#trickle down espionage

[biglisbonnews]

"Spy Superb" is a fun new comic about the best and worst spy in the world Spy thrillers are funny things. As a life-long fan of genre fiction, I've always had a soft spot for a good espionage thriller. But as an adult and a journalist who has much greater understanding of the real-life intelligence community, I find myself becoming increasingly aware of where and how I have to suspend my disbelief with these stories. — Read the rest https://boingboing.net/2023/01/18/spy-superb-is-a-fun-new-comic-about-the-best-and-worst-spy-in-the-world.html

[rioromanoffroses]

Ovulation

G!P Natasha Romanoff x Fem Reader

Warnings: 18+ content, masturbating, oral sex (R and Natasha receiving), finger sucking, dry humping, fingering, unprotected sex (P in V), overstimulation

Summary: You're ovulating while on a mission, causing you to be uncomfortably aroused. Luckily, the agent with you is more than eager to help you out...

WC: 4.1k

The motel was just like any other – grey, dusty and lit only by dim off-white. You would only be here for a night and when you pressed your hand against the cold metal of the radiator, you were glad. You debated whether or not you ask the receptionist about it but keeping your head low was key when travelling on an undercover mission. The more questions you asked and the more times your face was seen and captured by CCTV, the greater the risks. You decided against it.

You inspected the bedroom, following safety procedures which included searching for signs of any electronic devices but luckily, there were none. The bed was a small double with beige, striped sheets that were thinner than you would’ve liked. The back wall was taken up entirely by a sturdy, wooden cupboard that matched the tawny-brown, bedside tables covered in dust. You switched on the lamp and ran your hand over the mattress, noting that you would need to wear thick layers of clothing to bed. You assumed the other bedroom was the same but didn’t bother checking. The other agent could do that.

You sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing your forehead with the palm of your hand. One of the things you hated most about being a woman and a spy was the problems it caused when it conflicted with your cycle. Missions on your period were uncomfortable, draining and painful. Ovulation week was also a mess; you had no way of dealing with the surge of hormones it triggered while on a mission. You made a mental note to take a cold shower after the other agent arrived. 

You read over the intel for the upcoming mission while you waited for them, straining your ears for the door. It was a complicated mission; you had to infiltrate the base of a growing terrorist organisation and hack into their systems to gather as much information about them as you could. S.H.I.E.L.D. knew scarily little about the organisation so you were going in almost blind – anything could happen. 

The plan was for two agents, including you, to blend in as one of the terrorists to get into the base. You were unaware of the identity of the agent you were paired with. You were curious to know if they were someone you’d worked with before or a complete stranger. You assumed the latter – you were still young and hadn’t been assigned to many difficult missions yet. You tightened your arms around yourself, shivering as the light outside the window was sucked from the sky, the moon blocked out by an array of dark, restless clouds. 

“You look cold.” You jumped and leapt on your feet, spinning around to see a woman standing behind you. Her face was painted with a smirk and she looked at you with her hands on her hips, her jade eyes travelling up and down your body. You swallowed. How did you not hear her come in? S.H.I.E.L.D. weren’t exaggerating when they said she was the very best they had at espionage. You didn’t realise you were staring at her until she brought you out of your thoughts, “Cat got your tongue?”

“Uh, sorry,” you said, clearing your throat, “Yeah, I am. East Europe is always freezing at this time of year.” You could feel sweat trickling down your neck. Not only were you ovulating on a mission but you were stuck with an extremely attractive woman during it. You were so fucked. 

“Mm, it is,” she said, stepping towards you and offering out her hand. You noticed the electrified branches of azure and emerald running down her arms up to her fingers, pushing up against the skin, your heart thundering against your ribcage. You quickly pulled yourself out of your trance. You were a spy for goodness sake, not the nervous wreck or helpless whore your elevated levels of estrogen were making you feel like. You shook her hand.

“It’s nice to meet you,” you said, “I’m Agent Y/l/n.” You pulled your hand away from hers before she could pick up on your clammy palms but unbeknownst to you, she’d already felt them. 

“I know,” she said, “I’m Agent Romanoff but to you, it’s Natasha.” You could feel your breath hitch in your throat. Natasha. You could already imagine how those three, pretty syllables would feel falling off your tongue. 

You dismissed your dirty thoughts immediately, feeling ashamed of yourself. She was a stranger and your teammate; you seriously needed to pull yourself together. She nodded to the file in your hand, “I see you’re already prepared for the mission.”

“I was just double-checking all the details,” you said. The tight, black shirt and jeans she was wearing hugged her in all the right places, her sculpted arms in full view to you. She must take her training seriously, you thought, I wonder how often she goes to the gym.

“Good,” she said, dropping her bag on the floor, “I already know I’ll enjoy working with you.” You placed your hands behind your back so she couldn’t see your fidgeting fingers. Your gaze fell onto the bag and you frowned.

“Oh, were you planning on sleeping in here?” You said, “I’ll move to the other room then.” She held her arm in front of you as you stepped towards the door. 

“There isn’t another room.” You felt your heart drop. You realised the other door must be to the bathroom. You couldn’t imagine how your situation could get any worse, “Are you unhappy with that arrangement?”

“No, not at all,” you lied, “I just didn’t expect it, that’s all.” You swallowed, hard. You started moving towards the door, “I’m going to take a shower,” you mumbled, not waiting for her answer. You fumbled with the handle, cursing under your breath and slammed the door shut behind you. 

You didn’t waste any time taking off your clothes and turning on the shower, sighing as the cold droplets collided with your burning skin. The water only offered you a few moments of relief, however. The more you thought about the redhead and how close you’d be together that night, the more you fed the raging arousal between your legs. It became clear that there was only one way you were going to calm yourself down.

You covered your hand with your mouth as you touched yourself, your mind overwhelmed by images of Natasha. It didn’t take long for you to reach your climax and you were certain that the sound of the shower and your hand had muffled out all your moans. You cleaned yourself before stepping out, drying yourself with a towel and getting dressed, praying that your body would be satisfied for the night. When you returned to the bedroom, Natasha was on the bed facing you, resting a pillow on her lap.

“You’re even prettier in real life than you are in your pictures,” she said, the unexpected compliment drowning you in butterflies. You noticed that her cheeks were flushed a bright red and her breaths seemed more laboured than before. 

“Really?” you said in disbelief. You had never seen yourself as unattractive but you didn’t think you were anything special either. You were nothing compared to the Goddess in front of you, that was for sure. She chuckled.

“You’re a humble one,” she mused, “How cute.” You couldn’t quite believe her words. Natasha thought you, of all people, were humble? You searched the room, looking for any kind of escape from the conversation and spotted a clock hung above the bed.

“It’s getting late,” you said, trying to hide your stutter, “I’ll sleep on the floor.” You knew it would be uncomfortable but anything was better than being next to Natasha. You’d slept in awkward places before so you’d just have to deal with it.

“No you won’t,” she said, shuffling to the other side of the bed and lifting the sheets, “There’s room for both of us, see?” The amount of room wasn’t the problem – it was the proxemics between you and the internal chaos your body was experiencing. How were you supposed to explain that to Natasha though? You noticed the moment your eyes fell on her that her autonomy wasn’t the same as yours so she wouldn’t understand your dilemma.

“Uh, okay,” you said, knowing you had no choice. You never sounded nervous or vulnerable, not even with your close family and friends. If embarrassment was a type of poison, you’d have collapsed in agony by now. You climbed into bed beside Natasha, turning your back to her. You were reminded of how small the bed was when you shifted slightly and felt her hand brush against the small of your back. You took a deep breath. You were in for a long night. 

She switched off the bedside lamp and to your horror, you could hear her unbutton her jeans and discard them on the floor. It was almost as if she was doing it on purpose. You tensed your muscles, forcing yourself to stay as still as humanely possible so there was less chance of you accidentally making contact with each other again.

“That’s better,” she mumbled and you felt her leg against yours as she adjusted her position to make herself more comfortable. You didn’t know how long it took for you to fall asleep with her body so close to yours, her breath creating goosebumps along every part of your skin that it hit. Unfortunately, you found out the hard way that your head was the worst place to escape to you in your current state. 

You woke up, gasping and blinded by the darkness around you. You pushed yourself up, feeling the slick on your thighs from the filthy dream you had just experienced. Natasha’s head had been buried between your thighs and you had been an absolute mess beneath her. You could honestly die from humiliation – how could your mind conjure up something so vile while you were sleeping next to her? As you were about to move off the bed and sprint into the bathroom, a light was switched on and you felt a hand tighten around your wrist. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Natasha said, a dark rasp accompanying her words, “You are not going into the bathroom to fuck yourself again.” Your eyes widened and you felt a tide of heat rush to your cheeks. She’d heard you. 

“I’m so sorry,” you said, “I shouldn’t have, it was really inappropriate of me…” She silenced you by straddling your hips, trapping you beneath her on the bed. Before you could react, you were distracted by the feeling of something hard against your stomach. You looked down to see Natasha in only her boxers, the bulge pressing against your abdomen straining in its confines. Your jaw dropped. It had never even occurred to you that there was a chance she’d want you too.

“I was going to let you make the first move,” she said, “But you took too long.” From how the other agents described you, she had been so sure your boldness and confidence would’ve caused you to spring onto her immediately. She was annoyed that she’d had to listen to you pleasure yourself in the shower without her but at the same time, Natasha loved that her presence had changed your demeanour so much. 

You gulped and looked up into her eyes, seeing that her iris had shrunk into a thin line around her blown pupils. You drunk in the sight of her on top of you, placing your hands on top of her bare, supple thighs, her skin like velvet beneath you. 

“Fuck,” you breathed. She tilted up your chin, running her thumb over your bottom lip, wanting a better view of you.

“Tsk tsk. Such a dirty mouth.” You knew you shouldn’t be letting her walk all over you but you were enjoying it more than you wanted to admit. She lifted herself off your body so she could move her other hand to the waistband of your trousers. She hooked a finger underneath the material, “Can I?” You nodded and she dug her nails into your chin, “I want to hear you say it.” You weren’t used to this power dynamic – you were always the more dominant one. 

“Yes,” you said, “You can. Please.” She grinned at your obedience and slipped her hand into your pants, feeling you drip onto her fingertips. She groaned.

“Oh God, you’re so wet already,” she said, “I could stuff you with my cock right now if I wanted to.” She removed her hand from your underwear and brought it to your mouth, pushing her fingers past your lips. You sucked her digits hungrily, tasting yourself on your tongue. The sight only drove Natasha even crazier but she also felt a pang of envy, wishing it was her cock in your mouth instead. You felt so good around her fingers.

After pulling her digits out of your mouth, she lowered herself onto your body and she didn’t hesitate to connect her lips with yours, sending a jolt of electricity through your veins. Her lips moulded against yours perfectly and you moved in sync with her, your kisses becoming more and more desperate. She could taste your sweetness as she kissed you and she forced herself to forget about breathing, not wanting to pull away for even a second. Her hands cupped your face and you reached up to tangle yours in her hair, her lips staining yours with garnet lust. 

You pulled her even closer against your chest, your mind a buzz of her and her only. You let her tongue slide between your teeth when you felt it press against your bottom lip, making no effort to fight against it with your own. She swallowed your whines, her crotch grinding against your thigh. You had never hooked up with anyone before; you weren’t that kind of person. But you were willing to break all your rules for Natasha and give every part of you to her without hesitation. 

Her mouth moved to your jawline, littering your face with kisses, her hands trailing down your arms. You shivered under her feather-light touch, gasping as her teeth sunk into your neck, intending to leave a bruise that everyone else would see. She tugged at the hem of your shirt.

“Take it off,” she said. She leaned back to give you space to pull it over your head and unhook your bra before she pounced on you like an animal. She traced her fingers over your collarbones before venturing further down to your chest, her fingers circling your nipples. You arched into her touch as she caressed your breasts, her movements sending a spark straight to your core. You reached down to cup her bulge, noticing the wet patch on her boxers but she slapped your hand away, “No touching,” she snapped. 

“Please, Natasha,” you said, “I need you; it hurts.” She tutted.

“Patience,” she husked. She pulled away from you and started taking off her clothes, freeing her aching breasts before pushing down her boxers. Her erection sprang out from the material, the tip inflamed and ringed by an enraged red, pre-cum dribbling onto the sheets beneath her. 

She led back onto the pillow, giving you a full view of her body and you took a moment to admire her. Everything about her was a masterpiece – her facial features, her muscles, her curves. Her crimson hair was a mess around her shoulders and the front pieces had fallen forward, framing her face, “I want to fuck that pretty mouth of yours.” You shook your head.

“No, Natasha,” you pleaded, “It’ll feel so much better in my pussy, I promise…” You fell silent as her eyes burnt into you. You reluctantly crawled over to her on all fours, hesitating before wrapping your mouth around the tip. You tried to irk her, moving as slow as possible but she grabbed a hold of your head and started pushing you down on her cock. 

“Suck.” You gagged around her length as she started bucking her hips upwards so she was fucking your mouth but the sound only drove her more. It didn’t take long for you to start moving your head up and down her cock without any guidance, guttural moans escaping Natasha’s mouth from the warmth and skill of your tongue, “Fuck, that shut you up.”

Tears spilt down your cheeks as she hit the back of your throat over and over again, the vibrations of your whines sending even more waves of pleasure through her body. She lifted her legs onto your shoulders so you could grab onto her thighs, spurring you on even more, “I’m so close,” she breathed. Her thrusts were messy and out of rhythm by the time she came undone, spilling her cum into your mouth. You made sure to swallow it all. 

She pulled her cock out of your mouth, a mixture of cum and drool coating her length, some of it dribbling down your chin, “You did so well. Such a good slut for me.” She took a moment to catch her breath, watching with eagerness as you pulled down your trousers and your panties that were positively ruined, throwing them on the floor. There were tears of white running down your legs and your clit was visibly swollen. She smirked wickedly, “You want me that bad, huh?”

“Please, I’ve been a good girl,” you whined. You tried to reach for her again but she caught hold of your wrist, stopping you in your tracks. 

“Lie down.” You went to lay on your back but she grabbed your shoulders, her nails indenting crescent-moons into your skin before pushing you down onto your stomach. You gasped as her hand pressed against your cunt, her fingers running through your sensitive folds. Her movements were slow and deliberate, intending to increase your need but not give in to it.

“More,” you begged as her thumb massaged your clit. The smell of sex was heavy in the air and your senses were intoxicated by the vanilla and brown sugar fragrance of her perfume. She gave your clit a sharp pinch in response to your pleas, causing you to inhale a sharp intake of breath.

“You’re insatiable,” she said, “You’re begging to be fucked by a woman you just met. Like a whore.” You started rubbing your crotch against her hand, your motions erratic and frantic. 

“More, please,” you cried, your thoughts becoming incoherent as the need between your legs started to burn, “Please, Natasha.” She pushed two fingers inside of you, stretching out your entrance but making sure to avoid your g-spot. 

“Tell me what you want.” 

“I want you inside of me,” you groaned as she added a third digit to your cunt. Natasha started to play with her breasts using her free hand; she was burning for you just as badly as you were for and the sound of your begging only worsened her desire. It took all the strength in her body to hold herself back and not ruin you right there and then. She was so glad you couldn’t see her.

“I am inside of you.” You whined.

“I want your cock. I need it inside of me, please.” She grabbed hold of your hips, smirking. As much as she enjoyed seeing you so needy for her, her patience was wearing thin.

“Then you’ll take it all.” She suddenly rammed inside you without any warning, not being able to resist you for any longer and you cried out in shock. Your initial discomfort was drowned by explosive bliss as Natasha filled you to the brim, hitting places you didn’t even know existed. She was met with no resistance as she rutted into you despite her size which stretched you out deliciously. Your pussy was so much better than she could’ve ever imagined.

She flattened herself against your back, needing to feel more of you. She grunted against your ear as her hips slammed into your ass with each powerful stroke. You were dizzy with pleasure as her speed increased, your moans intensifying as she started to pound into your sweet spot. She was older and more experienced than anyone you had been with before which was evident in how she was making you feel. Your body was coursing with more pleasure than you thought was humanely possible. 

The knot in your stomach was tightening fast and the sounds of your wet cunt were echoing through the room, “Oh fuck, you’re so tight,” Natasha said, not caring about her dignity anymore, too lost in the sensation of your warmth clenching around her cock, “Tell me how you feel baby.” 

“I feel so, so good,” you said, “Please, don’t stop.” You looked back at her and she tilted her head so your lips could connect for a moment before her mouth moved to your shoulder. She sucked on the soft skin there, slowing down so she could sink deeper into your cunt. She could feel your legs trembling beneath her own as you pushed back in rhythm with each of her thrusts.

“How close are you?” Natasha didn’t want to admit it but she was already teetering on the edge, struggling to hold back from how well you were taking her. You could feel her movements become sloppy as more and more of your juices gushed from your entrance. 

“So close,” you said, your walls clenching even harder around her cock. It only took a few more thrusts before you could feel gasoline flood your bloodstream, ready to be set on fire, “Natasha, f-fuck…” You didn’t even have to say it.

“Let go for me,” she commanded. You let the knot in your stomach unravel, screaming her name as all the nerves in your body were electrified, sparks of searing light shooting across your vision. No drug could replicate the state of euphoria you were both lost in as your walls were drowned by white, your cunt milking her cock dry until there wasn’t a single drop left to give. You had never experienced an orgasm so strong, so prolonged, so incredible. You expected Natasha to stop after fucking you through your high but instead, she picked up her pace again. You whimpered.

“Natasha, that’s enough…” She pulled out of you and flipped you onto your back before slipping straight back inside of you. Your eyes widened. 

“What’s wrong?” she mocked, “You begged for my cock, slut. Isn’t this what you wanted?” She smirked when you didn’t give her an answer, already drowning in ecstasy again despite the building ache between your legs. You were losing your grip on reality as the new angle gave her access to more places inside of you and you knew it wouldn’t be long until you were overstimulated. 

She didn’t take her eyes off you, wanting to see your reaction to everything she gave you. You were growing more sensitive by the second and you could feel her cock throbbing against your walls each time you squeezed her, drops of perspiration gleaming on every inch of your skin. You reached up to cup Natasha’s breasts, the extra layer of stimulation pushing her towards yet another climax in record time. 

She started to rub your clit, hoping to speed up your release but it was becoming evident she’d have to release without you. You wrapped your legs around her waist, pulling her even closer and for a moment, she forgot your pleasure, getting too lost in her own. She tore her eyes away from you and threw her head back, panting like a dog. 

“Cum inside me,” you said and at the sound of your words, she didn’t hesitate, letting her orgasm crash into her body with full force. She moaned your name between gasps as she was hit by waves of bliss that slowly decreased in intensity as the milliseconds passed, pulsing through her entire body. She finally pulled out of you and collapsed on the bed. You both gasped for breath, your thighs and the sheets beneath you stained with lust. You were glad you hadn’t climaxed this time – you didn’t think you’d have survived it. 

“That was fucking incredible,” Natasha admitted, turning her head to face you. You nodded in agreement, too fucked out to form a sentence, your limbs still shaking from adrenaline.

That morning, Natasha woke you up with her cock between your legs, already hard and ready for another round. Her hands only left your body during the mission and three days later after its success, she didn’t hesitate to fuck you senseless until you passed out.

A/n - I have an idea for part two so let me know if that's something you'd like.

[cerastes]

I love Kazemaru, man, she’s so funny conceptually.

Kazemaru is a former Higashi ninja, now Rhodes Island Operator, and she specializes in espionage and intelligence work, but is also a capable combatant. Nothing out of the ordinary so far, and her reason for joining Rhodes Island? “A clash between her own views and the new head's business goals”. Here’s where a little elaboration is necessary:

Kazemaru is a ninja, with all that entails: Espionage, assassination, sabotage, bodyguarding, you name it, Kazemaru did it, she did it with pride, she did it with professionalism. When serving her old lord, Kazemaru was right at home, having been trained since she was a child by her ninja parents to be one of the lord’s ninja. Now, here’s where you may think “Oh, but the constant ninja business, the espionage, the assassinations, the harrowing life of the underworld... It got to her, and she moved to a place where she could use her skills to help people instead, Rhodes Island, like some of the other repentant assassins, right?”

Nope! She fucking loved being a ninja! She REALLY REALLY liked that lifestyle!

Head covered in mud, tailing a target for days on end, sabotaging an enemy organization, making them lose everything... It was her life. Kazemaru truthfully thrived in this environment. For instance, when she just started at Rhodes Island, she’d beeline for the conference room to regurgitate mountains of information for Kal’tsit and others.

But what Kazemaru didn’t consider was the power of the children of Rhodes Island:

By chance, they found out that Kazemaru has the power to make origami constructs move (which is how she makes her clones) and they thought it was the dopest shit ever, so they were like “PLEASE TEACH US” and battle-hardened ninja veteran Kazemaru was like “oh damn I can’t just leave them hanging, that would complicate the workplace situation maybe, that’s SUB-OPTIMAL, I will just act friendly a bit and then move on”, except OOPS she ends up really loving these children so now she legitimately is smiling and having fun with them.

So then... Why DID she come to Rhodes Island in the first place?

Well, her old lord passed away, presumably due to old age and illness, and then the young lord succeeded him. Kazemaru was ready to ninja her heart out for her lord’s successor, ready to give it her ALL. Instead, the young lord, well, went legit and turned the underworld organization into a legitimate business. He hit Kazemaru with the You Are Now An OL Beam.

And she hated every last second of it.

Day in and day out, office work, meetings, cordialities, idle smiles, plastic hearts. Her skills dulled to the point where a flower pot fell from a window and landed square on her head. So Kazemaru stood there, owned in front of the girls, bits of the pot and soil and some of her blood all trickling down from her head, and she said “ENOUGH”. She went to her young lord and said “hey this fucking sucks dude I HATE being an OL. RELEASE me.”

Because Kazemaru is that kind of person.

And she got her freedom.

And she couldn’t be happier to be back where one mistake can be the end of it all. Because Kazemaru simply is that kind of person.

And you couldn’t possibly tell at first glance! She is legitimately a very nice, sweet, stylish girl! But the moment there is some semblance of peace, of stability in her life, it gnaws at her. Is she becoming dull? Is that thrilling danger truly gone? Is this right? And the answer is always, no, this isn’t right. The stillness of peace can’t sate her. The clashing of bone and sinew, the embrace of the shadows, and thrill of espionage... That’s what Kazemaru lives for. Hell, she even offers Doctor to gather intel for them almost for funsies:

It’s just delightfully ironic that the person whose job is to be secretive and a shadow is so immensely open, so transparent, so easy to understand, she doesn’t even particularly keep it a secret.

“Yeah, the new lord tore up the oaths and made us sign regular contracts instead, then gave us office work. I hated every single second of it.”

The only real question is... Why Rhodes Island? We actually don’t know. Her Module elaborates just a bit further into this turn of events: When her young lord eventually approved of her release, he specifically told her “alright, sure, you can go, BUT you should consider Rhodes Island.”

It might be that this young lord is a business partner/ally of Rhodes Island to some capacity and we might learn more of him and the company when we eventually cover Higashi.

So Kazemaru is really, really good at her job, really enjoys living in the jaws of danger, and when her young lord, possibly with good intentions, thrusts her and her colleagues into a peaceful life where they don’t need to risk their lives in dangerous missions anymore, she hates it so much she can’t bear it anymore, because some people simply are born to be steeped in danger and shadows, and you can’t take that away from them. And it doesn’t stop them from being very nice, sweet people! But when all is said and done, where Kazemaru belongs is in the shadow, mere inches away from a mistake that could end her life, at the border of life and death.

And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Kazemaru and Mlynar should have a conversation in which they complain about HATING being OLs. 4 uninterrupted cutscenes in which they just shit talk office work nonstop, in a Rhodes Island hallway, making it REALLY awkward for a bunch of characters that just wanna go to the other side of the hallway.

[rel124c41]

DESTROYING ANGELS. jade leech

It screams in your head. A siren. An eagle. A sick, diseased, morbid raven yelling and yelling: housewarden, housewarden, housewarden, it caws at you. With Vil Schoenheit's third year coming to an end, you hold the ambition to become housewarden, if even only for a measly year.

But when struck with the visage of Vil's overblot, you doubt your efforts and turn to a deal with a truly odious individual.

tags: rival relationship, blood and injury, mental breakdown, developing relationship, poisoning, pomefiore (twst), gentle kissing, happy valentine’s day!!

word count: 24,883

For what was an immeasurable time, you again scrubbed the fifteen second clip back to the beginning. At this point, Si and Am — your dormmates — have already left the library to attend class. You told them you would catch up, but reflexively your thumb drags the red dot to the left. You said you would catch up perhaps five minutes ago.

As the clip starts, you watch it like it has pierced both your eyes with hooks and is cranking you back into the boat. You have to watch it again and again, pause at mark 00:05, mark 00:13, mark 00:10. And it is not even enjoyable.

You are transfixed like someone watches a person burning in the backyard get-together, morbidly interested yet disconnectedly anguished.

The quality is mediocre at best. The recorder, one of the dwarf children or a random attendant, had a faulty grip on his phone. Perhaps, you should give them some credit. Running for your life would make a video appear blurry as found footage films, but … you scrub back to the beginning, Sevens couldn’t they have just stood still for a fucking second!

The grip around your phone tightens immensely and your case crackles. At this point, the screams and pleads on the loop are like trickling sand. You hold your thumb by the pause button, waiting and waiting until there!

Instantly, your glumness vanishes. Your eyes break the limits of human anatomy and widen even further to soak in all of the image. You screenshot it six times.

On your phone is the countenance of Vil Schoenheit in his overblot form. Black lips open wide into a yelling shout. The lace and insignia of blot indented onto crystal white skin. Golden peacock feathers cutting into the sky and forming Mary’s halo around his head. And most importantly, the symbol of every overblot, wisps of violet curling and pulsing off the campfire that is Vil’s fiery eye. The only recorded video of your housewarden’s overblot saved onto your phone after pulling so many strings and calling up so many connections.

And you should be happy; you have that image; you could do whatever you please with it and ruin Vil Schoenheit. But, gathering up your paperwork, all you feel is envious.

Storming out the library, you mourn that if you overblot, it will never be as magnificent as the one your housewarden has achieved.

You are not as skilled in cloak and dagger activities as your vice-housewarden is. Those observation skills of yours left something to be desired. Plus, your lack of companionship did not stem from a need for secrecy (like many other students) but rather a practical desire to complete your goal. Being isolated should have left you with plenty of time to practice espionage-esque skills. You guess you have wrongly judged that you were at least subtle in your staring, because as you go to tap Jade Leech on his shoulder, both of you walking down the hallways, he says without even turning his back, “twenty-seven.”

You quickly withdraw your finger from the space inches near his shoulder as if an animal you were petting had opened its maw. You shrink back as Jade Leech stops in the middle of flowing school traffic and turns around. The impression he cuts through the current is odious. “I’m sorry?”

“You have stared at me this week on twenty-seven different occasions. I was wondering if you were going to reach thirty before you said anything to me.”

His smile is odious too. Ah, how terrifying he is to look at. You deflate at his words then attempt to puff right back up again. All that false confidence you had been building up this whole week was meant for this, “I was hoping that I could trouble you for setting up a meeting with housewarden Ashengrotto. At his earliest convenience?”

“I see,” Jade Leech says, reaching a gloved hand up to his chin. “But would it not be more optimizing if you were to come directly to Azul with this. Of course, I can pass on the word to him.”

Okay, this is it. As a last ditch intimidation method, your instincts make you stand up straighter. You spent all week preparing for this. Be honest; Jade Leech will never reveal his hand but as the applicant, you will need to reveal yours. And you know this conversation will not reach housewarden Ashengrotto if it does not manage to interest his vice-housewarden.

“Because the deal I want doesn’t involve Azul; it's a deal between both me and you.”

You find yourself in the VIP room before the day is out.

You are almost dizzy with the speed that things were commencing. Stress had been intimately stitched into your uniform as you spent the last week. A week spent staring at Jade Leech – apparently twenty-seven times – and trying to deduct how to talk to him. The same day you approach is the same day you get into Ashengrotto’s office. Yes, you certainly feel whiplashed by the turn of events.

The lilac straw in your mouth has definitely known kinder customers. Halfway done with the sunset-hued drink Floyd Leech presented you with, you occupy yourself with gnawing on the straw. You need a way to relax and were appreciative of the drink. It is a good drink, a mixture of pineapple and orange juice with grenadine. Nothing else, though you had tasted around for a hint of any poison, and you were good at –

“(Name),” Azul says and you quickly set down your drink. “I was told this was an imperative matter, so I am wholly interested in how Octavinelle can provide for you. After all, I don’t believe you have ever graced Mostro Lounge with your presence before.”

You narrow your eyes slightly at the orange foam in your glass. Why did he make it sound like you kept him waiting? When you were the one waiting for twenty minutes at least as he did paperwork, trying to avoid eye contact with the Leech twins seated across from you. Forget it, do not be intimidated. Looking up, you puff your throat and start.

“Housewarden Ashengrotto, I want to make a contract with you. I–”

“Well, yes, most individuals at Night Raven College do. However, Jade informed me this was a matter that did not involve myself.” Azul is still busying himself with shuffling papers as if you are an impediment.

“The contract,” you swallow hard. “The contract would not involve me and you. I require nothing from you except a contract that would ensure that both me and the other signer will provide the agreed upon terms. It would involve Jade Leech and myself.”

You receive no response from Azul. He is scribbling on a paper with his fishbone pen. You send a quick glance across the table to the twins – bad idea, you quickly turn back to Azul who is peering at you bored over his glasses. Your words are not entertaining enough. “I want to know if this type of contract is possible with your signature spell before I reveal my hand.”

