#character design is um. not my strong suit- | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

factorialsotherfandoms · 4 months

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A breakdown of character appearances and hybrids and stuff in qsmpxcomau for @rabbit-harpist

As fair warning I can't easily summarise the eggs and don't have drawing spoons rn so um... ask me for specific eggs if you want one and I'll do my best <3

In the context of the au, 'human' means any human or hybrid. (These are mostly based on common stuff I see around fandom. but only speak English so shh). Generally for things like hair their cubitos are a good shout.

General wear is like... armour for missions, then it depends. For truly casual hours (think the Brazilians in France) they do have their own clothes - at least a few changes - but anyone who does combat stuff tends to sleep and hang out in jumpsuits. Because the armour just goes over them, and everyone is on call 24/7. The exception is the non-combat people, some of whom still wear them. They do come in many colours at least! And some of them have decorated with embroidery.

Own clothes are mostly in the region of modern clothing. I'll pop some NPC screenshots below for vibes and the like.

If they're being undercover or around civilians, trench coats, jeans, hoodies, big workboots - think like.. cyberpunk but then take all the cool neon strips away when they're somewhere they can't relax but need to look normal.

Under cut is notes on specific people, then also a bunch of reference images

Notes for individuals:

Antoine - just... Okay you know those fan designs for him where there's the cube with faces on and the rest is a flesh coloured slightly torn up at the bottom all the way around cloak and what's underneath is a mass of black shadows? That. He basically looks like if a Mimikyu tried to make a human suit with a changable expression hat. Don't worry about it I'm sure he's a perfectly normal and lovely person and did I mention he has a cult?

Aypierre - a dude. I really like the robot extra arms headcanon I see around, but he only really uses those in the lab. Both for higher stability and to handle dangerous substances. Lab coat in the lab, jeans and knitwear (Gegg shirt is now a knited jumper) vibes casual hours. Heavy scarring on the back of his head, much like Felps', but much more obvious as shorter hair.

Baghera - is... not strictly a hybrid, but lets call her one. Human shaped, but all of her skin is covered in yellow feathers, and she actually kinda has two mouths. She has a fully functional bird beak, behind which is not her throat but a normal human mouth. Everyone calls her a high-expression duck hybrid but, um, yeah no. She has wings, but they're clearly badly stunted.

Bagi - cat hybrid, but she doesn't have ears or a tail, only retractable claws. Wears big trench coats and hats or hoods, and while out working always brings a gas mask. Her eyes also reflect like a cats, though the shape is normal. Just likes big and loose clothing generally. A strong believer in many layers.

BBH - demon. Legit just a demon. He cannot really hide he's demonic given the pure black skin is demon-only trait, but he claims he's just a couple of generations down from a demon and a human having a kid together. Big hoods, even in casual wear.

Cellbit - cat hybrid. No those aren't cat ears, shut the fuck up. (They totally are, and that's a tail, and unlike his sister he can't even claw you - he used to be able to, but when he 'joined' the Federation they forcibly and surgically declawed him, and there's scars on his hands from it). His goggles are a Tazercraft special and have all sorts of access to various feeds and tv stations and infrared view. Heavy scarring he can and does keep under his clothing. Friendship bracelet worn around his ankle and in his boots instead. Goes in a safety box if doing anything very dangerous. When using psionic powers, his eyes go red. The level of red scales with the strength of the power, unlike Tazercraft where it's just very colour or not. Roier's jacket is slightly too big for him and usually either worn or around his waist.

Dan - really was just a guy, poor dude.

ElQuackity - Scroll down to Quackity. They're identical twins, ElQuackity just prefers suits and smirking. Doesn't have scars. Like suspiciously few scars everyone has at least a couple here or there, simply from life, except for him.

Etoiles - yes the cucumber thing. Plant hybrid because it's fucking cool okay??? Grows flowers in the spring, but they're extremely vulnerable and tend to get knocked off him easily. Tends to wear a full helmet when fighting because he throws himself around and likes having to worry less about head injuries.

Felps - is almost a generic just a dude as Dan. Has heavy scarring at the base of his neck thanks to the surgery to remove the implant. It's mostly hidden between his very thick hair and his neck tattoos. This is a thing from, well, the coma story onwards. When working in the command room uses in-ear headphones and wears a stabproof vest. It's not a lot of armour, but he can't handle full and they're not expecting problems there, everyone's just comfier if he wears it. Almost certainly has scarring on the back of his hands and insides of his arms and at his shoulder from the IVs while he was in a coma. While away in France was probably in a cute dress Festa Junina style. Friendship bracelet was stolen by aliens :( (Cellbit has it though. Once he gets it back, it's always there and on display). Various tattoos you know how it is.

Fit - biologically only human and there's no specific feature you can pin it on, but there's something clearly off about him. Scars everywhere, but the heaviest scarring is around his left shoulder, and across his chest. Heavy burns, usually hidden. Prosthetic left arm, made with scrap and junk rather than good quality materials. Scarring gets heavier as plot progresses - they do have means to minimise scarring, but they don't work well on him.

Foolish - Shark thing is too fun. Little feet and wrist fins, though the head is just a hat (one he uses to cover his gills as too much exposure to air upsets them). Skin varies between the smooth grey of sharks and a golden metallicy texture. In universe nobody knows what that means (totems no longer exist, but he still has a bit of their blood in him from many many generations ago. The shark component made it stand out). His features also look oddly flat to the human eye.

Forever - a very pretty guy, but a guy. There might be some trace of something elven or fey in his ancestry, but if there is he doesn't know it. He's given up on formal wear when conducting operations, choosing stuff that's easy to run in and wash instead. Loose trousers, good boots, shirt he only needs to undo the top few buttons to take on and off - has to look presentable to their allies. Rather than a jacket will usually be wearing something in the order of a bullet or stab proof vest. Much like Felps isn't in the field so isn't taking the good armour, but given position and what's happened in the past isn't comfortable without something. Friendship bracelet worn usually openly, but under gloves to keep it safe if it risks being damaged. Has a USB stick on a necklace chain he wears under his shirt, containing both the most secret info of the group and digital versions of photos of his family. Various tattoos, mostly arms.

IronMouse - actual demon, perfectly happy to admit it. She's also PsiOps so while they /want/ her in armour, she has been known to magically reinforce her cute dress when needed for something and doesn't have time to change. Just wears what she likes, doesn't bother with the jumpsuits. If she has time to change she will, if not you get her as she is.

Jaiden - bluebird hybrid. Has the lovely toned wings, though they're a bit too small to fly with. Perfectly healthy size, just she didn't develop that trait. Normal bones, too. Does not believe in sleeves, largely because she finds armour on her arms obstructive and blood in fabric uncomfortable. Blood just on skin is her preference - if its acidic it'd get in the armour anyway. Nobody's happy about this, but like, are you going to stop the woman with the highest kill count? Off duty if its cold she will wear a hoodie, specially adjsted for wings. Heavy tattooing on her arms.

Luzu - Jeans and hoodie guy. Mostly looks normal, unless you squint too hard and realise his one visible eye is cybernetic and there's something very slightly off about the way he moves his jaw. Incidentally, sometimes that eye changes colour - and at the same time it does, the colour of the lights on his little flying helper robot also sway.

Mariana - looks mostly human, though there's light, pale cream feathering around his ears. He's called a dove hybrid for it, but it's not quite right... Leather jacket with lovingly applied patches.

Maxo - just a guy, but sunglasses. Always looks exhausted even hiding his eyes. None of the group (except ElQuackity, and Forever on meeting days) are especially neat, but Max is extremely scruffy. Likes his collars to stick up, covers his lower face with a bandana while on mission, keeps his hair in a messy bun. Keeps a locket and many changes of pairs of gloves.

Mike - pink hair, you know how it goes. Likes his bright colours and shorts and lab coats while around and about, is much more restrained when fighting. He likes having a body. A bit of scarring, but most of hs damage is internal. His and Pac's friendship bracelets broke, so they combined the beads and take it in turns to wear it. Mike wears it as a necklace. There's nothing paticularly special species wise. Usually just like. Brown eyes. When he uses psionic powers more complex than telepathy, they glow green. If Pac is in his body (and therefore using psionics to be there) one eye turns blue. If Mike isn't in his body at al but Pac is, both eyes are blue. If nobody's there even slightly, pass out time. If they're perfectly in synch to the point they should be considered one entity in two bodies, both have the grey-green-blue of aquamarines (think like when they were heisting right before Mike was kidnapped for timing). After his kidnapping he has claw scars scraped down the left side of his face, and just spots where the claws dug in over his right temple.

Missa - Skeleton hands! Acid is a problem but immune to most poisons on his hands. It probably spreads elsewhere, but he likes to keep himself covered up. Big hood, skull pattern tattooed on his face which he sometimes uses facepaint to decorate the skull. His armour is a purpley blue and painted with a skeleton over it. Does also have a skull mask, though it's too fragile to wear in combat. The facial tattooing is to cover up heavy scarring, which becomes obvious if you look closer. And, well, being part skeleton was an obvious choice. Post-plot there's heavy burn scaring reaching from his belly button to his left shoulder, and slightly on his neck. But, not until the very very last mission (Leviathan). Until then his scars are smaller. Actually has very sensitive pads on his feet.

Pac - Hoods, even when on mission. Hides in them. Turtlenecks or scarves, too. Blue is his favourite, jeans are his friend. If its hot he might wear less, but he'd much rather keep on his hoodie over a turtlenecked shirt. Left leg is prosethetic, custom built by him and Mike. He actually has a couple of prostheses of different designs for different purposes. A more comfortable everyday one, one suited to difficult terrain, a running one, one built of acid and fire resistant materials, etc. Mike makes him more out of scrap as a way of showing affection. When he has the friendship bracelet he loops it a few times around his wrist - or ankle if he's doing lab work. Prefers trainers, does boots for heavy work like missions. See Mike notes for eyes - normally brown, his psionics colour is blue. After he nearly dies has burn scarring most places, heaviest up his left side and across his back.

Philza - crow hybrid. Very high expression, having large enough wings for flight, hollowed bones in his wings, spine, and hips, some feathering around his ears. Wings could fly except that they are visibly damaged. It's hard to tell what, but the feathers are messy and he clearly struggles for the strength to keep them up (the feathers cover large scarring, but did manage to gorw back through). The hat cannot be lost, neither the emerald or the charity ribbon. He ties the ribbon to hs armour when fighting. For fighting he has a veil on his hat. He's also one of the first to pull out gas mask during fighting, because his theoretical ability to fly leaves him more vulnerable to certain toxins. (When all is said and done and with the right combos of surgery and physio he will be able to short flights again, but not as far as he used to. And they'll always be sensitive. And not until the aliens are gone and not without a lot of research.) Does the perching when he thinks.

Quackity - ducky. The little wings in his hair you get in some fanart as I adore it. Also wings - actual duck wings while the hair ones are yellow - but a little smaller than Jaiden's. Tracksuit with slightly too small trousers and a much too big jacket vibes. He keeps the gunshot scarring on his chest very hidden, though there are also clear places his feathers were plucked and failed to grow back. Does not remember what the injuries were from. Smilier than his twin.

Roier - spider hybrid! Almost as obvious as the birds and their wings is the fact he has six eyes. His two central ones are the largest, while thinner ones above and below. The bottom ones curve upwards along his cheekbones, and are a little chunkier than those above.When on assassin duty he kept to thick but tight fitting clothing. He still prefers it now, though his red jacket was given to Cellbit once he found the guy again. While Mike has claw scars which go down his face, Roier has some which go across.

Slimecicle - just a gloopy guy. Slime hybrid. As he's a hybrid not a slime he looks mostly person, except his skin is able to secrete slime. Generally it doesn't, bu does if he gets scared or stressed or too hot. Really intolerant to temperature changes - cold makes him seize up, and hot makes him unable to get up as his muscles jelly a bit and he gloops all over the floor. Despite looking funny, it can be extremely dangerous for him. Clothing he prefers things that stay cool - thin t-shirt, some shorts, he'll just grab Mariana's jacket if he gets cold.

Spreen - bear hybrid. High expression. Has the ears, but also much of him is covered in black fur. Claws. Joins Max in the sunglasses club.

Tina - demon pretending to be a goat hybrid, keeping her horns ground down. They don't have nerves so it doesn't hurt, but it is uncomfortable with the vibrations into her skull. Likes cute pastel colours, and likes how blood splatters on them.

Vegetta - does not believe in shirts, and has the scars on his chest to prove it. I'm sorry I'm at the bottom of the list and bored now >.<

Walter Bob & Fred do not take off their armour. I'll include a sample of what it looks like below. (Fred leads their group, Walter Bob stopped by once for a mission and can be called again but stays with his group)

Wilbur - he's just a guy in knittwear and jeans and maybe suspiciously pale and hungry, but he's got a guitar and he'll sing for you.

Screenshot time! Options are very limited in the character maker but like. For the vibes.

First some NPC stuff:

Then our three Chosen, left to right Hunter, Warlock, Assassin (internet can find full images I guess)

A Reaper (AKA Bagi's class) in full combat getup (just normal looking person under mask and all)

Skirmisher (renamed Deserter in this), so Walter Bob/Fred/Ron etc

Now some screenshots from my game not just cutscenes and renders!

Missa and Roier in the common room, with Cellbit and someone at the back

An extremely busy infirmary at... some point in the game?

I'm preeeeetty sure is Mike and Felps hanging in the command centre, but unsure on the Felps there's no many customisation options so he's just generic black haired guy there

Baghera and Mouse at the training range

Fit and Jaiden at the front, Foolish and maybe BBH (unsure couldn't make a demon at all) in the middle, I think Tina and someone at the bar

Commander's Quarters, a bit nicer than Forever's Office but you get the idea

Just the whole inside of the ship zoomed out, or as much as I could get

Fit showing off armour (late game, mid game, early game in that order)

Roier (human obvs) in "spider suit", special armour I gave him allowing grapples to higher elevations as a free action

Jaiden (late game armour)

BBH attempted with facepaint, with his ghostie in the background (this is the in game design. Only BBH's and Tubbo's use that model. Phil, Mike, and Luzu have custom ones not found in game)

There's no good skull facepaint in game to use as either mask or tattoos, but here's what I mean about Missa's armour being decorated like a skeleton

There's also these which are like... A selection of posters made in game. Some auto-generate at certain points, others I made at the end of missions. Also forgot Max's sunglasses in one but shhh. Just to fill up the max pictures allowance now screenshots for now

Cool screenshot I found

Also please just the position Mike was yeeted into the cell in while captured the poor man (towards left)

#qsmp x xcom #reference #ensemble #aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa #god this took like um 3 and a half hours to put together

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trixterdark · 2 years

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I love Batman and Robin and Batman Forever, bye~

Val Kilmer’s Batman is great. His balance between Bruce and Batman is surprisingly good. Despite all the camp you can believe his miserable millionaire vibe.

George Clooney as bobblehead Batman. I have no problem believing that George Clooney is Bruce Wayne. His Batman has a Adam West vibe.

Chris O’Donnell is uh... A Dick. But I think that his Robin works for this universe. His desire to be equals and cocky nature make sense for the character’s age. Laundry karate will forever be iconic lmao.

Alicia Silverstone as Barbara. My fav 90s film girl. Wish they put the bat ears on her outfit. Not sure why they made her related to Alfred, but I guess it gives her access to the tech faster.

Michael Gough is THE Alfred Pennyworth. Also a total enabler who keeps insisting that random teens turn into vigilantes.

Nicole Kidman as Chase Meridian. Not quite a damsel in distress or a strong independent woman (for the 90s, I mean. It was like you had one or the other) who has time to fill Batman in with important info, but also isn’t afraid to flirt with him

Tommy Lee Jones Two Face is perfect with his manic energy. Love the use of duality with the lair. Kinda wish we could have seen Billy Dee Williams in the role, but I suppose we can pretend 89 Batman and 95 Batman are alternate universes.

A very elastic Jim Carrey as The Riddler. Apparently he didn’t get along with Tommy Lee Jones, which is surprising considering how well they mix in the film. Also does a lot of damage to both Gotham and Wayne manor in a short amount of time.

Uma Thurman is giving 60s Batman villain. Inspiring countless costumes and drag performances with this charisma. We can only stan.

Arnold the Terminator himself as Mr.Freeze. Love the puns and the very 90s suit design. Like a action figure come to life.

Also. Robert Swenson as Bane. Scary to me as a kid.

Also...the goons. Gotta love all these goons. Every villain has goons and they have cute funky outfits. Color coated goons. Goons on skates.

And the lairs! So many cool lairs!

The Batmobile glows and I’M HERE FOR IT. Giant red flame? Glowing blue stuff? 10/10

The suit up closeups are um...cinema. Don’t ask me why. They need to be there.

The Gotham in these movies is wild, bright and fantastical. Take a look at the buildings! They carry some of the dark whimsy from the Burton films. Weird neon warehouses, giant statues mixed with some art deco here and there, possibly inspired by the cartoon running at the time.

In short these movies are campy, weird and colorful. I don’t prefer them to any other iteration, I’m just glad they’re here. I wish we had another one that showed us more of a team dynamic between Bruce, Dick, and Barbara.

#Batman and Robin #Batman Forever #Batman #DC #Batman movies #90s movies #film #dc comics

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kuromantic · 3 years

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Tales of Zombish: Haikyuu Light Novel Translation

*This is my translation of the Zombie Knight Zombish snippets from the light novel. It’s split into 5 parts, and inserted between each chapter of the light novel. Don’t copy this to another site. The translation is under the cut!

Zombie Knight Zombish

1: Zombish is Born!!

Nightfall. A lone swordsman wakes up. A swordsman that does not know of true death, because of experiencing a false death.

“...Wait, it’s still evening, you stupid crow!”

The man yells at the small crow beside him, having just woken up by a thin bush. The man’s body was wrapped up in an old, tattered cloth—which must have been a cloak some time ago—which covered his entire body.

“I could have gotten burned by the setting sun…” The man blocks out the sunlight with the tattered cloth, and the crow caws apologetically.

“Well, it’s okay. I don’t even have a body that can be burned.”

The man laughs, and the crow flaps its black wings, flying ahead up into the sky. The man follows it with his gaze, squinting at the brightness. He stands up.

“Oh, well. Guess I’ll go.”

The man starts to walk. His frame was thin and delicate, which could be seen even when it was covered with the tattered cloth. And on his back, was a sword.

The sword, which is large enough to not be recognized as one at first glance, does not suit the lean man.

“Man, I wonder if a car will pass by… Eh, I guess no sane person would have gasoline now.”

There’s no road where the man looks ahead.

In the dead world where smokey, dried up wastelands stretch out for seemingly forever, the man continues to walk alone today.

“Yeah, isn’t this good? Isn’t this good? It sounds like the story’s just begun, right?”

The rookie mangaka, Udai Tenma, stands up with an excited face and gets another drink from the self-service fountains. He returns to his table with a glass of cola in his hand. He continues working on his storyboard.

The only equipment on the table is a notebook, a pencil and an eraser. On the open page, there are scribbles that nobody else could decipher. It’s the storyboard Udai made with all his effort.

I wanna try and make a manga. I like it. With that, Udai had drawn a manga during his college years. And it had won an honourable mention in the rookie awards. He had gotten an editor and debuted as a mangaka. But the reality was, he wasn’t quite reaching serialization.

But now, “Zombie Knight Zombish”, is being created in the restaurant. And there’s a confidence that hasn’t been there before.

“‘Everything but death is nothing but a scratch’? He needs to get over himself… No, maybe ‘Mortal bodies, they make me jealous.’...”

Udai mumbles dialogues to himself, changing his expressions to suit the main character’s. The other customers at the restaurant glance at him.

But he can’t afford to care about those gazes.

Zombish needs to help the heroine attacked by the enemy, in an extremely cool and overdramatic manner.

And the enemy has to be a fated opponent that Zombish has known before turning into a zombie. The heroine needs to be a key person, for Zombish to return from zombie to human. And of course, she needs to be cute, a little strong-willed, who tries to join in on the fighting sometimes. But also a girl who you just want to protect…

A flash.

The girl’s eyes can only capture the white hand, emerging from the tattered cloth and gripping the sword on his back.

She feels wind brush past her cheeks, and closes her eyes. She opens them again, and the bandits have already collapsed onto the dry ground.

“Huh? What…?”

As the girl struggles to comprehend what had happened, Zombish is already starting to walk away.

“Hey, don’t leave me behind!”

She grabs the knight. At that moment, the tattered cloth on him rips and falls to the ground.

What appears is not the handsome knight she expected. Nor a fighter that’s big and well-muscled. It’s a skeleton.

“...Wait, bone?! Why bone! Bone? Wait, do bones even talk?!”

“Yeah, I’m bone! So sorry I’m bone, sue me!”

The knight picks up the truly tattered piece of rag, and hides his body. It truly looks like a skeletal model. He turns his back to the girl.

“Anyway, I’m bone. So I can’t go with you. Protect yourself, you’re on your own.”

The “bone”, that had slain a crowd of bandits instantly, tries to walk away from one single girl, as if to escape from her.

Staring at Zombish’s lanky, weak-looking back and the huge sword on it, the girl shouts over at him.

“Hey, bone! Can you eat?”

Zombish turns around, lifts the tattered cloth, and points around his stomach with a laugh.

“You wanna see me eat? It’s hilarious.”

“If you don’t eat… That means I don’t have to share my food or water with you, right?”

“Huh?”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re bone or not, if you can defeat these guys. You’re pretty strong.” The girl points to the iron-clad, muscular bandit with a mohawk. “And I should sew that cloth I ripped back together…”

Zombish laughs, his hard skull distorting a little. “I’m not strong. Those guys are just small fries. But I guess I’ll have you fix this cloth for me.”

At those words, the girl runs up to him.

In the dried-up world of death, two footsteps mark their paths. Up above in the sky, a crow flies around in circles. As if to watch over them.

Zombish’s journey has just started!!

“I wonder what my editor will say…”

The man, once the “Little Giant”, leaves the restaurant and returns home. And without changing his clothes, collapses into his futon for the first time in a while.

