#why people let this man fuck with their dreams i could not say. hubris i imagine

[talentforlying]

@4ger: you're not well enough to go anywhere. — PEARL STARTERS

' bollocks you say. I'M FINE. ' his head is throbbing, the rapid gallop of his spooked-horse-heart pulsing beneath his fingers as he pinches the sweat-slick bridge of his nose and tries to stop the world around him from spinning away. the spindly corners of his toy house totem dig into the meat of his palm, reassuringly solid, the photograph inside rustling softly as he tilts it; for a queasy moment, he doubts its certainty, almost does something stupid and asks eames to check it for him before rational thought reasserts itself with a swift kick.

he's never been the best about splitting dream from reality — even without twenty extra degrees spiking his temperature to dizzying fever heights and cooking his brain inside his skull. ( the newcastle projections have always seen to that. )

scarred fingertips squeeze harder against the inside curve of his orbitals until the swimming afterimages of that lovely thought blur into haze, cracking one red-rimmed eye open to scowl at the other forger. ' don't be a prick, eames. s'my job, and i'm gonna see it through. ' it's just a matter of professional pride, innit? not like he dreads what he'll see when he's too fucking still to STAY AWAKE. ' you gonna stand there and play nursemaid, or give me a lift? '

[zara-renata]

Alike and Cornered Beast: Sylus's POV

Summary:

I was desperate for Sylus's point of view during the first time that MC meets him in the Alike and Cornered Beast chapters of Long-Awaited Revelry. So I uh wrote it myself. I wanted to know why he touches MC so reverently but also quite brutally, so I spent a lot of time thinking about possibilities.

A/N:

Sylus x gender neutral reader/MC, second person POV (but we don't use Y/N in this house). Brief, derisive mentions of Xavier and Zayne (this is Sylus's POV after all, don't come for me). I love all the LIs, but Sylus has his hand wrapped around my throat and I see him as arrogantly having something to say about the other people who are also interested in his shiny treasure. He has mean thoughts about the other LIs, but he can be mean and we love that for him. Slightly canon divergent if you believe Sylus can't tell that MC is scared and repulsed by him until the shopkeeper informs him. I however believe this man is a little more perceptive than that. CW: violence, cursing, rude language, death, grief, murder, ok this is Sylus hello, non-consensual (non-sexual) touching of MC, metaphors involving hunger and blood, overuse of the word "lovely," but Sylus is a simp and it's mostly his POV so we must endure it. SFW, although clearly there is a thread of desire running beneath the interactions depicted ao3 link here

He doesn’t need the aether core in his eye to know how you're feeling. He can see it in the way your lovely jaw is locked tight, teeth clenched behind soft lips twisted into a tight line. The shudder you’re trying and failing spectacularly to repress, desperate to conceal your weakness: the fact that almost as much as you fear him, you hate him.

Almost from the very beginning, things have been going sideways for Sylus. First, that imbecile having the hubris to believe he could just pilfer what had clearly been claimed as belonging to Onychinus.

Second, the palpable fear that had juddered through you as he had graciously relieved the larcenist of the burden of his pathetic life, only for that fear to flare into bright, barely controlled hate once you figured out that using yourself as bait had succeeded in reeling in the largest predator in the N109 zone.

Third, even when he sauntered close to you, allowing you to drink your fill of his face, no other spark of recognition fired besides that of the leader of the most powerful criminal organization in the region. You didn’t recognize him personally at all, even as he hungrily mapped your face with his eyes and felt the bottomless well of want deepen even further in his heartless chest.

You didn’t remember a fucking thing. And for some reason, you hated him more than his worst enemies. And he had quite a large body count in the worst enemy column of the ledger of his existence.

The fear, he can understand. Onychinus is on the Hunter Association’s Naughty List, and you’re one of the Association’s true believers, a jewel in the hilt of their blade composed of naïve warriors. And like the noble, naïve creature he knows you to be, you firmly believe that any intel they fed you about him and his organization was the pure, unfiltered truth.

But the hate? He muses as he looks down into your upturned face, a face that has been carved into his dreams for weeks now, ever since Mephisto had reported back after scouting the Flux Nexus in the no-hunt zone. Ever since the night he finally found you, stumbling around and battling at the side of your sleepy, cunning rabbit of a partner in the dark wood, oblivious to the real danger perched amongst the leaves, watching through mechanical eyes. His lips twitch in an ironic smile, as he knows he should be grateful to the rabbit for the fact that you’re in front of him now, so agonizingly close. He can see the rise and fall of your chest. The breath you exhale, for him to inhale. All he has to do is let his hand do what it wants—reach out, fingertips drifting softly along the curve of your cheek, your throat, the pulse point that betrays your racing heart. You’re close enough that he could swallow you whole. A good man might be grateful, but he isn’t a good man, and he doesn’t have it in him to be grateful; he only catalogues the threat, and tucks away the thought of the light evolver to be a problem to contemplate, and solve, another day. Right now, he needs to solve the problem of why you hate him on a level that professional distaste can’t explain. The hate he sees in your bright, sharp eyes is personal.

Consequently, he might not need the aether core in his eye to know that you hate him, but he sure as hell needs it to figure out why.

He knows he should wait to use his power on you. He knows that strategically, the best play here is to move slowly, to rebuild your trust, to tease out what he wants from you, to prove to you that despite every instinct that the Association has indoctrinated in you, he is not a threat to you and never will be. He knows all too well that one can’t force trust and forge an equal relationship from coercion, but he doesn’t have the time. Not with the entire Nest on the hunt for his Prey tonight, not with his own house in chaos with Sherman running amok and running up the bill on collateral damage. He needs to know why you hate him so that he can deal with it now, all of it. To borrow the vocabulary of another one of your hapless suitors: now is the time for triage, and after he has assessed the carnage, then he will begin suturing the aftermath. Sylus may be a businessman, but he can appreciate a surgeon’s precision in approaching a crisis. Even if Sylus can’t appreciate the iceman himself, if only for the lingering looks the doctor indulges in when his patient is looking the other way. Sylus files this problem away, like the other, to be solved in quiet solitude another day.

So he indulges in a lingering look of his own, fingers twitching with the need to touch where they’re deceptively, casually resting on his hips. And then: Sylus lets himself look. He can feel the familiar warmth increase within his eye socket, the ember beginning to glow hotter and hotter, until it’s almost unbearable, and then truly unbearable, as it is every time, the price he must pay so that he may see.

A little silver apple on a chain.

A pair of smiling eyes.

An old woman’s hand placing a dumpling on a plate.

The relief of realizing that the danger has dissipated, and dinner is still waiting.

A strong, broad back, shoulders shaking with laughter as a door swings shut.

Almost from the very beginning, things have gone sideways for Sylus. He shuts his eyes, feels the heat and the pressure fade like grief with time, as the power in his aether core goes dormant once again. But you haven’t had time, have you? It’s still fresh, the wound still hemorrhaging. You think that he caused this. You’ve been bleeding for months, thinking it was his hand that wielded the knife lodged in your heart. Or rather, detonated the bomb that incinerated the only family you’ve ever known, leaving a smoking crater where your heart used to be.

Sylus’s mind races, compiling this new information, archiving the whys and hows, constructing and reconstructing his carefully assembled plans and all of the contingencies in between, laughing derisively at himself for not seeing this possibility coming. Sideways is an understatement. Things are well and truly fucked, Sylus thinks, looking into your lovely, livid face.

For a moment, an unfamiliar sensation drifts through his chest. He tests it gingerly, letting it cascade through him before he can identify it: despair. After all this time. Every year, month, week, day, second, breath, he has been carving a path towards you, littered with the broken dreams and broken bodies of others, and now he has finally found you, and what should have been his greatest victory (the spoils? His fingertips drifting up your silken skin, his fingers entwined with yours, home), may have been his greatest loss���a loss that is for once, despite all of his crimes and all of the corpses at his feet, every terrible thing he has ever done, not his fault at all.

He savors this strange feeling for a few heartbeats, indulging in it, pressing into it like a bruise, if bruises would actually remain under his skin. And then he discards it: the unexpected rarely obstructs his carefully laid plans, but nothing about you has ever been expected, has it? If he were the kind of man to resign himself to unexpected loss, like the other men clumsily flitting around you, he’d have been a dead trophy tossed at the feet of an enemy long ago. So the rules of the game have changed. So what? Sylus will adapt, because no matter his fucking luck, he is playing to win.

Because while gazing into the depths of your beloved eyes, Sylus not only saw the why of your hate, but the only thing that could soothe it. Something that you refuse to admit, even to your fundamentally honest self. Something you can’t admit, as you spend insomniac nights training until collapse, as you slice, maim, and end wanderer after wanderer, as you bare your teeth a little too savagely as blood spills beneath your fist and blade. You need vengeance. You need someone to hurt as much as you’re hurting. And not just anyone—the wanderers and criminals that you’ve trained your fists and pistols and blade on do not satisfy the blood-thirst burning through your veins. You need to punish the person responsible for the inferno in your chest. Maybe then you’ll be able to sleep again. Maybe then you’ll be able to not smile again, but at least retract the fangs that have been frightening the people around you for months now. The fangs you feared were always there, underneath the careful façade of the well-adjusted, law-abiding, healthy paragon of a hunter you’ve built to keep the nightmares at bay for years, to show your colleagues, your partner, your doctor and your superiors: Look, I’m harmless and righteous, the perfect tool, love me, love me, love me, please do not leave like everyone else I've ever loved.

And Sylus? Sylus has always, and will always, endeavor to give you everything your damaged heart could possibly desire. He knows that you will not believe that he was not the one who ripped your ‘family’ apart. And he knows that it will take time, time that he does not currently have, to rebuild what has been lost between the two of you. He recalibrates, sweeps aside the despair, and reinforces his resolve. If you want to exact vengeance on the person you think is responsible for all of your indescribable pain, Sylus will give his heart to you on a bloody platter, regardless of the pain it will cost him.

You need someone to hate right now to stay strong? So be it. He will be that for you, until he can locate the actual culprit. As he reaches out, ever so gently trailing the backs of his fingers along your hauntingly lovely face, he tells himself for a moment that he can't bring himself to use something so impersonal as the energy of his evol on you. But who is he kidding--Sylus is many things, but a liar is not one of them. He admits to himself that this is just him finally giving into his deepest desire, as he lets his hand drift from your face to the side of your neck, closing around your throat and lifting. He does not want to handle your precious form with such brute, concise strength, but he needs to hurry, he needs answers and he needs to fix this, now now now and you need him to be the enemy. This is what is best for you at this moment, in this place, and he only ever wants what is best for you, so he plays the part you need him to play:

"From your past to your future...to even all the crimes you'll inevitably commit. After all, you and I...we're the same. True kindred spirits."

As your body goes limp from his chokehold on you, he catches you, cradling your head in his hand, grateful for the strength of his body, the shelter he can provide you as he lifts you in his arms, holds you tightly, your chests finally close again, yours too full of a maimed heart and his missing one entirely, complementing each other, completing each other, even though you’re out cold and it will take so much—too much, too much, it’s already been too much time, you’re finally here, you’re finally in his arms, where you should have been all along—time to be able to have you in his arms like this but with your eyes wide open and fixed on his.

Later, when you wake up, in a dark room with this familiar stranger disdainfully staring you down through crimson eyes, as his evol winds itself around you, as it jerks you onto his big lap, you clench your teeth, you fight the tears of frustration and fury—why do you always cry when you’re angry? Is it not humiliating enough to lose control of the leash on your emotions, without tears spilling down your face to betray you to the object of your rage?­—and you fight desperately against the immovable force pinning you in place.

"I want to kill you myself," you grit out, through the tears and the snot running down your face.

And then this man places your gun in your hand, eyes bright as blood never leaving yours, in answer to the quietest, deepest buried desire of your limping heart that he has driven you to saying out loud. Your hate flares, because how dare he expose you to yourself in this manner? Who does this motherfucker think he is, casually extracting from your own mouth and offering you that which you couldn’t before name in hushed whispers, as if it means nothing to him, as if it costs him nothing, his sharp jaw relaxed, a ghost of a smirk curling the edges of his wide mouth? You fight it, the surge of hunger that chokes your panting breath—you fight it so hard, you’ve been fighting it for so long, ever since the piercing ringing in your ears began to sound that replaced your grandmother’s and Caleb’s laughter, the ringing silence that followed as debris rained down on your useless, injured body. You are not a mindless animal. You will not give in to this voracious want. You and this man holding your gun to his own heart are not the same, and never will be.

“Do you need some help? Yes? No? Maybe so?” His voice is the purr of a jungle cat, his hand, large and just as calloused as yours, envelops your own, with that same bizarre gentleness that you can’t even begin to interpret the why of, his finger drifting along your own, until it slowly tightens over yours. Your mouth says “No,” and you see how his eyes dart from yours to your lips and back again, but the hunger inside you howls as this man presses your finger against the trigger and the sound of the bullet leaving your gun drowns out all of the other noise in the cacophony of your thundering heart.

His big body jerks back, head hitting with a painful sounding thump against his melodramatic throne (ok, so it's just an antique chair, but honestly, where do villains buy ridiculous props like this?), and for an endless moment in time, the hunger is satiated, and a sense of triumphant relief courses through you instead. And then your vision sharpens, as blood the color of this man’s eyes begins to pour through the hole he—and you, we, together—just shot into his fucking heart.

He jerks the gun from your grasp and tosses it with a loud clatter to the concrete floor.

“You—Are you fucking crazy?” You’re moving before you realize it, palms pressed over his heart (a spiteful part of you hopes that it hurts him, even as you are suddenly overwhelmed with the terror that he is actually going to die, before you get any answers, before you get any help, before you’ve accomplished anything at all).

“You wanted to take my life,” he pants. It never hurts any less, no matter how many times it happens. He can feel his flesh knitting back together already, each stitch as painful as the one before. “And so you’ve taken it.”

Despite the pain, Sylus watches you leisurely, drinking in the blood splatters across your lovely neck and chin. My blood, he thinks with satisfaction. He wants to soak you in it. He wants to watch you bathe in it. He shakes his head, tucking that urge away for later contemplation. He is finally in the position to do what he has been craving for so, so long. He has given you what you want. Of course he will always give you what you want. However, that doesn’t mean that he can’t simultaneously get what he wants—Sylus strongly prefers deals when they’re win-win. He has given you what you wanted, and the slate is now clean. Now, it is time to begin negotiation of the highest stakes deal of his life: the acquisition of your body, heart and soul. Back at his side, where you belong.

“Now what? Have you already figured out how you’ll pay me back?”

[curlyhairedsimp]

I think about this show a lot. I think about Ford a lot and his thoughts. Why he chose to do things the way he did. Now I’m not trying to place blame but it will sound like it. Ford factually without a doubt fucked up cause he thought that he was supposed to be the man to turn to for these things. He is supposed to tell you if it’s dangerous. He just didn’t account for this other being actually being able to outsmart him.

Bill in the beginning was trying to figure Ford out. I’m sure that he wasn’t quite sure where he stood but Bill doesn’t get attached for no reason. He saw what Ford could become with his selfishness and thought with how far Ford was willing to take it this would be okay too.

Ford isn’t an idiot and he knew what he was building. This part is more of a head canon than anything but in his journals the progression of the books doesn’t really show that Ford slowly feels suspicious of Bill. It’s like one page to the next and that’s why I think bill just laid it out for him. He tried to get ahead of Ford figuring out he was actually lying to him and so he told him. He could bring the weird here and Ford was mortified probably. He was given access to things most people can’t even dream of. It’s why I know it’s his hubris considering more that more than anything that the most important thing to him was preserving his research from being destroyed even when he’s trying to fix everything.

So when Stan calls him selfish in the basement and he gets mad at Stan. It’s because of all people he didn’t want to hear it from one person and it was Stan. Cause to him the most selfish person in the world is right in front of him. Not even realizing that Stan wasn’t wrong to call him that. He almost damned the world for trusting an anomaly and instead of just letting Stan destroy the book. He fights him for it cause he respects his own work too much to destroy it. When it could kill so many people and it was just the best course of action at the time. Regardless of why it was being done.

Ford never unlearned those selfish tendencies cause that’s just how consuming his work is. I think in this sense Ford is a lot like Mabel except Ford doesn’t get hate like Mabel does. Even though Mabel actually goes out of her way to acknowledge her selfishness. Also Mabel is 12 and Ford is like 60. And was like practically 30 making all the mistakes he did.

In terms of emotions/values Ford and Mabel are very similar even if they don’t enjoy the same things. Like the unicorn hair incident. That wouldn’t have bothered Stan or Dipper nearly as much as Mabel or Stanford. Cause they strive to be those things and more so it hurts when someone says otherwise.

In conclusion Ford needed fucking therapy yesterday and Stan deserves hugs.

[newtonsheffield]

So will we be getting another opportunity for the two lovebirds to go to a school dance together in Good Girls? Will they discuss the “joke” ask from last time?

We will be getting another opportunity to see these two at a school dance. There was even a moodboard for it I think. You guys know me, any excuse for a moodboard.

Let's take a tiny look

Of all the things Anthony should have been nervous about in his relationship with Kate, asking her to the formal probably shouldn't be one of them. This was the girl who just last night had barely blinked as he climbed through the window of her bedroom, and let him fuck her senseless while she dangled from the edge of the bed, her hands firmly planted on the floor. If he was embarrassed to ask her for something, it probably ought to have been that.

But instead, here he was, with anxiety bubbling in his stomach as he held the flyers for the dance while she stapled them to various bulletin boards around the school.

"So have you picked out a dress?" He tried for nonchalant, maybe that was best.

Kate hummed questioningly, hardly paying attention. "What's that honey?"

Anthony cleared his throat. "Have you picked out a dress for the dance?"

Instead of the surprise, the excitement he'd thought he'd see on her face, she only shrugged. "Eh, I think I'll just rewear something I already have."

His eyebrows shot up, Even he'd had his Mum take him to the tailor this last weekend so he could get a second opinion on the plaid trousers and waistcoat he'd picked out. And he knew that while Kate wasn't particularly vain, she also wasn't one to pass up the opportunity to buy a new dress. He was obviously missing something, he just couldn't make the pieces fit.

"Don't look at me like that." She was rolling her eyes at him now, turning back to the notice board, "You're going to tell me that you want me to buy a new dress, and look pretty for a dance you won't even be at? Sure."

Anthony froze. His heart pounding, his fist clenched. Did she not want him to go?

"Why...? Why would I not be there?"

Kate shrugged again, "Anthony Bridgerton doesn't go to school sponsored events. I organised it so I have to go, which I get is like embarrassing or whatever, just like, don't this year, okay?"

And suddenly he realised, why she'd rejected him when he'd asked her last year. When he'd screwed up all his courage and called out to her in the hallway. And momentarily she'd looked torn, before she'd laughed. She'd thought he was making fun of her.

"Kate, do you want to go to the dance with me?"

Her face twitched, her eyes stuck on the notice in front of her. "Don't ask me because you think you have to. I don't want you to be miserable."

Anthony scoffed, trying to joke, "You know, a less secure man than I am would be upset that you've now rejected them two years in a row, for the same event. Even more confusing this year because you sucked me off before I snuck out of your house this morning but okay."

Kate froze for a very long moment, before she slowly turned towards him, horror written on her face. "You weren't making fun of me last year were you?"

He shook his head, "No, I was genuinely trying to ask you out in a moment of wild hubris. You can see why I was a little surprised at the idea that you had a filthy dream about me when you were fifteen that got those lovely little knickers in a twist."

Her mouth fell open, panic in her eyes, "Anthony, I'm so sorry, I thought- I wanted to go with you but I-"

He shrugged, leaning down to kiss her cheek. "It's fine, but I'm not letting you off so easily this year." He cleared his throat his voice booming through the hallway, startling several people "KATE SHARMA WILL YOU LET ME TAKE YOU TO THE DANCE THIS YEAR?!"

"Please say yes, I already had a suit made." He whispered in her ear.

She rolled her eyes, standing on her toes to brush their lips together. "Yes, definitely."

[yellowocaballero]

Jon & Sasha Arson fic

Little fragment of an idea that never went anywhere. No reason for it. Just thought it would be funny. I was right. Rest under the cut. 

Most people who were unlucky enough to meet Jonathan Sims assumed he had no friends.

