#while I scramble to remember all my lore

[salparadiselost]

Some times I read my old writing and I’m like “wow this is crap” sometimes I read my old writing and I’m literally blown away like holy shit how did it do this

[pauli-writes]

warnings: probably not lore accurate, shackling prison

pairing: dan heng x vidyadhara!reader

author’s note: i got the xianzhou on the brain, im sorry if this is bad i just needed to write something to get rid of my writers block :,)

eternity.

a state to which time has no application, timelessness. the concept of eternity was almost unthinkable to short life species such as humans, everything had a beginning and an end for them. but long life species view time differently, for them eternity was a feasible concept, yet equally as unreachable. whenever one thought they had reached it, they’d die or get reborn anew.

you have wished for eternity as long as you could remember, but you knew even if it would claim you, you would be reborn, doomed to repeat this endless cycle for millennia to come with no memories of your previous life.

and so life moves on, and yet you remained unmoving, as the shackling prison of the xianzhou luofu has been your home for the better part of this amber era. every day you looked wishfully at the dark walls of your cell, imagining a life outside of the prison, the life your other self had lived on the luofu.

but not everything was awful.

you had a friend once. his cell was next to yours, you never saw his face, but you could hear his voice, the screams and whimpers he’d let out when he had a nightmare. it wasn’t that unusual in the prison, but to you everyone else’s voices were scrambled and distant, and yet you could hear his so clearly, the anguish with in it, that one day you couldn’t take it anymore and asked him what he was dreaming about in an attempt to satiate your own curiosity.

“what are you always dreaming about?”

there was a prolonged silence followed by the soft rattling of chains. you assumed he was shackled to the wall just like you were.

“i think i’m remembering things from my previous life…” he spoke, but he sounded unsure and shaken up by his nightmare.

you frowned and shook your head, “that’s not possible.”

he didn’t reply after that. the two of you went back to being silent, for weeks you didn’t bother talking further. you were pretty sure he hated you, still eternity was so far away so you decided to try talking again.

“so, what did you do to end up here?”

he didn’t reply again, but you didn’t care, you needed to talk, to distract yourself from your prison, so you just continued. “i don’t really know, but i think my previous self did something bad.“

there was another pause and you believed this conversation to be another dead end until he spoke softly, “i think mine did too.”

your eyes widened as you heard him speak and you felt yourself smiling for the first time in a while. “i’m reader by the way...”

“dan heng.”

you paused for a moment, the name stirring a sense of familiarity inside of you. was it possible that… perhaps, perhaps not. all you knew at that moment that company was a momentary reprieve from this prison. so, you continued occasionally talking to your new friend, commiserating in your shared misery of being chained up for something you don’t really remember doing in the first place.

you were usually the one to initiate the conversations, dan heng wasn’t much of a talker you quickly figured out, but you mostly only spoke to him after you could hear him having a nightmare. but you were surprised as he spoke up first one night.

“do you know something about imbibitor lunae?”

you paused, a feeling of familiarity washing over you from the word, but nothing concrete came to mind. “it sounds familiar, but i don’t remember…”

“i see.” he replied, sounding disappointed. it made you sad that you couldn’t help him out, but you didn’t dwell on it.

“why are you asking me?”

silence filled the air once more, you could hear the chains rattling from his cell. “i… had a dream. i heard your voice. you said those words.”

“you have strange dreams.”

“you don’t?”

you looked to the ground, trying to recall the last time you had a weird dream, or even a dream. but you couldn’t remember, you slept so little that you definitely would have remembered a dream or strange dreams. “no… i don’t dream.”

“then you’re even stranger.”

you thought for a moment, “maybe…”

time continued passing outside of the prison and just as you found a moment of respite and comfort with the fleeting moments between you and your friend, they were ripped away from you in an instant like a cruel cosmic punishment. you didn’t see anything, but you heard the hushed voices, the whispered names and titles as the chains were loosened and the doors opened.

dan heng, dan feng, imbibitor lunae, the high elder of the vidyadhara…

those names meant something to you once upon a time too, maybe they would again…

[gothamite-rambler]

"I'm a poison... I couldn't save them," Nightwing cried, the fear toxin invading his mind.

A/N: Whelp, I cried while writing this… I kind of regret knowing so much lore about Nightwing, but that song from Epic the Musical: The Wisdom Saga really felt right for him, and I got this idea from a TikTok video too. Yeah, it fits perfectly. Love you, Nightwing.

Context: Scarecrow escaped Arkham and released a stronger strain of his fear toxin. In the ensuing scramble of fear affected Gotham citizens and the batfamily trying to ease the insanity, Nightwing's mask is knocked off... and every fear, regret and shred of guilt is unlocked from his buried memories.

Barbara (on comm): Nightwing? Nightwing, can you hear me? What are you whispering?

Nightwing (whispering, slightly louder): All I hear are screams.

Barbara (worried): Nightwing, it’s not real.

Tarantula (in his head): Nightwing, get away from the ledge!

Nightwing stepped into the middle of the road, staring blankly ahead. His hands trembled with fear as he noticed a knife on the ground. In the pandemonium a stray weapon laid on the ground— but to Nightwing it was a visceral reminder of his worst nightmares. He picked it up, not as a weapon, but as a lifeline to his fraying sanity.

Red Hood (standing behind his brother): Nightwing, get out of the road.

Nightwing (voice trembling with fear and guilt): You don’t know what I’ve gone through… You don’t know what I’ve sacrificed…

Red Hood stepped back, confusion etched across his face as he observed Nightwing staring at his shaking hands, stained with phantom blood. His grip on the knife tightened, wavering between the urge to use it and the desperate fight to resist.

Nightwing: Every comrade I once knew… Every friend… I saw them die… And all I hear are screams.

Silence enveloped him, Barbara and Red Hood begging him to break free from the horror unheard. Yet, the only voice haunting him was that of Tarantula’s—it seeped into his mind like poison. She was behind him… she was too close.

Tarantula (in a fake sweet tone): It will be fine, dear. Come back inside, dear. Love of my life, come back to paradise.

Red Hood (who appeared as the Tarantula in Nightwing's confused and frightened mind) took hold of his arm. To him, it was a gesture intended to pull him to safety and offer assistance, but in Nightwing's eyes, it felt like an attempt to hurt him once more. He recoiled, wrenching his arm free and stepping back in fear. All he could see was her—the woman who had exploited him at his most vulnerable.

Nightwing (clutching the knife arm in fear): Please… don’t hurt me.

Red Hood (confused): Hurt you?

What he hears…

Tarantula (Circe lines): Think of your past, and your mistakes. They'll be the last mistakes you'll make.

Tarantula (as Red Hood) stepped closer, but Nightwing could only cling to the knife as his breathing grew heavier.

Nightwing: Please… Tara- Catalina… Stay away from me.

Barbara covered her mouth in shock, her heart aching to be there to help.

Red Hood: Catalina?

The image of Catalina grew clearer before him, her malicious smile reminiscent of that night weighing heavily on him. The pain surged as he brought the knife closer, the blade just inches from his skin.

In reality, Red Hood's heart raced as the truth dawned on him. He remembered the whispered rumors about this woman who had shattered a hero’s life—he never learned the hero's name.

Red Hood: Nightwing… were you…?

Nightwing (clutching the knife): Let me close my eyes.

Tarantula (as Red Hood spoke to Barbara, demanding to know who Catalina was): I know your life’s been hard; I’ll stay inside your heart.

Nightwing (closing his eyes): All I hear are screams…

Tarantula (creeping closer): I love you, my dear. I love our time here. Life would be so much worse—

Red Hood (but all Nightwing hears is Tarantula): Life would be so much worse if you had died.

Nightwing (forcing back tears): Just let me close my eyes.

Red Hood: Please stay away from harm. Stay in my open arms.

Nightwing (trailing off): All I hear are—

His eyes widened as he noticed the knife rising toward his chest. But then he froze in horror as he saw a young Jason standing before him—the brother he failed to save, the one he discovered was gone too late.

Young Jason: This life is amazing when you greet it with open arms.

Another familiar face appeared—Tim Drake at the age of loss, the moment he lost his mother.

Young Tim: How much longer 'til your luck runs out?

Nightwing: I’m sorry…

His mother emerged next, a visible head wound marring her beauty, her smile faltering, hands clasped as if praying.

Mary Grayson: Waiting, waiting, waiting… My baby boy, I’ll be waiting.

Nightwing (the knife trembling in his grip): I’m took too long...

Young Jason: Whatever we face, we’ll be fine if we’re leading from the heart.

Within that torment, a version of Barbara materialized, a gaping gunshot wound in her stomach clawing at his heart.

Young Barbara: How much longer 'til the show goes south?

Nightwing: I can’t go on…

Current Red Hood (trying to remain calm): Nightwing, stop.

Barbara (on the comms, trembling): Nightwing, wake up!

Current Red Hood: Oracle, I got this!

The cacophony of voices began to overlap, engulfing him in chaos as he clutched his hair with one hand, the knife locked tightly in the other. Panic surged within him, his breath coming in quick gasps. Red Hood, witnessing the depth of his brother’s despair, realized the danger—the knife was raised, and his brother was on the verge of self-harm.

Current Red Hood (begging): Nightwing, fight it, please!

All he could hear were screams—cries, death—an agonizing paralysis that made him feel utterly helpless.

Nightwing (resigned): This is the price.

Tarantula (baiting him): We pay to live.

Nightwing (mindlessly): The world does not.

Tarantula (smirking, her voice more demonic): Tend to forgive. Do it… plunge the knife into your chest… for them.

Young Jason (bleeding): No matter the place, we can light up the world. Here’s how to start.

Young Tim (sobbing): How much longer…?

Young Barbara: Until we all fall down?

Mary (bleeding): Waiting, waiting, waiting…

Nightwing raised the knife higher, Red Hood's eyes widening in terror, sensing this was his only chance. He lunged toward his brother, but all Nightwing could perceive was his bleeding younger brother.

Young Jason: Greet the world with open arms, greet the world with open arms.

Nightwing tried to scream, but it came out as a weak whimper, charged with terror as he prepared to cut into his own flesh. Just as he was about to plunge the knife, something seized his arm, intervening in time before the blade could find its target. It was an embrace, but not Tarantula's—real and solid. The haze around him shifted from the ledge to the stark reality.

He wasn’t on that precipice anymore; he was in Gotham, in the heart of the street, the air thick with fear toxin. Red Hood, masked for protection, was the only one holding him.

Nightwing trembled, fear and rage intertwining, the remnants of Scarecrow’s toxin gnawing at his mind.

Nightwing (voice trembling): Poison… I’m poison.

Red Hood (comforting his sobbing brother): You're not poison. You're nothing she told you. It’s okay… bro, I’m here. She isn’t here to hurt you… Nobody will hurt you.

Red Hood tightened his grip as Nightwing slumped forward, sobbing against him.

Nightwing (reflecting on those he lost or failed to save): I couldn’t save them… I couldn’t save them.

Red Hood (his typical jaded tone giving way to desperation): I don’t know if you can hear me, but you did everything you could, and you’re a hero. You’re one of the few people I can genuinely call a true hero. Please, don’t let the toxin take you down.

Nightwing (desperate, convinced he’s all alone): Forgive me… Forgive me…

Red Hood: I forgive you… because you're my brother and I love you.

Nightwing drew a deep breath, feeling a wave of calm wash over him. Though his mind was still shrouded in darkness, the presence holding him anchored him in reality, slowly dispelling the nightmarish visions that threatened to consume him.

[strong-with-the-sarcasm]

Revenant!Jazz ideas:

Continuing from this DPxDC prompt of mine, I’ve had some more thoughts about Jasmine Fenton and Revenants, especially where it concerns DC lore and Jason Todd in particular.

———————-

In my original post, @starlightcat04 asked whether or not Jazz’s eyes would glow toxic green too. I propose that, no, they wouldn’t.

While it’s a common head canon that Ectoplasm is heavily influenced by emotions, Jazz’s Ecto-contamination is bone deep and pure, unlike Jason’s. So no, I don’t believe her eyes would glow green.

They turn from the teal she had in life to a smoldering green that reflects light just like a feline, with a heavily damaged sclera that is perceived as black in low lighting, with ash grey veins spreading from her eye sockets down to her jaw like tears.

Her once bright hair turns from a lively orange-ish red to the color of cooling embers.

That which caused her death, a punctured artery is half-way healed by the time Jazz reanimates in the crematorium, so not only is she supposed to be dead still, she also has to be very careful with her movements otherwise she could very well bleed out again before she is fully healed.

What else changes with Revenant!Jazz?

In exchange for a higher mental processing and the high damage absorption of Revenants, Jazz loses most (almost all) of her memories of her life. What she does remember is thankfully not her death, but rather Danny’s, his death scream and ghostly wail overlap in her mind, at times causing severe headaches and nausea.

(According to his wiki page, Jason spent a year in a coma and as an amnesiac vagrant, therefore it’s not entirely without precedent that Jazz wouldn’t keep hers.)

Her Ecto-contamination has to factor in a lot though.

Jason was revived by Superboy-Prime’s Reality Shattering Punch. Jazz was reanimated by her own willpower, aided by Ecto to allow her body to heal and regress the stages of rigor mortis.

———//:///////———-

What does Jazz need to accomplish as a Revenant?

In the original prompt I wrote that Jazz returned to keep Danny safe- broad enough for a prompt, but what exactly does “safe” for a halfa entail?

Let’s list the major threats to Danny’s health, beginning with the obvious: the Ghost Investigation Ward and The Fenton Parents.

The Fentons are capable of tracking Phantom by his Ecto-signature, creating and having created weaponry specifically designed to target the ghost in question, to which they pass that tech on to the GIW.

If Danny remains in Gotham, the ambient Ecto will scramble the tech over enough of a distance, but if Danny were in a line up of three people right next to a GIW agent he’d be clocked almost immediately.

So, the Fentons and the GIW have to go. How does this happen?

The greatest irony I could possibly inflict on these anti-ghosters- becoming ghosts themselves. I won’t go into detail about what my brain jumped to when I thought about that outcome, but let’s just say it was pretty dark.

(And karmically well-deserved.)

#3 on the list depends on where Danny is when Jazz is finished with numbers 1 & 2 on her list.

If Danny is is Gotham and staying there for the long haul, then I believe this girl would take one look at Batman’s rogue gallery and nope them so hard everyone in Gotham gets the sense of their world about to be rocked, but the ones she gunning for the most?

(Joker, Bane, Manbat, Firefly, Madhatter, Riddler…)

They get the sensation that someone just walked over their non-existent graves.

(I got a little gleeful demented imagining Jazz just straight up ripping Manbat’s wings clean off, burning Firefly alive and throwing a detoxed Bane into a crowd of vengeful Gothamites.)

(Jazz learns that Joker killed a young hero with a crowbar and a bomb. She’s fully onboard with turnabout being fair play when it comes to that Pennywise reject.)

(I can’t even begin to list every rogue Jazz cuts down, it she doesn’t kill all of them, just most of their number.)

(Gotham celebrates for weeks.)

(I’m not sure whether or not Jazz kills the four mentioned previously in a couple of nights, one night or over a a few months, but it doesn’t take as long as one might think.)

/://:///////:::/::::///////

What’s next for Revenant!Jazz?

I’m still writing The Regent series, so I doubt I’ll come back to this for a while, but I’ll still be posting ideas and whatnot about Revenant!Jazz. There’s still plenty to explore here, and I have a pretty angst/bittersweet ending for Jazz in mind I want to talk about later.

If you have any ideas to add, please feel free to comment! If anyone does write this, please let me know so I can read it!

