#vision so good she can see the lines of glass but that somehow renders it unseethroughable

[monty-glasses-roxy]

She can probably see the shrimp colors, color in the mind is just the brain’s interpretation of different frequencies of electromagnetic radiation so, being a robot, she can probably tell all of them apart pretty well

Roxy with two mixes of paint: Hm ya know, I prefer this shade of green. What do you think?

Chica: Uhh....

Roxy with another mix of paint: Oh but this green is pretty good too hmm

Chica: Hun...

Roxy with another one: Ah shit I forgot about that one. That's a good one hmm this is hard...

Chica: They're... They're the same shade...

Roxy: What?? Not they're not!

Chica: Hun. They're literally the same shade.

Roxy: Obviously not! See? This one's lighter, this one's darker, this one is more blue-

Chica losing her mind: They're the same?!

Roxy: ..... Chica... Are you okay? Do you need your eyes testing??

Chica: I don't know anymore what the fuck are you talking about-

It's the confidence in it that's getting her lmao. Roxy is given a bigger range of visual processing ability because of her funky eyes and no one can tell if she's fucking with them or not. They learn about shrimp colours and she's like "OH HEY THAT SOUNDS LIKE ME!" And she's RIGHT she has SHRIMP VISION!!!

Monty: Shame ya Shrimp Vision don't cancel out ya Pigeon Vision.

Roxy: You shut the fuck your mouth-

[marvelwritings]

Can't tell me there's no point in trying

Summary:  Peter travels back in time, get's a concussion and Tony takes care of him, even though in his mind, Peter has been blipped for three years.

In hindsight, the exact memory of when they started researching how to travel back to the past is lost on him. It’s just that he had been so devastated, after Tony’s death, that his emotions had reached through to the only person that somewhat knew what he was going through. Peter didn’t want to compare Wanda’s situation with his, after all, Wanda was the one that was forced to choose between the love of her life and saving the universe, but the weight of their grief was the same none the less.

Wanda had approached him while he was out on patrol, and though there was not set plan, Peter was willing to try anything to get Tony back. They started of their plan by seeking help from Doctor Strange, and when that hadn’t worked,  Peter had snuck in and stole -borrowed as he preferred to call it- a few books that might have been helpful for their goal. Between going to school, patrolling, putting up a front for his friends and aunt -and as of late Happy-, and searching endlessly for a scrape of hope, Peter had worked himself to the bone. It would all be worth it though, if their plan came to fruition.

It hadn’t worked the first time, nor the second time, and neither did the third. Failed enough times that Peter’s heart sunk into his stomach, and that he carefully tried to convince Wanda to try something else. The spell was eerily straightforward with very little need for ingredients, nothing more then saying two sentences and having a personal item of the person they strived to reach, and if they hadn’t managed to work it out in three attempts, Peter assumed, though the idea rendered him dejected, it would never work.

Until he went out on patrol again that night. One moment he was excitedly talking to Karen, animatedly retelling the story of how he managed to stop a bank robbery, as it the AI hadn’t witnessed it, and the next he tried to shoot out a spiderweb to building so he could swing over, only for the web to hit nothing but air.

‘Ow, wow’, Peter floundered, trying his best to reach something and prevent himself from slamming on the ground -again-, but he failed. He banged into a tree at full speed, colliding head first and tumbling down while hitting every branch possible. That was the first sign that should have tipped Peter off. There were no trees in the middle of Queens. Under normal circumstances, he would have considered that, but the heavy impact is not working well in his favor.

Landing on the ground on his stomach with a hard thud, his body, and specifically his ribs, screamed in agony, and he rips the mask off without considering his predicament. Anyone could walk by and see the face beneath the mask. Still, Peter can’t breath with the way his ribs object, but at least without the mask it’s fresh air he inhales.  

He turns around and struggles to get on his back. His hand instinctively slide over his stomach, protecting the hurting area. Come to think of it, every area on his body hurts. Peter knows the logistics of cracked ribs, and savvies that even with the aid of super healing, it’s not going to repair in a few minutes times.

He inhales as a small as he possibly can, despite knowing he shouldn’t, and braces himself for running back to May’s and his appartement. He can’t stay here, where anyone could walk up to him and attack him while he’s down. He laughs incredible, at least aunt May, and Tony of he was still here, would be proud of him for calling it a day.

When he blinks his eyes open though, he’s met with nothing but grass and green for miles, and a blurry vision that tells him he has a concussion. While trying to sit up, his visions spins like  he’s a part of a rollercoaster, and his stomach turns uncomfortably.

‘Oh no,’ Peter moans, ‘aunt May is gonna kill me.’ It’s the only thing he can say before he has to swallow back bile and decides it’s best to be quiet from now on. He struggles to his feet, stumbling a few times before successfully finding his footing in the grass.

His vision does not clear, but he forces himself to take a few steps in any direction anyway. Wondering if seeing all these trees are because of his concussion, Peter freezes when he hears tiny footsteps approaching the opening his still currently residing in. It’s accompanied by children’s crying, the hairs on his arm standing up at the sound. Perhaps it’s a trap, but Peter has never done well ignoring a child ever since meeting his baby sister.

‘Hello?’ he calls out tentatively, squeezing his eyes shut firmly to clear it, but it doesn’t help.

‘Hi’, an adorable voice answers back to him, a head peeks out from behind a bunch, as if the child is equally as curious about Peter as Peter is about her. He can only notice she does this because blurring colors that inch closer little by little. The girl sniffles, ‘I hurt my foot.’

Peter is out of his depth here. He’s only ever impressed children by swinging them around in the sky, but his body will not allow that right now. Instead he tries to focus on what he would do if Morgan was the one that was hurt. Adopting a tone only Morgan has ever heard from him, Peter crouches down on his knees. His ribs creak in dismay, but he ignores it firmly. Someone needs him right now.

‘Oh that’s not good. Does it hurt a lot?’ Peter himself cannot assess the damage.

‘No I guess not’, the girls splutters, pulling up her foot to show Peter.

‘Okay, that’s great. Do you live for away from here? I bet that if I take you back home, your parents will give you a lollipop because you were so brave.’

‘Oh’, the child cries out in wonder, pain in her foot forgotten completely at the mentions of dessert. Peter can’t help but smirk a little, bribery works on Morgan every time too. ‘I’ll show you, but you have to carry me okay?’

Peter can’t think of a worse activity for his injured body to sustain right now, but he’s not about to let a kid down.

‘It’s a deal, lead the way and hop on up.’ His tone is cheerful, even though he has to bite back pained groans by biting his lip.

The girl shows no hesitation and follows his lead immediately, giggling in delight.

‘So, do you want to play a game on the way over?’

They end up playing I spy with my little eye, which Peter loses every time, and not only because he can’t see straight at the moment. The girl, being clearly very young, is a spitfire, which is good because it means Peter doesn’t have to talk during the trip.

It gets increasingly harder to carry her the longer he has to endure the pain, but he knows that salvation is near when the girl, points to a brown blob in the distance. ‘That’s it, there it is. Put me down, I want to get my lollie now.’

Peter obligates, and watches as she runs without any regard for her painful foot, smiling to himself. He hears the door of the house open, and a male cadence calling out and sounding so joyful he must not have noticed Peter yet. He can only imagine the weird sight that must be, to see a stranger bringing home your daughter, but Peter can’t move away yet. His body has stopped listening to his commands.

‘Daddy, daddy, can I have a lollipop, Peter said I could if I was brave, and I was! He said so himself.’

Peter assumes she points to him, and his smiles weakly, although he’s having trouble even finding the strength to do that. Once he walks a little further, he should rest for a bit, close his eyes for the briefest amount of time. Before it get’s to that point though, Peter hears a glass mug being dropped on the ground. The sounds is piercing in contrast between the quiet forest and the intrusion, but that’s not the weirdest thing.

‘Peter?’ That same cadence exclaims, the voice breaking of the syllable. It’s strange, because for the briefest moment Peter’s mind flashing the name Tony at him, but the man is long gone.

Peter just about handles frowning at the direction, a weird knowingness to the exclamation, like the man somehow knows who Peter is.

‘How do you-?’ The sentence is cut short when a wave of nausea slams into Peter again, and he can’t keep himself upright this time. His knees buckle, his eyes roll into the back of his head, and the ground nearly welcomes him with open arm. Before he can collide with it again however, in such speed Peter can’t phantom the man being fast enough, he instead lands between the mans arms. All the strength has left his body, and Peter can do nothing but let his head roll onto the man’s shoulder.

‘Pepper’, he screams, so shut up it comes across as hoars, pulling Peter even closer to him than thought possible. ‘You’re okay kid, you’re okay. I promise you’ll be okay.’

---

Peter comes too slowly, groggily, as if moving through solaces. The logical part of his brain, of which there is much, screams at him to panic. He doesn’t know where he is, he can only vaguely remember the events leading up to his current situation, and he can’t ensure his safety or anyone else’s furthermore, but the smaller part of his brain soothes him.

Tells him everything is fine and he’s safe. It’s rare that Peter feels that way. Even at home with May in their appartement, there’s a constant need to be alert. Peter snaps awake from every little sound, his body turning rigid from the forceful transition between sleeping and waking up, even if the cause was only a door creaking.

It doesn’t make any sense for Peter to be this tranquillized right now, or any other time for that matter. He groans, pained, fluttering his eyes open to find himself in a dark room with the windows drawn. His eyesight is still blurry, his head is still pounding beneath his skin, and because there’s no acute danger to be detected- his spider senses tell him so, though he hasn’t learned to trust them completely yet- he allows his eyelids to droop closed again.

A warm, calloused hand strikes through his hair softly, while a thumb strikes out the frowning lines that pain flashes put on Peter’s forehead. Peter realizes with a startle that his not alone, and that must mean his Peter tingle has failed him, but can’t force himself to push the hand away. It’s nice to experience a loving touch after so many rough handlings, and the memories of lab days with Tony, car rides with Happy, building Lego with Ned and cuddling with MJ render him immobile. He longs so fiercely to feel safe, to be safe, that he leans into the touch like a cat being petted.

‘It’s okay Pete, just go back to sleep.’ A rough voice rumbles from besides Peter. All the rest he previously had, flies out of the window, as his entire body fill up with adrenaline. That voice belongs to a man that’s long gone, a man that sacrificed himself to save Peter and paid the ultimate price for it. That voice can only originate from a ghost.

Peter practically jumps up, opening his eyes and looking in the direction where the voice came from, but he miscalculated how fast his concussion would go away. He stumbles, faceplanting into the body that held Tony’s voice, and was only held up by the grace of the other man. Again, there were bouts of pain, but not only from his physical ailments.

The fire that Peter imagines to be inside of him, the one that destroys everyone else around him but leaves him, unfortunately intact, burns up from the remnants of his heart. He’s tried very hard to move on from Tony’s death in the past few months, and he had almost convinced himself that he was over it. That would be a flat out lie though, and Peter Parker doesn’t lie. The agony of the situation had just been shoved to the back of his mind, while Peter took on so much so he wouldn’t have to touch upon it, to prod in it. It peeked out every once in a while, when Happy would tell May about his life and an anecdote with Tony would be told, or when a poster with Iron man on it drew his attention, but it’s easier to pretend to be okay then to deal with the truth.

‘Hey Peter, I’m glad to see you too, but don’t get too excited now bud.’ Tony laughs, but the tone with which he says it sounds grief stricken, with the barest hint of hope coating the edges. He lowers Peter back down into the bed, and Peter has to bite back a sob at how comfortable the sheet caresses his skin, and how gentle it is on his wounds.

He shakes his head vehemently, trying to clear it and be able to think logically. He wants so badly that Tony is actually here, but there isn’t any way for that to be true, unless.. Peter gasps, memories piercing through the fog in his head. Unless Wanda managed to do what they set out to do. And that would mean that It’s no weird fever dream. Peter’s hand clench up in Tony’s shirt, pulling him down so Peter can meet him in the middle and hug him. He still can’t see the expression on Tony’s face, but he prepares to be rejected, and can’t find it in himself to care. Even if Tony pushes him away after barely a brief second, at least Peter still did something he had set out to do for months now.

That doesn’t happen. Instead, Tony grabs him even tighter, a gentle hand cupping the back of Peter’s head as he curves his body around him.

‘Tony’, Peter whispers, the first tears starting to track a path on his cheeks. ‘Tony.’ Sobs are building up in the back of his throat, unable to be contained for much longer, and as they escape, Tony doesn’t scold him, or tells Peter to stop, but he starts to rock the both of them.

Peter can’t be sure, but he thinks he feels splatters of Tony’s tears on his shoulders as well.

‘Morgan’, Peter says nonsensical after a while, sobs are still heaving his body, but he’s had experience pulling himself together in need before, and right now he needs to know Morgan is safe.

‘Is she okay?’ he asks Tony, with a clumsy tongue. The crying has made his weak and aching body even more exhausted, the rocks reminding him of babies being cradled and normally he wouldn’t want to be seen as a baby, but he doesn’t care right now. He just want to enjoy being around Tony again.

‘Morgan?’ Tony laughs, sniffling quietly like he’s refusing to let Peter knows his been crying too. ‘She fine, she’s probably playing in the barn again even though Pepper tells her she’s not allowed. She’s a bit of a menace, just like you Pete.’

At that, Peter sobs turn into heaves, his entire body shaking with the force of them. All the grief of the past few months, the guilt that Peter has carried knowing it’s all his fault, is all coming to a head now. It’s his fault that Tony’s dead, it’s his fault Morgan has to grow up without a father, and it’s his fault the world doesn’t have Iron man to protect them anymore. He’s tried to so hard to make it right, but how can he? How can he ever be the person Tony was, when he’s just Peter Parker.

‘Kiddo, please calm down, you’re gonna make yourself sick’, Tony soothes despairingly. He lowers peter again but stays close, his hand going back to striking Peter’s hair. ‘You’re okay, I promise you, I won’t let anything else happen to you.’ Tony is getting chocked up again, but this time he doesn’t try to hide it. ‘Not again.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’, Peter whispers, his voice wrecked by the amount of crying he has done. He wants to talk to Tony, explain what happened, spend time with him and beg for his forgiveness, but Tony shushes him, and he’s asleep before he can argue.

----

The next time Peter struggles to consciousness, he senses their presence; Morgan, Pepper and Tony, and he knows without a sliver of doubt that its them. He shakes with the knowledge. The room he’s in, his room as Pepper had told him upon visiting for the first time, is scattered with spiderman toys, and even a few posters on to wall to complete the image. The sight is ridiculous, but Peter laughs at it all the same. He tries to keep the smile on his face, but melancholy isn’t easily beat.

At the very least his concussion seems to have gone away since waking up a first time, and all that’s left to remind him he took a fall is a vague pounding in his head, and the nausea. It’s not as bad as before, and Peter takes the reprieve with greedy hands.

The hustling and bustling of the family, alive and well, downstairs is crustal clear to Peter’s advanced hearing. It’s strange, being back in the lake house without it seeming so bleak. After they defeated Thanos, and Mister Stark died, Peter’s mind helpfully supplies, he had only been here twice. Pepper tried her best to come back, to give Morgan a home away from the home they owned in the city, but too much had reminded of the husband she was forced to burry, so they moved fairly quickly.

So it unusually to see it the way it was supposed to be. Lived in, with Morgan’s giggling and Pepper’s pretend scolding voice, with mister Stark chuckling quietly to himself, a perfect little family. It’s supposed to emit a warm, honey affection bleeding through every crack, and it’s a shame it isn’t anymore.  

‘Morguna, go play with your toys for a second, I need to talk to your mom about something very important.’ Spying on Tony leaves a bad taste in Peter’s mouth, but he can’t help it. He’s been so devoid of any scraps connecting him to Mister Stark, that he’s willing to forgo manners.

‘Is it a surprise?’ Morgan asks, mirth in her voice. She’s so much younger than Peter ever remembers her being, because he’d never got to witness her at that age. His heart clenches, the hurt still so fresh.

‘You know what little miss, as a matter of fact it is, so you better scoot, or we might not be able to get in time.’

Morgan squeals in delight, and Peter hears her little footsteps sprinting outside. Peter smiles, he knew Tony would be a good dad someday. The downstairs is quiet for longer than normal, and Peter suddenly turns worried that Pepper and Tony caught him.

Then, Pepper speaks up again. ‘You can’t keep spoiling her you know. She’ll turn into a monester by the time she hits fourteen.’

‘She’s fine,’ Tony placates. Peter visualizes Tony pressing a kiss to the top of Pepper’s head, the only weakness the woman has, which he takes great advantages of. The issue seems to be settled, the playful disagreement put to rest.

Peter ponders over what to do next. He’s so extremely awkward, and despite hoping for an opportunity like this one, he has no idea what to say to Tony.

‘Oh Tony, is it really him?’ Peter freezes, so caught of guard by the heartache in Pepper’s words. She sounds both optimistic and demoralized, as though she has had her hopes up for so long she can’t risk it again.

‘It is Pep. I know it is, I saw it in his eyes.’

‘But how?’ Pepper questions extensively. ‘He was blipped, just like so many people. None of the others have come back.’

‘I don’t have all the answers Pepper, God knows I wish I had. All I know is that my kids back, do I need to question why?’

Hearing, outright hearing mister Stark say Peter is his kid, has Peter tearing up, something sharp sticking at his ribs and feeble heart. It hurts just as much as he longs to overhear it again.

‘He might be able to bring the others back. Tony, I get why you don’t want to hear this, but he could be the key to helping millions.’

‘He has to be nothing but healthy alright? Maybe he can help, maybe he can’t, but all I’m sure of is that I’m never,’ Tony’s voice sinks lower and even more venomous then before,’ putting him in the line of fire again.’

I’m okay, Peter thinks, needing to scream it to Mister Stark’s face that he didn’t do anything. It wasn’t up to anyone, just like it wasn’t up to anyone to save Tony either.

