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shadowofahope · 3 years

Text

NOT Gonna Happen

Warnings: Swearing? One bad word near the end.

Premise: Fight or Flight. Meet BTS or run away from BTS?

“Uh guys…. She’s rolling away.” Yoongi points to you and your attempt to escape the room. Hands grab your ankles to halt your getaway. “I hate all of you.” You groan up at Yeonjun, who still had hold of you. You give up, letting out a deep sight, wishing the ground would open from under you.

Ft. TXT

Authors notes: My honest to all the kpop gods, reaction to meeting these boys. YEET!

This is also a response to people constantly asking me, what would you do if you met BTS?

ALSO this is heavily un-edited. I'm really tired and I'm trying to write 3.5 stories at once! Wooooh, wish me luck!

masterlist

Today marks your 8th week working at BigHit, currently working with TxT on their new album and the chaos that always followed them. Walking down a hallway with one of the backup dancers you had become quick friends with, you felt at home in this monumental building. You are comfortable here, everyone making you feel at home.

“Pleasssssse” Sung-ho begs again. Hands on your shoulders, shaking you gently as he walks behind you. “You have to come.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” You whine back, swinging your staff badge back and forth on your neck. “You know I don’t want to meet them.

He tugs on your shoulders lightly forcing you to halt. Jumping in front of you, palms pressed together, eyes closed he starts begging.

“You promised you would come to one practice. Just this one. Please Please Please-”

Huffing in frustration, you screw up your nose. He silently waits for you to give in, as he knows you will eventually.

“Just this one.” You finally give in.

“Yaaay!” He cheers, jumping to your side.

In all the comotion you don’t notice the footsteps approaching you two from down a connecting hallway. Shrugging your friend off, you’re about to round the corner when you hear it. Instantly freezing.

“I think it’ll be safer to go over the choreo with the dancer one more time.”

“I agree, the timing still seems a little off. We should take a look at the schedules.”

“Sung-ho!”

Your friend smiles and turns to the voice that called him, turning his back to you.

“Hello, Taehyung. Jimin. Hoseok.” Sung-ho greets cheerfully.

“Do you have time to come with us to discuss the schedules for practice?” Jimin asks politely.

“Of course, I was just on my way to grab a snack with -” He starts to explain, turning to where you once stood. Hand hanging in the air, he’s dumbfounded.

“With-?” Hoseok questions.

“Apparently myself.” He turns back to the boys. How had you disappeared so quickly and to where?

He chuckled awkwardly at the idols, cursing you for putting him in this embarrassing situation.

They mirror back his awkward laugh, excusing themselves as they continue on down the hallway.

Your friend stands there for almost two full minutes, trying to figure out what in the hell just happened. He hears a rattle coming from the small storage room near him.

The door swings open.

“You did not just-“ He’s wheezing, trying to catch his breath.

“Don’t talk to me” You walk out of the storage room, in reality it’s more of a tiny linen closet. Upon hearing the idols voices, In sheer blind panic, you threw yourself into the closet and shut the door behind you.

Walking past your still wheezing friend, you push him playfully before continuing on towards the lounge. His loud cackles bouncing around you all the way there.

💜♾💜♾💜

You are sitting in a waiting room with TXT. You’ve made yourself comfortable on one of the couches facing away from the door across the large room, angled towards the wall full over mirrors for makeup and hair. Scrolling through your phone, while Kai and Taehyun talk about something animatedly behind you. You can see them every once in a while, flailing their arms, mimicking wild gestures.

You three had chosen to stay back while the other three needed to ‘stretch’ their legs and find something to drink. So when the door opens you don’t look up, expecting it to be the missing members. Your body lurches forward at the reflection in the mirror, panic spreading.

“Hyung!” Kai exclaims excitedly, bounding over to the 2 members of BTS that have entered the room. “What are you doing here?”

“Hello, we were looking for Jungkook. Have you seen him?” Namjoon asks, looking around the room.

“No, he hasn’t been through here.” Taehyun chirps next to his bandmate.

“Ok, I’ll try calling him again. '' Jin responds, pulling out his phone from his back pocket.

“What are you guys doing here?” Namjoon questions the younger idols.

“Oh, we are working on a concept for one of the singles off our album. Our producer -” Kai motions to the couch that you were on. Now being completely empty. Your slouching form gone, the room appeared empty as well. “Who apparently is gone now, was here helping us.”

Jin and Namjoon shared a skeptical glance at each other. Kai rubs the back of his head as he looks at his beandmember, giving him a confused tilt to his head, to which he gets a shrug in response.

“That’s the newer producer right?” Jin questions.

“Uh yea, that’s her.” Taehyun confirms, still utterly confused by your houdini act.

