#who took moment to perceive whatever the heck i am doing

[thegreatestrash]

PLEASE GUYSSS , DO ANY OF YOU HAVE OR GONNA WRITE FANFIC OVER THIS CUTE GUY, I AM IN DIRE NEED 😭😭I CANT FIND ANY FANFICS ,AAAAJHJJJHHHHH

[abizarreyodelingincident]

Braaaaaaains...

Jason Todd is legally – and biologically – dead. His family noted his lack of pulse at three in the morning, inside the cave, his body laid out on a table with medical instruments.

No, really, tell him something he doesn't know.

What else crawls out of a grave moaning and groaning?

Or, Jason thought his family full of the world's greatest detectives was smarter than this. Apparently not.

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

It had been an ordinary night. Calm. The stage for very little costumed crime and barely more regular, non-insane crime as well. Half the menagerie that made up Dick's loving ragtag bunch of younger siblings had even taken the night off.

Nothing should have make him arrive to silence this thick, to this faint echo of sniffling.

He sprinted after the noise.

Damian's fine, left before me. Duke didn't go out, nor did Steph. Babs spent the evening with Cass in the cave, Tim swept the bowery and said he was going to stop by Jason's place to-

He collided with a shaking, tear stained Tim right outside the medbay.

There was a body on the closest table. Others around it, crying, pacing, muttering in denial.

Dick couldn't look.

No, no, please, please no. I can't do that again. I can't!

Scarred skin, too pale – to be Duke or Cass – by death. His breath hitched. No. He. Fuck.

He knew those scars. Those arms. That chest and that fucking Y from navel to shoulders.

“Dick! Jason... he was...  I found him in his apartment. And I brought him to the cave... but... Jason doesn't have a pulse. He's... cold...”

Dick stumbled.

No.

No, no, no, that... that couldn't be real.

He caught himself on his little brother. Brought himself into a hug too tight, as painful as the arms gripping his ribs and back. A grip meant for a lifesaving light at sea. For a safeline over a ravine.

Twice. He'd lost the same brother twice. And this time, he didn't even have the excuse of inexperience and unstable situations. He... he patrolled the city whilst his brother was dead, completely oblivious to the fact. How could he? How dare he not know?!

“Shh, Tim, I'm here. I'm here.” But not for Jason, whispered a vicious part of him.

“What's all this?”

Dick's heart just about stopped.

Damian stood at the entrance to the lockers' room, uniform folded under one arm, hair slightly damp from a shower and Bat-themed pajamas worn without shame. His mild annoyance was proof he had no idea of the drama that had happened not twenty feet from him.

With reluctance, he let go of Tim, a gentle hand lingering on his shoulder, before he took a few steps toward his youngest, most vulnerable brother.

“D-Dami, I... ”   Damn it, he had to be the one to tell Damian about this. Because otherwise, the person to break the news would be Bruce, and-

Shit.

Bruce.

Oh God. How could they possibly tell him- ? After all their fights, the goddamned shattering that had broken the man he had been, and their last conversations even being more admonishment about protocols that Jason had flippantly disregarded. Bruce would never recover. That was it. The end of Batman.

...But first, God he hated himself, wanted to just curl up in a corner and forget everything, first he had a young brother he needed to talk to. One... one little brother less than just this afternoon.

“Jason... ” He swallowed, his throat tight, his heart in denial, the words so damning, but needing to be said. “Jason did not make it. He... he's dead.”

Damian stayed thoughtfully silent.

Not... not the tearful reaction he had expected, but Damian had grown up surrounded by so much death and horror that he would obviously be guarded. And oh, Dick's heart went to his baby brother, and he truly wished he could

“I do not understand. Why such theatrics for the zombie?”

Dick gasped, knowledge warring with the flash of anger.

“Damian! He's our brother!”

“Did he lose his head?” Damian demanded, and Dick's mind buckled.

“Huh, no, but that doesn't have anything to d-”

“Then, why are you acting so weirdly emotional, Richard?”

Before Dick's temper could catch up to his mouth, the longest and most painful-sounding gasp erupted from the medbay, where, to the general shock of all, Jason's gray-ish body shot upward with both his arms raised.

Electroshocks didn't make you jolt like that.

Electroshocks, in fact, remained in their kit on the other side of the medbay, unused. Because Jason had seemingly been dead long before he had been brought to the cave.

That was roughly the moment when Dick's brain caught up with the first of many hints. Latched onto it with a fool's hope.

“... Damian... When you were calling Jason a 'zombie', what did you mean?”

Damian's brows scrunched up together, a look he meant to be intimidating, but had more in common with a disgruntled kitten. “Exactly that, Richard. Do we not have files on zombies in the computer? Dead bodies walking about animated by unholy powers?”

Jason's not- Dick forced the half formed thought to a halt. For once, he rather wanted to be very, very wrong in how he perceived his family.

“What's with all the noise? Can't someone try to sleep like the dead without screaming?” Jason groused. “Should have gotten myself buried ag-OOF!”

“JASON!” screamed the hysterical teenager that had launched himself at a very lively dead body.

“Huhh? Hi, Timmy?” Jason said blearily, ruffling Tim's hair, eyebags suspiciously prominent. “... Fear gas?”

The blinking slowed, the fog of sleep drifting away as he silently begged the rest of them for an answer.

Happily provided by a still crying Tim. “I thought you were gone!”

“What is dead may never die,” Jason quipped, his mouth twisting in that cocksure grin from his Robin days.

And Dick wanted nothing more than to stop right there, pass out from the relief and joy of his little brother being alive and kicking, but...

But... 

That joke. One of many morbidly unfunny jokes and puns.

Bone-deep fatigue crushed his back. A bitter curse for whatever higher forces messing with them echoed strongly inside his skull, before he gave in to the inevitable and inhaled a few times for patience.

“Jason. We thought you were dead-dead.”

With prickly, hedgehog style affection, Jason pushed Tim back and stood up, stretching. “Come off it, Goldie. I wasn't even decapitated. I mean, if you were really worried, you could have just called a necromancer or something.” His expression hardened. “But if you ever call a necromancer on my ass, I'll shoot your perfect glutes.”

Yup, yup, yup, this is happening.

Tim finally wiped the rest of the tears away, helped by one of Stephanie's handkerchiefs, when he froze. “Wait. Your skin's still pale as a corpse.”

The flicker of amusement in Jason's eyes killed it for Dick.

God, how could they have all been this idiotic? If Wally ever learned about this – Shit, did Roy and Kory know before him?!

They were going to laugh their asses off at him.

Jason, unaware of the world recalibration happening in his poor big brother's mind, shrugged and rolled his shoulders – who creaked suspiciously loudly, more like rusty hinges than normal body parts. “Eh, I'm just a bit hungry. Nothing a meal or two won't fix and get some blood flowing back under my s-”

“You're a zombie.”

They turned toward him.

“Way to cross the finish line on time, Mister Rabbit,” Jason drawled.

Barbara, for once, looked completely unprepared. “A zombie,” she repeated, dazed.

Stephanie's nervous giggle died out when she noticed the lack of humor. “... No!”

Cassandra furiously looked down, muttering in her fist. Duke, by contrast, had the expression of a person stuck in a very awkward nightmare.

Even Jason's good-natured ribbing faded in when faced only with the distant screeched of bats. “... Hm, guys, bats, roostery, parasites and octopi? This is old news. What's with all the... ”

He vaguely gestured at their faces.

“Old news?” Tim rasped like he was being strangled.

“I came back from the dead years ago! Come on! Am I in a parallel universe? Hey, Demon Brat,” Jason called, baffled, “you knew, right? I didn't imagine that, right?!”

“Of course, Todd. Mother informed me of everything. Besides, Grandfather's interest in your state of being was of interest for a few weeks. How could I have been ignorant about your zombified state of being?”

In the corner of his eyes, Dick noticed Tim's, Barbara's and Cassandra's expressions all pinching in displeasure. In a way, Dick was reassured. He hadn't been the target of a family-wide hoax to discredit him as an attentive and loving eldest brother. No, he was just naturally blind, apparently.

“He knew?” Tim growled, like it was a personal failing of the fabric of time and space.

Damian's tone was the exact opposite. “And none of you realized...?”

Dick squirmed. “I... huh... you see...”

His baby brother eyed him, completely unimpressed, and for once after years of partnership, Dick felt he deserved every single ounce of it.

“I see... I shall reevaluate the value of this 'detective training' I've been given if this is the result then,” he said, the nearest thing to completely disavowing his older siblings without saying so.  

In other circumstances, perhaps the others would have demanded that Damian stay and explain, but he suspected the quelling look it would have deserved prevented them. Not one of them spoke until Damian had disappeared upstairs and the elevator doors had closed.

“Jason, since when have you been a zombie?”

Jason blinked, jaw hanging. Juuuust enough for some of the scar tissue on his face to stretch past normal. Why did Dick only notice that now?

“Wait, you're all serious? How could you not know? I told you guys!”

And there was Dick's pride rearing its ugly head, because no, no he had not been told and maybe his deductive skills needed a very complete overhaul, but his memory was still excellent!

“You never said that. Heck, we weren't even talking until two years ago!”

“I literally told you all that I crawled out of my grave by myself, groaning the entire time. No experiment, no Lazarus Pit, just a body waking up in its own coffin and deciding to breathe fresh air. Does that not scream 'zombie' to you?”

They cringed.

“Not the only one that returned from beyond,” Babs mumbled. He could see her pull up the mental list right there.

“I greeted you all last meeting with a 'What's up, my bat folks? It's me, your favorite zombie!'. What did you think that meant?”

“That you're an asshole with a morbid sense of humor?” Stephanie quipped, and Jason momentarily paused his indignation to high five her. Fair's fair.

“Okay, but what about that time I got shot in the chest and I told you all not to worry about it?”

“I just figured you were going to get stitched up by Leslie or yourself, you know, regular bat neuroses,” Tim confessed.

Dick made a mental note to keep a much closer eye on Tim's patrols for the next few months.

“From a bullet chest wound?” Jason asked with an incredulousness that was not at all earned, because he was a freaking zombie!

“I thought your armor had blocked it! The hole wasn't bleeding!” Tim protested, cheeks red and tone defensive.

“Well, yeah,” Jason replied. “I don't bleed. It's like some fruit pulp or something. Ain't coming out if you don't press. My heart's not pumping.”

That's a 'nevermind' on the smoothie I saved for after patrol.

“Well, I know that now,” Tim said.

“I feel like I should write it down on the plaque or something,” Jason still sounded amazed, and might have pinched his arm just to be sure he hadn't been daydreaming, “Like, 'a good soldier AND A VERY DISCRETE ZOMBIE!' in big flaming letters. With a spotlight. And a dictionary opened on 'Zombie' or 'Undead'. You know, just in case the next batbrat to come along needs a few subtle hints about my true nature. What'd you think, Dick?”

He could not have been blushing harder than he currently was. “I think shut up.”

“Of course. What about when I shoved my deadly cold toes at Tim under a blanket?”

“Cold feet.”

“Never eating around you guys?”

“Daddy issues with Bruce,” Barbara deadpanned, and got a sock thrown at her for her honesty.

However, Duke, poor kid, turned green. “Wait, so when you offered me some jellied brain... was that not a death joke?”

Dick's stomach spontaneously shrivelled.

By the grimaces and sharp inhales all around, that was a common reaction.

Then the worst possible thing happened: Jason grinned.

He strutted, all confidence and brashness, and viper-quick, snatched an arm around Duke's shoulder. “Narrows, Nightlight, my tiny bitsy bro, everything I do is a death joke. My very existence laughs at death.”

Inside the batcave, the groaning was long-suffering and shameful.

“But that was actually brains,” Duke countered.

“Yeah. Calf brains. It's a delicacy.”

Tim massaged his forehead. What a mood.

Duke narrowed his eyes. “It was purely for the joke, wasn't it?”

Jason patted him on the back so hard Duke faltered. “One tragically wasted on your obtuse mind. I prefer me some Tête fromagée instead. Less like grainy jello.”

Stone-faced, Barbara wheeled herself toward the batcomputer. There, upon a series of quick clicks, she opened up the Bats's files. “Alright, you had your fun. Do you need to eat brains or are you just the world's least funny meathead?”

“I'm the world's most misunderstood vigilante!” Jason loudly protested, milking their pain for all it was worth. And then some. “But yeah, I do. No grey matter in there” -- he tapped his belly -- “no thinking up here.” -- his skull.

“Need some better quality brains then,” Tim stage-whispered to Stephanie.

Cass pointed the finger at Jason. “No killing for brains.”

Jason's good humor flickered with a flash of green. “Ain't ever done it, never will. It's a matter of morals, not hunger, Cass.”

Dick swooped in that minefield before it exploded.

“Great! Proud of you, Jay! You're the good kind of vegetarian zombie,” he said, putting an arm around his ginormous little brother's shoulders.

Wait a minute...

“Hey, you're older than when you died! Zombies don't age.”

“No, I was thrown into a Lazarus Pit, and the evil waters cured the malnutrition-induced delay on my growth. Haven't aged a day since.”

“I just thought you had a weird babyface thing going on,” Tim said.

Jason's grin turned sardonic. “Quite the opposite, Timber.”

Dick put his head in his hands in some vain attempt to prevent his brain from leaking through his ears.  With his luck, his little brother would 'playfully' eat some of it. “There's no way you look this rugged at biologically sixteen! I refuse to believe that.”

“Can you imagine my power if I'd been allowed to reach my full potential?” Jason leered, eyebrows waggling like waves in a sea at storm. “So many heart attacks.”

Barbara and Cassandra exchanged a silent look, and, after a solemn nod, Cassandra reached up to slap Jason upside the head.

“Thank you, Cassandra,” Barbara told her. “Jason, never do such a thing again.”

The disgruntled groan that followed must have been on purpose, because Jay was indeed an asshole.

“Besides, it's not like the world will ever know,” Tim said, cutting, a smirk hiding by his hand.

Dick really thought his little brother was far too relaxed upon learning that Jason was one with the undead. Sure, they had all encountered various levels of zombies during their missions, from all sorts of oral traditions and cultures, alien viruses and hidden nanobots piloting meat puppets. It wasn't even classified as a nation-wide crisis to encounter free-roaming zombies. But since the chronically unalive individual in question was one of their own, Dick felt he was owed at least a whole evening of frazzled panic and incomprehension for once.

“Oh?” Stephanie instead asked, sensing blood.

Tim shrugged. “Well, you know, no pulse, no blood flow,” he said with an angled eyebrow nodding at Jason's crotch

Stunned silence followed, their expressions varying from disgust, horror, unholy glee and, from Jason himself, wide-eyed shock that his shrimp of a little brother had had the balls to assimilate the zombieness fast enough to mock him for him.

Dick prayed for patience. For fortitude. And for an alternate timeline where he was an only child.

Why, for all the love of cotton candy and professional uncriminal clowns, did Tim put THAT image of Jason inside their brains? What had he done, him, a loving model for all of society, to suffer like this?

Maybe if he asked nicely, Jason would eat the image out of his head. He owed Dick that much after this clusterfuck of a conversation.

“Ooooooooh,” Stephanie crooned, miming getting dunked on. With acrobatics.

Jason huffed. “Like I was ever interested in the first place. I ain't Dick.”

“Okay, no slut shaming or virgin shaming, in fact, no shaming at all, please. In this house, we accept all sexualities, but we don't give out raunchy details about any of it, I only have so much brain bleach.”

“Share?” Duke pleaded in a whisper.

Oh, I wish I could, you young innocent soul.

A few beeps turned their attention back to Barbara and the batcomputer. “Well, that's one long overdue update to Jason's files. Anyone else want to share their 'obvious' medical condition?”

“Excuse you, being dead is not a medical condition.”

“I will make you wish for the peace of the grave, Jason.”

Droplets dripped from nearby stalactites.

A few bats flew overhead.

Jason turned to them like nothing had been said.

“Right. That was fun. Best night of my month. Can't wait to tell the Outlaws.”

Dick resigned himself to a series of unflattering texts by the absolute dickheads that were his second family. He could already tell the messages would blow up his phone to the Moon. 'You didn't know your brother that came back from the dead is a zombie?!'

“Have mercy and wait tomorrow morning?”

That smile could have been great or terrible. “You're lucky I'm in a spectacularly good mood, Dick.”

He had lifted his leg over his bike's seat when Duke was struck by genuine worry.

“Wait. Does Bruce know?”

Jason barked out a laugh.

“Of course he does! God knows he's got some massive blind spots, but he's obsessive, paranoid and I find subcutaneous trackers on me every week. No way he didn't get the hint before now.”

But, as his gaze went over the rest of them, his good cheer dimmed, his grin slipping off his face as surely as a bit of decayed flesh.

“... Right?”

[dragonleesupporter]

The Many Sides of Murder Part I

A/N: Eyy I’m not dead, I promise. I’ve just been smacked around by life a bit. Anyway, this a fanfiction based off of an rp between me and some good homies, shout out to good homies! I’ve been wanting to write this for a very long time.

WARNING: Not for the faint of heart! Also, no t-community stuff in here!

Patton was walking out of the office building after a long day at work. He was exhausted, but he’d have his beautiful rose bush to look forward to when he got home.

            “Rosebud…” He said to himself jokingly, shivering in the cold.

          One of the first to come to work, and one of the last to leave… Patton looked across the vast parking lot and saw his grey, rusty car sitting on the far end.

            Sigh.

            As he continued walking, he heard what sounded like scuffling behind the ginormous square garbage bins to his left. He had gotten used to the noises the critters made at night, working the closing shift. Raccoons, possums, skunks, hell- sometimes the homeless stopped by to check the garbage for valuable items.

          After several moments of listening to the sound, Patton started to pick up on small alterations, like heavy breathing and shushing of sort. Yep, a homeless or drunk. No doubt about it. Suddenly, a shape leaped out in front of him, running in the same direction as his car. Patton froze, his voice caught in his throat. There was no way he could break into-

          “Your efforts are futile.” He heard a monotone voice call out from behind the garbage bins. He then saw what he could only perceive as a living knife launch from the same place the other shape had come from. In mere moments, the man who had started running, was now motionless on the asphalt. The other shape looked down at the body before looking up at Patton.

          Patton’s instincts finally kicked in and he turned tail to run in the opposite direction. Even in the dim light of the widely-spaced street lamps, he could tell he had made direct eye contact with whoever just attacked that other person. The sooner he made himself invisible, the better!

            “The tree line!” He thought to himself. “There! If I can make it there, then maybe- “

 Too late. He felt a harsh shove from behind has he lost his balance mid-stride, falling onto his chest. He then felt a hand grasp his face, some kind of cloth covering his mouth. He took in a deep breath to scream for help, but as soon as he did, his consciousness faded into an almost peaceful oblivion.

 “That was close.” Logan silently scolded himself as he carried Patton on his shoulders back to the body of Orlando. “How could I have let a witness run so far away from the execution site? Utterly useless. I must increase my intake, it seems.”

 He lit the body ablaze and covered his tracks. Every grain of sand out of place was corrected. He was never there. The only thing now was to decide what to do with the witness he had captured. He adjusted his glasses, sighing. It would slow down his current plan, but in order to make it more secure, he would just have to be patient and take the witness into his care. Perhaps he could reason with him, or at least keep him in a place that he wouldn’t cause any trouble.

 …

 Patton woke up in a very awkward position. Both his hands and his ankles were restrained, and he immediately noticed that the hearing on the right side of his head had gone blank.

“N-no… this can’t be real.” He started to feel tears well up in his eyes. “This is just a bad dream… I’m at home safe w-with my rosebush… please, please let it be a dream.”

 “Ah, you’re finally awake.” A chillingly monotone voice sounded from the other side of the room.

 “Wh-what do you want from me?!” Patton blurted out, making an attempt to sound brave and failing somewhat.

 “I don’t want anything from you, good sir… in fact, it’s rather a shame that you had to bear witness to my execution. I do not enjoy this situation any more than you do.” Logan stayed sitting on the opposite side of the room.

 As Patton’s eyes adjusted, he saw a lean, tall figure sat against the few steps that lined the entrance to a hallway just behind him leading into the room. He had milky white skin and clear blue veins running along his arms and legs. Despite the hostility he had seen at his hand, Logan’s face was strangely calm, his eyes grey behind his glasses. The rest of his attire was simply a black suit and pants, fitting his body as tight was possible. No part of his clothing was loose on him. Just as jet black as his attire, his hair was neatly combed back.

 “That being said, I hope we can come to an agreement that benefits both parties.” His grey eyes pierced into Patton’s, reflecting all the apathy the rest of Patton’s left drew to him.

 No one really cared about him… he had no friends… no family other than his brother who hardly visited… no one was coming to save him… he was going to die here.

Logan’s posture stiffened at the sound coming out of Patton.

 “Like heck! I’m not trusting a word you say!” Patton screamed, tears streaming down his face.

 Logan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I knew this would be an issue… I probably should explain myself…”  

 “No! I am not listening to ANYTHING you have to stay!” Patton’s heart burned with the knowledge that this man could do whatever he wanted to him. He started pulling on his restraints.

 “You know that’s not going to work… I wish I could’ve avoided the restraints, but how else am I supposed to keep her here safely?” Logan got up, slowly walking toward the struggling man before him.

 It was almost hard for Logan to look into his prisoner’s eyes. They were so bright and full of passion and emotion, even behind his contact lenses. His bright blue eyes kindly reflected off of his matching blue t-shirt, also blending well with his worn-out jeans. His bright blonde hair nearly blinded the criminal as he approached, wavy and tangled.

 “Why not just let me go then?! S-stay away from me! Don’t get any closer!” Patton struggled harder as Logan got closer.

 “Calm your nerves, you wiggling worm… I need to ask you a question.” Logan sat down next to the bed Patton was tied to.

“Well, I have nothing better to do. Ask away!” Patton called sarcastically. A small hope inside him told him that if he kept acting tough and hiding just how scared he was, he might be able to find a way out.

 “Is this correct?” Logan held up an ear aid.

 “What do you mean is it correct?” Patton scoffed.

 “Is it the right model? After cleaning up, I realized an ear aid had been knocked out of your head. However, when I found it, it had been broken. I did my best to judge what model it was so I could get another for you. Is this the correct model?” Logan’s monotone voice didn’t help Patton’s mood, however his question did puzzle him.

