#so now im convinced its a message from the heavens | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aerequets · 2 years

Text

the perfect family

a/n: another one sitting, 1 AM fic! (its actually 1:30 right now but.)

again, no rereading, no beta, bla bla............ yall know the drill. enjoy!

WAIT WAIT first i want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the love, its actually insane. i havent been able to reply to all your reviews but just know i reread them ALL multiple times and giggle and save them to look at later. i love all your reviews so much yall have no idea. im glad people enjoy my writing!!

okay now enjoy haha

Rating: T

read on ao3

Summary: Twilight had never been this tired in his whole life. He’s used to grueling missions. He’s used to getting a meager few hours of sleep per night. He’s used to being in a perpetual state of anxiety and stomach-achiness. But being Loid Forger is something else entirely. Being a family man, a parent, is no joke.

Or: Twilight has a dream about the "perfect" family.

Twilight had never been this tired in his whole life.

He’s used to grueling missions. He’s used to getting a meager few hours of sleep per night. He’s used to being in a perpetual state of anxiety and stomach-achiness.

But being Loid Forger is something else entirely. Being a family man, a parent, is no joke.

First off, Anya almost got another Tonitrus at school earlier that day. Fiona had relayed to him via his earpiece that Yor had left a message on his office phone that Henderson had called her about Anya using some colorful language. The teacher was willing to discuss before taking further action since Anya claimed he’d misheard. Yor was apologetic and said her break was over and she was needed at work, so would he please go see Anya if he had the time (Fiona didn’t relay it in as kind terms, but Loid could imagine). Loid, who was in the middle of a warehouse stakeout, had to shimmy out of the vents in his best approximation of a hurried worm while trying not to have a conniption above his targets’ heads.

When he finally got to the school, changed into ordinary work clothes and hyperventilation in check, he had to meet a sheepish Anya, who was busy trying to convince Henderson that she’d called Damian “sofa king stupid, like the evil villain Sofa King from Bondman (nonexistent), who is stupid”. She’d crafted a whole backstory for the villain and his love for all manners of seating furniture, which was what eventually sent him to his doom as he watched his favorite armchair get run over by a car. Somehow.

In other circumstances, Loid would be impressed at the intricate lie—and equally concerned that she was able to think of it—but at that moment he was busy trying not to shit his pants from the way his heart dropped into his ass. Where had she learned that language?! It was a huge concern that he couldn’t even address because he had to back her play and convince Henderson that, yes, Anya didn’t cuss, heavens no, where would she possibly have learned that? How inelegant!

Anya got off with a warning from the teacher to not call others stupid. Loid considered reprimanding her once they left the office, but thought it best to wait until she finished the school day and returned home to tell her she was grounded.

Anya inexplicably threw a tantrum right then. “I didn’t get a bolt,” she wailed. “Why should I be punished?!” He was torn between trying to explain that he hadn’t even punished her—yet—and that calling others ‘sofa king stupid’ was not acceptable in any capacity. In the end, Anya yelled that she hated him and ran off to join Becky, who had been watching from afar with a strangely large smile on her face.

So that went swimmingly.

He went back to resume his stakeout, but by that time everyone had left the warehouse and he had no new information to show for it. He ended up going home early, stomach aching this time in anticipation of Handler’s lethal disapproval. When Anya arrived home from school, all she did was send him a nasty glare (and stick her tongue out at him when she thought he wasn’t looking) before slamming the door to her room. To make matters worse, Yor had told him that morning that she’d be home late. It was embarrassing to admit, but he had no idea how to navigate Anya’s tantrums without her around. Usually he and Yor made a team wherein she calmed down and soothed Anya while he explained their perspective. He had a feeling that if he tried to soothe Anya she would call him a big liar. And maybe some other choice words, which he still didn’t know how she learned, if she was feeling extra mad.

When Yor returned, he was just about finished cooking supper. He was still at the stove when he heard the door open, so he called out a hello from the kitchen. When he didn’t hear a response, he turned off the heat and stepped out to see Yor, standing petrified by the door. There was a spider in the entryway.

“Oh,” he said. Yor could paralyze a cow, but she couldn’t stand bugs. “Hold on, I’ll get a glass—” But at that moment, the spider scuttled a little to the right, eliciting a shriek from Yor. Before Loid could even blink, her shoe was slamming down onto the bug.

And through the floorboards.

She stood with her foot through the floor for a few seconds, him watching with a slack jaw, before she gingerly lifted it out of the hole. The sheer force had caused cracks to spread out all the way to where he was standing.

“I—I—” Her mouth was opening and closing, hands fluttering helplessly. She looked mortified. “I’m so…sorry…”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, hardly hearing the words coming out of his own mouth. His eyes stayed fixated on the saucer-sized hole in the ground. A mallet would probably have done less damage. “Those floorboards needed replacing anyway.”

Maybe it was something in his voice, but Yor didn’t insist like she usually would. Instead, she quietly asked, “Where’s Anya?”

He sighed that time, knowing he failed to keep the tiredness out of it. “Her room. She’s angry with me.”

Yor dipped her head. She could probably approximate what had happened since Henderson had explained the situation to her first, which Loid was glad about because he didn’t feel like rehashing every disastrous detail from that meeting. “I’ll go talk to her.”

He should have been more relieved, but instead he felt like all the energy was sucked out of him once she left. He cast one last glance at the hole in the floor before heading to the living room to slump down on the couch.

Every normal family had bad days, he knew. But he couldn’t fool himself into thinking any of this was normal. His daughter had mysteriously obtained a foul mouth and repeatedly came close to demerits. Her teacher probably thought their whole family was one giant red flag. His wife could crush wood beneath her foot like dry leaves. Rarely did he ever think this operation was hopeless, but right now it was like a suffocating reminder weighing down on his shoulders. Everything was wrong.

Nothing about this mission was going how he thought it would. His family was nothing like the people that the Forgers were required to be on paper. He’d been unwillingly flying by the seat of his pants until now. It was exhausting. His luck had to run out sooner or later, and he’d gotten used to relying on it.

These were the last things Loid thought as he nodded off.

…

“Papa? Papa, wake up!” Small hands gently patted his cheek. He furrowed his brows before slowly opening his eyes with a low groan. He was met with the sight of large green eyes close to his face.

“Anya?” Had he fallen asleep? Concerning, but no matter—it looked like Yor had talked to Anya and managed to calm her down. He sat up and rubbed at his face before realizing three things.

One, he was not on the sofa. He was on a bed. What time was it? They hadn’t eaten supper yet—had Yor decided to just carry him into his room? An embarrassing thought, especially since that meant he’d somehow stayed asleep through the whole thing. How was he this lax when the day had been so disastrous?

Second, a quick examination of the room revealed that it wasn’t his room at all. It was Yor’s. Maybe she thought it would be inappropriate to enter his room without permission and had taken him to her own room instead. It was a reasonable explanation that he was ready to accept before he noticed his clothes strewn about a chair in the corner. On the nightstand next to her bed were his glasses and his meds.

…Why were his things in her room?

Before he could even start getting into that, though, there was the third thing, odd enough to put pause on the room dilemma for the moment.

Anya’s head was devoid of her usual hair ornaments, the same ones she never took off or let anyone—including him and Yor—touch. Her head looked strangely empty without them. He must have looked baffled, because Anya tilted her (smooth, cone-free) head.

“What’s wrong, Papa?”

“Um…” He blinked a couple times as if that would put the cones back on her head and the room to rights. It didn’t. “My room? Your hair…?”

Anya squinted, clearly confused. At that moment, the door creaked open and Yor stepped in, causing him to jump a little. She was wearing an apron and brandishing a spatula. “Anya? Is Papa not waking up?”

“His eyes opened, but I think he’s still sleeping,” she stated. Yor laughed.

“Alright, you go and start eating breakfast. I made omelette.” Loid’s eyes widened—Yor had made breakfast?!—but, to his neverending surprise, Anya excitedly whooped before running out of the room.

What on earth was going on?

“You must have had a busy day yesterday,” Yor said as she approached him. He subconsciously tensed as he watched her approach, heartbeat quickening. She was looking at him…differently. “You’re usually up before me.”

“Ah…I guess,” he said vaguely. He had to figure out what exactly was going on. “How does Anya feel about yesterday?”

“Yesterday?” Yor frowned. “What happened yesterday?”

“You don’t remember? The… the call?”

She placed a hand on his forehead. He froze—she never initiated contact first. Never so casually. She retracted her hand with a thoughtful hum. “No fever. I guess Anya was right, you really are still half asleep.”

His brain couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He was a man who operated on logic and reason, and nothing about the current situation made any sense. So, naturally, all that left his mouth was an unintelligent “Wuh?”

She giggled. “Oh, you’re so cute in the morning.”

What?

She leaned down and pecked him on the lips. “Come and eat before it gets cold.”

What?

Mercifully, she left at that moment, so she didn’t see him short-circuiting. Okay, calm down, he commanded himself through his racing heart and sweating hands. It was ridiculous, he never had such extreme physical reactions, but to be fair. What just happened?!

Calm down, he thought again, and this time his heartbeat eased slightly. He would do what always helped him calm down: go over the details and focus on what he knew. So here were the things he knew: it looked like he was in Yor’s room, which they may be sharing. Somehow, the events of the previous day hadn’t passed, as Anya wasn’t angry and Yor didn’t remember. Anya didn’t have those cones on her head. Yor could cook. Yor could kiss.

Was he in a coma?

No, that was ridiculous… but so was everything else. Nothing made sense. He mulled over it in bed before suddenly remembering—his mission log! He wrote everything that happened in that secret log. If, by chance, he had somehow been drugged and knocked out by an enemy organization and was currently experiencing hallucinations in a torture facility, his mission log might indicate some plans to go to said enemy organization and he would finally have an explanation.

He got out of bed and opened the closet. He was sharing it with Yor, half of her clothes hanging on one side and his on the other. Ignoring the way that unsettled him, he knelt down and rooted around in his sock drawer. He pulled out an argyle sock with a loose thread and reached inside, praying. His prayers were answered when his fingers met cool metal. The key was there. He got up and reached inside the closet for his briefcase next. After unlocking it with the key and entering the 26-digit code, he clicked the case open and sifted through various forms of ammunition and explosives before pulling out the log, located at the very bottom. Of course, the whole thing was written in 3 layers of code, but there was no such thing as being too careful.

He flipped to the previous day’s log, expecting to see the same writing he’d put down in the morning and maybe an extra paragraph if he was lucky, but he paused.

It was all different.

‘Today went well, like usual. Anya did well at school. Closeness with Damian questionable, but successfully transferred gift. Yor had work function. Attended and put up successful front of upper class couple. Five stellas left. Estimated time of Strix completion roughly three months from now.’

There were too many things in that short statement for him to consider. ‘Today went well like usual’? Since when was that usual?

And five Stellas left? That meant Anya had already obtained three Stella stars! It should have made him overjoyed, but he was just baffled. Had WISE finally snapped and pulled every string in the last night? He couldn’t see any other way for Anya to have somehow gotten two more stars than she’d had yesterday.

And the last thing—Strix to be completed three months from now? Last month, Handler had told him that they were hoping to complete the operation within four months. He’d been so bad at lying that he could achieve that timeframe that Handler had snapped at him. But here, his log indicated that he was on track with WISE’s expectations. That everything was going according to plan.

He sat on the floor and started from the beginning of the log. He was a fast reader and had photographic memory, but even he had to reread some parts several times in disbelief.

Anya was adopted from the same orphanage, but none of her eccentricities were listed down. In fact, all he’d written was that she was well-behaved and performed well in school. What about her speech? What about her eclectic facial expressions? What about her love for peanuts, or her hate for carrots, or her uncanny ability to recognize his thoughts, or how she drove him mad, or how she made him proud?

As for Yor, he’d met her at that same party, but had correctly introduced himself as her boyfriend. Afterwards, they had actually started dating, and Loid waited a period of three months (short, but surely more appropriate than three hours) before proposing to Yor at a fancy restaurant. Romantic enough, the log read, to fool both passerby and Yor.

That was why they shared a room, and why she’d kissed him. Here, wherever he was, he was not in a mutually beneficial arrangement with Yor. She thought they were actually married, possibly even loved him—which was what he had originally planned for when first trying to find a wife.

The bitter taste in his mouth at that realization was not lost on him.

Was it possible he was dreaming? He pinched his arm. If this was a dream, it wasn’t one he could force himself out of. At least for now, he had to deal with the unfamiliar family outside his door. It seemed, at least, that he was still a spy and that Strix was still going on, so perhaps he could go to Handler and try to get some facts straight. Dream or not, he was not about to stumble around not knowing what was going on around him.

He heard Yor’s footsteps outside the door. Another thing for him to note down in his mind: she didn’t have the unparalleled ability to catch him by surprise here. He quickly closed the briefcase and shoved it back in the closet as Yor poked her head in the room.

“Loid? Are you going to eat?”

“Sorry, I just knocked some shirts off their hangers and was putting them back up,” he said smoothly. He got up and brushed himself off. “I’m coming.”

She sent him another smile before leaving again. He swallowed. Did they usually kiss? She seemed to do it with ease. He suddenly froze and looked back at the bed.

Did they…?

But the Twilight in the log wasn’t him. That Twilight had fooled Yor. That Twilight was a better spy than him. That Twilight made him angry. If he took advantage of Yor…

But what was he thinking? It was what he’d done many times before. Why was it different now?

He was giving himself a headache with all the difficult questions, so he put them aside for the moment and went outside to eat. The omelette was perfect. Anya had impeccable table manners. Bond, he noticed, sat attentively at the door like a guard-dog instead of begging for scraps at the table like he usually did.

It was the perfect family for the mission. So why did he feel so unnerved?

“Ugh.” At Yor’s grunt, he turned to see her hand clenched over a jar of jelly. She was twisting with all her might, but the lid wouldn’t come loose. After a few seconds she gave up and sent him a sheepish smile. “Could you get this for me?”

“Oh… sure.” He twisted the jar open with ease. Yor could pulverize a jar like this between her pointer finger and thumb. This Yor gratefully took the opened jar from him with soft thanks.

Breakfast passed peacefully. Anya hadn’t overslept, so she had time to neatly finish her food and gather her things for school. He and Yor got ready for work in the same room. He stared at his feet the whole time. They walked Anya to the bus, where she cheerfully bid them goodbye.

“I’ll see you later at home then,” Yor said, turning to him once Anya’s bus had vanished into the distance. He could tell what was coming this time and prepared himself for her kiss. This one was longer, long enough for him to close his eyes and shudder when she pulled away.

She placed a hand on his cheek, a divot between her brows. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”

He swallowed, mouth dry. Everything was perfect. His daughter was a pleasant, well-mannered child who performed in school. His wife kissed him good morning and goodbye. He was a spy executing his mission without a hitch.

Everything was wrong.

But the one thing that was the same was that he was a liar, so he leaned his face into her palm and placed his hand over hers. It was fascinating to see, the things he could do here that he’d only had fleeting thoughts of before. Her face flushed, but no more than a wife’s face would flush at an ordinary act of affection from her husband. “Yes,” he lied. “I would.”

…

Unfortunately, no details were revealed by WISE like he’d hoped. Instead, he was greeted with a pleased Handler when he entered her office. He thought she might be putting up an act to scare him later until she spoke.

“Good job with the third star,” she told him. “Let’s try getting her fourth one in the arts. It’s good to be well rounded.”

“The arts,” he repeated. He remembered her horrid cow drawing. Handler pulled out a folder from her desk.

“Yes. There’s an art contest coming up soon, isn’t there? She can enter any of these pieces for the first-to-third grade group. They’re quite good.”

He opened the folder and looked at the pictures of the artworks inside. Accurate, if not slightly lopsided, depictions of prominent figures. Landscape watercolors with good usage of color and perspective. A few sloppy but intelligently framed still-lifes of fruit.

He thought he preferred the horrid cow. All he said out loud, though, was “Understood.”

“Good. Dismissed.”

Usually his debriefings with Handler lasted much longer, because they had so many things to go over and attempt to fix or counteract. This was an ideal situation, one in which she was pleased and the meeting went smoothly.

It did nothing to ease the sense of crookedness that had pervaded him all day.

When he got home, Yor was already there. This Yor, it seemed like, didn’t have to work late shifts. She was humming in the kitchen as she prepared dinner. It smelled delicious, but he wasn’t sure if his stomach grumbled or churned.

“Oh! Welcome back.” When she kissed him this time, he was able to keep himself together enough to reciprocate the appropriate amount and smile at her when she pulled back. “I’m making potato soup.”

“Smells good,” he said. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Help?” She cocked her head. “Don’t worry about that, you just got back from work! You should relax. Anya will be back soon.”

He didn’t want to sit alone with his thoughts, not to mention that he was used to cooking supper and had actually come to enjoy it. But Yor might think something was off if he pushed. She might put her hand on his face again, look at him with that divot between her eyebrows. He probably wouldn’t be able to take that. So he picked his poison and sat in the living room where Bond was resting. Usually the hound liked to rest by Loid’s feet when he returned from work, but this Bond remained in the corner. It was a small detail, but one he noticed nonetheless.

About twenty minutes later, Anya entered the apartment. “I’m home!”

“Welcome home!” Yor came out of the kitchen to hug Anya. “How was school?”

“Good! I got an A on the science test!”

“Wow!”

“There’s also an art contest,” she added. “I want to enter!”

“Go for it, your artwork is amazing!”

Over dinner, which tasted as good as it smelled, everyone shared their days. Anya’s school tales were nothing out of the usual for a normal child. Yor’s work stories were perfectly normal for a civil worker. Loid shared select details from his own mundane psychiatry. Dinner was civil, and normal. It was all normal.

After dinner, Anya studied mathematics. This Anya didn’t beg to watch Spy Wars—he wasn’t sure if she watched at all. This Anya didn’t struggle with fractions. This Anya didn’t beg to stay up past her bedtime and ran to the bathroom when Yor told her it was time to wash up. When he tucked this Anya in and asked if she wanted her chimera plushie, she sent him an incredulous look.

“I don’t sleep with that anymore, Papa,” she said. A little belatedly, he realized that the penguin plushie he won for her was missing from her room, too.

Maybe the other Twilight never got that plushie for her at all. That thought made him feel as hollow as the circle of Anya’s arms.

He bid her goodnight and washed up for bed himself. When he returned to his room, he froze.

Yor was on their bed, reading a book. She was wearing a nightgown. It wasn’t particularly revealing or racy, but it was nothing a woman would wear in front of someone she wasn’t married to. At least, not in the real sense. She glanced up at him and shut the book. “Loid? What’s the matter?”

“I…” His mouth was parched as his fears from that morning came barrelling back into his head. What did the other Twilight do with this Yor? How? How did he lay with her at night without feeling like he was going to throw up at the very thought?

He could imagine an answer now, though. It was because that Twilight was the ideal spy, with the ideal family, completing his mission in the most ideal way possible. That Twilight never made any mistakes; that Twilight adopted the perfect child to complete Strix, properly romanced a woman, and treated her like his wife. In every sense. And because that Twilight was the perfect spy, he would lay with Yor, kiss her, and would definitely be able to toss her aside in three months.

“You’ve been off all day,” Yor said as she approached him. He froze, eyes locked on the wall. Her hands came on the side of his face, forcing him to look her in the eyes. “Really, Loid, what is it? You know you can tell me anything.”

I haven’t told you anything, he wanted to shout. I’ve been lying. He lied. I did.

At his silence, she leaned up and kissed him. The first three kisses from that day were short, if not sweet. This one was long. Languid. It was impossibly warm and felt impossibly good as she raked her fingers through his scalp. It pulled his heart to his throat when she pulled away just a breath, eyes lidded. “You’re stressed. Come to bed.”

It was when she leaned up again that he’d had enough. Gently, but firmly, he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back, trying not to break under the hurt look she was giving him. Desire and disgust roiled through him in waves.

He could not. He would not. It didn’t matter what the other Twilight had done, or if this was a dream or hallucination. He wouldn’t do this with Yor, not when she didn’t know anything. Maybe it was just him losing his touch, or maybe he had a soft spot for Yor that he was still refusing to acknowledge, but she deserved better than a liar. Even if that might be to the detriment of the mission.

“I remembered I have some things to finish up for work,” he said. “Don’t worry about me and go to sleep. I’ll join you soon.” He quickly collected his things and left the room so he wouldn’t be able to see her expression. Outside, he spread his things out on the coffee table before lying down on the sofa.

Please be a dream. Please be a dream. He shifted and closed his eyes. He didn’t think he would doze off, but he must have been more tired than he thought, because soon everything went silent.

…

“Papa? Papa, wake up!” Small hands poked his stomach before a bigger weight landed on him. He let out an ‘oof’.

“Anya, don’t jump on him!”

Before his eyes were even fully open, the details of what had just transpired flashed through his mind. His heart skipped a beat as he blinked and looked to the side.

Large green eyes. And those black horns. Her horns!

Anya furrowed her brows and raised a hand to those hair ornaments as if she’d heard his thoughts. He could almost laugh. There was that uncanny reaction to his thoughts.

