#grappling hook arrow

[blumineck]

One of my greatest joys in this life is bringing reality to things that have no right to actually work! And the best way to do that is to understand /why/ they shouldn't work.

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#fantasy #archery #archer #nerd #trick shot #boxing glove arrow #grappling hook arrow

[dankovskaya]

:D what did you think of separate ways!!!!!

Helppppppp I can't even give my proper thoughts on it because there was like. Half a year between me playing the first 4 chapters and the last 3 so I straight up don't remember a lot of the beginning of it but. Overall I enjoyed it 💞 all of her interactions with Luis especially were fun and I thought it was funny that by the end of it Luis clearly objectively had a larger impact on her than Leon ever has 💀 even if it's still only slightly. Also I saw u talking about that moment with Ashley and it was so kshgslgnlsdngs my brother and I both went HUH? in unison when it happened. I think I wasted like 15 seconds on the timer just standing there wondering what the point of that was 😭😭😭 LOOOOOVED the laser room shit btw.

#Idk how I feel about the insect guy and her having a unique parasite and also Wesker not caring that she went rogue at the end #because. he really wanted the insect guy? #All i Know is grapple hook go brrrrr. Blast arrow go BOOM💥 #ask #ok wait when Luis calls while leon and krauser are fighting and then you even hear the end of the fight. #I thought that was deeply unnecessary 😭 it just felt very Haha remember when that happened xDD! #AS always Ada is the best character in the franchise and if the next mainline game is not about her I am going to start sending packages :-

[redflagshipwriter]

Hot Ghouls in your area ch 5 part 1 of 2

Masterpost

Jason found himself back in the real world (the human world?) in fuckin Star City. Christ. Luckily, his electronics came on line. They weren’t fried, then. He looked up the nearest zeta tube and booked it over there, not eager to get caught in another hero’s city.  The worst part would be that Batman would inevitably smooth it out on his behalf and go growl at Queen for having the audacity to try to arrest him. Jason did not need to get bailed out by his asshole Dad, thanks. 

He wasn’t worried about Green Arrow and his crew per se, but it would be a shitstorm he didn’t need even if he managed to get out. 

Not when he was so laden down with books that he had unfolded both dufflebags stored in his suit, for fuckin sure. Sure, they’d make phenomenal weapons if he swung ‘em around, but the books deserved better than that. 

His comm forced itself on as soon as he came through to Gotham.

“You’re back!” Barbie said, breathless. “You’re alive? Right?”

Jason snorted. The street he stepped onto wasn’t fully dark yet. Patrol probably hadn’t started. “I’m alive,” he confirmed. “How long was I gone?”

“About ten hours,” she said.

Oh. Jason pursed his lips. It wasn’t dusk, it was dawn. “Tonight must have been fun,” he said lightly. 

She laughed darkly. “You’re about to find out how fun it was.”

He stopped in his tracks. “Hey, no-”

Oracle opened up a line to what was probably every vigilante in Gotham city. “Hood is back and safe,” she announced, gleeful about throwing him to the wolves. “He’s on 2nd and Grim, for anyone who wants to drop by and tell him how much they missed him.” 

Jason cursed a blue streak and started off at a dead sprint as he reached for his grappling hook. It was a lot slower than usual since he was swinging two enormous bags of books. …Could he even grapple with these? Goddamn. He’d be over the weight limit. He cursed even harder and put the hook back.

“Heading west,” Oracle said cheerfully, and then clicked off a bare instant before he manually mashed the damn power button on his setup. Nope, nope, nope, he was not dealing with this shit tonight. 

He made it about four blocks and was so goddamn close to a safehouse (one of Bruce’s, but he could put it on lockdown) when a wailing blue and black blur emerged from the skies.

“We thought you died,” Nightwing warbled at him. Jesus fucking christ, he had been crying. His face was wet. Jason tried to duck away but he was too laden. He struggled against the hold for a few futile seconds before he went limp.

Dick sniffled into his chest. 

“Shut up,” Jason said, shoulders nearly up to his ears. He didn’t need to hear any criticism of how he had handled that cult situation, or any grieving about how this had made people think of the time he got brutally beaten to death. 

“I’m not saying anything,” Dick mumbled. He gave one more squeeze before withdrawing. “Huge relief to see you in the-what do you have there?” He dove down into the bags of books before Jason could kick him away. He was already prying the bag open by the time he asked. Jason tried to pull it away but it was impossible to keep Dick’s grabby hands out of your business.

“He went to a library,” Nightwing announced to the comms, outraged. “We thought he was dead and he went to a library!”

Someone laughed loudly on the comms. The brat turned on his comms explicitly to scoff.

“Did you rob a library?” Dick’s voice went high. “There’s so much here!” He flipped things around. “There- these are the same book? Hood, why do you have so many copies of the same book?”

“They’re not the same,” Jason snapped. “Get your grubby hands off of them!” He took his things back and edged away, glowering at his dumb asshole brother. “If you came to gawk, you did it, so now fuck off. You can clearly see that I am fine.”

“Jason,” Batman rasped, like the goddamn creep he was. Jason spun to see that he’d come up from behind. He lurched closer. He looked like hell. His knuckles were bloody and his pulse was jumping in his throat.

“No names in masks,” Jason snapped. He put his hands up to keep Bruce at a distance. “That’s your own rule, old man!”

It was no use. He endured the bullshit while his dumbass Dad made sure he wasn’t dead again, but he drew the line at letting Bruce clutch him and probably sob under his sweaty cowl like a weirdo. 

“I should have stayed there,” Jason grumbled. He patted at Bruce’s back. “There, there, asshole. You’re fine.”

#red hot ghouls #dp x dc #dc x dp #dead on main #dc fanfic

[ganondoodle]

it may not look like it but this took a long time to make

heres a rough ability breakdown for the totk rewrite project (i know its hard to read in the pic so let me clear it up and add some extra info)

theres two ability wheels now, sages are not frame rate killing glitch ghosts around you but their abilities are selected through the wheel on the right (pic is rough concept, it is clearer what is selected and what isnt + it has names in final version, symbols are placeholders as well) and bound to the player, when you acitvate it an aura appears similar to the arm abilities and their ghostly form appears besides you, charging or firing when you hit A while the ability is active

SHIEKAH ARM WHEEL

ANALYZE: zelda tells you info about targeted enemy/NPC, it gives you info about it and informs you more dynamically about important things than the foto-entries do

FOTO its fotos :) zelda joins selfies tho and does silly poses with you

REWIND: functions like the time recall in canon, but this time it is a more developed version of stasis instead

AMIIBO: its ... amiibo

HOOKSHOT: grab onto anything (perhaps restricted but not yet decided), you pull yourself+zelda to heavy stuff, light weight objects are pulled to you (including light enemies like bats or small slimes) grab onto something and hold onto it, usable like a vine (think, ww grappling hook) but with limited duration (battery power?)

AUTOBUILD: like in canon but it uses luminous stones if material isnt all there (or other material you put out to so its more versatile and you are more aware of what you have, no accidental spending then)

BUILD: similar to canon, but no glue (it kinda just fuses with no extra graphic unless pehaps like a bolt or sth), you put stuff together anyway you want; build is also used for weapons (no extra ability needed), you just build a weapon on the ground and pick it up afterwards (it has to be a weapon handle part and then sth else to it, otherwise it wont turn into a weapon)

INFUSE: infuse somethign with ancient energy, useless on normal objects usually(?) but reactivates broken or deactivated tech like elevators and doors; used to dynamically access caves and especially labs (labs serve a similar function as shrines, they are old shiekah labs that broke over time, puzzles are diverse things like traversal and little quests in which you help the researcher ghosts of the people that died in these labs (by the calamity, earthquakes, accidents, or killed by the royal army when their tech was banned and they refused to give it up)

SAGE WHEEL:

WIND GUST: same as in canon

LIGHT SHIELD/LIGHT LASER: zelda uses a shield of light to protect herself in combat, it does not affect the player (or perhaps only when you happen to be within range, which is small, this is more a character thing for her than useful for you) for the player through the selection wheel; aim and tell her to shoot a light laser like rauru did in the moldora cutscene in canon totk (a bit more dynamic) it deals very high damage to anything hit but has the highest cooldown of all abilities; deals extra damage to miasma enemies

THUNDERSTRIKE: similar as in canon, it charges through you however (so the charging only gets stopped if YOU shoot an arrow or get hit)

FIRE .. BOOM THING: similar as in canon but yuno has a little animation of daruks shield around him again :)

YIGA TELEPORT/KOGA CLONES (undecided yet): A: target a location in range and koga grabs you like a naughty kitten and teleports you both to the targetted location, you spawn in a little above ground giving you time to either perform a bullet time move or a sword attack from above B: summons a bunch of koga clones that serve as a distraction for enemies and combat support, they die in one hit (reference to kogas and monk moz kyoshias similar moveset; since there are no sage ghosts around you all the time and a max of two companions (zelda always, sage in sage dungeon) it serves as a replacment for that)

WATER ...WELL(?): sidon gives you a shield of water, elemental effect is applied to weapon and lasts as long as the shield does no matter how many times you attack; if it is hit by an enemy it breaks but you dont take damage; if the shield lasts it entire duration without getting hit it it grants you a percentage of your missing health back upon dissolving (ref to mipha healing powers anyone??)

im open to constructive feedback but overall im quite happy of makign it work out like that, although there are quite a few things that need polish i think this is both realistic and works well with what else i have been writing; remember tho, this is my rewrite so im undoing the things i dont like, like riju never being there when you need her bc she runs right up to the enemy and her losing her charge bc she keeps getting knocked over + overall uselessness of minerus robot (to me)

(totk rewritten project)

#ganondoodles #zelda #art #tloz #loz #totk #ganondoodles rewrites totk #this took me so long omg #i hope this all is somehwat cool #i liked the idea of all the abilities being a thing you can swap on the fly but i couldnt get it to work with the controls #and putting it all into one wheel would be hell to try and select anything #so you choose a wheel with left stick and the ability with right stick #of course the wheel that isnt selected turn grey and all that and it will get a better look too #this is a mock up after all #... took alot of brain juice to try and balance it how i liked #hope you like it too :D

[rel124c41]

CHILDREN OF THE O.D.D. alastor

In his seven years of absence, Alastor calls on you and collects you.

tags: radio, literary references, developing relationship, temporary amnesia, mental torture, alastor love you but can’t resist causing a little emotional damage, wendigo, dark magic, hurt/comfort

word count: 10,716

It was not your intention to make any sort of detour after work. Always the string of home pulled you back in like a faithful dog returning to the outstretched hand. You trudge, like a ghost shackled by unfinished business, to the space underneath your shower head. To watch ebony red and wood brown slip into the drain; the filth of blood under fingernails and the sleeves of dirt upon your arms ebbing away.

This detour is unexpected and odd. Breaking a cycle that you had never strayed from, it is undernerving to you. Still –You put your fingers over your lips and frown. You are looking for something; that is as much as you are able to deduct. 

The homemade yard-sale sign is crumbled and ruined. A slab of cardboard folding in on itself because of the rain from yesterday. In streaks, the markers bleed like branching veins across the surface. You actually took a wrong turn because one of the arrows was so wet that you could not decipher if you were meant to walk right or forward. The skies still remain a blanket of nebulous gray and black, thick with potential rain.

Really, you should head home and ignore this detour, you judge just as you step into the backyard sale. Logic tries as it might, you are grappled by this ardor. Entering the mouth, you realize you are here, looking for something. Something that has leashed you subconsciously.

Yard-sales hold a wild assortment of things: dusty books, a splintering wooden bow with arrows included, outgrown clothes, etcetera. An evil secret here or there? You chuckle at the ridiculous thought. 

Rummaging around in dirt was your past-time, rummaging around in strangers’ belongings felt unusual. Mindful of your unclean hands, you simply float around the tables and piles of things. When someone lingers behind you, you move quickly because you are browsing while others are hunting. Truly, you do not yet know what you are planning to sink your teeth into. Your little routine continues, floating around and bouncing out of the way when it looks like someone is interested in the pile you stand in front of. Deeper and deeper, you wander into the labyrinth of unwanted things. 

Perhaps you could pick up something for Alastor. That harrowing need to find something was starting to dim inside you. 

Just as you start browsing for him, that feeling returns tenfold. The peach pit of your stomach feels like a mixture of drain cleaner and bleach. It burns you. Whatever that something is, it is upset to be ignored and hooks itself into your abdomen pulling. 

“Turn left then straight.”

You jump at the sudden voice. And a shudder runs down your spine because they were close enough that their breath tickled your neck. In the labyrinth’s heart, you glance around for the individual that was talking to you. Hm? No one is looking at you. Everyone is nose down in their own business, browsing tables. 

Tentatively, you rest an ice cold hand on the spot where you definitely felt someone’s breath. Odd. You take a step to the right. 

“Left then straight.” You stumble in your walk as if you were a newborn in heels. 

What? You shake your ankle as you restabilize yourself. It felt as if someone had snatched onto your ankle when you moved. Another shudder joins your first. This time you decide to heed that voice. If your subconscious pulled you into the yard-sale, it can definitely direct you. Different from your previous lazy tumble, you move with purpose to that ‘left then straight’ direction. 

But as you take that left turn, you feel an uneasy cocoon itself over your previous headstrong annoyance. You slow your pace. Those previous sensations had been very odd. Someone’s breath on your neck. Someone’s hands around your ankle. You shudder one last time and move straight, searching.