‘I’m sorry’, Tony utters, sounding defeated and, honestly, old. ‘I’m sorry, but I just got him back, and I can’t, I can’t lose him again.’

‘It seems like the first step in ensuring it never does it to go up and talk to him. Go to him Tony, say what you couldn’t say three years ago. And’, Pepper swallows thickly. ‘Tell him we all love him.’

Peter’s grateful he won’t be forced to initiate the first move by walking downstairs.

‘Underroos, I’m coming up so you better not be sleeping anymore.’ The flawless transition between vulnerable and slipping into his role a cool role model is staggering, but it doesn’t surprise Peter in the slightest anymore. He’s spend too much time with Tony for that to be the case.

He doesn’t know what to do with his body, how he’s supposed to respond to seeing Tony in person again? Part of him wants to lung at his mentor, while the other part hisses at him to act like a normal human being. Peter ends up sitting down on the bed, standing in front of  the door, hiding behind the closet and finally back to bed in the span of however long it takes Tony to reach the room.

By that point, Peter is too distracted by the glimmer of his past to overthink the encounter. He remembers the lego set as if it just happened. It was the first bout of Peter’s interests that Tony listened to wholeheartedly. After the battle with Thanos, it had slipped Peter’s mind completely. He had no idea Mister Stark had this thing in his home.

‘I asked May if I could take it with me, when I moved out here’, Tony says with melancholy, taking a seat by Peter on the bed, but leaving a considerable distance. He’s not looking at the lego set at all, instead dividing his full attention on Peter. Swiftly his eyes roam Peters face and posture, sucking in all the little details Tony hadn’t been able to discern about him after a while.

‘There’s so many of that stuff in her apartment, but this one was the most fun to put together, because it’s the death star you know? It has all this detail and it took forever to make but that’s all good, cause there’s so much detail and-’

‘Pete’, Tony sounds chocked up, like the façade he was forcing himself to wear is already slipping. Peter hasn’t even said anything yet. ‘God kid, where the hell di you come from? I’ve tried everything but I-‘, he takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. Peter has only witnessed mister Stark crying once, so it’s a shock that it occurs again. ‘I didn’t know how.’

‘Mister Stark-’, Peter stops, cutting his own sentence off. Is he even supposed to say anything? Is he supposed to blab the secrets of the future. His Spidey scenes are distinctively ordering him not too, but Peter itches to all the same. ‘I don’t think I’m supposed to say,’ he settles on, ‘with the butterfly effect and all.’

‘The butterfly effect? Kid what in the world are you talking about?’

‘You know, like in the movie, where he can travel back in the past but it always alters things for the worst?’

‘Yeah, I’ve seen the movie’, Tony asserts, almost deadpans. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’

‘Just- just please trust me Mister Stark’, Peter pleads, hands beginning to tremble with the need to reach out for reassurance. The memories of the one complete hug Tony had ever given him sparking a longing in him.  ‘Do you trust me?’

‘Of course’, Mister Stark firmly agrees.

‘Then don’t ask me how,’ even to his own ears the desperation is tangible, ‘please.’

Tony clasps his hand on Peters shoulder, a ground weight to which Peters never endings zing in relief. Before he can stop himself, he’s crumpled in, his head on Tony’s shoulder while his hands twist in the back of mister Stark’s shirt. The reciprocation is immediate.

‘I’ve missed you’, He chokes out, feeling rather annoyed at himself that all he seems to be doing is crying. His time here is limited, he can sense it, the hunch that time is of the essence and he doesn’t posses much of it, and he refuses to waste it on more tears.

‘Me too, Pete, more than you know.’

‘I think I have a pretty good clue’, Peter laughs bitterly, it’s not the same really. He’s only been missing mister Stark for a few months, the man in front of him has been missing him for three and will need to miss him for two more years. The buzzing in the back of his head grows louder. Another stroke of Parker luck, he spend most of the time he had with mister Stark unconscious.

Whatever, he can’t change it now, but he has a few more things to say before he needs to leave.

‘Tony’, he begins, using Mister Starks first name to ensure he understands how important this is. He pulls away, just enough to be able to look Tony directly in the eyes, but what he sees there is nothing short of panic. His hand tighten, softly guiding him back but Peter resists.

‘Please don’t tell me you have to go again.’ It seems that despite Peter intent, Tony savvies more than he’d like. Peter smiles bitter.

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘What?’

‘What happened on Titan, when he blipped all of us, me, that’s not on you mister Stark.’ Peter repeats patiently, watching as Tony’s face hardens.

‘Peter-‘

‘It’s not. You couldn’t have protected me any more then you did. I’m sorry it turns out the way it did, but I need you to know it’s not on you.’

‘I should have done more.’ Tony insist, raising his voice a few octaves. Downstairs, Morgan asks Pepper why her dad is so close to yelling. ‘I should’ve, you were my kid Peter, are my kid, and I failed.’

‘You didn’t fail’, Peter yells back just as loudly, he stands up from the bed, subconsciously trying to appear taller so he has more say in the situation. ‘Because if you already failed then what did I do? I’m still here and you-‘, he cuts himself off once again, almost spilling all the secrets.

Tony approach him like he’s an animal that needs to be handled with care. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about, but I’m a grown man Pete, I can take care of myself.’

‘But I-‘

‘Ah, ah, ah, not talking back, I’m the adult here. Zip it kid. How about this, we’re both not to blame alright?’

Peter isn’t convinced Tony believes that, but it’s still a weight of his shoulders to have said it to Mister Stark, maybe, in the future, when he pins the blame on himself once more, he’ll think about this moment. He nods.

‘I have to go now Mister Stark’, The words tumble out of his mouth before he realizes that it’s the truth. Whatever is going to happen next won’t wait much longer.

Peter walks over to the window and opens it, ready to swing out after saying goodbye. He can’t go and see Pepper and Morgan, it’ll upset them as much as it’ll upset him. He’ll see them back in his time.

‘Wait,’ Tony screams, as I Peter was going to leave without a goodbye. The embrace he pulls Peter in is heavier this time, loaded with the upcoming goodbye’s. It’s still nice though, and Peter enjoys every second of it. Tony presses a kiss to Peter’s temple then holds it there when he asks; ‘How long do I have to wait before I see you again.’

Peter swallows painfully and considers lying to make Tony feel better but, ‘two years’, he eventually confesses, figuring that he can at least give that little piece of information.

Mister Stark simply hums, but Peter notices his tears nonetheless. With one last, solid squeeze, Peter wiggles out of the embrace and tries to stall his own tears. It would hurts less if he could go back to find Mister Stark there, if only he had a way to warm Tony.

He’s pretty sure he can’t go into too much detail but; ‘Mister Stark, when it happens, please hold on. I can’t lose you either.’

‘Okay Pete,’ Tony assures, his hands shaking with the urge to drag his kid back, safe in his arms. ‘After this is all over, we’re going to hold a movie night okay? With pizza.’

‘And Star Wars?’ Peter asks hopefully. Mister Stark laughs, his eyes wet. The smile is all Peter demands before he jumps out the window, not waiting for an answer. He prays that he’s done enough without messing anything up. He hopes.

---

When Peter makes it back to his own time, his phone pings with a message.

It reads; ‘Hey kid, still up for a movie night?’ send by Tony Stark.

[tessiete]

For the Spotify fanfic ficlet: 12 for the Kenobi-Kryze fam? 🥺

@lightasthesun so here’s the deal. I STRUGGLED with this. Because I wanted to give you happy, fun, fluffy times, and there are some real bangers on my Wrapped. I mean, relative bangers.

But you picked probably the most Obitine-angst appropriate song ever, and I was like......oh, no. I can’t - I can’t do that to them.

So, after several days of thinking about it, we came up with this. It’s...I refuse to call it angst, bc everyone is alive, and well. It’s just like, some family fun times. Thanks, especially to the Obitine discord, and @duchess-of-mandalore @mg024 and Finn!

And anyway, I hope you love it! Thank you so much for the challenge! <3

Prompt: The Chain (Ingrid Michaelson)

THE CHAIN

The sky over Capital City is grey, and tremulous when they arrive on Coruscant. A natural storm had surged over the breakers of the planet’s ancient atmo regulators to sound its rage and fury out above the city. It’s rare, but not unheard of, and though some might take it as an ill omen, Satine thinks it a fair reflection of the twisting winds within her breast. Rain falls in great, heavy drops, lashing its grief across the transparisteel viewports as they break through the clouds. Thunder cracks, righteous and defiant. Lightning fractures the plate of the sky, reaching out with jealous fingers to touch the earth. Korkie has slept through it all, but Satine doesn’t want to miss any moment more than she must.

They hit the pad with the sudden jolt of gravity reasserting itself, the locking clamps securing them in place. She feels each shudder of the ship echoing in her bones, the soft satyn of her simple travelling gown like water over her skin. Every contrast feels sharp, and malicious. She takes Korkie’s small hand in her larger one, and together they wait for the ramp to lower, releasing them into the wilds outside.

And they are met.

Across the platform, standing silent in the downpour, is Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

Though her vision blurs, and renders his face unreadable, she can see the straight line of his shoulders, the proud tilt of his chin, and the defiant stance of his feet spread wide. His hands are hidden in the fold of his cloak, and at his back are Masters Windu and Jinn.

At Satine’s back is the black maw of the ship, and the wind whistling through it. Korkie laughs, and she looks away from the Jedi to see her son, hands out, catching rain. 

“It’s wet! Belli, look!” he says, showing her his hand, shining in the grey light. “The sky is crying!”

Satine feels the rain coursing over her own face, and smiles in recognition of his delight.

“It is,” she says. “Happy tears, of course. Coruscant is glad to meet you, kih'kairkiyc.”

He grins at her, and she squeezes his hand, and together they cross the narrow bridge from the ship’s dock to the reception platform where they are met by Obi-Wan. He steps forward, and bows, deep, and formal.

“Duchess,” he says. His voice does not waver, but lies flat, and orderly in the space between them. 

He is much the same as she remembers, though his hair is longer, and his braid is cut. A beard has grown in, at long last, though she does not like how it covers his mouth, and hides half his face, and she longs to reach out and wipe it away so she might be able to read him again, like she used to. But there is more than an arm’s length between them, so instead, she nods her head in acknowledgement.

“Knight Kenobi,” she says, like glass, clean and showing nothing of itself.

Korkie tugs at her hand, and she pulls him forward to introduce him next. His fingers linger at the tips of hers as she lets him go. He takes a step. He takes a breath, and just as they’d practiced, he bows with his hands clasped before him, until his back is level with the floor.

“How do you do, Knight Kenobi?” Then, in succession, “Master Windu. Master Jinn.”

The three Jedi return the gesture. Master Windu is tense, and wary of her, she can tell, still unconvinced of the wisdom in this. Obi-Wan’s eyes are fixed on her, but Qui-Gon Jinn smiles at the boy, and Korkie stumbles back until he falls against his mother’s stomach, his hand reaching out to fist in the fabric of her gown to steady himself.

“Hello Korkie,” the old Jedi greets. His voice is soft, like birdwatchers in Keldabe before. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

Obi-Wan is pulled from his study of the past by this reminder of their present company. His hands drop, and he shifts, leaning towards her, his head ducked and uncertain.

“I apologise for the weather,” he says. “I would have - if there had been any indication of inclemence such as this, I would have suggested somewhere with a roof.”

“Of course,” Satine says, too quickly. Then, bridling herself, she continues. “Coruscant is usually such a civilised, and well-behaved planet, it could not have been foreseen.”

There is the promise of forgiveness at the end of her declaration, which Obi-Wan accepts with relief, and they smile at each other. It is brief, and carried more in their eyes, than in their mouths or hands, but it is there nonetheless.

“And you, Master Korkie,” says Qui-Gon, with a smirk of his own. “Are you more civilised, and well-behaved than you appear at first glance?”

He gestures to Korkies rumpled tunic, and mussed hair which sticks up in wild tussocks like knots of grass.

“Someone was rather exhausted by our journey,” says Satine, fondly. “He fell asleep just past Corsin.”

“It was rather a long flight,” says Korkie, in his own defence. “And I don’t much like flying. Lightspeed always feels funny.”

At this, Qui-Gon kneels to meet Korkie on his level, and speaks as if he is confessing some great secret.

“Do you know,” he says, “That Knight Kenobi also dislikes flying.”

Korkie throws a wondering glance at Obi-Wan, who shifts beneath the scrutiny.

“Truly?” he asks Qui-Gon.

The Jedi nods. “Yes, truly. Only he stays awake the whole time.”

“Why?”

“I think in order to complain,” says Qui-Gon. “He needs to be sure that I am equally as miserable as he is, otherwise he feels lonely for company. But it does make for a very long trip, from my point of view.”

“That’s silly, Knight Kenobi,” declares Korkie. He turns to address Obi-Wan directly, and though he speaks critically, his brow is lifted, and his eyes wide in an earnest desire to ease the knight’s discomfort. “It’s much better if you sleep,” he says, with all the wisdom of a moment. “The time goes by much faster.”

Obi-Wan is forced to accept his master’s censure with grace as to spare the gentle feelings of an innocent child, so he smiles, and bows to acknowledge the boy.

“As you say, Master Kryze. You are probably right.”

“I know I am,” Korkie says. “Even though I do look a little wild in the end. But I feel tidy. So I suppose it’s just a matter of which part of me you look at.”

With a rumble that starts deep in his belly, then tumbles out like thunder, Qui-Gon Jinn laughs.

“A man after my own heart,” he says, giving Korkie a little clap on the shoulder. “I foresee you will become a great Jedi, Kiorkicek Kryze.”

“Sorry to interrupt, Duchess, Obi-Wan,” says Master Windu, stepping between the parties, “But as this rain doesn’t look to be letting up any time soon, may I suggest we complete the investiture ceremony somewhere a little drier?”

He levels Obi-Wan with a challenging glance, but its severity is diminished somewhat by his own bedraggled state. Despite their equal exposure, the rain has somehow managed to do more damage to Mace Windu’s composure than any of the others. Perhaps because he is more conscious of his position, and his dignity than the other two, Qui-Gon being rather untroubled by such pretensions, and Obi-Wan still humbled and distracted by the circumstances in which he’s come face to face with the unquiet ghosts of his past. Both of them wear the rain with ease, but Mace has struggled, unable to convince himself of the need to shield himself, but conscious of the desire. His cloak is patchy with damp, and the top of his head reflects the sky, the water washing his face, and dripping from his lips and chin. It is clear that Obi-Wan feels this indignity on his superior’s behalf, but Satine fights laughter at the spectacle.

“I think that would be wise, Master Windu,” she says, her voice tripping and sparking with barely repressed delight.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says, with a shallow bow. And then he says, “There is an air car waiting.”

And Satine feels her stomach drop.

She meets Obi-Wan’s eye over Mace’s shoulder. His gaze is steady, and somber and as he makes his answer to the master’s request, and she can hear farewell in the heaviness of his voice.

“Yes, Master Windu,” he says. “Satine, I’m sorry we must be so brief, but I -” and he stands gaping, and voiceless for a moment.

The tight knuckle of sickness twists in her gut, scraping across the raw nerves of the underside of her skin, buckling muscles, and shifting against her bones, but she swallows the nausea back, and saves Obi-Wan from the inexorable void of silence.

“Do not apologise, Obi-Wan,” she says. “These things cannot be helped. Perhaps it is better this way. Perhaps the sting will be less.”

“Like a plaster,” he says, numbly.

And she agrees. “Just like.”

Master Jinn’s rises from his crouch, leaving his hands to ghost over Korkie’s shoulders, his hand still wrapped in her own, and Obi-Wan still staring at her, still drowning in the rain. Master Windu is merciful then, and bows out his leave taking.

“I’ll prepare the car,” he says.

“Thank you, Mace,” says Qui-Gon, when no one says anything else, and Master Windu leaves them to say goodbye. 

But still, no one moves. Silence falls, a fragile, lacework thing, too delicate to touch with the clumsy fingers of speech. They remain suspended in its web for an age, until Qui-Gon braves what the others cannot fathom, and speaks again.

“Obi-Wan,” he says, stepping away from Korkie to reach for his own grown padawan. “A word.”

He draws him aside, turning away, turning their backs to Satine and Korkie, and speaking quietly in Obi-Wan’s ear, an arm about his shoulders, and drawing him close in private assignation. At another time, she might feel ostracised and othered by this, but now, she is grateful. It is she who is with Korkie, and the Jedi who must stand apart.

She kneels to face her son, heedless of her skirt, of the thin satyn and how it catches at the rough duracrete, pulling taut, maybe tearing beneath the pressure of her knees. She doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. What matters is this: herself, and her son, and the rain washing away the things between them.

“I don’t want to go,” says Korkie, and she grips his hands tighter than before.

“You must,” she says. “You must. You are going to be a wonderful Jedi Knight. Just think of that.”

“I don’t care,” he says. “I know I said before, but I changed my mind. I want to go home.”

“You can’t go home, kih'kairkiyc,” she replies, her tongue growing thick with a truth she hates to speak. “Remember? We talked about this. It’s dangerous. But you will be safe here. Knight Kenobi will protect you.”

“But who will protect you if I’m not there?”

“Oh, many people, Kiorkicek,” she says. “A whole court of people. All the people. The people of Mandalore will be my strength, and they will take very good care of me while you’re away, and one day, when you come home, they will be glad to meet you again, and so will I.”

“Do you promise?” he asks. “You won’t forget me? Even if I’m gone for a very long time?”

“Even if you were gone for almost as long as forever, I would never forget you, Kiorkicek Kryze. Ni kar'tayl gai sa'ad. Ratiin.”

“Ratiin,” he repeats. “Always, and always.”

“Yes,” she avows. “Now, do you remember what I told you?”