“Dear, anything is possible with the Sea Witch’s spirit of benevolence. But, you are the applicant here and I am no mind reader. So, please, indulge my ears and tell me your worries, your struggles, and your troubles.” He waves one hand in a gesturing stroke then returns to writing.

“In exchange for what I’m asking, I’ll offer you my life and freedom, my possessions, and all my magic.”

The VIP room’s atmosphere shifts at your words. The bubble of indifference is pricked with a needle. Fishbone pen clattering, Azul snaps his head up to you so fast that his glasses tilt on his face. Cool cerulean eyes brim up with a destructive interest. In the corner of your vision, Floyd’s restful shoes suddenly slip off the glass table and are replaced by his slamming hands. Underneath the glass, three koi fish swam agitated at the weight. The courteous smile has slipped off Jade’s features and he is staring at you. Are his eyes glowing? No matter, his already perfect posture has already begun to straighten more.

You pick up the glass that Floyd had rattled and sip the drink. The knowledge that you had definitely secured the usage of Azul’s signature spell sends a warmth through you that you need to cool with an orange, iced beverage.

“HAHAHAHA,” Floyd shrieks excitedly. “Pufferfishy is so exciting! Aren’t they, Jade!” Jade mumbles his agreement that this is quite unexpected as his twin continues laughing, thoroughly amused.

When you reach the bottom of your foamy drink, Azul is done fixing his glasses. “Well, that is certainly unexpected collateral. Are you perhaps desperate, (Name)? Such heavy words.” But he is already summoning a contract in his right hand. Golden luster drips off and shadows him a canary yellow gleam. He starts to scribble on that instead.

“I am not desperate,” you state. It is a true statement. Despite what your collateral is, not an ounce of this is desperation, despite everything an outsider might believe.

“An-And what would you require from Jade,” Azul asks, his hand rapid with his writing. His voice makes you inclined to believe Azul would be willing to sell Jade Leech for anything you had to ask for. Good, you think, you need to make them more willing to your whims than vice versa. You start to describe what you want from this contract.

“I need someone, not from Pomefiore, who still possesses knowledge of poison. My options were five students from Octavinelle and Scarabia who excelled in potionology, Jade Leech was one of them. If I picked any of the other four, they could have easily betrayed me or sold my research. Jade Leech has both a knowledge of fungi poisons and oceanic poisons with a minimal understanding on land and magic poisons too. Divus Crewel even sings his praise.

“To become Pomefiore’s housewarden, I need to make the most potent poison. I need to win this upcoming summer exam above all else. Working with someone from Pomefiore could compromise me. I am leagues ahead of my peers but,” but I even fall into self doubt “but even I know when I am running into a deadend, of sorts. I need another pair of eyes to help me find that exit.

“If Jade Leech is willing to help me both make and test a variety of poison, then I will sign this contract. If I fail to become Pomefiore’s housewarden, then I forfeit my entire life to anyone in this room. My magic and all my servitude is one of yours.”

There is it, terms laid out plainly. You silently watch the way the trio reacts to this information. Really, you try to focus your attention on Jade without losing eye contact with Azul. His interest is definitely piqued. If something catches the eel-mer’s scrutiny, he is sure to go into it wholeheartedly, yes? You wish you could read people better, it has never been your speciality.

“Such a streep price. Your entire life?” A dangerous firecracker glint passes over Azul’s eyewear. “Perhaps, I can have you working for Mostro Lounge indefinitely. After all, the Octavinelle dorm is where you originally belo-”

“Don’t. Don’t bring that up.”

He is not sorry but still says, “Of course, my apologies. So, the assistance of my vice-housewarden is what you desire, dear student. Well, I cannot help but ask Jade what he thinks of this arrangement.”

“Wait. I want to add a clause to this contract.” Surprise molds Azul’s lips in a pout, but he still tells you to continue. “If I feel – for any reason – that Jade is becoming an obstacle to me becoming Pomefoire’s housewarden, I can invoke a rescission of the contract. And the other party will need to accept that.”

Azul’s face starts to mold like prodded clay at your verbal addendum. His eagerness is ruefully gone from his motions. Octavinelle’s housewarden gains control of himself and starts to realize he will need to actually negotiate. You are not as easy to blindside as others. He spits out two sentences as if they are tar in his mouth. “A clause that would terminate the contract, hm? And all under your jurisdiction.”

“Well, that simply won’t do,” Jade says and you finally get to look at him. You meant what you said earlier, he is terrifying to look at. There is always something wolfish in his features, perhaps his eyes or teeth, but he always looks eager to tear everything apart if given the order. A thudding and pounding box with a thousand belts and locks twined around it. That is the only image you can compare his guise to.

“What if I am benevolently doing all I can to help you complete your poison? Providing my knowledge on both fungi and oceanic poisons. Yet,” his eyes shimmer here “your shortcomings are making you fail. I can only aid so much. Or what if you come to regret this contact and purposefully try to fail? You would be wasting my time.”

You puff and challenge back, “And what if you are not being so benevolent, Leech? What if you are trying to sabotage me at every turn so I do not become a housewarden? I need to plan for every angle and make sure I am not vulnerable.”

“So little trust. Do you really think me so villainous, little Pufferfish?”

“The very thought of me purposely sabotaging myself is ludicrous. The thought of you pulling subtle strings is not so far-fetched. I have offered too gracious a price on my end.”

“Yet, all the same, here you are offering it. Are you sure you do not wish to retract what you said about being desperate?”

“A desperate person would never add a clause.”

“Perhaps, this is true but –”

“You two, enough of this banter,” Azul cuts in.

Huh? You were not bantering. You were discussing contract terms. The back of your neck grows hot as Jade smirks, just a few feet from you, separated by koi fish and table legs. Neither of you noticed that you were leaning into each other, biting, until Azul stopped the argument. Still, “my apologies, housewarden Ashengrotto,” you should always remain on a housewarden’s good side as a student at Night Raven College – that was one of your philosophies.

“Jade is right. You could dip out of this contact all under the guise that Jade is halting your progress when it is really you have reached the limits of your ability. Not that I doubt your ability, but human nature requires failure.”

You weigh all of this. Getting this clause added onto the contract was never going to be easy, this you anticipated. The allurement of forfeiting your life was what you had originally hoped would entice them. Maybe you spoke in the wrong order, said too little or said too much. Still, you were here and needed to find a way to cement this clause’s spot on that golden contract.

You glance at your empty glass … perhaps you should, no perish the thought. Intimidation is sure to never work in the Octavinelle dorm and you will surely be thrown out.

“Trust. You said I had little of it. That is true; I have little trust for anyone truly, Leech.” You stare down at the swimming koi fish. Turning to Azul, “If I tell Jade the reason that he is an obstacle to me, and he agrees, then I would like our contract terminated. Ultimately, Jade Leech would be in charge if I choose to end our arrangement.”

A little bit of your free-will; you calculate that you can afford to lose a little bit of that. As far as you were concerned, you could trust Azul Ashengrotto and Jade Leech as far as you could throw them. As soon as you were out of their sight, they would be conspiring to find a way to ensure your failure. However, with a more trained mind when it comes to poison, you should be able to safely squeeze what you need from that slippery eel.

“My, such an angry expression. Do you really trust us so little?” Slippery eel, slippery eel, slippery eel.

Azul smiles as he waves his magic pen over the contract, words shifting to his whim. “Do try to not look so constipated, dear. It’s a bad look. Perhaps, Octavinelle can teach you to conceal your emotions if you need assistance there too.”

With a bit of heat on your neck, you do your best to school your expressions. Your features just leap back to revealing your mind, shock overtaking at Azul’s next words. “Oh, and I will be adding my own clause that Jade will have to assist you benevolently or the contract will find itself void.”

One last time, the entire VIP room’s atmosphere shifts. Shock has already started to color the two eel-mers’ expressions. Floyd leans over his brother's shoulder and lets out an annoyed, “huuuh?” Jade, trying to keep his polite façade, has placed a hand upon his heart. His mouth is twitching and you envision one of those belts or locks around his convulsing box exploding off. “Azul –” Jade starts but Floyd ends, “Azul, that’s totally unfair.”

Honestly, it is the most fair part of the contract, but you keep your mouth shut, worried that you could get the clause removed with the wrong words. Then comes the devastating part. Azul, who has seemingly finished the contract, stands up from his desk.

“Come now, after November, we all promised to be more accommodating in our contracts. We have to do our duty to uphold the virtues of the Sea Witch such as (Name) here will uphold the unrelenting efforts of the Beautiful Queen.

“However, benevolence is subjective person to person. Of course, the clause will be dependent on what Jade considers benevolent. His definition of it might be different from mine, his brother, or your own. But it will still be there,” here, he places the contract in your hand, paper feeling like a dumbbell “a safety net for you to use in your judgment, if needed.

“You’ve always been interesting. Thus, we all do expect great things from you. One way or another.”

If you were not in competition for the spot of Pomefiore's housewarden, your strong affection for chemicals, venomous things, and poison would have been concerning — to say the least.

At least that was what Jade deducts, watching you whip around the private lab in Pomefiore’s dorm. He had observed you in Crewel’s class and botanical gardens. This you is on another level of enthusiasm. Plucking all the supplies you need from storage, you are ablaze with a passion that almost seems to swallow up your entire being.

Passion can intimidate others. Jade knew for himself as his relationship with mushrooms did cause a few shudders, and Azul and Floyd were sadly unenthusiastic to share in it. You know all the cracks in the floor, all the loose cabinet shelves, and all the chipped flasks to avoid that an inexperienced student might pick up and use. Observing this, Jade thinks your fiery strides must be equal to his when he is able to embark on his hikes. Fluorescent energy beating hard under skin. How truly entertaining.

Supplies cradled to your chest, you scramble over the table and start to place your third trip of supplies down one by one. Jade sits patiently. Too engrossed in your element, you had avoided conversing besides telling him joyful, when you two entered, that one rarely gets to see Pomefiore’s lab without being enrolled in the dorm. Since then, unfortunately your attention has been away from him.

This contract better not be going to waste.

Bunsen burner, two volumetric flasks, heavy duty gloves. Once done setting them down, you start gliding away, stars in your eyes, to go pick up more things. Jade sends a spectacle look to the supplies. Will you cover every inch of the table with tools?

As you lean down into a cabinet, Jade calls out, “So, enlighten me on what the requirements our poison must meet. There must be rules that I am unaware of.”

You puff up. Bewildered eyes met his gentlemanly gaze. He resists the chuckle in his throat; did you perhaps forget that he was here, waiting for you? Shaking off your confusion, you straighten your posture and start speaking like a professor giving their favorite lecture.

“To become the housewarden of Pomefiore, one must be able to create the most potent poison among their peers. It is graded upon presentation, name, and the effectiveness of the poison. The poison can be presented in a variety of forms: food, liquid, a smear-like jam, a breathable substance, a cosmetic item, etcetera.”

You recite this as if you are reciting your full name for an interview, as if it is something you have known since birth. The passion in your voice is firm. “But to me, all of that is meaningless.”

Jade’s eyebrow twitches up at this. “Meaningless? Then why sign a contract?”

“No, not meaningless. It is all,” you snap your fingers, searching for a word. “It is unimportant because I will be creating a poison that can stop an elephant or dragon’s heart in a second. Presentation, name, who needs it. We should focus on the effectiveness, nothing else.”

Finally locating what you needed from the cabinet, you stand up with it huddled to your chest. A large jar with a sloshing black liquid inside. You unclip your magestone from your breast pocket.

Accelerating towards Jade is another lab table that collides with one he is already seated at. He blinks once in shock and then folds all his other thoughts into the crisper of his cold mind. Disappointment iced over him. Turning, Jade is met with a grin quite like his own when scheming.

Oh!

Gratitude fills his mind, dethawing his previous frost.

He knew that canceling the meetings from yesterday to get you into the VIP room would be worth it. Even if Azul did try to stab back at Jade by making him promise that he would act benevolent, you would be worth it.

Besides, isn’t he always on his best behavior?

Matching your expression, Jade says, “A poison that can kill a dragon?”

Jade had yet to attend one of these exams for becoming Pomefiore’s housewarden. They were hosted in the auditorium and a professor used simulacrum spells to conjure up creatures at the student’s request. Truthfully, Jade had been uninterested because you were not attending.

Your first year you made it stone clear what your goal was and pivoted away from distractions (friends). Despite your goal, you did not attend last year’s summer exam. You know that you did not attend because you were aware no one was going to beat your current housewarden. Jade thinks it was because you had given up. But, right now, he is glad you have not grown so boring after two years of observing.

“The record for poisoning a fabricated dragon is two weeks. That was set by Professor Crewel his first year, yes? How much do you plan to cut that record by? Three days or two days?”

“I hope the poison will claim its life by the fifty-nine minute mark.”

Huh? “Surely, you are exaggerating.”

You give no verbal answer, wearing such a wicked grin. You wave your magestone in a diagonal cut. On the lab table that had joined yours, multiple bottles string up like flowers or mushrooms. Seven … no, nine bottles, all labeled with a skull with a tiny halo over its head.

“No. I am a Pomefiore student. I will always strive to be the best of the best.”

Sevens, you are electrifying. Your energy billows up like a balloon, pushing at the latex and straining to pop. All that static and shocking was enticing to watch. Up close though? It seems to Jade that he will get burned if he does not navigate you carefully and that lovely risk is everything to him.

“Now then,” you clap and interrupt Jade’s train of thought, taking your seat beside him. “I am versed in flowers and chemicals. Mushrooms and toxicities in the sea, I know the basics … That’s where you come and benevolently assist me.”

Despite your grimace at asking for assistance, you are fixated on the eel-mer, waiting to eagerly absorb information. Jade, whose atypical interests were rarely seen as interesting, grows a bit warm at the intense look you are directing towards him.

“Well, I suppose I should give you what you want. As per contractual agreement.” Jade unclips his magic pen from his breast-pocket.

With a flourish of his own magestone, three terrariums neatly stack in the empty space in front of you two. “Pick one.”

You study them all individually and then compare them too. At bottom, brown mushrooms with ringlets of soft white poking through like stretch-marks or slicing scars. A little intriguing but not as much as the middle. Bright orange mushrooms, thin like chips or leaves, are piled onto each other and rest on wet pieces of tree bark. Those are a beauty but ultimately you go with ones in the top terrarium.

Their look is wholly boring and uninteresting. Dull olive green caps and shaped like the typical mushroom is, they intrigue you. There is something so energizing about being near poisons. However, there is something life-changing about sinking your teeth into a cocoon of masquerading innocence, only for the bitter taste of something dangerous to pierce your tongue.

You turn to Jade, Monsieur Mastermind as your vice-housewarden calls him, and point to the top terrarium. “What are these ones?”

“These ones actually cause the majority of poisonings in Twisted Wonderland.” With a wave, the other two terrariums disappear. Jade leans in to lift off the lid, explaining, “They’re called amanitas due to the shape. But the translated names are death cap, death angel, or destroying angels.” He pulls one out, not the smallest of the bunch but the largest either.

“Destroying angels are naturally deceitful. They appear like the common mushroom, the same color and shape. The indicator is the vulva. Other than that, they hide in plain sight and kill those not careful enough to understand them. There is such beauty in that … a dull appearance hiding such violent intentions.”

You cannot help but agree vehemently with him, nodding along. All of his entire explanation felt like it related more to simple mushrooms. It was like a principle of attraction in life.

You look at the remaining ones in the terrarium and ask, “the side effects?”

“First, stomach cramps, loose bowels, and vomiting. Next, it might damage the liver and kidney to irreversible measures. Lastly, cell death or damage of the central nervous system.”

“Amatoxin poisoning. That can kill a person in only two days.”

“Just twenty-one milligrams of amatoxin in the body is fatal. That is perhaps,” Jade suddenly leans into his terrarium and grabs the second smallest, “the amount found in a small one like this. Three bites and you’re facing Death.”

You are exhilarated at the information, staring at the two destroying angels pinched in Jade’s gloved hands. Do they seep through the pie crust of skin, you wonder excitedly. “Are these the deadliest ones in your collection?”

“If I’m comparing a single species to another single species, then yes. Destroying angels alone are more poisonous than any others I know.”

“Good. We start with this one.” You cast a look over to the porcelain bottles. All nine of your prototypes for what you wanted to use in the summer exam sitting neatly there. “There is a variety to test and so little time. And if amatoxin will enhance,” you start to ramble off, mumbles that Jade’s hearing cannot pick up. Suddenly, you are grabbing from the stack of papers and scribbling. Once more, you have completely forgotten Jade is here with you. Though it is nice to watch the crackles of fire alit from you, the Leech brother would rather have your attention.

He leans in, nose almost brushing your shoulder. Still enraptured with your work, it seems.

Jade is a little unsure if this will work. Nicknames are his twin’s territory but he did know that you get disgruntled when hearing the nickname. Probably only because it came from an Octavinelle student, people you did not want to grow close to. But no matter because Jade is growing awfully close to you. Once that distance is closed, he says far too loudly, “Pufferfish.”

You leap and drop your pencil. Huffing and puffing, you turn in your seat. An accusatory glare and scowl battles with Jade’s smile.

“You seem to have forgotten our contract involves collaboration, Pufferfish. You did read it thoroughly, yes?”

You send a glance down to your paper, bewildered by the sight of it. And surprisingly your mouth opens and says …

“Sorry. Don’t usually collaborate.” You magic his chair to slide closer to you. “Ok, so here’s what I’m thinking …”

The past two weeks had been stressful yet eye-opening too. You had been learning a lot more about poisonous mushrooms and toxins in the Coral Sea that you would not typically interact with. However, while making progress, a sapling of doubt was growing inside you. All watered and photosynthesized by one slippery eel. The allusions about betrayal, his sly, ensconcing grins, and every action seemed to have a double meaning or price to pay for later: all of Jade Leech’s personality was driving you nuts!

The worst was when he would say something bone-chilling and dismiss it: “But that is an event we would not want to happen, yes?” or “But I would never say that, surely not I.” or “I simply jest. This would not be in my benevolent interests.” Every sentence seemed to tear you apart mentally.

Apparently, he was doing this because of your defensive action. Apparently, you puffed when he said things like that. You moved as if you were blowing up with invisible spikes, defending yourself and your barracks with a prickly attitude. He had also taken to calling you that nickname that Floyd had for you. You asked him about it a week ago.

“Aren’t fish related nicknames your twin’s thing?”

“Yes, but it annoys you so I would like to join in.”

You gave him a disgruntled hum and continued working.

A few mind-games were not going to discourage you after signing such an important contract, Jade had proven to be useful in expanding your knowledge. You would weather his little tricks and sinister smiles – no matter how much they made your skin crawl with suspicion.

You almost want to test his resolve, test if you can out disturb him. He had words and you had actions. Besides, you cannot ask either Si or Am this question. You were planning to pick those twins to work as your vice-housewarden. If they knew how attracted you were to the image of an overblot, a taboo subject, you might not have a vice-housewarden next year. So, as you two are fiddling with the measurements and burning liquids and powders, you ask Jade:

“When Ashengrotto overblotted, what were your and Floyd’s thoughts?”

It is one of those out of the blues questions. Still, you are still surprised by how Jade manages to keep his composure, hand stilling for no longer than three seconds. A slippery centipede of white teeth crawls on his face, amused, but he keeps his focus on the powder he is pouring.

“When Azul overblotted,” he mused. “Well, I thought what a foolish thing to do. Truly, he should have known better to lose control like that. Floyd was very disappointed in his lack of composure. We expected better of our housewarden.

“Why ask?”

Of course you and Jade would look at overblots and feel different. You two were on two separate planets, labeled Octavinelle and Pomefiore, thus you would never see eye to eye. You hid a scowl behind your hand, stirring your mixture.

“In Pomefiore, you’re expected to have a taste for beautiful art – to create art, be it craft or performance – not that you yourself are beautiful. When Schoenheit overblotted, there was something hypotonic about it. Eldritch beauty. I’ve never seen anything so gorgeous.”

“Were you there when it happened?”

“No. I managed to pick up a video recording of it after numerous favors were given out. It’s so grainy but even still, you can tell he was perfect at that moment. You felt no awe for Ashengrotto?”

“Mermaid forms are sometimes hypotonic to humans and the like. But Azul’s overblot was simply himself but unraveled and foible. It was just not all that stunning to me.”

“They have this saying about art and beauty,” you cannot help yourself from speaking. “Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.”

“Hm, I can see the appeal. Humans always have such odd little sayings,” Jade muses. And that is the end of that conversation.

Beauty is an important value of Pomefiore; there is no denying that. Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all? But beauty is a volatile word as it is so deeply subjective. And fighting prejudices itself is a big Pomefiore value! However … you twist your pencil in hand, forlornly studying Jade.

You are positive that he knows you are studying him. He simply waits patiently to see if you can entertain him more.

If you reveal this to him, the entirety of Night Raven College might know by the end of the week. Not that you keep it hidden for your own vanity. Though, Vil Schoenheit had strict requirements on what beauty is … If you are to reveal this and Schoenheit finds out, can he disqualify you on the basis that you are too disfigured to be housewarden?

Truly, you have no vanity but to jeopardize your goal. The hand wrapped around your wrist tightens until your bones start to ache. You absolutely cannot jeopardize yourself or risk being disqualified from attending the exam.

But, then again, your vice-housewarden found beauty in everything. If this spread to all of Night Raven College (if Jade revealed it because it would provide him entertainment), Hunt would at least be a voice in Schonheit’s ear, praising your dedication that ran skin deep. You did have some cushioning there. Ok, you were going to do it.

You shrug off the heavy black jacket and start unbuttoning your vest. Jade does not say a word, watching. You let these two articles of clothing drop to the nubs of your stool. You continue by unbuttoning your white collared shirt.

“If you are hoping to get something more physical from our relationship, you should disclose that information in our contract. No matter how embarrassing it might’ve been to discuss it in front of Azul.”

The sides of his lips pull up in a razor-sharp smile. You puff and continue stripping.

“Don’t flatter yourself. All of this is still in pursuit of me being housewarden. There is no need for you to even touch me”

“Oya, then may I employ the reason for you und–” You interrupt him by slamming your dominant arm down on the table. His eyes fall to your mummified arm. A coil of white bandages serpents from the third inch of your wrist to the end of your deltoid, a few inches off from your black tank top. A spark jumps to Jade’s eyes as if someone struck together two rocks. “Oh, what is this?”

“Have much gore can you handle? Be honest.”

That question seems to really add some intensity to his eyes because he moves them off your arm and stares at you. His still lips start twitching up again. “Now, why would an innocent thing like you ask someone like me that?”

“The last time anyone saw this, they threw up on my dorm’s floor. Stop being such a smart-ass, Leech.”

His eyes are like suns. “I have seen things in the Coral Sea that would make you throw up, Pufferfish.”

Good. You move your index and middle finger under where the top bandage is tucked. However, your nose starts to crinkle as you sit there contemplating. Risks are still uncalculated; you have yet to map out every angle at which this could benefit or ruin you. If Schonheit finds out … No, this is in pursuit of making the best poison, no one can fault you for ambition. You start to unfurl your bandages.

To be honest, a demented part of you is excited to see the reaction that notoriously spooky and eldritch Jade Leech will have. So as your hand circles and twists, you watch the sharp profile that watches your hand.

Masking raw emotions behind a tiny, sinister smile is a trait that Jade has mastered. People jump at loud noises, Jade does not even flinch. His body is alarmingly disconnected from the kingdom of his mind.

Enviously, you watch as his features thoroughly remain schooled to neutrality and reveal nothing of his thoughts. Inch by inch, more of your arm you reveal. His mismatched eyes are certainly analyzing, shifting, and evaluating but nothing is truly revealed in his face. The only flicker of discomfort you see is when he swallows hard. His throat bobs slightly when the bandages around your shoulder loosen up. But that could be a totally unrelated act of swallowing. Strangely, you admire his ability to keep an expression that can conceal a thousand more expressions.

Done unwrapping your arm, you begin to fold up the bandages in your hand. To be honest, you can admit that perhaps the lack of reaction is reasonable as your arm has surely looked worse before.

Multiple lacerations of varying degrees and depth climb up your arm. The orange-yellow fat of your upper arm is exposed in some areas like the backs of poisonous toads breaking through mud. A concave spot of burnt brachial muscle is oozing black-red again. Sometimes, your ring finger still twitches desperately from that wound; the nerves are similar to old chargers that need to be pinched and settled specifically to create charge.

Tooth white of your humerus bone plays peek-a-boo at you from the cave of maroon, peach, and black. You still have skin but it is a raw yellow tint from surface wounds or poison. However, there are barely three inches of real skin left clinging like desperate webs to your upper shoulder. Which might have earned you the motion of Jade’s throat rippling with a deep gulp.

No matter, it is healing up better than most days.

Cautious to not touch the steel table again (no matter how clean), you begin by trying to locate an island of skin to test. You are pulled from your exploration when a voice asks:

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Why? Worried about me?”

“Not particularly.”

“Ouch, that hurts my feelings, Leech.” You fake a frown until you finally can locate a patch of remaining skin. “Hand me our poison.” The vial is deposited between your non-dominant index and thumb.

Once the cap is off, you say. “My tenth birthday. Just some poison ivy on the path to my middle school. That set me in my ways. All because some teacher said to never touch leaves that look like those and I was curious as to the reason.”

“Floyd had a similar experience. Spotted trunkfish. They were so colorful that Floyd thought to ignore our parents' warning to never touch fish that looked like that. He grew quite sick after a lick.”

Well, that is certainly unexpected.

Not the story about Floyd. You could easily conjure up an image of him going to bite the leopard spotted skin of such a fish only to have a colorless toxin poison him. Yet, Jade actually revealing some information about himself — well, actually it is about his brother, so then information about their childhood – is strange for the tight-lipped twin. Perhaps he only told you so you can contemplate using trunkfish’s toxin at a later date.

Still. You cough a laugh into your elbow. Then, you rotate the arm for better access to unblemished skin.

“Adults avoid revealing necessary information like the plague. They never want to give the reason for why something shouldn’t be done.”

“Perhaps, they just want to see it done so they remain quiet.”

“Hm, perhaps. Everyone needs a bit of entertainment,” you mutter, administering altered fluorine. Is that perhaps the reason why Jade Leech is here; why he had gotten you into Azul’s office within an hour? Entertainment is a feasible reason. Silently, both of you watch the effects.

Sizzling skin, rashes, deep lacerations: all of this pain you were used to. Repetition of self experiment did eventually lead to sensory neurons quieting down and accepting the abuse. So as smoke starts to rise off your arm, Jade is surprised by the composure in your face.

Smoke rises in a tiny cloud before pretzel-ing itself into a little skull. The skull thuds once then twice in the air like a heartbeat. Breaking apart, it leaves as acid starts to tunnel down into your flesh. You remain still, watching with a clenched fist.

Acid digs and digs, past the numerous layers of skin and fat. You wrap a protective ward around the intricate, branching neuron system. Like a growing virus in a petri dish, you watch the acid start to jump from fat to fat from muscle to muscle, licking at all the surrounding areas.

Good to see that it spreads instead of tunneling. An essential aspect to chart about each poison.

Finally, it reaches the bone like you were hoping. Absorbed fluorine can bond with calcium cells. If the spells and chemicals added work, this administered fluorine should bond through touch alone.

Close and close it inches until — “Ah, I thought I would find you here, (Name).”

Jade, alert, turns even though he was not addressed. Ah, it is one of those twins that always tails after you like imprinted kittens. He cannot tell where it is Si or it is Am. Curious, Jade turns to look at you for the answer which twin he is dealing with before a usually concealed emotion passes over his face.

Surprise.

You grip your magestone like you are afraid that it will run away. Residues of a spell fall over in lilac sparkles. Yet, the most surprising part to Jade is that you are fully redressed, every article of clothes summoned back to their neat place. Even the snake of bandages you had removed are spiraled back on your arm, concealed under layers of the Night Raven College uniform.

“Hi Si,” you smile like nothing is unusual. “You were looking for me?”

“Yeah, Vil is making everyone in the dorm attend this etiquette class tonight. Some of us were sent to collect anyone who was out of the dorm. I lost rock-paper-scissors against Am.”

Etiquette class? A fucking etiquette class? When you become a housewarden, you would never call your dorm students to do such a frivolous activity like learning how to distinguish types of spoons. Schoenheit had everything you wanted and was wasting it. You, on the other hand, would push your dorm students in meaningful ways – by making them study poisons and work towards creating lethal injections.

“Ah I see. Just let me,” you shift up from your chair. With a startling speed, you vanish all of your supplies from the table. Almost as if you are trying to hide … before Jade can continue thinking on that thought, you say, “Next time, call me.”

“Yeah, I know but,” Si’s eyes flicker over to Jade. “Next time, ok? I’ll make sure to call next time.”

“Thank you.” You pocket your pen as Jade stands. Giving him a once over, you say, “Next time for us too? I’ll see you on Monday.”

“Yes, see you then.” You nod gratefully and start to walk away with Si. Stupid etiquette class. Underneath your bandages, you are acutely aware of the working poison that you cannot visually study. It slithers and crawls over the maroon meat in your arm. There is an insectoid itch to just rip off the bandages just to see – fuck Schoenheit, you knew what a salad fork was! “Oh, and Pufferfish?”

“Yeah?” You turn.

You are startled by how close he is leaning to you. His mismatched eyes are burning intensely like stars and his smile is moonlight. He rests one bare (when did he take off his gloves?) hand to your neck, rubbing a thumb to the skin laying like a pie-crust sheet over your voicebox. “Thank you for your vulnerability.”

