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just-dreaming-marvel · 4 years

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SEVENTY SEVEN - UNCERTAIN FUTURE

LEGACY: A Tony Stark Daughter Story

MASTERLIST

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Word Count: 1,750ish

Summary: Bailey becomes uncertain about her future.

“Yes. I will marry you.”

The reporters quickly stood up and began taking pictures, clapping, and cheering. Tony slid the ring onto Peppers finger before grabbing her face and kissing her hard. I started clapping and cheering as well, tears beginning to trickle down my face. The tears were a mix of happiness and sadness. I was happy for them, happy that I was finally going to be able to call Pepper mom, happy that they worked out their issues and were finally going to be together for good. The sadness was that I wanted to run up and hug both of them and I couldn’t, not in front of everyone without questions going to be asked. Tony whispered something to Pepper, and it was probably something along the lines of him proposing privately again later. I wiped some tears away and sniffled as Tony and I made eye contact. His eyes suddenly filled with worry. I made a heart with my hands and mouthed ‘I love you’. He pointed to his head. I nodded, wondering why he needed me to get into his head.

“Yes dad?” I wondered.

“What’s wrong?” He asked as him and Pepper started posing for pictures.

“These are tears of happiness.”

“Not all of them are, honey. I know you better than you think.”

“I’m fine dad.”

“Please don’t hate me for what I’m about to do. But I’m going to need you to get out of my head.”

“What are you about do to?”

“Bailey, everything will be fine. Please just get out of my head… Trust me.”

“Okay.”

I left his thoughts, very confused. I could have hunted down his plan while I was in there, but I really didn’t like intruding without good reason. Tony leaned over to Pepper and whispered something. She quickly look at me and then whispered something back to Tony. I was so confused. They looked at each other and smiled. Tony then held his hands up and motioned for the reporters to quiet down. Pepper began speaking once they had.

“We have one more thing,” Pepper announced.

“About 5 years ago, I was on a lone mission and came across a HYDRA base,” Tony began. No. He can not be doing what I think he’s doing. “During that mission, I rescued a kid. At the time she was 13. I placed her in the foster care system and kept tabs on her for a few years. In 2013, when she was 15, I officially adopted her.” The audience gasped and began asking questions, so Tony spoke louder so that he could continue on. “I have hid her from the lime light for safety reasons. But I believe that is it time to tell everybody. Because I would have not been able to propose to Pepper today without her… So, everyone, please, welcome my daughter, Bailey Stark.”

Tony and Pepper looked at me as Tony extended his hand. I was in shock and panic began to rise in my chest. All the reporters followed Tony’s out stretched arm to find me by the door. Tony started waving me over. I slowly started walking towards them. The reporters started taking pictures and tried to ask questions. I reached out for Tony’s hand and he quickly pulled me into a hug with Pepper.

“What did you just do?” I whispered.

“I can’t be truly happy without my whole family together,” Tony answered.

“You two will owe me later,” I said as I pulled away.

“Will it help that I’ve already registered you for classes at Columbia and bought you your own apartment?” Pepper asked.

I smirked. “A little.” I turned around to look at the reporters. I kept one arm around Tony, for a sense of comfort and to keep me from panicking.

We took pictures and answered questions for most of the afternoon. Questions about how he found me, my age, why I had an arc reactor in my chest, if Tony had built me a suit, if I approved of Pepper, and many more. It was exhausting. We made sure to avoid the topic of powers so that we could avoid the topic of the Sokovia Accords. When we finally exited the press hall, my face was sore from smiling so much. I was the first one out of the press hall. I was rubbing my cheeks trying to get them to relax. Tony and Pepper weren’t far behind.

“Oh my gosh,” I whispered. “What just happened in there?” I turned to face Tony and Pepper. They were holding hands and smiling. “We— You— Are we? Am I?” I took a deep breath and smiled really big. “It’s official. We’re a family.”

Pepper grabbed my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “We’re a family. Though we still have a wedding to plan to make it official.” Pepper playfully glared at Tony.

He held his free hand up as to surrender. “You could have said no! You had…”

Tony kept talking as I zoned out. The panic officially setting in. I was now known about to everyone. They knew the basics of my story. Everyone. The whole world. Including those left of HYDRA, the ones who have been haunting my dreams. Dr. Montgomery. My smile slowly turned to a frown and my eyes started filling with tears as my breathing quickened.

“Bailey?” Tony questioned. It broke me out of my trance. He was looking at me with worried eyes. “Kid, what’s wrong?”

“Everyone knows,” I whispered.

“Sweetheart,” Pepper said, “what do you mean?”

“I mean, everyone knows,” I said a bit louder. “They know where I am, who I am. They’re going to come for me.” The tears started running down my face and I couldn’t stop them. “They’re going to take me away… They’re going to finish what they started.” Tony let go of Peppers hand and reached for me. I took a step back. “No! We should have thought this through better. We didn’t think it through… You didn’t think this through… I won’t be able to go to school now. I won’t be able to live a semi-normal life… What did you do?” I started to slowly back a way but Tony rushed towards me and I turned around and ran towards my room.

“Bailey!” Tony shouted, he started running after me.

I knew I shouldn’t being running, doctor’s orders, but I knew that the fastest way to my bedroom would be to run up the stairs. Especially since Tony could order FRIDAY to hold the elevator. When I reached the top, Tony had started his run up the stairs. I ran down the hall and slammed my bedroom door shut. I locked it and then quickly moved my dresser in front of it before moving my bed in front of the door that connected our bed rooms. I heard Tony try to get through the door. I went to the farthest corner of my bedroom and slid down the wall. I curled up against the wall, sobbing into my knees.

“Bailey!” Tony shouted through the door as he hit it. “You’ve got to let me in! I’ll break down the door if I have to.” He banged on the door a few more times. “You’re going to be safe. I’m not going to let them get to you! I promise! Please kid, let me in. I really did think about this!” I sobbed harder into my knees. “I’m breaking down the door!” Tony yelled. “Please do not be in front of it!” He paused for a few seconds to see if I’d answer. “FRIDAY, is Bailey in the way?”

“No boss,” FRIDAY answered.

“Great,” Tony said as he pushed a button on his watch and an Iron Man gauntlet formed on his hand. “I’m shooting the door down in 3… 2… 1…” Tony shot the gauntlet and it broke the lock. He shoved the door open and pushed the dresser out of the way.

“Don’t come any closer,” I commanded, controlling his movements.

Tony froze. “Bailey… I need you to calm down.”

“Did you even think it through?” I looked up at him with my bloodshot eyes, unwanted anger seeping through my words. “They’re going to come and get me. They want to finish what they’ve started.”

“Kid… I will not let that happen. You know that.” Tony calmly said. “You’re going to go to Columbia University and you’re going to live in that apartment I bought for you. You are going to continue on with your life. I’m going to have the best security system installed, and we will get you a body guard. We are going to be able to do this. I am going to protect you. Okay? I’m going to protect you… Will you let me come near you?”

I slowly nodded, letting him free from my control. Tony carefully moved one foot, as if to see if I actually let him go. He hurried over once he realized I had. He got down on the floor next to me and wrapped his arms around me. Tony held me close to his chest and gently rocked us as I sobbed.

“I’m s-so scared…” I whispered.

“Shh..” Tony said, brushing through my hair. “I know. I know… Me too.” I heard footsteps in the hallway and barely looked up enough to see Pepper walk in.

“I ordered pizza,” she said. “It should be here soon.” I nodded against Tony’s chest.

“It’s going to be okay,” Tony whispered.

“How about we all get our pj’s on and we can turn on a movie in the theater while we eat pizza?” Pepper suggested.

“That sounds great,” Tony said, giving a little smile. “Doesn’t that, B?” He pulled away a bit to look at me. I nodded but didn’t look up at him. Tony carefully grabbed my face. “Look at me, kid.” I grudgingly looked at him. “We are going to do this, together. You are going to start college. We are going to move on and live our life’s. We don’t know if anything will actually happen. So we can’t let the unknown stop us. I know I’m really bad at that myself, so we’ll make sure we help each other. Okay?” I nodded. “Now, let’s get ready.” He stood up and then helped me up. He gently kissed my forehead. “We’ll met you downstairs, okay?” Tony grabbed Peppers hand and walked out of my bedroom.

next >

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rosierocks30 · 3 years

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Hidden Ch.4

Chapter 4: Don’t let go of me

Levi was sipping a cup of warm tea while sitting on the bench where his subordinates and comrades eat their breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He stared at his wedding ring for a long time. He still couldn’t believe he’s married. Can he be a good husband to Historia or a great father to his unborn child? HIs insecurities started to creep on him. The captain knows for sure if their union was out to the public, it would be chaotic. The noblemen would be pissed off that the queen is not single for one of their sons to take their place as king. Huh...king? Is he now king? Honestly, he never cares about titles and certainly, he doesn’t care about them now. Levi is a man of action; ready to be put in the field to protect and kill anyone harming his growing family. Tch, Kenny probably would be intrigue as fuck if he was alive now. The raven haired man remembered the last conversation he had with his uncle. That time he found out who he really is. An Ackerman. Kennedy made sure to tell Levi enough about their family’s legacy and what became their downfall.

“You and that other girl are the last of our bloodline. Continue our once great family name...I still don't’ regret the way I raised you. You turned out ok for a scrawny brat when I found you next to your dead mother.” The older Ackerman coughs blood. “Damn, I don’t have much time left. Anyways kid, don’t forget our ancestors are guiding you and the girl...you two will never be alone.” Levi watched as his uncle took the last breath and closed his eyes as death took him away.

Levi still had Kenny’s death fresh on his mind. It wasn’t that long ago when Levi and his squad rescued his wife and that Yeager brat. Speaking of Jager, he’ll add cleaning chores in the morning. While lost in his thoughts, one of his subordinates, Jean Kristein stops in front of him while regaining his breath from running. “Sir, Commander needs you in the meeting room. It’s urgent.” The light brown haired man did a salute then ran back. Levi gets up to neglect his tea and rushes towards the meeting room. Once he reached there, Commander Hange and most of his squad were already there to gather around Hange. All of their faces have a similar confused but also concerned expression. “What the hell is going? Kristein said it was an urgency.” The captain glares at his commander. “So I got a report that Her Majesty is missing and the intels believe a group of Zeke followers, The Jaegerist, are involved in the kidnapping of Queen Historia. Her Grace ordered a carriage to meet the Premier Zackely for the news of Eren Jaeger's betrayal of joining his brother’s cause. Both the MPs and the Garrisons are in a man hunt to find the queen before it’s too late especially in her condition.” When Hange finished speaking, the room was so quiet that a pencil was dropped. On the other hand, Levi was shaking in trying to conceal his rage. His wife is kidnapped? It wasn’t that long he saw her. Why the fuck did she left the castle at this late hour?! He wants to go find her now and slay that hairy titan bastard and Eren for kidnapping Historia. Oh Walls, Historia please you better stay alive for me and our kid.

So many fears in his thoughts running in his mind. He didn’t realize the chair he was gripping broke from the rage he tried to conceal. “I’ll put an end to both shitheads.” His tone was dark and cold which it left most of the soldiers here in this room shivering. They rarely see their captain like this. The captain of the Survey Corps was about to walk away, but Mikasa ran in front of him to stop him as she gave the man a death glare. “Captain, I won’t allow you to harm Eren. We didn’t get to hear his side of his story.” Levi Ackerman scoffs like he’ll believe that bullshit. He already made up his mind. Slaughter the Jager brothers and their followers then rescue his queen. “Move aside, Ackerman. If you know what’s best for you.” He threatened his subordinate. “Is that a threat, Captain?” her tone mirrored his. Both Ackerman in a standoff ready to attack. The room is thick with tension from those two. Hange finally intervened before things got ugly. “Alright that’s enough for both of you! Levi and Mikasa stand down, and I order you as your commander. Save your hostility for the enemies. Levi, I need you to be level head if we are going to find the queen and bring her home safely. Can I count on you, Captain?” The commander was stern when she glared at both the Ackermans. Mikasa obeyed her superior and withdrew herself from attacking the captain. Levi was conflicted at first, but deep down Hange was right. He needs to get his shot together if they want to rescue Historia. He sighs in defeat. “Tch, yes.” This made Commander Hange pleased.

“Alright, I already sent the letter to the officials to volunteer in searching for the Jaegarists. Once we find where their hideout is located, we’ll make a stregistic plan to save the queen.” She said as everyone listened. “Ok, have everyone get ready for this mission.” Most of the soldiers nod and go to get ready for the mission. Levi was about to leave, but his commander stopped him. “Levi, wait. I know this news is shaking you to the core, but please have a clear mind, you have a better chance saving your wife. Believe me, I’m upset and worry for her and the baby. Have faith in us. We’ll get her home.” He takes in her comforting words. Yes, he was being irrational before. The only person who understands what he’s feeling is Mikasa even though he was so close to attacking her for being in his way. His head turns to glance Hange and gives her a nod as a thanks then he goes to gear up for the rescue mission. Once most of the Survey Corp soldiers were ready, They all went to meet up where the Mps and Garrisons were located.

Meanwhile…

The queen’s eyes open to see the room is dark. The only light that shows is the long line crack giving her a bit of light.. She looks around to see if there’s anything to give her clues of the location. Carefully, the pregnant queen walks by the crack of the light and hears mumble conversations. She listens to identify one of them as that bastard, Eren and a deeper voice she can’t identify yet. Her ear pressed against the hard surface to listen better to the conservation. “Do you have to be a bit rough on her? She is carrying a child, Zeke.” He was interrupted by his brother. “Ah yes, the queen is carrying an heir. How befitting for her already thinking about the future of the royal bloodline. No one knows who she chose to be the father of her child.” Eren said. Zeke nods. “We are going to make her confess.” The older Jaeger smirks with malice. “Why is it important we know who the man spread whore herself to? Probably it's a nobody or a fat nobleman.” Eren said, still feeling bitter and hurt from Historia’s rejection earlier. “Don’t be an idiot little brother. If it was either someone who's nobody, she might have said something, but what Yelena told me, little Historia was determined to not let it slip. So I’m giving you the opportunity to get answers from her or I’ll have Yelena to do it. She will give a fast result so don’t screw this up, Eren.” On the other side of the doors, Historia gasps from their conversation. Her mouth covered to stop making noise. It was too late when the doors opened to reveal Eren and his brother, the infamous Zeke Jaeger, the holder of the Beast Titan. The queen already started to slowly back away from those two. “I see you’re awake now, You’re Highness. Forgive me on the lack of hospitality. We rarely have guests here.” He chuckles while seeing the young queen backing in fear like a trapped puppy. Once her back is pressed against the edge of a wooden table, she glances to see a pair of scissors. Historia grabbed the scissor and held it in front of both brothers so they wouldn't come near her.

