#bullet proof spoilers. like all of them

[itsbenedict]

BP Postmortem post 2 bc/image limit

Don't read this unless you've read the first one already! There's a 30-images-per-post limit and I had to split it up! Opening this readmore will immediately spoil lots of stuff and be confusing.

So, right. Nolan. Didn't that guy die? Case 1 killer?

Well, you see... that wasn't Nolan Cubbins. Not a very Brazilian name, was it? So... who's this kid?

That's Lucas Rossi, Davi's younger brother and host of "Bullet Proof", the fourth-most-popular Enoshima knockoff killing game on the air! (And the most popular one being broadcast in English!) While there's a whole production crew on the ground that edits together the footage, he's the host and director on-set.

Why's he doing this? Well... for the money, mainly.

Lucas met Junko Enoshima while she was doing a despair tour through Brazil. He'd been a student activist at the time, and student activists were sort of her favored prey, and what should have happened is that he was brainwashed like basically everyone else who ever met her. And that is what happened, until he went home to Davi and tried to spread the gospel of despair and Davi was like, what the fuck? And did some brain surgery to his little brother to erase the memory of meeting Junko.

After finding out what'd happened to him, and being deeply deeply discomfited by how malleable he turned out to be in the face of superpowered charisma, he developed a pretty intense hatred of her and the whole despair cult! He eventually connected with the Future Foundation, and found... that the Future Foundation was underfunded and needed more resources to put a stop to the apocalypse. They needed money. A lot of it.

So... Lucas got into showbiz. Despair-based entertainment was like, the only thing anyone cared about anymore, for some impossible reason, and lots of people had life savings they no longer cared about because life is pointless and only Despair matters, so... it was easy to play to the crowd. With Davi's help, he was able to put together some very convincing bloodsport and execution videos, but... the apocalypse is a tough environment for indie payment processors, so they had an audience, but not much money.

That's when the Bright Conglomerate reached out with a big budget and big plans to convert a flying Hope's Peak safehouse into a staged deathgame. They'd have top-of-the-line equipment, a whole production staff, and a major corporation working to adapt to the economic realities of the despair apocalypse and ensure cashflow. Lucas and Davi would get a cut of the revenue, and it'd be a lot of revenue- which he'd be able to divert to the Future Foundation in hopes of putting all this madness to rest.

So they flew up there and took over, thanks to Gwen and Sakura not bothering to turn on most of the ship's defenses, and Henry running interference. They initially tried to negotiate with Will Bookerton (still an adult at that point, trying to root out whoever had taken over Monokuma and started some sort of cockamamie Deception Game), and... faced opposition. Will didn't trust the tech, Henry wanted to cultivate more of a family-friendly image for the show which was insane and counter to the whole idea, and ultimately Lucas had Davi erase their memories so they couldn't interfere with production. It was all going to go perfectly!

And it went perfectly! A smash hit! Made billions! Bullet Proof was a reality TV craze that swept the, uh, anarcho-despairist perpetual riot that they had instead of a nation by that point.

Y'know, for the first couple seasons. Until season 3, when Lashauna shoved this dipshit off the top of the school building and his head got pulped on impact:

This was sort of a crisis point. Davi was forced to confront the reality that his skills couldn't undo every murder that happened on the show, and that the charade would have a cost in human lives. And a reality TV star dying in an accident during filming would be a huge scandal for a normal show!

But obviously this led to a huge jump in ratings with the show's core demo, so there was a bit of a moral dilemma there.

Lucas, in charge, ultimately decided... by the numbers, it was worth it. One fatal accident every so often, in exchange for funneling millions to stop the apocalypse where hundreds of thousands of people were dying every day? It... made sense, right? It was worth it. The show must go on.

Agnesi Wu Jessie Bai, until this point, was in the same boat as Raymond and Lilakali- a genuine Hope's Peak student who voluntarily assisted with the production of Bullet Proof. When she thought no one was really in any danger thanks to Davi's miracle resurrection tech, she was in league with Lucas to help fund the Future Foundation, and was happy to play the heel a bit to make the show more exciting. But, uh... once it became clear that people were actually dying, she wanted nothing more to do with it, and they started wiping her memory just like Henry and the rest. Still, there exists footage of her confessing to being the mastermind from earlier seasons, which was going to show up in case 5 as a misdirect.

So people kept dying off. And they needed replacements for the dead students, so there'd be enough suspects, of course. So they imported some fake Ultimates.

Martha and Vic were what they called "Murder Geniuses"- prolific killers who, after succumbing to despair, performed highly public and dramatic killings without suffering repercussions. Martha had formed an impromptu military unit that had dominated an entire city, and Vic was a prolific serial killer known as the Gumball Maniac. Bullet Proof's production crew managed to capture them, revert them to teenagers, and erase their memories of despair- adding some bigshot celebrities to the cast. I forget if I set this up in the adventure, but there was going to be another misdirect with the Hope's Peak student records, where their profiles would be missing- casting suspicion on them as mastermind candidates.

So... remember that one time I posted these, and was like "one of these is an actual evil mastermind design, hee hee hoo hoo"?

HAHA! GOTCHA! They were all actual evil mastermind designs! Kinda... bad ones, in retrospect, but whatever.

Anyway... it didn't take too long before the show caught the eye of Cyrus Bookerton, who was supposed to be headmaster of the school. He saw Billy on TV and was freaked out- deciding that it was worth opening up his safehouse and sending his daughter, ???? Bookerton, Ultimate Impostor, to rescue her older brother and put a stop to this.

"Alice", in one of her earlier guises, posed as an intern at the production studio on the ground. As she was eager to get involved, she was eventually sent up to assist Lucas, Davi, Lilakali, and Raymond as a replacement student on the show.

She pretended Lucas was her hero, in her guise as an ascended fangirl working her dream job. He spilled everything to her, explaining how everything was to divert money to the Future Foundation and save the world. They were very close!

And as a result of them being very close, she noticed something. She noticed that Lucas had given up. Compromise after compromise made to keep the show on the air and the money coming in had worn him down, and he'd stopped really caring about where the money was going. Despair was beginning to get to him, the longer those Future Foundation millions went without saving the world. Nothing seemed to be changing, but all he could do was keep doing what he'd always done. He didn't really believe in what it was all for anymore. And... he'd gotten very good at doing his job.

So she went to go do what she was sent there to do. Kill Davi Rossi, put an end to Bullet Proof, and rescue her brother.

Only she got caught and failed.

She'd set up a bomb in the lab, but was caught red-handed and forcibly sedated and mindwiped. Because she'd been a double agent for so long, Davi had to do a pretty complicated mind-wipe, making swiss cheese of her memory so she'd only remember rehearsing her various cover identities. She was left only with the memory of being Alice Bayko, SHSL Stage Magician, normal student at Hope's Peak Academy. (Or Alistair Bayko, or Charlie Range, or Diana Ingenue, depending on what the player selected at the start of the game.) Demoted from showrunner/double agent to hapless cast member- with a suite of fuzzy and awkward half-remembered memories bleeding through.

After that... well, Lucas trusted her a lot. She helped run a bunch of seasons of the show, and her betrayal really got to him. In a fit of paranoia, he decided to become a shadow mastermind, operating from behind the scenes of behind the scenes, so that Raymond and Lilakali couldn't betray him too. No more mistakes like this one! Delete him from their memories, make them think it'd just been the two of them that whole time. Keep that Nolan Cubbins kid on ice- he'd take his place, and then...

...after posing as an easily-caught culprit in case 1, he'd get harpooned during his execution, and then... reeled back into the ship, where Davi would patch him up ahead of schedule. A perfect disappearing act.

As for Alice- getting mind-wiped wasn't an outcome she failed to anticipate.

It was always possible she'd get captured and mind-wiped. And if that happened, someone needed to finish the job. The state-of-the-art custom Monokuma droid she'd been set up with as part of her cover identity: Flopsy-Turvy. She'd programmed it with instructions to kill Davi and then self-destruct, destroying his lab and making it impossible for Bullet Proof to continue.

She didn't think to program it not to catch Billy in the blast, though, who happened to be infiltrating that very same lab via the secret passage he built in the first place.

I really hadn't figured out how I was going to present this whole setup to the players deductively, to be honest, but that's the upshot of Case 5: Determining that Flopsy-Turvy was the culprit, and by extension Alice.

And then Lucas, whose mental state at the time is best-represented by this TMBG song...

...executes Alice in a fit of rage and betrayal.

That's about as far as I had planned. I knew I wanted there to be some sort of case 6, getting into the backstory with Lucas and Henry and all the other backstory details that weren't explored in case 5, but I didn't have any clear plans- maybe some kind of action scene as Lucas's control over the guns and security systems goes up against the whole class working together to evade his defenses and subdue him, shot like an execution? And then an ending where the survivors take over the airship and fly off into the sunset with a vague intent to save the world somehow? Most of the dead would still be in Davi's tanks and hypothetically recoverable, if they found some other Ultimate Doctor. I didn't really have the ending nailed down from there, except that...

...with Alice dead, I was going to have Jo take off the incongruently feminine costume and reveal the ahoge, becoming the new protagonist. It's a rule of Danganronpa that the protagonist has to be a boy with a stupid hair doinker thingy! Joe Alejo, Ultimate Hope!

I was setting up a bunch of Gender stuff with Jo leading up to this protagonist reveal- when Davi's Monokuma was going to show up to treat the wound Martha suffered from Gwen's saw trap, he was going to notice Jo was binding with Ace bandages and be like. No. Honey. Come on. Here's my old binder from before I used my necromancer powers to trans my gender. That's so unsafe.

(Which... in retrospect, wouldn't have made sense? Surely this season isn't the first one in which Jo had a gender journey, and Davi who was responsible for reanimating them a bunch of times wouldn't have failed to notice this. Hrm. Would find a way to rewrite that moment in the reboot.)

That is... I think that's everything! Aside from... a few changes I was going to make in the reboot.

Reboot changes

One was going to be that... I was going to just cut Violette and Caleb. Violette's shtick was too annoying to write consistently, and Caleb was kind of me working through some religious baggage that I'm kinda distant from at this point.

To replace Violette as case 1's victim, I was going to build up to case 3's super tragic thing with Lashauna and Mill some more. To do this, I was going to split Dominique into two different characters.

Dom had... a couple of weird things going on with him. The initial conception of his shtick was... completely cishet guy who acted all camp and flamboyant because he just liked messing with people. The kind of guy who's, like, absolutely homophobic, thinks queerness is deviant and disgusting- but thinks deviant and disgusting people are so funny to laugh at that he supports them anyway? Joins in on the bit? Like being gay is the funniest joke he can think of? A little extremely confused, and doesn't got the spirit at all, but somehow the same energy anyway?

Plus, like- Dominique was like, late twenties, absolutely not a real high-schooler, and Lashauna was... I want to say like, 18? Definitely too young for him, but also she's his boss so there was a weirdass power dynamic that definitely wasn't healthy in some direction or other- and it definitely wasn't a good look to have the camp gay guy be sort of a sexual predator.

That was always a really awkward bit to write, and I ended up not really committing to it at all. So instead he just sort of ended up... like, a normal stereotypical camp gay hairstylist guy? And then he died before there could really be any exploring any of the fucked-up parts of his character. It didn't really work.

So instead, we've now got Dominique Locke, Ultimate Stylist, and Nick Martin, Ultimate Gambler.

Dominique is just straight-up genderfluid, a shy and untalkative kid who uses their hairstyling and makeup skills to modulate their gender performance on a moment-to-moment basis. They get the hair-changes-every-portrait shtick, and get killed in case 1 only to come back alive in case 5.

Nick, meanwhile, gets most of the scummier elements. He's the homophobic one in charge of the Diamonds who colludes with Henry re:crime stuff and dies in case 2's double murder. This guy's very clearly not a teenager by any stretch of the imagination, and technically neither is Lashauna in this iteration, though I still want to have like, the too-young-but-also-his-boss fucked-up power dynamic for their weird relationship.

The idea there is to build up, like... one Hit Deck member dying in both cases before case 3, to build up to Lashauna and Mill's conflict re:whether she should cut her losses and kill him to escape or try and stick it out and save her last surviving subordinate.

-

The other thing I'd do is... foreshadow the reality TV and loops thing more. Introduce impossible footage of things that didn't happen earlier, find some way to explain the rules of memory modification ahead of time, and use the Monokumas as mouthpieces more liberally. Maybe have Davi show up in person only to disappear hastily at some point, so he doesn't come out of nowhere. There's a lot of this plot that just wasn't really sufficiently foreshadowed, I think, and with this many layers to it it would definitely be doable to start peeling them back earlier.

And, of course, rework the logic of the cases more to be, uh, better. More fair and solvable with multiple roads to noticing the relevant clues. The ones I did were very much a first attempt, and I didn't really have the knack for it yet.

And that's, uh... that's it! I think that's everything. If you've got any questions, ask box is open. Thanks to everyone who read and supported Bullet Proof while I was making it!

#bullet proof #bullet proof spoilers. like all of them

[jake-g-lockley]

Sin Without Limits (Javier Peña x reader)

Masterlist | Spotify Playlist

*gif not mine*

Warnings: MDNI, Narcos Season 2 and 3 spoilers, canon-usual violence, unhinged behaviour from Agent Peña and reader, unprotected p in v sex, choking, spanking (?), oral (m and f receiving), knife play (if you squint), overstimulation, angst, swearing 

A/N: bruh I just cleaned this one up and I'm appalled at what I have written but enjoy. I’ve written a secondary plot (and changed some sequence) to what happened at the end of season two heh

Word count: 7.7 k (wtf)

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You trained your gaze on him as you leaned your entire weight onto the truck. You watched him pace and scan the officers before him, his hand clenching and unclenching as he tried to stim his anxiety away. Watching a DEA Agent act skittish is not always the best thing in your books.

You felt your breath quickening slightly as Steve slapped his back and beckoned you to join them. You jogged to keep up with them as they jumped into a truck. You turn in the front seat to look at him. The eye contact he made with you for a millisecond told you everything you needed to know. Javier Peña looked absolutely terrified. 

“...armed men…”

“Checkpoint…”

You caught a few words of what Steve was trying to tell the both of you and you realized that your suspicions that you had been having for the past few days are slowly unfolding to show you a harsh reality, a reality that you were not ready to admit to. You watch from the truck as Javier convinced the men to lower their weapons, after Steve’s failed attempt. The way you could pin-point the shiver in Javier’s hands even from a distance made you curse yourself for being so aware. You watch his hands curl up to clutch the collar of his bullet-proof vest, as he spoke to Steve, the one constant tell that you could pull from him and your heart broke under the pressure that your brain was putting you through. 

You masked the heart wrenching pain that you were going through until Steve left the office. It was just you and Javier, like how it had been for the past few months, working late, going home to nothing but the empty shells. You hadn’t even noticed you were staring at him until he called your name. 

“Everything good, mariposa?” He said, squinting through his cigarette smoke. 

You had to confront him, this was your only chance. You nod and try to find the right words.

“Just wondering how Los Pepes always manage to get there before we can.” you say softly, picking at a hangnail on your finger. 

You catch Javier shrugging on your peripheral and decide your next best move.

“What if there's someone here who’s telling them what to do?” you said, locking your eyes with him. 

“Well, a rat wouldn’t be surprising to me, that's how this world works, mariposa.” he huffed, setting down his cigarette and rubbing his face with his hands. 

“Hmm.” you got up and pushed Javier’s chair away from his desk, perching above it as you stared down at him. “Javs?” 

He looks up at you, but his eyes don't find yours, settling to look past them.

“Look at me.” you whispered, tracing his jaw with your fingers.

“I am.”

“No, look at me properly, Javs, or I swear to god-”

He does, and that gives you all the confirmation you need.

“You’re fucking around with Los Pepes, aren’t you?” you murmur, your eyes wide with fear. 

Javier nods slowly as he looks away from you. You gasp softly as a tear runs down your cheek. You slid off his desk and turned away from him, your heart pounding in your chest. 

“Marip-”

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Javier?!” you scream before he could continue. “And don’t fucking call me that.”

“It’s not a big deal, I’m handling it.” he said getting up from his seat and walking towards you, placing a hand on your shoulder.

“You’re gonna get yourself killed, that I can fucking assure you. Those assholes are killing innocent people in their quest to take down Escobar, you know? People who don’t deserve to fucking die, Javier.” you said, shaking his hand off you. “Their blood will be on your fucking hands.”

Suddenly, you found yourself being slammed into a nearby wall. Javier was towering over you, a glowering look etched upon his face. 

“I need you to shut that pretty mouth of yours. We all are working towards one goal, don’t you dare blame me for trying out my last option.” he snarled. “Anyway, what the fuck can you even do about it, report me?”

You stared up at him, your gaze hardened and unfaltering.

“What if I did? You’re gonna go down their fucked up root, Javier? Hmm? Go on, kill me then for knowing your little secret.” you mocked him, straightening your back and standing a little taller. 

Javier’s breath hitched a little but he didn’t budge.

“They are going to use you like the whore you are and then when they’re done with you, they’re gonna put a bullet through this thick skull of yours and leave you all fucked out.” you spat. 

The next thing you know, Javier’s hand was around your throat as he flattened you against the wall with his entire body weight. He wasn’t squeezing you, but a rush of panic settled in the pit of your stomach as you stared into the raging fire in his eyes. He moved forward until his face was next to yours as your hand reached up to grab at his.

“Want me to show you what a whore can do?” his lips grazed the shell of your ear as your breath quickened. 

He brought his face in front of yours until the both of you were nose to nose. You could see every tiny detail on his face and if he got any closer his lips would be on yours. You contemplated making the first move as Javier’s fingers flexed at your throat, pushing a whole flow of arousal straight down between your legs. A part of you almost forgot why he had you pinned against the wall, and it made you a little afraid by the way he was taking you apart just with one swift move. 

The sound of the phone ringing brought Javier out of his trance and he immediately let go of you. You immediately hurry away from him and grab your jacket, not even turning to look back at him as adrenalin pushes you to jog out of the office. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Javier kept his aviators on inside as he squinted at the work he was doing. He could clearly remember what he had done to you but could only vaguely remember what happened after that. He had drowned himself in whatever liquor he could find lying around and stumbled into the office in the morning with an almighty hangover that could rival the power of two colossal giants fighting. He obviously felt awful about how he treated you yesterday and dreaded leaving his apartment in the morning. Steve gave him an understanding pat on the back, handing him a painkiller which Javi took gingerly and accidentally made eye contact with you. 

You instinctively looked away from him, his warning from last night ringing loud and clear in your head when you slyly glanced at the wall that he had pinned you to. In a weird turn of events, you still couldn’t decide whether you were scared or turned on by his threat. Although, you do have to admit that calling him a whore was a little over the top, despite all of the picturesque rumours you had heard about him. Being the only woman on the team meant that you had to deal with questioning individuals from the red-light district and that ultimately gave you a clear idea of what Javier Peña’s sex life sounded like and you hated yourself that you were slightly intrigued. Your thoughts were interrupted again when Javier slid a tiny piece of paper in front of you and walked away. You raised an eyebrow at his retreating figure as you grabbed the note.

Mens. Stall five. Now.

You were still pissed at the way he was engaging with Los Pepes. Javier is practically giving them full leeway to do whatever they please, but if he seems to think that if that's the way they are going to get to Escobar, then so be it. Besides, you’d like to see how this plan of his plays out, despite the part of you that is scared shitless about the consequences that he might face after this ordeal. 

You rolled your eyes and got up only to be stopped by your boss. You froze and crumpled the paper in your hand, stuffing it into your pocket as fast and discreetly as possible. 

“Agent, how are things?” she asks, staring you down with her usual demeanour.

“All good, boss.” you feigned a smile as your eyes end up landing on that good awful wall again, making your eye twitch slightly. 

“Good, good. I expect to see you at the party tonight.” Messina says, catching you off guard. 

“Hmm?” 

“You know the state party?” 

The fucking state party. You almost forgot that you were invited entirely. Who in their right mind holds a party in the middle of a narco war? 

“Yea, of course, I’ll be there.” You said beaming at Messina.

Sure, you had nothing to wear but whatever to please Messina, you’ll figure something out soon. 

“I’ll see you there then.” You nodded quickly at your boss and quickly walked to the mens as soon as she was out of your sight. 

As soon as you opened the door to stall five, Javier used his brute strength to pull you in, making you collide with his chest. 

“Ouch, man, I have legs, I can invite myself in.” you groaned, rubbing your forehead. 

He sits you down on the closed toilet bowl and kneels down in front of you, his eyes coated in exhaustion as he gazes up at you. 

“Lo siento, mariposa.” he murmured, taking your hand in his. 

“For pulling me into the stall or for working wit-” Javier cuts you off by pressing a hand to your lips.

“For everything.” Javier drops his hand and tugs at your collar, exposing your neck.

His fingers softly trace the skin of your neck as he examines you and you felt slightly frozen by the way he was touching you. To think that those hands were capable of killing a man and having those hands so close to a vulnerable spot caused a shiver to run down your spine. 

“I don’t bruise easily, Javs, if that's what you’re so worried about.” you whispered, bringing your own hand to meet his. 

“Lo-”

“Say that you’re sorry again and I’ll kick you in the dick and walk out. I think you know that if I wanted to disarm you yesterday, I could have. I have work to do dumbass, so what's up?” you rushed through your words, noting how Javier’s eyebrows furrowed. 

“I need your help.” Javier says after a moment of silence.

You nodded him along and he gulped, his eyes downcast at your shoes. 

“I heard from my CI that there is going to be a person at the state party that's going to be the key for some information that I need.” He whispers. “I need you to help me get that information.”

“And is this information for us, or for Los Pepes?” you say, curling a finger under Javier's chin and tipping his head so that you can catch him if he tries to lie.

“For us.” he said, holding your gaze tightly.

“Why aren’t you asking Murphy?” you asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Obviously because you already know about it, you know?” he hissed and you grinned back at him.

“Hmm, okay.” you hum, surprising Javier.

“That’s it? Man, I thought I had to pull up some waterworks to convince you.” Javier chuckled nervously, rubbing his collarbone.

“Honestly, I’d do anything to get away from Messina at this point. I’m the newest recruit here, she's gonna make me socialise.” you pulled a face, making Javier smile. “Besides, now I’m more valuable to you than Steve.”

“That's my mariposa.” you roll your eyes at his excessive use of the endearing word.

Secretly, you loved it. Mariposa, or “butterfly” sounded a little too close to mi esposa, or “my wife” and it tingles your insides everytime Javier would call you that. Yet, you always find yourself pushing away the thought of having a nice domestic life with Javier the second he does something reckless and stupid. Sometimes you wonder whether he bribed his way through this job because of how dumb he can be. 

Javier stands up and pulls you up with him but in that moment the both of you hear the door open. Javier quickly sits back down and taps his thighs, gesturing for you to sit and hide your legs. Your eyes widen as the footsteps get closer to the stall and you silently hook your legs over him and straddle his lap. 

“Peña? You in there, man?” Steve’s voice floated through the cracks in the stall’s door. 

It was hard to calm your breathing with the way you had slotted your face in Javier’s neck, breathing in a slight hint of aftershave, smokey goodness and clean skin. You poked him for an answer.

“Uh, yea dude, I’m here.” he croaked out, his voice a little strained, probably from the way you were clinging onto him for dear life. 

“Come on man, you’re taking a shit at work?” Steve groaned and your body shook as you strained hard to keep the laughter in. 

Poor Steve, what a naive man.

“What the hell do you want Steve?” Javier pressed, pulling you closer to stop you from bursting out into laughter.

It must have worked because when Javier pulled you closer, his thigh hit something so devastatingly amazing that you felt yourself being rendered into a shocked silence.  

“Hurry up, there’s a meeting we gotta go to. And remember to wash your hands, you filthy fuck!” Steve chortled as he walked out of the mens.

You and Javier waited with baited breath for a few seconds before you brought your face out of the crook of Javier’s neck.

“He didn’t see you walking in he- wait are you okay?” Javier caught the flush look on your face as you turned to look at him.

You blink twice at Javier’s beautiful face before nodding your head vigorously. He hadn’t even touched you and you slowly felt yourself being pulled apart by him. Javier didn’t look convinced but he shrugged it off as he helped you get off from his lap. 

“Aight, I will see you later at the state party?” He said, steadying you.

“Yep.” you mumbled, giving him a tight lipped smile as he exited the stall. 

When you were sure he had left, you exhaled the breath you were holding and pinched the bridge of your nose. 

Today was going to be a long one.  

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Javier nervously checked his watch for the billionth time. You were late. You were always never late, always clocking in earlier than him. He couldn’t deny that he was trying hard to hide how nervous he felt. He never wanted to bring you into this, but he always had a feeling that you were going to somehow find out anyway. The disappointment he felt was indescribable, he hated himself for being too obvious. 

He adjusted his mask again, uncomfortable with the way it was cutting at the soft skin covering the back of his ears. His eyes searched in the sea of masks, hoping that they would land on yours. The dim lighting made it hard to see through the masquerade themed party and Javier strained hard, willing for you to appear. 

Suddenly, a beautiful figure steps into his line of sight. Javier couldn’t take his eyes off the figure, watching them sway as their dress hugged them tightly in all the right places, clinging to every curve. The figure walked closer and closer to him until they were in front of him. A long slit exposed a holster that was disguised as a garterbelt, definitely carrying a concealed weapon. Javier instantly recognised your eyes and pushed the mask away to reveal your heavenly face. He stares in disbelief, he had been used to seeing you in suits and minimalistic makeup, and he was ashamed to think that he hadn’t expected this. He felt a rush, a similar rush that he had felt the night before as he scanned your face. 

“You look good, dolled up like this.” he murmured, pushing your mask back on. 

“You don’t look so bad yourself.” you really had toned down your initial compliment, he looked like a prince, the way his hair was styled and the way the tux complemented his beautiful broad shoulders. 

He offers you his hand and when you take it, he leads the way into a small closet. He clips a microphone to your neckline and you help him thread the wire through your dress. Javier was quite literally smitten by the way you looked. He resisted the urge to run his hands down your curves and he tried to rid his mind from remembering the way your body had been pressed up against him before. He sighs and kneels down, looking up at you.

“Can I?” he said, gesturing at the transponder and your thigh.

You nod and watch as he gently pulls the slit in your dress aside to hook the tiny transponder onto your holster. His other hand steadied himself by gripping your thigh and you felt like you were going to melt in his grip. A tremor ran through your body and it didn't go unnoticed by Javier. He smiled to himself and purposely tried to let his touch linger, sliding his fingers slowly across your soft skin, savouring the feeling of you. Your breathing gets slightly heavier but you let him do as he pleased. 

