#i did not think they'd go as old as 19-20

[watcherintheweyr]

'Rhaenyra is a bad mom bc she knowingly gave birth to bastards and she knew how much danger they'd be in!!!!'

1. She had no way of knowing those babies wouldn't pop out looking exactly like her, beforehand. And unfortunately she couldn't stop at Jace. The throne needed an heir. Driftmark needed an heir. And a spare was needed as well, given the sheer rate of Targaryen children dying untimely deaths.

2. She had to provide heirs to the throne, and to Driftmark. If she hadn't, society wouldn't have blamed Laenor, they would have blamed her- which makes her position even more unstable, bc then she 'can't fulfill a woman's duty' so why would men think her 'able' to fill a 'man's role' by ruling the kingdom? And she and Laenor tried. He was either unable (meaning infertile or impotent, or unable to get it up), or unwilling. (And they did try. We dont know what they tried but Rhaenyra is shown to be clever in the show so honestly i have no doubt she attempted what Margaery suggested with Renly.) Laenor was in on the entire thing. He was aware of every part of this. He wasn't duped, he wasn't cuckholded- it was a plan greenlit by him, bc this way he and Rhaenyra would both have their heirs and a family. This cannot in any way shape or form be compared to Cersei cuckholding Robert (fuck Robert Baratheon tho), seeing as Robert was **not** at all aware that his children weren't his, and wouldn't have been OK with that.

Either way- she chose not to maritally r*pe her husband and put him through more trauma after it was clear their attempts weren't working. Yall are always so upset for Alicent (rightfully so, bc show!alicent was maritally raped, even if it wasn't considered as such in that time), but you... WANT Rhaenyra to do that to Laenor? Hello???

[And no. Rhaenyra did NOT rape or coerce Criston Cole. The actors, writers, and directors have all stated their sex was consensual and 'an act of love.' It was Rhaenyra going to someone she felt close to and trusted after feeling abandoned and unwanted and betrayed. In that scene you literally watch, as after Cole tells Rhaenyra to stop undressing herself, she moves aside so she isn't blocking his way to the door. The director states that the moment they show Cole folding and setting down his cloak was him choosing his desire over his oaths. And Criston Cole has known Rhaenyra since she was 14. He knew damn well the sort of person she was- and she was not the person who would have harmed him for saying no. She was an intoxicated and emotionally vulnerable 19 year old- Criston was in his late 20s to early 30s. And it's explicitly stated in ep.9 that the ONLY person a Kingsguard cannot refuse is the king. In ep.7 Criston disobeys a direct order from Alicent when she wants him to mutilate Lucerys. Criston Cole was not assaulted. Stop trying to assign Aegon's sins to Rhaenyra so that you can feel better for supporting him.]

3. In the books, the rumors of their bastardry at large halted when all of Rhaenyra's boys' cradle eggs hatched. The ONLY people who continued to try and raise issue were the core green faction. But the realm at large *did not give a fuck* why? Because every actually relevant party claimed those boys. Repeatedly and without flinching. Laenor claimed and loved those boys even face to face with Alicent's bullshit. Corlys claimed and love those boys- he was proud of them, and it's been stated by the actor in the show that Luke was his favorite- that given the... events of ep.10, Corlys will be out for blood. And Viserys repeatedly insisted upon their legitimacy- because Laenor and Corlys claimed them, because he knew that by forcing Rhaenyra to marry Laenor in order to repair the damage his insults caused House Velaryon, that he had backed her into a corner.

Rhaenyras boys are remembered to history as Velaryon. Even **Green supporters** noted that they were good, capable, intelligent, and **worthy** princes. That their deaths were unfortunate *for the realm.*

Legally, those boys are legitimate. They cannot be proven illegitimate without Laenor renouncing them, and he never did. Furthermore, trying to declare children illegitimate due to their appearance is a stupid, dangerous precedent. The fact that it's people who have no ties to House Velaryon pushing these rumors and pushing for disinheritance makes it even worse, because they're meddling in the succession of a House that *is not theirs.* if that became a standard, imagine the feuds and conflicts that would erupt- lords pushing for the children of rivals to be declared illegitimate all for the sake of trying to grasp and steal land, power, and influence as a norm? The realm would tear itself apart. Not to mention the sheer danger that would place women in, in Westeros.

Furthermore, even whilst usurping her, even while calling her children bastards, the Greens also imply Laenor's homosexuality was inherited by the Velaryon princes- that they would use Rhaenyra's 'promiscuity' and Laenor's 'predilections' to turn the Red Keep into a brothel- ironic, considering that's more what Aegon would've done. So even while claiming that Rhaenyras children are bastards that shouldn't inherit, they try to state that what the boys inherit or learn from Laenor makes them unfit for the throne. They can't keep their own damn story straight- because their usurpation was never about what is moral, what is right, or the greater good. It was about greed. Power. Sexism.

It doesn't matter what those boys looked like, especially seeing as Rhaenys had dark hair in the books. What matters is that Corlys and Laenor and Viserys claimed them and declared them legitimate, and that they **never** deviated from that.

As for Vaemond, he was a second son. And he waited until Corlys and Viserys were dying and too ill to stop him to make a grasp for power. Youre not supposed to look at that and feel hes in the right. Youre supposed to look at that and see a man consumed by greed, and literally trying to bury Corlys' will and intentions before the man is even in a grave. He was NEVER Corlys' heir- he just wanted power. It wasn't about his House, or their legacy, it was about him.

(And before yall start shit about Rhaenyras boys stealing Laena's girls' inheritance... Rhaena and Baela are *TARGARYEN*. Not Velaryon. Their claim was to the throne or to any holdings in Daemon's name. NOT to Driftmark.)

Rhaenyras boys being betrothed to Rhaena and Baela tied up any issue of 'Velaryon blood.' Baela would have been queen consort of the seven kingdoms at Jace's side, and they very clearly adored one another in book and show. Rhaena would have been Lady of the Tides- which she never would have had a chance for, without Rhaenyra (and Laena) making those betrothals. She and Luke were also canonically very close- and in show she's very encouraging of him whenever he looks nervous or uncertain. They had a bond.

Rhaenyra stole nothing. She gave those girls more. And she loved them- they were the only daughters she got to have, seeing as the Greens treachery caused the early death of baby Visenya. If she hadn't loved them, she wouldn't have trusted Rhaena to look after Joffrey or give her Morning's egg from Syrax. She wouldn't have immediately invited both girls to the table when she was queen, which is something her father did not do for her until much, much later. He allowed Rhaenyra's voice to be silenced too often when she was first made heir. Rhaenyra did not repeat that hurt to her girls or her boys.

Anyways, moving on.

You lot do also remember that Rhaenyra herself has Velaryon blood, right? Jaehaerys I's mother was Alyssa Velaryon. Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya the Conquerors' mother was Valaena Velaryon. It's not immediate, but there *is* Velaryon blood through *all* of Rhaenyras boys.

Ultimately, Rhaenyras boys were only in danger because of the core Green faction usurping the throne. If they hadnt- no succession crisis or rebellion could have truly threatened Rhaenyras boys- because none of them would have had dragons. All of Rhaenyras children loved one another- her sons by Daemon would not have turned on her sons with Laenor (and Harwin). They were a true, loving family- possibly one of the healthiest and most close knit one House Targaryen ever boasted.

And another thing... 'her having babies with Harwin was stupid, she should have picked someone Valyrian!'

Here's the thing. Rhaenyra had to be careful as hell choosing who would father her and Laenor's heirs. She had to choose someone who was physically close, and who could be trusted. Someone who wouldn't try to publicly claim those boys in boast or jealousy. Someone who would keep their mouth shut and had no ambition of their own in regards to the throne. Do you really think Vaemond Velaryon (as I see him suggested a lot) would've kept his mouth shut? That he wouldn't have tried to use this to blackmail Rhaenyra and Laenor for more power and status? Do you think Rhaenys would have ever fought for or supported Rhaenyra if Rhaenyra had tried to have Corlys sire her children? And flying to see Daemon in Pentos and having a purely Valyrian child 9 months later would have made things look even more suspect.

Furthermore... she chose someone who cared for her deeply. Who clearly had a positive relationship with Laenor. She chose someone so she wouldn't have to traumatize herself- she took power over her body in a way almost no Westerosi woman has ever been able to. They were a family unit- Rhaenyra, Laenor, and Harwin. Those children were loved and cherished by two fathers and their mother. They were raised never doubting their mothers love, nor their father's- either father. They were raised and educated to be true, good princes of the realm.

Rhaenyra fought like hell for her children. She was an incredible mother. Yall just believe everything the Green faction says without looking at it critically, and that's unfortunate as hell.

#rhaenyra targaryen #pro rhaenyra targaryen #anti team green #anti alicent hightower #anti team green stans #pro team black #in defense of rhaenyra targaryen #anti alicent hightower stans #anti criston cole #anti team green fans #anti criston cole stans #anti vaemond velaryon #anti green faction #anti otto hightower #pro laenor velaryon #cersei lannister #anti robert baratheon #laena velaryon #visenya targaryen #in defense of lucerys velaryon #pro lucerys velaryon #lucerys velaryon #pro jacaerys velaryon targaryen #jacaerys velaryon #jacaerys targaryen #in defense of jacaerys velaryon #pro joffrey velaryon #joffrey velaryon #aegon iii targaryen #viserys ii targaryen

[holopossums]

so about that twitter q&a...

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #casey jr #casey jones jr #sona art #holopossums #holopossum live reaction #listen i thought he'd be ~18 or so #i was in the ballpark #but considering previously stated that they aged him down #i did not think they'd go as old as 19-20 #the fandom will go nuts with this information

[rageserenity]

It's 2024. Are you still thinking about movieverse!Cherik? Because I am.

For the past several months, there's only been a very slow trickle of posts/fics in the xmcu cherik tag. Let's try to breathe some life back into this incredible pairing!

With one clear winner of my poll, here's thirty prompts for the thirty days of April. (This is a super chill, laid-back event---do these in any order, interpret them as loosely as you like! Create in any medium! Fic, art, gifs, meta, incoherent screaming about the otp…all winners in my book.)

The only rule here is to cherik too close to the sun. Alright. Here are the prompts.

Mutual Pining

Doesn't really even need elaboration! Write that horrifically slow slow-burn. Gif every time McAvoy made insane fuck me eyes on screen. Make a playlist of songs about impossible love.

2. Alternate Meetings

There are endless quotes about how these two complete each other in a way no one they'd met before or after ever did. How else could they have met?

3. Erik Has A Telepathy Kink

This is basically canon. Let my boy get freaky!

4. Canon Fix-It

All the times Fox fucked it up. There are endless options.

5. Hurt/Comfort

Put them in that Situation. Put them in that Blender. Break them apart and put them back together ❤️‍🩹

6. Canon Compliant

Draw that missing scene! Gif your favourite cherik moment!

7. Beach Divorce

Make it worse. Make it better. Show it to us exactly how it was. Break it down in a 3,000 word meta. Go wild!

8. Domestics

Sometimes you just want to see them doing normal couple things. Erik put the gun down.

9. Found Family

The real heart of x-men!

10. Time Travel

There are SO many possibilities here. Stick them in a time loop. Give them a chance to change their past.

11. AU

Love a good AU!

12. There Is Only One Bed

Had to get this one in here. What better way to amp up the tension?

13. Genosha

By some miracle, cherik actually did end up together at the end of 2019s trash bag disaster Dark Phoenix. We aren’t making a big enough deal about this.

14. Declaration(s) of Love

Who says it first? How do they say it and when? Have they said it…without saying it?

15. Jealousy

Need I say more.

16. Reunion

These two have absolutely no chill.

17. Soulmates

Classic prompt, had to get this in here too.

18. The DOFP Aircraft

The TENSION here. Break it down for me. How does Charles feel about his injury? How does Erik feel about his injury?

19. Gay Mutant Road Trip

You already know.

20. Body Swap

SO fun when people have superpowers.

21. First Kiss

When? How? Who initiated it?

22. The Mansion

Mansion!content is a genre of its own.

23. Conflicting Ideology

Give me your theses. Who’s right? Can they ever reconcile completely? Write a fic where it drives them apart.

24. Sebastian Shaw

A trope unto himself.

25. Team As Matchmaker

They had to have known something was going on, didn’t they?

26. Cooking

Charles deserves a good meal. Also, imagine Erik using his powers in the kitchen. The sheer domesticity…

27. Hurt No Comfort

Plenty of scope with these two 🥲

28. Growing Old Together

Giving Sirs Ian Mckellan and Patrick Stewart their props as well!

29. Making Up

*pushes chess board across the table* sorry babe

30. Charles Xavier Did More For Mutants Than You'll Ever Know

Rising to each other’s defense. Only I can insult this man.

I will be tracking #revivecherik to reblog stuff! Here’s a fic collection for the same. Let’s get this ball rolling! Please feel free to send me an ask if you’ve got anything to say! And most importantly, let’s all have fun 😁

*I know a few of you preferred something like a gift exchange because of the commitment factor—I’m super down to organise a tiny one for the handful of us! If this promptathon doesn’t flop horribly, we can hopefully do a whole bunch of stuff :)

If you read this post all the way through, please reblog for reach! Thank you! Hoping you participate come April.

Shoutout to @inmymagnetoera for reaching out and helping with this!

#revivecherik #cherik #charles xavier #erik lehnsherr #xmfc #james mcavoy #michael fassbender #x men days of future past #x men #charles x erik #magneto #professor x

[girlgenius1111]

wrong.

r is dating an older woman. her teammates don't approve. when r and her girlfriend breakup, she hides it from her teammates, determined not to let them know that they were right.

angst + fluff. breakup obviously. protective barca :)

When you'd decided to ignore your teammates feelings about your girlfriend, you didn't imagine it would end as terribly as it did. You chalked it up to them being overprotective, which they were, rather than them being right about her, which they also were. She was 28, and you were 19, and you knew they felt that she was too old for you. You were one of the younger players on the team, which you took as something of a challenge, as if you had to prove your maturity. That wasn't why you were dating someone so much older, but it was certainly a perk. You thought they'd be impressed when they met her, but they were not. They waited until she left to tell you that they thought it was a bad idea, that she was too old for you.

This only really strengthened your resolve to keep seeing her, much to your teammates frustration. They'd all tried to speak to you about it, promising that they just didn't want to see you get hurt or taken advantage of, but you wouldn't hear any of it. You all fell into an unspoken agreement to not discuss your girlfriend, as it was the cause of countless arguments, and they clearly weren't changing your mind. Alexia had finally thrown up her hands, saying that if you wanted to be immature and not listen to them, you were free to do so, but that you shouldn't expect them to be there to fix it when it inevitably ended poorly.

Alexia was just frustrated and worried, and she hadn't really meant it. She thought that was obvious; her and the team had made it clear, she thought, that they were always there for you. No matter what. They'd proven it, time and time again, but Alexia's words rattled around in your brain for days after she said them, and you were unable to pretend they hadn't hurt. Still, you pushed it to the back of your mind, confident that you wouldn't need your teammates, because nothing would go wrong.

-----

Of course, everything did go wrong. You had gone to your girlfriend's apartment to surprise her with dinner after training one day. You were in the kitchen, preparing to start cooking when you heard her key in the door. She was on the phone when she walked in, sitting on the couch and continuing her conversation, and you decided to wait until she was off the phone to announce your presence.

"No, really, it's fine. She doesn't have to know, and besides, she's just a bit of fun. She's 20, she can't possibly think I'm serious about her."

You felt nauseous. As far as you were aware, you were the only 20 year old she was seeing, which meant she was talking about you. It only got worse from there.

"I definitely prefer you, baby. Her body is nice, obviously, but I could do without her personality. She's young, and annoying, and she doesn't know how to shut up. I don't know how her team tolerates her, honestly, I can't spend more than a couple hours with her unless we're partaking in... other activities, and then her mouth is pretty busy."

You can hear the smirk in her voice, and you swear you can feel your heart fall out of your chest. She was speaking so carelessly about you, so cruelly. You felt used, and suddenly self conscious about everything you'd ever said. Was she right? Did you talk too much? Did the team secretly hate you? It only took you a few seconds to decide that she was probably right. She was older, the age of a lot of your teammates, and it seemed incredibly likely that they felt the same way.

Your embarrassment quickly turned to anger, though, as it often did, and you grabbed the flowers you'd brought her, and marched out into the living room. Her eyes widened, hand dropping the phone, and you threw the flowers in her direction, as well as the key to her apartment she'd given you, before walking right out the door, taking care to slam it behind you.

-----

You thought you were handling it pretty well. You walked right out of her apartment and to your car, driving home. You didn't cry, that would be ridiculous. What was there to cry about? You should have known it would end like this. You couldn't stand the thought of hearing your teammates I told you so's, nor the thought of them sticking to their guns, and not being there for you when you needed them, because they'd warned you. You decided that you wouldn't need them, then, which definitely was not fueled partly by your ex-girlfriend's words about them probably hating you. No, you were fine. Everything was fine.