“Stay back. Don’t you dare come closer!” She tries to hide the panic in her voice. “Now now Historia, let’s not be reckless. I promise my fellow followers and I will not harm you. You’re more valuable alive than dead. Think of your child. Do you want your distresses to lose the baby?” No, she doesn’t, but all she wants is to leave and be in the arms of Levi to feel safe. As her grip becomes loose, Eren quickly grabs the scissors from Historia. Now she’s defenseless. “Speaking of your unborn child, it's better you tell us who’s the father of your heir?” Zeke observes to find any detail. He spotted a wedding banded around her marriage finger. “I see you are married. Such a disappointment you didn’t invite me. Your only family.” Zeke still smirks. Historia glares at her so-called relative. “We’re not family! To me you’re just a mad stranger.” Her tone was full of venom. “So that’s the reason you don’t love me? You gave your heart to someone else!” Eren abruptly interrupts her. The blonde haired woman raised her brow at him. “Why does it matter if both of you want to know my husband’s name? He’s not your concern.” Historia said. “Don’t give me that bullshit! It’s one of the higher ups? Or someone who I might have known. Definitely not Ymir unless she can magically impregnate you.” Eren said sarcastically and laughed. The queen didn’t see what was so funny about this. While playing the tips of the scissors blades, Eren steps forward to the woman he loves. Zeke was intrigued about what his younger brother was planning to do. Historia was still when the scissors were poking gently on her neck. “E-eren..please d-don’t.” Her whimpers made Eren feel a bit powerful because she’s at the hands of his mercy. “You know, we just need you alive for the plans of you holding the Founder’s Titian. I can just cut your belly to get rid of your baby. That would be the fastest way right?” He smirks and watches how those beautiful blue ocean eyes widen in terror. “But I love you too much to cause you pain. So I suggest telling me or I will do as I say. Don’t test me.” He glares. Eren hates what he’s doing to her. Seeing her in tears, breaks his heart but this is necessary. To make her submit and be obedient when the time is right. “I’m sorry I- I can’t…” Her sobbing eyes look at the green eyed man.

He growls in frustration. “Seriously Historia?! Why are you protecting your so-called husband’s identity? If he’s some useless guy then you have nothing to fear.” Now the scissors traces down to her belly and slowly and pressure enough for her to freak out. “No! Please I will tell you. I promise to tell you, but both of you will not harm me or my child after revealing his identity.” She now has her hands covering her baby bump to protect it. “Good, that’s more like it. So this guy must be a big shot huh?” The titan shifter looks down at the crying queen. “Alright, we promise you and your child won’t be harmed.” Zeke said and both waited for the queen to speak. “Eren, you have met him countless times...he is in your squad.” This got Eren his attention. “He’s part of Levi’s squad? Hmm, don’t tell me, is Connie or Jean for that matter?” He was in disbelief. “It’s neither. He’s the strongest of all of us including you.” Eren tries to pretend her insults did bruise his ego. “The only strongest would be Captain Levi.” He stopped when she stayed quiet again. Zeke suddenly pins Historia to the wall by choking her. “I get it why you wanted to conceal his identity after all Captain Levi Ackerman is the father of your baby and your husband.” Historia eyes widen while struggling to be released. “Zeke! Let her go! We gave her our word.” Eren tried to convince his brother to let go of the queen. “Don’t you see brother, this whore is carrying an Ackerman. A royal with Ackerman blood will bring doom to us titans and the Eldian’s curse.”

“How is that a bad thing? We would be all free from being persecuted by the whole world! We won’t be seen as devil spawns and any baby will not inherit the burden of a titan shifter if one of the nine Titans doesn’t get passed on to a successor.” She tries to reason with Zeke. The older man shook his head in disagreement. “No no, the Ackerman is already a bloodline of titans but in human forms! With our royal blood mingle with an Ackerman it will create an offspring powerful enough to destroy our people and the world.” Zeke explains to the queen and Eren agrees with his brother which Historia doesn’t believe what Zeke had said about her child will bring doomsday. “Are you saying my baby will be an abomination?” The blonde hair woman feels enraged by this nonsense. “What full of shit! If that is what it said, show me the prophecy?” She tested them. “It doesn’t matter that you believe it or not. The baby must be terminated.” A woman named Yelena was running to them in despair. “Zeke, the MPs and the Survey Corps are here! We have to go.” Yelena pleads with them to start leaving before they are caught. In the background, you can hear fighting going. Historia takes this opportunity to scream loud to signal where to find her. “Levi! I’m here!” Then her mouth was covered by Zeke as he pressed the sharp object on her neck. “I’ll cut your womb and let that abomination rotten here. So be careful.” Zeke signals his followers to start walking away from the room and goes through hallways. Just when they were about to escape, the exit was blocked by the notorious Captain Levi Ackerman. Zeke went bewilder when he saw him. The scissors were pressed harder which drew a little bit of blood from Historia. Behind them were Mikasa, Jean and Armin. “Eren!! Please don’t go, come back to us. We’ll forgive you. It’s all a misunderstanding right?” Mikasa shouts to beg the person that means everything to her. “Eren, don’t go with him..” Even Armin was begging.

“Zeke fucking Jaeger, I’m still planning to cut you into tiny pieces. Let the queen go!” The captain growls in anger. His squad position to ready attack. Zeke let out a crazy laugh then gave Historia to his brother. “Make sure she doesn’t escape.” He said. Eren holds her now. Historia starts to wiggle to have enough space to escape while Zeke pulls the scissors apart into two small blades and posts ready to fight. “Levi...Levi, I’m sorry.” The queen looks at her husband and lets more tears fall. Levi hated seeing his wife in tears. It kills him that he’s useless at the moment. Eren knows they won’t be able to escape. “Let’s make a deal. If you let us go, we’ll give your wife back.” Zeke was not too happy but he can see why his brother did it. The rest of the squad were shocked at the news of what Eren said. Levi has to snap them back to reality. Time is precious. “Oi, snap out of it all of you. There will be no distractions. Got it?” His subordinates nodded. Levi doesn’t want the deal but having Historia in his arms safely from them is more important than his bloodlust for vengeance. “Fine, you got yourselves a deal.” He signals his comrades to give the area a big space for the brothers to escape. Before Historia was released, Eren grabs her chin to press his lips onto hers and roughly kisses her. Of course, both Ackermans were not happy. Historia screamed in displease from the kiss. Her arm became free and slap hard on Eren’s cheek. “You asshole!” The titan shifter chuckles while rubbing. “It was worth it.” Quickly, he starts running away along with his brother and so,em of the followers. The queen was looking down at the ground taking all in from everything that had happened. She felt her hand pull. Before she said anything, Levi stopped her. “Shh it’s fine. I’m glad you are safe. You’re now safe.” He wrapped his arms around her which she longs been wanting to ever since from the kidnapping. Both lovers embrace their hugs not caring they are being watched. A cough interrupts their moment. “Um not to kill the mood but we’re confused on what’s going on between you two and now Jaeger.” Jean spoke while others nodded. Mikasa was too quiet with a broken heart. Armin was comforting her. Mikasa was too tired of Eren not noticing her feelings. Maybe this time she needs to let go of Eren for good. She hopes Carla’s spirit will understand her for breaking the promise. While the two couples were about to explain, Historia felt a discomfort on her abdomen. “Ahh.” She placed her hand on her baby bump and crouch a bit. “What’s the matter with you?” Levi looks concerned. Historia looks up at her husband, but passes out as Levi catches her in his arms and carried. Most of the squads were for her. “Let’s get her to a doctor quickly.” Levi ran the exit as his team followed him.

Disclaimer: I don’t own the franchise or anything related to Attack On Titan.

#levihisu #rivahisu #historia reiss #levi ackerman #snk #fanfic

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razieltwelve · 4 years

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Old Friend (The Vestige)

"Is it strange that he feels like family after all these years?” Lightning asked Fang.

The other woman followed her gaze to Odin. The Eidolon had played a pivotal role in both Breach Wars, and he continued to serve as humanity took its first, tentative steps into the stars. Mastering Breach technology had not only allowed humanity to defeat the Makers, the alien race behind the fal’Cie, it had also allowed them to develop far more advanced technologies in countless areas.

It turned out that being able to warp space and time on a colossal scale was a Rosetta Stone of sorts to all kinds of things. Who’d have thought the humanity’s greatest triumph would come from its darkest hour? Vanille had certainly found it ironic, especially when they’d gotten access to even more technology after essentially looting the burnt out ruins of the Makers’ civilisation. They hadn’t built a big enough bomb the first time around. They hadn’t made that mistake again.

“I don’t think so,” Fang replied. “He’s been around for even longer than you’ve known me. He’s saved the world at least twice, not to mention all the other things he’s accomplished over the years.” Her voice softened. “He kept the kids safe too.”

“All those missions,” Lightning murmured. “And he always brought them back.”

“Yeah. I’m still amazed you managed to talk the world out of putting him in a museum.”

“Soldiers are meant to fight,” Lightning said quietly. “And Odin is a soldier, maybe the best we’ve ever had. We’ve asked so many things of him over the years.” She could remember begging him to move when she’d been forced to solo pilot him near the end of the First Breach War. With the damage to her brain, he shouldn’t have moved, but something in the machine had heard her, some ghost, some lingering neural impression she and Serah had left behind. And Odin had answered. “He’s always been up to the task.”

“It makes you wonder if there’s something alive in there, doesn’t it?” Fang had asked Vanille about, but the other woman had always given her a secretive smile. There was a reason, Vanille had said, that they’d never replaced the Eidolon’s neural interface. If there was a ghost in the machine, that’s where it would live.

“I wonder if he’ll miss me,” Lightning whispered. “When I’m gone.”

Fang’s hands tightened around the handles of Lightning’s wheel chair. “Don’t say that.”

Lightning chuckled softly. “We both know it won’t be long now.” She looked back at Fang. “Sixty-five years, Fang. That’s a lot longer than I thought I would have.” Her lips twitched. “Nora was amazed I made it to forty with all the brain damage I’ve got. I can’t exactly complain about sixty-five, all things considered.”

Fang wanted to rage about how unfair it was, but she knew that Lightning was right. Lightning should have died years ago. That she’d lasted this long was a testament to her sheer stubbornness. Lightning had never been quite right after piloting Odin for the last time, but she’d held on. The kids and the Second Breach War had given her a second wind of sorts. She couldn’t die while the girls still needed her, and she couldn’t die while the world was still in peril.

But the girls were all grown up now, and the Second Breach War was over.

“You’ve given so much,” Fang said. “Why couldn’t the world have given you a bit more time?”

Lightning leaned back and closed her eyes. She tired much more easily these days. It was why she’d asked Fang to take her to see Odin. He was back on Earth for a full maintenance and review. It would be years most likely before he came back again, and she doubted she’d still be around when he did. This was probably the last time she’d ever see him.

“The Eidolon Program takes, Fang. That’s what it does. It took my leg from me, and it’s taken years of my life from me too. But it gives as well. I’d never have met you without the Eidolon Program, and I’d never have gotten to pilot without it either. Maybe I’m just being foolish, but I don’t think I’d change anything that happened. It... it wasn’t easy, the path I’ve walked, but it’s one I’m content with, one I can be proud of. And I got to walk it with you and all the others. I’m glad for that.”

“It’s like you’re saying goodbye,” Fang said.

“Maybe I am.” Lightning’s lips curled. “And when I do go, can you please stop them from doing some stupid like naming a planet after me?”

Fang laughed, and if there were some tears mixed in, Lightning was kind enough not to say anything. “I’ll do my best, but I’m not making any promises. You’re the Grand Marshal. Heck, they still haven’t nominated another since you stepped down. Hope calls himself the High Marshal instead since he doesn’t think he can live up to the standard you set.”

“That kid...” Lightning shook her head fondly. Hope wasn't a kid anymore. He hadn’t been one in a long time. But there was a part of her that would always remember him as that skinny young man trying desperately to live up to his father’s legacy never realising that he was well on his way to surpassing it. “He’s always thought too much of me.”

“I think everyone does,” Fang said.

“I’m just glad I didn’t let the world down,” Lightning said. “It was close, Fang, so close at the end of both Breach Wars. If a few things had gone differently...”

“But they didn’t.” Fang smiled. “We won.”

“Yes, we did.” Lightning glanced back up at Odin. “Do you think they’ll let me into the Conn-Pod, not to pilot but just to look around?” Her smile was watery. “I’d like to see what they’ve done with him.”

“Of course, they’ll let you look.” Fang started pushing the wheelchair toward the elevator. “You’re the Grand Marshal. If you ask, they’d probably still let you pilot him.”

X X X

Grand Marshal Lightning Farron passed away at her home early in the morning on a spring day from complications related to the brain damage she suffered throughout her career. She was survived by her wife, her children, and her grandchildren.

Of particular interest to researchers is the strange anomaly detected in Odin. The Eidolon was helping to terraform one of the new colonies when it momentarily went silent, ceasing all activity for a period of roughly one minute. Examination of the Eidolon’s system logs and the medical apparatus supporting the Grand Marshal suggest that the period of silence corresponded to the moment of her death.

How exactly this is possible is unknown. However, advances in the increasingly useful field of quantum sychronisation-based communication, which is used to communicate instantaneously across essentially any distance, suggest that there are at least some similarities to the oddities observed in the neural interface system that forms the heart of the Drift.

X X X

Although there were initially plans to name one of the newly colonised worlds after the Grand Marshal, objections were raised by her wife, Oerba Yun Fang. As a result, the United Alliance instead opted to name a space station after her. Farron Station serves as the centre of the United Alliance’s fleet command structure. As the Eidolon Program once served as the first and most important line of defence against alien threats, so too does the fleet stand ready to protect humanity from outside threats. It is only fitting that its headquarters be named after the Eidolon Program’s most storied leader.

P. S. Roughly a century after her death, a motion was successfully passed renaming a planet after the Grand Marshal. Farron Prime is currently one of the fastest growing and most important planets in the United Alliance. It is home to the Eidolon Program’s Grand Academy.

X X X

Author’s Notes

That’s basically how Lightning ends up going. Sadly, all of the damage she’s taken has really reduced her lifespan. However, she’s not bitter about it. She got to live a pretty good life with Fang, and she got to raise the kids. That’s more than she ever thought she’d get.

This is also how the story could lead into a Final Effect style situation with humanity using Breach-based (i.e., dimension and reality warping technology) in place of Mass Effect technology. This gives them some considerable advantages in many areas (e.g., Breach-based weapons are stupidly powerful because they essential tear reality apart). It also would make any encounter with them and the Citadel races tricky because humanity is extremely wary of aliens since the last ones they met tried to wipe them out twice.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here. I’ve recently released two stories, Attempted Adventuring and Surviving Quarantine, as well as three audiobooks, Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Army of Golems, Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire, and The Hungry Dragon Cookie Company. If you like humour, action, and adventure, be sure to check them out!

#the vestige #fanfiction #lighting farron #oerba yun fang

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kingofdirtandnothing · 3 years

Text

@polyfacetious big ass Christmas Drabble Extravagaza: Day Eighteen

This isn’t the first time Clark has been interviewed about the farm. He remembers being about twelve years old, sitting on the front of the tractor while his dad talked about immigrating, and starting fresh on an entirely different continent.

