tracker on _that_ person?" shura: can i narrow it down? Mephisto: "The blue dot." shura: right. *hands her phone to bon* you guys find rin and madoka, i'll help subdue the impure king. Bon: "How are you going to do that?" shura: just leave it to the pros kiddos~<3 -in the woods someplace- madoka: .....*uneasy* Rin: "..." *hugging his legs, turned away from her, seated in the tree branches* madoka: ....rin?... Rin: "...How high are we?" madoka: im not sure.......rin.....am i....being selfish? Rin: "...How?" madoka: when i heard they were going to kill you....i was so scared....and i made you run away with me because i wanted to keep you safe.....i dont want you to get hurt, rin....*trembling* Rin: "..." *hug* "Love is selfish--because the person you see completes you." madoka:...*hugs him* i guess....t-that makes sense... Rin: "...Where are we going? We can't just..." madoka:....im not sure.... -creeeak- madoka: WOAH! -CRASH- Rin: "Ow..." madoka: ow....a-are you ok? *she landed on top of him* Rin: .///. *nod nod* madoka: t-thats good... *blush* konekomaru: ._.;;;; um..... izumo: there you are! madoka: O-O;; Rin: o\\\\o madoka: w-w-we-we werent doing anything lewd!! >////< izumo: um...i didnt say you were? madoka: *realizing...and grabs a branch* im not letting you hurt rin! *her hands are shaking* izumo: *facepalm* oh for the love of. we're here to _help_ him. Rin: " 'Help'?" *holds his scabbard* "Funny way to 'help' when I got a death warrant." izumo: listen knuckleheads. do you want to stay on the run forever, or do you want a chance to clear your name? Rin: "..." *puts down scabbard* "What're you thinking?" shiemi: *turns him around.....to face part of the impure king* that. madoka: ....how did we miss that? -shiemi and the others explain the situation- Rin: "...So, it's weak to fire?" izumo: *nods* madoka: you're able to control the flames better now, right rin? Rin: owo;;;; "Kinda?" izumo: good enough. let's go! Rin: "Well, I'll need something to get up there--" ???: *cough cough* madoka: ?? izumo: ??... !!! bon! isnt that your dad?! Bon: "!!!" *runs to him* "Dad? What happened?" tatsuma: s-son? is...that you?...guess...i didnt die... -a small bird appears- karura: i have healed your wounds, but you must take it easy, or else you will certainly die. Rin: "...Why is that bird talking? And on fire?" karura: i am known as karura. once upon a time i was servant of the myoda dharmani, but when the secret was exposed, that pact was anulled. i am now bound to tatsuma suguro by a personal agreement. Bon: "So Dad can stop the Impure King--" tatsuma: i cant....im already spent. but i can tell you how to beat the impure king. it will continue to grow until it is the size of a fortress. then a large spore sack will form in the center. Rin: "...Then we just got to burn this mushroom. Where's the weak spot?" tatsuma: inside of the sack. but should it rupture, it will release a deadly miasma. Rin: "Right, that thing!" *starts running* tatsuma:....15 years ago, i made a deal with karura to use the aeon wave flame. it converts one's lifespan into flames. i was planning to use it to defeat the pure king, but i was only able to hold it in place. Bon: " 'One's lifespan'..." *looks at his dad* tatsuma:...rin...i want you to use the kurikura to cleave the impure king's core like fukaku did many years prior...then i will use the remaining aeon wave to finish it off... Bon: "And what will happen to you?!" tatsuma: *smiles* the lives of hundreds are more important than the life of your good for nothing father. karura: oh? you are tatsuma's son? Bon: "...Yes, I am." karura: i am able to transfer the aeon wave to one of the high priests blood. tatsuma: NO! bon's still so young, you musnt get him involved!! i swore on my life this plague would end with me! Bon: *bites his finger, revealing blood* tatsuma: !! karura: so that's how it is then? Bon: "It is. Give it to me." karura: so be it... -a flame appears from the blood- Bon: "!!!" tatsuma:....*sigh* i never wanted you to bear this burden... Bon: *stares at the flames* "...Just have to stop this miasma before it's too late." tatsuma:...listen close son. im going to reach you a barrier sutra. listen well... izumo: .... konekomaru: .... Bon: "Barrier...How?" tatsuma: should the spore sack burst, this will prevent the miasma from escaping....so pay close attention... Bon: "Right..." *watches* -elsewhere- shura: *slicing* damn! they keep multiplying... uwabami hojo: how are things on your end, mr okumura? Yukio: *firing shots* "Trying to hold the line--with little luck!" ???: mr okumuuuuraaaa~ Yukio: *freezes* -a red light is seen in the distance- Yukio: "...!! A fire!" myoda: good! bring it over here! Yukio: "I-I don't think that's an ally coming..." Yukio: *runs towards it* -a young man with feathered ears is staring up at the sky- Yukio: "!!! Todo..." todo: *grins* lovely evening, isnt it, mr okumura? -elsewhere- tatsuma: do you get it now son? Bon: *nods* tatsuma:...you're finally becoming a man. Bon: -___-;;; "...Whatever. Let's go kill this thing." madoka: we're right behind you, bon. *smiles* Rin: *nod nod* "Let's get going!" -back with yukio- todo: come on out boy, i just want a friendly chat <3 *throws a fireball* Yukio: *dodges, fires a shot* todo: ah, there you are. you look tired. busy night i take it? Yukio: *firing more shots* todo: tsk tsk, so violent. *It's coming down onto Todo* todo: *dodge* phew. that could have gone badly. i just want to talk. so tell me, how is your brother these days? Yukio: "Nowhere near you." -elsewhere- madoka: it almost looks like a real fortress... Rin: "With a giant mushroom in the center." kuro: rin! there's a really stinky monster around! Rin: "?! Which direction?" kuro: *points to the impure king* Rin: "...Oh. Um...Well, spores kinda smell, and you got a strong sense of smell..." madoka: kuro, do you want to help us get up there? kuro: NYEH?! rin! you guys cant be serious! Rin: "Well, yeah! We need your size and great leaping ability to get us up there to squash that thing!" kuro: *sigh* alright then. *POOF* madoka: thanks kuro! ^^ Rin: "Yay!" -elsewhere- todo: *dodging bullets* my my, what got into you tonight? Yukio: *silent, firing more shots* todo: did i touch a nerve? how's your dad? Yukio: "Quiet!" *shoots at Todo's feet* todo: i heard he's in weak condition. who knows how long the old codger has left- Yukio: *leaps at Todo, firing* todo: *punch* oops. Yukio: *knocked back* "Ugh..." todo: you must be so stressed from your family holding you back. i understand that completely... -he grins- todo: you're a doctor, correct? Yukio: "Yes...and you'll need one..." todo: from what i heard, fujimoto was also a skilled doctor. as well as a skilled dragoon, but such is to be expected of a former paladin....he always gave your brother the better treatment....and what of you? you were trained to be a weapon. his replacement, so to speak. Yukio: "Quiet..." todo: you think to yourself 'this isnt fair'....admit it. you hate your brother, dont you? Yukio: "N-No! I don't--" -elsewhere- kuro: *running along the 'walls' of the impure king* madoka: woah! Rin: *hanging on* O_O -tendrils shoot at them, but madoka shoots at the tendrils with her arrows- Rin: *flames along his scabbard, as he tries to swing at them* kuro: rin! i see a bolder down there! Rin: "To land on, or toss at this thing?" kuro: to land on! Rin: "Okay! Then do it, buddy!" -nice landing- Rin: "Okay! Now, point me to it's soft spot!" madoka: bon, get ready. -a large round shape is in the center- Bon: "Okay...Just got to prepare the incantation..." madoka: we'll hold off the enemy. Rin: "Right!" *holds the scabbard on fire* madoka: *shooting arrows* Rin: *striking at flames* Bon: *inhales* -elsewhere- todo: already tired? Yukio: *panting, struggling to stay standing* todo: *smirks*.....?? oh? what's this now? Yukio: *aims again--but stumbles, firing just past Todo* -several magic circles begin to glow- todo: so you werent just aimlessly shooting....clever boy. Yukio: *smirks* "You will be contained now..." -several watery creatures appear, some female looking, some male looking, some resembling children- Yukio: "Naiads..." todo: *smirks* water beats fire....well im right in a pickle, arent i? Yukio: *gets on his knees, panting, exhausted* todo: heh. you cant even keep up...so much for in your prime....*lunges and pins him to the ground* how boring...perhaps i should kill you here and now... Yukio: "L-Let go!" -inside the impure king- madoka: rin! look out! *shooting arrows* Rin: *dodges, still trying to unsheathe his sword* "Damn it..." -elsewhere- shura: ..... !!!! oh shit- everyone! outside the barrier! now! Monk #1: "!!!" -the spore sack twitches violently- Monk #2: "That d..."Monk #2: "That ain't good..." -BOOOOOOOOOOOM- Monk #1: !!!! -elsewhere- todo: *pulls back fist* good night, yukio okumura~ *about to punch* Yukio: "NO!" *he's feeling warm...* todo: hmm? *FWOOSH* todo: *jumps back* well, this certainly is a game changer... Yukio: *trying to look* ("Everything's dark...No...Blue?") todo: seems i underestimated you...those eyes.....they arent your own... -POW- todo: *knocked back* oof- Yukio: *vision slowly returning* "Wh-What?" todo: well, fancy seeing you here mr shima. juzo: word to the wise, it's not a smart idea to go flaunting your flames about like that if you're trying to hide. Yukio: ("...Flames...") juzo: after all the lives you have ruined, there wont even be ashes left of you, todo! -inside the impure king- madoka: *cough* rin! bon! are you guys ok?? Rin: *forcing a smile, as he swings his sheathed sword at tendrils* "Just fine!" Bon: *focusing the fire* "..." kuro: *looking at a large entity* t-that's- impure king: *ROARS* -outside the barrier, rain begins to fall- Bon: "...W-We can't stop this thing...It's not possible..." -elsewhere- Yukio: "..." *light bulb* todo: *still battling juzo and the others of the myoda* Yukio: "Um, excuse me? I think I have an idea..." juzo: eh? monk: you want to make a strategy now?! Yukio: *shrug* "It's that or Todo keeps gaining ground..." juzo: ....alright. what do you have in mind? todo: done already? awww, but im just getting started~ Yukio: "So you'll hold him while we let Mother Nature weaken him..." juzo: right. narumi! shishamo! take the lead! Narumi: "Have at thee!" todo: *battling* *smirks* have at me all you like, i'll just absorb the weaker flames anyway. it's almost like trick-or-treating! juzo: TRICK OR TREAT THIS! FIRE LIFE SAMAHDI! *throws a bigass fireball at todo* -BOOOOOM- Yukio: *watches* "Just a bit more..." todo: fighting fire with fire? despite how the saying goes. it wont work-...urk-...w-what? Yukio: "Over-working yourself in your old age, teach?" todo: ....clever boy... -FWOOOOOOM- *Everyone is blown back, Yukio having to hang onto a boulder...* juzo: is he....dead? Yukio: "He's ash." ???: huhuhuhu~ Yukio: "!!!" todo: *getting up, his body ash and crumbling* making me overheat. not a bad plan...however, dont underestimate the healing abilities of a phoenix... Yukio: "No..." todo: *crumbling in the rain* oh...i forgot its raining...this might....make recovery difficult... -inside the impure king- madoka: *panting* this is bad... Rin: "J-Just have to keep going...as long as we can..." madoka: r-right. cant give up now... Bon: *stumbling, his finger still pressed to the ground* kuro: *clawing at tendrils* Bon: *panting, staring* "How much longer...?" karura: with thing going the way they are, the barrier may not last if you continue to be exposed to the miasma. Bon: "I'm fine--" *cough cough* madoka: !! Rin: "Bon! Hang on! Let us protect you like those princesses in fairy tales!" Bon: "...The hell you just call me?!" madoka: ^^;; dont worry, we got you covered! Rin: "Yep! Shining Knight Madoka and Rin to the rescu--" *cough cough* madoka: rin! Rin: *waves his hand* "I-I can do it..." *smiles* "Just trust me..." madoka: *nods and keeps shooting arrows* Bon: *on his knees and hand, trying to keep a hold...* Rin: *knocking down tendrils* impure king *ROAAAAAR* Rin: *thinking, as he sees a small flame on his shoulder* "...Could I...?" madoka: *nearly about to collapse* Rin: *remembers...* "Do these flames only burn humans or..." *spots Madoka* "!!!" *catches her* madoka: *pant* t-thanks.... RIN! BEHIND YOU! Rin: "?!" *turns* -a large tendril is coming down onto them- Rin: *tugging at his sword* "Come on, come on!" -why was i saved?- Rin: ("...I just wanted to be a hero...But then...I'm...") -why did fujimoto save me?- Rin: ("Because...Because...I...don't know.") -why are you alive?- madoka: RIN! Rin: *flames are along his back* "..." madoka: ....*holds his hand* Rin: "!!!" madoka:....*smiles* Bon: "Urk..." *falling down* madoka: !!! Bon: *he lets go* Rin: "Oh crap..." shura: *fighting off tendrils* GUYS! NOW ISNT THE TIME FOR MAKING GOOGOO EYES AT EACH OTHER! D8< Rin: "THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE DOING! I'm trying to figure out how to burn these things!" shura: USE YOUR SWORD THEN! PROVE FUJIMOTO HE WAS RIGHT TO RAISE YOU! Rin: *tugs on the sword from its sheathe* -why did he save me?