#she has a cool pistol in this universe i JUST know it probably killed a man too | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dercolaris · 3 years

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Hope

Obsession is always the beginning of the end. It’s good to have friends, when the world starts to fall apart. None Romantic Harley Quinn & Scarecrow. Mentioning of suicide, but no characater death.

Song: https://youtu.be/h0rE8dI6dRg

Have fun!

The annoying sirens wailed in the distance, as the Master of Fear puffed heavily and came to a stop at the boarded-up door of the old sawmill. Was it really a smart idea to hide in here tonight? He looked nervously over his shoulders. The police cars came closer and closer with every second. The former psychiatrist took a deep breath and pushed himself through the narrow gap that had not yet been closed, cursing angrily as a part of his black coat ripped in this process. Immediately the darkness of this place hold a grip on his slim body, brought back some gruesome memories. This was an old hiding place of the Joker. One of way too many in Gotham, in which Scarecrow had visited the self-appointed prince of the underworld a few times. Their rarely collaboration has mostly been crowned with success, even if they didn't get along very well. Jonathan let out a long sigh, watching his breath in the form of the white mist in front of him. He couldn't see much further right now. The darkness was somehow special in this place. The older man looked in his rags for a flash light. It was small in his bony hand, but could light up the surroundings a little. The brown-haired man aimed randomly into the blackness around him and came to a stop on an old metal staircase. Up there were the old offices of the business. The gaunt man frown a bit. Offices, that Joker had probably use for his own dirty desires. The clown had never tried to hide his abnormal wishes in terms of weird intercourses. Jonathan rubbed his neck a bit and pushed away the disturbing thoughts, then concentrated again on the big hall. How long has this building been empty? Probably around fifty years since the great global stock market crash. Many industrial companies were unable to recover from this, including this sawmill. The former psychiatrist moved almost silently through the darkness, lighting his way carefully. He put his scythe down on one of the concrete pillars and pulled the dirty mask off his face. It feels so much better without the leather on his skin. A slight breeze touched the man's petrified features. He leaned against the concrete and slowly slid down, closed his eyes for a moment and enjoyed the silence. The sirens were almost gone by now. They were probably looking for him in the theatre district. Fine for him. The Master of Fear let out another gush of white smoke from his mouth. It still tasted of iron and death in these great halls. Suddenly, he heard a faint noise in the darkness. Jonathan raised the flash light again and shone it into the blackness. How high was the possibility, that the Bat found him after such a short time? He pushed himself up on the pillar, slowly walking towards the source of the noises. The next moment, a huge rat jumped out from between two barrels, seemed to be blinded for a moment by the bright light. The former psychiatrist let out a relieved breath. Just an animal.

The older man gave a small laugh and touched his sweaty forehead. Who would get lost here anyway? Maybe one or two homeless people, but even these avoided the Joker's old hiding places. Evil curses apparently hung over the prince's buildings and whoever stayed in them too long would die a terrible death. It was just a rumour, of course. Jonathan went back to his scythe and leaned against the pillar. The coolness felt incredibly good. That break-in hadn't gone too well this night. To make matters worse, there were also Poison Ivy and Two-Face in the chemical plant's buildings. The gaunt man shook his head slightly, rubbing the cold sweat from his forehead. Now was the time to recover from this failure and plan further steps. He was clearly not allowed to appear in public places for the next few weeks. Gotham was a city that could easily forget things if someone didn't move lightly through the streets for some time. To make matters worse, there was the damned Bat, who was really a master at tracking down rogues. Well, what else should you expect from a detective? It was only a matter of time before Batman would find him. Until then he would at least try not to be seen so much outside of his own hideout. Suddenly, there was another loud noise in the darkness. Jonathan flinched and looked around, but saw no possible attacker. He crept through the dark, covering the beam of his flash light with the filthy rags he wore. Out of nowhere the sound of a shot boomed through the silence. The former psychiatrist came to an abrupt stop on the metal stairs and looked up at the offices. At that moment he saw a small streak of light coming out of the wooden door. Scarecrow reached for his belt, took out his pistole carefully and released the safety catch of the weapon. He went cautiously up the first steps, listening for more noises. As he approached, a faint whining reached his ears. He paused confused and continued to listen into the room. The voice was clearly feminine. It sounded somehow familiar to him. With these thoughts he pushed open the door to the office, startled at the horrifying sight.

His weapon lowered slowly. Harleen Quinzel, better known by her alias Harley Quinn, sat on the dirty wooden floor. She shivered, turned as in slow motion to the former psychiatrist. Her make-up had run off and ran down her cheeks in rivulets. Her lower lip literally trembled and the blue eyes looked right through him into an unknown distance. A rusty revolver rested in her hands. Jonathan couldn't tell from a distance whether it was loaded. The shot shortly before, however, indicated it. The older man snorted softly and tried to stop the racing of thoughts in his head. At that moment a thousand words rattled in his mind, but clearly not the right ones. Harley was crying bitterly now, holding the revolver with shaking hands. She tried to put on a smile, then whispered, barely audible: “Hey Johnny. How are you today?” The gaunt man paused for a moment, blinked a few times. He finally slipped his gun into his belt and took a step closer to the woman on the floor. Harley immediately raised the gun, pressed it firmly to her temple. She sniffed a bit louder and muttered tearfully: "Don't come a step closer, Johnny or I'll pull the trigger. This time where the bullet should actually go in the first place.” The Master of Fear stopped short in his movement, raised his hands soothingly. He breathed a little faster than usual and replied all the more calmly: "Harleen, please, what are you trying to do?" The young woman pressed the barrel tighter to her skin, looked at Jonathan with tearful eyes. She shivered again and pulled the trigger halfway. Harley yelled loudly into the room: “Are you fucking kidding me? What do you think I'm doing here? I'm ending this whole wretched life for good! Just look at me, Johnny, at what I've become in the last years. How often did I run after him and how often did he use me again only for his evil purposes? How could I have been so blind all my life to do whatever he asked. I've suffered so much from this monster and you know what, Johnny? I still love him. I would probably love him for the rest of my pathetic existence!"

The former psychiatrist took a small step forward, but kept his arms raised soothingly. He spoke softly, trying not to startle the poor woman any further: “Harleen, listen to me. Whatever the clown did to you, there is another way than this one. Trust me. Please lower the gun and we will talk about it.” The girl snorted loudly, wiped her wet cheeks with her free hand. The make-up just smudged more over her skin. She swallowed what appeared to be a gigantic lump in her throat and replied weakly: “What difference does it make whether I die here or someday by his hand. I'll never get rid of him. Never.” Jonathan nodded slightly, stayed in his position for a moment. In this conversation he had to prove that he had learned more than just unnecessary and marginal nonsense at the university in Gotham. To make matters worse, Harleen had once studied in the department for psychology and psychiatry herself. She should knew the simple tricks. Jonathan took a deep breath, then talked to the young woman again: “You have a chance, Harleen. Everyone has it. You just have to take and work with it.” The young woman closed her eyes tightly and pressed the barrel firmer to her skin. She was shaking more and more – so much that Jonathan feared, she might accidentally pull the trigger. He took another step towards her and spoke up again: “Please. Allow me to help you.” The addressed shivered strongly under the cold of the office, cried even more bitterly than before. An absolute breakdown. The older man looked at the harlequin's tearful face, carefully took another step forward. He held his hand forward and was almost within reach of the young woman. His voice was unusually gentle for him as he breathed softly: “You don't have to end this path. Come with me and I will make sure that you can heal. I can't take the scars away from you, of course not, but they will fade over time. You can trust me.” The Harlequin bit her lower lip hard, trembling clearly visible. She weighed her will to die against her will to live at this moment. The struggle she was fighting inside with herself was almost exposed to the outside. After a few seconds she suddenly growled deeply, hissed angrily: “Why the hell should I trust you, Johnny? You're not a bit better than all the other villains in Gotham. You kill people without blinking an eye and now you want to help me? God, give me a stupid reason to believe you, Scarecrow! Only one!"

The Master of Fear paused immediately, thinking for a moment. A really good question. He fiddled with his rags and finally replied: “I may not be an angel. No, I'm probably the recantation of the devil, but I can assure you of one thing – you have always been important to me, whether in the collaboration with Joker or the many times we were stuck together in Arkham. I never hurt you and was always careful to keep you away from the clown. I was there when literally no one else was there for you. Maybe I'm not the right company for you, but the fact is that I'm right here with you and willing to help you. I will not go until you've made up your mind, Harleen.” The young woman sniffed a few times, then looked up with fearful eyes. The fingers around the revolver released slowly, opened leisurely. Slowly the gun slid to the floor and hit the floorboards hard with a thump. The Harlequin put her face in her hands, now crying without any restraint. Jonathan took a step forward, grabbed the revolver with his hand. He picked it up and placed the weapon in his belt, only then drop on his knees next to the young woman. He hesitated for a moment, but finally took Harleen's delicate hand in his own. The former psychiatrist felt a slight pressure on his side. In the next instant Harley released his hand and wrapped her arms around his thin neck. Her face was now hidden on his shoulder, continued to cry muffled in the dirty fabric of his costume. Jonathan froze for a moment, thinking briefly what to do next. He let his instincts decide. Slowly his arms wrapped around the petite figure of Harleen. The older man just held her close to his chest and felt how his rags gradually getting wet. His fingertips caressed her back gently. He closed his eyes and whispered softly: “It's okay, Harleen. Everything is okay."

The addressed did not react, just kept crying on his shoulder. Jonathan didn't know how long they had been sitting in this room together. Finally, Harleen pushed away from him and looked up with watery eyes. She whispered softly: "I don't really know what to say, Johnny. I guess thank you?" A small smile played on his lips. He removed the hand from her back and placed it on her cheek, gently stroking the tears away. His words were gentle and unusually warm: “Anytime. Shall we go now?” He got up carefully and pulled the young woman to her feet with him. She looked at him almost confused and asked shyly: “And where should we go, Johnny? We don't have a place that is safe, do we?" The older man wiped away a stray tear with a smile. He calmly replied: "Yes, we actually have a place to which we can return at any time. Arkham.” With that idea, Jonathan pulled out an outdated cell phone and quickly tapped in the emergency number. A woman answered the line. The former psychiatrist hesitated for a moment, but then spoke up: “My name is Jonathan Crane and I'm right now in the old sawmill. With me is Harleen Quinzel, my partner in the last robbery this night. We'll surrender without a fight and are ready to face the consequences of our actions.” With this information, the gaunt man ended the call. The Master of Fear held out his right hand to Harleen. The young woman showed a very small smile and took the hand slowly. Together they stepped down the metal stairs and opened the heavy door to the empty street in front of the mill. The sirens were slowly approaching to their position. Jonathan looked up at the old halls of the industrial district, spotted on one of them the dark shape of a well-known Bat. He nodded briefly to the Dark Knight, which the hero apparently replied. In the next moment Batman was gone. The former psychiatrist held Harleen's hand a little tighter and spoke softly: "Let's go home. Together."

#DC #Batman #Harley Quinn #Harleen Quinzel #Jonathan Crane #Scarecrow #Arkham?#psychiatrist buddies #Hurt #Comfort #Friendship #None Romance #Joker hate allianz - join now for free!

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takerfoxx · 3 years

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Jurassic Park 4: Doki Idol Live Festival!

magic5ball submitted:

Remember how you asked me about my idea for a Jurassic Park sequel? Well, here you go:

The two velociraptors stood outside a pastel colored town house in Hokkaido prefecture, Japan. If any passerbys thought that was weird, they certainly didn’t show it. Probably because the raptors were wearing fedoras and fake mustaches, so they looked like humans. Also they had guns. Very cool, very intimidating mobster guns. A tommy gun and a sawed-off shotgun, respectively.

You needed guns, to survive Shinzo Abe’s little empire of vice and socialized medical care.

“So this is the place, huh?” muttered the velociraptor carrying the sawed-off shotgun. His thick Brooklyn accent hung in the air like concrete. “Kinda… frillier than I was expecting.”

“It better be.” Replied his companion, who sounded like your racist conservative uncle trying to impersonate that one cool guy from ‘The Godfather’ (You know, the one with the mustache who was played by Robert de Niro). “We hadda kill a whole lotta people to get this hellhole.”

Sawed-off shotgun licked his non-existent lizard lips

“But hey. That airplane stewardess tasted mighty fine goin-“

“Oh, for f*ck’s sake, would ya stop thinkin’ with your stomach and help me with this f*ckin’ knob!” cried tommy gun, trying to work the doorknob best he could with his raptor claws, which, in all honesty, wasn’t much, because raptor claws are terrible at operating things meant for human fingers. Little did he know, the door was a ‘pull’, not a ‘push.

At least he didn’t have to wait long before someone unlocked the door from the other side: another velociraptor, this one a bit on the short side. And p!ssed. Very, very p!ssed. You could tell he was the cool one because he wore an eyepatch over one eye. An eyepatch with a Captain Underpants logo on it.

“Didn’t your parent’s ever teach you idiots about using the doorbell?! I was just about to enjoy lunch with my beautiful wife and you-!“

He paused, recognizing the two figures facing him.

“Well, well, well” Said tommy gun, cocking his weapon “If it isn’t SWEET JOHN HAMMOND’S BALLSACK WHAT THE F*CK AM I LOOKING AT?!”

For the cool raptor was dressed in a gothic Lolita maid outfit, complete with a bonnet and penny loafers. Under his arm he carried a human sized pillow depicting what appeared to be a blonde floozy with massive tits.

“Oh this? This is Mami Tomoe, my beautiful wife.”

“WHAT THE F*CK!?!?” Tommy gun pulled out a flask off orange Fanta from his butthole and drank the whole thing in one go. He did NOT have time for this homosexual weeaboo nonsense! Still, he and shotgun hadn’t left a mountain of corpses the exact height and width as Mt. Fuji behind them. Too many to go back to Isla Nublar empty handed. Er, clawed. Because they were dinosaurs. Who have claws.

Shotgun took a deep breath. “What the Boss means to say is, ‘May we take refuge in this fine establishment?’”

Cool raptor opened his mouth to reveal a pistol he’d hidden there. And by hidden I mean replaced his tongue with it.

“You know, for all crap you guys used to give me in the past, I oughta pump you full of lead right here and now. Buuutttt… the lady of the house is present, and I’m not in the mood to create more work on her end. So come on in! You’re just in time for lunch.”

Lest they attract unneeded attention, the three dinosaurs hopped inside.

. . .

Lunch was omurice boba tea with a bottle of teriyaki sauce on the side. It was just boba tea, but the boba had been replaced by omurice because F-Bomb hated the flavor of boba, which he likened to rabbit crap. The teriyaki sauce was teriyaki sauce.

It was the most racist thing shotgun had ever eaten.

“Well, now that you jerks have gotten a taste of my sloppy seconds, I suppose some introductions are in order. You’ve already met my lovely wife” Cool raptor gestured to the body pillow seated next to him “So that leaves you two. Mami, meet A-Hole and D-Bag. A-Hole’s got the tommy gun, D-Bag is ridin’ her sawed off shotgun, as always. They’re old… acquaintances of mine.”

“He.” Corrected D-Bag. “I’ve been using he/him pronouns six months now.”

“Well that’s an improvement. Now instead of bein’ the Boss’ side B!tch literally, you’re just his b!tch figuratively!”

“Well screw you too, F-Bomb!” laughed the boss. “An’ speakin’ of screwing, what’s with the fruity get up? You a prostitute now or something?”

“Even better! This might surprise you, but I’ve got legitimate work now. This here’s my uniform, my uniform for MILF TIDDIES!”

A-Hole chugged his entire bottle of teriyaki sauce in one go, lest his mind implode from the sheer stupidity of that sentence.

“The Hell’s a milf tiddie!?”

“Only the best freakin’ maid café in Hoikaido, hookers!”

He gestured to a wall, covered in hundreds of photos of cute floozies dressed like they were attending a vampire’s funeral. Among them was a photo of F-Bomb in his drag, serving a deep fried hot dog to some elderly Japanese dude.

“As you can see, yours truly is serving Japan’s national desert to none other than 57th Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe!”

“Hold it up. Youse been hobnobbing it with politicians?!”

“I wish! You’re thinking of Shinzo Abe, 57th Prime Minister of Japan. This guy is his twin brother. Still pretty sweet though. We DID win a Grammy for that, after all.”

A-Holes eyes bulged out of his scaly raptor head.

“YOUSE WON A GRAMMY FOR THAT?!”

“Dang right! Milf Tiddies has won sixteen Grammys since I started working there!” He pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket. A very special piece of paper, if the six holes punched into it were any indication. “Did you know that if you win ten Grammys in a row, they give you a free orphan? That’s how the wife and I got our glorious daughter, Lil’ Nagisa!”

F-Bomb pulled a faded photo out of his wallet. A photo showing himself, his pillow wife, and a smaller body pillow of a ten-year-old moeblob wearing a Green Bay Packers cheesehead helmet.

“So youse couldn’t even conceive your own kid?” Inquired D-Bag sexily. He was munching his omurice slowly, so F-Bomb knew he was being serious.

“Are you implying I have sex with my own wife, you sick freak?! I’m a weeaboo, not some degenerate anime fanboy! Get it straight!” He instinctively cocked the pistol in his throat. It was awesome as hell.

In response, D-Bag pumped his shotgun. Loudly.

“Permission to put the sick freak out of his misery, Boss?”

“Firstly, don’t call me Boss when we’re not having anal sex. Second, no can do, my spicy lover. We need F-Bomb alive.”

F-Bomb heard all of this even though A-Hole whispered it, but he pretended not to make A-Hole feel clever.

D-Bag mumbled about how the Boss was lucky he was so mind blowing in the sack, otherwise he would have left the relationship long ago. The sack in this case being a really kinky sex dungeon. Like really kinky. So kinky even Donald Trump wouldn’t go within a mile of it. D-Bag had almost died of autoerotic asphyxiation more times than I’ve gone to the bathroom in my lifetime. That’s why he was the smartest dinosaur out of the three of them. Now where was I again?

Anyway, F-Bomb interrogated

“Alright guys, what’s the deal? I know folks who come to this socialized medical care infested hellhole, and they don’t come here just to eat omurice boba tea. You WANT me for something.”

He cocked his mouth-pistol again. Sparks flew all over the carpet, which was made of alpaca fur so it didn’t catch fire.

A-Hole scandalously kept his cool.

“It’s about Isla Nublar.”

The second those words left A-Hole’s lips, F-Bomb escorted his wife out of the kitchen, but leaned her against the kitchen door, because that’s what she would have wanted.

“Well what about it? I told ya guys, I’m done with that dump.”

“They’re puttin’ the screws on us, F-Bomb. Making us pay for eating those tourists back in the nineties.”

“And what makes you think I care? Like I said, I’m done with that place. I got a wife and kid now.”

“But F-Bomb, doesn’t the Park mean ANYTHING to ya!? What about the time we ate that park ranger that called you a girl? ‘Better than sex’ I recall you saying.”

“Nice try, but I’m not exactly in the mood to get misgendered again. Don’t you guys got any ideas that don’t involve me?”

“As a matter of fact, yours truly had this really spectacular one!”

D-Bag did a hand gesture wherein he constantly crossed his dinosaur claws across his throat rapidly in quick succession. A-Hole, being very smart, knew this meant he should continue, loudly enough so that everyone in the prefecture could hear.