When he finally hooked the transponder and slowly got up, the eye contact he was making with you sent an army of butterflies to violently collide with your stomach. You could literally cut the thick atmosphere with the knife you had on you as Javier held your gaze like it was his last lifeline. His eyes were slightly hooded and he looked as if he was about to say something when you broke eye contact with him and let your eyes drop to his lips. Before the both of you could do or say anything, the sound of footsteps snapped you out of your haze.

“Alright, the floor is yours, take it away.” Javier cleared his throat, nodding towards the door. 

He handed you a key, the key that he booked under a pseudonym so that you could interrogate the intended target away from the prying eyes of people. You took it and slipped it onto your tiny purse, your mind racing. You swallow and nod, hoping your guise was enough to mask you from the people you were going to eavesdrop and enough to mask the lust that was blooming for Javier Peña. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You let Javier lead you through the sea of masks, as he searched for his intended target. You felt out of place, watching people dance while you followed him around to do his bidding. 

“Javs?” you whisper, pulling him closer to you

“Hmm?” he turned to look at you.

“Dance with me.” 

“But-” 

“I said, dance with me, I have a plan.” you said firmly, pulling his hand to settle it onto your waist. 

He stares at you for a second and again you feel as if the whole world has stopped around you. You found yourself craving for his attention, to feel his hands on you again and only then you could think on how to make the next move. He readjusted his hand that was at your waist and held you firmer, his confidence radiating out of him as he laced his free hand with yours. You tried to refrain from savouring the feeling of your hand on his tough shoulder but you slowly felt yourself being lost to him as he started to lead the both of you into a slow dance. 

You straightened your back and kept your eyes trained on Javier only looking past him when you judged it was safe. You spotted your prey, a lawyer who was known to make deals with the cartels. You tapped Javier twice on his shoulder and he turned the both of you around, immediately spotting the lawyer from where the both of you were standing. You could feel his grip tightening slightly as he pulled you closer to him, your arm trapped between your two bodies. 

You were so close to Javier’s jaw, surveying its sharp edge as he gritted his teeth. It was perfectly sculptured as if an artist had taken a chisel to it. Before you could think twice, you pressed your lips to his jaw, leaving a light imprint of red lipstick. The tip of your nose dug into his cheek, and when you breathed in you could smell the delicious scent of his aftershave, intoxicating you and driving you to do what you need. Javier’s grip loosened and you pulled yourself away from him to walk towards the lawyer, turning to wink at the stunned Javier as you parted the sea of disguised individuals, your lipstick stain staining like a work of art on the canvas that is his beautiful face. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

It didn’t take long for Javier to find another woman to dance with. He kept a watchful eye on you, but willed to keep his distance. He continued to grit his teeth and lock his jaw to contain every ounce of violence that was trying to emit out of him as he watched the dirty lawyer run a finger up your bare arm. He tried not to push the woman he was dancing with aside as the lawyer suddenly grabbed you and pulled you flush against his body. Javier could hear your giggle and it made his blood boil hot watching you being touched like that. His eyes followed you as you led the lawyer to the room, partially glad that his plan was unfolding. 

When Javier got to the outside of the room, he held his gun in front of him in his usual defensive stance, hoping that you had enough in you to overpower the lawyer. He heard a thud and he immediately swung the door open and found you standing over the lawyer, the sharp edge of your high heel pressed firmly where his sternum was. You smirked as you crouched low, putting all of your weight onto the foot that was atop the lawyer’s chest. You smoothly pulled out your blade from your holster and mockingly shushed the lawyer as he screamed while you made a spectacle of cleaning the blade. 

You could feel Javier’s eyes on you but you didn’t acknowledge his presence. You could tell that he was undoubtedly staring at you while you blatantly flirted with the lawyer on the dance floor. You wanted Javier to feel the anger, to know that you were risking almost everything for him. You hold the blade at the lawyer's throat and smile innocently at him.

“My informants have given me a tip that you have been in contact with a certain important sicario. Tell me where La Quiqa is hiding and I’ll think of sparing your measly life.” you hiss in Spanish, pressing the blade slightly harder. 

Blood beaded at the edge of your knife and you raised your eyebrow amusedly as the man below you whimpered and begged for his life. He turned to Javier and started to beg him instead and you rolled your eyes at the man and slapped the lawyer.

“Don’t you dare think for a second that I am more patient than my partner here. I’ll slit your throat open before you can feel the bullet passing through your skull.” you continued to jeer. 

“Okay fine! I’ll tell you where La Quiqa is!” the lawyer screamed. 

You kept your heel planted firmly against the lawyer’s chest as Javier rang Steve. The second the information was passed across, you stepped off the lawyer and he scrambled away from you. Javier caught him by the collar and pulled him up. 

“You do not breathe a word about this to a single person, or I swear to god, I'll unload this gun in your mouth.” he sneered before pushing the man out of the room.

Once he was gone, you perched onto the edge of the bed. 

“Won’t he go and warn La Quiqa?” you question.

Javier stayed silent for a while. He then suddenly walked towards you and got onto his knees, removing your high heels from your feet and setting them aside. He had already given Los Pepes the information that the lawyer would be outside of the hotel within seconds. He made a deal that the police force gets to arrest La Quiqa while Los Pepes can extract information from the lawyer, which was a win in his books. 

“He won’t get far.” was all that he said as he looked up at you, his hand massaging your calf. 

You lean forward and take his face in your hands. One of your hands fan out and you stroke his cheek, and he leans into your touch, his eyes fluttering shut for a second. He wrenched them open again almost as if he didn’t want to lose sight of you. His hand at your calf reached out to grab your arm and he slowly started to rub your skin. You knew he was trying to erase the lawyer’s touch off you and you smiled at the gesture.

“What?” you question, reading his eyes, knowing he had something to say.

“I can’t stand it.” he whispered.

“Stand what?”

“The way he had his hands on you.” Javier’s hands were shaking now and you could see a fire raging in his dark brown eyes. 

“Javs, we just needed the infor-”

“I don’t like it when people touch what is mine.” he growled slightly, making your heart leap to your throat. 

“I’m not-”

“You are.” he confirmed firmly, his chest heaving now with shallow puffs of his breath. 

“Then, show me how I’m yours.” you sighed, your lungs constricting your last bit of oxygen. 

Javier stands up, and you could tell that there was a shift in his demeanour at your words as he gazes down at you. He towers over you, looking absolutely dazzling under the dim lighting.

“Only if you’re okay with it.” 

“Of course I am.” you say a little too quickly for your liking. 

“Kneel.” He says, his voice edging lower, sending an array of goosebumps at the nape of your neck as your vision blurred slightly. 

But you kept your chin up and knelt between his feet. 

“What? Not gonna kiss me first, Peña?” You smirked, knowing that you were pushing his buttons. “Too used to fucking whores?” 

He smoothed out the hair that fluttered to your forehead, running his fingers through your locks until he got to the nape of your neck. Suddenly, his hand grabs you by your hair and your eyes widen. He tips his head to the side and surveys the look on your face. 

“No, I’m gonna fuck you like the teasing brat you are. I’ll only kiss you when I know you’ve learnt your lesson.” He gives you a smug smile. 

His hand loosened its hard grip, leaving a delicious stinging sensation at your scalp. His fingers trailed to your lips, tapping them.

“Open, mariposa.” you were positive that he knew how that nickname made you feel and your jaw automatically dropped open. 

“So she does follow instructions.” he said pointedly before leaning over and spitting in your mouth. 

You knew from that second that the man before you was not going to let you off easy and a small voice at the back of your head was giggling gleefully at the prospect of your night. You closed your mouth and swallowed, only to open it up right away, making Javier nod in appreciation. You edge closer, placing your hands on his legs.

“Go on, take what you need.” you were already running your hand up his thigh before he could finish his sentence. 

You cup his hardened bulge and he hisses, but surprisingly lets you have your way. Your fingers shake slightly as you undo his slacks, letting them fall to his ankles, revealing that he had in fact gone commando. You would have rolled your eyes if you didn’t take note of how big he was. Your sharp inhale didn’t go unnoticed by Javier and he watched as you shifted your weight from one knee to the other slightly nervously. 

“Like what you see?” he questioned smugly. 

You couldn’t let him know you were anywhere close to backing out, you wanted this as much as he did. You spit on your hand and grab his length, pumping him from base to tip, letting your thumb graze his tip only to watch him writhe slightly. 

“I’ve seen better.” you smirked back, looking up at him from under your lashes.

Before he could form a retort, you licked a long strip down his cock and whatever he was going to say was mingled in a strangled moan. You continued with small controlled kitten licks, testing out all his soft spots before closing your mouth over the tip and sucking softly. Taking your time, you invite him into your mouth at a slow pace, partially teasing him and partially adjusting yourself to his size. 

You gradually swallowed around him, gagged slightly when he pistoned his hips slightly forward. He pushed you on and you swallowed around him, making him groan proudly as he bottomed out into your mouth, your nose nestling in his curls.

“Look who’s the whore now.” he managed to say as his hands found your hair to grab onto. 

You rolled your eyes at him and began to move your mouth along him, sucking him hungrily. He sang his praises, incoherent moans spilling out of him. He wanted to punish you, to teach you a lesson, but how could he when you were taking him so well, without a single complaint or cry. It made him want to worship you instead. But the primal creature inside of him forbade it and it took over him, making him pull out of your mouth and slam back. You choked around him but the sounds that he made spurred you on, letting your tongue lick his underside. Your perfectly done makeup was most definitely ruined as you felt your eyes water. You both were definitely in a game of seeing who could tap out and for a second you thought that you could in fact overpower this man. 

Oh, how wrong you were. 

Javier suddenly pulls you off him but didn't give you a chance to take a breath, pulling you up to your feet and letting his lips meet yours in a frenzied fashion,

“Lose your limits, mariposa, just give me a chance to prove to you just what I can do.” he pulled away and commanded sinfully, but he might as well had just done it straight to your cunt from the way you were already soaking. 

“What are you waiting for Javs?” you exhaled and he reclaimed your lips with his. 

He pressed himself hard against you, making you moan as he showed off his possessiveness. He licked into your mouth, groaning at how sweet you tasted. You could taste cigarettes on his breath and it instinctively made you want to rut your hips against his hard on, an aroused buzz coursing through your veins. He pulled away slightly, not before nipping your lips and drawing another moan from you. 

Javier pushed you down onto the bed, falling on top of you. He dragged the tip of his nose down your neck and sunk his teeth into the soft skin of your neck. You reeled at the pain that surged up your spine before crying out loud at the way he started to kiss and suck your neck. You were pretty sure that he was thinking about you claiming that you don’t bruise easily, making it his priority to mark you with all he’s got. When he was satisfied, he pulled away and smirked at you before flipping you over. You felt the bed dip around you as Javier’s fingertips grazed the back of your neck, moving your hair aside.

You felt his hand at your holster, slowly pulling out your blade and letting it skim across your skin, leaving a trail of goosebumps, making you whimper slightly. Suddenly, you felt it at your dress, the sharp edge almost touching you as it tore your dress open. You were mad but it was was your turn to smirk as Javier gasped at the surprise that met his eyes. His knuckle skimmed your skin and you could tell that he was staring open mouthed at the delicate branch of flowers trailing along your spine. 

“Fuck, youre fucking beautiful.” he hissed, feeling like it was Christmas, hastily pulling away your dress like it was wrapping paper to reveal you all bear for him, tossing it aside with your knife. 

You were completely naked under your dress and Javier was impressed. He let his hands explore you, leaving no inch of skin unattended. 

“Stop being a fucking tease.” you moan, secretly relishing the way he was taking his time. 

Suddenly, he smacks your ass hard, drawing a muffled moan from you as you bury your face in the sheets, before flipping you over again. He immediately ran his hands up and down your body, quenching his quest of wanting to touch you. The shape of your body drove him mad and he wanted to worship you, to make you call out to him and only him. 

He testily palm at your tits, moaned together, you at the stimulation, him at the way you felt under his hand. He tweaked your hardening nipples, making you writhe and moan. While you were distracted, your legs fell open and Javier brushed a finger through your slick, making you moan.

“Fuck, Javs…” you breathed as he pushed a finger inside of you and brought it back out for you to taste. 

“I bet you taste great, but I’ll get mine straight from the source.” he smirked, as your tongue swirled around his finger, sucking it the way you did his cock.

Your clit is warm and throbbing under his touch and you shudder as he starts to massage it back and forth. He bends down and his tongue licks slowly up your wetness, parting your pussy lips and teasing your clit, going absolutely feral at the way you tasted. 

You shiver and moan, arching your hips trying to get him to lick you more. Instead he stops and you immediately whimper and bite your lip trying not to show how badly you wanted him to keep licking. You grind your hips against his face, your clit catching his nose and you whine, grabbing onto his hair and pulling him closer to your pussy. He finally caves in and gives you what you want, holding you down and pushing his tongue into you. 

He greedily fucks you with his tongue, putting in a new meaning to eating you out as his hands spread you wide open and his tongue scoops out every remnant of your wetness. Your clit isn’t abandoned with the way his thumb gave it all of its attention. It doesn’t take long before it’s too much and you start to feel the orgasm start to wash over you. Your body bucks involuntarily at his touch as he slows it to match your moans. His big dark brown eyes watches you intently from his vantage point, wanting to see how the first orgasm he gives you absolutely wreaks havoc on your body. 

You were absolutely out of it, the orgasm ripping every cell in your body in half, rendering you absolutely useless. You shook in Javier’s arms, only vaguely hearing his praises as they floated their way into your ears. Your eyes are shut and you didn’t realise that he was already plotting his next plan to destroy you. You feel something nudge your entrance and Javier slips into you without any resistance, and his lips are back on your mouth, swallowing your moans. 

One of his hands found yours, gripping them at the wrist and breaking the kiss only to pin them over your head. He held them firmly, one wrist between his thumb and index finger and the other wrist between his index and middle finger, locking them in position as he started pistoning his hips. Your eyes were hooded as you looked up at him, indulging the way sweat made his face shine and glow. 

“You look fucking deadly like this, cariño, all spread out for me.” he grunts as his cock continued its assault on your pussy.

You clench down around him and he slumps slightly, not expecting that move from you as you lazily pull your lips into a smirk. He pushes on deeper, hitting all the best spots, pressing down on your wrists harder. You feel your juices squelch out of you and onto the bed. Your tits jiggle harder and the bed frame creaked with Javier’s thrusts as he slowly lost himself in you. 

“Javs, yes… don’t stop, please…” you whine as he keeps slamming into you harder. 

“Say my name again,” one thrust. 

You mumble, trying your best to let his name tumble out of your voice box.

“Please, say it.” he trusts again. 

“Javier…” his cock literally pushes his name out of you. 

Suddenly, Javier pulls out and flips you over before you could lean towards your pleasure. You whimper at the emptiness you felt, your pussy fluttering around nothingness. You felt your arms being gathered at your back by one of Javier’s arms and he bent you backwards so that your chest stuck out. You gasped for air, sweat sticking bits of your hair to your forehead.  

“Who do you belong to?” his mouth was back on your neck, leaving kisses in between his questions. 

“You…” you clearly did by the way he had just used you. 

“Never going to let a filthy criminal touch you again.” he growled in your ear and you smiled, coming to your senses.

“Says the criminal who is touching me.” you feel a spike in your confidence as the words leave your mouth, only to have it crashing back to ground zero as Javier dropped you onto the bed. 

“Oh you’re going to regret that, mariposa.” he says and you could visualise him grabbing his cock and feeling the stretch as he shoves himself back into you. 

His hand inched its way around your throat, and he pulled you up again, making you choke. Your pussy betrayed you as you clenched down on him, making him laugh deliriously. 

“You fucking like it when I did that to you yesterday, didn’t you, you slut.” his hand grips harder at your throat, squeezing ever so slightly, his touch is forceful, masterful, alluring with the hidden depths of just the right amount of sensuality as he pulls your head closer to his. You helplessly tried to ask him to keep going, came out of your mouth like hot garbage from the strain his hand was putting on your throat.

“Harder, I need it harder.” you breathlessly spoke.

“I know, baby, I know” his soft words were a huge contrast with the way he was manhandling you.

Now all you can think of is his hard cock, there’s a pulsing in your head, a dizzying, nauseating feeling overcomes your entire body. You can feel his hard body pressing against yours and all thoughts of the night left your head, leaving a void that was soon filled with disgusting, disturbing thoughts. You want this man to fucking ruin you, you had tasted the sin on his lips and you couldn’t help yourself but want more. 

Moaning and whimpering you cum before you even know what’s happening. It was blinding again and you literally lost all sight as your tight cunt contracts and squeezes his cock as tight as you can over and over again in time with his hips thrusts. He doesn’t stop pounding your wet cunt and you let him chase his own orgasm as more filth spills out of his mouth. He makes a wet slapping sound as he fucks you from behind.

After a few more seconds of fucking your cunt you feel him tense up. He lets go of your neck and pulls your hips tight to his and his cock flexes and then begins to spurt his hot cum into you. He folds his body over yours, grunting as he tries to catch his breath, subconsciously canting his hips forward to ride out his own orgasm. His sweaty skin was sticking to yours as you felt his moustache against your neck. 

“Fuck, Javs.” you say first, feeling his heartbeat against your back. 

“Lo siento-”

“And he’s apologising again! What now, Peña?” you sigh.

Javier stays silent for a while before pressing his lips to your shoulder. The air around the both of you smelled like crazy sex and your brain was still slowly coming down from its high. 

“Sorry for calling you a slut.” his hand trailed against your spine, tracing your tattoo.

“Jezz, Javs, you know I like it.” you said, keening into his touch as he smiled against your skin. 

“I’m sorry for calling you a whore too.” you said, smirking as Javier’s hand kneaded your ass. “Although, I do mean it, you’re fuckin’ freaky as hell.”

“You’re welcome.” his hand left your cheek and came back down with a sharp smack. 

Slowly he pulled out of you and you groaned, feeling his cum seep out of you. Two of his fingers pushed his cum back in, to no avail and he eyes your cunt as he does it over and over, accidentally pulling another orgasm out of your sensitive cunt from his trance. 

“Oops.” he mumbles before gently flipping you onto your back and walking to the bathroom. 

He slowly wipes you with a warm towel, avoiding any part of you that could have been potentially sensitive before tossing it aside and laying beside you. You pull his head into your chest and he leaves soft promising kisses onto your tits as you wrap your legs around his torso. You both fall asleep like that, not another word leaving your mouths as the after effects of your madness lulled the both of you into deep and dark dreams. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You were not surprised when you woke up to an empty bed. A pile of fresh clothes sat at the edge and you sighed, willing yourself not to tear up at the abandonment you felt coursing through your veins. You stumbled into work all sore, every part of you hurting from the way Javier had treated you, including your heart. Cheers greeted you and you pulled your collar tightly around your neck as Steve stepped towards you with a cup of what suspiciously looked like whiskey. 

“Let me guess, you guys got La Quiqa?” you said, taking the cup from Steve.

“Yep.” 

You looked around for the one you needed to see the most but your eyes never caught him. 

“I’m guessing you haven’t heard about Javier?” Steven suddenly says, making your eyes snap towards him instantly. 

“What?”

“He turned himself in, just got on the flight back to D.C. for his re-evaluation.” Steve says, shrugging, but the sadness was evident in his voice. 

Your head swimmed as you stared into your cup of whiskey. He has truly left you. 

Without even a single goodbye. 

You nod to no one in particular, anger driving you to stay upright. You sigh and walk towards your desk. 

“What are you waiting for, Murphy?” You said shortly, “We have Escobar to catch.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

A few months later

Javier sat at the bar and swirled his drink in his hand revealing his past few months. He woke up every morning to the thought of you and tried hard to drink the feeling of you away with bottles of the shit he kept at home. But here he was, back in Bogotá, nervously tapping his leg, wondering when he would ever catch a glimpse of you.  

He breathed heavily, reaching into his coat pocket to pull out a cigarette. He placed it between his lips and searched for his lighter, but to no avail. He searched again and was ready to admit defeat when a light suddenly flashed before him. 

“Hola patrón. Congratulations on the promotion.”

That voice.

The cigarette dropped out of Javier's mouth as he turned to stare at you. You wore an angry expression on your face, but Javier wasn’t phased. He was so happy to see your beautiful face that a dopey smile unwillingly spread on his face. 

“Who’s the criminal now, you thieving little minx.” he snorted, snatching his lighter away.

“You fucking left me, you asshole!” you started to hit him.

He grabbed your arms and pulled you off the bar stool and flush to his body. 

“No, I fucked you, then I left you. You need to work on your English, mariposa.” he smirked.

It only made you swing harder, but Javier was quicker, pulling your face towards him with his free hand and locking you down with a bruising kiss. You relax into his kiss and you feel him smile triumphantly and you let him, wrenching your arms out of his grasp and pulling him in by his tie. 

You pull away and scowl at him, biting your lip slightly. You take a better look at his getup, smiling slightly at his more professional look, a contrast to the shirts he wore with open buttons. 

“You know I had to go, mariposa, I couldn’t do it anymore.” he said, smoothing out your hair and kissing your forehead. 

“I know. But that doesn’t make me any less mad.” you say, looking straight into his eyes as he pulled away. 

“I know how to make it up to you?” he said, clearly testing the waters.

“Whatever you say, patrón.” you smirked, crashing your lips to his once again. 

Translations:

- Mariposa: butterfly

- Los Pepes: Paramilitary group composed of enemies of Pablo Escobar.

- Lo siento: I’m sorry

- Sicario: hitmen

Reblogs are appreciated ~~

- Cariño: sweetheart

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[animeshotsh]

Bullet Proof - Various x Overlord!GunDevil

Notes: Reader has a human/demonic form and a full demon form (pic used). And has similar powers as the Gun Devil from Chainsaw Man, im leaving a link here if you want to read them in detail. Carefull with spoilers!!

Warnings: violence - mentions of flesh eating - Does not connect with other chainsaw man!reader pieces - Platonic and romantic - Grammar mistakes -

On November 18, Hell was shaked up when a portal opened up in the red sky. Demons feared it was another execution but the dates was still away.

What came from that portal was...a figure born from nightmares. With a furious roar a new sinner had came, lucing their back and arms with gun parts. They head was a gun and they chest was full of sckelletons.

Soon the figure started shooting, hitting some and missing others. Sinners ran, screamed and even cried.

The bullets flew in all direction, the new sinner moving fast, like they only wanted to end the circle.

Then a figure that never came out from his big castle was out in the sky, Lucifer wont ever confess how he struggle to finally make you faint, or how him found so....cute? Pretty? It felt like a fallen angel like himself had fallen. His heart beated up so fast he almost forgots to take you back to his castle for questions.

After you got a well nap and woke up in a big bed in a castle you were not suprised or scared, you had been in worse places thanks to your work and evil contract.

Speaking of it...you never guessed you would end being the gun devil in hell, your guess was that after consuming so much flesh from the demon and then dying and ending in its original home then you two became one.

Suddendly the door of the room you were staying opened revealing a small figure dress in all white with a hat and a cane. He eyed you then gave a polite smile.

"Hello Sinner, Im Lucifer Morningstar, yes the devil and yes you died, now i must ask you some questions for your safety"

Well, what a fine way to meet the devil.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~

Lucifer had only read stories of a monster like the Gun Devil. He never once saw it or felt it in hell till a few days ago. Its energy was different. But its way to be was the same, a being without brain that just fired at everything. He did not want to deal with it. However once he saw its human form...he was confused, the old records never mentioned of another form like this one. Much less a form that resembles a human.

He was agitated by it and wondered just what were humans doing with demons to end like that.

After having a small talk with you he discovered quiet the disturning things, no only how demons would accept back not only souls but human flesh, emotions and more, but also how a human would go for power.

Like you, who had consumed lots of the flesh of the original Devil itself to end being a danger to humans who killed you.

Understable, they were scared and you angry. But Lucifer could not really feel much symphaty for you. Still, he knew for hell it was important to keep such a powerfull being alive in order to keep balance.

And so he made you promise him that you would live and not reveal what devil you were.

~☆~☆~☆~☆

For years the secret was down, you were know as only a powerfull sinner who quick became an Overlord, not that you were too interested on it. You just wanted to be able to go back to earth to end humanity or at least end with the lives of these who betray you.

~☆~☆~☆~☆

Carmilla was the first one who became interested in you. Seeing how you during one exterminion took down two angels using some bullets that appear from your fingers. You were even able to injure the wing of one angel that was leaving, almost passing the portal to heaven.

Of course she got curious and wanted to know you and maybe do some bussines with you.

You were reclutant at first, but both became charmed by the other one and soon became partners in crime.

She was the one who introduced you to Zestial. The tall spider Demon did not think much of you till he saw you in action taking down multiple sinner and demons alike. From close to far distance.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~

Alastor was quick to figure out who you truly were, the change in the air after you appear for the first time was enough to let him know.

He did admit to himself he was jealous you were still so strong, even if know you had a human part you suprassed him by a lot.

He may try to get on your good side and trick you to have a deal. If rumors of you looking for a way to go back to earth were true then he just needed to press that desesperation.

~☆~☆~☆~☆

Oh! Charlie loved you!! Being honest she was warned from her father years back about you, she had read the previous information of you and was so interested!! If she could make the Gun Devil redeem then sinner and heaven would give her a chance, right?

Well all her hope crash down when you politely declined her offer but told her that if she needed help you would do it if she got you a way back to earth.

~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

The V's wanted to get their claws on you as fast as they could. You would be such a good weapon! Vox had his second thoughts about being able to hypnotize you....knowing your streght, but negotiations were still open.

Till Valentino made a comment that caused you to shoot him on his shoulder ending the meeting and you leaving with a proud smirk.

~☆~☆~☆~☆

Characters who are romantic interest:

Carmilla: she finds your personality to be one to fall for. Your ferocity is cruel but your soft side is likeable to her. She loves how you treat her daugthers.

Zestial: Its a crush but is there! Not lots of sinner gets his attention but he so interested in you.

Lucifer: May not trust you but years seeing you from afar (totally not stalking) madr him have a crush. He also likes how you never really revealed yourself to others but it was the others who figured it out. Maybe one day he will invite you over for tea and to try and talk you out of your plans on kelling so many humans. Maybe wait till they are in hell to make your revenge.

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel x you #lucifer x reader #alastor x reader #carmilla x reader #zestial x reader #vox x reader

[yeyinde]

after dark

Keegan P. Russ x f!Reader

⟶ WARNINGS: 18+ SMUT; P-in-V sex; female reader, female gendered anatomy; gratuitous use of kid; slight body worship; established history/relationship; canon-compliant, takes place after Sin City; minor game spoilers; mentions of death (canon-compliant); war; fluff - this is honestly just gratuitous smut and my awful attempt at fluff ⟶ WORD COUNT: 9,7k ⟶ SUMMARY: you want to see him break. ⟶ NOTES: my first foray into Keegan! this took a bit of time since i wanted to include so much, and it ended up growing a little out of hand. i might expand on this/make it into a series potentially (just small drabbles). Keegan was so fun to write for!

