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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 2 years

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Yuu can do it!

What if all three Yuus (from the novel, manga, and game) were sent to the same world?

Part 10

(Link to previous)

Enma did not trust the mirror. It went from a foggy black backdrop with a strange green face in it (which, by the way, is not what a mirror is) to a portal into the middle of the woods (still not a mirror!) and he very much did not like either of these things.

He frowned and leaned close, until his nose was nearly touching the glass. It was interesting, yes, and he would love to study it… but he would prefer to study it from afar. Through a book, not by going through it.

(And, yes, he knew it was strange of him to be fine with ghosts but not as cool with magic mirrors… but ghosts were otherworldly by nature, he wouldn’t have seen any back in Japan… seeing a normal, everyday item that he wouldn’t have thought twice about back home being warped by magic was insanely uncomfortable.)

Ace and Deuce seemed, largely, unperturbed. They stepped through almost immediately. Deuce even said that they should “Hurry up, we don’t have all day!”

Grim covered his eyes with his paws. “I hate this.”

Ito crossed their arms over their chest, eyeing the mirror warily.

“Guess it didn’t hurt the first time I went through a mirror,” they said, though there was some definite hesitance in their voice. “This time I can even choose not to go in face-first.”

Kuroki nodded hastily and pushed Ito forward. “Tell us if it’s safe.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” they said, sighing deeply. They reached a hand out to touch the not-mirror, and watched the surface ripple. Their expression shifted into a strange one for a moment, as if the texture was unpleasant, but then they steeled themself and rushed through.

Kuroki, Enma, and Grim waited with bated breath.

A hand came back out the mirror and flashed a thumbs up.

Ace knelt to pick up a large stick from the ground and, after testing its strength, he started along again, using it as a cane.

“Are you okay?” Enma asked, eyes sliding down briefly to the makeshift bandage wound around his leg.

Ace shrugged. “I always walk with a big stick when I go out in the woods. This is just… slightly more necessary than it usually is.”

He nodded his understanding. “If you need help, just ask.”

“Worry about yourself,” sighed Ito. “You just…” They trailed off, unsure.

Enma crossed his arms over his chest and scowled ahead. The silent ‘what was that?’ was written plainly on their face and he was determined not to look at it.

Because he didn’t know either. He felt mostly better but, even now, he could still feel the strange vibrating under his skin… as if every cell in his body was screaming for his attention at once. Unfortunately, he didn’t speak whatever language cells spoke, which rendered all of the screaming largely useless.

He didn’t know.

He didn’t like not knowing.

The sun was starting to set. They had left at around 17:30, which means that it had been at least two hours since they had left, and they were no closer to figuring out where the mine was.

“Magic sucks,” complained Kuroki, who looked about five seconds and/or a minor inconvenience away from laying down on the dirt below them and never moving again. “You would think a magic mirror would be more accurate but noooooo.”

Ito rolled their eyes and flicked him in the side of the head.

This, apparently, was the minor inconvenience needed for Kuroki to give up. Whoops.

“I’ll drag you on the floor if you don’t get up,” Enma warned, hardly even slowing to look at his fallen… (‘friend’?) companion.

Kuroki, for his part, wasn’t perturbed. He held up a hand for Enma to drag him with.

Ito’s lips curled at the corners as they rested a hand on their hip. “Hey… Spade-san?” They glanced at Kuroki and Enma, who gave a tiny nod and thumbs up respectively, and then continued on: “If you throw Kuroki high enough maybe he’ll be able to see the cave.”

Deuce actually started to pull out his wand and Kuroki was quick to jump to his feet.

Enma grinned. “Looks like you’ve lost your last ally, Kuroki-san.”

“Grim-chan is the only person here who understands me,” Kuroki pouted.

“The ‘only person here who understands you’ is currently eating grass.”

Once the sun finally sunk over the horizon, casting them all into a darkness only partially broken by the light of Ace and Deuce’s phones and the faint blue glow of the flames in Grim’s ears, they managed to catch sight of a dim light in the distance.

With no better ideas, they decided to follow it. It had to be a settlement of some sort, the pale yellow glow was artificial enough in color that they were reasonably sure it wasn’t some kind of demon luring them away like the magical equivalent of an Anglerfish, and they desperately needed directions.

But, unfortunately, no one was home.

Deuce sighed. “I mean, we could always break in.”

“What the…?” Whispered Kuroki.

“Why?” Asked Ito, loud enough that Kuroki’s voice was drowned out. They didn’t look particularly disturbed, just mildly confused.

“Maybe they have a map of the area or something.”

Ace was also not disturbed, but he did give Deuce a look that said quite plainly that he thought he was dumb. “Why would there be a map of the area that they live in?”

“I don’t know! Do you have any better plans?”

Ito sighed and leaned back against the door. “This is stupaaAIIIIII.”

The door had swung open under their weight and sent them crashing to the ground.

(Grim fell over laughing, but no one noticed because he’s short and the ground isn’t all that far away from him.)

Deuce hastily stuffed whatever he had been pulling out back in his pockets. “Cool, looks like The Greats are smiling upon us today.”

