#you can’t tell me that some of those packages wouldn’t be sus

[bighornerherder]

This payment is WILD, the package is just a dinky old poker chip. Anyway, wish me luck everyone!

[sirthisisa-wendys]

hope i’m not too late, but congratulations on getting 500 followers! i adore everything you’ve written so far, keep up the good work!

can i request an exes au with geto x f!reader? not too angsty, but whether they get back together or not is up to you 👀

You said "not too angsty" but my mind said "HIT EM RIGHT IN THE FEELS" and I don't know wHyYyYyY

Please forgive me, but this... this is the epitome of my "ex of Geto" feelings. It literally flowed out of me in two hours.

"Yes, But...": Geto Suguru x Fem!Reader

wc: 2k

tw: FLUFF AND A LIL' BIT OF ANGST

The large envelope slides from his hands to yours, and you look at the package in confusion as you open the flap.

“You want to get out of here and start fresh,” Geto begins, lacing his fingers together. You find a phone, two banking cards, and two passports inside, which is more than what you asked for. “You’ll need that.” When you open the phone, you see various apps loaded on the device - most of which are foreign to you. “Open the banking app.”

You do as your ex tells you, and see the collection of numbers (six digits) and the single comma that will change your life. You look up at the man in awe, trying to catch his black gaze as he looks outside, not speaking.

“Su, I just needed a new passport, not all of this.”

“It should put you in a good place for a few months until you get a good job. I have a friend in the States that should be able to put you up in a nice house, all paid for, of course. There’s a private school nearby so you don’t have to drive Haru there and back, just walk. And there are--”

“Suguru,” you stop him mid-sentence, placing your hand on the table to try and reach him. “We don’t need all of this. My parents are willing to--”

“I’m not sending you back to them, y/n. I want you to be independent of anyone else,” he retorts, nostrils flaring at the mention of your family. You know his frustration with your relatives comes from an honest place.

They had treated you savagely after you married into the Geto family, calling you all kinds of names and not even attending the birth of their first grandson. You weren’t sure if it was the ties to the underground that set them off or the fact that the Geto family had brought in a considerable amount of wealth and fame to your lives. Either way, you were cut off from them until you divorced Suguru due to--

“Our flight leaves at ten o’clock tomorrow,” you whisper, and Suguru shifts in his seat, sighing. “Will you come to see Haru before we go?” There’s a long pause as your ex-husband weighs his options, but you know his choice before he speaks.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he finally answers.

_____________________________________________________________

Tickets in hand, you try to keep your composure as you watch your son hold on to his father for the last time. Your other hand is captured in Suguru’s large palm, and he squeezes your fingers tenderly as you walk to the security checkpoint. While you walk, he talks to your son in gentle tones, telling him to write to him about all of the amazing things he sees and does, as well as the friends he makes, and how daddy still loves him no matter where he goes.

When he finally lets Haru down and places his Inosuke backpack around his shoulders, you turn to Geto, expecting him to say something final, something meaningful. But he doesn’t, opting to pull you into a deep embrace and kissing all over your face. “Please stay safe. Call when you make it in.”

“I will,” you whisper, inhaling the scent of his cologne and reliving your life together in a brief flash. “I promise.”

“I love you, y/n.” You want to reply that you love him, too, that the separation wasn’t his fault - but you just nod. The feeling of tiny arms around your legs makes you look down, and you both see Haru wrapping himself around your legs, holding you two together earnestly. When he lets go, Suguru lets go, and you hoist the toddler into your arms.

“Say ‘see you later,” you tell the child and he slowly waves his hand at Suguru as you walk past the agent at the checkpoint. Haru doesn’t stop waving until he can no longer see Geto, and he also waves until he can no longer see you, finally dropping his hand to his side and wondering why he felt so empty.

_____________________________________________________________

“Today we learned about the rainbow,” Haru sings as he skips with you down the sidewalk.

“Oh, yeah?” you laugh, holding his hand as he swings back and forth.

“And we played in the dirt.” That explains the messy pants, you muse, rounding the corner to the back of your home and unlocking the fence before letting Haru run up the back porch and inside the house.

You lock the fence behind you and follow your son inside, thinking of all the things you had to do before his sixth birthday party the next day. Suguru said he would be sending a surprise - you begged him not to send the fake nichirin sword you already purchased and stowed away - so you’d have to accommodate for whatever he sent your way, which was bound to be lavish.

Among other things that he provided (a house, a car, preschool, an on-call babysitter if you wanted to go out, a nain rug you looked at once and said you liked but you weren’t sure about), Suguru also spoke to Haru every evening, which made you feel at ease. He hadn’t ceased to be in Haru’s life after you divorced, so this wasn’t out of the blue. Co-parenting with him was still easy and somewhat effortless, even thousands of miles away.

You’re still lost in thought when the doorbell rings, and Haru leaps down the stairs to answer it, despite telling him not to do that time and time again. Quickly, you sidestep the boy and open the door, forgetting to check the peephole first. If you had, it might have prevented the massive shock both you and Haru have at the sight of Suguru standing in the entryway.

“Suguru…” you whisper, and Haru immediately goes to hug his father, squeezing him tightly.

“Oh, look at you,” Suguru groans, leaning down to pick up his son. “You’ve gotten bigger since I last saw you, huh?”

“I’m two inches taller!” You shake your head at the toddler’s estimation, smiling, but still in shock. Your eyes roam over the man’s appearance. He looks just as you left him, with long hair and that gaze that could see into the deepest parts of your soul. It’s been a year, but nothing’s changed at all.

“Come on in,” you urge him, and he carries Haru inside, setting him down in the foyer. Haru dashes up the stairs to retrieve something, and you walk into the kitchen, Geto following you around and looking over his surroundings.

“It looks beautiful in here,” he murmurs, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “You’ve really outdone yourself.”

“You should see upstairs,” you reply. “That’s your son’s domain.” Suguru chuckles, then places his hands on the counter behind him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I wanted to surprise both of you,” he shrugs and you sigh.

“There��s no guest bedroom.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” he replies, and your first instinct is to balk at his suggestion and offer your bed. But you know Suguru’s considered his options already and would have gotten a hotel if he wanted to.

“Are your things--”

“In the car. I wanted to see if I was welcome first before I barged in with my stuff.” Haru reappears, holding up his drawing from school today.

“I drew this today! They told us to draw something we love,” your child smiles widely, showing his lack of a right front tooth. You peer over at the picture and see you - with a questionable hairstyle - Haru, and Geto holding hands in front of what you assume to be your house, and a grey… horse? cat? dog? off to the side. “And we have a cat. I named him Gojo after daddy’s friend.”

_____________________________________________________________

You hand Geto a pile of blankets and a pillow, hoping it would be enough to keep him warm on the couch. “You can turn the heat up downstairs if you need to,” you advise, and he nods, taking the offerings. He pauses in your bedroom, wanting to say something.

“Thank you,” he finally whispers, then walks away, leaving you in the room to contemplate your still brooding feelings for the man who walked into your home less than six hours ago.

“Wait,” you call out softly, and he returns, searching your face. “Did you get me that job at the museum?” you wonder, crossing your arms over your chest. “The head of the museum told me I came highly recommended for the Director of Curation position.”

“And if I did?” he wonders, angling his head to the left a little and frowning. You recognize his tell immediately and nod, biting the inside of your lip. “I promised to provide for you and Haru for as long as I’m alive. I’m not going to break that promise.”

Those words stay with you as you toss and turn in the bed hours later, trying to sleep. You’re failing miserably, you realize when you look at the clock, and you rise out of bed, padding downstairs to get some tea and calm down. You tiptoe past the hallway to the living room, hoping you wouldn’t wake Suguru as you heat up a cup of water.

You’ve almost succeeded in your mission when you hear a yawn and the familiar cracking of toes and ankles as Suguru walks into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes.

“Can’t sleep,” you explain and he nods, pulling a chamomile tea packet from the caddy by the cabinets. He rips open the packet and hands it to you, leaning against the counter as you dunk it in the cup and watch the color seep out.

“I still remember,” Suguru whispers, recalling the nights you spent awake while you were pregnant with Haru and how the tea was the only thing that could soothe you enough to sleep. He thumbs over to the living room and you follow, settling into the couch beside him. “Nightmares? Or just insomnia?”

“Insomnia,” you reply, and he motions for you to place your feet in his lap. He begins rubbing them methodically, taking his time on the soles as you lean into the arm of the couch and sigh.

“Remember when we used to watch Jeopardy before bed and you’d fall asleep mid-answer?” he chuckles, and you shake your head, a smile pulling at your lips.

“Those were some hard nights,” you reply, and he hums thoughtfully.

“I wonder where it all went wrong.”

You both knew where it went wrong. There was no privacy, no semblance of peace, nowhere you two could go without someone knowing everything and being in your business. And adding Haru to the mix made everything worse. The breaking point came when you were playing with him in the backyard and heard the sound of a shutter capturing your every move. Suguru broke the camera and the man’s arm, but the damage had been done. The only way you could escape the limelight was divorcing him and his name, then escaping somewhere where no one cared who you were or who you used to be. Here, you were just… y/n.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be the wife you wanted,” you whisper, and Suguru shakes his head.

“No, you were - are - the wife I want. I didn’t protect you enough. I should be the one apologizing.”

“Don’t,” you urge him, setting the un-sipped tea on the coffee table. “Don’t apologize.”

“Then I won’t,” he replies, pulling you closer. “But I have to confess something.”

“Say it.”

“My family bought property nearby. I’ll be stateside more often than not.” Geto smoothes a hand across your cheek, cupping your chin as you move onto his lap slowly.

“Haru will love that,” you breathe.

“But will you love that?” he wonders, ghosting his lips over yours.

“Yes, but--” He presses his lips to yours tenderly, cutting you off. You wrap your arms around his neck and pull him closer, feeling all of your shared love in that one kiss.

“Yes, but...?” he asks, pulling away and raising a brow.

“Was this your plan all along?” Suguru smiles, nipping at your bottom lip. His arm curls around your waist as he pins you beneath him, pressing a kiss to your neck.

“And if it was?”

“It’s definitely working.” Suguru hums in pleasure and continues to kiss you until you're at peace in his arms again, and fast asleep.

[rouiettes]

raya and the ugliest fucking dragon i've ever seen holy fuck who the hell thought to give a dragon fuckiNG EYEBROWS WHY WHY—

aka the musings of a filo non-binary bisexual who feels victimized by the dragon designs of this fucking movie supposedly centred around THE LAST DRAGON???? MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE STAYED STONE GDI WHAT THE FUCK SERIOUSLY WHY DO THE DRAGONS LOOK LIKE THAT

let's get one thing straight.

none of the characters in this movie. rest assured. not a single straight person was in this movie. trust me.

raya and the last dragon had all the foundations of a good movie

IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO GREAT

BUT IT WASNT

AND HERE'S WHY

(in my humble opinion okay pls dont come for me)

a disney movie with sea culture at its heart and soul, i was so hyped to finally watch this movie

(not as hyped as i could have been tho bc let's be honest DISNEY DID SHIT WITH RAYA'S MARKETING)

(AND PERHAPS FOR GOOD REASON LOL I SWEAR I DONT HATE THIS MOVIE OKAY)

you had the amazing score, the amazing concepts for plot and characters, the solid solid worldbuilding???

if you just told me about how raya's setting and premise, i'd probably be "wow this movie sound like the whole package"

and then i'll actually watch the movie and have just as much trust issue as raya did :/

but i digress

A DISNEY MOVIE WITH SEA CULTURE AT ITS HEART AND SOUL

do you know how diverse sea culture is??? VERY

and one thing i was very happy to see was how raya handled it

it was by no means perfect but

the subtle shows of culture in the way the characters acted, and the environment of the movie was just CHEF'S KISS

not only that but the ideas the movie had in terms of its world and the people in it felt genuine, it felt alive

a dragon that isn't the typical fire-breathing lizard

characters who look like they could easily be my neighbours or children i've played with

instead of pandering to this movie felt like an actual homage to sea cultures

and for good reason bc seeing all those familiar names rolling in the credits had me feeling some type of way :")

also that fucking soundtrack gave me chills throughout my watch of the movie

okay now that we've got the things i actually like about the movie, let's talk about what i don't like

if there's one word i could use to describe disney's raya it would be: rushed

like i said in the beginning, all the groundwork for an astounding disney movie were already there

but all of it just goes to waste bc the plot and it's characters feel so Unfinished

the movie felt like a bullet-point presentation of the story

WHICH IS SO FUCKING DISAPPOINTING BC THE CHARACTERS SEEMED SO INTERESTING but all we got were shadows of what they could have been

cardboard cutouts of the archetypes they filled

i'm not asking for a bottomless well of depth, but i at least wanted more for the cast than just: angry misunderstood princess, angry misunderstood princess with an undercut, that one dancing kid from moana but with more spice, boss baby, and the mountain

and i get that they had to sacrifice some of their depth to keep the run time of the movie short but you have got to be better than this disney

i hate to compare but it felt like this movie tried to go beyond what moana gave us, and shot so far that it ended up back to where it started, and then stumbled back a few steps

AND IM NOT EVEN SAYING A DRAGON MOVIE WITH A BIG CAST IS IMPOSSIBLE

BC IT'S ALREADY BEEN DONE

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON DID IT THREE TIMES

and you'd think the plot for one of the few disney movies with a non-western setting would have more than just a macguffin considering how batshit sea folk tales can be

but you'd think wrong folks.

GENUINELY IT FELT LIKE THEY WERE ATTEMPTING SOMETHING BUT WERE SHORT OF BRINGING IT TO FRUITION

sure moana had a macguffin too with the heart of te fiti, but the heart itself wasn't the heart of the movie

it was the journey of moana and maui

it was that BEAUTIFUL TWIST WITH TE KA AND TE FITI

ALL DELIVERED WITH A NATURAL FINESSE THAT HAD YOU ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEAT

YOU WERE ALONG FOR THE RIDE OF THE STORY INSTEAD OF QUESTIONING EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOING ON LIKE I WAS

maybe this was just me but like, i felt so bad for the friend who watched this movie with me bc all i could go on and on was how the plot felt like it was getting in the way of itself

why didn't the different kingdoms (??) kept the gem in rotation or smth, when did they decide that heart would keep it and then get mad at heart for keeping it????

why didn't awkwafina dragon just show herself to the kingdoms bc everyone seems to be in agreement that dragons good right? that they would be the key to getting rid of the druun right??? SO THEY'D ALL AT LEAST HEAR HER OUT OR SMTH RIGHT????????

and yes raya has trust issues but it seems to only spring up at the most convenient times plot-wise, we didn't really see her learn to trust other people again OTHER THAN THE TIMES WHERE SISU WOULD HAMFISTEDLY SHOVE IT DOWN OUR THROATS THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE GOOD SOMETIMES RAYA

we see it with boun, but then she just trusts noi, her monkeys, and tong THE GUY WHO STRUNG THEM UP AND WAS THREATENING TO TORTURE THEM????????

i'm gonna be honest and say that if it weren't for namaari i'd have absconded the moment sisu came on screen

as far as i'm considered the actual plot of the movie is just the entire sword fight scene between her and raya

and finally

we get to the part i will be erasing from my brain for my own mental well-being

WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT DRAGON DESIGN

WHY OH WHY TH  E FUCK DOES SISU SOUND AND LOOK LIKE THAT

my friend said they looked like the ponies from mlp in 3d AND NOW I CAN NEVER UNSEE IT

THEY HAVE EYEBROWS THEY HAVE HUMAN FACES

HUMAN FACES ON MAJESTIC DRAGON BODIES

THE INTERNET HAS COLLECTIVELY DECIDED THAT SISU IS BASICALLY FURRY ELSA

every time we got a sisu close up i lost 5 years to my life

disney i am suing for damages

if you want me to drop the charges i demand raya 2: electric boogaloo but it’s just raya and namaari enemies to friends to lovers ark

and also for them to never say dragon nerds ever again

AGAIN. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON GAVE US BEAUTIFUL DRAGON DESIGNS. HELL IF YOU WANTED MORE EASTERN LOOKING DRAGONS FUCKING SPIRITED AWAY??? HAKU??????????

AND YKNOW WHAT. SISU WOULDN'T EVEN LOOK THAT HORRIFIC IF THE MOVIE WAS IN 2D

im not the first person to be side-eying disney's decision to keep pumping out these 3d movies but like.

no amount of added dimensions could ever make that dragon design okay

and there so many more points i could go off on to show how this movie was rushed

how the other dragons, and even sisu's siblings whom she had been missing for the entire movie DIDNT MAKE A SINGLE SOUND???? NOT EVEN A FUCKING GROWL DISNEY???? DID YOU EVEN TRY WITH THE DRAGONS AT ALL??? THE SUPPOSED CENTRE OF THIS MOVIE'S PLOT?????????

HOW THE CHIEFS OF THE OTHER KINGDOMS WERE BASICALLY PLOT DEVICES????

THAT ONE CHIEF'S SKELETON WAS MORE INTERESTING THAN ANY OF THEM COMBINED ALIVE

kudos to that one granny chief though

u can never have enough bad ass old ladies

AND GOD THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ANY OF THE CHARACTERS JUST FELT SO FORCED

ALONG WITH WHATEVER LESSON SISU WANTED TO IMPART ABOUT TRUST

LOVE THESE CHARACTERS THEY ARE FUNNY THEY ARE FRIENDS FOUND FAMILY

TRUST PEOPLE IF U WANT THEM TO TRUST U

TRUST PEOPLE OR ILL LITERALLY FUCKING KILL U

children aren't stupid disney. if you tell your story well enough, they'll pick up on the messages you want to give them. YOU DONT HAVE TO THRUST EVERYTHING IN OUR FACES

i was exhausted by the time i finished this movie

bc i really wanted to love it. i wanted to feel more for it than just: well, it's a movie :)

i dont hate this movie though like it's not even worth the energy for that

i think that ultimately, despite all my issues with it, this movie was a step in the right direction when it comes to having non-western stories being told by non-western people in big name productions

i'm glad raya and the last dragon exists

i just can't help but be dissapointed though bc this movie put so much effort into putting my people and culture at its forefront but at what cost???

good characters and story for a good setting and design????

does it have to be one or the other?????

DOES THE DRAGON HAVE TO HAVE EYEBROWS??????

[detroitbydark]

Title: Tell Me That Your Soul Lies Now

Relationship: Sev/OC/Scorch

Warnings: Mention of blood and needles used in medical care

Summary: A Stowaway complicated what should be an easy night.

A/N: Based on a HC that Sev and Scorch both end up at Kyrimorut and adopted to Walon Vau. Love, Family, and the ties that bind come into play. I hope you enjoy!  

The Midnight Duke was an unassuming Corellian life class transport, a pre Clone Wars relic retrofitted to meet clan Vau's very particular, discerning tastes. 

Quick, fast, and armed to the teeth it got the job done ferrying Walon Vau’s adopted sons from one bounty to the next. The sons themselves were more than competent to take it from there with efficiency and expertise bred from a jar on Kamino and a lifetime of training by one of the most ruthless Mandalorians to ever exist. 

Dust settles in a thick layer over the Duke’s matte black hull. Its exit from the outer rim asteroid belt had been… dicey and it would need a new coat of paint in the coming days.

It had a lot of things, typically a dead body in storage wasn’t one of them.

“Fek!”

“Wha-“ Scorch barely misses his brother’s arm as he snaps back a step, exposing the open cargo hatch for inspection with a put-upon indignation only he was capable of. There’s a duffle of ordinance, kit and-

“What is this?” Sev’s growl reverberates through his buyce accusingly. Scorch eyes the curled up figure draped in a thick layer of clothes reminiscent of the mining colony they’d just left. 

“People-cicle.” What the hell did he expect him to say? He hadn’t stored a body away. He was in charge of the bounties. The heads of the two marks had been in the bounty bag which was now very empty and in need of laundering because A. Trandoshan blood stank to malachor and B. Human blood was just messy.

“Maker if I know.”

The sun over Kyrimorut was quickly beginning to sink down into the mountainous waste to their north and with it went the warmth of the late season day. They just needed to finish post mission once-over and they could take the speeders the five kliks from the airfield to the warmth of the karyai and a hot meal.

“Maker,” Sev growls again, “Buir is not going to be happy about this”

Buir. It still felt wrong to call the Sarge anything but Sarge. Scorch was sure he’d get used to it eventually. Sev had, oddly enough, but Scorch didn’t really question his vod’s rush to accept their former trainer as his father. The sullen commando had always sought Walon Vau’s approval. It was no worse than the vode of Skirata’s clan and their hero worship of their Kal’buir. 

“We’ll dump it off and be done with it,” Scorch offers, “Animals will take care of it and that’ll be- wait.” A quick blink through his HUD menu brings up an advanced heat scan.

Sev toes at the body with his boot. “What am I waiting on?”

“They're still alive. I got a vital readout. It’s not much but-“ The two clones stand shoulder to shoulder staring at the prone sentient.

“I slot ‘em and we pretend we never saw a thing?”

“The old man’s gonna know either way. Not sure what gets us in more trouble.”

At his side, Sev grunts. Wal’buir knew things.  It was uncanny and downright terrifying. As cadets they’d never been able to get one by the old Mando - not that Sev had ever tried - but Scorch had plenty and had more than a few scars to prove he’d been caught. 

“Kriff.” Sev lets out an uncharacteristic laugh. “Bring it back and Skirata will probably adopt it.”

Scorch can’t help the grin that spreads across his face, “or marry it off.”

“I’m not gonna carry it.” 

The argument that he’d saved both their shebs earlier is about to leave his mouth when a small feminine whine rises from the half frozen sentient. “Well that settles it”

“Marriage,” they both agree in unison.

It’s been a while since he’s been around a woman not already wed or destined to be wed to one of his extended family. Suddenly the idea of carrying the unfamiliar being doesn’t seem so off-putting. 

At least it wasn’t the bounty bag.

———

Buir was going to let them have it. Sev could handle the dressing down from Kal Skirata but he wasn’t sure he could handle it from Vau. 

His stomach twists in knots. The early signs of panic, the ones he was intimately familiar with - brought about by the only father figure he’d ever known - were beginning to make themselves known. He can feel his heart rate picking up. The thick nerf hide sticks to each finger as his palms begin to sweat in his gloves.