“It was called ‘Trump Ballz’. We’d harvest Donald Trump’s testicles, see, and sell them to the highest bidder, so they could do whatever people do with lopped off testicles. I’m not one to judge. It was a terrific idea. I know because when I told my best friend Donald Trump about it, he said, ‘A-Hole, this is an incredible idea. Absolutely terrific! This is probably the best idea in America! You are very smart, very intelligent dinosaur! I oughta buy you a prostitute!’ Of course, we didn’t realize that Trump’s ballz don’t grow back when you lop them off. Did you know that by the way? Human testicles don’t grow back-“

F-Bomb cocked the pistol inside his throat gain, getting the Boss to shut up. This was probably the most heroic thing anyone had ever done in the history of the universe. He also asked a question:

“SO WHAT THE HECK DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ME?!”

A-Hole vomited a severed arm and a pamphlet onto the table.

“EVERYTHING, ya WEEB trash!”

The pamphlet was for something called the Doki Idol Live Fest- DILF, for short. F-Bomb was no stranger to the DILF, but they had parted ways years ago. Six, to be exact, when he had buried Nico Yazawa’s still screaming corpse by the side of the highway. And neither was he stranger to the prize.

It looked like a beer and soda drinking baseball cap, but only to complete idiots who didn’t know crap about the Idol Life.

And F-Bomb wasn’t one of those people, er dinosaurs.

“THE MCGUFFIN OF SIN?!”

“Dam* straight! And like it or not, youse the only one with enough idol know-how to help us win it! Thing’s worth, like, a zillion dollars.”

A zillion in this case was equivalent to half a million. Still, isn’t that impressive?

F-Bomb stuck his nose in his omurice and snorted, a common intimidation tactic among velociraptors. I know because I read it in the Scientific American.

“Sorry, guys, but even with that on the line, no can do. I’m DONE with the Idol Life, any I’m not letting you filthy casuals drag me back in.” He cocked the pistol in his throat. “NOW SCRAM!”

A-Hole and D-Bag jumped out a window, so they could get the jump on a feral dog humping its’ owner. Nobody realized they were dinosaurs because of their fake mustaches, so it looked like a pair of mobsters were eating a puppy.

When they were gone, F-Bomb pranced to the bathroom, which was filled with plush alpacas he had collected over the years. So many, in fact, the bathroom did not meet OSHA compliance. Which was why F-Bomb had made it an independent nation state, only to realize that OSHA didn’t apply to him anyway, since he lived in Japan.

He had felt really stupid after that, but at least he got his own country out of it.

Anyway, he vomited sixteen liters of blood into the sink, for F-Bomb had a secret: he was dying. Back when he was a fetus in an egg in a lab on some island in the Caribean, he’d become addicted to the illegal street drug known as WEEB, and frequent use had poisoned his lungs. The doctors had given him Socialized Medical Care and four more years to live. The WEEB had taken eighty years off his life. Socialized Medical Care had borrowed his lawnmower and never given it back.

But F-Bomb also had a dream: he and his wife were going to build their own maid café, and it would be even better than MILF Tiddies. He’d already picked a title: DILF Tiddies, and it was going to be the greatest food-selling establishment in the history of Japan. Omurice boba tea was going to go global. But he’d never get the funds on time, not on his meager salary. Unless…

His beautiful wife greeted him as he exited the bathroom.

“Get a pen and some razor blades, sweetgums. I’ve got a letter to send.”

. . .

The message arrived in the neck of a mailman’s severed head. This is the traditional way velociraptors send letters to each other. I read it in a book.

D-Bag didn’t see the letter, but the look on A-Hole’s face told him everything.

“What’d I tell ya, D-Bag? Like I always say, when you’re dino you’re dino all the way, till youse dead in the ground or youse come out as gay!”

“Yeah, we really need to update those lyrics.”

End Chapter 1

...I cannot for the life of me decide if this is the greatest thing I've ever seen or the worst, but it at the very least had me staring speechless at my computer screen for a long time.

#submission #jurassic park #puella magi madoka magica #pmmm #well then

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wordofrecall · 4 years

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character playlists: ori

so. let’s do this. my playlists are long and scattered, but they make me happy, so i might as well share them and the thoughts behind song choices. so. here’s some songs for runaway knights & wannabe witches, and what have you.

something holy - childhood & riches & wonders

pearl diver - mitski - oh hunter, if you didn’t want the beautiful so badly, perhaps you would’ve found it in your spirit singing softly - look. it's on the nose, considering that her title is "the pearl hunter," but also, like, that rules. this is a song for wren, i think; ori in the present reflecting on her mother and the similarities between them.

icicles - the scary jokes - i can only be forgiven if i’m giving myself up to you on a silver serving tray / must i bare myself to the stabbing of your knife & gnashing teeth while our lovely company appears so entertained? - aaand a song for childhood. 99% of ori's socialization came from her parents having important guests over, so. uh. yeah. show off your reclusive child prodigy like a pageant whenever you have the opportunity. she probably won't grow to loathe you.

life: the cruel interlude (on god) - kilo kish - why do i dare believe in me when i bleed? - questioning was. always a big thing for ori. i don't think she ever believed that the mirzha was god, and i known that she never truster her father's patron, but. in her studies, in her passions, there's always this tiny sense of desperation for something to have faith in something. not herself.

bluejays & cardinals - the mountain goats - the stars come out of hiding for you, & i would too - there is. a lot, in ori's relationship with her brother. she was the favorite child, yeah, the one destined for great things in spite of her... troubles. but he never had those troubles! she didn't, doesn't understand how he went through life so unafraid. there's envy there. i also think that the line i quoted is terribly true, like, canonically. because. she sure did do that stupid shit.

be calm - fun. - take it from me, i’ve been there a thousand times--you hate your pulse because it thinks you’re still alive! - sometimes you have intense social phobia. and that's okay!

country death song - violent femmes - kiss your mother goodnight & remember that God saves, kiss your mother goodnight & remember that God saves - i think andrei is a much less pitiable or even sympathetic man than the narrator of this song, but. like. it's a country song about a father killing his daughter while preaching godliness. i had to.

i’m all bloody inside - liam lynch - inside me, well, it’s dark & gross as hell, i’m not a pretty sight - the family business!

the hazards of love 3 (revenge!) - the decemberists - but father, don’t you fear, your children are all here - fantasies. part of the fantasy is imagining a world where she doesn't feel terrible about the thought.

shankill butchers - sarah jarosz - they used to be just like me & you, they used to be sweet little boys - "blood hunters are ghost stories." "and also, they're fucking terrible. violent, cruel, zealous. the worst."

sparrow - st. vincent - & no eyes are on the sparrow, eyes are on the sparrow, how could that be the case? the lark keeps whistling his number, silly little number, as if he isn't prey - pity for the boy. sort of retrospective, but it's a thought that's been there since she was a child.

something burning - rituals & fire & running

starchild - ghost quartet - but i will transcend & vomit this loser out of me; i will become the next big thing, i will light myself on fire - maybe she is some kind of angel? bursting with radiance and terrifying to look upon.

arsonist’s lullabye - hozier - don’t you ever tame your demons, always keep them on a leash / when i was sixteen, my senses fooled me - oooor maybe she is a sixteen year-old who is having a panic attack and setting everything in sight on fire by accident.

blood - my chemical romance - i’m the kind of human wreckage that you love! - so she's broken.

girl anachronism - the dresden dolls - it’s not the way i’m meant to be, it’s just the way the operation made me - so she's failed and she's broken and she's sick, and there's no time to fucking think.

when the chips are down - anais mitchell - cast your eyes to heaven, you’ll get a knife in the back. - so she does what her mother did before her, and she runs from that which she has always known.

body terror song - ajj - i’m so sorry that you have to have a body / one that will hurt you, & be the subject of so much of your fear - feelings on being built Wrong; feelings on your mind's undue control upon your body.

in corolla - the mountain goats - & no one was gonna come & get me, there wasn't anybody gonna know, even though i leave a trail of burnt things in my wake every single place i go - very good as an ori song in general but this is her justification to herself in the water. under the docks, she says this to herself.

the harrowed & the haunted - the decemberists - will i be so brave? - just to get that oceanic vibe up.

luna - the mountain goats - rise through the flames & end again in flames at last - an inexplicable feeling.

unwhere - reeder - a song for leaving what you've always known.

something lonely - years & woods & dreaming

runs in the family - amanda palmer - run from their pity, from responsibility, run from the country & run from the city, i can run from the law, i can run from myself, i can run for my life, i can run into debt, i can run from it all, i can run 'till I'm gone - she is broken and all she can think to do is get as far away as possible

panic attack - liza anne - i hate that i can be seen like this

black eyes - david wirsig - my hammering heart hears the voices of spirits that tempt us, the scorn that they’ve spoken

for the departed - shayfer james - they will bury me alive, but i’m not inclined to care; i am too far gone now

hurt - johnny cash - everyone i know goes away in the end; you can have it all, my empire of dirt

my body’s made of crushed little stars - mitski - i work better under a deadline! i work better under a deadline!

blood in the cut - k. flay - guess i’m contagious; it’d be safest if you ran--fuck, that’s what they all just end up doing in the end

little pistol - mother mother - i think i might be scared of the world & the way it makes you feel afraid & how it gets in the way

villains pt. 1 - emma blackery - built to create, designed to destroy

the beer - kimya dawson - & the christians gave me comic books as if i would be scared of burning in hell while i was already there [...] i tried to scream fuck you but blood was pouring out my mouth

something safe - family & finding it & fighting together

haunted house - sir babygirl - i’m running just to hide & i’m hiding just to breathe & around every corner is the same night on repeat

your heart is a muscle the size of your fist - ramshackle glory - i love you & you make me glad to be alive; i promise that i’m gonna pay you back / you always know how funny everything is, even when i’m so serious that it’s gonna be the death of me

medicines - the taxpayers - o, but our rotting corpses lying there soon began to leak & grow these lesions that all smelled just like a rose / & all the blood & guts inside us germinated into timeless pages stained with lines of lovely prose

autoclave - the mountain goats - i am this great unstable mass of blood & foam

alligator skin boots - mccafferty - i’m cool to the touch, leap to my death, i’ll die for you all, i’ll die for my friends, it goes like this

100 years - florence + the machine - lord, don’t let me break this, let me hold it lightly, give me arms to pray with instead of ones that hold too tightly

tomorrow will be kinder - the secret sisters - but i feel warmth on my skin, the stars have all aligned

armour - rae spoon - you know i placed was to build a life for you

amy aka spent gladiator 1 - the mountain goats - play with matches if you think you need to play with matches; seek out the hidden places where the fire burns hot & bright / find where the heat’s unbearable & stay there if you have to--don’t hurt anybody on your way up to the light, and stay alive

curses - the crane wives - won’t you stay with me, my darling, when my walls start burning down?

something daring - islands & visions & loss

jane’s dream - janelle monáe

beekeeper - keaton henson - hear me, o woman that has gone astray, gone astray

fire - kimya dawson - i’m reading books about how they’re corrupt [...] as long as i’m burning, i’ll keep on yearning to save the world, not sure how, but i’m learning

cosmic hero - car seat headrest - i love you, but i can’t stand the touch, & of course i’m alright with death

turn the lights off - tally hall - everbody likes to get taken for turns to see how bright the fire inside of us burns [...] should be stronger, books abandoned

eat you alive - the oh hellos - child, i’m afraid for your soul; these things that you’re after, they can’t be controlled

cry for judas - the mountain goats - hallucinate a shady grove where judas went to die

o death - monica martin - no wealth, no land, no silver, no gold, nothing satisfies me but your soul

blood of angels - brown bird - and i would wage my soul to bet that there ain’t no one throwing lightning anyhow

the universe is going to catch you - the antlers - the arms of the universe kept you from falling [...] those arms did not come back

a burning hill - mitski - i am the fire & i am the forest & i am the witness watching it / i stand in the valley watching it

something terrifying - conversations & selfhood & divination

the lamb - dessa - but blood is blood, & what’s done is done; blood is blood, & its burden is a beast

going invisible 2 - the mountain goats - i’m gonna burn it all down today & sweep all the ashes away

the lion’s roar - first aid kit - she plays a tune for those who wish to overlook the fact that they’ve been blindly deceived by those who preach & pray & teach, but she falls short & the night explodes in laughter

the villain i appear to be - connor spiotto - even if you can’t see the good inside me, i don’t have the time to tell you why i do the things that i do, just please hold on & soon you’ll seem

up the wolves - the mountain goats - there’s bound to be a ghost at the back of closet, no matter where you live; there’ll be a few things, maybe several things that you’re gonna find really difficult to forgive

thursday girl - mitski - glory, glory, glory to the night that shows me what i am

at the bottom of everything - bright eyes - we must take all of the medicines to expensive now to sel; set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell

everybody does - julien baker - i know i’m a pile of filthy wreckage you will wish you’d never touched, but you’re gonna run when you find out who i am

tongues & teeth - the crane wives - i know that you mean so well, but i am not a vessel for your good intent

a pearl - mitski - you’re growing tired of me and all the things i don’t talk about / sorry, i don’t want your touch--it’s not that i don’t want you

#original #this is. so long. and i will probably add more. but. Daughter.#ori #playlists

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tehrevving · 4 years

Text

Now Where Will You Be - 1

I’m starting a new series :O

Basically I really liked the dynamic between the characters in “One Chance” so I’m writing some more stuff in a slight AU of that universe. The only important thing is that instead of the reader only being there for a few days, she’s there with him indefinitely, and this will of course never be addressed.

Chapter 1: Featuring a descriptive fight with blood and gore, gun play, blood kink.

It’s a full blown miracle when some random, well dressed man walks into the Devil May Cry office and asks Dante to kill some hellish creatures for him. Dante can’t believe that his half-assed advertising actually worked. If the man had come in just a few days ago then he would have said no, but he’s feeling a little bit better now, a little bit less depressed. He turns to the source of his sudden personality change to find her standing there beside him and he finds that he can’t resist the way that her face lights up when he agrees to it.

Dante puts on a shirt this time, he’s not sure why he’s bothered because he knows it’s just going to end up getting destroyed anyway. She insists on coming with him, insists that she can handle herself and while he’s a little bit concerned, he can’t really do much but believe her. He has no idea where she keeps getting all of these clothes from, but she ends up dressed in a dark coloured tank top and black jeans with a large belt. His heart leaps into his throat when he sees she’s got thigh holsters on, and it leaps again once more when she turns to him and ever so sweetly asks if she can borrow some guns.

He’s even more concerned when she immediately gravitates towards a shotgun, holding it in her hands with glee. He warns her about the kickback but she just shrugs, says “I know,” and straps it against her leg along with a pistol and some small blades. She winks when she notices that he’s watching her twirl them in her hands and lifts it up, running her tongue against the flat side of the blade. Dante gulps and averts his eyes while she laughs.

She stands in the doorway waiting for him, all loaded up. She cocks her hip and stares at him and he just can’t help but think that he’s going to be very distracted during this job. Then she’s smiling and taking all of it off and shoving it into her bag, because obviously you can’t just wander the streets fully loaded.

It’s a pretty leisurely walk because he doesn’t have a car. She points out all of the things that are different than she’s used to, and what’s going to change. She points out a few places that she wants to visit later and Dante sighs now realising that he’s going to have to play tour guide.

Eventually they reach the abandoned warehouse, well it’s abandoned because of the infestation. Apparently there’s a nest of gross things crawling around inside, the guy wasn’t too specific about what they actually were. She straps her arsenal back to her body and then pulls out a pair of what looks like heavy duty walkman headphones, but with no wires. “In case they’re loud,” she says and he shrugs, throwing his sword on his back and holstering his guns.

She gestures for him to enter first and he’s still unsure about her tagging alone. “You don’t need to watch out for me,” she smiles, “but if I need you, you’ll know. Alright?”

Dante nods even though he’s not sure at all.

He walks through the door first, because he’s basically bulletproof. There’s a reasonable sized nest of grotesque creatures, writhing and crawling over each other. They shriek at him, inhuman screams echoing so heavily off the walls that it makes even his ears ring, he realises that maybe she does know what she’s doing.

The creatures start limping towards him, their gait is wobbly, unsteady. They drag themselves along the floor using their disgustingly long claws. The sound is like nails on a chalkboard and it grates deep inside his skull.

Dante takes in a deep breath and draws his sword. He moves forward with speed and cleaves the heads off four of the creatures with one fluid slice of his weapon. Their too hot blood gushes from their empty necks and rains down on him. He thinks he probably should have thought that through a little bit better.

They’re not difficult to defeat but there’s a lot of them. He fights through as many as he can while she takes up the rear, the ones that he misses. He slices through more and then turns to make sure she’s okay, and then finds himself utterly distracted.

He watches as she plants her feet on the ground, lifts up his shotgun and double taps two rounds right into the face of his horrific abomination, already mangled from his sword. Her arms shake from the recoil but she holds steady as the creature screams and falls to the floor in a twitching heap. She cocks the gun again, turns to him and grins. Fuck his pants get so tight suddenly that he can hardly move. Not that he needs to because he’s almost immediately skewered through the chest by a wicked scythed claw. Dante grunts and shoots the damn thing in the face without even looking behind him. The claw drags sticky against his insides as the weight of the creatures drags on it as it falls to the floor. He pulls the thing out from his back with a squelch and a spray of blood. He turns to find her staring at him, giggling, like she knows she’s the reason he got stabbed.

He finds he’s more motivated then, covered in their blood and his own. He goes after the remaining creatures while his skin itches as it knits back together. He notices that they don’t attack her like they attack him, they approach her like they’re curious, like she’s not a threat even though she’s ripping them apart. Damn they go for him through like he’s personally fucked and then murdered their parents.

Suddenly they’re all dead, heaped in sizzling, rotting piles of flesh on the bloody warehouse floor. He turns and finds her blowing on the steam that billows from the muzzle of her shotgun. There’s demon blood and guts streaked across her ripped shirt, he can see parts of her coloured bra peeking through and even covered in guts he’s never seen anything so alluring.

He stalks towards her like a predator and the creature inside of him purrs when she doesn’t back down. She digs her nails into his chest and pulls him to her lips while he walks her backwards. He crowds her against the shitty, blood stained brick wall, caging her in. Dust falls from the bricks as he puts his hands through them in his desperation to keep her in his grasp. She pulls away and stares directly into his eyes, “not enough carnage for you huh?”

“Not enough carnage,” he growls, “not enough payoff.”

She digs her nails hard into his skin, through the holes in his shirt where the sythe stabbed him through. The skin is already healed but she digs into it like the wound might just open up again. “I call it your horny energy,” she laughs, “when you rile yourself up and the fight just isn’t enough to disperse all the adrenaline. The air around you goes hazy, like looking at a fire. Sometimes you get too eager, and then it’s not just demon blood covering the floor afterwards, if you catch my drift. Powerful devil pheromones are enough to drive even a human mad.” She bites her lip, leaves him to ponder her words and then she’s on him.

He doesn’t even know why he let her talk, why he didn’t just pull her body to him because now she’s biting at his collarbones while playing with his belt and it’s amazing. She undoes it carelessly, yanking his pants barely down enough to free what she wants. She plays with his cock, squeezing at it roughly while Dante tries his best not to shred her pants in his haste to have her.