“Loid? Are you okay?” He looked up and had to remember to breathe. Yor was smiling at him, kind and gentle as ever. She also stood a pace away, making sure not to lean over him. It made for a strange mix of yearning and relief in his chest, but it was leagues better than her believing in a lie about their marriage.

He looked around. He was on the sofa in his day clothes. The scent of the supper he’d prepared hung in the air. In the entryway, a rug conspicuously covered the place where the hole would be. And Anya looked guilty.

“I’m fine,” he replied. He was even too relieved to do his usual mental spiel of how spies would never doze off in front of others. “I was just tired and fell asleep for a bit. Did you two talk?”

Yor sent Anya a meaningful look. She shuffled and pulled at the hem of her dress. “‘m sorry, Papa. I’m sorry I was so bad to Damian, and I lied, and I almost got a bolt, and I was mean to you…” She looked up and her eyes were already welling up, snot dripping from her nose. “I’m sorry I was so bad today!”

She rushed into his chest, bawling and getting snot all over his vest. He didn’t care. He smoothed a hand over her back and let himself smile. She was loud, messy, and erratic.

This was his daughter. Anya was perfect this way.

“As long as you understand why what you did wasn’t good,” he said to her. “I forgive you, Anya.”

After she calmed down a bit, he looked up at Yor. “Should we have supper?”

“Ah, yes.” As they got up, Anya holding onto Loid’s leg, Yor gestured to the rug by the entryway. An embarrassed flush was aglow on her face. “Um… also… do you remember that old toaster you were going to toss out?”

“The toaster?” Loid blinked. “Yes, why?”

“Well…since you were going to throw it away anyways, I thought…” She trailed off and decided to go over to the rug instead. She peeled it back to reveal a hunk of metal squished and flattened into the hole. “S-so it’s not a danger anymore. I swear I’ll fix it for real, but just for now—I hope you don’t mind, I—”

A laugh bursted out of Loid before he could stop it. Anya and Yor both looked up at him with the same curious expression that only seemed to swell his heart even more.

“It’s perfect, Yor.”

And it was. It was unconventional, jarring, and definitely strange, but it was stronger for it. And he rather liked the way it looked.

408 notes · View notes

snickerdoodlles · 2 years

Note

stardust au for the wip ask game!! its one of my favourite movies and i love your writing, so im very curious to your spin of it

can you believe i tried to scroll back nearly two months of DMs while also messaging jemmo to find this AU's convo before i remembered that i copied it all into the doc sitting in my drive folder?? brilliant, i am not

but okie dokie so!! stardust AU! it's a bit of a hot mess rn ngl--i have a lot of the story's start figured out, but im still working out where it's going to go. as a quick note, my current name claim for Pat and Paa's mother is Nam. anyways, we begin here:

Many would say this story begins in the far past, quite possibly all the way back to when their country’s ancestors decided blood should not be the only consideration when choosing a ruler. They’d tell you all the ways the rules to choosing a new king were refined, the ways people have always tried to lie and cheat their way to the throne. Maybe they’d even tell you how fallen stars are a blessing or a curse, depending on a point of view, for even things as grand as the night heavens are relevant to this tale.

But for Pat, everything began here: his childhood, coloured gold and warm, his sister in their father’s lap and him tucked against his side as he set aside his crown and tells them a story.

we're playing hot and fast with worldbuilding atm, but in this version, the rival prince thing is not between the sons of one king, but rather the ruler chooses a successor that they think will suit the country best from a group of candidates. a lot of candidates do mostly come from noble houses because resources and biases and other such annoyances, but there was that one time the mad king sent out burnt seeds and chose the person who made it grow best

and in Ming's case, he became king because when a star fell almost twenty-five years ago, he was the one who found the star and consumed its heart. the king was impressed by his decisiveness and given that Ming was already a favourable candidate for the throne, a king with a star's protection against harm pushed him to the top

well. one little problem.

Ming never ate a star's heart.

in fact, Paa's been secretly living as his daughter and Pat's little sister ever since she fell and Ming and Nam scooped her up. so when, at the start of this whole story, the assassination attempt against him works, suddenly everyone's questioning just what the hell this guy's been playing at for all these years. if he didn't eat the star's heart over twenty years ago, did someone else take it, or is the star still out there?

the main story begins with Nam waking up Pat and Paa in the middle of the night with the dire warning "your father is dead, you need to leave, now." Pat's already pretty worried, but then his mother also hugs him, fresh tears in her eyes, and says "I'm so sorry, my son, i've failed you. i never should have let your father become king, or let him die like this." Pat tries to ask her what the fuck that's supposed to mean, but then Nam's back to business sneaking him and Paa out of the castle (“who do you, completely and absolutely, would stake your sisters life on it, trust?” “Ink” “good, you have someone. convince her to go with you, Paa’s life depends on it”). she and Korn get the two siblings out of the castle within the hour, Pat and Paa scoop up Ink on their way out, and two days later Pran pops up to smack Pat upside the head because "you need to cover your tracks better idiot!!"

so the four of them are gallivanting across the countryside, where they eventually get scooped up by Chai (Chai's the Captain Shakespeare equivalent in this AU btws). and in amongst their various adventures there, Chai's accidentally going to say that he's glad Ming never killed the star like he planned to in Pat's hearing vicinity, and Pat's "wait, what" startles about 20 years off of Chai's life because fucking shit, he did not ever want Pat to know this

Chai: ah, sorry. I shouldn’t say more Pat: no, please tell me Chai: the man is dead Pat, what good will me telling you things now do? Pat: it’s precisely because he’s dead that I’m asking you. Chai, please. all I ever hear now is how my father was a liar and a cheater. that’s all I ever will hear about him now, I won’t get any truth from listening to rumours from strangers who didn’t know him. but I’ll be dishonouring his memory if what I know is a lie. please (and what goes unsaid by both of them is that Nam is the one he should truly be talking to, but he doesn’t even know if he’ll ever see her alive again)

see, for Pat, he's always known his father had lied about consuming the heart of a star. he and Paa's favourite stories as children always revolved around a trickster lying to protect something smaller and more precious than them, just like their Papa does for Paa. for weeks, Pat's been living with people whispering vile things about his dead father, someone who he dearly loves and respects even when he's gone, and the knowledge that his father was only what the rumours say he was to protect his sister from someone else's greed has been a huge source of strength for him.

but then he learns that that's not the case at all. that Ming could have very well scooped up Paa with the full intention of killing her. Nam was the one who planned to save Paa, the one to come up with the plans to hide Paa's identity. the ruse where Ming claimed to have eaten the star's heart started with Ming, but it's unclear if that was a compromise or him working angles. either way though, it was never the selfless, caring act Pat believed it was. when his mother said she failed him, she meant this--not recognising that Ming's genuine offer to help was also a power grab until it was too late, not until after she and her children were trapped in it. Ming loved his family, all three of them, and he did try to protect and provide for his wife and children. but he never truly considered all possible options, or what might be best for them, not if it meant that he'd have to sacrifice. Ming tried to keep his family safe, but he could’ve done so much more had he given up his pride

it hurts, but it hurts more when he goes to tell Paa. Paa's emotions on their father is a lot more tricky--there's a lot more cognitive dissonance. she was so young and confused when she fell. she recognized that Ming was using her in some capacity, but he was also one of the kind people that helped her and cared for her and swung her up on his shoulders when they walked through the gardens and made her laugh until her belly ached

When Pat tells her, Paa mostly just curls in on herself. "I think, on some level, I always knew that I was a tool for him," she says quietly. "Just like how you were a tool for him as well."

"I wasn't--" Pat begins to protest.

"He loved us," Paa interrupts, not in disagreement. "But I was his way to succeed in this lifetime, then you were there to carry on his legacy." Paa hugs her knees closer. "Even when he thought of us, he was thinking of himself. We couldn't ever be just his kids.

"I knew this Hia. I think I always did." Paa curls in on herself smaller.

"So why does it hurt so much?"

tbd on how this growing monster ends, but there's a loooooot of Jindapat (not you Ming) love in it. i think the only thing i have jotted down for the end is that Pat gets a chance to go to Ming's grave and let out a lot of his feelings about everything. he loves his father, he's so grief stricken that he's dead, and the most selfish thing the man ever did was die and leave the mess to his family to clean up, and Pat deserves to yell at him for that

[[ WIP ask game ]] | [ 1, 2, 3 ]

#bad buddy #ask game #WIP shenanigans #i think this now also counts as:#ask game: fics im not writing #whoops #bbs stardust au #SORRY FOR THE WAIT i was trying to organize my notes into smth semi-coherent hjgfhjgjhghj #outtakes include: Nam's POV points bc Pat and Paa's mother is literally a queen and i have so much love for her #Junior's mother is a pirate captain here too and she's in a friendly rivalry with Chai #which mostly amounts to her calling Chai an upstart scamp bc he's younger than her #and the two of them aggressively comparing photos of their kids and dueling over who's is cuter #and more but this is getting too long hjjhghjg SHUSHING NOW #thanks for asking about this sorry i cant give a concise answer to save my life 😂#mine: bad buddy

20 notes · View notes

lveclouds · 4 years

Text

euphoria and boba (jjk x reader)

a/n: this is the last and final drabble for the bts bubble tea date series!! thank you all so much for supporting me and this series!! your incredibly sweet comments and feedback have made my heart very happy and warm:((( thank you to my sweet mutuals for supporting me and encouraging me to keep writing! i love you all to the moon and back!!!

genre: fluff, tooth-rooting fluff, slightly cheesy (you’ve been warned)

word count: 100+

rating: g (for all audiences)

dedicated to these angels: @softguks @sketchguk @sweetheartjeongguk @jungkooksmoon @moonbeamjk @jksmoongf @gukwluv @gguksbby @gguksgalaxy @lomlkook @kookscrescent @koosgrl @kooksmos @guktual @artjjk @jeonify @guksheart @onherwings @utopiajeon @swanqook@jeonangels @cherryjk @sweetpeajeon @lovejeons @jinsjjk @jjksangel @gukkism @jeonsdear @jeonsbun @kookswife and all of my jungkook biased mutuals, i love you all so so so so so so so much and i hope you all enjoy this drabble!

(in which jungkook sings euphoria to you, in the middle of a boba tea place, or jungkook being the little cutie that he is)

you struggled to hide the blush that was spreading on your face as your boyfriend of two years, jeon jungkook, serenaded you, his voice sweet and smooth and chill-inducing, a fond smile on his face. you fought the urge to smack him on the arm due to embarrassment, as there were a few people in the cafe that were staring at the two of you, amused. “jungkook!” you hissed, blush deepening. one of his perfect eyebrows raised in question, but he continued to sing his heart out, much to your dismay. while you loved to hear jungkook sing, as it was always amazing and never failed to take your breath away, but the sole fact that he was singing in the middle of a crowded place was a bit embarrassing, as all the attention was now on the two of you.

“s-stop! people are looking!” at this, jungkook let out a soft laugh. “aw, is someone embarrassed?” he teased, doe eyes glinting with amusement and mischief. “y-yes, just a little.” his smile only deepened, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and your heart melted at the sight. jungkook was gorgeous, well, that was more of an understatement. jungkook was absolutely stunning. soft, raven hair that was forever falling into his eyes, gorgeous brown doe eyes that practically sparkled, especially when he was happy or excited, sharp jawline, soft, pink lips that were like heaven to kiss, and the cutest little mole underneath his lower lip, a feature of his that you found to be quite endearing. his smile, however, was easily one of the most gorgeous things about jungkook, at least, according to you. his smile lit up his entire face and never failed to make your heart melt, especially when the corners of his eyes would crinkle. whenever he smiled, you felt as if you had been punched in the gut, especially when said smile was directed at you. a simple smile from him made you weak at the knees, and your friends teased you for being so whipped for jungkook, but you didn’t care. after all, it was hard not to be. not only was jungkook one of the most stunning guys you’d ever seen, but he was also one of the sweetest and most caring and loving guy you knew. you suspected his heart was probably made of gold, for jungkook was always unfailingly polite, humble, respectful, and thoughtful. not only that, but he respected all your boundaries and made you feel as if you were the only star in the sky. and yes, admitting these things to yourself did feel a bit cheesy, but it was true. jungkook was the only person who could make you feel special and loved and “on top of the world.”

so, because you loved jungkook, you decided to stop from trying to convince him not to serenade you in public. you would undergo secondhand embarrassment for him any day. “you are the cause of my euphoria.” he sang, his voice clear and smooth and sweet and melodious. jungkook’s singing never failed to take your breath away. his tone was sweet and soft, but despite that, you could hear the emotions jungkook was trying to convey, no matter what song he was singing.

a fond smile made its way onto your face as you listened to your boyfriend sing his heart out, receiving your mango bubble tea in the process. your smile widened as you took a long sip of the refreshing beverage, making your way out of the cafe, jungkook in tow.

jungkook hummed softly as he gently grabbed your hand and laced your fingers with his as the two of you made your way down the street. the air was cool and crisp and the sun was shining brightly, bathing the world in golden beams of light. despite the weather, jungkook was wearing one of his all black outfits, cargo pants, chunky black boots, and a simple black carharrt sweater. he made this simple outfit look as if he just stepped off the cover of vogue. he always looked effortlessly gorgeous, even after a long day of rehearsals and photoshoots. you adored the small tattoos that adorned his hands, for you knew that while they were simple, they held great significance.

“jungkook?” “hmmm?” he replied, turning his head slightly to look at you. “i love you.” he smiled brightly, wrapping a strong arm around your shoulder, pulling you closer to him. he let out a soft chuckle as he kissed the top of your head sweetly. “i love you too.” sure, your boyfriend loved to embarrass you on a daily basis, but you loved him regardless.

a/n: ty all so so so so so so so so so much for supporting me and this series!! all of your sweet messages have made my day and are motivating me to keep writing and improving!! a little s/o to the lovely angels that belong to the heartsforbts discord chat and the hopeworld net one as well!! ily all so much and thank you for always supporting me, no matter what! much much much love to all of you!! thank you for loving this series as i much i loved writing the drabbles!! also, about my untamed au, i’m going to put it on hold for now because i don’t have any ideas for it :(((( im so sorry guys and i hope you all don’t hate me for this:(((((

tagging: @agustkive @take-u-2-an0ther-w0r1d @honeylovecult @dylanxmin @joonglows @biminiee @yoonsgiggle @birthofvcnus @franklytae @jungtaeyoongles @roguebangtan @yourdelights @nahfamily @kimcritique @taesangels @floralyibo @jinhopetual @kimseokjinss @seokoloqy @btsrespect @j1ns @ksj1 @ksjmoon @ksjluvs @joonsbaby @joonsbesitos @gukssunshine @brilliantlybasicb @flowerseok

#mine #heartsforbts #bangtanhq #networkbangtan #btswriterscollective #btswritingcafe

75 notes · View notes

theexecutionerssong · 3 years

Note

I am soooo annoyed with this. An actual shit show. Maybe I’dbe like 10% less pissed off, had they at least given Dean a proper death not some amateur first day on the job bs. With that type of death might as well pull one of the endings from Mystery spot🙄😤 im pissed they killed him period. But I thought if they’d actually do that, they’d give him the hero type of death that he deserves. But nooo even that is too much to ask for. Im so mad so fuck all of them (especially ja*** because he liked this ending, im not saying im surprised he liked it bc ive been eh about him but I expected more from the cast side) i feel so bad for Jensen, he and Misha as well, deserved way better than this. And i know Jensen asked Kripke about the finale and he was like “yeah its good” so i wanna fight that dude as well. Because CMON. I wish that part in heaven where dean sits in baby and turns on the music and drives off (right after bobby scene) was the ending, except not in goddamn heaven. They shouldve just done the ending with him legit riding off into the sunset, happy that shit is over, and maybe Cas with him but thats also too much to ask so id settle for Dean talking to him on the phone and aaying hes on his way. I’m mad as all hell. (Also im mad that they did Misha THIS dirty, not even an appearance in the damn heaven, not even brought up properly..gross!) damn, im sorry. I just saw your posts and remembered how angry i was all over again😩 we deserved so much better Gaëlle!

I’m not even that pissed off about the way Dean died, it’s that he died period that’s disgusting. Who even reaped him? Who would reap Dean Winchester? Dean has said times and times again, as early as season 3, that he was tired. That he didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, that he was gonna die with a gun in his hand,and hadn’t he given enough? His entire life he lived for others, convinced he’d die bloody. And guess what? There’s nothing satisfying in hearing this for 15 years, and have it come true. It’s bullshit. It’s such terribly bad writing. It’s taking everything Jensen built and telling him it didn’t matter. I feel like complete shit for him, beyond the show ending and beyond how bad the finale was, it’s unfair to give Dean and Jensen this ending. Kripke just took Swan Song and rewrote it. And Swan Song would have been a correct ending for season 5, but not for season 15. Things changed between then and now. But it’s like it was all for nothing.

And Misha, who carried that show, who saved that show, with Castiel, who was the embodiment of love and free will, to be treated that way? To be left as a sidenote on a wikipedia page as the angel who fell for love and in love but who died before the end, for nothing? He didn’t deserve that. Jensen and Dean didn’t deserve that, and neither did we.

And you know the worst part? I love that show. I love it so much. It was with me through everything, high school and college and moving abroad and leaving my family, depression, coming out, losing friends to suicide and accidents, losing my grandmothers, losing my nieces, all this time it was right there to pick me up and it told me that family didn’t end with blood and that if you kept fighting, if you kept believing that it was worth it, then good would prevail. That good things do happen. And they took all that, all that hope, and ripped it to shreds and sent it back to me with a “fuck you” note. They literally told us with that ending that death was the only way for them to reach happiness. They did that. The cast has spent years talking about mental health and suicide prevention, and they did that. That was their last message. To say we deserved better doesn’t even begin to cover it.

#spn #spn spoilers #15x20 #gaelle parle #Anonymous

13 notes · View notes

herakosmos · 4 years

Text

matchup exchange w/ @todorokis-yn! 𐐪𐑂

im so grateful for her to accept this exhange! she’s very kind and sweet🥺 pls do check out her blog!!

if you want to do a matchup exchange with me pls dm me! <3

i match you up with . . .

daichi sawamura!! 𐐪𐑂

✰ when first meeting daichi, he wouldn’t be the type to be scared or intimidated by your looks, but instead intrigued? he’ll definitely be very interested in your sense of fashion (edgy) completing that aura you give off to strangers like daichi himself. his face would slowly start to heat up after realizing he’s been staring too much. this doesn’t change the fact that this man will have the confidence to ask you to get coffee together though

✰ what can i say he’s very intrigued 🌚

✰ when actually getting to learn more about you, he’s not that surprised you were the complete opposite of what everyone percieved you to be. daichi never judges someone solely on looks and really looks for what’s on the inside

✰ that soft and gentle soul of yours really makes him melt into your arms and feels the need to hug you 24/7 🥺

✰ both of you guys are very caring and great listeners on each other’s problems. you being fairly expressive on how you’re feeling, the communication in the relationship would be phenomenal. you guys would help bring out the best in each other and know your way of saying encouranging words of advice! :)

✰ daichi thinks you’re absolutely adorable once your goofy side starts showing. the fact that you’ll do anything to make him laugh makes him grateful to have you. it really shows how much you want him to smile and be happy

✰ i don’t know why, but i feel like daichi just loves dad jokes so much. he’ll be so excited to tell you one and it always ends up looking this:

“i like dad jokes…sometimes he laughs!”

“…yeah VERY funny i’m laughing my ass off right now”

✰ he immediately starts tickling you mercilessly for that and eventually it turns into a tickling war! even the neighbors could hear the sounds of your guy’s laughter 😭

✰ even though daichi comes off as a mature person, his childish side really starts to show whenever you’re around (awwhhhh)

✰ this boy is a very busy man knowing how much is on his plate and he loves you for being understanding about it. it doesn’t mean he doesn’t make time for you though! he’s open to anything as long as it’s with you. sometimes maybe going to a cafe and drinking your favorite beverages while having a conversation, holding hands on the table. 🥺THIS MAN IS WHIPPED WHSJDJ

✰ there are those days where you guys wanna relax and unwind though and binge an anime yall are already invested in. he’ll get so into it, like if there’s a part where a character is acting dumb he’ll literally say it to the tv like the character could hear him LMAO

✰ 100% trusts you in everything. daichi isn’t the type to be jealous or controlling on anything. he thinks you have the right to wear anything you want and doesn’t want to take your freedom away. he knows you love him and he loves you :(( loyalty is very important to the both of you, so there is no need to worry about anything!