“We’ve heard a lot of great things about her, from all over, but we still havent seen her.” Namjoon concluded by nodding his head, in thought.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll meet her soon. It’s bound to happen.” Kai reassures.

The duos bid each other goodbye, BTS leaving the room and TXT walking back towards the empty couch.

“How did she-where did she-?” Unable to fully ask his question, Taehyun looks around the room again.

Kai rounds the side of the couch, noticing a hood under the coffee table.

“Noona?” He tries to hide his laugh but fails miserably.

You lift your head from the floor, removing your hood, peering up from underneath the coffee table at the younger. You glare at him, crawling out as he falls back onto his butt laughing, Taehyun joining him on the floor. Both now convulsing with uncontrollable laughter.

Flopping angrily back onto the couch in your previous position, you ignore their incessant chattering and laughing. Recounting you hiding again and again. Even when the other members returned and they explained everything that happened while they were gone, you chose to angrily scroll on your phone until their pestering and teasing died down.

💜♾💜♾💜

Pacing back and forth in a secluded lounge area, you waited with all of the members of txt. You were waiting to hear back from the execs about your concept ideas. The boys had worked extremely hard to come up with a fully thought out concept, you had backed their ideas the whole way as they presented them to the higher staff. Now you waited, anxiously.

Drumming your hands together while pacing you chewed on your bottom lip nervously. Each member stationed on the couch, lounger ottoman, facing you. Legs bouncing in anticipation, knuckles cracking you stopped in front of the large window, facing them, the outside world behind you.

“Look guys, regardless of what happens you did amazing.” You smile at them. “And I’m unbelievably proud of you. All of you.”

Breaking them out of their stoppers, they look up at your faces glowing, pride swelling in their chests.

“Soobin-ah?” A deep voice calls from somewhere unknown, and you freeze.

The members of TXT jump up from their seats, whirling around in time to see all the members of bts walking around the balcony area over to them.

“Taehyung-hyung,” Soobin greets politely. “How are you all doing today.?”

“Good, we just finished rehearsals.” Taehyung explains, once they were standing just on the other side of the couch to him. “Have you guys heard anything yet? We saw the concept art, we really liked it!”

“Nothing yet. We were actually just waiting. Noona was just trying to-” Soobin attempts to explain, motioning behind him to you. Seeing the skeptical looks on their faces, he turned his head to see nothing. You had completely vanished. With furniture and a structural wall surrounding you, there was no place you possibly could be hiding.

Confusion evident on his face as he looks over at Yeonjun. Eyes silently asking him where you had gone, the older only shook his head, eyes just as wide, he shrugged in response.

“Right, the elusive producer we keep hearing about but never seeing.” Yoongi responds comically. “Maybe she isn’t real? But a ghost!”

Spooking Jin and Hoseok alike, they give him an alarmed glare.

“No, we promise she’s real.” Soobin persuades, his voice coming out in almost a plea.

Trying to affirm your existence to their Hyungs, Gyu becomes overwhelmingly curious. He walks over to the spot you had been standing, a deep frown settled on his features.

He does a full 360, in an attempt to understand where you could have gone. Upon turning around he notices something. Stifling a laugh and breaking into a full blown smile, he subtly waves Kai over, when they make eye contact. Kai nonchalantly makes his way over to him, Gyu mumbles something to him and he looks in the direction that Gyu was nodding. Trying to hide his own laugh, the two youngest members stand snickering, waiting for the members of BTS to walk away before exposing you to the group.

Once the groups bid each other goodbye, they both break out into hysterical laughter.

“What guys?” Yeonjun jumps at the unexpected hollering. But neither boy can speak, too consumed by laughter they both point to the semi open window.

“She didn’t” Taehyun launches himself over the ottoman in front of him rushing to the window. Soobin and Yeonjun right behind him. The three of them look out to see your figure hopping down from the last branch of the tree outside.

With lightning speed and zero hesitation, you had climbed out of the already opened window on the second floor. Stepped from the ledge onto a tree that's long, thick branches were supporting itself against the building. Then walked to the center of the large tree and climbed your way down.

Mass hysteria broke out between the 5 members.

“That’s it. We have to make her meet them.” Soobin exclaims, wiping a tear that fell down his cheek.

“Guys, I think I have a plan.” Yeonjun smirks. So they all huddled around to listen.

💜♾💜♾💜

Today was supposed to be your day off. But upon receiving a text from Soobin, saying they needed you there urgently for their concept proposal, you raced straight there. So there you were standing in the hall talking to an exec in a black oversized pullover hoodie and workout leggings. Today was about comfort over professionalism, well it was supposed to be.