Keegan looks good like this. Laid out, bare; skin stained with the bites of your nails, the nips of your teeth, nestled evenly amid the smattering of battle wounds and blemishes that colour him in a rich history wrought with gunfire and calamity. (You often tell him that the two of you are kismet. He says Momus just has a sick sense of humour.)

The milky white expanse of his torso is littered with scars, and you map them with your greedy eyes, drinking each bloom of imperfection that stains his ivory skin. Finding new ones that weren't there before. 

Blades, bullets, burns, pockmarks—many from weapons you can't even begin to name, to know—all etched into sinew. Into bone. 

They mar him in a brutal smear of varicoloured hurt. A mosaic of near–death laid out like Orion, curved like the tail of Sagittarius. It's spooled, knotted, in a way that makes you think of Lyra. Of the stars you can see so clearly now without any light pollution around to smog the indigo sky above. 

The scars are healed in uneven patches; some darker, uglier than others. Raised welts, bumps. Deep indents in his skin, cutting through muscle and tissue. 

There is no sense of structure in the gashes that line his body—silver, to red, to purple, to black—and you know they were collected over time. Over years, decades, before you ever met him. Knew him. 

(The only one that looks familiar is the jagged hole on his shoulder where he stepped, stupidly, in front of a bullet for you. 

Stupid, because no one, especially him, should risk themselves for you.)

They sit, carved in flesh, as a testament to his nomadic lifestyle, one drenched in danger, death, and calamity. Shadows moulded into man. Into ruined skin and jagged bone. Deadly forces of nature hidden in the craters where the earth split into twos, threes. Triplicated ravines clogged with the rubble of was once life. Peace. Home, maybe. 

A tenuous fallacy, now. 

But they risk everything—even themselves—for it, and the proof of their commitment, the dedication to the cause, is smattered across his torso for you to see. 

The exploratory tips of your fingers, dripping reverence and featherlight, ghost over his flesh, over the blemishes that decorate his body, taking them in, feeling them. 

Some are baby–hair soft, silky sateen; they sit in thick, raised welts of scar tissue clotted over each other. Others are rougher than sandpaper, gritty like stripped lath. They feel like tree bark under your fingers. Scabs. Fresh, new. 

You wonder if he remembers each one of them—how they happened, where, by who; which ones hurt the most, and which ones took longer to heal. He might, you think. 

(It's him, after all.)

Catalogued pain organised and filed away. Locked in a safe box inside the enigma of his head, and kept there for safekeeping. 

But it's not gone, not put away. 

(It's always within reach.)

Phantoms congeal in the corners of his eyes sometimes when you happen to touch one, to reach out and grab him by the arm, or the hand, the wrist, and you see the brief flash of recognition in cut slate. A distant fog simmers up from the depths; veiled blue. A past you're barred from touching, knowing. 

It's not pretty, kid, is what he told you when you asked. Not like you. No sense ruining something like you with all that ugly. 

It was the end of the conversation. Locked away for good, and brassbound with a warning sign, rusted and aged, that read: do not enter.

So, you don't. 

But sometimes, like now, you like to take them in. To see the contrast between your blemishless skin in comparison to his. Worlds apart. A cosmic chasm of experience and life needles between you, and yet—

You brush your fingers against the marks, and have never felt closer to him, despite everything inside that tells you you're wrong. 

You place your hand flat over a cut over his breastplate, right where his heart thuds against your palm, and wonder what near–miss he escaped from that caused this. The other slides to his stomach, his muscles flexing, rippling, under your touch, and you brush your thumb over a circular hole under his solar plexus. 

You think, then, of the years you spent underground, running through the barren safehouses that dotted the landscape, only to come away with minor cuts, abrasions. The worst of them all is a small scar near your wrist where you burned your skin with cooking oil. 

You've never met the end of the blade—not until him.  

"What are you thinking about, kid?" 

His hand lifts—skin littered with small knicks and cuts, a burn on the back of his hand that almost matches yours except his was caused by a Molotov cocktail and not youthful ignorance (a world of difference, a chasm)—fingers sliding over the curve of your cheek. His slate–blue gaze is fixed, unmoving, on you. 

It was those eyes—cenote blue—that drew you to him in the first place. Teal in tenebrous. They haunted you for months. Wordlessly following your every move, drinking in the expressions that flitted over your face. Taking stock of you. Measuring you. Your accomplishments. Your worth. Assets.

Survivability.

("Pretty low," Merrick says, plain and brutal, and the rawness of it rumbled through the hollow crevasse you found yourself in. Low. Lower than low. So low it was almost a miracle you survived as long as you had.)

Keegan said nothing at the time. He stood back, hand gripping the butt of the rifle, eyes fixed on you, unwavering. Unforgiving. 

It was easy to take his silence as cold. Distant. Bundled up in thick layers of muskeg, in icy separation. 

You did—at first. 

An active war zone was not a place for a civilian. Merrick told you as much when he found you, taking refuge in a dilapidated home split in two, and welding only a metal bat you'd grabbed on your travels. Your only protection against an enemy that has no qualms in murdering innocents. That uses guns and heavy artillery to decimate the soldiers, the allies who jumped oceans to fight alongside the troops. 

You lit a lantern one night after settling down in a broken home, and woke up to the barrel of a gun pressed to your temple. 

It was Ajax who saved you. 

"Hey, uh. You're American, right? What are you doing in a place like this?" 

You didn't trust them. 

Didn't trust anyone. 

You'd spent too long cutting through the thickets of the surrounding overgrowth, hopping from one ramshackle house to another to lay low, to hide from the people who wandered past, looking for survivors, hostages, to give into that part of yourself that longed for people. For normalcy. The road jaded you a little. Isolated you. 

It was safer. 

The people you stumbled across either tried to pick you bare, taking the meagre belongings you scrounged together until there was nothing left but the thin skin covering your body, and your will to live. 

Or they tried to kill you. To use you. 

Hostages. Civilians used against the threadbare resistance. Their safe return in exchange for more land, for surrender. 

So, you hid. Got good at it, too. 

("Too fuckin' good," Merrick hissed, shaking his head. 

The only one who was ever able to spot you was Riley. Keegan, sometimes, through the lens of his rifle.)

When they found you, you tried to run, to fight. Enemies. All of them. 

It was Ajax who stopped you, who talked you off the ledge. 

"Come on, we're not gonna hurt you."

"Heard those words before."

"How long you been out here for, anyway?"

"When did ODIN destroy New York?"

"Jesus, kid."

"Stupid," Merrick said. "That's what you are, Cali. Stupid as hell." 

And Keegan—

Said nothing. Nothing. 

He doesn't like you, was your first thought when it all added up, stacked together. The avoidance, the distance. He wasn't cold, but he didn't try to get close to you, to get to know you. He just—

Watched. Waiting, you thought, a touch bitter, for you to die. Like they all expected you to when you said you weren't going to the safe zone. That you were staying, and you were looking for them—your brother, your father. 

Then—

Stay behind me, always, kid. You got that? 

If you can't see my back, you wandered too far. 

Eat. You need it more than I do. 

Watch your step. You'll fall into a crevasse if you're not careful, kid. 

The second: he likes you too much. 

And now—

Your hips flex. A slow, teasing roll against his pelvis, and it's that indelible sight of sky blue eyes shuttering out of view when his lids lower, lashes fluttering, that nearly sets you on fire. 

The press of his cock makes your nails dig into the constellation of scars on his chest, clinging to him as licks of pleasure flicker up your spine. Nerves smouldering at the stretch, the feel of him seated so deeply within you. 

"Thinking about you," you murmur, breathless. Raw. 

You wonder if he remembers the rainy days in San Francisco, the sunrise in Los Angeles, huddled under the waterlogged crater of what once was Pacific Avenue and Venice Boulevard with the same touch of halcyon fondness as you do. 

You think, then, of the fusillade following you in the ruined husks of the streets, enemies on every corner, of the six-day hike between the cities to reconvene with the others, lost somewhere in the decimated coast. 

A little part of you still hopes he does despite the stress, the tension, the danger; the separation, the distance, that cracks between you, louder than a thunderclap. 

That he thinks back on that time when it was just you and him, and no food, no shelter, and feels something more than the gritty reality of everything falling apart around you. 

Of death, and the stench of rot, and decay, and the overgrowth of vegetation that sometimes felt like it was trying to reclaim you along with its land. The vines that curled around your ankles when you idled, or slept—shackles that refused to let go. Gunshots in the night. Predators roaming wild and free in what once was a metropolis. 

Then, softer, you add:

"Always." 

You speak it reverently, as if the word, the sincerity in your voice alone was enough to somehow shade the gossamer of calamity and horror you faced together into something pink, something roseate. Something fond, and wonderful, and good despite all of the ugly and the bad that stacks up, deeper than the hole punched through San Diego.

(Down so deep you sometimes think you can see the eerie glow of molten rock below.)

Keegan says nothing, gives nothing away, but you catch something in his gaze shift, relent.

Another inch off the thick veneer that keeps him from falling into you fully, that keeps him from letting you in. 

It's the slow erosion of his defences, the ones that make him say, yeah, kid, whatever you say when you bring up the smouldering ruins of Death Valley, when you slipped your finger in the cut of his mask, and tugged it down below his chin. Your nail caught on the bridge of his nose, but he didn't flinch at the thin white line you left behind, the sting. He didn't move. Didn't blink. 

Didn't push you away. 

He let you. Let you press your sun-chapped lips to his for the first time with nothing more than an easy, kid—don't start something you can't finish before he gives in. Kissed you against the grainy sand that scorched your skin. 

You used to think he was cold. Unfeeling. 

But now—

Shadows dance over his face when the clouds drift over the milky moon hung in the indigo aether, but you catch the rubicund smear over the bridge of his nose when they part. Pretty pink dusted in soot. An ethereal chiaroscuro etched into his flesh. 

You feel his chest shudder, expanding with his rippling inhale. 

—You know that, sometimes, he just feels too much. 

You hitch your hips again just to watch him flinch beneath you. The breath stutters out of his chest, lips parting on a grunt when you grind over him. The pinched knot between his brow is stained with bliss, and deep like the crevasses ripped through the earth. 

The hand on your cheek jerks, tenses. His fingers curl around the back of your skull as his eyes crack open once more when you settle. Heavy lidded, stained the residuum of soot and grease paint the lukewarm water wasn't able to scour off. 

You meet his cobalt stare, and feel the breath catch in your throat. 

Keegan looks good like this. Laid out, bare; skin stained with the bites of your nails, the nips of your teeth, nestled evenly amid the smattering of battle wounds and blemishes that colour him in a rich history wrought with gunfire and calamity.  

When you whisper this to him, his hips jerk again, flexing, under yours. 

"Fuck, kid. Don't go starting something you can't finish."

His words nudge something inside of you, and the slow simmer of competition roils through your chest. 

"Can't finish, huh?" You murmur, and keep your eyes fixed on his as you lift your hips. The drag of his hardened cock sliding against your walls has pleasure liquifying your core. 

When it's just the tip you clench around, you pause, a small smirk curling over your lips. You'll make him break. Make him eat those words. 

But Keegan can read you like an open book. 

His hand lifts from your hip bone, sliding up the flesh of your torso until his fingers are perched in the gaps between your ribs, holding you steady. 

"Easy now, kid," he whispers the words low, voice breathless, humid. "Don't bite off more than you chew."

In response, you sink down an inch. 

It makes him choke a little. A wet noise spills out from his mouth, teeth flashing when they burrow into the plush give of his full, pink lips. The tendons in his neck strain, pulse throbbing in tandem with your heartbeat. Linked, you think, a little delirious, even like this. 

(You often tell him that the two of you are kismet.

He says Momus just has a sick sense of humour.)

His fingers tighten on your ribs. The other hand falls, palm swallowing your breast, fingers digging into the flesh once before sliding down, pinching your nipple between his calloused thumb and forefinger. It sends shocks of pleasure ricocheting down your spine, and you arch into his grasp, eyes dropping. 

"That feels good—"

"Yeah?" He husks, lips curling into a rare smile, a grin. "Like that, huh, kid?"

The raw timbre of his voice coils over your flesh, and you shudder at the liquor-rich sound, eyes blinking open to drink him in. 

The spark of pleasure that glimmers over his expression, eyes dark, eclipsed, and saturated in bliss, makes something coil low inside of your belly. A molten heat that leaks into your bloodstream until it bubbles, froths. 

Keegan is a slow burn. A steady crescendo of pleasure that builds and builds in evenly spaced increments until your head is molasses-thick from the endorphins that saturate your synapses. 

Keegan is always so giving, so quiet with his affection; picturesque stoicism even when he has you bent over, battering his cock into you as you lose it amid the unrelenting waves of euphoria that bloom inside of you, singing hymns in his name, and only just lucid enough to round the vowels out. He rides you through it all without cracking. Without rupturing from the pleasure that thickens the air between you until it's syrupy and heady with the scent of sex. 

And it's good. Always. 

You love the way he handles you; love the way he splits you apart atom by atom until you're an impending explosion, leaking bliss into the warmth of his mouth when you breathe his name. Raw, exposed. Bare and flayed by his scorching hands, and hungry lips. 

Keegan touches you with the same delicacy as he does the rifles in his arsenal. A finely tuned weapon, honed and perfected in his hands. He drags only the best out of you, and knows where to press, to nip. He knows your body like he knows the inner workings of each gun he carries. 

He's adroit in combat, and it bleeds over into the soft, plush give of your body beneath him. 

It's often thoughtless—done purely on muscle memory, and instinct alone. A primal switch in the back of his head he commands at will, one now grounded and circuited into making you tremble, gasp, and moan his name the way you know he likes best. 

Keegan leeches his own release from the aftershocks of your pleasure, pounding desperately into you as you clench around him, back arched and toes curled. He fucks you through the remnants of your climax until his own takes hold, and spits his bliss into your body, groaning low in your ear. 

But everything—everything—is for you. 

He takes where he can as he fractures you into pieces, into fragments of yourself. Crumbling in ecstasy under his touch. Broken, shattered. Rendered into a trembling mess of pulp beneath the bulk of his body.

He's a lesson in patience, in tenacity. 

Usually.

But now—

You set the pace. Control the motions. 

(And you want to see him break in the same splintered pieces he leaves you in.)

"Just sit back, and let me make you feel good."

He draws a sharp breath, eyes fluttering, widening slightly at your base command. 

Something gnarls over his exposed face, a frisson of affection, and softer than anything you'd ever seen before. 

It's rare you get to see him so bare, so open. 

"You do," he rasps, words sticking between his teeth. "More than you know."

He swallows thick, eyes skirting away from you as if to gather himself together, to calm the racing of his pulse that beats against the pale skin of his throat. 

Comfort is taken in composure, in distance, and you can see him grasp for it, reaching for that same phlegmatic control even now. 

You don't let him find it. Won't. 

You take a quick breath to steady yourself, fingers sliding down his damp chest, nestling in the messy smear of hair that sticks to his skin, grainy and gritty from salt and dirt, and then you drop. 

The blunt head of his cock bludgeons into a fleshy spot behind your navel that has your ears ringing, head tipping back in pleasure. It's good—so, so good—and you can't stop the whine of his name, broken and fraying at the edges, when you sink down to the base, swallowing him whole in the right clutch of your cunt.

White noise, static, flashes behind your eyelids, catching in the pale moonlight. A slurry of soporific pleasure spools inside your head, saturated with bliss, and edging into that indelible equinox of pleasure and pain when his head kisses the seal of your womb. It flexes against your mettle, pushing the limits of what you can reasonably take, but you grit your teeth against the strain, and breathe. 

You won't break first. 

Not when his eyes roll back a little as you shift in his lap, brow furrowed into a deep ruck of pleasure at the feel of you around. 

The overwhelming feel of him buried deep behind your navel notches into too much, and the ache of it pulses like a heartbeat in your sternum, knocking the breath from your lungs, but you hold steady amid the waves that crash over you, that threaten to consume you. To drag you under. 

White-hot pleasure lashes at your spine. Congealing inside the pit of your lower belly. A molten puddle of nirvana that steadily thickens into a coiled knot, gnarling within you. A spool of bliss, slowly unravelling under the stretch of him, the grind of his pelvis against your throbbing clit..

It thrums in your veins, your bones. Madness bleeds in at the edges; blurred lines of so good and too much too full and you find the equilibrium, the perfect zenith, when he groans your moniker, Cali, out between gnashing teeth. 

The brassy rasp of his voice centres you. Grounds you. You inhale the tang of him until your lungs begin to burn, to ache. You feel them pressed taut to your ribs where his fingers sit, nestled between the gaps of your bones. Firm, steady. 

You exhale in slow, measured increments, feeling the way he throbs against your walls, in your throat. You take it all in, all of it. Him. The firm press of his body beneath yours, thighs spread to fit him in the seam, makes you relax, ease into the press of him. The fill. 

Keegan's hands twitch. His hips lift slightly, an unconscious movement. An accidental proxysm. His ironclad resolve, the honed stillness of an expert sniper in perfect control, command, of every limb, every muscle, every movement, and breath, crumbles like papier-mache with the tight clench of your pussy around him. 

It edges into delirium, into that burning sense of conquest when he grunts, and rubs a spot inside of you that feels like heaven itself is nestled behind your belly button. 

(A fissure. A crack.)

The steadying breath he takes draws your attention back to him, to the sheen of sweat drenching his brow, the smear of charcoal he couldn't scrub away. It stains his skin permanently, now. A tattoo of battle grease, war paint, that he can't be rid of. 

(You tell yourself it isn't jealousy that congeals at the base of your throat when you see the blemish on his skin, and wish, so desperately, that you could brand him the same way. Mark him, too. 

To crawl inside the brackets between his ribs, and suffuse your atoms to his until every pump of his heart sends blood roaring through your veins.

It sits there, bitter and acrid, when you try to swallow it down, refusing to budge. 

Stupid. Stupid—)

You take it all in. The racing of his pulse, the slow, deep inhales, and the way he reaches out, struggling to control the impulse, the instinct, the want, to greedily take more and more from you. 

"Keegan," his name falls between your teeth, breaking in the middle when you roll your hips, and catch the flash of gritted teeth. 

The thin strands of sangfroid he managed to snag in his grasp are released when your voice crests over his name, cracked open and wanting, and desperate. 

It tastes of victory when he groans yours in return—not kid, not Cali, but the one you whispered to him that first night he found you in a desolate husk of what was once someone's home—and bucks into you in a stutter. 

You meet him again, pelvis kissing his until it suctions the air from your heaving lungs, and you can feel him pulsing in your sternum. A red-hot blade snug against your jugular.

The thin skin of his eyelids crinkle when he squeezes them shut against the feeling, the overwhelming pleasure, of being buried balls deep inside of you. 

Your ribs ache. His fingers burrow into the flesh that separates each rung, clinging to you, and keeping you perched on his lap as he struggles to catch his breath. 

It rips open something inside of you—something deeper and fuller than sex, than shattering his ironclad resolve—and the sight of him, chest heaving, eyes heavy and black with desire, and the soft way he crumbles in your hands, makes you think of the morning rays of the sun brushing over the broken landscape. The moments of peace in the midst of war. 

You think of him, and the tick in his jaw, the gleam in his eyes, the same shade as crushed bluebonnets, and think of kismet once more as you pant out his name. 

"Ah, fuck—," sweat drips down his brow, and you follow the droplet until it falls, soaking the jaundiced pillow below. "You keep that up, kid, and you'll be tapping out soon enough."

It drags a huff from your chest. "It was once. And you made me run through San Diego for hours before, and—"

"It was fifteen minutes. We ran a block," his hand falls from your breast, palm swallowing the side of your thigh. "You lasted five minutes on top before you begged me fuck you instead. Said you were tired."

"I was," you whine, muscles flexing when you lift off of him again. You feel the ache in your muscles already, the burn of exertion from sitting atop of him like this, knees wrenched apart to accommodate his bulk between them. "But I wanna make you feel good, Keegan."

The sharp sting of his nails catching your flesh makes you gasp. "C'mon, kid. Easy now." 

The low commands roll off of his tongue with practised ease, and you slip a little further into that inky madness that smells of fir boughs, sticky spruce sap, and ripened satsumas. You breathe him in and taste dusty pomander balls, and pinyon in the back of your throat. 

"Keegan—"

His hips lift, pushing into the soft, wet clench of your cunt. "That's it. Nice and steady."

He guides you along—a maestro stroking the keys of a piano as he plays his grand requiem. You struggle to keep up with his pace, the way he pistons into you, notching his cock into that soft, sensitive place inside that makes your eyes brim with unshed tears of bliss. 

Each deep thrust makes the head of his cock kiss the plug of your womb—just a brush, just a tease—but the burning sensation of blistering pleasure and wisps pain, of too much and too full, have you spiralling down the precipice faster than you expected. 

It's a dizzying descent, but you match his tempo as best as you can, determined to ride the torrent of ecstasy that runs down your spine in a thick, dulcified rivulet. 

Still. Still. You can't help but bask in the way he melts in your hand, rendered into malleable polymer with just a twist of your hips, a clench of your cunt. It's electrifying. Addicting.  

The high of it all brims deep in your head, blooming like a sickness that clots along the seam, noxious and heady. 

You can't stop the satisfied curl of your lips from growing, slowly and languid, when you bear down on him, taking him to the root. 

His grunt reverberates through his chest with enough of a punch to rattle your bones. 

Seeing him desperate is intoxicating. 

"What happened to your composure, Keegan?" you mewl, heading rolling back. "My big, quiet soldier is so talkative now—"

Rough palms sear the flesh of your hips when he grabs you tight in his unyielding hold, keeping you fixed on him. 

You try to move, but he tightens his grasp, refusing to let you budge. 

Frustration curls inside of your chest, and you glower down at him through glassy eyes brimming with tears. "Keegan, I wanna—"

Your words dissolve into a low keen when his hips lift again, battering into your cunt in an unrelenting wave of thrusts that force the protests from your lips. 

"Talkative, huh?" He grinds the words out from between clenched molars. "That was your goal, eh, kid? Break me?" 

He punctuates each word with a brutal cant that feels like a battering ram to your skull until the weakened bone splinters, shatters, and he punches through. 

"Kee–ah, ah, fuck—!" 

"That's it," he husks, tone liquid. His fingers spear into your flesh, tight enough to bruise your bone. "Just like that, kid. You wanna see me break? Lose control?" 

Heart in your throat, all you can do is whimper around the pulse in your esophagus, and struggle to find purchase under his unrelenting onslaught. 

His hand lifts, falls to your shoulder when he stills, keeping you locked tight to his pelvis, cock jerking inside of you. His fingers curl over the ledge, gripping bone, and then he tugs, pulls. 

You fold easily in his grasp, lowering your chest until it rests over his, sweat-slicked and warm. The scrape of your sensitive nipples over his coarse, damp chest hair makes you moan, clenching desperately around him at the sparks of pleasure roiling through you. 

When you settle over him, his hand moves, slides to the back of your skull, and wrenches you even closer to him, until your forehead meets his, and the soft bump of your nose catches on the bridge of his, right over the thin line you left on his skin. Healed, now, but you wonder if this is intentional. If it's—

Keegan breathes heavily through his open mouth, breath mixing together with yours, a humid coagulation against your lips where condensation gathers on the dip of your chin. 

He says nothing, just stares. Bare-faced, naked. Still smeared in the residuum of his battle grease, the armour he wears to keep himself hidden from the Federation, from discovery, and the freckles of black on his ivory skin look like an inverted night; the endless yawn of the heavens above. You wonder if you can map a new constellation in the dirt left behind, but the notion is pushed down, dissolved, when your gaze lifts, finding his own. 

He hasn’t looked away from you at all, and the intensity of his gaze makes you dizzy, breathless. Too many emotions ripple through the mercury depths for you to grasp, but they're soft. Tender. Your heart thuds when you see the endless flicker of them hidden inside, tightly sealed under a rusted lock without a key. 

"Keegan—"

He doesn't let you finish. His chin lifts, mouth hooking on yours in a blistering kiss. His tongue slides between the gap of your parted lips, stealing the words that spool behind your teeth. 

Keegan kisses you with a deep, almost methodical precision. It's a contrast you can't keep up with; an ebb and flow. He starts fast, harsh. A demanding press of his mouth to yours, unrelenting and eager. It's all tongue, lips, the clash of teeth until yours are stinging and bruised, and then he pulls away until his are just a brush. A ghost of a touch, a whisper. 

He holds it there, teasing, taunting, until your lips bloom in a soft pout, eyes turning downward. 

"Keegan, please," you whimper into the firm seal of his mouth, so close and yet, so far away. Out of reach. Held there until whatever he wants, whatever he seeks, flashes in the glossy puddles of your eyes. 

And then, he gives. 

Gives, gives. His mouth devours yours with a steady ferocity like the howling winds echoing through the wizened fir boughs in the desolate forest. He holds you close, a hand fisted against your skull while the other plinths your jaw, thumb stroking the bubble of your cheek. 

The pressure of his hold, of his hands, oscillates between firm, unyielding, and keeping you afloat, soothing you. 

You need it, you think, when he kisses you like the sudden approach of an avalanche ripping through the thicket, and barrelling down the vertiginous mountain he keeps you locked on. 

An ebb and flow. 

When your head swims, dizzy with hypoxia that inks across your vision like a Rorschach, he pulls away. Peppers small kisses, nips, over your stringing, swollen flesh, and soothes the ache he left behind. 

"I know," is all he says to you before he starts to move. “I know, kid.”

Keegan keeps you locked to his chest, one hand bracketing your skull, kissing you in tandem with each roll of his hips. His other hand settles against the swell of your ass, holding you steady as he bucks into you, bludgeoning his cock into your cunt. 

Your hands drop to the pillow under his head to stabilise yourself, pushing firmly into the mattress in a futile effort to keep the brunt of your weight from pressing against him, but he notices. 

Always. 

His grunt of displeasure is barely heard over the roaring in your ear, the lewd slap of his wet skin on yours, the grind of his cock into your cunt, but you feel it rumble through his chest, reverberating over your lips. 

His hand trails up from the curve of your ass, and over your spine. 

"C'mon, kid," he murmurs, teeth scraping over your stinging bottom lip. "You're not gonna break me."

His sly words make you huff, and you clench your muscles around him in retribution. There is something blisteringly intoxicating in the low groan that leaves his chest, the pinch between his brow, the flutter of his lashes, lids cresting in pleasure. 

