#well I guess it was too much of a hussle

[theeyeofeverything]

IS THAT A FUCKING GLOVES AGAIN?! And wait- WITH ROCKET LAUNCHER????????

*cracks my knuckles* It's time to break some spines of some old men

[grimfolks]

i'm sorry to bother you, i just came across your blog and i'm so shocked with how amazing your sims look. i play sims 3 but my sims look pretty average and my screenshots don't look great, can you please if it's possible explain how your sims look so beautiful like this? (specifically this post hiddenspriings/742135415348330496) like, how do your sims look that good? is that a default skin? and how do they have those shadows on their faces etc, is that editing or reshade? can you please explain deeply? i'm sorry i'm asking for many things, i'm just a noob and i really get confused looking at these beautiful posts wondering how to make my sims look cool like that too!!

I don't even know where to start asdfghjkl 😅 developing a sim style is honestly a journey and when I joined simblr my sims looked like potatoes too, it takes time and effort to actively work on that 'skill' if I might call it that. With that often comes the dissatisfaction of your progress and how your sims look, and sometimes you just have to stop yourself and enjoy the ride, without looking around at what others are doing. Anyways, into actual 'tips':

I think you need to figure out where you stand when it comes to cc (it's not really a need but it's gonna help I guess). I like the look of very simple maxis match skins (I have those linked on my resources page) and very often alpha makeup cc layered on top. I personally don't really like how alpha skins look like on my sims (they usually have much more depth to them but since I’m not into that I can’t recommend anything) so everything you see on them - highlights, blushes, shadows etc. is just makeup cc. For those I recommend: blushes 1 2 3 4 shadows & highlights 1(!) 2(!) 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 (+ tifa’s stuff here). Add them on top of each other and bam! suddenly your sim isn’t so flat faced anymore (little note here, I often use ‘blushes’ as shadows as well depending on their placement ;)

If you are interested in what I personally use as defaults check my resources page. I also have all the skins and eyes cc I use linked there. My advice would be to also check other simblrs’ resources as well, there are some well hidden gems there that otherwise I wouldn’t be able to find on my own. 

But If you are new to sims 3 you might ask: hey, how do you layer cc if you can only apply one for the category in cas? Well...Get yourself nraas master controller if you haven't already. With that mod you can increase the number of sliders which give you freedom of creating more diverse looking sims and assign multiple makeup per location. I won't explain how to do it here as there are multiple guides online, just google your question :) - I even saw great guides on youtube! It might seem like a lot at first but believe me, nraas along with its many modules will save you a lot of time and hussle. 

Lastly, part of the posting process here on simblr is editing and I cannot lie that my sims don’t benefit on that. I use reshade with mxao which enhance colors and shadows (check my f.a.q page for links) and smooth out pictures further with photoshop tools. 

Now I’m gonna expose myself a little, this is from left to right: the oldest sim in my folder currently (I’d say this is my late 2022 style), my newest sim and my newest sim with reshade on (but no further editing).

It’s a shame I don’t have access to my very first sims in sims 3 to really compare them but I think even here you can see the difference. So do not get discouraged, it will take a time and dedication like any other hobby but you’ll get where you want to be eventually :)

[atlaskrr]

Comics that resonate with me in an unexplainable way - a rec list

☆ amount represents how much is resonated with me (aka how obsessed i became or how deep i loved) which is a personal thing not a quality thing.

sorted by sections below ⬇️

Manga

Zeikin de katta hon☆☆☆ - delinquent wants to use library. OH NO! he needs to return a book he lost when he was child. welp. reimbursement time. he does (while embarrassed) and ends up working in the library in the process and growing as a person. messages relate to the books and library practices in the chapter.

pos: AUGHHHH. comforting, imformativs, beautiful messages, well-written characters that each carry a message, and makes you fall in love with libraries and books (you will appreciate librarians 10x more)

neg: some charas can feel exagerated and some jokes are repeated one too many times

Magmell shinkai suizokukan☆☆☆ - i wanna work in an aquarium! a well renowned first ever deep sea aquarium! and i am. just as a janitor. but its ok since i get to watch and learn about all these wonderful creatures. i hope people see how beautiful they are too. each chapter carries a message tied to the creature it covers.

pos: GOD DAMN the art is beautiful. informative on the deep sea, well written characters and their psychology, nice mystery build up along the slice of life, you will be enraptured by the "ugly" deep sea. will make you believe in yourself and your dreams and that you can always grow and improve

neg: some scenarios of the world dont make sense with how the creatures would usually behave, weird age gap side-story (did not happen and was handled responsibly but still)

Butai ni sake☆☆ - they said i sounded scary. what if everyone will misinterpret me again? im at a new school for hs. i got this. how can i learn to be more, less scary? wait what club is showcasing right now? the... threatre club? maybe thats the answer. chapters show the club preparing for plays!

pos: RELATABLE AF characters. the messages are strong throughout and all the showcase of what goes on in a theatre club is very accurate. it makes you fall in love with the art and if youre already a theatre kid like me, i think youll be impressed and find it relatable.

neg: besides the main 2 characters, side characters can feel underdeveloped. ESPECIALLY one of them. the ending is very open-ended on the romance that they kept on implying (though it mightve just been bait)

Yokai gakkou no sensei hajimemashita☆☆ - imagine the most pathetic man you can muster. now make him 100x more wimpy to the point hes hussled by kindergardners. thats the mc of yohaji abe haruaki! he became a shut-in after trying to teach at a school and getting scared away by delinquents. but wait! a family friend has let him work at a school. with its own island?! wow this is an amazing oppurtuni- ITS A SCHOOL FOR YOKAI?! starts out as comedy but plot and characters develop along the way

pos: AMAZING characters, well developed relationships, great development throughout the story overall, fun yokai trivia, and well incorparated comedy. also. GAY. like- well written abd casually. pretty art btw.

neg: humour can be repetitive and too questionable for some. lowk the mangakas kinks are slipping through into it 💀 the timeline of one year feels like its streching on for ATLEAST 2 with the amount of shit that happens. once again, lots of questionable things. like time travel age gap. or just age gap ship bait. or just the mc. he gets a pass tho.

Manwha

The makeup remover☆☆☆ - i am ugly. but im ok with that, i mean im just a photography student. but i guess i could try more... how does everybody just become beautiful? how do they learn? OMG HE FUCKED UP MY MAKEUP. wait whos this new random dude. and why is he asking me to be his model for a makeup competiton??? the story follows this duo in the makeup competition.

pos: AMAZING STORY. AMAZING MESSAGES. each character FEELS like a message. they're well written. it feels realistic. the makeup looks SO CREATIVE. the relationships between characters are developed well and the diverse cast of backgrounds allow for good subplots that make you CARE and think about the messages they carry as they resonate in your soul. it shows both the good and bad of makeup. realistic. truly.

neg: very vauge open ending on relationship front as they kept teasing multiple relationships and it just- no payoff. spme character backgrounds were not explored enough.

Sambong barbershop☆☆ - theres a virus spreading around to ugly people when they break. im scared ill be next. but then a cat steaps her watch, she follows it to a barbershop and- is that a humanoid cat?! smoking a cig?????? oh and a majestic dude who cut hair with gigantic scissors. blablabla she ends up working at a barbershop. sambong barbershop. it shows how one can grow as a person yet stay the same as the mc works at the barbershop.

pos: good message, complex charas (they can be assholely but theyre human), cool action scenes and fantasy elements, very realistic as, well youll see how the development goes if you read this comic.

neg: artstyle takes a while to grow on you and ending was- random. and ambig. also, because its very realistic it guves a more harsh vibe to the message rather than positivity (not a full downside tho). also the world-building is very unclear and vauge.

Surviving romance☆☆☆ - ive been isekaid into my favourite romance novel. ahh this is the life, ill get my happily ever after, who cares about those faceless extras. lalalala- ZOMBIE OUTBREAK??? I DIE?! wait. im. alive again. at the beginning of that day. WHATS GOING ON??? the story follows how she'll survive this nightmare by getting to know unknown extras she has never cared for along the way.

pos: AMAZING development throughout the story as always by lee yone. characters and relationships grow very well and the mystery us very well developed and hints are rlly good! as hidden yet visible as they need to be. the pacing was good and the artstyle is very charming. the visuals are also used very cleverly and creatively. you can even see hints in the first few scenes! also, friendship! and a good, hopeful message for anyone struggling.

neg: ending can feel very luck based. also very open-ended (personally part of the charm tho). also questionable age losgistics and some might not like the character attitude switch ups.

Peace restaurant☆ - the dimensions have all collapsed together, right in seoul. naturally, theres war over land. but one safe haven owned by a mysteriously strong and feared lady, is peace restaurant. the newly awakened demon king is ready to fly there and when he does- be gets beat up. and not by the warrior there- BUT BY THE LADY???? the story follows the growing mystery behind the mc and the "fight" agaisnt people who oppose her restaurant.

pos: love the mystery and found fam. fun exaggerated characters yet also clearly more depth hiding beneath that. love through cooking. comedy that grows plot my fav genre fr. also, very cool dishes and world. also good character and relationship development for one chara. also, HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS!

neg: other characters could be more well developed and complex. change can feel too fast suddenly accepted by the mc. the current arc (chap 26ish i think?) is dragging FAR longer than it needs to. could benefit from more realistic characters (though its probably a writing choice for the tone of the story)

Webtoon

Cursed princess club☆☆ - gwendolyn is beautiful, just like the rest of her siblings, everyone in her life thinks so. though her life in inside the palace due to her overorotective father. but when she and her sisters are set to get engaged to the plaid princes and her fiance calls her UGLY. her world shatters as she realizes hes right. she runs into the forest as she cries and WHATS THAT. she passes out and wakes up in a mansion with princesses having a tea party outside. huh. so this isnt a haunted forest? WAIT WHATS WITH THE LONG NOSE? AND HOLLOW EYES?? AND- LOBSTER HANDS???? she has just stumbled upon the cursed princess club. the story shows a journey of self improvement and self love.

pos: WAAAA I ACTUALLY CRIED AT THE ENDING. very well written characters that develop over time, creative curses and good foreshadowing. the subversion of tropes is PEAK. it has good callbacks, parallels, analogies, etc.

neg: i feel like many characters can be explored more, worldbuilding unclear, and cam often times focys on romance more than id like. humour is very often misplaced such as in serious scenes when they should be before or after the peak of tension instead of well- at the peak. some relationships and feelings feel- random? and also bad people are way too easily forgiven. i feel like there needs to be a line to the positive messaging on that front.

Maho shonen☆ - ahh magical girls. teenage girls with superpowers. ah! 2 guide are descending and- TWO FULLY GROWN MEN?! and the gaurdians are, well.... they're certainly not cutesy, on the inside at least. and the grown men? they're just plain horrid at their job. the only thing they gain from all this, is trauma! not like they're already stocked up on it. oh, and each other of course! the story shows how the two will get through this whole ordeal as well as their daily life.

pos: the story WILL grow on you. cool art, good trope subversions esp in the price of being a magical girl. explores the psychology of it all and has well written characters that deal with realistic issues. also very nice duo dynamic.

neg: the humour may not suit everyone as it can be a bit more mature. it does take a few eps to get good and grow on you.

Our walk home☆ - two academic rivals.... wait, why aren't they acting like rivals at all? they're even getting along? and finding things in common?! they're letting the masks slip. but their rivaling schools won't be happy to hear about this from their top students. afterall, no one from the two schools are allowed to be friends. the story shows how these two mask-wearing academic achievers get through life together. and maybe, just maybe, fall in love.

pos: VERY good exploration of identity and self-worth and VERY relatable. the characters are very well written and have simple yet recognizable designs, a cute dynamic between the mcs.

neg: honestly, i don't know. it just didn't attach to my soul. probably secondary character relationships could be further expanded on.

The bathroom ghost☆☆ - ghost are scary. but this ghost, is just REALLY BAD AT HER JOB! what's a ghost to do when she can't scare? and is stuck in a mall bathroom of all places? worse yet, the managers keep badgering her about it! this follows her hijinks.

pos: the COOLEST artstyle I've seen in a comic with a very fitting and unique feel. cool character design, simple, yet entertaining, comedy, great use of body language, hidden plot developing. mc is very endearing and so are the rest of the characters. it's just so feel-good and heartwarming.

neg: takes a few episodes to move on from episodic if you dislike that. honestly, i just need more. that's my only complaint. GIVE ME MORE VOLPEE

[pissmoon]

ANGEY PERSONAL LONGPOST

I am so fucking pissed at this guy. He thinks we are bffs because we went to one music fest together and we were smoking when i had nothing better to do. He bothered me and whined and begged that i cover 2 of his shifts so he can go to Berlin with family. I almost always agree to shifts exchanges with coworkers when i can but in this case there was a huuuge joint bday party 2 coworkers were throwing and i told him i want to go and he was offended (i was invited and he was not🙃)...? And it pissed me off how like... He planned an abroad trip with family but he didnt bother to take paid vacations leave he just assumed i'll always exchange shifts with him whenever he asks because i cant possibly have plans and life of my own and he felt entitled to it?? I ended up agreeing tho bc there was 1 shift he could take so i have 5 days off in a row. If its sooooo important to him that he's been bothering me for 1 fucking week. So, 1 hour after we and our manager signed our exchange shifts paper he told me he is too depressed to go to work and cover one of those two shifts of mine and he'll be taking sick leave 'but dont worry you will not get in trouble because i'll 100% be on the second one'. Yea we had a shift together and he didnt tell me that before i signed the shit even tho he already knew! I was so pissed but I believed him and i was kinda too excited about having 5 days off in a row. Next fucking day he tells me he's not going to Berlin with family on that date and if i wanna go with him for 1 or 2 days on my 5 days off. At first i thot well if u dragged me in the middle of this mess you can take me to Berlin in exchange for the hussle. But after 1 day i realized wait ill be on the first day of my period no way i am going to sit in a car/train for hours and then walk around Berlin when its all windy and cold and told him that. He came to my apt uninvited as he always does and kept being like pls pls pls pls go with me. I was like dude idk if i feel right yea maybe but ill probably wont even be able to get out of bed. He took that as a yes i guess and went to a pub with the main gossiper coworker and a MANAGER as he was on sick leave and BRAGGED about how he is going to Berlin with me. On sick leave when he was supposed to cover my shift. Like he made it look like i intentionally exchanged knowing he wont come to work so we can go together? Of course i didnt even feel like going anywhere on my period but he had to tell everyone. And bam big fucking surprise. He promised i wont get in trouble because he 100% will cover that second shift right. He fucking forgot about it and went to Ukraine of all places and called in with some 'my kid is sick' bullshit to work. And he bragged to me about all the trips he had to be on because he was too sad to go to work as i was getting in trouble at work because of him!! He knows damn well our workplace puts bans on exchanging shifts on ppl who fool around like this. I dont give a shit if he gets not so legit sick leaves but he dragged me in the middle of this mess like what for? He fucking gets 4 sick leaves a week to get out of work he can travel whenever he wants. To be petty and selfish now - I didnt go to that coworkers party, i was banned from exchanging shifts along with him. I talked to the boss and they unbanned me after 1 week, but before that happened uhh. I missed the concert by patriarchy and spit mask because i could not exchange a shift with anyone. God i hate this dude so much now how can one be this immature and selfish like what are you 11. I told him it him it was selfish and entitled behavior and i feel like he used me and didnt care ill get in trouble and he didnt reply since. He didnt even say fucking sorry

[stellamancer]

sniffs moda u wrote me an essay.

tldr: if you don't read me and moda crying at one another at least look at their cute doodle at the end of their essay.... it's so cute.... despite... well you know. i'm gonna hang in on my wall.

AS MUCH AS I WOULD LOVE TO CALL THIS FIC MY MAGNUM OPUS IT IS NOT A FIC I WOULD WRITE NORMALLY. lmao in any sense of the word. time loop. no romance. gojo... but i think this would be the most memorable since time loop searing itself into ur brain (yours and mine especially)

BUT YES. i am an advocate for the strong opening!! i mentioned it before, but it is my personal belief that you must start strong. as someone who generally decides in the first few paragraphs if i want to read something or not... i feel like they are the most important parts of any particular work.

buT YEAH. i was very meticulous in most... most of my details LMAOO. beef has told me in the past that a good story has good foreshadowing and like i get really... giving a reader a good shock, but i think it's very satisfying for readers to like, figure stuff out. and the thing with the magical girl was put there expressly to give readers an early hint about what gojo basically spells out for them later.

BUT YEAH I'VE THOUGHT ABOUT IT TOO and with the hussle and bustle of everything, especially in earlier loops where things are insanely chaotic, there were definitely incidents where reader was probably touching someone else at the time of death. but the consistent looping needs consistent touching.... hehe....

AND YES. SINISTER COUNTING. that's on purpose. it echoes into the repetitive lines, well, mostly repetitive. i made jumps just because i feel like the higher the number went, the higher the stakes felt, ya know? but yes reader needs therapy soooo bad.

AND THANKS AHAHA. i was honestly a little concerned that reader came off as.... too composed. but it's as you say, they are very good at compartmentalizing their feelings in addition to approaching the situation in a very pragmatic way. that being said, there were definitely loops off screen where they were just... completely bsod'd. i didn't write those in because i didn't feel they'd really add to the story. HAHA. tho i guess maybe one sprinkled in would have been good.

i think that they were. fairly well adjusted, i actually haven't really given too much thought to what kind of life they were living prior to this.... time to think about that and hand off more crumbs to ari lmaoo.

aH YES. that line, and then the other shounen battle manga lines... very intentional on my part. me, as the writer, poking fun at the irony of the situations HAHA my own personal copium.

EVEN IF U HAVEN'T SEEN DA EPISODES... i know u have seen the gifs. and for someone who says it ain't about gojo grinding his gojussy on jogo's arm you certainly bring it up a LOT.

ALSO LISTEN. i think it can be agreed that he is supposed to be a good looking guy. reader just acknowledges that, and as you said, that's their copium. actually the... morbid entrancement is one of things i really wanted in this fic and what, in my mind, links it to it's spirtual prequels (nier fic and another fic i wrote a long time ago in which both readers were also entranced by a very handsome man committing atrocities)

and right??? HE IS FULL NAMED SO MANY TIMES IN THIS FIC. but it doesn't feel quite right to call him gojo for them i think. a little too familiar, even tho it happens later on.

yes... it is evil but i must hammer the despair down.

but yes!! their memory is good. they are focused. they are in the zone. they got amazing grades in school LMAOOO.

you say it's the only time loop fic you'll read but what if i wrote another? /j BUT YES. they are a determinator!!! strong willed!!! precious baby!!! but their friends are very precious to them. makes me think i should do something to their parents in their backstory. :D

BUT YES!!! DA ESCAPE. too bad about it tho. lmao.

ALSO YES THE NO MUSCLE!! very unfair you know? they are getting smarter.... or maybe smarter... ahaha...

i feel like.... the last bit of that scene with kenny is very heartbreaking in a lot of ways because the resignation... the realization that they about to be killed with intention. :'D

ALSO I THINK IT'S UNFAIR TO CALL ME A GOJO FUCKER FOR READER BEING OVERWHELMED BY HIM LOOKING AT THEM it wasn't for hornky reasons but more 'is this real???' reasons sniffs... so mean to me.

it was my intent for the mochi receipt scene to be funny!!! a moment of levity if you will since the majority of this fic is so heavy and like, i guess pretty representative of how his presence is really the turning point for everything....

but YEAHHHH reader blasting that barrier hehe.... as the deserve a little destruction as a treat.

AND YESSS THAT LINE... the one you mentioned before... hehe... it's a good onee... but yes... i feel like since 1) reader has gone through the wringer and is very desperate and 2) they're kind of an outsider to the situation they're not going to try and be delicate about what's going on. i think that kind of directness really gets to gojo.

ALSO BECOME GOJO FUCKER MODA AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

gojo did not know jogo's name i think, but reader did tell him what it was. i rewrote their explanation so many times because i wanted them to be concise but they were also... not amazing at it at first LMAOO.

happy ending? maybe (actually moda.... they didn't really save anyone at the station itself, but their actions did trickle down so that ultimately the lives of others (namely nanami and the haseba twins) were saved. BUT i think they would have been happier if that fool didn't open the box right back up HAHAHAHA.

but thank you moda, truly, like, thank you for being my cheerleader during the whole writing process of this fic, from listening to me ramble about it, to listening to me read it multiple times in my attempts to push myself to finish. your support helped me finish this fic!!!! even if u and pika were trying to tell me that two could fic in the box and they could boink weeps.

i hope u look forward to what happens to this reader next hehehehehehehehee.

beyond the unending night (reader + satoru gojo)

notes: it's finally here. the long awaited halloween fic. yes, i know it's march, but i did start working on it in september. haha. there's so much i could say, but i will leave it at that this fic is, in every sense, a fic that i would not normally write. and yet here we are.

contains: f!reader (no physical description or gendered language is used), no explicit romantic pairing (though you don't have to look hard to find the reader x gojo implications), major character death (played with), semi-graphic depictions of death, blood and violence, minor suicide ideation, canon retelling (lines of dialogue are pulled from the jjk english dub because i'm a dirty dub watcher). opening poem is from higurashi no naku koro ni (minagoroshi-hen). fic title is from giga's beyond the way.

please note that this is a time loop fic and, by nature contains repeating scenes (particularly from canon). please do not read this fic if you do not like that sort of thing.

wc: 21,883 read on ao3 (account required) || playlist

Please tell me what happened in this night. It's like the cat inside the box.

Please tell me what happened in this night. You don't know if the cat in the box is dead or alive. Please tell me what happened in this night. The cat in the box was dead.

The first time, it is instant— you don’t even know what’s happening.

The second, it is by flame, but you barely realize it, barely feel it— a second of mind numbing heat before nothing.

The third time, it is something slicing across your throat; you see the blood spilling everywhere, then the pain follows— a moment of pure agony before nothing.

The fourth time you realize what’s going on; what’s really going on.

You realize you’ve been dying.

You think your head is going to explode.

At first, you think it’s because the subway platform is crowded, insanely so— there are hundreds of people shoved into this space alongside you, packed like sardines in a can. You’ve never been one for crowds, but it’s the reality of things when you live in Tokyo. For the most part, you’ve learned to accept it, but even this crowd is a little much and you wish you hadn’t listened to your friends when they said you should go party in Shibuya for Halloween; you don’t even like partying.

There’s a sharp pain in your temple followed by a thought so loud that it feels like someone is screaming it at you through a megaphone positioned right next to your ear.

It’s the night of October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

For the eighth time.

Before you can even question the thought, images flash in your mind’s eye, blurry at first before they come into focus. The platform gates open. Chaos ensues. People dropping onto the subway tracks— spontaneously bursting into flame— their heads, necks sliced off, stomachs cut open—

Bile rapidly builds up in your throat, and you clamp your jaw shut, trying to force it down. Not here. Not now. You try to focus on something else, anything else happening outside of your brain. There’s a pair next to you musing about the people standing on the subway tracks, wondering what the two (the four?) of them are talking about. You blink back tears as you look. You can only see two: a freakishly tall man with white hair dressed in all black, and another man, dressed in strange, yet more traditional looking garb. Are those costumes too? You don’t have a lot of time to think about it as another image forces its way into your brain.

Your corpse— lifeless on the ground.

Your corpse— burning to ash.

Your corpse— bleeding out.

You can’t hold it in any more. Every fiber in your being screams at you to get away from the subway tracks, but instead you rush toward them, shoving people left and right as your hands desperately reach the stability of the gate. You grip it like a lifeline as you retch over the side of it, the contents of your stomach spilling all over the subway tracks.

There’s a quiet murmur of disgust behind you but you can’t be bothered to respond. You need to get out of here. You need to leave. You need to do it before—

The gates open and the crowd starts to move like a tidal wave, pushing and shoving their way through the gate. You’re swept away, vomit long forgotten as you and a few dozen others tumble onto the railway.

Alarm bells go off in your brain, loud and deafening. A voice in the back of your head screams for you to get off the track! Get off the track now before—

The platform erupts into a cacophony of screams, drenched in horror, saturated in fear. You are surrounded by people, by corpses— beheaded, sliced open, bursting into flames.

Your terror roots you to the ground as the carnage ensues around you. It’s only when another person, another corpse, dressed in a magical girl costume collides with your body that you can finally move. But it’s too late, you realize, despaired and helpless, as your bodies fall to the ground.

It’s too late.

You die an eighth time.

You think your chest is going to explode.

At first, you think it’s because it’s so hard to breathe, frustratingly so— there are hundreds of people squeezed into this space alongside you, packed like cattle for slaughter. You've never been one for crowds, but it’s the reality of things when you’re in Shibuya. For the most part, you’ve come to accept it, but this crowd is way too much and you wish you had just stayed home and ordered a pizza; though honestly, the thought of pizza kind of makes you sick.

There’s a dull throbbing in your forehead, followed by a thought so loud that it feels like someone’s hollering at you from a loudspeaker that’s been installed in your brain.

It’s the night of October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

You think it's the ninth time now.

Behind you, you hear a woman screaming, her voice crazed and terrified. You turn your head automatically to look at her and when you see her you realize you recognize her yellow and white magical girl costume. You can say with certainty that you’ve never seen her before and yet—

Before you can ruminate more on it, images— memories assault your mind’s eye with a clarity that is absolutely sickening. That woman colliding into you, your bodies slamming into the subway tracks before you both— Your stomach churns violently,

and you feel like you’re going to puke, but you force it down— can't afford to right now. Instead, you make your way over to the woman.

Her head is in her hands as she mutters over and over again about how everyone is going to die. People around her figure that being stuck in here with the crowd has probably gotten to her. You, however, know better.

“...hey,” you say softly.

Her muttering comes to an abrupt halt and slowly she raises her head to look at you. There’s a flash of recognition in her eyes and she grabs you violently by the shoulders. “You! You know, don’t you? That we’re going to die?”

If it weren’t for the fact that you have indeed experienced death here eight times already, then you would have thought she’s lost her mind. Slowly, you nod and she seems relieved by it, her grip on you loosening.

You can’t help but feel a little relieved too— glad to know that you’re not the only one experiencing this nightmare. There’s a voice in the back of your mind that’s confused though. Why is she only remembering now? But then again, it took you a few times before you realized yourself.

Around you people start to gasp, and you glance back toward the railway to see an abnormally tall man with white hair and dressed in all black jump down from the atrium onto the railway. He lands rather gracefully for someone who jumped at least one floor and starts to converse with the other three people (you think they're people— two of them are in some pretty wild costumes) on the track.

Wait. Isn’t it supposed to be just two people: the tall man and the one in the traditional clothes? Where did the other two come from?

“We have to get out of here,” the woman says. “Before they kill us.”

Her grip shifts from your shoulders to your arms and she starts to shove at everyone around you, trying to force her way through. She seems to know, just as well as you do, that any second now the gates will open and the crowd will start spilling onto the railway, littering the tracks with bodies and ash. Neither of you can let yourselves get swept up with the rest. If you do and you end up on those tracks, you’re as good as dead.

People move aside at a snail's pace, many of them too focused on trying to see what is going on on the subway tracks. This isn't good. You need to move faster or else—

The collective sound of the gates opening echoes in your head, a metallic hiss that makes your stomach fold into itself. Before either of you can stop yourselves, you both whip your heads back to look, to confirm, but it’s a mistake.

The briefest lapse in attention is enough to pull you both into the current of people, and try as you might to fight against it, the crowd splits you and the woman apart as it swallows you both whole. You’re both spat onto the tracks at the edge of the platform and your head collides with the metal rails of the track. It feels like your skull is about to crack in two, and it takes every fiber in your being to scramble to your feet. You're close enough to the platform that if you can just climb up it, then you'll be—

“Help! Help!”

It’s the woman’s voice. You turn to see that she ended up a couple meters away from you. She’s staring at you, eyes brimming with fear filled tears as she extends her hand in your direction. You take a step toward her, reaching out.

And then, her entire body is engulfed in flames, the skirt of her magical girl costume a ring of fiery death around her.

Her blood curdling scream is the only thing you can hear, her burning flesh, the only thing you can see. You don’t know what to do.

You can’t save her.

There's something touching your back. You can barely feel the pressure, but it's hot, scorching hot, mind numbingly hot, painfully hothothot.

You know this sensation. You have felt it before. The scent of burning cloth, burning hair, burning flesh clogs your nostrils. It's too late, you realize, helpless, despaired as the flames eat at your body— your soon to be corpse.

It's too late.

You die a ninth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the tenth time.

Your head hurts, but you ignore it. There’s something more important that you need to attend to. You immediately make your way to the woman you met during your last round, the one you watched burn to death. Her costume is still pristine, unmarred by fire and death.

For now.

She’s not screaming this time and while there’s a little voice in the back of your mind that’s concerned by this, you try to ignore it.

“Um, excuse me?” you say when she doesn’t acknowledge you as you approach.

The woman turns to look at you. You’re taken aback by the distinct lack of recognition and it feels almost as if the woman you encountered previously and the one before you now are two separate people. In a way, they technically are.

“Do I… know you?” she finally asks when you don’t say anything.

Your mouth is dry. How do you even answer that? You don’t know her. You just watched her die twice. You know her. She begged you for help. You couldn’t save her.

If you explain all of this you know she’s just going to think you’ve lost your mind. Maybe you already have— you’ve died nine times after all.

You give her a weak smile. “I… just wanted to tell you that you think your costume looks great.”

She blinks, taken aback by your words. There’s no doubt that she wasn’t expecting you to say that. It’s the truth though, her costume is nice; she’s dressed up as a character from a magical girl anime that was popular a couple years ago.

“Thank you! I made it myself!” The woman breaks out into a genuine smile and your heart hurts. In a few moments she’ll die and the costume she worked so hard to make will be nothing but ash on the subway tracks.

“Sorry,” you blurt out before you can stop yourself.

“For?”

For watching her die. For not being able to save her.“...I just kind of came up to you all of a sudden…”

She laughs. “It’s okay.”

It’s not.

You consider telling her that she should try to move. That if she stays here she will die. You don’t want her to die. Again. You can still hear her screaming in your ears as she burned to death. You want to tell her.

You don’t.

“Stay safe, okay?” you say. It almost sounds like you’re begging.

She gives you another smile, kind and gentle and you think you’re far too undeserving of it for not telling her what fate will soon befall her. “You too.”

“I’ll try,” you say and move away from the woman just as the gates open and the crowd surges toward the railway. You do not fight it as you are swept up into the crowd and despite what you said, you do not try, this time, to stay safe.

You die for the tenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the fourteenth time.