[brilliant-psywurm]

Something I think about with the constant stream of Big New Things (gene sets, breeds and lore, etc.) is that it makes it really hard for the average player to keep up with the slew of content thrown at them? Not to mention the onslaught of bugged genes that get fixed months down the line.

Like. Auraboas just came out recently. Also, sandsurges came out recently. Also, undertides came out a little less recent, but still recently. I still don’t have an undertide despite them coming out however long ago, because I had spent a lot of money trying to gene whatever breed came out before then (and I hate that I can’t remember btw).

There’s so many new breeds coming out that I can’t even remember what and when??

And let’s say I finally decide to get an undertide. Let’s say I liiiiike… Cinder on them. I finally buy the undertide with cinder on it, and I love my little guy! But what if cinder was bugged on undertides, the colours were wrong, and they had to redraw the patterns and gradients? I’ve now just spent all my hard earned treasure on something that’s not what I wanted- and if I hated it? I just wasted my money.

BUT WAIT, WHILE IM SCRAMBLING TO REGAIN TREASURE TO GET A NEW GENE, THEY RELEASE THE LIGHT ANCIENT-

I decide to not get the new ancient when I finally get money, because I’m scared to even gene it because what if every gene is wrong?? Why should I spend my dragon cash if it’s gonna be changed later?

And maybe, by the time I decide to finally get the light ancient, a new breed will come out……

[cmyk-anaglyph-honeycomb]

Hazbin Hotel Episode 3 & 4 Opinions and Story logic (mostly)

(ignore any typos, it's 3 min til midnight and I have a con in the morning and was at one all day, i'm not reading through this)

(Episode 3: Scrambled Eggs)

It’s weird to me that Vaggie wants to get rid of the egg bois cuz like??? Are they not also sinners that need redemption? Don’t they need to be saved too? The problem was that they kept building weapons that Sir Pen told them to make. They just needed something else to do, like idk, act as staff for the hotel. They can build, so maybe they can fix the hotel up a bit more.

I get it was just so one of them could spy for Alastor, but like, just have one follow him randomly. That isn’t out of character considering the eggs don’t have one.

It doesn’t make sense to me that Vaggie is so broken up by not getting the hotel guess to bond with each other. I get that she feel like she’s failing Charlie, but like, Charlie has accomplished literally nothing up at this point.

Yeah, so far there’s only 4 episodes, and the most Charlies done in all of them is get the exterminations moved up to every six mouths and fuck over Angel majorly ( I'm soft-balling that right now).

Like she signs a random paper without reading it, which, like girl, you are the daughter of the devil, there is now way she doesn’t know about the importance of contracts. Not only that it absolute FUCKS OVER everyone in hell. And it’s just brushed off??? Like no?

The exterminations is a big deal to all sinners, no matter the rank. Even if no one else knows what she did, Charlie should be more effected by this. The contract thing should have happened mid season or at the end, with her becoming more frantic to prove that her idea work so she can save sinners. But instead its treated like an oopies and she does trust falls and bond activities as if that’s going to make anyone a better person. Them liking each other doesn’t redeem them of anything.

*episode 3…im talking about that…*

Its my favorite so far. I like Zestail, Carmillia, Velvette and that dino lady are my favorite characters. Genuinely surprised I haven’t heard more about Respectless because it is my favorite song. (But it did come out next of ep 4, so it make sense.)

I hope Carmillia’s daughters are adopted or where her kids in life cuz the idea that the sinners can have kids are stuck in hell like the imps is messed up.

I’m glad Velvette gets development in this episode. I was worried that she’d just be the woman (tm) character of the Vees and be pushed to the side, so I was happy to see her upfront so soon. She’s now my favorite of the three, sorry Vox. I also like that her hair style keeps changing, that’s a nice touch for the fashion oriented one of the Vees.

The hotel gang going to the bondage…idk what to call it..Club felt like a waste of time. It was there for a joke and that’s it. Then Vaggie takes them to a city war zone and throws Pen and Angel off the building while Husk sneaks away.

Admittedly Husk sneaking off was funny to me, but like why would Vaggie think this would make them trust each other. Angel has a mafia background and family. Best bet he’s had to get into a few fights with them, and if I’m remembering lore correctly, he hates most to all of his family but okay.

At this point I’m genuinely curious how this show is going to develop Charlie’s redemption plan, because everything we’ve shown them try has failed and been show to clearly leading to fail. I have a feeling that he show isn’t going to have an ending, its just going to end. Like, nothing regarding the redemption plot line had made a single step forward. There’s just one more of them not, that’s it.

The second song doesn’t feel earned from Vaggie’s side.

Conclusion: This one is the best so far. It being mostly away from the main cast is not a good sign but it’s only number 3.

(Episode 4: Masquerade)

*gestures to that hot fucking mess* I’m not touching most of it. If you’re reading this them you’ve probably seen better points than I can provide. So I’m just going working on the logic within the story.

Personally, I think the visuals are a little too much, and I can understand where it goes way to far for a lot of people. I’d like to note that while Helluva Boss has a working screen on every single episode this has jack shit which was a huge fuck up in my opinion. I don’t care what the shows rating is, adult content and sensitive content are two different things and need to be treated as such.

Any media that handles SA, SH or abuse needs a huge label like those FBI no pirating screens from back in the day. I am not joking.

*shit I toughed it moving back a bit*

Okay, so why did Charlie goes to Angel’s job KNOWING he was in the middle of working. Like she knows he makes porn. The episode starts with the hotel gang watching one and her being visible uncomfortable. Why would she go there? And not like, wait outside or something? (she was uncomfortable at the bondage place why wouldn’t that be any different here?)

Charlie not picking up how upset Angel was that she showed up to his job THE FIRST time is child levels of ignorance. Even without the seriousness of what was really happening, that was infuriating to watch. I get that she’s supposed to have rose tinted glasses but those things are opaque. By this point all of her ‘accomplishments’ have been fucking people over majorly. She is a hindrance to those around her and it is hard to watch.

*skirting around the trash fire a little bit more.*

( I’m not trying to make a joke about this but like, I don’t know how to express how fucking yikes this episode is. Like it’s such an uncomfortable topic and it’s fumbled so hard. And then for Viz to turn around and argue about it on twitter and shit, like come on.)

Husk and Angel arguing doesn’t make sense to me. Husk says doesn’t like Angel cuz he’s fake, ignoring that it’ coping, shouldn’t Husk’s reasoning that Angel makes him uncomfortable. He is clearly shown being bothered by Angel’s aggressive flirty and sex talk. Him being ‘fake’ comes out of nowhere. As does them fighting.

Three minutes in, Angel gets pissed at Husk dismissing his porno. Flirts with him when Husk reveals he knows about the other hotel gangs’ insecurities and secrets. Then gets pissy again when Husk does the same to him. If Angel is short with Husk this episode because of Val, then let that be that, but the back and forth is jarring.

Charlie being the one to go after Angel an comfort him would have been the one good thing she could have done in the show cuz to be honest she as done nothing but ruin things for everyone at this point.

The loser song happening IMMEDIATELY after Angel’s emotional moment is a gut punch. Like WTF. I could not imagine being on the production team, seeing this shit and not saying something. Like there’s not scene cut to Charlie writing those (pointless) letters, her talking to Vaggie about how she messed up, nothing.

Angel has his break down and Husk seconds later is singing about how shit sucks and he’s a loser. Without the context, that’s bad. With the context, it’s horrific.

Husk had/has a gambling addiction. Not to downplay that or invalidate anyone who has/is going through that but it is not the same as SA. Especially as Husk isn’t going through his problems right now while Angel had to go through it…what an hour before, two maybe. For a prolong period of time and has to go back to that.

Husk is talking about his problem in the past tense. Besides the Alastor thing, it’s behind him. Angel’s problem is in the present and future. And that’s not taking into account the guy at the bar who was going to drug him. Who Angel was going to let drug him.

I could not imagine being on the production team, seeing the script for this and not immediately being like, no. This show is making miss Helluva Boss I am not joking.

Positives: The song Poison is good. Just listen to the audio and nothing else and its great. Val’s coat being moth wings was neat to see (especially if you ignore everything that happiness before and after that one still shot). I like Valentino’s design. I’ve no people have a problem with his voice, but personally I don’t mind it.

Conclusion: I have mixed feeling on the aftermath of the episode. Acting like the problem is solved and not addressing it won’t treat the SA plot-line with the seriousness it deserves. On the other hand, I do not want to the show to touch anything like this again. If it just leaves it here, then at least its only the one episode instead of more.

Ignoring Viz’s response to criticism over this, the executives and people with money have likely seen this shit blow up, and if anything, might not be willing to let the show go near something like this again. Which, in my opinion, is the best option. I do not trust this show to do it well, so it might as well not do it at all.

I am going to keep watching, cuz, like Helluva Boss, I want to see how this turns out. I don’t have hope for the show, but I am curious.

Overall, I hope ep 4 will be a good example of what not to do for any media hoping to cover SA in one way or another.

If anyone want to talk with me about the show send me a message and tumblr mobile and social anxiety willing, I'll be able to get back to you.

[cdroloisms]

my lore brain is all scrambled from my unironic 'c!wilbur did nothing wrong' phase and this was something i never got (but now i am seeing the light of c!dreambur), but why do you think dream wanted to revive wilbur in prison? was it just a threat, or did he actually have reason to rely on wilbur? i'm behind on the dreblr analysis of this 😭

this won't be the best answer 😅 but i think it's important to remember that when c!dream was making the decision to revive c!wilbur, he was in a very very desperate place. this was about a month of daily torture because of c!Quackity, a few months of solitary confinement in horrid conditions. the actual decision was made very quickly, and he pivots from at first holding ghostbur hostage to try and get himself some leverage (because well he's very noticeably lacking in any leverage whatsoever in the prison, sam VERY literally owns him) to reviving ghostbur when he realizes that no one's going to budge.

as far as what he was expecting, well. having c!wilbur back, from his pov, was definitely a plus compared to just ghostbur being around. c!wilbur, before he died, was in an active allyship with c!dream. one of c!wilbur's last words is how proud he is of c!dream for carrying out his part of the plan. c!dream quotes c!wilbur multiple times, down to referencing the unfinished symphony, over the course of his actions post-nov 16th to his imprisonment. without many options in a literal torture box, having c!wilbur around as a potential ally was better than nothing. so i'd say that's part of what's the easiest stuff to quantify--c!wilbur was someone that dream worked with, there were never any betrayals on either side after they started working together post-vassal, and c!Dream would've revived c!Wilbur from death--something he reasonably might've expected to earn him favor from c!Wilbur

but of course, there are things that are. worth questioning, about this reliance! why the hell was c!dream expecting c!wilbur specifically to have any success in breaking into a max security prison when this guy has like zero gear to his name and like, even if he DID, no combat skills to actually fight? what abt the ways that c!dream and c!wilbur talk about their dynamic (especially post-revival), and what does it mean for the two of them? why was c!dream listening to c!wilbur in inconsolable differences? and while i have my uh c!dreambur demons (out of the c!dreamburians ik im probably the most c!wilbur negpilled, sorry anon) but i definitely encourage you to consider some of these questions for yourself :] bc believe me these two are WEIRD abt each other

[brooklynisher]

Hey ! I think I've seen you mention details about how Boop and GG met (if I'm wrong I'm so sorry I'm . So tired) ,, could you maybe . Elaborate on that I miss them ....

Aaa

Right, so I don't think I've ever explicitly stated it bc the lore is really stupid, but I did vaguely hint at it multiple times

You remember when I asked you to draw GG in the backrooms?

I'm being serious about that

I don't think you knew, but that request was a lot more self-indulgent than you probably thought it was ;D

I'll give you a little rundown on the lore. It's a little tragic, but not so much from her perspective. Maybe if she gains hyperintelligence it'll weigh down on her more, but not atm. I've been pulling together my thoughts on her so don't be surprised if this is a bit info dumpy ok?

Boopsy Doodle was built in 1923 by Peter Walter III. She was a prototype drawing bot. He worked on her for 2 years before leaving her to figure out the outside world on her own under supervision of course. Unfortunately, he looked away for just a second and she was gone. She was drawn by Delilah, the giraffe, not the wraith, but because her sense of depth perception wasn't quite developed yet, she fell to the bottom of the pit that contained Delilah. Peter and the Walter Workers scrambled to the bottom to search for her, hoping that they could at least retrieve her parts and repair her again, but she was nowhere to be seen. That's part of the reason why III doesn't have any kids. He felt really bad about losing Boop just before she could ever meet the other robots.

She fell into the backrooms and met GG. Don't ask me why GG's there she just is. But yeah. GG was just as egotistical, mischievous, obnoxious, and loud back then as she is now, but after a while, she realizes the Boopsy is the only real person she can talk to in there, so she puts a lot of her pride behind for Boop so that way if they are stuck there forever, GG doesn't have to be alone forever. Much less with someone she hates.

And I've never been a fan of the whole modernization of the backrooms where people added different levels and different monsters to make it "scarier". I think it's creepier at its core. But for the sake of lore, I'm going to incorporate the leveling thingy so that way GG and Boop's whole thing isn't just sitting in an empty room for god knows how long doing nothing. I wanna give them something to do.

So yeah, GG and Boopsy's backroom adventures. Eventually, they escape. It was by accident. They were getting quite used to level hopping in the backrooms so it came as a surprise to them when they finally escaped. But they were separated so that sucks. Still haven't decided what's been going on since they were separated from each other.

Also, thought I'd mention, I like to think of her personality as very similar to Frisk from Undertale. Basically non-existent through words, a little more noticeable through actions. I like to think that like Frisk, Boopsy has a very go-with-the-flow-like attitude. It doesn't matter what kind of world she gets stuck in. She'll go along with it and not question it at all no matter how strange it is. Which I suppose is more of a child-like approach to new situations more than anything else.

She'd make a great videogame silent protagonist whose personality is revealed through actions rather than words is what I'm saying.

But anyway

[color-cacophony]

I was going to make a Big Official Review Post about Rayman in the Phantom Show but I don't really have enough complete thoughts to make something comprehensive and organized, but I still want to share some points from my experience with it so uhhh without further ado, here's a bunch of thoughts on what dazzled me and what I thought could have been done better.

Here I go...

I'll start with the stuff that bugged me first because I don't like to end on a bad note:

I think the biggest issue is that giving the player the option to complete each set in any order diminishes the opportunity to have a linear story. Without a series of events building up to the finale, the actual climax doesn't feel as grand or substantial as it should be (it definitely feels like a few lines were cut from the moments before Phantom's first verse with how abruptly it starts). It would have felt more immersive to see actual scenes of the heroes trying to play their roles and have more varied quests based on puzzles or even characters and dialogue (like the search for Sweetlopek's stolen axe), all whilst gradually putting the pieces together that they were led into a trap.

Speaking of putting the pieces together, it would've paid off to have Beep-0 learn from his own arrogance in the past instead of repeating his assertion that he knew what Phantom was up to all along. That part made me kind of sad because I really like Beep-0 and it seemed like they were setting him up to eventually become less uptight and more open to admitting his mistakes, which would be more satisfying and obvious!

As we all know, Beep-0 isn't the only one who repeated himself. I remember an exchange I had with @randomrabbidramblings about our predictions for what would happen in the climax; they were hoping the final showdown with Phantom would not be redundant with his first encounter, having the same battle gimmick as before. Unfortunately that is, in fact, what they ended up doing. While framing it as Phantom being unoriginal or making a callback helps it a little bit, ultimately it made me feel let down (although I love Beep-0's delivery when he reiterates his line from Kingdom Battle. he means business).