- Rin: *removes the sword* "So I can do this!" *ignites in blue flames* madoka: !!! *smiles* shura: *grins* raise hell, kid. Rin: *leaps and slices at tendrils* ("This is too slow...") ???: good grief. this is pathetic to watch. Bon: *lying on the ground* "Wh-What...?" Rin: "?!" -a large bird like creature has appeared besides rin- bird: i am ucchusma. the impurity kongo. the impure king is my age old foe. the blade you wield was once our lord's weapon. if you desire to defeat the impure king, i will teach you how to guide the flame. Rin: ._. "...'Kay. What's Step #1?" -the bird has now possessed the koma sword- Rin: " So, you gave me a power-up?" ucchusma: more or less speaking. i will call forth the fire life samadhi, a flame with the power to burn anything in the material world. with that, i will purify the impure king and the whole mountain with flame using your flames of satan. Rin: "Wh-What?! By 'material,' that'd kill everyone on this mountain!" ucchusma: so? it is of little consequence. all those who entered the impure palace and were touched by its servants are contaminated. the impure king can come back from even a remnant, therefore each one must be purified. let us go. Rin: "...So, just need to burn away impurities...even those attached to living flesh..." *small sneer* ucchusma: *chanting the sutra* Rin: *repeating the chant* ("So what do I do...") madoka: *running up the steps, shooting at tendrils as she does* Rin: ("Just need to burn...") impure king: *ROOOOOOOARS* madoka: RIN! Rin: ("Burn it all...Burn it all!") -CLANG- ucchusma: ?? why do you hesitate? Rin: "...Because...I can't kill them..." -its in your nature- Rin: ("No...I mean, I know I am...Satan's son...") madoka: *jumps* -BURN IT ALL! BURN IT! SCORCH THEM! THEY WANT YOU DEAD! KILL THEM BEFORE THEY KILL YOU!- Rin: ("...I want to...") -hug- madoka: *she had jumped onto his back, and is holding him* it's ok rin... Rin: "...What do I do...?" madoka: *holds his hands* we got this. all of us. *smiles* Rin: *inhales* "O-Okay...I just have to focus--* *FWOOM* *Flames cover Rin and Madoka* madoka: !!!....*closes her eyes* it feels warm... -a large wave of blue flames appears- uwabami hojo: !!!.... wha? monk: hey, only the fungus is burning off... monk 2: feels kinda nice actually... Yukio: "...Rin...What the hell have you done...?" monk 3: LOOK! THE IMPURE KING! -the impure palace is vanishing- Shima: "...Wow..." konekomaru: he...he did it! shiemi: *smiles* i knew he could do it! izumo: well i'll be... true cross member: wait, satan's son is...helping us? true cross member 2: am i tripping balls right now? Monk #3: "Not exactly proper language..." -the impure king has vanished, and rain still falls- Rin: *panting* "...Damn..." madoka: ha.....we....*she hugs rin tightly* we did it!! Rin: .\\\\. "...We did?" *looks around...then smiles widely* madoka: ^////^ *tears falling* Rin: "???" *hug* madoka: im so proud of you rin. Rin: "...You are?" madoka: ^^ of course rin. *smiles* shura: great job, kiddos. the three of you are heroes. -several people come running up- konekomaru: okumura! Bon: *struggling to stand* Shima: "What the heck did you all do up here?!" madoka: well...we beat the impure king. ^^ izumo: *JAWDROP* she says it so casually....are you _sure_ she's a rookie? shiemi: wow! so brave. madoka: oh, i was terrified! but i couldnt let that stop me. Rin: "Always brave is more like it..." *rubs the back of his head* ^\\\^ shiemi: ?? yuki? Yukio: *grim stare, as he marches up the hill* Rin: "!!! Bro! Look what I did! I told you I'd do this!" shura: ?? Rin: "I said I'd be the hero you wanted me to be, who Dad would want, who could leave you eating my-" Yukio: *Punch* madoka: !!! shiemi: YUKI! Rin: *stunned, down on the grass* "...What the hell?!" Yukio: "I told you not to use those flames!" shura: those flames just saved our asses! Yukio: "And what if he got out of control? He is Satan's son! The powers that be could still kill him! I told you to keep control of him, and you just did not list--" Rin: *Punch* shura: *grabs him* RIN! YUKIO! CALM DOWN! *clunks their heads together* Rin: X_X Yukio: X_X madoka: D8> shura: -_-; -later- Rin: *snoring* madoka: zzzzz....*asleep next to him* Rin: *yawns, opens his eyes* "..." o\\\o madoka: *yawn* hmm? hey rin....how's your head? Rin: "..." *touches his head--and winces* "Gah! Man...The Impure King must've hit me hard..." madoka:..... rin... Rin: "??? A-Are you okay? Did we win?" madoka: *she nods* yeah. we did it. we beat it. Rin: "..." *hug* madoka: *smooch* u/////u i love you. Rin: .\\\. "I-I love you...And I...I..." Shima: "OooooooOOOOOOOOoooo..." madoka: O////O s-sh-shima?! shiemi: oh my. .///.; Rin: o\\\\\o "WHY ARE YOU ALL IN MY ROOM?!" izumo: this is an inn, remember? Rin: "THEN CAN'T WE BUY EXTRA ROOMS?!" Shima: "So you can do things alone in this room?" madoka: eh......EHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!?!?! O///////////////////////////O *KO* awawawawawa -elsewhere- yaozo: and that's what happened. felisia: ... Mephisto: "...So, I guess we can't kill Rin?" yaozo: the boy is a hero. Mephisto: "So, no killing, got it." *sips his drink* "Sweet." yaozo: right....i'll just be going then. Mephisto: "So soon?" yaozo: *nods* if the vatican needs me to give a testimony, i shall do so. *exits* felisia: well.....*cuddles up to mephisto* seems we have the room all to ourselves now~<3 Mephisto: "Indeed~" felisia: i brought something special for the trip. so im just gonna put that on real quick, ok~? Mephisto: *chuckles* "Alright..." felisia: i'll only be a moment~ -after a short moment, something is felt pressed against his back- Mephisto: "...Oh. You." shura: *holding a kunai to his neck* alright. start talkin... Mephisto: -_-; "...Fine. So, the key is to use honey, not sugar--" shura: just what are you planning to use rin for, huh? Mephisto: "..." *smiles at her* "You know what would be a shame?" shura: is this going to be some vague threat? Mephisto: "Not vague. A promise." shura:.....*removes the kunai and heads for the door* i got my eye on you.........oh...and tell felisia i said congrats on her pregnancy. *exits* Mephisto: "...Huh." felisia:....*hug* i trust your judgement...call it instinct i guess.... Mephisto: "..." *hug* "So trusting..." felisia: *crawling onto his lap* now, where were we~? Mephisto: *smirks* "In the best place possible..." *smooch* felisia: ah~<3 konekomaru: *opens the door* mr yaozo are you-............. O____________________O;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; *closes the door* felisia: OuO;;;; Mephisto: "...I usually enjoy audiences, but not like that." -morning- izumo: finally, we're heading on home. unagi: *peeeeek* Shima: .\\\. *waves* unagi: <um....shima-kun.....you'll....write back....wont you?> Shima: <Of-Of course!> o\\\w\\\o unagi:....t-thank you....renzou. uwabami hojo: ..... renzou. a word with you for a moment. Shima: "??? Um...Yes?" uwabami hojo: im fine with you having unagi as a friend, but that's as far as i can allow your relationship to go. Shima: "Huh? I mean...Wait, why not further? I mean, if I wanted something more--" uwabami hojo: *grabs shima by the shoulders and looks him straight in the eye* renzou. unagi is 12. Shima: “Eh-…….EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!?!?!?!” -on the plane home- Rin: "..." izumo: koneko, shima, you guys look awful. konekomaru: i saw nothing...i saw nothing... Shima: Q____Q "The universe hates me as much as I hate myself." izumo: good. madoka: *holding rin's hand* Rin: "..." *pat pat* -upon arriving to the airport, several people are there with a sign that reads 'welcome home exwires'!- adrian: well if it aint the heroes of kyoto! seiya: congratulations. gilda: ^^ Rin: owo kyouko: oi! rin! yukio! Rin: *waves, smiling* kyouko: you....*shaking him* YOU ALMOST DIED MORON! D8< madoka: ^^; ???: -aAAAAADOOOOKAAAAAAAAA!!!! *TACKLES HER* madoka: AH sayaka: I MISSED YOU SO MUUUUUUUUUUCH! TT~TT Rin: X____X Bon: "..." sayaka: hey guys! how was kyoto? did you see kyoto tower? did you take pics? we got new students at school! one girl considers me her senpai now! kyouko: sayaka, inhale. sayaka: *BREATHES IN...then out* sorry. im just so hyped! Yukio: *grabbing his bag* Rin: "That's great news!" *shaking still from Kyouko's attack* -elsewhere- ???: right....i see.....i'll keep an eye on them....understood lord lucifer... -elsewhere- ango: ._.; um.....this is.....er...... Kunikida: "...Why?" ango: exactly. dazai, what are you trying to do here? Dazai: "You two have so much in common!" ango: i dont see it. Kunikida: "Agreed." Dazai: owo;;; "...You both can't stand me.* ango: .... Kunikida: "...He is quite annoying." ango: what you mean to say is 'neither of you can stand me'. Dazai: -3- Kunikida: "His grammar is atrocious." ango: isnt that the truth. -_.-; Dazai: "See? You're getting along great!" ango: -_.-; Kunikida: "...I'm going to need more alcohol." ango: tomato juice please. im driving. Dazai: *pouts* "Fine...I'll get your drinks." Kunikida: "...Was he always like this?" ango:....to be honest, he has improved quite a bit....thought that's a stretch. Kunikida: "...I'm reticent to admit the same. I can only imagine how worse he was before the Agency." ango: ......you're better off not knowing... Kunikida: "Perhaps. After his behavior at work..." ango: ....being in the mafia...can mess a person up...a lot...especially under the care of the mafia's boss... Kunikida: "Hmm...I cannot imagine." ango: .... Kunikida: *holds up glass* -elsewhere- Rin: "I just want to sleep for days..." kyouko: i can imagine. we got your bed all set up for you. oh, and you start classes again the day after tomorrow, just to give you a day to get your bearings back. Rin: "...Only a day?" Q_Q kyouko:....rin? are you sure you're alright? Rin: *nods* *yawn* "Just exhausted..." kyouko:..well, if you need anything, let us know, ok? Rin: *weak smile* "R-Right...Thanks." -elsewhere- Kid: "Feeling better?" stocking: yeah. *yawn* Kid: *rubs her back* "Need more sleep?" -elsewhere- Relan: *kitten yawn* shinra: zzzz Relan: "..." *hug* shinra: =///w///= Relan: "Feel okay?" shinra: yeah. Relan: "..." *rubs his hand lightly through his hair* shinra: =/////= Relan: "It's soft." -elsewhere- keek: Q_____Q Hawthorne: "..." barkova: *growls* heheheh~ Hawthorne: "Stop that noise, you mutt." barkova: *snarls* Hawthorne: *glare* barkova: *snarling* FD: "Down." barkova: !!....*silences herself, trembling...almost as if afraid* FD: "Corner." barkova: *crawling to a corner and curls into a ball* .... Hawthorne: "...Disgusting." yana: ... keek: Q_Q FD: "??? Why are you crying?" keek: THIS PLACE IS TERRIFYING AND I WANNA GO HOME! FD: "..." keek: i-i never asked to be brought here. i just want to go home and see my mom again... FD: "I can arrange that." keek: r-really? FD: "Yes. She would look nice with a bomb along her neck as well." keek: !!! no please! dont involve her in this! i-i'll be good! just dont hurt her! FD: "Then do as I say, before I get angry." keek: o-ok.... FD: "Zoey, what shall we do with them..." zoey: whatever you see fit, master fyodor... FD: "..." *smirks* "Care to have some fun?" zoey: for you, anything! FD: "Good. Take the pastor and get him to change that expression. Make the girl watch." -elsewhere- Yohei: *shivers* chie: everything ok, honey? Yohei: "...Fine. It's fine." chie: yohei...i can tell when something is bothering you...*hug* Yohei: "...Don't tell the others. Not yet." chie: *nods* is it....him? Yohei: *nods* chie:....*rubs his back* Yohei: "...New info at work. Just...Why?" chie: ....... medea: ....... *walking back to her room* ..... Shotaro: "G'morning Medea!" medea: !!! Shotaro: "Ready for breakfast? ...You okay?" medea: just....just tired is all....i think...i will sleep in today... Shotaro: "...Well, feel better soon." medea:.....right...... -elsewhere- Lucy: *grumble* anne: *poke poke* Lucy: =_____= "Stupid sleep..." -in another room- kirako: zzzz.... Dazai: *whistling in the kitchen* mii: *mreeeeeow* Dazai: "???" *looks down* -it appears to be a mouse.....with a camera inside it?