The reporter at the time was a beautiful woman, with dark hair and bright blue eyes. She had smiled and took notes, and even asked questions that went beyond the breadth of the “fluff piece” this was supposed to be.

Clark always had a soft spot for reporters after that. They were people searching for the truth. That truth had to be harsh sometimes. They had to work hard and chase leads and bring light to unsavory things.

But sometimes, a good story was just talking about life, and making other people feel good. It was a balance that Clark could respect. Because he knew as much as anyone how difficult it was to find balance in your work.

Because Clark loved what he did. He loved the farm, he loved continuing on his parent’s legacy. But there were days that he wondered what it would be like to chase stories, to go on adventures, to peel back the layers of the world and find what was waiting beneath.

Those were the days he took a little longer out on the tractor. Clark was a known daydreamer. His mom always liked to tell people that he had that faraway look in his eye the day that they met, even though he was three months old.

(That’s another story he finds himself daydreaming about chasing. Finding out who his biological parents were. Why they didn’t want him.)

But those were thoughts for another time. Because there was a reporter back on the Kent farm again, and Clark needed to focus on that. This wasn’t the classy woman with her wedge shoes and her big pearl earrings from his childhood. This was a young man, dark headed and dark eyed, wearing a flannel shirt and work boots. (He’d have an easier time getting around the farm than Ms. Lane did.)

The one thing they did have in common was the bright light of curiosity in their eyes.

“Farm fresh is one of those things you see written all over packages in the grocery store, right? They say that it’s farm fresh butter, or farm fresh cheese, and that’s almost never the case.” Clark has been practicing his little speech since he first got the email from Mr. Stilinski about wanting to come to the farm and interview him.

It’s going pretty good, if Clark can say so himself.

“But farm to table? That’s exactly what the name implies. We work with local businesses to get them fresh produce, fresh dairy, and even fresh meat at certain times of the year.” Clark had thought about going into the logistics of meat production in a small scale business, but that kind of stuff probably wasn’t palatable. No one really wanted to know where their beef, chicken or duck was coming from.

So he would keep to the easier things. Harvesting vegetables and fruit, and milking the cows. Everyone always got a kick out of milking the cows.

“And I think that’s something to take pride in. Not that there’s anything wrong with mass produced food, everyone needs to eat.” There was a lot wrong with mass produced food, especially meat. Carbon emissions were a problem, as well as the discarding of less than attractive looking fruit and vegetables. But this wasn’t Clark’s pulpit. This was about the farm.

“I like being able to walk down the street and know that what we’re doing here at the farm is nourishing people. And that it’s making them happy, too.” Clark looks over at Mr. Stilinski, who’s told him twice now to call him Stiles, but he can’t stop him from thinking about him as Mr. Stilinski, and grins.

“We’ve come a long way from parents just slopping veggies out of a can and onto a plate.” Not that his mom ever did that. Martha Kent wasn’t a fancy cook, but she was a good one. She knew how to make the most out of what they pulled out of the ground at the farm. A little homemade butter and some herbs went a long way when it came to green beans.

Stiles is taking notes on his phone, Clark can see his thumbs flying. That itching urge to check the screen over the top of his shoulder is there, but Clark squashes it down. It wouldn’t be polite.

It also wouldn’t be polite to let Stiles walk into that cow patty that was right in front of him. They were crossing the pasture because it was the fastest way to get from the barn out to the fields. But it was a mine field out here, and Mr. Stilinski was about to step into one stinky mine.

“Watch out.” But Stiles was still lifting a foot. Clark reaches out to grab slim shoulders in his hand, turning Stiles just about fifteen degrees to the left so that he bypasses the cow patty and can walk on. “Sorry. Didn’t want you to get your shoes dirty.”

Clark waits, a beat of silence as those big dark eyes zero in on him. “Dirtier. Because you’re in the dirt already. And that’s dirty. So…” Great. He sounded like an idiot. But Clark couldn’t help it. Those were the prettiest brown eyes he’d ever seen.

Not that he was going to say or do anything about it. Clark spent enough time as a kid watching men hit on his mother when she was just trying to get her work done. That wasn’t how you showed interest in somebody. Clark was just going to let the man do his job and keep that appreciation to himself.

But Stiles just grins right back at him, and Clark breathes out a sigh of relief. “We could go into the paddock, if you wanted to see them up close and personal.” Not an improvement, Kent. “The cows. Not the cow patties. You don’t want to see them close up.”

Before he can say anything else dumb, Clark shifts away from the path towards the fields. They could go look at rows of carrots and potatoes after this. The cows were more fun, and they always appreciated the company.

(There was more than one reason they only slaughtered once a year. Clark had a bad habit of getting attached to the cows and the pigs and ducks and chickens.)

The cows are already milling near the front of the paddock. They’re not used to being penned up during the day, so they’re curious about the change. “Alright guys, make a little room, make a little room.” Clark’s voice is soft with amusement as he nudges his way into the paddock, shoulder brushing against Stiles as he reaches behind him to shut the paddock gate behind them both.

If they got loose now, there would be no rounding them up before nightfall. And that meant he’d put a heck of a kink in this whole interview plan.

“I don’t know how much you’ve been around cows…” Clark tries not to assume things about people. Of course, the first time he laid eyes on Stiles, his thoughts wouldn’t have gone to reporter. So he’s not going to make any assumptions here. “But they’re pretty much like big, laid back labradors.”

Case in point, Krypto, a big old white lab who hadn’t made his way off of the porch at all when Stiles showed up. Clark had mumbled ‘some guard dog you are’ and gotten a wag of the tail for his trouble.

“They’re curious. They’ll want to smell you.” Clark laughs as he’s jostled to the side and has to shift his stance a little wider to make room for him to stand without getting knocked over. “And they don’t realize how much they weigh. So they’ll bump into you, thinking you’re just another cow and you’ll brush it off.”

Clark reaches out, scratching behind a big ear. “This is Bessie.” He sees the look from Stiles, and laughs. “Yeah, I know. I’m not the most creative guy these days. I used that all up on Krypto.” He gestures back towards the big farm house, and the wrap around porch where his white lab was currently sunning himself, belly turned up towards the streaming sunlight.

“Bessie is one of our dairy cows. She makes the milk, which helps us make the butter and cheese.” There’s a big nose pushing into his stomach, and Clark reaches out absently to keep one of the other cows from knocking Stiles over, a big palm against his back.

“Sorry. They mean well. They’re just…” Clark laughs. “Fat isn’t the nicest word I can think of, but it’s the only one coming to mind right about now.”

Clark chews on his lip for a minute, and tries to remember where he’s at in his bullet points for this interview. It’s long gone, because he didn’t even plan to bring Stiles over here with the cows to begin with.

But it’s feeling nice and worth it because Stiles is smiling down at the two cows who have bunched up in front of him. Clark watches as the reporter scratches behind ears and under chins, cooing sweet nonsense to the cows that were eating up the attention.

“We do a lot less meat sales these days.” Clark admits sheepishly. “I don’t have the heart for it. I was lucky when I was a kid that my dad never made me help when it came time for culling the herd. I got to stay inside. So now that he’s retired, I only really sell meat in special circumstances.”

Even the chickens and the ducks were too sweet for Clark to butcher them. It just wasn’t in his nature. His dad liked to call him a soft touch. Clark is pretty sure that’s just the polite word for ‘pansy’ that his dad chose.

“We also have a small amount of rescue animals.” Clark cranes his neck, looking around at the milling cows to try and find who he was looking for. There’s a soft ‘aha’ and Clark points to the back. “That’s Petunia. She was abandoned when another farmer closed up shop. When we found her, she was all skin and bones.”

And Clark had spent more than a few nights in the barn with her, trying to get her to eat and feel better. Thankfully, the winters didn’t get too cold here, but there was at least one night that Clark slept under a blanket in the pen with her, until she was well enough to join the herd.

“We’ve got a duck named Popcorn who my mom found in a parking lot.” He shakes his head, warm and fond. “Little guy flew right into her open truck window and sat down. He was ready to go. So Mom said it was meant to be.”

Stiles is watching him again, though his fingers are still scratching absently at whichever cow was near enough to be under his fingers. “So you’re not the only one around here who’s adopted.”

It’s not a question, and Clark is caught off guard by the words. Stiles must have read the other article on the farm, even though it was probably printed before he was born. That was the only way Clark can think of that he would know that Clark was adopted.

“Yeah.” Clark agrees softly after a moment of thought. He nods, and feels the words really settle into him. “Yeah, we’re big on adoption around here.” For a moment, Stiles looks like he’s thinking about apologizing. But he smiles when Clark smiles.

“And since you’re here, why don’t you go ahead and help me get everyone fed? That way you get a feel for what a day in the life on the Kent farm is really like.”

#ch: clark #polyfacetious | stiles #polyfacetious #v: expats row #carlota's christmas drabbles #queued #this one is Not Great #but gotta get back on the horse somehow

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thesevencrimesandpunishments · 5 years

Text

Chapter 7-Wrath; Scene 2

Seven Crimes and Punishments, pages 125-134

“Master” died due to the Leviantan insurrection.

But even more important than that, thanks to that insurrection the USE collapsed into partial inefficacy.

What began to rise to prominence within the country of Elphegort in all the chaos was the Tasan Party, which was comprised of the former members of an anti-USE organization.

The imprisoned Nemesis Sudou was released on amnesty, and, as she was popular with the people, the Tasan Party gave her the seat of deputy party head. When the actual party head Gammon Octo went missing later, Nemesis became the new one.

Eventually, Nemesis and the Tasan Party, having gathered support both internationally and domestically, launched a coup against Elphegort’s government.

As dictator, Nemesis ordered Elphegort’s army to invade the Republic of Lucifenia. Elphegort was excommunicated from the USE for that act, but Elphegort’s army made no move to slow their invasion, instead forming military alliances with Beelzenia and Jakoku once they had fully subjugated Lucifenia.

The USE army headed by Marlon and Holy Levianta resisted them, and made plans for a large-scale siege of Elphegort. The neutral power Maistia also declared their support for the various countries connected to the USE. Due to Jakoku then declaring war on Maistia, the seeds of battle spread across the globe.

Elphegort, in a bind by the onslaught of the USE’s army, secretly undertook development of a new weapon under the orders of Fuhrer Nemesis—this determined the construction and actual deployment of the popularly-named “Punishment”.

A prototype “Punishment” that was released for a trial run completely burned the entire Millenium Tree Forest to the ground.

Next, Elphegort fired “Punishment” at Maistia, but due to a mistake in their aim it fell on their ally, Jakoku. It reduced Onigashima to ashes.

By the time USE forces, having learned of the change in situation, surrounded Elphegort, countless “Punishment”s had already been aimed to be fired throughout Evillious.

And then—

Nemesis inserted the golden key into “Punishment”s firing mechanism.

The result of that was the current state of affairs.

The masked woman had said that she was launching me to where Nemesis was. Strictly speaking, it might be better to say she’d “dropped” me here rather than “launched”.

At any rate, I—we had reached a new place.

“This is…” murmured a boy who stood on the cliff before me.

It was Hänsel. He was taking in the scenery around us, eyes wide.

We had fallen on top of a pile of rubble. We had fallen from such a height that if we had still-living bodies, we would have most certainly died.

I wasn’t sure where we were right then, but it was a little different from everywhere I had been up to that point.

The sky was covered with a plane of bedrock, and no sunlight got through. But in spite of that, it wasn’t exactly pitch black here. The ceiling bedrock itself emitted a faint light. Thanks to that, though it was dim, I was able to see relatively far.

The rubble scattered about beneath our feet looked to be gears used in some kind of machine. Various sizes of gear, large and small, were piled together into a mountain.

And, at the foot of the cliff that Hänsel was gazing at were lined countless black gravestone-like objects.

“These gears, and these gravestones…Are they all illusions too?” I asked Hänsel from behind.

He shook his head, still continuing to look at the bottom of the cliff. “Nope. Everything here really exists.”

“Then is this some place that’s escaped from the destruction caused by ‘Punishment’?”

“Yeah, looks like. …If Lady Banica saw this place I bet she’d she’d jump for joy.”

“Conchita? –Just what kind of place is this, anyway?”

“This is the land where sleeps the legacy of the ‘Second Period’…The place that Lady Banica has always been searching for; the ‘Grave Yard’.”

“The civilization of the previous era—You mean, the gears here are their wreckage? Then, that means Conchita’s been after this advanced technology.”

“Yeah, though like she herself said, it might not mean anything now that the world’s been destroyed. …Anyway, let’s go. Assuming the ‘Master of the Hellish Yard’ wasn’t lying, Nemesis should be somewhere in here, right?” Hänsel said, turning around. He was still clutching the doll.

After that he began to search for a way to move on ahead.

“’The Master of the Hellish Yard’…You mean that masked woman?”

“Yeah. Though I don’t really know what her aims are. Or if she’s that way out of her own will, or if she’s being manipulated by that mask…Oop! Looks like we can get down this way.”

Hänsel broke into a run, so I decided to follow after him.

The gravestones at the foot of the cliff were erected in a systematic order. When I got close enough to peer at one of them, I was able to see that its material properties looked to be the same as the Blackbox that I had spent so much time inside.

“This is…Well, obviously these aren’t ordinary graves, right?”

In response to my question Hänsel replied, as he continued walking, “Yeah. You shouldn’t go around touching them all willy-nilly. You might get shocked, Geheehee.”

“Leaving that aside…This place is big. Looks like it’ll be considerably exhausting to find Nemesis in here.”

“Well, let’s be patient. Maybe she’ll come over here to find us.”

“You have any basis for that?”

“Nah, not really.”

“Sigh…”

For a short while, we continued walking through the grave yard. We caught sight of several fascinating items within, but right now we didn’t have time to concern ourselves with those. I had come here to meet with Nemesis. There was no point if it wasn’t connected to her.

“…That’s right. Come to think of it, Hänsel, can’t you fly?”

“Yeah.”

“So then search for Nemesis in the air.”

“—Oh, yeah, that might be a good plan.”

Why didn’t he realize that sooner? While lamenting all the wasted time spent, I had Hänsel gently float upward, and then fly into the air.

However, due to the bedrock ceiling he couldn’t fly very high up. Nonetheless, he rose to a hair’s breadth from the ceiling and looked around them.

In no time at all, he once more descended to the ground.

“—There. I saw something moving over there,” Hänsel said, pointing in a certain direction—I wasn’t sure if it was east or west.

In that direction was something that looked like a clocktower, one that wasn’t terribly tall.

The hands of the clock tower didn’t look to be moving.

“Although I don’t know if it was Nemesis or not.”

“Well, for now at least we should fly over there and check it out.”

“You can’t fly, right? What are you going to do?”

“Even though I can’t fly, that’s not so for you, yeah?”

“…You want me to carry you. Fine, whatever. Come on, let’s go.”

Hänsel shifted the doll to under his left arm, then with his right he roughly picked me up and once more fluttered up into the air.