The itch stops as does your footfall. Raw prickling sensation is washed over and replaced by something much stronger. The pumping, panicking flood of your heart.

Sevens, were you going to regret that? Metaphorically, you just pulled down the collar of your dress shirt to a cannibal. Oh, this is not a good investment. You give a quick nod to Jade and flee, with Si close behind, giving you a curious look. As you learn meaningless dining etiquette and posture, that sentence stays with you.

Lying in bed that night, you imagine the sensation is a half-baked dream that comes to you as you fall into sleep. A bubble of blot floating to the surface of your pen.

Mint foam falls out of your mouth in surprise. “Wh-what!” You snatch up your magic pen. No bigger than a facial mole, a speck of blot has dirtied up your magestone. Frantically, you rub your thumb over the mark. Don’t panic. It could be from a stain from your inked papers or perhaps rubbed eraser bits sticking to the surface. You scrub harder at the unrelenting mark.

“Shit shit shit,” you moan as you rush into the bathroom to spit out your toothpaste. “No, no, no,” you bemoan louder when you dip your magestone under the water and the mark remains, a tiny lemur-like pupil staring at you. Sevens, what are you to do now!

The world seems to tilt as you rest your head on the chilled faucet. Slowly, bit by bit, your anxiety begins to pluck your mind out of your ear like it is bad stuffing that was put into a toy wrong. You feel like you are losing your mind.

A trembling hand reaches out to retrieve your violet towelette off the rack, scrubbing the mint off your lips. Senselessly, you stuff the rag stuffed in your mouth. Holding it there, feeling the soft fiber filaments brushing your tongue and gums. With pained abandon, you scream into the soft fabric. You slam the rag down when your caterwauling is finished.

Overblotting? You cannot overblot when you have so much ahead of you. Unconsciously, your body slides down to the corner of the bathroom like a defeated sticky hand falling into a heavy heap of lint and dirt, feeling muddled and disgusted.

A fire erupts on your skin, shoulders and above, roasting your thoughts. It takes an hour to calm yourself down. You ignore Si and Am when they come to collect you – not like they stay long. Sitting, knees tucked to your chest in your bathroom, you went through the motions. Your body refrains from crying, gritting teeth and gripping fingers are your only outlet for stress. Then, the embers reach your arms and smolder out in billowing smoke. Your consciousness slowly returns to you.

Pursue your goal to become Pomefoire’s housewarden. You realize as the fire dies that you had to keep doing what you had been doing all along. To avoid overblotting, you need to ground yourself with your goal. The dot of blot is so tiny! You criticize yourself for panicking so badly. Yet, when you go to pick yourself up in the physical sense, your fingers are still trembling.

The botanical gardens. The botanical gardens. You need to go there and calm down. You shove your magic pen in the pocket of your slacks instead of letting it be exposed to the world in your chest pocket. Despite picking yourself up mentally, you still walk like someone is in a daze. Just get to the botanical gardens and find something to experiment with. You go to imagine comforting oleanders or deathly nightshades. Tightening your teeth, you push open the lips of your dorm and exit on the tongue of your carpet.

You finally feel like you have returned to yourself when the smell of it all rushes to meet you. A scent that fills your veins and roots you. The tang of rich soil, the bite of fresh rain water, the kiss of flora. You could never be away from the land; this smell of earth would be devastatingly missed.

Inhaling deeply, you close the glass door and drift deeper in. There are no classroom activities in the impressive greenhouse until afternoon so you are cleared to explore. Speckled around the vast garden are a few students, studying for herbology, potionology, or something else. Hands sitting on your churning stomach, you make sure to drift around and away from them.

There is such a beauty in here that makes you grateful to be enrolled in Night Raven College. Carried on oily breezes, freckled sunlight enriches everything that it touches and magnifies their hues. It is a renaissance of vibrant childhood wonder from rich reds to popping purples. How gorgeous land is.

As you go, you gather a few yellow angel’s trumpets and blue larkspurs in your hands. You twine the stems one by one, ignoring how the larkspurs start to sizzle against the skin of your hands. An ugly rash will bloom on your palms in the morning. Still, you keep braiding stem by stem, trying to make a senseless pattern in your collection.

You are so intent on your braiding that you make one of the worst mistakes anyone can make in the botanical gardens and step on a lion’s tail. An agitated growl is all the warning you get. As quick as a frog, you jump up and narrowly miss the five claws that swiped where your ankles had been.

With a loud thump, your landing turns a few heads. “Hello, housewarden Kingscholar. Sorry for the disturbance.”

You frequented the botanical garden like an addicted gambler to a casino. You had come to learn everything about it, even Kingscholar’s napping habits and habits when he was not napping. You still remember the way your sock filled with blood your first year when you accidentally woke up Kingscholar.

As the grumbling lion rises up, a few leaves caught in his brown hair, you cast an apologetic smile down to him. Striking green eyes narrow at the sight of you. “Ah, (Name) (Last Name). The one who challenged the Dark Mirror themself.”

You roll your eyes at that as he has always greeted you that way. When were people going to drop that? No matter, you would prove them all foolish when you became a housewarden. Then, people would know you as that instead of capitalizing on something insignificant that happened forever ago.

Because when anyone mentions it, bile rises up to your throat.

“The shape of your soul is Octavinelle!”

You blink awestruck. Huh? You shift your eyes around the mirror chamber as if trying to locate the soul that the Dark Mirror is talking to. However, you know that he is addressing you as dread starts exploding in your chest in sharp bursts. That cannot possibly be right. Is it stuffy in here, the thought flickers over your brain as you try to steady your wild breathing.

The noises around you swallow you whole. Shuffling of polished shoes, the person behind you in line stepping up to take your place. Distance chatter of other students, theorizing on which dorm they will be sorted into. The sound of your — no, Octavinelle’s housewarden, some shark-mer, calling out your first and last name. All of it so loud and obnoxious. All of it is wrong. Your fists unclench and clench rapidly by your side. All of this idiotic noise is –

“You’re wrong!” You spit at the mirror, shattering the cacophony around you.

The student behind you comes to a grinding halt and everyone’s heads turn towards you. You care little, glaring up at the Dark Mirror, and shouting, “You made a mistake! Look at my soul again! You’ll know where I belong!”

Crowley pinches his golden talons up to the filigree metal resting over his nose, summoning up a deep, tired breath. There is always one student. Egotistically set in their ways, they believe they are granted a right to whatever dorm they please. Moving to medicate this ordeal, the Headmaster waves his hand and opens his mouth to speak.

“You!” You turn on him, glaring venomously. “Quiet!”

The ebony feathers on his shoulders seem to gain sentience and ruffle with agitation. Why you rude little thing — Crowley was not expecting the first expulsion to fall on Orientation but —

You fall into a bow, legs standing and head colliding with your knees. A cloak of murky green light falls over your figure. “I know the shape of my soul because it is mine and mine alone. I know that if you look at my soul again, you will realize your mistake. I will accept a beheading or euthanization if I am proven wrong.”

You turn your gaze up towards the mirror, “But even dying, I will be assured you are still in the wrong, Dark Mirror.”

Crowley, having stopped to listen, quickly regains himself. You have quite a little mouth on you, he thinks as he darts to grab you and expel you from his college. The Dark Mirror is unquestionable and omnipotent; you are nothing but an ant begging to not be stepped on. He makes it about halfway to you when —

“Stop.”

The Dark Mirror’s lips fall into a tight line once more. Somehow, the hue of green radiating from the capsule the mask is trapped in glows even brighter.

Crowley is shocked when he realizes the mirror is talking to him.

“I will grant the request of this student to re-read the shape of their soul. Step closer, child.”

You make no mistake this time in your approach. Perhaps anxiety had kept you tethered to a spot too far away from the Dark Mirror. Boldly, you place your dominant hand down upon the glass. People start once more murmuring but you are stone in your resolve. Let the Dark Mirror judge; let it feel past your fingers into the burnt and serrated flesh crawling up your arm; let it taste your dedication and know the shape of your soul.

It takes half of a far too long minute of calculating and reading before the Dark Mirror gives you your answer.

“The shape of your soul is Pomefiore!” You withdrew your hand.

And though it had mattered little to you, housewardens and vice-housewardens and professors and the group of students you shared a year with still talk about it: the only student who got the Dark Mirror to change their dorm. The one moment in Night Raven College history where the Dark Mirror made a mistake. You crinkle your nose at the lion.

“That story’s old history.” You puff and tighten your grip on your bouquet. Oh, the larkspurs are definitely going to leave a rash. “I don’t see why I need to have such a long, tedious nickname tied to such a boring event.”

“Truly self righteous, aren’t you, (Name)?”

“Well, it’s a mouthful, so I can’t see it sticking anyways.” You meddle with your flowers. “Besides, there are more interesting stories like Enma Yuuken. The Dark Mirror might be getting senile, putting me in the wrong dorm at first then the carriage carts a magicless student into our school.”

Pointed teeth smile at you. “Come on now. You? You criticizing the oh, so respectable Dark Mirror is unheard of. What pissed you off?”

“I love the Pomefoire dorm and this school, but I can admit when things are turning upside down.”

The enrollment of a magicless student, the mistakes that both the Dark Mirror and Crowley were making, … the multiple overblots. You try to ignore the weight in your pocket. Night Raven College had been having an unusual couple of years.

“Still, I thought you had an avoidance policy for Octavinelle? After the Dark Mirror tried to put you there.”

Oh, so that is why he brought up the incident with the Dark Mirror due to your relations with Octavinelle. As you stirred your flowers, you had been trying to figure out Kingscholar’s goal. Everyone in your year was at least aware of your hatred for Octavinelle. Working with Jade Leech, no matter how smart, he was still an Octavinelle student. You were not one for secrecy so yours and Jade’s mysterious relations had probably became the next grape on the vine.

Still, you could've only been seen interacting with him in the Pomefiore labs or the botanical garden as you avoided him in class. “He asked me for tutoring with potionology. Having Leech indebted to me is sure to be a plus when I become Pomefiore’s housewarden.”

“Is that so?” From his lounging pose, he suddenly strikes up. Jade is only five centimeters taller than him. Still, you feel more crushed like a rat in a cat’s paws under those emerald eyes than mismatched ones. Brunette hair billows around his angular face and starts to brush you when he leans in close. “Has scenting become part of tutoring now?”

Scenting? Did the lingering smell of certain poison stain your clothes? You always experimented with poisons whose smell lingered on your arm since before Orientation and no one said anything. Si and Am had been looking at you weird since a week ago, is it a cat thing?

You furrow your expression at the too close incline Kingscholar has over your body. This is typical of him. Whenever you were in the botanical gardens during daylight, a lion would find itself leaning over you. Still, you should maintain your promise that you would stay on the benevolent side of every housewarden and not bite back. You even managed to smile at Malleus Draconia two weeks ago! Though it had sent shivers down your spine and left you dizzy with terror. So be nice to Kingscholar, you remind yourself, though you are always nice to Kingscholar.

You puff in surprise at his next move. Leona moves his face to rest his chin on the crook of your collarbone. Getting a face full of voluminous hair, you spit when some gets too close to your mouth. If your hands were not occupied with flowers, you would poke him. Instead, you vouch to remind, “No sleeping on me while standing, Kingscholar.”and dig your chin into his head.

Your only response is a soft sniffle against your neck. You twitch at the feel of it.

“If the smell of cyanide on me is bothersome, my apologies, Housewarden Kingscholar.”

“Nonsense, I like that scent on you.” He moves back and starts to mess with the flowers in your hand, claws poking at petals. “This other smell though –”

Leona stiffens. His keen eyes flicker up to your face and then back down to the flowers. Like an insect sprayed with water, his nose twitches and twitches.

What is he so concerned about? But then, one of his fingerless gloved hands starts to go down to your waist. Terror reaches out as Leona does, squeezing your heart like a mutt ripping into their favorite toy. Ice shoots down into your burning, rash-covered fingertips. You had forgotten, as you lingered here in conversation with Leona, that he could smell magic. The crumbs and residue of a spell. The stain of an overblot dot. You go to jump back when –

“Ah, Pufferfish, I thought I would find you here.”

It is a moment of convenience and parrying, you harshly remind yourself as you look with eager eyes at Jade Leech. You had completely forgotten about the break between second and third period. Perhaps he was hoping to spend time with his terrariums? Whatever the reason, you will take your exit graciously.

Annoyance paints Leona’s face as you slip through his grasp like sand. You bound over to Jade’s side and quickly go to speak about his ‘tutoring’, knowing he is sly enough to catch on. Yet you are interrupted as he observes the poisonous flowers in your hands and smiles, “Ah, are those for me? How generous.”

You try to ignore it. You really try to submerge the feeling in the back of your mind but it erupts in a heat across your neck and ears. “O-Oh, I. I um.”

“Thank you,” Jade smiles and delicately peels the larkspurs and angel’s trumpets from your hands. He admires the braided stems. “Angel’s trumpets. You do always seem drawn to the things named after angels. Fufufu, quite fitting, indeed.”

The flush over your skin dies when you hear a low growl behind you. You turn to Leona, a brief shock in your eyes. “Ah, housewarden Kingscholar,” you start and the anger seems to deflate out of Leona, typical annoyance adorning his face. “I have to go. Leech and I are actually going to do some studying on these types of flowers. I’ll see you later?”

Despite the fact anger is gone from Leona’s expression, his tail is shifting behind him, contemplating his motions. His eyes trail to the flowers clutched in Jade’s gloved hands. “See you later. Don’t disturb my nap next time.”

Taking the opportunity, you and Jade exit. Though you mourn being gone from the fresh air of the botanical gardens, you are grateful to have escaped with your secret (which makes your worry about said secret less tantalizing than before). You and Jade stride in silence for a while. He is surprisingly finishing braiding the remaining flowers that you missed, content to ignore you. You start to feel that familiar flame crawl up your shoulders, worrying about that black dot. You bring a thumb to your mouth, biting at the edge.

Noticing, Jade pops the head off one angel’s trumpet and hands it to you. “What are the side effects of this one? No flowers grow in the Coral Sea.”

You gratefully take the cone-headed flower, rolling it around in your bare fingertips. “If you ingest them, fever, hallucinations, and persistent memory disturbances, to name a few things. When brewed in tea, they can block this compound that sends signals to cells to do specific body functions and results in delirium. Ingest a whole bouquet, you’re looking at death and a life without children.” Jade lifts an eyebrow at that. “They’ll paralyze your dick.”

“Oh,” the eel-mer grows a bit paler in his cheeks. You start to chuckle, feeling a little of the weight that had been crushing you earlier lift off. “Truly a deadly angel. Hm, you said something about brewing them in tea.”

You puff at him, “Don’t think I’ll be willing to drink anything you serve me. I wouldn’t trust bottled water from your hands.”

“And yet you drank a drink Floyd presented you with when signing our contract. How cruel of you. Perhaps you should have made a deal with him instead.”

“Don’t joke like that.” The eel-mer gives you that odious smile. A grimace falls on your face at the sight of him looking happy.

Still … you made a promise to maintain good-naturedness with NRC’s housewardens and their second in command were simply an extension of them. “Leech. Thank you for retrieving me.”

“Ah, it is no problem. You looked like you needed an out. I provided one.” Still … you want to gripe that it meant a lot to you, but you rather not push it. If the sycophantic was going to act against his nature and help you, accept it. “To be frank, think nothing of it; I’m positive that you will get me back eventually.” Spoke too soon.

“Yes, I’m sure you and Azul have already created an outlined list of each small favor you had done for me during our time under contract.”

“All completed with dates and times,” Jade adds helpfully.

You chuckle, pressing the angel's trumpet to your lips. Inhaling the sweet scent, you think how monumental it is that eating such a plant could make someone fall into a coma. Truly, magical spells are petite stars compared to the universe of power nature has given the world. So enamored with the upside-down umbrella-like petals, you blink in surprise once realizing both of you are walking towards the Hall of Mirrors.

“Have you always been so close with that lion?”

Your shoulders rise in surprise. “Kingscholar? Yeah, we’re close. He naps in the botanical gardens often and I’m in there experimenting. We know each other fairly well. Though I’d rather not be the spot that he decides to nap on.”

This time you notice he is not looking at you. Odd, when you were speaking a moment ago, you two held each other’s gazes. He has his eyes trained towards his ‘gifted’ bouquet as if trying to shield something from you.

“I had not realized. Perhaps, I have not been to the botanical gardens as frequently as I thought.” His keen eyes cut a perfect bisecting line across your features. Bristling under his harsh attention, you listen as he says, “Do you see him as a friend like Si and Am?”

“I try to keep every housewarden in my good graces. If he does not graduate, I’ll be standing beside him at Orientation. I would rather our relationship be more stable than the one between him and Schoenheit.”

And that is the honest truth. You had already tried your hardest to become friends with Rosehearts and Al-Asim. You were slightly successful both times as they were rather easy to appease in their own ways. Ashengrotto had proven to be a harder buyer of your friendship, especially since you were very opposed to stepping into Octavinelle. Still, remaining cordial with Kingscholar was planned too because he might stay back another year. Yet, you never spoke to Schoenheit.

As Jade is contemplating your words, you two enter the Hall of Mirrors. It is slightly dense with students, coming from free periods into Night Raven College. You step close to Jade and look up.

“Housewarden Kingscholar is just, well he’s just that. Housewarden Kingscholar.”

Seemingly this pleases Jade because he gives a little satisfied hum at the answer. “Well,” he starts as he picks the angel’s trumpet out of your hands. “I can see no one will be breaking through your barricades any time soon. Not unless they’re equipped with a tank of sorts.”

He takes the yellow flower and places it on the nook of your ear. His fingers move down and down until he reaches your neck, rubbing his thumb against it again. What was up with that?

“Well, my shift at Mostro Lounge starts this period so I should be going.” You nod, sharing the sentiment.

“Perhaps you can grace me with your presence sometime. Floyd will serve your drink.”

“Anyone ever have the guts to tell you that your jokes aren’t funny?”

“I happen to be known as a very fun-gi by those close to me.”

“That was awful, Leech.”

Seconds before you depart from each other, Jade instructs you, “Take a shower when you get back to your dorm.” You blink at him as he starts to slip a leg into the Octavinelle mirror. “Just … benevolent advice.” And then, with your bouquet in hand, the flickering mirror slides over him like a wave and Jade Leech is gone.

Jade is smiling. Which in itself is not unusual. Jade is typically always smiling, eyes angled up and a polite simper on his features. The roulette of emotions he shows on his face is few but smiling seems to be a constant.

This smile is something different, though. One that is barely concealing its malice mirth with tiny twitches. Like he has a knife attached to his sleeve, gearing to slit your throat ear to ear. If you shrink into yourself a little, you tell yourself it is self defense rather than cowardice.

And he’s walking faster towards you than usual! Sevens, he might just be plotting to kill you.

He comes in front of the steel desk with one hand over his heart and the other behind his back. You noticed it briefly when he was discussing destroying angel mushrooms but it is more prominent now. When Jade is pleased, his eyes glow slightly. Dim luminous yellow like a pinprick of a flashlight, yellow gliding over his eyelashes.

“Good morning, Pufferfish.”

“You seem awfully pleased, Leech.” The hand that you decided conveniently to place your neck on is self defense, you remind yourself. “You managed to steal the spot of housewarden from Azul? Discover a new species of mushroom?”

“Though it is regrettable not the latter, I can assure you that I am ‘awfully pleased’ for reasons that you will be most gratuitous for.”

Oh that is not a good sign. Shifting in your seat, you say, “Okay, I’m biting. What’s got you so happy?”

Grin growing, he pulls his non-dominant hand from his spine and holds his source of happiness out to you. You almost faint.

You stare at the vial as if it will suddenly combust like a poorly wired bomb or grow teeny legs to visit the Headmaster to snitch. Then, your heart starts pounding excited bursts. You leap over the desk and grab Jade by his tie, hissing, “How did you even manage to get this!”

“The Octavinelle dorm prides itself on benevolently helping others in need. If there is a problem, we procure a solution. Thus, due to this sympathetic principle, we do have connections in every dorm, and with every housewarden.”

“Ashengrotto managed to get blackmail on Schoenheit!”

“Fufufu, to me, blackmail is such a crass word. But it is better to be the one holding the debt, than be indebted.”

Hand still clutching Jade’s tie, you turn and stare down at the vial. It is the poison that made Vil Schoenheit housewarden after his first year attending NRC. You had watched the broadcast as often as you did your housewarden’s overblot. Enraptured and drawn in by the ferocity of a Pomefiore’s housewarden. How you yearned to be that grand and perfect. As perfectly pristine as the lacy, overblot insignia on Schoenheit’s forehead. In Jade’s hand was an achievement that any Pomefiore student would kill to have. And Jade has it held out to level with your nose! You do not realize it but your features are inches away from brushing his cheek as you lean in. Fixated, you stare at the bluish-green liquid like it is a winning lottery ticket. The gluttonous liquid stares back.

In awe, you whisper, “Who would have imagined Schoenheit caught up in strings?” You reach out a finger to briefly draw a line down the vial. “So pretty. Poison is so pretty.” Like a mage has placed a potent charm on your soul, you are bewitched by the sight of the vial.

You snap out of it when Jade’s chuckle blows warm air on the side of your face. Suddenly realizing the distance between the two of you is not even considered distance, you quickly fall back into your seat. Your heart is pounding rapidly; is it because of the lack of distance or being so close to that poison?

“Be honest, how did you manage to get it? No way this came easy. A Pomefiore’s housewarden’s pride is their ability to make a winning poison.”

“Vil is an individual meticulous about his looks. That’s his main pride. Floyd and I happened to halt the production of one of his skincare products in order for me to retrieve this for you.” Then, shockingly, Jade slowly grabs your dominant hand and unfurls the fingers. You shiver at his unhesitant touch. He drops the vial into your grasp. Grip on it sturdy, you look up at Jade’s radiating eyes.

“Wait. You’re giving this to me.”

He halted the entire production of skincare? Were there recognizable name brand products under the management of the Octavinelle trio? You couldn’t have guessed that their influence was that large. Struck with some warm, foreign emotion, your eyes trail back down to the hypnotizing, lovely poison in your hand. “But why?” Why would Jade Leech ever pull a single string in the marionette of influence that he and his two friends had over NRC for you?

Answering your question, Jade straightens his posture and a hand falls to his chest, “Like previously stated, it is better to be the one holding the debt than be indebted.”

Oh. A frost falls over whatever unknown warmth had previously enraptured you. You realize what you hold on your hand is far from a gift but a leash. A bit of blackmail to hang over you at all times. A knife always at the back. No good deed comes without a price to pay – unsurprisingly, this is another debt to that outlined list.

As if noticing your sudden emotional shift, Jade amends, “but this time you can be assured that when time comes for me to cash in, it will make you awfully pleased. Trust me.”

“That’s asking the impossible, Leech,” you sigh.

Despite your words, you roll the vial around in your hand anyways. You are already thinking of all the things you can do with the treasure in your possession. First will be dissecting the ingredients. Or should you test it on your arm? A delighted shiver runs down your back. You feel like you are on cloud nine.

You have been facing trouble almost all your life. Truly what was one more offense? If Jade was not being deceitful then this would work in your favor. Sycophants were not usually known for such generosity. Maybe you misjudged the eel – if only a little bit.

“Leech.” You cannot believe you are about to say this. “Thank you. You didn’t have to and I didn’t ask for it. So, thank you.” There you go, out with it, no matter if it feels like chewing nails.

His smiles turn a bit warmer. Yet, in typical fashion of his, he weighs his next words carefully. What should it be: Azul and I; the Octavinelle dorm; or I, singular. Instead, Jade omits himself, “Azul expects great things from you when you are a housewarden, Pufferfish. Don’t disappoint him.”

A prideful grin materializes on your face. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” You pull Jade’s seat out from under the table. “Sit. I’m dying to test this.”

Jade makes no move to sit. You are arrogant to his plight, eagerly unbuttoning your vest. He traces his eyes over your collarbone, the ridges where bone pushes up. Drawing his eyes over the brightness of your eyes and the speed of your fingers. The collared shirt falls to the ground. The tiniest hit of muscle tone in your unbandaged arm stirs up his slippery intestines. Upon being so close, observing, Jade thinks he might get cold feet. But

“I also brought this for you.”

His words are apprehensive; his self-assured smile is strained. Your hand stops fiddling with the tied part of your bandages. Whatever Jade is appearing to hand over to you must be more dangerous than the vial you grip. Nails snap into your flesh like an activated bear-trap. Dreadfully, you remember your new possession could usher you into expulsion. You wait with baited breath.

“It is a gift. I,” Jade clears his throat, seemingly frustrated with himself, “I thought that with your affection for poisonous things that you would enjoy it.” He waves his magestone through the humid air. A lavender comet paints the air briefly.

At first, an irrational part of you worries he will summon a sulfuric liquid to pour over your head in a sick joke. So though your muscles slightly tighten up, Jade still goes through with his spell. Worry withers. You spring up upon seeing what he has summoned.

“Wow.”

In front of you sits a terrarium. The glass structure is shaped like a tiny gnome house, perhaps about one quarter smaller than a gingerbread house. Elegant black metal twirls around the pentagon’s sides. Moss and soil with a few decorative pieces of bark lie on the bottom. Inside lies two destroying angels, one taller than the other. It is oddly sentimentally of Jade.

There comes that warm, strange emotion again. What is it? Perhaps, your addiction to self-done tests is eroding a part of your stomach or ribs. Is some acid sitting dormant in your chest, waiting until Jade does something unexpected?

“Thank you.”

You push the thought away. Nothing to be concerned about.

“So. Jade Leech?”

Really, you should learn to collar your emotions. Why did Night Raven College not teach a course about emotional intelligence? Perhaps then every housewarden would not be falling in a domino effect of overblotting. Trying fruitlessly to relax your shoulders, you ask over them, “What about him?”

“You just have been spending a lot of time with him.”

“I agree. It is almost weekly at this point.”

“Almost daily if I remember correctly, just not Tuesdays or Thursdays.”

“Odd.”

“Truly odd.”

Bristling, you send a venomous look over your shoulder. “I don’t like what you’re implying.” The siamese twins give you a matching expression of mock confusion.

“Implying what?” Si asks.

“Implying what?” Am asks.

You roll your eyes to the ceiling and continue down Night Raven’s halls. The twins had been flanking (in their words, escorting you) since you all left Humanities. Usually, this would not bother you. Catty and sly, they were still your friends. You even planned to pick one of them as your vice-housewarden when the time came.

You just really do not like what they were implying.

Am tucks a strand of hair between his ear and says, “It is just odd that after your self-proclaimed ban on anything involving Octavinelle that you would hang out with the vice-housewarden of Octavinelle so often.”

Si adds in, flicking dust off his tail, “We all know you are not dumb enough to sign up a contract with Azul. So what has you so enthralled with that eel?”

Out of the corner of your eye, you catch the motions. Are they truly disturbed the thought of you hanging out with Jade Leech? Though their body language was quite different from yours. Still, how sweet of them.

“Are you in trouble, (Name)? If you ever need a fish flayed, you have two cats at the defense.” Am puts an elbow on your shoulder.

Si follows along, “Little eel wouldn’t know what hit him.”

You chuckle at their offers. Si and Am are certainly dangerous students. Deep crystal blue eyes (framed by golden hair with black tips) that were shrewd and curious. Two matching sets of claws for each of them that could shred skin easily. Large fangs only visible when they chose to intimidate. Unpredictable and volatile cats.

At least with Floyd Leech and Jade Leech, you had a little distinction with who you were dealing with due to their unmatched hair. The siamese twins were perfect clones of each other, adding to the turbulent experience of interacting with them.

“I can take care of myself,” you say, grateful to finally come up to the door of Divus Crewel’s class. “Though, the offer is not on a time limit, is it?” A playful, unserious smile grows on your face.

“Of course not,” both of them say in unison.

You laugh and disappear through the door, singing “Have a good day you two.” You miss it, but as soon as your back is turned, those shrewd blues eyes sink down into malice, cutting glares.

“What’s so funny?”

“Ah!”

You jump in surprise. Why are you so surprised, you arranged for Jade to meet you here? Hand on your heart, you greet the eel-mer with a timid smile as he leans over, teeth on display. It is quite cute that he tucks that black strand behind his ear when wearing safety goggles. Heart slowing, you scold, “Warn me before you speak.”

His eyes narrow yet his smile stays present. Chuckling, Jade stands up to his full height and stalks off. He truly is sinister in his motions at times, never revealing too much. “So. How did you manage to get Crewel’s classroom empty?”

“I offered up study sheets for Crewel’s upcoming exam to get the students that were going to use this room today.”

“Hm, where have I heard that before?”

Upset that he is comparing you to his housewarden (who is in Octavinelle), you bump your hip into his. “Watch it, Leech.”

It brings back that nagging thought all the same. You gather up your lab coat as Jade moves a couple of items around the room. Octavinelle. Why did destiny try to push you into somewhere you did not belong? Fingers buttoning up the coat, you seethe at the idea. Were you contorting and bending yourself into a position you did not belong to; to you, it is either become the housewarden of Pomefiore or become nothing – your train of thought ends when Jade puts the vial of poison in your gloved hands. He has finished setting up the cauldrons to analyze the simple ingredients of Schoenheit’s poison. No. This was right. And for some reason what encourages that thought is not the vial but the smile on Jade’s face.