 “Th-that is the correct model, yes. Why?” Patton looked up at the figure who almost had to look away from his bright cyan blue eyes.

 “Good. I will momentarily untie one of your restraints so you can manually place the ear aid in. As well as take out your contacts. I’m aware they can be painful if you sleep in them.” Logan’s voice changed just a little bit in that moment, and that little bit was all it took.

 “O-okay…” Patton’s body went limp as Logan undid one of his restraints.

 “And no trying to escape, or I’ll knock you out again.” Logan watched him closely as Patton adjusted both his hearing aids and took out his contacts, relaxing significantly from the lack of pain. Afterwards, Logan tied him up again.

“So, are there any bathroom breaks here?” Patton asked sheepishly.

 “Yes. But I’ll only release you if we can gain a mutual sense trust… You see I only restrained you to keep you safe. This is the only place I could keep you from spreading knowledge of my existence. All of these hallways behind me are open to the front door, but they’re all rigged with traps that only I know how to navigate around. This was only set up for defensive measures, but I cannot turn them off now, so they also act a hinderance to your escape. If you were to try and escape, many of those traps would cause you extreme pain, and, in full honesty, I don’t want that.” Logan tapped his chin in thought.

 “Something’s not making sense here.” Patton finally spoke after a long silence. “How come you don’t want to hurt me when you hurt that other person?”

 “That low-life scum can barely be considered a person…” Logan’s voice grew heavy with anger. “Sh-shit!”

 Patton turned to look at his captor to find a surprising sight. Logan, was bent over with a hand firmly pressed to his head. “Damn, it’s wearing off faster!” The criminal rushed over to the opposite side of the room, taking out a syringe.

 Patton watched in horror as Logan plunged the needle into his skin and quickly injected himself, his tenses muscles going lax again. Patton saw, for a brief moment, color in Logan’s eyes before it changed back to the grey he had know for the past fifteen minutes.

 “I apologize for the interruption. But unbeknownst to you, there’s a great difference between you and the man I killed. I would go into detail, but I have an inkling it might disturb you, so until we are better acquainted, I see no reason to explain.” Logan’s posture loosened further. “I should probably start with my name. My name is Logan, and I’ve been on the hunt for a specific group of individuals. The one you saw me take out was one of those individuals.”

 Patton felt odd staring at this man… could even call him that? This THING?

 “Well, my name is Patton, and I’ve been on the hunt for a meaningful life.” He chuckled sadly.

 “What’s funny?” Logan cocked his head.

 “Oh, it was a joke! I like to tell them a lot…”

 “A… joke…” Logan appeared to be lost on what Patton was describing.

 “Yeah. You tell it to people you care about to make them laugh and smile…” Patton looked away from Logan’s eyes, afraid he would become equally apathetic if he continued to stare.

 “And what about searching for a meaningful life is funny?” Logan tapped his chin in thought with a perplexed expression, looking at the ceiling.

 “Oh wait… of course this guy’s not going to understand jokes! He’s a complete psychopath! I need to figure out how to get out of here! He said he would give me access to a bathroom once we gained mutual trust for each other. So, if I pretend to trust him, he might trust me and warrant me access to the bathroom. But the bathroom probably doesn’t have any escape routes. If there isn’t a window or a vent… I might be stuck… unless… he’s lying about the hallways! He must think I’m stupid… if there’s no chance of escape in the bathroom, I’ll abide by his rules until he gets sleepy or needs another one of those needles. Yes! Flawless plan!”

 “I realized that you’re smiling. Is something funny? Did I unknowingly… tell a… joke?” It took Logan a moment to think of the word again.

 “Oh no… I was just thinking about a joke one of my friends told me a couple days ago…” Patton lied.

 “Oh? A memory can make you smile… I forgot that…” Logan looked down at the floor. “Thank you for reminding me.”

 After a few more moments of awkward silence and Patton trying to avoid the gaze of the mad man, his stomach growled loudly.

 “Dammit stomach! This is not the time to be complaining!”

 “Ah, I assumed you would need sustenance before long… luckily I was able to grab some ramen from the store. I know from experience that it’s very filling, if not a little bland in taste. I’ll prepare some…” Logan turned his back to Patton getting a stove heated up.

 “Oh no! I can’t eat anything that monster gives me! It could be poisoned, or laced with something to make me be truthful with him! But if I don’t eat soon, I might start thinking illogically… m-maybe I already am! Dammit, Patton why did you skip your last break last night??”

“To put all doubts to rest, I will also eat from the same brewed pot of ramen… I apologize for the lack of nutrients in this specific dish. But hopefully, if everything goes according to plan, one meal is all you’ll need…” Logan turned around, giving full view of the pot of ramen, stirring it around.

 “Oh Jesus, he’s going to kill me! According to plan?? Only one meal?? That has to be it!”

 “A-and what plan would that be?” The captive muttered nervously, eyeing the noodles like he would a loaded gun.

 “Ah, my apologies. Allow me to explain after I’ve finished undoing your cuffs.” Patton violently flinched away from the criminal as he undid all of his bonds. “Come sit with me, Patton…”

 There was… a hitch in his voice for some reason. Patton couldn’t tell why, but Logan’s perfectly monotone dialogue had broken, just for a second, but he noticed…

 He sat down stiffly on the other side of the pot as Logan poured each half of the brew into their bowls. He took the first bite, fully knowing that Patton wouldn’t eat unless he was certain that the food was safe.

 “Maybe he built up an immunity a poison he put in the brew… ahhh but it smells so good! I can’t get distracted! Think, Patton! Think…”

 Logan continued to eat as Patton played with his food, his thoughts racing. After he had finished the whole bowl, he just sat and stared at Patton, waiting patiently for him to trust the noodles. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity to Patton, he finally took a bite. He had no way of telling time, but from his judgement, Logan would’ve shown some signs of discomfort if the noodles had been poisoned. It was just a risk he’d have to take, considering, just how badly he needed the food. But he also needed something else.

 “M-may I use the restroom?” He asked, looking away from Logan’s piercing eyes.

 “I suppose I have no reason not to trust you in this moment, and you trusted me enough to eat what I made for you. How about a compromise? My original offer was to free you of your cuffs without feeling the need to restrain you again… while also giving you free access to the bathroom… but since I can’t fully trust you in moments to come, even if I can trust you now, I’ll give you access to the restroom but restrain you afterwards, though I’ll make sure your restraints aren’t as tight this time…” Logan explained, eyeing the bruises on Patton’s hands.

 “O-okay… and where is the bathroom?” He was shaking a little.

 “Just to your left. It’s not the most luxurious, but is serves its purpose.” Logan hadn’t even finished his sentence, before the door to the restroom was slammed shut. “I suppose I should clean up this mess…”

 “Dammit! No windows or vents! This room is an oven!” Patton thought to himself while doing his business. “It certainly isn’t a good restroom, but it’s a clean one… and right now, I’m in no place to complain… these walls are pretty thick, he probably can’t hear what I’m doing… meaning, if I hurry, he might not be prepared for me to make an escape. The longer I wait, the more he’ll expect me to come out. Better make this quick!”

 Patton slowly opened the door and peeked out at Logan, who was occupied washing the dishes they had just eaten from. He had blue eyes again… why did he look so… sad? Patton felt the smallest pang of sympathy for his kidnapper, despite everything. He’d soon need another syringe that made his eyes turn grey again. Some kind of drug. His posture was looser and his normally expressionless face was bent in a look of grief.

 “I- is he shaking?” Patton squinted. He could see long-range distance just fine, but movement was a little hard, but he swore, he could see his captor, shaking in place uncontrollably. Enough, he had to get out of there, NOW.

 Patton dashed for the hallway entrance just next to the kitchen, side closest to him. Logan noticed the movement right away, and try as he might, he couldn’t move fast to block the blonde from what he knew was going to happen.

 “AHHHH!!!” Patton screamed bloody murder as an improvised bear trap snapped around his right leg, dragging him down to the ground. He laid there, whimpering on the ground.

 “You stupid son of a bitch!” Logan ran up to him, quickly carrying him back to the main room. “What made you think I was lying about my traps?? Damn you, I was trying to do something good for once and you had to go and make such a stupid move!” He laid Patton down as he cried openly, unable to take the pain.

 He quickly ripped off the bear trap and started to examine his leg.

 “D-don’t touch me! It hurts! It hurts…” Patton sobbed, unable to move as Logan pressed different parts of his leg.

“Okay, it didn’t break any bones, but your muscle and tissue are severely damaged… I didn’t design that thing to break through bone, but I never tested it before, so that’s a relief… Now all that’s there to do is bandage your poor leg…” Logan quickly wrapped up the wound, adding on several straps of ice to help ease the pain. He then laid Patton back in the bed. “You just made things ten times harder for both you AND me!”

            Patton looked up fearfully to see Logan’s bold, indigo eyes starting back at him, his booming voice scolding him. Yet, strangely enough, Patton felt an odd sense of relief. Logan’s colorful eyes and evidently angry voice gave the criminal emotion. The blonde would rather have his kidnapper yell at him, than stare at him coldly from across the room. Logan then cried out in pain, grabbing his head again.

            “DAMN! This is YOUR fault! Now I’m even having problems with my CURE!” He hurried back to his cabinet to take another syringe, wincing harshly as the drug made its way into his body, before taking a deep exhale, relaxing significantly, as his eyes started to turn back to the void-ish grey that Patton had come to hate.

 “I apologize for my outburst… there will need to be a change of plan due to your foolish refusal to heed my warning about my security system…” Aaaand there’s that awful monotone voice again.

 Just then a figure burst into the room from the hallway, several bruises and scratches on him.

 “EVERYONE FREEZE!” He held up his gun at both Logan and Patton, who put their hands up. It was a police officer!

 As Roman pointed the barrel toward the uninjured suspect, he nearly dropped it.

 “L-Logan…? What happened to you?”

To be continued...

 @imflynn  @boba-and-doughnuts @tottalynotgayatall

[paintedwithapalette]

Monsters Incorporated could be a ticking bomb waiting to happen at times. With its reliance on laughter to fuel their city, it wasn’t entirely uncommon that they’d receive laughter so powerful and potent that it would cause a shortage. This was one of those times. At least, for the upper floors of the massive complex where some sort of outage had taken place, and considering the CEO of the company had Boo with him, he didn’t want to turn her visit into a mess of running from floor to floor like the last time she was there. As much as he and his best friend loved her, they didn’t want Boo slowing them down either. They thought it might be best if she stayed in the lower levels where the power was, thankfully, still intact. 

The good news for Mike Wazowksi and James P. Sulliven was that a certain fuzzy exterminator who carried an oversized key was in the neighborhood. Though, this time he didn’t have the one-eyed duck and green dog with heterochromia iridum accompanything him. Instead, it was an unfamiliar girl wearing a stylish pink dress with her periwinkle fur, large paws, four eyes, and horns. It was a far cry from the much more outlandish looks of Donald and Goofy they remembered. 

After a quick introduction to Kairi and thanking the two for stopping by to do them a favor, Mike and Sulley scurried off to reach one of the main generators on one of the upper floors, leaving Sora and Kairi to care for Boo themselves, They entered Sulley’s office where the two had left Boo to play with her dolls while they stepped outside to have a chat with Sora and Kairi. 

“Boo?” Sora asked no one in particular. The room seemed fairly standard for an office: a desk located in the back with a computer and shelves of books surely collecting dust. “Anyone home?” 

As Sora and Kairi stepped further inside and searched the room for any signs of the young girl, Sora accidentally stepped on a doll and carefully picked it up. 

“This must be hers,” Sora concluded. 

“Do you think she’s okay?” Kairi asked, concern painted on her face. 

Sora didn’t say anything. Monsters Inc. was a big place and there was no telling where she could have gone. Boo was a sweetheart but she could be a troublemaker as well if left unsupervised. Sora crossed his arms and closed his eyes, contemplating what their next move should be. 

“Boo!” 

“AGH!” Sora yelled, wincing. 

When the dust settled, he saw the culprit reveal herself from behind Sulley’s desk, covering her mouth with both hands as she giggled at the reaction she was delighted to have witnessed from Sora. 

“Whoa, Boo! Where’d you come from?” Sora asked. 

Kairi laughed. “Looks like someone got a little spooked.” 

Sora cleared his throat and rubbed right under his nose. “Yeah, scared that you’d get hurt,” he excused poorly.  

Kairi gave a knowing smirk. “Yeah, sure.” 

When Boo looked at Kairi, she tilted her head at the unfamiliarity of her. Kairi recognized the little girl’s uncertainty and hunched over with a friendly wave. “Hi, there! You must be Boo. My name is Kairi. I’m Sora’s girlfriend.” 

Despite the validity of her bold statement, Sora couldn’t help but blush with a goofy smile lingering on his face that was only concealed thanks to his fur. Boo wasn’t sure what exactly a “girlfriend” was but she assumed it was something similar to Mommy and Daddy. With a giggle, she ran towards Kairi, talking to her as if she could understand whatever gibberish she spewed as she took her hand. 

“You are just the cutest little thing,” Kairi cooed as she picked up Boo. “And probably a lot braver than Mr. Scaredy Cat over here.”  

“Whaaaat?” Sora said. “I am not. I mean, okay...” he crossed his arms. “Some of the monsters around this place kinda give me the heebie-jeebies, but... I wouldn’t say I’m a scaredy cat.” 

Kairi sent him a teasing smirk. 

“What?!” he said defensively. 

Kairi laughed, settling into a sigh. “Oh, Sora. Remember when you and Riku would come over and we’d steal scary movies from my parent’s room to watch at midnight? You pretty much hid under the blankets the whole time and couldn’t sleep with the light off for a week.” 

“I was seven!” 

Kairi shook her head, the smile on her face never leaving. “You haven’t changed a bit. Even your monster form looks non-threatening.” 

“Huh? No way! I can totally be scary when I wanna be. Right, Boo?”

The only thing that came to mind for Boo was the unforgettable Funny Face Special that cracked her up the last time he visited. “Scary” was the last thing her developing brain categorized Sora as by any means. She giggled just thinking about it. 

“Aww, no. Not you too, Boo!” Sora dropped his head in shame. 

“Then it’s settled,” Kairi concluded as she and Boo laughed. 

“Hmmm.” Sora folded his arms and looked to the ceiling, thinking to himself until an idea came to him. Maybe if he scared Boo, it would show just how intimidating he could be. With a sinister-looking grin, Sora raised his hands and wiggled his fingers, a low growl murmuring under his breath. 

However, what Sora perceived to be a sinister smile came off more as a silly, non-threatening look Boo assumed was meant to be as funny as it looked and once again rewarded Sora with affectionate laughter. 

While Sora loved making her happy, he wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong either. He spent the next ten minutes doing whatever he could to make Boo at least a little fearful; he made every face he could possibly muster, but they all resulted in either blank, confused stares or laughing frenzies from the girls. 

A lightbulb popped over his head as an idea came to mind. “Stay right here,” Sora requested as he hurriedly turned off the lights, blanketing the three of them in complete darkness. 

“Boooooooo,” Sora sang in a deep, haunting voice. “I seeeeeee youuuuuuu.” 

Sora couldn’t see it, but Boo’s lips quivered. Thankfully, she had Kairi to hold onto tight, making the dark not as scary as it normally would’ve been. Sora carefully and quietly crept around the office. 

“Boooooooooo,” Sora echoed. 

“Kitty?” Boo said in hopes of her favorite monster friend coming to her rescue at any moment. 

Sora stealthily crept closer to where he pinpointed where Kairi stood and snuck behind her. He lifted his finger, ready to tap Boo on the shoulder in hopes of giving her a good fright, but instead, Boo heard him at the last second and grabbed his finger just before he could touch her.  

“Boo!” she said. 

“WHOA!” Sora cried,  rushing back to turn the lights back on. Kairi howled with laughter at how poorly Sora’s plan backfired. He groaned. Maybe that was what he deserved, trying to scare a little girl just to prove a point. Still, as he watched Boo laugh heartily with Kairi knowing that he was the cause, it did make him feel warm and fuzzy inside. . 

“I guess you’re just too cute to be scary, Sora,” Kairi teased. “Just stick to what you do best, okay?” 

Sora smiled. Kairi was right. If anything, he was more glad to have been able to bring Boo such joy rather than be the reason she would have a nightmare that night. “Looks like you win, Boo,” Sora said. “You’re tough! Guess nothing ever gets you down, huh?” 

Boo only responded with more giggles before she spoke a set of words he wasn’t expected. “Funny Face! Funny Face!” 

“Huh?” Sora questioned aloud. To his surprise, she really did remember that from the last time he visited. 

“Funny Face?” Kairi asked. “Oh, you mean like when you first met Donald and Goofy, right?” 

Sora rubbed the back of his furry head with a bashful smile. “Ah, I guess you would remember that, huh?” 

“Yup!” Kairi affirmed with a laugh. “And honestly, I’d like to see it, too.” 

“Well, I guess I can’t disappoint,” Sora said. He set his feet, tied his hands behind his back, dipped his head down with an imaginary drum roll playing in his mind before he shot back up with his eyes nearly rolled to the back of his head, showing off his pearly whites. 

Just like last time, Boo laughed like a little madwoman. Kairi found the sight amusing as well, it was her first time seeing this face from a third-party’s perspective rather than when she was inside his heart when he first did it. 

Sora chuckled. “Hey, Kairi, give it a try!” 

“Oh, m-me?” Kairi asked. 

“Sure! Let’s see how silly you can be.” 

“Well, I guess I can give it a try,” Kairi said. She turned Boo in her arms to give her a better look at her before she dipped her head down, imaginary drum roll and all, before she lifted her head with her crossed-eyes pupils and her tongue sticking out. “Neeeeeeeeee!” 

Boo was hit with gut-wrenching laughter she couldn’t contain, tears leaking from the little girl’s eyes as the deadly combo of both Sora and Kairi sending her the silliest faces they could manifest was too much for her to handle. Before long, Sora and Kairi noticed the lights in the room beginning to flicker at a rapid rate. They ceased their onslaught of silly faces, but Boo didn’t stop laughing at the fresh memories. 

Pop! 

In an instant, the lights cut off and shards of glass from the broken lightbulb crashed onto the floor, thankfully out of reach to not hurt Boo but close enough to make Kairi let out a slight shriek. 

“What happened?” she asked. 

Sora nearly forgot that laughter was what fueled the city of Monstropolis. Having Boo laugh so much must have caused some sort of overload. He chuckled nervously. “I think we might have gone a bit too far.” 

Before Kairi could ask a question, they heard Mike Wazowksi’s muffled voice from the other side of the door. “See, Sull? What’d I tell ya? That generator was a piece of cake. Still, where’s the electrician when you need ‘em?” 

“You probably could’ve used the exercise yourself, Butterball,” Sulley replied as the two entered the office only to find that it was pitch black. 

“Uh, guys? You in here?” Mike asked. 

“Yeah, Mike,” Sora said, leading Kairi outside into the light of the hallway. 

“You guys playing hide and seek?” Sulley asked. 

Sora rubbed the back of his head. “I, uh... think you guys might need a new lightbulb.” 

“What the heck is that s’posed to mean?” Mike asked. “What in the world were you two doin’ to make Sull’s whole office pitch black?” 

“Making Boo laugh,” Sora admitted bashfully. 

“Yeah, like this!” Kairi said, offering a demonstration as she made a similar face from before. 

Sora, Mike, and Sulley reached out their hands dramatically. “Kairi, no!” all three said a variation of. 

But it was too late. Boo went into another burst of laughter and before they knew it, the hallway lights flickered and after another resounding pop, they stood in the midst of darkness. 

“Oops,” Kairi squeaked. “Sorry... I didn’t think her laughs were that powerful.” 

“But if the entire hallway blacked out, then does that mean...?” Sora prodded. 

Sulley sighed. “You guys think you might wanna take a trip down to the generator in the basement?” 

Mike nearly had a heart attack. “OH, FOR THE LOVE OF—”

Fin. 

------------------------

Definitely one of my sillier and lighter pieces for this week! Lol the adorable full piece will be posted by @amyhayanora​, so check her out! 

[mousehole5000]

wow i made this draft on november 1st i really took a break from this huh anyway tgcf chapters 121 - 142

i realize now this coffin scene was inevitable. feel kinda weird about hua cheng  back and forth from Teen to Big Man but it is very funny that theyre having their “dude dont look at my boner” moment while in the jaws of a water dragon

pei ming: why didnt you guys make a bigger coffin so you didnt have to squish together like that? xie lian: haha yep!! anyways what brings you here?