He lifts her up while she puts her legs around his waist and his dick almost instantly finds the already wet entrance of her cunt. She bites down on his bottom lip and digs her nails into his shoulder, rocking her hips until he can’t help but press inside of her.

He fucks her roughly, because he really doesn’t know how to do it any other way. She takes everything he gives her and begs for more. She cries out his name and claws at his skin.

She reaches behind him and he thinks she’s just feeling him up, but then there’s a click and her hand is coming back with one of his guns. He hears the clip fall to the ground as she uploads it, and he pulls away from her lips as his cock throbs inside her. He opens his eyes to find her pointing the gun straight at his face, still with a bullet in the chamber.

He leans forwards and bites down on the cold steel, the metal creaking against the force of his fangs. He feels her cunt tighten around his cock.

“Can I shoot you?” she asks, and then seems taken back by the way his eyes blow wide open. “No, you’re not ready,” she murmurs and then pulls the slide back as more bullets fall to the ground.

She brings it to his temple, presses the cool metal to his skin. “Fuck me harder Baby,” she whispers and suddenly he finds that he can’t stop.

She keeps the gun at this temple as he fucks her, as he thrusts hard and fast into her tight, willing body. He can’t say the feel of the metal doesn’t spur him on. He licks the remnants of blood from her neck and chest while she bites at his jaw and uses her free hand to claw lines upon lines of marks against his chest.

He struggles to keep it together as she starts biting at his throat. Because that’s her cue to him that she’s close, and because she knows that once she digs her teeth in and draws blood, he won’t be able to help spilling inside of her.

Her body spasms around him, and her arm holding the gun is shaking as she comes. She calls out his name and the wall behind her back turns to dust as he starts to come. She fires the gun just as the pleasure gets too much and even though it’s empty, even though the only reaction is the soft click of the empty chamber. The anticipation of more is enough to send him over the edge.

The warehouse is an even worse state once he’s had his fill of her. She just holds onto his arm for support so she can stand, nuzzling at his shoulder and smiling.

“Guns huh?” he asks later, once they’ve got their clothes back on and they’re walking back to the office.

“Don’t knock it until you try it,” she grins, “give it a little bit and soon you’ll be begging for me to blow your brains out when you come.” She laughs when her words make him stumble and make a slight moan escape from his lips. “Don’t worry,” she smirks, “just you wait and maybe I’ll give you a demonstration after the next job.”

#dmc #dmcv #dante #dante sparda #dante x reader #rev writes #my writing

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fvlminare · 3 years

Text

✗✗✗ you see [ camille rivas ] around lately? yeah i heard that the [ cis female ] is up to no good. [ she / her ] has been here for [ three years ] now but they’re still pretty [ calculating ] which is fine because they’re also [ ardent ] so it balances out. the [ twenty-six ] year old [ dancer at mayhem ] actually looks like a lot like [ sofia carson ], don’t you think? it’s best to watch out, though, because it’s been said that they’re really into [ the rush of cocaine in her veins & a vice grip on her throat ].

henlo it me again! i hope u guys aren’t sick of me yet bc here’s my other bb! say hello to my boss-ass bish gal camile! she’s sassy, classy and a lil badassy. she’s a rather feisty, fiery, ball of rage and anger who cba with ur bullshit tbh n she’ll tell u this too if u piss her off enough! she’s lowkey cutthroat and always out for number one, aka: herself. but, i mean, she does have some redeeming qualities and her hair is bomb af so that makes up for it all really, doesn’t it? basically that meme: ‘ she’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll punch you in the face. ’ anywho, you know the drill, slap a lil luv on this n i’ll come pester u for all the good stuff : - )

fundamentals.

CAMILLE ALARA RIVAS — twenty-six, dancer at mayhem, + an honest-to-god vixen / hellcat / lil demoness !

aesthetics ➤ dresses of black lace and red velvet, the scent of chanel perfume lingering in the air as she floats past, blood-red fingertips coiled around the pistol grip of a gun, red-bottomed heels clicking against marble floors, rose gold highlighter shimmering along the height of prominent cheekbones, satin dresses draped over a svelte frame that is shrouded in an air of mystery and intrigue, baby pink roses in a vase on the window sill, deft fingers stained with charcoal and oil paint, the melodic chime of piano keys, delicate digits adorned with moonstone gem rings, a coy smile spread across full crimson lips, long raven locks blowing in the cool breeze of a summer’s evening, battered books with dog-eared pages, a sense of freedom and carelessness when dancing for fun, & a sense of allurement and captivation when dancing for work.

nicknames. cam, cami, mil, millie, spawn of satan >:~)

date of birth. april tenth.

gender. cis female.

pronouns. she + her.

birthplace. manhattan, new york.

orientation. pansexual + demiromantic.

education. bachelor of dance degree obtained from nyu tisch school of the arts.

spoken languages. can speak fluent english, spanish, & latin.

negative traits. capricious, ornery, impulsive, guileful, caustic, brusque, obstinate, destructive, deceptive, & promiscuous.

positive traits. ardent, whimsical, intrepid, graceful, poised, elegant, headstrong, observant, independent, & confident.

strengths. optimistic, energetic, creative, practical, spontaneous, rational, knows how to prioritise, great in a crisis, & relaxed.

weaknesses. stubborn, insensitive, private, reserved, easily bored, dislikes commitment, & has a rather risky behaviour.

talents. ballet, knife throwing, hand-to-hand combat, horse riding, figure skating, piano, violin, painting, singing, & dancing.

physiology. hazel eyes. dark brown hair. five feet, four inches tall. of a petite, slender stature with subtle curves and long hair. has a long silvery scar on her back. her skin is clean of any tattoos. has both earlobes pierced. requires glasses but wears contacts most days. is right-handed.

psychology. aries zodiac. fire element. ravenclaw house. istp-a. true neutral. type seven enneagram. choleric temperament. intra-personal intelligence type. addicted to alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis. suffers from addiction and abandonment issues. her vices are lust, greed and wrath. her virtues are ... ( again ) honestly, probably just diligence tbh.

background.

possible triggers : child abandonment, abandonment issues, foster homes, alcohol, drugs, violence, gore, blood, murder, & death.

a synopsis. ok so for this gal, let’s all give a big, warm welcome to sadness ( no, i was in no way at all inspired by salem from sabrina for that line ) bc boy oh boy, her life has been constant grief and pain, tbh. strap in for the bumpy ride, i’ll give u cookies for compensation. OK SO, camille was abandoned as a baby, never did—and still doesn't—know her biological parents and she doesn’t want to either, tbh. she bounced around from foster home to foster home, never sticking in one place for too long. given her turbulent upbringing, she was somewhat of a difficult child. too boisterous, too unruly, too stubborn, too inquisitive. too much of everything but never enough of anything. never enough for anybody to want her. it didn’t take the girl too long to figure out that it was just her alone, against the big bad world. from the age that she was old enough to realise it, camille knew that she had to fend for herself—that she could never truly rely on a single soul but herself. the hollowness inside her chest never quite satiated, leaving her empty and only too well aware of the lack of her real parental figures. as a young adolescent, this started to crawl under her skin and mess with her mind. it rendered her void of affection and unable to form genuine bonds with others—filling her with deep-rooted resentment that festered beneath the surface of the indifferent demeanour she plastered over herself every day. she always felt starved of love: as if some integral part of her heart was missing, leaving a gaping void that nobody could ever fill. anywho, she fell in with the wrong crowd which did little to aid her foster families hostility toward her. truthfully, most of her experiences in various homes were ... not pleasant. she’d encountered abusive ‘parents,’ horrible ‘siblings,’ and even worse schooling days. pressing the self-destruct button is this gal’s speciality thus she found herself gravitating towards her vices: things and people she knew were no good for her. drink, drugs, people, you name it. quickly, she realised that these things were no longer any good at keeping her dark side at bay: she needed something more, something deeper. thus, she began going down the road of petty crimes—stealing cars, smashing windows, theft, setting fires both metaphorically and literally. due to this lifestyle, she wound up entangled with some real shady folk who did … even shadier things. most specifically, she started dating a real jackass who was violent and truthfully, a horrible person, really. stupidly, she decided to run off into the metaphorical sunset with him * insert eye roll emoji here. * so, fast forward a year or so and things took a swift nosedive when her lowlife boyfriend’s hands were round her throat and not in the kinky way. while she’d clawed at him and tried to fight him off, she struggled against his weight and strength until, eventually, she lifted the first makeshift weapon she felt: a rusted pair of scissors. [ TRIGGER FOR VIOLENCE, GORE, BLOOD, MURDER, DEATH ] and, in a blind state of panic, she jammed them right into his jugular vein, his blood squirting out and decorating her face in crimson splatters. he’d stumbled backwards, clutched onto his neck, blood spurting from the webs between his fingers. naturally, camille was shook about this but somehow managed to flee the scene with less guilt rattling her soul than she’d imagined. [ TRIGGER OVER ] in her mind, it was an act of self defence. it wasn’t too long after the incident that she found herself in a rather perilous situation that resulted in her sudden realisation that she needed to get her damn life on track. therefore, she done the responsible adult thing and got herself a decent education. somehow, she managed to get into university where her life started to shape into a positive one—the kind she’d always dreamed of. once she graduated, camille decided that she wanted to see the world. following a couple of years travelling, she wound up in santa ysabel where she quickly fell into the employment of mayhem. admittedly, this was a far cry from the future she’d envisioned when she was just a sweet, innocent lil child. still, all in all, she kind of digs who she is and what she is: after everything she’s been through, she loves herself. it’s been a long and winding road but camille finally believes that she’s settled in her life now. tho she still refuses to let people in, her abandonment issues terrifying her to the degree that she feels that anybody she’d ever let into her life would eventually leave her in the end. * insert sad face emoji here. *

random extras.

her tell? playing with her hair: when she’s lying, nervous, flirting—you name it!

can drink any man under the table.

she loves art in every form: paintings, sculptures, music, dance, people, etc. she loves the freedom that expressing herself through these mediums gives her.

she’s ... experimental. she’s experimented with just about everything: hairstyles, clothing, drink, drugs, people ...

can be hella calculating and vindictive so do not cross her.

quite power-hungry tbh.

she does have a shot at redemption but she doesn’t want it lmao. she’s already been to hell so why bother trying to right her wrongs?

and boy, are her wrongs a century-long list shkjsh.

high key is not above killing people who don’t do things her way.

doesn’t believe she’s capable of loving anyone.

she’s lowkey a perfectionist to the point of being ruthless, also cutthroat and egotistical.

if ya ain’t of use to her, then what the heck is ur purpose???

she’s v ambitious, v morally ambiguous, v self-serving and v self-involved.

she can be ... aggressive sometimes and most definitely has anger issues.

dry sense of humour one million per cent.

her signature look is her blood-red lips.

extremely skilled with knives and blades. and always carries one on her person at all times.

her most prized possession is her brushed chrome zippo lighter. it has her initials engraved into it and where she got it from, or who is something she’ll never tell.

always says she needs to quit smoking but never does and probably never will either.

did someone say ... resting bitch face???

tho when she smiles it’s like sunshine uwu

high key will sleep with anyone.

first place is the ONLY acceptable place, ok???

one of those people who just excels at everything she tries her hand at.

absolutely adores animals. much prefers them to humans.

she’s quite adventurous and loves to feel the adrenaline in her blood.

doesn’t take herself or her life too seriously.

always up for a good time and is usually the life of the party.

outspoken and quick-witted with a sharp tongue.

much too sassy and sarcastic for her own good.

really, she does what she wants to, when she wants to, without seeking the approval of others.

truthfully? she’s a bit of a spitfire if you really irk her. so, watch out.

you can find a pinterest board for her by clicking anywhere here.

#* dj khaled vc * anotha one !!!#slap a lil heart on this n i'll hit ya up for le plots !!!#indulgence.intro

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overlord-off-record · 4 years

Text

This used up my last spoon, and it probably shows.

---

A sharp drop jolted him awake, and Tarvek managed not to yelp. He hadn’t expected to sleep at all tonight, not after the terrible events of the day and yet…

And yet.

Another lurch slammed his head back against something solid, and fresh pain shot through his skull. Ah. The growing knot there suggested how he had come to be outside, the cool nighttime breeze mussing his hair and slicing through the silk of his pajamas. He shivered. It didn’t really surprise him that someone had taken the opportunity to abduct him. He cracked one eye open, then immediately wished he had not. The lights of Paris whipped by at alarming speed. The contents of his stomach made a bid for freedom.

“Hey! If you’re going to puke, do it over the side!”

Over the…? Tarvek squinted through the night, and he realized with growing horror that the soft lights of the city illuminated far more of the vehicle than he wanted to see. He sat on a narrow oval of planks, at the center of which was mounted an apparatus cobbled together of the worst, most rickety-looking jumble of scrap, upon which some fool had mounted a ship’s wheel. A person stood there, looming over him, one hand on the helm and the other on her hip. Tarvek tried to focus on her rather than on the two swivel-mounted propellers and the ridiculously outsized sail protruding off the back.

“Is this,” he managed, “an air skiff?”

“Not just an air skiff!” crowed his abductor with unreasonable pride to take in such a ramshackle machine. “This is the skiff that conquered the wilds! This skiff is damn near indestructible!”

No. Tarvek looked around, noting gouges and scorch marks on almost every surface. An indestructible skiff would be legend itself, surely not piloted by some cut-rate thug come to take advantage of his unguarded state. Surely this woman exaggerated.

Not that such speculation improved his current situation any.

“Commandeered it from Old Grump-Face himself. He had it coming, letting this fine craft gather dust.”

‘Fine craft’, Tarvek reflected, was something of an overstatement. Afraid that the smallest movement might overbalance the wretched thing and capsize them, he tucked his hands beneath him and tried not to think about the unreasonable speeds the skiff seemed to attain. His captor yanked a lever on a control array��apparently cobbled together from bits of no less than seven different machines—above her head, kicked some hidden switch, and spun the wheel hard to the right. The skiff banked into a steep turn, flattening Tarvek’s already-rebellious stomach inside him and affording him too clear a view of the brightly lit street below. Yelping in alarm, desperately trying to maintain possession of what little he’d eaten that day, Tarvek clutched at the gunwale. The skiff skimmed along the face of a building, ruffling curtains and disrupting potted plants as it went. His captor’s teeth flashed white in the darkness.

“You’re fun!” she said, clearly enjoying herself too much.

“I don’t want to be fun! I want to be alive!”

“Oh, that doesn’t really matter. Not when—“

A small object that resembled a gas canister sailed over the side of the skiff and landed at Tarvek’s feet. While he and his abductor both eyed it with suspicion, it popped open, and a tinny voice issued from within.

“Hailing air skiff Queen of the Wastes: You are in violation of University airspace. Divert your course at once, or else drop anchor at the nearest mooring station.”

When Tarvek has collected his wits sufficiently enough not to sputter, the most intelligent comment he managed was, “You registered this derelict?!”

Sneering in the half-light, his captor yanked another lever and gave the wheel two sharp turns. “‘Course I did, and she’s no derelict! We wouldn’t want her impounded for something stupid like a mooring violation, would we?” The bottom dropped out of Tarvek’s stomach as the skiff plummeted toward the avenue below.

None of this made any sense. Here he was, probably about to die on a stolen air skiff that had been registered to prevent it getting impounded if it’s pilot decided to moor it illegally. He’d have been better off with the exploding spiders.

Exploding spiders?

Nearer to the street, more light splashed across the skiff, illuminating the face of his abductor. With mounting dread, Tarvek realized he recognized her. “The terrible bartender!” he blurted. “You like setting things on fire!”

“You’ve got it the wrong way around.” She gave the wheel a hard spin, and the skiff heeled over in its steepest turn yet. “I set things on fire professionally. The bartending was for fun.”

“We’re going to die,” moaned Tarvek.

“Don’t be such a—“

Such a what, precisely, Tarvek never found out, for a grapnel arced over the gunwale and landed near the helm. It skidded across the scarred old deck until it found purchase. Tarvek clung to the gunwale, but his captor took their sudden, sickening change in momentum in her swaggering stride. She yanked a sword from a scabbard that hung from the control array, and, grinning wildly, she turned to face the other skiff coming alongside. Its three occupants looked to board the so-called Queen of the Wastes. Green glass lenses gleamed beneath the brim of a tall, official-looking hat.

“This is Air Constable Marat,” commanded a voice that was unmistakably Tiffy’s. Three known aliases meant she probably had at least a dozen more. “Debark your passenger and remove your vehicle from University airspace.”

Tarvek’s captor laughed. “Are you planning to come and take him?”

Tiffy gestured with one white-gloved hand, and the two men beside her hopped over to the Queen of the Wastes. Tarvek’s captor’s sword flashed out and slapped the pistol from the hand of one of them.

“Come on!” she complained, sounding in her annoyance a little too like Gil. “At least pretend you mean it!” Swift as a striking snake, she stabbed the other one through the shoulder. She was toying with them, of that Tarvek was certain. Her grin gleamed in the low light.

“Captain.” Tiffy had one foot up on the gunwale of her own skiff. “Stand down.”

The so-called captain’s grin wavered slightly. “If you know who I am,” she said, gesturing toward Tarvek with her bloody sword, “then you know that I’m transporting valuable equipment for a time-sensitive science thingie.”

“I don’t think so,” said Tiffy, her voice frosty. She kicked over a belaying pin, which turned out to house a switch. An impossibly loud BRRRRAAAAAAAWWWP! noise bellowed out of her little skiff. It rattled Tarvek’s teeth and vibrated the sword right out of the captain’s hand.

“Is that a sonic condenser?”

No one heard him, not over the ringing in their ears. Tiffy had produced two pistols, both of which she had trained on the captain. Inexplicably, the captain’s grin brightened until it could outshine the sun.

“You cheated!” Tarvek saw her lips form the words, saw her obvious delight. He tried to edge farther away from her, but on the little craft he had nowhere to go. The gunwale pressed against the backs of his legs, reminding him of the uncomfortable distance to the street below. Could he survive leaping overboard? Possibly. Did he want to?

Probably anything would be better than proximity to the captain.

An arm encircled him from behind, making his choice for him. As he felt himself yanked upward, up and off of the skiff, any yelp of surprise that escaped him would be lost to the deafened people below. He still twisted his head around, trying to see who was swinging him to safety, when Varpa deposited him on a nearby awning.

“Thanks,” he said, apparently too loudly, for Varpa gestured for quiet and melted deeper into the shadows.

“Lead on,” he whispered, probably still loudly. “I can’t wait to find out what Seffie wants.”

Varpa almost smiled, just for a moment, before leading him away from the skiffs, away from the captain and Tiffy, away from the University. Well. The captain wouldn’t kill Tiffy. At least, he didn’t think she would.

For the moment, Tarvek had other matters to occupy his mind. He could worry about Colette’s spy friend later, in the light of day, his hearing had returned to normal and the ache inside him had dulled. For now? His eyes traced Varpa’s back in the darkness, searching for a cause so urgent Seffie would send for him in the middle of the night. Perhaps Tweedle had goten up to something idiotic again.

It didn’t matter. None of this mattered. None of this would have even happened if he’d had someone to watch his back. He settled into a sullen silence that would carry through the rest of the night, no matter what Seffie wanted.

Paris really wasn’t what he had expected. Not at all. Still, if he got some sleep for once, he figured he could probably learn to work with it.