A slumbering nest of snakes starts to squirm in your stomach. The real snake though – the ouroboros ring on your ring finger – is scorching instead of slittering. Like red hot iron to a horse flank. Knowing it is impossible to take it off, you rub cold fingers over it. Worrying hands joined at your chest, you look left and right for the item that has ensnared you. Long ago, the ouroboros ring had ensnared you in the same way, pulling and tugging at your intestines and bones like a magnet grabbing at its opposite pole.  Remembering that, you grow even more uneasy. 

What are you looking for?

You realize it as soon as your eyes fall on it.

The spiritual itch is finally scratched. The last piece is thumbed into the puzzle. The starved man has finally been given food. Before your mind catches up, you have already reached the plastic folding table and are touching your something. Heat from the ouroboros ring ebbs softly.

The woodwork is beautiful like a stained catholic mural. The single diamond eye of brown bakelite and wood blinks at you, surprised to be touched. Gilded brass is tickled by your experimenting hands as you turn its knobs. Wires spread over the speakers like a spider-made ribcage start to beat flustered at your presence. When you run your fingers over the ridges and arches, it leans into your touch. Though it is an entirely inanimate piece, it has so much character. An authentic radio, probably dated 1910 or 1920s. Worrying a bit about its fragility, you do not dare to pick it up no matter how it pleads and flirts with you to do just that. It is certainly a bewitching beauty. So, this is your something; this is what you were looking for. 

But – a delicate frown moves your lips. You have no use for a radio like this in your home. Heavens know you have enough radios at home. Can this really be what your heart wants? When you move your hands off the woodwork, it feels as if your ring grows a circle of spikes that sink into your skin and collide at your fingerbone. You yelp and quickly put your hands back on the yard-sale item. Your heart does want this … apparently …

“Okay,” you whisper as if that will appease your heart, your subconscious, and your ring – all three holy spirits of your body. “Okay.” Gingerly, you lift up the hulking mass and start back towards the entrance. Well, Alastor can simply deal with another radio. And you are slightly elevated to bring it back home. Elevated enough that when you reach home –

You kick off your shoes by the entrance and sing out, “Alastor, I’m home.”

Radio cradled to your chest, you listen intentionally to the suspicious silence. You wonder how he will greet you this time. Sometimes, there are bumps of furniture or he simply slips in front of you. You can never truly predict Alastor’s moods. He is something volatile; he can either be as sweet as a dream or dangerous as a nightmare. For a few moments, you wait for the other shoe to drop. And when he arrives in your sight, you wear your best smile to greet him. 

“Hi honey,” you say and kneel down. You balance the heavy radio on one of your knees. Reaching out one dirty hand, your faithful cat Alastor nuzzles into the skin, ignoring the dirt and blood. You scratch behind his ears as his purring starts up.

You named him after King Alastor from the game Painkiller: Battle out of Hell. When he was just a kitten, you wrestled with two names Alastor or Asura from another video game. Why did the name of a final boss win over a hero’s name? You had no idea but your heart guided your decision and four years later, it fits your mischievous bengal cat perfectly.

“I know, I know,” you medicate when he starts meowing for food. “I’m twenty minutes late coming home and that means two hours to you. But look Alastor! Another radio! This one is too heavy for you to knock down so it’s perfect.” Your enthusiasm is met by louder caterwauling.

Wilting at Alastor’s lackluster reaction, you gently set the radio on the long dining room table. It was lined with six chairs that no one besides yourself used. On the wooden surface is a Christmas rug-runner and stacks upon stacks of mail asking you to open a new credit card. A few unwashed plates stand in a stack of six, grease of meals shining luminous off them. May’s sun pours in to brighten all of the radios that you have collected on your table. 

Your new radio nestles itself snuggly into your little home. Though you were not able to bargain the price you exactly wanted, you were glad to have it at all. The condition is remarkable for something coming from a yard-sale. Annoyed at your admiration, your bengal cat lays himself over your socks and bites your toes.

“Alastor,” you scold, scooping up your noisy cat. “Be nice to your parents. Where are your manners?”  

With a boop on the nose and a kiss on the cheek, you bring Alastor into the kitchen so you can serve him Purina kitten chow and ruffle his fur when he nuzzles into you. Then you will wash away all your filth and sleep. 

It has been seven days since you bought the radio. 

For something you were so enraptured over, you had no urge to try working with it. The owner remarked that it only works for AM radio broadcasting. After a century, those channels never changed and were opertable during power outages. Their frequency could be picked up anytime, connecting themselves to the skin of your radio like a lovely little kiss. Since no natural disasters were happening, the most entertainment you could get from AM radio was the morning’s traffic. Enthusiasm washed out of you after a week of showers, you found yourself kicking yourself for giving in so easily to temptation. 

“And my more-having would be as a sauce to make me hunger more,” you mutter Macbeth as you lace up your boots. 

Today, your boss has scheduled you and your groundskeeping company to plant a dozen trees outside of a mail office. You enjoyed the small business as a landscaper; being the leader of a whole team had some perks too. 

Louisiana was always pleasantly warm. Never did you have to gripe over blizzards causing traffic nor bringing an extra coat to weather the weather. Most days you manage to just walk to and from the sight your boss assigned. Life was good and life was simple. 

You finished with the final knot on your Timberlands. Hesitantly, you cast a look towards your new radio, standing out among the rest because of its antiquity. Hearing a bit of the weather might be the perfect test to see if the radio worked, if all vacuum tubes and components were clean. Stomping through the kitchen into the adjacent dining room, you quickly turn the gilded knob and wait.

A mimicking hiss of a vexed Alastor and a sizzle of eggs poured into a pan is the first sound your new radio blesses you with. Resolutely, you flicker with the knob. The sound of a million pieces of hail falling on your roof. The singing of a mixed bowl of frequencies. The caterwauling of – oh! You finally found a coherent station.

“With highs reaching ninety, we can expect a beautiful Thursday ahead of us. Now, we do have some cumulonimbus clouds making their way down from the north-east.  That thunderstorm from Mississippi should be reaching us in –” Satisfied, you click off the radio and head out the door. 

“NO! NOOO!” When you are pulled up by the waist, you only scream louder. “NOOOOO!” You scream like a deer with its leg snapped and broken in the jaws of a bear trap, desperate and tormented. 

“(Name)! (Name), stop this! (Name), calm down,” your mother pleads. 

The woman who baked you under her pie crust skin for nine months is devastated to see you so upset. Her own flesh and blood, curled tightly in her arms, wailing like a hunted deer. You cry loudly as if you have broken a bone or been stabbed. “I know, baby. I know,” she tries to console and move your crying face into her neck. A piercing yell in her ear causes her to wilt and shudder. 

“(Name) please.” Your mother has already passed the point of angrily yelling back at you. The crescent shape of her acrylic nails still present on your tiny wrist. Given up that fight, she tries desperately to figure out why you refuse to leave the pawn shop. 

Gore cakes your tiny, wailing face. A scream so loud had one of the vessels in your vocal folds erupting open; a vocal cord hemorrhage which will cost your mother a month of bills for vocal therapy for her four year old child. Red oil glides out and down to vinyl floors. Around the mouthful of blood, you still scream no no no as your mother tries to walk you out.

There are no words to explain what you are experiencing. Even if you were not so young, you doubt that you could relate to anyone what you felt. As the distance between you and entrance grew smaller, a stabbing pain in your gut emerged. A simple tummy-ache. Then it grew. Tummy-ache evolving into a fever; fever blossoming into a stab wound; stab wound maturing into a pain that felt like some invisible hands were trying to tear your soul from your body. When you toed your foot on the entrance, everything exploded in one culmination of white pain and you lost yourself to the possession of something otherworldly. 

Defiant, your limbs move in a hurricaning, thrashing windmill. You squirm like a fly blindly trying to escape out a window as bang bangs of a person’s shoe follow its erratic track. A strong kick into your mother’s pancreas has her stumbling. Relenting, she drops your mercurial body. 

Your mother falls to her own knees with you. She considers telephoning your father, telephoning her own parents, telephoning a medical professional. Anyone who can come and save her: a scared, new mother who has never seen her child act out this.

Hundreds of eyes are staring at the volatile display. Guests who want to enter and buyers who want to leave, all stare at her hunched form as you caterwaul. “I don’t know what’s wrong. I just don’t know what’s wrong,” your mother mutters helplessly. By now she is starting to suspect that you might be seriously injured in a place she cannot see. Something beyond the blood in your mouth. “God please.”

Finally, someone heavensent steps off the background and taps your mother on the shoulder. Her desperation causes her to turn at a neck-breaking speed. 

She never remembers the face or gender of this person when recalling the story. She recalls only a shudder of terror. Spindly and crawling terror, pianoing itself in a rapid flight up her body like a bumblebee. A symphony of fear, she recalls. Gently, the person takes one of the hands she had put around you protectively. In it, a ring is dropped.

An ouroboros ring – the image of a snake eating its own tail. 

Fumbling with disbelief, your mother glances around to see that the person is gone. She sets her sight back on you, worried you might have disappeared along with the person. There you are – all forty inches of you, shivering, water and blood falling down your face in rivulets. She glances helplessly at the ring and then –

When she drops it into your hand, the pain goes away. Yet, stricken by such an endeavor, your eyes roll back in your head. Past the billowing tears and red veins, up and up. Like a puppet cut from strings, you promptly pass out. Squeezed tightly in a rigor mortis grip, the ouroboros ring stays with you. And when you feel that thousand feet plummet into oblivion course through you, your body in the waking world springs up, face stained with warm tears.

That memory again. 

How many times have you dreamed about it?

How many more times will it be in your dreams?

Chilled fingers run across your damp face, drying it. The head of the iron snake kisses a stroke from eyelid to eyelid. You suppose the ring will always remain with you, in dreams and in reality. Tired eyes glance at your bedside alarm clock: 1:11. Trust your intuition and listen to your heart. You climb out of bed, mindful of Alastor even with limited vision.

Often, your body moves disconnected from the kingdom of your mind. Without even being aware of it, you will pull yourself back from danger (a falling tool at the job site, a misplaced nail, etcetera) and chalk it up as extreme good luck. Leaving words unsaid, you laugh at all the random occasions of self-saving, pointing your thanks towards God.  

You are not slow though. After a while, anyone would start to suspect it. You know it is something else other than luck. Something that has shadowed you since birth.  

Pulled towards it like a magnet, you sit on the dining table chair. Everything in your house is shrouded in nebulous dark. Silver light shines down from the moon, past a window’s filter, onto the radio. An evangelical interruption? Like slippery fish-oil, silver glides over the rich brown of a ribcage and heart and skin. The scene looks disrupted like fragments of reflection in a dirty mirror. Sleeping moonlight brushes over your fingers, nuzzling into your ring.

Timidly, you extend a hand and flick on the dial. A short buzzing hum greets you. “Hello?” You turn the knob some more, searching. Your face is still damp from previous tears. “Hello?” And though there should be more than a dozen A.M. frequencies that your radio can tune into, all that you hear is everlasting static.

None of your strawberries tasted like fruit this morning. Where they should be rich with juice flowing in your mouth when you bite, they are dry. It is the entire quart of strawberries that you bought had been replaced with foam copies, a facsimile of themselves.

Everything that has been feeling imitation of itself. Yesterday, you swore there was someone standing behind you while digging a tunnel for a septic tank and distribution box. Yet at each wild turn, no figure was hovering off you. This morning, you woke up dreaming that dream again. You carefully spit your strawberry into a napkin. Ugh, what was happening to you?

When you discard them into the trash-can, Alastor stirs and gives you a look before returning to his food. You nudge him with your foot and move across the kitchen. Leaning down into the fridge, you search for the carton of milk. In the recess of your mind, you halfheartedly listen to your radio.

Your new family member plays something vintage this morning. You had no idea A.M. frequencies did old radio series like this anymore – you had only heard about The War of the Worlds radio drama due to a parody and its natural popularity. In today’s modern age, you thought podcasts were the only echo of radio dramas, a cheap imitation. You luckily caught this radio drama at the very beginning, perhaps only two or three minutes in.

The radio drama was about a husband and wife. Aboard With the Lockharts was the name. The wife, Kathleen Lockhart, had finally persuaded her husband that they would take a cruise to Europe, after some womanly envy, and her husband conceded to come. It is the end of the first episode:

“There we are, dear.”

“You’re the nicest husband a woman ever managed!”

“Well, I-uh I guess every husband would be nice if he had a wife like you. Now, let me study that circular a bit and see what we’re going to get. And, uh, turn on the radio, dear.” A flow of music follows.

The cheapest you can get a gallon of milk in New Orleans is at Aldi’s for only three dollars. You had heard almond-milk was statistically better for your health. As a groundskeeper, you knew maintaining that was entirely important for your job but double the price for a quart rather than a gallon. Well, you knew your –

“Tour Europe with us! Seven glorious countries! Why, you have just started to go aboard with the Lockharts … We thank you for tuning in listeners. The day is May 10th, 1931. The weather forecaster is sunny with –” 

As Alastor stops hissing, angered at how rapidly you run from kitchen to dining room, you hold the knob in your hand tense. Challenging, the eyeball of your radio stares back at you. 1931? 1931, ha. You sigh at your panic. It was probably prerecorded. Even if the day and month were the same, there is no reason to get so out of sorts. Ugh, what was happening to you?

As you towel off yourself, the radio program you had turned on plays. You were so ashamed that you had gotten worked up over nothing. After listening to a few more radio dramas, it turned out that they were cut and played from previous tapes. Of course the dates and times would remain. 

Though why when you used your car, (Name), did you not find that station? Did any other A.M. frequencies play returns of old 1920s and 1930s radio drama, hm?  Not a single one.