But when you had finished your pleasant chat with the exec, he started apologizing profusely about something he couldn’t say. Trying to hide his chuckle, his eyes dart over your shoulder. Before you could press him about his comments, you were spun around and hoisted off of your feet. Draped over a shoulder like a sack of potatoes. In alarm you manage to struggle enough to see your kidnapper, Yeonjun.

“What are you dooooooiiiinnnng?” You whine, struggling more.

He says nothing, but turns down the hallway to the dance practice rooms.

“Put me down shrek.” You quote. Wiggling even harder to escape the ironclad grip on you.

“There’s no point Noona, just accept it.” A sweet cheerful voice, butts in, shoes coming into view as you tilt your head up to look.

“Really Kai, they have you in on this too?” You slump in defeat. “Fine, but don’t you dare fart.”

Your capture lets out a chuckle before entering the dance room. The other three members you can kind of see. Or at least their shoes. Your hood keeps flopping down and making it hard to tell.

“Guys seriously, why are you-” You begin as blood starts rushing to your head. Making you slightly dizzy.

“Hello Hyungs.” Yeonjun greets politely. Panic rising, you tilt your head to the side to look into the wall mirror, there you see all 7 members of BTS sitting on the floor, along with the other members of TXT standing around you. “This is Y/N-Noona, the real, not a ghost, producer.”

Realization hits you like a ton of bricks, as snickers and muffled laughs resonate behind you.

“Yeonjun…..” Your voice is a little shaky. “You did not just introduce me to BTS ass FIRST?!”

Everyone in the room breaks into rounds of full belly laughter as you are hoisted back over the shoulder, feet planted on the floor.

Turning shyly to the side, you make eye contact with each member of BTS. Your legs crumble beneath you, muttering ‘I could have lived my whole life without this’ angrily. You lay on the ground face down, hood over your head as more laughter ensues.

“You had to meet them at some point, even backwards!” Gyu exclaims between heaves of laughter, clutching his stomach .

Waving your hand blindly towards the members of TXT you bark “That’s it! We are no longer friends. Done, Forever, never again!”

Apologies begin to flow toward you but you ignore them. Eventually you ignore any comment that comes your way, still plastered to the floor, the 12 men begin to talk about other things. Completely unaware of you.

...Or so you thought….

“Uh guys…. She’s rolling away.” Yoongi points to you and your attempt to escape the room. Hands grab your ankles to halt your getaway.

“I hate all of you.” You groan up at Yeonjun, who still had hold of you. You give up, letting out a deep sight, wishing the ground would open from under you.

#bts fics #bts drabble #ft txt #bts imagines #bts jimin #bts hoseok #bts seokjin #bts namjoon #bts jungkook #bts taehyung #bts yoongi #bts ot7 #bts fanfics #txt yeonjun #txt soobin #txt heuningkai #txt taehyun #txt beomgyu #txt ot5

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dancingthesambaa · 3 years

Text

Smell of Plum Blossom Tea Ch 15

Summary: Just like a butterfly wing, a single act of kindness can change the course of the future, it certainly did for MK as a black furred monkey put out a hand towards him

Rating: Teen and up

Chapter 15: Plotting Revenge is a Good Bonding Activity

“And then you showed up and, well you know the rest,” Red Son exhaled as the three of them sat down on the swings at the park. It had taken a week before he eventually had the courage, and while making sure his father was rested, to face his friends once more.

“So you're the one who took the skeleton key,” MK said.

“Yeah,” the prince nodded and braced himself for the accusations.

“Oh thank god, I really thought I lost it on accident,” MK sighed in relief as he sagged on the swings.

“Still kinda lost it,” she pointed out.

“But at least it wasn’t through me just forgetting it somewhere!” He pumped his fists in the air, promptly forgetting he was on a swing and was now flailing his arms trying to not fall off.

“…okay you're both taking this a little too easily,” the prince deadpanned as he stopped himself from tugging on his hair, “why aren’t you both mad at me?”

“For?” They both turned to him with a raised eyebrow.

“For? For?!? I stole from you and didn’t say a word until everything blew up in all of our faces and had a crisis that almost destroyed the city-AGAIN!” He had to jump off the swing as he paced in front of them. “Why aren’t you both pissed off at me?!”

“Well for one, the key was cool and all, but it didn’t have, like, any real sentimental value,” MK shrugged, “I mean I had it for like a day.”

“Two, it just opens locks, which is pretty bad with certain things like banks and homes, but at least it’s not a weapon of mass destruction,” Mei finger gunned him.

“And three, most importantly, it’s you,” MK finished.

Red Son looked at him with the most dumbfounded look.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Well you like to call yourself a villain, but I have never actually seen you do any hardcore villainy stuff,” he pointed out.

“I once saw you make fire animals to a group of children because they complimented you on your flame head,” she grinned.