There’s a slight ache in your head, but it’s subtle enough that you can ignore it. The pain you feel lessens with each round and you think it’s a sign that your body no longer feels the need to remind you of the precarious situation that you’re in.

Or maybe you are just becoming numb to everything: your death, the death of the people around you, the death of the woman in the magical girl costume—

You try not to think about it too much as you reach into your bag to check the time on your phone: 8:37PM. There’s not a lot of time: you need to move.

At the very end of your last attempt to escape this nightmare you realized something. You need to know exactly what is going on around you so you can plan accordingly: where to not stand, where to not go. Up until now, you’ve relied almost solely on the knowledge gained from your previous failures to try and survive, but obviously it’s not enough to keep you alive. You’re not sure why you didn’t realize this earlier. The panic, maybe? The fear?

Maybe you really are becoming numb to all this.

Unlike previous iterations, this time you elect to move closer to the gate, positioning yourself somewhere against it where you’re unlikely to be pushed off the platform in a couple minutes when they open. You take great care to place yourself where you can see the ones responsible for the slaughter very clearly. At the beginning, you could only see one, the one who looks the most human, but with each repetition, the other two have become more and more clear. You wonder why. You don’t have time to think about it.

Murmurs nearby alert you to the arrival of the fourth major player involved in the night’s events. You look up and see the white haired man dressed in all black descending upon the platform like an angel from the heavens. This is your first time really looking at him and you realize there’s something almost inhumanly attractive about him. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but it occurs to you that you shouldn’t even try; you don’t have the time to be drooling over some handsome stranger.

You’ve naturally never taken the time to try and listen to whatever the conversation the man and his opponents have before all hell breaks loose on the platform, but you try and lean closer to listen. It’s hard to hear over the dozens of conversations going on behind you, but you try anyway. There might be a clue to what’s actually going on— or better yet, a clue on how to get out of it.

It’s obvious that you’re missing context from what bits of the conversation you do manage to hear, but honestly it all sounds like stuff out of a shounen battle manga. There is one part of the exchange that you manage to hear with a startling sort of clarity. It feels almost as if your heart stops beating as your blood turns ice cold in your veins.

“If I run away, you’re just gonna kill everyone here, right?” the man in black asks.

There’s a pause, and if your heart was still beating it’d be long enough for just four heartbeats.

“If you run away?” The monster with cane repeats, the sadistic grin spreading wide across its features, displaying its charcoal black teeth. The gravelly sound of its voice sets fire to the blood in your veins, your stilled heart thumping wildly, in fear, in anticipation. Soon. It’s happening soon. You brace yourself. “We’re going to do that even if you don’t!”

You die a fourteenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the seventeenth time now.

Things are going surprisingly well, even as the people around you tumble onto the tracks. You manage to hold on, desperation keeping you from falling into the abyss. This is good, you tell yourself, despite the fact that it’s not the first time you’ve achieved this. Every little victory is worth celebrating, but you have to remain vigilant. This is yet another information gathering loop, and while you know that maybe this time you’ll be lucky and live, there’s still a chance, a big one, at that, that you will die again.

You have to make the most of each and every death.

It’s such a morbid thought, but the ends justify the means, or so you tell yourself. If you have to die a few times to make it out of this unending nightmare, then so be it.

The spot you’re in is a good vantage point; it’s easier to see everything happening below you. It’s so good that it’s actually sickening. You watch as the monster with the cane and one with what looks like branches for eyes slaughter the people on the track, mowing them down, setting them aflame. In another life, in another many lives, that was you down there, and for what feels like the first time in forever, you feel like you’re going to be sick. You feel like, at some point, you likened the scene before you to some kind of shounen battle manga, but you think that was wrong.

This is borderline horror.

Everything plays out before you like a scene out of an action horror flick. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were just an extra on set, but you know the reality is that you’re just an extra to whatever phantasmal battle is taking place in front of you. The monsters and the strangely dressed man all try to attack the man in black, but he manages to block every hit effortlessly, as if he is protected by some sort of invisible barrier. When it seems the two monsters are about to hit him, he merely jumps out of the way and the two monsters seem to collide, the force of their combined strength sending a gust of air throughout the crowd. The man in black neatly lands on a nearby platform half wall and says something about curse users, whatever those are, to the monsters, before he starts to mock them, pulling down his strange blindfold in the process.

And this, you’ve found, is where you start to get in trouble.

You clearly remember thinking, at some point, previously, that there was something attractive about this man. You still don’t know what it is. You haven’t had the time to try and figure it out, but there is one thing that you do know: you can’t keep your eyes off of him.

He drops back down onto the tracks, antagonizing his opponents in an arrogant tone as he approaches. When he comes to a stop between the two monsters, the second round of their fight begins. They try to hit him, but he dodges still, gracefully, fluidly, like the three of them are embroiled in some sort of passionate, yet violent dance.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he cruelly rips off one of the arms of the one-eyed monster.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he brutally kicks the branch-eyed monster in the abdomen, sending them flying to the other side of the platform.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he effortlessly hurls the one-eyed, now one-armed monster in the same direction, sending them smashing into the wall.

Only when the man in black seems to fly to the other side is the spell over you seemingly broken. Still, your eyes give chase, and your body too, rushing from one side of the platform to the other. You can’t lose sight of this fight, you tell yourself, settling in a spot you recall being safe during your last round. Doing so could mean another death, another loop, another October 31.

You watch as the man in black acrobatically dodges what looks to be vines or roots that the monster with branches for eyes seems to have summoned from the depths of the Tokyo metro. He lands on the monster’s shoulders, balancing on them as he uses its branch-eyes for leverage. The look in the man’s eyes is so crazed that you can see it from where you’re standing. He says something to it and then—

With a feral and sadistic smile, he rips their eyes straight out of their skull.

Your heart is pounding wildly in your chest as you watch the fight unfold. It is horrifyingly, disgustingly violent, yet still you watch as people on the track are killed by the human-like person, blood raining down as their freshly beheaded skulls go flying into the air. He and the one-eyed monster launch their counter attacks against the man in black and the blowback is so intense the power goes out causing everyone to scream.

There’s a faint glow where the man in black is standing that starts to grow brighter and brighter. You can make out his form turning to face the wall, and it seems almost like he’s slammed the monster that had branches for eyes against it with some sort of telekinetic power. Despite the panic from the people around you, you manage to hear him, chuckling like a mad man as he draws closer and closer to the monster.

The one-eyed monster yells out a name, a name you think must belong to the man, but he doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster as he extends his hands out toward the eyeless monster, exerting some kind of force that you can’t really see. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster as the eyeless monster’s entire body is vaporized in a flash of blue light. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster, as the lights flicker back on revealing a smoking crater stained with purple blood where the eyeless monster once stood.

But you do.

Satoru Gojo.

You make sure to remember that.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And this is the eighteenth time.

You watch as the man called Satoru Gojo stalks through the crowd of people on the subway tracks, chasing after the one-eyed fire monster. It throws people at him, in a clear attempt to slow him down.

It does not work.

Satoru Gojo climbs back onto the platform in a way that you can only describe as inhuman, and the people nearby shriek and move away from him, out of terror, out of fear. You, on the other hand, draw closer, refusing to lose sight of him.

He is relentless in his pursuit of the one-eyed monster. It continues to throw person after person at him, but he does not stop and the people float there, suspended in midair before they are gently lowered to the ground by some unseen force and scramble away.

No one dares get close to Satoru Gojo, everyone on the platform seems to know that doing so means certain death, yourself included. But you still feel the need to keep an eye on him. The monster and the strangely dressed man are focusing more on him than the crowd— anyone in between is just collateral damage.

But not you.

Especially since you’ve made it this far— you’ve never made it this far before.

A voice echoes throughout the platform; you realize it’s the automated announcement.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

You can hear everyone’s relief coming from all sides. The train is coming! The train is coming! A ripple of hope makes its way throughout the crowd. With the train comes the chance to get off the platform and the senseless violence that’s been happening here. Some of the people around you are talking excitedly and others are running toward the gates, toeing the yellow line they’ve been instructed to wait behind. And you, you should be excited, you should be hopeful.

All you feel is dread.

It eats at your stomach, at your chest, at your mind. Clawing and gnawing at you in a way that leaves you paralyzed on the platform. There’s something wrong here. You can’t be sure because you’ve never made it this far, never survived long enough for the train to come, but something is just not right.

No.

You must be paranoid. The train coming is a good thing. It has to be a good thing. You are just paranoid. It’s normal. It’s natural. Dying seventeen times would do that to anyone— rob them of hope, condemn them to an existence full of fear.

It is not lost on you that the thought of dying more than once, much less, dying seventeen times is not normal or natural in the very slightest.

But you need hope, you crave it, wildly, desperately. The hope of freedom, of escape is the only thing getting you through this unending nightmare. Every time you die, every time you wake, it is with the hope that maybe, just maybe this iteration will be different, maybe this one will be the one where you make it out, make it back to your friends who must be waiting for you, make it back home where you can be safe and sound. You need the hope to keep going. Because without hope, what will you have left?

The train screeches as it pulls into the station and the people around you laugh in both disbelief and relief. They start to push and shove toward it, fighting to be able to board because there’s no way everyone here will be able to get on an eight car train and being left behind at this point is practically synonymous with death. Unable to decide if you believe in the train as a symbol of hope or a new layer of fear, you are pushed along with the crowd toward it.

The doors of the train cars slide open and the current passengers all rush off as they disembark. You as well as everyone else on the platform can see with a horrifying clarity that the train is filled to the brim with monsters. Monsters that reach out and grab anyone their hands can reach. The woman to your left. The person to your right.

You.

Hope is gone.

What do you have left?

You die for the eighteenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is probably the twenty-sixth time now.

If there is anything this entire ordeal has taught you, it is that you are resilient. Whether it is some innate trait that you never had any reason to uncover before or just a byproduct of being trapped in an unending cycle of being dead and not dead, you don't know. What you do know, though, is that even if you no longer have hope, you at least have your resilience.

Whether you want it or not.

You check the time. It’s 8:35PM. Something flickers in your chest, like a faint light in a sea of darkness, but you ignore it. You don’t have time right now.

With a nimbleness born from your previous failures, you weave your way through the crowd. You’ve done this enough times to know where the gaps are— who will yield and who won’t. Your destination is the escalator that leads off the platform and up to a higher part of the station. You’d noticed previously that the escalator along with every other entrance onto the platform will eventually be blocked by vines or roots of some sort (the work of the branch-eyed monster probably). It’s not a perfect plan because you don’t know what happens on the other side, but whatever it is has to be better than whatever is happening on the side that you’ve been on.

You’d tried to get to the stairs during your last two rounds, but you’d just missed it. You hadn’t been fast enough and had gotten caged and slaughtered along with the rest. But this time, this time you have more time. It’s just one minute, but it’s enough. You know it is.

The flickering in your heart grows stronger. Hope. You try not to pay attention to it— you don’t want to be disappointed yet again. But you want to so badly. A voice in the back of your mind tells you to focus on the good, tells you that if there was truly no way out of this endless nightmare, then why would you get more and more time with each round to escape your fate?

With that thought in mind, you break out into a run, recklessly rushing through the crowd, shoving anyone who will not yield to the side. Out of the corner of your eye you can see the stark white of Satoru Gojo’s hair as he descends upon the platform.

You need to get up those stairs.

Now.

If you remember correctly, the roots and vines don’t close off the area the moment he touches down, but a little after they start talking, so you think there is probably some time, but you can’t leave it to chance.

The stairs are packed, and for some reason no one is moving. The escalator right next to it is just as full and the power doesn’t seem to be working. You don’t have time for this. You clamber onto the escalator’s rubber handrail, ignoring the weird feeling that passes through your body as you do so. You don’t have the time to worry about whatever that is. The people around you start exclaiming around you, but you don’t care, you don’t listen. You wobble as you try to balance yourself and when you think you’re steady you try to run.

But you trip.

And you die for the twenty-sixth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This marks the thirtieth time.

And you have, finally, finally made it up the escalator, up the stairs with barely a second to spare. You pause, glancing back as the roots or vines or whatever the hell they are seal off the entrance to the platform. You notice that the area where the plants come down is actually fairly clear, despite the crowd. It seems weird, but you don’t dwell on it.

A strange feeling envelops your entire body and your legs turn into jelly. As you sink to the floor, you realize what you’re feeling is relief as all the tension, maybe thirty iterations of Halloween 2018 worth, seeps from your being. You don't remember the last time you felt anything other than fear and dread; it’s weird, but not unwelcome.

That voice in the back of your mind tells you that you can't relax just yet: October 31st isn’t over. Even though you have repeated this night again and again, burning the events that play out on the platform into your memory, you do not know a single thing that happens over here. It would be smart to scope everything out.

Legs still shaky, you rise to your feet and start walking. You think it’s probably for the best to try and head up to the surface and you make your way up to the next floor.

It’s packed with people here too, but relatively peaceful, especially when you compare it to the pandemonium taking place beneath your feet. Still, you can make out the undeniable hum of displeasure resonating throughout the crowd. People complaining about how uncomfortable their costumes are, people complaining about how much they want to go home, people complaining about how much their nights have been ruined because they couldn’t meet up with their friends and—

A thought hits you like an eight car train.

You were supposed to meet up with your friends.

That’s why you were on the platform in the first place— you were waiting for them to arrive, but then the trains stopped working, and people just started pouring into the station out of seemingly nowhere (you think you heard some people say they’d come from the crossing?). Soon after that is when everything went to shit.

You check your phone, though, for once it’s not to look at the time (8:56PM). Instead, you open LINE to check your friends’ group chat. There’s no signal here, for whatever reason, so if there are any new messages, you haven’t received them. The last one was from Kei, mentioning he was enroute, but as far as you know, you’re the only one who made it to Shibuya before the trains stopped.

Did one of them maybe make it here though? Surely, you would have run into them if—

The image of a woman in a magical girl costume fills your vision, burning to death before your very eyes as her screams echo in your ears. It is the first time in what feels like forever that you’ve thought about her and your stomach churns violently. You couldn’t help her, you can’t even help yourself, so how could you even expect to do the same for your friends if they were here? The mere thought of having to watch them die over and over is almost enough to send you over the edge. You don’t know if you could do it.

Would you even have a choice?

No. You can't think like that. You have choices. You've had choices. If you didn’t then, you would still be down below, among the fire and brimstone. Dying, if not dead already. However, instead, you are up here, where, for the moment, it is quiet and peaceful.

That thought, in of itself, is enough to give you a shred of solace, a glimmer of hope.

You take a deep breath and fiddle with your phone a little more, changing your lock screen to a picture you and your friends took at a photo booth not too long ago. The four of you are huddled together, faces squished as if you're all struggling to fit in the frame, despite there being plenty of room. You're mid-laugh because it's the first time you've been in a photo booth in years, Mio and Shin are grinning mischievously and finally, Kei is smiling, but only just slightly, the embarrassment clear on his face. It's probably only been a few months since you all took this picture, but the fact that it feels like it's been years makes your heart ache.

You press your forehead to the screen, like a prayer, like a promise.

You will make it out of this nightmare.

No matter what.

A shrill scream yanks you from your thoughts and you are instantly on your feet, alert as your eyes flit around frantically to identify the source. It doesn't take long for you to find it and when you do, you think you might have stumbled upon a new layer of horror to this nightmare.

It’s not the corpse, dangling by a noose, that terrifies you— by now you’ve seen dozens upon dozens of dead bodies that the sight of just one more doesn’t faze you in the slightest. The thing that’s the most mortifying, that’s the most disturbing is that right next to where the body is tied are two girls, two teenage girls still dressed in their school uniforms.

You can accept monsters and weirdly dressed men being responsible for the carnage tonight, but children too? Both girls look like they’re barely in high school and try as you might to rationalize things, to chalk it up to coincidence, you cannot ignore the ominous energy radiating from them.

The very notion that these two children could have killed someone here is a hard pill to swallow, but so is the fact that you’ve died.

And you’ve had to swallow that pill thirty times now, so what’s once more?

“Listen up!” one of the girls yells over the crowd, but she is mostly ignored; you don’t think everyone here has noticed her and the corpse dangling from the rafters. She scowls and turns to the other girl and says something quietly to her. The other girl nods and almost instantly she’s stringing up another person, another example. You want to look away so badly, and yet you cannot bring yourself to and you watch the poor soul choke to death.

“I said listen, you dumb monkeys!” the girl shouts, and this time she’s caught most of the crowd’s attention. “If you don’t want to end up like these two, you’ll listen to what we have to say!”

There is clear dissent among the crowd, people dismissive as they utter their disbelief. Some seem to think it’s a prank, but you know better. It takes two more examples before the crowd goes silent before the two high schoolers.

“About damn time!” The girl roars and then points toward the atrium, which is currently covered by roots and branches. “All of you move over there!”

You have a bad feeling about this.

Still, you comply; the girls have made it abundantly clear that failure to do so will result in death, though, at this point, you're almost certain this iteration is a bust and death is all but imminent. You try to keep positive— thinking you can at least gather information or, who knows, maybe there's a chance that this one is the one.

Yet when you step onto the mound of vines and branches that cover the atrium it feels as if you've crossed the threshold into hell. Your footing is stable… but for how long?

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

It's faint, but you can hear the announcement from below. The liquid in your stomach curdles at the sound as you recall the train and, in particular, what is on board. Soon enough, those monsters will be swarming the platform, massacring everyone in reach, guzzling down their blood, feasting on their flesh—

It dawns on you that the people on the platform are the monsters' first course.

And you, and those around you here in the shrubbery, are the second.

As you realize this, the branches and vines disintegrate beneath your very feet and suddenly you are mid air— falling, falling into the abyss below.

You die for the thirtieth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

You've done this nearly sixty times now.

After countless failures, you've decided that you're just not going to go upstairs any more. No matter where you try to go, you still end up herded onto the death trap above the platform where you ultimately fall to your death. You've tried positioning yourself in the same spot, tried bracing yourself for the drop— but nothing seems to work: upon landing, assuming you manage to land without hurting yourself or dying in midair (which has happened a couple times) you get grabbed and killed by one of the monsters from the train. It's probably not impossible, you just don't have the physical prowess or reflexes for it.

If anything, you can try again later, but you sincerely hope you don't have to.

It's 8:32PM, and you have plenty of time to get to your chosen spot for this loop— it's close to the stairs, in the very center of the platform. Here, there's little risk of getting pushed off onto the tracks when the gates open. You'll probably have to move when the train comes, or even before (assuming you survive) to avoid the monsters, but you'll get to that when it's time.

You can't really see the fight once it breaks out after Satoru Gojo arrives, but you still try to keep track of it as best as you can. You see when he hurls both monsters across the platform and you're not sure if it's muscle memory or what but you have to fight the urge to move to the side and watch. It's been a while, yes, but you've seen the fight countless times before— it doesn't change. Satoru Gojo will give chase. He will rip the branches from the branch eyed monster's skull. He will use some kind of power to eviscerate them.

You don't need to watch, but there's something in you that wants to.

It doesn't make sense, you've seen it all before; if you're unlucky you'll see it all again.

The lights go out and people start screaming; Satoru Gojo is ending the life of that one monster. Soon enough he'll be back on the platform, in pursuit of the other. You think at that point it would be good to move, reposition yourself as far from the incoming train as possible.

When he rises from the tracks like a demon straight from hell, you realize it's the first time this loop that you've actually gotten a good look at him. You remind yourself, again, that this isn't the first time you've seen this man, this scene. You can't help but watch, but stare at Satoru Gojo as he stalks through the crowd in pursuit of his prey. His expression is an eerie sort of calm that's at odds with the acts of violence you've seen him commit— his eyes an unnaturally bright blue.

He's a terrifying sort of beauty and you can't help but be captivated by him.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

The sound of the announcement sends your heartbeat into a frenzy, snapping you out of your little trance. The train is coming and you need to get moving. As you dart to the edge of the platform, the thought occurs to you that even if you avoid the initial wave of monsters, it's likely you will inevitably be caught by them and killed. It wouldn't be impossible for Satoru Gojo to turn his attention to them instead of the two he's currently facing, but he's just one man— can he truly defeat all those monsters?

You can see the train pulling in and you brace yourself, praying that it'll work out somehow.

The doors hiss open and the screaming starts again as the monsters come bursting out of the train, biting and mauling anyone they can get their hands on. Those who were lucky enough to not be at the front start to scramble away and the monsters give chase. Your body is taut, ready to try and dodge any that come your way.

Out of the corner of your eye you notice something moving through the air. A person? With blue hair? You take the risk to look— they're attacking Satoru Gojo. He tries to punch them but they fly away from him to dodge— disappearing into the crowd.

You hear a loud cracking sound over the cacophony of the crowd and your stomach twists; you know what that sound is. The roots above the atrium disintegrate and bodies from above start to rain down onto the platform.

And then, you're not sure what happens— it's so quick that you only manage to see what looks like an explosion of blood surrounding Satoru Gojo. Corpses litter the ground around him and even from here you can tell he is shaken by the carnage.

The monsters have finally reached where you're standing, and you duck under one as it lunges at you. Although it's big and scary, you realize it's moving kind of slow. Right after it another one comes at you and you take a side step to avoid it; this monster is kind of slow too.

Maybe you can do this.

As soon as you think that a strange feeling courses through you. Every hair on your body feels like it's standing on edge and the voice in your head is telling you to look at Satoru Gojo. You don't understand why because you think he's the least of your worries right now, but you do it anyway.

He's in some sort of stance, one hand raised to his face, fingers bent in some kind of gesture. There's some sort of aura, oppressive and frightening emanating from his form.

Satoru Gojo is doing something.

You just can't tell what.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you are utterly confused.

Barring your first few loops when you weren't fully aware of what was happening, you have very distinct memories of how each of your previous iterations of this night have gone— of each and every one of your deaths. But for your last round, the last thing you remember was feeling the immense power radiating from Satoru Gojo's body, but that's it.

You do not remember dying.

In fact, you don't think you did.

And yet, here you are again, back at the start: it's 8:32PM and the monsters and strangely dressed man are standing on the subway tracks waiting for the arrival of Satoru Gojo.

You don't understand what's going on; you didn't die but you're still stuck in this damn loop. Up until now, your death has served as the trigger to restart the loop. It's not impossible that maybe you suffered a quick and painless death but you're almost certain that isn't the case.

Something else must have happened.

Something having to do with Satoru Gojo.

You have to find out what. If you don't, you won't know how to avoid it, and if you can't do that, then you really might spend an eternity stuck in this nightmare. And so you take great care to repeat the steps of your last round. You need to make sure to survive to the same point you made it to last time.

Miraculously, you do.

The moment you feel that sensation again, a prickling sort of feeling that envelops your entire body, your eyes are on Satoru Gojo— trying to figure out what the hell he's doing. His eyes are crazed with a desperate kind of focus. You see his mouth move— he's saying something. A spell? A prayer? A curse?

You don't know.

You do know.

Your brain feels like it's going to explode.

Again.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

Again.

You do not know how many times it's been the night of Halloween in Shibuya: you stopped counting around the hundredth loop. It feels like it's been a while since then. Or maybe it hasn't? You don't know any more.

What you do know is that this night ends up going one of two ways before you are forced to repeat it. Either you die, in some way, shape or form or something happens just after nine that forces you to reset. You still don't know what it is exactly; you only know that Satoru Gojo is responsible for it.

You do prefer it to dying— it's far less painful.

But if anything, you wish you could just die permanently and never have to repeat this night ever again.

Unfortunately, you know better.

The only good thing you’ve noticed about all of this is that you really do seem to keep waking up earlier and earlier. The last time you checked, it was at around 8:30. It might take hundreds of thousands of loops, but eventually you’ll certainly wake up early enough to avoid this damn entire mess.

But by the time that happens… will your sanity still be intact? Will you really be able to go back to a normal day to day life after living the equivalent of hundreds of years, repeating the same night over and over again? You don’t even know how you’ve managed to stay sane all this time and as much as you want to believe you could do it…

There has to be a breaking point.

For both your mind and this time loop.

If you’re lucky, you’ll reach the latter first.

There’s a dull ache in your head that feels foreign yet familiar. Your mind is foggy, all your thoughts hazy as you try to recall what the word for this feeling is.

Groggy.

It feels as if you’ve woken up from a nap and you blink the sleepiness away from your eyes. When was the last time you took a nap? It’s been a while… You think you maybe tried once or twice, but you were too nervous, too on edge. Awake or asleep, it didn’t matter because, either way, you were doomed to repeat this nightmare.

As you think this, you realize that something is different.

You’re used to how the start of each loop feels like waking up suddenly and abruptly and it becomes clear to you that you haven’t looped. This is completely uncharted territory.

You need to find out what’s going on.

The first thing you notice is that it’s quiet. Almost eerily so, especially when the last thing you remember was screaming and chaos. You glance around you and find that it looks like all the monsters from the train are dead, the ground littered in their bloodstains and corpses. There were so many of them, you don’t know how someone could have wiped them out so quickly… Could it possibly have been Satoru Gojo’s doing?

More concerning than the complete eradication of the monsters is the fact that nearly everyone else on the platform is standing stock still, their mouths ajar with blank expressions on their faces. It’s almost as if their souls have completely vacated their bodies…

Were you like that too before you woke up?

You hear voices, and your body immediately goes tense as you turn your head in their direction. A little ways ahead of you, you see a man dressed as a monk conversing with the blue haired person from earlier and before them is—

Your heart nearly stops: it’s Satoru Gojo, restrained and on his knees.

Honestly, you can’t make heads or tails of the conversation they’re having; it’s more shounen battle manga nonsense. Satoru Gojo doesn’t seem to be enjoying their conversation either, and he interrupts them, clearly annoyed.

“Are we gonna do this or what?” he asks. “The view sucks and I’m just kinda bored.”

“I wanted to enjoy this sight for a little bit longer, but you are right,” the monk says. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen— gate, close.”

When he says that, Satoru Gojo’s restraints move, the weirdly shaped cubes at the ends of them closing in around him, trapping him in a giant red cube. It starts to shrink until it’s small enough to fit in the monk’s hand.

You gulp and hope they don’t notice that you’re awake. The fact that they haven’t slaughtered the rest of the people standing around you is a good sign, but you don’t want to find out what happens if they know you’re cognizant.

It’s not hard to play the part of a living statue, especially when you compare it to everything else you’ve had to suffer through on this night. You watch as the monk’s allies, the ones who had attacked everyone on the platform, wake up, but before they can do or say anything, the box holding Satoru Gojo slips through the monk’s fingers and makes a dent in the concrete. The look on the monk’s face makes it clear that it’s a problem he wasn’t expecting.

You don’t know a damn thing about Satoru Gojo, but you feel like this kind of thing is the norm for him.

The blue haired person suddenly looks in your direction and you nearly stop breathing. Have they noticed you? It takes everything in you to keep perfectly still, in hopes that maybe they didn't, that maybe they’re looking at something else. They raise their arm and it extends, their hand acting like some kind of projectile. You almost shut your eyes and brace yourself for impact, but their hand flies upwards and hits something on the ceiling, destroying it.

Inwardly, you breathe a sigh of relief— you’re still safe.

For now.

You listen to their following conversation and while you still don’t fully understand everything, it’s clear they’re talking about what to do next since they’ve taken care of Satoru Gojo. Something having to do with someone named Yuji Itadori? The group seems split on what to do about him but it’s clear he’s their next target.

Eventually, everyone but the monk (you heard the blue haired person, who is apparently named Mahito, call him Geto?) runs off, probably to find this Yuji Itadori person. Once they’re gone, Geto speaks and, at first, you think he’s talking to you, but it becomes clear he’s addressing someone else. “Those cursed spirits are actually smarter than the two of you.”

“Give him back!” a voice hidden among the crowd hisses. Your blood runs cold at the sound. You recognize it; it’s one of the high school girls from the upper floor.

“We cooperated with you fully and kept dropping monkeys for you,” says another voice; it must be the other girl that was with her, the one who hung all those people.

“Now give us back Master Geto’s body like you promised!”

“Don’t toy with Master Geto any further than you have!”

You blink in confusion. Isn’t the monk named Geto? The way the girls are talking it sounds like they’re talking about someone else… Is it possible that the body is ‘Geto’ but the person they’re talking to is someone else possessing it? It sounds kind of crazy, but then again, so is every single thing you’ve experienced tonight.

Your suspicions concerning this ‘Geto’ are confirmed only seconds later as he says, “Now begone, or is it your desire to be killed by this body?”

One of the girls vows her revenge and you hear shuffling somewhere else in the crowd as they scurry away. Now you think it’s just you and whoever it is that’s puppeting Geto’s body. You see him plop down in front of the box (the prison realm, you think he’d called it) that’s holding Satoru Gojo.

“You can come out, you know,” he says after a while.

You freeze. The rest of the platform is completely silent. This time you think he might actually be talking to you.

“I know you’re there,” ‘Geto’ adds, his voice casual. “If you’re insistent on hiding, you should know that I’m not afraid of using whatever means necessary to smoke you out.”

Given everything his allies have done, there’s no doubt in your mind that he’s serious. You were hoping to hide out among the crowd until he decided to leave, but it looks like you won’t be able to now.

Looks like this loop is a bust after all.

Your heart starts to race as you weave your way through the crowd. In every single one of your loops, you were always treated like a bit character, never noticed or singled out by any of the major players of the night. Although this is your first time encountering this ‘Geto’ it’s clear to you that he’s involved with everything that’s happened here and honestly, you get the feeling he might actually be the mastermind behind the massacre.

That makes you even more nervous.

You come to a stop in the place where Satoru Gojo was once kneeling before he was put in that box. Now that you’re out in the open, ‘Geto’ looks you over with some sort of nonchalant curiosity.

“You’re…” he starts, sounding thoughtful, "not a sorcerer, are you?”

Sorcerer. You heard that term thrown around by him and his group a few times. It’s what they’ve been referring to their enemies as. It probably wouldn’t be smart to lie and say you are one; you get the feeling he’d see through your lie anyway. “I’m not.”

He hums. “How interesting.”

“...what do you mean?” you ask before you can help yourself.

“It’s just you have an abnormally large amount of cursed energy for a non-sorcerer,” he explains. “Though, I suppose that all just sounds like gibberish to you."

You nod and look down at the box lodged in the floor. It has eyes, big creepy looking eyes. "...are you going to do the same thing to me as you did to that man?"

He laughs, "...fortunately for you, the prison realm only holds one person at a time and I need him sealed away more than you."

"...does that mean you're going to leave him in there forever?"

"If I'm feeling nice, I might unseal him in a hundred years or so."

One hundred years? At this point, you've probably lived roughly that amount of time through your loops alone, but for Satoru Gojo… "Won't he die first?"

