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neonacity · 3 years

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LUCID | NCT DREAM ‘00 LINE X READER | CH.3

LUCID DREAMS - A TYPE OF DREAM WHEREIN THE PERSON IS AWARE THAT THEY ARE CAUGHT IN A DREAM WORLD.

Summary: It was supposed to be a harmless, professional transaction. You were to tutor a group of boys, get your pay at the end of the day, and go home to your loving fiance. Kids aren’t supposed to be dangerous, right? So why, then, are you caught up in a web of madness that slowly makes you feel like you’re in a living nightmare?

A/N: Third chapter is here! Again, thank you to all those who are supporting the story. Once again, this is a yandere plot featuring NCT Dream ‘00 line which means there will be mature themes in the story as well as obsessive, toxic behavior. If you’re a minor, please refrain from interacting. If this isn’t your thing, then just scroll and skip. In no way am I condoning anything written here— this is not love, this is obsession—nor do I think that any of the people mentioned here will act any way like in this story. This is purely a work of fiction.

Genre: yandere, horror, suspense

TW: abuse, obsessive behavior, toxic relationships, suggestive scenes, stalking, possible kidnapping, mental health. Age gap–though nothing dramatic. Everyone is of legal age. Creepy, creepy, creepy! This will be updated as the story goes along.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

“Insane madness of the living can be more, more terrible than the bloody hunger of the undead...”

― Silvia Liam

The rules of hunting down prey are simple. First, you observe to take note of their weakness, then you stalk...waiting for the right opportunity to take your shot. Hunting is more often about a game of time than aim sometimes. You jump too soon and you risk scaring your target to a successful escape, or you do it too late that you let them fully slip through your grasp. Hunting... has always been about perfect timing.

"You already know the rules of the game, right boy?"

The frail form of a seven year old child cowered against the foot of a dead tree, eyes shaking as it regarded the man leering at him. The sky was a deep dark velvet above them, and the only source of light came from the full moon that dipped in and out between the passing clouds. A bell dingled from the tight chain strapped around his left ankle when he moved, the sound causing the smile on the man's face twist into a wicked grin.

The hum of a gun being cocked sent the boy to give a choked sob. He shakily tried to stand up from his spot and pressed his palm against the rough bark of the tree to support himself, his wide eyes set on the looming form that has taken a step closer to where he stood.

"It's the first sturgeon moon tonight, so we are going to change the rules a little bit, okay?" Those words only made the child shake harder, the thin shirt he had now clinging to him like second skin due to the cold sweats gripping him.

"You run. And if I catch you, you die," the man cooed as he craned his face a bit to the side, causing the light from the moon to illuminate his features briefly. He looked handsome, inhuman, like he was one of the fallen souls exiled to earth at the beginning of times.

The man moved the arm holding his hunting gun and used it to lift the chin of the boy still cowering in front of him. He smiled—a smile so beautiful and dangerous it can make angels weep.

"But if you die, then your brothers will be the one running in this forest to take your place. So...make sure I don't catch you, hmm?"

Tears finally streamed down the bruised cheeks of the child as he realized what he was up to tonight. Eyes wide with fear, he pushed himself off the tree he was leaning on and started making a run for it.

He could still hear his words even as he dove deep into the woods, the bell on his feet masking his thundering footsteps.

"Seven bullets! You have one minute to hide, son~!"

Gunshots pierced the night air like a wailing scream.

------

Bang!

Jeno lowered his hunting rifle and let go of his breath slowly. Despite the shadows cast by the towering trees surrounding him, his eyes could still clearly see the slight flailing of the fawn he just shot before it went completely still. Above him, a flock of crows looked down on the fallen prey with their beady eyes, as if gauging the best time to dive for their feast.

He slowly picked himself up from his hiding spot, a wide oak tree with overarching branches that hid him from sight. He's been crouched there for a good half hour or so, just waiting for the fawn to finally circle the area. He's been observing it for the past week or so, taking note of its routes, and today he decided to make the kill.

Unlike other hunters, Jeno prefers the thrill that comes with stalking his prey over simply making a successful game. For him, the fun of hunting is in the process and not in its ending—a kill , after all, means nothing if you didn't work hard for it.

He looked down on the small fawn now as it lay lifeless on the mossy forest ground with its glassy eyes still open. Leaning over, he lightly pressed his hand over it to feel its heartbeat just to check if he killed it properly.

It was so beautiful and graceful just prancing in the forest a few days ago….it would be a shame if it suffers now.

"Hey, you got it?" A voice from the edge of the clearing made him look around. Haechan emerged from between the trees, his own hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

"Yup. What did you get?"

The other boy lifted a brown sack and gave it a light shake.

"Got three rabbits. I'm too lazy to skin them here so I'll just ask Taeyong-hyung to do it. Want to go back now?"

Jeno turned to look back at the fawn in front of him briefly before finally shaking his head. He didn't really want to go back to the mansion yet, so he decided to just throw an excuse to the other for now.

"You go ahead. I'll just skin it right here," he said casually over his shoulder at his brother. Haechan, too cold and too bored to stay another minute in the humid woods, gave a wave of his hand before turning back. Unlike Jeno, he prefers the comforts and luxuries of the manor over anything else.

"I'll go ahead then. Try to get back before nightfall, the forest can be a dangerous place~" he said in a sing-song voice, knowing full well it was a useless warning he just gave.

Jeno simply ignored him and silently pulled his skinning knife from his belt so he could get to work. Nights in the forest have never scared him, he knew it like the back of his hand.

If anything, it is the creatures there who should be terrified of him.

------

You glanced over at Jisung and Chenle who were currently immersed in their readings over the page you’ve been scanning. The sun is about to set in just a few minutes and you have the last session of the day scheduled for the pair before you could pack up and go home. Your lips slightly quirked into a smile as you watched Jisung lean over slightly into the other to silently ask about something, Chenle looking up from his pages to roll his eyes before patiently answering. The two have such different personalities from each other, which adorably and ironically, makes them work so well together.

If you're going to be honest with yourself now, you'd say it is your time with the two youngest that you enjoy the most as Rosewood's tutor. Chenle and Jisung were withdrawn and shy at first, but the pair slowly started warming up to you as time went by. Maybe it's because they are younger, but you prefer the innocent air around them every time you would have your lessons. Chenle is the chattier and the more confident of the two, but with his help, even the shy Jisung also started lightly joking around with you on his best days.

That's not to say that you hate your time with the rest of the brothers. You've only ever had one session with Mark—which went so well as expected from the eldest—while the rest have always been polite and casual. There isn’t really anything about your job and connection with any of the boys that should put you on edge and yet... you have to admit that there are still those rare moments when you just feel as if something is out of place. You couldn't really place your finger on it, nor have you blatantly caught anything suspicious, but sometimes you just feel odd whenever you are around any of the four middle children. It’s something similar to being watched...like there is an imaginary pair of eyes always pinned to the back of your head, or the ghost feeling of hands hovering around your throat.

Your eyes flickered now to the grand clock on the far side of the room which finally struck five. Closing your own book which you have been scouring over, you called out towards the two who quickly looked up from their work.

"Alright, time's up. Have you answered the first two questions at least?" You asked with a smile. Chenle groaned and pointed at Jisung accusingly.

"I only got three questions because he kept disturbing me, noona."

Jisung frowned and you had to keep your laugh back with how offended he looked.

"Hey, I wasn't disturbing you. I was just asking questions."

"Okay, okay. Don't fight now. Do you want an extension for the chapter quiz? We do have our next lesson the day after tomorrow."

Their faces simultaneously lit up.

"Can we do that?" Chenle asked.

"Yes, but I'll have to leave you the assignment of reading another chapter and finishing the questionnaire for that as well. That'll be your homework, okay?" You tried your best to put on your best impression of a stern look, which only made the two giggle.

"Okay, noona."

"You promise you'll do it?"

Jisung put up his right hand and placed his left one over his heart.

"We promise."

That made you chuckle. "Well then, that will be all for today. I'll see you again tomorrow, okay? I'll have lessons with your brothers but just come to me if you have any questions." You gathered the rest of the papers that you have sprawled on the desk you were using before waving the two goodbye.

You were in the middle of trying to fit in a rather stubborn pile of files on your bag that you didn't really notice the tall figure that entered from the front door. When you finally looked up, it was already too late for you to stop crashing straight first into someone's chest, if not for the strong hands that held you steady. You felt an arm settle on your waist, and another on your back as you almost toppled when you hastily stepped back.

"Oh! I am so sorr—" you looked up with wide eyes to see Jeno looking down on you. Your words died in your throat when your eyes caught the red stain on his neck and you gasped.

"Jeno, what happened?!" Your voice raised in panic as you stared wide eyed at the blood running down the side of his neck. He gave you a slight look of confusion before raising a hand to touch the area you've been staring at.

"Ah… this…"

You didn't wait for him to finish. Quickly, you grabbed his hand and turned on your heels to drag him to the opposite direction. You didn't look back to see his surprised expression, and before he could even say anything, you had already pushed him into one of the expansive bathrooms down the nearest hallway.

"Sit there."

You pushed him urgently on the closed toilet seat before you proceeded to rummage on the hidden compartment behind the mirror that Taeyong showed you before. You quickly grabbed the box of first aid kit there and hastily opened an antiseptic wipe.

"Uhm...noona…"

You didn't pay him any attention, too focused on what you needed to do. You quickly kneeled in front of him so that you were more eye-level with each other before finally pressing the damp wipe against his injury.

"Shh. This might sting a little. We have to see how deep your wound is and stop the bleeding," you said, a small frown creasing your brows as your fingers gently dabbed at his skin. You were so focused on what you were doing that you didn't notice the light in his eyes shift as he looked at you closely.

His gaze dropped to your slightly parted lips, then at the look of concentration on your features.

Are you...worried about him?

Your frown deepened as you finally managed to wipe most of the blood away from his skin. The antiseptic sheet you were using has already turned dark red from the liquid, but still you haven't—

"It's not my blood," Jeno said plainly, his voice suddenly sounding too close to you. You looked up to him in confusion, and for the first time you realized how close the two of you were. His gaze didn't waver from your face, pinning you into the spot where you are kneeling in front of him.

"Not your…"

"I was hunting. I was skinning the game I caught but my hand slipped and I hit a major vein. This is deer blood."

If your face wasn't burning after realizing how close the two of you were at the moment, it is definitely on fire now. You opened your mouth to say something, then closed it again in embarrassment. Jeno continued staring at you and you watched as his lips ever so slightly curled into a smirk.

That made you suddenly stand up from your crouch. He calmly followed you with his gaze, a mix of curiosity and amusement in his brown eyes.

"I-I'm so sorry. I thought you were injured so I panicked," you stuttered as your eyes fell on the bloody wipe that is still on your hands. You quickly ducked to throw it away just so you could avoid his gaze.

Jeno followed your every move closely before slightly leaning his head to the side. He seems to be mulling over something, face now devoid of any telling emotions.

"Were you concerned about me?" He asked, tone curious. You glanced at him in surprise, stunned that he would ask such a question. It was bad enough that you stumbled over your words when you finally managed a reply.

"Of course I was concerned. Anyone would be."

Jeno slowly stood up from where he sat and for the first time, you realized just how much he towered over you. It didn't help that the two of you were in a much smaller space than usual which sent a wave of claustrophobia to wash you over briefly. You involuntarily took a step back, eyes only high enough to meet the base of his neck.

"Why though?" He asked again, and you could genuinely hear the curiosity in his tone. You frowned. He was asking...as if he isn't used to such a level of care. As if things like this are so foreign to him.

"Because you are my student. And I wouldn't want to see anyone hurt."

For a moment, Jeno didn't say anything else. He simply looked at you while you tried so hard not to flinch under his heavy gaze.

Then, as if a switch had been turned, he took a step to the side to free some space between the two of you. Your eyes shot to his face when he did that, and you were met by his boyish smile that crinkled his eyes into half moons.

That made you blink. You see it on him whenever he is with the rest of his brothers, but it was the first time he ever smiled that way to you.

"Thank you, noona. I appreciate it."

It was as if a blockage in your throat dissolved all of a sudden. You smiled back, a sense of relief overtaking you.

"Don't worry about it. I'm sorry I panicked, too."

"It's cute. Nobody has ever…" he trailed off before shrugging. "I guess, it's because we're all men here. So none of us are used to that kind of care."

You nodded slowly at that. It really must be hard...being in this kind of household. Now that you think about it, the boys are technically orphans.

"Anyway, I have to go. I need to get back before dark. I'm not really a big fan of night drives," you said as you picked up the bag you had haphazardly thrown into the sink in your panic earlier. Jeno simply watched you silently from where he stood.

"Make sure to be careful next time alright? Don't give anyone a heart attack again," you smiled before finally excusing yourself out. He smiled back and gave a nod of goodbye as you closed the door.

Jeno turned to the mirror in front of him and slowly touched the part of his neck where your fingers grazed earlier. It was cold now from the antiseptic you had rubbed, but he could still remember how good the warmth of your touch felt against his skin when you were trying to wash the blood away. He curled his fingers slightly over the area now, leaving half moon marks as his nails dug there.

Oh what he would do to have you touch him again.

-------

"Pretty neat, huh?" You grinned at Jaehyun as he parked the car in front of the manor. You watched as your boyfriend's eyes moved over the impressive facade of the structure in front of him, knowing full well that his architect training is kicking in.

"Not bad. Victorian-era, probably. The stones look old but the place looks pretty well-kept…"

You grinned to yourself now as you leaned back on your seat. Of course you have absolutely no reason to be proud of something you don't own, but you can't help but boast a little at your boyfriend. It is your workplace after all.

Jaehyun turned to his seat now to give you a slightly guilty smile. He sighed before reaching out for your hand.

"Are you sure you will be okay though? I'm sorry about borrowing your car all of a sudden, the timing is just so bad."

You gave his hand a squeeze before patting it with your other. He was supposed to go on a three day business trip away from the city when his car, all of a sudden, just wouldn't start this morning. He wouldn't make it if he waits for the shop to fix it so the both of you decided to just have him use yours for now. At least he has enough time to drive you to work, which is why the two of you now are parked outside the manor, 10 minutes before your first lesson has to start.

"Don't worry about it. I'll make sure to pick up your car later. I'll have the taxi drive me there."

Jaehyun glanced back at the mansion briefly.

"Are you sure you can get a taxi here though? This is pretty far off the main road…"

Well...to be honest, you weren't even really sure about that yourself but he didn't have to worry about it right now. You nodded and reached over for your bag with a smile.

"Yes. Or I'll just ask Taeyong for help if I can't get one. I'm pretty sure they have some taxi companies in contact."

Jaehyun still didn't look convinced but gave you a small nod nevertheless. His eyes were back to studying the house again which made you chuckle.

"Jae, I'll be fine. You have to go now or you'll be late to your conference. Thanks for driving me here," picking up the last of your things, you leaned over to give him a quick peck on the cheeks. He responded by pulling you over for a slightly longer kiss when you tried to move away.

"Yah, Jung Jaehyun. We'll both be late if you don't stop," you whispered softly with an amused tone. He laughed before finally letting you pull back.

"Just getting my fill of it since I won't see you in three days. Call me once you get home later, okay?"

"Mmn. Take care, too. Go get that deal closed," you gave him a wink before finally opening the passenger seat. You watched as he finally pulled away from the driveway and waited until he disappeared again on the long winding road before turning towards the manor again. You were almost at the front steps when the doors finally opened, spilling Haechan, Renjun, and Jaemin out of them. You frowned slightly as you took notice of the canvases they were carrying as you approached the group.

"Hey...are you going somewhere? Class is about to start." You asked curiously, eyes landing finally on the small leather bag that Renjun was carrying. It seems to be full of art supplies.

"We're doing a free art class today, right noona?" The eldest of the trio asked. You nodded, still a bit confused.

"Renjun suggested we do it in the garden since the weather is nice today," Jaemin finally said. "We think it'll be a nice change from the stuffy rooms inside," he slightly jerked his head back at the wide windows of the manor which are currently shut back with thick curtains. You glanced at them briefly too before nodding slowly in understanding.

"Oh… I mean… It's not a bad idea. We can have the first session outside while the sun is still bearable, I guess."

That made Jaemin, and most especially Renjun smile. The boy can be withdrawn most of the time, but you did notice that he looks happiest whenever you do creative classes.

"Thank you, noona."

"No problem. I'll just put my bag inside and then I'll follow you. Why don't you set up your things first?"

You've taken a couple of steps towards the front door already when Haechan suddenly spoke up.

"Who was with you, noona?"

That froze you on your tracks. Slowly, you turned to face the trio again. They saw Jaehyun drive off?

"Oh, that was my boyfriend. He dropped me off today," you said casually with a smile. Haechan leaned his head a little bit to the side in curiosity.

"But he took your car…"

"Yes, he did. His broke down so he had to borrow mine. He's leaving for a three-day trip so—" you stopped all of a sudden, realizing that you're explaining things too much. There's nothing wrong about what you said but there was still a part of you that made you feel a little...exposed. Jaemin, Haechan, and Renjun, fortunately, didn't seem to notice and continued to politely look at you.

"Anyway, I'll just grab a cab to go home," you continued with a smile. "There are some who stop by here, right?"

"Yes. Or we can just ask Taeyong-hyung to drive you. He is the only one who has a license among us," Jaemin offered with a casual shrug.

"Ah, maybe I'll have to bother him this one time if I can't get a cab," you said with a sheepish smile. "Okay, I do have to bring my things inside. I'll see you."

You have already reached the top of the steps before the double doors when you finally realized something. Quickly you turned to the three boys who were just about to disappear to the side of the house leading to the manicured gardens.

"Wait, where's Jeno?"

It was Jaemin who answered.

"Oh yeah. He can't come. He is on bed rest."

You frowned.

"What happened?"

Haechan snickered which caused Renjun to shoot him a reprimanding look.

"He got into a hunting accident," the boy explained as he barely tried to keep his lips from twitching with amusement. "He was foolish enough to get stabbed in the chest by a stag."

-----

You gave the oak wood door a few light taps before drawing your hand back to yourself. You still weren't sure if this is a good idea, and yet here you are standing outside Jeno's room, the expansive hallway making you feel too small and out of place. This is the first time you've been in this part of the mansion since you only ever roamed the lower floors for your classes, and you couldn't help but feel a little strange at the heaviness of the air clinging around you now.

Maybe it's because it is where the private quarters of the boys are, but the corridor was only slightly illuminated by dimmed lighting from the lamps on the walls. Everything was silent, and for a moment you wondered if you got the wrong door that Taeyong gave directions to when you told him you wanted to check on Jeno. You have already taken a step back and was about to turn away when you heard some rustling from inside the room. It was followed by a voice muffled by the thick wood separating you from the other side of the door.

"Come in."

You froze on your spot for a few seconds before finally managing to shake yourself to open the door before you slowly. Peering around it, the first thing you noticed was how big the room was—it looked more like a smaller section of a house than a private quarters. It was dark, but a quick look at it told you that it was mostly bare if you don't count the essentials, which is a simple desk by the side, a long couch, and, in the middle, a four poster bed.

Your eyes landed on Jeno who was looking at you with equal mild surprise. He was propped against the headboard of his bed, the light from the laptop on his lap illuminating his face. You noticed that he didn't have a shirt on, but most of his skin from the right shoulder down to his chest was covered by bandages.

"Hi," you smiled, suddenly feeling conscious now as you stepped into his room.

"Um. Hi. What are you…"

"I heard that you were injured so I just dropped by to check on you," you quickly answered to diffuse any awkwardness that is in danger of settling between the two of you. Jeno blinked, as if processing what you just said.

"Uh… sorry, I didn't realize that I might be disturbing you. I can also just go back another time and—"

"No," He said all of a sudden before you could excuse yourself. Quickly, he closed his laptop and put it away on his side. "You can stay for a bit."

"Oh...great. I uh…" your eyes roamed around his room once again, hoping to find a chair that is closer to his bed. There was none. You figured the couch was the only place you could go to so you started walking towards it, Jeno's eyes on you.

"You can sit here," he suddenly said and you looked up to see him pointing at the foot of his bed. That made you stop before glancing again at the couch at the farther side of his room, something which he immediately noticed.

"It's too far away. It'll be awkward for us to talk if you sit there,” he said, as if he read your mind.

That...makes sense. With a slight nod, you closed the distance between you and the bed instead and chose to sit by its far end.

Jeno was back to watching you as you settled down, his expression curious. You softly cleared your throat.

"How are you feeling?"

He glanced down his chest briefly. "Oh, I'm fine. It didn't hurt as much during the weekend, but I was still told to stay in bed. I can't really move that much yet."

"What happened anyway?"

He scratched the back of his head almost sheepishly and looked away.

"I was trying to hunt a deer. I didn't know its mate was just around the area when I approached it so...yeah."

You winced as your eyes fell on his bandaged chest. You know next to nothing about hunting, but you know enough that an angry stag doesn't spell good news for anyone. Things could have been more serious for him.

"Are you sure that you shouldn't be in the hospital though?"

"Yes. We have a private doctor anyway. I just need to make sure I don't move too much to keep my wound from opening. And I also hate hospitals so I prefer to stay here…"

"You have to be more careful next time, okay Jeno? The forest is such a dangerous place…" you sighed before shifting your attention towards the window at the far wall of his room. He only had his curtains partially open but you could still see a sliver of the woods from where you sat.

Something about what you said shifted something in him. You missed it entirely thanks to the shadows from the room's dim lighting that masked his features, but it was there, hiding in plain sight.

"You take care of us so well."

You turned to him again as you heard him whisper something.

"What?"

Jeno simply smiled. He leaned back against the headboard, as if mulling over something.

"Since noona is worried about me, can you help me change my bandages?"

You blinked. That wasn't something you expected him to ask at all. Before, you figured Jeno to be one of the more withdrawn among the brothers, always with this air of intimidation about him, but lately, he has been throwing you off with these kinds of moments. He isn't flirty like Jaemin or sly and playful like Haechan, but he’s just so...direct. Almost pushy, sometimes.

"I uhm… I don't know. I wouldn't know how to do it, maybe I can call someone and—"

You watched as he already started to undo the bandages on his torso, your eyes growing wide as he started to expose more skin.

"Jeno wait, I think we should call Taeyong for thi—oh my god."

Your words were cut off when he finally let the last of the bandages fall to reveal the cut on his torso. It started from his right chest, a few inches above the collarbone, and ran sideways to the middle where it cut off. Stitches held the skin together, and you could see the darkening sides of the flesh where it broke.

Yet it wasn't only that which caught your attention. Despite the dimness of the room, you could see other marks in his body, old scars that adorned his pale skin here and there. They varied in length and thickness, and you couldn't figure out what might have caused them. Were they from hunting accidents too…?

You immediately turned to look away. You didn't want to seem rude for staring. Jeno, however, seemed unbothered, if not mildly amused. Watching you through hooded eyes, he let you squirm for a little bit first before finally calling for your attention once more.

"Noona."

"Yes?"

"Help me, please?"

The tone he used on you finally made you turn with a slight wince, which only made him chuckle.

"You're not used to seeing injuries?"

"I'm not fond of them. I don't think anyone is."

“So let's get this over with then. I just need you to hold one side of the bandage for me while I wrap it again. It's hard when I do it alone."

You were about to open your mouth to say something again but chose to purse your lips after in the end. With a soft sigh, you finally picked yourself up from your spot by the foot of the bed to move closer to him. Jeno had already uncapped what looked to be a bottle of antiseptic at this point and had started to dab gently at his cut. You tried to watch without wincing too much as he tried to do the job, but it was probably too painful for him to move too much because he was missing a lot of it.

"Hey, just give me that. I'll do it," you asked as you gently took the cotton pad from him. Jeno wordlessly let you take it, eyes closely watching you as you ducked a little to clean his wound. You tried your best to keep your eyes on target, not allowing them to move anywhere else…

"It looks so bad… I'm surprised you can still move…" you whispered, more to yourself than to him as you frowned over it. You completely missed the way the corners of Jeno's lips ever so slightly tilted as your fingers brushed against his skin.

"Your fiance must have never gotten injured before, noona."

Your hand froze at what he said. Slowly, you looked up at him, only to see him smile at you.

"How did you…"

"Oh, Taeyong-hyung told us. He just reminded us to be nice to you or else you might quit. He said you are saving up for your wedding."

You didn't say anything at first after his explanation. There's nothing wrong about it, and it seems very in-character for Taeyong to say that since he seems to be the most worried about the possibility of you quitting. Still, you couldn't help the odd feeling that tugged at your chest, one you tried to shove back as you turned your attention again to what you were doing just so you could escape Jeno's gaze.

"Well… yes. I am saving up for it. But I also enjoy my time here… so far…"

Jeno smiled to himself as he looked down on you, eyes watching your every move.

"We'll behave too, we promise," he said softly that you almost didn't catch it.

"Until then, I'm sure your boyfriend wouldn't mind us borrowing you from him."

----

"Jisung! Chenle! Don't run too far into the forest, okay?" Taeyong called out to the two boys who have already turned on their tails and have started running towards the woods. You watched as the two laughed and pushed at each other playfully before finally disappearing into the forest edge.

Taeyong sighed beside you and let the hands he had on his hips fall to his sides. You turned to him and he gave you an apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry for suddenly asking you to watch over them. I totally forgot that I had to drive the rest to their dentist appointment today," he said with a scratch of his head. You simply shook a hand at him to wave him off.

"Don't worry about it. I don't have any other classes today anyway so I'll just wait here for them. But... uh... are you sure that it is safe for them to play there?"

"Yes. As long as they stay in the right zones. There are parts there where some wild animals might roam around this season but Jisung and Chenle already know that, don't worry. It won't be the first time they'll be going there too. They've been playing there since they were kids."

You nodded slowly, still a little bit unsure as your gaze floated over to the woods once more. If it were you, you wouldn't let them go near it, especially after what happened to Jeno.

"I'll have to go then. I promise I'll be back by 5. Then I can drive you back to town after."

You turned to look at Taeyong once more and gave him a grateful smile. You usually would have declined the offer under normal circumstances, but you honestly think it will be easier and safer for you to just have him take you back later.

"Thank you. I appreciate that."

The other nodded before giving you one last smile. Turning around, you watched him go to the car where Haechan, Renjun, and Jaemin were already waiting. Jeno was still in bed rest, so he is skipping the impromptu trip this time.

You only turned back to look at the woods ahead when you finally saw the black sedan disappear down the road. The forest looked foreboding in front of you, one look at it and you know there is no way you'll venture there in your own free will. With a sigh, you picked up the book you've brought with you and let yourself take a seat by the grass as you wait for Jisung and Chenle to return.

