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five-rivers · 3 years

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Long Night in the Valley chapter 10

“So,” said Ochako. “Do we open the door, or…?”

The door was unassuming and bland. Very… doorlike. It was also the only way forward unless they wanted to backtrack several hundred feet.

Incidentally, no one was standing directly in front of the door. Ochako wondered if that was a coincidence, or if they were all just that wary of things after these past few hours.

Aizawa sighed heavily and hauled open the door. It was dark inside, with a single spotlight illuminating a small sign that said, ‘This way to 5.’

“That’s suspicious!” said Iida.

“So it is,” agreed Aizawa, squinting into the dark. “I’ll go.”

Walked to the sign, and the rest of them tensed, ready to jump in to help at any sign of danger. The lights suddenly turned on, and music began to blare. A large television screen played a video of a dancing man.

“A rickroll,” said Todoroki, reverently.

If Aizawa’s sigh had been any heavier, it would have had its own gravitational pull.

“Yeah,” said Six, voice as emotionless as ever. “Great job, everyone, you got here.”

“Was that really necessary?”

“What?” asked Six.

“The music,” said Aizawa.

“Consider it a practical demonstration,” said Six. “The farther in you go, the older we are, and the more experience we have with this kind of landscape.” He ran his hand over the sign, and Ochako gasped as patterns and colors followed his fingers.

“You’re younger than Skyrunner or All Might, though,” said Ochako. “You’re the same age as Aizawa-sensei.”

“Well, yes, but actually no,” said Six. “I was here before they were. I’m older.”

Ochako’s senses, honed by months living in a building with nineteen other teenagers, detected an opportunity for teasing. She pressed her hand to her lips and put on her slyest smile. “Are you? Reaaaally?”

“Memes,” said Todoroki, nodding gravely.

“I can see why Nine likes you so much.”

Six grabbed Aizawa’s sleeve preventing him from moving on with the others.

“If you’re trying to keep me away from my kids, I suggest you don’t.”

Six raised an eyebrow. “Your kids, huh? You know, we had a bet running about that.”

“Excuse me?”

“Anyway, I wanted you to hear this, first. You can decide if you want to tell them, after, but they are Nine’s friends. I don’t want to be responsible for them running off on their own without your knowledge.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me something that could help Midoriya but will be incredibly dangerous.”

“Are you sure your secondary quirk isn’t precognition?”

“I am saving my crisis about that until we get out of here. This waste of time is illogical.”

“Right. So. Remember when I said that Nine didn’t get to choose who we were?” He gestured at himself.

“Yes,” said Aizawa, already hating where this was going.

“There’s someone who we don’t count as one of our number.”

Now Aizawa really didn’t like where this was going. “You mean, you’ll count terrorists, but not… this person.”

“Yeah. Usually, we keep him locked away, but with all this disruption…”

“He’s gotten out.”

“Not yet. What I’m telling you now may not be relevant at all. But if that door does open, I want you to have this option. Not all the others agree the risk is worth it, but I think that should be up to you, since you’d be the one taking it.”

“What option?”

“That person, he took something from Nine, back when his quirk first manifested. You know all the guys you ran into back when you were in his mind space? He took one of those. I think, and most of the others agree, that it would be beneficial if he got it back.”

“He took part of Midoriya’s personality.”

“Yes, you can think about it that way.”

“That part wouldn’t happen to be something like self-preservation, common sense, or grudge-holding, would it?”

“No.”

“Pity.”

“When you reach One, if you want to try to get it back for Nine, ask One if the vault it open.”

“Exactly how dangerous would this be.”

“Horribly. But you probably wouldn’t die. This quirk comes with a time limit. Otherwise, we wouldn’t ask at all.” Six let go of Aizawa’s sleeve. “Your students are waiting for you. You should go.”

Aizawa stepped into the dark. A battle strobed against the darkness. No, two. One with Six and a man who must be Five, and another with Six and Shimura Nana. Both battles were against a darkness whose silhouette resembled the monster of Kamino Ward far too much for Aizawa’s comfort.

“You’re next!” shouted two overlapping voices.

Aizawa blinked. He was in a well-lit street, looking at what could only be the so-called Five.

Izuku woke up slowly. Being asleep had kept some of the pain at arm’s length, but now it returned with a vengeance, along with an oddly comforting pressure.

Oh, Toshinori had fallen asleep wrapped around him. That was nice. They really should start moving again, though.

The ground rumbled, and Izuku realized what had woken him up.

“Toshinori,” he said, shaking him the best he could from his position. “Wake up. There’s an earthquake.”

Toshinori blinked awake. “Did you call me Dad?”

“No?”

“Back in the city?”

“Um. Earthquake. What do we… uh, do?” He didn’t know what the earthquake drill for the middle of the forest was. Four had, but Izuku was having trouble understanding him over the pounding in his head.

“It isn’t shaking anymore,” observed Toshinori. “We should probably still go.” He rubbed his eyes. “Let’s get you patched up first. I can’t believe I fell asleep without making sure you were alright…”

“I’m fine,” protested Izuku, trying to stand up. He could just keep using Blackwhip to stabilize—

The space behind his eyes turned white. When it became clear again, he found himself pressed against Toshinori’s shirt.

“Toshinori,” he whined, because he couldn’t help it, and, oh, no, he was such a burden he shouldn’t be making Toshinori hold his weight, he was a lot heavier than he looked, but his head was pounding and his eyes felt like they were bleeding and his skin felt like sandpaper, “it hurts.”

“I know, I know,” said Toshinori. “Let me take care of you, please?”

Toshinori lowered him back to the log and started to remove medical supplies from the pockets of his coat.

“What are we going to do after this?” asked Izuku, voice as quiet as he could make it without whispering.

“That is an excellent question, my boy,” said Toshinori in an imitation of his usual heartiness. “As you might imagine, I’ve acquired a number of contacts over the years. Some of them are comfortable with, ah, less than legal escapades.”

“I didn’t think you had any friends other than Detective Tsukauchi and Mr. Shield. And maybe Gran.”

Toshinori hunched his shoulders. Izuku immediately felt bad.

“Well, you aren’t wrong. Contacts and friends are in two different categories, I’m afraid. In any case, I’m hoping to eventually reach one of them, and then…” He trailed off, and Izuku got the sense that Toshinori was bracing himself for Izuku being upset. “I am hoping to arrange passage to I-Island.”

“We’re leaving Japan?”

“Just until we get this cleared up,” said Toshinori.

Izuku rubbed his eyes. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. “What about Shigaraki and All for One?”

“Not your responsibility,” said Toshinori.

“It kind of is.”

“It really isn’t.”

“It’s our family.”

“I know. At least, I know now. Goodness. I don’t think I’ve wrapped my head around it, yet.” Toshinori rubbed his temples with his wrists, keeping his dirty fingers well away from his eyes.

“What about before that?” asked Izuku, guiltily changing his line of questioning.

“I have a few other safe houses around here. Funny story about one of them. Completely abandoned building on public land. Was being used by some anti-mutant cult. No one ever came to check it out after the initial arrest. So. Finders keepers.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“All Might,” said Izuku, suppressing a giggle despite the seriousness of the situation, “that’s illegal.”

“I have done a surprisingly large number of illegal things in my life. Comes from fighting with a centuries-old monster the government doesn’t want to acknowledge as existing.”

“They’ve acknowledged him now,” observed Izuku.

“Hasn’t seemed to help much, has it? Anyway, that one shouldn’t be too far from here. Probably. It will still be quite a walk. We’ll stay there, for a while. Until I can reach one of my contacts.” Toshinori sighed. “I think the one in Deika will be out best bet. He works in the shipping industry. I’ll have to introduce you, just in case we end up separated.”

Izuku pretended the last sentence didn’t send him into a spiral of panic.

Of course, this spiral of panic was interrupted by an entirely different panic, because the ground started to shake again.

“I can Float us—”

“Don’t, you’ll hurt yourself,” said Toshinori, keeping a tight grip around Izuku’s bicep.

Toshinori’s hands were extremely large. A tree crashed to the ground in the distance. Accompanying that sound was a roar too loud and animal to be completely human, but too coherent to not be human.

Toshinori went pale.

“Someone you know?” asked Izuku, covering his ears to keep the sound from battering his brain any further.

“We need to go,” said Toshinori, bundling up all the supplies he’d taken out. “We need to go right now.”

“All for One?” whispered Izuku, getting to his feet. “A gigantification quirk?”

“One of his subordinates,” said Toshinori. “One I never managed to find. I’d hoped—Of all the luck—” He started cursing under his breath in English.

Maybe Izuku really did have a villain-attracting quirk.

The shaking of the ground grew stronger. “Run,” said Toshinori. “Don’t look back for me.” Toshinori had to know that wouldn’t fly (or float) with Izuku, because a second later his face twisted up in something like resignation.

Izuku grabbed Toshinori’s wrist. He could Float them both out of here.

Blinding pain lanced through his brain again.

Okay, maybe he couldn’t.

The ground in front of them erupted. A craggy giant burst up from below.

“Little Lord!” the giant shouted, voice more than loud enough to hurt. A massive hand picked Izuku up, holding him gently but extremely firmly. “I’m SO HAPPY to see you again!”

Something clicked in the back of Izuku’s head. A memory he didn’t know he had resurfaced.

“H-Hi, Machia,” he said.

“Did this bald man kidnap you?! He smells like All Might! But All Might is yellow. Should I kill him?”

“No,” said Izuku. “He’s definitely not All Might. He’s, uh, a friend.”

“HELLO LITTLE LORD’S FRIEND.”

“Hello,” said Toshinori, waving a little, clearly in shock.

Machia shifted to wave at Toshinori and Izuku hissed as the movement jostled his injuries. His minor injuries. His very minor injuries that weren’t bothering him at all.

Who do you think you’re kidding, kiddo?

Not helping, Grandma.

“Little Lord! Are you hurt?” Machia sniffed him. “You smell like blood! I have to bring you to the doctor!”

“The what?” asked Izuku, alarmed.

“Don’t worry, Little Lord! He is a very good doctor! We must go!”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Izuku, before Machia could get more than three humongous steps away from Toshinori. “It isn’t my blood, it’s the blood of my enemies!”

“Lord tried that one, too, Little Lord!”

“But—”

“Oh! I forgot your friend!” Machia turned around. “Sorry, Little Lord’s friend!” He picked up an increasingly distressed Toshinori and continued stomping through the forest.

Izuku realized that Machia was headed back towards town.

“Wait!” he shouted, despite not having a plan for what to do next.

“Wait?” repeated Machia, balancing on one foot.

Thankfully, Izuku’s brain churned out a plan. “My friend here,” said Izuku, gesturing at Toshinori, “has a house nearby. It would be better if we went there, and then the doctor can come to us.”

Machia grinned, which was honestly an unsettling sight. “You’re just like Lord, Little Lord! Always making plans.” He brought Izuku up to his face, close enough that Izuku could feel his (oddly minty-fresh) breath and bonked the top of his head with his nose.

“Do you brush your teeth, or do you have a quirk for that?” asked Izuku before he could think better of it.

“Lord gave me a tooth-brushing quirk! He said he was tired of smelling my morning breath. I do not know why he said that, because it was night. But he gave this quirk to me! It was very generous of Lord.” said Machia, delighted. “How did you know?”

Izuku decided not to go down the rabbit-hole of his reasoning and shrugged. “Lucky guess?”

Machia laughed. “Lord says that, too, sometimes! I am very glad to see you, Little Lord. I have missed my Lord very much, and you are just like him!”

Seven vaguely annoyed and insulted ghosts buzzed in the back of Izuku’s head.

“I am also glad that you did not grow up to be as big as me! You would be much harder to carry if you did.”

Apparently Izuku was not the only one with a propensity for rabbit-hole thoughts, because he could not imagine a scenario where it would be reasonable to expect him to grow to be as big as Machia.

“So,” he said, “you’ll take us to my friend’s house?”

“Yes, Little Lord! And then we can call the doctor, and he will take care of you!”

Izuku didn’t think Machia meant to be ominous, and yet.

“So,” said Aizawa, surveying the man up and down. “You’re the one that decided the best place for my student to develop an unstable, highly dangerous, and painful quirk was the middle of a high-adrenaline training exercise full of other students.”

“Hey,” said the man, scratching the back of his head, “no one got hurt, and when you’ve been dead as long as I have, you start looking for entertainment wherever you can get it. Besides, you’re the one that let the training exercise keep going.”

“According to your compatriot back there,” Aizawa said, hooking a finger over his shoulder, “you haven’t been dead at all.”

Five jolted and ran his knuckles over his bandoleer. “Yeah, it’s easy to forget.”

It was great to know that Five was trash at lying. True, he’d been told up front that Six’s explanation would be at least partially false, but still.

Aizawa sighed.

Five, who’d also introduced himself as Lariat and Banjo Daigoro, appeared to be a fairly typical hero for his era. Minimal hero costume repurposed from military gear, worn with just a bit of flair, indicating that the celebrity status of heroes probably hadn’t fully set in yet. Ammunition for a sidearm, although the sidearm itself was well hidden. The gun was probably bulky, but if Aizawa didn’t miss his mark, those were stun rounds. Eye protection, but not head protection. Not that Aizawa could complain about that, considering.

“Anyhow, if you’re all here, let’s go.” The man clapped his hands together, activated his quirk, and proceeded to fling Aizawa and his students through the air, without warning.

“Sorry ‘bout this!” said Five. “But we don’t have time for the whole history lesson! Just the highlights!”

Brief battles flared to life around them as Five dashed sideways along skyscraper walls and swung from building to building.

“I always thought of myself as a sort of Spider Man, y’know?”

“I don’t know that hero, sir!” shouted Iida over the whistling wind.

“Pre-quirk comic book character,” explained Five. “Most of ‘em got censored after the first quirk boom. Didn’t want to give anyone ideas. But by my time, with the pro hero scene starting up, they came back in a big way!” Five landed in front of a large convention center. “This’s where they held the first Modern Comic Convention in Japan. Or ModiComiCon for short.”

“And we couldn’t walk here, because?” asked Aizawa, suppressing an increasing urge to commit murder.

“I thought my way was more fun,” said Five. “Haven’t you always wanted to travel like that?”

Aizawa tugged on his scarf. “I do. Frequently. Under my own power.”

“Another Aizawa-sensei,” decided Todoroki, quiet but decisive. “Aizawa-sensei, but… funkier.”

That did it. Once this was over, he was expelling all the problem children and taking a vacation. The Rat God could find a sub.

“This is where I met Four the first time,” said Five, pushing the doors open. The auditorium was filled with rows upon rows of booths. All empty of people of course.

Aizawa, grudgingly, followed.

First contact.

Those voices… Something about them… The number.

“Those are your voices,” said Aizawa.

“Yep!” said Five. “It’s a special moment, you know?”

Aizawa frowned. At this point, he highly doubted that these ‘vestiges’ were simply based on real people. The vestiges themselves had to have reason to suspect that they were at least remnants of real people to give themselves a name like that, and with All Might thrown into the mix…

Add to that the repeated themes, the oddly ritualistic components (First contact and you’re next), Midoriya’s closeness with All Might, and Aizawa got—

Honestly, he had no idea. The fact that All Might was still alive tended to rule out the ‘Midoriya’s quirk is that he’s haunted’ theory, which, admittedly, was rather flimsy to begin with. Perhaps it was a legacy-dependent quirk, reaching back from student to teacher? He would be skeptical—Most quirks had some kind of logic to them, and there was no way to extrapolate entire people from contact with their successor—but Vlad King had a student whose head was a manga speech bubble and other abstract quirks existed. So.

It still didn’t feel right. Surely, Midoriya would have figured out his quirk before he was fourteen in that case. Unless All Might had to be involved for some reason.

Also, the fact that they called Midoriya Nine. Six’s explanation for that didn’t even make a little bit of sense.

Not to even mention the hints that All for One actually was involved in this somehow.

“Banjo-san,” said Aizawa, “there’s no truth in the commission’s accusations, is there?” He could have asked Six, but logically, Six would be the best liar, if he was the one chosen to relay the lie. Banjo Daigoro seemed rather less adept at deception.

The world seemed to gray out a bit. “Are you kidding me? What part?” asked Five, his eyebrows disappearing under his goggles.

“Yeah, sensei, there’s no way Izuku-k—”

“I’m not asking about Midoriya. I’m asking about you. How are you connected to All for One?”

Five opened his mouth, lips drawing back to reveal his teeth. He looked unspeakably offended. “You don’t think we actually work for that bastard—”

“Excuse me, sir!” interrupted Iida after Five had tacked on several rather fouler epithets. “There are minors present!”

“Oops,” said Five. “Anyway, we do not work for All for One,” he continued, failing to answer the question Aizawa had asked.

“That isn’t what he asked,” said Todoroki.

Alright. Maybe Todoroki wasn’t all bad. He was still on thin ice.

“Excuse me, is this a bad time?”

Aizawa nearly jumped out of his skin as a terrifyingly tall man in a hero costume appeared at the edge of his peripheral vision. He was taller than Yagi.

Actually, wait. Aizawa’s expert eyes roamed over the man’s hero costume. That was cosplay, not professionally done. The man was standing there, in Midoriya’s head, in front of two professional heroes, wearing cosplay. It looked like it had been hand-sewn.

It also looked like it had been used. And inexpertly reinforced. Even for a vigilante.

Somehow, in retrospect, this made Midoriya’s choice to wear a costume his mother had made for him for his first training session make much more sense.

Of course, Midoriya would have someone as ridiculous as he was in his head. Of course, he would have several people as ridiculous as he was in his head.

“Four, I presume.”

“I prefer Shimura, actually.”

“Oh!” said Uraraka. “Are you related to Skyrunner?”

“She’s my adopted sister’s descendant,” said Shimura/Four.

“Hey, hey, I thought we weren’t telling them this stuff,” said Five.

Shimura blinked. “My apologies.” He paused. “However, considering the structure of my mental domain, it is likely that they would have discovered my chosen name in short order.”

“Who do you think he’s based on?” asked Iida, leaning towards Todoroki.

“I can’t put my finger on it,” said Todoroki, “but he does feel familiar.”

“And why is that?” asked Aizawa, pretending he couldn’t hear his students.

“I have a lot of unresolved trauma relating to my biological parents and also my quirk.”

“Ohhhh,” said Todoroki. “He’s based on me.”

Wow. Another horrible thing Aizawa would have to deal with when he woke up.

“Isn’t your quirk Danger Sense?”

“That’s what Five-chan calls it.”

There was something extremely disturbing about this tall, intimidating, eyebrowless man calling another muscular intimidating adult man chan.

“But I call it—”

“Please don’t—” interjected Five.

“—super anxiety.”

“Why?” cried Five. “Danger Sense is a much better name! It’s like Spidey Sense! Like Spider Man! You like Spider Man.”

“Yes,” said Shimura, “but I am not Spider Man. However, that reminds me.” He turned his unblinking gaze towards Todoroki. “Nine-chan has several plans for removing your father. I believe only about half of them are workable, but it’s the thought that counts. At least, that’s what Yagi-chan says.”

“You mean All Might?” asked Aizawa. If his soul hadn’t already left his body, it would now be preparing to do so.

“No, my wife.”

“Yeah, don’t think about it too hard,” said Five. “He’s always been like this. I mean, he came up to me in the middle of this convention to tell me about a bunch of underworld deals going on out of town. I thought he was, like, some especially serious cosplayer, but then he showed up at my apartment, too.” The surroundings briefly shimmered into something that might have been the mentioned apartment before resolving themselves back into the comic convention.

“I apologize, I did not realize that was inappropriate.”

“I’m this little baby hero, just a couple years out of training, no name for myself, and this guy shows up like he’s in the middle of one of those old video games. Like, ‘here, take this old legend and defeat the demon king, you level one peasant.’”

“I didn’t expect you to fight him right away,” said Four, looking both vaguely offended and confused, and now, yeah, okay, Aizawa could see a vague resemblance to Todoroki.

“I’m still not entirely sure why you picked me, of all people. There had to be a dozen others with the right, uh, requirements.”

“Requirements, huh?” asked Aizawa, having finally managed to shove the part of his brain screaming about the ‘wife’ comment into a tiny, locked box in the back of his brain.

“Yes. As my other adoptive sister said, one must possess a strong will, an indomitable spirit, a sharp mind, a pure heart, and a ceaseless drive to save others, both body and soul.” He paused for a moment. “She also said something about being ‘just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing,’ but I believe that was a reference to the book she was reading at the time. Her parentage was certainly known at that point.”

“Y’see? I can never tell if this guy is serious or just pulling my leg.”

“Why would I pull your leg? Do you need to pop it?”

“I’m beggin’ you, man, learn some idioms.”

“WAIT!” shouted Todoroki. “Are you related to All Might? Is he your secret love child?”

The silence stretched between them.

“I don’t know what that is,” said Four. “You keep asking Nine if he’s one of those. What does it mean? Is it a good thing?”

“ANYWAY,” said Five, loudly. He attempted to prop his elbow on Four’s shoulder, but the height difference defeated him. “Four and I had lots of semi-legal adventures—”

“No, we didn’t,” said Four.

“Became best friends—”

“My wife is my best friend.”

“Let me have this.”

“Have what?”

Five sighed. “Okay, whatever. Fine. Can you cross them over here?”

“I think I’ll need the other one, unfortunately.”

“Why are you different, by the way?” asked Uraraka. “The ones before stayed in their own mindscapes, it seemed.”

“Oh,” said Four. “I’m having flashbacks. Because of…” He trailed off, then sighed. “Flashbacks.”

Right. Wonderful. “We’re going to have to deal with your flashbacks, aren’t we?” Aizawa asked.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Four said. “I apologize for my habit of oversharing.”

“This and that are two completely different things.”

“They seem like the same thing to me,” said Todoroki.

“I am inclined to agree. I also apologize for the things you may see. I will attempt to keep you away from the more disturbing sections.”

“Great,” said Aizawa. “Can we stop wasting time?”

“We aren’t really wasting time,” said Four. “At the moment, dream time is compressed. We’ve only been talking for…” He tilted his head to the side. “Perhaps a second, in terms of real-world time.”

“He’s right,” said Five, crossing his arms and nodding.

“Seconds are still time,” said Aizawa, hoping they’d get the hint.

“I suppose—Oh. You’re frustrated. Apologies. Neither of us have interacted with anyone but the others in… Quite some time. I fear our sense of hurry has been damaged. Especially with how distracted we all are.”

“Why are you distracted, if you don’t mind us asking?” asked Iida.

“Another unwanted guest is trying to get in and Nine and Ei—Nine managed to run into someone extremely dangerous.”

Eight. These people had a ‘live’ connection to All Might, too, damn it, and the blond idiot was wherever Midoriya was. Maybe that should have reassured him, somewhat, because even if All Might was retired, he was still All Might, but, by some dark magic, when All Might and Midoriya were placed in proximity to one another, they gained the ability to spawn problems that Aizawa had never even heard of before.

Like this one.

“Our final meeting, then?”

“I believe that would be appropriate.”

Black tentacles exploded from Five, covering the space around them. When they receded, they were in a different place. Underground, if Aizawa didn’t miss his guess. A safe house of some kind?

Flickering doppelgangers of Four and Five occupied the space.

“Why didn’t you transport us like that before?” asked Todoroki.

“Had to take the long way the first time,” said Five. “That lady’s quirk changed some of the rules. You ready, Four?”

“Let it play out,” said Four, gazing at the static figures.

“Your choice,” said Five, shrugging.

The ‘real’ Five and Four abruptly vanished, and the doubles started moving.

“I suspect this is the last time we will meet,” said an older Four to a younger Five.

“Huh? Why’s that?” said Five, twisting in his chair so that his arms rested on the top of the back.

Four stared blankly at a wall. “Everything is coming to a head, now. I’ve chosen to put my faith in you and the new laws.”

“Huh?”

“The last push of the old era… My big sister would scold me for trusting you.”

“Dude, you’re not making any sense.”

“My apologies.” Four turned to look more directly at Five. “The new quirk laws and the establishment of the Hero Commission are steps in the right direction, as evidenced by your existence.”

“Yeaaah, sure,” said Five. “But what does that have to do with not seeing each other again?”

“They’re not enough,” said Four. “Even now, certain existences cannot cry out for help. What do you do, when you can’t turn off your quirk?”

“You’re not going to go terrorist on me here, are you?” asked Five, nervously.

“No. I just want you to be aware,” said Four. He tilted his head to the side. “Whenever I go home, now, there’s danger on the horizon, and I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”

“Is it him?”

“No. I don’t believe so.” He sighed. “I suspect it’s the Special Task Force, to be honest.”

“They were disbanded,” said Five. “Any one of ‘em that didn’t get absorbed by the Hero Commission got let go. Or, er, what’s the term? Discharged.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Four. “Perhaps this is simply paranoia. I would certainly like it to be.”

“Look,” said Five. “Maybe I can help. You’ve never told me where y’all live, and—”

“Absolutely not. I am quite certain that he is still monitoring me to some extent. You do not want to be on his radar, Daigoro-chan.”

“Dude. Why do you keep calling me that?”

“You haven’t told me to stop.”

Five sighed. “I get it, I get it. Just… let me know if there’s anything I can do. I’m a hero for a reason.”

Four smiled faintly. “I know,” he said. “After all, I chose you. Good luck, Daigoro-chan. I think you’ll be able to do it.” He started walking away, towards the door.

“You, too, old man. Souma.”

Four stopped with his hand on the door.

“I believe we will see each other again,” continued Five. “Count on it!”

“In this life or the next,” agreed Four. He opened the door.

As they crossed over from Five’s domain into Four’s, the dream around them did not shift seamlessly, staying in the same general location with only the details changing like it had for the others, but dissolved into something not quite like static and then blank whiteness before fading back in.