As for the aftermath of the battle, I want to know where Phantom went. There doesn't seem to be any sign of him anywhere in the studio. It's really odd, given how this was supposed to be his grand comeback (alongside Rayman, of course), but we don't get even a simple explanation of what happened to him after he was defeated for the second time, unless I missed something. I presume this is his last major appearance in a game (unless they decide to do something completely different with him in the distant future??? wishful thinking but not ruling it out!), so it's a strangely underwhelming and mysterious send-off to our beloved ghostly diva. I would have been bummed that we didn't get lore paintings for him, but the memory entry summarizing his surprisingly short-lived career actually made me laugh and honestly, the thought of him only releasing one album and becoming so well-known just because he's notoriously a huge jerk and a producer of incredibly terrible films is so in-character for him.

Another choice I found unusual was the lack of any explanation as to how he got his voice back, since it's been established that he screwed it up by overdoing it. Although, they must have dismissed it knowing that not everyone is going to find the mural containing the only source of that detail. His voice could have healed over time anyway, but it just doesn't entirely make sense that they don't acknowledge it at all (I did see @bramble-scramble 's post mentioning a detail @randomrabbidramblings pointed out where a gramophone can be seen in a box in the studio's control room and it is supposedly the one Phantom replaced with a new one when he messed it up, but even if that's true, it's still a bit easy to miss).

I understand that a lot of these issues were due to restraints since it's only a DLC and they could only fit so much in, but that goes to show that this concept is a little too big for a DLC, but not quite big enough for a full game.

Now, for the things I loved...

I must give massive props to the artists and animators for taking reference from multiple Rayman games and essentially making the pinnacle of his goofiness. Rayman was HIGHLY entertaining to see (and listen to, thanks to David Gasman) and very lovable in this! And the way his dynamic with Rabbid Peach and Rabbid Mario changes up until the end where he becomes friends with them and realizes that he can work with the Rabbids now instead of against them it's just 🥺 awgh... It feels cheesy to talk about it but it really does make me happy now that Rayman has a chance to be an equal to the Rabbids and have something resembling a mutual understanding.

I appreciate them bringing back characters from the main game and giving them their own sets. Fittingly enough, it's like a curtain call for the final installment of SoH.

The return of Beep-0's swearing. SERIOUSLY IT'S SUCH A SMALL THING BUT IT DELIGHTED ME

The studio's lobby is gorgeous. Absolutely STUNNING I love all the details and the music notation motifs on everything.

Honestly the rest of this is just going to be me gushing about Phantom hehehe...

First of all, I was completely awestruck at the decision to give him a swing/jazz sequence because I love the aesthetic of the whole sassy big band musical number kind of thing so when I saw that Phantom was going to do that I went INSANE. The animation in the song sequences is absolutely top tier. Phantom is ALL OVER THE PLACE, very charming, very energetic. The swing bit made me realize just how unbelievably coordinated he is. Like when he's zipping and spinning around the stage and it doesn't affect his singing at all? Holy crap. Then, I went even MORE insane when rock/metal Phantom showed up. I would have wanted a verse in that style too, but I get that it was cut because it would mess up the pacing of the battle.

I love Phantom's inability to contain his excitement at the start of the battle, his annoyed lines when you destroy the lights, his smug remarks even when he's taking damage. He's just so- I'm just gonna say it- so freaking cute in this! His line deliveries in general made me fall so hard for him, especially "were you EVER a thing, Rayman?". The way he drops his voice sounds so cool...

Regarding his abilities, I thought they were going to explain why he could turn people to stone in Kingdom Battle, but they simply took that detail away. I don't have a big problem with this, as the Stone Deaf ability could have been part of the Megabug's influence (and it makes him at least a bit less OP lol). I'm also satisfied to finally know that he can indeed phase through things like any other ghost and isn't limited to just teleporting.

His death acting has definitely improved since last time, in that it's silly and makes me smile instead of just making me feel embarrassed lol.

So uummmm yeah that's all the noteworthy stuff I can think of! Overall I thought the DLC was delightful during my playthrough, but after I finished it I felt kind of sad because it just didn't feel "thorough". However, given that Sparks of Hope generally improved on so many aspects from the last game, I'm confident that they'll keep adding and experimenting with more characterizations and scenarios and make something even better if they decide to continue with Mario + Rabbids. And even if they don't, we'll always have the amazing fans to continue the story and put even more wonder into this wild crossed-over universe!

Anyway, thank you for reading through this highly disorganized rant/gush! And while I'm at it, thank you to everybody in the Mario + Rabbids community for making such amazing art and just being here to share our love for the series. That means thank you to @randomrabbidramblings @bramble-scramble @salamifuposey @hostess-of-horror @phandrow @pastelprince18 @critterzone13 @hostdoozy @majorpepperidge and more! You guys are super cool and I appreciate you even though I've never directly interacted with all of you, hehe. I suppose all I have left to say is goodnight, so goodnight/day everyone! Until next time I decide to dump more nonsense onto your dashboard :D

[t4tails]

hi ik ur a bit of a horror aficionado so i was wondering .. have u seen all the saw movies and if so do u think any past 1 are worth viewing or are they cash grabs. i watched the first one on principle and didnt think id like it but i did, tho im not necessarily scrambling to watch the next ones if theyre not as good as the first

im a fake saw fan ive only seen the first 3 and really only remember the first 2 😭 however from my time surrounded by bigger fans of the franchise i will say some general consensus thoughts that may help you decide: while the first is rather tame, the movies do get progressively gorier and earning of the "torture porn" moniker, while the other main thing that gets progressed through the franchise is jigsaw lore - so if youre interested in john kramer, his apprentices, his backstory, etc, and can stand and/or enjoy hardcore gore, the sequels may be your thing!

[sboochi]

I have a few questions about your Big Four Au!

One - What are the guardians doing while Jack is missing, and especially Baby Tooth and Jamie? Is Baby Tooth there accompanying him or is he all alone? Is Pitch making any moves now that he knows Jack is gone and the guardians are all distracted?

Two - How does Queen For a Day play out? Since Jack is the embodiment of winter, him versus Zhan Tiri’s blizzard, maybe instead of the invention, he’s the one to overpower the storm and control it to defeat it? And if so, does that cause him to pass out like when he overused his blue lightning powers on Pitch and that’s what distracts the Big Four from checking in on Varian?

Three - How does Jack get home at the end? Does the combining of the moonstone and Sundrop shooting up into space being him back, like does that huge magic force being him back to his timeline like he’s a shooting star flying along with the celestial powers? And what’s the fate for his friends back in Corona? Do they stay in touch? Do people remember Jack? Is there a chance for them to always be connected or does he lose them forever and they forget about him, or like when the Sundrop flower was picked, is there a monument in honor of him after he vanishes?

Oooo so many questions ty!!

While Jack is gone, the Guardians are probably scrambling to find him, Jamie included. I've always headcanoned that after his defeat, Pitch is much weaker and can't attack them for a good while. Baby Tooth doesn't follow Jack, this is gonna be a solo journey!

Jack arrives in Corona after he follows a trail of black rocks that lead him to a magic portal. I figure something similar might happen in the end: his job there is done and the Moon allows him to go back home.

This is a place and time where magic is more present, that's why people can see him. Dunno if this contradicts canon RotG lore *shrugs*

So when he leaves, people will remember him. The story would leave it vague if Jack and the others will ever see each other again, but if magic portals can just appear, nothing says it can't happen again right??

The Corona people would absolutely make a statue to celebrate The Four, because I'm cheesy like that lol

Queen for a Day headcanons under the cut because I have A Lot to say!

Varian gets his father Quirin to agree to go express their concerns about the black rocks to the royal family

However, when Quirin lies to the king and starts to leave, Rapunzel and friends notice how distressed Varian looks. He tells them that the rocks are becoming a serious problem at the village. They tell him not to worry and Rapunzel promises him that they'll solve the problem together. Eventually. These rocks are hard to figure out guys.

The king and queen leave to go celebrate their anniversary on the mountain retreat

The scene where Rapunzel tries her best to give advice to the Coronians (??) plays like in the show, but here she makes the "oh god I hope I'll be a good ruler like my parents when I actually become queen" to her friends (Eugene still gets his own scene with her at the end like in the show so don't worry)

She asks Merida for advice - "since you're also a princess right?" - but she just shrugs and says she never listens to her mother's ruling lessons and can't help with this. They all look at Hiccup bc they know he's a future chief too, but he says something vague and changes subject (foreshadowing for when it's revealed he's running away from responsibilities)

The blizzard begins, but after the initial fun, it's clear that this is no ordinary storm. Jack tries to make it stop but he fails (he doesn't faint bc he got more powerful after becoming a Guardian)

Varian starts making a potion to destroy the rocks

Rapunzel's parents get stuck on the way to the mountains. When the gang finds out, Rapunzel wants to go find them but the castle staff begs her to stay. Eugene, Lance, the thugs - and Merida! - go instead

Quirin gets trapped in the crystal and Varians runs to Corona to get help

Xavier tells the gang about the legendary machine once used to stop a similar storm. They compromise and start evacuating people from the island to mainland, supervised by Jack, while Rapunzel and Cass get ready to start searching for the machine

Varian arrives and asks for help. With Merida and Jack away, Rapunzel has to decide between searching a possible solution to the storm or going to the village and lose precious time. Hiccup reassures her and agrees to follow Varian, but Varian won't forget this (oof)

You know what happens next: the girls find the machine, the storm stops, the others rescue the king and queen, yadda yadda

Hiccup and Varian fail to free Quirin and Varian swears that he'll get revenge on Rapunzel for abandoning him (Hiccup just. looks around awkwardly. because this is a villain arc in the making right?? uh i probably should leave yikes)

Comfort scene I was talking about before with Rapunzel and Eugene (the cupcake one)

[missingmywing]

So as per usual for me and fics, this will be long. Ryomina is fun and has a lot to play with. (Ao3 link)

Day 1: First Meeting/Childhood Friends

I’m playing fast and loose with canon and the actual lore behind Nyx, because as much as I like FFVII I don’t want to just write Jenova 2.0. So my lore is that she is a being of the collective unconscious like the other “gods” in Persona, she’s just much, much more powerful because death is an inescapable, tangible thing that happens rather than an intangible concept.

Also Erebus isn’t… a thing. I understand and respect what the team was going for with how they did Nyx and Erebus with The Answer, but it makes things more convoluted than necessary for my preferences. Humanity’s despair and wish for death doesn’t need a tangible form - Nyx can sense it directly and her radar lights up red when she’s called for directly (thanks Kandori, thanks Kirijo) and that’s what makes her active. Minato’s seal acts like a buffer or a muffler - an interference so she can’t hear herself being called (unless it’s particularly direct). Because you can’t kill death - and even if you could you shouldn’t because unconditional immortality is a very bad idea- and I’m getting off track. Point is I’m making P3 consistent with the lore of the rest of the series rather than “it was aliens, actually”. P2 subverted that, P3 can’t just turn around and play it straight while hiding it under a mountain of conditional lore.

Also exploring Minato as a freshly traumatized child is a fascinating exercise. Newly nihilistic six year old has not realized he’s nihilistic yet because everyone is still assuming the apathy towards everything is a normal trauma response. He and Death have such an interesting dynamic as they both learn.

FINDING OUT HALFWAY THROUGH THIS THAT IT WAS APPARENTLY RECENTLY CONFIRMED THAT TATSUMI PORT ISLAND IS SUPPOSED TO BE BASICALLY ODAIBA WAS INFURIATING. What do you MEAN Gekkoukan is in Tokyo, no it is not I’ve had the hc that Minato spent his junior high years in Tokyo for YEARS do not do this to me Persona. Anyway, I moved it so that I can keep my hcs the same, it’s still in the same general area it’s just outside of Tokyo Bay rather than inside it now. I was so tempted to keep the long-standing guess the fandom has had and put Tatsumi Island in Kobe you have NO IDEA. Fucking Odaiba man. Maruki says hello Nyx.

~ ᙙᙖ ~

In one world, they wouldn’t have met or known each other until Minato was sixteen. Minato would have been not-so-blissfully ignorant of the truth of the events that happened that night of the explosion. Nothing but vague memories of a bright light and broken cars and fire all around.

But in another, Minato remembered.

Unbuckling his seatbelt to look at the ocean far below, the explosion that threw him out of the car, his mother’s teary pleading for him to live, the collision of a robot and monster on the bridge that threw everything else back, the flashes of a chaotic fight, the guilt and devastation in the robot girl’s eyes as she pressed the blue fire containing the monster to his chest and apologized for turning him into its seal-

That was technically the first time he met Death.

But it wasn’t until a month later that they met properly, face to face, and Minato could acknowledge him directly.

It had been… a rough month. The aftermath of the accident had destroyed and consumed his life - left him thrown about from hospital to police station to a different and more elaborate and creepy hospital where he stayed for nearly two weeks while people in lab coats ran tests and poked at the new giant scar on his chest and men in suits tried to get in contact with a family member they could force to willing to take him, and then he was given to his aunt and uncle who weren’t expecting to suddenly have a child to take care of and were upset and scrambling to adjust. And they weren’t cruel or dismissive but he knew they weren’t happy to have him here suddenly and his aunt was devastated about her sister’s death and their smiles were so fake and he couldn’t even cry which made them uneasy and more upset and-

Minato had heard the words “trauma reaction” and “emotional suppression” more in the past month than his entire short life beforehand and he wished he could understand what that even meant but it felt like everything was a blur and just floating past his head.

He knew there was something wrong with him, though. That had been obvious at his parent’s funeral where he didn’t even feel anything and couldn’t bring himself to react or say anything to the parade of people coming over to talk to him.

The doctors who they kept trying to make him talk to acted like it was normal. His aunt and uncle acted like he was broken. Everyone else acted like he was a ghost.

He was pretty sure the ghost comparison was the one that was closest. He had a monster inside of him now, after all. The same monster who was probably responsible for his parents dying and midnight turning weird.

But maybe he was a little broken too because of it. Because he didn’t hate that monster even knowing all that. He didn’t really even miss his parents even though he’d always loved them so much before. He didn’t… care. About anything.

And he wasn’t scared, on the full moon a month after the accident, when the midnight hour hit and there was a sharp, tearing pain in his chest, and the monster appeared in a blaze of blue fire. It hovered over his bed like the evil creature from every scary bedtime story and stared down at him with its chain and torn brown cloak and a sword in its hand.

It looked evil but it didn’t feel evil. He’d always been good at telling what people around him felt - a gentle soul with an empathetic heart his mother had called him - and the monster felt… empty. Empty like he always felt now. There wasn’t any anger or hate like he’d expected from a monster.

He sat up and looked at it blankly, waiting for it to do something. Try to kill him like it had been trying to kill the robot, maybe. When it didn’t do anything he tilted his head and asked, “What’s your name?”

Might as well know what monster he was supposed to be “sealing”.

The creature stared down at him for a moment of silence, then spoke in a raspy, echoing voice - like two pieces of metal screeching against each other in the undertones. “I am Death.”

“Oh. Okay. I guess that’s why you killed people.” He frowned. “If you’re trapped inside of me then are people going to stop dying then?”

“No,” the monster said. “I embody the concept but I am not its entirety. I am merely the harbinger for she who calls the end.”

“What do you mean? What’s a harbinger?”

“An omen. I am a sign that the end has come - that humanity has forsaken its will to live and wishes for the world to end. I am the call to the goddess of death, Nyx, to bring death to all.”

“But that’s… not true. Most people don’t want to die. You can’t say that humans don’t want to live when most people do,” Minato tilted his head to the side. “I don’t know anyone who really wants to die. It’s usually an accident, or because someone else did it on purpose.”

“My very existence is proof that humanity has succumbed to despair and wishes for death. Your sole experiences are meaningless.”