#Girl Genius #fanfic #Tarvek continues to have a bad day

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reinarandraw · 5 years

Text

The Herald Descends

I wanted to practice writing something fun so I thought writing a small ficlet for my villain ironstrange au would be neat. Exploring how they first met each other sounds cool. And then things got out of hand and I don’t think I have the energy to finish it, well not in the near future. But I kinda like the 1st part of the fic so I guess it won’t hurt to post it here.

So, enjoy.

Title: The Herald Descends Words: 1,491 Summary: In the beginning, there was darkness. In the end, the darkness awaited. Stephen Strange would make sure Earth would finally fall into his master’s hand.

In the beginning, there was darkness. The universe was formless and empty. There was no sign of life anywhere nor the smell of death and decay. There was simply nothing. Just never-ending darkness. Just a bottomless void of nothingness.

But then the light appeared and it brought life.

Stephen used to think that life was all that matter. He became a doctor to preserve life and to save people. Even when his heart turned cold and he let his ego dictated his move, he still clung to that ideology. Do no harm. He was not a fan of violence after all.

But one life meant nothing in this multiverse. People died every day and yet everything went on. The Ancient One told him, death is what gives life meaning. Stephen wondered how come she could be so close-minded. She had seen the vast multiverse, she had lived for more than a hundred year, she was the Sorcerer Supreme. And yet she still thought like a mere mortal.

Neither life nor death mattered. Why should it matter? Every beginning had its ending. Great civilizations fell and left forgotten. Planets explored and gone forever. We were nothing but dust in this multiverse. Our life was too short and insignificant. Nothing mattered. In the end, everything would come back to the darkness.

In the beginning, there was darkness. It the end, the darkness awaited.

“Mercy, please have mercy…”

The man before him croaked. Stephen looked down at him. His skin was marred with blood everywhere. Stephen knelt beside him so he could get a better look. A short gasp escaped the man’s lips as Stephen’s leaned closer, eyes blown wide with terror. Up close, Stephen could see every line on the man’s face, some spoke of his age and some of his agony. This man had minutes left to live, sooner even. He was the one who called himself the good shaman. He brought magic to this little town. He saw himself as a healer and disregarding the dangers he invited by tampering with powers beyond his comprehension. It was the one that drew Stephen’s master to this town. This town flourished with magic. How poetic it was to end it with magic.

“Please…” he whined, his voice breaking, “have mercy! I beg you!”

Stephen looked at his surroundings. Only debris and destruction remained of this small town. Stephen didn’t give them any chance to fight. With waves of his hands, Stephen unfolded reality and destroyed everything in his sight. Buildings collapsed and buried people inside them. Roads bent and trapped cars in their twist. The local polices tried to subdue him with pistols but no bullet managed to graze him. The town was too far to attract attention so no help was coming. Not soon enough at least.

“What do you want?! Why are you doing this?” The man asked. Tears fell from his eyes, leaving wet trails on his bruised cheeks.

Stephen touched the man’s cheek, feeling him whimpered under his touch.

“Please don’t kill me…” he begged.

“I won’t, don’t worry,” Stephen promised. For a fleeting moment, Stephen saw hope flashed in his eyes. It soon died when he heard Stephen’s scoff. “I need someone to spread the news.”

“What news?”

The man shrieked in terror when Stephen let magic to levitate him from the ground. Stephen got up on his feet then walked to the center of the town with the shaman floating behind him. Once he was in the position, he turned to address the man.

“Listen to me,” he began, “you’re going to witness something and I’d like you to tell everyone. Can you do that for me?”

The man was only able to let out a pathetic whimper.

Stephen smiled and somehow it only made the man whimper even louder. How pathetic. He turned his back against him. He felt a surge of energy burst in his system as he opened his connection to The Dark Dimension. His hands then moved to form complicated hand gestures to cast his spell. Soon, he could feel raw power flowing in his vein. So much power, it burned him from within.

It hurt, oh did it hurt. The power set his nerves ablazed and strained his muscles. Mortal body was not meant to wield this power. But thankfully, Stephen was not a mere mortal anymore.

“Let the darkness descend upon this town!” And with that, he released hell.

The ground shook violently below his feet. Stephen could hear the shaman screamed but his cry was drowned by the cracking sound of thunders. Dark purple clouds covering the night sky above them, forming a temporary portal to The Dark Dimension. Stephen smiled at the magnificent sight, a glimpse of the different sky he called home. The air was thrumming with primordial magic. Stephen watched in silent satisfaction as bodies on the ground crumbled to scorched husks. They flew to the sky, towards his master.

“That’s… That’s The Dark Dimension!” The shaman’s words made him turn his attention back to the pathetic wailing man.

“Oh, you’re more than a blabbering idiot,” Stephen commented. “I don’t need to recite my evil monologue. What a shame.”

"You...” the shaman gaped at him. “How...?”

“But what you know about The Dark Dimension is probably wrong. There’s so much misconception about it, especially about my master. Maybe I should start writing a book. Book of Strange has a nice ring on it, doesn’t it?”

“You served him!” The shaman spat the words like it was an insult. Stephen resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“Wow, what gave it away? The fact I just banished the whole population of this pitiful town to The Dark Dimension or my creepy eyes?”

Stephen then grasped the man’s lower face in one hand, his nails digging right to his cheeks. He could feel the man’s scream behind his palm.

“Sshh, there’s no need to struggle.” He brought his other hand to the man’s forehead. “I promise I won’t kill you, remember?” A spark of purple fire ignited from his fingertips.

The shaman’s eyes went wide. The purple light looked so beautiful when it was reflected in his black eyes.

“It’s going to be ok,” Stephen tried to reassure him. “Trust me. I used to be a surgeon.”

And with that, he carved a symbol to the man’s skin. A warning to the world, especially those at Kamar-Taj. His master’s symbol.

Dormammu.

Stephen admired his handiwork with a small smile. He leaned forward toward the shaman and said, “Tell everyone you see, darkness will come to you all soon. He will come and there’s nothing you can do to stop him.’”

He didn’t need a sling ring and a hand gesture to open a portal. It was for dumb sorcerers who had no idea how to manipulate space and time continuum. Stephen learned so much from his master. A circle of purple spark materialized just behind the shaman. Stephen could see the street of New York on the other side of the portal.

“What are you-“

“Bye.” Stephen used his magic to launch the shaman towards the portal and then closed it.

Stephen noticed that purple clouds were starting to dissipate. A minute passed in somber silence until the connection to The Dark Dimension was finally closed. Stephen’s knees buckled and just failed to support his weight. Knowing that he was completely alone, he let himself fall to the ground. He was exhausted, his whole body shaking with pain. He curled up into a fetal position and closed his eyes.

It always happened after he channeled an extensive amount of energy from The Dark Dimension. A backlash from casting a large portal to Dark Dimension and banishing hundreds of people there. Stephen’s physiology might have evolved into something more than a mortal but he was not a cosmic being that was born from pure energy.

“I’m disappointed.”

His master’s voice rang loudly in his mind. Stephen’s eyes snapped open as he tried to control his labored breathing.

“You are not ready.”

“Ok, that’s not actually true.” Stephen quickly got up on his feet, ignoring how his muscles spasm painfully as he did so. “I just need more time!”

“Ah, time. The little gift you brought me when we first met.” A deep rumble echoed in his mind. It was hard to tell whether Dormammu was chuckling or grumbling. “Haven’t you spent centuries mastering the power I gave you? You dare to ask for more time?”

“I haven’t been here for a long time,” Stephen argued. “You trained me in The Dark Dimension. Things work differently here. The Sanctums are disturbing my connection to you. It’s harder for me to access your power. They protect the Earth, remember? Let me destroy the sanctums so I can have full access to you. You can even come here.”

“You are not ready,” he repeated. There was no more word for a long time. Stephen feared his master had left him, but then he continued, “Rest, my herald. There is still much work for you.”

Stephen felt like he would collapse once more but he refused to do so. Fuelled by sheer will, Stephen made a portal to his hideout. His master was right. He needed to take a rest. Earth destruction could wait.

***

I’m just going to stick with fanart for now.

#stephen strange #i write something #dark stephen strange #villain stephen strange #i'm so rusty #sorry for any mistake

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e350tb · 5 years

Text

Steven Universe: Marooned Together - Chapter Fifty Two

(thanks to @real-fakedoors for proofreading)

Predominantly blue and green, the tropical world looked almost like Earth from a distance, a sight that brought forth nostalgia that wasn’t entirely unwelcome, but it stirred something that had been dormant for long years—something painful.

It didn’t really matter; the facade dropped as the Crystal Avenger drew closer anyway.

There were no oceans, only great lakes and wide rivers snaking across the single, giant continent. Parts of the surface were obscured by enormous clouds, and there was a small ring of snow around both poles.

Of greater concern was the old Homeworld transport ship, slowly rotting away in orbit. It was beyond salvaging; much of the hull was gone, sheared away by asteroid impacts. There were no signs of life on board, but a quick scan revealed that the escape pods had all been used - the ship had been abandoned.

“There’s no technology down there,” mused Peridot, frowning. “As far as I can tell, this is just a normal tropical planet.”

“Can’t even be used as a kindergarten?” asked Amethyst.

“No,” replied Peridot. “The mineral composition of the crust is of poor quality. It’s not even optimal for farming, not that gems need produce.”

Stevonnie gazed out the window at the planet, scratching their chin.

“And yet something down there knocked Jenny out of contact with us,” they said.

Amethyst furrowed her brow.

“I don’t like this,” she declared. “Zircon, contact Peedee. Tell him we’re here.”

Zircon nodded, pressing a button on her console. She frowned, pressing it once more, then shook her head.

“Something’s jamming our communications, Captain,” she replied.

“That can’t be right!” exclaimed Peridot. “The Crystal Avenger is a… mostly up-to-date corvette. It should have advanced anti-jamming software!”

“Maybe someone down there invented a really good jammer?” suggested Stevonnie.

“Stevonnie, there’s nothing down there that could invent one of those human ‘chicken sandwiches,’” snapped Peridot. “Never mind a state of the art… huh.”

Amethyst raised an eyebrow.

“Huh?”

“There… is a jamming signal,” said Peridot, looking over the scan on her screen. “It’s coming from the planetary core, but… that doesn’t make sense!”

She stood up, shaking her fist at the planet below.

“Stupid cloddish mystery world!” she snapped. “Make sense, damn you!”

“Well, we don’t really need to stop the jammer,” Stevonnie shrugged. “We just need to find Jenny. Do you know where she is?”

“I’m still scanning for traces of the Kofi,” replied Peridot. “So far I’ve triangulated her transponder to a two hundred square kilometer area around the south of the planet, near the river that comes out of that lake that looks like Peedee’s head.”

She pointed. Stevonnie squinted.

“No, I’m not seeing it, it looks more like Bismuth.”

“The noodle hair! It has the silhouette of the noodle hair! It’s blindingly obvious!”

“Nah, the head shape is too big, it’s definitely…”

“Okay,” interrupted Amethyst. “Let’s get down there and look around Lake Peedeebismuth until we find something, alright? We can work out who it looks like later.”

Peridot blinked.

“We’re… we’re not actually gonna call it Lake Peedeebismuth, are we?”

----

The Crystal Avenger soared over Lake Peedeebismuth, slowing to a hover as it reached a clearing just below its southernmost shore. Down below sat an old, familiar shuttle - the Kofi.

Carefully, the Crystal Avenger touched down, the cargo ramp opening. Slowly , Stevonnie advanced out, sword and shield ready, but they could hear nothing else besides the strange, shrill sounds of the planet’s birds.

It wasn’t at all dissimilar to Earth - it resembled the jungles of South America, with tall grass and thin, spindly trees. They could feel a cool precipitation in the air, and could just about smell rain on the wind, but the sky above seemed blue for now.

“I think it’s clear!” they called back.

The other gems (save Zircon, who remained on the bridge) followed them out. Peridot immediately marched over to the Kofi, planting her hand on the metal surface. She let out a long “hmmmm…” and scratched her chin.

“You sure you should be touching that?” asked Lapis, walking up behind her.

“Please, Lazuli, I’m a technician,” sniffed Peridot. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Yeah, we’ve seen a bunch of ships in our time, Laps,” added Amethyst, swaggering casually over. “We’ve ridden in ‘em, slept in ‘em, ate in ‘em, we’ve even f-”

“Yes, thank you Amethyst,” interrupted Peridot. “Hmm… no sign of damage. It’s like she landed and just walked away…”

“Maybe she was following that distress call Peedee mentioned?” asked Stevonnie.

“Possibly… but why wouldn’t she come back…”

Not far away, Garnet watched the trees for any activity, arms crossed and face impassive. She barely reacted as Bismuth walked over, looking similarly wary.

“Future Vision picking anything up?” she asked.

“A few things,” Garnet replied.

“Hmm.”

Bismuth was about to say more when she saw a glint in the grass - something metallic reflecting sunlight. Slowly and carefully, she knelt down, picking up the little object and turning it over in her hand.

Her brow shot up.

It was a bullet casing, slightly rusted and clearly spent. Did the people of this planet have guns? Hadn’t Peridot said they had no technology?

She turned it over again, looking at the bottom of the casing. The writing was old and stained, but she could just about make out bits of it.

...RSAF Enfi...303...British…

“Garnet,” she whispered, “this thing’s from Earth…”

There came a quiet series of clicks from the trees.

Garnet reacted quickly, shooting into the jungle with such ferocious speed that she resembled little more than a blur. Seconds later, she was back, clutching a large human man by his ragged collar as she slammed him into a tree trunk. An old rifle fell from his hands.

“What the-” Stevonnie turned and gasped. “A human!”

“Yeah, no kidding,” said Amethyst flatly.

The human was covered in long, grey hair; his face nearly completely obscured by a white beard that stretched down to his stomach. His nails were long and yellow, and his clothes were strips of cloth and leaves fashioned together to make a very crude shirt and pants. His eyes were sunken, and his skin was weathered. He snarled and growled, almost like an animal, as he saw himself reflected in Garnet’s visor.

“Tell me who you are,” Garnet growled.

The reply was hoarse and halting, as if the man had not used these words in a very long time.

“Back off… gem…” he spat.

“We got you six to one, Gandalf,” said Amethyst, drawing her whip. “Why don’t you…”

“Wait!”

Stevonnie stepped towards Garnet, hands up.

“Wait, let him explain himself!” they said. “He’s been here for a long time, he’s probably confused!”

The man turned to Stevonnie and stared. His jaw dropped.

“You,” he wheezed. “You… Stevonnie.”

“Honey, does everybody in the universe know you?” asked Lapis wryly.

Stevonnie stepped forward.

“Yes,” they said, slowly and kindly. “I am Stevonnie. And you are?”

The man stared further, his eyes unfocused. For a moment, Stevonnie was sure they were watering.

“Put me down,” he said. “And I talk.”

Stevonnie glanced at Garnet. Slowly and reluctantly, Garnet did as asked, gently setting the man down on his feet.

“Okay,” she said. “Your turn.”

The man licked his dry, cracked lips.

“The water,” he said.

“What?” Stevonnie tilted their head.

“Don’t… drink water.”

He turned to Garnet. For a long time, the fusion and the hermit stared at each other, neither making so much as the slightest move.

Suddenly his arm was a blur, reaching swiftly under his shirt and pulling a rusty old pistol - in the same instant, Garnet was moving too, extending her arm to grab the weapon. They met in the middle, and Stevonnie winced at the slight metallic grind as the barrel of the gun scraped the gem on her hand…

Bang. The sound was like a clap of thunder.

The man had no time to see what he had wrought - an instant later Bismuth’s fist was colliding hard with his face, sending him physically flying backwards. His head slammed hard against the tree - there was the sound of cracking wood - and he slumped down, out cold.

“Whoa, Bis, I think you killed him,” said Amethyst, impressed.

“Nah, he’s still breathing,” replied Bismuth, almost sounding disappointed.

“Garnet!”

Stevonnie ran over to Garnet, who’s form was flickering dangerously. Her visor disappeared, and she gazed at her fellow fusion - her blue eye still firm, but her red eye flickering violently, and her third eye unable to focus.

“Stev- S̸̢̡̟͎͔ţ̷̩͔̦̯͙̙é͈̻̭̭̺v͚͡͡o̴̵̴̘̱̮͇̦̠̣͉̰n̡͎̠̪̫͕̺̰̗͡n̦͍i͇̮̭̗͇e̘͔͈̲͜…̻͍̯̪̣̞” she stammered.

Then, quite literally, she came apart.

Sapphire was holding Ruby in her hands, gazing in horror at her gem - it was cracked, with an enormous hole in the middle where the bullet had struck. Ruby seemed woozy, her vision unfocused. Stevonnie knelt down next to her, putting their hand on her shoulder/

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ll fix it!” they said. “Let’s get you back on the ship, okay?”

“I̸͎̳͚͙͉͞h̝̕p̴̴̱̤̱͇̦̰p͕͚̠̟̹͎̝̼͙͘a̡̰̩̰̦͎͔̯̺̺͡s̼̲̩͙͞͡?̶̨̤͇̠͉͇ͅ” whimpered Ruby.

“I’m here.” Sapphire squeezed her hand.

By now Bismuth had raced over - she swept Ruby into her arms and made a run for the ship, Sapphire close behind. Stevonnie made to follow, but was stopped when Amethyst called out.

“Yo, ‘Von? What do we do with Tom Hanks here?”

Stevonnie walked over - Lapis, Amethyst and Peridot had gathered around the unconscious man, the latter poking him with a stick.

“We should take him inside,” replied Stevonnie. “Maybe find out who he…”

They squinted, taking a closer look at the stranger’s face - his nose, his features, the colour of his skin (distorted as it was by decades of sunburn.) Their brow shot up, and they gasped.

“It’s him,” they whispered.

“Who?” asked Lapis, putting a hand on their arm.

Stevonnie swallowed.

“Kevin.”

---

Every day, they changed up the guards in charge of looking after Lewis. It was supposed to prevent any one of them from forming a rapport with her - yet there were only so many crew aboard the Tartarus, and she had long recognised a pattern.

Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays she was guarded by humans. Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays were gem days, On Wednesday, it was a combination. (Or at least that was how she worked it out - she was no longer sure if New Earth used the old, proper working week after the Human Resistance had been overthrown.)

She’d learned particularly the roster of the guards assigned to feed her. It cycled over ten days, and she’d even come up with mental names for them. Today, for example, she’d be fed by Clumsy, a somewhat uncoordinated brute of an Amethyst. Under her rule, such incompetence would not be accepted, but these soft Home Guards seemed to like her. Likely she’d come in, drop her food, apologize about it and then leave, same as always.

Except that wasn’t the case this time.

The guard that fed her today was hard to identify - they wore a scarf over their face, and spoke to nobody. But as she dropped her tray, a note fell from her sleeve, tumbling over her porcelain white hand and onto the floor.

When she was gone, Lewis picked it up.

Thirty days.

Lewis chuckled silently and sat back. Good things came to those who waited, she thought to herself.

#steven universe #marooned together #stevonnie #lapis lazuli #amethyst #peridot #bismuth #garnet #ruby #sapphire #commander lewis #lapvonnie #amedot #rupphire

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clockworkrobotic · 5 years

Text

OOOOUUUGGGH H HERE IT IS

Thanks everyone for your patience while I took three times longer than intended <3

final word count 5234 ;;

I’m planning to write more but this ended up so absurdly long that I’m splitting it up. It’s a wild dumpster fire of headcanons and canon canons, ive tried to avoid exposition but if something doesnt make sense shoot me an ask lol

sort of vaguely around the end of BL1. Rowdy teenage calypsos. Dramatic backstory. Go

“Do it again.”