- Dazai: "Hmm..." kirako: *yaaaawns* morning... *in a nightshirt and panties* Dazai: *kicks the mouse behind him* *smiles* "Hey there." kirako: making breakfast? Dazai: "Surprised?" -elsewhere- Hibana: "And pancakes are done!" *sets down...very burnt pancakes* mikami: um...thank you commander ^^; gabriella: ^^; hanako: yay! Hibana: Eat up~ -elsewhere- Meme: *puts on her sweater vest* mio: *yaaaawn* -at school- atsushi: *working hard* Kyoka: "Impressive." atsushi: *hella focused* Kyoka: *looks over his shoulder* -elsewhere- tsuyu: seems they're setting up for the sports festival more and more each day. Izuku: owo *shaking* ochako: this is gonna be so exciting! Iida: "An important moment to demonstrate our improved skills since last time we engaged in competition!" Bakugo: -____- ochako: what do you think, todoroki? Todoroki: *staring at an envelope in his hands* "..." ochako: >w> what's that ya got there? Todoroki: "Nothing." ochako: hmmm... Iida: "That looks like the envelope of tickets that were distributed to all students. ... !!!! You mean you haven't given your tickets to anyone?!" Todoroki: "Quiet." ochako: .... Bakugo: "What, you don't want your mom going?" Todoroki: "..." Izuku: "..." *light bulb* "!!!" eijiro: what about your sister? Todoroki: "...I haven't given her a ticket yet." eijiro: planning on doing that when you get home? Todoroki: "...I don't know." -elsewhere- Student: *running, tossing off his jacket--which is on fire* "Get away from me!" shinra: ?!?! Student: "They're not leaving me alone! Call the cops!" shinra: oi! the hell are you guys doing? girl in glasses: nyeh? who's this brat? Student: "Th-They wanted money! I gave it to them! Then they burned my jacket!" TT~TT girl in glasses: yeah, it wasnt enough brat. shinra: *KICK ATTACK* girl in glasses: tch- oh, you really want to go up against an oni? heh, be my guest. *holding a die, and rolls it. 3* -BOOOOM- shinra: *has already ran with the student* girl in glasses: !!! fuck! -elsewhere- Arthur: *puts on a mask* "..." mina: is that a welding mask, boyle? jirou: nice. Arthur: "I thought if the new recruit Vulcan can do it, so can I..." mina: like from star trek?! *shiny eyes* Arthur: "...What is this 'Trek in the Stars' of which you speak?" mina: dude, have you been like, living in the middle ages or something?! Arthur: "No era in this world ever dies, so long as it lives on, in our hearts and minds!" *holds up blow torch* -he was put on janitorial duty- Arthur: *holding a plunger* "...Vile toilet. I will be the end of you." marie: *SCREAMING* -BOOOOOOM- Arthur: o____o "...Truly, you are an expert..." -elsewhere- Kunikida: *holding his head, groaning* -the apartment is empty- Kunikida: "..." *stumbles out of bed* "Medicine..." -elsewhere- Benimaru: "Right there." kirei: *rubbing his shoulders* Benimaru: =\\\= "That's good..." -elsewhere- Poe: *humming* rowena: doing well, i see. *smiles* Poe: .w. "...Maybe?" rowena: how is lana? Poe: o\\\\o "...Lana-y?" rowena: ...brother? are you ok? Poe: *nod nod nod* rowena: ....did something happen? *worried* Poe: "...I have a girlfriend. I'm scared." rowena: !! brother, im so happy for you! Poe: .\\\. "I'm going to screw this up." rowena: o.o; why do you think that? Poe: "...Because I'm cursed." rowena:....brother.... Poe: "I'm not worthy..." -elsewhere- FD: "You completed punishment?" zoey: yes.... keek: *still shaking, horrified* Hawthorne: ………. FD: "Good..." *pats Zoey's head* zoey: ah~ sonia: *peeking out her door, just out of sight* FD: "..." *spots Sonia* "..." sonia: *has already gone back inside her room* ...... FD: "...Zoey, perhaps you should punish the other one..." *walks to Sonia's door* keek: *already hiding in her room* zoey: open up.....OPEN THE DOOR! keek: *whimpering* sonia:....... FD: *knocks on Sonia's door* sonia: .... FD: "Sonia? May I enter?" sonia:......... FD: *opens the door* sonia:....*stares at him* ....... FD: "...Are you hungry?" sonia:.... yana: not much of a conversationalist, is she? FD: "No. But she looks hungry. Might as well give her something." sonia: ...... -elsewhere- Bon: "..." *tosses a ball against the wall* konekomaru: *already catching up with school work* Shima: "..." *headdesk* konekomaru: ?? Shima: "I'm an idiot." konekomaru: is this about unagi still? Shima: *nods* konekomaru: ^^; well, to be fair you never actually asked. Shima: "She looked like her older sister!" konekomaru: *sweatdrop* oh, by the way, night market is open tonight. did you want to go? Shima: TT~TT *nod nod* Bon: "..." -elsewhere- Vulcan: *pouts* nozomi: everything alright? Vulcan: "Just thinking...about those Hoods..." nozomi: ....oh.... Vulcan: "Yeah. Just nervous about this mission." -elsewhere- Anya: *looking up at the sky* bailey: thinking about stuff, princess? Anya: -_-; "Don't call me that." bailey: isnt it true though? O.O; Anya: "...I just don't like being called that while I'm here." bailey: oh. im sorry. D8> Anya: "It's fine. Just don't make a habit of it, please." bailey: noted! -elsewhere- Giriko: *holding a ping pong paddle* "Ready!" -elsewhere- Gopher: "SMASH IT!" kirika: *squish* freaking roaches... Gopher: *huge sigh of relief, as he leans against Kirika* "So grateful..." kirika: -_-; Gopher: "I hate those tiny creatures, with their antenna and legs and...and..." o_____o kirika: what? Gopher: "...What if there are more of them?" -elsewhere- Medusa: *sips juice* neian: zzzz Medusa: "..." *rocks the crib just a bit* neian: =w= Medusa: *content sigh* grimoire: seems the child has mellowed you out after hundreds of years. Medusa: -_-;;; "I have not changed that much." -elsewhere- Yumi: *making Shiori's bed* shiori: zzz lord death: ^^ Yumi: *whispers* "She's growing so big..." lord death: i know. Yumi: "...Death?" lord death: hmm? Yumi: "...She's going to need you." lord death:....i know...hey shiori.. shiori: *yawn* pa! pa! lord death:...*craddling her* Yumi: TTWTT stocking:.....*walking away*....*sigh* Kid: *whispers* "Found you..." stocking: !!!! kid! jeez, i nearly jumped out of my skin! Kid: ._.; "S-Sorry..." stocking: *sigh* i-it's fine... Kid: "...What's wrong?" stocking: just this whole sibling thing im trying to get used to....it feels so surreal. Kid: *nods* "I have...some familiarity with that." stocking:...s-sorry... Kid: "It's fine...I have a sense how you may feel...but maybe I could ask, do you feel badly about this?" stocking:....how so? Kid: "Are you upset with the situation?" stocking: i wouldnt go that far. i mean, i am shocked, but im not mad or anything. Kid: *nods* "Any sense how you'll react when your parents have this child?" stocking: i dont really know....i'll just have to take it in stride. Kid: "...I think...your sibling will have the best sister possible." stocking: ^^; Kid: *pats her hand* -elsewhere- ebie: maaaaaail caaaaaaall! oscar: *looking at a letter*....i'll read this one in secret~<3 Steinbeck: "...We get mail?" ebie: yep! oh, and your sister sent you a letter! Steinbeck: *takes it* "..." rosasharn: [dear big brother, how are you doing? we're all doing well so far back home. midge is growing up so quick, she looks just like her papa. ruthie and winfield ask about you every day, as does ma. you know how she worries, haha. write back soon, your sister, rose of sharon.] Steinbeck: "..." *his hand shakes slightly* twain:..you ok? Steinbeck: "Fine! Just...fine." twain: ok then. Steinbeck: "..." *folds the letter, puts it in his pocket* -elsewhere- Lucy: "Another!" clerk: ma'am...you've had 9 shots of orange juice... Lucy: "A. NOTH. ER!" atsushi: OwO;;;; Lucy: *stares at Atsushi* "...Be my drinking buddy." atsushi: um... okaaaay? OwO;;;; odasaku: *sweatdrop* Lucy: *leans forward, holding the glass up to him* atsushi: here i go! *takes a full chug* haa... Lucy: "...I like a man who can hold his juice..." atsushi: ^^; (thinking: at least it isnt something like alchohol, i would die) odasaku: you and ango would get along great in that aspect. Lucy: *leans against him* =w= atsushi: O////////////O um... odasaku: .... 7.7; Lucy: *holds his hand, breathes calmly* "..." -a shiver goes up atsushi's body....and his tail pops out- Lucy: *feels the tail hit her* o\\\\\\o atsushi: O/////////O;;;; Lucy: O\\\\\O "...It's big." odasaku: you two um....need a moment alone? atsushi: yeah... Lucy: o\\\\\o "...Have you always been able to have that...tail?" atsushi: since this summer, yeah....i think? Lucy: "...What about..." *pats his head, rubbing his hair* "...ears?" atsushi: uhhh...... o/////////////o *sweating, tail twitching all over* Kyoka: "Is there sinning here?" atsushi: O_O;;;; odasaku: busted. ._.; Lucy: -_-; "Not now..." o\\\o "I mean...no?" atsushi:.... *atsushi.exe has stopped responding* Kyoka: "..." *takes Atsushi's hand* "He's going home. He is not feeling well. Goodbye." Lucy: D:< -outside- naoya: tough break, kiddo. Akutagawa: *clawing a pillar* naoya:...say, something rather funny happened the other day! Akutagawa: "ThERE'S NOthing fuNNY..." naoya: O-O;....well i was hiking through the woods the other day, and guess who i ran into... Akutagawa: "Dead hiker." naoya: no....mori. *she cracks up laughing* Akutagawa: "...Ha ha ha..." naoya: *grins* see, there ya go! Akutagawa: "..." -\\\\- "Let's just go." -elsewhere- akaderu: *in a fast food uniform, collapsed on the couch* X_X im dead.... -elsewhere- miura: ... Mori: "Well? What is it?" miura: no comment, sir... Mori: "Hmph. Not much of a conversationalist..." miura: -.-; Mori: "Can't you tell a joke?" miura: you mean besides kajii's 'sex life'? Mori: "...High five?" miura: *high five* Mori: "Good one!" miura: thank you sir. Mori: "You're welcome....You drink?" miura: im not physically able to sir, given that, in case you forgot, i'm a goddamn robot. Mori: "Motor oil?" miura: hah. funny. Mori: "...Do you do anything for fun? I mean, if you can't drink, what do you do?" -elsewhere- Mephisto: "How are you~?" stocking: doing well dad. how was the trip? Mephisto: "Illuminating." *holds up a gift bag* stocking: oh? Mephisto: "Something sweet for our sweet daughter~" stocking: *shiny eyes* felisia: hope you like it. stocking: *HUG* TTuTT Mephisto: "!!!" *pat pat* "Are you okay?" stocking: just happy... -elsewhere- Dazai: "Where did it come from?" atsushi: i think it just popped out cause i was nervous... i mean, i know it's a side effect of my ability but.... ./////.; it's still awkward... Dazai: "...Maybe see a doctor? Or...a vet?" atsushi: -_-; odasaku: that...actually is kinda funny. atsushi: no one is asking you od- Dazai: "??? 'Odd'?" atsushi: ._.; oddly enough? OuO;; Dazai: "...Okay. But maybe it's tiger puberty." atsushi: =////=; what was it like for you?.....when you started having those.....weird feelings that make you feel funny? Dazai: "...You mean when I noticed how attractive certain people were?" atsushi: i guess? Dazai: "...I think I lost my virginity before I realized how attractive people are." atsushi: O-O; um- Dazai: "It didn't feel like anything. Maybe other people's first time is good. But it felt empty. Just happened." atsushi:.....oh... Dazai: "With time, I had good experiences, and bad experiences. I screwed up, a lot." atsushi:....*pats his back* Dazai: *small smile* "You're going to be fine." atsushi:....t-thanks... odasaku:....*pats his back* Dazai: "And hey, you're getting sex education at school, so just be smart." atsushi: o-of course! .... .//////.;;;; Dazai: "??? What, you need some more sex ed?" atsushi: im fine thank you! Dazai: *nods, pats his head* -elsewhere- Jacqueline: "!!!!" *holds up the newspaper* kim: what happened? Jacqueline: "Doesn't this surveillance photo have someone who looks familiar?" kim: *examines* ?? *squiiiint* *It looks like her mom* kim:...*her stomach drops* Jacqueline: "...What is she doing?" -elsewhere- Todoroki: *holding the envelope* fuyumi: more fan mail? ^^; Todoroki: *holds it to her* "Take it." fuyumi: oh? um... *opens it* !! Todoroki: "...Will you be in attendance?" fuyumi: *smiles* it'd be my pleasure. -elsewhere- Meme: *frowning* tsugumi: is everything ok, meme? mio: you look uneasy... Meme: "Just tense...irritated...Want to punch something..." mio: did someone say some shit to you? Meme: "..." *nod nod* mio: want me to beat them up? Meme: *shakes her head* "...I want a punching bag. Can you hold it for me?" -elsewhere- eijiro: SPORTS FESTIVAL HYYYYPE! atsushi: ???? i am so confused. Lucy: "That thing where the Quirk students compete against each other?" momo: not just quirk students. over the years, it has grown and expanded to various types of students. Kyoka: "Such as ability users?" momo: i dont see why not. ^^ Kyoka: *looks at Lucy* Lucy: *looks at Kyoka* Lucy and Kyoka: "..." *look at Atsushi* atsushi: um.... ^^; ochako: deku. iida.....*her face is intense* LET'S DO OUR BEST!! Iida: ._. Izuku: o_o "Y-Yeah..." mina: its like she's possessed all the sudden. ._.; Izuku: "M-Must be pumped up?" ^^; Todoroki: "..." ochako: IM TOTALLY GONNA WRECK THIS! YEEEEAH! Izuku: o_____o Todoroki: "..." -later, at lunch- Izuku: "...So, I was wondering..." ochako: hmm? whats up? Izuku: "I'm sorry if this seems intrusive, and you're totally free not to answer. I mean, I wouldn't want to look like I'm delving into other people's business, but at the same time I think learning more about my classmates can help me rationalize what is--" Iida: *slaps Izuku upside the head* Izuku: *focused* "Why did you want to become a hero?" ochako: oh! um...well...uhh....i-if i tell you, you promise you wont look down on me? Izuku: "O-Of course I won't!" Iida: *nod nod* ("...Although I am taller than you.") ochako: well.....