Dead ends. The end of a road or passage from which no exit is possible. Dead ends in artwork, staring at a computer or canvas and unable to create. Dead ends in jobs, accepting the placement of yourself that has no chance of advancement into a higher position. Dead ends in academics, coming to the point where you had wrung out the last bit of your knowledge into a project.

You were sure that just around the bend, your nose would punch into concrete and your stubbed toes would ache in a grueling pain. The passage that you were taking to Pomefiore housewarden would summon a blocking wall. Faith would call you to struggle up it and climb. But … your nose was raw from past collisions and your heels were numb from previous efforts, another climb might mean you would slip down. Crunch and splat when you drop. Emotionally, you just felt exhausted and raw.

Jade might have been right, you would never be satisfied despite numerous testing trails. Your poison could kill a dragon in a day and you would go on trying for a lethal dose that worked in twenty-three hours, then moving onto twenty-two hours. Why were you like this?

Lamenting, you toss over in bed. The ceiling blinks at you, uncomforting. You rest the back of your hand on your forehead as if you were checking for a temperature. Jumbled legs twist the lilac sheets and you ask one of Sevens to aid you into sinking into the bed. You feel like some cheap rendition of Fuseli’s The Nightmare, locked in by this mood. Slowly, you slide your head over the side of your bed so the world tilts upside down. Your dominant hand knuckles kiss the floor, bandages stretching from the arc. There is a more accurate rendition.

Self-experimenting on your arm usually grounded you in volatile times. A new burn cries on your shoulder as you roll your knuckle on the ground. Dealing with both speckles of blot and the upcoming exam … well, self-experimentation was not providing the usual security.

You fidget your hand in senseless motions, thinking and thinking. Your contract was signed for the purpose of opening new doors to you. Granted, Jade Leech did have the keys to access them but – “Yet your shortcomings are making you fail. I can only aid so much.” and those shimmering eyes stamp themselves in your mind.

You spring up in bed!

Flipping yourself off the bed, you growl and kick when your legs get tangled in the sheets. Your shortcomings. Your shortcomings would not be what got in the way of becoming Poemfiore’s housewarden. The brick wall that would be found around the bend would not be your own reflection!

Riding off that positive energy, you hover over your dresser. You had a minimal amount of clothes, so most of the dresser was filled and packed with papers relating to your research along with your poisons. Sealed with your own magic, of course. Trusting public storage lockers, even if locked by Divus Crewel himself, made you nervous.

You look at all the locked drawers, hand starting to reach for your magic pen when you suddenly stop. The terrarium Jade had given you rested on the solid-wood top. Destroying angels. The twin angels nestle against each other, one tall and the other medium sized.

Before you really comprehend yourself, you are lifting up the glass-house top and using the poker to lock it into an open position. Carefully, trying to not disturb the foliage, you pluck up an angel.

“My own shortcomings, hm,” you murmur and twist the mushroom around. You refuse to fail because of yourself. Perhaps, you are self-experimenting in the wrong places. You had tasted poison before but … “I’ll tell it to Leech when I see him,” you decide and take a bite of the poisonous mushroom.

You just have to be more hands on.

“Taste-testing your own poison?” Jade asks.

This is your objective when you see Jade Leech, the next day. This meeting is in the botanical gardens, a bit deeper into the greenhouse and a bit later than usual. In his hand, he rotates the half bitten destroying angel you had presented like a proposal ring out of your dorm pocket. His scrutinizing eyes flick between you and the bite marks.

Sevens … why are you nervous for his approval on this matter?

“How surprising of you. Grown bored of our tiny simulacrum spells, have you?” He sinks a thumbnail into the indented space. Studying intently on where you have bitten and the size you consumed, the grams of amatoxin poison.

“Would you really want to go through what they have on a larger scale? Small bits like these are much less … lethal. It would be unfortunate if you jeopardized your life before the contract collects it.”

“Odd way to say you’re worried about my life.”

“Oh, nothing of the sort.”

Slippery eel. Slippery eel. Slippery eel. Shimmering inside, you quickly grab the paperwork you prepared for tonight. You must be making that pufferfish expression because Jade smiles warmly at you. “See, I calculated it out. I was able to neutralize the amatoxin in the mushrooms with magic. I burnt it all away from my system.”

You quickly slid a paper in front of Jade and continued. “This is the list of poison that I had tested orally before and some I have even built up tolerances to.” His lips move slightly as he reads them. Ignoring your warming neck, you grab the paperwork and start reorganizing your poison bottles. “I can safely consume a variety of these and burn them out of me when they become too lethal.”

“It is also correct of me to assume that you will proceed with this even without my approval.”

“Yes, very correct,” you grin and pull a specific poison between you. Pinching it by the cork, you amorously twirl it on the table in sly circles. Inside, ebon liquid that shines mauve rocks like a bobbing ship. “But, it would be more benevolent of you to help, yes?”

“I suppose,” Jade grumbles.

He is a bit displeased at having been caught by his own contract clause. Not that you need to know that his benevolent interest involves keeping you safe. You excitedly uncork the bottle and shuffle paperwork towards him. No, you definitely do not need to know that.

“Great!”

You stand up from the table and take a few steps back. You put the cork into the pocket of your dorm uniform and raise the bottle to your lips. It is all happening so quickly that Jade’s heart jumps like a frog into his throat. Give an eel a warning!

Before you drink, your eyes widen and you remember something. You reach onto the table and grab a … watch? “Almost forgot. I want you to write down all that happens along with the times. I’ll try to stay talking for as long as possible.”

“You do know that you are drinking a poison meant to kill a dragon.”

“Yes, I’m quite aware of what poisons I work with.”

“Perhaps a smaller sip should be taken. We can calculate the volume and density between you and a dragon. It should work the same.”

“No, I’d rather drink it all.”

“Benevolently, I think –”

“Leech,” here you grab his hands and force them to cup together. Oh Sevens, his face feels warm. “Trust in me. I will become Pomefoire’s housewarden. I just have to work past the limits.” You deposit the watch into his gloved hands. “Keep time for me.”

“Okay.” The words of a smitten eel.

“Thank you.” You fall back a few steps and lift the poison back up. “Time?”

“Nine, forty-eight, zero three. Zero four. Zero five.”

“Good.”

Delicately, like you are sipping a rare tea, you lift the poison’s bottle to rest on your bottom lip. You hold it there, listening to Jade count up. You cannot allow yourself to be the reason you fail. You cannot be your own shortcoming, something else would have to interfere. Doing this, you would be able to calculate the specifics of what the poison targets, the speed, and so much more!

Still, your heart is quickly hammering up in your throat.

Medicine. Take it like it is medicine. You sternly tell yourself. And before the begging fists of your heart can beat any faster, you take it all down in one gulp. Just like medicine.

“Tw-Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.” Jade uncharacteristically stumbles in his counting. He keeps going as your throat bobs with the weight of poison.

The taste is not putrid. You do not shake your head or scrunch your nose at all. Swallowing with a tiny quiver of your bottom lip, your face falls neutral. A thumb wipes your lisp for good measure. “Twenty-one. Twenty-two.” Now, it is all about the waiting.

You two do have to wait long because before Jade can even reach the full sixty seconds, your dominant hand suddenly rises up to your lips in surprise. No way. Before you pinch it down, a cough pounds itself free from you. And it is a horrifically wet, gurgling cough. You move your hand away, staring at the strings of blood connecting lip to hand.

“(Name).”

“Keep counting.”

Okay, what was this targeting first? Scrutinizing over the liquid, you think about your airways. Your tongue was still intact. So this was not completely fast-acting and more gore decorates your hand as you hunch over with another punching cough. Your airways were mostly likely corroding first, but a dragon had such thick airways. What should you do to maximize –

Before you can theorize more, you are on your knees, choking like you ran a marathon. Blood splatters out of your mouth. Sevens, you really should burn it out of you.

You go to grab your magestone — the spell will weigh heavy on it but — you startle when two hands grab your shoulders, unsure of who is trying to get a one up on you. Hand clapped over your quivering mouth, you meet Jade’s narrowed eyes and watch his lips move. That’s right. It’s just Jade. You shuffle one arm out of his tight grip, fist around your magestone. The spell sends the sensation of barb-wire veins running up into steel arteries, but you still manage it.

The room goes black, all electricity absorbed by your pen. As your breath and hearing come back to you, you find Jade’s shoulder in the dark.

“Write down everything I’m about to say,” you say victorious.

“WHERE THE FUCK IS IT!”

Vengefully, you grasp the drawer’s knob and fling the wooden box across your room. The momentum causes it to hit the mirror above your desk. Snowflakes of glass sneeze out onto your carpet in a musical burst. The symphony just causes you to grind your teeth harder until your gums are begging for relief.

“Where – Where,” you caterwaul desperately. Snowflakes of agony hurricane in your mouth and reduce your once stable voice to a shredded mimic of itself.

You rip open another drawer. Inside is exactly what you are not looking for. That is predictable because you knew you would never misplace what you are currently without. Still, you desperately search and search, fruitlessly hoping that you did misplace it. Still, you claw through your room because it is better than having to face the music that someone has stolen your research notes and preparations for the summer exam.

“Please,” you beg the last untouched drawer in your room. “Please.”

Slowly, the drawer opens up and in it are no bundles of paper twined with magic nor your nine bottles of poison nor Vil Schoenheit’s vial of poison. Like a puppet cut from its strings, you fold over the drawer and start to hyperventilate. “N-ngh, no … no.”

Distantly, you feel the raindrops. Three consecutive splat splat splat falling over your head, spreading down your curled spine and seeping into you. Overblot. Though your pen is far from your hand, you feel it clearly there. The soulbound between you and your pen burns you. Magic becomes dirtier as emotional pain pushes at your throat like vengeful hands. Rein it in, you scold yourself, hunching and groaning at the pain. You dig your forehead into the wood of your dresser to focus on anything but the watery black liquid that coats you. ��Br-Breathe,” you scold yourself.

Slowly, you emerge out of the phantom blot that has infected you. Like caught in a shuddering light, your body moves in odd inhuman jerks. Nails digging into the dresser’s top, you pull yourself up. “Breathe,” you repeat a little firmer this time.

The botanical gardens or Pomefiore’s laboratory. Preferably, the laboratory in Pomefiore’s dorm so you will not collide with any unwanted attention. You surmise that the best course of action is to find a way to calm down. If you can drown this painful burn with something stronger – You will – You will just sign another contract with Ashengrotto to locate who stole from you. Desperately, you plan and plan how you can avoid overblotting. On twitching legs, you exit your dorm of discord and leave your magestone on your desk.

“Breathe.”

The walk to your room and Pomefiore’s private laboratory feels like stepping on hot coals barefoot. Burying yourself into the violet sleeve of your dorm uniform, you try to navigate with limited vision. Your fellow dormmates look upon you like you are a stumbling raccoon drunk off rabies. You keep most of your warm face hidden by the sleeve over your cheek and nose. Sevens, you hope that no one has rented the laboratory for a private study.

Your motions are still unstable and jumbled. The revelation that someone has successfully stolen your work from you is world-tilting. Tripping over your own feet and bumping shoulders with students, you reach a hand to your sternum and push. Your hand tries to combat the rapid pace of your heart.

“No, don't think like that,” you mumble drunkenly but then the thought consumes you.

Jade Leech. Heart lunging into your bone like a claymore, you wince violently at the thought. After giving you Schoenheit’s poison, what is the purpose of taking it back then taking everything else in addition? Would his contract allow him to steal? If his benevolence was tied not towards helping you but helping Ashengrotto, then it might be a loophole. No, he was contractually forced to assist you; plus his character …

“No, Jade, won’t,” you start but stop. You do not know that eel-mer. You are not on a first name basis. Despite that, your heart pounds at the raw leather and rose flesh of your ribcage and muscular system, terribly sad.

Stumbling, you make it shoulder first into the door of Pomefiore’s lab. With a groan, you push open the door and fall in. Momentarily, you close your eyes and breathe in the scent of chemicals. Home on Saturdays and Sundays. Days in the laboratory with mother. Breathing becomes easier and then you open your eyes and it is suddenly unachievable.

“You fucking trait –!”

Your hand races down to your empty pocket, feeling for your magic pen. You stumble twice, once when realizing you left your pen in your dorm and second when the growing mass of a water spell is pointed in your direction.

“Cut it out, (Last Name). Throw your magestone on the ground now.”

“I-I don’t have it on me.”

The absolute devastation laced in your face and voice must be enough because … A wicked laugh billows up out of sharp teeth. Water spell drips off his pen. Your body puffs defensively at the shame you feel. In one hot glare, you watch Si and Am laugh cruelly at you.

“Give me back my stuff, you traitors,” you growl.

“Come, surely, you don’t think your words are going to get us to relinquish this to you.”

“Took way too many unlock spells to get our rewards.”

“Truly such a paranoid individual you are. Seven arcane lock spells.”

“You have always been so troublesome since Orientation.”

“I don’t fucking care,” you scream, hands clenching at your side. “It is locked up because it is mine. It belongs to me.”

“There you go again,” Am sighs. “Always claiming things. Claiming that the Pomefiore dorm is yours. Claiming that this,” the siamese lifts up the vial and a chill stabs you, “is yours when it is actually Schoenheit’s. Do you really have anything that is yours besides your self righteousness?”

You have heard enough and rush towards the twins. It is two against one. Pure magic against an overblotting mage. It is a battle that has already decided its victory, but you march into it nonetheless. Tails whip up in surprise as you close a long gap in seconds. Aiming towards Am, you raise up one fist, vision red with anger. The punch does not land.

Instead, a levitation spell bubbles around the back of your head and you are slammed swiftly into the wood of a lab table. “Fuck!” Your body crumples to the ground as those laughs start up again.

“HAHAHAHA, the future housewarden of Pomefiore everyone. A round of applause for this intelligent, unrelenting mage,” Si sings, summoning an auditory track of cheering and hollering whoops with his magestone.

Am hurdles a more subdued laugh at you. “Truly, did you expect to be the next housewarden? That wasn’t a jest?” The cat smiles larger when you — pushed to the dirty ground on all fours and a slime-trail of red down your nose — glare up at him. “Oh, it wasn’t. How sad.”

Mouth opening, you go defend your future position as housewarden. They knew you deserved that position. They were stealing your information above anyone else. You were the most likely winner for the exam, with or without Jade Leech’s and with or without Schoenheit’s poison. Claws sink into the soft flesh of your cheek. Claws cut off all your bristling anger before you can speak. Si pulls you up between the chest of him and his brother.

Kingscholar slashed open your ankle once but nothing compares to this bloody pain. Physically injured and emotionally embarrassed is a deadly combination. You cry out when Am takes one of his claws and cuts diagonal along your noise.

“Now, tell us, what does the brilliant (Name) have in their plans? How do you rebound,” fangs wink and preen at you in victory. “What’s the revenge for us going to look like?”

“Th-The Dark Mirror,” you spit out from the bear-trap of fingers clenching deeper into your face. One of your hands rises up and clenches back at Si’s wrist. “That’s my work. The Dark Mirror will recognize my magic on it.”

“Come now, don’t be so dense. Even if the Dark Mirror recognizes your work, we always have one ace up our sleeve.”

Schoenheit’s poison is waved in front of your bloody nose like a hypnotizing clock.

“You should know that no underclassman can receive help from their housewarden for the upcoming summer exam. I don’t know how you managed to get blackmail on Schoenheit but well done. You sealed your own fate.”

“Besides, (Name), who will they believe: us, the amiable students who have drawn no attention to themselves, or the student who has always had one foot in expulsion and one in attendance after disrespecting Dire Crowley? Crowley would die to have a reason to kick you out.”

“No more troublesome little mage in NRC.”

“No more housewarden (Last Name).”

All your thoughts and anger caught in your throat, all you do is puff. You want to warn them to watch what they drink, be careful what might slip into their food, but you know that the threat of Dire Crowley’s involvement is all too real. You cannot poison them if they leave something behind for Crowley to find. Think. Think. Think.

Sharp cobalt eyes meeting, they seem to conclude they are done with you. With a simple wave of a magestone, your body is propelled through the door and into the adjacent wall in a single blinking second.

“Ack,” your throat cries as you crumple to the floor.

“Tah-dah!”

An explosion of confetti explodes over your head and the coupling laughter of Si and Am cuts off when the laboratory door closes shut. Under the shower of pinks and yellows and whites, you sit, bleeding heavily from your nose. Trembling once more, you jerk yourself into a ball and put the sleeve on your uniform firmly to your mouth.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Breathe. Breathe. BreatheBreatheBreatheBreathe –

You have been using your magic pen, less and less.

It is only natural, you scold yourself. A safety precaution that you need to take. Instead of openly volunteering to demonstrate spells for professors, you let another student take up the helm. But it causes an itch to glove itself over your arm, observing and not participating in potionology.

Perhaps people think you have gained modesty. Perhaps people are thinking you are growing lazy. You would bare your teeth at all of them. They don’t understand. Holding your magic pen is like holding your hand on a bomb always. It is like holding a grenade with the thoughtlessness of holding a rubber eraser. A simple levitation spell to grab potions off Crewel’s top shelf could blow off and unravel the bones and blood of your hand.

Eventually, you are going to get caught. Too many times using a ladder instead of a levitation spell, too many times struggling with tightly sealed caps instead of using an elementary ‘unscrew’ spell. With a vice-housewarden like Hunt, you know when eyes are peering at you. You just wished that it was anyone else.

“Twenty-seven,” you grumble. It really is not meant to be heard and is for your own pitiful attempt at finding some entertainment in this entire shitty storm. Still, it is hard to keep things hidden from Jade Leech – spoken or unspoken, it comes to light.

“Twenty-seven,” Jade muses from behind you. His hand is posed to his chin in that calculating manner. “If I counted correctly, I only looked at you seven times during our Defense Magic class and then five times in our Flying class. That makes twelve.”

Sometimes, you wish that you did carry the physical traits of a pufferfish so you could stab and stab at the annoyance that is Jade Leech. Pufferfish regrettably were not poisonous for eels to consume. So slicing yourself up for him to eat would be useless. Sighing, you slow your steps so you and him fall into walking next to each other.

“Only twelve? I swear I thought you were going to burn a hole in my head. Are you going to add to that number when we reach potionology?”

“Perhaps then I can actually reach twenty-seven. I will work diligently to get there.”

You crush the laugh that wants to come out and stay silent, upset at everything, him and beyond.

“Pufferfish, you have missed our last two scheduled meetings. Monday and Wednesday at eight PM. I’ll have you know that I loathe having my time wasted.”

“Sorry.”

“Does that mean I can expect your presence in the botanical gardens tomorrow?”

“No. No, don't wait for me there.”

Jade gives you a curious look, the tiniest hint of concern or maybe that is frustration. His hand momentarily flexes by his side, trying to inch towards you.

“Well, that is no good. Our contract did not outline what would happen if we stopped collaborating. I suppose that the clause would argue that you would have to give me a reason for terminating our agreement.”

“I’m not terminating anything. I’ll go and participate in the exam. If I lose, one of the three of you will decide to keep me. If I win, I will be a housewarden. The contract is still valid … I just do not require anything more from you.”

“Is that so? Nothing at all?”

“No, I got all I needed from our contract.”

“Then perhaps I can offer you a meal at Mostro Lounge since our research is complete. We should celebrate the fruits of labor, and we can discuss what poison you will be using to win.”

Your breath hitches. Jade definitely notices because he sends that curious look at you again; you can finally identify it as genuine concern. You cannot help how open your emotions are. That was the first time he had talked about the upcoming summer exam in a positive way instead of slyly hinting at possible failure. Jade Leech thought you were going to win. Jade Leech thought you could become Pomefiore’s housewarden.

Instead of joy, you want to curl into a ball and cry. Your bottom lip trembles.

“N-No, I don’t want to do that.” And even though you and Jade share the next period together, you quicken up your pace momentarily. “Thank you for all your help, Leech.”

Jade finally commits to the move to grab your dominant wrist. Uncaring of your bandaged and maimed arm, he pulls you so your body spins to face him. His mismatched eyes did not collide with yours. Instead, he is focused strictly on the magic pen you had gripped in your hand, which was once hidden in your pocket.

“(Name), your pen.” You tear yourself from his grip so fast that Jade blinks in surprise.

Tiny droplets start to blossom like cherries on your wrist from where his fingers had dug in. That pain is expected – you are not gonna get out a predator’s grip without a few cuts. Hell, Jade could probably tear your wrist to ribbons without breaking a sweat. Your features crinkle like paper mache, inked and painted with hot shame.

The concern in his eyes churns your stomach into a ugly nest of snakes. Bottom lip trembling, you scrounge your brain to find a way to excuse yourself. Really, what can you say to excuse the prominent black that is blanketing itself over the sleeping purple of your magestone. Your lips still tremble anyways, but you shut down when the predator crowding above you throws cutting words at you. The pain from them is unexpected.

“I shouldn't have to remind one of the highest ranking alumni the inevitable future that comes with having a magic pen that looks like yours. You watched your housewarden’s overblot and kept this hidden. For someone with so much intelligence, you are acting foolish, Pufferfish.”

The nickname, usually light, stabs at you like a claymore into your chest. Pufferfish … a bothersome fish that blows up around danger, one of the stupidest fucking fishes in the sea! Teeth clip against each other in your frustration. Rounding, you press your palms on Jade’s shoulders and push him as hard as you can. Blood from your wrist starts to climb down your fingers and towards your pen’s handle.

Concern is switched with shock. You doubt anyone has had the guts to ever physically injure him, not that your shove did anything but send him a few steps back. Not wanting to let him get in any words, you shout, “Don’t come near me anymore, Leech! Don’t find me in Pomefoire; don’t even look in my direction during class. Our contract is void.”

You turn, shove your magic pen back in your pocket, and go to flee when – “On what grounds?”

Students flow around you but you feel as if the entire world has frozen at his question … at worse, his tone of voice. Refusing to turn around, you push your mouth into your non-dominant sleeve. You bet if you turned around there would not even be any anger on his face, just that sharp, still, statue-like smile that could tear apart anything.

“On the grounds that you just violated our contract. You implied that you wanted me to stop using magic but I need magic to pursue becoming a housewarden. That is acting as a roadblock to me becoming Pomefiore’s housewarden.”

“I suppose that it was outlined if you felt I was an impediment that our relationship would end. Benevolently, I would advise you to stop magic altogether. Very well. I thank you for our time together, Pufferfish.”

You wish you could be as graceful as Jade in the face of another person’s silly anger. Perhaps that is the divide that keeps you from your goal. Perhaps that is why you are only a student as a second year and Jade is a vice-housewarden.

“Whatever,” you mumble and rush to find a bathroom. The grease of blood in your hand is making your pen harder to hold onto. Slipping, slipping, slipping.

You had not even realized that magic grounded until you found yourself starting to slip from it. Solid ground underneath you has suddenly become sand, pulling itself from you like taffy and shifting in grainy waves around your soles. Fuck, you breathlessly realize that you are spilling into panic. The floor is pliant and vanishing from your reality. In a split decision, you take a turn towards the Hall of Mirrors instead of heading towards a bathroom.

Summoning bandages to wrap the wounds Jade has given you is an impossible feat. In your dorm, there are bandages along with thousands of other medicinal herbs and supplies. When you reach it, you hurl yourself into the Pomefiore mirror, gasping for breath as you just emerged from a dive in the Coral Sea.

Mentality is key. If you can occupy your mind with anything else but your overblot, perhaps you can finally push the slab of stone off your chest, the emotional peine forte et dure crushing your ribcage. You slam your open palm to your dorm door and rush inside.

Think of anything else, you beg your mind but you feel as if every single body has fragmented away from each other and placed them far away like out of reach planets. Sevens, think of anything else, you scream and your hip falls into the corner of your dresser. Focusing on the itch just makes it itchier. Focusing on an illness just prolongs the time you are sick.

The floorboards, count them, a satellite translator reaches out and you grab onto that thought.

One.

Two.

Three.

Your throat hugs your vocal cords. Individual bones embracing your breath and trying to smother you out.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

A knock at your door. Flailing at the sudden noise, your hip digs deeper into the dresser. A bitten back scream traps itself in your mouth. Your nails grip down the wood and you pant heavily onto the surface, panic rising back up now that your concentration is broken.

“Um, (Last Name)?”

Sevens, what awful timing –

When bolting through Pomefiore, you must have spilled past Epel Felmier. Fucking shit. He was a first year student that managed to pull a quarter of the strings for you to have that video of Vil’s overblot. He has requested from you a potion to strengthen tree roots and the fruit they produce. Well versed in botany, you agreed readily for that video. You gave him three vials and said to return for a larger dose of what had given him his desired effect. It was likely that he would be approaching you this week.

Just that remaining bit of Octavinelle in you, making deals to boast yourself up. You start seething at the vile thought. You want to entirely stamp Octavinelle out of your mind, incinerate them all into fish kabobs. Just as you try to picture the image to calm yourself, Epel Felmier knocks again.

“It’s been three weeks and all the test trials have gone well. I think I picked out which one I want. Could you open the door?”

Go away. Get the fuck away from me. You manage to force out, “Now’s not a good time, Felmier. Tomorrow okay?” Underneath your nails, strips of wood bury themselves as you drag your fingers down in a clawing lion grip. Wildly, your ring finger twitches with your shot nerves. You spear yourself harder on the desk to ground you.

Go away. Go away. Go away. Go away. Go away. Go away. Go –

“Are you overblotting!”

Your heart stops cold in your arteries. Huh. The floorboards start to blur under your bulging eyes. Then the entire room blurs and spins. You open your mouth, to respond to Epel’s acquisition. Syrupy black starts raining from the cumulus cloud of watery blot in your open mouth. Huh. Are you overblotting? No, you do not think so. However, the dots of blot pounding down on your dresser tell a different story.

Maybe this is right. You would have been in Octavinelle if you did not push. You are as egotistical and troublesome as everyone says. You do not deserve to be the housewarden of a dorm that rejected you originally.

Your vision swims and you tilt with it. In a desperate effort, you go to grab the dresser’s edge to avoid falling. Glass breaks and the sound returns you to yourself.

“Are you okay? You sound pained.”

Oh, that is what he shouted. You force out one last time, “Busy now! Tomorrow!”

The pressure of your hyperventilation and hugging ligaments increases. You start to choke on your terror and quickly press your mouth into your sleeve. When the fit subsides, you look down to see your dresser is clean besides the nail marks. Luckily, you can register the sound of Epel Felmier walking away. But where had the sound of glass come from –

“No. No,” you lament sincerely.

This time you allow yourself to fall down. You reach out a hand, draw it back, and then reach out again. The Dark Mirror should have banished you. You are scum. You are not worthy of what you covet. Avoiding glass shards, you grab the tallest destroying angel and bring it to rest on your knees. Tremors rock your body as if you are nude in a snowstorm.

Doubling over, you mourn, “Jade. Jade Jade Jade. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Really, you should not be here. If you are found, it will surely be a mark on your already wobbling enrollment.

Breaking and entering anywhere in Night Raven College could lead to expulsion … but a majority of your time spent in NRC has been spent walking that fine line. Like an ostrich who has committed to burying itself underground, you commit yourself to this path no matter the consequences. One more risky choice is fine. Besides, no one would ever monitor the botanical gardens past midnight.

You sigh over your mortar and pestle. Dropping the tools, you actually do bury yourself. Into the comfort of your injured hands, you push your face deep into their embrace and groan. You hiss when sharp pangs of agony ripple up your back. A giant spider constructed from pain has spread its legs over your upper spine, embracing you. To be honest, everything is painful. As if to spite, your dominant arm has taken to burning and burning with no medicinal help getting it to calm. All this you could weather usually if – if only –

Sevens, are you going to start crying?

The last time you cried, you were eight. Since then, you had bottled up tears like they were a fatal toxicant that would ruin you. No, no, you cannot uncap that bottle until you are a housewarden.

Piercing your nails briefly into your forehead, you groan one last time. You had been working constantly for three days without breaks. Your memory about toxicology was brilliant compared to others but you still knew that even you were missing chunks and scraps of your knowledge. That is why it was written down, your mind whispers. Yes, that is why you had written and laminated note after note. To start again was weakening you bit by bit.

You pick up your tools again. The longer that you wallow, the longer you are not working. You start to stir the bumpy white powder when the front glass door of the botanical garden clicks open.

Jumping up, you grab your pen to – to fucking what? Teleport yourself? You glance down at the tiny, desperate eye of purple that is still breaching the surface of an otherwise prominent oil spill. Your magestone has one last spell in before you overblot. Are you really going to waste it? You glance up in the direction of the door, flora and herbage blocking it entirely from your sight.

You set your pen down. Maybe it was just an old building settling? You wait for something, a voice, footsteps, anything really. And it does come.

“Ya suuure this is where they are? I’m gettin real tired of all this walking.”

Huh? You know that voice.

“It is worth the look. If they are not in their bedroom or Pomefiore’s personal lab, this is the third place I elect to look.”

“And if they aren’t here?”

“Then, we will find a fourth location to look for them.” A loud, miffed groan responds to that.

Jade Leech and Floyd Leech, what are they doing here? You pass a glance to the candle burning on the desk. Perhaps you can snuff it out and hide. You can see the glow of their twin magic pens, using them as flashlights to navigate the botanical garden. Perhaps you really can hide if they are still unaware of you.

You puff up air in your mouth and make a move to blow out the candle. Yet, one last noise pricks your attention, a whimpered please, we’re sorry. Your eyes snap to look at the golden specks peeking through the shrubbery. No way.

Tiredness is curling around your mind, so you barely even feel how your legs begin to stumble towards the freckled light. Your body moves before your mind. You do not realize that your numb fingers have picked up your pen again. No way.