“They have good taste,” he averted his eyes away from the both of them as a small flush appeared on his cheeks.

“But my point is,” MK stepped off the swing and put a hand on his shoulder, “you have been with us to know long enough that what you say isn’t what you do. You have a very soft and squishy heart underneath all those flames.”

“No! I do not!” He instantly denied, ignoring how his face brightened.

“Yes you do,” both humans said as MK confined, “and I like to think that while it has only been a few months, I know you wouldn’t steal something of ours unless you were forced to.”

Red Son said nothing as he clenched his fists, but that was all the confirmation that the two needed.

“Exactly my point, so I was hurt at first, but it turned out alright in the end, so don’t be too upset about it okay. I have already forgiven you,” he gave a big hug to the demon.

“It’s in the past nightlight, all is already good between us,” Mei joined in on the hug and grinned, “but I wouldn’t mind some ice cream after this.”

The demon Prince froze in their warm embrace as he slowly relaxed and lifted both his arms around his friends. “We’re going to the good one, not the rip off that tries to scam up for a mint chocolate chip, only for it to be vanilla and fucking peppermint candy inside.”

“Agreed,” both humans instantly said, that was the most disappointing I’ve cream joint they have ever been to and they saw ones where they can even mess up vanilla ice cream.

“We so need to catch up,” Mei said as she laid her head on Red shoulder, “there have been so much that you missed, and learning that the Monkey King and pops have a thing for each other is a whole nother ball game that needs to be discussed.”

“I’m sorry WHAT?!” He held them both out as his hair slightly flicker in shock at that abrupt news.

“Ohh boy,” MK sighed as he slumped down. “I need some mind numbing ice cream before we even go into this.”

“Ice cream,” Mei echoed.

“…fucking ice cream,” the demon eye twitched. This was going to be one hell of a conversation.

“They like each other?!” He slammed his spoon down.

“Not so loud,” MK groaned as he put his head to the table.

“But yeah,” Mei continued with a spoon in her mouth, “they have a total thing for each and the real kicker is that both sides are dense enough to not realize that.”

“Your fucking with me,” he deadpans.

“There is no fucks to be seen.”

“Unless they do it with each other.”

“Mei!/Why’d you put that image in my head,” Red yelled as MK groaned.

“What?” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m just saying, besides I still don’t like the half priced knock off Monkey god trying to hook up with pops,” she narrowed her eyes.

“Oh,” the prince was a bit surprised by this, “I thought you idolized him, what changed?”

“Well first, never really idolized him, that’s all on MK.”

“I feel no shame,” he crossed his arms.

“Got really disillusioned by him with all of Makkie’s stories. And secondly, I hands down don’t believe that the great almighty Monkey King is good enough for him,” she bluntly stated.

“I mean you're not wrong, but explain,” the bull demon leaned in. He has known the Six Eared Macaque for a very long time, the monkey healer has taught and shown him many things throughout their lives, and has saved it just as many, if not more. So it’s needless to say that he sees the monkey as an uncle for a very long time.

“I mean other than fighting pops and almost trying to kill him over his fuck up-”

“WHAT!/He wasn’t trying to kill him!”

“He can’t just expect to walk in and pretend everything is all fine and good between them after he made pops blind and severed their friendship for five hundred years. Pops had mourned for him and self deprecated himself during his bad days, he feels the guilt and shame that had overcome him and he emotionally understood his wrongdoings but has been trying-no he has turned over a new leaf. He had changed and has learned better from the immature monkey he once was, but the same can’t be said for the Monkey King. Cause instead of talking about it, what does he do? He fucking yells and attacks him!” She slammed her fist on the table. “He attacked him and when MK stepped in between the two, which is still so very fucking stupid by the way.”

“You did what?” Red looked towards the sheepish human.

“I had to stop them somehow!”

“Not with your life!”

“Well, now I know for next time.”

“There better not be a next time!”

“It was still MK who had to stop the dumbass from fighting,” Mei growled out. “And he still had the audacity to question pops about trying to use MK like the fuck?! Who the fuck does he think he is to think that he has any parental right over him other than Pops. None! Zilch! Fucking zero! He has nothing except that pretty little staff that MK somehow is able to lift, which by the way we really need to figure out how that is possible.”

“Oh believe me, I’ve been trying so hard to figure that part out as well,” MK sighed.

“But my point to all of this is, I know he is a good monkey, him saving the city and mentoring MK and all that, but he is absolute garbage when it comes to actually acknowledging the fact that things don’t stay the same, everything has changed.” She let out a huff and proceeded to finish her melting ice cream.

“Wow…you really have thought about this,” the demon said as he watched her.

“Well I had some time to think and I still stand by Monkey King not being good enough for pops.”

“No one is good enough for dad,” MK muttered, making his two friends a bit surprised.