*sigh* im doing it for money. ^^;; Izuku: "!!!" Iida: "...Well, why is that wrong to seek a more comfortable lifestyle?" ochako: it's just...well, my family owns a construction company, but we dont get much business, so we're kinda broke. Izuku: "...Oh." ochako: thats why i want to become a pro hero. i can earn lots of money so my family can live easier lives! Iida: "That is quite noble!" Izuku: "Yeah! It's what anyone would want..." Todoroki: *around the corner* "..." -elsewhere- Yohei: *flipping through documents* coworker: oi, nanami. how's the fam? Yohei: *smiles* "Quite well. Kiddo will be doing computer coding in no time." coworker: haha. Yohei: *points to a pic on his desk* "Looks like his mom." coworker: he's got your eyes though. Yohei: "...A bit gentler than mine." -elsewhere- Hibana: *mixing chemicals* -elsewhere- Bakugo: *drinking milk--looking around him* "..." eijiro: you excited man? Bakugo: "...Just something to do. Got to show this class is the best. And that I'm the best." eijiro: yeah! ....you feel like someone is staring at us right now? Bakugo: "Every. Damn. Day." eijiro: almost feels malicious. creepy. *shivers* Bakugo: "..." *hands Eijiro a knife* "Toss this." eijiro: HUEH?! O_O; Bakugo: "He'll dodge it. He always does." eijiro: uuuuhhhh ._.;;;;;;;; Bakugo: "..." *takes the knife back* "I'll do it." *tosses it into shrubs in the cafeteria--and a loud yell is heard* eijiro: HOLY SHIT! Mineta: *sits up out of the bushes* Q__Q *he's holding a camera...* eijiro: oh. it was nothing important then. Bakugo: "Yep." Mineta: "YOU COULD'VE KILLED ME!" student: so? pony: *gives him a cup full of ice* Mineta: TT~TT "Thank you, Pony." pony: yeah, ya needed some ice for dat burn. Mineta: Q_______Q "EVERYONE IS SO MEAN!" -elsewhere- Stein: "...What's security like at this festival?" marie: they've strengthened it up five times since last time, given the incidents that have been occurring recently. Stein: *nods* "Gonna be loud...but it'll bring in ratings." marie: remember how fun it was when we were taking part? Stein: "...I was just there to win." marie: ...still, it was fun. Stein: "Hmm...It was kind of funny seeing Spirit lose." marie: yeah. kami was so pissed off at him for that. kneed him right in the balls. Stein: "...Ha." Spirit: *flames around him* "..." marie: OuO; Stein: "Oh. Hello, Spir--" Spirit: "LET ME TELL YOU ONE THING! THIS COMPETITION IS GOING TO BE MASSIVE! AND I'M GOING TO RECLAIM MY CREDIBILITY AT IT!" marie: are you...saying you're going to compete? ._.; Spirit: "...Sure?" -elsewhere- Master: "Put that banner up higher." miranda: *nods and putting it up* Master: *thumbs up* "The Sports Festival should be a killer for business." miranda: yeah. *smiles* remember that year i was in the olympics? good times. *smiles* Master: *nods* "We are still proud of you." miranda: ^^ -elsewhere- Hyde: *drops a TV into the living room* licht: *raises a brow* romina: ooh. Hyde: "Guess who's watching the festival?!" julian: us? Hyde: "Yep!" *hands Julian a bowl and a bag of microwavable popcorn* julian: ._.; Hyde: "I got plenty! So keep making it!" -elsewhere- Izuku: o_______o *looking into a shop window* "New...alternative...action figures...of All Might..." *grabs his wallet--and sees the cash* "Aw...I don't have enough money." ???: *hands him some cash* Izuku: "?!" *looks* ???: here. take it....dont worry, its not stolen or something, haha. Izuku: "I-I can't take your money! I mean, I didn't earn it. And it could be a poor example if I wish to be a model superhero. Furthermore--" -she smiles- yana: easy kiddo. im just trying to be a good Samaritan here. ^^ i can tell you really want it. if you want, you could pay me back some time later. Izuku: "..." *nod nod* "Th-Thank you! Um...Where do I send you the money?" atsushi: !!! here! let me! yana: ... Izuku: "???" atsushi: it's this one, right? -elsewhere- Iida: *doing squats* -elsewhere- Meme: *pants, pants...takes another swing at the punching bag* mio: *timing her* Meme: *punch punch punch* -elsewhere- Kepuri: "We're home." nea: welcome back! medea: *still in her room* ... Kepuri: "...Where's the psychic?" mana: she's in her room. she hasnt left since this morning... Kepuri: "..." *takes bags of fast food, hands them to Mana--then takes out a bag labeled 'Medea'* "Give the rest to everyone. Tell Shotaro I got him the Happy Meal he wanted." *walks to the stairs* mana: ok....medea? we got you lunch. medea:...not hungry... Kepuri: "Come on--you need to eat something." *shakes the bag* "We got you fries!" medea:...*takes the bag and closes the door* Kepuri: -_- "...You're welcome." medea:..*silently weeping* -elsewhere- Kunikida: "Report." atsushi: *hands it to him* Kunikida: "...You have not let this work get in the way of what you need to finish in school, have you?" atsushi: no sir. Kunikida: "Even that competition?" atsushi: *nods* Kunikida: "...Then wear this." *holds up a uniform* atsushi: oh.. um... ._.; Kunikida: "Promote us." atsushi: .___.; this is...um.... *The uniform has the Agency's name in big letters* Kunikida: "Is there a problem?" atsushi: not at all sir! Kunikida: "Good. Then get back to training. Dazai said something about sparring--" atsushi: *looks at the door* Dazai: *opens the door* "Meet your sparring partner!" *Someone seven feet tall is behind Dazai* atsushi: O_O;;;;; um...who is that? Dazai: "Meet Winnifred! She's a great compet--" Winnifred: *grabs Dazai by the head--and tosses him back like a ragdoll* -elsewhere- Kid: *sips his hot chocolate* kirika: *playing her game with mocha resting on her head* Patty: *collapsed on the couch* "Zzz..." liz: peaceful. Wes: *sighs, smiles* "Yeah." lord death: ^^ my precious family. Yumi: *small smile* "Indeed." *sets down drinks* -elsewhere- Bakugo: "I'm home." mitsuki bakugou: welcome back kiddo! so i heard you're takin part in the sports festival? Bakugo: " 'Course I am. Got to make an impression." -elsewhere- himiko: *watching tv* fang: guuba! guubaguu! Dabi: “…” compress: the joys of fatherhood? Dabi: "...Kill me..." compress: no help there. Dabi: Q_______Q -elsewhere- FD: "And done." yana: *takes a peek* huh. FD: "...'Huh'? I only get a 'huh'?" yana: i mean, what kind of reaction are you looking for here man, like 'woooah that is so cool!' or 'eeew what the fuck man?!' FD: "...Drive the fear of death into people." yana: ...dark. FD: ^^ "Thank you." yana: no probs. FD: "Now, I have to complete a task for our 'guests.' Care to assist?" yana: sure, got time to kill. FD: "Take care of the children. I'll deal with Hawthorne." yana: yep. sonia: .... barkova: 8D keek: Q_Q FD: "Have fun~" *closes the door* yana: alright brats, listen the fuck up. it's story time. FD: *approaches Hawthorne's room--and spots blood under the door* "..." *knocks down the door* "...What fun is this if you're going to torture yourself?" Hawthorne: "..." mitchell?: h e  a s k e d  y o u  a  q u e s t i o n... Hawthorne: "I...am not here for anyone's amusement--" FD: "Really? Because this is rather amusing in how pathetic you look." Hawthorne: "..." zoey: he is pathetic, isnt he master fyodor? FD: "Indeed. Zoey, he is filthy. Remove those rags from him." zoey: *tearing them off* Hawthorne: *does not resist, stares at the floor* FD: "Look at me." Hawthorne: "..." FD: "...Zoey..." zoey:...*slaps hawthorne* he gave you an order. Hawthorne: *swallows...looks up* FD: "I need you at your best. This is not it. Your mind is like clay, which we will mold. But your body...Zoey will now do what is necessary to fix you up. Fix his wounds and heal his scars as well as you can." zoey: of course, master fyodor. FD: *nods* "I will leave you to it." *turns to depart* Hawthorne: "Will you give me what I ask?" FD: "...And more." *departs* -elsewhere- Chuuya: *looks at the poster* " 'Sports festival'?" kouyou: i even went and got you some new gym clothes~ *holding up a green track suit* Chuuya: "...Green?" naoya: she said something about it bringing your hair out? kouyou: ... Chuuya: "...F-Fine..." -elsewhere- Mori: "Now, get some sleep." elise: zzzzz =u= Mori: *small smile, as he tucks her in and exits* -...- Mori: *sighs* ("Too quiet.") -....- Mori: *presses a button on the intercom* miura: yes sir? Mori: "Come here." miura: do you require something, sir? Mori: "...Someone to speak with. I...want company." miura:...are you requesting anything lewd of me, sir? Mori: *shakes his head 'no'* "...I don't want to be alone tonight." miura:...very well then, sir. Mori: *nods* "Thank you...Do you...drink tea?" miura: no. Mori: "...Do you have more jokes memorized?" miura:...sir.. Mori: "...What? Are you suggesting _I_ am a joke?" miura: not at all sir. Mori: "...Do you dream?" miura: surprisingly, no. i do not dream of electric sheep. Mori: *smirks* "And that, Miura, is a joke." miura:...ah. Mori: "...Do you like it here?" miura: it's the only place i really know, so i suppose yes. Mori: "You can always see more places." miura: i have no particular interest at present. Mori: "But is there anything keeping you here?" miura: simple. i have a job to do. Mori: "...What if there was more to keep you?" miura: if you're suggesting anything sexual, im afraid i will have to decline. Mori: "...Not what I..." *sighs* "Nevermind. But promise me, you will consider not some_one_, but some_thing_, that fulfills you, makes you want to stay other than work." miura:...i'll consider it. Mori: *nods* "...May you sleep by my side tonight? Nothing sexual. Just to know I am not alone." miura:...very well. Mori: *opens the door to his room...stays dressed, just lies down...* miura:...*pats his head, like a mother would to her child* Mori: *small shake...* miura:.......*small humming* Mori: *closes his eyes* "M..." miura: .... Mori: "Zzz..." miura:...sleep well sir.... Mori: *sleeps* -elsewhere- Giovanni: "Unacceptable." lisa: .... Giovanni: *holds the photo up to her* "You took this from the workshop, didn't you?" lisa: ..... -elsewhere- Relan: *shivers* shinra: *hug* ^^ Relan: *calms down...* "Zzz..." -morning- Motojirou: *snoring* ayako: WAAAAKEE UUUUUUUP! *banging pans together* Motojirou: O___O *falls off* "Ouch!" ayako: YAAAAY HE'S UP! Motojirou: "...What now? I was having good dreams." ayako: we got stuff to do today! Motojirou: -____- "Can I at least eat first?" -elsewhere- Mori: *snoring* miura: .... (thinking: he was...almost like a child in that moment....) Mori: *turns over, yawns, opens his eyes* "...???" miura: good morning sir. Mori: ._. "...Good morning. Did you sleep?" -elsewhere- atsushi: .... odasaku: nervous? atsushi:...i dunno.... odasaku:....*head pat* atsushi: thanks. odasaku: no probs. *Knock knock* atsushi: it's open. Lucy: *pops in her head* "Ready?" atsushi: yeah. *smiles* Lucy: "...You look better smiling." *smiles back* atsushi: .///////////. Lucy: "Now hurry up." -elsewhere- Kid: *hums* stocking: =////u////= Kid: *smiles* "Well, look at that..." stocking: hmm? what? Kid: *small smooch on her nose* stocking: hehe~ Kid: "And what are you up to today?" *hug* stocking: not much, you? Kid: "I have the day off..." stocking: ah. Kid: "May I spend my day with you?" stocking: it would be my pleasure~ Kid: *offers his arm, smiles* stocking: *smooch* ~<3 Kid: ^\\\^ -elsewhere- Todoroki: *jogging* ochako: *whistling* Todoroki: "???" ochako: hey todoroki! training hard? Todoroki: "...Oh. Hello. Yes." ochako: this is gonna be eeeepiiiic! Todoroki: "...It will be an opportunity for true heroes to rise to prominence." ochako: i know! >u< Todoroki: "...Well, good luck." ochako: you too, todoroki! ^^ Todoroki: -\\\\- "...Okay." ochako: ^^ Todoroki: "...Are you jogging as well?" ochako: yep! im pumped! Todoroki: "...I was taking this path..." ochako: cool! i think the observatory tower is up ahead. you can see a huge part of the city from there! Todoroki: "Oh. I have not been there." ochako: eh? for real? well, death city is a huge place. maybe we could stop by? Todoroki: "...If we can climb the stairs." ochako: you're on! Todoroki: *follows...small smile* -elsewhere- FD: "And did he learn his lesson?" zoey: yes... FD: "Very good...What is he doing now?" zoey: healing for now.... FD: "Good...Because you and I must speak." zoey: what is it? FD: "Are you happy here?" zoey: of course i am! if i can be by your side, i'm more than happy! FD: "Because I would hate to think you are as miserable as others occupying this location...After how Hawthorne behaved, I cannot afford to have you be unhappy." zoey: *blush* FD: "How may I improve your mood?" -elsewhere- Relan: "I can't imagine being in that festival..." shinra: i think you could have the potential. Relan: "When the competitors include...that explode-y guy?" shinra: we could take him on! >u< Bakugo: "...Really?" Relan: Q_Q shinra: JEZZUSFUCK! iris: how long was he....? Relan: *hides behind Iris* -elsewhere- Dazai: *staring at the dish in the oven* "..." *in an apron and with oven mitts* "...Just a bit more." -ding- Dazai: ^W^ *opens the oven removes the dish* "..." *inhales* "Ah, good..." -elsewhere- Akutagawa: "This outfit is stupid." gin: well it's practical. Akutagawa: "I fail to see why I must wear this." naoya: ceremonial. i wore the same kind of outfit when i was in high school. Akutagawa: "Yours was this goofy?" naoya: eh. i had no real opinion. could have been worse, you could be down to practically your underwear! Akutagawa: "...I'm debating that point..." higuchi:.... ._.; Akutagawa: "I have no more time for this. Are the measurements sufficient on this attire?" -elsewhere- Akane: *speaking to security* "Be sure to check in and check out when you finish your shift." guard: *salutes* sir. Akane: "...Interesting cape. Your name?" guy: they call me 'the crooster!' clay: ACK! Akane: *writing down the name, then looks at Clay* "???" clay: MY EYES BURN DUDE! namiko: TT_TT *hiding under the bleachers* Akane: *sighs, puts on goggles, tosses bottle of drops to Clay* "At least we have 'tear gas' as a superhero this year..." namiko: that's fair. midnight: it's 'teary blue' actually. Akane: "Just describing the practical technique...So, all exits are guarded. After the last attack on students, whether by villains or rogue witches, I'm happy to have most preparations completed." clay: and protection from giant whales falling out of the sky! Akane: "...I told you, they don't migrate here." clay: then explain the one that fell into the lake then a few months ago, huh? Akane: "...That was a whale commandeered by electronic implants." clay: so like a robo whale? Akane: "Yes." clay: oh. Akane: "Professor Midnight, who is your biggest hero, height-wise?" midnight: in terms of height? as in all the time or maximum growth? -elsewhere- Iida: "...Brother? It's me..." tensei: oh, a pleasure to hear from you, tenya. what's up? Iida: *small smile* "I'm preparing for the festival. I've been improving my training. I...just want..." tensei: hmm? Iida: "...bring honor to our family." tensei: *smiles* i think you already are. Iida: "..." *manly tears, bows* "THANK YOU, BROTHER!" -elsewhere- Hiro: *looking at festival schedule* "Some musical performances on some evenings..." EF: ah. Hiro: "You get tickets?" EF: yep. Hiro: "Same. Guess I'll see you there! I hope I can actually see it this year--usually, someone is blocking my view..." -elsewhere- Reporter: *waving at teachers* "Excuse me! An interview, please!" marie: oh. you're ann terveau, from the news station? Reporter: *beaming* "Yes, I am! And you...Mjolnir, correct? The student from an earlier festival and now a teacher here, correct?" marie: that's correct. and dont forget that im a death scythe~ ^^ *wink* Ann: "...O-Of course not." ^^; "I wanted to ask about the upcoming Festival. Who are the students favored to win this year?" marie: well, as a teacher, i shouldnt really be picking favorites out of fairness to the others. Ann: "Aw, come on--there has to be a few you're mentoring for this event." -elsewhere- Stein: *falls down onto the couch* valentine: long day? Stein: "Security protocols, stocking the medical offices...Will be over-time at the infirmary during the games." valentine: ah. Stein: "...Could I have your assistance in the infirmary during the games?" valentine: already way ahead of you. Stein: "Thanks, Val..." *lies back* -elsewhere- Mr. Tsubaki: *whistling, as he sets out a photo...showing some students in sports uniforms* reimi: that's...watanuki, isnt it? Mr. Tsubaki: *nods* "Sakuya, yes. And Naho. And Lilac." reimi:...you miss them, dont you...? Mr. Tsubaki: "..." *nods* -elsewhere- Shamrock: "Eat well. You'll need the energy." lilac:...t-thank you. Shamrock: "You're welcome." X_^ tsubaki: ^^ Sakuya: "Could someone pass the salt?" -elsewhere- Todoroki: "..." ochako: wooooah! the view is awesome from up here! Todoroki: "...There is a lot to see." ochako: *smiles* can you see your house from here? Todoroki: "..." *points* ochako: woah! Todoroki: "And yours?" ochako: oh, it's on the other side of town. Todoroki: "Point it to me." -elsewhere- Yohei: *sips coffee* chie: *kiss* Yohei: ^\\^ "What's that for?" chie: love you~ Yohei: *smiles* "Love you, too." chie: ^///^~<3 Yohei: *puts a hand on her hip, letting her sit in his lap* chie: o///o Yohei: *rests his head along her shoulder* chie: *hug* Yohei: *hug* chie: =////= Yohei: "Are you...okay?" chie: yeah. of course i am. Yohei: *nods* "I'm glad...Toru sleeping okay?" chie: *nods* Yohei: "...Want to lie down for a bit?" chie: ....yeah. Yohei: *picks her up, takes her to their bed* -elsewhere- Hawthorne: *in a suit again...but his eyes look out, dead* "..." zoey: well?.....say something you.... Hawthorne: "...What would you have me say?" zoey: ..... Hawthorne: "...Why are you here?" zoey:...it's simple. im here only to serve the man i love Hawthorne: "And what if he does not return those feelings?" zoey: *grabs him by the neck* YOU DONT KNOW A THING ABOUT MASTER FYODOR!! HE LOVES ME MORE THAN ANYONE!! Hawthorne: *choking, but smirking* "Love...Hate...Same emotion...I see how he looks at you. He has no love for you. Just hatred..." zoey: *grabbing tighter* SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!! Hawthorne: *grabs her wrists, trying to pull them away, bringing up his knees to push her away* "Yes, woman, suffer as I have suffered, in sight of me, your worst enemy...No friendly hand pulls at his heart-strings, for he has no love in his heart. How could he love a monster like you, who murders her only friend?" zoey: he...hehehe..AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ahhh~ i only....did...what master fyodor...asked of me... Hawthorne: "And you killed your friend. You killed your friend because a madman told you to. You killed your only friend because a madman told you to. You killed your only friend because a madman told you to--then defiled you, from the inside out, like the base whore you are--" zoey: *slaps him...with a lead pipe* Hawthorne: *knocked to the floor, bleeding from the head* zoey: ......*exits the room* ......... FD: "..." *steps out, looks at Hawthorne...follows Zoey* zoey: master fyodor...? you...dont believe him....do you? FD: "Of course not." *rests his hand along her cheek* "I love you." zoey: ahhh *blush* FD: "But there are two problems." zoey: w-what is it, master fyodor? FD: "First, you have damaged one of our members. He will need your medical treatment." zoey:....understood. FD: "Second, you will treat him..." *turns her around--and slams her against the wall* "...after your punishment." zoey: ah! *pant* m-master fyo- FD: *slaps a hand over her mouth, as he leans onto her* "I can't have you killing my soldiers..." *jams his nails into her side* zoey: *letting out a muffled moan* FD: *rips her skirt with his nails, tearing it off of her* "You like blood so much?" *digs his nails into her bare leg* zoey: a-ahhh~!' FD: *grabs her underwear by the edge--tugging on them until they start to tatter* zoey: *blush* FD: "Are you really so embarrassed, Zoey, at being in a state of undress before me?" *turns her around, lifting up her shirt over her head* "You have no reason to be ashamed, before the man who loves you, who has seen all of you." zoey: it...f-feels good... FD: *grabs her bra--and rips it down, his mouth reaching her breast* -elsewhere- Spirit: "Hey, Kim. How're you holding up?" kim: good. you? Spirit: "A'ight. Just working out for the Festival..." kim: you're...taking part? sachiko:.... >////>; Spirit: "Yeah. What's wrong with that?" kim: no, nothing at all!....hey sachiko. sachiko: miss diehl. Spirit: "We're getting items for dinner. You hungry?" kim: eh, sure. Spirit: "Feel free to invite Jackie--plenty of food tonight!" kim: cool. Spirit: "And bring dessert!" -elsewhere- Kepuri: "What is her deal?!" chie: im not sure....she seems....hurt. Kepuri: "Then go to a doctor!" chie: i dont mean physical hurting. -_-; Kepuri: "Then a head doctor! You know, a shrink!" chie: perhaps... -elsewhere- Izuku: *sets his new action figure on the shelf* "...I'll make you proud, sir." -elsewhere- rowena: *reading* Poe: "Sister? I finished the cookies." rowena: *smiles* that's great. ^^ lenore: *casually perched on her head* Poe: *offers a cookie to Lenore* lenore *nom nom* Poe: ^^ "Glad you like it." -elsewhere- Todoroki: "I'm home." fuyumi: welcome back! Todoroki: "May I provide any assistance with dinner?" fuyumi: sure. Todoroki: *grabs an apron* "...Anything interesting happen?" -elsewhere- Mr. Urakaka: *asleep on the couch, still in his work clothes* "Zzz..." ochako:...*smiles and puts the blanket over him* -elsewhere- Black Star: *snoring* kilik: guess he's crashing here tonight then? soul: seems like. Black Star: *swings his arm* soul:...whatcha think he's dreaming about? kilik: *shrug* Black Star: "Give it to me..." kilik:...*smirks, pulling out shaving cream and putting it into the palm of black*star's hand* Black Star: "Yeah, that's it...Big burger..." *moves his hand up to his mouth* "NOM." kilik + soul: *holding in laughter* Black Star: *muttering* "Tsubaaaaaaaakiiii....I told you I don't like whipped cream on my burger." -they just lose it- Black Star: *wakes up* "..." *growls* -elsewhere- kenji: *humming* Kunikida: "I have an errand for you." kenji: okay! what is it? Kunikida: "Delivers this package to the police." kenji: okay! hey kyouka, lets do our best! Kyouka: "Yay." -elsewhere- yana: *checking the cameras* *Dazai is washing dishes, Lucy is...holding up a sports uniform?* yana: *yawn* uuuugh. so laaaaame. are we ever gonna get this damned plan going? FD: *enters, buttoning his shirt* "What do we need to move forward?" yana: *looks back at him ala shaft head tilt* well, for starters, we need to finish contacting that guy, but it may take months. FD: "Can you make it 'weeks'?" yana: i could try, but i cant guarantee it. -_-; FD: "Please do." *adjusts his tie* yana: *nods* *glances through the door* zoey: *panting, laying on the floor* yana: *cringe* FD: "...I'll be done in a few minutes. Tend to the children." yana:....right. -elsewhere- Tsukiyo: *hands out towels* -elsewhere- kenji: ^^ Kyoka: "...There it is." -after that- kenji: what do you want to do now? ^^ Kyoka: "Crepes." kenji: that sounds yummy! Kyoka: "Good. I hope you have money." ???: hueeeee....the city is so big and scary. i wish i could go home... kenji: !!!! ???: *a young boy, around 14, looks up* ueh? k-kenji? kenji: *HUG* NANKICHI!! Kyoka: "???" kenji: oh! kyouka, this is nankichii, he's from ihatov like me! nankichii, this is kyouka, she's one of my coworkers! nankichii: e-e-ehhh? coworkers? what? *confused* Kyoka: "Student employee." nankichii: ehhhh??? -elsewhere- hirotsu + naoya: *belting out an epic enka duet. it is a marvelous sight to behold* higuchi: ^^; Gin: "..." *downs another shot* higuchi: wait, where did tachihara and ryunosuke go? Gin: "??? ... Oh no." clerk: sir. you're drunk. go back to your room please. -_-; Tachihara: "No, you go back to your room!" Akutagawa: *shivering* -a voice can be heard singing in one of the rooms...atsushi's voice- Akutagawa: "..." *follows the voice* atsushi: *singing karaoke* Lucy: QWQ Akutagawa: *staring from the window* Q~Q kirako: *claps* naomi: ^^ Lucy: "Bravo!" atsushi: aw, shucks guys. ^^ *scratching the back of his head, blushing a bit* Lucy: "Encore!" atsushi: well- *notices the window* *SCREAM* Lucy: "!!!" Akutagawa: *face pressed against the glass* naomi: WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?! Akutagawa: *smashes the window* -he got tazed- Lucy: o_o; atsushi: that was terrifying. -underground- RHOD member: <boss, we have a problem. someone leaked our location. we'll need to move to the secondary base.> FD: *sigh* <Begin.> -elsewhere- Mori: "???" miura: someone sent us the location of the rats... Mori: *smiles* "Send our team!" miura: understood. -and so- naoya: look out fuckers, pest control is in town! hirotsu: *approaching the door....he sent it flying back* -silence.......no one is here...- Akutagawa: "..." Chuuya: "Damn it." *sniffle* naoya: ??? -a small child can be heard whimpering from one of the rooms- Chuuya: "???" *follows the sound* -the room is empty, save for two beds....the sound is coming from under one of them- sonia: *whimpering, clutching a stuffed bear* Chuuya: "..." *approaches one bed* sonia: ??? .....*staring up at him* Chuuya: "...Hey." sonia: .....are you....going to kill me? Chuuya: "No...Why would you think that?" sonia:....are you....an angel? Chuuya: "No. Human. Like you." *removes his glove* sonia: ....... *staring out the door* Akutagawa: "...Why is there a small person under that bed?" sonia: ......they left me in this place.....told me i was nothing more than dead weight....*crawling out and going out of the room* Chuuya: "...What is your name?" sonia:.....sonia.....*points to the incubator* i came out of here....from a dead thing.... naoya: the heck is that? hirotsu: an incubator? *examining it* nirvana corporation...? how long has this been here...? Chuuya: ("...Dead thing?") higuchi: *checking rooms*.... ?? *spots a box with 'to mr nakahara' written on it with a letter* what the....?......hey chuuya? you might want to see this. Chuuya: "??? ..." sonia:....*points to the box* mommy in there. Chuuya: "...What do you mean--" sonia: mommy in there.....she died.....i was supposed to be dead too.....but then they grew me in the tube...and now im here.... naoya: that's pretty freaky.... Chuuya: "..." *opens the box* -rain's body is left inside- higuchi: *screaming in horror* hirotsu: !!!! Chuuya: "..." *turns his head--and vomits* naoya: what the fucking shit?!?! sonia:....mommy in there. naoya: w-what the fuck does she mean 'mommy in there'?! Chuuya: "..." *looks up, cleaning his mouth, stares at Higuchi* "...No..." higuchi:....*realization* ......*her face went pale* Chuuya: *stares at Sonia...