“To wash my face, and brush my teeth every day, even if I’m very sleepy.”

And she laughs, pulling him close to her breast, and tucking his head beneath her chin.

“Yes,” she says. “That is very important, but what else?”

“To listen to the masters, and study hard, and show respect, and try my best, and to always, always be very kind to Knight Kenobi, because he isn’t always very kind to himself.”

“Yes,” she whispers. She presses a kiss to his hair, and combs it as flat as she can. “That last part, most especially, kih'kairkiyc. Look after each other. For me.”

“Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum, Belli.”

“Bal Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum, balyc.”

“Satine?” The call is Obi-Wan’s and she looks up from the cradle of her embrace, and her son within it to see him standing cautious, and concerned a few paces away. “It’s time to go.” 

“Of course,” she says. She stands. She takes Korkie’s hand, nestled in her own, and places it in Obi-Wan’s. For a moment, the three of them are one, together, and then…

She lets go.

“Goodbye, my Kiorkicek,” she says. “Remember what I told you. Kote, ijaa, aliit. Ratiin.”

He nods, and she can see his grip tighten on Obi-Wan’s hand, fierce determination rising in the face of her expectations. It is Obi-Wan who falters.

“Satine, I -” he shakes his head. His eyes match the storm. “I will do my best by him, I swear. I will not fail you. I will not.”

“I know,” she says, steady where he is not. “I would not give him up to another. None but you, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Gar ratiin ru’kar'taylir. Be gentle with it.”

He nods. There is nothing else to say, and they’ve always been terrible at goodbye. She smiles at Korkie one last time, and he points at the sky.

“Happy tears,” he says, and grins, wiping the salty streaks from his own face.

And with that, he tugs on Obi-Wan’s hand, and leads him off towards the distant figure of Mace Windu, and the air car waiting patiently to take them home.

But Satine is not alone.

Qui-Gon Jinn steps close, until she can feel his shoulder jut up against her own, the warmth of his body breaching the barricade of wet clothes, to soothe her own chapped skin, and she shivers against him.

For a moment, they say nothing, just watching as Obi-Wan turns to Korkie, and Korkie to Obi-Wan, chatting animatedly, his free hand swooping through the air. She imagines he must be telling him of their departure from Mandalore, and the world he left behind, and she hopes that selfishly, she might be included in as many of these stories as he thinks to tell, because he is in all of hers. Qui-Gon chuckles beside her.

“Fast friends, already,” he says.

“Forgotten just as fast,” she whispers, nearly losing the words to the storm. But Qui-Gon is listening closely.

“Never that,” he says. He wraps an arm around her shoulders, and she yields like water, dropping her head to his shoulder, and weeping into the crook of his neck.

“I thought I was ready,” she says, hitching breaths to match the shifting winds. “But it has come too soon.”

She feels his chin press against her skull, and though it isn’t exactly comfortable, there is comfort in the angles of his affection, and she leans closer to him, until her arms sneak beneath the wet folds of his outer robe, and wrap around his waist. She clings there, as though she might blow away. This is familiar, though it is an old, old memory, now. She was once a girl, before she was a Duchess, and Qui-Gon Jinn was once to her the very thing her father could not be. She was bereaved, but never lost, and there were many nights that Qui-Gon held her while she wept just like this. It is easy to reach for him, now. It is easy to look back.

“You are never ready,” he says, his voice vibrating so near to her ear it is as though he speaks to her from within her own mind. “But he is not going very far. He is with his family. He is with his father. You are not losing him to the wilderness.”

“No,” she says. “Only to the Force.”

He does not chide her for the bitterness upon her tongue.

His own words remain gentle, and soothing, and he rocks her in his arms, as they watch the matched set of their hearts walk away.

“Then I have lost my own heart twice,” he says. “First to the Force, and then to you. But people always come back, in one way or another. No one is gone forever.”

And as they reach the car, as though he hears their call from across a vast, unending night, and over the wind and roar of the storm, Obi-Wan looks back, and Qui-Gon smiles.

“Oh, look,” he says, as the knight turns once more to his son. “There he goes again.”

Satine buries her face in Qui-Gon’s arms, and though she doesn’t feel at peace, for a moment, she feels like she has come home.

[rainbowcaleb]

impossible magic

fictober prompts: 4 "incantations" mixed with 5 "you are here"

CW: blood, implied torture, imprisonment, chains, disassociation, hurt with a dash of comfort at the end, also mutual pining~

((also available on ao3 if you’d rather read there))

--------

 If he died, there would be no coming back.

 It was a secret Essek kept carefully hidden away. It was the reason behind the argument that pushed his father away to a place he didn’t return. His mother must know. There was nothing that escaped her notice and his father had no love enough for his son to keep his secret. But Essek knew his mother was like himself in one important way; she was a master at compartmentalizing information if it could be used.

Right now Essek didn’t really care about whatever political machinations he had inherited. The tiniest whisper of regret was trickling across his consciousness much like the drops of blood that had finally slowed their flow down his forehead.

He had woken from unconsciousness held strictly in place by manacles and chains. His arms were pulled taut behind him, mere inches of chain holding his wrists down to the shackles on his ankles. Every link, every piece, every ounce of the metal was heavily enchanted to block any magical escape. Even if Essek had any feeling left in his fingers, he wouldn’t be able to cast.

 Sparing no expense, his captors had his neck collared with a thick heavy ring, just tight enough to drag painfully when he tried to swallow. Another enchantment laced through it and he knew if he tried to speak magic it would shock him with lightning. He knew because he had already attempted one desperate incantation. The collar was attached by a short length of chain to the wall behind him, so he wasn’t even able to find relief by lying on the ground without choking himself. He was forced to stay upright, his voice the only boon still left to him, but all his decades of magic rendered useless.

 Essek had long stopped feeling the pain of his legs against the uneven stone floor and he had long lost track of the time. It was more than a week. He had scraped bloody lines on the floor with his knee to keep the time, but after the days kept going and going, he had lost the motivation to bother. No water came. No sustenance. No visitors. But they didn’t want him dead, otherwise he would be already.

 This was calculated torture. They were waiting for him to break. Since his captors had taken the risk of leaving his voice in place, clearly they were hoping for him to give information. Otherwise, why not just slash his throat and be done with him? Perhaps they knew, impossibly somehow they knew Essek only had this current life and to kill him would end the trail of any of his secrets. He could be locked away by an enemy that intimately knew him. And now they were simply waiting. Essek wanted to heroically believe he could last until a rescue came, or perhaps he could overpower his captor, but he knew he was too weak. They had already won when they captured him.

 It was some amorphous time between one week and two when the first visitor came. A bucket of ice cold water was dumped on his head, waking him from a feverish daydream, and he opened his mouth trying to catch whatever drops he still could.

 There was a laugh from some distance a few feet away, male or female he couldn’t tell, and then footsteps receding before the slam of a door.

 It would be another week before another bucket of water. They were doing the bare minimum to keep him alive. They were waiting. They were patient.

 All Essek could do was try and keep his mind. He had lost motivation and strength long ago. If it wasn’t for the collar and chain holding him upright, he would have collapsed many days ago. Essek had to hold grasp onto his mind, the most important part of him, his most powerful part. He could not lose this too. He repeated lines of incantations, imagining their sigils and components in his mind's eye, but being careful not to move his mouth. He did not know if anyone was watching or what they were watching for. He started with the first spell he ever learned, testing his memory too, and then worked through each spell variation until he advanced to its final form. And then he would pick the next simple spell, working through each one like a library in his head, keeping his mind occupied. His whole body had surpassed from pain into nothingness. Essek felt completely detached from anything material around him. All he had was the repetitions of incantations, the words a rhythm in his head that kept his heart beating.

 Another ice cold drench of water. It woke him from a fitful sleep, having dozed off somewhere between reciting dunamantic spells. His body protested, the tension against his shackles friction again as the water trickled down. It was a terrible reminder of where he was.

 He coughed out his first word spoken since he was brought here. “W-who?” Essek didn’t need to know why.

 The voice just laughed again, mirthlessly. He heard the door shut again.

 Even though time had completely slipped from him, Essek had come to expect the water that came in a regular pattern.

 It did not come that week.

 There was something warm and glowing near his legs. His first thought was that perhaps his mental incantations had impossibly broken through the spells on his manacles and a drift globe had materialized. Something small and soft patted his knee. He smelled sulfur. Then there was an earthshaking explosion and the door he assumed was somewhere in this room was knocked down onto the ground. Essek’s eyes were still closed, he barely opened them anymore, but he could still see shocking orange light through his eyelids. Then it dimmed.

 He heard scuffling, metal being dragged, multiple footsteps. Something grazed his face, but it was so light it felt like he imagined it. Essek felt the tension of the chains snap and he toppled sideways, suddenly loose from his bonds. Softness caught him instead of the hard stone floor. The last string of fight that had been forcing him to stay awake snapped.

     Essek woke lying down. It felt like the first time in a decade that his body wasn’t twisted into a terrible position. He opened his eyes. It took more strength than he expected to force his eyelids open. He didn’t bother trying to move his limbs. The pain was greatly dulled, but the exhaustion was filling his bones with lead.

 He didn’t recognize where he was. The whole room emanated a soft amber glow, the walls a plain ocher paint, the floor a polished wood. Essek tilted his gaze as far as he could and he saw a small nightstand beside him, a pitcher of clear water next to a glass, and several emptied potion bottles beside it. He was in a bed. Someone had found him and cured him and tucked him into bed. Essek knew who. As his senses woke up from however long he’s been asleep, he knew. The magic he felt flowing through this entire room told him with certainty. Caleb.

 There was a click and a door opened. Essek didn’t turn his head to look, but several footsteps entered. He saw the familiar blue of Jester lean over him.

 “Oh my gosh we were getting so worried, it's been days, we didn’t know when you would wake up and it’s been kinda crazy having to haul you out and have Caleb recast the Tower and stick you back in and-”

 “J-jester.” Essek’s voice felt tight with under-use.

 “Yes, that’s me!” She gave him a blinding smile. “You remember! You were kinda delirious when we found you, like you didn’t recognize us and were mumbling spells under your breath. You didn’t cast anything though, I don’t think you had anything left in you.”

 Caleb was over her shoulder, looking at Essek with a guarded expression.

 “H-how, there?” Essek asked.

 Caleb finished his thought. “We heard you.”

 He had so many more questions, but his voice wasn’t cooperating. Jester picked up on this.

 “It’s a long story, but I was trying to send you a message about Vess, ‘cause we were gonna do this thing for her but there were some crazy red flags and we thought you might’ve heard something, any anyways your reply was super weird. It was like you were whispering on the other side of a door and it was hard to hear you and it didn't even make any sense. Just a couple words in between some long pauses.”

 “It was a spell. When Jester repeated the words to us, I recognized it as your Echo spell.”

 Essek had no memory of a Message, or doing any magic. The only thing he could imagine was that somehow his repeated incantations had briefly broken through the shackles.

 “Well, whatever it was totally made me worry! It was so random and weird for you to respond like that. And then when I scryed it was like a big blank space and then I got booted out from the vision with a painful shove! It was scary enough that I Messaged our housekeeper, gosh I had almost forgotten we had gotten one but thank goodness we did, and had her go look at your house and there were some weirdo guards posted outside who said you were not to be disturbed. But they were totally unconvincing and weird.”

 He was barely following the story. The drag of sleep was threatening him again, and nothing felt better than the soft bed he was resting in at the moment. Essek tilted his head to look properly up at Caleb. There were bags under his eyes, nothing new, although they looked darker than he last remembered. There was a mostly healed cut across his cheek and the cuffs of his coat looked dusty black with ash.

 “Jester, can you find Caduceus? I think this calls for some tea.”

 “Can’t you get one of the cats to-”

 “Jester.”

 “Okay, fine, fine. I can take a hint.” She winked at Caleb and stepped out the room, closing the door behind her.

 Essek kept his eyes open, trying to take in Caleb’s face as the guarded expression was faltering under the weight of something happening in his thoughts. Caleb’s arm jerked forward, then paused, but he completed his movement to gently brush a lock of hair from Essek’s forehead.

 “I will not ask, because I know the answer will be ‘no I am not okay’.” Caleb gave him a wry smile but then it faded again “We were...We investigated and what we found, or didn’t find that is, was disturbing. So many lies so easily spread, and you-” The hand returned to Essek’s face, the lightest sweep of Caleb’s thumb across his cheek. “We were worried.”

 Maybe he still had a tinge of delirium, but Essek had to ask. “And you?”

 There was the briefest shock in Caleb’s eyes, like he hadn’t expected the question. But Essek had to know. In between the flow of magic words that kept his mind occupied, the daydream (painful, beautiful, impossible) that came to him was the memory of teaching spells to Caleb. Of wanting to teach him more. Of wishing to spend more time with him. Of pursuing that thread of something that seemed to keep pulling them back to each other. He had to know.

 Caleb leaned over and pressed his lips to Essek’s forehead, familiar yet unfamiliar, the touch feeling much more intimate in this position while alone in the room.

 “I was worried.” Caleb’s words were a puff of hot breath across his forehead. Then he straightened back up and pulled his hand away.

 “Caleb-”

 “Do not make me say more.” There was a small smile on his lips, but Caleb’s eyes looked sad.

 “Not now...We-,” Essek was really wishing his throat felt less like glass. “Can we talk later?”

 There was a noise at the door as the handle turned. Caleb didn’t turn to see who it was and instead kept his gaze on Essek.

 “Yes.” He stepped back as Caduceus and Jester walked into the room. “Yes, later.”

 Essek was given another cold potion and warm hands of healing, and then he drifted off into unbothered sleep. Whatever they had given him was preventing any restlessness or dreams. However, Essek still found himself chanting a spell to himself as he sank into sleep; it was the first spell he had taught Caleb, its words as familiar and soothing as that memory itself.

[rose-director]

Blooming Roses, part 1

Content warnings:

Masks

Face covering

Momentary loss of breath

Neural connection

Hypnotic theming

Corporate setting

Cyberpunk

Description:

A new hire at Rose Cybernetics is given their final interview.

~2800 words

Story:

The megalithic building stands proud against the concrete and glass towers beside it, making mortals of titans. Sheer, elegant, imposing; the structure kisses the sky, inspiring awe in those who observe it. This effect becomes overwhelming in its courtyard, where these same observers are rendered ants in a temple of giants. You let a breath fill your lungs, feeling it sweep out through your anxious smile. Here it is. Rose Cybernetics.The sliding doors of the atrium open with a hissed breath as you enter. You knew that the company did its best to impress its visitors, but if the scale of the building hadn't already set an imposing stage, its lobby would finish its show. Seeming as though it was open to the air, the 'ceiling' of this enormous space rests comfortably at the top of the building itself. From this, a tiered array of circular floors wrap along the outer walls like a serpent's coils. Light permeates the structure from a myriad of sources, all carrying a natural hue that - if what you've heard is accurate - mirrors the color of the sky outside. The sterile whites and greys of the building carry accents of saturated color across its industrial carpeting and in stripes along its walls. Of a similar color set, furniture that seems more like modern art gives the entire area an almost organic quality. The structure itself, though, is complemented in its unique qualities by those within. Figures all around you work busily, writing on whiteboards, collaborating in clusters of various sizes, darting from group to group, and delivering items as though their need was known preemptively. Interestingly, these forms all appear dissimilar from each other. They represent myriads of body types, clothing styles, and gender presentations, yet they all wear a sleek cover across their faces; a brushed, dark curve that obscures all facial features while displaying imagery of its owner's choice. Pulling your attention from your surroundings, you return to your task. A desk labeled 'check-in' sits at the atrium's center, and inquiring there seems to be the place to start. "Hello, welcome to the Rose Cybernetics Center! How can we help you?" The person at the desk carries a spritely, delicate voice, and their words appear across their faceplate as they speak. Almost as if understanding your hesitation, the words 'she/her/hers' flash across her screen. "I- um, hi," You've practiced this interaction many times before, but trying to get words out when you're already off-beat is a bit like trying to tame a tiger while wearing rollerblades. The staffer looks at you again, tilting her head curiously in a motion that dangles her blonde ponytail against her shoulder. It's unsettling to interact with someone with no face, yet looking into her faceplate is somehow calming all the same. Rippling waves of various colors splash across the black of her display, soothing cool tones that remind you of northern lights. You take a breath to settle your heart, acclimating yourself to the unusual sight, and try again. "I'm here for my in-person interview. I-I heard that you'd be expecting me?" Even without seeing her face, you get a good sense of the smile under her faceplate as its colors take on a gentle warm hue. "Of course, applicant 3B90, right this way." The staffer stands and walks out from behind the desk, as another worker wordlessly takes her place. You find yourself unsettled by the exchange; it almost felt more mechanical than human. Suppressing a shudder, you follow the staffer as she leads you to one of the elevator wells built into the side of the building."If you don't mind, um," you speak, immediately cursing the way your words always drift away midsentence. "How can I help you, applicant 3B90?" The warmth associated with her smile appears again, easing some of the anxiety in your chest."It's ah. Sydney, please. What's your name?" "Oh, I'm sorry, Sydney. I'm GIU-2CE5, but you can call me 2C if you like!" As with all of her words, these too float across her display, as does a small '^-^' emoticon afterward. Having gotten more accustomed to the way she emotes, you see the way her tone seems to perk up at the opportunity to share this particular bit of information."Sure," you say as she guides you into an elevator and presses a button for one of the middle floors, "that's your employee number, or um. Whatever, but how about your name?" She pauses for a moment, and you can see her faceplate's slow visualization stutter briefly as she thinks. "Nope, but 2C's my nickname!" It's painfully clear to you that she likes that 'nickname' at least, and you doubt you'll get further on this line of questions, so you let it go with a sigh. "2C it is, then." Okay, maybe it *is* a bit cute to see her get excited about something so simple.The elevator dings and she leads you out through its doors, grabbing your hand to pull you along. The contact is startling, but you don't seem to mind too much as you shrug and let the enthusiastic girl drag you along. On these lofted floors, full glass windows look out on the open atrium while the walls of offices and cubicles emerge, finally welcoming you into something more familiar. She pulls you into an office, empty except for two chairs and a small cabinet, and gestures for you to take a seat. You comply, settling into a piece of furniture that has no business being as comfortable as it is. 2C takes the opposite chair, crossing her legs. "Okay, Sydney, I'll be conducting your interview! Let me know, and we can go ahead and get started." Hearing this surprises you. Sure, you keep an open mind when it comes to most things, but getting interviewed by a front desk greeter for a network administration position is almost surreal. "Alright, so what is this, exactly?" 2C's 'smile' flashes again, and she cheerily explains the Rose Cybernetics hiring process. You know most of this stuff already; the company runs a series of difficult online challenges that lead the way to their application portal. From there, you don't need to submit a resume (thankfully, since yours is in desperate need of some TLC), but they do ask you to solve a problem in realtime over an internet call. If you've shown your skill, they speak with you in a brief remote interview to learn more about you as a person, then give you one final in-person meeting. This last interview, to your knowledge, is a formality; they'd already told you to bring everything you needed to move in, after all. It's at this point where the details get fuzzy, though. As much as you've searched for information about what this would even be, you'd found nothing but missing links and dead-ends. "This meeting is a different kind of test! We're going to hook you into our internal network for a moment, and see how you take to it." She reads your confused look, and the waves on her display bubble lightly, almost in a light giggle. "What do you mean? Will I have a laptop?" You watch as the laughing effect grows. She holds up a hand as if to ask for just a moment, then stands and walks over to the cabinet. Sliding out a slim, black box, she strides back over to you and places the box in your lap. It's blank, unadorned, and made of showy cardboard. You start removing the lid, suction keeping the base from falling as it slides slowly, and an idea of what might be waiting inside dawns on you. Tossing away the newly-liberated lid, you stare directly into the item you'd been expecting and dreading; a faceplate, returning your stare.Just above the glossy covering, embedded into the packaging foam, a small bolt-like object sits ominously. You've already seen the faceplates, but this thing..? It makes the whole situation even more concerning. "Don't worry about that receiver - for now, just put your faceplate on - I bet you'd look so cute! Oh, I'm so excited, I get to see what your display shows before anyone else!" 2C's demeanor is a confusing thing; her screen jumps and reacts to her mood, and so does her voice, but her body language and physical responses - while present - are significantly muted. Her posture is almost perfect, and her movement is unsettlingly smooth. Just one more uncanny part of this business, you suppose. Considering your current situation, you catch yourself worrying about the results of this interview again, for very different reasons this time. Your eyes widen with anxiety, as your heart beats faster in your chest. "Sydney, look at me, okay?" her faceplate's coloration shifts back to those comfortable blues and greens. "Putting the faceplate on won't do anything permanent." Her hand is holding yours. "It'll press against your face, make a tight seal, and beam everything its cameras pick up into your eyes once it starts up." She's holding both of your hands now. "When I press the receiver to your neck, it'll let you control the faceplate with your mind, just like I do!" Her display wiggles in a playful pattern for emphasis. Her hands are soft, reassuring. "Once you take them off, it'll be back to normal, okay? Just a taste now, that's what this interview is for." You nod, thoughtlessly. With 2C's hands still holding yours, you reach to the faceplate in your lap. Her reassurance pools in your chest, and after slowing your heartbeat with a couple of deep breaths, you press the dark shape to your face. It's cold, almost like your face is pressed against a window, and begins to shift against your skin. You can feel it exerting a suction force, and for a terrifying instant, you realize that you can't breathe. As you try to pull in a breath, a refreshing current of air wafts in through its respirator, and your brief panic recedes. At first, your vision is blank. Another few deep breaths go by, and imagery starts to flow back into your eyes. Dim at first, most likely to keep you from being immediately overwhelmed, slowly building until your surroundings resolve around you again. You've needed glasses, apparently; the world around you appears sharper now than before, and much more detailed. Looking over at 2C, a small blurb of information hovers over her head. It's a single word; 'contented.' You'd figured that she was just good at reading emotions, but this was cheating!"H-have you been reading me from your s-screen this whole time?" you stammer. "Oh, no, not quite. That info comes from your receiver. I'm just good at guessing!" The panel shifts to 'proud,' before progressing to 'flirty.' You're about to comment on it, when she decides to continue. "By the way, that faceplate looks so so cute on you!" Your cheeks redden, and you're, surprisingly, thankful that the unlit display is covering your face. You still have almost no idea why the company would require wearing these things, but the anonymity is surprisingly refreshing. "O-okay, I've handled the mask-faceplate-whatever, I'm good to keep going." 2C's faceplate lights up a monochrome green as she tilts her head, and you see metadata confirming that it's posed as a question. You nod again in response, and she stands up to walk behind you. Your anxiety builds at the thought of a person directly behind you, but it subsides as chilling metal touches your skin. The mechanism's electromagnetic fields warp your thoughts, pulling at them as though they were elastic. The tension builds and builds as your mind becomes a coiled spring, the receiver forcing it ever tighter. The force, the pulling, the pushing; it feels like everything that makes up your mind is about to explode. "Relax," 2C's voice cuts through the swirling forces and mental struggle, "just let go, let the flow of information sweep over you.” “Relax.” At her last word, your entire being stalls, before sinking into a state of extreme ease. All of that tension, so overwhelming moments ago, courses through your body, letting you accept this new pathway for information to travel through. As you pick up the pieces of your consciousness, you shake your face from the empty stupor it carried a moment ago - thanking your mask once again - and actively sift through the data streaming into your brain.The Rose Cybernetics building is already impressive from a visual perspective, but looking at it for what it is, the glowing connected consciousnesses of every mind in the structure lighting up before you, you feel your jaw drop automatically. Your gaze returns to 2C, whose current emotions register as 'pleased.' [You can talk to me like this now, you know.] The thoughts sound like her voice, and you jump as you hear them. [It's strange to start with, I know, but this is how we all communicate here; much faster.] Realization dawns on you, and without prompting, your thoughts pour through the connection between you. [How do I respond- oh wait I'm responding now this is amazing but hard to control how do I sto-] flows out of you, in combination with a variety of related emotions, images, and half thoughts. You spend the remaining interview time experimenting with this paradigm shift in interaction, communication, and existence that's somehow both entirely new, yet confusingly familiar and natural. After only a few minutes, it feels as though 2C understands you on a deeper level than anyone you've ever met, just as your understanding of her reaches that same depth. She explains that for the sake of getting you used to this, she's the only one linked to you. She shares - with enthusiasm - that after you've had enough time to acclimate to this shift, you'll be able to open connections with anyone and everyone in the entire facility. Her excitement bounces through your mind, and you can't help but let that positivity bubble up until it begins to play across your faceplate, too. Your display is a lot less abstract than 2C's; instead of the amorphous waves against a black background, your faceplate decorates itself with images of the cosmos. Galaxies, nebulas, constellations, all proudly used to emote in a way that words never could. It feels freeing, strangely enough, wearing a screen like this. It's a window, you think, glasses for the mind. You can feel 2C thinking to herself, the sign to expect a burst of new information broadcast from her mind to yours. As you do, you can't help but think just how cute she is! So excited over being called 2C; of course, if someone called you 3B90, you'd probably melt too. It's confusing to you, looking back, why you thought that names were so important. After all, designations are just so much more convenient! [You were broadcasting that, 3B,] 2C's smug feeling drips between your connection. Your blush returns to paint your cheeks bright red, and you notice another - somewhat less innocuous - response between your legs. She waits, perfectly aware of the effect her words carried as she feels it flowing through her mind from yours, before continuing. [I think that our interview was a success! Come back tomorrow, and we can get you fitted with a permanent set.] [I have to take it off?] [It'll be alright, just one more day.] Through your mental link, she sends you more feelings of relief, complemented by a physical hug. She looks up at you for a moment questioningly, before you nod gently, confirming your begrudging acceptance as she pulls the receiver away from your neck. With all that meta-information gone, you squeeze against her even tighter to compensate. As your mask falls away, you feel strange; naked even. Leaving the office room, stepping into the elevator, and giving your goodbyes to 2CE5 all serve the singular goal of making you feel that much more alone. For a brief moment, you consider just how strange it is to be feeling these things at the hand of your new employer, but at this point, you're in far too deep to do anything but shrug. "Before I- um... go, will I see you again?" you stumble out the question, mouth once again failing you. 2C's smile lights up her faceplate again - stars, it's so beautiful to see - and a giggle creeps out too. "I wouldn't be too worried about that, 3B! After all, I'll be your new supervisor!" Hearing your designation excites you in a way that feels almost enchanting, and you blush deeply in response. The part of you that might have questioned why she of all people would be your supervisor remains muted, as the excitement of the prospect tingles down your spine. Only a few hours ago, you would have scoffed at yourself, but now you can't help but be excited; tomorrow is your first day at Rose Cybernetics.

[imagine-loki]

To Know Better

TITLE: To Know Better - trigger warning PTSD CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: One shot. AUTHOR: marvelgirlonamarvelworld ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine being in the Avengers Compound with the whole team, including Loki. You were all in the living room about to have movie night. That night it was Loki’s turn to choose the movie you would see, and as soon as you sat by his side, he chose the movie, or at least the genre: horror.

…

You tried to leave, but Loki hold you by the waist and told you that he was right and that you were just a weeper little girl. You being the prideful you were, sat down again and tried to watch the movie. And for a couple of minutes it worked. The few moments were the aliens appeared you put all of you to keep your eyes in the screen. But just as the final scenes started, you couldn’t keep handling it. You stood up and ran to your room, ignoring the calls from the others and with your face full of tears.

RATING: M NOTES/WARNINGS: TRIGGER WARNING PTSD, mentions of past trauma, torture, child abduction. Emotional distress, language, angst, slight fluff towards the end. Loki’s an asshole in this one.

A/N2: this was requested by a good friend of mine, a one shot based on the imagine above  just before the end of the year. Thank you very much for reading!

-

It all was going according to plan.

Tension permeated the lounge. Clung like claws to every bone as light reflected and tainted the faces of everyone in the dark. Surged by suspense; by the not knowing; by the movie unfolding.

The black night seeped through the glass. The only boundary to the outside. It only enhanced their thrilling suspense. And the trickster’s enjoyment.

Every sound was a spark. A caress to the spine. Goosebumps to the heart.

Their eyes were drawn, soldered to the action, caught in the webs of the screen’s psychological thrill. Mostly expectant, completely distracted while they stuffed their mouths with never-ending snacks.

It all unraveled to his will. 

Loki had chosen wisely. And had been gifted with the thrill of her fear. He had toyed with it. Used it to his benefit. Now she was clinging to him. 

Pretty thing. Frightened little fawn. She sought refuge in his wolfish disguise. And pleaded to the god for the movie to be stopped, for the horrors to be cast out.

Loki paid deaf ears to her pleas as a matter of fact. He was ecstatic with her company. With her arms embracing him.

Pretty frightened thing. Beside him she trembled. Flinched and clung to him as her hand clutched and entwined with his. As if those creatures with eyes as black as the void and pale scaly flesh would detach and turn to a vivid nightmare. As if they too, would snatch her away from the room.

“Please turn it off…” she was hating it. She was loathing every second as much as she was now despising the foolish trickster. Abhorred him as much as she did her repressed memories. Her ever-present secret. For each macabre sound prickled her veins numb. Each look to the creatures of other worlds enticed her heart to hammer loud, fast, heavy in the backdrop of heavy breathing coming from the tv. All to no end till she was rendered against a void of dizziness and visions.

And he was enjoying it. Not the film. The movie was as boring as it could ever be. But to have her so near. Yes! He was blissfully delighted. 

“And just why would I do so?” His surmised response shushed her fears.

A grimace of anger shadowed her face as her eyes drifted to the screen. She was hating it.

On carried the film. Each scene immersed the lounge in scalding silence; in a grim background orchestra which raised all hairs on end. Drew in the Avengers with every creature from a foreign land and every kidnap. With every victim growing mad, paranoid, desperate for they couldn’t tell who was who, or who had gone where.

“Never thought you’d be a weeper,” Loki mocked her fright with a snarky smile. His eyes twinkled enamored as he had an internal fight.

He was being heartless after all. Just a little. Perhaps a lot.

“Okay, I think that’s enough.” Nat arbitrated at some point. She was one of two who’d been aware of her friend growing anxious. “Turn it off.”

But who had the power? Loki smirked. It sure wasn’t her and he wouldn’t do so anyway.

“It’s okay,” her voice was small, helpless while her eyes drifted anywhere else but the hideous aliens. All eyes had suddenly landed on her. “Think I should go to bed early anyway.” She excused herself, just to be denied her parting by Loki. 

Selfish little asshole.

His grip, yet soft, was firm around her middle. His smile, much like the cheesier cat, twinkled mischief as much as his eyes did. They were stars fallen from the sky. Meteors crashing to cause a furor. “So you are a weeper girl. How can you possibly be an Avenger?”

”I am not a weeper you idiot.” Annoyed of his speeches her pride bloomed forth again and her timid eyes wandered back to the screen. “Now get your hands off of me.”

Loki had succeeded again. His grip softened though he did not move his arm. That mischievous side had won the internal fight. And now as the victor, he reclined back and feigned to focus back on the movie itself and not her. So too, did the Avengers drift their confused eyes back to the unfolding plot. So too, did hers.

It all was silent again. Everyone was expectant while the stars gazed down on the compound. On her. 

Minutes passed, seconds withered away, more and more aliens appeared on the screen and caused mayhem. More victims had fallen to them, to their tests. Communication with them was futile, their reasons remained in a language none of the characters could comprehend, worsening their chances to know why had such creatures reached earth. It all seemed the end would unfold with colonization. 

Loki was less and less interested in the plot itself. But more and more did her anxiousness bloomed and exploded in her chest, flooded her veins, tainted her mind until no more could she stand to stay.

“I can’t do this,” she murmured brokenly as she rushed out of the lounge and into the dim-lit hall.

“Wait!” Wanda stood and paused momentarily. A grimace shaded her face against the light of the screen as she turned to Loki. “You insensitive idiot,” she snapped as her accent thickened evermore and rushed after the girl.

Loki was only left with perplexity in his mind as well as guilt building up in every thought. For he hadn’t thought such a movie would cause someone as much distress as it had.

Silence was grim, tension clung to it, suffocated it, to say the least. In a blink, all light dimmed back to life and ushered the night back out. So too, was the screen frozen and shut down. All eyes drilled down on the trickster who had nothing to do but hide his astonishment with his usual mask of indifference. 

“Brother!” Thor roared angrily.

Natasha stood and stiffened her jaw. Her glare, cold as the snow, pierced through as Loki gazed at her as she paced trying to hold her wits and not kill him instantly. “I’ve had it with your bullshit Laufeyson.”

“Oh, it was all but pure fun,” the trickster excused himself as he sat back pinching his lips, disguising lazily his amused sneer.

Nat shook her head and chuckled angrily, “You’re an insensitive asshole! Do you ever think before you act, huh?! Do you even realize what you’ve done?! How much harm you’ve caused?!”

“Oh, do please, by all means, enlighten me as to how I’ve presumably done any harm,” Loki humored as the rest stared in silence with concern in their eyes.

“She was kidnapped Loki! As a child!” Natasha gestured. “And it’s not for me to tell you all this. But why do you think she was acting the way she did?! This!” She pointed to the black screen, “This was too much for her. Those people in the movie! All those who were kept as lab rats for experiments in there! She was them!” 

Her fury rained down crimson. And if Loki was already pale, he was now a ghost as he studied the redhead’s face in the search for an expecting lie he did not found. But Natasha was a trained spy, one to lie so easily even he, the god of lies, would not be able to distinguish it. So it must be a lie, right?

Loki cocked his brow reluctantly, unwilling to believe. “Have you a better lie to tell, Romanoff?”

The former spy glared at the sitting trickster helplessly. “You’re a heartless piece of shit,” she growled and folded her arms. 

Silence again placated the place before she spoke again, this time on a much calmer tone than before.

“Loki, she was used as a human test for years by people who thought themselves to be God. By people like HYDRA if not worse than them. They played with her mind. They injected her god knows what, every single day. Exposed her to heaven’s know the amounts of radiation throughout the years! She was taken from her parents when they had decided to go on a picnic…her powers are the collateral damage, her everyday reminder, of what they did to her. You yourself claim to have gone through hell and understand how it feels. And if what you claim is true…then you should understand what you did triggered her.”

Loki’s breath faltered. His heart seemed to slow, to almost come to a stop as the hurtful truth sunk. The room somehow seemed to have gotten cold and much larger than it was. And he realized…he was an insensitive idiot. A bloodless asshole as Nat had barked. Again his pranks had crossed the line. 

And she was right. Loki had to admit, the read head was as right his own seldom could not abide to let it pass.

It all had gone according to plan. Yet somewhere along the lines, things had fallen apart. His wicked game had spiral and caused harm. Loki hadn’t aimed for that. He never meant to cause as much distress. It was all after all supposed to be harmless, innocent pure fun. Another of his unexplainable ways to have that one soul who made his heart soar stay close. 

Yet, he had fucked up. Big time.

Right away Loki sprung up from his seat just as a hand gripped his collar and pulled his upper body. “Your better make this right, brother,” Thor snarled as his knuckles whitened. His deep-sea glare sparked rage much like the clouds in the foreground. “Your tricks have gone too far.”

Yes, his tricks had gone too far. Loki was now aware of that.

Brusquely he stepped away from his brother’s death grip and spun on his heels, and chased after the poor soul he had so carelessly hurt.