You woke the next morning sadder than you'd been the night before. The anger had faded, leaving a hole in your chest, where the words you'd overheard were etched permanently. You knew that, in this state, it would take just one person asking if you were okay for you to break, and that was not an option. You would act as normal as possible, no one would suspect anything, and you could cry when you got home, not before.

-----

You wished you didn't have such perceptive teammates. You could have sworn you'd acted normally, completely normally, as you headed into the locker room that morning, joking around with Pina and Ona, and doing your best to keep a smile on your face. It was like the older girls had some internal alarm that went off when you weren't okay, and you felt their eyes flitting over to you throughout the morning gym session.

Still, you held strong, avoiding the girls that were watching you carefully, instead spending time with the younger girls, who were happy to joke around, which keep your mind off things. Your first real test came in the form of Lucy Bronze.

Everyone was walking out to the pitch, when she fell into step with you, slinging an arm over your shoulder.

"How did your surprise dinner go?" She asked. You'd completely forgotten that you'd told Lucy about that. She was one of the only ones who could be civil when talking about your girlfriend, taking the time to ask you about her, even though you knew she held the same opinions as the others.

"Oh. Fine. It was good." You replied shortly, and Lucy couldn't help but be slightly confused when you shrugged out from under her arm, and jogged away. You weren't one to spare details when telling a story, but you had evidently not wanted to talk about it. That wasn't like you.

"What special dinner?" Ingrid asked, coming up on the other side of Lucy as you literally ran away. Mapi was on her other side, also looking curiously at Lucy.

"She was surprising her girlfriend by cooking her dinner last night," Lucy explained and Mapi frowned.

"I don't like that girl." She stated plainly. "She's not good enough for our pequeña."

Ingrid rolled her eyes. "Everyone knows how you feel about her, love, you don't need to remind us every time she's brought up."

Mapi ignored her girlfriend. "She answered strangely, no? Normally she's talktative whenever someone asks about her girl, but she ran away from you." The Spaniard observed, watching as you sprayed water on Pina's head, your smile not quite reaching your eyes.

"Yeah, I guess. You know she hates hearing how much everyone dislikes her girlfriend though, it was probably just that." Lucy dismissed, but Mapi's eyes stay trained on you.

"Hmm."

"María, please don't get involved in that again, you know how upset it makes her when everyone has something to say about her relationship," Ingrid said reproachfully, fully understanding the look in her girlfriend's eyes.

"I am not going to get involved," Mapi defended. "I am just going to see if anyone else has any observations..."

Ingrid sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Don't mention this to Alexia until you're sure something is going on, she'll freak out."

"I won't." Mapi promised, distracted. Ingrid walked away to talk to Frido, and Mapi immediately found Alexia standing with Irene, and marched over.

Ingrid abruptly stopped talking, watching as Mapi seemingly did exactly what she ahd told her not to do.

"What?" Frido asked, following Ingrid's eyes to where Mapi was standing with the captains.

"Mapi's convinced something happened with y/n and her girlfriend, and I told her not to say anything because you know how y/n gets, especially not to Alexia, and look. She's doing exactly what I said not to." Ingrid sighed, exasperated.

"I don't like that girl." Frido said, frowning at the mention of your girlfriend.

Ingrid threw her hands in the air. "No one does! That doesn't mean we have to get all up in y/n's business. The more we push, the less likely she is to listen to us."

"Alright, relax, I agree with you." Frido said. Ingrid glared at Mapi from across the pitch, the Spaniard very obviously avoiding eye contact with her girlfriend. Jona called them over to start a drill, then, and all conversations came to a halt. For now.

-----

You weren't oblivious to the increase of attention on you after talking to Lucy, but you were determined not to acknowledge it. Your teammates were stubborn, though; almost as stubborn as you. You were walking off the pitch at the end of training, towards the locker room, when Alexia and Mapi appeared on either side of you.

"How was your night last night?" Alexia asked innocently, looking at you out of the corner of her eye.

"Fine?" You asked, feigning confusion.

"Do anything fun?" Mapi wondered.

"No." You said, because you weren't sure you could even discuss your ex at this point. Lucy had brought it up before, and you'd barely made it through that brief conversation.

"Really?" Both girls said in unison. You rolled your eyes.

"Yes." You huffed, getting frustrated, and they could tell. Alexia grabbed your wrist, stopping you, and her and Mapi moved to stand in front of you, blocking your path inside.

"Lucy said you did something fun with your girlfriend?" Alexia asked, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. Mapi's arms were crossed, and it really felt like you were in trouble.

"Yeah, we had dinner. Can I go now?"

"No, you're being weird. Did something happen?" Mapi said, stepping closer to you.

"Nope," you shook your head stubbornly.

"Pequeña, you seem upset," Alexia reached out a hand to rest on your shoulder, but you moved out of the way.

"I am not upset." Your voice was completely devoid of emotion, and Mapi and Alexia exchanged looks, not used to you acting so stand offish towards them.

"If something happened, you can tell us," Alexia stated, not deterred by your behavior.

"I don't even know why you care, you said you didn't want to hear if something happened." You scoff. Your face is one of anger, but your body language radiates sadness.

"When did I say that? I always want to know whats going on with you."

"Alexia, you told me not to come crying to you if you ended up being right about her." The blonde was speechless, absolutely stunned that you had taken that to heart.

"I wasn't being serious, y/n." She said quietly, somewhat gaining an understanding of why you were being so resistant to them. You remained quiet, gaze fixed on the grass under your feet.

"Seriously, pequeña, if something happened with you and your girl, you can tell us." Mapi cut in. You groaned, running a hand through your hair. You weren't getting out of this, you knew.

"We broke up. You guys were right. Happy?"

"I am so sorry, y/n." Alexia sighed, moving closer as if to pull you into a hug. Instead, you pushed in between her and Mapi, stalking towards the locker room.

"No you aren't. You don't have to pretend you care. You don't want to hear about it, and I don't want to talk about it." You snapped over your shoulder, ignoring the way they followed you, calling your name.

You made it inside the locker room, aggressively throwing your things into your bag, and stomping back out towards the parking lot, completely ignoring the way every member of the team was watching you, concerned. Alexia and Mapi stood in the door, once again blocking your path.

"Y/n, stop," Mapi said. The room was quiet as everyone watched the standoff.

"Move." You said through clenched teeth. You were blinking back tears, and Alexia and Mapi softened at the sight. You took your opportunity, shoving them out of your way, and walking out without a look backwards. This time, the girls didn't follow you out of the room, instead looking like they were at a complete loss for what to do. As you walked down the hall, you heard the unmistakable voice of Ingrid cutting through the silence.

"María, I TOLD you not to bother her." The room erupted into conversation, and you left the building, wiping angrily at the tears falling down your face.

-----

You made it home, showering and fighting the urge to just get in bed and fall into misery. Instead, you focused on de-girlfriend-ing your apartment. There wasn't much, as you'd only been together for a few months, but you'd filled a garbage bag of her stuff, and headed down to the dumpster. You threw the bag out, and it didn't bring as much satisfaction as you'd hoped it would. You walked back to the front door of the building, rather dejected, when a voice called out to you.

"Y/n, you haven't been answering any of my calls," your ex said, jogging to where you stood frozen by the door. "Hey, baby," she continued, wrapping her arms around you and trying to pull you in. You unfroze, shoving her off you.

"Don't touch me." You snarled, backing into the door.

"Don't be like that, you weren't supposed to hear any of what I said."

"Is that supposed to make it better?"

"You're being dramatic, y/n, stop being so sensitive. This is what I was talking about, you won't even have a mature conversation with me about this." The girl standing in front of you was completely unrecognizable, to you at least. You wondered if this was the person all of your teammates had seen.

"There's no conversation to be had. We're done. You are a horrible person, and I never want to see you again."

Her face contorted in anger. "Did your teammates tell you to do this? They're probably just tired of hearing you complain, y/n. They barely put up with you, you aren't going to find anyone other than me that will." She reached forward again, trying to hold onto your arm, and there wasn't any room behind you to back up. Her words felt like a slap to the face.

"Don't touch me," you said again, voice much weaker this time. You couldn't believe what she was saying; it was like she was a completely different person suddenly, yet she still knew you, and knew exactly what to say to hurt you.

"No, you're gonna hear what I have to say," she said, clearly frustrated with you standing up for yourself. Her hand closed around your wrist, and you prepared to pull away, to run, when another voice shouted out from not too far away.

"Get your hands off her," Mapi growled, coming from seemingly nowhere to shove your ex away from you. Her and Alexia stood, shoulder to shoulder, not unlike how they had earlier, glaring at the girl in front of them.

You jumped as a pair of arms wrapped around you, settling when you Ingrid stepped in front of you, bringing you in close to her chest. You clung to her, not really sure why you were so afraid. You knew your ex wouldn't have hurt you, but she really scared you when she'd tried to grab you, and you wanted nothing more than to be as far away from her as possible.

"You do not ever touch her again, understand? Or you will not enjoy what happens to you." Alexia warned, her voice angrier and more threatening than you'd ever heard it.

"Are you okay?" Ingrid asked, drawing your attention away from Alexia. You nodded shakily, gripping tightly onto Ingrid's sweater. She was blocking you from really seeing what was going on, positioned directly between you and your ex. You could still hear her though.

"Whatever," she scoffed. "She's not worth the trouble." Mapi made an angry noise, and Alexia started forward, but Ingrid's voice brought their focus back to you.

"She's not worth it. Let's get pequeña inside." The Norwegian said, shooting both girls a meaningful look. They watched your ex walk away, as you unlocked the front door, and headed towards the elevator. No one spoke as you stepped in, taking it up to your floor. They filed out of the doors after you, still silent, following you to your door.

"You don't have to stay." You said quietly, fiddling with the lock.

"We're staying." Alexia responded firmly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Her and Mapi were still practically radiating anger as they entered your apartment. Ingrid was angry to, you could tell, but she hid it better, focusing instead on getting you a glass of water. She handed it to you, as her and Alexia took seats in your living room. Mapi remained standing, whole body still tense. You sat, in the corner of the couch, bringing your knees up to your chest. Your teammates hated how small you were making yourself, how shaken you seemed.

"Are you okay pequeña?" Alexia asked after a minute, scooting closer to you on the couch.

"Fine." You said. You were fine. She wouldn't have hurt you, you knew that. Everything she said, though, did hurt. It felt like she'd picked out your biggest insecurities, and told you that they were true. You'd been vulnerable with her, more than you'd ever been with anyone else, and she'd used it against you the second she could. You weren't overly eager to share anything else, not right now. This wouldn't fly with your teammates, though, that much you knew. They'd come to apologize, probably, but they wouldn't leave until they were sure, absolutely sure, that you were okay. One word answers weren't going to convince them. "I'm fine, really. She startled me, that's all."

They didn't look convinced. You supposed that was fair; they'd need more than that.

"Seriously, I'm alright. I dodged a bullet, clearly."

"What she said..." Alexia started, but you stopped her, shaking your head.

"I really don't want to talk about it."

"Too bad." Alexia said.

"Ale," Ingrid said, shifting uncomfortably. The blonde ignored her.

"She is completely wrong, pequeña. We don't put up with you, y/n. We love you. We always want to hear what's going on with you, and what you have to say. You know that, don't you?"

You shrugged, really wishing they hadn't heard that part of the conversation.

"Can you tell us what happened with her?" Mapi said softly, finally taking a seat in the chair next to Ingrid. You hesitated, and it becomes very clear to them that you've internalized what they heard your ex say to you. "We want to hear, we want to help."

"I didn't mean what I said before, y/n. That because we warned you about her, we wouldn't be there if things went wrong. You could ignore every piece of advice I ever give you, and I'd still want to be there for you. Every time." Alexia cut in, resting a hand on your knee. You didn't shift away from her this time, which she took to be a good sign.

With a sigh, not meeting any of their eyes, you told them everything. Everything she'd said on the phone about you, the things that made your cheeks burn with humiliation, your stomach twist with anxiety. The words felt like they burned on the way out of your mouth, the fear that your friends would agree with them almost choking you. Of course, they didn't.

You'd barely finished talking when Mapi abruptly rose from her seat, hands clenched in tight fists and walked without a word into the kitchen. You looked after her, confused, but Ingrid just shook her head.

"She's angry, she just needs a minute."

You nodded slowly, trying to wrap your head around the fact that Mapi was so angry on your behalf that she could barely contain her feelings.

You looked to Alexia, her hand still resting on your knee, finding her deep in thought. She cleared her throat before speaking.

"You are right, pequeña, you definitely dodged a bullet. I am so sorry she said those things about you. None of them are true, not even one. You are a wonderful, thoughtful, kind person. You deserve so much better than her."

You nod your head weakly at her reassurance. You weren't convinced, but it made you feel better, if only marginally. Mapi reentered the room again, sitting not in the chair she was in earlier, but squishing herself into Ingrid's chair. It was always interesting to watch them together; wherever one of the struggled, the other picked them up, always, without a second thought. Ingrid scooched over in the chair, face unchanged and still fixed on you, wrapping an arm around her girlfriend and squeezing her shoulder comfortingly. Mapi visibly relaxed once her body was in contact with Ingrid's, like all of her muscles had un-tensed, and some of the anger was pushed out of her body.

That was how a relationship was supposed to be, you thought. You'd never felt more like an idiot in your entire life, yet still, your insecurities swirled around your head, and you felt like you were drowning in them.

"So you don't... you don't think she was right?" You ask in a small voice, peeking at the girls' faces. They all look shattered at your question, like it was causing them physical pain that you thought it possible that they didn't actually care about you, that you believed even a word of what that awful woman had said to you.

"No. She is completely, entirely wrong." Alexia said, sounding like she was pleading with you to believe her.

"I just thought she really liked me." You whispered, and it appears Alexia couldn't hold herself back anymore, moving closer and smooshing you into her arms. You cried softly into Alexia's sweatshirt, never having been more grateful in your life for anything, than you were in that moment that she was there, that all of them were there. Your captain wrapped you up safely in her arms, and the strength with which she held you did even more to convince you that she meant what she said; she wanted, more than anything, to be there for you.

"Voy a matar a esa puta." You heard Mapi declare. Alexia hummed in agreement against you.

"You're not going to kill anyone, María." Ingrid dismissed. "Not by yourself, and you'll have to beat me to it."

You looked up in surprise, seeing a satisfied grin on Mapi's face, and a fiery look on Ingrid's. If you ever wondered how 2 seemingly different people made a relationship work, you had your answer. Deep down, Ingrid could be just as protective, just as reckless as Mapi was when it came to people she loved.

You tried to pull away from Alexia, having stopped crying, but her arms only tightened around you.

"No, you are staying right here, where no one can ever make you sad again." Alexia said decisively. You stifle a laugh, but give up your attempts to escape. Your words come out slightly muffled when you speak again.

"Can you guys not tell everyone about what happened? They can know we broke up, but the whole team will just freak out if they know what she said, and I don't want to deal with that."

Ingrid and Alexia easily agree to your request, but Mapi remains silent. Finally, you do pull away from Alexia to stare suspiciously at the defender. Ingrid is tilting away from her girlfriend, an exasperated expression on her face.

"María, what did you do?" You asked. Mapi smiled sheepishly.

"I may have asked Lucy and Mario if they were free later to pay your ex a visit, and I also may have told them what we overheard."

"Mapi," you groaned.

"I didn't know you didn't want people to know! Besides, it will be easier to scare her away from you with more people. Especially those two!" You weren't impressed, but Alexia evidently was, a contemplative expression on her face.

"No, Ale, please don't let this happen," You begged, switching your attention to the normally more cool-headed individual.

"You can't go threaten that girl, no matter how much she deserves it." Alexia said, and Mapi deflated, a frown finding it's way onto her face. You sigh, relieved. "At least not right away. We'll give it a few weeks, until she lets her guard down."

"Alexia!" You yelped, and she simply smiles softly at you.

"No one messes with our pequeña. Ever." Alexia shrugged, relatively unbothered by your slight annoyance.

It wasn't actual frustration, though. You knew they were just joking around. Well everyone except for Mapi; she was definitely being serious. Regardless, it felt good to know they had your back; like further confirmation that they didn't feel at all how your ex had said they did. You should have listened to them from the beginning, but more than that, you should have never listened to your ex, not when everything your teammates did today, and everyday, proved her to be wrong.