"Only if he decides to," 'Geto' says, looking completely and wholly unbothered. "Time doesn't doesn't flow in the box, so when I unseal him, he'll be the same as he was just now. Physically anyway. Who knows how deteriorated his mind will be after all that."

Time doesn't flow in the box.

The words echo in your mind over and over. Time doesn't flow in the box. In other words, that means time has stopped in the box, and if that's the case then—

"Anyway, rather than worry about him, shouldn't you be more worried about yourself?"

You look at 'Geto' and he's smiling at you, it's friendly, but ominous. There's no doubt what is going to happen next, though you had already resigned yourself to this iteration being a bust; it was only a matter of time.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

"I was thinking I might keep you around, even if you aren’t a sorcerer, your wealth of cursed energy would serve my plans well," he muses. "But… it would be too much trouble trying to teach you how to use it in time."

As he talks, you realize this is probably the first time your death is intentional— every other death you've suffered has just been a byproduct of the ongoing slaughter. You were just another casualty, a victim, never a target.

You're scared.

Even though you know that once he kills you, once you die, you'll just loop back to around 8:30 again. You'll be on the platform again. And you'll play out some sequence of events before you eventually die again. And again and again.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

"I'll be nice, though," 'Geto' says, raising a hand and another monster appears out of nowhere. You don’t even bother trying to figure out from where. It doesn’t matter, especially since this monster will surely be the one to end your life. "I'll make it painless."

"...I appreciate it," you say and close your eyes hoping that he's not lying about it.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

He didn't lie.

You die again.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you're trapped.

You don't know how and you don't know why, but you are stuck in a time loop— forced to suffer through the horrific events of the night before you die and begin it all again. It's been a long time since you stopped counting how many loops you've gone through, but if you had to guess, it's probably somewhere in the hundreds now.

You are so very tired.

But it doesn't stop. It won't stop no matter what you seem to do. You are stuck. You are trapped. You are doomed.

“Time doesn't flow in the box.”

Ever since that first loop where you heard whoever is possessing Geto's body say that, the words have been stuck in your head, playing on loop.

You finally realize why.

“Time doesn't flow in the box.”

It's 8:25PM when you wake up; that should be plenty of time.

You need to find Satoru Gojo.

After hundreds of loops you've come to a singular conclusion: you need to prevent him being sealed in the prison realm. You've witnessed it enough to know that you won't be able to do it alone; you'll need his cooperation.

You rush upstairs as fast as you can, ignoring the shiver that runs down your spine as you step onto the stairwell. According to your previous loops, Satoru Gojo arrives on the subway tracks at 8:40PM. With how crowded the upper floor is, you don’t know if you’ll have the time to intercept him and talk to him, but if you can at least figure out where to find him, then you can try and talk to him during a subsequent loop.

When you reach the fourth basement floor, however, you don’t know where you should even start. He’s pretty tall so you think you could spot him in the crowd, but… there are still so many people. It occurs to you that maybe it would be better to try and look from a higher vantage point so you head to the stairs that lead up to the third basement floor. You check your phone again. It’s 8:35PM; you need to hurry.

Luckily for you, you find him very easily on the third basement floor.

The only problem is that he’s in a hard to reach spot— squatting above a sign hanging over the crowd.

You check your phone again. It’s 8:38PM and he’s starting to move, presumably to meet with those waiting for him on the subway tracks. It’s good that you found him, but there’s no doubt about it.

You’re going to need more time.

The moment you wake up, you immediately bolt toward the stairs. It's taken many, many more loops, but you've finally brought the time you wake down to around 8:15. You're still not sure if it's enough time, but there's only one way to find out.

You barrel your way up to the next floor and zig zag through the crowd to get to the next flight of stairs. By the time you get to your destination, you're completely out of breath, your chest heaving as your lungs clamor for air. You’ve done this so many times, yet your body acts like it’s always the first. It sucks, but there’s nothing you can do about it. You slow to a brisk pace to catch your breath and check the time. It’s 8:27— a new record. Hopefully it’ll be enough.

The goal is to catch Satoru Gojo before he moves to his lookout point above the crowd. While not impossible, it would be difficult for you to follow him there. You eye the safety barricade that blocks off the area where he’ll be moving in just a few minutes warily.

Yes, getting over there would be extremely difficult.

You don’t want to think about it right now; you’ll deal with it when the time comes.

Especially since Satoru Gojo has now entered your field of vision.

Your heart starts to race at the sight of him and it feels like it’s beating a million times a second. There isn’t a lot of time. You need to talk to him, but your legs only wobble, your feet planted firmly to the ground. This is not good. You need to move. You need to move.

Finally, after what feels like both an instant and an eternity, your feet finally budge, propelling you in Satoru Gojo’s direction. The beating of your heart only grows louder as you make your way toward him, mingling with the single thought that’s echoing throughout your mind right now: will he even hear you out?

You need to make him.

��Excuse me!” The words nearly come out in a stutter as you realize that you are actually talking to Satoru Gojo. You have watched this man at a distance for so long that it almost felt like he wasn’t real, like he was just another fixture in this nightmare that you’ve been living for far too long. And yet, here he is, right in front of you, in the flesh.

And his attention is on you.

All sound stops: the crowd around you, the thoughts in your head, the beat of your heart. Even though you cannot see them through that blindfold of his, you know that Satoru Gojo’s eyes are on you and the thought of that, the knowledge of it is actually a little overwhelming. Your mouth is dry and suddenly you don’t know what to say, but you need to say something. You need to say something before he thinks maybe you bumped into him by accident and just walks away without a word.

“I need to talk to you!” The words just burst out from your mouth and something about it is just absolutely embarrassing. You’re not sure if it's desperation or the fact that you haven’t really talked to anyone other than the existence occupying Suguru Geto’s body in nearly forever.

Satoru Gojo’s lips slowly start to form a smile, “Oh, yeah?”

The sound of his voice makes your mind go blank. There’s something different about it right now; more playful, amused even. Maybe it’s because he’s talking to you, a harmless human being and not a monster trying to kill him. It’s almost kind of jarring, but you know, with certainty, what Satoru Gojo’s voice sounds like. And the fact that he’s actually talking to you right now has you kind of excited. You nod, doing your best to not show how thrilled you are that he’s not ignoring you.

He hums thoughtfully, “Sorry… but unfortunately I kind of have some business to attend to right now.”

“I—” You start to say that you know that he’s headed down to the platform below to fight with…Choso and Jogo, you think their names are— you don’t know the name of the monster with the branches for eyes. “It’s— it’s really important!”

Gojo tilts his head a little, clearly thinking. You should probably say something else, something to try and convince him to stay a little longer and hear you out, but your mind is both full and blank. Where do you start? From the beginning? Or do you start with what is most important? Maybe you should say what you think will get his attention. You’re not sure, and you realize you really should have thought about this earlier because you’re running out of time right now.

“...mind handing me your phone?”

You stare at Gojo, completely and wholly confused, but he just holds out his hand expectantly. When you don’t move, he wiggles his fingers a little, a silent gesture telling you to hurry it up. Without thinking, you reach into your bag and unlock your phone before handing it to him.

“Kind of sucks that cell service isn’t working right now,” he remarks as he types something into your phone before handing it back. “But! Here's my number.”

You look down at your phone and, sure enough, Satoru Gojo has added himself as one of your contacts. He’s even added a little star to the end of his name. That’s… a little unexpected. Why his number though?

“Are you… hitting on me?” you mutter in your confusion.

He laughs, “Well, you said you had something really important to talk to me about, right? So just give me a call when you get home or some time tomorrow and we can talk then!”

You’re not going to make it home, or even to tomorrow, and neither will Satoru Gojo. As you start to tell him this, he steps past you. Desperate, you try to grab him, but somehow, for some reason, you can’t. You remember he did this with Jogo and the other monster, made himself untouchable.

This is not good.

He gives you a little wave, cheery as he says, “I’ll talk to you later!”

You watch, helpless as he hops over the barricade beyond your reach.

Gripping your phone tightly, you take a deep breath. It's fine, it's not like you didn’t expect things to go well anyway.

You'll just have to try again.

Every time you’ve tried to solicit help from Satoru Gojo, it has gone the same way. He just won’t give you the time of day, and in some ways you can’t blame him; he’s clearly here to deal with the monsters down on the platform. You’re fairly certain that he probably thinks that whatever is going on with you is a much lesser issue in comparison.

Plus, it probably doesn’t help that in the times that you’ve approached him, you haven’t been able to articulate yourself particularly well. Once you start talking to him, you just get hit with something akin to stage fright and the connection between your mind and your mouth just stops working. It’s gotten better with each attempt, but…

It’s just so frustrating.

It is interesting that Gojo has given you his number every time, star symbol and all. You’re not sure what kind of person you were expecting him to be, but after witnessing him literally and viciously rip monsters apart, you’d figured he’d be a little more somber. However, in the fragmented conversations you’ve had with him he’s come off as far more friendly and playful than you would have thought. Is he the type of person to get more serious when the situation calls for it? You can’t help but wonder, but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter.

What really matters is that you’re able to convince him to help you.

You have to convince him.

“Excuse me!” you say, stepping in Satoru Gojo’s path. You don’t stutter this time, and your voice is more sure. This is good.

“Yes?”

His head turns in your direction and you gulp. Gojo’s gaze, despite that blindfold of his, still feels just as overwhelming as it did the very first time you approached him. You have no doubt that he’s sizing you up, but there’s just something about it that makes you feel like you’re being picked apart.

You take a deep breath and step closer to him, hoping your voice sounds firm enough as you say, “I need your help. I’m trapped.”

He chuckles a little, “I know, but yours truly is on his way to go beat up the bad guys keeping you all trapped here, so soon enough you’ll be all free to go on your merry little way.”

Right. You were so caught up in your own plight that you nearly forgot that technically you’re not the only one ‘trapped.’ Satoru Gojo obviously knows that everyone else is confined to this station, but you doubt he knows that you’re confined to this night alone.

“That’s not what I mean!” you sputter.

“Then what do you mean?” Gojo asks. Should you tell him that you mean that you’re trapped in a time loop? You’re honestly not sure— in the movies and manga you’ve read about time travel, revealing that sort of thing risks creating a time paradox which seems to be a bad thing. If you have to tell him, you will, but— “Oh, I get it.”

You stare, bewildered. Did you maybe just spew all of that aloud?

Gojo gives you a mischievous smile. “You’re hitting on me, aren’t you?”

“No!” The word comes flying out of your mouth. You can’t deny he’s attractive— you’ve thought it all this time, but that is not what’s happening here.

“No need to be embarrassed,” he continues, ignoring you. “I totally get it, so if you want, I’d be happy to give you my number!”

Again? You’ve received Satoru Gojo’s contact details in every loop you’ve talked to him, star symbol and all— you even have his number memorized. There’s something kind of odd about how he keeps giving you his number. Part of you wonders if he’s got some sort of ulterior motive, but you haven’t thought too deeply about it. There are way more important things going on.

“I don’t need your phone number,” you say. “I need to talk.”

Your response seems to give Gojo pause. Did you somehow manage to get through to him? No way. Your suspicions are all but confirmed when he gives you that familiar apologetic smile.

“Like, I said, I’m sort of in the middle of something, but…” Gojo reaches into his pockets and rummages around until one hand fishes out a folded up piece of paper. The other hand keeps digging around in his pocket and when Gojo seems to give up on whatever he’s looking for, he turns his attention back to you. “Got a pen?”

What?

Gojo tilts his head. “Well?”

“I do, but…” You trail off, unsure why he’s asking.

He holds out his hand waiting for you to just hand him the pen. You still don’t get it, but you reach into your bag’s front pocket and pull out the pen and hand it to him. Gojo looks almost like an excited child when he takes it from you, quickly scribbling something onto his paper before shoving it and your pen back into your hand.

You look at the paper; it looks like a receipt. For a disturbing amount of mochi that Gojo bought earlier today. The amount of money he spent is almost sickening; way too much to be paying for mochi. More importantly, you notice something juxtaposed over the receipt’s print.

It’s Satoru Gojo’s name and number.

He even drew a little star next to his name.

“If you change your mind later, just give me a call!” he tells you cheerily. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while!”

You gawk at him. He cannot be serious. You literally just told him that you didn’t need it and yet he still gave it to you. He must want you to contact him later, but you can’t even begin to understand why. It can’t have been something you said or did, right? Unless, he’s actually—

“Later!” Gojo’s voice cuts through your thoughts and you notice him walking off with a wave.

You can’t let him get away.

Again.

You crush the receipt in your hand and rush after him. Despite the crowd, Gojo seems to move through the people with ease and it almost seems like they are yielding to him naturally. It’s good for you. Makes him easier to chase.

“Wait!” you yell, but Gojo doesn’t even look back. Bastard. Your muscles strain as you try to run faster. You know you won’t be able to grab him if you get to him, but there has to still be something you can do to stop him. Circle around him? Cut him off before he—

Satoru Gojo reaches the barricade.

“Wait!” you yell again. “Satoru Gojo, wait!”

He does not even acknowledge you.

You’re almost there though. Almost. If you reach out your hand, then maybe, maybe you can grab him. Something in your head tells you that it’s useless; you’ve never been able to touch him. But, you don’t care, you don’t care because you have to try. You stretch out your hand, desperate and hoping, but just as you do, Gojo effortlessly jumps over the barricade, moving to survey the crowd.

Due to your momentum, you almost collide into the barricade, but you manage to stop yourself. You stare at Satoru Gojo through the glass. He watches the crowd for at most three minutes. Is this just another bust? Is there really nothing you can do? There must be a way you can get his attention. Is it possible to climb over the barricade? No, it’s too high. There’s nothing you can grasp onto or use as footing either.

This fucking sucks.

Another minute or two and Gojo will be on the move again, and there will be no way you can follow, no way you can get his attention. You press your hands against the glass, pushing against it. Naturally, it doesn’t budge. Why would it? If only you could get it out of the way. If only you could break it. This stupid barricade is the only thing between you and Satoru Gojo and there’s no way you can climb it, but if only you could break it.

If only you could fucking break it.

Suddenly, the glass feels warm. Satoru Gojo’s image starts to look a little distorted as the warmth beneath your fingers grows. Something is happening. The glass starts to vibrate and shake. Violently. The tremors grow stronger and stronger. You should stop. You should back away.

You don’t.

The barricade starts to crack and fracture and soon the sound of shattering glass resounds throughout the entire room. Everyone starts screaming. No one knows what’s going on— not even you. But you don’t care. It’s gone. The barricade is gone.

You take a step forward, toward Satoru Gojo. He’s on a beam that’s about a two meter drop from where you’re standing. That’s fine. That’s okay. You can make it. You have to. Without a second thought, you jump—

And you land on the beam. You look up and Satoru Gojo’s attention is back on you. He’s finally, finally turned toward you, face twisted into an expression you can’t decipher or even comprehend, but—

Something’s wrong; your world is turning on its axis, but—

Satoru Gojo is looking at you, and—

Up is very quickly becoming down, and—

Satoru Gojo is coming closer, but—

You’re slipping—

But he’s right there, and—

You’re falling, but—

He’s trying to catch you, but—

It’s too late. It’s too late.

The last thing you think you feel—

—is Satoru Gojo’s arms around you.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you are causing a commotion.

“Shit! Fuck!” you curse loudly. The people near you start to shift away but you barely notice; you don’t really care.

You were so close, so fucking close and yet… yet here you are again. It’s quarter past eight and you are back on the goddamn platform. You don’t know what happened; you remember falling and thinking you were going to die, but you are absolutely certain that, once again, this time, you didn’t die.

Is Satoru Gojo at fault again? Did he do something? Like he did all those other times you looped without dying? When you think about it more, you don’t think so. You don’t know what happened; all you know is that you tried to get to him, but you slipped.

And he caught you, you definitely remember that.

You still don’t understand why you looped, but there’s not much you can do about it now; it’s not like you can go back anymore. It just sucks, because you think he might have actually listened if you’d talked to him.

Or he would have come after you for… whatever happened with the barricade. It could have been taken as an attack on the crowd… But if he thought you were doing that, then why would he catch you?

You don’t know.

All you know is that you have to try again.

The only problem is that you don’t know how you managed to shatter the barricade. You think about it as you make your way up to where you’ll find Satoru Gojo. There is the possibility that it wasn’t you and something else happened to it instead, but that feels way too coincidental. It had to be you. That’s the only thing that makes sense. You just can’t figure out how you did it outside of wanting, wishing, praying for the barricade to break. It’s not like you have supernatural powers like Satoru Gojo and his enemies.

Despite your mind being completely and wholly occupied by trying to figure out how in the world you managed to break through that barricade, you still manage to make it to the second basement floor of Shibuya Hikarie by 8:25PM— a brand new record. Satoru Gojo doesn’t show up until around 8:34PM, so that gives you almost ten minutes to try and figure out what you need to do to try and replicate shattering the glass barricade again.

Except—

Except Satoru Gojo is already here.

The thought that maybe you’re mistaken flashes in your mind before it’s quickly dismissed; there’s no way you’d mistake anyone else for him. There is absolutely no denying it: that is Satoru Gojo. Bewildered, you double check the time on your phone. Maybe you misread it and you’re actually late but sure enough you read it right— Satoru Gojo is here early.

What the hell is going on?

Of the thousands of times you have experienced this night, this hell, this sort of thing has never happened before. Everything happens at a specific time, as if adhering to an unseen schedule. It’s likely that what happened in your last iteration did delay Satoru Gojo’s arrival onto the platform, but other than that there has never been a deviation to the time table.

And yet, here Satoru Gojo is, nine minutes early now.

You realize that that’s not the only thing that’s strange: he’s not moving. In previous rounds, when you encounter Gojo here, he’s walking to the lookout spot beyond the barricade. But, right now, he’s just standing there, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket. It almost looks like he's waiting for something.

Or someone.

This unexpected turn of events has you rooted to the spot. You’re not sure what you should do. No. This shouldn’t change anything. You need to talk to him. As concerning as a change like this is, the extra time it gives you should be a good thing. Despite knowing that, your feet are still firmly planted to the ground.

The crowd shifts and you see Satoru Gojo start to move. Toward the barricade? No. He’s not heading in his usual direction, rather he’s—

You stop breathing.

He’s headed toward you.

All sound stops: the crowd around you, the thoughts in your head, the beat of your heart. Even though you cannot see them through that blindfold of his, you know that Satoru Gojo’s eyes are on you and the thought of that, the knowledge of it is absolutely mind numbing.

He comes to a stop before you, lips curled up to form an amused sort of smile as he says, “Soooo, you needed to talk to me?”

You try to answer but no words come out of your mouth. Are you dreaming? You have to be, right? There's no way that this is actually happening. Could it be that, after thousands of loops, you’ve finally lost it? Your mind shattering along with the glass of the barricade at the end of the last one?

Gojo tilts his head, indicating that he's still waiting for an answer. When you open your mouth, at first, nothing comes out, the words stuck in your throat. You force them out, your voice cracking, “...how did you know?”

He smiles, looking almost mischievous as he reaches up and lightly taps the side of his head. “I remembered, of course!”

All you can do is stare at Satoru Gojo. He remembered? How is that possible? From his perspective, this is the first time you’ve met and while it shouldn’t be possible for him to remember there’s something in your mind that’s keeping you from completely dismissing the possibility.

Gojo laughs, “I take it from the look on your face that you’re not used to this sort of thing happening. Is this the first time?”

“No.” The fact that the word is out of your mouth before you can even really think about it surprises you and you really have to think. Your face scrunches together as you try to remember. Is this really not the first time? Then, the memories assault you, overlapping as they replay simultaneously in your head— a woman in a yellow and white magical girl costume— begging you for help as she burns to death— smiling as she tells you she made her costume herself. “...it happened just once a long time ago.”

“‘A long time ago,’ huh. Sounds like you've been at this for a while now.”

“...unfortunately.”

Gojo hums. “So when you said you didn’t need my phone number…”

“You’d already given it to me a few times,” you say, figuring that’s where this conversation is going.

“Really now?”

Does he not believe you? Or is he just being an ass? You’re not sure, but since you had taken the liberty of memorizing Satoru Gojo’s phone number you recite it back to him to prove your point.

Just when you think you may have stunned Gojo into silence he starts to laugh, obviously finding something funny about the fact that you know his cell phone number. “Seems like you've got quite the fascinating technique there.”

Technique? What is he talking about? Your confusion must be plain on your face because he adds, elaborating, “The time travel.”

You continue to stare at him. You don't think you'd consider what you've been going through time travel, because traveling implies moving from point A to point B, but you've been stuck walking in circles at point A for a long time. What really gets you is… “What do you mean by ‘technique?’”

“You mean you don’t— oh. I get it; no wonder you’re trapped.”

That does not answer your question in the slightest. “Can you please explain what you're talking about? What do you mean by ‘technique?’”

“Right, right… So basically, a technique is like a special sort of power,” he finally explains. “Like I said, your technique seems to be a kind of time travel. Whenever you activate it, your mind is sent back in time.”

What he's saying makes sense, but… “How come you were sent back too?”

He laughs again. “Isn't it obvious? Think back to before— do you remember that I caught you as you were falling?”

You nod slowly. The memory of his arms around you is almost embarrassingly vivid. “...is it because we were touching?”

“Ding, ding, ding! That's correct! Anyone you happen to be touching when you activate your technique gets affected by it too!”

Something about his tone annoys you, but you try to ignore it. He could have just told you rather than make you guess. “How do you know that for sure?”

“Well,” he continues. “You’ve done your little time loop a bunch of times, right? If your technique affected everyone, or even a few people in a select range you would have noticed for sure. And if it affected only just you then we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, now would we?”

When you think about it, you do think that the woman in the magical girl costume might have bumped into you before the loop where she remembered.

“That’s honestly just conjecture, but I've got pretty good eyes, so I’m hardly ever wrong.”

Gojo gives you a grin and while you do think that his reasoning is sound enough his confidence is a little grating. More than that, though, you’re glad that this conversation is actually going really well.

“Either way,” he says thoughtfully. “It doesn’t look like you can control your technique. Usually a person’s technique manifests when they’re a kid, but you seem to be a special case… in fact, I bet your technique activated for the very first time tonight— probably under some pretty extreme circumstances, too.”

“...dying counts as an ‘extreme circumstance,’ right?”

“Oh, absolutely. Or legitimately thinking that you’re gonna die, but it seems like your body has been unconsciously activating your technique as a sort of defense mechanism. Which is why you’re trapped.”

“So, if I could control it I’d be able to make it out of this time loop.”

“Yeah, but in this case it probably wouldn’t end very well for you,” he points out with a chuckle. “It’s not like you actually want to die, right? I mean, if you did, then your technique wouldn’t even activate in the first place.”

You don’t; what you want is for this night to finally end. To be free from the endless cycle of dying over and over again and again. You don’t think death is quite the answer; even if you were to learn how to control this supposed technique of yours, there’s no guarantee that you would just unconsciously activate it when the grim reaper comes knocking on your door. No, the answer is…

“Anyway!” Gojo’s cheery voice cuts through your thoughts. “I highly doubt that you’re the type that makes a habit of jumping off ledges for the funsies, so the fact that you’ve been dying tells me that some pretty gruesome stuff is about to go down, so, tell me what happens tonight.”

The sudden drop of his voice sends a shiver running down your spine. If it weren’t for the fact that you’ve seen how serious Gojo can get, the sudden shift in demeanor would probably freak you out a bit, but it doesn’t. This is the Satoru Gojo you’re familiar with.

You do have one concern though. “That… won’t create a time paradox or anything, will it?”

“Nah,” Gojo shrugs. “You wouldn’t cause one with the way your technique works, besides, if you’ve only been going back at most an hour or two in time it’s hard to believe you’d be making a really big impact… unless you really believe in the butterfly effect.”

You’re still not quite sure.

“Trust me, it’ll be fine.”

His voice sounds strange. Gentle. Kind. It's the most soothing thing you've heard in a long time and it makes you want to believe him.

“...okay.”

Anxiety is still gripping at you, but you try to dispel it, taking a deep breath before beginning your explanation. For the sake of brevity, it’s probably best that you’re as concise as possible. There isn’t much need to really get into the nitty gritty of things unless he asks specifically.

Naturally, you begin with his arrival onto the platform and how soon after a fight breaks out and how the crowd is unfortunate enough to be involved. Gojo’s expression is passive for the most part, but he does crack the faintest hint of a smile when you mention how he manages to eviscerate one of the monsters.

It disappears once you tell him about the arrival of the train. Between the dozens upon dozens of people being dropped onto the platform by those two high school girls and the hoard of monsters disembarking from the train, everything devolves into pandemonium.

“Wait,” Gojo holds a hand up and you pause. This is his first interruption since you started recounting the night’s events for him. “Everyone is able to see the monsters?”

You stare at him. What a weird question. “...yeah?”

His mouth twists and it looks like he’s thinking about something. You can’t even begin to imagine what. Finally, he comments, “Makes sense.”

It does not, but you don’t ask him to elaborate. Surely if it was important he would have just done so.

“Anyway, in the middle of all that, you… you do something.” Your brows bunch together as you remember the stance Gojo took, the crazed and desperate look in his eyes, the feeling of your head about to explode. “I don’t know how to describe it. At first, it would just force me to… activate my technique, I guess. But now, it just knocks me out for a few minutes.”

Gojo frowns and he rubs at his chin, obviously thinking about what you’ve said. Eventually, he raises a hand and bends his fingers into a familiar gesture. It’s the one that preludes whatever he does on the platform. “Do I do this?”

“Yeah.”

He hums. “Interesting.”

You wait to see if he’ll explain. He doesn’t. Great. Even if he doesn’t think you need to know, it certainly would be nice to. It’s annoying otherwise, but you ignore the feeling and continue. “I can’t tell you what happens when I’m knocked out, but when I come to everyone is basically a zombie and all the monsters from the train are gone. I think you kill them.”

“I probably do,” he says casually. “But what about Volcano Head?”

“...you don't…get a chance to kill him,” you say slowly. Gojo tilts his head, waiting for you to elaborate, but you hesitate. You have to tell him, you know you do, but…

You have seen the interaction so many times and though you don't know the exact nature of the relationship between them, you can tell that seeing Suguru Geto (or rather seeing his body) shook Satoru Gojo to his very core.

There's no doubt in your mind that he will not take this news well.

“Come on now,” Gojo's tone is light-hearted, unaware. “Don't keep me in suspense here.”

It's as if you're withholding the punchline to a joke. In a way, you suppose you are, but you don't think he's going to find it funny.

You take a deep breath. You need to tell him. The worst thing that could happen is that he doesn't believe you, but if that's the case… you'll probably just end up repeating this all again until you find a loop where he does.

Having made it this far, you'd like to avoid all that.

“Before you can get Volcano Head you get restrained by something called the prison realm,” you say slowly, “by someone calling themselves… Suguru Geto.”

The second the name leaves your mouth, there is a clear and obvious shift in the air. Gone is Gojo’s laid-back and frivolous demeanor, replaced with something more somber and almost frightening. The tension grows more and more palpable to the point that you think it might almost choke you.

You almost wish that it would.

“You can’t be serious,” Gojo finally says, once your words have fully sunk in.

“I—” You start to speak, but come to an abrupt stop when you see him shove his hand into his pocket to yank out his phone of all things.

The both of you know full well that there’s no reception here, but you don’t think that he’s planning on making any calls. Gojo scrolls and scrolls on his phone before he stops and shoves the screen in your face. It shows a picture of three people— a teenage girl with a cigarette in her mouth, a younger, happier version of Gojo sporting a pair of round sunglasses and—

“When you say ‘Geto’ is this who you’re referring to?” Gojo demands, using his other hand to point at the third person in the frame— a handsome young man with long dark hair pulled up into a bun.

“Yes, but—”

“That’s impossible. It can’t be him,” Gojo interrupts, his voice firm, cold even. “He’s dead.”

There’s a note of finality in his words that is definitely meant to leave no room for argument. It doesn’t stop you, though. Instead, you glare at Gojo’s stupid blindfold and say, “...being dead doesn’t mean a damn thing! I’ve died hundreds of times and yet I’m still fucking here, but—”

“Your situation is different,” he interjects, the temperature of his tone hiking up, his words like heated hissing. “I killed him almost a year ago. There's no way—”

“You didn't get rid of the body properly!” You cut him off, raising your voice in hopes that he'll take even just a second to stop and listen. It seems to work and you add something you remember ‘Geto’ saying. “You should have had Shoko Ieiri get rid of it, but you didn’t and now some… some kind of gross brain thing is possessing the corpse!”

The air between you both is silent as the grave. Though you can't see it, you can feel the weight of his gaze pressing down on you. He’s definitely having second thoughts about everything you’ve said so far. There’s a chance he might even think you’re his enemy now. You stare him down though, refusing to look away. You’ve made it this far, you can’t— you won’t back down.

“...you’re not lying, are you.” Gojo’s words are more of a statement than a question. There’s no doubt in your mind that he knows the answer, and yet he’s still asking. You wonder if maybe he’s clinging onto some vain hope that maybe, just maybe this all a sick, cruel joke that’s gone way too far.

“I’m not.”

Gojo holds your gaze for a second longer before he lets out a curse. “Fuck!”

“...I’m sorry,” you say quietly, mostly because it feels like the most correct thing to say at this moment. You don’t know the whole story, but it seems like they were close. If so, then it must have hurt Gojo a lot to have killed him, and must hurt even more to know that someone is desecrating the body. You hate that you, a complete and utter stranger, happened to be the person to tell him, but…

It had to be done, for the sake of getting past this unending night, it had to be done.

Gojo runs a hand through his hair and lets out a ragged sigh. “Okay. What happens after that?”

You give him a rundown of what follows; he gets sealed, the monsters wake up and all but ‘Geto’ leave in search of their next target. When you mention the high school girls demanding the brain give Geto’s body back, Gojo snorts loudly.

“Fat chance of that,” he says derisively.

You nod in agreement. It was clear to you that the brain parasite has no intent on giving it up any time soon. “After they leave, he… talks to me.”

“Probably couldn't ignore all that cursed energy you have,” Gojo remarks offhandedly.

You stare at him, expression twisted in a way that shows that you have absolutely no clue what that means. It should be fine for you to ask this one question; it actually concerns you after all. “What does that even mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like, though… probably doesn't make much sense to you, does it?”

You give him a pointed glare and all Gojo does is laugh.

“Just think of it like having a lot of MP.”

“...Like in a video game?”

“Exactly!” Then, Gojo tilts his head, clearly thinking. You don't bother asking; you don't feel like he'll explain.