It's a small win, a minuscule victory despite losing the war. But it is a double-edged sword that leaves you just as breathless, just as aching, as he is. 

You acquiesce to his insistent prods, and slowly, hesitantly, melt into him. With your full weight settling on top of him, Keegan breathes in deep, and murmurs a quiet, hushed: that's it into your lips. 

His hands are on you, tugging and pulling until you're flush on his body with a muted groan. 

Your arms bend at the elbow, hands moving to cup his jaw in your palms, feeling the scratch of his rough stubble over your life line. 

Kismet, you think, and taste salt on your tongue, a humid breeze on your skin. It reminds you of Los Angeles, of the hole you sunk into with him. When you decided in the ramshackle remnants of what once was that, despite everything, all of it, you would follow him anywhere, everywhere. 

A confession in the shambles of normalcy, where the cracked Macy's sigh hung suspended on wires, and reinforced by nature. Thick webs of wisteria kept the relic from a bygone era arched over the collapsed ruins of the Beverly Centre. A macabre chandelier: a poignant piece of what is now history. Gone. Erased. Decimated by a weapon meant to protect. 

The rest was felled into a deep cavern, karst, destroyed by the beams of inert energy that spliced the world you knew in half. Water leaked in—from the burst pipes, the broken aquifer at the bottom, rainwater, the ocean, and, you think, from when they razed the smouldering husk of the cities on fire with a deluge of water, back when everyone still clung to the belief that everything was going to be okay. It pools at the bottom, a murky abyss of cracked rock, steel beams, and dead wires. 

On the surface, something floated past. A bag, maybe. Waterlogged and aged. You fish it out despite the soft rumble from Keegan to stay away from the cenote. 

"Currents might sweep you under. Not a place you wanna fall in, kid." 

When you dragged it to the linoleum ledge you sat on, the broken logo made you snort. 

"Never could afford designer," you muttered and tossed the Balenciaga bag aside. 

It doesn't matter. Not anymore. Not here. 

You know it doesn't, feel it deep in your polluted bones, and yet—

You stared at the shattered heap of luxury, and couldn't help thinking about those days in the past when you'd wake up after a long trip on the road with your dad, your brother, and the world would feel so massive, so empty. It felt like you were the only ones left. The only survivors. 

It eats at you now. 

You cried that night. Broke for the first time in months, years. Sobbed into the corner of what was once Macy's or Gucci or some other relic you used to scorn in your youth, and the whole time, Keegan said nothing. Nothing at all. 

He just held you when you stumbled into him. Kept you tight to his body as your sobs echoed through the chamber. 

Through it all, it was Keegan who kept you grounded. Who stood in front of you, sniper ready, whenever the bushes around you rustled, or the ground trembled with the aftershocks of the lingering explosion that decimated your home. Your world. He was there, his hand on the small of your back, eyes sharp, wary. Kept you alive, fed. Safe. 

Safe.

You can only sleep when he’s around. Even when they left you in the safe zone you clawed out of, you couldn’t sleep. Nothing quelled the anxious needling in the back of your head but his presence—solid and steady. An unshakeable rock. Your foundation amid a shattered sense of security. 

You turned to him, then, when the moon drifted over the open crater punched through the earth, and whispered the words he refused to return. 

Even now.

But it doesn’t matter. None of it does. 

Not anymore. 

“Thinkin’ too much,” he husks, nails leaving trails of white when he scrapes them over your skin. “What happened to breaking me, kid? Give up already?”

There is no way for him to know you taste algae in the back of your throat from when he pushed you deeper into the cenote as you ran from the Federation soldiers. When they closed the gap, he shoved you into the murky blue of the grotto below, too quick for you to close your mouth, to not panic when you hit the pool with a splash that echoed on the slick, mossy walls. You breathed in the stagnant water filled with bioluminescent algae, and as gunshots bounced off the jagged limestone, and you drifted down below the buried rubble, you wondered if you’d glow so bright he could find you at the bottom of polluted blue. 

(He did. Always.)

Still. You swallow down the tang of salt, and breathe him in, saturating yourself in the loam scent of him—thick musk; burning lignin and scorched evergreen—and let it sit in your throat until all you can taste is him when you swallow. 

“Thinking about you,” you say. 

He says nothing, but you catch the shudder in his chest, the tremble in his hands, when he slides them over your flesh. Reverent. Halting. The fingerprints he leaves on your skin are stained in chiaroscuro. 

He grabs you tight enough to bruise sometimes; holds you so close that you often think he’s trying to absorb you into him. To keep you safe and secure in the bulk of his body where nothing can hurt you, touch you. 

Not even him.

So, he pulls away. It’s not distance that pitches itself in the recess of his piercing gaze, but something close to it. Kin. Fear, maybe.

Of this, of you.

The fear started when Ajax went missing, but it was Keegan who held you together.

("It's gonna be okay, kid. We'll get him back.”

Empty promises. Broken pinky fingers.)

You broke when they brought Ajax home and laid him to rest as best as they could, and the marker that signified his resting place—a coded message only they would ever know—was all that remained of the man he fought beside, the man who made a pinky promise to never leave you in a the empty shell of a Walmart parking lot when you told him about the camping trips.

A scrap of fabric. A blood-drenched mask. 

You held Keegan as he whispered sorry, kid. Sorry. We tried. We— 

Gone. Gone. You think of rubble and the scent of rock dust. The crushing weight of cinder blocks and beams, and what it feels like to stumble when the earth breaks into pieces beneath your feet.

Elias. 

And now—

All he has left is Merrick. Hesh. Riley. 

Logan—

(“Missing,” the radio crackled a few days ago. “Gone.”)

—and you. 

He holds you at arm's length, even now, after coming back to you, after finding you again, because what you offer is different, more dangerous, than theirs. 

And despite what they say, Keegan isn’t a man who feels nothing at all.

No. 

He’s a man who feels too much. 

And he knows this. Knows it like he knows the world is in shambles, knows what the Federation is capable of. 

What you're capable of. 

You wonder if he's thinking of that now, as the shadows leak back in. They flood the corners of his eyes when he gazes through you, lost in those lour thoughts that rush by in quick succession. Too fast for him to cling to any. 

They cut into the crease. The ones that make you think he’s somehow omnipotent, all-knowing. That he can chisel inside of your head, and read the want, the greed, that festers in the rucked divots. 

And he isn't sure how to handle it. What to do with the bold, bare-faced sincerity of what you offer him. What you want from him. 

Before, Keegan would get so lost inside the maze of his mind that you didn't know how to bring him back. He'd speak only when necessary—just short, clipped words, commands (over there, inside, stop, eat)—and the silence would grate at you. Somehow quieter than he usually was; oppressive. 

It lasted for days, sometimes. 

It never sullied his ability to aim, to shoot. Survive. Protect. 

It was just—

An introspective silence. A storm cloud over blue. 

He was thinking too much, and wasn't sure which option to pick, which outcome was best.

You never knew what to say to bring him back. To ground him. All you could do was wait it out until the gyre would fade from his eyes, and he'd turn to you again, clear blue. 

Now—

“—You’re thinking too much,” you murmur, mouth trailing loose kisses over his stubbled jaw. 

“Just waiting for you to come back to me,” he volleys back, eyes cresting. A tendril of that unknowable something snakes through the gloom of blue, and you reach for it with curious, wanting fingers. 

“I’d never leave you.” 

Keegan swallows, and you trace the bob of his Adam's apple. A part of you expects it to retreat, to flee back to the safety of its bivouac where nothing can get too close. Nothing can hurt. 

But it doesn’t.

He huffs, and the soft expel of his breath, the sinking of his chest, feels a little bit like victory. 

“Wouldn’t survive without me.”

It’s as close to a confession as he’ll offer, and you take it with eager, greedy hands, cupping it in the plinth of your palm where it sits, safe from harm, from the world that crumbles around you. 

“Neither would you.” 

It’s a lie, of course. Keegan is dampening his own chances at survival by keeping you close to him instead of doing what everyone said he ought to, what he tried to do: leaving you behind. 

He pushed you away once. You wonder if he thinks of the separation. The distance etched between the two of you. Slowly relearning each other in broken husks that were once homes.  

"Drop Cali off at a safe zone, and then come find us, Keegan."

The intention, you know, was to leave you behind permanently. To keep you locked in the safe confines of a safe zone in Oregon, where they pitched tents in an expansive field, and lived off of pipe dreams. Where they pretended they couldn't fear the gunfire in the distance, or smell artillery smoke in the air. 

Direct orders passed down through the chain of command, from Elias himself, and yet—

He came back.

("Just gonna do whatever you want, kid. We're headed the same way, anyway.")

“That so?”

"It is."

Keegan swallows. Something yields, breaks. 

His palms are balmy on your skin, firebrands. You stare into his eyes, counting the deep ravines of inky black cutting through sapphire blue, and the gyre of those hidden things, locked away and kept at a distance, seem to tremble. Wobble. The edges blur. 

A frisson passes over his face, illuminated only by the milky light spilling in from the tattered curtains, and something cracks. Splinters. The fracture makes him flinch, makes him heave under you, chest expanding with the deep drawl of his breath. 

With another sigh, his hand slides down the heated flesh of your back, spreading over the swell of your ass. Before you can say anything in response, his middle finger dips into the valley between each cheek, brushing over the skin of your perineum before dipping lower, brushing over the wetness gathered there. 

He drags his finger higher, brushing over the soft skin of your ass. The feeling of it, the red-hot heat of his flesh, makes you keen, tightening around him. 

He huffs into your neck, lashes fluttering over the soft skin of your throat when he blinks. "Like that, huh? Want me here, too, kid?"

You gasp when he presses against the rim. "K–Keegan—"

"Not ready yet," he murmurs, and you try to stifle a whimper when he pulls away, heart thudding in your chest at the thought alone. 

He catches it, anyway.

"Fuck, kid—," it's a jagged husk; ripped up and shredded under barbed wire. Raw, wanting, and dark. You'd never heard his voice so low, so gritty. When you peer down at him, all you see is the endless ocean in the blanket of night. Midnight blue. It makes you shiver. 

You feel feverish when he groans again, when he rasps your name in a way that sounds like it was wrenched up from the recesses of his chest. Buried under soot and ash. 

"Gonna take you there," he pants, and you know him. You know Keegan. It's not a suggestion. It's a promise. "Soon."

The thought of it makes something ugly gnarl inside your chest. A possessive thing, out of place in such a moment. Between you and him, and this awful, awful world, greed has no room to grow. To burrow its roots in deep, and yet—

Yet. 

You crave him in ways that are unattainable. That belongs to a world that no longer exists in the land you roam. 

His fingers pull away, and settle on the tight flesh of your raw cunt stretched around the thick of him. His thumb brushes over your chafed, red skin, eyes softening as he coos at you. A gentle tut when he feels how wrecked, swollen you are from the brutal pounding he's giving you. 

You think he might be lenient. Merciful. Might let you pretend you have control again. But when you lift your gaze to his, eyes blurry and lachrymose, all you see is a deep, unrelenting satisfaction cut into deep slate. His pupils ripple. Deep puddles trembling in pleasure. 

"Fuck, kid." 

He punctuates his words with a slow, full roll of his hips. Slick drenches the tips of his fingers as he feeds you the thick of his cock, feeling the way you swallow him down to the base. To the root. 

"Takin' me so good."

His words are slurred, drunk off the spread of you in his lap, taking him into your willing cunt. Eyes flashing with something that prickles across your skin. It should be a warning to you, a siren. You know him enough to tell what those little flickers in his eyes mean, the shadows hidden in the canyons of blue, but he moves before the thought can take root inside the syrupy haze that clots over your thoughts. 

His legs slide up, knees bending, spreading, as he plants his feet firmly into the mattress. 

"Hold on." 

It's all he gives before he pushes up into you, cock sliding in deeper than before. 

You gasp, eyes snapping shut when he cudgels against something inside of you that has pleasure blooming in your lower belly. 

The angle is different, deeper and fuller than anything you'd ever taken before. Even riding him, sitting flush against his hips, it didn't hit that soft bundle of nerves that has fire licking at the base of your spine. 

You moan his name again, low and broken, and Keegan responds with a sloppy snap of his hips that makes your back arch in his hold, toes curling as batters into that place that makes Nirvana bleed over your synapses. 

Keegan's hand settles on your thigh, holding you steady as he bucks into you. His other hand tangles in your hair, cupped on the nape of your neck. He tugs, his nose pressing into yours. 

"You feel so good, kid," he breathes, sliding his hand down to cup your jaw in his palm. "Squeezing me so tight. Missed your pretty pussy—"

"—Feels so good, Keegan, feels so—"

His lips steal over yours in a searing kiss. Biting, blistering. He devours you whole until nothing remains but the taste of him on your tongue, in the back of your throat. It clogs all of your senses—a brutal assault of Keegan: rich, earthy. 

Like this, locked to his chest as he pistons into you, you have very little choice but to take everything he gives you. All of it.

The sounds your bodies make when he's seated in deep, the slap of his pelvis, the wet squelch of your pussy, make you dizzy. Make you keen. Whine. Your mouth drops. Toes curl. Eyes roll into the back of your head. 

The cacophony of him fucking into you over and over again fills the empty space around you, sticking to the walls, and the moss-covered floor. It bounces against the lining of your head until it throbs, pulses, and threatens to split you in two. To halve you down the middle where Keegan presses taut to the seal of your womb. 

All you can do is cling to him, hands sliding to grasp his thick, rippling forearms as he batters into you. It's sloppy, unrefined, and you've never seen him lose it like this before. 

It edges into that precipice of pleasure and pain, both admixing into a heady cocktail of bliss that roils through you. 

He trails kisses across your blistering cheek, down your neck. His breath is warm over your skin. The flash of teeth makes you gasp. 

"You're gonna cum." 

It's not a demand, or a request. It isn't a plea, a bargain. He says the words like he's relaying the time, coordinates, his position. He isn't unaffected—his voice crumbles a little over the vowels, wobbles on the syllables—but this isn't him asking you. He's telling you. 

Keegan knows your body like he knows the intricacies of his rifles, his weapons, and he knows, knows, you're going to cum around his cock soon. Can feel it in the way your nails find purchase in the firm muscles of his shoulders, the way you tighten around him like a vice. The sound of your voice when you get closer to that looming precipice he holds you over. 

He knows. 

You moan his name as liquid pleasure leaks into your marrow, and that vertiginous edge grows closer and closer. You want to warn, to tell him, but Keegan knows. 

He hushes you, mouth moulding to yours, and devouring the whimpers that seep out. His hands tighten, holding you steady as he fucks you through it, slowing his pace to the easy grind of his cock against the seal of your womb, dragging over that soft spot inside of you that makes your head spin, and eyes cloud over with bliss. 

You moan weakly into the kiss when he slides his hand back, fingers pressing once more against the taut flesh stretched around him. It's too much—the added pressure, the feeling of him bucking into you, brushing over the seam where you swallow him down—and you tilt your head back with a whimper of his name. 

"I know, kid," he grunts, teeth catching on your chin. "Gonna cum for me, yeah?" 

You can't speak, can't talk over the rush in your head, the thick spool of pleasure clotting inside your head, behind your eyelids, in your veins. Molten, liquid. You fall into him as the world around you shatters once more, erupting into white noise, static. 

Everything that isn't him—the solid press of his body, unyielding and supine under you; the weight of his hands on your flesh; the painful crescent of his nails sinking into your skin; the stretch of his cock wrenching you open, and filling you deep, deeper than you'd thought possible; the burning heat, white-hot and balmy, that soaks your being from base to empty, empty skull—is sucked out through the broken shell, and into the vacuum of nothingness where it dissolves into embers, ashes. 

All you can think, feel, is Keegan. 

He works you through it, hand still pressed against the rim of your spasming cunt, feeling the way you pulse around him. 

He moans low in his throat, the noise cutting through the gossamer of pleasure liquifying your joints into sticky molasses, and you know he's close, too. 

You push back into him, into the sloppy cants of his hips as he leaches the lingering aftershocks of your climax for his own taking, his own rapture. 

His chest shudders. Fingers tremble when they run along your skin, grasping, clenching. Keeping you tight to his body where you fit like a puzzle, and he, in turn, fills all of the empty, barren cavities inside of you, leaving no crevasse, no fibril, untouched by him. 

You want to give him everything. Everything. 

You buck into his thrusts, meeting him in the middle where he sinks home with a grunt that echoes through the hollow spaces of your ribs, and you tremble with him. Satiate yourself on his scent, his taste, the noises he makes, the feeling of his body on yours. Sweat-slicked and fever hot. You douse the burn heat of his in the inferno of your own; incandescent with the molten press of him everywhere. 

Your head drops, nose pressed to his cheekbone as you breathe in him in greedy gulps that make your lungs quiver. Filled to the brim with him. Gorged on his taste. Saturated in his scent. 

It's good. You're delirious. Mad with it. Drunk on the elixir of his briny skin, and the way he leaks into your pores, into your being.

You push yourself tighter against him until you feel his heartbeat pulsing inside of your ribcage. 

His name is ripped from your throat in needy gasps drenched in the potency of your devotion. Shrill hymns that fans over his skin until it prickles, dampening with the humidity of your breath. Stained, then, with you. 

"God, Keegan, you feel so good inside of me—" 

Slurred words tumble from your sore lips, dipped in euphoria, in bliss, as he batters clumsily into you. 

You'll ache tomorrow—already feel like one massive, liquified contusion. He might have to carry you from Yosemite to Coarsegold where Merrick and Hesh are waiting. 

They'll know, of course, when you can't stand properly without feeling the stretch of him anew. When your knees wobble and your legs shake. 

(But a part of you wants them to.)

"Gonna cum for me, Keegan?" You mewl, nails scratching at his shoulders when he grunts your name like it's salvation. Purpose. "Want you to, baby, want you to—"

His cock jerks, twitching within you, and with a choked, guttural moan, he cums inside of your fluttering pussy. Saturates you in his release that spits, plumes of warmth, against the battered, bruised seal of your womb. 

He rumbles your name again, a shattered husk of vowels, consonants, and the ecstasy that paints his timbre sends you spiralling down into an abyss of endless blue. 

Keegan's stomach flutters. The skin pulling taut as his muscles clench, seize. You feel the drag of his flesh over your quivering belly; the constellation of scars rubbing over your slick skin. Your hand falls to his shoulder, pressing against the bullet wound left behind when he perched himself in front of death for you. For you. 

His eyes slide open slowly, heavy-lidded and bone weary with the shuddering tremors of euphoria that dance between the rucked 

The tip of your nose slides over the bridge of his, and when his skin wrinkles at the featherlight touches, it feels a little bit like the scar over his heart. 

"Fuck, kid," he rasps, eyes misty and lidded. Heavy pools of mercury you could fall into if you tried hard enough. "You have no idea what you do to me."

He grabs your hand, fingers lacing through the empty brackets until every part of you is filled with him. 

Your nail catches the burn mark—a molotov cocktail when the world wasn't in shambles. His thumb brushes over yours—hot oil, perogies, back when your dad took you around America on grand adventures every weekend, and your brother would sneakily eat your fries from the McDonald's bag. 

The other snakes up your spine, tangling in your messy hair, and then his lips are on yours. Messy, wet. He gasps into your open mouth as you rock against him, working him through his undoing, his breaking. 

You hold his shattered pieces in your hands, clutched tight against your sternum, and wonder, once again, if this is what they mean when they talk about kismet. 

"Never gonna leave you again," he rasps, the words clawing up his throat. 

The raw, pulpy mess of them sits heavy between you. A promise. Promises. Broken, flayed. A crumpled heap of everything you once were in shambles. 

You think of the anger you felt before, when the heels of his palms dug into your shoulder, and he pushed. Pushed you out, away. The bitter resentment, the festering rage. 

The agony. The sorrow. 

You missed him. His stupid face. His stupid voice. Stupid hands. Stupid humour—soft, witty, and drier than Death Valley. His stupid touch, his kisses. Him. 

The loneliness carved a hole inside of you, a crater where only he could fit. 

(You sleep better when he's beside you, anyway.)

"I won't let you."

Your lips crook into a small smile, a dawning blitz over a ruined landscape, and you lean down, pressing your lips to his pulse, sliding up until you catch his lobe between the seam. 

"Still broke you," you murmur, skimming your teeth over the downy soft hairs that cover the shell of his ear. "Still won—"

His hand moves, braces against the back of your skull, the base of your spine, and then he flexes his hips beneath you. It's quick. A fluid motion. Keegan bucks you off, and rolls you under the bulk of his body within a blink. You barely have time to choke on your gasp when he's already nestled above you, eyes shining in the milky light spilling in from the moth-eaten curtains. 

"What—?"

His hips jerk into yours, cock sticky, tacky against your skin, but you feel him thicken with each slow roll he makes into you.  

He leans down, bracing his forearm on the flat pillow above your crown, eyes burning embers that spark in the dim light bleeding between the wisps of broken fog that shroud the moon. 

"My turn, kid." 

#ahhhhhhh #so much was cut of out this #so i hope it makes sense #litro just smut #omgggg #ive been in the biggest writing slump ever #so this feels lacklustre #but i tried my best #keegan p russ #call of duty keegan russ #call of duty keegan #call of duty ghosts #cod ghosts #cod keegan #cod keegan russ #keegan russ #keegan russ x reader #keegan russ x you #keegan p russ x you #keegan p russ x reader #keegan russ mut #keegan smut #cod smut

[too-many-rooks]

Spoiler warning: Long rambly notes I took while watching season 3, disclaimer that a lot of this is just character moments/lines I found interesting and initial bones of an au idea for a burgeoning, extremely self indulgent slightly-darker-Alex in season 3 wip I’ve started.

Also it was the middle of the night and I was very tired and wired out of my gourd on some mix of cheap white wine and floods of hyperfixation-sourced dopamine. Also also I only started taking notes at ep 3?

Episode 3

Alex is SUCH a better spy this season than when he began even in the first few episodes prior to SCORPIA training he’s more careful and precise and the team feels better organised - he did so well on that boat I’m so proud of my baby

I’m actually enjoying Tom and Kyra fucking about more than I expected. Tom pulling Kyra together after the boat explosion suprised me by how emotive it was. But I do want them to.. go away. Alex should more isolated/desperate/have NO other choices than SCORPIA.

Everything in Malagosto seems so staged to just see how Alex will react to it all - here’s an unlocked door, here’s an Alex sized vent and a dead spot in the cameras, what are you gonna do about it? +Alex absolutely speaks French I think he’s just not giving that away yet

Oh yes yes lingering bad touch from Julia Rothman hitting the right notes even though that costume is a WILD kaftan moment. Evil carmen sandiago/noir femme fatale aesthetic where are you I miss you so much

Ohhhh Julia saying Ian walked away and abandoned him and that was what hit him worst oh my goooooooooood

(Outfit change from julie mean day change or is she just a multiple outfits a day kinda person. Believable, I guess)

Julia’s gaslighting I ssoooo crazy ‘we trust you. We want you.’ After having his closest people not trust him, and now maybe questioning if Ian even wanted him!

Julia fucking loved this, she’s totally thrilled by her own power. Queen 👸🏻.

God Jones and the department is going THROUGH IT THIS SEASON, just suddenly surrounded by corpses

Julia : offers irrefutable proof, upsets him, then presses him to continue believing what he did before and belittling his objections - very subtle but more firm tone of voice, less motherly/accepting, very clear that the noose around Alex’s neck is always there.

She’s so delighted at the prospect of making Alex into the perfect soldier

Julia: “I want you to meet your tutor”

Me: ‘here he here he comes here he comes.’ And then I threw of my blanket, pushed myself onto my knees, and started bouncing and palm clapping in sheer delight. I basically never happy stim like this but MY GOD the flood of dopamine is IMMENSE.

More manic laughter at the start of episode 4 realising I’m about to see John and young Yassen. Nicuragua! 18 years ago!

God nervous baby Yassen with a gun

HES!! SO!!! BABY!!!

Baby boy already got his colour scheme locked down

Baby Yassen has curls - is it just the humidity or maybe does he have naturally curly hair that he straightens so he looks less cute?

Johns actor has a real resemblance to Ian (and Jack Lowden) but less so to otto

Ohoho scar moment scar moment bc Yassen was nervous and fucked up two people one bullet

“Close your eyes” as I tell these people I’m going to shoot you and have faith

God cut to adult Yassen WATCHING ALEX SLEEP LOOKING SO INTENSE

“Leave the past behind us.” “Ian rider was a professional. It was not personal it was my job.” “Think of this as a school and your dead by the end of the day” (actual honesty for the first time)

Alex not committing to being able to work with Yassen is perfect

Yassen taking Alex TO HIS KNEES so easily besties not been slowed down too much by a bullet to the chest

Soaking wet!!!!!!!!

Alex shooting scene amazing, as was Yassen bursting into his room immediately after for a murder pep talk. Alex has no privacy privileges from Yassen

Yassen removing the humanity from his targets, names/faces/lives are irrelevant, they are just blank targets. “One day you’ll have to murder them.”

“That’s not gonna happen”

Yassen *be so ffr rn face*

Really interesting to see the other side of the department covering up an agent death and lying to the family - I like the department with more humanity/emotional resonance than pure ruthlessness

Shitty Malagosto communal dorm room and matching drab grey hoodies my beloved

Shame there’s no ‘your not afraid of a little prick are you?’ ‘I wouldn’t call you that’ line. (But switching out the ‘getting vaccinated will implant you with secret nano tech that will kill you’ plottline probs a good idea)

Ooooh Julia creepily poisoning him so excited making me think of her delighting in drugging him in a cocktail of ‘let me take care of you’ ways

Yassen pulling rank to break up the fight!!

Ooh Nile wants to take down Yassen so bad.

Toms film skills coming in clutch recording/ documenting things so Alex will be taken seriously, glad to see him be… less of a dead weight to the team

Begrudgingly-impressed-at-Alex Yassen, even with the “come on that’s a bad idea”, “yeah, but!” Teenagerisms

Yassen’s core (suppressed) emotions: fear, doubt, panic

Alex: love, hope, friendship (okay dear, 🙄 but remember you’re literally becoming an assassin why are you so niave all of a sudden?)

Alex insisting John saved him bc he had compassion and was his friend and that Yassen’s rejection of that makes him lonely oh oh my heart my heart

I LOVE how much fun Nile has being evil at his job of threatening children.

Episode 5

Oh my god HIT HIM ALEX where do you think you are? How do you think you’ll actually manage to get those trainees to trust you? Stop whining and hit the man with a wooden sword, christ

Smithers (in reference to Alex) “he’s out there being a teenager because of us” *cut to Alex, very much in danger, contemplating his capacity to kill*

Julia: “no one leaves,” [scorpia, me, interchangeable to her]

mission with Yassen!