-----

#woso #woso imagine #woso x reader #barcelona femeni x reader

[markantonys]

Show Rand just seems a lot more mature in general. I've just started reading the books, and all of the EF5 seem older than their book counterparts, who feel a little more like teenagers (tbh the show versions seem a lot more in line with the maturity of a 17th century 20-year-old--I say this as a teacher of 19 to 20-year-olds). It kind of makes sense that his relationship with Moiraine is calmer and less fraught

absolutely! haha i often see readers going "ugh why does everyone keep talking about the show aging up the EF5, they're basically the same age in s1 as they are in book 1 🙄" and i'm like my dude, we're OBVIOUSLY referring to them being aged up in terms of maturity and life situations/circumstances, not a literal "they made them x years older" age-up (although they did make egwene a couple years older since she's younger than the boys in the books). and yeah i totally agree, the book versions come across and behave VERY unrealistically immature for the ages they're supposed to be, whereas the show versions come across and behave more like actual 20-year-olds.

across the board the show!EF5 is better than their book counterparts at skills such as communication, emotional intelligence, empathy, and self-awareness/self-understanding. the result is that they are also better at forming healthy and mature relationships. and i think the cause - well obviously the out-of-world cause is just the writers writing them as more mature - but if we're thinking in-world, then the cause is that the two rivers has a much more open, chill, liberal, and equitable culture in the show than it does in the books. no puritanical policing of sexuality and young people's relationships? then rand and egwene are better equipped to navigate their relationship troubles in a mature and empathetic way, because their emotional growth and life experiences have not been stunted by their community insisting they'd better not even THINK of so much as kissing each other until marriage. no insistence that men and women are two different species fundamentally incapable of understanding each other? then rand is better able to connect and communicate with moiraine, and the EF5 are able to be true lifelong best friends, all five of them, rather than egwene/nynaeve often behaving antagonistically to rand/mat/perrin and vice versa simply because they're different genders. and plenty of other similar examples.

#quantumbluejay #answered

[rainofthetwilight]

-20 asks for Fic Writers-

hey!! I was tagged by @basicallyjaywalker to do this tag game, so ty for the tag rook!! :D

for tags, hmm... @taddymason @lightning-chicken @toastingpencils37 @lavful @weekend-whip and any fic writer that wants to do this!!

-

1.How many works do you have on AO3?

4 of them!

2. What's your total AO3 wordcount?

23,088 as of now :D

3. What fandom(s) do you write for?

so far, only ninjago, but I might write for another fandom at some point? not sure but it's pretty much only ninjago that I write for

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

I only have four of em on AO3 (and one on here), but here we go:

The one I've known since I was I was only just a kid at 85 kudos

I'm not sick, I swear at 61 kudos

As the years pass by (the old version) at 23 kudos

Thank you for being a friend at 18 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments?

YES. I always get a bit too excited when I see them and I literally cherish every single one, so even if it's just a keysmash I always respond <33

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angiest ending?

with almost all of my fics ending on a fairly happy note so far, The one I've known since I was only just a kid easily sticks out like a sore thumb with it's ending lmao

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I think it'd def be I'm not sick, I swear! it's basically the only actual fluff fic w/o angst I've published so far lmao

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I hope I never will, but I mean- there was that one comment on my old version of atypb where this person complained about the wait and how they've been waiting 'a year' so 💀I don't know if that counts as hate but it's annoying af

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

nope, nope, nope 🤺

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I don't! I'm not sure if I'm open to it, tho

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

thankfully no I haven't, and I really do hope not

12. What's the longest time you've spent working on a fic? And what's the shortest?

the longest one would definitely be the old version of atypb (the new ver which I hope to release soon will beat that tho I think), and the shortest would be I'm not sick, I swear! I literally wrote that fic in like almost 2 hrs or smth while I was struck with the cold myself lmao

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

nope! I do feel up to it tho tbh

14. What's your all time favourite ship? From all the fandoms?

...do I really have to choose? like rook said, this is an awful question for a multishipper lmao

since I can't decide, I think they'd be raincloud, lost and jaya!

15. What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

that one lostshipping fic I wrote back in november or smth and never got back to it, I so badly wanna finish it but I can't :')) (although now that finals are done, I could try getting back to it)

16. What are your writing strengths?

shoot, uhhh Idk?? I think it's when it comes to describing smth I guess (so description basically)

17. What are your writing weaknessess?

honestly, I think it'd be dialogue, I don't know why I struggle with it often :') I am trying to get better tho!

edit: and while I haven't written any so far, I think fight scenes is also a weakness for me :') (well technically I did in the old version of atypb, but lets- lets just ignore that)

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

*smacks google translate* this bad boy can fit so much translation in it (unless it's arabic w/ it being my language n all..arabic fus7a, however-)

19. First fandom you wrote for?

ninjago, obviously 😎

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

I think it'd be definitely The one I've known since I was only just a kid!

-

#tag game #ninjago #writer tag game #rook tag #levi's beloved mutual(s) <3 #this was really fun to do tbh!!!

[syntia13treeman]

Case files 11.01

what I think happened in:

Case 11.01, the case of "Ink in the Water" or "Dead men tell no tales."

Today we visit the old Padstow cemetery in Cornwell. Sat at the very edge of the cliffs, just a kilometre or two away from town of Padstow, the place offers breathtaking view of the Atlantic Ocean, surely appreciated by the many sailors of old interred here. Unlike its less scenic sister cemetery located off Newquay Road, this old burial ground hasn't seen any burials since beginning of 20th century, but until recently remained a local landmark.

The cliff erosion that had been slowly eating up the space over the years has finally reached the stage where integrity of the cemetery was threatened*, and Cornwall Council decided to relocate all dearly departed to a more secure quarters at Newquay. The job was appointed to a crew of local lads led by Gordon Alan Johnson, under supervision of David [last name unknown], a medical examiner. They regularly reported by email to Alison Leshi of the Cornwall Council.

The works started in the first days of 2020 (yikes) and progressed with little delay. It was determined that they could use heavy machinery everywhere except the patch nearest to the cliff edge, but Gordie was confident that they'd manage those last few graves just fine with shovels.

All was well for about a week, until January 12, when a suspiciously well preserved body was uncovered. An artful rendition of a sailing ship covered the dead man's back, and the fact that it remained intact and pristine raised concerns that it was, possibly, a modern-day murder victim buried on the sly.

While the controversial cadaver was carted off for closer scrutiny, Gordie and his crew were left to care for unconfirmed crime scene. ($)

The news must have spread, because within a day or two a curious individual came by. They didn't give their name, but we know them as Ink5oul. They apparently had somehow** identified the dead man's tattoo as work of Oscar Jarrett, (connected to Sutherland Macdonald)***, and wanted to take a look. They visited cemetery first, then started hanging around the examiner's office. Let's leave them there for now and go back to two local man who already did have a peek at the inked masterpiece

Around the time when the tatted body was uncovered, Gordie started noticing the sound of the waves getting… louder. Or maybe closer. So close he could even hear them in his dreams. He started re-examining photographs of the tattoo left by David and at some point his interpretation of the scene changed. At first glance it seemed hopeful, but now he saw that the sun was setting on the voyage, and there was something sinister lurking beneath the waves, giving chase. The waves kept getting louder, and Gordie so desperately wanted to know, what was hiding in the water?

Dr. David, meanwhile, had not just pictures, but the og tattooed body all to himself, and was in no hurry to let anyone else have it. We don't know what he heard or saw or dreamt when examining the ink, but we know how it ended. On January 15th David walked out to the cliffs and threw himself into the ocean below. His body hasn't been recovered. It's all right, though. The deep will care for his bones.

Few days later, on January 19/20, there was what appeared to be a break in at the examiner's office, and the contentious body disappeared****. Good ol' Gordie swore up and down that it wasn't him, and his frequent presence at the scene was just due to his fervent wish to see the corpse he was responsible for. He pointed fingers at Ink5oul and vowed to recover the body from them or die and kill trying.

Shortly thereafter his email account was deactivated/deleted. Gordie's final fate remains unknown*****.

Final thoughts:

*A case could be made that the cemetery was at risk of toppling into the sea, because the sea was actively trying to get to The Body. This man belonged to the sea, not the earth, and was clearly marked as such. The sea was not having any of this ‘burial’ nonsense.

** I wonder how Ink5oul knew to come here. Did local news run the story of halted exhumations, and showed pictures of the tattooed body? Or did Ink5oul feel a great disturbance in the ink when the body was dug up?

*** What is the 'thing' with OJ and SM? Since Sutherland Macdonald (1860–1942) was a known tattoo artist irl, I think that Oscar Jarrett was either his competitor, student, or both. Also an og tattoo magic man.

**** Was there really a break in, or was it actually a break out? While it is believable that Ink5oul or other fan of OJ spirited the body away for worship or study, it is equally possible the 'body', freed from the confines of the grave, heard the call of the sea, woke up and walked out all on its own. Who knows, maybe we'll meet it somewhere down the line.

*****That only leaves the question, what happened to our friend Gordie? We know from Daria's case that Ink5oul was still operating in 2022, so presumably they didn't get killed or arrested in 2020. If Gordie indeed tried to confront them, it didn’t go in his favour. Maybe he died right there, in a small motel room, at the hands of a tattoo artist who was more than they seemed. Or maybe, cursing and desperate, he found himself walking toward the cliffs, irresistibly drawn by the call of the waves. Maybe he got to find out what was waiting in the water.

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp case files #tmagp case 11.01 #tmagp 11 #Oscar Jarrett #Ink5oul #ep. written by Jonathan Sims #ep. written by J.S.+A.J.N #Oscar Jarrett is the new Jurgen Leitner Y/N? #(@)I briefly got possessed by Narrative Telephone Caduceus Clay in the middle there. I apologize for nothing. #I skipped over the hint of nepotism and the email-professionalism-drama because it’s not as interesting as the tattoo-centric drama.

[thatmarvelobsessedteen]

Not planned...at all

Cassian x reader

Azriel x OC!reader'scousin

Short Summary: Two girls, cousins, somehow find themselves inside a slightly modified version of their favorite book saga ACOTAR. What will happen to them, things have changed and not just their situation but themselves...are those pointy ears they now have?

Long Summary: Leonor and Roxanne had only planned their usual afternoon, reading fanfics on the floor of Nell's room and chatting about their favorite love interests. Doing weird hairstyles and screaming the lyrics to various Nickelback songs was on the schedule but nighttime they both learn a very valuable lesson. Don't go looking too deep into the internet!

Roxy and Nell both pay the price when finding themselves in the middle of...nowhere? That is until they walk through the snow for a bit and notice that they are now direct spectators of the very scene they'd been about to read!

Chapter 1

Growing up and moving out had never stopped two good cousins from acting like kids and sharing a flat for their studies certainly wasn't gonna stop Roxanne or Leonor from having sleepovers in each other's room.

Tonight was Nell's turn. The plan was simple! Celebrate the ending of second term globals with weird ass skincare products they'd never even touched before, blast music low enough for no neighbors to come complaining, and mix up sweets and energy drinks while devouring sour candy and Takis.

Nothing new or out of the ordinary, most time these sleepovers didn't involve as much food but today was special. Roxanne had gotten second place in a large judo tournament that took place in their city, the black long haired girl was almost vibrating with excitement at the news so of course her older cousin and roommate had taken it upon herself to make tonight specially fun.

"We could've got drinks?!"

Nell was snapped out of her intense focus by Roxy's words, it's true Roxanne's 18 and she's 19 going on 20 in less than two months. Feeling up to a teasing mood Nell pulled unnecessary hard on Roxanne's pitch black long straight hair with a smirk as she continued the intricate hairstyle she'd been working on for the past hour, this was their second attempt at perfecting.

"What's up with the comment? Are you feeling alcoholic young lady?! Meh didn't feel like buying that, energy drinks are more of a rush and it did feel kind of depressing to think of us both having a pijama party just to drink wine like old widowed wives."

Roxanne didn't really react to hair pulling, I mean the woman could put down a fully grown man without any weapons it was to be expected that she didn't feel bothered by Nell's petty hair pulling. She did hum in agreement with Leonor when hearing her reasoning and chugged another drink at her glass.

"How much left? Not that you're pulling too harshly but my neck feels sore in this position"

"Give me five more minutes, I like your hair, this type of stuff can't really be done on my hair! Or at least I can't manage on myself unless I spend a full hour untangling this bird nest"

Nell complained referring to her thick brown curls that were struggling to pull out under their containment from the hair claw she had on.

It wouldn't usually click to people, that she and Roxy were actually cousins at least not until they saw them interact with one another.

Roxanne was the absolute definition of a black cat type of girl, with her straight black hair and resting bitch face no one would expect to see her running into Leonor's arms for a hug to celebrate her victory. She loved dressing in black and wouldn't think twice before pulverizing someone's ego if she deemed it necessary. Standing on 1'64 meters she could somehow still manage to look down on anyone twice her size with her icy blue eyes.

Leonor on the other hand was usually all smiles and apologies, almost like a reflex at this point.

#cassian x reader #cassian #cassian x you #cassian x oc #azriel x oc #acotar #cassian acotar #a court of thorns and roses #acotar x reader #acotar x you #acotar x oc

[ivyial]

I'm shocked that Leshley/Eagleone is classified as a "rare pair".... like... the potential these two have. It's one of the rare (ironically) ships where both parties could end up genuinely happy together, despite horrific circumstances lmao. Why in the world isn't it more popular? Simple answer? People have no taste and can't read between lines. 😤

(omg my first ask thank u ily)

no cause exactly. i tweeted something similar a few months ago about how people go wild for disney fairytales but not this. especially since at the time, the new little mermaid movie had just come out and everyone on twitter was losing their minds over it. people love a good fairytale, so it's surprising that leshley/eagleone gets this much hate. like the reply to the tweet said, it's probably a matter of other shippers not wanting to change their mind because unfortunately, people are very intense when it comes to ships!! you either have to be all in or fuck off, which to me sounds like a ridiculous way to approach shipping in media. so that's the first reason why, and arguably a dumb one too, because when it comes to franchises that are not going to give you romance outright, like RE, there is no need to invest this much energy into a ship. it's not like there is a ship war to be won, at least not in my eyes.

the second reason is the whole age gap thing. since the loudest part of fandoms is populated by literal teenagers who apply high school logic to both fiction and real life adult situations and a teenager thinks it is wrong for a 14 year old to date an 18 year old (and they'd be right, because age gaps matter greatly as a teenager, due to puberty and the various experiences you either get or do not get at a certain age), they automatically think that any and all age gaps between adults are wrong. UNLESS it's people who are their parents' age. i've seen it happen a lot on tiktok, where kids would be like "you can't ship them, they have a 7 year age gap" and someone would inevitably reply "but my mom is 35 and my dad is 42". so they'd be forced to acknowledge that "yeah, but it's different in your case, they're old enough" (???) because you're not gonna tell a stranger online that their parents' relationship is "morally wrong" (though, honestly, i wouldn't be surprised if someone did).

teenagers, as well as teenagers fresh out of high school, are convinced that your early twenties are the direct follow-up to your high school experience. that is straight-up not true. as soon as you get to 20, everyone you know will be in radically different places in life. i mean, i have friends who are already engaged, some who have never been in a relationship, and i know someone from high school who had a child at 19 and got married right after. to them, maturity can only be gained much later in life, like in your thirties, because their parents are around that age, or because that's when people start to have kids these days. maybe i'm wrong. but that's how i see it.

and that's when they start to resort to the sibling coded thing lmao. and if you look at tweets or tiktoks about leon and ashley's dynamic (not framed in a romantic manner), everyone will go out of their way in the comments to make sure that it's known that THEY VIEW THEM AS SIBLINGS GUYS. like the average reply will be "THEY'RE SO SIBLINGS" or "MY FAVOURITE SIBLINGS" which makes me throw up in my mouth a little. like okay, we get it. you don't ship them and you think no one should either. no need to be flamboyant about it.

and then as you mentioned, there's also the fact that people can't read between the lines, or maybe they don't want to. when i played RE4R, i didn't pay attention to leon and ashley that much because i was too focused on the game itself hahahaha. my primary takeaway was that they had a great, supportive dynamic, and then i'd noticed a few moments like ashley flirting with leon about the armour, or leon's fingers trailing down ashley's arm for no reason on the bed in chapter 13, or leon's weirdly boyish and bashful tone when he says "can you make it down? i can catch you" (seriously. he tried to make this into an incentive and i'm not sure who it benefitted more, him or ashley). after seeing some eagleone content and analyses, i was like hang on a sec... there is something there. i will admit that i personally suck at flirting, or at recognising it for that matter, unless i try really hard. i mean, a guy once tried to get my number with a magic trick, and my only response was that he didn't logically need my number to tell me what my card was, and he could tell me right there and the trick would be the same. like no shit girl. you're fucking dense LMAO. but that's just a me thing. when you really start paying attention, leon and ashley's flirting gets pretty obvious.

i've also seen people argue that ashley's crush on leon is "innocent" and she just views him as a hero so that's why she thinks she likes him. you know, because a 20-year-old woman can't make decisions for herself. she doesn't know any better. obvious sarcasm. in wanting to protect (young) women, people are starting to shelter them to the point where we're going backwards towards (male) guardianship.

so so sorry this ended up being longer than i thought help

#leon kennedy #ashley graham #eagleone #leshley #resident evil #resident evil 4

[delicatebluebirdruins]

the Hollow Boy book 3 reactions reading it for the first time

book 1 and 2

finally ready to type this up here we go page numbers are my copies

page 3 "I think it was only at the very end of the Lavender Lodge job, when we were fighting for our lives in that unholy guest house, that I glimpsed Lockwood and Co working together perfectly for the first time" Lmao

page 8 the owners of the Lodge description "If they resembled anything, it was a pair of elderly owls roosting on a branch"

16 we know who you are Lucy

19 "That's real bad. If I were you Lucy I would find a window and jump out." that is not a good thing is it

page 20 "however as the weeks passed and we'd got to know it properly, we'd learned to really despise it too" heartwarming really

Page 27 that is a lot of ghosts (example whatever I'm on this would be great to see this on screen the practicality of it though? nope)

38 "you chucked that bottle like a girl"/ "I am a girl" no comments let it speak for itself

49 "Outside the window a gale was blowing. Portland Row seemed formed of liquid. Trees flexed; rain pattered on the panes. Inside, it was warm; we had the heating on full blast." this is so cosy

57 "so Lockwood's proximity made me happy" 63 Skull being annoying and I love the background on the night taxis

66 insight into the past and the sorry fate of Jessica Lockwood.