Minato stared at him for a long moment then shrugged. “You’re wrong, but okay. Are you going to kill me, then? I think the robot girl made it so you can’t leave, that’s why she sealed you inside me.”

Death was silent for a moment, then said “My very essence has been sealed within you, bound and entwined to your soul. Your death would mean an end to my existence as well, vanishing into the Sea of Souls alongside you, unable to accomplish my goal.”

“So… no?”

“No. So long as the seal is intact I am incapable of killing you.”

“Okay, so you can’t leave and you can’t kill me. I’m going to sleep then.” Minato fell back and tugged the covers back up, rolling onto his side so his back was turned to the mon- to Death. “Night.”

The Shadow stared incredulously at him for several long minutes until his breath evened out and it became apparent that he truly was asleep.

It seemed the Anti-Shadow Unit had indeed known what she was doing to best undermine him. He was truly and solidly trapped.

… time would tell how this would play out, he supposed. After all, time came for all in the end and death was the most patient of mistresses. Nyx would wait.

~ ᙙᙖ ~

Minato quickly got used to Death showing up. First once a month on the full moon, then as time went on he began showing up in his dreams, and then speaking into his head while conscious outside the extra midnight hour.

It was almost surprising how quickly Minato got used to him - by the time a year had passed Death had become a normal presence in his life. Not a comforting presence, perhaps, but normal. The Shadow, as Minato now knew he was, still disbelieved Minato when he said that humanity really didn’t seem to be calling to Nyx. He remained adamant that it was simply Minato’s small range of existence that hid the truth.

And maybe that was true - maybe the small city he lived in didn’t show how many people were wish for the end. But if there were actually that many surely he would have met at least a few here.

Death did slowly become more curious about the day to day lives of people as time passed though, asking questions first during meetings in his dreams and then directly in his head once he’d figured out how to break through the seal enough to do so.

Minato probably should have been more worried that he was doing that, but most emotions were muted and distant these days so he just learned to ignored the burn and stinging pain in his chest that indicated Death taking an active interest in something going on. Sometimes it was a history lesson or science assignment, sometimes it was a conversation with a classmate or an overheard argument between adults.

He gained an active presence in Minato’s head just in time for the christmas season, actually, so Minato got very used to tuning out the pain of it very quickly because Death seemed fascinated and bewildered by… just about everything about the holiday. Things Minato had taken for granted were now subject to question and he had to ask about quite a few of them himself.

Granted he and Death both realized pretty quickly that the adults around them were simplifying explanations to make him understand it, because Death asked a lot more complicated and confusing questions about humans and traditions and… something about transferral of religion? Things Minato didn’t understand and couldn’t figure out how to ask about because he wasn’t sure what Death was actually asking.

What did someone dying for everyone else a long time ago have to do with christmas trees?

Once Minato asked Death that question in return the Shadow seemed to realize that Minato didn’t understand a lot about what he was trying to figure out and returned to asking more simplified questions.

Some of them still went over Minato’s head - why did it matter about the weird necklace the student helping at the shrine was wearing? The shrines never decorated for christmas, everyone knew that - but at least he could answer why the teenage boy was sneaking the bracelet he’d bought into his pocket so the girl with him wouldn’t see it.

The true shift in their relationship happened around the year mark of the accident.

Death could still only manifest physically on the full moon, but he did so each month without fail. Perhaps to ensure that he still could. But this time was… different.

Because when he did Minato felt something like satisfaction or triumph flicker through his chest as the Shadow appeared - and the fire vanished to reveal a boy the same age as Minato. He looked similar, but had darker and shorter hair, and his eyes were a bright blue. He was also wearing a striped prisoner outfit like out of a movie, but that was obvious enough why.

He looked down, examining himself, and nodded in satisfaction. “It worked.”

Minato tilted his head at him. “You were trying to turn yourself into a human?”

“I’m still not actually human, I’m merely taking this form. But yes. I thought it might better help me understand humans if I could imitate their form. So I tried to copy yours. It’s not exact, but I suppose that’s the influence of my inherent nature.” He hopped up onto the bed beside Minato. “If nothing else, it should be less disorienting to speak with me during this hour in this form.”

He wasn’t disorienting to talk to in his other form either, but he seemed unusually pleased with himself about this so Minato didn’t see a reason to contradict him. “I won’t have to look up at you anymore, I guess.”

“Exactly. I still know that humanity is calling out for the end, but it is strange how much attachment to life the people around you have in general.” The Shadow turned cocked his head with a thoughtful look. “If I imitate and understand humans, perhaps I can understand why that is.”

Minato really didn’t see what was hard to understand about people generally not wanting to die, but he supposed it was a fault of Death being a Shadow. And, well, Death.

“If you want,” he shrugged. “I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about it, but if it’ll help you understand then I think it’s fine.” Death still hadn’t shown any indication that he was about to break out of the seal, after all, so he couldn’t muster any real worry about it.

Not that he’d probably be able to stop him if he did, but… well, the robot girl had entrusted Death to him when she failed so the least he could do was make the attempt.

~ ᙙᙖ ~

He wasn’t quite sure when he’d crossed the line in the minds of adults around him from “recovering from the accident” to “creepy”. But he began noticing it over time as one year crept towards two towards three and his aunt and uncle - rather than adjusting and becoming comfortable in his presence - went from uncertain to uneasy around him.

At first they’d looked at him like they weren’t sure what to do with him, like he was one wrong word from breaking down crying. But now they looked at him like they thought something was wrong with him - like they didn’t want to figure out what to do with him.

He blamed Death, honestly. The Shadow was rubbing off on him as much as he was on the Shadow.

The whispers behind his back that they thought he wasn’t listening to - unnatural, too quiet, emotionless, never cries, never throws a tantrum, never gets happy or upset, doesn’t have friends, looks right through you - definitely made it sound like there was something wrong with him.

He didn’t really feel wrong. He just didn’t feel strong emotions - was more tired than anything a lot of the time.

But maybe that was the proof that something was wrong, because he remembered feeling more strongly about things, remembered feeling excited or scared or sad or happy so strongly he thought it’d overwhelm him. His parents had gently chastised him more than once about an excessive reaction to something.

So maybe they were right and there was something wrong with him. That “something wrong” just happened to be the personification of Death sealed in his chest, and there was nothing he could do about that.

Not… that he really minded. He liked having Death in his mind, asking questions and making him wonder about the world around him in ways he wouldn’t have otherwise. He liked being able to guess what the people around him were thinking and feeling based on their expressions and body language. And it came in handy on tests when he couldn’t remember the answer to something and Death was willing to remind him.

It just meant that Death stayed his only friend because everyone around him found his presence off-putting and unnerving. Even his teachers didn’t really like him if they spent any time outside of class with him. And his aunt and uncle only became more distant and unnerved as the years passed and he didn’t become more open or how he had been before the accident.

So it wasn’t really a surprise when he turned ten and they told him that he’d be moving in with a cousin. Their excuse was that they were trying for a child, and didn’t want to divide their attention between two children who both needed it so he’d be sent to someone who could continue to devote attention to him.

It would have been a lot more convincing if they had been devoting attention to him rather than avoiding him or becoming very strained when they did interact with him.

Minato… didn’t really care, he’d been expecting it, but there was a keen edge of resentment from Death at both the lie and the disregard.

(There was something else there in the undertones that Minato couldn’t quite read. A bitter, sharp edge of emotion that Death tried to hide from him, and Minato didn’t ask. If Death wanted him to know then he would tell him.)

There had been no expectations on Minato’s behalf on his way to Inagawa in Hyōgo - it was a relatively small town comparatively, fairly rural, and he knew nothing about the cousin taking him in. He wondered how they’d been convinced.

The town was… nice enough. Surrounded by mountainous area, forest on all sides, lakes and rice patties in the distance…

Altogether different than the cities he’d grown up in.

His cousin, as it turned out, was a middle-aged no-nonsense man clearly far more focused on whatever his career was than any sort of familial relationship. Given how quickly the man had gruffly brushed through introductions and a tour of the apartment - relatively small and sparsely decorated, the man clearly spent almost no time here - and essentially told him he was on his own and to stay out of trouble, Minato assumed he’d been promised that Minato was low-effort and he’d be able to effectively ignore him.

Which wasn’t inaccurate so he couldn’t complain too much.

(Death seemed to take it the wrong way and got very annoyed, though, which was almost funny.)

It did mean that he had to learn to cook. He got an allowance, enough to cover any food he needed, but unless he wanted to live off of prepackaged food he did need to learn the basics at least.

… although after his terrible start of burned rice and an uneven omelette the man did at least teach him those basics, so he clearly wasn’t entirely uncaring. Or he just didn’t want to risk a fire.

Death was relieved about that, though he did seem to derive some amusement from Minato’s inept attempts at learning to cook. Not that he was any help. Any number of historical or philosophical questions he’d be more than happy to lecture about, but anything practical and he was useless.

It wasn’t a bad two years. Just as lonely, but not bad. Less side-eyes and unease at least.

His cousin was very rarely home, and when he was he was usually working on either paperwork or a laptop. The man didn’t seem to care about friends or social circles, or at least not enough to invite anyone over, and he and Minato largely ignored each other when they were home at the same time. He didn’t ask about Minato’s grades or social interactions either, which his aunt and uncle had still done, which made it harder to really care about them either.

Minato continued to be off-putting to everyone around him, it seemed, but he still wasn’t sure what exactly he was doing to drive them away and make the kids call him scary and the teachers murmur that he was unnerving. It wasn’t just lack of emotional reactions, he didn’t think, because there were a couple of other kids that were like that and they were called “cool” and “admirable”.

But something about him made people shy away and refuse to meet his eyes.

Maybe it was the same thing that made animals nervous around him.

The same thing that made the other Shadows leave him alone during the midnight hour, even though they would attack anyone else able to move around. That ability didn’t seem to happen here, at least - he never encountered anyone else out the few times he wandered around town in the green light.

Which was more than he could say of the city he had lived in - after the first time he’d been out and encountered both a person and the Shadows around, and his presence had whipped the Shadows into a frenzy and made them more aggressive than usual towards any one else around, he’d avoided going out during that hour.

Death made them more dangerous, and Minato didn’t want to be responsible for anyone dying.

But it wasn’t a problem here, and there was something fascinating about walking around an empty town covered in blood and coffins beneath a green moon. It was eerie.

It made him feel the most alive that he had been since the accident.

Still, it was just one more thing that set him apart from everyone around him and he continued to spend most of his time alone. Often with a book. And while animals were more nervous around him than other people they did warm up to him relatively quickly once assured he wouldn’t hurt them. Once he realized that it wasn’t quite as lonely, and he became a friendly face to several of the strays around.

And Death was always there. He never really left anymore, and the pain of his presence had long since vanished. Minato chose not to think about what that meant for the seal. He was a friend, always at Minato’s side, and the years passed had made his comments about being the harbinger existing only to usher in humanity’s death fade into only the occasional thoughtful consideration about one situation or another. His absolute certainty that humanity at large wished for death had diminished significantly in the face of so much constant drive forward from everyone around Minato. Instead, he seemed to be searching for what humans did want - what it was that drove each one forwards to the future, each person chasing after their own goals in life.

Minato certainly didn’t have the answer, and people didn’t like him enough to be willing to tell him, so they contented themselves watching and listening and speculating.

So the two years he spent in Inagawa were peaceful enough, with various animals and Death (both in his mind and in child form) keeping him company.

~ ᙙᙖ ~

And then that peace was summarily shattered when his cousin announced that he was getting engaged and moving in with his fiancee to Osaka, and Minato would be moving in with another relative, a different cousin, in Tokyo.

When it happened Minato felt nothing more than a twinge of disappointment. He’d hoped to keep this peace for a while longer before his presence became a nuisance again.

Death was significantly more displeased, irritated that Minato’s cousin was displacing him rather than adapting around him, concerned about being sent to Tokyo - and there was that something more to that thought that Minato was sensing from him more and more often these days - and handed off to another relative they knew nothing about, a frustration on Minato’s behalf that they’d long since acknowledged he probably couldn’t feel. But there was nothing they could do about it, so Minato packed his few belongings again and was gone.

Had they known what was waiting for them - had he realized the abrupt downward spiral his life was about to take - perhaps he would have mustered the care to ask to stay.

But they had no way to know.

The first sign that something was… off… was on the way to the address he’d been given. Shinjuku had residential areas, of course - nice ones, even. But the address didn’t lead him to a nice one. It was a ragged, run-down area, with dirty alleyways and narrowed glances sent out covered windows.

The fact that it was just outside Kabukicho didn’t help.

It set him on-edge despite himself, and for the first time in years Death pushed against the seal hard enough for it to burn.

“It’s not the midnight hour, not for a couple more hours,” he thought to the Shadow, watching a group of shady looking men muttering in an alleyway from the corner of his eye. “Even if you broke through the seal you couldn’t manifest.”

“It’s possible that I could,” the Shadow shot back. “We’ve never attempted it.”

“We’ve never seen any Shadows out in the daylight, only during the midnight hour,” Minato pointed out, taking a step to the side as a ragged cat hissed at him from under a dumpster.

“I’m not a normal Shadow.”

Minato didn’t respond.

They didn’t know what would happen if Death broke fully through the seal, but it probably wouldn’t be anything good. So Minato would just have to try and avoid being put into a position where it was necessary.

Easier said than done as he quickly found out. His… aunt? cousin? he wasn’t quite sure and she didn’t clarify so whatever- apparently worked in Kabukicho as supposedly a hostess, and had only agreed to take him in because she was hoping he would be a second source of income. Which, given the kinds of places in this area that would be willing to hire a junior high student, did not bode well for his likelihood for staying out of danger.

Death was irritated on his behalf, but it wasn’t as though they could really do anything about it. Any authority figures would just turn a blind eye - that became apparent the moment he arrived at school and met his homeroom teacher, and then the rest of the teachers were no better - and she hadn’t done anything to him yet so he couldn’t use anything against her.

She’d just made it clear that if he wanted to eat he’d bring home enough money to make it worth feeding him.

So he quietly asked around. Several of the other students in his class also had jobs, though whether it was for a similar reason he didn’t know and didn’t bother asking, so he had a few options. Not many, and none of them particularly appealing, but unless he wanted to either starve to death or learn to steal he’d just have to accept it.

Minato settled on the job that seemed like the least effort and one of the ones less likely to be directly tied to any potential host club scams or yakuza operations.

Washing dishes at the back of a host club wasn’t exactly fun, but it avoided the risk of being caught by any police or getting caught up in any drug trafficking. And the midnight hour meant he could grab an hour long nap in the middle so… it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. His sleep and grades both suffered for it, but no one was expecting him to have good grades anyway and none of the teachers cared to check why it was happening, so… he supposed it was convenient.

It was… fine.

It was fine. It was tolerable, no matter how frustrated Death got, and he could deal with the constant smell of cigarettes and alcohol all around him, could wrinkle his nose and turn away to his book or homework when she came back smelling of alcohol and sex, could tune out the chatter and flirtations from the room over at the club, could ignore the rumbled clothes and bruises peeking out on skin from the hosts and hostesses around the area.

Minato kept his head down, didn’t talk to anyone unless he had to, and no one really approached him. People in Tokyo - or at least this district of it - didn’t seem as bothered by whatever off-putting aura that had always scared everyone else, but they weren’t really inclined to bother with him either. Which suited him just fine.

Months passed easily enough, his cousin (as he eventually did find out) was satisfied for a while with the money that he did bring home and seemed happy enough that he wasn’t going to bother her or get in her way that she didn’t really bug him either unless she wanted one chore or another done while she was out.