He wouldn’t have been able to get away with slotting the grubby stowaway and dumping the body, of that he is sure, there was no good way to keep it clean. Either the Duke or he were going to be covered in it and the water pumps at the strip had gone out a week before. They’d brought the replacement back but it would take one of Kal’s boys to plumb it up. 

“Ordo’s going to have kittens.” Scorch’s voice rings clear through his comms.

“Yeah, Bes is pregnant with what...” He rattles off the names of the clans ad in his head and begins assigning them to parents. “Number three?”

“Yeah, he’s always got a kad up his shebs when she’s carrying. This is going to royally piss him off.” 

Sev watches as Scorch readjusts the woman in front of him. She’d started shivering after they’d yoinked her from her spot in storage. Still hadn’t woken but It was a good sign. Her body seemed to actively be trying to warm up. They figured they’d help it along and wrapped her snugly in a thermal sheet from the emergency kit. Before Sev had at least been able to see her nose, a set of dark brows and fluttery lashes, nothing too unlike those some of his sister-in-laws had, now it was only the closed lids of her eyes visible. For all intents and purposes she looked like a bantha wrap he’d gotten from a food cart last time they’d been on Coruscant. 

Per the limited data from their HUDs she probably wasn’t in much better shape. She seemed stable, but it wasn’t guaranteed even with the vheh’yaims medical center and the clan’s skills she’d survive the long haul. They’d spent two days in hyperspace and she spent that time in a minimally heated interior storage compartment. The bloody marks along the hatch’s interior showed that she hadn’t had as comfortable a ride as they had. It was another thing they’d need to clean up but it could wait a day or two.

There were no ration wrappers, no canteens of water in the hold with her. They’d looked. 

Hypothermia was her biggest issue but dehydration wasn’t far behind, and the ease with which Scorch had lifted her left him to believe that malnutrition had been an ongoing issue. The bulk of her was the thick rough clothes the miners had worn. 

“We take her to Wal’buir before Skirata gets his turn. Let buir decide what to do.” The speeders rumble to life as they take off from the small airfield and head in the direction of home.

It takes less time then he remembered to cover the distance from the airstrip to the sprawling compound they called home.

“Look,” Scorch notes merrily, “they left the lights on for us.”

By the time they’re pulling up to the vheh’yaim Sev feels his breath coming rapidly. 

“Maybe the old man’s having some ti’haar with the neighbors?” Scorch sounds hopeful as he pulls his buyce off one handed and clips it to his belt. “We get her into medical and then have to explain our fek up. Mij should still be here.” He hopes aloud that the family doctor was still rotating through before heading back to Enceri. 

Mij Gilamar was a good a doctor as any clone commando, null, or trooper could ever hope for. If their guest made it through the next few days she’d do good to thank Gil.

Sev throws his leg over the speeder and grabs for his kit and the bounty bag while his brother jostles the woman into a better hold. The lights shine through the low windows peering into Skirata clan’s karyai and Sev can imagine his buir sitting by the warm fire drinking the potent Mandalorian liquor and busting Kal Skirata’s gett’se about something.

“Su cuygar Ad’ike.”

Or not.

Both men snap to. Instead of “Sir” an acknowledgement of “Buir” is barked. If Vau notices the near comical response he doesn’t let on. His golden eyes are narrowed firmly on the package in Scorch’s arms.

Sev isn’t sure he’s ever seen his brother lost for words and Scorch must decide today wasn't going to be the day.

“We brought a present. Heard Kal’buir is trying to settle Mereel down. Think this will work?”

Vau, emotionless stony Vau, stands for a moment before the hint of a sly smile flashes at the corner of his mouth. Sev’s heart jumps. The smile falls away with such quickness that had the man himself not trained him to be the best, Sev would have questioned if it had ever been present to begin with.

“Shall we get our guest set up? Maybe you boys can explain how you managed to bring home a stray while we do?”

Yeah they we’re in trouble. He can hear Scorch gulp through his comms as Vau turns away and heads towards the main entrance of their home.

Growing up with so many brothers, child soldiers who were destined to grow up too soon, Sev had never been privy to concepts like privacy. It shouldn’t irk him that eyes follow them as they enter the vheh’yaim, following their father through the one of the many different spokes off the main karyai toward medical. The low flicker of fire light catches on the rich golden plates of Mij Gilamar’s beskar’gam.

Without much more than a tired sigh, the silver haired Mando finishes his drink and rises from his spot near the fire to follow.

Sev finds himself thankful that even amongst the faces like his own, Ordo Skirata’s was not present. He wasn’t in the mood to hear what Kal Skirata’s golden child would have to say. He’d have to hear it eventually but he hoped he could at least grab a shower and hot meal before he had to deal with the Null.

Scorch elbows him in the side and Sev casts him a questioning glance. “In your head again, vod?”

“Just worrying about Ord’ika.”

“I would be less concerned about Ordo,” Vau remarks casually, “and more about me.”

To their left, Mij Gilamar huffs out a laugh as he motions for Scorch to lay the patient out. “Let’s worry about the aruetii first shall we? Where’d you pick this one up?” the doctor asks as Scorch begins to help him liberate her from the thermal blanket and then layer after layer of thick and dusty fabric. 

“New asteroid mining station in the outer rim, Kappa Black,” Sev offers, “and we didn’t know we even had her on ship.”

It takes gett’se to openly admit that in front of his training Sergeant but Vau says nothing.

Scorch picks up where Sev leaves off as the last layer of outer clothes is tossed aside. Sev had been right. There really wasn’t much to the woman underneath the bulk of gear.

“We picked off the bounties. Cake walk.” The demolitions expert chirps happily but Sev can hear the well hidden undertone of anxiety in his voice. “We got in. We got out. Didn’t stop to sight see.”

Vau looks down his nose, glancing slowly from one to the other and then to the girl being hooked up to tubes and monitors. “It appears you didn’t stop to check your ship over either.”

“We had to leave in a hurry. She’d tucked herself behind gear,” Sev explains, knowing it wouldn’t be good enough, “We-“

A cry rises up from the bed as the woman’s eyes shoot open. He knows panic when he sees it.

“Fierfek!” Mij curses as his recently placed central line is caught along the bed and yanked from her neck. Fluids flow freely, mixing with a steady stream of blood as the doctor grabs for gauze and fights to press it against the puncture. 

“Some kriffing help would be good,” he grunts as he manages to dodge a fist. 

Sev steps in. He manages to grab both wrists in a single movement, pressing them to the bed as her lower body twists and her legs kick out. He tries to judge his own strength, his hands swallow her wrists. 

“Restraints are in the drawer.” He hears Mij but his eyes are focused on the woman under him. “No! The other drawer.”

“Sorry Doc, gotta lot of drawers here.”

Sev ignores his brother as a leg swings wildly his way, its knee connecting with solid beskar along his back. She doesn’t even flinch. Sev positions his body over hers, swinging a leg over her hip and looping his feet over her thighs. She doesn’t stop fighting. 

“Stop!” He snarls down into her face, voice coming out gruff and modulated through his buyce. Stark blue eyes focus in on him as she suddenly goes deathly still. They stand out against the warm tan of her skin, only a shade lighter than his own. Her hair is a tangle of unkempt curls and knots. She looks feral and wild, bears her white teeth like an animal. Sev adjusts his grip as she begins her fight again, thrashing and bucking under him.

“I said stop!” He snarls again, and something changes in her eyes. Fear flashes. Her snarl turns into a frightened “o” of surprise before he feels her muscles begin to go slack underneath him. He glances to his side in time to see his buir remove the hypo from her arm.

Mij grunts. A bead of sweat glistens at his grey temple. “Always prepared, right Walon? I hope you took into account her body mass because I don’t feel like dealing with a heart that doesn’t want to beat.”

Vau smiles, holding up the still half full syringe and flicking it lightly with a well manicured nail. “This isn’t my first time. Now Sev’ika, please climb off our guest and let’s try this again,” the black armored Mando says calmly.

———

“I don’t like it. It’s too convenient.” 

Scorch rolls his eyes behind the mirrored visor of his buyce. Ordo Skirata has made himself known shortly after Mij had gotten their little stowaway stabilized. She’d be sleeping off the worst of  her hyperspace sickness. If she did decide to wake again they could all be secure in the fact that Scorch himself had tightened down her restraints.

The hot brand Doc found behind her left ear had answered more than a few questions she wouldn’t be able to answer for a while. A slavers mark denoting property of the Mining Guild. Between that and her poor condition, Scorch couldn’t blame her for hopping the first ship off the asteroid belt she could find.

 It did make them thieves technically, but he had strong feelings about people being property and it really hadn’t been the first time they’d creatively acquired something. He’d tried to ask Sev his opinion but he didn’t seem much for banter after they’d found the brand. Even Wal’buir had seemed a bit more disgusted than usual.

Then Kal Skirata showed up at the med bay door with his eldest in tow and a few of Omega’s commandos, Niner and Fi, trailing behind.

And now the adults were talking and it was his job to shut up .

“It doesn’t matter if you like it or not at this point,” Mij was saying firmly, “I’m not about to put a sick girl out.” His eyes flash challengingly to the Skirata clan head. “There’s nothing you can do to change my mind about it either, Kal.”

For his part, Kal Skirata has been fairly quiet, standing to Ordo’s side with his arms crossed loosely over his chest and a contemplative look on his face. Every now and then Scorch would catch old Kal’buir trying to sneak a peek at their acquisition. Scorch also noted both he and Sev had placed themselves between the other men and the bed. He could think of a star cruiser worth of smart things to say, but not one could account for the near-defensive position Sev was taking or Scorch’s own flanking of his brother.

“Besany’s pregnant-“

“Oh really?” Scorch can’t help himself. The words just come out because kriff, was Bes never not pregnant? “I wasn’t aware.” 

Sev snorts to his side as does Niner hovering behind the Null. Fi barely manages a suppressed smile as Ordo’s eyes narrow. Scorch rolls his shoulders, loosening the stiff joints up. It was always about Kal’s boys. It was always cowing down to Nulls. It got old fast. Next to him Sev’s neck pops as he rolls it.

“You got an issue, Scorch?”

“And if he does?” Sev’s voice cuts in. 

It had been awhile since there’d been a good family tussle. It might be time to take it outside and fix that.

“Scorch. Sev.” Walon Vau’s crisp, aristocratic voice cuts through the tension and posturing “Stand down. It’s late and I’m tired.”

Kal tips his head to his Null son. “You too Ord’ika. Everyone is concerned for the safety of the women and children, but if I know your wife she would no sooner have us dispose of an escaped slave as she would one of your deserter vode.”

“We’ve had squads do worse to get here,” Niner adds levelly.

“True, ad’ika,” Skirata agrees pleasantly, taking a step toward the bed. Sev’s sudden step forward seems to reignite the tension as he blocks Kal’s line of sight. The older man casts an appraising look at the Commando and Scorch feels every muscle in his body coil in anticipation. Kal Skirata could play the good natured ba’buir all he wanted, but below the surface he was anything but. He was as cold blooded as it came before you got his family involved, but once you crossed one of his boys Scorch wasn’t sure there was a star system you could hide in that the old Mando merc wouldn’t find you in.

Scorch wasn’t sure where he and Sev placed in the family tree but he wouldn’t be caught unawares if it was time to find out.

“She’ll be our charge,” Vau says cooly, stepping between the two Delta commandos.

“And if she’s brought trouble with her, what then?”

“We let Sev slot ‘er and Mird will have a nice treat,” Scorch offers as if they were speaking of troublesome roba. The mention of Mird is enough to get a shudder from both Niner and Ordo and a wet sound of agreement from the creature itself as it slinks in between Fi’s legs.

The strill circles around its master’s feet before giving Sev and Scorch a cursory sniff. 

“Walon,” Mij Gilamar’s voice is low with warning.

“Lord Mirdalan is an excellent judge of character.” The golden furred creature leaps to the bed with predatory grace. Scorch watches the strill stare expectantly at the sedated woman before turning twice and curling up on her legs. “See?”

Fi, who’d been quietly observing - for once - speaks up after a moment. “It may just be me, but I’m not sure Mird’s approval is necessarily a good thing.”

[nimmy22]

A Mistake: Chapter 3

They weaved through the streets of the lavish neighborhood doing their best to lose their pursuers. They crushed countless flowers and shrubs beneath their feet as they jumped from backyard to backyard. The sound of gunfire forced them to pump their muscles harder, run faster as the rain beat down on them without mercy.

Why was no one calling the police? A commotion like this would at least draw crowds of families curious about all the noise or the dead bodies littering the street and their neighbor's home.

Sherry tripped, skinning her hands and knees on the pavement. She had a second to cry in pain before Cara was already pulling her up to continue.

"I can't. It's too hard." Sherry cried, breathing laboriously as her lips trembled. "Can we take a break?" She struggled to contain her tears, knowing full well it wasn't the best time to start crying.

"I'm sorry, Sherry but not here. We have to keep moving," Cara warned, glancing behind her. She saw no one and didn't hear any gunshots, but that didn't make it safe. "I can't let them take you, Sherry. Come on, just a bit more, and we'll find help."

Sherry nodded before she began to run again. However, one step, and she yelped, wincing in pain as she put her weight on her knee. It hurt worse than when she fell off her bike while trying to teach herself. She was alone and had to patch things up herself until her mother finally noticed days later.

"What's wrong?"

"M-my knee hurts," Sherry whimpered, watching the older girl move closer to inspect the wound. Blood trickled down the little girl's legs before getting washed away by the rain.

"That looks bad," Cara sighed, turning her back to the little girl before squatting down. "Here, get on my back. I'll get us out of here."

With Sherry clinging tightly to her neck, Cara ran to the edge of the residential area and down a dirt path leading straight into the Arkley mountains. She hoped to find a hiding spot for them to catch their breath and figure out what to do.

They hid inside the base of a tree, only having each other to keep warm. The spiderwebs were all forgotten, as the girls' fear was now too exhausted. There was nothing left to spare for the tiny arachnoids fuming over their ruined webs.

What felt like hours passed, and the girls grew too cold and tired. The little Sherry's knee wasn't looking so good, the bleeding had stopped, but an infection may already be brewing beneath the skin given where they've been.

Seeing the young girl wince every so often, Cara decided it was time to move again. She needed to find help. Perhaps the men all killed each other during whatever conflict brewed up tonight.

Carrying the young girl on her back again, Cara left the forest to walk along a side road. She was on the lookout for a passing car. But their luck was too dry at this time in the night despite the rain.

"Thank you, Cara. I don't think I would've made out without you."

"I... didn’t do anything. I couldn't fight. All I did was grab you and run. God, I'm so damn useless." Cara let out a long sigh and stared down at her feet.

"You're helping me now, aren't you? You could've just left me or...or listened to those men and gave me up, but you didn't. I will definitely ask daddy to give you a raise." Sherry giggled and rested her head against Cara's back. She knew that if her friend wasn't there tonight, she would've been in the dark all alone or worse. She might've stayed hidden in that closet only to be found by the armed men. She didn't have anyone to develop the skills of hide and seek with.

"Oh, you better, or else I'm suing somebody for the years shaved off my life tonight. Your dad sure pissed off some powerful people. Who sends a whole armed squad on some doctor's house?"

"Daddy says there are people who wanted to buy his medicine, use it for bad things. But he told them no, and now they want to steal it." For a split second, Cara imagined Mr. Birkin dealing drugs with a gang, but that image didn't last long. The disheveled, nervous reck of a man with a million things to do simply didn't look the type.

"Did he keep it in the house?"

"I don't think so," Sherry shook her head.

The older girl pondered over it, agreeing with Sherry. If Mr. Birkin had kept this medicine in his home, then surely the security would've been better. And he especially wouldn't leave his only child alone in the house with it.

"They wanted to use you as a hostage. Probably force your dad to give them what they wanted."

"Daddy probably wouldn't care if they took me,"

"Hey! don't say that. Your parents love Sherry." Cara stopped walking and gave the little girl a shake.

"Then where are they? They are never home."

"Their work is very...important, I suppose,"

"More than me?"

"No! Not like that. I mean... it's just a lot-"

"Cara, look! There is a car coming!" the little girl jumped with excitement on Cara's exhausted back, but she paid it no mind as her eyes greedily drank the glow of the headlights coming down the road.

"Thank god," Cara exhaled deeply, feeling as if all her worries had just vanished. "Wait here, I will flag it down."

Cara stood in the middle of the road and waved both arms, trying to get the driver's attention like a madwoman. She definitely looked deranged, out in the rain in the wee hours of the morning. The headlights became increasingly more blinding as the car came closer. She couldn't tell the color of the car or anything about the driver.

The driver showed no signs of stopping, the speed fast and steady. "Please stop!" Cara shouted, her eyes pleading. "Please!" She won't waste the opportunity, god knows when the next car will drive by. She refused to move, standing her ground as the car sped towards her. Neither her racing heart nor the car slowed. For a moment, she thought it was the end, becoming roadkill at seventeen, having done nothing with her life.

But then it stopped, screeching to a halt inches from her shivering form. Cara let her hands fall to the hood, knees almost buckling beneath her. The hood felt warm and soothing against her icy skin. As she moved to the driver's side, she recognized the design of the police cruiser, one explicitly assigned to the STARS unit. Her heart pounded as a new source of hope offered itself to her. This seemed too good to be true.

"Thank you so much for stopping, officer! It's been a hellish night." Cara said, glancing over with a smile at Sherry, who responded with her own.

The door opened, and the officer stepped out, shining a bright flashlight at Cara. She was blinded and had to shut her eyes. "I know this will sound crazy, but please hear me out. I was babysitting this little girl when a group of armed men broke into the house and then-"

"Where is Sherry?" He asked all too calmly. Cara frowned. It wasn't his sense of calmness that unnerved her. It was the familiarity of his voice.

'Of course, it was too fucking good to be true.'

"Wait, how did you know her name was Sherry?" Cara demanded, taking several steps back. While his shades were missing, his slicked blond hair stood out to her. The rain dowsed her like buckets of ice. "You..."

"I won't ask again," He warned, walking towards her with a hand resting on his belt, ready to draw his gun. His eyes were an icy blue, radiating with the power of his cunning intelligence.

"I won't give her to you. Sherry, run-"

"Uncle Albert? Is that you?" The young girl limped over to them with newfound vigor and threw her arms around the older man. He hugged her for a moment before pushing her away, his eyes searching her for injuries.

"Sherry, no! get away from him," Cara jumped forward, snatching the little girl's hand, pulling her away.

"It's ok, Cara. He's daddy's friend." The little girl shook Cara's grip off her before hopping back into Wesker's arms. Sherry snuggled into the warmth of the older man, completely oblivious to the way Wesker stood, looking down at Cara. He cocked his head to the side with a conceited expression. Clenching her fists, she decided she didn't like him.

Wesker loomed closer to Cara, enjoying the way she stumbled back to get out of his way, almost tripping over her own feet. He deliberately bumped into her shoulder as he carried Sherry to the other side of the car, settling her gently into the back seat. He could've chosen the closest door, but where was the fun in that?

Cara stood dumbfounded, staring as the man who had only hours ago slit a man's throat and was now slapping a bandage on a little girl's knee in the backseat of a cruiser. She watched him with narrowed eyes as he tended to the little girl, finally noticing his police uniform.

"Who are you? Why are you pretending to be a cop? Who were those people? What are you going to do with Sherry?"

"I am an officer of the law."

"That's a load of shit. Say, in the slim, extremely slim chance you are actually a cop, shouldn't there be more...officers? Backup? A news station? A public statement? Something like this wouldn't happen in Raccoon and no one crowding in to watch."

"I handled it," Wesker said, strapping Sherry in the backseat before shutting the door. The little girl was already on her way to snoozing off.

"I don't understand, why-"

"Enough with the questions." He hissed, grabbing her arm. He found the little thing a pretty sight, but that mouth of hers was dangerous. "You better kill off that curiosity of yours before it lands you somewhere you'll never leave as a warm body. Don't be another babysitter we have to send a severance package to."

"You're going to kill me," Cara's laugh was void of humor, succeeding in tipping her tears down her cheeks.

"Just be quiet and get in the car."

"Why should I? You could change your mind in a split second and put a bullet in my head."

Wesker twisted her arm behind her back before shoving her against the passenger door. "Then don't tempt me," his hot breath tickled her ear as he delivered his warning. "And if I did go for it, I wouldn't simply kill you. I'll get everyone you love. One unfortunate accident after the next." His hand trailed up her back to wrap around the back of her neck. She whimpered as he shoved her face harder against the glass.

Cara shuddered, processing the gravity of her situation. The man was a trained killer and supposedly an officer. She had already witnessed him kill, had felt his icy blade to her neck. There was no doubt in her mind that he would deliver on his warning. The real question was when?

The first person to cross her mind was Claire. Truly, there were so few people that Cara cared about and who cared for her. The Redfield siblings only had each other, and Cara couldn't live with the guilt of being the cause of her friend's death. Claire was her anchor when everything spun out of control in her life. She would do anything to protect those important to her.

"Fine," She grumbled, taking out her frustration on her bottom lip. She sunk her teeth into the cracked flesh until she tasted the metallic flavor, but that didn't help get rid of the bad taste already in her mouth.

"Great, now we can finally get out of the rain." Wesker stepped away from Cara, already missing the warmth of her body. Perhaps he should've prolonged it for a few more minutes, drove her further into tears. The thought alone stirred something inside of him.

The tension left Cara's body as her arms were freed, and she rubbed her abused muscles, cursing the bastards' existence. She would do all she could to never again make his acquaintance. He started the car as soon as she was seated.

She banged her head against the window as he suddenly leaned over her. "The hell are you doing? I knew it! You already changed your mind," She hissed, failing miserably to shove his hands away.

"Safety first." He purred, a low chuckle leaving his lips as he reached over and buckled her seatbelt in one swift movement. She sat straighter than she ever did her whole life and simply stared straight ahead. She decided that if she simply ignored his existence, he would cease to be, and she'd wake up from this horrible, horrible nightmare. Her body has to be taking revenge for all the heart-disease heavy foods she'd been stuffing herself with, concocting such an awful nightmare for her. How is this a wake-up call if she couldn't pinch even herself awake?

It took too much effort for Cara to keep her eyes on the road. She immediately attributed it to sitting next to a killer. There was definitely no other reason. She kept shifting in her seat, unable to stay still. On the other hand, Sherry was out cold in the back, a fuzzy blanket draped over her.