A sudden sharp caw that tore the air made you look up in surprise from the current chapter you were reading. You didn't have any idea how much time had already passed after you lost yourself in your book, but you were surprised to see that the sky had gone red over the horizon as a flock of crows soared from the depths of the forest. You watched as they circled just above the trees before finally disappearing far into the sky. That was when you realized it; it's been a while since Jisung and Chenle left.

With panic slowly creeping into your chest, you glanced at your watch then back at the mansion behind you. Taeyong didn't say anything about a curfew for the two kids, but your own sense told you that the pair should be back before night falls. Your gut told you that you should start looking for them, but the problem is that there is still more than half an hour left before Taeyong said they will return and the only other person left in the manor was Jeno—who can't even get out of bed.

You swallowed. Before you could make any decision, however, a bone-chilling sound floated into the air that made your blood turn cold. It was faint at first, making you wonder if it was just your imagination playing tricks on you, but then it called out again, and you felt your heart drop to your stomach.

It was Chenle. Screaming.

You broke into a run without a second thought.

It took you everything you have not to topple over the uneven forest floor as you wove through the trees. You have no idea where you were going, your mind and vision reeling as you tried to follow the voice. Your skirt have caught countless times on shrubberies and wayward tree barks as you tore through the woods but you kept going, not minding the tears on the fabric and the skin of your legs.

"Chenle! Jisung! Where are you!"

You called out desperately when the cries suddenly stopped. You were only barely aware of your heart thundering in your chest and your lungs burning from overexertion.

No. No. Don't stop screaming. I can't find you if you do.

"Chenle! Jisung!" You called out again desperately as you stopped at the edge of what seemed to be a small patch of land that dropped off to a ravine. The trees beyond were denser than the ones at the edge of the forest and the already fading light of the day wasn't helping the thick canopies above you that rained shadows on where you stood. You looked around and swallowed thickly. Something inside of you told you to turn around and run again but you stayed frozen on your spot, waiting for any sound from the kids.

It took you a few more heartbeats to pick up something again. Jisung's voice sounded far off to your right, maybe about 15 meters from where you currently are.

"Noona! Help! Chenle fell down!"

Your adrenaline jumped into action again.

"Jisung?! Jisung! Wait—Is Chenle with you?” A soft voice called out and you breathed in as you recognized the latter's tone. “I'm coming! Don't stop calling for me, okay, so I can find you!"

You were about to turn away from the edge of the steep ravine you were still standing on when you felt your back hit something hard. Before you could even turn around to look at it, however, a blunt force hitting the middle of your shoulder blades sent you toppling forward, straight into the sharp fall beyond.

You screamed, before everything went quiet as your head hit the bedrock below.

---

A.N. GOD THIS WAS SO LONG IM SO GLAD IT IS FINALLY DONE.

Taglist: @negincho, @jhornytrash, @jaeminhyuckiii, @jungwoosswhore, @jsturkey, @aj--7, @pukupukupawpau, @tomiesgirlfren, @vsszn

CHAPTER 4

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adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy · 3 years

Note

please he would threaten to punch her and she would go from ☹️ to 😁

“I’m gonna smack you.”

“Harry, it’s not funny.”

“Am I laughing? Look at my face, do you see a smile on it?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Exactly. Because this isn’t a laughing matter. I am sick and tired of you being mean to my girlfriend. I’m exhausted. Worn away. Eroding. Weathered. I’m sand particles, at this point.”

Y/N attempts to keep a neutral attitude, but his comical dramatics are difficult to resist. “I—”

“So, if you’re gonna keep being mean to her— if you insist on putting her down— then I have no choice but to clock you in the face. Sorry, not sorry. I haven’t spent months and hundreds of dollars making her feel perfect for you to come and ruin it. Can’t allow that.”

“Harry—”

“Assume the position.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re excused.” Harry comments easily, lifting his fists up as he bends his knees a bit, his posture crouched as he shuffles from side to side, throwing air punches to suggest he’s practicing. “C’mon, hands up. I’ll even let you get into a defense stance before I rock your shit.”

Y/N rolls her eyes, haphazardly putting her arms up as if to block a blow, kinking an eyebrow at him pointedly. “Like this?”

“Your form is utter rubbish, but it’ll do.”

“This is ridi—”

She doesn’t get the chance to finish her insult. Harry charges forward, snaking his arms around her waist and chucking her upwards, throwing the girl over his shoulder as he straightens his body. He spins around sharply with her in tow, cackling as she screams in surprise and pounds at his back, demanding he put her down. Despite her protests, he can her giggling between words, trying to keep a solid front in order to get him to oblige.

Harry tosses her around messily, laughing even harder as she shrieks and grasps onto his t-shirt, kicking her legs in an effort to get him to release her. He turns his head, calling over his opposite shoulder so she can hear, a evil smirk plucking his dimples into place. “You want me to put you down?”

“Obviously.” Y/N spits in fake exasperation, wriggling around wildly to emphasize her point. “If you keep spinning me around, I’m gonna hurl all over your Marc Jacobs t-shirt. Put me down now.”

“Happy to.”

Harry reels around towards his couch, sauntering over with his mind set on the cushions at the very center. Y/N recognizes his intentions immediately, and she begins to thrash with more fervor as she screams more objections and threats. “Harry, don’t! I swear to God, I’ll shave your head in your sleep if you fucking—”

“You said you wanted me to put you down!”

“Not like this!”

He sucks at his teeth mockingly as he tuts in a scolding manner, giving her backside a hard spank just to be annoying. “You should’ve been more specific, blossom.”

“I’ll fucking bite your dick off next time if you—”

Harry leans backwards to gather his strength, grabbing a firm hold of the backs of her thighs to guide her as she tumbles. He lurches forward, her torso see-sawing across his study shoulder as he chucks her onto the sofa, right onto the mound of pillows he’d aimed for. Y/N lands on the plush mountain with a rough exhale, her body sinking in deeply due to the momentum Harry had put into his fling. She blinks up at his chandeliers in a foggy daze, shaking her head to get her bearings back and struggling to sit up onto her elbows.

The second she manages to prop herself up, she wishes she hadn’t. Instead of being met with Harry standing before her, arms folded over his lean chest as he laughs at his own antics, she’s met with him looming over her with a mischievous glint in his eyes that suggests he isn’t done. Harry bends one of his forearms back, patting his elbow with the opposite palm in a gesture that suggests he’s preparing it for use. He squats down as if gathering all his might, a goofy grin splitting his face in half as he bellows in a deep, exaggerated voice that imitates a sports anchor. “Styles goes in for one last move, and it’s not looking good for his opponent, folks!”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“He crouches down and jumps into the air, locked onto his target!”

“Harry, I’m serious!”

“The crowd goes wild with anticipation!” Harry simulates the screams of an imaginary audience, his giggles interrupting the sound as he plants his footing appropriately. “He goes in for the final kill!”

“No!”

“The crowd is chanting for blood! ‘TKO! TKO! TKO!’”

“Rot!”

“TOTAL KNOCK OUTTTTTTT!”

The vampire launches himself into the air, screaming incoherent bloody murder as he lands on top of his girlfriend with a muffled thump, the matte leather couch shifting with their conjoined weight. He doesn’t hit her with his elbow at all— the posing had simply been for theatrics— but he does dive his face right into her neck, blowing raspberries into her skin until she’s a giggling, bucking mess under him. He weaves his arms around her hips, pulling her close to keep her from escaping his attack, continuing to nip and prod as he wreaks havoc across every pressure point where he knows she’s ticklish. Y/N shoves at him futilely to try and get him off, but she’s too caught up in the moment to actually garner any success. They’re a mess of flailing limbs and contagious laughter as Harry torments her, and she’s practically forgotten all about her concerns from earlier. In the face of Harry’s efforts, her insecurities have shrunken away and dissolved all together, just as he’d intended.

When the immortal finally rolls off her in a merciful ceasefire, he lands on his back beside her on the couch, the motion accompanied by an empty grunt and a shit-eating smirk. He glances over at the human, her hair a rat’s nest and her clothes wrinkled and bunched due to his actions. Even with her disheveled appearance, the bright smile adorning her features lets him know his little act had worked out the way he wanted it to.

He reaches over, moving a strand of hair off her cheek with his index finger, delicately tucking it behind her ear. He then nurses the back of that same digit over the apple of her cheek, the gesture as tender and caring as his voice. “Feel better?”

She cranes her head to meet his gaze, chewing into her cheek to stifle the warm fondness flooding her heaving chest. “Maybe.”

“Good.” He pinches her cheek playfully, putting on a serious demeanor for the sake of the joke. “Take this round as a warning, then. I won’t be so nice next time.”

“Consider me warned.”

#ysijwa!ask #ysijwa!blurb

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after-witch · 4 years

Text

Birthday Gift (Yandere Overhaul x Reader) Part 1

Word Count: 2,602

Synopsis: It’s almost your birthday, which means it’s been almost a year since you were taken to your new “home” by Kai Chisaki. You don’t fight (much) anymore. You do what he wants and follow his strict rules. As you brace yourself to ask for a special gift, you remember how you came to live in Kai’s small, oppressive world.

Notes: Yandere, kidnapping, abuse, manipulation, mentions of food control

You stare at the same book page you’ve been “reading” for the past hour and try not to think about difficult things. Thinking about difficult things makes you upset, and when you get upset you tend to act out, and you’ve been trying so hard to behave lately.

Your birthday is coming up, and you want to ask for something special. Something you normally can’t have. Your captor is rigid and unbending, refusing to be questioned on any of the rules he’s forced you into following, so your hopes for your special request rest on the slim idea that your good behavior may make more affable to change.

So. You try your best to envision your request being granted, and you try not to think about the fact that your upcoming birthday will mark almost a year in captivity, held in the oppressive and unrelenting grip of Overhaul--Kai Chisaki.

Your eyes scan the words in your book, hoping to dive into a nice escapist story to pass the time, but your mind refuses to let you drift away.

So you think about the past, instead.

****

Your life used to be very different.

Before you met him, before he took you away, you used to live in your own little apartment on a less-than-ritzy side of town. It wasn’t much, but you could afford it on your own, which was exactly what you wanted. Your mom had begged you to stay with her--she worried about you, poor quirkless young woman living by herself.

But you told her that you needed your independence and off you went. You worked on your budding small business during the day and left for your part time job at a little 24/7 mart in the evenings. You always walked the long way home, because it was lit up by endless neon signs and ads for late-night businesses.

But a split-second decision to take a shortcut down a dark side street one evening changed everything. You heard the sounds first. There was an anguished cry, cut short by a noise that made you think about chopping meat; the cry was swiftly replaced with a low, throaty gurgling. A dull street lamp finally revealed the source: a short older man, wild and flailing, grasping his throat which appeared open at the seams. Blood fell out of the gaping hole in waves. A man stood in front of him, tall and imposing, facing away from you.

You were frozen to the spot. A small sound escaped your throat, and in a moment, the second man had whirled around and stalked up to your frozen form. You felt like you were trapped in a nightmare as you slowly gazed up, body shaking uncontrollably, at the visage of a man wearing a strange mask around his mouth. He was wearing an expensive looking suit, and his hands were gloved.

“What’s your quirk?” he asked.

Your chest heaved. Just like mom said. Poor, quirkless young woman: the perfect target. You thought about bluffing, maybe he would leave you alone if he thought you were strong. But the sight of the old man, now grey and slumped over in a pile of his own blood, made you realize how foolish the thought was.

“I--I don’t… I don’t have one…” you managed to whisper. “Please, please don’t kill me. I can’t even fight back.”

Something about your words seemed to surprise him. There was something unreadable and foreign in his eyes. Was he delighted to find you were helpless? Did he find you pathetic? You looked down at the ground in fear. You saw him raise a gloved hand towards you and you closed your eyes, thinking a thousand thoughts in what you assumed were your last moments alive. Mom, friends, home, dreams--tears spilled over your cheeks unknowingly.

You felt a gloved finger brush your cheek, then the other, wiping away your tears. You shivered uncontrollably and finally gathered the courage to open your eyes. He was watching you, saying nothing as he wiped away the tears his very presence had caused.

Finally, he spoke: “Don’t go down these streets at night. It’s not safe for a woman like you. Go straight home.”

He took a step back, and you felt as if you’d finally regained control over your muscles. You stood for a second more, gazing in fear at the man who could have ended your life, before bolting away.

When you reached your apartment, you could barely get the key in the door with your shaking hands. You slammed and locked the door shut behind you before collapsing on the floor, exhausted and terrified. You thought about calling the police, but stopped yourself. What if he had watched you go home? What if he knew where you lived? He would know you called and--you rushed to the bathroom and emptied the contents of your meager dinner.

From that day on, you felt… watched.

It wasn’t long before gifts showed up at your doorstep. Clothes--high end but simple, chic. New books you’d been eyeing at the bookstore but couldn’t afford. You gave the clothes to your mom (“Found them at a discount store, can you believe it?!”) but kept the books stacked on your increasingly overstuffed shelf. Then, you tried to give your landlord the rent and he waved you away, muttering that someone had paid up your rent for the year.

After that, you changed your locks.

Of course, that didn’t stop your stalker-turned-captor from breaking into your home one night and sedating you. You’d woken up the next morning in an unfamiliar, sterile, terrifying new reality.

****

You sigh and drum your fingers on the book page. Maybe if you hadn’t accepted the books--maybe if you had insisted in paying the landlord--maybe if you hadn’t moved out of your mom’s place at all, none of this would have happened.

Your world has now been reduced, compressed, carefully cut away into a few small rooms.

Your room is… well. Boring. White walls, clinical and clean. A few months ago, Kai surprised you with some things to decorate your room with: little fairy lights (sparkly and bright, like the kind you used to have in your apartment) and generic flower photo prints with sticky backs and a small mirror with a striped fabric frame. A child’s mirror, not made from real (and thus sharp, and thus dangerous) glass but some finicky shimmery silver stuff. You don’t care. You love the change in scenery and have spent hours since then rearranging your meager possessions.

Of course, you have a bed (a sterile hospital blanket at first, but since you started behaving more often, he let you pick out a comforter in whatever color you wanted--sky blue, so you could remember it); a tall wardrobe for your clothes, built into the wall (he keeps the doors locked, since he insists on picking out all your outfits); a short desk and a table for reading and, since you’ve been so good, a small craft boxed with paper, pencils and paints.

Your bedroom “suite” has an attached bathroom, where the cabinets are dutifully locked and child-proofed and the water in the bathtub is turned on remotely to keep you safe. Kai doesn’t watch you bathe, but he listens outside the door, just in case. No mirrors. Sometimes you wonder if he’ll get you one for the bathroom, if you’re good enough.

Kai lets you visit his office, sometimes, if he thinks you are being exceptionally well-behaved. The change in scenery is a wonderful incentive and sometimes before you go to bed, you daydream about the first time you were allowed inside. You can still feel the mental thrill of seeing two big bookshelves stuffed with books and a leather couch and a mirror not made with crinkly aluminium staring back at you. Kai let you sit on the leather couch with a pile of books for hours until your legs and eyes were equally strained.

But, the past is the past. Your life now is the present, an ongoing stretch of routines that he insists you follow. You grimly realize that you don’t have much trouble playing by his rules anymore. When did you stop fighting?

You no longer flinch when Overhaul--Kai, he says, call him Kai, and lately you’ve remembered--enters your bedroom in the morning to help you start your day. You used to do more the flinch, though. You used to scream and cry and tell him to go to hell. You used to cling to your bed posts and refuse to get dressed. You used to try to scratch him. That got you locked in a new room, small and bare, and the thought of going back there (for that wasn’t the only time you were terribly bad) sends goosebumps up your arm.

You rub your arm and remind yourself: you haven’t been locked in that little room for a long time. You haven’t even been bad enough to get scolded for refusing to eat or demanding you pick out your own outfit. You’ve been so, so good. Now, in the morning (and evening, and afternoon) you comply quietly with the life Kai wants for you.

In the mornings, you’re quiet and yawning when he opens up your fortified bedroom door; you rub your eyes and cling to your pillow to soak up the last bits of dreams sprinkled there. Most days, you even answer him when he says “good morning,” in such a soft and mild tone, as if he’s afraid to startle you out of behaving.

In the morning, your routine is simple: Out of the bed. Make the bed. Lift off your pajamas--he turns around and never looks. Change into the daily outfit he’s picked out for you. Then, to the bathroom. Wash your face, brush your teeth, brush your hair. Moisturize, then put on sunscreen. (You’ve stopped reminding him that there was no sun down here, and you no longer demand that if he insisted you slather on SPF50, he could at least take you outside.)

Then you eat breakfast. Sometimes together. Sometimes alone. It depends on how busy Kai is. It’s healthy and carefully planned down to the exact nutrient. Sometimes you stare at your bowl of carefully chopped vegetables, expensive fruit and your singular boiled egg and you yearn for your favorite breakfasts, the kind you used to eat in your old life.

You used to pop two pieces of bread in the toaster and then toss a careless dollop butter on top of the crispy toast, then plate it with slices of fried bacon and eggs. Sometimes you’d feel lazy and simply munch down a bowl of sugary cereal or heat up leftover takeout from the night before.

But what you missed, and what you wanted, didn’t matter anymore. Kai had made it clear from the start, during one of his rambling monologues that had you covering your ears: your habits were unhealthy and abhorrent and they made you sick, so sick. He was going to help you get better, and that started with your diet. No more junk food, no more treats, because they weren’t necessary for your health.

Now you ate healthy meals with wholesome nutrients and large, bitter supplements that sometimes still make you throw up. He doesn’t get mad when you throw them up, though, especially when he realized you were telling the truth about not doing it on purpose. But that doesn’t stop him from wiping them off and making you try again until you manage to swallow and keep them down.

Sometimes when you don’t want to finish your food he chastises you, and reminds you of what you used to eat and how horrible you felt. (But did you? You don’t remember feeling awful, but he says you did, and he obviously knows more about nutrition...)

He asks you if you feel healthy, and you always crumble under his intense and prolonged gaze and admit the truth: yes, you do.

Sometimes you clench your fists when you answer and want to scream again, want to tell him how his control over your diet and what goes into your body makes you really feel. Helpless and humiliated and angry--but you don’t scream, because screaming isn’t polite, and impoliteness means you’ll get another lecture that leaves you feeling small and weak. So you pick up your utensils and finish your dinner and Kai gives you an approving nod and a ghost of a smile, as if you hadn’t almost misbehaved.

In those moments, deep in the the pit of your stomach, you recognize that you’ve begun to crave his approval. The thought makes you feel like you’ve swallowed a bitter pill.

Your mind feels suddenly blank when you hear the door to your bedroom begin to unlock from the other side. You feel startled, unprepared. It was already dinnertime, and you’d been staring at the same book page since the afternoon, wandering round and round in your thoughts.

Kai Chisaki walks through the door, a dinner tray for two in hand, and shuts it swiftly behind him. He’s maskless, the usual for meals, and he meets your gaze with the faintest hint of a smile. He always looks relieved to see you, like seeing you takes something off his shoulders. Lately, you realize, his visits lift a weight from your shoulders too.

You smile back without realizing it. He says nothing, but sits down and waits for you to move your book before sliding your dinner tray to your side of the desk.

“I trust your afternoon went well. How is the new book I gave you?”

You nod, unfocused, and look down at your dinner plate. It’s nutritious and portioned perfectly and something deep inside you hates it for what it represents.

“(Y/N)?”

You look up suddenly. You never answered his question.

“Kai, there’s…” You struggle to find the words. You hadn’t exactly felt confident about your request before, but faced with his deceptively impassive gaze, it is difficult to muster the courage to even ask.

He raises his eyebrows, and waits for you to collect yourself.

You take a deep breath and fold your hands neatly in your lap. You start to feel prim, good--deserving, even, of what you’re about to ask for.

“I wanted to ask about my birthday…”

(End Part 1)

#yandere overhaul #yandere bnha #yandere x reader #yandere chisaki kai #yandere mha #afterwitch writes

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xo-cuteplosion-xo · 3 years

Text

The Ending of The Everlasting Sun.

Soukoku angst: will have 2 parts, one is Chuuya pov another is Dazai pov (Dazai is part 1 aka this piece. I'll start chuuya's tomorrow)

I’ll do a version for Dazai after (not pov but version so Chuuya can have the dose of Dazai’s pain T_T).

Warnings: Death, gore, violence, angst with just more angst. (idk if i consider dazai ooc but towards the end is mostly how i feel the situation would happen, so kinda ooc)

TBH, I don't know why I wrote this but hey I love feeding peeps and myself angst so, here you go.

The Ending of The Everlasting Sun. | A Soukoku Angst one-shot |

words: 4264

Dazai’s pov- (it swaps between third and first. I know my writing style is weird af)

The sun, a forever gleaming light in life. They say even in death, the sun won’t fade from your view. For light, something that brings reason to a life so pitched in black is everlasting. There is a place that resides within a person the sun that will never leave. Like the memories that one left behind shall forever hold. Memories will not fade, even as the deceased are placed within mounds of dirt, their body left to neatly decompose.

They say it is natural to feel your heart so heavy. To feel so pained when death washes over. Death can change a human, they say, death is rebirth, something shall always come from it. In some ways, Dazai knew the truth of such words. For he’s experienced the death of his light. At least he had thought the brunette, who’d stuck by his suicidal tendencies, his cruel ways, he thought that man had been the light. He had changed, he’d moved on into the light of this world. His heart may still be shadowed in the darkness the mafia left. The memories of those he left may never leave, but he was in the light. He was the light for another now. Still, dark himself, he’d help lead his news pupil to the light. He repeated this so often, yet why, why did his mind travel back to those days, the days when he was alongside that small ginger boy? The boy with anger issues could be heard a mile away, was he important? Why must he feel as if he left behind something important when he’d listened to a friend's dying wish? Surely he was better off now? He felt better, life wasn’t as black or as unlit as it had once been. So why? Why was it always that ginger that popped into his head on those restless nights? He worried so much if he was okay. If he was out there using that uncontrollable side without him. Ever since he left, he’d worried that ginger would do something as stupid as that. So maybe, just maybe, this world had blessed him with two lights. A light to change, that light had left him to save him. Then the second light, the light that showed him he could love and be loved. This world could take both lights to make such a realization, and eventually, this world, so cruel and dark would. Not by fate, but by the hand of an enemy who sought out Dazai’s weakness.

I stood beneath pelting rain, my mind held within it one thought, where was he? Never had the small boy I'd fallen for in my early teens missed a chance to torment me as I had tormented him. Never had he let the phone, to which we still held each other's numbers unblocked, reach the full number of rings before the voicemail kicked in. I had never felt this before. Nor had I the courage to admit such a thing. For feelings were only a danger to men like myself. I am undoubtedly cruel. Even now, in my early twenties, I stand beneath the rain alone. The mistakes of my past hanging over me for somebody to eventually discover. The past profession I had tried to hide and had hidden well for many years was creeping to my heels. The man whom I'd sought help from was gone, his final words my reason to be in the light. If neither side means anything, he told me to help the defenseless, to help the orphans. That is what I did. I left behind the ginger-haired boy whom, I now say with hesitance, I loved. It is a fine point that I was able to decline such things until after I left the mafia, for otherwise, I may have tried to do good whilst in the mafia, so I could stay with my final light within my life. Many have shed their light on me. The orphan I took in has shocked me many times, reading me in a way I thought only Oda, my extinguished light, could. He knew I was mourning that past friend when he found me at his grave. He continues to shock me to this day, the only one who can occasionally see past the mask I've worn since I was 14, since Mori found me. Kunikida has taught me responsibility and morals. There is still a bottle of things I shall never change. Some people can’t change. My mind prevents me from collecting such information about being human. My ability says it all, does it not? It is a perfect description of myself. The intelligence I share with Dostoevsky is merely one of the many things that keep me behind the wall of change. I may do things for another reason, but I am still a shadow over the people around me. I curse them all, I have brought heavy burdens onto the agency, I harm all of those around me. Love is a feeling I'm incapable of. At least, I can not recognize true love, only conclude that is what this pain is. It is a pain like no other, it is not physical, but no sense of being can push away the tangent throb of every beat. It is my mind, and the way I was brought up so young, that initially warped me beyond repair. That is why I am here, running in the rain despite my coworkers protesting to stop me.

Dazai understood the trap he was headed for, but he knew the trap would result in a fatality either way. If it was his death that waited for him, then he was alright with that. If it was painless, and he died a quick death before his mouth could run to say final bidding words to Chuuya, then he’d die. If this taunt was to break him, if he were to be late, he would drop to his knees and beg his old friend, who lay watching over him, to be forgiven for his actions tonight. If some awful being really did oversee this world, let it give Dazai one moment of peace. Let him have one good light stay until he is gone. He couldn’t do it again, the pain of holding a bloodied body within his arms, it would be hell. He knew not of true mourning, the pain of losing the one, who in a storybook, could be considered a soulmate. He knew it, others knew it, so many people knew the way he stared at Chuuya was not a friendly matter. There was lust within his soft chocolate hues, a hidden cave behind closed doors. Secret thoughts hidden in his mind. The things he wished he could have done before he left, the way he wanted to fix things, to regain what he had lost by leaving the mafia.

With every soft patter, Dazai flew between streets and yards. With every step, he grew closer and closer. With every new step, he felt his heart sink. For the area around was brittle and frail. The ground was crushed and indented. Some buildings lay in tattered pieces. Holes the size of beds lay stretched in the buildings and grass. The worst began to form in his head as his legs picked up into a pace he thought he could never take into. His lungs burned with the inhaled drips of water that turned to flames within his lungs. He pushed past the pain, the burn, the tired flail of limbs. His legs grew numb, but he refused to stop until his arms were flying open doors to a building that looked so horribly damaged.

As if I were the show that night, I could remember the lights. My lungs felt like fire, and my legs were ready to buckle beneath my frail body. I had not eaten a proper meal for weeks, my pockets empty from money spent to cover the scars I had littered my body with. The night is a haze within my mind. An unwilling nightmare I wish to set aside and to never look at again. A night I wish could be rewritten. It was a night that even I had thought the same way as Destoveski. My mind was no longer set right, that side of me to which was feared, had ripped from its confines and torn through to confine me to my own mind. I had truly wanted to tear a sheet from the book spoken about so much in this little town of Yokohama. If it meant my lights could come back and this world could change, then I would, I would do it without a blink. I’d make myself the villain to free my light. I would do it for the right reasons. Yet, I could never ruin the lights of others. There would be too many sacrifices to do such a thing at that moment. To this day, I curse myself for thinking like that man, thinking about such things would make me like him. Dostoevsky was no man I wanted to be.