You push past the willowing leaves of plants and nudge poisonous flowers out of your path. Gradually, the shrubbery decreases in density and light stronger than your candle burns your eyes. You stumble and round past the last potted plant in your path. No way.

“Hey, look, it’s Pufferfishy! They were here, Jade!”

Floyd’s jovial tone is met with your anxious silence, gangly body hunched like you will fall over at any moment and face drawn into a Greek tragedy mask.

No way. No way. No way.

“Fufufu, it seems so. No need to seem so aghast, Pufferfish. We come bearing gifts.”

“Merry Christmas, Pufferfishy!!”

The morbid gifts the Leech twins are bestowing to you are Si and Am whose consciousnesses are kept unlidded by a very weak, thin thread. In matching fashion, a monolith of red is raining from their noses. Si looks like he has taken a fall cheek first into a mirror. Am, who seems unable to breath through his nose, has two of his bottom fangs missing. Their entire bodies are soaked wet, hair and ears pressed down by the weight of water. In their ripped clothes, there are random placed indents. Bite marks, you realize with horror. Jeweled blue eyes are feverishly avoiding looking at you.

And since you are unable to speak, Jade takes the opportunity, “found these two cats looking for a midnight swim. Quite unusual of their species. But Octavinelle will always have its doors open for any student.”

“(Name), we-we get it really. And we’re sorry. Please, please, just call off the twins and we’ll,” Si rambles at you.

His words are cut when Floyd — who is holding onto Si by his nightshirt collar — lifts him up and slams his face into the botanical garden’s cobblestone. There is a crunch like a log of uncooked pasta being snapped. Terrified, your hands and pen fly up to your mouth. When Si is lifted back up, his nose bridge is reshaped into a crescent.

“How rude. Quiet, hehehe, Pufferfishy and Jade are tryin to talk.”

At this, Jade and you finally lock eyes. Your terror and his rigid poise melt into each other. For a second, it feels you and Jade are sharing a pulse, trying to push your ideas at each other. Olive brown and yellow, so unnatural yet turning into your normal. You two stare and stare.

“L-Leech.”

“I gave that vial to you. So taking it from you is the same as stealing from me.”

“...”

“That is a great offense to me. My father always said that you keep what is yours close and if anyone breaches your hold, bite back. Things are no different here than they are in the Sea.”

“Please, get them out of here.”

“If I was wronged, I’d lash out with a torrent of unmitigated verbal abuse to break them down mentally, then bind them and drag them beneath water. Which I have done. For you. Because you and I were betrayed.”

“Please, I’m on the verge of overblotting.”

“No. You are going to bite back, even if it means you overblot. Right this.”

Your pulsing eyes finally slide away from Jade’s stare. They shuffle down but only to the tips of Si and Am’s lowered, wet heads before you get scared and move your gaze back into the comfort of Jade’s eyes. If you give them one more look, you are sure to overblot.

It feels like you are standing on a raised building, miles and miles above the ground. The platform is ice. If you infect your eyes with one wrong image or infect your mind with one wrong worry, you will slip.

You have enough common sense to know pleading with Floyd is a waste of breath. Face knit with pain, you beg, “I’ll never ask anything of you again. No contract. No advice. No favors or gifts. Just please leave with them.”

“Your arm.”

Your features’ wrinkles and creases deepen with confusion.

“Your arm is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life. I almost puked looking at your grotesque flesh. Compared to the nightmare that is growing up in the Coral Sea, your arm is more unsightly than anything I’ve ever seen. Looking at it made me sick.”

You shake your head wildly back and forth. “Sevens, Leech, does it look like I fucking care? Get them out of here!”

As anger blooms on your face, Jade mimics that expression. As if to spite you, the eel-mer uses his strength to pick up Am by his collar and toss him into your feet. You ignore his pained groans like someone ignoring a bothersome, untrained dog pawing at their heels. “(Name), help.” A shiver runs up your spine.

“Your arm is your dedication to becoming Pomefiore’s housewarden. Do you think that is a person worthy of becoming housewarden?”

“I can still become Pomefiore’s housewarden! I know more about poison than anyone else in this school.”

“They stole from you. What I had given you as a –”

“I was fine before you came into my life!”

Anger spills off Jade’s face, sobering up.

Your chin is shuddering rapidly. Despite the heaving of your chest, you refuse to cry. You lock your trembling lips together and plead at Jade with damp eyes, officially done talking.

His gloves fingers slowly unfurl from the tightened stones of frustration they once were. He casts a judgmental look at both Si and Am. You never even knew Jade could look so vexed before, as if things were out of his control. His eyes gleam with the hot fire in them.

“Perhaps, you are right. Perhaps,” Jade looks at his brother and kills his train of thought. Mind unclogged from wrath, he turns right back into the mastermind Hunt dubbed him as. “Pufferfish, if you can’t become Pomefiore’s housewarden, then what is left for you?”

Huh?

“Can you really find a reason to keep going on if you don’t win this upcoming summer exam?”

Then, like an explosion, the thought strikes you. A deep breath flares through you. Previous hesitation to avoid seeing Si and Am is gone. Your voice is meek and clogged with mucus. “N-No.”

The thought motivates you to brandish your pen, tremors reducing. You hold it horizontal to the front of your chest, a violet cosmic spell turning and rotating around the gem stone. In what should be clear lilac and gray, black blot congeals like a twisted lava lamp, cracked open and slipping all over you. A nebulous disaster twisting over your ribs and heart.

“No. I can’t.”

When you release the accumulating spell and your vision goes white, you regret nothing about overblotting.

Because you would rather die than not be Pomefiore’s housewarden. And since that future has become impossible through Si and Am’s efforts, you can go all out and die. Right here. Right now.

Death is rather peaceful too, you come to realize. It feels like a warm embrace, sentimentally holding you tight and brushing a hand over your face. And for some reason, it speaks too. From the white: “Hey, you on the other side, give me back my Pufferfish.”

At the nickname, you jolt alive.

Glass and vines are the first thing you see but it is void compared to the blot in your mouth that you have to spit out. Ebony egg yolks glide down your chin. With vengeance, you throw yourself on your shoulder so as to not choke on the substance. Someone has their hand around your dominant arm and you think your spine is resting on their leg. You want to check but — but, more sludge comes up and blankets the cobblestone. Your entire body rattles with the force as you take one shuddering breath and then puke some more.

“Good, clear your throat.”

Listening to this strange voice, you puke for a fourth time. When you have finally stabilized yourself, you fall back into Death’s embrace with a groan. When Death greets you with his two mismatched eyes, you frown.

“J-Jade?”

“Here I save your life and you don’t even seem happy to see me.” His lips mimic your frown with a bit more dramatism.

“Because,” you hack, fake anger on your tongue “, because I’m racking up quite a debt with you. Azul will have me on a leash by third year.”

“Ideally, I will be the one holding the leash.” He says, tenderly swiping a bit of blot off your chin.

“Shut up,” you hiss, not in the mood for his jokes. Tired bones and bruised skin leans deeper into Jade’s embrace. He does not make light of it, at least. You were expecting teasing piled onto teasing. “Si and Am?”

He cups a hand to block your wandering eyes and starts to faintly smile. “Thoroughly disbanded for the time being. As always, you were quite methodical in ensuring your goal. Though, this path is quite atypical for applying as Pomefoire’s housewarden.”

You chuckle at that before a sharp pain in your arm breaks your mirth. Erratically, your middle finger twitches and you wonder if you severed a nerve in your arm. Your studying is interrupted when Jade brings a hand up and down the length of your arm. His next words are not mocking or duplicitous.

“I,” his words pause heavy in his throat. “I did not mean what I said about your arm earlier. I don’t find it —“

“It’s alright,” you interrupt. “I’ll never be ashamed of it, no matter what anyone says.” Hating how Jade looks a bit troubled, you try to revive the previous atmosphere. “Plus, your opinion doesn’t matter to me that much, Leech. Don’t flatter yourself.”

The lie makes the eel-mer regain his usual tone, “yet who asked who for their opinions on poison?”

“I asked to use your intellect, nothing more.”

“So I truly am just a pawn to you. How cruel.”

It seems like you two could go on forever in your banter, which is why Floyd — whose irritable disposition at being thoroughly ignored has been snowballing — decides enough is enough.

“Pufferfishy was so cool when overblotting, right Jaido?” The sudden voice makes you jolt in Jade’s arms until a new train of thought washes over you. Your overblot. “Almost knocked one of my teeth loose, Puffy~ Would’ve squeezed you for that one.”

Your overblot. Your overblot! What did you look like? What had you said? Did you cut an impressive enough visage to match with Schoenheit? You stare at Floyd. Curiosity pushes like spiders trying to crawl out your mouth. “Wh-what did I look like?”

“You looked —“ like an angel.

“Ya had this big halo over your head. All sticky and inky. Your clothes were all drapey and purple. Patterns all up your arms.” Enraptured and delighted, you listen as Floyd plots out each part of your overblot to you, using his own body as an indicator. “And this totally radioactive spike as your pen!” You feel like you are on cloud nine.

“Was it? Was it more impressive than you know who?”

“I say you have both Azul and Vil beat for most imposing overblot.”

“Ya, Azul was all cryin’ and whiny. You were all, agh I’ll burn out your insides! You filth!” Floyd breaks off into giggles. “Pufferfishy has always been interesting since Orientation. Course your overblot is gonna be super cool.”

You preen at their words. Yet, in the aftermath of the praise, you start to come down from that buzzing high. “Wait. Wait, I can’t have this get out.” It could potentially disqualify you from running in the exams for housewarden.

“Don’t worry, I will have Azul write up an NDA tomorrow to be signed by all of us, Si and Am included. Besides a few damages that can be magiced away, you are in clear for continuing to work towards your goal.”

You breathe a sigh of relief. It is troublesome to sign any confidentiality agreement with Ashengrotto but this has slowly become your new normal. In your first year, you would have combatively against this relationship you have built with the Octavinelle dorm. Hesitantly, you go to leave Jade’s arms when —

“Jade, holy Seven! Your forehead.” You do not know how your eyes slide over it before. In an arch over Jade’s right eyebrow is a deep laceration. It is impressive in depth because a constant river of red is curling down his face in the same way the black strand on the left of his face does.

“It’s only a scratch. As Floyd said, you were quite vengeful.”

“That’s not a scratch. I know wounds; that’s going to need stitches.”

“Oh my, will it really? How do you plan to make it up to me? Such a deep wound; I will surely need a nurse to take care of me.”

“Ugh, be serious.” You start pressing your sleeve to stop the flow.

“But I am being serious, Pufferfish. To be honest, I feel my vision in my right eye is subpar now.”

“It’ll be subpar when I stick my finger in it, Leech.”

“Back to using my surname, are we? How tragic. I’ll surely miss that stutter you had calling out my first name.”

“Leech, Leech, Leech.”

In the background, Floyd Leech rolls his own uninjured eyes, annoyed at how your banter has started up again. Sevens, get a room, he thinks.

Rationally, you know that you no longer have even a drop of blot left sitting inside either yourself or your magestone but —

“How do I look? Do you think they score on outfits too? What am I saying; this is professor Crewel, that probably is an unspoken criteria that I was supposed to meet … This buttoned up has a bleach stain on sleeve, fuck. Leech, swap shirts with me.”

But you feel like you are choking on that syrupy black substance once again.

Jade chuckles at your evident panic. Always an open book aren’t you? He tightly grips your wrists when you leap at him to unbutton his shirt and smiles, enjoying your distress. “I’m terribly afraid it’s not the right color of lilac to represent Pomefiore. Plus, I’m much bigger than you.”

“I can just tuck the extra into my slacks,” you bargain. Your hands rattle fruitlessly in his cuffing grip. Now that he says that … you start to worry if the wrong shade of violet could make Crewel sicker than a bleach stain. You feel like you are choking down on a chunky milkshake of blot.

“Ugh.” Uncaring of his reaction, you start to fall into Jade Leech. Forehead connecting to sternum, you stay there as he holds your wrists halfway above your head. Since he held you after your overblot, physical contact between you two was oddly becoming normal. And this entire thing does feel like a second overblot. “I feel worse than ever.”

“Now, I’m quite positive that you have felt worse.”

“Nope, this is the worst.”

“In only a couple minutes, you will go out there and choke. Just imagine it.”

“Die, Leech.” You stomp on his Oxfords. You won’t injure him but you still hope to dirty his expensive footwear.

For the exam, they have a system of how people walk in. First, every Pomefiore student participating will stand outside. Then one by one, they are moved into a small room behind the auditorium, waiting until their name is called, and move onto the stage. Sometimes, Pomefiore students brought along support. After the betrayal from Si and Am, the role unfortunately fell to Jade Leech. It is just you and him in the room; same as it has always been under contract.

You squirm so you can rest your cheek into his chest, still locked by his grip on your wrists. “I’m gonna be so sick right now.”

An overblot was the catalyst of all negative emotions. You misjudged that it would dry you out of all insecurities. The grip of the Evil Queen holding you by the ribs until all the black liquid sponges out from black rivulets in your pores. Turns out you still have a bottomless cocktail of worry and stress left.

Jade was on the other end of the spectrum. He was quite assured that you would be winning. It had been a foreseeable outcome before you even asked to make the contract. When Azul and him schemed about their upcoming third year, you were substituted into the role of Pomefiore’s housewarden as naturally as Silver was substituted into the role of Diasomnia’s housewarden. All hypothetical yet assured. All calculated by some of the sharpest minds in Night Raven College to come to fruition.

Jade looks down at you, face on his shirt. How cute, your face even has that puffing expression when you worry yourself to the verge of puking. He smiles at you. It is unseen and genuine, far from odious.

“You have always been so interesting, (Name).”

Flee, your mind screams at you. You make a move to stumble backwards but you have forgotten that you are still in a bind, Jade’s slippery hands around your wrists. That odious, scheming grin returns to mask over his affection.

Jade leans in close, suffocating you, dangerous teeth gleaming. So close that the scent of mint toothpaste spills into your nose. Gleefully, he holds your locked arms out like he is pulling the wings of a butterfly to pin to a board.

“No, interesting is an understatement. You are magnetizing like a flame. Like watching someone burn alive.

“On Orientation, it was certainly amusing to be around humans. A new experience for me, Floyd, and Azul as mermen. But it grew old. Got repetitive, hearing your soul is Savanaclaw, your soul is Ignihyde, your soul is Octavinelle. You.” His eyes shine like a lightning flash, yellow painting his eyelashes. “You were like an explosion of fire, so much more powerful than any brief glimmer of light. I haven’t been able to look away since then.” And then, he lets you go.

With the force of yourself and what you suspect is also Jade pushing you away, you fumble awkwardly in the air for a bit. What stops you from cracking your head open is the single table in the room. Tailbone colliding, you desperately grip the surface behind you for stability. Ouch!

You look down at your hand. A bead of blood blooms on your index finger like a poisonous mistletoe berry. Damn, is the glass of your project at least still intact? Fretful, you go to examine the table when Jade pulls you back in by the wrist.

(It is odd. Since collaborating with the eel-mer, peace has been as rare and brief as a shooting star due to it. He has stressed you beyond belief. He has left you grappling for the true intentions of his words. Where Si and Am tricked you, it is odd that the one who openly speaks of your failures and challenges you has been more genuine to you than anyone else.)

Truthfully, you want to glare at him but you just stare. Those nocuous words leave you with a tingling sensation through your veins. Something warm and intoxicating, to be regarded as an image worth viewing. You watch as Jade lifts your bloodied, pricked finger to his lips. Pushes his tongue out and laps up the berry dot.

Oh.

“Leech?”

Divus Crewel calls your name.

You glare, metaphorical spikes flaring around your skin. Leave it to Jade Leech to calculate the perfect moment to confess yet not confess at all. Leave it to him to say words that you have to filter through a sieve to reveal the meaning. What a sly bastard, you muses.

“What are you standing around here for? Everything you’ve worked for is waiting for you.”

Funny of him to say that when he is still gripping your wrist.

“We’re talking about this later.”

“In the botanical gardens? Or perhaps Pomefiore’s laboratory? Will you finally concede and enter Mostro Longue?”

“Don’t push it. I’d never pay for those overpriced drinks.”

“Who said I’d let you pay?” He finally gives you back your hand.

“Hmph.”

You rotate quickly on your heel. From the table, you grab your project. Thank the Seven that is still intact despite the pressure your hand had placed on it before. The glass pufferfish cradled in your hand shines. Inside the jade green glass, the lethal poison sits waiting. From the pursed lips of the fish, you will take the poison and serve it to a dragon. Your heart pounds excitedly in your chest. There is one last loose end though – Turning to Jade, you question, “If I lose, did you three decide who would have me?” You have been dying to hear this.

“Yes, we all picked from the three things you outlined in the contract.”

“You’re splitting them up?”

“Yes. Azul will take your magic. Floyd is arranged to ransack your room, taking all your possessions. And I, I will be the receiver of your life and freedom.”

A snake manifests in your stomach, lashing at that sentence. You gulp, flustered at the venom in his tone. “How sad you will never have that,” you tease.

“I suppose that you should go out there and win.”

“I suppose I just might.”

You two share something warm in your mimicking smiles. And before Divus Crewel can call your name again, you rush out to the auditorium.

Glancing up from your cosmetic mirror, you watch Floyd sleep.

You never thought you would see a body look like that, limbs angular and disfigured. Bones rotated as if they had suffered a fall from a great height. Your knowledge on eel anatomy was limited. Perhaps, it was eel-mer flexibility that got him to comfortably sleep with his hand twisted around his back and touching his ankle?

“Do you sleep like that too or are acrobatics just Floyd’s specialities?”

The other eel-mer perks up at your voice. Another thing you learned about eels was their habit to bite. Jade stops sinking his teeth into your hip to answer, “A mixture of both. Though, I can assure that I am not as unruly to sleep next to, if you ever are hoping to find out.”

You take the pointed end of your makeup brush and dig it into his temple. As he whines of all dreadful things about your cruelty, you continue applying your blush. Whining from him would have unnerved you months ago.

To be honest, a lot of things you have been adapting to about Jade Leech were once very surprising. The whining, the biting, the clinging. You wished Floyd’s future significant other the best because the clinging (whether skin to skin or being shadowed constantly) was horrendous with Jade. Red powder brightens your cheeks. You were even surprised that the meticulously punctual Jade hated getting out of bed.

“You know, you’re going to be late to Orientation if you keep nuzzling into me all morning. Floyd is acceptable. You are the vice-housewarden of Octavinelle. You cannot neglect your first years.”

“And you are the housewarden of Pomefiore, but who’s lingering in who’s dorm now, hm?”

Your body hums lightly at the pleasant reminder. You almost want to beg him to say it again and again till his tongue falls out. Instead, you purposely make a lot of noise with your makeup tools as you drop the blush on the nightstand and grab your lipsticks. “See, but I’m up and preparing for the day. And you are not.”

Jade makes no response and goes back to gnawing on the slip of skin revealed between underwear and tank-top.

You roll your eyes as you start to outline your lip shape in a deep brown. You do admit that you will miss him when he eventually decides to get up for the morning. The position you have is nice: you, sitting on the edge of his bed, applying makeup, as he wraps his arms around your waist, body still tucked under the sheets.

“You truly are one bothersome eel, Jade.”

You apply the last bit of clear lipstick from a jeweled black tube. Rotating one nude thigh on the bed, you maneuver Jade so his head is in your lap.

“Spending all morning in bed, hiding Dire Crowley’s letter to the housewardens so Azul has to rush his own preparations, texting me this morning, oh (Name) please there’s an emergency at our dorm, please come. Didn’t know I was dating such a villain.”

“You knew,” Jade smiles up at you.

“… Yeah, I knew.” You lean down to give him a kiss which quickly escalates into more. Who can blame the two of you though, after a long separation on summer break?

Eel blood is poisonous. It is a biological fact that molds him to an image of worship in your hands. It reminds you of all you two struggled through – the first person you had opened up to and let him inject you with a thing as deadly as love. You gently cup his face, a stroking thumb on his cheek, and kiss each other like it will be your last kiss. All kisses with him were like that, infinitely finite.

Blood floods into the kiss. He does not even wilt when you bite down hard on his tongue. You feel a droplet break from the limited space between you and wipe it away with your thumb. He takes his own thumb, nuzzling it over the skin of your neck. You poison him; he poisons you.

You pull away, pupils blown, with a new lip tint.

“He-Here,” you say. Most of your purple lipstick has rubbed off onto Jade’s smug face. The red-violet mix is an intoxicating look on him. When he smiles with his full teeth, your stomach stirs at the blood pooling between enamels.

Breathlessly, you hand him a jeweled white lipstick tube. He pecks two quick kisses on your lips, looking like the cat who got the cream. “The top layer of my lipstick is poisonous. Apply this before your lips start feeling numb or you’ll lose the ability to talk for two days.” Your words do not even reduce the joy he feels having you in his arms.

“Oh dear, it sounds like you want that to happen to poor me.”

“I’m handing you the antidote, aren’t I?”

“Pomefiore’s housewarden is so cruel~” His faux look of sadness in slanted eyebrows and pouted lips is almost painfully predictable now. Still, he goes to take it and — oh, this is a bit unpredictable of him.

Uncapping the lip balm, he runs it over the top and bottom of your lip. Awestruck, you watch his calculating face. He caps it again and wastes no time pulling you into more sloppy kisses.

“Jade,” you pant. He hums underneath you, loving how his wandering claws are ruining your once tame hair, loving how you say his first name. “You definitely got enough of the antidote.”

He starts whining again! You laugh as you move your thigh off the bed and return to going over your makeup.

Shortly after, Jade falls into a silence. You start checking out each minuscule detail on your makeup. Symmetry no matter how you angle your face is key, Vil once said. Vanity is not a main concern of yours but your first appearance as housewarden is vital. The housewarden whose poison killed a dragon in six days. When they eventually put you in the textbooks, it would be best not to look sloppy. Perhaps, you can even convince them to do an article on your arm. Jade had been trying to convince you to publicize it more. Though the bandages were on today, who's to say they have to be on tomorrow. Hell you can —

“About your overblot…”

Your train of thought hops off the track and is engulfed in one giant flame.

You hate the way your body betrays you. Posture leaps up into a straight line. Jade definitely feels the way your spine becomes tense at his words. You know he can feel it as his forehead is pressed to the center of your back now.

After everything, you two had swept in under the rug. Decreeing it as a non-disclosable talking point. You wonder why he is breaching contract today of all days. Did the sadist want you overblot again on Orientation, thinking about the past?

You stay silent, hoping he will drop it.

“You shouted … shouted that you would be nothing if you weren’t Pomefiore’s housewarden. I just wanted to let you know before it all starts, that you’re everything to me. Housewarden or not.”

Your body is treasonous. It should be exiled and thrown out of the kingdom of your mind. You wish you could strip yourself of it because it is betraying you again. And you know Jade can feel the traitorous actions of your body, as your spine curls and your shoulders start to shake hysterically with your cries.

Hiding your emotions has never been a strong trait of yours.

As each muscle convulses and shakes, Jade elects to press a few more kisses on the ridges of your vertebrates.

“… Fuck you,” you gasp out wetly. “Now, I have to redo this stupid makeup.” Violet glitter leaks from your eyes.

Knowing what you truly mean, Jade smiles and presses a long-lasting, antidote-coated kiss on your sobbing skin.

[15-lizards]

Hi! I absolutely love your thoughts on Planetosi fashion and the culture aspects and changes in fashion over the time periods. It’s such an aspect of world building that I don’t think gets much focus in media and it gives a look into so much of a richer world that we didn’t see as much in the show (in my opinion).

I know you mentioned a bit about the Daynes style of dress, but do you have any more HCs on Dorne? I know you mentioned the the amount of layers would change according to the region because of the heat.

Yes I love thinking ab dornish fashion!!

Starting from the north, near the Dornish marches and by the Red Mountains, where those with the most Andal blood live, we have a little bit of a mix between influences. Either because they live so close to the edge of the kingdom, or because Andal traditions trickled down. Clothing is thicker bc it is a (slight) bit colder for where stony dornishmen live. Textiles are also a combo of thicker fabrics they get from the stormlands/reach and traditional airy fabrics from Dorne.

Moving to the actual deserts of Dorne, this is where you see full coverage clothing. Usually this consists of a singular long and loose shift, with added robes for added protection. If you pass a sandy dornishman in the desert, you will hardly ever see their face. Clothing is almost solely made up of cotton and linen (they’re the most breathable fabrics) and there is always going to be a turban or hat of some kind while they ride or herd or work

And “Salty” dornish fashion (so around the coastlines) still has strong remnants of their Rhoynar ancestors. Both in patterns/accessories and the fabrics they use. They can afford to have both light and heavy fabrics since they live near the water and weather will cool during winter, unlike the rest of Dorne. Their patterns and textiles still reflect the intricate artistry of the old Rhoynar cultures, and has striking similarities to the free cities, mostly Myr

The Martells themselves :D very much drippy. Despite the fact that Dorne is a notoriously brutal climate, their clothes reflect the fact that they are not only wealthy enough to survive but also have extravagance. I’m obsessed with the idea of gilded and embellished clothing for the Martells, especially for ceremonial/traditional clothing to show off power (the left pic is Doran and Oberyn at an important Sunspear ball is it not) ALSO I like to think that princesses of Dorne will wear their bride price on their clothing as a sort of “I’m expensive” type thing, embellishing their dresses with silver coins and charms that equal the cost of their bride price

BONUS sand snake fits: I think the girlies like to match, especially when they need to go intimidate someone. Still fairly practical most of the time for riding around and fighting but still indicative of their royal blood despite their bastard status. Other times I think they fully dress practically and essentially like a commoner (when they need to stay hidden for ~espionage~ reasons) and it’s just easier to move around in whenever they’re in rough terrain. Probably favored by resident butch Obara

[profeyandere]

𝐉𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 𝐍. ─── ☾ 𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓

ʟɪɴᴋꜱ ↪ ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ ↪ ᴘɪʀᴀᴛᴇꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀʀɪʙʙᴇᴀɴ ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ ↪ ᴡᴀᴛᴛᴘᴀᴅ

ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏꜱ ↪ ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 2.7ᴋ ↪ ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: ᴊᴀᴍᴇꜱ ɴᴏʀʀɪɴɢᴛᴏɴ x ꜰᴇᴍ!ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ ↪ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ: ᴀɴɢꜱᴛ, ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ᴜɴʀᴇǫᴜɪᴛᴇᴅ ʟᴏᴠᴇ

English is not my native language, so I apologize for any mistake and if you can help me improve it, I will greatly appreciate it. I hope you enjoy it :D

The dull sound of metal striking the strong, rickety wood of the Dutchman made Norrington, still gawking at Elizabeth's falling form into the sea as the whisper of the shot slowly dissipated in the air, turned the other way to find himself with the strong back that belonged to you, being able to easily see how most of your muscles were flexing to maintain your defensive posture and thus keep him safe from the sudden attack it couldn't have been stopped by one of David Jones's sailors. The ex-commodore was stunned because, although he did not remember having seen you in Elizabeth's crew, he swore to have distinguished the strong flash of your eyes among the shadows of the ship that now belonged to his former love.

You, thanks to your espionage and concealment skills, had been able to sneak onto Sao Feng's pirate ship, watching and listening from the shadows for anything that was of special interest to you, barely being able to make out anything he was saying to Elizabeth, but discovering how he made her captain of the ship that had been under his command for decades and made her the owner of one of the eight coins necessary for the Brotherhood. As part of that select group, you couldn't help but be confused for a brief moment, but you saw in Swann a pirate like any of you could be.

Returning to the subject of how you had been able to reach the Flying Dutchman, all you had to say was that you appreciated the speed with which you moved and the innate balance that had allowed you to cross the long ropes that linked both ships without making a small threat of fall

"What are you doing here?" James asked with some fear. In his voice, you could feel that state of nervousness that the situation in which you were involved had caused him.

"Save your life," you answered, snorting and taking all the air you could to regain the strength that you were gradually exerting to win the fight in which you had gotten involved with the sailor.

You felt the sweat trickling down your forehead, encrusting your brows to prevent the drops from falling into your eyes, while your calloused hands gripped the handle of your short sword, which, being more than a decade old, had been the only weapon you had. It had truly given you the confidence to take on some of the most feared pirates in the Caribbean and the stormiest seas in the world. The adrenaline had been the icing on your little cake because, although you had started to run like a rag through the thick ropes between the two ships, you had not realized how serious the situation was until you had seen the father of Will Turner, already eaten away by the curse of the octopus man, trying to attack the man who, from an early age, had made your heart beat a thousand per hour; James could be many things, he had even disappointed you greatly when he had given the heart of David Jones to the disgusting aristocrat who had martyred pirate minds so much, but the one who backed down and thought better about his actions to try to amend his mistakes, was what truly he impressed you and made you act on his behalf.

The fact that you had come between him and death had been a mere matter of luck and the work of your badly wounded heart.

The simple fact of remembering the brief kiss that he and Elizabeth had shared made you draw more strength from yourself to be able to separate the sailor from you, being able to free your sword from the prison that had been the enormous wooden stake, causing the pirate took a couple of steps back and there was a small space between you. A sigh left your lips, but you quickly felt the lack of air present when you saw yourself surrounded by several pirates belonging to Jones's crew.

"Back to back, James," you ordered seriously and in a lower tone than usual, feeling a soft weight on your back after a few seconds. "I can't believe I am going to die like this."

"I still don't understand how you got here," the admiral muttered as he exchanged glances with the monsters who were the Dutchman's crew. "At what point did you think it was a good idea to follow Elizabeth or cross that stretch of sea to come here? You have condemned yourself to certain death."