They were standing in the middle of a battlefield, a ruined landscape.

Not the ruins of a city, though, which made this only more jarring. For all that Shouto was only a teen, he’d seen his fill of city battles. He was used to villain fights.

The only time he’d seen this kind of devastation in a place like this had been at the forest training camp last summer. He swallowed, eyes rolling over uprooted and burning trees, huge craters and ruts in the soil, and the rare bit of roofing and wall. He realized, belatedly, that this must be the remains of a small, rural village.

He stiffened at the sound of someone crying.

“Over there,” said Uraraka, pointing.

Shouto turned to see a tall, broad-shouldered man in a suit hunched over one of corpses. His face was shrouded in smoke.

As he watched, he realized he wasn’t crying over a corpse. The other man was still breathing, his eyes were still open.

(It was hard to recognize Four’s face under all those injuries.)

He stepped forward, wondering if he should help, if he even could help. His hand passed through the man’s shoulder with no resistance.

“Shigaraki…” said the uninjured man. “Shigaraki Hibiki, you foolish child…”

Shouto wasn’t the only one to gasp.

“’S not my name an’more,” rasped the injured man, Four, Shouto realized now. “’N they gottaway, din’ they? ‘Sworth it…”

“What do you mean, it’s not your name? Of course it’s your name. It’s the one I gave you. The one you should have been born with. It’s your name.”

“M’name’s…” The man on the ground panted.

“Shh, shh, don’t talk, don’t talk Hibiki, I’m sorry I snapped. Don’t worry, Daddy’s going to make it all better, son. A healing quirk…”

“Name’s…” slurred the man. “Shimura… Souma… You…” He took a deep, rattling breath. “You don’t… own… me. I’m…” He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Free.”

The scene began to go dark. Before the last of the light was gone, the uninjured man spoke again. “Shimura,” he hissed, voice promising violence, “was it?”

Yagi Toshinori was having the most surreal experience of his entire life. Considering his life included that awful college party in America, the one where he learned that One for All did not mesh well with psilocybin, that was saying a lot.

Here he was, riding on the shoulders of a man who had tried to kill him on the behalf of his worst enemy multiple times, alongside his student and successor, who was being called ‘Little Lord’ by the man carrying them. They were having an admittedly fascinating conversation about the man’s quirks, multiple, one that Toshinori was only barely keeping up with. Two of them were being actively hunted by the government.

That is, Toshinori, the retired professional hero, and Izuku, the licensed hero student, were on the run from the government. Not Gigantomachia, the mass-murdering minion of All for One, who was quite possibly the evilest man alive.

(And also, possibly Izuku’s father. But no one wanted to think about that.)

(Not to mention all the things going on in their heads.)

(This level of connection to One for All was thrilling, but also incredibly strange.)

Oh. And they were going to one of Toshinori’s safehouses. With Gigantomachia. True, Toshinori hadn’t been to this one in a while, but it was still a place that was supposed to be safe, hence safehouse, and Gigantomachia was decidedly not safe.

He was also going to be difficult to get rid of, because he had a sense enhancement quirk that let him track down individuals he was familiar with from miles away. Toshinori knew this, because Gigantomachia was currently happily telling Izuku all about it.

Surreal.

Izuku reached over and patted him on the shoulder.

Ah, yes, this was only made more surreal by the fact that Toshinori could feel how much pain Izuku was in, but the boy hardly showed any of it. It made him wonder. How often was Izuku in pain and Toshinori did not see?

Izuku patted his shoulder again, this time in a way that suggested he really wanted a hug but couldn’t give him one because he was holding onto Gigantomachia and the logistics didn’t work out.

Oh, and there was the safehouse.

Gigantomachia let them down a short distance from the building (he claimed not to want to get to close, because he’d accidentally knocked down buildings in the past, which Toshinori could easily believe).

The building was in better repair than Toshinori had expected after his long absence. He fished the spare key from its hiding spot and opened the door.

The back entry was full of people wearing black robes and skull masks, all of whom were scrubbing at bloodstains on the floors and walls.

Izuku fixed him with a disappointed stare. “I thought you got rid of the cultists.”

Yes, he had thought so, too. He had, in fact, worked quite hard at getting rid of them.

“You!” shouted a cultist, pointing. “You’re with that filthy League of Villains!”

“You killed our brothers!”

“Mutant-lovers!”

“Run?” suggested Izuku.

“Run,” agreed Toshinori.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #long night in the valley #fic #fanfiction #my writing

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booksarelife-stuff · 3 years

Text

The Story of Us- Chapter 2

Jily (James Potter/ Lily Evans), minor wolfstar

Word Count:

Modern Muggle AU. When Lily Evans meets the man across the hall due to a fire alarm, she has no idea that a new chapter of her life has begun. Featuring a librarian Lily and sports journalist James.

Masterlist Read on AO3 Chapter 3

Chapter 2- and the sparks fly...

Lily had found her love of libraries in secondary school. She remembers one day, specifically that started it all.

Petunia, Lily’s tight-lipped older sister, had gotten all her friends to make fun of her in front of everyone. Lily didn’t remember what it was that day that the gaggle of girls had decided to torment Lily on. It could have been just a simple “freak” thrown her way in the hallway.

What Lily does remember though, is finding solace in the library. She remembers running in there, looking for a private place to cry. She had sat in the back, near the reference section that was barely touched since the age of the internet. She started doing her homework there and more importantly started realizing that escaping into books was easier when she was surrounded by them.

The library Lily now called home was an old building, untouched by the modern buildings surrounding it. It was made of stone and when you walked in, you were greeted by the musky scent of old books.

This library had also brought more than a safe place in her adult life, but friends as well. Remus Lupin was the overseer of the adult non-fiction and reference section. Lily was convinced that man was Google. She could ask him anything about anything he’d probably have an answer. Then there was the children’s librarian from downstairs, Marlene McKinnon. Marlene was vibrant and offered great critiques of all the new teen show adaptations of young adult novels.

Lily had finally found a home for herself.

Lily was sitting at the circulation desk, waiting for patrons. Remus was running a workshop for homeless members of the community to get jobs and they had had a nice turn out. Lily had spent all night packing lunches for them and was yawning every five seconds.

She was tired and she didn’t notice the man who stepped up to the desk.

“Hey Lily,” a deep voice said. Lily’s throat filled with bile.

She looked up to see Severus Snape, a barista from across the street at the Starbucks. Also, her sort-of-ex.

Lily looked up and gave her customer service a smile.

“Hello Severus,” she said. “Did you find everything you needed?”

“Yes, I did,” he drawled.

“Great,” she said. She reached out for his book and library card. She tried not to make a face at the book he was checking out, something about government conspiracies, and scanned his card. Lily should have been surprised that he was even here at all, especially since Lily had to deal with a lot of talks that revolved around the internet making libraries useless from him. But he showed up, like clockwork.

“You have a late fee,” she said. “It’s only a pound.”

Lily checked out his book while he pulled out his wallet. She marked the fee as paid as he slid the pound over the desk. Lily handed him his card and book back.

“Due in two weeks. Have a great day,” she said, smiling.

“I was wondering if we could talk for a second,” he asked. Lily looked up into his deep brown eyes. She really didn’t want to, but she couldn’t think of an excuse, as there weren't any other patrons.

“About what, Severus?” she asked.

“Have you changed your mind yet?” he asked.

Lily mentally counted down from five in her head, trying to bite back the anger that flared inside of her. That was the thing with Severus. To him, he never did anything wrong and it was Lily that was holding the relationship back.

“No, afraid not,” she said, her tone coming out sharp. Severus’s nostrils flared a bit.

“That’s unfortunate,” he said.

“Is it?” she quipped.

His eyes flashed but the door swung open, stopping whatever he was about to say. Lily’s flickered to the new patron but did a double-take.

Standing there was James, Lily’s neighbor. He was wearing a white button up with a red tie and black slacks. The sleeves were rolled up, showing his arms again and the tie hung loosely from his neck. He had a black messenger bag hanging from his shoulder.

He gave Lily a small and a wave. He stood behind Severus, waiting in line. Severus looked pissed off as Lily’s eyes turned back to him.

“Is that all you need, sir?” Lily asked.

“Yes,” Severus spat. He grabbed his book and turned sharply. He walked out of the door.

Lily smiled widely as James stepped up to the counter.

“Hey neighbor,” James said, running a hand through his already messy hair.

“Hey. What brings you to the library?” she asked.

“I heard that books contain knowledge and I need a specific kind,” he said. “And a library card.”

“Let’s get you a card first,” she said.

She learned James’s full name was James Fleamont Potter. She tried not to make a face at his middle name but James responded with a quick “yeah I know.” She learned his birthday was March 27 and that she was older than him by a few months.

She handed him his card and a little flyer that had instructions about their app that would let him browse their online collection and place holds on books they had on the shelves.

“So, what specific knowledge would you be needing today?” she asked.

“Ah well, remember the professional bowling team I mentioned?”

“The Cannons?”

“That would be it,” he said. “I need books on bowling. I know most of the rules of football and rugby, but I seem to be lacking some expertise on the intricacies of bowling.”

Lily laughed and started typing in their system.

“And you couldn’t Google that?”

James did a dramatic gasp that made Lily look up at him.

“Did a librarian just say I should Google something? That’s a sort of sacrilege,” James said, his hazel eyes wide with fake horror.

Lily laughed and turned back to her computer screen. She told him the number of the Dewey he could use to find books on bowling and he blinked at her.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Unfamiliar with the system?”

“Yeah. And this library,” he said.

Lily motioned for him to follow her. If Remus was available, he’d be able to go directly to the space on the shelf that contained books about bowling. It took Lily a minute to find them. She left James to browse and went back to the desk to find Marlene sitting at Lily’s portion of the desk.

“Hey Lil,” she said, stopping her spinning in her chair.

“Hey Marls,” she said.

“I’m on break,” she said, tossing her thick blonde hair over her shoulder. “I also have a story.”

“Do tell,” Lily said, taking her seat at the computer.

“A girl came in with her mother looking for a book,” she began, her blues eyes turning animated. “And I would have guess she was looking for the latest John Green or something, but this girl walks up to the desk and asks point-blank ‘Do you have Gone Girl?’”

Marlene took a dramatic inhale while Lily started smiling.

“She had to be no older than thirteen! And she wanted ‘Gone Girl!’” she exclaimed.

“Please tell me you didn’t let her check out ‘Gone Girl’?” Lily asked.

“Well, we aren’t in the business of judging are we?” Marlene said. “Our physical copy is checked out but I showed her how she could read it through our app.”

Lily laughed.

“Isn’t that book the one where the wife fakes her death?” James asked. Lily spun around to see James leaning against the counter, two books sitting in front of him.

“It is,” Marlene answered. She got up and stood next to Lily at the circulation desk. “Have you read it?”

Lily rolled her eyes as she scanned James’s card. Marlene would flirt with anything that moved, even though she had a lovely girlfriend waiting at home for her.

“I haven’t but my brother made me watch the movie,” James replied. “I really enjoyed it.”

Marlene hummed as Lily checked out the books to James. He had gotten two books, one about the theory of bowling, which Lily didn’t think was a thing, and one of different techniques and rules.

“Here you are,” Lily said, sliding the books back. “Please take a bookmark or two!”

“Yes please,” Marlene said. “Please don’t dog ear the pages.”

“Will do,” James said, picking up a colorful bookmark. “See you around, Lily.”

He gave her a small before turning away and walking out the door. Once he was gone, Marlene lightly hit Lily’s arm.

“He was totally flirting with you!”

“He was not,” Lily said, though she hadn’t really thought about it to determine if he was or not.

“‘See you around, Lily,’” Marlene quoted, her eyebrows high on her forehead.

“He’s my neighbor.”

Marlene widened her eyes even more.

“Since when did you get a hot neighbor? What about the old man?”

“James moved in a few weeks ago,” Lily replied. “He was the guy who brought his cat out during the fire alarm.”

Marlene started laughing. Lily had mentioned him when she saw Remus and Marlene the next day, but just focused on the cat. She didn’t tell them about their conversation.

“Well,” Marlene said. “I need to go back. But we aren’t dropping this James conversation.”

“There really isn’t much to be said,” Lily said as Marlene started towards the stairs. She turned before she headed down giving Lily a look.