72 Poor Lockwood standing there as Lucy and George bickered

74 I love this quote "It was a place of absence, we were in the presence of something that had gone. It was like coming to a valley where someone had once shouted, loud and joyously, and the echo of that shout had resounded between the hills and lasted a long time. But now it had vanished, and you stood on the spot, and it was not the same"

also Lucy thinking about Lockwood opening up to her more is so cute

82 Hi Kipps (lmao this is so funny when you consider how worried Lockwood was at the thought of Lucy leaving for Fittes "Bloody cheek. Lockwood said. He's talking nonsense as usual. Even so, he said little in the taxi, and it was left to me to give renewed directions"

85 "I smiled at him. There was a horror behind that door. I would see it in seconds. Yet my heart sang in my breast, to be standing beside Lockwood in that house. All was as it should be" aw the horrors but united front

86 I wonder why i was thinking of the Woman in Black

91 "My Talent could bypass such anxieties" can it? 100% of the time?

92 the skull is funny but also an jackass

96 testing Lucy's talent time... the skull is so funny

101 "it wasn't the easiest of homecomings" (typing this up I did not notice the Fittes ghost hunting board game which is basically surgery" 105 "I couldn't believe it. They'd actually done it. They'd tidied! they'd tidied up for me" and "Lockwood's favourites - the ones with almond icing that he rarely allowed himself- were on top" and "Portland Row was my home. My real family was here." I need a minute for that last one honestly

118 "her skin looked as smooth and delectable as coffee- coloured marble". interesting word choice (bisexual Lucy)

125 "I'd never thought to sit so close behind Lockwood that I could lean foreward and speak quietly in his ear, or, by virtue of my proximty to the leader, tactily became the second most important person in the room"

133 the tale is so eerie the casual callouseness of Mrs Wintergarden (thought she doesn't mean to be) and the haunting itself 136 "I gulped mine down like an antisocial seabird" also hello lyre brooch

142 Lucy talking and getting cut off by Lockwood.

153 time sickness

162 Ned Shaw dies and it is just go on as usual there'll be time to mourn later. I am really glad we got to see Ned and Lockwood fight together in the show

165 Neighbourhood Protection Leagues. I was hoping for something like this in the world at large

176 Holly wearing Lockwood's old jumper on the one hand makes sense because cold but also was it necessary for Holly to say it still smells like him? like it is really intimate wearing someone else's clothing and smelling them on it and of course the possibilty of her wearing Lucy's spare gloves is so *flails*

186 "there were bloodstained footprints all around my circle" how about? no 188 "or mimicking the sound of breathing" again no

192 "the ghost opened it's mouth. "I need YOU" it said" creepy. three steps at a time is huge (i want a Lockwood POV)

200 "were you feeling particulary abandoned or needy up there?" and Lucy not answering or looking at George. 205 Lockwood and Lucy arguing about Holly (not arguing per say but rumbles of thunder off in the distance)

209 I love this chat with the Skull. 211 "head wounds clearly suit you" the way i sputtered at this

216 I love the vastness of the Chelsea outbreak

219 Bad things happening? let's throw a party! well carnival you get the picture

224 FLO! we're going to see Flo... 228 "Don't worry about Locky. He must like you really. It's been eighteen months and you're still alive" lmao

233 Love Mrs Wintergarden inviting them to the carnival

236 George is protective of Lucy aw

241 hi sir Rupert... 244 they're tossing sources!

247 deadly hair piece NICE ("the band was a crescent- moon- sharp, made of silver. She held it like a knife")

253 "we [Locklyle] were in step together perfectly in sync"

259 I love the pictures of Lockwood in the newspaper

264 "[Luce] You're a star" a bit out of context but who cares? and then she goes into Jessica's room and finds out what she can

266 Lucy finds a necklace "a golden necklace with a dark green stone lay on a sheet of cotton wool" 269 poor little Lockwood

278 world building! finding where things are located! this is cool

281 smarty pants George but also teamwork with Flo

284 "Another point to Lucy. She's good at playing atrocities" now thing of the scene in the show where she and Lockwood roleplay relic men

287 misplaced trust in Barnes

292 Lucy telling Lockwood to join forces with Kipps and I really like the scene

Lucy: "I think we should take Kipps up on his offer. There are people dying out there, Lockwood, and we can't stand back from it. We need to act. We need to engage, even if that does mean making compromises. That department store is massive: even if we're just doing a reconnaissance, we need a proper team. And Kipps's team is good- we know that. If we have faith in George, in all the work he's done, we should do this. We owe it to him. More than that, we owe it to ourselves.

and Lockwood just gazes at her (Lockwood POV) and she gets flustered "I just don't think we have any choice" and I love it so much

and I love the reactions of everyone else

297 FLO! I feel so safe. 299 Flo is plesant to Holly Lucy is annoyed

303 haunting descriptions time "Mornings are all right' the attendant in Meswear said. 'And late afternoons, funnily enough when you get the sunlight streaming through the windows. It's noon I don't like, when the streets outside are bright, and in here it's full of shadow. The air goes thick. Not hot, exactly. Just stuffy."

312 Lucy paired with Holly and neither being very happy about it the skull being funny

317 i like this description from the skull "Because you're [Lucy] unique. You shine like a beacon, attracting the attention of all dark things" 319 "i missed him [Lockwood] at my side"

323 "And i watched that notch of darkness. I watched as something moved into it" how about nope

328 "with a fetch a ghost that makes a psychic bond with the onlooker and takes on the guise on the guise of someone closely connected to them" this would be horrible yeah (I would love to see it in the show)

338 Lucy telling Holly she should have told Lockwood no and Holly goes "like you do?" Lucy yelling at Holly and poor Bobby is injured and having to deal with these two

351 "truth is, it's everywhere. it's right on top of us. It coils around us like a snake. We're all inside it. It's already swallowed us whole." I LOVE THIS LINE

359 why is Lockwood's eyes sparkling at Lucy and then it all goes to shit the chapter ending with "both my mind and body were lost"

365 "rule seven (b), obviously, is to keep your matchbox well stocked."

367 "I looked at it. 'Hello,' I said. 'Sorry' The skeleton said nothing. It couldn't help it's bad manners"

379 Lucy recognising the voice being that of Lockwood. But it not being Lockwood

385 "you know I'd die for you" so Lucy see's the fetch ghost take on Lockwood's form and telling her Lockwod dies for her. Then she hears this from real Lockwood. If it were me the moment i was able i'd sit in the corner and rock. Also this is a crime that we don't get to see this scene and the lead up to it on the screen because Lockwood's actor is great and would knock it out of the park. (also Lockwood pov again)

390 "it's happened to me before. Losing someone dear to me. I can't let it happen again" see above Cameron and Ruby would be stunning.

394 Lockwood's first ghosts were his parents? yikes

413 creepy thought indeed missing mysterious people doing a ritual

417 "take your boyfriend Lockwood" lmao skull

419 and everyone is in shock and the book end.

#the hollow boy #lockwood and co #lockwood & co #lockwood and lucy #anthony lockwood #lucy carlyle #george cubbins #holly munro #quill kipps #quotes #ellie reads #you know as i was typing this 9th Jan 2024 the skull is a little bit like calcifer the fire demon

[cantquitu]

Why do you think Harry ended up being closer to Ed than Louis did? I'm thinking about James Corden too. He started as Louis's friend and he introduced Harry. I think there were others too

Well, why do any two people become closer friends? There are countless reasons and we can't possibly know them all. But from what we do know from their interviews etc it seems clear to me that Harry was far more present and invested in building friendships in London than Louis was. Meanwhile, Louis was invested in his new relationship with Eleanor (and her new friends), and maintaining his friends group from Doncaster.

And this is not specifically directed at you, Anon, but let me go off on a tangential thread about how conspiracy theorising in this fandom skews discussion of things like Louis' and Harry's friendships. Because the Larrie conspiracy theory colours everything.

You have the tinhat hate bloggers saying dumb shit like, "Harry targeted rich and influential people from the very beginning because he is ruthlessly ambitious and only cares about money and fame blah blah blah", and the just plain nasty hate bloggers saying, "Nobody successful wants to be friends with Louis because he's a dull chav who's of no interest or benefit to them blah blah...". And then you have the OG-style Larries saying, "Well actually, Ed and James and Adele ARE friends with both Louis and Harry because they're a couple, they're just very discreet about it because Reasons"

Meanwhile, the truth is probably way more mundane than any of that. And it almost certainly conforms more to the (limited) info that we fans have been privy to.

I would guess that Harry and Louis' friendships were shaped by personality, age, priorities, personal circumstances etc....same as it is for Normals.

Harry's friendships with people like Ed, James, Grimmy, Ben etc all started forming in 2011 when he was 17 and living in London, away from his family and childhood friends (who were still at school! Because they were 17!!) I don't think it's a coincidence that these new friendships really took off when Louis started dating Eleanor in September 2011. But of course all the conspiracy theorists can't accept that Louis was actually besotted by Eleanor, so this is dismissed as a key factor.

Until then, Harry and Louis had a super intense new friendship. They were touring with the X Factor tour, going to Sweden to record their album, they'd moved into their shared flat, they were going to gigs and music festivals and meeting new people together etc.

Louis met Eleanor at exactly the same time as 1D launched. From then on, all the 1D boys were constantly travelling and working. They had hardly any time off at all, and it's clear that Louis prioritised spending as much of that free time as possible with Eleanor. He went to visit her at Manchester Uni or they were hanging out in London.

Harry was single, wasn't an adult yet, and totally unmoored from his old life. All his old friends were living at home with their parents and going to school every day. He spent about 90% of his life, 24/7, with the four other 1D members and their team. When they weren't working, what was Harry going to do - sit on his ass? Zayn and Liam had their best friends living with them. Niall's mum was living with him. Louis had Eleanor and his mates back home who were all at uni or starting work.

Harry was on his own! It's not exactly like he could call one of his mates from Holmes Chapel and say, "Come down to London and we'll go out on the piss!" They were probably doing homework!

Louis' friends were in a totally different stage in their lives. All age 19 or 20, they had the freedom and autonomy that a schoolkid doesn't have. Although their lives were completely different to Louis', they could at least join in on some of the madness. Louis' first years in 1D coincided with his friends' uni years, and I think that really contributed to them maintaining the strong bond which is so important to Louis. Harry's schoolfriends' lives were unimaginably different to his. Like, for H&L's New Year's party in 2011, Louis got a bus-load of mates down from Doncaster. Harry had some childhood friends there too, but think about it - they would would have had to ask their mums for permission to go :)

So it's no surprise that Harry built a friendship group around him in London. Many artists who become successful young do not manage to do this and have spoken about how isolated and alone they were when away from the screaming and the stage. It seems to me that Harry is lucky to have the type of personality that enabled him to build friendships easily. It appears he was extremely proactive in doing so. Ed has said Harry would text him and ask did he want to hang out, Grimmy said the same, Dermot O'Leary did too. It's clear that Harry was invested in those relationships, that he put time and effort into them, and that's how those friendships grow. Louis had other priorities - he was in a brand new relationship with his girlfriend whom he adored. It's the most basic story in the book, but it's one that tinhats don't like to think about.

#ok where did THAT come from!! lol that was an essay sorry #louis tomlinson #harry styles #1D friendships

[n3onstarss]

PACIFIC RIM AU - CH 1 Part 1

I'm very autistic about both TMNT and pacific rim, so have this!! the plot for this takes place in an alternate universe where the rim wasn't fully closed. everything plot-hole wise will be explained away later, it's there for a reason!

each chapter will have 3 parts, I'm splitting them up so i can pace myself!

TW for mentioned blood, plenty of violence and cussing if you need one for that!

this is the Rise turtles, and all are aged up by 5 years. (Making Raph 22, April 21, Donnie and Leo 20, Reader 19 and Mikey 18!) the events of the Rise movie or most of rise in general, along with the Pacific rim movies, won't be used. this is an excuse for me to be weird about my interests ♡♡

°•°

Things weren't going well. The war against the kaiju out in the Pacific wasn't going great either. Many jeagers and their pilots had been lost. In fact, pilots were sparse, few and far between. That is, legal pilots. In the slums of NYC, there were 6 delinquent individuals. And not far away there was a junkyard full of old jeagers from both the US and Canada.

Those 6 had spent years, almost a decade by now, gathering parts and assembling their very own jeagers, hidden in warehouses along the docks. These young adults had even perfected drift compatibly down to a science, literally. Teams of two, that was the deal, and they were all partnered off.

Donatello was most compatible with his older sister figure April. Raphael with Michelangelo.

And Leo with [NAME].

An odd team, compared to the others. a short fused, easily upset human with a cocky turtle who laughed through all his problems. A team that shouldn't have worked. And yet it did. Flawlessly, even.

In fact, most would think they were only paired due to being the last options left, when infact they were the first to be found compatible. They fueled each others ego when needed, brought each other down to Earth more often than not, fueled the others rage and motivated them to keep going when things looked bleak.

Most would think they were just teens in love, and they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. [NAME] had harbored feelings for the blue clad turtle since they first piloted side by side, even before. His memories, his hopes, his fears. They'd seen them all and still fell for him all the same. But it was something they had to bury deep. A day would inevitably come when they would have to pilot in a fight, and their feelings cannot get in the way.

And today was the day, apparently. [NAME] was sat straddling the shoulder of their jeager, clinging tightly while they welded on some finishing touches to the large blue and white bot. And not a second too late were these upgrades finished.

Mikey burst through the warehouse doors into the large, dusty space, making [NAME] twist around at the waist and stare down at him, shocked by his sudden entrance.

"KAIJU! OFF THE COAST! LIKE, RIGHT NOW!!" His arms flailed wildly as he tried to talk with his hands and convey his distress. He definitely succeeded in that last part.

"DEADASS?? You're kidding, right?! Aren't they only in the Pacific?!" Their welding items and mask were dropped off into the basket and the rope untied, sending it plummeting down. [NAME] caught the end of the rope, gently lowering it the last of the way quickly as Mikey continued to holler.

"No, no I'm not kidding!! It's moving fast, Dee and Apes are already out there! We gotta go Now!" He was still gesturing wildly, bouncing on his heels like he was about to bolt to suit up. And he was, [NAME] could tell.

"Shit okay!! Go get Leo, tell him to get his blue ass in here!" [NAME] called as they scrambled down the arm with practiced ease.

As if on queue, Leo bolted in and almost knocked Mikey over, clambering up the jeager's leg at surprising speed. Mikey bolted out the instant Leo was in the room, likely because the warehouse holding his and Raph's jeager was down the way a little.

By the time both pilots were inside, in sync and moving, the kaiju was up in the shallows, coming off the coastal shelf. The bots burst from their warehouses, tearing them to splinters. The two bots sprinted through the decrepit storage yard, barreling towards the nearby sea and the other jeager.

Leo and [NAME] moved in tandem, running in place and pumping their arms in sync. The neural handshake was strong as always and practically ensured precision. They sped ahead of Mikey and Raph's jeager, taunting eachother over the comms.

"Damn, you guys are slow today! And that's saying something Mr. Orange-insisted-on-long-ass-legs-on-this-itty-bitty-torso!' Leo panted into the mic, teasing Mikey about his design choices.

"Oh shut up Leo!! Did you even bring medic supplies like you were supposed to?" Mikey was yelling and [NAME] almost had to crank down their comms to stop the oncoming headache, chuckling the entire time.

"No, he didn't Mike." [NAME] faux whispered into the comms, knowing it would be heard by Leo anyways.

"HEY-"

"Guys! We need to handle this as a team, which means no. Fighting!" Raph interjected, cutting Leo off and smashing the red jeager's fist into its palm mid run as if to punctuate his point.