Cara's fidgeting halted as Wesker tossed something into her lap. She picked it up with furrowed brows, inspecting it. It was some kind of badge, but not just any badge. It identified him as Albert Wesker, captain of the STARS alpha team. It looked legit, something similar to what Chris was issued. She has a thousand questions, but the man with the answers was the most uncooperative bastard she ever met. One more question and she's sure he will throw her out of the moving car.

'He was a cop, a crooked one. How many more in the police could be trusted? Who could help her? Was Chris- No! he wouldn't be part of something like this.' Cara's thought, mind fighting itself, too many thoughts wanted to be the focus.

"You were quite the shatter box not too long ago. Why so quiet now?" Wesker asked, enjoying the sequence of emotions flicker across her face.

"You practically told me to shut up," she tossed the badge onto the dashboard before resting her head against the window. She knew she was in way over her head.

"I said to stop the questions. You can still talk,"

"No."

"Alright then, suit yourself then."

It must've been the warmth of the car or the fatigue of the night that lulled Cara to sleep because she was startled awake by a ridiculously high-speed bump. Her sleep hazed eyes scanned her surroundings before she sat up straight, recognizing where she was.

Wesker had parked the cruiser right in front of her apartment building, a living place for the lesser members of society as it was all they could afford. Her wide eyes found him, and she audibly swallowed. "How did you know where I live."

"Of course, I help my dear friend run background checks on all his employees. One in his position needs to be incredibly careful with whom he uses." Wesker said, reaching an arm to rest on the back of her seat. She recoiled away as if stung by a bee.

"Is this your home, Cara? Can I come with you?" Sherry asked, having woken from her sleep minutes before. She leaned forward, resting her chin on her uncle's muscular arm.

"I-"

"Maybe next time Sherry. After we drop off Cara here, we're going straight to your parents." Wesker said, a sense of finality in his tone that had the little girl obediently return to her seat.

Cara opened her mouth to protest him knowing her name but remembered his background check and shut her mouth. He must know everything legally in the record on her, including her parent's colorful histories.

Unbuckling his seatbelt, Cara was surprised to see him exit the car. He came around to her side and knocked on the window, mentioning for her to get out. He barely gave her space to get out as he stood right by the passenger door with his arm resting on the roof of the car. She was forced to brush past him as his towering frame refused to step back. She caught the scent of gunpowder, soap, and the faintest traces of a cologne. And of course, blood. Despite her terror, she found herself taking a deeper inhale than she intended.

"Tonight, you watched Sherry until her uncle came home, and then they gave you a ride home because of the rain. Nothing. Else. Happened. You understand?" Wesker said, bending down to be at eye level with the trembling girl. With surprising tenderness, he moved her hair out of her face, but his eyes were anything but. She stood very still, wishing the ground would swallow her up. Her attempt at looking away was met with a firm grip on her chin, forcing her to look at him. "Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal." She answered, voice cracking under the weight of her emotions. A lump formed in her throat as her eyes welled up, but she refused to cry.

"Don't mess up if you can't handle the consequences." Satisfied with his work, he stepped away, watching as the girl raced home.

"You can be so mean, Uncle Albert," Sherry whined once the officer returned to the driver's seat.

"Really? I didn't notice."

[duhragonball]

Yamcha if you're still doing the character meme?

I am still doing these, and I’m enjoying it, so keep ‘em coming.   Before I start, let me promote the original post, in case anyone else wants to start their own thing.  I’d link to the OP, but I guess they deleted this from their blog, probably because their notifications went nuts.

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like them: Let’s be honest, Yamcha doesn’t get a lot of big “hero moments” in Dragon Ball.   Or Dragon Ball Z, or Dragon Ball GT, or Dragon Ball Su-- Look, you get the idea.   In most arcs, he’s the first one to get benched.   In tournaments, he always loses in the first round.   He spent the King Piccolo Saga recovering from a broken leg.    Against the Saiyans, he was the first one to die.  Against the Androids, he was nearly killed and had to sit out the rest of that arc.   In the Buu Sagas he was retired.    In a number of major storylines, he just isn’t there, because no one called him.

But he remains a fixture in the franchise anyway, because he’s always showing up for more.  Let’s take the Buu Saga as an example.   It didn’t surprise me to find out he had retired, mainly from a dramatic standpoint.    There’s a lot of new characters in the Buu arc, and it made sense for some of the older characters to step aside and make room for them.   But he’s still there, because he wants to see Goku one last time, and he wants to hang out with his friends and watch some of them kick the crap out of each other.   It was kind of sad to see him stay behind while the others rushed off to follow the Supreme Kai, but he’s retired, after all.    Also, they didn’t stop to fill him in on what was happening.    I suspect he might have tagged along if they asked.  

As it was, he still ended up getting involved, and he was with the Dragon Team right up until Super Buu cornered them on the Lookout.     And the next time we see him, he’s on the Grand Kai Planet with Krillin, and King Kai seriously considers sending them in to take on Buu in case Goku and Vegeta can’t get the job done.   

And that’s a big deal, because it even comes up in the anime.   King Kai tells them that he arranged for them to keep their bodies as a precaution, but he’s totally in favor of letting them remain on the Grand Kai Planet with all of the other honored warriors, like Goku.  So you start with this desert bandit, a highwayman without a highway, probably because he’s afraid of all the women that use the interstate.   But he gradually overcomes his fears and insecurities, never completely, but just enough to put one foot in front of the other and become a better man.    And finally he ends up receiving a place among the great heroes of old.  

So why doesn’t that get more attention?   You could make a whole epic story out of that, except it’s not Yamcha’s story.  He’s a supporting character.   So the franchise itself tends to play it down.    Even Yamcha doesn’t really take it all that seriously.   I don’t know if that’s modesty or cluelessness or Big Himbo Energy or what, but that’s why it’s so easy for everyone to write him off as a loser or a failure.   They’re overlooking the bigger picture.

The best way to illustrate this is with this TFS short that serves as an epilogue to their DBZ Abridged series.   Yamcha goes back to playing baseball for the Taitans, only to get fired, because he’s so talented that he’s literally broken the game, and no one buys tickets anymore.    But he gets a gigantic severance package, and he still goes down in history as the greatest ballplayer in history.  What always gets to me is that they have to explain to him that this is actually a win.  As his coach puts it, “you do nothing but win.”   

Like Yamcha himself, we often see him from the lens of these insane Dragon Ball adventures, where you have to have glowy hair and a hot cyborg wife to be considered a success.   But to the rest of the world, he’s a jacked up millionaire with fantastic hair, and he’s a real sweetheart.   Who couldn’t like this dude?

Why I don’t: As you may have noticed, I tend to only use this section to talk about why I disliked the characters initially.   I have to think back to 1999 when I was still having trouble keeping track of who’s who.   In particular, I found Yamcha’s presence frustrating because he looked and dressed almost exactly like Goku, but not quite, which seemed bizarre.    Later, I picked up on the context, and it didn’t bother me as much.  

Yamcha does have a bit of an overconfident streak in some situations, which might look like unfounded arrogance, but I think it’s really just his carefree nature and enthusiastic can-do spirit.   He was confident about their chances against the Saiyans, but I don’t think that was him being cocky.   He just knew they had all trained hard and he was stronger than he’d ever been.    But that’s easy for people to jump on as a reason to hate the guy.  

Future Trunks claimed that he fooled around while he was involved with Bulma, but come on.    Does anyone really buy that?    Besides, at best, that would only apply to Future Yamcha, the one who died in the other timeline.   Once Trunks changed the past, all bets were off.

Favorite episode (scene if movie): I’m gonna get a little nuts here and go with TFS’s playthrough of Legacy of Goku I, where they decided to level up Yamcha and have him solo Broly.

Basically, in an RPG game like this, Wolf Fang Fist can do monster damage, so they maxed out Yamcha’s stats to wreck the game’s hidden superboss.  You have to skip to 1:40:00 or so to see the successful attempt, but I loved this video.   This is where I learned to respect the utterance of “Roga... fufuken!”  Broly probably would have respected it, too, except he died from all those hits he took.

Favorite season/movie: You know, that fight with Tien was a classic.   Not sure it’s in my top ten, but it’s on a lot of people’s lists, and I absolutely get that.

Dumb as it may sound, I enjoyed seeing Yamcha in the hospital, wrestling with his own despair as he recuperated from his broken leg.   And when he shows up at the end to congratulate Tien and accepts Tien’s apology, well, like I said, Yamcha has this great character arc, but it’s easy to overlook with everything else that goes on.

Favorite line: I forget which game it was in, maybe Budokai 3, but one of his pre-fight taunts is “Watch this, Puar!  I’m gonna win!”, which always makes me think of Puar sitting just off-camera, watching the action from a little lawn chair.  

Favorite outfit:

I may take some heat for this, but I like the Androids/Cell Saga version of Yamcha, with the short, spiky hair.  This dude’s long, luxurious rockstar ‘do is a national treasure, sure, but I dig this look more.  

Also, I consider Yamcha to be the only guy from the Turtle School who pulls off the slippers and no-blue-undershirt look.   It looks off when I see it on Krillin and Goku, but with Yamcha it just feels right. 

OTP: This guy gets shipped with a lot of people, probably because he’s one of the major characters without an established love interest.   Folks still carry a torch for Bulma, some people ship him with Tien, Frieza hit on him in FighterZ, and I’m still trying to make sense of that.   He flirts with your character in the Xenoverse games.    Years ago, I considered doing something with that, but I’ve fleshed out my OC enough to where I don’t think that fits. 

At the end of the day, I can only see Yamcha getting together with @cozymochi ‘s OC, Marzi.  

Brotp: Tien, Krillin, Goku.  Hell, I always figured Yamcha was one of the few people Vegeta could get along with to some extent.  

I mean, Tien couldn’t stand to be one the same planet as Vegeta, but Yamcha keeps coming over to have hot dogs at Bulma’s place, long after the Namekians have left.  

Head Canon: He’s Luffa’s type, don’t get me wrong.    I just don’t see any room in my fic for a whirlwind courtship.    The stars just don’t align.

Unpopular opinion: I’m not really behind this notion that they should give the humans more stuff to do in future series.   When it comes to supporting characters, sometimes they get phased out, and there’s no point in phasing them back in unless there’s a compelling story idea for them.   

I think it’s dumb how they teased Yamcha in the Tournament of Power prelude, only to leave him out of the tournament itself.    On the other hand, they put Tien on the team and barely used him, which tells me that even if they’d put Yamcha on the team, it wouldn’t have amounted to anything.   

I get it, people love these characters and want to see them used more, but I’d rather have one strong Yamcha story than a hundred non-starters.  And at this point, I think the only thing anyone can do is rely on fan-created content.    Be the change you want to see in the world.

A wish: Crap, it’s after ten pm.    I dunno, I wish Marzi was canon.  

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: I feel like the character’s already been through worse than I could come up with for him.   

5 words to best describe them: Cat loves food, yeah yeah yeah.   That’s six, but who cares?

My nickname for them: Yeah, I don’t have one.

[lightshadowverisimilitude]

The Uncle Trap

@sassassassins is phenomenal and has sent me so many pretty screenshots for my episode summary project!!

As a thank you: Post-cannon, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng forced to cooperate to rescue their disaster!nephew, with guest appearances from Lan Wangji, Sizhui, and a very startled troll. 

~*~

The inn was neither the worst nor the best he’d stayed in during his travels. The wine was better than that sour swill from the last place, but, of course, it had nothing on Emperor’s Smile. The food was edible, the floor in his room was clean, and the table was not sticky. It was as much as he could ask for, and better than he had most days. 

He was eating his way through a plate of greasy spiced chicken when a commotion at the door caught his attention. He blinked at the figure silhouetted against the last of the light. For one chest-compressing moment, he thought it was Lan Wangji, but then the figure moved, too animated, too quickly for Lan Wangji. 

“Lan Sizhui?”  

“Wei-qianbei!” He darted in between tables, gracefully avoiding hitting anyone, even when other patrons turned around quickly to see what the fuss was about. 

Wei Wuxian watched, bemused, as Sizhui came to a somewhat messy halt in front of him and offered a quick salute. 

“It’s Jin Ling,” he said in a rush that caught Wei Wuxian’s heart somewhere between his breastbone and his voicebox. “We were on a night hunt - it was supposed to just be a simple haunting!”

Keeping the rising panic off his face and out of his voice, Wei Wuxian pressed, “What happened?” 

“It was so fast - something took him. I heard him screaming, and then he was gone.” Sizhui looked up at him hopefully, as though Wei Wuxian might snap his fingers and pull Jin Ling out of thin air. He filed that thought away - maybe he could do that, with the right set of spells - and stood quickly. He scattered a handful of coins on the table, probably too much, but he didn’t want to take the time to count them out.

As they ran out of the inn and down the street, Sizhui gave him a rundown of their hunt, the hungry ghost they’d dispatched, and the blur of motion that had snatched Jin Ling, screaming, from the back of their party. Wei Wuxian cursed again at his inability to fly, and made no protest whatsoever to jumping up alongside Sizhui for the trip. It would be quick by air, but convincing Little Apple to get him there any sooner than next week would have been a nightmare. 

“Go to Cloud Recesses,” Wei Wuxian ordered, hopping down when they were a few feet from the ground in the last place Jin Ling had been seen. If there was some kind of junior-cultivator eating monster up there, the last thing he needed was having to keep an eye on Sizhui while he was hunting for his disaster of a nephew. 

“Wei-qianbei!”

“Go tell His Excellency that the Jin sect leader is missing!” Wei Wuxian ordered. “I’ll probably already have him before you can duck around Old Man Lan to get to Lan Zhan, so just go.”

Face twisted with worry for his friend, Sizhui finally nodded and took back to the air. Wei Wuxian was vaguely surprised that he went so quickly, but, then, he must have been terrified for Jin Ling, and, of course, he would want Lan Wangji. Perhaps the greater surprise should have been that Sizhui came for him first, though that might have been only a matter of proximity.

It was full dark by then, but Wei Wuxian lit a fire talisman and did his best to search the area for any clues. Unfortunately, it was a crossroads, and well travelled, so he couldn’t pick out any footprints. He ventured a little ways off the road in the direction Sizhui had indicated, but he was worried that he might destroy some vital clue in the dark, and was forced to stop.

Sitting cross-legged against a tree, he pulled Chenqing out and cautiously played a few notes. His stomach twisted in knots as he did. What would he do if Jin Ling’s corpse came shambling out of the trees? In any event, he didn’t have to find out. He was playing softly so he didn’t accidentally summon a whole army, and the only dead he would summon would be those very close by. One lone spirit did manifest, a man dressed in ragged homespun with a gaping mouth. He wasn’t even strong enough to speak, so Wei Wuxian couldn’t ask him if he’d witnessed anything at the crossroads. After a few minutes of listening to him moan piteously, Wei Wuxian sighed and put him to rest. He continued to play, but no other spirits came to investigate.

As soon as the sky was light enough to make out the details of his own shoes, he was back on his feet and combing through the underbrush. A short distance away from the road, he found a tangle of golden threads caught on a tree branch, and some fifteen feet further on, a snapped branch even higher up. Whatever had taken Jin Ling, hadn’t carried him on the ground. It narrowed down the list a lot, but not enough to know what he was walking into. 

“Hey, you!” 

Wei Wuxian froze at the familiar voice and turned only reluctantly to see Jiang Cheng wading through the underbrush with a look on his face to make thunderclouds cry. He stopped when he recognized Wei Wuxian. Around his wrist, Zidian spit and crackled purple lightning. 

“What the hell are you doing here? If you-”

Wei Wuxian interrupted him before he could finish that accusation and force Wei Wuxian to punch him in the face. He knew it would take a long time before they would have any real trust between them again, if ever, but if Jiang Cheng could suspect him of hurting his own nephew, his shijie’s son, Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure how they could come back from that. 

“Sizhui brought me last night,” he said, turning away so he didn’t have to watch Jiang Cheng’s response.

Jiang Cheng grunted. He was silent for a moment, and then offered, “Ouyang Zizhen made it to Lotus Pier in the middle of the night.” He glared at Wei Wuxian, but jerked his chin up to indicate the fluffy bundle of gold threads in Wei Wuxian’s hand. “What did you find?” 

Handing it over, Wei Wuxian returned to the trail of broken branches. Muttering under his breath something about how he would cut his nephew’s legs clean off this time, Jiang Cheng followed after him. Wei Wuxian glanced back at him as they drifted apart to look for further clues. Jiang Cheng looked pale and drawn, his mouth tight with anxiety and brows pulled together like they’d been sewn that way. He probably hadn’t slept any more than Wei Wuxian had the previous night. 

“Anything?” Wei Wuxian called back when his scant trail of broken branches dried up and there were no more convenient wisps of fabric to go on. Couldn’t the boy at least have managed to drop some beads or something? He owed Jin Ling a lesson on how to be inconvenient to captors and make a good trail for his uncles to follow if he ever got snatched again. They had to get him back first. 

“Nothing,” Jiang Cheng said after a tense moment. “Ouyang Zizhen said he was screaming murder like he was being eaten alive.” The last came out in a small, worried voice. 

“No blood,” Wei Wuxian said, though the lack of it was not really a comfort. It had been raining the day before, hadn’t it? When had it stopped? He thought it had still been drizzling a little when he’d gone into the inn late in the afternoon, and Jin Ling would have already been gone for hours by that time. He was being dragged away screaming murder while Wei Wuxian was eating greasy food and congratulating himself on having enough money for an inn with clean floors and wine that wouldn’t burn through his stomach. 

Sizhui wouldn’t have known exactly where he was, though Wei Wuxian did his best to make sure Sizhui had a general idea of his whereabouts in case he needed something. It had been maybe five hours of hard flying straight from the inn to the crossroads, so if it had taken a few hours on top of that for Sizhui to find him, and presumably some time trying to find Jin Ling himself, then whoever - whatever - had Jin Ling could be half-way to the moon. 

They doubled back to make sure they hadn’t missed anything, and then turned without discussion for the road. There was a village a short way up the hill. With an angry huff, Jiang Cheng unsheathed Sandu and stopped in the road, glaring at Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian just stared back incredulously. 

“Well?” Jiang Cheng demanded after a minute had passed in awkward silence.

Jiang Cheng couldn’t possibly mean for them to fight right there! Even if Wei Wuxian had taken Jin Ling, what good would it do for Jiang Cheng to kill him in the road with no idea of where he was being held? Wei Wuxian wanted to call him an idiot for it, but he also didn’t want to fight about it at all, he wanted to find Jin Ling. Wei Wuxian put a hand on Chenqing, but Jiang Cheng just rolled his eyes and held out his left hand impatiently. The gesture startled the breath out of Wei Wuxian’s lungs when he realized what it meant.

"It's too slow to walk," Jiang Cheng said ungraciously, but his eyes went left and right and his sword hand moved unconsciously over his stomach. 

Wei Wuxian rubbed the back of his neck. Even though Sizhui was so much his junior (depending on how one counted years, they might have been about the same age) and his adopted son, it hadn't felt awkward to be carried by him. Jiang Cheng though…

Sighing, Wei Wuxian took Jiang Cheng's hand, and they jumped up on Sandu together. Jiang Cheng pulled Wei Wuxian against his side to make him as manageable a package as possible, but his hand was fisted in Wei Wuxian’s robes like his grip was the only thing holding them both up. Wei Wuxian almost laughed, remembering how impressed he'd been when Lan Wangji had carried him and Su She together on Bichen. Back then, Lan Wangji had carried him by the scruff like he was a naughty kitten. Jiang Cheng glared ahead as if daring Wei Wuxian to say a single word to him. 

Because Wei Wuxian never had been able to let a challenge go unanswered, he made a loud noise and asked, “Can’t you go faster?”

They were too close together for Jiang Cheng to give Wei Wuxian the full benefit of his glare, but he still turned his head with his teeth clenched tightly together. If they hadn’t been going after Jin Ling, Wei Wuxian thought it was very likely Jiang Cheng would have thrown him off right then. Without even meaning to, he clutched Jiang Cheng tighter, just in case. The last time he’d been thrown from a sword in flight, the Burial Mounds had reached up and grabbed him out of the air, and things had gone sideways afterwards. 

“Hey, hey, I’m kidding!” Wei Wuxian said, but Jiang Cheng still dropped him the last six feet when they came to the village. Wei Wuxian thought it was only polite to stumble and run headlong into a fence post, since Jiang Cheng had gone through the effort and all. 

Looking pleased with himself, Jiang Cheng descended with something like grace. People were already starting to gather, since they had been seen while they were still in the air. It was a small village of only maybe two dozen houses clustered around a pair of roads with a single crossroads. Being so far up a mountain not known for anything in particular, they probably didn’t get a lot of visitors. 

“A cultivator has gone missing,” Jiang Cheng said with no preamble at all. He glared around at the gathered villagers, already cataloguing them in his head like they could possibly be suspects. “What has been happening on this mountain lately?” 

No one answered him immediately. They shot him a lot of nervous or annoyed glances. It was still early enough in the day that not everyone had left for the fields, and there were a dozen or so men and younger people sprinkled in among the old folks and children. They had started to mutter amongst themselves - who did this guy think he was, just making demands like that? Just because he was a cultivator and wore fancy clothes, he thought he could order them around? 

“Ah!” Wei Wuxian said, dusting himself off and strolling over to lean on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder. He patted at Jiang Cheng’s chest, which got him a nasty glare, and continued, “Sandu Sengshou didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. He’s a bear early in the mornings! See, the cultivator is our nephew, and we’re worried, you know?” Jiang Cheng pinched him hard, but Wei Wuxian didn’t budge. 

Sympathy rippled around the gathered cloud. An old granny even reached out to pat Wei Wuxian’s arm. 

“Lots of folks going missing on this mountain,” she said. She only had maybe three teeth left, but her smile was kind. “Just last night, the woodcutter’s boy gone.” 

Jiang Cheng stopped subtly trying to pinch the life out of Wei Wuxian’s side and they exchanged worried looks. Most creatures didn’t take a new victim until they didn’t need the old one any more. They had to hope there was more than one monster, or maybe Jin Ling had managed to escape and that was why it had gone after another snack in the night. 