“Then there needs to be,” she said. “He is ten steps up from Severus and I think you need to jump on that quickly.”

~~~

Lily waved at the security officer at the desk as she passed. Moody was scary looking fellow, but once Lily brought him sweets, he softened up to her. He always guarded her packages.

She quickly got her mail and got in the elevator with a nice old woman from the third floor. The ride was silent and once Lily made it to her apartment she collapsed on her couch, throwing her bag on the floor and the mail on her coffee table. The afternoon had gotten busy for her, as the after work crowd had come in around five. Not that she was going to complain that so many people were still using the library.

She debated ordering take-out, not feeling up to cooking but she couldn’t decide on what sounded best. She sat up and picked up her mail. It was mostly junk but she found a handwritten letter. She looked quickly at the name and realized it wasn’t hers, but was addressed to James from a Euphemia Potter.

Lily sighed and slipped her flats back on. She didn’t know if James was home yet, but she figured she’d at least try before she forgot. She left her door open as she made her strides to his apartment door and knocked three times.

“One sec!” she heard James call. She waited as she heard the thump of his footsteps get closer to the door.

He opened it, smiling. He had already changed out of his work clothes and was wearing a shirt that was old and faded and his sweatpants.

“Lily,” he said. “What do I owe the pleasure?”

Lily held out the piece of mail, returning his smile.

“This was in my box,” she said. He looked down at the letter as he took it from her, his glasses low on his nose.

“Oh bugger,” he said. “Sorry about that. My mum seems to have put the wrong number. I’ll call and let her know she doesn’t do it again.”

“It’s not a problem,” she said. “I figured you would want a handwritten letter sooner rather than later.”

“Yeah. Mum’s a bit old fashioned,” James said, smiling. He leaned against the doorframe, his hazel eyes looking directly at Lily.

“Well, I’ll see you around,” Lily said, turning away.

“Wait!” James said, causing Lily to turn back. “I was just about to start Outlander.”

“Wait, really?” she asked. She couldn’t believe that he was going to sit down and watch the show because she mentioned it to him.

“Yeah,’ James said, running a hand through his hair. “I was just about to order some curry, too. Wanna join?”

Lily blinked and James' face quickly fell. He started babbling.

“Not like a date or anything!” he started. “You’re just the first person I’ve really talked to since moving here and I think you’d be a, a great friend—”

“I’d love to, James,” she said, talking over his babbling. James smiled brightly.

She told him the best curry place that delivered in town and her order. She wanted to change into something more comfortable before they started so she ran back to her apartment.

Normally, Lily would be reserved about these kind of things, but James didn’t seem to be a threat. He had been nice enough and Marlene had always said she needed to put herself out there more. If that included eating curry while watching Outlander, she was more than happy to oblige.

She put on some leggings and an oversized jumper. She quickly put her hair up. She grabbed her phone and keys. She was almost out the door when she remembered a tub of ice cream she had in the freezer. She ran back and grabbed it, hoping James was a fan of brownie batter.

When she knocked, James let her in.

“Oh, ice cream?” he asked.

“Yep. Like brownie batter?” she asked. His eyes lit up.

“Yes! My favorite,” he said. “Besides mint chocolate chip.”

Lily made a face.

“Mint chocolate chip taste like bad tooth paste,” she said.

James let out an offended noise as he took the ice cream from her and walked towards the fridge.

“It does not!”

Lily smiled and looked around James' apartment. He had a decent sized television and a large gray sectional that looked soft. Buttercream was napping on the top of the couch, his tail flicking back and forth.

It wasn’t really decorated, Lily noted. He had a few pictures up but the walls were bare. Lily noticed some books on his entertainment center and went and looked at them. They were mostly about sports, rules and techniques, and whatnot. Lily also noticed the books he checked out earlier on his coffee table, one of them with a bookmark already in it.

“So,” James began entering the living room. “How much do you think I’m going to like the show?”

Lily hummed for a second.

“I think you’ll either get really into it or you’ll be indifferent,” she said. “I don’t know you well enough to give a better judgement. I don’t think you’ll hate it though.”

“Fair enough,” he said, petting Buttercream. “I looked it up and it sounds quite interesting.”

“Are you a big fan of period pieces?” Lily asked. James glanced up at her with a smile.

“Don’t tell my brother this,” he started. “If you ever meet him. But yes, I am.”

Lily smiled.

“What’s your favorite?” she asked. She watched as he ran a hand through his hair.

“My mum made me watch Pride and Prejudice so many times, I can recite the movie line by line,” he said.

Lily felt unbridled glee. That was her favorite movie, hands down. She knew it wasn’t accurate to the book but the tension between the characters in the movie drew Lily in more than anything.

“The 2005 movie?” she asked, her excitement showing.

“Yep. We did watch the BBC version quite a few times though,” James said. “I love Colin Firth, but there’s just something about the movie.”

They talked excitedly about the movie, comparing the two adaptations when their food arrived. Once they had settled on the couch, take-out containers and plastic forks in hand, James went to Netflix and started Outlander.

#jily #james potter #james potter/lily evans #lily evans #harry potter #marauders era #minor wolfstar #sirius black #remus lupin #jily fic #jily fanfic #Harry Potter fanfic #James x Lily

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wearetakingthehobbitstogallifrey · 4 years

Text

Kdrama recs Part 2

Hello @camsthisky and anyone else who cares! I do apologize for the delay on this post--it has only been 84 years since Part I of my kdrama recs, I know, and I thought about going for a full century but this is me finding a way to de-stress after watching the first episode of I-Land alkdjfadlksj I’m gonna die of heartbreak but whatever

Speaking of heartbreak, there is a lot to be found in Korea’s wonderful historical dramas, so like, be warned—or, if you are an angst-loving monster like me, settle down for hot guys and good cries

Let us begin! (or, if you want romantic modern dramas see Part 1)

1. Scarlet Heart Ryeo/Moonlovers:

aha ahahahahahaha *weeps* You may have heard people talk about this show. You may have heard ME talk about this show. This thing was my first kdrama ever and it RUINED ME

Disclaimer: I have seen this show once and rewatched it twice and on the rewatches I can never quite make myself watch the last 4 or 5 episodes because things get tragic and messy and I get mad. HOWEVER there is a lot of good in the first part of the show and because this thing was all the rage in everywhere but Korea itself, there’s like over 300 fanfic for it and several good fix-its, including one by my good friend @thelonelybrilliance

Ok so anyway this show which could also be called An Abundance of Princes starts with a young woman from modern times getting thrown back into ancient Goryeo during an eclipse and finds herself in the body of Hae Soo, the cousin of the wife of one of the princes, and thus she gets embroiled in royal affairs which are, quite frankly, a mess. See, the evil eyeliner prince (whom I love even when he’s the worst) is plotting with his mom to get the Crown Prince out of the way aka dead BUT who should return to the Palace but the 4th Prince, Wang So, who has spent at least half his life living as hostage to a powerful family.

So has a scar that cuts across his eye and which in this society makes him a horror to look at or smthing idk he just looks extra hot to me but anyway he wears a mask and is known as the wolf dog (or as the MURDER ANGST CUPCAKE thanks @abadpoetwithdreams). He might seem a little rough around the edges at first because his life has been hell but he really just wants to love and be loved okay people need to be nice to him wtf

Other princes include:

1. the Crown Prince, Wang Mu, a good egg, not particularly charismatic but he tried to protect his lil bro when no one else would

2. the 8th prince, Wang Wook, who reminds me of a fellow named Shane and I don’t mean the cowboy

3. the 10th prince, Wang Eun, a dumb adorable spoiled bby (played by Baekhyun from EXO)

4. the 13th prince, Baek Ah, a tol soft boi, an artist, a BAE, a BRO, a SHIPPER ON DECK

5. the 14th prince, Wang Jung this son will fight everyone he’ll fight himself he just loves to fight! Not always wise but he’s a good boy and I like him a lot

6. just realized I skipped the 9th prince but nobody cares

One quick note is that IU plays Hae Soo, and I enjoy her a lot in the first half of the show where she is still spunky and rebellious...sadly her character kind of falls apart/gets too weak for my liking as the episodes progress

The MAIN reason why I feel it my duty to recommend this show to everyone despite the fact I have never met anyone who wasn’t traumatized by it is LEE JOON GI

Yes, this man:

I mentioned him in the previous rec post—he played Bong Sang Pil in Lawless Lawyer (AND IS NOW CURRENTLY STARRING IN FLOWER OF EVIL WHICH WILL BE ON ANOTHER POST AHDFOIASDHGALDSKJF FRIQ I AM IN LOVE WITH THAT MAN)

BUT SERIOUSLY LOOK AT HIS PHOENIX EYES!!! HIS RAZOR SHARP FEATURES! HIS BIG ADORABLE EARS! HIS BEAUTIFUL EXCESSIVE BANGS! 4TH PRINCE WANG SO LOVE OF MY LIFE

SOMEONE PROTECT THIS BBY

2. Hwarang: Ok so right off the bat I am going to smack down a disclaimer that I can’t stand the female lead. TRULY CANNOT. Thus, I don’t like the romance, and only care about the love triangle as far as it just shows how sad and lonely one of the guys is. (Also there are scenes of dumb old men plotting and I don’t like them either). At the end of the show, I am happy that the one guy is NOT stuck with the female lead as his wife. Good for you sir

Sounds like a show to steer clear of then, right? WRONG. This is a show that you skip through because the scenes that are good? Are GREAT

Picture this: It is the Silla era of Korea, and the queen is ruling as regent in place of her son, who has been hiding all his life because everyone wants to kill him. Well, son is now grown and must soon come into the light and take the throne. Queen who both wants her son as king but also really likes being queen decides to do everyone a favor and form an elite fighting squad out of all the prettiest and most talented sons of nobles in the land, with the idea that they will be loyal only to the throne, and thereby keep their dads from plotting to destroy everything.

Let me tell you something, these ARE the prettiest boys in the land. Good hair, good jawlines, beautiful smiles—the cast lineup includes Park Hyung Sik and his cute lil elf ear, Park Seo Joon, Taehyung (yes from BTS!), and Choi Minho from Shinee, plus two other actors who are lesser known but who are drop-dead gorgeous. Anyway. Sorry, but they really are all beautiful.

The fun thing is they don’t all get along right away, a few of them are VERY much opposed to the other for various reasons, but they all have to bond and become brothers in arms. And what they don’t know is that the real king snuck in and is one of them. 10/10 I would die for the boys! (also Tae has an older half-brother who is a lower rank than him but whom he looks up to and that makes for cuteness and pain) Once you skip the boring or annoying parts of the show, the rest has so much delight, laughter, and oops pain, lots of pain. I want to go re-watch.

Two other things I should mention about the show: a super soft side romance between secondary characters and a game of, as they call it in the show, HOT SOCCER

^pretty boy 1 (with the cute elf ear sadly on the other side of his head)

^pretty boy 2 (sad cheekbone bby) and pretty boy 3 (happy cheekbone bby)

^pretty boy 4 (the prettiest of them all, and he knows it!)

^pretty boy 5 (aka Taehyung danced around the set of a historical drama and made everyone adopt him as their bby)

3. Faith/The Great Doctor: This is a longer kdrama at 24 episodes and they didn’t have much of a budget so special effects aren’t the best or anything but I just got really attached to all the characters? This is another modern girl goes back in time but UNLIKE SHR it actually has a happy ending, so if you need a historical drama cleanse after that tearjerker/enrager, this could be it for you

Eun Soo has to navigate the ancient kingdom, keep people believing she is a heavenly doctor with special powers, and keep Choi Young alive so he can fulfill his promise of returning her to her own time. The problem with that is Choi Young does have kind of a death wish because of reasons—

Eun Soo is a plastic surgeon who would really like a rich handsome husband one day but them’s the breaks for you, aka she has had no luck in that department. Back in ancient Korea, Choi Young (played by Lee Minho in sadly the only role I really love him in) is a high-ranking beloved captain who can fall asleep anywhere. Oh he can also make electricity with his hands! :D

The story begins when the sleepy sad captain tries to escort the new king and queen to their palace. This was during the time period when ancient Korea was basically a puppet kingdom/tributary of ancient China (Yuan). The king (who is very smol and lacks confidence, but still has a good heart for his country) lived as a hostage in Yuan for many years, and his wise tol queen is a princess of that land, and someone needs to sit them down and make them talk because they actually love each other a lot. Anyway, when the queen gets injured by assassins, Choi Young goes searching for a legendary doctor, winds up in modern Korea, and steals both Eun Soo and a SWAT shield, because hey, it looked cool I guess

Lots of fun things in the show: Choi Young has a crew of soldiers who are BEYOND loyal to him, and while he doesn’t think much of the king at first because he’s been burned by kings before, they slowly become bros and shippers on deck for each other. Eun Soo does not lose her spunk or loyalty unlike other people I could mention *cough*HaeSoofromScarletHeartRyeo*, and it cracks me up when she curses people out. There are also a bunch of people (mostly bad guys) running around with special powers or gifts, including a flame lady and a flute boy, and the latter wears delightful anime wigs, keeps his sword in his flute, and plays his flute to kill—literally! I love flute boy very much

sorry it’s black and white but DO YOU SEE THE SWAT SHIELD

4. My Country: A New Age:

ANGST ANGST ANGST PAAAAAIN BUT ALSO BEST INTRO BEST FAVES BEST ACTORS

Picture this: two young men, who both hail from childhoods of trauma, who grew up together and are best friends, and who are tragically forced apart and end up on opposite sides of a conflict that threatens to upend the current rule of the kingdom. This IS the star-crossed brotp you’ve been waiting for!

Seo Hwi is the son of a general who died a criminal, and all he wants is to live simply and earn enough rice take care of his younger sister, who has seizures and a sweet crush on Hwi’s bestie. Hwi is the best softest most loyal boy with a good and true heart, a great deal of courage, and a talent for wielding a sword, and just wait till you see the best one-shot fight scene ever of him in battle, it is INCREDIBLE! (He is played by Yang Se Jong, who I now want to see more of) Hwi has an abundance of charisma points in that he picks up a small band of loyal soldier friends and they become the best little found family, lots of brotp-ness in this crew—do not mess with any of them because they will all FIGHT you

Seon Ho meanwhile is the illegitimate despised son of a powerful nobleman, only tolerated because the legitimate son died. Seon Ho loves his friend and is very protective of his friend’s little sister who crushes on him but his dad is a high class grade A power-hungry jerk and that causes complications of course. Seon Ho also has a good heart, he’s a gentle soul really, but he always gets stuck in bad positions and unfortunately makes a couple of difficult/bad choices so he hardens himself as much as he can but the consequences always kill him and he just wants to save his friends and destroy his dad and the stupid hierarchy that treats bastards as lesser. WHY IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

Seon Ho he is played by Woo Do Hwan who has so much talent I die so many times over in this show just because of the way he portrays Seon Ho like that sad sad boy is one of my favorite characters evER! Is he problematic? At times maybe but I am HERE for him he just needs LOVE AND AFFECTION AND AN ABUNDANCE OF GOOD FRIENDS BUT INSTEAD (SOMETIMES THRU HIS OWN FAULT BUT HE ADMITS THAT) HE JUST SUFFERS AND SO I SUFFERRRR

*grabs a towel and dries up my tears*

Hwi also falls in love with a woman named Hui Jae (or was it Hee Jae i can’t remember) and they are very cute together, she’s pretty cool but the show’s one failing is arguably that they kind of underuse her in the plot as the story goes on? But I still like her and she still has a good role, and she is both brave and kind and not afraid to step in or tell people off, also keep a weather eye open for patching up scenes!

Oh yeah, eVERYONE in this gets hurt/stabbed/shot/bloody, such a shame they have to take their shirts off to clean and bandage the wounds ;)

Last character I must mention is Bang Won, played by Jang Hyuk in his second interpretation of the historical figure. Bang Won is the fifth? son of the guy who becomes emperor/king, and he has his own plans for the country, so when Hwi catches his eye, he recruits him to his cause. What you need to know about him is that he has issues with his dad, is slightly unhinged, and cannot and should not be parted from the fan that he constantly carries around with him. Gotta say, Jang Hyuk is FANTASTIC (heheheheheheh) in the role, able to convey all kinds of emotion in the rise and fall of his voice, in the tilt of his head, the tears of his eyes, the flick of his fan. Give this actor all the awards!

To sum up: if you like to cry for days after watching a drama, if you like excellent heart-wrenching brotps, if you like conflicted characters, if you like amazing music and setting and plot, if you like guys with good hair and arm muscles (and

abs, thank you shirtless scenes what) this show is a Must Watch

DID I SAY STAR-CROSSED BROTP I MEANT SWORD-CROSSED BROTP ADKJFADLSKJFLKJDFALKDGKLJL </3

Ok I was going to leave the historical drama post at this for now but...I’m going to cheat a little and include the one historical C!drama I just finished.Yes folks I am talking about:

5. Nirvana in Fire:

Ok so maybe the switch from kdrama to cdrama makes you uncertain. Maybe the fact that this show has FIFTY-FOUR EPISODES makes you go hell no I don’t have enough time for that. Well if you overlook this show for those reasons, you are making, and I do not exaggerate, the greatest mistake of your show-watching life!

Look, first, this drama has one of the best, most intricate, most satisfying plots in history, with like 20 characters you would die for, and second, the episodes are only about 42 minutes each, which is shorter than most kdrama episodes, so you can deal.

Once upon a time there was a general/family who were just too good to exist in corrupt old China, so naturally they were framed for treason and there was a giant massacre and everybody died, including the eldest prince who was like um dad maybe this is all a horrible mistake and the king was like no u are the mistake. Sad times.

One of the many younger princes named Jing (A NOBLE HEART, if not always the cleverest) returns home from wherever he was, finds out that not only did his prince brother die, but so did his best friend/brother in the whole wide world, Lin Shu, son of the general. Because he insists on the innocence of said bros/family, Jing becomes an outcast prince and is shuffled off to fight in wars where he can’t cause any trouble. Meanwhile, Princess Nihuang, Lin Shu’s brave, awesome, amazing, wise, incredible girlfriend, refuses to marry anyone else, and because she is too cool to be messed with, nobody tries to banish her

Cut to I think eleven years later, when the two most powerful princes are vying to be the crown prince and heir to the throne. They both try to recruit the aid of a renowned clever and sassy strategist named Mei Changsu, to help them with plotting and PR and such.

Well little do they know that Mei Changsu is actually the not-dead Lin Shu, with a completely new face (for reasons), and that Mei Changsu is a chess master setting up a long con for the dual purpose of obtaining revenge/justice for the dead and of raising Prince Jing to the throne, since Prince Jing is the only man with a good enough heart and strong enough will to make China a better place for all the people. But just to make it hard on everybody, Mei Changsu is dead set on not telling anyone who he really is—again, for reasons. He is not always successful in keeping his secret.

I literally don’t know what else to say because there is so MUCH to say, so many characters to love, and I mean LOVE. How do you get a cast this good? How is everyone so different yet so important? How do you feel bad for the emperor even when he’s slimy? How do you have to stop yourself from rooting for the prince who would destroy some of your faves? I can’t praise the charisma and acting talent in this show enough! And the music! IS GORGEOUS!

1 strategist too sassy for his own good and too clever for everyone else’s good + 1 prince who loves his mom and his dead best friend and his dead older brother more than anything else in the world + 1 gentle wise mom + 1 eternally loyal princess who would defend her loved ones with the sword if necessary + 1 sassy Elrond healer man + 1 grumpy sulky baby who loves being a better fighter than almost everyone + 1 loyal to the death, brave badass general who is going to have a stress breakdown if the strategist doesn’t take better care of himself + not 1 but 2 good boys who deserve to be protected but who are willing to throw themselves into battle if necessary + 1 antagonist tiger prince who I love and am not ashamed to say it = THE BEST OF TIMES

^he hardly ever wears his hair down but when he does <33333333

*checks calendar* how soon is too soon rewatch something, asking for a friend

#kdrama recommendations #scarlet heart ryeo #hwarang #faith: the great doctor #my country: the new age #nirvana in fire #my kdrama recs #historical kdramas #plus one cdrama #i went overboard on gifs sorry not sorry

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goldenworldsabound · 4 years

Text

Exhibiton Match

Golden attends Kabu’s Exhibition match, which he’d invited her to. She is thoroughly impressed, and they spend time together afterwards getting dinner together and chatting. Content warning: none. Word count: 2814.

Kabu had made it sound like the exhibition match was going to be poorly attended. And perhaps, compared to some other match, it was. But Golden was floored by the number of people in attendance. She had never seen a gym host so many people in Johto. And sure, there were empty seats, but the stadium was huge, after all.

So what did minor league mean, anyway? These people seemed pretty excited.

She had almost asked him when they met up and he gave her the tickets. Almost. But she'd found the words caught in her throat. He had seemed so happy she was going to come to his match - she didn't want to make him unhappy by asking about something like that. Like what she wasn't entirely sure, but...well, she'd ask him some other time. Or maybe she could ask someone else. After all, she wasn't going to stay in Motostoke for her entire trip...

That thought made her heart twinge a bit.

"Chiiiir?" Tak chirped at her, feeling her arms wrap tighter around him from his position on her lap.

"All good, Tak." Golden said, absent mindedly giving him a pat on the head.

She perked up as the announcer began to speak.

"Folks, welcome to Motostoke Stadium. Today we have a match between Kabu, the Ever Burning Man of Fire, and his competitor..."

Golden didn't pay much mind to the other name, which she didn't recognize. But her eyes were wide at hearing the cheering and applause that came with Kabu's name. Sure, it wasn't deafening but it still seemed like a lot.

And then Kabu stepped onto the field.

Golden couldn't help but gasp as she stared at him. She didn't know he had a uniform. Red was a perfect color for him. Even more so than the uniform was the intense expression on his face. His eyes were practically burning with passion, his gaze sharp. She had seen his serious expression many times - but never quite so serious as this.

He raised up a hand to the crowd, acknowledging the way they cheered for him, but his expression remained unchanged. His eyes flicked to where Golden was sitting. Golden sucked in air, blushing.

"Wave to Kabu, Tak!" Golden said breathlessly, waving with a huge smile as her Charmander did the same. Kabu nodded his head, closing his eyes for a moment before walking to the center of the field to meet his competitor. They shook hands, and then...the battle began.

----------------------------------

For once, Kabu was glad that this was the minor leagues, and as such there was almost no press presence. He had gone straight to the locker room after his victory, and then to the showers.

When he had seen Golden up in the box seats, cheering him on, watching intently, he'd felt...strong. Ready. Like he could do this. That was a new feeling. Well, not new exactly. He had missed that feeling. Since he'd fallen from the major leagues, he'd been on quite the losing streak. Perhaps...he could turn that around after all?

Having wrapped up his quick shower, and still mulling over his various thoughts, Kabu got dressed in casual clothes and headed out to the stadium's lobby. By this point, most folks had dispersed. While he still had a decent fanbase from his major league days, no one stuck around for his signature or anything like that.

Kabu was so surprised to see Golden sitting on a bench waiting for him, he stopped in his tracks. Tak was sitting on her lap, and she seemed to be having an animated conversation with the Charmander, who looked pleased as punch. Kabu's expression softened. He quietly cleared his throat before heading over to her.

Upon noticing his approach, Golden paused mid-sentence, turning her head to meet his gaze.

"Kabu!" She said, getting to her feet, putting Tak down on the bench for a moment. "You did great!" She moved in for a hug, which Kabu was more than happy to accept. "Gosh, when you had Arcanine use Extrasensory at just the right time on that Boltund, I was on the edge of my seat! And Centiskorch's dynamax- er, no, gigantamax form was INCREDIBLE!" Golden seemed fired up, grinning from ear to ear.

Kabu laughed, blushing faintly. "I'm glad you enjoyed it so much. Thank you for supporting me." He bowed his head a bit.

"W-well, thank you for inviting me." Golden replied, also blushing a bit.

"Chirrrr char?" Tak had wandered over, and was now grabbing onto Golden's leg, face tilted up at her.

"Oh, yes, I'm sorry Tak." Golden leaned down, picking up the blind Charmander so that he could hold onto her shoulder, his back legs supported under one of her arms, leaving the other one free.

Kabu smiled softly. "And what did you think, Tak?" He asked, holding a hand out near Tak.

Tak chirped a bit, before rubbing his head into Kabu's hand happily.

"Looks like Tak thinks you had a great battle too!" Golden said with a grin. "I don't think he's ever taken such a liking to someone else so quickly." She added, though she found herself immediately feeling self conscious about the remark.

"Is that so? Well, I like him a lot too." Kabu gave Tak a few solid head pats before putting his hand back at his side. "Have you had dinner yet?"

Golden blinked. "Oh! No, I haven't! How about I treat, to celebrate your victory?" Golden suggested.

Kabu looked taken aback. "Are you sure? I mean, you don't have to do that."

"I don't have to, but I want to." Golden crossed her arms. "Though...I probably shouldn't have said that until you chose a restaurant. Don't hold back on my account. Where would you usually go to celebrate a victory?"

After a moments pause and consideration (when was the last time he'd celebrated victory?), Kabu said, "Slateport Sushi. But really, it's...expensive, so you don't need to treat me."

"I want to. C'mon. Lead the way!"

---------------------------------------

It was a quiet night in Motostoke. The sun was just beginning to set, and the air was cool but not cold. Golden had asked Tak to go back into his Poke'ball, and now she and Kabu were walking to the restaurant together. They were both fairly quiet. It was a comfortable sort of silence.

Golden couldn't help but sneak glances at Kabu, noticing the way the light hit his handsome face, his defined cheek bones, his grey eyes that were still smoldering with passion after the battle. His expression, what seemed to be his default, was severe, and belied the kindheartedness that was his true character. But Arceus...he was beautiful.

She flicked her gaze away quickly as Kabu turned his head to look at her. Her face burned a bit - she hoped it was masked by the colors of the setting sun.

"Thank you again, for supporting me." Kabu said, looking away again. "It was nice to know you were there, cheering for me."

"Of course. We're friends, right?" Golden asked, grinning, lightly bumping her fist against his arm.

He looked surprised for a moment, before he smiled. "Yes. We're friends." Golden felt herself blushing again. But maybe he was blushing, too? It was hard to say if that was a dusting of pink on his cheeks. She grinned back at him, feeling warm at his words.

Even the cool air couldn't take this warmth from her.

---------------------------------------

Settled into the restaurant and with their orders placed, Golden chewed her lip as she debated whether or not now was the time to ask what all this minor league talk was about. Before she had reached a conclusion, she realized Kabu was looking at her with mild concern.

"Is something wrong?" He asked, fixing her with his serious expression.

"Er, no, it's just, I was...you've mentioned this, 'minor league' a few times, and I just, um, don't know what that means?" Golden bit her tongue, keeping from adding, I didn't want to ask because it seems to be bringing you down...

"Ah, that's right, our home regions don't really have a thing like that, do they?" Kabu replied thoughtfully, not looking the least bit offended. He sipped at his green tea before answering. "You can think of it as a secondary gym position. The major league gym leaders are the ones who fight the challengers, and who get to challenge the Champion." He looked away. "Minor league gym leaders can become major league gym leaders, but only through defeating the current leader at specific opportunities..." He went silent, seemingly without much else to say on the subject.

Okay, sure. Golden thought. It's disappointing to have someone better than you. But still, the way he downplayed it seemed...excessive.

"And you...are trying to move to the major league?" Golden asked tentatively.

"Of course." Kabu replied. "It wasn't that long ago that I lost that spot." He refused to meet her gaze as he spoke, eyes sharp, voice tinged with a hint of bitterness.

Oh.

She understood now.

"S-sorry." Golden blurted out, looking down at her own cup of tea with a frown.