You idiot! You fool! You clueless big dumb fool! All you ever do, is hurt people. And of all people you could have harmed with your stupid games, for your personal amusement, you come and hurt her…you fool.

The grand halls were barren in the backdrop of the starry night. The stars, hanging and twinkling so knowingly, peered back at the desperate trickster whose footsteps echoed against the midnight silence. All of a sudden Loki had forgotten where in the compound was her chambers.

Was it this way or the other way? No. This is the way. Yes.

Briskly he turned once again and was met by a familiar adorned door down the hallway. Silently he neared it and noticed it was ajar. A soft accented voice drifted in the dead of silence inside. Loki knew it was Wanda, comforting her just like the good friend she was.

Deep down, Loki wished he had been that friend.

“It’s okay, they can’t hurt you now,” the redhead cooed softly. “They’re gone, we made sure of it.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“I’ll be right back, okay?” Her voice sweet as sugar, assured the trembling girl before soft, barely audible, footsteps replaced her voice. “I’ll go get you some water and something to calm your nerves. And probably kill that tricker somewhere along the way,” Wanda humored, “Hang in there.”

“Oh, please don’t,” soft laughter reached Loki’s ears which made his heart skip a beat and placed a soft, guilt-tripped, smile on his face. He acknowledged in his head, although he knew Wanda meant the latter to an extent, he deserved it.

Right away Loki shielded his presence from Wanda’s eyes as she walked out the door and down the hall. He waited a few moments, before growing enough courage and nearing the open door.

One, two, three silent steps.

Once there, his inquisitive eyes wandered from the neatness of her room to her form sitting on the bed. And noticed her eyes were glazed, pensive; they were a pair of crystals lost in the dark forest just beyond her window across. Loki didn’t have to inquire to know what were her current thoughts.

Ever so slightly, Loki knocked on the door frame and leaned against it. His fingers right away started fidgeting with each other as her eyes darted his way and widened ever so slightly.

  “What? You’re here to continue mocking me,” she sniffed and raised her brow.

Loki parted his lips but no words came out. His throat had gone dry just as a tug of guilt had nestled in his chest. He knew it was the nerves.

Her eyes remained on him for another minute, disinterested yet drilling down his soul, before she set her gaze back on the dancing branches of the trees outside. The midnight breeze softly whistling outside filled the room in place of the deafening silence.

“No,” Loki finally answered.

“I suppose Nat spoke to you about it,” she inquired distractedly, “otherwise you wouldn’t even be here looking like a sad scolded puppy.”

Ouch.

Loki only fell silent and observed the contour of her face as she breathed in and closed her eyes. His lack of words spoke tenfold of what he knew although the vagueness of it.

“What I did…” Loki lowered his eyes to the gray carpet on the floor and slowly stepped forth, “words alone cannot express how sorry I am for hurting you…” ever so slightly he raised his gaze as he stood two footsteps away from her, “for causing you to remember. I never meant it. It was heartless.”

A tear rolled down her cheek as she still refused to acknowledge Loki who right away summoned a delicate white cloth and offered it to her. Silently she took it and dried away the stray crystal bead.

“Oh, I relive those memories every day, you know. You didn’t cause me to remember. I always see them, in my nightmares,” she said in a hushed tone, almost broken, melancholic for a dreamless night she now doubted she would ever have. An evening when closing her eyes never meant to relive the past. “Whenever I close my eyes I remember. I remember every single detail. My mind forces me to. I recall their whispers, their heavy breathing, the glossiness of the walls, the pinch, and coolness of their needless, the rubber of their gloves against my skin, how blinding were the lights I could never see clearly,” she explained. “I remember them every day, the only difference is…whenever I close my eyes, I have the control to fade them out so they don’t hurt as much.” She paused for a beat. Another tear meandered down her cheek, “but today, you took the control I had over my memories. I could feel them so vividly, as if they were there, sitting beside me, holding me down so they could continue on with their painful tests.”

Loki’s face grimaced sourly as he swallowed the lump that’d formed. The harm he’d cause…it was far worse than he had thought. He knew from his past how the ghost of endless torture still loomed about in the aftermath. How the control one could have over such things was limited but precious, invaluable. And he had triggered in her, that helplessness she’d once experienced time and time again. 

“I was only seven when they came…whoever or whatever they were. I never saw their faces regardless of how long I was kept by them,” she said out of nowhere while memories from the past resurfaced. “We were out at the park, having a picnic with mom and dad. It was a sunny day, breezy too. We were playing hide and seek, I ran to hide behind some bushes that were some feet away…The next thing I know is I’m laying on a metal table with needles and tubes stuck to my arms and my chest. And they wore these sort of gray suits whenever they came to the room. Though to me as a naive child, they seemed like…aliens.”

Loki reached to place his hand on her shoulder but hesitated. Rapidly he withdrew it and bit the inside of his cheek. He was no longer sure if it was the wises way to approach her without causing her any more distress than he had already inflicted. After all, as he thought of it, he was no good but to only cause heartache to others. He was a fuck up.

“It was never my intention, I never meant for my foolish games to have gone so far…” a shadow of pained desperation crossed over Loki’s face, “I never desired for you to relive it all over…I… I should’ve…”

“Known better,” she finished off his sentence as he perplexedly fell silent. “I know,” her eyes still remained on the dancing woods outside. 

“Yes,” he agreed, slowly tilting his head. “I should have known. I was a fool. A heartless idiot.”

“But you didn’t know.” She turned her head and made eye contact with Loki. Her reddened eyes bore down on him, drilling him to his spot. “Nobody did. So how can I blame you when you knew nothing?” 

“Regardless,” Loki insisted, his voice soft like that of a boy who just had been reprehended for something. “I should have not done what I did. I shouldn’t have forced you to stay!” He quickly crouched in front of her and wiped away another tear from her. “It was completely stupid. I was an idiot. I should have known better.”

“I know it wasn’t your intention to make me relive it,” she acknowledged to his luck, “all you wanted was…my company,” she lifted her knowing gaze and half-smiled at Loki whose eyes were wide. “I know. You just went about things the wrong way without knowing. An old cliche which wouldn’t have worked by the way.” She pointed out as she wiped away the remnants of her tears and sighed.

“I…I…how did you…but…” Loki mumbled but no coherent, no complete sentences were able to come out of his mouth. For all he could wonder was how could she have known those were his true intentions?! 

Though it dawned on him she still remained a mystery to him. For very little was known about her and her true potential. He was amused to know one of her powers was…telepathy.

“I try not to use it, although I just did, it’s too intrusive,” she excused herself. “Way too intrusive.”

“A tad bit like me,” Loki uttered, still perplexed and lost in his head.

“Yes, a little like you,” she chuckled shyly. 

And Loki could have sworn his heart almost stopped. He had made her laugh, unintentionally, but he did! 

Loki glanced at her with enamored eyes and felt the world still for a brief stance. Good thing he was already crouched for his knees would have threatened to give in upon him witnessing such a warm smile. His lips eagerly curved and mirrored her semblance of shyness and sudden bloom of happiness. 

“Will you forgive me, dear? If there’s anything I could do to atone for my wrongdoings…there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Please.”

The wind continued to quietly whoosh and whistle outside as it waded through the starry night. So too, continued the tree branches to dance a lazy waltz.

Shadows formed on her eyes through her lashed as she gazed at Loki with gentle warmth. Perhaps she too felt something towards the fool.

“I forgive you, Loki. Just think before you play another of your tricks on someone.”

[kclenhartnovels]

Episode Three

[One] [Two]

“Wait!”

DeWitt held up their hands in a T shape, and took a few steps forward. Frosticle startled, and the ice obediently cuddled against her palm instead. “Wait, please. Ms. Jackson, can you kindly explain to me your evil twin sister?”

Kate tucked the blanket around her shoulders, crossing her legs comfortably. Flashback panels littered behind her while she spoke, and Frosticle waited patiently for the explanation to finish. “When we were babies, my mother knew that there was something wrong with Vanessa, but she could never tell what it was. My parents raised us until we were nine, and then there was a terrible accident, and they were both killed.” The flashback panels politely showed a young Vanessa freezing the steering wheel, sending a car and the entire family into oncoming headlights. “My grandparents adopted and raised me, but they knew that Vanessa was evil. So she went to live with the Villa family.”

“They loved me for who I really am,” Frosticle snarled, curling her fist and sending cracks of frost across the floor. “Evil.”

DeWitt scrubbed at their face for a moment. “Ms. Villa, I have reason to believe that you are in great danger as well.”

“Great danger?” she repeated, and laughed. “Darling, I am the danger. And I’m here to kill my sister.”

“Why?” DeWitt asked, already digging out a business card.

The question seemed to throw her for a moment, and she looked between Kate and DeWitt. It snowed thoughtfully. “Because Power Surge loves her, and I must destroy everything that he loves.” She clenched her fist. A wind swirled the snow, waving her hair dramatically.

“Why didn’t you kill your sister when you killed your parents?” DeWitt pressed. “You had the opportunity then. Why wait all these years until she happened to fall in love with your enemy?”

“I love my sister,” Frosticle snarled. “But I hate men. She fell in love with a man, and the worst kind of man! She betrayed me!”

DeWitt held out the business card between two fingers. “Luckily for you, I am not a man. Let me help you, too.”

The wind snatched the card out of their hand, and obediently wafted it into Frosticle’s. She inspected it with a sneer. “Secondary Character Protection Agency. I am not secondary.”

“You wouldn’t be, if this was your story. But listen to your dialogue, Ms. Villa. You’re an antagonist, and one that the writers will gleefully kill. But not until they make you kill your sister, who you love.” DeWitt spread their hands pleadingly. Their coat fluttered in the same wind that buffeted Frosticle’s hair. Somehow, it didn’t touch DeWitt’s hat. “Ms. Villa, you are the perfect villain for them to kill. You are beautiful, strong, black, and a lesbian. There is no way you’re getting out of this story alive without my help.”

Kate stood at last, holding the blanket around her shoulders like a cape. Snow kissed her hair. Her lips were too blue. “Nessa, please.”

Frosticle tucked the card into her cleavage. “There is one other way I can get out of this story alive. I just have to kill Power Surge.” The wind whirled, tossing snow and scattered shards around the room, and then Frosticle disappeared back out the broken window.

DeWitt rushed to the window, and swore quietly.

“We’re eight stories up,” Kate protested, not daring to move for all the broken glass. “Where did she go? Ice powers wouldn’t allow her to fly.”

“Villain physics,” DeWitt explained. “It allows for dramatic entrances and exits, regardless of powers. She’ll be fine.” They turned enough to offer Kate an exhausted smile. “Superheroes have their own set of physics, too. It’s why they can always stick the landing.”

“Trent never complains that his knees hurt,” Kate agreed with a frown. “But I have weak ankles. I’m always falling into his arms.”

“Of course you are.” DeWitt rubbed at their face for a moment, then took off their hat and raked fingers through their hair. They wanted nothing more than a shower and a half dozen shots of whiskey, but there was no time for that, and they doubted the writers were ready for a drunken interlude. Not when the stakes had just risen. Maybe another dozen chapters, and there would be a comedic break, but they weren’t counting on it. “I doubt we’ll be able to catch up to Frosticle right now--we need to find another way to get to her to help.”

“Do you think she’ll let us help?”

“No, but maybe we can stop her from killing Trent.” They looked around the apartment, still strewn with shards of glass and scattered with snow.

“Do we need to clean up?” Kate asked with a frown. “Your windows are missing.”

“I’m not worried about it,” they said with a flippant motion, and put their hat back on. “This mess is too much for the artist to draw over and over. It will be cleaned up on its own by the time we get back.”

“Get back from where?”

“I think it’s time we have a talk with that barista again. Get some clothes on, Miss Jackson.”

“Where do you expect to find him? It’s the middle of the night,” Kate pointed out, pulling a shirt on anyway. The front of it read Drop Dead Gorgeous. DeWitt didn’t like the sadistic foreshadowing.

DeWitt gestured towards the broken windows. Dawn began to peek over the horizon, glimmering off the high rises around them, and sending light across Kate’s cheekbones. “Story progression is more important than the continuity of time. You’ll get used to it eventually.”

She tugged on a pair of jeans that hugged her thighs too closely. “But I thought we were trying to intentionally break the narrative. How can we do that if even time is broken?”

They offered Kate an overcoat. “There are some things we will never have control over, Miss Jackson. This world is written and drawn for viewers that we will never see. In order to have our own agency, we have to find a way to move in the peripherals of their vision. You were never aware of the way time moved before. Now that you know, you can use it to your advantage. Which is why we’re going to get coffee.”

Kate slid into the coat. It was too big on her, and for once covered her skin without immediately sticking to her curves. DeWitt counted it as a small victory. “Do you think my cream will mix this time?” she asked hopefully.

DeWitt doubted it, but offered her a noncommittal shrug instead. Just as before, Sugar Honey Ice & Tea had a nominal line, just long enough for Kate to lean up on her toes and peer over the heads of strangers. She wasn’t wearing heels for a change, and DeWitt wished they had been keeping a notepad just to tally the minor changes, before they became part of the conscious rendering.

“You gave Joe Steve your business card, right?” Kate asked with a frown. “Did he ever go by your office?”

They shrugged helplessly again. “I don’t know; the plot curved away when Frosticle appeared, and I think the writer forgot about the scene. I guess we’ll find out when we talk to him if he remembers me or not.”

She rubbed at her nose. “Agent DeWitt, this is very complicated. How can everyone just forget or remember things that may or may not have ever happened? How am I supposed to know what’s real and what’s--?”

“What’s been redacted, edited, or canonly changed?” They smiled, and put an arm around Kate’s shoulders. A saxophone solo blared from the overhead speakers. DeWitt chose to ignore it. “I’ll get you signed up to receive THE CANON CHRONICLE. It will help you keep track of any changes.”

“Good morning, what do you want?” Demeter greeted from behind the counter. A brightly-colored pin promised SERVICE WITH A SMILE!, but her pierced lips refused to even make the attempt.

DeWitt pulled a folded wallet out of their coat, flashing it open to reveal a badge. “I need to talk with your barista for a few moments, please.”

“And two coffees,” Kate added brightly.

“Please,” DeWitt agreed, handing over cash as well, leaving some of it in the tip jar.

Demeter barely blinked. “That’s not a city police badge, not FBI or CIA, not even the secret government agency’s.”

“How would you know what the secret government agency’s badge looks like?”

“Duh. Everyone knows it. What good would a secret agency be without marketing?” She handed them a receipt with a look of faint scathing. “So what is that badge?”

“SCPA, ma’am. I gave him my business card yesterday.”

Demeter glanced down to the barista, who was sporting a black eye from his last fight with Power Surge, but seemed otherwise unscathed. “Yo, Frappachino, take your fifteen, huh?”

Kate sat at a table at the far end of the cafe, and stirred her coffee with more force than necessary, but the cream still did no more than make an artistic whorl in the center. The overcoat slipped off her shoulders to pool around her elbows.

“So,” DeWitt began, steepling their fingers as the barista joined them at the table. “Do you prefer Joe or Steve?”

“I prefer Dr. Thomson,” he corrected, his shoulders nearly double the width of the chair he leaned back against. “I have two doctorates and four masters’ degrees.”

Kate’s eyes widened, and small shock scribbles appeared around her mouth. “What are you doing working at a cafe, then?”

His massive shoulders shrugged. “I’m the right size for a henchman, so it’s how I got cast. There was already an oversized doctor villain in town, and Doc Tom doesn’t sound as intimidating.”

DeWitt sighed through their nose. “And let me guess, your doctorates aren’t medical, so there was no other way for you to be cast?”

“No, they’re in philosophy and literature, specializing in romanticism poetry.” He adopted a wistful expression. “Byronic poetry in particular just speaks to me.”

Kate’s smile was wistful. “Trent gets confused when a word has more than three syllables.”

“So,” DeWitt redirected, taking a sip of their coffee at last, “you work for Frosticle?”

“Yes, I am a criminal assistant.”

“Don’t you mean accomplice?” Kate asked.

Dr. Tom shook his head. “If anything, it’s more like criminal intern. I’m not getting paid, which is why I work here. That, and it allows me to spy on superheroes for her.”

“I thought Frosticle hated men. Why do you work for her?” DeWitt already had another business card in hand.

“I have no idea,” he admitted. “I think it’s an inconsistent writer.”

“We did talk yesterday,” DeWitt decided.

“I was in your office for three hours. Your Chief handed me a stack of inspirational cards on my way out.”

“Well, that makes this easier.” DeWitt tilted their hat, and leaned forward conspiratorially. “We need to stop your boss before she tries to kill Power Surge. We need your help to be able to get into her lair and talk with her.”

“Talk to her?” Dr. Tom repeated. “You’ll never get past Lesbeam. She kills anyone that even gets close to the warehouse. And she doesn’t accept solicitors, either, so I don’t think your business cards will help.”

“What warehouse?” DeWitt pressed. “Just tell us where we need to go, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

“We?” Kate repeated. Even halfway empty, her coffee and cream remained a perfect swirl. “I get to go with you? Not just stay behind and stare wistfully out the window in my underwear?”

“Well, of course. We’re partners, Miss Jackson. I need you with me.”

Dr. Tom scribbled an address on a piece of paper. Based on his handwriting, DeWitt had no doubt that he had multiple doctorates; it was barely legible. “I have to get back to work,” he said, standing and blocking out the overhead lights for a moment with his girth. “Good luck.”

Demeter leaned against the counter to call over to them. “Yo, Blended Machiatto, your break’s over.”

“Before we go to the warehouse,” DeWitt whispered, tucking the slip of paper into their coat. “I think we need to swing by the office, Miss Jackson, and help you look the part.”

“Look the part of what?”