This was true, up to a point two weeks after Jon became a researcher at the Magnus Institute: afterwards Jon had no friends, except for Sasha James.

Sasha James was attributable to arson.

Most people who were unlucky enough to meet Jonathan Sims assumed he had no friends. 

This was true, up to a point two weeks after Jon became a researcher at the Magnus Institute: afterwards Jon had no friends, except for Sasha James. 

*******

Sasha James was attributable to arson.

Arson was attributable to a bookshelf of Leitners, humming strange songs and spewing toxic energy into the air in rhythmic hissing motions. The Leitners were attributable to Artifact Storage, a testament to mankind’s hubris and a modern-day tower of Babel where a group of underpaid academics found themselves stress testing kevlar and fire suppression systems each day. Artifact Storage was attributable to the Magnus Institute, where Jon had managed to land a job after three months of desolate post-graduate unemployment. And the Magnus Institute was attributable to - well, probably Jonah Magnus, but Jon found that it was likely a bit of a reach to blame a long dead Regency gentleman for all of his problems. 

Jon needed this job. London was expensive and so were funerals, and he couldn’t keep living on life insurance forever. It was even a good job, with decent pay and the exact kind of limp, half-hearted academia that the private sector promised disillusioned English mastery holders. His coworkers were nice - well, Tim was nice, everybody else seemed to hate him for the same reason that everybody else hated him, likely intimidated by how smart he was - and the commute was short. He couldn’t afford to lose this job. Spiritually, metaphysically, and literally. 

Which was why he should stop staring at this piece of paper. The follow-up research to a statement given by some idiot unlucky enough to cross paths with what was certainly a Leitner. 

‘ORIGINATION OF PHENOMENA ISOLATED’, the page read out professionally, yet chipperly, like a young woman in a new office job. ‘ITEM QUARANTINED WITHIN ARTIFACT STORAGE (46B.1)’. 

Hm. 

Jon pushed down on the floor, rolling himself a meter to the left.

“Say, er, Mr. Stoker.”

Tim “I’m only four years older than you, please call me Tim” Stoker, who had been thumping away on his cheap plastic keyboard either writing up a report or messaging someone on one of those infernal casual sex websites, pulled down his headphones and blinked at Jon owlishly, before splitting his face into a grin. Jon could practically hear the David Attenborough-style narration within his mind: ‘After long weeks leaving out food for the wild Simothan, the feral yet gentle animal approaches the researcher of his own volition. A win for scientists everywhere.’

“Yes, Jon?” Tim asked, in an uncanny yet hopefully unintentional RP drawl. 

“What’s Artifact Storage?”

“God, I wish I was you,” Tim said feelingly. But he nodded sagely anyway, milking his ‘wise senpai’ thing for all it was worth. Jon could practically feel Tim calling himself a senpai. It was kind of embarrassing. “You know the shady room locked deep within the basement that exudes a terrible aura of malice and hatred towards you specifically?”

“The gender neutral bathroom?” Jon asked, confused. 

“No, the one that always smells somewhat of blood. You hear screams sometimes?”

“The Archives!”

“Yes, but no! It’s Artifact Storage. If the researchers dig up any creepy shit from a statement, or if a statement giver brings in something that melts the metal detector, then we dump it in Artifact Storage and let those miserable fucks take care of it.”

“Is it more of a containment facility, or would you say that they conduct experiments?”

But Tim just shrugged. “My source down there tells me that they do some experiments to justify their budget, but it’s mostly unscientific. Poke this and I’ll give you twenty quid, that kind of thing. They say that if you really want a sick day, all you have to do is touch a mysterious rock and whisper your mother’s name -”

“Fantastic, thank you for your help, must go back to filling now,” Jon said quickly, skittering back to his own desk. He tried to distract himself from the terrifying thought of the basement full of supernatural nuclear bombs underneath his feet by trying to remember his mother’s name, but he was stuck on if it was Marjorie or Margaret. Mary Anne?

Maybe Tim’s personal Meerkat Manor series of Jon’s life had paid off - Sims Shack? - more than Jon would like, because Tim squinted at Jon in an unsettlingly familiar way. As if he knew exactly what Jon was thinking about the literature of mass destruction, and he really wanted Jon to be thinking literally anything else. 

“I wouldn’t go down there if I were you, Jon,” Tim warned, sounding a little like a horror movie trailer. “Bushy tailed college grads who go down there don’t come out the same as they went in.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, Mr. Stoker.”

“For the love of christ call me Tim!”

It really was a pity - Jon had actually liked this job. 

*******

It was remarkably easy to commit arson in central London.

Jon had done it once or twice. Three times, actually, although when you think about it arson was a criminal charge and only truly existed so long as someone was charged with it, so technically you could say that Jon had done arson zero times. In his defense, you try making it through Oxford without doing anything embarrassing. 90% of your time was in class or schoolwork and 10% of it was being hazed. At least Jon hadn’t fucked any pigs. 

Jon hit up the usual stores, and stashed the usual implements in his rucksack. It was a careful week after his conversation with Tim, as he couldn’t afford for the older man to connect the dots. He made a show of going home at a timely five pm, startling everybody around him, and paced in a tight circle around his flat until he gave up and watched mindless telly until the clock struck midnight. 

He took a cab to the park a few blocks down from the Institute, and walked the rest of the way. It was a cool, dim night in London, and the foot-traffic had slowed down to a steady trickle of young people in tight clothing. Jon pulled down his baseball cap on his head, fished a key out from his pocket given to him by a helpful and friendly janitor, and took a back entrance into the Institute. 

Said helpful and friendly janitor, whose allegiance had been won because Jon was a “nice young lad” and “I always wanted to burn down the place myself, I’m happy to see the next generation give it a go” had helpfully told Jon that there were no security cameras inside the Institute. A grievous oversight, but good luck for Jon tonight. He took the stairs down to the basement, zipping his jacket up tight against the inescapable chill, and pushed his hat further down his head as he navigated his way towards Artifact Storage.

He unlocked the door with the janitor’s key, hands shaking, and slipped inside into the dusky and unlit room. 

It was pitch-black, and Jon quickly fished a torch out of his backpack. He flipped it on, letting it slowly scan the room. It was the lobby into Artifact Storage, familiar from his stake-out missions: you walked in, met the bored woman behind the desk, checked in or checked out what you wanted, and if you needed to go inside she would press the button that unlocked the heavy climate-controlled door and let you into the hallway inside. The only other door in the lobby was to the office of the Director of Artifact Storage, a terrifying short and squat woman with silver hair pulled into a bun. 

Jon leaned over the counter and jammed the button, holding his breath until he heard the door click open. He quickly twisted the handle, swung the heavy door out, and slipped inside, taking care to grab one of the chairs in the lobby and prop it open. Quick escapes were necessary. 

He was in. 

The torch lit up a map taped up to the wall, and Jon squinted at it. Section A, Section B, Section C...he remembered the classification from the document he read a week ago, and slowly walked down the hallway until he found the heavy climate controlled door marked ‘SECTION B’. He carefully wrenched it open, taking care to grab a rolling cart and using it to prop the door open, before stepping inside. He fished the canister of gasoline and the lighter out of his backpack, giving the gasoline a good shake. 

It was a library. Small, and instead of shelves there were long metal racks with filing boxes stretching long into the darkness, but Jon knew a library when he saw one. Each box had a clipboard attached to it, and most boxes had very large and terrifying stickers on them painted sickly yellow or dangerous red. 

The only thing in the library that wasn’t a filing rack was a battered and beat couch. And the only person in the room besides Jon was a woman, blinking up at Jon blearily from where she had been passed out on the couch. 

“Er,” Jon said. 

The woman sat up, squinting at Jon’s torchlight until he guiltily aimed it just to her left. She had a wild mane of curly brown hair, and was wearing a pencil skirt and ruffled burgundy blouse. A blazer was folded at one end of the couch, clearly being used as a pillow, and she looked strongly as if Jon had just woken her up from a very nice nap. 

“Whuh,” the sleepy woman said. 

“My mistake,” Jon said, “this isn’t the loo. Go back to bed, this is - er, a very bad dream, goodnight.”

“Whutuhiseet,” the woman slurred. 

“It’s - very late, go back to bed.”

“Alright,” the woman said, falling back on the couch. After a second, her snores echoed through the room again. 

Jon very slowly crept backwards. Actually, on second thought, his mission could wait for tomorrow. Bit of a cock block, this, but that was alright - 

“Hey! Who are you!”

Jon, hand on the handle of the door, squeaked and turned around. 

The woman was back up again, and this time she seemed actually awake. She was frowning mightily at Jon, and was already sliding off the couch in stocking feet to glare at him. Jon was aware that he did not look like an innocent person in these events. The gasoline did not help.

The woman’s eyes trailed to the gasoline, then widened. Jon ineffectually tried to hide it behind his back. 

“You’re trying to burn down Artifact Storage!” the woman accused, somewhat fairly.

“Not all of Artifact Storage,” Jon said guiltily, “just the Leitners.”

The woman stared at him further, as if she was a special guest on Tim’s Sims Shack nature documentary. 

“Why,” the woman said slowly, “would you want to do that?”

Despite himself, Jon found himself puffing up in indignation. “They’re evil, nasty little books that shouldn’t exist. Forget studying and - and containing them, we should be making sure no more of them ever disgrace the world again. We should be burning every one we see. They’re pure evil given literary form, they are a disgrace to books and libraries, and if I ever met Leitner myself I would beat him to death with a rusty pipe for subjecting me to his fucked up books.”

The woman stared at him. 

Finally, she said, “I’m Sasha James. Want some help?”

“I - er, wouldn’t that get you in trouble, Ms. James?” 

“I like this job but I hate Leitner and his fucked up books more,” Sasha said gravely. 

Jon, having found a kindred spirit, held out the lighter. 

Sasha James took it, a wide grin splitting her face. 

*********

Jon didn’t remember much else of that night. 

There was definitely arson involved - or, seeing as they hadn’t gotten caught, just some good old-fashioned fire starting. He had the sense that they had both been so giddy with adrenaline that they had immediately joined the raging uni students in the late night bars, toasting their success in toasting. There had probably been quite a bit of alcohol.

When he woke up the next morning, it was in his narrow and uncomfortable bed, face to face with an unfamiliar snoring woman. For a second, two, Jon was briefly convinced that he had done something so drastically out of character it meant that a fucked up book had body swapped him with Tim. Bodyswapping was more likely than him having casual sex. 

Then Jon remembered the arson, and he exhaled in relief as his life made sense again. 

“Ms. James,” Jon whispered, poking her in the arm. She snuffled and muttered something. Jon poked her harder. “Ms. James, we have work.”

Sasha turned around, turning her back to him and pulling up the blankets. “Go back to bed, Tim.”

Ti - oh god. Jon felt like he was in a CW drama. This was why he didn’t interact with people, far too much likelihood that he would accidentally end up interacting with somebody who had sex.

“Ms. James,” Jon hissed, extremely embarrassed, “you have to get up!”

“Mergh mergh fuck off,” Sasha James said. 

Jon, like a true gentleman and hero, got up and made them both strong tea. He squinted at Sasha, recalling everything he knew about her (slept a lot, liked arson, hated Jurgen Leitner) before digging out some instant coffee and making some of that too. Finally, after shoving a hot cup of sludgey black liquid at the woman, she grabbed the cup and chugged it until she was able to sit up and open her eyes. 

She blinked at Jon, who was already picking his hair in an attempt to get ready for work. He could clearly see the thoughts ‘you aren’t Tim’ run through her brain. Hah! He could be the narrator of the nature documentary for once!

“Uh,” Sasha James said, “I’m sorry, did we…?”

“Commit arson? Yes.” Jon paused a beat. “But as I don’t believe we were caught, call it an indoor campfire.”

Sasha James drank more of her coffee. Jon grabbed his clothing and disappeared into the loo to get changed. 

When he re-entered his bedroom, she snapped her fingers at him. “Right! We got pissed after! Good times, mate!”

“I have to assume,” Jon said politely. He was doing his very best to be very polite, because Jon knew he was rude and didn’t want his new coworkers to know that until his probation period was over. Maybe he should have waited until after his probation period for the arson? Would it look bad on his annual review? “Do you need to borrow some clothing? I think we’re about the same size.” Oh, no, was that rude to say to a woman?

Sasha James squinted at him. “It’s like you’re not hungover at all. How old are you?”

“Twenty five?” Be polite, Jon! “And you’re...thirty seven?”

“I’m thirty one, asshole!”

Oh no. Women hated it when you called them old. “You don’t look a day over twenty seven!” Jon cried, panicked. 

“Have you met a woman?”

“I had a grandmother?”

“I’m going back to bed,” Sasha James said. 

Unfortunately, Jon knew that it would be very suspicious if they both skipped, so he forced Sasha into one of his suits that...looked much nicer on her than him, but whatever, and hustled them both to work. Now that the adrenaline had worn away and the sense of purpose in his holy mission had burned up with the cleansing flames, Jon found himself biting his nails in agony in the Underground. 

They had to know. Someone must have caught them. Maybe there were secret CCTVs in the Institute. Maybe Sasha was going to rat him out - but she had helped, so wouldn’t she just be ratting out herself? Was she a double agent? Mr. Bouchard was never going to forgive him, no matter how nice he was and how much he seemed to like Jon to the point where he rather wished someone had given him the ‘Stranger Danger’ speech as a child so he would know what to do. Jon was going to go to jail, or worse - get fired. 

Sasha, cooly sipping her coffee and looking somewhat fly in sunglasses and his suit, did not seem disturbed by any of this. Jon’s rapidly spiralling panic attack must have been obvious, because she casually flicked a finger on his forehead. Jon yelped with pain. 

“Take it easy, mate. If they catch us, I’ll just say that the books made us do it.”

Jon scowled at her, rubbing his smarting forehead. “The books?”

“Sure.” She waved her fingers spookily as the Underground rattled forward into the heart of London. “Brainwashed us to do their evil bidding of -”

“Destroying them?”

“There’s a lot of arson Leitners,” Sasha James said sagely. “Trust me, this is just a normal day in Artifact Storage.” She clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder, and Jon fought a blush. “Don’t worry. We performed a public service, kiddo. St. Peter’s gonna give us a medal when we get to the pearly gates.”

“I’m an adult,” Jon said, scandalized. He had gray hair!

“Well, I guess, but I don’t know your name, so…”

 Jon squinted at her. She squinted at him back. 

“You’re thinking that if you don’t give me your name I can’t rat you out to the feds,” Sasha said flatly. 

Jon pursed his lips. 

Finally, he settled on, “You don’t rat me out to the feds and I won’t tell them that you’re in an illicit relationship with Mr. Stoker.”

“Mr. - how did - what!”

“It’s Jonathan Sims,” Jon said gruffly, crossing his arms. He was slightly hungover and his nerve were jittery and he had set fire to his workplace the previous night, but somehow Jon thought that his heart was jackrabbiting in his chest for a different reason. Somehow Jon felt as if his heart couldn’t stop thumping behind his sternum because Sasha James was staring at him, head cocked, as if he was a mystery she was interested in finding out. “That’s my name.”

Sasha James stared at him, as if surprised, before her face broke into a wide and happy smile. Jon hunched his shoulders up, embarrassed, faintly aware he was blushing. “It’s nice to meet you, Jonathan!” Then she grabbed him by the collar, shaking him slightly. “And there is nothing illicit about me and Tim, and there is nothing between me and Tim at all, we are just friends, so get that out of your little head -”

The train rattled on towards the Magnus Institute, and towards the slight smell of smoke in the air. 

*******

Sasha: are you coming 2 the pub w/us 2nite?

Sasha: come onnn you should comeee don’t feel awkwardddd 

Sasha: I know you hate a) group settings b) drunk people c) Tim in a group d) drunk Tim and e) Tim drunk in a group but that’s no reason not to come!

Sasha: Tim is physiologically incapable of not adopting men 3-5 years younger than him it’s in his blood you can’t escape his affection

Sasha: or at least I find it funny so I’m not letting you

Sasha: Jonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Jon: Yes I’ll come, I need to talk to both of you.

Sasha: WAHOO

Sasha: wait

Sasha: really?

Sasha: did you commit ars*on again

Sasha: wait if you did don’t tell me the courts can request text transcripts

Jon: No, I just need your advice on an urgent matter.

Sasha: do you need to be drunk to do it

Jon: ...maybe.

Jon: ....Mr. Bouchard offered me the Head Archivist Job?

Jon: Which is stupid because I’ve worked here for barely four years and you’ve worked here for about ten years I think. And you’ve published five papers in parapsychological research. I know I helped you figure out that this place is a weird trauma mill but it was really mostly you. It’s completely ridiculous to promote me and I’m afraid it’s favoritism. For potentially heinous ends? This feels awful because it’s such an honor but I would never stop feeling stressed and guilty because I know so many more people (like you) are so much more qualified. Or qualified at all.

Sasha: holy shit

Sasha: ...do you remember the speech I gave you on stranger danger?

Jon: I’m afraid to mention this to Tim because he might beat up Mr. Bouchard for both my honor and yours.

Sasha: Jesus at this point I don’t even want a fucking job anymore. What bullshit. I’m never going to get promoted and I just need to accept that. This isn’t your fault, Jon, seriously, thank you for telling me. 

Sasha: we can talk about this at the pub

Sasha: in private. Off the radar. 

Jon: Looking forward to it :)

Jon: did I use the emoticon right?

Sasha: Yes, Jon, you did everything right. 

[mythundermeme]

THE LEGEND OF VOX MACHINA SEASON 1 STARTERS - part 7

note: feel free to tweak details to fit the muses. other meme blogs, please don’t reblog. (content warning: swearing, violence, death, alcohol)

EPISODE 7

"Are you volunteering to demonstrate?"

"Do keep the children in one piece, if you can?"

"Your ambitions cloud your duties."

"Oh, forgive my hubris. Your advice is always illuminating."

"No one appreciates me. No one at all."

"Pray you never wake to find reality knocking at your door."

"The fuck happened back there?"

"I assure you, I'm in control."

"Were you in control when you pointed that at me? I saw your eyes."

"Oh, I swear, if you turn that thing on any of us again, I will not hesitate. I will kill you."

"Holding that weapon, it's like you're a different person."

"When we came here, darling, you promised no more lies."

"With my family murdered, I had no way of striking back."

"I disappeared. Wandering aimlessly, my days spent struggling for survival."

"My days spent struggling for survival. My nights filled with fear, blood, and cruel nightmares."

"I worried I would go mad from grief."

"The hatred inside me grew."

"Vengeance burning hotter than black powder. Nearly consuming me."

"Yikes. No wonder he's single."

"Do you normally build instruments of death you find in dreams?"

"Not the first time I've been inspired. Does it matter where it came from?"

"You're so weak."

"Yeah, look, don't get me wrong, that thing's badass. But what are those scribbles for?"

"In my dreams I swore to make a list of those who wronged me."

"Why not just announce where our hideout is while you're at it?"

"All right, you made your point. It was an accident."

"Hate to interrupt, but this is bigger than all your personal shite."

"I mean, this town ain't even got any ale."

"_ is back from the dead. If that won't inspire people, nothing will."

"Right now, I'm only thinking about my sister."

"There's a million guards and we'll die a thousand deaths."

"Come on. Real ideas only."

"Now is not the time to be cute."

"I am not cute. I mean, I am. Extremely. But not like you mean it."

"The answer is no. It's far too dangerous, and you're far too... you."

"You're always saying I'm annoying. Well, let me be annoying."

"What the fuck am I doing?"

"How would this ever help?"

"Thinking about your sister?"

"She was a nightmare. Always got me in trouble."

"Terminally irritating, pompous, utterly incapable of silence."

"This guy's weirder than me."

"Never listen to me again."

"The longer we wait, the more we risk being discovered."

"Holy shit, he did it."

"I was dead yesterday, remember? Can only improve from here."

"Not everything's a trap, you twit."

"Oh, man. They are fucked now."

"Did you honestly think you could best me by yourself?"

"You're weak. You're small, and in this world, that means you lose."

"Open the door, coward!"

"My new employer encourages me to make my own decisions."

"If you harm her, I will end you."

"Let her go and we can discuss a future where you're still breathing."

"You seem to think this is a negotiation."