* naoya: t-the fuck did they do?! th-they turned her into some fucking doll.....what kind of sick fucks are we dealing with?! sonia:.....mommy died..... Chuuya: "..." *sobbing* higuchi:.....chuuya....we should probably leave now....we should bring her with us... Chuuya: "The...The..." naoya: h-h-hey, g-get a hold of yourself! Chuuya: *crying, walking ahead* hirotsu: ..... -in the mafia office- kouyou: !!!! miura: .... elise: EEEEEW SO CREEPY! Mori: "...Uuuuuuuuuummmmm..." hirotsu: and that's the report. naoya: what the hell kind of sick, deprived bastards are we dealing with, mori?! Mori: "...Truly disturbing ones. Poor Rain." higuchi: .........*hard stare at mori* hirotsu: what do we do with her now? *glances at chuuya* Chuuya: "...Sonia? Are you hungry?" Mori: *calm smile before Higuchi* sonia: *hugging his leg, as if hiding from mori* ...... kouyou:..... Mori: "???" Chuuya: *pats Sonia's head* "Come along. I'll make you something good to eat." sonia:....*holding onto the back of his shirt and following* Mori: "At least someone here is good with children." kouyou: .....*small smile* Chuuya: "You like pizza?" sonia:....what's that, papa? Chuuya: .\\\. "...Um...I'm not...Um...It-It's bread with cheese on it..." sonia: *imagining a bread loaf with a slice of cheese on it* oh. Chuuya: "And tomato sauce." -elsewhere- keek: *terrified* FD: "Which of you told them our location?" -no one says anything- keek: *tears falling* FD: "...Keek. Child. Come here..." keek: *trembling* FD: *approach Keek...and hugs her* keek: ??? zoey: .....*malicious glare at keek* FD: "You know who did it. And I promise, if you tell me, I won’t hurt you." keek: i-i dont.... ???: it was me sir! -a young lady approaches- ???: im the one who told the mafia our location FD: "...Why?" ???: i thought......if we lured them into a trap...we could....kill them.... FD: "And so you risk our location on that gamble? What is your name?" ???:....sasha...sir.... FD: "I appreciate your honesty, Sasha. Thank you." sasha:..... FD: "I would like to reward you. Zoey, if you would be so kind..." zoey: *goes up to sasha......and slits her throat* sasha: !!!! *choking on her blood and twitching.....before finally dying* FD: "Oh, you've made a mess, Sasha." sasha: ........ -no one says a thing- keek: *tears still falling* FD: "Well, now that this task has been taken care of, I want all but Zoey and Keek to begin the clean up, unpacking, and organizing. Dismissed." -they all go about their business- keek: ......... zoey: *glaring at keek* FD: *pats Keek's shoulder* "And this is what happens...to anyone who goes against my wishes. Do you understand, Keek?" keek:....*nods. still whimpering* FD: "Good. Now get Sasha out of here. Zoey and I must talk." keek: ......*staring at sasha's corpse* -sasha's eyes are wide in shock...- zoey: ...... FD: "...Zoey? Will you miss Sonia?" zoey: ......will we.....retrieve the new child soon...? FD: "When you wish me to do so, I will." zoey: ah~ FD: "..." *pats her cheek* "That's my girl." zoey: ^^ FD: "...I think I can help you with the new child, too." -elsewhere- Chuuya: *staring at Sonia* "..." sonia: *nom nom* *shiny eyes* delicious! {higuchi: i think....this kid is rain and mori's child....they must have revived her with the incubator....} {Chuuya: "...Same."} {higuchi:....what do we do with her?} {Chuuya: "...Keep her away from Mori."} {higuchi: no arguments from me on that...} {Chuuya: "I just...think that look on his face..." *shudders* "I don't want to know what is going through his mind."} {sonia: *holding her stuffed bear* .....} {Chuuya: "...Hey, Sonia...Does your bear have a name?"} {sonia:....*shakes head* i hid my dream drawings in it...} {Chuuya: "...Drawings?"} {sonia:....i have.....dreams about mommy. about papa......about the demon....} {Chuuya: " 'Demon'?"} -tug tug- Chuuya: "???" sonia: are you ok, papa? Chuuya: "...Fine...Why do you call me 'Papa'?" sonia:....*pulls out a drawing of herself, rain....and chuuya* Chuuya: *holding back tears* "...Oh." *small smile* sonia: you look like the same papa in my dreams..... Chuuya: "In these dreams...what is your mama like?" sonia: mama's really nice....she gives the best hugs. Chuuya: "...Yeah." sonia: ......where are they gonna put mommy now? Chuuya: "...They're...going to let her rest." sonia:.....oh....i wish mommy wasnt dead. Chuuya: "...Me too, Sonia." sonia:.....*hug* Chuuya: "!!! ..." *pat pat, hug* -elsewhere- Gin: "How is Chuuya dealing with all of this?" higuchi: im not sure.....i think....taking sonia in might help him.....god....i can still see her in there.....she looked peaceful... Gin: *nods* "...That they would do such a thing to her...is mortifying.” higuchi:......why would they.....is this some kind of sick joke to them? Gin: "Likely. And to send a message, not only to Mori...but to Chuuya." higuchi: .....*trembling* she never deserved any of this.... Gin: *holds her hand* "No. She did not." higuchi: *hugs and whimpers* Gin: *hug, strokes her back* "..." -elsewhere- Mori: "But Elise, aren't you happy to have another child here to play with?" elise: i gueeeesss... she kinda looks like you a bit. how gross. Mori: ^^;;;; "...Just your imagination." elise: and i think she already hates your guts, rintarou. Mori: ^^;;;;;;;;;; "...I'm sure we'll get along when we get to know each other." -elsewhere- Rin: "How's your mom doing, Stocking?" stocking: doing well. im gonna help set the nursery up later. Rin: "D'aw! I can't imagine how they'll set it up...Your dad's going to add any of his otaku stuff?" stocking:....*excalibur face* that's a scary thought. Rin: "Maybe you could get some candy-shaped plushie for your future sibling." stocking: that would be cute ^^ Rin: "Darn right it would be!" *opens another can of soda* "So, how long before you have a kid?" stocking: RIN! D8< Rin: "What? I thought that's what would happen next after the wedding. I already have a bet going how long before--" izumo: *tapes his mouth shut* stop. Rin: OXO "Hmph?!" Yukio: -_-;;; "My apologies." -elsewhere- Ann: "Thanks for your time!" *turns off her recorder* "Great interview." -elsewhere- Arthur: -_____- "It's him..." tamaki: ??? *excalibur face* dear god. Aoyama: "Bonjour, chaton! Hello, Boyle." tamaki: *siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh* hello aoyama. -_-; Aoyama: "You look in fine form today. Excited for the upcoming Festival?" tamaki: yeah, i guess. (thinking: knowing my luck, im gonna be humiliated most likely...) Aoyama: *takes her hand* "Then I wish you the best of luck. And I hope you will be cheering for me." *kisses her hand* Arthur: "..." tamaki: .......... nozomi: oh, hello mr aoyama. it's been a while since we spoke last. Aoyama: "Ah, Miss Nozomi! Hello. You are looking well." -elsewhere- Lucy: *sigh* "Craziness." atsushi: yeah, no kidding. odasaku: .... Lucy: "..." *hug* "Don't get killed by that weirdo." atsushi: !! *hug* i wont... Lucy: *pat pat* "Good...Good." *leans her head on his shoulder* odasaku:...i'll just....*ahem* let you two have a moment.. 7.7 Lucy: "...Atsushi...Thanks." atsushi: *smiles* you're welcome. Lucy: *pulls back, smiles--and pats his head* "Good boy." atsushi: >///<; Lucy: *stretches* "Well, I'm starving. Make me something~" -elsewhere- Hibana: "Mmm~" *smooch* gabriella: *smooch* ~<3 Hibana: *lies down* "Did you ever think it'd be like this?" gabriella: no....but im so happy it is... Hibana: *hug* "...Thank you, for not giving up on me." gabriella:....*hug* Hibana: "I love you, so much... -elsewhere- FD: *seated, in front of a white wall...just staring at it* "..." yana: im back! i got you a housewarming gift. *hands him a mug* FD: "..." *blinks* "Huh?" *looks around, then at the mug* -it has '#1 boss' written on it- FD: "..." yana: im gonna go set my room out. FD: "...Thank you." -elsewhere- Sakuya: *pouting* naho: you ok? Sakuya: "Just...irritated." naho:....*hug* Sakuya: "..." *sniff, hugs* naho: do you want to watch some movies? Sakuya: *nods* "Something...kind of light." naho: ok~ ^^ Sakuya: *sits on the couch* "..." naho: ^^ -elsewhere- Benimaru: *staring up at the Moon* kirei: *asleep, resting her head against his shoulder* Benimaru: *glances at her* "..." ("The Moon only makes her look more beautiful.") kirei: =///= Benimaru: "..." *cheek smooch* -elsewhere- Medusa: -___-; "She's drunk again." shaula: awwwcumooooon im not daaat druuunk. Medusa: "Do I need to show you what you have been shit-posting during your video game playing?" -elsewhere- Emine: *picking a lock* *whispers* "How is this a 'good deed' again?" Shotaro: "Shh!" -elsewhere- Kid: "Welcome home.” stocking: hey kiddo~ *hug* Kid: ^^ *hug* "How was it?" stocking: today went pretty well. Kid: *smiles* "I'm glad." *smooch* stocking: mmm~<3 Kid: *rubs her arm* "All finished for the day?" stocking: yep. shiori: stocky! stocky! stocking: *picks her up* hey to you too, kiddo! shiori: ^o^ Kid: *smiles* "...Perfect." stocking: ^^ Kid: *takes his phone--and snaps a pic* -elsewhere- Vulcan: o_o;;; "...Why does this new robot have...ostrich legs?" karin: we got a commission for a promotional poster by the UA. one of their students is gonna pose with this thing to promote the sports festival. Vulcan: "...That is so rad. Have you named it?" -elsewhere- PlushFix: *shudders, covered in blood* hina: *whistling and playing with a butterfly knife* that was fun, right guys? saku: ... PlushFix: "...I need a bath." *shakes like a dog* hina: *picks him up and throws him into the washing machine* PlushFix: D: "At least let me take a bath with someone hot!" hina: *tosses in a plush toy of a fire ball* PlushFix: -___- "...Cute. How am I supposed to fuck this?" -elsewhere- Anya: *snores* -elsewhere- Jacqueline: "Thank you for the meal, ma'am." sachiko: no problem, kiddos ^^ kim: ^^ izumi: jackie, how do you like working in the library? Jacqueline: "It's enjoyable enough: quiet, get to keep things organized...But I do not like the rabies shots." izumi: O-O; eh? Jacqueline: "...I was kidding, about Poe's raccoon in the library?" izumi: oh, i see. i think i've seen that raccoon. Jacqueline: "Cute enough--but kind of noisy." kim: from what i've seen in pictures, he's kind of become the library mascot, haha! Jacqueline: "And leaving his fruit-juice footprints everywhere..." -__-; -elsewhere- Stein: *sips a beer* -elsewhere- Akitaru: "Zzz..." -morning- sonia: zzzzz.... Chuuya: "..." mito: *sleeping next to her* Chuuya: *steps away to the kitchen* -there is a few texts, from kouyou, naoya, hirotsu, higuchi, and akutagawa- Chuuya: "?!" *pulls up Kouyou's* kouyou: [how did sonia sleep the first night?] Chuuya: [a bit of adjustment but okay. had her take my bed, i took the couch] kouyou: [i'll be buying her some new clothes today ^^ #proudgrandma] Chuuya: -_-; ['kay] *looks at Hirotsu's* hirotsu: [congratulations on parenthood. if you ever need a nanny, let me know. im already taking care of four children as it is. ie tachihara, naoya, and the akutagawas] hirotsu: [*congratulations] Chuuya: [lol. thanx] *pulls up Higuchi's* higuchi: [u feeling any better? if u want to talk about it, let me know, k?] Chuuya: "..." [thanks.] higuchi: [ok] Chuuya: *pulls up Akutagawa's* Akutagawa: [how is the child?] Chuuya: [sleeping. seems to be resting.] Akutagawa: [good. let me know whether you need me to pick something up.] Chuuya: "..." [okay] *glancing at Naoya's text* naoya: [eyyy congrats on the kid!] Chuuya: -____-;;; [i'm just watching her today.] naoya: [u on parental leave or somethin?] Chuuya: [i don't know. i may have to ask akutagawa for class notes] naoya: [ah.] Chuuya: [can you cover for me at work?] naoya: [are you asking me to play 'executive'? like? for legits?] Chuuya: "..." [no. i am asking you to take on some of my lesser tasks. i have kouyou covering executive duties] naoya: .... [oh. can do] Chuuya: [thanks. make sure akutagawa doesn't do anything stupid] naoya: [*thumbs up emoticon*] Chuuya: *small smile...sets down the phone, opens the fridge, removes some eggs and milk...* sonia: zzz.... mito: *yawns* =w= Chuuya: *pours some milk into Mito's dish, then starts mixing items into bowl...* sonia: *waking up* ??? Chuuya: *already pouring pancake mix into skillet* sonia: *walking into the room and looking around* Chuuya: "...Good morning, Sonia. I'm making breakfast for us." sonia: .....*trying to get up onto the bar seat* Chuuya: "..." *sets down skillet, removes oven mitts* "Here, let me help you up." sonia: ... Chuuya: *picks her up with his hands to drop her into the seat* sonia: thank you. Chuuya: "You're welcome! So, what do you like on your pancakes?" sonia:...? Chuuya: "Maybe banana slices? Chocolate chips? Berries?" -elsewhere- Takehisa: *loading his rifle* -elsewhere- Kid: *yawns* stocking: morning~ Kid: *smiles* "Good morning, Stocking." stocking: *smooch* Kid: *small giggle* "Aw...How was your sleep?" -elsewhere- Vulcan: *staring at an octopus plushie* "..." nozomi: is everything ok? Vulcan: "Y-Yeah...This plushie just...looks familiar. Whose is it?" -elsewhere- Akutagawa: =_= teacher: mr araragi? Akutagawa: "...What?" teacher: please pay attention.