"Hey, hi, hello! We could REALLY use some help right now! Our plasma cannon rounds are low and we don't have any more back at home, so I'd really fucking hate to run out right now!!" April jumped in, sounds of struggle from inside the jeager alongside the screaming of metal and the bellows of the beats could be faintly heard.

"Shit, sorry Apes, we are enroute! ETA is about a minute and a half out!" [NAME] reassured their friend, going faster and pushing themselves to the limit to get there quicker, which in turn made Leo speed up too.

"Yeah yeah, hurry UP!" Donnie interjected. He wasn't really one to talk on comms, so hearing him made everyone realize how bad the situation must be.

Finally close enough, Leo and [NAME] got good visuals on the fight. Running across a large stretch of gravelly sand they could see Donnie and April's jeager, Echo Seven, grappling hand to hand with a giant beast. This kaiju was likely only a category 2, but it was still formidable on the battlefield. The kaiju looked like a pangolin, shark and lionfish all at once, with spines along it's back and arms, scaley plates covering it's body and fin-like legs supporting the whole thing. The head resembled that of a shark with some odd growths and horns.

Even worse, the kaiju towered over the green jeager. This normally wouldn't have been a problem, their jeagers were small, but Echo Seven was that tallest of their little fleet.

Even with the disadvantage of size, the fleet had the advantage of speed and team work. The mace flew past Typhoon Eden, the blue jeager, landing right on the creatures back, crushing spines and causing the kaiju to scream out in pain. Just as the creature whipped around, flailing that long tail of its in an attempt to knock down Brawler Fury, the red jeager. Typhoon Eden, and subsequently the pilots, ducked and rolled underneath the flying tail before sliding across the dunes beneath it's belly. Time seemed to slow as they delivered an uppercut punch, rolling to a stop right beside Echo Seven and the creature was forced to rear back with the force of the blow.

"Thank God, what took y'all so long?!" April hollered over comms.

"Eh, downtown traffic, you know how it is." Leo joked back, earning a small chuckle from [NAME]. They began running the small bot up the bigger bot's back and onto the monster, working seamlessly like a well oiled machine. The kaiju had been mid-turn when Typhoon Eden ascended, the creature moving to attack Brawler Fury. The blue and white bot grabbed tight to the keratin horns and yanked, putting all the force of the bot and their combined fury to the test.

The kaiju's head was reared back again, and Brawler Fury was able to land a few hits to the chest and neck and tangle up it's front legs in the chain. Typhoon Eden's pilots shared a nod and attempted to snap the kaiju's neck and end this battle quickly. Just as the head began to be yanked at a full force by the jeager the monster threw its head forward in an attempt to buck off the mecha.

Typhoon Eden managed to hang on and ride the kaiju like a bucking bronco for a minute, but were ultimately sent tumbling info Brawler Fury, knocking both jeagers back into the sand. During the time it took for that one move to throw off the plan of attack, Donnie had concocted a new one.

"April, under it! If we go under it and plasma blast it we can rip it to shreds!!" Donnie spoke a little too quickly, undecipherable to anybody except those close to him.

Echo Seven tucked in on itself an rolled onto the jeager pile, landing on it's back with it's arms flung wide, as the baest shuddered and collapsed.

"Got it, got it!"

And with that the two of them ran in tandem, falling to their knees and leaning back in a mock power slide. Their plasma cannon ripped and burned through the creatures belly, tearing it from anus to mouth as sickly teal blood began to ooze from the rift and drop onto the sand below.

Shock and joy filled everyone's systems and within a minute all three bots were on their feet, holding each other's shoulders and jumping for joy as the comms lit up with boisterous laughter.

They did it! They'd defeated a kaiju! All on their own! They were as good as actual pilots with no training and half the jeager!

Just as the celebration was coming to an high and the adrenaline rush crashed, a booming voice rang through the atmosphere.

"Unauthorized jeager pilots, exit your jeagers and surrender."

The loud voice was demanding and left no room for contemplation. All four turtles, alongside their human companions, exited the command pods cautiously.

The giant, full sized jeager cast a shadow over the pilots and their bots. The Saber Athena glowered down at the six young adults, who simply stared in awe.

Eventually, and nervously, [NAME] and Raph both waved at the massive jeager, one five fingered hand next to a three fingered one. The pilots of Saber Athena must've been stunned, an educated guess substantiated by the lack of response or movement since the pilots of the rouge jeagers emerged.

The Saber Athena straightened, and one of her pilots cleared their throat before speaking.

"Re-enter your jeagers and retrieve your weapons. Await orders from there. And no funny business. understood?" A different, higher voice came through the comms, presumably the other pilot.

A lot of nodding and a few salutes were sent towards the Saber Athena and her pilots before the children dispersed, splitting off into pairs and disappearing quickly back down the hatches into their jeagers.

Teasing jabs and laughter could be hear over the comms, and the pilots of Saber Athena seemed to relax at the lightheartedness. These kids weren't here to cause trouble, that could've been guessed by the fact that they took down the kaiju instead of the city while they had the chance, but they had been uncertain up until this point.

It wasn't long before all three jeagers were up and running again, and again the voice they'd heard first came over the comms.

"What are your designations and names?" The voice seemed almost softer, but not by much. Enough to allow them room to respond, but still demanding.

The blue and white jeager raised it's hand first as an older teens voice came across the comms.

"Pilot number one here, you can call me Leo. This here is my lovely co-pilot [NAME] and our bot is the Typhoon Eden." The jeager did a theatrical bow followed by a curtsy, one for each pilot assumably.

The giant Saber Athena nodded sharply before directing it's gaze to the next, a green and black robot.

"Hi, hello, I'm April-" The left hand of the jeager waved a little, but rather enthusiastically.

"-And I'm Donnie." The right hand raised in the least enthusiastic wave possible.

"And we're piloting the Echo Seven." Both hands began doing jazz hands, except one was more exaggerated than the other.

Another nod from Saber Athena and a vague salute from the Echo Seven were exchanged before they moved on for the final time. Their gaze directed at the red and black bot seemed to make it stiffen as one of the pilots began to speak.

"Oh, yeah, okay so I'm Mikey, and," The speakers attention seemed to shift from the Saber Athena to someone else, supposedly it's co-pilot. "You wanna introduce yourself?"

The jeager shook its head, before the teen continued.

"Okay, and that's Raph and this is our beloved Brawler Fury!"

The Saber Athena looked from bot to bot before speaking.

"Well, it's easy to assume none of you have licenses. Or experience. Or training." As if to punctuate and add weight to each sentence the giant jeager looked pointedly at each bot, assessing them almost. "And based on how advanced your jeagers are, for hunks of scrap at least, parents who don't care." The higher voice pitched in.

The smaller jeagers all have different reactions. The Typhoon Eden looks ready to launch and attack the Saber Athena, Echo Seven stiffens up and stands at attention, falling completely radio silent as if they weren't already, and the Brawler Fury seems to curl in on itself.

A small crowd of civilians were now gathering nearby on a sight seeing parking area on the side of the road, simply observing. The Saber Athena held a hand out.

"Welcome aboard."

And with nothing else the jeager turned around and began to talk away, turning back after a few steps to see if the smaller jeagers were following. Not one had moved from it's previous spot, but all the stances had gone slack from surprise or relief, maybe both. The Saber Athena nodded its head sharply towards the direction it was walking in and began to move again, except now the pilots could hear the scramble of the three smaller jeagers running to keep up.

#AUGH #rottmnt leonardo x reader #leonardo x reader #rottmnt leo x reader #leo x reader #g/n reader #gender neutral reader #pacific rim #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #pacific rim uprising #pacific rim x rottmnt #crossover fic #tmnt x reader #my au #neve say never #neve.writing #neve writes

[grumpygreenwitch]

The Witches and Wizards Job 9 - 10 - 11

AO3 Link

Buy me a Ko-fi?

Remember: Tumblr has no algorithm. Reblogs give me life.

1-2 + 3-4 + 5-6 + 7-8 + 9-10-11 + 12-13-14 + 15-16 + 17-18-19 + 20-21-22 + 23-24-25 + 26-27-28 + 29-30 + 31-32-33 + 34-35-36 + 37-38 + 39-40-41-42

NINE

Morning came virulently early. No one had gotten much sleep, and in the end the team decided it wasn't worth the attempt. A few calls got enough food delivered to bury the kitchen bar under a variety of donuts, egg sandwiches, coffee and tea, and they stared at each other, simply because it wouldn't have been polite to stare at their consultant.

Harry Dresden, Professional Wizard, was sitting at one corner of the bar, eating slowly, looking like the victim of a bad suntan booth accident. He didn't look nearly as bad as he had when Nate had dragged him up to the loft, at least. As if the shower had washed away the burns.

As if they hadn't been real.

"Hey, man." Hardison was holding a bag of frozen peas to his head with one hand, and a smoothie with the other. He looked profoundly hungover as he took a seat between Parker and Eliot. The sweatpants Dresden was currently wearing were his; the shirt was Eliot's. "Thanks."

"No problem," the wizard replied, unfazed.

"Harry," Sophie asked as gently as she would've out of any of them if they'd been hurt on the job, "what happened down there?"

Dresden sighed and shifted minutely. Eliot knew that motion; he'd grown out of it himself many years back as a dangerous telltale, but he knew it. It was how you braced yourself to focus on what needed to be done, away from the pain. It went right into the hitter's mental file about the wizard, along with the scarred knuckles, the one bandaged hand, the ready way in which Dresden shifted so his back was nearly always to a wall.

"You found a Burning Witchwell." Nate scoffed minutely, but Dresden didn't seem to mind.

"A Burning… ," Sophie repeated carefully.

"Witch's Well," Dresden enunciated more carefully. "Shorthand, Witchwell."

"Is it still dangerous?" Nate asked.

"Probably. I'll go down in a bit and contain it," Dresden sipped at his cup. "It's a trap, a booby trap."

"Can't you destroy it, dismantle it?" Nate insisted.

"I can try." The wizard glared minutely at the mastermind. "Look, you gotta understand, I was not expecting to find a piece of arcane magic on my first night in Boston. Witchwells are incredibly old magic. I've only ever read of them, I've never even known of someone in the past four hundreds years with the chops to make one."

Sophie threw Nate a quelling look before she turned to Dresden once again. She was both amused and concerned that, at the moment, he looked very much like Parker did: frustrated, restive and angry. The wizard knew there was an enemy before him but he couldn't see it, couldn't target it, couldn't act. There was a great deal of physicality to the man; he was obviously rusty when it came to dealing with people, he'd proved that amply in Chicago, when he'd been about as tongue-tied in front of her as a schoolboy, but he was also used to the world lashing out at him while he had to stand there and take it. Parker was mad that Hardison had gotten hurt and there was no one she could hurt back in retaliation; Harry was just mad that someone had gotten hurt on his watch. "Harry, what exactly is a Burning Witch's Well? How is it a booby trap?"

The wizard sighed deeply. "The first thing you have to understand is that there are laws for me, just as there are for everyone else. There's a lot less for me," he said calmly, "but the penalties are a lot heavier. I can bend a lot of them to help you because you already know there's weirdness going on. I can twist some more because you've been put directly in the line of fire, and because honestly, I don't think anyone's going to be able to look you up for an inquest. But there are still questions I won't be able to answer."

"That's not what we hired you for," Nate protested, knowing it wouldn't matter but still wanting it on record.

Unsurprisingly, Sophie threw him a quelling look before turning back to the wizard. "Go on."

"You've read those fairy tales where someone finds a magic book or a magic cauldron, and read the inscription on it, and it activates?"

"'Speak, friend, and enter'," Hardison murmured.

"It works like that. A normal Witchwell is any item, any thing that's been empowered so you read the command words on it and it activates. It does the one thing it's supposed to do, and it turns off. Very neat, very clean - and very hard to make, because, I mean… Just like any other piece of machinery, anything magical needs power to run. You plug in a coffee maker, you charge a phone, you put batteries in a flashlight; magic's no different. A Witchwell doesn't need any of that. All the power it needs comes from its making, from it being used."

Hardison perked up; this sounded suspiciously like a Rule. He liked Rules; science and technology were full of Rules. Hacking wasn't even breaking the Rules so much as it was applying them in new and exciting ways. To hear that magic had Rules was exactly what he'd been hoping for. "Like a Rolex."

"Say what?"

"There's a rotor, a little pendulum thing, inside most Rolex watches," Hardison explained. "You don't need a battery, you just need to wear the watch to keep it going."

Harry looked surprised at this bit of trivia. "You can do that?"

Nate stepped in. "So this thing downstairs," he declared, trying to shepherd the conversation back in place. "It's going to keep running forever?"

"No," the wizard said forcefully. "It's going to run whenever someone reads what it says on it."

"I didn't read it, I couldn't," Hardison said immediately.

"But you tried," Harry said, not unkindly. "That's where the fernflower comes in."

"I'm very curious about this 'fernflower'," Nate said mildly.

Harry gave the mastermind a suspicious look. Apparently he'd already learned that 'mild', when it came to Nate Ford, meant danger. "For starters, it's not a real plant."

Nate pinned a vaguely murderous look on the wizard.

"Harry," Sophie was trying not to laugh. "You and Hardison didn't get hurt by an imaginary flower."

"The fernflower didn't hurt him, or me." He gestured, trying to ferry his own thoughts back into a semblance of order. "Fernflower's a flower of the Nevernever, the world on the other side, fairies, all th-"

"Fairies are real?!" Parker interrupted him.

Dresden closed his eyes and fought to focus. "Yes, they are, no, they're not nice, no, they don't grant wishes, if you see one, run."

"Why? What would you do if you saw one?" she challenged.

"Run," Dresden replied earnestly without missing a beat. "It's rare even there. It only grows in places of power, places were magic naturally gathers. It's that plant you hear about in fairy tales that gives you magical powers, but only for a little bit. It lets you talk to animals, protects you from curses or," he sighed, looking at Hardison, who immediately realized the cause-and-effect involved.

"It lets you read magic," the hacker said slowly, testing the words even as he spoke them.

"That's the booby part," the wizard admitted.

"Because even if whoever found the cylinder didn't know anything about magic, they'd still activate it." Hardison lowered the bag of peas. "That's nasty, Dresden."

"That's the harmless bit," the wizard told him wryly, "hangover aside. The killer in there was the night's breath."

"Let me guess," Nate pointed out dryly. "Another plant that doesn't exist?"

"Oh, no, you can grow night's breath on this side," Dresden replied in the same tone. "It's just illegal and if you do grow it a man in grey with a big sword's gonna show at your doorstep, torch your garden and cut your head off."

There was a very long beat of silence.

"That brought up so many questions I don't even know where to begin," Sophie declared, stunned. Nate scoffed and worked on refilling his cup.

"I got one," Eliot stepped in. "Dresden, you washed off the burns. You were covered in blisters. Hardison was covered in blisters. They were real."

"They sure hurt like it," Hardison muttered.

"But they still washed off. You're hurt, but you're not hurt as bad as you were."

"He doesn't actually have magic." Dresden pointed at Hardison. "Night's breath burns magic, corrodes it. In his case, it burned off the fernflower, not him."

"And in your case?"

"I sloughed off what it had damaged. A bit like scouring a wound that's gone bad; it's not pleasant, but at least the stuff underneath's healthy. And I'm thinking I can't afford to take my time healing, if you're finding Burning Witchwells just lying around."

The fridge began to rattle.

"Getting hurt doesn't work like that," Eliot protested tightly.

"Stuff from the Nevernever doesn't last on this side," the wizard countered. "It needs a power source, energy, will, same as anything else. For starters, the fernflower. But once that burned off, all it needed was belief. If…" He trailed off, staring at Hardison in sudden befuddlement.

"Alec Hardison." Hardison put aside the smoothie and offered his hand.

"Harry Dresden." Dresden shook it.

"Pleasure to meet you."

"You bet." Neither man missed a beat. "If I could get to Hardison before he realized what the night's breath had done, before it had time to cement itself in his mind, I knew he'd be fine."

Hardison started laughing a bit. "You had to catch me before it got compiled." He looked terribly pleased. Despite his words to Parker or Nate, Hardison had expected a hoax and a riddle in equal parts. What he had never, in his wildest imaginings, had expected, was that he (and Arthur C. Clarke) had been right. But he was, they were. In his own way, the partially singed Chicago beanpole was just a different sort of hacker, with a different language, with different tools. Just like Hardison was a master of his own science, so was Dresden. Dresden's tech was just incompatible with everything else.

The big ol' monolith was indeed just a different breed of computer.

"I think I'd like to know what's going on now, if it's not too much trouble," the wizard said evenly, looking at Sophie and Nate.

Surprisingly, it was the mastermind who replied to the request. "You go lock that canister down," he told Dresden. "By the time you get back hopefully we'll have hard copies of everything so we don't have any more screen mishaps -"

The coffee-maker chose that moment to chirp sadly and shut down.

"Yup." Dresden hopped to his feet.