The light pulsed for a moment before illuminating the room in a sharp glow of white. Dazai stood blinded before the room came into focus, the empty space warm in comparison to the pelting rain. For a moment, the world had paused, allowing his mind to make a sharp halt and think. Though his thoughts were not something he wished to hear. The thoughts inside his head screamed an equal verse to the night he’d lost Oda. He had no more time to pause, as soon as he’d adjusted to the blaring lights, he was scanning the room, finding the spots of blood, the corpses littered on the ground. Then, he was running against his will again. The next thing he knew, he was diving forward too quickly brush against the ginger, who’d consumed his thoughts since they reunited all that time ago.

The first thoughts I had when I felt the cloth of his jacket, the same one I had sown hat-rack into when we were 15, were thoughts of panic. I was always the type of man who wore a mask, but that mask only masked my depression. I yearned for death, I lived to be human, and that feeling you have right as you fall victim to death may be my only chance at life. My co-workers were never worried about me. At first, I had shocked them. I remember the way Kunikida halted with his trust, how on my first job he watched me with a hawk's eye. Never once did I not feel the burning gaze of his judgment. I never blamed him, I was a man with an erased past. There was nothing to tell whether I was good or evil. The day I entered the agency, I would have said I was that darker gray that wisps on the side of black. Today, I would tell you I wanted to be the light, to be good, but I am far from it. It shall always be my nature to look up into another and dive within their soul. My hands are skilled in ways of torture. I could shoot down an enemy with my eyes closed. These pieces of me still exist, even though I had locked them to the confine of my mind, a faraway nightmare that haunted me. The faces of the victims who plead because they had family, haunt me. It’s not remorse I feel, it’s a haunting reminder that I shall never see that friend again. When I die, I shall not meet him in the afterlife, if there is one at all. I like to believe that one can look up and think there is such a place. These thoughts, wishes, all suddenly reappeared the moment his body fell to the floor. Yet, even coated in his own blood, his breathing so unsteady I feared he was only a few breaths from death, he remained beautiful. How could I, a genius strategist with an inhumane IQ, let this happen? Why had I not called him, this ginger, ocean-eyed slug? Chuuya, he’d always be those names to me. I still wonder why we call each other such things, but it makes us both feel alive. With him, I could act like a child, as I never had a true chance to be a child. Even now, if I could muster up the courage as I write, I'd twist the narrative so it looked as if I did not care. If I did that, I would dishonor the words we had shared that night.

Dazai rushed over the pavement to grab hold of Chuuya. His hands sliding over the boy's body to pull him over his lap. His eyes are a sea of worry and panic. One of his hands grabbed the boy’s wrist lightly, his pulse was so slow, his eyes were already slowly dropping, but Dazai stayed confident. “Hey Chibi, you’re an idiot.”

The frail form of the boy beneath him cracked a small smile. “You’re the idiot you- his body racked itself with a spurt of coughs, his lips dripping crimson to join the stains on his perfectly pale skin.- d-damn mackerel.”

Dazai dropped the boy's wrist with a chuckle, pressing his hand to the boy's lips. “Yeah, I know Chibi, I know. - The ginger's eyes began to flutter shut.- No Chibi, your eyes have to stay open. Look, I've got people coming to fix you up. So just try to keep yourself awake.” Dazai’s hand moved to cup the other's cheek. “You’ll be okay.”

Chuuya’s breath staggered a wheeze interrupting the shallow breaths he’d been going through. “I’m dying, aren't I?”

Dazai shook his head, feeling his chest sting with the familiar pain of grief. As if somebody took a microscope over the feeling, it continued to grow. By now, he was sure the pain exceeded the total amount of grief he’d gone through with Oda’s passing. “No Chibi, you’re not… you're not dying.” He paused in that sentence looking down at Chuuya, who laughed dryly.

“So fucking optimistic.” They sat in silence, and Chuuya's eyes fixed on Dazai. Though it was unnoticed by Dazai, his clouded tired eyes were on his lips. He was taking into memory the parts of wishes he’d never get. Every passing second, Chuuya felt his eyes threaten to drip shut. He was trying to listen to Dazai, but his eyes were bricks; sleep a melody that sang to him. With the fear of never waking up again, Chuuya lifted his hand from his side to reach Dazai’s cheek, his blood leaving a mark. “Hey, Dazai.” His voice lacked anything but sincerity.

“No Chuuya. No, you’re okay! Just a few more minutes and Yosano will be here! Fuck, just stop moving, keep your eyes open, keep breathing because you’re alright.” Chuuya had never seen Dazai act like this before. So as Dazai’s hand warmly wrapped around his, his head pressing into the cold touch of Chuuya’s, words were spoken.

“Dazai, I. Never. H-hated… you. I. lov-” before those words could finish, his body was shaking. Tears were forming, he was still conscious and very much alive, but his entire system of organs and cells were rejecting him. The use of corruption had been at its limit long before Dazai had touched him. Before his ability had been canceled out, he was beyond death. The way he coughed his hands, flailing out to grab Dazai’s shirt and press their bodies together, made even Dazai emotional. Dazai managed to still the boy's movements. His eyes half-open as he tried to hold onto whatever string was left. “Lo-” this time he was cut off by Dazai’s hand. His head shaking, hearing Chuuya speak would make this far too real.

He wasn’t ready to let him go. For the first time, he wanted to be far from death, far from the pain and suffering of humankind. So as Chuuya smiled and looked to the ceiling, his hand continued to stroke Dazai’s cheek. A reminder he was still alive.

That moment ended all too quickly when Chuuya took a final staggered breath and looked to Dazai. “Loved you.” He finished his sentence before his eyes dropped shut. His hand slipped into a limp state within Dazai’s hold.

It took the brunette no time to jump to compressions. He continuously screamed. A voice that had never once mourned, or shed a tear, now sat in a contorted expression between agony and doubt. His mind was static, for the first time nothing clear could form within his head. He shrieked out for Chuuya. Open your eyes, he had chanted and begged before he no longer had the strength to continue. He simply fell on top of Chuuya, his ear to his chest praying to hear a soft thud. Three minutes passed before his body, devoid of any, and everything was yanked away. Had he been shown a mirror, one would not have recognized Dazai. His clothes were bloodied, his hair disheveled and wet from the rain he’d run in only a handful of minutes ago.

Dazai sat numbly as his co-workers looked around trying to find if there was any danger left. When the scene was clear and Yosano made the final statement, the world truly crumbled. Still, despite having started CPR and rescue breaths, despite having felt the cooling touch of his skin, Dazai had held onto the hope that Yosano would fix this. He watched as she put on a work face. Her heels clicked across the ground as she walked over to Dazai with a doctor's approach, not a friend's approach. She bent before Dazai and began to speak. “Dazai, I need you to focus your eyes on me, alright?” Dazai could read her mind like an open book. His mind, in his numb state, had returned to his 17-year-old self. Devoid of any real feeling, bent on causing pain and suffering. He tilted his head like that child-self would in this situation. For once, he genuinely felt human. “I understand you were close to Nakahara-san. You were also here at the scene. It’s with much regret-” before she could finish, Dazai’s eyes grew cold and clouded, his lips a snarl as he shoved her.

“He’s okay! Chuuya is okay, he’ll wake up! He always does, even when I have to change things in a second advance because I fucked up. He's okay! We’re soukoku, double black. We can’t be put down. We’re partners, we need each other." even Yosano froze at the sudden outburst. The way Dazai cried without realizing the tears were falling. The way he tried to look happy as if he hadn’t watched Chuuya die within his arms. “Right… he’s okay right?” Dazai hardly knew what he was saying, his head foggy, his mind trying to stay collected.

If one could compare him to anything, one would say that moment he'd looked like a child, no older than fourteen, who’d watched a death before their eyes. Yosano collected herself before shaking her head. She decided to take the approach she’d have with a child instead of an adult. For in this moment, Dazai was experiencing what one could call his first-ever truly emotional loss. This was the first time his mind was catching up with him. “Dazai, Chuuya cared very much for you. You know that right?”

Dazai seemed to calm slightly at the thought as he focused on Yosano. “Yeah, he loved me… he said he loved me.” Suddenly, the situation became worse than she’d thought.

“Mhm, and you loved him too?” Dazai took his time to slowly nod before gulping and shrinking down.

“And now… he’s not coming home. No more loud, annoying comments. No more nights at the bar…” Dazai’s voice choked before the sounds of more footsteps followed in.

A high-pitched female voice screamed in a shrieking roar. “Where is he!” Dazai knew that voice. Kouyo, his Ane-san. At least, at one point she’d been his Ane-san. But his eyes stopped looking at Yosano and instead took a glimpse at Chuuya, whose corpse still lay there.

Once more, Dazai’s emotions took control, and he placed his hands over his eyes and shut himself away. Yosano swore under her breath and stood up. “Which one is he?” Yosano stood up rather angrily. She disliked her conversations being so rudely interrupted, even if it were somebody she had a small connection with.

“Chuuya…” the red-haired female stormed over before spotting Dazai first. His body cradled in like a child. A position she’d never seen him in. Her heart could only lurch to the worst. Hesitantly, she looked off to the side and saw it. The bloodied corpse. She spent no more time looking, she couldn’t.

She shoved Yosano away from Dazai, a boy she had once helped to look after and almost raise. Though she resented the boy for abandoning his role as an executive, she knew how much the pair had been connected. So she’d be a mother or older sister for a bit. Something Dazai had never seemed to have. “Dazai, it’s Kouyo, can you look at me? I just wanna make sure you’re alright.”

Dazai peeked from his arms, sniffing in his delirious state as he lunged towards her. Not in a hostile way, but an embrace. Something he never thought he’d need. He felt so human, so alive, but at the same time, he felt so dead inside. He felt as if his life had been torn and replaced within seconds. This feeling he couldn’t place a name on. “I was too late… I couldn’t, and now he’s and I… it’s all my-'' Kouyo was quick to shut him down, muffling her own sobs as she rocked Dazai in her arms.

“Hush child, these things happen. The fault is never that you could not make it in time. The fault lies within the bastard who did this. He always took extremes to protect you, Dazai. So hush now, let yourself grieve.” There was a slight pause as the agency starred in shock. This woman, who most of them knew as a vengeful woman with no remorse, sat cradling a grown man from an opposing organization as if he were her child, no more like an older sister cradling a younger brother. “Dazai, I won’t criticize your reaction, I've seen it many times in the mafia. Little children who witness death at such a young age think they are immune to it. They find another blame or they say they are monsters. You were 14 when Mori took you in. You never had somebody to teach you to grieve. You never needed to, not until now. So listen to me child, you’re going to let it all out, the years of pain and suffering, the years of grief for lost friends, even I have cried in my life. Nobody is immune to pain, some of us just think we are.” As Kouyo spoke, she noted Dazai’s breathing reached a slowing point. He was fast asleep before she finished her words. Her touch was gentle as she brushed a lock of his hair behind his ears.

Next, she walked over to Chuuya and hung her head, murmuring words of mourning. She walked off quickly, but came back moments later with his hat. “He’d want somebody to have it.” Yosano stood beside Kouyo, who choked back her own tears.

“I think it should go to Dazai. He always mocked his hats, even though he loved seeing Chuuya in them. They really were meant for each other. It’s unfortunate such a great pair ended up… in a life like this. Perhaps they will be reborn in an era where they are nothing but students who fall in love. I like to think there is always a second chance for lives that end too short.”

With a nod, they both looked to Dazai, who looked at peace sleeping on the ground.

When I woke up that day after, I could hardly remember anything. I had lost myself completely to the side that was human. I truly did try to live on, but it was difficult. No matter where I looked, I could see his laugh, I hated it. The pain that constantly wrapped around me. Hence, why I sit here with a pen. I never took myself to write my thoughts down. Oda had once ruminated about being a reader, he died before he ever could. I miss them both. I say that, but when I look down at the tear-stained paper, so many of them were for Chuuya. A love I never got to kiss or truly love. Today, I will not wake up. I no longer care about things like making my death overly complex and comfortable. I shall go to sleep with Chuuya’s hat at my side. I shall die with him at my side. That is how it should have been. Chuuya should have lived that night. I shall never know what sparked him to use corruption without me there. All I know is the worst person in the world, Destovesky, who now lay in a ditch from my own pistol, threatened the ginger to such an extent he felt the need to use it. In a way, I have solved several problems with one action. I killed the criminal, and I'm killing the single person whose blood runs more mafia black than any other.

Tag list If you want to be added when I upload fics/HC etc., just shoot me an ask: @jadegreenimmortality

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mylordshesacactus · 4 years

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An Exhaustive Blow-By-Blow Analysis Of The ‘To Catch A Jedi’ Warehouse Duel That Was Definitely Asked For And Desired By People Other Than Us: An Essay By Alex And Jo

Or: It Is The Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand FUCKING Twenty, And Yet Here We Are, At The End Of All Things, Still Analyzing Barriss Offee’s Terrible Life Decisions.

Yes we’ve been saying we’d do this for the past five years minimum yes we’re girls what about it.

Before we begin, a moment of acknowledgement. Of all the people she’s faced, with all her skill and cunning and strength in the Force, the one and only character we have ever seen completely get the drop on Asajj Ventress--take her out without even giving her time to go for her lightsabers, stone cold, no duel no banter no challenge—

Is BARRISS FUCKING OFFEE. DEPENDABLE BARRISS™. LUMINARA UNDULI’S KID. THE NERD WHO MEMORIZED THE ENTIRE INSIDE OF A GEONOSIAN LABYRINTH, YOU KNOW, JUST IN CASE.

WITH A PIPE.

In the library.

And once she’s done that, this happens:

...and Jo and Alex spend the next seven years going absolutely feral.

A brief moment now where we drag Ahsoka for failing to notice that in the last ten minutes Asajj Ventress has somehow managed to lose about six inches of height. But of course she doesn’t; the entirety of To Catch a Jedi is spent establishing that Ahsoka is firing on zero cylinders. She’s exhausted—she’s probably been awake for over 24 hours at this point—she’s confused, she’s scared, her entire world is crumbling all around her and she doesn’t understand why. So we see her make slip-up after slip-up, making a lot of stupid mistakes that get her noticed by the Coruscant police, and also briefly forgetting how elevators work.

“I, uh, guess I’m not exactly on my game these days.”

So...yeah. She doesn’t notice Asajj’s height loss or the real damning difference: Barriss is completely silent the entire fight, and Asajj never shuts the fuck up.

Of course, Barriss doesn’t need this deception to be perfect. She just needs to make it believable enough. This little Makashi salute—a duelist’s formality, something that screams Dooku—is the first little Ventress-y quirk she throws in, and that’s relevant, because it’s central to her entire motivation for this fight.

Barriss isn’t here to kill Ahsoka.

Barriss is here to save her life.

...Like, she’s bad at it. She’s making horrible decisions that keep getting worse. But there’s a reason she’s disguising herself as Ventress—Ventress is the perfect catspaw, and Barriss desperately needs a catspaw right now, because Ahsoka was never meant to take the fall for the bombing.

Letta went off-script and came within inches of naming Barriss—who, going by the timing, was almost certainly already infiltrating that secure facility (which...gotta respect the skill that took, at least) to silence her—or free her, we don’t know what Barriss intended but we’re not giving her that much benefit of the doubt right now. If she hadn’t called for Ahsoka as quickly as she did, Letta would have died alone in her cell, killed by a nameless Force-user, and the trail would have gone cold.

Instead Ahsoka was there, and when Barriss was faced with a choice between her actions being exposed and letting Ahsoka take the blame, she took the latter. But then Barriss breaks her out, with every indication being that something...went very wrong, as the situation spirals out of control. It’s obvious that Barriss is in the vents during that escape because the clones in Ahsoka’s path keep mysteriously dying and their wounds are fresh, and also there’s no more convenient interference once she gets outside. So now Ahsoka’s free but the subject of a planetwide manhunt that makes her look even MORE guilty…which wasn’t meant to happen.

Remember that Ahsoka is the one who contacted Barriss for help, and Barriss clearly wasn’t expecting it. She spends most of this episode desperately flailing for something, anything to do to fix all this, and she’s lost until she discovers Ahsoka is now with Ventress.

Ventress. Ventress is a darksider. If Ventress is linked to this at all, people will believe it. Ventress could easily have gotten into that prison—through the vents, someone would inevitably have suggested, and probably discovered whatever lightsaber sabotage Barriss used to get in. Case closed.

So all Barriss has to do to fix this without coming clean is frame Ventress believably. Then the person being executed will...well it’ll only be Asajj Ventress, and she deserves it, right?

(Asajj Ventress--and all those clones Barriss killed in the breakout. And that’s very telling. Barriss who memorized 800 junctions of a Geonosian labyrinth for one singular mission, because “other people’s lives” depended on her success, doesn’t seem to have factored in the lives of those clones. They don’t seem to be registering in these calculations.)

The point is that Ahsoka’s name will be clear and Barriss’ will never have been in danger.

If you watch that short opening bout, before Ahsoka kicks her away, it’s...well, in Luminara’s words, amateurish and sloppy. All the blows, including that ostensibly fatal double-overhead strike, are DRAMATICALLY telegraphed. In a few cases, she is visibly missing on purpose:

This strike right here? This strike is HILARIOUSLY transparent in slow motion. She has an opening and instead sweeps her lightsabers ALL THE WAY back on the opposite side; and when she brings them down again…

Apologies for the motion blur but—Ahsoka moves to block and MISSES, which doesn’t matter because the blades were like a full foot away from actually making contact with her body. Barriss is striking at her lightsabers half the time for this first flurry of action, before letting Ahsoka break away for that salute. And this is not an animation error. TCW has plenty of those, but they know how to choreograph a lightsaber duel.

So the goal of this fight is very clearly not to kill Ahsoka. It’s to LOOK like she’s trying to kill Ahsoka, while mostly just trying to attract attention and act as much like Ventress as she possibly can.

As a result, Barriss spends a lot of the fight creating space. She pulls a sheet of metal down at Ahsoka, while gesturing dramatically to telegraph her intentions and give Ahsoka plenty of time to dodge:

And then she runs away to a higher level, letting Ahsoka pursue and then hiding.

This fucking pipe trick is NOT a Ventress thing, mind. This is 100% Mirialan using-the-environment bullshit and also, Barriss, a massive bitch move. We’re pointing it out mostly because of how dramatically Ahsoka JUMPS here. Because...listen, she’s better than this. She’s a wartime Padawan. She’s Anakin Skywalker’s wartime Padawan. She has way more duelling experience than a Jedi of her age normally would, and in a vacuum—in a normal sparring situation, where they’re both rested and prepared for it—Ahsoka would probably beat Barriss nine times out of ten in a duel.

This is anything but a vacuum. As we established, Ahsoka is firing on zero cylinders, she’s exhausted, she’s in the midst of a complete mental breakdown, she’s lost her offhand blade, and she doesn’t know the layout of the area like Barriss does. Ahsoka may be a more skilled and experienced duellist, but in this situation that means exactly fuckall. So Barriss runs rings around her.

So after the pipe trick—again a “cinematic” detail, something to ramp up the tension and sell the deception that otherwise has massive holes in it—Barriss gets in ONE solid blow.

Ahsoka’s off-balance, she’s blocking with both hands, Barriss could use her primary to slice under her guard—

At which point she does a FUCKING CARTWHEEL over the point of contact, which is not REMOTELY a Ventress thing, that is all Luminara Unduli all the time. That is the Mirialan Unnecessary Acrobatics Bonus Action.

And then again, a sloppy midsection slash that was nowhere near connecting and serves entirely to create space. A few more standard telegraphed blows.

And then what we generally refer to as the first turn in this duel.

Barriss roundhouse-kicks Ahsoka in the ribs hard enough to send her flying through a stack of boxes and bounce off the wall behind it. And that was an actual, solid injury. Ahsoka takes a moment to get back to her feet, clutching her side like she’s broken ribs, and her already-poor form takes even more of a dive after this. If Barriss wanted to, she easily could have killed Ahsoka here, but instead...

She backs off. Slowly and deliberately, making what’s very nearly a come-hither gesture with her offhand lightsaber.

And again—Ahsoka is better than this. She is smarter than this. This is such, such glaringly obvious BAIT. She’s being drawn deeper into the factory; Barriss is absolutely herding her, and she falls for it, because she’s not doing great right now.

(And of course Barriss is herding her. Thus far, there’s no actual evidence that Ventress was here except for Ahsoka’s word. For this deception to work there have to be witnesses. She has to attract attention.)

So she does a bunch of flippy bullshit (#Mirialans) to knock those barrels off, slowing Ahsoka down and tiring her out some more.

And when Ahsoka’s done playing Donkey Kong, she COMPLETELY crits on her spot check and does the exact thing that will get Anakin brutally dismembered in about a year. She flips onto the upper level, right past Barriss, who’s just sort of politely waiting for her to land and get her feet under her.

It...is genuinely heartbreaking, honestly, how out of it Ahsoka is during this fight.

And this is actually the second turn, because while it’s impossible to get a high-quality screenshot, this is the first moment where Barriss begins to show that she’s...getting a little too into this. Ahsoka flips onto the platform, and for several seconds she’s slashing wildly around herself while Barriss dodges...completely unarmed.

There’s a few more halfhearted exchanges of blows, culminating in Ahsoka’s only near-hit in this episode. And it comes CLOSE, too; she’s still Ahsoka Tano, after all. Barriss dodges this blow by inches, and Ahsoka impales her saber to the HILT in that support column.

At which point Barriss dodges around the other side of the column and, again, just...waits, for Ahsoka to come at her again.

(We honestly have no idea how so much of the fandom misses how INCREDIBLY staged this whole thing was, because it’s not subtle. The animators are brilliant. It’s fast-paced enough that it’s believable that AHSOKA would believe it, but when you actually watch what’s happening...)

Barriss does ANOTHER FUCKING backflip and they exchange a few more strikes, at which point Barriss pulls what’s actually the bitchiest move she pulls in this whole fight. But it’s also...one of the most interesting and lowkey AWFUL things. Because right now, she is still trying to be Ventress.

She slashes the gas canister open to set up the upcoming explosion, but she also times it so that Ahsoka gets blasted in the face with hot compressed gas that staggers her and briefly impairs Ahsoka’s vision. And that is...a move that we have seen Asajj Ventress use, onscreen, before.

Against Luminara.

The only possible way Barriss could know about this little compressed-steam trick of Ventress’ is through her master.

Barriss was not there for this fight. Barriss did not see this happen. But Luminara has, out loud, credited Ahsoka for saving her life in this fight—and rightly so, because Ventress came within inches of killing her multiple times during that fight and this was one of them. And Barriss would have to know that. And she just used it against Ahsoka.

In a fight, Luminara is a graceful Lady of War. Barriss Offee, on the other hand, is a stone-cold fucking bitch.

By the time of this arc Barriss is convinced that all of the Jedi have fallen, that they’re all in service to the dark side and just don’t see it, and in a lot of ways she’s right. But the fact is that Barriss Offee herself has fallen to the dark side personally in a way that most individual Jedi have not, and what happens next shows it.

Barrels Offee over here uses the Force to shove a bunch of explosives over the red-hot wounds left by her lightsabers and gets the pyrotechnics she was looking for.

And this is the final turn. Earlier, we noticed Barriss getting a little too into this fight, toying with Ahsoka, taunting her with that unarmed dodging; but she was still focused on her objective, still laying a stage for the most part.

And this is it. This is the objective.

By creating that explosion, she caught the attention of local authorities. There will be witnesses any moment now who will see her, wearing Ventress’ mask and holding Ventress’ lightsabers, standing in a munitions factory that Letta Turmond can be tied to. Ahsoka will testify that she went to investigate and Ventress came from behind to kill her, and suddenly everything will make sense.

Ahsoka...is out of the fight. She’s barely stirring, she’s not getting up. She doesn’t even have the strength to lift that sheet of metal; the only reason she’s able to BARELY get onto her hands and knees is that Barriss uses the Force to lift it off her.

Barriss got what she wanted.

And then she keeps going.

This is Barriss in the FULL grip of the Darkside Tango over here. She’s angry and scared and angry and something about that explosion was cathartic, and this is the point where the duel takes a sharp turn. Something...has changed, about Barriss’ demeanor, here.

She doesn’t appear to be thinking anymore.

This is the point at which this fight is...honestly, just hard to watch. It’s a beatdown. Barriss is now hurting Ahsoka on purpose, and for no other reason than to hurt her. She puts her ALL behind flinging a ragdolling, half-conscious Ahsoka into the wall so hard it shakes some of the steel loose. It’s brutal, and Barriss’ body language is cold and confident the whole time.

She is completely lost in the sauce on the Dark Side at this point.

The absolute worst thing from here on in is the way Ahsoka just…Keeps. Getting. Up.

She can barely stand at this point. She’s got her saber up trying to hold a guard position and she physically can’t. This is legitimately the worst Ahsoka’s ever gotten beaten in a fight in her life, and she knows it. She’s staggering. Her eyes aren’t even fully in focus.

Barriss doesn’t bother with actually fighting, because she doesn’t need to. She hits Ahsoka with a casual Force push to knock her back off her feet, and Ahsoka just cringes in anticipation of it because she knows she can’t defend herself properly.

And then there goes her lightsaber, tumbling over the edge, and she never holds it again until the Siege of Mandalore. That Weapon Is Her Life, and we never see it in its current form again.

And Ahsoka GETS UP AGAIN.

Ladies and gentlemen, our hero.

She is DOWN. She’s dead on her feet, she can’t even walk; she just sort of stumbles across the floor with her own momentum. But she is still SOMEHOW trying to square off with “Ventress.”

And this, right here? This is how we know exactly what Barriss’ mindset is right now, because Ahsoka never gives up. She just doesn’t. She’s the biggest cockroach in a universe containing Darth “Just A Flesh Wound” Maul. Ahsoka doesn’t just lie down and accept her fate. She doesn’t just let people win.

And Barriss...has.

There’s a viciousness in the way she ends this fight. Like, it’s Barriss—all of her fights are a little bit vicious. She is a BITCH when the chips are down. But this is...vindictive. From the moment Ahsoka trembles to her hands and knees after that explosion, the overwhelming cold cruelty Barriss shows from that moment until she spin-kicks Ahsoka down like two and a half stories of broken slats onto solid concrete is raw, bitter:

Will you just STAY DOWN for once in your FUCKING life?!