Packing for the mission with Yassen!!!

Yassen can’t read his handwriting!!!

“You’ve put… lockpick?”

“I left my last one in Nile. “

Alex bitching about his meagre gadgets at point Blanc 💯

Matching tactical turtlenecks!!!

“I don’t want you to fail. I don’t want you to die.”

Alex and Yassen are a team but Yassen gives Alex command of them oh boysieeeee

Again glad they dropped the vaccine bit: vaccines aren’t dangerous, but vaping is!!

Of on a road trip with Yassen!!

A murder road trip!

Love Kyra seeing the shot and the body - I know why it didn’t happen but I do kinda wish for a more corrupted violent Alex coerced/bargained into firing it himself

That Tom confrontation was great - I do want to see it as like a ‘your getting in my way’ intentional cruelty to push him away and keep him safe when Alex is too deep in SCORPIA to be deluded about thinking he can go home

Alex rejects intimacy with Julia and she cracks down her authority ‘no one leaves’

Ep 6

Love Alex spooky in the cemetery, SCORPIA hot on his heels

Sharing a grotty safe house together god SO GOOD

“We trust each other. You should try it sometime.”

“If it’s not emotional why do you do it?”

“Because it’s my job. (Identity/life/personal connections/sacrificed everything for) I work for SCORPIA. I’m good at it. You could be too.” Olive branch of intimacy - wants alex to be more like him, so they can be equals, can share this life that he apparently finds satisfaction in, not thinking or making decisions beyond how best to achieve his goal/finish the task(/order)assigned to him/subject himself to feeling emotions/thinking about his life beyond his attempts to depersonalise himself as just a weapon - just a professional with no emotions, and that that is fundamentally who he is. Evidently having some inconvenient feelies about Alex tho.

Oh no his delivery disguise makes him look like a caveman. Glad he took off the accessories for the Jones confrontation, his hair actually looks great there all tousled. (Beginning to realise how important characters hair is to me bc I still hate Julia’s I want some dark perfect waves this Bob is ough)

I’m really glad they settled on Yassen NOT knowing about John - he twists it that John didn’t betray him bc he had nothing to gain from being kind to him, so it wasn’t false, but he is so 100% loyal to John, eager to twist any criticism. I do wish we’d seen more of their relationship, but expecting some Russian roulette bits was overly optimistic

“I know my place” he’s IMMEDIATELY off to rescue his boy (actually, where did he go? All of that last episode I was just WHAT ABOUT YASSEN? Was he just plotting a rescue that didn’t need to happen and waiting for his boy to show up?)

Dare I say… good for blunt? Stephen dillane is just so charming I can’t help but like him. And you see some flashes of his ruthlessness like when he talks to Greif but he’s not a 24/7 conniving monster. Also Jones in charge and Alex possibly (definitely) returning to spy work in a couple of years? I like that. Totally abandoning it would have felt unsatisfying.

Loved that moment on the roof - missed opportunity for them to awkwardly wave at each other, but I’m so happy I predicted wrongly and Yassen gets to live and walk away and put down his weapons. There’s so much space for how they can reconnect in that.

#alex rider #alex rider spoilers #Alex rider season 3 spoilers

[brightnote]

Okay hear me out (again) is a revival on the rise? Secret Invasion Spoilers!

I am once again…… posting a Maria survival potential outcome (mostly because this is more fun than working and I can’t stop thinking about it)

We are going back to the bar scene in Episode One. 

So question, why did Nick and Maria not arrive together at this bar? Weren’t they staying in the same safe house, working together? Maria is just like I need a night off after getting my ass kicked by five foot G’iah which definitely made a lot of sense …. So I am just gonna head off to a bar alone in Moscow because I am not an important lady with an important never described job and I am not an American agent hiding in Russia for an unknown reason, and no one would miss me if I just took off for a night. In fact, apparently no one even misses me if I just like go rogue and stop working on whatever I was working on and go kick around with Fury.  All of this makes perfect sense, no notes. (Ok but see my notes below)

So then Nick comes later to the bar and meets Maria there but Gravik is already at the bar (no one comes in the bar behind him) So wouldn’t this suggest to you in an alleged chess themed spy thriller that Fury was watching where Gravik was going and not Gravik was watching where Fury was going? I mean we learn later that Fury knows Gravik is looking for him and wants something from him and that Gravik has worked with Fury before, and why would these two boneheads just go out to a bar in public when people are looking for Fury- unless they want to be seen.

So then Maria says OUTLOUD in PUBLIC at a BAR THAT GRAVIK IS AT that world famous spy Nick Fury has been ignoring her (!!!) and he hasn’t been the same since the blip and he needs to sit this one out. Nick Fury you cannot do your job and the only reason she called him was because Talos asked her, even though he has your number.  Again, this makes perfect sense, no notes. (But ok again, see my notes below)

- so what if Nick wasn’t ignoring Maria’s messages or calls but what if Maria and Nick just had this conversation out loud where Gravik could hear it. Then Nick can barely even play a simple game of chess against his long time bestie. What if this is all a show and it’s all an act for Gravik. And then Maria is like practically shouting “THE FURY I KNOW IS ALWAYS THREE STEPS AHEAD, STAY OUTTA THIS FIGHT MAN SIT THIS ONE OUT” (even though I called you and picked you up— makes sense. Ok.) Isn’t this conversation weird? Like, Maria, c’mon who is gonna fight the Skrulls? YOU? LITTLE MISS I LEFT MY BULLET PROOF VEST AT HOME? YOU ARE GONNA DO IT? I DON’T THINK YOU ARE GONNA DO IT. Just saying. side note: YOU ARE TELLING ME THAT VARRA AND G’IAH HAVE TIME TO PUT ON BULLET PROOF VESTS THAT THEY JUST HAVE WHILE BEING SHOT AT BUT MARIA DIDN’T WEAR ONE TO A BOMBING? MARVEL WHAT?

- so then after Gravik probably hears this whole conversation I would assume since he also seems to think Nick is some broken sad man.  Nick, Maria, and Talos, engage in what is probably the stupidest fucking plan of strategic spy geniuses anyone could imagine. They go to a planned bombing with absolutely nothing but infrared glasses apparently that they just happen to have and they are going to grab the bombs and put DIRTY BOMBS next to their human/skrull mortal bodies and also does this plot make sense for Nick Fury who is so unbelievably afraid of death that he wouldn’t come back to earth for years? YET somehow this alien-human hybrid bomb squad sans back up is gonna move these bombs away from a crowd and themselves and do it before Gravik sets them off and they will not die next to these bombs, how? Two of these bozos can’t even survive a bullet and a knife wound…apparently… so ok… what? I think everyone universally agrees that this is a stupid stupid stupid plan and it’s so obviously stupid that it genuinely confuses the entire fan base. 

But is this actually evidence of a fake out Maria? She is wearing slightly different clothes and her cut has kind of healed way more than you would think overnight.  Because what if it was okay for this version of Maria to die? It make sense that she would just run up to a bomb bag and grab it ….. because otherwise… that would be really fucking stupid and what would stop Gravik from just blowing her up if she took the bag??? [YES I KNOW THERE ARE NO BOMBS IN THERE BUT THEY DON’T KNOW THAT YET---unless they do? gasp?]

Maria also loses her infrared glasses somewhere around this point.  I thought she lost them in the bombing but she actually wasn’t wearing them then! Just saying if you know a bomb is going off like maybe protect your eyes but ok sure it’s not like she protected anything else that day so idk. Additionally, Fury saw Maria get shot and instead of shooting Gravik right away he just doesn’t? Right right, he couldn’t take the .01 second to fire a bullet at Gravik, he had to run to Maria clear his name and then abandon her body on the cold Russian ground….in front of Gravik… (ok Gravik does leave after a hot second) but hey maybe this is another show! I mean after all, Maria did think she could just strut away with a dirty bomb for some reason no one can explain. 

Maybe real Maria is in hiding and got some super skrull antidote serum and is gonna sharp shoot it into them. Maybe Maria always knew Skrull Ross was a Skrull and some shit was was up Rhodey and she just had to like pretend or something. Maybe she wanted Rhodey to see she sent a message to Fury, I mean if she sent them before why would this one suddenly cause alarm? I feel like true spy thrillers generally come full circle by the end.  And maybe Maria is who Fury was calling on his ear piece since that is like kind of their thing. And the person on the other side has to be someone expecting his call, it pretty much has to be someone on earth… probably… and Nick already said he wasn’t calling any avengers to get involved so I can’t imagine any one else who is waiting for his call…  so it could be a surprise alive Maria! But it’s probably just G’iah sigh. (lol maybe it’s ant-man jk lmao let’s just have one marvel tragedy at a time please)  

Also, the reason potentially that Maria is alive, is that her death just became very public. There’s video of it and it’s going to have to be explained a way some other than “that wasn’t Nick Fury it was just a secret alien disguised as Nick Fury murdering someone.” Because I think that is gonna raise a lot of questions that no one is going to want to answer. And the best away to navigate that whole issue? She’s not dead. SHE’S NOT DEAD. GIRL NOT DEAD. (can’t wait for next Wednesday when they reveal she’s dead dead)  

But of course they have to pretend she’s dead because Rhodey is a skrull and they didn’t know that Hill Mommas were gonna get involved and maybe that’s why Fury was an aloof idiot at the body transfer which is not a funeral btw cause Talos had a real body burning funeral and we just saw a box. 

So what if the Maria who died was a skrull who shape shifted as Maria but was wearing the Widows Veil as Maria DOUBLE SHAPE SHIFT which is why Maria didn’t turn green when she died. ALSO if Maria was actually Soren that would explain why she thought G’iah was someone suspicious….? But then of course Talos would have been a mess so probably not and  actually I think this would be kind of a terrible explanation for this— the whole thing the double shape shift included (I just thought it was funny) but Talos has to be in on a plan somehow because how did get a car to take him and Fury away from the the scene so fast? Was that always their plan? So they had some kind of tech and plan going on here? This is why the writing in these style of shows is really important because it otherwise comes across as a chaotic mess with too many plot holes?

Also, can Nick Fury really be so terrible he only gets (billion dollar) tech to protect himself, and everyone else has to fuck off and die? I mean I guess so, but this whole I have to do this alone angle is actually pretty dumb for a guy who spent his whole life bringing people together. Also side note the Rick Mason (I figured out his name) cameo was probably legit and not Maria in disguise after all. If Talos dying fixes a broken Fury, then what purpose did Maria’s death serve at all? Everyone has to die for Nick Fury to get out of his man baby spiral — half the fucking planet disappeared in the blip man, get a therapist. In fact, at this point, if this show doesn’t come full circle with a Maria reveal, I would have rather watched six episodes of Nick Fury in therapy, Dr. Katz style. 

Either the point of this show is that Fury was three steps ahead the whole time (which tracks), or Fury has gone full on ‘Maria is still alive delusional’ (like me :) ) he’s either right and he is always in even when he’s out, and that nobody calls him nick, and that he can defend the earth like him (which I think would include his closest allies but lmao sure ok) or he is just the old out of touch hanging onto the past sad sack who is so totally out it’s embarrassing and I just can’t imagine they would write a show about that. 

Marvel also really went out o the way to give Maria zero cool moments in this whole series … so far and she has so many cool ones in the Secret Invasion comics, they have to give her one!!  ALL SHE DOES IS DIE. SHE DOESN’T EVEN WIN A FIGHT AGAINST A FIVE FOOT LADY SHE RANDOMLY DECIDES TO FOLLOW. So expecting them to comeback with something AWESOME with this character is a full state of delusion that I can’t even comprehend but here I am living it and sharing it with all of you. They even took one of the coolest moments from Maria when they made her a skrull back in Far From Home (which I get they had to do but that means her only other moments are her coughing (the word) testosterone at Tony Stark and Thor (A++ moment btw) and freeing Captain America, Black Widow, and the Falcon (A) but you don’t even really see that one. So they just brought her back to die, and then blast that death on full volume in every episode? Mm nah. I don’t buy it anymore. I mean Marvel go ahead and disappoint, but it would be really cool if you didn’t. Also it would totally change the whole show in a good way. At first I thought a fake out Maria death would be cheap, but now I don’t (bias aside) I think it’s necessary.

So full disclosure on this delusion, Cobie herself has said in a number of interviews that she thinks Maria Hill is dead, “it looks real to me!” “It felt different” “but I don’t know it’s the multi-verse” and she “doesn’t know anything” about being in the Marvels etc. She also said Marvel told her “Maria was going to get shot by skrulls.” Idk i think some of these are interesting phrases but probably nothing. She also posted  a good-bye to Maria Hill on IG but deleted it 40 minutes later. Screencaps here. Interesting though that she used Maria as an LMD escaping the Skrulls. I also believe she has been giving us secret messages via her clothes but probably she didn’t even know what she was posting and was like wow look at these cool Maria action shots in the comics and posted them and then everyone freaked out because she posted Maria as an LMD escaping the Skrulls and she was like whoops gonna delete that. That’s my best guess. 

edit: actually i think there is going to be a double shape shift but it won’t be related to Maria it’s going to be G’iah shape shifting into Nick Fury with a full body widow’s veil of Fury too!  that’s why Fury mentioned the new widows veil was full body and G’iah as fake Fury is going to fight Gravik since she’s a super skrull! Bummer Maria is gone for real probably but eh this was a fun theory to rant out.

SECOND EDIT: Maybe we are going to see a flashback involving Maria and Rhodey as we are still waiting on these scenes that Maria and Rhodey supposedly have. Maybe Maria is the one who notices something is up with him from awhile ago?  I know Maria and Rhodey are buddies and it would be great if she was the one who secretly survived and saved him. You can’t tell me Fury didn’t know skrulls were high up in the US Government for sometime now. Maybe we are going to see Ross again in the last episode when everything is explained (I hope cause a lot of explaining needs to be done here?) Like there has to be a reason that Maria and skrull Ross are working in Russia they have to have more of a set up than “we open in Russia where Maria is (no reason) and she is just driving around on her Moscow Vacation but still working and Ross who is also in Russia (no reason) calls her for a pick up and surprise he dies and is a skrull! But don’t worry Talos says not really Ross fake Ross and no one investigates this and wonders about it or even brings it up again.”

If this is really what Marvel did, it would be as stupid as sending a 20+ years of experience agent into a planned bombing and without a shred of protective gear which apparently other women can get and put on in a shoot out... but the one person who probably would definitely have one... for some reason doesn’t and no one has explained this to us why... I just want everyone to know that when I saw Varra and G’iah put on those bullet proof vests I flipped the fuck out. 

#Omg I posted another one #i've gone full bananas #this is more fun than working #marvel show up and don't disappoint #maria hill #maria hill is alive #justice for maria hill #agent hill #deputy director hill #aos #agents of shield #marvel #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #secret invasion #secret invasion spoilers #cobie smulders #nick fury #samuel l jackson #talos #ben mendelsohn #g'iah #emila clarke #secret invasion theory #human alien hybrid bomb squad #little miss i left my bullet proof vest at home #girl not dead #i know it's gonna be g'iah he called but let me pretend

[ohmeadows]

very interested to hear your fu xuan thoughts now that she’s out !

first of all love her second of all i'll just do this in bullet points because my brain is soggy cereal today:

starting with her character stories, so spoilers under the cut:

she hails from the xianzhou yuque, famed for their divinations and jade abaci export, and it mentions that "centuries passed" so. she's at least, at the barest minimum, two centuries old, probably older. she ran away from the yuque to attempt and avoid a foretold destiny, namely that she would kill her teacher. indeed her teacher even says it was part of the reason why he took her on as a student.

this is interesting because it ties into her teacher's prediction that she becomes master diviner of the yuque, a destiny she defies by running away. but...

xianzhou fleet follows star calendar dating, and in 8072, third abundance war happened, a decisive year for many on the luofu. (caiyi dies in this war, as well as dan shu's love.) fu xuan, annoyed that the divination commission can't do much to help in the battle, devises a plan to use the cloudpeer telescope, putting it on the battlefield and calling down lan's arrow to raze it, winning the fight. jing yuan agrees to her plan, but takes responsibility for it. as a way to protect her.

she is willing to go down and be the one to call on lan. but no. the person who goes down with the cloudpeer telescope... is her mentor. he dies. as does many. but the battle is won.

this battle happens roughly 30 years before current timeline in-game, where while it's not confirmed 100%, we can guesstimate that we are around 8098 or 8100 SC (xianzhou reckoning, we know it's 2158 Amber Era, IPC calendar) which, sidebar, jingliu was ""killed"" by jing yuan in 7380. that's almost 700 years of the high cloud quintet survivors being tormented in various ways.

not sure of the timing of this report, but lan is on the move again.

the third war is very interesting because it left part of the hexafleet struggling to recover; luofu only recovered because of widening trade, something we see reflected in tingyun, yukong opting to work in the skyfaring commission, and aurum alley. and it was won because of fu xuan's choices.

in the time since, she seems to have come to terms with destiny being impossible to change. she writes in this letter (emphasis mine):

Let me be more straightforward here — the way the Matrix of Prescience Ultima operates is like a black box. We know that we can derive a frighteningly accurate prediction from the Chaos system by "observing our observation," but no one knows how it works nor can anyone explain it. Many, including my colleagues from the Divination Commission, consider this to be an example of how humans can change or select the future with their own power. But for me... I will interpret this from another perspective... The past, present, and future are not diachronic, but synchronic. (This statement denies the existence of time, so the use of "diachronic" and "synchronic" might be slightly inappropriate.) Every moment in the universe has been predetermined since the genesis. That is to say, it is impossible to change the future.

i find this very fascinating because we can thus also trace what that war did to her mindset and point of view; she doesn't think the future can be changed and that the universe is a deterministic one. (note that i don't think it's proof it is, as we saw with kafka and our choices in her quest, she also grapples with the question of if everything is predetermined or not. these are their point of views.)

now, some other observations and picking at her voicelines:

so, the omniscia/third eye she has is a gift from nous the erudition, also known as the wisdomwalker on the xianzhou. she writes in glimpses into the beyond that she has had at least one audience with nous, and regards them highly. (i also wrote more in-depth about that book here already, so i won't dig too deep right now.) she's had it most of her adult life, even before the third abundance war, before leaving the yuque.

despite being harsh sometimes, she's not mean. this comes across very well in march 7th's quest, i think: she does care what people think about her, but she's not about to go simpering or sucking up to get liked. i really respect that in a character, especially female? i've seen men write her off as a walking red flag of a personality, which is hilarious to me. she's a delight! just not your soft uwu waifu.

she loves her boba and milk tea. she claims it eases her constant pain from the third eye, which kind of tracks for me, i usually need to have caffeine in some form to help alleviate migraines. she likes them far too sweet for my liking, however, but she's big on teas. (it's suspected she is the one arguing that startaro tea is amazing and everyone else is just a loser and hater.)

and the pain. so, xianzhou natives, because of the abundance's blessing, are constantly healing. nous implanted a third eye into her that if it had been made by mortals, would have just been rejected. her body is constantly fighting this third eye, pushing it out, but it does not budge because of nous' powers. hence, unending pain until the day she dies. she even refers to it as an eternal punishment.

also worth noting how she's a follower of nous, while being on qlipoth's path.

her trigram talk sounds a lot like the i ching to me, and she's constantly consulting it, sometimes several times even before breakfast. implication? that she does not like surprises, perhaps. that knowing the future is her greatest security.

in march 7th's quest, i feel like we get to see a very protective side of her. she does not take lightly at having her work interfered with, even by fuli's followers, and you can see a glimmer of why she follows both qlipoth and nous here: intense desire to protect, and intense desire to know the truth at the bottom of it all, even if it makes her unhappy.

i also think her desire to be general stems from her preservation path, beyond just ambition. sure, she wants power, but to me she seems to want power to ultimately protect and guide.

ignorance is not bliss to fu xuan, to put it lightly.

she notes that the trailblazer doesn't have a trace of future destinies around them, and calls it strange. gestures.

#ask meadows anything #honkai star rail #fu xuan #i'm also extremely in love with her from a gameplay perspective #but that is a whole nother post #anyway i rambled on for too long

[normal-about-the-dca]

Going through your blog since I came across a lovely post with Luna and Moon and now! Obsessed with Robots in Ponyville!

So I have a few questions and feel free to answer as many or as little as you want!

How does DCA react to colourful, talking, magical ponies?

Is the virus present here and does that affect much of the story and is there any effort to help get rid of it?

What role do they get (ie childcare, baking, etc) and where do they live during their time in Equestria?

Whats Twilights initial reaction and if this happens post Equestria Girls does she write to have any input from Sunset about these human looking robots?

Since we have an idea of Luna reaction/relationship with Moon whats it like with Sun? And how does Celestia react/interact with either of them?

Thank you so much for an amazing idea to brainrot over!

Anon I am BITING YOU!!! I AM BITING YOU (POSITIVE)!!!! I'll answer with a bulleted list under the cut so as to not clog people's dashboards with a super long post. I am SO EXCITED TO TALK ABOUT IT!!!

Okay! Both are honestly terrified at first, but they react in different ways. Sun is the first to encounter the ponies and Moon's later direct encounter is informed by his memory of Sun's. Sun is a people pleaser, so he seems like he's going with the flow. He's not. He's just biding his time until he can find a way out of this mess. Moon decides to cause as many inconveniences as he can because he's not sure if the ponies are being genuine in their attempts to help them. He operates under a "you can't hurt me if I hurt you first" mindset.

The virus is very much still present! It's not as intense as it was in the Pizzaplex since the Daycare Attendant is no longer connected to the network, but it did fundamentally change them. The effects of the virus play a big role in both Sun/Moon's arcs. If the can get rid of it or not? Time will tell.

They live in Ponyville for the time being! They don't intend to have a permanent residence, so they kind of live with each of the Mane 6 for a while... Minus Rainbow Dash and not just because she lives in the clouds.

Twilight is FASCINATED. Equestria has never seen machinery as advanced as the DCA let alone anything that runs without magic. She's read about the multiverse theory of course, but seeing living(?) proof of it is mind blowing! I'll be honest, I didn't even consider EQG. I'm thinking Equestria Girls happens much later in the Robots in Ponyville timeline, if only for my own peace of mind. So Twilight has no idea what humans are.

Sun is very wary of both princesses. Luna because of the similarities between Nightmare Moon and his own lunar counterpart, and Celestia because he cannot understand her own actions. Moon kind of resents Celestia for what she did to Luna all those centuries ago, even if her sister has forgiven her. Celestia, like Luna, sees herself and her sister in the animatronic's relationship and wants to help them. She is annoyed by Sun's attitude, but doesn't show it most of the time. He may or may not occasionally manage to get under her skin.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING!!!! There's so much more I wanna get into, but that would veer into spoiler territory. I am currently writing a fic for the au, slow going as it may be, and I don't want to spoil it all before it's done. Thank you again for the wonderful ask you made my day!!

#ask #normal beetle fic #robots in ponyville #beetle chittering #AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THANK YOU AGAIN I HAVE BEEN *DYING* TO TALK ABOUT IT #anonymous

[traumxrei-archive]

【 book 6 pt. 2 thoughts ! (4) 】

woagh a whole post for JUST 6-66 ?? more likely than you think !! (also this is legit just 6-66 until the 14th node / sector 6 for each group bc. it was getting so long)

[ spoilers for 6-66 under the cut ! ]

✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦

[ about : pome tower, START ! ]

ok i'm starting off with pomefam after playing eenie meenie miney moe bc ya boi indecisive. it's quite interesting that the door to the elevator didn't open, considering ortho said he would "play" with all of them. ok omg nvm the door opened.

the fact that ortho's quantifying everyone's resistance against their plan as a part of a game, as a part of "NRC quest", despite the fact that they will SURELY die first if the phantoms are released into the world... it's kinda morbid, bc it shows that ortho can't think that far into the future, and sees the world in an undeniable black and white. (also...what the hell is idia thinking ? trying to free og ortho ???)

o man, not star rogue again :'))) the way i died SO FAST from the bullets ough. but i think we're supposed to Not Beat It. and vil being like "the insufferable way you're speaking reminds me of idia..." and ortho's like all sunshine and rainbows because "i take after my brother, hehe~" like guys. help.

....ME WHEN I'M STRUGGLING WITH STAR ROGUE AGAIN. i swear to god i'm just bad at dodging when the boss is there T^T update: after playing this shit a fourth time, I WON !!

[ about : pomefam's heart to heart (?) ]

ok ppl might think that vil is being harsh, but literally everyone else kinda had their vice housewarden / second in command put in charge in their absence (jade, trey, kalim, ruggie...) but pome's only got rook. and even then, rook left someone else in charge in the middle of all the chaos. as a vice housewarden, rook's responsibility was towards making sure that the pomefiore students were okay + running the dorm in vil's stead until he returns.

and the way he scolds epel n yuu too, obviously he's not saying it because he wants to berate them. it's mostly because had something went wrong (and there was a HIGH chance of something going wrong) then it probably would've been epel or yuu who got hurt...

he makes a distinction between what he says as housewarden and as vil schoenheit and sniff. he was HAPPY. oughhh he was so happy to see them wtf and people say that vil hates epel and rook ?? guys where is your proof, look at how happy he is to see them !!

guys. i'm not saying anything. but i'm also saying everything. bc A HUG AND KISS FROM VIL SCHOENHEITTTT OUGH UGH AUGH *minecraft damage noises* guyssss the hearts the hearttttttsssss the way he kissed yuuuu aaaaaa

this line has me passing aaawwwwayyyyyyy aaaaaaaaa

(also i've noticed, vil stopped correcting epel's accent !! he swaps between the formal speech and his accent a bunch of times and vil's just chilling. probably because they don't have their deal anymore from back when sdc was a thing.)

[ about : epel's UM talk ]

i love just how proud rook and vil are of epel's achievements in STYX ^^ like, they very obviously manifested their own UMs earlier than epel, but they don't judge, and instead they're just very elated for him >:DD rook being disappointed that his eyes weren't cameras bc he wanted to show vil epel's UM awakening is such a mood jskfjkdsf

[ about : phantoms ]

lowkey, the first phantoms are tiny ? are these how normal phantoms are supposed to look ? bc all the ob gang's phantoms are HUGE and they have real bodies too, not just the blot head or whatever the glass vial part is called. (also i think the bottom phantom might be based off king midas ? crown and gold bars n all. idk about the first guy)

[ about : the underworld ]

"it's easy to get into the underworld, but once you're in, there's no getting out." does that mean that somehow og ortho got through the door of the underworld ? and bc they can't open the door, they couldn't get him out ever ? i think it's true bc og ortho says "everyone's gonna be so surprised when i make my return." meaning he's probably been waiting for a chance to escape this whole time.