[pandoraborn]

Cruelty of the Beast - Part 11

( previous. )

Characters: c!Dream, c!Tommy, c!Techno, c!Phil Word count: 2398 words Content: hostages, kidnapping, manipulation mention, brainwashing mention, betrayal, acceptance, bonding,

-----

“I don’t understand, why couldn’t I have gone with Wilbur?” Tommy grips the crossbow tightly as he follows Dream. He looks back over his shoulder as the portal they’d come through is washed out by the falling snow. He doesn’t like where he is, he doesn’t like where they’re going, and he especially doesn’t like that he and Ranboo have been separated again.

“Because yours and Ranboo’s little stunt set us back, and we don’t have time to gather what we need, so we’re going to get help,” comes Dream’s curt reply.

Above all else, Tommy really doesn’t care for how snarky the man is.

He’s coming to accept that Dream is a man, slowly. He’s coming to accept that the tall, blond man is not a god, just a pathetic loser who’d dabbled in powers he shouldn’t have been messing with. With this mindset, Tommy can almost tolerate him. Without his mask, he looks no more intimidating than Tubbo.

They’re both armed with crossbows and heavy jackets. Tommy’s hair is now almost as long as Dream’s, and both have their hair pulled back in tight ponytails. It had been Wilbur’s idea. The idea of them looking similar doesn’t disgust Tommy as much as it should; maybe he’s grown too used to being around Dream.

“By help, you mean we’re taking hostages,” Tommy replies. “This isn’t a good idea, they could easily kill us.”

Dream stops, turning around to face Tommy. There’s a tight-lipped smile on his face, and his eyes crinkle with amusement. “Tommy, why on earth would they kill us? They like us, remember?”

“You. They like you,” Tommy corrects. “They made it rather clear they detest me.”

Dream snorts. “Everyone always says they hate someone, but deep down inside, we all cherish the moments when we were all friends.”

“If you’re talking about you and me, I was never your friend. I was always your toy.” Tommy scowls. “You say you’re okay with me hating you, but you never actually address why that is.”

Dream seems to study him for a moment. The grin fades, and his eyes droop. Tommy can’t tell what that expression means, but Dream’s turning away again, head bowing forward. He starts walking again, with Tommy hurrying to keep up.

“I made mistakes, Tommy. I made a lot of mistakes that I regret. You were one of them.”

“I’m not anyone’s toy, you know.” Tommy lowers the crossbow, tapping his fingers against the wood. “Not yours, not even Wilbur’s. I’m my own man, and I deserved way better than anyone gave me.”

“You did. I can say all I want that it was yours and Ranboo’s stunt that got us in this position, but really, I just wanted to get a moment alone with you. Wilbur’s had you on a leash.”

His hand snakes out and grips Dream’s jacket, yanking firmly. Fingers grip the man hard enough that his hand starts to ache. Tommy glares at Dream, bottom lip trembling. “Let me repeat myself, Clay. I’m not anyone’s toy. I’m not attached to anyone’s fucking leash. If you had trouble getting me away from Wilbur, it was because I wanted to stay by his side, because he’s more safe than you are.”

“Let go of me.”

“No, I want you to fucking listen to me for once. I have had it with being used and manipulated. I am so sick and tired of being everyone’s pawn in whatever game you’re all playing. Don’t think for a second that any of you are using me. I’m with Wilbur and Ranboo because I want to be. I could have run off at any time I wanted, and none of you could’ve stopped me. I want to end whatever miserable existence I have because I’m tired.”

“Tommy-”

Tommy lets go of the jacket, but he’s grabbing at Dream’s wrist next to hold him in place. “And maybe you’re right, I don’t actually hate you. I hate what you’ve become though. Arrogant, maniacal, playing around with death and life like it also is your personal toy.

”I’ll accept a dragon, I’ll accept this apocalypse you’re all planning. Maybe deep down inside, I want it too. Not because I hate the world, but because I have nothing left to live for, and that’s all your fault.” With those words, he turns and marches toward the tundra cabin he’s starting to loathe.

“I never meant to break you.”

“Yeah, well, you did. Over and over again. I think I’ve suffered enough, don’t you think?”

“That’s why we want this. None of us are whole anymore.” Dream’s voice is barely a whisper against the rising wind. The snow is falling harder, turning Tommy’s ears red and numb with cold. He can see his breath more vividly, and a part of him wonders if this is just a sign of what’s to come.

He’s about to massively betray Technoblade and Philza.

“You get it though, don’t you?” Dream continues. “Wilbur lost himself to paranoia, Ranboo lost himself to forgotten memories, I lost myself to hubris and you...”

“I’m still lost,” Tommy replies. “It’s a neverending cycle of pain and hurt and betrayal. I’m just cementing the opinion that I’m the bad guy in everyone’s minds.” He nods in the direction of the cabin. “If he threatens me-”

“Then I’ll protect you.”

It’s not something he’d expected to hear from Dream. He still hasn’t heard any sort of apology, just more excuses. But he’s starting to see Dream in a new light. Minutes ago he’d been coming to terms with the fact that Dream is only a man, but now he wonders if he’d been too clouded by his own pain to really see Dream.

Or maybe he’s just growing stupid because of the cold.

Snorting, Tommy shakes his head. “I have a crossbow, I don’t need your help. Thanks for the offer, but your ‘protection’ is why we’re here to begin with.”

“It was you and Ranboo drugging us that brought us here. You both could have just asked, you know.” Dream laughs. “I wouldn’t have said no.”

“Well I guess Ranboo doesn’t trust you either then,” Tommy chirps. A grin spreads across his face when Dream stumbles forward, swearing under his breath. He catches himself and continues walking until the cabin is appearing in their view.

“I know you want to hear an ‘I’m sorry’,” Dream says, reaching back to grip Tommy’s shoulder. “But that wouldn’t make up for everything that happened. “So here’s what I’m going to do instead: I’m going to make sure we make it out of this in one piece and unharmed. We just need temporary help. Now go up there and-”

“Wait, you’re not coming with me?” Tommy jerks back. “You’re seriously going to make me talk to them alone?”

“You want to prove yourself to Wilbur, don’t you?”

“We just had this conversation about manipulation,” Tommy growls. “Don’t do this.”

“I’m not manipulating you. I’m asking you a genuine question, since you’re so attached to your brother. Do you want to prove you can do this? Because if you don’t want this, you can go back to the taiga and prepare the tnt with the others, I can do this on my own.”

He stares for a moment. That offer does sound tempting, but so does seeing Techno. It won’t be on the best terms, but...

Standing up for himself is outweighing everything else.

“Alright, so what exactly do we need from them?”

“Them. Their supplies.”

“Great.” Tommy rolls his eyes as he brushes snow off his face. “More kidnapping. As if kidnapping me wasn’t enough.”

“You were more or less willing. I promise Phil and Techno won’t be. Which is why I gave you a weapon. Can you do this or do you want to head back?”

“No, I’ll do it.” He grips the crossbow tightly again and marches forward, leaving Dream behind, next to a tree. He’s trembling with anxiety, but he can’t back down now. Everything over the past several days had been leading up to him betraying people for some dragon.

Gods, that dragon had been cool, though.

Knocking on the door, he fidgets in place while waiting for a response, It comes seconds later in the form of Phil answering the door. Phil looks surprised to see Tommy aiming the crossbow at him.

“What are you doing?” Phil asks, stepping back.

“Hi Phil.” Tommy tries to keep his voice casual. It doesn’t work, as it cracks. “Miss me?”

“Word on the street is you’ve been kidnapped,” Phil says. “By Wilbur. How is he alive? How are you alive? We all thought you were dead.”

“I was,” Tommy says. “Then I was alive again, with Wilbur. Thanks to Dream.”

“Phil? What’s happening, who are you talking t-” Techno’s voice comes from above. There’s the sound of footsteps on a ladder before the pig’s feet come into view, followed by the rest of him. “Tommy?”

“Hey, Techno.” Tommy’s trying really hard now not to falter. Part of him wants to rush into Techno’s arms for a hug, but he remains rooted in place. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“What are you doing?” Techno asks. “Put that down!”

“No. In fact, I want you both to come with me,” he continues. “Actually, I want you to pack all your things up first, then come with me.”

“He said something about Dream,” Philza explains to Techno. The pig nods as if he understands, then shakes his head.

“No, Tommy was dead. He’s supposed to be dead. You’re supposed to be dead, along with Wilbur. How are you here? Where’s Wilbur? Why are you showing up with a crossbow?”

“Things have changed,” Tommy mutters, looking down. He’s losing his resolve; he can’t actually do this. He cares about them too much. “Things are so much different than before, and I can’t tell you what, but you just have to trust-”

“Trust you?” Phil laughs. “We did trust you once, until you turned your back on Techno. Now you show up after being dead, or kidnapped, aiming a crossbow at us, and you expect us to believe anything you have to say? You know better, Tommy. You’re supposed to be better.”

“I do know better!” Tommy snaps. “I know better than anyone what shit feels like, alright? That’s why I’m here, because you two are the most well-stocked people around, you have more shit that could be useful for us to do something big.”

“Tommy.” Techno’s voice is softer than Phil’s. “Tommy, put the crossbow down and come inside. We can talk about this, we can go over everything, and maybe-”

“I’m afraid he can’t do that.” There’s a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. The teen flinches when he realizes Dream had finally stepped in. “See, Techno, Phil? He’s with me.”

Oh.

For a few seconds, not even the winds are heard over the deafening silence. Tommy can see the way Techno is trying to work out the statement and what it actually means. There’s confusion, followed by anger, followed by resignation. The last expression hurts the most, because it means there really is no going back and fixing things.

“You’re calling in that favor, aren’t you?” Techno asks. “You’re using Tommy to get me to comply.”

The warning shot is fired in between the two men in the doorway, hitting a far wall. Everyone jumps before turning to stare at Tommy in shock over his sudden action. “Let’s get one thing straight,” Tommy practically yells. “I’m no one’s, no one’s fucking pawn anymore! Everyone can shit on me all they want, but I’m finally taking my life back! For once I’m where I want to be, and no one can stop me!”

Techno and Phil hold their arms up at the same time, stepping back to give room for the other pair to enter the cabin. “Okay, okay,” Phil says softly. “What do you need from us, how are we helping?”

“Depends, you want to see Wilbur again, don’t you?” Dream is back to looking confident. “Wilbur’s in great condition, by the way. He’s actually the one calling all the shots, so if you have a problem with our current venture, you can file a complaint with him.”

“Do you have them brainwashed?” Leave it to Techno to be blunt.

“No. In fact, Tommy was bitching at me the whole way here,” Dream chirps, ruffling Tommy’s hair. “He’s been doing nothing but tell me I’m an awful person for days. He really meant it when he said he likes it with us.”

“If you’re in trouble, blink twice,” Techno faces Tommy. There’s a grimace on his face, as if he’s trying to smile, but it’s not quite working. “I’m serious, we’ve got ender pearls and swords and so many other things, we can slay him-”

“Don’t touch Dream,” the teen instructs. “He’s on his last life, remember?” The crossbow is waved toward the chests. “But we do want the ender pearls and weapons and potion ingredients.” Tommy smiles sweetly. “And you two, of course. And food.”

There’s no more snark. Phil and Techno are packing silently, moving up and down ladders and throwing everything they can hold into sacks and backpacks. Tommy watches them for a moment before turning back to Dream.

“I feel like shit,” Tommy admits.

“Yeah, me too.” Dream presses his hand to Tommy’s shoulder again as they head back outside. “I like Techno. But some things have to be done.”

“Does being a villain get any easier? Like, do you get used to it?”

“Honestly? No. It’s always shit. Especially when you have attachments and can’t fully get rid of them. I tried, but I just really wanted to pretend I wasn’t hurting the people I loved.”

“Cause I still love them,” Tommy mumbles. “And I’m hurting them.”

“It’ll get better soon, I promise.”

Phil and Techno eventually come outside. They stare at each other before moving foward, falling into step behind Tommy and Dream. There’s a heavy silence weighing in between all of them as they move back toward the portal.

“Oh, Tommy?” Dream breaks the silence.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry, for everything.”

Tommy nods, liffting one foot to rest against the edge of the portal. He turns away from the swirling purple to give Dream a genuine smile. His first one aimed at Dream, in months.

“I know. Thank you.”

[thereluctantinquisitor]

Another Year

OKAY so it is @frenchy-and-the-sea’s birthday and I am HERE with a terrible gift that is just... okay, listen. LISTEN. I had feelings and I just wrote them down and if it is wildly out of character please just pretend it is a really weird AU! 

Aaaanyway, Alex and Tahir belong to the wonderful Frenchy and live in her amazing original work, Seven Cities. If you haven’t already, join me in this glorious rabbit hole and come fall in love with all her characters!

Happy Birthday Frenchy <3

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

If someone had told a young Alex that her life would be shaped like a cradle of wood, set adrift over the ocean chasing fairytales, she would have laughed them out of the room and told them not to bother coming back. Hell, sometimes she felt like laughing herself out of the room when she paused long enough to think about what they were doing. Seven cities. Sitting cross-legged by the Ranger’s bow, her head resting against one of the railing posts, those two words alone were enough to stir something deep and quiet in her chest. It was hard, not to long for answers to unasked questions. Particularly when they had been planted in your head by someone else. Some days, that meeting with Jon, and all the things that followed, felt like a dream. A story that had happened to someone else, a long time ago, that she just happened to overhear at a pub in some piss-soaked harbour town. A story full to the brim of adventure and triumph. Fuller still of mess and mistakes.

“Another year, huh?”

Alex huffed, not bothering to pull her eyes from the waves. “Not sure what you mean. Not sure I care to know, either.”

Of course, she knew exactly what he meant. Maybe at another time, in another place, Tahir might have laughed at her almost dramatic sullenness. But not this time. Instead, he just hovered for a while, before finally lowering himself down beside her with a soft grunt. Exhaling, he tipped his head back. Dark circles framed his eyes, same as hers. There had been some long days, of late, and even longer nights. They wore them about as well as could be expected. “You know, after all this time, I thought you’d soften up to people wanting to celebrate your birthday.” His gaze flicked down, and Alex’s averted just as fast. “It’s a good thing, lad. Means you’ve eked out another year in this mad place. And there’s no one alive who can take that from you.”

“If you’re feeling like waxing poetic, Tahir, there are better audiences for it.”

“Ah, well, Adelina is asleep.”

“Try Duchess.”

The pair exchanged a flat look, like siblings poised to push each other’s buttons. Normally, Alex’s glower was a thing of legend, but this time she felt the corners of her lips twitch traitorously and had to break the contest, masking it by casting her attention back out over the water with a huff. Rather than reveling in his victory, Tahir just allowed a faint smile to spread freely across his face. He was a spot of brightness in the inky dark. Somehow, when she needed him to be, he always was.

The silence lingered until she broke it. “I don’t make a fuss or demand a song and dance because I don’t care about it, Tahir.” Alex wasn’t sure why she started speaking. Normally those kinds of words had to be pried from her like a coin from a miser. “So unless you’ve been spending your lonesome evenings knitting a cape from old hemp sacks and sail rope, best to just treat it the same as any other day.”

There was a pause. “Well,” Tahir began slowly, “I’m not sure about the knitting, but if I’d known you wanted a cape made out of old hemp and---”

He broke off with a surprised grunt as the heel of Alex’s boot connected solidly with his thigh, then quickly caught her foot in one large hand. He raised it slightly, as if to say don’t make me confiscate this, then set it back down on the wooden deck at a pointedly safe distance. “In seriousness,” he continued, one eye still watching for any further signs of attack, “have a drink, at least. Even if it’s just with me or Adelina. Celebrate a little.”

Alex arched a brow. “That an order?”

“It’s a suggestion, Alex. From a friend.”

“Yeah, well…” Alex reached up and ran a hand through her hair. Or at least, she tried it, tangled as it was from the salt and wind. “Consider your friendly suggestion noted. I just…” Her arm suddenly felt heavy. Too heavy. She let it fall to her lap like an anchor to the seafloor. “I just don’t feel in a celebrating mood. Not of late. It’s… there’s so much to do, Tahir.”

“Like what?”

“I…” Alex hesitated. There were things to be done. Of course there were things to be done! There was always something to finish, or begin, or re-do because some half-asleep idiot fucked it up the first time. They were all tired. All drained dry. That meant something was leaking – something that needed to be fixed. Something she needed to fix.

Yet, when asked what that thing was, she found herself at a loss.

Tahir shifted his weight, boot scraping over the deck as he bent his knee and propped his elbow on it. “Sometimes, we have bad weeks. All of us, together, on this ship.” He was looking at her, waiting for her to meet his gaze. When she didn’t, he continued anyway. “None of us blame you for it, Alex. We’ll blame the gods, or the weather, or a bad hand at a tarot reader’s tent well before we’d ever blame you. This is just… how things go sometimes. We can’t change it any more than we can change the tide.”

Finally, Alex turned to face him. “So… what? I’m just meant to accept that sometimes everything goes to shit for no reason? Make my peace with it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because punishing yourself doesn’t make it any easier.”

Alex opened her mouth – to retort? Argue? She wasn’t sure. But once again, she found the will to fight had abandoned her. Or maybe, just maybe, Tahir had a point, and she’d just rather cast herself into the sea than admit it right now. 

Instead, Alex just grunted; a quiet kind of acquiescence, open enough to interpretation that she could stomach it well enough. Tahir, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, accepted it with wordless grace. They sat in silence for a little while longer, side by side, lulled by the creaking of the ship. Then, there was a rustle of fabric as Tahir reached into his side-pouch and extended a further sign of peace.

A flask.

“What’ve you got in there today?” Alex took the flask and set to unscrewing it with half-numb fingers. The night-chill was starting to rise already. She convinced herself the drink was just to chase it away. Nothing more.

Tahir relaxed back against the rail, stretching his legs out again. “Something you’ll like.”

Frowning, Alex eyed him warily as she slowly raised the flask to her nose. The first inhale was short – a test, of sorts. When she didn’t keel over from a poorly conceived prank by one of the twins, she relaxed and allowed herself a deeper breath. What met her was something rich, lightly spiced, and possessing just enough edge to promise a good, trickling warmth that curled its way to her fingertips. Even without tasting it, she knew one thing for certain: it was good. “When did you even get this?” she asked a little accusingly. Last time they were at port, he’d insisted on staying with the ship while the others enjoyed a well-earned shore leave. 

Apparently not.

As though reading her mind, Tahir quickly raised his hands. “Easy there, Captain. I convinced Davin to take my place for a bit. The Ranger was in good hands.” He hesitated. “Well, reasonably good hands. He was still sober enough to stand.”

It was easier to laugh, somehow, with that flask in her hand. Not just because its contents sent a comforting warmth straight to her stomach, but because it was something she hadn’t known she needed. It was a moment with someone she trusted above anyone else, sitting on the bow of her ship, letting sea and sail carry them towards a distant point of the compass.

Some leaks are small. Barely even noticeable, at first. But god, it feels good when someone takes the time to patch it.

“That good, huh?” Tahir asked eventually, after Alex had helped herself to a third hearty swig. Humming contently, she smirked and held out the flask.

“You tell me.” When Tahir raised his brows, Alex just rolled her eyes. “Listen - given you probably owe Dav a favour now – a thing no man alive would envy – you can at least partake in the spoils.”

Laughing, Tahir shrugged his large shoulders. “Well, when you put it that way, how could I say no?”

There it was again. That smile. The one that reminded Alex that she had her own. And she found it, then, as Tahir took the flask and allowed himself a long, deep swallow. Then another. Then another…

“Hey - don’t go emptying it!” There was a moment of frenzy, Alex grabbing for the flask, Tahir twisting away, keeping her at bay with a frantically extended elbow. Eventually, Alex managed to snatch it back and tipped it up, peering inside as though to measure the precise depth of his betrayal. “You rat bastard.”

But Tahir wasn’t listening. He was too busy laughing, one hand on the rail, hauling himself to his feet (and, more importantly, out of range). Once upright, he swayed slightly, then stretched his back. Cat-like. Content in his flagrant hubris.

 Duchess would be proud.

 “Come on, then,” he said. “Up you get.”

“What?” Alex was still fuming, trying to fish out the last few boozy drops with her finger. Traitor. “Why the hell should I?”

Tahir just grinned. 

“Because the rest of the bottle is with Adelina, and you’ve kept her waiting long enough.”