You scrub your towel harder into skin, ignoring yourself. There was no intelligent reason to be worked up over a station that played love stories. Love was the least malice part of life after all. Not that you would ever know, you mourned. You got ghosted more than you would like to admit. 

The program on the radio almost seems to mock you:

“Because I love you myself I suppose.”

“You do, Jeanie?” The woman murmurs a yes. “How long has this been going on?”

“Ever since I helped you with that tire.”

“You know maybe that was why I was kind of relieved when Roberta told me we were all washed up.”

“Frank!”

“It’s true. I’ve been kind of dreading marching down that aisle with Roberta for some time now. You know, someone else seemed to fit better into that picture.”

“Who?”

“A hitchhiking blonde I picked up once. She was bound for New York. Funny if she ended up in London on our honeyman.”

“Oh Frank.”

“Oh (Name) darling.”

The towel falls to the ground, heavy with the weight of water it has absorbed off your skin. Nude, you stand with a breath locked and keyed away in your lung. Alastor sleeps soundly on your comforter, ignorant to your distress. You push a hand to your chest, steel band cold on your skin. Yes. It is beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. 

“Go to bed, (Name),” you instruct yourself. 

When all the lights in your house are flicked off, you make sure to put the radio into the kitchen. Your bedroom is right adjacent to the dining room. At least with some distance between you and it, without true separation, you might get some sleep. 

You stare at your ring as you pet up and down Alastor’s spine. Some distance but never fully separated. 

You rush into your home as if someone is chasing you, snapping and swiping at your ankles. “Shit, double shit,” you curse, throwing your closed umbrella down to the ground. Loudly, the door is banged shut to the point where the tiny window on it rattles. Water has soaked you down to the bone marrow. 

“Fucking shit,” you gripe as you take off boots filled with miniature ponds. If only the rain was not coupled with sparks of lightning, you would have been able to use your umbrella. 

Ugh, what a goddamn mess. You strip off the soaked bomber jacket. That depth of rain was so bad for the fabric. Defeated, you hang the Clavin Klein jacket on the nearby hook and go to venture deeper into your home when you pause. 

You had forgotten you left the radio on your kitchen table. The presence of it startles for a quick moment. Surely, the need to strip off the wet clothes you are in wins over. Truthfully, besides a few odd glitches of words, it has been harmless. Falling back into your typical dismissal cope, you move to go into the dining room. 

The power in your house goes out. 

“Double fucking shit.”

A power outage would have been a minor inconvenience if you were not blind. The entirety of your house is cloaked in a nebulous black, not even a flicker of the microwave clock. You pause in your footfall, still as a tree. Hands clenched by your side, you rationalize it all. Lightning must have caused a fallen wire. One of your hand pats around to find a wall. Get to your hung jacket then you can use your phone to navigate in a much clearer fashion. 

You just hoped Alastor would not be causing a fit in the deep sea darkness. “Alastor, honey?” Thankfully, your hand falls on the circular kitchen table. “Alastor?” Slowly, you round the table and start to finger the walls. Just ten or so steps forward and you will be standing right by the entrance. 

Though, Alastor being this quiet was unnerving. You move towards the door – Huh?

The table rattles unsteady as you are pushed into it. “Ugh, what the –.” The breath is punched out. The scream that comes out of you is inhuman and animalistic, full of fear. Groaning muscles wilt as you are thrown into one of your kitchen chairs, seated forcefully. 

You barely recover your mind, barely recover yourself to worry about your safety, when something chills you to the bone.

Up, the scream of an injured cat pierces the formless black innards of this haunted house. It almost sounds fake like a horror movie sound recording. Then the clattering rain of a handful of objects hitting the ground pierces your ears next. Those coupling sounds … the horrible thought that someone has thrown Alastor into something. The horrid, bone-chilling thought that someone is hurting him.

“Alastor!” You jump off the chair, guided by instinct. Swiftly, you are back down in the chair. “Alastor!”

A mimicking hiss of a vexed Alastor stabs the air … except it is not your cat. You know because it sounds like the sizzle of eggs in a pan too. Your bottom lip trembles wildly. Luminous white from a flash of lightning splats onto the kitchen then shrinks away in seconds. You refuse to look at it though. Calm down. AM frequency works during power outages, this radio is unlike your others, you rationalize, but you never turned the knob for it to reach any sort of frequency. 

“...Alastor,” you try again, voice trembling. Oh you stupid cat, just come when called. You sit mournful and yearning that Alastor will come to prove he is safe at the very least. 

Not stuck with silence for long, the radio sings out. The words and instruments broken up by flaking static like kintsugi pottery, a second melody backdropping the noise: Hey, hobo man; hey, Dapper Dan; you've both got your style but brother – then an anguished scream breaks the voice of Donald Craig and the musical number. You shrink into the chair, face aghast and jaw slack. No. No. NO!

You stay silent the entire broadcast, horrified. 

A woman’s voice: “– he gives me the glad news that I have a growth in the back of my eye and he wants to cut it out. Only it’s too close to the brain, and he says if it isn’t cut out, this growth might cut off my sight, and leave me up on the high wiRE –” 

A plea: “GOD HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME! GOOOOD!”

The wail of a pipe organ piano follows this demonic symphony. Rustic and deep, it billows out. Echoes of the sound flicker and decay across your walls; the reverbs are rich and dark like shadows; the start of Bach’s Toccata. 

A man’s voice: “lying on the floor, two feet away, with a broken neck. With a broken neck, and his left hand – Well, he put the golden ring on his little finger of his left hand – the way his arms were spread out –” 

The chugging grind of a car that would not start – stubborn coughs and wheezes – assaults your ears. You cradle your head tighter, praying that hardwood will morph into quicksand. 

A cry: “MERCY PLEASE! MERCY! AAAAA!”

Three separate voices overlapping all at once: “Help me! Help me! We belong dead!” — “Oh well, I am just not appreciated around here. Dirt under the feet. That’s all I am.” — “Please, kill me! KillmeKillmeKillme! I just want to die! I can’t — anymore —“ Then the shriek of a deer who has its foot caught in a bear trap. It is your voice as a child, crying out. A masculine voice in a fatherly rhetoric shouts over your infant wails, “You should have never been born, Alastor!” Then, as if lightning had torn down the broadcasting tower, all the cacophony on the radio fell silent, lingering on that horrible name.

The Earth holds its breath in anticipatory silence. 

A merry tone starts up – the melody of a saxophone, clarinet, and trumpet all hugging into one another. It moves amatory in humid air. Jazz. Your favorite genre despite the fact you were born in the year 1998. Swing and blue notes fill your heart like honey on the tongue, familiar and comforting. From the warmth of continuing jazz, a woman’s voice pops out like a flower bud emerging on a spring morning.

“666 A.M.” No that is wrong – the station was 833.3 A.M. (how do you know that?) “-- the Voice of the South; radiophone broadcasting station of the New Ear, New Oreleans, Louisiana, announcing the one who needs no introduction, our one and our only Alastor Melsar.”

Somewhere far away, deep below, a hostaged crowd rises, pulled by the hooks in their napes to start a thundering, happy applause. Someone’s lips are even voodoo-ed to move into an adoring wolf whistle. 

“Hello, hello, is this thing on?”

Your stomach falls to your feet like a rock dropped from a bridge. It explodes, breaking every ice-layered bone in your body. Jazz withers away but the familiarity stays. Because you know that voice, intimately beyond what New Orleans knew about it beyond the ribcage of a radio. You had been ribcage to ribcage, heart to heart with that odious man before. Only you had forgotten. Until now.

You remove your hands from your ears, listening in rapture. 

“Now, I know the broadcast you want to hear comes from Center Theater studio, but today we are coming at you straight from Hell’s very own Pride Ring. But I will bring back our favorite broadcast, for my dear listener. (Name). My love, this one's for you.”

i. Papa nou ki nan syèl la, [Our heavenly Father,]

Alastor hates his father.

This is as established as the hues of flora or as the physics of energy. It is a sentence that will never change under any variables or phenomena. If emotions could become fact, this is one instant of such a time. It is a sentence that you sympathize with as you hated your father too. Oddly enough, you two meet on Father’s Day. Both of you illegally drunk in the height of prohibition, escaping to an abandoned bayou. A shared sentiment connecting your wayward souls: there was no better day of the year to get wasted besides Father’s Day. 

“Oedipus was such an unlucky bastard.”

“How so?”

“He gets to kill his father and doesn’t even know it. The man who left him stranded on a hill to be eaten by wolves. And how does Oedipus repay this? His revenge is killing him in a duel like he is another thug, a nameless person.” You gulp down a sizable sip of your bathroom-made gin. “Just no satisfaction in it.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t you suppose it’s better than not getting to commit patricide? Poor Hamlet. His father harks him about vengeance. And he cannot even get that annoying parasite off his shoulder as Claudius had already killed the King.” Alastor takes a much more measured sip from his whiskey. 

“A dead father is better than a ghost father … I suppose.”

You give a mischievous smile to the stranger sitting with you.  He is quite handsome, bronze brown skin flawless without a drop of sweat. If this were any other day, you would try flirting a bit but today is June sixteen so …

“How’d you kill yours?”

“A shotgun. Then I cut him up and ate him.”

“Serve him to your mother?”

“Oh, I would never taint her darling palette with such horrid meat.”

You start laughing as the stranger asks you the same question, you in jest and him in sincerity, “How’d you kill yours?”

Smiling, you reveal, “I drowned him in this very bayou.”

“This very one?”

“This very one.”

The stranger smiles at that. His smiles are nice. Wide winks of yellowing teeth that seem to engulf his entire face. There is something charming about smiles that show all your vulnerable enamels. 

“I suppose that we drink from the same bottle.”

“We do … I suppose,” he copies your earlier pattern of speech. 

You smile back as you two clink your glasses together. It sucks that after today you two will never see each other again. You have never felt so kindred to another person. New Orleans is so vast. Both a blessing and a curse, certain that your paths will only cross this once.

ii. Nou mande pou yo toujou respekte non ou. [We ask that they always respect your name.]

Names are so significant. It is the equivalent of slicing off a cut of your soul and sharing it. It is the word used to beckon one in a call. And, reconnecting, Alastor and you give your names to each other easily, smitten in a butcher shop. 

iii. Vin tabli gouvènman ou, [Come and establish your government,]

The company Alastor kept was odd. Men who wore sunglasses at night and women who laughed like rusty doors. Human beings that seemed more like monsters with human skin pulled over them like an ill-fitting nightgown. Demons and witches, a cruel part of you speculated.

You had underestimated the vileness of them. They were beyond witches and demons.

You cannot even settle into the place you are sitting. Instead, you collapse into it like a body thrown off a ledge. Vocal cords pinch and tighten under your skin. Awful wheezes plume out of your throat. Amidst this destructive hyperventilation, tears pour down the curvature of your face in steady beads. Your trembling hands gather them up as you curl into the brick wall outside of The Dog House. Ugh, what is happening to you?

The door to the jazz club’s back-alley opens tentatively as you wallow. It is only a sliver of space, not even enough to poke a head through much less an arm or leg. From the slit eye of a shy door, your boyfriend says, “Should I come back at a later time?”

The care of his question only makes you sob harder. Respecting previously set boundaries, the timid door does not fling open and Alastor does not move an inch to step outside – though, the doorknob does wilt and ache under the mounting strength of his grip. He relaxes when the sound of your voice (strained and trembling but no less beautiful) asks, “Do you think I’m silly?”

“Why, dear, you are the unfunniest person I have ever been acquainted with,” Alastor smiles. “Unhumorous and beautiful, like always.” A hazel eye peaks out through the space. It is a talent how much emotion he can translate into each facet of his body. A simple upward crinkle of his eyes, a tiny gleam, and you know his aim is to make you laugh.

Instead, you are compelled with the urge to smack him on the shoulder. 

Taking that angered energy, you grip the bottom half of the door (you still stay seated on infectious, wet pavement). As you push it open, Alastor slinks out into the back-alley. One hand, one foot, a shoulder and chest, until he finally joins you. He sits shoulder to shoulder with you in your hiding spot behind The Dog House. 

“Now, can I ask what made you so out of sorts, dear?”

“You would find it silly. This is all so silly.” You harshly scrub your tearful face, wishing it would restore itself to the dry skin you were accustomed to. “I’m sorry.”

“Now, (Name), we just established that you are unfunny.” With him so close, you do whack him. Nursing his shoulder with a laugh, Alastor continues, “So whatever needs to come off your chest, be out with it. Climb off it.” He looks upon you patiently.

“Mimzy.” His face makes no change in expression, imploring you to continue. “And Harlord. And Lawrence and Evelyn. Oh, Alastor, all of your friends are just so cruel.” Shameful of your confession, you hide back into your knees. The geyser of tears that you had capped with your thumb is starting to billow and leak. “I just cannot see how someone like you can keep such horrid company.”

It was almost like someone had prematurely told them every single insecurity you had. 

The left side of your abdomen still aches from where Mimzy took her nails and dug into you. Lawrence had hooked a finger under your necklace and pulled a bright, suicidal mark on your nape. After repeated use, those insectual insults crawled under your skin, a horde of ticks. Weak defense laughs eventually stopped coming from you altogether when you realized this was not a hazing mechanism. Hate bled from every millisecond of their actions – such a quick switch, all because Alastor left to use the washroom. 

“Oh, dear, what happened?” Alastor wraps an arm around your shoulder, pulling you in close.

“I don’t know. Perhaps, I did something to offend them. What they said was so true, so spot on. They just –”

“No, you’re perfect. Hey. Look at me. You are perfect.”