"Eliot, go with him," Nate directed.

"Alright."

"Can I come?" Parker asked hopefully.

"Are you good at following directions in a hurry?"

"The sort of directions people give in a hurry, yes."

A smile twitched along the wizard's mouth, making him look younger and handsome for the briefest of moments. "Can't argue with that condition. Come on."

TEN

If Parker and Eliot had been expecting to see some magnificent display of magical fireworks as their contractor dealt with the canister, they were sorely disappointed. Dresden stepped warily enough into the room, and examined everything else: the table, the camera, the rumpled tablecloth on which the canister rested - everything but the canister itself.

"You got any duct tape?" he asked Eliot, further confusing both thief and hitter. Then, with utmost care, he taped a piece of cardboard from a box of straws on top of the inscription of the canister.

"That's it?" Eliot asked in disbelief.

"Yeah," the wizard shrugged. "Can't read it, it can't activate." He shook the canister slightly; they all heard something sloshing in there, and Dresden grimaced. "I don't like that sound, though." He wrapped the canister in the tablecloth, duct-taped that down as well, set it back down on the table and dragged a sharpie out of a pocket in his weather-beaten duster. He drew a long, deep breath.

Then he sketched a near perfect circle on the table and began to sketch swift, unrecognizable scribbles around the perimeter.

Parker brightened up. "What are you doing?"

"Making it so the owner can't track this thing to here," Dresden replied distractedly. "At least not without warning me that they're doing so. It's a warding circle." He gave them both a very level look. "Whoever did is very, very powerful. Powerful enough that just their image, not even their presence, is messing with your equipment. I doubt I can stop them if they really want their little death bottle back, but I can at least be here to get a good look when they come for it." The fingers of Dresden's bandaged hand twitched restlessly.

With Eliot carrying the camera, they headed back up to the loft. Rather than gathering before the bank of screens, they surrounded the kitchen bar once again, cleared of food and buried instead in any number of documents, printouts and paperwork.

Dresden picked up a chair and slid it back and away a whole two feet when Eliot put the camera down on the table. Nate shot the wizard a pointed look. "All done?"

"As much as it can be without my workshop," Dresden admitted.

"What do you need from your workshop?" Nate asked distractedly as he read from a very official-looking folder.

"The list is endless… Is that… Is that a police report?"

"No." Nate tipped his chin vaguely at the bar. "That's the police report. This is the insurance investigation report."

Dresden's mouth worked emptily for a moment.

"Harry," Sophie said mildly. "I think it's time we told you what we know."

"That'd be nice," he admitted, not quite managing to keep the doubt out of his tone or his expression. It quickly changed to disbelief as Hardison began speaking, even though every now and again the hacker got sidetracked into grumbling while he dug through the mountain of paperwork to find some tidbit or another.

"Is it magic?" Sophie asked into a brief silence when Hardison finished speaking.

"What? Yes." Dresden shook himself. "Yeah, of course it is. I knew that the moment I realized you'd found a Witchwell. Of course there's magic involved."

"You look so unconvinced, it's all," she pointed out.

"I'm not unconvinced, I'm -" He hesitated visibly, and then smiled wryly. "The people who hire me rarely tell me everything they know. Or anything at all."

Nate set a hand on the papers, looking deeply thoughtful. "Honesty, mister Dresden. I believe I mentioned that before."

"You did." Dresden said nothing else. He could feel the mood around the table sharpening, every eye coming to rest on Ford.

"You know what bothers me?" the mastermind said at last.

"That people nearly died?" Sophie suggested.

Nate flapped a hand at her. "That doesn't bother me, that upsets me. Very different."

"That they could have ruined the artwork?" Dresden suggested meekly.

"Argonite systems are designed to be completely safe to the art," the mastermind told him distractedly, picking up and tossing two stapled pages on the center of the table. "The Tetryakov Gallery is delighted, actually, that the Gardner Museum was willing to kill in order to protect the collection."

"Is that… Is that normal?"

"They're Russians, Harry," Sophie explained, leaning closer. "If you really want to see cutthroat, you should try to get an art loan from the Egyptians. Or the Japanese."

"What bothers me," Nate said firmly, "is that we found the cylinder at all." Silence fell around the bar. "Nothing else was this sloppy, not even the ones that could've gotten away with it."

"Rush job," Eliot murmured.

"Why?" Sophie asked. "What changed, what was different?"

"We were there," Parker pointed out.

"We aren't the target." Nate shot that one down. "We hadn't even taken the job at that point."

"Fedorov was there." Eliot picked up their dossier on the Russian enforcer and threw it atop everything else. "He did say this has been targeting people from their side."

Nate paused to consider that.

"I have been meaning to make time for the Sokolov collection, but I am a busy man, mister Ford."

"Fedorov might be a target, but this wasn't for him. He'd planned this visit ahead of time; they would have known he was coming, it wouldn't have been sloppy."

"The woman," Sophie murmured. "Baba Yaga."

Nate grimaced openly, then visibly braced himself. "Dresden, you're up. What can you tell us about Baba Yaga that we don't already know?"

"That I hope it's not her? If she is, there's next to nothing I can do to help you. You could call in a dozen wizards and they still wouldn't be able to help you." Suddenly aware that he had the team's attention, the wizard exhaled resignedly. "Stories and fairy tales aside, Baba Yaga is… a single step down and sideways from a god. Just like prayer and belief, and time, and a bunch of other variables empower a god, she's the same way. She depends on people to empower her, yes, but she's also been around so long that she has gained other sorts of power, magic, knowledge, alchemy, favors. She used to be a kind of litmus test for royalty, not just Russian, but most of the Slavic bloodlines. The Royal had to either trick her or survive her to prove they were worthy of the throne."

"And if they didn't?"

"She ate them," Parker replied before Dresden could.

The wizard, looking sheepish, had to agree. "She ate them."

"She ate p- like, for real she ate people?" Hardison demanded confirmation.

"You'd be surprised how many things out there think we're just convenient little walking snacks," Dresden said, voice tight. "But. It's entirely possible that she also just ate them metaphorically, like… eating their magic, eating their mind, their luck, their knowledge, eating half a dozen things that could, would, leave them alive. Just not in a way they'd appreciate."

"Better to just get eaten," Eliot muttered, daunted.

"Do we agree, then, that she's the target?" Sophie asked.

"No, we agree on nothing just yet, "Nate protested. "Only that she was there, unexpectedly. Someone saw a shot and they took it. So why was she there to begin with?"

"The portrait." Parker rummaged through the mound of paper until she found the printout of Nate's photograph, and frowned minutely at it. "She really does look upset."

"Can I see that?" Dresden asked politely, and Parker surrendered the printout. He squinted at it. "Do you have a bigger one?"

"Sure, the one hanging on a wall at the Gardner Museum, why?" Nate told him flippantly.

"This." Dresden stood up to move closer to the table, then hesitated. Hardison picked up the camera and put it aside, and the wizard set the paper down, pointing at the barely visible flash of green under the man in black's coat. "This is magic."

"How can you tell?" Sophie moved closer.

"I can't, that's why I want a closer look. But the setting around it, that silver, diamonds, whatever it might be? They just saw me draw something like it downstairs. A warding circle."

"Who's the man?" Eliot asked. "Did we figure that out?

Nate stared at the printout. "He was there, too."

"You saw him?" Sophie turned to look at him.

"I'm… not sure." The mastermind closed his eyes, trying to remember that moment. Motes of dust in the golden sunlight, barely stirring. The quiet murmur of a dozen admiring conversations. The portraits all around. Sophie nearby. Parker. Fedorov. The old woman.

The man, passing by the open doorway before the shutters slammed down.

Nate opened his eyes and shook his head. "I saw someone that looked like him, but it was just a quick glimpse. It could have been anything."

"Harry, who is he?"

"He could be anyone, a Royal, a pupil. It's said she took on apprentices every now and again."

"An asshole. That's what Fedorov said." Parker cocked her head. "I kinda agree."

"Hardison, did you get a chance to go through the security camera footage?" Nate shuffled through the paperwork.

"No, because every time I tried, my failsafes started beeping. How do you- is there any technology you can use?" the hacker demanded of Dresden.

"I've got a landline, and a VW Beetle," the wizard was trying not to sound amused at Hardison's plaintive demand. "Anything old. The older the better. Pre-WWII is pretty much guaranteed to work fine."

"Oh, my god, you want me using…" Hardison sighed in exasperation, hanging his head for a moment. "Fine. Fine, I guess backwards-compatible means we have to go way back." He looked at Nate. "I gotta go shopping, but I can have something set up by lunch."

"Parker and I could take Harry to the museum," Sophie suggested.

"Why? The painting's not there anymore." When everyone looked at her, Parker shrugged. "The MET demanded we move the collection to secure storage, and the Gardner doesn't have the vault space. It's in the MFA vaults now."

"How long would it take you to get in there?" Nate asked without hesitation.

"I can be in and out with it by lunchtime, too."

"No, I don't want you to steal the painting, Parker. You and your friend worked too hard to get this loan set up. How long would it take you to get yourself and Dresden into the vault?"

"Oh." She turned to look at him. "Can you make yourself invisible?"

"Uh, no. That's a little involved, and I don't have my workshop."

She huffed. "Magic's not very fun, is it?"

"Parker, how long would it take you to break into the vault if there were no other security concerns?" It was Sophie's turn to look like she was thinking hard.

The thief thought on it and shrugged. "Nine minutes from the front door to the vault. It's a Milwaukee 2300, they're a little temperamental sometimes."

Sophie turned to look at Nate. "We don't need anything from the vault. We just need Harry to get in, have a look and get out."

Nate paused to digest that. "The Mona Lisa?" he suggested. Sophie's smile told him he'd guessed right.

"Mix in a little Golden Fiddle, and we could probably go as long as twenty minutes before the police are even called."

"Hardison, how many decent fakes can you give me in," Nate checked his watch, "five hours?"

The hacker looked delighted. "Give me six and you can have a hundred solid."

"Lunchtime, then." Nate nodded and moved to the door, where Sophie was already waiting for him. "Dresden, make your list."

"My list?"

"You keep saying you need your workshop, which is fair, but I need you working at full efficiency. Make your list. I doubt it's endless but hey, we like challenges around here." The mastermind pointed. "Parker's going to run you through a little escapade -"

"Are we breaking into a museum vault?!" The wizard sounded a little indignant, and a lot full of disbelief.

"Well, yes," Nate admitted cheerfully, "but we're not stealing anything," he added, as if that made everything better, and walked out of the loft.

ELEVEN

The con went off just after lunch. It gave the team time to set up a few failsafes, and gave their hired wizard a chance to stuff his pockets with a variety of very strange things.

Around 3 PM, with the wind rushing down Huntington Avenue and the trains of the Green Line clattering back and forth, the nondescript white van finally found a parking spot a little bit away from the entrance to the museum. There was a sparse crowd hanging around, mostly art students waiting for the brief period when admittance was free. A great many of them had sketch pads and were busily putting down, in broad charcoal strokes or distracted color lines, the ephemera of the people passing them by. The rear doors of the van swung open. "Ladies and gentlemen!" A powerfully built man in faded jeans, heavy steel-toed boots and a comfortable jacket sat on the edge of the van's bed, his voice pitched to carry and catch the attention of those around him, his good looks and the peaceable, charming half-smile he wore like sunlight set to keep it. "How about we engage in some mischief!"

He gestured to the back of the van, where canvases sat in neat, orderly rows, hanging from a specialty shelf. "I have one hundred and twenty pieces of art here. Twenty bucks a pop, only one per customer, no refunds, no returns, no buyer's remorse." The man reached into the rack, gently dislodged one of the smaller canvases, and set it on his lap.

A sigh went up from the crowd. Renoir's 'Madeleine', one of the artist's smallest portraits, well known to be in a private Louisiana collection, gazed soulfully at them. "At least one of them," the man told the crowd while he had their attention, "is the real deal."

Gasps followed that proclamation. "Yeah, right!" Someone yelled. A crowd was beginning to gather around the back of the van.

Eliot grinned merrily. "You don't gotta believe me, man." He set the Renoir aside, reached for a larger canvas. The crowd cried out in disbelief. Titian's 'Salome' stared them all down haughtily. "It's your buck against my bang. You can just walk away."

"How much for the 'Salome'?" a woman's voice shouted from the crowd.

"Twenty bucks for each of the nine."

"Can I buy four?"

"One a pop."

"I'll give you fifty each for four of them," another man exclaimed, rushing up to the van.

"Nope, twenty each, one per customer."

"I can just come back," the man protested.

"My man, you're gonna what, take it off the frame and roll it up to hide it in your shirt? Titian's 'Salome'?" Eliot pinned a level gaze on the man, who caved pretty much immediately. He still passed out a twenty, and Eliot readily surrendered the canvas. "Pleasure doing business with you."

The crowd began to close in. Seemingly at random, Eliot grabbed another canvas and brought it forth.

Every voice went profoundly silent. The hitter peeked around at the painting. A masterpiece, missing since World War II, stared back at him. "Oh, that one." His grin was pleasant, his blue eyes full of cheer. "Got four of those."

"Twenty, I got a twenty!" A young woman surged breathlessly forward.

"You got it, sweetheart. Wanna wipe your fingers before you grab it, though," he pointed out, offering her a tissue so she could scrub charcoal dust off her hands.

The crowd detonated. People rushed forward, chatting, exclaiming, questioning. It was a lottery, yes, but at 100-to-1 odds it was brutally effective as bait. Word went out. Passersby detoured. Not everyone was buying, not everyone was convinced that any of the paintings were real, rather than merely exceptional copies. Arguments exploded discussing brushstrokes, pigments, styles.

Jessamine Lochlin fought her way to the front of the crowd. "One 'Salome'," she demanded breathlessly. "And I'll have you know this is just the worst -"

"One 'Salome' for the gorgeous young lady." Eliot turned the full force of his charm onto the young curator. "Picked it special just for you."

Lochlin went pink to the roots of her hair, her righteous indignation choking out with a squeak. By the time she recovered she was short a twenty, richer by a highly suspicious canvas, and the horrible man peddling a potential masterwork out of the back of a van had moved on to argue with two people who each wanted a copy of 'Madeleine' - except they wanted the same copy.

She huffed angrily, and pressed her mouth into a thin, undecided line. Some part of her still wanted to tell the man fifty different kinds of whatfor. A tiny part of her wanted another one of those gorgeous grins, but she stepped on that part with angry determination.

Most of her, however, was whispering very loudly. What if it's true?

That was the part that won, eventually. It would have won in any of the people there, most of whom loved art in one form or another. She turned and fought her way through the crowd, half-running, half-speedwalking to the entrance to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, rushing through the afternoon crowds and the beautiful displays without seeing either.

"Jessamine!" A familiar voice, a soft Russian burr, called out to her, and the curator turned in both surprise and exasperation. It was the Russian woman, Iggy's friend, the curator, apparently admiring the Japanese exhibit. "Hello, what a pleasant surprise."

"Oh, hi!" Lochlin beamed at the woman, paused exactly three seconds, not even listening to what she was saying. "Bye!" She ran on, leaving the other curator open-mouthed and puzzled. She burst into the main laboratory. "Michael, I need your Titian database!"

There were two men currently in the room, a vast, airy, sealed space full of sedately humming, dormant machinery under blue halogen lights. One was an older man, lanky and silver-haired, the unruly mane braided at his back. He had an indecent amount of stubble and a lab coat over a tee telling the world that finger-painting was an acceptable form of art, the writing surrounded by prehistoric hand stencils. The other was a short, stocky man with little hair on top of his head, but an impeccably groomed silver beard and moustache, a fine button-down shirt and slacks under his own coat. He sputtered in surprise at the invasion. "Jess, what on Earth -"

She hefted 'Salome' and while she didn't quite slam it on the work table between the two men, it was a close thing.

They gaped at it, speechless.

"There is a man out there selling these out of the back of a van. He's promised one's the real deal, I bought a 'Salome', and I need your Titian database, and then I need your Raphael database because he has a 'Portrait'."

"A portrait?" The lanky man straightened up. "The 'Portrait'?!"

Lochlin nodded intently.

"Fakes. All fakes. A conman's game, Eli, don't you dare, Elijah!" The other man was already running out. Michael Erlkist, one of the MFA's most seasoned curators and its Egyptian and Fertile Crescent expert, scoffed. "They're all fakes, they have to be," he protested at Lochlin.

"Michael!" she all but shrieked at him.

"Alright, alright!" The man moved over to one of the computers. "Mel isn't here, though, Jess. She's the Titian specialist, none of us are near as good."

The young curator paused, struck by the truth of that. As much science as one could apply to telling the difference between an original and its replicas, verifying artwork, particularly paintings, was still a matter of skill, of finesse, of expertise acquired on the field. "We're plenty good, you and I."

"I like mummies and you do watercolors." His tone was dry and deadpan. "And you bought this out of the back of a van."