The clocktower was black, like the gravestones, and near the giant clock was a viewing platform.

From the air I was able to see that on top of that viewing platform was a girl wearing a black, sleeveless uniform.

“Is that…Nemesis?” I asked Hänsel.

“Why are you asking me? You have all the data on Nemesis’ appearance too, don’t you? That green hair, those sharp eyes—there’s no mistaking it, that’s her alright.”

“I guess so…But she’s not wearing the Tasan Party’s military uniform, and she looks way younger.”

“A spirit’s appearance isn’t always influenced by the way they looked when they died. There were probably people like that among all those you’ve met up to now, yeah?”

I had to agree, it was true. Among the people I’d seen at the Lucifenian Palace, there’d been several who were much, much younger in appearance than the age they’d been when they actually died.

“But what’s she doing in a place like this? What do you think, Allen?”

Nemesis was loitering about and frequently looking down, without making any move to get down from the viewing platform.

“Looks like she’s searching for something to me. Maybe she’s looking for us?”

“Who knows. The fastest way to find out would be to ask the girl herself, wouldn’t it?”

“If that’s what you think then you shouldn’t ask that from the start. Well…anyway, I guess we should go talk to her.”

“Okay!”

Hänsel picked up speed and headed for the clocktower.

We slowed as we approached the tower, and right before we got there we completely came to a halt.

I let go of Hänsel and arrived at the viewing platform with my own two feet. A little bit later Hänsel dropped down at the same spot. Nemesis had already noticed us there. After she gazed at us with a little bit of surprise, she quietly murmured, “You two…why are you here…? No, that’s wrong. Neither of you are the “boy” that I know of.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…but I’m Allen. You—are Furher Nemesis Sudou, aren’t you? What are you doing in a place like this?”

“I’m…I’m looking for my mother. I came here seeking her whereabouts.”

At that, Hänsel spoke up from behind me. “We were just looking around here, and there wasn’t anyone aside from you. Maybe she’s not here?”

But Nemesis shook her head.

“That can’t be. My mother must surely be here.”

“I can’t imagine any ordinary soul can make their way down here. Though, I don’t know how you got here then.”

“My mother…hasn’t become a spirit. She—Ma is still alive, and somewhere here on the ground world.”

“…Ah, it’s no use. She’s gone completely crazy.” Hänsel scratched at his own head, astonished. And then he moved closer to Nemesis, telling her, “You get it? First of all, this place isn’t the ‘ground world’. It’s the ‘grave yard’—the resting place of the old civilization. And another thing...there’s no one still alive anywhere. Because they were all put to their deaths by the ‘Punishment’s that you fired all over the place! You destroyed the world!”

“I…destroyed the world?”

“You’re kidding, you don’t even know that you’ve died? You stupidly used ‘Punishment’ on your own country. And thanks to that—we’re all sons of bitches!”

“I…No. I can’t have wrecked the world. What I destroyed was ‘hell’. Yes—the hell named ‘Evillious’. And…the one who killed me was that ‘boy’. Yes, the one you two look identical to—Ee—Eeeeeek!”

Suddenly, Nemesis’ face warped with terror.

And then she gripped the railing of the viewing platform, and a moment later, jumped down.

“Hey! –She’s getting away!” Hänsel shouted.

After Nemesis got to the surface of the ground, she started to sprint full-tilt towards a nearby hill. She was unusually fast on her feet.

We would chase her as she ran—we didn’t have any other choice. A lot of the things that Nemesis had said were incomprehensible, but there were several things that had piqued my interest.

We needed to ask her on the specifics a bit more…

I once more gripped Hänsel.

As though on cue, he propelled himself from the viewing platform.

<<prev------directory------next>>

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emeraldwaves · 5 years

Text

Title: What We Lack Part 9 Pairing: Kacchako, Deku/Melissa, Todomomo Rating: T Word Count: 3,905 Read on Ao3 Summary:

Quirkless.

They’re the last people anyone expects to have a child without a quirk.

Neither of them can fully wrap their heads around it, but Ochako knows Katsuki is struggling far more than her.

Thank you to @its-love-u-asshole for beta-ing

Full fic under the cut

"Are you nervous, sweetheart?" Ochako asked, cupping her son's cheeks.

"Nervous?" Shouhei smirked, pulling his face away from her hands. "Fuck no!"

"Shouhei!" she said, and lightly bopped him on the forehead. "Language!"

Sayuri bit her lip, watching her mother dote over her older brother. It was an important day, one Shouhei had been practicing for his whole life.

The U.A. recommendation exam.

"The twins will be there," Ochako nodded. "So at least you won't be alone-"

"Oi! None of that matters," Katsuki hissed. "He's going to pass with flying fucking colors!"

"Katsuki," Ochako growled, gritting her teeth. "Language."

"What? I can't tell my fucking son he's gonna kick ass during his goddamn exam?" Katsuki snorted, folding his arms over his chest.

"Guys. I'm gonna pass, there's nothing to worry about!" Shouhei sighed, shaking his head.

"Yeah, unless Yuuta is in his group," Sayuri finally spoke up. "Then he'll gladly step aside and let his ass get fucked!"

"Sayuri!" Ochako gasped.

"Who even invited you to come?" Shouhei asked, glaring at his sister.

"I would ask where my children got such horrible mouths from but we all know from where!" She whipped her head around to glare at Katsuki. She rubbed her forehead. "We all came here to support Shouhei."

"Yeah, yeah, Shouhei is going to pass. Like U.A. wouldn't let in the child of Ground Zero and Uravity," Sayuri snapped and turned her gaze away. Her parents’ names didn’t necessarily guarantee entrance to the school. It wasn't like U.A. hero class would ever take her even if she put her parents’ names on her application...

"Sayuri, our names don't matter. Shouhei, you're going to be great all on your own love," Ochako said, kissing his head again.

"Okay, okay," he said, pushing her away. "I really gotta get going."

"I know, I know."

"You fucking got this, kid," Katsuki smirked, punching his arm against Shouhei's, and he nodded, dashing into the school.

Sayuri let out a long breath of air. She didn't care what her mother said, their names did matter. It was why Shouhei was taking the recommendation exam instead of the regular one. She scraped her teeth across her lip; she knew their names would never help her, only hinder.

"Ooo... I'm so nervous!" Ochako bounced up and down. "I think I'm more nervous for his exam than I was for my own."

"Calm your tits," Katsuki snorted, wrapping his arm around her shoulder as he pulled her close to kiss the side of her head. "Both our kids are fucking champs," he smirked, glancing back towards Sayuri.

The last thing she felt like was a ‘champ’.

"Of course they are!" Ochako agreed, turning to smile at her daughter. "But I'm still nervous!"

Sayuri swung her hands back and forth and stepped forward, gently placing her hand on her mother's back. This day wasn't about her, it was about her brother. She probably would never have a day like this, and that was fine. She'd come to terms with her quirklessness a long time ago.

Mostly.

She wished she could attend U.A. She wished she could've been a hero right alongside her parents. She still had their action figures posed in her room and when she was a little girl, she always thought one day her and Shouhei would have figures right next to them. She supposed she could add Shou to her collection one day.

Sometimes she wondered what it must be like to have a quirk. She saw the way her father's explosions lit up the globe. She'd witnessed her mother rescuing people, moving insanely large debris with such ease. Even watching Shouhei move things around his room when she was a little girl had been thrilling.

Admittedly, she loved their quirks. She loved quirks in general, and she hated how much it sucked not to have one.

But most of all she hated the way people looked at her, especially her father. Sometimes quirks of new pro-heroes would come up at dinner, and her father would look over at her like she was some fragile creature who would start crying at even the mention of the word.

If she ever did feel the need to cry, she'd do it in her room, away from Katsuki's watchful eye.

And really when it came down to it, she was happy for her brother and she wanted him to succeed. Hell, if she became an engineer like her Auntie Melissa, she would help out heroes so much, she would almost be more important than the heroes themselves.

She prided herself on that fact. She didn't know why her father couldn't too.

Sayuri watched Katsuki's hand gently stroke down Ochako's arm, comforting her while she continued to panic about Shouhei. It wasn't that she didn't think her father was proud of her; she knew deep down she was basically his entire world.

She just never understood really why he looked at her like that.

"Okay, okay. It's silly to stand outside and wait, the exam takes a few hours. We should all go have lunch!" Ochako said, clapping her hands together, always certain not to let her pinkies touch.

Sayuri raised her eyebrow. "Are you sure you want to eat, Mom? You look really pale."

"Oh, I'm plenty used to being nauseous," Ochako said, waving her hand up and down. "Let's go."

"Idiot. I wouldn't mind treating my girls to a nice lunch." He huffed, wrapping his hand around Ochako's as he pulled her away from the school.

It was probably for the best, Sayuri didn't feel like staring longingly at the building for any longer.

Yuuta wasn't ready. He wasn't ready at all.

Next to him Shouhei bounced up and down from foot to foot, and Arata looked like he was ready to murder someone.

Last night he'd decided he'd take the exam, but now, he wanted to hightail it out of there.

When Shouto sat Yuuta down the night before, his heart sank because he knew exactly what he wanted to talk about.

"Are you sure you want to take the exam tomorrow?"

Yuuta had swallowed, unsure of how to answer his father. The last thing he wanted was to disappoint him, though he knew his father would never pressure him. His whole life his father had been nothing but supportive and calm... and yet...

He stared into Shouto's mismatched eyes, trying to stay as neutral and confident as possible.

"I..." he swallowed.

What did he want?

"Yuuta... your mother and I want you to be happy, above all else," Shouto said. "No one is forcing you to attend U.A. if there is somewhere else you want to go."

"But... Arata-"

"Just because the two of you are twins, doesn't mean you have to do everything the same," he said gently.

His father's voice was always filled with so much respect for him, and Yuuta almost felt even more guilty feeling so unsure. Shouto smiled, his expression warm.

It wasn't just Arata though... Shouhei was also trying for the exam. It was a stupid reason... to want to follow Shouhei... but Yuuta loved how their hands fit together. He loved how Shouhei sometimes couldn't look him in the eye, and when he did, his cheeks got all red and embarrassed.

"No..." Yuuta had said finally. "I want to try."

But now that he stood at the starting line of the opening race, he had no idea what to do. How could his fire help him in this situation!? Shouhei could levitate himself and Arata could use his fire crystals to make something... but... what could fire do? What did his father do during this exam?! He probably used his ice... was it even the same test!?

The examiner stepped out onto the field and began to explain the rules. They couldn't help one another, the fastest times would be logged... Yuuta tried to pay attention but the asphalt in front of him kept distorting as he looked at the ground. His chest felt tight, stress and panic constricting around his heart, the muscle trying to break free of the squeezing emotions.

Maybe he was doing this for the wrong reasons? Maybe he didn't understand fully what being a hero meant, even though it was in his blood... part of his legacy. As much as his father wanted him to ignore that... it was hard to when Endeavor, Shouto and Creati were everywhere.

He couldn't do this, he couldn't. He wasn't powerful like his father, nor was he smart like his mother. Arata would be amazing... he would get into the A class, number one spot and right behind him would be Shouhei... perfect, talented, incredible Shouhei. How could Yuuta ever compete? He could imagine the whispers now...

At least Shouto and Creati have one talented son!

His parents were literal perfection and what was he exactly?!

Would he be kicked out of the family?! Would he still be a Todoroki after this!? His grandfather already looked at him as weak. It wasn't like he never overheard his father fighting with the man about leaving him and Arata alone. Endeavor was frustrated Shouto was always "babying" them.

"GO!"

The words hit him, pulling him from his daze as his hair brushed against his eyes when everyone dashed forward, leaving Yuuta standing by himself on the starting line.

"Uh, Go!" the teacher called again, and Yuuta tried to breathe. His feet felt like they melted into the ground.

He needed to move but he couldn't. In front of him he saw everyone rushing towards the finish, Shouhei propelling his body through the air, Arata skating on his crystals...

Could he even get his quirk to work?! The air felt tight...

"Todoroki Yuuta! Do you need assistance?" The voice next to him was distant, far away from where he stood on the end of the line.

He wanted to cry and collapse to the floor, his knees shaking as though they were about to give out. He slammed his eyes shut, shaking his head back and forth. He was an absolute disgrace to everyone around him.

"YUUTA!"

He opened his eyes and met with Shouhei's brown hues staring directly at him, their foreheads almost touching. He was floating, hovering ever so slightly above the ground.

"S-Shou-kun, w-what are you-"

"What the hell are YOU doing!?"

"You can't help me! We're not allowed to help each other!" Yuuta babbled, more panic rushing through his veins.

"Shut up!" Shouhei snapped and bonked his head against Yuuta's.

"O-Ow! I-I just... I can't do this Shou. I don't know why I signed up for this when I knew my quirk wasn't as good-"

Shouhei slapped his hands against Yuuta's cheeks, squishing his face between his palms. "Get moving you fuckin' idiot!"

Shouhei pulled back and swung his finger back and forth, moving his body forward.

Had Shouhei really just jeopardized his own exam to help him!? Did he really turn around just to try and get Yuuta to move? It didn’t make any sense. Shouhei could’ve potentially been number one, and he risked that for him!?

He took a deep breath; he couldn't let Shouhei down. He let the blue flames curl around his arms, the air cool around him. He needed to focus on heating the flames up to push himself forward. He could do it. He'd seen his father and grandfather use their flames with such ease... and though his was different... he knew he had it in himself to at least make it to the end of this race.

He focused his body heat towards his arms, pushing them behind him as he shot forward, leaving a trail of blue flames behind him. With how fast he moved, he soared over the raceway and the finish line, not even finishing last.

Arata stood at the end, arms folded, glaring. Was he mad? Did he think Yuuta was a fool? Probably all of the above...

"Yuu, you big dumb idiot!" Shouhei laughed and wrapped his arms around Yuuta's head, pulling him into his chest. "You're so fucking strong, what the hell were you thinking moron?"

"I... I'm sorry Shou..." Yuuta breathed, looking down at the ground. "Y-You probably won't pass because I... did so horribly...I know I definitely won't pass..."

"You don't know what they grade on!" Shouhei said, trying to reassure him. He always tried to reassure Yuuta when he was too far in his own mind.

"I doubt I'll win points for being frozen at the starting line..."

Arata clicked his tongue and walked away from both of them, heading towards the designated locker area.

Yuuta bit his lip and sighed. "And Arata is mad for some reason... great..." He puffed out his cheeks.

"Isn't Arata always fuckin' mad?" Shouhei snorted, rolling his eyes.

"Not... always," Yuuta said, but more often than not as of late. Something was most likely bothering his brother, but he had yet to talk to Yuuta about it.

"Whatever. You're not giving up on the rest of the test right? We gotta get ready for the combat and written portions," Shouhei said excitedly, obviously unfazed by his potential point deduction.

Yuuta sighed, even with Arata mad, he had to at the very least finish out the rest of this exam. He owed that much to Shouhei, and he prayed he didn't hurt any of their chances.