2. VS Editor A!!

“Zombies aren’t usually skeletons, right?” Akaashi Keiji opens his heavy mouth, holding his coffee in one hand. It makes Akaashi heavy-hearted to meddle with a work an author brought to him.

Kanda, Chiyoda City, Tokyo.

In the editorial department of Weekly Shonen Vie, there’s an extreme lack of people in the afternoon.

The rookie mangaka, Udai Tenma, freezes momentarily in the meeting space. And he attempts to brush it off with a laugh.

“Yeah, I thought, ‘Is a skeleton okay?’ for a bit. But maybe a Japanese-style zombie would be new, and I thought I could pull it off. We all get cremated in Japan, too. Hahaha.”

“I see.”

Akaashi looks at the copy of “Zombie Knight Zombish” on the table, and Udai laughing in front of him. And he says one more time, with force behind his words. That this is the last time he’ll say this, and he won’t say the same thing again.

“Zombies aren’t usually skeletons, right.”

The question mark had disappeared.

It’s not a question, but a confirmation of fact.

“...Yeah.” Udai replies weakly. He drops his shoulders, and bites the straw of his cola.

It’s tough.

It had been his best work. He had a confidence in it, that he hadn’t before with his other works. But his concept had been fundamentally criticized.

The editor continues talking to the crestfallen Udai.

“And one more thing.”

“...What is it?”

Udai hunches his shoulders, looking up at Akaashi like a scolded child. Akaashi sips his coffee, adjusts his glasses and lets out a breath. He opens his mouth slowly.

“We’ve established that a skeleton is not a zombie. But I think this skeleton’s design is a little lacking, in the first place. It’s no different to any old skeleton. For the main character, I want a quirk that will tell you it’s Zombish with just one look.”

“Any old skeleton?” Udai says, and draws a normal-looking skeleton into his notebook.

“Yes. For example, he could be wearing glasses, or he could have a large scar. I want a unique design. Even if you draw him simply, you would know it’s him. If I were to ask for more, I’d even say make his silhouette recognizable. That’s how strong his design should be.”

Udai adds a scar to his skeleton, and mumbles, “I guess it can’t be a scar, if his silhouette has to be recognizable.”

“The scar is just one example.”

“I’m sorry…”

Udai slurps the cola at the bottom of the glass, which is pretty much melted ice. He laughs disappointedly.

“I thought the skeleton was fine, since he was cremated. Like a Japanese-style zombie. Well, there’s no zombie-ness, I guess…”

At those words, Akaashi’s glasses shine.

“Then… How about you make Zombish look more Japanese? It could link with his sword, too.”

“What?”

“Well, this is just one what-if scenario.”

“...No, I think it could work. I’ll think about it! Then maybe he can look different from any old zombie!” Udai grabs his pen, and draws a Japanese-style zombie in his notebook. “If it’s Japanese clothes and a sword, he’d just be a samurai… How do I give him the zombie knight feeling…”

Watching the pen move busily and create many versions of Zombish, Akaashi feels a weight lift from his heart.

It makes him heavy-hearted to meddle with other people’s works. But sometimes, his words make the author take a step in a good direction. That must be why he can continue with this job.

“So now, please brush up on the work. And, depending on the edited manuscript, I may bring it up during the serialization meeting.”

Udai’s pen stops moving. “Wait, why?! You’ve been talking about my work so harshly and tearing into it this whole time!”

“...I haven’t been tearing into it. It’s entertaining, so I just want to make the story even more entertaining.”

Udai’s face crumples, as he looks up at Akaashi. “Akaashi-san, you weren’t just an unpleasant person, after all!”

“I’m an unpleasant person…?”

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean it that way! I meant it in an um, good way!”

Akaashi doesn’t ask what exactly he means by that, and organizes the manuscript. “Zombish is very entertaining, compared to the works you have brought me so far. I think you have a chance.”

“Thank you!”

“Oh, and lastly…”

“There’s… still more?” Udai tenses.

Akaashi chuckles, before talking. “I’ve been thinking for a while, but this bit on the edge of the page, saying ‘Zombish’s journey has only just begun!’. You don’t need to write that. It’s the editor’s job.”

“...!!”

4. Get Serialized!!

It’s just past noon. Noticing that the phone is ringing, Udai reaches out from under the futon. He checks, and realizes it’s Akaashi. He gets out of the futon in a hurry, and answers.

“You were asleep.” Akaashi says, in the same straightforward tone.

“...I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry too. I’m going to get into it. Your one-shot is well-received.”

At those words, Udai’s hand begins to sweat. He had been told to make a one-shot for the extra issue, and had made “Zombie Knight Zombish” with everything he’d got.

He had changed Zombish’s design into a young man with patchwork skin, after Akaashi’s critique. He likes the way the bandages show around his collar. It can’t have been a skeleton, he thinks. It’s hard to relate to a skeleton.

The “recognizable by silhouette” task had been cleared with the axe on his head. The zombie knight element was incorporated, by making him detach his left arm to wield his sword. Maybe they’ll make a movable figure out of the character.

Above all, it was a work he’d been confident in. If it had still been absolutely hopeless, Udai wouldn’t have been able to recover from it.

“Thank god…” Udai feels the tension drain out of him, and Akaashi continues.

“And now, I would like to brush up Zombish to prepare for serialization.”

“Of course! With pleasure!” Udai answers with gusto, almost like an izakaya employee.

“Firstly, your heroine.”

“Yes!”

I should probably fix up the heroine a bit more, Udai thinks. Make her cuter, better… But Akaashi doesn’t steer the conversation in that direction.

“In the one-shot, Zombish saves her, and they decide to go on a journey together, and it ends there.”

“Huh? Oh, yes.”

“If the one-shot will be chapter one, are they going to be travelling together in chapter two and beyond?”

It’s not anything fun, like about making the heroine have a good figure or about how revealing her clothes should be.

And really, Udai hadn’t been thinking what would happen once it got serialized. Well, he supposes it would be like what Akaashi just said.

“Wouldn’t the readers grow bored of that?” As if to read Udai’s mind, Akaashi says.

“What?”

“The main character and the heroine go on a journey together the whole time, an enemy appears, he saves her, he defeats the enemy, and then moves on. And they continue like that until the final boss.”

“Yeah…”

“Wouldn’t that bore people?”

Wait, am I getting given out to?

No, he’d only been thinking of the one-shot as a base, so he hadn’t set anything beyond that in stone. He had only thought that leaving the readers hoping for more would be enough.

“...Um, if it’s possible, I’d like to talk about this in person.” Udai says, wiping the sweat off his palms with his t-shirt.

“All right. When are you free?”

And so, in the editorial department the day after, the brainstorming session in the meeting space had continued for more than two hours.

“So then, instead of a heroine that just keeps getting saved…”

“She’d be like a buddy that also gives witty comebacks.”

Udai draws a bunch of expressions for the female character. Flustered, angry, glaring… He stops his pen, and looks at Akaashi.

“Then maybe Zombish will have a goofy side, instead of just being cool?”

“But please don’t make it into a gag manga. Looking at the survey results, there are a lot of people saying that the manga is interesting because Zombish is cool.” Akaashi answers, looking at the survey chart.

“I see… Balancing it out is hard.” Udai draws out a bunch of Zombish’s expressions in his notebook, and laughs. “But it’s fun. It feels like I’m making a manga.”

“It’s good to hear that.” Akaashi smiles for a moment, and continues. “And also, about the enemy. Instead of them being a group of bandits in the harsh world, making them an organization would add depth to the story.”

“Oh, maybe they’re the reason Zombish turned into a zombie?”

“Sounds good.”

Udai’s mood lifts from Akaashi’s acknowledgement, and opens up a page earlier on in his notebook.

“Look here! The final boss is a fated opponent from before Zombish turned into a zombie. And the heroine is a key person for Zombish to turn back into a human. So I thought right now, maybe the heroine is the daughter of the final boss.”

In contrast to the excited Udai, Akaashi lets out a low groan of uncertainty.

“...So what, exactly, is Zombish fighting for?”

“You always ask questions that can make the whole thing fall apart, Akaashi-san.”

“Well, isn’t that the most important part?”

Expanding ideas simple-mindedly is fun. The more he expands, picking up the pieces and making the story coherent will be hell, though. But knowing that, talking about final bosses and rivals is genuinely fun.

“Secret hideouts are great, aren’t they?”

“If they’ve taken over this world, isn’t there no need to keep it a secret? Something that would display their power…”

“A castle!”

7. Secret Technique: Bolster Up!

Just after serialization, the response had been very good. It had been. Udai had been in a good mood, asking “This will definitely be turned into an anime, right?”

But now, it had gotten to a point where they couldn’t let it get any lower on the survey rankings.

“........”

“Are you okay?” Akaashi’s senior sees him with his head in his hands, and speaks to him.

“...Oh, yes.”

“It’s about Zombish, right? You should bolster it up with something. Like, with a pretty girl or a handsome guy,” the senior says. “Well, I don’t know.” He returns to his seat, after saying his part.

“Bolster it up…”

Akaashi’s brows knit together.

Would that be enough? Could such a hasty, superficial solution entertain the readers? Well, the current results point to the fact that they’re not entertained. But even so, shouldn’t they be charming the audience with the protagonist’s appeal, or how interesting the story is?

“The protagonist’s appeal, huh…”

But what are the features of a protagonist that will be loved?

What kind of story makes the readers want to come back for more?

“.....”

It would be the anticipation the readers have for the main character. What will happen next week? What will he show us next? Expectations as such. There must have been a lack of absolute protagonist strength, if he thinks about it.

But that was the result of trying to create a dark fantasy, painting a delicate picture of emotions. Precisely because it was an absurd world with a zombie knight appearing in it. Was that what they had done wrong? Was it impossible for his literature department-aspiring self to make an entertaining manga, after all…?

After pondering for a long time, Akaashi lifts his head with a start.

“....!”

Wait a minute.

Am I making the same mistake again?

Am I thinking I could control the author and the readers?

“...No. Pour your spirit into each ball, pour your spirit into each ball…”

Yes. Focus on the next point, the next ball. Focus on this week’s story, the obstacle the protagonist must overcome.

His desk becomes messier each day, as if to reflect inside his heart. Akaashi closes his eyes, and focuses his mental state.

“Don’t think about what’s easy, think about what’s fun. What’s fun…”

The survey rankings going down, getting discontinued isn’t fun. Then what is he meant to do…?

“Give feedback… Connect it to the next step… The next…”

The seniors look at Akaashi worriedly, in front of the printer.

“Akaashi is muttering to himself again, is he okay? He won’t quit, will he?”

“He always comes back to life afterwards, you can leave him alone.”

“Yep.”

“I want an absolute, strong main character.” Akaashi says to Udai, during their meeting.

“Absolute?”

“Yes. Like a star that hits any ball with his utmost ability.”

“Am I going to get discontinued?!”

Udai stands up with a clatter, face growing pale. Akaashi shakes his head quietly.

“...Please calm down. It’s not getting discontinued, yet.”

“...Yet…” Udai shrinks, and sits back down.

“It’s a tough situation, but let’s turn things around.”

They’re burning their bridges behind them.

On the walls around the meeting space, there are many posters of works that had been turned into anime and movies. And the cardboard boxes blocking the corridor are packed with samples of goods.

They have to join the ranks of those popular works, at all cost…!

Akaashi brings his gaze back to Udai, and starts to summarize the things he had thought about for the past week.

“The main character… Zombish is a ‘star’. The readers have expectations for the star. What will he do next? What awesome moves will he show us? What kind of crazy risks will he take?

“We want the main character to amaze us with unexpected, yet charming actions. Whether Zombish sinks or swims will depend on how he overcomes next week’s desperate situation.”

Akaashi lifts the paper bag on the floor. “And there’s a favour I want to ask from you.”

“What’s this? I was wondering about it for a while.” The paper bag handed to him is unexpectedly heavy. Udai glances inside. “A blu-ray?”

“Yes. I picked out swashbuckler films of all types, that have useful scenes for composition and pose references. At this point, we should take in anything cool and flashy.”

“Thank you!”

“Also, it will be hard for you to watch it all, so I wrote the times for scenes I want you to watch.” Akaashi gives him a note.

“I’ll definitely watch it! I’ll use them as references!”

“I’ll do anything I can as well. Let’s both try our best.”

There’s no way Akaashi can control what story the author will bring to him, what the other works will be like, how the readers will react.

So, he should think about what he can do, what he should do.

Avoiding discontinuation— it’s hard, but it shouldn’t be impossible.

10. Our fight has only just begun!

“Zombish is getting discontinued… You have seven chapters left…”

After getting the phone call informing him of the discontinuation, Udai had gone outside. Staying in his room felt too painful. But why, and how he’d come to the editing department, he doesn’t remember.

Akaashi had been taken aback, after Udai had come without contacting him. But one look at his face, and he knew he couldn’t leave him by himself. And so he had taken him to a nearby coffee shop to talk to him. It was just his luck that he hadn’t gone outside the company.

“Please order anything you like.”

Akaashi gives the menu to Udai sitting opposite to him, but Udai drops it onto the table, not having enough energy to hold it.

Akaashi pulls the menu closer to himself, trying not to show his shock. “Is coffee all right, then?”

“........”

There’s no answer, but Akaashi asks for two cups of coffee from the waiter. He chooses his words carefully, and begins to speak.

“We had unfortunate results this time, but…” Akaashi continues, to the dejected Udai. “And as a suggestion from me…”

“........”

“I would like to get a fresh start with a new work. We should solidify the concept more for your next work, and compete with a work only you can make.”

“Next…?” Udai raises his head at last, only to slam it back into the table. “There’s nothing! There’s no such thing that only I can make!” He lifts his crumpled face, and yells.

“That’s not true. There must be something…”

“It is too! There’s nothing!”

Akaashi can only bite his lip, while his assigned author descends into total panic.

What should he do…

He can’t just say “Bye, then,” and leave him feeling downcast. He had wanted to part ways with him in a positive manner, connecting him to the next step. That might just be his own ego talking, though.

“...I’m sure there’s a good theme for you. Is there anything you liked as a child, or something you put your heart into?”

“I’m just a jack-of-all-trades, average guy. I’ve just gotten by in regards to study, sports, art and music…”

When Udai had been in good form, he had preened about it, saying “I can do pretty much anything!”, but now he’s totally dejected. Well, that can’t be helped. He’s getting discontinued, after all.

The only thing Akaashi can do, is to tell him his completely honest thoughts.

“I don’t think a serialized author is just a jack-of-all-trades, average person.”

“I’m not a serialized author anymore, I’m a discontinued author…”

At that moment, the waiter arrives. He shows a slightly intrigued face at Udai’s words, but immediately puts on his professional face and turns on his heels.

Akaashi takes the cup, and inhales the aroma of coffee to calm himself down. He thinks. Maybe he should make some small talk, and change the mood.

What should he talk about? Not about his work, or about what lays ahead. Then, about Udai himself? He wonders what he had talked about with him recently. What club had he joined in college? Where was he from?

And he remembers.

“Udai-san, you told me before that you’re from Tohoku. Were there any unusual traditions there? That you can write a manga about.”

“...Yeah, I’m from Miyagi. But I lived in a normal estate, it was all pretty normal.”

Udai says with a hoarse voice, and absentmindedly puts sugar cubes into his coffee. Many, many sugar cubes. Akaashi thinks he’s adding a bit too much, but there’s an atmosphere around them that makes him unable to say that.

“Well, maybe where I live is in the middle of nowhere in the countryside, to you. You’re from Tokyo, after all.”

“That’s not…”

Akaashi thinks that Udai is getting a little too dejected with him, but he can’t be blamed. “Zombie Knight Zombish” is Udai’s first serialization, and his first discontinuation.

Food, sleep… Udai had sacrificed such human necessities, and yet his work had not been well-received. Of course he would be dejected.

And as a new employee, “Zombie Knight Zombish” was Akaashi’s first work that he had launched from nothing. Due to being emotionally invested in it, Akaashi had felt deeply disappointed about the decision made for Zombish.

Which is exactly why he had wanted to end it on a positive note. Surely there’s something in common with them, that they can talk about…

Akaashi, feeling cornered, opens his mouth. And starts to talk about something unexpected, even to himself.

“...Actually, I have someone I know in Miyagi. It was in relation to the club I was in during high school.”

“I see.”

Udai stirs his coffee with lifeless eyes, not picking up the conversation at all. He doesn’t even drink the coffee that is surely too sweet.

“........”

Of course. Someone else’s high school years is the most irrelevant subject to Udai right now. But really, what should he do? Telling someone they’re being discontinued, and thinking of what happens afterwards, is a first for Akaashi. And it’s a big job. He isn’t sure what the correct thing to do is.

Akaashi falls silent, and Udai opens his mouth. “...What club were you in, during high school?” He asks, not sounding that interested. It feels more like he asked out of obligation, because there was a break in the conversation.

Akaashi feels regret, after realizing he’s made Udai read the room for him. But at the same time, he feels relieved that some of Udai’s energy has come back.

“Volleyball.”

“I see. I did volleyball, too.” Udai says. “During my years, we went to the Spring High nationals, too.”

At those words, Akaashi places the coffee he had lifted back onto the table.

“Oh, me… too.”

“Really?! That’s amazing, Akaashi-san!”

“No, you too.”

And with a light premonition, Akaashi asks. “...Which school did you attend in Miyagi?”

“It’s not a powerhouse, so I don’t know if you’d know…” Udai laughs, before answering. “It’s called Karasuno.”

Please look forward to Udai-sensei’s next work, “Meteo Attack”!

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu novel translation #akaashi keiji #udai tenma #zombie knight zombish

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wanderingchocolateeclair · 3 years

Text

Here she is!!! I finally got round to drawing her again and I’m actually relatively happy with how she turned out. She is one of my favourite ocs and I love her to bits - I made her almost a year ago when I was thinking about some random EctoLoader headcanons and suddenly had the urge to give them a child...and so then she was designed :D I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post my initial designs as well because I really don’t like the look of my old art but you know why not:

Please keep in mind that these are quite old and um...not that brilliant but they were my first quick sketches of her and I ended up writing a whole entire backstory for her so yeah! (Now that I look back at it I realise I didn’t make her hair poofy enough in the new drawing...also the page ripped and I was really sad about that-) anyway here’s some info about her (under the cut because it ended up a little longer than I expected):

AH I forgot to say!! There are mentions of death and severe injury and other stuff like that in the backstory so please read with caution!

Name -> Yuna Makimi

Age -> 17

Quirk -> “Adapt” - her quirk allows her to adapt certain parts of her body to suit whatever situation she is in. A main example of this would be when she creates little pads on the ends of her fingers which pick up vibrations, enabling her to “see” her surroundings a little better. However she cannot use her quirk to restore parts of her body that are lost/severely damaged (like her legs + eyes).

Occupation -> Student at UA

Current status -> Alive

Family -> Mother (deceased), Father (deceased), Powerloader (adopted dad), Ectoplasm (adopted dad)

Likes -> Dumplings, sitting in flower fields, doing literally anything with her friends + family

More info + backstory:

So, like I mentioned, I came up with her when I was thinking about EctoLoader headcanons and one of these hcs is that after Ecto loses his legs they both go round and pay visits to hospitals and other places to visit the children/patients there - and so yeah.

Yuna was part of quite the loving family, her parents were quite strict but loved her to pieces.

They weren’t the richest of people, and didn’t get along with the rest of their family for whatever reasons, but they were fine together - just the three of them.

That is until the accident that completely changed her life.

At the age of 8 she was caught up in a nasty villain attack as they were driving through the city and their car was completely destroyed. Her parents died at the scene and she was immediately whisked to hospital with very severe injuries.

She lost both her legs and almost all sight in her eyes, her parents were dead and she had nowhere to go, and at such a young age she felt so lost.

2 years passed and still nobody wanted to take her in, they said it would be “too much responsibility” to look after someone like her. And so at that point she had given up on all hope if someday being in a loving family again. Only 10 years old and her life had completely crumbled to pieces.

That is until one day PL swings by on one of his visits and meets this small child who looks as if she never smiles. He speaks to her and she slowly became less shy of this small man that sat in front of her. He decided to visit more often (he was made aware of her situation by one of the nurses that looked after her) and told Ecto all about this sweet little girl who he’d met who was in need of a better life. And over time they contemplated taking her in as their own - they weren’t sure yet but they had thought about it.

One day PL came with a surprise. He had put together a pair of prosthetic legs for her that she had mentioned to him before that she wished she had and that wasn’t all, they mentioned that this time Ecto came along too. She was absolutely overjoyed. She had heard about him and looked up to him a lot, he inspired her to keep going, even though she had lost her legs.

After discussing it with each other, they asked her whether she would be happy to come and live with them, and join a loving family once again. She was taken aback by the offer, as no one had even considered looking after for 2 whole years, but she realised that she was finally offered a normal life again and she was oh so happy with that...and so they adopted her and it was the best decision they ever made.

They helped her get used to her new home and she slowly got more and more comfortable with her new life. Ecto helped her with her therapy, guiding her when she felt lost and confused about what she’s doing. PL helped by tweaking little things about her prosthetics that could help her, and created little items to support her in her walking and her sight. They helped her discover new ways of using her quirk to allow her to be more aware of her surroundings and to help her “see” (she can’t use it to see fully, it just helps her to pinpoint the movements and positions of the objects/people around her a little better).

Soon enough, she was happier than ever, and when she was old enough she brought up her decision of wanting to go to UA. They weren’t sure whether or not she should, for her own safety, but she insisted that even with her disabilities she wanted to try her best at becoming a hero just like them in her own way...even if others believed it was barely possible. And so they allowed it. They taught there anyway so if anything were to happen they would always be close by.

She made a bunch of amazing friends at UA and learnt to handle her quirk in many different ways - expanding it to help her in various different situations. Her classmates would always be there to help her when she needed it but all believed that she was one of the strongest out of all of them - this really made her emotional because it wasn’t something that she ever expected to hear - and hearing this really made Ecto and PL happy, because they had watched as this tiny helpless girl had grown up to become strong, happy and incredibly loved.