“In the grand, spacious centre of the entrance hall sat a person. And this person, dressed in all black, its face snow-white—was a corpse! Instantly Xie Lian shut the doors soundly.” - king of minding his own business.

okay this is where i stopped putting notes here for a while but i did save some in my e-reader so here’s some of the highlights

“Guzi used to have a good sleeping form, but perhaps with his cheap dad’s bad influence, now he was also spread out on top of Qi Rong’s stomach like a dead fish. Lang Ying himself was curled neatly in the corner, and was covered by a few shirts. Xie Lian lifted the blanket covering Qi Rong, suppressed the urge to smother his face, and covered the two small children.” - xie lian funny moments. also it would be really funny if qi rong redeems himself by learning love through these misfit chiildren and it might actually endear me to him but i hope that doesnt happen

Every heavenly official was yelling, and even Ling Wen was throwing a fit. “DON’T THROW EVERY BIT OF USELESS INFORMATION MY WAY, HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK I HAVE TO GO THROUGH EVERY DAY? DON’T YOU ALL KNOW TO USE YOUR BRAINS A LITTLE BEFORE ASKING ME?!” - ling wen marry me right now

“An expression like “seen a ghost” that only mortals experienced was now showing on his face for the first time. Shi Wudu’s pupils shrank to the smallest they could, and he blurted, “You’re still alive?!” “I’m dead!” He Xuan said coldly.” - okay everythings going tits up rn but i did laugh

i did see spoilers re: ming yi/he xuan reveal + shi wudu’s fate beforehand so i dont have a genuine reaction other than oh shit

“He slowly enunciated each word. “I won’t touch your fate. But, here in this place, chop off your brother’s head for me.”  CLANG! He threw a rusty blade onto the ground. Shi Qingxuan stared at that blade, his eyes wide. He Xuan continued, “Then, never show yourself before me again, and I will pretend you’ve never existed in this world.” - okay idk what else is going to happen but rn im concerned that this is like the 2nd biggest ship. i guess we’ll see?? i mean i am really curious whats going to happen to them. shi qingxuan keeps calling he xuan “ming-xiong” and i... sad

shi wudu im not really invested in you as a character but these next two bits... interesting

“If I don’t die but have nothing, then that’s truly a fate worse than death. If I’m not the Water God, I can’t take care of you. I won’t even be able to protect myself. I’m scared that we won’t even last two days…TAKE IT!” - damn. something about the wealthy losing everything and not knowing how to live without it bc thats their entire life and identity

“EVERYTHING I HAVE TODAY, I FOUGHT FOR MYSELF. I WILL FIGHT FOR WHAT I DON’T HAVE. I WILL CHANGE FATE I DON’T POSSESS. MY FATE IS UP TO ME AND NOT THE HEAVENS!” - okay so the whole committing spiritual fraud by tormenting a man and his family to get your brother a cushy title thing aside this was kind of badass. heretical? possibly. but still. also is he intentionally riling up he xuan so sqx doesnt have to kill him? if so damn...

also okay as long as im here im just gonna say it. the choice that he xuan gives shi qingxuan is fucking brutal but i actually think its probably as fair as it could be. sqx didnt know about or participate in what happened to hx but they did benefit from it greatly while hx lost EVERYTHING and i can understand he xuan’s thinking of “if you really feel bad for what happened to me then you have to make a sacrifice and understand the suffering and this is as clean as its going to get” and theres a bit where sqx is trying to beg for mercy but cant get the words out which im guessing is bc theres no good argument!! what happened was fucked up!!

“When Pei Ming saw that reinforcements had arrived, he didn’t appear particularly delighted; instead he threw the sword into the ground, then rubbed his nose and said, sounding grim, “You all just had to come just as I finished making these, what the heck.” - pei ming making coffins chopping down trees with his sword i love it #wastehistime2k17

“Xie Lian brought that basket of eggs along, and gave them away as souvenirs from the mortal realm. Many who received the eggs were overjoyed; some deciding to eat it along with their own blood, and some proclaiming they would hatch an eight-foot monster.” - GHOST CITY GHOST CITY

“Placing the brush down, he blew lightly at the ink and smiled. “If I like something, then my heart will not have room for any other, and I’ll always treasure it. A thousand times, a million times, no matter how many years, this will not change. This poem is the same." - thats nice and all but king... get therapy. i actually have further thoughts but tbh i dont want to put them into words bc they are simply too personal! moving on

didnt take any notes but somewhere in here was the bit with mount tong’lu opening and hua cheng losing it and kind of um. hm. that scene. thats another trope i really hate tbh i dont care for it as a way of including physical intimacy between characters and idk if it really ever adds anything but whatever moving on

The Half-Maquillage Woman - kind of interesting monster idea bc women and aging…. yeah. however i think this would be a lot stronger if there were a) more girls and this was b) discussed or illustrated at all prior to this moment. still interesting that its included knowing the author is a woman tho and there’s been comments on how ling wen is perceived vs pei ming. this book does keep giving me hope for interesting female character arcs i really want it to deliver something

quan yizhen..... i get u

lmao i have a note on a bit with lang ying that says “please dont be hc in disguise” and..... my clown nose was on but at least i knew that. for real this is bothering me how much he’s just. always. there. i know he’s a lead but we didn’t really need him around for a lot of this. oh well.  okay now to my current notes

“Yet it was precisely because it wasn’t cooked that it had to be eaten quickly. Once Xie Lian cooked it, it wouldn’t be edible anymore” - fucking fantastic

“Xie Lian hugged his belly. “Of course! Only after having met you did I rediscover that it’s such a simple thing to be happy, hahaha…” Hearing this, Hua Cheng blinked. Xie Lian’s laughter quieted a bit, realizing what he just said was a little too revealing.” - okay i know i said what i said about being tired of hua cheng being everywhere but... the line…. the fact that theyre laughing together…. :pleading:

“It’s not,” Ling Wen said. “At least, I believe, there will definitely not be another in history who can create a dish called ‘Incorruptible Chastity Meatballs’” - and truer words were never spoken

“I, DO NOT WORSHIP GODS. “I, AM GOD!” - this was every bit as badass as i hoped but no one told me it was immediately followed up by a little bit of the ol dinner theater fjalkdsfjsd. also puqi shrine noooooooooo

“Xie Lian sighed as he thought, “Qi Rong has taken Guzi away, who knows if the poor child was eaten or abandoned. Wind Master...... ..... who knows if Black Water took him away. Pray they’re both safe.” yeah hey are we going to fucknig. find out what happened to the child???

and yeah i dooooont really care for the age regression? thing thats going on. i just dont like that trope tbh. but tiny hua cheng whipping out his fat ghost king wallet in the store was funny tho. it is really funny that hualian are just like wandering around some random towns while the heavens are in an uproar. i guess theres not much else to do but its funny

“Me too, me too. You all know of my shixiong, right? Talented, with an infinite future! He only had one small vice: he loved playing women. Decades ago, a little prostitute ghost seduced my shixiong and sucked him dry into human jerky, and that Hua, Hua, Hua, that ghost king dared shelter her.” - yes omg give me the forbidden hua cheng lore i love this for him for real it goes along nicely with xie lian’s principles about giving another cup. god i love shared values

“Hua Cheng poked again, and a small hole appeared on the wall, as if the wall was made of tofu.” - how’d he do that. why is this a ghost king power. its useful tho

*me shaking qi rong when he pops up* WHERE IS THE CHILD

mu qing fu yao is here okay im happy now. once again no one has a good grasp on their secret identity and i love that. this inn has descended into chaos and im delighted and im glad lan chang is back

“The good ol’ kitchen was suddenly squished and crowded, loud and noisy. Fu Yao was chasing that fetus spirit leaping up and down, Lan Chang was chasing after Fu Yao like she had gone mad. Half of Qi Rong’s face changed shape by the way Xie Lian was pressing him down on the chopping board, his back turning into a target for those yellow talismans Fu Yao hurled while being observed by a crowd, and Lan Chang would step on him from time to time.” - this is pure chaos. i love that mu qing was in that room when the mob checked and he didnt say a word didnt open the door just sent out a talisman as a warning. king your disguise is transparent

“Xie Lian remembered the way Feng Xin laughed until he was hoarse when he first heard that verbal password all those years back, and couldn’t help but feel nostalgic, even though it wasn’t the right time.” - awwwww omg im emotional about this... faithful friend feng xin laughing at xie lian’s stupid joke password and remembering it!!! ;_;

“They have, but they’re not effective,” Feng Xin said. “Usually they’re the most diligent in scorning the Palace of Ling Wen, like they could do the job way better if they had the position. Now that we need them to take up the task, not a single one can do even half of what she does.” - typical... typical typical typical

also emotional about the fact that feng xin contacted xie lian at all.....

also!! emotional about lan chang as a mom and wanting to help out sick lil guzi.....

xie lian forcing “fu yao” to let him help “his general” is making me.... what is friendship if not playing along with your buddies little shenanigans while also making them accept your help

“Someone like Mu Qing, even though he’s narrow-minded, petty, sensitive and skeptical, has a bad personality, constantly guessing, doesn’t say nice things, likes to nag, always offending people and has a lot of people who dislike him, has no friends, can remember small, unimportant details for a long period of time…” ”Xie Lian went on in one breath with a straight face, but in the end he concluded with, “...But I’ve known him since we were kids, after all, he’s still got principles.” - XIE LIAN PLEASE AFJDLKSFJDL omg ive seen this quote before but i figured he was talking to someone else not actually to mu qing himself fgjasdkfjsl. god thats amazing. hey im gonna help you out because i care but i will roast you first <3

waaaaaait so is lan chang aka jian lan that girl from book 2 we took a page to talk about and then disappeared? that has to be it why else would we have stopped to discuss her

“Jian Lan spat on his face, then choking his neck, she slapped him twice again. “WHAT SHITTY SUPREME! YOU SURE KNOW HOW TO BLOW YOURSELF UP! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, THINK YOU’RE EVEN WORTH TO BE THOUGHT OF AS EQUALS WITH THE OTHER THREE SUPREMES? WHAT ARE YOU EVEN GOOD AT? YOUR THICK SKIN? OF COURSE I DARE HIT YOU!” - oh this feels so good i cant lie. YES GET HIM!! CHOMPING AND VIOLENCE YES!!!!

okay this description of cuocuo.... im... that sure the hell is a creature

this book is so entertaining bc i already saw spoilers for the feng xin/jian lan/cuo cuo reveal and yet i could never have predicted the circumstances that brought it about. imagine being feng xin. the heavens are in an uproar and your only friend/enemy has been jailed for possible fetus spirit-related crimes but he escapes along with this female ghost who keeps causing problems. you figure “fuck it lets see if dianxia kept his old phone number” and he has but then he hangs up on you. you’ve got fuckall else to do so you go find him. mu qing is there but he’s in his disguise the two of you were using so you could watch over his highness while staying aloof. you think you see hua cheng only he’s a chiild for some goddamn reason but who knows at this point. the female ghost is also there and theres a fetus spirit climbing trees and biting your arrows in half. you realize the female ghost is your ex and the little demon is your son. it bites you. what do you do

amazing that despite everything going on everyone is still playing along with the “fu yao” persona when it would probably be easier to drop pretenses at this point. then again tbh if i could explain my actions to my friends while pretending to be a third party.... i probably would so.. carry on

“With all his devotees gone, only Feng Xin still treated him like the Flower-Crowned Martial God and His Highness the Crown Prince. ” “...his protection charms were all seen as trash. However, Feng Xin was still determined and tireless in handing them out; telling Xie Lian, look, you still have devotees.” “After all, he was the darling of the heavens since birth, high and mighty. Feng Xin so naturally spun around him like he was the world, so how could he possibly have his own life, his own heart” “Whether or not that fetus spirit was Feng Xin’s son, if it was that period of poverty that made Feng Xin lose the girl he loved, Xie Lian wouldn’t be able to forgive himself no matter what." ohhhh my god this relationship i. im...

oh my god i still have 30 more chapters until book 4............ its naptime now i think

[justlookatthosesausages]

‘Emergence’ - an interactive fanfic

=======

CHAPTER 10 - Epilogue

=======

It was a known fact now that Honeymaren and Elsa lived together. It took a while for both women to take that decision. For Elsa, because she needed a long time of reflection for such a decision than the one of welcoming Honeymaren in her tent to live with her; and for Honeymaren herself, who usually was fast in taking decisions, but who kept insisting to her girlfriend that she had all the time in the world to agree on that change, even if mutual. 

Which, Ryder underlined, was the worst idea ever. 

“She'll take forever to decide now.” Sighed the Northuldra. 

Honeymaren had punched his arm at his sentence. 

“Aoh! Why are you always so violent when I talk about her?”

“Stop being mean about Elsa if you don’t want me to kill you.”

“Oh yeah. Because my sister is famously known for being a massive murderer. You wouldn’t even kill a moth last summer.” 

He got kicked to the ground by Honeymaren’s staff, and he didn’t add anything for the whole day. And took a mental note to never anger his sister during morning fight session. 

Honeymaren wiped the sweat off her face with her towel as she giggled with other Sami girls. Sighing in the typical happiness after early training, she walked to Elsa’s tent - their tent, she corrected her thoughts.

She walked for a while. The Fifth Spirit’s tent was isolated from others. It was at one of the borders of the village, but not too far so nobody felt like she was out of the camp, and children were happy to have space around the tent to play with her ice games when she made some. 

The brunette smiled at the memory of the moment she had asked Elsa how okay she was to not have her little fortress of solitude for herself anymore. Elsa had laughed openly in a soft way, and assured her that she had Ahtohallan for that. Another thing that Anna was right about. 

With a smile, Honeymaren entered the tent... And she suddenly blinked at the surprising heat in it.

“WAOW! What the--”

She looked around for Elsa.

“What the heck happened here? Did you make a fire??”

Elsa stopped right in her move, a wood log in her hand, about to add it to the stove in the middle of the room. She looked at her girlfriend with wide eyes, her mouth still.

“I thought you were going to like it.”

“Like it?” Scoffed Honeymaren. “Elsa, it’s like a thousand degrees in there! I feel like I just stepped into a volcano!”

The Spirit frowned. “You once went into a volcano?”

She then realized how stupid she could get when her brain was too distracted on Honeymaren.

“No, of course you haven’t.” She muttered, shaking her head.

The Northuldra stepped in, fanning her collar.

“I’m so sorry”, rushed to say Elsa, spraying ice into the stove. “I just have no idea what chilling air is. I don’t know what’s the discomfort limit, and as I used to live alone in this tent until now, I thought it would be too cold for you and that--”

Honeymaren put her hand on her shoulder to interrupt her. It was really efficient, for every time she touched Elsa, she instantly stopped talking and thinking.

“I’m fine. It’s perfect. I actually needed that heat, it’s getting cold outside. But nuances and appropriate measures are something we need to work on, okay?”

“Definitely.” Exhaled Elsa, agreeing. She really needed to know what was best for them both.

There was a silence.

“You can lower the temperature of a dozen degrees at least.” Indicated Honeymaren.

“Oh, right, sorry.” Hurried Elsa, and she refreshed the logs.

The Sami looked at her with a touched smile. “No need to apologize, you did nothing wrong. I truly appreciate the gesture.”

A smile appeared at the corner of Elsa’s lips.

“I’m quite surprised that you didn’t set the tent on fire.” Joked Honeymaren.

Elsa stuck her tongue out. 

“How was training?” She asked, changing the topic. 

“Great as always.”

“Did you let Ryder win?” 

“Pff. No.”

“Honeeeeey...” Sighed Elsa, bending her head. “You should let him win someday.”

“What? Oh, you’re so soft. He has to earn his victory. If he can’t beat me, he has to train more.” Smirked the Northuldra, cracking her fingers. 

Elsa shook her head. 

“Let me guess, you let Anna win from time to time so she doesn’t get angry?” Eye-rolled Honeymaren. 

“She actually win sometimes. And I don’t really have a competitive mind.” 

Her girlfriend giggled. She knew that very well. 

“Say, are you done with the... Whatever that obsession with making me comfortable was?” She asked, smiling. “Because I need your help on something. Are you available?” 

Elsa nodded.

“I’m all yours. No, wait, that sounded weird, I’m taking that back. I’m... Available.”

They laughed, and went out of the tent.

A little blue ball bounced from a nearby log and uncurled, jumping on Elsa. Hopefully, she was used to those unprompted surprises from the salamander, and welcomed him with a giggle.

“Hi, Bruni. What’s up?”

The Fire Spirit smiled and cuddled in Elsa’s palms. The latter absentmindedly showered him with snowflakes, and turned to Honeymaren. “So? What is it? What did you want to show me?” 

"Follow me.” 

That was an odd thing to ask, and quite useless, given that the Sami girl had grabbed Elsa's hand and started to walk to an isolated place of the forest. Bruni, curious like always, followed them - curiosity really was the character trait that all the Spirits had in common, thought Honeymaren as she looked at how the salamander walked behind them with its tiny adorable steps. 

"Where are you taking me?" Asked Elsa, smiling. 

The brunette didn't answer, and gave a stare to Bruni with a silence sign, putting her finger on her mouth. The Fire Spirit tilted his head to the side, trying to understand why she looked like she wanted to make him keep a secret.

Elsa turned her head to him, sharing the confusion. Suddenly, Honeymaren kissed Elsa on the lips, and she blinked of surprise, then smiled and kissed her back. What started as an improvised kiss turned into a passionate one, and they kept their love rhythm for a long time. 

Bruni squealed in embarrassment, and he closed his eyes as he became pink, his magic fire glowing like a blush. When he gave a peek by slowly opening his eyes, Honeymaren and Elsa had parted the kiss, and looked at each other with such devotion that it was obvious that they had forgotten Bruni's presence. They were looking into each other's eyes with their arms on each other's waist, relaxed and happy. Bruni perceived the message - mostly "Shoo! It's a private moment!" - and trotted away with a giggling squeal. 

Honeymaren stared at Elsa. 

"You're not blushing." She noticed. 

"Should I?" Teased the blonde. 

The Northuldra’s hold on Elsa’s hip got stronger. 

“No, I'm happy that you've used to our intimacy now. And as we'll live in the same tent starting from today, I just wanted to make sure...” 

“That I won't get embarrassed? Or bashful?" Completed Elsa.  

"Yes." Nodded her girlfriend. 

Now it was Elsa's hold which got stronger. And Honeymaren gasped, because she was pretty sure that it was even tighter than her own touch. 

"You’ll have to be the one who’s going to get used to me in the tent." Smiled Elsa. 

There was a beat. 

“Wait... Did my sentence make any sense?" 

Honeymaren laughed, and she hugged her close. "Not really, but I got it. By the way, you're a terrible flirt." 

Elsa pouted, but knew that it was true. 

"But it's okay!" Smiled Honeymaren on a reassuring tone. "You'll learn." 

The Fifth Spirit switched to sarcasm. "What? From you?" 

"Am I not a model?" Smiled the brunette, getting even closer to her, and now their noses were touching. 

"Certainly not.” Puffed Elsa. 

She then looked around. "But we can learn from each other." 

They got even closer, if that was even possible. 

"I'd love that." Grinned Honeymaren. 

She kissed her, and started to walk away the instant that followed. "Let's go take care of the reindeer." 

Elsa grabbed her arm. "Wait. Didn’t you need my help on something?" 

Honeymaren thought that she was trying to hold her for more cuddling, but she was genuine. She puffed at Elsa's big caring eyes. She really did have a long work to do to make her better at flirting... 

"Of course not, you ethereal idiot. That was a ruse to make you follow me without asking questions. You're the attentive and protective type. And it obviously worked." 

Elsa pouted once again, but admitted that she was right, once again. 

"So you don't need my help to take care of the reindeer?" Said Elsa, lifting an eyebrow. 

Honeymaren’s mouth opened in a perfect O when she heard her sarcasm. "Hold on, that's not what I meant." 

"Byyyye", smirked Elsa, waving and turning around. 

"No wait, Els, you know it’s always easier when you use your magic! Hey, come here you dork!”

=======

Several days later, or rather nights, the peaceful silence in Elsa’s and Honeymaren’s tent was interrupted by a light scratching of pen on paper.

Honeymaren finished noting the soup recipe Kristoff had asked for, taping her pen on her lips as she checked that she didn’t forget any advice in the composition, and exact ingredients. She wanted to make sure that Kristoff would cook the best version of the soup. He had asked the recipe discreetly on his last visit, for he wanted to cook it for Anna on the upcoming cold Winter evenings, when she was so busy with royal paperwork that she barely had the time to eat.

The Northuldra smirked as she added ‘Mix the butternut first if you want the soup to be even sweeter’ in a corner of her notebook page. Once she was done, she detached the page and folded it at the light of the lantern next to her on the nightstand. She then closed her notebook and put it next to Elsa’s on the ice cabinet. Honeymaren stretched her arm as she reached the surface, her tongue out, doing all the effort necessary to not go off the sheets to not wake Elsa up.

The blonde was sleeping next to her on the bed, but practically on her, one arm against her on her pillow, and the other on Honeymaren. The woman sighed at how beautiful she was in that position, and yet she had no clue. Honeymaren had lost the count of how many times she had told Elsa how beautiful she was in casual moments and that the latter had looked at her with a surprised face and a ‘I do?’. 

Elsa was a real extra and dramatic person who loved sparkly outfits, noticed Honeymaren, but paradoxically she had no idea how she was admired in daily moments where she didn’t even bother about her appearance.

In this specific moment, Elsa had crafted herself a quick ice night gown that was like a second skin, too tired to make herself something more fancy before falling into bed. As Honeymaren was outside telling a story to the children, Elsa had entered their tent, turned her outfit into something lighter, fell on the sheets, and curled herself against the coat which the Northuldra had left on the bed that morning. Elsa obviously wasn’t doing this to warm herself up; she liked the smell of her girlfriend in the winter clothes, and when Honeymaren entered the tent an hour afterwards, she wasn’t surprised to see her sleeping tight to it with a smile at the corner of her lips. The blonde was holding her coat like a child would do with a comforter.

Elsa was exhausted, after spending her whole days helping the Giants build a valley up West to make an access for merchants. She was deep into slumber, and was sleeping with her mouth slightly open, breathing calmly. Honeymaren smiled as she observed her. She was very glad that Elsa was a Spirit with still a human body, and could feel tiredness and had to sleep, so she could admire her as she did so.

The Sami woman blew the candle out in the lantern she had lit up to write the recipe, and slid down the bed under the covers to be at Elsa’s level. Only the light of the Moon passing at the top of the tent lit up her face, but her platinum blonde hair looked like it shone in the dark. Honeymaren smiled and softly put a kiss on her forehead.

Elsa moved at the sensation, waking up a bit, but falling right back to sleep.

“Yep, you’re wrecked.” Murmured Honeymaren.

She put the blanked on them both, even though, she knew, that it was of no use on Elsa, and she would soon toss it away in her dreams. She felt Elsa getting closer to her, and that was so soothing that she found sleep in no time.

=======

They enjoyed the rise of the sun as they had their breakfast, and Honeymaren nudged her girlfriend as they ate.

“How powerful are you, exactly?”

Elsa looked down with a smile. The brunette was lied down, her head next to her. Honeymaren’s voice, as she asked that, was filled with concern and fascination at the same time.

“Well, we were bored on a rainy day with Anna once, and we kind of did the maths…”

“I thought that you couldn’t estimate your magic with numbers.”

“It’s an expression.” Smirked Elsa.

Honeymaren stared at her girlfriend with a challenging look, and twirled so her chin would be on her hands, lying on her stomach. “What is the most powerful thing you’ve ever done with your magic?”

The blonde smiled, and looked at the horizon.

“I switched an entire kingdom from Summer to Winter, once. Just because I was upset.”

The Northuldra’s jaw dropped, and the Fifth Spirit laughed at her reaction. She nudged Elsa. “You’ve never told me that!!”