"The written exam was the hardest part," Shouhei whined once they all sat in the car, heading back towards their house.

"OI! Did you study everything I fuckin' told you to!?" Katsuki snapped, keeping his eyes on the road.

"I'm sure he did," Ochako said, shaking her head at her husband.

"Oh that's rich coming from you. Your mother is lucky she passed some of our written exams in high school. If I hadn't fuckin' tutored her-"

"I would've had someone else do it! Like Deku-kun or Tenya-kun or Shouto-kun or-"

"Shaddup!" Katsuki yelled, clenching the steering wheel even harder. "It was me who ended up saving your ass!"

"Oh, my hero!" she giggled, turning around to laugh with both of her children.

"I did study," Shouhei said. "But there was so much to remember," he sighed. "I don't have Sayuri's freaky brain!"

"Hey! I'm just smart, not freaky!" she snapped, folding her arms over her chest. "Sucks to actually have to study."

"Maybe your quirk is actually that you're freakishly smart," Shouhei teased.

"Yeah," Sayuri said, her voice growing quiet for a moment. "I think I just work harder than you, idiot!"

"I've been training every goddamn day!" Shouhei snapped, glaring at his sister.

"Alright you two," Ochako sighed. "Let's calm down."

Neither of them wanted to frustrate their mother anymore than they already had. Instead, Shouhei leaned back.

"Who knows, I might not even get in because I helped Yuuta during the race," Shouhei shrugged, looking out the window.

"...What?" Ochako asked quietly, a hint of panic in her voice. She always tried to hide it, but they could always tell when their mother was feeling nervous. "What do you mean?"

"He thought with his dick instead of his head," Sayuri snorted.

"Sayuri-!"

"Fuckin' hell Sayuri! We're not doing anything like that!" Shouhei yelled.

"Not yet!" she teased. "We all know you have a crush on him!"

"No I don't!"

"Enough!" Ochako yelled loudly. "It doesn't matter if Shouhei has a crush or not! What matters is what happened?!"

"They told us we weren't allowed to help each other... y'know like... cheating with each other’s quirks. But when they said to go, Yuuta didn't move from the starting line. I got worried so... I went back and told him to move his ass. Technically I didn't break the rules..."

"Aw sweetheart... that was very kind of you to help Yuuta when he froze," Ochako said. "Heroic even, right Katsuki?"

"Yeah," he muttered, tapping his thumb against the steering wheel. "I don't know why you got a thing for Icy Hot's kid but-"

"Katsuki!" Ochako groaned. "It's not about that. Shouhei helped someone when they were in need. I'm sure U.A. won't look at is as breaking the rules since your help didn't involve either of your quirks."

He always dreamed about going to U.A., any other schools didn't seem as enticing as his parents’ alma mater. He wanted to be as amazing as both of his parents and he hoped U.A. would take a chance on him.

"Yeah," Shouhei muttered, "that's kind of what I'm banking on... Guess we'll find out when the letter comes."

"So!" Momo smiled, placing down the plates in front of both of her sons. "Tell us all about it! How did it go?!"

Both boys stayed silent, looking at their food.

"That well, huh?" Shouto chuckled. "It can't have been that bad. Both of you are working so hard."

"Apparently the recommendation exam is a bit easier than the general one," Momo said.

"I don't know about that, love," Shouto chuckled. "I think you were always just very smart."

"Possibly," she hummed, taking a seat at the table. "But enough about our exam, we want to hear about yours."

"Arata did great-" Yuuta began softly, gently moving some of the rice on his plate.

"Shut up, Yuuta," Arata hissed.

"Boys..." Shouto murmured, not wanting them to fight again.

"Alright," Momo said, looking at both of them. "What is going on?"

"I... I might have..." Yuuta bit his lip, his cheeks flushed. He was holding something back, and the longer he stayed quiet the more worried Momo grew.

"Yuuta fucked it up," Arata snapped.

"Arata, language!" Momo scolded, shaking her head at the boy. "What happened, Yuuta?" she asked gently.

"...During the race portion... the teacher called out for us to start but I... I didn't. Shouhei ended up coming back to the start and snapping me out of it but I..."

"You could've cost Shouhei-kun, you, and me entrance to the school!" Arata yelled.

Yuuta immediately frowned. "What does this have to do with you, Arata?! You were one of the first to finish and you know you aced the other two sections! I only hurt me and Shou-kun!"

"We're twins! If you do things wrong, they're going to assume I suck too!"

"Arata... that's not how it works," Shouto said softly. "They look at you as two different people."

"You don't know that! You're not a twin! They're already judging us based on you two!" Arata said, gesturing to his parents. "And now I've got an idiot brother who can't even start when they tell him to!"

"Arata!" Shouto hissed.

"I promise you, Arata... they wouldn't judge you based on us or your brother. They're judging you based on your talents and skills," Momo said softly. Concern filled her eyes as she reached next to her to touch his arm. "There's no reason to be so angry..."

"This has been my dream!" he yelled, pulling away from Momo. He clenched his hands into fists against his legs. "I've been training to get into U.A. my whole life!"

"Arata," Shouto frowned, "No one said you weren't going to get in. This is about Yuuta."

"Isn't it always?" he hissed. He stood up, pushing his chair out. "I will carry on the Todoroki legacy, not Yuuta!"

He slapped his chopsticks down, storming off to this room as they heard the door slide shut with a loud slam. Momo swallowed, looking towards Shouto. She could see his fists clench, his shoulders trembling. The Todoroki legacy... it was an idea Endeavor often touted, though Shouto worked hard to keep the boys away from any sort of negative thinking like that. Momo and Shouto didn't care what their boys chose to do, as long as they were happy... and yet, for some reason Arata felt a burning need to do exactly what Shouto never wanted either of their boys to do; continue a legacy.

"I think... Arata needs some space..." Shouto muttered.

"I-I'm sorry..." Yuuta said quietly.

"Oh sweetheart," Momo smiled sadly. "There's nothing to be sorry about. I'm sure you didn't ruin anyone's chance of getting into the school," she continued.

"Definitely not Arata's... but I'm not sure about Shouhei's and mine..." he said. "I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get in after that."

"Don't worry. Shouhei didn't use his quirk to help get you to start. I doubt they'll take it into account," she said.

"Tch. Knowing them, they'll probably give him extra points for helping Yuu," Shouto chuckled.

"Indeed, U.A. did always do unexpected things like that. See? There's no reason to worry," Momo nodded.

"I guess," he muttered.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Momo asked. "Arata probably won't be coming back."

"I-I dunno," Yuuta said softly, swallowing. "It's really dumb. I started thinking about all the things that could go wrong and how my quirk really isn't that great and I thought I was stupid for even going to the exam..." he rambled. "My thoughts just... spiraled."

Momo smiled and gently touched his shoulder. "I used to do that too... it's hard to push past your brain when your thoughts are so loud, isn't it?"

Yuuta nodded.

"I'm glad Shouhei was able to help you," Momo said, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

"You shouldn't think so poorly of yourself, Yuuta. Your quirk is very powerful," Shouto nodded. "I think you should wait until the letters arrive before you count yourself out."

"Probably," he said and picked up his plate, walking to the kitchen. "I'm... going to save this for later. I'm not really hungry," he said quietly, bowing his head to both of them. "Sorry Mother."

"We already said you have nothing to be sorry for," she smiled, "get some rest if that's what you need."

Yuuta slowly walked down the hall, leaving Shouto and Momo alone at the table. Immediately Shouto placed his hand on his forehead, shaking his head back and forth. "I... I don't know what to do about Arata..."

"You should talk to him... he's obviously very upset."

"Did you hear what he said?" he whispered. "Has he been secretly talking to my father? He sounded just like him."

"I highly double that..." Momo said. "But... he did seem very strongly opinionated..."

"No kidding," Shouto sighed. "I think he needs space before I go tell him legacy isn't... important. I just want him and Yuuta to be happy, and right now it seems like Yuuta is terribly sad and lost and Arata is just... angry."

Momo reached out, lacing her fingers with Shouto's. "It's not your fault... think about how frustrating being a teenager was for us."

"I know..." he muttered, but then raised his eyebrow at her. "Was it frustrating for you?" he chuckled. "You always seemed so poised and put together... well minus when you would get in your head. Seems Yuuta stole that from you."

"I know... I'll have to give him tips on how to break out of that awful cycle..." she sighed.

"It seems we both have to talk to our boys," Shouto said, brushing his thumb over Momo's fingers.

"I know. I worry for when those letters come... I hope they both get in."

Shouto glanced down the hallway towards their rooms. "Me too."

#kacchako #todomomo #bakugou katsuki #todoroki shouto #BNHA #yaoyorozu momo #uraraka ochako #boku no hero academia #future AU #OC kids #what we lack #kacchako has a quirkless daughter

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bethanybyrne · 3 years

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Grace Aitana is an American superhero. She was born on November 2nd, 2004, at a hospital in Warwick, New York. Grace’s parents are James and Deborah, they are seven years apart with James being 63 years old and Deborah being 54. They have 12 children including Grace. She is the youngest and has a twin named Jimmy, but he doesn’t have any powers, he’s not a superhero like Grace. Grace’s parents made a nice home for all of their children, they got by but they never had too much but they always got what they needed. Grace was always around other people; her older siblings all had kids so she also has 12 nieces and nephews. Since they were pretty close in age with most of the older ones that’s who she grew up with and hung out with most of the time. Her favorite niece was Brianna, she lived about 10 minutes away so they hung out a lot. Grace’s main influence was her niece Brianna. They were best friends who did everything together. They got their nails done together and played outside as children together. Rode bikes together and did everything you’re supposed to do growing up with your friends. They didn’t need any other friends because they had each other. They would facetime every single night even after just being outside together but they never ran out of anything to talk about with each other, it was a relationship that everyone was jealous of and that everyone wished they could have as their own. But then something happened. Brianna’s family was moving to Florida. They all said goodbye and packed up their things and moved a thousand miles away. They still facetime almost every single night but their relationship with each other ended up changing over the years, they weren’t as close as they used to be and it was sad, because like I said before this was a relationship that everyone wished they had. So it took its toll on both of them physically and mentally. They did see each other at least once a year. Now that Grace’s dad is retired every school break they end up going to Florida just to visit them and have fun and just hang out with each other and it’s become kind of like a tradition to them as well.

One day Grace was trying out for a bunch of different school sports. She didn’t really know what she was into but she didn’t want to rule anything out and she definitely wanted to at least try it before she did. It was the fall season so she was trying out for swimming, volleyball and cross country. For swimming they had to do a bunch of laps and race each other to see who was the fastest in each event. After the tryout was over Grace and a bunch of her friends were having a contest of who can hold their breath the longest underwater. They were all taking turns and timing each other and when it came to Grace’s turn something happened. Grace went under the water and she didn’t come back up after what seemed like forever her friends started screaming and getting nervous that she ended up drowning, but once they got to her and they tapped her she went above the water and acted like everything was okay and that she was able to breath under the water for that long. She said “did I win?” and her friend said “I think we should get ready to go home, that was kind of scary”. So that’s what they all did. They got out of the water and went to the changing rooms to change into their everyday clothes to go home. But not Grace she sat on the bench in her towel until all her friends went home. She surprised herself with being able to stay under the water for that long, she didn’t understand why she was able to do that, so she got off the bench and went right back to the pool area with her stopwatch to see how long she could stay under for. She was in the pool for over an hour timing herself just to find out that she can breathe underwater for a little over thirty minutes. She was happy she found this out but she thought it was weird cause most people could only hold their breath underwater for maybe two minutes.

When Grace went to her volleyball tryout she had a good time and had fun trying out with all of her friends but she couldn’t get it out of her head that she was meant to be a swimmer because she can hold her breath for that long underwater. The next day came and went and it was time to try out for cross country. Cross Country is for long distance running which Grace was fit, but she didn’t know if she would be able to run three and a half miles in a decent amount of time. They all did a warm up together stretching and having fun and then they did a light granny jog to warm up as a group as well. When they were done with the warm up they started getting ready to race to run the three and a half miles. They all lined up on the starting line and when the horn blew they all started running. Little did she know, but Grace, she was fast. She took off and she was in such a lead the coach used the bull horn to yell “keep a steady pace don’t run too fast in the beginning”. But Grace didn't need to keep a steady pace; she wasn’t even tired and she was already two miles in, in two minutes time. She was fast. When she turned around she saw no one behind her. She thought that was weird, maybe she took a wrong turn and that’s why she didn’t see anyone else. When she went a little farther she saw the two and a half mile marker so she knew she didn’t go the wrong way, was she really just that fast. She decided to take a break until she saw at least one other girl, so it didn’t seem like she was too far ahead of everyone else. All of these events got Grace thinking. Maybe she has these special talents for a reason, it can’t be a coincidence that she can breathe underwater and run that fast. There must be something that she was meant to use these things for.

Grace was just a normal teenage girl; she was just confused on why she was able to do these things. She looked just like everyone else; she didn’t have any odd features that made her stand out besides those two things, at least she doesn’t know of anything else at this point. At this point her superpowers would be able to breathe underwater and run super fast, but she has a lot of life to live and she might find other things that she’s good at as well.

Grace has always been very into her emotions. She knows she can get attached very easily and most of the things she does is because she cares too much about other people. She always says sorry even though she doesn’t need to. Growing up people in her family just made it seem like almost everything she did was wrong or she wasn’t doing it the right way even though she got the end result that she wanted. She’s also a very smart girl and she knows there’s more than one way to do something, she also knows that she’s not always right either. But she doesn’t let the fear of not being right stop her from learning new things everyday.

Grace realized that she can use these powers for the greater good. During the summer she became a lifeguard because with her talent she saved a lot of people from drowning mostly children. But one time something really bad happened when she was on her way home. There was a car that went right over the side of the bridge. It wasn't a huge bridge but it still had a deep amount of water underneath it. Grace stopped her car and jumped right in the water to save the mother and child from that crash. She wouldn’t have been able to do that if she wasn’t able to breathe underwater. This one event ended up making her want to help a whole lot of people and that’s exactly what she did whenever she saw someone who needed help she helped them. There was no one around to help her and she didn’t want anyone else to feel like she did, because even if you’re surrounded by a million people it can still feel pretty lonely if they are not meeting your emotional needs. Grace then became known as a mystery woman on the news. No one knew who she was or how she was able to do what she does. She became a hero that no one knew was needed until she showed up. They started calling her The Real Life Wonder Woman and she lived up to that title.

She didn’t believe in just one thing. She believed that anyone who needed help, if she was able to then she would help them. She didn’t advocate for any causes and if you had a different opinion on a cause then hers she would still help you if you needed help because that’s just what a decent human being does. She used her powers for the greater good and it showed, everybody learned to love her and appreciate her for everything she gave back to the community without expecting anything in return. The only thing she ever said to the press was that “if you see someone in need be a human and help them that way we can all be heroes and trust and believe in the world just a little more each day”.