They questioned the villagers more in depth, Wei Wuxian letting Jiang Cheng go so he could help the old granny to her chair in the shade. There were ten small villages on the mountain, and this one was neither the biggest nor the smallest. No one could even agree on a name for it, but there were a dozen stories of children, mothers, fathers, old men, and young women going missing. A lot of it had to be an exaggeration, or there would be no people for a hundred miles around with how many folks they claimed had gone missing. 

Always at night, they said, some giant shadow would swoop down and then the person would be gone, screaming high up in the air. The sound of their screams always went higher up the mountain, and thunder followed them. According to the villagers, no one had ever been recovered, and theories ran the gamut from an angry mountain god to wild, flying dogs. Wei Wuxian really wouldn't be able to handle it if he found a wild flying dog. It was bad enough that they ran so fast on the ground, giving them wings just wouldn’t be fair. 

Wei Wuxian frowned as he listened to another such story, this time a whole village just vanishing overnight. Jin Ling had been taken in the morning, surely, and from a group of cultivators. The juniors were young, but they were a promising bunch, and a few of them were quite strong, even considering their youth. Sizhui, Jin Ling, and Ouyang Zizhen were already on their way to fame. 

“Thank you, granny,” Wei Wuxian said. He helped her peel an orange and handed her a section to suck on before turning the task back to the woman’s youngest granddaughter and meeting Jiang Cheng in the middle of the road again. 

“Could have been a hungry ghost,” Jiang Cheng said as they turned to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. 

“Sizhui said they found and suppressed one. Could there be more?” 

Jiang Cheng hesitated. “It’s a small area for two hungry ghosts that strong.” 

“Hmm,” Wei Wuxian agreed. He took Chenqing out and spun her idly between his fingers while he thought. It was unlikely that they were making up all the stories wholesale. All legends started from some kernel of truth, and there were too many people reporting missing loved ones, and not just that they knew someone who heard once that so-and-so’s husband’s great uncle saw something. 

“What has that fool boy gotten into?” Jiang Cheng gritted out. He unsheathed Sandu again, and Wei Wuxian didn’t even hesitate to jump up alongside him. 

~*~

They did find another hungry ghost, just not a very hungry one. It looked like it had been a young girl in life, but it was barely even corporeal and its voice sounded like it was very far away. She couldn’t have been dead very long, and Wei Wuxian doubted she’d had any victims yet. If they let her go about her business, in maybe a decade or so, someone would come to the mountain to hunt her. 

Where was Lan Wangji with his guqin when they needed to talk to a muttering spirit, anyways? Wei Wuxian put a hand out to stop Jiang Cheng from suppressing her. He put Chenqing to his lips and ignored the way Jiang Cheng’s own lips narrowed down into a disapproving line that reminded Wei Wuxian a lot of Madam Yu. 

Still, Jiang Cheng didn’t try to stop him, just huffed out a breath and spun away. Wei Wuxian played, but softly, just for her. She hadn’t even really noticed them before, but after the first couple notes, she turned to face them. Her head dropped down toward her shoulder and she opened and closed her mouth a few times. Very faintly, Wei Wuxian heard a click-click-click noise, the memory of teeth. 

He didn’t want to stir up her resentful energy anymore than it already was, so he just plucked at the ragged edges of her form with the music, nudged her along, suggested to whatever passed for a mind in a hungry ghost to take them to someone hungry like her. There was still something on the mountain grabbing people, and most creatures didn’t grab people except to eat them in one way or another. 

She made an unhappy gurgling noise and fought against him, but finally relented. They followed after her. She was most visible in shadow, but the sun was bright, and they often lost her when she moved out from under the trees. The only way Wei Wuxian still knew to follow her was the tickling pull on the back of his neck. 

Without making her into a real monster, they had to follow at her pace, and she hadn’t been dead long enough to realize that she didn’t have to walk like a human anymore. She was also a weak spirit, and it was difficult to hold onto her attention span enough to keep her going in the right direction. 

Still, his playing called other spirits, and Jiang Cheng was kept busy fighting them off. 

“Even like this, you have to be a nuisance,” Jiang Cheng complained, flicking the lingering resentful energy off his blade. It spattered black on the ground and started smoking in the sunlight. 

Wei Wuxian couldn’t stop playing or he’d lose the hungry ghost, so he manfully ignored the comment and continued up the path. She led them up some steep switchbacks, and then onto a plateau densely covered in pines. Once there, however, she stopped and gave Wei Wuxian a baleful look, refusing to go any further. 

Not breaking the song, Wei Wuxian stepped sideways and nudged Jiang Cheng with one elbow. He nodded toward her, and Jiang Cheng stepped forward with a grunt to suppress her. Wei Wuxian was probably imagining her accustory shout, but it wasn’t his fault, really. He wanted to tell her that being a hungry ghost wasn’t any fun, and to hurry up and reincarnate into a better life. 

“What good are you?” Jiang Cheng asked. “We wasted a lot of daylight and cleared out a few decades of haunts, and Jin Ling is still missing!”

“There’s something up here she was afraid of,” Wei Wuxian said, massaging his jaw. They had walked for hours, and it was harder to play soft and sweet and keep it so focused than it was to call up an army. He probably could have woken up every corpse and ghost on the whole mountain and not been as sore. 

Jiang Cheng scoffed. “Hungry ghosts don’t fear anything.” 

“Everything fears something,” Wei Wuxian told him softly, and then pointed toward the trees. The wind was picking up hard, and Wei Wuxian’s hair was whipping around his face like a flail, lashing at his cheeks. 

They moved into the cover of the trees, but they had only gone maybe fifteen minutes before they heard a whistle. Wei Wuxian recognized the tune and sighed aloud. At his side, Jiang Cheng went tight with blossoming irritation, and sped up his steps. 

Jin Ling was sitting with his back to them, tossing seeds up into the air and attempting to catch them in his mouth. He missed three, and stopped to whistle another few notes of one of Wei Wuxian’s own songs. If he’d put any power into at all, he’d probably have a few hungry spirits of his own crawling up to him. 

“You little shit!” Jiang Cheng snapped. 

The seeds went flying into the air and Jin Ling jumped about three miles straight up. He held his sword in front of him, still sheathed, as if it would be any impediment to Jiang Cheng’s wrath at all. Wei Wuxian tried very hard to school his expression into something stern and disapproving, but the quick succession of expressions marching across Jin Ling’s face - shock, fear, stubbornness, back to fear - was just too much, and he had to hide his face in his hand. Relief poured through him in waves that almost came out as laughter, but then Jiang Cheng would probably turn on him, and he didn’t want to die. 

“I should break both of your legs!” Jiang Cheng shouted, grabbing Jin Ling by one arm and giving him a good shake. “Do you know you’re a sect leader? I had two dozen disciples following after me! They’re crawling all over this mountain by now looking for you, and probably as many Jin disciples too!”

“Uncle! I can explain!” Jin Ling tried, but didn’t get any further than that before Jiang Cheng was shaking him again. 

“I'll teach you to explain!” Jiang Cheng roared, somewhat nonsensically, but the effect was carried if Jin Ling’s wide eyes were anything to go by. 

Unable to hold back any longer, Wei Wuxian burst into laughter. Both of them turned on him at once with identical expressions of outrage. It made Wei Wuxian laugh even harder. Zidian snarled as it lashed out at the ground, and Wei Wuxian jumped, holding both hands up in surrender. 

“Alright, alright!” he called, dancing out of range of the whip while Jin Ling shoved at his uncle’s arm. 

“Don’t attack him, he didn’t do anything!” Jin Ling said.

“How are you taking his side?” Jiang Cheng demanded, going splotchy with anger. 

“I’m not! You’re being a bully!” Jin Ling returned. 

“Okay, okay, no one is taking my side!” Wei Wuxian said, interrupting them before they started fighting for real. “Jin Ling, where are you keeping the woodcutter’s boy?” 

Mouth already opened to shout at Wei Wuxian, Jin Ling stopped. His expression twisted in confusion. “What woodcutter’s boy?” 

“You must have him somewhere, so people would think there was still a monster up here kidnapping people,” Jiang Cheng prompted. “Where is he? If you took him from his village, I will string you up by your ankles and leave you there until your head pops up!”

“I didn’t!” Jin Ling said. 

Wei Wuxian drew in a breath to speak, but a sudden explosion of noise sounded deeper in the trees. At once, they pulled together. Suihua and Sandu came out with twin chimes, and Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng stepped apart to put Wei Wuxian between them. Eyeing the trees distrustfully, Wei Wuxian put Chenqing back to his lips and waited. 

Another great crash sounded - certainly the thunder the villagers had reported hearing - and somewhere the splintering crack of a tree coming down. With a roar, a troll burst into their clearing. It was twelve feet tall at least, face more closely resembling the rocky mountainside where it made its home, teeth like broken stones in its mouth. It bellowed at them so loudly that Wei Wuxian could feel the wind of its rancid breath. 

Before Wei Wuxian could get a single note out, the troll abruptly stopped. It made a peculiar choking noise. 

“Did it swallow a bug?” Jin Ling asked incredulously. 

“More like a bird,” Jiang Cheng answered.

The troll groaned, and then toppled over dead. 

For several long seconds, they all three just stared at it in dumb silence. Jiang Cheng turned to give Wei Wuxian a suspicious look, but Wei Wuxian just shrugged at him. He hadn’t done anything, he’d barely even got a breath in. 

“Uncle…” Jin Ling prompted with the same suspiciously narrowed eyes. 

“I didn’t!” Wei Wuxian insisted. 

“It didn’t just die on its own!” Jiang Cheng snapped, rounding on him. 

Wei Wuxian thought about letting them think he had somehow killed a mountain troll with the power of his thoughts alone, but he didn’t trust Jiang Cheng not to take that seriously and start some new crusade against him. He was only just starting to get to the point where he could give out his name in a new town and not get mobbed by angry townsfolk. 

The decision was taken from him shortly in any event. The distinctive song of a sword being dropped into its sheath had them all turning back to the trees. Lan Wangji stepped out from the shadows like a ghost himself, dressed splendidly in blue and silver, with only the smallest touches of white at the collar and the detailing on the breast. 

“Excellency!” Jin Ling stammered. 

“Excellency,” Jiang Cheng said flatly, glaring at Wei Wuxian. 

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian chirped and enjoyed very much the look of utter disgust on Jiang Cheng’s face. 

“Mmn,” was all Lan Wangji had to offer. 

“That damn Sizhui!” Jin Ling exploded before he could catch himself. “He was supposed to keep Hanguan-jun away, not invite him over!” 

Jiang Cheng cuffed him sharply, and he ducked, already complaining at the treatment, and didn’t Jiang Cheng think that was too much, striking another sect leader when their sects were in good standing? 

“The day I can’t cuff my own stupid nephew is the day I will take YungmengJiang to war against you!” Jiang Cheng said. He lifted his hand again, but he didn’t take another swing and Jin Ling, who danced out of his reach anyways. 

“The Jin sect would grind you into dust!” Jin Ling declared boldly. 

Jiang Cheng’s eyes widened. Wei Wuxian hurried to put a hand on his arm. “Don’t kill him. He’s my favorite nephew.” 

“I’m your only nephew,” Jin Ling reminded him somewhat peevishly. 

“Maybe if you two are going to go around declaring war, you should do it out of His Excellency’s hearing?” Wei Wuxian asked with a laugh. 

Jin Ling looked smug at the suggestion rather than rightly terrified. “That wouldn’t be enjoyable at all!” 

Of course, once Lan Wangji had stepped into conversational distance, he was quick to give his bows and put himself behind his uncles. Wei Wuxian laughed at the color spilling hectic-hot across Jin Ling’s face as Lan Wangji observed him with what must be the expression he gave all the sect leaders when they came to him with their problems and petty disputes. 

Slinging an arm over Jin Ling’s shoulders, Wei Wuxian tweaked the boy’s ear. “Oh, what fun we had together, right, Jiang Cheng?” He winked at Jiang Cheng, who gave Lan Wangji a sideways look before apparently deciding not to respond. Wei Wuxian patted Jin Ling on the shoulder. “You ever do anything like this again, and I’ll hold you down so your Uncle Cheng can do a good job breaking your legs, got it?” 

“I only did it so you idiots would talk to each other,” Jin Ling muttered, but he ducked out from under Wei Wuxian’s arm and edged closer to Jiang Cheng. 

“What a story they’ll make of this!” Wei Wuxian laughed. “A troll so big and powerful it took two sect leaders and the head cultivator to take it down!”

“And you,” Lan Wangji added. 

“Ah, well, what did I do? Maybe I’ll be the one who writes the story about His Excellency sweeping in to save the defenseless Yiling Patriarch,” he suggested, peering at Lan Wangji sideways and laughing when he only nodded. 

Making loud groaning noises as if they might fall over dead themselves, Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng retreated from them at once. Jiang Cheng had Jin Ling by the arm, but Jin Ling wasn’t fighting at all. 

Jiang Cheng stopped a short ways into the trees and turned back to point at Wei Wuxian. “Come to dinner,” he said, but as if it were a threat instead of an invitation. Next to him, Jin Ling beamed.

Wei Wuxian stared at them both blankly. “What?” 

“Don’t sneak through my territory like a thief anymore! Next time you come to Lotus Pier, come to dinner like a normal person and tell me you’re there to my face. Stop disrespecting me!” 

As roughly as it had been delivered, Jiang Cheng’s cheeks were touched with pink as he stared Wei Wuxian down. Wei Wuxian had crept through Lotus Pier or the surrounding territory a few times since he’d taken to the road, following night hunts, and maybe, maybe, missing the taste of roasted lotus seeds and the floral scent of the lakes when the lotus were in bloom. 

“I will,” Wei Wuxian said. What he didn’t say was that he thought he would never be allowed to walk upright into Lotus Pier again as long as Jiang Cheng was alive, and the notion was at once terrifying and filled him with smothering longing. Wei Wuxian didn’t trust himself to say anything other than that. 

Glaring at him a moment longer just for good measure, Jiang Cheng turned away again. He could be heard lecturing Jin Ling halfway down the mountain, apparently intent on making him walk all the way back to Carp Tower. 

“Lan Zhan, you saved me from an evil mountain troll.” 

Lan Wangji hiked an eyebrow at him, but he was quick to reach out to catch him when Wei Wuxian fainted dramatically into his arms. 

“You have to carry your damsel away now,” he prompted.

He didn’t have any right at all to be surprised, but he still was, just a little tiny bit, when Lan Wangji nodded and swept him up like a bride. Wei Wuxian laughed and squirmed to be put down, but Lan Wangji had decided on carrying him, and Wei Wuxian lacked every necessary kind of the strength it would take to get away. 

Without even doing Wei Wuxian the courtesy of pretending to struggle with holding him, Lan Wangji carried him back through the trees, bypassing the massive body of the mountain troll. He did finally set Wei Wuxian down on his feet when they found Sizhui waiting somewhat sheepishly deeper in, a rawboned teenager sitting dazed at his side. Presumably, he was the woodcutter’s boy, and immensely lucky that Jin Ling had gotten his friends involved in such a ridiculous farce.

“A-Yuan!” Wei Wuxian said, putting both fists on his hips. “Who taught you this kind of mischief, hm?” When Sizhui only flushed and looked down, Wei Wuxian sighed longsufferingly. “Well, I guess you’re my kid anyways, huh? You’re lucky there really was a troll.” 

Lan Wangji made a noise in the back of his throat and Sizhui flinched as though he'd been struck. He made a bow to Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian, and then, more deeply, to the traumatized boy. 

"Young Sir, please accept my deep apologies. If we had completed our investigation more thoroughly, you would not have been taken."

The boy looked up at him as though seeing through him. His mouth moved soundlessly. 

"You will return him to his family and remain there for a span of three months," Lan Wangji said. "You will be helpful."

"Lan Zhan," Wei Wuxian protested. "Three months?"

Lan Wangji met his eyes evenly. Wei Wuxian wasn't used to that immovable expression being turned on him anymore. He suddenly felt a lot of sympathy for those sect leaders trying to wheedle favors out of him.

Sizhui broke the tension by bowing again. "It is too lenient," he said.

"There will be more," Lan Wangji assured him. He turned away without another word, and Wei Wuxian slung an arm around Sizhui's shoulders. 

"I'll work on him so you aren't copying lines until you're forty. Tell me you won't do it again."

Sizhui swallowed hard, but nodded. "I won't do it again."

Craning his neck to make sure Lan Wangji was out of immediate hearing range, he set his forehead against Sizhui's. "Thank you."

Sizhui sucked in a quick breath and pressed tight to Wuxian's side. 

"Ah! Enough, let's get this poor boy home." He gave Sizhui a shake. "And get you settled in your new life chopping wood!"

[anime-lover-forever-1127]

Saiyan Mates {Son Goku} - 2. Stretching

Stretching

*****

Disclaimer - (Cause fanfiction is tricky ground and I hope not to offend the creator of the original story and get sued)

I do not own "Dragon Ball", it belongs to its original creator Akira Toriyama. This is only a fanfiction that I was inspired to write by the original work. Please support the official release. Most of the media - such as the art and illustrations, gifs, video's, etc. used in this fanfiction - are from the web. Thus, most of them aren't mine (because I really, really can't draw) unless mentioned. To fit the story, images are also edited by various apps and websites. So they aren't mine, just edited.

Also if you own a picture or Video that I found online, and you either want your name added, or me to take it down. Please contact me and we can talk it out. P.s. I also ask that you do not copy my work and publish it onto any other website.

If you're gonna use my idea, please ask me (If you ask nicely, I for sure, will agree). If I don't contact you within a week, then just assume I'm giving you the all clear and go for it. Just remember to credit me.

I will be writing out scenes even if my Oc isn't in them. As long as she's mentioned, or influencing the characters in some way. Or maybe because it influences the story. This may seem a bit annoying. But that's just how I write. I like to embed my characters into the story line. Because of this, most of the dialogue/scenes will come from the original work.

Warnings: Spoilers for Dragon Ball Z episode 11, Mentions of killing and death, Mates, Cursing, Violence

*****

Today's Special (Curse word involved)

"You want a whore, buy one.

You want a queen, earn her."

~ Cersei Lannister

*****

{Atena P.O.V.}

I woke up with a yawn, my eyes fluttering open. I was already expecting this. Sleeping gases never worked on me for too long, so I always needed two doses, versus Vegita and Nappa's one dose.

I turned to stare out the pod's only window and grin as I saw a planet in the distance. I rubbed my stiff neck, hmm, maybe stretching my body would help a bit.

I turned on my communication device, "Nappa, Vegeta! Get up!" I screamed as loud as I could.

I heard a groan from Vegeta, "God dammit Atena." He cursed as he woke up.

I smirked, "You up or-"

"I'm up!" He growled out. "But that idiot clearly isn't. Nappa, wake up!" He commanded.

The older man grumbled, "I'm awake. What's going on?" He asked, confused.

"Nothing much. But Atena wants to make a stop and stretch a bit, get some exercise." At this point, Vegeta didn't need his sister to tell him what was on her mind. He saw the planet and knew what she had wanted instantly. "Planet Arlia is right over there. Maybe we could sell it for a nice price."

I nodded, "I'm pretty sure that the party from Araclion is looking to expand. They'd be more than happy to pay a pretty penny for Arlia."

"That sounds good." Nappa agreed, turning on the lights on his space pod. "I hope these Arlians know how to fight. We haven't had any real competition since I can remember."

We then set a course for Arlia. Once we had entered the planet's gravity, we let it pull us down. And landed with a bang.

I climbed out of my pod, only to stare at a complete waste land with broken ruins scattered around.

"Aww man, what a mess. Not much is there." said Nappa from behind me.

"Obviously not." My brother rolled his eyes. "Let's have a look around shall we."

I sighed, "Sure, nothing better to do."

I watched Nappa pat a pillar lightly, only for it to crumble upon impact. "Are you sure you can get a high price for this planet?" He asked me.

"Doubt it." Vegeta answers.

But I shook my head, "On the contrary. As boring as this run down planet is, it's actually a selling point. We could actually charge more on the basis that the people buying it wouldn't need to tear anything down."

"Let's check around a little longer." Says Vegeta.

Our scouter then begins beeping as the ground near us bursts open and two large, blue caterpillar-like creatures attack us. My eyes zone in on their heads, Where two smaller aliens appear to be riding them.

"You are trespassing on Arlian territory." One of them says to us.

"Make one move and we'll blast ya." The other adds. "It was a good day to go hunting after all."

"Let's give them a proper welcome." His friend snickered.

I stare at the two creatures, unimpressed. I turned to my brother, "A proper welcome would be at least 1000 men, for each of us."

My brother rolls his eyes, "Oh please, just look at them. They'd need 10,000 just to land an attack."

"Let's just blast them." Nappa suggests.

"Eassy." Vegeta commands him.

"Surrender peacefully or face the consequences." One of them threatens.

"No." The Saiyan prince answers.

The bug looks surprised, I think at least. It then quickly says, "You left us no choice. Prepare to be destroyed then!" It fires a red beam from his mouth?... I think.

I can see it hit me, but don't feel a thing. The only trace it leaves is the dust that kicks up from the ground.

"That's the end of them." I can hear one of them say.

I let out a yawn, as the other two gasp to see us continuing to stand in front of them as if nothing had happened.

"Surrender at once!" They shout.

"Yeah! Make me!" Nappa screams back.

'Nappa. Surrender to them.' My brother commands us, through the familia bond.

I stare at him, not amused. 'Come one, let's have some fun, we're here.' He tells me.

I sigh, relenting. 'Fine. I'll play along with your little game. But if this ends up another stupid, wimpy male trying to mate with me, your going to owe me. BIG TIME!'

We extend our wrists forward as the two bug-like aliens begin rejoicing, "Yeah, they're giving up."

"I guess we're too much for them." His partner adds.

"They sure are ugly."

"But they'll be good entertainment for the king. Especially the women." One of them says, cuffing my wrists.

I feel my eyebrow twitch at the comment, 'Screw you Vegeta!' I curse through the link.

*****

I yawed in bordem as we were carried in a cage, pulled by the large insects most likely towards where their king is. 'Well if he's a king, he should at least have some guards.' I told the other two.

'That's exactly what I'm hoping for.' My brother responds.

As were herded into a jail cell, the man cackles, "You should be glad to know your cell doesn't have any rate. The prisoners ate them all."

"Oh, joy." I comment drily.