“Alastor, maybe, I don’t belong here. I just cannot fit in with them and I–”

“Dear,” here he takes both your hands and squeezes them tight. “I have felt that sentiment of yours my entire life. I have been so ostracized for so long before I met you. Never knowing someone who could relate to what I have been subjected to. If they cannot see how perfect you are, then that is sincerely their loss.” 

“But Alastor, they’re your friends. I want them to like me!”

“Dear, we need no one but each other.”

iv. pou yo fè volonte ou sou latè, tankou yo fè li nan syèl la. [to do your will on earth, as it is done in heaven.]

Your nighttime routine is a bit strange. To be truthful, your entire life was wandering a little bit out of the quotidian fences on the roaring 20s. 

The most startling difference was your romantic courting compared to the entire United States. You and Alastor had lived together before marriage. His house was empty – mother and father dead – and you wanted out of that odious prison called home. 

Yet, by now, the two of you had established a nighttime routine like one which a married couple would have. 

Before Alastor stepped into the shower, you checked the expanse and plain of his skin for any ticks that might have made their home there. After, you brewed Alastor coffee instead of tea as a nighttime drink as the shower ran. Then, you freshened yourself and Alastor penned down his next broadcast before you two joined in the dining room, stomach already full of dinner. 

He takes the photograph of Papa Gede out of his study after locking away his papers. On the dining table, his golden eyes cut through you. You always felt nude under that gaze. Parallel to what a dog must experience before being hit. Gazes locked, you hear the repetitive motions of Alastor as he collects all he needs for the ritual. 

Papa Gede’s, the corpse of the first man who ever died, painted form stares at you. Alastor was very keen on this man who represented the powers of fertility and death. A psychopomp believed to wait at crossroads to take souls into the afterlife. You had no idea what Alastor spoke in Creole to him when you two did this before bed. All you knew is those gleaming, almost alive eyes unnerved you to the point where you wanted to turn tail and flee, doe-like.

“Dearest.”

You shudder, disrupted like a still lake attacked by a falling rock, and finally tear your eyes away. The comfort of his arm across your back is warm. You lean into him as he quotes Hamlet to you, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“Sorry.” You place a kiss on his cheek. “Sorry. I know, I overthink too much.”

This is the part you hate the most.

“I quite adore your mind.”

“Thank you, Al.”

He kisses you on the lips. “No, thank you.” And before you can comprehend, like a child getting his tooth pulled on two instead of the promised count of three, Alastor has already run the blade over your palm. 

Alastor goes back in for a deeper kiss as you wince and wilt. Pressing himself hard against you as an outlet to your pain. And then, after a good enough amount of your blood has fallen into the vial, Alastor, in his native tongue, starts to pray that when Papa Gede sees you at the crossroads, he will send you back into the living world. 

v. Pen nou bezwen an, ban nou li jòdi a. [The bread we need, give us today.]

The geography of hearts are all the same.

When Alastor brings home a dead deer, you can tell what his gullitoning Shibazi cleaver is striking down on. Yet — when it all cleaned up — fur and hooves off the table. You can almost pretend you have any species on the table. 

As mammals, we all have four chambered hearts.

Silver light from an oil lamp folds itself over Alastor and where the silver is not, shadows snuggle into Alastor. He is an autopsy photo, too gruesome yet necessary to examine. From his hands, the slick pulse of meat being cut talks to him. Unforgiving, his hands move like headstrong lightning, slicing and dicing.

He opens the whole heart like a scroll or a book. 

You had been apprehensive about consuming deer hearts. The heart was the zenith of evangelical symbolism in literature. Were you or Alastor worthy to consume such a part of the body? It was if you were dissecting an angel and feasting on their piety. 

The geography of hearts are all the same.  

As mammals we all have four chambered hearts. 

He opens the whole human heart like a scroll or a book. 

vi. Padonnen tou sa nou fè ki mal, [Forgive all that we have done wrong,]

Alastor was not an active participant in his own religion. When he did, it was often out of your sight and always out of the public’s eyes. He kept religious scriptures and paintings locked in a safe then additionally locked in a study room. A scandal such as performing in the Haitian religion would pinch out the fire that was rising up his radio broadcasting fame like a hot-air balloon. 

Today, you are positively giddy and positively ready to puke when Alastor invites you to join him to celebrate St. John’s Eve. A holiday in June he rarely went to.

Ditching your shared car, Alastor makes you walk hand in hand with him to the celebration after pink twilight skies drift into charcoal black hues. You have no idea how he can navigate so clearly in such darkness. Trusting him, you follow over moss and soil. Both of your white attire was probably stained from the journey. None of that mattered. You could not stop yourself from smiling. 

The night is wondrous. You will never understand such a beautiful celebration could be so abhorred. Reaching impressive heights, the humongous bonfire casts warm hues of amber over the white attire of all who attain. Your body spins and leaps with positive energy – everyone is so friendly – no one wears glasses at night and they all laugh like humans, humans! You and Alastor dance, painted in the bonfire’s warmth and laughing in addition to all the other people. At one point in the night, Alastor says to you, “They say bathing in the gorge is supposed to preserve the health of your body and the good condition of your skin. Not that you need anything to add to your beauty. However, I would be grateful if you —”

“Yes! Yes, I’ll join you.” You have been that way all night, eager and absent of your usual anxiety. You strive to enjoy this – enjoy the world he lives in spiritually due to the stinging rejection of his friends. Something to keep you two close and tethered together.

He takes your hand and brings you waist deep in the water. All the while, you cling to him, arms around his neck, smiling and kissing his cheek repeatedly. He preens under the attention. 

“So, is it like a baptism of sorts?”

“I’ll dip you under the water briefly, yes.”

“Ok,” you are still giggling, not even having a sip of anything. “Ok. Can I go first?”

Adoring Alastor brings his hands up to the sides of your face, running his thumb over your cheek. What a shame that you will not be smiling so wide soon. The flame of you has to be extinguished same as the roaring bonfire on the shore. He pecks you on the lips. “If you want to go first, I have no gripe over that, dear.”

Don’t worry, Alastor thinks as he dips you down into the murky, nebulous water, he will relight you. 

You hold your breath as you go under. The water chills the back of your ears, sliding itself through your hair, then covers over your eyes. Alastor’s hands rest in a triangle of your upper back, steadying you so you do not fall back. One involuntary shiver moves you then you fall still. You take your breath and cup it in your chest like a pearl. 

Weightlessness is a rare sensation. There is something tranquil about being enshrouded in water and able to feel like you are slipping away somewhere. Like the ribbon pulling on your heart at all times has eased and unraveled itself so instead of a bundle it has become a slippery eel. 

You are so grateful that Alastor is sharing this with you. You felt bad for not making a connection with his friends. You hoped nothing ever breaks your connection with Alastor.

After half a minute or so, you lean a bit up to signal to Alastor that you want up. Oddly, there is no pressure on your back from Alastor pushing you up. You lean yourself up a bit more, then with the speed of a cobra striking, a pressure pushes you down. Fingers on your throat. The pearl in your chest slips out. With a muted, submerged shout, you push your hands up hoping to break the water surface, feel dry air. Nothing, all your panicked hands slide through is water.

AlastorAlastorAlastor – the pearl grows spikes like a urchin and pierces you, a debilitating pain in the chest as water floods through. You hack up what you swallow and yet swallow some more. Previous cold water feels as intensely hot as the bonfire you were dancing in front of before. 

Everything is dark.

Everything is burning.

Everything – you gasp as Alastor pulls you out. You cough like you are trying to expel a hairball or demon out of you. Your body shakes and pounds with each forceful push. And in the midst of that, Alastor holds you by your waist and worrying over you, your hands around his neck, you start to sob.

“A-Ah, Alastor.” Your smile is gone.

vii. menm jan nou padonnen moun ki fè nou mal. [as we forgive those who hurt us.]

“Promise me you will not leave me.”

“I promise.”

“No, be serious.”

“I am being serious, haha. I promise. Hey. Hey? … Hey, I promise to never leave you, Alastor Melsar. No need for tears, love.”

viii. Pa kite nou nan pozisyon pou nou tonbe nan tantasyon, [Do not leave us in a position to fall into temptation]

Injuring Alastor is no easy task. He takes impeccable care to never be on the receiving end of any harm, but this amorous injury is different.

In the back of a drunk mind, Alastor senses the trail of warm blood running down his lats to his spine. Three evanescent droplets riding down and down. Sweat is outshone by the iron beads. He focuses his mind gently on where you scratched him, the injury it caused, and the blood curling around the brown curvature of his abdomen muscles. How he wishes you two drew each other’s blood more beyond this and rituals to Papa Gede — at a later time, he will ask you if you want to engage in anything more with blood.

“Oh fuck, Alastor. Oh fuck!”

Yes, at a later time would be more appropriate. He cannot properly engage in conversation which he is grunting so heavily.

Gently, Alastor rubs a thumb into your skin, studying the harsh bone of your pelvis. You tremble when his palm goes down and pushes up your left leg. Knobby knee touching your breast, you shriek at how more palpable you are to his efforts.

Alastor does not particularly like sex. He shared no interest in it like his acquaintances and rather seemed repulsed by it. He performed and acted on this sweaty stage because it made you happy. Yet, now that you have drawn his blood —

The speed at which his head pounds into your spongy inside gradually starts to pick up. You two are clashing your hips into one another like vengeful knights crossing claymores. Instead of the racket of piercing metal sparks, the noise of wet skin slapping and patting against one another billows up and up in volume. He fucks you hard, an executioner stealing the last drops of your life away. 

“De-Dearest,” he pants, hoping to grab your attention.

All you do is dig your nails into his shoulder blade deeper, anchoring yourself feebly to a ship caught up in a storm. Alastor has never been so rough before. His force punches the words out of you, mouth hanging open in involuntary cries. 

He pushes your knee down harsher into the globe of your breast. Your nails dig in deeper. Cut more skin, please, Alastor wants to beg but his own voice is withering from him now too.

“Fu-Fuck! Fuck!” You shred another part of his skin like a cat slicing up curtains into decorative ribbons. He feels it. The waterline of blood bubbling before it spills over like tears of a face.

“Oh Hell, (Name),” Alastor moans.

He often had problems coming to his release. Now, he worries that he will come before you are satisfied. Your previous cut has trailed down, colliding at the spot where the two of you are joined together. His worries are meaningless. At the sound of his voice, trembling and wanton, the violin strings of your consciousness are slit down the middle. Mind plucked out of your body, you cannot control your voice and groan a loud “Mmmmmpfh!” as you throw your head back and orgasm. 

Your warmth squeezes around him and he loses that hold on your leg. Collapsing down, he moans and keeps thrusting in. Greedily, you roll your hips up. Slick, wet suctioning noises lose their space between one another fast like counting lightning that is rapidly approaching.

Into raw bloody flesh, your nails burrow. Alastor comes with a grunt of your name. 

ix. men, delivre nou anba Satan. [but deliver us from Satan.]

It is an inconvenience of an illness that has befell the Meslar house. Really, you should be resting your body and he should be resting his voice. You stumble in your chores, body humming with a furnace warmth that rivals New Orleans summer heat. Alastor stumbles in his broadcasting, throat expelling out body-jerking coughs like plumes of brimstone smoke. He jokes that it would be more fortunate if you two swapped illness before curling into himself, hacking. You nod your agreement before curling into yourself, brain sitting in your head like a popsicle on a summer’s sidewalk.

Eventually, you two have to concede that you cannot keep on like this. Your shared stubbornness to push through a lingering illness will do you no good. Alastor calls out of work, you dismiss yourself from your household duties. Finally, you two rest.

Alastor loves having windows open. He pulls the woven horsehair screens away from their pins. Let spiders and flies enter your humble abode, meet their two caring hosts. Refreshing air snakes a tranquil pattern through the kitchen and dining room. Sunlight warms wood of a dining table and back of chairs. In the forty second breaks Alastor gets before his throat punches him, he nestles close to an open window and breathes in rich Earth. 

You are resting in the open living room, passed out on the uncomfortable sofa. He had taken care to wait on you as you had taken care to read Hemingway aloud for him. Yet, soon syllables started to slur into a rainbow of ums, mhms, mmms, until you fell into a cavernous sleep. 

Content, Alastor drinks his coffee (absent of the sedative, amobarbital, and the awful taste of tea) and gazes out on nature. Drugging you is not so gentlemanly of him. However, who can truly blame him, watching his beloved drag themselves to get the one last load of laundry folded or scrub a stove that would be fine with a day of neglect. 

“Such a stubborn donkey, that one,” Alastor chuckles, taking a gracious sip. 

His sleeves are rolled up and cool air breezes over the mark drawn on his inner forearm. Cornmeal and wood ash grounded up into a pallid gray. The symbol sticks to his skin fairly well. The symbol is an open diamond with a long line running through it, elbow crevice to wrist, with a tapered end like that of a ½ beat note. The voodoo symbol of good health. You have one drawn on your comatose arm too, sleeves rolled up. 

He did not see the need to call upon Damballah for healing properties. A simple incantation and a longer than natural sleep should get you back to your natural self. Alastor always promised himself that he would care for you. He would keep you away from dangers always, even a mischievous viral infection swimming in your body. 

Maybe he should tell you, maybe open up just a bit about his – 

No. He had labored a fine scheme to make you afraid of what his religion and his friends had to offer and that fear would be a coin to cash in later. If everything else around you was horrific, he would be a certain tunnel to run towards – leap into his open arms so he may protect you from Death, the Devil, and beyond.