“I’m a bit shocked, I would have thought you would have been all for letting the Monkey King and Macaque court each other,” he tilted his head. “Why the change of heart?”

“No change, it’s just that-well” he began to fiddle with the ends of his violet headband, “I know the Monkey King and I know he is an amazing mentor, always includes me when the tribe comes around, loves to feed me, and he is just a good person. I grew up on the stories about him and what he has accomplished. I can’t help but idolize him and want to stay by his side through thick and thin. It’s just that-that…” he trailed off and hesitated with his next words.

“But not as much as pops,” Mei saw what he was getting at.

“…yeah, not as much as pops. As much as that seems mean, he has been with me for so long that I can’t imagine my life without him…Have I ever told you guys how I met dad?” He suddenly said as both human and demon shook their heads.

“All I know is that he found you in an alley one day and you’ve been with him since then,” the pigtail girl stated. “But I have a feeling there’s a lot more to it than that.”

“Yes and no,” MK pushed away his bowl, “he did find me in an alley and took me in for the night, fed me, treated my injuries, and comforted me, but that was supposed to be my only stay there.”

“So what changed?” Red softly asked.

“My former parents weren’t good people,” he breathed out. It took a long time before he could finally admit to himself that his sperm donors were selfish, good for nothing, assholes that only cared about two things, their nonexistent reputation and money. That night might have set a world record on how long he hugged his pops as he just wouldn’t let go even when the morning came.

Both human and demon knew exactly what he meant without any unneeded details as both their eyes glowed an ominous scarlet and viridian.

“Where are they?” The Bull and Dragon successor echoed as a small burst of energy flickered off them.

‘Should really be glad that today is a Monday and no one is around,’ MK winced as he took a glance around outdoors. “Guys, calm down. I’m fine, it’s been over ten years since I last saw them and I doubt I will ever see them again.”

The two begrudgingly settled down like a petulant child and slouched in their seats.

“Look dork, all I need is an address and I can promise you that I can make their lives a living hell,” Mei leaned in with a malicious smile. “They will regret even wanting to breathe by the time I’m done with them.”

“A name would suffice as well, it’s always prudent to know who the enemy might be in case there are no longer using the same location,” Red added as well.

“I am not giving you a name nor an address,” he sternly told them, “It’s been a long time since I saw them and I haven’t thought about them since,” which may be a teensy lie as they do pop up from time to time in his head during his not so good days, but it’s best not to tell them that.

“Besides, while I don’t exactly remember what happened that night I last saw them, I do know that they were terrified of Dad, whatever he said to them thoroughly shook them to their core.” He let a bit of vicious delight show on his face, he may not be a cruel person, but even he will happily admit that it was a bit cathartic to think back on that night and watch the emotional journey they went through that night as the life drain out their face the longer Dad spoke to them. It’s a bit messed up yes, but can you really blame him, he had to put up with their shit.

“Like he would do anything less for his child,” Mei smirked, “I guess I’ll let them off this time.”

“Good,” MK smiled as he got up to throw away all of their trash.

“We’re so getting it off of Mac,” Mei whispered to Red.

“Undoubtedly,” he subtly nodded, “they will feel pain.”

“When I’m done with them not even the morticians would want to come near them,” both shared a devilish smile, but quickly widened it when MK came back.

“Anyways,” he sat down with a huff, “before I got into all of that, what I was trying to say is that yes I respect the Monkey King, but I will always hold Dad to my heart first before anyone else.”

“Hear hear,” she pointed in the air, “so, does that mean you don’t want the great and powerful Monkey King to date pops.”

“Not really,” he winced at how bad that sounded. “I mean don’t get me wrong, but they just got back to being friends and I don’t think that it would be a good idea to jump into any type of romantic relationship so soon.”

“Sounds like an excuse but I don’t care, preach it!” She laughed and threw a fist in the air.

“It’s not an excuse,” well maybe a little, “it’s just that Dad said that he swore off dating for a long time after his last partner.”

“By the gods, we don’t talk about his previous partners, especially lemur bitch,” Red groaned as he knocked his head on the table, hoping that this would be the blow that would finally free his mind of those atrocious memories.

“Yeah I’ve been hearing that a lot, but what exactly did he do?!” Mei turned to look at the groaning prince.

“You really don’t want to know.”

“Heard that a lot as well and I still say, yes I really do,” the monkey successor added.

“I’m not-”

“Pleassseee!” Both humans begged with a puppy dog look in their eyes.

“All I’m willing to say is do not eat anything that he gives you and don’t show signs of high intelligence,” he pushed their faces back.

“Well I don’t have to worry about the second one,” MK grinned.

“Same!” Mei high fived him.