She did kick him out a few nights a month to bring men home - though whether they were clients or boyfriends he didn’t know or care - but those were passed studying or doing homework in a cafe nearby that didn’t mind some kids in his situation hanging around all night provided they bought something every now and then. It wasn’t uncommon to see a few others around, sometimes he even studied with a couple of classmates or helped an elementary schooler out with their homework (except one who rebuffed him with a flash of red eyes and a snap that he could handle it himself), but largely he remained in his corner and tried to ignore the rest of the world as Death muttered and complained in his head.

He was equally pouty in his child form on those nights he joined Minato during the midnight hour, perching on the edge of his futon and casting annoyed glances across the room at his cousin on the other futon. Minato rolled his eyes and ignored him, until he flopped backwards and sprawled across Minato in a way that clearly demanded attention and Minato just patted his head and let him keep complaining about the people and world around them.

Minato hadn’t been expecting a christmas gift from her, but she seemed to be in a particularly good mood around that time so he didn’t question it. He supposed she’d caught the eye of a particularly affluent client or something because she suddenly had new clothes and jewelry. Plus decent takeout rather than Big Bang Burger or some other fast food chain.

But on christmas morning she cheerfully handed him a wrapped box with a comment that he’d earned something for his efforts this past year, and when he opened it with a quiet thank you he found an mp3 player and pair of headphones inside. It was the first present he’d gotten in years and quickly turned into the best he’d ever gotten.

It was something to drown out the tedium of the world, to filter out all the static and noise of the world around him into a steady, predictable, stable beat. Whenever it got too much he could simply put the headphones on and turn on the mp3 player and everything would fade away. A lifeline.

A necessary one, because things rapidly got worse after that. The giddiness that had clung to her throughout December began fading rapidly throughout February and into March. She got defensive and quiet, snappish, almost always on her phone, scrolling away as though looking for something. Biting her lip until it nearly bled - an unusual habit for someone so careful with her appearance.

It all came to a head around mid-April, just after the new school year had started, in the afternoon before Minato left for work. He was sitting at the low table, working on homework, when she suddenly made a snarling sound and started a phone call.

He quickly put on his headphones and turned on his music, tuning out whatever angry argument she was picking over the phone. It wasn’t his business, it wasn’t his problem.

It quickly became something near his problem when a bottle shattered against the wall dividing the kitchenette less than a meter away from his head and his gaze snapped up to find her glaring in his direction with eyes blazing and lips pulled into a snarl. Minato froze, unmoving even as Death reared up protectively in his soul and the seal burned beneath the weight of his presence. But a few moments passed of her glaring, chest heaving, before her mouth began moving again as she yelled something and he took note of her glassy eyes and distant gaze and he relaxed as she jerked her gaze away from him to continue shouting. She hadn’t been looking at him or aiming at him, he’d just been in an unfortunate direction. Death reluctantly faded back, but didn’t pull away entirely just yet.

He watched her shake her head desperately and fall to her knees on the floor as tears began streaming down her face and her other hand reached up to clutch at the desk of empty beer bottles she hadn’t gotten around to throwing out yet.

Or just throwing yet, apparently.

With a soft sigh Minato closed his workbook and leaned over to begin picking up the glass shards before one of them stepped on them. The bottle had at least been empty, so they wouldn’t have to deal with stains on the wood floor. The star of Sapporo sat wholly intact, almost mockingly, as he collected the glass in his hand.

By the time he’d finished picking up the glass and throwing it away, it seemed the call had ended and she was staring unseeing at the wall as tears streamed down her face. Minato stared at her for a moment before going back into the kitchen to fill a glass with water and pick up a cloth.

He knelt to set the water down in front of her and held out the cloth.

It took her a few moments to reach for it, but she did. She buried her face in it and sobbed.

Minato shrugged and returned to his spot at the table to continue his homework.

Things did not improve from there.

She became… unstable, switching between listless and desperate in the span of hours. If she was home without a client she was either drunk or drugged, and she either ignored him entirely or demanded he help out more. He quickly became the only one doing chores - if only to avoid being yelled at or risk having something thrown again - and after several months of her unable to bring home as much money as was satisfying to her he became the target of her ire for how little he was also bring back.

Comparatively, anyway.

He ignored it for several months hoping she’d get over whatever rich guy had gotten bored of her and leave him alone again, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t likely. It was only a matter of time before she began making threats again, and at Death’s urging Minato began considering his options.

A second part time job wasn’t particularly feasible given how much time the one he already had was taking. He could avoid being at the apartment as much as possible, but he still had to sleep sometime and the last thing he wanted was for her to decide she needed to hunt him down. He could use the midnight hour to shoplift, but that wouldn’t necessarily satisfy her if she wanted actual yen to use.

Well, he could try to start breaking into registers he supposed, but he didn’t know if he wanted to start dealing with the risks of that. Just because there weren’t people or camera didn’t mean there wouldn’t be evidence and just because Kabukicho had an underbelly didn’t mean it was actually illegal. He didn’t need the police to track him down using dna evidence or something. Besides, he had to set the standard somewhere.

He could take a different risk and get a more lucrative job elsewhere he supposed (Death didn’t like that option). He refused to work at the front-facing side of a club, but one of his classmates had talked about a package sorting job that paid well and was looking for a couple more people.

Minato had avoided it before - like most of his classmates did - because he didn’t really want to deal with drug smuggling. But it was a significantly higher pay, and his classmate had assured him that he’d been working there for three years and it really was just organizing packages into the correct address delivery bins. It really was just an ordinary job.

(So long as he didn’t open anything went unspoken.)

So with a heavy sigh and Death stewing angrily in the back of his soul, Minato followed his classmate to get recommended for the job. He was hired instantly, given a brief tour of the small warehouse, given an overview of how to organize the packages properly, warned not to open any of the packages for any reason, and then pointed at a stack that needed to go out the next morning.

The job wasn’t as bad as they’d both been concerned about. It really did seem like a normal sorting job. And it paid well.

None of which put Death at ease as he hovered almost painfully close to the seal constantly these days. It was getting to the point that Minato could almost feel the seal slowly dissolving as the nigh-painful tingling of it rapidly faded and Death came closer and closer to the forefront of his mind as the weeks passed.

Minato didn’t bother fighting him on it - the Shadow would worry regardless and if he did manage to break through the seal and manifest at least Minato wouldn’t have to deal with a fight himself.

(When had the worry of the consequences of the seal breaking faded? He could barely remember the robot girl who had sealed the Shadow inside him now, even if the guilt and grief in her eyes still haunted his dreams anytime he inhaled a lungful of smoke from somewhere. What did he care about the world? If Death broke free and destroyed it - well it wouldn’t be his problem for long.)

The uptick in money satisfied his cousin for the time being at least, so she went back to mostly ignoring him in favor of whatever poison she’d chosen for the day. He spent more time in the cafe than the apartment just for the smell alone, even when she hadn’t brought someone back.

The world faded more and more into the grey of exhausted numbness from there. An endless routine - get up, silently get ready for school, go to school, try not to sleep through his classes, leave for work, work until the daily quota was filled, go to the cafe to study until the midnight hour, leave once the hour was up and the cafe closed, return to the apartment and sleep, then get up again.

It was easy to lose track of the days when he didn’t talk to anyone and spent most of his time drowning out the world with his music. The date on the board and subjects of the lessons were really the only ties to reality that he had between the monochromatic repetition of everything else. The sudden uptick of pressure in the middle of the year to study hard and improve their grades in order to do well on high school entrance exams and get into a good school was a sudden shock to them all, and it did a little to break things up.

But even that quickly dulled back into routine - it was all just memorizing dates and facts and kanji and equations, and with Death in his head to help he wasn’t likely to do badly even if he didn’t bother trying.

Though even if he got accepted there was no guarantee he’d be able to attend. Given his cousin’s increasingly empty eyes and unstable attitude and inability to maintain her grip on money he highly doubted she’d be willing or able to pay for him to attend. Which was one more thing for Death to become angry over, but Minato didn’t really care much.

Even if he did attend, what then? It was just a continued routine. How likely was it that he’d make it to graduation and find somewhere decent to work?

Really, what was the point of it all?

Not that Death let him get away with that. As Minato had less and less motivation or will to bother even trying with anything, Death pushed harder and harder to make him. Pushing him to study, to do well on tests, to remember to eat lunch or dinner even if he continued to skip breakfast. Nudging him to stop by and try that restaurant, or get that soda from the machine with a weird name.

He was less enthused by Minato’s willingness to accept the can of Asahi beer from some of his classmates during one of their study sessions on the roof, but the taste alone meant that Minato wasn’t in any hurry to try it again. Not to mention the way it made the numb disassociation from the world even worse.

The sensation of a near-complete break from reality didn’t quite scare Minato, but it did unnerve him and the alarm it raised from Death only made it worse. So that wouldn’t be any sort of habit he would fall into.

Unlike some people he had to clean up after.

The high school issue was resolved when he got within the top ten marks in the school and was offered a scholarship to the closest high school. It was not what everyone had meant when they talked about a “good” high school, but anything was better than nothing so with a bit of prodding from Death he accepted.

Not that it really changed anything - other than the location, it was simply exchanging one routine for another and he quickly sank back into the grey numbness.

Nothing really broke through it for a while. He was distantly aware of his cousin getting paler and thinner, the desperation towards something rising, until a bit before summer she stumbled into the apartment and cornered him against the wall.

“I need you to get money,” she said, gripping his arm tightly.

Minato tilted his head, feeling Death rearing up close to the seal warily. “How much?”

“A million yen.”

“A million yen?” Death repeated incredulously.

Minato sent her a blank look. “That’s impossible.” How in the world could she possibly expect him to be able to get that much?

“What?” she asked dangerously, leaning close. “Do you even realize the situation we’re in?!”

“No. You never told me.”

Her face twisted into an expression of such frustration he thought she was about to start screaming. She didn’t, instead snapping, “That damn club is demanding a million yen from me for ‘services rendered’ - which is bullshit they’re a shitty club anyway - but now I have to pay it or my reputation and ability to get clients is ruined!”

That club? Had she- “How does a hostess fall for a host club scam?”

“I did not get scammed!” She shoved him against the wall and spun around to storm towards the desk against the opposite wall. “Just get the money.”

He considered for a moment. “No.”

Everything froze, before she slowly turned to stare at him with a darkness brewing in her eyes. “What?”

Minato stared at her blankly. “No. I told you that’s impossible. You got scammed, deal with it yourself. It’s not my problem.” He wasn’t going to get any homework done here. Picking up his bag, he turned to leave.

“Now wait just a damn minute you brat-”

He turned to look at her as she lunged for him and felt the seal burn, stretched so thin it was on the verge of snapping as Death lunged back with his presence, and she stumbled to a stop as the blood drained from her face. Minato waited for a moment before leaving.

He’d have to hope she wouldn’t retaliate.

Apparently Death had scared her enough in that moment to avoid him entirely, because she would barely even look at him other than the occasional glare if they happened to be home at the same time. So he tuned her out as well, putting his headphones on and ignoring her.

Trying to ignore the fact that she was looking more sick and exhausted by the month. It wasn’t like he could do anything about her irresponsibility - he was already giving her the money he was making, and unless he wanted to get actively involved with the yakuza he wasn’t going magically get a job that payed more.

Maybe if she stopped spending her money on ways to forget the problem she’d be able to deal with the issue. Minato had already caved and started shoplifting food during the midnight hour when she stopped bringing groceries home.

Death was getting more worried and frustrated as time passed, and was curling up next to Minato in human form nearly every night for the midnight hour. Sometimes they talked, but most of the time they just leaned against each other to derive what comfort they could. Death clung to him like he was afraid he was going to disappear, which was funny given that of the two of them Death was the one only tangible for an hour.

Death and the mp3 player were really Minato’s only lifelines by this point.

He probably should have been paying more attention. Should have accounted for human vulnerability and desperation and realized what she would end up turning to. Though he really didn’t know what he could have done about it even if he had known - she wouldn’t have listened to him if he told her not to anyway.

December was cold.

It always was, but it somehow felt colder standing in the back alleys a few blocks from Kabukicho’s streets under a flickering street light with a dozen men from a local street gang staring down Minato and his cousin. That explained why she’d rushed in and grabbed him, told him to come with her and hurry and be quiet.

What had she expected to happen if she ran from her debt after borrowing money?

At least it wasn’t the yakuza, he guessed, but this wasn’t really much better. She was shaking with terror next to him, tears welling in her eyes.

“P-Please-” she stuttered, “Give me a little more time! I’m working on it, I promise, we both are, so-”

“It’s been over six months, the hell much more time do ya need?” The man in front snapped, pulling his jacket back to rest his hand on his gun. “I don’t appreciate games, girlie, we got our own expenses. You said you’d have it paid back by now, and I’m holdin’ ya to your word.”

“I-I’m trying,” she protested, hugging herself. “I swear I am, I thought I’d have it by now but the club across the street keeps bribing people to help them steal our business! I’m doing everything I can, if I can get another couple of months-”

“That’s what you said three months ago!” Another one snarled, pulling out his own gun to aim at them. “We’re not gonna keep buying into the lies of a drug-addicted whore!”

“N-No, please-”

What was Minato supposed to do here? There were a dozen of them with guns, and even with Death straining as hard as he could against the seal - to the point where Minato could barely stand from the pain and was very sure that it was about to shatter completely - there wasn’t anything he could do outside the midnight hour. An aura of death didn’t do much good when the men were both used to death and very much armed.

Could he buy time? Even if he did, there wouldn’t be anywhere for them to run. He didn’t think he could defuse the situation when they were this angry over broken promises. He wasn’t going to make stupid promises he couldn’t keep either.

Minato didn’t really care about dying. If he died here… it was fine. He didn’t care. But Death did, and Death was one of the only things that Minato could bring himself to care about anymore, so he should at least put some effort into not dying. And he didn’t really want her to die either. She wasn’t exactly good, he didn’t really like her and she’d made too many mistakes, but that didn’t mean she deserved to die for it.

Not that deserving it had ever saved anyone.

Minato sighed. “Is killing us really going to solve anything?”

The man in front narrowed his eyes at him. “I don’t like being lied to, brat.”

“Not saying you should. But she is still paying you back, even if it’s not as quickly as she promised.” He shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets. “If you kill us you can’t get any money from us. I’m not defending her, just pointing it out.”

“You offering to take her place?” One of the men in the back sneered.

Minato sent them a flat look. “I’m already giving her all the money I make, so I kind of already have.”

There were snorts and scoffs from several of them and the man in front smirked. “Sounds like you’re not in the right business then, boy. How about I cut you a deal - I’ll get you a job that you can pay us back in no time, and we’ll let you both walk away from this alive. Do a good enough job and we’ll even let you keep the extra.”

Well that wasn’t an obvious hook or anything. It was probably some sort of smuggling, and they needed someone as unsuspicious as possible to the police. He wasn’t really interested in getting dragged into that because people who got involved rarely left, but they didn’t really have many options either.

“Stall them until midnight and we’ll have plenty of options,” Death growled, clawing at the seal. “I hoped I’d be able to break out before then, but it’s more difficult than I anticipated.”

Ah. Killing them during the midnight hour was probably the easiest solution to the problem, yeah. Almost everyone turned into coffins, so letting Death break through the seal and then dealing with them one by one would be simple enough.

So Minato tilted his head at them. “What kind of job? I need details before I promise anything.”

“Do you really have room to negotiate here?” the man asked, pulling his own gun out and flipping the safety. Minato’s cousin gasped, stepping behind him and grabbing his arm.

Minato shrugged. “Not negotiating. Just making sure I can actually keep my promise before I make it.” He flicked a glance down at his mp3 player - ten minutes to midnight. He could keep them talking for ten minutes.

“Well I guess you’re smarter than that girl hiding behind you then. You don’t really get much of a choice in this if you want to live, though.”