✰ he loves your honesty. he’s a pretty straight forward person himself, so it doesn’t really bother him. this means you won’t have to stress about anything being hidden in the relationship. the fact that you overthink about that trait you have makes him really sad :// he reassures you every single time and always says the right things to make sure you won’t worry

✰ caresses you with his giant hand and grazes your cheek with his thumb while looking at you with his loving eyes🥺🥺

✰ hearing about your biggest fear, he doesn’t think it’s silly and tells you how much you ARE worthy of it. instantly pulls you in for one of his bear hugs while stroking your hair. he doesn’t EVER want you to feel like your are less than what you really are🥺

✰ although your drive is inspiring to him, it’s also another thing to overwork yourself. in times like this he’ll give you a massage to ease up any tension and would buy all the junk food you desire. daichi can be pretty hard headed sometimes, so convincing him by saying “you’re fine” won’t work on him. he can read you like a book and knows when it’s time to take a break

✰ probably would prepare you one of those rose petal baths and candles with your favorite scent. you guys would both talk about anything while relaxing. his hands would suddenly go to your scalp and start to massage the shampoo onto your hair to give you a head message (a busted a fat awhhh while writing this ahjdfjfjj)

✰ basically ANYTHING to help you unwind and have no worries about your work 🥺

✰ he would happily be open to you teaching him how to play the piano. he finds it soothing whenever you play it and wants to try it out himself, so he can impress you. probably would be very invested in it once you start showing him the basics. tries to look up basic songs to play on his own, so he could surprise you one day :D

✰ i feel like he would find out about your amazing singing skills whenever you casually sing or hum around the house. he’d be like where’s that angel like sound coming from? then he would realize its HIS angel singing so beautifully🥺🥺🥺

✰ when you aren’t looking he’ll quietly back hug you

“you sound so beautiful baby”

✰ his pet names for you would be the traditional “baby” or “babe” :))

✰ daichi loves exercising and since you find dancing as your only form of exercise, he would take this opportunity to do it with you! i can just see him always wanting to try new things for you and opening his hobbies, so you guys can bond more over your guy’s likes and interests🥺

✰ you being a taurus and him being a capricorn this is definitely a match made in heaven!

✰ both signs are very ambitious individuals with a tremendous work ethic and drive to succeed professionally. capricorn and taurus are both earth signs and since this sign is very grounded, they can build a solid and responsible relationship. they’re very genuine signs that like to keep it real and want to understand each other on many levels.

✰ daichi is an ENFJ and you’re an INFP (again very compatible with each other!)

✰ both are very compatible with each other because they both share a lot in common :))

✰ they prioritize their deeply held values, seek emotional connection, very real, don’t like to be toyed with and have excellent communication skills. INFPs are attracted to ENFJ’s energy, optimism and positive attitude while ENFJs are attracted to INFP’s deep and thoughtful nature.

bonus!

heres an anime relationship type gif that i just think you two would do 🥺

#anime matchup #haikyuu matchups #haikyuu!!#matchup exchange #hq daichi #daichi sawamura

11 notes · View notes

seblos · 4 years

Text

there’s not a star in heaven that we can’t reach - ch 2/10

chapter title: let’s stop swirling, and start twirling

word count: 3,351

read on ao3

Carlos now has a hall pass to miss the last 15 minutes of study hall so he can get to rehearsal early. He probably would have been allowed to leave without one, considering everyone in the cast had been excused half an hour early for costume fittings, but he has Mr. Mazzara to thank for the small yellow paper he clutched in his hand now.

Miss Jenn was already in the bomb shelter by the time he gets there, quickly typing away at her phone until she notices Carlos standing in front of her.

“Carlos, perfect, just in time!” Miss Jenn says as her phone made a fwoosh noise, confirming some order that Carlos couldn’t see. “I left the box of scripts in my office, so can you set up the desks and name cards for the read through? I’m thinking a circle for all the named roles, plus me, you, and our stage manager, and then the ensemble and the rest of tech can just be grouped together behind.”

He was about to ask why not just put everyone in a circle, but Miss Jenn had already made her way out the door towards her office. He shrugs, not caring enough to argue with her judgment. Miss Jenn knew what she wanted; he might as well follow her agenda.

Carlos arranges the desks the way she had asked, then quickly slides over the top of one as he begins putting down the name cards for everyone. He starts with his own choreography card (keeping a mental reminder to take a photo with it later) then director, stage manager, Chad, Troy, Gabriella, and Taylor.

The next card stops him though. Carlos reads over the neat printed “Sharpay” as the conversations he had with Seb from auditions washed over him, warming his heart.

He glances over at the desk he had left off on, almost directly across from where he was sitting. Instead of putting it there, though, he bit his lip and turns, dropping the card on the desk next to his instead.

With that, he kept going around the circle acting as if nothing happened. He makes sure to put the Ryan card next to Sharpay just in case anyone decides to ask why Seb was all the way on the other side of the circle from the other leads. Miss Jenn came back in a few minutes later with the box full of scripts.

“Oh that looks perfect!” she tells him, looking at the arrangement. Carlos sucks in a breath, expecting her to say something about the out of place Sharpay name card, but she doesn’t say anything about it.

The theatre kids begin filing through the door just as the bell rang for school to end as Carlos swipes through the few notifications on his phone as Miss Jenn calls for everyone to take their assigned seats. Nothing important, just a new post from Ashley Tisdale on Instagram, a few new twitter followers (he was surprised to see EJ Caswell was one of them) and-

Carlos groans, showing Miss Jenn the text he had gotten from Natalie.

“Who is Natalie Bagley and why do I care if her glands are swollen?” she asks.

“Our stage manager. Guess she’s not coming,” Carlos says, switching off his phone.

Miss Jenn immediately called out Ricky’s friend, Big Red, and asked him to read the stage directions. Part of Carlos is upset that she didn’t just ask him to do stage directions since it wasn’t like he had any lines to read, but it was fine. They needed more tech kids anyway, maybe this would convince him to join backstage.

Or so he thought, considering the next near-hour and half was spent painfully listening to Big Red read the stage directions. Carlos at one point had shot Miss Jenn a pointed look, who looked stressed out of her mind as she asked him to read the punctuation. Unfortunately, Big Red had taken that seriously, and no one had the heart (or the energy) to correct him after he started reading “Sharpay comma heads for class period.” This, plus Carlos’s ADHD made him feel like he needs to take a lap around the school. Maybe around all of Salt Lake City before he’s ready to come back to this.

Instead, he chooses to glance over at Seb to his left, who looks just as spaced out as everyone else did. An idea pops into Carlos’s brain, and he quickly scribbles down an SOS on the blank sheet of paper he had been using to take choreo notes (in which there were none, yet. He couldn’t focus like this anyway.) He then folds up the note and tries to make eye contact with Seb.

Unfortunately, the farm boy was still spaced out as ever, staring at the pages which he turned while everyone else did, although his eyes weren’t moving along the words.

The universe decides to apparently help him out, though as while Carlos was trying to get Seb’s attention, he doesn’t notice his pencil rolling off the table until it was too late. It clattered on the floor, not catching the attention of anyone except for the boy sitting next to him.

Seb breaks from his trance, reaching down to grab the pencil before handing it to Carlos with a grin, and Carlos uses it as his shot to quickly hand the boy the note as he takes his pen back.

He takes the piece of paper in surprise, cocking his head at Carlos for a moment as he unfolds the paper as quietly as possible. For a moment, Carlos wonders if it had been a bad idea.

Until, Seb reads the note and a smile grew on his face, grabbing a pen from his backpack nonchalantly so he wasn’t writing back in highlighter. Carlos noted that it was cow print and wrote in shimmery light blue ink, which, aw.

He passes it back a moment later, and Carlos grins as he reads the response. Underneath his SOS in round, loopy writing is Seb’s bubbly ikr? big red is the sweetest but this plus my adhd my brain is GONE.

Carlos grins when he reads it. He didn’t know Seb had ADHD too (it’s not exactly something he advertises either, to be fair) but it’s always nice to see someone who can relate. He quickly scribbles back same! im all for new tech kids but i think miss jenn should just let me read from here on out. and i hate reading out loud. (and i have adhd too, crazy lol)

He passes it back to Seb, who’s brow furrows he writes, passing it back a moment later. It now reads she really should. why didnt she? i mean, youre capable of anything, even reading out loud. (and that’s cool! i mean, not cool, but cool that you can relate :) )

Carlos smiles. It’s sweet that Seb thinks that about him. He writes not sure. perks of being the unpaid choreographer i guess.

When Seb gets it back this time, he smiles. well, someone should pay you then. btw have you done the chem hw yet? mr mazzara is killing me

They continue passing the paper back and forth, veering off topic from the show and just talking about school and their families. It’s never been this easy for him to make friends, but something just seems right when he’s talking to Seb, even if its through a piece of paper.

They end up covering the paper, only pausing when Seb has to read lines. They have to move onto the back at one point before Big Red finally reads the last sentence of Act I, and Miss Jenn calls for a break. Carlos is about to scootch his desk closer to Seb’s when Miss Jenn gestures for him to come talk to her. He shoots Seb an apologetic look, who just waves him off with a smile before adjusting his jacket and instead moves to talk to Ashlyn, who looks surprised when he drops down in the seat next to her.

As he follows Miss Jenn over to a corner of the bomb shelter, he worries for a second that she’s going to call him out for not only not paying attention to the script but distracting one of the leads in the process. Thankfully, it seems she didn’t notice and instead starts asking about Ricky and Nini. (As if Carlos has any idea what’s going on between them. Again, hetero drama that he doesn’t completely care about.)

“Should we think about recasting?” Carlos offers.

“Absolutely not, my instincts are impeccable.” Miss Jenn replies, then adds, “and I’m not scared of a challenge.”

“This one might be impossible. She won’t even look at him.”

“Don’t underestimate me. I come from strong stock. My mother bounced back from an autopsy.”

Okay, not the reply he was expecting, but Miss Jenn was already calling them back together, which meant another hour of listening to Big Red read Act II.

When he sits down, though, Seb smiles at him again, and Carlos pulls back out the paper.

—

Carlos was packing up his backpack after they ended early rehearsal that day. Ricky stormed off, and maybe it wasn’t necessarily Carlos’s fault that he was quitting the show, but he could feel his chest getting tighter the more he tried to ignore it. If he had just pushed Ricky a little less or cut all the dance talk and tried just a little harder to get him to stay, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

“Hey, do you need a ride home?” Carlos hears footsteps approaching. He hadn’t realized that anyone was still in the bomb shelter, but when he turned around Seb was standing there. They had talked before rehearsal and in classes, but during rehearsal, Carlos was barely able to spare a glance at the boy playing piano while he tried to teach choreography. Not that rehearsal was about interacting anyway.

“Don’t you live on a farm?” Carlos asks, even though he knows the answer. It’s more of a question of why are you offering a ride if you live so far away?

“Yeah, but don’t worry! Your house is on the way!”

Carlos squints at him, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly. “You don’t even know where I live.”

“No, but I’m sure it’s on the way,” Seb is grinning at him, and Carlos doesn’t want to say no. Besides, he told his mom they would be done at six, and it’s barely even 5 o’clock, so he nods.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind. That would be good,” Carlos returns the smile and Seb beams. He finishes zipping up his backpack, swings it around his shoulders as Seb finishes sending a message on his phone, and the two walk out the door of the bomb shelter together.

“By the way, I like your shoes,” Seb says without even looking down, and Carlos feels the slightest bit of heat rushing to his face. The shoes in question are cow print, and even though he bought them before his conversation with Seb at the read through, he did think of the boy this morning when he put them on.

“Thank you,” Carlos says. He’s quiet for a moment, before asking “how are you so happy all the time?”

Seb looks surprised. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re always so smiley and nice, even when everything is crazy stressful, like right now. I feel like I’m just snapping and brushing people off.”

“Well, first of all, you’re definitely more stressed than me,” Seb says, turning his head towards Carlos as he speaks. “I barely played today, considering how much everyone has been arguing with you about the moves. I mean, just because Miss Jenn isn’t there all the time doesn’t immediately give them the right not to listen to you.”

“I think it’s that, plus being an underclassman,” he sighs, pushing open the doors to the main entrance of the school. “I mean, Gina respects me but she isn’t exactly the friendliest with everyone right now either.”

“Well, it’s not fair of them,” Seb says, and Carlos bites his lip. He already knew deep down what Seb had said was true, but just hearing someone say it out loud made it so much more real.

When Carlos doesn’t say anything else, Seb continues. “Besides, it sort of seemed like you weren’t having the greatest time, so I was hoping if I was a little happier, you would be too. Is that stupid?” he asks.

“No, it’s not stupid. It helped. Thanks,” Carlos smiles, because it did genuinely help. Well, either that or the venting.

Seb smiles again, and Carlos feels his heart flutter just a little bit. Something about Seb’s smiles always made him feel warm. They never feel fake, and they’re always just as bright as the last.

They stop in front of a car, and Carlos opens the door to the back while Seb goes to the front seat. Behind the wheel is a girl a few years older than them who he presumes is Seb’s sister.

“Carlos, this is my sister, Georgie,” he introduces, and the girl turns to smile at Carlos. She has the same blonde hair and blue eyes as Seb.

“Nice to meet you, Carlos,” Georgie says. “Seb texted saying you need a ride, so where am I going?”

For the most part, the car ride is silent. There’s music playing, a mix of old 2010’s pop and musical theatre, and Carlos can’t tell who’s playlist it is as both Seb and Georgie sing along. It’s not uncomfortable though, and he smiles as he watches the two of them together. He only has step siblings, and he’s not nearly as close to any of them as Seb is.

“Do you have other siblings?” he asks out of nowhere, and both Seb and Georgie laugh.

“Too many to keep track of,” Seb shakes his head. “I’m a middle child of seven.”

Carlos’s eyes widen. “Seven? And they’re all fully blood related to you?”

“Yep. four sisters, two brothers. Josephine is the oldest, then our brother Cohyn, then Georgie, then me, then Sophia, Paisley, and Isaac. We’re all two years apart, starting at 21 with Josie, except for Isaac who’s 5 and was a bit of a surprise,” Seb explains, and Carlos feels his head spinning.

“How do you remember all that?” he asks, causing both the Matthew-Smith’s to laugh again.

“Years of practice. To be fair, I don’t know like, half of their birthdays,” Seb says, earning a punch in the arm from his sister.

“Do you have any siblings, Carlos?” she asks.

“Two stepsisters on my mom’s side, both older. Isabella and Victoria,” Carlos says. “Isa is in college and Vic is about to graduate, but she goes to West High. I have a lot of cousins though, which are basically my siblings.”

“Us too,” Seb smiles softly. Carlos is expecting the look that people give him when they realize his parents aren’t divorced, but there’s no change in his expression. It’s nice to not have people ask about it for once (not that he remembers a time before they were divorced anyway. He was three, it doesn’t really affect him anymore.)

Georgie pulls into the driveway of Carlos’s house, and Carlos opens the door.

“Thank you for the ride,” he says.

“Anytime, Los.” The nickname hits Carlos harder than he’s expecting it to, and he stops for a second, registering it into the mind as his heart swells. Only family members had ever used that nickname on him before, and hearing Seb use it felt… different. But good different.

“See you tomorrow,” he says, closing the door and waving goodbye to the two before running up the steps to his house. He can see them driving away as he closes the door.

“You’re home early,” his mother steps out from the kitchen, and Carlos turns.

“We ended early. Sort of a dramatic day.”

His mother laughs. “Always is in theatre,” and Carlos can’t help but laugh too. “How did you get home? You could have texted.”

“A… friend gave me a ride. Seb Matthew-Smith, he’s our accompanist and he’s playing Sharpay.”

He can see a twinkle in his mother’s eye as she nods. “Got it,” she says, stretching it out as she gives him a look.

“Not like that, mamá, just a friend,” he rolls his eyes with a smile.

“Well, I’m glad you’re making friends. Dinner will be ready in an hour, I’m going out to play bunco tonight, so make sure you and Victoria clean up,” she tells him, and Carlos nods, taking that as his cue to go upstairs.

As he reaches his bedroom, though, his phone dings with a text from Seb (they had swapped numbers at the end of the readthrough) about the chemistry homework. Carlos sets down his backpack, pulling out the homework in question, and sets it on his desk while he texts back.

His mother’s voice rings in his head. I’m glad you’re making friends. It’s the first time in a while that he’s had a close friend, and it fills his chest with warmth.

—

“Where do you sit during lunch?” Seb asks Carlos out of nowhere, plopping down on the seat next to him during study hall. He’s in the library, researching other school’s performances of High School Musical so he can try and get inspiration for their show. When Seb sits down, though, he pulls out an earbud.

“I mean, here, usually,” Carlos glances around the library. “Why do you ask?”

Seb shrugs. “Dunno, I’ve never seen you at lunch before and I was wondering who you sit with. I thought we might be in different periods, but we have gym and chem together sixth and seventh, and you mentioned to me yesterday that you have algebra fourth, so the only option left was fifth unless you take an extra class like some kinda psycho.”

Carlos blinks. “You kept track of all of that?” he asks.

Seb suddenly blushes slightly. “I mean, I don’t know the rest of your schedule, I was only really paying attention because like I said, I was wondering who you sit with. But I guess you sit with… no one…?” he trails off.

Now it’s Carlos’s turn to blush. “I mean, my mom plays bunco with the librarian so she always let me sit in here. The only other person I really talk to is Gina, but she has seventh period lunch. And I guess I could eat in Miss Jenn’s office, but sometimes she stresses me out and I can watch videos in here. Plus it’s a lot quieter than the cafeteria, although I did run into Ricky today-”

Seb cuts him off. “Would you want to sit with me and Natalie? It’s only us at our table.”

“I- uh. Yeah. Sure,” Carlos says.

Seb nods with a smile. “Okay, cool,” he says, then turns in his seat and logs into the computer next to Carlos.

“Why do you keep inviting me to things?” Carlos asks suddenly, gnawing on his lip.

Seb turns back to face Carlos again. “What do you mean?”

“You offered to drive me home, now you’re inviting me to sit with you at lunch.”

He cocks his head, smiling, although still clearly confused. “Because we’re friends, dummy,” he tells Carlos.

“Oh,” Carlos smiles. “Okay. Cool.”

Seb nods. “Cool.”

They both go back to doing their work silently until Seb turns around again.

“Did you say you saw Ricky in here?” he asks.

“Yes! You’ll never believe what he did.”

“What?” “He told me he’s joining the show again! And then, he started dancing. Like, in the middle of the walkway!” They both laugh.

As Carlos continues filling Seb in on all the details of his previous conversation with Ricky, he can feel his heart fluttering. He doesn’t know what is with the other boy in the long run, but hey, at least they’re friends.

#seblos #carlos rodriguez #seb matthew smith #hsmtmts #high school musical the musical the series #my writing #not a star

9 notes · View notes

cruddyborderlandstheories · 5 years

Text

athenas or the new ign videos... hmmm

im gonna go for the ign videos (moze gameplay and sanctuary-iii, no guns yet, i have a reason for that) because athenas hasn’t gotten its sweet instagram video yet. once that’s released i’ll do a full post on it. by the time i got around to finishing this post, they had released the video. oh boy... gonna do the gun post then the athenas post, i think. alright, off we go.

tl;dr: we read the entire end user agreement DAHL thrusts upon us for using the ECHO device, talk about some stuff like how (spoilers) it seems like Lilith will be getting her powers back at the end of the game, and a voice line Lily says that sounds like “Tyreen took my powers. it’s like Tannis said: [inaudible] Siren” (altho im not 100% sure on the [inaudible] part because 1) it sounds weird and 2) there’s a drum beat and also the devs are talking over her, the Siren part seems fairly accurate because of the way her mouth moves). so you know. im gonna be agonizing over that until i can hear what she says. ive already spent an hour just repeating it over and over. i nearly fell asleep lol

we’re gonna start with the moze gameplay (the first 14 minutes of bl3) because chronologically it’s first in both timeline and release date

i love the license plates on the right there

also it looks like they added in claptrap’s old welcome sign from windshear waste! time to stand in front of it for 30 minutes to see if any messages pop up like bl2

fast travel station as well, definitely going to see if/where i can teleport and going there immediately. i imagine this is more for DLC stuff and grinding tho.

also! i do believe we saw Covenant Pass previously. good to know this is actually where it is!

Marcus saying “And Welcome to Pandora!” in the beginning confirms that, yes, they’re going to be on a bus!! i wonder if there will be a fight scene before that though. it’s interesting Clappy mentions that “those jerks who tried to murder you are the children of the vault!” so i mean... there’s gotta be... right?

im also convinced this intro is going to be a mirror of Borderlands 1. i stg if it starts out with the first few notes of Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked and then swaps songs I’m going to lose my mind

also also, the order is totally going to mimic the bl1 one. Fl4k = Mordecai, Amara = Lilith, Moze = Roland, Zane = Brick. We even have Lilith taking Angel’s spot as the mysterious voice in our heads, and probably Marcus driving, AND being dropped off at a bus stop.

bet the reason they changed it from ‘Moze as the Bot Jock’ to ‘Moze as the Gunner’ is because it fits under ‘Roland as the Soldier’ better. Also, ‘Zane Flynt as Himselfs’ would be a play off ‘Brick as Himself’. Amara as the Siren is obvious, and ‘Mordecai as the Hunter’ vs ‘Fl4k as the Beastmaster’ is pretty similar as well, given Fl4k has all those Hunter skills.

the 4 basic emotes im guessing. im so glad we have the option to boop our friends in the face with emotes.

also moze’s little bunny skin is adorable

the ECHOnet used to be called “Riftspace”, “the Spline”, and... “MercTel: A Cyber-Dahl Joint” lmfao

specifically calls out Pandora. also, “artificial megastructures”??? THAT’S SO COOL

AND FUCKING

SENTIENT MEGASTRUCTURES????

gearbox. please. i have never ever wanted anything more in my life. please. it’s probably my birthday. PLEASE GEARBOX

also interesting that the user agreement specifically notes ‘Respawns’. I assume this is a joke because New-U stations have been confirmed not canon

“Core law”. Core law? Core... daddy? ... ????

core as in like a core government somewhere that’s not the border worlds? that’s interesting...