“He does ask me if I'm a sorcerer, whatever that is. Is that why?”

“Probably. Ordinary people don't have even a fraction of the energy you're packing.”

‘Ordinary people’ he says as if you’re not an ordinary person who got caught up in all this supernatural sorcery bullshit. Or at least you were, but if the time loops are really a product of your own doing…

“Does he kill you when you answer?” Gojo asks to get the conversation back on track.

“Not right away. What happens next kind of varies,” you answer. “He usually lets me have a question or two before he kills me; I've asked him a couple different things.”

“Really taking advantage, aren’t you?” Gojo says and you're not sure what to make of his tone. Is he mocking you or is he easing back into that laid-back persona of his?

“If I’m doomed to repeat the same situation over and over, I might as well make the most of it,” you respond flatly.

“You know, your technique kind of reminds me of save scumming.”

He’s definitely gone back to acting almost completely unserious— all signs of his earlier agitation are nearly gone.

“So what did you learn?”

“Well, the prison realm only holds one occupant. Once they’re sealed, time stops for them and the only way out is if the bearer unseals them or if they choose to kill themselves.”

“I see… And what about our body jacker?”

“He didn’t go into detail but he said something about… striving toward the evolution of mankind?” You frown a little at the memory. He didn’t explain further because he said that you wouldn’t understand.

“Huh. Interesting. Wonder how he was gonna go about doing that.”

“I don't know, but I can't imagine you'd like it since he goes out of his way to seal you into that box,” you say. “Said you’d get in the way because you’re too strong.”

Gojo shrugs his shoulders and grins a little. Cocky. “Well, I am the strongest sorcerer around, you know.”

You would think him overconfident if you hadn't seen the magnitude of his strength first hand.

“Anyway, that's as far as I ever go. When he's decided he’s done talking to me, he kills me and I loop back.”

“So, in short, what you want help with is getting past that point, right?”

“More or less.”

“And all I have to do is avoid getting caught by the prison realm?”

You nod.

“What’s it look like?” he asks. “A big cage with a bunch of metal bars?”

Now that you think about it, you haven’t woken up early enough to see it before it traps him, but you can’t imagine it looks that much different. “No.. It’s a small box with eyes… It gets big enough to fit you in it, though.”

“Huh.” He stretches his arms out above his head as if he’s trying to emphasize how large he actually is and shoots you a grin. “Should be easy enough then. I bet our body snatcher used the shock of seeing Suguru to trap me but since I'll see it coming, avoiding it'll be a piece of cake.”

Gojo makes it sound so easy, and maybe it really is as simple as that, but you can't help but be worried still.

“Don't tell me you don't think I can do it,” he says, tilting his head.

“It's not that,” you admit. “I'm just concerned I might die before we can get to that point.”

Truthfully, since you know that will just result in another loop you're less concerned with dying itself and more worried about losing the progress you've made in convincing Gojo to help you. Even though it's been clearly proven you can loop him as well, there's no guarantee you'll be able to make the physical contact needed to do it upon death.

“You've made it pretty far on your own, though, right?”

“Yeah, but… I’ve messed up plenty of times.” More than you can even count. “There's also the possibility that taking the time to talk to you might have thrown things out of whack.”

Speaking of time, you check your phone. It's 8:39PM. You curse.

Gojo leans over to check your phone. “Let me guess, I'm supposed to be somewhere right now.”

“Yeah, this is when you’re descending down onto the platform.”

“You know where I am down to the exact minute?” He asks and you tilt your head back and forth a little. It’s not exact per se, but it’s close enough. Gojo chuckles a little. “Man, I didn’t realize that you were actually that into me.”

That earns Gojo a glare from you, but he just laughs it off. “I doubt being a few minutes late is going to make a big difference.”

You certainly hope so.

“Don't worry,” Gojo says and you notice he's using that tone from earlier. “You won't die.”

It’s hard to argue with him when he uses such a reassuring sounding voice and yet, you still open your mouth to try— to voice your doubts, but what he says next silences you before you even can.

“I'll protect you.”

You think your heart stops beating in your chest and your words dissolve in your throat.

He grins at you. “Did you fall in love with me just now?”

That catches you a little off guard. You're willing to admit he's hot, but surely he must be joking. “How could you even think of something like that at a time like this?”

Gojo laughs again. “Well, since someone is so worried about their time table being all messed up, I better head down there; can’t keep Volcano Head and friends waiting, right?”

You blink. Is that it? “Wait, shouldn’t we make a plan or something?”

“Isn’t the plan for me to not get caught in the prison realm?”

Yes, but… “But what about me? Is there anything I can do?”

Gojo stares at you, or at least you think he does. “...I don’t know, is there?”

You’ve seen the encounter between Satoru Gojo and those monsters so many times and you try to picture a version of it where you intervene and… all you can see is yourself getting in his way. You’re no fighter, no… sorcerer, or whatever he is, you’re just some ordinary person that was unfortunate enough to get all caught up in this mess. The most you can probably do is kick the prison realm out of the way when the time comes, but otherwise… “...no, I guess not.”

His expression turns sympathetic. “You’ve done plenty by telling me everything that happens. So just wait up here, and let me handle the monsters.”

You almost nod. Almost. But then you remember what transpires up here above the platform. You know it sounds safer up here where you’re less likely to get involved in the carnage, but… “Wait, no, if I stay up here then I’ll fall to my death when those girls—”

Gojo laughs, interrupting you. “Don’t worry about that. It’ll be fine.”

“How?”

“Just trust me.”

“I…” It’s hard to. After everything you’ve gone through it’s hard to trust in anything, to believe in anything. Even though you’ve made it this far this time, the worry that something will go wrong and that you’ll have to do it all again still lurks in the back of your mind.

Despite all that, you want to believe.

You want to believe that you can make it past this unending night, that one day you’ll wake up and it’ll no longer be October 31, 2018. And the first step towards that is trusting in Satoru Gojo.

“...okay,” you say quietly. “Okay.”

Gojo chuckles then asks, “Anything else before I head off?”

You start to ask if there’s anything you should say, in case things don’t work out, but you stop yourself. You’re choosing to trust him, to believe in him— you can figure out that stuff later if things end up going south after all. So, instead you give him a smile and it feels a little weird because you don’t remember the last time you did. “Good luck!”

For a split second, Gojo looks almost surprised, but then he laughs again, beaming widely at you. He starts to move past you and reaches out to give you what you think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder and then he’s off. You turn to watch him go, the crowd, once again, parting almost naturally for him.

When he reaches the barricade, he pauses, raising his hand as if he’s giving you one last wave. Then he jumps over it onto his little perch and then less than a minute later he’s gone, descending to the platform below.

Now, all you can do is wait.

You check your phone again and it’s 8:44PM. If you remember correctly, the high school girls start threatening everyone right before 9PM. With Gojo’s arrival being shifted back almost five minutes, does that mean that they’ll be shifted back too? It would make sense, but you’re not too sure.

Out of habit, you keep checking your phone and at nearly 9PM, you hear the shrill voice of one of the girls over the crowd, commanding everyone to do what she says, her partner stringing up bodies until everyone listens. Everything plays out just as you remember it, which is mildly comforting, though you know that the events that happen up here are more or less independent from what happens below.

Surely, just as Gojo said, a few minutes aren’t going to change anything, but—

No.

You agreed to trust him. To trust that everything would be fine.

When the girls start to demand that as many people as possible climb onto the roots and vines covering the atrium your heart starts to hammer in your chest. In just a few minutes, all the foliage will disintegrate beneath you, and you and everyone else here will fall into the abyss below.

You are afraid.

There isn’t a single loop where you’ve really survived this fall. If you don’t die in midair, you die right after landing. It’s a death trap, and that’s why you’ve stopped coming up here. There’s a part of you, the part that knows what’s about to happen, that wants to try and run back onto stable footing. But you can’t, because you know if you do then the girls will kill you for sure; you have to stay.

It’ll be fine, you tell yourself, it’ll be okay.

You just have to trust Gojo.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

You hear the announcement faintly below you. It’s almost time. You brace yourself and try to stay calm. Gojo said he would protect you, that you wouldn’t die. You don’t know how he intends to keep that promise, but all you can do is believe in his words.

It’ll be fine. It’ll be okay.

The vines and roots start to crack and the ground beneath you starts to give out. You squeeze your eyes shut as that sickening weightless feeling overtakes you. It occurs to you that this is actually quite literally a trust fall— will Satoru Gojo really be able to catch you?

As you fall, you realize almost instantly that something is different.

You’ve experienced this fall dozens of times and so, even though it has been a while since you’ve gone this route, you are very familiar with what it feels like. Something is different. You’re falling faster. The trajectory is changing. It’s like some force, other than gravity, is pulling at you.

Is this Gojo’s doing?

Just as your body collides with the ground you hear the sounds of mutilating flesh meld with the screams surrounding you. Blood and severed limbs litter the ground, but you try to ignore it. You need to focus on your own survival right now. Quickly, you scramble to your feet scan the area around you; you’re on the platform right now and right in front of you is—

Right in front of you is Satoru Gojo.

His back is turned to you, his focus currently elsewhere. Looking at him you realize you recognize this scene, though it’s much closer and at a different angle. He’s about to do that thing, that thing that knocks you out.

Something in you tells you to move closer to him, after all, he used his mysterious powers to deliberately bring you closer to him, right? You rush toward him and as you do something he said earlier pops up in your mind.

Anyone you happen to be touching when you activate your technique gets affected by it too!

Whatever he’s about to do… Is that his ‘technique?’ And if it is, would it work the same way as yours? If so, there’s only one way to find out: you need to touch him. You dodge monsters and other people as you run toward Satoru Gojo and—

A monster still manages to grab you, its large hands wrapping around your wrist. You try and yank it free, but it's much stronger than you are.

“Shit!” you hiss as the monster starts to pull you toward it and away from Gojo. What do you do? Your other hand is still free, should you try to punch it in the face? Or—

Before you can do anything, something blasts the monster’s head clean off. Shocked, you stare as the monster’s body slumps onto the ground, its grip loosening on you instantly. You whip your head around to find that while Gojo still has his back to you, his arm is bent back in your direction, his palm open as if he fired some invisible blast from it.

Then you feel it again, something pulling at you, but this time it's more forceful. Your body is yanked toward Gojo and the second you feel his hand press against you, you see him make that gesture with his other hand.

“Domain Expansion,” he whispers in a strained voice. “Infinite Void!”

Something happens and your vision flashes for a fraction of a second. And then—

The room is enveloped in an eerie stillness; all the violence and bloodshed coming to an abrupt stop. Monsters and humans alike stand like the living dead, unconscious with their eyes wide open as if they are staring into an infinite abyss. You recognize this scene, you’re familiar with it because it’s similar to the one you wake up to after being hit by Gojo’s ‘domain expansion.’ The only difference is the presence of the monsters, who are all but gone when you regain consciousness.

The pressure from Gojo’s hand is gone and he says to you, his voice still low. “If you’re squeamish when it comes to blood and gore, it might be best for you to close your eyes.”

And then he’s gone.

You do not take his advice. You do not close your eyes. How many loops were you unable to witness what’s about to unfold? A few hundred? A few thousand? And if all goes to plan, then you will never get another chance again: there’s no way you could possibly look away.

And what you see unfold before you is that Satoru Gojo was right.

He is the one to kill all the monsters.

It’s not as if you really had any doubt, after all, it seemed like the most logical conclusion to come to and yet…

There’s a difference between knowing and seeing.

All the violence resumes and the platform is engulfed in the sounds of carnage and slaughter once more. The lack of terrified screams makes everything more disconcerting— without them, all you can hear is the squelching echo of mangled flesh and blood splattering all over the place. You can’t really see him, but you can tell where Satoru Gojo is in the crowd as he leaves dozens upon dozens of decapitated heads soaring in his wake. Once or twice, he leaps out of the crowd and even from where you stand you can see the crazed glow of his inhumanly blue eyes as he massacres monster after monster.

Even though you don’t think you have anything to be scared of, you are still terrified: Satoru Gojo is no longer a man, but violence incarnate. You want to move closer to where Gojo gets trapped, but you’re afraid to. What if you get in his way? What if he kills you by accident?

Dying again when you’ve made it this far is definitely not ideal, but isn’t being killed by Gojo the best case scenario? Because then the two of you would probably loop together again and—

No.

Gojo said you wouldn’t die.

He said he’d protect you.

It’s hard to believe when he’s in the middle of a massacre, slaughtering monsters left and right, but you remind yourself yet again that you have to believe in him.

You take a deep breath and start moving, taking care to keep an eye on where Gojo is. You don’t know how long this is supposed to take, but you do know where he ends up when he’s just about done. The closer he gets to that spot, the sooner the prison realm will be unleashed upon him.

There’s a small group of zombified people nearby and you settle yourself among them. It’s not super close, but you think it's close enough that you'd be able to run over and kick the box away from Gojo if you have to. You do a quick survey to see if you can spot the body snatcher, but he's nowhere to be found. Hopefully, he hasn't noticed you moving around, or, if he has, he's more concerned with Gojo than he is with you. Given that you always seem to be the last thing he acknowledges, you'd like to think that he doesn't consider you a threat.

Which you're not, not really anyway.

The sounds of slaughter start to die down and you look to see Gojo approaching the spot where he gets caught. He looks beat, his eyes unfocused and his breathing heavy. You do another quick scan around him and notice a small box a few meters away from him, wrapped in what looks like paper charms or seals or whatever they're called. That has to be the prison realm— though it looks different than what you saw before. Gojo seems to notice it right after you do, his gaze honing in on it, examining it with some measure of bewilderment. Then, some invisible force slices through all the paper seals covering the box and it expands, the corners of the box floating up in midair to reveal what looks like a large sheet of dark red flesh with a large bloodshot eye stapled to the middle.

Disgusting.

If Gojo didn’t realize before, he seems to now, because he takes a step back, away from the grotesque thing. Good, good—

“Hey! Satoru!” Your blood runs cold at the sound of the body snatcher’s voice. He emerges from the crowd, smiling widely as he gives Gojo a wave. “Long time no see!”

Satoru Gojo’s entire body goes rigid. Shit. You told him, you warned him about what was going to happen, who he was going to see, but was that not enough? It’s possible that no amount of warning would have been enough to mentally prepare Satoru Gojo for the sight of the man he said he killed a year ago. After all, you know that there’s a stark difference between knowing and seeing. Even then, if Gojo doesn’t gather his wits and move now then he’s going to get caught and you can’t let that happen.

Your body moves before you can even think about it.

You scramble out from your hiding spot in the crowd and throw yourself in between Satoru Gojo and the prison realm. There’s no way you can kick it away from him now, not when it’s in this form, but maybe, if you get between them you can at least keep it from capturing him.

The eye quivers erratically, as it flits from Gojo to you. Every hair on your body stands on end as it watches you, the pupil dilating and contracting uncontrollably. You can’t look away from it, your own gaze fixed to your image reflected in the black abyss of the pupil. Something in the back of your mind tells you to stop, to get away, it’s dangerous, but you keep your feet firmly planted to the ground.

A second, or maybe even a minute passes and the prison realm shifts, its fleshy form morphing to restrain you.

The body jacker looks at you, his frown tinged with disgust. “Don’t you think you’re being rather rude by butting into what could have been a touching reunion?”

You scowl. Is he still trying to play the role of Suguru Geto?

He sighs and looks past you at Gojo. “Satoru, I thought bringing lesser sorcerers to fight alongside you was more trouble than it was worth?”

You hear Gojo snort from behind you, “It is… but this person here isn’t a sorcerer… Just like you aren’t Suguru Geto.”

The faker almost pouts and presses his hand to his chest as if Gojo's words have wounded him. “Satoru, I’m hurt, how could you say such a thing to your best friend?”

“Cut the bullshit,” Gojo snarls. “You can’t fucking fool me. You might be in Suguru’s body but I know with all my heart and soul that you’re not him.”

The corpse snatcher stares at Gojo, expression blank before he sighs once more. Then, his gaze shifts back to you, his eyes narrowed as he looks at you with sheer disdain. It feels as if you’ve been drenched in ice cold water. There's no smile this time but you already know what's going to happen.

He’s going to kill you.

“I intended to deal with you later since you seemed harmless enough,” he says, raising a hand to summon a monster— the same one he always uses to end your life. “But you’re in the way. So, I think it’s for the best if I just get rid of you right now.”

Instinctively, you try to take a step back but the prison realm’s restraints keep you in place. Not that it would have mattered much, even in the loops where you’ve tried to escape the faker’s monster, it still kills you, too fast and too agile for an ordinary human like you to avoid. All you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the monster to kill you. At least, it’s always painless.

Something touches your back.

Your eyes shoot open.

Before you is the monster, wiggling and writhing only mere centimeters from your face. It gurgles and snarls at you, desperate to fulfill its master’s wishes and kill you but it doesn’t move any closer. You stare at it with wide eyes, unsure of what to do.

Someone behind you clicks their tongue— Gojo. You try to turn your head to look at him, but your movements are too limited, the most you can do is turn your head to the side. The sounds the monster is making start to change, sounding more frenzied, almost as if it’s in pain, and you flit your eyes in its direction just in time to see its entire body explode. The monster's guts and bright purple blood fly off in every direction, getting on the floor, the ceiling, the zombified bodies of the people unfortunate enough to be nearby, but not on you.

This is Satoru Gojo’s doing.

He steps in front of you, half turned towards you as he moves in between you and the body snatcher. His hands are shoved in his pockets as he loudly says, “Did you really forget about me?”

You’re not sure if he’s talking to you or the body snatcher.

Past him, the imposter scowls, raising his hand once more, probably to summon even more monsters, but Gojo’s quicker, and it almost looks like his eyes are glowing even brighter, the blue looking almost white as he whips his head in the faker’s direction. The sound of mangling flesh and breaking bones echoes throughout the room as Gojo, using that mysterious power of his, seems to break the faker’s arm.

The body snatcher hisses loudly and despite the fact that his face is twisted in very obvious pain, he tries to shoot Gojo a mocking smile. “Do you really think you can kill your best friend again?”

“I already told you,” Gojo turns to fully face the monster inhabiting Geto’s corpse. He tilts his head a little to the side and some force starts to squeeze at the faker’s neck. “You’re not Suguru.”

You hear a loud crack as Gojo telekinetically snaps his neck.

The head rolls onto the ground and you almost look away, but then you notice his eyes still moving, looking around. Is he still alive? Then you remember: the thing possessing Suguru Geto’s body was some kind of parasite. “Gojo! Wait! The brain!”

He reacts almost instantly, head turning and in an instant the skull is crushed and all that remains is red splotch on the ground.

You almost relax. Almost.

But the body is still standing.

Horrified, you watch as it quivers violently before falling to the ground. Then what looks like dozens of black spirits start to erupt from the corpse and the entire room is engulfed with a shrill howling.

What the hell is going on?

“Those must be all the cursed spirits he consumed,” Gojo explains uselessly, voice barely audible over the screaming. “Guess he was empty before.”

You don’t bother asking what he means. There are bigger problems right now. “What do we do?”

“No choice to exorcise them,” he answers plainly.

For him to exorcise them, he means. You both know that there’s not much that you can do. You still can’t move and honestly, you don’t even know if it’s possible to get out of the prison realm’s restraints. Not without dying. And if you die now…

Everything will have been for naught.

You’ll reset time and have to do this all over again— assuming you can even get to this point again.

There has to be something, you just have to think outside the box.

Or rather—

“Gojo!”

He glances back at you.

“You need to seal me in the prison realm!” you exclaim. He turns to face you fully, looking bewildered and you start to explain as fast as you can. “Those things are going to attack any minute right? I can’t move or try to hide and I can’t expect you to protect me the entire time and if I die then I’ll end up looping time again, but— but, if you seal me in the prison realm then that won’t happen.”

Gojo frowns, looking conflicted. “You don’t think I can do it?”

“Wouldn't it be easier if you didn’t have to?”

He tilts head and you think he’s conceding your point.

“Please,” you beg, staring at him desperately. “We don’t have much time. The other… cursed spirits will wake up soon too!”

You don’t have to explain that you mean Volcano Head and friends.

It takes only a second for Gojo to consider the very few options you have. “...how do you seal it? Do you know?”

“I think so,” you answer. “There’s no guarantee it’ll work but I think that if you say ‘prison realm, gate close’ it should seal me inside.”

If anything, it’s worth a shot.

Gojo nods. “Do you know how to break the seal?”

“I… don’t,” you confess. You never asked, and you don’t think the body snatcher would have told you even if you did. He only told you that it holds one and that…

That time doesn’t flow in the box.

“...you don’t have to break the seal.”

Gojo frowns, “Wait a sec—”

“Even if I make it past tonight… What if this all happens again? What if I inadvertently trap myself in another time loop?” you ask. “I… I don’t want to have to go through all of this again. It’s better for me in a place where time doesn’t pass.”

You don’t know for sure if it’ll be better, but right here, right now, it seems like the best option.

It feels like an eternity passes before Gojo says anything.

“...fine,” he agrees and you don’t quite know how to feel about it. The howling around you all grows louder. You wonder why the cursed spirits haven’t attacked yet. Maybe Gojo’s power is holding them at bay… for now anyway. You both know that he can’t ignore them forever.

“...before I do, though, mind if I ask you just one thing?”

You blink. “Not sure what I can do for you in this state…”

He laughs. “I just want to know your name.”

What an odd request. Though, now that you think about it, you don’t think that during this loop or any other loop really, you’ve ever told him your name. It only seems fair to tell him, since you’ve known his for longer than he’s known of your existence.

You tell him your name.

He nods, looking as if he’s committing to memory. Probably easier to remember than his phone number. “Any last words?”

You try to think of something. Nothing comes to mind and you just shake your head.

Gojo takes a deep breath, “Alrighty then… Prison realm, gate close.”

Just as it did the many times you’ve seen Satoru Gojo sealed away, the boxes and restraints around you vibrate a little before they start to close around you, growing large enough to fit your body as they approach.

You won’t see it, but once you’re inside the box will shrink and become small enough to fit in the palm of someone’s hand.

Will it be quiet inside?

In your final seconds, some words, some last words come to mind, and you say them, hoping that he hears them in time. “Thank you, Satoru Gojo.”

You burn the glittering glow of his brilliant bright blue eyes into your mind.

And then, everything is engulfed in an unending black.

It’s November 30, 2018— morning on the campus of Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School.

Satoru Gojo strides through the school grounds, casually tossing a small silver box with eerie blue eyes known as the prison realm up and down in his grasp. Walking at his side is Shoko Ieiri, a pretty woman who’s been unfortunate enough to have been Satoru’s friend since high school.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Shoko asks, twirling a few strands of her long brown hair.

“What do you mean?” Satoru responds nonchalantly. “All my ideas are good ideas.”

Shoko hums in clear dissent, but doesn’t say anything more. Even she knows better than to try and waste her time trying to argue with Satoru. “I’m just worried about their mental state. Didn’t you say that time doesn’t flow in the box?”

“I’d be worried if it was some normal person,” Satoru says. “But after what they’ve gone through I think they’ll be fine.”

“...well, if you say so.”

The two arrive at their destination: the largest training area on the Jujutsu High grounds. Satoru places the prison realm at the center and takes a few steps back with Shoko standing behind him, in case anything happens.

He doesn’t think it will, but it’s always good to take at least a few precautions.

“Gojo, are you sure we should be doing this?” Shoko asks again. “Didn’t they want to remain in the box?”

“Of course I am,” Satoru says with his usual air of confidence before looking back at the prison realm nestled in the grass. He grins and then—

“Prison realm, gate open.”

if you made it this far. thank you. it's my sincerest hope that you enjoyed the ride.

[echantedtoon]

Im Blue Ch14 Tsunami Incoming P4

(This is going to contain a time skip of events but it will all be important to the story so please bare with me.)

It felt like DAYS they continued walking and walking and walking until once again more and more noises filled her senses. More people and by the vibrations and noises being picked up slowly but surely to her blind self, more car activity as the occasional siren blaring car would pass them back towards the way they came. Firefighter? Ambulance? Police?? She couldn't tell since she couldn't see and all the now new vibrations were muddling her mind again, and the sardine can trapped feeling returned too as with her grandmother pulling her along more people and noises, and the headache a city with all the hussle and bussle going on around them and soon enough she was wincing from when bodies were starting to press up and bump into her again the further and further they all walked into the city from suburbia. Being blind and scared with a clouded mind meant time seemed to pass a lot more faster than her confused self could follow. Blue did remember stopping a few times at what must've been crosswalks or streets as cars went by and then they would move again suddenly. All this twisting and turning not knowing where she was going ultimately became too much and she ended up asking her granny where they were.

"Granny. Where are we going?"

"Hotel," she answered quickly.

"A hotel?"

"Yes. I'm not having you smashed up against somewhere with a lot of strangers especially when we have no idea what's going to happen after this," she explained tugging her along again, "Lucky for us I remember where one is in this city from your grandfather's past service within the city police force."

Well she wasn't complaining. Shelter was shelter after all. And it didn't sound too bad then. After more walking and walking..and WALKING her grandmother lead her up somewhere and she stumbled. Mostly because what she walked into was steps that was leading up to something but since she couldn't see anything, she stumbled while her grandmother tried pulling her up the stairs. Upon stumbling her grandmother stopped and pushed her back up and let her know there was such a thing there. After wards leading her up again but much more slowly so she wouldn't accidentally trip again as she timidly stepped her way up the steps to where she heard her grandmother open a door. reaching her other hand out still clutching the bag of belongings, Blue kept the door open forherself as well and felt a wave of relief rush over her from not being outside with the heavier vibrations and louder noises into a more calmer atomosphere. But she still kept her antenna pinned to her head. There was a lot of people, which meant a lot of people could look at her or GOD FORBID recognize her from last week's broadcast with the villains!!! Lucky for her everyone seemed too busy or just didn't care to notice her when her grandmother tiredly dragged her up to the front lobby's desk and spoke with the man upfront as he snapped to attention noticing there was someone coming right up to him.

"Excuse me young man," her grandmother said tiredness laced with every word she spoke. Blue didn't blame her one bit though. Considering they traveled quite a bit away. "We're very tired and we want a room as soon as possible. Now can we get one?"

"Oh! Of course, Ma'am," the man said, "Will it just be you and the young lady?"

"Yes. Please. The room."

Blue waited patiently as her grandmother paid for the room she guessed with what money they had and the man gave her a key. Her grandmother then regrabbed her sore wrist and with a wince from Blue she was again yanked off towards an elevator. It didn't take too long for her to drag poor Blue into the elevator and make her stand there with the typical 'DING' of the elevator doors closing. She stood there rubbing her sore wrist as the elevator shook and then went up under her, making her shake a bit. They went two floors up before she hissed again in pain as her wrist was again grabbed by her grandmother and into the hallway right up to a room to which she used the key to unlock and drag Blue inside. Once inside she was FINALLY able to have her wrist to herself as she was left to stand uncomfortable in the unfamiliar environment. This was not her room. This was not her home. This was NOT comforting or ok in the slightest! SHE NEVER STAYED IN A HOTEL BEFORE!! AND NOW SHE HAS TO STAY HERE UNTIL THE TSUNAMI PASSES!? She blinked and turned her head as tired footsteps approuched her from behind, then past her as her head slowly followed and her grandmother sat herself onto the bed's mattress with a soft squeak from it. A moment of silence passed over the two. Letting the reality of their bad situation finally sink in for the two of them. ....And. It. Was. BAAADD!!

".....Granny?" The old woman tiredly hummed in the butterfly girl's direction as she continued to rub her wrist clutched to her chest. ".....What's going to happen n-now?"

There was silence once again between the two of them for a little while before the older woman sighed and procceeded to lie down. "I-....I don't know what's going to happen. But right now we're safe here until the storm calms and passes. So we're going to stay put right here until any dangers pass over. Everything will be ok. You'll see. After all. How could it get worse than it already is now?"

.....There was a VERY good reason NODOBY should EVER ask something like THAT!! Because in the next few days things would go from bad to WORSE!! As night came fairly early that night from walking so long so did the eventually rain and clouds brought upon by the storm. You would've thought that the world was coming to an end by the way the windows rattled as the thousands upon thousands of raindrops rammed into everything as thunder and lightning lit up the night and teased her uncertain and scared with their taunting display of a disasterous symphony of mayhem. She didn't get any sleep that night. In fact she could barely find a place to lay down. Settling to just laying on the floor curled up into herself with just an extra pillow from the bed she swiped. Her grandma had fallen asleep not long after laying down too exhausted from the events of the day to care to wake up. Not that Blue wanted to wake up the poor old lady. After all she needed more rest and could definitely use the bed way more than her anyways. That didn't mean she wasn't good laying on the cold hard floors scared as a puppy hearing it's first thunderstorm. Antenna firmly planted against her head for the entire time. Somehow she was able to fall asleep by some miracle that night and by the time she woke up the next morning it was very late in the afternoon, and it was to the same noises as last night, thunderstorms like crazy except the new noise of her grandmother with the TV on watching the news reached her ears as she yawned and got up. 

"Granny? W-What-"

"SHUSH!" Her grandmother shushed her not paying her another second glance. Blue stared blindly in her direction confused but soon got her answer why when the reporter on TV finally got her attention. 

" -day after a magnitude seven point six magnitude earthquake just off the shores of Japan's east coast followed by a close called Tsunami wrecking havoc across the coastline and many many towns across the way," the woman spoke, "And a very significant storm followed it's wake. Everything was shaking. The tides were moving. People became very alarmed during the emergency evacuation processes issued out yesterday and are still going on throughout the storms as heroes and emergency forces alike are trying to wade through the flooding. Trying to push any stragglers out. And trying to fight against the storms still raging along the coast. We now go live to Yugo Onaga who's on scene at this very moment right now. How's the conditions from last night and yesterday impacting everyone Onaga?"

A man's voice is what she heard next from the Tv as she sat there numbly. "Thank you Iko. Right now we are survaing the rescue staff and workers at a recommended distance within a safe spot but the fact of the matter is that there has been severe flooding and damages caused from the sudden slam of the tide waters and oceans from waves nearly ten feet in height from yesterday's tsunami as the storm rages on and they are working to get anyone they can out. A warning has been issussed for nearly the entire east coast to evacuate the seashore and places near it immediately if you already have not. To the nearest safe places above the coast line and take shelter from the incoming storms. You see for those who don't know when Tsunami's are generated if you're within a hundred kilometers of one of those, you're not going to have much time so it's best to leave as soon as possible. They ask everyone to stay safe indoors in a safe place, stay away from the flooded areas at all costs, and to please if you have already not get to a safe place away from the flooded and damaged area until we have been given the ok to return by professionals. We now go live in an interview with some of those very same life support workers and heroes working at the sce-"

Silence returned to them and the room as the tv was switched off and neither said anything for a long long moment...until she jumped at the sound of her grandmother getting up and slowly walking towards the door. "Stay here. I'll be back with some room service food."