And that’s my “little” backstory for her! Sorry its a bit sad and all that but it wouldn’t be one of my backstories if it wasn’t some form of tragic....:/ Anyway have some random headcanons for her->

She cannot ride in a car unless she is holding someone’s hand, this is pretty self-explanatory.

She loves jokes and stupid puns, they make her so incredibly happy it’s unbelievable.

She also loves flowers - they smell nice.

She isn’t entirely blind - she can just about make out shapes and moving objects but without the aid of her quirk she finds it hard to tell the difference between what might be a person and what might just be a large object.

She loves to sing and dance, and she has a beautiful voice, however she gets embarrassed if she gets caught.

She is always happy to spend any sort of time with her dads because with their jobs as heroes, free time can sometimes be very hard to come by.

Sorry how absolutely all over the place this is, I have plenty more headcanons and info about her, but I think I’ve rambled on for quite long enough now! (Plus I kinda just want to post it now because the more I look at the drawing the less I like it-)

Anyway, I hope you like her! She is one of my favourite characters that I’ve made and she makes me very happy. Hopefully, I’ll draw her some more :)

~Eclair

#bnha #eclair’s art #eclair rambles a bit :)#bnha oc #mha oc #my ocs #my characters #ectoloader #ectoplasm #power loader #higari maijima #Yuna #Yuna Makimi #I love her so much #I finally got round to drawing her :)#i managed to muster enough confidence and motivation to actually write out her backstory #so yay!#:) ❤️

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outoftheframework · 5 years

Text

an introduction to the fanon batfamily

Are you new to the DC Batfamily fandom? Or perhaps do you need a refresher on our favorite vigilante disasters? Well, look no further! Here is your holy grail list of the traits/characteristics/cliches we as a fandom have collectively decided to embrace instead of the actual source material.

Just a quick disclaimer (because people get very passionate about how these characters are portrayed) this is a collection of my headcanons popular on the internet. These are (mostly) in no way canon-correct.

Let’s start out with the man himself:

BRUCE WAYNE

Has too many kids

Has a problem with adopting small dark-haired children with tragic backstories. It’s literally a compulsion. He cannot stop himself.

Classic Dad

Doesn’t understand “teen lingo”

Will forget your name

Cannot function by himself (as Bruce)

Can make two dishes correctly: cereal and grilled cheese

Will fall asleep in business meetings

Wears either a three-piece designer suit or no shirt and sweatpants

Many headcanon him as gay.

Valid

My personal option is that he’s a disaster bi

DICK GRAYSON

The cutest child ever created

Robin!Dick is just an endless spout of puns and adorableness

Never grew out of sliding down railings/swinging on chandeliers

Fashion icon but not really

Never lives down Discowing

70s/80s/90s/Early 2000s mashup in every outfit

Simply better with finger stripes

Damian’s real dad

Stop erasing his Romani heritage

BARBARA GORDON

Simply the smartest

Computer science queen

Strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man but at the same time puts up with Dick

Barbara says fuck the joker

Holds one of the two collective braincells

Could and should run the entire GCPD

JASON TODD

One day we all decided that Jay likes Shakespeare more than his family

Literature icon

Destined to be chained to Roy Harper forever

Better with the white hair streak

“fuck y’all; did you die??”

Actual zombie

Needs a dog

Of Latinx descent

fucking crowbars, man

CASSANDRA CAIN

Stop excluding her from fanart??

Sign language and disability icon

The best fighter of the bunch

Fashion icon but like actually

A sweetheart that needs to be protected at all costs

Bruce’s favorite child

Of Asian descent

DUKE THOMAS

Literal ray of sunshine

Also needs to be in more fan content

!!!!!!

Owner of the other collective brain cell

Common. Sense.

Confused but excited

“Um, why is there a turkey in the bat- you know what? Never mind.”

Invented the color yellow

TIM DRAKE

Out of every headcanon, Tim’s being a coffee/caffeine addict is somehow almost universally accepted

Alfred worries about this kid 24/7

Cursed to always be 17

The detective Robin who is always 20 steps ahead

The N52 Red Robin series is a treasure and the injustice done to it is unacceptable

Needs long hair

Fancast is definitively Ryan Potter

Skateboards

“Drake” superhero name is stupid and we should say it

STEPHANIE BROWN

Purple icon

Bring back waffle-obsessed Steph

If she’s not dating Tim she better be dating Cass

Her Robin career was too short

Steph said Gay Rights

Somehow at the manor 24/7 when she doesn’t live there

Sometimes the bane of Bruce’s existence

Sassy queen

DAMIAN WAYNE

“TT” every other sentence in fanfiction

(I am guilty of this)

Better when Jon’s his best friend

Stop erasing his Arabic background

“Demon Spawn”

Okay but literally when did this start? I see this in every fanfic.

Always carrying a katana (?)

Dick’s actual son

Somehow I feel like this is controversial but I’m not sure why. Not saying these are all “correct,” they’re just common in the fandom :) hope this helps! feel free to add more tropes/cliches. Thanks for reading!!

COMMISSIONS ARE OPEN!!! MSG ME FOR DETAILS :)

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destielreboot · 3 years

Text

Something Worth Celebrating

Summary: Dean’s tired of Cas not understanding his not-so-subtle hints that he’s in love with him, so panics his way through using a movie to make his point clear, as if that makes any more sense.

Words: ~3.8k

Read on AO3

Dean never really celebrated his birthday, not in any way that mattered. It was a date that marked him maybe surviving another year, and he figured it couldn’t be all that accurate a marker anymore given that he’d died so many times. Was he supposed to subtract the four months in Hell? Was his birthday now after Sam’s? None of it mattered much, and he was not about to accidentally jinx himself or something by celebrating an arbitrary day. Instead, he grumbled all the way home about the snow and salted roads being bad for Baby, then immediately went to his room and started flipping through his movie collection with the hope a new case wouldn’t come in for at least a few hours.

“Dean?” Cas knocked once and swung the door halfway open. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to find something to watch. I figure I deserve a bit of R&R after the week we’ve had.”

“Of course. Ghouls are never particularly pleasant, although the hunt went well, all things considered.”

“Hell of a lot better than the last one. You stickin’ around for a while?”

“I have no plans to leave.”

Dean looked back down at the drawer full of DVDs and smiled softly. “Good. It’s nice to have you here.”

“Dean? Can I… watch the movie with you?”

“Uh, yeah, as you wish.”

Dean’s hands shook slightly as he picked up a DVD case. It was dumb—so recklessly stupid—and if it didn’t work out, he’d have to live with that, but Cas hadn’t said a word about the mixtape. Not a damn thing about something he’d spent hours anxiously perfecting. Odds were good this would go over his head as well, but hey, at least they were spending time together. And not even Cas would leave during a movie unless there was an emergency, right?

“What are we watching?” Cas timidly sat on the edge of Dean’s bed, the usual comfort level gone as this was Dean’s space, and Cas had become nothing if not respectful of that boundary.

“A classic from my childhood.”

“It’s designed for children?” Cas narrowed his eyes and frowned.

“No, it’s—it’s about… pirates and thieves, sacrifice, rewriting destiny—” The words slipped out of their own volition, as they weren’t quite true, but then again, Dean wasn’t solely focused on the plot of the film. “Um, it’s about overcoming evil forces, fighting for those you care about, and outsmarting the enemy.”

“No cowboys?”

“No cowboys,” Dean chuckled as he put The Princess Bride into the DVD player. He plopped down onto the bed and kicked his feet up, instinctively patting the place next to him so Cas wouldn’t stay perched on the edge. “Settle in, I think you’re gonna like this one.”

Cas inched closer, far too conscious of Dean’s repeated complaints about lack of personal space to get close, but he let himself relax slightly as the movie started.

“This time period is inconsistent with most pirate-centric media. Dean, what does this ill child have to do with the plot you described?”

“Shh, just watch.”

Cas begrudgingly obliged, although biting his tongue was never his strong suit. He’d joined Dean for enough movie nights to know his questions would not be answered, and silence was the preferred initial viewing state—aside from laughter, that is; the uproarious joy that bellowed from his best friend never failed to elicit a smile from the angel.

The first few times he heard Westley say “As you wish” seemed inconsequential, as Dean had been incessantly quoting movies at him for years, and it wasn’t difficult to see why he would relate to this roguish character. He was vaguely aware of Dean glancing back and forth between him and the screen, no doubt to make sure he was paying attention, a task that would be much easier if he didn’t feel Dean’s eyes on him quite so often.

For the most part, Cas did well at keeping quiet, though certain absurdities in the movie had him itching to ask questions.

“What is the point of her throwing herself down this hill? I understand that it’s too steep for comfortable walking, but there has to be a more convenient way to reach the bottom.”

“I guess it’s supposed to be sort of romantic?” Dean shrugged. “She’s just been reunited with Westley after believing he’d died; she doesn’t want to waste time getting to him.”

“Hmm.” Cas looked pensively at Dean for a moment, then turned back to the tv with a hint of a smile.

“Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while,” Westley declared.

“Do you believe in the existence of true love, Dean?” Cas asked innocently.

“I—uh—um—I’m gonna go grab a drink,” Dean stammered. He did his best to nonchalantly leave the room, an action made far more difficult by his pounding heart. Once safely in the hallway, his pace quickened dramatically. If he was going to have a panic attack, it’d be away from prying eyes. Jack may have been at Jody and Donna’s, but Sam was home—he couldn’t see him like this. Diverting his path, he headed for the Dean Cave instead and sunk into one of the recliners.

He knew it was stupid to be panicking over something so small, but this was the closest he’d ever come to outright stating how he felt, and it was scary, goddammit. Growing up, he would’ve been beaten for even entertaining the idea—John didn’t raise no goddamn fruit—and that intense unease had settled itself into his very being, become a core tenet of his identity. Undoing several decades of damage was more difficult than he’d ever imagined, but fucking hell, he wanted to try.

It took longer than he’d hoped for his breathing to return to normal, which amped up the fear that Cas would come looking for him, and he realized on his way to the kitchen that he’d probably need an excuse. He grabbed a couple beers out of the fridge—maybe Cas would drink one, maybe Dean would end up chugging both—and turned to go back before thinking better of it. He pulled some popcorn out of the pantry and tossed it in the microwave, hoping Cas wouldn’t know how quickly it cooked. Once it was done, Dean took a few deep breaths to steady himself, dumped the popcorn into a bowl, and walked as calmly as possible back to his room.

Coming back with a snack seemed to somewhat assuage Cas’s concern for Dean having been gone so long, but Dean could tell he would be asked about it later.

“You missed the Fire Swamp and something called the Pit of Despair? I can’t find much validity in the mechanics of the machine, although the concept is interesting. Taking time off the end of life, which is by its very nature uncertain, rather than reducing to a set number of years.”

“Try not to think about it too hard.” Dean smirked, holding out the second beer as he settled in. Cas habitually accepted the offer, even though everything tasted like molecules. He didn’t mind too much; partaking always seemed to make Dean happy, a sight Cas didn’t see nearly enough.

“I agree with the pestering child on this one, killing off the hero of the story this early makes no sense. Unless, of course, they live in a world like ours? Is there someone who can return his soul to his physical form, as I did with you?”

Dean choked on the handful of popcorn he’d just stuffed in his mouth. Cas looked on, worried, as Dean coughed and took a swig of his beer.

“Uh, no, nothing like that… They’ll, uh, they’ll explain it.”

“Hmm. Are you alright, Dean? You seem… preoccupied.”

“What? I’m fine.” He picked up the bowl and held it out. “Popcorn?”

“Dean.” Cas took it from him and set it further down the bed as he pivoted to face Dean, sliding a bent leg across the blanket between them.

Dean made a show of rolling his eyes. “I said I’m fine, Cas. You’re missing Billy Crystal.”

“We could pause the movie, if you’d like. Ordinarily I wouldn’t push—”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, sure. Can we just… not do this right now?” He raised his hands in resignation and let them drop without looking, one landing on the outside of his left thigh, the other on Cas’s knee.

Dean immediately felt heat rush to his cheeks as they stared at each other, unmoving, for an undetermined amount of time. He was vaguely aware of the Miracle Max scene happening in the background, containing yet another discussion of true love, and he prayed Cas wasn’t paying attention. This had to happen now?

“Dean?” Cas asked softly, finally breaking the silence enveloping them despite the continuing movie, which was obviously oblivious to the quiet scene of bi panic unfolding in front of the screen. “You seem uncomfortable and in distress. Can I—”

“I’m fine!” Dean responded a little too loudly, too quickly. He jerked his hand back, unconsciously clenching and unclenching his fist, his thumb rubbing over his fingertips, as if trying to force the feeling of touching Cas’s knee into his memory.

Cas continued to fix him with that concerned gaze he was all too familiar with, so he downed the rest of his beer as a distraction. Out of the corner of his eye, he swore he saw Cas run his own fingers over his leg exactly where Dean’s hand had been, but surely it was out of discomfort, right? Friendly pats on the back and occasionally the knee were common enough, but accidental lingering touches? Not so much.

“I need a refill. You?” Dean asked, although he didn’t wait for an answer, once again quickly making his way down the hall.

“Dude, are you okay?”

Dean just about dropped his empty bottle, having not noticed Sam seated at the kitchen table with some sort of preposterously healthy grain bowl in front of him.

“Will everyone stop asking me that?” he huffed, his free hand on his chest. “I’m fine.” He set the bottle on the island and pulled the fridge open. They were down to their last few beers, and, simultaneously thinking too much and not enough, Dean turned around to search for something stronger instead.

“Don’t bullshit me.” Sam gave Dean his best bitch face—probably the best he’d seen in years—and stood, crossing his arms. “Is this about what happened with the ghoul? Because there’s no way we could’ve—”

“Yep, that’s it. Congrats, Dr. Phil, you’ve done whatever psych crap and managed to cure me. How on earth do you do it?”

“Dean.” Sam followed him out of the kitchen and back toward the library, where they’d most recently stashed their rolling booze cart—yet another feature of the bunker Dean still couldn’t quite wrap his head around, although he had to admit it was rather nice.

“Don’t ‘Dean’ me, I’m fine. It’s been a long week, cut me some slack.” He unscrewed the top of the whiskey bottle and poured a generous amount into a glass. Sam shot him another exasperated look. Dean sarcastically saluted as he backed out of the library.

He stopped just outside his door and took a quiet breath, releasing slowly, urging the tension in his chest out with it. He glanced in and couldn’t help but soften at the view in front of him: Cas was engrossed in the wedding scene, albeit a bit confused by the clergyman. Dean watched him take a drink of his beer and wince, an instinct he almost always suppressed around others.

Once Inigo, Fezzik, and Westley were back on screen, Dean sauntered back in. Cas immediately turned and smiled at him, but his brow furrowed at the sight of the whiskey glass. Dean shrugged and took a sip, savoring the slight burn and the slow spreading warmth. He flashed Cas a reassuring grin as he sat down on his side of the bed.

Everything was fine, it had to be. Besides, Cas had definitely missed some important dialogue, so all Dean had to do was get through the end of the movie and shrug all his anxious behavior off as lingering effects of the hunt; there was a good chance Cas wouldn’t believe him, but if he got adamant enough, he’d be left alone. Not that alone was what he really wanted, but it was better than rejected or ridiculed, and he was far too accustomed to being by himself—yet another thing to thank his father for.

They got through the rest of the movie without another incident, even if the silence was a tad tense. As the credits rolled, Dean glanced over and noticed Cas was frowning.

“So… uh, did you… did you like the movie?”

“I still have many questions that have gone unanswered. Or, rather, we were otherwise occupied while they were explained, I suppose.”

“We did, uh, miss a few things.”

“Also, I’m no expert on the matter, but I’m old enough to know with relative certainty that there have been kisses more ‘passionate and pure’ than that one. I assume this particular kiss isn’t leading to the consummation of their relationship, as carnal desire would prevent it from being pure, I suppose, but I’m afraid I cannot agree with the story’s assessment.”

“The slow-burn romance wasn’t drawn out enough for you, huh?” Dean laughed.

“She only believed him dead twice, Dean. I think our own experiences have reduced the impact of that. Besides, their relationship required more exposition. With what we were given, you can’t expect me to be truly invested.”

“Maybe she should’ve died at least once, just to shake it up a bit.”

“My sentiments exactly. Westley cannot understand the same levels of grief without experiencing it firsthand, and it’s always more interesting to allow characters beyond just the hero the chance to die. Imagine how monotonous our lives would be if we only consistently lost one of us.”

Dean closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, a goofy smile plastered on his face. His shoulders shook as he laughed, the bed eventually shuddering along with the movement.

“I don’t understand what’s so funny, Dean.”

“It’s just… Our lives are so ridiculous. No one else watches this and thinks it’s not realistic enough because only Westley dies and gets resurrected.”

“I’m aware it’s outside of the usual human experience, of course, but I also can’t help but—” He paused, eyes widening slightly. “Never mind.”

“C’mon, Cas, you know you can’t do that! Say it.”

“I’d really prefer keeping it to myself, thank you.”

“Cas, dude, just say it.”

“You won’t let this go, will you?”

“You know I won’t.” Dean smirked.

“Fine,” Cas sighed. “I can’t help but see similarities between the characters and, well, our family.”

“Oh, of course, I project us onto characters all the time! I’m Westley, right?”

“Buttercup, actually.”

“I—” The smile slipped from Dean’s face. “You see me as the princess? Why?”

“You’re both stubborn and remarkably willing to sacrifice yourself for those you love.”

“You know, I did not show you this movie just so you could turn around and attack me,” Dean grumbled, but he flashed Cas a small smile so he wouldn’t take the complaint too seriously.

“I feel it’s a proper evaluation of your character.” Cas shrugged and grinned back.

“Does that make you Westley, then?”

It took Dean approximately two seconds after the words left his mouth to process what he’d said, fear twisting his stomach into knots as he realized the implications of it. Cas, on the other hand, chuckled quietly and looked down at his beer bottle.

“I suppose Westley saving Buttercup from the quicksand does mirror me pulling you out of Hell, at least a bit.”

“Lightning sand. Way cooler than quicksand,” Dean corrected, latching on to anything that would distract from his question.

“Ah, yes. Lightning sand. It’s no match for Hell, but I don’t need to tell you that.”

“Yeah… Hey, I don’t think I’m ready to turn in for the night yet, would you want to watch something else? You can pick, if you’d like.”

“As you wish.”

Dean froze, his hand halfway to his whiskey glass, the gears in his head screaming into motion. It wasn’t every day that Cas made a movie reference, especially one with such a blatantly romantic connotation. He was well aware of his own intention in saying it before the movie, but was Cas just emulating him? Picking up on yet another of his habits? Or— No, no. Dean had to remind himself that Cas wasn’t human, that he couldn’t experience affection the same way, that everything else had completely escaped his understanding.

He figured he’d put his foot in his mouth enough times that evening, he should just change his mind about stretching this out any longer, just go to bed. But the thought gnawed at him, the silence had continued to the point of becoming awkward, he needed to say something.

Dean turned to face Cas and swallowed down his pride and insecurities, hope and fear clashing across his features. Cas was waiting patiently with a soft smile, his bright eyes crinkling beautifully.

“Did you just—” Dean whispered, his voice getting caught in his throat.

“I believe so. Did I use the line incorrectly?”

“No—I… I just never thought—”

“That’s fine, too,” Cas quickly cut him off, his shoulders sagging slightly.

“Cas.” Dean reached out and tentatively brushed his fingers lightly across the angel’s stubbled cheek before settling on his shoulder, thumb resting softy on the side of his neck. “Why do you think I said it?”

It was as if someone had just powered Cas back up, he so nearly glowed with joy, and Dean thought to himself that this was the most angelic he’d ever looked. Messy hair, glassy-eyed, and all, he was stunning.

Dean felt the knots in his stomach unravel, the weight he’d been carrying for so long lessened. The hesitation of entering unknown territory faded as it started to sink in that Cas wanted this, too, and he stopped thinking, painfully aware that if he thought about it too much, he’d never do it. And he so desperately needed to do this.

He leaned forward, making his intent clear while also looking for consent, and Cas eagerly met him in the middle. It wasn’t the most graceful kiss, as they were both a little out of practice and had yet to learn each other’s rhythms, but Dean was looking forward to learning.

Cas rested his forehead against Dean’s and sighed contentedly.

“With a little more practice, I think we could top Buttercup and Westley’s kiss.”

“I’d like that,” Cas laughed, his warm breath tickling Dean’s nose.

“Their slow-burn seems almost boring next to ours.”

“Oh, speaking of…” Cas straightened up suddenly, causing Dean to have to catch himself before he fell face-first into the angel’s shoulder.

“Speaking of?”

“I missed how they brought Westley back,” Cas said sheepishly. “Would you mind explaining?”

“A little distracted, were you?” Dean smiled cheekily and leaned in for another kiss, something he could never imagine getting tired of doing.

“More than a little.”

Dean launched into a detailed explanation of the Miracle Max scene, the chocolate-coated miracle pill, and the plan to break into the castle before the wedding, going so far as to include all the dialogue he could remember off the top of his head. Cas tilted his head to rest on Dean’s shoulder and laughed at the exaggerated voices, each distinct and absurd in their own way. When the story was over, they slipped into a comfortable silence, Dean’s arm snaked around Cas’s waist, personal space no longer a concern.

After some time, Cas glanced at the clock on the nightstand and was startled to find it was nearly midnight.

“Oh, before it gets too late…” He lifted his head and placed a hand gently on Dean’s cheek. “Happy birthday, Dean. I would’ve gotten you a gift—”

“There’s nothing I want more than this.”

…

The following morning, Dean woke up early and decided to make breakfast, tossing some slabs of bacon on a baking sheet to crisp up in the oven. Sam stumbled in a few minutes later, drawn in by the aroma. He gave Dean a questioning look and was met with a broad grin.

“Rise and shine, Sammy! Are you going to eat like a normal person, or do I have to separate your eggs for you?”