[oceansoulx]

Des annotations pour une lettre

*

I miss you because by yourside I can be myself. I miss you because I feel home with you. I miss you because everything is ok by your side. I miss you because with you life is better, the sun shines brighter.

*

I wish you were there to tell you how my day was and that i were there for you to tell me yours. I know we didnt pay much atention to it when we were together, but now i see how much of a beautiful little routine it was for us and how much i miss it. Our bodies were not next to each other, but our words was and it was enough for me to keep it up for you till we would meet. *

Temo al olvido. Nunca en mi vida supe lo que era la genuina felicidad hasta que llegaste tu. Temo el olvido porque no quiero volver a ignorar lo que es ser feliz; mas aun, no quiero olvidar lo que es la bondad, lo que es la belleza, lo que eres tu. No quiero desterrarte de mi memoria, ni que el tiempo te borre sutilmente de mi. *

The biggest lesson i learnt with you is that love isnt about either good or bad moments but life itself. When i’m with you i live at its fullest. And i want to discover where such feeling would take me, take you, take us together. Physically together.

*

I miss your to-the-left-to-the-right dance. I miss your voice, you speaking french at me while i joke around at it. I miss every little moment we had.

* Extraño al evil raccoon on the most random situations. Extraño tus dedos, tus manos, el color de tu piel, tus cabellos, tus ojos, tu voz.

* I live with the hope that life will again bring us together.

* Translating work keeps me busy off love thoughts. Mais quand la nuit viens je suis si seul dans le lit et je pense à toi. I never had you in my arms, never actually touched you and yet, after all, i keep imaging the smell of your body, how would it be to have your lips all over me, your breath touching my trembling lips, and your face next to me in the morning with the certain that it will always be like that. And I cry. And i fall asleep wishing you were back to me, that everything were like before. And i cry when i wake up because i have but memories and words of what never was. And i cry because i still think of the smell i never had the chance to feel. And i wonder if you think of me as often as i do think of you. *

Je veux tu reste dans ma mie, suis-je fou pour en vouloir ? Broken or not i love you the same. Qu'est-ce que je vais faire avec cet amour si tu n'es pas avec moi ? Il est à toi seulement. *

Am I crazy if I deeply believe that life will bring us together again ? What i feel is an ocean, my soul is such a night and you’re the lost sailor who’s on a short visit to the land. Je suis la nuit et ma mer a besoin d'être exploré par toi. Reviens.

* I heard someone saying that “changing a bad habit is easy, changing a bad heart is impossible. That’s why one must keep those with good hearts, even tho they are struggling with bad things in themselves”. That’s one more reason to miss you. Yours is the greatest, most noble heart i ever had the chance to love. *

“Keep the goddess on my side, she demandes sacrifice.” I don’t speak from the position of someone who was before related to you. I don’t speak as your former boyfriend or someone who loves you. I speak on the position of someone who has got love deep inside. I speak on the position of someone who has been posesed by something greater than words. L'amour est un oiseau rebelle que nul peut-être aprivoiser and his nest lies on my chest. And he calls your name.

* Hablo pienso y siento desde mi. Sin embargo, que sientes tu? Llevas el mundo en tus hombros y solo pienso en ti desde mi. Que es llevar tus inseguridades, tus heridas? Que es ser tu? Me gustaria ponerme en tu piel o darme un poco de mi para sostenerte. Me gustaria tantas. Me gustaria poder hacerte feliz. Pero la realidad se alzó sobre nosotros y nos separo. Y ahora estas solo sin importar lo que intente. Ahora estas solo y yo quiero estar para ti. My niece was just born today and i wish i was sharing this moment with you, even if you wouldn’t be physically here. Am i crazy for thinking this much about you ? Am i crazy if everything reminds me of you ?

* People might think ours wasnt a true relationship becasue we wern’t together. Moreso at their bestest opinion they would think it wasnt a complete thing, which think is truth. For almost 8 months we shared most of our days throught skype. We didn’t only shared our time but ourselves: i told my joys, my fears, my insecurities and tbose things which make me sad. I shared with you my ideas and deepest thoughts. My good and bad sides. I shared with you myself like I never did. And so you did. We had something rare. We had a connection. We had such a strong comitment of being spiritually together because our bodies wasn’t. We had much more than most couples get in a life-time-marriage. Y a tant des gens dans l'existence quk voudraient bien être amoreux… How would it have turned out if we were together or if we had the hope to be it sooner? I think about such fact… What went wrong? I wasnt there when you needed me the most as you wouldnt have if i ever do. And it’s ok because we knew what we were getting into. Was I the only one experiencing that greatness? It’s truth: we are young, we are in the need of experience before achieving anything. That love is not enough is a painful truth. And yet here are my words, the only place were reality and posibilities are not separated by stupidity. We need time, that is another truth. I need it to believe less in love, you need it to experience it long enough to be able to live it at its fullest with anyone. I was there for you, completly yours to you to share your weaknesses and pains and it wasn’t enough, which is ok. Love goes beyond life and death and if you dont understand it you will never live it. Je ne parle pas de le passion, le engouement. Je parle de le concept, l'idée, de tous leurs expressions et formes. In our first conversation you wrote a poem for me about how we, separated by space, were looking at the same direction. With all my heart, humility, i tell you  i still do look at that point, and with such frankess i tell you as well: you need to grow up on experience and i need to grow on maturity. The conection we had i never had it before, thus with utter certainity i tell you that life will bring our paths together again at that moment on life where hapiness isn’t but a thing on the hand and where we would be able to love each other like we did those endless movie nights were we layed on bed silently watching each other. Forgetting those one love is like mourning, for that i ask you nothing but to keep me in your heart. Keep me inside, in a little place, i wont bother there. Keep it till i get to hug you like i always dream i do, for from this moment on i chose to love you in silence and bother you no more till it happens. I love you and i hope you love me the same still. I am completly yours. I am nothing more than a window on your computer which will be always open for you when you are in need of someone to share not only your sadness and hapiness but yourself. I do still look at that direction, dearest. À bientôt, jusqu'à nous soyons prêts de nous aimer l'un à l'autre comme nous le méritons.

*

I just want you to know and always remember a single thing: No matter what, I will always deeply love you. For me, it will always be the same. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here with my arms wide open to welcome you.

[trendingnewsb]

I could hear things, and Icould feel terrible pain: when anaesthesia fails

The long read: Anaesthesia remains a mysterious and inexact science and thousands of patients still wake up on the operating table every year

When Rachel Benmayor was admitted to hospital, eight and a half months pregnant, in 1990, her blood pressure had been alarmingly high and her doctor had told her to stay in bed and get as much rest as possible before the baby came. But her blood pressure kept rising this condition, known as pre-eclampsia, is not uncommon but can lead to sometimes-fatal complications and the doctors decided to induce the birth. When her cervix failed to dilate properly after 17 hours of labour, they decided instead to deliver the child by caesarean section under general anaesthetic. Rachel remembers being wheeled into the operating theatre. She remembers the mask, the gas. But then, as the surgeon made the first incision, she woke up.

I remember going on to the operating table, she told me. I remember an injection in my arm, and I remember the gas going over, and Glenn, my partner, and Sue, my midwife, standing beside me. And then I blacked out. And then the first thing I can remember is being conscious, basically, of pain. And being conscious of a sound that was loud and then echoed away. A rhythmical sound, almost like a ticking, or a tapping. And pain. I remember feeling a most incredible pressure on my belly, as though a truck was driving back and forth, back and forth across it.

A few months after the operation, someone explained to Rachel that when you open up the abdominal cavity, the air rushing on to the unprotected internal organs gives rise to a feeling of great pressure. But in that moment, lying there in surgery, she still had no idea what was happening. She thought she had been in a car accident. All I knew was that I could hear things and that I could feel the most terrible pain. I didnt know where I was. I didnt know I was having an operation. I was just conscious of the pain.

Every day, specialist doctors known as anaesthetists (or, in the US, anesthesiologists) put hundreds of thousands of people into chemical comas to enable other doctors to enter and alter our insides. Then they bring us back again. But quite how this daily extinction happens and un-happens remains uncertain. Researchers know that a general anaesthetic acts on the central nervous system reacting with the slick membranes of the nerve cells in the brain to suspend responses such as sight, touch and awareness. But they still cant agree on just what it is that happens in those areas of the brain, or which of the things that happen matter the most, or why they sometimes happen differently with different anaesthetics, or even on the manner a sunset? an eclipse? in which the human brain segues from conscious to not.

Nor, as it turns out, can anaesthetists accurately measure what it is they do.

For as long as doctors have been sending people under, they have been trying to fathom exactly how deep they have sent them. In the early days, this meant relying on signals from the body; later, on calculations based on the concentration in the blood of the various gases used. Recent years have seen the development of brain monitors that translate the brains electrical activity into a numeric scale a de facto consciousness meter. For all that, doctors still have no way of knowing for sure how deeply an individual patient is anaesthetised or even if that person is unconscious at all.

Anaesthetists have at their disposal a regularly changing array of mind-altering drugs some inhalable, some injectable, some short-acting, some long, some narcotic, some hallucinogenic which act in different and often uncertain ways on different parts of the brain. Some such as ether, nitrous oxide (better known as laughing gas) and, more recently, ketamine moonlight as party drugs. (If you have an inclination to travel, take the ether you go beyond the furthest star, wrote the American philosopher-poet Henry David Thoreau after inhaling the drug for the fitting of his false teeth.) Different anaesthetists mix up different combinations. Each has a favourite recipe. There is no standard dose.

Todays anaesthetic cocktails have three main elements: hypnotics designed to render you unconscious and keep you that way; analgesics to control pain; and, in many cases, a muscle relaxant (neuromuscular blockade) that prevents you from moving on the operating table. Hypnotics such as ether, nitrous oxide and their modern pharmaceutical equivalents are powerful drugs and not very discriminating. In blotting out consciousness, they can suppress not only the senses, but also the cardiovascular system: heart rate, blood pressure the bodys engine. When you take your old dog on its last journey, your vet will use an overdose of hypnotics to put him down. Every time you have a general anaesthetic, you take a trip towards death and back. The more hypnotics your doctor puts in, the longer you take to recover, and the more likely it is that something will go wrong. The less your doctor puts in, the more likely that you will wake. It is a balancing act, and anaesthetists are very good at it. But it doesnt alter the fact that for as long as anaesthetists have been putting them to sleep, patients have been waking during surgery.

As Rachels caesarean proceeded, she became aware of voices, though not of what was being said. She realised that she was not breathing, and started trying to inhale. I was just trying desperately to breathe, to breathe in. I realised that if I didnt breathe soon, I was going to die, she told me.

She didnt know there was a machine breathing for her. In the end I realised that I couldnt breathe, and that I should just let happen what was going to happen, so I stopped fighting it. By now, however, she was in panic. I couldnt cope with the pain. It seemed to be going on and on and on, and I didnt know what it was. Then she started hearing the voices again. And this time she could understand them. I could hear them talking about things about people, what they did on the weekend, and then I could hear them saying, Oh look, here she is, here the baby is, and things like that, and I realised then that I was conscious during the operation. I tried to start letting them know at that point. I tried moving, and I realised that I was totally and completely paralysed.

The chances of this happening to you or me are remote and, with advances in monitoring equipment, considerably more remote than 25 years ago. Figures vary (sometimes wildly, depending in part on how they are gathered) but big American and European studies using structured post-operative interviews have shown that one to two patients in 1,000 report waking under anaesthesia. More, it seems, in China. More again in Spain. Twenty to forty thousand people are estimated to remember waking each year in the US alone. Of these, only a small proportion are likely to feel pain, let alone the sort of agonies described above. But the impact can be devastating.

For Rachel, sleepless and terrified in her hospital room, it was the beginning of years of nightmares, panic attacks and psychiatric therapy. Soon after she gave birth, her blood pressure soared. I was in a hell of a state, she told me.

For weeks after she returned home, she would have panic attacks during which she felt she couldnt breathe. Although she says the hospital acknowledged the mistake and the superintendent apologised to her, beyond that she does not recall getting any help from the institution no explanation or counselling or offer of compensation. It did not occur to her to ask.