"You don't need to apologize." Kabu looked at her again. "You wouldn't know that. And it's nothing to apologize to me for."

"Yeah, I mean, I...I get it, though." Golden cleared her throat quietly. "I fought Lance. And I lost. Twice. I was supposed to be a shoo in for victory, so they told me." She smiled ruefully. "So I...I don't understand exactly what you're feeling, but...it's not a foreign feeling to me."

Kabu listened intently to her words, realizing these were vulnerabilities she was spilling to him, in an attempt to...not to cheer him up, per se, but to make it clear that her opinion of him wasn't changing with this information. And, it also told him that she could be trusted with any further vulnerability from him.

"I'm sorry to hear that. That's a difficult position to be in." He replied, face softening.

"Er, well, thank you. I didn't mean to, to make it about me." Golden blushed a bit. "When is your next chance to try?"

Kabu sighed. "This is...well, it just passed not that long ago. So there's still the better part of a year." He ran a hand through his hair, a hint of agitation in his motions. "I didn't try, this last time."

"You didn't-" Golden seemed shocked at his response. From what she'd seen, Kabu was an incredibly passionate and driven trainer. The idea that he hadn't tried was...unbelievable to her.

Kabu smiled wryly at her response. "Once I started my losing streak, I couldn't stop. I hadn't figured out how I was going to recover yet." He closed his eyes for a minute. "But it seems meeting you has rekindled the fire in my heart. And, after today's match, I've broken my losing streak." There was a genuine smile working it's way onto his face now as he looked at her. It was clear he meant his words.

"...I'm glad I could help." Golden said shyly, looking away from his intense gaze. "You...the person I've met here, who helped me catch my very own Sizzlipede and welcomed me to Galar...I have no doubt that this time next year, you'll be the major league gym leader." Her heart was pounding at her proclamation as she met his gaze. He smiled back at her.

Before he could say anything else, the waitress arrived with their sushi, and the conversation swiftly shifted to lighter topics as they began to eat.

---------------------------------------------------------------

They left the restaurant feeling full and satisfied. It was now actually a bit cold - Golden and Kabu both slipped on their jackets. The sun had fully set, leaving the brickwork to be illuminated by yellow streetlights.

"I'll walk you back to the Budew Drop." Kabu offered, nodding his head a bit.

"I appreciate that...I honestly have no idea how to get there from here." Golden said with a laugh. At worst, she could always send Athens up to scout from the skies, and let the Togekiss direct her home. But she was more than happy to have Kabu along with her instead.

They walked in silence, the gentle chatter of those who were still out and about wafting across the street, their footsteps echoing on the brick walkways. Kabu breached the quiet first.

"...would you be interested in training with me?" Kabu asked, his tone less than confident.

"Oh!" Golden felt guilty for a moment. "Well I...I had intended to spend some time exploring the rest of Galar, actually." She frowned. "But I was planning to come back and spend some more time here, before I went back to Johto." She hated the way his face fell momentarily at her words.

Kabu had quite nearly forgotten that Golden didn't live here. It felt like more of a punch to the gut than he would have expected.

"Ah, I can't believe I forgot." Kabu put a hand over his mouth, smiling awkwardly despite the way his stomach was churning now. "Yes, you should definitely see all that Galar has to offer. Perhaps by the time I see you next you'll have a full team. There are a lot of Poke'mon unique to Galar." He covered up his blunder by slipping into words he had used before. A mentorly response, distancing himself if only for this moment.

Golden listened, nodding to his words, but her shoulders were still slumped. "Then we can have another battle." She replied, forcing herself to grin. "And there should be enough time to train together still!"

They were in front of the hotel now, and they came to a stop outside of it's doors.

"Certainly don't rush back on my account. Make sure to make the most of your time here." He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently.

"And you make the most of your training while I'm gone!" Golden fired back, putting her hand on his shoulder. "You better be stronger when I come back." She grinned. Kabu smiled back at her, face softening in a way that caught her off guard.

"You're a good friend, Golden." He said, letting his hand fall back to his side. She did the same, blushing at his remark. "I won't disappoint you." He gave a thumbs up, his face back to it's usual serious expression. She couldn't help but giggle at that. "Hm?" He questioned, furrowing his brows.

"Nothing, you just did that with such a serious face."

"Did I?"

"Yes. You most definitely did." She playfully fist bumped the hand he was still holding up. "Bam."

He laughed. She felt captivated by his laugh, even more so when he turned his gaze back to her.

"When are you leaving?" He asked.

"Um...I guess tomorrow morning." Golden looked thoughtful. "Yeah...I was going to check out Turrfield, and then Hulbury, I think it was. And then I'll just keep going north and check out everything between here and Wyndon!" She nodded, recalling her plans. She had, truthfully, intended to do this much sooner. But she had decided to rearrange her plans to accept Kabu's kind offer. She was here for a few months, after all. There was still plenty of time.

"Ah." Kabu nodded, keeping a calm face despite the way her answer made him feel. "Safe journeys then." He moved in for a hug, and she returned it happily. The hug lingered for a moment longer than seemed normal. But Golden couldn't complain. Feeling him holding her tightly but gently was...well, making it really hard for her to actually want to leave Motostoke tomorrow.

As they pulled apart, he averted his gaze as he added, "and if it's not too much trouble, do let me know what you get up to. I'm curious how you'll enjoy the rest of the region."

"Oh! Yes! I can do that. And you, uh, keep me up to date on your training!" Golden grinned, feeling her heart pound at the exchange. Kabu nodded his assent.

They both lingered a moment, searching for the words to keep the conversation from ending and delay their separation. But the words didn't come.

"Have a safe trip. I'll see you when you get back." Kabu waved. Golden nodded, waving back.

"Thanks," and after a moment that was perhaps a bit too long, she turned away and slipped inside the hotel. Kabu, with his hands in his jacket pockets, watched for a moment, before turning and walking away. His calm expression belied the myriad of emotions he was sorting through beneath the surface. Her departure was shaking him more than he had thought possible. But by the same token...

He was driven not to disappoint her, and not to disappoint himself.

#golden flames #fic #self insert #self ship #self shipping #selfship #>w<

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tanadrin · 4 years

Text

The Botanist

Rahal called on Yaru at midmorning, when the springtime Kayuban air was still fresh and sweet. The walk down to the Botanical Institute was unusually pleasant, and put her in mind of nothing so much as Opara in the autumn, and the exuberance--and folly--of her youth. The Institute's doorkeeper directed her to a shabby little building behind a row of small greenhouses that was unassuming enough that Rahal assumed she had the wrong door, even as she knocked. There was the sound of footsteps within, and then the door opened; a pair of spectacled eyes, peeking out from below a wild mass of graying, curly hair looked up at her.

"Yes?" the man said curtly.

"I'm looking for Yaru," Rahal said.

"Oh?" He seemed to want more than that.

"I'm from the Order," she said.

"Oh! The archivist!" The man stood aside and waved her in. "I'm Yaru. I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting you until later. Come in, come in."

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," Rahal said. The inside of the building was no more attractive than the outside. A stack of old boxes and a chair missing a leg took up most of the cramped vestibule. The windows were dusty and did not let in nearly enough light; a couple of cramped hallways led off to what looked like small offices, or large closets. Yaru himself was small, thin, and energetic, but it felt like Rahal that he, too, had been abandoned to this forgotten part of the Institute. But Sabir had been quite clear; she seemed to think Yaru's work was of the utmost importance.

"Not at all," Yaru said. "Only preparing tomorrow's lecture. They have me teaching students again. Ghastly business."

"You don't like teaching?"

"Oh, what's even the point? They're all blockheads. Waste of time, if you ask me. That door on the left there," Yaru said, pointing.

Yaru's office was in fact surprisingly well-kept, although not spacious, and full of the clear morning light. He had made an effort to dust, it seemed, and his stacks of books and papers were neatly organized, even as they seemed to occupy most of the available surfaces. His desk was only a small writing table in the corner; the only other chair was serving for the moment as an ersatz side table. He plucked up the books off it as he came in, and gestured for her to sit.

"Excuse the clutter," he said. "I don't get many visitors."

"Weren't you a student once?" Rahal asked.

"Oh, no," Yaru said, with a faint hint of disgust. "Well. Maybe yes, in a sense. But not like these ones. They're just here for an *education*. No love of learning at all."

Rahal was bemused. She genuinely could not tell whether his horror of the undergraduates was real, or just a very dry joke.

"Sabir said you'd joined the Institute a few years back?" Rahal said conversationally.

"Yes," Yaru said. "Well, I've been in this office since I came to Kayuba. A friend found it for me--it's nice and quiet and out of the way. But three years ago they were clearing out some old equipment and found me hiding back here, and told me I could only stay if I joined the Institute properly. And then last summer thy tracked me down and told me *all* faculty had to teach. Still, I've been managing to avoid it until recently. But I think I overreached by scheduling my last lecture for three in the morning in the rector's house."

Rahal smiled. "Did anyone turn up?"

"Goodness, I hope not. Tea?"

Yaru produced a small kettle from inside his desk and began hunting for a plug.

"Please."

"So what can I do for you, Walks-With-Dawn?"

"Rahal is fine," she said. Her name sounded ungainly to her in the southerners' tongue; she preferred to leave it untranslated. "Sabir sent me to you."

"And how is our mutual friend? I didn't see her when she was in Kayuba last. A pity"

"She's busy these days." Still trying to make up for my stupidity, she did not say. "Traveling a lot. Worried about the future. Though I suppose that describes most of the Order."

"But not you?"

Rahal bit down a dark thought. "No," she conceded. "Not me."

"You Archivists have always puzzled me," Yaru said. "More pessimistic a profession I have never seen. If the Holy Ones themselves showered gold upon the city and raised all our beloved grandmothers from the dead, you'd purse your lips and mutter."

"Someone's got to look to the future, I suppose."

"I always thought the future could take care of itself."

When the kettle finally boiled, Yaru poured two small cups of flower tea, the traditional Kayuban sign of hospitality. Rahal nestled her cup in her hand and enjoyed the warm, fragrant scent.

"So Sabir had some grim purpose in mind when she sent you to me, I suppose," Yaru said.

"Perhaps," Rahal conceded. "She said your work was important."

Yaru cocked his head. "Did she? She should tell the rectorate that! Very important, to be funded generously, and not to be disturbed for any reason! They might listen, coming from the Archive."

Rahal smiled. "I'll pass that along. She didn't offer me any details, though. What *are* you working on?"

Yaru scratched his head. "I never know how to talk about it to non-specialists. Well, not that anybody asks about it, besides my wife. Do you have a background in biology, Rahal?"

"I have the general Archivist's training in scientific matters," she said. "But my own specialty was always more... human systems."

"Economics?"

"More like, politics and diplomacy."

"Ah, the real black arts, if ever there was one," Yaru said with a nod. "No wonder that in darker days they called your kind the wielders of witchcraft."

Rahal laughed. "You understand us better than most."

"So what does the Archive generalist training cover? Cell biology? Ecology? Anatomy?"

Rahal leaned back in her chair and tried to remember her youth and the hours and hours of lectures she'd sat through. Natural philosophy, as they called it in the Archive, had not been her strongest subject. "Some of each," she said.

"Sabir tells me you learn all these things quite differently than we do in the outside world."

"That's true. You learn from principles. We learn texts."

"What do you mean?"

"For you, science is an inquiry into the world out there," she said, gesturing at the window. "For us, it is something that lives in books. And each book stands on its own."

This seemed to really puzzle Yaru.

"That seems like quite a strange approach to knowledge," he said.

"It depends on what you see as the ends of knowledge," Rahal replied.

"Understanding the world, improving human lives?"

"Well, yes, On that the Archive agrees. But... well, how do I explain this. You know the history of the Archive?"

"Vaguely, I suppose. It's old. Nearly as old as civilization."

"Older," Rahal said. "Maybe by a lot. And because it's old, and because its mission can only be fulfilled on the timescale of many lifetimes, every facet of its existence is oriented around long-term survival. That's a feature we don't talk about much for obvious reasons."

"It makes you sound like jealous, knowledge-hoarding, power-hungry tyrants. Which some say you are."

"And which we can be--if we have to. But mostly, we are preservers. We are advisors when we can be, but still librarians when we cannot be, and we are careful and slow, and we think everything to death, because too often we have seen the bitter consequences of recklessness--our own, or someone else's."

"But you're also only human."

"Yes," Rahal said. "These days, we're only human. The point is, we're not empiricists, although we do care about the work of empiricists. We preserve it, where we can, but this is the preservation of works. The masters teach Uranti's Six Mathematical Classics, not mathematics. We learn Furan's treatises on medicine, not medicine itself. The difference is drilled into us early in our education: the thing we learn is not the world outside, which is rapid and changing, but the world within the work we keep alive. It is for those to whom we make these texts available to judge their merits."

Yaru nodded. "I understand. You are only human, and no less a product of our fallen age than I am. And the Archive must preserve things it cannot possibly understand."

"Indeed," Rahal said. "We have preserved theological essays for centuries, thinking they were intended to communicate spiritual truths, only later to understand they were physics handbooks, and vice-versa. We preserve designs for machines that no civilization on Ogandraa can build, and maybe never could."

"Sabir herself told me she knew of a kind of mathematics that pertained only to an electric calculating machine that does not exist," Yaru said.

"Just so."

"So you would say your knowledge of biology is..."

"Scattershot."

"Very well. But you know the cell, and the genetic principle?"

Rahal nodded.

"We distinguish within the cell between the albuminous and non-albuminous materials; the latter are the secondary element of living tissue, while the former are considered primary. The albuminous materials are those that coagulate under heat, or condense within acid, and all are composed of the same ratio of elements: thirty one parts hydrogen, twenty parts carbon, six parts carbon, and five parts nitrogen, in large and diverse configurations. By hydrolysis, the albumins can be decomposed into their constituent parts, organic acids of the nitrogenic classification. By the careful separation of albumins, and by the measurement of their individual component acids, we can distinguish and name them, despite their common chemical formula."

"And this is what you work on?"

"It's the foundation of my work--the intersection of chemistry and botany. Before I came to Kayuba, I was primarily interested in separating and identifying the chemicals operative within plant cells. Albuminic and carbonic chain analysis was my specialty. Some of my work was directed at improving agriculture, while some of it was purely investigative."

"And now?"

"As you might expect, not every organism has the same albumins, or the same carbonics. The carbonic which forms the cell walls of plants, for instance--it's not found in animals at all, and it's totally indigestible by humans. We have already for a number of years used chemical distinctions, as well as physical ones, to distinguish the greater families of living organisms. Sessile, sunlight-capturing organisms, for instance, can be divided between the plants with a chemical environment similar to our own, the endoflora, and those with a chemical environment dissimilar to our own, the xenoflora. From the former come all food crops, and all plants which our livestock prefer. The latter are almost uniformly nutritionally useless."

"Native and non-native."

Yaru smiled. "Theology lies outside my competence, unfortunately."

"It's hardly a religious doctrine."

"I know in the north it is a view more universally held. We southerners tend to be a little more skeptical of folklore, I suppose. But I suppose it's no surprise the Archive tends to be conservative in these matters."

Rahal didn't press the point; it wasn't relevant to the conversation. She sometimes forgot that the descent from the stars was considered unverifiable mythology in the south, or downright superstition. She motioned for Yaru to continue."

"In any case, a similar division does exist within some, but not all, other domains of life. The funguses, for instance, are endochemical only. Land animals--motile, sensory--are endochemical and xenochemical, except in the sea, where they are mostly xenochemical. The disease-causing bacteria are uniformly endochemical, as are all viruses. I made a discovery a few years ago, which might be of some comfort to those of a more traditional turn of mind. You see, it had always been thought that one line of evidence against celestialism was that xenochemical and endochemical organisms still have certain albumins in common, albeit in small amounts."

"I've heard this," Rahal said.

"I discovered that this was not so."

Rahal raised an eyebrow. Yaru continued.

"If you take a sample of tissue from a human, a springgrass flower, or a mushroom, and separate its albumins and carbonic chain molecules, you *will* find small amounts of certain chemicals common across all three. More in the case of the two endochemical organisms, of course, many more, but even within the springgrass flower there is some similarity. Identicality, in fact--of the albumins found in humans and springgrass, the component acids exist in identical ratios."

"A common genetic inheritance? From an early split between the two domains of life."

"That's always been the anti-celestialist argument, of course," Yaru said. "But it's not true."

"What then?"

"A separate organism entirely. Actually, a whole group of them."

Rahal leaned forward in her chair, intrigued.

"They can be cultured separately, in small amounts: an intracellular symbiont that is chemically distinct from both of the other two major domains of life on Ogandraa. Microscopic only, and quite unlike either the endobiota or xenobiota. Indeed, based on some tantalizing clues, I predict this third domain may not form cellular structures at all. If humans are indeed not native to this world, these are probably the original inhabitants. And, I believe, they are the solution to a longstanding mystery in ecology. Do you know the remote signalling problem?"

"I think--something about wildfires?"

"That's the canonical example, yes. How does the springgrass know to hide its buds when the fire is hours away and upwind? But it goes deeper than that: if you isolate the springgrass bud entirely, seal it in its own jar with its own atmosphere and soil, insulate it from all outside heat, but burn a nearby patch of ground, it will still bury itself in the soil. There are similar phenomena elsewhere in nature, however. Raspflies will swarm if killed in large numbers, even up to half a mile away. The larvae of bloodfish begin to emerge in freshwater lakes when the mating frenzy happens at the river mouth, even if it's hundreds of miles away."

"Some kind of chemical signal?"

"The most current research on the subject indicates that such a signal would have to travel at about forty miles an hour, upstream. It's possible--but rather unlikely. My belief is rather that it is this acellular, symbiotic organism which plays a role in the remote signalling mechanisms that are omnipresent in nature. When supplied with the correct stimuli, it is capable of emitting energy, even visible light. Although as you might expect, the effect tends to be very weak. Yet it can propagate rapidly."

"How rapidly?"

"More than rapidly enough to let the bloodfish larvae know to emerge and make room for the next generation."

"That's fascinating. Genuinely. But I still don't understand why Sabir put us in touch. She seemed to think it was more than an ordinary scientific breakthrough that I should be aware of."

"Ah, well. I think I know," Yaru said. He shuffled some papers around on his desk, looking for a blank sheet, and picked up a pen. He scrawled a short mathematical equation on it.

"As I said, the effect is principally very weak in nature. A stronger effect, using purified chemicals or an electric current, can be obtained in the laboratory. An even stronger effect can be produced by the application of a specific modulated electromagnetic field, and the stronger the field--and the more accurate its modulation--the greater the release of energy, and the further its propagation. Two curious facts have emerged from my experiments.

"The first is this: these mysterious microorganisms contain an enormous quantity of chemical energy." He picked up the still-warm kettle and set it on his desk, between him and Rahal. "Our most vigorous organic explosives produce about enough energy that burning a few grains of them would raise the temperature of the water in this kettle by oh, let's say, a degree and a half. A small handful--enough to blow my office door off its hinges and make us both deaf for a few hours--would boil it."

"And these organisms are comparable?"

"No. They contain far *more* energy. I've attempted to exhaust small samples of all their energy available for signalling, and I can't do it. Based on the amount of energy they can output, they must be able of storing phenomenal amounts, far more than can be stored in an ordinary chemical bond. Enough that if the water in this kettle were frozen, and you could unlock the energy in an equivalent small weight of these microorganisms, you could vaporize the ice to steam--about eight hundred times the energy of a blasting explosive. At least."

"Goodness."

"This is the other curious fact." He slid the piece of paper over to Rahal, and tapped a variable circled in the middle. "Based on signal propagation experiments, an induced energy release by a very precisely modulated electromagnetic signal would release N units of energy from the activated sample, which would signal the release from nearby organisms reduced by a factor based on distance and the strength of the original activation signal. For any signal below a certain original activation efficiency--represented by this factor, k--the energy release falls off exponentially, and eventually disappears into the background noise of normal intercellular signalling. That behavior holds true up to a k of 1."

"And above that activation efficiency?"

"As you can see, k is part of an exponential term. In theory, at k the energy release propagates at full strength indefinitely. How far, I don't know. Maybe clear around the planet. Maybe you can make Ogandraa ring like a bell. *Above* k, the energy release increases, indefinitely, with each activation releasing more than the last."

"What are you saying?"

"That in the presence of the right electromagnetic signal, you could induce an energy release that would make our biggest bombs look like holy day sparklers. You could annihilate cities. Boil seas. Set the world aflame."

Rahal looked at the hastily-scrawled letter in the exponent position without saying anything. Then she folded up the piece of paper and slipped it into a pocket.

"There are practical difficulties, of course," Yaru said. "The richness of the sample matters. How much energy it actually contains--you *can* deplete the signalling mechanism, and it only replenishes very slowly. And the fact that the world is still here, and doesn't regularly blow itself up is indicative that if this phenomenon is possible, it's not at all trivial to unlock. It doesn't occur naturally."

"But such a signal wouldn't need to be natural."

"No. Just because it doesn't occur doesn't mean it *can't* occur."

"This is a weapon."

"Quite possibly. Quite possibly the most dangerous one ever conceived."

"Who knows about this?"

"Right now, very few people. But the possibility is latent in nature itself; and the remote signalling problem is being studied elsewhere. Even if I burned every scrap of my research and decided to become a house-painter, it would be a few years at best before someone working in Ptrar or Lareth stumbled across the same thing."

Rahal was feeling a little dizzy. She set her untouched tea down on the desk and folded her arms, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

"You called the Archive conservative earlier."

"Hm? Oh yes, I suppose I did. Celestialists and such. No offense."

"None taken. Do you know what the difference between being conservative and being Conservative is?" She used the Kayuban emphatic particle to make the distinction clear.

"I imagine you have one in mind."

"The Archive is cautious, deliberate, and wary of change. We're not empiricists, it's true, but we're not hostile to empirical methods. We've seen both the good and the bad that can result from such methods, and we work to increase the former at the expense of the latter. But in times of crisis, in times of upheaval and war, I worry less about the conservative approach and more about the Conservative one."

"Are you speaking politically? Scientifically? Artistically?"

"All, and none. This is something that cuts across political factionalism and scientific squabbles, and runs to deeper attitudes, attitudes that in my experience are only loosely connected to specific beliefs or aesthetic choices. I'm talking about the...." She struggled for the right Kayuban word. "We call it the-turn-inward-and-reject-the-legible-world-impulse in the Archive. The urge to fall back on the oldest and worst parts of human nature. The parts that are still frightened and soaked in blood.

"There are histories in the Archive which--well, they're not secret. We'd tell you if you asked. But we don't usually volunteer them, because they are dark and frightening and usually not very applicable to novel situations. In Kfaris, when it fell, a madness consumed the people for ninety-nine days, and in their madness the people claimed the motions of the stars ruled their fates, that the world outside the walls of the city was a deceit of the devil, and they devoured every written word in the city, even if it meant smashing stone plaques to pieces and choking down the dust. In Chopakim, when it was beset by a festering plague, every fourth son was flayed alive in the city's plaza, and their skins were given to frightened mothers to wrap their babies in--this, it was said, would spare their infants from disease. In Lalai, on the eve of war, a beggar said that God had made him king; and when the enemy came, he ordered the gates opened, and the army to lay down its spears, and every living soul was slaughtered as a result.

"I walked here this morning, rather than take the streetcar, because it was a fine spring day. Peaceful, fragrant, with a shining sun. Kfaris, Chopakim, Lalai--each of these cities was, perhaps on some day not too long before disaster, sun-painted and happy. Each, like Kayuba today, was once part of a civilization that looked to make the world legible to them: through ethics or empiricism or philosophy, or some combination of the three, and very often succeeded. Each was once possessed of honest ignorance and superstition, and slowly worked to shrug these things off, and rise above them--until one day they proclaimed they wished to partake of that struggle no more, that to behold the-world-as-it-is was too frightful, and they would prefer to inhabit only the world of their hearts. Each was ruined; and each suffered terribly in the aftermath."

"And what lesson do you draw in this particular scenario, where I have shown you a novel path to ruin?"

"No lesson in particular. But I am afraid, Yaru. I am afraid some spirit wiser than both of us, than any soul in Kayuba right now, showed each of those cities the truth; I am afraid that, in their very instance on ignorance they might have been right."

"Do you really believe that? That there can be justice in ignorance, happiness in letting our fears govern us?"

"Of course not. I wouldn't be an Archivist if I did. And although I'm not a priest, it's not rare in my vocation to have a certain kind of faith. But I do have my doubts sometime."

Yaru sighed.

"So do I, my friend. So do I."

#tanadrin's fiction #sogant raha

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darkestwolfx · 4 years

Text

Inferno - Re-Review #49

Is this it’s first TV appearance? Yes, it is. The episode that never aired (in the UK) - even in the Series 2 re-runs, due to the Grenfell Tower fire. Now, it is finally being given its long awaited slot- Oh, no, hold fire.

We still can’t (or it’s been decided not to) air ‘Inferno’ in the UK because of the case being in court, being held off by the current situation. I do completely understand that - I’m not unsympathetic in anyway, but - for us fans - this is a gem of an episode that is being swept under the carpet, which is why I’m reviewing it in this series anyway, because it really does deserve it’s place in the lineup in my opinion. (And I’m a little OCD and on’t want it out of order too much so I’m doing it now not later. If they air it after ‘The Long Reach’ I’ll be annoyed)!

Anyhow, this is the first of two reviews for today and we get to start with a lovely tall tower. Now, when has that ever been a good idea? This episode bears similarities to ‘Towering Inferno’ and ‘City of Fire’ (TOS).

This is another one of our ‘Joker’s’ Club - Current members;

Light-fingered Fred

Ms Baker

Langstrom Fischler

Francois Lemaire

Mr Yost

Professor Harold

Feel free to suggest others and I will add them to the Hall of Shame. (Ned is saved because he’s actually nice and he has the best intentions, he just can’t achieve them. I like Ned okay? He doesn’t deserve to be in this club).

Today anyhow, this show of stupidity is all in the interest of breaking a record - because one man can’t handle the fact that someone built a building taller than his. That would be Mr Yost - I think his place in the above hall is aptly given.