Things only kept getting worse and worse from there over the course of a blurry few days of feeling useless and in solitary confinement. She couldn't even tell how many days had passed or time since she couldn't see and she couldn't do anymore than just stumble around, yelp when she fell over not knowing much about the environment around her trying to get around, sit down and just listen to the Tv as her grandmother received food, and just...Couldn't do anything else but wait for something. More time passed and the rain eventually stopped. It was the first good thing for a long while. Just feeling a great weight lifted from her shoulders, but it didn't last long at all. Because not too long after that her grandmother and her had packed everything away and she gently lead her out of the hotel room, back down the elevator, and after returning the room key to the front desk man, proceeded to silently guide her out of the hotel and into the noisy city outside. Once again she could feel a headache bubbling up but she could handle that. She was just happy it seemed like they were going home. With a lighter feeling in her chest and lead by her grandmother, Blue happily walked along .....Until realization hit her. They weren't leaving the city otherwise the sounds would've started to disappear. They were heading deeper INTO the city.

"Granny? W-W-Where are we going? This isn't the way back to the coast."

"We're not going back there," the older woman stated bluntly, "We're going to the homeless shelter. We have no home and barely any money."

"WHAT!?,''she cried digging her heels into the sidewalk and probably catching some strange looks as she made the both of them stop and look down directly at her grandmother's spot in front of her as the heavy feeling from before hit harder than a cannonball to the face. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE'RE NOT GOING BACK?! A homeless center!?"

"Well what else would you expect us to go, Blue!?,'' her grandmother fired back. "I know you can't see but you need to realize what's in front of you. Our home is gone there is nothing to go back to I checked...Our home was in the disaster area and among the destroyed homes. Any money we did have is now gone besides a few measly bills and coins. We CAN'T afford anywhere else."

"......Then....W-What are we going to do?"

....She shook her head and inhaled. "I-...I d-don't know. But at least there we'll have some kind of food over our heads and some kind of food source. Now's not the time to be picky. Especially when nothing is what we're left with..." Blue flinched when her grandmother again grabbed her wrist but gentler. "Now come along. I want to be there before dark."

Things were like a snowball rolling down a hill for them. Harmless and small at first, maybe only a little bit annoying when they hit you, but have them fleeing down a hill and then getting plowed over by the MOUNTAIN of a snowball would definitely hit hard. And hit hard it did. Because things went from bad to WORSE with a capital W. When they arrived at the homeless shelter is was so packed full of others leaving the area that they were nearly rejected...Nearly. Somehow they managed to be some of the lucky ones who managed to get a room....That they had to share...With two other ladies..and one of their two young children. Having to share a bed with her grandmother she could handle but being so squished and the experiences there were not pleasant to say the least. At least one of the ladies were quiet, sure she didn't want to help or do anything to clean the room, but at least she left them alone. The woman with the two children...Were not very friendly. How would someone describe her??....Oh. Blue couldn't remember the last time she had to wake up to children screaming or running around in such a limited space-.......or taking her things. Or teasing her for her condition. Or their mother not doing literally anything but lay there and complain about the small food rations the shelter provided or how long it was taking her family to come get them out of this mess. And lord forbid if she or anyone else said anything to the mother who'd blow a fuse defending her 'angels' and how dare they and blah blah blah. Food was ok she guessed. Usually the same thing over and over again and tasted as stale as dry dog food left in the sun for a million years. Considering she even got her one meal a day at all if it wasn't stolen from her seeing a blind gal as an easy target or eaten by the hell spawn of children when she was able to sneak it back to the room, and only got yelled and nothing back from the mother who claimed it was better for her kids to eat more than her anyways. After all how can a blind and an elderly woman even keep up with that. Any confontation could get them kicked out. Oh. And they were the only ones to actually put effort into cleaning up their one availible room which was easily and quickly destroyed by the reckless kids screaming and running around. Stress. Day in. Stress. Night out. Stress. Stress. Work. More Stress. More tears were shed during that time that any other time in her life in those few dark days. ....Which the karen would tell her to stop because it was making her kids uncomfortable. SCREW YOU KAREN!!! And it turned even more terrible one fatefull day when her grandmother took her to the side and told her she was going to go out and see if any of the local businesses were hiring so they could save money and soon get out of here. She...wasn't comfortable with that kind of thing at all, but it was a much better idea then trying to stay here and dealing with constant cleaning of the room, terrible roommates, and limited food. And to be honest, her granny was the more likely one of the two of them to even get a job so she agreed to go along with it. It was RIGHT after she left too when it struck...Or knocked. Because she was just laying there not knowing WHAT to do anymore when the door knocked, and her and anyone else in the room looked up when it opened obviously and two people stood there. Although obviously she couldn't tell who or what was there.

"This is their room, Sir."

Their? Was that karen's family FINALLY here to pick them up!? That would make this day ten times better! There was some footsteps shuffled about before a man's voice asked. "Ms. Blue Chan?" She froze....That was her name WHY was someone saying her name. She couldn't answer that but she didn't have too because the man's voice kept talking. "I am Lt. Sansa Tamakawa of the city's third division police force here."

.......What? "W-W-What? Wait. Why are you here then?" She was pretty sure she hadn't done anything illegal. So why in the world would there be a cop looking for here here."

"I know this must be very sudden, but I'm here to get your official statement for the incident that you a part of a month ago back at the docks for the official case file." A month?? Had it really been that long? "And to take you in for questioning for an earlier incident."

She froze. The last sentence striking her like a giant bee sting. "WHAT!?"

"We have evidence you called in a warning about the tsunami a few hours before it actually hit," he explained calmly. HOW COULD HE BE CALM ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW!? "Regarding your previous sighting with the villains and refusal to give a proper statement before, it can come off as a bit strange. Please come with me."

***********************************************************************************************

He was ABSOLUTELY exhausted!! Having to spend days and days out there when he was supposed to be just relaxing evacuating everyone and trying to manuver around in such panic before the flood really hit. It was a whole reign of mess that he wouldn't bother to rethink. But luckily now he was able to return home as the police and emergency forces could handle the rest of the stragglers fine on their own and clean up the damage from the storms and flooding without his assisstance. And it was nice of the board to rienburse him for the days he had to go back to action but letting him have and his crew have an extended vacation to make up for lost time. Which he appreciated and gladly accepted. Hopefully things from here on out would be more smooth sailing waters for this sailor.

[arrowflier]

Can you write Mickey be the whipped married guy in his friend group who always leaves early because he misses his husband 😂🥰

“Read ‘em and weep, boys,” Mickey said, smirking as he laid his cards on the table with a flourish.

The other three men groaned, tossing their own cards to the middle without even bothering to show them.

“That’s the third one in a row, Milkovich,” one of them complained. “You tryin’ to hussle us?”

“Ey! Shut up, Danny,” another hissed, whacking his arm with the back of one hand. “Kid’ll probably gut ya for sayin’ that shit.”

“Nah,” Danny said. “He wouldn’t dare, he’d get sent back to the can without his hubby.”

All three men broke out into raucous laughter, Danny making kissy noises until Mickey grabbed up a handful of cards from the table and smacked them right into his pursed lips.

“Yeah yeah, laugh it up,” Mickey said. “Just remember that Joe knows what he’s talkin’ about—learned a lot of ways to kill a guy in prison.”

“Not much else to do there,” Joe agreed with a nod as the other two men started to wind down.

“Unless you got a man!” the third man, Timmy, chimed in, and they were off again.

“Sure, sure,” Mickey said, letting them laugh. “But there’s only so much an ass can take, fellas, and once that’s done…”

He mimed slitting his own throat.

“Ugh, Mickey,” Danny groaned. “We don’t need to know that shit, man.”

“You’re the maintenance guy, Dan,” Timmy said. “Don’t tell me you never walked in on the two of ‘em?”

“Fuck no!” Danny exclaimed. “If their stupid little ambulance is in the lot, I come back later!”

“Lucky,” Joe sighed. “I was up there cleaning the windows once before they got curtains, and—”

“Whoa!” Mickey interrupted, holding out a hand over the table. “Let’s keep that shit to ourselves, fuck you very much.”

Joe grinned.

“Why should I?” he asked. “Not like you cared at the time.”

Mickey rolled his eyes.

“At the time, I had a more important issue to deal with.”

His phone went off in his pocket, the shrill tone cutting through the room loud enough to halt the conversation.

“Speak of the fuckin’ devil,” Mickey muttered, digging it out. “Ian just texted, he’s heading back up. Sorry guys, guess that’s it for today.”

A chorus of groans met his statement, a chair creaking as Danny leaned back too far.

“You always abandon us, man,” he complained. “As soon as he’s done, you nope outa here, even in the middle of a hand.”

Mickey raised his eyebrows.

“We in the middle of a hand now, genius?” he asked. “No? Then if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go meet up with my husband.”

“Fine, fine,” Danny said with a sad wave. “But someday you gotta at least bring him down here to meet us when we play, so you can’t go runnin’ off before you lose.”

Mickey snorted.

“I don’t lose,” he said dryly. “And you’ve already met him.” He looked around the table, meeting every pair of eyes. “All of you fuckers have.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “I have. And you know what?” He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth, let it go. “I don’t fuckin’ get it, man, I really don’t.”

“I’m with Dan,” Timmy said, sitting straight. “Guy’s an over-sized puppy dog, and you’re a badass, Mick. How’s he got you so wrapped around his little finger?”

Mickey waited a beat, then looked to Joe.

“Anything you want to add?” he asked the cleaner, but Joe just shook his head.

“Nah man,” he said with a snort. “I’ve seen exactly how he’s got you wrapped up.”

Mickey flushed.

“You shut the fuck up,” he demanded, pointing at the older man. “Or next time, I’ll open the window and shove you off your platform.”

“The windows don’t open!” Danny called toward Mickey’s back as he turned to walk away.

Mickey threw him a middle finger over his shoulder.

“And I’m not sure you’d get to them anyway if he trusses you up like that every time!” Joe added, and got the other finger added for his efforts.

The door to the basement slammed as Mickey left, and the three men were left alone in the pleasantly chilly employees-only room.

“Think he’ll ever bring him by?” Timmy wondered.

“Nah,” Joe answered him. “Only time he comes down here’s when Big Red is busy.”

They all nodded in agreement as Joe gathered up the cards again.

“Another hand fellas?”

—

Exactly a week later, Joe, Danny, and Timmy were down in the basement again, clustered around their little card table between the lockers that held their personal things.

“Too hot to be mowing, man,” Timmy complained, running a hand through his sweaty hair. “When I took this job, I thought it’d be cushy, but that Melanie bitch is demanding as fuck.”

“Your own fault for pickin’ such a stupid job, mate,” Danny told him with a heavy pat on the back. “It is hot as balls out, though,” he agreed a second later as he took a seat. "That weird lady on the third floor doesn't run the AC, and I was up there all mornin' fixin' her shower."

“Anybody know if Mickey’s joinin’ today?” Joe asked, shuffling the same deck of cards they used every week.

“Nah,” Timmy answered. “He only comes when his man’s at the gym, yeah?” Danny and Joe both nodded. “Well, Big Red was headin’ up to his place when I finished up; he must’ve decided it was too hot too.”

But before Joe could start dealing, the door above them creaked open, and they could hear heavy footfalls on the steps. From the sound of it, more than one person.

Mickey appeared first, a wide smirk on his face, followed immediately by Big Red himself.

“Hey losers,” Mickey greeted, making straight for the table. But instead of sitting, he just pulled out the chair, and motioned for his husband to take it.

“Uh, hi guys,” Ian Gallagher said as he obediently sat down. “I hope you don’t mind me joining.”

The three men just stared, then stared harder as Mickey, instead of finding a seat of his own, chose to plop right down on Gallagher’s lap.

“Figured you guys had bugged me enough,” he told them. “Might as well give you what you asked for.”

“Uh, yeah.” Joe was the first one to recover, offering a cautious smile to the newcomer. “Hey man, good to see ya. You know how to play?”

“Probably,” Ian said with a shrug, one arm wrapping around Mickey’s waist to keep him in place. “What are we playing? Five card draw? Texas hold’em? Seven card stud? High Chicago? Low Chicago? Follow the Queen?”

He looked around the table, and stopped when all he saw were stunned faces.

“Uh…or something else?” he added hesitantly.

“No, no, just…regular poker,” Joe answered, eyes wide. “None of that weird shit.”

“Oh, sorry,” Ian said with a little laugh. “My dad made sure we knew all the games, made it easier to help him cheat. I remember one time he tried to sneak me into a casino just to grab wallets while he played, but I ended up winning big at a high-rollers table until they found out I was only seventeen and chased us out.”

He sighed wistfully.

“Still wish I had managed to cash out first, would have set us up for a year.”

All the men, Mickey excluded, just blinked at him.

“Your puppy tellin’ the truth, Mick?” Timmy finally squeaked, but all he got from Mickey was a shark-like grin.

“Deal him in,” Mickey ordered with a nod to Joe. “And remember, you fuckers asked for this.”

[ifuckingloveryoshu]

PUNK ASS FUCKING ROYALTIY SHIT ASS FUCK YOU LORD OF HORIKAWA YOU FUCK I HATE THAT MAN SO MUCH BECAUSE IM BIASED BITCH ASS MOTHER FUCKER ID THROW HANDS WITH HIM ALL DAY LONG ALL DAY FUCK

Also woo, I shill JIGOKU all day and all night. You are entitled to therapy and questions of consern for your mental well being from me. The rest of this reblog is going to be me yelling about Hell Screen stuff. I need more work understanding this peice and this is my excuse. Also, I am like the narrartor but biased toward Yoshihide instead so obligitory take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Why are you sacrifcing little boys, oh great Emperor of Horikawa?

OR or, lets think for a bit. On your knees in prayer, PRAYING NOT TO DIE. FUck. YOu.

I dont know anything about hiarchy but what is he supposed to do, poor painter man, interupt the high people's oh so coveted time and risk punishment? All he needed was a model to paint, if they looked pretty or accurate, what the fuck does rank in the palace matter?

This one feels like foreshadowing to a reason why Yoshihide would want his daughter away from this fucking Lord of Horikawa man. Yoshihide is just being used as a scapegoat here. That sounds like Mr. Lord Of Horikawa did something to them.

Ohh this is where that quote came from. I've already read this several times but my adhd brain has a habit of just skimming.

Single father. What the fuck do you mean "Not above hiring street thugs." What else can he afford or get if people keep calling him ugly names beheind his back, you need to protect your child. Yeah? Yeah?

That's called Focusing On Your Work. WHat man. What.

How else is he supposed to research? In fact, why is there a corpse on the roadside you fuck? Is Lord Of Horikawa not doing his best to govern his citizens? Is he running them over with his ox? He's too busy fucking woman, aint he? I don't fucking know.

This is after the nightmare, this is not even Yoshihide at any worse, man is having a night terror and you still feel the need to demonize him.

My guess is Yoshihide knows he needs to strangle someone, so he picked someone who looked strong and bulky who could handle getting choked, but this is just be thinking very generously. Of course, no one wants to get choked so he doesn't go, "Im going to choke you for a while." because that's not Yoshihide's style. People are already demonizing him, no sane person is going to agree to letting him get choked.

ALSO MR NARRATOR SERVANT MAN, YOU ARE JUST WATCHING. I guess from your point of view, it wouldn't make sense to object to such a *sigh* unreasonable grumpy stubborn old man and there might be socio-political factors but come on. Stop acting like you care. You don't seeem to. You ass.

Then snake comes out of no where some how, legitimate shock to everyone. That's not Yoshihide's fault.

This scene, fine. Whatever. I can't completly defend Yoshihide here when the owl comes for the child. He should have known better not to touch a bird that might not fully trust him, even if its feeding, esspecially from the back. They are sadly not that chill, you just got this bird Yoshihide. You have not developed a relationship with this bird, I own birds, I don't own birds of prey and their temperments are probably diffrent compared to a bird who is prey as opposed to a predator raptor, but you can't preen or touch them if they don't know you.

But, I don't think he threw the owl at the apprentice on purpose, that's my headcanon. He only got up to paint because it was already happening in front of him and he needed to hussle.

It clearly says "Yoshihide was a man who simply hated to have anyone pry into his business, ... he would never let his apprentices know what kinds of things he had in his studio." Moments later, Yoshihide answers the young apprentice, YOU DON'T NEED TO LOOK AT SOMEONE TO BE TALKING TO THEM AND I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL. LET ME FOCUS ON WHAT IM DOING WHILE TALKING TO YOU, I DONT MEAN TO BE RUDE, OK? ITS THE AUTISM. I KNOW YOUR THERE, ITS NOT NATURAL FOR ME TO LOOK AT YOU. WHAT THE FUCK DO I LOOK AT? Your nose? Your cheek? If I look into your eyes, that's akward for me, ok? Almost vomited just thinking about it. Ill look at you in the eyes I guess but some people find that hostile so what do you want?

I think Yoshihide legitimatly called the other apprentinces to help out this other apprentice being mauled by the owl and its also dark, and then the snake again. After that, the apprentice is fine. Hes fine, you didn't say anything about that, Mr Narrator Servant Man.

Because hes stressed. I also would stay away from someone who is STRESSED. OK? (I like having beef with fictional characters, its fun and no one gets hurt most of the time.) This is the only way to get his daughter back, he thinks. Hes begging for it, praying for it.

Skipping SA scene but this is a big reason why I really don't like Horikawa. Im also skipping around because I'm getting tired.

Horikawa you bitch.

HORIKAWA YOU FUCKING BI-

Mr. Narrator Bitch Ass Servant Simp still needs to shoot the artist while hes down, eh?

I have problems deciphering this part. The narrator switches sides breifly. Yoshihide just feels so much contempt because his one and only daughter and their monkey was just burnt in a carriage. It's easy to say its beautiful as an outside observer but come on, that's his daughter. It's a complex feeling beyond rage because on one hand, your finnished. This was the best way to end the art. On the other, still your family memeber getting burnt and catching on fire. He's broken. Fuckass Horikawa should be fucking sad. He should be ashamed.

Fuck you and your fucking shit Horikawa. FUck you. FUck you. This is such an ABUSER RESPONSE. Abusive fucking response you shit. This is how abusers rationalize hitting their children, ok? To punish and teach them a lesson, get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck, the termites in their time machines better get to you faster than I will you peice of shit.

Fuck you. You people suck. Yoshihide and Yuzuki and Yoshihide (the monkey) deserve better then this. He has nothing left but his art. Your lucky as shit he event had the drive to finnish the peice before his death. God, and then you just forget him, just like most artist are treated. You saw the art, you enjoy the art, you don't give a shit that their blood, sweat and tears went into that peice. Labor. They don't get to see their families sometimes, they get demonized, they get mocked, art is very underappreciated as a medium that can change lives and hearts and thoughts thinking, rewritting, and me as an individual am no diffrent to that, someone who also takes a lot in their life forgranted. I'm getting heated for no reason. I'm using targeted langauge but this isn't an academic essay, this is me wanting to put letters to post. I need to learn more about this courtship culture and this higharchy to get more off this text, im doing it such a dissevice.

But yes, unreliable ass narrator. I will throw hands with him any day of the week. That is all I can say.

Hell Screen

narrator: Yoshihide was an artist that everyone hated and who was an awful person, but his daughter was kind and sweet and everyone loved her so we all kinda tolerated her dad

Yoshihide: I would do anything for my daughter, Yuzuki. I can't paint something unless I've seen it with my eyes.

Yuzuki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_piety

Lord Horikawa: You've painted some nice art for me. I'll do literally any favor for you now.

Yoshihide: Can you release my daughter from your service

Lord Horikawa: no. fuck you

narrator: he wasn't in love with her or anything, he just felt bad that Yoshihide was her only family.

Lord Horikawa: Also I'm commissioning a massive scene of the Buddhist Hell, artist who can't paint something without having seen it

Yoshihide: ok

[various agonies of Yoshihide's apprentices]

[psychological agonies of Yoshihide also]

Yuzuki: [is seen growing unhappier and more stressed as the days go by]

narrator: people are saying Lord Horikawa's forcing himself upon her. this is false because he is too cool. this is Yoshihide's fault

[incident in which the narrator encounters Yuzuki fleeing from what was clearly assault]

narrator: yeah

Yoshihide: I'm almost done with the painting. I just need to see a maiden burn in a carriage so I can paint it

Lord Horikawa: okay [puts Yuzuki in a carriage and burns it]

narrator: stop saying it's because she didn't reciprocate his love it was clearly to punish Yoshihide for being so fucked up. I know this is true because Lord Horikawa said so

-- End --

[shinyzango]

*finds a tunic she bought last year for the hell of it that turned out too small to wear back then*

Me: "Oh. I thought I threw this away. Oh well, guess I'll throw it away now. I'll just try wearing it again for the hell of it."

*tunic fits enough to not feel too tight and still be able to take off without too much hussle*

Me:

"How--"

[clean-bands-dirty-stories]

Breathe ~ Doctor (part 1)

A/n: So I had a FANTASTIC idea and had to write it. The first part is all of the experience with 9 in one part. I so hope you enjoy this introduction, and allow it to take you on a journey with me that I have been having far too much fun exploring.

Word Count: 11,000+

MASTERLIST

Rose Tyler had three people in her life that were a constant.

Her mother, first of all. The woman might be a little annoying from time to time, gossiping and being pushy and demanding and wasting money on parties and dramatics. She was a good woman though, with a large heart. She had, after all, raised Rose by herself and the girl had come out brilliantly.

Then there was Mickey. Mickey was Rose's boyfriend. He was... cool, I guess. There was definitely more to him than others cared to dig for. Even he himself didn't know his full potential, and it put a stopper on him quite a bit. He was fine enough, and obviously cared for Rose, but he tended to be a bit... distracted, and oblivious. Desperate, maybe.

Y/n sure didn't approve of him, but as Rose's best friend he had long since learned to accept the man. Y/n was very good at filling in the spaces where Mickey lacked. He was attentive and listened to Rose talk for hours. That was perhaps the biggest reason he didn't like Mickey too much. Rose complained a lot. Y/n fancied himself an artist. He and Rose had met when he'd tried to do street art to get some attention, but it was more hussle than it was worth. The best thing that came out of it was his friendship with Rose.

There was something odd about Y/n, Rose was sure. The man was usually very open and honest - unless it came to any and all talk about relationships. Rose had long since stopped asking, but others hadn't. Every time his love life was brought up, he clammed shut and got very bitey. No one was sure why, but it happened every time without fail. His reaction didn't get any more or less violent, either. No one could wear him out or get him to snap. He just got tense and irritable until you stopped talking, and then the mood was usually ruined the rest of the day.

It was a silver lining, though. Otherwise Y/n was extremely pleasant and had no problems talking about other peoples' relationships or love lives. Y/n never encouraged Rose to be single or to dump Mickey - as long as everyone was happy, you could talk about anything in your life without any back lash. Rose got along and they didn't talk about it and that was that.

Then the Doctor happened.

Rose and Y/n didn't lie to each other. They'd formed a friendship on if you didn't want something known, you didn't mention it until you were ready to talk about it with a level head. No matter what, they didn't lie. They just kept their mouths shut. So when the Doctor entered Rose Tyler's life and her mom took up the phones like usual and Mickey ran off to the bar to watch the game, Rose pulled Y/n into her room and told him everything.

"No," Y/n mumbled. It wasn't that he didn't believe her. Rose Tyler wasn't insane, and they didn't lie to each other. He knew that, logically, if she said it, it was true. That didn't stop the fact that his mind rejected what she was telling him.

"Yes!" Rose gushed, nodding eagerly. "He's got this weird screw driver, except it's got no head, just a little light at the end. And mannequins - they moved. He's the one that blew up my job."

Y/n allowed him a second to process that before responding. Rose stayed silent as well, waiting for him to speak again before she said more. "And he said his name was what?"

"The Doctor. Sounds like a mad man, huh?"

A sort of amused snort came from Y/n then. "No shit." He shook his head. "Hold on, I need air." They began to walk out when the doggy door suddenly blew in. Y/n and Rose both jumped, before Rose yelled something at her mom about not nailing the flap shut like she said she would. But when Y/n kneeled down, he picked up nails off of the ground, holding them up for Rose to see. "I think she actually did, Rosey."

The two locked eyes and then both gazes shot to the flap as it suddenly moved again. Rose went to stick her head down there but Y/n wasn't having any of that. He nudged her with his foot, grabbing the bat by the door he had insisted the Tyler's kept at the ready. Two women living alone needed some way to protect themselves. Not necessarily a man - no woman NEEDED a man, even Y/n knew that - but something. Now it came in handy as he hefted, swinging the door open as Rose scrambled to her feet behind him.

A man stood there. He wore a leather jacket and had an odd expression on his face. "Hello," Y/n greeted, unsure.

"Hello," the man responded back. He lifted a long, odd object and pressed a button, running the object down Y/n's body as if... scanning him.

It clicked in Y/n's brain far too quickly. The thing glowed at the end that was pointed at Y/n, and it made a buzzing noise. The man was weird and smiled too wide. Even the leather jacket was there. "You're the Doctor."

The Doctor's smile grew. "Normally I have to introduce myself. It's usually a bad sign when someone knows my name, but you're not made of plastic so I can't imagine what I'd have to be worried about. Are you made of plastic by chance?"

"No," Y/n answered calmly. He was processing Rose's story at hyper speed now. It only made sense that a man like this would be attached to a world where plastic came alive and tried to kill you. The night seemed bright around him. There was something odd about his presence, like seeing cartoon and live action mixing between characters and background. The Doctor didn't belong here, and it was obvious in every move he made.

The Doctor nodded. "Suppose I'll be on my way then."

"You will not," Rose spoke up, grabbing the man's arm around Y/n and pulling all of them. "I have questions and this time you WILL answer them."

That simple action changed the lives of Rose Tyler, the Doctor, and everyone they cared about so much that none of them would ever be able to go back. Honestly though, none of them would have it any other way. Except maybe Jackie.

-

"Doctor?" Y/n turned to the other man, who hummed without looking over. The Doctor's eyes were trained on the end of the world. As were Rose's. Y/n couldn't keep looking. Something had stuck in his head. Something that made him even more sick than the sight of an empty planet being consumed in a universe that had long since been done with it. "The woman before. She said something about your planet. Something about you being impossible."

The Doctor got a very dark look on his face then. "I suppose I am rather impossible." He shrugged, obviously trying to keep it light.

Unfortunately, Y/n's curiosity was insatiable. It was something the Doctor had come to appreciate about him. Until now, maybe. "Well, I'm the last of my kind." He paused but when Y/n's expression grew only more earnest, he shared more. There was something about Y/n that pulled at the Time Lord. Made him want to talk. Talk about things other than just science and time and language and culture and history and such. Something that made the Doctor want to talk about himself. "A very long time ago, there was a war. A war between my people, and those knows as the Daleks." He paused, getting rather somber. "We won...” he swallowed. There was an unspoken, at a cost.

Y/n found himself with more questions, but felt none of them appropriate to ask. "I'm so sorry." Rose turned then to see Y/n take the Doctor's hand. Y/n had always been affectionate, but only with people he was rather attached to. With strangers, Y/n was usually quiet and reserved. Until he was sure someone could handle his prying questions and blunt honesty that so often got him in trouble if he didn't check himself around the right people.

Perhaps it was the fact that the Doctor was a lot like that as well that Y/n had taken to him so quickly. Whether it was that or something else, Rose was glad the two men were getting along. She was also glad there was someone smarter than Y/n in the room. The boy had asked so many questions and gotten so many answers that he had quite a bit of knowledge more than normal people. He was no genius like the Doctor, nor was he hyper intelligent or anything. But he could outmatch Rose and Mickey, and they often went to him when they needed something spelled or math done that they couldn't mentally do quick enough.

Rose suddenly saw something else though. Past the similarity and the comfort and the peace the men found in each other. The Doctor looked back to Earth, and Y/n continued to look at the Doctor. It was subtle, and it wouldn't have been noticed if Rose wasn't already looking. But she had. Y/n finally looked away fully, but there was a look in his eyes that Rose had never seen before.

What was that about?

"What was that?" Rose demanded when the left the room, parting from the Doctor.

Y/n seemed taken aback. "What was what?"

Rose wasn't sure how to describe it. An odd look? A weird new air about him? There was something different when Y/n looked at the Doctor and Rose couldn't understand it. "With you and the Doctor?" She tried to clarify.

That only seemed to confuse Y/n more. "What are you talking about? Holding hands? I do that with you and Mickey all the time, and I'm not even Mickey's biggest fan."

Rose rolled her eyes so hard that Y/n almost laughed. "You looked... different."

Y/n was quiet a long time. Rose almost thought he wasn't going to say anything. That she had found something he wasn't ready to share. But then he did speak, even if it was soft. "He's different, the Doctor. Not just because he's alien, though... perhaps that is it." He sighed. "He's lonely. He's so lonely, Rose. Can't you see it? In the way he empathizes with loss and grief. The way he looks when you mention his name or his planet or the TARDIS or your family. When he was watching you watching Earth die, like he could see... something else. He told me something. Something that makes me think... he might have watched his own world be destroyed, like we did today. But it wasn't empty, and his species hadn't spread out and integrated and evolved. They just died, and left him all alone."

For a second, it was quiet. "You see it, don't you?"

A nod was all Y/n gave at first. He didn't need to say anything, but he did anyway. "He looked the way I did when I got the news back then. When I found out. He gets that exact look."

Suddenly Rose looked very sad indeed. "Well. Now you both have someone, eh?"

A small smile tugged at Y/n's lips. "Yeah, here's to that at least."

-

"Y/N!"

The man turned at his name, only to be tackled by the shorter blonde that had become known as his best friend. "Rose," Y/n whispered, clinging to her. "God I thought you were dead for sure. I - what happened? I lost you guys and then..." He looked sick. "There was so much light and-"

"We're all okay," the Doctor reassured. "That's what matters."

Y/n turned on the older man. "Now you listen here. That's NOT all that matters. Because she damn well could have not been and I wasn't there to protect her. Or you! What would I have done if either of you had died and I was up here sitting on my thumbs like an idiot?"