“I… uh, just the whites would be great, thanks.”

“Normal person breakfast, it is!”

Sam rolled his eyes as he turned on the coffeemaker, but he smiled quietly to himself, glad to see Dean had gotten over whatever had been bothering him the night before.

Cas wandered in as Dean pulled the bacon out of the oven, and Sam just about choked on his coffee; instead of his usual trench coat and suit, Cas was wearing a soft purple and blue flannel he’d most definitely pulled from Dean’s closet, and he’d neglected to button nearly the entire top half.

“Mornin’, sunshine!” Dean slapped his hand away from the hot tray and passed him a mug of coffee instead. “You lookin’ to burn yourself?”

“I’m an angel, you ass,” Cas chuckled, stepping around him to reach the bacon. “I can do what I want.”

“You can’t even taste it properly.”

“Dean, too much grease is bad for your health,” Cas deadpanned as he took a bite of the still steaming rasher. It was hotter than he’d anticipated, but nothing a little grace couldn’t fix.

Sam cleared his throat loudly and gestured at the stovetop, where the eggs were burning.

“Fuck!”

“Good morning, Sam.” Cas took a sip of his coffee as he walked toward the table. “How was your night?”

“Evidently not as good as yours.” Sam looked up at him in stunned disbelief. “You two finally figure your shit out?”

“Hell of a way to phrase it, but yeah.” Dean beamed as he set the plate of bacon on the table, his other arm slung around Cas’s shoulder. “This idiot’s in love with me. Who knew?”

“Practically everyone else,” Sam laughed. “But I’m really happy for you guys, I don’t know anyone more deserving of this. One request, though, seeing as Jack and I live here, too.”

“Shoot.”

“Minimal PDA in communal spaces?”

“No deal.” Dean grinned and promptly pulled Cas in for a kiss.

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disgruntledkittenface · 3 years

Note

Peanut butter filling!

hiii thank you!!

Peanut Butter Filling: share a snippet that really shows a character’s personality. (or: talk about an upcoming scene where their personality will shine!)

Okay, so what came to mind is super long, so it's below a cut! This is from when Louis comes to meet Harry's family for the first time and the gist is that he tries to take care of Harry, who's nervous, when actually he's nervous too and needs some taking care of!

chocolate themed wip ask game questions

send me one!

“So,” Louis says, as Harry exits the highway. “Are you nervous?”

“Yeah,” Harry admits, turning to look at Louis once he stops at a red light. “My parents can be a little… they have high standards, and they can be kind of blunt about it? My dad especially. And I want them to like you, and to be kind to you.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Louis says, reaching over to pet the curls at the nape of Harry’s neck peeking out of his knitted hat. “You know, it’s funny. I’ve never done this before.”

“Done what?”

“Meeting the parents,” Louis explains, looking out the car windows as they drive through Harry’s hometown. “I’ve never been this serious about someone I’ve dated.”

“Are you kidding? You’ve never done this before?” Harry glances sideways to see Louis shake his head. “Well, you know how I’ve always rushed things, I’ve done this way more times than I should have.”

“Any tips before we get there?”

“Um, yeah,” Harry says, chewing his lower lip as he thinks. “Okay. With Gemma, when she makes fun of you–”

“Don’t you mean if?”

“No, when,” Harry says, turning left when they reach an intersection. “When she makes fun of you, don’t just take it; you have to joke back. She’ll respect you for it.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

“My mom is more of a softie than my dad, she just wants me to settle down, I think. She’s been studying up on Monaco, so expect a lot of questions about it, the history. She’ll probably ask about the university there.”

“Well, I happen to be an expert on Monaco, so that’s fine.”

“And my dad… he’s really big on propriety, like manners. He and my mom both taught at the same liberal arts college when I was growing up, and he’s been president there for ten years now, so he’s used to being in charge, not having people talk back. So even if he’s being rude, he’ll get really upset if he thinks someone is being rude back to him. It sucks trying to have, like, an actual dialogue with him.”

“That sounds hard,” Louis says softly, rubbing his thumb over Harry’s neck. “Luckily I have some experience working with difficult personalities like that. I’m not worried, darling, I’m really not.”

Harry pulls into the driveway and shuts off the ignition, turning to Louis. “Famous last words.”

The wind picks up as they get out of the car, shuffling the red and yellow leaves that have fallen to the ground, and they hurry as they grab Louis’ suitcase from the trunk and walk up to the house, which is owned by the college where Harry’s parents work. It’s larger than they need as a family, but one of the requirements of the job of college president is to entertain, and his parents make use of the space more frequently than Harry had expected when they moved in.

“Hello?” Harry calls out as he closes the door behind them. “We’re here!”

Harry’s mom rushes into the front hallway from the kitchen, trailed by Gemma, whose features are schooled in a disinterested expression. She can't hide the gleam in her eyes, though, and Harry can tell that she’s just as eager to meet Louis as their mom is.

“Mom, this is–”

“Oh, no, no,” she interrupts, waving her hands at Harry. “I’ve been reading about protocol; you’re supposed to present us to the prince, not the other way around.”

“Please, Mrs. Styles,” Louis starts, reaching out a hand. “That’s very thoughtful of you, but I’m not concerned with protocol while I’m a guest in your home. Well, that’s not strictly true, I am concerned with your house rules. Should I take my shoes off?”

“Oh, call me Anne,” she exclaims, her face lighting up as she shakes Louis’ hand. “I am delighted to meet you, Harry speaks so highly of you.” She seems to forget to let go of Louis’ hand, and he smiles patiently, raising his eyebrows. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry, no, don’t worry about shoes or anything like that. Whatever makes you comfortable.”

Gemma makes a scoffing sound behind her. “But you always yell at us–”

“And this is my daughter Gemma,” Anne says loudly, finally releasing Louis’ hand to gesture behind her. “Say hello, Gemma.”

The predictable monotone “Hello, Gemma,” is followed by her stepping forward to offer her hand to Louis, which he accepts, laughing.

“Harry, do you think you could offer to take his coat?” Anne looks meaningfully from Harry to Louis and back again. “Honestly, Your Highness, you’d think they were raised by wolves. We did our best with them, I swear.”

“Please, call me Louis,” Louis says, shrugging off his coat and handing it to Harry. “There’s no need for titles. I’m afraid I’ve already inconvenienced you enough, what with the security requirements.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” Anne says, her tone sugar sweet in the way it only is when she’s lying through her teeth. It had been obvious that she’d been more than a little freaked out when two guards had done a sweep of the house and grounds earlier that day, something the head of palace security had called to arrange in advance. “We’re just so happy to have you here. Harry’s been on pins and needles all day, waiting to go pick you up.”

“Mom, quit it,” Harry groans in his best impression of a moody teenager. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“Oh, this is nothing,” Gemma remarks. “Wait ’til she gets out the photo albums.”

“I’m afraid that will have to wait,” Anne says, looking genuinely regretful. “Harry, why don’t you show Louis to his room? Your father will be home with pizza soon.” She smiles apologetically at Louis. “Family tradition. We put all of our energy into cooking Thanksgiving dinner, so we always get takeout the night before.”

“Oh, it will be a treat for me,” Louis assures her. “I rarely get to eat pizza, and I love it.”

Gemma snorts. “Harry, you didn’t tell us your boyfriend was such a suckup.”

“Gemma Anne Styles,” Anne hisses, swatting her with a dish cloth. “Kitchen. Now.”

“Alright, alright,” Gemma says, holding her hands up in surrender as Anne herds her back down the hallway to the kitchen, leaving Harry and Louis alone.

“See, that wasn’t so bad, now was it?” Louis whispers, stepping into Harry’s space and resting his hands lightly on Harry’s hips. “Come here, give us a kiss.”

“Us?” Harry raises his eyebrows.

“Sure you’ve heard of the royal we, darling,” Louis murmurs, leaning in and kissing Harry softly. Harry forgets to banter back as he melts into the kiss, their first since Louis arrived since neither of them wanted it to be in front of the crowd at the train station. It’s the little bit of tenderness that he needs to get through the family dinner ahead, and he only pulls away because he doesn’t want his dad to walk in on them. Louis smiles like he knows exactly what Harry is thinking. “Well, Harold? Lead the way.”

The guest room in the basement is more like a suite; the bedroom has a queen-size bed, and there’s a full bathroom as well as a tiny kitchenette. It only takes a minute or so to show Louis around and point out the best feature, in his opinion: the coffeemaker. Harry drapes himself on the bed as Louis unpacks, actually putting stacks of clothes into the small dresser as opposed to living out of his suitcase for the duration of his stay like Harry usually does when he comes home.

“We should get back upstairs,” Louis says as he slides his empty suitcase under the bed. “I want to make a good impression on your father when he gets home.”

“Well, you definitely chose the right outfit,” Harry replies, standing up and running his palms over Louis’ chest. “It’s like you used a stylist, or a costume designer picked out the perfect sweater for a coming home to meet the parents scene in a movie.”

For the first time since he’s known him, Louis actually blushes.

“I, ah… may have had some help,” Louis admits. “From a stylist.”

“Wait, what?” Harry asks, unable to stop the grin forming on his face. “You have a stylist? You’ve never mentioned a stylist before.”

“Well, it’s not like he dresses me every day,” Louis says, smoothing a hand over his sweater. “But yes, I have a stylist. Zayn. We meet every few months and go through my closet, and he shops for me and makes recommendations for special occasions.”

“Special occasions like going to Buckingham Palace…” Harry can’t help smirking. “Or special occasions like meeting my parents?”

“Special occasions like both,” Louis says, burying his face in his hands. He mumbles something that Harry can’t quite make out, so he gently pries Louis’ hands away, lifting his eyebrows. Louis shrugs. “I wanted this weekend to go well.”

“I love you.” Harry kisses Louis before pulling him into a hug. “I’m sorry for teasing, you’re just so cute, Lou.”

“Lots of people have stylists,” Louis mutters, grasping Harry’s sweatshirt in his hands as he hugs him back. “You have a stylist.”

“I know, honey, I know,” Harry says, holding Louis tight and swaying slightly. “You know, knowing that you’re nervous too actually makes me feel better.”

“Really?”

“Really. You don’t always have to be the strong one, you know. We can lean on each other.”

“Well, that’s… that’s very nice of you to say,” Louis mumbles, pulling back. “Can we go upstairs now? I don’t know why but it feels like bad form to be down here when your father gets home.”

“Of course, Lou, let’s go up.”

#chocolate themed wip ask game questions #grace kelly au

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justheretobreakthings · 4 years

Text

Okay, we’re starting off Bad Things Happen Bingo with a bit of a throwback to the Voltron Bingo event from back in 2018. Way back then, I got a request from @familyofpaladins for my ‘Taking the Fall for Someone’ square, for Keith taking the fall for Hunk, and then the bingo ended and the prompt has just been sitting there for an eternity. But now, my BTHB card has just the square for me to finally get this prompt filled. Hope it was worth the very, very long wait!

Got Your Back

Written for @badthingshappenbingo Prompt: Taking the Blame Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Word Count: 13,198 Characters: Hunk & Keith Read on AO3

Summary:

While defending the planet of Crelxatain from attacking drones, Hunk causes what he believes to be some minor collateral damage, but what turns out to be much, much worse. And when the Crelxats needed something to blame, Keith steps in to take the fall.

I don’t even drink coffee.

It was fortunate that Hunk had gotten better with flying during the battles and flight practices he’d been through with Yellow. It might have been the Lions’ magic helping to keep their pilots stable, or the more mundane gyroscopic design of the cockpit helping with his equilibrium. Or, of course, it might just be a matter of him getting used to it. Whatever the case, he had come a long way since his Garrison days, when even a fifteen-minute run in a simulator would be more enough to empty the contents of his stomach.

It was fortunate, because if he hadn’t gotten better about keeping the nausea at bay, his cockpit would be a revolting mess right about now.

He and Keith had only been tasked with coming here to Crelxatain to negotiate for supplies, its geography home to mineral ore that Coran assured them could be top-grade fuel when Altean alchemy was in use, but just as they had approached the planet’s atmosphere, Yellow and Red both picked up a distress signal from the same city they were nearing. It seemed they had coincidentally arrived just in time for an air strike on the city from a nearby Empire ally, and the Crelxat had little in terms of defensive weaponry. So of course, that duty landed on the paladins.

If Yellow’s failed attempts to detect life in any of the little attacking cruisers was correct, they were only dealing with drones, not manned vehicles, but the maneuverability of the drones was downright amazing. They were constantly dodging strikes and blasts from Yellow, skimming near the tops of buildings and sometimes slipping between them, making sharp turns and speedy dives that left Hunk reeling.

The drones’ weapon of choice appeared to be some sort of energy pulse, and well-aimed blasts had elements of the infrastructure and sections of buildings toppling inward. These pulses were also being aimed at the Lions, and although they were made of strong enough material to resist being damaged by the force, the pulses would still send them jerking off course and blown aside.

Hunk groaned into his comm as Yellow tumbled in the air from one such blast, rolling rapidly enough that the gyroscopic cockpit couldn’t stop the blood from rushing to his head and then down again. “I swear,” he grunted, “When we’re finished with these things and back on the ground, I’m just going to spend like three days just lying on the floor, perfectly still, not moving. I’ve had enough movement.”

“You know we’re going to have to head back to the Castle eventually,” Keith replied through the comm. “That counts as movement.”

“So? Allura and Coran said we could take a few quintants.”

“Because it could take time for them to gather and refine the stuff we need, not because they expect us to conk out for days at a time.”

“I don’t care, I’m going for it. Day one, we place our order. Day whatever, we head back. Everything in between, we go comatose.” He squinted into the viewscreen and tried to get his vision to stop swirling before directing a blast toward an oncoming drone. The shot went wide, and the drone responded with a pulse that shoved Yellow backward and threatened to give Hunk whiplash.

“You hanging in there?” Keith asked.

“Yeah,” Hunk replied. At the corner of his viewscreen he spotted a beam of flame, the Red Lion’s fireblast, reducing a drone to ash. “Not as well as you are, though. Aren’t you getting dizzy too?”

“I was on the pilot track at the Garrison, I’ve been flying longer.”

“Still.” He righted Yellow as best he could and caught a drone in his sights. He sent off a cannon fire, and although he didn’t hit it head on, he managed to wing it just enough to send it spiraling. “Seems you’re taking down three of these things for every one I get.”

“We’re not keeping score, Hunk.”

“Just wish I was being a little more useful right now, is all.”

“You’ll be plenty more useful than me when we actually get around to talking to the Crelxats and making deals. You know that’s not exactly my strong suit.”

“Hmm, fair point,” Hunk said. “Your people skills are pretty abysmal, aren’t they.”

“Don’t hold back, Hunk, tell me how you really feel.”

“I’m just agreeing with you.” Yellow lurched upward, and Hunk narrowed his eyes at a drone zipping by from the bottom of his viewscreen while his stomach tried to right itself. He took aim with Yellow’s laser cannon, but just before he fired, another pulse threw the Lion to the side. The laser shot off, and he winced as it blasted through what appeared to be an enormous sculpture in a plaza below. “Crap,” he grunted.

“What is it?” asked Keith.

“I think I just took out some public art,” Hunk replied. “You don’t think that’ll come across as some weird anti-art statement, do you?”

“Let’s hope not. If the pulse things are giving you trouble, why don’t you focus on the drones that are flying higher up for now? I’ll work on the ones nearer to the buildings. Red’s got quicker reflexes, it’s easier to avoid collateral damage with her.”

“Yeah, sure,” Hunk sighed, managing to hold back a self-deprecating remark about how it was probably more to do with the pilot than the lion. For now, he set his sights on a drone careening toward the city's outskirts, and directed Yellow to go barrelling after it.

The pulses continued to give him no end of frustration, but he eventually managed to take down another three drones, and a scan informed him that the sky seemed to be clear around this elevation. He sighed with relief at the scan’s results, and reminded himself that he was this close to finally getting to touch down on flat ground and relax. His stomach was still churning, and his face was soaked in salty sweat, but it was over.

Well, almost over. The skies were clear at this elevation, but there had been more drones closer to the ground, and he wasn’t sure whether Keith had finished them all off yet. Odds were, of course, that he had, and might even be waiting impatiently on the ground wondering why it was taking Hunk such a long time to finish off his own batch. And now he was wasting more time catching his breath instead of actually finding out.

Heaving a deep breath, he grabbed the controls again and started downward, eyes peeled for signs of Keith. It didn’t take long to find him, as Red and her fire were making quite a scene above the city square, currently whipping around in a complicated air ballet while facing off against five drones at once, all focused on sending their pulses into Red from every direction.

Red was able to wing one of the drones before pulses from two of the others sent her flying back, and the Lion let out a growl that was echoed in Hunk’s comm as Keith let out one of his own. She dove back into the fray, expertly wheeling around between the drones and the building tops to send an arc of fire their way.

Hunk hovered on the outer edge of the ongoing fight, feeling the urge to help but not wanting to risk hitting Red by accident. “Uh, Keith?” he said. “There anything I can do right now?”

“Um, keep an eye out if any of these try to make a break for it,” Keith answered. “Other than that, think I got this under control.” As if to emphasize the point, a blast of Red’s fire hit one of the drone’s dead on, blasting it to ash.

“Okay…” Hunk said. He chewed at his bottom lip as he watched the drones, eyes straining as they flitted amongst their flight paths, trying to catch any sign that one of them was liable to break from the pack so he could go after it, but they all seemed to have their sights completely honed in on Red. It felt a little wrong to simply be waiting around while Keith managed the whole firefight on his own, even if Keith had sounded pretty certain of what he could handle and what he needed. He tentatively spoke up as Keith shot down another drone, “You know, um, maybe I could get a shield up and you can sort of feint toward it, see if we can draw them into - ”

He was cut off by a loud blast and a flash engulfing his viewscreen, and Yellow reeled back, sending him slamming his head into his dashboard. It seemed Red had sent out a powerful arcing blast from all to send the remaining drones careening out of the air, at the same time that the remaining drones surrounding her had all pulsed at once. Resulting in a shockwave that pushed Yellow back and, as was apparent when Hunk managed to blink his vision back into focus, leave many of the surrounding buildings with caved-in roofs. Hopefully any Crelxats inside them had had the sense to hunker down in the lower floors.

As he made sure Yellow was steady again, he glanced around for Red, and grimaced when he spotted her. She was still airborne, but the lights on her face and the tip of her tail were stuttering, while bolts of light crackled beneath her flank. “Um, Keith?” Hunk said. “Red’s not looking too hot.”

“I know, I’ve got it under - shit, hang on,” Keith grunted. Red turned around in the air, her movements jerkier than Hunk ever would have expected from Red, and starting soaring away from surrounding buildings. He followed in Yellow, and together the Lions made it to an open stretch of land. Red glided toward the ground, and as she was lowering, her lights went completely dark. She hit the ground with audible force, collapsing in a heap where she landed.

Hunk winced at the sight of the downed Lion before scanning his eyes over ground, making sure the terrain was clear for his own landing. He managed to maneuver Yellow close to the other Lion before lowering her to the ground and disembarking from her mouth. Keith was already outside of Red, standing with his arms folded and staring up at her face.

“You okay?” Hunk asked as he approached. “Looked like kind of a rough landing.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Keith said. “Managed to get nearly to the ground before she went offline. So, little abrupt, but nothing I couldn’t handle. We’re gonna have to see about getting her powered up again before we can head back to the Castle. Think it was one of those pulses throwing off the propellant tank that downed her.”

“Hmm. If that’s the case, I can probably do the repairs myself in a day or two, but we’ll need to replenish the fuel.”

“Hopefully the Crelxats will be willing to help us out for that.” Keith looked around. “Speaking of whom, see any of them coming this way yet? Battle’s over.”

Hunk frowned and joined Keith in peering about at the surrounding buildings. He had only seen a few sparse Crelxats on the ground while they had been in battle, the pale shocks of hair against skin shades of red and orange making them easy to spot, but most of them had likely fled indoors when the drones had arrived.

He felt a tap against his shoulder, and when he turned, Keith pointed; it seemed he’d been first to spot movement, and without a word between them they started off to follow the pair of Crelxats heading away from the Lions’ landing site and deeper into the city.

It didn’t take long for them to see where the many Crelxats had ended up, since after only a couple of turns they could see a crowd gathering in a wide plaza ahead, a murmur from the assembled onlooker reaching the paladins even at this distance. Hunk glanced to Keith, eyebrows raised, and Keith only shrugged, just as unsure as to what had the crowd so enthralled.

As they moved closer, heads began to turn in their direction, some of the onlookers nudging others beside them and pointing, the chatter gradually dying down as they stepped aside to let the paladins through. No face wore the joy or relief that Hunk was used to seeing from aliens after Voltron fought off invading forces for them. Instead, they were eyeing him and Keith with apprehension and suspicion.

This, Hunk decided, was not a good sign.

The Crelxats were quick to step aside for them, so they were able to reach the front of the crowd fairly easily. And Hunk’s stomach knotted itself tightly as he realized what they were all staring at.

The sculpture. The sculpture that he had blasted with Yellow’s cannon. Or, at least, what remained of it.

From above, it had been hard to see what the sculpture had actually depicted, and here from the ground, seeing only the bottom half, it wasn’t any easier to discern. The shape seemed to be fairly complex, a tangle of angles and loops, but nothing that resembled anything Hunk had ever seen before. His best guess was that it was an abstract piece; a lot of the public sculptures that could be found in plazas like this back on Earth were abstract. There was rubble, he noticed, bits of the same material as the sculpture scattered along the ground behind it, some of it smoldered black like the top of what remained of the standing sculpture, burnt up by the cannon’s heat.

The Crelxats standing nearest to the statue turned as Keith and Hunk approached, and one stepped toward them. She was half a head shorter than most of the others gathered nearby, although she made up for it with a piece of headwear that to Hunk just looked to be a tangled pile of wires. She appeared to be unarmed, although the other Crelxats just behind her all wielded either halberds in their hands or daggers at their hips; the weapons combined with the helmets on their head and matching sashes indicated that they were security of some sort, although Hunk wasn’t sure if they were guards for the city as a whole or just the Crelxat with the wires on her head.