“Well, I don’t really like to talk about it. It was four years ago, and I still am a bit ashamed about it…”

“I understand. But when blondie is upset, she’s upset!” Giggled Honeymaren. “I’ve seen the state you can get into when you’re angry. I pity the poor enemies.”

Elsa wasn’t smiling, however. Honeymaren’s smile therefore vanished.

“You don’t get it. I wasn’t upset in that way.” Stated Elsa, now grave. “I was scared, overwhelmed, and I lost control. I didn’t do it on purpose. Also, that wasn’t a foe kingdom. It was Arendelle.”

The Sami woman got speechless. All those informations at a time… Her eyes widened as she processed everything.

“Elsa…” She muttered instinctively.

But to her surprise, the Spirit didn’t seem to be sad in any way. Like it was all part of the past, and she had completely healed from it. The blonde looked down at the hand Honeymaren had just put on hers.

“I’m okay.” Smiled Elsa, a bit weakly. “Anna helped. And I managed to thaw it all and bring back Summer. Thanks to her. She helped through the years, as well.”

“To move on?”

The blonde nodded. “The Arendellians also were comprehensive and supportive. I didn’t expect it, and it was really heartwarming.”

Honeymaren smiled. “Even if some of them got severe colds?” She joked.

Elsa giggled at her humor. And the brunette enjoyed the return of happiness on her face in the early sun rays.

“Apparently, nobody got harmed. It’s a miracle.”

“Your magic is a miracle.” Slipped Honeymaren.

Elsa turned to her with a touched expression and a light blush.

“…Thanks.” Muttered the blonde.

The brunette took another chocolate treat from the box - Arendelle’s finest, that Anna had brought as a gift - and a silence passed.

Elsa cleared her throat.

“So, yeah. That was the most powerful thing I’ve ever done. I think.”

“This, and stopping a gigantic tidal wave.”

“Oh, yes, also that.”

“Hey, you did that sudden Winter accidentally. Imagine what you could do on purpose.”

Elsa smiled. “Anna comments on that quite often. She says that if Arendelle is ever attacked or at war, we’ll be safe and done with it before the first day of fight is even over.”

The Northuldra laughed. “Especially with the help of the Spirits.”

“Especially with the help of the Spirits”, nodded Elsa, sharing her laugh.

She looked at Bruni, several meters below, playing with Gale and sticking his tongue out as he flew in the air.  

“Well, some of us really aren’t the fighting type.”

Honeymaren smiled, and took a chocolate treat from the box.

“Think fast!”

“Uh?”

A chocolate treat bumped Elsa’s mouth, and she grunted at the sudden shock.

“The heck?!”

Honeymaren cackled.

“Yep, your reflexes are really bad. We’re screwed.”

“Come here, you’ll see if my reflexes are bad!” Threatened Elsa with a smile, suddenly standing up to tickle Honeymaren.

The latter hurried to roll away and stand up too, and gasped with a giggle as she ran out of her reach.

Elsa tried to catch her, grabbing her waist, and they kept running after each other in the forest, filling the woods with laughter.

======= 

THE END 

=======

*bows* Here we go! :D I hope you enjoyed this fanfic just as much as I enjoyed writing it (read: a LOT). Thank you SO MUCH for all the awesome feedback you gave me so far, you all, it’s really meaningful and touching. Whether you tell me you laughed, or cried, or squealed, it shows that you loved my work and I’m very happy!

The best compliment you guys gave me and that seems to come back again and again (to my delight) is that everything is “totally in-character”. It’s amazing.

I’m glad you like my style! If you want to read more of it, check out Untangling the Frozen Knots, my Frozen x Tangled crossover fanfic novel. It’s 140K words long and available in paperback version. So comfyyyy!

Cheers and thank you all again! See you on the next fanfic or drabble! ;)

[mandakatt]

Fire Emblem Three Houses Fic - Lorenz Hellman Gloucester x Ferdinand von Aegir - What matters

A/N: A request I wrote for @silverdriftdragon​ during one of my writing streams who asked for Lorenz and Ferdinand and a Secret Kiss. 

I kinda stuck to it I suppose? Maybe? Ah heck, here, take it, before I continue to feed it and make it longer cause my muse was wanting to run with this and not give it up.

Characters: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester x Ferdinand von Aegir Warnings: None Word Count: 1111 Summary: There was one thing that Lorenz really wanted from the Garreg Mach Ball, but he was positive he couldn’t have it...it would hurt him too much...

The music was soft in the air, and everyone had a bright smile on their face and yet Lorenz couldn’t stand any of it. It was as if everything, every single smile was grating on his nerves, and he couldn’t figure out why. He had been so looking forward to the Garreg Mach ball, wanting so badly to dance with the one that he had affection for, but as he watched the couples dance, and glide along the floor, to him, it felt like each couple was deliberately throwing him a teasing smile. 

He couldn’t have--no--He wasn’t allowed to have it and they knew it. 

Clicking his tongue loudly he turned on his heel to head outside for some fresh air. He hated how his heart was hammering in his ears with his anger. How dare they. But then again, if they only knew who he truly wished to dance with, they’d probably shun him even more than they already did because of his family name. Well, more of what his father had made of their family name really, and it pulled a soft, almost frustrated noise from his throat. 

“Lorenz?”

Turning his head quickly toward the sound of that voice, goddess that voice he’d wanted to hear all evening, he quickly placed his hands behind his back, and offered one of his signature smiles. 

“Oh! Good evening Ferdinand. I do hope that the ball has treated you well this evening?”

Ferdinand gave him a gentle smile of his own as he stepped closer to him. “I suppose it has, though I am surprised to find you out here and not out on the dance floor with someone. Are you feeling alright?”

Lorenz took a slow deep breath to calm the sudden rise in his temper, and the thundering of his blood in his ears. Why would I be on the dance floor with anyone other than you?! “I promise you I am perfectly fine Ferdinand von Aegir. I am surprised that your dance card is not completely full for the evening.” and he clenched his hands behind his back at how slightly sharp his tone had become. 

“I am glad to hear that,” Ferdinand said softly though his expression looked a little sad. “Though I do hope you would tell me if something was bothering you, so that I may help you with whatever troubles you.” 

Lorenz felt his heart twist a little as he turned his eyes away from Ferdinand, only to take a slow deep breath. “I apologize for my tone, Ferdinand. There is...there is just something that I want and I am not allowed to have, and I suppose I have let it get the better of me.” and it was then he realized just how close the other man was, and he felt his nails bite into his palms. 

“Well, if there is anything that I can do to help you acquire what you need, do tell me, please? I want nothing more than to help you if I can do so, Lorenz.”

Turning his head to look back at Ferdinand, Lorenz felt his breath catch at just how close he’d gotten to him and he felt his heart catch in his throat. Swallowing the lump down he tried to offer him a smile only to gasp just a little as Ferdinand brushed his fingers down his arm and gently pulled it towards him so that he could take his hand. 

“Please Lorenz. Know that I would do anything within my power to help you. You do know this right?” Ferdinand’s voice was soft, full of concern and it pulled right at Lorenz’s heart. 

“What I want is something that would hurt you, I believe. So no, Ferdinand, I am afraid that this is something that I cannot ask for.”

Ferdinand blinked at him once then stepped closer, clasping his hands in both of his own as he looked up at him. “Lorenz…” and then he let his voice drop down to almost a whisper, but he knew that Lorenz could hear him. “My love, please…”

Closing his eyes a moment, Lorenz let himself enjoy the warmth of Ferdinand’s hands around his own before he looked at him, his brows furrowing just a little. “I...I-I want…” and he groaned a little when Ferdinand gave him that lovely, hopeful smile that always made his heart flutter. “I want to dance with you, where everyone can see. I want everyone to know just how much I love and adore you, how I long to be yours. But, with how people think, and perceive things, I would not want to--” 

His words were then cut off by the feel of Ferdinand’s lips on his own. It was chaste, and too short for his liking but it was enough to completely derail any thought he had as he blinked at the other man who did nothing but give him that lovely, bright smile. 

“Then let them talk. Nobles are to set examples of how others are to act and should act, and if I am at my best when I am with you, then I see nothing at all wrong with a dance, or another kiss for that matter.” 

Lorenz felt his face grow warm before a smile finally pulled his lips upwards. “Y-You would kiss me again?”

“Yes. All you must do is simply ask...” 

“Then...please...kiss me again, i-if you would be so inclined.” 

Ferdinand couldn’t stop the soft huff of laughter that passed his lips. “Gladly.” he breathed as he quickly closed that distance to kiss him again, though this time he let it linger with Lorenz’s hand still clutched gently within his own near his chest, and Lorenz couldn’t help but gasp softly into that kiss as he could feel Ferdinand’s heart race against his hand, nor could he help the fact that he slightly chased after him when it ended. 

“I care not what anyone else thinks of you, my love, and I swear I will constantly remind you that the only thing you should worry about what someone thinks of you, is me…” Ferdinand spoke softly as he gently brushed his thumb against Lorenz’ hand. “Now then, I do believe you had wanted a dance?”

Lorenz’s eyes went wide with surprise as Ferdinand had simply started to sway to the music, though soft it was from this distance from where the ball was being held, and he found himself moving in time with him, a rather happy and very pleased smile on his features. 

Yes. 

Ferdinand was right. 

This, who was with him right here, should be all that really mattered

[thegreenfairy13]

A Gotham Ghost Story - Part 5

When Oswald shoots Jim on the pier, his ghost is doomed to haunt the mobster. You can read the full story here. 

Thank you @mexican-texican for the beta! <3</p>

What follows feels like an onslaught. Jim is left with no choice but to follow the woman down gloomy corridors as he’s being pulled around corners and up the stairs. He wonders if death will always remain like this, being reduced to a sentient being that only observes but is unable to act.

A door behind him slams shut and the blonde hurls around to lock it. Finally, the cop can take a better look at her and gasps. He knows her, recognizes without a single doubt on his mind Gertrud Kapelput’s face however it can’t be . It’s a cop’s curse, being unable to forget a face, and even if he only ever saw her once he’s still absolutely certain.

But when looking closer, he notes how it can’t be, mustn’t be. The fragile woman might resemble Gertrud, they share the same nose, cheekbones, lips…but it can’t be. This woman is in her twenties, at most, and most notably, she’s got a ferocity and purposefulness to her that Oswald’s mother always lacked.

This young lady might be terrified but she’s not helpless. Jim observes her shoving a couple of dresses and some personal belongings into a bag before turning towards the window, for sure assessing the height and her chances should she be forced to leave the house by jumping through it.

They both freeze at the sound of steps coming down the hallway and before Jim can react, the woman does. “Hold the door!” she shrieks, looking directly at the Commissioner. When he doesn’t budge she repeats her request, more commanding this time.

Unable to process what’s happening, Jim does what he does best: saving someone. Turning, he drops his entire weight against the door. Closing his eyes, all he focuses on is the task at hand. James Gordon is still a cop and this woman is an innocent citizen demanding help. All he has to do is keep this door closed - at all costs. He sinks into the wood, feels each and every little atom, breathes the scents of wax, wood, and metal, imagines the lock fusing with the frame, imagines this single door holding up entire armies because if he doesn’t, whoever makes it through will kill her. He knows that with the same certainty he knows he’s dead, and he knows he won’t allow for it to happen.

The woman glances at him from the other side of the room, smiling gratefully. Jim smirks back at her and it suddenly hits him. She’s resilient, she’d make it without him too, but he buys her the time she needs. Another item follows the ones already in the bag and for a reason unknown, it makes him incredibly happy she’s able to gather everything she requires.

“I’m ready,” she states, already opening the window, preparing herself for the jump from the first floor. Holding out her hand, she invites Jim to follow her. Dazed, he takes it and for the second time today, he actually feels anything . He senses her warmth, picks up on her scent, which is also vaguely familiar, and vows to protect her.

“We’ll land softly,” she orders and Jim nods.

“You can see me,” he states, slightly awed and noting how his state of mind resembles being drunk. Not that he minds - it’s wonderful, as if someone had taken his brain and wrapped it up in clouds.

“Of course I can see you, silly,” she responds. “I conjured you,” the woman declares matter of factly. “I prayed for a guardian to watch over me and my child, I made the sacrifice - what good would it be if you’d appear and I couldn’t see you?” She shrugs as she tries ushering Jim toward the window.

Someone’s banging against the door already. However, Jim is certain they have all the time they need. Not a single second extra, but not one less, even. It’s a funny thing of her to say that though, that she made a sacrifice when he’s the one who died, he muses.

Jim already wants to contradict her when remembering he still has to get his facts straight first. “You’re Gertrud, indeed,” he asserts, waiting for her to confirm.

“Who else would I be?” she laughs a little bit, probably wondering what type of third-class guardian her magic procured. Given the circumstances, Jim accepts the concept of conjurings with shocking ease. Compared to dying, it’s not that outlandish though.

The lawman wants to laugh out loud. When truly taking in her physique, Jim wonders how he possibly could have missed her circumstances in the first place. Gertrud is delicate, way too thin for it to be healthy, therefore the slight swell of her belly should have caught his attention earlier.

“You’re pregnant,” he points out, feeling a bit foolish for stating the obvious the second time in a row.

Instinctively, she covers her belly with her free hand. “You’re here to protect him first,” Gertrud orders. “My safety is secondary. We made the deal, demon!”

“Demon?” Jim chuckles bemused and Gertrud’s face falls.

“You’re not…?”

“A demon?” the dead man finishes. “Hardly. I have no idea what I am. I only know I died and it was because of the baby you’re carrying.”

The women’s eyes open almost comically as she backs away from Jim in sudden horror. She grabs her bag, makes for the window once more, however backs down in sudden desperation.

“But you helped me,” she cries out, frantically looking for another way out. Feeling guilty, Jim raises his hands placatingly.  

The door behind Jim rattles again, louder this time, and the cop feels a sudden wave of urgency, as if he was forced to carry on, else he might give away his chances.

“I’m a cop, I help people,” he says matter of factly, opting for a soothing tone.

“You’re a liar, demon!” she accuses instead, eyes rolling wildly from here to there and suddenly, it hits him. Jim didn’t recognize her right away but now, as she’s pacing the room hysterically, running her hands through the strands of her hair, he perceives the madness.

In later years, her mental decline will be clear for everyone to see, but today the illness is nothing but a small seed. One day, she’ll seek salvation in the illusions her mind will gracefully procure for her and the thought alone saddens the cop. How must it have been, being raised by a mother gradually unable to differ fiction from reality? Is it the reason Oswald never told her about his true profession? It must have been easier, leaving her to her delusions and letting her see whatever she chose to.

Stomping her feet, she focuses all her rage towards the cop. “I’ll raise a good boy!” she declares with conviction. “I’ll have a beautiful baby boy, and he will be happy, he’ll be honest, he’ll be generous, and he’ll know nothing but love. I swore,” she almost screams and Jim shakes his head.

There’s something about Gertrud that makes arguing quite difficult, impossible even. “I said your baby is the cause for my death,” Jim sighs wearily. “I never said he’s responsible for it.” That’s not entirely true, but it’s a lie Jim can live with. Everything considered, dealing with men like Oswald on a daily basis is like playing Russian Roulette; he had it coming, especially after meddling with his freedom the way he did. Heck, he got ten good years, even.

Jim wishes he could close his eyes for a second, escape this new reality for a second. The only grace he’s being given is the ability to stare at a stain on the wall. He wills himself to focus.

“So it was an accident?” the future kingpin’s mother inquires curiously. “And even after your death, you’re here to help?”

“One could put it that way,” Jim admits drily.

The door rattles for the third time, a warning for the both of them to hurry up as a vivid image flashes before the cop’s inner eye: he observes himself stepping away, sees a lock breaking and wood splintering, he sees an outraged man storming inside, Gertrud screaming. Jim sees blood and he feels nauseous. He never could, could he?

Taking a deep breath, he imagines Gertrud’s lifeless body, a baby never born. It feels wrong and terrible, this death.

‘I will faithfully serve and protect anyone in need of a helping hand. I will never kill unless there is no other option to fulfill my vow.’ Jim silently recites the oath he took when joining the force, pushing away an image of his daughter running joyfully towards him. All of this is just a test, Jim tells himself. None of this is real and the past can’t be changed, he remembers his physics-teacher from fifth grade saying so.

Face lighting up, Gertrud claps her hands. “He’ll be exceptional, won’t he?” she muses. “What a man he’ll grow up to be, how much he’ll be loved when his friends even seek to protect him after their death?”

“You are friends, aren’t you?” she urges after a moment, giving him the same treatment he received the first time Barbara introduced him to her parents. It’s a look of pure scrutiny as she carefully sizes him up, for sure wondering if he’s good enough for her precious Oswald.

“We’re friends,” Jim rushes to clarify, fully aware he’s finally saying the words her son longed to hear for years.

Gertrud opens her mouth, indecisive. Jim isn’t sure why he’s secretly proud of the fact that she seems to be slightly disappointed in the statement before her demeanor changes again. It’s slightly endearing how much she and her son have in common.

Narrowing her eyes suspiciously, she assesses the dead man once more. “You said you’re a cop,” Gertrud recalls. “If you are indeed a cop, why would you , the corrupt scum of Gotham, be friends with my baby boy?”

Rolling his eyes, Jim prepares for his well-studied not-all-cops speech, the very same he bestows upon hesitant witnesses.

“I’d teach my child better than to hang out with cops and robbers,” Gertrud declares furiously and honestly, Jim can’t blame her, yet he’s got a trick up his sleeve that works even better than any type of persuasion.

“All honest cops have either quit or died,” he snaps back. “As we both can see, I’m the latter,” he adds drily.

Despite herself, Gertrud chuckles. “Can’t argue with that, darling,” he declares warmly.

“We should leave now,” Jim reminds her when he feels something pressing against his back. There’s no urgency though. He feels it again, this floating, unearthly sensation of being a mere pawn in a greater game, unable to act but to follow the path of destiny.

“Do you think you can help me?” he wonders out loud when taking Gertrud’s hand, leaping out of the window together with her.

He hears the wind rustling through the trees the very second she shouts her answer. They land on the grass, both chuckling in delight when she brushes off the leaves from her dress while Jim is still completely unaffected.

“Who was that lunatic anyway,” Jim wants to know, already running into the woods with her, admiring the long strands of hair dancing through the air. She looks so alive , like that, not even knowing how close indeed she’d been to death. If just one tiny thing had turned out differently, if she had tripped, if she had been silent instead of loud, if the door had not been made from oak, if…

Life always beats death, Jim decides. There’s no hidden romanticism in a life cut short, in a heart stopped from beating. Gertrud is gorgeous, and full of hope and love for her son’s future. He couldn’t take that from her even if there might have been a chance it would have stopped his own suffering.

Laughing in sheer relief, Gertrud runs through the trees, the bag flapping over her shoulder. “Who should it have been,” she grins. “My baby boy’s grandfather, of course.”

Even Jim has to giggle. For Gotham’s standards, that sounds like such a mundane family-drama.

“I need your help, though,” he shouts in lieu of an answer. “I need to be alive again,” he adds and Gertrud stops.

The good mood from mere moments ago is lost instantly and Jim swears he can almost feel the temperature dropping himself when his stomach falls.

“Oh, my poor baby,” Gertrud says, cupping his face lightly between her hands. “My poor, poor baby,” she repeats sadly. “The dead can’t return to life. Not like that. Either, they are gone, or they need to fulfill their purpose.” Jim hopes it’s only a trick of the light she suddenly sounds crazed.

After pondering for a moment, her face suddenly lights up. “But I can do one thing for you,” she proposes excitedly. “I told you I’d make sure my son stays away from cops. I’ll teach him not to befriend one, maybe…”

The gunshot echoes through the woods, cutting her line of thought short. That has been the last warning and Jim can practically feel the time running out as his mind is getting dragged through space and time, hurled mercilessly through the void back to where he started.

The feeling is similar to a cramp, only worse, and a hundred times more painful. Here goes his only chance for help, Jim thinks, as Gertrud leaves him behind, taking his ability to communicate with another living being with her. He screams after her, begs her to call him back, to help him however possible.

Turning, she reaches for him, tries grabbing his hand again yet they both already know she can’t follow. “I promise,” she shouts after him and Jim wants to weep.

[nanodayoloswag]

Detective Akechu

It’s words. Several of them, strung together. Y’know. Like a parody fic that absolutely did not need to exist but weird shit happens when you don’t sleep for days so here we are. Read on if you dare or whatever.

__

 “Hey! Hey, wake up, please? Are you alright? You’ve both been passed out for a very long time now. I’m not sure exactly how much help I can be in this form. I feel as though what I could do would be very counteractive to what actually needs to be done. Though in this world is that particularly dangerous? Then again, in our own world, where people tend to heal absurdly fast, something like that isn’t particularly dangerous at all, right?

“Surely then, in this world, where creatures such as this exist, then it’s the norm to be jolted like this every now and again, right? Otherwise this creature wouldn’t be half as popular as it is, would it? Well, maybe among certain groups. But generally the face of the brand such as this has much less malicious intentions, right? Of course, there is an argument to be made for Madoka’s mascot character, but that character also wasn’t acting out of malice, really. It’s just that people perceive it as malice. 

“Attempting to save the universe from entropy really is a noble endeavor, though I suppose the real cause for argument is how unethical the tradeoff seems. Alien creatures don’t need to adhere to any human code of ethics though, right? It doesn’t really make them wrong not to abide by that, does it? No, of course not.

“But am I taking the aliens’ side too easily you ask? What about the humans who were tricked into the contract? Withholding information isn’t exactly a trick or deception. It isn’t an honest tactic for sure, but why would anyone accept the deal the incubators needed for them to strike if they knew the consequences from the start? Something like that is what you’d call ‘a necessary evil’ right? 

“You can’t answer that of course, still knocked out cold it seems. Perhaps I should find someone. Or, perhaps I really should employ that particular method? It is entirely possible that convenience in situations such as this could be a reason that I was -

“Oh! Are you finally coming to now? Great. I was just thinking that maybe I should sh - GyAHk”

“SHADDAP.” A fist collided hard with the back of the blabbering creature’s fuzzy head, shoving it down into the dirt as Aiura Mikoto groggily picked herself up off the ground. “Ugh, what the shit.” She blinked several times, and glanced around at her surroundings. Whaaa-HuH??? This. Certainly wasn’t where she lived. Or anything close to it, actually. Was this still even around Hidariwakibara? She was out in the woods somewhere. 