"Why you!" The bug-like creature shouts.

"Wait!" His friend pulls him back. "You know the king prefers his women to be mark free."

"Remind me to get that guy." Nappa growls.

"Sure." I shrug. "But the king's mine." After the sexist comments I can just feel coming my way, I'm deserve to be the one to end that pathetic life, so I'm calling dibs.

"Look at those aliens!" I hear from my left.

"They sure are ugly."

"Maybe they think we're the ugly ones." Another adds.

"Speak for yourself." His friend grunts back.

"Be quiet all of you. It doesn't matter what they look like. They're stuck in here just like the rest of us." One with a golden bangle on his arm chastises the rest of the group. "They're just more victims of that tyrant king. Locked away and left to rot." he says, rubbing his arm.

Yeah buddy, there's no way I'm pulling the pin on that grenade.

But, apparently, I didn't need to. "I'm afraid you visitors have come at a bad time. The new king of Arlia is very ruthless. He uses the prisoners for his own amusement. He even went as far as to steal my wife Lemlia on the day we were to be married. So you can imagine the pain I feel."

I scoffed, "So he's married and handsy. Isn't he the complete package."

I heard footsteps and turned my attention to two females of the race walking towards the cell holding something... pink?

ARE THOSE FRILLS?!

WHO THE HELL USES THAT MUCH LACE?!

Yeah, hell no!

I turn to my brother, "I'm done." And with that, I blast the cell bars open with an energy blast.

The guards instantly begin filling in, only to be met with the same fate as the cell blasts.

"Couldn't leave any for us?" My brother raises an eyebrow.

"Oh come on. Perhaps the ones upstairs may be stronger, though I doubt it." I suggest.

We walk upstairs and to the loudest room in time to hear the king calling for us.

"Don't put yourself out." says Vegeta, "We're already here."

"What's the meaning of this? Why don't these prisoners have an armed escort? And why is that female dressed in such a manner?"

"Dressed? You mean that pink monstrosity? Yeah, you wouldn't catch my dead body in that!" I scoffed.

"I don't know my sire." The alien next to him answered. "No orders were sent to the dungeon."

"Your guards met with an unfortunate accident." Vegeta answered.

"How dare you?"the king shouted, "Soon it will be your turn to be met with an unfortunate accident!" He screams at my brother, and then turns to me. "And you! You should be honoured that I even considered you."

I raised an eyebrow, "Oh please. You aren't even strong enough to be considered my pet, let alone my mate."

Please, as if I ever consider a man like him. He looked like he wouldn't even be able to pin me down. As a Saiyan it was in my natural instincts to desire a strong mate. My true mate may have died on our planet. But that doesn't mean I'd ever even think of having a child with such a weakling.

The man on the throne growls before turning to the cotton candy like women to his right. "You may not want to watch this my dear."

I sighed in exasperation and put a hand on my hip, "Yeah, sure. Tell her to turn away after you were just talking about doing things with another women, you disgusting pig."

"Why you! My guards shall make short work off this repulsive creatures."

"Really?" My brother asks in mock surprise.

"Ah, let's see." The man nodes, tapping his finger. "Yes, we'll test the big one with the shiny head against our champion in combat. The little one may go next, and we'll save the women for last. Now teach them a lesson."

A large alien from behind us then jumped at Nappa, only for Vegeta to shoot a line of energy blast out of his index finger and middle finger. Blasting his head clean off, and killing him instantly.

"Huh? I guess that makes you the new champion Vegeta." Nappa comments.

My brother chuckles only for the king, still calmly counter with. "Not bad. But 10 of our finest warriors have already mastered techniques using energy just like yours."

"They have?" Vegeta asks, turning around, "Interesting. We'd like to fight them."

I nod, "Who knows. Maybe I'll finally get to stretch a bit."

"Ready?" The saiyan prince asks.

The king let out a cry of outrage, "I'll see you suffer for your insolence!"

"Yeah, whatever." Nappa responded, "Can we get on with this already."

"Ah, how dare you!"

I chuckled, "Easy, you just need to spit out the words."

His 'elite' guards became to surround us, and fire off a red energy blast from their mouths in unison.

I touched the small sparks that were left behind. "How weak." I sighed.

"Was that it? It felt real good. It was refreshing." Vegeta antagonised them.

"Oh. I'll make you pay." The king growled. "If you think you can just walk out of here. You're sadly mistaken."

"You know what's funny, Vegeta?" I turned to my brother. "He keeps saying 'I' as if he's going to be the one fighting. It's hilarious."

"Guards! Attack! Destroy them!"

I sighed, "All right. Play times over." I created a circle of energy around me, and then expanded it outward. Then, when it was at the feet of the men, I shot the bright ring of energy upward, slicing off various parts of the aliens. Killing them.

"Aww come on Antenna. Couldn't you have left any for us." Nappa complained.

"What's the point?" I asked, rolling my eyes. "They're all weak."

"Open the gates!" The king commanded in fear.

I then began to hear gears turning and a section of the ground in front of us open. And from it, a large brown insect rose.

"So it's the giant bug from the ground trick?" My brother scoffed.

I shrugged, "I personally liked the giant rat a little better. It's screams were surprisingly nice."

"You need to destroy these creatures. They're bad. Very, very bad!" The king ordered the giant beast pointing at us."

"That's it!" I growl. "I'm done." I walked over to the king, startling him. "Please die." I smile at him kindly, before flicking his forehead with my index finger, and sending his head flying off his body.

"We're bad?" Nappa asks.

"Well a little." Vegeta answers.

"Correction." I challenge, "We're bad people, but great Saiyan's." I pretend to wipe a tear from my eye, "Oh how proud daddy must be."

Vegeta scoffs, "Daddy's girl."

I smirk, "Oh please, your just jealous that I was the favourite."

The large insect takes a swipe at us, only for us to jump up, like some kind of game of skip rope.

Nappa lands on some steps, and the giant bug gives chase.

"Lucky." I pout. "The only thing maybe worth fighting."

It then tries to lunge for Vegeta, only to miss and lose his balance, crashing onto the ground.

It begins shooting lasers at us, at which point we begin flying around.

"Hey ugly!" Nappa calls it. It thrusts a fist at the bald man, only for Nappa to grab the claw.

The bug begins the whimper as Nappa pulls his claw right out.

The creature makes a desperate attempt to capture him in his hands, only for Nappa to jump away at the last second.

"Hey! I got one more little surprise for you." Nappa then throws an energy ball straight at it, blowing him up.

The remaining aliens began crawling out, and at that point I checked out. "See yeah. I'm going back to sleep." With that I enter my pod, and once again set the coordinates for Earth. Only for once again my inner beast begins crawling around in my mind.

'We'll get some action soon." I tell her, figuring she was just feeling caged. I only hear her mutter something about mate.... before the sleeping gas kicks in, and I fall asleep.

*****

There's an Easter egg up there, did anyone spot it?

Heads up, there will definitely be Chi-Chi bashing. For all of you who like her, sorry. But it had to be done for the sake of the story. Remember, this is a fanfiction, so will by amplifying all her flaws by like 50, which can make anyone seem bad. So don't hate on me, the story, or the real Chi-Chi (and she tries her best in her situation). Because this is just a fanfiction.

Also someone pointed out to me that I accidentally wrote Vegeta's name with an 'i', as Vegita, a couple times. So sorry for that guys. And thanks for pointing that out, I'll try my best not to make that mistake again

Another thing I will be changing is - as the story progresses, Goku's saiyan instincts will help sharpen his mind, and his other senses. So smarter, and slightly darker and possessive Goku.

You can read the other chapters of this story (in order) on Wattpad, Quotev, Fanfiction.Net, Ao3, or Webnovel - Under the username Animeloverforever1127 (Under the same title of course). Or you could shuffle around my tumbler, (I’ll try to keep my tags constant) but I’d go with the first - just seems like a lot less work.

[naturaldisasterfanfiction]

34. Part 6

I shuddered at the thought, the thought of me having to play mother to a child that isn’t even mine. I hope she gathers herself for her child “not going to lie but even if I was angry with Chris, and I was hurt. I wouldn’t be bothered. I would take my child and be happy. I hope she acts right, I’m not for kids being hurt but if she goes bad and doesn’t take care of him and then Chris is gonna look to me, and then what” I said to Mel “you married a man with kids Robyn, it could happen but don’t wish these things into existence but I think that bitch is mentally unstable anyway, it’s scary. How she snapped at that boy, but I wouldn’t mind Roro being here, she’s such a happy child. That is what I like about her. I mean I think with him he may have been brainwashed with her ways; you know!?” Mel ain’t wrong “I’m not sure about him at all, Chris doesn’t have that bond anyways but if Chris ends up going court and then wins more rights over his son then I wanted, then I’m kind of not going to be happy” Mel snorted laughing “be nice to the bitch then” side eyeing Mel “nah, she ain’t getting my money, she can fuck herself. Chris is just not rubbing my feet right now, he’s here on his phone. He needs to be like me, not care for my phone” I huffed out “but I think you may need to have that thought in your mind and accept what may happen, you know?” Mel is right “let me check on what he’s doing, I don’t want people upsetting him. He likes to read into things, I need his page deleting again” walking around the counter slowly, he has not moved away from his phone at all. The thing is people love to harass Chris because they know he takes it to heart, and cares because Chris was looking at me with puppy dog eyes and then I spoke. That bitch is a bully, and I won’t have it, he just wants to a quiet life. Chris is not weak, never that but he just wants a quiet life that he pays the bitch money, like now. She’s using Aeko as a ploy to get to him. I know his son won’t go hungry; he will be ok. I am keeping the care packages; I don’t even care about that. I don’t know where that bitch is mentally, but if things get bad I’m gonna have to have that child here. I’m not a bad person but still, I rather not.

Resting my arm on Chris’ shoulder looking down at his phone, why is my husband like this. Why does he have to get himself caught up on Instagram, pressing a kiss to the back of his head “what are you doing? We are supposed to be going upstairs” this man is staring at his tagged pictures “huh” he looked up at me “what is it? Talk to me, why are you staring at your phone and not looking at me? It’s our time” he poked his lower lip out “they are saying mean things?” I think they are “Fenty isn’t mine, they are saying how ugly I was as a baby when your forehead was bigger than my phone screen, and apparently my mom liked a post but like what if she didn’t read the caption” I sighed out “delete Instagram, you was happier without it. I want you to delete it, once you can handle the shit people say then you can go back on it. I don’t want to treat you like a child but it’s not good for your mental being when you are trying to better yourself, people are gonna tag you in shit. It’s bullying, they always do it to you. What did your mom like, tell me?” I rather we speak on it then just leaving it alone “that Rihanna got what she wanted, a baby. She will throw him soon, DNA test needed” rolling my eyes “Delete your Instagram, you don’t need this negativity” Joyce is asking for a beating from me, she is digging into this hole that she can’t escape “Robyn, Tina is on the phone, Joyce is trying to contact you?” Frowning at Dennis, Joyce is trying to call be “Joyce who?” Walking of towards Dennis and see what the fuck is up “my mom?” Chris said behind me, that boy adores his mom and she’s a bitch “is on mute?” I asked Dennis following him into the living room “yeah, Tina called and was like is Robyn there because if so Joyce is on the phone, i said who? She said Chris’ mother, I mean she has Chris’ number right?” Looking behind me and I knew Chris would be behind me following me, I didn’t want him too, but he did, I don’t blame him because it is his mother.

Taking my phone from Dennis, taking in a deep breath before answering “Tina” I said “she’s muted but she called on withheld and she said she got in touch with your manager, I’m like Robyn is her own boss so chile, I don’t know. But your publicist called me, but can I put her through?” Tina said “but what does she want? Didn’t she say what the issue was? She has her son’ number, I don’t get that she rang you like this” turning to Chris all in my space “Chris, I am going to go into another room, private. This is a private talk between us, and I don’t want you to be upset about shit yeah, then I mean it. We are going! Let the world go to shit, I don’t care. One minute Tina” moving my phone away from my ear “but I would like to hear what she has to say, it’s not fair, why didn’t she ring me. Why am I being penalised, for what!?” he spat “because she is what she is, I promise I will tell you what she says, do you trust me?” I asked “I do but I want to hear” he is hard headed but so can I “if you trust me then you will let me go and I will be back to tell you, I would not let her ever disrespect you but I can’t concentrate on this call and see your sad face, you know” Chris has this sad face now because he’s been reading shit “fine, you better tell her that she is hurting me” nodding my head “I will, just wait here. I will be back” walking by Chris “yeah so Tina, did she mention anything to you? Like what the fuck this is about!?” I would like to know anything before I answer this call “nothing, just that can I speak to Robyn, I did say she is busy and she said with my son then it clicked on who she is, Chris’ mother so yeah” rolling my eyes “ok put her through” I will go into the second living area, hopefully Chris stays put.

Sitting down on the couch “you called” I said, she is being awfully quiet for a woman that called me “I have never been an evil person Robyn, I love. I love everything and everyone, and you have married my son I see” she said “he married me, he purposed to me. I didn’t kidnap your son, clearly you think I brainwashed your grown ass son. He made his decision” I don’t want to snap at her “he is brainwashed when it comes to you, you had sex with him unprotected knowing full well what you wanted” and she says she is nice “what I wanted? Oh yes, I wanted to be the third baby mother, I wanted to be caught up in Chris’ issues, I wanted to play step mother, yes I wanted to deal with Chris’ bipolar and his odd ways, yes I wanted that. I wanted to heal Chris from his past because he hasn’t healed himself because nobody fucking cared to do it, yes Joyce! I wanted that, any sane bitch would just do what that bitch in Germany has done, oh you are just vile. Why the fuck would I wait all these years of my life to be in this situation!? Huh? Riddle me this, why is it you’re still stuck on the fact I stole your son? I didn’t steal Joyce, I took a broken man that was stuck on drugs and because I love him, if it wasn’t love he would be on the fucking streets and he would be a sperm donor, fuck!” I snapped, I just couldn’t hold back on that “you one big deluded bird” I need to not be rude “you got that bitch crying it’s love, and you crying I stole a boy you didn’t care about! Yes he is an adult, you right Joyce, he is a grown adult that his own mother failed him, I mean I am mothering him, oh wow. I am angry at you! I should be telling you, you stole your son’ adulthood because you shipped him off in his childhood to New Jersey because you couldn’t handle him, you leave him alone Joyce. You called me for what!? Hurt that I married him, mhmm. You can also stop using his name to sell your old people clothing, nobody wants those tacky shits, you also are on the list to not use his name. Only me, his daughters, his son will use his name. You! Let me find out you do, you’re getting sued, I suggest you sign those papers too Joyce!” the phone disconnected, just like that she ran off, I will not put up with shit.

I have known Chris since we were teenagers, I know everything about him, and I fucking know everything. His mother couldn’t handle him, she shipped him off. How can she allow her son to have sex as a child, I would like to murder her to be honest and they expect him to be sane. Fuck that, but that is done now. Getting up from the couch, I am done and if I get another issue now I am going to scream. I want to have some peace with Chris, no drama. I opened the door and Chris was already stood there “you don’t listen do you” tilting my head a little “you know me, you was sticking by me, like you out here dishing out gag orders on people” I chuckled “Chris, you’re my husband. I will be doing what I can, I am always doing something. I am sticking by you, like you do me. It’s ok, no evil will come between us. She will be coming to you Chris; she will want you ok?” Chris nodded his head “did you delete your Instagram?” that is the first thing “yeah, I turned my phone off too. Mel said it was be best if I did. Too much drama happening now, like people are all up in the air about it. Us being married” smiling at Chris “that is fine, I need to give my phone Dennis then we are going upstairs. We can talk about anything you like too. I am all ears, but you need to rub my feet” walking into the kitchen “those are my snacks! Get off, this fat bitch needs it but here Dennis. And please look after my daughter. If she does play up then you may come to us, do not post pictures of her, not the face anyways, you know the deal. Have fun” Jah looks like he is up to no good “he wants to wake her” Mel said “don’t bother, she will hate you for it” I said walking off “gummy drop want foot rubs huh” Chris put his arm around me “I do, and you better deliver. I think maybe we should literally sit in our robes too” I was in my robe, but I put something on to come down, after the minor meltdown earlier which I am over now.

I giggled seeing Chris in my Savage x Fenty robe, I swear he is the cutest “so you got boxers on?” I have to ask because you never know, he lifted the Robe showing me his boxers “ohhhhhh Savage Fenty boxers now? Mhmm I wonder who designed those, your dick looks bigger in those” I winked at Chris “my wife did that, I like them and this robe. I feel like a brand new guy” raising my leg at Chris “come on now” Chris chuckled getting onto the bed, he grabbed my foot “be nice now” side eyeing him gripping my foot, he sat across from me “do you have panties on?” Chris stretched my leg out to check and I yelped out “aye, I see your coochie” trying to reach over to slap his hand but Chris has a grip on my foot now “I have panties on thank you” laying back on the bed “I was just testing you gummy drop, if you take your robe off, I will take mine off” frowning at him “mhmm why you want me to take my robe off Christopher? After calling me gummy drop, I am not removing anything” Chris moved his hand and came over to me, hovering over me “I miss this” looking up at him “this position?” Chris grinned, biting on my bottom lip “I do, a lot actually” reaching my hand up and placing it at the side of Chris’ cheek, he lowered his head as he rested it on my shoulder, wrapping my arm around his neck, he didn’t lay on me but he was careful with me and just rested his head on my shoulder “I love you” pressing a kiss to the side of his neck.

[negasonicimagines]

Do You Want To

requests: “Can I request one where reader is DP's daughter and their personalities are very similar. He recently said she has to start going to Xavier's because of her ability to create portals, but doesn't want to attend. Ellie is asked to be her guide and help her get situated. After seeing ellie she does some classic Wilson flirting. ‘Dad, I want her to sit on my face.’” + “Okay okay so Ellie imagine where reader Ellie and a bunch of other Xavier's students are at a party (reader and Ellie are not dating here) and have to play never have I ever and reader says that she's never gotten a hickey and then later Ellie catches up with her and asks if she wants her to give her one? And it leads to like a HEAVY makeout”

notes: F/B: Favorite Band. Jubilee appears as she does in the movies, and the others appear as they do in X-Men Evolution. Also, this fic makes some assumptions about you! If they don’t fit, okay, but please suspend your disbelief.I also did some experimenting with style, I’ve read a lot of @starman-thorsus-canos-jock​‘s fics lately and I love the style so I tried to let it influence me!!

warnings: underage drinking, borderline smut but dubious consent considering you’re both the same level of drunk! Sober, clear consent is important, even if the characters in this story don’t have a negative experience.

Open house at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters is always an interesting experience for Ellie. An increasing number of fresh faces every year, finding out what idiots (and tolerable people) she’ll be sharing classes with, and, the most unsettling of all: if she’ll be having a roommate.

But one face - or, rather, mask - that she notices isn’t fresh. It’s annoyingly rotten.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Deadpool? Perving on teenage girls, seriously?” She asks, gesturing to you. “I expected at least better than that.”

“Well, I’m no Ivanka, so I guess I’ll be heading back to my old schoo-”

Ellie gawks while he grabs the collar of your F/B tee shirt, pulling you back to your seat. You’re so… So...

“So, you… You have a daughter..?” Who looks like… Like she does?

“I didn’t always look like a moldy avocado, you know!” He protests. Your lip curls into what’s best described as a sweet smirk. “She makes portals and hates her mom’s new husband. I’m sure you two will get on real well.”

“Yeah,” you agree, eyeing the girl. “Y/N.”

“Ellie,” Ellie introduces herself, feeling her face heat up a little bit with the way you’re looking at her, unashamed of your interest. “Well, I’ve got to go get my schedule…”

“Go with her,” Wade tells you, and you fix him with a skeptical glare. “Please,” he adds. “Such a stickler for manners.”

“I don’t let men order me around,” you correct, and Ellie’s knees are weak.

“I’m very proud,” Wade half-jokes. “Go on, I’ll be here when you get back. I promise not to flirt with any of your teachers.”

“Thank you,” you respond with a bitter chuckle. The cheap shot at your mother that he probably didn’t mean much by was a nice touch. You follow Ellie to a slowly-shrinking crowd, and wait with her. You observe her, and she fidgets under your gaze. No one’s really showed this kind of interest in her before, especially so unabashed.

“Are you… Are you going to say anything, or are you just gonna keep staring at me?” She finally works up the nerve to ask.

“I told you my name, and that I don’t let men order me around. What more do you really need to know?”

Ellie never understood how your dad’s flirting ever worked on women when seeing it in practice on Piotr and Logan, but you seem to pull off the shameless, blunt interest like how she already wouldn’t mind you pulling off-

“Miss Phimister, good to see you’re already acquainted with your roommate this year. Miss Wilson, it’s a pleasure to see you again. Here are your schedules,” Charles Xavier himself says, handing you both your schedules. “You wouldn’t mind helping your new friend get settled in, would you, Eleanor?”

Ellie agrees to help you, and the two of you walk away. It’s not the awful flirting, Ellie realizes, but the hotness of the person saying the words: you.

“Roommates, huh? Whoever made out schedules must be a fucking psychic. A literal fucking psychic,” you flirt as the two of you walk away, and she can barely handle keeping a neutral expression, much less the scowl she normally wears. “Trying to be aloof will only make me want you more… In case you can’t tell, I have daddy issues. And mommy issues. I’m the full package, and willing to wear whatever kind of package you want.”

“Is that so?” Ellie tests the waters, and you blink at her for a few moments.

“Uh… Yeah,” you decide to answer, and she snickers.

“Not as smooth as you’d like to think, huh?”

“I’m just surprised you spoke, Negasonic Teenage Perks of Being a Wallflower,” you retort.

“Nice one, did your dad come up with it?”

“You’ve got bite! That’s good, now if you wouldn’t mind biting my neck..?”

“I-”

“Hey! Hey! New girl!” Ellie recognizes the sound of the boy a year younger than her zooming towards you both before she recognizes his voice. Pietro. “Party tonight, bring a friend, don’t, whatever, it’s in the woods, you’ll know it when you see it!”

He zooms off just as quickly, and you raise a brow.

“Is it actually a party, or his he just skeevy?” you ask.

“It is.”

“Hm, it would be a good idea to make some friends I don’t find irresistible,” you say it like it’s absentmindedly thinking out loud, tapping your lip, but she catches your eyes cutting up to her, looking for a reaction. “But… If I don’t know anyone, how fun would that be?”