Grace continues to help people her whole life and she also learns new tricks through practice and doing all of these continuously by saving people. So she decided to open a studio to help teach people how to use their talents to help others. She met many wonderful people on her journey and she enjoyed being able to help everyone that she could. She thought that every person on earth had a special talent even if they were blind to it themselves and that they couldn’t see it. She realized people can be hard on themselves and that’s why she liked to observe people before teaching them just to find out what their hidden talents might be. After she figured out what she can work with, with each individual person she would then take them into the studio and teach them with their individualized lesson plan. This continued on for years and years it didn’t stop until Grace was well into her nineties and she was in the hospital. When she was in the hospital she had a visit from her niece Brianna’s Great granddaughter, Bella. Bella wanted to take over and continue to teach people how to help others and that’s exactly what she did. After Grace died of old age her legacy lives on through Bella and they helped save many people’s lives through people who came to the studio to learn just that.

Grace would be best likened with in terms of contemporary superheroes with Wonder women. I think Wonder Women is a great hero but I also think you can’t compare two people no matter how great they are. Everyone needs to be looked at individually to see who they really are and what a great person they are and what great qualities they hold as that person. You can compare two great Women if you want but they are both great in their own ways.

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beardcore-blog · 4 years

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A Princess Diary

"What’s Wrong With Cinderella?"

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with ”Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her ”princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, ”I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, ”Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

”Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. ”Do you have a princess drill, too?”

She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.

”Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. ”It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”

My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. ”Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. ”What’s wrong with princesses?”

Diana may be dead and Masako disgraced, but here in America, we are in the midst of a royal moment. To call princesses a ”trend” among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. ”Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

Meanwhile in 2001, Mattel brought out its own ”world of girl” line of princess Barbie dolls, DVDs, toys, clothing, home décor and myriad other products. At a time when Barbie sales were declining domestically, they became instant best sellers. Shortly before that, Mary Drolet, a Chicago-area mother and former Claire’s and Montgomery Ward executive, opened Club Libby Lu, now a chain of mall stores based largely in the suburbs in which girls ages 4 to 12 can shop for ”Princess Phones” covered in faux fur and attend ”Princess-Makeover Birthday Parties.” Saks bought Club Libby Lu in 2003 for $12 million and has since expanded it to 87 outlets; by 2005, with only scant local advertising, revenues hovered around the $46 million mark, a 53 percent jump from the previous year. Pink, it seems, is the new gold.

Even Dora the Explorer, the intrepid, dirty-kneed adventurer, has ascended to the throne: in 2004, after a two-part episode in which she turns into a ”true princess,” the Nickelodeon and Viacom consumer-products division released a satin-gowned ”Magic Hair Fairytale Dora,” with hair that grows or shortens when her crown is touched. Among other phrases the bilingual doll utters: ”Vámonos! Let’s go to fairy-tale land!” and ”Will you brush my hair?”

As a feminist mother — not to mention a nostalgic product of the Grranimals era — I have been taken by surprise by the princess craze and the girlie-girl culture that has risen around it. What happened to William wanting a doll and not dressing your cat in an apron? Whither Marlo Thomas? I watch my fellow mothers, women who once swore they’d never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who warble ”So This Is Love” or insist on being called Snow White. I wonder if they’d concede so readily to sons who begged for combat fatigues and mock AK-47s.

More to the point, when my own girl makes her daily beeline for the dress-up corner of her preschool classroom — something I’m convinced she does largely to torture me — I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her. I’ve spent much of my career writing about experiences that undermine girls’ well-being, warning parents that a preoccupation with body and beauty (encouraged by films, TV, magazines and, yes, toys) is perilous to their daughters’ mental and physical health. Am I now supposed to shrug and forget all that? If trafficking in stereotypes doesn’t matter at 3, when does it matter? At 6? Eight? Thirteen?

On the other hand, maybe I’m still surfing a washed-out second wave of feminism in a third-wave world. Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can ”have it all.” Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what’s wrong with that?

The rise of the Disney princesses reads like a fairy tale itself, with Andy Mooney, a former Nike executive, playing the part of prince, riding into the company on a metaphoric white horse in January 2000 to save a consumer-products division whose sales were dropping by as much as 30 percent a year. Both overstretched and underfocused, the division had triggered price wars by granting multiple licenses for core products (say, Winnie-the-Pooh undies) while ignoring the potential of new media. What’s more, Disney films like ”A Bug’s Life” in 1998 had yielded few merchandising opportunities — what child wants to snuggle up with an ant?

It was about a month after Mooney’s arrival that the magic struck. That’s when he flew to Phoenix to check out his first ”Disney on Ice” show. ”Standing in line in the arena, I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses,” he told me last summer in his palatial office, then located in Burbank, and speaking in a rolling Scottish burr. ”They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, ‘O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.’ ”

Mooney picked a mix of old and new heroines to wear the Pantone pink No. 241 corona: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas. It was the first time Disney marketed characters separately from a film’s release, let alone lumped together those from different stories. To ensure the sanctity of what Mooney called their individual ”mythologies,” the princesses never make eye contact when they’re grouped: each stares off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others’ presence.

It is also worth noting that not all of the ladies are of royal extraction. Part of the genius of ”Princess” is that its meaning is so broadly constructed that it actually has no meaning. Even Tinker Bell was originally a Princess, though her reign didn’t last. ”We’d always debate over whether she was really a part of the Princess mythology,” Mooney recalled. ”She really wasn’t.” Likewise, Mulan and Pocahontas, arguably the most resourceful of the bunch, are rarely depicted on Princess merchandise, though for a different reason. Their rustic garb has less bling potential than that of old-school heroines like Sleeping Beauty. (When Mulan does appear, she is typically in the kimonolike hanfu, which makes her miserable in the movie, rather than her liberated warrior’s gear.)

The first Princess items, released with no marketing plan, no focus groups, no advertising, sold as if blessed by a fairy godmother. To this day, Disney conducts little market research on the Princess line, relying instead on the power of its legacy among mothers as well as the instant-read sales barometer of the theme parks and Disney Stores. ”We simply gave girls what they wanted,” Mooney said of the line’s success, ”although I don’t think any of us grasped how much they wanted this. I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy. The counsel we gave to licensees was: What type of bedding would a princess want to sleep in? What kind of alarm clock would a princess want to wake up to? What type of television would a princess like to see? It’s a rare case where you find a girl who has every aspect of her room bedecked in Princess, but if she ends up with three or four of these items, well, then you have a very healthy business.”

Every reporter Mooney talks to asks some version of my next question: Aren’t the Princesses, who are interested only in clothes, jewelry and cadging the handsome prince, somewhat retrograde role models?

”Look,” he said, ”I have friends whose son went through the Power Rangers phase who castigated themselves over what they must’ve done wrong. Then they talked to other parents whose kids had gone through it. The boy passes through. The girl passes through. I see girls expanding their imagination through visualizing themselves as princesses, and then they pass through that phase and end up becoming lawyers, doctors, mothers or princesses, whatever the case may be.”

Mooney has a point: There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be ”perfect”: not only to get straight A’s and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be ”kind and caring,” ”please everyone, be very thin and dress right.” Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they’d be in business.

At the grocery store one day, my daughter noticed a little girl sporting a Cinderella backpack. ”There’s that princess you don’t like, Mama!” she shouted.

”Um, yeah,” I said, trying not to meet the other mother’s hostile gaze.

”Don’t you like her blue dress, Mama?”

I had to admit, I did.

She thought about this. ”Then don’t you like her face?”

”Her face is all right,” I said, noncommittally, though I’m not thrilled to have my Japanese-Jewish child in thrall to those Aryan features. (And what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?) ”It’s just, honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.”

Over the next 45 minutes, we ran through that conversation, verbatim, approximately 37 million times, as my daughter pointed out Disney Princess Band-Aids, Disney Princess paper cups, Disney Princess lip balm, Disney Princess pens, Disney Princess crayons and Disney Princess notebooks — all cleverly displayed at the eye level of a 3-year-old trapped in a shopping cart — as well as a bouquet of Disney Princess balloons bobbing over the checkout line. The repetition was excessive, even for a preschooler. What was it about my answers that confounded her? What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! my 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?

According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable. They believe that they have a choice: they can grow up to be either a mommy or a daddy. Some psychologists say that until permanency sets in kids embrace whatever stereotypes our culture presents, whether it’s piling on the most spangles or attacking one another with light sabers. What better way to assure that they’ll always remain themselves? If that’s the case, score one for Mooney. By not buying the Princess Pull-Ups, I may be inadvertently communicating that being female (to the extent that my daughter is able to understand it) is a bad thing.

Anyway, you have to give girls some credit. It’s true that, according to Mattel, one of the most popular games young girls play is ”bride,” but Disney found that a groom or prince is incidental to that fantasy, a regrettable necessity at best. Although they keep him around for the climactic kiss, he is otherwise relegated to the bottom of the toy box, which is why you don’t see him prominently displayed in stores.

What’s more, just because they wear the tulle doesn’t mean they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Plenty of girls stray from the script, say, by playing basketball in their finery, or casting themselves as the powerful evil stepsister bossing around the sniveling Cinderella. I recall a headline-grabbing 2005 British study that revealed that girls enjoy torturing, decapitating and microwaving their Barbies nearly as much as they like to dress them up for dates. There is spice along with that sugar after all, though why this was news is beyond me: anyone who ever played with the doll knows there’s nothing more satisfying than hacking off all her hair and holding her underwater in the bathtub. Princesses can even be a boon to exasperated parents: in our house, for instance, royalty never whines and uses the potty every single time.

”Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of ”Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.” ”The issue is 25,000 Princess products,” says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. ”When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.”

It’s hard to imagine that girls’ options could truly be shrinking when they dominate the honor roll and outnumber boys in college. Then again, have you taken a stroll through a children’s store lately? A year ago, when we shopped for ”big girl” bedding at Pottery Barn Kids, we found the ”girls” side awash in flowers, hearts and hula dancers; not a soccer player or sailboat in sight. Across the no-fly zone, the ”boys” territory was all about sports, trains, planes and automobiles. Meanwhile, Baby GAP’s boys’ onesies were emblazoned with ”Big Man on Campus” and the girls’ with ”Social Butterfly”; guess whose matching shoes were decorated on the soles with hearts and whose sported a ”No. 1” logo? And at Toys ”R” Us, aisles of pink baby dolls, kitchens, shopping carts and princesses unfurl a safe distance from the ”Star Wars” figures, GeoTrax and tool chests. The relentless resegregation of childhood appears to have sneaked up without any further discussion about sex roles, about what it now means to be a boy or to be a girl. Or maybe it has happened in lieu of such discussion because it’s easier this way.

Easier, that is, unless you want to buy your daughter something that isn’t pink. Girls’ obsession with that color may seem like something they’re born with, like the ability to breathe or talk on the phone for hours on end. But according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, it ain’t so. When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty. Why or when that switched is not clear, but as late as the 1930s a significant percentage of adults in one national survey held to that split. Perhaps that’s why so many early Disney heroines — Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Wendy, Alice-in-Wonderland — are swathed in varying shades of azure. (Purple, incidentally, may be the next color to swap teams: once the realm of kings and N.F.L. players, it is fast becoming the bolder girl’s version of pink.)

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a key strategy of children’s marketing (recall the emergence of ” ‘tween”), that pink became seemingly innate to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few years. That was also the time that the first of the generation raised during the unisex phase of feminism — ah, hither Marlo! — became parents. ”The kids who grew up in the 1970s wanted sharp definitions for their own kids,” Paoletti told me. ”I can understand that, because the unisex thing denied everything — you couldn’t be this, you couldn’t be that, you had to be a neutral nothing.”

The infatuation with the girlie girl certainly could, at least in part, be a reaction against the so-called second wave of the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s (the first wave was the fight for suffrage), which fought for reproductive rights and economic, social and legal equality. If nothing else, pink and Princess have resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs — doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves — flowing through ”Ally McBeal,” ”Bridget Jones’s Diary,” ”Sex and the City” — of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female.

I mulled that over while flipping through ”The Paper Bag Princess,” a 1980 picture book hailed as an antidote to Disney. The heroine outwits a dragon who has kidnapped her prince, but not before the beast’s fiery breath frizzles her hair and destroys her dress, forcing her to don a paper bag. The ungrateful prince rejects her, telling her to come back when she is ”dressed like a real princess.” She dumps him and skips off into the sunset, happily ever after, alone.

There you have it, ”Thelma and Louise” all over again. Step out of line, and you end up solo or, worse, sailing crazily over a cliff to your doom. Alternatives like those might send you skittering right back to the castle. And I get that: the fact is, though I want my daughter to do and be whatever she wants as an adult, I still hope she’ll find her Prince Charming and have babies, just as I have. I don’t want her to be a fish without a bicycle; I want her to be a fish with another fish. Preferably, one who loves and respects her and also does the dishes and half the child care.

There had to be a middle ground between compliant and defiant, between petticoats and paper bags. I remembered a video on YouTube, an ad for a Nintendo game called Super Princess Peach. It showed a pack of girls in tiaras, gowns and elbow-length white gloves sliding down a zip line on parasols, navigating an obstacle course of tires in their stilettos, slithering on their bellies under barbed wire, then using their telekinetic powers to make a climbing wall burst into flames. ”If you can stand up to really mean people,” an announcer intoned, ”maybe you have what it takes to be a princess.”

Now here were some girls who had grit as well as grace. I loved Princess Peach even as I recognized that there was no way she could run in those heels, that her peachiness did nothing to upset the apple cart of expectation: she may have been athletic, smart and strong, but she was also adorable. Maybe she’s what those once-unisex, postfeminist parents are shooting for: the melding of old and new standards. And perhaps that’s a good thing, the ideal solution. But what to make, then, of the young women in the Girls Inc. survey? It doesn’t seem to be ”having it all” that’s getting to them; it’s the pressure to be it all. In telling our girls they can be anything, we have inadvertently demanded that they be everything. To everyone. All the time. No wonder the report was titled ”The Supergirl Dilemma.”

The princess as superhero is not irrelevant. Some scholars I spoke with say that given its post-9/11 timing, princess mania is a response to a newly dangerous world. ”Historically, princess worship has emerged during periods of uncertainty and profound social change,” observes Miriam Forman-Brunell, a historian at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Francis Hodgson Burnett’s original”Little Princess” was published at a time of rapid urbanization, immigration and poverty; Shirley Temple’s film version was a hit during the Great Depression. ”The original folk tales themselves,” Forman-Brunell says, ”spring from medieval and early modern European culture that faced all kinds of economic and demographic and social upheaval — famine, war, disease, terror of wolves. Girls play savior during times of economic crisis and instability.” That’s a heavy burden for little shoulders. Perhaps that’s why the magic wand has become an essential part of the princess get-up. In the original stories — even the Disney versions of them — it’s not the girl herself who’s magic; it’s the fairy godmother. Now if Forman-Brunell is right, we adults have become the cursed creatures whom girls have the thaumaturgic power to transform.