[ about : grim sniff ]

I MISS GRIM....WHERE IS SON.... the way they're talking about him,,,they're all so endeared and they hope he's okay. rook reassuring yuu that grim wasn't conscious when he attacked them bc he knows grim would never attack yuu. and grim being picky about getting his nails trimmed,,,,just like a cat frrrr

[ about : rookvil first meeting lore...? ]

NOT US GETTING LORE COCKBLOCKED BY ANOTHER CONTAINMENT FACILITY— I'LL BE COMING BACK HERE WHEN THEY FINALLY TELL THE STORY

[ about : second trial ]

HUHH ??? ORTHO KIDNAPPED A PERSON AND LOCKED THEM UP WITH A KEYCARD ??? THE FUCKKKKKK—

ok wait let's think calmly. how the hell did underworld ortho manage to grab someone...? all researchers are either at HQ or fleeing to the edge of the city, so how did he conveniently get someone AND manage to lock them in a phantom cage..... the charon's could've helped ig but they're all set to terminate so this is sus indeed....

I FUCKENKNEW IT !! SHE WAS A PHANTOM WHO'S ACTING ALL ALONG !! as we progress further down, we're gonna meet bigger and more dangerous phantoms, so it makes sense that some phantoms are able to mimic a human's cries for help in order to trick them. and they're growing more sentient too, she could voice her thoughts.

[ about : earth titan ]

wowowowow talk about scary looking !! tbh its interesting that there's three elements for earth, water, and fire, but no null phantom (e.g. a light or dark phantom).

[ about : thunderspear !! ]

tbh it looks so fucken sick like i would want to have one of these irl. also i love how the code is titanomachia,,,,all the mythology parallels are NOT escaping me. titanomachia was the series of wars between the titans and the olympians, so it's fitting that they're fighting the earth titan with "jupiter's spear".

[ about : pomefam celebration !! ]

LET'S GAURRRR THEY DID ITTT !! also not epel's stomach grumbling skull emoji,,,,,it HAS been hours since they've had food but it's so funny :')))) i hope they have a good and restful picnic after all that hard work they went through <333

✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦

[ about : azurid tower, START ! ]

ooo it's interesting to hear that blot can interfere with using magic,,,,azul mentions that they can't use flight magic due to blot density... also i absolutely love how the beginning is legit azul just having a monologue jKSJDFKSJS my boy i love you <333 and riddle just. not listening. and going ahead....i wonder if this team is gonna be okay. they seem to be the type to disagree a lot so what would happen...?

azul: hmm, why would ortho make the elevator turn on ? what an obvious trap that even an idiot will avoid....

riddle, not an idiot: so the enemy is offering us a way into their stronghold....alright, i accept their challenge

azul: NO WAIT—

god not riddle. getting riled up enough to try and blast through the doors as if they aren't about to encounter monsters left and right after they clear the elevators :'))))) riddle i love you and all, but your foresight needs work.

[ about : will they ever stop arguing ? ]

help me please someone stop them from arguing for one second before they get blasted into pieces or something sniff :')))) bc this exchange was about to make me throw my phone sjkfjskdf like guys. there's merit in what both of you are saying, but i'm the type to be more cautious so i agree with azul on this one, riddle TT^TT

at this point both their prides are gonna get in the way of making sound judgements, riddle might run himself dry on magic, and azul's gonna have to help him out or else they both d word. they're both leaders, so obviously none of them prefer to take orders from others.

[ about : riddle got hurt ]

arghhh what kind of fanfiction trope kdrama arc are they having rn !! the arguing, and then riddle getting injured but still insisting that he did it bc he has to protect azul, and then azul getting angry bc he doesn't want to be seen as dead weight, and wants to be seen as equals....give these guys an oscar already :')))

[ about : AZUL.... ]

NOT HIM CALLING RIDDLE WEAK AND THEN HARDHEADED WITHIN THE SPAN OF TWO SECONDS.....

[ about : researcher ]

omg there's a legit researcher in here this time, and ortho used one of the armored dudes to get her down there.....interesting indeed, he's already willing to hurt innocent people who AREN'T standing in his way just to play his game.

[ about : magma titan ]

them working together to spear down the magma titan...about damn fucking time :')))))) riddle aiming while azul keeps it steady bc he's stronger !!! finallyyy !!!! teamwork !!!

[ about : !! their celebration !! ]

THEY'RE SO HAPPY WAHHH !! riddle screaming for joy and azul joining him omg please this is the teamwork i was looking for >:DD they highfived ?? or hugged or something ?? friendship is actually friendshipping frrrr and then instantly being reminded of their image and springing apart,,,,typical of them two T^T

✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦

[ about : leojami ]

and finally, team leojami is last. first of all, NOT LEONA YEETING ONE OF JAMIL'S HAIR ACCESSORIES DOWN TARTARUS ???? HELP MEEEE ????? JAMIL'S FACE. HE LOOKS SO NOT PLEASED. also i love how fake jamil's comeback was and how leona's outright "i don't buy that shady ass smile for a SECOND—"

and oh ?? the doors to their elevators was open ?? these two are the smart-asf duo, so the fact that they knew ortho was waiting for them doesn't surprise me. (also even with no obligation, jamil keeps trying to protect leona. like leona's more than capable but ig his past tutelege is popping out rn)

NAH. tell me why leona just threatened to rip out the shrouds' hair and ortho went "we're really REALLY looking forward to this, after all." WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN RRRAHH (and the emo music ?? hellooo ??)

[ about : video game mentality ]

yea like...this whole time, ortho's been treating this like a game. as if the world isn't actually real life. he talks about "resetting" the world by letting all the phantoms out and overrunning it with blot. but he did not ONCE talk about the amount of chaos and destruction that it would cause.

it's like...the best way i can explain is it's like playing gta and stealing cars. obviously you wouldn't do it in real life, but bc it's a game and the game is fiction, you do it anyway. and sometimes you'd make a save point, try something silly, get killed, and then respawn again at your save point. but that's obviously NOT possible in real life.

he didn't even stop once to think that these people he's calling "friends" are probably going to get killed by the phantoms if they do escape OR the fact that when they're getting injured fighting these phantoms, that they're actually getting injured. or even the fact that he himself might get killed, or that idia might get killed.

in reality, this isn't a "game" to anyone other than underworld ortho.

[ about : jamil's uneeded considerations ]

yk at this point i was expecting leona to get mad at jamil for trying to coddle him ? but he hasn't. which is interesting. bc jamil keep saying things like "get behind me" or "i'll protect you" but leona doesn't really...need it. royalty as he is, leona's probably got far better training that jamil has, so he'd be just as if not more competent in battle than jamil is. so i was expecting him to throw his weight a little bit, but he's been pretty calm and giving logical reasons as to why he shouldn't do that.

(e.g. jamil offering his jacket bc they're both weak to cold, and leona saying it'd be more troubling if jamil came down with a cold and couldn't move, rather than just leaving it at no.)

obviously jamil's trying to avoid anything happening to leona (e.g. injury) bc he would be "blamed" for it if it DID happen (i.e. it'd be his failure to protect leona) since he's the second prince and all....but holy hell man, this guy's your senior, and you read the report about him, he's hella strong, so dw abt him bestie

[ about : worried about school ]

jamil being worried because kalim and mal are the only housewardens left behind....vs leona "they can take care of themselves" kingscholar. need i remind you guys this is the guy who before he was taken away said "ruggie, savanaclaw's in your hands until i get back. don't let it fall into ruin." like. pfft. who is he trying to fool ?? (obviously jamil, he has to keep up his "idgaf" facade but it's still funny to me)

[ about : cross ?? wind ?? ]

wtf are these guys, they're analyzing WIND patterns while walking and having conversations ?? the fuck ??? and then them noticing the tiny ass crack from far away ???? ok if i had to be stuck with anyone other than pome ig my safest bet would be these guys,,,,,

[ about : leona about jamil's one-man act ]

ok here we go, they're "arguing" though it really does pale in comparison to azul and riddle's arguements... (azurid are like the loud screaming at each other type of arguers and leojami are the quiet and logical type of arguers)

leona acknowledges that jamil is strong, but he also cautions against being reckless,,,,especially because they've both overblotted before, it'd be a nightmare if they get contaminated again. and obviously, they're a team. if jamil goes down then leona's left to fight on his own, which would be a sure loss.

[ about : containment facility 1 ]

shit fuck shit shit they were so smart that they made ortho make their FIRST containment facility harder than it had to be. (also not leona...calling the shroud family dour....i'm not laughing. i'm not !!) they're legit the only group that had the whole password thing,,,i'm crying on their behalf :')))

[ about : do ur best !! ]

THAT'S SO FUCKING FUNNY. but also oh my gooooddd ortho knows JUST how to annoy each person and each group huh. making leojami go through all of that for their password to basically just be "do ur best tee hee" is just. evil.

[ about : jamil WHEEZE ]

NOW WHY WOULD HE SAY IT LIKE THAT I LOVE THEM SO MUCH SJFKJSDKF i never knew i needed jamil and leona to interact this bad but now that i have it i'm having the time of my life. two of my faves who are just. similar in some ways but a lot different. this is giving me so much serotonin.

but jamil is right, the earlier ortho had only the purest of intentions with his every action. even when he was indirectly making fun of leona, he just meant that he thought leona would enjoy the game more bc he's a lion beastman, not bc he's a cat.

obviously us as the reader know that this isn't "just ortho" and that it's underworld ortho, who used to be a human, i'm assuming. thus why he got angry at leona calling him a robot. meanwhile, normal ortho would probably start boasting abt how he's the most advanced and capable robot bc he knows and doesn't care that he's a robot.

thus furthering my "underworld ortho is actually idia's real brother who died a bunch of years ago and got stuck in the underworld and current ortho is just an android modeled after him made by idia, but now underworld ortho somehow took control of current ortho" theory.

[ about : arguing :00 ]

ok i keep commenting about their arguing. but man it took a LOT for leona actually to get mad at jamil for something. he only really started getting mad when jamil got in the way of his "plan". which, to be very fair, he should've said something. bc jamil doesn't have beastman senses, how was HE supposed to know that leona sensed one and that he had a plan to combat it ?

also not jamil hiding his injury.....sir...... and not him NOT getting leona's words and continuing the "i will protect you" act pLEASE— tbh from leona's words it's not very clear, but he's trying to work together here. like he's trying to increase their chances of a winning fight, and yea communication is key, but jamil keeps ignoring his words in favor of "protecting" him.

[ about : containment facility 2 ]

oh god, here we go, why do we have another trial :'))) how did this get worse ?? first, using a phantom that can mimic human voices. and then putting a REAL researcher into a cage (no phantom, but with a charon armor). and now ?? tying a guy to a cage and making him almost drown in coolant ??? with the CABLE that controls the openings and closings of the facility ????

they...they really pissed ortho off huh.

[ about : stand up. ]

are you. telling me this guy was sitting the whole time or something. instead of just standing up in the water ? shakes him 1000 times....head in hands.

[ about : king's roar appreciation ]

nah are we all gonna ignore how leona was able to precisely turn ALL the ice in the air and around them into sand ??? the amount of control that would take oml, how much did he train to be able to do that ??

[ about : thunder spear timeee ]

jamil making the call not to register his handprints because he KNOWS he can't handle the magical energy rolling off the spear and choosing to rely on leona,,,,helloooo we have some developmentttt ^^ jamil's not sacrificing uselessly in this case !!

jamil realizing that he made the right call, bc if he registered himself he'd probably need leona's help to aim/hold it up. meanwhile leona saying he can "barely hold it up" vs the others who had like. 2-3 people helping them prop it up and aim,,,,sir i think you're plenty powerful enough.

also comparing the pictures to the ones above is making me throw up, bc the others are like. holding it a meter-ish above the ground. meanwhile leona has it hoisted up high above his head with PERFECT AIM mind you.

whew made it to recharging all the spears ^^ (technically the others minus leojami have been done for days but shhhh) see you again later ig sjkfdjskf

#/trau rambles #rrahhh more book 6 be upon ye #twst book 6 #twisted wonderland #i'm too tired to type out the characters #but did you see my boys (leojami) #they're so cool #i loved watching them do their thing <333

[belletroxa]

an easier one for you: sam or max and you can only choose one and it will be as if the other never existed

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️

⚠️ LONG ASS POST ABOUT SILLY CARTOON DOG AND RABBIT ⚠️

⚠️ I'M LOOKING WAY TOO DEEP INTO THESE BASTARDS SOMEBODY SAVE ME FROM OVERANALYZING THESE BITCHES ⚠️

🚨⚠️ YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. ⚠️ 🚨

"an easier one."

"an. easier. one." is what he said

how do you feel after ruining me huh.

do you feel good.

bet you do.

DO YOU KNOW HOW THIS CHOICE PHISICALLY HURTS ME. I'M NOT EVEN KIDDING, I'M SO PARASOCIAL ABOUT THEM THAT I LITERALLY FEEL LIKE I'VE BEEN STABBED RIGHT HERE IN MY CHEST AT THIS VERY MOMENT. I LITERALLY DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO START CHOOSING. BECAUSE I'VE SEEN BOTH SIDES OF THEM BY THEMSELVES AND LIKE. DUDE LET'S JUST START WITH THE FACT THAT MAX IS CANONICALLY DEPRESSED AND LITERALLY HATES HIMSELF. BRO IGNORES HIS SUICIDAL URGES BECAUSE SAM EXISTS AND IS THERE FOR HIM. HE CANNOT STAND TAKING LIFE SERIOUSLY AND WOULD LITERALLY BE A DEPRESSED HOBO LIVING ALONE IN THE STREETS WITHOUT SAM. HE WOULD LITERALLY PROBABLY HAVE A CRIMINAL LIFESTYLE AND STILL FEEL PURPOSELESS BECAUSE THE WHOLE REASON HE FEELS HAPPY IS BECAUSE HE HAS SAM'S COMPANY AND CAN COUNT ON HIM WHENEVER FOR ANYTHING AT ALL. THERE'S NO MAX WITHOUT SAM DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME I MEAN THAT LITERALLY HE WOULD NOT HANDLE IT WITHOUT HIM AND EVEN IF HE DID HE WOULD NOT BE HAPPY HE LITERALLY IGNORES HIS MORALS AND HIS POTENTIAL TO BE BETTER BECAUSE THAT WOULD NOT MAKE HIM HAPPY, WHAT TRULY MAKES MAX HAPPY IS JUST HANGING OUT AND HAVING FUN WITH SAM. HE IS ALWAYS MAKING JOKES BUT HIS ACTIONS SHOW THE OPPOSITE OF THE OVERCONFIDENT PERSONA HE PORTRAYS THROUGHOUT THE GAMES AND COMICS, ALTHOUGH HE ACTUALLY IS INSANE THE FACT MAX IS NEVER EVER CONCERNED FOR HIS OWN SAFETY IS BECAUSE HE LITERALLY DOES NOT CARE OR HAVE APPRECIATION FOR HIS OWN LIFE, THAT IS LITERALLY SUICIDAL BEHAVIOR, THE ONLY REASON HE STILL IS NOT DEAD IS BECAUSE OF SAM AND THAT IS SHOWN SEVERAL TIMES THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE, HE STILL ONLY PUTS HIMSELF THROUGH THESE DANGEROUS SITUATIONS IS BECAUSE HE KNOWS (AND EXPECTS) SAM TO SAVE HIM, AND HE IS A 100% CORRECT. MAX LITERALLY ONCE SAID, AND I QUOTE: "I KNOWN YOU'D TAKE A BULLET FOR ME SAM", AND HE COULD NOT BE MORE CORRECT. MAX NOT CARING FOR HIS WELLBEING IS LITERALLY NOT BECAUSE OF SELFISHNESSS OR THINKING HES UNTOUCHABLE, IT'S BECAUSE OF HOW SAFE SAM MAKES HIM FEEL, SOME COULD SAY "OH BUT HE IS BEING SELFISH BECAUSE HE THINKS SAM'S LIFE REVOLVES AROUND MAX", BUT THE IRONIC PART IS THAT THAT'S KINDA TRUE!!! THEIR LIVES REVOLVE AROUND EACHOTHER!!! BECAUSE THEY'RE THE ONES WHO MAKE TEMSELVES TRULY HAPPY AND ACCOMPLISHED!!!

OH AND. HAHAHAH. FUN FACT. BUNNIES CAN DIE WHEN THEY'RE ALONE. THAT'S RIGHT. THEY GET DEPRESSED AND DIE.

ha. hahahah. ooooh but that's still NOT JUST IT. SEASON 3 SHOWS A LOOOOOT OF MAX, EVEN THOUGH WE MIGHT NOT REALIZE IT....

WARNING:

⚠️SAM & MAX TELLTALE/SKUNKAPE SEASON 3 THE DEVIL'S PLAYHOUSE SPOILERS AHEAD ⚠️

ONE MIGHT SAY MAX "DOESN'T CARE FOR SAM BECAUSE HE IS SELFISH", AND EVEN THOUGH THATS WHAT MAX WANT US ALL TO THINK, IT IS NOT TRUTH. IN FACT, HIS BEHAVIOUR AND ACTIONS SHOW THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE. A LITERAL PROOF OF WHY MAX IS NOT SELFISH IS BECAUSE HE LITERALLY SACRIFICED HIS LIFELONG DREAM OF DYING WITH SAM FOR SAM'S OWN LIFE AND WELLBEING! AND NOT ONLY FOR SAM! FOR THE ENTIRE CITY! WHEN MAX CHOSE TO SACRIFICE HIMSELF, HE SHOWED THAT HE CARES, WHICH IS THE LITERAL OPPOSITE OF WHAY HE WANTS EVERYONE THE THINK, BUT HIS ACTIONS ARE LIVING PROOF THAT HE'S NOT THE OVERCONFIDENT SELFISH LONE WOLF HIS PERSONA PORTRAYS, BUT ACTUALLY THE OPPOSITE!!! CAN YOU THINK OF ANYTHING MORE SELFLESS THAN A LITERAL SACRIFICE FOR OTHERS' LIVES??? WELL I CAN'T. LIKE BITCH HE LITERALLY NOT ONLY SEVERED ANY CHANCES OF SAM SAVING HIM, BUT HE LITERALLY GAVE UP HIS DREAM OF DYING WITH SAM AS WELL!!!!! AND REGARDLESS OF IF MAX COULD COMPREHEND THE SITUATION, HE FELT SO SAFE WITH SAM IN THE MOMENT HE REALIZES SELFLESSNESS!!! MAX COULD ACTUALLY COMPREHEND THE SITUATION A LITTLE BIT AND AGAIN, HIS ACTIONS ARE WHAT SHOWS THIS, FOR ANSWERING SAM'S CALLS, FOR SMILING WHEN SAM BROUGHT UP MEMORIES THEY SHARED IN THE CITY... AND. MAINLY. I THINK WHAT SHOWS HOW MUCH HE CARES ABOUT SAM, IS THE NEED THE ALTERNATE-DIMENSION MAX HAD TO LITERALLY TIME TRAVEL TO ANOTHER REALITY TO FIND A SAM FOR HIM, BECAUSE HE LITERALLY WOULD NOT STAND LIVING WITHOUT HIM, AND DOESN'T TAKE THAT AS A PLAUSIBLE CHOICE.

⚠️ SPOILERS OVER! ⚠️

you can go on now! :)

anyways... the center of everything that surrounds max:

sam.

sam is essentially the reason why despite everything, max is still happy. sam is the one and only person that has always been there for max. the one that always knows what he's thinking and the only one that truly understands him. while max is portrayed to be the more extroverted of the two,sam is the one who is actually able to actually talk to other people and even befriend them! i know this seems like an useless fact considering the current topic, but if we actually consider how max is supposed to be kind of an extrovert (which i seriously doubt he is), let's just see would would be his social life without sam: oh that's right, HE BASICALLY WOULDN'T HAVE ONE, THAT'S RIGHT, THE BITCH WOULD HAVE NO FUCKING FRIENDS. SAM IS LITERALLY THE ONLY ONE MAX CAN COUNT ON! and the only friends max ACTUALLY made WERE BECAUSE OF SAM. but if you consider that if max didn't keep playing thevideogame SAM made at prom night, and considering the fact sam wouldn't exist if i chose max, max would've become way more social after that prom, as it's shown in his flirty behavior when talking to momma bosco, he would probably attract dozens of girls and be so popular amongst everyone, but would he be happy?

not really... :(

anyways, i think sam might have made max more introverted than he could've been (and pls let's thank him for it, I CAN'T IMAGINE the possibility of max being a straight rizz-and-bitches-haver motherfucker in an alternate reality...), and we know that, when max suffers from lack of sam, he becomes lonely. theres nobody there for him anymore.

if we look back into the cartoon for a second, we can see that sam and max's relationship means a LOT to max. the cartoon max is UNDOUBTEDLY the sweetest version from the rest of the medias max appears on, and therefore, probably the most expressive one as well, that way we can see max express how his relationship with sam means so much to him, to the point that if they weren't friends, max's life would be PRETTY GOD DAMN TERRIBLE!-

DON'T GET ME WRONG! sam WILL be depressed without max aswell, but to some extent, he can go on. meanwhile, max is basically not able to function properly without sam, and ends up in bad places.

AND AGAIN: DON'T GET ME WRONG! that does NOT mean sam loves max ANY LESS! he cares about max just as much as max cares about him, and, as sam is way better than max at portraying his emotions, since in the games we always play from HIS point of view and know HIS perspective about basically EVERYTHING. and it is CLEARLY shown in LITERALLY EVERY PIECE OF MEDIA OF THIS FRANCHISE, JUST HOW IMPORTANT MAX IS TO SAM, they both end up being open about how they love eachother, even if they arent open about ALL of their stuff, there isn't a single moment where these two doubt that the other cares about them. they openly know how much the other cares about them. sam just expresses it better in every media, while max is a little more close in relation to that, because he doesn't like taking things seriously and showing empathy, he thinks of love as a weakness, hence the persona he portrays being a complete sociopath that does not care for anything that does not involve being hilariously unhinged, he portrays his mental instability as a complete joke, because that's what he thinks he is, a pure comic relief, which is not wrong, but he takes that role too seriously, to the point that he thinks showing humanity can be considered as unfunny, and, therefore, not relevant. but still, as i said, his actions show how important sam is to him.

more the devil's playhouse spoilers later in this section because it is literally SUCH A COMPLEX SEASON i'm literally OBCESSED with it i could talk about it for HOURS, this season literally changes the perspective of the characters completely, we see a WHOLE NEW SIDE OF THE PROTAGONISTS THAT WE HAVE NEVER GOTTEN SO INTO IT BEFORE, hence the reason this fucking game rented an apartment in my fucking mind since like i think two years now and it refuses to get the FUCK out. it makes you think and it makes you care SO MUCH MORE about the characters and it's SO WELL WRITTEN UGH I LOVE SEASON 3 SO MUCH. and c'mon, it's clear the main focus of season 3 is sam and max's relationship (hence why i love this season so much, besides it being really good of course), this game explores how much they help, care and generally NEED eachother. and this is done both in a subtle and in a direct way, you've gotta look a bit more into max to truly understand him as a character, in special, you've gotta look a bit more into his super-ego, which reveals a WHOLE other side of max we didn't know before. meanwhile, the way they portray sam's point of view about max is generally the same as this franchise does in every piece of media.

he's openly very worried about him, worried he'll lose him, he does everything to save max every time, because he also cannot be truly happy without his little buddy... :(

in every piece of media, sam is portrayed to go through basically every stage of grief every time he's separated from max (god they're so codependent they literally joke about it themselves LMAO), in the unfinished comic where max dies for example (please purcell finish that comic i'm desperate), sam seems completely purposeless at the final panel. (which happens SO MUCH THROUGHOUT THIS FRANCHISE, I SWEAR THIS MOTHERFUCKER DIES SO MUCH---)

oh and by the way:

⚠️ MORE SEASON 3 SPOILERS AHEAD!!! ⚠️

⚠️ BEWARE!!! ⚠️

ok so, speaking about max's deaths, i GOTTA talk about season 3, and how it expresses the loneliness of sam PERFECTLY to whoever's playing. it portrays how much sam misses max, because WHOEVER'S PLAYING STARTS MISSING HIM TOO!! i mean, two whole seasons of this duo, to suddently be separated for a whole episode, go back to normal, then spend ANOTHER WHOLE EPISODE WITHOUT MAX TOO?? HOW CAN WE NOW MISS MAX! how can't we miss their conversations, miss their jokes, and just miss their relationship in general! it just feels... wrong, to not have max be there around sam. and that's probably what the game wants us to feel! it makes us understand the rage he feels after losing his little buddy in episode three! and it makes us understand the depression and panic sam goes through episode 5, and the NEED to bring him back NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCES! it's not JUST to save the city. sam NEEDS max back. you play the game and care about them because they made you laugh, but, when things get serious, all the player wishes is to go back to normal, so you can have the good time you had with these characters before, you NEED sam to get max back, because you KNOW sam NEEDS him. you want them to be together. you want them to be okay. you want a happy ending, because c'mon THEY'RE SAM & MAX! THEY DESERVE A HAPPY ENDING! c'mon, every episode ends up with sam saving the day (max helping of course, but mainly there to be a funny little guy who also serves as a prop), and then they both end up happily ever after! but... this season is a little more complicated. sam's main priority this season was to have max be ok. he wanted to protect him, max went through such bad stuff in this season that weren't even max's fault, so all sam wants is for him to be okay! max doesn't deserve to suffer! and sam feels as if he HAS to protect him. since max doesn't seem to be able to do that by himself.

but... the twist is...

for the first time in this franchise

sam fails.

he fails to keep it all together as always, he fails to solve it all in a way that would make everyone happy.

he fails to save his little buddy. (fuck i'm getting teared up)

and BOY...

does sam feels guilty.

they saved the city, but... at what cost?

max's life, and, consequently, sam's happiness.

max is sam's sun. he wants him to be okay... he needs HIM in general. and he's always sure he's managed to make sure his partner's fine. he literally made a solemn vow to protect max at whatever cost.

but not this time.

then...

the credits roll.

he lost his little buddy. and he thinks it's his fault.