Red Son just looked at the two humans, one who was trying to earn his doctoral degree in Medicine and the other who almost finished with her bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering. He blinked once, then twice, opened his mouth, then promptly closed it and instead pinched his nose.

“But about that first thing,” Mei turned her attention back to the demon, “is his cooking really that bad or is there a little extra something he puts in there.”

“The second one, I don’t know exactly what happened, and I thank everyone for that, but I do know that Macaque was unconscious for a few days and when he awoke he felt an underlying desire to grovel at Shun’s feet and adore him and only him.”

“He made a love potion?!”

“More like a love poison,” he shuddered. While he had never ingested one before, there have been times where he was sent food laced with these poisons. Luckily he had never taken a bite of it before, but the first time it had happened, he swore that he had never seen both his parents so furious before. “They make the user attracted to the designated target and they will forever obey their every whim and command while under this spell, or at least until the spell wears off. The more potent and permanent ones have either been destroyed or kept under a watchful eye of a higher deity or demon.”

“That sounds fucking horrible,” MK grimaced.

“Yeah, like a 50/10 of no fucking thank you,” Mei scrunched up her nose.

“Exactly, so this is one of the reasons why Macaque decided best to get the fuck out of that and break up with him.”

“One of the reasons?”

“One of the reasons,” Red didn’t exactly know how to tell him that Shun had an unhealthy obsession with the simian, always stalking him, getting overly possessive, and those were just the blatant things. Yeah, it’s best to just let it be and forget that creepy ass fucker, it’s not like he’ll ever show his face again after his beat down courtesy of Macaque.

“And that just further emphasized my point!” The teen said, “he wants nothing to do with a romantic relationship of any kind, so he and Monkey King getting together would just be bad all around.”

“And I totally agree, so if Monkey ass tries to hurt Pops at any time, I already have Operation Sticky Surprise all bundled up and ready to go,” the dragon successor gave an evil looking grin.

“Sticky Surprise?”

“Mei has been making plans on plans on how to make the Monkey King life a living hell aside from outright killing him,” MK deadpanned.

“Killing is boring, humiliation is a lot more fun and it comes with the added bonus of there being so many different ways to do it! I also have Operation Inkblot, Stink Butt, Bug Devastation, Hangman Riot, Gossip Thrill, Paranoia Pandemonium, Faeries Laughters-”

“You got the Faeries involved in this?” Both boys looked horrified. “Why?!”

“I asked and they were more than happy to agree. In fact, I got a lot more creatures to help me out as well, I have an entire file just for the forest!” She eagerly held out her phone and showed them the numerous folders in the file that was labeled ‘Dragon Revenge: Forest Edition.’ “Want to hear about it?”

“…yes,” he leaned in closer. He had to admit that he is morbidly curious on what exactly some of the plans may entail.

“Well, I have Operation Ní Chorus, Qilin Stampede, BaBa Appetite, Macaque Monkeys Mania, Kappa War, and so much more. I even have another file that contains the one Daiyu and the rest of them made.”

“Even Ahmed?”

“Even Ahmed,” MK nodded. He should know as he was there that day when they were coming up with all of these elaborate plans. He felt he shouldn’t have been so surprised when the lion demon came up with some gruesome one, involving a bag of blood and some nasty curses, but that has nothing on Minsheng and their ideas. Who knew glitter can be used that way.

“You're just trying to humiliate him and possibly injure him in the process?” The demon asked.

“He’s an immortal monkey that has been through a lot of shit, he can take whatever we throw at him,” she bluntly stated.

“Have you thought of using a vast amount of flour then igniting it? I know from experience that using the two would make an unexpected explosion,” the first time he cooked he burned down the whole kitchen while holding the bag of flour in his hands.

“No, I did not,” Mei raised her phone and opened a new document, “tell me more.”

“Nail polish is another flammable object, which is why I have never worn it until you forced it upon me, powdered sugar, Ping Pong balls, oranges-”

“Why do you know this,” MK asked with a bit of horror in his tone.

“Well after I set my Pomelo on fire inside a safe house that we don’t use often, I decided it would be best to look up what else in a regular home is fucking flammable and not so surprising, a lot of things are. But on the upside,” he matched Mei’s sinister grin, “it’s not common knowledge and I don’t think the impulsive Monkey King would look up something like this if you know what I mean.”

“Oh I know exactly what you’re getting at,” she grinned even wider, “it would be a damn shame if someone were to perhaps spill some sugar on him, and there just happens to be a flame.”

“Or maybe if someone wanted to try something daring with a Ping Pong ball only to ‘accidentally’ hit it in the wrong direction,” he ominously said.

“Oh that would be bad.”

“Very bad.”

“Annoyingly bad,” Mei leaned in, “Tell me more.”

“With pleasure.”