[eyeslikefoxglove]

Episode 10 - Tywin Lannister called, he wants the Rains of Castamere back & once again, Foxglove cheers when someone gets shanked

Hiiiii! Welcome to episode 10 commentary! I’m doing this one right after episode 9 because for once in my life I started on this early enough in the day I can get more than one single episode in. Hope you enjoy!

Before I descend into several “wtf is wrong with this guy” rants, let me point a funny to y’all. The corpse that WWX checks for pupillary changes is not only breathing, you can see his carotid pulse jumping on his neck.

Ok done.

WHAT THE FUCK THAT’S A LITTLE GIRL WHAT THE FUCK.

Fuck this creeper oh my god. I know he’s supposed to have a tragic past and be cute and charismatic but I just want to shush him every time he opens his mouth.

(XXC truly looks like an elven prince doesn’t he)

Aaaaaand WWX gives zero fucks about your dramatic exit stage right.

He also gives zero fucks about the fight to the death happening right in front of him, I mean, why would he when he can flirt with LWJ instead?

Speaking of said fight, I really hope they sped up the footage of them spinning through the air, because if whatever machine and harnesses they used truly spun them so fast I feel for the actors/body doubles.

Hey XXC that’s your boyfriend right there!

Today is really not XY’s day is it.

(That disgusted face WWX makes is pretty much a visual representation of what I feel when XY tries to be cute. Seriously)

SHUT UP XY MY BOY IS HAVING A FANBOY MOMENT.

I can’t believe I’m saying this but he’s got a point. Not in this case, because these five are actually good people but the rich and powerful are indeed a bunch of hypocrites. *Softly plays Eat the Rich*

LWJ is a hairsbreadth away from slapping XY out of his faux-innocent act and I can’t say I fault him tbh. And WWX is fucking smug because he is the king of being a little shit and this amateur got nothing on him.

Is Zhu Zanjin wearing eyeliner or are his eyelashes actually that incredible?

I’m making pained noises because I keep wondering what would’ve happened if WWX had asked XXC for help after people mounted a witch hunt against him and why do I keep doing this to myself?

WWX: *talks about his boyfriend*

JC: *eyeroll*

Oh my god this bit is so painful. You can see how starved WWX is about finding the smallest connection with his mum and my soul hurts.

And LWJ’s face watching them go. He’s probably just realised this was a dream you could have, and there it is, walking away. I’m gonna go make myself some tea and eat some cake or something, I deserve it after all this emotional turmoil.

(Aaaaaaand there goes XY being a fucking creep again)

LOOK AT MY TWO LIL CUPCAKES BEING FUCKING ADORABLE WHEN THEY GET PRAISED. LOOK AT THEM.

We’ve already established that I have the survival instincts of a concussed lemming but NMJ is a dude I want to get into a shouting match with. I don’t dislike him or anything and he’s badass, but watching this is obvious a five year old with an attitude can push his buttons. And he’s both a political leader and has a whole baby brother to take care off, you can’t allow yourself to get so angry you contemplate murder in your living room my dude. Furthermore, I know his way of cultivation makes him even more unstable and prone to Qi deviation; but instead of finding a way to work around that this idiot is ok with dying young and leaving everyone who loves him fucking devastated. Because why? It’s the way of his clan? It’s traditional? It’s honourable? Fuck that, no wonder NHS dislikes sword fighting so much if that’s going to eventually kill his big brother.

NMJ: I am a just and frank man, I fear nothing in presence of sinners like you.

Me, with a megaphone: HUBRIS IS A BITCH

The One Braincell Trio being MY fanboys gives me life *insert another million canon-divergences in which they befriend MY and everything is less Lannister red as a result*

THIS ASSHOLE IS2G SOMEONE SAYS SOMETHING LIKE THAT ABOUT MY MUM AND NO ONE WILL FIND THE BODY.

Ok, NMJ called Lan Yi “the great talented leader of the Lan”, I want to pick a less violent fight with him now.

Wei “let me be damn sexy while drinking” Wuxian back at it again.

WUJI IS ON! MOONLIGHT! ROOFTOPS!

WWX: Lan Zhan I’ll sleep on your roof tonight

LWJ: Wei Ying I have to go

WWX: Lan Zhan I’ll sleep on your roof tonight

LWJ: Wei Ying, there’s room in my bed if we snuggle.

There, I fixed it. (Here I come again, joking to hide the pain. Parting is such sweet sorrow and all that)

... oh hey I’d never noticed how big Wang YiBo’s hands are and now I’m in trouble. Which is funny, cause LWJ is v much not my type, but Wang YiBo apparently is now? I mean, I’ve reblogged stuff about him because he’s ridiculously beautiful but...

*falls down a google images rabbit hole*

...

Yeah I can safely say I’m into Wang YiBo’s badboy-prettyboy-coolboy-gremlinboy attitude.

Anyway back to the show:

That was a fucking great sword throw and I love the little smirk MY’s wearing.

... what did I just see?

I don’t know how to describe it, but when WZL sticks the tip of his sword into the flat of NMJ’s sabre and drives him back and you see then go through the frame in front of WC? That’s like the most ridiculous anthropomorphic version of a train dragging a car along the tracks. All that’s missing is the “nyooooom” sound.

Speaking of WZL that’s one coolheaded dude.

Ok, I’m going to go down a Meng Yao rabbit hole again. Brace yoselves.

At risk of sounding like NHS I really don’t know why MY would’ve set XY free. I mean, if he gets XY and the Yin Iron back to WRH he’s got the chief cultivator’s favour... but everyone and their mum wants WRH out of the scene, including as far as he knows Daddy Dearest. He’s clever enough to realise there’s going to be a war, so he might’ve though that if he put himself up as a spy this soon it would’ve benefited the, yet nonexistent, SunShot Campaign. In the book he also murders his bully of a superior right before “defecting” and becoming a spy, and much like in here, NMJ catches him and stabbing happens. Do I think he, like the Jins, was playing both sides during the war? Yeah, but in this instance if I were him I wouldn’t trust in the benevolence of a man who makes puppets out humans for funsies, especially seeing how much he gets bullied.

Now if we go the other direction, of wrong place wrong time, MY doesn’t seem displeased with the Nies. I mean, NMJ and NHS like and respect him as far we’ve seen, NMJ even follows his advise. Why would he want to risk his fucking neck against NMJ just to get a potential in (that again depends on WRH liking him) to spy in a potential war? Call me a hufflepuff, but I’d stay put. Right before NMJ finds MY murdering someone we hear the voice of he asshole captain who loves to mess with MY, same captain that wasn’t present when confronting WC and that was really fucking drunk last night. I’m not saying this man works for the Wens, but hangovers make you sluggish and tired, who’s to say XY didn’t actually break tf out if this yahoo was the one guarding him (back again to the bit when MY asked the captain to post extra guards and the captain told him where to stick it, we don’t know if he actually doubled the guard) and MY walked in on it. Now this asshole has the perfect scapegoat! The *insert his preferred MY slur* did it! He saw it! And MY either panics or snaps and gets stabby.

Listen, it’s murder either way, and I won’t pretend MY doesn’t have a whole alphabet of plans for every situation, but damn I cheered.

Shut the fuck up WC.

My one track mind is shrieking because MY has a stab wound in his chest and he’s just... chilling? (Like a villain lol)

Did y’all see the fan smacking the hand bit? Now that I’ve seen the whole thing is evident, but that’s pretty much the same exact show as at the beginning with the “mysterious man”. Ooooohhhh I love the hints!

HOLY FUCK NMJ IS CRYING (my 3zun ship is sailing y’all can’t stop me).

Speaking of 3zun if y’all could point me to nice fics where everything doesn’t go up in flames for these three idiots I’d appreciate it.

And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for reading.

[blackcatanna]

Phoenix Wright: Rise from the Ashes OPINIONS

Greetings, Tumblrinos! I have FINALLY aquired the original Ace Attorney trilogy on PC and have just finished the first game. I didn’t have any issues with the first four cases BUT I have a lot of UNANSWERED QUESTIONS about the fifth case, which was not in the original game. There were many things I loved about it (it gave me so much delicious evidence to play with) but I feel like its long, complicated plot had a few more HOLES than I like to see in a game all about finding contradictions and I have to SHOUT MY QUESTIONS/OPINIONS TO THE GREAT TUMBLR VOID so heeeeere we go! :D SPOILERS (duh)!!!

NUMBER ONE: WHY did Gant MURDER NEIL MARSHALL?!??!?

This is never addressed in the game, which I found very odd. This case is, I think, the longest in the main series and yet it ended SO SUDDENLY?!? Gant admitted how he killed Goodman to stop him reopening the case but he never gave a motive for killing poor Marshall AND SO I am left to speculate.

Of course, we know that Gant wanted to control the prosecuters and so it’s reasonable to think that he did it purely to frame Ema and thus get Lana under his thumb. However, he states that his motive for collecting evidence against Ema was simply “insurance” in case the case was examined too closely...? Is he lying? He might lie in order to distance himself from Lana and Goodman’s murder but then he goes and confesses anyway so why would he bother to do that?

Okay, so, murdering Neil worked out pretty well for Gant. He was promoted, Lana was promoted and he had leverage over Lana AND SO it looks like Gant purely wanted to frame Ema and that’s why he killed Neil. HOWEVER, this is still WEIRD AF. 

Okay, so, in order for this to be EVEN REMOTELY PLAUSIBLE, Gant would have to be on the extreme end of murderous psychopathy. To murder your colleague who’s UNCONSCIOUS is just... It’s insane behaviour. He killed Goodman because Goodman was a threat. Marshall was just... THERE. ALSO, he’s have to be a huge hypocrite! Gant says that he did everything because he hates criminals and wants to catch them, no matter what AND YET HE LIFTS UP AN UNCONSCIOUS MAN, IMPALES HIM ON A SWORD AND PATS HIMSELF ON THE BACK FOR CONVICTING DARKE?!?! AND HE SEES NO ISSUES HERE?!?! 

Furthermore, I don’t think that any of this was necessary to convict Darke. Lana seems to think so but it looks like Marshall and Gant had pretty much cracked Darke when he made a run for it. Lana wasn’t there for the interrogation. Not sure how relevant Darke is to Gant’s motivation but it’s interesting that it’s thrown into the MOTIVATION SOUP that we’re presented with.

Therefore, it appears that Gant killed Neil because he believed that it was for the greater good: by controlling both the police and the prosecutors, he would be able to ensure that those he deemed to be guilty would be punished. Fair enough. 

Okay, so, Gant and Lana are about to crack the case. Gant states that he’s already up for his dream job. If they succeed, Lana will be able to become Head Prosecutor. SO all that Gant needs is leverage over Lana. BUT SURELY, she already admires and respects him. They’ve been partners for years. They’ve cracked many cases together. They are the dream team! Pretty sure they even have a name in game like “Dynamic Duo” or something... “Legendary Duo”, thank you, Google. Presumably, Lana trusts Gant. He could give her forged evidence or omit things and she would most likely use it without ever knowing, much like Miles Edgeworth did. 

SO, if Gant hadn’t killed Neil and framed Ema/Darke, Lana would most likely still be Queen Prosecutor and would trust Gant. So, not only did he take a HUGE RISK killing Neil (MORE ON THAT LATER), he also jeopardised the valuable relationship of trust between himself and Lana, replacing it with BLACKMAIL. Perhaps, blackmail might seem like a more solid bond to someone as TWISTED as Gant BUT there are two problems with this blackmail.

FIRSTLY, there is the possibility that the person being blackmailed will SNAP. This doesn’t seem to be a huge risk with Lana. SECONDLY, this blackmail is based on LIES. It potentially becomes USELESS if someone figures out that Ema is not responsible so he’d have to believe that he’d left no traces (so I guess we can add HUBRIS to his list of character flaws). Oh, and this brings up another problem. In order to follow through on his threats to Lana, he’d have to admit that he covered up the truth in the first place! 

Okay, so I have decided that killing Neil didn’t accomplish that much of a REWARD for Gant so let’s look at the RISK. He PICKED UP an unconscious, fully grown man without disturbing the other two unconscious people in the room or Neil himself. The building was full of people for the award ceremony, presumably. To be fair, it took place in Gant’s office and so it’s unlikely that anyone else would walk in but the office had massive windows! 

Although unlikely, the possibilty of someone else witnessing Gant’s murder definitely existed. Furthermore, there was the more likely possibility of someone IN THE ROOM regaining consciousness and catching him in the act. Darke had hit his head, but Ema had merely fainted and I can’t believe that Marshall never regained consciousness while someone cut out a segment from his waistcoat, PICKED HIM UP and SKEWERED HIM ON A SPIKE. I mean, c’mon. Even if you agree that it’s possible that he didn’t get woken up by being impaled, how would Gant be so sure that this wouldn’t happen. 

The more I talk about this, the more questions I have but I MUST SAVE THEM FOR NOW. 

Okay, so Gant walks into the room, sees three unconscious people and thinks, “Gee! I could totally do a murder right now and frame one of these people, tee-hee. OMG if I make it look like Ema did it, Lana will TOTALLY have to do what I say, like, for EVER.” So, Gant does a murder and tries to cover it up but leaves A FRIGGIN’ HUGE OBVIOUS TRAIL BEHIND HIM THAT ANY IDIOT COULD SPOT, HOLY COW. IN FACT, WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THAT NOW. 

WHY DID NOBODY QUESTION THAT THERE WAS A SQUARE CUT OUT OF MARSHALL’S WAISTCOAT??! THIS IS SO OBVIOSLY HIDING EVIDENCE!!! LANA EVEN HAD A PHOTO OF HIM WITH THE SQUARE MISSING AND A PHOTO OF HIM TAKEN MINUTES BEFORE WITH AN INTACT WAISTCOAT!!! NOBODY THOUGHT TO POINT THIS OUT?!?!?

WHY THE FLYING FUCK WOULD MARSHALL WRITE EMA’S NAME ON THE WOBBLY VASE?!?! This particular piece of evidence didn’t come to light until the current trial but it’s just so stupid! Obviously, Ema didn’t try to kill Marshall. It was an accident. Why would Marshall think, “I must not let this demon child get away with this heinous crime!” and use his last strength to do this nonsense. Furthermore, HE WAS IMPALED ON A SWORD. HE COULDN’T HAVE REACHED THE VASE. HE WAS TOTALLY SKEWERED. 

Speaking of that ugly-ass vase, did none of this top notch investigation team try and piece it together? Presumably, they did. That would bring up the question of the missing piece. Gant, you idiot! No wonder all of the investigators were suspicious. 

I guess that Gant thought he was untouchable and could just shut anything down with his authority but he made such a mess of everything that he was caught out by many people and eventually had to resort to  the ol’ Stabby Stabby just to shut people up. Gant’s supposed to be this brilliant person but he just comes across as an idiot with a TERRIBLE personality. I feel like a lot of Ace Attorney villains slip up because they’re in positions of power and think that they’re untouchable but I think that this is the stupidest one I’ve encountered so far. 

Okay, so, ASTONISHINGLY, Gant’s plan works. He gets away with THE MURDER and now it’s time for some sweet, sweet blackmail... He tells Lana that Ema will be convicted of murder if the truth gets out. Wait, WHAT??!?! HOW!? IN WHAT UNIVERSE COULD EMA BE SEEN TO BE GUILTY OF MURDER. Manslaughter, perhaps but she was acting in self defense! She pushed a guy wielding a knife. I DO NOT BUY THIS AT ALL. It seems likely to me that Lana would still co-operate because she was afraid of letting Ema know that she was responsible for Neil’s death but that seems to me to be the extent of the hold he has over Lana. Lana claims to have sold her soul for this. Does she believe that it’s worth it to spare her sister from the truth? Perhaps.

SO, IN SUMMARY, in order for this to be any kind of plausible, Gant has to be EXTREMELY SOCIOPATHIC, HUBRISTIC, HYPOCRITICAL and brimming with, my favourite, UNFATHOMABLE STUPIDITY! The UNFATHOMABLE STUPIDITY is what I have the biggest problem with. He is supposed to be SMART and CAPABLE. So are the rest of the team assigned to the serial killer case. I just, ugh... It doesn’t make sense... 

NUMBER 2 (finally): WHERE’S THE BLOOD, BITCH?

Why is there so much blood by Lana’s desk in Gant’s office? Neil died on the other side of the room AND YET there is no trace of blood to be found there! I sprayed the HECK out of that suit of armour and there was NOTHING. If Neil was skewered there, he would, PRESUMABLY have bled A LOT. Also when they UN-SKEWERED HIM. In fact, we know that he was coughing up LOADS OF BLOOD while he was skewered, thanks to Lana’s photo. SO, WHY. IS. THERE. NO. BLOOD. THERE. Presumably, Gant had the office thoroughly cleaned in the TWO YEARS since the incident but, then, why can I still see blood in Lana’s half? And surely there would have been blood traces there two years ago when this, ALLEGEDLY, UBER-COMPETANT TEAM investigated? 

Number 3: WHY THE EVERLOVING FLYING FUCK did the police decide that Goodman had been MURDERED in the evidence room?!??!

What did the police find to lead them to believe that a murder had been committed?!? They had a video showing someone dressed like Goodman entering the evidence room, followed by that annoying af megaphone guy, who got beaten up, cut on the hand and knocked unconscious. THAT’S NOT A MURDER. NOBODY DIED. THERE WAS NOTHING TO INDICATE THAT A MURDER HAD TAKEN PLACE! WHY WOULD THEY REPORT IT AS A MURDER, LET ALONE GOODMAN’S MURDER!!?!? THIS MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE!?! 

Furthermore, WHY WOULD THEY HAVE MEEKUMS DELIVER THE REPORT TO EDGEY BOY WHEN HE WAS THE ONE THEY SOMEHOW DECIDED WAS THE MURDERER?!?!? At the time, I thought that Gant sent Meekums or whatever his name was (cba to look it up because he was SO ANNOYING) because he knew that Edgeworth would ignore him because he was so annoying and he’d be able to make Edgeworth look bad in court later. But, seriously, what was even in that file? There was no murder!!! If Gant was trying to throw us off, why would he draw our attention to the evidence room and the two-year-old case?!? Whyyyyyyyy!?!?

Tbh, I have no explanation for any of this. IT DOES. NOT. COMPUTE. 

THING THE FOURTH: Why was Lana’s hand not bleeding in Angel’s photo?

Lana says that she cut her hand because she was shaking while stabbing Goodman’s corpse. YET, Angel’s photo VERY CLEARLY shows her without any injury. Angel ran down to the car park because she saw Lana stabbing Goodman. Therefore, by the time Angel took the photo, Lana must have already stabbed the guy. Also, Angel states that she saw Lana stab Goodman repeatedly and that she was wearing a muffler. So, the stabbity stabbity must have happened before the photo was taken. 

Question the Fifth: Who the Hell calls an exhaust pipe a “muffler”?!?!

Well, I just googled it and it’s something that reduces noise coming from the exhaust pipe. Yay learning!

Question the Sixth: Why did the cameras not catch Gant giving Goodman the old stabby stabby? 

Presumably, Gant erased the footage immediately after exiting the room but this was never addressed, for some reason. I guess it was already a long af case but I like details, dammit!

7: How did Gant clean up so quickly?!?

Bruce Goodman died of bloodloss. That’s A LOT of blood to clean up! He summoned Edgeworth to the room to collect the screwdriver only 20 minutes after he himself first entered the evidence room with Goodman. In those twenty minutes, he must have had the fight with Goodman, waited for him to stop bleeding, moved the body, stuffed it into Edgeworth’s trunk, found cleaning products, mopped up ALL THE BLOOD from a guy who DIED OF BLOODLOSS, hiden whatever it was that soaked up the blood (slorp), erased the video footage and somehow not got ANY BLOOD on himself and WASN’T SEEN by ANYONE stuffing a body into a car ON THE DAY OF DATA TRANSFERENCE!?!? HOW?!

8: Seriously, how many identical white detective coats are there?!?!

Marshall wears one to impersonate Goodman, Goodman is wearing one when he is MURDERED, Lana is wearing one in Angel’s photo and, weirdly, it has a bloodstain on it in the same place that Marshall’s one does. However, we can still see Marshall’s costume coat sticking out of his locker. WEIRD. 