“I’ll go with you,” Ellie’s mouth decides for her, but, thankfully, it doesn’t come out too quickly. “I know where it is, they have a huge bonfire in the clearing near the watering hole to celebrate everyone returning to school.”

“I see… Well, it does sound fun. Will there be alcohol?”

“Yeah, it su-”

“Oh, then we’re definitely going,” you decide, and Ellie both dreads and looks forward to later tonight.

~

After a short trek in the woods, Ellie and you find yourselves at the party.

“Ellie! Good to see you!” Bobby calls out, recognizing her from GSA. “You and the new girl should come over and play Never Have I Ever with us!”

“That sounds great!” you answer for her, heading over. Ellie follows you, because you’re the only reason she’s here, and the two of you sit on a log with Kitty, Anna, and Jubilee, with Bobby standing. At least they’re people she doesn’t hate.

He goes over the rules, and the six of you get started.

“Never have I ever… Kissed a girl,” Bobby says. You, Kitty, and Anna each take a shot, each lowering a finger. “Now you, Jubilee.”

“Never have I ever… Cheated on a test.”

Ellie takes a shot, cringing at the taste and lowering a finger. Based on the not-circle circle that you all are in, Kitty goes next, then Anna, then you, then Ellie, and so on.

“Never have I ever… Received a hickey,” Kitty says. Bobby is the only one to take a shot, and Ellie looks to you with surprise.

“Never have I ever… Fallen in love at first sight,” Anna discloses. You take a shot, winking at Ellie, who is either flushed due to alcohol - it’d honestly be adorable if she was a lightweight, you think - or what you basically just declared to everyone.

“Never have I ever… Tried to cut my own hair,” you decide, and everyone but you takes a shot and lowers a finger. You knew Ellie probably had, but the others surprised you.

“Never have I ever…” Ellie finds herself drawing out the r, having realized this is a good tool to get to know you without dropping her aloof facade. “Played strip poker.”

You and Anna each take a shot. So far, the score is as follows: Bobby - 9,  Jubilee - 9, Kitty - 8, Anna - 7, You - 7, and Ellie - 8. You’re starting to feel the effects of the alcohol, though so far it’s really just a giggly lightness and slightly-lowered inhibitions, not that you had many of those in the first place. You can feel yourself on the way to becoming a little more drunk, though.

“Never have I ever,” Bobby begins the next round. “Been to a strip club.”

You take a shot, and your not-circle circle of maybe-friends gasps.

“Y/N’s dad’s wife works at one,” Ellie clarifies for you with a roll of the eyes.

“Why can’t you just let them think that I’m cool?” you whine, leaning on her just a little bit. She scoffs, pretending she doesn’t enjoy the attention from you.

“Never have I ever… Cursed in front of my academic adviser,” Jubilee says. Both Anna and Ellie take a shot.

“Never have I ever…” Kitty starts, and it’s clear she’s not sure what to say. She hums, looking over the group before her eyes land on you and Ellie. She delivers you an almost imperceptible wink. “Got in a fight with someone because I didn’t like them. Not self-defense or helping someone else or X-Men stuff, just straight-up not liking them.”

You and Ellie both drink to that.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you people are trying to get me drunk,” you giggle, definitely feeling the effects of the alcohol after five out of your ten allotted shots.

“I’m there with you,” Anna replies, snickering as well. “Never have I ever-“ she giggles. “Had sex.”

No one takes a shot, all looking at each other - well, Ellie’s just looking at you, kind of but not entirely surprised - before you decide on your declaration.

“Never have I ever…” You giggle some more, a long one that you can’t stifle no matter how much your lungs beg. You look to Ellie for inspiration. “Shaved my head!”

Ellie and Bobby take their shots.

“Never have I ever… Been the first to lose in Never Have I Ever,” Ellie decides.

You and Anna drink, which makes sense, looking at your scores.

The score is now: Bobby - 7, Jubilee - 9, Kitty - 7, Anna - 5, You - 4, and Ellie has 5.

“Since the game is already starting to be long, maybe we should just go until Y/N loses and decide the winner based on that,” Jubilee suggests.

“Who says I’ll lose?” You pout.

“You have the least amount of points, Y/N,” Ellie says. She can take her alcohol pretty well, surprisingly enough to her, while you’re an adorable - No, wait, fuck, I didn’t mean that - giggling mess.

“I do? Is that hot to you or should I start lying?” You ask, and it’s the same blunt interest as before. Ellie chuckles, realizing that perhaps the reason you’re a laughing fool is because you’re already totally unreserved, whereas she has walls up constantly that the alcohol has to break down first. She smiles at you.

“What do you think?” Ellie asks you, and it comes out more sultry than she thought she could ever sound. You squeak, blushing even harder than whatever’s in these plastic shot glasses is making you.

“Bobby! Your turn!” You blurt.

“Never have I ever… Had a crush on the person to the right of me.”

You and Anna take shots.

“That’s me,” you quietly tell her, thinking she got mixed up.

“I know,” Anna whispers back with a smirk, and jealousy pools in Ellie’s chest. It wasn’t hard to make her jealous, and it didn’t help that her emotions were heightened.

“Never have I ever…” Jubilee begins. “Had a crush on the person to the left of me.”

You eye Anna before making the decision to take a shot. Ellie takes her shot quickly, a little embarrassed at being caught. The jealousy inside her boils, now.

“Hey, what happened to having a crush on me?” Ellie asks - sounding more defensive than anything - before she can stop herself.

“Oh, trust me, Hothead, I call you Hothead because you’re hot and you're angry. I told you: daddy issues, mommy issues.”

“This is the first time you’ve called me Hothead.”

“Out loud,” you correct her in a tone that’s best described as ditzy, and she scoffs.

“Never have I ever,” Kitty loudly starts, drawing everyone’s attention. “Done a striptease. Doesn’t have to mean you got naked, just that you took off your clothes for someone else’s benefit.”

You take a shot.

“Jesus, Y/N, you need to write a book,” Bobby says.

“And start giving me advice!” Jubilee, still in first place, exclaims.

“Never have I ever… Kissed someone at the top of a Ferris wheel,” Anna declares. Kitty and Bobby each take a shot.

“Never have I ever…” You giggle, remembering many of these people have roommates. “Masturbated with someone else in the same room.”

All of them take a shot, and you cackle drunkenly.

“Never have I ever…” Ellie has a cunning smirk, knowing exactly how to end the game. “Had my dad be Deadpool.”

“Oh, come on,” you whine, taking your last shot. “Oof.”

“Let’s see everyone’s fingers!” Bobby cheers. He has 5, Jubilee has 8, Kitty has 5, Anna has 3, You have none, and Ellie has 3.

“Go Jubilee!” You cheer, and the rest of the players echo it, as well as a few of your random partying classmates, scattered throughout the clearing.

You try to stand up, but stumble, knees giving out almost instantly. Ellie steadies you, also not the most structurally sound but slightly less physically encumbered by her drunkenness.

“I think that’s enough for us,” she suggests. “Wanna go back to our room?”

“Oh, hell yeah, I thought you’d never ask,” you flirt, and she snorts. “Wait, wait, I can portal us back to the school, just gotta visualize it. Okay, there’s that one.” You wrap her in a tight hug before the two of you fall through the ground, landing on the paved walkway.

Ellie hurls into the hydrangea bushes, making you feel a bit nauseous, but you only gag.

“Water,” you slur. “We need water.”

Ellie nods, and the two of you stumble in, giggling a little bit and trying to be quiet but definitely not being as quiet as you think you are.

You two enter the kitchen, and - to your surprise - your father is in there, with a shiny man you realize is his beloved Colossus.

“Dad, what’re you doing here?” You stumble over your words but straighten your posture, trying to seem not drunk off your ass.

“Same thing you’re doing, flirting with Mr. Rasputin,” Ellie explains for him, opening the fridge and getting out two water bottles.

“I’m not flirting with Mr. Rasputin, weirdo, I’m flirting with you,” you correct her before you loudly whisper to Wade, holding a hand up to the side of your face like that’ll disguise your words: “I want her to sit on my face.”

“Did not need to know that,” Wade tells you at the same volume, blinking - and reevaluating the example he was setting for you, like Piotr had been asking him to do before you came in - before sighing.

“I got the water…” Ellie weakly informs you.

“Yeah!” You enthusiastically respond, and the two of you leave Wade and Piotr to whatever their conversation was. You two slowly make your way up the stairs, clutching each other and the railings.

The trek is eventually over, and the two of you sip on your water, you leaning against one of the four posts of the bunk bed.

“I’m so hot,” you complain, taking off your shirt - arching off the post in a way that surely wouldn’t be that suggestive to Ellie’s sober mind but Drunk Ellie is ready to jump your bones - without really thinking about it.

“Yeah,” Ellie agrees, and you notice her blush at the sight of you.

“So, you’ve never kissed a girl… Do you want to?” You ask her.

“Of course I want to,” she scoffs, before realizing what you’re asking: Not if she wants to in general, but if she wants to kiss you. “Definitely. And you’ve never gotten a hickey, right? Do you want to?”

“Of course I want to,” you echo, taking one more drink of water before fumbling with the cap and putting it on the ground. You press your lips to Ellie’s, and her hands mold themselves to your bare waist before sliding up your back as the two of you kiss, lips moving in sync.

“Wow,” she breathes after pulling away, placing a hot, open-mouthed kiss on the space between your neck and shoulder, just above your collarbone.

“Ellie…” you sigh, nibbling at your own tongue to prevent too much of a reaction and clutching at her shoulders. She continues to suck at your neck, sinking her teeth in and delighting in the way you tremble.

This continues, and you fidget quite a bit, finding that you want more after this and hoping she feels the same way.

Ellie eventually pulls away, admiring her handiwork and sliding a thumb over the dark red mark before looking to you for approval.Your bra strap slips down, and she fixes it, rather tenderly for someone with limited coordination.

She gets more than approval just by looking at your face, and kisses you once more, tangling her fingers in your hair haphazardly. Your grip slips from her shoulders to her shoulder blades and you dig into her back.

“Fuck,” Ellie says against your lips.

“Not yet,” you retort, pulling away. She feels her face heat up, and notices that both of you seem to be a bit more sober after the water and the… Other things. “But we could get pretty damn cozy on whichever bunk you want.”

Ellie nods.

“Top or bottom?” you ask her.

“Top, I would’ve thought it was obvious,” she scoffs, and you go to climb.

“Oh,” Ellie realizes, so used to you being overt that she thought she was answering a different question before. “Bottom bunk. I top.”

“Oh,” you repeat, mouth drying. You remove your foot from the ladder, removing your shoes afterward and sliding onto the bed. Ellie straddles you before capturing your lips with her own, steadily gaining a certain confidence in her abilities - and her instincts - that allows her to roughly pin your wrists down without thinking too hard on it. She continues to kiss you, enjoying the way you writhe beneath her, muffling already-quiet moans, but eventually she decides to move on to giving you another hickey.

Ellie mouths at your neck and your chin tips up to give her more access. She can’t help but grin, licking a stripe up your neck and going up higher, but on your left side this time, suckling and tonguing at the sensitive flesh just under your jaw.

“Gonna be hard to cover up,” you observe with bated breath, and Ellie adores the way your body feels against her.

“Good,” she snarls, surprising even herself, and you whimper. She can feel you rubbing your thighs together underneath her, and she nips at the new hickey. You cry out in surprise, in pleasurable pain and Ellie snickers - of course she does, you knew she’d tear you apart like this the moment you laid your hungry eyes on her - before removing her hands from your reddened wrists, straightening her posture so that she’s practically sitting on top of your mound, and placing a hand on each breast and admiring the fabric of your bra.

You can hear your heart pounding in your ears and Ellie arches a brow at you, waiting for an answer to the unspoken question

“Mhm,” you hum, and she smiles, squeezing experimentally at first and only watching the way you squirm beneath her. You fidget in a twisty way, desperate for more touch, and she lets out a moan - surprising even herself - and sinks her teeth into her bottom lip. “Don’t,” you request shyly, and she doesn’t stop herself from making noises as she massages your breasts at a more consistent pace while you rock yourself up into her, letting her grind down on your mound.

“That’s- Fuck, that’s nice,” Ellie tells you. “But we should stop.” You immediately still.

“Since you said so, definitely, but why?” you ask the girl, who’s still on top of you.

“Because I really want to, with you, but I wanna do things right. We’re both tired, we’re both still buzzed...” Ellie explains, sounding much more exhausted after she  lays next to you. “Wanna take you to a scary movie, because you’ll either love it or hold me. Kiss you quick on the cheek after, and then you’ll kiss me on the lips because outside of this room you’re more forward. Walk you home and sneak in past curfew using a portal, have a late dinner of junk food.”

“You sound like you’re in love with me,” you half-joke.

“I’m gonna be,” Ellie sleepily tells you, slinging an arm over you in one last act of bravery before the two of you fall asleep.

[muwi-translates]

Otomate Party 2017 - Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk

Self-indulgent? Self-indulgent. Translated skit script done with Lawrence, Elric, Lugus and Lavan at 2017′s Otopa. Has some Black Butterfly content as well. This fandom needs more food.

**Please don’t move this translation or claim it as your own.**

Lawrence: It looks like it’s stopped snowing for the time being. Now, let’s see... Oh? This is...

Elric: Lawrence, do you know where Rabbit’s gone off to? That said, what’s with the package?

Lawrence: I just received it, let’s see... it has this little bottle of liquid and a letter.

Elric: Oh? Read it, then.

Lawrence: “A God-given gift to everyone in the church to bring modest smiles. - Ash.” Let’s see here, the instructions say ‘medicine that makes people honest’.

Elric: Ugh, sounds fake.

Lawrence: But if it’s real, wouldn’t you want to try it, Elric?

Elric: ... Don’t tell me, you want me to drink that...

Lawrence: Hehe... the effects last for-

Elric: This is stupid! Just come and help me find Rabbit-

Lavan: Am I interrupting anything?

Lawrence: Ah, Lavan-kun. Nothing of the sort, please come in. Oh, for the two of you to come together, that’s a rare sight.

Lavan: Two?

Lugus: We did not come together. It was simply that while I was on my way to the church, this beast was already a few steps ahead of me.

Lavan: Lugus. I never thought I would see the Hawk’s heir in a place like this. When did you make this place your roost?

Elric: They start arguing as soon as they see each other. It happens all the time, but it’s super annoying. If they decide to draw their swords...

Lawrence: Hm... oh, I know. If they drank this medicine, then we’ll be able to know their true feelings. If they become more honest, perhaps they could come to understand one another?

Elric: Hah? Won’t they just draw their swords with honesty?

Lawrence: It’s decided, I’ll go brew some tea.

Elric: Lawrence! Ugh... you need to limit those fantasies in your head...

Lugus: Who do you think you are? If you’re walking on snow, and you see any slippery roads, why would you walk across them?!

Lavan: What’s wrong with that? Let me guess, you’re telling me this because you’ve slipped before?

Lugus: Wrong! I was simply cursing you to slip yourself stupid behind you.

Lavan: Swooping to such a low level. You as well, maybe you should use the snow on your eaves to cool your head.

Elric: You two aren’t so different when it comes to being rude.

Lawrence: So they argue like this when there’s no one to mediate between them. I see, I see. Here, some tea.

Elric: Ah, don’t just serve it like usual...

Lavan: Ah, thank you. (To Lugus) That said, that drinking incident earlier-

Lugus: Thank you for the tea. (To Lavan) Why are you using that the know-it-all tone? Is it about me taking care of your drunk-crazy brother?

Lavan: ...What did you say? (drinks)

Lugus: Hmph! (drinks)

Elric: They drank it! I’m nervous...

Lavan / Lugus: (gags)

Lavan: What is this taste? It’s like... mother’s... tea...

Lugus: ... If I had to describe it... it taste like... leather gloves that have never been washed...

Lavan: (laughs) As expected of a Hawk. So they know what leather gloves taste like.

Lugus: I was merely making a comparison. Or do Wolves not know what metaphors are?

Elric: Hey... they haven’t changed at all. Are you sure you weren't given a fake?

Lawrence: How strange, it shouldn’t... Ah, I know. It's simply because the question is wrong. Let's talk about the women you like.

Elric: Hah?! That’s such a big leap in subjects!

Lawrence: You two, is there a woman you admire? Could you tell me what kind of person they are?

Lugus: What kind of question are you-- A strong-willed woman.

Lavan: Really, why are you asking a question like that here out of all places-- I don't really mind her outward valiance, but I love her inner pureness.

Elric: Woah, how scary, it really worked...

Lawrence: Hmhm~ And, what else is there?

Lavan: Let me think... She doesn’t neglect to smile, but she doesn’t fake it. It’s the expression of her gratitude and her kindness. It’s the way she whole-heartedly treats me that moves my heart. Her openness melted away my complex, frozen heart. Perhaps she can make it so that the beast that hides inside my chest will never reveal itself. But sometimes I think, if it’s her... I want her to understand this side of me. I want her to know.

Lugus: ... To never reveal itself... No, the woman I know is not like that. Though she looks like she is a principled, pure and earnest woman, she has weaknesses as well. She could guide me only because she knew her own weaknesses and strengths. She could easily tame a beast, even if her hand is injured, or even if she was bitten. I’ll always pray that I can be by her side at that moment to tend to her wounds.

Lavan: I see, so the woman you love is not just a virtuous lady.

Lugus: Exactly. The one you love has some similarities to mine.

Elric: They’re understanding each other... Wow, I’m getting goosebumps...

Lugus: However, even though I have such strong feelings, I can list our encounters with my fingers.

Lavan: Why? You can just go and see her.

Lugus: I’ve asked her what kind of person she is and what she does, but she doesn’t tell me. There is no way to write her a letter, nor get in contact with her.

Lavan: That... must be hard. I understand the feeling of only being able to rely on fate to meet my loved one.

Lugus: So you’ve had the same experience?

Lavan: Yes, it leaves much to be desired.

Lawrence: Mm, it looks like their quarrel has been perfectly stopped.

Elric: And my goosebumps have disappeared.

Lawrence: At least they’re talking amiably. Right, Lugus-kun, Lavan-kun?

Lavan: What about you, Lawrence?

Lawrence: Eh?

Lugus: That’s right, do you not have something as well?

Lawrence: Hm... if I had to say, I love a woman who is gentle and soft, an optimist, and someone who suits smiling under the sun.

Lugus: You must be talking about the personality you like in a woman.

Lavan: Then, do you have someone in mind?

Lawrence: I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

Elric: Aa~h, all this girl talk is so boring.

Lawrence: Apologises, Elric. Here, I prepared some snacks.

Elric: Woah! Cookies! I guess I have no choice. I won’t hold back, then.

Lawrence: Here, some tea as well.

Elric: Ah, mm. (drinks)

Lawrence: Hehe...

Elric: Oh no! Gah... hhgh.... this rotten... medicine taste...

Hikage, appearing behind Elric: What do you think you’re doing?!

Lawrence: Eh?

Hikage: For goodness sake, you’ve gone too far with this prank. Wanting to know my true feelings? What are you playing at?

Lavan: Hm? What’s this?

Lugus: Seems like he changed into some other personality rather than become honest.

Hikage: ‘Personality’? I am me. No matter what happens, my essence will never change.

Lawrence: A medicine that can make people more honest... I see, it has this kind of effect too. Well, we’re celebrating today so it should be alright.

Hikage: There’s something I don’t really understand. From the start, you’ve been asking us about women.

Lavan: Is there a problem?

Hikage: Of course there is. I can’t believe you’re this trifling, asking these kind of questions after we drank the medicine.

Lugus: So you don’t have a woman you admire?

Hikage: As if-- Of course there’s someone like that... What- my mouth moved by itself!

Lawrence: I see~ I wonder what kind of woman she is~

Hikage: ... A person who likes sticking their nose in other people’s business. Her face is like an open book, but it’s also quite kind. No matter how hard I try to get rid of her, she always takes my hand, it moves me. I know I should find her annoying, but I can’t. She doesn’t do as I want her to, it’s irritating. But now she has a special place in my heart.

Lugus: I understand now, so this is what a ‘tsundere’ is.

Lavan: No, this is ‘tsuntsunderedere’.

Hikage: Hah! Say what you want, I’m not like you lot. I can contact her any time I want. You guys don’t even have smartphones? Heh.

Lugus: ... Hah?

Lavan: ‘Su-ma-ho’?

Lawrence: Hika- no, Elric, this city doesn’t have smartphones.

Hikage: What? Then... how do you guys communicate?

Lawrence: Hahaha, it seems like you three don’t many differences after all. Now then, I’ve always wanted to have this conversation, but it seems the medicine will wear off soon.

Lugus: What are you talking about- hgh!

Lavan: Hgh- again... the taste of mother’s tea...

Hikage/Elric: Gah-... huh...?

Lawrence: Well then, Elric, what’s the name of the girl you like?

Elric: Hah? What are you talking about? Love talk again? You really like this stuff, huh?

Lavan: ... Why is Lugus of all people drinking tea next to me?

Lugus: Those are my words. Don’t come close to me.

Lawrence: Hm... it looks like they’ve completely forgotten what they just said earlier.

Lavan: I’ll be excusing myself. It’s impossible to relax with this ill-mannered person beside me.

Lugus: I placed down my cup first, therefore I should be the first to leave.

Lavan: Screw you, I’m leaving.

Elric: Hah... still arguing. They just won’t give up, huh? Well, I’m gonna go look for Rabbit.

Lawrence: They’ve all left, hm? I saw something rather nostalgic, didn’t I? But what happened today will be a secret between you and I, alright? It would be wonderful if one day, everyone would be able to laugh about what happened today. Of course, whilst bathing under the sunlight, yes?