“I feel like I should stop them,” he pondered to himself as he watched his two friends plot his mentor not-demise. “…nahh, I’m sure it will be fine.”

“We can dump sodium medals in the water to really make an explosion!”

“Yeah I’m good,” MK deadpanned as he leaned back, “Monkey King can handle it himself.”

“What are you bozos doing here,” Mei huffed as she saw Yin and Gin at the arcade.

“We may be elite demons with awesome powers and the everlasting hunger for a worthy fight,” Jin dramatically said.

“But even we can get bored sometimes and MK mentioned this place before,” Yin finished as he concentrated on shooting the zombies. “Speaking of, where is he? I usually see the two of you together.”

“I will mention the creepy stalking if I didn’t do that myself,” she muttered, “but couldn’t make it, he’s currently doing his online courses right now.”

“Oh right he did mention something about wanting to be a…healer I think was the word.”

“No dumbass, he is trying to be a physician. Healer is so Ming Dynasty bro,” Jin corrected his blue twin.

“Hey I’m the social one, you're the one who has their nose all up in the books,” he shrugged then pumped his fist in the air. “Hell yeah, new level!”

“I’m still pissed off at the both of you for the stunt you did at the race track,” she said as she leaned on the racing game next to theirs.

“To be fair, we knew we wouldn’t win,” the orange demon said.

“Yeah, it was mostly for fun.”

“Well that ‘fun’ almost cost me the medal and you really pissed off a lot of racers that day,” she stretched and hopped onto the bike. “Side note, if you ever meet a girl with purple hair, bright green eyes, and utterly jacked, you might want to scram. She was one of the competitors and she’s the least bit happy with either one of you.”

“Is that so?” Jin hummed as he hopped on the bike next to her.

“Yeah she wants to use your corpses as a gaudy rug for her front porch.”

“It be like that sometimes,” both twins said.

“You both seem way too chill about that,” she raised her eyebrow.

“We have seen people, demons, deities, and creatures alike much scarier,” Yin started as he continued to shoot the zombies down.

“We had masters who threaten to crush our bones, people using scrolls to torture our minds, deities making us relieve the worst days of our life over and over, demons stabbing us in the heart over and over, and the sheer presence of Macaque bearing down on the both of us,” Jin casually said.

Mei blinked a few times, “Okay that seems like a lot, but understandable. You met pops before?”

“You know the Six Eared Macaque,” the blue demon turned his head to her, “of course you do, cause why not.”

“We met him a few times after the whole Calabash incident and he is much scarier than the rumors made him out to be.”

“But demon knows how to put on a good play.”

“Yeah, his shadow play is a real banger,” Jin gave a toothy grin.

“So you guys met him at the theater,” she deadpanned.

“Yup,” both said.

“Why am I not surprised,” she sighed and began the game, “well I’m gonna smoke your ass on this.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Jin grinned as he revved his engine.

“Children, both of them,” Yin rolled his eyes, but he gave a loud shout as he noticed he finished the level. “Hell Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!”

“I refuse to believe that you managed to make peaches taste sour,” Wukong scrunched up his nose as he disdainfully eyed the peach dried chips. “This has to be some mockery or imitation, cause ain’t no way in hell are those actual peaches.”

“Hate to break it to ya,” Mac smirked as he took a chip in his mouth, “but they are.”

“You heathen,” he hissed out.

“Payback for the tainted Mango,” he smirked.

“Oh come on! That was centuries ago!”

“And I hated every last bite of that disgusting piece of fruit that dared touch my tongue!” He barked back.

The sage threw up his arms and marched to the kitchen, “I am raiding your kitchen! I need to wash put that nasty taste and hope that it doesn’t taste like a cup of lemon juice has just been freshly squeezed into my mouth.”

“You big baby, it’s not even that sour,” he snorted as he took another handful of chips. He knew that Wukong hated the taste of anything sour, revenge never tasted so good.

“No, no, no, why do you even have this,” he asked as he held up a bottle of Olive juice.

“Blame MK, last time he brought home an Aloe Vera milk which I didn’t realize was even a thing,” and the sad thing was that it didn’t taste bad, just extremely weird.

“Course he did,” was all he said as he continued to scrimmage through the kitchen. “Aha! Here we…go?” He paused as he moved over the soda and spotted a large jug. “What are you?” He opened it up and the familiar smell hit his nose as he never forgets that smell. “You mangy monkey!”

“Hmm?” Mac raised his brow as Wukong leaped over him with a familiar jar in hand, “No, you are not about to drink wine right now. I can’t deal with your alcohol self, you are too fucking clingy and a hundred times more impulsive.”

“I won’t, but how did you manage to sneak this away,” he grinned and swished the half full jug in hand.

“Huh? What are you babbling on about?”