Ace strode inside, not bothering to hide the fact that he was taking this as an excuse to snoop. “Dude, this place is, like, an abandoned house or something!” He said, leaning down to get a better look at the cauldron in the fireplace, which had cobwebs spilling out of it in a way that was reminiscent of a pot boiling over.

“Please don’t be haunted please don’t be haunted please don’t be haunted,” Kuroki whispered to himself, fingers crossed.

“Not like it would be all that different from that Ramshackle place,” said Grim, though he was hiding behind Kuroki as they ventured inside, only barely peering over his shoulder.

“Don’t remind me.”

Ito frowned. “We really shouldn’t be in here while they’re gone…”

“You’re already inside.”

They looked down and seemed to realize that they were, in fact, on the floor. “You’ve got me there.”

Deuce made his way upstairs despite the fact that each step creaked with every little shift he made, because literally no one else would.

Especially not Enma, who wasn’t even going inside. Enma hung out in the doorframe while the people he was with snooped. He, of course, would never do the same. Ignore the fact that he was leaning as far into the house as he could without actually crossing the threshold. That was for something else, clearly. He just so happened to notice a few things while he did this mysterious other thing that he has chosen to keep a secret, including…

No one had been there for quite a while. Spiders and dust bunnies danced around the place as the group made their way around, creeping into the many shadows of the dimly lit room. Two of the many chairs gathered around the dining table were broken and one had been tipped over like the last person to use it had left in a rush.

“All the furniture here is so tiny,” said Ace, leaning down. “Maybe they had kids… a lot of kids?”

Ito frowned. “I only counted seven chairs.”

“Only?” Repeated Grim incredulously.

“Yeah,” they said. “I mean, my family has six kids right now, including me, and I know one person with nine siblings.”

“Sounds like hEll,” said Ace, his voice straining slightly as he pulled a pickaxe from where it had lodged itself in the table. He tossed aside his stick-cane and in favor of using that instead, as the stick had started to splinter and break with how heavily he was leaning on it.

Kuroki picked up a lit candle. “I hear it’s a cultural thing for Mex –...” He glanced at Ace, who looked mildly confused. “Er… for ‘you guys’ to have a lot of kids.”

Ito hummed a little. “Kinda. A lot of ‘us guys’ are super religious, so the use of birth control is less common.” They knelt down and opened a chest, then smiled when they found even more pickaxes. “We should take some of these, in case we actually find a magestone we can use. What’re the chances it’ll just be on the floor or something?”

“No one’s using any of this stuff, so it doesn’t matter,” said Grim. He tried to take one, but was stopped by the fact that he did not, in fact, have thumbs. How sad.

“We can be minors and miners,” Enma said, taking a pickaxe when it was offered.

Kuroki rolled his eyes so hard he had to have seen his brain back there. “I hate you.”

“Why? ‘Cause I’m punnier than you?”

“Ever hear of an axe murderer? I’m going to become the first pickaxe murderer.”

Ito grinned. “There’s no way you’d be the first one.”

“The most important one, then.”

Enma, wisely, opted not to say anything... or at least not until Kuroki shifted the candle to one hand so he could grab hold of the pickaxe Ito offered him. He eyed the flickering flame, frowning. “Hey, if no one’s been here in a while, why is that candle still lit?”

Every eye in the room snapped to the candle immediately. It was remarkably quiet for a good while.

And then Deuce came downstairs, holding a rolled up piece of paper. “Guys! I found a map of the area!”

Ace whipped around. “You’ve gotta be shitting me –.”

Enma had long-since gotten used to the way Kuroki would grab onto him or Ito when nervous, and he could understand, for once, why he was feeling that way. After all, even the woods in their world were a little creepy. Who would feel confident walking into a forest, at night, when it was almost guaranteed that there would be monsters there?

Ace, who was holding the candle (overcompensating for the fact that he couldn’t hold a candle to the Yuus –), glanced back at them and grinned widely. “Really, Kuroki, are you scared? Don’t be lame.”

Kuroki bristled, but Enma wasn’t sure whether this was because Ace hadn’t used an honorific (Ito didn’t use them, but they weren’t speaking their first language so they got a pass) or because he had been called ‘lame’.

Ito’s eyes flickered in the candlelight, and they tipped their head to the side. “Obviously, he’s scared. I mean, haven’t you heard of duende?”

Ace scoffed, but Deuce took the bait:

“Due-nde?” He questioned, careful not to trip over the word.

“Mhmm! There’s a lot of types, but… the ones that I’m talking about are these little creatures that lure misbehaving kids that go out into the forest back to their caves, where they’re never seen again!”

… for some reason, everyone was a little hesitant to go into the mine after that.

With the threat of an expulsion poking at their consciences like a swarm of particularly persistent mosquitos, they started down into the mine.

And, instantly, his nerves disappeared. Colorful gems littered every surface, each giving off a soft glow.

Enma grabbed a couple looser ones as he walked and stuffed them in his pockets.