“This is the Crystal Spire! The World’s first StarScraper. I designed it to be the world’s tallest structure, then they built a bigger one in Dubai. Tonight, ’m going to raise the entire building by seven record shattering metres. Trust me, the lifting process is 100% safe.”

Do you know what else they said that about? Moving The Empire State Building in TOS’ ‘Terror In New York City’. We all know how that one ended.

It did look pretty for a moment there, before you know, all the fires burst out and everything.

“Your job is to make sure those electrojacks hold. If they fail, fire will be the lest of our problems.”

Yeah... we’d have another Empire State incident on our hands and no one wants that. Big Ben’s probably going to fall into the Thames one day as it already is, we don’t need the ‘grand’ Crystal Spire joining it.

“Please, please, save my building!”

Idiot.

“I think you mean save those people!”

I like her already. She can stay.

Cue acting faces;

Put on your best shocked and worried expressions!

I think this lot nailed it.

Bravely going where no firefighters have gone before! Putting out fires to save lives, and accidentally getting trapped beneath about eight tonnes of rubble. Not so hooray..

I wonder if Conrad’s brother is one of these firefighters? That would have been a nice touch. Slough isn’t London, but isn’t too far away. It’s not outside the realms of possibility.

“We can’t do this alone. International Rescue, come in. It’s McCready. That offer still good?”

“Absolutely Chief. We’re on our way.”

Oh the annoying title cards are back interrupting the flow. Someone obviously ‘forgot’ to do an extra bit of animating... again.

Nice little throwback to ‘Move and You’re Dead’ here. Not that Alan’s won anything at this point.

“Make me look cool.”

“We haven’t got all day.”

“Oh, and really heroic.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And make sure you show how totally good looking I am.”

I feel like this is what Virgil does when he starts painting - he just half listen and answers quickly and shortly.

Alan is such a poser. Has he ever played Musical Statues do you think? The point is staying still. So I think not. In fairness though, he probably never had a normal styled birthday party.

“Erherm... International Rescue, we have a situation. Virgil, Alan, we need you both in Thunderbird Two.”

“Alan, you can move now!”

John honestly looks very confused and amused.

Cue everyone gasping over the arrival of Thunderbird Two. It is a pretty cool sigyht.

“That is one tall tower.”

“Crystal Spire. One thousand,one hundred and twenty five metres, ground to tip.It’s supposed to be some sort of architectural masterpiece.”

“It probably looks a lot better when it’s not on fire. Chief McCready, this International Rescue.”

“Meet me up on the 47th floor and be prepare for some heavy lifting.”

“I was made for heavy lifting.”

Boasting. He does kind of have rights though. He was made for heavy lifting.

“No way in. But as dad always said. If you can’t find a door...”

“...Make one!”

Cue badass leap to the other side.

Cue near dangerous, deadly fall to the possible other side.

This episode has it all and we’re halfway there!

“How’s it looking?”

“Remember that time you supercharged the barbecue?”

“Yeessh..”

“Bad?”

“My eyebrows have only just grown back.”

I should have guessed Virgil would have music on board, but really that sounded like something Gordon and Alan would listen to and it definitely made me life.

“Ooops, sorry, wrong playlist!”

Cue secondary fire exploding through the building.

“Thunderbird Two, you okay up there?”

“Yeah. (Nothing a respray won’t fix).”

Goodness Alan, you are never going to be allowed to pilot Two again.

Speaking of pilots, are you okay there, Virgil, you know, just holding that lift above your head to stop it crushing you?

“I’m sure Brains won’t mind too much.”

I think that means Brains is going to go crazy. Wait until he sees Thunderbird Two. Actually correction, wait until Virgil sees Thunderbird Two!

And here we have another of the best ever entrances to a rescue;

“We’re here to rescue you!”

“Uh, that’s usually my line.”

“Sorry.”

Still doesn’t top Scott and Ned though - in my opinion.

“What’s the evacuation plan?”

“Good question. Thunderbird Two, what’s the evacuation plan?”

“Well Thunderbird Two can’t get close enough. And we can’t really risk breaking the glass with so many people inside. Suppose a really big trampoline’s out the question?”

Yes, Alan, it is! Seriously, have you seen how much the prices have risen since Lockdown? I’m not forking out for one. I mean, I don’t really need or want one, I was just saying.

Look at that face. This episode was literally just like Expressions of Virgil central.

“Everyone’s looking at me, Alan.”

“I don’t know, we could always... take off the top?”

“Take off the top of the building?!”

“Brilliant idea! Let’s do it.”

“Ok Alan, we’ll give it a try.”

“Ditch the fire fighting module and come back for us.”

And show the camera how badly you’ve scratched up Virgil’s Thunderbird. Yeah, he’s gonna’ go bonkers.

“How’s the view?”

“Breathtaking.”

Quite literally if you aren’t careful, Virgil.

We know logically they’ll catch each other, but these shots still get me. They’re pretty cool.

“Thanks Tracy.”

“Don’t mention it. We’re a team remember?”

Now Virgil’s doing a Gordon, and doing a George of the Jungle impression!

“Ah! What did you do? What did you do to my Crystal Spire!”

Don’t you mean ‘what did you do?’ After all, it was Mr Yost who moved it, and lit it up, and set it on fire...

“Second tallest..?”

That man is obsessed. Let’s move on. He annoys me (although not as much as Fischler, it must be said).

“If you ever feel like a break from flying, there’s always a spot for you on my team.”

“Well, I do have some vacation time coming- Alan! What did you do to my ship?”

“Uh, it’s not as bad as it looks! All it needs is a spot of paint.”

”Paint: that reminds me... Come on, Alan, we’ve gotta get back and finish your portrait.”

“Just promise you won’t make me look too short! Or hairy! Or give me goofy teeth!”

You’re giving him ideas, Alan.

“Virgil? Virge? Oh man!”

Yeah, already said way too much, and Virgil ignoring you is probably not boding well.

And there’s just about time for the finished painting (as the Grand MAX left it) to end this Review.

P.S. Virgil definitely has more artistic talent than MAX, sorry MAX! Although in fairness to him, I’m not quite sure that’s the result he was aiming for.

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remywrites5 · 5 years

Note

Omgosh all those fake exes prompts are amazing, will you do one for us? I like wolfstar but you can choose the pairing and scenario if you’re feeling inspired!

Remus hated himself, and sure, that was mostly par for the course, but this time he really hated himself. It was the only explanation for being in a relationship with an absolute prick like Gilderoy Lockhart. This went beyond the beating Remus usually gave himself over his anxiety and depression. This was just…cruel to do to himself.

Gilderoy was just absolutely the worst person Remus had ever met and he wasn’t sure how they had ended up in a relationship. He supposed Gilderoy was attractive when he stopped talking, which was hardly ever. To add to his already sparkling personality, Gilderoy hardly ever breached beyond a subject that wasn’t himself and his many, many accomplishments, most of which Remus believed to be bollocks. Climbed Mount Everest, my pasty white arse.

As he sat across from Gilderoy at the café that had somehow become “their spot” Remus thought that he must be some kind of masochist. How else could he rationalize being with such a wanker? A glutton for punishment, that’s what Remus was. He watched Gilderoy do yet another soliloquy about how wonderful he was – not really listening to the words spewing out of Gilderoy’s gob – all Remus could think was “Christ I wish I’d never had this guy’s cock in my mouth.” Remus took a sip of his coffee to wash down the unpleasant taste the memory caused.

The most maddening thing of all was that Remus had tried to end things with Gilderoy three times already. The idiot just apparently wasn’t used to rejection and didn’t recognize it when Remus said, “Maybe we shouldn’t see each other any more,” or “I don’t think this is working out.” Gilderoy had just laughed and changed the subject as if Remus hadn’t spoken. It made Remus want to punch him in the face.

He let his eyes wander away from Gilderoy, still not listening to his incessant chatter, and they landed on a guy with dark hair over at another table. He was sitting with two other people, one a guy with messy brown hair and glasses, and the other Remus recognized as Lily Evans from his English Literature class. He figured the guy with the glasses must be James Potter, Lily’s boyfriend that she’d mentioned during a group project they’d done together. But the dark-haired guy in the leather jacket was a mystery.

As if sensing that someone was looking at him, Mr. I know I’m Sexy That’s Why I’m Wearing a Leather Jacket And a Ripped T-shirt That Shows Off My Incredible Body glanced up. His eyes met Remus’ and he smirked knowingly as if he could tell exactly what was going through Remus’ mind. He was eating what looked to be a raspberry Danish and he dipped his fingers into the jam, bringing it up to his lips with Remus watching, his mouth suddenly having gone dry, and licking it off slowly, sinfully. And then if that weren’t enough, he finished the whole display with a wink!

“Excuse me,” Remus said, getting out of his chair in a hurry. “Toilets.”

“Hurry back!” Gilderoy said, waving Remus away as if he were the Queen of England greeting her subjects. Remus knew that Gilderoy didn’t actually need him there because Remus’ half of the conversation was non-existent. One time they had gone to the famers’ market before and Remus had done a little experiment. He had walked away from Gilderoy – mid-conversation to look at some apples – and walked back a few moments later. Gilderoy never even paused or noticed Remus’ absence.

Remus went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. It didn’t do to be getting turned on by beautiful strangers when he was in the middle of trying to break up with his boyfriend for the fourth bloody time!He pressed his wet hand to the back of his neck in an effort to calm down. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the problem at hand but the door to the toilets opened and the secondary problem walked in.

“Hi,” the dark-haired guy said, sliding over to Remus, resting casually against the sink next to him.

Remus’ eyes snapped open and he stared in disbelief. Whoever this was looked even better up close and Remus filed that away under more things that were just not fair. He had a long pale neck that Remus just wanted kiss and bite and lick and… he splashed some more cold water on his face.

“Hi,” he said when he felt like he could say it evenly enough to not give away his current mental state.

“Are you okay?”

Remus had to bite his lip from not dissolving into a fit of hysterical laughter at the question. He was so absolutely far from okay. “I must look amazing,” he joked, wiping his hands with a paper towel.

“We’ll you’re definitely cute,” the stranger said, turning his head to the side and appraising Remus. Remus felt himself blush under the scrutiny. “But I saw you sitting with Gilderoy Lockhart and I figured that was enough of a cry for help that I should come check on you.”

Remus raised an eyebrow in surprise. “It gets worse – I’m actually dating him.”

“No!”

Remus nodded and winced. “Yeah.”

“You poor thing,” the stranger said, rubbing Remus’ arm consolingly.

Remus laughed uncomfortably. “Most people just call me Remus, actually,” he managed to joke and not have a compete meltdown that such an attractive bloke was touching him. “Remus Lupin.”

The man laughed, his face breaking out into a huge smile, and oh wasn’t that just lovely. “Sirius Black.”

“Nice to meet you,” Remus said, shuffling his feet. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to attempt to break up with my boyfriend yet again only to have him ignore me, the git.”

Remus went to pull away but Sirius kept a hold on his jumper. “What if I help you?” Sirius asked after a moment.

“How?” Remus asked, looking Sirius over, his eyes searching for some sort of answer to his problem. All he found were more problems because fuck Sirius was gorgeous and distracting.

“What if I pretend to be your ex?” Sirius offered, his eyes lighting up as he formulated a plan. “Just be a real bastard and scare him off, eh?”

Remus furrowed his brow in confusion. “Why would you do that for me?”

Sirius met Remus’ gaze and wiggled his eyebrows playfully. “I have my reasons.”

Normally, Remus would object to letting a complete stranger help him dump his boyfriend, but Remus was really at his wits end. Where Gilderoy was concerned, he’d take all the help he could get.

“Okay,” he said, nodding in agreement. “Just please don’t make a scene.”

Sirius’ grin grew wicked. “Me? A scene? Never!”

As he left the toilets, Remus had a very bad feeling about this. He went and sat down across from Gilderoy and wondered if it was too late to just go with the whole punching him in the face idea.

“Ah, Remus,” Gilderoy said, lacing his fingers together and resting his chin on them. “I was beginning to worry about you!”

Remus resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He doubted Gilderoy had even noticed his absence. “Gilderoy, I – “

“Remus?” Sirius called out before walking over. “What did I tell you about coming in here?”

So much for not making a scene. The entire café was either looking at them or trying really hard to pretend they weren’t. “Sirius, wait – “ Remus stood up and held up his hands as if to keep Sirius back.

“No!” Sirius said, stomping over, his combat boots making it quite the entrance. “This was our place and you have the nerve to bring another guy here?”

“Sirius, calm down,” Remus said, playing his part but also wanting Sirius to tone it down before Remus died of embarrassment. Despite Gilderoy, Remus did actually really like this café.

“You want me to calm down?” Sirius said, walking over to Gilderoy and hauling him up by his collar. “Remus, who is this?”

“Please, I don’t want any trouble!” Gilderoy said, immediately starting to sweat.

“Sirius! We’re not together anymore!” Remus said, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling at the look of terror on Gilderoy’s face. He really shouldn’t have been taking such pleasure in it, but he couldn’t help it.

“You’ll always be mine!” Sirius said, glancing at Remus with a grin and quickly schooling his face back into his persona. He turned his attention back to Gilderoy, tugging on his collar and making Gilderoy choke slightly. “Did you touch my Remus?” Sirius growled and Remus had to pretend that hearing it didn’t do things to him. Between the embarrassment and the arousal, Remus was sure he was never going to recover.

“I-I-I mean y-yes b-b-but-“

Sirius grabbed a few sugar packets off the table, ripped them open with his teeth savagely and dumped the contents over Gilderoy’s head. Gilderoy sputtered in shock.

“I won’t touch him ever again!” Gilderoy promised, glancing over at Remus and then back at Sirius. “He’s all yours.”

“Gilderoy!” Remus said with false indignation. “You can’t mean that.”

“I’m sorry, Remus,” Gilderoy said, whimpering like a coward. “I-I-I think we’d better call it a day.”

“Yes, I think that’s best,” Sirius said, releasing Gilderoy and giving him a shove towards the door. “And I’d better not catch you in here again…or else!”

Gilderoy grabbed his things and scurried towards the door, bumping into it in his haste to get it open and leave. As soon as the door shut, Lily and James broke out into applause and Sirius took a little bow.

“That was hilarious,” James said, bursting out into laughter. “I wonder if he wet himself. I think you made him wet himself.”

Sirius went over to his friends, bouncing like an excited puppy. “It was really hard keeping a straight face.”

“You have a hard time keeping anything straight,” Lily teased, chucking a bit of croissant at him. “What was that all about, anyway?”

Remus glanced at the three of them and felt immediately envious. Although he and Lily were friendly, Remus didn’t exactly have friends.Now that he and Gilderoy were over, Remus quite suddenly realized he didn’t have anybody. He gathered up his things and thought about going over to thank Sirius for his help, but Sirius was in the middle of an animated conversation with James and Lily. Remus downed the last of his coffee and quietly made an exit from the café. He just hoped he’d be allowed back in.

He was about halfway down the block when he heard fast footsteps behind him. He turned to find Sirius racing after him. “Hey, Remus!” he said breathlessly, running to catch up with him. “What the hell? Why did you just disappear like that?”

“Oh,” Remus said, biting his bottom lip nervously. “Well, you were busy with your friends and I didn’t want to intrude.”

Sirius grinned up at him. “Are you always so polite?” he teased, booping Remus on the nose. “No wonder Gilderoy didn’t take the hint.”

Remus shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. “We can’t all be as subtle as you.”

Sirius laughed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, it’s never really been my strong suit. That’s why I’m going to tell you that I like you and I want to date you and at the moment all I can think about is kissing you.”

Remus felt his jaw drop at Sirius’ confession. It took him a moment to close it, snapping it shut. “Fuck,” he said, shaking his head. “Sirius, people don’t just say things like that.”

Sirius took a step towards Remus, crowding into his personal space. Remus had a feeling it was something Sirius did often. “I do,” Sirius said, tilting his face up towards Remus. “So how about it?” Sirius raised his eyebrows in the so very obvious challenge that it was.

It took all of the courage Remus had to lift his hand and cup Sirius’ cheek. His thumb grazed of Sirius’ impossibly high cheekbones. “You don’t even know me,” he whispered, forgetting that they were on a busy London street as his world narrowed down to that small point of contact.

“So?” Sirius shrugged nonchalantly. “I’d like to. Get you know you, that is.”

Remus smiled – a real, genuine smile for what felt like the first time in ages. “I’d like that,” he said, his world growing even smaller as he guided Sirius forward for their lips to meet. If Gilderoy Lockhart had been a slowly poisoning Remus over the past two months of their relationship, Sirius was absolutely the antidote. Remus drank him in like a man in need of salvation. “That’s the second time you’ve saved me today,” Remus murmured, breaking the kiss but not going far, their breath still mingling in the brisk Autumn air. “Thank you.”

Sirius chuckled softly. “You’re welcome, Remus” he said, pressing in close to Remus. “Happy to do it, any time.”

“I might just hold you to that,” Remus informed him quietly, nuzzling his cold nose against Sirius’ warm cheek. Already he could feel intimacy and affection growing between the two of them. He felt noticed for the first time in a long time and it was a relief but also a miracle that someone like Sirius would notice someone like him.

“You’d better,” Sirius breathed out. “I’m not going to be scared off quite as easy as the last guy.”

Remus scoffed. “You think that was easy?”

Sirius laughed and pressed a kiss to the corner of Remus’ mouth. “What I meant was that I’m going to stick around,” he clarified, staring up into Remus’ eyes. “You’re worth fighting for, Remus.”

Remus blushed and pretended it was just from the cold. “You still hardly know me, a few kisses doesn’t really change that,” Remus rationalized, trying to keep himself from falling head first into whatever this was with Sirius. It was a little late in his life to start being an optimist.

“I know I’m going to fall in love with you.”

Remus laughed incredulously. “And how do you know that?”

“Because I’ve never wanted to help someone become single so bad in my entire life,” Sirius informed him with a knowing smirk. “And as fun as it was to play to part of your jealous ex, I’d much rather play the part of your doting and only slightly jealous boyfriend.”

Remus searched Sirius’ stormy grey eyes for any hint that he might be joking. All he found was a frank sincerity that honestly knocked Remus a bit sideways. “Well, congratulations,” he said, his face breaking out into another genuine smile. Sirius kept causing those. “You got the part.”

Sirius celebrated by pulling Remus down into another kiss.

#wolfstar #i write things #you never have to twist my arm to do wolfstar #fluff #fake ex prompt #modern day au #sirius black x remus lupin #long post

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gal-liveblogs · 4 years

Text

RWBY Chapter 8: Players and Pieces

Hm, that title makes me think those chess pieces are about to become very important.

O.K., what on earth are you doing, Ruby? Are you... Are you riding a giant bird? Is that why you were falling from the sky at the end of the last episode? WHY are you on a giant bird? HOW did you get on a giant bird?

Ruby: Well, why don’t we just jump? Weiss: What are you, insane?

Aaaaaand Ruby’s gone. God damn it, Ruby.

That’s some stellar timing. Congrats, Ruby, you saved Jaune from hurtling even further into the forest. Hopefully he doesn’t crush you when you both land.

Oh great, before Yang and Blake can deal with the Ruby and Jaune situation a Grimm appears from the forest. I sure hope that scorpion Grimm doesn’t join the fray as well.

Nora: Yeeeeeehaaaw!

Oh. Thanks, Nora! That was easy!

Nora: Aw, it’s broken.

She has no respect for danger and I love her.

Nora: I’m queen of the castle~ I’m queen of the castle~

You are fighting hard for my favorite character.

Here comes the scorpion now! It’s fine, the other Grimm is dead and we have a bunch of warriors gathered. I’m sure they’ll be fine. What’s Weiss up to?

Pyrrha: Jaune! Jaune: Pyrrha! Ruby: Woah! Jaune: Ruby! Yang: Ruby?! Ruby: Yang! Nora: NORA!

I sure love the Name Game. Glad to see Nora knows how to play the winning hand.

Yang is shaking in frustration and I can’t tell if Nora is just happily swaying or having fun imitating her, but it’s just the cutest thing.

Oh, there’s Weiss! Boy, that bird is quite a bit bigger than I expected it to be. Gosh... How did you girls manage to hitch a ride on that?

Nora, stop being so adorable this instant.

Ren: She’s falling.

Oh no. Jaune, I know what you’re thinking. Don’t. This is not the perfect opportunity to play hero and save the falling damsel. You are the butt monkey, your role to continually fail for comedy. This won’t end well for you.

I know it’s tempting, Jaune, but don’t even try. Really there’s only two ways this is going to go. You’re going to try and somehow make things worse, or one of the other’s is going to rescue Weiss before you can do anything.

Either things are about to go horribly wrong, or Weiss is gonna smack him and call him a pervert.

Music: *is angelic* Jaune: Just dropping in?

Or this will turn out to just be a fantasy Jaune has concocted after hitting his head trying to jump out of the tree.

O.K., not a fantasy. Cartoons physics was employed so that they could float in the air for a moment before gravity picked back up. Now the question is if the punchline is them still crashing to the ground or will it be that one of the others will still end up rescuing them?

Crashing it is! At least Weiss seems fine, since Jaune acted as a crash pad. So I guess... Congrats, Jaune? You managed to save the girl?

Weiss: My hero.

She just sounds so disinterested. That’s gotta hurt him more than his crushed spine.

Oof. That was a crunch. Poor Pyrrha, I thought you’d be able to put up a bit more fight against the scorpion.

Yang: Great, the gang’s all here! Now we can die together!

Glad to see you being positive, Yang.

And of course Ruby jumps into the fray only to get immediately bitch slapped.

Holy shit! That thing has projectile feathers! I’m more scared of it than the scorpion now!

Be thankful it only skewered your cape and not your body! Still, this is legitimately terrifying!

Ruby, no, don’t try to rip your cape free just take your cape off! Trust me, it’s much faster!

O.K., yeah, wow, thanks for the ice wall and all, Weiss, but could we maybe have the getting along speech after we defeat the Grimms?

Ruby: *sighs and whispers* Normal knees...

What are you going on about, Ruby? I know you just wanted to be a normal girl with normal knees, but what does this mean? Are you reminding yourself to just act normally, or are you thankful that Weiss just said “you’re fine” and thus she sees you as normal?

Really though, these friendship building moments can wait until AFTER THE GRIMMS ARE DEAD, YES?

I’m sorry, but I have to point out Yang’s little run here wasn’t the best. She just kind of, slid across the ground. Not great animation. Very slippery.

Alright, so now everyone has a chess piece. Were those missing chess pieces already missing to begin with, or did those two dudes we saw at the start take them? You know, they two people who had character models but no lines?

So the gang tries to run, but it seems the bird has them trapped. Oh, and then the scorpion comes back too. So how’s that “just run and don’t fight them” plan going?

I love Nora’s gun. She has a grenade launcher. I wonder what it transforms into?

You know, for an exercise all about teaming up with one other person they all seem to be working with, well, everyone. I mean, it’s good to have teamwork with everyone at your disposal, but I would think you’d want to stick with your “assigned” partner and learn how to most effectively work with them.

Calling it now, that bridge is either going to collapse and make the scorpion tumble into the ravine below OR it’s going to collapse and trap out heroes in the ruin. Possibly both. Either way the bridge isn’t going to survive this fight.

Well, I was right about the bridge being destroyed, at least, but it looks like everyone is gonna hitch a ride on the bird on outta here. How did Ruby and Weiss do this the first time??

Oh, never mind, they do get trapped in the ruin after all. Looks like only Pyrrha, Ren, and possibly Blake hitched a ride.

GOD DAMN IT! NO ONE GOT CARRIED AWAY? Bullshit! You could clearly see they were all too far away from the edges with the bird came through!

Oh neat! A hammer! Let me guess, it’s gonna have some sonic blast or something that will propel her across the gap when she swings it down?

Ah, no magic nonsense, just basic physics! Yay for levers! Bye, Jaune! Now what will you do, dear Nora? Also what about the others?

Oh that is awesome! A grenade propelled scooter, basically! Who knew hammers could be so versatile?

Aw, and you were doing so well too, Nora! Now who’s going to save Blake from plummeting to her death?

Blake’s gonna save herself thanks to grappling guns!

I like that during the classic “run up all the falling rocks” moment we get to see that each of the four main girls does it slightly differently. Blake immediately gets off the unstable rocks and goes to another classic, “run up the walls”. Weiss uses her glyphs to give herself more stable footing when there are no rocks. Yang uses her rocket gauntlets to propel herself, and Ruby just stays with the classic approach.

So while Ruby has a plan to fight the bird, Jaune seems to be giving orders to the other team fighting the scorpion. Not so much orders as barking out their names and they knowing what to do already. I could be mean and say Jaune isn’t really needed here, but I’ll give him the credit has leader of this team of four. Clearly Ruby will be leader of the other team so he’s being built up as the leader of the secondary characters.

Nora is just the cutest gosh darn thing! Sorry, Jaune, but Nora has been too precious this episode. She has booted you out of the top spot on my characters list.

Poor Ren, someone get this boy some snacks. Nora, give him pats and snacks!

Wow, this is quite the plan, Ruby, How did you manage to tell the others what to do while all of you were fighting?

Ruby: Think you can make the shot? Weiss: Can I? Ruby: ... Can y- Weiss OF COURSE I CAN!

I’m a sucker for confident “can I?” “that’s what I just asked you” interactions.

Holy shit, Ruby is strong! I know Weiss puts some glyphs down, which are probably helping her with the speed and keeping momentum, but Ruby is still dragging that giant bird by her scythe!

Nice decapitation!

Jaune: Wow.

Yeah, I mean, not to downplay your guys’ scorpion, but that was really cool.

I guess we’re all back at Beacon now. Sounds like whatever piece you took assigns you to a larger team. So I guess only one piece was taken per team of two? Then, since it’s chess, there were two of each piece (excluding the pawns) so then the two teams that had the same pieces would get combined here. Still doesn’t sound like a great way to form actually good teams for four years, but whatever. How lucky that the teams that worked together fighting each Grimm ended up being the actual teams. Now they have a basic understanding of each member’s abilities!

Wait, did I just hear Yang Xiao Long? Not Yang Rose? Do you two have different fathers? You usually take your dad’s last name after all. We saw a Summer Rose gravestone. Hm. Well if they’re half sisters it would explain why they look so different.

Ozpin: From this day forward you will work together as Team RWBY, lead by Ruby Rose.

Wow, who could have guessed the team named after her would be lead by Ruby. Honestly, it would have been a jerk move to name the team “ruby” and then have someone else lead the team.

OH COME ON! NOW THE SHATTERED MOON ISN’T EVEN ROUND ANYMORE! It’s a shatter egg! I’m telling you, it’s fluctuating size and shape, that’s the cause of it breaking! The moon saga never ends!

Oh? And what is our dapper villain up to in this lonely warehouse?

Hm, I see you have various districts marked out on your maps. Also COPS! and Beacon. What dastardly plans are you concocting?

Man, you’re eyelash game is strong. Are you wearing eyeliner too?

Monopoly money!

Oh, credit cards, not Monopoly money.

A better look at the map. He’s not only marked out COPS!, but also DUMB COPS. I wonder if Forever Fall is a town or a landmark. Beacon seems like a pretty big place.

Torchwick: We’re gonna need more men.

BOO. Cliched line is cliched!

We never did find out how Ruby and Weiss got on that bird...

#rwby #rwby liveblog #gal liveblogs #the moon saga

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armour-of-fafnir · 5 years

Text

Brothers Conflict - Passion Pink Prologue part 2

I lost a CG because I’m stupid, so please bear with me

Ayame

[ And thereby, with Juri’s accurate guidance, I arrived at the Asahinas’ apartment, the “Sunrise Residence”. ]

//Rings doorbell//

???

[ Yes. ]

Ayame

[ U-uhm, I… will be under your care from now on… ]

???

[ Ah, you’re going to be our little sister, right? ]

Ayame

[ T-that’s right… ]

Ayame

[ ( I was surprised to hear him call me little sister, I’m getting really nervous now…! ) ]

???

[ Just wait a minute, please. ]

Ayame

[ ( That low-pitched voice was one of an adult man… ) ]

Ayame

[ ( Hm, what kind of person will perhaps come out? ) ]

Ayame

[ ! ]

???

[ …Ah! ]

Ayame

[ ( U-uhm, is this really the person that spoke to me through the intercom before? ) ]

???

[ … ]

Ayame

[ U-uhm… ? ]

???

[ …! Aah, pardon me. Pleased to make our acquaintance, and welcome. I am the second son, Ukyo Asahina. ]

Ukyo

[ Go head, please come in. ]

Ayame

[ Y-yes. ]

Ukyo

[ Ayame, is it alright for me to call you as such? ]

Ayame