All you need, all you would see, all of it: him, him, him.

x. Paske, se pou ou tout otorite, tout pouvwa ak tout louwanj, depi tout tan ak pou tout tan. [For to you be all authority, all prayer, and all praise, forever and ever]

“Honey, I just don’t think he is right for you.”

“That Al, he is a bit eccentric. A little birdie tells me that Edward thinks you’re butter upon bacon! And Ed’s quite cute!”

“Is there a leak in your attic, (Name)? Alastor, really?”

He’s absolutely perfect for you. His eccentricities had bewitched you. And if there was a leak in your attic, you hoped it showered over you forever. In your rose-tinted eyes, no one could hold a candle to your Alastor. He was it for you, until death and perhaps even beyond. You know this to be a universal truth – if emotions could become fact, this is one instant of such a time – especially true as he proposes to you.

“Yes, of – of course, I will,” you tumble over your words. A showman until the end, the long, heartfelt speech that Alastor had voiced in that honey intonation had you quite speechless. He knew exactly where to praise and where to kill your insecurities. “O-of course.”

He has to pinch the center of your hand, thumb on bone and index on palm, so he can slide the ring on your shaking hand. You truly are a mess in his presence, so in love. 

It takes a few moments to find your voice. Alastor kisses you in front of the crowded restaurant, people clapping. You two sit back, still having untouched desert waiting for you. As the waiter shakes the hand of the most famous radioman in New Orleans, you sit wide-eyed, glancing between tiramisu and champagne, waiting to fall out of this daydream. 

“An ouroboros,” you murmur after the waiter leaves. Giddy smile on his face, Alastor raises an eyebrow at you. “It is an ouroboros.”

“Yes, I figured a literary master like you would love the symbolism. Does it please you? I was apprehensive of choosing something that did not have a diamond.”

“The self-eating snake.” Smitten, you rotate around your left hand to greet all the angles of the creature with enraptured eyes. “The eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. Transmigration of souls.”

“The eternal cycle of our love.”

You flush and smile. “You’re being too charming tonight, Alastor.” 

xi. Amèn. [Amen]

“Alastor,” you whisper into the dark after he finishes saying your wedding vows. The name is much heavier on your tongue. It no longer belongs solely to your sweet bengal cat. The name you sing out to grab a cat’s attention or scold him for swatting something off the counter – “Alastor.” – the name is now shared with your dead husband. 

Bone-deep shivers run through you. Dead husband. Your dead husband who is broadcasting out to you, voice rich and recognizable. The most chesired prayer you had ever heard in your past life, bleeding off into radio-waves. “Alastor.”

“Yes, dearest?” His intonation holds the patience of an enraptured man. He is smitten and at the ready to lend you his ear in a much more tangible Van Gogh way than in the literary sense. “Would you care to share your vows too? I always did love hearing French-creole roll off your fumbling tongue.”

“No, I –” 

You feel dreadfully faint. All of it rushing back to you; it is a miracle that you have not faint or turned into a vegetable. You stare at the brown husk of a radio where you should be looking at the brown skin of your late husband’s face. A miracle is too angelic. A curse. This is a curse.

Something boils unpleasantly in your gut. This house. It was Alastor’s. Even after being born in a different square of New Orleans, you found your way back to the house. 

Found your way to the ring. Found your way back to the radio.

“Why?” It is the only word that you can manage to form.

“Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality” 

“Death is a supple suitor, that wins at last.”

“Love is anterior to life, posterior to death”

“Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.” 

“A wounded deer leaps the highest.”

You two cannot keep quoting Emily Dickinson at each other. Burying your head in your hands, you sigh deeply with the strife and age of an entire already lived life. You miss the flash of lightning that illuminates your kitchen, the shadow of a wendigo stamped on the floor where the kitchen table’s circular imprint should be. 

As the light leaps back out the window and you raise your head, Alastor hums at you lovingly. “Now dear, you know I hate to see you so despondent. It breaks my heart … well it would if I still had a beating one.” 

Laughter follows and you startle in your chair. It sounds so intimately real that you almost thought the crowd of a comedy show was dropped and placed in your kitchen. Your shield falls as the noises wither away. 

“Why now?”

“Dear, this interrogation is so harsh. I thought you would be overjoyed to be reunited. You said yourself that you never wanted to live without me. Aren’t you even going to say it?”

“Alastor. I love you.” Those words come as easy as the last puzzle piece. “Why now,” you press stubbornly. 

The dark space around the radio almost echoes with the deep sigh Alastor gives you. There is the sound of some tinkering, a few knocks of wood and clanks of metal. “Why now, dear?” The noises grow in volume and rich jubilation breathes itself through Alastor’s voice. “Why now indeed! Well, dear, I have just happened to secure your place in Hell! Right alongside me! Please, please, hold the applause.”

There is no applause besides the one he is controlling and manipulating to move to his whims. 

Why would he think that was pleasing news? Vexed, you straighten up your posture and go to ask, “Alastor, why —“ and then your words get caught in a spiderweb. “Alastor!” 

Uncaring of your blindness from the power outage, you jump up and rush towards your bedroom, in search of Alastor. 

You make it about halfway into the dining room when the bengal cat is suddenly deposited in your arms. Alastor is shaking up a storm. Protectively, you wrap your arms around him, wary of whatever nebulous thing held him in their clutches. Your empty glare falls off your face as you are suddenly roller-coastered back into the kitchen. 

“That was quite rude of you.”

“You’ve been quite rude this entire month.” 

“Well, I simply cannot pop out of nowhere. I do still have my affliction for showmanship. Something that was a trait loved by my dear spouse.”

“Showmanship, he says,” you grumble, petting Alastor gently. His tremors are still so extreme. “Ouroboros. Transmigration of a soul.”

“Well if I tether you to me, there is this little political game called Extermination that would have been a threat to you. If you were to die of natural causes, you would have gone to Heaven. Keeping you human was the best choice until I came to collect you.”

“You’re collecting me to bring me to Hell?”

“Quite correct. Yes, I am.”

“And if I don’t want to be collected?”

“HAHAHA, and do you not want that? Truly?”

“No … if anything … I’m more pissed you didn’t arrive sooner.”

A flash throws itself into the open space of a kitchen. This time you are able to see it. Up the wall, between the space where you keep an ancient television set and the place on the wall where a rotary phone rests is a shadow. Ignoring its definition, the shadow is built from no imposing object or body sitting in your kitchen. Instead of a physical presence, the stamp of long antlers and a sharp angular body are its own body. Gone as soon as the lightning flash flees. 

You miss it barely but you saw the shadow of a hand reaching out to you. The something you had been searching for, finally here to call and collect you. Come home, dear, it calls out in gravel static. And you answer.  

#alastor x reader #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin alastor

[triforce-of-mischief]

Spirits and Hands

Summary: On his way to save Zora's Domain for the second time, Wild and his companions encounter a terrifying enemy.

Warnings: totk spoilers, panic attack, hands

AO3

Please reblog to show your support! Likes do nothing.

The journey to Zora’s Domain was already turning out to be a lot better than Wild had expected it to be. Any traveler he passed would have thought that he was making the trip alone, but he was far from it. Two glowing, spirit-like forms were at his side.

One, a young Rito with a bow on his back, had joined Wild last week after his physical counterpart had discovered his abilities as a sage. The spirit was useful for flight and fight, but his inability to emote more than a tilt of his head left his companionship a little lacking. Wild liked to talk to him, but Tulin’s avatar seemed to be more willing to communicate with beings on a similar level.

Wild’s other companion had been a constant presence ever since he had woken up on the Great Sky Island. Well, they hadn’t appeared in this form at first. He was one of many companions who visited Wild one at a time. Today, Wild was accompanied by a mostly-incorporeal Hero of Winds.

Unlike Tulin’s avatar, Wind was fully present and intelligent in this state. Time travel magic, yada yada, they didn’t really know or care about the differences between heroes and sages. What they did know was that although Tulin was unable to process too many new thoughts or allow Wild to touch him, Wind had no such limitations. The sailor claimed that he wasn’t dead, but all three of them agreed that he was more alive than the sage’s avatar.

Which brought them to this moment, meandering around the Zora River as Wild tried to avoid stepping in the thick sludge that had invaded the area. The spirits chattered with each other, audible only in Wild’s mind.

“And that’s when I looked up and realized that the dragon’s tail was the perfect shape for my grappling hook!” Wind said.

Tulin flapped his wings excitedly. “You could use it to wiggle the ceiling loose and crush the monster!”

“Exactly!”

“Stay close, guys,” Wild said quietly. “We’re about to enter the Tabahl Woods.”

The spirits agreed to finish the story later, mostly so Wild could concentrate on their surroundings. Unlike a few years ago, no Lizalfos could be heard near this stretch of the river.

“Gloom ahead,” Tulin pointed out.

Wild glanced in that direction, spotting a churning puddle of black-rimmed red. “Good eye. We’ll stay clear of that.”

The champion brought them closer to the river, letting the patch of gloom fall behind his line of sight. He had barely passed it when he saw Tulin prepare his bow out of the corner of his eye.

“Don’t tell me I missed a Lizalfos,” Wild groaned, setting a hand on his sticksword and turning around.

His heart dropped.

Wind shouted, “What are those?”

The puddle of gloom was creeping closer, tearing across the wet grass and turning the very air red as if a blood moon had appeared mid-afternoon. Flakes and tendrils of the evil substance floated above the concentrated mess, making Wild cough as it entered his lungs. With a demonic screech, a half dozen gnarled arms rose from the gloom, each topped with a hand and a malicious eyeball staring from its palm.

“Run!” Wild yelled, tripping on his own feet as he hurried to do just that.

“I got it!” Tulin called, and Wild heard the rapid thwip of his arrows.

“It won’t work!” Wild reprimanded, sprinting mere inches ahead of snatching fingers. “I tried that last time, they- ack!”

The hand found purchase on his ankle, draining precious energy before he managed to wriggle free. The pursuit resumed immediately, rendering Wild exhausted within seconds. He had lost track of both Wind and Tulin, the spirits left behind as Wild struggled to escape. The hand gave up the chase, but any relief Wild felt was extinguished by a familiar shrill scream.

Wild whirled around, finding that the gloom hands were now preoccupied with the smaller targets. Tulin had managed to fly out of range, sending useless arrows into the monster’s eyes. Wind, however, had been surrounded completely. A hand was clamped around his face, holding him suspended in the air while his feet kicked at nothing. More hands gathered around him, grabbing and squeezing and smothering.

Wind couldn’t feel pain, but judging by his panicked cries, that didn’t matter when he could still be scared.

A surge of protectiveness gave Wild the final burst of strength he needed to run away from the monstrosity’s field of influence. The hands shrieked and shriveled in the returning sunlight, vanishing and releasing Wind.

Tulin’s avatar swooped beside Wild, who told the Rito to go scout. Wild crashed to his knees beside Wind, giving him an instinctive once-over. The boy’s translucent body was unharmed, though Wild couldn’t be completely sure. Wind was curled around himself, knees tucked to his chest and hands clamped over his ears.

“Wind, are you…” The remainder of the question faded away, and Wild tried again when the sailor didn’t move. “Wind?”

In a voice more small and broken than Wild had ever heard it, Wind asked, “Is it gone?”

“Yeah… yeah, they’re all gone.”

Wind was perfectly still, but Wild could hear muffled crying.

This was a new experience, and Wild didn’t know how to react. Wind rarely cried, putting on a brave face around the older heroes and defending himself with youthful bravado. Wild had seen him wrapped in Warriors’ scarf a few times, even hidden away in Time’s arms once or twice, but Wind had never sought comfort from Wild. With the kid so vulnerable before him now, Wild could only hope that he could balance comfort and respect so he didn’t ruin the moment.

Wild asked, “Can you try to sit up so I can see that you’re not hurt?”

Wind hiccuped and slowly pushed himself upright, keeping his hands close and his head bowed. Wavy sea glass-green hair concealed his face, and Wild carefully reached out to rest his finger under the spirit’s chin. Wind flinched the slightest bit at Wild’s touch, but allowed him to tilt his head up for inspection.

Just as Wild had expected, Wind was completely unharmed- physically, at least. His cheeks were free of marks like the ones Wild could feel burning his ankle, left behind by dragging fingernails. No bruises from being grabbed, no patches of angry flesh sizzling with remnants of gloom. Satisfied with his findings, Wild braced himself before finally looking into Wind’s eyes.

Like Tulin’s avatar, Wind’s eyes were simple pools of light that held far less emotion than his true form. So when Wild saw that they were wide and shimmering, that glowing tear tracks were streaming down Wind’s face, he knew that something was very wrong.

“Wind, please,” Wild whispered. “What can I do to help?”

A ragged wail tore through Wild’s mind, and the champion had no time to prepare himself before the spirit launched himself forward. Wind was weightless in Wild’s arms, but tangible all the same as he quickly pulled him into a proper hug. The sailor made himself as small as possible, hiding from the world as he cried. Raw sobs and hoarse screams that would have caused a lot of pain if he had been able to feel such a thing, wave after wave of catharsis that came from vocalizing pure, overwhelming fear.

Wild waited in silence, knowing that words couldn’t help this situation. He remembered how afraid he had been in the aftermath of his own first encounter with the gloom hands. Only adrenaline had kept him going long enough to reach the Mount Lanayru Skyview Tower before he had crumbled in the snow, hyperventilating and hallucinating the horrible screams.

But as scared as Wild had been, Wind’s reaction was so much worse. The boy was trapped in his panic well after Tulin gave the all clear, never calming down even a little. Was it because he was so young, or was Wind reliving trauma that Wild didn’t know about? Something more was going on, but honestly, Wild found that he didn’t care. In this moment, all he wanted to do was comfort his little brother.