And we want to take a moment to give Ahsoka the dignity of acknowledging that she still doesn’t.

And then the GAR shows up, and Barriss really shows her true colors. Because the moment she hears Republic forces arriving...

Barriss runs.

We worry sometimes that because Barriss is our favorite character, people will think that means we think she’s justified in her actual actions in this arc, or that her worst actions are somehow not her fault. But let us be very clear: Barriss Offee fucked up royal and is entirely responsible for that.

The fact that it’s very clear she didn’t come into this fight with intent to kill, the fact that her actions are calculated to clear Ahsoka’s name, is the FURTHEST thing from absolution. Even as she tries to find a solution throughout this episode, it all stems from her original decision to frame Ahsoka for Letta’s murder rather than let Letta spill the beans. There’s a very, very simple solution to this mess, a simple way to clear Ahsoka’s name and make amends for the attack that Barriss regretted almost the moment it happened. But she consistently refuses to even consider it as an option.

Barriss Offee does not want to face the consequences of her actions.

She came into this to fix things, but when push comes to shove—she wants to save her own life. She wants to be a radical dissenter and still get to be the Jedi Padawan poster girl, and the security that comes with it. She doesn’t stick around to make sure she’s seen by witnesses because as evidenced by that brutal beatdown, she’s...stopped caring, that much. She doesn’t value Ahsoka’s life enough to risk her own anymore.

So when this fails, when the clones don’t see her and there’s no evidence to back up Ahsoka’s story that Ventress was the one behind it, when three words from Barriss would save her from a death she doesn’t deserve, Barriss says absolutely nothing until she’s compelled at lightsaber-point.

At the end of the day, this whole elaborate deception was only ever about one thing, and it wasn’t Ahsoka. It was the fact that Barriss Offee doesn’t want to get caught.

#barriss offee #ahsoka tano #to catch a jedi #tcw #star wars #IT'S BEEN 84 YEARS--

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littlemdzsdump · 4 years

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swim between the lotus pods

another little xicheng tribute because it’s summer and i think these two are great in summer. ~

“Jiang Wanyin…” Lan Xichen tries to excuse himself as politely as he can. But the Lotus Pier sect leader is not having it.

Jiang Cheng stands, shirtless among the little clumps of floating lotuses, arms akimbo, and face stern.

“Zewu-Jun” Jiang Cheng answers just as politely, though there is a slight teasing glint in his eyes. At the edge of the dock, Lan Xichen stands very very hesitant. He is also very very torn. Is it worth it to drown, if he could get close enough to Jiang Cheng’s broad, toned chest?

Maybe.

Lan Xichen wrings his hands, biting his lip ever so slightly.

“I…” Lan Xichen doesn’t know how to finish his sentence.

Jiang Cheng stands to his full height. From a little ways in the river, Jiang Cheng moves closer to the dock. Droplets of water run down the crevices of his muscles and the side of his face, where he had swum in circles before. Despite the scars that marked his chest from a time past, Jiang Cheng now walks with the confidence of those hardships. If anything, those scars bring out a tough and admirable air to him and Lan Xichen can’t take his eyes off. So he stands where he does, watching as Jiang Cheng wades right up to the edge of the dock, pulling his upper body up to lean against the edge comfortably.

Jiang Cheng stares up at Lan Xichen, water droplets racing down the toned biceps holding him up.

The 4000 Gusu Lan Sect rules seem to have all disappeared from his memory, completely.

His tongue-tied-ness is saved by Jiang Cheng’s hand reaching out and tugging lightly at the edge of his long robe, a small pout on his face. Lan Xichen doesn’t know how to feel. Jiang Cheng’s too cute face doesn’t match his incredible NOT CUTE body.

“I know you want to take all those layers off; the weather now is perfect for it” Jiang Cheng persuades, flipping a piece of wet hair over his shoulder mindlessly.

It shows more skin.

Lan Xichen is hot for more reasons than just because it’s summer.

“I don’t know how to swim” Lan Xichen explains weakly, for the fifth time since Jiang Cheng had tried to convince him to come into the water.

“I’m here, it’ll be okay” Jiang Cheng reassures, leaning his head on his arms. The longer that Lan Xichen stares, the faster he feels his resolve dwindling. Jiang Cheng pulls on the edge of his robes one more time, exaggerating his pout.

Too easily, Lan Xichen found himself slipping off his robes though he still hesitates when he sits down at the edge of the dock. Lan Xichen swings his legs along the edge, as Jiang Cheng leans on his arms near his legs. Lan Xichen swings his legs mindlessly, taking in the summer breeze that he’s finally able to feel on his skin.

As he’s enjoying the cool of the small breeze, he feels hands making their way up his leg and landing softly on top of his thigh. Lan Xichen sends a look down at Jiang Cheng, who is suddenly found pressed right up against Lan Xichen’s leg.

“Let’s go for a swim” Jiang Cheng coaxes, giving Lan Xichen’s thigh a quick squeeze. Lan Xichen barely manages to swat him off. Lan Xichen was just opening his mouth to retort to him, when he felt hands grabbing onto his waist and pulling him into the water. Lan Xichen lets out a yelp as their bodies hit the water.

For a second, all he can see, feel and taste is the cold river water. In the following second, he’s gasping for air, flailing his arms around wildly. It takes him a third second to finally notice the hands around his waist and his own legs wrapped around a sturdy hip. Lan Xichen splutters out the extra water from his mouth as Jiang Cheng’s laughter rings in his ears.

“This is why people close their mouths when they dive,” Jiang Cheng says, wiping the water from Lan Xichen’s squinted eyes and around his mouth. Lan Xichen lets out a tiny huff, dabbing his face slightly before opening his eyes fully to stare deadpan at Jiang Cheng.

That gets another loud laugh out of the sect leader.

“What?” Jiang Cheng teases in return, smiling as Lan Xichen tightens his arms around Jiang Cheng’s neck.

Is this another reason for him to press closer to the sect leader’s toned abs?

Pssh...maybe.

“I wouldn’t have had to scream if you told me we were going into the water” Lan Xichen replies, still in wonderment at the fact that they were both floating.

“Would you have gotten into the water if I told you we were going to jump?” Jiang Cheng asks, tilting his head at the man in his arms.

Hmm… Touche…

“Hey...Where are you going?” Lan Xichen asks in alarm when he feels Jiang Cheng walking farther away from the dock

“Well, if you want to keep staying like this, then we should go deeper into the water, no?” Jiang Cheng asks. Lan Xichen feels the smallest pat on his lower back.

Lan Xichen wants to swat Jiang Cheng again, but he’s paralyzed by the prospects of deeper water. So instead, he holds on tighter as the water level reaches their shoulder.

“Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng the water here’s good enough, right? Right?” Lan Xichen asks helplessly as the man continues to stride determinedly farther into the river. When it feels like Jiang Cheng is floating with him, Lan Xichen completely loses his composure.

“Jiang Wanyin I can’t swim!!” Lan Xichen shouts when Jiang Cheng attempts to dip them both under the water. Lan Xichen wraps his legs even tighter around Jiang Cheng. Though that does the opposite of his intended purpose and almost drags both of them under the water. Lan Xichen yelps, spluttering as water gets into his mouth from all the moving.

Jiang Cheng (sadly) removes his legs from around his waist, though his hand is still on him most of the time. He looks like he’s trying really hard not to laugh.

“A-Cheng you know I can’t swim” the Gusu sect leader pouts, clutching onto his boyfriend’s shoulder. Jiang Cheng laughs softly at him, though he doesn’t move his hand.

“I know you can’t. That’s why I’m going to teach you” Jiang Cheng says. He floats as gracefully as ever. If Lan Xichen was known as graceful in his strides, people had yet to see Jiang Cheng in the water. Jiang Cheng holds Lan Xichen’s hand over his shoulder, and slowly intertwines their hands. The warmth between their palms is a small comfort.

It’s the only thing that keeps him grounded. Which is why he panics when he realizes that Jiang Cheng is slowly letting go of his hand.

“Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng” Lan Xichen repeats helplessly when Jiang Cheng lets go of his right hand.

Jiang Cheng hushes him, bouncing a little bit in the water as Lan Xichen clutches to the only life line that he has.

“Jiang Cheng, don’t do this.” Lan Xichen pleads, staring at Jiang Cheng fearfully.

“Just float for a little A-Huan,”

Jiang Cheng sounds all the more like he’s teasing him.

“Jiang Cheng” Lan Xichen whines, because his boyfriend is beginning to look a lot more like he’s about to ditch him alone in the water.

“It’s just a little bounce from the bottom to the top of the water babe,” Jiang Cheng pacifies when he sees Lan Xichen shake his head hard and pout harder.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to you-” Jiang Cheng doesn’t get to finish his sentence before he suddenly dips under the surface. His hand is let go so fast that Lan Xichen doesn’t even have time to process. Lan Xichen flails wildly, worried about where Jiang Cheng had gone and if he could stay afloat long enough to get to him.

“Jiang Cheng!” Lan Xichen shouts loudly, even though the water gets into his mouth. Lan Xichen bounces in the water, feeling the tips of his toes graze the floor of the river and pushing himself up like that again. He calls out his boyfriend’s name a few more times, and when he doesn’t get a response, he begins to search around.

Sure, he didn’t know how to swim but what if something happened to Jiang Cheng?

He couldn’t let that happen.

Lan Xichen flailed around for a little bit in the water, shouting the other sect leader’s name at the top of his lungs. After a while, he managed a small doggy paddle, but it wasn’t long before he stopped feeling the dirt ground beneath him. More and more water kept getting into his mouth.

Lan Xichen flailed around again, bouncing up and down as much as he could. He gets one prepared bounce in and gulps a deep breath of air as he sinks down under the surface again. He’s petrified as he comes up gasping for air. Just as quickly he’s being pulled down under the surface, so he chokes a bit on the water.

He knows it won’t be long before he runs out of breath. Suddenly, he remembers the small times that Jiang Cheng’s helped him float in the water.

Just lay back, let the water do it’s work. Just trust the water; pretend like you’re sleeping, Jiang Cheng had prompted as he helped him lie on the water.

Lan Xichen gulps.

So he calls in all the meditative techniques that he had spent so much time perfecting in Gusu and lets himself fall into the flow of the current naturally. He closes his eyes when his entire body faces the sky on the river’s face, breathing a small tentative step. He floats there, feeling the sun warm his pretty flushed face. He begins to breathe fully, stretching his arms out wide. There is a moment where he does not worry where he ends up.

It is nice to just float.

Lan Xichen closes his eyes.

While he’s enjoying the cool of the water against his back, he feels something wrap around his legs.

Immediately, his meditative state is broken and he opens his eyes to look up Jiang Cheng’s broad form. He’d ended up in his arms. Lan Xichen stops flailing when he feels the arm hooked under his knees and supporting his back lightly.

“Look at how you were floating by yourself” Jiang Cheng praises when Lan Xichen throws his arms around the other man’s neck.

“That was so mean; I was worried about you” Lan Xichen whispers as he rubs his nose against Jiang Cheng’s neck. When he pulls away, his boyfriend has the decency to look a little sheepish.

“Sorry love; but hey, you floated by yourself” Jiang Cheng comments happily. Lan Xichen feels like he’s accomplished the biggest impossibility of the world when Jiang Cheng smiles at him like that.

Lan Xichen beams.

His legs have found themselves wrapped around his waist again and his arms hold loosely around Jiang Cheng’s neck. Lan Xichen takes in Jiang Cheng’s wide smile and they bathe in the sight of each other. Jiang Cheng breaks first, moving in to rub his nose against Lan Xichen. It gets a surprised giggle out of Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng finds himself joining in easily.

The two lovers are too wrapped up in each other to notice the three younger disciplines standing by the dock.

“That was disgusting” Jin Ling comments, huffing in a way his father would have done similarly in his youth.

“Do you think Uncle knew that the water was shallow-”

“Obviously not” Jin Ling interrupts Jingyi quickly, shaking his head as both of their uncles begin to splash each other in the water.

“But how could he not?” Jingyi asks confusedly, “...the water-”

“Maybe if your shu-shu wasn’t too busy ogling my shu-shu’s abs-”

“You don’t get to say that! My uncle is a dignified man!”

On the side of his friends, Sizhui snorts.

hi there! (ˊ•͈ ◡ •͈ˋ) yet another little drabble drabble. i’m sorry if this formatting is a bit weird. i’m still working around something that would look okay for me and haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet. but i hope you all don’t mind bearing with me for a few more posts. thank you so much for stopping by and reading!

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saokpe · 4 years

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HDLW Sibling Week 2020 - Day 2: Pillow Fort

More siblings! I’ve always wanted to write a political drama, glad I was able to fit it in. Enjoy!

@hdlwsiblingweek2020

Comfortable Negotiations

The synchronized steps, bouncing across the overwhelmingly muffled walls of the McDuck Manor, follow the figures of an arrogantly joyful Louie Duck and a stoically serious Huey Duck. Their trenches lead them to one of the few areas of the house yet to fall victim to the rampant colonialism these shrewd visionaries spear head, a solitary wooden desk, two equally simple chairs stationed on both sides. They take their seats.

“Hubert Duck, President of Pillowvile.” The hoodie wearing triplet acknowledges.

“Llewellyn Duck, holder of the title of Current and Forever After Ruler of Cushion Island.” Huey responds. “How have you and your partner’s endeavours fared following your sudden departure from Pillowvile? A severing I did very little to oppose, might I add.”

“Yes, very little.” Louie’s previous smile turns into an almost sarcastic imitation of thoughtfulness. “Well it seems that my business partner’s ingenuity and my business savviness has brought us quite a bit of success, as clear when you compare our charts here.” The confidence oozing duck raises both his arms to reveal two staunchly different pieces of cardboard. Both demonstrated crudely drawn line charts, one with an elegant example of calligraphy spelling out Cushion Island while the other, spelling Pillowvile, could be described as anything but. The former diagram demonstrated a staunch uptick following a point labelled “When we got smarter and left Pillowvile.” The former followed a similar pattern, the line taking a steep dive after a period called “Our smarter halves leave Pillowvile.”

“Uhm…” The self-appointed president of Pillowvile attempts to assess the borderline illegible data. “Very… interesting. But, you can’t run a country like a business dear sibling of mine, way more goes into it.”

“Yet you’ve called ME to discuss negotiations.”

Huey bites his lip, the concise retort robbing him of his high ground. “Well, I wanted to talk to both of Cushion Island’s political powers, yet I see only one.”

“You seem one partner short as well.” Louie correctly assesses.

“Dewford had other businesses to attend to.”

“I’m sure he does.” A grin carves itself forcefully onto a self-assured Louie. “So what did you want to discuss?”

“Well I thought-”

“Pfft- Sorry I just can’t keep it a secret!” The previously reserved negotiator bursts, his body slamming and rolling as his lung expands into a chuckle, “We caught Dewey sneaking through our blueprints, Webby’s currently trying to get a confession from him. I was supposed to lead you on for a cooler reveal but it’s just TOO funny!” He continues between his glee infused snorts.

“Oh…” Huey attempts to speak, left paralyzed in his brothers all consuming laughter.

“You better start talking unless you want to go on another trip into Mr. Cuddles’s play place!” A high pitched demand pierces.

Dewey hung from a collection of patched together blankets, one end tied tightly on his ankle and the other on the insurmountably tall ceiling of this pillow comprised room. Poorly lit and suffocatingly warm and dry, the restrained friend cackles and hacks, coughing wildly as the rope pulled tighter on his body. His feathers filled with lint and tangled plushies, all courtesy of the deep and dark alleyways of the play place. A pool of dolls and toys which hide their bloodlust in their disarmingly soft fur.

“NO! NO! PLEASE, I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO MR. CUDDLES ANYMORE!” The prisoner whines wildly.

“Are you sure? Cause he sure wants to talk to you!” Webby, her expression contorted with malice, drops her prey closer to the pit.

“I’LL TALK, I’LL TALK, PLEASE JUST DON’T DROP ME ANY CLOSER!”

For a second the tensed and thick air is complemented with horrid silence. But slowly and surely the rope is reeled back higher.

“Man I’m good at this job.” Webby congratulates herself.

In between his terrified gasps for air, Dewey is able to speak, “I don’t remember exactly what I came here to do, but if you give me my phone I can read off what Huey wanted me to do.”

“Hmm…” The prison guard contemplates the statement a bit longer. “Yeah that seems believable. Here you go.” The girl chipperly walks to the hanging duck, allowing him to clutch the device before retreating.

“Thanks.” Still hanging upside down, Dewford lets the bright light of his electronic’s screen envelop him, slamming his finger across it until opening the previous chat log he had shared with Huey. He scans through it, reading the last message. “Did u find the weak point? Waiting for your signal” Dewey sighs as the options placed before him thin out. Without thinking, the cornered duck types as fast and haphazardly as someone could, sending the following message: “THE STRINGS BEEN TIED, DO IT, DO IT!” Just as his thumb forces send, his body clutches, his eyes slamming shut waiting for the sudden impacts and his inevitable fall into the pit. Instead, the shime of a new message received echoes.

“What was that?” Webby notices, a particular doll turning in her hand, causing the tied duck to flinch.

Panic stabs through the already hindered operative, his eyes darting to the message which oh so terribly inconvenienced him. “You’re still inside, the plan was for you to escape.”

“It looks like you DO want to spend more time with Mr. Cuddles!” The threat curses with the power of a million witches.

“DO IT NOW, JUST DO IT NOW!” The message sends in the moment of panic, his finger pushing over the final button just as it’s stolen from his hand by a ravenous Webbigail.

A moment of anticipation follows as the messages are read back to Webby’s unknowing eyes. Them widening in horror as the realization washes her.

“You deal with him Mr. Cuddles! I have to go!” She hardly finishes her sentences as her feet trail off.

“NO! DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE WITH HIM!”

A notification rings across Huey’s phone, his body still stunned from the sudden reveal his youngest triplet cast over him.

“I mean, I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to replicate Cushion Island, it’s perhaps the most perfect pillow fort ever created.” Another, of the plentiful, boasts Louie has thrown in the last couple minutes. “I mean look at it.” He directs attention behind him, walls upon walls of multi-colored furniture and cushions hoard the view. The wooden walls that previously housed now rest infected by the stuffing of these misused decorations.

During the monologue, Huey lends a peek at the message Dewey had left for him. Dread befalls the brother, all of his soul used to avoid any sorrow. “You’re the bravest man I know, Dewford.” He whispers.

“What was that?”

Hubert readies his left arm, an arm which had yet to be seen by anyone since arrival. He sighs. “You say that Cushion Island is perfect?”

“As perfect as they come… why?” The creeping suspicion the question arises prevents any hubris.

“I ask because you and Webby actually left your blueprints back in Pillowville, and I wouldn’t really call it perfect.”

The snarky response Louie had planned catches itself at his throat, a worried gulp tossing it back under.

“There was a little design flaw I doubt you knew about in your infrastructure. Poor Webby had a tall order building the whole pillow fort by herself. Especially when you left such a glaring issue in the foundation. All of Cushion Island is being supported by a single sofa cushion.” Huey raises his right hand, revealing a beautifully drawn blueprint, a red circle signalling the sad truth that, yes, one cushion balanced the whole country wide fort. “You’re a shrewd businessman, sure, but when it comes to ruling a country…” Huey finally raises the elusive left hand, clutched between his fingers was the end of an elongated piece of string. “-you need a little bit more.”

A combination of shock and hatred form in the previously egocentric Llewellyn, that manic gaze following the string which, as he feared, led directly into his beautiful Cushion Island. Additionally, as he stares bitterly to the entrance of his magnum opus, the distant figure of his business partner runs frantically towards him. Her arms flail as she attempts to catch the attention of Louie, who already knew it was too late.

“FOR PILLOWVILLE!” Huey screeches as he pulls the string, the movement creating an orchestra of falling pillows and walls. Destruction as far as the eye could see, pain resonating in the echoing screams of those that lived in its warm housing. A domino effect of crumbling dreams and desires. As the final blanket floats over, Louie crumbles to his knees.

Pity does enter the victor’s heart, his body moving in satisfied strides towards his grovelling competitor. Huey lays his hand over his fallen brethren. “May this be a warning to all others who dare defy the power of Pillowville.”

Louie stares back towards him before solemnly returning his view to the ground that used to house his home. “I spent my whole allowance building that.”

“In war we all lose.”

Huey’s illustrious Pilloville was soon discredited and destroyed as punishment for its president’s multiple breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

His second in command, Dewey Duck, was eventually found retreating in the remains of Cushion Island, hiding in the rubble. When asked on the matter, the former ruler informed our reporter that he was fleeing from one “Mr. Cuddles.” This figure has yet to be found.

When asked about the demolition of what he had previously called “the love of his life,” Louie inquired “The what?”

Webbigail, the labeled business partner of Llewellyn Duck, has since been spotted waterboarding various stuffed animals. Some theorize she is training for something bigger.

#HDLW #ducktales #Huey Duck #Dewey Duck #Louie Duck #Webby Vanderquack #hdlw sibling week 2020

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willow-salix · 4 years

Text

Isolation update!

Day 75 of Isolation on Tracy Island.

“Come on, chop chop, time to wash my baby!” Scott yodled down the stairs to us. The cleaning of Thunderbird One had been pushed back by the impromptu brother bashing that took place in the form of Shakespeare. Since it was kinda my fault that his precious one had acquired it’s new decoration and I had promised to help but, that didn’t mean that I had to go quietly or that I couldn't rope in extra hands to help.

“Come on, you promised!” I pouted, dragging John and Alan by their hands.

“No fair, we have to do our chores and yours?” Alan whined.

“No, you help us so that we can be done quicker and then get to that movie you are forcing me to watch with you,” I retorted.

“Fine,” he huffed. “But I can still complain while doing it, right?”

“Sure, kiddo, knock yourself out.”

Scott was waiting for us with buckets of water, a special cleaner that Virgil had mixed up for them that was gentle on the paint jobs but tough on the stains that always seemed to stick to their crafts like glue.

We were given our orders the moment we appeared and John and I got to work on the top part of the graffiti anatomy while Scott and Alan tackled the…bottom bulges.

"This is so boring!" Alan moaned, rubbing at the paint.

“Where’s Virg and Gordo?” Scott asked, growing a little red in the face as he scrubbed like crazy at the paint that had marred his crafts perfection.

“Have no fear, the squid is here!” Gordon glided past us. And when I say glided, I mean he zoomed past quite gracefully on his roller skates.

“Gordon...” Scott sighed, he didn’t need to say anything else, the tone said it all.

“Hey, I said I’d help, I didn’t say I wouldn't do it with style!”

He tapped a few buttons on his comm and music began to pound through the hangar. It was awful music, but it had a beat that you just couldn’t help but vibe to.

Music always makes things better, no matter how bad it is and I was soon having myself a nice little boogie time as I worked on a particularly stubborn line of paint.

We worked our way through three increasingly terrible songs, scrubba-dub-dubbing at One and by working together we had cleaned off all the graffiti that had so offended Scott.

“Phew, nearly done,” I huffed, wiping my sweating forehead with the back of my hand. “How is it so hot down here?”

“It was an active volcano…” John started but Gordon jumped in.

“I’ll help!”

“No, Gordon it’s fine I- gahhhhhh!” I spluttered as a jet of water hit me full in the face.

“Gordon,” John sighed. “If I was you, I’d run.”

“I’ll kill him!” I screamed, grabbing a bucket of dirty water and hurling it at his rapidly retreating back. I missed, obviously, as I am both a terrible shot and not as strong as the boys, which meant that my projectile missed it’s mark by a good few feet and hit Virgil who had at that very moment, chosen to walk around the nose cone and appear as if by magic.

“Hey, what the heck?” he yelped as the bucket crashed to earth at his feet, soaking his shoes and his jeans up to the knee.

“I’m sorry, I was aiming for Gordon!”

“Understandable,” he agreed, shaking his foot like a dog with sticky tape on his toe. “I have a water cannon on Two.”

“I don’t think this warrants anything that drastic,” I told him, “but thank you for the offer.”

“We have a lot of sponges here,” Alan pointed out, lifting one up and dropping it on the floor with a wet splat.

“Do I take it that you’re all done cleaning then?” Scott asked, but I suspect he already knew the answer. One was half clean, the graffiti was gone and now we were just cleaning the rest of it, it could wait.

“Yep!” Alan grabbed his bucked and emptied it out, filling it with fresh water and dumped in a few sponges before taking off for the door. We all did the same and followed close behind him.

We caught up with Gordon out on Two’s runway where he was happily skating. We took aim and let the missiles fly, pelting him with wet sponges taking him by surprise.

He retaliated by trying to catch the sponges that flew his way and tossing them back. One hit me square in the chest and I flailed, stumbling backwards. Virgil swooped in and caught me like a true superhero and set me back on my feet.

Alan, little legend that he is, somehow located a big water pistol from parts unknown and loaded up, squirting a long stream at Gordon.

Gordon, soaking wet, zig-zagged madly here and there on his skates, trying to avoid the onslaught.

John emerged from the hangar with the same hose that Gordon had attacked me with and turned it on Gordon, who shrieked in horror as the water smacked him straight in the crotch.

“Why does everyone aim there on me?!” he bellowed, sending Alan into hysterics.

I grabbed another sponge and aimed at Gordon but, once again, I missed. It was a combination of my aim letting me down and the wind intervening to send the sponge hurtling at John to smack him square in the chest.

“You got me!” he accused, having previously remained dry and unscathed.

“I’m sorry!” He looked so put out that I had to hold in a giggle. I failed.

"Are you laughing at me?"

"No?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"OK, I am, but just a tiny bit. Forgive me?"

He opened his arms and I shuffled over for a hug. He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight…too tight.

"Get her!" he yelled, spinning me around and lifting me off my feet.

I screamed and kicked as I was pelted from all sides.

"Oh, it's on!" I yelled, managing to catch a sponge that was aimed at my chest and slapping it into John's face. He spluttered and dropped me.

I was up in seconds and grabbed a bucket, throwing the entire contents at Scott who had just turned the hose on me.

"You beast!"

"You got me!"

"Take that!"

"Noooo, not down my shirt!"

"That was so cold!"

"I'll get you for that!"

"Duck!"

Chaos, screams, yelled insults and threats filled the air. Water, sponges and buckets were flying in all directions, someone had even managed to find a towel and John had soaked it and was using it to whip anyone that came to close.

"Back! Away, thou loathsome toad!" he whirled the towel like a lion tamer, whipping at the air in warning.