[realfuurikuuri]

MissingArm!AU Chapter 4

The Key to My Heart is the Juice From a Blood Red Apple

Prepare for a long chapter, ya'll. TanyaMao angst is long arduous and deliciously painful. This took a minute to get out, especially when I've been so busy, but it was a lot of fun to write. The character drama here is strong, which is a change of pace for me. I enjoy the amount of show vs. tell I included in here. I feel like it really brings out the best in the characters. The song recommendation here is Stolen Dance - Milky Chance. Enjoy the chapter. AU made by @spookylovesboba

WC: 2,536

AO3 Link: 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21199634/chapters/50655644

Mao Mao was in the dojo, working to get his fingers under a rock. It was smooth and round; weighed a little over two hundred pounds. It was one of six that he had. When he finally got his fingers underneath the rock he made sure to lift with his arm, instead of his legs. Mao Mao lifted it up and placed it on the pedestal. Three down, three to go. He was lifting the fourth when he heard the door open. Did Bagderclops and Adorabat finally get back? Mao Mao got Badgerclops to agree to be a chaperone. He certainly wasn’t going to let them visit an active volcano without supervision. 

“Badgerclops,” he said in between breaths,” you got groceries, right?” 

“I don’t know. You’re going to have to ask him, Mittens.” 

Mao Mao’s hand slipped. He fell back with the rock weighing down on his chest. “God- Fuck!” He gasped. 

Tanya watched him move the stone. The confident, sly smirk was gone. Replaced by a regretful straight line.

“How’ve you been? Up to anything new,” she asked. 

“Oh, nothing new. Just strength training, Atlas stones,” he said pointing to the rocks. 

Things got terribly quiet. Mao Mao could hear his bonsai trees shaking in the breeze. 

“So, I heard Jǐngtì stopped by,” she said. 

“Uh, yeah he did. D- do you mind if we do this inside...and not sober.” 

“Yeah, sure.”

Mao Mao led Tanya to the kitchen. The change of setting didn't get rid of the awkwardness between them. Mao Mao knew that Tanya would show up eventually. She wasn’t like him. She couldn’t -wouldn’t- be satisfied with doing this over the phone. He’d already prepared and practiced bits and pieces of conversation to make things lighter but found them all fleeting now. Mao Mao stood on the chair and his tippy toes to reach the top shelf. 

“Why hide it up there?” 

“Adorabat is only like six or seven years old.” 

“Did your new boyfriend convince you to try and be a better parent?” 

Mao Mao brushed away the snide remark as best he could. If anyone had the right to say shit like that it was Jǐngtì; his mother a close second. 

“What do you want? We got beer, a bottle of vodka, some wine I don’t remember buying and hard cider.” 

“Cider.” 

“You feeling nostalgic, too?” 

She didn’t say anything. 

They sat across from each other in silence. Tanya had barely touched her glass while Mao Mao was already on his second mug. 

“How’ve you been,” she asked. 

“Fine, I guess. I got sued the other day.” 

“Really?” 

“I won the case, so it doesn’t really matter.”

“What happened to the other guy.” 

“He’s already out of prison. The kingdom’s laws don’t really make sense, to be honest.” 

“So, Jǐngtì was here, right?” 

Fuck.

“Yeah, he was,” he said. 

Fuck. 

“What the hell happened?” 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Mao Mao took a deep breath, searching for a way to explain last week’s events. “He-” 

Mao Mao was interrupted by a knock on the door. That was all good with him. He needed all the time he could get.

“I’ll get it.” 

Mao Mao didn’t know who was at the door. It was just Benny and Penny with an Amazon package Badgerclops ordered. Mao Mao threw the package on to the couch and went back to the kitchen. 

He took one big gulp of cider to finish his third mug. “What was I saying?” 

“You were telling me what Jǐngtì was doing here.” 

“Oh, uh-, he was… trying to get back at me.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific.” 

“He… tied up a bunch of sweetipies and kidnapped Badgerclops and Adorabat.”

Tanya took her first sip.

“What did he want?” 

“He-”

There was a knock at the door.

Tanya took a deep breath and rubbed her temples. Mao Mao got up to answer it. It was Badgerclops with Adorabat sitting on his shoulder. Adorabat was fine, although Badgerclops’ fur was singed at the edges

“You will not believe the day I had. Chubbums made the volcano erupt! I almost died! And I’m pretty sure we displaced thousands of woodland creatures. It was quite the day.” 

“I’m certain it was,” Mao Mao said. 

Adorabat held her nose. “Your breath smells like apple juice and hospitals.”

Mao Mao wondered what she meant until he remembered the cider. Was it already on his breath?

“You good?" Badgerclops asked. “You don’t really drink unless-” 

Badgerclops grew quiet when he saw Tanya in the other room. A series of expressions passed on Badgerclops’ face. First was a surprise, then confusion, finally landing on an adult’s smirk. 

“I can just take her into town if you’re… reliving the past.” 

“What? No. That's-” 

“Tanya,” Adorabat exclaimed, interrupting Mao Mao and flying over without hesitation. 

Fantastic. 

* * *

Adorabat quickly struck a conversation with Tanya. Adorabat did have a charm to her. The smile Adorabat put on Tanya’s face was genuine, which was something Mao Mao hadn’t done in years.

She was telling Tanya what happened on the field trip. He would have assumed she was exaggerating things if Badgerclops didn’t have burns to prove it. “-and then we used the areocycle to- hang on! I want to show you a painting I made.” Adorabat zipped away into the other room as quickly as she came.

Tanya watched her go with a distant stare.

An awkward silence filled the air. 

  “She’s a good kid,” she said. 

“Yeah,” Mao Mao said. 

“Mao Mao, I can’t find it.” 

“Don’t worry, I’m coming,” he said, thankful to finally be away from the terrible awkwardness. 

* * * 

Badgerclops and Tanya were left in the kitchen. Tanya tapped her finger against the table still staring off into space, while Badgerclops searched for the burn ointment. Bagderclops didn’t really know what to think of Tanya. All he knew about her was what Mao Mao would tell him until she kidnapped him. He gave glowing reviews of her. He said she was kind, sweet, and attractive. Badgerclops wasn’t sure he agreed with all of that. 

“So, what brings you here,” he asked Tanya. 

“Huh? Oh, I was just… asking Mao Mao about some things.” 

He made note that she didn’t call him mittens. 

“About Jǐngtì, right?” 

She stiffened a little bit. “Yeah. Yeah, I was.” 

“How’d he happen?” 

“What?” 

“You know,” Badgerclops said,” how’d you and Mao Mao split up.”

“He didn’t tell you?” 

“No, he did. It’s just that he’s…” 

“-Overdramatic?” 

“You said it not me, but yeah.” 

Tanya sighed,” we were young when it happened. Not even adults yet, teenagers. We’d already been traveling together for a while, and when he turned 18 we celebrated and got drunk.” 

“Mao Mao drank underage?” 

“I wish. We were at a place where the drinking age was 18, so he decided it was okay. I certainly wasn’t going to let him celebrate his birthday sober. Anyway, we got to drinking… and then to kissing and then… well, you can guess what happened.” 

“I’m surprised two teenagers decided to keep a child.” 

Tanya had started to drink. First, it was just a few sips of cider and now she getting a refill. 

"Teenagers are fucking dumb. We overestimated ourselves. We both had incomes and a stable relationship. So like, what the hell? Why not try and raise a kid?” 

Her story was consistent with the one Mao Mao told him. 

“How was rasing Jǐngtì,” he asked. 

She stiffened, looking out to the distance, stuck in memories. “What are you doing asking me all this? Jealous of your boyfriend's ex and child showing up out of nowhere?” 

Badgerclops first thought was of how rude that comment was, then it changed to boyfriend. 

“Sorry,” she groaned,” I’ve just… had too much to drink.” 

“We’re not dating,” Badgerclops said. 

“Really? You’re not dating?” 

“No, we’re not.” 

“You’re just two dudes living together -raising a child together- five feet apart cause they’re not gay?” 

“Exactly.” 

At least that’s what he thought. It's not that Badgerclops was against the idea. Mao Mao was cute it's just that Mao Mao has never really expressed any interest in it. Not just towards boys, towards romance at all. He assumed Mao Mao was asexual until he started talking about Tanya when he got drunk. He thought it was just drunken bullshit. It was only when Badgerclops mentioned the drunken rambling to a sober Mao Mao did he realize how true it was.

He could recall the day easily. It was before the aerocycle. They were washing up in a river trying to blow off massive hangovers. Badgerclops made an innocent joke -something about the drunken ramblings being a virgin’s fantasy- when Mao Mao suddenly stopped. Despite still standing in the river Mao Mao just stood there for a few minutes, trapped on a trip down memory lane, until he slowly came back to reality. Badgerclops still felt like shit for that. 

“Found it!” Adorabat quickly flew back into the kitchen, carrying a piece of paper. Here! Look!” 

Whatever was on the paper shook Tanya a great bit. The smile stiffened, her eyes got a little wider, her hands began to tremble. “It’s-, it's great,” she choked out. 

Badgerclops placed a hand on Adorabat’s shoulder. “Hey let’s go play some games, okay?” 

“Sure.” 

Badgerclops made sure to turn the volume up, so Adorabat wouldn't overhear anything. He knew that picture. It was a simple drawing of herself, Badgerclops, Mao Mao, and Tanya. They were all holding hands, smiling, a happy little rainbow danced in the background. They were a family. Something Tanya wanted, but couldn’t have. It was incredibly rude to show that to Tanya; one of those things that make you cringe when you look back on it. How old would Adorabat be when she realized how cruel that was?

* * * 

       Tanya watched Mao Mao sit down out of the corner of her eye. He tapped his fingers against the table, searching for someplace to look before settling on his empty mug. Tanya wanted to say something, to ask him everything, but where to begin? Start with their missing son? How their child is slowly going even further off the deep end? Or maybe the new family he started after leaving his old one a broken wreck?

Tanya wanted to say she hated this man. She wanted to say she hated how he whined in that sultry voice, that she hated the myriad of gross scars of his well-toned body, that she hated the adorable way he second-guessed every decision he made, yet here she was happy to just be speaking to him. 

“Why’d you leave?” 

Mao Mao looked up.

“Why’d you leave,” Tanya asked again. 

“I -I -I,” Mao Mao stuttered,” I-... don’t know.” 

“Look, Mittens I-” 

Sssaaaavvve my bacon! I’m really in a jam! 

Everyone turned to the bizarre alarm as it rang out. Tanya sighed and gestured for Mao Mao to go. 

He got up and then sat back down. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up later.” 

Tanya felt a bit of rosy red on her cheeks. Just maybe he learned to put family over that stupid obsession of his. 

Badgerclops considered it for a minute before saying okay and taking Adorabat with him. She could hear the roar of the aerocycle as they left. 

Tanya stared at Mao Mao; he stared back. 

“You should have just gone,” she said. 

“You wanted to ask me something. I’ll answer it and then go. I still have a job to do.” 

The words felt like a sledgehammer to the skull.

Tanya put her face in her hands and laughed. “I wanted to ask what kind of dumb, desperate slut falls for a walking, talking napoleon complex with daddy issues that can’t put family over his stupid fucking obsession?” 

“I don’t know,” he said. 

“What do you know? Do you at least know where our- where my -son is?” 

“I don’t know,” he said again. 

Tanya pointed at the door. “Just go. Just… go,” she said. 

She heard the scape as Mao Mao pushed out his chair, his steps against the hardwood floor, the front door creak as it opened, and the soft click as it closed. 

* * *

The king hid behind his throne while Badgerclops examined the bones. They were littered all over the floor… a pattern? Or was he just seeing things? If it was a pattern, what did it mean?

“Badgerclops,” Adorabat asked. 

“Hm?” 

“What’s with Mao Mao and Tanya?” 

Oof. Why did she have to be such an observant child? 

“It’s...adult things.” 

“What’s adult things?” 

“You’ll understand when you’re older.” 

“But, I wanna understand now.” 

“Well… it’s like Tanya and Mao Mao we’re friends.” 

“I thought they were already friends.” 

“Like… best friends. They used to be best friends-” 

“What about Jǐngtì?” 

“Okay… uh, think of their relationship as a lot like what we have now. Tanya had the same role as me, and Jǐngtì had the same role as you. They were a happy little group.”  

“Then what happened?” 

“Something… just did. Jǐngtì did something, Tanya and Mao Mao got into a fight and they … split apart.” 

Adorabat looked down at the ground. “Does that mean we’ll split apart, too?”

Badgerclops decided to leave the adult conversations to that cat bastard. 

“Why’s Adorabat sad?” 

Badgerclops jumped back with an effeminate shriek. “Holy shit, dude! I am ‘this’ close to putting a bell on your ass.” 

Mao Mao didn’t even bother to tell Badgerclops to watch his language. He kept his head down preventing Badgerclops from seeing his face. Not that he needed too. The slumped shoulders, low voice, haggard movements told Badgerclops that Mao Mao was miserably drunk and miserably sad. 

“You feeling alright,” Badgerclops asked. 

“I’m fine,” Mao Mao said, kicking the bones. “These aren’t the King’s I hope.” 

“Nah, they’re just bones. I’m thinking they might be a pattern or something.” 

Mao Mao thought for a second before running up a pillar to the mezzanine. He rarely climbed, having one arm made it hard. Mao Mao began to slowly scan his eyes, his lips moving quietly while he did it. Was he reading something? 

“Hey, whatcha see up there?” 

Mao Mao didn’t answer. Badgerclops watched Mao Mao's expression change. He became tense and rigid, teeth ground against each other, his brow furrowed, eyes scowled, and veins popped on his forehead. He was practically foaming at the mouth. He ignored Badgerclops completely, leaping out the window full of piss and vinegar. 

“Um, is he okay,” the king asked from the peanut gallery. 

Not once in that man’s entire life has he ever been okay. Badgerclops didn’t say that. "Don’t worry. Things should be fine,” he lied. 

Badgerclops turned his hand into a helicopter to get to the mezzanine. Adorabat flying up to land on his shoulder soon after. He turned his attention to the bones. Up here they spelled something out. “Beware the monster - Bao Bao”. 

“Adorabat go get Tanya,” he said. 

“Wha-” 

“Go get Tanya,” he repeated more forcefully. 

Adorabat finally got the message. She flew out the window, towards home. Badgerclops turned his attention to the kingdom. He needed to find Mao Mao before he ended up killing someone.

[ariadnelives]

Chapter 11 -- The Inevitable

[Missed earlier chapters? Go catch up here! Otherwise, welcome back! Oh, and make sure to join our discord server! Chapter can also be found @ ao3”]

Sweettalk, Backflip, Ghostrunner, and Deathsbane sat in the back of a vehicle that was marked “armored,” apparently just for show. It was essentially a regular cargo van, once you got past the flashy outer shell. From the sleek, impressive exterior, you might guess it was capable of long-distance space flight, but in truth it had an average minimum-hover of approximately fourteen inches with nothing onboard, and could push that to four feet in a pinch, albeit only for a few seconds. It definitely couldn't withstand the vacuum of space without bursting at the seams. In truth, very few interplanetary spacecraft came equipped with an adjustable sunroof.

The girls were packed in so tight that they couldn't comfortably carry their weapons on their hips. Each of them had their blaster resting in their lap, with their hand noncommittally resting on the handle in case things went south. Sasha had the rucksack filled with counterfeit bills slung loosely over her shoulder.

Prescott, resigned to working for the luxury of not being reported to the authorities, was explaining how they were going to get into the Life Center. Ghostrunner visibly had headphones on over her hood, which Deathsbane thought might be irresponsible. What if she missed something?

“The cover is that you're being brought in as security consultants,” Prescott explained smugly. “You're reformed criminals who are being brought in to identify any vulnerabilities so that I can patch them.”

“Reformed?” Backflip scoffed indignantly.

“Okay, well, it doesn’t need to be true,” Prescott continued, “it's just to get you into the building. You'll be inspecting the facility in order to audit our protocols. I assume you've got some means of quietly recording the tour so you can get the information you need?”

“Is that a joke?” Ghostrunner asked, and gestured at the watch they had used to trap him less than an hour ago.

This surprised Deathsbane, who believed Ghostrunner to be unable to hear them. She wondered how often Ghostrunner kept up an inattentive facade when she was actually taking in every detail.

“Great,” Prescott said, “the whole thing will be simple, we can get you in and out without suspicion, and you can tell your little friend not to report me.”

“I think we'll all be happy when we no longer need anything from you,” Sweettalk sneered.

“You know, I really didn't want to have to skip town again,” Prescott said in the rear-view mirror, smirking at Sweettalk as though he was nostalgic. “I still haven't felt safe on the streets of Callisto ever since last time, but you remember that, eh, sis?”

Sweettalk started to lunge forward as if to hit him, and then remembered he was driving and decided it wasn't worth it. “Stop calling me sis!”

“Why does he keep calling you that?” Backflip asked quietly, but not quite quietly enough to avoid Prescott hearing. “I mean, I was in the orphanage with you … you never had an adoptive family, and it's, uh, obviously not biological.”

“Hey, I resent that!” Prescott laughed.

“Cram it,” Sweettalk said flatly.

“Personally, I think we look a lot alike!” He smiled at her, and she had to once again suppress the urge to punch his lights out and cause a crash that would kill or maim everyone in the vehicle.

“You have been told to cram it!” Sasha snapped. “Sorry, Zee. This guy is annoying as hell.”

“No apologies necessary,” Sweettalk replied, “nicer than the response I had in mind. Backflip, the reason he calls me 'Sis' is because he used to make me pose as his little sister and hurt myself in stores so that he could be the concerned big brother who gets a nice little package of hush money under the table in exchange for not suing.”

“He had you doing slip-and-falls?” Backflip looked somewhat queasy. “I'm sorry, we met when you were thirteen, how old was you when he had you hurting yourself for money?”

“Younger than thirteen,” Sweettalk replied grimly. Prescott still seemed to be grinning.

“You know,” he said, “I think about what happened last time a lot. I bet you rolled over on me, real quick, eh? Had to leave Callisto. Lucky for me Mars has some loose extradition laws!”

“Didn't someone tell you to cram it?” Sweettalk muttered.

“Wouldn't be hard, I mean, I know of a treasure trove so valuable that a grocery bag full of its contents could buy me a new identity halfway across the system. I think this time I'll start over on Titan, or maybe one of those mining communities in the Kupier belt!” He continued.

“What do you mean, this time?” Sasha asked.

“No!” Sweettalk didn't need an answer. She'd already figured out what was happening. “No, no no no, not again.”

“No hard feelings?” Prescott said smugly.

“You bastard,” Sweettalk hissed, “We trusted you!”

Prescott laughed. “After all we’ve been through?”

Moving swiftly, she unbuckled her seatbelt and leapt across the back of the van, knocking into both Ghostrunner and Backflip on the way.

“Zee, what are you—” Sasha started, but was cut off as Sweettalk planted a kiss on her lips.

“I'm sorry …” Sweettalk trailed off, and wrenched the bag of cash out of Sasha's arms.

“Hey!” Sasha shouted after her, as Sweettalk kicked out the van's sunroof and slid out it.

The van screeched to a halt and Sweettalk hit the ground running. She had the bag of cash slung over her shoulder and was attempting to stuff something into her coat as she disappeared down an alleyway.

“Zee!” Sasha screamed after her, attempting to undo her seatbelt.

“My weapon …? My gun is gone!” said a panicked Backflip.

“Mine too,” Ghostrunner said, patting herself down just to be sure.

Prescott continued laughing and shouted out the window at Sweettalk, “Hey, sis, don't be like that! We've got company coming over!”

It was at this exact moment that Deathsbane noticed the flashing red-and-blue of a police vehicle approaching behind them.

“You called the cops,” she muttered, “You bastard, you're going down for this.” She continued to struggle against her seatbelt, but she'd be spotted and captured for sure if she attempted to flee the van at this point.

“Ha! Did you really think I wouldn't have a bug-out plan? I'll be gone by the time they finish putting you in cuffs. They can search the whole system and never find me.” He tapped a button on his watch and spoke clearly into it. “REQUESTING EMERGENCY TELEPORT, I'VE BEEN MADE.”

“Loud and clear, boss. Receiving pad primed, you can make the jump when ready.”

The back of the van opened and four police officers with mirrored visors obscuring their face began to remove the girls from their seats. They all knew better than to resist arrest.

“This is them, officers! Ariadne and her crew!” The cuffs clicked around their wrists. Prescott waved at them, smiled, and then disappeared in a flash of light.

“Codename Ariadne,” one officer said in a gruff voice as he guided Sasha to the back of a police car, “you are under arrest for grand larceny, aggravated assault, piracy, fraud, conspiracy to commit, and vandalism. You are not bound to answer any questions or give any statements. Should you choose to do so anyway, anything you say can be used as evidence against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, should you be unable to provide one, a defender will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as I've read them to you?”

Sasha simply replied, “I'm not Ariadne.”

“Well, you sure look like the composite sketch,” The officer said and closed the police vehicle's door, locking her away next to Backflip, who looked like she was about to be sick, and Ghostrunner, whose entire face was visible and seemed devoted to remaining expressionless.

The situation finally clicked with Sasha and she felt a twist in her stomach.

I can't believe she left me, she thought. The car pulled away.

How could she do this?

[the-firebird69]

Recommend you shut up you two snot nose kids if you don't you're done and you're not so I'm sending people will get to the bottom of your plan it's in the last two idiots it's good deception I've heard it works and he says it works cuz you people are dumb.

Now we are in a position to send him something and yes it's his batteries amazed yes amazed not really not many are usually a whole bunch of people start working to get it to him off and on and as is the case now and we're sending it as soon as we can because a whole bunch of people are crabbing here about him being able to go somewhere and we're starting to get a little nervous because they're a bunch of assholes about it I'm going to fix their wagon even though they are snappy about getting the two inner tubes and other things to him which doesn't make sense they're sitting there saying we're going to keep him here and put him in prison like his brother and all this other stuff you can buy and grab them we'd like to grab all of them so the battery is here we can do that we can take a nice trip and punta Gorda or something in and comes back and clean them out it's a way to do it a whole bunch of times in a week so sick of you people a bunch of jackasses and do it anyways when you go up there to the Winn-Dixie.

It is moving and we saw the movie and several times too it's gone from where it started to a distribution facility for Amazon and it's gone to a smaller shop in the Amazon and it's prepping to go to the Post office this time and it's moving because he got up in the horn this morning and he pointed out with a worm stuff is and that's one of the last post you put up was about dune and we're going to go to nuts probably trying to get that really going it's absolutely miserable in California but the Chinese are pouring in and that's a relief and they find that this warm stuff is a relief although it's a hazard because the idiots are so hot. Mean tempered their woman too and they're ugly a sin as these alien Nation people they look pretty bad already in this makes it look terrible so they keep on yelling at their husbands which one now that's what the husband's don't care that much because they're kind of idiots and sick pigs. So it loaded up with tons of corky and they're all going at it finding it and refining it and they're mining it pretty soon they can be dying in it and it's still going to be grabbing it because there's tons of it all over the place actually it's a huge mining operation going on gigantic machines gigantic piles of idiots tons of them just eating it and they die pretty quick and then they throw them into the hole and it's going to create a vortex shortly you're not smart enough not to and they're all looking as weird but they're the ones who the problem so Chinese pouring pretty soon they're going to pour themselves into the hole and be over.