SO YEAH

This concludes my list of puzzling things in this episode! There are probably more random things that I’ve forgotten but, in that case, they can’t be bugging me too much. What really IRKS me is the question of the “murder” in the evidence room and how UNFATHOMABLY STUPID everyone, especially Gant was 2 years ago. These two things just make the episode feel a bit incomplete to me. I admire the ambition of this episode but I feel like some things slipped through the cracks and left my brain aching for the wrong reasons.

[fourteendoors]

The Queen of Akzetha and the King of Crete

Image credit to Denys Tsiperko on artstation. Most modern stories about the Minotaur suck. I’m allowed to say this because I’m an Artist, and therefore objectively correct about everything. These stories suck because they focus on Theseus, a boring prettyboy whose only real talent is murder, instead of the much more interesting blend of divine retribution, personal tragedy, and general horniness that underlies the creation myth of the Minotaur. So, before we go any further, let’s have a quick refresher of the story, and then a dissection as to why I like it so much.

The Minotaur is a creature entirely born from the fuck-up of King Minos of the Isle of Crete. Upon ascending to the throne of Crete, Minos was having trouble consolidating power, and as such asked the sea-god Posideon to send him a snow-white bull to show that the gods favored him for leadership. Posideon asked Minos to sacrifice the bull to honor him, but Minos valued the bull so much that he instead sacrified another instead. Angry at this, Posideon caused Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, to become incredibly attracted to the bull, at which point she begged the inventor Daedalus to build her a bull-shaped armature so that she could have sex with it. Upon doing so, she became pregnant with the half-man, half-beast Minotaur, who, being divided between two species had no natural source of food, and so (logically) was only able to subsist off devouring human flesh. Although Pasiphae attempted to take care of it for a time, eventually Minos imprisoned it in his Labyrinth, constructed by Daedalus. There’s a ton of interesting things here. Firstly, that the Minotaur was entirely born out of hubris and spite. He’s not a monster because he was made by an evil god, he’s a monster because he was made by an incredibly petty one. The detail about the wooden cow is incredibly choice, but not really gameable (although I am begging someone to prove me wrong.) It’s interesting that Minos chose to imprison the beast, rather than kill it. If you can contain something enough to trap it in a giant maze you had your inventor friend build, surely just straight-out murdering it wouldn’t be impossible? I like to imagine that Minos felt some guilt about what he’d done to his son, and couldn’t bear to have it killed on his own orders until Theseus arrived. Anyway. Here’s a Minotaur-variant you can stick in your own games. ------ The Queen of Akzetha The Kingdom of Akzetha is a small city-state on the Sea of Silk. It’s not a Kingdom anymore- it hasn’t been for the past few decades- but the Council currently in charge of the city is absolutely resolute that Akzetha is a kingdom, and will be known as such. (They tried to issue an official motion to transition the city into the Republic of Akzetha. They had to suspend the vote because of the nightmares.) For its size, Akzetha is fairly wealthy. This is mostly due to the exploits of its founder, Vrantearn the Serpent, a legendary Yncol pirate who terrorized the Sea of Silk for nearly a century. Upon his retirement, he took the hand of a legendary songstress in marriage, and bought the island where he would found his Kingdom. Vrantearn’s hoard funded the fleets of trade ships that now ply the Sea of Silk, making the early years of the kingdom very profitable for The Serpent and his loyal crew. There is a story about his death, and the story goes like this. Vrantearn and his lover had a daughter after Azketha’s founding- a clever and bright-eyed girl named Xurah. Vrantearn truly loved his child, and spoilt her with exotic trinkets from across the known world. One night, while Xurah was being tutored in poetry by a Cvess philosopher, a bedraggled man approached Vrantearn’s throne. He claimed to be a priest of Rhulenkaath, the goddess of blood and birds and contracts, and asked after a certain artifact that had come into the Pirate King’s possession. The artifact was of grave importance to the priesthood, and if Vrantearn would turn it over they would consecrate a new temple in his honor. The Serpent simply laughed, saying he had no need for the assistance of a goddess who could not protect her own subjects, and turned the man away. Ill omens followed. Traders at port found that the touch of gold opened cuts on the skin of their palms. Vrantearn’s prized monkey died, bleeding black ink from its eyes. And Xurah grew strange and distant, keeping odd hours and odder habits. The people whispered of the wrath of the goddess, of the folly of the Pirate King. One day, Xurah entered the royal bedchambers and devoured both her parents whole. The girl hungered for blood, and although the guards fought valiantly they found that she healed from any wound they could give her. It was only through the wit of the King’s advisor that they were able to Xurah beneath the palace, in a network of secret passageways that had been built if an escape was ever needed. The entrances were sealed, but for a single accessway, watched day and night by guards to ensure the monstrous child would never escape. This is what the story tells. It less often discusses what happens next. Although Xurah is monstrous (guards report glimpses of feathers and talons and wide, dark eyes), she is intensely intelligent, charismatic, and persuasive. The art of statecraft seems like an intriguing game to her, and it is one she is very, very good at. And although the Council would never admit it, in matters of politics they still often answer to her. It goes like this. The most heinous criminals in Akzetha are sentenced to the worst fate imaginable: to be devoured by Xurah. They will not go willingly, of course, and so they’re often given a soporific beforehand. Under the soporific, a question may be tattooed on their back- ‘should we go to war,’ perhaps, or ‘how do we cure the blight.’ They are cast down into the dark, and they are not seen again. The answer will usually appear by the next morning, either in a dream, whispered on the wind, or (in one particularly unpleasant case) spelled out in animal viscera on the floor of a Councilman’s estate. This is the price for the questions of state. For questions of one’s own life- the Councilmen’s aspirations, their relationships, their future- Xurah demands flesh from one’s own body. In recent days, a change has occurred in Xurah’s behavior that terrifies the members of the Council. It’s not that she’s began to try to escape- far from it. Xurah’s entire life has been marked by escape attempts, each more elaborate and unpredictable than the last. (The Council has spent a fortune hiring wizards and engineers to try and keep up.) Rather, it’s the fact that in the past year, Xurah has not tried to break free once. The more optimistic members of the Council speculate that her will is broken, that she is now utterly resigned to her fate. The more pessimistic members say that she’s only biding her time, or even perhaps that she’s realized that staying trapped beneath the earth can inflict more cruelty upon them than her release ever could. And in the dockside inns and on the cold beaches at night, you will sometimes hear the commoners speak of a queen that speaks in dreams, a queen whose crown is wind and blood... ------ How To Use Xurah In Your Games: Xurah will take an interest in your PCs, because your PCs are likely interesting. What this interest will actually mean is entirely up to you. Perhaps she’ll want to eat them (if that’s what she’s doing), and will convince the Council to frame them for something heinous and cast them down into her lair. Perhaps they’ll end up serving her, knowingly or unknowingly, following the cryptic words on the wind and the voice in their dreams. (She can pay them well- there are caches of pirate treasure all over the island, and she knows each and every one.) Maybe she’s not even interested in escaping anymore, and is instead looking for the PCs to assist her in her newest scheme- perhaps killing the old rivals of her father, or serving the interests of the god who made her. I wrote Xurah’s followers as acting on her behalf, but I actually like it better if they’re not, instead misinterpreting random dreams as signs of divine prophecy. Of course, when Xurah tries to drive them away with nightmares, that’s just more signs that the prophecy is fulfilled. This gives Xurah, the Council, and the cultists a push-and-pull aspect, each ostensibly allied with the other, but secretly working on their own agenda.

[litzing]

The Crown of God

Do you like demons? Demons with antlers? What about morally corrupt angels? Well friend, you’ve come to the right place. The Crown of God is a short story (by me!) about what happens when the good guy turns out to be the bad guy. Hope you love it!

Title: The Crown of God

Author: @litzing​

Word Count: 2213

I’m the only creature in the world that can hide from God. God’s successor, I mean. His watchful eye sees all, knows all—but with the Crown of God in my possession, I’m invisible. And He is not happy.

“Elvis, darling...”

I clutch the Crown to my chest, one hand clamped over my mouth to stifle myself, as I cower behind a pillar in His magnificent palace. A golden light passes behind me, and I hold my breath.

“Elvis!”

His booming, layered voice is earth-shattering, but the Crown keeps my eardrums from exploding. I’m not an emotional man, never was, but even I am afraid, tears pricking my eyes as I wait for Him to move on. After an eternity, the light fades as He searches further down the corridor, and when I’m sure He’s gone, I bolt.

I skid around a corner. At the end of the hall, I can see the intricate, wrought-iron gates leading to the pits of Hell, wide open, and I know what I’m going to do. I creep towards the gates, hugging the wall so I can duck behind a pillar if need be. The Crown hums in my arms, searing hot, yet it doesn’t burn my hands to the bone.

“Elllviiis...”

The voice is close. I freeze and flatten myself against a pillar, but I’m too late. A brilliant light blooms in the corridor behind me, and the pillar explodes, the blast sending me flying towards the gates in a shower of marble. I hit the ground hard, and the Crown tumbles from my arms and clatters to the floor. I groan, supporting myself on weak arms, then scramble to grab the Crown before He can get to it first. I shouldn’t, but I raise my eyes.

Lyriel—God, as He’s called these days—seems smug as His countless eyes wink at me one by one, His six wings growing still as He alights on the polished marble floor. I’m amazed that I can gaze upon His angelic form without my eyes melting. In a flash of luminous light, He looks almost human, save for having a few too many eyes and a few too many teeth. The small wings sprouting from the sides of His head flutter and flex. He’s beautiful, in the otherworldly way that angels are, with golden brown skin and long blond hair so fine it slips through His fingers when He flips it over His shoulder.

“Oh, holy, holy, holy! Elvis, dear, is that you? It’s been so long,” Lyriel says, spreading His arms wide in a grand gesture. “How have you been? Well, I hope!”

I struggle to stand, but my legs aren’t cooperating just yet. I smashed my hip on the floor when the explosion launched me down the hall.

“No greeting? Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? Oh, I apologize—Of course she didn’t.” He approaches, His bare feet silent on the marble. “She only taught you thievery. You stole her life just like you stole my crown.”

I’m as good as dead if I don’t get on my feet, and with adrenaline coursing through my veins, I stand. My hip throbs, but still, I stand. Lyriel stops when I do, half of His eyes flicking to the Crown while the rest watch me closely.

“That crown is mine, Elvis.”

“Fuck you.”

He’s unfazed. “You dare speak such words to the Lord, your God? My, my.”

“Why do you want it so bad, anyway?” I ask, shifting my weight to ease the pain in my hip. “You’re already God. You don’t need the Crown too, Lyriel—“

“You will no longer refer to me by that name,” He snaps. His tone is forceful.

“Struck a nerve, Ly?” I ask, inching backwards towards the gates.

He scowls. “To answer your question, I want it because it’s mine. How would you feel if I came into your house and took your things?”

“So it’s not important? Just another artifact you’re hoarding?”

“Precisely.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind if I...”

I raise the Crown, and I’m about to place it on my head, nestled between my antlers, when Lyriel cries out in protest, an ancient, long-dead language. I arch an eyebrow.

“Thou shalt not lie.”

“The rules of mortals do not apply to the divine, Elvis!” He’s frantic, teeth clenched, hands curled into fists as His wings shiver with rage. I’ve ruffled His feathers. Lyriel calms Himself, and He exhales. “Fine. What is it you want from me? Power? Oh, I could give you so much power. Or do you want money? It’s funny how mortals worship papers and coins these days. Or maybe...” There’s a gleam in His eyes. “... Maybe you want to be human.”

I blink and lower the Crown. Human? Could He do that?

“Poor Elvis. One foot in Heaven and the other in Hell. An ugly half-breed. What’s that like? Tough, isn’t it? Humans fear you and demons hate you. It must be so sad to be you. But I can help you! I can grant you new life.” He steps forward. I step backward, wincing when my hip strains. “Wouldn’t it be nice, Elvis? Wouldn’t you love being human? Being normal?”

It’s enticing. I’ve had dreams about waking up human, waking up normal. No more depression. Sometimes I’m even handsome—No antlers, no red eyes, no fangs. Less gangling. I hate that I can count my prominent ribs in the mirror every morning.

I avert my eyes.

“Oh, is that your weakness?” He takes a few more steps towards me, and I back up in time. “You want to be human. I can see it in your eyes, Elvis.” He taps His temple. “I see all.”

I cast a fleeting glance behind me. I’m in front of the gates, and just beyond, I can see the pits of Hell giving off a faint orange glow, fueled by fire and brimstone. Hellfire is the only thing that can destroy the Crown of God. Lyriel knows that. But does He know that I know?

Lyriel extends His hand towards me.

“Give me the Crown,” He demands, “and I’ll make you human. It’s more than a fair trade.”

I think about it. I really do. I’d give up almost anything to be human, handsome, happy. Could I give up a planet? Could I hand over the reins of the Earth to this maniac? I know Him, and I know what He’s capable of, just like I know that He’ll stop at nothing to get the Crown back. Once it’s out of my hands, He’ll smite me—

But it was out of my hands. And He knew it was.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

His smug smirk fades. “What? When?”

“I dropped the Crown when you broke the pillar. You could have killed me. Why didn’t you?”

His lip curls back in a sneer, exposing razor sharp fangs. He doesn’t speak. My eyes dart from Lyriel to the Crown and back again, and I furrow my brow. My brain is cycling through legends, tales of the Crown of God. I’ve studied the legends. I grew up with them. Is there something I’m missing? There has to be. Why wouldn’t He smite me? I had dropped the Crown. We talk about God being all powerful, but in reality, His powers are finite. Not a lot of people know that He makes up for His shortcomings with spells and artifacts like… Like the Crown.

“... Because you couldn’t.” I’m incredulous. How did I miss that? Of course He wants it back. He’s not God without it. “God can’t smite without his crown.”

Lyriel is furious, and with a banshee screech, He’s in His seraph form, with six wings and so, so many eyes. He’s bright, bright like the sun, and I’d be blinded if I didn’t have the Crown. He launches towards me, His wings beating at the air, so powerful they kick up a gust in the hallway. Fear surges through my veins, and when people are afraid, they don’t think. They act.

I put the Crown on my head.

It’s very unceremonious, becoming God. I feel warm. I feel energized. Healthy—my hip no longer aches and my mind is at ease. I look down at my hands, and as I watch electricity crackle between my spread fingers, I think... Is this what it’s like? Is this what it’s like to be God? I may not have the rest of God’s abilities like Lyriel does, but I’m still the second most powerful creature in the universe.

I’m about to be the first.

I turn my attention to Lyriel. He halts right in front of me, wings folding inward in a show of cowardice. He’s afraid. Terrified. I can sense it. He shifts into His more human form to parlay.

“Elvis, dear...”

“Don’t.”

“You wouldn’t want to live in a godless world, would you?” His voice is saccharine, like He’s coaxing someone off the ledge. “There would be chaos! Can you imagine a world without order? The humans, they’ll kill their planet. They already are. They’re facing extinction! Just give me the Crown—”

“No, I don’t think I will.” I lift my hand. “Burn in Hell, Lyriel.”

The air warps between us, churning like water. Desperate, Lyriel launches into a chant, a spell, in a tongue forgotten by time. But before He can finish—and He tries, oh, He tries—there is a burst of energy from my hand, knocking Him off His feet.

And when He hits the ground, He crumbles into dust.

I drop my hand and allow myself a moment of peace. I let myself enjoy being the most powerful creature in the entire universe for a minute, then reach up to take off the Crown. Once my fingers brush the hot metal, I hesitate. I could do great things with this power. Great things, but also horrible things. Power corrupts. Lyriel proved that through His own hubris. I don’t trust myself to not turn out the same way, so I sweep off the Crown and sigh, exhausted now that I’m no longer a god. I stare at the Crown for a second, holding it up in both hands. It’s a very simple crown. Unassuming. I was expecting something ostentatious. This is just a gold circlet.

I turn around and make my way through the gates. I stand on the edge of the pits of Hell. The pit is gargantuan in diameter, and it goes so deep I can’t see the bottom, but it glows orange with hellfire and radiates an unbearable heat. The Crown vibrates in my hands like it’s afraid, tempting me. I could do it. I could be God. But would I want to be? Could I handle that responsibility? Or would the Earth roll off my shoulders and shatter like glass? I’m no Atlas—And maybe it’s a good thing I’m realizing that now. We all think we want to rule the world, but when presented with the option... How many of us would be brave enough to carry the lives of billions? Beyond that, how many of us would be any good at it?

I need time to think. Is any mortal fit to be God? Should there be a God at all? The implications are dire. What would happen in a world without God? Would Lucifer rise? Would the world exist at all? I could be about to tear the fabric of the universe, but I can say with the utmost confidence that a world without God would be much better than a world ruled by Lyriel. Do you know what makes an angel an angel, and a demon a demon? Nothing. They’re the same. The only difference is who they serve. Lyriel may have been called an angel, but He had an evil heart.

I lower the Crown and gaze down at the hellfire. If the Crown didn’t act as a shield against divine forces, I’m certain the heat would singe my eyebrows off—and that’s because I’m part demon. A human might be dead by now. I can’t imagine how hot it must be further down.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I fish it out. It’s crazy that I have service up here. My dear friend Monica is calling because I’m a little late for our coffee date. I swipe to pick up the call and raise the phone to my ear.

“Aloha?”

“Hey Elvis! Did you go to the wrong café again?”

“Not exactly.” I watch the Crown glimmer and shine in the orange light. “Sorry I’m running late. Had to deal with some shit.”

“Is something wrong? Where are you now?”

I don’t know how to reply, so I don’t. What do I tell her? Do I tell her I killed God? Or that I might become God? There’s a lot to explain. There are layers.

After a short pause, Monica prompts, “Elvis? Hello?”

I sigh. “I’m here. I, uh—”

“You’re acting weird. For real, what’s wrong? Are you in jail? Who died?”

“No, no, Monica, it’s nothing like that. It...”

I give the Crown one long, final look. Then I toss it in the pits of Hell, and I walk away.

“... It’s kind of a funny story.”

[theicarusinsp]

·· ᴍᴀʏ ɪ ᴀsᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀ ғᴇᴡ ϙᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴs﹖ ·· . || task two

           “ -- only if the truth is optional. i ask the questions; i don’t give answers easily. “

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

"A pen --” a particular instrument, she thinks of; one that her father gave her as a quiet gift, “-- a journal, and a piece to write,” she answers, “Maybe a quiet place to write it. Nothing better than something worth writing itching at my fingers.” At this, as if illustrating the sensation, she flexes her fingers and then curls them again, tucking them into her soft palm. Her father had been the same. He had always carried something with which to jot down notes about the world about him. Always the observer, he had been. 

Had been. Is. 

“Just set me to work chasing something -- that’s when I’m happiest.”

Describe your view of Chicago in five words?

"Much darker than it seems.” 

Her lips curl upwards. Though she deals in truth, there is always a place for theatrics. She shrugs, “Am I wrong?”

What is your most treasured possession?

At once, the fountain pen tucked into her breast pocket burns, as if set alight by the question. She can picture her father wielding it, hunched over the desk in his study, as if it was yesterday. It is, and always has been, an instrument of truth. She shivered when she first held it -- it is a quiet, solid sort of victory to know that she deserver it now. 

“A pen that my father gave me years ago --” she smiles, nimble fingers darting to pat at her pocket, “-- he used it himself, and now it’s mine. I do all my best work with it.”

What or who is the greatest love of your life?

"The work is my greatest love,” she clips, “If you don’t understand, then you clearly have never done anything worth loving.”

Heart or Head?

Her immediate reaction is the former -- but she bites down upon the tip of her tongue and tempers her instinct. She has learned better. She knows better 

“Head,” she nods, swallowing the logic attributed to the alternate answer, “The head is never wrong. It’s logical. The heart is irrational.” And she knew it to be true, all too well. 

When and where were you the happiest?

A bitter voice at the back of her mind tells her that she was never happy, that she has always been just short of it, ever reaching, ever wanting. But she has determined otherwise, overriding intuition, convincing herself of this decided truth until it becomes fact. 

It has yet to sink in. 

“Well --” she holds out her hands, as if beholding a great spectacle, “I’m happiest now, here. I’ve never been happier, never been more at home. This is where I’m meant to be. How can you not be happy when you’re where you’ve always been meant to land?”

What is it that you most dislike?