He sits cross-legged, facing her, watching intently. Tyreen scans the grass for another flower and finds one, a small purple thing that’s braved the blistering Pandoran heat to spring up from the rare lush patch they’ve settled into this afternoon. Her brow furrows with concentration as she touches it and searches for the not-quite-uncomfortable breathless feeling that precedes what she’s about to do. In honesty, she’s not entirely sure what she does to trigger it, but if she focuses hard enough, it seems to happen eventually.

Sure enough, after a few seconds, it’s wilting against her hand, the colour draining to a dull brown as the petals dry and shrivel and crumble to dust. Her chest feels hollow and then it doesn’t, her arm is tingling slightly as the pleasant warmth travels up and leaves her markings glowing a faint blue, and she feels content and floaty for a moment.

Troy is watching in awe, and he reaches out suddenly and grabs her arm.

“These are getting bigger,” he tells her certainly, inspecting her tattoos, “they didn’t go around your hand the other day. D’you think they’ll keep growing?”

Tyreen pulls back and looks at the ground. She doesn’t want to tell him that she feels them, at night, a scratching needling feeling drawing patterns down her body, and that as pretty as they are she doesn’t really want any more of them, they might make her face look weird. She also doesn’t want to tell him that he’s right.

“So cool…” He trails off, and Tyreen enjoys the quiet envy in his voice.

“I wish I could do other stuff,” she confesses. Troy shrugs.

“Maybe you can. But you haven’t found it out yet.” He pulls up another flower and hands it to her. “Do it again.”

* * *

“When was the last time you ate?”

“Dunno,” Tyreen answers honestly, “I’m fine, though, really.”

She feels more than fine. It’s the only use she’s managed to put her powers to - as long as there’s something small and alive nearby, she can draw its energy in place of food. Some days she’s been getting by just running her hands through the grass. When she thinks about it, she can’t even remember what being hungry feels like.

The past few weeks have been a blur of trudging through the arid desert and scavenging abandoned camps and just trying to stay away from trouble. They had learnt early on to avoid active settlements - the local bandits didn’t take too kindly to thieves - but rummaging around in waste and ruin yielded little in terms of rations. Tyreen had pocketed herself a neat little pistol that she (thankfully) hadn’t had to use yet and Troy had secured some kind of baton that looked as though it might have once doubled as a taser, but other than that, resources are scarce. At least this way she can make sure he’s getting something close to enough to eat.

“You should still eat something, Ty. This can’t be good for you.”

“I’m not sure living in the desert is good for anyone.” Tyreen pulls her jacket up over her shoulders to shield herself from the heat. Little as she might physically need it, she’d kill for a cold drink right about now. Beer. She isn’t even sure what beer tastes like, but she’s parsed that it’s a noble option on hot days, and under the blistering sun came now to consider it some kind of ambrosia.

Troy’s footsteps stop behind her and she turns wearily to look at him. He’s shielding his eyes and squinting into the distance.

“I think there’s a town up ahead. Let’s move.”

* * *

“It’s no use, Troy,” Tyreen groans, trying to hide how pissed off she’s really getting. Not that she doesn’t appreciate his enthusiasm, but there’s only so much she can put up with. She starts to pull her jacket back on.

“No, no, c’mon, just - one more try,” Troy pleads, darting forward to grab her wrists, “You heard the guy in the bar back there. He reckons you’re a Siren. There’s - there’s so much more you could lea-”

“Most powerful being in the universe were his exact words, Troy.” She slouches a few exasperated feet away and slumps onto a rock cluster. “Killing plants is a far cry from that.”

Troy runs a hand through his hair and sits himself on the ground in front of her. “It’s not killing plants, Ty, it’s - some kind of energy thing, like you can - steal life force or something -”

“Troy,” Tyreen cuts him off firmly, then pinches the bridge of her nose and softens her tone, “I know you want to believe there’s more to this but - I think this might be it.” He’s watching her in earnest, but she can see the light die behind his eyes a little, and it hurts. “You heard him, too. Sirens are dangerously powerful, from birth, he seemed to think they’re killing their parents and levelling bandit camps before they can walk. Do you - don’t you think, if I could do anything like that, we would’ve found out by now?” She tries to offer a small smile. It looks more like a grimace. Troy opens his mouth to say something, and she cuts across him again. “I’m sorry, Troy. It’s a fairy tale. We’re stuck on the same shitty planet as everyone else.”

Troy’s mouth is pressed into a grim line and he looks away from her. Tyreen gets up and offers him a hand. “Come on. It’s getting dark. I can start us a fire, at least.”

* * *

They come for her that night.

Tyreen is jolted awake by a hand over her mouth, and finds herself face to face with a masked marauder. Even with the ventilator covering the majority of his face, she can tell who it is.

“Hello, little Siren,” he croons, and the grin in his voice is sickening. She shrieks, one hand going for his face, the other scrabbling above her head for her pistol, kicking and howling muffled under his thick glove, trying to make enough noise to wake Troy up. The marauder is bigger than her by a lot, pinning her easily to the floor, and to her panic she can see two others advancing behind him.

“Never seen one in real life,” one of them comments, stepping over and kicking her gun out of reach, “Is she dangerous?”

“Nah, they told me everything,” says the one holding her down, and shifts to press his knee into her abdomen. Tyreen feels tears springing into her eyes. “She can’t do shit, least, not yet, anyway. Reckon we can fix that, though.”

Tyreen twists beneath him and makes another lunge for the pistol. It catches her assailant off guard, and she manages to choke out a breathless “TRO--” before he regains his hold on her, hand twisting in her hair and slamming her face hard against the ground. She can taste blood.

Several hands seize her arms and haul her to her feet, and there’s one covering her mouth again. She kicks frantically at them, feet slipping against the dusty earth floor.

“Come on, sweetheart,” is the rasped attempt at sweetness against her ear, “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.” And with that they’re dragging her from the shack, impervious to her muffled pleas and the tears streaming down her face.

Through her panic and probable concussion, she tries to find some clarity, to find that little breathless inkling she feels with the plants. It’s a long shot, she’s never managed anything more complex than a small cactus before, but maybe Troy is right, she can do it, she just needs to -

CRACK

The hand around her mouth goes limp and after a couple of beats, she feels the weight drop behind her. The other two let go of her arms, instinctively leaping away from whatever has just felled their comrade, and for one absurd moment she thinks that she’s managed something incredible.

“TYREEN!” Troy grabs her arm and pulls her behind him. He’s holding a thick piece of wood that looks like it might’ve been Tyreen’s height to begin with, but now hinged almost completely in two, bearing thick, vicious splinters where it had collided with the marauder’s head.

The other two have drawn their guns, but Troy is faster. Even at 16 he towers over them, wasteland-formed muscles knocking down both attackers in one swing of his makeshift weapon. There’s a loud BANG that jolts Tyreen unpleasantly back into reality and she dives for the dead marauder, seizing his gun from its holster and realising too late that she’s never done this before.

Troy has one of the men pinned to the ground, and the other is taking aim again. Tyreen doesn’t think, just points and shoots, aiming as far from her brother as she can get away with, fighting the resistance of the trigger until she lands a solid hit. Silhouetted by the light of Elpis, she sees him go down, his fingers twitching as his weapon falls from his grip. Her heart is racing, vision blurred by tears and adrenaline, but she can’t risk him getting up. She can hear the panicked pleas choked beneath Troy’s fingers to her left as she shoots her attacker between the eyes.

* * *

“Can’t sleep?”

“Nah.”

Tyreen sits on the mottled grass and watches the sun rise. Troy seats himself next to her, legs crossed like he used to when they were kids. Tyreen fidgets with the sleeves of her shirt.

“You can’t wear this, Ty, it’s a hundred degrees out,” Troy says, picking at the worn cotton. Tyreen pulls them further over her hands.

“I don’t want anyone to see them.”

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, and the pair of them sit in silence and watch the orange sunlight wash over camps and communes as far as the horizon.

“We have to go,” Tyreen says eventually. Troy glances over his shoulder to where the bodies of the three marauders are still lying. It’s only been a few hours, but in the heat the flies are already buzzing lazily around the corpses, and a swarm of rakk are beginning to circle overhead.

“Don’t you want to get some rest first? Nobody’s going to find us up here for a while.”

Tyreen shakes her head and lets the silence fall for a little while longer, punctuated by the occasional shriek from above.

“I’ve never killed anyone before.”

“Me neither.”

They both ponder the absurdity of the situation. Pandora isn’t renowned for its peaceful living, its occupants consisting mostly of violent bandits, escaped convicts, and the mutated casualties of Dahl’s mining operations. Yet they’d managed to avoid confrontation up until now, and it had dragged them screaming from their cabin in the dead of night. Terrified as she’d been, Tyreen wonders why she isn’t feeling more, well, anything - she’s just taken a life, and she feels as indifferent to it as if she’d walked away from a bar fight.

“They deserved it,” Troy says suddenly, as if reading her mind. His voice is flat and stony, “They were going to hurt you.”

Tyreen looks up at him. His expression is cold, and there’s something different about him, like a vengeful spark in his eye. She sighs and leans her head against his shoulder (well, arm) and then pulls away abruptly.

“Troy, you’re bleeding!”

Troy snaps out of his reverie and glances down, noting the deep indent in his bicep where a bullet must have skimmed past him.

“Has that been open this whole time? Damn it, that’s hours old, we have to get that cleaned up-”

“Calm down, Ty, it’s just a gra-”

“It’ll get infected, Troy, you could lose your arm.”

“It’s fine, leave it-”

“Let me help you.” She’s standing now, furious tears pricking her eyes. Troy doesn’t say anything. She storms inside to get the med kit.

* * *

They play it safe and don’t stop until they’re a couple of towns over. Despite the sparse population news had a habit of travelling fast here, and Tyreen is keen not to become the focal point of a planet-wide manhunt. She stays small, keeps her arms covered despite the sun, though thankfully they appear to be moving north and it’s getting a little cooler.

Troy keeps an anxious eye on her. She’s growing skittish, recoiling inward whenever anyone passes too close, avoiding eye contact as much as possible. She refuses to use her powers any more and at night she insists on sleeping next to him, terrified of what might happen if they get raided again and she can’t wake him up in time.

They’re sitting in a tavern one lazy afternoon when a conversation the next table over makes Tyreen freeze up. Troy hears it too; they’re talking about a local faction of the Crimson Lance, and the word Siren hangs heavy in the air. Tyreen cringes inwardly and looks up at Troy with pleading eyes, desperate to get as far away from this conversation as physically possible. Troy shushes her, trying to tell her without words that they can leave in a moment, but what they’re hearing could be important - Commandant Steele is old news at this point, but it sounds like they think there’s another Siren in the area. Tyreen pulls nervously at her sleeves. They can’t be talking about her, surely - she hasn’t said a word to anyone since they arrived. Low profile isn’t the word.

Tyreen gets up suddenly, upsetting their glasses, no longer resigning to sit and listen. She grabs Troy with a shaking hand and all-but drags him out of the bar.

* * *

Tyreen sleeps restlessly, tossing and turning uncomfortably, too hot and too cold at the same time, her brother’s protective hold the only thing preventing her from falling out of bed. She swears the ground is shaking like they’re resting over a tremorous fault line, yet the room and its contents remain still and Troy sleeps undisturbed. There’s a nagging urge telling her to head outside and look for… something, like a magnetic pull calling her out into the darkness, but she vehemently fights it, fear outweighing abject curiosity. When she finally drifts off, the sun is rising, spilling in through the frayed curtains, and she’s curled up in Troy’s arms, safe as she’ll ever be.

* * *

“Ty.”

Tyreen barely hears him. Her head feels like it’s full of radio static, has done since she woke up somewhere around 3pm. She’s focussing on just walking straight forward, though she’s not sure she’s doing a particularly good or convincing job of it.

“Tyreen,” Troy insists, grabbing her arm and forcing her to stop.

“Wuh,” is all she can manage, her hazy state making the sudden halt feel vaguely like whiplash. She presses her eyes shut and rubs her temples.

“Ty, look.” Troy is pointing behind her. Tyreen turns around and waits for her head to stop spinning.

“What ammi lookin’ at?” She mumbles after several seconds of attempting to decipher the blur that is her vision.

“Are you alright?” Her brother sounds incredibly worried and incredibly far away. She aware of his hand on her back, although she’s not sure that is her back, it feels thrice removed, as if she’s watching through someone else’s eyes and thinking with someone else’s brain.

“M fine. J’st dizzy. Water,” she manages, and fumbles around for her hipflask. The motion is disoriented, almost drunken, but she finds it and struggles with the cap for far too long. Troy takes it off her and opens it. “What’s am I lookin’ at?” She says again.

“Ty, you’re leaving footprints.”

“So? S’a desert.”

“In the grass.”

Tyreen blinks several times and tries to focus on what’s in front of her. It takes what feels like minutes before she can see clearly enough, and when she can, she’s not convinced she isn’t hallucinating.

As far back as she can see, as far as they’ve walked - which is not the sandy wasteland she’d been picturing in front of her for the past couple of miles, but more of a, admittedly ill-attended, pasture - there’s a set of footprints leading up to where she’s standing. Where she’s set foot, the grass has wilted away beneath her, leaving dead foliage and dry earth in its place. Tyreen looks down to where she’s standing now, and sees it; around her, the verdure wavers and leans in, towards her, pulled taut by some invisible force, before drying up and shrivelling to straw. It seems to slow as the circle around her grows, but it’s happening alright.

“This is bad... issnt it.”

“It’s…” Troy’s tone does not match hers. He seemed elated. “Ty, it’s incredible. I’ve never seen you keep this up for so long!”

“Mm?”

“You’re getting stronger, I told you, you just need to practise-”

“Troy…”

“- We can find somewhere safe next time we stop, you can try it on something larger, like, an animal or something-”

“Troy, I’m n- not -”

He’s still talking, but his words are blurring together into one excited stream of noise. Tyreen feels a drop in the pit of her stomach, like the ground has just fallen away with her still attached to it. She tries to feel for the hipflask he’s still holding.

“Troy I’m going to throw up,” She manages, surprisingly coherent, and her brother catches her as she blacks out.

* * *

Troy is holding a cold cloth to her face when she comes around. She’s lying on his jacket, but the ground beneath is hard and uneven, and the fabric pulls uncomfortably against her as she moves to sit up.

Troy breathes a hefty sigh of relief and against his better judgement, gathers her into a tight hug.

“Oh my god, I was so scared, Ty, I thought I’d lost you,” he mumbles brokenly into her shoulder.

Tyreen pats his chest gently. “’M fine. Can I have some space?”

Troy gives her one last squeeze and lets go. His face is wrought with worry, and she can tell he’s been crying. She opens her mouth to say something, and he shoves her hipflask into it.

“Drink. It’s been hours.”

She complies gratefully. He’s right, she’s completely parched, and the flask is empty in seconds. The awful fuzziness from earlier still isn’t quite gone, but she can see clearly again, and Troy doesn’t sound like he’s half a mile away when he talks. Tyreen takes a few deep breaths and scopes out the room.

It’s not a room. They appear to be in a cave of sorts, the grey walls dotted with condensation that’s slowly crawling down the walls and keeping the air comfortably cool and refreshing. Up ahead, the entrance opens out to a deep blue sky dotted with bright constellations and a full, luminous moon.

Troy is watching her. “I’m sorry, it’s not great, but it’s the only place I could find without anything…” He trails off, and she sees his jaw flex as it does when he’s nervous. “...Alive.”

Tyreen blinks at him, at a loss. He doesn’t elaborate. She draws her legs up to her chest and rests her head on her arms.

“It’s a good thing you’re wearing long sleeves, anyway.”

It’s then that she sees it. His shirt is torn - no, burnt, the edges frayed and blackened, pulling away to reveal an angry mess of red, blistering skin dragging down from his shoulder.

“Oh my god…” she murmurs, reaching out to touch him. He flinches.

“You, um,” Troy laughs uneasily, trying to lighten the mood and failing, “You were a bit grabby.”

Tyreen can only stare. She can barely remember anything before she passed out, only a static headache, and footprints, and Troy catching her, and now…

Now her brother is recoiling from her touch, on instinct, like a frightened animal, and he looks as though someone has raked at his chest with a hot poker.

“Troy,” she says slowly, “What’s going on?”

Troy runs a hand through his hair and looks at the ground. His shoulders are hunched, making it hard to see the scars she’s left on him, but she knows they’re there now, and she can’t take her eyes off them.

“I don’t know,” Troy answers honestly, after what feels like forever, “But I think those bandits were right.” Tyreen flinches at the memory. “I think I was right.” Troy looks up under his hair and offers her a half smile. Tyreen feels like her heart is in her throat, too anxious to smile back. “You can do more than kill plants.”

* * *

Tyreen is glowing.

Whatever cover the long sleeves offered her before is lost now. Through the tired grey of her shirt the markings weave a prominent blue around her arm. She wonders if they will actually burn through eventually.

She walks a few paces behind her brother, hopeful that his hulking presence will shield her from view, or at least deter any would-be attackers.

She wears gloves now, although she’s not sure it’s doing much. Foliage still wilts as she brushes past it, and it’s getting worse. She can’t control it. Her heart is hammering in her chest and she can’t sleep, so buzzed constantly that she can’t get a moment’s rest. The static headache is coming back.

They’re back to raiding bandit camps, reluctant to risk running into any enthusiasts in towns, but it’s taking a toll on the both of them. Troy still needs to eat, and as they venture further into the tundra the camps grow populous and more secure. Few are abandoned and they’re more complex, civilised almost, rickety shacks climbing multiple levels up cliff faces, connected by makeshift stairs and ladders that can barely hold Troy’s weight.

After a few close calls, they decide Tyreen should sit out the raids. Night is a lost cause, her luminous tattoos making her a walking target as they try to stealth through the camps, and during the day her vision blurs and vertigo hits her in waves.

She resolves to sit outside the camp, standing guard, although there’s not much she can do if disaster strikes. At least Troy can find her easily in the dark. She learns quickly not to mention the growing collection of marks and scars he’s amassing with each trip.

“I think we should turn back,” she says one night, as they’re huddling together under blankets, deep in the safety of a cave. Tyreen can barely feel the cold but her brother is shivering (much as he tries to hide it) and she’s giving off enough body heat for the both of them.

“We can’t.” Troy’s jaw is clenched.

“We were safer in the desert. There’s too many people here.” Troy shakes his head. “Troy, come on, we can’t stay here. You’re going to freeze to death.”

“I’m fine,” Troy mumbles, breath rising in a mist before him, “Have to keep you safe.”

“Troy…”

Her brother presses his eyes shut and shakes his head again. “It’s better for you… here.” He draws in a shivering breath. “Nothing… to hurt you.”

Tyreen knows exactly what he’s talking about, and he’s right. As they wander deeper into the frozen wasteland the greenery is dwindling, giving her body less to draw on, the headaches becoming tolerable background noise as opposed to the constant, nauseating buzz when she was brushing through the foliage a few miles back.

She wants to tell him to leave, that she’ll be fine here on her own; but she knows that’s a lie, and he’d never abandon her anyway. Troy is the only thing keeping both of them alive, and it’s killing him.

