#(later) mom: i've never been rich but. i don't feel wronged in this life. idk y but aside from ur dad who keeps picking on me i'm v happy

[universallychaoticpan]

⚠️SPOILERS FOR DARK ERA⚠️Idk if you’re still taking requests, but if you are, could I request a hurt/comfort one of Dazai with a hella protective older sister!Reader? Maybe after their parents died (left?) (evaporated??) she became like a mother to him and tried her best to shield him from Mori and his whims when she could. She was planning to escape with him from the mafia, but after Oda’s death they ran away together to lie low. Could you also include the reader comforting him when he finally breaks down over Oda’s death and Ango’s betrayal? Feel free to ignore ofc! Merry Christmas! 🎁

Always taking requsts, and this one made me so happy to see since it's been a hot sec since I've written for BSD. (Also Dazai my love-) Anyway I hope you enjoy this, and Merry Christmas! <3

(Yes I started this before Christmas but I'm aware by the time it's posted it'll be passed.)

"You don't have to protect me you know. I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself."

You scoffed at your brother, pressing the vodka soaked rag to his skin as he hissed in pain, the small hovel you were hidden in dark save for the city lights outside and a few sputtering candles.

"Yeah right," you replied, gently cleaning the wound on his shoulder before wrapping it tightly. "And I never said you needed me to. All I know is all we have now is each other. And like it or not, I love you too much to loose you, to."

For as long as you could remember, you'd been looking after him. When your parents got involved with the wrong crowd which sent you all into ruin, you were playing mom to your younger brother. When you joined the Mafia years later, you worked your ass off to make sure Mori never even dared to think about hurting your brother. You paid him favors and did things you never wanted to think about, heard countless people scream in agony all for him. All so you wouldn't loose the past person you had in the world. You knew Osamu was capable. You knew he was strong. You'd never babied him or coddled him, not since you were children. But you'd always wanted too much for him. When you lived in the gutter, you'd wanted riches and finery around him. When you learned to kill or be killed, you longed for him to know safety for once in his life; you wanted that for both of you, really, despite knowing you never would. So when it came down to it, you protected him the same way he cared for you. It was a mutual understanding on both parts;

Protect your own and you'll never be alone in this world.

So long as you had each other, you had someone to trust.

When you'd planned to leave the Mafia, he was the first and last person who knew. And when he had agreed, you'd spent many a night scheming and thinking of plans and places to hide. Most times, you'd end simply staring up at the ceiling of your room, daydreaming to each other about all the places you'd see when you were free. When you were out.

Everything had gone to shit when Odasaku had died, though. When Dazai had learned just how Ango had betrayed them both, how much danger you were both really in. And though danger was never something he avoided, and he knew you were far more than capable, he knew there was no life for either of you if you continued with the Mafia.

So you vanished

Together, with you leading the way when you needed to, you slept under bridges and highway overpasses, your sharp clothes becoming tattered and ruined with the weight of your lives. But what worried you the most, as always, was your brother. He stayed awake for hours, simply staring off to nowhere as the clock marked the passing nights. You'd find him sitting on the edges of buildings, the wind tearing around him with it's howl in your ears, as he watched the world below.

He hadn't cried once.

He wandered off most nights, returning to you hours later with the stench of alcohol still heavy on his breath, stumbling into your arms as you kept your tears hidden from him. You were more than afraid for him; but all you could do was try to comfort him as best you could, fight as his side when he needed you to, be the one who kept you both alive. As always, you both watched the back of the other, walking a thin line fine as a knife blade, taking every risk you needed to to preserve whatever twisted life you'd made for yourselves. The Mafia was your past, but you saw no future like this. So you spent countless nights like this one, washing away blood and covering would-be scars on your brother's skin while you both pretended not to see the sorrow in your eyes.

"You don't have to worry so much, you know," he said quietly, stopping your movements with a hand on yours as you looked up at him. "There's only so much you can do to save me from myself."

"Then I will do all that and more, Osamu. You're all I have left and I'm sorry but I can't loose you-"

"And what if I loose you?! What if I can't save you?" He was shouting now, his voice suddenly heavy with fear that startled you more than scared you. Your hand was in between his own, in a grip so tight it felt as though you were a lifeline. "What if you end up like Odasaku? And I can't do anything to stop it?! You've always been there to help me but what happens when you leave? When you get tired of trying to keep me safe from myself!? I'm a danger to you, y/n, and one day you're going to realize it too. I killed Odasuku, I'm killing myself now, and I'm going to get you killed.