She can think of a great number of things that she dislikes. Sweet tea, hymnals, chatter that is oh so specific to southern women; funerals, fire, the sound of gunshots. Her entire adolescence was an experiment in just how much she could manage to dislike -- and she was adept at it. 

“What kind of question is that?” her nose turns upward, lips curled into a disquiet frown, “I dislike spiders and forest fires. I also dislike slow walkers and people who chew with their mouth open.”

She pauses. 

“Liars --” she settles, “I fucking hate liars.”

What is your greatest fear?

She laughs -- it is an unexpected response to such a question, and yet she laughs. Buoyant and unafraid, she laughs and shrugs like a god, feeling utterly untouchable for the first time. She thinks of her name splashed in heroic light upon the television; she is a god. She is untouchable. She is the bringer of truth, and she has nothing to fear. 

Of course she does -- but what is the point of being a harbinger of truth and justice if it doesn’t come with a little hubris to sweeten the deal?

“I’m only afraid of letting typos into my articles,” she snorts -- though there is much more she could rationally be afraid of, “You think I’m afraid of anything? I’m not. Danger is afraid of ME.”

Where do your loyalties lie?

Her face is set in hard determination, lips a pursed line and eyes ablaze with conviction. For a moment she thinks of her father -- perhaps this would be an appropriate answer to such a question. But she has learned that sentimentality is an Achilles heel. “The truth,” she says, “is always where my allegiance will lie. Not with any person, family, whatever. The truth.”

What is your best virtue?

She thinks of her mother, her mother’s Bible, her mother’s disdain for the Catholics -- for Winifred Adler, it was the Methodist way or no way at all. For a moment, her lips curl into a grimace of a smile, for her mother would have called her anything but virtuous, in the Catholic or the Methodist sense. But she answers anyway. 

“My diligence,” she juts her chin upward, “without question.”

What is your worst vice?

And then her smile falls. Her mother would have adored the answer to this. Wesley had been nothing but vice, or so Winifred had maintained. Those who disliked her writings would agree. “They called it hubris in the scripture,” her lips twitched, “As did Aristotle. But what do they know?”

What is your greatest regret?

There is no hesitation in the rapid movement of her mind; it moves at once to her sister’s wedding, to an unanswered invitation, to a bitter laugh at the sight of it, which had rung hollow and antagonistic through an empty apartment. It had been clear that the invitation had been sent as a courtesy, and not as something genuine, something Wesley had been intended to respond to in earnest, and yet it stung. She could only hope that her absence would sting, too. 

It wouldn’t -- she knew it. 

And yet, her answer could only be a singular memory: “Not attending my sister’s wedding. Chasing a story -- there are things more important. Were.” She thinks of Honey’s grave; far too opulent. “Were. I hope she was happy while she still could be.”

What do you most value in your friends?

“Honesty, humility -- a good sense of humor,” morbid topic of moment before vanished; though Wesley was bereft of true friends, “It’s hard to have real friends in this line of work. And it’s understandable -- not many people can handle it. But those that stick around all have one thing in common: a penchant for transparency.” 

She laughs; it’s a genuine thing. “Whether they like it or not.”

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

She snorts. “Off the record,” her hand flourishes through the air, as if practiced in gesture, “I never mean it. Fuck it -- ya’ know?”

Do you have a family? What do the members mean to you? Do you hate them or love them?

They inhabit her dreams, this faceless and nameless bunch. Her family, those who birthed her and left her to rot upon the orphanage steps. They loom over her like intrusive nightmare-spirits, only to be chased away by the warm and pensive visage of her father. He, all blonde hair and green eyes, has always been glaringly obviously not the man from which she came -- and yet there has never been a better father. His has been the only familial warmth that meant a thing. 

Winifred, mother, the cold and cruel matriarch -- a source of disquietude. 

Honey, sister, the arrogant sun, far too hot to burn for long -- a source of inadequacy. 

But her father -- oh, her father -- had always believed in his little orphan. 

“Yes,” she answers, something like emotion prickling at her eyes, though she is remiss to show emotion in moments like these, “I have family. I love him more than anything. But I’m my own goddamn family now. Don’t you forget it.” 

It hurts to admit it. But it’s true. For why has he not come for her yet? Would he ever?

No -- no one ever did. She would make her own fucking luck. 

[zyzzyva1936-blog-blog]

“Lemma the Librarian” - summing up

There’s one more paywalled story, “The Shelving”, where Lemma finally returns with all her collected books and becomes a Librarian for real. There’s a conflict and all that, but it’s pretty drummed-up: the main point is to finally get Lemma and Iason to admit out loud that they love each other, and let us look at their new relationship, which is 100% a worthwhile goal. Spoilers: they’re great, and also adorable. I mostly only even bring this up for completeness, and for the sake of one last “When The Fuck Are We 🤷”. ;) So, the Lemma series. I’ve been stressing its arcs pretty hard, which might be a little misleading if you haven’t read it*. It is quite an episodic series; you could shuffle probably three-quarters of the stories without more than minor changes. But the arcs are there, and Lemma’s journey from the hot-headed, selfish asshole in the Prologue to the heroic, self-aware (although still pretty impatient) mc-kinked sub of “The Shelving” is pretty great. It’s not, like, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or anything, but for mc comedy-erotica it blows anything else (that I’ve read, at least) out of the water. 

Iason’s rather more shallow - or at least, we don’t get to see inside his head the same way we do Lemma’s. His development, inasmuch as it exists, is more a matter of his relationship with Lemma developing. Iola, honestly, has more of an arc than her brother, but it’s a pretty great one so I’m not complaining**. 

If you wanted to throw a major criticism at it, it’d probably be “formulaic”. There’s half-a-dozen individual stories that have literally the same ”Lemma gets mind-controlled, Iason rescues her” plot, and if you broaden the second part to include people other than Iason, you’re comfortably over half the series. But it didn’t get dull for me, even reading the entire series twice in quick succession while writing up this series. Part of that is just it’s in a fairly narrow subgenre - you want sexy mind-control, here’s some sexy mind-control - and part of it is that @midorikonton does a good job of varying things up in the incidentals from story to story, the drawn-out induction of “By the Book” versus the interpersonal conflict of “The Last Dance” versus the deliberately awful dumb humour of “Op-arrrrr-ant Conditioning”.

The series has some other flaws - the way the books are characterized in the first three and last stories, and not at all in the interim; also, every single thing in the first third of “The Choosing One” - and the quality of the individual parts varies, if not widely, than at least noticeably. But on the whole it’s pretty great, and I don’t regret for a moment reading it or putting my time into this series. A high recommend.

*Why in God’s name have you read two dozen reviews for a publicly available story I’ve been linking to in every post without reading the actual story? What are you doing!?

**Wasn’t she gay at the beginning? What happened to that?*** ...Also I just realized she’s so uncomfortable about knowing young Iason did it thinking about Annella because she did the same thing. ;)

***She’s been having dreams about someone she met in the Tin Islands - oh, God, both halves of the party have been paired off, haven’t they XD

When The Fuck Are We? 🤷

We finally hit Lemuria! And the port city of Atlantis, all on the continent of Mu. Sometimes @midorikonton is too cute for her own good. :P Atlantis, of course, comes from Plato’s Republic, where it’s used mostly used as a tale about the hubris of nations and how great his ideal state is. There’ve been plenty of suggestions that it’s based off cultural memories of the Minoans, who had a powerful mini-empire pre-pre-Bronze Age Collapse and were destroyed or at least crippled after a catastrophic volcanic eruption/tsunami in the Aegean; which is as good a theory as any, although my feeling is it’s as likely Plato just made some shit up. In any case, it’s been an inspiration for lots and lots and lots of subsequent fiction, and a great deal of pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology. It traditionally is placed in the Atlantic, usually somewhere around the Azores.

Mu, like Lemuria, is much more recent. It was invented by cranks in the late 19th and early 20th C, as a singular ancestral civilization to explain “similarities” between distant cultures like the Babylonians and Mayans. (The idea that building a big honking fake mountain by pushing rocks into a pile and putting a temple at the top is very straightforward apparently didn’t come up; neither did the idea that non-white people might be capable of that whole “technology” thing on their own.) It lives in the Pacific - the longest land-bridge ever hypothesized - which neatly gives each major ocean its own lost continent.

By about the 1930s the three of them had been sort of stapled together; they even have a standard order which maximizes euphony (“Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu”). If there’s more than just at Atlantis - two thousand extra years of pop culture means it’s by far the best-known and most-used of the three - then you usually get all three. Although this is the first work of fiction I’ve ever seen that actually conflates them. ;P

Lemma’s Lemuria lives behind three “gates” in a sort of pocket-dimension, which is how it stays so isolated*. One gate is in the Atlantic and goes to the port of Atlantis; the second is in the Indian Ocean and goes to the capital of Lemuria. The third is “on the opposite side of the world” - presumably the Pacific - and leads, in the real world, to a “Shattered City” that’s a generally awful place to be. It took me a surprisingly long time to realize that that’s probably R’lyeh, duh.

R’lyeh is - but that will have to wait for another time. ;)

*My sudden theory is that the Bronze Age Collapse is kicked off by an occurrence of the quarter-second lapse in magic disaster that Lemma mentions in “the Choosing One” - that’d mess up any of the societies we’ve seen in this book, but not so badly as to be irrecoverable with a century or two of time to pass, by which time the spread of ironworking messes up any chance for magic to get a foothold again. Lemuria would drop out of history entirely; if we want to be generous, we could say the gates would break but leave the people alive and well in their parallel world.

[everygame]

Heavy Rain (PS3)

Developed/Published by: Quantic Dream / Sony Computer Entertainment Released: 23rd February 2010 Completed: 14th January 2018 Completion: Finished it once. Trophies / Achievements: 41%

David Cage, eh? Let’s be honest, he sucks. I thought so well before his recent recently pillorying in the press for not just being a ego-centric fool but also a genuinely toxic one; I don’t need to go into the accusations here, you can read all about them at your leisure. He’s always been something of an anomaly in game development; someone who has literally never managed to make anything good (let’s not forget Peter Molyneux put in his time) yet has managed to get Sony to bankroll genuinely massive productions, not least the upcoming Detroit: Becoming Human. There’s an odd emperor’s new clothes to him.

Since the accusations, things get muddled of course. I don’t think Cage should lead a game again; before, I’d have said purely because he makes shitty things. But now it’s one of those things where the “shitty things” in question have all the hallmarks that make us ask—why weren’t the questions being asked before? One only has to look at his recent wrong-headed defense of triggering sequences from Detroit: Being Human to see there’s something wrong there, as soon as he’s actually challenged.

Perhaps you’d view this all as an aside, but I there’s been a lot of chat recently that the reason gaming hasn’t had its “me too” moment is simply that women and marginalized people in game development simply don’t have the power. It’s very different being a known actress from being a programmer, or an artist in a team of hundreds; Quantic Dream isn’t just a production house that will just put someone else in Cage’s place; he’s the founder, he owns it, he’s not going anywhere. 

It sucks.

[Keza MacDonald would write an article about this lack of a “me too moment” for The Guardian that’s worth reading—pointing out that things like #1reasonwhy shouldn’t be forgotten.]

So with that all said, it’s with rather a different light that I consider my decision with a few friends to play Cage’s post-Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy games “as a lark” as a bit… less… funny. I think it’s worthwhile to dig into it, anyway, as an experience, so yeah, let’s genuinely try and make sense of it and him.

For background, let’s discuss Fahrenheit, because sure as shit no one bothers to remember anything about Omikron: The Nomad Soul other than David Bowie was in it (tragically.) It’s a game that opens with a polygon model of Cage himself explaining how to play the game, and I remember cringing myself fully inside-out at that point. After that comes literally Cage’s one (1) memorable interesting bit of game design, the one (1) that literally everyone references. He places you as a man who has to hide a body in the bathroom of a diner and there are lots of different decisions to make as to how you do it; and then you play the police investigating it.

It’s interesting! Genuinely! Because of course, you know where the police should look and what they should do; but there’s that thought where… maybe you don’t want them to? There are lots of interesting things to do with “player omnipotence” in narrative games, but of course, this is basically the only time Cage does anything with it. Indeed, he spirals into what I consider his true trademarks: a complete inability to write a narrative that makes any sense, and leering sexism.

But of course, we’re not here to go into Farenheit’s plot (anyway, you all know it devolves into your zombie protagonist fighting the embodification of the internet, etc.) we’re here to with an open heart explore Heavy Rain as a serious work of an artis… I’m sorry I’ll start laughing like a drain again if I keep this up.

Heavy Rain has trophies, right? The first one you get is, literally, “Thank You For Supporting Interactive Drama.”

The hubris.

I mean, this is why you want to play this, right? Because you desperately want to try and understand how you could have so much ego, so much self-belief, that you literally do something like that.

I’m really not sure what Cage thinks interactive drama is, though. His games crib relentlessly from the language of cinema, but they’re just “interactive” right? So they’re interactive movies, right? But no, they aren’t. Because for some reason Cage is obsessed with the minutia of living. In literally any film, character doing things as mundane as, say, starting their car are cut out, filmed dynamically so they’re expressive and over quickly, or—if they are included—included for a particular narrative or thematic reason. But not in Heavy Rain. In Heavy Rain, if you want to do anything, you have to do it in the most insane detail using the absurd control system. Everything you do takes forever; just opening a door has to be done perfectly.

It adds nothing; it gums up the pacing and seems to be interactivity for interactivity’s sake, because (turns out) when it comes to the crunch your interactivity otherwise is going to be nothing more than quick-time events.

There’s another thing here, too, which I think speaks to Cage’s ego. In Heavy Rain, you can “fail” at basically anything by not doing it just right. So, for example, reaching to open a door. You can mess it up and your hand drops back to your side. You can do it slowly, you can do it fast and then stop. You can basically make your character look like a jerky moron who can’t open a door because you think it’s funny, and I genuinely refuse to believe that Quantic Dream didn’t get testers in who did this. I’ve talked before on this tumblr about how players should “meet the designer in the middle” and play along with what is expected, but a big part of that is (as the designer) not leaving your game open to abuse by offering the player things they don’t need and can basically only use to mess with the game. This is a perfect example of that, and I believe that in every situation Cage said “Real players won’t play it like that. Ignore it.”

Ego.

When you really get down to it, your interactions are little more than tedious housekeeping; only once does it make sense, as the beginning of the game you experience one character’s perfect family life and then (later) experience the shattered mirror of it, except they’re not actually direct analogues so I’m being fairly charitable in assuming that’s the point.

So let’s just pretend the game doesn’t include a lot of interactions that serve no purpose. I mean, if the story is good, usually we can excuse that, right?

Even if Heavy Rain had a plot that generally worked (it doesn’t) it does something so inexcusable that I’m shocked—shocked!—that anyone gives it a pass. I’ll give the (not so vague) spoiler that in this game (about the search for the mysterious “Origami Killer”) one of the characters you play *is* the Origami Killer! Except, for every character you play you can see their thoughts by pushing a button. And all the characters are investigating the Origami Killer, meaning one keeps investigating themselves. “Ah ha,” you might say, “obviously all of his thoughts are cleverly written to not implicate himself, but also are believably what the killer would think.”

No, they literally act like someone who doesn’t know who the killer is, thinking full thoughts that the killer could never think, and it’s not like he’s paranoid about his thoughts, or in a fugue state. It’s just… I mean, is this lazy writing? Or is it just the work of an actual moron? I mean the section of the game where he “cheats” by obscuring the actions of one of the main character is lazy writing. But this is breath-taking, the work of someone who either doesn’t know how stories work, or doesn’t care.

Let’s move on to Cage’s other hallmark; the leering. Heavy Rain is a game that has a lengthy nude shower-scene for the female protagonist that happens… in a dream. Also just to note we… don’t need a shower scene with her anyway? Or for her to like, have to fight off men in her pants for ages and ages, also in a dream? It’s ok though, she’s mostly there to tend the wounds of the male protagonist and shag him.

[“Actually, systems-wise, she’s actually necessary to help the player keep good endings available if they fuck up a lot with the other male protagonists. But yeah, she is mostly a nurse... I mean apart from that bit where she has to rip her dress and act slutty to go on to almost get sexually assaulted”—charitable ed.]

Look, I can’t bang on about Heavy Rain forever, it feels like I have already. After playing through the whole thing, I struggle if anything worse to understand how Cage not just got more work but managed to get Ellen Page to star in his next game? How this game won a BAFTA (well, a video game BAFTA) for STORY!

Heavy Rain is fucking shit and it’s not why David Cage should never work again, though at one point I’ve had said it would be. He should never work again because he’s a toxic garbage person. I hope Sony sticks him in the bin after their obligations relating to Detroit are over.

(Oh and all the staff that have suffered under him and his culture get lovely jobs making things that are good.)

Will I ever play it again? I wondered if it would be more interesting with the Move controls, but I’ll be fucked if I’m ever touching this again.

Final Thought: Above I talked about how this game drowns in the mundane; and I’d like to restate that I do think it’s a mistake to argue this is some kind of a directorial choice, to imbue that mundane with meaning. Like… I don’t know. Anyone from Ozu to Jarmusch can show how that can be used thoughtfully. Hell, just watch David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Compare and contrast to failing to open a door because you didn’t hold the trigger down just right.

[valkyrie-echo]

Project Echo, Part 3: Chapter 26 (Calling the Bluff)

Part 3 Summary: Seven years after the events of “Part 2”, Avengers Tower explodes, fulfilling Bucky’s vision. All evidence points to Avengers Shadow-Ops leader Inessa Ryker, who is forced to seek out Bucky in hiding. Together they must determine who the traitor is in their ranks and if their friends are still alive- all while trying to survive deadly ambushes orchestrated by Sam Wilson and his hand-picked army.

Chapter 26: Calling the Bluff

"Berny, can I have the access codes to this thing?" Ellie was more than a little confused by Eoin's assignment. It seemed, well, rather mission-critical, and in her experience on Natasha's team jobs like that were something the main planner took care of themselves. Eoin swore though that whatever he was trying to pull off had to be done mostly by others, that his direct involvement crushed the chances of success, so here she was. Working with computers… Yeah, that was a smart idea.

"It's 'popsicle'. The sub-directory code is 'fudge'."

Ellie giggled as she typed, "Let me guess- craving?"

"Big time," Berny was working on something in the navigation system behind her, "Clint always sends- sent- a shipment via Quill, but it's never enough… was never enough."

"I'm sorry," she didn't know what else to say in the abrupt silence.

"It wasn't- until you all got here I never had any trouble with tenses… I've seen more death than you could dream of, I spent most of my life trying to kill Clint, but…"

She focused on the mission, but kept up with Clint's little brother, "It's easy to forget, out here. For me it's just like being on another mission. Earth was harder for us in the same way we're more difficult for you. He was never here. He was on Earth. With us here, you almost expect to see him too, and back in our bases we all felt like our leaders were at a meeting, about to come home. That's why we all moved into the highest floors of the Tower we could. It was crowded and uncomfortable, but being in our bases without our friends- that's too much."

"Yeah," Berny sighed, "truth be told, I don't think I'll ever go back to Earth. Not just because of Clint and Nat… I know she did this to them, I've heard the evidence and I'm behind you 100%, I shot her for God's sake… But I keep waiting for Inessa to figure it out. To snap back and have some answer, some clue that makes all of this make sense…"

Ellie shrugged as she typed, "Of everyone on this team I think I'm the closest to being objective, if it helps, and I did most of the scans on her mind. I can answer any questions you might have, fill in the blanks."

"Let me be the first to say you did a shit job of digging around in there while it still mattered." There was no venom in his voice, and he even reached back to give her shoulder a squeeze to show he didn't mean anything by it.

"You're not the first."

"I'm sorry, you don't deserve that."

"She was increasingly hostile, paranoid, defensive… I don't know what happened, but just before she killed them something changed. It was like she saw something we didn't, and she just shut down. All I saw on the last sweep, before she threw me out, was dread, resignation, and rage. So much rage it almost washed everything else out. The Shadow King put her on the warpath. She couldn't stop what he was doing to her. Sam says she planned it all from when she was in Astana, maybe even before, but if it helps, most of us don't believe that. The Inessa we knew would fight to the death to save us. A part of her might still think that's what she's doing."

"But who is controlling her now?"