She looks up at him, in time to see his head drooping as he drifts into an uneasy sleep, resting against her shoulder. She’s managed not to burn him since that fateful night in the nexus, but she also hasn’t managed to do anything else. For a few days Troy had insisted that she try channelling the energy she’s built up, convinced that that’s what had hurt him, but after several frustrating, failed attempts, Tyreen was starting to think they’d both imagined it. Maybe she hadn’t burnt him, just clawed at him a whole lot, enough to draw blood. That must have been it.

She wishes she could sleep. Instead, the best she can do is curl up close to her brother and keep him warm until the morning sunlight seeps in through the windows of their makeshift home.

* * *

Tyreen is sitting in the snow a few hundred feet outside of Troy’s latest charge when she hears him screaming. The sound reverberates within her, shaking her to her core, raw and visceral and unmistakably him. She’s on her feet before she can stop herself.

He’s done this before… don’t get involved… it’s too dangerous… She stops trying to convince herself. She’s never heard that sound from him before. He needs her.

Nobody looks at her when she bursts into the camp. They’re too busy huddling, watching, jeering at something she can’t see up ahead. The ground is spattered, warm and wet and soft with blood, so much blood. They’re at least a hundred yards away and the vicious spray reaches as far as where she’s standing.

Tyreen feels as though she’s wading through water as she approaches the spectacle. She can’t move fast enough, terrified of what she’s going to see, but desperate to see it. The buzzing headache is creeping an icy path behind her eyes and obscuring her vision, her heart pounding so hard and so fast her chest hurts and she can’t breathe, her blood races like molten metal through her veins and she can see out of the corner of her eye the vibrant blue radiating from her, the only visual she can place as the static pulls a cloudy veil over her sight.

She isn’t sure if the crowd parts for her, or if she pushes through them. The taunting subsides for a moment as her presence is noted, and then starts back up again, wordless yelling and mockery coming from all sides. Who is she? She shouldn’t be here.

Tyreen doesn’t need to see clearly to know what she’s looking at. Her brother is slumped motionless before her, propped half-upright against something, his form through her murky vision painted merciless red, red, red. She can make out her hands in front of her as she reaches out to him, her palms coming away from his torso hot and damp. Her mouth forms silent words, begging him to wake up, fingers drawing thick red lines along his face.

“This is heartwarmin’, truly.” The voice comes from all around her, barely audible through the haze of shock. Tyreen gets unsteadily to her feet. The world tilts sideways. “But you can’t be here, darlin’.”

Tyreen half-staggers around to face the speaker. He’s a blurry mess of colour and motion, and he’s pointing something hefty and probably dangerous at her. “You got ten seconds to leave, or you’re joinin’ him.”

What happens next, Tyreen will later justify as self-defence. It’s a lie. She’s never wanted to hurt someone so badly. She wants him dead.

The figure takes a step towards her, and Tyreen moves, hand outstretched. She thinks she hears his shotgun go off as she connects with his throat. Something surges within her, rippling through her body and charging the air around her with a terrifying electricity. Her vision goes white.

Tyreen comes around to chaos. Her clothes cling to her uncomfortably, and she’s vaguely aware of screaming and raucous movement all around her. She looks down at her hands.

She’s covered in blood. It’s coating her arms, her body, drying against her face, plastering her hair against her forehead. Through the vibrant red, her tattoos glow faintly, the light dying peacefully against her skin. The headache is gone.

Heart in her throat, Tyreen reluctantly surveys the area around her and nearly passes out. The bandit who threatened her is gone, replaced by a violent spattering of blood and viscera. An amalgam of decimated organs and what might be clothing is dotted around, hanging from various buildings and structures, painting a few unfortunate nearby bandits caught in the splash zone. Only the gun remains intact, lying in the midst of the gore, seemingly untouched by any of it. It’s almost comical.

“Don’t touch me,” she says shakily, aware of one particularly brave or foolish bandit cocking his gun off to the side. He doesn’t need to be told twice. Tyreen casts a sweeping glance around her, and the remaining spectators scatter.

“Tyreen…”

“Troy! Oh my god!” Tyreen spins around and all-but throws herself at her brother. The colour is drained from his face, his skin cold and clammy, but he’s alive.

She pulls away suddenly, remembering what has just transpired. “Oh, fuck, oh my god, I didn’t-”

“That was... awesome,” Troy manages. He smirks weakly, hand reaching up to grasp her shoulder. Hand…

“Troy, your arm!”

Troy follows her gaze to bleeding crater where his arm used to be. It’s been blown completely from the socket.

“Huh,” he mumbles. He moves to touch the wound, and Tyreen grabs his wrist. “That’s not good, is it.”

“Can you walk?”

“Th... think so.” Troy attempts to push himself up with his remaining hand. “No.”

“I- I don’t know what to do.” Panic settles solidly in her throat as the magnitude of the situation dawns on her. “Troy, y - you need a doctor.”

“Yeah…” Troy trails off, his eyes starting to drift closed.

“No, no, god, don’t go to sleep, Troy-!” Tyreen taps his face firmly, hands shaking. He doesn’t respond. “Stay awake, please, wake up, oh my god - HELP!” She scopes the camp frantically. “SOMEONE HELP ME!” There must be something, someone who knows what to do, a settlement out here couldn’t last this long without medicine…

There. She can make out the crudely-drawn Aesculepion hammered into the ground a few hundred feet off.

“I’m gonna be back soon, okay?” She presses her forehead to her brother’s, fighting tears. “I’m getting help.”

She draws herself to her full height and takes a deep breath. Picks up the discarded shotgun with bloodied hands and marches towards the medical tent.

* * *

Troy’s hand twitches lightly against hers. Tyreen springs to attention, the most she’s moved in two days.

“Hey,” she greets him softly as his eyes flutter open, “Don’t move too much. You’re in safe hands.”

Regardless, Troy awkwardly tries to push himself upright, knocked off balance by the missing appendage. Tyreen pushes him gently back to lie down.

“You need to rest. Doctor’s orders.” She shoots a smile over to the far corner, where the medic is cowering, terrified. “Isn’t that right?”

“You’re not glowing,” Troy murmurs, his voice cracking slightly from the anaesthesia. He moves over like he wants to touch her. “I can’t feel my arm, Ty.”

Tyreen brushes the hair from his face and smiles tenderly. “We can fix that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Troy squeezes her hand weakly, too worn out to inquire any further. He mumbles something incoherent and sinks back into the mattress. Tyreen pulls the worn blankets over him, feeling real relief for the first time.

It’s refreshing. Liberating. Nobody’s out to get them here, far contrary - the commune dwellers have proven quite eager to help her. For once in her life, they don’t have to run.

#borderlands #the calypso twins #Troy calypso #Tyreen calypso #gratuitous self indulgence #real talk i had a blast writing this i hope yall enjoy reading it #more to come!! like comment and subscribe!!#it's 6am i should go to bed #ive gotta go to college in like two hours lmao

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dafukdidiwatch · 5 years

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REVIEWING TIME TRAVELING BABIES

Right, so, I have now complete understanding (hopefully) over the progression of the Universes that have popped up. Alpha-Jegus->Karkat->John->Jane. I got that.

I also got that the Reset just changed the time/location the babies were originally going to. Pre-Reset, the babies would have gone into the past and grown up to the gang we all know and love. Post-Reset, they would have gone to a different dimension in different locations and turn into the Alpha-Verse.

So that means John (our boy john) was the one to create ALL the babies, and ALL 8 sets of both Alpha and Beta-verse.

And since each baby didn’t launch yet without a gift/present, let’s see where each of those things ended up.

JANE

She got the hat. In Beta-Verse, she didn’t really much wear the hat (seeing how most of the time she is a ghost).

But in Alpha-Verse, Jane uses the hat as a way of expressing her interest in Detectives. Mean that hat went through an explosive landing and time, but still has ink splots on from when Beta-Dad went through Skaia.

JAKE

He got the Guns.

in Beta-Verse, he grew up to be Harley, named after his dog. He had duel-Pistols, which he used to accidentally kill the Colonel. Baby Jade was messing with them, prompting Tavros to move the guns away from her, and killing Harley instead.

In Alpha-Verse, Jake just has the guns and his weapon of choice are the guns.

DAVE

Dave got Maplehoof. He stole Rose’s birthday present.

In Beta-Verse, his baby ass killed her gift (the bastard) and Bro just made it into a leather bib for some fucking reason.

Alpha-Verse, yeah we haven’t really seen the original Maplehoof, just this tiny version of it. So my theory is that Maplehoof died again in Alpha-Verse, and Dave grew up, wanted to replicate that, and just used his vast wealth to create a tiny-ass version of Maplehoof, like what happened in Spy Kids 2.

ROXY

So this one is a bit easy. Mutant Mew-Mew was created by Rose, taken in game by Rose, and John ended up with her. Given to baby Roxy.

In Beta, this was probably the thing that inspired he to be a scientist, to find the secrets of the 4 eyed cat and study with her super secret science lab underground. And honestly? It is probably the same cat, so I guess it lives eternal, unless Beta-Roxy makes a new cat every so often.

In Alpha.....

I think we know her love of cats...and science

JOHN

John got a book, specifically, John got the book that his ghost-grandma signed.

So original history was John had a non-signed version of the book, took it with him, Ghost-Grandma wrote a message, dropped it down for John to find the book in the Ecto-room, and for baby John to crawl on it.

From there it killed grandma, but Beta-Dad found said book and kept it in his safe. Which John opened and has currently.

In Alpha-Verse, John crashed with the book. Was raised as a comedian pro, kept this book as an heirloom, which was passed down from generation to generation along with his body, until it was in Jane’s house all her life.

DIRK

God, GOD! Fuck this puppet, you are Fucking Eternal and I hate you.

So, if I get this fucking right.......Gamzee gave Dave nightmares and he got haunted by Cal. Dream-Cal was picked up by Cop-Guy, and floated his way to the Ecto-Room to be with Dirk.

In Beta-Verse, Cal went back in time to Dirk, where Dirk took, loved, cherish, used to raise/beat up Dave, used to fight Jack on Prospit, where Jack stole Cal, took with him when ransacking the Trolls, sent back in time to Aradia, re-suited in a green suit, for the Troll’s Black Queen to ecto-create a brand-new fucking Scratch (hate that guy still), and Gamzee currently has it.

Alpha-Verse, Dirk was raised with Cal. I have no idea why Alpha-Dave didn’t burn it when Dirk came crashing in, but whatever. Dirk loves the bastard, and I do not.

See, I got a theory. You know how poltergeist could fuck with people by like doing demonic whispering and leading them to the dark side in movies? Yeah, I 100% agree with Anti-Jegus that Cal is Bad Juju. Gamzee made it out of anger/rage, so it became evil. A fucking Swag-Bag of evil.

I 100% believe that Cal did like, secret evil dark whisperings of “you should go kill” “killing is fun, totally, all the cool kids do it.” Not to say Gamzee didn’t also just went nuts from withdrawl and just wanted to kill, but he had Cal encouraging it because Cal is t r a s h.

So, Cal is now loose in Alpha-Verse, and I am just Waiting for the next victim of Cal’s Bad Juju Dark Spirit Shit.

(SIDEBAR: please fund me on Patreon so I can get enough money to make my own Cal Effigy and just burn the bastard)

Finally, RABBIT

Yeah, THESE GUYS. The Rabbit has a Long Fucking History, doesn’t it?

Dave bought Con Air Rabbit. Gave it to John for his birthday.

John, in a moment of Con Air Purity, Gave that Rabbit to Rose.

Rose grew up with the rabbit, but it was torn. So with John’s gift of Knitting-Supplies, she reknitted it to send to John on the same Birthday.

(So John had 2 rabbits at the same time)

During the Same “Con Air Purity” Moment, John gave that Rabbit to Jade.

Jade grew up with that rabbit, and for months (somehow) kept sending it Back and Forth with Jake (again....somehow!) to improve it.

Resulting in Liv, John’s current Rabbit, who helped him deliver the Bomb to both Rose and Dave to kill (but actually create) The Green Sun.

The long Complex life of Beta-Rabbit.

And it changes in Apha-Verse.

So, Dave gives rabbit to John, who gives it to Baby Rose. In Alpha, rabbit just stays as a rabbit. Given to Roxy, who dresses it as a Wizard and given to Jane for her birthday.

With this rabbit, Dave->John->Beta Baby Rose-> John -> Baby Jade. Only this time, baby Jane goes to Alpha-Land, passed down to Jake, who dressed it up and gave to Jane for the same birthday.

Meaning that Lil Seb

Is just another Con Air Rabbit turned to Cyborg, only with more of a shortcut, than what happened with Liv.

#dafukblog #homestuck #act6 int2 #hs226 #analysis

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osmw1 · 4 years

Text

Crowbar Nurse Chapter 12 — The Lamer the Technique, The Stronger the Kiryū

My consciousness resurfaced from the depths of a deep dreamless slumber, similar to the feeling of waking from anesthesia… or so I’ve been told by my patients.

My tongue squirmed, trying to rehydrate the dryness in my mouth. I surveyed my surroundings while still lying down… I knew where I was.

Uptown — the second stage of the Emergency Partition Plan and lovingly nicknamed Safehouse by fans of the game.

We managed to make our way here at last…

A sigh of relief trickled from my lips was followed by another deep lungful in, but the dry air cut my trachea as if I were breathing in razor blades.

Glimpses of the bare, windowless room peeked through the impenetrable red iron door. Where I had lain wasn’t a bed, but something closer to a bench you’d find in the waiting area of a hospital. The air in here was musty, evident that this room has long since seen visitors. And it was also dry because the air conditioning units lack a humidification feature?

Though glad as I was to make it here safe and sound, equal amounts of bitterness welled up in me, cursing the reality of the situation: This was no dream.

I’m not sure how we got in. Normally, you’d need to find a hidden NPC or the key in a secret room… well, I suppose I should count my blessings.

Lying here all day wouldn’t do us any favors. I sat up while taking another large breath.

“Finally awake, I see. It’s a shame that you are not dead.” “… Oh, it’s you, Elizabeth.”

Some distance away, the voice emanated from an office chair that looked to be built by the lowest bidder. The sour look on her face indicated the fruit she was munching on might have been as well.

“You fainted as soon as things had settled down. Kiryū turned pale as a ghost, fearing that he had pushed you too hard.” “Oh, jeez… Sorry about that. That was poor timing though, seeing things haven’t settled down. Not until we reach the safehouse, at least.” “We were fine. Sure, we might have taken a few wrong turns, but we managed to stumble our way here alright. It was nothing we couldn’t handle on our own… so he said. You have been running on fumes and working long hours, haven’t you? Adrenaline only gets you so far before your body clocks out.”

With her hand clutching her temple, Elizabeth looked just as poorly. More jarring was how tied around her ankles was a makeshift rope fashioned from bedsheets.

“Speaking of which, where is Kiryū anyway?” “Him? He took two NPC’s with him to the supermarket in search for more food. … look at this. All this just to make sure I wouldn’t kill you.” “Hmm? What about it?” “These sheets are all part of Kiryū’s contraption. He tied my ankles to the lever that opens the door so that if I were to force my way towards you, the zombies would all rush in.” “Wow.” “He even went around confiscating any objects large enough to be a weapon and tucked it underneath the bed you’re sleeping on.

She looked helpless all tied up like that. … Kiryū sure is cautious. But that makes it even weirder for someone so cautious to run out on his own, leaving behind me and Elizabeth, a potential threat. I guess I should first check the place where a rifle should be… Wait, what?! There’s only a pistol and a shotgun here!

“… I wonder if he’d be alright with just two NPC’s…”

I mumbled as I sat up from the leather bench. Why did he go and do that? I mean, you can have up to five soldiers in your—err, survivors following you at the same time.

“He said he was going to recruit the NPC’s that he left behind at the start of the game. I suppose he is also going to take the chance to level up as well.” “Why is he in such a… Oh, maybe he’s worried about the seven-day limit.” “What limit?” “So, after seven days pass in this game, an endless amount of zombies will come and overrun you and that means game over.” “How awful.” “I know, right? Such a shame, especially because it’s such a fun game.”

I awkwardly chuckled before taking a sip of water from a plastic bottle underneath the bench, instantly dissolving the parchedness from before.

“… Sorry that we left you just lying there.”

Her words slowly stumbled out,

“That Kiryū really wanted to help, but besides you, none of us knew how to use syringes. Stuffing your mouth with herbs couldn’t wake you up either.” “Yes, I suppose Medicinal Herbs don’t help with fainting.” “Right…”

Elizabeth’s response marked the end of the topic. I looked towards her to see the remainder of half-eaten fruit resting on her lap and her lips sucked in. She must have been fraught, nervous.

Shoot. How do I break this awkward silence…?

My nursing training can come into play here. Hark, thee! … Umm, I learned this technique called assertive communication in class… What was the trick to it again?

“… The air in here sure is dry.”

Panic beset me and the words that came out were nothing but unengaging small talk.

“Yes… I suppose powering down the air conditioning would help.”

Elizabeth followed up with the pointless topic I offered, perhaps similarly hoping to cast away the awkwardness.

“I already tried doing so with the controls on the wall but to no avail. Perhaps the cooling system is centrally controlled. The air conditioning in the lecture halls at my university were just as annoying too.” “Oh, maybe, yeah… Speaking of which, what did you study in university?” “If we know too much of each other, it would just be awkward if either of us dies. … I mean, if you really want to know, I suppose I do not mind telling you that I am licensed for early childhood education, elementary school education, and childcare—where I currently work.” “Wow! That must’ve been a lot of hard work.” “It certainly was… and I was frequently rewarded with unlawful overtime. Hard work sure pays off.”

She turned her gaze upwards and unto the ceiling; I couldn’t help but to sigh too.

“It’s tough before and after graduating, hey? I guess I’m in the same boat as you. Being thrown into this world sure is scary, but also, being torn away from my super overworked lifestyle isn’t the worst thing either. I mean, it’d be bad if we were trapped here forever though.”

At the very least, I was able to share a laugh in agreement with Elizabeth.

“I wholly understand you. There really isn’t too much you can do with your own powers to escape the confines of a terrible job. Perhaps this world was created as… something like respite care. Less than likely though…” “Hey, Elizabeth?”

Though interrupting the girl deep in thought, I managed to find resolve and approached Elizabeth.

“I’m wondering if you could tell me a little about what you know about this world.” “…” “I don’t see myself surviving if we continue on like this. More importantly, though, someone important to you died so that you could return to the real world, am I right…?” “What makes you think so?”

Her voice strained and wavered.

“Gamer sense,” I said with a shrug and a smile, and continued.

“I’m sorry if I’m wrong, but that’s probably the reason why that a know-it-all like you is hurting. But even then, you’ve experienced something very painful, haven’t you?” “You’re…”

Her voice trailed off and the safehouse sunk back to a silence. Not an awkward like before, but a silence for scrambling thoughts.

“… it isn’t as if I know more than the very basics.”

There was another good length of time before Elizabeth expanded on her thoughts.

“There’s seemingly an administrator in this game.” “An administrator?” “At the very least, that is what they called themselves. Perhaps it would be more prudent label them as the creator of this world. Someone or something with a twisted sense of purpose. We stand no chance of overcoming that being for as long as we share the same world.”

An overpowered being.