Virgil had hold of Alan's water pistol and was aiming at people, getting many of us directly between the eyes or in our mouths.

Gordon had kicked off his skates, needing more stability and was capering around like a drunk monkey, dodging streams of water and retaliating with his own.

I ducked behind Virgil, using him as a shield when I spotted Scott sneaking to the side and diving into the hangar.

"Where did he go?" Alan demanded to know.

"I don't know!" Gordon yelled back.

Something moved to the side of me, catching my eye, then it happened again. Poles rose out of the ground, evenly spaced along the runway.

"Scott, no!" John yelled but he was too late.

"Scott yes!" Scott yelled back.

The fire hoses burst into life, raining water down all around us, soaking us to the skin.

"Ha! I win! Scott whooped in triumph as we all screamed.

We were a soaked to the skin, dripping wet mess by the time we finally called it a day and headed inside to get dry. The boys hair was sticking up all over the place where they had rubbed it dry with towels and their beards were still damp and they would never win any beauty contests. Honestly, if their fans could see them now they would abandon them in disgust, but you know what, it's good that they have had this time to let their hair down (literally) and to take some much needed time off. We don't know how long lockdown is going to last, but for now we are all treating it like an enforced vacation and making the most of it. Even if they do all look like castaways on their own island.

(Big mahoosive thanks to the awesome Isabelle who made me this picture in celebration of making it 75 days of lockdown. The boys looking like absolute ragamuffins. But her attention to detail is amazing, Alan's tiny man bun, Scott's half pony, Gordon's tragic beard, Virgil's lame duck flock of seagulls on his head, John's Disney bangs, Brains with his shaven head, it's freaking perfect.)

#Isolation is doing bad things to them #Look at the state of them #My lawd my eyes #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #thunderbirds are go

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the-awkward-outlaw · 4 years

Note

Hi sorry I'm greedy, but I bumped into the night folk (and the ghost) last night. I know you've written horror before... plus maybe reader is a new convert to the group and Arthur has to decide whether to kill you now or try to help... (ooft reader as a serial killer seeing how good Arthur is)

Dude you ain’t greedy for sending in requests! I love writing!

Masterlist

Read on AO3

All is dark. The perfect time of day, when the only source of light is the stars and the flickering of the lightning bugs. From somewhere to your right, a low growl comes from the swamp. The gators are out hunting, just like you.

This is all still quite new to you, but you’re adapting well. This hunting in the night, setting traps for the witless wanderer. Sometimes their screams haunt you, but you like the look of fear in their eyes when the trap has been sprung and they see you and the others approaching, ready for the kill. Those moments are the most telling of a person’s character. Are they cowards who tremble and hunker in the dark, or are they fighters, ready to take as many of you down with you? The hunt is when everyone’s obsessions with appearing a certain way come tumbling down and all that is left is their raw selves.

You’re still new to the gang who the locals have begun to call the Night Folk. You silently call them that too as you don’t know what they call themselves. Talk is rare even in your hideout at Lakay. In fact the only time you heard one talk was when you’d accidentally wandered into Lakay at night and they captured you. They must have seen something in you when they trapped you. Perhaps a certain excitement or a general lack of fear. After all, you’ve never been afraid of death. More fascinated by it than anything.

When the gang decided not to kill you, they had to test your abilities when it came to slaughter. They happened to have a live prisoner, so a man handed you a big machete, pointed to you then to him and the man and said one word: “kill”. You did just that and found that you were fascinated with the human body.

The man, as a man, was uninteresting to you, but watching how the human body reacted on a biologic level as you murdered him was fascinating. You hadn’t done anything too awful, just slit his throat. Still, you’ll never forget the intense curiosity you felt at watching as his limbs flailed as the blood slipped down his body. How his eyes bulged and his jaw clenched. The Night Folk seemed pleased with your results and ended up incorporating you.

Still, talk is rare. The most anyone speaks is when a trap is being set, but even then it’s minimal. Usually just a “you pretend to be injured, cry out for help” or “whistle like a bird, confuse the rider’s horse”.

The Night Folk themselves are interesting. They have no leadership. Everyone is completely equal, even when it comes to things like eating and sex, both in the social and physical aspect of sex. Orgies tend to be a common thing with them, but as you’re a newby, you’re not allowed to participate, which is just fine. They may not have a leadership, but newcomers must earn their right to participate in all gang activities. In fact, you’re not even allowed to kill anyone when a trap is set. You’re the one who acts as lookout for when a new target heads your way.

It’s uncertain how long you have to be the lowest person on the totem pole, but you don’t complain. You’ve never been a very talkative person anyways, and perhaps you’ve always had something sick living in you because you’ve always had a fascination with the human body, putting aside the knowledge that they feel, think and have a complex form of conscience. You could care less about them as you’d care for a fly being swatted.

Despite the Night Folk having no leadership, they have tight bonds with one another. However, you have not gained that right yet. You’ve tried pushing yourself up into their ranks, even tried to dive into the slaughter when a trap has been sprung, but the results have not been good. The more seasoned members got extremely aggressive towards you and chased you off, threatening to butcher you next.

It’s this lack of concern for you on their part that ends up getting you into trouble. Living in the swamps has plenty of risks. The gators are the most obvious of course, but there’s also snakes and biting bugs that can carry diseases. Boars can also be a problem as they spook easy and will sometimes bash their tusks into the thing that’s threatening them. Every once in a while, a panther will wander into the area. They are the most frightening, as they’re silent and cunning. It’s impossible to hunt one as they blend in so seamlessly. Luckily they don’t come this far down too often.

You’re standing on the fork of a road. It’s foggy out tonight, providing the perfect cover. You’re watching for any travelers coming down the road, and pretty soon you see one coming down the path. You let out a low whistle, alerting the others of his presence. The man is instantly on edge. You decide to test him, see how curious or wary he is. After all, this section of the forest is known for its ghosts. Not only that, but he won’t see you. You’re too well camouflaged. All Night Hunters paint themselves when preparing a trap.

“I still love you,” you call out. You’ve heard a spirit calling this out before and even see the ghostly apparition of a young woman.

The man instantly stops. “Someone there?” he calls out. His voice says that he’s alert.

“Come back to me,” you say.

The man unwittingly begins coming towards the sound of your voice. “Miss, are you hurt?” Just a little closer.

“Come home,” you plead. He’s feet away from you and still can’t see you hidden in the foliage.

Suddenly the others are on him. They stalk over to him, not running. They don’t need to. With their camouflage and the heavy fog, there’s no need. He doesn’t see them until it’s too late, and even his horse doesn’t. It gets spooked, sure, but it fails to spot them until they’re onto him.

The man yells out in fright as the others pull him off his horse, throwing him into the mud. You watch in excitement as they begin beating him, then hacking at him with their machetes. He pulls out his gun, preparing to shoot one, but his hand is smacked away and the gun points in your direction. It goes off suddenly and something slams into you, just above your right hip. Pain rips through you like you’ve never experienced and you fall, letting out a grunt of pain. The others don’t hear it as they’re killing the man, but you’re in trouble.

As they finish killing their man, you try to stand but can’t due to the excruciating pain. Three of the men take the kill and begin strapping it to a tree, a warning to others passing this way. Then the signal is given that it’s time to find a new spot. You end up hobbling your way onto the path, a hand pressed over the wound as blood seeps onto your fingers.

The others see and what they do next is a surprise. You thought that by this point they’d value you enough to try and help. Instead, they turn on you. They start kicking you, knocking you down. A loud crack comes from your left arm, signalling its break. You scream and try to fight them off, but there’s too many.

When you think it’s over, they stop and one of them grabs you by your hair and drags you to a new section of the swamp about a hundred yards away. They position you onto the soggy grass and put a lantern down. Then, to be sure you can’t run, one takes his machete and cuts your thigh. The gash is deep and you holler in pain.

You don’t understand why they’re doing this, then it becomes obvious. They’ve no means nor desire to care for their wounded, so rather than fight the inevitability of death, they’re using you as bait. For what though is unclear. It can’t be for gators, most of them are too lazy to come this far out of the water to eat. Boars, maybe. They’ll happily eat a person who can’t defend themselves.

The Night Folk suddenly scurry off, back into the foliage. You know they’re not running, but hiding. You try calling for them, your body burning in pain, but they ignore you. You try getting up, but the bullet wound, your broken arm and gashed leg completely prevent it. You’re stuck here, and you don’t like it. You feel like one of the dozens of people you’ve lured into a trap, and the fear they must’ve felt comes into you. It’s not fun.

Despite your best efforts, you begin to cry. This must be what they want anyways. The sounds of a woman sobbing would lure in any unwitting person. It works.

After a rather short period, another man comes down the path. He’s not dressed like some city man, but rather a man of the wild. A man who’s been many places and seen many things. You feel the urge to not let these bastards who’ve betrayed you get another kill, not on your watch, but you can’t help the sobs.

“Ma’am, you a’right?” the man calls out. His horse paws the trail nervously. Surely it senses the danger. You want to tell him to leave, to save himself, but you can’t. The idea of uttering a single word seems as impossible as walking. “You hurt?”

He prods his horse to get closer to you, and once again you try to tell him to leave. He keeps asking if you’re okay, and you keep on failing to say anything. He’s about ten feet away and looks like he’s about to dismount when they attack.

The Hunters start their slow stalking out of their hiding spots, wielding their machetes. The horse roars in anger. Clearly this man has been in many dangerous situations as he notices the danger almost immediately. He pulls out a shotgun and kicks his horse into a trot, becoming a moving target. As the Night Folk carry no aerial weapons, they’re left with chasing his horse. The man clearly has the upper hand though and he quickly takes them down.

“Creepy bastards!” he grunts as the last one falls. He looks at you, disgust on his face. You realize that this man is your only hope at surviving at this point. He puts his shotgun in its holster on his saddle.

“You,” he says harshly. “You one of them Night Folk.”

He waits for you to respond but you don’t, other than to whimper.

“Say something right now or I’m leavin’. You can fend off them gators alone.”

You try again to speak but can’t. You’re in too much pain. He throws you a look of contempt and kicks his horse into a walk.

“Help,” you somehow manage to say. “Help me!”

The man stops and looks at you. “You ain’t gonna try to kill me, are ya?”

Tears leak from your eyes. “N-no. I can’t.”

He sighs and dismounts. He keeps one hand on his gun as he slowly approaches you. When he’s close, he inspects your body. The odd angle your arm is lying in, the bleeding wounds on your thigh and hip.

“You’re in bad shape. What happened?”

“Got… got shot. They turned on me.”

“Those lousy bastards. Well, I can help ya, but you have to promise me you won’t try killing anyone. You do and I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in your head.”

You nod and he leans over. Instead of helping you up, he quickly searches you, making sure you have no weapons. You don’t, so then he picks you up, making you wince and grunt in pain and he apologizes. After settling you on the back of his horse, he mounts up in front and canters down the path. You clutch to him with your good arm and somehow manage not to black out.

After a while, he slows the horse down and rides up on an old cabin. You recognize it a bit as it sits not too far from the swamps you and the other Night Folk occupied. An older woman, who looked like a gunslinger, used to live there until she just left one day, the land surrounding her cabin littered with bodies. You thought nothing of it, but the cabin’s sat empty since.

The man carries you into the cabin and settles you down on a dingy, old mattress, damp from the humid air. You cradle your arm to your body. He inspects your injuries a little closer.

“Bet you still got that bullet in ya. That, uh, needs to come out.”

You shift away from him, knowing it’s going to hurt like hell. He starts looking around and finds a file which he then heats up over a candle he lit. Then, he approaches you with the hot file. You scoot away from him, your eyes boring into the file.

As he starts instructing you to lay down so he can help. Maybe it’s a result of spending time with the Night Folk or maybe your fight-or-flight instincts kick in, but you’re suddenly standing up and lunging at him, waving your good arm around, trying to strike him and you yowl like a wildcat. The man fends you off, and suddenly his fist pummels into your face, knocking you back onto the bed and into a world of darkness.

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

Hours pass and you finally come to. Your body is in a lot of pain and you’re lying on your back, settled on the bed. When your vision clears, you scan the cabin and find it empty. The man’s gone and early morning light streams through the tattered curtains.

You look down at your body and see that you’re bandaged in multiple places. That man, dispute you attacking him, must have done this. You inspect the bullet wound and figure he must have gotten it out. Your arm’s in a tight cast and in a sling. Guilt floods you as you knew he was just trying to help, but after what your old gang did, it’s no surprise you didn’t trust him much.

On the night stand beside the bed sits a bottle of whiskey which holds a folded piece of paper. You unfold it and read:

“I don’t know if you can read, but if you can, I just wanted to let you know you should be safe for now and I’m sorry for having to knock you out. However, I strongly advise you to get away from here. Them folks who turned on you are likely to still want you dead.

If you are wise, you’ll try ending up with better folk. I myself run with a gang, and I thought about bringing you to them as you seem to need the protection, but the honest truth is I can’t trust you not to kill any of them. There are days I want to kill some of them, so forgive me for not trusting you.”

There is no signature, but you feel even more ashamed. Here is a man who was willing to bring you to run with his gang, as you’ve never been a fan of following laws yourself, yet even among outlaws you’re an outcast. You decide from here on out, you want to get cleaned up. Not go straight, necessarily, but just enough that you can be trusted. After all, a life of isolation is no life at all.

As the man recommended, you decide to leave the swamps when you’re healed enough. However, it takes a long time for travel as you’ve no horse, but after a few weeks, you end up in the Cumberland Forest. It’s a lovely place and you find yourself enjoying the hot, dry air rather than the humidity.

As far as your behavior goes, you don’t change so much in that you rob and sometimes kill people. You just don’t put them on display the way you did with the Night Folk. Often you still feel that intense curiosity as to the human body and lack of empathy. However, you know that your behaviors are not normal so you curb your desires to study the corpses you create as you know it will only lead to trouble.

Years have passed since you were saved by that man. You haven’t seen him since, but you did hear, only a few months after he saved you, of a gang being chased out of a place called Beaver Hollow and that a man died during the escape. Part of you wonders if he knew the man who saved you, but you’ve no way of knowing since you never even learned his name.

#rdr2 fanfic #red dead fanfic #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x female reader #awkward asks

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cyb-by-lang · 4 years

Text

Cosmic Escape Velocity

Did a little bit of writing in the whole YYH situation thing! It’s silly. It also takes place during Hell Year in its own branch timeline.

Kei.

Yeah?

I suspect your personal fate and fortune may be… Isobu paused, clearly trying to come up with a single word that would sum up the disaster of Kei’s life. All of his tails swayed uncertainly in her mind.

Unlikely? Hilariously broken? Kei’s suggestions, as always, went over like a fleet of lead balloons. She didn’t react at all when Isobu mentally swatted at her with those tails in irritation, keeping her hands behind her back in perfect parade rest.

We are standing in the office of a thousand-year-old spiritual being that has a pacifier in his mouth, said Isobu, angling his palms as far up as they’d go without breaking his not-at-all-physical shell. He just didn’t have the limb rotation range. I am not sure there is a way to sum up this latest catastrophe without stretching the language.

Kei shifted her weight from her right foot to her left. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with just screaming.

I do not scream, Isobu huffed.

Too much dignity?

Not enough lung.

It was Kei’s turn to roll her eyes as subtly as she could.

“Are you even listening?” asked the baby, standing up in his chair to loom as far as he could over the top of his desk. The two mountains of paperwork to each side of him did not care, and in fact made him look even smaller. Despite the added weight of his spiritual energy—not chakra, as had been specified a few minutes ago—Kei didn’t take him much more seriously.

Look, she had the equivalent of a nuclear reactor implanted in her chest through spiritual surgery. There was only so much comparison to make.

Still, what Kei actually said was, “Of course, Koenma-sama. Sorry for the interruption.”

The baby sat back in his chair, frowning around his pacifier. “Then as I was saying, I can’t send you back to your starting point.” As Kei’s hopes for a quick resolution took a dive, he went on, “Going by your spiritual signature, you arrived from a world that has a different wave pattern from our own. Forcing your way through during convergence must have cost tremendous amounts of energy—”

Well, it wasn’t like I passed out in a bush on purpose, Kei thought despairingly, silently cursing her circumstances for the umpteenth time. Koenma’s attendants had picked her up, dusted her off, and plopped her in front of their boss with barely any time to react.

“—but once the intersection period passes, that cost skyrockets. By a factor of a hundred.” Koenma laced his pudgy baby fingers together as far in front of his face as they’d reach, a contemplative look crossing his expression as he observed her. “How well do you understand the concept of a leyline?”

Kei considered. Then she unfolded her arms and brought her hand to her chin, to facilitate her thinking. It was probably a placebo effect, but it made her feel better. “I don’t know if you’re going for the ‘weak point in reality’ or the ‘source of magic’ version, but I think I get the basic idea.”

She’d only read enough fantasy novels to fill her entire brain with tropes.

Koenma stared at her with his eyes narrowed almost to slits, as though trying to decide if she was being facetious or not. “Well, you must have found a leyline from your home world at the exact moment the waveforms met. And whether you knew it would happen or not, using any kind of spiritual energy near something that volatile has…consequences.”

Of the wormhole kind, Kei thought.

Your luck is atrocious.

“But this is no time to give up hope,” Koenma said firmly, wagging one finger. “Your world’s wavelength is appreciably short by human standards! The best time for sending you home could be anywhere in the next year to the next four. It’s certainly better than the half-century for some worlds. Some others haven’t come back in my entire lifetime!”

Kei shot a mental glare at Isobu. You were saying?

I stand corrected. It is worse.

Kei took a careful, meditative breath to steel her nerves. No time for freaking out. She could have her moment of wordless panic when she could find a corner to cry in without being observed. Even the emotional deadening of the last few months couldn’t stand up to this. “I see.”

Koenma’s face scrunched into a frown. If it was ever going to be less strange hearing fully-formed sentence coming out of that face, Kei didn’t imagine it’d be any time soon. Then: “In the meantime, would you like to have a job?”

Kei’s thoughts screeched to a halt. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s not the same as a solution; just a stopgap,” Koenma explained patiently. “But if I understand humans, it’s better to have something to keep your hands busy than to sit around in despair until a miracle falls into your lap.”

“What kind of job?” Kei asked, careful to keep the suspicion from seeping into her voice. She’d had more than enough contracts go bad in the midst of her long deployment to learn a little caution. Sensei filtered what he could, but now Kei was out of his reach.

And she hadn’t said no, so Koenma leaned forward in his seat with full lecture mode engaged. “I have a new spirit detective—a boy a few years younger than you—undergoing training to improve his combat skills. But while he’s busy getting whipped into shape, I don’t have anyone to handle his workload.” Koenma’s half-hidden eyes gleamed. “Are you interested?”

“What does the job entail?” Kei asked, as most of her sense of humor dropped right out of her body. Even if she didn’t know where she was, some things never changed. It wouldn’t be her first time being hired halfway through a contract, though it was always at Sensei’s discretion. There had to be a reason why a person whose agents had found her in a bush under a purple sky, in the land of the dead, thought she would be useful for his purposes.

Koenma replied, “In your case, it mostly means completing any minor missions he can’t. Stamping out trouble caused by apparitions of all kinds, but especially demons. Your duties will change after he returns.”

Something in the back of Kei’s head started itching, like a thought she’d forgotten sometime over the last seventeen years. The blanket of emotional exhaustion was too thick to avoid smothering it.

I will look for it.

Thanks.

Kei’s gaze roved slowly around the room, from the stacks of paperwork to the employer offering her busy work. “Let me read and edit the contract before I sign anything. I’d also like any reference material you have on apparitions, and maybe an assistant if you have one to spare.”

Something in Koenma’s expression softened, at least as far as Kei could tell. Babies did not have terribly suitable faces for adult emotions. “I’ll send for Ayame-san. She’ll also be your contact if you do decide to take me up on this offer.”

“Thank you, Koenma-sama,” Kei said, because it didn’t hurt to be polite to a god who administered the afterlife. Sure, Kei was a little corporeal to be a resident, but that could always change.

Kei barely paid attention as the oni attendants bustled around the pastel office and eventually escorted her out into a waiting room. While blue- or red-skinned humanoids registered as unusual, the sheer number of them running around like headless chickens cut down on the unfamiliarity quickly. They were just barely clambering up the slope on the uncanny valley in their tiger-skin loincloths, and most of them ignored her presence entirely.

I wonder if that is a self-preservation instinct.

If any of them can tell you’re here, it is. Kei, sitting in an armchair no more comfortable than those plastic abominations in a waiting room at a hospital, mostly let the world pass her by. Do you think anyone’s realized we’re gone?

I doubt the nearest jōnin has, Isobu muttered resentfully. Then, more thoughtfully, he said, The crane might have.

Kei’s hand shot to her mouth before she’d even articulated her thoughts. Using her kunai would be more sanitary, but hell, she was in the land of the dead. She bit down on her knuckle with one canine, drawing blood for the contract. Then her hands flew through the hand signs with barely enough time to name them: Boar, Dog, Bird, Monkey, Ram.

For a split second after she slammed her hand into the nearby coffee table, Kei’s nerves jangled with fear. What if this doesn’t work? What if I do this wrong and Tsuruya gets hurt—

Chakra-derived ink spread across the wood in a familiar pattern. Sure, the drain behind the technique was an order of magnitude higher than anything she’d expected. And sure, that usually meant bad things, and she was probably breaking several interworld rules in one fell swoop.

But Kei didn’t care.

Because, amid the sudden burst of white chakra smoke and the terrified screaming of oni office workers, she heard a familiar voice say, “Keisuke-sama? Did you call for me?”

Tsuruya beat her wings once, sending paperwork flying through the air along with the rapidly dissipating smoke, much to the dismay of the oni audience as the flailed after their disrupted files. Once she could see, she jerked her dark head to see Kei better with one eye, then the other. Then she folded her huge wings against her sides and bowed low.

Kei launched herself out of the chair and hugged Tsuruya’s three-meter bulk with enough force that her crane companion let out a startled honking noise.

“I missed you too,” Tsuruya said once she regained her balance, dropping her beak to rest against Kei’s back. Her wing looped around Kei, shielding them both with metal-edged feathers. “Though if you do not mind my asking, where are we?”

Kei said, “Probably the afterlife?” but was so muffled by her summoned friend’s feathers that she didn’t get a response.

“My apologies, but I do not think I caught what you said,” Tsuruya said. When this, too, failed to incite an audible response, Tsuruya changed tactics.

“Ow!”

By hitting Kei in the head with her beak, just like old times.

It was at this point in Tsuruya’s fussing that they were interrupted by a polite cough. Kei kept one arm slung around Tsuruya’s neck as the two of them turned to face the interloper.

A dark-haired woman stood amid the chaos of the oni attendants’ panic, expression placid. She wore a black kimono and carried a centimeter-thick stack of paper bound neatly with gold thread, along with an oar strapped to her back.

She bowed.

“Can I help you…?” Kei prompted, after managing a half-assed bow despite her stance.

“Ayame, Gekkō-san. I have your contract.” When she straightened, Ayame added, “If you’ll come this way, there is a side room where we can discuss terms in private.”

“Are you helping represent my interest or those of the spirit world?” Kei kept the obligatory lawyer joke tucked well inside her skull.

“I only want to help both parties come to a compromise.”

Well, that was helpful. “Thank you, Ayame-san. Please lead the way.”

-----

An hour later, Koenma received the modified contract and began to read it, while Tsuruya, Kei, and Ayame all stood around. Of the three, only Ayame seemed perfectly in place.

Ten minutes after that, the oni outside his office were startled to hear a cry of “How many thousand yen per month?!”

Kei stared down his fury with patience born of entirely too long spent alone and nail-biting desperation. “I’m still human. I’ll need to pay rent, buy food, and obtain supplies while living in whichever city I need to cover. And I know what my expertise is worth.”

Koenma gaped at her for a moment longer, only avoiding the goldfish impression by dint of his pacifier, then glared down at the contact. As he perused it with increasing fervor, he muttered under his breath.

Kei caught the words “unbelievable” and “never in my life” and “not made of money.”

Over Koenma’s shoulder, Ayame smiled faintly.

“FINE!” Koenma burst out at last, throwing down his fountain pen in defeat after almost fifteen minutes of desperate rereading. “It’s legally sound, and you have a point about living world expenses. But when the call comes, you need to be ready to fight! Is that clear?”

Kei bowed in full shinobi style, dropping to one knee with her head angled toward the floor. Koenma didn’t need to know she was hiding a smile for, however tangentially, managing to frustrate a god. “Of course, Koenma-sama.”

Oh, he may regret that.

“Then get out of my office! Ayame, show her how to get everything organized so she can start as soon as possible!”

Ayame swept Kei and Tsuruya out of the room amid the god-child’s impending tantrum. While Kei sat sidesaddle on Ayame’s oar as they took flight, Tsuruya pumped her huge wings and trailed in their slipstream with deceptive ease.

“I look forward to working with you, Ayame-san,” Kei said, though even she wasn’t sure how sincere she was. “Please take care of me.”

Still, Ayame replied, “Like one of our own, Keisuke-san.”

It wasn’t until they’d landed in some human city that Kei realized, however belatedly, that she’d never told anyone her name. And that to be in the spirit world meant she’d been separated from her real body. Which was, of course, also lying in a bush.

All she could say to that, once she was again on her own two feet, was, “Well, that figures.”

Dead twice she could remember, and all she got out of it was a job.

#catch your breath fanfic #crossover #yuyu hakusho #keisuke gekko #isobu #tsuruya #koenma #cosmic escape velocity

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michael-langdon-appreciation · 5 years

Note

Loved part 12!!! How long do you think it’ll be till 13? No pressure though :))))

It’s finally here, it’s been an absolute joy to write the Runaway Saga. When it began I had no idea that it would take off and so many of you would love it so much. We have an epilogue left to go but it’s nearly time to bring the story to a close. I’ve loved writing Jim, Duncan, Michael and Y/N. It definitely won’t be the end of the foursome, but all good things must end.

I hope you enjoy, I had to admit I was emotional writing this.

(Does contain giving birth)

—————————————————————————————

PART 13

MICHAEL

Her screams rip through me as I fight back the tears. ‘Come on my darling, you can do this.’ He grits his teeth so hard they crack, never breaking eye contact with Y.N. Her hair is glued to her forehead in sweaty strands, her chest heaving.

‘GET THEM OUT OF ME MICHAEL!’

‘We will!’ He roars back, ‘You’re almost wide enough. Is that what they even say?’

‘I DON’T KNOW!’