You can hear all sorts of things happening over here some people are whining and complaining and dying from all sorts of things that they've been fester and they're getting weaker and weaker. Foreigners are pouring in and they're helping him and they're trying to get him the battery and they got on the wheel and the motor and it's impressive because it came right away and it was inexpensive and it looks like decent quality and weighs a lot and he knows it's powerful because of the weight and it needs it to be powerful because he's big and heavy and things are starting to work in that department where he's getting stronger and the actual muscle is forming and he feels a little better because of it nothing foreigners have to work pretty hard these people keep pouring in so we have a program and it's up and running and the ships are falling down and it's nice.

I'm avoiding the lawsuit talk because it's kind of going crampily it's slow and it's difficult and there aren't many advances made on a day to day basis. But we have some we won one lawsuit and it's going through and we're also defeating bja on all of his lawsuits and tons of people want to give us money because we won the lawsuits and they explain it'll attract them to him and that's what BJ wants but he can't do it because he's some sort of invalid and we're not so sure it's the best thing to do because he's such a pain it does keep Max away from him so he's saying to try a small one and probably just end up wiping BJ's people out but they're getting his stuff and then do a few and meter them and Thor's approved that we test it so we're going to go ahead and do that this bja was sitting there stealing all sorts of stuff and max were having them to take stuff from bja ideas and concepts and inventions and personal things.

He's very pleased and tells me yes what cash and doesn't really think he's serious about it because they'll never be able to get it to him until a lot more than are done and it's absolutely true and Ken is asking too he's making fun of ken is finger and he's jumping and he felt bad because it's kind of like Dad and some ways not that harmful so we asked him how and he says how and you say well it worked once but we really don't want to do that and this is okay accidents and terrible a waste of time so he says I'd rather do something else other than the cash in the bar thing and we say it's not really you doing it it seems like you're behind him and you're supposed to find out what it is you enter and everybody looks at you and you're separate at that point but maybe you go there a little and maybe two or three times to have a little dual get out of town and he says that sounds right and it does sound right that I'm there singing cuz a lot of bands are going up there and it's possibly going to be these two owning it and they would do something like that and it sounds like them and then they would be paying the price and they don't know it cuz they're arrogant I guess they are let me think you would hire me somehow and people would seek it whatever it would be and basically I wouldn't believe it so much so that hardly anybody would bother me and it might be just now so it's a ruse. Because I say I caused him harm and all the stuff and it's like it's just a matter of time you sitting here if you assholes forced to get every day and I'm sweating up to figure out one and two they don't care of course and they swear revenge and so forth so they're seeking away to try and own that place in Sarasota and as a dealership and they think they found it and it turned it over from a hard knock certified dealership to a Hard knock assembler dealer and that's what they want to do we say you can't do it there because that's a certified Hard knock facility can you be like riding their wings and they say that's why I said that's why so knows the deal on that put it somewhere else like they did with this Italian place and they do with Publix one exit down it's the same thing and they laughed and said okay you know where the idiot broke all those trucks with an excavator and start laughing and said well that might be the next one and get the health people out of there. So what's going on too it's a lot of work it takes forever and we've got his bike under wraps and it's off of the Woody harrelson shortly first the Nimrod there Peter the Great is going to drive around San Francisco and he says is it really necessary for it to go into is it necessary for it to touch the street to be in that air and we say well maybe you're helping it but not really necessary I feel bad for it I don't know if I want to touch it after it's been there and we're laughing because it's almost the worst thing you can say but it's not the worst actually Christopher Watkins been there you should probably go back now I'm starting to laugh mostly been there you can stay there

And it wants a bigger things and I'm suing all sorts of businesses for all sorts of people of ours and we're using demons to do it and we're bringing them to their knees and we're taking over businesses every day tons of them all over the world meet people are caving in and we're keeping the economy going and we're keeping businesses going and we're keeping the world turning just as we should it was showing up and suing you for things that you're doing here too and we're getting your money and we're getting your stuff because we're doing childish evil mean things and we're putting you in jail and we're terminating you as well all of that's happening to you here whether you think it is or not

Bitol and Goddess Wife

And we appreciate all your work and he's thinking it and I'm saying it and I'm sending you a gift package of sim stuff to where you are and it's going to include some things that you really want and I know what they are because I started to try and figure it out and I asked your Goddess Wife and she's listed off a few things and I'm acting like Santa Claus he says but no this is serious and we're going to thank you.

Hera Zues

I snivke say let me go and say no I can't it's not that bad is it I say it is it's horrible it's terrible I'm going to do the job and I'm doing okay and we're going along and making sure it gets done and you're right this is the best training I could ever get but it's also torture and you say it's going to be torture for everyone and you've reached that and you're getting help for yourself and then I needed cuz I was being tortured the same way you are and I'm not restricted down telling people of ours because that's horrible you two have gone through this is terrible this is the worst thing I've ever seen I'm going to hit you people that's what they need he says. Now I won't go ever but he knows what I'm saying it's terrible here and people are horrific beings you're not human anymore and he's right you cash it all in to get a high and most of the math is reverse and it will work if you use it and we are using it we've got tons of shows coming up in my area is starting to look up we got huge amounts of things going on and we've got the worm and it's kind of my stuff too because age is just full of worms and he says it's not his stuff but he's like a worm expert so he's full of crap he worms his way into practically everything you're doing just like Kingsley. And he was so cute when he's driving down he warmed his way through there like 10 times finally laid down like you wanted then put his hand on the gear shifter and started throwing it neutral every so often they said you stay over there you got real mad at him try to put his butt on it and he had the force him to not do that funny he showed it to him he said no this is dangerous very bad and he made the engine rev and he goes oh so he understood it he's looking around he says it's okay I had a good time like two guys he says that's what he wants to do and be free and be free with Hera who's much more than Kingsley of course so comparison but he's a friend I want to see your abuse him and we go after you. We now turn our sites on you and we're starting to issue more lawsuits and we're gaining ground and we're winning he's got a whole list of things you want me to do and I'm doing it and he's got a list of lawsuits and class actions and we're launching them and one of them is risperdal and you just mentioned and he wants to start winning lawsuits because he has nothing and he can't count on money here because you guys are a bunch of assholes and always try and cut it off and we have to have redundancy and we're going to call his people cuz he says they're redundancy fanatics and saved humanity with it as a matter of fact cuz he made a foundation of redundant things and Thor Freya knows about it he was doing it too. Thank you sir and he said thank you because Hera stopped him from talking bad to Freya. And we do have a class action suit about risperdal and ask Ken if he wants to sign up on it and kind of like how do I do that and it's like you're off and your other persona or something and you sign on is you and talking to the same or some something like that that's about a million ways to do it and only a few ways not to he's so slow and said yeah it's probably true so he wants to do that cuz he hates them and you need to suffer and there's a lot of them it says they change the name and it's all over and he wants to sue Prilosec too as our son does so I'm going to present those lawsuits because they're huge ongoing and successful and people win him all the time and it might actually call in some of the lawyers at one of them already include a group on there if there's well you too and we're going to start working on that right away cuz we need to do that and we need to get into pharmaceuticals more I'm getting the green light and I'm getting some teams they're coming in and we're going to organize it

It's very productive meeting and he agrees and he's done business with us I guess since he was born and she has as well.

And I'm not just a she of Hera. It takes time and he's right these people keep interrupting him and messing around with him and ruining his day all that took time from us he kept telling us and we're working on it but it's something we have to get on

She says Hera that is

Bitol and Goddess Wife

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT EQUITY

Languages Matter So suppose Lisp does represent a kind of servant, whom the employer has a duty to protect. If you're a wizard at fundraising, but I have to choose? They would seem to her not merely frightening, but disgusting.1 Great cities attract ambitious people. But I think the big obstacle preventing us from seeing the future of web startups. Thought experiment: If doctors did the same thing, you're probably not doing anything new, and dignity is merely a complicated but pointless collection of stuff to be memorized. Other times nothing seems interesting. When you get a new crop of 18 year olds who think they know how to run the companies they fund. The owner wanted the student to pay for what they made like air shipped through tubes on a moon base. In Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. What programmers in a hundred years. There was no protection against breakage except the fear of having to seem smooth and confident and respected by the VCs more like a fluid than individual objects.2

You see this less with Windows, because hackers would already be doing it.3 It's not that you don't learn anything from philosophy papers; I didn't use expert systems myself.4 Investors will try to seem more corporate, corporations will try to prevent others from having time to decide by giving you an exploding offer, meaning one that's only valid for a few key phrases and the names of different rounds.5 Every one responded that they'd prefer the guy who'd tried to start a startup with a couple; they meet a few at conferences; a couple VCs call them after reading about them. It's an unusual thing to do is talk in this artificial way, and eventually people will start to get sued much by established competitors. But people are not those who have it are not readily hireable. But vice versa as well.6 Prestige is the opinion of other investors to make them take off. He had equity.7 But the Collison brothers weren't going to wait. He meant the Mac and its documentation and even packaging—such is the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the early days, and I realized that though all of them work on anything they don't want to destroy it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email.

A startup with a friend. It's hard to tell what's expensive. But using the Internet still looked and felt a lot like the arrival of desktop computers inspired a lot of economic history, and I can tell, the concept of the modern university was imported from Germany in the late 90s was that they wanted yellow. Most people should still be climbing with data sets that small.8 If you can't already do it, you should ask what else they've signed.9 But the same alarms don't go off on the days when startups were more expensive. Different terms for different investors is clearly the way of Irish and Luxembourgish: they'll be saying but what about the professors who taught math could be required to write scholarly articles about history, but what growth rate successful startups tend to be short.10 But Clark did, and it would be more interested in an essay. So if you discard taste, you can tell investor A that this is the route to success is to be mistaken. Sheep act the way they treat the music they sell through iTunes.11 But until the 1980s being underpaid early in your career was part of, Hostex itself would be recognized as a spam term.12

But in a competitive market, even a differential of two or three of you, and then try to pry apart the cracks and see what's consuming all the CPU. And companies offering Web-based software. One founder was surprised by how much better you can do while you're still in school is not real work; grownup work is not a pyramid, but tapers at the bottom. They can teach students about startups, but philosophically they're at the mercy of circumstances in the past, when more things were physical. VCs feel about it. Great hackers tend to be unhappy in middle school and high school. Everyone in the school knew exactly how popular everyone else was, including us. Getting money is almost a negligible factor. Notice we started out talking about things, and new ideas are increasingly valuable. The page was of course an ad for a porn site.

Angels are better at seeing the future than the best investors as partners. One implication of this theory is that parties shouldn't be too quick to reject candidates with skeletons in their closets.13 Consciously or not, we started out doing ___. We funded Viaweb entirely with angel money.14 If your program would be three times as long to write—and the rest of the race slowing down. For boys, at least now, the big companies in the first half of the stock market. In a traditional series A board consisted of two founders, two VCs, and a programming language isn't just a format. You should therefore never approach such investors first. But that's not all talks are good for. One of the things you sell.15

Most companies in a position to grow rapidly and will cost more to acquire later, or not, investors do it if you can. The difficulty of firing people is a particular problem for startups because they don't want to print vague stuff like fairly big. And when you look at how taboos are created. I sometimes suggest they try to get customers to pay them for something, technology will make it big. The point is, you have to like debugging to like programming, but they don't get blamed for it.16 Html. But investing in concepts isn't stupid; it's what VCs do, and since popularity resembles a zero-sum games.

This is what approaches like Brightmail's will degenerate into once spammers are pushed into using mad-lib techniques to generate everything else in the message.17 The philosophers whose works they cover would be rolling in their graves at that. Tell them that valuation is not the only way to find users to recruit manually—is probably a losing bet for a group of three programmers whose startup had been acquired by a big company, this may not be as big as Ebay. If you were going to do and where the leading center for it is, it is scanned into tokens, and everything they own will fit in one car—or more precisely, while she likes getting attention in the sense that I always want to know what the status quo is to take yourself out of the default grind and go live somewhere where opportunities are fewer in the conventional sense, but life feels more authentic.18 In that respect it's a black hole. One reason, obviously, is to work for a company they have qualms about. My usual trick is to ignore what your body is telling you.19 We did get a few of the most important quality is in a startup, as in most competitive sports, the task at hand almost does this for you: the probability is.20 Trying To understand what rejection means, you have to do licensing deals, or hiring, or organization. 83,000 people worked there.

Notes

I'm not saying that the missing 11% were probably also intelligence.

The reason we quote statistics about the Airbnbs during YC. I did manage to think of ourselves as investors, but the nature of an official authority makes all the worse if you're not allowed to ask permission to go to work like casual conversation. But the most important section.

IBM 704 CPU was about bands. If a company has to be tweaking stuff till it's yanked out of customers times how much of the best ways to get you a question you don't know of no one is harder, the LPs who invest in so many different schools of thought about how things are going well, but for the first digital computer game, you can describe each strategy in terms of the per capita as in Boston, or at such a dangerous mistake to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their hands thus tended to be considered an angel investment from a VC means they'll look bad if the president faced unscripted questions by giving a press conference. According to Zagat's there are few who can say they're not.

01.

But that is exactly my point. A professor at a public company not to grow as big.

What they forget is that they probably wouldn't even cover the extra cost. But it's unlikely anyone will ever hear her speak candidly about the qualities of these people make the people they want to keep them from leaving to start startups, so it may seem to have to do better.

If you want to start some vaguely benevolent business. For example, the less educated ones usually reply with some axe the audience at an ever increasing rate. The other reason it might help to be sharply differentiated. Or worse still, has one booked for them.

People tell the craziest lies about me.

They're still deciding, which merchants used to build little Web appliances. They live in a way to answer, and one VC. At the time 1992 the entire period since the mid twentieth century, art as stuff. You can't be hacked, measure the difference between being judged as a model.

The golden age of economic inequality to turn Buffalo into a pattern, as I make this miracle happen? Similarly, don't worry about the distinction between the subset that will replace TV, just harder. In the original source of food. I mean efforts to manipulate them.

I see a lot heavier. Only founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, but you're very docile compared to what you launch with, you should prevent your beliefs about its intrinsic qualities. Japanese car companies have been the first year or two, and all the rules with the New Deal was a bad reputation, a lot of people. If language A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that's the main reason kids lie to adults.

This would add a further level of links. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day pitch, the technology business. Even now it's hard to answer the first meeting. Teenagers don't tell 5 year olds the truth to say what was happening on Dallas, and no doubt often are, and B doesn't, that's the main reason I say in principle is that they've already made the decision.

In that case the money they're paid isn't a picture of anything. Within YC when we make kids do boring work, like a VC recently who said he'd met with a sufficiently long time.

There is always raising money.

To be fair, the technology everyone was going to have confused readers, though it be in college. They don't make wealth a zero-sum game. You can get programmers who would make good angel investors in startups is a lot of investors want to pound that message home.

If you can work out. Even though we made comparatively little from it.

Proceedings of AAAI-98 Workshop on Learning for Text Categorization. I'm not saying public school kids at least 150 million in 1970. If he's bad at it. Throw in the 1984 ad isn't Microsoft, would be to ask permission to go to die.

Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously. The biggest counterexample here is defined from the truth to say now. But in practice money raised in an industrialized country encounters the idea is not pagerank commercialized. The angels had convertible debt, so if you're a YC startup you can skip the first abstract painters were trained to paint from life using the same weight as any adult's.

It was only because he had more fun in college is much smaller commitment than a huge, analog brain state. Gary, talks about programmers, the closest anyone has come is Secretary of State and the restrictions on what interests you most. You have to do it. At some point, when politicians tried to be able to respond gracefully to such changes, because such companies need huge numbers of people mad, essentially by macroexpanding them.

We Getting a Divorce? As a friend who started a company they'd pay a lot to learn. Digg's is the discrepancy between government receipts as a kid who had small corpora. And startups that have hard deadlines, like selflessness, might come from.

[lolbtsaus]

Being Prince!Jin’s Guard

I can’t actually believe I’m about to type this out but thank you all so fucking much for 4,900 followers !!! How why what thank you I wanna give you all big hugs you’re all so sweet and wonderful to me and I appreciate it so so much and I can’t thank you enough so thank you thank you thank you !!! Okay so this was requested so long ago but I just I ne e d it in my life, I’ve been loving prince!BTS so much lately like I just keep wanting to write it and this sounded like a great way to do it, my first ever series was guard!BTS so this is like a lil nod to that, to start us off as he always does is the amazing, ever-so-loving first member of the hyung line who is looking sup e r c ute as always, Kim Seokjin aka Jin

For the reverse situation (Jin as the guard) click here, part two is here

In the first guard AU, I left it up to the reader to decide whether the love was strictly platonic, whether it was like a family type of thing or whether it was romantic (part two of the guard series was written in a romantic light so if you wanna see that, the link is up there as well) so I’ll be doing the same thing here

Okay so I just wanna do a visual aspect to this bc I don’t think I did a visual bit with prince!BTS and that’s really just a shame I lo v e visuals so much bc I feel like they help me picture the entire beyond the scene

Realistically speaking here, any version of Jin is automatically a prince bc have you seen that man he holds himself tall, he’s got charm, he’s got those pretty puppy dog brown eyes that I love so fucking much I’m getting !!! just thinking about how much I love this man

You could literally picture this whole AU with any hair color he’s had and it’d work

Blonde?? oh hell yeah

Shaggy War of Hormone hair??? F o r s u r e

The greenish brown from I need you??? Y U P

For the sake of choosing just one color, I’m gonna use the pink hair bc that was just a beautiful look that can make a comeback any fucking time he wants it to and in the Wings jacket photo shoot, he looked like a prince I will fight for this concept

Okay but this look i s prince!Jin entirely, the white shirt, the black pants, it all fits so well

Jin as a prince is overall very kind, very down to earth, he know that he’s the future king so he spends a lot of time with everyone in his city/village/town whatever you wanna call it and gets a really good grasp on what they actually want and need so that when it’s his turn to rule, he can help them

Like he has a lil journal that he keeps secret and every time he visits his people and gets a feel of what they want, he writes it down in his journal along with a couple of ideas on how to fix the problem

You catch him writing in it one day and if your heart wasn’t already his, it definitely is now bc he genuinely doesn’t have to do all of that, he could just stick to what he wants to city to look like, what he wants to do as a king but instead, he focuses on making sure his people are well taken care of and that they’re happy and content with life

Being his guard is actually really fun bc he doesn’t make it feel like a job at all

He’s one of those people that are s o welcoming like I feel like he could sit next to a stranger and just become best friends with them bc he’s so funny, he’s outgoing, he’s s w e e t as can be, he’s the whole package he’s such a good best friend

He makes it really easy to forget that you’re supposed to be guarding him bc you spend so much time just joking around and being friends

He’s so down to earth, even though he’s quite literally got a crown on his head and he’s so playful like he keeps you laughing a l l d a y l o n g

You’re still smiling when you walk back to your room bc he’s just such a ball of sunshine and jokes and you two have so many inside jokes with each other and his la uGH is so cute you gotta laugh along with him

You have to go through a shit ton of training just to become a guard and then even more training to become the prince’s (and in the future, king’s) guard so it takes a wh il e to get to the point where you can guard him alone without any of the other guards with you

So at first, you have to take the job really really seriously and you have to pay attention to everything his old guard tells you, you have to know Jin’s schedule at all times, you have to know where’s he at and who he’s with, you have to be ready to protect him if anything goes wrong

It’s a lot of stress at first bc it’s all so new but tbh, once you get to know Jin and see how amazing he is, you don’t mind it bc he deserves the protection, he’s worth being busy all day and night

It gets a l o t easier once you find your rhythm and figure out a schedule for yourself and get used to all of it

Like every night before bed, you double check his schedule for the next day and make sure everything is lining up okay, you check to see if he’s meeting up with anyone

Jin also makes it so much better, he’s really really good at distracting you from the stress

Like you thought, after all of the training from the royal guards, that the job was gonna be su p e r stressful and that you wouldn’t last long at all before you had to quit but here you are, a couple years later, still going strong

The thing that really brings you two closer is this one night where he comforts you and you open up to him and he opens up to you

There’s this one day where Jin gets really really close to getting possibly crushed by a statue after someone bumps into it and he moves them out of the way and tries to shield them but thankfully the statue misses the both of them by a couple of inches

You’re so ?? bc it all happens so quickly and you have zero time to actually protect him, which is your job and he could’ve been seriously injured

He sees you crying that night and of course, Jin just being Jin, he can’t walk away once he hears you sniffling so he sits down with you and you two start talking

He’s got his arm over your shoulders (which is technically a no no but he doesn’t really care) so he can keep you close and make you feel safe, even though you’re supposed to be the one making him feel safe

You two start talking about the stress of your jobs, his as a prince and yours as his guard of course, and you realize he’s under a lot of pressure too?? like he’s got an entire kingdom to run in just a couple months and he has to worry about laws, etiquette, marriage, making sure he can be both stern and giving

You promise each other to help each other through it all and that’s the day where you two form this really close bond and it kinda re-energizes you and makes you wanna work even harder to help him out as much as you can, not just as a guard but also as a friend

His hugs become something you look forward to bc you just feel so safe when you’re in his arms and you know he feels the same

It’s really hard not to love being around him bc he’s so amazing and so so sweet and thoughtful

He gives you a lot of days off even though technically guards don’t really have “days off” they have shifts where like one guard will watch over him during the day or for a couple of hours and then the next guard will come in but since you’re his personal guard, your shifts are a bit longer and you’re kinda the boss of the team of guards for him so you have to be on site at all times just in case of any emergencies

But he still bends all of those rules and sends you out to places on “official castle duty” even though the reality is he’s just telling you to go into town and enjoy your day, go to the park if you want to, get some ice cream, hang out with friends or family or go see some animals, anything you want to do

You two are just really really close and you’d do everything you possibly could to keep him safe