And. The hell was that guy doing here? 

Lying face-down in front of her was Toritsuka Reita. 

Why in all fuck was she out in the forest with Toritsuka? 

Just what the hell did that imply? 

Well she’d be damned if she wasn’t about to find out. She grabbed his unconscious form by the shirt and yanked him off the ground.  

“Hey, get your ass up and tell me what’s going on here!”

“I can tell you that!” Something else popped up from the ground. It was a familiar little fuzzy shape. Yellow-ish with tiny bead eyes and round red cheeks. Plus that iconic tail shape. There were several reactions a person could have to seeing something like this. Mikoto, thoroughly startled by it, responded by screeching and kicking it away from her as fast as possible. It slammed into a nearby tree, and fell back against the trunk, dazed. What that thing was didn’t click to Aiura for another few moments.  

H-HuuuHHHH??? Her face perfectly matched that sentiment. She let Toritsuka go and stared at the large rat she’d kicked for a few moments, making sure she was absolutely certain before slowly coming forward and making the call. “Holy shit is that a fucking Pikachu?” She was incredulous. What in the heck. No way. This was like, a toy or something, right? 

The toy sure was moving in a lot less robotic way than she would have expected as it tried to recompose itself. It was quietly mumbling as it did so, words a bit slurred here and there. “That chsertainly is unpleasant. It isn’t as though this medium has ever implied that these scenarios were parchitcularly pleasant but the battles against each other at the least arree shppposed to be exhilerating at least, yes? I guess that’s not fully connected. There’s still got to be physical pain involved, it’s jusht that -” 

It sure did talk a lot too for a toy. Didn’t Aiura know that voice? 

“Hey. You’re like, for reals alive, yea? Ya ain’t a toy?” Might as well just cut to the fastest way to clear this up. 

The fuzzy little thing looked straight up at her face. “Yes, I’m alive, to my knowledge. I can’t say that I know much about how ‘life’ itself works in this world. We can easily assume it works the same as ours, considering what’s presented in the materials for it, however one can also easily make the argument that this is simply an altered state with life itself being tethered to original bodies and worlds and so on and so forth. For example, my form may have shifted to become that you see before you right now, or, my spirit could have traveled here and possessed this being. There are several more possibilities and as I just woke up this way I can’t say that one or the other is for sure the truth of the matter here. But it is very possible that if my spirit is here and my original body is left behind somewhere, that that version of me is ‘dead’ at this moment if it can no longer function without the spirit.”

Woah, it recovered fast all of a sudden. Aiura had no idea what exactly he was on about with spirits here but at least something was clear now. 

“You’re that one guy. Kusuo’s friend.” 

“I assumed that I was being clear enough but yes. I am Akechi Touma! Although at this moment we could also say that -”

“NO, quiet for a moment. I need to understand this.” Okay. Alrighty. Sure. She had just woken up in the middle of the forest. Toritsuka was there. Akechi was there. And for some reason, he was a Pikachu. Right. Yeah. Okay. That was happening right now. 

How the heck was that happening right now? Was this a dream? Was she asleep? No way in hell she’d be dreaming about Toritsuka being there with her. Actually, she needed to get back to waking him up. It’d be easier to understand an explanation from him than Chatterchu over there. She had just bent down to grab the spirit medium up and start shaking him when someone who just could not follow directions called her attention again.

“Ah! Right! Him! He was here with you when I first woke up. I was around the both of you as well so I assume that whatever happened must have involved all of us together. I have no recollection of events prior to ending up here like this either, or what has caused my sudden transformation. However if you need an assist in waking him I did several experiments before attempting to wake either of you. As this is my body now it seemed imperative that I-”

“GET TO THE POINT! Geez, some of us are tryin’ to figure out what the fuck is happening yanno?” 

“Ah, yes, right, the point. Well I’ll be brief then and test my theory on this. After some trial and error with this body I discovered that shockingly easily I am able to –“ He cut himself off for once as a bolt of electricity burst forth from his body and struck Toritsuka. 

The target crackled and sputtered from the shock, his body twitching violently. Akechi’s plan worked well enough to jolt Toritsuka awake though. Once he stopped his attack the medium hopped up, screaming, and also stumbling a bit as his body was still shaking.

“I WAS ONLY LOOKING I DIDNT TOUCH ANYONE!” 

A little smile crept onto Aiura’s face. Toritsuka seemed like he’d be fine, but that was. Well. She hadn’t expected it, at the least. “Hey that’s super handy. We should consider keepin’ you this way.” Down the line Toritsuka could probably use a few more good jolts like that.

It took a good minute for Toritsuka to realize that he was awake and in the middle of a forest instead of off in some foreign nightmare prison being tazed for things he probably should not admit to here. He wasn’t as confused by the situation as Aiura had been once he got his bearings. He simply mumbled out, “Must’ve been sleep walking.” His temple was around a forested area, so he just had to figure the way back. 

Akechi was fascinated by the fact that Toritsuka didn’t seem to particularly be injured once he’d fully woken up. The physics of what he’d just done worked just as he had figured that they would in this world. He would have launched into a whole spiel on that, excited to share his discovery, if Toritsuka hadn’t taken notice of them finally first. 

“Hah? Boob girl? What are you doing here?” 

The first thing Aiura did in response to that was slap him as hard as she possibly could. The force sent him reeling backward. 

Toritsuka grabbed his poor, very red, stinging face. “HEY WHAT THE HECK?!!” 

Aiura was having none of his games. “Obviously you kidnapped me out here in my sleep or something!” She had ignored Akechi’s implication that something must have happened to all of them. This was Toritsuka’s fault. There’s no way anyone would willingly wake up next to that guy. There’s no way she would’ve willingly gone into some situation with that guy that would cause this. Well, unless Kusuo asked, maybe. But if he had, she didn’t remember it, so that didn’t matter at the moment. 

“I DIDN’T DO THAT! I’M NOT THAT KIND OF PERVERT!” 

Her hard stare said she didn’t believe him. She was about to voice that but stopped, startled as something fuzzy had leapt up onto her shoulder to be more at eye-level with Toritsuka. 

“I’m here as well!” Akechi chimed. That sent Toritsuka reeling back for an entirely different reason. 

“Wh-HUUH??!! That’s a Pikachu! Isn’t it?!!” 

“Yes. Indeed, it seems I have become a popular mascot character in this world. However, that is not our issue at current. Well, I suppose it is still my issue, as I’m not quite certain how it may have happened, and I would like to return to my original form, if possible. Although I do have several theories on the matter. Again, though, that is not the topic of discussion right now. At present the issue is how all of us have awoken together in this place. I feel it’s wrong to place unnecessary blame without having all the facts. We can’t confirm or deny that one person dragged the other out here. And the three of us don’t particularly spend as much time together as we do apart, so unless there were other circumstances, one of which I think is a major factor in this, then -”  

“Woah, okay, shut up! You’re just like that one guy!” 

“He is that one guy.”  

“He-WHA?” 

“Right! I already said this while you were asleep, but I do happen to be Akechi Touma!” 

Toritsuka stared at the Pikachu for a long moment. A very, very long moment, before voicing what was on his mind about it. “Saiki-san really is terrifying, huh.” 

“Kusuo?” Aiura questioned, not quite following.

The look Toritsuka shot her said that this should have been obvious. “Well, duh! What else could do this?! You’ve seen what he can do to people just by looking at them!” 

“Well, yeah...” Of course she had to concede to that, but. Why would Kusuo do something like this? He wasn’t the type to just mess with people on a random whim. 

Akechi didn’t look so sure about Toritsuka’s deduction either. “Though I also feel as if Kusuo-kun may have had something to do with this situation, perhaps we can’t place the entirety of the blame on him just yet? Considering where we are, there could be several other factors at work here. This particular group is proof that our world has it’s share of unnatural phenomena, but I feel that in this one such things are far more common.”

People didn’t often -no, they would never- ask Akechi to elaborate, but the way those two were looking at him said that they weren’t quite understanding. “The two of you still haven’t realized, I see. Take a good look around us. Particularly, at the fauna. Do they look like creatures that existed in our own world naturally?” 

Fauna was animals and junk, right? Aiura walked around, glancing here and there with Akechi still riding on her shoulder. That was a little annoying, but it really was easier if they didn’t have to look down at him. She wasn’t really seeing anything though. There were some birds in the distance, but they were too far off for her to tell what they actually were.

It wasn’t too long before Akechi poked her face to get her attention. He pointed to what had his own attention currently. A little farther off from where they were, in between the trees, things were gathering. Big things. They were brown, bug-like, kind of reminiscent of an upright stag beetle with those large spiked horns, and stood about as tall as a person. More and more were gathering to watch them. It was kind of creepy.

“Perhaps,” Akechi whispered. “It would be in our best interest to head to another area. Their demeanor and movements suggest agitation, so perhaps we’ve intruded on their territory. It would better if-”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Didn’t need to tell Miko-chan twice. She also agreed that booking it outta there would be best. They just had to get Toritsuka, and- 

Oh no. 

What the fuck was he doing?!

They turned to find Toritsuka nearly face to face with one of those bugs. How the heck had that happened? Did one just decide that it couldn’t stand his face and decide to go at him first? Well, considering that guy, it’s probably what happened. It didn’t seem like he had a plan here though. He looked scared as shit as he backed away and the thing kept advancing on him. If he kept that up he was just going to get pinned against a tree. Damn it. They had to do something to get him out of that, but what? If Aiura did something to call attention to herself that thing would be on her. Not to mention all of those other ones that were probably also getting ready to make some attack against them. 

Akechi decided this was a matter he should take into his hands. Logically he could do the most here, right? He hopped off of Aiura and ran towards the bug. She called after for him to stop, but this should be fine. These creatures were made for this sort of thing. And despite his earlier experience with impact pain, surely when it came to battling these bodies were much more durable. They had to be, otherwise this sport never would have gotten as far as it did. Or, as far as he assumed it did, anyway. At present he had no reason to believe that such wasn’t the case for this world. 

He shocked the bug as he had Toritsuka before. It didn’t seem to enjoy the experience, but as Akechi also figured, one hit wasn’t enough to put it down. And now it was angry with him. Forgetting Toritsuka, it charged the Pikachu, bending to gouge it’s target with it’s horns. That was, admittedly, kind of terrifying, as Akechi was quite a bit smaller than the bug. So when Akechi unleashed yet another bust of electricity to counter, it actually was not the only thing he unleashed. That was much less embarrassing as a mouse out on the ground where it wasn’t as noticeable and socially unacceptable. Although when it came to various creatures that were territorial, what he’d just done was probably very bad if these particular creatures noticed and got it in their heads that this was some sort of marking behavior.

Through his counter-shock he was still grabbed by the larger monster anyway, and it clamped him with it’s pincer-like horns until the pain became too much and Akechi was forced to cut off his own attack. Perhaps he should have moved before making the decision to attack again, but sometimes fear beats out reasoning and he did not. How was he going to get out of this? The spikes on it’s horns were piercing his body slightly, and the more it clamped the deeper they went. Perhaps the others could lend an assist now that he had it’s attention? But where had they gone? Had they abandoned him here? 

No, he was able to see Toritsuka at least. He had moved from where he was before, but now he was just watching the situation. Akechi thought he seemed unnaturally still. He tried to call out to him, as he most certainly did not look alright, but all the managed was a little squeak as the other clamped him tighter. It was saying something. 

Akechi realized then that he could understand it. 

Right, of course he would be able to understand it. In this world, these creatures understood each other. What a terrible oversight. That wasn’t like him. He probably could have tried resolving this through conversation, yet, he had just done what had seemed natural. Was that folly truly a simple misstep, or was it due to now being more driven by instinct than rationality? 

Either way, perhaps he wouldn’t be in a situation where he was being crushed to death, had he reacted differently. But, ah, what was that thing saying? It was repeating something over and over again.

How strange. Somewhat alarming, Akechi supposed. But what did it really mean? He pondered it as he started to lose consciousness. It was probably the last thing he’d ponder. Surely this creature would manage to completely stab through him soon enough. 

Well, that might be true, if something hadn’t knocked Akechi out of it’s grip first. 

He bounced along the ground, rolling to a stop near the still unmoving Toritsuka. 

“Shit, shit shit shit shit shit shit shit SHIT” 

Aiura, who had bashed the monster across the back of it’s head with the largest fallen tree branch she could find and carry, was now rushing towards the two of them. The bug was straggling after her, with more coming out of the trees to avenge their injured comrade that hadn’t managed to take the group down solo yet. She scooped up Akechi in one arm and with the other grabbed Toritsuka’s arm and attempted to drag him off with her. Bugs were emerging from all sides now and quickly coming up on them. It was time to bolt the heck out of this forest. 

Toritsuka wasn’t budging. This was not the time to be fucking around. Aiura pulled at him harder. “Come on, we have to -” 

Slowly, he turned his head towards her and her mouth snapped shut on those words. She had no idea what to think about that. 

Toritsuka’s eyes were glowing orange. Seemingly satisfied with Aiura’s reaction, he looked away from her and screamed. It was jarring, an eerie sound akin to a cross between a human cry and the warning growl of some large animal. Then he ran forward, opened his mouth, and shot fire from it at the horde of bugs that had come for them. The bugs started, attempting to stop and turn before they got burned with several failing to succeed. Toritsuka screamed again. The group seemed to take the hint. 

 Once it seemed as though their attackers had retreated a good distance, Toritsuka’s eyes faded back to normal and he relaxed, breathing out an exasperated sigh before turning back to Aiura. She was staring at him, agape and completely dumbfounded. He ignored that. 

“This is the forest near my house! Come on! It should be safer there!” He started onward but Aiura was not about to let this go without saying anything. 

“Woah, woah, wait. Just what was that? Did you get some kind of bullshit spirit flame power that you’ve been keeping secret until now?” 

Toritsuka shrugged. “I wish. Something possessed me, right after you went looking around.” He tried to sound nonchalant. Ghosts were his thing and he wanted to seem like he had a handle on this stuff. But it was clear he was a little uneasy about the event himself. Usually he was the one to incite possession. Spirits didn’t just force their way into his body. They were usually even polite enough to ask first. “It told me we should ‘wait for the right moment’ and then that happened.” 

“Ghosts can give you superpowers now?” 

“It wasn’t a normal ghost. It was like. Well, I guess these really are other Pokemon, huh?” 

“Apparently.” They couldn’t deny it based on those encounters. Akechi was right. This was some alternate dimension. But that still left more questions than things answered. 

“It’s good that you’re accepting our surroundings now,” Akechi voiced. “However if it’s not too much trouble, may I request that we find some medical assistance for me? I feel as though I might have some pressing internal injuries.” And then he promptly fainted. 

Oh shit. Aiura hadn’t even paid attention to Akechi’s injuries. Her only goal had been to grab him and go. But now that she got a better look at the mouse she was clutching close in her arm, daaaaaaamn. Those were some concerningly deep bloody gashes. Wasn’t that a little too macabre for a world like this? The look on Toritsuka’s face said he thought about the same. 

“What should we do about this?”  

“Why are you asking me?!”

“You’re a priest, aren’t you?”

“That’s not the same as a doctor!” 

“Well we can’t just walk him into the hospital!” 

“Wait... can’t we?” 

“Huh.” 

“We’re in this kind of a world, right?” Toritsuka was pretty pleased with himself for realizing the obvious a few seconds before Aiura could. “They have hospitals for Pokemon. They should be all over the place!”   

Come to think of it, yeah, that was right. It had been a hot minute since Aiura had played Pokemon, and she was pretty sure all Toritsuka probably bothered to play were eroges and online mmorpgs where he could harass girls, but. That was pretty basic knowledge for anyone that’s ever picked up Pokemon once or at least had some other experience with it. “Guess I gotta bother finding it then, huh?” Divining was more of a pain without her crystal ball, but whatever. She just needed some space. 

Toritsuka thought for a moment. “Well, the temple shouldn’t be too far from here. We can still stop by there first and see if there’s anything that can help some!” 

That was another thing.

“How are you so sure about that? If we’re in another dimension why would your temple exist here?” 

“The ghosts told me!” 

Of course they did. So currently, dead people were their authority on this place. Somehow that didn’t seem to bode well. At least they knew where something was though. “I guess that’s worth a shot. Wait, give me a sec.” It would be better to know for sure before making any unnecessary stops. She shoved Akechi into Toritsuka’s arms. He flinched back, face revealing his disgust at having to hold the bloodied mouse. 

Aiura ignored him as she dropped to the ground and started rapidly tearing out blades of grass and collecting them in her hands. Once she had almost too much to hold she stood up, turned, and blew it all into Toritsuka’s face. “Yeah, it looks like you’ve got some Pokemon medicine there.” 

“Was that really necessary.” The grass-covered Toritsuka grumbled. 

“Soz.” Aiura smiled as she took Akechi back and brushed stray grass from his fur. “No other way. Let’s go.” 

Toritsuka didn’t believe that for one minute, but it’s not like it mattered anymore. 

 Once they arrived at the temple, Toritsuka left Aiura and Akechi in his room while he went to find that medicine. She had told him exactly where to find it, but that didn’t seem right. She had said it was stored in one of the Buddha statues, specifically, the one he often hid his porn mags in. Haha, the other monks totally would have kicked him out if they found that stash. No way they were keeping medicine in there. Besides, there were more practical places to keep it. 

That wasn’t the only odd thing, he supposed. If this place existed in this world, and so did his room, then shouldn’t there be another him walking around somewhere? Another of all of them? It was probably more important to figure out just how they got here and how to get home, but. What was the alternate Reita like? Was he popular? Did he have a girlfriend? Was he possibly off on a date right now? What were his secrets? 

Well, he at least happened upon a familiar secret once he got into that statue. This Reita, too, hid his porn in there. Although among that were several other things. There were some snacks, several small spray bottles with different labels, which Toritsuka assumed had to be the medicine, a few colored discs, what appeared to be a pile of berries to one side, a few electronic devices, and two familiar-looking red and white balls which may or may not contain more Pokemon. 

Woah. To hide this much stuff, the monks really had to be cracking down here, huh. He grabbed several of the medicine bottles, then hesitated a moment before also taking the spheres. It was fine to borrow these, right? It’s not stealing or anything if you’re taking something from yourself. Alternate Reita should understand, right?

If they had to be here a while, most likely they were going to run into more situations where Pokemon attacked them. And Toritsuka would feel a lot better if they had more backup on their side for that. He didn’t want to have to rely on ghosts to help them there again. Sure he could probably count letting Pokemon, who apparently could still will the elements when in a body, possess him as a cool new power. It gave him new bragging rights. He had access to so many elemental abilities now that he felt like even Saiki, the superpower monster, might get jealous! 

But he hated how unsettling that was. The ghost didn’t have any ill intentions that he could discern, it just wanted to help them out of a tight spot and took control of the situation to do it - completely without Reita’s permission. He didn’t like that. He really didn’t like that. He’d almost lost himself before when ghosts started taking over him on their own accord. He was not about to let that happen again. 

Ghosts were usually nice, but that was aggressively nice. Maybe if they noticed that he had other means of handling things, they’d leave him to it. 

When he re-entered his room, Toritsuka found Aiura against the back wall, facing his direction as she did a handstand. Akechi, blood covered Akechi, had been laid on his bed. But that was fine. This was Alternate Reita’s bed. 

“Oi, ya get the meds?” 

He held up the potions he’d found, gaze questioning what she was doing at the same time. 

She stayed in place as she answered. “I’m looking for Kusuo.” 

“Ours or one from here?” 

“Doesn’t matter. Either would probably help us find some answers...but.” Her own expression was knitted with concern. “Something’s wrong.” 

“What do you mean wrong?” He came to sit on the bed beside Akechi.  

After a couple of seconds of silence she gave a frustrated sigh and fell onto her side. “Uuuugh. There’s at least one here, I just can’t tell where he is. It’s like...something’s blocking me. It’s pissing me off.” 

“Maybe Saiki-san doesn’t want to be found?” Toritsuka offered. 

Could he really hide himself from Aiura’s divination powers? Just what kind of power would allow him to do that? That thought pissed her off too. He’d never hidden himself from her before. In fact, until they bumped into each other in the wild, he usually wasn’t aware beforehand that she was even going to use her powers to find him. No, this had to be something else, right? It had to be.

Then again, he was always hiding from people. Of course he’d jump at the chance to stop her from scrying him out if he knew he could. “Uuuggh this is mega annoying. Whatever. Let’s try to fix whatshisface up now before he dies or whatever.” She grabbed one of the potions out of Toritsuka’s arms and tried to figure out where to press on the odd little square-shaped bottle to spray it. 

Toritsuka found the trigger on one that he was looking over first, jolting back with a startled yelp as he accidentally sprayed the contents into his eyes. 

“Oh man, good job,” Aiura laughed. Then, ignoring Toritsuka’s agony, she went ahead and sprayed the medicine on all of Akechi’s wounds. This was how they were supposed to do it, right? Hopefully that was fine. Whatever this stuff was might keep him stable at least until they got him to the hospital - which she had also gone ahead and divined before trying to search out Kusuo. 

“HELP ME NOW!” Toritsuka cried once it seemed like Aiura had stopped spraying. He couldn’t see and damn his eyes burned like hell. 

Aiura just looked at him. “Help you with what?”

“WOMAN YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHAT!”

She sighed. What a pain in the ass. 

“Fine, fine. We’ll go find some water.” She took his hand and yanked him up from the bed. “Try anything while walking behind me and I’ll make sure those eyes never work again, got it?” She didn’t wait for his answer before pulling him along out the door. He had better understand her clearly, and that was that.

  When they returned to the room after flushing out Toritsuka’s eyes, they found Akechi awake and standing on the bed waiting for them. His wounds seemed to have completely disappeared. “Hello!” He bowed. “Thank you very much for the assistance! Well, for the moment anyway I’m assuming that is how I’ve recovered so quickly! As I woke up in a place with which I’m unfamiliar I must have lost consciousness at some point, and seeing these bottles of what is presumably the medicine leads me to think that the two of you must have applied it to my injuries. It looks to have worked remarkably well. I’m not in the slightest bit of pain anymore. Injuries don’t persist very long in our own world to begin with but this is astounding, isn’t it?” 