I'm not safe for you. Please save yourself."

His word were tearing you apart, every one of them ripping through you the way only a truth can. He expected you to cry. He needed you to get mad. He needed to wound you so deeply you no longer wanted anything to do with him, hit you in the places that would scar you so every time you thought of him you were reminded of what he had done. He wanted you reminded so you would stay away from him, so that you would leave and maybe be safe. So that you could have a life away from the misery he brought upon himself.

Instead you pulled him close, breaking him with your touch as you surprised him.

"Don't you dare," you began, your voice shaking with anger and grief, "ever try to protect me by pushing me away. Don't try to make yourself some kind of martyr, because it won't work with me. It's not fair to either of us."

Pulling back, you held him by his shoulders to look into his eyes. He was crying. For the first time in so long, he was really crying, dark eyes made storms of rolling anguish that peered back into you and didn't look away.

"I'm your sister, Osamu. I know you don't need me to keep you safe, that you don't need me to survive. You can do that on your own, and I know that no matter how painful it gets, that you would be strong enough to hold it all. But I know that I'm one of the few people you have, and maybe the only one still here, that has held you when you were broken. We're broken people, Osamu, it's just who we are. We're strong and wild and fiercer than the world that made us, but we're still cracked and bleeding in places we can't stitch ourselves. So we find people who can. I know you're strong, and I know when it comes down to it, you don't need me at all. But I love you more than you will ever come close to understanding, so I'm going to love you at your strongest; and I'm also going to hold you even tighter when you're falling to pieces."

Bringing him in again, you sat in silence, simply feeling his breath in the darkness as he cried into your shoulder. Like rain watering the driest earth his tears hit your skin, running down your arm as he whispered apologies into the shadows.

To Odasku, for not being able to save him

And to you.

"I'm sorry y/n," he'd said then, so quiet you could've missed it. "I'm sorry, and I don't think I'll ever stop needing you."

With the blood drawn from your splintered heart you made a silent vow, there with the darkness as your only witness;

As long as I breathe, I will stand at your side.

I will love you till my heart gives out, knowing you'll do the same.

I'll be your ally until the stars leave the sky dark, until time stops it's march to mourn all it has taken.

This was the promise you made then, the one you'd made countless time before, the reason you kept going when you wanted to give up.

Because you needed him as much as he did you.

And you'd die before you left him alone in the cruel world that had made you strong, and so broken.

#dazai x reader #platonic dazai x reader #osamu dazai x readee #dazai osamu x reader #bungo stray dogs x reader #bsd x reader #bsd dazai #bsd hurt comfort

[cyberwavelit]

Gamer's Debt (Short Story)

"Crap, all I wanted was the gold chest so I can buy some extra lives. If I don't get any more extra lives, I'll lose all my gold when I die. How am I supposed to win if I have to pay for every damn thing?" Joden stepped down the ramp of his Blourgan cruiser and surveyed the alien landscape. It was barren except for the remains of a small village that he had just annihilated with a two-ton necro-missile.

"That's life. People are generally selfish, impatient, and insecure. Game companies use these weaknesses to motivate players. Maybe you shouldn't have blown up the village, is all I'm saying." The pilot of the cruiser, Jershamalama, spoke through his comm.

"But how does anyone get the hell out of this game if they can never win? I've been stuck in this hell hole for thirty days! My body’s back in the real world, rotting away.”

"Hey, you wanted to play, didn't you? Maybe if we travel to a non-npc sector we can trade off some of this junk we get every time we kill an enemy.” His pilot stared at him from the cockpit.

Joden looked back, “I feel like a slave. That garbage is only worth a pinto cent. It’ll take decades to get to the end game. And besides, that's if we can take off with all that junk. It'll take us a few hours to get back into the atmosphere. It's like a Fetch-22."

"You mean a fetch quest?"

"Yeah, something like that." said Joden taking out his cent-o-meter. It consumed his health bar as it scanned the surrounding sector. His eyes darted around his visor interface, looking at all the blips and bubbles that pinged. “I wish I could afford the Super Hyper Gold Jetpack that all the booster players use.”

“They only release that on the first Wednesday of every other month with a sign-on fee, an option to buy stocks in EternaEntertinament, a monthly fee, a mental evaluation, and maintenance fees when your able to grab it from one of the random places it spawns, like the Hell planet Infernum or the planet Madness Descent. Plus, I hear they only give you like a 3 second jump.”