In the 1990s, third-wave feminists rebelled against their dour big sisters, ”reclaiming” sexual objectification as a woman’s right — provided, of course, that it was on her own terms, that she was the one choosing to strip or wear a shirt that said ”Porn Star” or make out with her best friend at a frat-house bash. They embraced words like ”bitch” and ”slut” as terms of affection and empowerment. That is, when used by the right people, with the right dash of playful irony. But how can you assure that? As Madonna gave way to Britney, whatever self-determination that message contained was watered down and commodified until all that was left was a gaggle of 6-year-old girls in belly-baring T-shirts (which I’m guessing they don’t wear as cultural critique). It is no wonder that parents, faced with thongs for 8-year-olds and Bratz dolls’ ”passion for fashion,” fill their daughters’ closets with pink sateen; the innocence of Princess feels like a reprieve.

”But what does that mean?” asks Sharon Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael’s College. ”There are other ways to express ‘innocence’ — girls could play ladybug or caterpillar. What you’re really talking about is sexual purity. And there’s a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It’s to hot, sexy pink — exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid.”

Lamb suggested that to see for myself how ”Someday My Prince Will Come” morphs into ”Oops! I Did It Again,” I visit Club Libby Lu, the mall shop dedicated to the ”Very Important Princess.”

Walking into one of the newest links in the store’s chain, in Natick, Mass., last summer, I had to tip my tiara to the founder, Mary Drolet: Libby Lu’s design was flawless. Unlike Disney, Drolet depended on focus groups to choose the logo (a crown-topped heart) and the colors (pink, pink, purple and more pink). The displays were scaled to the size of a 10-year-old, though most of the shoppers I saw were several years younger than that. The decals on the walls and dressing rooms — ”I Love Your Hair,” ”Hip Chick,” ”Spoiled” — were written in ”girlfriend language.” The young sales clerks at this ”special secret club for superfabulous girls” are called ”club counselors” and come off like your coolest baby sitter, the one who used to let you brush her hair. The malls themselves are chosen based on a company formula called the G.P.I., or ”Girl Power Index,” which predicts potential sales revenues. Talk about newspeak: ”Girl Power” has gone from a riot grrrrl anthem to ”I Am Woman, Watch Me Shop.”

Inside, the store was divided into several glittery ”shopping zones” called ”experiences”: Libby’s Laboratory, now called Sparkle Spa, where girls concoct their own cosmetics and bath products; Libby’s Room; Ear Piercing; Pooch Parlor (where divas in training can pamper stuffed poodles, pugs and Chihuahuas); and the Style Studio, offering ”Libby Du” makeover choices, including ‘Tween Idol, Rock Star, Pop Star and, of course, Priceless Princess. Each look includes hairstyle, makeup, nail polish and sparkly tattoos.

As I browsed, I noticed a mother standing in the center of the store holding a price list for makeover birthday parties — $22.50 to $35 per child. Her name was Anne McAuliffe; her daughters — Stephanie, 4, and 7-year-old twins Rory and Sarah — were dashing giddily up and down the aisles.

”They’ve been begging to come to this store for three weeks,” McAuliffe said. ”I’d never heard of it. So I said they could, but they’d have to spend their own money if they bought anything.” She looked around. ”Some of this stuff is innocuous,” she observed, then leaned toward me, eyes wide and stage-whispered: ”But … a lot of it is horrible. It makes them look like little prostitutes. It’s crazy. They’re babies!”

As we debated the line between frivolous fun and JonBenét, McAuliffe’s daughter Rory came dashing up, pigtails haphazard, glasses askew. ”They have the best pocketbooks here,” she said breathlessly, brandishing a clutch with the words ”Girlie Girl” stamped on it. ”Please, can I have one? It has sequins!”

”You see that?” McAuliffe asked, gesturing at the bag. ”What am I supposed to say?”

On my way out of the mall, I popped into the ” ‘tween” mecca Hot Topic, where a display of Tinker Bell items caught my eye. Tinker Bell, whose image racks up an annual $400 million in retail sales with no particular effort on Disney’s part, is poised to wreak vengeance on the Princess line that once expelled her. Last winter, the first chapter book designed to introduce girls to Tink and her Pixie Hollow pals spent 18 weeks on The New York Times children’s best-seller list. In a direct-to-DVD now under production, she will speak for the first time, voiced by the actress Brittany Murphy. Next year, Disney Fairies will be rolled out in earnest. Aimed at 6- to 9-year-old girls, the line will catch them just as they outgrow Princess. Their colors will be lavender, green, turquoise — anything but the Princess’s soon-to-be-babyish pink.

To appeal to that older child, Disney executives said, the Fairies will have more ”attitude” and ”sass” than the Princesses. What, I wondered, did that entail? I’d seen some of the Tinker Bell merchandise that Disney sells at its theme parks: T-shirts reading, ”Spoiled to Perfection,” ”Mood Subject to Change Without Notice” and ”Tinker Bell: Prettier Than a Princess.” At Hot Topic, that edge was even sharper: magnets, clocks, light-switch plates and panties featured ”Dark Tink,” described as ”the bad girl side of Miss Bell that Walt never saw.”

Girl power, indeed.

A few days later, I picked my daughter up from preschool. She came tearing over in a full-skirted frock with a gold bodice, a beaded crown perched sideways on her head. ”Look, Mommy, I’m Ariel!” she crowed. referring to Disney’s Little Mermaid. Then she stopped and furrowed her brow. ”Mommy, do you like Ariel?”

I considered her for a moment. Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ll never really know. In the end, it’s not the Princesses that really bother me anyway. They’re just a trigger for the bigger question of how, over the years, I can help my daughter with the contradictions she will inevitably face as a girl, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. Maybe the best I can hope for is that her generation will get a little further with the solutions than we did.

For now, I kneeled down on the floor and gave my daughter a hug.

She smiled happily. ”But, Mommy?” she added. ”When I grow up, I’m still going to be a fireman.”

– by Peggy Orenstein, for the New York Times Magazine (December 2006)

Posted by lukewho on 2007-01-01 19:50:52

Tagged: , fremont , christmas , 2006 , jacinto , princess , disney

The post A Princess Diary appeared first on Good Info.

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leanderparrish-archive-blog · 7 years

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OOC Day 6

Your first RP:

Our Legacy :) Back before the werewolves were a thing and I just had my little red-headed snake and my hyper sexual ravenclaw

Other RPs you were in:

I’ve tried to be in various others, but didn’t really stick with them. Some of my favorites include: A Series of Unfortunate Events in which I was Kit Snicket, A modern Disney one where I was Hades, A mythology rp where I was Persephone, A Prometheus/alien rp where I was just a guard or something but it was nice

I think the trend with all of these is that they closed before I burned out, so I feel like incomplete and I didn’t get closure

I was also in the House of Wolves rp where a lot of us went after Ol closed in which I played Ava (again) and made another character named Quinn and I actually really loved her

Also in Teddy’s Percy Jackson-esque/mythology rp and I loved that too but school was overwhelming so i had to stop rping in general for a while

Also I want to give a shout out to this really cool innovative rp that I was in where the paintings in hogwarts had like come to life and began to like remember more things about their past lives and make new memories and etc it was amazing. I was Rowena Ravenclaw and I made this really cool painting edit of a picture of Deepika Padukone for my theme and I loved it

Your first character:

Ava. my sweet summer child, so sweet, didn’t deserve the life I gave her

Your favourite character that you’ve ever RP’d as:

I was in a series of unfortunate events rp as Kit Snicket for a hot second and I really loved that actually. And a disney characters in real life sort of one where I played Hades with a Tom Hiddlestom fc and that was probably the fastest I had connected with a character, like ever, but pro

Your favourite FC to use:

I don’t like to reuse FC’s because I tend to associate the actor with my character so it would be hard for me to reuse a character face. That being said, my Kit Snicket, Sarah Gadon, is gorgeous and I would love to make a character with her again so i can continue to look at her face

FCs you have used:

I had to go into my folder for this because I was in so many little ones that I forget them all

Kathryn Prescott, Anna Kendrick, Ezra Miller, Sarah Gadon, Lauren Cohan, Andreja Pejic, Chris Evans, Deepika Padukone (10/10 would roleplay again, I made another character with her face too because I love it so much, but then Carlie’s Marauder’s Era rp closed so...), Dena Kaplan, Diana Agron, Emily Rose, Evanna Lynch, Freida Pinto, Harry Shum jr, Julie Andrews, Kat Dennings, Katie McGrath (MY Persephone!), Ksenia Solo, Penelope Cruz, Shay Mitchel, Tatiana Maslany, Tom Hiddleston, Tristain Wilds, Troian Bellasario, Jason Momoa, Lindsey Morgan, Tyler Blackburn, Allison Scagliotti

FCs that have been absolutely ruined for you (no offense intended to anyone playing them right now though):

I haven’t been like ruined in the sense that I hate the character, but I literally can’t, I CAN NOT, look at Andrew Garfield’s face without thinking KELLER and it’s a struggle because when I try to reference the Amazing Spider man I can’t remember Andrew’s name and just have to say the-not-tobey-mcguire-one

Your dream RP/an RP you’d like to join or make:

I’d love to be in a series of unfortunate events rp that doesn’t close in the first 3 weeks it opened

I’ve been in a few superhero rp’s that don’t take off and I think I’d like to make something like that, if I were to make an rp, but I imagine that there might be a lot more in recent years because of marvel but i haven’t checked recently

Do you prefer to admin or be a player?

never been an admin but i feel like that’s too much responsibility for me plus I never finish anything so my rp wouldn’t make it off the ground

What personality type do you think you play best?

I think I play happy characters really well. And I like playing the strong silent characters that have the ~dark past~ but sometimes I get too dark with thea so I prefer happier characters

A character (or character type) you’d like to play in the future:

I’ve never played the stuck-up/pretentious/rich kid tyoe so that would be cool to play, but I think that I would be irritated very easily with the character

Do you think your writing has improved through roleplaying?

oh for sure. I kind of really wasn’t that good when I first started, and then after consistently for (2?) years I was able to improve my writing vastly. I actually feel like my dream of someday writing a book really could be within grasp due to roleplaying and having to plot with people and develop characters and everything

Gif chats or paras?

I like gif chats because I get to look at faces and they are easier, but I also really enjoy inner monologue that i get to do through paras

Have you made any friendships through roleplaying?

Many. I am really bad at keeping in contact with people, but I like having facebooks and tumblrs so I can still keep up with people’s lives

Why did you start roleplaying, and why do you continue to roleplay?

I started roleplaying because I didn’t have a lot of friends in my new town and didn’t really want to make any because I viewed the place I had moved as temporary, so I had a lot of free time and I wanted to write but I wasn’t very good and I wanted to improve my writing

I stayed because I made a lot of really good friends and learned that I really enjoyed writing and want to keep doing it without having to commit to a whole book

If you want to ask me questions, go for it, I’m just really only active in this rp so i’m not sure if any of these questions apply

Questions you can send one another. Include in your response those you’re comfortable answering!

🔟: How many active muses do you have in total?

🔜: Are there any muses you want to add, but aren’t sure about?

👪: Are any relationships between your muses? (friends, family, enemies, etc.)

🎊: Which is your favorite muse?

🎭: With which of your muses can you identify the most?

👄: Which of your muses would probably get sexual with each other, if they met?

💀: Which of your muses would probably fight each other if they met?

🐞: Which is your most childish muse?

🐢: Which is your most mature muse?

👻: Which is your most mischievous muse?

🐜: Which of your muses is the most clever/intelligent/educated one?

🐌: Which of your muses is the least clever/intelligent/educated one?

👰: Which of your muses would you date?

💥: Which of your muses would you fight with?

🐩: Which of your muses is the most loyal?

🐑: Which of your muses is the most peaceful/friendly one?

🐦: Which of your muses is the vainest?

🐎: Which of your muses is the fastest?

🐮: Which of your muses is the strongest?

🐷: Which of your muses is the naughtiest?

🐺: Which of your muses is the most unsocial?

🐹: Which of your muses is the smallest?

🐘: Which of your muses is the tallest?

#olooc #ooc #kari #also if you have questions/comments about the fc's i used throw them at me

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spongeguyandlelouchvibridankia · 4 years

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Christmas Gift

December 24th. 2177.

Steam flew off of the engine as a sleek limousine parked, its shiny hood now submerged in snow.

A click, and the door opened, revealing a grown woman and man, both in grey winter jackets, goggles on to face the harsh snow.

The future always seemed to struggle from excess snow, for some reason. Promises had been made to fix that, but they were not being kept.

The harsh winter continued as the two people walked towards the B.O.T.T building’s door, passing a pamphlet passing green android with suckers on its hands and a moving ramp sidewalk for those who don’t want to use those useless leg things.

The shiny doors opened, revealing a place that seemed to never change, despite a very recent administrative coup: Mr. Block had resigned (and was still MIA) and Ms. Barrier (a hated figure by those who knew her) was very much in charge.

“Attention, all employees: A blizzard will reportedly be striking in 1.5 hours. Alert your close ones and prepare for weather control!”, a voice rang out.

The man sighed. “Weather control? Oh man!”

“You only hate it because we need to schlepp out the weather transformers.”, The woman retorted, pressing the elevator button.

“Whatever. I’m much more interested in checking in on Billy. I can’t believe we inspired him to join the academy!”, The man replied, jubilant. Pride was evident from his behavior.

The woman smiled warmly back. “As am I.”

She then sighed as the new elevator shrunk into a bullet and moved through a tube, a speck amongst hundreds of tiny elevators.

“Let’s just hope his academy days are better than ours…”

The woman was thankful for one thing: Ms. Barrier wouldn’t instruct the boy. At least that wouldn’t damage him.

“That depends: Will he let his legacy hurt him?”, The man said.

The two nodded sadly as the elevator enlargened and arrived

There are a million stories in B.O.T.T.

This one is about Agent Savannah, Agent Brick, and Academy hopeful (and star student, though not in behavior) Billy Decker.

So let’s get on with it!

“Aim!”

20 blasters are aimed at a wall, the target lying “safely” behind it.

“Fingers on the trigger, at the ready!”

19 fingers nervously shake.

1 finger knows just what it’s doing.

A smirk from the only one with confidence, and then 20 shadows on the floor as the camera pans up to show…

A transparent wall.

“You have 5 seconds to look at the target, breath…”

The instructor, with a veiny, throbby face, and a sneer, fixes his coat and barely addresses his students.

“…And succeed.”

19 pairs of eyes dart around and shake as they panic at the time that’s running out.

1 pair is shut tight.

The wall turns solid again.

The guns are at the ready.

19 students continue to worry.

1 yawns.

“And…”

The instructor looks up from his textbook about The Robert Muller Report.

“…Fire!”

20 gunshots, 19 miss…

1, right at the heart.

Billy Decker can do it with his eyes closed.

The only reason he didn’t do it with his back turned was because his instructor would have chewed him out.

Not that he would have listened.

He’d have been too busy hitting on the girls at lunch.

“Excellent, as ever, 75-24-30! The rest of you…”

The instructor scoffed, disgusted. “Are beneath my level to even be insulted. All of you better improve! There will be perfection in my classroom!”