“The Legion”, okay, acknowledging TPS, that’s dope

“Project Blackrakk” ... im interested

“Thresher Company” lmao

im curious if Axton was apart of any of the mentioned ones. i don’t think it’s been stated, but i could be wrong

“Chieftain Oort”. also ‘Recently Legless Gary’, lmfao poor dude.

oh yeah im sure this is fine. also holy shit did they google the synonyms for ‘change’ and just start listing them? lmfao

“implicit subscription to the Digby Vermouth ‘Dig’s Gigs’ secret concert subscription service”

sorry, what?

if this doesn’t come up again in the future- if we don’t get a spam letter or 3 in our mailbox about this concert subscription thing i'm gonna be so disappointed

Dahl hates you if you’re not a fan of hyper-jazz, “you snob” lmfao

my brain hurts, they’re good at writing these

damn phones exist? i thought everything was ECHO. aight, that’s good to know. i guess there just aren’t any phone networks around the border worlds

also “shared dreamspaces” sound really cool

hm. that’s no good lmfao. also i love that the buttons are ‘Agree’ and ‘OK’. there is no escape, once you agree, you can’t even leave because you’re agreeing that you’re trapped with these rules even if you cancel.

that’s fucked up, DAHL. can’t believe you treat your user base the same way you treat your employees. i guess i shouldn’t be surprised.

anyway, shoutout to literally the only TOA I’ve ever fully read in my life.

also, clicking through this TOA too fast WILL end claptrap’s voice line early. so be careful if you want to hear what he has to say!!

oh shit lmao I gotta go edit that Fl4k post

ok im back ~time magic of being able to save things in drafts and post them at a later date~

sliding preserves momentum, so you can actually slide (nearly) the entire way down! i love this.

small, but claptrap bends his antennae when trying to be stealthy. i thought that was a pretty cool detail

“and some guns include an alternate shooting mode~! try it out!”

player: `immediately shoots claptrap in the face`

i died lol

a very nice look at this sign.

good to know that the twins really are tempting people to join with promises of food. i mean it makes sense, i imagine most of the cultists are desperate for stability and a reasonable life on pandora.

also, Shiv calls himself “holy influencer of the children of the vault” lol. i love that. gearbox really is going for the internet’s throat, isn’t it?

i do like that hovering over an NPC will give you their name only and not name/healthbar.

a better look at one of the signs referencing the Mother!!! i was waiting for this, the only real look we got at one was in that one scene with Moze and IB

“Behold the Mother strength surrender to the truth”

yeah that’s not ominous...

i assume the mother and father are intended to be tyreen and troy? but idk how i feel about that implication...

i like the new little gear/spring effect for the magnet lol

new lilith! i know a lot of people don’t like it, but i do. she looks better than the bl2 vers. altho i think it’s weird they swapped both bl1 and bl2′s ‘AI’ effect to those dots and then didn’t bring it to BL3. the dots effect felt cleaner. curious why they’re not applying it to bl3 when they went thru all that effort in 1 and 2.

... back up please.

i like that there is a changing icon for long pressing now

“time to check out our slay of the day!” sounds like Tyreen but tbh i legit thought this was moze’s reaction to opening the chest at first lol

you can hear someone start screaming in agony while she’s walking up the stairs, so i know it’s not moze, but im so used to the VHs talking when they see a new piece of loot my brain just assumed.

also THE MUSIC IN THE BACKGROUND IS A REMIX OF BANDIT SLAUGHTER!!! IM SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS I WAS FREAKING OUT THE FIRST TIME I HEARD IT

also, claptrap when dropping health yells “this could save your life! then, you’ll owe me a life debt!” bullshit im pretty sure you already decided we owed you a life debt the moment we stepped off that bus

“i see it... the great vault” - a line from a cultist you kill

i know i mentioned in this post that the Great Vault may be already opened, but it could also just be a Vault they’re planning on opening and using the propaganda to convince the cultists to help them find it.

“if you help us get this vault open, you’ll be handsomely rewarded! you’ll get superpowers! you’ll get regular meals! you’ll get money and guns and dates!” you know, the usual stuff.

either way, elevating the Vault to a higher state (god/heaven/whatever) makes sense if you’re running a cult.

btw there is a hidden chest in the scaffolding to the left of the door, if you’re interested in grabbing some better guns before shiv. personally, i’ll be using the toy guns.

also the TVs are actually playing propaganda now!!

this one is asking questions that i cant understand due to the sound effects of the chest and claptrap talking, but it says something about “... the dust? ... join the Children of the Vault!”

“hey shiiiiiv all your dumb friends are dead!!”

shiv be like

“all my friends are dead”

some cool level-up art! I notice these are the same pictures as used on the japanese site. i wonder if they change depending on which VH you’ve picked (If you’re playing Amara/Fl4k, do you get pics of Amara and Fl4k? the player is playing moze, afterall).

also also “it’s a KIA on the knife wielding maniac. suuuper dead.”

it’s cool that the VHs have specific lines for the deaths of bosses. i hope that continues and it’s not just a ‘15 min of intro gameplay’ thing. you know, where everything is super detailed in the beginning and then slowly gets less and less as the game progresses? anyway, moze’s little chuckle is fuckin adorable lol

ah. the door closes now so you can’t even explore Shiv’s room before Lilith shows up. gearbox plS you know me too well, i was looking for a g l i m p s e

claptrap’s voice line for getting released is SUPER off time, he hits the ground before going “you did it! i’m sa-ahhhhhhhh!” it’s weird, wondering if that’s just a glitch.

also also we get a nice listen to the revive ally sound. i could’ve sworn it wasn’t in the first look at this mission we got, because i heard it for the first time during the coop Zane/Amara gameplay on Promethea. i might be wrong, tho.

im very curious what these symbols are claptrap is beaming up

i mean you know what im gonna say

they look eridian

and they do

so wtf clappy why u beaming up eridian letters to Lilith

i assume maybe Tannis gave clappy some weird upgrade or something so he could communicate with the crimson raiders without the CoV listening in? it could be that Tannis or someone is decoding this message since Tannis does know how to translate Eridian (as shown in her bl1 ECHOs)

... or at the very least she gave Lilith a translator

the darkening makes it so that you can see the crackening. also this COULD just be a beam that lilith can see from wherever she is, but i want to believe there’s more eridian stuff. bc eridian stuff is fun.

this is so fu cking crisp im dying i love it

lilith’s tattoos spreading down her fingers

same symbol as her chest tattoo. maybe the symbol denotes new powers? like how lily has one on her chest for phasewalking, and a new one on her hand for teleportation

i love how her wings look like actual fire. i fucking love this

lilith is looking so fucking good in the new engine

im glad they got rid of her super red eyes, tbh it looked a bit weird

i think they are really pushing her fire affinity, im sure we’ll see Maya has an elemental affinity as well (im calling corrosive) and im sure Tyreen will too (slag). Amara looks to be Shock because that’s her ‘default’, but who knows until (if) bl4 comes out. but corrosive wings on maya would look SOOO fucking cool. please. please please please.

god she looks so good compared to bl2. i love how the tattoos softly glow in the dark, too. i gotta play this mission late in the day...

“you’re... the voice in my head, right?” i love this so much, i really hope my shitpost comes true.

lilith gives you a grenade mod for completing her mission! im really glad they are PUSHING through the tutorial/intro so you can get right into the game. bl2′s ‘intro’ of all these tutorials was brutal. especially waiting to unlock your action skill.

in 3 you get your action skill automatically at level 2!!! which is insane, i love it! they’re jumping right into it, it’s great. and they seem to be pushing for you to get all the stuff you need right away.

it’s curious to note that in bl3 we get our class mods at the end of the Promethea demo (after Gigamind), since in bl2 you get your first (usually?) after the hunting the firehawk mission and both seem to take place immediately after we get to the ‘base of operations’ of the game (Sanctuary vs Sanctuary-III).

yep that quest is 100% in line with the quest marker.

i imagine From the Ground Up may be discovering where the Vault Map/Key actually is? maybe bringing people to the Recruitment Center (notably Tannis)

for this scene. i hope this takes place after the HBC, because i seriously... can’t imagine the twins showing up, taking the Vault Map, bringing it to the HBC, and then NOT taking Lilith’s powers/trying to kill Lily and accidentally taking her powers. it just doesn’t make sense, Vault Hunters be damned, we are level 2 they could melt us easy peasy.

If anything, it feels like we COULD find the Vault Map in the Recruitment Center, Tannis tries to activate it/fix it, we find out it’s mega broke, and then the Sun Smashers show up and take it. but i seriously can’t imagine Lilith nor the new VHs allowing that to happen while they’re still there. maybe if Tannis sends us to do something while Lilith is gathering other CR members? then it could make sense if they attack while Tannis is alone with the Key...

we end up finding something in Shiv’s room that shows/helps us realize the Sun Smashers bringing the Vault Map to the Calypsos. tho this would mean the quest From the Ground Up is SUPER short and I imagine it’s not. Maybe we raid a camp of theirs like the one in front of Sanc-III with the bridge/ramp? We need to be about level 6 before we go and we start From the Ground Up at 2 so there’s obviously something DEEP we’re missing here. maybe this is a mission where we go gather the other Crimson Raiders? HMMMMMMMM...

.... oh.

nevermind lmfao

she opens her ECHO immediately after this LOL i feel kinda dumb now

raiding their camp it is! the Droughts sounds like a fun location. Very much like the dust. you guys think there’s a Shade situation going on there? i’m excited to see it. Still think we’re going to use Shiv’s room to get that lead, though. i just really wanna watch tv lmfao. i hope this means the bandits run from the camp to the HBC, or we find info that the bandit warchief sent a party to the HBC with the Vault Map. either way, i just don’t want the twins showing up until after the HBC or i will have so many questions. “why didn’t you kill lilith?” being the first. “the god queen wants her head!” ur goddamn right she does, so why doesn’t she (try to) kill lilith???

85% already?! hot damn

also

that’s one badass description there, Moze

also also

while having gun slots locked is pretty normal, im surprised they’re locking class mods and relics, too! i wonder when we’ll be able to equip relics. maybe when we first go to eden-6 or smth. or maybe after we meet up with Rhys. shit maybe he’s just handing us an artifact (im gonna interchange these a lot, sorry!) in that Promethea video lmfao

“ready to chuck some boom and frag some maniacs” lol moze i love you

if you’re playing Zane... `equips grenade mod for checkmark` `immediately equips second action skill and never actually uses grenade mod`

“it’s the firehawk! the god queen wants her head!”

like i alluded to before, i would not be surprised if Tyreen doesn’t know she can absorb Siren powers... when she goes to succ lilith in front of Sanctuary-III, it’s totally possible she actually was trying to kill her. That could explain why she looks so intrigued at her hand like “oh shit okay lets see what this can do”

might be why she was okay with sending her cultists after her instead of showing up herself.

“alright, we got a foothold. maybe things are turning our way. come on killer, you’re with me” we are going to explore the SHIT out of shiv’s room.

alright alright alright

let’s move on to the Sanctuary-III stuff

yessss

i love the quest objective thing, it looks like we will be able to swap through our quests with the push of a button! also im curious why exactly we’re going to promethea right away. i wonder if the twins say something about moving there after getting the vault map/lilith’s powers, or if we hear from rhys. im expecting something about the vault map, since our vh will admit they don’t know rhys at all when talking to lorelei. but for some reason we need to be within the city limits? since lily says ellie got us within the city limits.

hmmmmmm. okay, okay, maybe the map was trying to lead us to promethea for vault reasons during that short amount of time that we had it and it was working. maybe promethea is what we see when tannis is activating the key during that one cutscene? ohhh shit how dope would it be if we got that fucking easter egg message? omg “Children of the Vault. Come to Promethea. We are not on Pandora anymore. Tannis is not what she seems. Do not open the Vaults.” and everyone is like ‘uh did that thing just mention Tannis by name??’ and now it’s REALLY important to get the map back just so we can figure out wtf it’s trying to tell us.

i will question how ‘Tannis is not what she seems’ would affect character relationships, especially if it’s said so early in the game. so perhaps we only hear the first part of the message. maybe it’s corrupted because it was recently broken. iunno. just playing around with ideas. the canon of this game is like flarp putty until sept. 13th

anyway moving on because this is literally the first f r a m e of the video

i like that you can see pandora’s eridian scar. if the destroyer is speaking through eridium to people, it’s gonna bust outta the side of this planet like you wouldn’t fucking believe lmao. eridium is a window to the soul and if you stare long enough into its glossy, shining sides, the destroyer stares back

that or it’s just like a beacon, slowly spreading its influence across the universe. but i like the idea that the destroyer can waltz out of a big enough hunk of eridium. so it will bust out of pandora’s eridium scar. F in chat for pandora but also lmfao the amount of tentacles and rage would be unparalleled.

reality is that the twins are probably farming this scar for eridium to turn into slag for multiple purposes. like brainwashing their cultists, giving them powers, and ensuring their guns have their manufacturer’s quirk (im getting to this in my next post bc im just gonna compile all the ign gun videos into one big post)

the floor art is different from the actual sanc-iii demo. i mention this first in my behind closed doors panel analysis, but im gonna mention it again because this is ~official~. the floor list on the first walkthru of sanc-iii we got had the names of all the crimson raiders and lines leading to their shops. so we had the infirmary/tannis, marcus, moxxi, etc listed on the floor. i imagine this new sanc-iii will change as we get more people on board or if we do a sort of re-decoration of the ship.

also also, it’s cool to see that we have 4 rooms on the minimap, likely one for each of the VHs (and your coop buddies). ive seen speculation that the other, non-played VHs will hang out in their rooms when you’re not playing them, and tbh i really hope this is the case.

we also know this version of sanctuary-iii is after pandora, so there are no promethea citizens aboard yet. which makes me double certain the first sanc-iii video we got takes place either after endgame (explaining why Lily has her tattoos back) or right after Athenas (explaining why Maya is there). which... i mean... spoilers, guys.

that’s one good lookin fast travel station, holy shit

im in tears over here because “Caution: no steppy”. this is so fucking funny to me

no steppy on me

okay moving on because i will cry laugh over this for forever im allowed

moze’s room is so much different than amara’s

also i notice she’s on the left of the two on the top, which makes me hope the other 4 are reserved for the other VHs (or your coop buddy).

compared to the official sanc-iii demo video

and amara’s room

moze’s is so barren oh my god

someone get this girl like... a colorful throw pillow or something

baaank. also doubles as the secret stash. kinda upsetting, because that is infinitely less loot i can store when i make a lot of characters. also if i upgrade the bank once, is it upgraded across all my other characters too? or are the guns i put in storage slot 11 locked up until i buy the upgrade?

either way, i am saddened because no more mule characters. and way less space the more characters you make and more gear you find, because all gear you put in here is there across all characters. i hope this means our backpacks will be a lot bigger this time around!

supamax mfg shows up again

ppm/04-02 matches up with the number behind the fast travel station. i wonder if this will come into play. if the number changes later in-game im going to freak the fuck out bc that means wherever we are isn’t actually sanctuary-iii

ppm/04-02. remember that 👀

also, the wall behind the golden chest changed from red to steel/greenish. can’t tell the actual color. same as the floor

you know. that color.

“golden keys are popular. you can get some in-game and also get them online”

in-game you say??? im interested! i wonder if there will be some sort of arena (like moxxi’s) where if you complete it you get a key as a reward. i saw people speculating about some sort of randomized boss rush, that could definitely be a way to get gold keys, as well.

oooo engine room! im excited to explore here.

original size is 16. so, we have 40 backpack slots! still... you know... only 1 above the max of bl2, but hey. at least that’s an upgrade. as small as it may be

on the bright side: bank upgrades increase capacity by 5. with a base of 10, and 8 upgrades, we have 50 slots to fill. which is a big leap from the original 24. it is still a shame we have to share these across characters, tho

offline cultist stream? makes me think the CoV really was trying to steal/take over sanc-iii from the crimson raiders and we went to go take it (back?) in Taking Flight. either the CoV found/ordered Sanc-III, or the crimson raiders were building it/fixing it up, their stronghold got taken over, and the CoV were prepping it for takeover.

the shooting range. and if you notice that little CoV symbol in the bottom left there? yeah pretty much backs up my previous theory

all those red bits are tied to ellie’s crew challenge. so we’ll be collecting things for her!

an altar for scooter 😢

“we’re gonna get those cultism sumbitches, believe you me”

where you get yeeted out of Sanc-III. im definitely going to try jumping in it to see if it kills me. doesn’t look like the drop pods are available yet

that’s not clappy, pretty sure he’s hanging out on the bridge right now

schematics for veronica

the thing i was most excited about in this video!

loooots of customizations! which excites me because i know eridium used to get useless late game when you’ve grinded all the raid bosses. it looks like eridum is going to be in ultra high demand. but u can bet ur ass im gonna be unlocking all those fucking customizations asap.

veteran rewards is also super super interesting

hgggggg i wanna know what the shields do!!!

i like the vault symbol at the top of the item card as well, shows you its a special type of weapon/item. im honestly surprised we’re able to buy ‘veteran rewards’ so early in the game? i mean obvi we won’t have enough eridium (look at the costs!) but it’s wild it’s even accessible. im personally a fan of the first bonus ‘anointed: gain life steal on action skill end’

looks like these guns have been chosen

to give them those special bonuses

i do see that just anointed is not class specific, but the ones that say anointed gunner or maybe anointed siren will be (confirmed by the devs in video).

you pay with eridium, so maybe the vending machine has some way to confer the power of eridium to the guns. or some shit. iunno. it’s possible this won’t be available until the end of the game, hence veteran rewards, and is only being shown to us right now since this is a showcasing video.

pandoran civilian. no promethea civilians today folks! i am CONVINCED that the old sanc-iii demo takes place after the end of the game. at least after athenas.

it’s weird seeing moxxi hanging outside her bar.

is also cool to know that the 4 slot machines are actually available. seems like npcs can play them, but we can use all 4 if we want to. which is really nice

the one on the far left is called the ‘loot boxxer’ and it gives mostly guns lol. i see they are taking jabs. good for them

better pic of the leftmost machines

Zer0 seems to have a bounty board? not sure if this is like a physical bounty board or if they will contact you when they want something dead, but it is cool to note. this isn’t shown in video, just the devs speaking about it.

similarly hammerlock has ‘big game hunts’ where you find “rare, challenging creatures” and kill them for him

apparently we’ll be killing something known as a manvark

this book

i fucking recognize this book

HAMMERLOCK NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

in all seriousness tho

hammerlock probably isn’t in his room because we haven’t rescued him from eden-6 yet.

a cool thing about the crew challenges: as you progress through the game and do these challenges, sanc-iii will ‘grow and change to reflect the things you’ve accomplished’. altho another dev says “sometimes these are optional things, like challenges”

so now im like oh shit we’re gonna change sanc-iii as we play the game. i wonder if that means we’ll be changing the hull, too. because you know. the blue paint job. we gotta go STEALTH. sneaky beaky into the calypsos fleety

tannis doesn’t have the saurian on her table. also, interesting note, she DOES have the eridian log in the corner. meaning she must have had that before eden-6. interesting... maybe we’ll find more on Pandora.

she is still covered in blood tho. idk i don’t have an explanation for that. don’t think i want to think of one, to be quite honest.

oh no. (those are skulls next to all the gurneys)

“tannis plays a much bigger role in bl3 than she has in past games”. bigger than borderlands 1? that is... impressive. she’ll be running the health vending machines (which is weird bc i could’ve sworn in the promethea demo, zed was still running them... hm.)

another angle of sanc-iii

clappy? you good there?

the devs said they’re using him to plug a hole. i assume the calypsos shot at the ship as we’re leaving or smth.

lily with no tattoos, who also looks significantly more pissed than her other sanc-iii demo counterpart

you know. because she got her tattoos.

also

fucking

lilith says something right here. all i can make out is “Tyreen took my powers. it’s like tannis said. ..... [inaudible] Siren.” maybe some weird word i haven’t heard before? i swear she’s saying ‘like tannis said: a ‘m...’ Siren” but i am not 100% sure. if someone could help me out, that’d be rad.

so its sounding like lilith rushed in with explicit warning from tannis about tyreen stealing her powers, and tannis knew tyreen was some sort of Siren and warned lily, but lily didn’t listen. it could also be that lily is saying something like “im not a siren” but i can’t really hear it if she is. it sounds like she saying a word that starts with m to me. if someone could help me with this i’d owe you my life

whew. i am. fucking TIRED.

im gonna sleep for like 3 hours and then wake up and make food before the fl4k streams start.