Allura had briefed him and Keith a bit on who they would be interacting with on Crelxatain, and she had mentioned one of the Crelxats was both the governmental and religious leader for the city. Malvet, he was pretty sure her name was.

And right now, despite her being smaller than the other Crelxats and unarmed, he was feeling much more frightened of her than of the surrounding guards. Because he had never seen that much icy fury on a person’s face before. Her narrow silver eyes fixed him and Keith with a wrathful glare that he could almost physically feel, her hands clasped together in front of her were shaking from how tightly the fingers were intertwined, and dark veins pulsed visibly beneath the skin on her forehead.

“What,” she bit out, her voice low and dark and heavy, “happened?”

Hunk gulped, though it did little to alleviate the feeling of daggers in his throat or the clawing in his stomach. He had anticipated that people may be upset about the damaged sculpture - people always had a fondness for public art, especially pieces that had been around for quite a while and been accepted as an inherent part of the landscape - but the irate looks on the faces of Malvet and her guards and the horrified silence of the surrounding crowds was far worse than he expected.

Beside him, Keith cleared his throat, making Hunk jump. “Look,” Keith said, “I understand if you’re upset. But collateral damage is basically unavoidable against a weaponized enemy like the one that was attacking just now. We’re both here representing Voltron, and we were expected today, and we’d be willing to assist with repairs to your art while we’re here if you - ”

“Our art?!” Malvet spat, her face going an even deeper shade of maroon. “You believe this monument to be simply art?!”

“Um… isn’t it?” said Keith.

Her hand shook as she pointed a clawed finger toward the sculpture’s remains. “This monument is the vessel for the Twenty Gods of Crelxatain, the channel through which they grant life and fortune. It was built as a cenotaph to the spiritual leaders who have dedicated their lives to guiding Crelxatain to the will of the Gods, and as such is the one site wherein their connection to the citizenry is most powerful. It has stood for centuries, and now… it has been destroyed.”

“...Oh,” said Keith, as a murmur began rumbling through the crowd. He had paled somewhat, and seemed to be at something of a loss for words.

Hunk was faring no better; he didn’t think he’d be able to string two coherent words together right now with his nerves the way they were. This was much worse than he could have predicted. Why the hell would something this important to them be out here in the middle of the town with no additional protection? Why wasn’t it in some sort of ultra-enforced temple and under constant watch? He could only hazard wild guesses - maybe they wanted it to be more exposed to the people, maybe they had assumed that faith in those twenty gods of theirs would keep it safe or something. Now didn’t really seem like the correct time to ask about it.

Keith was the first to speak again, keeping his voice surprisingly level. “I - I appreciate the seriousness of the damage, then. Know that we did what we could to prevent it. The drones were - ”

“No,” Malvet cut him off. “We witnessed these drones. They used force, yes, their weapons have done damage enough. But they burned nothing. The monument - it has been burned.” She swept her arm out to gesture again toward the remains, the singeing and ashes seeming somehow darker now. “We witnessed your ships too. You had cannons and flame. So tell me, representative of Voltron. What. Did. You. Do?”

“I - ”

“Which of you did it?!” Her voice rose abruptly in volume, crackling with despair. “It had to have been one of you! This callous destruction - which of you is to blame?!” She rounded on Hunk, who stepped back, swallowing down a whimper. “You’ve not spoken, have you, yellow one? And why is that? Have you nothing to say?! No words in your defense?!”

Hunk could feel an icy sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. “I - I - I, uh - ”

“Is it guilt that stays your tongue?!” Malvet continued, jabbing a gnarled finger toward him. “Is the sight of the damage you’ve done before you too much to - ”

“I’m sorry,” Keith suddenly spoke up beside him. Hunk and Malvet both turned to him, incredulous, as Keith stepped forward, arms crossed over his chest and eyes on the ground.

“You’re sorry,” Malvet repeated tonelessly.

“Yeah,” Keith said. “It was my doing. Red - you know, you saw her out there, she’s awfully fast, and, um, gets real heated in battle and stuff, so it can be easy to kinda - to lose control, see, and I wasn’t really paying attention to the, um - ” He waved his hand in the direction of the destroyed sculpture. “The scenery, and stuff, so, yeah. It’s my fault, and I’m sorry.”

Hunk bit his lip as he turned his attention back to the Malvet, who was examining Keith with narrowed, probing eyes. If she knew Keith at all, it would be obvious that he was lying. He had rambled and stumbled and refused to look even remotely in her direction and his voice had kept getting lower as he spoke. All tells of his. Not to mention that Keith was the least likely of any of the paladins to ever focus during a battle or be unable to handle his Lion’s agility and fire.

But the Crelxats didn’t know Keith, so after several ticks of silent examination, Malvet hissed out, “I see.”

She stepped back, and Keith’s eyes darted upward, looking apprehensive. Malvet let silence ring throughout the square for a couple seconds more, but just as Keith opened his mouth to speak again, she nodded.

Instantly there was an eruption of activity, and Hunk was nearly knocked to the ground by the guards rushing past him toward Keith. Half a dozen fully armored guards descended on Keith, and though Hunk saw Keith’s hand fly instinctively to his hip where his bayard was holstered, he either was too caught off guard to grab it in time or thought better of whipping it out right now, since it was still holstered when his arms were wrenched behind his back and he was brought forcefully to his knees.

“Hey!” Hunk yelped. “What are you - ?” His attempt to rush forward to help Keith was stymied by halberds crossed in front of him, and a guard took his arm to hold him back, although he was handling Hunk more gently than his fellow guards were handling Keith, whose ankles were being pinned to the ground by heavy boots on top of them and whose hair was in the tight grip of gauntlet-covered hands. “Stop it!” Hunk cried. “You’re gonna hurt him!”

“After what he has done to us, hurt only seems fair as recompense,” Malvet said, stalking over to glower down at Keith. Around him, Hunk could hear others in the crowd murmuring their agreement. “He must be made to pay penance.”

“He didn’t do anything to you!” Hunk shouted.

“He just confessed to being responsible for the destruction of our monument.”

“But it wasn’t his fault! He only - ”

“Not his fault?” Malvet finally turned to Hunk. “Are you saying that his confession was inaccurate?”

Keith shook his head, or at least gave a little twitch in the guards’ grasp that may have been meant as a head shake, but Hunk nodded at the Crelxat, relieved. “Yes, yes, that’s what I’m saying! It was my - ”

But Malvet was already turning away before Hunk could finish, making a gesture to one of the guards. “You heard him; remove it.”

“Oh thank God,” Hunk sighed. “I’m sure we can all - um - ” He faltered as he watched the guards. When Malvet had told them to ‘remove it’, he had assumed she meant removing their feet from on top of Keith’s legs or removing the weapons from where they were pointed at him, sharp tips far too close to Keith for Hunk’s liking. But they weren’t. Instead, they still held him in place despite his struggling, and one of them had moved in front of Keith and was grabbing his jaw. “Wait, what are you doing?”

“If his tongue is to be used to spew false witness before the eyes of the twenty gods,” Malvet said, “Then it is of no good to us nor to him. It shall be removed.”

Hunk’s eyes blew wide, every drop of blood in his veins turning to ice as the guard managed to force Keith’s mouth open and a dagger’s blade approached. “No! No, no, no, you can’t do that! He - he wasn’t lying, you misunderstood!”

“And pray tell, what did I misunderstand?” Malvet said.

“Just - I meant - he - it was an accident,” Hunk fumbled weakly. “He did but - but he didn’t mean to, you know? It was, like, unavoidable. So - so - so it’s not his fault.” He glanced toward Keith, trying to figure out whether that had been the right thing to say, but with the way the guards were still holding his jaw and gripping his hair, Keith couldn’t exactly make an expression to indicate one way or the other.

Malvet let out a derisive sniff. “Unavoidable? The people of Crelxatain have avoided damaging it for centuries. This one could easily have done the same.” She turned away from Hunk again, back to the guard. “How soon can we have him perform his penance.”

The guard let out a pensive hum before replying, “We’d need until overmorrow’s nightfall to prepare and deliver an oblation to the twenty gods. The penance can take place the morning after.”

“Begin preparations, then,” Malvet said with a nod.

Keith was hauled to his feet, meeting Hunk’s gaze as one of the guards behind him drew a set of shackles from somewhere within their armor to cuff his hands behind him. “Hunk,” he said, a slight rasp to his voice, no doubt from the way his mouth had been manhandled a moment ago, “It’s gonna be fine, okay?”

Hunk almost let out a laugh of sheer disbelief. Keith should be the one being reassured right now, not Hunk. “Are you insane?” Hunk said.

“Look, just get the supply stuff taken care of, I’ll figure this out, and we can - ”

“Get moving,” one of the guards said, shoving him away from Hunk as two others began wheeling him around by the arms.

“Just a sec,” said Keith. “See if you can get Red up and - ”

He grunted, his words cut off by the hilt of one of the guards’ daggers being slammed into his face. When he scowled back up at the offending guard, his nose was bleeding. “I said get moving,” the guard growled.

“Hey!” Hunk cried. He tried moving toward the retreating guards, but the ones who had held him back before intercepted him again. “Hey, you can’t treat him like that!”

It was useless. The guards ignored him, and as the crowd began surging and milling around him, they disappeared, along with Keith.

This was so, so, so bad.

For a long moment he simply stood there on shaking knees, uncertain what to do, until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He whipped around, coming face to face with a tall, narrow-faced Crelxat. “What?” he snapped.

“Your companion said you were here as a representative of Voltron,” the Crelxat said. His expression was stoic, unfazed by Hunk’s tone and by the scene that had just gone down before him.

“Yeah,” Hunk said. “And?”

“I am Kalgex? Of the Crelxatain Geological Survey Bureau and Mine Repository. I was contacted about overseeing a trade deal between your organization and our department?”

Hunk stared. “Um,” he said, “Look, I’ve kind of got other things on my mind at the moment. Keith - I - I don’t know where they’re - I have to figure this out, I have to see - ”

“I am certain a member of the security force will be in contact with you once your friend has been duly processed,” Kalgex said. “They are quite efficient in matters of communication.” He pulled something out of his pocket, a small cylinder with a screen across it that lit up like a cell phone. “Those attackers put us behind schedule. We really oughtn’t postpone negotiations any longer than necessary.”

A part of Hunk, a small but strong part, wanted to punch Kalgex in the face right then and there. He was talking about Keith being arrested and hurt and forced to pay ‘penance’ - Hunk wasn’t sure what that entailed exactly, but it didn’t sound like fun - as if it were a minor inconvenience in a normal workday. As if Hunk were being somehow unreasonable for wanting to go after him rather than worry about the stupid ore.

“No,” he said. “No, I have to go.” He turned away, scanning the crowd and spotting the array of wires that had decorated Malvet’s head. Immediately he began shoving his way through the crowd, ignoring Kalgex calling after him, and didn’t stop until he had reached her, right on the edge of the plaza with a guard at each side. “Hey!” he shouted. “Where did you people take Keith?!”

She turned, eyeing him up and down with pursed lips, like he was a stain on her floor that she was deciding how to get rid of. “To the holding cells to await penance, of course,” she answered.

“And where’s that, huh?”

Malvet’s eyes narrowed. “He will not be allowed visitors until his case has been fully processed according to our laws. Respect our criminal proceedings should be the least we could ask of Voltron, considering the disrespect your friend has shown toward our - ”

“Yeah, I know,” Hunk said, frustration turning his voice to a growl. “Fine. When will that be done so I can visit him?”

“I will see to it you are contacted when proceedings are completed,” Malvet said. It wasn’t exactly an answer, but at least it was an assurance that he would get to visit Keith before the penance took place. “And of course,” Malvet continued, “Your companion will be duly returned to you once penance has been completed.”

“Right,” Hunk sighed. “So, what is this ‘penance’ anyw- ”

But Malvet had already turned away, leaving Hunk standing uselessly, grinding his teeth and dreading what the answer would have been.

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

He tried and failed to come up with a plan.

His first thought once he finally accepted that the whole situation with Keith was out of his hands was, naturally, to contact the other paladins for help. But the reason it had only been himself and Keith coming to Crelxatain in the first place was that the others were on missions of their own. They had docked the Castle, shields in place, on a moon in a neutral zone the next star system over, and Shiro and Allura were off on Heliuruta to negotiate allowance through their blockade into the quadrant, while Coran had recruited Lance and Pidge to help him on a medical supply-gathering expedition. So Hunk couldn’t reach any of them at the Castle, didn’t know where on the planets the groups had gone and wouldn’t have time to track them down, and couldn’t contact them through just the Lions’ communications system at such a range.

Which meant that whatever happened to Keith, he was going to be the only one around to deal with it.

It also meant that he was stuck doing the negotiations for the Crelxat ores alone. Between himself and Keith, Hunk was better with numbers, but Keith was more stubborn and better at steamrolling attempts to mislead. By the time he wrapped up his meeting with Kalgex and his board, they had wound up settling on a price nearly twice as high as what Coran had told them to aim for.

Hunk couldn’t bring himself to be that put out about it, though. The main reason he’d done such a lackluster job of negotiating, after all, was that his mind was more occupied with the much more pressing matter of what the hell was happening with Keith.

He managed a grand total of less than a varga of sleep the first night on Crelxatain, despite the comfortable accommodations that had been prepared for him at a lodging house not far from the plaza where the monument had stood. He had made sure every single member of the staff there knew that they were to come get him immediately the instant anyone contacted him about getting to visit Keith, but no message came.

The Crelxats had predicted it would take them about two days to refine the ore he’d requested and prepare it for transport, so he tried to occupy his time by working on repairs for Red. He dried up nearly all the GAC they’d been given for this trip gathering tools and supplies for it - apparently the ability to fix vehicles must have been considered something of a luxury in Crelxatain, and was priced as such - and as he set to work on her dark and still form, wondered what she would be doing right now if she were up and running. If she was calm, then he’d know Keith was okay. If she was angry and trying to reach Keith by force… well, then he’d be even more worried than he was now, but at least Red would be helping to take care of the problem.

He worked on her throughout the day, still with no word about Keith, and the longer he went without answers the more nauseous he felt. He managed to eat some lunch between getting supplies and starting on Red’s repairs, and it sat like rocks in his stomach for the rest of the day. He didn’t bother with dinner.

He managed to fall asleep at some point that night, and woke tangled in his bedding after tossing and turning in his sleep, not feeling refreshed at all.

It wasn’t until later that day, when he returned from Red’s landing site back to the lodging house, promising himself that he would at least try to eat something because starving himself wasn’t going to help Keith, that he discovered a member of the security force was there waiting for him, had told the staff that he was there to escort Hunk to visit ‘the prisoner’ as requested.

Finally.

The walk to where Keith was being held wasn’t far from the plaza that had housed the monument, and the building he was led into looked from the outside a bit like a country church, long and narrow and with a vaulted roof. Hunk was led into a dim anteroom as the guard who escorted him had a muttered conversation with another who was standing watch inside, then, another door was opened, and he was ushered through and into a hall lined on each side with cells. The guard didn’t accompany him any further past the door, just told him, “You have fifteen doboshes,” before taking his leave, slamming the door shut behind him.

The hall was just as dim as the anteroom, the walls and floors a shale-like shade and narrow windows in the walls of the cells lining only one side of the hall casting sharp shadows, so it took a moment for Hunk to spot the cells’ only occupant, seated on the floor against the wall at the end of the hall. When he did, he let out an enormous breath of relief and rushed toward him, yelling out, “Keith!”

Keith looked up at the sound of his name, and Hunk grimaced at the sight of him as he got to his feet. He’d been stripped of his armor and left only in his dark undersuit, and was shackled hand and foot, maybe a foot and a half of chain between each metal cuff on his wrist, and the same around his ankles. A red and purple bruise spread from his cheek to his nose, swelling enough to make one eye squint; this was likely the result of that guard who had struck him with the dagger hilt the other day. Besides that, Keith appeared to be uninjured, just tired, a fact that the dark rings beneath his eyes could attest.

“Hunk,” he said. “So, um. So, how are you do- ?”

“Are you out of your mind?!” Hunk cried. Honestly, he had been intending to ease into that a bit more, give Keith a friendly greeting and see how he’d been being treated before moving onto the topic of what the actual quiznak Keith had been thinking, but it seemed his brain had forgotten to relay that plan to his mouth.

“Hunk,” Keith repeated, lifting his shackled hands placatingly. “You have to be calm, all right?”

“How can I - you can’t expect - what were you thinking?!” Hunk demanded. “You know as well as I do that Red didn’t - ”

“Hunk, I’m serious. They’ll hear you.”

Hunk shut his mouth, teeth coming together with a click, and looked back toward the door. Right. Apparently the Crelxats really didn’t like being lied to. As much as he hated it, their story was that Keith had been the one to ruin the monument, and that’s the story they were going to have to stick with if they wanted to get out with their tongues still intact. “Sorry,” Hunk said. His eyes roved over the rest of the hall, stopping at the sight of a lens near the ceiling in the center. “Crap, will they be able to hear - ?”

“That one’s just video, no audio,” Keith said. “They can’t hear us.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“The guards told me.”

Hunk raised a brow. “And you’re just taking their word for it?”

“Course not,” Keith replied, shaking his head. “I tested it. They didn’t care one lick about me slinging insults at them through that camera for about an hour straight. Moment I said the same while they were actually here, they got pretty thin-skinned.” He tapped lightly at the dark bruise on his face. “This, uh, this was smaller yesterday.”

Hunk winced. “Dang it, Keith,” he said. “Why did you have to go and do that, huh?”

“... You mean, why’d I have to insult them?”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

There was a long moment’s pause between them, and then Keith sighed. “I was trying to help, Hunk,” he said. “That’s all. That Malvet, she was so mad, and the guards were at the ready, and you - well, you were - ” He took a deep breath. “I dunno. Maybe if you were able to see how you looked in that plaza, you’d get why I needed to step in.”

Well, Hunk could certainly recall feeling terrified to his core, but he didn’t know how much of it had actually shown on his face. If it was enough to get Keith to take the fall for him like that, though, it was too much. “I mean, you did a heck of a lot more than ‘step in’,” he said. “Look, Keith, don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful, but I - God, man, I really wish you hadn’t done that.”

The shadow of a sad smile played on Keith’s lips before vanishing again. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Wasn’t really expecting you to be overjoyed about it. But it’s not like they were giving us a whole lot of time to come up with a better plan to get you out of that mess than just… getting in myself.”

“Why did you decide you needed to get me out of it in the first place?”

Keith frowned at him, appearing genuinely surprised. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because - because I’m the one who caused the mess? Yeah, it was an accident, but it still was mine to own.”

Keith shrugged. “We’re teammates, right? Your mess is my mess.”

“I - ” Hunk took a long breath and blew it out slowly. “You really picked a horrible time to embrace team spirit.”

“I guess. Can’t exactly go back now, though.”

“Right, suppose not.” He let the silence linger a little longer, half-hoping that Keith would suddenly pipe up with an, ‘Unless…’ and a brilliant idea to make everything right, but of course he didn’t. “So we’re just supposed to see this out to the end, huh? Endure whatever they throw at you?”

“Don’t exactly have much choice,” Keith answered. “But, I mean - it’s just a waiting game until tomorrow morning. They’ll dole out their punishment and then it’s over. Just have to get it over with. Did you get the ore stuff taken care of?”

“Yeah,” Hunk said. “And don’t say ‘just get it over with’ like it’s just a hard test at school or something, man. They’re gonna - I don’t even know what, but they were awful mad. What are they planning to do tomorrow anyhow?” Keith didn’t answer, and Hunk’s gaze grew more intense, newly ignited worry crackling in his gut. “Keith? Do you know what’s gonna happen?”

Keith hesitated, dropping his gaze. “Okay, um, they, uh, they haven’t really given me much to go on, so I don’t know for sure.”

“But you have some idea?” Hunk prodded.

“Well, so, you know they said that I’ve got to face ‘penance’ for the monument.”

“Yeah.” Hunk fought down the anxiety that bubbled up at the mere mention of the word. “Still don’t quite know what that means, though.”

“Right.” Keith took a deep breath. “Well, uh, no one’s said anything to me directly, but I’ve overheard some chatter. From the guards here, see. They don’t seem to have any specifics either, but they’ve got a better idea of what ‘penance’ usually refers to, so they were talking, and, um…” He trailed off and began to chew at his lip.

“And what?”

Keith lifted his eyes back up to Hunk, and they were wide, brow pinched, almost appearing apologetic. “You have to promise not to freak out.”

Immediately Hunk was fully prepared to freak out. “What do you mean? What’s there to freak out about?! Keith, what’s gonna happen?!”

“Okay, look, it’s probably not as bad as - ”

“Keith, if you have to warn me not to freak out, it’s probably pretty bad!”

“That’s not what - it’s not the penance part, I just didn’t want you to feel guilty about what happens, all right? I promise, Hunk, I’m gonna be able to handle it. Okay? Whatever happens, you’ve got to keep a cool head. The last thing we need is for them to decide to detain you too. And, well - ” He let out a little cough and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m probably, um, gonna need you to help me out afterward…”

Hunk gulped. As much as he dreaded the answer, he had to know. “Keith,” he said, “What’s the penance?”

There was another second’s hesitation before Keith quietly answered, “If what those guards were saying was true, Crelxatain seems to be fond of, um… corporal punishment. A public display of it. Apparently it’s, um, they seem to think it’s an effective way to, uh, deter repeat crimes, and, like - ”

Hunk’s voice, which had frozen in his throat at some point while Keith had been talking, managed to find just enough strength for him to repeat in a squeak, “Corporal punishment?!”

Keith winced. “Yeah. Um, best as I could tell from what they were saying, flogging’s pretty common, so that’s probably the most likely, but, um, yeah… Hunk? Please don’t freak out.”

“How can I not freak out?! Keith, they’re going to - !”