19 students got out of their battle armor and walked off, depressed.

Billy Decker whistled merrily as he began to leave the room, only to encounter…

“And I thought it might actually be better…”, she commented.

“She is in charge. She probably asked them to be assholes.”, he replied.

“Agent Savannah? Agent Brick?”

Billy was normally extremely confident, but there was something about seeing the two agents who had recommended him and had given him a chance to be more that made him more modest.

More humble.

Saluting passionately, he couldn’t help but grin. “I didn’t realize you were checking up on us. What do you think?”

The new agents uniforms were definitely different. Once, the agents were tasked with formal wear (or in Cavendish and Dakota’s case, time appropriate wear).

But part of the countless recent changes Barrier had offered were to update the uniforms to give a sense of unity to the agents, and a sense of security to the public.

“We nearly lost everything when Fisk almost killed Professor Time.”, she reminded the board when she arrived. “Times are changing… So we must to.”

Still, Savannah and Brick found the pure white outfits that shined and shimmered a bit much.

“You won’t believe how hard it is to polish these things!”, Billy joked, his ginger hair almost as bouncy as his freckles.

“I can believe.”, Brick said as he saw a dirty one pass by in the hall.

Stepping in to the radiated room, Brick and Savannah surprisingly didn’t feel comfortable enough to take off their jackets.

The sound of footsteps alerted the attention of the instructor, who looked up from his book with glazed eyes.

“Agent Brick…”, he greeted, as the top agents stood next to him, towering, yet not in charge.

Savannah stared at the instructor, but silence was all she needed to know that change was still not in currency.

Chairs rose from beneath them, holes opening up in the ground to allow them to sit on rigid, wooden chairs.

From above, more holes, now in the ceiling, dropping refreshments.

Billy’s look of idolization was not shared.

Brick and Savannah found all this a bit…

Odd.

Different.

And not in a good way.

But now was time for something else.

The instructor sighed and put his book away, a bookmark materializing on the right page the moment he put it down.

“I assume you’re here to see how 75-24-30 is progressing?”

Savannah scoffed and Brick gulped. She’d been uneased the moment they entered, and she clearly didn’t like this new look.

“He has a name, Mr. Spacer.”

She suddenly leaned forwards, eyes full of electricity.

“As do I…”

But Mr. Spacer ignored that last statement.

“Very well. Trainee Decker, why don’t you tell them how you’re doing?”

His slimy smile was a mirrored contrast to the worried frowns of the two adults and the cocky grin of the boy.

“Why, I’m kicking ass! I’ve aced every exam they’ve given me, I’m a natural with a blaster, and I’ve studied 10 cycles!”

Brick and Savannas were now gaping. This was extraordinary!

Speechless, they let Mr. Spacer do the rest.

“With some more guidance, he’ll graduate by February.”, he said, clearly pleased with how things were developing.

“Billy! You the man!”, Brick congratulated, high fiving the kid, but Savannah was less enthused.

“That’s the fastest it’s ever been! Even Barrier was…”

“I know, I know it’s the fastest ever.”, Spacer replied, getting serious.

He leaned close, taking the woman in front of him seriously for the first time. “But trust me: I don’t exaggerate about these things. He is not miles, he’s leagues ahead of the rest here.”

He looks uneasy, almost concerned over what he’s seeing. “I…”

His eyes blink rapidly, his fingers drum. “I… I haven’t seen such raw talent in years.”

Mr. Spacer had been teaching almost since Barrier, and since being promoted to main instructor last month, he had been delighted with his star pupil.

But such strength was worrying, even for those with dubious intentions.

Savannah calculated this, fearful thoughts passing her mind as Brick continued to catch up with Billy, asking him if his girl tips helped.

Billy’s skills were evident. She had seen the demonstration.

But graduating after only 3 months?

And with the new people in charge…

She and Dakota were very much concerned about the direction the Bureau was taking. She had personal interest, true…

But something felt odd about this whole place. About Barrier, about the new armor, the new policies…

Block had been a failure, true…

But perhaps they had jumped from the frying pan and into the fire.

Savannah remembered her education, Brick’s education, Dakota and Cavendish’s educations…

Billy was being treated significantly better…

But something didn’t feel right.

And Billy’s ego was unfortunately quite inflated, as she observed while she and Brick walked down with him to his dorm room to collect his things.

Even B.O.T.T allowed winter breaks, and Billy was excited to go back home to his family.

“I can’t wait to see their faces!”, he shouted out as he ran inside, riding his skateboard for no reason to reach for his already made suitcase.

He hadn’t even noticed the poor saps he had pushed out of the way in the halls, or the guy carrying a really heavy suitcase that had asked him for help.

He definitely didn’t notice his gross and overfilled sink.

Brick chuckled at Billy’s excitement, but Savannah nudged him, making a “Do as I say” look.

Brick nodded, unsure of where this was going, but willing to follow her lead.

A marked contrast from the past. He allowed himself a moment of self pride before refocusing.

Billy, meanwhile, was busy collecting his action figures of Milo Murphy, Melissa Chase, Zack Underwood, Perry the Platypus and Phineas and Ferb Flynn-Fletcher, and eating a half eaten sandwich from the morning.

“Isn’t this great, guys? I’m finally doing something with my life, making friends, getting all the gals, not getting shit from adults!”

He grinned at them as they stood in the opening to the messy yellow-orange room, B.O.T.T propaganda posters everywhere, and a blaster sitting on a pedestal above his bed.

“I’m finally living up to the family name!”

He hesitated, then hugged them.

“And all because of you!”

“Billy… We don’t think you’re ready for graduation.”, Savannah said, and Brick, not 100% sure, but having noticed the signs, nodded too.

Billy’s face was now filled with confusion, even shock. “…What?”

A few minutes later…

“Too arrogant?!”, he shouted, kicking a janitor’s broom to the ground.

“Hey! I need that, kid!”, the janitor called out, and Billy (after ignoring the janitor) sighed as he leaned back on the desk, joined only by fellow 17 year old recruit and precocious nerd girl Penelope Parker.

She looked at him with wide eyes from her glasses, encouraging as ever. “How’s kicks, Billy? I heard you really nailed it at target practice!”

Billy scoffed, crossing his arms. “Yeah, but apparently I’m not good enough!”

Penelope sighed and asked an unnecessary question. “Your mentors not happy?”

“They don’t think I’m ready. To full of myself, something about “dangerous enviorment” or some junk like that.”

Billy’s anger was soon replaced with disappointment. For years he felt like a wanderer, lost and confused, meaningless.

When he was sent here, he felt like there was a reason for him to live! Finally, he was making a man of himself!

What was he doing wrong? Why was he again not good enough?

Was it fate? Was he destined to never live up to his great ancestor?

Billy sighed again and began to walk off. “I’m clearly good enough! You’ve seen me in training, I’m more talented than all of them put together!”

Penelope blushed softly. “You ARE pretty cool…”

She then put a comforting hand on his shoulder, which cooled him down for some reason. “But I don’t think they’d say it with no reason. I’m sure they’ve got your best interest at heart.”

Despite only knowing them for a month, Billy agreed. Maybe he just needed some time to think.

“Besides…”, Penelope added, a little shyly now. “It’s only been a month and you’re already going. I’ll miss you.”

Billy smiled at her, putting an arm around her. “I’ll miss you too, Pen! You’re my best friend here!”

Penelope didn’t mind being friendzoned, she knew it would take him time to realize. He was fast in everything but what was under his nose.

Besides, as if being just friends was a terrible punishment! She was there for him, couple or not!

Billy took another breath, as a tiny dust killing microbes walked over his feet.

Maybe some fresh air would clear his journey up.

“I think I need a walk. Find where I’m standing, you know?”

“Sure thing!”

Penelope saw him walk away, and called out “Will you be singing up to the minecraft server later? I gotta rant to you about the new Weirdo Squad movie!”

“Dude, if I’m not, I’m dead!”, he called back and laughed.

Finally, he opened the doors and left, the snow greeting him coldly.

Sighing, Penelope took out her tool kit to prepare for Time Vehicle repair lessons.

Looking at her compass/phone/toaster, she smiled sadly at the picture of her ancestor.

“Oh, great-great-great-great-great grandmother. I wish that Billy wouldn’t worry so much. As you said, you can solve any problem if you stay calm.”

The picture of Veronica didn’t respond. But it didn’t need to.

Unlike Billy, Penelope wasn’t afraid of her legacy. She embraced the lessons of old and mixed in the experience of the new.

Sitting in the bus stop, Billy Decker felt cold.

But not because of the snow.

After all, all bus stops had now personal heaters, little suns that could be turned on and off.

It wasn’t malfunctioning: he was just feeling bad.

“First mom and dad, then Brick and Savannah…”

Billy sighed as he looked up at the tallest building in sight, the one and only Decker Foundation building, its namesake’s statue looking down at him with much judgment.

“It seems like I just let everybody down. Even you, great-great-great-great-great grandfather.”

Billy green winter wardrobe was weathering the storm mostly well, but he was still feeling sniffly as the daily announcements came through.

Great. More reasons to feel lesser.

“It’s 16:45 and we are proud to announce that major developments have occurred in the field of science! Our head researcher Esteban Lopez has managed to finally destroy Pizzazium Infanionaite, the most dangerous of elements! Fernando, as you know, is the great-great-great-great-great grandson of Amanda Lopez, former president of the United States, founder of Lopez Enteprises and savior of the universe! He’s clearly living up to the name!”

The voice almost taunted him as it said “Are you?”

Billy sighed and buried his head in his hands, feeling like shit.

How could he ever make a difference? How could he ever be more than the great-great-great-great-great grandson of Elliot Decker?

Snow continued to fall, and Billy looked around him.

He didn’t understand why they didn’t think he was good enough.

Cocky? Perhaps.

A little full of himself? Maybe.

But he was killing it! Did he not deserve some praise?

How was he not ready?

What was missing?

“Sir?”

Billy just didn’t understand. He put a thumb to his chin and thought.

It wasn’t ground work, he had already passed some simulations.

“Sir? Hello? Sir?”

It definitely wasn’t weapons or physical fitness, he rocked that!

“Sir? Yoo hoo!”

The outfit? No, bossing that as well. Seriously, he was perfect, what could be possibly…

“SIR! HEY! I’M TALKING HERE!”

Billy jumped up and hit his head, immediately being offered a first aid kit from a robotic arm hidden in the bus stop.

Rejecting it, he looked over at the little kid, no more than 8, who sat next to him.

Billy wasn’t used to this. He wondered if the kid would talk like the ones in the movies, “W”’s instead of “R”’s and everything.

“…Sup!”

Never mind.

Billy shrugged and put his arms behind his head, trying to create an illusion of confidence. “I’m pretty wizard. How’s you, little man? Shouldn’t be out here all alone.”

“Oh, I’m only here on a job, which blows.”

“Hear, hear.”, Billy said, and the two fist bumped.

The coconut haired kid and Billy continued to sit, not saying much.

“What’s your job?”, he asked.

“I’ll tell, but first I gotta know if you’d actually help me.”

Billy raised an eyebrow. “Whaddaya mean?”

The kid rolled his eyes and pointed at people passing by. “This whole utopia thing is nice until you actually need someone to act like a member of it. Bunch of jackasses have completely ignored me so far.”

Billy felt like there was a chance here! He’d prove his heroism and get graduated this evening!

AND THEN HE’D GET CHRISTMAS PRESENTS! IT WAS A WIN IN EVERY WAY!

Putting on his cockiest grin, he stood up and bowed.

“At your service, my liege! I am the next biggest hero of the universe, Billy Decker!”

He took out a pretend gun and slipped on his emergency pair of sunglasses.

“Super spy…”, he whispered, cooly.

“…Noice. Here, check this out, Mr. Decker.”

The kid handed his business card, and Billy read over it, only to be very surprised.

He was expecting something cool, and dangerous, and exciting, like a volcano inside an atom bomb, or shaolin monk sharks, or cyborg librarian pirates.

Not…

“…A soup kitchen?”

The kid nodded, now feeling a little less confident. “As I said, Utopia’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Some of us are still trying to get there.”

Billy hadn’t even realized that people still needed to be fed in the future. All around him he saw and heard of amazing successes.

How come this wasn’t solved?

At first, Billy felt bad for the kid and whoever else needed the kitchen’s help.

He couldn’t even begin to imagine having no food at all, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine having to hope that someone makes it for you.

And on Christmas Eve?

It just felt wrong.

It felt almost evil.

Who let this happen?

But…

Well…

“Gee, I want to help, but…”

Billy felt a little weird. Wasn’t this beneath him? He was supposed to stop world wars and shit, not feed the poor!

He was supposed to be up to his armpits with beautiful women and explosions, not the hungry and needy!

Besides, he definitely didn’t want to spend his evening making food and washing dishes for a bunch of strangers!

I mean, what kind of action movie would that be?

Billy didn’t want to be a jerk…

“Hard pass.”, he said, and he gave the card back to a very annoyed kid.

“Jesus, what a prick!”, the kid went, but Billy didn’t notice as he began leaving.

At first, Billy felt a bit bad. That kid looked like he needed to eat, and he was sure the others did too.

But no one told him this was in the job description!

He was supposed to do cool stuff, not hard stuff!

Maybe if he’d just think about something else, it would help.

Billy’s heart began to guilt trip him, asking him how could a hero turn down those in need, but Billy was not ready for this, so he took his phone and stared at the black screen for a few seconds, hoping that just the task of looking at the device would help.

Of course, reality struck as Billy collided into a door.

“OW!”, he cried out, and as he looked up he saw…

“Great-great-great-great-great grandpa…”

Brilliant. Just what he needed. A guilt trip 159 years in the making.

Billy tried to avert his eyes but he found himself powerless.

He tried to ignore his concionse, but it was knocking hard at his gates, calling and calling.

The image of sad, hungry people, with no family, no support, no friends…

No life…

Billy knew what it was like to feel sad, and he had a loving family, great mentors and friends all around!

Even when he was being scolded he was surrounded with support!

These guys didn’t even have enough to eat.

Billy looked up at an impossible to surmount legacy.

How could he ever be a hero, when Elliot Decker existed?

…How could he ever be a hero if he acted like a total dickhead?

Billy truly wanted to do the right thing…

Maybe the right thing wasn’t always what he wanted to do…

But what he needed to do…

Standing up and clenching his fists, Billy looked inside himself.

What was the right thing to do?

He so wanted to do something else…

To sit in bed and feel sorry for himself…

But, as he made his mind up, he realized…

“It’s the right thing to do…”

And a sense of… Duty took over him. A sense of goodwill.

Later that evening, people were fed. People were happy.

People had a Christmas Eve they wouldn’t have had if it wasn’t for him.

And while no adoring crowds were around, Billy felt a warmth in his heart.

Perhaps being a hero was more than being loved and feeling worthy.

Perhaps, being a hero was about all of us.

And for the first time in his education, Billy Decker felt as if he could really make a difference.

So he smiled.

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