#borderlands #bl3 #borderlands 3

26 notes · View notes

takerfoxx · 4 years

Text

IM Swiftly Descending Darkness, Chapter 9

With a clean heart and a resolute mind, Brother Nathaniel Skinner stepped up to the pulpit.

The Brotherhood of the First Gensokyo Baptist Fellowship met in a small, plain room in the back of Nathaniel’s house. With only six pews facing a small raised platform and a small wooden crucifix adorned with a wreath of ivy hanging from the wall, it was certainly a humble sanctuary for the few faithful of Gensokyo, which, all told, numbered only twenty-four.

Six of them, specifically Nathaniel himself, Andrew Shuemaker, Betsy Caulfield, Bobby Forester, Dorothy Forester, and Eddie Orozco, were from that fateful bus ride that had first stolen him away from their home, the others having either left the Human Village, perished, or wanting nothing to do with them. The rest were native Gensokyians, local Japs that had been wise enough to see their home country for the cesspool of spiritual disease that it was. when Nathaniel had first been stranded here, he had been convinced that none of the locals were even capable of salvation, that their families had been wallowing in sinful practices and demonic energies for so long that their hearts would be repulsed by the mere idea of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In this, he had been proven wrong, and for which he was thankful. As Joshua Stump, the man who had once been his brother, had demonstrated, Nathaniel could trust not even good American Christians to properly keep the faith. And in was good to know that even in the Devil’s own country, the Light of God could still shine through.

Nathaniel took a deep breath, and then said, “My brothers and sisters, we are the Chosen Few.”

“We are the Chosen Few,” his congregation parroted back at him.

“We are the Light in the Darkness.”

“We are the Army of Christ.”

“We are the Army of Christ. Amen.”

Nathaniel bowed his head in silence. Then he threw it back and called to the Heavens. “Oh Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner! And thank You for reminding me of our true mission, which, in my zealousness to stand fast against the wiles of Satan, I had forgotten!”

…

The previous night…

At last.

I can feel it. Even in my place of imprisonment, even in my place of torment, I can feel it.

Can you feel it, my little lost servant? Can you hear them, my wandering prodigal? Though you have closed your heart and mind to me, you cannot hide forever. You carry a piece of me with you, and He will not take it from you.

For even in your rebellion, I have found others, I have chosen others. And you will help them. Even if you continue to resist my call, you will do this. You will seek out the children, and guide them into my darkness.

You will do this.

I have commanded it.

Nathaniel Skinner woke up in a cold sweat.

He was in the dark, still in the cold black, and he couldn’t move. The chains held him still, keeping him prisoner, damned for all time for his sins, his sins of…

…of…

Nathaniel blinked. No, wait, the darkness was impenetrable. Above him he could see…the roof. The roof of his house. He wasn’t in the cold, black pit, he was at home, in bed.

As for his restraints, his nocturnal thrashings had simply rolled the covers into a tight cocoon. Again.

Nathaniel hastily loosed the covers and tossed them off. Now lying naked on sweat-soaked sheets, he slowly breathed out and closed his eyes. The dreams were happening again. The visions once more called to him, all the way from the place of damnation. And his hand…

He flexed the fingers of his right hand, or at least gave the command to. But nothing happened. His brain registered no response.

Nathaniel’s head fell to the right. In the dark, he could see the silhouette of his right arm stretching out across the bed, his fingers curled into a fist. He relaxed them, letting them fall open, and again squeezed them tight.

Though he saw his hand obeying his every instruction, he still felt nothing.

His left hand swept across his body to slam into his right palm. Nothing. Sitting up, he struck again and again, pounding the cold hand. When that didn’t work, he shoved it into his mouth and bit down, trying to evoke some kind of feeling, some kind of pain.

He still felt nothing.

And then it happened.

Nathaniel.

Nathaniel Skinner froze. No. No, no, no. Not again.

Give in.

Not now, now again! He had shut the Dark Voice down years ago! For nearly two years he had resisted its whispers, blocking them from his mind, until they had finally ceased! He had kept careful control, making sure to never allow it to once again awake, making sure that his corrupted hand was well cared for!

But now it was back. The Dark Voice was back.

Give in.

It never said much more than that. Just his name, and the call to give in, to surrender his will. He needn’t ask what it wanted him to give in to. It wanted him to stop fighting, to let it claim his body as its vessel. It had gotten a small piece of itself inside of him, but it needed his consent to pour in the rest, consent he had always refused to give.

Give in.

Trembling, Nathaniel lay back. There was no doubt about it. It was happening again. Fortunately, this time he knew who to blame.

Then, as he lay there in the dark, thoughts racing and heart pounding, he was startled by a loud and sudden sound.

Knocking.

Someone was knocking at his front door.

…

Mai didn’t awake to the knocking. Making a mental note to have her chastised, Nathaniel rose from his bed and hastily dressed himself. Doing so without washing himself made him feel disgusting, but it was only a temporary thing.

The knocking continued. There was no time to bathe his hand, so Skinner had to wrap it up as is. Again he felt nothing, which made his insides squirm. The pain after thoroughly cleaning his diseased hand in hot water might bring tears to his eyes, but it was preferable to the cold nothing he felt now.

Finally he was at least presentable. Nathaniel left his room to confront whoever it was that was foolish enough to wake him at this hour.

Mai was finally up and just reaching the door, which irked him. In the time it had taken him to dress himself, she ought to have already answered, seen who it was, and be on her way to rouse him.

“Move,” he said hoarsely.

She drew back in surprise. “Master Skinner! Forgive me, I-”

“I said move!” He shouldered his way past her and slid the front door open.

Standing outside were several members of his fellowship, specifically Seiya Kirisame, his son Rito Kirisame, Andrew Shuemaker, Bobby Forester, and Satoshi Yuuki. That wasn’t good. The five of them had been sent to deliver Gendou’s message to the orphanage, so having them come to him meant that something had gone horribly wrong.

As soon as Brother Seiya saw that it was him that had answered the door instead of Mai, his sweaty face went pale. “B-Brother Nathaniel!” He bowed his head. “Apologies for disturbing you at this hour, but-”

“Brother Seiya,” Nathaniel said icily. “Well, yes. Apologies would be in order. I hope this is important.”

“It is! We were just at the orphanage, and-”

Nathaniel felt blood rush to his head, and it took a considerable amount of will not to backhand Seiya across the face. “Stop!” he hissed.

Seiya stiffened, but he obeyed.

Control, control. Think about this. Nathaniel closed his eyes and mentally pushed back against the geyser of rage he felt rising. Jesus, grant me Your strength. He was already sweaty from his rude awakening, and this was causing fresh beads to start trickling down his forehead.

“The orphanage,” he said. “You were at the orphanage?”

“Yes!”

“Doing what?”

“I…” Seiya looked utterly gobsmacked. “Delivering the message, of course! From the Leader!”

“The Leader,” Nathaniel repeated. “You mean, you were sent by Master Gendou Sonozika?”

The five of them stared blankly at him. Why? they were wondering. Why would they ask something that he already knew the answer to? After all, Nathaniel had been in the room when Gendou had sent them off. He had relayed part of their instructions, after all.

But there was a reason why they had been given their instructions in private! As such, now that something had apparently gone wrong, Nathaniel wasn’t happy about them banging on his front door in the dead of night for everything to see.

“Y-Yes,” Seiya said after a bit.

“Then why come to me?” Nathaniel said. “If something went wrong, shouldn’t you be taking this information to Master Sonozika?”

“I…” Seiya continued to gawk, his mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish.

Then Rito, ever the pragmatist, nudged Seiya from behind. “Of course, Brother Nathaniel,” he said smoothly. “We will go report to the Leader at once. Our apologies for disturbing you with a matter that is none of your business.”

Nathaniel relaxed a bit. Rito had again proven himself smarter than his elder. Nathaniel really ought to start entrusting him instead of his idiotic father with errands of a sensitive nature.

“Not at all,” Nathaniel said. He made a point to give a long and obvious look toward the nearby back alley. “I apologize if I have been short with you. God go with you, gentlemen. And good night.”

He shut the door and waited until he heard the group’s footsteps recede. When he was sure that their trajectory was taking them the right way, he hurried through his house, toward the side door.

There were two ways to get to the Sonozika estate from Nathaniel’s house. The first was to take the long way through the main streets, which would take you all the way around the block, while the second was to cut straight across the alley between Nathaniel’s house and his neighbor’s. And from the sound of things, they were heading for the alley.

He waited by the side door, listening as their footsteps drew near. When they were loud enough, he swiftly opened the door, reached out with his left hand to seize Seiya by the lapels of his robe, and yanked him inside before the man could cry out in surprise.

“Go home, gentlemen. Go home and speak of any of this to no one,” Nathaniel said briskly to the other four and shut the door.

Seiya was reflexively struggling, so Nathaniel shoved his left hand over the squat man’s mouth, leaned over so that they were face-to-face, and whispered, “Do not cry out. Speak only in whispers. Do you understand?”

His eyes wide with fear, Seiya nodded.

“Good.”

That done, Nathaniel all but dragged Seiya to a small side-room where he knew they would have some measure of privacy. Tossing Seiya in with one hand, Nathaniel stepped inside and slammed the door shut.

“What is wrong with you?” Nathaniel hissed. “Banging on my door in the dead of the night and babbling like an idiot. Everyone could hear you!”

Seiya was not a brave man. He reminded Nathaniel of Gendou in that way, someone full of bluster and indignation that would crumble at the slightest pushback.

“Forgive me!” Seiya blubbered. “I didn’t mean-”

Nathaniel gripped Seiya’s cheeks with one hand, his right hand. “Stop. Quiet down.” He squeezed ever so slightly. “And tell me what happened. Slowly.”

He released the squat man’s face. Seiya stumbled back, clutching at his jowls. “I…I…”

“Now,” Nathaniel said.

The fear in Seiya’s eyes was apparent. He lowered his hand, and when he did, Nathaniel frowned. Was it his imagination, or was there a pair of faint black spots, one on each of his cheeks, where Nathaniel’s fingers had dug into the flesh?

“We went…” Seiya swallowed. “We went to the orphanage. The others, and I, like we were instructed! To deliver Master Sonozika’s message, about how they were no longer welcome at-”

“I remember,” Nathaniel said.

“Right! But when we got there, they were all outside. The children, their guardians, all of them!”

“And?”

“And…they were having a funeral!”

“A funeral,” Nathaniel repeated. “Whose?”

“One of the children. One of the orphans had died.”

“So what?”

“No, you don’t understand! She didn’t just get sick or fall off the roof! She had been killed! By youkai!”

Nathaniel shrugged. “Tragic. But why does that have you so upset? They live in a dangerous place. Distant relation, perhaps?”

Seiya shook his head. “No. It was-” He cut himself off, and fearfully looked around at the dimly lit room, as if spies were lurking in the shadows.

“It was whom?” Nathaniel prodded.

“It was the spiders!” Seiya said in a hissing whisper. “The same ones! They apparently attacked the house, took several of the children, and killed one before the others were rescued!”

“The spid…” Nathaniel’s blood ran as cold as his right hand. He finally understood, and the realization clenched the muscles in his chest, leaving him short of breath.

“Yes!” Seiya said with a frenzied nod.

Choosing his words carefully, Nathaniel lowered his own voice and said, “The same ones?”

“Yes!”

“How? I mean, why? They had clear instructions!”

“I don’t know!” Seiya said, somehow managing to both wail and whisper at the same time. “But they did!”

Nathaniel gritted his teeth. “They attacked early then.”

“Yes! Far too early!”

The icy cold fear that swam through Nathaniel’s veins was starting to thaw, as his rising anger began to bring things to a boil. “They accepted the job. They took our money.”

“Yes! Absolutely! And we were perfectly clear our demands!”

“We told them when to move,” Nathaniel muttered, his hands curling into fists. “We told them how, and against who. We even paved the way for them, and they ignored it all!”

Nathaniel felt the furnace in his heart grow hotter and hotter, blurring his vision with steam and causing the room to tilt. It was like standing on the deck of a ship in a turbulent sea, with everything swaying this way and that.

Damn them. Damn those wretched youkai! So little had been asked of them! All he had requested is that they act according to their godless nature, but save it for the appropriate time and against the appropriate person, but they couldn’t even manage that!

The smoke covering his eyes cleared just enough to frame Seiya’s face. The other man was nodding vigorously and making noises of agreement, as if he and Nathaniel were equal victims. How wrong he was. Seiya had been the go-between. Seiya had been the one to enter the Youkai Forest and beseech the spider clan to take their contract. He had been the one to explain the details.

He had to have fouled things up. Maybe he hadn’t explained things correctly. Maybe, in his squealing, cowardly manner, he had forgotten the important parts. Something had gone wrong, and in such cases, the messenger must be blamed.

Despite most of the room being rendered in cloudy shapes, Seiya’s fleshy neck was crystal clear, every fold standing out in stark relief. Nathaniel stared at it, wondering how it would feel with his hand clenched around it, his fingers digging through fat and flesh to close around the windpipe.

Give in.

It would be so easy. Just a small squeeze, and it would crumple like paper, and Nathaniel wouldn’t have to suffer Seiya Kirisame’s squeaking any longer. He thought of those black smudges his fingers had left on Seiya’s cheeks. He imagined Seiya’s entire neck covered with black, withering the fat and sinking in deep to smother him.

Give in.

(“Nathan, are you feeling angry again?”)

Nathaniel started a bit. He was used to the Dark Voice, whispering to him from the back of his head, urging him toward violence. But that gentle, admonishing tone came from someplace else, someplace buried…deep…

(Church was over. The sermon had finished, the final hymn sang, and the concluding prayer sent up to God. Now everyone was milling about, some leaving immediately, others helping clean up, others standing around and talking. Fellowship, Reverend DuBois called it.

Not Nathaniel Skinner, though. Nobody ever talked to him. Some would try, but they would soon find reason to excuse themselves. Nathaniel knew why. He held himself to higher standards than anyone else, standards that few were strong enough to attempt.

And that was the problem.

He was standing by himself, his sky-blue eyes staring with hawklike intensity across the room. There, the Hendersons were leaving, replacing the hymnals and gathering their things.

The Hendersons were…decent, he supposed, but were weak at heart, and that was demonstrated by their sorry excuse for a son. The boy was fourteen, and completely without respect. He had been slouching all service, not joining in the singing of the hymns, not paying attention to the sermon, not even bothering to close his eyes and bow his head during prayer. He had just slouched their the whole time, legs propped up on the back of the pew in front of him, beady little eyes sullen.

How dare he?

But as he had stood there glowering, someone had sidled up to him, one of the few members of the congregation that still spoke to him. It was Joshua Stump, the dark-skinned Jew, the former addict. At first all of those had repulsed Nathaniel, like someone might be repulsed by an odious stench. But there was something about Joshua that led Nathaniel to at first tolerate, and eventually kind of appreciate. Joshua saw the good in people, and as misguided as he could be at times, it was an admirable trait.

And he somehow always knew when Nathaniel’s heart and mind were starting to boil over, when the screaming was about ready to start.

“Nathan,” Joshua repeated. “You’re getting angry, aren’t you?”

Nathaniel didn’t respond. He just continued to stare.

Joshua laid a hand on Nathaniel’s arm. “Don’t do it, Nathan. Don’t.”)

“Brother Nathaniel?”

Nathaniel looked down. Seiya had laid a hand on his forearm. Even through the sleeve and the bandage, his fingers felt like hot iron.

“Do not touch me!” Nathaniel cried as he wrenched his arm away.

Seiya recoiled. “I’m sorry, I-”

Shaking with barely restrained rage, Nathaniel leaned over so that he was nearly nose-to-nose with the smaller man. “Do not ever, ever lay hands on me again. Ever. Understand?”

“Yes, Brother Nathaniel! Forgive me!”

“Get out.”

Seiya opened his mouth, maybe to argue, but he saw the look in Nathaniel’s eyes, and quickly hurried away. Nathaniel was about to let him, but then some small part of rationality surfaced.

“Wait.”

Seiya froze by the door.

“The spiders. Did they say what happened to the spiders?”

Gulping, Seiya turned back toward him and said, “J-Just that they killed them.”

Nathaniel stared. “Killed them. People kill youkai all the time. It doesn’t stick.”

“That’s all that they said! That they, uh, dealt with the with extreme prejudice!”

The wheels in Nathaniel’s head started turning. When that happened, the cloud of rage started to get pumped out, and the channels of his brain were cleared. If they had simply exterminated the spiders when they found them and ran off with the children, then that might be a problem. The spiders would simply return, hungry for revenge, and would go rogue. And the longer they were in contention with the orphanage, the morel likely that secrets would spill.

On the other hand, it was entirely possible that they had been dealt with permanently. That wouldn’t be so bad. The fewer loose ends lying around, the better, and the world was better off without them anyway. Though it was unlikely that those heathens actually had the means to permanently destroy a youkai on hand. The methods capable of pulling that off were both rare and difficult to pull off.

(It was the dead of night, with the moon shining brightly overhead. Nathaniel stood in knee-high grass, staring off at the hills. Though he couldn’t see it where he was, just beyond that hill was fence that encompassed the orphanage grounds.

He breathed in and out. It was time.

Opening the heavy book in his hand, he flipped to the tagged page, the one that detailed the ritual necessary to pull off the overload spell. The steps were both complicated and precise, which is why he had practiced them over and over until he had gotten them right.

It had taken time, but he felt that he finally got the spell down. He just needed the proper regents in order to do it for real.

He now had them.

One was a weatherworn paper charm, plucked right off a fence post. It was designed to repel youkai and their various supernatural cousins, so he had been able to walk right up to the fence and take it off without anyone noticing.

The second was sitting on a nearby flat stone.

There were five of them, three fairies and two youkai. They had been all tied together in a circle, back-to-back, their arms bound behind their backs, their legs roped together, and their mouths gagged, their terrified eyes staring at him with mute pleas.

They were right to be afraid.

It frankly galled Nathaniel to have to resort to such blasphemous means, to consort with the same magic he was working to destroy. But the Lord did often employ imperfect instruments. He had delivered his warning to King Saul through the witch of Endor, hadn’t he? This was no different.

Though he read the words, he was already mumbling them out loud, reciting them from memory. As he did so, he turned toward his bound captives. Though they were already struggling and whimpering, they froze when they saw the silver blade he drew from its pouch, the blade and the runes inscribed on the hilt. They knew what it was for.

Yes. It was time.)

But it was unlikely that they had anything like that at their disposal, much less anything that could be used in something as chaotic as a fight.

Then there was the worst-case scenario, that before eliminating those wretched bugs, they had time to question them, to interrogate them. Nathaniel had been careful to not personally involve himself with any dealings, but there was always a trail.

Then Nathaniel was struck by a thought. “Who told you this?” he said. “Was it Satoko Yume?”

Seiya inhaled sharply. “Oh, that’s right! I mean, no. No, it wasn’t. It was that woman, the one who insulted both you and Master Sonozika!”

“That woman? You mean, the cook?”

“Yes! She threatened us too. And she…she…” Seiya pressed a trembling hand to his forehead. “She breathed fire at us! Just…spat it at our feet!”

“Breathed…fire?” Nathaniel said skeptically. “You mean, like that trick where you inhale a torch, and…”

“No! She just opened her mouth and a jet of flame came out! I almost had my toes burned off!”

Now that was interesting. “Tell me: given how everyone here seems to have some kind of…occultic ability or another, is the ability to breathe forth flames something that’s known to happen?”

“I…guess?” Seiya shrugged. “I mean, my cousin can spit sugar. But I can’t say I ever heard of anyone able to do something like this.”

Hmmm.

Nathaniel inhaled deeply and exhaled. “Brother Seiya, I have been unduly harsh to you. That was unchristianlike of me. I apologize.”

Seiya blinked in surprise. “Ah, oh, um, not at all! I understand. But what are we going to do?”

“Give me time to think,” Nathaniel said as he slid the door open for Seiya. “But whatever it is, we must act quickly. Tell no one of this.”

“Of course,” Seiya said. “Of course.”

Nathaniel stood still and listened as the man departed. Seiya’s footsteps were fast and heavy, thumping loudly through the house until he had rushed out the side door, slamming it as he left.

Even after the man was gone, Nathaniel continued to stand as still as a statue, eyes staring at the far wall.

Think. He had to think. Now was not to time to lose control. Now was the time to keep and clear mind and approach things rationally.

“Lord Jesus, grant me your wisdom,” he whispered. “Give me your strength. Help me see through the lies of the enemy.”

Unfortunately, if Jesus had an audible answer for him, he couldn’t hear it, because another voice was already speaking, drowning any other messages out.

Give in.

…

“It is far too easy, I believe,” Nathaniel continued, “in our battle against the wiles of the Devil, to forget why we fight. Just as our Lord Christ was not sent to this world to condemn it, but to save it, we too our sent into the world not leave the wicked and sinful to wallow in their own corruption, but to try to lift them out, to bring them to the Light.”