Ellie completed her assigned task and locked the computer down once again. She went to Berny's side and put a hand on his shoulder, returning his kindness, "Does it matter anymore? Before dinner tonight, if Eoin's plan works, she's dead and all of this ends. We go back to Earth, show the Galaxy that our Leader's deaths don't diminish us, and if the Shadow King comes we finally get our revenge- for Clint, Nat, Tony, Steve, Thor, Banner, and Inessa. Even for Noelle."

"If Eoin's plan works."

"It'll work," Ellie put on her convincing voice to bolster his hope, "she's already dead. She just doesn't know it yet."

Once Ellie and Berny were away on their tasks, Eoin sought out Marie. Fresh from her turn at trying to provoke some sort of response from Inessa, he located her in the kitchen and dining area of Berny's space station. It was fully equipped with all Earth appliances as well as a handful probably only space-bound travelers knew how to operate. The newest Avenger wasn't there for cooking, though, she was there to charge her battery.

Marie stood near the back, chewing on her nails distractedly as she held one hand in the center of a tall flame. She wasn't paying attention to what was going on around her. Eoin didn't appreciate that at all- she didn't challenge him when he walked in, her eyes didn't flicker to register his movement, hell- she probably didn't even know he was there! For no reason at all she was staring at the wall, lost in thought, and completely open to attack. This was someone who was supposed to be a trained Avenger (granted, a newer one, but still)! He wouldn't have even allowed her into his sewer gang!

"If you're scowling because I'm now paying enough attention to you, then you can go fuck yourself," Marie still didn't look at him but apparently her peripheral vision was better than he gave her credit for.

"What are you doing in here?"

"Preparing," Marie curled the hand wreathed in flames into a fist and turned it, "something doesn't feel right with all of this, and when she strikes, I want to be ready. I don't buy the brain-dead act. Not for a second."

Eoin scoffed, "Yes you do. At least enough to chew on your nails."

"Maybe I'm over thinking it," she admitted, "but you don't know Inessa like I do."

"Don't I now?" He'd barely said three words in a row to this girl since Sam brought him in to help in the hunt for Inessa back on Earth. He knew her story, but how dare she presume to know his? "Inessa and I have known one another for six years. We were friends once. I was going to be a leader too."

Marie rolled her eyes and fixed her gaze on Eoin all in the same motion, "Yeah, I've heard. You turned out to be a traitor, Inessa wasn't allowed to kill you, so she settled with driving you and your followers underground and keeping you there. You know her as a friend and as a prison guard, you don't know her as an active threat. I'm kind of a self-taught expert on that front."

"Are you kidding me?" he stared down the girl with amazement and disgust, "You're arguing semantics with me? I know Inessa makes shit decisions, but putting you in Black Ops has to be one of the worst."

"Hardly," she didn't know this man by anything but reputation, and even so she was unimpressed and un-phased. So he was supposed to be the anti-Inessa, so what? He was a dirty, stinky vagabond when Sam brought him in, and his skin had a yellowish cast that made his deep freckles look almost green. Truth be told, he looked like some of those so-called heartthrobs on magazine covers- attractive? Sure, in the right light. But he also looked like someone who'd be sticky if you touched him. "And was that supposed to be an insult? I don't know why Inessa brought me in, I never did. I suspect it's because I was a combat-gifted and her team was the only one short a person."

"Well, so long as you also realize how useless you are." She reminded him too much of Inessa. Ironically (considering what she was doing) Marie had none of Inessa's fire, that flare that made her dangerous, but the ice was there. Whenever she annoyed him back when he still had Mallory, Eoin would call Inessa the Ice Queen. Now Marie was proving herself a contender for that crown. At least now he knew precisely why he disliked her.

Marie took her hand from the flames and watched it for a moment as the bright pink glow to her skin faded. Eoin could swear he saw an orange light under her flesh as her bones glowed like hot metal, "Inessa is the kind of person who walks with you, learns how you move, how you operate. While you think she's on your side, what she's really doing is sliding a blade into your back so slowly and carefully that you don't even know you're dead until she tells you. Oh, and if you think you know where she'll make her killing blow- if you think you're ready for that knife in the back? That's when she puts it through your eye instead."

Eoin heard a sound on his left and turned- half the metal chairs at the table were in one large glowing puddle without Marie so much as lifting a finger. She put her hand back into the flames, "Inessa isn't gone, she's just figured out finally what powers I do and don't possess. She'll keep up this act until even I'm not sure anymore and right when we think we've got her we'll realize it was all some big trick and we were the ones who were playing her game all along. So if you don't mind, I'm going to keep my powers charged this time. I can't melt Bucky's arm, but I can melt him, and that'll slow Inessa down for sure."

His smile was genuine, "You're better than I thought. Still not Black Ops material, but you could pass for a member of one of the espionage teams. The fact of the matter is that you are useful to me right now. I'm going to prove Inessa isn't gone and then I'm going to kill her myself. You're going to help me."

"You're too cocky. Our hubris is what lost us the first two rounds of this fight. We thought we had her cornered both times and look what happened."

"You were hit in the head and went nappy-bye before the fight even started?" Eoin stepped forward until Marie's skin glowed with heat and the air around her crackled. He stopped just short of scorching-distance, "I'm not like Inessa, kid. I'm better, way better."

"I know you are, everyone does," she used the heat radiating from her like a shield against him, and so it made her cocky, "Inessa killed six people and we're halfway across the universe preparing her execution. You killed nine and walked away with a slap on the wrist."

"And don't you forget that," there was a flash of something in Eoin's eye that caught Marie's attention- it was a look of pain and loss that made Marie's flesh crawl. He was trying to play her to gain her allegiance.

"Stop dicking around and just tell me what you think I'm going to do for you," she wasn't going to play his game. If he wanted to flash the pity-me look around as if it just slipped out then that was his prerogative. Just as hers was to think he was full of shit.

No one had spoken to Eoin like that in a long time. He was too used to being feared by his horde of vagabonds, he forgot how frustrating well-adjusted people were. I should probably have spent more time around them on the ride here. She'd already won against him with her heat-shield, or else he would have knocked her around a bit until fear reappeared in her eyes. Eoin had no choice but to treat her as an equal, "You're going to draw Inessa's eye while I make my move. When this is all said and done, she'll have shown her hand in full and both her and Bucky will be dead. Deal?"

"Just draw her eye?"

"You'll work with Sam. That's all I need from you. Then Inessa Ryker gets a tombstone and we hopefully never see each other again."

Marie turned off the stove and pulled a pair of leather gloves out of her pocket to protect the space station from her at full power, "Pro tip- if that's really all you wanted, you should have just come out and said it. Remember that, if you have to speak to me again."

"We've made our decision," Sam stood in front of Inessa's cell and tried his best to keep the goosebumps down. In front of him was a young woman who was lost, in need of help, someone he should be protecting- except he knew her for what she really was. A monster. She played her role very well, but that was still all it was- an act. Inessa wasn't gone, she was biding her time, and so was he. The tension was almost tangible, which made Marie just as nervous.

Why do we even have to play this game?

"We don't know what you are," she spoke up, "Nadya, or the host. There's only one way for us to be sure."

"That's us killing you and letting Saint Peter sort it all out at the pearly gates. If we're wrong, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry… But if we're right I just want you to know that you deserve worse. You deserve everything that came to you in Astana and more. I just wish I had the two years with you that Bucky did to make sure you adequately paid the price for the lives you've cost us, the friends you've taken!" He squeezed his hand into a fist and tried to get control of himself and his emotions. He could almost feel Nadya watching, and that pissed him off even more.

"For the sake of the host, if that's you, it'll be a quick death," Marie was firm, hard. She had to be the one to draw attention, not Sam. "I can make it so fast your nerves won't even have time to fire. One minute you'll be here, and the next you're gone."

Sam coughed and straightened his shoulders, "Either way, innocent or guilty, you'll die in an hour. When you're dead, Bucky will be sent to Asgard for seventy years to pay for helping you. I'll never see his face again so long as I live," he looked away from the girl sitting on the cot, "I'll never see a lot of my friends' faces again, thanks to you… or thanks to her. Whatever."

Where did the rage go? Sam wanted to rip Nadya apart with his own two hands, beat her, skin her alive, anything. That never changed, but the pain did. He was angry, but he was also disappointed. He missed the person who was like a niece or even a daughter to him, but just the thought of her face, let alone the sight of it, made his blood burn in the veins and his vision go red, "Nothing I could ever do to you would make up for what you did to them. You took my family and friends away… A quick death is too good, but I guess that's just another prank war you've won. How does the saying go? The greatest trick the Devil every played was convincing the world he didn't exist? You don't mind if we make sure you're wiped out of existence, do you?" Everything they needed to say had been said, so Sam turned and stormed out of the room. Soon enough Inessa would be gone and he would have peace again… Hopefully.

Marie followed Sam as far as the door, then hesitated, "One last thing, just between us?" she spoke softly enough that Sam couldn't hear her even if he was listening, "Noelle made the funniest noise after I tore out her tongue," she giggled to herself and shook her head in wonder, "I couldn't stop laughing!" she wiped a tear from the corner of her eyes, "Ah, and just think, I'll get to hear it again soon!" Marie peeked out the door back down the hall. She could still see the back of Sam's head as he walked away, but he was very small now, "I'll save him for last, I think. I want to see that moment when he realizes you were right all along, when he figures out he stopped you from saving them." She laughed once and slapped a hand over her mouth. Marie tipped out again to check on Sam's progress, he was gone. "I'd best be off after him. My master would prefer if I maintained my cover at least until we're on the ship."

A wink and a quick step into the hallway was all it took. She knew Inessa would follow her now. Eoin told her to keep the creature's eyes on her- what better way than to give her what she always wanted- concrete, tangible evidence that Marie was the one responsible for Noelle's death? It made her stomach churn to even pretend to be happy about it- especially since they'd all read the autopsy report- how long she'd lasted in unimaginable pain as Inessa tortured her. She put a few fingers on the cool metal wall to steady her as she walked, but that was the only weakness she could afford to show. Inessa was watching- she had to proceed entirely as if she meant what she said.

This was Eoin's equivalent to leaving the cell door unlocked. Inessa wasn't going to burn in an hour- although Marie protested that to Sam before they went in in the first place- she could melt her old leader without opening the door even, but Eoin had a bigger game in mind, and she promised to follow his lead for now. He wanted Inessa inspired to escape, mentally, and push up her move on the intel she so desperately sought.

Let the games begin… God help us all.

Rise and shine, sleepyhead.

Oh great, you're back, Amadeus groaned in pain and stirred on the stretcher. He was in the infirmary, grotesquely uncomfortable. Two of the Asgardian drones were guarding the door, but otherwise he was mercifully alone.

Travis is building a second containment cell on Sam's ship, I'm guessing your new quarters. Castor and Maya are up to something on my ship. Bucky's got two Asgardians of his own, and I get three- Calder is here himself. The server room is being locked down, remote access to the data is being locked down as we speak.

You've been busy, what do you even need me for? Inessa sounded rushed, which worried him slightly.

I need you to get out of that room. There is a terminal two levels below you, in the south of the second warehouse. It's all cobwebs and dust, I don't think Berny even knows it's there. That's our intel.

Amadeus glanced around the medical room, I think I can handle the Asgardians. I'll get your intel, but how do I get it to you? And how do you get to Bucky?

That's the easy part. Trust me. Nadya will meet you in the warehouse, follow her to the terminal.

His stomach fluttered, You're not going with her? Ness, this could be a trap, and if it is I'd really be more comfortable having you in on this too…

They won't use the frequency beacon in some dusty storage space, trust me. I'm following Marie and Eoin around, if anyone is planning anything, it'll be those two. Marie is trying to draw my focus too hard, she wants me to make a move. They'll keep the frequency emitter close to me, not you. Don't worry, Nadya will be fine, and she'll protect you.

You're sure?

Positive. You have half an hour before they melt me into a puddle though, so you need to get going. It'll be close.

Alright boss, Amadeus resigned himself to crawling through vents and creepy space-warehouses with cobwebs- so, creepy space-spiders too, don't worry, I'll hurry. Tell Nadya to look for the beacon though, I want it accounted for before running into trouble.

She's on it already. Hurry, we have to make our window.

Inessa had appeared in his mind as a feeling of pressure behind his eyes, now that pressure faded as she returned to her body (or whatever the hell she was doing). Amadeus' skull hurt, his jaw was swollen, and he was fairly certain Bucky had fractured one of his cheeks, but the man knew what he was doing- he'd avoided any hits that would limit his vision. He groaned and turned his head to the right, away from the door with the Asgardian guards. Med labs were handy for arts and crafts- especially when you happened to be a super genius.

"Hey, am I allowed to move around?"

One guard looked over at him, "You are not permitted to leave this room unescorted. That is the only order we were issued. You may move about freely within these confines."

"Fair enough," he slid off the cot and winced at the ache in his jaw, "I need drugs."

Amadeus ambled over to Travis' medicine bag and began to search through it for something to help, "Do you have any way for me to contact Berny? The guy who owns this station?"

"There is a communication device set in the wall."

"Thanks again." He found a silver wall panel and hit the button, "Berny, do you have some kind of medicine cabinet? I need anti-inflammatory drugs and a pain killer."

"There's a chemical synthesizer in the wall. It's got a menu of drugs in it. The strong stuff and tranquilizers are locked. Nothing in there will help you get past those guards."

"Um, thanks? I just want Tylenol, jeez." Amadeus randomly slapped the smooth, silver panels on the wall until one slid up. The drug synthesizer looked more like a coffee maker than anything. Amadeus tested it by asking for some simple stuff- with each drug he chose from the list a cup would pop down and a liquid was deposited.

Amadeus typed at the keyboard until he managed to pull up deeper operating instructions. It wasn't written in any form of code he'd ever seen, but luckily Steve made a very stupid decision many years ago and stuck Inessa with the 7th smartest man in the world as a lieutenant- he could figure out any code within minutes. Ten, to be precise. Once he had control of the code he could play and order any individual chemical contained in one of the unlocked medicines, re-combine them, and convince the system it was a new drug he was authorized to have in any dose.

Fifteen of his thirty minutes had passed before Amadeus had two small cups of clear liquid. He turned back to the Asgardians and smiled, "Cheers boys."

He tossed the contents at the guards, angling the cups so that the splash of liquids collided in mid-air. The chemical reaction was instantaneous. There was a searing flash of light and a concussive blast that knocked the guards back into the door and blinded them. While they were dazed, Amadeus grabbed two more cups and poured them into the open mouths of the shouting guards. It was the strongest sedative he could produce.

Fifteen minutes, and he'd wrestled control of the room from two Asgardians. Loki was right to keep me out of the Realms. I'm bad-ass.

You have a bad ass. The pressure returned for a moment.

GET OUT OF MY HEAD NESSIE.

I couldn't resist. Good luck, move faster.

Amadeus smirked and began to tap at the other metal panels until one slid aside and he found the air vent. As promised, Nadya was waiting for him. She slashed out with her talons and the bars covering the vent shredded. The wolf crawled through the darkness away from him and Amadeus followed. Hopefully from here on out was the easy part.

He had no idea he was being followed.

The warehouse was, as advertised, cavernous, dirty, dusty, and full of cobwebs. Mercifully though there were no space-spiders to go along with it. Amadeus wasn't even sure what a space-spider was, but he knew he didn't want to learn. Of course, considering how many shipments Clint had passed on through to Berny and the visits Berny himself made they could just as easily have been Earth-spiders stowing away, but still.

It was worse than being in a Costco. The pallets of illegal gear were stacked floor to ceiling, with paths barely wide enough for a person to walk snaking through the maze. Nadya had to abandon him to run through the stacks and navigate the labyrinth of boxes. She'd return for him and help lead him down paths towards the back wall, but they were on a clock. Eventually she found a way for him to climb onto the top of the tower and run along that, jumping where necessary towards the computer.

Inessa had been out of contact with him for some time, but no contact with her was usually a good sign. He glanced at his watch as often as he was able to see in the dim light. His time was rapidly running out and he hadn't even gotten the coordinates of the person who sent the Collector his shipment yet. Then he had to find a way to get back to the infirmary so he could be on the ship when Sam called the Counsel to witness Inessa's execution, pass the information on to her, and then let her do whatever the hell she was going to do to grab Bucky, their gear, and get the hell out of dodge.

Oh, and Inessa didn't really know how to fly a spaceship. There was that too.

Get to the damn computer and get her the coordinates. The rest is a Nessie problem. He dropped down near the wall and saw Nadya waiting in a closed off space against the wall, slightly recessed, with an ancient-looking computer tucked away, "Thanks, now go find me an easier escape route, please."

Amadeus typed as fast as he could, but the computer was frustratingly slow, then he had to figure out the OS again, Berny's file organization, and finally flick through the data until he found scans of something headed towards the Collector with the right size and quantity of materials to be the beacon emitters. Amadeus didn't have time to be thorough, by the time he got all the intel he needed he was three minutes to the deadline. He scribbled the coordinates onto a piece of notebook paper, crammed it back in his pocked, then shouted for the wolf, "NADYA, GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

He turned back towards the pallet he'd seen Nadya on last just in time to see the wolf encased in blue lightning. The wolf howled in agony before it exploded in a flash. Raj stood behind where Nadya had been, Tony's anti-shadow gun in hand. His face was grim-set and pale, "You're in a lot of trouble, Cho."

Calder, his Asgardians, Sam, Castor, Maya, Marie, Berny, and Ellie came for Inessa. Kelsey, Eoin, Travis, and Geoff were guarding Bucky on the bridge of the ship. She was pretending to be the bewildered host. They already knew she could walk, so she did, but she stumbled occasionally and kept her face a confusing mix of braindead and frightened.

When Berny first fired Tony's gun she was bewildered. It was like she'd been half-numb for years and suddenly felt everything at once. The power overwhelmed her. This was just a matter of remembering and recreating that state of shock. She very nearly fell when even more power slammed into her, and it took all of her concentration to keep her eyes brown. She couldn't stretch her senses into the Shadows, not right now, but she had a feeling whatever that burst of power came from, she wasn't going to be happy.

No one helped her when she stumbled, but no one forced her down the hall either. They seemed fine with letting her set the pace, but were weary of any tricks she might have up her sleeve.

Inessa had her tank top and cargo pants, but not her armor or her blades. Those were being carried by Calder himself. This was the hardest part of the plan. Inessa, Bucky, and Amadeus- they all needed to be in the same room for her plan to work. Marie was the method of execution, so Inessa just had to hope she could keep the girl distracted long enough to break free, grab her gear and Bucky's arm, free the man, get whatever intel Amadeus had, and run to her ship. Their plan had too many places things could go wrong, and Inessa was in serious need of res.

Since the last time she'd managed to catch some real sleep she'd battled the Avengers on the Collector's Vault station, had about 10,000 wats of electricity blasted through her veins (at least, that was what the power-dump from Stark's gun felt like), and been out of her body several times. Her bones and muscles were strained, and she still had to figure out what Bucky's deal with Calder was, get him, get his arm, her gear, and Amadeus' intel, high-tail it to the ship, and make a clean exit, all with Marie at full-power actively working to kill her, plus whatever other precautions the Avengers had taken against her.

It was a tall order, she just hoped her new Shadow-Armor was heat proof… And Kelsey proof.

Bucky didn't know precisely why they were bringing him out of his cell to the bridge of the ship, but when he saw Inessa led in he got a pretty good idea. Especially with her hands bound in front of her and Marie glowing with heat, ready to strike. This was an execution, and they'd brought him out to watch.

It still felt good to see her again, in her own body this time.

The Avengers with Inessa lined up in front of him and his guard, but he still had a good view of him. Amadeus came in their wake with a small Indian boy- Raj, presumably, pushing him along. He looked angry and pale. Something was wrong.

Inessa didn't acknowledge him or any of them as Calder made her kneel. She slumped forward for a moment as if she were dizzy and instantly Bucky felt a pressure behind his eyes and heard her voice as a hushed whisper in his mind, Who is Calder?

He didn't know how to communicate it to her, so he pictured as best he could the destruction of Clint's farmhouse in the battle with Sebastian Morris. He'd never seen the man's face (whole) other than in grainy pictures, but he got the feeling Inessa knew what he was trying to say. Calder grabbed her ponytail and jerked her hair back, lifting her face. Bucky's heart skipped a beat. Inessa's eyes were still brown- or back to brown. The pressure behind his eyes vanished and he took a steadying breath.