Things can go wrong. Equipment can fail a faulty monitor, a leaking tube. Certain operations caesareans, heart and trauma surgery require relatively light anaesthetics, and there the risk is increased as much as tenfold. One study in the 1980s found that close to half of those interviewed after trauma surgery remembered parts of the operation, although these days, with better drugs and monitoring, the figure for high-risk surgery is generally estimated at closer to one in 100. Certain types of anaesthetics (those delivered into your bloodstream, rather than those you inhale) raise the risk if used alone. Certain types of people, too, are more likely to wake during surgery: women, fat people, redheads; drug abusers, particularly if they dont mention their history. Children wake far more often than adults, but dont seem to be as concerned about it (or perhaps are less likely to discuss it). Some people may simply have a genetic predisposition to awareness. Human error plays a part.

But even without all this, anaesthesia remains an inexact science. An amount that will put one robust young man out cold will leave another still chatting to surgeons. More than a decade ago, I found this quote in an introductory anaesthesia paper on a University of Sydney website: There is no way that we can be sure that a given patient is asleep, particularly once they are paralysed and cannot move.

Last time I searched, the paper had been adjusted slightly to acknowledge recent advances in brain monitoring, but the message remained the same: just because a person appears to be unconscious, it does not mean they are.

In a way, continued the original version of the paper, the art of anaesthesia is a sophisticated form of guesswork. It really is art more than science We try to give the right doses of the right drugs and hope the patient is unconscious.

The death rate from general anaesthesia has dropped in the past 30 years, from about one in 20,000 to one or two in 200,000; and the incidence of awareness from one or two cases per 100 to one or two per 1,000. Obviously we give anaesthetics and weve got very good control over it, a senior anaesthetist told me, but in real philosophical and physiological terms, we dont know how anaesthesia works.

It is perhaps the most brilliant and baffling gift of modern medicine: the disappearing act that enables doctors and dentists to carry out surgery and other procedures that would otherwise be impossibly, often fatally, painful.

The term anaesthesia was appropriated from the Greek by New England physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1846, to describe the effect of the drug ether following its first successful public demonstration in surgery. Anaesthetise: to render insensible. These days there are other sorts of anaesthetics that can numb a tooth or a torso, simply (or unsimply) by switching off the nerves in the relevant part of the body. But the most widespread and intriguing application of this skill is what is now known as general anaesthesia.

The first public demonstration of the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anaesthetic in 1846 by an American dentist, William Thomas Green Morton. Photograph: Design Pics Inc/Rex/Shutterstock

In general anaesthesia, it is not the nerve endings that are switched off, but your brain or, at least, parts of it. These, it seems, include the connections that somehow enable the operation of our sense of self, or (loosely) consciousness, as well as the parts of the brain responsible for processing messages from the nerves telling us we are in pain: the neurological equivalent of shooting the messenger. Which is, of course, a good thing.

I am one of the hundreds of millions of humans alive today who have undergone a general anaesthetic. It is an experience now so common as to be mundane. Anaesthesia has become a remarkably safe endeavour: less an event than a short and unremarkable hiatus. The fact that this hiatus has been possible for fewer than two of the 2,000 or so centuries of human history; the fact that only since then have we been able to routinely undergo such violent bodily assaults and survive; the fact that anaesthetics themselves are potent and sometimes unpredictable drugs all this seems to have been largely forgotten. Anaesthesia has freed surgeons to saw like carpenters through the bony fortress of the ribs. It has made it possible for a doctor to hold in her hand a steadily beating heart. It is a powerful gift. But what exactly is it?

Part of the difficulty in talking about anaesthesia is that any discussion veers almost immediately on to the mystery of consciousness. And despite a renewed focus in recent decades, scientists cannot yet even agree on the terms of that debate, let alone settle it.

Is consciousness one state or many? Can it be wholly explained in terms of specific brain regions and processes, or is it something more? Is it even a mystery? Or just an unsolved puzzle? And in either case, can any single explanation account for a spectrum of experience that includes both sentience (what it feels like to experience sound, sensation, colour) and self-awareness (what it feels like to be me the subjective certainty of my own existence)? Anaesthetists point out that you dont have to know how an engine works to drive a car. But stray off the bitumen, and it is surprising how quickly pharmacology and neurology give way to philosophy: if a scalpel cuts into an unconscious body, can it still cause pain? And then ethics: if, under anaesthesia, you feel pain but forget it almost in the moment, does it matter?

Greg Deacon, a former head of the Australian Society of Anaesthetists, told me about a patient who was waiting to have open heart surgery. Deacon had been preparing to anaesthetise him, he said, when the man went into cardiac arrest. The team managed to restart the recalcitrant heart, then raced the patient into surgery, where they operated immediately. It was only once the operation had begun, the mans heart now beating steadily, that they could safely administer an anaesthetic. It all went well, said Deacon, and the man made an excellent recovery. Some days later, the patient told doctors he remembered the early parts of the procedure before he was given the drugs.

That is a sort of incidence of awareness which was thoroughly understandable and acceptable, Deacon told me: he had not even known if the mans brain was still working, let alone whether he would survive an anaesthetic. We were trying to keep him alive.

This is not denial. This is the tightrope that anaesthetists walk every day. They just tend not to talk about it.

In 2004, and against a backdrop of growing public and media concern, Americas Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations finally issued an alert to more than 15,000 of the nations hospitals and healthcare providers. The commission, which evaluates healthcare providers, acknowledged that the experience of awareness in anaesthesia was under-recognised and under-treated, and called on all healthcare providers to start educating staff about the problem.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists subsequently acknowledged, in a 2006 practice advisory, that accidental intraoperative awareness, while rare, might be followed by significant psychological sequelae and affected patients may remain severely disabled for extended periods of time.

Before that acknowledgment was published, however, then ASA president Roger Litwiller made a small but telling observation. Despite his organisations concern about anaesthetic awareness, he did not want the issue to be blown out of proportion: I would also like to say that there is a potential for this subject of awareness to be sensationalised. We are concerned that patients become unduly frightened during what is already a very emotional time for them.

This is the anaesthetists dilemma. Under stress which affects just about everybody facing a general anaesthetic we lose our ability and often desire to process complex information. More than half of all patients worry about pain, paralysis and distress. High anxiety or resistance to the idea of anaesthesia may even contribute to anaesthetics failing, or at least increase the chances that we will remember parts of the operation. The more anxious we are, the more anaesthetic it may take to put us to sleep.

This creates a quandary for doctors: how much to tell? When we are anxious, our bodies increase production of adrenaline-type substances called catecholamines. These can react badly with some anaesthetic agents. So what does an anaesthetist tell a patient who, because of the type of operation, or their state of health, is at higher than average risk?

I mean, were trying to make people not worry about it, said one Australian anaesthetist I spoke with, but in the process I think we blur it so much that people hardly ever think about it, and thats probably not right either Should I be telling you that youve got a high risk of death? Is that going to frighten you to death?

Today the profession makes much of the emergence of a new generation of anaesthetists who are more attuned to the experiences of their patients. But the reality is that anaesthetists remain for the large part the invisible men and women of surgery. Many patients still dont meet them until just before or sometimes after the operation, and many, muffled in a fug of drugs, might not even remember these meetings. Nor do anaesthetists generally leave anything to show for their work: no scars or prognoses. When they do leave evidence, it is invariably unwelcome nausea, a raw throat, sometimes a tooth chipped as the breathing tube is inserted, sometimes a memory of the surgery. It is unsurprising, then, that by the time an anaesthetist makes it into the popular media, he or she is generally accompanied by a lawyer.

For the doctors who each day make possible the miraculous vanishing act at the heart of modern surgery, this invisibility can be galling. It is not surgeons who have enabled the proliferation of surgical operations numbering in the hundreds 170-odd years ago and the hundreds of millions today. It is anaesthetists. In hospital emergency rooms in Australia and other countries, it is not surgeons who decide which patient is most in need of and mostly likely to survive emergency surgery: anaesthetists increasingly oversee the pragmatic hierarchy of triage. And if you have an operation, although it is your surgeon who manages the moist, intricate mechanics of the matter, it is your anaesthetist who keeps you alive.

One of the first articles I came across when I started researching this subject was a 1998 paper by British psychologist Michael Wang entitled Inadequate Anaesthesia as a Cause of Psychopathology. Wang pointed out that pain even unexpectedly severe pain did not necessarily lead to trauma. Post-traumatic stress seldom followed childbirth, for example. What could be devastating, he said, was the totally unexpected experience of complete paralysis.

Even today, most patients undergoing major surgery have no idea that part of the anaesthetic mix will be a modern pharmaceutical version of curare, a poison derived from a South American plant, which causes paralysis. Few will be aware, either, that during surgery their eyes will be taped shut, that they may be tied down, and that they will have a plastic tube manoeuvred into their reluctant airway, past the soft palate and the vocal cords, overriding the gag reflex, and into the windpipe.

An anaesthetist checking a patients pupil to gauge the effect of an anaesthetic. Photograph: Cornell Capa/The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images

For the patient paralysed upon the table, said Wang, [t]he realisation of consciousness of which theatre staff are evidently oblivious, along with increasingly frenetic yet futile attempts to signal with various body parts, leads rapidly to the conclusion that something has gone seriously wrong. The patient might believe that the surgeon has accidentally severed the spinal cord, or that some unusual drug reaction has occurred, rendering her totally paralysed, not just during the surgery, but for the rest of her life.

As soon as anaesthetists explain to patients how the process works, it all starts to seem a lot less mysterious. And talk, it turns out, is not only cheap but effective: a preoperative visit from an anaesthetist has been shown to be better than a tranquilliser at keeping patients calm. I know from my own experience I had surgery on my spine how reassuring such a conversation can be. For me, it was not just the information; it was the fact of the human contact, of being treated as an equal, of being included, rather than feeling like an appendage to a process to which I was, after all, central.

Hank Bennett, an American psychologist, remembers a young girl whose mother brought her to see him some time after the girl had her adenoids removed. The surgeon referred the mother to Bennett after she had returned to him in a state of anxiety about her child. The surgery had been straightforward, but the mother felt that something was very wrong with her previously happy daughter: the child had withdrawn from her family and friends, and had stopped working at school. She could no longer fall asleep without her mother sitting with her, and was afraid of the dark.

Bennett spoke with the girl. He told her there must be a reason she had changed her behaviour, and asked if it might have something to do with the operation.

Bennett recalled: And she said, Yes. They saidthat they were going to put me to sleep, but the next thing I knew, I couldnt breathe. Now, she was only momentarily like that she does not remember the breathing tube going in but when I asked why she was doing these things differently at school and at home, she said: Well, I have to concentrate and I cant be bothered by anything. Ive got to make sure that I can breathe.

Bennett referred the girl to a child psychologist, and within weeks she was back to herself. Today she would be approaching middle age. But lets say that was just luck, Bennett says now. What if nothing had been picked up about that? Would she have been permanently changed? I think that you would say, yes, she probably would have been.

So if you were my anaesthetist and I your patient, there are some other things Id hope you would do in the operating theatre. Things that many already do. Be kind. Talk to me. Just a bit of information and reassurance. Use my name. Patients who remember waking are often greatly relieved at having been told what was happening to them, and reassured that this was OK and that they would now drift back to sleep.

The Fifth National Audit Project on accidental awareness during general anaesthesia states: The patients interpretation of what is happening at the time of the awareness seems central to its later impact; explanation and reassurance during suspected accidental awareness during general anaesthesia or at the time of report seems beneficial. Hospital staff could put a sign on the wall of the operating theatre: The patient can hear. Because one of the strange things about anaesthetic drugs is that they can exert their effect in each direction not just upon the patient, but upon the doctors and theatre staff performing the procedure.

After the teenage son of a good friend was badly burned in an accident some years ago, he had to endure weeks of intense pain, culminating each week in the agonising ritual of nurses changing the dressings on his chest and arms. They did this by giving him a dose of a sedative drug designed to distract him from the pain and prevent him remembering it. My friend would attempt to comfort her son as he yelled and as the nurses got on with their difficult task. What she observed was that while the drugs did give her son some distance from his pain, and certainly his memories of it, they also gave the nurses some distance from her son. It was an understandable, perhaps necessary, distance; but inherent in that tiny retreat (the lack of eye contact, the too-bright voices) was a loosening of the tiny filaments that connect us one to another, and through which we know we are connected.

It is a process inevitably magnified in the operating theatre, where the patient is silent and still, to all intents absent, and where their descent into unconsciousness is routinely accompanied by the sounds of the music being cranked up (one prominent Australian surgeon is said to favour heavy metal), and conversation. It need not take a scientific study to tell us that this deepening of respect and focus is good not only for patients, but for doctors, too. In the end, it might not even much matter what you say. During an operation, a soothing voice may be more important than what the voice says, writes psychologist John Kihlstrom, who still encourages anaesthetists to talk to their anaesthetised patients (about what is going on, giving reassurance, things like that) but acknowledges that he doesnt expect them to understand any of it not verbally at least.

Japanese anaesthetist Jiro Kurata calls this care of the soul. In an unusual and rather lovely paper delivered at the Ninth International Symposium on Memory and Awareness in Anaesthesia in 2015, he wondered if there might be part of our existence that cannot ever be shut down, which we cannot even conceive by ourselves a subconscious self that might be resistant to even high doses of anaesthetics. He called this the hard problem of anaesthesia awareness. I have no idea what his colleagues made of it. But his conclusion seems unassailable.

Any solution? Science? Yes and no. Monitoring? Yes and no. Respect? Yes. We must not only be aware of the inherent limitation of science and technology but, most importantly, also of the inherent dignity of each personal self.

Anaesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness by Kate Cole-Adams (Text Publishing Company, 12.99) is published on 22 February. To order a copy for 9.99, go to guardianbookshop.com

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/09/i-could-hear-things-and-i-could-feel-terrible-pain-when-anaesthesia-fails

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