"Michael, he has a 'Portrait'."

"Everyone always has a 'Portrait'."

"Are you willing to take that chance? The one in a million chance that it's the real 'Portrait'? That this is the real 'Salome'? He has nine 'Madeleine's!"

"'Madeleine' is in a private collection in Louisiana," he retorted primly.

"Is it? Would they have said anything if they'd lost it, if it got stolen?"

"Jess, what do you want?" He demanded impatiently.

"I want to know if this is the real 'Salome'!"

"What if it is?" Without letting her answer, he asked, "What if it isn't?"

"If it isn't that means another chance that one of the 'Portrait's is real," she told him with hyperbolic focus.

That shut him up. He turned and typed furiously on the computer. "This isn't going to work, you know. We know the theory, the basics. Never mind that no one can authenticate a painting without taking at least a few hours to do so. You need someone with more expertise, who's actually worked with other collections."

She huffed angrily at him, but couldn't dispute that point. Chewing on her lip, a sudden idea occurred to Lochlin. "Get started with the analysis, I'll be right back."

"Oh, what now," he moaned.

She was already gone, sprinting past the late afternoon crowds and looking about desperately. She nearly ran down a woman and her two kids as she closed in on her target. "Hey! Hi. Hello. Ekaterina, right?"

Ekaterina Yegorov turned and smiled her calm, steady smile at the younger curator. "Please, Jessamine, Kate is fine. Ekaterina is for formal occasions and for customers, you do not need to -"

"That's nice. Have you ever curated Titian?"

"Oh, another personal favorite we share, is it?" The Russian brightened up at once. "The detail work on 'Flora' is just so exquisite -"

"Good. Come with me."

Ekaterina found herself all but hauled along, her sensible heels clacking a harried staccato on the marble floors, her confusion warring with her implacably calm demeanor. Lochlin dragged her past several guards and security locks and very nearly shoved her into the lab.

"Jessamine Esther Lochlin, you do not bring strangers into my lab!" Erlkist cried out.

"She's not a stranger! She's an independent curator. She's good, too, I should know, I've spoken to her before! And she knows Titian."

Both curators turned to look at Ekaterina, who shrugged delicately. "My work is discreet, but not secret," she declared, flicking her fingers to the computer. "You can find it if you search for it."

"Let me just do that, if you don't mind," Erlkist replied with stiff, frantic courtesy, turning back to the computer and tripping over his own fingers.

"Between the three of us, we can surely tell -" Lochlin hissed impatiently at him.

"Ah-buph-buph-buph," he shushed her. "You brought a stranger into my lab, Jessamine Lochlin," he accused her irately, but equally sotto-vocce.

"We need more eyes on this," she snapped. The screen suddenly began to load a vast list of responses to Erlking's query. "Besides, she's obviously not a stranger," she declared, gesturing sharply.

They stared; they read. Ekaterina Yegorov was, as she'd pointed out, discreet but not a secret. Her work was there to be found, everywhere, from small private collections to some names that made both the curators glance nervously at her over their shoulders.

It didn't matter if they were being subtle enough or not, she wouldn't have caught them: Yegorov was curiously examining the 'Salome' Lochlin had left on the table. Lochlin elbowed Erlking minutely, and they both turned as covertly as they could to watch as idle curiosity became radiant focus.

Yegorov began to mutter in Russian. She wouldn't touch the painting, obviously, but she paced back and forth along three sides of the table, leaning close and squinting fiercely at it from each side she could reach. "Bozhe moi," she breathed after a moment, her expression stunned and her voice strangled, "is this 'Salome'? I thought we had lost it to some, some," she sought angrily for a foul enough word, "selfish private collector."

Lochlin gave Erlking a triumphant look.

"That is not proof!" he protested. "That is one opinion out of three -"

Elijah Randall burst into the lab, wheezing, his face red, carrying a canvas. "Oh, my god, I just bought the 'Madeleine' for twenty bucks out of the back of a van." He laid the canvas down on the table next to 'Salome' and leaned down, his cheek nearly on the table, making frantic little noises.

"It's a fake! Elijah, you know this con! We all know this con! This is Brooklyn all over again!"

"Wasn't one of those real?" Yegorov pointed out meekly.

"I know Renoir, Michael!" the lanky man fired back. "Oh, my god, I touched it, where are the glov - Sorry about the 'Salome', Jess.

"But," Lochlin blinked at him. "'Salome''s real."

Everyone in the lab came to a dead stop. He sputtered a question he couldn't finish. Lochlin gestured at Yegorov.

"Obviously I would need to go into more detail," the Russian woman admitted. "But I would readily offer my word that this is the real 'Salome'.

Eli and Jess crossed a look. "He's got multiple originals," she breathed.

"He's got a 'Portrait'," he choked.

"Who's got a portrait?" Yegorov asked in confusion.

"Everyone always has a 'Portrait'!" Erlking yelled. "It's the most counterfeited painting in the history of painting! Everyone wants to be the one who finds it, undamaged, safe, famous!"

"Wait, the 'Portrait'?" The Russian woman's attention sharpened all at once. "'Portrait of a Young Man'?" she asked Randall.

He nodded breathlessly.

"They're fakes! They're all fakes!"

Yegorov looked at 'Salome'.

They all looked at 'Salome'.

Yegorov looked at 'Madeleine'.

They all looked at 'Madeleine'.

"Um, I think, if you do not mind, I will go -" she said most politely, inching for the door.

Randall and Lochlin sprinted past her and raced out.

"No, don't -!" Erlking was too polite a creature to swear openly, but his face was blotchy and his expression was angry. "Stay right there!" he yelled at Yegorov, for lack of any other target to take the brunt of his mood. She jumped and nodded warily. He snatched for his coat and ran after his peers.

The lab was silent, only the quiet whisper of technology surrounding the lone woman.

Sophie gave the curators ninety seconds to get out and succumb to the mob mentality Eliot had provoked outside before she opened the door and peeked out, just in time to see Parker and Dresden coming up to her. "You are going to wreck this place," he told the wizard almost gleefully.

"I'm already breaking into a museum full of priceless art," Dresden shot back dryly. "Destruction of property is low on the list of crimes I'm committing today."

"Oh, you'll be fine, Harry," she grinned wickedly at him, holding the door open for them. While Parker could have breached the security defenses of the MFA, Sophie infiltrating instead had shaved nearly three minutes off their timeline. "It's just computers, machines."

Harry was staring all around him with a little grimace, trying to stay dead center of the room and as far away from anything digital-looking as possible. "The computers aren't important?"

"Not as much as the art. They can replace a spectrograph." Sophie put on gloves while Parker moved to the far end of the lab, where a door stood discreetly to one side, a lock blinking sedately at them all. "'Salome' can never be replaced," the grifter murmured, picking up the canvas with utmost care and setting it aside, safely out of the way.

Dresden blinked at her. "You m- You mean it's real?!"

"Yes, of course. The Golden Fiddle only works if some part of what you offer is real, Harry. Normally you have a fiddle, but sometimes you have to get a little creative."

"So this is the one real painting you had in there?"

"God, no," Sophie took off the gloves and pocketed them. "This con was geared toward people who know their art, Harry. One real work wouldn't have fooled them." The lock, under Parker's ministrations, beeped cheerily and the door hissed open to a tiny room that looked very much like an airlock, since it actually was one. "There's seven originals," Sophie explained.

"What is it you guys do again?" Dresden croaked hoarsely.

"We're past the lab," Parker said mildly.

From his spot in the service parking lot behind the museum, Hardison stared at the screen and the chatter he was getting from the earbuds of the team. There was an almighty amount of feedback trying to whistle into the collective channel from Sophie's line, which he took to mean she was the one currently closest to Dresden. Giving the wizard an earbud had nearly blown the other five; Hardison was sensible enough not to try a second time, but everything in him itched to know one of his teammates, however temporary, was in there without communications, without support. It made him twice as aware of anything else that might clue him as to Dresden's location and general state of being. When Parker spoke, he was ready. "Nate?"

"Internal power's off." Their mastermind had never been the sort to shy away from getting his hands dirty - literally, in this case, when he'd had to hunt down the immense generators that supplied power to the security systems of the museum and do mean things to them. He rubbed grease off his hands and scowled minutely. So much effort wasted for a hunch of 'magic'. "Eliot, how're you holding up?"

"Oh, we're fine, Nate." Normally a Gold Rush would have run with two people, but Jessamine Lochlin already knew three of the team's members, and Hardison had been needed elsewhere. Eliot, shuffling into the van to reach canvases further back, was having a blast with his current partner. "Dresden's security's working like a charm. Right, Mouse?" The immense Temple dog, sitting shotgun in the van, whuffled; after those gigantic jaws had caught and delicately held onto the hand of someone trying to break into the van, no one else had tried.

Hardison shut off the external power feeding into the lab area. Nothing much seemed to change for two of the three people stepping out of the airlock into a dimly lit hallway. For Parker, it was as if an incredibly loud world had gone abruptly silent. Chem-detectors, bubbling microscopically to themselves, went quiet. The delicate subsonic zap of the laser grid faded. The heat sensor began to cool with inaudible pings. Only the lights that dotted the hallway beyond the airlock, which ran on their own dedicated batteries, remained.

She led the way at a quick trot, Sophie a step behind, Dresden three. One of the lights above them crackled and fizzled out, and both women turned to glare at the wizard, who shrugged awkwardly. "Are you seriously going to crack a museum vault in nine minutes?"

Parker grinned at him. "I could do it in four, but I'm not gonna." She lifted a keycard with a picture of a stocky, older man, balding, with a neat beard and moustache. "Hardison, we're here."

"Restoring power now," Hardison replied. The lights brightened. The lock next to the door blinked back to life. Parker ran the card through it and the immense vault door clicked and clanked loudly as several bolts slid open.

"Sophie, tell Dresden to move away from you," Hardison said suddenly into the line. "The feedback's getting bad."

"He is away from us," she replied as Parker dragged the immense door open, glancing at the wizard, who was five steps away and looking decidedly uncomfortable with the proceedings.

Hardison chewed on his lip. "He might be affecting the intranet system I'm piggybacking for our communications." The buds would have never been powerful enough to get a signal past the tremendous amount of steel and concrete currently between the outside world and the three interlopers, but the museum had run its own communication network into the vaults. Unfortunately, as with most technology trapped in direct proximity to a wizard, it was becoming increasingly unhappy. "Hurry."

The door swung open on soundless hydraulic systems. "Harry, we're about to lose comms," Sophie told him tersely. "In, out, now."

He charged past them, his coat flaring behind him. They followed him into the vault. It was a cold, dark space, lighted only as much as necessary. Racks, easels and pedestals stood at regular intervals, granting no space for observation, merely for each piece in storage not to touch its neighbors.

"We need light," Sophie murmured. Both her and Parker reached for their phones.

A warm, silvery radiance filled the space, spilled all around them, touched the shadows and sent them scurrying away. Both of them stared. Dresden had lifted up the plain pendant he carried tucked under his shirt and it glowed like starlight between his fingers. Sophie could only gape; as magic went it was nothing, a tiny trick, likely easily replicated with tech. But it was there, before her, real. She'd thought herself willing to believe; she hadn't realized how far she'd been from taking the actual leap of faith until that moment.

Parker grinned triumphantly at the sight. Finally, some proper magic.

"Where is it?"

"Here." The thief led the way to the largest frame in the vault, Sokolov's double portrait. Harry followed after her -

The buds screeched feedback. Wherever they were, all of the team winced.

"Dresden!" Hardison yelled.

"Sorry, sorry!" Though Harry couldn't hear the hacker, he could readily figure out why the two women with him had jerked violently and slapped a hand to their ears, and stepped immediately back.

"No, Harry, you step forward, we step back," Sophie told him sternly, giving him a little shove, Parker and her moving further into the vault. Just like that, the wizard was before Sokolov's portrait.

Almost immediately he was frowning. "Stay behind me," he told them distractedly. "Can I touch it?"

"No," both women replied tartly.

Dresden lifted his free hand and ran it just shy of the portrait's surface. "Ok, this is -" He grimaced minutely. "This better not be another trap," he muttered and flicked his fingers.

There was a flash of deep, rich green light, brighter than what he'd conjured. On the portrait, the half-hidden emerald brooch shone like a star, as if someone had kindled a light behind it to show it off as one of the most striking jewels in the world.

"What is it?" Parker asked while Sophie stared, open-mouthed.

"A lock," the wizard replied without turning. "A literal lock." He took a full step back and threw his arms open. The entire frame, ancient gilt and carved wood, began to glow. "This isn't just a portrait, it's a door." He went very still. "It's a gate."

"Good or bad?" Nate asked on the line. Sophie repeated the question.

"Well, odds are it opens to the Nevernever," Dresden replied, then seemed to hear his own words. "So bad. Very bad. Except it's, you know, locked."

"Bad enough that we should take it?"

"No," Nate refuted at once. The line crackled over the one negative.

"Parker, no," Sophie gasped.

"I'm not leaving another death bottle lying around," the thief declared sharply. "Particularly around Jess. Harry?"

Dresden dropped his arms and his head and turned very slowly. "You… have a point," he admitted unhappily, then rubbed at his forehead. "You both saw it. It took nothing to activate the lock. Obviously without the key it's not doing anything, but if the key does show up…" He trailed off. "Almost nothing in the Nevernever's friendly. Neutral at best. Hungry, almost always."

Sophie gritted her teeth and made the only decision she felt she could make. "Everything we need to safely move it should be back at the lab."

Nate huffed, rushing out and hopping on the driver's seat of Hardison's van. "Eliot, start a few arguments. They'll need a little more time. Sophie -"

The line squealed feedback, fired off a few angry popping sounds, and Hardison hissed. "I lost the communication intranet. It burned out."

Nate exhaled sharply, turning to look at the museum.

The three people inside rushed out of the vault, Sophie giving out terse directions. "Harry, will taking the frame apart affect th-" They came out of the vault, around the immense door, and face to face with six people clad in black from head to toe.

Everyone came to a stunned halt.

One of the black-clad figures snarled something in Russian.

The three didn't hesitate: they stepped right back into the vault.

#leverage #nathan ford #parker #sophie devereaux #eliot spencer #alec hardison #the dresden files #harry dresden #fanfiction #my writing #urban fantasy #crossover

[themoonsbride]

Come on, Love. x

a/n: I randomly had the idea for this today and decided I should write about it and post an image again since it's been awhile, sorry if it's short and not well written , xo

-×♥︎×-

You were laying on top of your bed reading a novel, the cool spring breeze blew in through the curtains of your opened window, giving your forearms arms small goosebumps.

You heard your phone buzz, you place a bookmark inside of the novel and placed it next to you while you picked up your brightly screened device. It was nearly almost 1 a.m.

Your best friend Jamie texted you.

Wanna sneak out?

Jamie you know my parents will kill me . you typed back smiling at your screen, you'd known Jamie since you guys were in your senior years of highschool, now you were about to turn 23 and in the process of moving into an apartment with Jamie. Since the first day you met him when you were 18 you'd thought he was cute, and your opinion didn't change. Though, you didn't realize until you were around 20 that it seemed you'd found him more than just cute.

But you knew he didn't think the same of you, he'd been through girlfriends during your relationship, which wasn't a big deal nor problem to you, you were always respectful of his boundaries along with his partners. You didn't 3rd wheel onto dates even when invited, hell, your existence felt rude simply standing next to Jamie when he stood next to his past lovers.

But now the both of you were single, and you'd only ever had one boyfriend in your life. and you were a bit embarrassed about it quite frankly.

awww, come on love.

you felt your face become warm. and whether or not it was from the heatwave of your cellphone. or you blushing, you didn't know. You sighed.

okay fine, where are we going?

It's a supriseee, see you soon :)

see you soon :)

You smiled to yourself and placed your phone back onto your night desk and stood up from your bed, stretching your limbs before walking over to your closet. You'd snuck out before with Jamie, but it was only once, and you'll never forget how mad your parents were when they'd caught Jamie sneaking you back inside of your bedroom window.

You got grounded for a month and weren't allowed to see Jamie during that month either, it felt like torture. That happened a bit after you turned 19 years old. You giggled at the thought of how mad your parents faces were before quickly placing a hand over your mouth, scared you'd wake up your parents again even if you were an adult now.

You pulled up some black jeans from around your ankles up to your waist before zipping them, rummaging through you closet, picking out a nice shirt, tying on some sneakers and sitting down at your desk with a mirror placed at it.

You quickly tried to do a small amount of makeup before Jamie arrived, and just as you finished. Jamie was at your window.

"hey!" he whispered over to you, causing you to jump a bit, getting a smile out of him. You slipped your phone into your back pocket at you stood before walking towards your opened window, feeling somewhat cold from the breeze.

"come on let's get you out of there" Jamie chuckled as he grabbed your hands and started to help pull you out of your bedroom window frame.