....

nAH SIKE MAX FROM AN ALTERNATE DIMENSION WHERE SAM DIES USES THE TIME MACHINE TO GO BACK TO A REALITY WHERE SAM IS ALONE SO THEY CAN BE TOGETHER AGAIN

but... when max tries to joke about it and treat like it's all a joke...

both remain silent. and max realizes it's not a joking matter. its probably the toughest situation both had to go through. and they know it.

usually they joke about things, since that's their way of communicating, they never take anything seriously, they're always trying to be funny to make the other laugh (insert banang gag here) because their partner's happiness makes them feel achieved.

but this time it's not like this.

they keep quiet for some really long seconds...

theeeen they come back to normal!

the relief that comes to everyone, sam, max & the player, when they come back to joking and just being silly goofy little guys, i can't even begin to explain how relieving it is to have sam & max back! their dynamic! their conversations! their chemistry! it's just immaculate.

one could say "they're repressing their emotions! they should talk about everything they went through! not just ignore all of that and move on!"

but i don't think so.

even though sam is known for comically over-explaining stuff, and max is known to need stuff being explained to him, due to his fish memory and alienation of everything that surrounds him...

they don't need to talk now. they both know what they went through. and both know how awful it is.

they know themselves so well to the point the don't need to talk about how much they love and care for eachother...

they already know. :)

oh i just remembered i was being angsty about them being separated so hey fun fact after the season 3 finale sam is forced to live the rest of his days knowing that his max is dead! and live with an extremely flawed alternate timeline copy who doesn't remember anything from the last three years of their lives! but he's fine with it because he was genuinely about to snap without max so he can't do much about it lmao that's how much he needs max and doesn't complain about the alternate version because he know his little buddy ALSO has been through a LOT.

lmao sorry i couldn't resist i had to be angsty for at least a bit more

⚠️SPOILERS OVER!!⚠️

back to normal programming! >:3

ok not gonna lie i'm kinda tired of writing about how much they love eachother because COME ON MAN we ALL KNOW how they both care and need for one another.

oh wait i had an ask didn't i?

ok lemme check it again wAIT FUCK NO-

THERE CAN'T BE SAM WITHOUT MAX THEY BOTH ARE MADE FOR EACHOTHER THEY'RE A TWO IN ONE PACKAGE THEY CAN'T BE TRULY HAPPY WITHOUT ONE ANOTHER

DO YOU KNOW WHAT SAM'S PERSONAL HELL IS? YEAH THAT'S RIGHT. BEING WITHOUT MAX. SAM WOULD DO ANYTHING TO HAVE MAX WITH HIM FOREVER AND MAX WOULD TOO. MAX LITERALLY DREAMS THEY CAN LEAVE AND DIE TOGETHER. BOTH CANNOT IMAGINE LIFE WITHOUT EACHOTHER. AND EVERY TIME THEY'RE SEPARATED THEY PANIC AND FREAK OUT.

i love how i don't even have to speculate how would sam be without max as i did with max before in this essay, SAM LITERALLY SAYS THAT HIMSELF! AND I QUOTE:

"without max, i'd be just another grim loner, skulking through the seedy armpits of the city, assaulting crooks and assorted crook-like punks in a humorless, over-narrated fashion. sure, it’d probably sell like granny panties in a nunnery, but would I be happy? not really..."

AND PEOPLE COULD SAY "OH BUT IN THE CARTOON SAM GETS OVER MAX-" SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU DON'T KNOW THEM LIKE I DO!!!! SAM HIMSELF SAID HE WOULD NOT BE FUCKING HAPPY WITHOUT MAX!!!!!! THEY NEED EACHOTHER!!!!!!!!

...

anyways imma pretend i didn't receive this ask and you pretend you never asked this capiche? sam and max need to coexist and wouldn't be able to keep their shit together if eachother didn't exist &/or live with them

anyways i quoted sam before i feel the need to quote some max sentences!!!

"don’t be such a worrywart, sam. if it makes you feel any better, I PROMISE to take you with me when I merge with the godhead!"

oh and there was that one time where they had this dialogue that still kills me to this day:

sam: "if you die first, promise to wait up for me, okay little buddy?"

max: "oh sam! when i die, i'm taking you with me!"

i swear they're so- *gunshots*

anyways have some photographic evidence of why they need eachother to be happy if you're still not convinced:

buh bye :3c

#sam & max #snm #sam & max the devil's playhouse #snm tdp #sam & max the devil's playhouse spoilers #snm tdp spoilers #sam and max #sam and max the devil's playhouse #sam and max tdp #sam & max tdp #sam and max tdp spoilers #sam & max tdp spoilers #the devil's playhouse #they're so codependent holy shit #bros need therapy #someone give them couples therapy desperately they GOTTA treat that codependency #i'm so normal about them #long post #character essay #ok bye now i'm tired of writing

[ssa-atlas-alvez]

Whumptober Day 21 (BAU & male reader)

No. 21 FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Coughing up Blood | “You’re safe now.” | “Take me instead.”

Warnings: Creepy whumper, blood, guns, death, reader dies (spoiler), sadness, 

Word count: 1095

@whumptober-archive

"Take me instead," Your eyes widen as Aaron steps forward, hands in the air, gun no longer aiming at the unsub. 

The unsub digs the gun into your temple harder and you wince. "Hmm, how about no? I like this one. He's fresh, young. He is full of youth and life. And I want to watch it drain from his eyes," Your eyes meet Hotch in terror, as the unsub continues to taunt you in front of your team. "He's trembling like a leaf, it's okay sweetheart. I'm only going to hurt you until you beg me to kill you. Until you beg me for mercy." 

"Hotch-" The whimper slips out, you can't help it. Normally, you'd be embarrassed, but you couldn't bring yourself to be. You were petrified.

“Just- just take me,” Hotch offers again, hoping that the unsub accepts him.

Laughing, the unsub replies, “This is the Big Bad BAU team. You’re pathetic.” The unsub scoffs, “I’m taking him with me. If you try to stop me, I put a bullet through his brain. I think we all know I’m not messing around with that threat, either.”

You’re pulled back with the unsub and you stumble, you try to keep it together for them if nothing else. You know that whatever happens they’re all going to be wracked with guilt and that’s the last thing you want for your family. 

It takes too long to find you, although the team firmly believes that anything over five minutes is too long. Especially with an unsub like Karl Harris. But eventually they manage to track you down. It’s been twelve hours when they finally do and none of them have slept more than an hour, their only thought is finding you. They’ve seen what Karl can do and they will do everything in their power to stop that from happening to you. 

They hope they’re not too late as they pull up to the warehouse, splitting up to cover more ground but in contact via radio. Aaron uses the side door, follows the hall down a flight of stairs and round. There’s only one door and the handle’s covered in dried blood. Drawing in a deep breath and raising his gun, he opens the door. It’s empty minus a figure in the centre of the room surrounded by a steadily growing puddle of blood. 

Aaron rushed towards you, dropping to his knees, you blinked up at him slowly, trying to clear your vision, “Aaron?”

“Yeah, it’s me, we’re here,” He murmured, he didn’t know where to look. Your torso was covered in blood. Finding the wound that was bleeding the most, he bunched his windbreaker and pressed it against it. A few tears fell down your cheeks. 

“Hey, hey,” Aaron’s hand gently stroked the tears from your eyes, making sure to still keep pressure on your wounds, “You’re safe now, I promise,”

You nod, giving him a weak smile, “I know, you’re here,” Aaron gave you a small smile.

“I’m so sorry,” He said, you shook your head.

“No, not your fault,” You forced out.

“You’re hurt,” Aaron’s voice cracked. You were the youngest, barely old enough to join the team, you walked with a spring in your step and constantly checked up on everyone. You’d listen to Reid’s info dumps, train with Morgan, proof-read Rossi’s books, babysit and catsit for JJ and Emily, you’d go tech shopping with Penelope, you had looked after Jack a few times too, and you always (without doubt) made sure everyone was okay. 

“I can’t feel it,” You replied, giving him a weak smile. You coughed lightly, “Did we get him?”

“Yeah, yeah we did,”

“I did good?” The hopefulness in your voice cut through Aaron’s heart.

“Yeah, yeah, you did,” He whispered, “You’re the most important member of this team, (Y/N), you hear me? You’re the best agent we’ve got,”

A smile graces your lips, looking pitiful with the blood smudged around your lips, “Yeah?” You reply, breathless, “What about Reid?”

“Reid’s got nothing on you,” He jokes, a small smile stretching across his face despite the situation.

"And Morgan? He's pretty strong," You whisper, teeth chattering. Aaron gently wraps his suit jacket around you, hoping it will provide you with some warmth. Now sat to your side, he laid your head in his lap. 

"Not as strong as you," There's rustling as the rest of the team (minus Garcia) start filtering in.

You furrow your eyebrows, “I’m gonna die, aren’t I?” Your voice is merely a whisper, a fresh tear falling from your eyes.

Aaron ignores the tears in his own eyes as he shakes his head, “No, you’re going to be okay, the paramedic’s are nearly here. They’re going to take you to the hospital and you will be fine.”

“I don’t wanna die-”

“You’re going to be fine, I promise.” He knows it's a lie. He looks up at Reid, who (when he knows you’re not looking) gently shakes his head. No one can lose this much blood and live. It’s soaking through Aaron’s trousers as he sits with you. He reluctantly released the pressure on your stomach, hand engulfing yours instead. 

“Okay,” You whisper as you nod. Your eyes flicker up, your team is standing around you, eyes torn with worry. "You should tell them that," You say with a laugh, wincing as more blood spills from your lips. 

You watch as the team smiles at you, "We just worry," Emily offers. 

"I'm gonna be fine," You say with a nod, "H'tch says I'm gonna be fine,"

There's a small pause and you furrow your eyebrows, anxiety spiking, "B-but just in case, I love you all. So much, I do," You say, nodding frantically, ignoring the tears that slip down your cheeks. "I do, I promise, I don't want to die and you all think you were just coworkers to me, you're my family and I love you-" 

"We know, sweetie," JJ says, smiling softly at you, quickly wiping at her tears. 

"I do, I love you, I do," You whisper, nodding. Aaron runs his fingers through your hair, gently shushing you. 

"It's alright, we know," He whispers.

"I do, I love you," 

"It's okay, (Y/N)," He mutters, hand still holding on to yours, thumb rubbing soothing circles. “We love you too.”

“I love you-”

“It’s alright,”  Hotch comforted, “Just relax, it’s okay, you can relax now, we’re here, and we love you too.”

"I do…" The team watch as the breath leaves your body and you fall limp in Aaron's arms.

#whumptober 2022 #No. 21 #coughing up blood #you're safe now #take me instead #creepy whumper #blood #guns #death #reader dies #sadness #criminal minds #Aaron Hotch Hotchner #Jennifer Jareau #emily prentiss #aaron hotchner #david rossi #derek morgan #spencer reid #penelope garcia #male reader #bau x male reader #reader #x reader

[itsbenedict]

Bullet Proof: Postmortem

Waaaay back in the day, when I was 19 and I'd just discovered Dangan Ronpa (back when we put the space in the title, because all we had was the Orenronen LP and we called Ultimates "Super High-School Levels"), I decided to do my own. That was the heyday of forum adventures on the MSPA Forums, and there were no standards. I didn't know how to draw, but I decided to learn. I wanted to make a thing!

I got a good ways into it, honestly! It went through a few format changes, skipping over a couple cases in the middle in an abridged format on Tumblr, but I'd finally found my groove for the fourth case, playable from the perspective of the murderer. It was going well!

Then the MSPA Forums got hacked and the admins didn't keep any backups and everything was lost.

So that sucked! And once it became clear they were never going to recover the forums due to a mix of security incompetence and not giving a shit, I didn't really have a choice but to try and reboot it. I'd lost all the text, apart from a few garbled pages from a corrupted archive snapshot.

But... I've got way too much else I want to do at this point, and it's not looking too likely I'm going to have the time to come back to it. So if you want to know everything about what happened and where it was going...

You've clicked the readmore. So you do want to know all that. Here goes! Activate theme music.

You remember how it opened, right? It was a forum adventure, and at the time, I asked the readers to select an SHSL talent and gender as the protagonist entered the American branch of Hope's Peak Academy.

That was diegetic. "Alice Bayko" was an SHSL Impostor, or- I actually kinda waffled on having her not technically be SHSL anything, as she infiltrated the school with a false identity. She has, however, forgotten this, and her original identity and mission, leaving her with nothing but the mask. I believe there was a scene planned, or maybe a scene that did happen, I forget- where Alice would be called upon to demonstrate some sort of stage magic trick... and completely not know how to do any of that.

But what was she up to?

Well, that's a good question, with a complicated answer. Let's start pulling back the layers, here.

Seventeen students, and of the seventeen... somewhere between six and nine of them could be considered secret masterminds. Hilariously, I seem to have ordered this old banner issue in order of who's the most technically the ultimate mastermind, which was very cheeky of me. Would've been fun if someone ever caught that.

Let's start with...

Mastermind Level 1: Disguise

This creepy kid, SHSL Prodigy Billy Bookerton, was supposed to be the original secret mastermind in charge of the school. As came up in the adventure proper, this iteration of Hope's Peak was intended to be a safehouse from the ongoing despair apocalypse pictured in the Danganronpa canon. The son of the headmaster, he would control their Monokuma puppet and be in charge of faking to the outside world that this Monokuma-themed airship was in fact a murder-happy despair cult (like everywhere else on Earth somehow.)

This was not supposed to be a secret to the student body. And this 27-year-old man was not supposed to wake up in the body of a malnourished child and pose as a student. After events occurred, he found himself like this, with a note in his own handwriting instructing him to lay low and play this role.

What events occurred?

Mastermind Level 2: Blackmail

Also explained in the adventure proper, since these two were culprit and victim of the playable case 4: Gwendolyn and Ursula Schultheiss, SHSL Sysadmin and SHSL Retro Gamer nothing at all. Gwen was admitted to Hope's Peak on the basis of an actual talent, and pretty quickly gained control of their computer systems, sneaking Ursula in under the guise of Sakura Aran, and learning about the plan to escape Ultimate Despair by disguising the school and taking to the sky.

She thought that plan was really stupid.

Specifically, she thought Ultimate Despair was a flash in the pan, and it was ridiculous to think that some student riots all the way in Japan posed some sort of apocalyptic threat. (In her defense, this is a reasonable thing to think! It is ridiculous! Danganronpa's worldbuilding is fucking nonsense! But unfortunately for her, we're rolling with it.)

So she and Ursula hatched a plan to get rich. Hope's Peak is full of the progeny of the super-rich, like the Bright conglomerate. Obviously people like this would have loads of incriminating secrets, with which they could be blackmailed, and by which they would deserve to be blackmailed because screw those nepo babies. The plan was to run a Deception Game, not a Killing Game- they'd steal Billy's remote-control scary apocalypse terrorist, and pit everyone against each other in a contest to uncover each other's darkest secrets.

Once they had the dirt, they'd pretend to lose control and land the ship somewhere safe and sound, and Hope's Peak could deal with the scandal of the Monokuma hijacking and the consequences of their bonkers overreaction to some airhead fashionista's trendy protest.

If you recall, their plan went like this:

Each of them assumed that the other had somehow betrayed them and hijacked the school's systems on their own- Ursula retained control of the damaged Monokuma puppet, and Gwen retreated to her secret closet base to try and wrest control of the systems back from whatever super-hacker Ursula found to compromise her control. It took Gwen a few chapters (and accidentally murdering her sister) to realize that there was a...

Mastermind Level 3: Reality TV

It all started with SHSL Heir Henry Bright, heir to the Bright Conglomerate and active vice director of the company. Specifically, he directed vice. The Bright Conglomerate, in his opinion, did things too by-the-book, and were passing up big opportunities for growth in the organized crime sector. He was fostering connections with the Hit Deck (which led to the altercation that led to his and Dominique Martine's deaths in case 2), and...

Unlike Gwen, he didn't think the emergence of Ultimate Despair was nonsense. No, it was a growth opportunity. His plan was to invite a film crew to the airship and broadcast an exciting (fake) killing game to pander to this emerging despair-based market! With illicit funds provided by his contact in the Hit Deck (in exchange for his help securing a place on the ark for the Hit Deck's boss and trusted confidantes, posing as students), he assembled a team. Bribed some students, located an SHSL Doctor and some effects artists for realistic murder effects, did some networking, and...

...well, word gets around. The team he put together had bigger ambitions. A creative vision. One that had no room for executive meddling. They cut him out of the production team and forced him into the cast.

(I'm honestly not sure if this layer of convolution was necessary- I was on the fence about cutting him from the cast. The show's team might've found out about the school just because Gwen and Sakura screwed up the school's stealth measures. He's gotta kind of be there to explain the Hit Deck's presence, though, since aside from Dom none of them were actual Ultimates.)

Realer Reality TV

Before I reveal the members of the final mastermind tier, let's go over how they did this.

I never ended up using this portrait, but this is Davi Rossi, SHSL Doctor, though he prefers "Ultimate Necromancer". He's a graduate of the original Hope's Peak in Japan, and his technology is the cornerstone of the whole setup here- underneath the school, in the restricted areas in the body of the ship, he has a whole secret lab with vats of glowy chemicals and fancy futuristic surgical tools.

He can bring back the dead.

Well, sort of. He can do all sorts of repairs on ordinary tissues- lose a limb, get a vital organ mashed up, bleed out, he can fix that. He can make alterations to the body, too- such as surgically reverting someone's apparent age, or implanting remote-control death chips, or strategically weakening someone's skull.

He can even fix a certain degree of brain damage- the kind of stuff that might occur if you suffer blunt force trauma or total deoxygenation, where the brain is still mostly intact.

As a result, most victims are recoverable. When someone dies, he can bring them back again and again. However: he can't fully reconstitute the brain, and he has a number of limitations when it comes to working with it:

If the brain is completely torn apart or otherwise destroyed, he cannot revive the victim.

He can't directly mind-control anyone, nor can he insert false memories.

He can delete and rearrange memories, but not read minds, and memory deletion is episodic- he can't mess with specific facts, only spans of time.

I think I... also made an exception so he could delete specific people? Which is clunky and doesn't really make sense in hindsight.

There's still a lot you can do by cutting up and rearranging the filmstrip of someone's memory- but except in one specific case, he only ever really used it to delete the last loop.

In case it wasn't obvious, this isn't the first killing game. This show has multiple seasons. It's been going a while- and while injuries that destroy the brain are rare, they're not nonexistent, and so there's quite a few students who died before the story began. There used to be a lot more students! That's why all the dorm rooms have bunkbeds!

And there's also unfortunately the one who received a fatal injury in this loop by blowing himself up with an improvised explosive device. Sorry, Mill!

(There's actually only a few people physically present running the show, since the show's been running for years now and they found that they really didn't need more than a skeleton crew to run it- Davi and some student plants, along with Monokuma drones and countless hidden cameras, are all that's necessary for production on the ground. There's no adult film crew present on the ship.)

(♪ Kids with guns. Kids with guns. Taking over. But they won't be long. ♪)

Davi is also responsible for rigging up the masterminds with the mental control rigs for the two Monokumas- and has a third Monokuma of his own, who was going to show up to treat Martha's injury during case 4, I think in literally the very next update planned before the forums exploded.

So who are the people in control of these Monokuma knockoffs?

Mastermind Level 5: Case 5

All that I just mentioned about Davi? You learn about this in the fifth case, after case 4 in which you play as either Sakura or Gwen after killing their sister and trying to avoid getting caught in the trial. You can't win case 4, but you can successfully stall and bullshit long enough for the trial to be interrupted by a sudden explosion before you can be executed.

Prior to case 4, Billy has disappeared into a secret passage, trying to track down the mastermind. Likewise, Flopsy-Turvy, Alice's rabbit, has also disappeared into a secret passage. Billy remains missing during case 4's trial.

After the explosion, the Monokumas call off the trial and lead the whole class to Davi's secret lab, which is the site of a set of murders.

Davi has been murdered via various small lacerations all over his body, including a slit throat.

Billy has been blown to bits by an explosion.

If Gwen or Sakura was executed during the trial, their corpse is found on a table in the lab.

Flopsy-Turvy, who was a robot all along, has been reduced to mechanical smithereens.

Violette, not dead anymore, but unable to speak aloud due to an incompletely healed throat injury

Some completely unfamiliar redhead kid, who doesn't know jack about anything and doesn't know how he got here.

The two survivors of this scene are naked save for some towels they found, and appear to have been spilled out from a couple of big glowy specimen tanks which were broken in the explosion that killed Billy and Flopsy. More on them later.

The subsequent investigation reveals all that stuff I just told you about Davi, blowing the setup wide open. In the course of that investigation, two of the masterminds find themselves confessing their involvement. After all- Davi's dead. There's no way they can run another season without someone to bring people back to life!

One in particular confesses before the other one- she doesn't care anymore, and she's happy to watch her co-conspirator squirm to try to avoid revealing his evil machinations to the people he desperately wants to think he's cool.

Lilakali Bhallu and Raymond Rizzini are my favorites. They suck so much. They hate each other quite a lot, and have gotten together and broken up like three different times. Their collective theme song is No Children by The Mountain Goats. They're like 25 at this point, stuck in the bodies of the teenagers they were when the show started filming and they fully agreed to be part of the production.

Why? Well, Lilakali hates everyone and enjoys seeing them turn on each other like rabid wolves repeatedly- and Raymond craves acceptance and is using his memory privileges and surveillance abilities to try over and over again to be Popular In High School (to no avail.) They're both pretty pathetic people.

Notably, they are both real students who're supposed to be here. I don't remember if I ever had Lilakali make any predictions, and she'll insist she's just making shit up, but I was gonna have her predictions all come true, because the Fortune Teller thing is a real talent. And Raymond really can make a pretty mean burger. (Cheekily, that old Tumblr post was supposed to have taken place in a previous season- you might notice Gwen in the background, who in this iteration was never convinced to leave her room for meals, instead sneaking out at night to raid the cafeteria.)

Lilakali also has an Edgy Backstory- she grew up in the circus, apprenticed under her grandmother, who refused to let her socialize with kids her age. She was supposed to learn the family divining techniques, not dance around like some harlot with a pack of urchins! Her grandma taught her to hate the world, and herself, and accidentally also her grandmother. One day, in a moment of perfect nihilist clarity, she took a Sixlizard cigarette lighter out of the trash, wandered amongst the tents, and burned down the entire circus, killing her grandma in the process. She looks back on that moment fondly as the happiest she's ever been.

Anyway. Those two are my favorites, but they're not the ultimate masterminds. In fact... they're quite sure there's supposed to be a third mastermind, and they suspect this third mastermind of having erased their memories of them and killing Davi. They can tell their memories were edited- they're fully aware of how the tech works and what the signs are, and they can tell there's big ugly gaps and gashes in their recollection of the past. Someone was missing, and Davi was being all cagey and weird about it. And last loop...

Well, what happened last loop is the direct cause of case 5. And at the end of the investigation... the two Monokumas go dead, and one giant Monokuma shows up, furious that Davi is dead and forcing the students to go to trial one more time. This will be the final execution- catching Davi's murderer.

Mastermind Level 6: Sailing No More

It doesn't take long into trial 5 for the identity of this giant Monokuma to be revealed- it's a mechsuit with a living person in it, not a robot, and he unmasks himself during the trial without too much objection once people start questioning... that confused redhead kid who they found at the crime scene. That character introduces himself as... the Super High-School Level Pilot, Nolan Cubbins.

Wait. What?

Didn't that guy die?

Well, you see--

--oh, shit, I forgot Tumblr has an image limit of 30 images per post. Uh, gonna have to break this up into two posts. Continue reading here!

#bullet proof #bullet proof spoilers. like all of them

[worldformula]

I am asking about the aitsf au 👀

And I am answering! I’m gonna go down a bullet list of things I don’t think I’ve mentioned about our AU! Specifically about the siblings because my inbox is mostly about Ryuki + Saito lol so this will be a long one! Thank you for letting me go on and on about this AU seriously I enjoy it very much.

AITSF / AINI SPOILERS.

Warnings for violence, child abuse, and some seriously bad family dysfunction.

Saito has a scar around his neck, which he covers with a black choker (this is me trying to justify why he appears to be wearing two turtlenecks) (I know it’s because his model is weird but who cares). He got this from a childhood accident where Uru got angry and pushed him as they were swinging with ropes and he nearly got strangled to death. The scar is from the rope burns as he struggled. Uru wasn’t actually ever afraid of him until that day because Saito beat him up so badly for it that they had to get separated by the guards. This was also before Iris.

Following that, there is an ending where Uru finally gets to kill him (of course, it’s strangulation. Finish what you started, Uru.) but it’s also a bad one. Pretty much any ending where Saito gets killed is a bad one. But also you can imagine how insane A-Set stan Twitter is going to look following the news release that Iris’ brother killed her other brother (who killed her mother).

There was a period of 6 months where Uru and Saito just did not see each other, following Manaka’s murder. While So tried to figure out what to do about Saito, he just locked him in his room (though obviously he was let out for like, assessments and basic care) and had guards make sure no one went near (but mostly to make sure Saito didn’t get out). Uru did not know about this at all and was told he was sent away for health reasons.

Between the untreated physiological brain disorder making him upset and the distress of being stuck in The Room for so long, he developed a fear of being trapped / unable to escape. Once he was let out he moved rooms entirely and avoids The Room, which is left intact with proof of his tantrums / meltdowns (broken CRT tv, messed up walls and floors, etc).

Iris and Uru have no idea why he’s antsy about it and it bothers him immensely that they don’t have the same fear of being trapped as he does, even when he used to lock them in closets whenever he got angry with them.

This is also why he chooses to put So’s body in something as small and morbid as The Vase (it’s the vengeance babey). I have this headcanon outside of the AU but it fit really well into here, so this is the room where Hitomi shoots and kills Saito in her final girl bad ending. We love karmic retribution.

If the siblings just unionized against So, they could easily kick his ass and live like normal people. But they aren’t ever going to do that because Saito is so poisoned by the belief that he’s better than the others because he’s the true born son and they’re all inferior to him (which is undermined by the fact that So is more restrictive of him than the others + Saito himself knows he’s on thin ice constantly and is insecure about it).

So doesn’t really like any of his kids because he’s the root of all evil but if he had to pick a favorite it is actually Iris. Because Saito has a body count and Uru is deeply insecure to the point of being pathetic but at least Iris is a nice young woman who is doing literally everything she can to stay out of it. Tbh she’s slightly spared from the mind games by the sheer age gap between her and her brothers.

Despite literally all of this dysfunction, for the most part they all get along tentatively. Saito’s made himself the top of the pecking order, Uru follows Saito’s lead (but is extremely unhappy about it which is why he ends up violently repressed, susceptible to cult indoctrination, and trigger happy), and Iris respects them both from a sad distance.

The problem is that they occasionally have pretty good moments together so no matter how bad it gets, those few moments make them forget about it. Saito in particular occasionally does stand up for them against So. He was the one who convinced So to let Iris be an idol, for which she’s grateful. But he stands up to So on their behalf as a sort of power move, because neither of them have ever really stood up to their father the way Saito is able to (further establishing to them that he’s the favorite of them all).