But, what James was not aware of, was that Jones always left a survivor.

"It seemed like a good idea to me the moment I found out she'd been captured," you explained. "She might have been already dead but, knowing that you were in a certain way in charge of the Dutchman, I knew that you would protect her and avoid such a cruel fate."

Norrington couldn't help but frown at your words for, while they were sweet because of the obvious feeling he harboured for Miss Swann, they had come out of your mouth as if you had tasted the most disgusting morsel in the whole world and, it was not to be least, because the love triangle that had formed between the three had been so notorious that even Jack Sparrow had joked with you about it and Elizabeth had not tried anything more than to guide James towards you to see if he could see your sweet and friendly interior. You had tried, and you had not won the battle to win James's heart and, like a good loser, you had accepted defeat at the hands of the blonde.

"And was it worth it?" Norrington questioned. "She made it out alive and now we're stuck against a rock and a hard place."

"It was completely worth it, Commodore," you stated with a certain mockery, smiling slyly and leaning slightly forward to prepare yourself for the attack. "You're still alive, so it's been worth something to get here."

James wanted to correct the title with which you had mentioned him, but it was the sudden presence of the captain of the pirate ship that made both of you completely stunned. There wasn't much surprise on the admiral's part, but you couldn't help but smile at Jones as soon as you saw him appear due to the nerves you felt, well, with the surprise and how intimidated you were to finally meet that legendary pirate, you face was distorted until making a grimace of happiness that was too strange for those present; for a moment they had thought that he could have given you some type of cerebral infarction and for that reason, you had shown yourself that way.

"You're smiling?" Norrington questioned in surprise. "Have you lost your mind?"

"Don't blame me," you answered, still smiling, "it's because of my nerves."

"Your reaction is fascinating to me," the captain commented, moving closer to you until his huge body covered in marine elements was inches from yours. "Can someone explain to me why neither of them is dead?"

"Her," Bill stated, raising his barnacle-strewn hand to point at you, causing you to suddenly shrug to take the blame that he hadn't done his job properly. "She has crossed through the ropes and prevented me from following your orders, our Captain."

David Jones's face resolutely showed a look of confusion, perhaps fused with irritation, and he didn't hesitate long before meeting your gaze with his, trying to search deep within you for the reason why you would commit such a heroic act when one pirate would have let another die; if you had been like him, perhaps you would have helped Elizabeth to have someone on your side, but he did not understand why you had prevented the death of Norrington, one of the main enemies of the pirates.

The half-animal man bent down to be at your height and to be able to make eye contact with your flashing eyes that, illuminated by nerves and anger, did not match the bright smile you showed him, in which your teeth were the main character. Perhaps, he did not fully understand why you acted, but it was not until you unconsciously moved your right hand towards the admiral so that he would remain still in his position that he understood the desires that had led you to act that way.

"Love, huh?" Jones spoke, confusing his entire crew and causing your smile to begin to diminish until your lips were completely united forming a straight line and thus a serious grimace was shown on your face.

James, at that moment, felt upset because, despite having heard the captain's words, he did not understand their meaning. He didn't know what he meant by what he said and it wasn't until he noticed how his body slowly relaxed little by little that the pieces of the huge puzzle that had been forming in his mind didn't fit together.

The two of you had known each other since before he travelled to Port Royal with Governor Swann and his young daughter, you had found him interesting and had too much fun bothering him, so you quickly saw yourself as number one on his list of pirates to capture. Your slippery skills had gotten you off the gallows more times than he cared to remember, and you had always taken something of his with you that, while not of much use, caused him a great deal of irritation. Of course, once he became a commodore and was involved in the adventures of Jack Sparrow, he had much more contact with you when he was forced to work with pirates to rescue his beloved Elizabeth, which greatly increased your teasing and affection for him. to this day.

In a second he managed to understand that your taunts, your little plundering in England and Port Royal, together with your inconsiderate taunts towards him and the British army, were nothing more than a way to get his attention and be with him. That had been one of your ways of making him understand that you loved him. Your kindness when he was part of the crew of the Black Pearl, how you had gone to the trouble to feed him properly and detox from the rum, as well as taking care of his hygiene when no one else had seemed interested in it even if it stank the whole ship, made him see that all that was what you could offer him if at some point you declared yourself. It had been a pity not to have made sure of it beforehand because, as much as it hurt him to tell you now, it was too late for it and not precisely because death was an inch away from both of them.

But because his heart already belonged to another woman.

"Are you so surprised to meet a pirate in love?" you asked defensively, frowning and gripping the sword handle tightly. "I seem to remember that you had the same feeling for a woman that caused you to tear out your heart."

"I'm not going to deny the obvious, my dear," he said mockingly, straightening up so he could look at the admiral. "But he didn't expect it to be a sentiment that could be evoked towards a Royal Navy Admiral, much less if he works for the East India Company."

"It's not a matter of choosing the person," you murmured, sighing. "I wish we could choose who to fall in love with to avoid suffering, don't you think, captain?"

The tone with which you had addressed him, spitting out his title as if it were disgusting, ended up irritating him.

"Are your feelings unrequited?" He questioned, shifting his gaze to the man who was behind you and who seemed so shocked that he seemed to have suffered some kind of shock that had prevented even the movement of his eyes, causing the simple look they directed was enough for Jones. "He doesn't love you, and that's why you've come to my ship, to take his place in my crew."

"I perfectly remember that your crew member's decision was not that," you mentioned. You always leave a survivor, don't you? Asked. "Let him go and I'll take his place."

Suddenly, a strong hand on your shoulder made you take a couple of steps back until you were next to Norrington, who with his eyes seemed to ask for one last moment before the final decision was made. Your eyes met and, although it was obvious that you did not need words to communicate, it was obvious the discussion wanted to start with your sudden courage.

"Are you crazy?" He asked seriously, gently squeezing your shoulder. "You can not do that."

"Why not James?" You questioned back, surprising him by the sudden use of his name for the first time. "I have nothing to hold on to in this life and you still have so much to live for."

"What life am I going to have now?" he questioned. "I will never be forgiven for all the crimes I have committed, and while a pardon will not absolve me of them, at least you could continue your life calmly as if nothing had happened."

"If you die, don't hesitate to think that he would fight against everyone present to avenge you," you indicated, sighing one last time before surreptitiously placing your real eight in the pocket of his vest. "I love you and seeing you die would be my downfall, respect at least my last wish."

"James!"

Elizabeth's deafening scream made the name turn around, panicking at the thought that something bad was happening to him, and it was then that you decided to push him overboard so that he would have a chance to escape so that he could speak for you in that great meeting in which the pirate lords would be the protagonists and thus ensure that the pirates could live in peace and harmony after joining forces and defeating Lord Beckett.

James, who fell from a considerable height, plunged into the water once he had been pushed into it, emerging from the turbulent waters to find himself in the worst scene he could imagine in his entire life. Before he would have tried by all means to kill you, put a rope around your neck and end the suffering that pirates like you caused in the population, but now he felt a huge wave of nausea when he watched your body being mercilessly impaled with your sword; the only thing that the admiral could hear in the background was the scream of Elizabeth who, terrified by the scene that was happening before her, had not been able to do anything but scream your name with sadness and anger.

Norrington watched as the huge figure of Jones seemed to approach the edge of his great ship and, unceremoniously lifting your body to the outside of the ship, drew your sword, causing you to fall into the sea like a rag doll, just as he had done it a couple of seconds ago. Fortunately, or unfortunately, you had fallen relatively close to him, so he quickly submerged himself in the water in search of your body to be able to rescue it and to be able to heal the wounds that the bloodthirsty pirate had caused you, who was surely laughing at his cowardly feat.

You found yourself semi-conscious and, although you tried to move your arms and legs in search of propelling your body towards the surface to look for air, you found that they did not respond because of the great loss of blood that you were suffering at times. You did not make sure of the huge wound that was in your belly, somehow the seawater managed to mitigate the pain you felt, and it wasn't until you spotted a dark figure trying to approach you that you finally remembered the reason you were sinking into the sea.

Your beloved James Norrington would live, perhaps not a dream life, but one full of love and adventure that would not have any element sad enough to destroy his good person of him.

A slight spasm ran through your body and you stopped thinking about the moment you felt a strong burning in your belly, although that stinging was unbearable, you knew that it would never compare to the pain of your broken heart.

[wyrmfedgrave]

Pics: Republikkkan lies.

1. If espionage is so important for the extreme Reich, why haven't they gone after The Big Orange Rump for selling out our national secrets?

Did any of their billion dollar payments (from foreign enemies) trickle down to your blood-stained hands?

I'm betting nothing did...

Not even change for a dollar.

2. This is why minorities don't vote for your Party.

Rather than trying to re-enslave folks, you should have tried to uplift the whole country...

But, your heart doesn't worry about the welfare of others - right?

It's all about your access to power, sex & money - right?

Is this why you surround yourself with soulless, yes-folk?

People who are only interested in their own dreams of power & money...

Folk that stab you in the back when you fire them - or, leave them to take the fall for you...

You're hurting your own Party about as much as you wish you could hurt the real Law & Order Party - the Democrats.

3. This is what the U.S. will look like under Putin's rule.

But, you don't care about that.

Instead, you've surrounded yourself with traitors - hoping so to be safe.

Traitors forever together - right?

You're forgetting that you've had to 'buy' so many of them to your side.

That's makes them dangerous - when Putin has no more need of you...

You didn't think that he'd actually let you live as some kind of overlord?

Your own 'popularity' would mark you out to be a possible challenger to his powerbase.

That's something he won't tolerate...

4. As for the billionaires that bought your spiel, if they can buy your help - they can buy anybody.

You'll have to be wary of anyone who becomes more popular than you with these corporate 'barons.'

They're so 'money conscious' that they'll always be on the lookout for someone who costs them less...

5. As for the white folk that follow you blindly, they don't understand their future use in your dystopia.

While minorities & Democrats will be fighting for their freedoms, poor white folk will have to serve as cannon fodder for your new, privileged Nazi leaders.

Some of you are even looking forward to a new Civil War.

Hoping to re-ignite the self esteem of your Aryan hate & jealousy of others.

But, you're just disposable toys that couldn't even kill the Vice-President.

All you did that January day was to become marked folk. Liable for your actions - just as you thought you had gotten away, Scott free...

So, how many of you were actually pardoned by tRump?

Without, that is, having to pay for the 'favor.'

6. So, how many of you have lived in a totalitarian nation?

Not many I'd bet.

It's not like living in the U.K. - that's a constitutional monarchy. You still have rights.

I'm talking about China, Russia or North Korea...

In these countries, everyone lives in fear. Especially those in power.

Any act, no matter how innocent, can be your last.

Anyone can be picked up by the Secret Police.

And, you have no real legal protect- ions against false arrest.

Nobody has a totally safe life.

7. We should all be working together to fight against the real problems of our times.

Things like climate change, solar eruptions & meteor strikes - for God's sake!!

"Think of your children. They're the ones who will suffer thru a hellish future...

I know the American political system is capitalistic & doesn't really care - much - about relieving poverty or easing medical assistance.

But, you still have access to better personal freedoms than in any known totalitarian state.

Banana republics are places where there's no question that you live in an oppressive & invaded land.

Closed countries that good people are dying to leave...

What does it take for you to see the truth?

Aren't you a good person?

Aren't you worthy of better treat- ment?

Let me know...

[veale2006-blog]

The Truth About Martin Luther King, Jr. AKA Michael King

YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" ALWAYS SEEK THE TRUTH NO MATTER WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES MAY BE!!! LONG READ BUT WORTH IT!

January 16, 2023 In November of 2017, President Trump instructed the National Archives to release hundreds of previously-sealed documents which pertained to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Included among these documents were two FBI files which, curiously enough, have little to do with the Kennedy assassination but could have great bearing on the current struggles of the Dissident Right. In Part 1 of this series, we covered the May 1967 FBI report entitled “Racial Violence Potential in the United States This Summer.”

Now I will discuss the second document, “Martin Luther King, Jr., an Analysis,” which was dated March 12, 1968, just three weeks before King’s assassination.

It always hurts to see one’s icons destroyed. Those icons are really what link a person to a greater humanity and whatever lies beyond it. It’s as if through an icon a person can channel an identity which signifies something much greater than himself. Icons can pull people into their orbits and inspire love and awe. People derive meaning and self-worth through them. Icons can also compete. Different groups may share an icon, or their incompatible icons may prevent them from coexisting. But in all cases, serious espionage prostrate themselves before their icons. It’s sort of like kissing the ring of a mafia boss. It’s done for protection. If you’re going to get to me, first you have to get through him.

In releasing the FBI’s 20-page analysis of Martin Luther King. The information in it is quite damning, and it hits King’s legacy from several directions. If people on the Right take up where this document left off by internalizing the document and by going on the offensive with it against the Left, King’s potency as an icon will be greatly reduced. It sort of reminds me of how Sean Hannity would often mention Chappaquiddick whenever the topic of Ted Kennedy came up on his show. It was his way of shaming his opponents for supporting an icon that was not only all too human, but at times even less than that.

For students of the Civil Rights Movement, the FBI’s analysis may not reveal very much new information about King (although there is some). King’s heyday is still well within living memory, and contemporaneous knowledge and rumor surrounding the man has had a way of trickling up to the present day, especially within conservative and rightist circles. The major knocks against him are that he plagiarized his doctoral thesis in systematic theology at Boston University in the mid-1950s, that he frequently engaged in extramarital sex, and that he was closely linked to the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). The FBI file addresses these last two issues, in some cases down to niggling detail, and leads one to conclude that Martin Luther King was little more than a sex addict and a shill for the Communist Party.

The sexual indiscretions harm King’s legacy, of course, but in the near-fifty years since his death, King’s friends and admirers have successfully whitewashed a good deal of it. Have a look at this Wikipedia article, which I believe sticks to the leftist party line on King. In the section entitled “Adultery,” the article’s authors and their various sources refer blandly to King’s “affairs,” “liaisons,” “infidelities,” and (best of all) “incidental couplings.” King colleague and eventual successor at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Ralph Abernathy wrote of King’s “weakness for women,” and claimed he had a “difficult time with temptation.” Another writer describes King’s promiscuity as “a form of anxiety reduction” which caused him a great deal of “painful and at times overwhelming guilt.”

The whitewashing of King’s prodigious sexual appetites goes on to this day. For example, CNN called the document’s frank disclosures of King’s conduct as “insinuations and assertions about King’s personal life” and describes King’s behavior as “extramarital affairs and other sexual improprieties.” CNN then quotes the current director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute who accuses the authors of the document of attempting to “damage Martin Luther King’s reputation.”

So, basically, in the eyes of the Left, Martin Luther King, Jr. is a victim who is as innocent as he could possibly be and still be guilty. Given the Left’s overall tolerance of sexual promiscuity and deviancy, this means he’s not really guilty at all. At least not until the National Archives releases the FBI surveillance tapes and transcripts to the public in 2027.

So what did the FBI disclose? In the report’s final section, entitled “King’s Personal Conduct,” it states that in February 1968, while running a “workshop” on urban leadership in Miami, King hired prostitutes with funds from the Ford Foundation. He then engaged in binge drinking and group sex acts which the FBI describes as “deviating from the normal.” The FBI also relates how King participated in another “drunken sex orgy” in Washington, DC back in 1964. The sex acts were both “natural and unnatural” according to the FBI and were performed “for the entertainment of onlookers.”

In the 1960s, this was the pattern for King, who, according to the FBI, “has continued to carry on his sexual aberrations secretly while holding himself out to public view as a moral leader of religious conviction.”

As for bombshells in the sexual improprieties department, the file reveals that King may have sired a baby girl out of wedlock with the wife of a “prominent Negro dentist in Los Angeles.” He also reportedly had sexual relations with folk singer Joan Baez.

Note how King’s defenders refer to all this as King’s “personal life” or, when forced to, admit his excesses only in the most anodyne terms, such as “affairs.” No, King didn't just have “affairs.” He had sex parties.

Furthermore, the FBI analysis did not infringe upon King’s “personal life” because what King did wasn't merely personal. What one does in the bedroom with one’s spouse or significant other is “personal.” I’ll even grant that what one does during a discreet tryst in a hotel room can also be construed as “personal.” Drunken orgies, on the other hand, especially those involving prostitutes and paid for by grant money, cannot possibly be considered “personal.” No, such behavior is quite public — not to mention hypocritical — when engaged in by a public figure who dedicates his life to holding his nation up to unrealistically high moral standards.

Even more inflammatory about the FBI report — although reported on less since its release — is its assertion that King often acted at the behest of his communist puppet masters. Where the two pages covering King’s sexual misconduct challenge his high moral standing as a Civil Rights Era icon, the ten or so pages covering his communist activities bluntly call into question his intellectual capacities as a leader of men. Unsurprisingly, the name Stanley Levison appears many times in the document. Levison was a Jewish attorney and “shrewd, dedicated communist” who acted for many years as King’s “Assistant Chief” and who also served as a clandestine fund-raiser for the CPUSA. The FBI claims that King often looked to Levison for instruction and approval before acting, and that Levison used King to further the communist agenda (which by the 1960s included linking the so-called “Negro people’s freedom movement” with anti-Vietnam War effort).

Levison gravitated to Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1956. He has been as dedicated in his support of King as he has been in advancing communist goals. He has actively involved himself in fund-raising drives for King, served as his legal counsel in certain matters, suggested speech material for him, discussed with King demonstrations in which King was involved, guided him in regard to acceptance or rejection of various public appearances and speaking commitments, and helped him with matters related to articles and books King has prepared.

According to the FBI, Levison also ghostwrote a chapter in King’s book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?. Most damning, however, is the FBI’s assertion that Levison considered King a “slow thinker” and insisted that he never issue statements without first seeking approval from him (Levison) or his other advisors.

Levison also served as the SCLC’s assistant treasurer in the early 1960s.

Also according to the FBI, Levison and other sources within the CPUSA saw King as a committed Marxist-Leninist who for obvious reasons had to keep this fact under wraps. But his ties to communism, the FBI shows, were quite clear. One of King’s closest advisors, Clarence Jones, married the communist daughter of publisher William H. Norton. Other communist colleagues of King included Hunter Pitts O’Dell, Lawrence Reddick, Bayard Rustin, Cordy Vivian, Randolph Blackwell, and Harry Wachtel.

Wachtel and Rustin in particular acted as behind-the-scenes players who attempted to leverage King’s status as a Nobel Peace Prize winner in order to “inject King into the Vietnam issue” and ultimately conceded victory the Vietcong. But King, who apparently knew little about international politics, was hardly suited for the job.

When a newspaper asked him twelve questions on his position on Vietnam, King forwarded the questions to Levison. Further, after the bombing of North Vietnam in 1966, the media was pressuring King for a response.

He had to check with Levison and Rustin before giving one. As the FBI document shows, these were not isolated incidents. Martin Luther King, Jr. frequently sought counsel and instruction from his advisors before acting, especially his Jewish ones, Wachtel and Levison. Also, in spite of denying any communist ties, his positions and statements rarely wavered far from the official platform of the CPUSA.

The fact that two of King’s most prominent advisors were Jews should come as a surprise to no one. Benjamin Ginsburg, in his indispensable work The Fatal Embrace shows exactly how Jewed-up the Civil Rights Movement really was:

Jewish organizations also worked closely with civil rights groups during the 1960s in their struggles on behalf of voting tights and for the desegregation of public facilities and accommodations. Jewish contributors provided a substantial share of the funding for such civil rights groups as the NAACP and CORE. Jewish attorneys were at the forefront of the legal offensive against the American apartheid system.

Stanley Levinson , a longtime official and fund-raiser for the American Jewish Congress, became Martin Luther King’s chief aide and advisor, having previously served as a major fund-raiser for Bayard Rustin. Harry Wachtel was a major legal advisor and fundraiser for the SCLC. Levison and Wachtel were often called King’s twin Jewish lawyers. Jack Greenberg, head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was the most important single civil rights lawyer in the United States. Jews comprised a large segment — perhaps one-third of the Whites who participated in civil rights marches and protests in the South during the 1960s.

The information presented in “Martin Luther King, Jr., an Analysis” only supports Ginsburg’s points as well as the conviction that Martin Luther King acted often as a tool for the Communist Party.

There is one relatively minor finding in the FBI report which should be mentioned before concluding.

Apparently, on top of being a sex fiend and covert communist, Martin Luther King and his associates at the SCLC were swindling money from the US government. In a short section entitled “A Tax Dodge” the FBI states that The SCLC set up Foundations to serve as tax exempt organizations that would solicit funds for the SCLC. To this end, the American Foundation on Nonviolence of New York City, and the Southern Christian Leadership Foundation of Chicago, Illinois, were established. As money is needed by the SCLC, Harry Wachtel reportedly funnels the money from the American Foundation on Nonviolence to the SCLC.

I have no idea if this was common knowledge beforehand, but it was certainly a new one for me.

As an icon of the Left, Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered today in two major ways: as a paragon of the egalitarian ethos championed by current Western elites, and as proof of the moral superiority of the Left over the Right. Using King, the Left can justify violence against its enemies simply by claiming that King’s nonviolent approach has been proven to fail. Any racial disparities in the years following the Civil Rights Movement can be seen as proof of this. The fact that King was assassinated offers proof as well. Because King failed to reach the Promised Land via nonviolence, the only tactic remaining for the Left is, of course, violence. This is essentially why Martin Luther King will never die in a multiracial society: as a weapon he’s too useful.

By mentioning these two FBI reports in public discourse as often as possible, people on the Right now have a handy weapon of their own. And since these reports have the imprimatur of none other than the President of the United States on them, they cannot be ignored. In the past, bringing up compromising information on King could be dismissed as racist sniping or rumor-mongering. Now, it cannot. Now it must be part of the mainstream. Now it must be used to counter the Leftist control of our nation and culture. For no other reason than because it can.

Check these videos out! Documentary Marxist Lucifer King full movie on MLK Martin Luther King Jr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-B1SpcOkTs

The Truth of Martin Luther King https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM4biT3Na30

Do the research. Connect the dots. Draw your own conclusions. I have drawn mines.

[xceruleanrosesx]

It was weird, talking to Le Blanc with his colleague's face. He knew it was him, but hearing him flirt back put things into perspective. He could change his face to whoever he wanted, even Vin. Oh, how odd that would be. The vampire listened to him, and though the Spy's eyes were looking up at the sky, he was not. He was fixed on the side of his face as he looked up. Indeed, poetry spilled forth like a trickled in a fountain, the effects of its ripples making his heart react in his chest. Mm...yes. Quite so. The doors to RED base were finally in view, and in a few yards, they'd be there. Of course, he did have some anxiety about bringing him in his base, for they ran the risk of running into the very person he was disguised as. Vin would open the door for him to step through first, but he warned him before he could do so. "Ah, I know you are a spy and you've done this before, but just...stay close to me. It's not far of a walk, but I'd rather not run into any of my teammates. They should all be making their way to the showers, so we should be fine."

Laurent caught his eyes for a second, but he didn't mention anything. It was probably just weird for Vinzenz to see and hear him practicing his craft. As they got to the doors, he simply smirked at the other man's worry, reaching down to his wrist and activating the cloak and dagger, disappearing in a puff of smoke. Since he didn't smoke cigarettes, he didn't have that distinct smell to him that a lot of spies had. In fact, the only real scent he carried was the smell of his cologne. It was some kind of mix of cedar firewood and mint. A very clean and homey scent. Once he was completely out of view, he leaned in and whispered.

"I am far more equipped for espionage than you seem to think, monsieur." He spoke softly, the words rolling off of his tongue easily. Spooking people when he was invisible was, admittedly, one of his favorite past-times. To see them jump and frantically look around always had him suppressing a laugh.

[x] @xceruleanrosesx

It had been a grueling day but their hard work and effort was paying off. RED managed to push BLU back, but that didn't come without numerous trips through respawn. So far, Vin had been greeted with a rocket upon leaving the locker room, walked into a sticky bomb trap, got mowed down by the enemy Heavy and their Medic, got blasted into the face twice by a Scout, and triggered a sentry nest. To say he was tired of dying was a bit of an understatement. He was tired of the day. He wanted the clock to run out and hear that blasted woman's voice on the loudspeaker which side one so they could leave.

That is, until he caught sight of a familiar jacket dashing away. Leaning against the wall in the shade, the Medic glanced at his occupied teammates discussing where they were going to ambush next. They wouldn't miss him too much, right? He didn't give it much thought and slipped away.

The Spy had run far and hard enough that, when he ducked into a dilapidated building, he was bent over, trying to catch his breath. As he panted, he must not have heard his footsteps approaching the dirt, and lo and behold, claws picked at his mask and pushed it up just slightly, but not enough to expose his whole face. Red lips brushed against his jaw, not quite a kiss, but if he turned his head, their lips would meet. Obviously catching the Frenchman off guard, Vin backed off with a devious smirk.

"Guten Tag, Liebe! Couldn't resist saying 'hello!'" He laughed as he scuttled away, in the hopes that he'd chase him down.

[ny-nymeria]

Say My Name

a.n.: loid forger x reader. a short scene I couldn't get out of my head.

t.w.: smut, unprotected sex, name kink (is that a thing?), swearing. minors, do not interact.

s.n.: Twilight pays a visit to the only person who knows his real name.

“I’ve missed you,”

Those where the first words he’d spoken since arriving by your bedside. Tucked away behind the curtain, he hid from the glowing moonlight by the veil, the illumination trickled in as silently as he did and once he stepped out of the shadows it revealed his broad shoulders—once he peeled off the plain white t from up and over the top of his golden crowned head.

He went by the codename Twilight, which felt so fitting because he and you would spend hours into the night in each other’s company until the soft dim light of the rising sun would begin to appear.

“I’ve missed you too.”

Those were the only words the two of you exchanged before clothing stripped down to the floorboards so that the two of you could be bare in each other’s embrace, quietly making up the seconds spent apart. Collectively knowing how easy it was to be so captivated by each other so much so that words would easily cause the rapture of hearts.

No other name could capture the identity of who this man was to you. For the sake of tonight, he was no other name but your lover.

“Say my name,”

A smile dawned on your face at his request.

“Mr. Forger—“

He bucked his hips into yours out of rebellion, his long cock sunk deeper into your tight pussy. You inhaled sharply, feeling his thumb drag across your bottom lip only to hold your jaw firmly with it and his index finger pressed across your blushed cheek.

“Stop teasing,” as low as his voice was he couldn’t hide the subtle desperation in his voice. “My real name,”

You spoke his name in the shallow of his ear and yet it was carved so deeply onto his heart, the name that nobody knew except, of course, you— the name he told himself he had abandoned years ago. Once it was uttered by your sweet lips, his mind instantly descended down into Hades.

He was a spy, not Hercules, after all.

You stifled another whine into his shoulder after he drew another orgasm out of you swiftly with his deep strokes, drawing circles with his hips into yours while his fingers ran over your clit over and over.

Fuck, the man had stamina.

“Fuck,” was the only word he could recite and it sounded so sweet when it passed through his lips in an exhale, pebbling the nipple he would suckle on with cool air, gripping the bedsheets to ground him as you squeezed around him.

You said his name again but this time it ghost his neck and chin, greeted once more by his lips into a savory kiss that left each other breathlessly moaning into the other’s mouth, clawing to steal breaths.

“I’m close,”

Neither of you wanted this to end despite knowing that the duty and disposition of espionage was always waiting for you to come back into the shadows.

Until your mutual missions were done, until each country was safe, you’d agreed to put your mutual pinning aside.

But that didn’t mean that neither of you could see each other from time to time.

His hands found the plush sides of your hips and without removing himself pulled you up and into his lap, holding you closer with your legs straddled and bound around his strong waist. Your arms wrap around his neck as he thrusted himself up and into you, keeping a rigorous pace for just a few more fleeting moments until you could feel his body tremble, pouring himself inside of you while making stuttered thrusts to take you into the clouds with him, his bottom lip caught between his teeth trying to catch his breath while a shiver had settled across your skin from goosebumps caused by your high. He peppered kisses over your collarbone and shoulders, chanting your name, your real name, into prayers across dew-dropped skin.

He adored you as much as the earth revolves around the sun. You’d joke with him that he had flown too close to the sun, always at risk of melting his wings from the heights he’d risk to see you, the lengths he took to be with you despite the danger of his current mission. It was so unlike him; seeing him break from his usual stoic facade to give you a playful pout from you bruising his ego— it was too adorable to not make fun at the top spy. 

“‘To die by your side would be a heavenly place to die,’” 

The both of you laid together in bed, silently laughing at The Smiths reference he chose to make while he held you in his arms until the sun would soon rise; for staying for too long would endanger the both of you, He drew circles with his fingers into your back imagining himself instead drawing a plan to steal you away from this god forsaken country. 

“The pleasure, the privilege is mine,”

He sighed longingly, his hands cupping your face gently before planting a long, loving kiss. 

“I’ll see you again soon, my love.” 

You wondered how his voice could sound so reassuring and yet so sad. You whispered his name quietly again before burying your head in his chest. 

Once again it felt like the sky had fallen. 

“See you soon, Twilight.” 

***Comments, reblogs and feedback appreciated <3

Read my other Loid piece here:

[hamsterclaw]

Berlin

My contribution to the Autumn Leaves collab hosted by the lovely Justine @bangtansmauyeondan. Banner by the very talented Dani @persphonesorchid.

Hoseok and you have tried to make it work but you can't. And yet you can't be without each other either.