“I know,” Keith snapped. “I - yeah, I know.” He huffed out a sigh and crossed his arms over his chest. “Look, it’s not like I’m looking forward to it, but it’s not exactly like we can opt out. The place is under heavy guard, Red is still down… Only thing for us is to ride this out, let them take their anger out on me if they have to, then get back to the Castle as soon as we’re able so we can, um, you know.” He tightened his arms where they were crossed. “Fix anything that needs fixing.”

With a frustrated sigh, Hunk leaned against the wall, letting his shoulder rest up where the hard wall met the narrow bars of Keith’s cell. His legs were feeling leaden, like they would give out on him if he spent much longer standing on his own two feet, so he let himself slide down toward the floor. Once he was seated, Keith joined him, sitting down cross-legged on the other side of the bars, although it took some maneuvering to get settled with those chains on his ankles. “You okay?” Keith asked.

“Don’t ask me that,” said Hunk. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be in that cell right now, not you.”

“Hunk,” said Keith, “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was an accident.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t do anything wrong either! You know as well as I do that Yellow was the one who took down that monument. You’re too good a pilot, you’d never let something like that happen with Red.”

“It has nothing to do with who’s a better pilot. Yellow’s bigger than Red, it’s harder to avoid collateral damage with her.”

“Doesn’t matter. The damage was still mine. And you - ” His lip began to tremble, and Keith seemed to tense at the catch in Hunk’s voice. “You shouldn’t have lied to the Crelxats like that. You should’ve just let me take responsibility. What good does it do for you to have to do this stupid ‘penance’ thing instead of me?”

“Hunk, I - ”

“Either way, we’re ending up with one paladin who’s gonna wind up really, really hurt, so why did you get to decide it should be you instead of me, huh? Why would you go and complicate things like that? What the hell were you thinking?!”

Keith sighed, bringing his hands up and combing his fingers into his hair as he grabbed his head. “I was thinking, you were scared. And I just… I dunno. I wanted to fix that.”

Hunk set his jaw, hoping that that would help keep the tremor out of his voice. “And you just decided the best way to do it would be to take on all the consequences for yourself? That’s not fair to you, Keith.”

Slowly lowered his hands from his hair to cross his arms over his chest instead, and he muttered something under his breath that Hunk couldn’t quite make out. “What was that?” Hunk asked.

“I said, nothing’s ever ‘fair’,” Keith replied. “This isn’t about fairness. If things were gonna be ‘fair’, the Crelxats wouldn’t be upset with us over that monument in the first place, they’d be too busy being grateful to us for saving their asses and they’d realize that that should be much higher priority than a stupid statue. But as is, we can’t leave, we can’t get help from the others, and the Crelxats want blood. It’s not fair, but it’s happening, so all we can do now is get it over with.”

“I know, but - but - ” Hunk sighed and rested his chin on his hand. “I still say you shouldn’t have done it.”

“I know.”

“And I wasn’t that scared.”

“Okay.”

“Are you scared?”

There was a pause before Keith answered, “No.”

Hunk sighed. “You’re a really awful liar, Keith.”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a long while before Hunk slowly reached through the bars of the cell and took hold of Keith’s hands, twining his fingers into Keith’s and trying not to think about how cold they were. “I’m sorry, man,” he said softly.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Keith mumbled.

“Sure. I’m just gonna go ahead and be sorry anyway, kay?” He gave his hand a squeeze. “Besides the face, have they hurt you?”

“Nah. Bit of shoving around, but that’s all.”

“They been giving you water? Food?”

“Enough, yeah.”

Hunk frowned, making a mental note to set aside some food from the lodging house to fill Keith up the moment he was released. He was just opening his mouth to ask if Keith had any requests - none of the Crelxat food was an exact match to any from Earth or any they’d encountered in space so far, but he could at least do some taste testing and see if he could find something similar to whatever Keith wanted - but he was interrupted by the door at the end of the hall slamming open.

“Time is up,” the guard grunted. “Make your leave.”

Hunk scowled at the guard, but after giving Keith’s hand one final squeeze, he rose to his feet. “I’ll be right there waiting once the penance is done,” he said. “The ore delivery should be finished early tomorrow morning, so once Red’s back up and running we can go straight back to the Castle. Get off this planet for good.”

“That’ll be nice,” Keith said, and he grimaced when the guard knocked his halberd into the doorframe, ordering Hunk to get moving. “I’ll - I’ll see you then. Better get going.”

Reluctantly Hunk complied, shuffling back down the hall of empty cells and giving Keith one last wave goodbye before the door was slammed shut again with a sickening finality.

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

Time moved at a crawl as Hunk waited. He kept himself occupied as best he could, working on Red’s repairs throughout the day, and he managed to convince a guard to let him take Keith’s confiscated armor and bayard off their hands (with the understanding that if he tried any funny business with the weaponry he would be tossed into his own cell before he could so much as blink) to have them ready for Keith when the penance was finished, and he polished the helmet three times over just for something mindless to do.

He stared at the ceiling in his room that night, trying to convince his exhausted body to sleep, but it wasn’t easy. Every time he closed his eyes all he could see was Keith, standing before that same crowd that had been in the plaza, and he was facing his penance, Malvet raising a whip with sadistic glee in her smile.

He always opened his eyes again before it actually made contact.

It took vargas of pacing around the room that night - ignoring the irritated knocking from whoever was staying in the room below his - to finally wear him out enough to get any amount of sleep, and then he was up again, getting the ore loaded onto Yellow in the earliest hours of morning and anxiously watching the planet’s sun creep upward into the sky, the whorling dread in his stomach growing stronger with every inch it rose.

No one came to fetch him or let him know when the penance was starting, but they didn’t have to. He could see for himself when Crelxats started to eagerly emerge from their homes and head off all in the same direction, and he overheard bits and pieces of discussion about whether they thought the twenty gods would be appeased and what they thought of the offering that had been made by the city the night before; Hunk didn’t know what that offering had been, and honestly he could not have cared less, but apparently it had been act one of this show, and Keith’s penance was the finale.

For visibility’s sake Hunk donned his full paladin armor before leaving the lodging house, hopefully for good, and he followed the flow of Crelxats past the building that housed Keith’s cell and even past the plaza featuring the statue, which, judging by the scaffolding that had been set up around the plaza, was currently under repairs. The Crelxats moved down a road veering off to the side and sloping down toward a long, solid wall, where they congregated toward a large arched entryway flanked by two guards.

He started toward the entry, but was stopped by a hand on his arm. He jumped and whipped around to find a stony-faced Crelxat guard, dressed in the same garb as the guards had been in the jail where Keith had been kept. Two other guards were hovering nearby, watching with the same stoic expression.

“If you are intending to view the penance,” the guard said, “You must remain under our watch.”

“What?” said Hunk. “Why?”

“You have made known that you hold close personal connection to the transgressor.” Ire scratched at Hunk’s throat at Keith being referred to as ‘the transgressor’, but he held his tongue and let the guard continue: “It is standard, then, to ensure that you are kept under supervision to prevent attempts at interfering with the penance.”

“Oh. Um, right,” Hunk relented. It made sense, he supposed. Any decent person witnessing their friend being publicly tortured would want to try to put a stop to it. It seemed that even if he hadn’t already promised Keith that he would let the Crelxats go through with their punishment, there wasn’t much he would be able to do under the eye of their guards.

The one who had stopped him nudged him forward as one of the others began leading the way toward the entrance, while the other approached and held out his hand. “No weapons are allowed at the viewing. Hand it over.”

Reluctantly Hunk removed his bayard from where it was holstered at his hip and dropped it into the guard’s hand. The guard nodded curtly and turned to follow the other, turning the bayard in his hand to inspect it as he went, and Hunk was nudged again, a cue to follow.

He trailed behind them, and as they passed through the entryway, he got his first view of where this penance was being held. The space seemed to be some sort of amphitheater, with rows of seats curving in a semicircle, getting lower and lower as they reached the center, where there stood a completely bare platform, high enough that the spectators sitting in the front row would probably have to crane their necks to see what happened on top of it.

Hunk wanted to go toward the front, to be as visible as possible when Keith was brought out, so he would be able to see him in the crowd, know he was there to support him and rush to his side the moment this whole mess was finally over, but the guards instead led him into a row toward the back. As they filed in, Hunk scowled at the Crelxats who were milling around the amphitheater, filling up the rows of seats in front of them. All these people, taking the time out of their lives to come and watch Keith suffer. As though this was some sort of entertainment to them. They wanted blood, they wanted it from Keith, and there was nothing about this whole situation that wasn’t disgusting.

He had to take care to clench his jaw so he wouldn’t wind up just shouting at everyone in the crowd, since that would probably only end with him being forcibly escorted out by the guards, and took his seat obediently. The other Crelxats in the crowd were gradually sitting down as well, taking their time far too casually, and every dobash of waiting felt agonizingly long.

After that wait, though, the crowd finally hushed at the sight of the guards coming through the entrance at the front of the amphitheater behind the stage, and as they did, Hunk wished they could go back to the waiting. Harrowing though it was, it was still better than watching Keith being escorted onto the stage.

His wrists and ankles were still shackled, so his gait was only a shuffle, and the guards at either side of him pushing him forward didn’t seem to be making walking any easier; he tripped on the steps leading onto the stage and, rather than pause to let him regain his balance, the guards grabbed him under the arms and began dragging him before Keith managed to find his footing again. He still wore the leg portion of his underarmor, but he’d been stripped of the top, and his bare torso looked deathly pale in the too-bright sunlight.

He also, as Hunk realized with a surge of fury as Keith shook his hair out of his face, been gagged, a strap of what looked like leather cinched tightly over his mouth and digging into the skin at the corners. Hunk wondered vaguely what he had said to the guards to warrant that addition. Or who he had bitten.

The Crelxats in the amphitheater around him had begun to jeer as Keith was escorted onto the stage, and only stopped when another figure stepped out: Malvet, the wiring of her head blindingly reflecting glints of the sunlight as she raised her hands for quiet.

“We are gathered here,” she began, her voice booming despite Hunk not seeing any sort of microphone or other audio equipment anywhere, “To offer the Twenty Gods of Crelxatain a display of our respect, our reverence, and our compunction. The offender who stands before you now has, in an act of brash disregard for our planet and its citizens - ”

She continued, but Hunk tuned her out, and not just out of anger toward the way she was talking about Keith. His focus had instead been drawn to the guards who had come forward along the stage. Where he had thought there had just been flat floorboards, they opened a hatch, and from beneath the stage they unfolded a bundle of beams that clicked into place as a solitary and stationary pole, with a hooped hook sticking out of it a good six feet up. Keith was pulled forward, and the chain between his wrists was lifted and latched onto the hook, leaving Keith standing with his arms stretched above him, back stretched out and exposed.

So Keith had been right about the flogging, and Hunk pressed his lips together, feeling nausea bubble up in his throat and wondering if he were going to start blowing chunks onto the row of Crelxats in front of him.

He kept his eyes on Keith, trying to meet his gaze, and Keith was looking out to the crowd too. It was hard to be absolutely sure from this distance, but Hunk was pretty sure that Keith spotted him, because his gaze was definitely aimed Hunk’s way, his pale face and wide eyes directed right toward him.

And no matter what Keith said, he was definitely scared.

Unlike in Hunk’s nightmarish visions from the night before, Malvet wasn’t the one to bring out a whip. Instead it was one of the guards, unfurling a length of cord from behind him as Malvet stepped toward the pole, fixing Keith with a withering glower before turning back to address the crowd once more. “To each of the twenty gods he has chosen to desecrate, he shall pay blood in penitence. Firstly, to Taelxot.”

That was all the fanfare given before the crack of the whip rang through the amphitheater, making Hunk jump at its suddenness. It seemed too soon to be starting, he needed more time, more time to emotionally ready himself and for Keith to say his own piece, but here they were. It was happening. Now.

The first lash seemed to have taken Keith off guard too, since he let out a yelp at the contact that was muffled by his gag. The crowd of Crelxats let out applause as the whip struck, and the sound seemed distant to Hunk as he watched Keith, trying to see if he was okay.

“Secondly,” Malvet continued, “To Vokrin.”

Another crack of the whip, another cheer. These names Malvet was saying, Hunk surmised, must have been the names of some of those twenty gods she kept talking about, and they must have been giving Keith one lash for each god that had been disrespected.

Which meant there were going to be twenty lashes in total. Hunk’s eyes widened as the whip dragged on the floor as the guard reeled it back, leaving a red streak on the wooden planks that Hunk could just barely see from where he was sitting.

There was no way he was going to be able to stomach eighteen more of these.

At the third lash, Keith squeezed his eyes shut against the pain, and at the fourth, the whip struck deep enough that Hunk could see blood droplets flying directly from Keith’s back. The crowd was eating it up, getting to their feet as they applauded, and at the fifth lash, Hunk stood too, because that was the only way he could still see over the heads of the cheering Crelxats in front of him.

The lashes kept coming.

Hunk’s hands hovered over the lower half of his face, threatening to move up and cover his eyes, but he resisted the admittedly powerful temptation. He owed Keith this much, at the very, very least. He owed it to Keith to be there and watch, to meet his eyes whenever Keith opened them so that the red paladin would have a face to look toward for support, for a silent message to hang on, just hang on, it will all be over soon.

Besides, closing his eyes now wouldn’t get rid of the image of those blood droplets Hunk had already seen spraying from Keith’s back, so there really was no point. That image would probably stay burned in his mind forever.

Another lash - Malvet was still counting them, but Hunk couldn’t hear her. All the sounds in the amphitheater were starting to blur together in his ears, muddling into loud and angry static as he focused only on Keith. The pain of the flogging must have been getting to be too much even for him, because an agonized shout escaped into his gag this time, much to the delight of the assembled Crelxats. At the next lash, he screamed again, and his eyes flew open, meeting Hunk’s almost immediately.

Hunk’s heart stopped at the sight of the tears gathering there, the sun sparkling off of them, and it started up again, pounding like a drum, when the whip came down again and the tears broke free and began to fall.

The specks of blood staining the platform were growing thicker with every lash. They couldn’t possibly keep this up. They were going to kill him.

On the next lash, the whip’s aim was off, and it landed over Keith’s shoulder. The barb on the tip must have caught on his skin, because it ripped a line of flesh off with it as the guard pulled it back, sending a splash of blood across his chest.

Hunk finally threw up, then, and the cries of delight coming from the Crelxat in front of him turned to ones of disgust as the sick splattered onto his back. Which did nothing to relieve Keith’s pain, but it did give Hunk just the tiniest glimmer of satisfaction before he straightened up again to watch the last of the lashes.

“And to the twentieth God of Crelxat, Skovok!”

The whipped cracked for the final time, the crowd cheered, and Keith was motionless on the stage, all his weight dangling from his wrists, his head bowed and hair covering his eyes so Hunk couldn’t tell whether they were open or closed. The floor at his feet far, far too red.

Hunk could only spot the tiniest bit of movement, just catch the way Keith’s chest shook as he breathed, and he tried to focus only on that as he waited for Malvet to give her stupid closing speech and Hunk could finally take Keith back to the Lions and try to find some way to patch up his back, which had to be a grotesque mess at this points.

“To each of the gods, a due has been paid,” Malvet was saying grandly. “So all that remains is our assurance that the transgressor can never again bring harm to the gods, or to Crelxatain itself. To that end, we offer the last of his life, that they may find solace in its removal and a better purpose for it in the world beyond our own.”

… What?

With great difficulty Hunk pulled his eyes away from Keith to see what was happening on the rest of the stage. All but one guard had moved to the other side, and another hatch, like the one from which they’d pulled the pole, had been opened, something else being unfolded from this one. They locked the pole into place, but this one kept unfolding, into a bracket that projected over the hole the open hatch left in the floor. The hatch was pulled back into place, and one of the guards hooked a loop of wire over the projection.

It took a long moment for Hunk’s brain to catch up to his eyes, for him to realize what he was looking at.

Gallows.

His heart racing, blood pounding he whipped around to face the guard next to him. “What - what is that?!” He jabbed a shaking finger toward the stage, and oh god, the guard who had stayed by Keith was taking him down and starting to drag him across the stage.

“It is a device that will allow penance to be completed,” the guard said, explaining it like he was a teacher giving a classroom lecture. “The wire is placed around the neck of the criminal, and the hatch - ”

“I know what it is!” Hunk yelled. “Why is it here?! Keith paid his penance! He got his punishment already!”

“He paid a blood penance, yes,” the guard said. “Now, they are ensuring that he can never again cause harm to the sacred - ”

“We were never gonna even come to this stupid planet again!” Hunk shouted. He ignored the surrounding Crelxats who were turning to glare at him, a couple snapping at him to be quiet. “They don’t need to ensure it! They - they - they said he’d be returned to me once the penance was done! What happened to that?!”

“He will. To be preserved or memorialized as you and your culture see fit.”

Disbelief had Hunk lost for words for a few seconds, while on the stage, he could see Keith, even in the state he was in, starting to struggle in the guards’ hold. “I don’t want his corpse!” he finally squeaked out. “I - I - oh god, I’ve got to - ” His eyes roved toward the guard holding his bayard.

A hand thumped onto his arm, holding him in place. “Consider this your only warning,” the guard said. “Any attempt to derail the proceedings will result in you joining him.”

Hunk swallowed, his legs feeling close to giving out under him as the loop of wire was wrestled over Keith’s head and around his neck. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. “Please,” he begged, tears pricking at his eyes. “There - there has to be something I can…”

Keith was shouting into his gag, and Malvet was saying something again, raising her voice to drown Keith out. The guard’s grip on Hunk tightened, and he felt dizzy. Keith was going to be hanged right in front of him. Keith shouldn’t even be the one going through this, it should have been Hunk.

Keith was going to die, and it was going to be Hunk’s fault.

There had to be something he could do. He owed it to Keith. Keith had saved him from the Crelxats’ wrath, hadn’t even thought twice about him, and Hunk needed to repay him. He couldn’t let things end this way.

If he were up on the stage right now, in that noose, and Keith were the one having to watch, what would Keith do?

Lance would probably say Keith would ‘punch his problems until they go away’.

It wasn’t much of a plan -

A thunk sounded as the hatch below Keith’s feet was dropped and the wire went taut.

- but it was all he had.

All the fury that had built in him since the moment he had been ushered into the amphitheater flooded into his fist as he whirled on the guard holding him, and it connected with the chin of his helmet. His knuckles immediately throbbed with pain, but there was a satisfying crunch of bone as the guard’s head reeled back, his grip going slack.

Hunk dove for the guard holding his bayard. The guard let out a shout and tried to jump back, but Hunk was not to be deterred, and he bodily tackled him into the next row, the Crelxats there shrieking and scampering out of the way. He clawed his way up the guard’s arm, fighting to pry his fingers off of the bayard, and when he wouldn’t give, he decided he didn’t have the time to fight clean. He hauled himself forward and bit down as hard as he could on the guard’s hand.

The bayard was dropped immediately, and Hunk snatched it up and clambered to his feet. It expanded into its miniturret launcher form as he hefted it up and aimed it toward the stage. Several Crelxats screamed, and his vision swam as he saw Keith through the optic. He was still moving, still jerking in his bonds even as the wire tightened around his neck and his face began turning blue. That meant his neck hadn’t broken when he dropped. He was still alive. There was still a chance.

Although, that chance was getting exponentially smaller with every tick that passed, and Hunk didn’t have time to reach the stage. With his vision hazy and his body shaking and his stomach doing somersaults, it would be insane to try to shoot from here. There was too much chance of hitting Keith. He was going to survive being hanged only to be killed by cannon fire instead.

But it was the only thing he could do.

He fired, praying to anything that was out there and that might be listening that the shot would hit its mark.

It didn’t. It went too high. Hunk’s heart sank, despair flooding him -

Until another shot came from behind him, the projectile this time much larger. This one took out the projection of the gallows that Hunk had been aiming for, dropping Keith’s struggling form to the ground, and burned through half the stage along with it.

He turned around.

Never in his life had he ever been so happy to see the Yellow Lion, hovering just over the amphitheater’s entrance. The buildings behind her were darkened by her enormous shadow, and her eyes blazed down on the crowd that was practically trampling itself to get out of her way.

Yellow had come. She had sensed Keith in danger and -

No, that wasn’t quite it, Hunk realized as he finally noticed Yellow’s presence in his mind, the weight trying to ground Hunk like a heavy blanket, the low rumble of her growl asking if he was okay.

She had sensed Hunk’s distress. That’s why she had come. That’s why she had flown here on her own.

Huh. It seemed Keith wasn’t the only one with an overprotective Lion.

And speaking of…

Hunk’s bayard shrank back down into its dormant form as he raced down the amphitheater steps, shoving panicking Crelxats out of the way and sliding onto his knees as he reached Keith’s crumpled form. The smell of iron from his bloodied back was so strong Hunk could taste it, and he gagged as he rolled him over. Keith’s eyes were closed, his lips gray from lack of air, and Hunk immediately set to fumbling at the wire noose, mumbling reassurances to Keith’s unconscious form as he loosened it.

Right as he pulled it up over Keith’s head, grimacing at the dark bruises it had left on the skin of his neck, the body was yanked aside by the arm, and Hunk looked up to see Malvet, both her hands locked around Keith’s forearm as she tugged at him.

“Get away!” Hunk snarled. “Haven’t you hurt him enough?!”

“He has not completed his penance!” Malvet cried. She swiveled her gaze onto Hunk, and the angry gleam in her eyes was almost manic. “The destruction he caused must be paid in kind! The twenty gods require his life, and we must - ”

Hunk let out a frustrated growl, just about at his wit’s end with Malvet’s gods. In a show of rashness that would make Keith proud, he brought his bayard back up, and it morphed into its energy minigun form as he pointed it right between Malvet’s eyes. “If you even think about hurting Keith one more time, then my gods are gonna need your life in exchange.”

Malvet narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Sure I would. I already took out your monument. I’m on a rampage. I can’t be stopped.”