On a lighter note, Uru in this AU is actually naturally a brunet and bleaches his hair blond. On a darker note, the combination of coloring his hair like Saito and the fact that he dresses like him (turtleneck + blazer) surely doesn’t mean anything about his self image relating to his older brother now does it.

That was 11 bullet points which I think is enough from me. Thank you!

#anonymous #ask #aitsf au #aitsf spoilers #aini spoilers #sorry for being saito centric it’s because I love a project

[warmaidensrevenge]

It’s the end of the world

Pairings: Alden x plus!size reader Eddie x plus!size reader

If you want to read my other work you can find it HERE

A/N: I have this idea of Eddie and Dustin joining the walking dead. This is definetly different but i hope you like it. I haven't caught up on the series. Spoilers!!! So this takes place after alpha killed Henry and Enid.

Warnings: 18+ smut, slight degrading, Language, angst, arguing, mentions of death and Not proof read and no word count.

Summary: The world ended. Alden finds you and falls in love again. However, a new comer and his friend needs your help.

You were cornered. How you ended up in this pharmacy with 30 or 40 fucking stinkers was stupid. You knew better than this. You knew after 6 years of running and hiding that you should never get so close to a fucking settlement. This time though you need supplies really bad. You were running super low on water and medicine.

The only thing blocking them from you was the damn gate that was on the counter. Your dog was barking attracting more and more. This was it you thought. Finally you were gonna die. You had a couple of rounds in your 9mm but it was only for emergencies. The only other weapon you had was a kabar. So little by little you stabbed the fuckers in the head. But you could see the gate coming loose.

For the first time since this all started you were scared. You sat down on the floor and held Lucy Doing your best to shoosh her. You pulled out your gun and started to cry.

" It's okay Lucy, we're finally gonna go home."

You brought the gun up to her head. You were about to pull the trigger but you just couldn't. You got up and pulled out all the shelves in one of the cupboards across from you. You put Lucy in.

" Listen. I love you okay. Be quiet. And stay."

Lucy quit her barking and sat down. You closed the door and pulled out the string in your hoodie and tied a knot in the handles.

You didn't know what you were gonna do. But you were not dying today. If you were then you were gonna die fighting. You quickly wrote a sign that Lucy was in the cupboard on the window. You tried it earlier but it was bullet proof.

Fucking rednecks in stupid Virginia!

You were looking around for anything when you heard the bolts falling out. They were breaking through.

" Fuck fuck fuck!"

There was literally nothing to help. You pulled down a shelf to slow them down and pulled out your knife and watched them come in. You got a few before you heard gunshots. You ducked down and crawled as best you could under the shelf. But of course you were too big to fit. So you just balled yourself up until the shots stopped.

You had this shooting pain in your side. You looked down pulling up your shirt and saw that you were bleeding. Two bullet wounds were next to each other on your right side.

Fucking amateurs.

You heard voices and you tried to hide but then Lucy started to bark. So you got up and crawled to her. Your hands were shaking trying to untie the knot. She came out and licked your face.

" Good girl."

The last thing you remembered was a dark blonde headed guy with brown eyes. You heard Lucy growl and bark before you passed out.

...

When you woke you were in a room that looked like it was stuck in the colonial times. Lucy was at the foot of the bed. She instantly got up and laid on your lap whimpering. That's when you heard a voice.

" Hi."

You jumped and looked around for your bag.

" No. No. You're safe."

" Where-where are we?"

"Umm this place is called the Hilltop."

" oh...kay. Can I leave?"

" Uhh but you're still hurt."

You lifted the blanket and saw that you were in just your underwear. With a bandage wrapped around your stomach. Completely embarrassed about your thick body you covered yourself up.

" umm where are my clothes?"

" They're being washed. Here. I found some extras for you." The guy said handing you some.

You hesitated to take them but you wanted to leave so you did.

"Can you turn around?"

" Oh. Yeah yeah."

When he did you quickly got dressed.

" I'm Alden by the way."

You didn't say anything. Lucy kept whining.

" Umm your dog has been looking sick lately."

" Where's my bag?"

He pointed at a chair and you went to retrieve it.

His eyes followed you and you rummaged for something in it. You pulled out a small vile and a syringe.

" Come here Lucy."

She came to you slowly. She looked so tired.

" Sit. Medicine."

She sat down and let out a soft cry when you gave her a shot. After you pulled out a snack for her and petted her until she was finished.

" What was that?" Alden asked.

" She's a diabetic." You said still looking at Lucy.

" Oh. Is that why you were in the pharmacy?"

You nodded. You got up and put on your shoes.

" I don't know anyone who would risk getting killed for a dog other than Daryl."

" She's not just a dog to me." You were being cold to him.

You whistled and Lucy followed you out.

" Hey wait." Alden called after you.

You walked up to the fence and shouted for them to let you out.

" Hey. Just stay for a bit. Eat something and talk to our leader.

' No thanks. I'm better off alone."

He chuckled. " Really? Didn't look like that at the pharmacy."

" Right. Thank you for saving me and Lucy. But I really would like to leave. No good comes from camps."

" Where you at a camp?"

" I don't know you. And I would like to leave. Please."

He was going to say something when a woman came. Lucy went to her immediately and let her pet her.

" Open the gate. If she wants to leave Alden. Let her. But I have to say. You aren't gonna last long in your condition."

" I've been in worse." You retorted

" Yeah? Well you're gonna be slow and with only a knife and a few shots are not gonna get you far."

" I'll be fine." You said looking back and forth between them.

" Well fine. But we can offer you safety and food. For you and your dog."

" I'll manage."

" Fine. Alden. Get her some food and a gun."

Alden gave you a thin lip smile and took off.

" I don't need anything." You said slightly surprised. " Lucy."

" No you do. What you need are people. But if you are insisting on leaving then it's the least we can do to make sure you're given the best chance out there."

" I-I don't like camps. They always fall or they have some crazy person running it."

" You've been to camps before."

You sighed. " Yes. Lucy come here."

Lucy came and sat next to you. You really didn't want to say anything but just something in the woman's eyes made you feel like you could trust her.

" I've been to some too. I used to live in a prison."

" I lived in a town once. But the guy who ran it. He was fucking nuts. If Lucy doesn't like you then you're bad. And she hated that fucker."

She smiled. " I like Lucy. It's a good name. I'm Maggie."

You swallowed. " I'm y/n."

"It's nice to meet you."

You nodded and saw the guy come back. He handed you a sack and a rifle. He patted Lucy on the head and went to stand next to Maggie.

You looked at them and then down to Lucy.

" Can we stay just for a few days? I want to be 100% so I can protect her."

You looked up and they were both smiling.

Alden came to you and grabbed the gun and your things.

" Common. You need to rest."

You and Lucy followed him and Maggie into the house.

" I'm y/n. And this is Lucy."

Alden smiled at you. " nice to meet you."

...

3 weeks later you were helping Alden get ready for a run. They needed supplies. There was something unspoken there. The way he looked at you felt good. You tried to ignore it because you were gonna leave soon. But whenever you came out of the room he was right there. Always. Either smiling at you or playing with Lucy. She liked him. And that was all you needed to know to trust him.

You guys left with a handful of others. It was a long ride to the next town. A few of the dead were wondering but nothing too serious. As you guys split up into groups of two, you and Lucy went off to find some medicine. You needed to stock up on Lucy's insulin. Winter was just about to start and you had to make sure you found a place to hold up in as well.

While you were digging around for supplies you found some antibiotics. You decided to get them for the camp along with cold medicine. During the last winter you had gotten so sick that you barely left the abandoned warehouse you stayed in. Almost freezing to death so you made sure to grab whatever you could to keep that from happening again.

That's when you saw Lucy perk her ears up and staring out the door. Then she bolted. You ran after her into a grocery store. You heard the dead banging on something. That's when you saw Alden getting swarmed. The person he was with was being eaten and you just reacted.

" Lucy. Bark."

And she did so.

" Hide."

And she went. Her barking distracted the dead and you went to help Alden. You guys killed everything in sight. After you guys just stood there.

" Lucy. Come."

She crept out from her hiding place and came to you and Alden.

" Thank you girl." Alden said kneeling down and petted her.

" You should gather the others and head back."

He looked up at you. " you're not coming?"

" No. I found a place for the winter. Here." You handed him the stuff you found and left.

Later that night you were setting up a bed in the attic of an old bar, when you heard footsteps. Lucy didn't get up from her bed. You looked out the small window and saw it had started to snow. You pulled out your gun ready for whoever was coming.

" Y/n?"

" Alden?"

He pulled down the ladder and climbed up.

" You shouldn't have come here. It's gonna be hard to get back."

" I'm not gonna leave you alone here all winter." He said pulling the ladder back up.

" I'm not alone."

He took a step closer. " Well I know. I'm talking about someone other than Lucy."

" I'm okay."

"Look I'm staying okay. I'll sleep on the other side of the room."

You looked at him and there was another moment. It was brief but it was there. " Fine. Just for tonight."

He opened his mouth to argue but you held out your hand. He nodded and set up his bedding next to Lucy.

The night got cold pretty fast. You were asleep when you heard Alden's teeth chattering. You sighed. You would think he would be prepared for the winter.

" Alden. Come here."

He looked up worried.

" Come on. I'm a furnace." You lifted the blanket and he came to you.

" Th-thank y-you."

" I swear. You should have just went home. You could die out here." You said while hugging him

" I-I w-wanted to-to be with y-you."

You pulled away. "Why?"

You could see his breath. He was breathing hard and he was looking at your lips.

"Al-"

He cut you off by kissing you. You pushed him away slightly and stared deep into his eyes. Contemplation whether or not to go there with him.

You leaned back into him kissing with such a lustful need. He unzipped your jacket and pulled it off. You took off his sweatshirt along with his thermal. After returning your lips to his. Your hands reached for his pants as his went for yours. Guess this was going to happen. Once you were both bare he kissed all over your body. Taking your nipples into his mouth and hand. You reached down to touch his length. Sure he wasn't huge or anything but he was big enough. Big enough to make you cum. You started pumping him gently. His beard tickled you as his head went up and down your body leaving a trail of tender kisses.

He adjusted himself so that he was resting on top of you. His thrust was slow and gentle. And it quickly became too slow for you. You repositioned to straddle him and started rocking your hips faster and faster. You held back your moans as you started coming undone. It's been ages since you had sex and Alden just felt so good, so you just let go. You came quickly but still wanted more. So you kept moving. This time Alden lifted his hips so he could go in deeper. His hands were on your ass with his fingers digging in.

You put your hands on his chest and used him as leverage to start moving up and down. With him pulling at your bottom to help. His grunts mixed with your breathy sighs echoed through the attic.

You started picking up the pace when you felt another orgasm coming. That's when Alden's body tensed.

" Want me to cum in you?"

" Hmmm fuck! Yes! Yes!"

"K-kay."

You fucked him through both of your orgasms. You rocked your hips slowly trying to get every last drop of his cum out.

Afterwards he held you.

" I need to get a plan b."

He nodded. " We'll get one first thing in the morning. Then we head back to hilltop."

" I...I don't want to go back."

" Why? Don't you want to be with me?"

" I don't feel safe there."

He kissed your forehead. " I'll keep you and Lucy safe. I promise."

...

Somehow Alden convinced you to make the Hilltop your home. And the only reason you went back was because of him. You liked him and you wanted to protect him. So as winter came and went the spring brought news.

There was word of a hoard heading straight to the Hilltop and you and Alden were getting ready to help deflect them. Maggie had instructed to reinforce the south wall so it was vulnerable during construction.

You guys left with Lucy running by your side. Once you saw the vastness of the hoard you turned to Alden.

"You're the faster rider. You have to tell Maggie it's too big."

" No we can do this together."

" Alden. Please."

" No y/n."

"Just trust me... I'll come back to you."

" Y/n?"

You gave him a look and he nodded. You turned your horse around. And just as you took off you heard Alden say he loved you. You wanted to turn around and see if he really did say that. But you just rode off.

Just a few minutes went by when you heard someone singing and playing music. When you got closer you saw a long haired tall thin guy playing a guitar. And a small kid banging on a trash can lid with a spear.

🎵" Is there no standard anymore?

What it takes, who I am, where I've been, belong

you can't be something you're not

Be yourself, by yourself, stay away from me

A lesson learned in life

Known from the dawn of time

Respect, walk, what did you say?

Respect, walk, are you talkin' to me?

Respect, walk, what did you say?

Respect, walk

Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?

No way, punk"🎵

" It's been a long time since I've heard Pantera."

They were leading the hoard. You rode in front of them making them stop. They both smiled at you.

The tall one gave you a thumbs up and continued to sing and walk around you. Lucy went right up to him and he quickly patted her head and kept walking.

"I'm Dustin. That's Eddie."

" Umm do you guys know where you're going?"

" uhh I'm y/n." You said following them.

Eddie smiled when he heard your name. Seeing a plump woman riding a horse did something to him. He had never seen such a beautiful girl before. And seeing you look so damn majestic. It set a fire through him. But he couldn't be obvious about it. So he just kept walking.

" Nope. Just leading these away from our camp." Dustin said bagging on his lid again.

" Well you guys are leading them to my camp."

That's when Eddie stopped and turned around. " oh shit. I didn't know there was a settlement near here."

" yeah."

" Shit okay Dustin we got-"

That's when a crawler came out of nowhere and grabbed Eddie's legs making him fall. Another distracted Dustin and spooked your horse making him buck you off. When you fell you jumped up and went to help Eddie.

" Thanks sweetheart. Almost had me there."

Lucy was barking letting you know the hoard was getting too close. After you killed the one who had Eddie you helped him to his feet.

He looked deep into your eyes and saw you blush. He wanted to kiss you for saving his life but he decided against it.

"Common we need to lead them in a different direction." You ordered turning away from him.

He leaned over to Dustin and whispered " I would follow her anywhere."

He saluted you and followed you out into a field.

You shook off that feeling that suddenly came when he looked at you with those ridiculous big brown eyes.

What the hell is going on?

You lead the others while Eddie started playing his guitar again. He grinned watching you talk to Lucy like she was a person. He couldn't help but wonder how a girl like you made it this far. Not that he was judging. But he hadn't seen anyone like you since this started. He figured you must have gone through hell to get here.

...

Your horse came back to Hilltop without you and Alden freaked out. He left again and went to find you. He rode hard and fast until he saw the end of the hoard. Making his way to the front he saw you with two others.

" Y/n?!"

You turned around and Alden hopped off his horse and ran to you. He held you tightly and you hesitated to hug him back.

" Looks like she's spoken for." Dustin nudged Eddie and he looked at you.

" All the good ones are always taken." Eddie said just above a whisper.

" I have never seen you before." Alden said. " we have an alliance with Alexandria. Where's Michonne? Normally she does this type of stuff."

" They were leading them away from Alexandria." You said pulling out of Alden's arms.

You both looked at Eddie and Dustin. For some reason you felt embarrassed when you met Eddie's eyes. You looked away and continued to walk.

" Oh um well my friend and I have been out scouting for new people and we've been gone for like a year. We missed home so when we came back we saw these ugly mugs. So we decided to lead them away before we go back." Eddie said not taking his eyes off of you.

"Y-yeah." Eddie stuttered.

Alden noticed and was upset. " alright well you guys got this right? I want to take my girl back home."

" Alden I'm staying with them. I want to make sure that we lead the dead far enough away."

" Y/n-"

" I wasn't asking for your permission. I'm going"

And there it was. The moment Eddie fell in love with you. He walked by Alden and gave him a thin lip smile and followed you dragging Dustin along.

...

Once the dead were far enough away. You convinced the new guys to stay the night at Hilltop. With a promise to escort them back to Alexandria. Alden was not happy about it. He saw the way Eddie looked at you and he didn't like it. He especially didn't like the way you kept avoiding his affection.

You knew exactly what Alden was doing and it pissed you off. He was staking his claim on you in front of these guys. He always did this when someone would try and talk to you.

Yes you liked Alden. And you did want to be with him. You just felt like when it came to doing things or making decisions for yourself he would always make them for you. And you hated that. Not having a voice.

Maggie told you about the saviors and how he used to be one but he never wanted to be with them. And then when Enid died he changed. You had wished you had met him before that. He seemed like he was really a care guy. Not that he wasn't now. It's just the things he would do made you feel "trapped" for the lack of a better term.

You guys got into it that night about Eddie fawning over you.

" Are you joking? I know you saw how he looked at you y/n?"

You scoffed. "Why does that matter? I'm with you aren't I?"

" Well you didn't have to bring them here. They could have gone back to Alexandria."

" Now you're joking right? They were tired and they needed food."

" I don't care what they need. Just stay away from them!"

You were taken back. " Excuse me?!"

" I'm serious. You're mine. And you can't go with them tomorrow!"

"Listen here! You do not own me! I allow you to be with me. You will not tell me what to do. Do you understand me?!"

"No-"

" Shut the fuck up! You need to stop this right now! If you want to continue to be with me. You need to let me be. Because I will be more than happy to take Lucy and leave."

He flexed his jaw and clenched his fist. "Fuck! Why do you have to be so damn stubborn!"

" I'm not-"

Alden grabbed you and placed a harsh kiss against your lips. Grabbing you everywhere. You pushed him away.

" You can't-"

He cut you off with another kiss and put his hand down your pants.

" Alden...fuck!" You threw your head back as he pressed his fingers roughly against your clothed clit.

His mouth was on your neck in a second. Leaving bites. You fucking hated how much you loved him being like this. So damn rough. You were soaked in seconds.

" On your knees." He ordered

You whimpered as he pulled his hand away. He fucking knew you liked this.

You dropped down to your knees. He took off his shirt and pulled out his cock.

" Open your mouth."

You did sticking out your tongue and he spit. You moaned and swallowed it. He pulled at your chin to open your mouth again and shoved his cock deep down your throat. Causing tears to fall. You held onto his thighs as his hands wrapped in your hair holding you still as he fucked your throat.

He finally let you have air and lifted you up. He pulled off all your clothes and pushed you onto the bed. He lifted and spread your knees apart. He slid his fingers into your throbbing cunt and you raised your hips. Tugging at your nipples.

He pumped until he felt you clench.

" Turn around."

" No" you whined as he took his fingers away.

You bit your lip and rolled over. He grabbed your hips pulling them up so you were on your hands and knees. He gave your ass one hard smack and your core tremble.

" Fuck Alden. Please... please." You begged

He pushed into your sopping cunt burying his length deep inside you. You gasped and gripped the sheets.

" You're fucking mine! This pussy. Is fucking mine!" He said pounding into you.

You were close. Though you knew you would regret this when it was over, you couldn't help but feel so damn good. One of Alden's hands moved from your hip down your back and into your hair. He tugged it pulling you up so that your back was flush with his chest. That's what did it for you.

You came so hard. Alden kept fucking up into you wrapping one hand around your large stomach and the other moving from your hair to your tits. Massaging them roughly and twisting your nipples lightly. He put his forehead on your shoulder and his thrusts becoming slow and hard. He grunted as his hot cum filled you. Your moaning turned into soft sighs until he was finished.

When he pulled out you winced. You laid down covering yourself with a blanket. While Alden went to grab a towel. He came back and got into bed cleaning you and himself. He reached over to the besides table and pulled out one of your morning after pills. He handed it to you with some water.

He pulled you to lay on his chest after. He strokes your back as you held him close.

" Alden, I really hate when you're like that."

" Yeah...I know. I'm sorry."

You were just about to fall asleep when you heard him say that he loved you. Not wanting to say it back you just pretend to fall asleep.

...

Once Alden was knocked out. You quietly put on a flannel and undies. You snuck out to the kitchen and looked for food. You were smacking on some carrots when someone cleared their throat.

" Hey beautiful."

You turned around and Eddie was smiling. It was one of the most amazing smile you had ever seen.

" Umm hey....can't sleep?"

Eddie stood next to you and grabbed a carrot. " Nah. It's hard to sleep when the threat of uglies are just right outside."

" Right? I always find it weird how everyone can sleep so comfortably."

He smiled while chewing. "So uhh. You and your guy are okay? He seemed kinda mad."

" Uhh. Yeah. I guess you can say that."

" What's wrong?" He said tilting his head.

" Uh. Nothing. Don't worry about it."

"How can I not worry about my knight in shining flannel? If you want to talk, I have nowhere to be tonight."

You laughed and gazed into those pretty brown eyes and just felt a sense of trust there. That it was ok if you said whatever to him. That he wouldn't blab to the whole world your inner most thoughts.

" I umm. I think when I go with you guys in the morning. I...might not come back here." You looked away and fiddled with your snack.

" Why? What's wrong with here?"

" it's just...I'm not comfortable. I don't think that I belong here."

" Oh. Huh... Well if you want. I'm sure Alexandria will take you and Alden in. We could definitely use a woman of your talents there."

You gave him a thin lip smile. " No. I mean I don't want to leave here with him. And I don't like settlements. They're just not safe."

Eddie raised his eyebrow. " are you planning on running away?"

You laughed. "I uhh. I guess you can say that."

" Where would you go?"

"I don't know. I just want to take Lucy and go."

Eddie smiled. Even though it wasn't the right time to think this. But he couldn't help but think he had a shot with you. So how could he let you go anywhere without him now?

" What about the beach? We could go to and build a sand castle and eat sushi." He smirked at you.

" We?"

" Well yeah. I can't let a fair maiden like yourself wonder out there with just Lucy. I get that she's important but she gets sick sometimes and she can't always protect you."

" Wait? How do you know she's sick?"

" Her eyes are cloudy. And she drinks a lot of water."

You were a bit shocked. " Oh."

" Yeah so I'm coming with. But Dustin has to come too. I promised a friend I wouldn't leave him behind."

You wanted to say no. That you were better off alone. But something about this guy made you want to agree. Maybe it was his smile or maybe the way that he looked at you. You didn't know. All you did know was that he felt real, he understood the threat. Being around him for just a few hours made you want him around all the time. Sure you felt bad for not feeling that way toward Alden. But you never really thought about a long term thing with him. Then again you guys were living together and having sex. But it never felt right. Just something about it felt like you could never live up to his expectations.

" Hey. Stop that. Don't get lost in there."

Eddie's voice pulled you out of a deep thought. He was much closer than before and he was holding your hand. He was crazy warm and his hand was rough but very comforting.

" um you seem like the type who overthinks."

You laughed looking at his and yours. He was nice. And he saw right through you. When you met his eyes there was a spark. A pretty big fucking spark that you couldn't ignore. You pulled your hand away.

" I uhh....I better head to bed. Early ride to the beach."

He smiled and slowly leaned to give you a kiss on the cheek. You gasped slightly trying to catch your breath.

"See you in the morning princess."

Eddie grabbed another carrot and waved before disappearing into the hallway.

What the hell was that y/n? Not possible. You can't be in love with someone this fucking fast.

...

#fanfic #eddie munson #eddie munson x female original character #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x plus size reader #eddie x reader #eddie my beloved #eddie x fem!reader #eddie x y/n #plus size reader #eddie x plus size reader #eddie x you #eddie and dustin #alden x reader #alden x plus size reader #the walking dead #alden x you #alden x fem!reader

[brightbeautifulthings]

Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones

"The real proof will be whether bullets can stop him or not, Letha supposes. If they can, then he's a serial killer. If it takes a final girl to put him down, though, then he was a slasher all along."

Year Read: 2023

Rating: 4/5

About: There are spoilers ahead for My Heart Is a Chainsaw. Four years after the Independence Day Massacre, Jade returns to Proofrock with the charges against her dropped-- the same day that escaped serial killer, Dark Mill South, wanders into town. A blizzard keeps the town trapped and cut off from outside help, and it's up to Jade and Letha to figure out who the final girl is and how Dark Mill South can be stopped. After all, they've aged out of the genre... right? I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Gallery Books/Saga Press. Trigger warnings: character death (graphic, on-page), child/parent/sibling death, animal death (graphic, on-page), suicide, implied pedophilia/statutory rape, graphic gore/body horror, skinning, poisoning, suffocation, drowning, fire, eye horror, guns, violence, severe injury, guilt, grief.

Thoughts: This book is a whole ride. Despite its size, I found myself happy to be back in this world with these characters, and I rarely found my interest flagging. Jones keeps the pages turning with a series of teen slasher style murders based on various popular horror films. In between, we catch up on Jade, Letha, and Hardy and what's changed for them over the past four years. I love the relationships among the three of them, the way they've bonded over past trauma but also just because they care about each other, and it gives the story more heart than My Heart Is a Chainsaw. If that book was about buried trauma coming to the surface, this one is more about living with it afterward.

Don't Fear the Reaper resolves some other problems I had with MHIaC as well. I struggled with Jade's rambling internal monologue about horror films in that book, but she's older and steadier here, and the narrative is likewise more coherent. It shifts characters often to keep things moving, and the only place it really slows down is in the essays on horror theory and town events from Galatea to the new history teacher, Armitage. I didn't love those, but it's a nice homage to Jade's essays to Holmes, and there's a plot thread buried in there that had me 😬. The whiteout blizzard sets a totally different tone from summer in Proofrock, calling up images of The Thing (1982), and the sense of place is practically a character of its own.

In spite of the Lake Witch being the major villain of the first book, I'm somehow always still surprised when Jones mixes the supernatural with regular slashers. The books seem so deeply entrenched in the real world, until suddenly they're not, and while it seemed to come out of left field (again--although I was able to look back and see the groundwork for it this time), I liked the additional thread it added to what was already a string of gruesome murders. Dark Mill South is a reasonably scary slasher addition, but I'll admit I enjoyed picking out the homages to horror film in the murders more than actually having him on the page. Much like the first book, the final showdown is a bit bonkers in scale, with lots of bodies, tons of gore, and killers and final girls alike who just won't stay dead-- you know, just as a classic slasher should be.

#book review #don't fear the reaper #stephen graham jones #horror #horror fiction #netgalley #gallery books #saga press #4/5 #rating: 4/5 #2023

[stranger-nightmare]

okay s4 spoilers ahead but…

I’m currently rewatching the show, at the end of season 1 and like. Brenner literally gets attacked by the demogorgon. The silence that precedes the demogorgon finding the kids and El in that classroom suggests that all of the agents in that hallway perished. So you’re really telling me that Brenner survived an attack from the demogorgon, and Eddie couldn’t survive the bats??? Nah duffer bros. Fuck y’all. -🧚‍♀️

no okay bc yes this exactly!!

and also Steve, Steve who wasn’t even wearing a shirt, somehow miraculously survived being eaten at by those demobats but my baby Eddie, who was wearing a bullet proof vest (granted it was open) was actually killed by them?? nah it just doesn’t sit right with me I’m sorry

- hope

#the answer to your nightmare #eddie munson #stranger things #🧚🏻‍♀️ anon