#linked universe #lu #lu wild #lu wind #lu totk #fable writes #wrote this sometime in may/june #just now decided its fine to post as is #since im giving totk another chance #i have ideas for some of the others #that i may write eventually #feel free to ask; it gives me motivation

[tbcanary]

for arrowfam week day one: "ghost" and "grow"

(set sometime around ga vol 7, but not exactly accurate based on current timelines within the run. suspend your disbelief with me for a sec.)

--

There’s a girl sitting at Mia’s desk.

Not that that’s unusual, or anything. Mia might come from a family of famous caped crusaders, but the vigilante business doesn’t exactly pay well enough for Ollie to foot all of her bills in the heart of Star City. She has roommates – two of them, actually, girls who have known each other since college but needed a third while so-and-so is studying abroad for a year, blah blah blah – and they’ve been known to sneak in to use her desk so that they both aren’t stuck studying at the kitchen table like they’re in the opening scenes of a Dickinson novel or whatever.

The point is, people sit at Mia’s desk sometimes. It happens, and normally it wouldn’t bother her, even coming home from work this late. Even after she spent all evening cleaning up the cafeteria in the community center after some kind of Bean Incident none of the kids would blab about, no matter how much she tried to wheedle it out of them.

Anyway. That’s not what bothers her. The thing that bothers her, actually, doesn’t hit until the girl looks up at her. The hood of her sweatshirt falls back from her head, revealing a shock of bright pastel hair, and Mia doesn’t know anyone with that hair color but –

But she knows those soft brown eyes. She knows that dimple in the left cheek, accompanying the uncertain smile.

“Lian,” she says. “What. The fuck.”

And then she slaps a hand over her mouth, and the laughter spills between her fingers despite her best efforts. “I mean, shit, I shouldn’t — goddammit, Roy is going to be so mad at me for cussing, but I —what?”

“Um.” Lian shrugs. It is her, after all; her voice sounds exactly like Cheshire, somehow, but the way her eyes crinkle at the corners is all Roy. “Hi.”

Mia stumbles into the room, sets her duffle bag to the ground with a thump that feels more like an earthquake. She drops down onto her unmade bed and stares – not bothering to hide her astonishment, her disbelief – at Lian, somehow so much older, somehow exactly the same.

“If I’m being haunted, you legally have to tell me,” Mia insists.

Lian shrugs. The toes of her sneakers drag against the floor as she kicks her feet, hands gripping the sides of her seat. “Nope. Not a ghost.”

Well. It’s not as weird as it sounds, probably. Roy had come back, and Ollie had, too, hadn’t he? But Mia… Mia had been there when Lian died. Sort of. Or at least, it was her not being there that had done it, and she’d done everything she could to find a loophole, but there had never been one. Nothing. She’d been gone; it had sat in Mia’s stomach like a weight, like a rock she’d swallowed and couldn’t spit back out.

“Clone?” she tried.

Lian shook her head. “Mm-nn.”

“Hallucination.”

“Nope.”

“Prank?”

“Only from the universe.”

“Alternate dimension.”

“Maybe.”

“Well,” Mia said.

And then she swallowed.

And then her breath came out in a flurry of hysterical giggles again, a fountain she just couldn’t stop, and she dropped her face into her hands and let the flood come, let it pour out of her chest like an open wound.

“Fuck,” Mia hissed. “I—Fuck me. God. Lian, does Roy, does your dad know?”

Lian hums her confirmation. “He’s on the roof. He and Uncle Connor brought me to see you.”

“They’re…?” Mia pushes off the bed and stomps over to the window. She throws open the glass and leans out, looking upward.

Sure enough, a grappling hook arrow is hooked into the brick of her building with a rope dangling down. That must be how Lian got in. Mia should really start locking her windows, but it’s just so much easier to make a quick escape that way instead of going out the front door.

She doesn’t give a fuck about the neighbors, so she shouts as loud as she can. “Hey! Assholes!”

Two heads peek over the edge at her, one with shaggy red hair and one with a series of blonde braids. Connor, at least, has the decency to wave. Roy just raises an eyebrow at her, like she’s the one inconveniencing him.

Ugh. Brothers.

“What the fuck?” she shouts. “How did she get so tall?”

Roy snorts, and it echoes off the building next door. “Blame the multiverse, or something!”

“I can hear you,” Lian offers.

Mia waves a hand. “Shut up, I’ll deal with you in a minute. The adults are speaking.”

Lian huffs, and Mia can practically hear the eyeroll. As if she doesn’t get enough crap from the kids she works with all damn day, now she’s got a bratty teenager who’s going to be expecting a cool aunt she can come play hooky with, or whatever kids do. Mia wouldn’t know; she didn’t exactly have aunts and uncles to set an example.

“Can you at least come down here and walk me through it, instead of sitting around like two old farts at a chess tournament?” Mia demands.

On the streets below, someone must take offense to their big family reunion. Mia hears the distant – but distinct – sounds of someone telling her to shut the fuck up, lady! from the sidewalk.

Star City. Gotta love it.

“Fine, fine,” Connor says. He’s still smiling, though, and she watches as he pulls a rope arrow from his quiver. “Give us a second. Arsenal’s not as young as he once was.”

Roy lets out some kind of offended comment at that, Mia’s sure, but she doesn’t pay him any attention. Instead, she turns to face Lian again and all but tackles her, trapping her head in the bend of an elbow and ruffling her hair as she squeals.

“And you, you little brat,” Mia says, holding on tight as Lian laughs and tries to wriggle free, “are going to tell me everything.”

#arrowfamweek2023 #arrowfam week #mia dearden #lian harper #arrowfam #EHHHH WHO NEEDS CONTINUITY. #this is only a stretch because roy is here. bc based on [REDACTED] he may not be when mia shows up #ASSUMING mia shows up #but i'm going to IGNORE all of that #in favor of mia and lian #roy harper #connor hawke #fic.tb

[pipsipey17]

till the next multiverse.

natasha romanoff x fem!reader main masterlist | playlist summary: you grieved her death for a long while until you saw her again.

contains: mentions of death, alcohol use, and smoking. painful angst but with a happy ending.

i recommend listening to this song while reading this for more feels.

You tripped Natasha using your explosive arrows, making her roll to the side and making it your opportunity to run off the cliff. You maintained eye contact with her as you ran, but once you jumped you felt her grab you from behind and she activated her grappling hook.

You held your girlfriend’s wrist as she continued to shake your hand to make you let go of her. “Let me go.” Natasha whispered softly as she looked at you with her emerald eyes. 

“No please, don’t leave me.” You said as tears started to form in your eyes.

“It’s okay, I love you Y/N.” Natasha then proceeded to push herself off, making her swing a bit and making you fully lose your grip on her wrist.   

You saw every second of her falling to her death, you closed your eyes for a moment and when you opened them once again you saw a glimpse of her lifeless body on the very bottom of the cliff of Vormir, you saw that there was a pool of her own blood surrounding her head. Thunder suddenly roared and lightning began to appear and you became unconscious.

Your eyes snapped open and you immediately sat up, you saw that you were laying on water but then you felt something in your hand, you checked your hand and saw that you finally have the soul stone, but it took a life before you could get it.

Your eyes welled up once more, “Natasha!!” you yelled, releasing all of your sadness and anger during that moment. Your tears streamed down and you cried loudly, grieving the death of your partner in crime, your best friend and the love of your life. She was gone, forever. 

“Does she have any family?” Tony asked and the truth is, you didn’t know if she really had any family or not, all you know was that she once had a fake family back then because of a 3 year mission for the Red Room. She would mention her somewhat ‘sister’ Yelena from time to time to you or Clint, but other than that you really have no clue. 

Natasha wanted her sister to be kept a secret from the others for her sister’s safety. In respect to her wishes, you just shook your head in response but thankfully Steve suddenly said, “Yeah, us.” 

“As long as we have the stones we can bring her back, right?” Thor said as he paced around the small dock by the lake where you were with the other Avengers. 

“It can’t be undone, it can’t, at least that’s what the red floating guy said.” You said in a raised tone then you sighed deeply, “She sacrificed herself for the stone and there is no way we can bring her back.” tears started to sting your eyes once again after saying those words. 

Bruce threw a bench across the lake in anger, “We have to make her sacrifice worth it.” he said as he faced you. 

Steve stood up and said, “Don’t worry, we will.” then you smiled sadly at them.  

The war with Thanos was over, earth and the rest of the universe was finally safe once again. As promised by Steve her death didn’t go in vain as well as the deaths of others whom you lost during the war including Tony Stark. Death of some of the members of your supposedly family pained you, but Natasha’s death really shattered your heart into a thousand pieces. 

You haven’t been able to grieve or mourn properly because of the war that was going on and the second you got the freedom to do so, you fully grieved. 

The first few weeks were the worst, you didn’t feel like doing anything, you even lost your appetite, you would do some daily routines here and there but it was like you were moving like a robot. 

The other Avengers were concerned with your coping mechanisms, you would drink bottles of alcohol until you would eventually fall asleep, you would also smoke cigarettes until you would finish a pack or two. They tried to help you with your coping mechanisms but nothing seemed to work, thankfully though when Wanda talked to you, you decided to stop, realizing that it was indeed unhealthy.

Nowadays you are feeling better, all thanks to Wanda and the other Avengers who supported you step by step in stopping your alcohol and cigarette dependency. You wouldn’t drink bottles of alcohol anymore, you only settle for a bottle and as for the cigarettes, you would only now smoke at least two to three sticks. You now even contacted Yelena to help you to set up a gravestone for Natasha to somehow show respect to her name and it was the least you could do for her after she sacrificed herself not only for you but for everyone.

“I miss her.” you said as you were standing in front of Natasha’s gravestone.

You hear Yelena sigh beside you, “I miss her too. I just wish we had more time together, you know?” you nodded in response knowing full well what happened in their past, “All those wasted years in that fucking Red Room.”

“She always talked about you,” You said which made Yelena eye you curiously, “She would always tell me childhood stories of the both of you, she would also tell me about the time when you guys met again back in Budapest.”

Yelena smiled, “She did the same to me, back when she was in Budapest she told me all about you, how you guys met and how you guys fell in love. The details were too cheesy if you ask me, I honestly didn’t expect my sister to be a cheesy person but that just means that she really did love you.” She said to you and it made you smile sadly. 

You suddenly remembered the time when you broke up. It was when the Avengers were wanted criminals by the government. You honestly hated every single second of it during those days, it was torturous, you just wanted to be with each other but for the sake of the both of you, you splitted up. Then eventually, you got back together before the war. 

Comfortable silence fell on the both of you as you remained standing in front of Natasha’s gravestone, “My offer still stands, Yelena, if you need a place to stay, you can stay at the compound.”

Yelena shook her head, “I don't know if I can stay at the place where the people who live there are sort of responsible for my sister’s death.” Yelena immediately realized what she said and then chimed, “No offense.” 

“None taken.” You simply replied. 

~~~

The afterlife was peaceful, but it was not a home for Natasha, it never will be without you. 

As she was walking around she saw a familiar figure in the distance, “Tony?” she said, which made the man turn to her direction revealing that it was indeed Tony, “Nat?” Tony said and Natasha ran towards him. 

Natasha hugged Tony, “Why are you here?” Natasha asked but suddenly realized that Tony died too.

“Did we win?” Natasha asked and Tony nodded in response, Natasha’s eyes then started to sting because of the tears forming in her eyes, “You were supposed to live.” she said with a choked sob. 

Tony placed his hand on her shoulder, “It’s okay, we can rest now.” he said and he smiled at her making Natasha smile back. 

“I miss them.” Natasha said quietly which made Tony look at her teasingly, “Do you really miss them or only her?” 

Natasha chuckled, “Of course I miss them, I just miss Y/n more.” 

“Well, what if I told you that you could go back and be with the Avengers and Y/n again?” Tony said, which made Natasha scoff, “That’s ridiculous Tony, we’re dead, we can’t be brought back to life.” 

A shine of bright light suddenly appeared in the sky but it slowly got bigger and bigger as if it was about to envelop Natasha, “What’s that?” she asked Tony. 

“You’ll see.” Tony simply replied then he smiled at Natasha. 

Natasha’s eyes immediately flew open, she sat up and saw that she was laying in a pool of water, she then looked around and realized that she was back in Vormir the place where she died. 

She is alive, she has been revived, she can go back to earth and live her life once again.

She thought of how she can get back to earth, but then realized that she can go back the same way they went to Vormir in the first place, she just hopes that they didn’t close the portal yet. 

~~~

There was a beeping sound coming from the controls of the portal Sam immediately rushed to the controls, “Clint, we’re getting some signal from Vormir.” 

“Really? From who?” Clint asked. 

“It’s… wait, there must be some mistake,” Sam’s eyes widened, “The signal’s from Natasha.” 

“It could be someone else, open the portal and be prepared to fight.” 

“Are we really going to risk this?” Sam asked.

“What other choice do we have? Just stay on your guard and we’ll be fine.” 

Sam then proceeded to open the portal and a few moments later someone came out of the portal wearing the Avengers suit and later revealed that it was indeed Natasha. 

Clint stood still too in shock to move, “Nat? Is that really you?” 

Natasha smiled, “Hi Clint,” she said as she rushed to him and hugged him. 

Natasha looked at Sam and said, “Hey Sam.” 

“H-hey.” Sam simply said feeling a bit shy around Natasha.

“How are you alive?” Clint asked Natasha and she replied, “It’s a long story but let's just say that I’ve been revived.” 