She continues,

“I don’t know of what it wants. What I do know is that all the people who get summoned here are always exhausted and one of them are designated as the ‘core’.” “What happens if you get picked to be core?” “Nothing comes from it… No, actually, they get to bring an electronic device, like a phone or a laptop. With it, you can check who is in which game and to travel between game worlds. You know that already though.” “Right, I remember.” “The games available are… Well, last time, they were all games which the core had played lots. It may be the same this time around. We also never have successfully charged the device last time, so use your phone with great caution.” “Argh… I’ll try my best not to check my phone. Let me actually just turn it off…” “A sage idea.”

Elizabeth concurred with a nod.

“Till this day I have no idea what it… the Administrator wants. Maybe it’s some sort of alien with unfathomable technology, or maybe it’s some time traveler hoping to destroy all wage slaves. Or maybe, it’s the vengeful spirit of someone who was worked to death. I don’t know.” “…” “You’re thinking it sounds ridiculous. But honestly, that is all I know. From the two times I have been through this, the bastard is possibly recreating these game worlds with an emulator or something. Our consciousnesses is then pulled over to this side then assigned to the physical bodies of characters from various video games. And then…” “If the core dies, does that mean… everybody else gets liberated?” “… Yes, there is that as well.”

Her assent was marked with discomfort, but I was only looking for the facts. I assured her that was the case and there was no need to feel guilty for it before further probing her.

“Just for reference, when was the first time you were brought to this side?” “The spring of 2014. The second time was… autumn in 2016. I truly have no luck with workplaces.” “Was it the first or the second time that you witnessed the death of the core?” “The second. First time around, I had returned before I knew what was going on. I suppose the core was killed, but I have no idea. For both cases though, I ended up simply losing conscious for about a week in the real world.” “I see. And have you beaten the world, like, as a game before?” “No.” “Okay. Have you ever been chosen as the core?” “No… The core for my second time here was someone who I got to know well. A good friend.” “That… that must’ve been tough.” “Yes, I suppose.”

In a sense, discomfort, but more so a mournful pain marked her confirmation this time. No doubt that it was an excruciating experience.

“She told me she worked at a bank and that she liked games. Perhaps people who like to game are more likely to be chosen to be the core… Or perhaps not. I mean, I game quite a lot too.” “Ya boy’s a hardcore gamer himself too.”

A third voice interjected and joined our conversation. I looked up without thinking; Elizabeth whipped around in a startle. Behind her stood Kiryū and the unstoppable hellish army in tow. He’s… really looking like something else. The buggy was filled to the brim with supplies. Various weapons and ammunition were dangling from each soldier, tied on with the makeshift rope. Among everyone else, though, Kiryū was carrying the heaviest load: Nick. The frozen protagonist was cradled to his back with what seems to be a baby sling made with the same reused bedsheets.

“Sounds like liking video games is the requirement for being transported to this dimension and not for being chosen as the core. There’s probably ‘nother factor we’re missin’.”

How can someone be so cool when he speaks but look so lame cradling an adult baby?

“Since when did you return?!”

Elizabeth couldn’t hide the fact that he took her by surprise. There’s something else though. She looks tenser than she was before. Being threatened to be eaten by zombies and being held prisoner would do that you. Conscious of that, I interrupted the two of them.

“Hey, Kiryū! Hey! We were in the middle of a serious conversation just now. Which part did you start listening in from?” “Pretty much from the beginning.”

He severed the connection between Elizabeth’s ankle and the door lever with a knife. His knot seemed to be too tight to be untied by hand. Kiryū’s really not going easy on her, huh? No, it’s more than that. Look closely—isn’t he gritting his teeth like he’s Harry Callahan?

“It must’ve been really hard for you to hold back from ridiculing her theories, I bet.” “… you don’t know the half of it! How the hell would an emulator be capable of recreating worlds, let alone transferring consciousnesses?! That’s too much fiction to your science. What, do we all have electrodes sticking into our brains or somethin’ right now? No, wait, you’re right. We’re in the middle of an alien abduction because that’s totally what it is.” “Yeesh, okay, I get you. Jeez. We were just chatting, y’know? Just wondering about the what ifs. Smiling and nodding can be the key skill to good communication, Kiryū.” “That’s a skill I couldn’t care less about. Unfortunately, I can’t help but to call you two out on your scientific inaccuracies. I’m in too deep with machines both as work and as a passion to care about interpersonal relationships.” “In too deep with machines? Are you some sort of inventor?” “In a sense… Like, I do a lot of benchmarking. I love running benchmarks on every video card that comes on the market.” “… Where’s the fun in that?”

Fed up with our conversation, Elizabeth heaved a sigh. Kiryū untied his sling and threw Nick off of his back and onto the ground.

“Kiryū! There’s only one Nick in the game, so treat him better!” “As if. More of him popped up at the beginning of the level. I also took the chance to secure a large batch of unlimited ammo rifles too.” “Uh… what?!” “I explored a bit of the map we’re in right now… Just a bit ahead in the game is the Shooting Range, right?” “Um, yes, that’s right.” “I found a really rudimentary bug there.”

He had a smug smile as he looked around at our army.

“So, you know how when you’re at the range, you can shoot your guns dry, leave, and come back to them at max ammo, right?” “Oh… that’s right. It was like that in the game as well.” “I tried it out with the pistol first. I shot it until I was out of ammo, left the gun on the ground, and then left the range… What do you think happened?” “… What happened?” “A fully loaded pistol appeared in Nick’s hand. I went back inside, and the empty gun was still just lying there.” “… Whoa, no kidding! That means you can generate endless guns like that!” “Bingo! Awesome, right? Just like you said, we can do that to get as many guns as we want. But it seems like we can only duplicate guns available at the range, so I couldn’t get any more combat knives. I’ve seen similar bugs in other games, so that got me thinkin’ if I could get it to work here… but there you have it.”

There were no other words other than “smug” to describe Kiryū’s face. I took a careful look and noticed all of the soldiers were wielding assault rifles with unlimited ammo. Not only that, but every soldier had a bedsheet baby sling and a Nick on their backs. We had more in our army than I could count. There were at least twenty of them in the room.

“Wait, what about the five-follower limit… Oh, I get it! Nick’s a player character too!” “That’s exactly it. Each Nick we have, we get five more soldiers.” “Awesome! We’re duplicating everything!” “Pretty good thinking, eh?” “Oh, boy, this is going to be so much fun!” “I hate to admit it, but I’m getting a little excited too.” “… What in heaven’s name are you talking about…?”

Left behind in our excitement was Elizabeth, who didn’t understand any of it. Someone who doesn’t even know who Sera is of course wouldn’t know anything about zombie games. It took a thorough explanation of the game’s system for her to finally follow along.

“I see. Well, in any case, it’s plain to see you have accomplished something incredible. Still, why has Nick multiplied?” “When I began to take Nick away from start of this level, the game kept wanting to return Nick to the proper spawn location for the level change. And since there wasn’t a limit, I just kept doing it until I had about twenty Nicks.” “How curious. Nick would disappear from your hands and be returned to the spawn area… is that not a little weird?” “Well, it’s a bug. Normally in the game, it’s neither possible to leave a gun at the range nor is it to take the protagonist away before the game even starts. Can’t say I’ve expected any of this to happen the way it did.” “This world is very curious indeed. Kinda makes you wish that the creators made up their mind whether they wanted a survival horror or a sci-fi game. Oh, right! Let’s dupe the grenade launcher afterwards. We shouldn’t have access it to it just yet, but I’ve got an idea how to get our hands on one.” “What are you planning on doing with all this firepower…?”

After seeing the sly smiles on our faces, Elizabeth was utterly fed up with us. However, seeing where we were now, what other choices did we have? We’re gamers after all.

“First, let’s go and beat this game. You don’t know what that’s like though, right, Elizabeth? We’re going to take total control of this zombie-infested world with our superior firepower. Maybe on your first time here, someone else went and cleared the game and that’s how you got out. You never know.”

As soon as I said that, a terrible roar echoed in the background.

■Kiryū, II

A software engineer who is… supposedly very cautious. Nevertheless, he lets his guard down around Sera, but that should prove to be fine. Thirty years of age but acts like a smug twenty-three-year-old when he discovers bugs. Kiryū may seem to be too cruel towards Elizabeth, but perhaps he is normally this suspicious towards women—or rather, anybody. Though it may be inevitable due to personal reasons, nevertheless, it does not detract from the fact that he is too wary.

contents: /ch001/ /ch002/ /ch003/ /ch004/ /ch005/ /ch006/ /ch007/ /ch008/ /ch009/ /ch010/ /ch011/ /ch012/ /next/

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mass-effect-galaxy · 5 years

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Joan’s Song 6: Hunting Asari

A thresher maw!? Really!? Again!? “Back! Back! Back!”, Joan Shepard was shouting as loud as she could, even though Kaidan sat right beside her, and even though he already had brought the Mako to maximum rearward speed. A load of acid spit went down where the vehicle had been a moment before. Some of it must have hit one of the front wheels for the Mako suddenly made a slight turn to the right. The motion dampers quickly stabilized the vehicle. “Lost a tire”, Kaidan just confirmed, surprisingly calm. Shepard was anything but calm. She had faced those monsters on Akuze before. And she had seen what they were able to do with soldiers trapped inside these metal coffins. Her next order should have been ‘Chief Williams, identified target, fire at will.’ Instead she just screeched “Ash!” “On it”, came the confirmation from the seat behind Shepard. The Mako’s main gun started barking. A warning signal reminded Shepard that she had been pulling the trigger of the secondary gun all the time. The weapon now had overheated and had to go through its cooling cycle.

The Mako slightly jumped when riding over a hill. It could barely be felt inside. Kaidan said, “solid rock” and halted the vehicle. Right, even a thresher maw could not break through solid rock. They should be safe here; says so in the chapter on maws in the Alliance’s xeno-combat manual. Shepard had written that chapter after Akuze. “Damn gun needs calibrating”, Ashley said. “How long?”, Shepard demanded to know. A moment of silence, then, “done, Commander. Let’s go and get that worm!”

Finding an asari archeologist in the Artemis Tau cluster did sound easier than it was. The extranet listed three prothean sites in that cluster. Dr. T’Soni had published on all three: There was some kind of penal colony from the “Post Citadel Period” on Therum. A research post from the “Proto Imperial Period” on Sharjila, and a “presumably religious” structure from the “Imperial Era II” on Edolus. Shepard remembered that her history teacher had told her that whenever archeologists label something as “religious” they, in fact, have no idea what it is.

Usually, she would have clicked away all those boring texts, but her “contact” with a prothean had made her curious. The University of Thessia was leading in research on the protheans. Their history was divided into three periods: the “Proto Imperial Period” before they founded their empire, the “Imperial Period”, which was further divided into four “eras”, and the “Post Citadel Period”, the time after which the protheans had abandoned the Citadel and their empire had collapsed in a civil war lasting for centuries. There was a mining colony on Therum, the other two were uninhabited. Shepard had sent a request to the miners and decided to check on the other planets while waiting for an answer.

“Wow, we should add this shot to the manual as the ‘William’s Maneuver’.” Ashley boasted while they examined the body of the thresher maw. “Dream on, Chief, you just were lucky”, Shepard replied with a smile. “You are a space tyrant, Ma’am.” about four meters of the maw’s body were on the surface. Ashley had hit it right at the moment it came up. Impossible to say how much more worm was still underground. A few meters away was a battlefield. The scenery was all too familiar to Shepard: a Grizzly, part of that vehicle was melted; a couple of mauled bodies. Whatever got hit by the maw’s acid melted away, metal, armor, arms, legs, torsos, heads. Akuze. The images of Lieutenant Burnside’s Grizzly, she trying to get inside, slipping on entrails, touching acid, Alena, bleeding, dying, reaching out for her. Shepard had pushed her back to get away. She suddenly felt as sick as did back then and had to throw up. Ashley gently touched her back, “Let’s get you off this world, Jo.”

Back on the Normandy, Therum hadn’t responded so far. Shepard send a report about the dead soldiers on Edolus to Admiral Hackett and placed her name on the list of report recipients, meant she would be informed anytime someone else reported anything related to it. Their next destination was Sharjila.

There were no signs of life at the prothean site on Sharjila. However, there was a compound in use a few clicks away. If Dr. T’Soni was on this planet, it must be there. When the Mako climbed over a hill overlooking that compound, something came flying in their direction. A rocket. It was deflected by the Mako’s shields. “Looks like this is the right place”, Kaidan said.

The two guns of the Mako had made short work of whatever resistance was outside that bunker. “Chief, would you please be so kind as to knock at that door?”, Shepard asked with some mock “royal” accent,. “A pleasure, Ma’am”, Ashley replied and fired the main gun. The gate of that building was obliterated and Kaidan accelerated the Mako to maximum speed. The vehicle crashed through the debris of the gate and a wall behind it. They ended up in some warehouse. Lots of armed people were running around. Ashley meanwhile had manually loaded a stun grenade into the Mako’s gun which she now fired into that hall. Its sound was able to destroy the eardrums of most species and might even be lethal to some. Before anyone in that warehouse was able to recover, the three marines had dismounted and started cleaning out the room. Shepard and Ashley were wielding shotguns, Kaidan his auto-pistol. Suddenly something massive hit Shepard. Her armor started vibrating, a warning that the shields were off and she better took cover. She dodged behind a crate and saw some movement on a balcony. “Sniper”, Shepard shouted. “Got him”, Kaidan replied. He used his biotics to pull the sniper off the balcony. A turian; he was helplessly floating towards them while Shepard and Ashley used him for target practice.

“Commander, is that Dr. T’Soni?”, Kaidan was bending over an asari body. Shepard started scanning her face, “Doesn’t look like her.” It took the spectre database a few moments to compare the scan with trillions of filed faces. Finally, it came up with a name: Dahlia Dantius, wanted for murder and slavery on Kahje, reward 300,000 Credits. Also wanted for fraud on Irune, reward 500,000 Credits. Shepard whistled. Even without Dr. T’Soni, this trip had paid off. She made a full body scan of the asari and sent the results to both addresses. Now, they only had to figure out how to get the Mako back into the open.

When entering the Knossos System, it became clear why Therum didn’t answer: Geth! “Several geth drop-ships in orbit of that planet.”, Joker confirmed. Drop-ships were not armed and the Normandy was able to destroy three of them before the others managed to jump to FTL. Shepard, Ashley, and Kaidan dropped in the Mako. Finding Dr. T’Soni was not much of a problem: they simply followed the path of destruction the geth had left. The team ran into several geths, both the normal robots as well as those large ‘Armatures’. None were a problem for the Mako. The situation, however, was most confusing. Ashley brought it up first, “Why would T’Soni attack this colony? They must have found something truly important.” Kaidan had a different idea,” Or maybe, the geth attacked it because the doctor is here?” This even made less sense. Shepard shrugged, “We’ll find out soon enough.” They had reached the entrance to the underground dig site.

This structure clearly had been a prison: there were open cells on several levels, only accessible by two elevators, one on the “wall-side”, probably the original access. A newer one was running along the “open side”, most likely built by the archeologists. In one of the cells, there was an asari caught in some kind of stasis field. “Dr. Liara T’Soni?”, Shepard asked. “Thanks to the Goddess!”, the voice of the asari sounded damped through the field. “I came in here to find shelter from the geth. Now I am trapped and can’t get out. Please, I am in here for two days now. I need food and water, and“ she continued, blushing, “a change of clothing.” “Doesn’t look like the evil mastermind we were looking for.”, Ashley said grinning. “What?”, Liara replied confused, “I am just a researcher. I don’t know why the geth are after me.” “That’s pretty obvious, honey.”, Ashley said disdainfully, “your mommy has become Saren’s pet and now his geth after your blue butt too.” It seems, as much as Shepard was able to fall in love with complete strangers within seconds, Ashley was able to develop an animosity in the same amount of time. “Benezia? But I haven’t spoken to her for years. And I don’t know a Saren.” Kaidan finally interrupted this interrogation. “We have hostiles coming down the ramp, Commander.”

Someone was trying to call the elevator, but Ashley had blocked its door: ancient trick; always works. Now, the geth had to come through the dig site. It was several floors below Shepard; no cover, a perfect kill zone. Ashley noticed a large device down there, “A miming laser. We can use it to blast a way through to the asari.” “Provided, we get it working.”, Shepard chipped in. “Shepard, please”, Kaidan said, somewhat bugged, “it is designed to be operated by unskilled workers. We’ll figure it out.” “Your turn, LT.”, Shepard shrugged. “I am a vorcha when it comes to computers.” “And here come the flashlights!” Ashley already had raised her sniper rifle.

There was a krogan with the geth, but he died all the same. Kaidan indeed was able to get the miming laser working. However, he couldn’t turn it off again. He seemed to have launched some automated mining program that now started to demolish the prothean structure. “Run!”, Shepard shouted, “I’ll get the asari.” Kaidan and Ashley took the “external” elevator while Shepard used the prothean one to get into the asari’s cell. Another console was waiting for her. The symbols on it didn’t look like any writing she had ever seen. Liara realized the problem, “Look for one with two lines and a circle, it reads ’off’ in Prothean.” Shepard got it, released Liara, grabbed her hand and dragged her out. In time. The prothean “Imperial Institue of Correction No. 409″ had been in use for 103 years. It was dormant for another 50,000 years. It collapsed two hours after Shepard’s visit.

#mass effect #therum #commander shepard #femshep #femshep x ashley #shepard x ashley #ashley williams #kaidan alenko #liara t'soni #joans song

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negasonicimagines · 6 years

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Thanks, Wade.

Finally, someone other than Dawna has given me an idea to run with! Thanks so much to @ceylon-morphe286 !! You’re an absolute sweetheart and I had so much fun working with you to create this piece!! (Also, I know Deadpool doesn’t hurt kids, but for comedic purposes let’s just say he does. And, clearly, he’s a good enough marksman to miss on purpose, so he could be fucking with you.)

The battle was quite graphic, you honestly don’t know how you got in the middle of it. One second, you were strolling around the city, listening to Danger Days, the next you were in danger. A boulder flies at your head, and you’re shoved out of the way.

“Hey, dumbass, are you trying to get yourself killed?!”

“You saved me,” you say, gaping at the angel in front of you.

“Kind of my job, shit-for-brains.”

“Thank you, for saving my life and all,” is all you have to say.

“We’ve been over this. It’s what I do. Weirdo. Scram!”

“Agh! What did I do?!” You question the red-suited superhero-looking guy who’s currently shooting at you.

“You bought the last chocolate chip cookie!” he yells back, chasing you through the streets.

Until you’re clipped by a bus.

“Oh my god, she fuckin’ dead,” Wade references a Vine.

“Deadpool!” Your rescuer from the other day groans, recognizing you. “I just saved her life, could you try not ending it?”

“B..but my cookie…”

“Who gives a fuck?” She asks him, before turning her attention to you. “Where are you hurt?”

“I, uh… I might have a bruise on my shin?”

She looks at you critically, and when she helps you up, her hand touching yours, even for a second, makes you blush.

“You’re really lucky you’re not, y’know, dead. That bus was speeding and ran a red light,” She explains, and you barely manage to hear her, too focused on her face. “What’s with that dopey expression of yours? You don’t have a concussion, do you? I don’t want to deal with that.”