[ Ah, yes. That’s fine. ]

Ukyo

[ Well then, I’ll now show you around our five floors of living space, and meanwhile introduce you to your new brothers, okay? ]

Ayame

[ Y-yes. ]

Ukyo

[ By the way, the fifth floor is the common quarters, our shared space. ]

Ukyo

[ Even though each person has their own private room, we have meals and space to be together on the fifth floor. ]

Ayame

[ Understood. ]

Ukyo

[ I’m sure you’re already aware of this, but we unfortunately are a bunch of sordid men here. ]

Ukyo

[ Please note that there may be some inconveniences for that reason. ]

Ayame

[ N-no… To say that you are sordid… That’s… ]

Ayame

[ ( I sure was hesitant to move into a house where only men live, but... ) ]

Ayame

[ ( But… Staying in the same house with a newlywed couple just didn’t feel quite right. I would only become a nuisance. ]

Ayame

[ Fortunately, upon discussion we found out that there was a vacant room for me in this apartment, and living with a big family was something I wanted to experience. ]

Ukyo

[ Well then, this is the way to the living room. After you. ]

Ayame

[ Y-yes…! ]

Ukyo

[ …Are you nervous? ]

Ayame

[ Y-yes. It’s just, well…! ]

Ukyo

[ It’s fine. If you have any problems with this house, please tell me right away. I have the power to correct it. ]

Ayame

[ T-thank you very much. ]

Ayame

[ ( Ah… ) ]

Ayame

[ I hadn’t noticed till now, but Ukyo’s suit has a sunflower badge at the front. ]

Ayame

[ A lawyer huh… Impressive. ]

Ayame

[ While being comforted by Ukyo’s warm words, I step into the living room. ]

Wataru

[ Kyo! Did big sis come!? ]

Ayame

[ Huh…? That voice, could it be… ? ]

Ayame

[ Wa-wataru!? ]

Wataru

[ Eh? The big sis from earlier!? ]

Ayame

[ No way, Wataru, you’re one of my brothers!? Does that mean that your older brother is also…!? ]

Wataru

[ Maa-kun? Well, Maa-kun is the oldest one in this house! ]

Maa-kun

[ Hello, thank you for earlier. I am Masaomi, the oldest son. Even so, do such coincidences really exist? ]

Ukyo

[ Are you acquainted with her, Masaomi? ]

Maa-kun

[ Just a while ago, we met near this apartment. Well then, I hope we get along from now on. ]

Wataru

[ Let’s get along, big sis! ]

Ayame

[ Yes, I hope we all get along! ]

???

[ Hey hey, do you think it’s fair keeping her all to yourself? Introduce me too, brother Ukyo. ]

Ayame

[ Eh…!? W-what a beautiful purple kimono…!? ]

???

[ Welcome to the Asahina household. Nice to meet you, lil sis ♪

]

Ayame

[ N-nice to meet you… ]

[ ( Eh? Is he waiting for a handshake? Uhm… I guess it’s fine right? ]

???

[ *chu* ]

Ayame

[ Wha…!? ]

Ayame

[ Wha-what was that now!!? Why did he suddenly kiss the back of my hand? ]

???

[ Aren’t you cute, lil sis ♪ Say, would it be alright if next time I kissed you somewhere other than your hand? ]

Ayame

[ Eh…Eh!? Y-you can’t…! ]

Ukyo

[ Hey, Kaname! ]

//Ukyo hits Kaname//

Kaname

[ …Ouch! Brother Kyo, you didn’t have to hit me. ]

Ukyo

[ I am so sorry he startled you, this dirty monk has poor manners. This is my younger brother, called Kaname. ]

Ayame

[ Monk…!? A monk of what? ]

Kaname

[ That’s right. If you want to hear my stories of gratitude, drop by my room anytime, okay? ]

Kaname

[ If it’s a cute girl like you, I’d like to kick it all night ♪ ]

Ayame

[ Wha-what? ]

???

[ Kana, those seem like worldly desires not so befitting of a monk. Being so aggressive is a bad example, I think- ★]

???

[ Just like Tsubaki said, your words were but distasteful. ]

Ayame

[ ( …One of them feels a bit flashier, and the other emits a calmer aura. Nevertheless… They somehow look alike? ) ]

Tsubaki

[ Nice to meet you! I’m Tsubaki ★]

Azusa

[ I’m Azusa. ]

Ukyo

[ Ayame, those two are identical. ]

Ayame

[ ( Identical…? ) ]

Ayame

[ ( So in short, they’re twins? ) ]

Azusa

[ I hope we get along. ]

Wataru

[ Hey hey, big sis! Tsu and A are inside anime and games~! ]

Ayame

[ I-inside them…? ]

Tsubaki

[ We’re voice actors-♪ ]

Ayame

[ …Kya!? ]

Tsubaki

[ From chlidren’s works to late night (adult swim?) anime, large scale RPGs , otome and much more, we have an extensive list of all the works we’ve appeared in, so ask me anything! ]

Ayame

[ Wai…! Uhm, Tsu-Tsubaki!? ]

Tsubaki

[ Oh, I see you’ve already memorized my name! I’m delighted-♪ ]

Ayame

[ U-uhm… P-please let go of me…! ]

Tsubaki

[ Eh-? Why-?? Isn’t it unfair if only Kana does so-!? My turn, my turn-★ ]

Ayame

[ Wha-what do I do…!!? ]

//Azusa hits Tsubaki//

Tsubaki

[ Ouch! ]

Azusa

[ What do you think you’re doing, Tsubaki. ]

Tsubaki

[ It hurts, Azusa-. What was that for, I was just following Kana’s lead. ]

Azusa

[Huh… Jeez… Sorry? Tsubaki, when you’re being bothersome and annoying, I have to tell you you’re wrong. That’s why I scolded you. ]

Tsubaki

[ Eh, what’s with that? I was just treasuring my little sister-. ]

Ayame

[ ( Having my hand kissed, being held close out of the blue… Did I suddenly end up in an outrageous place…? ) ]

Ukyo

[ I’m sorry… This is the end of the problem children, rest assured. ]

Ayame

[ Y-yes… But the fact that those two are voice actors, it’s really impressive! ]

Ayame

[ I love games, so I’m sure I’ll think of things to ask two prominent voice actors. ]

Tsubaki

[ SE- RIOUS- LY-? That’s trouble! Suddenly having a little sis who says she likes games! What have the gods done! That’s bad. I’ll seriously fall for her, that’s really bad…! ]

Ayame

[ ( …This guy, is he really okay? )]

Ukyo

[ Behave yourself a bit, Tsubaki. ]

Ukyo

[ Next are… Well. Subaru, Iori. ]

Ayame

[ ( Woah, what a tall guy and…, huh? The guy with the nice features… ) ]

Juri

[ Chii. Isn’t that the really popular guy in the white uniform we saw before? ]

Ayame

[ Yes… That’s right… Don’t tell me this guy also going to be my brother…! ]

Ukyo

[ The tall guy over there is Subaru. He’s a college student. ]

Subaru

[ …Tsk. ]

Ayame

[ N-nice to meet you. ]

Subaru

[ … ]

Ayame

[ ( Huh? He’s kind of unfriendly… ) ]

Tsubaki

[ Ah, that’s Subaru for you-. He has a hard time with women, pure isn’t he~★ That’s why, if he doesn’t speak to you, pay no mind! ]

Subaru

[ Wha…! Tsuba!! ]

Tsubaki

[ What? It’s the truth, isn’t it-? ]

Ayame

[ ( Subaru’s… face is turning red… ) ]

Ukyo

[ Well then, this one here is Iori. He’s just a year above you in high school. ]

Iori

[ Nice to meet you. I hope we can get along. ]

Ayame

[ Pleased to make our acquaintance. By the way, could that uniform be… ]

Iori

[ Aah, I attend Bright Centrea Academy. ]

Ayame

[ Wow… That’s so cool…! ]

Ayame

[ ( Bright Centrea Academy is a renown secondary school in the city... It’s highly regarded... ) ]

Juri

[ Perfect face and academics too, huh… Tsk. ]

Ayame

[ ( They’re probably wondering what this squirrel has been on about… ) ]

Iori

[ By the way, you attend Sunset High… Right? ]

Ayame

[ ! T-that’s right. I see you’re well informed. ]

Iori

[ Well, that’s... Yeah… ]

Ayame

[ ? ]

Ukyo

[ There are other siblings to meet, though they’re out for work and such. I will introduce you later on, alright? ]

Ayame

[ Yes, I understand. ]

???

[ Sorry, I’m late-! ]

Kaname

[ Yuu… Had you been playing around at the Game Centre again-?

???

[ Wha! This ain’t the case!! I was studying at school!! ]

Ukyo

[ Haah. In sort, supplementary lessons again… ]

???

[ Ugh… Wha-what’s wrong with that. I’m sorry! ]

Ayame

[ ( Huh…? Could that voice be…?? ) ]

Ayame

[ A-Asahina Yuusuke!!? ]

Yuusuke

[ Hi-Hinata!? What are you doing here!!? ]

Kaname

[ Hinata? Aah, so that’s lil sis’ last name. ]

Tsubaki

[ Eh? What’s this, what’s this? You two know each other-? ]

Wataru

[ They know each other-? ]

Yuusuke

[ We know each other…, well…, we’re in the same class… ]

Iori

[ You’re classmates? ]

Wataru

[ You-are-class-mates? ]

Ayame

[ Y-yes. ]

Tsubaki

[ Eeh, how lucky of you Yuusuke! That cute classmate of yours is now your sister★ ]

Yuusuke

[ HUH!!!? SISTER!!? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON! TELL ME! ]

Tsubaki

[ Huh? You didn’t know? My bad, forgot to tell ya★ ]

Ukyo

[ …Tsubaki. Even after I made sure you’d tell him… You…! ]

Yuusuke

[ Tsuba, YOU KEPT SILENT ON PURPOSE!!? You little… ]

Yuusuke

[ There’s no way I’ll accept this!! Classmates becoming siblings, that’s impossible!! ]

Ayame

[ I- I have nothing to say… I’m sure I’ll cause you trouble now that I’m your sister… ]

Yuusuke

[ …Ah, no, I didn’t mean that you’ll cause me trouble… ]

Ayame

[ But, you seem to despise the idea of it… ]

Yuusuke

[ T-that’s not the case…! What I mean is, AAH-! DAMMIT-!!! ]

Yuusuke

[ YOU HEAR ME!? DON’T SAY THINGS LIKE WE’RE SIBLINGS AT SCHOOL OKAY!!? AND DON’T LET ANYONE FIND OUT!!! ]

Ayame

[ Ah, wait a second, Asahina…! ]

Maa-kun

[ And he’s off… I’m sorry, it’s because Yuusuke is actually quite shy. ]

Kaname

[ That’s right. ♪ ]

Ayame

[ He’s shy…? ]

[Part 1] [Part 3]

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ayakashiramblings · 5 years

Text

Thank you to my followers! :D

This is long overdue but well, here it is. Because this is a secondary blog, I can’t reply to some of you without reblogging and we all know how ugly that is. I could technically DM but I’m a bit shy about randomly popping in to talk about a post that is like 5 days old or something, LOL.

And yet I’m doing this. Wow, the sheer logic.

So here I am, consolidating all the replies that I really wanted to respond to because YOU!ARE!SO!NICE! And I thought it would be nice to talk about some of the works and my thoughts on them, especially if they are going to be edited in the future!

Oh but if this is offensive in any way, please do tell. I don’t want to invade someone’s privacy or something.

I’m also showing the results of the Google Form although there are only 6 responses so technically, it’s not accurate?

Sorted by users:

D’aww thanks @newthoran97-blog! Your ask and the Nonnie’s made me squeal a bit inside, especially since technically some of the Dawn Faction members didn’t get one in their routes.

Plus, I have been dying to talk about kissing Koga there, hehe! (BTW, for some reason I can’t tag you so I’m putting you first in hopes that you will see this!)

Back at you @mseliteminority ! While Koga is my favourite, Aoi’s MC has made me blush, thinking about kissing hands (other than my cat’s paws, LOL).

Hun, listen, ANYONE would love to do your requests! The silent treatment is a CLASSIC war tactic that my cat always dabbles in when she doesn’t get to play with her cat teaser.

And honestly, I’m so happy to make you laugh! Hope you and your roommate are happy!

@singingonmyojileyka You don’t get a picture because YOU ARE A MASTERPIECE!

No, but seriously, thank you for reblogging! It always brightens my day to see a reblog and share more with the fandom! You’re amazing! Here are some of my favourites although there is too many for me to consolidate without melting into a puddle:

The very first one. Makes me shed a tear every time I see it.

YOU ARE CUTE! Although honestly, I was glad to see this on the Summer Festival post because I am not so familiar with the world of Japan. The few anime I watch are usually short ones so very few feature a Summer! Episode. Glad to see you liked it! :D

This... this... you see the pattern here? How they MURDER ME WITH KINDNESS?! Sobs...

Like I said, check them out! I think they also made an Ayakashi Romance Reborn TV Trope Page which btw helped me with this fic;

Kitsune no Yomeiri (NSFW)

@claggle Yes, I look through your reblogs too like the maniac I am BECAUSE IT IS SO PURE!

@chaerryamamiya You made me write my first FanFic, something I was incredibly scared to do because honestly, my English sucks, LOL. So thank you for the request even though I honestly wasn’t familiar with the work!

@ambereyedsnek YOUR ART AND WORDS MAKE MY DAY!

Also, you’re very kind in inviting me to interact with the rest of the fandom, I was honestly worried about how to talk to others.

Ah, WTF. As in... the series, not the explicit. I can’t seem to recreate it if you look at Episode 2... BUT I AM GOING TO DO MORE BECAUSE GAKU HAS BEEN HAUNTING ME AND IT IS NOT FUNNY!

And yes, that joke in the Summer Festival Headcanon still makes me wonder how the heck did I come up with that one other than seeing the Flat Earther meme.

@saeryenkalador OMG, you’ve been cute since day 1! Thank you for your request! I love cats! Meow!

Ok, but trying to incorporate Pokemon elements into Let’s Go Kuya! was a bit hard because I technically grew in the era of Pokemon... but somehow avoided being sucked into the world until the Detective Pikachu movie. Yes true diehard fans, I suck, I know.

That said, this was probably one of the most fun ones, LMAO. Arigato!

@pendingreply and @duerme07 : Actually you are the same person, right? Either way, thank you so much for the request! It was so much fun to do! I’m glad you liked it!

AND YOU are a great service! Thank you so much!

The best days of the week btw. Sigh, if only Oji-san knew.

@katiefromdablock

You have made me wonder beyond the universe and its mysteries. No, but really, it’s so nice to see you and your asks! Thank you so much!

AND ALSO YOUR ART! SQUEE THE FIRST TIME I GOT FANART.

I would show them but this would make the post NSFW SO PEOPLE DO CHECK THEM OUT!

@dany-ryujin Thank YOU so much for the request! Honestly, I was kind of inspired after watching some documentaries for this particular request so it somehow wounded in Kuya’s ABC NSFW headcanon, LMAO. I hope we can share tea someday and spit it out as we discover more of Kuya’s secrets.

@ikementally-deficient And I need YOU to know your comment on Oji made my day! Love your matchups btw! Go and check them out!

There are more of you but this post would get too long because y’all are too great. Thank you so much to all the Nonnies! I want your shades someday to tackle you into a bear hug!

And thank you to the rest of the followers! I hope to improve!

Which is why I did a Google Form. It only has 6 requests so if you have any thoughts, you can go there and fill it out, completely anonymously.

https://forms.gle/xMqKAZLtdZNnkpPC8

So I need to make them longer based on the responses.

Yay!

Double Yay!

Triple Yay except to the last one, I can’t teach. I don’t even know what I am doing, LOL. I can tell you if I find it funny or sad though I guess? IDK, what do teachers do?

You know, now that I think about it, the questions are worded weirdly but I’m hoping the results won’t change for this one with this post, LOL.

Thank god because I have a confession to make.

I really, really, really... hate Yakumo. He reminds me of a bad incident that I would rather stay away from. I know, it’s not fair especially since I haven’t played his MS so I am hoping to keep an open mind.

OMG I didn’t know someone even liked the Best Man headcanon. That one was purely random. Better look at it again.

I actually hate one headcanon of mine... and it’s the Starbucks one. Makes me cringe. Also, the ones when I neglected Yura and Aoi. The most recent one I hate is the Inari sushi because it sounds more like a thread than a headcanon.

This one... I can’t remember why I put this question actually... but thanks for responding! Makes me more confident to reblog with no fear.

Will keep the tags.

The last comment has been noted. I actually have some in mind but most of the requests are better suited for a headcanon style so I might close the ask box to focus on them. Hope you guys don’t mind! If you do, you know what to do!

Sniff, the blue one made me cry actually. Thank you so much!

And once again, thank you for following me! I’m so happy to be part of this loving and funny fandom and hope to get know more of you! :D

#ayakashi romance reborn #ayakashi rr #AyakashiRR #Ayakashi: Romance Reborn #voltage inc

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hipsofsteel · 5 years

Note

bro you gotta tell me more about chris

Gladly! The dad man is important to me. And so, we meet…

Christopher “Chris” Lewis Joseph, personification of Eastern Oregon/Nyo!Oregon

Credit to crikadelic, who will not be tagged in this post for reasons.

Physical Description

At 5′10, with dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a slightly olive skin tone, Chris is a very good looking man. He’s got well trimmed facial hair that can be a bit scruffy and thin, but he maintains it well. He’s well muscled from his work as a cattle rancher, and general farmwork. He is half Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) and half English, born in the area of present day Joseph, Oregon in 1806, and celebrates his birthday on February 14th.

Chris’s face claim is model Julian Schratter. He has no voice claims at the moment.

Personality

Christopher and Beverly were cut from the same cloth in some respects. Controlling either of them is nearly impossible. He’s a force of nature when he wants to be, stubborn and insistent and nearly impossible to be forced to do something he refuses to do. He’s as free-spirited and wild as he wants to be.

At the same time, he shows a remarkable degree of caution and thoughtful behavior that his twin sister tends to lack. If not caught in an urgent situation or in his own whirlwind of passions, he approaches things with well-thought out responses and is a calm and collected and highly intelligent man. He’s a great person to go to for advice.

He’s also very attached to those he forms close relationships with, either as family or friends. He’ll always have his twin sister’s back, and anyone who finds themselves in the position of being “adopted” as his child has just gained an ally and parental figure who will love them and defend them endlessly. Although, dispute it as he does, he does have a favorite child (Adam).

Sexuality and Gender

Behold, the one and only heterosexual cisgender OC I’ve made for my States. Chris is an incredible ally however, who openly supports all his friends and family.

Also, his type of women is as follows, so I promise you can trust him.

And he means it.

Religion

Chris has a personally styled fusion between Christianity and the indigenous religions he was raised around on the Columbian Plateau. He is not really big on explaining his faith as it’s a deeply personal and conflicting matter even for himself, so I don’t have much more to say than that for him. However, one of his two most irreplaceable objects he owns is a copy of Henry Harmon Spalding’s translation of the Book of Matthew into Nez Perce. Take from that what you will.

Employment

Chris has previously made his living as a farmer and for a brief while as a blacksmith, but nowadays, he owns a cattle range and is a full-time rancher, with a large range area in Central/Eastern Oregon. He also raises horses on the side, both as a secondary income and to continue traditions of horse breeding he was raised in with the Nez Perce.

Pets

I’ll try to keep this brief, but Chris has seven animals he considers close pets/his long lifespan has affected theirs, so I’ll divide it into sections.

Dogs

Zip and Lucky

Zip is Chris’s working dog, a purebred blue heeler who knows how to move a cow herd as well as he knows that when Chris puts on dark and clean pants, he’s leaving the house for meetings (sadness) and when he puts on less nice “farm” pants, they’re working stock that day (happiness!)

Lucky is based on Rincon, the dog owned by Chris’s faceclaim. Lucky is a beloved pet mutt and gets to come with Chris and Zip to work cattle, although his main job is to sit and stay since he has zero Cow Sense.

Horses

Jackrabbit, Strawberry, Juniper, and Celilo

Is Chris a dog or cat person? Neither, he’s a horse person (followed by dogs).

Jackrabbit is Chris’s horse he’s had the longest, serving as Chris’s warhorse during his youth. He’s one of the fastest horses any of the western states own, and he’s very selective about who’s allowed to ride him (Christopher, Beverly, Adam, and Helen are the only people who can). He’s a wild tempered buckskin Nez Perce Horse stallion.

Strawberry is a red roan Appaloosa that Chris has had nearly as long as he’s had Jackrabbit. She’s a gentle mare and very good with people.

Juniper is a Kiger Mustang mare, slightly more testy than Strawberry, and more prone to being spooked, but she’s a good horse.

Celilo is a palomino American Quarter Horse gelding, bought to be a reliable pack-horse for Chris. He’s as gentle as Strawberry and loves people.

Jackrabbits

Little Lady or “Lady”

Once upon a time, Chris and Juniper accidentally spooked a mother jackrabbit into the claws of a hawk, and then nearly immediately found her babies. Chris raised the three kits and released them into the wild shortly afterwards, but Lady stuck around his house. She appears pretty reliably every year, and seems to have been affected by his long lifespan, so he gave her a name and treats her a bit more like a pet than anything else.

He loves to joke that Jackrabbit met an actual jackrabbit, and everyone around him glares at him.

Relationships with other States

Family first

Western Oregon/Oregon

Credit to crikadelic again.

Sometimes, your twin sister is a lumberjack lesbian (quite literally on both counts) with arms made of steel and one hell of a right hook. Also she’s way more liberal than you, and politically you get dragged along with whatever she wants.

Ironically, once upon a time, Beverly wasn’t the main personification of the Oregon Territory. It wasn’t until American settlement picked up that the power of the state swung to her. Before then, Christopher held most of the power, but this was also when the Oregon Territory including all of Washington, Idaho, parts of Montana and Wyoming, and since Chris was entirely east of the Cascades, well, it made sense that he held the upper hand. Only later as the size of the land they represented shrank did power trade hands.

As independent as Beverly is, and as willing to tell her twin to fuck off, they have a very close relationship. They tell each other off, and sparks fly between them quite often, with Beverly usually being the one to storm off while Chris remains a wall of a human being. But they’ll quietly make up out of sight later, and then be right back to joking around and teasing each other.

And when it comes to advice, Beverly has no closer confidant than her twin, and often shows him the vulnerability that no one else sees. They trust each other implicitly, knowing that despite their differences, they won’t lead the other astray. No one could ask for a better twin sister.

Eastern Washington/Nyo!Washington

Credit to ME!

First off, he’s the one on the right, the one on the left is Idaho (we’ll get to him in a bit).

Adam Landes-Bush is the original cause of a radiation of dad energy that seeps from Christopher at pretty much every moment of every day. After retrieving Adam from the Whitman Mission shortly after the Whitman Massacre, Chris basically said “My weird looking white kid now” and ran with it.

He and Adam had to learn to live together fast with help from Helen, as Adam is mute, and Helen taught them both Plains Sign Talk. But Chris adored Adam and taught him how to shoot, hunt, ride, and accepted his limitations when he hit them. He did his best to give Adam a good life, even when it meant sending him away from impending war to live with Martha, who he barely knew then.

They remain close, sharing more culturally with each other and Idaho than they sometimes do with the western halves of their states. Chris was the first person Adam came out to, and the fact that Chris instantly accepted allowed him to embrace his identity as a gay man in a time that it was socially, at best, simply not talked about. Chris would and has killed to protect this boy, and would gladly do so again.

Western Washington/Washington

Credit to crikadelic

Martha, Adam’s younger sister, views Christopher as a father figure, and so, in turn, he’s a little nicer to her than he is to Beverly sometimes.

Christopher and Martha met at a crossroads in both their lives. Christopher had been involved in the Nez Perce War and come home feeling lost and alone. Beverly had taken off around the same time to run wild in the Southwest, leaving a still very young Martha to fend for herself and Clark, and now Adam. Martha was struggling to handle the load, and Christopher needed to find his place in this unfamiliar world, and fast.

They were able to cooperate quickly, Chris taking on the workload of the farm and helping with Clark, allowing Martha and Adam to start growing and learning the responsibilities they needed to run a state. And in exchange, Martha taught Chris how to read and write English, and helped him improve his skills in speaking the language.

To this day, they haven’t forgotten this point in their lives, and tend to critique each other much more carefully than they critique the other halves of their states.

End of Family, onto other states

Idaho

Credit to crikadelic

Ah, Clark Ashley, who exists in the most interesting little place in Chris’s mind. He’s friends with this guy, almost a father figure, hell, helped raise the little twerp. At the same time, he’s made Adam cry before, so he could also wring his neck.

Clark and Chris have a very good and amiable relationship in general, and enjoy the other’s company. Clark admires Chris a lot, and Chris views him like a much younger version of Beverly, carrying many of her same qualities of extreme stubbornness and rampant emotions, as much as Clark will say he’s nothing like her.

However, the root of Chris’s constant problems with Clark relies mainly on one fact. Clark’s internalized homophobia at himself that affects his and Adam’s relationship, which has swayed from deeply involved romance to barely tolerating being in the same room. When Clark and Adam get into spats with their push me, pull you, almost a relationship, Chris gets caught in the middle, and always takes Adam’s side in the fight. He’s tried to even discourage them from pursuing each other at times to end the constant back and forth, but it’s never worked.

However, as Clark’s started to accept himself in the 21st century, Chris has been the one person who’s been able to reassure him that , yes, for some crazy reason, Adam still likes you, and Chris thinks that this time, for real, Clark is unlearning the toxic culture he absorbed. So, he wishes that crazy kid lots of luck.

Southern California/California

Credit to crikadelic

To say Roberto and Christopher are antagonistic would be the nicest way of putting it. Despite pretty much being of equal levels of importance to Beverly in her family, they cannot tolerate each other.

Roberto blamed Christopher for some of the worst of Beverly’s behaviors in the 1870s and 1880s, and Christopher blamed Roberto for stifling Beverly so much that she hadn’t been able to emotionally mature. Both arguments had some validity, and yet, a divide in opinions had begun.

Nowadays, Chris and Roberto are mainly antagonistic on pure principle. Chris represents a part of Oregon that is noticeably more red, and Roberto represents 55 blue electoral college votes. Chris has been considerably affected by Californication (large real estate development projects generally seen as similar to those in California), and Roberto sees him as very set in the past and unable to move forward.

Let’s just say Beverly has to work out the holiday seating arrangements very carefully.

Montana

Credit to crikadelic

Helen Rankin has been a friend since Chris met her when the Nez Perce went to trade with the Crow. She taught him sign, became an unofficial mother figure to Adam, and, much later on, officially involved with Christopher himself (they dated from 1898 to 1927).

They’re close friends and allies still. Helen’s as strong as a mountain in more ways than one, and one of the few people who can sway Chris when he’s a storm of emotions. She can be just as stubborn as him, and yet he admires her just as she is, and she feels the same about him. She’s saved his ass so many times, and he’s saved hers a few himself. If they needed the other there, they’d be there in a heartbeat.

They also additionally have an “unofficial” daughter to accompany their unofficial son in Adam. I’ve been developing a Missoula, Montana OC (Mariah Welch), and she’s been heavily influenced by Chris over the years, and is about as damn close to him as Adam.

A quick note

Before I move on to my next section, I have been tinkering with my canon in the last several months, after a friend who had allowed me to entwine my Statetalia canon very heavily with theirs ghosted me, and this has affected this character significantly.

Christopher had been involved with their Nyo!Texas in the modern day, with Helen as his best friend. However, no longer comfortable with using this person’s OCs, I have yet to decide if Chris and Helen have, in the last few years, rekindled their relationship, or if my own Texas OC, who is a woman and in the earliest stages of development, is in a romantic relationship with him. This is going to take a long while to decide for personal reasons, and I’m okay with that.

Other States-Brief Thoughts

Northern California/Nyo!California- Inexplicably, he likes Alejandra way more than Roberto. Probably because of their little side project for the independent state of Jefferson.

Kansas- Nowhere near as antagonistic as Beverly and Evelyn’s relationship. He will agree with Evelyn to a certain point, but then he has to start defending his sister. Anyhow, she’s cute.

Nebraska- Logan’s a decent guy to have a drink with, definitely would have been a good guy for Adam if Adam hadn’t been so focused on Clark. IF he and Helen don’t end up getting back together in canon, he’s lowkey pushing for Helen and Logan to get together.

New York- Literally irrelevant to him, why are you asking for an opinion on that jackass?

Texas- Absolutely one amazing, ass-kicking woman, with the gift of aim from the gods, a smoking hot body, and God, she could step on him frankly. (I reiterate, my Texas OC is in development and this is subject to change).

RANDOM FACTS

-Sniper man! Christopher has served as a sniper for several wars. The Nez Perce were noted marksmen during the Nez Perce War, and one of the US’s most noted snipers was from Eastern Oregon.

-Additionally, Christopher has always served in the US Marine Corps when he’s been fighting for the US.

-He originally was given the same last name as Beverly, Joseph-Astor. He dropped Astor following the Nez Perce War as an act of protest.

-Chris has two “paired” names from when I created his character. Beverly’s middle name is Columbia, so Christopher and Columbia, after Christopher Columbus (something neither of them is very thrilled about nowadays), and his middle name of Lewis pairs with Idaho’s first name, Clark, in honor of that famous expedition.

-Has a knife that was from Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery as a trading item. It’s his second most irreplaceable object.

-Speaks Nez Perce (Niimi'ipuutímt), Chinook Jargon, Crow, Plains Sign Talk, ASL, Russian, German, Spanish, Basque, and English.

-Has the most currently established tattoos out of any of my OCs.

#casuallyeatingrocks #oc chris #aph oregon #hws oregon #nyo oregon #ask hipsofsteel #long post

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clumsydarknut · 5 years

Text

Scripted Wishes

Chapter 1: Salamander

Beginning (That’s this! Hi!) | Next | Most Recent

Lucy sighed contentedly. Students shuffled around her, exuberantly seeking out old friends or meandering up the steps to the front of Magnolia High. The front patio of the school, lined with well-kept foliage and comfortable wooden benches, was bustling with the excitement of the new school year. A hint of anxiety clenched at her throat, but as she gazed up at the majestic statue before her she was able to shove it away. She glowed as she read the banner strung between the two large wings of the stone mascot:

Welcome to Magnolia High School

Home of the Dragons

Let’s make it a good year!