He looked around the room, at all the rapt gazes. Some were nodding in agreement, others had their eyes closed in prayer, others seemed a little confused. After all, this sort of altruism wasn’t the norm for one of Nathaniel’s sermons. That was all right though. Nathaniel had something of a gift for persuading others to see his point of view.

“We all know that Gensokyo is a wicked country,” he said. “Unlike the Outside World, where devils hide in the shadows and work their evil through subtle means, here they walk openly without fear, and we Humans, who were made in God’s own image, have little defense against their wiles. And those who have forsaken the fellowship of their fellow Humans to dwell out among the devils often become little better than devils themselves. The Lord commands us to set ourselves apart from those who have invited sin into their hearts, lest we become corrupted as well.”

At this, there were more nods, but also more frowns. That was also to be expected. Even though they had been shown the light, the truth still stung.

“But just as we have been commanded to set ourselves apart, we are also called upon to be a Light in the Darkness, to try to draw those who might want to escape damnation and cleanse themselves.

“I speak, of course, of that dwelling place of sin that calls itself the Aoki Yume’s Children’s Home! It is they that gather the fatherless children of those families who have suffered the rightful consequences of their impiety. It is they that, rather than leading those little lost lambs onto the path of righteousness, instead drive them further toward the arms of Satan.”

“Now, in the past I have counseled that if they are going to close their hearts and minds to the Gospel of Jesus, than we ought to close ourselves to them as well, to keep them from corrupting those who might seek the Lord’s salvation. But today the Lord spoke to me, chastising me for my lack of compassion. After all, though those who run that place are surely damned for their blasphemies, is it not our responsibility to reach out to those poor children, to show them another way?”

“Earlier this week, a group of youkai from the Youkai Forest attacked the orphanage. And one of the children was killed.

...

That morning...

At a little past eight, Nathaniel Skinner left his house.

Unlike the night before, he was now rested, bathed, and fully clothed. His hat was straight, his coat unwrinkled, his hands tightly bound and gloved, and not a whisker was out of place.

As he walked, he took note of how the people he passed reacted to them. Some of them, those loyal to humanity and recognized that same loyalty in him, smiled and greeted him warmly. Those of lesser resolve merely politely bowed their heads in passing. Others didn’t acknowledge him at all, and a few even turned their heads away in disgust.

That was to be expected. Those who stood stalwart in the light would of course repulse those who dwelt in darkness. But he wasn’t interested in that. Rather, he was searching for some sign that any of them had noticed Seiya’s idiocy the night before.

Ignoring the immediate reactions of those who passed him in the street, he instead focused on those further away, the ones close enough to see him but not enough to come in direct contact. Though he did not make any indication that he was looking at them, he still studied their faces through the thick, dark glass of his spectacles.

His lip twitched. They were shooting him sidelong glances. They were whispering to one another. Even through dark lenses, he could see the unease on their faces.

Idiot. Though it had served a diplomatic purpose, he was regretting apologizing to Seiya Kirisame. Now he was wishing he had thrown the loudmouthed fool through a wall.

Keeping his visage straight ahead, Nathaniel quickened his pace.

When he arrived at the Sonozika estate, the elderly serving man bowed respectfully. “Welcome, Master Skinner,” he said. “You are expected. This way please.”

As was often the case, Gendou Sonozika was a mess of anxieties. He was pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, his forehead shiny with sweat.

“Ah, Brother Nathaniel!” he said, brightening as soon as Nathaniel entered the room. “Thank you for coming.”

“Not at all,” Nathaniel said. “I assume you’ve heard.”

Gendou nodded. “Yes. A youkai attack. A dead child. Terrible business, just terrible.”

“Horrible. Just goes to show the dangers of trusting youkai.” Nathaniel sadly shook his head. “We tried to warn them, Gendou. We tried to warn them.”

“You think that they were friends with these youkai then?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. Have you found what I asked for?”

“Yes, yes! Come with me!”

Gendou led Nathaniel to the courtyard out back. The Sonozika resident was a large, U-shaped building, with a lively garden growing between the two arms. The two men went was at the end of one of the arms. There, a slanted door had been opened in the ground, with steps leading to a room beneath the house.

Gendou lit a lantern and handed it to Nathaniel. As Nathaniel peered down into the dark, his stomach twisted.

He didn’t like to go down into dark places. He didn’t like it at all.

“I went through all of my family’s records,” Gendou said, not noticing Nathaniel’s discomfort. “And I arranged everything I could find into two piles. One for the Youkai Forest, and the other for…”

“The woman,” Nathaniel said, keeping his unease from his voice. “Thank you.”

Holding the lantern in one hand, Nathaniel descended into the dark.

Almost as if it were galvanized by the dark and the deep, the Dark Voice suddenly came to life. Give in, it told him, its tones sweet and seductive as always. Nathaniel. Give in.

Though it said little more than that, the meaning was clear. If Nathaniel were to let it in, to give it what it wanted, than all of the knowledge he desired would be his, with no need to sift through dusty old tomes in order to find it.

Nathaniel ignored it. He focused on the sound of the wooden steps creaking under his heavy boots. The more attention that he paid to the Dark Voice, the more power it had.

Unfortunately, though the message of the Dark Voice stayed the same, there were other voices, voice of his own weak, mortal soul, voices that longed to surrender to temptation.

You seek after lesser sorceries to meet your ends, telling yourself that they are a forgivable alternative to that power, they said. But there are no degrees of damnation, just as there are no degrees of salvation. You either are, or you are not.

Nathaniel reached the bottom. He held his lantern high, illuminating the wide space around him.

The floor was of rough stone, coated with dust. Square wooden pillars rose up, holding up the house above him. And everywhere was knowledge.

They came in scrolls and they came in books. There was even a small section of stone carvings. They sat in neat piles, lined up on shelves, and in boxes, some encased beneath ancient, dusty glass while others out in the open. The sum total of all Human knowledge in Gensokyo, both what the original settlers brought with them and what they had gained since. Any academic would gladly give an arm or commit an unforgiveable act of Gendou’s choice just to spend half an hour among that treasure.

Naturally, Nathaniel had free range.

Though most of the knowledge he had gained disgusted him, he learned it anyway. In order to destroy an enemy, one must know them. Nathaniel Skinner was fighting a war against the forces of darkness that literally permeated the air of this godforsaken country, both the demonic forces that lurked out in the dark and the ones that dwelt within his heart.

As promised, two piles of texts were waiting for him at a low desk. Nathaniel sat down on his knees in the dirt, laid the lantern down, and went to work.

It being what it was, Gensokyo was less of a country where supernatural phenomena occurred and more of a wellspring of supernatural phenomena that occasionally had meager attempts at civilization spring up like patches of mold. Demonic activity was the rule rather than the exception, and there were large swath that mortals were content to leave well enough alone, making no move settle in and modernize.

The Youkai Forest was hardly the largest or most notorious of those places, but it was up there, and despite Gensokyo’s small size, very little attempt had been made to delve into its secrets, even though the country had supposedly existed in its own little pocket of reality before even America had been civilized. Oh, there had been people who tried here and there, daring explorers who had gone in and even a few who had come out. And of course, there was that one family of pagan priestesses that seemed to consider themselves humanity’s protectors from the dark forces despite serving those same forces.

As such, there were some recording and observations. There just wasn’t very many of them, and what they did have mostly took the form of hearsay, theory, and conjecture. There was very little hard fact to be found.

What little did exist was the smaller of the two piles. Nathaniel thumbed through it, looking for anything that might be what he was looking for.

A rough census of the various youkai communities within the forest, one that was seventy years out of date? No. Something about a “pale white strider”? No. A meadow of sentient mushrooms that lured victims in with songs of sexual ecstasy before…wait, they ate their sexual organs? And nothing else? Why?

Shaking his head, Nathaniel put that one aside quickly. The bloodrattles? No. The Yamauba? No. The Throne of Bones?

Nathaniel paused. That one, at least, seemed to be near what he was looking for. He scanned the report only to scowl in disappointment. It was a description of a chair with a bunch of animal bones on it, one hypothesized to contain some ancient forest spirit. Certainly it seemed dark and evil, worthy of being burned away in Christ’s cleansing light, just not the source of darkness and evil that he was looking for.

Give in.

And then, right when he was convinced that he had gone on a snipe hunt, he found it.

It wasn’t much, just a small entry in some long-dead researcher’s journal, but it matched the description.

Of all the myths and legends passed along by the local youkai, few are more perplexing than the talk of something that they called the Bone Grove. Those willing to speak to me are strangely hesitant to mention it, as if doing so will draw its attention. As those who have been willing to speak of me have always seemed to delight in spinning dark and bloody tales of the forest’s dangers in hopes of scaring me, this struck me as very strange.

Nathaniel sat back on his haunches, hand stroking his beard as he thought. Well now, that sounded very familiar. Unfortunately, there was little else in there, just a mention of a rumor by someone who was long dead.

Regardless, I have not been able to even ascertain its location. I spoke to my friend Momo Tweeldewing, who has always been more forthcoming about the forest’s secrets. Even she seemed scared to speak of it, and all she would tell me was that long ago, there had been a small village where both Human and youkai lived together in peace, until one day a ball of flame fell from the Heavens and destroyed the village when it hit, and since then no life has been permitted to exist there, and no one in their right mind would ever set foot in that place. She begged me to promise not to seek it out, saying that I would not be strong enough to come back out again.

Though I could get no more from her, I have to admit I am now even more fascinated by this fabled bone grove, as until now I have never heard of any kind of peaceful coexistence between both man and youkai within the forest’s borders. If this story is true, then it could imply that this mysterious comet itself is responsible for the many dark energies that swirl through the Youkai Forest.

Despite his many thick layers of clothes, Nathaniel felt cold sweep through his whole body. He searched through the rest of the documents but could find no other mention of the bone grove. Part of him was glad for that. What little he had found told him that he was in greater danger than he had realized.

And there was still one more pile waiting for him.

Nathaniel cast a dour glance at the much larger stack of scrolls and ancient pieces of parchment. This one he honestly expected to be a waste of time. After all, what were the odds that the woman with the smart mouth working as the orphanage’s cook was also the Sonozika family’s ancestral enemy? It was far more likely that she had simply heard the name somewhere and used it to screw with Gendou’s head. Lord knew the man was certainly…malleable.

Still, he had promised, so he reached for the first scroll and unrolled it.

Though this time there was an abundance of information and carefully recorded observations, Nathaniel wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to make of it. According to what Gendou had told him and what he was reading, the Fujiwara family had been business rivals to the Sonozikas sometime before Gensokyo had even been created, which had later grown to being enemies of a more personal sort. There was mention of farm raids, assassinations, attempts to publicly humiliate, and other unscrupulous skullduggery one might expect from that kind of barbaric society. However, while there was plenty talk of Fujiwara no Fuhito and his sons, his single daughter only got a few passing mentions, and then only among familial lists. Apparently even the Fujiwaras’ arch-enemies hadn’t even considered her worthy of attention.

Right up until she was.

Of the “incident” in question, there was plenty, as the survivors had launched a full investigation once the flames had been put out. Apparently, one day a young woman claiming to be the estranged daughter of Fuhito had shown up at the Sonozika residence. She had called out the family patriarch, demanding that he face her personally to account for the murder of her brother and the many attempts to ruin her family. Predictably, she had been laughed at. And then…

Nathaniel arched an eyebrow.

And then an arrow had been sent through her heart. The culprit had been a bowman positioned on the estate’s walls, one who had acted without instruction. Why the fool had done so, whether it be overzealousness or accident, wasn’t recorded, as he hadn’t survived to be questioned. What was known is that despite being seemingly killed on the spot, the woman had not stayed down. Instead, she had gotten right back up again, pulled the arrow right out of her chest, and…

It was there that the details got muddled. There were several firsthand accounts of what had happened, but few offered anything concrete. What was clear was that the woman had become some kind of demon, a fiery abomination that had taken to the air and rained down damnation on the entirety of the Sonozika estate. Gendou’s ancestor had been cooked alive inside his own armor, as had all of his elder sons. His guards had either fled immediately or they perished as well. And seeing how much the Japs valued loyalty, they had probably lost their lives as well, once everything that could be learned from them had been learned.

Nathaniel thumbed through the accounts, but there was little variety. Fire and fear, those were the common threads. Reports from later spoke of wanton destruction, indiscriminate and thorough. The estate had been destroyed, burned to cinders but not pillaged. The devil-woman had come to kill and destroy, nothing else.

That had proven to be her undoing, at least insofar as her revenge had been concerned. If she had taken the time to search out the smoldering remains of the estate she had destroyed, she might have found the caches of wealth that had gone untouched, papers and documents and deeds that had been stashed away in safe places, all things that had allowed the Sonozika family rise from the ashes and reestablish themselves. And had she bothered to pursue those who had fled the inferno instead of concentrating on those who were fighting back, she might have prevented the escape of the youngest of the Sonozika children, from whom Gendou was descended. Instead, she had focused on the old man himself, him and his grown sons.

Regardless, as far as revenge went, it had still seemed fairly successful. Four Sonozikas dead, the patriarch and all three of his immediate heirs. Most of the staff had survived, those who had fled anyway. And they all said the same thing. The woman had taken flight, and everything had burned.

As Nathaniel thumbed through the reports, he came across something interesting. It wasn’t really a scroll, though it was wound like one. Rather, it was a silk tapestry, one that had been carefully preserved, though wasn’t on display upstairs for obvious reasons.

It was an artist’s rendition of that day, or at least as near as could be made.

It was done in that weirdly slanted style that the Japanese seemed to favor, with its broad strokes and flowing lines. Nathaniel had always found it kind of ugly, but regardless of the art style the scene it depicted would be hideous.

The lower half showed the courtyard of what had probably been considered a great house, though it probably had paled to even the most humble of homes in Philadelphia. There were several men wearing primitive armor lying on the ground, screaming in agony. And everything, including the men, was on fire.

The source of the flame was fairly evident. The upper half was taken up by the unholiest of abominations, a flaming demon that was half-woman and half-bird. It flew on great wings of flame, and gore dripped from the talons it had in place of hands and feet. Its beaklike mouth was open, and it was vomiting flame directly into the stomach of the man directly below her, whom was wearing green armor while everyone else wore blue. Gendou’s long-murdered ancestor, no doubt.

Nathaniel thoughtfully stroked his beard as he studied the depiction of the creature claiming to be the renegade daughter of the now-extinct Fujiwara clan. Well, he had certainly seemed several youkai who bore animalistic features, no doubt owing to their demonic origin, though he was fairly certain that this was merely artistic license. Or maybe the Sonozika clan had actually almost been wiped out by a flaming bird-woman. Honestly, at this point, Nathaniel would accept anything.

Of greater interest to Nathaniel wasn’t the bird-woman’s appearance, but what she was doing in the picture, or to be more specific, where the fire was coming from. Specifically, her mouth. Now, given that it was highly unlikely that the artist had set up his easel at the actual site of the slaughter and had her pose to be painted, that was probably just another attempt to be dramatic rather than accurate.

Still…

Seiya’s words came back to him. “Out of her mouth!” he had said. “She spewed fire out of her mouth!”

Interesting.

He mentally formed a picture of the uncouth woman claiming to be named Fujiwara no Mokou in his head and transposed it over the rendition of the Fujiwara no Mokou of old. Of course there was little they visually had in common, and by any reasonable metric that Fujiwara no Mokou ought to have been burning in Hell for the last several centuries.

But what if she wasn’t?

What if the two were one and the same?

He had to learn more. He had to get in close, examine the situation for himself.

But how?

Give in.

He shook his head. No, shut up!

Think. He had to think. He had to figure out a way.

Nathaniel sighed. This would have been so much easier in Philadelphia. There, it would be so easy to send someone under the guise of providing charity, and have them-

Wait.

Nathaniel frowned. An idea was forming. It was incomplete, it was certainly risky, but…

He slowly nodded. Yes. Yes, that could work.

…

“For as the Christ our Savior once said, it is better to have a millstone tied around your neck and to be thrown into the sea than to let even one of the little ones be lead into darkness! And though I am certain that some of those children have already welcome sin into their hearts and are beyond saving, there might be those whom still hear the Lord calling to them. There are those who might be persuaded to break away, and seek out the Light.”

Nathaniel paused, letting the faithful soak in his words. Then he said, “I am going to propose that our church offers the orphanage relief and support in this trying time. I know this goes against what I have counseled in the past, but the Lord does not make mistakes, and he finds faithful in even the most unlikely of places. Moses was a murderer hiding in the desert when the Almighty appeared to him in a burning bush. Jonah was a coward who ran and hid rather than deliver salvation to the wicked. The great Apostle Paul was a violent man seeking to eradicate the followers of Christ. It might be that, among them, we might also find the next vessel of the Lord’s will. And though they may laugh and curse us, though all but one of those children might turn their backs to the Gospel, that single one would have made the attempt worth it. Amen?”

In this, his congregation had no qualms in answering him.

“Amen!”

…

It was at the end of the day, and Nathaniel stood naked and alone in his washroom, staring once again at his reflection.

It was well that his sermons tended to be on the excitable side. That way it was easy to explain how his brow glistened with sweat. Besides, it was the middle of summer! Given how many layers of thick clothes he wore, of course he would come out a little sweaty.

But if that was the case, why did he feel so cold?

He looked down at his hand, the corrupted hand, the one that had been the Dark Voice’s conduit. On the surface it looked perfectly fine, and it moved when he told it to, how he told it to.

But he still couldn’t feel it. It was like everything from his bicep down had been hacked off.

Give in.

He always needed to put in work to wake it up. He would often rise to find it feeling cold and lifeless, but after a hot herbal bath he would be able to beat some feeling into it, even if that feeling was searing pain.

A deep basin of steaming hot water treated with herbs sat on the table next to him. After taking a moment to prepare himself, Nathaniel thrust his hand into the water.

Normally that would be when the agony started, when the heat and herbs would come in contact with the corruption and he would have to bite down on a piece of leather to keep from screaming.

Not this time though. This time, he felt nothing.

No, no, no, no. Nathaniel clenched his hand into a fist, digging his fingernail into his palm. Come on, feel something! Anything.

There was nothing.

He yanked his hand out of the basin and stared at it. Murky water dripped down and steam rose up, but it wasn’t flushed with pink in response to the heat. In fact, it was still pasty white, like that of a bloodless corpse.

Nathaniel fumbled around with his left hand until he found his silver shaving razor. He pressed the blade against his palm and drew it across, making a shallow cut.

There was no blood.

No!

Again he thrust it back into the water. Come on, feel something! Where was the pain? There was always pain!

But then, though there still was no response from his hand, something did start to change.

The water had stopped steaming. He waved his left hand over the surface and felt no heat.

But it couldn’t have cooled that quickly! It had been boiling hot just a moment ago.

Then, as he watched, ice started to form, spreading out from his wrist to consume the entire basin.

Nathaniel hastily yanked his hand back out again. God, even though he still felt nothing from his hand, he could still feel the cold radiating off of it on his chest.

It looked dead. He could move it, but he couldn’t feel it, and he couldn’t bleed it. It looked dead, it felt dead, and had done so ever since…

(eyes. Eyes of devils, opening all around him. The relief carvings of twisted death had opened their eyes and were staring at him straight from Hell.)

…ever since…

(something was rising from the center of the room. A cylinder, a multi-sided black cylinder. Oh Jesus, help me!)

…ever since…

(it’s calling to me. I can hear it! It calls my name, draws me toward it, but I cannot resist! My legs are no longer my own, my body moves of its own accord!)

…ever since…

(I touch it. It is as cold as ice, freezing my palm to its side. I give the command to tear my hand away, but my body does not move. Then something jabs into the center of my palm, and I feel warm blood leaking out)

…ever since…

(I lose an entire layer of skin when I finally rip my hand away. I see it there, a perfect white handprint, frozen to the side of the black box. In its center is a tiny scarlet bead of blood. The blood begins to spread, covering the skin, dying it red)

…ever since…

(the box is opening. Oh God, it’s opening! It’s opening, and-)

Squeezing his dead hand into a fist, Nathaniel looked up again at his reflection, at his hollow eyes he always hid behind dark glasses. He was scared.

Give in.

Nathaniel’s legs could no longer support him. He sank to the floor, curling his limbs up into a tight ball, his dead hand clenched at his heart while the other grabbed at his hair. “No,” he sobbed. “No, I won’t. I won’t!”

Though the Dark Voice rarely changed the candor of its message, he was pretty sure he heard its laughter echoing through the deepest recesses of his soul.

…

So…this one will probably get at least partially rewritten before I start posting on FF.net, on account to me being totally brainfried and doing barely any editing. Oh well. Enjoy the beta!

Until next time, everyone.

#The Touhou Project #touhou #imperfect metamorphosis #fanfic

3 notes · View notes

drsilverfish · 5 years

Text

The Riddle of the Sphinx: 14x12 Prophet and Loss

First, thanks to @verobatto-angelxhunter @gneisscastiel @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks @mrsaquaman187 for inviting me to guest this week, as part of their ongoing SPN #Metafest project @metafest

along with several other guests: @bluephoenixrises @poorreputation @agusvedder @amwritingmeta @savannadarkbaby @prairiedust and

@norahastuff

I’m going to guest meta about the Riddle of the Sphinx.