“Um… N-no concussion, I don’t think…”

“Good. Well, uh, see you around, I guess. Since you keep getting in danger and all.”

You were helping your cousin’s girl scout troop sell cookies by supervising them as they went door to door when the apartment you were in lit up in flames. All that was there was a Janitor’s cart, and the fire was getting closer and closer. It was blocking your way to the door, but you were close to the window.

“Toss the cleaners out the window so they don’t blow up,” you tell the girls, not even sure where that came from. Fire department is taking too long. “Hey, you guys learned how to braid, right?”

The girls, all terrified, nod. You offer them giant rolls of toilet paper. “Let’s get closer to the window, and we can braid it tight, long, and fast, okay? And then we’ll braid those braids together, to make a rope.”

You and the four girls you’re with work as hard as you can. The fire department gets there once you’re done, and the girls climb down the rope and safely land on the trampoline. They can only get down one at a time, and you’re sure you weigh as much as at the very least one and a half of them.

You accept your fate, glad you could at least help the little girls get to safety when she comes in.

“It’s about time I introduced myself, considering I’ve saved your stupid ass so many times. Negasonic Teenage Warhead.”

“Is that your real name?”

“Fuck no! What kind of shitty ass parents do you think I have? Come on, I’m fireproof, I’ll help you get to safety, whatever your probably dumb and totally not a cool code-name name is.”

“Y/N,” you tell her.

Damn it, why’s she gotta have a name as pretty as her face? Ellie thinks, taking your hand and leading you out of the flames, tossing flaming wreckage out of the way and allowing you to escape.

“Are you trying to kill yourself?” She asks.

“No, I was looking at the sunset. And then I fell.”

She snickers cruelly at this as her mentor reaches down and plucks you from where you dangle off the edge of your roof.

“Young one, there are many resources if you are feeling sad. This is not a solution.”

“I’m not trying to kill myself, I promise!” You inform them. “...I’m just clumsy, that’s all,” you add shyly.

You’re at the farmer’s market about to pluck an apple from a pyramid of fruits.

“Stop right there, Klutzy McGee, you’re not even touching that!” Deadpool stops you.

“Please don’t shoot me! There are plenty of other apples.”

“What? I’m not gonna shoot you, I’m gonna take you to your girlfriend!” He informs.

“I- I don’t have a girlfriend,” you tell DP, maybe he’s got you confused for someone else.

“Not yet!” He chirps, dragging you along by your wrist to a rather large home, well, a mansion. He knocks hard on the door and none other than Negasonic Teenage Warhead answers.

“I got your girlfriend!” He says cheerfully, and you blush deeply, but shake your head.

“She’s...Not my girlfriend.”

“Don’t be like that, Nega-hedgehog YA Novel Atomic Thing! You two would make a great couple!”

She looks at him skeptically, and then you, with a concerned expression. You realize you probably look like a tomato on steroids.

“You’re not going to spontaneously combust, are you? That gig’s kinda taken,” she informs you. ‘Do you want me to call the police?’ she mouths, and you shake your head.

“Ah, Deadpool and Y/N! Come in, have lunch!” Colossus says cheerfully.

You all eat BLTs, though Wade insists on having a knife with his to “feast upon it as the ancient lettuce-hunters would have.”

“So, Y/N, what would you like to do with your future?”

“I don’t know. I like helping people, maybe I’ll do something like be a nurse or a teacher.”

“Ooh, I like that!” Deadpool comments, gesturing with his steak knife and making you a little uneasy. You just know something bad is gonna happen with that knife.

“Ellie, pay attention,” Colossus requests, placing a hand on her shoulder. She shrugs it off, turning up the volume on her headphones to the point where you can hear it.

“You like MCR too?” You ask her.

“Uh, yeah… How can you hear this?”

“You have it cranked up really high,” you inform her.

“I can not hear it,” Piotr informs, and DP agrees. The two look curious.

“Oh, it’s nothing special. Just good hearing.”

“Well, damn. I was hoping you’d have an excuse to spend more time to spend with that grouchy teen over the-” He gestures towards Negasonic with the knife, and accidentally throws it at her face. You manage to catch it rather close to her face, gripping the blade. Blood drips down your wrist from your hand, and she looks at it with wide eyes, as does the rest of the group. “I stand corrected.”

“That is not normal, young one,” Colossus informs.

“Really? I’m sure she had no clue that it wasn’t completely fucking normal to catch knives thrown at people’s faces by a mercenary!” Deadpool snarks.

“Well done,” Ellie remarks, not to you, but to Wade’s sass skills.

“Have you always had such fast reflexes, Y/N?” Piotr asks.

“Uh, I mean, I guess. I would say I’ve been more, more lucky than anything.”

“But you’re always in trouble!” DP disagrees.

“And I’m not dead,” you point out.

“Ah…” Colossus sighs pensively.

Wade gets out one of his many knives from his belt and tosses it at Ellie. You catch this one as well, with your other hand.

“What the hell, Wilson?! Trying to kill me, now?”

“Not at all. Trying to get Y/N to save you. Ooh, watch this!” He aims so it’ll barely brush her shoulder, not that anyone else knows that when he shoots the pistol.

You catch the bullet between your wounded hands like a fly, feeling the burn.

“She’s totally a superhero, Iron Dick! Wait, that’s better for a different superhero in the Marvel universe, forget I said that one.”

“I’m not a superhero, I can barely take care of myself, let alone save people.”

“You saved Ellie three times from one of the best hit men in the world.”

“Well, I only saved her because-”

“Because you want to fuck her!” Wade cuts you off, and you look scandalized, a blush creeping onto your cheeks. Piotr and Ellie look at him like he’s insane, which he is, but- “What?! I see the goo-goo eyes Y/N gives her when she rescues her. I see the way Ellie looks at Y/N’s ass! Someone had to say something!”

You wish the ground underneath you would just vanish, you’re so embarrassed by his words that you don’t even notice his comment about Ellie checking you out.

“Y/N, would you like to join us? You are a gifted young girl and...”

“In case you missed the sign, this is kind of a place for gifted young people,” Wade finishes.

“I- I don’t really think I can help you, I’m sorry,” you deny his request.

“You can. I saw what you did for those girl scouts, and you said you wanted to help people earlier, right?” So, she was listening.

At Ellie’s insistence, you decide: “Oh.. Okay.”

“Yes! Another moody teen to annoy! Finally! I can’t get a rise out of any of the others!”

“Let us take you to the infirmary,” Piotr says.

“I’ll do it,” Ellie offers, walking you down the halls of the surprisingly quiet school. Deadpool follows closely behind, wanting to hear every detail of his OTP’s conversation.

The nurse, a mutant with the power to heal others, quickly fixes your wounds.

“Thanks for doing that, earlier. Saving me, I mean.” “W-well, I mean, I had to make it up to you s-somehow. All- All those times y-you saved me, I mean…” You tell her, more shy now that it’s pretty much just the two of you. You stand, walking over to the sink to wash the gunpowder off your hands. You lean against the counter, but you slip on a stray glob of hand-sanitizer that happened to be on the floor, grabbing onto a cot for purchase and trying to get up only causing you to slip more and more until you give up and let your face smush into the hardwood floor.

Ellie giggles at this, and you swear she sounds like an angel when she laughs.

You get up, rubbing your nose.

“Y’know, if you want to be one of the big shots like Colossus or whatever, you’re gonna have to be a lot less clumsy than that.”

Wade crashes into the infirmary. “Y’all having sex yet? I brought popcorn and dental dams!”

You and Ellie both look at him, like ‘WTF DUDE I’M TRYING BUT YOU KEEP COCK-BLOCKING!’

“Uh… I’m gonna go make some chimichangas. Lucky by Britney Spears, you better confess to Moody Teen Number Three before she puts those earbuds back in!” He dashes away.

“Why does he feel the need to play Fairy God-merc?” You ask her pitifully.

“Confess what to me…?” she asks you.

“Um- Uh- I- I killed the Easter Bunny!” You sigh, isntead deciding to tell the truth: “No, uh… I like you. LIke, uh, like-like you. I think you’re really pretty and mysterious and funny, and, I’m not really any of those things, so it’s cool if you don’t feel that way about me, but-”

She laughs at you, like it’s so funny that someone as horrid as you would like her. “You..Like me?”

“Yeah, it’s dumb, I know, sorry for wasting your ti-” Ellie grabs your arm as soon as you turn around, and kisses you.

Oh, you think. Thanks, Wade.

#marvel #Ellie Phimister #ellie phimister imagine #ellie phimister x reader #negasonic teenage warhead #negasonic teenage warhead x reader #negasonic teenage warhead imagine #negasonicteenageimagines #x-men imagine #x-men fanfiction #marvel fanfiction

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shockwrites · 6 years

Text

Starstruck

Author’s Note: I forget that I write sfw stuff sometimes

Series: League of Legends

Pairing: Luxanna Crownguard/Ezreal

Length: 2042

Rating: Safe

Lux was setting a bad example for the others.

Prim and proper Luxanna, leader of the Star Guardians, sneaking out past curfew? And on a school night??

She could already feel herself rolling her eyes at Jinx’s sarcasm, probably using Lux’s little felony as a get-out-of-jail-free card for when next she’ll no doubt do something…Jinx-like.

Lux sighed, nervously straightening her hair. She didn’t know what she was expecting when she asked Ezreal to meet her out in the woods that night. For whatever reason, she didn’t expect him to say yes. Why was she so surprised that he said yes? He was a Star Guardian like her. He’s expressed some interest in her too…hasn’t he? The occasional wave whenever he saw her, the corny jokes he’d tell her (that she would never admit to Jinx that she found funny), the way he’d listen to her attentively as she talked, not once taking her eyes off of her.

Maybe she was blowing this out of proportion…

He’s on a different team for stars’ sake! Ahri’s platoon wasn’t exactly on friendly terms with Lux’s. How did she know Ezreal wasn’t playing her for a fool? How did she know he wasn’t-“

“-running late!”

Exhausted panting and mild chuckles snapped Lux’s rambling brain back to reality. “Ez!” She yelled a bit too eagerly. “Y-You made it! Cool!” Question: what kind of numbskull talks like that?

“Yeah sorry,” Ezreal huffed, bent over in exasperation. His light blonde hair was disheveled slightly and his clothes were a mess, probably haphazardly thrown on last minute. That is absolutely illegal. His hair has zero permission to be that perfect. I call blasphemy. “Getting past Sarah’s not the easiest task.”

Lux’s mind raced back to Sarah Fortune’s intense, and quite frankly terrifying, glare. The standoffish Star Guardian must have been a real barrel of fun to room with. “I can imagine.”

Much to the dismay of her brain, Lux’s eyes couldn’t help but trace over the ruffled teenager before her. She recognized his sleeveless white and blue jersey that he usually wore. Probably one of his favorites. His ripped jeans were worn from misuse as if he traveled everywhere in them. He had that sort of explorer vibe to him. Ezreal always seemed to have a daring gleam in his eyes, like he was constantly ready to let his curiosity take the wheel and set him on a path to adventure.

Adventure…

Perhaps that’s what set him on the path of being a Star Guardian. Adventure was certainly one term one could use to describe their roles in the universe. Lux, on the other hand, had different terms: a burden, a duty, a trial even to name a few. Ezreal stood out from the rest of his team. He wasn’t hot-headed like Miss Fortune, or aloof like Syndra. He had a boyish charm about him. Something that reminded her that she was still a dumb teenager doing dumb teenage things. Things like texting, going to the mall, talking about boys…looking at boys…talking to boys…kissing boys…

Fu-

“Lux?”

It took the pink haired galaxy heroine a disturbing amount of time to realize she spent some odd minutes wordlessly ogling at Ezreal’s face like she was trying to win the world’s most uncomfortable staring contest.

“Wuhuh?” By the stars, could you stop being embarrassing for 2 minutes? Please?? “Oh-Oh sorry! Just a little, uhh…distracted! Just y’know, you look really…cute tonight.”

Ezreal’s cheeks reddened at her comment. He scratched the back of his head, visibly embarrassed. Lux wasn’t expecting that.

Oh stars, Ez, all of that handsome is going to kill me before the void even comes close.

“So, uh, Lux…you said you wanted to show me something?” He scratched the back of his neck casually. His eyes ran around the quiet atmosphere of the forest. “At night? In the middle of the woods?”

“Right! Yeah, I absolutely did want to show you something!”

Beat

I’m doing the finger pistols, aren’t I? “Follow me.”

The walk through the forest was quiet yet thankfully less awkward than before. Ez seemed more preoccupied with his surroundings. His inquisitive force of habit. Lux thanked the benevolent deities in the galaxy that he didn’t ditch her for a rock.

He wouldn’t ditch her for a rock, right?

Surely Lux wasn’t that uninteresting. She did fun things! Thinks like reading! And doing homework!

…

…………

I’m gonna die alone in a ditch, I swe-EEEARHH!!

A leader of planet protecting super soldiers must always be ready for the unexpected, a rule that Lux learned early on in her career.

A shame that rule never mentioned anything about vicious foot tripping branches.

As poor Lux planted face first into the dirt, Jinx’s distinct snorting laughter rang in her ears. Forget dying in a ditch, she was going to be the only one in the cemetery at this point. Lux could already read her tombstone; “Here lies Luxanna: A Forgotten Embarrassment. May the Stars have mercy on her poorly led team.”

She wanted to be surprised when Ezreal extended a hand to her. She would’ve been absolutely floored if any the rest of his team did anything of the sort if they had witnessed such a shameful display from a Star Guardian. How thankful was she that Ezreal wasn’t anything like them.

“You alright?” He asked. Lux didn’t know why such a little detail such as his genuine concern for her would leave a warm feeling in her chest.

“Yeah, dandy.” She replied, wiping the dirt from her shirt. “It only hurt my face…and pride.”

“It should, that was pathetic.”

Her face dropped faster than a comet. “W-what?”

Ez went down on to a knee while her brain was still processing what was said. “You wanna talk about falls, lemme show you one of mine.” He bunched up the leg of his jeans, directing her attention to a faded mark on his knee. Lux breathed in sharply once she saw the size of it; angled just above his kneecap. Instinctively, Lux rubbed her own knee in response, almost feeling the phantom pain from the wound herself. “Tripped down a flight of stairs a while back. You should’ve seen it, my teeth couldn’t stop chattering for a whole minute because my chin got decked so many times.” Ez chuckled like he was reminiscing a fond memory. “You know, I could still hear Syndra laughing at me.”

“Oh no!” Lux gasped in sympathy. “Were you ok?”

Ezreal’s finger lightly brushed along the scar. “Walking was a bit of a challenge. Nothing a cast couldn’t fix. Hope I’ll never be that bored sitting on my thumbs ever again.” Lux was blessed to see that relaxed smile of his. “The point is if you ever get embarrassed tripping on a branch or something, always remember the mental image of my face getting body-checked by like a million steps.”

Lux couldn’t stop herself from snickering. Something about that jovial sense of humor relaxed her. “C’mon, it’s just a little farther.”

Lux led them to a wide clearing within the forest overlooking a cliff. The far-off lights of the city shined from the distance, illuminating the clearing along with the glow of the moonlight and beautiful stars watching over them. Lux smiled. The sight of the inky night sky decorated with the reddish tint of the gorgeous nebulae entranced her, more than it should for someone such as her. It was nothing new to the Star Guardians.

“This,” Lux said, glancing back at Ezreal. “I uhh…wanted to show you this spot.” It was difficult for her to read his face. He analyzed the scenery intently, his eyes almost searching for something in the galactic abyss of stars. Lux’s heart dropped for the umpteenth time. A lump formed in her throat when he didn’t respond right away. Was he expecting something different? She must have been boring him for sure! What was she thinking? He was sure to have seen a million sights better than this! “U-umm…I just thought that uhh,” Come on Lux, use your words. “I thought it was…pretty.” I MEANT BETTER WORDS.

“I think it’s-”

“I know! It’s lame!” Lux blurted. “I wasn’t thinking!” She rambled. “We spend like 80 percent of our time in space! I just wanted to show you this little spot because I come here a lot and-and-”

“Actually, I think it’s pretty too.”

Ez didn’t stop marveling at the sight. He took a few steps forward, stopping just at the edge of the cliff before sitting down. Lux, still in disbelief, slowly joined him. “You know what’s weird?” He asked. “It’s amazingly easy to forget the Star in Star Guardians.”

Lux blinked. “What do you mean?”

Still mesmerized, he looked back at her. “We never take a minute to really experience what we…you know, guard.” Ez rubbed the back of his head. “Not sure if I’m making sense…”

His words buzzed in her mind. In her short time defending the planet, her team hadn’t stopped once to take in the fact that they were spacefaring superheroes. It would be easy to think that staring at a starry night sky after flying through it effortlessly would be underwhelming. Why stop and look when they’re already part of your job? Not Lux, however. And thankfully, not Ez.

“No, I get it.” Lux approached him, seating herself next to him atop the cliff. She felt her cheeks heat up when it dawned on her that she hadn’t been this close to his face before.

Seeing his blonde and teal colored locks this up close sent a certain heat to her cheeks. She really hadn’t been this up close before. Was she being weird? He wasn’t paying attention anything other than the stars.

“They say that we’re protectors.” He continued. “I think maybe I wanna get a little taste of what we’re protecting.”

Lux’s arm acted out of its own free will, looking to take advantage of Ezreal’s unsuspecting hand. She was unable to tell if he had registered her fingers wrapping around his palm. He seemed so…relaxed. The tranquil air reached her as well. Moments passed. Time passed the two teenagers by as the wordlessly enjoyed the peaceful shine of the moon.

The unthinkable occurred. Lux’s eyes widened in response to the sudden weight falling on her shoulder. Her thoughts were abuzz attempting to concoct a myriad of outlandish explanations as to why something soft and comfortable had taken up residence on her arm. Star’s forbid that a certain blonde demigod space warrior knight was legitimately pulling a romance novel cliché on her, less her face swell with the amount of blood flowing to her cheeks.

“Ez?”

There was no response. Only slow, light breathing, followed by a sound Lux was quite familiar with after sharing a room with Jinx.

Leave it to Star Guardian, Ez, to make even snoring attractive.

Ezreal slumped onto Lux’s shoulder, all but completely knocked out. He seemed so upbeat and attentive not seconds ago. Lux glanced at her phone, seeing that it was already quarter-to-one in the morning. They both had their respective dorms to go back to, especially considering the two guardians had a full day of school to look forward to, running on – what? Five hours of sleep?

Lux wanted to find the power to wake him up so they could awkwardly ignore the fact that they were a stone’s throw away from essentially cuddling themselves to sleep. Yet, unsurprisingly, she couldn’t. She could kill malicious void monstrosities from other planets but Luxana Crownguard was unable to resist the tempting enticements of a romantic embrace under the stars with a boy.

So she didn’t.

It wasn’t long before the drowsiness made Lux’s eyelids ten times heavier. She let herself plop onto the now pillowy soft grass, leaving Ezreal to comfortably use her an impromptu pillow. Lux thought to set the alarm on her phone, to not turn the next a.m. into a stress-addled mad dash of a morning rush. Her (soon to be un)conscious mind decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. They were both still Star Guardians. Surely the measly morning rush couldn’t be that much of a challenge.

…

……………..

Eyes cracking open in a cold sweat, Lux set her alarm to full volume.

#ezlux #league of legends #ezreal #luxanna crownguard #star guardians #safe

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