‘Fuck!’ His hands shake, both hovering above Y/N round stomach. Her screams are raw as the contractions come hard and fast, ‘Ease up baby please.’ He begs, ‘You gotta let her live! Please! You can’t make the same mistake I did.’

There’s a brief pause and Y/N lifts her head. ‘What’s happening?’

Michael listens intently, ‘I….don’t know.’ His hands rest on her stomach, Michael’s magic flowing throughout her.

One heartbeat.

And another…fainter.

‘Give your twin a chance.’ Michael whispers, tears tracking down his cheeks. ‘You’ve gotta ease up. You’re ready babygirl, just let them come.’

Y/N’s back snaps upwards as she screams loud enough to make the windows rattle in their panes. ‘MICHAEL!’

The door bursts open. Michael can’t even deal with the problem if he wanted to.

He has to make sure they live.

‘OH FUCK!’

It’s Jim, sagging against the door at the scene before him. Michael’s got Y/N propped up in bed resting against a mound of pillows. She’s gripping the sheets tight enough to nearly rip them. Duncan barrels into Jim, sending them both careening into the room.

‘What’s happening.’ Duncan demands, ‘Are they both alive!’

‘At the moment.’ Michael answers, ‘Let me do this.’

‘If you hurt my kid-’

Michael sends Jim back against the wall with a push of his hand. ‘I AM TRYING TO FOCUS!’

Duncan collects Jim, wrapping his arm tight around Jim’s waist for support. Both men kneels beside Y/N and she squeezes their hands the moment they’re within her reach.

‘I don’t know how you’re here but thank god you are,’ She grits out.

‘They’re early.’ Duncan murmurs, ‘It isn’t time yet.’

‘I know!’ Y/N’s tone is full of frustration, ‘And I can’t even get to a hospital I have to let the Antichrist be my midwife!’

Michael shoots her a scowl, but then he hear it.

A little girl’s voice, sweet and as melodic as a chime.

‘I’m ready, daddy.’

‘Okay Y/N you need to start pushing.’ Michael’s voice is full of authority as he clocks both Jim and Duncan too. ‘It’s time.’ Jim and Duncan wince horribly as Y/N crushes their hands. Her voice strains awfully as she tries to push with every ounce of her strength. ’Keep going!’ A headache is forming between Michael’s temples, the strain of sending healing magic to his Y/N a constant battle. ‘You’re doing so well.’

‘You can do it.’ Jim joins the barrage of encouragement, ‘You’ve got this Y/N. I’m so so sorry for all the shit I’ve put you and everyone through.’ His eyes flick to Michael, ‘You too. Just save my kid!’

‘NOT THE TIME JIM!’ Y/N screams as every single one of her muscles contract.

‘I can see a head,’ Michael declares. ‘One more big push, Y/N.’

The baby’s body appears, slimy and beautiful. Michael gathers the child at once, running on pure instinct as Duncan darts round to help him.

‘I saw them cut the umbilical chord in a medical drama.’ He says, brandishing the scissors. ‘I know how to do it.’

‘GET THEM AWAY FROM ME.’ Y/N screams, still very much feeling the pain.

Jim’s eyes are glued to the baby, ‘Whose…is it?’

He waits for the chord to stop pulsing, ‘Cut it now.’

Duncan does as instructed, making clean work of the job. ‘I hope you sterilised these scissors.’

‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’

‘GUYS!’ Y/N’s head flops to the side, a tear making it down her cheek as Jim wipes it away. ‘Is they baby okay?’

The little one’s eyes flick open, large ocean blue eyes meet Michael’s own. He feels the bond immediately as he towels off the little one, ‘She’s here.’ He says, ‘Our little one.’

There’s silence as everyone waits. Michael wraps his little girl up and passes her over to Duncan. He can’t be selfish now, he must be ready to act.

‘Where….where is-’ Jim begins as there’s an almighty scream from Y/N.

Michael dives back into action, reaching out to feel for the heartbeat. ‘They’re coming!’ He cries, ‘The heartbeat is strong.’

‘I CAN’T!’ Y/N screams, ‘IT HURTS!’

’We need another sweet child, my love.’ Michael coos, pushing all his magic into her.

Jim looks on the verge of passing out and Michael can’t blame him. Between Y/N’s screams, his baby girl’s first cries and Duncan’s mantra of encouragement it would be enough for anyone.

Excitement builds in Michael’s heart, his baby listened.

Jim’s child is gonna make it.

The child enters the world screaming, his lungs full as his eyes open, tiny arms flailing about. Tears fall fresh down Michael’s cheeks, ‘It’s a boy.’ He announces, ‘Healthy and alive.’

Jim is by his side in milliseconds, peering over Michael’s shoulder. ‘Oh my god.’ He whispers, eyes filling with tears. ‘He’s here.’

Duncan passes over the scissors, ‘Do the honours, Jimmy.’

Jim snips the chord and slips his baby boy into his own towel. Duncan brings Michael’s baby over to Y/N as the Antichrist takes a well deserved collapse onto the floor. ‘I….promised you.’ He wheezes, ‘I’d….succeed.’

‘You did.’ Jim nods, swaddling his baby. ‘I don’t even know if this is right, can we call someone now?’

Y/N has taken her little girl into her arms, ‘She’s so beautiful.’ She breathes, her expression awestruck. ‘Hello, baby girl.’

‘Did you ever think of a name?’ Duncan asks, his eyes soft as he gazes upon the child.

They haven’t discussed names, but Y/N answer comes as if she’s always know. ‘Miriam.’ She says, ‘I want to call her Miriam.’

If Michael had been crying before, it was nothing compared to the tears dripping down his chin now. ‘You…wanna call her that?’ He staggers to his feet, ‘I can’t think of anything better.’

‘Miriam Medina Langdon.’ Y/N says, her voice leaving no room for argument.

Jim cracks a smile, ‘It’s perfect.’

——————————————————————————————-

JIM

His baby is here.

This tiny potato-like miracle is his.

Jim can barely stand as he passes over his baby to their mother. Y/N takes the baby boy into her arms, passing on Miriam to Michael. The Antichrist is besotted already, he won’t remove his eyes from the child, nodding along occasionally. Jim is certain they’re already having their first non-verbal conversation.

Duncan rests his head against Y/N’s, ‘He’s got your eyes, Jim.’ He notes. ‘The same shape and colour.’

‘But Y/N’s smile.’ Jim says, ‘Her beautiful beautiful smile.’

Whenever Y/N smiles at him it’s like seeing the sunrise on a new morning.

‘You need a name for him.’ Duncan presses, ‘Now he’s here in the world.’

Jim hasn’t thought of a name. He didn’t fully believe his child was gonna make it, nevermind a name.

‘Uhhhhhhh.’ He wracks his brain, searching the room for inspiration.

He’s got nothing.

‘Any ideas?’ He asks the room, ‘I’m open to anything but Adrien.’

The room thinks, well Duncan thinks alongside Jim. Y/N closes her eyes, getting a few moments of precious peace. Michael’s far too enraptured with baby Miriam to notice anything else in the room. The witches could have come in, magic wands blazing and Michael would remain where he is cooing over the infant.

Duncan’s fixated on Michael too, ‘Jeffrey.’ The words come out a whisper, not fully realised.

His words bring Michael out of his stupor, ‘What was that?’

‘Give Jeffrey his chance now.’ Duncan’s eyes flick to Jim, ‘It’s…poetic I guess.’

Jim mulls it over, as Michael pushes away more tears. ‘Would you…like that Michael? It wouldn’t be…too much?’

‘Nothing would give me greater joy.’ Michael says, ’You can do what I couldn’t, Jim.’

‘And Miriam kept her word.’ Duncan pushes, ‘She let him come into the world.’

‘Jeffrey Mason.’ Jim knows it’s right the moment it’s said aloud, ‘Why not?’

‘And it ties us all together again.’ Y/N pipes up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘That’s all I’ve wanted.’

Jim nods, ‘I’m sorry how I’ve reacted-’

‘You don’t need to be sorry.’ Michael cuts him off quickly, ‘I was the one who kidnapped Y/N.’

‘Yeah,’ Duncan frowns. ‘It doesn’t put you in the good books.’

‘I knew you would terminate her.’ Michael holds his child to his chest, ‘I…couldn’t let that happen.’

Duncan claps him on the shoulders, ‘We never should have even thought about it. We should have trusted you.’ Duncan pushes Michael’s hair behind his ears, ‘I for one, will never misjudge you again.’

‘So…where do we go from here?’ Jim’s voice has gone timid, ‘No offence Duncan, but we can’t have two babies at your apartment. Plus, it doesn’t look like Jerome is leaving anytime soon.’

‘The beach house.’ Duncan answers, ‘It’s got enough space for us all.’

‘But what about being in the city for work?’ Y/N counters, ‘You’re big plans to run for Mayor.’

‘I think that can wait till I’ve spent some time with my family.’ Duncan smiles, ‘Besides, people are far more likely to vote for married men with children.’

‘Would you come with us?’ Jim asks, ‘I know words are easy to say and not mean but…I really do want you in my life. In all our lives.’

Michael considers it, he’s lost in thought as the Antichrist peers down at little Miriam. ‘I don’t know if I can watch you marry Y/N.’ He admits, ‘It might be too much for me.’

Jim can see the slight crack in Duncan’s facade, ‘Oh.’

‘But I’d like to try.’ Michael says quickly, ‘I want to see if we can make it work.’

Miriam gurgles in the Antichrist arms, she reaches out towards her brother, straining to be closer. Michael brings her over and seats the baby girl beside her twin and Miriam settles at once, ‘Doesn’t look like Miriam wants to move away from her brother,’ Y/N notes.

Jim grins, ‘Looks like you’ll both have to stay.’

——————————————————————————————-

TAGGING: @michael-langdon-owns-my-soul@langdonsinferno @pastel-cloudz@misslanabananaa @lovelykhaleesiii @lostin-fern @lvngdvns@ccodyfernn @asstichrist@yourkingcodyfern@langdonsdemon@satcnas @russianspacegeckosexparty @rosy-pugs @luxuryglitterhoe@langdonsoceaneyes@sodanova @petersfern-fics @avesatanormalpeoplescareme@sassylangdon @confettucini@sammythankyou@wroteclassicaly @Sloppy-Wrist @Langdonalien@alexcornerblog@sevenwondr@queencocoakimmie@sojournmichael@langdonsdemon@satcnaskinlovecody @kylosbabe@americanhorrorstudies @ladynuwanda@xxpixiefromdixiexx @elenareginaauditore@dadddysprincessss@gremlinkween@readsalot73@astir-bread @i-will-die-for-jim-mason@ms-mead @mega-combusken @hanhanxx@kahhlo@thelangdoncooperative@langdonsrapture@ritualmichael@cryptid-coalition @sloppy-little-witch-bitch26@infernal-langdon @jim-mason2@duncandimension @dark-jim@jimmlangdon @xtheinevitableprophecyx@moontheweirdpan@moonlit-void-to-the-far-unknown@bbyduncan@divinelangdon@theladynymph @divinelangdon@codyswhore-blog @blakewaterxx

#the runaway saga #the final part #michael x jim x duncan x y/n #michael-langdon-appreciation #michael langdon #Jim Mason #duncan shepherd #y/n #the kinky quartet #the reign of Michael #hello babies #Michael Langdon x y/n #the foursome #part 13

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lilsum4 · 4 years

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Close Encounters of the Invisible Kind - Chapter 9

You did it, you won. You made me sit down and write and update. Every time I thought “no one cares anymore,” one of your comments would come in and remind me that this story exists. Your kudos, comments, well-wishes and dogged perseverance won. So here is an update, 4 years later.

Special thanks to @davidtennantstrainers, who always chimed in with a “still waiting! you okay?” when I least expected one.

Read on AO3 if you prefer.

Close Encounters of the Invisible Kind - Chapter 9

She had forgotten that gravity's a right bitch.

Donna stumbles, quite literally, out of the TARDIS doors with as much grace as a newborn fawn. Or as though she's single-handedly imbibed a pub's stock of lager. Nerys' center of gravity feels horribly off and inhabiting these foreign limbs takes practice.

To add insult to injury, Nerys is also wearing truly uncomfortable wedding shoes, and she can already feel a pinch in her toes developing.

Once out the doors she uses the TARDIS to re-balance and keep from falling flat on her face. With hands upon warm wood, she realizes that, for the first time ever, she has an opportunity to examine the TARDIS from the outside. She's never had a chance before. So now she runs her fingertips over the aged, blue paint -- tottering around it in a full circle, in awe at the machine. "Look at you!" she breathes, inspecting the details, from the message on the door to the actual working telephone. "You're amazing!"

Donna throws her arms wide against the police box in a hug, squeezing tight, relishing the rough texture of it under her hands, real skin pressing against solidness. It's perfect. "Thank you," she whispers now, her own little secret message, "For taking me in. Giving me a home. I won't get to hug you for real again -- so thank you."

The TARDIS feels somehow content under her touch, so Donna thinks the TARDIS appreciates it.

She finally pulls back and turns, finding the Doctor standing a few feet away, watching her with a warm, secret gaze.

"What!" she demands in her brassiest tone. Well, Nerys' brassiest tone.

"Nothing," he grins. He extends a hand to her. "Come on. Aren't we supposed to be getting your friend to her wedding?"

She reaches forward and takes his hand and that feels perfect, too.

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

Several things happen rapid-fire after that:

She screams at the Doctor for not thinking about bringing money with him. She's the ghost along for the ride; it really should be up to the living to think about details like that, and it's not like he's green at this whole "unforeseen adventure" shtick. He says, one too many times, "Don't get too comfortable in that body," like she can forget, christ on a cracker, that this is temporary! And so then she accidentally-on-purpose leaves him behind when he's not paying attention, because he's being a git about this whole unintended possession thing and by god, she's allowed a bit of fun, ain't she - just for the little time before Nerys gets her skinny body back?

In the taxi, Donna bounces delightedly on the seat, actually enjoying London traffic for once. She doesn't get to enjoy if for long, as the driver turns out to be a Santa robot, and then Donna puts Nerys' body in mortal danger by diving out of a moving car, into the Doctor's waiting arms.

It's an awkward leap that's more flailing limbs, a hope, and a prayer, than anything else. She doesn't think the Doctor quite understands how utterly foreign this body feels -- how any body would feel after all this time -- and it's really a miracle that she doesn't land with a splat on the busy motorway.

When she does, against all odds, land with the Doctor's surprisingly solid body beneath hers, it takes her a moment to stop relishing the sensation of someone pressed against her. It's been soooo long.

But she does, in fact, remember that this is not her body. So in that moment when the Doctor and her are face to face and shocked into stillness, it strikes her that it's not Donna he's looking at, watching out for, holding hands with. It's Nerys.

She commands trembling limbs to lever herself to sit, in a pool of white skirts, on the floor. Excitement and adrenaline subside so that all that's left is an unwelcome pang in her chest. A deep, watery breath doesn't help the bite of realization that, as wrapped in giddy excitement as she is to take part in an adventure, none of this is truly happening to Donna. None of this is about her. It never is.

The Doctor has scrambled off to right the bucking TARDIS, consumed in flipping levers and pulling switches and dealing with a growing plume of smoke.

Donna watches him for a moment, then tells herself she really should get up. She's wrinkling Nerys' dress. The dress that should have been Donna's.

The sentence slips from her mouth without actual thought: "I looked better in it, you know."

"Hm?" the Doctor queries, distracted, more concerned with landing them safely.

"The dress. I looked better in it."

The Doctor finally looks up to find Donna slowly standing, smoothing down layers of tulle, looking down at her friend's form.

The Doctor recalls Donna only as an amorphous grey mass with terrifying pits for eyes, but looking at her in that borrowed body now, with a cocked hip, radiating attitude, he can imagine she must have been a force to be reckoned with. And for a moment that niggle of memory hits him again -- of gold-nebulae eyes, staring into his, and hair red as the fields of Gallifrey. He shakes it off, as he always does, as a fancy of regeneration sickness.

The TARDIS pauses its bucking as he finishes banging a button into submission, but flies smoothly enough - despite the growing smoke - for him to step away from the console and towards her. "You keep saying it's your dress. I don't recall you mentioning you were engaged?"

Donna keeps her gaze lowered, one hand going to a tiny rip in the beading along the side.

"No, I wasn't. It was just, you know, hopeful thinking. Picking out your future dress so your mates don't end up filching your style. One of those silly things. But I really did love this dress, ever since we saw it once when we were window shopping. And then she goes and takes it!"

The Doctor is grinning, but as the seconds beat by and she continues to look down, he begins to suspect that her sassy pose and ire are all an act.

"Donna?" he asks carefully.

"I tried it on at the shop and everything. Even Nerys agreed it looked good, and getting a compliment out of her was a fucking miracle."

He reaches out a tentative hand and places it on her shoulder.

She looks up finally, trying to smile through a trembling chin, her eyes suspiciously wet. "I ripped it. She's gonna be so angry."

"You saved her life. She'll get over it."

For a moment he thinks she'll say more, thinks that gravity will win the battle with the tears he sees in dishwater blue eyes. But instead Donna squares her friend's shoulders and lifts her chin, all traces of vulnerability wiped from Nerys' face as if they'd never been there. "Damn straight! Now, where did you land us?" she sails out the door, leaving the Doctor looking after her.

He has to wonder now how many times he's missed that vulnerability, invisible to everyone, any nuance lost under the loud voice and funny quips that only he gets to hear but never see.

The light is bright, the wind whipping Nery's careful blonde chignon out of shape, as the Doctor follows Donna out onto the rooftop.

Donna sighs. "Forget the dress; I've gone and messed up her wedding."

"No you haven't. It's not your fault she got pulled into the TARDIS. Obviously, something's after Nerys."

"But who would want to be after Nerys?" asks Donna. "It must be some sort of mix up."

She shivers as she sits on the roof's edge, and he finds a long-dormant impulse kicking in. He takes of his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders.

Donna smirks -- the Doctor has to wonder what that smirk would look like on her real face -- and gives him a little eye-roll. "Of course this sad excuse for a jacket fits Nerys. You both are skinny as rats."

"Oi, I'm trying to be a gentleman here. Doesn't happen often, you know!"

She bumps his shoulder playfully. "Right, right." She burrows deeper into his jacket, and he watches her fingers play over the pinstriped material as if memorizing the texture. He sees it again, that flash of sorrow quickly buried. He has the strangest impulse to wrap an arm around her, to somehow comfort her into getting that well-hidden dejection cleansed from her gaze.

"Don't really even know what we were trying to accomplish, really. I mean, so if we'd gotten her back to the wedding, then what? I'd still be stuck in her," she muses, looking off at the cityscape.

"Maybe she'd force you out, not wanting to miss her own wedding. Moot point, now. We have to figure out why she's being hunted, and fix it."

"Poor Nerys. Chased around on her wedding day," Donna sighs and shivers again.

The Doctor shifts at her side, the urge to hug her almost overwhelming now, but he resists and instead digs in his trouser pockets until his fingers touch metal. He pulls out a ring, and offers it to Donna, palm up.

She gapes at his hand for a second, before carefully asking, "What's that for?" There's a catch in her voice.

"Biodamper. It will hide Nerys' biological signature from the robots. Should buy us some time." He offers it again but her hands stay resolutely on her lap, until he takes one in his own and slides the ring on her finger. Her hands are trembling. From the cold, perhaps?

"With this ring, I thee biodamp," he teases.

Her fingers curl in his. This time Donna can't hide her feelings fast enough, and Nerys’ face shifts into an expression of sadness and longing.

"For better or for worse," whispers Donna.

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

Donna knows Nerys better than anyone, and has been hearing of her fairytale wedding plans since they were 15 and sneaking out of school. She gets it in one when she guesses where the reception would have been held.

"You had the reception without Ner- uh - me?!" Donna asks, appalled, upon entering the ballroom.

"Why not? You decided to pull that prank, so why waste all this?" begins Beatrice, attired in an appallingly ugly orange bridesmaid dress. Donna never much had liked Beatrice.

"Wasn't anyone worried?" Donna exclaims. "What kind of friends are you?!"

Lance -- LANCE! -- comes up to her. "Now, sweetheart. Don't fret so. We all knew you'd turn up. No case of cold feet would keep you away for long, right?"

"Lance?" she wonders, befuddled. Why was he even here?

He hugs her (and oh man, he was fit!), and a niggling suspicion has her pulling back just far enough to peruse his well-fitted tux and the expensive flower at his lapel. Donna stumbles back. Nerys...that absolute man-stealing cow!

It unfolds then, between friends and bridesmaids trying to placate her with glasses of wine, how she shouldn't be too angry. How lucky she is that Lance took her prank in a stride. How of course they were soulmates; it was fate that they'd meet at her friend's funeral who'd--

Wait, hold up! Donna reaches out and snatches the cocktail the Doctor had been nursing right out of his hand, to down in one gulp. Donna's funeral. They'd met at her own damn funeral! Now she really is fuming, and doesn't feel one whit guilty when the music strikes back up and Lance drags her onto the dance floor.

She's tearing up the dance floor, because...well, because she can. This, all of this, should have bloody well been Donna's, and so if anyone has the right to be dancing with Lance right now, it's her!

The Doctor hangs back, indulgent, letting her have her moment of fun. She winks at him over Lance's shoulder and the Doctor raises a new, fruity drink to her in reply. A conga line forms and she snags him into joining as they pass by, and then they're making a joyous circle around the room and she spins to laugh at some wry comment the Doctor makes about how conga lines are so much more fun when done on a planet with zero gravity, and it's all so wonderful that she forgets, for a little while, that this isn't hers and it isn't her future they're celebrating and then...

Then, she spies the quiet couple seated at a table on the fringes, and reality rears its head once more. Her feet cement themselves to the floor so that the Doctor crashes into her before pulling her out of the way as the conga line reforms without them.

"What is it?" the Doctor asks, scanning for danger as the blood has drained from her wine-flushed face.

"My parents," whispers Donna. Sylvia and Geoff, looking a little older, a little more tired. The smiles they aim in her direction, however, are as familiar as always.

It takes her several uncertain steps to make it to them, and the well wishes and hugs she receives pass in a blur. A quick impression of warm hands and Sylvia's favorite perfume, Geoff's hearty laugh. Donna has no memory, later, of what she said or how she forced Nerys' lips into a smile. Of how she was able to nod when Donna's own name was brought up and how much they wished she could be there to celebrate with her dear friend.

The Doctor is waiting, hands ready to grip her cold fingers, when she staggers back to him and begs, "Please, get me out of here." And right on time, the baubles on the decorative Christmas tree begins to explode.

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

Donna can confirm that after being kidnapped from your wedding, finding out your rubbish friends held the reception without you, and then finding out you’re being poisoned, a great distraction from your troubles is to barrel down maintenance tunnels in a Segway. It is so ridiculous that the laughter bubbles up without warning, until she and the Doctor are hooting and giggling and altogether having a swell time. Unfortunately, Lance is an utter killjoy.

Well of course he is, the two-timing arse - turns out he was cheating on Nerys with a spider.

"Is it always like this when you go adventuring," whispers Donna, much later, back on the TARDIS and watching the world being born. "The bits of chaos and the danger and the wonder?"

"Yep. 'S great, isn't it?" grins the Doctor, before noting that a wayward tear is further smudging Nerys' makeup

"I'm sorry about your friend's fiancee," offers the Doctor.

"Hmm," nods Donna. . She presses a cold hand to her chest. "She's so shocked inside. Oh, poor Nerys. What an absolute wanker Lance is. But this," she takes a deep breath now, staring at the kaleidoscope of colors outside the door as dust coalesces into her planet, "this puts it all in perspective, doesn't it. I hope it helps her."

It doesn't, not really. Or at least not right this moment, as she continues to sense Nerys aching in betrayal. But maybe one day in the future, Nerys will think back to this vista no other human has seen before, and heal.

The moment of calm is shattered as they’re pulled back to earth, and Donna heartily wishes her friend hadn’t chosen these horrible shoes for the wedding as she finds herself sprinting to keep up with the Doctor once more.

"So these Huon particles," Donna wheezes once the Doctor brings them to a stop at a maintenance door. "I still don't understand. What are they for?"

"They're an ancient form of energy, energy that's necessary for the Racnoss to rise. They need a living host to catalyze, and Nerys is it."

"You think maybe that's what's making me stick to her? Cuz it feels like how the TARDIS can keep me anchored" she ponders, watching him take out a stethoscope. She's pretty sure he's just fucking around at this point, he's such a drama queen.

He pauses suddenly, eyes going wide before whirling at her. Excited, happy hands gesticulate wildly. "Yes! Oh, yes! I'd forgotten entirely that you're stuck. Aren't you clever! The Huon particles, they're so old that the only other surviving particles power the heart of the TARDIS. They're like the little plus sides to your minus--"

"Oi, watch it."

"--an ancient magnet, keeping you in place!"

"Well gold star for me! Does that mean when you get them out of her I can finally leave?"

"Yep," enthuses the Doctor, back to inspecting the door he's so hell-bent on opening. "We'll sort that out back in the TARDIS, and then 'poof!', you're back to your role as resident ghost and Nerys is back to her boring life, probably knee-deep in wedding bills. Really, the wedding industry is a scam, I don't understand why--"

It occurs to him that he can't hear Donna’s labored breathing hovering over his shoulder any longer. He whirls back around and, of course, she's gone.

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

"I fucking hate you. To think, it could have been me!" spits Donna, now suspended in a web beside Wanker!Lance.

He sneers, and Donna wonders that she ever found him attractive.

The Racnoss Queen forces the Huon particles out of the both of them, and Donna's ire for her friend is derailed as she begins to feel the tendrils holding her in place begin to dissipate. Goddammit, why did she have to be right this time! If she's forced out here, she's going to be lost!

She digs in tight, trying to keep within this borrowed body. The Huon particles want to take her with them, but she's not going to go without a fight! She calls out furiously to Nerys within her mind. "Help me stay!"

Nerys continues to cower in a tiny corner of her mind, nursing hurt and horror and disbelief. Donna is grasping tight with a strength she didn't know she had, seeking out the cells within Nerys' body that contain the tiniest footprints of Huon energy still, ingrained after 6 months of being dosed. But she's not going to be able to hold on for long by herself. "For god's sake, Nerys, be useful for once! What, you want this cheating bastard and his spider mistress to win?! You end up as spider food and Beatrice gets first dibs at any eligible bachelors at your funeral this time around?”