“What?!” He nearly tripped over a crumpled alien body. “You can’t be serious. My mom’s going to kill me. I told her I was going to school. I figured I could just sign up for a few games, try my hand at Galactic Teamslayer, and be back at the rent-a-plex by nine. That was a month ago!”

“Relax. They won’t even notice you’re gone. Most parents have been sucked into this new thing called Binge Child Raising. EternaEntertinament created it too. It’s a simulation where adults can raise children and not have them become reclusive, angst-ridden failures. They’re really gouging everyone for money, real and fake, young and old.”

Joden was too focused on the horizon where a few blips were going off. They were purple, which meant that they were low-value targets. Everything seemed to be purple. “I never asked--how long you been here?”

“You shoulda seen it when it was it first came out. The servers would never load and you had to sit there, in the darkness, watching a timer run out as they patched their simulation. It was like holding your breath under water.” The pilot sucked his teeth. “Hang on a sec. Have to rate the game again—after this ad.”

“Yeah, I hate doing this every hour.” The astronaut picked up a child’s toy from the clutched hand of a sloblarian. “Wonder what this is worth. I heard that we used to play with things like this, not just video games where you pay to win. Up, hang on a sec, got an ad playing.”

Joden’s reality changed. He was sitting on a park bench. A duck came up to him, honking and pulling at his pants. The countdown to the end of the ad appeared in his peripheral. It quaked and quaked until Joden threw down a few coins to skip it.

Back in game world he was still holding the toy. He threw it down with distain and a lack of remembrance for such physical trifles.

He was then asked to rate the game. He voted as he always had, giving it a one-star out of three. There was a chime and a message: “We’re sorry you’re not enjoying your time in our game world. Perhaps if you were more openminded and understanding of the fact that you may not always get what you want, you might have a better experience with our merchandise. Please lower your expectations. Thank you.”

Joden coughed to drown out the message he had heard a hundred times. “I’m so tired of game companies stealing from us. Don’t they realize that it’ll only make the game suffer?”

“Yeah,” responded the pilot, “let’s go steal something.”

“I’m so tired, Jersh. I just want to go somewhere where we can kill an alien race and grind their bones into dust. What’s so wrong with that?”

“If you only knew, kid. On its launch the game world wasn’t even finished. Eterna used the gamers to construct most of the planets using the build-and-play incentive. Those gamers signed a contract that said that they had to make at least four hundred ‘products’ before they could actually the game. They called it the ‘fix-it-later’ release. The products they were referring to was one galaxy. Those designer gamers are probably still waiting…”

“Four hund--?” Joden held up his fist to the pilot, who had been watching from the ship’s windshield. “That’s extortion!”

“Welcome to the world. They get away with it because it’s a game world. You can do anything in the game world like gambling, murder, blackmail, forced labor, and forced sodomy. Nothing’s real so nothing matters.”

The astronaut had disembarked about five hundred meters from the ship. Steam bellowed from its worn exhaust. “Why did you call me kid? How old are you? I mean I know you have the same avatar as me…”

“Age doesn’t matter either. Yeah, I couldn’t afford the customizations either.” Jersh tapped his helmet. “So, I guess we both have the same face.”

“And same weapons, gear, armor, boots, ships, weapon skins, and abilities.” He noticed a large oval blob on his visor’s HUD. It was moving closer behind a small series of stone pillars.

“Oh no, I have the blue-skinned Rigormortis rifle. It’s got this badass blue stripe on the side. Cost me 20,000 gold, 200 platinum, and 4 of my lifesaving’s accounts. If I didn’t have this stripe, I’d probably go insane or worse, color blind.”

“Shut up, dude. Something’s coming. I think it’s a surviving sloblarian. I hear they get angro really quick. I don’t want to die here, man. I never bought a 600-gold resurrection pack. It’ll take sixty days to load back in…”

Jersh responded, sounding distracted, “You’re fine. Just cap it in the head or something.”

The purple blob was twenty meters away. If it wanted to attack it would have to come out into the open and charge him. He could tell there was movement but it was more restless than threatening. Joden took out his rifle and fired at the rock tower. The gun exploded in his hands, sending his obliterated fingers in multiple directions.

“Ah damnit! I forgot about the maintenance fee!”

The figure bounded from the pillar and slunk slowly towards the enemy astronaut. It skulked across the yellow, Phallusian sand with its omni-dexterous flippers. Arriving to the hunched-over human its tugged at his spacesuit and motioned for him to come closer.