Her jaw dropped, and her hands shook as her grip on Keith’s arm loosened. “You - it was you who - ”

Hunk was already hauling Keith onto his back and taking off before she could finish the thought, and he raced up the amphitheater steps in leaps to meet Yellow at the top, where she scooped the paladins into her mouth and took flight.

The sound of screams below them was cut off as her jaw shut and Hunk collapsed onto the cockpit floor, rolling Keith off of him as gently as he could before rushing to the controls, taking Yellow around in a wide arc and scanning the city below before he spotted where Red lay, still not quite fixed up to working condition. He dove toward her, and Yellow grabbed the smaller Lion up from the ground around the middle like a mother carrying her cub before rocketing upward, gaining speed until she broke the atmosphere. Then he set her autopilot to the coordinates of the Castle’s landing site and…

It was over. After all that, it was finally over. They were off Crelxatain. They were safe.

They were alive.

Well, Hunk reminded himself as he left the pilot’s seat and made his way back toward Keith’s prone form on the cockpit floor, the worst part was over, at least, but they weren’t in the clear yet. He reached to the overhead storage unit to pull out the emergency medical kit and got onto his knees next to Keith to get a closer look.

It wasn’t a pretty sight. Keith’s back had been slashed to ribbons, the gashes in varying depths with a couple cutting so deep Hunk could swear he could see vertebrae. Some of them had stopped bleeding, most had not, and the sounds of the slowly seeping blood dripping onto the floor of the cockpit rang in Hunk’s head. He’d be able to clean the wounds and get some gauze onto them for now, but the cryopods in the Castle would have to do the bulk of the work.

And his back wasn’t the only spot injured. His ankle was bent in the middle in a way it shouldn’t have been able to bend and was starting to swell; he’d probably landed on it at a bad angle when Yellow had shot down the scaffolding. A trickle of blood dripped from the edge of his mouth where the tight gag was cutting into the skin, and Hunk reached up to start working it free, relieved to hear Keith breathing when he pulled it away, even if the breaths were raspy and strained. Small wonder, considering the purpling bruises covering his neck where the noose had strangled him.

He opened the medical kit, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the extent of Keith’s injuries, and decided to pull out the bottle of disinfectant first. His back was definitely going to need it. He unscrewed the lid and held his breath against the sharp smell before lowering it toward the gashes and pouring the disinfectant in.

It let out a sizzling sound as it spread over the wounds, and Keith’s back arched as he let out a strangled yell, his swollen neck leaving his voice as nothing but a dry rasp. Hunk immediately set the disinfectant down and hurried up toward Keith’s head. “I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I know, I know, it’s gotta hurt like hell, but I have to clean it up, I’m sorry. Hang in there, bud.”

Keith let out another rasping groan, and slowly his eyelids began to peel apart. “Keith?” Hunk whispered. “You awake?”

His back rose and fell in a couple of slow, deep breaths before he finally grunted out, “Sh’ro?”

Wow. Keith may as well have just rammed his fist through Hunk’s chest, grabbed his heart, and wrung it dry. “Uh, no. No, it’s not Shiro. It’s me, it’s Hunk.”

Keith blinked slowly, his eyes working to focus on Hunk’s face, and then: “Hunk? We’re alive?”

Hunk let out a breath. “Yeah, man,” he said, giving Keith a wobbly grin. “We’re alive. We made it out of there. You did great, buddy. Just need to hang in there a little longer before we get back to the Castle.”

“I thought they - ” Keith took a rattling breath, but his voice didn’t sound any less gravelly when he continued, “They decided t’ kill me, di’n’t they.”

Hunk grimaced. “Yeah. They did. But that was a pretty stupid decision, wasn’t it?”

“You stopped th’m,” Keith said. “I saw you. In th’ crowd. You had - y’ had your bay’rd. Before I couldn’t see ‘nymore…”

“Well, I - I tried,” Hunk said. “But it was really Yellow who saved the day, you know. She’s the one who started blasting. All I did was get a little chaos going in the stands and grab you. It was nothing.”

“Nah,” Keith sighed. “It wasn’t noth’ng.”

He let his eyes drift closed, and Hunk pushed his bangs out of his face before scooting back toward the medical kit. “Once we’re in close enough range of the Castle, I’ll radio in and see if anyone’s there to get a pod ready for you. If we’re the first there, well, I’ll do it myself. Coran showed me the basics of how those things work, I can at least get you stabilized before he or Allura comes back and can get it started for the deep healing stuff. But, um, for now I’ve got to get this stuff disinfected and wrapped up. It’s definitely gonna sting.”

“‘S’okay,” Keith grunted. “Go ahead.”

“And Keith?”

“Mm.”

Hunk leaned in close. “Don’t you ever, ever scare me like that again, you got it? You’re no longer allowed to come that close to dying, I forbid it. And if you ever try to jump in and take the blame for my screw-up again, I swear to the Twenty Gods of Crelxatain I’ll bring all the wrath of the Yellow Lion raining down upon you. You hear me? Never again.”

Eyes still closed, Keith gave him a weak attempt at a smile. “We’ll see,” he rasped out.

Hunk sighed. Shiro really should have warned them right from the start how stressful it was to have Keith around. “Good enough,” he said, moving back to focus on the gashes. Keith tensed and let out a couple of whimpers as Hunk dabbed disinfectant into the wounds, but they got through it.

It wasn’t until Hunk was halfway through wrapping Keith’s torso in bandages that he opened his eyes and spoke again. “Hunk?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Remember, when I said t’ just let them get th’ penance over with? ‘nd not to interfere?”

“Yeah…”

“Thanks for not list’ning to me.”

Hunk let out a loud laugh, more out of the hysteria still left in his system than any humor in Keith’s weak joke, but he still broke out a wide smile as he said, “Any time, buddy.”

“And for… ev’rything else.”

“Hey. You had my back from the start, right? Of course I’m gonna have yours too. That’s what teammates are for, you said it yourself.”

“So now… we’re even?”

“Not even close,” Hunk said, shaking his head. “Not until you get out of that cryopod and eat every bite of the feast I’m going to make for you the moment we get back to the Castle. I’m talking twenty dessert courses and live entertainment by the mice. Then we’ll be even.”

Keith let out a breath of laughter and let his eyes slide closed again. “Deal.”

#badthingshappenbingo #keith #hunk #vldgen #keith whump #my writing #fic: got your back

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taki118 · 3 years

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How I’d Rework Miraculous LadyBug

Miraculous Ladybug is one of the series that has such a good solid gimmick behind it that I like tricked myself into thinking it was good for far too long (a similar thing happened with Once Upon a Time). So I finally sat down on wrote out how I’d rework the series. It’s really just slight character, role and magic changes but I think overall it’d work out much better than what we got, in my opinion.

What I really strive for is the idea of real vs persona which each character show casing a duality in both and how different people act behind a mask. Honestly this to me is the most important accept of the series as its set with teenagers and aimed at a younger crowd who are just starting to find themselves. Anyway enough with the preamble changes below its a lot.

Marinette

So I’ve had a problem with Marinette since season one and it’s never gotten better if anything its only gotten worse. She has what I like to call romcom protag syndrome, Marinette is really good at a lot of things, with a wide array of interests that she's competent at and is very well liked but unlike a Kim Possible type where the narrative owns this and her being hyper competent is just part of her charm Miraculous wants you to think that Marinette is just like you’re average girl by giving her really like cosmetic flaws like a romcom protagonist. She's clumsy! (but only when its convenient) She’s shy and bashful! (but only when it comes to adrien), She overthinks and worries! (but not in a way that impedes her in a meaningful way).

You see what i’m getting at right? How can Marinette be your average girl when she’s already a skilled designer, makes friends with like everyone, can pick up skills insanely quick, is always in the right (even when really she should not be), gets good grades, is class president and her only real (in narrative) flaws are she’s clumsy, sometimes.

So in my reworking I want to make a clear distinction between their true self and persona and Marinette needs this the most.

First things first keep Marinette as very talented fashion designer BUT her sewing skills are not quite there yet. Look I cosplay as a hobby and let me tell you taking something from a 2D sketch to an actual piece of clothing is VERY difficult. Like and even if you manage to make it again what looks good on a sketch might not look good on a real person. So I want to showcase her struggling here, things not looking quite right and maybe give her a bit of a perfectionist problem like her friends don't notice the flaws but SHE does. I would also make fashion and clothes her hyper focus so much that while she CAN do other artistic things she doesn't really like it and struggles with it in a way she doesn't enjoy.

Next up I’d have activities she just can’t do, most important being she’s bad at baking. Like she can’t really help out at the bakery because she’s so bad at it, only able to take orders and clean up because her pastries always come out looking awful. This is because she lacks the patience for baking and the eye for it, though her food tastes fine they just look terrible. And it depresses her a little, even though her parents are fine with it.

I’d also up her clumsiness, like she’s not a good dancer, she slips a lot, gym is not her strong suit, is not graceful in any sense of the word the only time she is is when she’s sewing. Thus adding to her confidence issues.

Another thing I’d add is Marinette is CONSTANTLY over thinking things like to her determinate, like a lot of her clumsy moments comes from her overthinking things (this doesn't just apply to Adrien). And this aspect is shown to be a negative a lot in the narrative adding to her confidence issues. Like she’s constantly afraid Alya won’t be her friend anymore if she messes up, thinks that Tiki would be better off with someone else, and second guesses herself a lot.

Overall the picture I want to give Marinette is a girl holding herself back more than anyone else.

Ladybug

On the other hand when she’s Ladybug all her doubt is thrown out the window because she HAS to be decisive. She doesn't have the time to over think and talk herself into a tissy and because of this every time she succeeds as Ladybug her confidence in her persona grows. Putting that costume on makes her feel stronger, but the second it comes off the doubts sink in. If they depower during a battle Marienette is noticeably less sure and confident. Marinette

associates her powers with her confidence and as such can’t even picture acting like Ladybug without it. She does so so strongly that she thinks if Chat Noir saw the real her he’d be disappointed. In her mind Ladybug is everything Marionette is not and it adds to her complex.

Adrien

My biggest issue with Adrien is that there is very little difference between him and Chat Noir. One of my favorite things from the anime PVs was how very different you could see between Felix and Chat and how you could see so very much with so very little. I don’t think Adrien is as big a mess as Marinette but then we don’t get much from him (which I would 100% change)

So in my reworking here Adrien would be a much more obvious people pleaser. He’ll agree to just about anything if asked because he’s terrified of people disliking him. He’ll let people take the last one of a thing he likes, will help with projects even if he doesn’t actually want to be a part of them and will assist people even if they are wrong because he desperately wants to befriend everyone. This will often lead to people taking advantage of and misunderstanding him. Like I want on more than one occasion a girl Adrien is friendly with seeing his people pleasing nature as a genuine interest in them leading to heartbreak and akumaization. This will also play into Marinette’s own worries about confessing to him as in my version he does treat her like a friend. A friend who’s gotten close enough to confide in at times (but less than Nino) but a friend all the same.

Also I would have Adrien just now returning to Paris having been living with his Aunt and cousin up until now due to his mothers passing making his relationship with Gabriel more strained than like abusive. And his experience in his last school was not great as it was a private school where his cousin made things difficult.

I’d also add in that Adrien feels like he has to be on his best behavior at all times for his family name and father’s company and will confess feeling stifled by it and that he doesn’t even like modeling, but its the only time he really sees his dad anymore.

Overall I want it to feel like Adrien is who he feels he has to be.

Chat Noir

When it comes to the Chat Noir persona this is what Adrien feels is his truest self. He acts and speaks and does as he likes, and sometimes he just messes around in the costume at night as stress relief. (maybe even have him not wanting to help sometimes because he just didn’t like the person akumatized and having to be bribed by ladybug) As Chat Noir adrien speaks more casually says whats on his mind no matter how cruel or crude it may be, and is 100% honest with himself and his feelings. To him Chat Noir is freedom and he’d rather die than give it up, it’s Adriens one real act of selfishness.

As such Chat Noir is the true Adrien and the person he is at school is the mask.

Love Square

So with these changes how does the love square work? Um better in my humble opinion.

Adrienette: Marinette is attracted to Adrien for a similar reason to the series in that he’s nice and sweet and handsome, I wouldn't have her start being confrontational with him just not impressed until he does something she views as special to her, but to him it was nothing. Marionette is head over heals (but not to the creepy level she gets in the series) and jealous of any girl confident enough to ask him out. She’s constantly tripping over herself wondering if it’s better to try and move forward or stay where she is as a close friend. But Adrien doesn’t see Marinette as anything more than that he thinks she’s nice but isn’t attracted to her and never does anything he wouldn’t do with another friend and is oblivious to her interest.

LadyNoir: Chat Noir is attracted to Ladybug for her confidence and straightforward attitude and finds her lack of romantic interest in him all the more alluring. He’ll make grand romantic gestures without much thought and flirts regularly but Ladybug isn’t interested seeing him as a showboat who isn’t all that serious. She is good with them being friends but firmly stands that they are nothing more as she views being a superhero as a job.

MariChat: Marinette still finds Chat Noir obnoxious and nothing more than a flirt, but she also believes that if Chat Noir saw the real her he wouldn’t be interested. And he’s not. He flirts but not to the same degree as Ladybug ad Marinette hides her mocking nature of his more ridiculous moments. But when she’s just Marinette she sees just how genuine Chat’s feelings for Ladybug are and he compliments her in ways Adrien never would and seeing a slightly more confident Marinette

Ladrien: Adrien hides his feelings for Ladybug from others thinking they’d laugh (expect for Nino) so when he’s face to face with her he often doesn’t know how to act. For Ladybug her confidence does fall a little but is far calmer and more upfront with Adrien than Marinette is. As a superhero Ladybug tires to hide her feelings for Adrien but lets it slip more than once that she has preference for him making Adrien think he has a chance.

I would also have a moment where Adrien confesses his feelings to Ladybug and it leaves Marinette in a weird state. Cause he likes her but not HER her, and things become awkward between her and Adrien. Ladybug herself confides in Chat that the person she loves doesn't love the real her he tries to say how stupid this person is but she pushes back that he doesn't really know her either. Leaving things weird between all parties. just yes this is the drama i live for

Alya

So Alya I think is a pretty solid character, but I’d have her pushing Marinette more and be less coddling towards her. My Alya would practice more tough love and also would be less invested in her friends love life. I would 100% make it an issue for her too like have an ep where Marienette is so busy obsessing over Adrien that she forgets something important for Alya and she snaps at her. Also she’d me more into news coverage in general not just Ladybug. I’d keep her confident and self assured and make it a little more obvious that Marinette is mimicking her when she starts out as Ladybug.

Rena Rouge

Now I’ll get into kwamii changes and such later i’m just talking about persona changes for now. But as Rena she’d be more cocky and arrogant and would butt heads with Ladybug on strategy. Her confident nature as Alya is great for Marinette but as Rena it’s frustrating for Ladybug. Remember Alya is a superhero fangirl so she’d be all about the action and would think she knows better. And while she and ladybug don’t get along well she and Chat and two peas in a pod a difference from how Alya is with Adrien who she regards kindly but doesn’t think they gel well.

Nino

First off get this boy a better outfit. Second again i think he’s a good start to a character but I’d have him be in a similar situation to Adrien. His parents are rich and away a lot but unlike Adrien they allow Nino to do as he likes and most people aren't aware oh just who his parents are. So he and Adrien bond easily and he confides in him more than in the series. His laid back and trouble maker nature mix well with Adrien but he knows when not to push. However because of his easy going nature people dont expect a lot from Nino and don’t really register his serious side that Adrien does notice.

Carapace

As a hero I feel like he gets the short end in the series, so here his more serious personality comes out. As Carapace he takes super heroing very seriously and is more cautious willing to stand back and follow Ladybugs lead, and butting heads with Chat over jokes. Rena finds him a stick in the mud and he thinks she takes it too lightly.

Bonus for Alya and Nino i think they should date but i’d totally have them being that on and off couple who you can never tell if they’re dating at the moment or not. Just very chill and teenage.

Chloe

Ok I wanna make it apparent I could rant for hours about all the missed opportunities the series has taken with her. Like Chloe is by far the most compelling character they have and they seem to hate it. But not here not with me.

First things first no personality changes Chloe is queen and i will here nothing on it, but we will be altering how she engages with others and the narrative.

For instance she is Marinette’s rival but it’s not for no reason. Chloe also has goals to be a designer and feels threatened by Marinettes work and a little embarrassed they both want the same thing just for very different reasons. While marinette just purely loves fashion Chloe wants to be acknowledged by her mother (more on this later) As such her designs are more avant guard and less favored by her peers she also has professionals make her looks herself. So she gets infuriated that Marinette work is praised over hers. Add in that they both like Adrien and this makes for volatile interactions.

Now i’d also want to play more into Chloe being Adrien childhood friend. I’d have Adrien note that Chloe wasn’t always this way, and remake about how kind she was when they were younger. I’d also have him say she wrote him everyday when he wasn’t in paris and she never liked talking about school. I’d also make it apparent that her cutesy nature with Adrien isn't fake and that’s how she’d always been with him. I’d also have times where Chloe says no for Adrien on things she knows he doesn’t want to do (like he gets invited to something that involves a thing he’s afraid of and knowing he’d go she acts like its beneath him to do). I’d also have her crush being somewhat protective like her saying that she’ll only accept someone else dating Adrien if they’re good enough for him.

I’d also have her relationship with Sabrina similar only make Sabrina a little crueler on her own. But I’d have her agree with Adrien that Chloe has more to her than everyone thinks. My backstory being that during a time when Adrien was away but before Sabrina Chloe herself got used by kids who wanted to take advantage of her position instead of crying she chose to be mean taking the kids down a peg and vowing to not let others get the advantage of her. (Also her father didn’t help in her spoils nature but still)

I’d also have her being a long time fan of super heroes not always for the right reasons but a fan all the same and use this as a means of her and Alya not getting along.

All in all I’d want Chloe to be mean and bitchy for a reason not just a sometimes obstacle for Marinette.

Queen Bee

As Queen Bee Chloe is much more honest with herself, she still has some attitude but she excitable and eager to prove herself to Ladybug who she idolizes for being like her favorite heroes as a kid. With Ladybug she’s definitely a side kick sometimes to her determinate ignoring her own intuition. And with Chat Noir they have a more relaxed friendly nature with the two feeling an odd ease around each other. Like they’ve been friends all their lives and you can see this is how Chloe and Adrien would be if she were more honest. She also gets along so better with Rena and Carapace than Alya and Nino

Master Fuu

This guy needs such an overhaul I mean honestly if i were writing this I wouldn’t even have a guardian the kwamiis would just be chaotic objects of chance. But we got him so I’d make him far more mysterious I wouldn’t have him interacting directly with Marinette and I wouldn't make him the last just one sent to Paris to find the peacock and butterfly miraculous as they had been lost ages ago. I’d have him meet both Marinette and Adrien but have them not know who he is, just a kind old man who gives good advice. I’d also have him be the only one giving out miraculouses and keep all identities secret. Eventually he’d reveal himself to the main pair but it’d be more equal.

Changes to kawmi

So heres my hot take there should only be 7 active, the ladybug, cat, butterfly, peacock, fox, bee and turtle. Theres just too many we loose focus I’m not saying we shouldn't have more heroes but they’d be more minor recurring like they’re in two for the day or something type deal. The zodiac ones also act too much like dues ex for my tastes.

Another change would be the time uses, it’d go like this:

Ladybug and Cat those two can be used multiple times a day this is what makes them so powerful amount other things

Butterfly, Peacock, Bee, Fox and Turtle can only be used once a day or a week this being why we dont have Rena, Cara and Queen in every ep after their intros they have to be sure they’re needed.

(If we NEED the zodiac ones they can only be used less frequently making them more careful in choice)

Another thing is that while Tikki and Flagg have been approved for use the rest have to be activated by Master Fuu theres like a guardian magic thing that makes it so they can only be in stand by unless summoned by Fuu or Ladybugs Lucky Charm.

Another thing is that they can’t like psychically can’t reveal their identities while in hero form and if they transform or de-transform in front of others they will no longer be able to use the miraculous. Adding in further drama as even if they wanted to tell each other the truth they couldn’t.

I think these changes would make the story far more engaging and more definitive in rules.

Luka

His overall personality and role would be the same but he’d be more direct with Marinette none of this I’ll wait for you stuff he’d make his feelings apparent but would be open to other options if they come around and he’ll tell Marinette so. He also wouldn’t be very close to Adrien what I mean is he’d be nice to him but he’d be one of the few people who sees through Adriens mask and call him out not in a mean way but a like “you cant please everyone” and “you’re gonna hurt people like that” way. His main thing would be getting Marinette to not overthink and gain some confidence.

Kagami

Hers would be similar but less um stereotypical. She’d still be Adriens fencing rival with a crush on him, but like Luka she’d be more direct with Adrien with little interest in him acting nice. Stating things like she doesn't want to be his friend. She also would not befriend Marinette my Kagami wouldn’t have problems making friends she is just very hard to be friends with because of her personality, and finds Marinette’s wishy washy nature annoying. Kigali wouldn’t be cruel to her but she wouldn’t go out of her way for her. Overall Kagami would be stoic, sincere, straight forward, competitive and blunt. Her main thing would be to get Adrien to be more honest with his wants and putting himself first.

Class Changes

One thing that has always and will continue to annoy me about Marinette and Adriens class is how they’re all friends with each other, have these writers been to school????? Like I’m not saying they should be nasty but like they should just have different levels of caring. Not all the girls should be siding with Marinette all the time have one or two like Alix or Juleka being annoyed with her and Alya’s “plans” to get the two together (alix cause she’s seen this episode before and dense want to hear it and Juleka cause of her brothers feelings and Marinette not giving him a clear answer). Have one or two of the guys being annoyed with Adriens “Mr perfect” persona, again not overtly mean just don't get along. Like I’m not looking to make them antagonistic but just i think its weird that Chloe is the ONLY one who cant get along with everyone. Cause it’s just not possible especially with teenagers.

Change to Audrey Bourgeois & Mayura

Ok this is the big one and it might seem small but it changes things fundamentally Audery can’t stand Gabriel but was best friends with Emilie.