The Doctor was taken aback by Y/n's outburst. When the man turned and stormed off, Rose was the one to step up and explain. "I'm sorry, Doctor. He's rather protective of those he cares about." She bit her lip, giving the Doctor the impression there was more she wanted to say. He waited for her to speak, and after a while she did. "When he was young, Y/n saw something terrible. His childhood wasn't normal. I mean, you think life is pretty rough on most of us, but Y/n's had it worst than most."

"What happened?" The Doctor asked quietly.

Rose sighed. "His parents had always been pretty distant, but they were mostly good. They did what they needed to do and let him free when he wanted to be. But, well, they were.. angry. The fought a lot, and it didn't help that his dad was a fan of alcohol. His mum... well she was a fan of lots of things other than that, none of them good for you. One day, she came home high. She wanted something... I can't remember what. His parents fought over it until... his mum pulled a little too hard. His dad slipped and knocked his head really hard on the floor. He died. His mom panicked and..." Rose swallowed. And no further words had to be said about it. "Y/n was on the couch the entire time watching. He ran. Was on the streets for a long time doing lots of things. Working as best he could while keeping his head down until he turned eighteen and was free of the system. Found us right after that. He watched his parents destroy themselves and spent a long time alone after that because he couldn't stop the fighting." She scoffed. "His words of course. Not his fault people fight. He was only twelve."

The Doctor seemed to be thinking about something. Something that didn't seem to be sitting right with him. "Does he have any other family?"

"Loads. He used to have a very big family. No brothers or sisters, but lots of aunts and uncles and cousins and the such."

"What happened to them?" The Doctor looked at Rose, as if searching her mind for something he desperately needed.

Rose stalled a few seconds. "A lot of the same, really. Not so much murder, but... well, his parents got their habits from their families, and between that and regular life? Not as many are as strong or as resourceful as Y/n. They ran off or got addicted to something or..." She shrugged. "He lost all of them at some point."

The Doctor nodded. "I see. Well, this is settled. Let's go somewhere more fun." His tone changed but the mood didn't. Rose let it drop though. Y/n didn't mind Rose answering questions like this for people he was comfortable with. He actually preferred it, so that wasn't her worry. The Doctor had drawn a silent line though. She didn't know what it was blocking her from, but she decided to let the whole topic drop just in case.

Perhaps it was what Y/n had said about him and the Doctor being the same.

She hoped they weren't too similar. It was bad enough knowing Y/n's story, she couldn't bare another like it.

-

Y/n had been staring at the building that had just gone up in flames for a very long time now. Rose and the Doctor had been celebrating, but Y/n sat there quietly, on the pavement, staring at the building like he was waiting for it to undo the carnage that had been caused moments ago.

"So what's on your mind?" The Doctor had plopped down next to Y/n, smile small. He'd gotten used to Y/n's mellow mood. The boy wasn't hyper like the Doctor. He didn't get off on exploration. What drove Y/n, it seemed, was saving people. And a life like this took its tole on people who wanted to save everyone. People like Y/n. So, the Doctor had learned to check in every once in a while. Every time he did, he was never disappointed. Even when Y/n seemed to be hurting, he was never negative about it. He could accept a success. The things he did think though put the Doctor on a path that had him mulling for days. In a good way. He and Y/n got into a lot of very stimulating debates this exact way.

Today wasn't about debates for Y/n.

"I know they were going to destroy the world and stuff. I'm not sad they're dead. We won and they've been stopped and all of humanity and Earth has been saved. That's great. The way we did it was rather impressive too." He chuckled, but there was obviously more he was thinking.

"But?" The Doctor prompted.

Y/n shrugged. "Wiping out an entire family. I mean, their species isn't normally like that, are they?"

"No," The Doctor answered slowly.

A bitter sweet smile rested on Y/n's lips then. "Do you think they were raised to be like that, or is blood thirst genetic?" It was a sarcastic question, so the Doctor didn't answer. There was a moment of quiet before Y/n shook his head and sighed. "Doctor, would you prefer I didn't travel with you?"

That was not the thing the Doctor had been expecting Y/n to say next. "Why would you ever think I didn't want you along with us?"

Another moment where Y/n struggled with how to form his thoughts and feelings into words passed before the boy finally figured it out. "I like this life. I really do. I like being around you and Rose and watching you guys have your fun. But sometimes I feel like... a bit of a downer."

The Doctor chuckled. "Honestly Y/n, you're the first person in a very long who sees the truth to things. As much as we cling to our victories, you're real about them. You handle everything with complete understanding, even with your limited knowledge. You have empathy even for beings who would have killed you without even remembering your face. You have pity for monsters and you feel for species the rest of your kind would rather kill than have a civil conversation with. Rose is fun and she matches my energy and I appreciate that. But you ask the questions I've been waiting for someone to ask for centuries. Your kindness is quite refreshing. You get it."

Y/n smiled. "So you want me along?"

"I will always want you along, Y/n. As long as I can have you along," The Doctor answered without hesitation. "You're no downer, I promise."

It was that moment that something changed for Y/n. Rose saw this too, but not in the moment the two men shared now, but after. Y/n and the Doctor had unlocked something in each other in that conversation. A kind of connection where even as everyone cheered, all the pair had to do was look at each other to know that in all the sweetness around them, the other understood the slight bitterness they felt as well. As much as they wanted to end evil, they also both felt the loss of any soul they couldn't save. Taking a moment to mourn with each other seemed a relief for both of them.

It was something Rose couldn't feel. She saw things pretty straight forward. Bad people needed to have an end to them. And she wasn't wrong, but the compassion that had come to Y/n and Doctor after having their families and lives taken from them and living far too long by themselves, they had a unique ability to give a moment of silence even for enemies who were twisted by things out of their control. Who couldn't be shown the light.

They bonded over it so much that Rose felt herself being left behind.

Y/n and Rose still told each other lots and cuddled when either needed comfort. The Doctor and Rose still had lots of fun and laughed at each others jokes and had that same sense of humor that came only from adjusting to and enjoying the life they both lead. They were all friends. But Y/n and the Doctor had something else. Just a little something more. Just enough that Rose saw the change and began to think that there might be something major she didn't know about the man who called himself her best friend.

-

"Something's off."

Rose and the Doctor looked over at Y/n, whose eyes were slowly and carefully scanning their surroundings with narrowed eyes, as if searching for proof that his hunch was solid. "What is it?" Rose asked gently, moving closer so they didn't have to talk around the people in the crowd they had been moving through before Y/n had stopped dead.

The dynamic between the trio had very early on become clear. The Doctor was the brain, coming up with the plans. Rose was the second in command. She was stuck to the Doctor's side and they worked in tandem, being unbroken and often sliding along the same wave length. Y/n was the heart. When Rose and the Doctor got stuck on a mind path, or got distracted, or veered a little too right of what was right, Y/n was the one to shake things up to give them a new perspective, or to help either of them if they needed it. Y/n was a comfort and a friend. He was also very intuitive. Where the Doctor sought things out, and Rose seemed to stumble on information she found, information seemed to find Y/n. He just had a good gut guiding him.

So when he said something was up, at this point, he was never questioned by his companions.

"Earlier one of the girls said that people are chosen to go up to the higher floors. That there's a prize. They go up and something happens and then they never come back."

The Doctor nodded. "I was thinking about that too."

Y/n shook his head. "Did you notice that it's incredibly hot in here? I mean, why? It's obviously not ideal - it makes the people here uncomfortable. It's slight discomfort, but still. Why keep a bunch of people in a super heated room? What's on level 500, air conditioning?"

It was made to be a joke, but the comment seemed to spark something in the Doctor. "You know what, that's an excellent point." He stood straighter. "Fun's over. Where's that friend of yours, Rose?"

The blonde looked around. "He was... just behind us."

"Grand," Y/n grumbled sarcastically.

The Doctor chuckled a few times. "Took the words right out of my mouth." As he said it he looked over at Y/n, his eyes flickering to Y/n's lips. He looked away quickly and Y/n missed the moment altogether. The two continued cracking jokes toward Rose about the man both of them had been increasingly annoyed with, but Rose wasn't responding.

Because she had seen where the Doctor's eyes had landed, and her mind was working a million miles an hour to put this together. It's not that the concept of men liking men was foreign to her, just rare. One that wasn't her first thought for sure. But as Y/n and the Doctor got closer and closer on a very emotionally intimate level, Rose was noticing the building tiny moments that wouldn't mean anything alone but meant everything put together.

She smiled to herself. Rose Tyler had a plan, and not just about Satellite Five.

-

"You wanna talk?" Y/n offered quietly.

"Do you?" Rose shot back.

Y/n wasn't sure what to do with that. "I always want to talk with you, Rose."

The blonde jerked her body to turn and face Y/n, a determined look on her face. "You know Y/n, how about this. An exchange of honesties. For every truth you tell me, I will tell you one in return. And your truth has to equal mine, so if you want something meaningful then you have to give something like that first."

Y/n paused and then nodded. "Sounds good. Do you want me to start?”

"No, actually," Rose decided. Y/n motioned for her to go ahead, so she did. "Watching my dad die was not great, but I'm glad he wasn't alone after all. It was kind of... a relief, actually. Some closure. I got to say goodbye. I got to hold his hand." She offered a weak smile. "Now your turn."

Unsure of what Rose was aiming for, Y/n thought for a second for something he hadn't told her recently that could be as profound and unexpected as that. "This whole life of ours gives me purpose. I feel like I matter, which is something I haven't really felt until now. I know I had people who cared about me and worried about me and expected me home every night, but I always craved to make a difference and finally having that has been like a dream come true. Even though I get a little melancholic... all the time, it's just because I get stuck in my own head a lot and think too much. I actually really like what we do."

Rose nodded. Even though it had been a tad mild compared to hers, it was less what he had said and more the fact that he'd said it. Y/n struggled to communicate positive emotions, often overthinking the negative ones and voicing those because he needed second opinions and insight. Acknowledging positive things didn’t require a second opinion or input, just a congratulations, and since when did he get that just for traveling with the Doctor and finding purpose without looking like some sort of arrogant dick? It might not have been as profound as Rose's truth, but it was equally meaningful.

"I love Mickey and my mum of course, but I don't think I'll be ever to leave this life and be okay with it. I think that I might end up breaking up with Mickey because he deserves better and that thought terrifies me."

Y/n pursed his lips. "Can I just-"

"No comforting or additional thought. We can discuss later. Right now, truth. State it."

"Okay," Y/n sighed. "Uh, relationships in general terrify me." It sort of slipped out and both of them hesitated. Y/n never talked about this sort of stuff. It was the only thing he never talked about, even with Rose. She expected him to clam up but after a second, he just kept going. "I'm scared of falling in love and having my heart broken. I know some things are worth it, and people glorify love so much and I crave it, I really do, but... I've lost so much. I don't think I'd be able to handle it if I really fell for someone and then had to lose them. I'd rather make friends and family than that nonsense. It would hurt to lose them, but in a different way, and there would still be the thought that you would always be that person's friend or family if you get separated or part ways or whatever. Like we'll always be each other's friend, I think. Even if we got to a point where we couldn't be friends anymore. If I left this life behind, or one of us died or-" He sighed. "But when you break up with someone, they move on. They date other people, and do intimate things with them. They love and connect in just as intimate ways as you used to, and eventually they forget you and replace you. I couldn't handle that. I won't."

Rose let out the breath she'd been holding. She'd been too scared to breath, in case it shattered the moment she'd been waiting to happen for years now. "I understand." She took his hand. "Have you... ever been in love before?"

Y/n shook his head. "Not yet." He paused and Rose felt the weight of those words. Not yet. She could imagine Y/n clinging to his heart as the Doctor got closer and closer, his smile ever wide and his charm ever sparkling.

Rose's shoulders sagged a bit. "What will you do if it ever happens?"

"Ignore it." The words were too quick and solid. They came across as desperate. Insistent. In that moment one thing was clearer than anything else in the world. If Y/n wasn't in love with the Doctor already, he would be soon. He was falling hard, and he was falling fast, and when he landed it was going to hurt. They were suddenly both terrified about it.

-

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" The words were hysterical. Y/n's hands shook and his eyes were wide and his skin shone with sweat. His hair was messier than usual and his clothes were disheveled, like he'd rolled down a long hill or gotten in a fight or something.

The horror of what was happening in that moment settled over Rose and the Doctor in a truly terrible way. It was in the ringing in their ears and the horrible, bitter taste that was suddenly in their mouths. "Y/n-" the Doctor began.

"No," the man answered in a very final tone. One that let them know there was no room for question or doubt. He had been touched by the child. He had been infected, and he refused to infect any of the others.

A new friend, Jack Harkness, jogged over at the commotion. "What's happening over here?"

"Doesn't matter," Y/n answered solidly. "We need to move on."

Rose let out a sound that neared a choked sob, except she wasn't crying. She just looked to be in pain. "You- you can't! Y/n-"

Y/n took a few deep breaths. He had made the mistake. In his idiocy, he had gotten between the kid and Rose, and now he was here. The child was far back and they'd had time to get away, but Y/n had touched him and that meant only one thing. "Rose, we don't have time for this." He was near breaking down, and he begged her to see that. He couldn't spend the time before he died losing it. He had to help as much as he could. He had to make a difference. He had to-

"You know, you don't have to do anything, Y/n." Y/n and the Doctor looked at each other. His lips were parted and his eyes were desperate. He wanted to help but... he didn't know how. "You can stop. We would understand. You - you probably don't have much time left." His face crumbled, like he finally understood the meaning behind what he was saying. "You don't have to come. Spend it doing something else. Get yourself some food maybe. There's bound to be something in the TARDIS. Pick a bed, and stay there. We'll keep you comfortable after... after this."

A soft chuckle came from Y/n then. "You know, I'm going to die." The group got deathly quiet. "Maybe that's not true. I'll be alive. I'll be something worse than dead. I'll be brain dead. Forever." He shook his head, his breathing becoming shallow. "But right now, I'm still me. And I want to do something before I stop being me, Doctor. I want to do all I can. I want to do everything, but all we have time for is making sure whatever is happening to me never happens to anyone else ever again, okay? Can I spend my last moment with you?" He was looking right at the Doctor. Not at Rose, which would have made sense as they were practically siblings with the way they acted toward each other. Not even Jack, who had been having fun flirting with everyone - especially because Y/n wasn't anywhere near as hard to get as Rose or the Doctor. Y/n looked at the Doctor, and begged to die by his side, and Jack and Rose looked at each other because the need that Y/n had to steal all the time he had left to spend with the Doctor of all people... it said something Y/n was not ready to find the actual words for.

"Of course you can," the Doctor whispered.

And he did. Y/n was there as they reached the not-bomb that was actually some sort of alien ambulance. He was there when they saved Nancy and gathered the troops. And when it came time, he left too.

"Nancy, take Rose to where you cut the gate. And take this!" He tossed his sonic screwdriver at Rose and she caught it.

"I ought to go as well," Y/n spoke up.

The Doctor looked confused by that. "No I need you here. I promised you'd-"

"Doctor," Y/n interrupted. He took a shaky breath. "I can feel it coming. Soon I'm going to be one of them. Mindless, and coming after you, and you won't be able to stop me. I will kill all of you. Make you just like them." His face darkened. "Like us." He shook his head and Rose and the Doctor looked at each other, trying to find the answer in each other that neither of them had. Y/n steeled himself. "So this is goodbye."

The Doctor stood there for a few seconds. Too many seconds. He was trying to say something, but didn't seem to be able to. "Y/n?" The man answered to his name, and the men locked eyes. "Do you remember the first time we ever set out, and you told me... you told me that Rose was the most important person to you? You joked that no one would ever be that important to you, except someone who would be... special." He let air out of his nose. "You were special to me. More special than most people."

Y/n smiled, fighting tears. "You are special to me too, Doctor." He looked away. "I'm sorry our journey ended so early. I think... I think it could have been special, too."

Then there was nothing else to say, so he left with Rose and Nancy, the three of them booking it to the fence. Y/n stepped through and watched as Nancy and Rose fixed the metal so he wouldn't be able to get back in.

"Did you mean it?" Rose asked, looking at her best friend for what could very well be the last time. "That I was important to you? And that the Doctor was special enough to be just as important?"

The silence stretched for too long. Rose wasn't sure if it was painful to talk with that thing pushing its way up Y/n's throat, or if it was his human fear that kept his lips sealed, but Y/n didn't say anything for a very long time. The fence was sealed and the women stood before he finally spoke. "Do you think differently of me?" He rushed to add, "I know it's obvious. I saw the way you look between us like you expect us to lose our minds and make out right there. I see the way you and Jack looked at each other before too. Like you were watching a romance movie that had a sad ending. One you didn't expect, or think fair. I'm not as subtle as I like to think I am."

Rose scoffed. "You think I think differently of you because you're in love with the Doctor? Why? Because he's an alien?" She narrowed her eyes. "Or because he's a man?" Y/n looked away. "Y/n, you're my best friend. After all we've been through with the Doctor, you're practically my brother. I have been waiting ages now for you to admit your feelings for him. I didn't know until we started traveling, but it doesn't change the fact that you're there for me more than anyone else. You protect me and care about me. Your heart is bigger than all of the universes put together, and you bleed gold - I swear to god. You and the Doctor... you give him something I don't think anyone ever could. You understand something I can't wrap my head around. The way you mourn even the worst of us, because you see potential. The way you can do that, but still stop evil and remove yourself from harm because as much as you pity people who destroy themselves and others, you also won't tolerate their destruction. You're one of the most amazing men I've ever met, and don't think I'm just saying that because you were my first boyfriend.” It was a reference to When they’d first met; Y/n had pretended to be Rise’s boyfriend to get a creep to go away.

Both of them laughed at that, tears falling down their faces. "I remember that." Y/n slipped his hands in his pockets and the mood dropped again. "In another world, Rose, I wouldn't have ever left your side. I really do love you. And even if I am feeling... things, for the Doctor." His eyebrows came together. "You were always my first priority. I just know that he cares about you, too. He has your back, but someone needs to have his. Someone who really understands. And... you get distracted sometimes. But that's okay, because you always have my back, so we watch each other like that." His voice broke as he continued, "Had." Y/n and Rose locked eyes. "You watch him for me, alright? You two..." He laughed again. "I know you two are like me and him. I know he'll never admit it in a million years, but you two. It's subtle and quiet and innocent, but I can see it. I see it in the way he says your name, and the way you trust him. If you don't end up happy because of me I'll come back from the dead just to kick your asses."

Tears fell harder down Rose's face as she laughed again. "You're an idiot."

"Your idiot," Y/n replied without missing a beat.

Rose's expression fell. "How am I supposed to go on these journeys without you? Go back home and face my mum, who needs you around because you're the only one who'll listen to her gossip without giving her an ear load in return? Who will tell Mickey off now that I'm so different and we-" She choked on her words. "You can't go, Y/n."

"I don't want to..." His vision blurred and the pain that had been rising steadily came in full force now. Y/n leaned against the fence, bending at the middle a little bit as his other hand rose so his fingers could wrap around his throat. "I'm sorry, Rose. I- I-" He began sobbing, but stopped as it made the pain worse. "I'm- m-" He shook his head. He didn't want to hear himself say it... Then the thought occurred to him that the people might be trapped in their heads. Conscious and aware, but out of control. Would he see the face of every person he condemned to live like him? Would he sit there and see them and have to touch them anyway? Every single person until... until what? They didn't die. He wouldn't die. He would turn person after person until they were all brain dead and trapped just like him. "Rose."

"I'm here," she whispered, her voice haunted. "I'm right here, Y/n."

Y/n closed his eyes. "Run. Please - PLEASE don't see me like this. Don't see me- m- mummy-" The word forced itself out of his mouth and he whimpered, flinching upon hearing it. Rose made a sound that was half groan and half whine. This was hurting her. "Rose, Ru-" And then he looked up and locked eyes with the girl who had become his sister, and he thought of her and the Doctor before everything went black.

When he woke up again, he was somewhere new. He expected to see himself marching toward his friends, condemning them to death. He expected to see someone else about to be wrapped in his deadly clutches perhaps. But all he saw, instead, was a lot of lights and people and a blue beam with something large and cylinder in it. He saw his hands next. He reached them up to touch his face and they answered him. His face was skin. It was smooth and a little warm. There was no leather or metal. He wasn't wearing a gas mask.

"Y/N!" He turned in time to be rammed into by a smaller blonde. Her hair went into his face and he felt both panic and relief.

"You- you can't touch me. Rose what have you done?" He demanded rather harshly.

She shook her head, her body shaking as she sobbed. "You're cured, Y/n. You're all better. The Doctor - he figured it out. A brilliant man, he is. Truly brilliant."

Allowing himself a moment to process that, Y/n stayed quiet and just hugged Rose for a second. Once it did settle, though, he needed to know something. "Is the Doctor okay?"

"I'm perfectly fine." Rose and Y/n parted, turning their gazes to land on the Doctor himself. The man was grinning, his eyes light up with joy.

Y/n grinned back. "Guess you're not getting rid of me that easily, Doctor."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," the Doctor replied. He slipped his screwdriver in his pocket. "On we go, then. There's one more thing we have to do before we can celebrate." And just like that, Y/n was okay and not dead and they were all together. Things had been said that they were ignoring for now, because none of them could acknowledge them. Not yet. Right now, they had more important things.

At least that's how they reasoned it. Easier that way. Much, much easier.

-

"I'm sorry, we'd be sending you to your death?" Y/n demanded.

"Yes," the Slitheen responded.

The Doctor turned to face the man who looked about ready to blow a circuit. "Y/n, I know how you feel. Trust me, I do. We all do. But-"

"No buts!" Y/n argued. "She just wants to be free! Her whole family was killed and she had to run away or die with them. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to run, knowing everyone you care about would be gone? Being helpless to save them, because you messed with the wrong planet? Because you do what you always did. What you were TAUGHT to do?"

That seemed to hit a chord with the Doctor. "It doesn't matter, Y/n. It doesn't!" The Doctor shot again when Y/n went to argue. "She would have killed everyone here without a second thought. What are we supposed to do? She almost destroyed this entire planet for a bit of money, and then AGAIN just to get off of it and go somewhere else. Every single life on Earth, GONE, because she wanted a lift somewhere else."

Y/n looked away. "I can't do this one with you, then. I- I know it's necessary. I know you have to do it. I can't sit by and let you though, so I'm going to leave." He turned on Margaret then. "If you hurt him, I will destroy you, do you understand me? These people are MY family, and if you hurt them I will hunt you down and I tie you up and stick a needle in you and I will pump your body full of vinegar - do I make myself clear?"

Margaret looked scared... and a little impressed. "Yes sir." She looked to the Doctor as Y/n walked away. "You found your soulmate, eh?"

The Doctor didn't answer as far as Y/n knew. It was a relief to know that even if the Doctor had responded, Y/n hadn't been there to hear it.

He did manage to stay away a very long time. He only came back when the Earth under his feet began to crack and the lights went crazy and the sky began to glow and everything began to shake. He couldn't stay at home when things were going to wrong. When Rose and the Doctor and Jack could be dying. So Y/n raced back to the TARDIS, reaching it just as everything began to calm down. He pushed open those doors, praying that it wasn't the calm before the storm and the world was about to end.

When he opened the doors, he saw something he wasn't expecting. Te Doctor stood, Rose and Jack on either side of him, an egg in his hand. "What's that?"

Grinning, the Doctor hefted the thing as Y/n entered the TARDIS, closing the doors behind him. "This is Margaret." When Y/n was rightfully confused, the Doctor explained. He recounted the nights' adventures up until Margaret had looked into the heart of the TARDIS and had reverted to what she was now. "She told me..." The Doctor looked at Y/n with a soft look in his eyes. "She told me to tell you thank you. Before she died."

Y/n smiled to himself. "Well, she's welcome." Then he turned away. "Now, let's get her home shall we?"

-

"You want us to face those things with guns? There are six of us."

"Actually," The Doctor piped up. "Rose, Y/n, can you help me strip these wires? The faster we do it the sooner I can get this done."

"Uh, sure," Rose agreed, heading over to where the Doctor was crouched.

"Four of us," the woman corrected herself. Y/n hadn't caught her name yet. He made a mental note to do so when they gunned down the Daleks together later. Because he had seen something in the Doctor when he asked for help. Something that made Y/n suspicious.

"Five actually." Everyone looked at Y/n in surprise. "If we're arguing our need for time, Rose can help here and I can help keep those things from getting here for as long as possible. Maybe-" He stopped himself. "Maybe I can take down enough to make them not a threat at all." It was a joke that fell short, but one that made everyone offer at least a small smile. The Doctor went to argue, and that's when Y/n got serious. "I can't stay up here and strip wires when people are dying, Doctor. I won't."

The Doctor seemed to have pain in his eyes. "I can't stop you, can I?" He was begging Y/n. Desperately pleading for him to stay there. To do as the Doctor wanted him to.

This time, Y/n wasn't going to though. His arm was still bleeding and his other leg had a limp from his game. Y/n had looked death in the face twice now and avoided it. He figured he was on borrowed time anyway. Even if that wasn't true, Jack had saved Y/n's life. He had been the one to find Y/n and pull him out of that game right before he died. If they were all going to die anyway - or, at least, most of them - he would be by Jack's side to repay that debt. "You can't."

Once again, the Doctor and Y/n exchanged a look they both believed would be the last they shared. Ever since Y/n had been turned into one of the empty people when they met Jack, the Doctor had been significantly more protective of Y/n. Y/n was a man though and had been staying firm when he made his mind up, no matter how much the Doctor tried.

"Not at all?" The Doctor tried again.

Y/n smiled. "You know, Doctor. I've been pretty obedient until recently. I didn't stray too far or wander off, because I chose to stay behind and let you know where Rose had gone and that she was okay. Or that she wasn't. I did what you wanted me to. And then I died, and I realized that there is more important thing to life than sitting back and letting you take control just because you know more than I do. This is my choice, and I'm making it."

After a second, the Doctor nodded and Y/n took off with Jack and the others, headed to face the Daleks with a bunch of guns.

Y/n did help some. He watched each and every person on the Station die, and he ended up pressed against a wall with Jack at his side and Daleks charging the pair without hesitation. He had lost. But he had helped, even if it wasn't nearly enough to make a difference.

"Go ahead and warn the Doctor they're coming," Jack ordered. He spoke again before Y/n could argue. "I'll hold them off. I know you don't want to, but the Doctor needs warning, and I... I don't want see you die. Not again."

Pain flared in Y/n's chest then. "You're a good man, Jack."

"Thanks, but we don't have time for one of your goodbye speeches." Jack scoffed at himself. "You know, I did always want one though."

Y/n laughed, tears in his eyes. Why did he always end up here? "How about I give you a kiss on the cheek and you can return it later? I can give you that goodbye speech another day, when we have time."

Jack paused, and then nodded. "I'd like that." So Y/n kissed him on the cheek and then ran when the Daleks turned the corner, feeling his heart drop when the tell tale sign of death hit Y/n's ears in the form of Jack's scream. They'd both known this was what was going to happen. Y/n would never get that kiss, and Jack would never get that speech, but it had been nice that they'd parted holding onto that impossibility. Y/n hoped it had been what Jack was thinking when he died.

Unfortunately, Y/n didn't have much time to lament about it. "Doctor!" He ran into the room, stopping in the doorway. Y/n knew about the delta wave, and he knew what was about to happen. He knew why the Doctor had wanted Y/n and Rose to stay. Y/n had gone though, and now he was going to die with the rest of them. He wouldn't have it any other way. First, he needed to say something though. "Doctor, last time I faced death, I said something that we never talked about again. But we've had even more time together now and after all the regret I had last time, I- I can't die again without telling you-"

"I know," the Doctor said, interrupting. "I hate death confessions. I always have. It's not fair, you know. Telling me something like that and then running off and dying before I can do anything about it."

Even now, the Doctor was making jokes. Dear lord. "I came back, though. And you didn't do anything about it." Y/n huffed in amusement. "You never would have, huh?"

The Doctor swallowed. "This would always been the end, Y/n. At the best, you would have gotten older. You would have moved on. I can't... I can't."

Y/n nodded. "I know. I understand. I really do, Doctor. And with Rose too - I can't imagine that ever getting settled. But I need you to know-" But Y/n didn't get to finish his sentence, because there was that horrible sound and Y/n's scream and then everything went black. Except this time, he wasn't unconscious.

He was dead. Y/n was dead. As dead as it gets.

Death and Y/n didn't see to get along though, because only a few minutes later Y/n was gasping back to life, scrambling on the floor. He was disoriented and confused, but he saw a bright light and heard distant but familiar voices.  He crawled around to get a better view without the large silver things he couldn't quite focus his vision on just yet. What he saw was Rose Tyler and the Doctor and the TARDIS. The Doctor kissed Rose and a light, far brighter than Y/n had seen anything be, traveled between the two of them and Rose fell.

"Doctor?" Y/n croaked.

The Doctor turned in surprise to see Y/n on the floor. "You were dead."

Y/n shrugged, his head spinning. "I feel... sick now. Just sick." His eyes fell to Rose. "I- Is she dead?"

"No," the Doctor reassured. "We need to go though. Come along, will you? We have lots to talk about." Y/n nodded, wobbling to his feet and then into the TARDIS as the Doctor scooped Rose up and set her on the floor of the TARDIS. He began to pilot the ship and as it set a course for what Y/n assumed was London, the Doctor turned on Y/n. He looked a little shaken. The glowing seemed to be moving under his skin, shimmering. But now it didn't seem beautiful, as it had before. It seemed wrong. Definitely dangerous. "Explain yourself."

"I... don't know."

The Doctor looked at Rose. "Ah." He looked back. "It seems I'm the one who has explaining to do." Again he glowed and the Doctor teetered, wincing in pain. "A... lot of explaining, it seems."

Y/n, worried and very confused and a little terrified, nodded. "Get on with it then. We don't have all day."

"Well... I don't," The Doctor agreed. "But I will. Or... you will, with someone else."

Y/n's breathing got heavier. "Doctor-"

"Y/n," the Doctor interrupted, moving close and taking Y/n's face between his hands. "Beautiful, empathetic, caring, protective Y/n. You've gotten your goodbye speeches, let me have mine."

And then the Doctor kissed Y/n, just like he had Rose. Except there was no light or glow, just a kiss. When they parted, it was because the Doctor groaned in pain. A pain that seemed to be growing. "Doctor?" Y/n rushed, scrambling to help the man stand.

The Doctor didn't ever get to say he loved Y/n back, but that kiss had said enough. It didn't really matter though, because it was then that Rose woke up. Then that everything would change forever. Not too much, but plenty enough. The Doctor changed. Changed into someone more controlled and reserved. Someone who couldn't express emotions as well as he could before. Y/n had changed too, though he didn't know that yet. He had changed into someone the Doctor couldn't accept.