She was here. At a real school! Not that her previous educational program hadn’t been, but it lacked the most important thing any school should have: a theatre department. Private academies like those she had attended her whole life rarely fostered anything as rowdy as a theatre program. Konzern Academy had some great things, she’d admit – they were top-notch when it came to academics, and they were the only secondary school in the whole of Fiore to boast a fully-fledged Astronomy program – but the school lacked something incredibly important. Some called it heart. Some called it imagination. And Lucy called it a theatre department.

Lucy flipped out her smartphone and turned on the internal camera, checking to make sure her ponytail was still sitting just right. She smiled giddily, jogging in place momentarily whilst trying (and failing) to contain a squeal. She had intended to come the previous school year when she turned sixteen and could legally move out and away from her father, but it took more work and more saving to build up the funds to afford it than she could do as a fifteen-year-old. After turning sixteen she was able to find work and saved every penny of her tiny, part-time paychecks until she could afford a few months rent somewhere in Magnolia City. Her father certainly wasn’t happy about her working jobs behind his back, and she could only imagine how much less happy he was the morning he discovered she wasn’t on the estate anymore, but at least he hadn’t come interfering as of yet.

Anxiety gripped her throat again. She hadn’t heard anything from him – no calls, no texts, and no limos to drag her back to the estate. It was somewhat concerning. But, determined to enjoy herself, she swallowed down the knot in her throat and rushed past the dragon monument into the building.

The main lobby was cool and bright, despite the massive number of people scattered about in clumps. The variety in tastes and personalities was quite apparent from a single glance. There were no uniforms. She had hated the dress code at Konzern Academy. It left no room for individualization, and even though she looked fantastic in her school shirt, she wanted to wear cute clothes intentionally rather than by obligation. Like she could do here. Like she was currently doing. She had specially picked this outfit. She wore a nicely fitted light yellow blouse hanging loose over a thigh-length black skirt to really accentuate her petite structure. Around her ponytail was tied a large black bow, and she had splurged a bit to pick out some cheap black jewelry just for today. She was so excited about being herself that she even took the time to lace her black boots with yellow laces to complete the look. Seeing all the other variety in the room made her feel right at home as she was dressed, and she liked it.

It’s so different, she thought, weaving between groups. It still feels like high school, but there’s so much more energy. She snuck her way between a group of darkly clad metalheads and a group of bubbly freshmen to the main office.

“Excuse me?” she said, drawing the attention of the secretary.

“Ah, Lucy!” the woman replied, “I assume you’re here about your schedule adjustments?”

Lucy smiled and nodded.

“Well, I have good news and bad news,” the woman continued, “We were able to transfer all of your credits from Konzern Academy, so you are right on track for graduation.”

“Yes!” Lucy exclaimed, pumping her fist. That was the first step to the theatre department: not having to take extra classes to make up for non-transferrable credits.

“However,” she interjected, “ while we were able to replace one of your make-up classes with the Japanese course you requested, we can’t immediately add you to the Theatre course.”

Lucy’s heart sank, but before she could ask why the woman smiled brightly and a flicker of hope returned.

“Because the upper-level drama courses are audition only, we can’t override this and enroll you from the office. But if you take this sheet and have Director Dreyar sign here-“ she pointed, “and here-“ pointing again, “we can fit it perfectly into the gap in your schedule.”

Lucy couldn’t believe how smoothly this was working out. Taking the form, she paused and asked, “He can just sign this without me auditioning?”

“Oh sure honey,” the woman responded, “From what I understand, you don’t need to audition to be a part of the crew or the pit orchestra, but the system has them all lumped under one class that requires director approval. If you still want to perform you can set up an audition for next semester, but I can tell you’re itching to sink your teeth into this business.” She winked at Lucy, triggering all sorts of excited bubbles in her stomach. Lucy was used to getting special attention from people because of her family name, but it had always felt cold and obligatory. This secretary – despite Lucy not knowing her name – had gone above and beyond, and not for any reason but a love for the students at the school. That warmness was a nice change from the superficial motions she had grown accustomed to.

“Thank you sooooo much!” she squealed.

“My pleasure, hon!” she chimed, “Oh, and Lucy…”

“Yes ma’am?”

“We’ve already spoken with your instructors. They’ve all agreed not to call out your last name when taking roll.”

Lucy gasped. “That’s really okay?”

“Perfectly okay. The faculty were very understanding of your wish to conceal that.” She snickered and continued, “It’s certainly more reasonable than when a student asked the whole faculty to call her Daphne instead of her real name in order to pull an April Fool’s joke 7 months later.” Lucy burst out laughing.

“Yes, it was quite the year,” the secretary giggled, “but if we learned anything from that experience, it’s that it would certainly help the faculty to fulfill your request if you gently reminded them before class for the first couple weeks.

“That’s totally understandable,” Lucy replied, smiling and nodding. “I’ll be sure to do so.”

“Alright, honey, if you need anything else we’re always happy to help. Just get us that form back by Wednesday and you’ll be all good to go.”

Lucy smiled and left with a cheerful thank you. She returned to the lobby just in time to hear the intercom crackle.

“WELCOME BACK DRAGONS! I hope it’s been a good summer break! We will now begin our Welcome Assembly! Please make your way to the auditorium! …and this assembly is mandatory for students and faculty!”

Lucy couldn’t help but giggle at the announcement. A line like that would never have graced the halls of Konzern Academy. She liked it here already.

The auditorium finally began to settle down as the principal took the stage. Lucy had found a seat near the sound booth, scrunched between a burly white-haired senior and a particularly animated freshman girl. She had picked this seat hoping to take a good look at the sound and lights equipment, but the fact that every student in every seat had their bags left little room for looking around. As the principal began his remarks, she couldn’t help but hear the whispered conversation of the freshman and her friends.

“Did you really meet him?”

“What was he like?”

“I can’t even-!”

Who could they be talking about?

“I want to see him!”

“Maybe we can catch him outside after the assembly?!”

“I can’t believe Salamander goes here!”

Lucy blinked.

“My sister was talking about his fire tricks at last year’s talent show!”

“I hear he does special effects too!”

Lucy had heard that name. Where had she heard it?

“He’s definitely the hottest guy in the drama club- get it? Hottest? Because he does fire tricks?”

“Ughhhhh don’t make stupid puns Cass!”

There it was! The school’s Instagram had tagged a Salamander in a lot of their posts about the drama club! She had seen it on occasion and wondered who in the world managed to get the username Salamander without attaching any extra symbols or numbers. She hadn’t been following the school Instagram for long and she’d never bothered to watch any of the video posts – perhaps she would have to later. For now, though, this seemed to be a great stroke of luck. If he was part of the theatre department, he could probably introduce her to Director Dreyar. She could just follow those girls after the assembly when the lunch break started, and they’d lead her right to a known member of the club she was after.

She smiled and leaned back in content – as much as she could lean back anyway. Trying to get comfortable in the cramped space was quite difficult. She directed her attention away from the chatty girls and back to the stage, where the assistant principal was now speaking about general rules and regulations.

“…and remember,” the gruff man continued, “The dress code is in effect from the moment the doors are unlocked until the dismissal bell rings. If you’re intending to wear something against the dress code to your extracurriculars, it had better be covered until then. Thespians, I’m looking at you.”

Most of the upperclassmen laughed at the quip, and Lucy faintly heard “My armor didn’t even show any skin! How was that against the dress code?!” from somewhere down near the stage.

She had definitely picked the right school. As the assembly continued there were many casual quips directed at a huge variety of different clubs and departments, and the relaxed interactions were completely different from the uptight attitude that permeated Konzern Academy. She was particularly surprised when the Student Body Officers introduced themselves and showed a video they had made specifically for the welcome assembly. The humor and lightheartedness here was refreshing, and as the meeting ended, she couldn’t wait to start classes.

The squeal of the girls next to her when the lights came up called her attention back to her plans. She was going to follow them to Salamander, right? She squeezed out of her seat with her bag, following them down the row, down the stairs, and back out into the lobby. Their sudden, shrill screams let her know that they had found who they were looking for – or at least, a crowd of more freshmen surrounding who she hoped was the Salamander in question.

She maneuvered her way through the mob of underclassmen until she reached the front. Her eyes boggled.

The boy was tall, with dark blue hair and a chiseled jaw. The shape of his face was accented by his mild undercut hairstyle, which left him with delicious sideburns and windswept bangs. Lucy felt her heart quicken as his thin, dark eyebrows drew down and his lips curled up into a smirk. His navy blue blazer and white button-up emphasized his thin but attractive build, and his loose, maroon tie gave his dark eyes an added layer of depth. Forget the fire tricks, this guy was hot. He nonchalantly brushed his bangs to the side, revealing a blue tat above his eye that looked somewhat like two horseshoes stuck together. He’s daring enough to put a tat right on his face? she thought excitedly. That would not have flown at Konzern.

“Oh you’re too kind,” he chuckled, some of the girls squealing and turning pink. He tossed his head, flipping his hair and looking directly at Lucy with a wink.

Lucy felt her breath catch and she turned away, blushing. He noticed me? she thought. Well, I guess I am the only junior in a crowd full of freshmen.

“Oi, Loke!” She felt someone push past her.

The boy was about her age, standing just a few inches taller than herself. He wore a thin but large red jacket and some well-loved black jeans. The jacket was zipped almost all the way, but the mustard-yellow hem of a shirt was still somewhat visible underneath. His sneakers were the same mustard yellow, and around his neck was wrapped a scaly-looking white scarf. He had a black and white backpack slung over his shoulder, his free hand shoved into his jacket pocket. His eyes were black and alert, his grin showing off fang-like canines, and his hair… now that was a surprise. His messy, spiky hair was a pleasant shade of sakura pink.

“Haven’t seen you all summer! How was-“ he cut off abruptly.

Salamander’s smile wavered as he turned toward the newcomer.

“You’re not Loke,” the pinkette grumbled.

“No, but I’m sure that can’t be the only reason you came over here,” Salamander replied smoothly, “but unfortunately you’ll have to wait in line just like the rest of these lovely ladies.” Several girls gasped and cooed.

“What are you talking about?” the boy replied, eyes raising in genuine surprise.

Salamander sighed, “Well, I’ve never gone out with another guy before, but I’m open to trying new things.”

The pinkette’s eyebrows furrowed and his cheeks tinged red as he shouted, “I-I’m not gay! I was literally just looking for a friend.” Lucy’s sudden attraction to the preppy junior diminished when he smirked mockingly.

“Oh that’s too bad,” he sneered, “We could have had lots of fun. But I guess that means more for the ladies.”

The boy grimaced, then retorted, “How are any of them supposed to have fun when you’re wearing that freaky mask? Oh, whoops, I guess that’s just your face.”

Lucy suppressed a giggle, but the crowd of girls was filled with gasps of abhorrence. The dark-haired boy stuttered for a moment, glaring, before cooling off and continuing.

“Well, no matter your hesitance on exploring your true feelings, closet dweller, you’re still invited to my back to school bash tonight,” he smirked, “As are all of you beautiful ladies! I hope to see every one of you there!” Girls cooed and squealed as he turned away and waltzed down the hall. The pink-haired boy glowered for a second, then sighed, rubbing the back of his head. Then, realizing something, he looked right up at Lucy.

Lucy gave a start. She hadn’t moved an inch and the crowd had dissipated, leaving just her and the pinkette, and she was looking right at him. Whoops. Way to make things awkward, Luce.

Snapping back to the present, she said, “Well he’s kind of a jerk, isn’t he?”

The boy’s blank look vanished as he grinned, saying, “Kind of? More like definitely.”

They laughed, the awkwardness vanishing.

“I’m Lucy,” she said, smiling and holding out her hand.

“Natsu,” he replied, shaking it in return. His voice had a rough quality to it, but not so much that “rough” was the right word. It wasn’t as deep as Salamander’s had been, but it had an element of depth that was pleasant to listen to. “You don’t seem the type to get caught in one of those fangirl circles.”

She laughed, “No, but I heard some girls in the auditorium talking about him and I was sort of curious. I’m brand new here, so…”

“Oh really?” he perked up. “Well, welcome to Magnolia!”

“Thanks!” she giggled, continuing, “It’s lunch time now, right? Mind if I sit with you?”

He chuckled, “You’re just asking because I’m the only person you’ve met, huh?”

Lucy’s mouth hung open, a tinge of shock prickling across her face before she drew her eyebrows down in slight annoyance and said, “N-no! How rude, assuming something like that just because I’m new!”

He gave her a sarcastic look.

She gave an irritated scowl. “Okay, you’re right, but I also thought you were kind of cool talking to that preppy jerk! You kind of snapped me out of the initial ‘wow he’s hot’ moment so I could think straight, and that automatically makes you better than him.” She turned away in a false huff. “Jeez, this is what I get for trying to be friendly?”

Natsu laughed out loud, running a hand through his spiked hair. “Well, I’m not new here, so you’re not the only person I’ve met, and I’m still cool with joining me.” He started off down the hall.

She smirked and followed after him. First friend! This day is working out pretty well!

The cafeteria was noisy and bright. High ceilings and large windows made it feel roomy and pleasant, despite the floor being overcrowded with circular tables. Lucky for Lucy, most of the students in the room had already gone through the lunch line, so it looked as though there wouldn’t be much of a wait. She followed Natsu over to the stack of trays and slid into the line behind him.

“Hey, do me a favor?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Sure, what’s up?” she replied, somewhat surprised.

“Those stingy lunch ladies don’t let you take more than one of anything, even if you swear you’ll eat it,” he grumbled, “so would you mind getting one of everything and letting me have anything you don’t want?”

Lucy blinked, then broke into giggles. “Sure, I can do that. It’s the least I can do for breaking me out of the fangirl trance earlier.”

He smiled and continued through the line. Because it was only the first day and the school schedule was all out of whack, the lunch ladies had just opted to order several hundred boxes of pepperoni pizza rather than offer multiple main dishes. Lucy didn’t mind, as a single slice and a carton of milk would probably fill her up, but the way Natsu pestered the lunch ladies for an extra slice and attempted to swipe an extra thing of grapes made her pretty sure he wasn’t happy with the idea. True to her word, though, she made sure to get a scoop of corn and a cup of peaches even though she had no intention of touching either.

“I don’t see any of my friends around…” Natsu mumbled as they pulled away from the serving area, scanning the room. He looked over his shoulder at her. “I guess I’ll just have to introduce you later. Want to sit outside?”

She gave him an enthusiastic nod and he returned a toothy grin. He led her through the tables away from where they had entered and pushed open the door, balancing his tray in one hand. It opened to a patio that stretched along the back side of the school, though the area near the door was somewhat sectioned off by decorative concrete planters and filled with round wire tables. Beyond the seating area, grass sloped down slightly from the patio to the fence marking off the athletic fields. So far, this was the only part of Magnolia High that reminded her of Konzern Academy. Both schools had remarkably fine landscaping.

Natsu led her past the concrete planters and plopped down at the top of the grassy slope. She did the same, still somewhat ogling at the extent the rear of the school had been decorated.

“Alright, what can I take?” he asked, shifting things around on his tray.

“Oh right!” Lucy said. She took a glance at her crowded tray. She unfolded her napkin and moved her slice of pizza on to it, picked up her milk carton, and then held out the tray to Natsu. “You can have the rest. This is all I want.”

Natsu gave her a surprised look without reaching out for it.

“You sure?” he marveled.

“Oh yeah I don’t eat much.” She held out the tray, nodding to him.

He looked it over and took it. After a second, he pulled the school-made brownies off both her tray and his own, handing them back to her.

“Oh no I’m good,” she laughed, “It’s really okay.”

“I know,” he said, “but I’m not a fan of sweets anyway. Go on.”

Figuring he would insist if she refused, she took them both and sat them in her lap with her pizza slice.

“So,” he began, folding his pizza like a taco, “you’re new right?”

She nodded, opening her milk carton. “Yeah, I just transferred from Konzern Academy.”

“Tha’ private shool wi’ the astrology thingy?” he said, mouth full.

“That’s the one,” she said, giggling and taking a sip, “I was in the astrology program, actually, but the rest of the school… Kind of dead in terms of fun.”

He nodded, shoving the rest of his pizza into his mouth.

“I actually came here because of the theatre program,” she continued, “The only arts Konzern offers are classical training in music and whatnot, and as much as I respect people who play violin concertos, it’s just a bit uptight for me. Not to mention the whole dress code thing where we all look like identical little aristocrats.”

Natsu almost choked on the grape he had just popped into his mouth, snickering.

She smiled, taking a bite out of a brownie. “When I heard Magnolia’s theatre department partnered with the professional theatre company in town I just had to come here. I guess I could have just auditioned for the theatre company without transferring schools and doing it on my own time, but there’s no way I’d be good enough to get in just like that.”

Natsu shook his head, swallowing the last peach in his fruit cup, “I bet you could’ve gotten in just fine.”

She laughed as he violently shoved more food into his mouth. “Well, maybe, but that still would have left me with wearing those stupid uniforms every day.”

He paused, cheeks full, then shrugged and nodded.

Lucy smiled and continued eating.

Natsu swallowed. “What do you think so far?”

“Oh I love it!” she bubbled. “There are so many interesting people, and it seems like there’s always something fun going on.”

Natsu laughed, mouth full of corn, “Bu’ I though’ I wash the only pershon you met!”

Lucy swallowed the last bite of her pizza, blushing. “Well yeah, but it’s easy to see when everyone isn’t wearing the same thing!”

“I guess that’s true,” Natsu replied, downing his milk carton in a single gulp.

Lucy blinked, just now taking in how much food the pinkette had shoved into his face. When they had come out here, both trays were overflowing with fruit cups and scoops of vegetables. Now, only minutes later, his tray was completely cleaned off, and he was almost done with Lucy’s. She still had a brownie and most of her milk left.

“Whatcha starin’ at?” Natsu shoved an apple slice into his mouth. “Ish there shomething on my jacket?”

She giggled and shook her head. “I just can’t believe you ate so much.” She took a bite from her brownie.

“Thish? Thish ish barely a meal.” He swallowed. “But I ought to thank you. Even though I asked you to get extra, I wasn’t expecting you to let me have that much.” He grinned. “Gochisou sama deshita![1]”

Lucy’s jaw dropped, and forgetting her mouth was full of brownie, said, “You shpeak Japaneshe?”

He started in confusion, then said, “Sukoshi hanaseru. Lucy-san mo?[2]”

“Watashi mo![3]” she squealed.

Natsu’s face lit up and his grin got even bigger. “Waaa sugeeei[4] are you in second year Japanese then?”

“I am!” she chimed.

“Yosh! Moete kita so![5]” Lucy was quite surprised at her luck. Not only had she made a friend on day one, but he also happened to be in one of her more difficult classes. Half the time when she met people on the first day of school they ended up not having a single period with her and they never spoke again. She was glad this wasn’t the case with the quirky pinkette.

Just then, the bell rang, signaling the beginning of the rest of the day’s activities. Natsu gave a little start, looked down at the remaining food on Lucy’s tray, then looked up at her.

“Think I can finish?” he said with a grin.

“We’ve only got five minutes to get to class, don’t we?” she replied, furrowing her brow in confusion.

“You’re right,” he said, grinning wider, “That’s plenty of time!” Suddenly he was scooping food into his mouth at an even faster pace, occasionally dropping corn kernels into the grass. Lucy recoiled slightly. Less than a minute later he had cleaned the tray completely.

“Well, thanks again, Lucy,” he hummed, getting to his feet with a stretch, “Guess I’ll see you in Japanese?”

“Sounds like.” She got to her feet and popped the last bite of brownie into her mouth.

“Alrighty,” he said, holding out a hand, “Yoroshiku na.[6]”

“Kochira koso.[7]”

Despite thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere of Magnolia High, by her third class she started to miss the efficiency of Konzern Academy. The first day at Magnolia was broken into two segments, where the welcome assembly took up the first half of the morning, lunch was served, and then the students would visit each of their classes for only twenty minutes before going back home. In some ways it was helpful – it prevented the teachers from giving out any homework on day one and allowed new students to find their way around without as much stress, but it left almost no time to meet anyone in any of the classes. She had already been to her first five classes and hadn’t been able to make friends with anyone but Natsu. It hadn’t helped that she had gotten horribly lost a few times and ended up at all but her first class five minutes late.

While the lack of social interaction was disappointing, she had started to get a feel for what classes here would be like. Her first period math teacher seemed quite nice, despite his intimidatingly blocky features. He had given out a syllabus that had the words Money is important, but love is what fuels the world printed in bold underneath his contact email, which Lucy took to be a good sign. The Japanese professor was a little harsher, though, as even waving across the room to Natsu had the woman shooting her an annoyed look. Her history class seemed interesting – as long as she could get used to the teacher saying “actually” much too often – and Natsu was also in her gym class, so dealing with the, um, somewhat excitable coach couldn’t be too bad. She was especially looking forward to her physics class with Prof. Clive, whose school year opener had been to karate chop a cinder block in half and explain how he did it with physics. She had no doubt her fifth period was going to be a blast.

Now she wandered down a hall in what she hoped was the direction of her English class. There were a few other students bustling about, but not enough to get in her way at any point. Perhaps it’s this way? The classroom numbers are going up, so I must be headed to the right place. C’mon, Lucy, it’s almost the end of the day, you’ve just got to find this one-

She cut herself off and came to a halt. Crap. It’s almost the end of the day. I still need Director Dreyar’s signature. But I guess it’s only Monday and they needed it by Wednes-

“You need Director Dreyar’s signature?”

Lucy whipped around toward the smooth voice. Salamander was leaning against the lockers not far away, staring at her through his windswept bangs.

Abruptly realizing she had been talking to herself, she sputtered, “Well, yeah, I’m trying to transfer into the theatre course.”

Salamander pushed off the lockers and swaggered closer. “You know, I’ve been looking for you. After I saw you in that crowd this morning, I knew I had to personally invite you to my party tonight.”

Lucy gulped, her heart quickening at his attractiveness despite his less than appealing attitude. “I’m not really a party person,” she replied.

“Aw, just this once?” he coaxed, “I’m a member of the drama club. If you come, I’d be happy to introduce you to Director Dreyar tomorrow.”

Lucy gave a start. She didn’t have any idea what Director Dreyar looked like, nor did she know where his classroom was. Perhaps one party couldn’t hurt? It wasn’t like this Salamander guy set of any major red flags – not anything she couldn’t handle anyway.

“Alright, but you’ve gotta do one other thing for me.”

“Oh?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

She looked sheepishly down at her feet, and asked, “Where’s room 213?”

Salamander blinked, then broke into chuckles. “Right up those stairs, down the first hall on the right, second or third door on your left.”

“Thanks,” she said, starting off.

“Wait, take this.” He handed her a folded piece of paper. “You’re going to need to know where the party is, won’t you?”

She shoved it in her pocket, nodded with a polite smile, and took off up the stairs.

She got to her classroom with a few minutes to spare. Glancing around the room, she noticed Natsu at a desk towards the back, tilting his chair back on two legs with his arms behind his head.

“Oi, Luce!” he smiled, giving a slight wave. “Way to be on time this time!”

Lucy frowned at him, plopping into the adjacent desk. “Gym wasn’t my fault. The room number was literally just ‘the rec center’ so you can’t blame me for getting lost.”

“What was different about this class then?” he teased.

“For your information,” she replied matter-of-factly, “That preppy guy from this morning gave me directions.”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed, “That guy is way too full of himself to be nice.”

“He did though,” she grinned, “and he personally invited me to his party.”

Natsu raised an eyebrow. “You planning on going to that?”

“Yeah, I am,” she chirped.

“Whatever,” he said, shrugging.

The rest of that class was rather dull. Mr. Melon, their English professor, had perfected the art of using lots of pretty words and not saying much at all. Natsu drifted off to sleep minutes after the lecture started, and Lucy couldn’t help but snicker at the dribble sneaking out the side of his mouth. When the bell rang fifteen minutes later, she didn’t bother to nudge him awake – he could be late to his next class. It would be the perfect revenge for teasing her about getting lost.

She stepped out into the hall and pulled out her schedule. She scanned down to the bottom and found a blank. Oh, right, she thought, I haven’t gotten Director Dreyar’s signature yet. But there’s only 20 minutes of class left, and I have no idea where to find him… She took a glance around the hall, tapping her finger on her chin. I guess I could just head home. Salamander said he’d introduce me to Director Dreyar tomorrow anyway.

She took a peek back into the classroom just in time to see Mr. Melon slam a textbook on Natsu’s desk, shocking him awake. She giggled and left for home.

Lucy’s heart pounded as she approached the door of the house. It was obvious to see the party was already well underway, as green and blue lights flashed behind the curtains and the deep thump of a subwoofer carried out to the street. Lucy was surprised none of the neighbors had called the police, honestly. Perhaps this was the norm around this part of town.

She tugged up on her sleeveless black dress and smoothed out the short skirt over her thighs, then raised a hand to knock. Before her fingers touched wood, it swung open.

“Ah, I’ve been waiting for you!” Salamander grinned. To Lucy’s surprise, his gaze held steady on her face, despite her rather skimpy attire. “Come on in! Things just got started.” He led her through the dimly lit entryway into the kitchen, grabbing two red solo cups off the counter.

“The name’s Bora, by the way,” he said, offering her a drink.

“Lucy,” she said, eyeing the cup, “but I don’t drink, thanks.”

Bora chuckled. “It’s not alcohol, just ginger ale. If you need to get drunk to have fun, you can’t be a very interesting person.” He shot her a clever smirk. “Besides, how do you think we throw wild parties in the middle of the neighborhood without getting arrested?”

A bit of a grin snuck onto her face. Maybe this guy isn’t as bad as I thought. Still, accepting drinks from someone she hardly knew at a party with tons of people hardly seemed like a good idea.

“Do you mind if I poor my own?” she asked, leaning against the counter.

“Not at all,” he said. He snatched a cup and a 2-liter off the kitchen island across from them and handed them to her, then taking a swig from his own glass.

She smiled, poured her cup a little over half full and took a drink. The carbonated soda bubbled across her tongue and down her throat, leaving the dark taste of cherry cola.

“So I heard you do fire tricks,” Lucy commented to Bora.

“That I do,” he replied suavely. “Special effects, too, but that’s not as fun.”

“Oh?” Lucy queried. “How so?”

“Well, both end up looking pretty cool…” He brushed his bangs to the side. “…but when I’m doing the tricks, the audience can see me do it.”

Lucy bit her lip, heart rate picking up momentarily. “And that’s more exciting?”

“Oh most definitely. Then I can see the excitement in the eyes of my fans.” Leaning close, he breathed, “Almost like that look in your eyes right now.”

Lucy jumped, blushing a tad. He was right, he was most definitely attractive, and she was most definitely not hiding that she thought so. She stammered, “I-I have no idea what you mean.”

He grinned and pulled away. “I know you do, but if you want to play things slow tonight then I respect that.” He tilted his head in the direction of the lights, and she followed after him. Maybe coming was a good idea after all.