"okay, okay, are we doing something fun?" you asked as you stood up on the flat roof of your house, looking at the rest of it where it was tiled more towards the middle of your house and how it'd stooped down at both sides. You met your eyes with Jamie's.

"of course we are, let's go now" He grabbed your hand as he started to guide you to climb down your dark quiet house. Some of Jamies decisions your parents heavily disagreed with, such as sneaking out, partying, concerts, and just other normal things that people did for fun or to

distract themselves. Your mother always told you sneaking out and parties would lead to possibilities of you ending up on the side of the road by morning with a massive hangover. Your father said a concert would explode your eardrums and make you deaf for the rest of your life.

But it didn't matter much to you, you were growing into a woman now and knew how to defend and protect yourself. And you had jamie. You knew you were safe with him, that's another aspect of him that made you love him more.

Before you knew it, you were inside Jamie's car, driving the both of you somewhere whilst quiet, low, music played on the radio. it felt so unreal, being with Jamie felt unreal. it made you feel like you were floating, like you were dreaming. He was so memorizing to look at.

--×♥︎×--

Jamie had his hands covered over your eyes as he helped guide you towards somewhere. You could hear the smirk in his voice. it made you smile.

"okay okay, and, stop!" he said as his voice started to distance from you and you stopped feeling the warmth of his hands disappear from your eyes.

"don't open your eyes yet." He said quickly before the sound the trunk opening and porclin clancking together filled your ears, hearing something land on the glass like material.

"can I open my eyes?" you asked feeling your face start to warm, a tulip red splattering your cheeks.

"wait" he said excitedly before what sounded like him sitting down a shuffling around. there was also the faint sound of a lighter, which was followed by Jamie hissing in pain, probably burning himself on accident.

"open." He said, an obvious smile plastered onto his face from his voice. You slowly opened your eyes as you saw Jamie sitting on a picnic blanket, with 3 bowls of ice cream, and a lantern with a lit candle inside.

You didn't realize how much you were smiling until your mouth muscles began to ache. you hoped you didn't look like a complete fool smiling so hard infront of him before sitting across from him onto the patterned blanket. his beautiful eyes seemed divine, even in the darkness.

it felt so amazing, and unreal. as always.

while you enjoyed your ice cream and talked all you wanted to do was tell him how much you loved him, how much you desired him. he was everything you wanted in a person, he was all you wanted.

If only you could've told him how his erupting laughs that came straight from his stomach lifted you up and pumped your heart with blood. how his periwinkle eyes made you feel like you could see into the depths and crevasses of true beauty. he was so pure and lovable, it drove you insane over him.

"We should do this more often" Jamie smirked

"Don't you remember how mad my parents were when they caught you helping me sneak back into my house?" you said smiling as you both bursted into giggles.

"Your father was furious!" Jamie spoke through laughs.

"He looked like a damn tomatoe he was so pissed!" you both began to laugh more, feeling more alive than ever.

"Remember how wide my moms eyes were with shock?" you asked through your chuckles.

"they looked like they were bound to fall out!" you were now both leaning against eachother laughing.

As your laughter died down, you'd ended up laying on your backs staring at the sky in silence, it was a comfortable silence, the tension, it didn't seem to be filled with friendship, atleast not to your senses it didn't. it felt more loved than platonic.

You went to look over at Jamie, just as your eyes landed onto his face, you noticed how it seemed as though he looked away rather quickly, as if he'd been looking at you before you even noticed. you smiled at looked back at the sky as you felt your face grow warm.

you went to move your hand to adjust yourself a bit feeling your hands brush together and your pinkies touching.

"sorry" you quickly whispered before looking from the sky over to the grass next to you, feel flustered and even a bit embarrassed.

"no biggie." Jamie whispered back to you, before feeling his own cheeks start to become warm, training his focus back onto the night sky.

--×♥︎×--

Both of you tried to exit Jamie's car as quiet as you could. climbing up to you window and standing on the flat roof near your window. As You started to walk towards your window more, cautious with each step you took,

You felt Jamie grab your hand you turned to look at him.

"What?" you asked, your tone seeming at though you'd asked him if something was wrong, he didn't respond.

Instead Jamie took the time to take in your apperance and you standing before him, he looked at though he wanted to say something. But he just couldn't form the correct wording, they scrambled in his throat and got caught, restraining them from coming out of his mouth.

He gently pulled on your hand, bringing your body close to his as your breath hitched and got caught inside your throat, you were so close to him, you'd only got this close to him through short hugs, but your faces never gotten close.

And now. here he was, standing so close your bodies were practically touching, as your lips were inches away from eachother, staring and melting into eachothers eyes.

and before you could process he was even this close to you in the first place, his lips were crashed onto yours, they felt like soft pillows as the warmth of his cheeks quickly spread to yours as you both embraced eachother.

#i love him so much #hes so amazing #jamie campbell bower #jamie bower #jamie bower fluff #jamie campbell #jamie campbell bower x reader #jamie bower x reader

[x-authorship-x]

hi Torship 💛

How tall is everyone in your hope au? Like you mentioned a few times that shisui and inocihi are the same height so how tall is everyone else? Have a good day/night 💛

Hey Anon!

Sorry for leaving this in my inbox for so long but I have Reasons behind everyone's heights lol so I'm sorry if you wanted just a quick list of numbers but I've no chill 🤣

So most Shinobi are Athletes in my mind (the performance of the body is a tool as well as a lifestyle) and I don't mean bodybuilder 5% fat etc etc I mean high performance and high usability.

The Uchiha go one of three ways:

Mikoto is slight at 5'6 ish, Shunsuke was about the same height and so was Kagami, Itachi won't get much taller than this because he takes almost completely after his mother. Hikaku from the Warring Clans era was also like this etc, it's the most common body type in the Clan (gotta love that inbreeding, eh). Think pilates, flexibility over brute strength. Izuna was about 5'6, lean to match his katana.

Fugaku is a little broader, starting to hit that slight softening of fitness because he's got a steady in-Village job and he's doing desk work as well as hitting forty BUT he's also keeping busy and he trains hard on Saturdays. Sasuke gets to be a little taller than him but lean, think 'tennis player'. Flexible and strong but mainly limber. They're both around the 5'8 mark, which they shared with Madara and Tajima etc.

Shisui and his mother Kana are the third type, which is "I didn't know Uchiha got that tall" 🤣 Kana was a taijutsu mistress so think "heavy AND strong" and she was about 6'1, which is how Shisui reaches about 6'1-2.

Shisui was a whippet of a kid, he was one of those high metabolism teenagers and lingered around 5'6 (giving Itachi false hope that they'd be about the same height and making Mikoto nostalgic for Shunsuke and Kagami) until he hit 17 and fucking exploded upwards another 3-4 inches lmao. Coupled with the fact he was a Rookie ANBU at that age, so at the peak of his training, and with a crazy appetite... The gains also hit. He has an ass, I'm so proud :')

So... Why did I make Shisui that tall?

The simple answer is because Inoichi is.

There are big wordy cinematic parallels between Shisui and Inoichi somehow ending up at exactly the same height and size, of them being parallel and equal and exactly at eye height. It makes them look more alike, more uncanny when they move in sync or copy mannerisms, and it makes Inoichi appear like a third parent in Shisui's genetics lmao.

But, to be honest, it was just a huge vibe.

Shisui in canon was this little slip of a kid, same as Itachi, and it always hurt to be reminded that he never got the chance to actually come out the other side of puberty. That's also why Inoichi in No Tomorrow/HOPE AU has those moments of realising how grown up Shisui is, because we're supposed to remember that this is someone who never reached full adulthood.

Note: I do generally age Shisui up. Canon/Fanon has him around 14-16 at the time of his death and I usually aim for around 19/20.

I also enjoy the imagery of Shisui, who is known for his speed, not being built like a whippet marathon runner but being more like Usain Bolt (who is a whopping 6'5 with muscles to spare) and a decent head taller than most of his Clan. So 🤣 you end up with a whole yowling pack of Uchihas, like serious feline energy, and then Itachi hopping around like a little blackbird... And then Shisui as this huge fucking corvid bird in the middle 🤣.

Squad Two

Kakashi is about 5'11. The hair makes him taller as much as his posture makes him smaller. Sakumo was a strong man with strong shoulders and Kakashi is a little finer, a hit that Gai would barely feel would make Kakashi stagger, which is why he's so crafty and brutally efficient. Frankly, Kakashi is lucky to get this tall; weighing up the cons of a kid who doesnt care about himself being the only source of meals and nutrition for himself from four years old (Kushina's ramen doesn't count) VS Kakashi being training obsessed and having a protein meal plan??? He has very little extra weight on him, Kakashi is the one who looks like a marathon runner/cyclist.

Genma: 5'7. He's average height, average built, he has a slinkiness that the others lack because he's an assassin and that means endurance and flexibility. He is silent, can squeeze through tiny gaps, and he definitely has damaged tendons from dislocating his thumbs etc too often. Think Ballerina (Ballerino have heckin strong thighs, which Genma doesn't much), pilates, contortionist.

Raidou: 5'9, just another dude. Raidou is an all rounder so he's got functional strength and endurance. A decent amount of body weight, soft muscle definition and a fuck tonne of callouses to go with that scar tissue. He was also raised by civilians who own a spice shop so he always ate very well and his parents often give him extra food because they worry about his health. I like to think Raidou is the only one with an ass-ass.

Tenzo: at this moment in HOPE AU, Tenzo is still a teen and he's still slight. He's currently 5'8 but he will reach 5'10, and he's only just begun to show signs of those amazing Canon shoulders. As someone with a LOT of nature chakra, his muscle buildup is quite dense. He'll be the most muscular of the Squad by the time he's thirty. Right now? He's still coltish and sweet.

Shisui: see above^

Other Characters

Inoichi: 6'1, see above^

Sora: 5'5, soft but strong, lots of freckles and callouses and stretch marks because she isn't a Shinobi (the body is a tool, blah blah) so she just exists and enjoys ❤️

Ino: bby. She'll be 6ft one day tho, the tallest girl in her year by a lot~

Kushina/Mito/Uzumaki: poppet rockets. Max 5'2, if that. Change my mind (syke, you can't). Kushina was like a little ball of anger, Mito was like a perfect doll, Naruto is gonna be so so angry that Sasuke is so much taller 🤣🤣🤣. This doesn't help that theyre chakra dense so grow quick and build muscle, where the Uchiha have excess yin chakra (as do the Hyuuga and Nara), so they have much later growth spurts... so Naruto was the same height as everyone else in the Academy and the rage and disbelief will kick in when they all get taller but he stays the same lmao. They are small and strong and from a distance their chakra is monstrous so you think you're dealing with a giant and then this little petit figure with chakra like a goddamn sun yeets you into space for calling them 'squirt'.

Minato: 5'8, svelte muscles. Average height for a man but did that stop Kushina from being annoyed? No ❤️

Anko: 5'4, curvy as fuck and with thighs that can crush watermelons amen

Gai: BEEFCAKE 6FT. A beautiful youthful Bear. Look up Strong Man Challenge and then also think about woodsmen with huge arms and shoulders and matching thighs. No ripped abs, because that's erring into dehydration etc etc. Gai 🤝 Kronk = Amazing Shoulders, Arms and Back, never skips leg day

Konan: 5'8, Ballerina (but impacted by malnutrition :/)

Jiraiya: 6'4, built like a fucking Ox, the hair is like a cloak and then you hit him and it's like a brick wall. Lots of strength, big belly as well as decades of muscle compaction, I feel like one step would snap a spine yk yk

Tsunade: 5'6, she has those Poppet Rocket Uzumaki genes but Hashirama (he was 6'4, Senju average at around 6ft-6'5, Tobirama was 6'2) was a literal tree so it balanced out a bit more. She has the Most Beautiful Biceps in the world. The definition of Girlbossing the weight room with a manicure and stilettos.

Orochimaru: okay but I love the idea that he's like 6'3 with a ridiculous shoulder to waist ratio and these long, slightly ghoulish, limbs. Like he has these long, dramatic features and big hands, long fingers, boney and sinewy and just very pale and very otherworldly. Beautiful in a disconcerting way, a little too much the serpent.

Tiger: She's a Yamanaka, so she's minimum 5'9, think volleyball. Same with Fū.

Kisame: you KNOW i gotta explain Kisame in full, it's deserved. He is canonically huge. He is Heckin. However.... We gotta have some moderation (stop booing in the back row) because otherwise I have some Concerns about Kisame's more human ancestors and logistics 🤣. So I've got Kisame pinned at around 6'7 ✨. He's bulked up like Gai but not quite, think more male Gymnast (especially the hanging ring demonstrations) crossed with a woodcutter. Lots of shoulder, back and arm strength. He's in the three way hand shake (or arm grip a la Schwarzenegger gif) with Gai and Kronk, he also respects leg day. Like Gai, he has great glutes too.

Non-human sizes:

Note: Japanese Crows are usually either 'jungle crows' or 'carrion crows' but both generally grow to 50cm/19inches in length with a wingspan that's max. 100-130cm/40-60inches. This is for proportional reference. ....who am I kidding, I'm just gonna fuck around.

Akira: he's the size of a big housecat, a decent armful (30 inches approx, 2'6ft) with a wingspan that's around 70 inches.... Which is taller than Itachi 🤣 omfg

Arakan: he's about the size of a common black bird (11 inches long, wingspan around 28inches, so about Akira's length)

Kana: she is WOW. I compared her to an ox cart and a nightmare, so the imagery is great but it didn't do her justice. A Moose (😈) is about 6ft at the shoulder but upwards of 7ft including antlers so... If that's her length... that puts Kana's wingspan at 14ft across. Stunning 👏 Toad Summons have a collective fear 👏

This answer took me several hours and I've made this far too complicated but 🤷 enjoy!

Have a great day, anon ☺️

#torship #torship talks #ask #anon #hope au #not #udb #shisui #squad two

[momotonescreaming]

20 questions for fic writers

I have been tagged by both @eriquin and @rejectscanon so thank you to you both! I try not to look at my stats much, so it'll be interesting to see

How many works do you have on AO3?

Currently, 20. I just uploaded 3 of my old tumblr ficlets though, so that helped.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

162,556. Which was honestly more than I was expecting.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The only fandom I actively write for at the moment is Stranger Things. In the past I have written for BNHA, Newsies, Dragon Age, Downton Abbey, and L.A Noire. Quite the random assortment.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Tragically, none are from my current fandom, but what can you do.

put your loving hands on me (BNHA)

ain't got nothing on you (BNHA)

Wandering in the Shade  (BNHA)

The End Was Soon (BNHA)

And There Reigns Love (Newsies)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try my best!! It is easy sometimes, to get overwhelmed when comments come through. How to convey my thanks to everyone for reading and commenting without just sounding like a broken record. In a way that truly conveys my gratitude.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I've written some angsty things before, but I always try to end on something happy or comforting. Nothing super angsty. The closest might be i couldn't utter my love when it counted, my L.A Noire fic, because its a character study of a man who comes home from war and doesn't know how to connect with his family. But even then the ending isn't all that angsty haha.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

A lot of them, to be honest. But I'd have to say where the heart is (Steddie, Stranger Things) because it ends with them admitting they're both in it for the long haul, they're in love, and there's no where else they'd rather be.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not yes!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I've only written smut twice in my life, and both times was kind of an ordeal, but I'm glad I did it. Both were on the soft, sweet, and loving side of things. I do not think I could write anything hardcore. My asexual ass would combust.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I haven't written any! Read a few in my time, because I think they're interesting though.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Once again, not to my knowledge!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope! I've co-written some original work with a friend back when I was a uni, but not fanfic.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Oh god, this is a tough question. Fenris/Hawke from Dragon Age will always hold a very special place in my heart; though Steve/Eddie from Stranger Things has gotten me into fandom and fic writing like nothing else.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

There are two WIP's on my Ao3 right now, both from BNHA and I have accepted the fact that I am never going to finish them. I'm not in that fandom anymore, and I doubt I'll go back.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I've had people mention my characterisation before, which was incredibly flattering. So I'm saying that haha because I can't come up with anything on my own.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Oh, there's a lot of them. Dialogue, being an easy cop out answer. Motivation, writing speed, getting far too in my head about what I'm writing and psyching myself out.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I've never done it! So I don't know how much weight my comment is going to hold but I will say this - be careful your translations are as correct as they can be and don't overload a fic with it if the phrases said aren't easily understood by context or have an easy translation in the notes. Constant flicking between fic and google translate is no fun.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The first fandom I wrote for was on Fanfiction.Net, and it was Glee. Unfortunately. I wrote something, posted it, got embarrassed, and then eventually deleted it. So I have no idea where what I was writing has ended up.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

My favourite would have to be where the heart is (Steddie, Stranger Things), because it was a total labour of love. I wrote it slowly over a period of months, and it means a lot to me.

my no pressure tags: @unclewaynemunson @findafight @farahsamboolents @shares-a-vest @augustjustice

#My Writing #Tag Game #Stranger things fic