In my version Audrey is Gabriels biggest critic and never says away from taking shots at him particularly after Emilie “death”. She always considered him not good enough for someone she considered a sister, and blames him for what happened. Hinting that she may know more than we do.

She would also confess to Chloe that she left Paris out of grief she had so many memories in the city with Emilie that after her sudden death it felt wrong being there. Andre suggested she go on a trip to clear her head a few weeks, turned into a few months, turned into a few years as she avoided thinking about the loss. Of course a causality of this avoidance meant avoiding her daughter as well. She came back after Gabriel gave her a cryptic message and now is where this get interesting.

We start with Natlalie using the peacock miraculous but when Gabriel says this is too much for her and she wont use it anymore he means it. He brings Audrey into the fold showing her Emilie and asking for her help, thus she becomes Mayura.

As Mayura she’s very snide and snippy with Hawkmoth and often questions his plans and methods. She also notes Natalie’s growing feelings for Gabriel and remarks that she’s putting her life on the line for Emilie and insinuating that maybe he doesn’t love Emilie as much as he thought. An insinuation Gabriel doesn’t care for.

Anyway thats how i’d changed the characters, and powers for a more solid show in my opinion, I got no idea for plot cause I got no clue what they are doing. But I think this set up would yield better results regardless.

#miraculous ladybug #ml #rework #opinion #thoughts

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catgrump · 3 years

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Break Up With Your Boyfriend; I’m Begging You - A Sayaka/Mukuro Oneshot

Available to read on AO3! Read a preview below:

I couldn't help but smile when I look at her, especially when she's performing. Even when she's just rehearsing, seeing her so engrossed in her work makes me love her even more. "Mukuro?" My heart skips a beat whenever I hear her say my name

I focus, trying to act as though I weren't just daydreaming about her, "What's up?"

"What do you think? Should the elbows go like this," she demonstrated a dance move, jutting her elbows and closed fists to the sides, away from her chest, "or like this?" and then she had one closed-fist arm punch up, while one jutted down

"Um... hm. Lemme see both with the rest of the combo?"

She nodded and reset herself, taking a breath to concentrate and get into character. She pops her head up, displaying her literal award-winning smile as she does her set of steps with energy through every inch of her body. "Okay, that's option one," she explained, and then reset herself once again

It's times like this that make me think things are too good to be true. We're such close friends that she trusts me in her room. She trusts me to guard her phone so she doesn't get distracted while rehearsing. She trusts me to ask for my opinion when creating new work for her girl group. I watched her perform the combo again— with slight variations— and sighed as I rested my chin in the palms of my hands. Once she finished, she panted a bit, catching her breath, "That was option two."

"Yeah, I think with the rest of the moves, the arms flow more naturally into option one. Option two looks a little forced, you know, as an audience member."

"Thank you, Muki!"

I smiled as I watched her grab the sheet music off her floor and scribble notes. Her tongue stuck out slightly while she was focused on writing. Adorable. I sighed again and one of my hands fell onto the book I forgot was open under me. Right: it's Talent Development Hour; I'm supposed to be studying.

Sayaka loves Talent Development Hour. She gets to practice her vocal technique, or rehearse dance combinations, or sketch flashy costume designs. She is so passionate about her Talent, and here I am, reading a book on human psychology to learn more about interrogation. The idea is that if I learn more about how people think, I'll be able to sway them better if I'm in an interrogation situation. I already know my strong suit is battle tactics and combat strategy; I hate having to force myself to become better at something that frustrates me— talking to people.

Communication has always been a struggle for me. Sayaka is one of the few people who understands and lets me take my time. She vouches for me. She's loyal and caring. I don't think I could've resisted falling in love with her if I tried.

#danganronpa fanfiction #this one has some ANGST ya'll #sayaka maizono #mukuro ikusaba #mukuro/sayaka #mukuro x sayaka #sayaka x mukuro #danganronpa fic #danganronpa sayaka #danganronpa mukuro #dr mukuro #dr sayaka #trigger happy havoc #trigger happy havoc spoilers #ikuzono

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bo-bo-bean · 4 years

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Octonauts Game Night

(Since there are no requests, I wrote something for Octonauts!! Hope you all enjoy!)

(Warning; LOOOOONG)

Octonauts Game Night

It was a calm night in the octopod. Everyone was lounging around, nothing to do. Dashi went through her old photos while Captain Barnacles was watching the window, seeing fish and aquatic mammals flowing through the water in peace. He would typically be happy there was no trouble… but today felt oh so slow. Kwazii seemed to have agreed, letting out a long groan.

“There has to be some sort of adventure, matey!” he told no one in particular. Everyone only made a noise in agreement, Shellington looking up from his book that he has read for the fifth time today, giving a nod.

“I wish there was some sort of creature to examine, maybe a new seaweed. I’d even take a new type of rock…” he huffed out, his bang fluttering with his head tilting backwards.

“Now, Octonauts,” the captain settled everyone down. “I’m sure there will be something.”

“Well, let’s hope so,” Kwazii whined. “I’ll be ready for anything! Swashbucklin’ with the swordfish! Finding a new monster or beast!”

“That are fictional…” Shellington could only mutter under his breath. Captain Barnacles could now tell things were going to get tenser and tenser until a fight breaks out, so he made a decision, sprouting out words.

“Game night!” he clapped his hands. This got everyone’s attention, interests peeking. “Yes! A game night sounds wonderful…!”

“I agree!” Peso beamed, happy it’ll be something where no one would get hurt. But he had his first aid kit with him, just in case.

“Ah, what shall we play then? Checkers?” Professor Inkling offered.

“Charades, perhaps!” Dashi stood up, putting her camera down.

“Maybe pictionary!” Shellington beamed.

“Arrgh, lancing sounds like a suitable game!” Kwazii stood up on the table. Peso gulped and held his first aid kit close to his chest.

“M-maybe something less dangerous…?” he asked. “Like… hide and seek!”

“Ah, I’ll find ya’ll in under five minutes if we play that,” Tweak bragged a little. “I should suggest, tag, though! Get the blood pumpin’!” The mention of blood made Peso turn pale. Tunip chirped an option, all heads turning to Shellington for a translation.

“I don’t think we can play tug of war, Tunip,” he giggled. “We haven’t a strong enough rope.”

Everyone began to clamour about their opinion on what to play, the polar bear scratching his chin in thought, then his eyes lit up.

“Ah, everyone! Idea!” he shouted. His deep voice roared through their own voices, everyone turning to face him. “Deep Sea Adventure!” With those three words, everyone’s eyes lit up and all agreed. The vegimals went to make snacks with Shellington’s help, Kwazii and Captain Barnacles bringing out a large table from storage. Peso brought in a mat covered in squares, having the design of islands and villages and caves. Tweak and Dashi brought in the chairs, Mr. Inkling getting the rule boards and books from his library.

Deep Sea Adventure was a game played by the Octonauts many times. It was like a roleplaying game where they make their characters and their actions are depended on by two dice.

“Has anyone seen the dice?” Dashi wondered. Looking under the table. Everyone began to search around, Shellington even searching his own satchel, just in case. This gave Kwazii a gasp as he ran to his chest in his room. He dug through some old treasure maps, little gold doubloons, and his great grandfather’s Calico Jack’s telescope and eventually fished out some dice. He slid down the octotube and presented them as if they were some sort of rubies.

“I got some, me hearties!” he proclaimed. The vegimals cheered, Kwazii seeing a display of fish biscuits, five varieties of kelp cakes, muffins, a bowl of popcorn, another of peanuts, and mugs of cocoa scattered on the surface. “Well, this looks like a night fit for a pirate on his night off!”

“Well let’s start, shall we?” the bear clapped his hands again. We’ll need to split into teams of two.”

Shellington and Professor Inkling beamed at each other, high fiving each other with tentacle and paw. Barnacles nodded at them. “Shellington and Inkling are one. Kwazii, want to be on my team?”

“‘Tis be an honor!!” Kwazii nodded.

“I call Dashi on my team!” Tweak raised her hand, Dashi laughing, them both holding hands.

“Girl power!” Dashi cheered.

“Right on that!”

“And then Peso and Tunip?” Barnacles asked them. They both nodded, Tunip trilling with excitement.

“Do the other vegimals want to play?” Shellington asked the little creature. Turnip chirped and shook his head. “Ah, too busy gardening? Well, we’ll at least save them some snacks.”

“And the loot once the captain and I win it!!” Kwazii laughed.

“Ohoho, you want to bet, do you?” Inkling playfully jeered.

“Don’t think you want to take that bet, Kwazii,” Shellington giggled, taking his seat. Inkling took his seat next to him, them both already whispering.

“Well, let’s do our best and have fun, Tunip!” Peso cheered on his own team. Tunip cheered in agreement, taking a seat and Peso plopping himself next to him. Captain Barnacles sat at the front, Kwazii taking the chair next to him. Dashi and Tweak sat together as well and soon, everyone was quiet. Barnacles took out a cardboard folded five times mat and looked at it, looking at a scenario. He rolled the dice, counted it, and then nodded.

“Okay! Here’s the scenario,” he started. “Inkling and Shellington are holding the treasure.” Everyone turned their heads to them, the two laughing hysterically. “It’s up to us to get it while they can set up any traps or travel to wherever they want. But, it all depends on the number of dice rolled. 2 means failure, 3 going on to be a fail, but tried attempt, and so on. Twelve means they get automatic privileges to whatever they wish to do.”

“Aaargh, last time, didn’t they bamboozle us with a ship full of monkeys…!?” Kwazii groaned.

“Well, it was funny, so I’d say it was worth it,” Inkling added his input, making Shellington laugh more.

“R-remember when you wanted to fight but rolled a three…!?” he wheezed out. Kwazii’s cheeks and ears flushed with embarrassment. “You fell into the wahahahater hahahahaha!!!”

“M-mayhaps, matey!” He quickly gained composure. “Just wait, though! Soon, you will be fighting the monkeys!” This sent everyone into fits of laughter, the captain smiling. This was a wonderful sight, seeing his crew laugh and be happy. It truly warmed his heart. He looked at the mat and looked at Dashi and Tweak.

“If you two can answer a question about marine biology, then you will go first. But if you answer incorrectly, then someone else gets the chance to steal.”

“Shoot!” Dashi beamed. Tweak seemed as excitable as she was.

“What male aquatic animal has babies?” he asked. Shellington almost blurted out the answer, but covered his mouth. Of course, the marine biologist was close to bursting with knowledge.

“Um… I think… that’s a seahorse, right?” Dashi asked.

“Correct!” he nodded. “Everyone gather your pieces and Dashi and Tweak may.. Well… what’s your team name?”

“Girl Power!!” they both answered with glee. He chuckled and looked at Kwazii.

“We should call ourselves the Swashbuckling Pirates of Red Beard’s Cursed Ship of Treasures and Glory!”

“... maybe just Pirates of Red Beard will be suitable,” he chuckled, his attention focusing on Peso and Tunip.

“We’ll be the Small but Fierce!” Peso answered for them both.

“Ya got that right, matey!” Kwazii approved of their name. Peso giggled in response, Barnacles looking at Shellington and Inkling. They both whispered and then looked at the captain.

“We were going to say The Winners, but perhaps Marine Match will suit better!” Inkling proposed.

“Okay! We have team names! Get a piece everyone and let’s start!”

Girl Power took a pink squid piece, Pirate’s of Red Beard taking a red Seahorse piece, Small but Fierce taking a blue shark and the Marine Match grabbing a green Sea Turtle piece. Dashi and Tweak both talked as everyone set up their pieces. Inkling put their piece at the end of the mat where the X is since they had the treasure. The goal of the same was to defeat everyone on the board. The others were supposed to take the treasure.

“Okay, we want to move…!” Dashi said. She took the dice and rolled it, seeing seven. Tweak moved their piece seven squares. The dice also allowed movement, but you could only move and not act in the same turn.

“Oh, our turn, Tunip!” Peso smiled. “We’ll be safe and move.” Tunip took the dice in his little hands and tossed them down, getting a twelve. “Good roll, Tunip!!” The creature cheered as Peso moved their piece. Barnacles looked at Kwazii, who was the KING of Deep Sea Adventures.

“Captain, I say we launch an attack to the Marine Match!” he proudly said. Barnacles chuckled and nodded, grabbing the dice and tossing them within his paws.

“And how do we attack?” he asked. But, out of sheer luck, he knew the answer. “Canons?”

“H-how did you know!?” he gasped.

“Heh, captain knows his crew,” he winked, tossing the dice down.

“Also, you use the same move as the first move every time,” Dashi giggled.

“I-I do not!”

“Fifteen,” Shellington pointed out, holding up a piece paper, where at the top it said ‘Times when Kwazii attacked a team with a canon as his first turn.’ and underneath were fifteen talleymarks.

“Shiver me whiskers, that can’t be right!” Kwazii lifted his eyepatch in shock.

“... oh you’re right,” Shellington smiled, adding another talleymark. “Sixteen. Thank you for pointing that out..!”

The cat grumbled and looked at the dice as they chose a side. It rolled to… two.

“Canon backfires and hits the Red Beards. They deal five damage points.”

“What…!? I call treason!” Everyone laughed, even the captain and eventually, Kwazii joined along. Shellington took the dice and looked at Inkling, them both whispering.

“They are always the same team,” Dashi noticed.

“Well, they are the brains,” Peso smiled. “And they are very good at the game.”

“Oh, not this time, mateys!”

“We choose to make a barricade around our area,” Shellington smiled. “With concrete and bricks.”

Professor Inkling rolled the dice, rolling it to a nine.

“You both build a structurally sound barricade, but it will need nine hits to be taken down,” Captain announced. They both nodded and high fived each other.

“... aye… they be smart…” Kwazii scoffed. “We’ll need nine canon turns now!”

“Um, Kwazii, I think it would be smart, and safe, to use the rest of our turns not trying to kill ourselves,” Barny laughed.

“No risk, no win!”

“... big risk, big lose,” the captain corrected him. Kwazii groaned as Tweak rolled the dice.

“What should we do, Dashi?” she asked.

“Hmm… let’s go to the village by boat,” she smiled. “So let’s keep moving.”

Tweak tossed down the dice, getting eight and moving eight spaces. Just five more until the village. Kwazii took the dice, Barnacles speaking out before Kwazii could say canons again.

“U-um, how about we move, Kwazii?” he suggested.

“Ooouggh, fine, but we will get this booty if it’s the last thing I do…!”

He rolled, getting ten. They moved ten spaces, Peso rolling the dice. Tunip chirped, Peso glancing at Shellington.

“He wishes to attack us using a ram,” he answered, to which Tunip spoke to Shellington. “Heh, it’s alright, Tunip, no need to apologize. It’s just a game.”

With that permission, Peso tossed down the dice, getting ten.

“Ooh…!” Captain beamed. You ram into their barricade with success! Roll again to see how much you hit.”

Peso let Tunip roll, him getting three.

“Three hits, barricade is now down to six hits away…!”

“Ha! Now we only need SIX canons!” Kwazii laughed heartily.

“What is with ya and canons?” Tweak questioned. Shellington took the dice, the duo both whispering again and then nodded.

“Heh, sorry, Tunip and Peso, but we choose to attack,” Shellington spoke.

“With canons,” Inkling finished.

“My signature move!!” Kwazii yelled out. The otter tossed the dice down, rolling a twelve. Tunip fainted, Peso gasping.

“Hits are directed and do twice the damage. Roll again.”

Each team was given twenty health points, so it was a big risk. Inkling took the dice and rolled it, the sides each landing three. “Six, so Team Small but Fierce take twelve damage.” Tunip had just woken up to the news, fainting again.

“Grrrgh, pure luck, I say!” Kwazii made an excuse. Shellington giggled and tossed the dice to the girls.

“Well… we’ll get revenge, Kwazii!” Tweak laughed. “What do ya say, Dash?”

“I agree! We attack with clubs!”

“Haha, get them!” Kwazii cheered. However, the dice rolled to a four.

“You attempted to attack with clubs, but they fall in the water.”

“... well we tried,” Tweak shrugging, leaning back and munching on a carrot. Kwazii sighed, hearing Shellington’s giggle again. He sneered and took the dice.

“I attack with tickles!!”

“Ti-what?” Captain Barnacles blinked. Kwazii rolled the dice, not caring what it landed on and pounced on Shellington, squeezing his sides. The otter erupted in bubbly laughter, kicking his legs.

“K-Kwahahahzeeheehee hahahaha!! Staahaahahap it’s nahahaahaaht part hahahahahaaha!! Of the gaahahahahaame!!”

“It is now, me hearty!!” the playful cat moved his paws up to his ribs, Shellington squealing and trying to push away Kwazii.

“Nooohahahaha pleeheeheease!!! Hahahaahaha!!! C-cahaahan’t breheeheeheeheeathe!!!! Caahahahap hehehehelp!!”

Captain Barnacles laughed and went over, pulling Kwazii up from Shellington, who was lifted by Professor Inkling. He let out little giggles as Kwazii looked mighty proud of himself, sitting back down.

“... well that was our turn,” Barnacles chuckled.

“Are you okay, Shellington?” Peso wondered.

“Y-yeahahah…” he giggled out. Peso nodded, happy his friend was okay, and rolled the dice in his flippers.

“Tunip, I say we move closer,” he told the vegimal. Tunip nodded in agreement. Peso tossed the dice down, getting twelve again. “Flappity Flippers! Another twelve!”

“Ya got the lucky streak, me hearties!” Kwazii pumped his fist. They moved twelve spaces, close to a cave.

Inkling took the dice and whispered to Shellington, then he looked at his captain.

“Captain, we choose to fix our barricade.” Barnacles nodded as Mr. Inkling rolled a nine, the barricade now fifteen points strong. The polar bear took the dice and rolled it, deciding to move, Kwazii agreeing. So far, it seemed Peso was getting closer and closer to the treasure. The girls moved to the village and rolled to get items, which they succeeded.

“What did we get…!?” Dashi eagerly asked.

“Two apples, three suits of armor, an unknown box, and you both gained any health you lost.”

The two high fived with both paws, whooping. Peso rolled, looking at Tunip… and gulped.

“I want to explore the cave,” he said. “Or… we would.”

“You sure?” Captain Barnacles wondered. They both nodded, Peso rolling the dice down, it going to four.

“Hmm… you tried to explore, but it was too dark for you, so you evade the cave.”

Peso let out a sigh of relief, but also a little disappointed. Although, he knew what he was going to do next turn. Shellington took the dice, whispering to Inkling again, however, this whispering session seemed to be taking longer.

“I wonder what they’re planning,” Captain Barnacles wondered.

“I’ll tickle him again if he takes longer,” Kwazii promised. A few minutes later, they nodded and looked at the captain.

“We choose to stay.”

“Wh-all of that for staying!?” Kwazii gawked. Since they didn’t attack or move, they didn’t need to roll, but Shellington didn’t give the dice back.

“But we do wish to send supplies to heal Small but Fierce,” he smiled. Peso gasped with a smile, Tunip cheering. Captain Barnacles smiled fondly as Shellington rolled the dice, getting a nine.

“They get nine points in health…!” he announced.

“Wow… thank you, Shellington!” Peso smiled. Shellington nodded back.

Kwazii took the dice and looked at their piece and at the mat with the x mark. He tapped his chin.

“... captain, I say we attack,” he said.

“Again?” Barnacles wondered.

“Ah, but this time! I got a plan!” he beamed. “I want to attack.. With monkeys!!!!” With that, he threw the dice down, them tumbling around… and landing on twelve. Shellington and Inkling gasped, looking up as Barnacles was even surprised. He read out the situation.

“... well, we send out a boat of monkeys. They take down the barricade Marine Match make.”

“Drat…!” Inkling groaned.

Tweak quickly took the dice and rolled.

“We choose to attack with monkeys!!” she shouted. It rolled to a nine, Shellington and Inkling looking at each other.

“The Marine Match take nine damage!”

“We choose to attack with monkeys!” Peso also cheered.

“Oh, this seems hardly fair now…!” Shellington stuttered. Peso rolled the dice and got a twelve. Barnacles looked at the open mouthed otter and dumbo octopus, him shrugging.

“Marine Match are defeated.”

“Noooo!” Shellington yelled out. “Ah well… good team effort, Inkling!”

“And to you, Shellington…!” Professor Inkling shook his paw, wrapping his tentacle around it.

“The treasure is up for grabs…!” Barnacles proclaimed. "Everyone roll, except Shellington and Inkling.” They both shrugged, eating after all of that excitement. “Whoever gets the highest number… gets the treasure.”

“Me first!!!” Kwazii yelled, grabbing the cubes and tossing them haphazardly. They landed on five. “Haha, beat that, me hearties!”

Tweak took the challenge and rolled it, but got four. Barnacles rolled after, getting seven and Dashi getting six. Peso took the dice… but gave it to Tunip.

“I choose Tunip to roll for both of us…!” he smiled. Tunip chirped excitedly and rolled. They all watched the dice flail on its corners and sides… and land both sixes. Peso screamed in delight as Barnacles proudly announced.

“Team Small but Fierce wins the game!!!”

They all cheered and clapped, Barnacles chuckling and looking at the time. “Oh wow…! It’s near midnight!”

“It… it is?” Shellington checked before following with a yawn.

“Well, time passes by with fun…!” Tweak chuckled, stretching.

“Well, let’s clean up and then let’s head to bed. Congratulations, Peso and Tunip…!”

And so, everyone began to clean up, putting away the table and mats, Shellington and Tunip offering the rest of the snacks to the vegimals and everyone went to their rooms, but not before Kwazii turned to Barnacles.

“We’ll get ‘em next time, cap!” he pumped his fist. The captain chuckled with a yawn.

“Perhaps, Kwazii, perhaps,” he smiled. “But… maybe less canons and tickling, hm?”

“I’ll think about it.”

He left, the captain laughing and turning off the lights and heading to bed. There may have been no critters to save… but they sure did have an adventure.

@fading-bisexual-queen-milkshake

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