“Y/n’s going to be so happy to see you.” Clint said which made Natasha smile. 

You just got back from the cemetery and you immediately heard noises coming from the other side of the compound, you rushed to where the noises came from thinking there was danger but you saw that everyone was there and Wanda was smiling as soon as you entered the room, “What’s all the ruckus about?” you asked Wanda. 

Wanda didn’t reply but she looked to the side making you look in the same direction she was looking as well and then you saw the person you thought you would never see again, the love of your life.

“N-Nat, y-you’re alive?” you stammered and Natasha nodded. You ran to her and hugged her tightly, happy tears were now flowing from your face, “I missed you so much.” you muffled as you continued to embrace each other for a while. 

“I missed you too, moya lyubov. I love you.” Natasha said and you replied, “I love you too, Natty.” then she kissed you with so much passion and everyone cheered happily seeing the two of you back together again. 

Even death can’t separate the two of you, if this is how soulmates are defined then you can definitely say that the one and only Natasha Romanoff is your soulmate.  

#natasha romanoff x yn #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff imagine #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff fanfic #black widow #black widow movie #black widow x yn #marvel x y/n #marvel imagines #marvel #avengers imagine #avengers x reader #avengers imagines #avengers

[numptypylon]

I know I’m late to the party as usual, work, timezones, yadayada, but… what’s up with this arrowhead? It’s split, like tongs or a grapple? My theory is that it’s a utility arrow that opens in the air to grab or hold onto something, rather than one meant to kill, it’s meant to do something else. Like… take down annoying overgrown pigeons, maybe? Or a grappling hook?

#rayla #the dragon prince #tdp #meta

[pidges-lost-robot]

Right so nobody probably cares and I'm no weapons expert but I kind of have more ideas about how the bayards work and them being more fluid and maybe them growing in terms of the team members with grow find their weapons begin to encompass more options within their initial weapons skillset (so yeah in this idea, no sword Lance but multiple types of ballistic and bow and arrow Lance though??)

But specifically I wanted to add onto Pidges weapon and it not just kinda working like a grappling hook and taser but it working like a magnetic type of meteor hammer that she uses to, in her words, "be this universes spider person"

Like this:

And this:

And this:

I also have ideas about Alluras working more like Donatellos stick with the end transforming more fluidly into different ends like a blade/scythe/hammer end as I like the idea that she kind of enjoys weapons training and is more involved in the teams training due to her experience and also her personal interest in the topic

#voltron #vld #voltron: legendary defender #pidge #pidge holt #pidge voltron #pidge vld #vld pidge #my art #allura #allura vld #princess allura

[girl-next-door-writes]

Through These Crazy Times

Characters: Clint Barton x reader

Summary: You and Clint have been keeping your new relationship a secret from the rest of the team, but a slip up leads to Clint deciding he doesn’t want to hide any more.

Word Count: 1353 words

Prompt: Fluff. Secret relationship. A kiss without thinking. Cleaning food off their face.

A/N: @justagirlinafandomworld requested this bit of fluffy Barton and who am I to not provide? This is for my follower milestone celebration, and I hope you enjoy.

Clint knew he had to time his stolen glances so perfectly, Nat had already begun to ask questions and it would only be a matter of time before the two of you were caught and your new relationship would be scrutinized. Still, he found his gaze floating over to you, his expression softening as he watched you listening intently to whatever it was Stark was saying.

From the moment you had walked into his life, Clint had tried to hold back his feelings for you. At first it was because he believed there was no way someone like you would be interested in him, then it was to hide his interest from the rest of the team. You were such a breath of fresh air; your presence was enough to calm him and bring him out of himself. Somehow, you always had the perfect thing to say and knew how to bring him back when he got too close to crossing the line. What the two of you had was so special, he selfishly did not want to share it, at least not yet.

Your eyes met his and his heart did a tiny summersault. Then, oh then, you smiled at him, and it took every ounce of self-control not to break into the biggest grin. Clint knew you were trying to play coy, but there was a twinkle in your eye that told him you knew exactly what that smile of yours did to him, especially when there was nothing he could do about it. For a moment, he considered signing ‘you’re lucky you’re cute’ to you, but he wasn’t sure where Nat was, and she would absolutely pick up on his message. Instead, he just shook his head and turned away.

“Okay, suit up and let’s get to the jet.” Tony announced, bringing Clint back to the matter at hand. He was glad you weren’t going on this one, he hated knowing you were in danger, but he was going to miss you being by his side.

“Typical, he tells us to suit up and get here and he’s the last one to show.” Clint grumbled to Sam as they watched Steve and Bruce going over some technical issue.

“Has to make an entrance.” Wilson smirked, glancing over to the door, his smile growing when he saw you enter. “Hey, you joining us?” he called over.

“Nah, just thought I’d make sure you all head off in one piece.” You teased, jogging over and barely stopping yourself from giving your boyfriend a hug.

“It’s a straightforward run, we’ll be back before you know it.” Clint met your eye, knowing you would be worrying about him until he returned.

“You got enough arrows? You got the grappling hook one? The stun one?”

“I’ve got enough arrows and I’ve got all the important ones. Not my first rodeo, sweetheart.” He couldn’t keep the fondness from his tone, despite being incredibly aware of how Sam was looking between the two of you.

“Right. Well. Just remember you’re not a super soldier, or a Hulk or wearing a billion dollar tech laden suit of armor. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Can’t make that promise.” Clint teased, relieved when you shook your head with a smile.

“Well, just come back in one piece.” You stepped closer to him, cupped his face and pressed a tender kiss to his lips before remembering yourself. Pulling back, you looked at him with wide eyes before turning to Sam.

“Stay safe out there, Wilson.” You then cupped his face and kissed him, surprising both Sam and Clint.

“You guys re-“ Steve began to ask, only to be cut off by a kiss from you.

“Good luck out there, Cap.” You gave him a bright smile as he floundered to respond.

“Is this a new tradition? Because I am all for traditions like this.” Tony’s voice caused you to spin around and before you could register, he had dipped you as his lips met yours. You could feel the bastard grinning into the kiss, and it left you a little flustered.

“Right, well, I think… yeah. Good luck boys.” You stammered.

“Don’t forget Bruce.” Steve said innocently, seemingly buying that this was just a kiss for luck deal.

“Oh, right.” Your eyes darted to Clint, and you could feel his confusion and panic. Giving him a small shrug, you then moved to give Bruce a kiss before spinning on your heels and leaving.

“Well. I think we’re all incredibly lucky right now, so let’s do this.” Tony grinned, walking onto the jet.

“Yeah.” Clint said almost to himself, still looking at the door you had just walked through. Your secret may be safe, but he definitely was not thrilled about the idea of you kissing every member of the team every time someone went on a mission. After all, he was your man, he should be the one to kiss you whenever and wherever he wanted, shouldn’t he?  Perhaps it was time to come clean and face whatever was coming. He knew that as long as the two of you were together then you could do anything.

So, the mission may not have gone exactly to plan, but they had made it back with minimal bruising. As Clint dragged himself into the kitchen, his tired eyes roamed the room to see if there was anything quick and easy he could eat before coming to find you.

“There’s some left-over pizza in the fridge.” Scott gave him a warm smile, obviously relieved they were back.

“Thanks.”

“No offence, but you look like you just got your ass kicked.” Scott’s words had Clint letting out a low chuckle.

“Yeah, well, you should see the other guys.”

They fell into a companionable silence as Clint shoved a couple of slices of pizza into the microwave and leaned against the counter. He ached all over and he was exhausted, he needed food and you, that was it.

The ding of the microwave cut through the silence, and he moved to sit at the island with his snack, his legs protesting until he slumped on his stool.

Clint was just starting to eat when Nat, Wanda and you walked in, and suddenly the weight resting on his chest was lifted. Just the sight of you made everything better.

“Hey! How long have you all been back? How did it go?” Nat asked, bumping her shoulder against his as she wandered over to the fridge to look for a snack.

“Not long. Just needed something to eat, then probably hit the showers before sleeping for a week. That’s an option, right?” He smiled at you, wanting nothing more than to curl up with you and forget the horrors of the fight he had just been involved in.

“I’d say you get maybe 24 hours. Oh, hey, you’ve got a little…” You indicated the corner of his mouth where he’d managed to smear tomato sauce.

Clint wiped at his face but, much to your amusement, seemed to manage to miss the smudge every time.

“Come here.” You sighed softly, reaching over and wiping the sauce from his lips with your thumb.

Clint didn’t so much as blink, he just looked up at you, taking in every inch of your face with a love-struck expression. Something that did not go unnoticed by the other people in the room. Your eyes met his, and you tilted your head slightly, questioningly. His hand came up to caress your cheek, all the things he wanted to say, all that he felt for you, bubbled up inside his exhausted body and he surged forward, capturing your lips in a heated kiss that could never be mistaken for anything but a kiss between lovers.

“You- you are my everything. I will always come back to you.” He hummed, his nose nuzzling yours.

“Does this mean I don’t have to give everyone a kiss for luck anymore?” You smirked.

“Hell no. I want all your kisses from now on.”

“Deal.” You whispered, pulling him in for another kiss as your friends quietly left you to it.

#Clint Barton #Hawkeye #Clint Barton x reader #Hawkeye x reader #gndw fic

[blumineck]

"How to use a Grappling Hook Arrow"

Wake up Babe, new Ranger Subclass just dropped!

Patreon - Youtube

#archery #fantasy #nerd #bow #arrow #archer #grappling hook

[quietlyimplode]

the language of flowers and silent things

Whumptober 2023: day 25 - buried alive

Warnings: thoughts on death

Word Count: 1.3k (gif not mine)

Summary: The tower shakes, and the avengers scramble.

A/N: 6 to go friends. Almost there.

Masterlist

Whumptober Masterlist

.

2014

NEW YORK

Yelena feels nothing as she plummets down.

Death, she thinks, should feel different; life flashing before your eyes, regrets, pleasures; something.

It makes her feel unbelievably sad.

She thought maybe in death, it might be peaceful, a release, not sadness and continued grief for what she doesn’t have.

Closing her eyes, she doesn’t bother to look down, waiting for the inevitable pain of death.

Instead, she hears a whoosh and warm body next to her and a tight grip underneath her armpits, then swinging them both into a nearby window with the momentum from a grappling hook attached to an arrow.

The bundle and roll into the building, enters them into the kitchen, as Clint breaks her fall.

He groans.

“Shit,” she repeats.

Glass everywhere, she picks it out of leg and shakes her hair, then goes to help him up.

“That would have been a stupid way to die,” she smiles at him.

He takes her hand and stands.

“It really would have,” he agrees.

The building groans, and she holds on to both Clint and the nearby bench.

“Do you think it will fall?” she asks looking towards the ceiling.

“Natasha’s up there somewhere.”

Clint nods.

“Yeah, she is, so is some of our friends,” he tells her.

“Oh,” Yelena replies, looking around at the Christmas decorations and stopping for a moment.

“How many do you think?”

“Six? If Bruce - the big green monster, has got out then it’s six.”

She nods.

She’s aware of Natasha’s powerful friends. The man of steel, the monster, the god, and the superhero.

She wonders just who will greet them when they make their way up.

Clint looks up and groans at the amount of stairs.

They both feel the shake, much like an earthquake, that rocks the building again; this time though, parts of the building move with it.

Clint covers over Yelena and raises his arms in protection of them both.

It shocks her, someone protecting her.

It’s never happened, not since Natasha.

She looks up at the man protecting her from debris in a stairwell and feels an intensity of emotion that she doesn’t really understand.

.

Sam smiles at the hole now opened up underneath him, and whilst he realises it can’t be good, he sees a way out and makes his way down the fissure of the tower.

He moves slowly and carefully down, trying not to make anything else move.

He’s surprised not to see Tony and the suits around him, and wonders why we hasn’t come across anyone just yet.

He looks around, dead worry sitting in his chest.

“Hello?” he calls hopefully.

“Sam?”

Peppers voice calls out and then she coughs.

He moves towards the sound of her voice, hoping she’s okay.

“Pepper?”

“Sam, we’re down here, I can’t move out and I can’t find Tony,” she says, slightly panicked.

Sam feels flashes to the war.

Picking bodies out of buildings.

He swallows hard.

“It’s okay Pepper, I’m coming,” he says, hopping further down.

“Keep talking to me, okay? Where’s Tony? When did you see him?”

He finally gets to where she’s stuck.

Sam smiles; trying to be reassuring.

“He’s somewhere here, we were in the room, the door was locked and he was trapped, Tony, he; he was stuck. I think… I think it had fallen on his arm.”

Moving some rubble from around her, he reaches and touches her arm.

“I’ll find him,” he promises, “grab my hand and we’ll try and pull you out, okay?”

He protects her head and helps her out to a clearing: she doesn’t look more worse for wear, just dusty and dirty.

“We’ll find him,” he says again as she hugs him.

.

Steve holds Natasha tight, grabbing Maria’s arm as the building moves.

“We need to get out of here,” he says redundantly.

“Tony, Pepper and Sam are somewhere here,” Natasha says, worried.

Maria nods.

“We’ll find them,” she says confidently.

Steve calls out their names, and they stop, listening for a response but don’t hear anything.

Natasha moves ahead, rounding the corner and calling again.

“Tony?”

“Nat?”

“Sam?”

“We’re down here!”

Maria moves with Natasha, carefully moving down the stairs and following Sam’s voice.

Natasha moves towards Pepper and gives her a hug, her panic visible on her face.

“We can’t find Tony,” she says, tears on her face.