The psychics had to admit that they were amazed too. The only way they’d ever seen someone heal so fast was if Saiki used his restoration power on them. Pokemon medicine sure was something, and it saved them a trip to that hospital. 

Toritsuka flopped down onto the bed next to Akechi, sure to avoid those blood stains that persisted. “So what now? How do we fix this if we have no idea how to find Saiki-san?” 

“We search for him.” Akechi proposed. He looked to Aiura, who had taken to standing in the middle of the room for the moment. “It’s my guess that you were unable to locate him with your clairvoyant powers, yes? If that weren’t the case, then finding Kusuo-kun would be no problem to us. Since we are unaware of the circumstances surrounding both his involvement in this and where he might be, he could very well be anywhere in the world. This could turn into a scenario where we end up searching for a needle in a haystack. But that’s only one possibility. It also is not the most optimistic one.

“Rather, what we should do is to start with what we can. This world appears to be a more direct alternate to our own. Places familiar to us exist here. That stands to reason that other people familiar to us should exist here as well, correct? This gives us our first lead in finding Kusuo-kun. We should start with that. And were we to start there, where would the most logical place to visit first be?”

“His house!” Aiura and Toritsuka chorused excitedly. Akechi was right, they weren’t as in the dark as they thought.

“Correct!” They were a bit slow on the uptake of things, Akechi had noticed, but it was good that they were all on the same page at the moment. He had to admit though, that despite their unfortunate situation, he was a bit excited as well for a different reason. Solving mysteries was where his true deductive nature shined. It wasn’t something that people really appreciated much before due to his tendency to talk on and on, but nor were their mysteries as important as this one. Here, he could show off his skills! “Now then!” He jumped up and plucked a hat off the wall that had been hanging above Toritsuka’s bed. A few hung there, but this one served his purposes the best. It looked like one of those hats you often see detectives wear in works of fiction.

Huh. Toritsuka remembered that hat from his own room back home, but was it always that small? It seemed to fit well enough as Akechi put it on.

Hat acquired, the Pikachu hopped off the bed, making sure he was both in between and in front of the other two before striking a cool, thoughtful and confident sort of pose worthy of a great detective. “PK Academy Psykickers, move out!”  

Toritsuka and Aiura nodded, each hopping to attention and striking a pose of their own behind him in true Psykicker mission style, but the look on their faces was much less enthused than usual. Even though they had accepted Akechi as part of the Psykickers before, it still felt like somehow their bit had just been taken over.

[didon]

My two cents on this whole Taylor Swift drama

I normally only reserve my rants for tv shows, but I’ve seen enough crap in the last day that I kinda want to add a little to it.

First of all, I’m not a swiftie or whatever her die hard fans call themselves. Do I like some of her music sure, but there are other songs that make me cringe the same way there are things that happened with her that made me dislike her and others where I’m now looking back at and thinking that it was just me wanting to fit in and that it was ‘’cool’’ to hate on her. Cause I think that there really is a movement where you have to hate on successful women because they are not perfect until the point where they are no longer human beings but actual mythological creatures that we must revere or die otherwise (Beyonce and the Bee Hive come to mind). Has Taylor always been right? Nope. It’s that simple, she has done some not so great things and instead of trying to understand them, I just went with the motion of hating her because I thought it made me special (it did not).

Secondly, to the people saying that he didn’t bully her, that it was his client, remind me his job again? Dudebro is a manager. His job is literally to MANAGE people, to make sure that the celebrities he has under his care not only receive the best but are also perceived as great. Seems like him allowing Bieber to post a dig at a woman for no reason and then not issue an apology right after was a bad managing decision because the only thing it did is make him and his clients seem like pissy little boys that can’t take people not agreeing with him. Him allowing Kanye (because tell me how he could not have vetoed that whole video that I’ll talk about later) to show someone that he knew Kanye had a troubled relationship with naked WITHOUT that person permission is a bad management decision. Especially since it could have led to more than one lawsuits toward his client. I feel like a manager normally tries to avoid his clients getting sued. So either he allowed her to be bullied by his clients and probably had his own hand in it or he’s shitty as his job and should not be allowed to manage anybody. Because it has to be one or the other, there is no third options where he didn’t advise his clients not to do bad things and had no knowledge of it. If anything, he could have at the very least if that was the case wrote his own appology for being in Bieber instagram. No instead he chose to stay silent, giving his approval toward it and to keep people that were attacking a female celebrity for pissy reasons as clients.

Thirdly, concerning the whole Bieber thing. Dude has to stop talking. He is not someone that can truly speak having grown up being influenced by Dudebro. Didn’t he sign Bieber when he was still a minor and everything? And yet he allowed him to make a fool of himself more than once, to be agressive toward more than one person knowing that it could cost sales. Dudebro was both a bad manager and a bad friend toward Bieber. Bieber who seems to act as if a lot of his fanbase isn’t young influencable girls that he is pushing toward not only bad decisions like bullying someone else because the friend of a friend doesn’t like them and also supporting people that are homophobic. Because let’s remember that for a long time (and I think still now but I’m not 100% sure), Bieber was friend with this pastor who was known for being homophobic. You can’t call someone coming at your friend a bully, but then have one of your close friend be someone telling others that something they have no choice in makes them bad, evil in some cases and that the one person that is supposed to love them (I’m talking about God here for the Catholics) hates them. How many queer people are we going to lose to suicide because they are constantly told by some biggots that God hate them, that they are going against everything that is good, that they shouldn’t be allowed near children, etc.? And no saying that just because you attend his congregation and hang out with him doesn’t mean you don’t agree with him. This isn’t the same as someone prefering strawberry milk over chocolate milk, this is someone spewing hate to who not only are you giving a platform by being near them (because yes it does), but are listening to. How many young teens are going to see that guy and go ‘’hey Bieber follow him so maybe he’s right’’? When you chose to be a celebrity, yes it means that you lose part of your privacy, but it also means that you should be obligated to lend your voice to those who aren’t listened to. Taylor Swift did that with her letter against homophobia, with her video and her support of queer artists. Bieber does that by giving a biggot relevance and then getting mad when his ‘’friends’’ are called out on their bad behaviours.

Fourtly, the whole Kardashian/Kanye thing. I can’t believe it’s 2019 and it has to be addressed but it is NEVER okay to showcase somebody else’s naked body even if it’s for ‘’Art’’ without their permission. His video was not only revenge porn, it’s an attack on her. Revenge porn is mostly defined as sharing private pictures of someone. This isn’t the case. She didn’t send his a naked wax art of her body. As far as I’m concerned, this is straight up violating her privacy and her body. And not only hers but the one of everybody else included in that video. Sure he probably has the signed statement from his wife saying it was okay, but does he has the one from every single other person? Also stating where their wax double would be placed? Because I’m pretty sure that Rihanna wouldn’t have said yes to her body being exploited by a man and placed next to someone who’s biggest relevance is the fact that he ABUSED her. It’d be the same as a celebrity asking fans to stop drawing porn of them and then getting backlash from their fans because they believe that they own that celebrity body. Your body is your own and no egomaniac should be allowed to have a naked wax statue made of it and put it in his video. Speaking of videos, Kim’s one is void. Not only is it clear that the video has been edited, but it was ILLEGAL!! A court would not take it as proof of anything just based on this alone. This is the same as a cop breaking and entering to get proof to arrest someone because a warrant takes too long and he’s sleeping with the other suspect. I don’t care if she actually agreed to one line and not the other or whatever. The whole video is void and should never be mentionned because it’s something illegal that again violated someone’s privacy which a celebrity should really know about. Especially Kim. The whole claim that Kanye made Taylor famous is ridiculous too. Bitch didn’t make her famous, he made an ass of himself. She became famous with her own hard work and good strategy (something her manager might have a hand into). What he did at that award show was just stealing a moment from a woman because he was prissy he didn’t get his way. There’s a reason why Beyonce gave the stage to Taylor and that everybody got mad at him. He took a young woman achievement and try to ruin it because it wasn’t what he wanted. That shows clear immaturity and if anything it made him more famous that it made her. She wasn’t known as Kanye’s victim, she was known as a singer while he was known as the guy that made an ass of himself and ruined a 20 years old big moment. I don’t care who deserved the award more or if he was right, nobody else does it and for a good reason. I may not have always have agreed with award winners, but you haven’t seen anybody stopping Matthew McConaughey speach saying sorry to interrupt but Chiwetel Ejiofor had one of the best performance ever. It’s almost like his manager should have stopped him from making a fool of himself.

Fiftly, just a little mention for Demi Lovato that came to Dudebro defence. Girl is coming out of a very emotional situation, is probably not 100% okay yet so don’t send her hate. Plus, she has known him about two months and he makes money off her so he has probably not been a dick to her. Her entire defence may even have his hand in it since people around her may be employed by his company. I almost killed myself over a year ago and I know that I’m still very emotional and that people can still have a big influence on me depending on how I’m feeling. I can’t imagine being around people that may not have your best interest 24h/7. On her claim that he is not homophobic because he signed her though, I will say that she can’t refute somebody’s experience with the man simply based on her own especially since she’s a famous artist that probably brings him a lot of money. Plus, while she’s a queer woman that consider herself fluid (and good for her tbh), it doesn’t mean that she has the same experience as a gay person. She has (mostly) dated men in the recent years and biphobic people will use it as an excuse to say that while she is ‘’fluid’’ she’s mostly straight (which is bull, but that might be how they see her in her mind). She can’t come at a gay man and say that because she’s also queer, the man cannot be a bigot toward anybody in the queer community. Heck, queer people in the queer community are bigots toward other members. How often do we hear transphobia or biphobia coming from queer people? The answer is too often. Especially black queer people who are often erased from their own history (*cough* stonewall and camp *cough*)! My own father was super friendly toward a trans tennant he had, calling her by her name and the right pronouns like it was nothing, only using her deadname on the official papers since it wasn’t officially changed, but to me he told me that if I came out as trans he would kick me out because I am his daughter not his son. If you asked that woman than yeah my dad is a great ally, but she wouldn’t know how he interacts with other queer people including his own daughter.

Finally, on the whole master thing. Shut up. She wrote the songs so I don’t care who owns the right right now or if they gave her a chance to ‘’buy’’ them back. This is her own work. When Devianart started selling artists art without their consent because they ‘’owned’’ it, how many people did I see on this website calling for a boycott? How many people were pissed and swore that it was horrible and that no artist should ever lose the right to their own art? Well, it’s exactly the same for her. Yes even for those songs of hers I hate. She put her time, her effort in them and so they should be hers. The idea that some white dudebro has right over them is ridiculous. The fact that he will own her feelings, a part of her soul should be upsetting especially since one of his artist already violated her body by showing it naked without her consent. I would be furious if I was raped and a friend of my rapist got the right to some of my writing. Heck, I would probably be a lot more agressive than she was in that post. The fact that she managed to stay polite and calm is a miracle if you ask me. Especially since he will be making money of a video that his friend and client didn’t even deem good enough to win an award!! Cause let’s remember that as cringy as it might be to look back at how we were all obsessed with some of her music video (god knows I was even though I would have never admitted it at the time), a man representing someone who put her down for one of them is going to make money off them. 

This is in no way acceptable and I encourage people to raise their voices against this and to keep those boys (because they are not men let’s be honest) accountable for their actions. Cause when Kesha needed help getting away from her rapist, Taylor Swift gave it to her and no matter how famous you are, you deserve to have people stand up for you. I’m not saying send hate, but keep holding men accountable for their shitty behaviours and for the creepy thing they say about women. We are not their objects, they do not own us in any way and we need to unite to stop them disrespecting us!! No matter your feeling on Taylor Swift and her music or her previous actions, this is something hateful that’s happening to her and women need to stand up and support each other! We own it to each other!!

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Sebastian

Our next aro-spec creator is Sebastian, better known on Tumblr as @gloriousmonsters and @mangledmouth!

Sebastian is a bisexual, autistic, aromantic trans man who is single-handedly covering many literary bases in producing original aro and queer short stories, novels and poetry. Aside from his Tumblr blogs, you can find and support more of his work at his Patreon. If you have a dollar or two you’re wanting to invest in worthy aro-spec talent on a less-regular basis, please take a look at Sebastian’s Ko-Fi!

With us Sebastian talks about identifying with the role of villainy in narrative as an aro creative, aromantic characters and grand emotional gesture, the divide between representation and self-expression, and some spectacular-sounding work-in-progress book titles! His investment in aromantic characters and characterisation shapes every word, so please let’s give him all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

It took me a while to realize I was aromantic, but it was one of the things that made me go ‘oh, that makes … a lot of sense’ when I looked back at my childhood. I was a weird, isolated kid, so I didn’t learn from bouncing off other children; I learned through stories.

One of my strongest early memories is of watching a poorly made Red Riding Hood film over and over again, belting out the lyrics to the (poorly written) villain’s song, called ‘Man Without A Heart’. Cut to a year or so later, watching the Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella (still the best Cinderella, IMO), I was utterly fascinated by the villainess singing: ‘Falling in love with love is falling for make-believe…’

I didn’t know, that early, that I didn’t feel romantic love. Not consciously. But there was something utterly, obsessively interesting about villains that sneered at love, who were called heartless, who challenged the narrative that there must always be a love story and it must come out right no matter what. I felt, on a deep level, that these people were like me somehow. The additional queercoding and common side-helping of mental illness helped - or didn’t help, depending on your perspective. I grew up knowing, deep down, what my part in life was: I was the villain.

When I hit my rebellious age, it first came out by my saying, ‘But being a villain doesn’t mean you have to be wrong or unhappy’. I began collecting villains like nobody’s business, and writing stories that more and more often centered people whose character types I’d only ever seen as villains. And from there we arrive at today!

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

Recently, my brother (who is my sounding board for a lot of stories, as I am for him) looked at my books-to-write list and said, ‘Nearly every idea you have is a deconstructed romance or strong non-romantic relationship.’

I love strong relationships, so I originally thought I needed to write people as love interests to get that; these days I feel more free to focus on whatever the heck I want, and being aro shows in everything. My current WIP centers a poly relationship where two of the partners are aromantic. Two people (often, but not always, a man and a woman due to my frustration with the ‘men and women can’t be friends’ thing) who are the most important people in each others’ lives and are platonic, show up over and over again in my novel ideas; I start with relationships that look like romances and then pull them apart. Part of this, I think, is due to my autistic ‘let’s take this into component parts and see how it works’ tendencies; being autistic and being aro aren’t cause and effect, for me, but they play well together.

When I write poetry, some of it deals explicitly with being aromantic, but all of it is non-romantic. It makes me kind of anxious sometimes to think of people interpreting pieces as being romo because they’re about intense emotions; one of the biggest ways being aro is expressed in my writing is my constant attempts to show other feelings, connections and relationships than romance being worthy of big feelings and gestures. I’ll sometimes refer to myself as ‘aromantic but capital-R Romantic’ (i.e.  extremely dramatic) because of that.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

I’m sure I’ll run into more problems as I try to take my increasingly aro and queer and ND works to professional markets, but at the moment my biggest problem is self-censoring. I sit at an awkward junction of having multiple identities I want to include in my work, and being … well, someone who grew up obsessed with villains, who later on developed a decade’s interest in slasher horror, and who still tends to write people who are perceived as, or see themselves as, villains. Awkward because I always have that voice in my head (helped along by some of the stuff I see on social media) going ‘that’s not good rep! nobody will want to read this!’

But I know from experience that not writing from the heart (and look at that, I do have one after all!) doesn’t end well, so I’m working on getting good at writing my weird dark stuff and hoping I’ll find the audience for it. And I always leave a little bit of light in it, because I have another voice in my head, still saying, ‘just because you’re a villain doesn’t mean you can’t be happy’.

It’s a weird sort of positivity, but it works for me.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

Following and submitting to this blog is part of my first attempts to actually join the aro-spec community. I tend to move slowly and be very nervous of talking to new people, but I’ve been trying to be more affirming of my aromantic identity lately, and seeking out other aros is part of that. Hopefully I’ll settle in a little more as time passes.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

At the moment, people following and reblogging from my poetry blog @mangledmouth would be much appreciated. It’s hard to get traction with poetry (especially if you don’t write romantic poetry) and I’d love more people to see my work. I’m proud of a lot of what I’ve done, so check it out! Be warned that my love for horror and oddness turns up there as well, but there’s nothing too graphic.

And Ko-Fi donations or small Patreon subscriptions are always appreciated.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

My current WIP (titled either The Night In Wanting or And One of Us Be Happy, depending on whether I go for the one that sounds better or the one that fits best thematically) is about a third done! Praise me, because I’m really bad at finishing things, but I’m still on track to wrap this up at the end of June. It’s about a Weird Small Town and Sarah, a girl with a reputation for breaking hearts, who decides to date one of her best friends and actually try to make it work. Her attempts at being normal quickly get derailed when their town’s general weirdness turns hostile - attacks by creatures from the woods, unsettling amounts of rain, pictures changing when you’re not looking at them and a really pushy forest spirit trying to bargain with people for a heart. Her attempts at normal are further derailed when she figures out that her new boyfriend is also in love with a mutual friend, and that she might not feel love at all.

I love these characters, guys. This story is finally coming together after years and the three main characters - Sarah, Mags and Fred - have always been at the heart of it, no matter what shape it took. (Mags used to be a ghost, and the story went through a phase of being a Band AU of itself. Fred kept getting possessed, and there’s a joke about that in the text now that nobody will get but me. And now you guys!) It’s terrifying to write a YA that’s not only poly, but focuses on an aromantic main character, but I’m determined to make it work.

(This is is one of the most sweet/normal things I’ve worked on, despite the healthy dose of horror. I’ve also been writing snippets of a pet project called How The Child-Eater Became King, to give you an idea of the other end of the spectrum.)

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

I haven’t got the release date for it yet (it’ll probably be a while yet) but I recently sold a short story, Sabuyashi Flies, to Glittership. The main character, Sabuyashi, was originally aroace but turned out to be a lesbian ace during writing. (Characters often decide to come out while I’m writing, which is always fun to handle. I mean that both sarcastically and genuinely.) I’m already working on and off on the sequel story where she meets her future best friend Nathaniel, who is aro. Working title is Nat Luckless and the Girl Made of Beetles. Look for news about Sabuyashi Flies soonish and Nat Luckless whenever my slow butt manages to finish and (fingers crossed) sell it!

[bokura-no-ua]

Inktober - Day 8: Crooked

Pairing: Jirou Kyouka/Kaminari Denki Rating: T Other Tags: A tad of social anxiety and some questionable behaviour on the part of a few young men

Art by Kumi. Words by Red. Read it on AO3! Please, do not repost anywhere.

Love-in-idleness

The atmosphere was stifling, and Denki brought his hand up to loosen the tie, the feeling of it around his collar constricting. He really hated these kinds of events, especially when propriety and formal attire were involved.

All U.A. students had to attend the formal party organised by the school so he had no other choice but to dress up accordingly. He wasn’t entirely sure what they were supposed to be celebrating but he knew the whole thing was for a charity of some sort, so he couldn’t really find it in himself to complain too much. He was an U.A. student now, so he had to suck it up and put up with everything that came along with that title.

He had started the evening off with his classmates, but they had soon broken up into smaller groups of twos and threes, until it was just him, Sero, Kirishima and Bakugou in one corner of the crowded room. However, after a short while, Sero claimed to be starving and left with Kirishima towards a table filled with fancy-looking food, whose ingredients they could not recognise and ended up asking Bakugou for help in deciphering what was what.

So, he had then drifted from group to group, chatting amiably with everyone he encountered throughout the majority of the event. He got to know quite a few of the first-years from other classes as well as feeling slightly intimidated by the powerful aura of a handful of second- and third-year students.

As of right now, though, he was standing near the doors that led to one of the balconies, shoulders and back leaning heavily against the wall. He was sure that if a teacher were to see him like that, he would get scolded but, for the first time that night, he didn’t care.

Denki needed a break.

He made a beeline for the balcony doors the second he saw the teachers nearby get lost in the sea of people.

The second he stepped out, he breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly, his body relaxing immediately. He even literally welcomed the chilly breeze of the autumn evening with his arms wide open before taking the few remaining steps towards the railing.

The night was quiet, the closed doors keeping away both the music and the incessant chatter he was sure was happening on the other side. The smell of rain floated in the air as a few dark clouds took turns covering up the moon hanging high in the sky.

Denki felt at peace here.

He closed his eyes, the wind picking up and ruffling his hair. He was considered a social butterfly by most of his classmates and he knew he could crack a few jokes at the drop of a hat and lighten up the mood quickly, but he treasured moments like these, moments when he could just... be.

He absolutely loved living with everyone else at the dorms but he sure as hell missed being able to isolate himself completely and read for hours on end, maybe with some music playing low in the background.

His thoughts were interrupted, though, by the sound of the handle being turned and the door being opened and closed quickly afterwards. He turned and saw Jirou sigh in relief, her forehead pressed against the glass for a second before moving away from the door and finally spotting Denki behind her.

Perfect, he thought. Of all the people at the party that could’ve cut into his peaceful, alone time, it had to be Jirou, the girl who loved antagonising him. It didn’t help that their every interaction made him develop the tiniest of crushes on her, or the fact that her purple dress made her body look even more petite and cute.

She was wearing a short, dark purple dress, with lace covering her chest all the way up to the base of her neck. He had no idea what kind of name the neckline might have or what skirt it was, but she looked amazing in it nonetheless. And the addition of the leather jacket made the whole outfit suit her even more. He swallowed loudly, thankful that the moonlight wasn’t illuminating his face right then.

He put on a big smile and called out to her.

“Hey, Ji-” She ran towards him and put her hand on top of his mouth to shut him up.

“Shhhh!” She looked frantically around, as if to make sure they were actually alone and then over her shoulder, checking to see if anyone came through the door. “They might hear you!”

“Who?” came Denki’s muffled response from behind Jirou’s hand. She removed it, seemingly disgusted by the proximity.

“Just some guys who wouldn’t stop following me around. I also needed a break from the party itself, honestly,” she said and sighed again. She moved to the railing and turned, her back pressed against it while her elbows rested on top of it.