Kate didn’t remember walking from the coffee shop to the office; she didn’t remember seeing a pair of disappointed teenagers walking out of the door when they realized there were no puppies up for adoption; she didn’t remember Chief Special Agent greeting them with his booming voice, or handing her a stack of paperwork to fill out; she didn’t remember looking through a closet full of clothing, or anything else that happened over the next few hours. None of it mattered to the viewer, and none of it was as impressive as cutting right to her walking through the Agency’s door.

Clad in a fitted black suit, Kate tipped down the brim of her hat, and gave DeWitt a bright smile. “Agent DeWitt, I am ready for my first assignment.”

“Well then, Agent Jackson. Let’s get to work.”

As always, patrons get first chance to read plus other goodies, and my ko-fi tip jar is always open. Also available to read on Wattpad!

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[triplehelix]

antigravity

It was always going to be Vax.

Percy remembers bits and pieces of this process from his handful of deaths through his time in Vox Machina: fading light, all-consuming blackness, and floating. He doesn’t feel disoriented in the directionless darkness, though, and for that he’s thankful.

There’s something ringing in the edge of his awareness. It sounds like Whitestone. It sounds like ravens. It sounds like a voice.

His lip curls, just a bit. Her realm, then.

There is no light, but for a moment his vision flashes white with the gleam of porcelain. Maybe it’s a memory, but maybe it’s an acknowledgement. This is her realm, and he is merely intruding. Merely passing through.

But if it’s her realm, then maybe-

He shakes his head to clear the rising hope that threatens to resolve itself into a name. There is no hope in this place. Didn’t hope die when he did?

He blinks.

And then, all at once, he can see.

There’s still no light, but against all odds, something manifests into the space before him, shaped like a man and a bird and a predator. Percy stumbles back on the endless blackness, but he gets no farther away. He braces himself, then, pushing up his glasses and standing tall against the darkness.

But then the thing reveals its face, and Percy isn’t afraid anymore.

“Vax,” he says, surprised, stunned into momentary stupidity by the sight of him. Of course, he’d expected this, but now, faced with him, it’s just. Well. Quite the surprise.

He just looks so familiar.

He’s still wearing the Deathwalker’s Ward, and it curls around him in a rush of black and silver and feathers, turning his silhouette into something distinctly inhuman. Percy would fear him if he didn’t know that this was Vax’ildan. Besides, he has seen enough death and monstrosity and ravens to recognize this shape. There’s that fey hint to him in the perfect, curving lines of his ears and eyes and fingers that can only be elven. His eyes gleam in the darkness, reflecting a light that Percy can’t see. He is beautiful and impossible and so, so familiar.

“Percival,” Vax says, and that’s all he needs to say. There’s something powerful in his voice now, but even that low rumble is broken by the way Percy’s name trembles from his lips.

Gods, Percy has missed him.

He can’t handle this right now. He can’t fathom this, but his frantic heart is forcing words from his mouth anyway. “All those syllables?” Percy asks, and he hopes that his mouth is curving into something wry and bold. “For a mortal like me?”

His face - Vax’s face - softens. “Freddy,” he murmurs. He steps closer, if there is such a thing as closer in a place like this. “Does that suit you better?”

“From you?” Percy smiles. “Far better.” He hasn’t heard that name in endless decades of waiting. It never sounds right in anyone else’s voice but Vax’s. “Like a glove.”

“Diplomacy,” Vax murmurs, and his eyes crinkle at the edges, and a smile twists at the corners of his mouth. “I hope you kept that thing.”

Percy tilts his head to the side. “You know I did.” There are so many things he can see now, looking back on it all, here in the blackness of the moment between breathing and stillness. And here, surrounded by Vax’s voice and the sight of ink-black feathers on a midnight canvas, he knows the hearts of the ravens.

Vax’s grin turns roguish. “You always were the smart one,” he teases.

The word - were - strikes at a part of Percy that flinches away from the sound. It reminds him of his purpose here; it reminds him that this is not a happy reunion. At least, not completely. “I was,” he agrees faintly, trying to look down at himself. To his surprise, the darkness has clarified into the familiar shape of himself and, thank the gods, he is blessedly clothed. He lightly touches at a lapel on his jacket and frowns. He hasn’t had this particular jacket for years. And his hands are unlined, marred only by the general wear and tear of life on the road and in the workshop. He stares up at Vax. “What do I look like?”

Vax shrugs. “Yourself.”

Percy snorts. “Well, that’s a relief.” He doesn’t stop pulling at the fraying thread on his lapel, though. “But truly, Vax. Do people always look younger when they come to you?”

“Some do. Some don’t.” It’s a noncommittal answer, and so incredibly Vax that Percy almost finds himself smiling like a fool. Vox tilts his head to the side and studies him closely. He asks, “Why? Would you rather look different?”

“No,” Percy decides, and he drops his fidgeting hands to his sides.

“You’re the first one,” Vax says, and he blinks at Percy as if he’s expecting a reaction.

Percy nods. “I know.” His aging, though inevitable, had still come as a surprise to them somehow, evident only through the aching in his bones and the tremble in his hands. With hair as white as his, only his failing body could tell time. Old men can’t be clockmakers. “Were you surprised?”

Vax smiles, sad and soft. “Death doesn’t surprise me much anymore, I’m afraid.” His eyes gleam with something Percy can’t fathom. “Everyone comes through here. Some stay. Some don’t.”

“So you’ll know, then.”

Vax’s smile fades into confusion. HIs brow furrows, and even that is a welcome sight. It’s been so long. “Know about what?”

“You know,” Percy says, waving his hands vaguely and wishing that words were easier to come by in this place, “about the others. You’ll know when the others will come here.” He doesn’t say die. He can’t. That would make it too real, and he can’t bear to think about all the others fading like he has.

“They’ll all have their time,” Vax says, staring at Percy with an unfathomable sadness. “And they’ll all pass through. The other gods have need for them. Sarenrae and Ioun and-“ He shivers. “Pelor.”

Percy winces. He misses her already; misses the way she’d wake him with the sunrise and take him through the trees, whispering of the render she’d been tracking. He knows that Vax is thinking of her too.

He asks, “And me?”

And then Vax smiles. “And you,” he echoes thoughtfully. “Godless.”

“Can I stay?” Percy asks before he can stop himself. “For them?” For you?

Vax studies him closely. His wings stretch and quiver against the blackness around them. “Would you like that?” He asks, but he’s never been good at lying to Percy and Percy hears the eager, wild hunger in his voice, hidden just behind that air of neutral sadness.

“I would,” Percy replies immediately, knowing that it’s the truth.

“What’s a moment, in the grand scheme of things?” Vax turns and stares out into the darkness; maybe he can see something out there with his raven’s eyes. “I’ve been here for a heartbeat and for ages.” He turns back around and stares at Percy. “They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die. I see it. I see all of their lives.” And he blinks, and that’s when Percy realizes what is gleaming in his eyes.

The souls. Their lives, their light, their love and grief and fate. He knows them all. He sees them all. Unseen, unheard, he watches them all.

It must be so lonely.

He reaches out and is surprised to find Vax’s hand to be warm. Somehow, he’d expected the cold of a revenant still. “She’d let me stay?” he asks quietly, haltingly.

He doesn’t need to say her name. He won’t. He can’t.

“You are quite safe here, I️ promise. Do not think that she’s forgotten the temple.”

“What of the time I threatened her?”

“Well.” His slight smile turns sad for a moment. They both remember the sunlight in the Platinum Sanctuary when the Raven Queen had claimed her champion. “Humans are so fickle, are they not?”

Percy snorts. “If that’s what you’d like to call it, sure.” Vengeful, maybe. Spiteful. He may not have made a weapon in endless years, but he still remembers the hate in his heart for the goddess who called him broken.

The hate fades a bit when he sees the fondness in Vax’s impossible dark-bright gaze.

Vax pulls him into a rough, tight hug with a fierce mutter of “Come here, then,” and his arms and wings wrap around Percy like a blanket.

And Percy, blind in the dark, laughs and hugs him back.

It’s not right yet. He still needs Vex here by his side. He needs his twins again. But right now, in this darkness, folded up in the wings of a raven, he feels comfortable. At peace.

“I’ve missed you,” Vax breathes into his ear, and he smells like Whitestone and the forest.

“I’ve missed you too,” Percy admits. “More than you can know.”

“I know,” Vax promises, because his eyes have seen Percy’s heart. “I know.”

[denlandis]

Grim (K)night, Pt. 1

The field stretched out like a verdant ocean, blades of tall grass swaying with every brush of the wind. Pearlescent reflections of the sunlight cast shimmering lines as wave after wave swept by. It was a warm, clear day with hardly a cloud in the sky and a few sparse trees to offer shade.

"Perfect day for a walk."

The soft words of her voice trailed up from behind, steps barely a whisper as she drew near. He didn't even need to turn, only to wear a knowing smile before her hands brushed down across his shoulders. Comfort, warmth, and the knowledge of safety after a year and a half of fighting. It was all they hoped for, all they wished.

"And a perfect spot to begin building."

Her forehead pressed into the middle of his back, quiet laugher and a soft breath spilling down the curve. It was a perfect spot, their spot. Where the foundation for the forge they planned to build would soon rest. They had drawn up the plans, and settled on this one location where before only a tent had stood. Their home away from the world. Now it would be real.

Calloused hands brushed along the toned and lightly scarred length of her arms, the softness willed away by the fighting. Bruises still clung to her knuckles like a stubborn reminder, but more likely from the morning's training. There was a quiet hiss, but then a gentle sigh as their fingers laced together. Warmth filled his palms and he took a long breath. The air was sweet, small groupings of tiny blossoms already blooming in the early days of the month.

"Just a few more days, and we can be-"

Something changed in that moment. A single blade of grass, hardly ten feet away began to twist into a blackened color. A pale ember fell away from it, blending with the rest of the green around it. It flared, touched another, and a firestorm swept outwards before he could take another breath. Scorched dirt took the place of the picturesque view from a moment before, leaving only a dark and cracked surface, stone.

"What..."

The hand that he'd held so dearly now seemed to grasp, tight and restricting. It took only a moment before it grew painful, and all he could do was gasp and twist down as his stomach lurched with the sudden shock. His hand came away red, trickles of blood dripping down even as his world upended. He wasn't standing in a field of grass in a quiet grove. The dream subsided, as reality forced itself back into the moment.

"Addie..."

Her name stuttered on his lips, coughed as he breathed out a lungful of thick smoke. Heat surrounded him as he pieced together what had happened. An advance on the ridge above, a counter from the Legion forces. They'd held long enough, until their infernal flying machines appeared from thin air. The sky above had rained fire, sending their forces to scatter before they could regroup. A retreat had sounded, he lagged behind to buy them time when something struck the ground beside him. Blinding light, and what felt like the fist of a titan sent him careening over the edge.

With eyes fluttering open, all there was to see was sheer rock walls and twisting lakes of fel. He shut his eyes, briefly hoping that the grove would appear and this was only a twisted dream. But a sharp lance of pain struck from his abdomen, and another stream of crimson spilled over the knight's gauntlet. With barely any light beyond the sickly illumination from the tainted river, he surveyed himself. A length of bronze metal, spiked and jagged had somehow lodged itself right through his armor. Bits of tempered glass and machinery lay around him, scattered in the impact. The remnants of his gift, the mechanized charger.

"She can..make another...."

One fickle breath of quiet laughter cut short when pain seized his lungs. Everything hurt. Every breath and beat of his heart was another reminder, even as each muscle strained to pull a battered form up from the ground.

The haze over the knight's vision began to subside, but the desolate expanse of the ravine was all that awaited. A quick survey, punctuated by the brief upturn of the world with a too quick turn, spoke even worse. The saddle bag that held the food had come loose, landing in the fel tainted muck of the winding river. Weapons lay nearby, but in such disrepair they were near useless. A sword cracked near in half, and a shield so warped by the force of the impact it bent in a reversed curve now. Torn straps coupled with split rivets rendered it little more than scrap.

His fingers swept down across the etched surface, over the tenets and symbols carved to be both reminder and inspiration. Thoughts briefly drifted, recalling the day each one had been placed over the grip. A shield in their own right, how many times had he read them quietly on the field. All at once the momentary distraction faded and the ground nearly caught him once again as a wave of dizziness struck.

Clouded thoughts and daydreams, and a trickle of blood that seeped from above his brow. The world began to swim, forcing him to a knee as a hand feebly tried to balance on a nearby rock. With his mind fading into a mist, the sound of approaching steps, clattering against the stone echoed through off the rocky walls. A moment of hope, even as he struggled to keep from sinking back into unconsciousness, dashed itself when a figure rounded the bend nearby. Impossibly tall, with armored plates near as thick as his palm. A grotesque mountain of corded muscle with features that jutted in the wrong places, made to fit its own twisted armor. The crescent shape of its axe, tipped with jagged spikes glowed the same sickly green as the river it walked beside.

"Good."

Its voice was a fetid stench of rotting meat and fel, its eyes teaming with a sadistic joy at finding its quarry.

"Still alive. You'll make an excellent addition."

The last thing Denlandis saw was the flat surface of the grated axehead swinging down. His arms were too slow to deflect the blade, and in truth he had little strength to fight back. It struck his head and sent him back to the ground. His vision clouded red as blood swept across his face, fading into darkness as he succumb to the pressing weight in his thoughts. There was no grove this time, no spring warmth to surround him or arms to hold. Just the dark, soundless grip of a cold sleep. (@adilynia for brief mentions)

[classicdaisycalico]

12 Sonamy!

protective sentence starters

First of all, I’m SO SO SORRY that I never got around to answering this sooner! Somehow I can’t search through my own tags anymore through the search bar so it’s been really hard finding the original post containing the prompts in the first place. But I haven’t forgotten your prompts! I promise! Anyway, here’s one of the first ones you requested!

(Also I’m just gonna put this under a “Read More”, btw)

“You’ll back off if you know what’s good for you.”

It was hard to think of a characteristic of Dr. Eggman that was actually somewhat positive, but persistence was often the first thing that came to Sonic’s mind. The same could be said for Amy, in some ways, as well, though at least her persistence didn’t bother the hedgehog anywhere near as much. This didn’t mean, however, that there weren’t times that he found it annoying, especially if he had to deal with them at the same time.

Such was the case today, as he was busy fighting off yet another swarm of motobugs and crabmeats that were currently attacking Green Hill. Eggman’s latest world domination plot may have faltered at the hands of the Resistance previously, but that didn’t mean his motives were completely crushed underfoot.

Seriously, when is Baldy McNosehair just gonna give this up already? he thought to himself as he sped through another hunk of scrap metal. How has he NOT gotten tired of going through the motions over and over again?!

“Sonic!”

It was Tails. Somehow he had caught up to him after getting overwhelmed with a previous wave of robots, but judging by the giant battered wrench he was holding in one hand, he seemed to look okay, save for a few bruises here and there. Sonic also noticed the Miles Electric in the other hand, still intact. “Got any more intel on this yawn-fest, buddy?”

“It looks like you’ve pushed through the last wave of robots, but there’s something on my radar up ahead. It’s readings look familiar, some other things constant, others not so much…keep on the look-out for anything unusual.”

“I’m on it!”

A roundhouse kick here, a boost there, and a hop, skip, and several homing attacks later, they found himself face-to-face with…

“The Death Egg Robot?” Sonic skidded to a stop in his tracks, Tails following suit. “I thought that hunk of junk was down for the count, last time I checked…”

“That’s where you’re wrong, you annoying blue pincushion,” Eggman’s voice boomed from his Eggmobile. “I was able to rework the outer shell into a battle mech that could function on its own.”

“How is that possible?!” Tails asked incredulously. “The outer shell was constructed specifically to keep the Phantom Ruby’s power in check. When the robot physically holding the Ruby ejected itself, the shell should have been rendered completely useless!”

“That’s only what I wanted you to think, fox boy,” Eggman sneered. “You should know by now that I never construct any of my plans with just one backup in mind. OHOHOHOHOHOHO–”

“Can it, Eggface,” Sonic retorted. “Knowing you, any and all of your half-baked ideas wouldn’t last you half an hour no matter how much work you put into them!”

“Oh, you naive little rodent, you,” Eggman bit back. “I can assure you this one won’t be as easy to push through. You see, I rewired the shell so it would run on a different energy supply.”

As if on cue, the core of the shell began to glow, pulsing almost like a beating heart. Unlike the first encounter, however, the “heart” did not glow red like the Phantom Ruby, but green…then blue…then silver…then gold…then red…then purple…then cyan…

Tails’ eyes widened in horror as he finally put two and two together. “…no…”

The mad doctor laughed again. “Oh, yes…while you were busy destroying the Phantom Ruby, I was on the hunt for something far more powerful. So naturally, the Chaos Emeralds were a fitting substitute…all seven of them.”

Sonic shook his head in disbelief as he watched the scene play out before his eyes. “I can’t believe how hard we’ve been duped…the entire Resistance just…completely forgot about the Chaos Emeralds…”

“It was a little difficult to get my hands on the last one, but no matter,” Eggman mused. “At least she’ll be here to catch a glimpse of both of you falling victim to your doom! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!”

Tails raised an eyebrow in confusion “…she?”

“Oh, yes,” Eggman said as he yanked up a bright pink hedgehog by the collar of her red dress. “SHE.”

Sonic’s eyes instantly widened as he realized who it was Eggman was holding hostage. “Amy?!”

The pink hedgehog’s ears perked up as she heard her blue hero’s voice for the first time in days. Just as she was about to shout his name at the top of her lungs, Eggman shoved a hand in her mouth, muffling her scream.

“This little nuisance has been a thorn in my side for the past few days.” Seeing the scowl on Sonic’s face grow, he added, “Perhaps when you’re done for, I’ll finish off your pretty little girlfriend, as well.”

“Finish me? You?” Sonic’s eyes narrowed as he readied a battle stance. “We’ll see about that.” With that, he sprinted in Eggman’s direction as the the Death Egg shell readied its laser cannons and machine guns.