That does it. She feels Nerys psyche uncurl, ponder, and finally lash out a mental hand, clawing back at Donna, gripping at her with Nerys' signature bitchy stubbornness. A final, mighty heave from Nerys has Donna settling back into Nerys' body with a palpable jerk. "You better fucking get me out of here alive, Donna!" she hears Nerys say to her. "It's your fault I even met him!"

And isn't that classic Nerys.

The Doctor, thankfully, arrives right on time. He doesn’t catch her, the dunce, but at least Nerys is not spider food, so that’s a win. She’s sure she’ll remember Lance’s fall for a long time, though. Is even more sure she’ll remember the Racnoss Queen’s frenzied sobbing and screams of “My babies” for much longer.

Which leaves Donna now standing in ankle deep water, staring at a stranger.

The Doctor, a silent and grim executioner, is perhaps the scariest thing she's seen today, or ever.

The water is rising rapidly, the screams of dying Racnoss long faded. "Doctor, you can stop now!"

He looks down at her with burning eyes, this stranger wearing the Doctor's face, and it's almost scary how well she can read him right now. How unfair it is that the Racnoss survived and his people didn't. How horrible it is to be the last. How easy it would be to just watch the water rise. The relief it would be to let go and finally, finally rest.

"What's death like, Donna?" he whispers to her and she hears it just fine, even over the rushing water.

She gulps, terrified. But she forces her borrowed voice to be strong. "Boring. Endless. Pointless. Is that what you want? Because it's not what Nerys wants." It's not what I want for you.

He closes his eyes, finally, and when he reopens them it's the Spaceman she's used to looking back at her. "Let's get her out of here, then."

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

The Doctor has made it snow for her.

"It's time, Donna," he says to her quietly.

"I know," she sighs. She shuffles her feet a little, enjoying the solidity of dirt underfoot. Even the ache in her arches and pinching in her toes is welcome. She rubs her hands over cold arms. Skin and bone and a voice and will and action. She's about to let go of all of it.

"You need somebody, you know," she says abruptly, using hands that aren't hers to reach for the Doctor's grasp. "Out here with you, a companion. You should find someone else, someone new. Like I told you before."

"I don't need anyone," he denies gruffly, though he grips her fingers tight.

"Yes you do. You need someone to share in the adventures and because... sometimes you need someone to stop you," she replies, kindly. Somebody to live for. And it can't be me.

He blinks rapidly at her. Wayward tears or snow in his eyes? She can't tell because she is blinking just as hard.

“Not Nerys, though!"

He chokes out a laugh, scrubbing one hand over his face. “No, not Nerys. Not now that you’re finally going to be free of her.”

She grins, trying to be strong, and nervously smooths her hands over her ruined dress. "Okay, well, here goes nothing. You know she's going to freak the holy hell out as soon as I leave her, right?" she begins. She wants to ask for a hug again, because she needs it, but she feels stupid asking.

Though she does quickly remember something else. "Wait! Oh here, save this for me." She slides the biodamper off Nerys’ finger.

The Doctor takes it from her with a confused look. "It's useless now, you know. No harm in it for her."

"But it's mine," she confesses in a rush. "Not Nerys'. You gave it to me and it's ...it's the closest I ever..." her throat clogs up, "closest I got to getting a ring from someone. Even when I was alive I..."

The Doctor's sympathetic eyes do her in, utterly, and she finds herself suddenly shouting, "Why did I have to die!"

To her horror, she feels tears sliding down Nerys’ pale cheeks. Her bottom lip is trembling, her chest aching, breaths staggering. She’d forgotten how much it physically hurt being so sad.

Then she is being enfolded in the Doctor's arms, his hug wonderfully tight as he shushes her and rocks her. And she didn't even have to ask.

She reaches around him, fists clutching his coat. She'd forgotten, too, how it felt to be comforted.

She is the one who finally pulls back, because it's too tempting to cling to him longer. She looks away and scrubs her eyes. The Doctor continues to gaze at her with soft understanding, slipping the ring into a pocket before reaching for her hands once more. "Donna..." he begins.

But she is embarrassed enough already, crying and snotty, and Nerys is not a pretty crier. She abruptly uses the Doctor's grip on her to pull herself out of this borrowed body. This time, Nerys is more than happy to let her go, and it's almost like a cork popping out of a champagne. The force of it throws Nerys back and Donna is left a ghost once more, with a firm grip on the Doctor to keep her tethered.

Nerys catches her footing, stares, smacks the Doctor hard across the face, and turns tail to run away, screaming, "HELP! Martians are real!"

"What the hell was that for!" exclaims the Doctor. He shakes his head at the retreating form of the woman, and heads back through the TARDIS doors. He ensures that Donna's hand is firm in his before closing the door, because she remains silent. Nerys is still screaming and scrambling towards her front door when the TARDIS disappears.

It's only after the TARDIS is in the vortex that he realizes he can feel Donna's hand in his as if she were solid.

#lilac summers fanfic #doctor/donna #Doctor Who fanfiction #close encounters of the invisible kind

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darkblueboxs · 4 years

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Fic Update - The Sphynx and the Hare

Chapter 7: We Keep Running available on AO3

(Chapter 1: Tastes Like Damnation available here although chapter 7 also works as a standalone)

There’s a lot Neil doesn’t remember about his childhood, memories growing heavy with the merciful fog of time and trauma. It’s probably for the best; the memories he does have are unpleasant enough that he doesn’t mourn those he lost.

The day he met Kevin and Riko in the nest is, unfortunately, one of the clearest. Riko’s daemon had settled already, a proud rush of black swooping and diving over their heads while they played. Rikka had taken her final form several years prior, absurdly early by anyone’s standards.

Even at such a young age, Kevin and Riko were already the prodigal sons of the Exy world. News sites seized on news of Rikka’s settlement with fanatic adoration. Words like “fate” and “destiny” followed Riko through the headlines as the Exy world basked in the perfect synchronicity of the raven daemon and the raven team. It was treated as a confirmation of what the trashier networks had been touting since Riko had been old enough to hold his first stick; that Riko was born to lead the ravens. His daemon settling in raven form was as good as placing the crown on his head.

Rikka’s perfect form was another burning point of jealousy that had led Neil to follow Riko and Kevin’s progress so religiously in the years which followed. Through dumb luck or a force beyond understanding, Riko’s daemon had taken the perfect form for him, or at the very least a form that appeared as such to the outside world.

Neil hadn’t spent much time considering what form Fìrinn would settle in until it happened. He had known on an academic level that it was coming – his mother had explained in loose and discouraging terms that it was part of growing up, an indicator of the type of person you were growing into. She had also told him in no uncertain terms how much more difficult it would be to be on the run once Fìrinn settled. It was easier when Fìrinn could flit and shift between forms at a moment’s notice to blend in or hide as the situation called for it. In public she could be anything from a mouse to a moth to a chameleon, zipping over their heads as a bird or insect to scout for danger or avoid a fight. Most importantly of all, it was harder for his father’s men to hunt them without a consistent description of Neil’s daemon to follow.

Despite his best and wasted efforts, Neil’s daemon had settled a matter of months after their departure from Baltimore.

Neil had expected something small and slippery; a ferret, a mouse, a beetle. The kind of animal Fìrinn shifted into reflexively whenever the slam of the front door announced his father’s return home. When his father’s greyhound lunged for her, she usually changed into something a bit more durable or prickly, anything from a turtle to a hedgehog. Like it ever made a difference. Neil was always better at running than he was at fighting.

A hare shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He swallowed his disappointment while his mother did her best to hide her frustration and fear, knowing that he was the cause of it but just as incapable of controlling it. Just the same as every other problem in Mary Hatford’s life, Neil’s existence was at the heart of it.

He remembers the moment of Fìrinn’s settling as clearly as he remembers the events which preceded it. A close call with one of his father’s men – too close – had left them driving through the early hours of the morning in a stolen convertible with the roof blown off (beggars couldn’t be choosers) with the scent of drying blood burning Neil’s nose off in the backseat.

He wasn’t sure how many state lines they had crossed, what day it was, or even who’s blood was staining his torso black.

He had been sleeping, or drifting, somewhere half a pint of blood shy of comatose for… hours, or days, or something. The last thing he remembered was two black cars pulling up to the gas station, his mother pulling him from the store with nails cutting into his forearm. No, the last thing he remembered was the sleek, silent movement as the man and the woman pulled guns from their holsters, and the explosion of pain just below his collarbone as a bullet tore through an inch shy of his Kevlar vest. No, the last thing he remembered, as his mother dragged them to the car, Fìrinn a hummingbird flailing in his hand, her wings fluttering to the pace of his heart, was how she turned, gun raised, and shot Neil’s assailant right between the eyes.

The gunshot screeched in Neil’s ears, his hearing knocked to pieces by the proximity.

The trickle of blood reached as far as the tip of the woman’s nose before she fell to her knees. The woman’s daemon, a hawk diving for Neil with yellow claws glinting inches from his head, burst into a shower of glimmering dust which rained down upon him.

The trickle of blood drawing a perfectly straight line down the woman’s nose is the last thing he remembered with clarity. It was followed by a dark jumble of shouting, tyres screeching, a distant clap of more gunfire.

Then he was coming to in the backseat of an unfamiliar car, new clothes already stained where the blood had soaked through his bandages. Legs twitching with the memory of his mother’s scream, run, Chris, run.

Fìrinn came too at the same moment, a dormouse quivering in the palm of his hands.

“Mum,” Neil had grunted.

Her mother didn’t take her eyes off the road but reached behind her, grabbing Neil’s outstretched hand and squeezing it. Probably to reassure herself more than him. Her viper daemon poked his head out of the hem of her sleeve, casting an evaluating eye over Neil’s injuries before sliding out of sight once more.

“Did you…” Neil stuttered, coughed. He could taste blood on his tongue, his lips, down his throat. It felt like he was full of it, choking his lungs. He remembered the woman’s daemon bursting into nothing above him and shivered. His clothes were different, but he imagined he could feel the dust still clinging to him. “You killed them.”

“They were going to kill us,” his mother replied sharply. She withdrew her hand. “You have to get used to it, Neil.”

Her viper appeared again a few minutes later, slipping over the edge of his mother’s collar to fix him with a piercing gaze. His eyes were dark green, same as his mother’s, his pupils thin slits.

“This isn’t a game,” Mairidh hissed with startling ferocity. “This is our lives, and we have to do what it takes to survive. This doesn’t end, because the moment it does, we’re dead. Understand? We keep moving, we keep running, we live.”

“I understand,” Neil said. He took a deep breath and forced the shaking from his hands. “We keep running.”

When he next awoke from a nightmare plagued with blood and bodies and daemons turning to dust, Fìrinn was a hare. Mousy brown hair – the same colour he had dyed his own three weeks prior – darker brown eyes constantly blinking, scanning for predators from every direction. Strong, quick legs. Born from fear and perfect for running.

Neil had known from the moment he saw her that she would not change again. The knowledge was like a weight encasing his chest. He looked into Fìrinn’s eyes and saw his entire future mapped out for him. Everything he was and everything he would be.

Kevin’s daemon had been settled too, when they first met back in Evermore, had been settled since Kayleigh Day’s death. Neil thinks of the similarities between Caith and Fìrinn in an idle moment as he’s adding another secreted clipping to his binder. Settling in the aftermath of death. It made sense, in some ways; the confrontation with the violent and unpredictable nature of mortality had been for them the final push from childhood to adolescence.

Fìrinn’s final form bears witness to that. She’s built to run, because running is survival. Kevin’s Doberman is the opposite; built for loyalty and persistence. Loyalty to his mother, the people who took him in after her death. Loyal to her dream for him. Ready to labour day after day to achieve it. Neil’s sure from everything he’s learned about the Moriyamas that they would have preferred Kevin’s daemon to be a raven too, or a bird at the very least, in line with the motif Riko and Edgar Allan present to the world. A Doberman would have been the next best thing – loyalty easily twisted in their favour, hardworking to the point of self-destruction, a speedy yet forceful presence on court. The second-best form for the second-best player.

Then there’s Riko’s perfect raven. Neil is living proof that one cannot choose their daemon’s form, but he wonders if the expectations placed on Riko’s head from such a young age did the trick for him, warped his soul into the shape everyone expected of him. Trapped him forever under the heavy expectations that crushed his childhood before it had time to begin.

Neil might have been sympathetic if he didn’t know what he does now.

On the court, Caith runs with her weight shifted to her right, her front left paw noticeably weaker than the rest. Neil had assumed it was psychosomatic, a sympathy pain echoing the injury of her human’s hand. Now Neil wonders if Riko hadn’t stopped at Kevin’s hand.

Riko’s daemon hasn’t changed since the day of their fateful game. She perches on the back of Kathy’s sofa, claws digging into the expensive creamy leather in excitement as her human follows her onto the stage.

Riko Moriyama takes his place at his daemon’s side, and the crowd erupts.

Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!

Fìrinn: Scottish Gaelic, meaning truth.

Caith: Irish, meaning battle.

Rikka: Japanese, meaning ruler.

#aftg #neil josten #kevin day #riko moriyama #tfc #tw violence #tw abuse #my fic #tsath

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mdelpin · 5 years

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The Red Dragon - Chapter 18

AO3 | FF.Net | Tumblr: Ch1 | Ch17

Chapter 18

Igneel had been prepared for a great many things as he flew toward the meeting. But he’d never once considered Deliora would betray them all just for the sake of revenge.

What did he possibly think he would gain from this treachery? Any truce he might have negotiated with Acnologia was obviously doomed to fail. The renegade dragon slayer had lost his mind a long time ago, but the one thing he’d always been clear on was his hatred of all dragons.

Acnologia wouldn’t be satisfied until there were no more dragons left on Earthland, he’d said so on many occasions. If he managed to kill them, Igneel had no doubt Acnologia would turn on Deliora, there was no other possible outcome.

Then again, Deliora had always been incredibly short-sighted. Like most hellfire dragons, he’d always let his emotions control him. They fed his flames and his magic but kept him from being able to devise elaborate plans.

Atlas had been the exception. His interest in magic from an early age had forced him to gain control of his emotions, allowing him to cast ever more complicated spells.

Atlas’ eyes widened in what Igneel easily recognized as horror before propelling himself towards Acnologia with almost deranged determination. And suddenly, it was as if everything were moving in slow motion.

Atlas’ hellfire blazed with his fury, his snout distorted with a hatred that seemed wholly out of character for him. He roared at the renegade dragon slayer that had been responsible for so many dragon deaths, and for once, those feelings resounded deeply inside of Igneel.

Ever since Porlyusica had died, Igneel had felt detached from the world. He went through the motions as best he could, trying to fulfill his duties. But outside of the longing for someone that was just outside of his reach, Igneel could only seem to muster feelings for Atlas and Natsu.

Even though he’d managed to defeat Deliora all those years ago, his efforts had been halfhearted at best. He should have killed Deliora then, as Dragon Law demanded, but he’d decided to be merciful instead, hoping that Deliora would come to see the error of his ways.

He hadn’t stopped to consider the consequences of that action, and that one choice had led them here. Now, as he watched Deliora let their greatest enemy attack his brother, the dragon he’d once considered his best friend, it was more than Igneel could stand.

He thought back to the reports they’d received of the large numbers of dragons killed by the renegades of late, and he knew without a doubt that had been Deliora’s doing. He’d willfully sacrificed his own brethren to further his lust for power, and that was something Igneel could never forgive.

The Fire Dragon King was suddenly filled with an intense rage. It brought him back as nothing else before had managed to do. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d told Natsu he’d been a great fighter a few hundred years ago. And now, as he began to feel that familiar battle lust claim him, he could once again see clearly.

Everything around him seemed sharper, brighter, full of vibrant colors that had been absent for far too long, and he welcomed them. The sights, the smells, the clarity. Igneel knew what he had to do.

He covered himself in his flames and prepared to join his brother, ignoring Deliora for the moment. It had been a while since he and Atlas had fought together, but the rhythm was not something easily forgotten. One way or another, this would end today.

Acnologia must be destroyed at all costs.

Igneel crouched, his wings flaring slightly, his tail whipping in agitation as he watched Atlas leap back and up, out of the reach of Acnologia’s maw. As the slayer rose to his hind legs, unfurling his wings to take to the air after Atlas, Igneel suddenly launched forward. His massive form was a blur as he closed the 100 meters in the blink of an eye.

He wasted no effort on magic or fire, knowing Acnologia would be unfazed by either. Instead, Igneel rammed his shoulder into Acnologia’s chest, launching the startled beast backward and attempting to snake his head around and bite at one of Acnologia’s wings.

The two tumbled, gouging furrows in the ground as they snapped and clawed at each other in a frenzy. Igneel ended up on his back, and Acnologia attempted to clamp his jaws on Igneel’s exposed throat while pinning the red dragon’s forelegs to the ground. His eyes gleamed with malevolent glee as he saw the opportunity for a quick end to the battle.

Unfortunately for Acnologia, in his narrow focus, he forgot to account for the other participant in this brawl. Igneel suddenly thrust his hindlegs upward, momentarily lifting Acnologia’s haunches into the air, well above the black dragon’s head. Acnologia’s tail flailed high in the air to prevent him from tipping over.

The timing of this maneuver was perfect for Atlas, who leveled out from the steep dive he’d been in, clamping his jaws onto the middle of the black dragon’s tail. He tucked into a roll and, with a twist of his body, hit the ground just past Igneel’s head, facing the opposite direction.

He took the significant speed and momentum of his dive and transferred it onto Acnologia. Hauling the tail around and flipping the slayer completely about, ripping him off his perch atop Igneel, and sending the black dragon careening wildly into an outcropping of rocks, reducing them to rubble and a cloud of dust.

Atlas turned to watch his foe right and extricate himself rather gracelessly from the rubble. Igneel rolled to his feet and stood beside his brother. Both of them shared a fierce grin at the thrill of battling together. They launched themselves at the black dragon, this time with Igneel going high, and Atlas charging along the ground.

Acnologia crouched and tracked Igneel’s path through the air, but as Atlas leaped in what was intended to be an interception of Acnologia’s launch into the air, the black dragon dove to the ground instead. He twisted at the same time and thrust his claws up to rake deeply across the bared underbelly of Atlas as he sailed overhead.

Atlas roared in anguish as he took his own spill into the pile of rocks Acnologia had just left. Crimson blood splashed across the boulders from the furrows in Atlas’ chest, but he quickly rose and prepared to re-engage.

0-0

The smell of blood filled the air pushing Natsu and Belserion to reach the meeting spot at full speed, each desperate to reach Igneel and Atlas. They hadn’t been sure what to expect, but they both stopped, admiring the rare sight of Igneel and Atlas fighting together. Natsu, in particular, was in awe, having never seen his father fight before.

He was so transfixed that he didn’t notice Acnologia studying him even as he fought.

“Who’s this?” Acnologia asked, not even sounding winded as he continued to battle against the two fire dragons.

Natsu remained silent, knowing there was no point in answering. If Acnologia could smell him, he would figure out his identity soon enough. He heard Belserion roar out a warning next to him and noticed Deliora trying to slink away while the attention of the red dragons was on Acnologia.

As much as Natsu wanted to deal with Acnologia, the second he saw Deliora, his dragon instincts took over. It happened so quickly he almost didn’t notice it. Images of Gray played through his mind as he was consumed by a bloodlust stronger than any he’d ever experienced before.

His fault!

It was Deliora’s fault that Gray had lost his parents at such a young age. That Gray hated dragons, and Natsu couldn’t tell his mate the truth about himself. His fault the war continued long after everyone wanted to go home.

And now, he had committed the worst sin of all, the one for which Natsu could never forgive him. Deliora had betrayed all dragons by allying himself with Acnologia.

Deliora had to die, that was all there was to it.

Natsu tried to fight through the haze. To take control back from the instincts that were screaming at him to kill Deliora. He was terrified of what it could mean if he let them consume him, but they were too strong for him to overpower. Natsu surrendered, reminding himself he’d long ago decided to go after Deliora if he ever got the chance.

I will avenge Gray’s family, and I will correct my father’s mistake. Deliora will never hurt anyone ever again.

His body and soul vibrated in anticipation, and Natsu could feel all reluctance fading away until there was nothing but a flicker of apprehension left inside him. Soon, even that was gone.

“I will destroy you!” Natsu roared, leaving Belserion to waver between aiding his father and uncle in their battle or going after Natsu.

Natsu coated himself in his hottest flames as he veered towards Deliora, who seemed honestly surprised to see the hatred on his face.

“Igneel, you’ve been holding out on me,” Acnologia leered at the King of the Fire Dragons as he sniffed the air. His eyes narrowed in interest as he peered at Natsu.

“There was another one,” Acnologia’s muzzle widened into a sickly grin, “I wonder, will he be a challenge?”

Those words decided Belserion, and he joined Igneel and Atlas in their fight.

Natsu chased after Deliora knowing the dragon would be immune to his breath attacks. That didn’t mean his fire was completely useless against him, he could still use it to power up his other attacks. He roared as loudly as he could, giving voice to the rage and loathing he felt.

Acnologia’s vile laugh rang out as he watched Natsu close in on Deliora while the traitor darted back and forth, looking for a way to evade Natsu’s approach.

“You shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss us, Acnologia,” Igneel advised, taking advantage of his distraction to slash Acnologia across the chest with his claws, barely earning a grunt from the Black Dragon in response.

Deliora determined there was no way to evade Natsu, and he braced himself for the young dragon’s attack. However, Natsu hit the ground just in front of Deliora and dug his front claws into the ground, wheeling about.

His hindquarters and tail lashed out, the narrower end of his tail moving faster than could be seen. It struck Deliora across the jaw, and the force of the blow spun the overbalanced dragon around, sending him reeling and seeing stars.

Natsu immediately leaped into the air again, looping and diving down from directly above Deliora, who had just started to clear his head and was looking from side to side to try to spot his foe. A moment later, Natsu crashed into the huge dragon’s back with enough force to make the ground shudder as Deliora’s legs gave out and he collapsed to the ground, frantically squirming to try to shake Natsu off as the young dragon raked his claws at Deliora’s wings and bit at his neck.

Acnologia laughed once again, this time with a mirth that sickened everyone present, “That’s a fine son you have there, Igneel. Deliora is clearly outmatched,” he paused for a moment, thinking as he continued to fight with the three dragons.

“While I wouldn’t mind seeing him kill Deliora, I think I’d rather challenge him at full strength.”

Acnologia made a disconcerting noise, and three additional renegade dragon slayers exited a nearby cave, instantly transforming into their dragon forms and taking to the air. The Black Dragon laughed at the dismay on the faces of the red dragons.

“Come now, you didn’t actually think you were the only ones clever enough to think of bringing backup, did you?”

As soon as his dragons were close enough, he disengaged, leaving them to fight in his stead as he took off in the direction of Deliora and Natsu. All three dragons converged on Igneel, attacking him from all sides as Atlas and Belserion tried to figure out the best way to help him.

Igneel whirled and leaped frantically, avoiding leaving his back turned to any of the three enemies for more than the briefest of moments. The slayers darted in and out constantly, trying to bite or claw exposed flesh as it was presented to them and keeping a healthy distance from Igneel’s deadly teeth and flames. Even with his considerable skill and ferocity, Igneel was quickly accumulating more and more small wounds, slowly soaking the ground below him with blood.

The maneuvering dance broke up as Atlas and Belserion entered the fray. Dragons and slayers took to the sky as they squared off in pairs. The dragons seemed to have a slight advantage in flight, but the slayers were still formidable, and it took several minutes before there was any noticeable shift in the battle.

Atlas peeled away from the slayer he’d been engaged with and suddenly dropped just above one that had been trying to bite Igneel’s wing. Atlas exploded in a nova of hellfire, scorching and stunning his target who fell limply out of the sky, trailing smoke from all over his body. Atlas wheeled and re-engaged with his previous foe, who looked much warier at getting as close to the fire dragon.

In unspoken accord, Atlas and Belserion took advantage of the momentary reprieve as a chance to get Igneel away to safety.

The King of the Fire Dragons was leaking blood from several wounds, but Atlas knew there was no time to cast any healing spells. They had to get back to the cave so Grandine and Wendy could work on him.

Atlas heard the uncertainty in Natsu’s battle roar as he was suddenly faced with Acnologia. He forced himself to drown him out, even as he felt terrible about it. He had faith in Natsu’s abilities as a fighter and his determination to protect his father at all costs. He had no doubt Natsu would be able to hold his own long enough for them to get Igneel out.

Any other course of action at this point would only lead to their destruction, and that would be disastrous to all the dragons who were counting on them to restore the peace.

He could see Igneel begin to respond to it as well, instinctively trying to move towards his son.

“Not this time,” Atlas murmured sadly, casting a spell on his brother that made him nearly weightless.

He grabbed on to him, using his magic again to speed himself up. Atlas needed to get Igneel to safety no matter what. He couldn’t let him die, not before that blasted abomination.

“Belserion,” Atlas yelled, but the dragon was already trying to keep the renegades from following them. Two of them managed to get away from him, promptly giving chase.

Their dragon forms were smaller than both Atlas and Igneel, but they moved swiftly in the air. Both dragon slayers kept up a constant barrage of attacks that Atlas needed to evade as he dragged Igneel along with him.

Just a little longer...

Atlas knew there were other dragons ready for just this eventuality, he just had to get to them, and everything would be fine. He looked down at Igneel worriedly, focusing more magic into his speed spell even as he pushed his wings as hard as he could.

He tried not to think about how he had left Natsu behind, knowing his nephew would have wanted him to save Igneel. He couldn’t help but worry, even though Belserion, who was a considerable fighter, had stayed behind to help. Part of him couldn’t help but hope that the two of them could take out Acnologia once and for all.

Atlas winced as he was pelted with yet another energy blast. His grip on Igneel loosened in response, but he was able to grab him quickly and keep going.

He didn’t have to look back to know the third renegade had joined his pursuers. The additional set of attacks alerting him to their presence. He fretted about what that could mean to the other fight that he hoped was still ongoing, but there was nothing he could do to help. Not until he got Igneel to safety.

Natsu, don’t give him any openings...

He caught a whiff of blood in the air and wailed upon recognizing it, his instincts screaming at him to turn back and join the fight. But he couldn’t, no matter how much he wanted to. If Igneel died as he was now… no, he couldn’t think about the consequences. He just had to hurry.

“Leave me,” Igneel struggled against him, pleading in a broken voice, “You have to go help him.”

“Stop it,” Atlas snapped, even as he fought every instinct he possessed not to do precisely what Igneel was demanding, “Natsu will be fine.”

He has to be.

0-0

“What the hell is going on?” Gajeel muttered, although everyone around him could hear him, “Someone should have returned by now.”