That was assuming quite a bit that he cared about living, but whatever. “So? What do you want me to do?”

The man scoffed. “Well you’ve got spine and an attitude, I’ll give you that. It’s simple - we get packages goin’ to and comin’ from all sorts of places around Tokyo. You’ll be our little delivery boy. Nice, simple, and easy, yeah?”

Minato didn’t bother reacting. “Drugs or weapons? That will change how it needs to be handled.”

A nasty grin broke out across his face. “Oho, got ourself a bold one here, huh? Not even a flinch. Keep that attitude and you might do just fine. Bit o’ column A, bit o’ column B. Depends on the day, and our buyer or seller.”

Helpful. “That’s not much to go off of if you want me to start planning how to get them past the police. I didn’t grow up in Tokyo so I’m not as familiar with it’s blind spots as a native would be.” He wasn’t going to look at his mp3 player, he wasn’t going to try to count the minutes passing. Midnight would get here when it got here.

“Heh, I applaud the initiative but we won’t just leave ya flailin’ around blindly. We’ll pair you off with a couple of our other runners to start, let them teach you the ropes. We ain’t heartless, kid, just don’t like bein’ lied to.”

“Not heartless, merely willing to blackmail teenagers into smuggling illegal items for you,” Death hissed. “Be ready, Minato. It’s going to hurt when I break through the seal.”

“It always does. I’ll be fine; I’m used to it,” Minato thought back, watching the gang mutter amongst themselves. “So you say. I suppose if I get caught I’ll be left to fend for myself?”

The man shrugged lightly. “We gotta take care of ourselves first. Consider it motivation not to get caught, yeah?”

He’d figured.

“No. No, not again, not like this.” The smallest whisper came from behind him, and he had a moment of confusion followed by an unexpected bolt of dread as his cousin suddenly straightened with teary eyes and stepped out from behind him.

“Don’t-” he began- but she didn’t listen.

Why? Why did she choose now to grow a conscience?

“Enough! He’s got nothing to do with this - I’ll clear the debt myself, I promise! There’s no reason to drag him into this even more and I won’t let you-!”

A shot rang out. It echoed around the empty alleyway and rang loudly in his ears. Pain burned burned burned more fiercely than it ever had before in his chest and he was frozen, eyes wide as his breath struggled to come. He almost expected to feel blood on his chest, wished that he could feel blood on his chest, but it wasn’t him who’d been shot.

She let out a shuddering little choked gasp, and Minato turned to see her reaching up to clutch at the wound with wide, horrified eyes. He couldn’t- he couldn’t breathe as she staggered and fell- blood pooling around her as the light above them flickered-

-fire flickered and flashed off the metal, shimmering in the pooling blood, and he saw his mother burned and broken as she smiled hopelessly at him and begged him to live as she and his father and his twin sister wouldn’t and- he couldn’t move- couldn’t help- he was completely helpless-

The men jeering and bickering lightly was distant in his ears as the world faded into a distant grey and the pain burned and the world suddenly shuddered and shifted around them as the moon flashed green-

-and the men’s laughter turned into something startled and alarmed but he could barely hear them and he wasn’t listening-

-and a scream of pain suddenly echoed and bounced off the alleyway as the ground rose up to meet him and his knees hit the blood-covered pavement and his chest felt like it tore itself open and another more monstrous scream joined his own and he distant heard the gang’s voices rise as well-

The blood on his chest and staining his shirt was his own from where the seal had been torn open and Death emerged. The blood on his hands and on his knees were hers. Hers where she was lying on her front surrounded by the pool of her own blood, and he struggled to balance as he leaned forward and rolled her over onto her back. She was still just barely breathing, eyes glazed and distant through her tears.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, staring up at the green-tinged moon. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for everything. I’m sorry Minoru-kun, I messed up again. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want this. Please forgive me, please I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to, I wanted to live and go see Paris and New York and London like we promised we would-” she choked and coughed, blood streaking her lips as her hand shakingly reached up. Minato reached out and took it, holding it between his as she struggled to breathe. “Please help me. Please don’t let me die, I have so many more things I want to do.” Tears streaked down her face to mix with the blood. “Please, Minoru-kun I’m not ready to follow you yet…”

Minato just distantly watched her and held her hand as she slowly went still and cold and even the echoing screams of the gang members eventually stopped. Everything felt distant and painful and he couldn’t bring himself to move even once Death returned to his side with bloody swords.

He wondered if he was supposed to cry here. If he was supposed to feel grief and loss the way everyone had said he should for his parents and sister. If he was supposed to feel anything beyond the disconnected exhaustion and pain of the shattered seal.

“What am I supposed to do?” he wondered aloud, staring down at his cousin’s body blankly.

A soft sigh came from above him, and suddenly Death had discarded his swords and knelt down to wrap his arms around Minato. “I think we both know that normal rules do not apply to you.” A pause, and his grip tightened. “I am sorry for that. It is my presence that has stolen pieces of your humanity and suppressed your emotions.”

Well they hadn’t talked about it, but it made sense.

Minato let go of her hand and twisted around to lean against Death. “Maybe. I don’t blame you for it though.”

“… I know. Perhaps it would be easier if you did.”

“I doubt it. I waste enough energy on just staying alive. Hating you or the robot on top of it just sounds exhausting.”

Death let out a noise somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “I would say that I don’t understand you, but I unfortunately do after spending nearly ten years in your soul.”

Minato hummed tiredly, closing his eyes and trying to tune out the pain still stinging his chest and blood still seeping through his shirt. “Whatever consequences it may have,” he said quietly, “I’m glad you did. I wouldn’t have wanted to go through this without you.” His lifeline. One of the two things that kept him sane and grounded in the static haze of this life.

The Shadow let out a shuddering breath and hugged him tighter. “I am glad that my presence has brought you something other than pain, at least.”

“Death, you’ve been my best friend for most of my life now. I’ve been with you longer than I’ve been without you.” He reached up rest a hand on his shoulder. “You should know by now that you’ve given me plenty more than pain.”

Death went still for a long, long moment, and Minato waited for him to process and accept that before responding. When he did, he caught Minato off-guard. “I suppose I can’t deny that. But… Death is not accurate for who I am anymore. For whatever I may have given you, you’ve given me far, far more.” Minato blinked his eyes opened and craned his neck to look up at him. “I am Thanatos - and you have given me so much of yourself, shared so much of your soul with me even beyond the nature of the seal, that I have become a Persona.”

“A Persona?” There was psychology terminology in the back of his mind that he couldn’t quite remember through the exhaustion of the night’s events.

“An aspect or manifestation of your soul. It’s-” he paused, amending, “-likely a bit too complex to explain in your current state. In normal cases a Shadow is the parts of yourself you deny, a Persona is the part of yourself you accept and project unto yourself. I’m a special case, for obvious reasons. Consider me an extension of your soul who wants to protect you, for now.”

“That’s what you’ve been for years,” Minato muttered, closing his eyes again. “So even thought the seal is broken now, you’re staying?”

“Yes. I’m not leaving you alone. I’ll remain at your side for as long as I can.”

“Saying it like that makes it sound like you’ll leave eventually.”

Dea-Thanatos was silent for a moment, and Minato felt his bone chin brush his head. “… eventually I may have no choice, and I’m sorry for that. If I had my way I would remain by your side forever.”

“But?”

“But I have a feeling the events from nine years ago are going to come back and haunt us soon. Death was separated into many parts that were scattered, and I was sealed within you. If those parts are rejoined, Death will come again and usher in Nyx. I will have no choice.”

“We can’t just prevent the pieces from being rejoined?”

“I doubt it. Nyx, even incomplete, is the source of the midnight hour and the Shadows. So long as we exist, so to will they and so too will the Shadows. I suspect things will come to a head very soon.”

“And we’ll be in the center of it,” Minato sighed, tipping his head against him. “Okay. I still want you to stay with me. As long as you can.” He wasn’t sure what his life would be like without Thanatos, but given how much the Shadow had been a constant companion and push forward he doubted it would be better.

“I will. You should sleep - my breaking through the seal exhausted you thoroughly. I’ll keep watch and prevent any Shadows from coming near until the hour is over. From there, though…”

“Someone will see the bodies and call the police,” Minato murmured as he finally began giving in to sleep. “Since I’m injured too I probably won’t get in trouble.” Hopefully. Whatever Thanatos had done to the gang members, it definitely wasn’t something he could be blamed for.

“Then rest - you’ll need it.”

~ ᙙᙖ ~

Minato woke up in the hospital a week later.

It was incredibly disorienting to experience - the neutral tones of the room, the beeping of the monitor, the IV in his arm, the fuzziness in his head - but Death- Thanatos- rose up to press against the back of his mind with a familiar reassuring coolness that helped chase away the worst of the confusion.

As long as he was still here, it was fine.

It took several long minutes of just thinking and reorienting himself to remember what had happened. While he didn’t feel the grief or pain everyone seemed to expect from these things, there was at least a twinge of regret that things had turned out as they had.

But what was done was done - there was nothing he could do about it. No one could change the past. Time moved forward regardless of wishes.

So he move forward with it. When the police questioned him what had happened he was mostly honest - until the events of the midnight hour happened when he feigned confusion. His cousin had been shot by the gang, and yeah he looked like he’d been stabbed but he was pretty sure it had been from behind, and he had no idea what happened to the gang because he’d passed out after being stabbed with a knife.

He was pretty sure the police came to the conclusion that his cousin had been involved with a yakuza or something, but she clearly hadn’t told him anything about her job so he somehow wasn’t held responsible for any of her actions and was simply handed off to his uncle - a high ranking and very wealthy businessman also in Tokyo - although in the Shimbashi district instead of Shinjuku.

Sure. Whatever.

His uncle was… distant, at best. Much like his other cousin had been, the man was busy with his work and wasn’t interested in interacting with him beyond the necessities. That was more than fine with Minato - it was nice to be invisible and self-sufficient without expectation again. He even got an allowance without needing to get a job again. It was a minor relief he hadn’t expected to feel, but it was there.

He still went to the same high school for the final three months but his uncle explained that he’d be leaving for an overseas business trip around March so Minato would be transferring to a different high school with dorms for the next year.

Minato was incredulous for… several reasons. The fact that his uncle was going out of his way to ensure he’d be… safe? successful? not left completely alone? for the year was surprising enough. The fact that it was an incredibly expensive private high school was even more so.

At least until he was told the name.

Iwatodai High School, on Tatsumi Port Island just outside Tokyo Bay.

It sent Thanatos on immediate high alert, and Minato understood a few moments later. The Moonlight Bridge leading to the island was where his parents had died and Death had been sealed inside him.

The the island itself was where everything began.

Thanatos had been right - the events of nine, nearly ten, years past were coming back to haunt them.

He didn’t show any of the realizations on his face, but he had a feeling that this wasn’t a coincidence. The man gained custody of him and immediately went on a business trip oversees and sent him to the island where this had all begun nearly ten years ago?

Especially now that Thanatos had broken through the seal.

His uncle may not know anything about what had happened, but someone did and this was no coincidence.

And so, come April, Minato left Tokyo proper and got on the train heading to Tatsumi Port Island for the year. Even with his headphones on and music blaring in his ears it couldn’t quite drown out the world around him this time. The buzzing beneath his skin from Thanatos was agitating, stirring up his own feelings of apprehension.

Whatever was waiting for them - scientists and laboratories and Shadows and Personas and at the end of it all the personification of death itself, and maybe, just maybe, a robot girl who had looked at him with such sorrow ten years past - most of it probably wouldn’t be good.

He probably wouldn’t even survive it.

But at the very least, he thought as he stepped from the station and into the coffin-strewn street to the dorms, he wouldn’t be alone through it. Thanatos would stay with him.

Although getting to the dorms and finding him smiling cheerfully behind the check-in desk with a quip that he was here awfully late made him suspect that the Shadow- Persona, would likely be stepping up his obnoxiousness and pushiness towards socializing and trying things.

… the contract was unexpected, but Thanatos likely had his reasons - even if he was pointedly keeping them to himself for the moment - so Minato just sighed and signed the book. As he handed it over he asked, “Are you planning to tell me what that’s about?”

Thanatos just smiled enigmatically at him, folding the contract close to his chest as though it was something precious. “All in due time, my dear Minato. All questions will be answered and all secrets revealed soon enough.” He closed his eyes thoughtfully for a moment. “No one can escape time. It delivers all equally to the same end.” He focused back on Minato and the fold vanished with a twist of his wrist. “You can’t plug your ears or cover your eyes to escape.”

The lights of the dorm began fading around them, shadows creeping up the walls and across the floor, and Thanatos smiled and reached out to Minato as they wrapped around him.

“And so it begins.”

And then he was gone, returning back to Minato’s soul with something mischievous about him that Minato didn’t feel like figuring out, and Minato was left standing along in the dark entranceway.

No one could escape the end. He’d known that.

They both knew that whatever happened in this place, during this year, would be an ending of sorts. It was just a matter of what kind of end. He placed a hand on his chest, where the scar from the seal still lay. But whatever it was - they couldn’t escape it. They knew that.

So they would just have to take what happened as it was, no matter what it brought.

He was at the beginning of the end.

“Who’s there?!”

~ ᙙᙖ ~

This was fun! It was also twice as long as it was supposed to be, but such is my curse with writing these days. The Ryomina was more implied than explicitly stated, admittedly, but I got caught up in the childhood friends part of it.

Also blink and you miss it Akechi cameo lol

[thekingofwinterblog]

Thoughts on those "the downfall of One Piece" videos by that Drizzt guy? He seems to really like Brandon Sanderson, and with you quiting the same author, I thought it may be interesting to contrast views that seem to be so different in regards to the quality of post time skip One Piece

I watched drizzt's take once yeah... Im not doing it again, so i'll try to give my thoughts on his from parts i distinctly remember.

Well to start off with, my opinion on One Piece isn't entierly positive. I too regard it as a series well past it's prime and highpoint... I just dont regard what came after that highpoint as bad(with exception of one arc). It's a series that is good, but is dragged down by the fact that no matter hoe much it tries, it can never recapture the glorious highpoint that was water 7/enies lobby.

By contrast Drizzt regards One Piece post timeskip more in the vein of Naruto. A series with a very clear, and obvious point where it fell off a cliff, broke it's back, and had to crawl across rocky, muddy, marshy terrain towards the finishline.

So lets start with the shit i kinda agree with him. The Strawhat's dreams are for the most part the most underutilized part of one piece by a wide margin.

Ironicqlly, the two dreams i completely disagree woth being used badly are the ones he bitched the most about, namely Luffy and Zoro. Luffy and Zoro's dreams are different than the rest, in that they don't actually have to achieve anything in between. Beat mihawk, and find One Piece. That's it.

The fact that they just travel on their journey, getting stronger along the way is not really a problem.

He compares luffy negatively to luffy, but the reality is that both of them came into the political climate under very different circumstances.

Roger had to actually do it, he was the trailblazer, the one who proved that it could be done... Evsryone else that followed him, luffy included, all had to repeat his feats to reacht he top. It was from the scramble for that goal that the Yonko system came to be, with 4 pirate superpowers who simply did it better than all the rest... but none of them had the power to sweep the rest away.

And its into this system that luffy came in, and in the end toppled, setting the stage for the endgame.

Otger than luffy and zoro though, none of the crews dreams are used in a particularily good way.

Nami wants to map all the world... We never really see any focus on her map making, and later learn there are over 10 million islands on this planet... Good luck with that.

Sanji wants to find the All Blue... I genuinely dont think it's even been mentioned in any real capacity since all blue.