Pairing: Hoseok x F! reader

Genre: Espionage AU, smut, angst

Rating: 18+

Word count: 3.9k

Warnings: Sexually explicit scenes, swearing, mentions of blood and guns

His lips are shaped like a heart and he looks like he’s pouting even when he’s just thinking, like he is now.

You straighten out the furl in the collar of his jacket. He stops moving for a moment to help you.

The afternoon sun is fading, light catching his long eyelashes, revealing the brown of his eyes, casting his skin in golden tones.

Why is he so beautiful even now, when you should hate him?

‘Done?’ he asks, and you realise you’re just staring at him.

Before, he would never have wanted to move you along from looking at him.

Before, he’d actively sought your attention.

Before Athens, and Basel, and the series of unfortunate events that was Verona.

You were jokers to even consider dating.

Part of you wishes you’d gone straight to fucking instead.

But no, romantic Hoseok had said he wanted to do things the right way.

You two, of all people, should know there’s no right way, not when you spend your days carrying out morally dubious tasks in the interests of political stability.

Morally dubious? Is that the euphemism for criminal these days?

Hoseok nudges you, a little harder than he has to.

‘Two men, crossing in front. I’ll meet you at the clocktower, Alexanderplatz.’

‘Half an hour,’ you agree. The bigger of the two men eyes you, and gracefully, Hoseok cuts in front of you, taking the route you’d intended to take, and the big man with him.

You weave your way through the crowds of people. The cold burns your lungs, the icy wind makes your eyes tear up.

Even worse, you feel a trickle of rain on your skin.

You love Berlin, but you hate Berlin in October.

You put your hood up and check on your tail.

It was really Hoseok and his shenanigans in Verona that had made you both a target of one of the most powerful arms dealers in Italy.

Sometimes you wonder if you’d sided with the wrong team working for Interpol.

Because the other side always seems to have bigger goddamn guns.

Sighing, you duck into an alley. It’s lazy, you know, but you have no desire to flee through Berlin when you could just disarm your tail and have enough time for a coffee before meeting Hoseok.

Your supervisor, Yoongi’s voice pops into your head, and belatedly you remember him reminding you that you have two strikes left.

You also remember railing against the impropriety of using sports metaphors to describe how close you are to being put on enforced leave.

Damn it.

You slip into the kitchens of a bistro, smiling apologetically at the staff as you make your way through.

You take a moment to get your bearings at the front of the restaurant and re-orientate.

There’s no way you’re going to let Hoseok beat you to Alexanderplatz. Even if you have to forego coffee.

You dip down into the subway and shed your coat, handing it to a busker. Perhaps they’ll get to enjoy the shearling lining more than you’ve had a chance to.

You’re five minutes from Alexanderplatz. You duck into a coffee shop and order two coffees, keeping an eye out for your allocated follower.

He’s nowhere to be seen.

You swipe a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from a table and get your coffees to go.

You turn up at the allocated meeting point with time to spare.

Hoseok arrives a full minute after you, and you try to keep the smugness out of your expression.

‘Coffee?’ you ask.

Hoseok accepts, and you notice his knuckles are cut and bruised.

‘Oh, I didn’t realise we were resorting to brute violence to get away,’ you say, conveniently leaving out that you’d considered the same.

‘He made a rude comment about your ass, actually,’ Hoseok remarks.

‘How chivalrous of you to defend me,’ you return.

‘I actually agreed with him,’ Hoseok says, mildly.

You’re hurt, but you know better than to let it show. Apparently your skin is still thin when it comes to Hoseok.

‘He said, an ass like yours is wasted on menial espionage.’

‘He’s a gentleman and a scholar,’ you say. You sip your coffee and shiver a little.

‘Where’s your coat?’ Hoseok asks.

‘Gave it to the needy,’ you reply.

‘It’s too cold to be out there without one,’ Hoseok says, frowning.

‘Are you volunteering to take me shopping, Hoseok?’ you ask.

He doesn’t smile.

Around you, the sun’s setting, giving way to the artificial brightness of early night.

You finish your coffee. ‘Well, as much as I always enjoy our little chats, I have a man in Vienna I have to meet.’

‘I’m heading that way myself,’ Hoseok says, falling into step beside you.

You get adjoining seats on the train.

There’s barely anyone else in your carriage.

You look out at the stretches of dark, the cityscape giving way to forest.

You’d rather be looking at Hoseok and his heart-shaped mouth.

You catch him staring at you.

‘What happened to that velvet dress you were wearing that night?’ Hoseok asks.

You know exactly which dress he’s talking about.

He’d peeled it off you with his teeth, used the straps to bind your hands together and had made you cum twice before he let you loose.

Or was it thrice? You feel an answering thrill in your bones at the memory of it.

You shrug. ‘Probably the same thing that happened to your velvet tux,’ you reply.

The tux you’d blown him in right after he’d made you cum twice. Thrice?

You stare at his hands. You want so badly to touch him.

‘Hobi,’ you say, suddenly, before you can stop yourself.

He waits, and you search his eyes for an inkling of how he feels.

You’ll take anything. Hell, at this point, you’ll take the hint of anything.

All you see is sadness.

Eventually, you fall asleep.

You wake outside Nuremberg, and he’s gone.

He’s left you his coat, another piece of him.

You think you’ll always want more.

***

Not for the first time, you rue the fact that you’ve never seen Hoseok’s real birth certificate, because you are convinced that his middle name is ‘Idiot.’

Jung Idiot Hoseok.

Hobi Idiot Jung.

You crouch against a low wall, watching as your once-lover strides confidently into the fray.

He almost manages to bluff it, you’ll give him that.

Unfortunately there aren’t many Interpol agents of Korean descent as ethereally beautiful as your beloved.

You’re not too worried until the AK-47s come out.

Damnit why do the other side always have better guns?

You run in and grab Hoseok.

He goes with you only to get you out of harm’s way.

Perhaps a part of him loves you as deeply as you love him?

No time for that now.

Hoseok, now leaning against a wall when he looks like he needs a stretcher, coughs a little blood away from you.

You stare in dismay at the blood on the breast of his new coat.

‘God damn you Hoseok,’ you swear, calling for help.

‘Just got this,’ he complains, breathing shallow, complexion ashen.

There’s a light rain falling, mixing with your tears as you wait for help.

‘You probably won’t die from this,’ you tell him, voice trembling.

‘Probably not,’ he agrees.

‘What’s your middle name? Is it ‘Idiot’?’ you ask.

His smile is wan. ‘Areum.’

You know immediately what he’s referring to.

‘Not a bad name,’ you say, cocking a brow at him. ‘It might have been a boy though.’

The sirens drown out what he says next.

***

It’s been two months since you left your love to be resuscitated and nursed back to health by capable strangers.

You know he left hospital after two weeks.

You know he’s recuperating somewhere.

Yoongi’s hinted that it’s somewhere close to you.

You look for him in the crowds of Oia even as you try and tell yourself you aren’t.

You’re on your third beer, lazy in the sun of your balcony. ‘Go on, Yoongi, just say it.’

You’re in the middle of a particularly delicate negotiation between two rival Greek families, but right now? You’ve got the night off and are trying to convince Yoongi to talk dirty to you in his astoundingly sexy voice.

‘Unprofessional,’ scolds Yoongi.

‘Ooh, I can go with that. Can you tell me I’m a bad girl?’

There’s a scuffling, then a yelp.

Then Jung Hoseok’s voice, smooth as silk.

‘You’re a bad girl, my love.’

You burst into tears.

***

You avoid the eyes of the men you’re serving in the private room. You’re not here to by eye-fucked by anyone unless they can give you what you’ve been instructed to get.

There’s a stir, a straightening of jackets, a general improvement of postures, and you assume this is where the fun begins.

To your delight, the newly arrived alpha of the pack is a woman. She eyes your cleavage and you shoot her a cheeky grin.

Behind her, a man prepared to die in his loyalty to her. Tall, stone-faced, impassive. You know the type.

Next to him, a familiar heart-shaped mouth, straight shoulders, and a height that fits against yours perfectly.

He doesn’t waste any time, patting the empty seat next to him invitingly.

You expect him to move the hand he’s carelessly left in the middle of the seat, but he doesn’t.

He squeezes your ass, and it’s better than a hug.

You’ve missed him so much.

You’re listening as discussions are had, loose plans are made, but really you’re mainly aware of Hoseok’s hand under your ass and the warmth of his body next to yours.

He hasn’t spoken to you directly at all apart from a brilliantly disinterested eyebrow raise when he asked your name for appearances.

Hoseok clasps your arm, leading you out of the club and into a waiting car.

He says nothing to you until the hotel door closes behind him.

‘There are hidden cameras in here,’ he says, lips so close to your ear you shiver with want. ‘Apart from in the bathroom.’

His lips graze your skin, teeth catching your earlobe.

‘Can you pretend not to love me?’

His words hurt but you want him anyway.

Hoseok shrugs off his jacket, tosses it at the floor to cushion your knees, and sits.

‘Go on, show me how much you’ve missed me,’ he says. His tongue pokes into his cheek.

To your surprise, when you unzip him, he’s already so hard he makes your mouth water.

His eyes darken as you curl your hand around him and lick a sloppy stripe up his cock.

‘You know how to do it better than that don’t you?’ he asks. He takes your hand, palm out, and spits on it.

You take him in your mouth. You’ve sucked his cock so many times by now that the slide is easy, the feel of him familiar.

You love the weight of him on your tongue, the push of him at the roof of your mouth.

Hoseok grips your shoulder, grunting as you swallow him down.

His other hand undoes the button on your blouse, cups the weight of your breast, thumb over your nipple.

You always just seem to fit his hand so well.

Your arousal is pooling between your legs, making you feel uncomfortably wet as you suck him.

Hoseok swears, loud, emphatic, then he’s pulling you off him, grip tight on your arm as he drags you to the bathroom.

‘Turns out I’m the one who can’t hide,’ he tells you, voice strained.

There’s not much talking after that, just his mouth on yours, kisses all over your face. He helps you onto the bathroom counter, lifts your skirt just enough to tug your panties off.

He lines himself up, waits until you look up at him, turned on and desperate.

You cup his face. ‘Hobi,’ you whisper.

‘I know, baby. I know,’ he soothes. He pushes into you then, letting you get used to the stretch of him, waiting until his arms are trembling with effort.

He’s holding you so tight you can barely breathe.

His rhythm is jerky, unlike him, but it’s enough. You keen with the pleasure of it as your orgasm hits, and you realise he’s cumming too, spurting against your walls, deep groan ripped from his chest.

‘You left me,’ he says, and it would sound accusing if he wasn’t still fully tangled up with you, hips braced between your thighs.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m sorry too,’ he says.

He smiles at you then, lips pulled into a smile that makes you long for him even though he’s still inside you.

He pats your hip. ‘Where’s your weapon?’

‘Hard to explain away,’ you say, shrugging.

Hoseok pales. ‘If I hadn’t been there – ‘

‘I would still have slept my way out of trouble.’

Your words are brutal, it seems brutal to compare what’s just happened between you with meaningless sex.

Hoseok slaps his gun into your palm, the same palm he spat in earlier.

‘I don’t have anywhere to put it,’ you tell him.

‘That’s not my fucking problem,’ he seethes. ‘You’re not walking out here without my gun or me, as protection.’

‘I’ll take the gun,’ you say, sullen.

Hoseok’s laughter is rusty, like he hasn’t laughed in a while. ‘Stop being a brat.’

‘I’ll attract more attention with a gun,’ you grumble.

Hoseok slips his jacket over your shoulders.

You don’t want to leave him.

‘Can I stay?’ you ask.

You know it’s a mistake as soon as the words leave your lips.

‘Y/N,’ he sighs.

You can’t look at him, it hurts too much.

You turn and leave his hotel room.

You leave his jacket and gun just outside his door.

They’re just more pieces of him, when you want all of him.

***

You’re outside the Blue Church in Bratislava, trying to catch your breath after running from the explosion.

If you end up dying here, you’re going to throw yourself into the Danube.

The deep slice in your side throbs like a son of a bitch, perhaps you can find a vet to stitch you up.

You would laugh if any of this was remotely funny.

You’ve lost your phone.

You wish you’d taken Hobi’s gun when he’d offered it to you.

You wish you’d taken Hobi when he’d offered himself to you.

The water seems so far away but you can just about see it.

You just need to keep walking.

***

Your new friend Jungkook is relentlessly friendly and kind, full of the goodness of the human spirit.

You want to show him how nasty the world can be and how much he’d like it but you keep holding back.

It’s not his fault he hasn’t yet seen the dark flipside of modern civilisation.

Jungkook frowns over the sparseness of your living room in Geneva.

‘Can we go shopping together?’ he asks.

He asks the same question every time.

The truth is, you don’t know if Geneva is for you.

You hadn’t bothered to get in touch with Yoongi, and by extension Hoseok, after Bratislava.

For all you know they think you’re dead.

For all you know they don’t care.

You think of the last time you saw Hoseok, how you’d practically begged him to let you stay.

How you’d left his gun and his jacket and how you’d immediately regretted it.

You want all of him, it’s true, but you’ve never said no to pieces of him before.

If that’s all he can offer you, can you make do?

You suspect the answer is yes.

You don’t think the answer’s the same for him.

Jungkook nudges you. ‘Come on we have to get ready for work.’

It’s funny how you fall back into things that are familiar.

You’re serving hors d oeuvres at some society do with some minor celebrities with Jungkook.

There’s a thrum of excitement through the air as the guest of honour arrives.

You lift your tray, and nearly drop it as he comes into view.

Dark hair, dark eyes, beautiful skin.

A dark grey suit, cut exquisitely.

If he were to open his mouth you know his voice would make you weak.

It’s Min motherfucking Yoongi.

He spots you just after you’ve spotted him.

You’re already walking towards him, tray held out.

He accepts a blini with a polite incline of his head, a flick of his eyes to an alcove.

You accept his invitation.

He waits until you reach him with two glasses of champagne.

‘So, you’ve done it,’ he says.

You look at him, confused.

‘You’ve finally broken Jung Hoseok.’

***

He doesn’t look broken to you, you think, as you watch Hoseok walk confidently into the room and greet a group of similarly confident and polished men.

Yoongi had told you that Hoseok had been distraught after you’d gone dark after Bratislava, two months ago.

He’d single-handedly taken down the Pitovci enclave in Lamac, who ironically had nothing to do with your disappearance.

He’d put out an alert on anyone who fit your description at hospitals, police stations, embassies.

Thankfully the alert hadn’t included vets.

The stitches had been a little coarse but you’ve healed well.

You’re turning to leave when Yoongi shakes his head.

‘No. You’re going to stay and show him how alive you are.’

‘He’ll kill me,’ you protest.

To be honest, wild horses couldn’t drag you away.

God, you’ve missed him so much.

You drink in the curve of his cheekbones as he smiles, the devastatingly sexy set of his jaw, the familiar tilt of his head.

Your vision blurs as your eyes fill with tears.

You realise he’s facing your way, and hurriedly, you dry your tears so you can see him better.

He looks like he’s seen a ghost.

‘He really did think you were dead,’ Yoongi murmurs. ‘It was all that blood.’

Hoseok’s coming towards you now, heedless of the way everyone he passes turns towards him,

Your almost husband, once upon a time, is still as beautiful as he ever was.

He reaches you, puts out a hand to cup your face.

His voice is raspy when he speaks.

‘I hope you know that I’m going to spank you silly for this little stunt you’ve pulled.’

‘Not even a hello?’ you ask. You can’t help it, your voice wobbles.

You just want him to hold you.

Yoongi sighs, impatient.

‘Oh,’ he says, voice heavy with significance. ‘Looks like my best living operative, Jung Hoseok, got caught in the crossfire at a mafia-linked assassination.’

‘Guess he really went off the rails after Y/N L/N’s unexpected death in Bratislava.’

Hoseok’s hand curls around your wrist, tight.

Yoongi leans close to you. ‘Good to see you’re alive, Y/N. I hate weddings, so please don’t invite me to yours.’

‘How about we name our firstborn child after you?’ Hoseok offers.

Yoongi says, straight-faced, ‘I bet he’ll be a handsome bastard.’

‘Will you be ok?’ you ask Yoongi.

Hoseok’s already putting his coat over your shoulders, curling his arm around you.

‘I’m not sticking around, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Yoongi replies.

He pulls out his gun and fires a single shot, at the ceiling.

You all get the hell out of there.

***

Jung Hoseok’s profile is a thing of beauty, you’ll never get tired of looking at him.

His teeth are sunk into his bottom lip as he undresses you, brow slightly furrowed.

You grab his hand as he grips your buttons.

‘I got a vet to sew me up last time, it’s not pretty,’ you warn him.

His eyes snap to yours, and his jaw clenches.

You’re worried those teeth in his lip are going to draw blood.

He tugs your silky blouse off, and stares at your new scar for so long you start to feel self-conscious about it.

Then his hands are on your hips, turning you over so smoothly it takes a moment for you to realise you’re across his lap, ass up.

His hand lifts your skirt up, exposing your ass, your panties.

His hand works your ass, curling over your flesh, squeezing so hard you yelp.

He sighs.

‘This,’ he says, voice calm, quiet, ‘is for letting me think you were dead for sixty four days.’

Your head turns just as his hand lands on your ass with a loud slap of open palm on skin.

‘Hobi!’ you cry, outraged.

You’re trying to scramble up, but he holds you tight.

‘This,’ he says, ‘is for not telling me you were in trouble.’

He pulls your thighs apart and spanks you again. He completely ignores your stinging flesh and runs his fingers over your cunt.

You clench helplessly as his fingers leave you.

‘Hobi,’ you cry again, and it’s more of a sob. Underneath your belly you can feel his cock hardening.

‘This,’ he says, ‘is for not taking my help when I fucking offered it to you.’

His third spank makes your panties flood.

You pant. ‘Hobi, Hobi, please.’

‘Please what?’ he asks, voice harsh.

‘I wanted to stay with you,’ you cry out. Tears are spilling out your eyes now, sliding down your cheeks.

Hoseok pulls you up to face him. ‘Then stay,’ he tells you, furious. ‘When have I ever told you no?’

You stare at him, eyes wide, until he pulls you close to kiss you.

‘I’ve tried living without you,’ he tells you. ‘It’s no good.’

You want to talk to him, but you want his lips on you.

Hoseok kisses a fevered trail across your jaw, down your neck, nipping at your skin as he goes.

‘Hobi,’ you say, and he stills.

‘I love hearing you say my name,’ he tells you. ‘Fuck, I didn’t think I’d hear it again.’

You’re frantic now, driven half-mad with the feel of his lips on you.

‘Hobi, get inside me,’ you tell him, spreading your legs for his hips.

Hoseok grunts, tugging his briefs off, slipping into you in one motion. He groans, deep in his chest as he bottoms out.

He fucks you hard, and you can’t tell if he’s angry still or if he’s upset.

His hand squeezes your ass, his other arm bracing himself by your head.

You shift your hips to meet his thrusts, and Hoseok swears.

‘I’m not going to last,’ he warns you.

‘So don’t,’ you taunt.

Hoseok laughs, darkly. ‘Don’t worry your pretty little troublemaking head, my love.’

He leans closer, biting your earlobe. ‘I’ll make sure you cum first.’

He does.

Afterward you’re curled in his arms.

He runs a hand across your bare ass.

‘So what do we do now?’

‘You promised Yoongi a child,’ you point out.

Hoseok grins. ‘I’m gonna need a minute before we can go again.’

‘I have minutes,’ you offer.

Hoseok leans across you, chain dangling from his collarbones as he reaches into the pocket of the jacket he tossed on the floor earlier.

He passes you a jewelry box.

You raise an eyebrow at him.

He shrugs. ‘I got it in Berlin.’

It’s a sparkly ring.

You snap the box shut.

Hoseok says, patiently, ‘If you want me to knock you up you’re going to need to marry me.’

‘Let me think about it,’ you say, teasing.

Hoseok laughs. ‘Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere.’

He frowns. ‘Neither are you.’

[bestworstcase]

back on the subject of what raven learned: i think it’s probably useful to start by considering what we know with certainty, which is what ozpin told team strq—in all likelihood, the exact same rundown rnjr got in v4-5.

thus:

1 - the gods from the myth of the two brothers are real, and that story is accurate in the essentials.

2 - there are four extraordinarily powerful relics, each representing one of the four gifts given to humanity by the gods, which—if used together—could change the world.

3 - we have an enemy called salem, who commands the grimm and wants to use the relics. it is imperative that we prevent her from doing so. the huntsmen academies exist to serve this purpose.

4 - the fairytale “the story of the seasons” is also true, and the maidens are real and still exist today.

5 - the four relics have been hidden away in special vaults, each of which can ONLY be opened by the power of a specific maiden. the maidens are therefore our first and most important line of defense against salem, and protecting the relics means that we must carefully safeguard the maidens to ensure their power never falls into salem’s hands.

6 - long ago, ozpin tried to stop salem and failed, so the gods cursed him to reincarnate over and over again until he could fix his mistake.

7 - we cannot tell anybody else about the relics, about the maidens, or about salem, because that would risk causing a panic, and that would cause chaos and bloodshed.

8 - salem is cunning; she works from the shadows to turn us against each other, uses other people to get what she wants, and leaves us pointing fingers at ourselves when it all falls apart. she seeks to divide us, and she’s frighteningly good at it.

so, raven hears all of this—maybe all at once, more probably as a slow trickle of information as team strq is brought into the inner circle—and her reaction is that she wants to know more. she’s in her late teens or early twenties, she was raised by bandits, and her original intention when she enrolled at beacon was to learn how to take down huntsmen; while she’s come to trust ozpin since then, a bit of suspicious cynicism has to be baked into her thinking still, because of how she grew up. if she starts asking questions, ozpin likely gets cagey or vague—that’s how he reacts when team rwby really start to question him in 6.2, and that kind of dodginess probably sets off all kinds of alarm bells in raven’s head.

what is he hiding?

there are some…pretty obvious questions raised by the “truth” as ozpin conveys it to his inner circle. he’s been coasting on his authority (as a teacher or as a king) for decades and leveraging the mystique of a wise old immortal to avoid any scrutiny of his narrative, so raven’s drive to find out more likely began with trying to fill in the gaps of what ozpin told them. specifically:

1 - under what circumstances did ozpin “fail to stop” salem before? that implies a victory for her—did she get the relics then? did she use them? did the gods need to intervene, and if so why didn’t they just get rid of salem themselves? if we’re trying to stop salem now, but ozpin failed to stop her in the past, she must have been defeated at some point after her original victory; how and when did that happen, and why wasn’t it enough to lift ozpin’s curse?

2 - if salem operates by turning people against each other in secret so we’ll blame each other instead of her, why is it so important to keep her a secret? doesn’t that just help her? something doesn’t add up here.

3 - how can ozpin know so little about salem, after all these lifetimes fighting her? there’s got to be more to this than—what, a queen-grimm who controls all the others but is also some kind of criminal mastermind? sure, the creatures of grimm get more cunning with age, but… political espionage? manipulating people into serving as her pawns? all for the sake of getting her hands on these four relics? that doesn’t sound like a grimm.

and, because ozpin confirmed the basic veracity of two well-known pieces of folklore, the obvious first step towards answering some of these questions is to examine those stories. “the story of the seasons” is fairly innocuous, and therefore something of a dead end… but the tale of the two brothers doesn’t line up super well with what ozpin said: there’s no mention of the relics, nothing that seems like it has to do with ozpin or salem, and the central conceit of the story itself is that the gods of light and darkness are fighting about whether to wipe humans out of existence or not, which is ALARMING in the context of ozpin having just confirmed that these two gods are real.

how do the relics fit into that? where did salem come from? in one part of “the two brothers,” both gods secretly make something new, to harm or help humanity as they prefer: in the story, it’s more grimm and an unspecified gift, but… might that have been salem and ozpin? are these—people? beings?—both some sort of living weapon fashioned by the gods? is this whole thing just a proxy war for the argument between the evil god and his benevolent brother? or… is salem the “evil in the world” that humanity must destroy in order to prove worthy?

hang on—in the story, the two gods tried to leave remnant, but they couldn’t, because they’d grown too weak, so instead they went to sleep and agreed to judge humanity when they wake up. the myth says that creating the world is what weakened them, but what if it was actually salem? could it be that ozpin really WAS involved in this divine war, some kind of champion the god of light chose to defend humanity from something new the god of darkness had made… only he failed, and that dark creation—salem—did something that wounded or even killed the gods? so now he’s cursed to keep coming back for as long as she still exists?

much to think about. (and given that this is a religious myth, raven could build herself a whole tower of theological discourse and scholarly literature on the topic of the brother gods and their promised day of judgment: there are a million rabbit holes she could follow from here.)

what about the other fairytales? there must be more stories about ozpin hiding in plain sight, surely, and with the right criteria searching for them should be simple enough. raven just has to look for stories that feature:

1 - a wizard

2 - reincarnation

3 - magical artifacts

4 - a strangely powerful grimm

or

5 - the brother gods

and we know a few fairytales that fit one or more of those criteria, don’t we? “the infinite man” is unambiguously about ozpin; “the grimm child” is about a kind of grimm that possesses people, turns people into grimm; and “the indecisive king” is about a magical crown which shows a king terrifying visions of a dire crossroads in his future, a plausible candidate for either the relic of choice or knowledge.

it’s possible—easy, even—to slot all three of these tales neatly into the speculation from “the two brothers.” if raven concludes that the indecisive king was indeed ozpin and she’s trying to fit ozpin’s origin story as he explained it into the myth of the brother gods, then it’s not implausible to wonder if, maybe, the king was his original life. could the magical crown—the four relics ozpin possesses even now!—have been the secret gift the god of light gave to empower humankind? were they given to ozpin to warn him of the new threat the god of darkness had created, so that he could prepare to defeat it? did the impossible crossroads he foresaw have to do with his eventual battle with salem—the battle that he *lost*?

next, “the grimm child.” it’s noted that this tale has some significant similarities to another fairytale about a “white witch in the woods,” and while we’ve yet to get any further information about THAT story, it’s probable that raven would have come across it, taken note of those similarities, and concluded that both were related to salem somehow. further, a “chill” is a real kind of grimm, but in ozpin’s commentary he remarks that real ones are far less powerful than the one in the story—only capable of inhabiting a corpse for a few seconds, and unable to convincingly mimic humans… but perhaps this fictional depiction of a chill is an accurate depiction of how salem came to be? in “the two brothers,” the god of darkness makes more grimm in secret to “plague” humanity and also to “test their limits.” perhaps, then, he unleashed a special kind of chill—one powerful enough to act like the one in the fairytale? is that what salem is? an incredibly old chill fashioned by the god of darkness himself, powerful enough to truly possess people and able to take over a new host every time ozpin gets too close to defeating her?

that would certainly explain how a grimm can be capable of political espionage, and it even gives a reason for the intense secrecy. the mere idea of a grimm like that really existing is both horrifying and impossible to prove, and if people knew about it salem could exploit the fear of one’s own allies being possessed to sow paranoia and division on an unprecedented scale.

lastly, “the infinite man” follows ozpin through three of his lives, in which he starts a movement, builds a following, becomes worshipped as a god, and then brutally falls at the hands of a rival army. this story clearly takes place after the original failure to stop salem, because he’s reincarnating; but there’s no mention of the gods or the relics, and only oblique references to a danger that might be salem. there are also, apparently, numerous different variations on this tale, which could keep raven busy for quite a while. the key takeaway, though, is that at some point after the original battle with salem, ozpin lost or hid or otherwise did not have immediate possession of the relics; perhaps they were already locked away in their vaults? (unless raven knew that the vaults were a recent measure; ozpin hasn’t said this in so many words, exactly, but he’s not made a secret of the fact that the relics were sealed in those vaults some time in the last eighty or so years, and conceivably more in the neighborhood of 20-30.)

another thing that i think raven would really hone in on, with “the infinite man,” is ozpin choosing to let himself be killed because he trusted his enemy’s word that she would spare his followers if he lost their duel. in the story, she absolutely does not keep that promise, and i bet raven—with her cynical raised-by-bandits streak and her disinclination to take what she’s told at face value—would think ozpin’s choice was Fucking Stupid, and that’s another crack in the foundations of her trust. if salem were to make a promise like that now, would he fall for it again? can they really trust him to keep fighting for them if salem tries to bait him into sacrificing himself?

and from here… well, digging into the literature regarding remnant’s folk history is one option; and there are no doubt plenty of other fairytales and myths related to ozma’s many lives that we haven’t been told because they simply aren’t narratively relevant enough to devote time to. scouring the historical record is another possibility—difficult to say how much might be left of ancient human civilizations, because if humanity re-evolved after the massacre then we’re talking a time span of probably tens of millions of years and the massacre itself would be an approximate analogue to the K-T extinction event; whereas if something or someone brought them back the timeline might be quite a bit shorter, and ancient human ruins more readily available (but then we also have some big unanswered questions about *how*). the grimm campaign suggests that ancient ruins with magically-enchanted artifacts in them do exist in mistral, but those ruins don’t necessarily date back to pre-massacre humanity; they could also be the ruins of the ozlem kingdom.

regardless, chasing rumors and legends of magic might have led raven down any number of bizarre rabbit holes and to any number of unsettling conclusions. i think it’s likely that her basic understanding of the truth is predicated on how she applied what ozpin told team strq to the same folktales that have been revealed to us, partly because those are the ones with connections to the truth that would be obvious to someone whose starting knowledge came from ozpin’s rundown of the situation, and partly because i don’t…think raven knows Significant Lore that we the audience do not, i think she’s got mostly the same puzzle pieces but she put them together on her own, rather than by hearing jinn’s narration of ozpin’s side of the whole story.

had raven played a role in v6-8 i’d be more inclined to believe that she really KNOWS something big that we don’t yet, but with v6-8 m setting up the pieces, then showing the characters interpreting those pieces in various ways, and then making such a deliberate point of hazel being given the opportunity to ask the spirit of knowledge for the objective truth and DECLINING to take it… i’m convinced that the remaining secrets are mostly matters of perspective, and whatever lore reveals we’re getting in v9 will be mostly clarifications that change our understanding of the facts we already have rather than entirely new information. which would necessarily mean that raven knows more or less what we do, but she’s arranged that information into a different narrative.