Natsu groaned as he rolled and stretched his shoulders. Somehow Coach Coco got it into her head that they should kick off the year with a double-length double-strength conditioning day, despite the fact cross country had started practices two weeks ago. He didn’t mind working out and did so regularly on his own, but damn that coach had some intense drills.

It was now pretty late, and the only light left was the leftovers of a vanishing sunset. The street lights had already come on, and he was grateful for the help in finding his spot in the parking lot. Just as he was stepping off the curb onto the asphalt, he heard two female voices from behind him.

“Dangit, the party’s probably started by now.”

“I wish Coach hadn’t decided to go nuts today, then we could have gone.”

“Too late now, by the time I finished getting all dolled up there would hardly be a party left.”

“It’s too bad. I bet Salamander will do some of his fire tricks since he’s the one hosting.”

Natsu stopped dead in his tracks.

“I’ve heard so much about him just today.” Peeking over his shoulder, he could see the girls were pretty small – likely freshmen. So they don’t know.

“My sophomore friend said he’s the best act at the talent show. I really wish we could have gone and seen him in person!”

Natsu turned around, and called, “Excuse me!”

The girls jumped a bit, not aware there was someone else out here.

“You guys were talking about a party?” he said, stepping forward. “Mind telling me where at?”

The smaller girl smiled. “No problem! I have the address right here.” She pulled a folded, pink post-it out of her pocket and handed it to him.

“Thanks!” he said, flashing a grin. He started back towards the lot, then remembered something.

“Hey! By the way…”

“I never would have thought…”

Bora smirked, tossing his hair back. “Thought what?”

Lucy leaned back into the couch, taking a sip of her drink. “Thought that a guy dressed like that could be anything but shallow.”

“A man has to have style,” Bora replied, tugging on his maroon tie. “I could say the same about you.”

It was true. Lucy was rather daring in showing as much cleavage as she did. She blushed lightly and heard him sigh in response. He leaned a little closer to her, dark eyes gazing into hers. She felt her heart flutter.

“You know, you’re quite beautiful,” he breathed. Lucy simply soaked in his gaze. He leaned a little closer, then looked down.

“Oh hey,” he said, smiling a tad, “Your glass is almost empty. Let me get you a refill.”

He took the cup from her smoothly and glided away into the kitchen. She let out a shaky breath, feeling her heart pound in her chest, cheeks heating up. The idea that he might be interested in her… it was exhilarating.

He returned, sitting down and passing her the newly filled plastic cup with a grin. She took it, blushing and taking a sip.

They talked for a few more minutes, exchanging flirty compliments and deep stares. Then Bora stood up, offering her a hand.

“Whatcha doing?” Lucy asked, warmth building in her chest.

“I wanna show you something,” he said simply, “Out on the back porch.”

She felt her heart hitch and she took his hand, following him out through some cabana-style French doors into the cool night air. The sky was clear and glittering with stars, but as he led her to the banister it was the pool he pointed to. She gasped to see the same night sky reflected perfectly on the surface.

“On clear nights like this,” he whispered, “The pool and the sky are so beautiful. Like you.”

She sighed, smiling at the compliment, dazedly watching a shooting star fly across the reflection in the pool.

Suddenly she started to wobble, leaning more onto the banister. “Bora, I’m a little tired…”

He smiled gently at her and led her by the hand back inside. Lucy’s eyes started to droop and she was only vaguely aware that, rather than leading her back to the couch in the living room, he had pulled her into a dark bedroom.

She blinked, mumbling, “Bora, what…? We’ll miss more of the party…”

Bora slid the door shut behind him and stepped up to her, only inches away. He slid one arm around her waist and brushed her cheek with his free hand.

“Don’t worry, we’ll have more fun in here,” he hummed, nudging her backwards toward the bed.

Her eyes flashed open as widely as they would go. “B-Bora, what are you…?”

With a sudden ferocity he pushed her down, landing on top of her on the plush mattress. She tried to let out a yelp, but it was cut off when his lips were suddenly smashed against hers. She tried to wrench her face away, but her muscles didn’t seem to respond half as well as they should have. Panic started to well up in her.

Trying to protest through his lips she pushed on his shoulders with as much strength as her arms would yield, though it wasn’t much. Bora grabbed her hands, lifting them above her head and pinning them with his elbow. She whimpered as his other hand slid down her side roughly and approached the edge of her skirt. Her heart raced as she struggled under his weight. He lifted his lips from hers and moved his face to her neck. Lucy cried and attempted a shout, but it was like all the strength had left her. My drink… she thought weakly, He must have spiked it… when he got me a refill…

She tried digging her nails into his arm as she felt his sweaty hand inch up her thigh. Sobbing and kicking weakly she heard him breathe into her ear, “You must be enjoying this, huh?” She bit her lip and turned her head away.

Suddenly the door was thrown open and a burst of orange light splayed across the room as Bora was yanked off of her, falling against the wall with a thud. The orange light flickered as a figure shifted into the space between her and Bora. Groggily, she registered pink hair and a scaly white scarf.

“N-Natsu?” she stammered. He looked over his shoulder at her, but she couldn’t see his expression in the shadow cast over his face.

Bora took the glance as an opportunity, launching off the wall at Natsu and attempting to land a left hook. Natsu managed to dodge most of the way, turning what would have been a dark bruise into a light graze on his cheek. Lucy saw him grab Bora’s shoulders, barely able to make out what was going on in the dim light. She heard a nasty crunch of sheetrock and a loud grown before feeling a gentle but strong hand lifting her into a sitting position.

“Lucy, daijoubu ka?[8]” he panted.

“I-I think s-so…” she stammered, “He told m-me he c-could… g-get me in the d-drama c-course… H-he m-must have s-spiked my d-drink… I can’t m-move…”

“I figured, “ he growled, “Some of the other girls looked pretty groggy. I already called the cops. I’ll get you out of-“ A hand fisted in Natsu’s spikey hair, yanking him back.

“You BASTARD!” Bora roared, throwing Natsu to the floor, “I’ll teach you to mess with the Salamander!”

Natsu took a few hits before catching Bora’s wrist and landing a right hook of his own. Bora reeled back enough for Natsu to slip out from under him, clambering to his feet. As Bora struggled to stand, Natsu pulled a box from his pocket and flicked it open. A small flame licked out of the corner. A lighter? To Lucy’s surprise, Natsu held the small flame to his palm, and his whole hand burst into flame.

She yelped, recoiling as the bright fist lit up the room. Bora’s eyes bulged, and he snarled, “Just who are you?!”

Natsu gave him a smoldering glare, shadows dancing on his face.

“The guy behind the username you’ve been usurping.”

Bora’s shocked face was met with a flaming uppercut, and then he was out cold.

Natsu extinguished the flame on his fist before clamoring to where Lucy sat.

“Lucy,” he breathed, looking her in the eyes, “Where do you live? I’ll get you home.”

“S-Sakura… Avenue…” she mumbled, blinking slowly, “231C… on the canal…”

“Okay, not far. Hey stay with me Luce,” he replied, her head starting to droop, “Do you have your house key?”

He followed her lidded gaze towards the door, seeing a bag and a pair of heels tossed haphazardly next to the frame. He picked up the shoes and put them in the bag, glancing around for anything else in the room that might be hers before slinging it over his shoulder. He returned to the bed.

“I’m going to pick you up,” he whispered as calmly as he could muster. Lucy simply stared at him, heavy eyes barely holding on to consciousness. He felt a slight flinch as he put an arm behind her back.

“You can trust me,” he continued, hooking his elbow under her knees and beginning to rise. “I won’t hurt you. Let’s get you home.”

He lifted her off the bed and swiftly made his way toward the front door, avoiding the scorched, unconscious teens he had left in his wake when he rushed inside. Several of the girls – all freshmen and sophomores, it seemed – were huddled together in the corner, crying. He had already told them the police were on their way, and that all they had to do was tell them what happened. He knew they wouldn’t get in trouble – this was a dry party, after all, and the drugging was solely Bora and his cronies’ faults. Those girls would be fine, but Natsu felt particularly responsible for this one.

She came to this party, he thought angrily, just to get into Fairy Tail? She could have just asked me. I should have paid more attention to her when she was talking about her plans during lunch – maybe this wouldn’t have happened at all.

He reached his cerulean blue motorcycle and gingerly climbed into the seat, using the handlebars and his left arm to cradle Lucy securely in front of him. She was totally unconscious now. Her house wasn’t far, though, and if he went slowly he ought to be able to get her there safely.

As he started his bike, he had the sudden impression that something was… off. He looked around, not noticing anything out of the ordinary. The only noticeable oddity was one of the street lights slightly flickering rather than holding a constant glow. The air was cool but not cold, just as it should be for a late August night, and the only scent in the air was freshly cut grass and a hint of the lighter fluid he still had on his fingers. But something felt weird. Almost reminiscent of the feeling of déjà vu, but not quite the same.

Just as suddenly as the feeling had surfaced, it was gone again. He shook his head lightly and drove away.

[1] Thanks for the meal!

[2] I can speak a little. Can you?

[3] Me too!

[4] Whoa awesomeeee

[5] I’m all fired up!

[6] Pleased to meet you.

[7] Likewise.

[8] Are you okay?

#fairy tail #scripted wishes #fanfiction #japanese #anime #nalu #lolu #jerza #gajevy #gruvia

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tamersa · 5 years

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I’m thinking about W and OOO a lot lately (writing fics rewatching some parts etc) and I like OOO as a series more. Still I wanted to know why so I made this VS battle for my own amusement:

MAIN RIDER: Battle between Eiji And Shotaro: Its hard one, both are interesting, have good plot twists, their characterization so nicely made and they both likable. Yet it is Shotaro win here: so relatable, and his range of emotions is great to! The Thing is Eiji was made to be”dried up” and thats the reason why his mental and emotional behave is like it is. First round winner : W THE ONE NEAR MAIN RIDER (LOL): So now it is Ankh and Philip: This one is bit easier. Ankh has way more screen time and is it written so much better. They do have some similarities: both are mind power of the dynamic duo, have some issues with the previous families, crazy hair style and have doubts about their Rider ( or other half) intelligence. The thing is Eiji takes almost no shit form Ankh when he cross the line too much. The Birb man has to pay for his mistakes and sometime the price is huge. Philip on the other hand has his tragic background but his mistakes are sugarcoated by his partner and not addressed at all. Because of that with more modest screen time his character is not as fleshed out as it could be. Mor rant on Ankh below hehehe Second round winner: OOO FEMALE CAST: In OOO we have: Hina, Chiyako and Satonaka, while W give us: Akiko, Wakana and Saeko. I like Hina I really do, but they didn't use her gimmick as good as they could. She should have throw more barrels or something! Also bit too passive sometimes? Chiyako is spot of supporting chara, funny warm energetic. Yes, good. Satonaka has her good points too: taking no shit from anyone and treating her work as well, work and not some life mission. But then we go to W side and oh boy, Akiko, my love! She is just the best Rider lady I even saw! Funny, dorky, has more to do, has the slipper, is actually useful even if not have special powers. Well thats debatable too, that wand made from slippers did work lool. But yes even if she is mostly comic relief, because of her Xtreeme was possible! Also She found that devil's tail. And got that name in her dream. She has guts has flaws also but really. I love her to bits. Wakana is interesting too: spoiled princess who suddenly has responsibilities. And Saeko: the dark lady with twisted desires, helping her hated sister in the end. Undoubtedly this round has one Queen:

Third round winner: W SECONDARY RIDER Terui Ryu vs Date Akira and Gotou Shintaro. Well its two vs one and it shows. Terui has that tragic background, and his bitterness fades away so he could be true city defender. Yet for me it was done bit clunky. There could be put more emotions and struggle into it. He looks cool in the red leather tho. Also he and Akiko are cute together. On the other hand Date and Gotou dynamic is so pure. Also Date is hilarious as hell! Both him and Ryu use Rider suit for other purpose than defend others at the beginning ( well money and revenge), but Date is somehow nicer since the beginning. And Gotous is cute guy who has his own little expansion ark. So yes, sorry red boy, those housbandos win this one. Fourth round winner: OOO VILLAINS On one side we have Sonozaki's and X foundation, On the other well Greeeds. It looks like one side have more villain types so it would win but... Sonozaki family makes Gaia Memories to make super humans and then let only them to live on this planet because some Earth tears or something. Experiments, no one knows who will live. Ryubee is just laughing old man wit terror, his older daughter is psycho maniac with bad taste for men, younger one is spoiled and doesn't know whats going on at all. It works somehow but not as smooth at it should. Some things are not explained enough some are over explained. And then suddenly some X foundation. Bit messy. For OOO we have Greeeds : incomplete beings who want to be complete but it is impossible so they will destroy everything to try it anyway lool. They have different approach to it and later have Dr Maki as weird hybridish psycho who wanted to end the world while is still beautiful. Sounds as messy as W but it is so much better. It is more consistent, we see the twists and dynamics between Greeeds, and the m Maki. I don't like him as a chara but he is made that way to don't like him: sociopath who killed his sister while still a kid, but have issues with her, creep who talks to a doll on his shoulder. He is both comic relief and terrifying at the same time! What a wonderful blend! Also his and Date dynamics are so hilarious I just couldn't stop laughing. Psychodelic af XDXD So because he is consistent in his doing, is a creep is funny dangerous and interesting even if you want to kick him in the balls. Fifth round winner: OOO PLOT Both have interesting stories, not too complicated on the surface, with some twists, with some plot holes and mistakes. OOO has however less of the plot holes ( most of them are from the past stuff like from 800 years ago), the story is more fluent, so fluent that it is hard to see chara development without going 10 episodes behind for a moment and the realization hits you), also there are none “new villain at the end!” no, we know who will be the ultimate baddie and want to know how it goes. One of the main twists was Lost Ankh. It was interesting and heart breaking. In W main plot is Philip past, his connection to the Gaia Memories and Sonosakis. Plot twist can be predicted quite early but it is still fun. But because of little screen time for Philip and his actual development some moments feel weaker or bit rushed. Yet Shotaro reaction to those are top notch!Still, Eiji and Ankh dynamic story flow etc is just better in OOO for me. Sixth round winner: OOO OPENING Music is important too and opening is the most characteristic piece of audio for most series. Here you can be biased and I will be. W is more pleasant to the ear, I like the video for it more too. And I mean both what you see in the series and official one. The vocal is more clean in W opening for me too. What to say more? Seventh round winner: W FAVORITE CHARACTER A war between half-boiled and angry birb. I love them both character wise. Are complicated have their flaws as good sides fleshed out, are interesting... but the birb... ah the birb! His story ark! His struggle, his ambiguous state towards other up until the end. His mannerism (his bird like movements and way he eats lool, he drinks tea with soup spoon! XD), way of thinking and all the changes. They way he goes from treating Eiji as and accessory to fight to having him precious enough to help him fight Maki at costs own existence/life. And he is so relatable. Not for literal stuff ( I don't think any of you is greeed) but in general: the feeling of not fitting into a group etc. Shotaro is very relatable to don't get me wrong, but his character development is not as deep as Ankh. Both have great clothes yes! Eight round winner: OOO

SUIT AND MERCH ASCETICS As for looks of suits of the Riders and gimmicks it will be short: I like standard double more over TaToBa OOO, but I don't like Extreeme much but I love TaJaDor. Bike looks better in the W animal robots are cute here and here too. Second rider suit is good enough, but henshin gimmick is more interesting in OOO (the medals and mixing them) So a draw! ENDING

OOO doesn't have that 49th episode and it shows. But with that we have 2 very different vibes endings and both are so good. OOO is bittersweet but gives hope, W I just... god I'm so happy for Shotaro, this soft man deserved the ending. And somehow Eiji deserved his too: you should talk to your birb more Eiji! And shipping aside W should have proper hug and not that weird thing at the end. Both give satisfaction both are great and not disappoint! Another draw!! BONUS ROUND: BACKGROUND STORIES I could write about all support cast etc but those are equals and we don't need another draw. So I'll will do one more thing as a bonus: background of the charas. Especially our main Riders. In W we know a lot about Philip and what he did in the past yet some thing are presented in chaotic way, we are not sure about important things ( like if his family was dysfunctional before or after Philip's accident), but about Shotaro? Almost nothing. Just that he was bit deliquentish in high school (we are not even sure if it wasn't middle school lool) and that he was with boss some time before Begins Night. And thats sad because Shotaro is developed in interesting way and his past should be show more to understand better why he was like that. On the other hand we know what we should about Eiji, what made him as he was, why he is living this way. It wasn't long exposition but good enough to understand his ways. For Ankh its bit more messy (because what we hear and what we see on the screen doesn't add up well) but still it is all understandable. Winner of eleventh round : OOO So in all OOO won but not by that much. W is still very good series and both deserve to be watched (and then cried over, and made 1245643 chapters and one shots and drawings to them GAH)

#kamen rider ooo #kamen rider w #kamen rider double #my vs #my opinions #had to do this for my own pleasure

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is-this-a-skam-account · 5 years

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Shelter Chapter 1 by shawnie1718 (me) on ao3

Drummer!Lucas/Model!Eliott

Omega!Lucas/Alpha!Eliott

It’s that fateful Instagram story which helps connect a certain Omega and a certain Alpha.

(Someone asked me if I posted it on my tumblr because they couldn’t see the photos so here we are!)

———

It was that fateful Instagram story that Lucas’s friend Yann had posted which would later change Lucas’s life. It was only fifteen seconds long. The video itself was jerky and fuzzy, so it didn’t do much in the viewing department. But there in the center of the frame was Lucas, jamming out in the street with bins scattered around him. The jamming session had been totally unprompted. Lucas and Yann had walked up to a street performer as he was playing on his “set of drums.” Lucas had commented something which prompted the performer to ask “would you like to play?” Lucas hesitated and it was Yann who actually pushed him to perform. So Lucas got up there and began to play a simple beat, pretty soon mixing it up and playing more advanced rhythms. Lucas thinks he looks stupid in the video, with his backpack slung around his back and hair flopping around as he jumped. But Yann argues that “that’s what gives it character!” And of course his friend claims that he brought on Lucas’s rise to fame.

Lucas’s following on Instagram blew up when the video went viral. Everyone began wondering who the sexy drummer was that could create awesome rhythms totally unprompted. So, Lucas decided to feed a growing fan base a video of him playing the drums upside down. What else was a man to do? The internet went wild. Lucas didn’t really understand why, but he took it. Lucas then did a follow up video as a thank you, and decided to share with his fans his love for playing guitar and singing.

Thus, he earned the title of the “French Cutie Who Can Do Anything.”

Then came the night Lucas and Yann had been chilling in Lucas’s apartment (which he shares with two other people. Yann always gets upset at him for not getting an apartment of his own “since you have enough money!” But Lucas likes sharing a space. Plus, living with another Alpha and Omega is comforting.) He had been on multiple press tours by this point, and had just finished with his USA tour which hit the main cities such as LA and New York. But it felt nice to be back in Paris, in his apartment, nursing a crappy beer with a French TV show on in the background.

He was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, Yann doing the same but on the other side of the couch, when he suddenly got a notification. Lucas frowned, he thought he had his push notifications for Instagram turned off. He slid over to his messages and read the profile name. Srodulv? How do you even pronounce that? Sro-deulv? Shrodulvsjdn? Like what?

Lucas shoved his phone into his friends face, “do you recognize that name?”

Yann narrowed his eyes at the screen, “the ‘srodulv’ one?” Lucas gaped at him, how did he pronounce that so well? Yann continued, “nah, but you can click on the profile.”

Lucas was about to protest but Yann beat him to it, already tapping on the phone screen to pull up the account. Yann shoved Lucas’s phone back into his face before going back to continue mindlessly scrolling through Instagram. Lucas went immediately to the profile picture and ho- holy shit this guy was hot. His eyes trailed down to the bio where it read “elite model/actor 🇮🇹” Ah well that explains the hotness level.

Lucas continued scrolling to look through the photos. It was obvious the guy was an Alpha, from his air of confidence to his rather dominant features, like how tall he was or his sharp jawline. I bet that jawline could cut glass... Lucas shook himself out of his thoughts and decided to start from the bottom. It started off with some odd posts that didn’t seem to really fit together, some drawing and some videos of old animations. But slowly it turned into more headshots and posts of that sort, probably as he became more into his modeling career. Lucas clicked on one post which caught his eye. Lucas wasn’t sure if he was drooling as he looked into the steely gray eyes. Jesus, is he even real?

Lucas meant to click on the exit button, once, twice. You liked the picture! Lucas felt his heart stop. Nooooo. He looked down to see the date. Lucas wanted to chuck his phone at the wall. Three years ago. Fuck. No getting out of this one.

Lucas began panicking and hitting Yann on the shoulder “bro, mec, ow abuse!” Yann yelled. Lucas ignored his friends remark and shoved his phone back into his friends hands. Yann took a few moments to catch up through evaluating the phone. There was no way Lucas could voice what he had just done. He was too busy trying to fold in on himself. He heard Yann laugh and mumble a “duuude...”

“No, no!” Lucas said frantically and grabbed the phone from his friend, “don’t ‘duuude’ me! HELP me!”

Yann shrugged, “I mean, he’s a model right? He probably gets thousands of likes a day. He probably didn’t even notice.”

That helped calm Lucas a little. Yeah, maybe he didn’t notice. His hopes were crushed, however, when we got another notification. @srodulv sent you a message!

Lucas hovered over the message for a few minutes, really it felt like centuries, before deciding to open it. He first saw the photo @srodulv had sent him. It was a drawing of a small hedgehog sitting at a set of drums, spikes going everywhere. And another small sketch of the same hedgehog with a guitar in hand. Lucas smiled at the photo despite his efforts to repress his smile. He then looked down to see the next message

@srodulv: like what you see?

Lucas wanted to go run...somewhere. No, what he really wanted to do was to just crater in on himself until he was nonexistent.

“Shit, he just messaged me again.” Lucas finally mentioned to his friend.

Yann huffed and sat up from his position on the couch to look over at the phone.

“So? Message him back?”

“Are you crazy?” Lucas squeaked.

Yann laughed, “uh, no. I mean, he’s a model right? Maybe being his friend could help boost your career!” Lucas eyes his friend, “also not that I’d date him, but man those eyes...”

“Okay, okay, get off me.” Lucas said grumpily and shoved his friend off his shoulders.

Lucas hadn’t really been into anyone ever since his crush on Yann. He still wasn’t out to his friends, or the internet. (Though he will say the internet is onto him. They are much smarter than his friends. The internet has speculated that he’s actually an omega despite the fact that he uses suppressants. They help him appear more beta like, especially in person.) He’s come to terms with his sexuality and secondary gender himself, but taking the step into the public eye is a large step. Well, more like a large jump. Especially with how much his life is on display to the world.

When he first presented as an Omega at 15, he was scared. He saw what happened to his mom, who was also an Omega. He loves his mom, he really really does. But he just doesn’t want to end up like her. So, he started taking suppressants. Luckily, his dad wasn’t against getting the prescription, because he was ashamed of having a male Omega as a son. So they agreed to keep that secret between them. That is, until Lucas moved in with Mika. He had to tell him about his secondary gender mainly because of his heats. That would have been a rude awakening for Mika if he were to walk in on Lucas. Lucas usually forces himself into heat, which means he stops taking his suppressants every couple months and sets aside a week for it to happen. He hates his heats. He hates how he becomes so needy, but at the same time he wishes he had an Alpha who could actually satisfy that neediness. Braving heats alone is not an easy task. Every time, it feels like his inner Omega is trying to rip itself from his skin, clawing at it, whining constantly. But it’s better than having an Alpha to control his every move.

Lucas pulls himself out of his thoughts and glances at his friend who is back on his phone, watching...is that a compilation video of dogs catching frisbees?

Lucas takes a deep breath, opening up Instagram.

@lucallemant: well I like the drawing. I suppose the artist isn’t bad to look at either.

He sets his phone to the side, heart pounding. Suddenly, his phone bings. He wasn’t expecting a response so quickly.

@srodulv: I would hope not.

Lucas felt like punching himself in the face he was so anxious.

@lucallemant: so...why a hedgehog?

@srodulv: maybe because someone always has such unruly hair. And maybe because someones nose just looks so boop-able.

Lucas is glad @srodulv let’s the change of subject slip by. But did he just say his nose was...boop-able?

@lucallemant: excuse me, what did you just say?

@srodulv: I think you heard what I said.

@lucallemant: heard? I didn’t hear anything?

@srodulv: you know what I meant! You’re mean... :(

@lucallemant: haha I’m sorry I’m sorry.

@srodulv: so do you accept my compliment on your nose?

Lucas smiled to himself, pretending to rub at his lips to make it seem discreet.

@lucallemant: I suppose I have to. And may I have the honor of knowing the name of the person who gave me such a nice compliment?

@srodulv: where are my manners?! I’m Eliott

@lucallemant: Lucas. Though I suppose you already knew that.

@srodulv: at least I know now for sure that your name is really Lucas. Not just “French Cutie Who Can Do Anything.”

@lucallemant: oh god that is going to haunt me forever, isn’t it?

@srodulv: haha I’m afraid so.

Lucas pauses before saying: so you’re a model then? What’s a model doing drawing ME of all people in fan art.

@srodulv: cmon if anyone deserves fan art it’s you!

Lucas blushes and tries to swipe it away before Yann sees.

@srodulv: I suppose I draw because it’s an outlet of some kind.

@lucallemant: that’s awesome. Well, since my fursona is apparently a hedgehog, do I get to know yours?

@srodulv: haha you know I would like to think of them more as soul animals, but thanks for that thought. My “fursona” is a raccoon.

@lucallemant: a raccoon?

@srodulv: yeah! They wear masks. 🦝

“Dude, quit smiling at your phone like that. You’re freaking me out.” Yann mumbles from beside Lucas, pulling him out of his little Eliott and Instagram bubble.

“Sorry...” Lucas said before letting his gaze trail back on his phone. He saw Yann roll his eyes, but Lucas just brushed it off.

@lucallemant: so how did a model such as yourself stumble upon me?

@srodulv: I couldn’t let a pretty face like yours slip away, could I?

@lucallemant: try again, this time without flirting.

@srodulv: ouch getting called out lol. But I suppose I was in a rough patch and your video sort of helped pull me out.

@lucallemant: which video?

@srodulv: that’s a surprise ;)

Lucas lets a smile take up his lips. His eyes drifted up to the time. Holy- it’s already 1:30 am? He’s gotta go to bed. Classes tomorrow. Thanks college.

@lucallemant: I have to go :( classes early tomorrow.

@srodulv: aw man, you’re still in high school?

@lucallemant: college actually

@srodulv: oh! What are you studying? (Last question for the night and then I’ll have to come to terms with our conversation ending D: )

Lucas snorted a laugh: I’m a bio major. (And I’m sorryyy! I wish I could keep talking too)

@srodulv: then show me how sorry you are. Meet me in Paris when I get back from Japan?

Lucas chewed at his bottom lip. Should he trust this guy? He is an Alpha...

But what’s the worst that could happen...right? Eliott seems like a nice enough guy. Lucas lets his inner Omega instincts take over on deciding what to do.

@lucallemant: sounds like a plan. When do you get back?

@srodulv: it’s a date! I get back in a month!

@lucallemant: looking forward to it. Goodnight, E.

@srodulv: goodnight, Lulu.

Lucas hugs his phone to his chest.

It’s a date!

#skam france #if someone could tell me how to do the read more feature that would be 10/10 #skam #skamfr #eliott demaury #elu

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