“Sonic!” Tails exclaimed as the weapons opened fire. “Watch out!”

The fleet-footed hedgehog knew exactly how this machine worked like the back of his hand. Effortlessly, he dodged lasers and evaded bullets left and right until he found the core, the shell’s only weak spot, fall into his line of sight.

Now I’ve just gotta ram into that thing a few times and make that thing cough up those Chaos Emeralds, he thought to himself. Here goes nothing!

One.

He felt the shell push back on contact. So far, so good.

Two.

He reached farther, pushing harder. Once again, the shell skidded backward, further back this time.

Three.

As he rammed into the core, the Chaos Emeralds released a shockwave, stunning Sonic and warping him back to Tail, his quills in disarray from the electricity emitted by the gems in the shell’s core. “I can’t stop it fast enough,” he groaned.

“Did you try taking out all the guns?” Tails inquired. “Maybe the Chaos Emeralds took some time to charge up before you damaged the shell enough, so maybe if you don’t get sidetracked by enemy fire, you’ll get to the core faster and deal more damage!”

“Great idea!” He was on his feet again in no time. “Thanks, buddy! And while you’re here, try to get Amy out of that Eggmobile! I’ll take out whatever’s trying to lock on you!”

Tails gave his best friend a thumbs-up as he took flight, beelining straight for the Eggmobile with his big wrench in tow. After narrowly escaping various lasers and deflecting numerous showers of bullets, he was able to sneak up on Eggman from behind. While the doctor wasn’t looking, Tails pointed his wrench at his head. “Where’s Amy?” he asked, trying not to shake in his little shoes.

Underneath his glasses, Eggman’s eyes widened. In the excitement of finally taking down Sonic in his new weapon, he had completely forgotten to keep track of the other annoying rodent in his possession! He slowly turned to his right. No sign of bright pink anywhere. He snapped his head to the left. Still no Amy to be seen. Come to think of it, she hadn’t made so much as a peep in a while…

“The little brat must have left when I wasn’t looking!” He slammed his fist against the dashboard of the Eggmobile. “Blasted hedgehogs. ALL OF THEM!”

In the meantime, Sonic was slashing through every weapon in sight, and was just about to tear through the last laser cannon when he saw the Chaos Emeralds about to form another shockwave. Right as it was about to release, however, there was a huge explosion from within the core, and the shockwave fizzled out. Within less than a second, he sprinted over to investigate. By the time he reached the core, he noticed that the glow of the Chaos Emeralds was absent. In fact…

“The Chaos Emeralds…they’re gone? Where did they go?”

Sonic looked closer at the core. It was completely destroyed, so clearly something must have gotten inside and damaged it enough so the Emeralds could be freed. He looked at the damage around where the core was housed. Were those…hammer marks?

“SONIC! LOOK OUT!”

He whipped his head around to find who screamed his name, but right as he saw who it was, the laser had already found its target. It stunned him, and pain shot throughout his shoulder and into the rest of his body. With no sense of coordination at this point, he toppled out of the core and back onto the ground. Although his vision was blurry at this point, he could make out the faint image of a pink hedgehog surrounded by seven other glowing hues.

“Amy…” he murmured as he fell. “What are you doing…”

“OHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!” Eggman cackled. “At last, Sonic the Hedgehog is finally out of commission! Now, with the power of the Chaos Emeralds, I can restart my efforts to bring the world under my control ONCE AND FOR ALL!”

“OH, REALLY?!”

Sonic’s vision was starting to clear, and he was just about to get back on his feet, when pain starting shooting through his body again. All he could do was lift his head up. What greeted him was none other than Amy Rose standing in front of him, with all of the Chaos Emeralds surrounding her. “Leave him alone, you jerk,” she hollered.

“And what should I do about it, little girl?” Eggman taunted.

“You’d back off if you know what’s good for you!” Amy shouted.

Sonic was able to push himself up off the ground slightly. Amy looked really angry. The Chaos Emeralds were revolving around Amy at an even faster pace now. Suddenly, in a fantastic flash of light, Amy was floating gently in the air, her quills glowing a radiant gold, her red eyes flashing.

The blue hedgehog on the ground gaped. She…she can use the Chaos Emeralds? She has a super form?!

She flew off, zooming towards Eggman, with her giant, walloping hammer in hand, and with one fell swoop, she swung at the Eggmobile, denting it severely as the head made contact. Instantly, the Eggmobile flew into the sky at an alarming speed.

And she didn’t stop there. Right as Sonic finally got back on his feet, she sped past him, readying her hammer to strike the Death Egg Shell, knocking him back to the ground.

Her hammer struck the core with a force so hard, it exploded, taking the rest of the shell down with it. Eventually, it toppled onto itself, clouds of dust emerging with every hunk of scrap metal that hit the dirt.

Sonic was back on his feet again when the smoke cleared. What he saw in front of him was Amy, smiling sweetly at him, as if nothing at all happened. He felt himself reaching out to her, almost reflexively, in an almost protective instinct, even though the roles were so obviously reversed. “Amy…”

His hand was shaking like the rest of his body. She took it in her own and walked closer to him, letting her own free hand rest on his bruised shoulder. Her hand was so warm, so gentle…under the soft little brushes of her fingers, Sonic could feel the pain melt away almost instantly, but he was still as weary as could be. Knowing Amy would want him to rest, he collapsed into her, letting her carry him as she flew back into the air to greet Tails. “Let’s go home”, she said.

And she flew away toward Green Hill, Tails following suit.

[darlingpetao3]

For Asgard (Chapter 9/?)

You awaken after a long deserved sleep against Loki's chest. You have no clue how long you have been in this horrid prison cell. It's most likely been days but you're praying it's only been hours. The pair of you lay cozy in a lounge chair (one he didn't get around to destroying in his fit of rage). You're curled up into him while he reads a book, and for once, you feel at peace (oddly enough in imprisonment). The past couple of days have been one wild ride and you are glad that time has now allowed you to catch your breath.

You make a small noise. The kind you make when you are comfortable beyond belief. Loki plays with your hair which causes you to repeat that noise, seemingly much to his pleasure.

“Hi.”

“Hello, my sweet. Sleep well?”

“Mmm, very. You make a fantastic pillow.”

He makes a happy sound as he kisses the side of your head.

“I could stay like this forever,” you sigh.

“As could I, darling. However, maybe not so much here, precisely.”

“True, but you know what I meant.” Loki nods and looks around the room. “We need to get out of here somehow...”

“I don't see any way we can escape from here,” you gesture around. “Plus, it would be too risky to try anything now. You might get yourself killed and I really don't think I could handle that.” When Loki hears your voice crack he looks down at you in understanding. He knows the feeling.

“Hush now,” he says pulling you closer to him. “I am quite capable of holding my own, darling.”

His soft voice reassures you and it's when his hands start caressing your own that you forget anything and everything fearsome in this world.

In all worlds, really.

But a commotion coming from outside the prison hall erupts out of nowhere, which causes you to bolt upright. What the hell? You get up and move to the glass window at the front of your cell, noticing that the other grotesque prisoners are doing the same.

The doors explode open. You were curious as to whom would bust into an Asgardian prison, but when you see the figure emerge from the darkness, you really should have known.

“Laufey,” Loki whispers to himself.

King of the Frost Giants.

The towering Jotun's blood red eyes scan the cells searching for someone and you know exactly who that someone is. Laufey spots you staring at him and his blue lips curl into a demonic grin. You shudder involuntarily. He makes eye contact with Loki, who is now on his feet. The King says something that you cannot hear through the glass but by reading his lips you figure out, “Get back.” Loki lunges forward and grabs you, pulling you back far away from the window. Just in time before a sort of bomb goes off.

You have to look away from it due to the hot and blinding light it gives off. But you are still able to catch the final fading glow of the window's disintegration.

“What was that?” you hiss.

“I believe it was a type of explosive from Muspelheim,” Loki whispers to you. “The realm of the Fire Giants... Why he has it is beyond me.”

Laufey steps into your cell like he owns it. Following behind him are three other just as threatening Frost Giants. Loki takes a step in front of you, shielding you from them. That's when Laufey lets out a chilling laugh.

“Relax, my son,” he says. “I will not harm the girl. She is of no use to me.”

“I am not your son,” Loki growls.

“Your blood would beg to differ.” Laufey slowly advances toward you two, step by calculated step. Loki huffs in response.

“So what are you here for, exactly, oh loving and caring Father?”

“For you.”

It all happens so fast that you can't process it quick enough. The clinking of cuffs and chains. A yell in protest. A devious roar of amusement. Laufey's lackeys yank their new prisoner along. Loki tries to resist their pull, but unfortunately, they are far bigger and stronger than he is. They can't take him! You chase after them in a frenzy and grab Loki around his waist and attempt to plant your feet firmly on the ground, but it's no use. One of the Giants strikes you, causing you to fall to the ground hard and hit your head on the floor.

“NO!”

Why does Loki's voice sound so distant...?

When you finally start coming to, you feel a warm hand on your face. Blinking your eyes rapidly, you realize it's Frigga.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she sighs in relief. “Are you alright?”

“Laufey,” you groan.

“Yes, I know. It remains a mystery to how he got passed Heimdall in the first place, but we have soldiers after the fiend. He has my son.”

“I have to go.” You get up from the cold floor and exit the busted window that the bomb destroyed.

“Wait,” calls Frigga.

“I'm sorry, but I have to go. I can't just let them take him.”

“I understand. And I won't stop you.” You won't lie, you're a little surprised she said that. “Let me help you.”

Frigga whisks you off to a room down a few corridors from the underground prison. Inside reveals an excess of weapons and armour.

“Weapon of choice?” she asks you.

“Um, I'm pretty good with a knife.”

Frigga smiles. “Just like my Loki.”

She pulls open a wooden drawer, inside of which, there are several shining daggers. You pick one that looks like it would do some killer damage. Frigga tells you that it's an excellent choice. Then she opens up an impressive wardrobe bursting with body armour and finds one close to your size. You put it all on with much haste. Once you're suited up, Frigga calls out to the guards in the hallway and orders them to take you to the Bifrost.

“And quickly!” she orders. The guards usher you to follow them, but Frigga addresses you one last time.

“Bring back my son.”

“Will do.”

Wind whips through your hair at the lightning fast pace one of the guards' horses was travelling. It was exhilarating and fuelling your adrenaline. Fuelling your fire to fight.

From up ahead, you spot them. Dozens of Frost Giants and Asgardians alike, battling on the Bifrost, before Heimdall's Gate. You jump off the horse and charge the crowd. Spaced out amongst the battle you see an animated quartet of fighters, three men and a woman, giving it their all. Even Thor is here smashing Jotun bodies with his trusty hammer Mjolnir. The cries and the battle yells keep you going and keep you angry. Angry for what Laufey has done.

A Jotun decides to charge you, but that was a big mistake on his part. A good, precise stab in the chest leaves him in a heap on the ground. The woman fighter near you sounds impressed.

“Nice one,” she compliments.

“Thanks.”

Two more come running at the two of you now, but the woman warrior holds them back in order for you to advance. She must know your mission. You're nearly out of breath, but then you spot him. Loki is attempting to break away from Laufey's henchmen but they hold him back all too well. It's a maddening sight to behold. Laufey is in front of Loki, taunting him, it appears.

“You belong to me. As you always have, before that blind old man stole you away.”

“Never,” Loki replies. “I have never belonged to you. Empty that notion from your mind.” He grows angrier with each passing second. You can hear it. You can feel it.

“And if I belong to anyone, in all the worlds, it is-”

He spots you sneaking up from behind Laufey. His eyes aren't cold and piercing from hatred anymore. His mouth moves, but only in the slightest, in the form of your name. You press a finger to your lips.

Shhhh.

“What, that mortal human girl? Honestly, Loki, you think you are even remotely in love with that wretch?”

Loki, bless his soul, can't even suppress his smirk.

“Undoubtedly.”

This is when you perform your (seemingly) signature move: stabbing someone in the back. Literally.

You didn't know Laufey's yell of pain would cause you such... happiness? But to your sudden horror, Laufey stands up straighter and turns around.

“Speak of the devil,” he says, pulling the dagger out from his back.

Oh shit.

The dagger clangs on the gleaming Bifrost. Laufey wraps his immense hand around your throat and lifts you up off the ground. Your windpipe is closing, your vision is blurring. All you can make out is Loki struggling with all his might against his captors.

“I take back what I said before,” says Laufey. “I will most definitely harm this girl.”

Just before you're certain life is about to pass before your eyes, a bolt of lightning does instead. Thor flies over and knocks Laufey down hard, releasing you from his clutches. The Jotun King doesn't move a muscle on the ground. You desperately gasp for air.

“Thor,” you wheeze. “Loki.”

Thor thankfully understands your meaning. He lifts Mjolnir in the air and brings it down strategically, shattering Loki's chains. But Thor doesn't stop there. No, he knocks Laufey's henchmen to the ground and renders them immobile as well.

Loki, now free from his shackles rushes towards you and locks you into the tightest embrace yet. “Darling, are you alright?” You nod. “My amazing, fearless, girl.” Your head is resting on his chest and his hand is on the back of your head. The moment with him is full of every kind of emotion all rolled into one ball. Of course, the moment is spoiled by an unforeseen appearance by Odin himself. The Asgardian King's look upon the two of you is nothing other than disapproving. Loki must feel your body tense at seeing Odin, so he follows your line of sight. He tenses up, too.

Neither of you has any time whatsoever to make a move before it happens.

With both of you thoroughly distracted, one of the last remaining Frost Giant opponents rams into you and Loki, knocking you over and are both sliding, sliding, sliding... You scramble, your hands claw at the Bifrost, but nothing helps.

You now find yourself dangling over the edge of the Rainbow Bridge.

To your right, also hanging on for his life is Loki, fear totally evident in his eyes. The Giant comes closer and attempts to finish you both off. This is it. This is for sure the end.

But Thor, the Mighty God of Thunder (and timing) picks up your foe and hurtles him over the side of the Bridge. You would feel relieved, but you were still suspended over something looking very ominously like a black hole oh god oh god oh god.

Odin stares down at you two. Is he seriously going to just stand there? Loki tries to have a heart to heart with his adoptive father.

“I could have been all you ever wanted father! For you! For Asgard!” His voice is genuinely pleading. His entire face looks hopeful. And yet Odin, surely remembering and focusing on all the negatives of their past, continues to stare down at his son and says, “No, Loki.”

Loki looks beaten. Hopeless. Desperate.

It breaks your heart.

Loki catches your eye and slides his hand over to grab yours. It's an unspoken communication that you need no explanation for. He doesn't need to tell you what's about to happen next.

You'd follow him to the ends of the universe.

Thor notices this implied plan and warns him.

“Loki, no!”

You brace yourself and both of you relinquish your grip on the Bifrost. Your stomach feels like it's trying to fly out of you. The farther you fall, the darker the space around you becomes. Loki brings you in close and curls himself around you. You're not sure if this action is so he will shield you from a potential crash so you won't be lost to him once you enter the hole, or simply for selfish reasons. Maybe it's all of them.

Everything turns pitch black in a matter of seconds. You feel an invisible, pressing force against you.

Your entire body shuts off.

You're rendered unconscious.

The first thing you feel when slowly slipping back into consciousness is a hand on your side. Lying down on cold, hard, rocky ground yet again (will you ever catch a break?), you realize it's Loki's hand. You thank all the gods you didn't lose him in the fall.

Where were you now? Was this Earth? Another planet? You couldn't tell, exactly. All you knew was that it was dark and that that was probably the norm around here. The sole lighting this place had was that of a moon and a few distant stars, leaving a shimmer of blue against the rocks.

A deep sinister laugh echoes from all around you.

“Well, well, well... What do we have here?”

Part 10

Tag List: @gerardwayisapotato @theloneavenger1995

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5 Sucky Things That Suck On Purpose

This may come as a surprise, but I like it when things don’t suck. In fact, I would say that I devote 80 percent of my efforts toward avoiding suckage. Sadly, though, I can’t control the actions of others, and I won’t ever be able to until The Device is perfected. But until then, some people make shitty things, and the rest of us have to deal with it. And while we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that everyone makes mistakes as we eat a pizza which inexplicably arrived topped with double olives and pineapple, there’s no solace in the knowledge that some people do shitty things entirely on purpose. On that note, here are five terrible things which people made fully knowing that they’d be terrible.

5

The Google Glass Battery

If you were sober or literate in 2013 and 2014, you may have had to endure the deluge of tech profiles and extremely not-boring thinkpieces on Google Glass. If you could not in fact read or legally drive in 2013 and 2014, Google Glass was basically Google’s answer to the question “What’s a super expensive piece of shit I can intrusively wear on my face which will obscure my vision and make anyone around me fearful that I’m videotaping them like some kind of creeper?” You know, a question that we’ve all asked.

While most of us immediately dismissed Glass as being about as appealing as a herpes scab parfait, there were naturally a few fans who couldn’t wait to be the dollar store version of Geordi LaForge. But even amongst those die-hard tech fluffers, there was a clear issue: Glass had a battery that sucked like a leech in the coldest recesses of the vacuum of space.

The battery life of Google Glass clocked in at around 45 minutes, meaning that you had just enough time to stream yourself watching one episode of Young Sheldon and then crying about it afterwards before it shut off. Google tried to explain this away as an intentional design feature that was actually beneficial and not an example of a battery assembled by a one-eyed guy in an flea market who smells like cats.

According to Google, your cellphone is just a dangerous espionage device constantly listening to you from your pants pocket and maybe sending all that sweet, sweet pants gossip back to Samsung or the Kingsmen or whoever the fuck cares what you’re doing. So in an effort to heroically protect you from filthy spies, Google intentionally made a shitty battery so that the New World Order agents will only be able to watch half of your masturbation session before they’re left hanging. Suck it, dickholes! You’ll never know how this one ends!*

*Hastily, with a climactic yawp.