Here is creepy Tony Alvarez drowning his first victim.

Despite an opening dose of Bucklemming torture-porn (ugh - although tbf there was a narrative point, as the drowned girl was a mirror for Dean, just like the slain first-born son and the dude who almost got barbecued were - more on that later...)... So, yeah, despite that, I was thrilled to see this in the visual narrative architecture - the Sphinx Machine Shop, where Tony does his mangled prophecy induced killing.

The Sphinx, as you know, is a fearsome part-woman, part winged-lion beastie, in Greek mythology, who was famous for guarding the entrance to Thebes and asking travellers to solve the answer to a riddle in order to gain safe passage to the city. If they failed, she devoured them.

She is tied in mythology not just to puzzles and their solutions, but to fate...

Here is the Sphynx of Naxos, from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (560 BCE)

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx_of_Naxos

The Temple of Delphi was the site of the Oracle of Delphi, who was the High Priestess Pythia (a transferrable role) famous for her prophesies, which came to her in trance-states, supposedly from the God Apollo.

You see the link to SPN’s own Prophet role here....

The Sphinx also, famously, appears in Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex, which became the basis for Freud’s also famous (and relevant a bit later) “Oedipus complex”. Sophocles didn’t invent the myth, but his telling is its most famous rendition.

Despite his other misfortunes, Oedipus doesn’t get devoured by the Sphinx, because he solves her riddle, a popular rendition of which is:

“What goes on four legs, on two legs, on three, and the more legs it goes on, the weaker it be?”

The answer, is - a human (baby, adult, old person with a stick).

Oedipus’ story is a classic story about fate, just like Appointment in Samara (re-worked in an SPN episode, 6x11, but originally an old Mesopotamian tale) which @mittensmorgul and I were talking about just recently, in relation to themes of fate vs free will in SPN (specifically in relation to the role played by Death - see here for the discussion:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182454009599/mittensmorgul-drsilverfish-mittensmorgul )

Oedipus’ story is a (f-d up) family drama - rather relevant to our very own Family Winchester [no, NOT because this is all about either of the boys wanting to sleep with Mary Winchester - thanks Dr. Freud - although, come to think of it, Dean did say she was hot in 4x03 In The Beginning :-)]

14x13 Lebanon promo shot

When baby Oedipus is born, his father King Laius receives a prophecy that his son will grow up to kill him, and so, he sends a shepherd to expose the baby on the mountainside to die, before that can happen. The shepherd however, not being an asshole, saves the baby, and raises him secretly as his own.

Oedipus grows up, and he eventually learns from the Oracle at Delphi herself (see above) that he is fated to kill his father and marry his mother. Believing the shepherd and his wife are his true mother and father, whom he loves, he leaves his home in the mountains for the city of Thebes, determined to defy the prophecy.

On the way, he meets a quarrelsome old man on the road, they fight, and Oedipus kills him:

When he gets to Thebes, he finds the King has been slain, by persons unknown, and the town is at the mercy of the Sphinx. Oedipus, by guessing the Sphinx’s riddle, obtains safety for the town and is, in gratitude, appointed King himself and given the widowed Queen, Jocasta’s, hand in marriage.

All is well for a bit, until a plague descends on Thebes, and Oedipus is told that to save the city, he must avenge King Laius’ death. So, he goes sleuthing, with the extremely relucant help of his seer Tiresius, and to his horror, discovers that he is the one who killed the King (that old dude on the road to Thebes all those years ago), that he is the King’s true son, and has, therefore, killed his father and, in marrying Queen Jocasta, married his mother and committed incest, fulfilling the prophecy he set out to escape from. He promptly blinds himself in horror. Poor ancient Greek dude.

The Chorus laments the power of fate

O heavy hand of fate! Who now more desolate, Whose tale more sad than thine, whose lot more dire? O Oedipus, discrowned head, Thy cradle was thy marriage bed;

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31/31-h/31-h.htm - Project Gutenberg translation of Oedipus Rex.

A reference to the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx is extremely pregnant right now in the SPN narrative, for two reasons:

1) Fate vs Free Will

2) The Ghost of John Winchester

1) Fate vs Free Will

Dean thinks his interpretation of the book Billie handed him in 14x10 Nihilism - apparently the only death of his in which AU!Michael doesn’t take over his meat-suit and burn the world - means he has to sink himself to the bottom of the ocean, in the Ma’lak (angel) box and that’s “fate”.

Like Oedipus, there is no escape.

However, 14x12 tells us two things. Firstly, by analogy - the prophecy is wrong. Alvarez thinks he is carrying out the prophetic Word of God TM by recreating a twisted version of the Plagues of Egypt sent by God in Exodus:

1) The slaughter of a first-born son

2) Drowning in the Red Sea

3) Fire out of Heaven

(all of which are mirrors for what Dean thinks is his “fate” right now: death of a first born son; being drowned forever at the bottom of the ocean in the Ma’lak box; being consumed by the AU Archangel Michael’s Heavenly grace/fire).

But it’s a garbled message, received as a result of Prophet Donatello’s comatose scramblings.

Secondly, screw prophecy - against the odds, Dr. Sexy of the Lord (yeah - you know Dean thought it) is able to revive Donatello, thus preventing further scramblings (aka wrong prophesies).

CASTIEL: “Dean - if there is a spark, a hope, then I have to try.... you taught me that!”

I loved that line, with its resonance all the way back, like a skein of blue grace, to the Apocalypse Mark One, when Dean convinced Castiel, in Zacharia’s (also due to return in 14x13 Lebanon) “green room” in 4x22 Lucifer Rising, to disobey Heaven for the sake of humanity (Yes, Dean, an angel did fall for you...).

In other words, just as the Winchesters beat their “fate” to be “angel condoms” for Michael and Lucifer last time around, by “tearing up the script” and “making it up as they go” (4x22 Lucifer Rising) thanks to the help of rebel angel Castiel, so they can do so again.

2) The Ghost of John Winchester

In the SPN world’s worst kept spoiler, we know John will return next week in 14x13 Lebanon. We’ve been meta’ing about the ghost of John Winchester haunting the SPN narrative for... forever.

Here is some meta of mine on the subject from S12:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/158388550099/john-winchesters-ghost-and-the-haunting-of-s12

John is explicitly recalled, during the brothers’ (beautifully rendered) car conversation in 14x12:

DEAN: “You ever think about when we were kids?”

SAM: “Maybe, yeah, sure, sometimes, why?”

DEAN: “I know I wasn’t always the greatest brother to you.”

SAM: “Dean, you were the one who was always there for me. The only one. I mean, you practically raised me.”

DEAN: “I know things got dicey, you know with Dad, the way he was... and I just.... I didn’t always look out for you the way that I should of. I mean, I had my own stuff, y’know, and in order to keep the peace, it probably looked like I took his side quite a bit. Sometimes, when I was away, you know it wasn’t cos I just ran out, right? Dad would, he would send me away, when I really pissed him off. I think you knew that.”

SAM: “Man I left that behind a long time ago, I had to.”

AU!Michael, I’ve been arguing since the start of the season, is a mirror for Dean’s self-repression and for John Winchester. See:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/179463975289/shirtlesssammy-14x03the-scar-meta-writers

John was one of the major causes of Dean’s self-repression, as illustrated in the convo above, where it’s clear Dean had to grow up too fast to become a substitute-parent to Sam, where he was often obedient to their father to “keep the peace”, and where he was also often, unreasonably, punished by his father in the process (such as, as we already know, when he was sent to Sonny’s after stealing food for Sam in 9x07 Bad Boys).

According to psychoanalysis, we always internalise psychological constructs of our parents - Freud calls them imagos. So the Riddle of the Sphinx, for Dean, is how to kill (or rather, lay to rest) the ghost of his father (whom AU! Michael is a mirror for) and with it, the self-repression which has wounded him so much, psychically, since childhood, without letting it kill him too.

Nick, of course (general shudder) also serves as a John Winchester mirror in the episode - his obsessive revenge quest for the slaughter of his wife (aka mirror Mary Winchester) by Abraxas, led to something she never wanted - damage to innocents along the way (aka mirror innocents, Sam and Dean).

To Conclude

The answer to the Sphinx’s riddle, the one that helped Oedipus avoid being devoured by her was.... humanity.

Light Sphinx, 2015-2016, Mixed media (inc. foam, hand stitched fabrics, LEDs, beads, synthetic hair), 74 x 32 x 54 cm by Tarryn Gill

https://tarryngill.com/Light-Sphinx-Shadow-Sphinx-2015-16

Dean IS the symbolic representation of humanity (which is why Amara was so fascinated by him, and let’s not forget Metatron’s words about Castiel in 9x22 Stairway to Heaven - “He’s in love with.... humanity”).

Our first-born Winchester son just has to believe what this episode showed him - prophecy can be wrong.

His “fate” - to die, to drown forever, to be consumed by holy grace/fire, to remain trapped by the ghost of his father, by his own self-repression, by AU!Michael, by the Ma’lak box (aka, in subtext, the closet) is NOT the “Word of God”.

And killing one’s father doesn’t (as it did for Oedipus) have to mean damnation, if, the way one does it, is symbolically, by laying his ghost to rest in one’s heart and mind (hello upcoming SPN 300 14x13 Lebanon).

Freud believed the resolution of the Oedipus complex (for boys) was identification with the father (and no, we don’t have to concur with Dr. Freud). Dean has actually been on an oppositve journey, to get out from under his father’s shadow.

The Jungian solution, which the S14 narrative is offering to the metaphorical Riddle of the Sphinx, is, to turn around and embrace the Shadow-self (the parts of oneself one has repressed) and in so doing, to evolve - to become more fully human.

So, a final salute to Jerry Wanek and team, and the ever wonderful SPN set dressing narrative, for The Sphinx Machine shop!

NB:

You can read my Jungian Meta series here, if you’re interested:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/180906003584/the-shadow-14x08

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/181122764984/14x09-the-spear-jungian-decoder-ring-edition

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182299438269/jung-and-deans-journey-towards-self-integration

And if, you want to read more of my SPN meta in general, go visit my blog and look under the “Meta” sidebar tag: http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/tagged/Meta

Plus, if you want to read lots of other people’s fabulous SPN meta, go check out the “SPN Meta” sidebar tag: http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/tagged/SPN%20Meta

Thanks for having me @metafest !

DrSphinx out.

#Supernatural #SPN meta #Metafest #14x12 #Prophet and Loss #Winchester Family Dynamics #Dean vs repression #Fate vs Free Will #Set dressing narrative #Jerry Wanek #SPN spoilers #Meta

143 notes · View notes

rockformed · 5 years

Text

thinkin about the implications of the story of my comic and the heavy theme it has and im.......... uhh maybe going to change the story completely now because im not sure i can present it in a respectable and good way. but i really feel the message of the story is important (although definately not...... like a hot new take) and i believe in it and i want people to read it and think about it.

more under the cut?? i bolded the parts that i really want u to read and if u have thoughts about this lmk pls

so....... the main theme that im trying to convey is the fact that the people with the least are often the kindest and that people on the “bottom” have to be compassionate towards each other and work together to overthrow the higher powers that are keeping them down

but the whole story is set in this sort of psuedo heaven-earth-hell scenario. the people with the most power live in the highest parts, the “heaven” (but it’s called something different in the universe) and they convey themselves as trustworthy and pure and convince both people in their own ranks and those underneath them that they know best and then use that power for horrible things (so.......real life)

the people with the least power are in the “hell” equivalent, and are all there because they were either cast down by the higher power or born there. these people are given traits to make themselves seem dangerous and evil by the people in charge, and the whole things an allegory for systemic oppression of all kinds of people and how the people in charge say they’re looking out for your best interest but in reality its the little people that care the most

HOWEVER i dont want the setting and theme to be misconstrued as “the people on the bottom are demons” or “oppressed people are evil” cause im correlating the people at the bottom to be living in the “hell” equivalent. do u see my problem

the whole things conceived by the people on top, but it takes a while to get to the point in the story where that is extremely clear and all the main characters believe and recognize that. so i dont want it to come off in the first chapters that the main characters are complacent or supportive of this system. the whole story is about fiona (fallen from the top) realizing that the people she came from are cruel and greedy and mean and the people she’s been “cast down” with are the people who will truly love her and look out for her, and that she needs to do the same for them

and i believe in this message wholeheartedly, i just dont want to miss-convey it so that it looks sketch. i dont want to compare underrepresented or underprivileged people as “demons”. i want the guys on top to be the bad guys and i want to find a way to make the READER understand that from the get go even if the CHARACTERS dont understand it or cant understand it from the get go

advice? ;;

#wall of text look out #i really need to reevaluate some things i think

6 notes · View notes

mittensmorgul · 5 years

Text

Today’s entire TNT loop in one post, because I’m tired and there’s only three episodes:

3.14, Long Distance Call. This is what happens when you mess with the phone company, dillweed!

I've written a bunch in the past about how this episode relates to communication and keeping secrets, which is still relevant:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/159234156395/314-lies-and-secrets-and-its-deans-turn-to

and

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/171381786235/not-meta-just-interesting-im-rewatching-314

But because the voice on the phone when Dean starts getting Calls From The Beyond (which aren't from the beyond but a manipulation by a creature who wants to lure Dean in to eat his soul) is John, providing words of comfort, encouragement, and instruction to Dean at a time where he feels like he's running out of time and options, Dean is led down a completely wrong path. "John" tells him he can get out of his deal and save himself from Hell by trapping a specific demon, but of course it's just the crocatta luring him to his death (but of course Dean figures that out before that can happen).

But Sam, meanwhile, THINKS he's told Dean what the monster actually is, but that information never reached Dean, leaving him confronting the crocatta by himself... RIP Stewie. Sam calls Dean and gets his voicemail (This is Herman Munster, leave a message), but his whole previous call with Dean wasn't even really a call with Dean...

SAM: What are you doing? CLARK: I'm killing your brother. Or maybe I'm killing another guy. We'll just have to see how it goes.

and most terrifying:

CLARK: Well once I made you two as hunters, it was easy. I found Dean's number, then your number, then your father's numbers. Then emails, voicemails, everything. You see, people think that stuff just gets erased, but it doesn't. You'd be surprised how much of yourself is just floating out there, waiting to be plucked. SAM: Dean's not going to fall for this. He's not going to kill that guy. CLARK: Then the guy kills him.

The crocatta was a monster who preyed on human communication, twisting words to his own benefit and manipulating people into believing what he needed to lure them to him. He had Dean convinced killing this innocent man would save him from Hell, but the other man was convinced that Dean was the man who'd killed his own daughter. It was all a distraction to keep Dean from learning what was really going on-- that Sam had effectively figured out what the monster was, and that it was the monster luring Sam to his lair, using Stewie as bait.

At the end of the story, everyone lost. Dean lost hope that they'd find a way to save him from Hell. Which drives Sam to pull a bit of a manipulation of his own...

in 3.15, Time Is On My Side.

This is Sam's last stand, his last hope to save Dean. Not by defeating the demon that holds his contract, but by gaming the system. His logic-- if Dean's can't die, he can't go to Hell. But the way Sam wants to make Dean immortal is... horrific at best. And something tells me the hellhounds wouldn't care if someone scienced their physical body into effective immortality, and would've collected Dean's soul anyway. But Sam needed to believe in something, as is his wont. When he loses hope, he loses it hard. Look at mid s13 for a reminder of that, specifically in an episode with a heavy thematic and tonal comparison to this one-- 13.11 Breakdown.

Meanwhile, Dean goes in a different direction, getting a lead on Bela and hoping to get the Colt back:

DEAN: You're not helping! You forget that if I welch on this deal, you die. Guess what, living forever is welching. SAM: Fine! Then, whatever the magic pill is, I'll take it too! DEAN: Oh, what is this? Sid and Nancy? No. It's just like Bobby's been saying. We kill the demon who owns the contract and this whole damn thing wipes clean. That's our best shot. SAM: Even if you had the Colt, Dean, who are you gonna shoot? We have no idea who holds the ticket. DEAN: Well, I'll shoot the hellhounds then before they slash me up. Now, you coming or not?

Sam decided... not. He stayed to try and figure out Benton's immortality formula. He does find it, but Dean doesn't want to live like that:

SAM: Dean, don't you want to live? DEAN: What he is isn't living. Look, this is simple. SAM: Simple? DEAN: To me it is, okay. Black or white; human, not human. (DEAN walks back to stand in front of DOC BENTON) See, what the Doc is is a freakin' monster. I can't do it. I would rather go to hell.

Well, heck, we know Dean doesn't really see anything as "black and white," and the real issue isn't "human or not human" anymore. But he does have a line he will not cross, and whatever Benton is is way too far across that line for Dean. And thank heck... Preserving life at all costs that way? At the cost of his own essential humanity? Yeah, that's horrific.

We meet Rufus, who eventually does provide Dean the lead to find Bela, but he also echoes Dean's attitude we've seen over and over again:

RUFUS: I know ain't no peashooter gonna save you. DEAN: What makes you so sure? RUFUS: Cause that's the job, kid. Even if you manage to scrape out of this one, there's just gonna be something else down the road. Folks like us...there ain't no happy ending. We all got it coming. DEAN: Well, ain't you a bucket of sunshine? RUFUS: I'm what you've got to look forward to if you survive. (Smirking and raising his glass again) But you won't.

Survive this round, just wait for the next one, because there's always a next one... Thanks, Rufus!

But of course Bela doesn't have the Colt anymore. Dean does learn that she sold her soul and her deal is about to come due. She's in the same boat he's been in all along...

DEAN: Is that why you stole the Colt, huh? Try to wiggle out of your deal, our gun for your soul? BELA: Yes. DEAN: But stealing the Colt wasn't quite enough, I'm guessing. BELA: They changed the deal. They wanted me to kill Sam. DEAN: Really! Wow, demons untrustworthy. Shocker.

Because no matter what, the demons were NEVER going to let Dean out of his deal. No matter how many demons they killed, no matter who they bargained with, no matter what, they needed him to die and go to Hell to fulfil their prophecy and break the first seal on the Apocalypse. And that's what s3 boiled down to in the end...

This was the long con that s4 would do to freaking perfection, but s3, with all it's structural deficiencies for having been 6 episodes shortened because of the writer's strike, manages the same...

So that brings us to 3.16, No Rest for the Wicked.

The one where they think they finally gained the upper hand on catching the Big Bad Demon who holds Dean's contract, and don't yet know the entire setup was a trap laid just for them. The fact the payoff on this information doesn't come until the end of s4, with other little hints along the way-- like Dean learning what Sam's been up to while he was in Hell, like learning about angels and the breaking seals of the apocalypse, like being given the runaround as heaven and hell both use Sam's desire to get revenge on Lilith for perceived wrongs against them and is willing to turn himself into a monster to achieve that end... when all along it was exactly what the angels and demons both wanted them to do...

S4 will become the template for Cosmic Manipulation of the Winchesters as part of the Grand Story of the Universe. But all the seeds for it were already planted in s3.

Well, except for Cas. He's the wild card, and isn't that the wildest thing ever?

I wonder how Chuck accounted for him? Bring on Team Free Will, breaking Chuck's story again and again until they'll finally force him to drop the curtain in 14.20...

ETA, because I always do this... I’ve written some about Ruby’s manipulation before, like in this post from May 2018, after the s13 finale aired:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/174230167715/since-your-anons-are-on-the-subject-there-is

SAM: And you decided to tell me this just now? RUBY: Um... demon. Manipulative's kinda in the job description. Fact is, is that you would have never considered it. Not until you were – SAM: Desperate enough?

and when Sam has doubts, and he’s so close to wanting to trust Ruby out of desperation?

DEAN: Don't you see a pattern here? Dad's deal, my deal, now this? I mean every time one of us is – is – is up the creek the other is begging to sell their soul. That's all this is, man. Ruby's just jerking your chain down the road. You know what it's paved with and you know where it's going.

And yep, that’s exactly it. The Winchester Family Sacrifice-Go-Round. All in the name of keeping Chuck entertained.

ETA FOR THE SECOND TIME: Lilith. Pretending to be a seriously twisted little girl, controlling this entire family for her own horrific idea of “fun.” Kinda similar to Chuck’s own MO, always playing a persona-- Chuck the trashy novel author, Chuck the prophet of the lord who doesn’t want to be, Chuck the super cute guy who was delightfully enamored by humanity enough to want to be human himself, at least for a little while... But all of it is part of his own incredibly long game, thinking he’s got the Winchesters exactly where he wants them, being on the scene to watch his plan play out, only for it to all go sideways.

ugh and yet another ETA: Dean, only when he is very close to death, a side effect of that is that he can literally see things he wasn’t able to before:

DEAN: I could see its face. Its real face under that one. SAM: So what, now you're seeing demons? DEAN: I've seen all kinds of things lately but... nothing like this. BOBBY: Actually it's not all that crazy. DEAN: How's it not that crazy? BOBBY: Well you've got, just over five hours to go? You're piercing the veil, Dean. You're glimpsing the B side. DEAN: A little less new age-y please. BOBBY: You're almost hell's bitch. So, you can see hell's other bitches.