Metalicana grunted his agreement, extending his senses as far as he could. “Something’s wrong.”

“Skiadrum?” Metalicana glanced over at the dragon that was standing next to him, his dragon slayer on his back.

Without a word, the dragon took off and instantly disappeared from their view as Weisslogia and Sting gazed worriedly at the spot where they had been.

A large group of dragons and dragon slayers were converged at the edge of their territory, waiting for the red dragons to return. There was hope that a truce had been accomplished, but they were ready for a fight nonetheless. Most of them had been fighting for years now.

They were a ragtag collection of all different races of dragons. The only real gain they had managed during this war was that the previously solitary dragons had learned to coexist somewhat peacefully. They had come to rely on each other in combat and had even managed to forge friendships. There were some exceptions, of course, but for the moment, they were all willing to stand together. They had seen enough death.

The minutes dragged on in tense silence as they waited for Skiadrum to return with a report.

“Atlas is coming in fast with Igneel, but they’re being pursued by three renegades. There’s no sign of Natsu or Belserion. We must hurry, they need our help!” Skiadrum suddenly reappeared, shouting urgently even as Rogue somehow managed to remain impassive, his expression giving nothing away as to what he had seen.

Metalicana and Weisslogia had already taken off before Skiadrum had finished speaking, and Irene began belting out orders to the dragon slayers who climbed on their assigned dragons and took off.

“Stay back!” Skiadrum yelled at Weisslogia, “This is no place for you, I told you before.”

“And I told you, these are my friends. I will not sit back and do nothing,” Weisslogia glared at his mate before flying past him.

He could feel Skiadrum’s anger at his defiance flooding him through their bond. It mixed in with the worry and ever-present guilt that were such a large part of their relationship now. He ignored it. He was tired of feeling helpless, and he was tired of being needlessly treated as an invalid by his mate.

Ssstubborn fool

Weisslogia shook his head at the intrusion and flew on, refusing to answer even as he extended his senses to try to locate his friends. Soon he could make out a red blur in the distance, and he readied a spell.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Sting asked, keeping his voice steady as he petted his father, knowing how hard it was for him to go against Skiadrum’s wishes.

Weisslogia snorted, “You’re one to talk.”

When he felt his son tense, he relented, “We must do what we feel is right, they will understand eventually.”

“Are you up to a fight?”

“We’ll find out, won’t we?”

With that, there was no more talk as they both readied their magic and focused on finding a way to help Atlas and Igneel.

Irene had deployed an assortment of dragons and dragon slayers. They would charge the renegade dragon slayers, freeing the Talos dragons to go after Belserion and Natsu once Igneel was safe.

“That bastard!” Metalicana roared in unbridled anger.

“Listen up!” Metalicana broadcast in his loudest roar, “Igneel says Deliora made some sort of deal with Acnologia. They tried to kill off Atlas and Igneel. Natsu and Belserion are fighting them now. Igneel wants us to take him, so Atlas can lead us back to help them.”

“Atlas isn’t going to like that,” Skiadrum muttered, knowing how protective Atlas was about his brother.

Several dragons cursed in disbelief, but Weisslogia wasn’t really surprised at Deliora’s treachery, it was what they had anticipated after all. Although to ally himself with Acnologia against his own kind was certainly unexpected and unforgivable.

Deliora had just signed his own death sentence. No matter what their particular stance on humans might be, no dragon would ever join him again.

“We can discuss this later. For now, we must focus on the fight that’s ahead of us,” Irene’s yell interrupted Weisslogia’s thoughts, and he silently agreed with the dragon slayer.

Weisslogia could hear grunts of agreement and battle cries rise behind him at her words, and he turned his attention back to his mate.

“It’s Natsu we’re talking about, he’s probably torn up as it is. He won’t put up a fight. I’ll take Igneel and get him back to Grandine, the rest of you follow Atlas back to Natsu and Belserion.”

“Weiss, you know—” Skiadrum began, but Weisslogia cut him off immediately.

“I can do this, Skia.”

Please believe in me...

Weisslogia could feel the battle raging in Skiadrum’s mind, but he could also feel the pride his mate felt, and he vowed not to let him down.

“Be careful.”

Weisslogia nodded and waited for Metalicana to use his telepathy to tell Igneel of their plan. A group of dragons zoomed past him, launching an attack on the renegades, and Weisslogia didn’t hesitate to head over to Atlas.

As he’d predicted, Atlas didn’t look happy, but he also didn’t put up a fight, handing Igneel over before whispering in a pleading tone.

“Weiss —.”

Weisslogia was already flying back when he shouted, “I will protect him with my life, go bring Natsu home.”

He tried to ignore the deep gashes he’d seen on his friend, or the tiredness in his eyes, knowing Atlas would do everything in his power to protect the nephew he loved as a son.

Weisslogia flew back to the cave as fast as he could, knowing every second could mean the difference between life and death. He held on to the bigger dragon tightly, grumbling whenever he heard Igneel grunt in discomfort.

“Is he going to be alright?” Sting asked quietly, his voice sounding tremulous, and Weisslogia could hear his own doubts reflected. He knew his son’s question was not limited to the dragon they were carrying.

Sting was worried about a great many things at the moment. Weisslogia wished he could give him some comfort, but he’d never been one for empty words. The fact was, they had no idea what their loved ones would be up against.

“They are all very strong. They will do their best, just as we are doing now,” Weisslogia looked down at Igneel, wanting to reassure himself that the red dragon was still with them. He wished he hadn’t, he’d never seen Igneel look so despondent before.

“We’re almost there, I can smell Grandine,” Weisslogia announced, pushing himself as much as he dared. The strain on his body was tremendous, but he knew he couldn’t rest until he got Igneel to the healer. As the cave entrance loomed tantalizingly closer, he called upon the last of his energy to bring Igneel home.

0-0

“Natsu, watch out!”

Natsu stopped mid-attack, heeding the tone of Belserion’s shout more than the words themselves. He forced himself to study what was happening around him. His eyes narrowed when he saw Atlas rushing away with Igneel, noticing straight away that Igneel was not flying on his own power.

His dismay intensified when he saw two renegade dragon slayers chase after them, barraging them with attacks. Belserion had his hands full with a third while Acnologia was flying straight towards him.

Natsu made a split-second decision. He let go of Deliora, determined to help protect his father as he had come here to do. Deliora immediately took off away from Natsu, not even bothering to look back.

“You were lucky today,” Natsu fumed as he called out to the fleeing dragon, “But I promise you this, I will be the last thing you ever see.”

Natsu steeled himself to face off against Acnologia, hoping in doing so, Belserion would have a chance to defeat the remaining renegade and follow after Atlas and Igneel.

Natsu’s initial reaction to being one on one with the dragon from his nightmare was terror. The malice Acnologia had exuded in his dream was nothing compared to what it felt like to be in his presence. The fear tried to inject doubts and insecurities into Natsu, urging him to flee, but he fought it off. He couldn’t afford to have Acnologia go after his father as well.

He had to fight, even though he knew this renegade dragon slayer was not only incredibly powerful but also completely insane. The madness reflected in his cold blue eyes brought this point home as nothing else could. Acnologia was lethal, and Natsu could not afford to underestimate him, not when he had managed to best all the dragons that had taught Natsu how to fight.

Natsu’s terror was soon replaced by rage as he thought of all the dragons that had fallen to Acnologia. Some of which Natsu was sure had not only trusted him but might have even considered him a friend. His rage boiled through him, heating his blood and bonding with his magic, magnifying it until Natsu felt drunk with it.

He was well aware that dying by this creature’s hand was a possibility, one he must avoid at all costs. It would destroy Gray to learn he’d been killed by a dragon, and he would do anything to keep that from happening.

Acnologia, however, wasn’t interested in fighting him yet, seeming content to size Natsu up as the sounds of Belserion and the renegade’s fighting continued behind them.

“There is something different about you,” Acnologia finally spoke, “You smell of Igneel but…also something else,” He shook his head in confusion, seemingly trying to figure out the puzzle.

For a brief moment, there was a lucidity to his eyes that hadn’t been there before. It disconcerted Natsu, who didn’t know what to make of the creature in front of him.

He stared at Acnologia open-mouthed, his breath catching at the Black Dragon’s words. How had he been able to tell when no dragon had yet been able to?

The moment was short-lived. Acnologia’s eyes quickly lost their lucidity as his maw stretched into a sickening grin. “Kind of small, aren’t you?” Acnologia taunted, and the similarity to Gajeel’s words snapped Natsu out of his temporary daze.

“I don’t need size to kick your ass,” Natsu replied with feigned bravado.

Thanks to Atlas’ constant experimentation, Natsu had been surrounded by magic his entire life. It didn’t take him long to recognize that Acnologia possessed many different kinds of magic, including his beloved fire.

Natsu banished all extraneous thoughts and feelings from his mind, he couldn’t afford any distractions. His survival would depend on being able to stay a step ahead of Acnologia.

Natsu feinted, but Acnologia didn’t flinch in the slightest. He charged, stopping a short distance in front of the slayer, digging his foreclaws into the earth and spinning his hindquarters around as he whipped his tail out at the slayer’s head.

Natsu’s tail moved faster than the eye could follow, but it was as if Acnologia knew precisely what to expect with the move. His jaws lunged forward, biting down right where he predicted the tail would be.

Natsu heard the familiar whip-crack of the tail attack, but instead of a strike against the slayer’s head, he felt a jolt like a shock of lightning as half a meter of his tail was bitten off by the black dragon.

He stifled a short howl of pain as he completed his spin, facing the slayer again. The young dragon struggled to control the pain and keep his composure. He watched Acnologia tilt his head upward and gulp down the piece of tail in his mouth with exaggerated delight and smacking.

Natsu channeled the shock and pain into fury and charged again. He veered to the right, tucking his left wing tight against his side to make it less of a target as he leaped and attempted to rake both of his foreclaws down Acnologia’s side and back, aiming for the root of his right wing.

The slayer crouched low, dodging the claws, and his jaws snapped at Natsu’s hindleg. Natsu sensed the attack, however, and used his tail to smack the top of Acnologia’s head, knocking it off target and temporarily blinding the slayer with the blood that continued to well out of the ruined tip of his tail.

Natsu spread his wings and took to the air. He wheeled about and immediately dove, trying to take advantage of the superior position before Acnologia could also get airborne.

He breathed a tremendous gout of billowing flames. He knew they couldn’t harm the slayer directly, but they did momentarily obscure his sight. Using this to his advantage, Natsu tucked his head, barreling through the flames and straight into his foe.

He pushed the slayer back, immediately slashing out with tooth and claw, trying to draw blood from the less armored underbelly. One claw struck home, but Natsu stayed in motion, attempting to get behind the slayer, biting at his tail and slashing at his wings with claws.

Acnologia leaped away from Natsu, spreading his own wings and gaining altitude. He turned and launched a series of breath attacks at the young dragon, but Natsu evaded them with dexterity, trying to close the distance to the slayer.

As Natsu neared his foe, he suddenly spiraled above the black dragon. Planting all four feet on the slayer’s back, he flexed his talons to dig in momentarily, then shoved down hard, launching himself higher and forcing Acnologia to pump his wings to regain control of his flight.

The two dragons flew away from each other for a moment, then wheeled and began speeding toward one another for another clash. This time, the slayer simply overpowered the smaller fire dragon. He pushed Natsu past vertical until he was upside down, slashing Natsu’s neck with a claw. The young dragon cried out in pain and fury, losing considerable altitude while he struggled to regain control of his flight.

0-0

Belserion did his best to keep the renegade pinned down, but after hearing yet another howl of pain from Natsu, he knew he had to do something. He had no doubt Atlas would be returning soon, and for this, he was glad. Natsu would need healing, but right now, more than anything, he needed help.

Even though the young dragon was holding his own, Belserion knew that Acnologia was still only feeling him out. Acnologia enjoyed a challenge, and Natsu was a dragon he hadn’t come across before, and that was becoming increasingly rare for the renegade.

When Belserion heard Acnologia begin to cast the spell he’d used against all his friends, the one that had the power to reap souls, he panicked.

Oh, no, you don’t!

Belserion flew as fast as he could towards Acnologia and Natsu, lunging to place himself in the way of the spell.

Acnologia’s frustration resounded around them as Belserion thwarted his attack. Belserion felt pride surge in his chest at the thought that he’d managed to protect the dragon he’d come to think of as their future. He was hundreds of years old, strong enough to survive the spell, but he wasn’t sure Natsu would have.

There was no denying Natsu’s strength or determination, but he was still young and a hybrid. Taking a direct hit from that spell had almost killed Weisslogia, who was much older. Probably would have killed him if he hadn’t been mated to Skiadrum.

Belserion was mildly amused at the shock registered on Natsu’s face as the hit he’d expected never came. Although it was quickly marred by the sorrow he recognized in Natsu’s eyes. Belserion tried to smile for him, even as the pain ripped through his body.

“You need to go, Natsu, this isn’t a fight you can win at the moment,” Belserion advised, keeping his voice even so as not to cause him any further worry, “I will buy you some time.”

“I won’t leave you,” Natsu protested, “How can you ask that of me?”

“You must.”

Belserion had hoped Natsu would have grasped the logic in his plan, but he hadn’t really expected him to agree to a retreat. Not when there was so much at stake.

He took stock of his condition as the air around him heated up to increasingly uncomfortable temperatures until it was almost like having Atlas nearby. For a brief moment, Belserion hoped the heat signaled the arrival of the other dragons, but it was only Natsu, looking angrier than Belserion had ever seen him before.

Belserion struggled to get up quickly, deciding that if today were his last battle, he would go down, giving it his all. He had sworn his allegiance to the Dragneels a long time ago, and he had never regretted it once. He would use whatever power he had left to fight alongside Natsu. He spared a thought to his dragon slayer, a woman both brave and wise, and he was filled with sadness.

Goodbye, Irene, please forgive me…

0-0

Watching Belserion stand beside him, even though it was obvious how much it pained him fueled Natsu’s determination even further. He wasn’t sure what that spell had been, but he had the nagging suspicion it was the one that had reaped the souls of his family to varying degrees.

That thought angered him beyond anything he’d ever felt before. Belserion had likely given up his soul to protect him, and Natsu would do his best to see that sacrifice not be wasted.

Acnologia roared in fury at being deprived of his magic’s intended target. He raced forward, aiming at Belserion, but was forced to dodge as Natsu closed on his flank, and the young dragon attempted to bite the slayer’s tail.

Natsu struggled to keep Acnologia’s full attention. It was evident that Belserion was significantly weakened by the reaping. Despite this, he fought on, looking for any opportunity to lunge in and attack while Acnologia was distracted. Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before the weakness and exhaustion slowed Belserion enough for Acnologia to take advantage of it.

Belserion lunged to attack the slayer’s flank as Acnologia wheeled to chase Natsu after their latest clash. The fire dragon failed to notice that Acnologia’s head was curled back, carefully watching Belserion’s charge. When he was close enough, Acnologia raised his tail and smashed it down on Belserion’s head, stunning the dragon who went limp and plummeted to the ground with a crash.

Natsu wheeled and roared in anguish as he saw Belserion’s form crumpled on the ground below. The young dragon channeled his magic into his four legs, each blazing like a comet as the fire pushed him to an incredible speed.

The gap between Natsu and Acnologia closed in moments, and Natsu spiraled, briefly rising above the black dragon as if going for his back again. At the last moment, while Natsu’s legs were above him, he fed another pulse of fire magic through them. He pushed himself suddenly lower to pass below the slayer, where he had an open shot at his vulnerable chest.

Natsu stretched his jaws and clamped firmly onto Acnologia’s left arm. He used all his momentum and magical thrust to wrench violently at the arm. Natsu felt a jarring shift in their struggle, and he righted himself moments before hitting the ground, flaring his wings to manage a landing instead of a crash.

Natsu’s teeth were still clamped onto the arm he’d managed to rip from Acnologia. Euphoria coursed through him at Acnologia’s muffled roar of pain, but it was replaced by curiosity as he felt a surge of weakness.

Natsu looked down to see a gaping hole in his side, leaking what seemed to be a river of blood. He looked up with confusion, and his vision wavered, his focus stretching out as if he were looking down a tunnel that was rapidly growing longer and darker.

At the far end of the tunnel, he saw Acnologia, definitely missing an arm, but with a huge mouthful of flesh in his jaws, dripping hot blood that steamed in the cooling air. Natsu’s legs lost their strength, and he stumbled but managed to keep his front legs locked upright, sinking into a sitting crouch.

Still, there was fear in Acnologia’s eyes, and Natsu reveled in it even as the Black Dragon spit out the chunk of his flesh before glaring down at him. Natsu could hear Belserion yell out his name urgently, but he couldn’t seem to focus on anything but how cold he felt.

Natsu laughed. The idea of a fire dragon feeling cold amused him. He called on his magic to warm himself up, and though he still felt plenty of it, it refused to respond to his beckon.

Belserion continued to call out to him, and Natsu closed his eyes for just a moment, trying to think of what to do. He felt himself begin to drift away, but an image of Gray assaulted him almost immediately, refusing to let him give up, his voice pleading with him.

I need you

Natsu’s heart ached, and he reached out with his arm trying to touch the vision of Gray that had appeared before him. Gray looked sad as he begged him….

I can’t lose you to them too!

And Natsu found himself repeating the words he’d said before leaving Gray in their field.

You’ll never lose me... I’ll see you soon, Princess.

Come back to me, Natsu...

Natsu opened his eyes once again. Even as everything continued to fade to utter darkness, he stubbornly called out again, not sure if the call was to his mate or his magic. And as his awareness dimmed, he felt that warm spot he was calling to turn its attention toward him, responding to his call.

A/N: I am terrible at writing fight scenes so I enlisted the help of my husband once again, since he actually enjoys writing them. He was given the skeleton of the chapter along with “stage directions” of what I wanted to overall have happen. I think he did a great job, even if he surprised even me with how far he was willing to go! Thank you very much, love. :)

I have enjoyed fleshing out the dragons more than I thought I would (I really liked Belserion in this chapter) and while I would love to go more into some of the things that will happen, I know it’s getting to be time to move on. The next chapter should wrap up the war portion (and setup other things) and move us back to Talos.

#fairy tail #gratsu #ftlgbtales #fairy tail big bang 2018 #update

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you-want-fuckign-cicadas · 6 years

Text

Into The Abyss, part 8

henroy

Felix belongs to @smoresthehalloweenqueen, as does Ink.

More below the cut

It is dark, cold, and wet. Felix would much rather be doing anything but wading around in an ink puddle, trying to find his glasses. But of course that's what he's doing, because why wouldn't this be the perfect time to lose his glasses in a hecking puddle of ink that perfectly matches the color of his glasses?

He sighs and rummages around in the ink. At least I seem to be mostly ink-proof like this. It's still annoying, though.

Lines of ink spread across the walls, first forming intricate patterns and then just becoming small rivers of ink. Felix frowns and steps back a little before continuing to rummage around for his glasses. Stupid glasses getting lost in a stupid puddle of ink. In fact, just stupid ink. Though I do wonder how it's doing that.

Finally finding his glasses, he holds them up triumphantly and inspects them for damage. They seem to be fine, so he wipes the ink off on his shirt (it's probably fine, right?) and puts them back on his face. “That's better. At least now I can see farther than ten feet away.”

There's a thumping noise as something very large realizes that he's there. His eyes widen as the creature comes around the corner and looks right at him.

“Bendy?”

The Bendy tilts his head at Felix, who simply tilts his head back at him in response. They stand like this for a while, a distorted monster and a strange cartoon, until the Bendy makes a rumbling noise and startles Felix, who, in a flash of 'brilliance', dives into a deeper pool of ink in a valiant attempt at hiding.

Just a note, Felix can't swim. At all.

Flailing around, he attempts to not drown in a puddle of ink, and fails, miserably. Instead he just kind of...flops around, slowly drowning and internally screaming at himself for doing something this stupid. That is, until he's abruptly hauled out of the ink and onto land.

He looks up and sees that his savior is the Bendy, who has apparently decided that he's going to keep Felix and is now making a weird purring-like sound. Felix never agreed to this, but as long as he's not being murdered, he's generally fine with it. Though I do wonder what exactly he plans on doing, considering I'm about two times shorter than him and a good deal weaker...wait.

And now he's started worrying. Great. Just wonderful. I really need to stop thinking too much.

As Henry walks the halls of the studio, he notices things. Mostly the fact that it looks like half the studio was swept up in a tsunami of ink. And all the plushies around. He makes a move to grab one, but decides against it and leaves it alone.

His board didn't hold together for too long, breaking apart after he hit a few Searchers with it. So he's weaponless as he wanders around, solving various 'puzzles' and occasionally needing to hit things with chairs. Chairs are surprisingly good weapons, when thrown hard enough. However, they also tend to break when thrown that hard, so maybe it wasn't so good of an idea after all.

Not that Henry cares. At least it gets his anger out and gets the things out of his way. He's not quite ready to die. Nor will he ever be, especially not in this haunted hellhole full of abominations. In fact, it would be great if I just didn't die, period. That'd be fine. Or, well, at least not for a while.

He doesn't notice that he's wandered into a room full of stuffed toys until he crashes into a large Boris plushie. Upon crashing into it, he realizes that he's stumbled into what looks like a plushie death trap, completely with, well, plushie death traps.

The room is covered with shelves upon shelves of plushies, each of various characters. Boris, Alice, Bendy, the Butcher Gang, even a few from that ill-fated merger. Small plushies of various side characters are hung up on the ceiling, surprisingly in okay condition. There's even a few plushies of old studio workers holding something related to their work, probably the ones that were the most memorable, and all of those are in good condition. Henry walks over to the plushies and inspects them. Looks like Shawn's handiwork to me.

The plushies of Grant Cohen and Thomas Conner probably had the most work put into them, with details that Henry himself hadn't noticed about the men when he'd worked with them. (Then again, he hadn't interacted with them much, only seeing Grant when he picked up his paychecks and really not interacting with Thomas at all.) After that, the next most detailed was Norman's, if only because of the projector. Half of the plushie itself is obscured by it. Though half the time Norman was carrying around a projector, so it's not...wrong...

His plushie is holding a pen, and while he admires the fact that Shawn put as much effort as possible into these, he's slightly grumpy that his is shorter. Even if I was one of the shortest workers in the studio, it's still insulting and it's bad enough “Alice” wouldn't stop pointing it out.

Wally's is, of course, holding his ever-iconic broom. However, it is also holding a real set of keys, which Henry manages to wrangle out of its hands without breaking it. He looks at it. “See, this one I just don't understand. Wally almost never held his keys. Half the time they were in a trashcan.”

Predictably, no one answers him, and he moves on to the next plushies, which are of Susie and Allison. They used to be pretty close, until Joey gave the Alice role to Allison. Don't know why, and don't care to know why. Both plushies are holding tiny little Alice plushies and VA mics.

Beside of those two plushies is a Sammy. Even in plushie form, Sammy manages to look grumpy, holding a banjo and frowning as always. The plushie looks like it's one misplaced set of keys away from flying into a rage, which was Sammy's default mode. The man probably had a few screws loose, but he was good at what he did. Too bad he's an ink creature now.

The last one is ripped apart, but it looks like it was of Joey Drew. Most likely, Shawn used (uses?) this one as a way to feel like he's getting back at Joey without doing illegal things.

There's a shuffling noise from one of the other shelves. Henry whirls around, keys raised like he's going to hit someone. (The keys are hilariously dull and won't cut anything even if Henry wants them to, so it's an empty threat.) There's nothing behind him except the shelves of toys, but...I could have sworn that that Boris plushie wasn't there ten minutes ago...and where did that rabbit plush come from?

He walks over to the plushies and pokes them cautiously, half expecting them to attack him. They do not. They don't move. See, they're not alive, he reassures himself. Just your mind playing tricks on you, Henry.

When he turns his back, though, the plushies rearrange themselves again, this time with a muted giggle from the rabbit. Henry turns around again, this time with a chair. “Okay, now I know someone's messing with me. Come out before I hit everything in the room with this chair!”

Nothing.

Not a single thing in the room moves. There's no breathing, no shuffling, and not even a twitch. Henry frowns. “Well?”

Still nothing moves. The silence is stifling, even if there is the noises from the studio now. Henry lowers the chair a little. “I promise not to hit you with the chair, okay? Just come out, please.” Or I think I might go insane, he adds internally.

The shuffling noise comes from behind one of the shelves as a tiny duo of a plush Bendy and Alice peek out. The toy rabbit hops off of the bigger Boris, who stays still but looks directly at Henry. Several other plushies move, though none of them are the studio workers. When all is said and done, there are about fourteen plushies standing in front of him, all staring. (Well, except for the Boris. And the fox plushie, who is the largest of the bunch, is half behind a shelf. But it counts.)

Henry puts the chair down, leans on it, and sighs. “Okay, Joey has a lot to explain, and I'm not keen on asking him after what happened earlier. Mind explaining?”

Meanwhile, the now much-larger army of ink creatures is swarming around the Angel's hideout. Their leader is throwing himself on the door, which is solid steel, and as such not going to be broken by a skinny-ass 'toon throwing himself on the door.

The Angel, of course, is not pleased by this development. “Why are all you rejects banging on my door? Can't you see that a lady needs her beauty sleep?”

“Sleep be damned! Did you kill Felix?” Ink yells, slamming himself on the door again.

“The human is dead?” The Angel asks. Ink simply slams himself on the door again. “How unfortunate. I didn't even get his soul. Have you seen it?”

“No, you bitch, because he's dead! Someone killed him!” Ink says, sitting in front of the door. He's bruised himself from slamming into various objects on purpose, and apparently the steel door has convinced him that it's not going to break. “And I'm asking if it was you!”

“I wish,” the Angel answers. “But no. Most likely it was Joey.”

“Which one?”

“What do you mean, which one?!”

And so begins the most ridiculous argument in the history of the studio.

Meanwhile, Felix is on top of a pipe, trying desperately to reach something above than him. Below him is the Ink Demon, a Swollen Searcher, and two stragglers from the army of Lost Ones, who had been separated from the Mind when they'd been stuck behind some doors.

Needless to say, it was a very strange group.

TL;DR: Felix makes a very tall, dangerous friends, Ink gets angry, and Henry finds living plushies. Also no one dies or gets hurt in this chapter, but don’t get used to it, because next one the army gets very very close...to the wrong person

#story #screws ink and stuffed toys #joey felix drew #ink felix #henry wright #alice #the Plushies #bendy #searchers #lost ones #oh no

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