To say, things were about to get really fucking complicated.

-

"He says that the yellow girl and her companion have the blue box, so they are the only ones able to speak for this planet."

"You can't," Harriet Jones, now Prime Minister, insisted.

"Someone has to be the Doctor," Rose began.

Whatever she was going to say was cut off by Y/n stepping forward though. No one questioned it. This entire time, Y/n had been the one who had seemed to have any idea on what to do. He didn't have much more a grip than Rose did, but what he did have was just enough that everyone seemed to naturally be stepping back to give him the reigns in the Doctor's place. Y/n stepped up and faced an alien race he had no idea how to defeat with no fear on his face. Maybe it was that the man had died twice now, or that his friends were in danger and nothing made Y/n more hostile than facing down people who threatened his friends. Y/n was different than the boy that had agreed to come along on a journey of a life time to make sure Rose was safe. Not so different that he didn't have mercy, but different enough that he not only didn't tolerate people who were willing to harm others, but he was willing to destroy them for the greater good. To protect those who could not protect themselves. That didn't stop him from pitying wasted life, but it did stop him from hesitating.

"Why do you want to kill humans?" Y/n demanded. The Sycorax leader faced Y/n down, but Y/n didn't step back even a little bit. He said something to Y/n, and the agents by Harriet translated.

"He says humans are simple and meaningless. They need to be conquered. They-"

"Now you stop right there," Y/n interrupted. Everyone behind Y/n and everyone in the crowd seemed to react to that. The people in fear, and the crowd in anger. It seemed no one liked that Y/n had interrupted the alien leader that was perfectly capable of killing. But Y/n didn't care about that. He needed to think, and he needed time to do that, and he was absolutely not about to let this monster conquer his planet without fighting back. He didn't know much or think as fast as the Doctor, but he could figure it out. He could figure SOMETHING out. Because he had to. "This planet isn't filled with a bunch of idiots. We may have a few bad eggs. We may make choices that are so incredibly daft, but we're incredible as well. We learn and grow and continue without being stopped. We defy death, even. We defy logic and reason. We're harder to wipe out than a hoard of roaches. We stick around and fight back. You can try your hardest to pin us under your thumb, or kill us off when we refuse, but it'll never be over and even if you do win this battle. Even if you do take this planet now. We will come back in such force that you will wish you had never made the mistake of messing with us. And it may not be now. It may not be in a decade, or several, or even a century. But it will happen, as it always does. And when it does happen, you will fear us."

"You want to be big? Then I will show you how small you are." Too late they all realized the Sycorax had spoken in English. Too late, because he flicked his staff and like a whip, a coil of electricity shot out and attached to Y/n's chest. He screamed and fell to a knee and his friends screamed behind him, but when the electricity left, Y/n was... fine.

Chaos erupted from the crowd. Y/n stood slowly, even his friends behind him whispering in chatter that sounded... fearful. What had just happened?

"SILENCE!" The Sycorax screamed. The crowd begrudgingly went hush, but a small voice from behind Y/n spoke up still.

"You should be dead. I watched him kill them with that- that- staff. You should be dead."

"And I'm not," Y/n brought up rather pointlessly. He sounded far more calm than he meant to though, so there was that.

The Sycorax leader stumbled back in obvious fear. Y/n stood taller. "That's impossible."

"It should be," A voice that was growing familiar spoke up. The small crowd behind Y/n parted and there stood the new man who was the Doctor but also wasn't. That man strutted forward, an expression on his face that was sort of bitter sweet, but leaning more bitter. "It doesn't sit well with me either, if I'm honest."

"Took you long enough," Y/n mumbled under his breath.

"Better late than never," the man shot back. And that was when Y/n saw the Doctor. If a bit more rude and quicker to respond... still the Doctor.

Long story short, the Doctor handled things as he always did. After Y/n's show of immunity to the Sycorax's one hit kill staff, there wasn't much work to do. There was calling the bluff of what turned out to be blood control, which couldn't go as far as the Sycorax said it could. And then there was the sword fight that was brought about by some law or another, but also threatened to happen because if the Sycorax leader didn't agree, the Doctor would "release" Y/n on him. It ended with the Doctor victorious, and Sycorax ship sailing off as the humans left all returned to the ground with the TARDIS.

Then, as they were running away, Harriet Jones shot them down with a beam from a group she called Torchwood, and killed them while their backs were turned.

"HOW COULD YOU DO THAT?" Y/n roared, rushing to the smaller woman. Harriet was suddenly shaking, faced with a man who seemed to be repelling death like it was a light cold and he had work to get to. "They were running away!"

"They could come back," she insisted rather quietly.

"They couldn't," The Doctor argued, standing just behind Y/n, at his side. "The fight - it was agreed. I won, Earth is free from them."

Harriet scoffed. "He attacked you the second you turned your back, and his people will surely do the same." Y/n flared but Harriet seemed to find her courage then. "You weren't there, Doctor. And you will not always be there. Y/n did a very good job of taking your place, but he won't always be here either. One day we will be faced with an enemy we cannot take down with a simple sword fight, and you may not be there to help."

"I should have told them to run from the monster," The Doctor sneered. "I should have told them to run as far and as fast as they could, because the real monster was sitting there, waiting for the moment to strike."

Harriet solidified herself. "I was there when that staff killed two good men. Right in front of me, and I could do nothing to stop it. I won't be helpless ever again. I have people to protect."

There was quiet for a moment, and then the Doctor stepped in front of Y/n, who had been stunned by such stupidity and selfishness that he was struck dumb. "You know, humans are so simple. I can end you entire career without lifting a single finger. I could do it without much trouble. Without even lifting one finger, all your hard work. Gone."

"Stop it," Harriet demanded, that fear from before returning.

"Six words," the Doctor stated calmly.

"Stop," Harriet hissed, coming undone by his terrifying calm.

"Just six words." And then he moved... but not to Harriet. He moved to the last man left that seemed to work with Harriet, and he leaned close and whispered something in the man's ear. Then he leaned away and turned around and walked away, hands in his pockets and face empty of regret or emotion in general. Harriet panicked behind them, begging the Doctor and the man the Doctor had spoken to tell her something. Anything. But she never got her answer.

Not in the way she wanted.

When they were away from her, Y/n rounded on the Doctor. "I'm still alive, and she said I shouldn't be."

The Doctor sighed. "When Rose looked into the heart of the TARDIS, she... brought you back. Honestly, I knew, and I saw, but I was in shock and in pain because I was dying and I was too scared to leave you behind. Far, far more scared of losing you than I was of what you had become."

Y/n looked as if he'd been slapped. "What do you mean, what I've become? You don't want me anymore?"

"That's the thing isn't it?" The Doctor sighed. "Rose doesn't even know. She forgot everything. And you weren't alive to see it. To get back to me, to us, she looked into the heart of the TARDIS. Like when Margaret became an egg. She looked and she gained immeasurable power. Power over time and space, completely. Over life, even. All she had to do was set your existence through out all time and space, and you're alive. But she didn't know how to hone it, so now you'll... probably always be alive. You can't die, I'd reckon."

"At all?" Y/n squeaked.

The Doctor shrugged. "There's no knowing for sure unless we test it, but if back there means anything, I'd say that no, you can't die. I'd even bet you can't age."

Y/n let out a breath. "So I'll be this age, alive, forever?"

"I'd say so," the Doctor confirmed. There was a moment of silence. "I feel guilty."

"Why?" Y/n asked, looking up from where his eyes had dropped.

A soft sigh escaped the Doctor then. "I'm glad of it." Y/n rose a questioning eyebrow, and the Doctor continued. "I've never been able to be really with someone before. I knew they'd go eventually. They die or move on or grow too old for this life, or get torn up by the life style or they're stolen from me. You... you're different, though. Humans age and get old, but I regenerate. I mean, a relationship like that would be one sided. Eventually I'd be alone again. But you don't age, or die, and I'm sitting here in a  predicament where I just so happen to be in love with you." He released a breath, as if the words had been weighing him down. "It's so much easier to say that knowing I may actually not lose you."

Slowly, a smile rose to Y/n's face. "Well, if you don't already know I love you too I might have to kick your ass right here and now."

The Doctor released a shaky sort of laugh. After a second, he looked away, his smile fading. "Y/n, there's something you need to know about me."

Y/n sucked in a breath and released it again sharply, his hands fidgeting. "What about?"

"I've had a lot of companions, and I  have lost every single one. Rose and you aren't the first, even though you two are... different." He shook his head. "But I had something real before this life. I had a family. I was a father. A husband. I had a life. And it was all taken from me."

For a second, Y/n didn't seem to know what to say. But then he found it, and whispered very gently, "Doctor, I'm weird. I don't... I don't fall in love, really. It's unusual for me to do so. I've only ever fancied one person other than you. I've never taken much to romance and it's never seemed important to me. Like you, the first person I felt like this for... they understood this feeling too. Their father died in a war and mother in childbirth and they spent their whole life being passed from person to person and never having a family or a home. This isn't my first time, though I will say that it is my second. I do know one thing though. If you need time to work this out. If you need something I can't fill... What I mean to say is, I'm happy when you're happy. I'm not asking you to marry me, or start a family with me or whatever. I'm not asking for an immediate serious relationship. Just because we feel the way we do about each other doesn't mean we have to limit ourselves to those feelings. I know you've felt love like this many times, and I know that... you may feel it again in the future, or even now." He shrugged it away. "I know this is going to take time. But I want you to know that I'm not going anywhere. Ever, it seems. That you can count on. Everything else... As long as you come back to me at the end of the day, I don't care about everything else."

And then the Doctor did something splendid. He kissed Y/n. And Y/n did something even greater. He kissed back.

It was a great kiss. One of many. Because this journey? It had only just begun!

-

Male readers: @sheepfather​

[kirishwima]

May I have a request a finding out that the MC finds out that they are pregnant with RFA +V, V's is with Lucy?

yes, i love this prompt! however for V, I’d rather have Lucy still be their adopted daughter-changing the way she came to be their child doesn’t sit right with me, I hope that’s okay :)

I’ll use she/her pronouns for MC, but if you’d like me to change them then feel free to let me know <3

YOOSUNG:

* Knowing how much of an over-excited mess he’d become at the news, MC waited patiently for him to be done with work for the day, come back home, take a shower and finally come to flop down on the couch besides her, leaning his head on her shoulder.

* This was their usual routine, finding some time before bed to talk about their day, plans for tomorrow and what not. MC gently ran a hand through Yoosung’s hair, toying with the blonde curls. “So...I’ve got some news” she started, biting at her lip.

* Yoosung hummed, already dozing off on MC’s shoulder, blinking back the sleepingess as MC nudged him off her shoulder. “Baby come on, I think you’ll want to be awake to hear this” she laughed, teasing him as he stifled a yawn.

* “You’re saying there’s something more important than a full 8 hours of sleep?” he asked, fully aware of the irony-how in college he’d go nights without sleeping a minute to game, to the present, where he can’t function properly without a minimum couple hours of sleep before work.

* MC hummed, pretending to think as she tapped a finger to her chin. “Let’s see...would knowing you’re about to become a dad be important enough?” 

* She smiled, raising a brow as she saw the range of emotions running themselves over Yoosung’s face. Shock, confusion, excitedness-his mouth agape, eyes wide and teary. 

* “You-what-we-who-we-baby?!” he jumped off the couch, pointing to MC’s stomach as she bit her cheek to contain her giggles at his over-exaggerated reaction.

* “Yes Yoosung”, she affirmed, nodding down to her own belly, “there’s a baby right there. How...how do you feel about that?” despite the shaky grin on his face MC was still hesitant, worried how Yoosung might feel once this excitement wears off. Sure, they ocassionally discussed future plans, but never to great lengths, and it’s normal to freak out in such a situation and-

* “Are you kidding me?! We-MC we’ll be parents! Omigosh I’m-” he fell to his knees, leaning forward to lean his head into MC’s lap, his hands on her thighs gripping tight. 

* Gingerly he looked up, gently bringing a palm to rest on her lower abdomen. 

* “Hi baby” he whispered, not caring if the baby was old enough to hear him through the womb or not. He’d be sure to study all that later. “I’m-I’m your dad. I can’t wait to meet you buddy...”

* Honestly....both he and MC teared up at that. Neither of them really expected it, but they both couldn’t wait to be parents. 

ZEN:

* MC had taken a pharmacy test that came back negative, but her period was still running late. Confused, she decided to book an appointment to her gynecologist as soon as possible, worried what the implications of this may be. If not pregnancy, then what...?

* Zen had come into the room the moment she’d been on the phone, booking an appointment for the following week. He raised a brow as he heard her, but she simply smiled, holding up a finger as a cue for him to wait a moment.

* “Babe, what’s up? Everything alright?” he asked as soon as she hung up, coming close to wrap his arms around her waist.

* “Mm, yeah just, my period’s late and uhm-” she hesitated, unsure of how to continue. Quite frankly, she wasn’t sure of what was going on either, so how was she to explain it to Zen?

* She felt his grip around her waist tighten, his breath hitching. 

* “Wait-does that mean-could you be...?”

* She turned around to face him, not surprised to find pure glee on his face-they’d discussed their plans for the future before, and they both had agreed they’d wanted to start a family together, just never decided on the when.

* MC smiled, running her fingertips across Zen’s knuckles. “I don’t know. I really don’t, but I guess we’ll find out once I go to the doctor” she shrugged.

* Zen hummed, leaning his head atop her shoulder. “Next week right? Tell me the time, I’ll make sure to make time to come with you.”

* “Wha-Babe you don’t have to-” MC started before Zen cut her off with a quick peck on the lips and a wink as he twisted her around to face him.

* “Shush. Whatever the doctor tells you, I’ll be there with you, and we’ll face it together. Always” he said, his smile softening. 

* And as a man of his word, Zen was there with her at MC’s appointment, holding her hand as her gynecologist took an ultrasound probe and looked knowingly at the screen, turning to face MC and Zen with a smile.

* “Congratulations you two”, they smiled, both Zen and MC turning to the doctor with wide eyes, “you’re about 5 weeks pregnant!”

* Now, if anyone asks, he won’t admit it, but did Zen jump up and down in that examination room, screaming and giggling like a kid? Did he cry and lean down to kiss MC, who was currently stuck with an ultrasound probe inside her and a little unable to cheer as excitedly with him? Did he have to clear his throat and apologise to the doctor who had to hide their laughter behind a cough? 

* Yes. Yes he did. 

* He’ll talk to MC’s belly non-stop, will be there for EVERY appointment and ultrasound, will cry when he first hears his baby’s heartbeat or sees the first 3D ultrasound. He’ll do every single bidding of MC, from weird cravings to holding her when the morning sickness hits, just 100/10 the best partner and father.

* Plus the first thing he teaches his kid is to never ever call Jumin ‘uncle’ :’)

JAEHEE:

* Okay listen, there’s a little backstory here that I can add thanks to my current weeks of working at an ObGyn and Fertility clinic;

* So Jaehee and MC, after establishing their coffee shop and having it run well for a few years, decided they were ready to take the next step and start a family together. However, there were many limitations when they tried to adopt a child, so they researched other options, and found that a single woman, can in fact, receive a sperm donor and an IUI (In Utero Insemination-just fancy terminology for ‘putting the sperm in the womb with a tube!), without too much of a hussle. 

* So they opted for this option. They sat through the paperwork together, mutually decided who it’d be who’d try and get pregnant-they both had no quailms about it so they kind of decided over rock-paper scissors lmao, and so the process began.

* However, even with modern day medicine, pregnancy in such means isn’t 100% guaranteed; in fact, the chances are about a little over 40%. So after the procedure the two worried, hoped luck would find them and they’d be able to start their own little family.

* A couple weeks after the procedure, Jaehee was manning the coffee shop whilst MC took a break back home to come take over the evening shift later on. It was a quiet day, not many people in the shop save for a few of their regulars and a couple friends, their cat Cocoa who’d now become the cafe’s mascot strolling around like she owned the place.

* Everything was peaceful...until MC came running, the bells over the front door jingling manically as she slammed it open and ran to the counter Jaehee had been standing at.

* MC panted, leaned on the counter to catch her breath as Jaehee fretted over her, a million worst-case-scenarios running through her brain.

* “MC? What-what’s wrong, what happene-”

* Before she could speak MC lifted her head, a huge grin on her face. “Jaehee. Baby we did it! We’re pregnant!”

* Jaehee was, for the first time in forever, at a loss for words, her lips slack, her hands dropping to her side as her brain short-wired. “We-we are? You took a test? You?”

* MC nodded along to Jaehee’s line of half-questioning half-realising, laughing as tears welled up in Jaehee’s eyes. She ran across the counter to MC, meeting her half-way into a crushing hug as they laughed and cried together. 

* “We’ll have a baby” Jaehee whispered into the crook of MC’s neck, the wetness of her tears pooling into the cusp of skin.

* “Yeah. Yeah we will Jae” MC nodded along, stroking soothing circles into Jaehee’s back.

* They were lost in their own little world...before the sound of clapping brought them back to the present.

* Of course the few customers in the shop had heard and seen everything, and both their regulars and their friends were eagerly cheering them on, some even whistling and yelling ‘congratulations’ at the two who were now a blushing mess.

* Even Cocoa the cat came by to meow at them, as if to say ‘eh, whatever, congrats I guess’ which was....probably the nicest thing this cat has ever done for them lmao

* And that’s the story of how their coffee shop had now become famous for the ‘super mom duo’ that runs it hehe

JUMIN:

* If you think this man wouldn’t get emotional over finding out he’ll be a father you’re a) WRONG b) REALLY WRONG and c) GOTTA PLAY HIS ROUTE ALL OVER AGAIN

* Will he be scared? YES! He’ll be stressed, but listen-it’s probably not for the reasons you’re thinking.

* When MC announces her pregnancy to him, it’s not over a candle-lit dinner or whilst lounging on the couch. Nah, this man is observant af, especially when it comes to the person he loves.

* He noticed her coming home with a pharmacy bag after work and frowned, instantly wondering what its contents were.

* “MC, you seemed in perfect health today, is something wrong? Should I call a doctor?”

* MC was quick to reassure him that no, she was fine, but was hesitant when explaining that her period was running late, worried how he’ll take the news-sure, they were married, but they never really explicitly discussed the potential of having kids and a family, she didn’t know how Jumin would react to it.

* “I see” he nodded, “You did seem worried, I was hoping you’d eventually talk to me about it. So you’re taking a pregnancy test? If it’s alright with you, can I wait outside for you to tell me the results?”

* If anyone else were to hear the conversation, it might seem like Jumin was cold, distant even. But MC could tell the little incantations in his voice, how his eyes gleamed, his mouth twitching at the corners-he was hesitant, yes, but also excited. And to be honest...so was she.

* So Jumin waited, his arms folded and foot tapping anxiously on the floor as he leaned on the wall right next to the bathroom door, holding his breath until he heard the door open, seeing the little stick MC held in her hands, how her shoulders shook as she looked down at it.

* “W-what does it say?” he asked, fearful of looking down at the test himself-he doubts he’d be able to understand it even if he did.

* “It’s-it’s positive. Jumin it’s-if this is right then I’m pregnant” she looked up to him, eyes welling up with tears. Jumin sighed, unable to contain a smile from forming on his own lips as he wiped away MC’s tears, holding her face in his palms.

* “We’ll book an appointment with a gynecologist first thing tomorrow, but if it’s true then...MC, I’m happy. I truly am.” He said, knocking his forehead with hers. 

* She let go of the test, put her hands around his back, feeling the soft shake of his body as he took in the new information. It was a shock to them both, but together, they’d be able to prepare for it. However...

* “Jumin...? Are you truly happy?”

* He leaned back, smiling down at her. “If I were the same person I was before I met you-before I fell in love with you...I wouldn’t be. Then again, I never would’ve been in this predicament if that were the case, but regardless, back then I would’ve worried that the woman coming to me with a child of mine would seek out only money and fame, not to give the child the love and nurturing it needs to grow up well and safe.”

* He let his eyes flutter shut, opened them again as he looked on, shakily bringing a hand down to MC’s abdomen. 

* “With you....with you I know it’s a child that’ll grow up loved, cared for. We’ll raise them together, and they’ll get to grow up as a child, not as a tool. That’s...that’s all I want for our child. To grow up loved, happy.”

* So...yeah. He’ll be scared, and boy oh boy the first time MC gives him his child to hold he’ll be so scared but also so happy I think it’ll be the first time Jumin Han will cry with joy, but overall? He’ll be one dang great father

SEVEN/LUCIEL/SAEYOUNG:

* Let’s assume that this all happens well after he finds his brother and leaves the agency-he’s still a hacker, but a ‘white hacker’ or whatever it is they’re called, often-times collaborating with C&R to strengthen their online security, doing hacking tests e.t.c. 

* He’s in a good place, his bond with Saeran is slowly improving, and his love for MC is constantly growing, so the two have had the time to talk about their plans for the future, about what they want and the relative timelines.

* Saeyoung always wanted a family-that much we’re all aware of. But...he never expected he’d be allowed to have one. Now that he’s given the opportunity to start anew he’s excited, but also terrified, waiting for something bad to come right round the corner and take it all away. So to now become a father...he’s not sure how well he’ll handle that responsibility.

* Well, he shares these fears one late night with MC, which...makes it all the harder for her to tell him when the tell-tale signs come up. When her period’s late, when it’s completely gone for one, then two months. When she feels sick in the mornings, nauseous and bloated, why she makes excuses for her odd behavior much to Saeyoung’s dismay.

* In fact, it’s actually Saeran that notices what’s up, quickly putting two and two together since he’s not the one MC is actively trying to avoid. 

* He confronted her about it, and she broke down, explained it all to him, how she’s done more than a few pharmacy tests to confirm her suspicion and they all came back positive, what Saeyoung had told her and why she feels terrified of telling him the truth.

* And Saeran...well, he’s dumbfounded.

* “You...are you really that stupid?” he asks, brows raised. MC can’t help it-even though she was crying whilst speaking to him, her tears stop at the sudden proclamation and she looks up at him wide-eyed. 

* “Listen, I know my brother’s an air-head and all, but do you really think that little of him? That he wouldn’t be over the fucking moon if you told him he’s gonna become a dad?”

* Well......talk about perfect timing, who happened to come back home and walk into the living room at the perfect moment to hear this very last bit of the conversation?

* Yup of course Saeyoung stood there, his keys dropped to the floor as he stared at his twin and his girlfriend, confusion and shock evident on his face.

* None of them spoke for a long moment whilst Saeyoung composed his thoughts.

* Then, with perfect calamity he simply took a deep breath, let his eyes fall shut. “Saeran, can you leave for a bit? I need to speak with MC.”

* Saeran merely nodded, throwing an apologetic look MC’s way before heading out the door, the loud thud alerting MC and Saeyoung to the fact that they were now the only two people in the house.

* The silence was deafening, constricting MC’s lungs like a monster’s tentacles around a shipwreck. 

* “Sae-listen, I’m sorry, I should’ve told you sooner, I didn’t know how to and I-”

* She didn’t get to finish her words. Saeyoung held a palm up, motioning for her to stop. “How far along are you?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, breaths raspy and shaky.

* “...about 8 weeks now” she admitted. 

* Saeyoung took a step closer to her, crumpled onto his knees as he wrapped his hands across her belly.

* “I’m-I’m going to be a dad” he whispered, mainly to himself, a declaration to make himself believe it, “and all I’ve done so far is make you worry-MC, I’m so sorry. I should’ve never, never made you feel like there was anything you couldn’t talk to me about. I’m-I’m worried. I’m terrified but I’m so happy-so, so happy” he mumbled the last words into the fabric of her shirt, hiding his tears on her body.

* MC wrapped her arms around her, stroked his hair as he cried. They eventually found themselves laying side by side on the carpet like a pair of teens wasted at a house party, holding hands as they stared up at the ceeling.

* “...Do you think they’ll be twins?” Saeyoung joked, relishing in the small huff of laughter elicited from MC.

* “I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle another pair of twins in this household” MC teased back, “that’s like...quadruple the amount of pranks” she shrugged.

* They stared at the peels on the paint, content in the silence before Saeyoung propped himself up on his elbows, turning to his side so he could rest a hand on MC’s abdomen.

* “Think it-they-whatever, think our child can hear me?” he asked, trying his best to hide the creeping blush blooming up his neck.

* MC hummed. “I’m not sure”, she admitted, “but I think you should try and speak to them regardless.”

* Saeyoung nodded, taking a moment to compose himself. “Hey baby. Or babies. Or whoever it is in there” he laughed, “um, this-this is your dad. Don’t confuse me with your uncle, otherwise I’ll be super sad okay?!” He rolled his eyes as MC’s belly shook with laughter, waiting for her to calm down before he continued.

* “Listen...I’ve always dreamed of being a dad, and of having a big happy family. I’d tell my brother-that’s your uncle, I’d tell him every day when we were young that when we grow up we’ll live together in a biig house, and we’ll have a toy factory together, and I’ll have a direct line to Santa Claus so I could help him provide gifts to all the kids in the world-and that I’d have my own big family, and that my kids would always get any toy they want, and if that toy didn’t exist, then I’d make it for them. And...and I’ll do that for you too. So if there’s anything you want, start thinking about it, and I’ll make it for you. Anything.”

* He smiled, stroked his thumb across MC’s belly. “I need you to know I love your mom very very much. If she wasn’t here, I don’t think I’d ever be able to dream of having a family and being a dad again. So...so you should know she’s an amazing person, and that I’ll forever be grateful she stumbled into my life, and that she chose me out of everyone else out there.”

* He looked to MC, leaned back down to knock his forehead across hers.

* “Thank you”, he whispered, “thank you for the best gift I could’ve ever asked for”.

V/JIHYUN:

* This happened after the two had adopted Lucy. Their daughter was a bundle of joy, an angel that brought so much happiness to their daily life, that Jihyun could barely even remember the horrors of his past.

* Even if he were to ocassionaly have a nightmare or remember a horrible memory, MC would be there to hold his hand, or Lucy would be there with her big smile and tight hugs, the two chasing all the bad things away.

* Lucy was also equally happy, absoloutely adoring her parents and her uncles and aunt of the RFA-there was only one tiiiny complaint she had...

* “Mommy, daddy? Can I have a baby brother or sister to play with? Pleaaase?” she’d ask, sweetly blinking those big blue eyes of hers as if she was asking for a new toy or a candy, ignoring the awkward looks her parents shared trying to think of how to explain to her that they can’t just...bring a baby sibling to her on demand.

* This led to an awkward talk of the different ways babies come into a family; from the belly into the world, and then into the arms of a loving mom and dad, be it biological or not. Luckily, Lucy never seemed upset about being adopted; the two always worried wether it was right to tell her from such an early age, but Jihyun prided honesty above all else, so the two decided to ease her into the topic, making sure to shower her with love and affection so she’d know that how she came to be their daughter didn’t matter to them at all-they were just happy to have her in their lives.

* But lo and behold; her wish really did come true.

* One day Jihyun and Lucy were in the back garden playing with watercolours, making the white t-shirts they were both wearing a swirling mixtrue of colours. As Jihyun came back inside to wash up, he found MC in their bedrooms’ bathroom, holding something in one hand, the other covering her mouth as if in shock.

* “MC...? What’s wrong, is everything alright?”

* She turned to him, eyes teared up which only added to his worry as he looked down to her hands, finally noticing the stick she was holding.

* Slowly, he put two and two together, his brows raising. “You-this is....are you..?”

* MC nodded, biting her lip as Jihyun gasped, laughed, a quiet huff at first before he burst into a full laughter, tears welling at his eyes as he gripped MC by the waist and swirled her around, holding her tight. 

* Lucy walked into their bedroom at that very moment, peering in curiously at the commotion. “I wanna lift too! Me too!” she giggled, running to her dad with her arms extended. 

* Gleefully Jihyun picked her up, bringing both her and MC close for a family group hug. 

* “Lucy, honey, you said you wanted a baby brother or sister right?” MC asked, stroking her daughter’s hair as Jihyun held her up to their eye level. Lucy nodded furiously, her cheeks red, eyes gleaming.

* “Do you still want one now?” MC continued, biting her lip to stop from smiling. Lucy nodded again. “Yes!! Yes, I do, I want one! And I want to help them drink their milk and put them to bed when they have bad dreams. And when they grow up we’ll play together all the time!” she beamed, Jihyun hiding his grin into her hair as MC nodded along to her daughter’s words.

* “Well baby, you’ll get a sibling soon. Mommy has a baby right here” Jihyun explained, bringing a hand to touch MC’s abdomen, “and when they’re born you’ll be a big sister!”

* Lucy was in awe, staring at her mom’s belly like it was made of gold. “There’s a baby in there?!” she pointed, looking incredulously to her parents. 

* Jihyun nodded, gently leaning down to let Lucy back on the ground. “They’re still very very small”, MC began to explain, “but as they grow you’ll even be able to feel them kick and move”.

* Suffice to say, everyone in their little family was thrilled at the news. Jihyun was worried, ever a worry-rat even when Lucy was a baby, but Lucy was already preparing to be a big sister, insisting on coming along with her parents at every doctor’s visit, asking the doctors a dozen questions each time. 

* As the baby grew and MC’s pregnancy got heavier, she could see the worry plaguing Jihyun, a concern he refused to voice. But MC was no fool-she could tell what it is he was thinking.

* “You know”, she told him one night, as she rested her hands on her growing baby bump, “I wish they’ll have your eyes-that gentle gaze of yours, it’ll be really nice if they inherit it from you.”

* Jihyun sighed at her words, turning on his side to bring a hand over her belly. “I don’t...MC, you know what I fear. I don’t want them to be anything like me I don’t-I don’t want them to go through anything remotely similar to what I did, to be anything like me, like I was, like I still am if I stop trying to change-I want them to have a good life. Them and Lucy..I want them to be happy.”

* MC pouted, gripping Jihyun’s hand, interlacing it with hers. “What you went through didn’t happen because of who you were, only because of the circumstances you were put under. You’re kind-hearted, self-less, caring and gentle, and yes, you put others above yourself and are quick to carry all the burden even when there’s others around you willing to lessen the load. But none of those are bad qualities Jihyun. And improving yourself isn’t a goal-directed process, it’s an open-ended journey. I hope our kids grow up to be like you.”

* Suffice to say, Jihyun was floored. MC had read him like a book, and he knew that, even if he initially didn’t want to admit it. Eventually he laughed, shaking his head. “I love you, you know that?”

* MC rolled her eyes.

* “I sure hope so”, she teased.