Marie pulled her gloves off and a wave of heat hit everyone in the room. She was barely containing all of the energy she'd absorbed from the fire, and Sm even had to look away, "Sorry," she mumbled and stepped back a few paces so he could approach her.

"Nadya Antonia Emilia Ryker. You have been sentenced to death by the Counsel of Yggdrasil for the murders of Anthony Stark, Steven Rogers, Natalia Romanova, Clinton Barton, Robert Banner, and Prince Thor of Asgard," there was more Sam was supposed to say in his pronouncement of the sentence, but the words escaped him now. He looked away from Inessa for a moment and shook his head, "I- I have nothing more to say to you. Marie- end this." He backed away from her but locked her eyes with his, especially at this point he was unwilling to let her out of his line of sight.

Eoin leaned against the hull of the ship and waited, watching. Now was when she'd strike, he was sure of it. He counted on it. Marie lifted her hands and he hot glow began to coalesce there. She was throwing every last bit of energy she'd stored up back at Inessa. Sam nodded to her and she released it all in a superheated wave of light-

Half a second before the fatal beam hit her Inessa's eyes flashed a brilliant silver, she grinned wickedly, and her entire body erupted in the Shadow-armor. Marie's hit was absorbed well enough, but she'd found the limits of the armor. It vanished with the wave of heat, but Inessa's policy was to pretend everything was intentional, and she was keeping that up now more than ever. She shrank her power down to just the claws and maintained them long enough to destroy her bindings and slash through her guard. Before the Avengers could react, Inessa slammed them through Calder's chest.

Her eyes locked on his and she ripped the talons out, slashing up and shredding his heart. It was a fatal blow, a killing stroke no one anticipated, "Now the Counsel can charge me with a real murder," she hissed.

Bucky threw himself onto the Avengers in front of him. They were too surprised to brace themselves and he ended up tangled in them. Without his arm his whole balance was off- this was what he got for refusing to train in one-armed fighting during his time as a monk. He managed to get himself angled just right to kick a few skulls and take out Raj's knee in the process. When the boy fell, Amadeus went down next to Bucky's human arm. My pocket, he mouthed.

Inessa grabbed their gear bag from Calder's feet as he fell and ran over to Bucky. She saw his hand snatch something from Amadeus before she yanked him to his feet. Kelsey untangled herself from the pile and pulled out her sword. Before she could strike, Inessa and Bucky ducked down the hall of the ship and made a break for the platform on Berny's station.

A beam of light nearly tore through Bucky (and would have if he had his metal arm on). Kelsey was on the warpath. Geoff appeared in front of them and Inessa slammed her palm into his nose, shattering it. Geoff went down and she jumped over his body. Bucky grabbed her and spun her sharply behind a crate on the platform as another beam shot out, then they made a last-ditch break for the hold of the ship they'd arrived on.

Inessa managed a thin shield of darkness to hold the back door as the bulkhead closed, then ran to join Bucky on the bridge, "What did Amadeus give you?!" she snatched the paper from his hand, tossed him the bag of gear so that he could reattach his metal arm, and began typing the coordinates in with lightning speed. Luckily she knew just enough about setting a course to be dangerous- and thanks to Peter and Rocket's sticky note she knew the button to press to activate the auto-piloting device on the ship.

"Why did you kill Calder?" Bucky panted, "I said he was mine!"

"I was closer," she watched, tense, as the ship took off. If Sam's ship had weapons they were fucked, "besides, that technically counts as an act of war against Asgard and if they decide to take that to the Counsel then I want it added to my tab. You still might not be executed for helping me."

"He was a relative of Morris, by the way. That's what I was trying to show you."

Inessa nodded, "Makes sense. None of Thanos' children travel alone. Every one I've heard of has come in a set of two, we had a feeling Morris had someone on the side to help get me off world if he managed to get his grubby hands on me." She sighed as Sam's ship dropped off the radar without weapons fire, "Oh thank god…"

"Not just yet," Bucky's body was throbbing with adrenaline, he needed a fight, "that was way too easy. This is a trap."

She laughed and slumped into the pilot's chair, "Gee, you think? Of course it's a trap, that's why we're flying head-first into it."

Bucky chucked, "Just so long as you know. How far out are we from the ambush?"

Inessa shrugged, "No idea, but something tells me it'll be pretty obvious." She cracked her neck and closed her eyes, "Talk, keep me awake."

"What do you want to talk about?"

"Well, I'm feeling both generous and exhausted right now, so ask me one question, any question, and I'll give you a straight answer. Take advantage now before my better judgement returns."

"Off the top of my head?" Bucky wanted to ask the dangerous questions- the ones Inessa made clear in Asgard were too sensitive to answer, but instead he settled on one Sam asked him, "What happened to Noelle Martinez?"

Inessa actually winced, "Geoff?"

"Sam."

"She was a member of my team," Inessa opened an eyelid halfway to watch him. She looked so tired he almost told her to rest and not bother talking, almost, "she went missing after an op, after I threatened her for trying to find you. When they found her- whoever killed her made it slow. There was more damage to her than I've ever even heard of, and every last bite, claw, or slice tracked back to me. The Avengers turned on me, once and for all. It was a smart move."

"Sam's never said her name. I've heard him list the charges against you twice now, but her name isn't part of the list."

"To put it bluntly? She wasn't important enough."

Bucky frowned, "But she was important enough for someone to torture to death to get at you?"

Inessa nodded, "Because she makes no sense and perfect sense at the same time. We had a big fight in front of a lot of people, then out of nowhere she's murdered. Between you and me? I have a feeling she was working with whoever master minded this- she just didn't know their plan included her death."

"What makes you think that?"

She chuckled and stretched her legs out to the dash of the ship, "Sharing time is over."

"You're still not supposed to fall asleep though," whatever Sam had planned could be hours out still, and Inessa looked like she was fading fast, "Ness, I can keep an eye out for whatever the ambush point is, you really need sleep."

"No," she kicked her feet off the dash and wiggled in her chair to wake up her arms and legs, "it isn't something you can see. I need to stay awake," her voice was more of a mumble than anything.

"You need to sleep."

"I need to stay awake," she yawned, then groaned, "why didn't I tell Amadeus to grab me some of the caffeine injections?"

Bucky glanced over the controls and a small computer screen. He hit a few buttons and a display popped up showing their trajectory and nearby star systems, "If this Eoin guy thinks he can ambush you, then he needs it to be somewhere you can't just pop away. I'm guessing- here," he tapped a point several hours out, "three stars close together."

"So?"

"So, three angles of light with no planets to break that up and cast shadows. Even as strong as you are right now, would you be able to fight through the power of three suns?"

"No," she admitted and rested a hand under her chin. Her eyes weren't even close to being open anymore, "That sounds like a good ambush... 's probably right."

"Go to sleep," Bucky chuckled and patted Inessa's shoulder, "I'll wake you up when we get close. I promise."

She was more asleep than awake, so he was never sure if her next move was intentional or not. Inessa tipped her face so that her cheek rested on his metal hand. She smiled sleepily and rubbed her cheek on his hand ever so slightly. Bucky knelt next to his friend to watch her a moment, "Go to sleep," he whispered, "you've earned it." only when her eyes began to move beneath the lids did he slowly slide his hand away and smile. He'd seen angry Inessa, scared Inessa, sick Inessa, injured Inessa (more than enough for one lifetime), and sleeping Inessa, but this was the first time that he could remember ever meeting this one- peaceful Inessa.

By the time they reached the ambush point Bucky was having trouble staying awake. He explored the ship (there were a few valuable-looking crates hidden under the cargo hold floor and a semi-stocked dining area), ran a few laps around it, found an exposed beam to do chin-ups on, and even found a shower to clean up with. Five hours in all passed while they traveled slowly but surely towards Eoin's likely ambush point. Only when they were just entering the star system did he lightly shake Inessa to wake her.

"What? When did I-?" she wiped at her eyes and peered at the controls. She didn't remember falling asleep- that was bad, they could have missed whatever Eoin was waiting for!

"Relax, we're just getting into the system now."

Inessa blinked hard and shook her head to dispel the fatigue that still overwhelmed her, "Right, ok, um, now it's just a matter of when whatever he's got planned kicks in," she hit the buttons around the monitor, "Damn, how did Peter turn his on? Does this one not have- ah, good, there."

It looked like a pyramid around a white dot he assumed was the ship. The dot moved slowly towards a green light in the center, "And this is what?"

"It's a gravity monitor, I don't know what it's called," she pointed to the points of the triangle, "those are the three stars, this is us. Once we're in the middle it means we're at an equal pull from each star. Their gravity all hits us at once, basically. It's a safety feature so you don't fly your ship too close to one or the edge of a black hole."

Inessa focused on the monitor intently as they drifted closer and closer to the green mark. As soon as their edges were touching she killed the throttle and let the ship coast to a stop (actually, if it weren't for the inertial dampeners the ship's relatively sudden stop would have thrown them both into the front of the ship with enough force to liquify their bodies, but luckily the dampeners held!). Almost as soon as the ship was confirmed as a lock in location between the three stars, another white dot crept into frame. Sam's ship pulled up beside theirs and likewise stalled.

A beeping from the rear of the control room alerted the two to an incoming message. Bucky raised an eyebrow and looked to Inessa, who nodded. He reached over and flicked a switch next to a blinking light and Sam, Marie, and Eoin's faces filled the screen, all looking exceptionally smug, "Uh oh, something wrong with your ship?"

"Why? Because you had Castor and Maya plant bombs around the engine?" Inessa's grin grew as Sam and Marie glanced to Eoin. A shudder ran though their ship and the three stumbled. Red lights began to flash behind them, "Uh oh, something wrong with your ship?"

"Open fire!" Sam commanded the Asgardian sitting at the controls behind him. Inessa waited patiently for the man to relay that there appeared to be no ammunition on board.

"Ah, yes, well, you'll find everything you're looking for floating underneath Berny's station," a second shockwave tore through the ship and Eoin put a hand on his forehead, "Uh oh, I think that one was life support... Or the hot water heater, honestly I couldn't tell the difference."

"Life support has been destroyed along with-" the Asgardian seemed deeply confused, "along with the water heater?"

"Two points to Nessie," Bucky high-fived her.

"How did you do it?" Eoin was livid, even more so than Sam and Marie, "We took precautions-"

"Marie pretending she killed Noelle is hardly a precaution," Inessa raised an eyebrow. "I know you Eoin. You were chosen for Black Ops back in the day not because you were clever enough, but because you were dark enough, personality-speaking. The second I saw those cameras in the bathroom I knew you'd be watching, and you'd be plotting. Leave me a single terminal to get my intel from and then put Raj there to guard it. Set geographically-triggered charges to stall my engine and take out life support somewhere where it would be impossible for me to use my powers outside of this ship. What were you planning on doing? Asking me to send over Bucky and then destroy this ship once and for all?"

"We weren't going to ask anything," Eoin spat, "he threw his lot in with you, he deserves to die."

"Cheers," Bucky smiled.

Sam turned away from the camera and grabbed Amadeus from among the Avengers gathering, "Sam don't-" Marie couldn't stop him from delivering the first two punches, but Maya, Kelsey, and Travis helped her separate them as Sam screamed curses and insults at the boy. He wasn't as deliberate in his strikes as Bucky was- Amadeus' face was a wreck. The boy never screamed though- he honestly didn't have time to.

"Sam!" Inessa was actually surprised and disturbed by the show of violence, "What the fuck are you doing?!"

"I CAN'T KILL YOU, BUT I CAN KILL HIM FOR HELPING YOU!"

"Ellie," Inessa spoke now to the girl behind Sam, "protect Amadeus. Whatever I may or may not have done, he doesn't deserve this and you know it!" Ellie nodded and went to put herself between Sam and the newest Avengers leader.

"You don't know what you just did, do you?" Sam snarled, turning back to the screen, "You killed a dignitary of ASGARD! If I don't kill you they won't just withhold their normal protections for us- THEY WILL DECLARE WAR!" he stepped back and gaped at her, "Killing Steve and the others wasn't enough, you want the entire planet to burn."

Bucky put his hand on Inessa's shoulder to hold her back, "Sam, Calder wasn't working for Asgard. He was a child of Thanos- Sebastian Morris' partner or brother or something. Whatever he had planned, she saved your life!"

"Your words are worth less than hers," Sam shook his head but the snarl didn't fade, "I'm going to kill both of you. Inessa- you'll die quickly, Bucky will be slower. Much slower."

"The damage to the engine is minor," she replied softly, "you can fix it in half an hour or so. And the damage to life support should still give you enough oxygen to make it back to Berny's station. If not, I also put all the spare parts marked 'Life Support' that I could find in the lower cargo bay. None of you will die, but we'll get a head start. I hope we don't see each other again, but if we do-"

"We'll be shooting to kill," Sam hissed.

"We won't be," Bucky was firm.

Eoin just chuckled, "You'll get a head start to the middle of nowhere," he pointed back to Ellie, "I had her change the intel you wanted. You lost Nadya, you lost your precious information, and this course ends in a black hole. You won nothing."

Inessa lifted her hand. As soon as it was at the proper height, Nadya appeared in an explosion of black mist. She sat next to her mistress calmly, "You changed the coordinates in a very dark room, Ellie. That wasn't a smart decision." Both Inessa and Nadya's eyes flashed silver simultaneously and she leaned forward to type the original coordinates into the navigation system, "Nadya saw everything."

"What did you do to Tony's gun?" Marie demanded.

"Not a damn thing," Inessa straightened up and Nadya faded away, "I just sent a new wolf for the gun to dissolve."

She slid the throttle up and their ship began to move out of the star system, "Goodbye Sam, everyone. I'm sure I'll see you soon enough... Oh, and as always- go fuck yourself Eoin."

Explaining their failure to the Counsel of Yggdrasil was the most difficult part of it all. Sam had to relive their humiliation in excruciating detail- and they were exceptionally interested in the part where the Avengers didn't know where Inessa went and had no way of finding out since Eoin's master plan involved destroying the original intel. They gave her safe harbor, a secure way out and an infinite head start.

The Asgardians were going to help them back as far as Berny's station, then they'd return home. As the Counsel threatened- all of Earth's defenses were gone. If an armada wanted to fly straight through the Realms to wipe out Midgard they would be completely uncontested. If Inessa got her prize and claimed the Earth, no one would come to their aid.

The Avengers protected Earth from most threats, but it was the Counsel and their Realms who stopped threats before they were even on the Avengers radar. The loss of their allegiance would have been catastrophic if the Leaders were still alive, but now- it was apocalyptic.

What's one worse than 'Apocalypse-Bad'?

That would be 'Avengers Bad'.

Sam could hear Steve's voice in his mind as he slumped, utterly defeated, in a chair on the bridge of the ship. He wasn't done trying to find Inessa, but that didn't mean he couldn't be completely overwhelmed. He had to be strong for the Avengers still surrounding him, deal with Amadeus for his treason, but for now he was content to sit silently, staring literally off into space, and leave him to be fussed over by his friends.

"Incoming transmission. It's from the Counsel," Berny glanced over at a despondent Sam and flipped up the switch, "I'll just turn on the camera on my side."

The face that filled the screens wasn't any counsel member they knew. This was a middle-aged man, Midgardian in appearance, with an overwhelming air of superiority he tried to mask. The man was a general, no doubt about it, but one not comfortable with his power or influence, "I'm sorry," he spoke with only a slight accent- German maybe, "I- I am not a member of the Counsel of Yggdrasil. No doubt you've realized this already, I just- it was the only way I could think to convince you to answer my hail. Um, again, I apologize for the deception."

"Who are you?" Berny couldn't stand hand-wringers, and that's what this man struck him as. A giant with the heart of an ant- no offense to Hank Pym or Scott Lang.

"I- my name is Jonathan Smith," some of the Avengers from the bridge came over to watch the man on the screens. They were curious, more than anything, about this human in outer space. Peter and Berny were the only ones they'd heard of (they were the only ones most outside of the Realms knew). Amadeus pulled himself to his feet to see over their heads. His hands were shaking, his left eye was swollen shut, but he managed a few quick keystrokes without anyone noticing.

"Hey, we've got a message from Sam's ship," Bucky snagged Inessa as she was leaving to find the shower. She spun around and sighed, then flipped the switch to re-open the comms.

"Sam, w-" Amadeus' face filled most of the screen. He held a hand to his lips and switched off the camera on his end before anyone noticed Inessa's face on the screens. She could still see his ship though- Sam was talking to someone. She couldn't see his face through the heads of the Avengers in the way. Bucky frowned and leaned in, listening.

"What can we do for you, Mr. Smith?" Berny nudged Sam to get him to at least look at the screen.

"I would like to help you, and I would like you to let me, perhaps? I- I've heard the news, that one of the Avengers betrayed you and killed their leadership. There are whispers that she is now here? Outside of the realms? I believe I can help you find her."

"How?" Sam hit the keypad in front of him and activated his own camera, "She is supposedly headed to the origin point of a shipment to the Collector. We don't know where it is, our ship is damaged, and now she's going to have at least a twelve hour head start, if we can even figure out how to repair life support on this ship. Oh, and by the time we get back to our base, we won't have a ship with enough fire power to take her down."

"I am sorry," the man shrugged, "but I do believe I can help you with your problems. There are only a handful of mines and production facilities in this sector large enough and skilled enough to be of any use to someone like the Collector. I can send people to the stations to track the shipment from that end until I find where the order came from."

Sam sat up straighter, "That's not much help. She'll still have a lead of several hours and we still won't have the right class of ship." This man had an idea already, it was just a matter of getting it out of him.

"I will have my associates change the ordering information, when she finds her intelligence, it will point her further on, to a place of your choosing. That way you don't have to find her, you just have to go straight to one location. I would like to volunteer my home, it is more secure than any other place I know of, and I am sure I will be protected should you arrive after her. It is an ideal ambush point, I assure you."

"Who are you," Sam didn't trust this man, coming in at their time of need with all sorts of helpful suggestions, "how are you so connected? And how do you know your facility is equipped to hold someone like her?"

"I'm just someone who wants to help the Avengers," he shrugged, "I- I have been made to do horrible things... Terrible things- all of it against my will. I was a good man once... I just want to be that again, and I feel that helping you may redeem some of the wrongs I have committed. Please, I assure you I am no threat to you-"

"You're a Child of Thanos," Berny raised an eyebrow, "that's how you have a home capable of holding someone who can teleport through fucking shadows. The main seats of Thanos' children were always the height of technology in the galaxy."

Jonathan looked down, ashamed, "You are correct. I was abducted on Earth, believe it or not, and taken aboard a slaving ship."

"It isn't uncommon, the smallest slavers can get through the Realms without the Counsel noticing," Berny confirmed for Sam.

"The ship I was on was damaged by debris in Earth's atmosphere. Navigation failed... Apparently they flew too close to Thanos' territory. He captured the ship, executed most on board, and took two of us to be his children." Jonathan shuddered, "That was a long time ago. I never wanted to be a monster, yet he knew tortures that ripped the very souls from men. I admit I have killed in his name, but with his death I became free. We all did. As I said, I want only to help you."

"Help in killing Nadya Ryker? That's what you're offering?" Sam was willing to dance with this devil, risk the Avengers on the words of a man he didn't even know.

Jonathan nodded, "That is what I am offering."

It sounded like Sam was going to take the deal. Inessa looked to Bucky and shook her head, He's insane, she mouthed. Amadeus was a god-send, sharing this with them.

The Avengers on board evidently thought so too. They began to shift uneasily, murmur to one another. For a moment their heads moved out of the way and Bucky caught a glimpse of Jonathan Smith. He tipped forward, stunned, and his metal hand hit the console hard as he caught himself, "Is that-" his heart was pounding so hard he couldn't even hear Sam's reply.

"Bucky? What's wrong?" The video cut out- either Bucky hit the switch on accident or Amadeus killed the feed on his end to stop anyone from hearing Bucky and figuring out what he'd done.

The final image was frozen on their screens- the Avengers heads, and the pale face of Sam's apparent new best friend.

"That face- that man-" Bucky was white with fear and actually shook as Inessa pulled him upright, "Jonathan Smith- Johann Schmidt. Nessie- that's Red Skull. Sam just sold his soul to the devil."

Chapter 27: 39 Days Before the Explosion