Usopp wants to be a brave warrior of the sea and meet his dad again... Wrll while the latter seems likely to happen very soon, if usopp hasnt done it by now, he will probably remain a man ruled by fear for the rest of his life.

Chopper wants to create cures to any disease in the world... Sorta used in an interesting way by contrasting him with caesar and Queen... But notice he didnt actually go on to fight and defeat either of them.

Robins dream is at least in the same way as Luffy's and zoro's in that there is a logical endpoint, but unlike theirs we really could have gotten way more insights into the past before through poneglyphs discovered in the story, rather than all the lore being dropped all at once. Oda really was way too focused on the ancienct weapons to realise that the poneglyphs could have been used to give us haunting snippets of character momenys, and pictures of lore from a dying age, that brought about the world government, that would all have fit together at the end.

To illustrate this point, we dont actually know the tone or the content of Joy's apology to the Mermaid princess.

Was it a harrowing apology for his own weakness? A nochelant eh, sorry things didnt work out? A We sure gave it our all huh... And yet it didnt change anything.

The fact is, we dont know. And that illustrates what a missed opportunity the poneglyphs actually were. There was so much room to use them beyond info on the ancienct weapons.

Franky's dream is also a missed opportunity, because we are never really given focus or attention on him fixing the ship or upgrading it.

Brooks is bizarre, because he could have achieved his dream at any point during the timeskip, and just... didnt.

And finally i dont remember what Jinbe's dream actually is... Which is a bad sign in its own way.

As for his other conplaints... I don't actually recall them much. It's been a while.

My own thoughts on one Piece post timeskip is that the problems boil down to a number of key issues.

1. Way too many new characters in each arc.

2. The age old One piece problem of Oda almost never killing characters no matter what means almost nobody gets to exit this story on a highnote, and when Characters do die, it usually feels more like an afterthought, rather than a defining moment(Pretty much everyone of luffy's allies who died in wano feels like this). Combine with point 1, and you get stupidly large casts that almost never get trimmed down, meaning every single arc is full of characters who almost always devolve into greek choruses in some form by the end.

3. One piece has completely changed it's fight structures, so fights where we get to see the action from beginning to end are much rarer, rather than the norm. There is a reason most of the strawhats post timeskip only has 1 or 2 good fights each under their belt(if that), when before every single one of them(except brook) had plenty of vool fights and moments. The new structure where we usually only get to see snippets of fights rather than the entire thing mrans oda can put in way more stuff alongside them, but it also means the fights themselves are usually lackluster.

4. several characters have become worse in one or several ways, and the narrative doesnt really avknowledge this. The biggest, by far, is Sanji, who not only is a worse character in every regard, but every single genuine development he got is undermined and undone. He gets a girl who genuinely loves him in the form of pudding. He hits a woman because of the german upgrqdes and decides to abandon them completely, only for his powers to sorta still be there maybe, but in the end he didnt actually hit the girl, it was an invisible queen. I cpuld go on, but oda had some many chances to shake up Sanji's character after the timeakip, and he backtracked on all of them.

5. Haki got fucking insane in wano. Oda made a gigantic mistake early in wano's arc, where Kaido took out Luffy in one blow. It was a cool moment, but it also meant that haki's ability to let fighters stay on their feet and recover from total beatdowns in record time had to baloon to insane degrees. And lo and behold, that is exactly what happened. Which sucks even more, because the qctual explanation about how luffy had to improve to reqch thw kind of offensive that roger, whitebeard, big mom kaido and shanks have and had was actually pretty cool and set up way before this. But unfortunately that's also introduced in the arc where luffy gets up again and again after kaido beat him unconcious, with no other explanation than Haki baby! It sucks any tension out of any fight when you know haki can allow people to just get back on their feet no matter how gravely theyre wounded.

6. Gear five having no actual foreshadowing/being a zoan.

Oda wrote himself into a corner with the biggest reveal one piece ever had... And there was only 2 ways to handle it to make it truly work.

Either go all in on foreshadowing this shit, and have characters point out that luffy losing his rubber body against sea stone when he doesnt when underwater is kinda wierd(which makes sense for a zoan, but not a always transformed parmecia), and judt highlight that there is a mystery here... So that when the reveal comes it all falls into place.

Or, and this is the solution i would have gone with, have luffy awaken and have all the powers of Nika luffy, just withouth a transformation. Id have accepted the cartoon logic becoming part of the world around him as the awakened powers of a rubber devil fruit no problem... It was adding in, oh he's actually a myyhical zoan devil fruit intrical to the world's history where oda lost me.

There are other flaws too, but these are the main repeating ones, you'll find all over the story after impel down.

Overall though, O would say One piece is a good story that suceeds in spite of its flaws... But those flaws very much means that it isnt a perfect story, and after the timeskip, it has never come close to reaching the high watermark again, and thats very the big problem. When you have reached the top, there is nowhere to go but down.

Arguably one piece biggest achievement post timeskip is arguably the fact that in spite of this, it has only had one bad arc, with the rest being good, to great if never outstanding.

The only bad arc of course being dressrosa. I could make an entire retrospective about all the ways that one dropped the ball.

[comraderomeo]

Where Skin Ends Ch. 1

Updated Every Other Thursday (hopefully)

Foreword:

Hello and welcome. This is the first piece of fiction I'm posting anywhere public since grade school, and I'm pretty excited and nervous about it. It's about a lot of things, many unsettling and esoteric, and is set in the BattleTech universe. However, I'm trying to not get too overbearing on the lore, for everyone's sake (including my own). Also, fair warning: these characters are stolen from my other, more central projects, so don't be surprised if they show up in a completely different setting. All in all, thank you for having a look!

links: ao3 masterpost

cw: alcohol abuse, vague mental illness, vomit mention

"I had just one quick glimpse out the porthole, to see the frosted dot in the distance becoming slowly massive, before the alarm went off. Sirens and red lights flashing all around put me and my lance into a run toward the 'mech bay. We stripped to reveal our um... coolant vests, and scrambled up the ladders into the cockpits of our veritable killing machines. The 'techs sped through the startup checks and then my Hatchetman, Jester, came alive. I felt Her warming me in livid spite of my wellbeing. Then, the commander came in over the comms, 'get those asses in gear, Alpha Lance! We've got Marik ‘mechs at the drop zone, so break a leg!' Jester spun around in her bay, and the world went silent."

You spent two months running patrols on some planetoid so devoid of life it couldn't even be considered backwater. Though, the mining company operating there was scared to shit of the inter-House war that had just broken out, even when it had just been rumors and speculation, so it was good money that got better daily. The patrols were so desolate. You only had the massive snow drifts and whoever was on comms to keep you company the whole time. Being so alone was perfect.

"The bottom of the bay dropped out and sent me into the fray. I came in right on top of an Atlas (you know what that is right?), and embedded my axe directly in his cockpit. Those fuckers are tough though, so it threw me off, and I got a torso-full of lasers at close range. It wasn't enough to take me down, though, and I got another chop in with a blast from my own weapons. That's when the rest of my lance got a good shot, and the ‘mech was lost in a barrage of shells and missiles and lasers. But, shrouded in the smoke coming off his melting armor, he kept coming. I used my other arm to get up close and push the weapons in his torso off angle, pulling the Atlas into a grapple. That sent his autocannon shots wildly off, but his missiles still got a bad hit on one of my lancemates. I knew at that point it was do or die, so I shoved my torso cannon right up against his viewport, and boom!!"

House Marik had arrived in just one dropship and launched an assault on the mining complex. It must’ve been producing something important, because they sent a lot of firepower at you. You had been out on patrol at the time they first popped up on sensors, and while the rest of the crew scrambled, you made the right choice to beat a hasty retreat. The truth is, you never stood a chance. In the following skirmish, it took all the skill your lance could muster and losing your hatchet arm to take down a single assault ‘mech, and the engagement had just let the other enemies slip by and annihilate the target. You probably could have taken at least two more, but not without losses.

"The blast almost tore my arm clean off, but the Atlas went tumbling into the ground, quiet as the void. Then, we turned our sights to 'mech two, a slightly smaller one that was trying to flank us. It was a bitch to hit, but we adapted-"

You ran and left them to burn. Another city to ashes.

"Mat! What the hell are you on about!?"

Your surroundings come flooding back into focus. You're at a bar somewhere you can't quite remember right now. How many drinks has it been? Last count says two, but that's beyond doubtful now, making your ability to rattle off that story coherently a feat in itself. There's a woman opposite you at the table. She's picking at a scratch in the finish and is almost certainly checked out of the conversation. You're sure there was a reason you were telling her about this encounter, and that it's extremely important that you make it impressive. However, the lack of oxygen in your brain had lost that reason paragraphs ago. Ashe, the lancemate who interrupted your flow, is certainly less far gone than you and looks bemused. She continues, "If you're going to be spinning tall tales about our exploits, at least make them believable. Who the hell’s going to think you actually chopped an Atlas in half like death from above?"

You feel the heat of embarrassment overtake that of inebriation. She could have just stayed quiet, because you have a good ending planned out and everything. What's her problem anyway? She has enough friends to go bother in the company, and her boyfriend is like right over there… somewhere. The woman across from you, who you'd neglected to get the name of like a prick, looks up with a bit of surprise and chimes in, "Oh! Sorry, I was listening, promise. It's a nice story and all. I mean, nothing like what it's actually like on the front, from what I know, but it would make a good story for one of those pulpy war novels or something."

This makes you indignant. You huff and say something stupid, "And, how would you know?"

She smiles back at you, barely wounded, and replies in practiced rhythm, "Corporal Hannelore Geelen, 57th Lyran Armored. A pleasure to meet you, MechWarrior."

Ashe laughs her head off in the background, while you- Wait are you crying? Why are you crying!? Ashe and Hannelore both look at you in different flavors of mortification. You didn’t even do anything that bad, but now you're saying sorry over and over again, while insisting you were a complete asshole. Be thankful your spontaneous bout of sorrow is quiet enough to avoid the attention of the whole damned bar. Some fear of predatoriness has clearly flitted into your mind and been amplified by alcohol, since you keep apologizing for being a dick, and a bastard, and a whore and really any bad word you can think of, without a care for relevance. The pair of voices in the background started to sound like a chorus,

"Hey hey, it's ok. The story wasn't that bad."

"Mat, what the fuck? Are you ok?"

Et cetera.

Et cetera.

Then, after some quick consideration, Ashe says something akin to "fuck it" under her breath and scoops you up into a fireman's carry to whisk you out of the public eye. That's quite the blow to the barely smoldering embers of your self esteem, and as if to spite you a fifteenth time over, the corporal you had accidentally been trying to have sex with gets up and follows along with you. A brief conversation occurs in the twilight of your perception. It's just mumbling to you really.

"I'm very sorry for this, Corporal. I can take care of them from here."

"It's no problem. I was bored anyway. Plus, I'm sure they'll be better company sober."

You pass out after that, which is likely for the best.

The air flees your lungs, as if they were cursed. You cough and writhe on the grassy hill you had been dropped upon not too softly.

“…and you didn’t have to drop them.”

“Didn’t mean to, but they’ll live.”

They’re talking about you, probably. You still feel the embarrassment lingering from the bar, but there that anger, still present and bubbling to the top. Being manhandled out of a public breakdown is a disgrace, but despite your clouded take on things, it’s clearly your fault to begin with. The figures towering over you are out of focus and haloed in blinding artificial light. Your brain cobbles together a pretty, angelic simile, which just makes you more angry. 

“Are they always like this?”

“Only in port, usually. They're a normal amount of feckless in a ‘mech.”

A mumbling starts to burble out from your lips, growing louder as you focus control into your fricatives and plosives and whatnot. It gets to a point where one of the angels stops mid-sentence to address you, “Care to share with the class, Mat?”

You think very hard about the words you want to say next. They have to be finely crafted and powerful enough to win you a quiet evening to recover from whatever this was. You take a deep breath, steel your gaze, open your mouth and rasp just barely audibly, “Fuck you. I am prestige. I outrank everyone here.”

Why do you keep claiming honor that's not yours? It's insulting.

The blindingly bright angel snickers, and its duller yet equally holy counterpart cocks its head in curiosity. 

“Is that true, Ashe? I took you for lance commander.”

“Maybe it was, but sure as fuck hasn't been for a while now.”

“Really? How's that?”

“Well, back in the Third Succession War…”

You feel their insolence radiating into you. It's unthinkable that you, the champion but inches away from nobility, the company commander with so many medals you jangled like a children's toy, the only mechwarrior with more than half a brain cell in this whole system, could be so debased. But, who are you to argue with heaven? Because, despite their angelicness being only a ruse, they can see you for what you really are in this moment.

“Wait a second, do you know if they've been drinking anything other than shots?”

“Wouldn't know. I was doing my best to avoid babysitting this time.”

“I see. But, in that case, I'll be back in a second.”

Once the other had left earshot, the remaining harbinger turns to you and speaks, “I swear to fuck, Mat. You're lucky she's nice. Otherwise, I would've dropped you in a drainage ditch and called you in M.I.A. Between the shit you and Ed pull, they wouldn't even question it.”

You say sorry.

“I don't really care about apologies. We have drills tomorrow, and you better be on point or I’ll make you as armless as your damned ‘mech.”

You say sorry again.

“I don't know what your problem is, but you really have to start thinking about how you're not the only one with them. I try to help, but I'm reaching my limit. We all are.”

You say sorry again. And, again, and again, and again, and again. You're curled into a ball now, trying to block out as much sensation as you can. A fleeting thought hits you, letting you know you'd make a good physics test question right now. It was kind of funny, but you find the idea insulting. You ask yourself where you're going from here, as if you could even stand in your state. You wonder what catastrophe will play out tomorrow, assuming tomorrow ever comes. You ponder if the ground could just swallow you here and now. A hand lightly taps you on the shoulder.

“Hey, Mat right? I got you some water. I suggest you drink now, before you regret it later.”

She set a bag of water next to you with a crinkle. It's probably one of the three litre ones they have in the stores here, the ones with the scenic river on the label. You should be thankful for this. You agree and say thank you as audibly as you can. She probably hears you. You take the water as an opportunity to distract yourself from the noise of thinking for a second and take a series of greedy sips from the plastic pouring tip. 

“Hey. Hey! Slow down! I'm not helping you back to housing if you piss yourself.”

You comply, and that's probably for the best because in your haste, you upset your stomach. You vomit about a third of the bag of water and a year’s worth of alcohol onto the grass. God knows how you were able to hold it back until now. 

“Eugh…”

“They haven't eaten, looks like.”

“Corporal, with all due respect, gross.”

Hannelore shrugs. You don't remember not eating, but you don't remember eating either. That's probably not a good sign. You try to push yourself up off the ground, so you don't have to sit next to the mess you made anymore. You do a decent job of putting your feet on the ground. The balance is harder, and you start to careen just as Ashe catches you by the shoulder.

“Alright, Sergeant [that’s you], that's enough embarrassing yourself for one night. I think it's time to get you home.”

“That's probably best for the both of you. It's a big day tomorrow.”

“Seems like it. I'll see you then, Corporal.”

“Stay safe, you two.”

You take a second to process the detail left so casually in that farewell. When you finally get it, you look at Ashe with a panic and say, “Wait, what!?” She laughs back at you and just says, “Tomorrow's going to be a weird one for you, that's a given.”

You think of all the different ways to get out of drills tomorrow. There's plenty, many of which involve some fairly unnecessary self mutilation, but you won't act on any of them. It's clear the thought of being in your warm bed all alone is too tantalizing to be interrupted by even the strongest self hatred. Outside your head, the walk home is quiet. Ashe seems to soften toward you along the way, but probably from fatigue over anything else. She leaves you alone, and you just try your best to focus on the path ahead of you.