“Weren’t you with Yaomomo and Mina?” he asked, a frown appearing on his face as he walked closer to her.

“I was, until I lost them while I was coming back from the bathroom, which is when these guys spotted me. I have no idea what they want, but the way they were staring gave me the creeps,” she explained with a shudder. At his questioning look, she added, “They were worse than Mineta watching that interview with Midnight and Mount Lady for the one hundredth time.”

“Wow, that bad?” To which she just nodded, silence falling on them right after.

The quiet Denki had been seeking had been completely disrupted by Jirou’s sudden appearance. He tried to get back to his previous state of calmness and peacefulness, but her presence, along with the reason as to why she had joined him, prevented him from being able to relax fully.

He chanced a glance and saw her fiddling with the sleeves of her jacket. Even though she had this tough look most of the time, she was obviously still shaken up by those dudes leering at her. He willed his anger down at that thought and decided to try and cheer her up. It was the least he could do, right?

“Hey,” he said, another smile tugging at his lips when his eyes met hers. “You’re wearing purple, are you an old woman perhaps?”

Denki’s attempt at a joke was met with a succession of punches to any parts of his body Jirou could reach.

“What - the - heck, Ka - mi - na - ri?!” Each word and syllable of his name were said quietly, so as not to alert anyone that they were out there, and they were accompanied by a hit.

“It was a joke! A joke! Stop hitting me!” he tried to defend himself and deflected her attacks, something which only served to aggravate her even further. He was at least thankful that she hadn’t used her Earphone Jacks; those hurt a lot.

“What kind of a lame joke was that?” Jirou asked, a final fist successfully connecting with Denki’s chest.

“There’s this poem that begins with the line ‘When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple, with a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.’ It’s pretty well-known.”

“Well, I... have never heard of it and I don’t really get what the joke was.”

“Never mind,” he said, and they stood in silence once more.

Denki felt bad now. He had just been trying to lighten up the mood! He didn’t know why he could never get her to laugh like he did with everyone else. Maybe he shouldn’t beat around the bush? Perhaps being more straightforward was the answer here.

So, after a few minutes of thinking, he went with a different approach.

“Did you know,” he paused for dramatic effect and only continued when he made sure she was actually listening to him, “that purple has always been associated with nobility and luxury because it was such a hard pigment to come by in the past? Only emperors and nobles had enough money to pay for garments dyed in that colour.”

“Really?” She raised an eyebrow at him. This was the most responsive he had ever seen Jirou being towards him, so he went on.

“Yeap,” he nodded as he looked up at the moon. “There was a time in ancient Rome when only the Emperor had the privilege of wearing that colour. Same thing here in Japan, we associate it with wealth and position. Also, the darker the shade, the more dignified the colour is perceived to be.”

After his little rant filled with fun facts was over, he lowered his gaze back to his companion and found her face rather close to his. He swallowed again as her eyes analysed every shift in his expression.

He had no idea what was going on inside her mind, but she must’ve found whatever answer she was looking for because, then, Jirou took a step back, her hands coming up to Denki’s tie, making quick work at adjusting it. He had actually completely forgotten about his lack of air from earlier.

“You know, you don’t have to try so hard if you just want to say you like the colour of my dress, stupid,” she mumbled, refusing to look him in the eye.

“Alright, then. I do actually like the colour of the dress. I think it suits you,” Denki replied softly, his face completely open and vulnerable if anyone were to walk out onto the balcony and see them.

She lightly hit him in the chest after finishing with the tie and walked back to the door.

“Let’s get back,” she said over her shoulder, and Denki followed her, keeping his body close to hers in case those guys were still around.

After a brief walk, he saw Jirou waving at the girls from their class. As he saw her practically sprint towards them, he thought that, even if the symbolism was different, Jirou definitely was the embodiment of the poem Denki had mentioned: never conforming to anything or anyone, always bending the rules and surpassing people’s expectations.

Denki grinned as he waved at the girls and almost didn’t notice the small smile in Jirou’s face that was being directed his way. His hand faltered a little in the air and he turned, face red, and decided to go find his three friends.

By the time he found them, standing near the same table piled up with food, his heart was beating rapidly still but, despite being surrounded by people from all angles, he at least felt unbelievably happy.

[bsidethetrees]

Accidents and Incidents.10: Proposition

Previous Chapter

The thing that bothered her the most was probably his attitude about the whole thing. He wasn't inconspicuous in the least bit. In fact, he was actually rather open about it, in his own creepy way.

"Afternoon, Lisanna," the seith said that first day, even giving her a half wave. His visor was down and his babies were floating around his head, but none of those attracted her attention. Not his dark attire and definitely not his tongue which hung in his usual precarious spot from his mouth.

No, instead, Lisanna's eyes were drawn to the flower pinned to his black cloak. Mainly become it looked like it was beginning to wilt and she had to wonder how long it'd been pinned on there. Definitely too long.

"New fashion statement?" she asked, gesturing to it.

"Eh?"

"Eh?" came the same sound from his five dolls. "Eh?"

"The fl- Never mind." Rolling her eyes, she leaned against the bar counter. "It's just me working today. Kinana's out sick and Mirajane's-"

"With the boss, I kn- Know what? I'm suddenly not thirsty."

For a moment the two just stared at one another, him through the bars of his visor and her through the deep blues she and her siblings shared though they were suddenly clouded with confusion.

"What did you just-"

"Err- Wow! Lucy! Hey." Suddenly he was turning and headed over to where he saw the blonde. At the sound of her name coming from his mouth, the celestial wizard let out a loud groan and a question of what she'd done wrong to deserve a visit from Bickslow while Happy, who was seated with her, just snickered something about how much she secretly loved the seith.

Lisanna only watched from behind the bar with a frown. Why would he say that Mirajane was with…the boss?

Makarov?

No. A quick glance down the bar told her that the man was seated atop it, in his usual meditative way, though it appeared that he was actually asleep and, nope, no Mirajane.

She said that she was going out on a job for the man though, so perhaps that's what the seith meant? Maybe?

Hmmm.

"Hey, Lisanna, you think you could lend me some jewels to then I give them to you to bring me some food?"

And Natsu had arrived from whatever mess he'd been causing elsewhere. He grinned too, as he took a seat in front of his long time friend, though her eyes were still lingering over at where Bickslow was purposely annoying Lucy and Happy was nearly dying from his excitement at their perceived flirting.

"Uh, Lisanna?" Natsu was not one to be ignored. More the one to do the ignoring usually. Craning his neck, he looked around. "Say, what are you-"

"Nothing." Shaking her head, she focused in on him finally. "I was just… You know Bickslow, right?"

"Yeah, sure. What about- Oh. Him and Lucy, huh?" Natsu sighed when he saw it. "I owe Happy some jewels. He bet me this would happen, but I just-"

"What? No." With a groan, she said, "He only went over there to bother her to get away from me."

"Oh." Natsu grinned at her. "You and Bickslow, huh?"

"Has Happy, like, infected you with the same annoying habit he has or what?"

"No," the man groaned before moving to rest his head on the bar. "I'm just hungry! And broke. Feed me."

"Why don't you go catch a fish?"

"I've been trying for hours," he grumbled. "But- Oh, hey. You could come with me and turn into a fish and lure the other fish to my fishing rod and then-"

"I'm not leading my brethren to their death."

"They're not your brethren. I am."

"They are if I'm a fish."

Heh.

"I'll feed you though," she sighed when she saw the look on his face. His eyes, however, were back over to where Lucy was putting on her usual fear of Bickslow shtick. Or at least he thought it was a shtick. "Just don't tell Mira that I'm giving away free stuff to you. Or Master Makarov."

Looking back at her then, Natsu said, "But what was it then?"

"Huh?" She'd turned, off to go make his meal, but glanced back at him when he spoke. "What are you talking about?"

"What's bothering you then? You mentioned Bickslow and then-"

"Oh, now you remember what I said?"

He sat up with a shrug. "What was it? He challenge you to a fight? You need me to take him on for you? I'm down. When and where? Now you say. Ha!"

"No, Natsu." She had to lean over the bar and grab his arm to keep him in his seat and not over there pounding into the seith. "I swear; you only use my words to entertain yourself."

Sometimes.

"What was it then?" He was slightly disappointed, but still managed to sound interested. "Lisanna?"

"Nothing." Releasing his arm, she took a step back. "I don't think. I just… Never mind. It's stupid. Here. Let me go make you your food, huh? Before Master wakes up and sees you not pay."

That was the last Lisanna had a chance to think of Bickslow. That day, anyway. Natsu occupied the rest of her time up at the hall, as well as Happy (once he finally finished fawning over the couple that absolutely no one other than him thought had a chance). It was nice. It beat working all day by herself, anyways.

However, the next day, Bickslow did something similar and she just couldn't ignore it.

Err, rather, his dolls did, technically.

She'd just opened and, that day, Kinana was there with her. They were both diligently trying to get the guild cleaned when he entered.

Which wasn't too odd. A lot of the more core members of Fairy Tail came in before opening at times, to get a crack at the jobs before the lower levels. Mira allowed almost anyone in once she got there and, well, Lisanna didn't feel up for arguing with an longstanding ruling.

"Hi, Bickslow," she called from behind the bar, where she was taking a stock the liquor. Kinana was off in the back, cleaning up the bathrooms (Mira usually did that, but without her…) "Did you need something?"

He didn't even fully come over to the bar before he began to speak. "Actually, it's about Freed. See, I haven't been able to get in contact with him through the lacrima and neither has Ever or Laxus, so-"

"The boss!" His babies went crazy at that name. "The boss!"

Bickslow though, used to their usual cries, didn't notice. Lisanna did though, tuning out of most of what he said as she frowned.

Laxus…was the boss?

Then that meant that her sister was with Laxus.

But why?

Huh?

He'd been gone long before Mirajane took off. Lisanna remembered being the one to process his S-Class job a few months back before when Makarov was busy and Mirajane was cleaning up a mess down in the bookroom.

"You sure you can handle this?" he asked as he handed the flier off to her. "Kid?"

"I'm not a kid, Laxus," she complained as he only stood over her, watching diligently, as if half hoping she'd screw up so that he could make fun of her. "I'm just as grown as any of you."

"I thought that ghosts were trapped in the age that they died in?"

"I'm not ghost!"

"You sure?" And then he had to reach out and poke at her face. "You're actually Lisanna, huh? Lisanna Strauss? Not an imposter?"

"Do we have to go over this every time we talk?"

Yes. They most definitely did.

That was actually the last that Lisanna had thought about the man. Other than the Thunder Legion, others didn't bring him up often. Since she could remember, back when she was a kid, he used to always take lengthy, hard jobs and not be seen for months at a time. It was just something he did.

It never occurred to Lisanna that what Mirajane was off doing had anything to do with Laxus.

Until then. And it hit her hard, too in that moment.

What could that job have to do with Mirajane? Was Laxus…in need of help? If so, why not send Erza? Or Nat… No. Just why not Erza? And why was the Thunder Legion still in town? Shouldn't they be flocking to him?

"-usually contact me," the seith went on, oblivious to her lack of listening. "I mean, heck, he's been gone forever! He usually doesn't do this. I mean, I know, we've all been trying to take solo jobs recently, the three of us, to prove that we're more than just the Thunder Legion, that we're great alone too, but-"

"W-What?" Lisanna finally glanced back at him. "Bickslow, what are you talking about? I wasn't-"

"Listening? Huh? Is that it? You weren't listening to me?" He tsked. "How shocking. No respect, babies. No respect."

"No," she insisted. "I was just-"

"I mean, what? Do I have to be Freed to keep your attention? Or Laxus? I'll have you know that I could capture your soul right now if I wanted to," he threatened. "Ignoring me. Do you not know who I am?"

"I was just-"

"The boss!" The babies were still fluttering around, going crazy over that word. "Con. Boss."

"Bickslow," Lisanna tried then, staring hard at him. "Are… Is the boss…Laxus?"

"Huh?" Suddenly, the darkness in his tone was gone. "What are you-"

"Is my sister with Laxus? What are they doing?"

"Eh…I… I didn't say anything! And you can't say that I did!" Just like that, Bickslow was turning to high tail it out of there. "So don't even try."

"No, Bickslow, wait. I just want to know-"

But he was gone. Kinana came rushing out from the back, at the sound of all the yelling, but Lisanna could only shake her head.

The other barmaid couldn't help her. No, there was only three people in her life that she could always rely on. And, as it was, Mira was gone and Elf was out on a job. That left only one. And he would do anything for her.

Anything.

"We'll fight him. Beat where Mirajane is out of him. Yeah?"

That was what Natsu said when she met up with him and Happy later, at Lucy's house. They were over there, bugging her like usual, but all three stopped to listen to Lisanna's story.

"Wait," Lucy said as Natsu jumped up from where he was seated on the floor, around her little table, flames blazing from both fists. "Natsu, sit back down. And Happy, stop flying in my apartment."

"I'm revving up," the Exceed complained. "You know, to fly Natsu out the window? To go rescue Mirajane?"

"We don't even know if she needs rescuing," Lucy insisted. To Lisanna, she only said, "You said that she asked you to leave her alone, right? And not ask any questions?"

"Well, yeah, but-"

"Then why-"

"I did ask though," she admitted. "After Bickslow left the bar this morning, I asked Master Makarov, when he showed up, if he knew where my sister was. And he got this really odd look on his face and told me that he sent her out on a job, but that she won't come back for some reason. I wanted to know more, but Erza arrived back from a job and he had to go speak with her about something and I just… I mean, I don't think that Mirajane's in trouble or anything. I just don't like that Bickslow's hiding stuff and that Mira wouldn't tell me what was going on. I mean, she didn't take stuff for a job."

"What are you talking about?" Lucy was keyed in on Lisanna then as Natsu, deflated by the celestial wizard's order he not go somewhere, fell back down on to the ground, Happy taking to landing on his head. "Lisanna?"

"When I found her in the house, packing," the other woman said. "She wasn't just taking things that you would take out on a job. She took, like, a movie lacrima and some of Elf's movies and… What could her and Laxus be doing with something like that? And why would she hide it? What sorta job are they on?"

For a moment, they all thought. Then, that time when Natsu popped up, it was with renewed energy.

"Let's go fight Bickslow for the truth!"

Lucy only groaned. "Seriously, guys, I don't think-"

"It is the only option," Lisanna agreed as she too got to her feet.

"What?" Lucy knew that the other woman was rather keen on doing whatever Natsu and Happy did, but to that extent? "Lisanna-"

"I don't mean really fight him," she insisted. "Just get him alone, question him-"

"Maybe take him hostage," Happy said as he took to flying around again. "If we have to."

Lisanna nodded. "If we must."

"You guys can't be serious." Getting to her feet as well, Lucy said, "I mean, come on. What do we really know? Nothing. We're not even sure if Bickslow knows where Mirajane is! We can't-"

"Gross, Lucy," Happy complained. "Just because you love him doesn't mean you have to condone everything he does."

"Yeah, Luce," Natsu complained as he headed over her window to push it open. "Keep your love life out of this."

"I'm not in love with him, dopes. But you guys can't-"

"We can and we will! Come on, Hap. Let's go!"

"We need a plan," Lisanna called after them as they left through the window. "Wait for me! I'll meet you downstairs."

Lucy though only glared at her. "You can't let them take him hostage."

"Of course not," she said, rushing after them. "Not alone anyways."

"Lisanna-"

"We're just going to question him. That's all."

"Yeah, well, have fun with th-"

"No way." She even took the mage's hand, dragging her along. "You're coming with us."

"What? Why would I-"

"To use your feminine wiles against Bick-"

"I'm not in love with him!"

Oh, Lisanna knew. But it was more fun to pretend that she didn't.

"Besides," she insisted. "You know that Natsu would ever let us do something like this without you."

"Something like this? What? You mean kidnapping? Lisanna-"

"Let's hurry before they ditch us."

Oh, because they just couldn't have that, could they?

It actually wasn't as simple as just jumping Bickslow though. Or just questioning him. If they approached him in the guildhall and a fight broke out, if he truly wanted to get away from them, it would be rather easy.

No. They had to get him by himself. And, as Happy pointed out, they had to find a way to where none of them could become under his control.

"Then he could fight back," the Exceed insisted to which Natsu nodded.

"He won't have a reason to fight back," Lucy reminded. They'd already gone over that on the way to the hall. "Because we're not going to attack him. Remember? Guys? Remember that? I'm serious, we're not-"

"Yeah, Luce, we hear you," Natsu complained, waving a hand at her. To Lisanna he only said, "We'll have to blindfold ourselves. All of us. Then he can't-"

"Natsu," Lisanna sighed. "If we were blindfolded, then how would we see?"

"Hmmm. This is quite the quandary." Glancing at his best friend, he said, "Thoughts? Hap?"

"We could cut eye holes in the blindfolds!"

"Yeah and then-"

"And then he could see our eyes and that would defeat the purpose," Lucy finished. "Now that we got the stupid ideas out of the way-"

"Hey," Lisanna began with a grin. "Why don't we just blindfold him?"

"What?" Lucy gave her a look. "You can't be-"

"Yeah!" Happy was excited by that for some reason. "That'll be great. And I bet you'd like it too, Lucy."

"What? Why would I-"

"I think you know."

"I do not! Would you stop-"

"Okay, so blindfold Bickslow and then question him," Lisanna said with a nod. "We just gotta get him out here though. Outside the guild. And, you know, I can't because he's already weary of me after this morning-"

"And I can't because…well…" Happy thought. "I just want Lucy to do it."

"Hey-"

"And I know that she does too."

"I do not!"

"So Lucy," Natsu decided. "You lure him out here and-"

"No way," she complained. "And besides, we're still on guildhall grounds. Just not in the building. You'll still cause a big fuss-"

"There he is!" Happy interjected suddenly. "Look!"

It was across the long property that they spotted him, over at one of the tables outside, speaking with Evergreen.

"Great," Lucy sighed, relieved. "Let's just go over there and ask him what- Where are you two going?"

Natsu and Happy, at the sight of him, took to running off.

"We gotta hide," the Exceed insisted. "He'd never come over here with us two brawny men around."

"Go seduce him into comn' over here, Luce," Natsu added.

"That has literally never worked any of the, oh, billions of time we've tried ti!"

"Then lose some weight."

Growling, she said, "Look, you stupid cat-"

"I believe in you, Luce," Natsu called his assurance over his shoulder, even sending her a thumbs up. "Good luck!"

"Thanks," she dryly responded. "That's really- Hey, Lisanna!"

"I have to go find something to blindfold him." She was headed towards the hall, no doubt hoping to find a dishrag or something. "Good luck. And remember, if he doesn't buy dinner, you don't have to put out."

"Why do you all insist on- And hey! How long are you planning to be-" Then Lucy sighed. "And she's gone. Great."

Sigh. It was bad enough when Happy and Natsu drug her into their dirty plans, but Lisanna too?

She wasn't certain what she was going to say as she approached the table Bickslow and Evergreen were at, but luckily, the other woman inadvertently saved her.

Namely, Elfman passed at the exact moment Lucy was going over and, Ever, knowing he just returned from his job, rushing to try and not be seen by him, but somehow also fall into step with him, ran right into Lucy.

"Oy, Ever," Bickslow groaned. "Try to be more careful."

Elfman took notice of the collision as well and rushed to help both women back to their feet. Which, honestly, was the last thing Ever wanted.

"There you go, Lucy," the overly muscular man said as, for Evergreen's taste, his hands lingered a tad too long on her arm. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she sighed, rubbing at his head. "I just-"

"She is fine, Elfman," Ever hissed as it was Bickslow that had to help her to her feet. "And so I am. Not that you care."

"What are you talking about? I was just about to ask you-"

"Well, you missed your opportunity!"

"Ever!"

And then the two them ran off to have…whatever they were having, leaving Lucy and Bickslow alone. Well, other than his dolls, who were floating around in concern.

"Fall," they sang. "Lucy fall."

"The two of them," Bickslow snickered, gesturing over at where Elfman then yelling at Evergreen about how she never respected him and, honestly, he didn't give a damn how she was anyways! "They never learn, eh?"

"I guess they don't," Lucy sighed as she smoothed over her skirt once more. "But, uh, that's what makes them so entertaining, right?"

"Guess so."

There was an awkward beat as the seith just stood there, staring at her, and Lucy tried to figure out just what she should say to keep him distracted (you know, so they could kidnap him or whatever stupid plan they were going with) and keep him around.

"Well, I guess I'll get back to it then," he said as he moved to take his seat again.

"It?" Lucy prompted.

"You know. Sittin'. Judgin'. Sippin'." He held up a bottle of whatever he had that had been resting on the table. "It."

"W-Well, that's definitely something to keep one's attention, sure," she said slowly. "But, uh, I-I actually had something that I wanted to show you."

"Show me?"

Nodding slowly, she tried to keep their conversation going. "You know…I…found a dying…animal behind the building and…I thought you might want it's…soul."

Because that, honestly, was one of the only things that Lucy knew about him; that people said he took things souls. Like dead animals. Apparently.

Ugh.

"A dead animal, huh?" Bickslow jumped right up. "We have to go save it. Take it's soul, what do you think I am?"

"Well, don't you take souls or-"

"Come on! Is it a dog? We gotta get it to a vet. Are you crazy? Just letting it die?"

"I just thought-"

"You psycho."

"M-Me? You're the one-"

"Come on! Where is it?"

"I…Just over…" And then she saw Lisanna as she turned, coming out of the building. Letting out a breath, she reached for the seith's hand and drug him that way. "I'll take you to him."

She passed Lisanna too, as she drug the seith along, his babies making noises the entire time. Catching the woman's eye, Lucy tried to make it obvious to her to follow along behind them, but honestly, after all she'd been through with her and Natsu that day, Lucy wasn't counting on anything.

"It was breathing really badly," she said as Bickslow just rushed along with her. "And…it was just sickly, you know?"

They were only just on the empty, unoccupied side of the building when Lisanna, who was sneaking along behind them, rushed up to the back of Bickslow and, reaching out, quickly knocked the visor off his head before tossing the towel over it.