4

Low-Quality Viral Commercials

In 2011, the internet was blessed with one of the worst commercials for a taxidermy business that anyone had ever seen. I say this not as a connoisseur of taxidermy ads, but as a logical human being. Also, do taxidermy places really need commercials? What more needs to be said, other than “Hey! Do you like wolves, but hate the bitey, movey kinds?”

This commercial for Ojai Valley Taxidermy featured the one-two punch of Chuck Testa’s taxidermy skill and acting, and made us all fall in love with the stuffed corpse of a coyote and the overall awfulness of the entire experience. It was poorly made, clearly cheap, and its only redeeming quality was that all of the badness made it charming as hell. Chuck Testa became an internet hero. And it was all bullshit.

Testa is just one of many viral commercial stars made famous for being in videos often shared as “the worst commercial I’ve ever seen.” One commercial for a mall from 2014 featured employees singing a jingle that sounded like a cross between 3 a.m. barf-in-your-own-shoe-drunk karaoke and a cat stuck in a well. It sucked large, and people went nuts about it.

For a local business trying to drum up some attention, you have two options: Legitimately make a forgettable, boring, low-budget commercial which blandly explains whatever you’re trying to sell, or roll the dice on potentially going viral by making an abomination. Create such an abysmal crime against advertising that the sun refuses to shine when the video is playing and birds immediately stop singing and synchronize-shit on your car. Make it so bad that everyone immediately shares it with everyone they know. And then your craptastic commercial becomes an internet sensation.

They say people are ten times as likely to share a bad experience with a business than a good one. People like to complain more than they like to praise, probably because if something goes right, it fits in with your expectations and is therefore unremarkable. It’s only when things go wrong that you get worked up and make a stink over it. So when you see a commercial that damn near offends you with its utter fuckshittery, you’ll share that monstrosity with everyone. And that’s exactly what they want.

3

Web Brutalism

When I first got the internet in my house as a kid, we got a state-of-the-art, badass, lightning-fast 56k modem. I could download an MP3 in like ten minutes, and sometimes an entire dirty picture would load up before something went buggy and the poor woman was cut off at the knees. And seven out of every ten websites looked like a low-res My Little Pony pony ralphed cotton candy and Four Loko across a small-town church bulletin board.

As time passed, we all grew up and became better people with better websites. Dancing baby GIFs gave way to interstitial ads and Flash videos. Designs that looked like they were made by a guy with vinegar in his eyes working in the dark faded away, and sleek, professionally designed mega porn sites took their place. It was a great time to be alive. Or so we thought, because I guess people got sick of things that don’t look like shit and Web Brutalism was born.

If the terribly cheesy name didn’t give it away, Web Brutalism is a kind of artsy shitsy internet aesthetic. You purposefully make your website look like the south end of a northbound horse. Ugly, disorganized graphics, shockingly off-putting colors, a veritable dumpster of design techniques shat out onto a screen — if your site doesn’t look a fourth-grader’s glue and cardboard collage, you’ve failed.

A classically bad website was designed on Angelfire by your aunt who collects figurines of Jesus playing sports when she wanted to do something to commemorate her love of beat poetry. Some links were unclickable, images didn’t quite line up right, and it had charm in the same way your macaroni artwork had charm to your mom, who never told you that it looked like shit because she loved you. By the way, your macaroni art looked like shit. It’s cool, though, mine looked like the shit that shit takes after eating shit sandwiches. And somehow, someone decided a forced version of that was a good idea.

Web Brutalism seeks to make a website harder to navigate and uglier to look at than a fine, upstanding site, like the one you’re currently enjoying. Why? The answer is best summed up in this quote I heard from a guy in a bar once: “Fuckin’ because.”

2

Bioware’s Female Designs

Back in the day when I had an NES, there were basically two female characters you could name across the spectrum of video game characters: Princesses Peach and Zelda, and I don’t even think Zelda was actually in her game. But I did beat Super Mario Bros. 2, and Peach helped a brother out on that one, so yeah, you could say I’m like a video game feminist or some such. Which is why Bioware’s curious history with female characters is such a headscratcher.

Bioware makes some pretty impressive-looking games, like Mass Effect, and the character designs are amazing. There is a definite problem with some of them, though, insofar as that amazingness is in how straight up nuts-on-a-donkey ugly they are.

When Mass Effect: Andromeda was released, fans were quick to notice that the male version of the player character, Ryder, looks super badass and cool and almost exactly like the male model who lent his likeness to the game designers. The female version of Ryder looks like the model if you rolled her in a sack of sadness and didn’t let her sleep for four days while feeding her a straight diet of CHUD.

Twitter

So why, if you have the ability to render characters in a way that makes them look like not vaguely emotive ballsacks, would you make your character look like a vaguely emotive ballsack? This one requires a bit of creative tinkering in the ol’ thinky bag, but it does make sense. Female characters in gaming, as you may be aware, have a bit of a lackluster history in terms of realistic representation. After Princess Peach, the next big name in lady characters was Lara Croft, who was at first presented as polygonal boobs on blocks, and then later as well-vectored boobs on well-vectored short pants. And thus began a tradition of most video game women being little more than boobs and confusion. So maybe Bioware makes their female characters less appealing on purpose so as to not be considered sexist or douchey.

Bioware has never come out and said they’ve made purposefully ugly characters. They have acknowledged abhorrent animation issues and terrible facial expressions which they set to work on fixing, but fans were all pretty convinced that there had to be more behind the distractingly objectionable visages of the female characters. As noted gamer nerd and feminist Lisa Kerzner argues in her video, it looks an awful lot like Bioware put considerable effort into downplaying the character’s face to make her more of an ugmo hero type (but just in the face), while trying to pawn it off as a technical limitation. Despite the fact that numerous other games can feature women who don’t look like victims of barnyard mad science, including a lot of Bioware’s previous games.

Unfortunately, dealing with matters of sex, sexism, and gender in video games is like opening a bag of cat shit lined with explosive squibs right in your damn face. If you recall anything to do with Gamergate, you know this is ground no one wants to tread on, so you almost can’t blame Bioware for not saying jack shit about it, as you don’t want to feed any trolls. But at the same time, when it’s obvious that they can make a nearly identical male character, there’s clearly a reason they’re not putting that same kind of effort into their females.

1

Scam Email Grammar

Usually when I send emails, I spell the multi-syllable words incorrectly and use grammar that’s about as fucked as a friction-burnt Fleshlight. But that’s my own bugaboo to deal with, and has little-to-no bearing on the world of scam email.

The odds of you having never received a Nigerian scam email are slimmer than Slender Man’s weird dick, which I’ll tell you about sometime if you buy me a few beers. But for the sake of the kids in the audience who are reading this on the wall I inscribe all my articles on and have never received email before, a Nigerian scam email is a poorly worded piece of fuckery that shows up in your inbox claiming to be from some African prince who has millions of dollars tied up in banks overseas, and if you could just help pay some transfer fees, you can keep a buttload of it!

Typically, these emails use terrible grammar and atrocious spelling, not because the person sending you the email is a blithering idiot, but because they need you to be so gullible that you believe a Wakandan prince personally sent you a one-way ticket to being a millionaire, and he typed the message with a greasy turkey leg in his hand while riding a homemade roller coaster.

Most of us can identify a scam email right away. Another subsection of people will be suspicious but interested. And an even smaller division will write back to test the waters. The scammers want nothing to do with any of those people. They want the person who immediately responds with their bank account number in the signature line, because they only want to deal with people who may have mistaken a ham bone for Tony Danza more than once in their lives. So don’t be too proud if you recognize right away that someone sent you a weak as shit attempt at ripping you off; they just didn’t want you to waste their time.

Ian’s Twitter is awesome on purpose. Go look.

Does Troll 2 suck on purpose? Find out for yourself, and go down the rabbit hole of recommendations like Samurai Cop and more!

Read more: http://ift.tt/2gTq5jG

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2AazPyt via Viral News HQ

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5 Sucky Things That Suck On Purpose

This may come as a surprise, but I like it when things don’t suck. In fact, I would say that I devote 80 percent of my efforts toward avoiding suckage. Sadly, though, I can’t control the actions of others, and I won’t ever be able to until The Device is perfected. But until then, some people make shitty things, and the rest of us have to deal with it. And while we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that everyone makes mistakes as we eat a pizza which inexplicably arrived topped with double olives and pineapple, there’s no solace in the knowledge that some people do shitty things entirely on purpose. On that note, here are five terrible things which people made fully knowing that they’d be terrible.

5

The Google Glass Battery

If you were sober or literate in 2013 and 2014, you may have had to endure the deluge of tech profiles and extremely not-boring thinkpieces on Google Glass. If you could not in fact read or legally drive in 2013 and 2014, Google Glass was basically Google’s answer to the question “What’s a super expensive piece of shit I can intrusively wear on my face which will obscure my vision and make anyone around me fearful that I’m videotaping them like some kind of creeper?” You know, a question that we’ve all asked.

While most of us immediately dismissed Glass as being about as appealing as a herpes scab parfait, there were naturally a few fans who couldn’t wait to be the dollar store version of Geordi LaForge. But even amongst those die-hard tech fluffers, there was a clear issue: Glass had a battery that sucked like a leech in the coldest recesses of the vacuum of space.

The battery life of Google Glass clocked in at around 45 minutes, meaning that you had just enough time to stream yourself watching one episode of Young Sheldon and then crying about it afterwards before it shut off. Google tried to explain this away as an intentional design feature that was actually beneficial and not an example of a battery assembled by a one-eyed guy in an flea market who smells like cats.

According to Google, your cellphone is just a dangerous espionage device constantly listening to you from your pants pocket and maybe sending all that sweet, sweet pants gossip back to Samsung or the Kingsmen or whoever the fuck cares what you’re doing. So in an effort to heroically protect you from filthy spies, Google intentionally made a shitty battery so that the New World Order agents will only be able to watch half of your masturbation session before they’re left hanging. Suck it, dickholes! You’ll never know how this one ends!*

*Hastily, with a climactic yawp.

4

Low-Quality Viral Commercials

In 2011, the internet was blessed with one of the worst commercials for a taxidermy business that anyone had ever seen. I say this not as a connoisseur of taxidermy ads, but as a logical human being. Also, do taxidermy places really need commercials? What more needs to be said, other than “Hey! Do you like wolves, but hate the bitey, movey kinds?”

This commercial for Ojai Valley Taxidermy featured the one-two punch of Chuck Testa’s taxidermy skill and acting, and made us all fall in love with the stuffed corpse of a coyote and the overall awfulness of the entire experience. It was poorly made, clearly cheap, and its only redeeming quality was that all of the badness made it charming as hell. Chuck Testa became an internet hero. And it was all bullshit.

Testa is just one of many viral commercial stars made famous for being in videos often shared as “the worst commercial I’ve ever seen.” One commercial for a mall from 2014 featured employees singing a jingle that sounded like a cross between 3 a.m. barf-in-your-own-shoe-drunk karaoke and a cat stuck in a well. It sucked large, and people went nuts about it.

For a local business trying to drum up some attention, you have two options: Legitimately make a forgettable, boring, low-budget commercial which blandly explains whatever you’re trying to sell, or roll the dice on potentially going viral by making an abomination. Create such an abysmal crime against advertising that the sun refuses to shine when the video is playing and birds immediately stop singing and synchronize-shit on your car. Make it so bad that everyone immediately shares it with everyone they know. And then your craptastic commercial becomes an internet sensation.

They say people are ten times as likely to share a bad experience with a business than a good one. People like to complain more than they like to praise, probably because if something goes right, it fits in with your expectations and is therefore unremarkable. It’s only when things go wrong that you get worked up and make a stink over it. So when you see a commercial that damn near offends you with its utter fuckshittery, you’ll share that monstrosity with everyone. And that’s exactly what they want.

3

Web Brutalism

When I first got the internet in my house as a kid, we got a state-of-the-art, badass, lightning-fast 56k modem. I could download an MP3 in like ten minutes, and sometimes an entire dirty picture would load up before something went buggy and the poor woman was cut off at the knees. And seven out of every ten websites looked like a low-res My Little Pony pony ralphed cotton candy and Four Loko across a small-town church bulletin board.

As time passed, we all grew up and became better people with better websites. Dancing baby GIFs gave way to interstitial ads and Flash videos. Designs that looked like they were made by a guy with vinegar in his eyes working in the dark faded away, and sleek, professionally designed mega porn sites took their place. It was a great time to be alive. Or so we thought, because I guess people got sick of things that don’t look like shit and Web Brutalism was born.

If the terribly cheesy name didn’t give it away, Web Brutalism is a kind of artsy shitsy internet aesthetic. You purposefully make your website look like the south end of a northbound horse. Ugly, disorganized graphics, shockingly off-putting colors, a veritable dumpster of design techniques shat out onto a screen — if your site doesn’t look a fourth-grader’s glue and cardboard collage, you’ve failed.

A classically bad website was designed on Angelfire by your aunt who collects figurines of Jesus playing sports when she wanted to do something to commemorate her love of beat poetry. Some links were unclickable, images didn’t quite line up right, and it had charm in the same way your macaroni artwork had charm to your mom, who never told you that it looked like shit because she loved you. By the way, your macaroni art looked like shit. It’s cool, though, mine looked like the shit that shit takes after eating shit sandwiches. And somehow, someone decided a forced version of that was a good idea.

Web Brutalism seeks to make a website harder to navigate and uglier to look at than a fine, upstanding site, like the one you’re currently enjoying. Why? The answer is best summed up in this quote I heard from a guy in a bar once: “Fuckin’ because.”

2

Bioware’s Female Designs

Back in the day when I had an NES, there were basically two female characters you could name across the spectrum of video game characters: Princesses Peach and Zelda, and I don’t even think Zelda was actually in her game. But I did beat Super Mario Bros. 2, and Peach helped a brother out on that one, so yeah, you could say I’m like a video game feminist or some such. Which is why Bioware’s curious history with female characters is such a headscratcher.

Bioware makes some pretty impressive-looking games, like Mass Effect, and the character designs are amazing. There is a definite problem with some of them, though, insofar as that amazingness is in how straight up nuts-on-a-donkey ugly they are.

When Mass Effect: Andromeda was released, fans were quick to notice that the male version of the player character, Ryder, looks super badass and cool and almost exactly like the male model who lent his likeness to the game designers. The female version of Ryder looks like the model if you rolled her in a sack of sadness and didn’t let her sleep for four days while feeding her a straight diet of CHUD.

Twitter

So why, if you have the ability to render characters in a way that makes them look like not vaguely emotive ballsacks, would you make your character look like a vaguely emotive ballsack? This one requires a bit of creative tinkering in the ol’ thinky bag, but it does make sense. Female characters in gaming, as you may be aware, have a bit of a lackluster history in terms of realistic representation. After Princess Peach, the next big name in lady characters was Lara Croft, who was at first presented as polygonal boobs on blocks, and then later as well-vectored boobs on well-vectored short pants. And thus began a tradition of most video game women being little more than boobs and confusion. So maybe Bioware makes their female characters less appealing on purpose so as to not be considered sexist or douchey.

Bioware has never come out and said they’ve made purposefully ugly characters. They have acknowledged abhorrent animation issues and terrible facial expressions which they set to work on fixing, but fans were all pretty convinced that there had to be more behind the distractingly objectionable visages of the female characters. As noted gamer nerd and feminist Lisa Kerzner argues in her video, it looks an awful lot like Bioware put considerable effort into downplaying the character’s face to make her more of an ugmo hero type (but just in the face), while trying to pawn it off as a technical limitation. Despite the fact that numerous other games can feature women who don’t look like victims of barnyard mad science, including a lot of Bioware’s previous games.

Unfortunately, dealing with matters of sex, sexism, and gender in video games is like opening a bag of cat shit lined with explosive squibs right in your damn face. If you recall anything to do with Gamergate, you know this is ground no one wants to tread on, so you almost can’t blame Bioware for not saying jack shit about it, as you don’t want to feed any trolls. But at the same time, when it’s obvious that they can make a nearly identical male character, there’s clearly a reason they’re not putting that same kind of effort into their females.

1

Scam Email Grammar

Usually when I send emails, I spell the multi-syllable words incorrectly and use grammar that’s about as fucked as a friction-burnt Fleshlight. But that’s my own bugaboo to deal with, and has little-to-no bearing on the world of scam email.

The odds of you having never received a Nigerian scam email are slimmer than Slender Man’s weird dick, which I’ll tell you about sometime if you buy me a few beers. But for the sake of the kids in the audience who are reading this on the wall I inscribe all my articles on and have never received email before, a Nigerian scam email is a poorly worded piece of fuckery that shows up in your inbox claiming to be from some African prince who has millions of dollars tied up in banks overseas, and if you could just help pay some transfer fees, you can keep a buttload of it!

Typically, these emails use terrible grammar and atrocious spelling, not because the person sending you the email is a blithering idiot, but because they need you to be so gullible that you believe a Wakandan prince personally sent you a one-way ticket to being a millionaire, and he typed the message with a greasy turkey leg in his hand while riding a homemade roller coaster.

Most of us can identify a scam email right away. Another subsection of people will be suspicious but interested. And an even smaller division will write back to test the waters. The scammers want nothing to do with any of those people. They want the person who immediately responds with their bank account number in the signature line, because they only want to deal with people who may have mistaken a ham bone for Tony Danza more than once in their lives. So don’t be too proud if you recognize right away that someone sent you a weak as shit attempt at ripping you off; they just didn’t want you to waste their time.

Ian’s Twitter is awesome on purpose. Go look.

Does Troll 2 suck on purpose? Find out for yourself, and go down the rabbit hole of recommendations like Samurai Cop and more!

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