What a strange way to finally see through the illusions to the truth, you know? Dean got all the way through Chuck’s endless parade of misery in s14-- losing hope against Michael only to lose hope for Jack, and himself-- to that final moment where he was able to glimpse the B side, as it were.

ugh again... this is what I get for posting stuff before the episode is over...

How close to killing an innocent little girl did Sam come here? While her own mother begged him to do it, because as far as they knew, the girl was still possessed. But Dean saw the truth, the demon was gone.

Sam’s ready to do whatever “Ruby” wants him to to save Dean, but it’s already too late. Ruby isn’t even Ruby anymore. Dean hadn’t noticed the switch until it was too late, again. Always too late. All part of the long manipulation.

#spn 3.14 #spn 3.15 #spn 3.16 #s14 hellatus rewatch #spiders georg of the tnt loop #it's spirals all the way down #that's what free will is #spn 4.22 #for the reference #spn 14.20

7 notes · View notes

seabonre · 6 years

Text

Rhett shuts his eyes, leaning into the beer in his grip while his wife leans into him. His hands are sweaty but he can’t wipe them off because he’ll drop his beer.

Jessie lifts her head off Rhett’s shoulder and looks at the man’s profile. His eyes shiver beneath their lids and there’s tension in his jaw, sweat on his neck with the late May air. She puts a hand on his cheek until he looks at her. He nods slowly. She doesn’t buy it.

The beer is leaving his hand and he feels a cramp forming in his wrist as Jessie sets the bottle next to the trail of its siblings. She turns in her seat, hardening her face just enough to remind Rhett that she’s looking for answers tonight, not tomorrow when his headache will clear his mind. This’ll be good for him.

“Wanna get him one’a those,” he says, voice like sandpaper and fear. Jessie can hear the mucous in his throat, can’t tell if his eyes are dry as they turn upwards, away from her intensity. He sounds dreamy.

His admission is more than she expected to get; nights like these tend to end in one or both of them passing out before any words are said, but Jessie usually takes a water anyway. She’s holding the fort down, as it is. And Link’s driving Christy home.

She can’t say she’s surprised, yet her heart aches just slightly more than she anticipated it might were Rhett to actually say something. She grasps his large hand in both of hers, rolling it into a fist that she then brings to her chest, eyes downturned at the corners. She doesn’t know how to respond, so she says, “I know, honey.”

“Can he stay over next time? I want... Wanna buy ‘im his cereal. He’ll stay.” He sounds almost like he’s speaking to himself by the end, forming a master plan in his head regarding just how he might coax Link to spend the night, as if he ever needed any convincing.

“You know he’s welcome anytime, Rhett.”

Rhett winces at his wife’s tenderness, suddenly alert. “Why ain’chu mad, baby?” His accent drips like summer honey, if you could spike honey.

He’s finally looking at her now, eyes glassy from staring into the stars for too long. He’s tall enough, doesn’t need to crane his neck as far. Doesn’t have to stretch at all to look at Link. Jessie’s heart breaks for him even more.

“There’s no reason for me to be mad. Cheer up, don’t make me sad, now.”

Rhett doesn’t seem to hear her, his eyes back to the heavens. “Gosh, he’d be so mad,” he laments, “Y’think he’d hate me?”

Right now, Jessie sees her husband as the kid she never knew: keeping Link’s favorite foods stocked in the cabinet, drawing Sharpied stars on the ceiling of the backyard tent, worrying that maybe someday his Link might lose interest and move on to a new best friend. His voiced anxieties are both childish and so very adult in nature, it’s hard not to feel like the man never really grew up when it came to Link. “No, he could never hate you. You know that.”

Rhett scrunches up his face like he’s trying to see something miles high. It gets hard to see. It’s the growing pains, probably. He takes a deep breath and trails his eyes back down to where Link sat just hours ago, before it got dark, right across from him. Rhett remembers Link’d left before the stars came out, and he feels sad that he missed them. He’s tired. “Let’s go ta bed.”

Rhett stands suddenly, nearly knocking over a dozen empty beer bottles with his jerky, decided movements. Jessie rises immediately, offering support with as much of her small frame as she can to drag him up the back deck and into the house. He doesn’t try the stairs, opting just to lie on the couch for the night. He’s dead to the world before Jessie can lay the decorative blanket over his lax body. She leaves some water and Aspirin on the coffee table and pads upstairs herself.

The light of her phone screen paints her chestnut hair blue in the dark of the bedroom. A few taps later, and she’s opening her messages.

To: Rhett

Tue, May 27, 10:33 PM

(1 Attachment)

Found a site where you can buy a star and name it yourself. Not sure it’s legit, but you might like it anyway. I know he will.

Delivered

#headcanons #bee writes #rhink #hehehe im angsty #and hes in luv #:P

114 notes · View notes

nctverse · 6 years

Text

imagine if jeno had a crush on you…

im crying i meant to post this ages ago but tumblr is a bitch

hey, its finally here though

anonymous asked:

can i request a jeno scenario/headcanon where he has a crush on you (and you have a crush in him too) and tries to make you understand but you've never been in a relationship so you're oblivious to his attempts and you just think he's just behaving weirdly ? Thankkks💞 - hp anon (who is still crying over the fact that you've never read/watched harry potter)

genre: fluff

words: 1.5k+ i usually dont write long things but do you guys want my fics to be longer or shorter??

masterlist

i honestly don’t think he’d really be shy of his feelings per say

who am i kidding

hes a shy goofy and awkward mess

but its the endearing, comical awkwardness that always seems to lighten the mood and make you smile

he wants to tell you but

1: he doesn’t know if you like him back

2: he doesn’t know how to tell you

so he just kinda hopes you’ll figure it out and catch on

but alas

the two most oblivious people on the planet just have to have feeling for each other

so of course hes trying so hard to get you to notice but some?? how?? you?? aren’t??

okay so onto the actual story part

jeno was thinking all day on how he could possibly find a way to convince you to hangout with him for the 5th time that week without seeming mega creepy

even though it would be hard for him to seem creepy to you since he’s your best friend

plus you liked him

then it hit him

he immediately sent you a cute short text

“hey can i pick you up in like an hour and a half i wanna go to the mall but i don’t wanna be alone”

he typed out the next message but hesitated before finally he was hit with a sudden wave of confidence, biting his tongue and pressing send

“… and i miss you”

he tossed his phone after sending the message and covered his cute blushy face.

he couldn’t believe that he suddenly had the courage to send that message, but he didn’t regret it at all

when you read the message your heart LEAPED

but of course you being you, you brushed off the message saying that hes just trying to be a good friend for you because that’s what friends do right?

you responded excitedly, not further questioning the meaning behind his confession as you felt you had come to a sensible conclusion on your own, typing out “of course, dummy. ill be ready!! i miss you too :(”

once jeno read your response, his smile faded slightly

he was slightly upset you didn’t read his attempts, but he couldn’t be too frustrated since he wasn’t being direct either.

he shrugged off the negative feeling, and decided to focus on the fact that he gets to see you again

he figured there will be another chance for him to drop another hint while you guys were out anyway

the mall trip was definitely an adventure

you both started out walking around with drinks, have cute casual conversations filled with laughter and teasing

him, being the gentleman he is, offered to help you find clothes to buy as you always loved having a second opinion

he walked into the store with you, helping to search the racks.

not long after he pulls out a silky button down shirt in your size

you chuckled “you and your button ups” teasing him since he basically drowns himself in a plethora of button up shirts

nonetheless, the shirt was stunning

he handed you the shirt and you added it to the small pile of clothes you have collected to try on before heading that way, motioning for jeno to follow you

he sat in a chair outside the dressing room

he had to wait outside the dressing room for obvious reasons but he insisted that you come out and show him what the outfit look like

You go in and change into the first of 2 outfits

you come out, a little embarrassed under his stare as he critiques the outfit, but he thought you were so captivating.

he had nothing negative to say

he thought you couldn’t possibly look any better than you did standing in front of him in that outfit

until you tried on the one he chose

when you stepped out in that silky button down shirt he chose, his jaw dropped.

literally

flustered at his reaction, you quickly ran up to him placing a hand on his chin, pushing upwards, effectively shutting his mouth

your other hand naturally cupped his cheek

“close your mouth you dork!” you whispered quite loudly, your face mere inches away from him

his hand instinctively came up and rested on top of the hand that rested against his cheek

his gaze fixated on your beautiful eyes, level with his since you had to lean over a bit to accommodate for the height difference as he was sitting and you were standing

his stare was intense, drenched in enamor

there was no way for you to hide the intense blush that crept upon your cheeks

finally, against your deep desire, you pulled away, standing back up straight, his hand falling back down to his side

“okay i’m gonna change back then we can check out” you managed to speak with only minimal stammering before retreating back into the dressing room.

you shut the door before turning around and resting your back against it, hand coming up to comfort the fast beat of your heart against your chest.

this was like heaven and hell for you

you were so confused by his actions because in your book it was impossible for him to have feelings for you

but at the same time you of course liked him

you just hated how it felt as if he was playing with you, even though you knew he would never do that

jeno sat on the chair, now alone, mentally beating himself up for not confessing right then and there

at least he knew for sure that he was gonna do it before you went home.

after finally collecting yourself you changed out of the outfit, putting back on your own clothes

you knew for sure that you were buying those two outfits not even just because jeno loved them on you, but because you loved them on you too

you draped the two outfit over your arm,opening the door to exit the dressing room, mentally preparing yourself to face jeno again

as you exited, jeno approached you with his usual smile, offering to carry the clothes for you as if you two weren’t milliseconds away from kissing a couple minutes earlier

you took him up on his offer, handing him the clothes before walking with him to the check out line

the line was empty so you both walked straight up to the cashier, jeno handed them the clothes before proceeding to step in front of the card reader

you took out your wallet nudging him with your hip with a cute “excuse me” thinking he was unintentionally in the way until he also takes his wallet.

“jeno you don’t have to-” you started, catching his drift before he cuts you off “well i mean i kinda dragged you here, plus,” he looks at you as the cashier scans the last item, “i want to.”

jeno’s eyes whip back to the card reader as the cashier announced the total, sliding his card in with absolutely zero hesitation

you huffed, putting your wallet back in your bag and briefly wrapping your arms around his waist, thanking him before taking the bag of clothes from the cashiers extended arm

after walking around the mall a bit more you guys finally decided to get going as it was getting late

the walk home was a short one but you guys wanted to take a slightly longer route in order to milk the time you both had together

you began to get slightly fed up with jeno acting as if nothing happened so you finally decided to confront him about it

“ hey, what happened back at the store? are you just gonna pretend like nothing happened?” your voice slightly weak as you were totally clueless as to how he would respond

“actually no i wasn’t, i was hoping you would catch on but obviously your didn’t,” jeno teases before becoming more serious “I like you. i dont know how you haven’t noticed, but i really like you. sometimes it feels like im going to burst-” jeno began to ramble slightly, contrary to his usual persona

you cut off his words by reaching out for his hand, intertwining your fingers, for the first time as more than just friends

he looked at you, his naturally beautiful smile lighting the sky better than any star, receiving and cherishing every feeling you attempted so send through your warm touch

he stepped towards you, so you were finally facing each other rather than beside each other, bringing his face close to yours

he paused for a moment, breath ghosting over your face like a feather, wanting to make sure you were entirely comfortable before he proceeded

his answer was clear as you looked back into his eyes with the same, unimaginable level of enamor that dripped from his gaze

he leaned in slowly, wanting to savor the innocent intimacy, bringing his hand up to cup your cheek as your unoccupied hand rested against his chest

the moment you felt his lips against yours was when you felt your whole world change for the better

as if time stopped and every single planet and star in existence aligned just for you

your stress seemingly fading away as you fell harder than you ever thought you possibly could

you already knew he was gonna be the death of you, in the best way possible.

110 notes · View notes

boredsingaporean · 5 years

Text

Chapter 26: Good Feng Shui for Offices

I was having a very bad morning. Some critical issues with a new FX fund had surfaced suddenly and its launch date was around the corner. I had been on four conference calls with the Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and China country managers respectively for the past four hours, repeating the same things over and over again. Just when I put back my headset and took a first sip on my already cold coffee, my MSN Messenger popped out. I had got a message from Nicky. “hey, ur product got prob? u sounded exasperated on ur conf calls” “yeh, got surprises at the wrong timing.” “do u think everybody has been rather unlucky lately?” “is it?” “ur product got prob, Choi’s report was handed up late” “erm… Choi’s reports are always handed up late” “ok, Dawn’s project got stuck” “Nicky, Dawn’s project is never destined to be successful” “Sally has been scolded by Ju for a few times in a row this month” “it’s their event period. It’s normal” “ok ,Rose has been falling sick” “hmm… true. She has been having migraine quite frequently these days” “and my shares has been dropping” “so wat are u trying to tell me?” “i think our office’s Feng Shui has got prob” “are u sure it’s our office’s Feng Shui?” “yeh. I tell u wat. I’ll bring my stuffs here tomoro” “wat stuffs?” “my Feng Shui tools. I need to take a look at our office’s Feng Shui and see wat’s wrong” Geez, to Nicky, all misfortunes lead to Feng Shui. But he was not being too paranoid though. It was true that all of us had been down on our luck lately. Nothing seemed to work and anything that could go wrong went wrong. Maybe it was really the Feng Shui. As promised, Nicky appeared with an ancient Chinese Feng Shui compass, a.k.a. Luo Pan, in the office on the following morning. It was a small compass embedded in a huge movable copper disc with lots of Chinese writings on it and this whole thing was then housed in a red square box. There was even a tiltmeter with a liquid bubble inside a chamber that indicated if the compass was tilted. The only time I had seen this kind of compass was in a Chinese movie about zombies and Taoists. Nicky walked to our office door, turned and tilted his compass then noted down his reading on a piece of paper. He then did the same action at the other three corners and the center of the area that belonged to our department. “Dude, I was right,” Nicky looked at me solemnly. “Our office has got bad Feng Shui.” “Then why did it only affect us at the end of the year?” I was not convinced. “Because then it was not time yet. But now, my friend, the bad luck has finally surfaced. We need to counter it or else more misfortune will be expected.” If I was not standing in front of Nicky and looking at him, I would have thought that I heard those words from a Feng Shui master who was trying to tell me that we needed to buy some thousands dollars Feng Shui cures to end our bad luck. “And what are we supposed to do, our dear Feng Shui Master?” I teased. “Our office door is facing the West, which is where the Grand Duke Jupiter is situated this year. That is very bad because all the movements at the door have created too much noise.” “Oh, so this Mr. Grand Duke Jupiter is a quiet guy like KZ, huh?” “Beng! In Feng Shui, Grand Duke Jupiter is very well respected. And misfortunes will fall upon us if we create noises at where he is seated!” “Okay, so what’s the cure?” “We need to buy a Pi Xiu,” Nicky continued. “This Pi Xiu should be placed at our door and facing West where the Grand Duke Jupiter is. It’ll then get rid of the bad luck due to the conflict.” Oh, so that guy with a horn, a face that looks like a mix between a lion and a dog, hoofs at its feet, two little wings and a tail would scare that cantankerous and sour old soul away. “Will this Pi Xiu stops people from treating me as a receptionist as well?” asked Ju who sat at the desk nearest to the door. “I’m so sick of having delivery men and guests asking me where is who seated, where is the wash room and where is the exit.” “Erm… I’m not sure about this part.” Nicky admitted. “But I know that it’s bad Feng Shui to sit facing the office door directly. It means that you’ll be out of the company soon.” “Out of the company? Does it mean that some headhunters will look for me and some companies will offer me higher pay?” “Err… I’m not sure if it can be translated to that.” “Nicky! Maybe you should look at my Feng Shui problem as well!” shouted Sally. “You’re not under any exposed overhead beam, and your facing direction seems okay. What’s wrong?” asked the puzzled Nicky. “It is bad Feng Shui to face the copier machine right?” “What?” “You know, everybody who discovers that the copier machine is out of paper will turn around and ask me whether I have any papers,” Sally complained. “There was once, this guy even told me that the copier machine was spoilt and he just stood in front of me and expected me to do something about it! What did he expect? Do I look like I can repair a copier machine?” “Erm… Sally, I’m afraid I can’t help you on this. The Feng Shui books did not mention anything about what to do when you sit facing a copier machine.” Before Sally could ask him anything, Nicky hastily walked to the back of our department area. He looked at the vertical blinds covering the windows then turned to me and said: “I’ve found another problem.” “What’s that?” “The three of us, you, me and Choi, we are seated with our backs to the windows. That’s bad Feng Shui!” “Because there’s another disagreeable guy situated there?” “No! In Feng Shui, if you are seated with you back to a door or a window, it means you won’t have the support from your bosses and colleagues in work. No wonder Rose rejected my last analysis report!” “Err… Nicky, I heard that she rejected that report because you made some mistakes in some of your charts.” “Never mind, I know how to cure this,” Nicky ignored my comments and continued. “We can place a Dragon Tortoise here to give us the support that we lack of.” “Dude, is it a dragon or a tortoise?” “A Dragon Tortoise.” “Yah, so which one? Dragon or tortoise?” “A Dragon Tortoise! A Dragon Tortoise is a Feng Shui animal with the head of a dragon and the body of a tortoise!” explained Nicky, slightly miffed with me. Nicky then turned and pushed away the vertical blinds as he opened one of the windows. He stuck his head out for a few minutes, looking up and down, left and right, then came back in and closed the window. “I don’t really see any sharp corners or protruding parts outside our office windows.” “Well, that’s great then.” “But in order to play safe, I think we’d better increase the yang chi in our office.” I had heard this from a television program before. People who believe in Feng Shui believe that our environment is consisted of yang chi, which is positive aura, and yin chi, which is negative aura. When the yang chi is weaker than the yin chi in an environment, the people staying in that environment will be very unlucky. And when the yin chi in an environment is too strong, that place could be haunted. I wondered if that was the reason for Sally’s spiritual experience. “How are you going to increase the yang chi in the office?” I asked Nicky. “There are these five-coin amulets that are made of five I-Ching coins tied together with a red string. I’ll get five of these amulets and we can hang four in the four corners and hang the fifth one in the center.” “Hey bro! Since you’re at it, is there anything you can do to the Feng Shui here to make our wealth luck stronger so that we can win some lottery?” Choi asked. “Hmm… actually there might be a way.” Nicky walked back to his table and took out several Feng Shui books from his document bag. One by one, he flipped and read through some pages. A couple of minutes later, he put down a book and walked over to Choi’s desk. “Choi, there is one way to enhance our wealth luck. But it’s a bit troublesome though.” “Well, if I can win the first price for lottery, I don’t really mind doing something that is troublesome,” Choi grinned. “We need to take a porcelain bowl, put in five I-Ching coins and fill it with water. Then we need to place this bowl of coins and water at the corner diagonally to our office door.” “That doesn’t sound too troublesome.” “We need to change the water every week.” “That’s not a problem at all. I can do it,” Choi committed. “And we can’t use normal tap water.” “Then what? Use mineral water?” Nicky took a breath, and then said: “We need water from the heaven, from the sky to be specific. We need to collect rain water to fill the bowl.” Choi raised an eyebrow and said: “Forget it. It’s really too troublesome.” During lunch time, I accompanied Nicky to the Feng Shui shop that he usually patron at The Bencoolen to get the Pi Xiu, Dragon Tortoise and five-coin amulets. After we left the shop, Nicky mentioned that we needed to bless our Feng Shui cures in the Kwan Im Tong Hood Che Temple. “How do we bless these stuffs?” I asked. “Oh, just circle the cures three times around the main joss-sticks urn in the temple and ask the Goddess of Mercy for her blessings,” Nicky explained. “Okay, I presume that you’re doing that because you’re a Buddhist. But Dawn is a Christian. Will these animals and amulets protect her as well?” “Err… I’m not sure. It’s not stated in the books.” After we returned to the office, we could not place those Feng Shui cures yet. Nicky said that the only auspicious hour for that day was at five o’clock and we could only place those cures by then. Finally at five minutes past five, Nicky placed the Pi Xiu and Dragon Tortoise at their respective places while Choi and I helped to hang the coin amulets on the lamp holders. Dawn watched in amaze as we hung the coin amulets. “Hey, what are you guys doing?” Dawn finally could not control her curiosity and asked. “We’re hanging some Feng Shui coin amulets,” I replied the obvious. “What is that amulet for? What is it supposed to do?” “Err… bring us good luck.” “Okay… these coins look pretty eerie. Will it affect me negatively? I’m pregnant, you know?” “Erm… I’m not very sure actually. Why don’t you ask Nicky? It’s his idea.” Immediately, Dawn walked over to Nicky who had just finished adjusting the Pi Xiu’s position and asked him a series of questions. Nicky frowned as he tried to answer her questions and I could see that he needed to read more Feng Shui books. Actually, maybe Nicky should find a Feng Shui cure that could stop Dawn from bothering him.

#nanowrimo

1 note · View note