Kuroki frowned as he ran his fingertips along the wall, eyes darting to wooden beam after wooden beam. “I wouldn’t take too many of those… this place doesn’t look… stable…” He warned quietly.

“What? They could be helpful further in the mine if it gets too dark,” Enma complained, though this wasn’t at all the reason he was grabbing them. What can he say? They looked cool.

Grim huffed. “Like we need those things. I can light the way just fine with my flames.”

“Not when the only thing holding up the ceiling is wood you can’t,” Ace said.

Grim puffed up and opened his mouth. They would never know if it was so he could retort or so he could send a fireball Ace’s way in retaliation, because Kuroki slapped his hand over Grim’s mouth just in case.

Then he jerked away, disgust lighting up his features. “Did you just lick me?”

“Revenge,” said Grim.

“And why does your tongue feel so weird?”

“Revenge,” he said again.

Kuroki shook his head and wiped off his spit-covered hand on Grim’s fur. Grim started to complain, but he quickly shifted to scratching behind the monster’s ear and he relaxed on his shoulder.

Deuce frowned as they neared a sign and tried and wipe away the grime on it with his sleeve. Unfortunately, the sign didn’t obey movie rules and remained firmly blank even when there was nothing on it. “What’s the point of having a sign like this if it’s blank?”

“Maybe it’s a marker?” Ace suggested. “That we should go this way?”

“Or that we shouldn’t,” said Ito.

“Rock-paper-scissors for it,” suggested Deuce.

“We will not decide our fates based on a game of rock-paper-scissors,” said Kuroki while Ace and Ito did exactly that.

Ace was victorious, so they opted to go down the corridor with the sign, much to Kuroki’s chagrin. However, he allowed himself to get dragged along by Enma (and the plot).

They all regretted their decision when quiet laughter met their ears.

“Heehee! Our first visitor in ten years!” Crooned a voice.

The teenagers (and the monster, who probably wasn’t a teenager) whipped around to find two ghosts.

The one that had spoken wore a miner’s hat, though his pale blue skin gave off more light than the cracked lens of the flashlight affixed to his head.

The second one had… oh god, he had a pickaxe sticking out of the side of his skull.

“Make yourselves at home! For eternity!”

You could practically see Ace, Deuce, and Grim’s souls leave their bodies (which might have been the point).

Enma, Ito, and Kuroki, however… well, they had slept in the same dorm as ghosts, had worn dead people’s clothes. They were slightly less wary.

Not completely okay, the smile Ito gave was tinged with nerves. But they were far more polite this time: instead of trying to re-murder the ghosts with Grim, they said, “Sorry. We have ghosts back at our dorm that already asked us that, and I think that means they have dibs.”

Kuroki nodded his agreement hastily from where he was half-hiding behind Enma. “Yeah, and I really don’t want to die here. There’s too many bugs.”

Kuroki had chosen the wrong person to hide behind, because Enma was perfectly happy to approach the ghosts with a wide smile. “Actually, though, I’m glad you’re here.”

The ghosts stopped cold – ha, ‘cold’, Enma is hilarious – and looked at each other, mildly confused.

“You’re… glad?” The first ghost repeated slowly.

“Yes… uh, sir…? Um, we were wondering if there are any magestones we could take back to our Headmaster? It’d need to be about –” Enma made a motion with his hands. “– this big.”

The second ghost scratched his head on the side opposite his pickaxe, confusion contorting his features. “I mean… yes, there is a stone like that… but you kids should really be going…”

“Why?” Kuroki asked, his grip tightening on Enma’s arm.

The ghosts’ eyes slid away from their faces, to something behind them, and they yelped before promptly flickering out of existence (or, at least, out of sight, Enma could hear their whispered “shitshitshitshit” getting further and further away).

“Wont… give…”

Kuroki swallowed thickly. “Maybe, if we don’t turn around, it won’t do anything. Movie logic, y’know?”

But the mines didn’t follow movie logic, so there was a loud roar from behind them and the sound of something scraping along the floor as a creature approached.

“The stones… MINE…!”

“Run,” said Ito.

No one needed to be told twice. They didn’t even spare the time to turn their heads to see what the creature behind looked like as they sprinted away at top speed.

~~~

(Link to next)

#this bitch speaks in bold!!#run!!#ace trappola #deuce spade #twst grim #twst yuu #yuu twst #enma yuuken #kuroki yuuya #twst fanfic #grim twst #twst #twisted wonderland #i have currently plotted up until the beginning of savanaclaw lmao #outlines take forever and i hate

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inkskinned · 4 months

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i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

#spilled ink #warm up #“why did u tag it warm up” bc i wrote it off the cuff while drinkin coffee lol #btw the 30 dollar buy in for the dog walking is bc they pay the organizer a small pittance so she can #run fb ads and stuff and like she does put in a lot of work i don't mind paying her #but that's exactly what im fucking talking about like.#ppl can't afford to volunteer their time anymore and we all understand it!!! everything costs money for everyone!#like we didn't have to use to say ''do you mind paying me back for the stuff we ate''#we used to be able to afford to feed our friends once in a while!!!

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