(this would also square A LOT better with salem’s general theme of storytellers having incredible power over the way their audiences perceive the facts and understand reality. raven is the maiden of knowledge, and her most important role in the narrative so far has been to plant the seeds of critical thinking that ultimately lead to the kids breaking out from ozpin’s authority and discovering the facts he hid from them—embodying the storytelling theme as it is discussed in the commentary on “the girl in the tower.” and of course, in v6 the spirit of knowledge herself turned out to be a STORYTELLER, offering both facts and a narrative that is, in v8, implicitly questioned by several characters via the uncertainty and speculation on what salem actually intends to DO.)

and… given that, i think it’s really interesting how easy it would be for raven to have gotten it almost right, if she tried to fit these fairytales together with ozpin’s explanation? there’s plenty of wiggle room in this limited collection of facts and fiction to get to something like: the god of darkness made salem to torment humanity, so the god of light made ozpin his champion and equipped him with these relics in order to fight her. but ozpin failed, and salem somehow got rid of the gods—hurt them or drove them away or even killed them—so now we’re stuck with her and ozpin is cursed to reincarnate until he’s able to stop her once and for all.

the big missing pieces here are “the girl in the tower,” which lacks any obvious connections to the divine war or ozpin himself, and the very personal history between ozma and salem—which is a hole in raven’s knowledge that would have a critical impact on her understanding of who and what salem is, assuming that salem didn’t fill it for her. (which feels likely even if they DID meet, given how tight-lipped salem is about her past even with her own inner circle.) and of course many of the details here are wrong or scrambled by guesswork, but the basic narrative of salem and ozpin being, effectively, proxies for the conflict between the gods themselves who were in some way created or chosen for that specific purpose does feel like a reasonable conclusion to draw from this. 🤔

i’m also… fairly convinced at this point that raven HASN’T used either of the relics she might conceivably have had access to (the lamp, whose vault she could open; and the crown, if ozpin’s special arrangements involved moving it elsewhere). because:

1 - ozpin has a very particular way of lying; he seldom if ever uses outright falsehoods. his lies are mostly little bits of fact presented with minimal context and arranged in such a way as to get people to believe a certain untrue thing. (consider how he blends his actual mandate together with his subsequent failure to get salem on board in order to produce “the gods cursed me to reincarnate because i failed to stop salem,” for example.) so, when he says in 6.2 that “the [lamp’s] questions were used before i sealed it away,” i’m inclined to think that was partly true—as in, ozpin DID ask one question before sealing the lamp in its vault.

2 - we also know that ozpin himself played a role in a particular event for which the lamp would have been VERY valuable, namely the elevation of atlas. (ironwood makes several statements in v7 that together make it clear that he was present and involved with the plan to raise atlas using the staff; hence, it must have occurred sometime in the last 20-30 years and ozpin almost certainly the one who made the actual request.) i think it’s also quite likely that the vaults were created and the relics sealed within around the same time, because that makes sense; they use the staff to raise atlas, then put the staff in the vault underneath atlas and seal it away, and for good measure they hide the other three relics under the other three academies at the same time.

anyway—the nature of the staff is that it gives you EXACTLY what you ask for. the value of asking the lamp a question to failure-proof your specifications before handing them over to ambrosius is obvious, and with so many lives at stake should something go wrong ozpin would’ve had a huge incentive to do just that. also, if he used one question then, he could have heavily implied to his inner circle that it was the last question for this century, thus heading off any inconvenient future suggestions about using the lamp for anything else. all he’d have to do is ask the question alone, ensuring that no one else could learn jinn’s name or hear her say how many questions she actually had left.

3 - if ozpin DID use a single question 20-30 years ago, that definitively rules out the possibility of anybody else using the lamp since then.

4 - on the other hand, if raven used the first question, that raises a few questions of its own: a) how did she learn the password? b) how did she get into the vault’s chamber without anyone noticing, given that lionheart carried the key around with him and the entrance itself is a huge statue in the lobby of haven academy’s administrative building? it’s not impossible for raven to sneak in, but that would have been a huge risk for someone so determined to keep her status as the spring maiden a secret. and c) why would raven stop at one? why not ask all three of the available questions? even if she initially only had one question in mind, if raven was so determined to learn the truth that she actually snuck into the vault to use the relic of knowledge for herself, surely she would have had some follow-up questions after jinn dropped the lost fable into her lap?

5 - as for the crown, i think it’s been either hidden in a vault underneath the emerald forest ruins this whole time OR ozpin moved it (or possibly moved the vault?) to that location after amber was attacked, for reasons of not stashing the comatose key to the beacon vault right outside the vault itself. in all circumstances, raven would’ve needed the fall maiden to open the vault for her and trusted the fall maiden to keep her mouth shut about it—which feels unlikely at any point in the timeline after raven arrived at distrusting ozpin enough to consider breaking into a vault a good use of her time. if the crown was moved from one location to another, it was theoretically accessible during the transfer—but the most obvious reason for ozpin to take that risk is amber being attacked, and raven was long gone by that point with little incentive to use the crown, because she’d already made her choice by then. it’s not impossible—and there are other intriguing possibilities for how raven might theoretically have gotten her hands on the crown, such as it just never having been in a vault at all—but it feels like a long shot.

further—just on a thematic level—while the character of each maiden is centered around the quality of the relic she guards, i think it’s significant that none of them have used the relics EXCEPT cinder—and that the relics cinder used were knowledge and creation, not her own relic of choice. i’ve discussed this before, but i think the main narrative role the maidens fulfill is to examine the structures ozpin developed to support his conspiracy and the widespread societal and indivual harm those structures cause. the old-guard maidens within the conspiracy are dehumanized, mere tools kept under lock and key or careful supervision; penny, raven and winter all represent varying degrees of imperfect separation from the conspiracy, with penny struggling to escape it, raven hiding from its shadow, and winter rising shell-shocked and grieving from its smoking ruin. none of these maidens are able to interact directly with the relics they’re meant to protect, because ozpin has, in his fear, literally divided humanity; separated the four essential qualities that together define the human soul, isolated them, reduced them to mere objects to be hidden away and hoarded until the end of time.

but cinder is salem’s maiden, not ozpin’s, and moreover she’s the maiden of choice. she isn’t bound by the restrictions the conspiratorial structures impose on the other maidens because she wasn’t supposed to become a maiden in the first place. she tore this power out of the structures ozpin built around it, chose it for herself, and has been gleefully making it her own ever since. so… of course she uses the relic of knowledge as soon as she figures out how to do so, casually and easily and without an ounce of anxiety about using up the last question. and naturally she uses the staff of creation for something as petty and ridiculous as Set This Asshole On Fire Please :). cinder exists so far outside the control of the crumbling structures that burden the other maidens that not only is she able to use whatever relics she wants, using them isn’t even a big deal for her. this is all—like, thematically, symbolically, it makes a very precise point about the rippling harms done by ozpin’s conspiracy; and while it wouldn’t be impossible to do raven using a relic in a way that fit into this pattern, i think it’s simpler and cleaner not to.

LASTLY—if raven hasn’t ever used a relic herself, then that leaves an encounter with salem as the likeliest possibility for raven having gotten some final piece of shattering information, some last straw that made her dawning horror and suspicion snap into desperation to just get the fuck away from this entire mess. and that’s… intriguing, because i really don’t think salem would have told her anything?—not anything important, at least, and certainly not any more than she’s told her own cabal. but there are some options that feel rather plausible:

1 - raven had some theory about the gods and/or salem’s origins that she went looking to prove or disprove, which brought her to the uninhabited continent and by extension to salem; and while it’s possible that salem caught her, it’s not inconceivable that raven might have slipped under the radar and stumbled across evernight *without* salem’s notice. that alone might have been terrifying enough to make her crack—it’s one thing to know there’s an ancient, malevolent being out there who commands the grimm, quite another to trip over her castle and see grimm spawning out of the pools all around it. even more if she caught a good look at salem herself

2 - or else salem did catch her and, upon identifying her as ozpin’s spy, tried to get raven to switch sides. in that case high odds raven got a personal demonstration of salem’s invincibility (terrifying but probably not a shock for her at this point!) and enough of a conversation to confirm that salem is either not really a grimm, or she’s a grimm so old and so intelligent that she’s able to persuasively act like a person (both terrifying options with the potential to crack any notions raven had of this being a straightforward humans-vs-soulless-monsters war, also terrifying.) and while it seems… doubtful that salem divulged anything about her past, virtually anything she said of her plans for the future has the potential for horror given what raven already knew or had guessed. bent on destroying the huntsmen academies and ozma’s legacy generally? vague talk of a “new world”? even the slightest implication that salem intends to challenge the gods themselves? NONE of that sounds good when you’re already up to your eyeballs in an everlasting shadow war between the gods, holy fuck.

3 - i said this in the other post but i really do think “she can’t be reasoned with” is a stance raven came by out of personal experience, by trying to reason with salem herself and failing or watching someone else do the same. one thing i’ve been mulling over today is salem’s recruitment of hazel—which she accomplished by letting him kill her over and over again until he exhausted himself to the point of not being able to move. being able to just outlast everything is such a potent weapon in salem’s arsenal, and she clearly knows it; and that applies not just to physical endurance but also to sheer refusal to budge during an argument. like… the woman has had literally millions of years to think about her situation and figure out exactly where she stands, and while she’s flexible in tactics her position in this conflict with ozma and the gods is never going to change. she’s never going to stop seeing the brothers as tyrannical monsters, and she’s always going to despise ozma for serving them; everything else she does arises from that, and it is utterly pointless to try to change her mind. but that doesn’t mean she won’t let someone try, yeah? let someone talk at her until their voice gives out and they’ve run through every single argument they can think of and they’re exhausted, and then hit them with a calmly implacable reiteration of purpose. let them really feel the futility of trying to change her mind. maybe they’ll be so weary that they just give up and accept the rightness of her position—or maybe they’ll shatter and stumble into a portal back to their brother in crisis because this is so, so much worse than what they thought. who knows!

4 - given that raven was a spy, and given the likelihood that she had at least some kind of conversation with salem a couple decades years ago, and given that raven remarks “i told you ozpin would fail, and he did; i told you beacon would fall, and it did,” i think a lot about the possibility that raven knew salem was considering an assault on the academies, beacon specifically. twenty years is not a long time and while salem hadn’t found a maiden candidate at that point she must have already been getting her ducks in a row as she reached whatever tipping point prompted her to make her move now—and if raven got a recruitment pitch then she might have gleaned a hint or two about what salem wanted to recruit her for. (d’you think salem took one look at this scared young woman who took it upon herself to find the truth and figured out enough to leave her faith in ozpin in tatters and saw a relic-vault-skeleton-key in the making?)

and then, well. once you’ve realized you’re in a cosmic horror story there’s really no going back, is there? on the one hand a duplicitous servant of one god who’s trapped in a doomed and unending cycle of war with an enemy who can’t be killed or reasoned with; on the other an immortal thing who might be human or might be something eerily good at pretending with an agenda she intends to pursue to the end even if it means burning the whole world down to ash to do it. what the fuck.—but the worst part of all this is that, for the rest of team strq, a lot of this might well have felt like old news? we know ozpin’s failed in the past, raven. we know salem’s ancient, of course she wouldn’t be that easy to kill, and we know she’s evil, come on. of course things are bad but this is literally what we signed up for.

because, sure, raven went digging and figured out a lot more detail than ozpin was willing to volunteer… but she didn’t discover the critical missing piece, the personal history ozma has with salem, that would have revealed just how DEEP the lies went. like fundamentally ozpin’s betrayal lies in knowing exactly who salem is, what she is, why she is, the precise nature of her immortality, and obscuring all of that to guide people into war against a vague, faceless, ancient enemy. as long as he’s able to keep the personal history a secret, the particular details anyone in his circle gleans don’t really matter that much. at worst you get a situation like raven’s, where she figures out a rough approximation of the bigger picture and the terror breaks her—or like lionheart, who takes the other option of giving salem whatever she asks for just to survive a little longer. like *waves hands* imagine a lost fable where the only thing we learned was that ozma was sent to remnant to fulfill his mandate and salem is his immortal adversary. the reaction would have been a lot more along the lines of: well, okay? we know more about the relics now and “immortal” sounds alarming but i guess we shouldn’t be surprised, all things considered. it was the shock of specifically learning that salem isn’t “immortal” in the nebulous way that ozpin is immortal, she’s immortal in the “will NEVER die and is IMPOSSIBLE to destroy” way, on top of finding out that ozpin knew EVERYTHING, that produced that feeling of shattering betrayal.

and unless salem told her the whole story, that’s not information raven would have been able to share with her team, so in all likelihood they just… kind of met what she told them with a shrug.

[liebgotts-lovergirl]

Fire On Fire: Chapter 14

(Ch. 13) ... (Ch. 1)

II Gallery II Tag List Application II Symbol Guide II

Summary: Who watches the watcher?

WARNINGS: The usual Espionage stuff, Implied substance abuse

A/N: Sorry for the wait, y'all! I'm going away for the holidays soon so it might be a lil bit before I can publish another section of FOF again but I do have some more Hallmark AU content coming your way in the meantime! 💖

Taglist: @latibvles @softguarnere @brassknucklespeirs @mccall-muffin @holdingforgeneralhugs @emmythespacecowgirl @parajumpboots @vibing-away @lieutenant-speirs @wwhatev3r

Contemporary: September 20th, 1944. Oosterbeek, Netherlands.

The first time Alix saw the man wearing glasses, she didn’t think much of him. He had entered the café a few minutes after her and sat a few tables back, casually spreading the day’s newspaper out onto the small, round table in front of him.

The freshly-cleaned windows were too foggy to see properly so with a huff, Alix subtly shifted in her seat and retrieved her makeup compact from her purse. 

Pretending to inspect her eyeliner, she was just able to glimpse the pattern of his tweed suit jacket a few seats behind her and for a fleeting moment, she thought she saw him watching her.

But she must have been mistaken because when she checked again, he was summoning a waiter to inquire about something off the menu like any other patron.

Once is normal, she reminded herself, looking out the window as she waited for her target to pass by. It's fine.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

The second time Alix saw him was later that day, in Prince of Orange Park, while she was following her mark. 

A slight autumn breeze rustled through the brightly-colored foliage with a gentle crunch and crackle, reminding her of better days at a home so far away that sometimes, she could scarcely believe it had ever existed at all.

If only Gio could be here, she thought sadly as she admired the orange glow of the falling leaves. He would've loved this. 

Her talented brother's favorite escape-- besides the cinema-- had been his art. He would spend hours wandering their vast backyard, scouring the landscape for the perfect place to set up his easel and pastels or paints.

 

Alix's chest ached at the memory now. 

She would've given anything to receive another letter from him, the stationary mottled with colorful smudges, the evidence of his latest creation. 

"You'd better be saving these, passerotta," Gio had joked after Alix had commented on the waxy staining on his latest letter. "They're Martinelli originals and they're already signed!"

Passerotta.

Her heart sank.

Little Sparrow, Gio's nickname for her since they were children due to her black eyes, playful antics, and small stature.

Oh the irony.

Her brother's passerotta was long gone, she thought sadly. The OSS Sparrow Program had ensured that.

Now only the killer in her remained.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

At least everything was going according to plan. Lieutenant Kruger had exited his meeting with some collaborators exactly on schedule– at least that intel was good– and Alix knew he would need to cross the park on his way to receive his orders from his superiors.

For a supposedly sick man, the gaunt SS officer was speeding along at an incredible pace and from the little she had seen of his face in person compared to the dozens of recon photographs she had studied, Alix felt fortunate to have recognized Kruger at all because the SS officer in front of her looked markedly different from the one in the dossiers the OSS had compiled.

Despite being only 23, the Lieutenant looked decades older. He appeared almost breakably thin with a grayish pallor and sunken, dead eyes that gave him the appearance of a drowned corpse more than a living person. His cheekbones jutted out like the jagged edges of a cliffside and Alix could see open sores trickling blood down the hollows of his cheeks.

The thick gray material of his SS uniform hung off his rail-thin frame like an empty potato sack and despite the frigid autumn weather, there was a fine mist of sweat coating his forehead.

With a fashion magazine casually tucked under her arm, the spy trailed soundlessly behind him, always making sure to keep at least 10 or so paces between her and her target.

Conducting surveillance was difficult without contacts keeping her updated but it was still possible. 

Except something was different.

Alix couldn't put her finger on what exactly but something was wrong. She could feel it in her gut.

The young spy had almost made her approach several times but something kept holding her back like an invisible hand on her shoulder, making her hesitate and reevaluate.

Her every muscle on-edge, Alix flexed her fingers at her side in a desperate bid to loosen up the tension but the anxiety swirling in her stomach just wouldn't leave. 

The park in Oosterbeek wasn't nearly as crowded as Eindhoven had been but still, there was something almost eerie about the way the hair on the back of her neck was standing on end. 

Everywhere she went, she felt eyes on her, following her, but when she would look, no one was there. Alix knew she was probably just being paranoid because of what had happened with Jean-Pierre selling one of her identities to the Gestapo but nonetheless, she still couldn't shake the sick feeling that she was being watched. 

As Kruger cut through the grass, his limbs practically quivering with suppressed energy like a man electrocuted, Alix continued on the sidewalk to avoid arousing suspicion.

The young agent allowed her eyes to casually roam the scene, taking in the earthy scent of the grass and the passing smoke of distant explosions which somehow didn't damper the nearby giggles of schoolchildren at play. 

A little girl with dirt-streaked cheeks and flame-bright hair was wielding a stick like a blade, apparently holding her own in a dramatic swordfight with an older boy who appeared to be her brother. 

Alix couldn't help but smile as she passed them by. 

She was almost out of the park completely when she spotted the man in the glasses again, this time loitering by one of the columns that marked the exit as he took casual puffs from his pipe.

Alix felt her blood run cold the moment he locked eyes with her and she abruptly switched directions, abandoning her target for the moment. Self-preservation came first and the emptiness…the ice in the man's expression felt dangerously like a punch to the stomach.

The tweed jacket he'd worn earlier was gone, replaced instead by a coat far too heavy for even the most blustery Fall day, which made Alix even more nervous. It completely obscured his body shape, making it impossible to tell if he was carrying a weapon.

First trick of the trade.

The agent could practically hear Nixon's languid baritone in her head. 

Twice is suspicious, kid. Get the hell out of there.

With one last glance over to Lieutenant Kruger's back as he disappeared around the corner, the OSS agent let out an irritated huff and quickened her already brisk pace in the opposite direction. 

Her target would have to wait.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

The third time Alix saw the bespectacled man was from inside the bookshop just across the street Hendriksen Hotel, which was apparently serving as an impromptu SS headquarters. The stranger was wearing his tweed jacket again and standing on one of the hotel's many balconies above, notebook in hand, and Alix tried to slow her racing heart as she pretended to browse the shelves.

Angling herself slightly and squinting against the streaming sunlight, Alix tried desperately to make out any distinctive features but there were none. He was an ordinary-looking man in his mid-thirties with dark, straight hair, thick glasses, and an aura she couldn't place but that seemed to scream at her from the depths of her mind, making Alix feel violently ill.

The young agent didn't even have to look up to know he was watching her; she could feel those empty eyes boring into her even through the glass window of the bookshop she was lingering inside.

But she had a mission to complete; she couldn't hold off any longer. 

Still, even as she idly perused the first book she'd grabbed, the feeling of the bespectacled man's soulless eyes staring her down never left. 

Even when she looked up and the man was gone, the merciless waves of nausea signaling his presence just wouldn't leave her. 

He had been scribbling into a notepad, she remembered, and five words from the Evasion & Counterespionage section of her training began to reverberate over and over again in her mind like gunshots as she waited for her target to leave the hotel across the street:

Three times is a tail.

[seizethegrey]

With Lucien in control of his body, Molly has been dragged away from the Nein. Desperation leaves Caleb, Essek and the rest of the crew with few safe or reasonable options for getting him back. Luckily, they've always specialized in unsafe and unreasonable options. Air piracy, fake slavery, a heist, kidnapping, assassination, being imprisoned by a beautiful psychopath, espionage, and a coup ensue. In the final part of this sprawling Exandrian criminal underworld AU, even the good guys are bad guys, and the only way out is through.

When Molly looks up, Lucien has crossed the room in a few quick strides to grab the dagger he’d stabbed into the wall days ago.

Molly immediately throws up his hands in a placating gesture. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Chill! I was just messing around!”

“What, are you scared?” Lucien mocks. “You don’t really have any skin in the game, now do you?”

“It still hurts!” Molly exclaims. He hates the undercurrent of anxiety he can’t keep from his tone.

Lucien stalks up to him, tossing the pommel of the dagger deftly from palm to palm.

“Molly,” he warns, “you said you want me to stay away from your little boyfriend? Know this: I don’t need to be near him to hurt him.”

With a fluid gesture borne of endless repetition, Lucien draws his blade through the network of scars on his forearm, the ones Molly did his part to add to over the years.

A rivulet of blood trickles down his arm to his hand, dripping onto the floor with a soft pat… pat… pat.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Molly breathes. His hands are shaking.

“Test me again,” Lucien hisses, “and you’ll find out. Experience is a cruel master - but fools will learn from no other.”

@antiva-flowers @widogaspmauk THANK YOU ETERNALLY TO MY WONDERFUL BETA GOBLIN MONARCHS.

[contreparry]

How about what their favorite smells in the world are for the DADWC? Happy Friday!

Here's some Bran/Zevran from the modern espionage AU thing (need to make a proper tag for this) for @dadrunkwriting!

Bran liked scented candles.

He liked browsing stalls at craft fairs and wandering specialty shops in Amaranthine to find them. He'd buy a half-dozen from the big box stores whenever they went on sale. If anyone looked at his hallway closet, they'd find four large plastic bins full of candles stacked on his wire shelves. He organized the candles by season, kept track of his purchases on a spreadsheet, swapped the candles out every few days because what was the point of collecting them if he didn't use them?

Bran liked scented candles, but his favorite... he blushed at the thought and quickly jammed the candle he took out back into the "Winter" bin. It was summer, almost fall, and he couldn't use a "Winter" candle even if it was now his favorite. There were Rules about the candles. There was a Spreadsheet!

Once upon a time he wouldn't have dreamed of opening a box out of season to grab a candle and light it purely because he liked the scent. The gardenia leather cedarwood candle ("Cabin Dreams") would have stayed in its place until the proper season, but now... now Bran dug through his candle collection to pick out his new favorite scent (displacing "Coconut Kisses" and "Dragonfire"), because "Cabin Dreams," despite its rustic name, smelled almost exactly like-

"Ah. Early autumn cleaning?" Zevran asked. Bran scrambled to shut the lid of the Winter box and fumbled for his phone so he could pretend that he was being productive. Bran tied his hair back into a stubby ponytail and hoped that his ears weren't as red as ripe cherries. Maybe if he lied and said one of his piercings got infected...

Ugh, why did he have to be caught being sentimental? Zevran said he was taking a shower! Which he obviously had, Bran realized as he took in Zevran's damp, towel dried golden hair, as he watched a drop of water trickle down the curve of his neck to disappear in the collar of his threadbare bathrobe. Somehow Zevran made the ratty thing look elegant, like he walked out of some high end boutique with it. "Fashionably well-loved," he'd call it, and in a week Orlesian fashion houses would beg him to model their faux-worn and faded dark blue bathrobes.

"Bran? You're rather quiet, mi amor," Zevran prodded before crouching down to look over his shoulder at his... candle horde. "Ah. Your candles." Zevran said it like he was commenting on the weather: the sun is shining, the breeze is balmy, Bran Surana has nearly a hundred scented candles and keeps track of them on a spreadsheet.

"I know it's a wasteful indulgence," Bran muttered. "Silly." Hadn't he grown up knowing that everything he couldn't carry in a backpack or a garbage bag was dead weight? When had he become such a... a packrat?!

(Ever since Amaranthine, ever since he had a place he knew wouldn't disappear if he shut his eyes, ever since Zevran swooped in with his designer clothes and flowery speeches and scalpel-like perception. That was when Bran started... settling. Like a house.)

Zevran's warm arms wrapped around his shoulders. He draped himself along Bran's back, warm and strong. The scent of his shampoo (cedarwood) mixed with the soap (gardenia), and the warm, clean smell of Zevran. A good smell. Safe smell. It was one of Bran's favorites, just edging out the fish and chips Alistair bought whenever they had a particularly trying day at the shop and Morrigan's terrible, terrible coffee.

"It's hardly silly, dearest Bran," Zevran said. "We all have our vices."

"You and your leather obsession, for example?" Bran asked, drawing a light laugh out of Zevran that he felt before he heard. There was something a little odd about that laugh, as if Zevran was in on some sort of joke. Once, when they first met, Bran would have thought Zevran was mocking him- but no. That was simply Zevran, a bit of an odd bird. He might hide it under his pretty face and elegant wardrobe and profound knowledge of everything upper-crust, but Zevran was a little strange. Sort of like him. Misfits searching for a kindred spirit.

"You don't know the half of it," Zevran replied. His damp hair stuck to Bran's neck as he nuzzled against him.

"... I'd make room for your leather gear. Whatever it is," Bran whispered as they sat on the floor in front of his hallway closet. It was too early for "I love you." Bran wasn't sure he could even say those words. Love was a... if not a danger, certainly a harbinger of storms to come. But this... this wasn't safe, but he could extend his heart this far. Zevran's arms tightened around his chest for a brief moment before loosening.

"... and I'd make room for your candles. Built a shelf. Maybe more," Zevran replied. "They'll be dreadful. I'm hardly a carpenter."

"Alistair can help. He's handy."

"Ah, but my sweet," Zevran insisted as he gazed down, his eyes bright. "Then they won't be MY shelves for YOUR candles."

[straightouttaskullisland]

a funny copypasta i made about the former kingsisle ceo

A vague sunset glared across the rippling waters of a great Texan lake, illuminating the outline of a yacht - a rickety, unbalanced thing cobbled together with its corners cut and its assets repurposed, rattling as it clipped hastily through the golden waters. The unmistakeable sight of the WIMO Games Yacht. Within, the huffing figure of a tropically-dressed Elie Akilian drummed his fingers erratically against his pristine boardroom table, a group of market analysts and soulless, suited figures taking seats that circled the eminent CEO, as though all present simply to listen and comply. A dim chandelier illuminated the oak-paneled boardroom, revealing a flourishing, framed oil painting of Akilian himself - then another, then another, all accompanied by his greatest creations in careful, loving detail, being cradled by Akilian like his mangled, semi-profitable children. Get Jiggy, Animal Cove, and, of course, the unforgettable RPG Dice: Heroes of Whitestone. Afore the CEO's towering leather recliner laid a barely noticeable plaque that proclaimed the ever-truthful WIMO Games creed: "WE MAKE GAMES. Passionate about games. Passionate about gamers."

 Akilian's eyes darted, disgusted, across his league of inferiors, before he leaned forward, hands clasped together as though he were choking an underpaid intern like the good old days. An uncertain bead of sweat trickled down his forehead, loosened from his composed facade. Simple, desparate words rang from Elie's tightened lips. "Why ain't we making money? Tell me." Elie's frosty sight surveyed the room for a single sign of an honest answer. His befuddled yesmen told him nothing new. "TELL ME!" he roared, leaping to his feet, arms still gripping the table as his maniacal gaze swept the room repeatedly.

"You were tellin' me mobile games was the future." Akilian hissed, disgust dripping from his croaky Texan accent. "That Kingsisle Entertainment was limitin', and insubstantial. That the real microtransaction-guzzlers was in the mobile market." Billows of smoke poured from Elie's nostrils as he paced aimlessly, glaring up at the depictions of his life's greatest failures hanging upon the wall.

"I am makin' an executive decision. Today. We're takin' back the studio. And we're gonna start makin' real dollars in here." Elie glared half-expectantly at his audience. Not a complaint among them. "We're gonna take back Wizard101. We're gonna take back pack sales. We're gonna halt all development on Pirate101 and shut that damn game off for good!"

 Silence. 

“Well?" Elie grunted. "WELL? What're we waitin' fer? Send the WIMO ninjas! Initiate the corporate espionage! Buy back our company!" Now even the most cold, cynical businessman in the room had began to shiver at Elie's madness. "I'm in charge here!" Akilian boomed, slamming a fist upon his table and shattering the flimsy plaque declaring the WIMO motto.

 A proud, mocking voice echoed throughout the WIMO yacht.

 "Do you feel in charge, Mr. Akilian?"

 A colossal hologram that stretched to the ceiling burst onto the table, bathing the room in an almost spectral blue glow - Remco Westermann. With a smirk, he looked down upon an aghast Akilian, uttering his ultimatum: "Pirate101 updates shall proceed as planned. Doing otherwise would be... quite stupid."

 The hologram's all-encompassing light faded.

"Mr. Akilian...?" an awed board member murmured, peering over at the man, whose smirk of arrogance and prestige had faded into the softened, sobered face of unconsciousness. "I need a new job..." he mumbled, twitching slightly.