"Hey! He growled. "What the-"

"Hush," she hissed against his ear, adrenaline pumping. It was such a rush, kidnapping someone. She was beginning to understand why people…

Err…um…well…

"Who is that?" Bickslow was fighting her and, honestly, was way stronger. Lucy had to help her keep him from throwing her off. "Huh? Who-"

"It's me, stupid. Lisanna. I-"

"Lisanna." Suddenly, just like that, he stopped struggling. His babies, who seemed thoroughly confused, just stayed motionless in the air, poised to start firing green bolts of energy at his command. "And Lucy. Blindfolding me."

"Yeah," the celestial wizard breathed. "We-"

"Well, all you had to do was approach me," the seith snickered. "And here? Behind the building? Very kinky, girls. I-"

"Ew, gross." Lisanna, who almost had the dishrag tied around his head, about dropped it. "What do you think-"

"Two sexy women like you? Ambushing me?" More snickers. "Well, I-"

"Maybe Lucy, but definitely not me."

"Why," the blonde groaned, "are you all so insistent on that? Huh?"

"Don't be embarrassed," Bickslow assured her. "And don't think that I want this blindfold thing. I like to see it all. I-"

"You're disgusting," Lisanna said, dropping her hands once she had it tied. "Truly."

"Yeah, well-"

"Great!" Natsu was running over then, around the building. "You guys got-"

"Awe, gross, nah." Finally Bickslow just reached up to remove the blindfold. "You two I'm down with, but a dude? Look, I'm into some crazy shit, but that's just-"

"We're not trying to have sex with you," Lisanna yelled at him which, honestly, was just awkward because, though they were out of everyone's immediate eyesight, they were not well away from others. Blushing from having to declare such a thing aloud in public, she whispered, "We want information."

"Info, huh? And you go about it by propositioning me for-"

"No one," Lucy said with a glare, "propositioned you. At all."

"Lucy might have." Happy had flown over too. "Maybe. Who knows?"

"I do," she complained. "And I didn't."

"You did hold my hand," the seith said. "That felt very proposition like."

"Yeah, well, it wasn't. So-"

"The point," Natsu complained, much more interested in tussling than hearing anything they were talking about, "was that we want to know where Mirajane is. Right now. Else I'll have to beat it outta-"

"What?" Bickslow was still rather worked up and only glared at them, eyes flashing green. "This is what you idiots jumped me about? Seriously?"

Huffing, Lisanna took to crossing her arms and looking off. "Well, you wouldn't tell me and-"

"Because I don't know, alright? I-"

"Liar," Natsu accused.

"Natsu," Lucy hissed. "He doesn't have on his visor. He can-"

"I don't care. He's lying." Coming closer, the Salamander only glared at the other guy. "I can smell her on you."

No one was expecting that. Not even Bickslow. It had been days since he'd seen Mirajane and Laxus. Surely the other mage's nose wasn't that strong.

Just what had the slayer magic done to him?

But Natsu was only glaring at the flower which Bickslow picked up on. And with a frown, he moved to unpin it from his chest.

"This?" he grumbled. "This is just something that she gave me. It means nothing!"

"Except," Lucy said slowly, "that you at least saw her. You know, for her to give it to you?"

Glaring over at her, Bickslow said simply, "I liked it better when we were going to be sleeping together."

"W-What?"

Happy only snickered. "Well, she does love you."

"Look, you stupid cat-"

"Where did you see my sister?" Lisanna asked. "With Laxus? What were they doing together? And why doesn't the Master, who's supposed to have sent them on this job, know what they're doing? Huh?"

"I don't know, right?" Bickslow insisted. "I just ran into them-"

"So you have seen her."

"Lisanna-"

"Just tell me what her and Laxus are doing together and I'll leave you alone."

"Or," Natsu tried. "We can just fight and-"

"Wait," Lucy intervened. "You said that they were together, right, Bickslow? When you saw them?"

"I didn't see-"

"Yes, you did," Happy accused. "Just admit it."

"Unless you wanna fight," Natsu enticed. "Because then-"

"Fight, huh?' Bickslow was bucking up then as well. "You did interrupt my threesome-"

"For the last time," Lucy groaned. "That was never-"

"No fighting." Lisanna rushed to stand between the two guys. She knew at that point that if they dissolved into a brawl, she'd never get her information. "Seriously. Just-"

"You promised," Natsu complained. "The only reason I did this was because-"

"Just," she insisted, staring up at Bickslow, not caring that his eyes were covered and she could very well become caught under his spell, "tell me where my sister is. Please. What is she doing with Laxus?"

"I don't know."

"Just tell-"

"Honest." He even threw his hands up in protest. Looking her back just as hard into her deep blues, he said, "I just saw them out. They were together and she had some flowers and it looked like they were on a date, but they weren't because I figured it out, right?"

"Flowers," his babies sang as, finally, they began to relax some. "Flowers."

"Right," the seith nodded. "She gave me one. When I was leaving. And-"

"What did you mean they weren't?" Lisanna prompted as Natsu just took to grumbling, annoyed that he'd been duped out of a fight. "Bickslow?"

"Eh?"

"You said that they weren't on a date," Lucy prodded as well. "You just did. But why did you know that?"

"Oh." Then he snickered as, finally, his face lost some of its tension, him smiling at the memory. "Because boss was in a chair."

"A what?"

"A chair," he told Lisanna. "You know a, uh, wheelchair. For the recon?"

"Recon?"

"Reconnaissance." Then he shrugged. "Or I guess that's what they were doing. I mean, what else could they be doing? Just some sort of scoop, I figure. Scope out a place, spy on someone. Whatever. I don't know. They said not to mention it though, so you guys better keep your traps shut. And I won't tell no one about how you wanted to sleep with me-"

"That never happened," Lucy complained. "And you know it."

Natsu looked to Lisanna then as she just stood there, staring down at the ground, thinking.

"Are you satisfied then?" he asked before bouncing slightly. "Can we fight now?"

Instead of pointing out that no one ever necessarily promised him a fight to begin with, she just whispered, "But that doesn't make any sense."

"Huh?"

"It doesn't," she began as she headed away from them then, "make any sense."

And it didn't. At all. Mirajane wouldn't have hidden something like that from her. And why did Master Makarov seem to know nothing about it?

What really bothered her, however, was the wheelchair thing.

What did that have to do with anything? Bickslow just dismissed it, but she couldn't.

And why were they on a date? Or whatever it was that they were on that the seith thought he had so figured out?

Maybe it was just her being the annoying younger sibling or just being nosey in general, but Lisanna headed back into the guildhall to ask Master just what it was that he knew and didn't.

His words stumped her even more though.

"Recon?" the man seemed to balk at the words from his position up on the bar. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Then what," Lucy prompted from where she stood next to Lisanna, having gone in there with the girl as she left the boys to that fight Natsu finally got out of the seith, "did you send Mirajane away for?"

"I didn't send her away for anything," Makarov said. "Not technically. More to pick something up."

"What?" Lisanna asked. "Master?"

He seemed conflicted for a moment before saying, "I wasn't supposed to mention it to anyone, but I'm so annoyed with them both right now-"

"What is it?"

Taking a breath, he said slowly, "Laxus was…in need. That's all I know. He contacted me and said that he was in a hospital-"

"A what?" Lucy's eyes grew. "Is he okay?"

"I do not know," the man said with a shrug. "He wanted Freed, but as you know, he's unavailable. The only one I could think of that might be of use to him was your sister, Lisanna, but now I've sent her off and I fear the two of them…"

Lisanna frowned. "That the two of them…what?"

"I honestly don't…" Makarov shook his head. "I don't know what they're doing. But if Bickslow knows where they are, then I wish one of you would go down there and bring them both back. If not my grandson, then definitely Mirajane. I did not send her off on a vacation after all. And I most definitely didn't give her leave to go play house with Laxus."

For a moment, both the women only stood there, too shocked for words. Then, face turning to a rare one of determination, Lisanna turned to head out of the bar.

"Where are you going?" Lucy called after her. "Lisanna?"

"Can you help Kinana with the bar for a bit?" was all she called over her shoulder. "I should be back in a day or two."

"S-Sure, but where are you-"

"To go get my sister, of course." Or to stop her before she made a horrible mistake. Lisanna liked Laxus enough, but… Gross.

Outside, she immediately went over to where Natsu and Bickslow had garnered a small crowd to watch them duke it out. And boy were they. The seith had Natsu pinned to the ground when she arrived, breaking right through the small group gathered to march over to the boys.

"What the- Lisanna!" Bickslow growled as she came over to grab him by the back of his cloak and pull him off Natsu. "What are you-"

"Lisanna," Natsu complained. "I was just about to beat him."

Happy, who was watching with the others, only snickered. "Yeah. You had him right where you wanted him; beating you into a pulp."

"That is not what was going on, little buddy."

"Was from my perspective."

Lisanna only dragged the shocked (and perhaps a bit willing), Bickslow along behind her.

"You," she told him finally, his babies frantically chasing after them, "are going to take me to my sister and Laxus. Right now."

"What? You're crazy. I-"

"It's happening," she sang, just continuing to tug him along. "So don't fight it."

"Lisanna, the boss doesn't want-"

"Don't care."

"He and your sister will-"

"Don't care."

"And I can't-"

"Still don't care. Now be quiet. You're on my nerves already."

Ugh.

"Look, woman," he finally growled, though he continued to allow himself to be dragged. "I don't think you understand. Laxus is not someone to cross. He-"

"I have direct orders from Master Makarov to go get them and, at the very least, bring my sister home immediately." She stopped, suddenly, right outside the gates. Letting him go, she pointed back at the hall. "You want to defy that man, you go right ahead. I'll be waiting."

Bickslow, scrambling to his feet, glanced over at the hall and shivered.

Fight Master Makarov? No thank you.

"Alright, fine," he grumbled, turning to look back at Lisanna. He'd long picked up his visor, but only pushed it up to glare down at her then as he said, "But we do this my way. Got it? It's my ass on the line here."

Lisanna only took a step back before gesturing off to the side. "Lead the way."

He snorted before setting off.

Damn Strauss. He didn't know how the boss was putting up with the other one for so long. Had to be Hell. Seriously.

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[meowlexandragrace]

Reflections, Creativity, and Carrie Fisher Quotes

The year is coming to an end and it’s left me catching my breath and looking back on 2017- on what went well and what didn’t. It was an amazing year for growth in personal relationships in my life. In contrast, the world around me seems to be constantly on fire (and right now that’s both a metaphor and a reality in Southern California). I’m constantly re-imagining where I fit in this dumpster fire of a universe we live in right now and over the past few years it’s changed a lot. That’s both terrifying and exhilarating because the older I get, the less I know exactly where I want to end up. It’s teaching me how to learn how to let go and see what the universe has to offer me.

Letting go has always been a really hard lesson for me. I’ve learned it time and again, after working myself to consistent mental breakdown, never stopping to take care of myself or stop to ask why I am even doing what I'm doing. That became a part of my personality and I thought it made me tough. Growing up, I would win awards in sports and at school for being the most dedicated, the hardest working, I was the one who wouldn’t sleep if it meant getting a project done. Hard work always pays off, it’s true. If I have ever gotten good at anything, it’s not by luck. If I’ve ever gotten anything in life, it’s because I worked my ass off for it. I’m a stubborn Capricorn, through and through. But sometimes, you need to learn when to save your energy for what is really important.

I always thought because of this mentality, I would be a career driven woman for my entire life. It’s always been what I thought would happen, I would get good grades and go to a good college and get a good job. Except, I seem to get stuck at that last part, over and over and over again. The logical part of my brain knows, duh, of course I’m still young and just because I don’t have a solid “career” figured out doesn’t mean that I never will. Then, the anxious, somehow always louder part of my brain just keeps screaming “F A I L U R E !” Every time I would scroll through Instagram and someone else younger than me got a good job, I would get insanely bitter. Social media in general could be a really big anxiety trigger. Most of the time, people are only posting the best parts of their life. We all do it, and it makes the most sense. That’s the easiest part of your life to share with the entire world on the internet- your best self. Putting your mistakes online puts you in an vulnerable position, so most of the time we don’t do it. That still doesn't mean we have to compare our worse selves to someone else's best self. 

That loud voice inside my head screaming “failure” started seeping into everything I did. If I went out with my friends and did something I enjoyed, it was always shadowed with a layer of guilt knowing I could be doing something more productive. If I took time to rest, I was obviously a lazy millennial who wasn’t worth anything. If I spent time with family instead of going to a networking event, I obviously deserved to be a failure because I wasn't working as hard as someone else, even if I was really making myself happy.  The opposite was also true- if I did work on writing, working out, eating healthy, whatever it was- it was never enough. The constant pressure to be more than I was started making nothing feel like it was worth trying for. It felt like any effort was futile, and why bother.

As I was reflecting on the year, I decided to focus for a bit on what went well. I just sat for twenty minutes (put a timer on and everything) and wrote about what I liked about last year. It all came back to my personal relationships blossoming. Things like spending time with family and barbecuing in my parents backyard, running around with my dog, late night board games and drinks with friends, and meeting the love of my life all gave my life meaning again. The older I get, though, the more I realize a career isn’t what’s going to make me happy, it’s the moments in between with the people I love. If you look at the longest study done on happiness, they actually found two things were consistent- the ability to learn how to let go of what’s not important to you and having solid relationships in your life. We’re essentially all looking for a family of some sort, whether that’s in the traditional sense or not. We just want a group of loved ones to belong to, who we can depend on through thick and thin. It’s becoming more clear to me that this is what’s the most important thing in my life- my inner circle. Who knows, if I had become this boss-ass-business person straight away, it might have taken me so much longer to realize the importance of the community I was building around me. So, it was time to let go of what I perceived as my biggest failures, because I was succeeding in ways I hadn't realized.

At this point, I stopped looking at things like, why continue to try at anything when it’s not going to get you anywhere and started thinking how can I improve my life so that I can do more of what I love? What did I still feel like was missing? After changing my perspective, I realized that what I want more than a specific career is to create art and connect with other people. I want other people to feel less alone, because when you feel alone it does start to feel like everything you do is pointless. This is where the terrifying part is- that really isn’t one specific job. There isn’t exactly a job market on LinkedIn for “creative person who likes to write and make things and just really needs to get paid for it so she doesn’t have to be homeless someday.” The moral of the story is- I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing, maybe even less so than I thought I did at the start of this year.

At the beginning of 2017, when I sat down to think of a new year's resolution, I came up with something pretty vague. Instead of making a really specific goal like “lose ten pounds,” I thought how I could have a new mentality to change the year for the better. A Carrie Fisher quote that I couldn’t stop reading came to mind. For background, she happened to die on my birthday last year, and for some reason, that really affected me. I became obsessed with reading interviews she did, watching video clips of her and just taking in all the magic and badassery. A few of her words echoed in my head, “Stay afraid, do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow. ” As someone who suffers from anxiety, I liked the idea of allowing myself to be afraid instead of trying to control the fear. That became my mantra of 2017. It opened up my mind to new opportunities- I started working on a novel this year, I started this blog, shit, I even tried online dating (that last one ended up to be the most successful thing I tried last year!).

I would like to say, instead of overthinking things, I just let go and did them, but that would be a lie. We’re taking baby steps here, people. I still overthought everything I did. My anxiety didn’t just disappear (though, I did eventually get medication and help for the anxiety). I just did things while I overthought them. For example, when I work on writing a blog post, I just start writing what I’m thinking about that week. Usually I sit in the bath or in bed and journal my feelings until I have a complete thought that I want to expand on. My thought process is never full or complete when I start out and I tend to be thinking about at least six things at once (and one of those things is almost always what I’m going to eat for my next meal). I have to mine through the thoughts to make sense of things before I share them. After that, it takes me about a week to write it, agonize over it, edit it, format it, and post it. That’s plenty of time to overthink things, but I’m still creating, I’m still regularly posting. In the end, I’ve been pretty happy with a lot of what I’ve made, overthinking and all!

That leaves me to where I am now and what comes next. Similarly to last year, I’m not setting one specific goal for the year. I tend to try and stack up a lot of smaller goals like this week I’m going to pack healthy lunches for work, or like this week, since it’s near the holidays and I am a serial collector of junk, I decided my goal was to go through my bedroom and make a pile of stuff I wanted to donate to Goodwill. Little things like that that actually will make a difference, one week at a time tend to add up more for me. Instead, I thought about what I wanted more of in my life and when it came down to it, I just want to be more creative. 2018 is all about how I can bring creativity in my every day life, right here, right now!

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up work. Sadly, I’m one of the many people in life who has to go to work for a living. I still would love to find a job doing something I’m even somewhat interested in because I actually take joy in doing work on things that I’m interested in. I just think I’m going to take a step back and take a more broad look at what I want out of life. Right now, it’s to be more creative in my everyday life. I’m trying new things, even if I don’t know if I’ll be any good at them. I want to surround myself with creativity and see what that brings! Even though I’m trying things that sometimes scare me, I’m planning on sharing them with all of you who wish to follow along on the struggle bus with me.

What about you guys? What or who makes you happy? What worked out in 2017? What helped you survive the insanity this year brought? Comments below!

xoxox

[a-woman-apart]

Life Update

Well, pretty much every week has been a life update of some sort, and I think I'll continue that trend for now. I just picked up a rental car yesterday so that I could go and get my belongings from my- now declared totaled- car. Strangely enough, even though that is probably the last time I'll see the vehicle that I've driven for about seven years, I didn't feel sentimental. I am mostly just grateful that the insurance claim is going forward.

Now, Geico wants to take possession of the vehicle. They are willing to pay me the value of what it was worth before the accident, which means that they'll need to calculate the mileage (they have been unable to start the car to check it). It's being moved to their lot tomorrow. In order to take possession, they'll need to get the title from me. The title, although in my name, is still in my dad's possession. I thought about asking him for it as he was "excommunicating" me that day, but I didn't want to seem like that was all I cared about in that moment. Besides that, I wasn't planning on replacing the vehicle any time soon.

It has now been two days since I emailed him to ask him for the title, and he hasn't responded. I've determined that I'll give him about a week before I take further action- and I'm hoping that none will be necessary. I honestly don't think he'd be so petty as to not send me the title when he made such a big deal of getting it put in my name, but it's possible that he's blocked emails from my address or something (though that too is unlikely). Another possibility is that he just hasn't gotten to it for whatever reason and I'm totally overreacting.

The other reason that I got the rental car was that I needed to run some errands. I was finally able to do my laundry yesterday and today, and go to the grocery store and pick up some things that I needed. Driving a car that wasn't mine was a bit nerve-wracking, and I have to remember to park it in visitor parking so it doesn't get towed, but I'm adjusting to it well. The car that Enterprise gave me was a Nissan Versa of some sort, and it runs so smoothly compared to how my PT Cruiser was running. The power steering is actually functioning, so sometimes I find myself over-correcting because of how sensitive of a response it has. The closest dealership to where I live is actually a Nissan dealership, and with how nice this car is I'm seriously considering looking into purchasing one. Also, the lady at Enterprise told me that they sell their rental cars after a while so they can always have the latest models, and while they typically sell to used-car dealerships they also sell privately as well. So maybe they'll have a car for me at a discounted price.

This whole thing could definitely be perceived as a bad situation, but I can definitely see ways in which it is working out positively for me. Occasionally, though, I do get overwhelmed- almost to the point of tears- with just trying to stay on top of everything. There are so many procedures that have to be followed for everything regarding the claim, and in the mean time I'm still doing work and school. I have piano and voice juries coming up and I'm still preparing for them. Also, I'm pretty sure there's a test that's supposed to be coming up on Tuesday for a completely different class (guess who hasn't studied?). At work, there's a staff development day that we have to be at from 8:00am-5:00pm. Then there's the fact that I wanted to keep the car rental for this entire week, just to make all this stuff easier, but because I didn't have collision insurance on my Geico policy (won't make that mistake ever again) I have to pay $20 extra a day to rent the car. I can afford it at this point, but I'm not sure that I can justify it with the possibility of unforeseen expenses popping up. I have to remember that without the car I would still be on Uber, and that costs money too, without giving me the benefit of taking as many trips as I want for a fixed price. I'm leaning towards keeping the car, despite the expense, but I'm going to use the hell out of it for sure.

At my best friend's advice, I have my phone pop up with "reminders" of positive messages that are important to me. I started out with "You are worth it" but I soon changed it to "You're doing your best!" I've had it for so long, that a lot of the time I just dismiss it without paying attention, but I think that I need to really let it settle, the way that I did at first. One of the things that I doubt the most about myself is that I am really putting forth my best effort, even if I am working as diligently as I know how to. Remembering that I am really doing my best is actually really crucial to my mental health and well being. I often tend to dismiss the work that I do. Heck, the chorus leader told me "You've come really far- I'm really proud of you" and I found a way to dismiss that. This is at odds with the fact that I know that she doesn't make any idle comments- if you're screwing up, she'll be quick to tell you. The fact that she took the time to tell me this means she must've meant it, but I found some way to disbelieve her. The self-deprecation needs to stop!

I am my own worst enemy. Also, I keep telling myself that I'm a "realist" but I think I slide towards the "pessimism" setting more often than not. I'm happy that I've been able to see so much good in this situation, but I'm unhappy with how my mind seems to twist positive things into something negative. If I were ever to be able to review the "movies" that my mind was playing at various times in my life, I would see that more often than not the horror stories that I envisioned never played out in reality. I didn't get the bad grade, the humilation, and people didn't react as badly as I expected in a variety of situations. True, sometimes I did get exactly what I expected, but it was never something worst, and there was usually an upside to it all.

So what's the next step? I think I'll just play everything by ear going forward. After juries are over, we're going into spring break. I was supposed to be visiting my brother and sister-in-law for it, but now I'm not sure if I'm going to go, because I don't have a car, and I don't know if they'll be able to make it up here. Even though I'll be disappointed not to be able to travel, I know that spring break will give me a respite from everything that's been going on. Of course, I'll still be working on my music, but not having to go to campus will save me money on trips.

Overall, I am optimistic about the future. I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to get another car before too long, and even if I can't get one right away, I'm pretty sure that I can hang in there.

[ice-cream-writes-stuff]

...

I DID SAY IF ANYONE WANTED A FIC

@thegreatesttrash

PLEASE GUYSSS , DO ANY OF YOU HAVE OR GONNA WRITE FANFIC OVER THIS CUTE GUY, I AM IN DIRE NEED 😭😭I CANT FIND ANY FANFICS ,AAAAJHJJJHHHHH