Before you know it, you're back in your dormitory room, double locking your door behind you. You hold a heavy debate over whether you can handle a shower, but something distracts you, another stray thought. This is a bad idea, but you won’t be dissuaded. Now, you’re digging through your duffle that had been tossed into a corner and lived out of for the past couple days. Toward the bottom, there's a slightly crumpled piece of photo paper. You almost instantly notice a few creases that had appeared since the last time you saw it. That hurts you. It reminds you that this fragile memory will be gone one day. You cry again. It's ok to this time; it won't hurt anyone. I silently accompany you because, despite the fact I never held a name that wasn't yours, it’s impossible to not miss how I looked in those royal guard dress whites. It was commissioning day. She was there too, looking happy for the both of us, but like me, She also lost her name somewhere down the line. I feel bad now. I wish I could apologize for being judgemental and cruel, but you didn't hear me say it at first so can't hear me repent. I wish I could hold you and you me, so we could mourn together and maybe you would hear me say, “it's ok.” Then, things might get better, even slightly. However, that's not possible, so you suffer drunk and alone. I’m sorry. 

Thankfully, sleep catches you at some point, despite you being fully dressed and leaving your lamp on. I hope beyond hope that you have a better day tomorrow.

[vancilocs]

i think i have enough ideas for another lore dump (details subject to change obvi)

so. third kingdom. kinda turmoilic

about 30 years or so ago there was this violent thronestealing plot that happened. there was king, and queen, and the heir to the throne and probably some younger siblings, but in one night some usurper cousin or a more distant relative snuck in and slayed pretty much everyone; except the heir managed to escape with like a handful of servants (and her own porcelain bodyguard). she was like 13-14 at this point. also trans, but not out yet, except to her bodyguard. this is relevant.

(she had a bit of a teenage crush on him, not in any real way, more like youre really cool and nice and oh no puberty got my brain scrambled)

but the escape was really narrow and while trying to get out the servants got picked off and the bodyguard held his own final stand and stayed behind to let the heir escape. so she had to run off all by her lonesome.......

she wandered the countryside for a bit to get as far away as she could and through some avenues she ended up in contact with Skullface whos?? a general nogooder??? has a skull for a face??? (and she/he pronouns. whats her agab? its a secret) who promised that hed help her take the throne back and take revenge on her relatives, if shed in turn make him an advisor/give her another high rank in her court. she agreed bc why not, she was a tormented teenager who wanted revenge in any way

thus began the training. it was p easy to hide away bc the new monarchs goons were looking for a prince, the eejits, so she just went by the name she had already picked for herself (also skullface shaved off the horn over her eye/covered the mark and her dragon eye with bandages to further hide her identity. shes a poor injured girl leave her alone. dyed her red hair probably too, it was quite distinctive) and began training sword and magic both

maybe a decade passes and skullface has molded her into a right meanie, while also working on his own to collect willing people to help her overtake the castle. the new monarch wasnt very liked overall.

(now skullfaces original plan was to basically use her and groom her into being his puppet on the throne BUT he grew to genuinely care for her and now truly wishes the best for her and only wants to be by her side to help. not quite a surrogate parent, more like your parents cool sibling? theyre partners in crime)

so they storm the castle one night. princess stabs people and skullface blasts them with magic (first_4_notes_of_megalovania.mp3) and the peasants and knights theyve rallied help also. princess stabs her cousin/whatever to death and retakes the throne. yahoo

and in the basement they find her porcelain bodyguard. hes basically been there for 10 years (since he was 14 or so) for the castles new occupants to torment - basically chained him down there and gave him a sword and people would go fight him for fun. mans turned semiferal atp. but when princess shows up he recognizes her, knows her real name bc she told him all those years ago, and he does an argos from the odyssey and dies in her arms immediately after.

shes inconsolable obviously, that was the Only Thing remaining of her past happy life, her family is gone, her friends are gone, the usurpers destroyed all the stuff that reminded her of home, paintings burned furniture destroyed history books torn etc. also that was her FRIEND

so she delves a bit into necromancy with skullfaces reluctant help, and drags him back to the land of the living (not super well, but somewhat). hes mangled, needs some prostheses probably or at least joint braces, has nightmares and short-term memory issues. tends to cut off at his death and after that everythings a bit hazy. but he remembers his liege and loves her, appreciates her coming back like he knew she would, is her bodyguard again like the old times.

sometimes she kinda regrets it tho, was it fair to bring him back like that? she didnt ask him, hes been through so much, didnt he deserve to rest? but he seems happy so she guesses its ok. he says its ok. also wonders how long the magic will hold up, will he stick around forever now?

(hes doing ok. most people dont really like him bc hes a zombie but some dont mind. im p sure he even has a kid, but for some reason isnt together with the mom anymore. probably bc her family wont let her marry an undead. but im not entirely sure bc why would her familys opinion matter when she could just live at the castle since he has a very prestigious position anyways)

anyway shes slightly tormented. but she has friends. shes got bodyguard, and skullface as her trusty advisor and support, but also shes got a wife and kids, And shes fairly close with fenrir. him and konoe did offer support for her taking her old home back. konoe is a good help when it comes to political knowledge and aid, but shes had good talks with fenrir abt grief and how daunting it feels to suddenly be a ruler. when fenrir lost his kid she even came to visit to offer her condolences.

other ppl in the castle include a giant snake tail woman. mothman probably also.

[vestige-nan]

The Thorn in my Side, the Pebble in my Shoe: Ch 9

Summary: The main quest line in Mannimarco’s perspective, except that he falls chaotically in love with the vestige just as much as he chaotically hates them.

Fun stuff: Small violent imagery warning, it gets a little gory in Manni’s head.  As always, vestige is gender neutral and physical features are not described.

One of the many benefits of lichdom included sleep, at least not in access, was not a necessity for me. Though even when I was alive, I had cast a spell here and there to bend my physical limitations and wave off timewasting slumber. That fool, Trechtus, worried that the prolonged sleep deprivation—even by magical means—might have a negative effect on my psyche. But there was always so much work to be done, experiments to perform, ancient lore to study, unsuspecting victims to murder and then raise.

However, this didn't mean I couldn't sleep. Just that I didn't need to often and for much less time than a lowly mortal. But while sleep was more of a recreational pastime, dreams very rarely came to me. This, I assumed, had less to do with my status as a lich and more to do with Vaermina not wishing to catch the attention of Molag Bal.

As such, my confusion was appropriate when I woke up with a start from my dream. Details didn't slip from my mind, nor did I scramble to rack my brain for specificities. I remembered it wholly, vividly, and its' palpability sent chills dancing down my spine as I sat in my bed.

I sat on the throne in an empty hall of cold harbor. Only one other living being (if you could call them living) was in the hall with me. The vestige, flush with exhaustion and trepidation, gripped their weapon with spent desperation, their breath heavy and their legs trembling. Bones, rotten flesh, and all manner of decay littered the floor around them. I didn't carry the same exhaustion as they had. If anything, I was more bored than spent as I crossed my legs.

"Do you surrender?" I asked, inspecting my nails with passing disinterest.

The vestige swallowed and attempted to slow their breathing. I could see how their eyes wavered with uncertainty. They had resisted so fiercely before, but now, surrounded by fallen enemies and not having landed a single scratch on me, I could tell they were no longer so sure.

However, no answer was not good enough for me. I wanted an admission of defeat.

"Very well," I yawned with a flick of my wrist, and in a black swirl of flesh and bone from the vestige's fallen enemies, a great flesh atronach crawled from the remains and the mort. It let out a horrifying roar, its' whole face unhinging to bellow, and—as if they could take no more—the vestige collapsed to their knees, their weapon dropping beside them and the hands falling to the rot beneath them.

"I surrender!" Their voice was hoarse with exhaustion and stretched with desperation. They kept their head lowered, as if they couldn't bear to look me in the eyes as they succumbed to my power. "I surrender..."

A thrill of pleasure traveled my veins like lightning. What lovely words that would sound even better in a tortured chorus of agony.

I waved my hand and—to my delight—the vestige flinched when the atronach collapsed into blood, bones, and death. The vestige's breath left their quivering lips in relief, but the tension remained in their shoulders as I uncrossed my legs and stood. Step by step, I descended my throne, treading unconcerned through the carnage. When I reached the vestige, their form trembling in anxious anticipation, I circled their kneeling form as I inspected them. Their eyes unable to meet mine, the sweat of exertion trailing down their neck, their chest rising and falling in steady acceleration under my scrutiny.

To have the object of my ire in front of me so was sweeter than moonsugar and more intoxicating than skooma.

As I rounded about them, I straightened my back in a poise to feign indifference, "Again."

The vestige stuttered only for a moment, "I surrender."

"Again."

"I surrender!" Their desperation seeped into their voice.

I inspected my nails, "To whom?"

"To you! I surrender—" The vestige inhaled sharply, finally gaining the courage to meet my eyes, and I was filled with a familiar hunger to bask in that gaze. "Please, King of Worms, have mercy—!"

I couldn't help but laugh, "You level my armies, steal my chancellor, attempt to foil my plans, and you have the audacity to beg my mercy?"

The vestige opened their mouth, as if scouring their mind for an answer to respond, but ultimately could not speak.

"Are you too weak from my risen forces to respond?" I mocked as I knelt to their level. "Pathetic."

The rotten blood and flesh oozed between the vestige's tightened grasp against the floor as they looked away in shame, their brow knotted and their eyes cast down. I couldn't stop myself from grabbing their jaw and pulling their gaze back on me.

"Do not." My voice echoed in the hall, louder than I willed. "Look away from me."

The vestige's eyes flitted through a medley of emotions, each more tantalizing than the last. Visceral fear. Broken will. Reluctant obedience. And somehow, despite the thrill of seeing the vestige defeated and submitted, it was their look of captivation that filled my head with delirium. Eyes so trained on me, mesmerized by my presence—my power, that they couldn't pull away if they wanted. Attention entranced with deep, fervid interest restrained by tentative fear, the vestige was mine.

They were mine, and they did not have the will to oppose that.

What an exciting thought! The vestige, the unabashed nuisance in my machinations; the single obstacle between me and godhood, was mine! Mine to own, mine to maim, mine to torture, mine to kill, mine to resurrect, mine to mold, mine to command, mine to use— They were mine.

I suddenly became very aware of my hand holding their jaw. The warmth of their skin was radiant against my cold, lifeless fingertips. How strange it was that a soulless being could be filled with so much warmth, and that they could smell so sweet in a room full of corpses, and that they could look so tempting after being so irritating.

I loosened my grip to just a few fingers tilting their chin up, and they did not dare turn away from me. I forced my voice to soften, a voice I used often in my calculative manipulations, "I must admit, no being in Tamriel has bested as many of my forces as you have."

Their throat bobbed as they swallowed.

"Nor have any slayed foes as powerful as you have. Are you proud of this?" My eyes twinkled in a patronizing glimmer, "Be honest."

The vestige bit their lower lip, "Yes."

My eyes were drawn to their lips, "You should be. You will make a valuable tool..." My fingers lightly traveled along their neck, gliding to across their collarbone. "After I take you apart and reassemble you."

The vestige was shaking under my touch and I could feel their pulse quicken. I would enjoy draining the blood from their body, slowly, and making them watch as I replaced it with venom... But I enjoyed the warmth I could feel from their blush much more. "I— Please, King of Worms, there... there must be something I can do for your mercy? Anything!"

I laughed again. "I haven't even began your torture and you're already trying to bargain with me? How charmingly naïve..." I grasped their chin once more and they gasped at my abrupt movement. "Don't worry. You will have plenty to do once I am done with you."

With a snap of my fingers with my other hand, chains of magicka snapped around the vestige's wrist. A new and exhilarating panic swept over the vestige as they tried to pull from the chains in vain. The dread in their eyes as they looked at me made me dizzy and I was overwhelmed with the desire hold their heart in my hands; to feel the pulse of their heart quicken between my fingers and to see the horror in the vestige's eyes as I bring it to my lips to take a bite. I wanted to simultaneously hold the vestige so full of life, feeling their warm hand against my cheek and to bathe in their boiling blood, singing as I let their marrow sink into my skin. I wanted to swallow their cries in a kiss and lick the blood from their wounds and I wanted the vestige to love and hate every moment of it.

There would be plenty of time to indulge my madness later.

"Please! King of Worms, you don't have to hurt me! I'll do what you want!" The vestige cried, their voice taut with terror and their hands pulling at the chains.

"Oh, I believe you." I held the vestige's face in my hands and relished the captivation that never left the vestige's gaze. Even in their terror they couldn't resist me. "I want to hurt you."

With the vestige mine and their expression consumed with dread and panic, I pulled their face to me, pressing my cold lips against their warm ones, reveling in the taste of victory and the vestige's tongue. I could feel the vestige heat up beneath my hands, their warm blood a charming tell. I pulled away just as quickly, my smile as bewitching as the chains.

"Do try to last long." I cooed, "I don't want to fix your broken mind more times than I need to."

I downed three stamina potions in succession just to give me the energy to deal with whatever deranged dream Vaermina and Sheogorath must've crafted together as a sick daedric joke (surprisingly less violent than most daedric jokes go).

I leaned against my desk with one hand and rubbed my temple with the other, groaning low and exasperated. It was almost the perfect dream, and I would have even thanked the lesser daedric prince for what I would've assumed would be a glimpse into the future, save for the end.

How insulting! Degrading! To think I would lower myself so—so—low! As to kiss, or even to think about—!

I heard the vestige stir in their sleep through their visage and my head snapped to it. I watched them, holding the breath I don't take, with furious disgust. Then, the end of my dream began replaying in my mind and I could feel my face turning orange at the thought.

"Disgusting!" I said, not to anyone in particularly, but mostly to the vestige. I went to close the visage with a wave of my hand, but stopped when the vestige began to stir again.

Were they having a nightmare? Were they having the same nightmare?

My face burned brighter.

My eyes were melded to the visage as the vestige's brow furrowed and their breath quickened. Something cracked underneath the pressure of my grip but I didn't care enough to notice what it was. The vestige looked troubled by their nightmare, maybe even pained. Would they hate it? Would they be disgusted by it like I was? Would they wake up with fear? Glancing at every shadow with nervousness? What if they woke up flushed and unsure? What if they liked it? What if they sought out the mundus stones—sought out me? They did say I was pretty.

The vestige's lips parted and the ending of my dream replayed and replayed and replayed; the taste of their lips, the trepidation in their eyes, their breath on my skin, their warm blood beneath my cold cold hands.

"Hey, you alright?" Some young breton shook them awake, pulling me from my own personal oblivion. The vestige inhaled softly as they woke, turning to the man, slightly disoriented. "Looked like you were having a nightmare."

I ground my teeth. Did he wake them up before they reached the end of the dream? I couldn't tell if I was relieved or furious.

The vestige groaned, rubbing their neck. "Yeah, I was... It was really weird..."

I furrowed my brow. "Weird"? What did they mean by "weird"? "Weird" as in "I was disturbed by the intimate nature of the dream and I don't want to be tortured" or as in "I was intrigued by the intimate nature of the dream but I don't want to tell this breton that out of bashfulness"?

"I know this is going to sound insane but..." The vestige sat up, stretching, and I was too transfixed with how their bones popped. "There were dragons all over Elsweyr!"

I blanked.

"Dragons?" The breton man laughed, "Come on!"

"No, really!" They asserted, "And one of them was good!"

I waved the visage off, evaporating it from existence. I downed another stamina potion while wishing I had picked up a bottle of sylph-mead somewhere. I didn't care if the vestige was bedding Molag Bal himself, a few days not having to listen to the ramblings of that halfwit vestige would do me well.

In the meantime, sending a legion of undead after Vaermina's cult seemed appropriate.