I went a ~little~ overboard with these but listen I’ve been doing ObGyn work for nearly a month now so it had to serve as inspiration somehow hehe

-send me mystic messenger headcanons for character(s) reactions!-

[queen-yalo]

FF VII | Headcanons | Confessing

Request: Hi autor-sama ! how Rufus and Reno confess their feelings :0 ? [by @leftpersonamuffinhound​]

A/N: Here you go, Reader-san! :) Hope you enjoy!

Pairing(s): Reno x reader; Rufus Shinra x reader

+++

• Reno would constantly switch between being super chill about it and being super anxious and stressed about it. 

• He knows he likes you. But he wants you to know, too. He has a few ideas of how to confess, but nothing really feels right, which is very unnerving for him. 

• In the end he just lets it happen. Why plan something as unpredictable as feelings? Whenever it would feel right, he would confess. Which is after one of your dates.

• You laughed a lot that night, both of you are in a really good mood when he takes you home and your time together comes to an end. But instead of the usual ‘sleep well, I’ll call ya tomorrow’ before he kisses you, he just looks at you adoringly, all his feelings for you visible in his eyes. 

• You smiled at him, encouraging him to speak up. He didn’t think about it too much. He just... said it. ‘I love you, (Name).’ He whispered, hoping you wouldn’t reject him. 

• And you didn’t of course. Instead, your smile became even more vibrant before you pulled him closer and smashed your lips onto his. ‘I love you too, you dork.’ You grinned, kissing him again. It took a while for the two of you to separate after. And if you didn’t have to work the next day, you probably wouldn’t have. 

• Rufus is so relaxed about it. Mostly because he is an over-confident, smug brat. You should consider yourself lucky that he has those feelings for you. And if you reject him, well - it’s your own fault. 

• Although, he briefly wonders what happens if you turn him down. He never felt those feelings for anybody before. And he doesn’t want it to end. So a small part of him is anxious about your reaction, but the greater part is still very confident. 

• He knows that a confession should be made at the right moment, so he patiently waits until your next date. Dinner at Midgar’s finest restaurant. Private table, away from all the hussle. You two just finished you dinner and were waiting for dessert. 

• Rufus took a deep breath and looked at you intensely. You gulped slightly, scared of what he might say. He took his time, choosing his words carefully. But in the end, he only said what was important. ‘I’m in love with you, (Name).’ 

• Your eyes widened slightly. Rufus Shinra? In love with you? That was more than unexpected. But you certainly wouldn’t complain.

• You smiled at him, blushing slightly. ‘I... I love you too...’ You whispered, biting your lip. Who would have guessed that you find yourself in this situation? Rufus grinned and got up from his chair, getting closer to you. He took your hand gracefully and helped you stand before he kissed your soft lips gently, yet demanding. He couldn’t wait to make this official. 

[soda-drabbles]

Pumpkin Spice 'n Everything Nice | EgoFlapBang Fic

Synopsis : During the weekend, the three lovers decide to take on baking.

Type : Playful Fluff

Pairing : Arin x Suzy x Dan (EgoFlapBang)

A/N : Ive been wanting to write a fic for this ship for so,, long,,, I hope you guys love it as much as i did while writing it.

During all the work that the couple had to face in the week, the weekends were something that they each looked forward to. Any couple could tell you they loved their domestic time. This domestic time could include snuggling, cuddling with a movie or other things. This rang true for the three as well, except they had other things in mind.

Instead of cuddles or late night fun, their thing happened to be baking. Suzy suggested it once and they were finally getting around to it.

“Suzy,” Dan called from the kitchen, peeking and looking around in the various cabinets. “Do you know where the flour is?”

“Right here!” She eagerly said between small huffs, hauling the newly bought flour into the kitchen and placed it on the counter.

Dan smiled and gave her a small peck on the cheek. “Thanks, Suz'.” She couldn't help but smile in return. Arin then came bustling in afterwards, phone in hand that held the recipe for the cakes they planned to make tonight.

“Alrighty, I'm back.” Arin spoke as he walked in, looking up at the two.

“Papa's got the recipe?” Dan joked, a growing smile on his face. Arin couldn't help but laugh.

“Oh, papa's got way more than the recipe.” Arin joked back.

Suzy started working on the batter, carefully taking the ingredients and dropping them into the bowl. Dan then handed her the whisk to mix the compound together while Arin was working on making the glaze.

“God, we are making such a mess.” Dan commented as Suzy began whisking away at their soon-to-be batter. Flour littered the counter, particles of salt was on the floor and broken eggshells was set to the side.

Suzy snickered. “You mean you made such a mess.” Which brought a look to cross Dan's face before he broke into chuckles.

“You can't blame this whole thing on me, I'm not the one here with sticky fingers.” He retorted as he raised his clean fingers up. In a split moment, a handful of flour was suddenly tossed and aimed towards Dan. The whiteness of the flour now stained his shirt and hands, leaving a shocked Dan and a guilty smiling Suzy.

Instead of getting angry, it only put him in a more playful mood. The wide smile that tugged at his lips made it extremely obvious. “Oh really? This is what we're doing now?” His tone asked in a nearly daring way, which brought a heightened giggle from Suzy.

“It was an accident, I swear.” She lied through a stream of giggles, her own smile widened. Dan's eyebrows raised in a doubtful fashion, clearly not believing her. He reached over to dip his hand in the small bag of flour and catapulted a small handful in front of her, causing her to gasp and squeal. “WhOoPs! My hand must've slipped~” Dan grinned and the two began laughing, a sudden flour fight to the death initiating.

All Arin could hear was the fumbling and squealing behind him. He took a pause from stirrimg the glaze.

The hell was going on?

“The hell are you guys doing over there?” He asked, turning over his shoulder while stirring the glaze.

The scene in front of him caused him to laugh, harder than he thought. His two lovers and the kitchen were practically caked in the flour, everything was pretty much decorated in white. It was, least to say, a mess. A snow white mess. “The hell did you two do?” He continued laughing, placing the bowl of glaze to the side.

She was still trying to contain her laughter while Dan snickered to himself, trying to talk. “Uh, well..” He awkwardly tried to explain between the nonstop chuckling. “Ask Suzy.”

Suzy laughed more, playfully shoving Dan. “Aw, dude! You can't just pin it on me!”

Arin shook his head, lips pressed in a wide smile. “Jesus Christ..” He snickered in a mumble, the wide smile only stretching more. “It looks like you two got into a hussle with some snowmen.”

“Aww, are you jealous?” Dan asked, “'Cause if you wanted to be apart of it..” A mischievous grin fell on Dan's features, his hand sneakingly scooping some flour.

Arin looked up when the sound of the slowly crinkling bag fell on his ears. His eyes settled on the smirk on the man's face and slid to the hand, which held a small amount of the flour.

Immediately, he backed up and shook his head. “Oh no. Nononono.” Arin's voice fell low, hands out defensively as if it would prevent the determined man's attack. A small squeal left Suzy's lips as Dan closed in.

“Don't encourage it!” Arin quickly shushed her, his voice much more meek now as Dan was closing in on him. His sudden plea caused her to giggle, which turned to laughs as the flour was thrown.

Arin's arms quickly jump to his defense, a slight yelp left him out of the anticipation. The flour mostly landed on his arms and hair, a little dusted the bottom of the apron he was wearing. Slowly, Arin brought his arms down to reveal a playful pout that brought a light hearty laugh from Dan.

“D'aww,” He teased and lightly ruffled Arin's hair which tousled the flour around some. “You look like you've got a super bad case of dandruff or something.”

“Gee, how sweet.” Arin only pouted more, dusting off his own arms and the lower half of his apron. “Where's the batter?”

Suzy then grabbed the bowl of generously stirred pumpkin spice batter and Arin wrinkled his nose. “Is it supposed to look like weird puke mush?”

“Yeah! It pumpkin spice so its gonna look orange." She explained and grabbed the cake pan. The batter was soon in the pan and tossed into the oven. During that time, the three of them began cleaning up the mess that was made. After all, it looked like a tornado just came through there.

The baking took around twenty minutes, including cooling. Thankfully, the kitchen was back to decent shape by then, as if they totally didn't just have a flour brawl twenty minutes ago.

Arin slipped on some oven mitts and pulled out the baked cake, which surprisingly didn't look bad at all. The cake spent another good ten minutes cooling after Arin sat it on the counter. Once the cooling process was done, he then drizzled the glaze over the done cake.

It looked so mouthwatering good, better than the three of them thought it'd look. It smelled delicious too. Arin then grabbed a knife and cut the cake, then served it to the two helpers. He took one himself.

“Bottoms up.” He said, jokingly bumping the cakes together as if they were wine glasses making a toast. The three of them then took a bite out of the cakes themselves. In conclusion, they were as good as they looked and smelled.

“Holy shitmf.” Arin's voice was muffled by the chewing but was still filled with surprise and pleasure. That was some good pumpkin spice. Suzy also agreed, eating the rest of hers. After Dan ate his, he stifled a laugh and smiled. He placed his plate down. “Y'know, for wrecking the whole kitchen and getting shit everywhere, this is pretty damn good.”

Everyone else agreed with chuckles being shared among the room. “We should do this more often.” Suzy smiled, taking another slice of the glazed cake.

Dan nodded, “Sounds like a plan to me.”

“And get flour stuck in our ears and god knows where else?” Asked Arin, looking at the two.

“Hey, it was fun.” Dan retorted with a laugh. “Plus, we got some damn good food out of it.”

“I guess you're right.” Arin chuckled out and smiled as he looked over his flour covered lovers.

He could get used to this.

[mochuelovelli]

Some Alt. Jobs for the Kids in the Future:

Mainly doing this as just a thought experiment. Usually people are of one mind on what the kids will *probably* be when they are older(myself included) so I wanted to give some alts that could fit their personalities.

Louie-Manger/Agent:Making this list mainly for him because I recalled Princess Carolyn from BoJack and how her job could fit Louie pretty well. Ik a lot of people headcanon Lawyer! Louie, I do too, but I think this would be a fun idea.

A manager's job is basically finding ways to get their client's hired or trying to tailor a client's project in order for it to be marketable. We already seen Louie do this in his ep this season but I think it be cool if became a legit job for him. He's still a McDuck ward so nothing with his business would be "normal" and he would have to do similar "schemes" to get his clients jobs, especially if they are inter-dimensional goat demons.

Louie would probably say the reason he became a manager would be "because I've been trying to convince people I am good enough my entire life, might as well make a career out of it". Edgy ik, but this is Louie we are talking about of course he say some dumbshit.

Dewey-YouTube Personality: this is probably just a less popular hc rather than one that's not talked about at all like the Louie (or the next couple examples). For me, I can't see Dewey being anything but some kind of globe trotting adventurer who would also record it for views. But in the case that DIDN'T happen, I think he'd become a youtube personality and make shows with his friends and family. I think it be really cute, that even as they grown older and become more independent, Dewey can still find ways to bring them all to his house to be apart of his youtube show(s) where he and a guest try to guess obscure history facts Webby comes up with (Watchers know what I'm talking about) or where he and some friends try to solve unsolved mysteries or try and bake without a recipe (im really showing what content i watch).

His Youtube channel would be sporadic like, "series" but he doesn't make actual playlists (Huey or Violet do) and uploads whatever he wanted to do that week. Good thing is, he never misses an upload date. Almost.

Huey-Military Engineer/Tech Guy (IE better Beaks): I had the hardest time with figuring out Huey since like Webby, he can pretty much be in any field to me (as long as its stem related). This suggestion to me is the least chill out of all of them but I picked it because 1. Huey likes structure and chain of command and 2. Science and defense systems.

Out of his brothers, Huey isn't the most WORRIED about safety but he definitely is the one who would do something about it to fix it. I can see him making some intergalactic defense systems and various prevention junk. Maybe he works under Gosalyn's administration[see gos] or he makes "unnatural-natural phenomenon" protection stuff. Kinda like the seawalls in Venice but like, stuff to make sure the Earth doesn't get destroyed because of all the crazy shit the duckverse has. Like ghost forcefields or the reversal of timephoons. I don't think he would be a Tony Stark character tho so I am not 100% with this one.

He could also just be a tech guy, but yknow, better than Mark Beaks. He accidentally has more followers than him would crush him in twitter fights (an example would be something along the Logan Paul vs Chris D'Elia). I find this just really funny, Huey would actually be what all those "good guy billionaires" claim to be (also he wouldn't be one just as a matter of principle). Owlson would probably be his mentor or maybe just business partner.

Webby-Comic Artist/Cartoonist: Webby, to me, can pretty much go into any field and I would be like "yeah makes sense". However I know in my heart she'd be some kind of spy or detective. Thinking about her being anything else was honestly kinda hard but then I realized she DOES have another hobby which could be turn into a career - her drawings and stories. Webby is definitely a creative person, maybe the most creative so far in front of or slightly behind Dewey, so I think she would like to make comics and cartoons.

If you want to be angsty, maybe she chooses this mundane route because she was somewhat conditioned by her granny (or her creators if theories are to he proven right) to be a super spy; choosing to be a cartoonist is something she was never trained to become and yet she still did because it's something SHE wanted to do for herself.

Lena-Poet/Song Writer: okay another one that might not be uncommon but I like to just see it thrown out there. Lena is cool in large part because of her magic but in a possible similar motivation to Webby, she wanted to be a poet not only because she was good at it but because she wanted to be. This doesn't have to be her main hussle, usually I don't see it as such, but I also think it be cute if she became a new Robert Frost (this is the only poet ik sorry).

Violet-Cosmologist: Most people see Violet as either some kind of chemist, professor, or occasionally a witch. I think another good alt tho would be cosmology since Violet herself wants to understand the world around her, which is a bit different from Huey who wants to obtain knowledge for knowledge sake in the case it might come in handy though not extremely. Cosmology as field in the dt universe must be WILD too since im pretty sure most scientists know of all the magic and junk, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if there was a legit subject on it or multiple. Trying to make sense of YOUR universe while knowing others exist along with time travel, possibly multiple after lifes? Its a lot. Perfect job for Vi.

Boyd-Therapist/architect: I feel like this isn't such a niche hc, but I do see more folks make him into his own superhero and/or an accountant. I might be playing into the Baymax stereotype of robots being good mental health assistants but idc, I think it's warranted since he has gone through and understands trauma. Maybe he focuses on those who need rehabilitation or are unable to get paid treatment. Maybe he just helps those who have committed crimes. Another alt is that he becomes an architect, building well planned buildings and public spaces in a flash by utilizing his vast abilities. He might even be commissioned to make space colony housing.

Gosalyn-Politican: Alright so, Gosalyn being a superhero like her dad is like, canon but again in an alt universe where it WASN'T (or maybe later in her life) I can see her becoming political. Frank even laid out some of what inspired this iteration of Gosalyn which included notable political activists, so as of rn its not that far of a stretch to say she might be interested in that. I have a feeling its happens because she gets riled up for something in particular rather than she always wanted to be a career politician or whatever. She would definitely be a less polished politician and that be her appeal, she'd kinda be like an AOC in that regard(im sorry I tried really hard not to name drop political figures but-). An example of her "abnormal" diplomacy tactics is where she stopped Ragnarok semi permanently by absolutely wrecking their shit. (She be dramatic about it like her dad, coming in her normal President wear and then throw it off to reveal some crazy wrestling shit. Louie would also make a lot of money that day.)

[caroline18mars]

A Man On Fire - Chapter 75

“Harper! Va bene tesoro, sei arrivato, finalmente” Arno came walking up to her which made her stop in her tracks, oh god, what was he now? Late thirties? The last time she had seen him..was what? a decade ago?. Jared squeezed her hand as he too stopped but took a step forward as to protect her from the man approaching them, “Arno..ciao, come stai?” what else was there to say to someone who still felt like a stranger to her? Her eldest brother stopped in front of them seeing Jared's protective demeanour, “If you don't mind we'll switch to English, Arno, this is Jared, he's my ..boyfriend” she swallowed hard. “Nice to meet you, Jared, I'm Harper's brother, I believe we talked on the phone” he greeted Jared in impeccable English and impeccable manners, “nice to finally meet you too, Arno” Jared shook his hand. “You've grown into a beautiful, young woman” Arno smiled at his sister who stood there awkwardly biting her lip, “yeah, thanks..” she took a deep breath when she was pulled against her brother's hard chest in a hug, something they had never done in their entire life. It broke Jared's heart to see them act all awkward, so she had never experienced what it really was to have the support and the love of a sibling, he just couldn't imagine that he and Shannon would ever greet each other with such an emotional distance between them.  “How's papa?” she quickly let go of her brother and asked the pivotal question, “same as yesterday I'm afraid..mama is with him now, the rest of the family has gone back to the hotel to get some rest” he nervously said, knowing full well how tense the situation could become between her and their mother. “Wait here, I'll go tell her to give you some time with him” he smiled and turned to go, Jared felt her hand tremble in his “oh babe, shhh, you nervous?” he pulled her against his chest and kissed the top of her head, “I don't know if this was such a good idea, I'm not sure I can do this” her breath flowed warm and soft through his shirt. “Of course you can do it, if you want I can come with you” ” he breathed in her hair “you decide”, it felt good that he left her the choice, right now it seemed like there had never existed a reason for their break up, maybe there wasn’t, maybe it was all that stupid pride of her all along, just like her pride was preventing her from just walking inside the hospital room of her father, pride and fear, the two most powerful and also most powerless words in the world. “I would prefer for you to be there with me, yes, are you sure you can handle that?” she slowly let go of him, “I can handle anything when you’re involved, remember that” he took her hand and kissed it, “come on, we’ll do this together”.

Harper saw her mother come out of the room without even giving her the light of day, “You’re only allowed 15 minutes” Arno gave her a faint smile, he too was dumbstruck by all the vile things their mother had just said to him about his sister, but he tried to hide it and opened the door to their father’s room for them. Jared walked in after her and saw her gasp just looking at her father who was attached to all kinds of tubes and machinery, “I can’t..” she turned to Jared, despair and fear flashing in her eyes, her breath weezing in her throat, “it’s ok, you can do this, go sit with him, I’ll be right here..there’s nothing to fear, ok?” what the fuck, he himself didn’t even believe his own words anymore, but he couldn’t allow himself to storm out of that room, he’d promised he was gonna be there for her and he was gonna keep that promise. He gave her a confident nod, she took a deep breath, turned around and headed towards the bed of her father again to pull a chair close to the side, “Ciao papa, sono io, Harper Coco” reluctantly she put her hand over his. This hand that had been raised towards her so many times, was now here resting underneath hers, so many fights, so much abuse, that entire hurricane of anger and hurt was stilled right here and right now where there was nothing left to say. That’s how she sat there for a few minutes, all still but Jared could see the war in her head that was raging, he would fly to the moon and back just to be able to help her, comfort her, but this was something she could only do herself, unfortunately.

It was so weird sitting here, all these tubes and machines didn’t scare her, she was getting used to them with all the huffs and puffs and bleeps but this silence between them was new and heavily uncomfortable, all her life her Dad had screamed and yelled at her and now he could no longer, which one was better? Did it matter right now?. “Why did you always hate me so much, papa? Because I didn’t follow your footsteps and be the good little girl you’ve always wanted me to be? Why couldn’t you accept the path I followed and what it brought me? Huh? Why? It brought me so much and made my life so much richer..and wealthier..maybe even your entire scene at the gallery has finally brought me fame, that’s the irony of it though, you of all people were the one who made me sell all those paintings, maybe I should be grateful, huh?!” she sarcastically huffed through the tears that were streaming down her face. “And you know what? My choice of life brought me Jared..and you like Jared, so you can be happy with that..and if not..well I guess that’s just tough because I’m not trading him for anyone”. Jared’s head shot up and despite the situation and the room they were in, his heart had never done more somersaults, meanwhile Harper kept talking, desperately trying not to unleash her pent-up anger of all those years, on her father. “You know, I keep asking myself the same question over and over again, was it worth it, Dad? Was it really worth all that anger, that hate you threw my way all those years? Disowning me? Taking my title away from me? I mean, was it all because I went my own way? Or was it to cover up something else?” now the words came pouring out, and she got all agitated “I guess I'll never know, will I? You come storming into that gallery on my big night and you just drop half dead on the scene? Was that another one of your little schemes to ruin my night? Was it? Why the fuck were you even there?”. The tears came fast and furious now, so Jared decided to step out of his little comfortzone on the other side of the room but she shot him such an angry glare when she heard him walk up behind her that he automatically decided to leave her be and he backed off again. “You made it feel for me like I never had a family, you turned everyone against me, nobody ever bothered to contact me in all those years, except you, wait no, your lawyer contacted me, you never even bothered to have a conversation with me! I've been dead to you for so many, many years, well guess what papa, you're dead to me too” she was sobbing so hard her voice was but a screech by now. “I did what I had to do, what was expected of me, so this is it, Dad, if this is too hard for you to keep holding on, or if you were waiting for me somehow then you can go, not that you need my blessing, but you can go” she angrily and roughly wiped the tears away with the sleeve of her jacket and nodded “whatever it's gonna be, you decide”.

Like it was meant to be, there was a soft knock on the door and a nurse walked in “I'm so sorry, Miss, but he needs his rest” and headed to the bed to check on his vitals. Harper quickly brushed the rest of her tears away and nodded, the last of her monologue with her father was without words, he could see it in the slowness with which she let go of his hand, Jared approached her for the second time, this time her reaction was a lot less hostile, “come” he reached for her hand and she grabbed it immediately, clinging to it as she got up and he escorted her slowly out of the room. “You ok?” her brother had worry scribbled all over his face when he walked up to them in the corridor, “No..yes..I don't know, ask me later ok?”, Jared felt her tremble, “listen..uhm..it's been a long day and I could do with a drink..something to eat, there's this place at the end of the block, maybe we could go together”. Before Harper could decline her brother's invitation, Jared nodded “good idea, give us all some time to catch our breath” she needed her family right now even though she would deny it, and so far Arno was her only ally. The hussle and bussle of New York did her good as they walked to the restaurant, it was the only trigger that entered right now as the conversation with and the sight of her Dad was playing on a loop inside her head. Jared held open the door for her and it was heartbreaking to see a grown up brother and sister act so awkward with and around each other, it was almost like a scene from a movie where the nervous older brother was 12 again and out with his kid sister, both of them so far out of their comfort zone, the older brother wants to comfort her, protect his little sister, but she looks so scared of him like they're not even siblings.

The waitress walked up to them with a huge smile, pointing at a booth in the middle of the crowded restaurant, “hey..” Arno put his hand over hers but she reacted like she was stung by a bee, trying not to pull her hand away too fast “it's ok..he's not here, he can't hurt you”, what did he just say? He knew? They had talked on the phone a few times, but they had never talked about anything this deep, so far he had always been the mediator, always choosing the middle of the road, staying away from the real issues and misery. “Wait, what? You know?” she suddenly hissed at her brother who turned bright red, like he was caught  in the act, “Coco, I..” he tried to think of the right way to answer her question, “don't 'Coco' me, who am I kidding? You all knew, mother, our sisters, brothers, everybody knew that Coco was Daddy's punching bag and you never did anything to stop it?” she banged her fist on the table, making every head in the entire room turn. “Ok babe, shhhh, calm down” Jared put his hand on her fist to calm her down “it's ok, your brother doesn't mean any harm, just let him answer, just stay calm ok?” and to his surprise it worked and she remained calm. “Coco, I didn't know, ok, you've gotta believe me, I only found out about a few days ago from Mama, she mentioned something about you and Papa and..it triggered a few things I must have pushed away, so I kept asking her about it, we even had a fight..you have to believe me, Harper, that's why I called you”. It was the 'triggered a few things' part and especially the 'pushing away' that calmed her down, she knew he was telling the truth, this entire family was all about hiding and pushing things away, to the outside world they were the perfect, wealthy diplomates family with all those beautiful kids and their nannies travelling the globe. All the hurt, the physical pain, the blows, the fights, the authoritarian upbringing was always kept neatly inside,  “I was hoping that you and I could finally start to reconnect again, I've been a lousy brother to you, so all I can hope for is that you'll give me chance to be that brother you desperately needed..I love you, Coco, you're my sister..” Arno whispered at her and it certainly had its' effect on her because she clasped her hand over her mouth and tears started rolling again, “I'll take that as a 'yes' as in 'yes, I will give you that chance to be my brother again', because nothing would make me happier, Coco”.  Harper could hardly believe what she was hearing, could there finally be a glimmer of hope and light coming out of all this misery? “I've missed you so much, Arno..and I love you too” she nodded while swallowing her tears away.

[cbseung]

cobblestones: modern prince hyunjin - [pt 3]

[masterlist]

[pt 1] [pt 2] [pt 3] [pt 4] [pt 5] [pt 6] [pt 7] [pt 8] [pt 9] [pt 10] [final]

hey pals here’s part 3 of 7! a/n at the end this time! 

pairing: you x hyunjin

genre: fluff!

word count: 1,015

description: it’s so interesting how quickly how you said yes to a summer long vacation in england even though your temporary enemy will be staying in the same palace as you?

“i have good news!!!” 

oh yikes 

good news from yeji? probably not good news

“IN addition to staying at the palace, my aunt also said we could stay here for the rest of the summer! all expense paid! how can you say no you know this only happens in fanfiction”

oh

wait

“uh i don’t think my-”

“parents would let you? you forget who you’re talking to! i called your parents and they were totally okay with it! something about figuring yourself out before you start university”

i mean..

let’s think this over

a month compared to a week? in london? pro

more time to spend with yeji and felix? pro

spending more time with hyunjin? a big con

i guess you made your decision

“yeji,, i don’t think this-”

“is such a great idea? of course it’s a great idea!! you’re in london!! where else would you rather be? back home? of course not! and now we can go to other places in europe! like paris! or something!”

sigh 

you hate it when yeji’s right  ╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭

“ugh fine you know me so well”

“YAAAY this is gonna be the best vacation ever!!!!”

“mhhhmmm”

you pack your bags at the airbnb and head your way to the palace

you can’t believe this is your life!

for the next two months anyway

“yeji,, you do realize that the next two months are gonna be filled with me and hyunjin fighting right..?”

“i never thought of that! how could i forget!”

“......that was sarcasm wasn’t it”

“for a smart girl you sure aren’t bright! and don’t worry, i doubt you’re gonna be fighting with him for much longer”

what? the?

“yeji do you have something planned?”

“what? no..”

well wasn’t that hella sus

next thing you know, you’re being greeted into the buckingham palace once again!

‘here we go!’ you tell yourself

and next thing you know you hear a

“cousin yeji! y/n! SO good to see you again!”

you knew this was coming

this was where he was staying anyway

“hyunjin..” you grit

“ah i can’t believe i get to see your pretty face everyday!”

“whatever hyunjin”

“what? no insult back?”

“ah i can’t believe i get to see your ugly face everyday!”

“wow! original!”

“just.. shhh..” 

as you drag your suitcases inside the palace, you’re greeted with another friendly face!

“felix! i feel like i haven’t seen you in ages! please save me from your brother!”

“y/n! it’s good to see you again!”

“felix i saw you like two hours ago”

“but still i missed you!”

badum

what

what was that

that wasn’t

oh boy

you didn’t

sign up for this?

this is literally the last thing 

THE LAST THING YOU EXPECTED TO HAPPEN

but if you ignore it!!! maybe it’ll go away!

that’s the game plan!

“i missed you too felix!”

“now come on!!! i’ll show you to your room!”

awesome 

perfect

wait til yeji hears about this

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・

unfortunately (or fortunately), you could never tell yeji

because for some reason

felix

decided to bring you to brighton?? for a day trip??

this is probably the worst thing to happen because you’re still trying to figure out your feelings

and now you have to spend 

the whole day

with your maybe crush

i mean maybe this is a good thing

maybe you can figure out your feelings

is what you’re telling yourself so you don’t freak tf out

it’s just a day!!!

just!

a!

day!

“Y/N ARE YOU READY”

“YEAH I’M READY”

with that said! you’re on your way to spend your day with felix!

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・

“YEJI!!” you shout as you barge into her room

this is a problem

and you needed it fixed

you CAN’T be having 

feelings?

no thank you!

this was a girls! trip!

living your best lives!

“WHAT NOW Y/N”

“WE HAVE A PROBLEM”

“UNLESS IT’S ABOUT WHAT WE’RE DOING TOMORROW AND WHAT WE’RE EATING I DON’T CARE”

“YOU’RE GONNA WANNA CARE”

“STOP YELLING!!”

“SHUT UP” 

n e ways

yeji can talk some sense into you right?

right?

“so how was your brighton trip with felix?”

“never mind that so we have a problem” you say

“as i heard,,”

“i think..”

“you think...”

“i have a...”

“my god just spit it out”

“HAVE MAY HAVE A ᵗᵉᵉⁿʸ ᵗᶦⁿʸ ᶜʳᵘˢʰ ᵒⁿ ᶠᵉˡᶦˣˀ ”

“YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON FELIX??”

“HEY NOT SO LOUD!!”

“WHAT? SOMEONE HAS A CRUSH ON FELIX?” you hear someone say from behind yeji’s door

oh no

that could only mean

you open the door and reveal 

ah yes

your arch nemesis (for the time being anyway), the devil incarnate (oookay that’s a little harsh)

hwang hyunjin

“oh. great” you say

“oh this is GOLD! this is SO GREAT!” hyunjin exclaims

“how is this great??!!!!?”

“i’ll help you with felix! he deserves a nice gal in his life”

“woah”

“woah what”

“you’re actually being nice?

“i’m always nice you just don’t see it”

“on the contrary-”

“alright you two, let’s dissect this” yeji suggests

“alright hit me” you say

“so why do you like felix?”

“great question! that’s.. a great.. question”

that brighton trip really helped

with you have felix talking about australia and your hometown 

and shopping at the lanes and relaxing at brighton beach

it was a nice trip! it was necessary too! with all the hussle and bussle of london, it was nice to take a chill pill

“i don’t know! he’s nice! and fun to talk to! and have you HEARD his voice! but no seriously! it’s fun to be around him!” 

“are you sure you don’t just like him as a friend?” yeji asks

ah

now that’s a question

that MUST be it

you just like him as a bff

that’s a thing right?

“ah, you must be right yeji, i think that’s it”

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・

after that conversation

hyunjin slipped out

why did..

hearing you say you liked his brother sit with him

so weirdly???

it’s not like

he likes you or anything

he probably just likes 

making fun of you?

that’s it

that has to be it

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・

a/n: sorry if it’s progressing a little slowly! i swear it’ll pick up next part!! we’re just getting into the good stuff! is a triangle brewing? what DOES y/n feel for felix? what does felix feel for y/n? what does hyunjin feel for y/n? ooOOooOoo