Assessing the situation, Natasha notices the wings on Sam’s back and the fact that building has moved in twenty minutes.

“Do your wings work?” she asks.

Sam nods, “I think so.”

Natasha turns to Maria and Pepper.

“Do you think you can coordinate the fire and police on the ground?” she asks Maria.

Maria looks around and nods.

“I can send more help, I think,” she agrees.

Pepper shakes her head.

“I know what you’re going to say, I don’t want to leave without knowing he’s okay.”

Natasha nods.

“I know, but Clint’s down there too, and probably Bruce and we need to know they’re okay too,” she rationalises.

Pepper looks around to Steve and then Sam and finally nods.

“Okay…” she says, wiping at her face.

“Okay.”

.

The tower doesn’t move.

Sirens fill the air and she’s thankful that the fire below will finally be put out.

She wonders how Clint and Yelena are going and just where Bruce ended up.

Natasha trusts Maria to organise the emergency services, and Pepper to keep it together long enough.

“Tony!” Natasha calls.

“Tony!” Steve repeats.

There’s no response.

She drops down, hitting something soft. She thinks for a minute that it’s a bed or couch but when she sees two large eyes and a nose.

The stupid rabbit.

She laughs despite herself.

Pepper’s stupid Christmas rabbit stuck in between concrete chunks of building.

Tony had put a Christmas hat on it and everything.

She sighs, and then, she sees his hand.

“Steve!” she calls, “he’s here!”

She tries to find a way, to him, blocked by debris.

“Help me,” she says, as he drops down near her.

Steve’s strength is something else, and Natasha has never been so thankful for it.

They clear the way around Tony, and find him knocked out on Pepper’s rabbit.

Steve pulls Tony free, his arm bent strangely and gashes on his body.

“Why wouldn’t he have used his suit to protect himself?” Steve wonders aloud.

“EMP,” Natasha deduces, “killed the power of the entire tower, probably the suits as well.”

She checks he’s breathing and sits back next to him.

Holding his good hand, Natasha sighs.

“What happened?” she asks, “who came? What were they looking for?”

Steve shrugs.

“Jarvis would know,” Natasha says, looking up and around.

“I think the only reason the building is still standing is thanks to the reinforcements Tony put in after the attack.”

Steve checks on him again.

“Tony?”

Still nothing.

“Sam knows to come back right?”

He sits next to Natasha and places his hand on Tony’s leg.

“I think so,” she replies, squeezing Tony’s hand again.

.

Clint feels concrete fall on his head and just manages to stay conscious as he stares down at Yelena, covering her like a child.

Natasha would kill him if anything happened to her.

He moves and drags her with him to underneath a feels like a stable clearing.

“Are you okay?” he asks, resisting the urge to touch his head where he’s sure it’s bleeding.

“Are you?” she retorts.

There’s more commotion above and he hears Natasha’s voice.

“Come on,” he guides and pulls her to the stairs.

.

#whumptober2023 #no. 25 #buried alive #the avengers #avengers fic #natasha romanoff #clintasha #black widow #clint barton #my fic #hawkeye #natasha romanoff fic #clintasha fanfic #clintasha fanfiction #yelena belova

[writebackatya]

Gosalyn: {grapple hooks from one end of McDuck Manor to the other} Whoa! This grapple hook is so much fun, Webs!

Webby: {examining Gosalyn’s crossbow} Thanks! Your crossbow is really cool!

Gosalyn: Thanks! I made it myself. It’s got some nice range too

Webby: Really!?

[the two trade their weapons back]

Gosalyn: Yeah, watch this. {fires her crossbow}

[the arrow goes from one end of the manor to the other hitting a can of Pep which just so happens to be in Louie’s hand]

Louie: Hey! Beakley said we’re not allowed to play with crossbows in the manor anymore!

Gosalyn: So what? Are you gonna tattle on us?

Louie: Not if you get me a new can of Pep since you ruined this one

Webby: {grapple guns the can of Pep over to her} Sorry Louie! We’ll get you a new one

Gosalyn: {grabs the can of Pep from Webby} Oh come on, this Pep ain’t ruined

Gosalyn: {pulls the arrow out of the can and immediately shotguns the Pep down; once she’s done, she wipes her mouth and throws the empty soda can on the ground and crushes it}

Dewey: {slides in out of nowhere in front of Gosalyn} OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Huey: {steps into the room} Why are there plunger arrows all over the kitchen wall!?!

#incorrect ducktales 2017 #incorrect ducktales quotes #incorrect ducktales #gosalyn waddlemeyer #gosalyn mallard #webby vanderquack #louie duck #dewey duck #huey duck #ducktales 2017

[ohlookanothercartoontofallinto]

Writing prompt: Four gets brainwashed by an enemy, Wind tries to save him. How it goes is up to you. I know how much you enjoy killing Four, so if someone in the Chain accidentally does so in the process of knocking them out so they won't be a threat or etc... 👀

(I wouldn't say I like killing four? Actually I don't think I've ever killed four. I've made him suffer but killed? Not that I can remember. Anyways went in a different direction but I hope you enjoy.)

(Btw Blood warning)

Four against one really wasn’t that hard it really wasn’t. Wind had fought five to one against Darknuts before, and don’t get him started on miniblins. However this time it was different. Because the person he was fighting was no evil-born monster. No, it was his brothers. 

The sailor blocked with his mirror shield, using the light above to blind the colors that advanced. 

“Red, Blue, Green, Vio! Mates! I really would appreciate any of you breaking out of that villain's control and fighting alongside me!” The sailor wasn’t sure how any of this happened. All he knew one moment he entered what looked like a battle arena, the next, an out of his mind Smith had split into his four selves and was out for blood. Wind’s blood to be exact. 

Red equipped the fire rode pushing the sailor back. The boy didn’t realize it was into a trap. Blue came from behind, trapping Wind's arms and chest in a lock. “BLUE!” the youngest growled, “Let me go!” The sailor struggled, as Vio pulled out his sword, making his way towards the pair. 

“Not like this.” the sailor mumbled. “Sorry blue!” With the little arm mobility the sailor had, he loosened the wrap on his shield, grabbing the leather straps before launching the shield back. The pointed top struck into Blue’s face, which would no doubt leave permit damage. Blue lost all grip he had on Wind, giving the sailor the opportunity to strike the blue boy in the gut with the hilt of his sword. Blood spat from the smallest mouth. Wind had no time to sympathize, he grabbed the boy's arm, and with all his strength and a little help from the magic bracelets. Launched Blue over his shoulder, into Vio, who had to drop his sword to guarantee no harm come to his brother. The sailor didn’t stop there, while there was a moment of confusion. Wind took his shield and frisbees it towards Red. Thankfully the wind was on the hero of the wind’s side. Because the shield made contact knocking him back with enough force to take Red to the ground. Without delay, the sailor pulled out his grappling hook, thanking the Wind brothers that there was a place he could grab onto, he swung and leaped into the air. 

Only the sailor forgot about the fourth. A freezing arrow shot into the rope, halting all movement in a jaggering motion. Wind only had a second to blink before the second arrow came. This one was lit with flames so bright. He braced himself, as the head made contact with the ice, the rope shattered. 

Wind slammed into the ground hard. The arm that normally donned his shield felt like it was shattered. The Phantom Sword slid a few feet away from the sailor. Coming to a halt in front of Green. Wind wanted to smack the smirk he had off his face. Green with his foot slid the weapon back to the sailor. 

"Pick it up." Green looked like a demon. 

'He's probably possessed by one.' The young hero concluded. 

Wind complied, having to use the sword like a staff to even stand. Blood dripped from his forehead. He took a fighting stance. 

Green scoffed, "Your forms off." The colors leader took a proper form. 

The sailor rolled his eyes, "Reminder I'm basically self-taught." He was getting lightheaded. 

Green pulled in getting ready to strike. Sliding his foot, wind braced himself, four launched forward steel against steel. 

"Oh trust me it shows." Wind pushed back slicing at his brother, Green shuffling back. Thrust aimed for the sailor side. The youngest blocked with the sword, and with his shieldless hand decked the leader in the face. Four stumbled back, “COWARD!” 

Wind tensed, “watch your language, mouse.” 

“I only speak the truth! Some swordsman you are! You choose cheap tactics. Rather than the art of the blade, you’re pathetic.” Green spit. 

The sailor's heart was ablaze, he knew these words were most likely from the evil controlling the Smith, however, it was still hard to hear those words. Especially from his ancestor, he wouldn’t let him know that though.  "Well not all of us could be raised by the Captain of the Royal Knights of Hyrule. Who taught you how to pick up a sword at what the age of four?” Sneakily, the sailor had pulled out his hook shot, aiming it at Green, pulling him forward, attempting to bring the sword's hilt down to knock him out. The green leader was prepared, blocking it, both entering a struggle for power once again. The sailor growled, “Oh also, last time I checked, I was a sailor, a pirate, and a kid that just wanted to live. I never claimed to be a swordsman.” 

A smile on Green's face grew, fear electrified the youngest body. “Good because you're not.” 

Before wind could even realize what was going on, it was too late.

A blade of violet stabbed him through the back. 

A blade of blue stabbed him on his right side. 

A blade of red stabbed him on his left side. 

And a blade of green stood before him. 

The hero of the wind’s fell to his knees, blood dripping from his mouth. “Who’s using cheap tactics now?” 

The smile was whipped from Green's face and he lunged his sword into his youngest brother’s chest. Not stopping until it came out the other side. The sailor took one large gasp and shrank in on himself. 

Green, Red, Blue, and Vio stepped away pleased with what they had done. 

As the droplets of the sailor’s blood hit the floor, the magic that had taken their mind dripped away as well. 

Reality became clearer, time became present, and their voice was in control. The first thing Green heard was the shriek of Red. ‘Who dares touch his brother?’ Followed by the desperate cries of Blue, begging for Vio to do something. ‘What needs to be done that I can not do?’ 

The world came into view, the sailor came into view. 

He was looking up at Green, pale as a ghost. 

“Teal…” Green whispered like a mouse. 

The sailor began to fall forward. Green fell down with him, Wind’s head pressed against his chest. Green lifted his hand, it shook violently, as blood dripped off it. 

“Oh Hylia, what did we–” Green breath was taken away as he tried to process what was happening. 

Red had not stopped his screams, as Blue hugged him for dear life, his wound still spilling blood as well. “What do we do, what do we do, how do we fix this! Vio! Green?” Blue wanted any answer. That neither party could provide. 

Vio stood frozen like stone, eyes fixed on the sailor, and on the four swords that pierced his skin. 

A weak voice called out. 

“Brothers…” Wind spit up more blood as he lifted up his hand for Green to take. “Promise me you will continue to live your lives, please.” Tears began to stream from the sailor's eyes. “I need you to live your life.” 

Green looked into the youngest hero’s eyes, they were the same as his. Green cowardly took the sailor's hand, and kissed his knuckles. “We–We promise.” 

Wind let out a weak smile, “Smith…I don’t want to die.” 

#linkeduniverse #lu #linked universe #linkeduniverse wind #lu wind #linked universe wind #lu four #linkeduniverse four #linked universe four #my writing #my fanfic #linkeduniverse fanfic #lu fanfic #linkeduniverse red #lu red #lu blue #lu vio #lu green #linkeduniverse green #linkeduniverse blue #linkeduniverse vio #I enjoyed this one

[box-of-miracles]

Miraculous Breakdowns

Season: Vernal

Specc, Giraffe, Longevity.

Ribbon Wand, good for long range as the ribbon extends infinitely and can function as a lasso, whip and grappling tool.

Remembrance, by wrapping the ribbon around their eyes the wielder can see through current appearance into the history of a place or object, and even see what of that history still remains in it.

The wielder's vision is obstructed and their attention fully turned to the target of Remembrance when using this power.

Not a combat focused power at all, the wielder is limited when working alone by how well they can isolate themselves from interferences.

A versatile miraculous best suited for long range, the Giraffe is good in a fight, a chase or for problem solving, but it usually needs to choose one of these to do at a time.

Volley, Firefly, Velocity.

Bow and Arrow, good for long range, endlessly replenished arrows.

Flash Fire, the wielder accelerates the targeted to the point of catching fire in their wake.

The power can target the wielder themself or their arrows, not both at once and no one and nothing else. The miraculous also doesn't give the wielder perfect aim.

When targeted, the wielder leaves a fire trail behind them and the arrows catch fire midair, both flames do not hurt the wielder or consume the arrows.

A weapon good for long range but a power that can close long distances in a short time, the Firefly miraculous is quite versatile and while it's combat capabilities are many, it is best utilized for a good diversion or perhaps containment of an opponent.

Fllush, Toad, Purification.

Fishing Rod, endlessly extendable line, sturdy yet flexible rod, good for long range and can be used as a grapple tool.

Cleanse, allows the wielder to detect the source of a problem affecting a certain area and, using their weapon, literally fish it out.

For magical problems, for example an Akuma, this power also works as an instant de-evilization as soon as the hook makes contact with the Akuma object. However, the Toad cannot magically fix any damages done in the battle after the fact, unlike the Ladybug.

For problems of a more mundane nature, however, for example a regular person causing property damage, all the power can do is point them out and the wielder must take care of the problem manually.

A long range miraculous with a focus on problem solving, the Toad is really half of a duo best wielded by two individuals, each suited for their respective miraculous best. The Toad identifies the cause of an illness and the Newt, it's natural compliment, treats the symptoms. Without each other, they only ever do half the job.

Thanks for reading, And As Always

Stay Tuned...

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous fanworks #hebrew miraculouses #kwami ocs #kwamis