“Gross dude, it wants to talk to me. What should I do?” The rounded head bobbed up and down like a rubbery ball. It seemed to be injured or at least miserable.

Joden heard distinct crunching noises emanating from the pilot’s mouth. “IDK. Step on it I guess.”

The polymorphous blob at his feet opened its crevice-like mouth and appeared to gasp for air. But it wasn’t gasping. It was whispering. He leaned down and listened.

“Dunk…prrray…Donk pppreeeey.” It was saying, and gargled as its lips flapped. “Doooonnk plllaaaaay. Chooose nut to pprraaaaay. Fyind sumting essl to do wilth yourg tyhme.”

“Oh, hell no!” shouted the man, as he squashed the creature’s face with his boot. It was like stepping on a water balloon filled with pebbles. He looked at where his hands used to be and screamed into the sky. “What does it all mean? Why do I always have to be punished! I’ve been in the same place for too long!”

"It's not good to live in a dream.” More crunching came from the ship. “You sometimes forget what life is like."

Virtual blood splashed onto the dry dirt from his nubs. A few splatters mixed with the alien’s internal fluids. The reflective pool at his feet showed his avatar’s face, the same face of his pilots. He searched rapidly for any signs of wealth or material possession. There was nothing but ooze and viscera. Tattered cloth around the dead alien’s head was smushed and torn.  

He turned toward the ship with a look of bewilderment. “How many gamers are trapped here? We can’t be the only ones. This game isn’t anything like what they advertised. They lied to us! Who would want to be stuck in this perpetual nightmare of pay-to-play, pay-to-build, pay-to-live, pay-to-pay mechanics?”

“I don’t think you get it.” The pilot was still eating. “Companies do this to consumers because consumers let them. The general belief is that consumers are very smart but when’s the last time you heard someone say: ‘I won’t buy that because it goes against my code of ethics?’ None, no one’s ever said that. People like spending money. It’s in our blood. Its our nature to trust rich people. They seem to have all the right answers even when they don’t. They make the truths that we all follow. Besides, how could they get all that money if they had bad intentions.”

Joden used his character’s remaining strength to rush back towards the Blourgan cruiser. He felt a draft of air coming in the direction of the ship, and heard the engine roaring to life. “What the hell are you doing?”

The mercenary vessel hovered three feet off the ground and its nose pointed at the runner. Its pilot could be seen through the windshield, “Sorry newb, you’re becoming to be a real downer.”

“I thought you were my friend!” he whimpered, his nubs heaving back and forth.

The ship elevated to ten feet. “None of us are really friends. We’re all just trying to make a living. And I need one more kill for the Slayer Award. We’re all just numbers.”

As he came to the plateau where he had disembarked, he held up his invisible hands to shield his face. “I just want to go home! I just want to go home.”

A cybersonic laser beam burst from the cruiser’s forward cannons. He felt the hot bathing light of the beam and then felt nothing at all.

“I can’t get out…I can’t…” He awoke in darkness. A screen appeared that read the same message he received hundreds of times, “You have died. Looks like you have low gear and feeble weapons. Would you like to buy a booster pack?”

“No.” he responded.

“A looter box?”

“No!”

He said the same words over and over before. The message continued, “You have elected to refuse game-provided assistance. This is a poor decision. In order to continue gameplay without using game-provided assistance please insert thirty-seven-point-one resurrection tokens.”

He wanted to cry but said, “I don’t have any.”

The automated voice paused and spoke again after popping up a sixty-page form. “Well that sucks. In order to continue please complete the loan agreement in front of you. The loan is for $6,000. Sign here, here, and here.”

Joden lowered his shoulders and looked at his current debt. It read: “-387,000.” He breathed out, collapsing his chest, and grew red-faced. “No!” he shouted.  

There was another pause and the form disappeared. For several moments there was darkness and silence. “Very well.” The automated voice returned. “You have chosen reincarnation. Goodbye.”

“No!” he screamed defiantly. “No!”

Then, all of a sudden, he felt strange. He looked out through oddly-colored eyes. His hands had returned but they had three fingers instead of five. When he tried to speak, he could only gasp through what felt like a straw. The sand that he walked on grew hardened in his webbed feet. An alien girl danced toward him, carrying a toy. She hugged him with pencil-thin arms and turned towards the sky. Tattered robes fell along his arm and he patted the girl’s head. He looked up, to where the girl was gazing and saw a massive fireball break through the atmosphere. A necro-missile came out of the fiery plume, heading straight for their small, stony village. 

#shortstory #short story #scifi #science fiction #oc tag