“How did you get the Immortality wine, I know they have it locked up nice and tight after my little fiasco,” he held it up for further emphasis.

“The what wine?!” He stalked over to him and snatched the jug out of his hands, “Is that what this is?!”

“You drank it without even knowing what it is?” He shot the black simian an incredulous look, he knows that he is the one who is the most suspicious of getting anything from anyone, let alone something he doesn’t know.

“Don’t look at me like that!” He barked, “It’s from a friend who stops by once and a while. When-how-what the fuck Shen?”

“You know someone who can just give you immortality wine,” he couldn’t help but find a bit of amusement from his friend's expression.

“Apparently, he comes by every once in a while and that fucker never told me what this shit is,” he growled that last part.

“How do you know him?”

“He was a friend of Ping!” He threw his hands in the air and marched back to the kitchen and put back the jug of very rare and sought after wine…on second thought it would probably be better if he found a better spot to put this.

“Ping? The same Ping who taught you medicine and helped grow the forest Ping,” he stated as his tail swished behind him. He really wanted to just shake him and ask what the human was to him, but (for once) he kept down his impulsive thoughts and gently prodded him.

“Yess,” he rubbed his neck out of a bout of nerves, “but technically I made the forest, he said it would be a good way to plant a seed and take care of it to vent my frustration. Which is weird, but oh well and the next thing I know there is a forest.”

“So you just forgot that seeds grow and made an entire ass forest without you even noticing,” Wukong smirked.

“I’m not that fucking blind that I didn’t see an entire damn forest, it just didn’t…occur to me that I made it,” he winced at how dumb that sounded. He rolled his eyes when he heard the first snort then a full blown laughter coming from the brown furred monkey. “Yeah yeah, laugh it up.

“Don’t worry,” he said in between breaths, “I will! Pffftttt! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

He gave a petulant huff and went back to his warm tea with a laughing monkey following close behind. Eventually, the laughter subsided and all that was left was a smirking monkey leaning on a simian dead set on ignoring him.

“Only you moonshine,” he smirked as he watched his friend turn his face away with a faint red blush. He knows that calling him cutesy nicknames doesn’t get on his nerves no matter how many times he says so, but he secretly likes them. It’s how he got away with some of the things he did, but now he has a new goal in mind as he casually stretched his arms behind Mac and gently let his fingers rest on his long fur.

‘Soft. So soft. I don’t think I ever felt his fur ever be this soft before,’ he eyed the tantalizing fur curled in between his fingers. Just taunting him and begging him to please thread your fingers throughout the fluffy locks. ‘I really want to groom his fur,’ his hands twitched as he watched to see if Macaque would stop him, but he saw his eyes closed and leaning back. He almost let out a purr at the sight of his friend's trust and really wanted to just put his whole body on him for cuddles, but managed to keep it down in time and instead readied himself to put his other hand to his fur, a door slamming open stopped him.

BOOM!

“Guess who's back and is hearing an obnoxious ringing noise in their ears!” A loud voice shouted out which made the two separate from each other, much to the ire of a brown furred simian.

“Who the-” he began to mutter.

“And what have I told you about keeping your voice down inside?” Macaque yelled back.

“Too many times to count,” Bohai sighed.

Minsheng chuckled as they walked in and noticed that his friend wasn’t quite alone. “Well what do we have here?”

“Hey there, you might know me, I’m the-” he was cut off by the lion demon.

“The Monkey King, I have seen images of you before,” Ahmed then gave a slight nod, “I’m Ahmed, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Right back at you.”

“The name is Daiyu chimp,” she gave a very harsh slap on his shoulder and sat on the edge of the couch.

“I mean not really a chimp-”

“I’m Bohai,” the jellyfish demon said with a glow, “we’ve heard many things about you.”

“What kind? I mean there are a lot of stories-” he was cut off once more.

“And I’m Minsheng,” they said as he sat in between the two monkeys, “and I would introduce you to Yanyu, but she’s at work right now.”

“Yanyu?”

“His student,” Bohai commented as he watched the monkey demon sit the vulture down and is currently examining her ears.

“You had a student?”

“What can I say, I have that charm,” he deadpanned then shot Daiyu a glare, “how many times have I told you not to fuck with strange magical plants unless you know what it is!”

“Again, too many times to count,” the jellyfish reiterated.

“She heard the rumors about him and just went to the forest and forced him to teach her. But secretly, we all know Mac attack has a soft spot for the kiddos,” the bunny grinned as he saw that Mac was now purposefully tuning them out.

“Yeah, I can tell,” he gave a sweet smile as he remembered all his interactions with both of his children.

All the demons not preoccupied silently blinked at Wukong’s words and expressions and it was all at once did it click for them. And they all shared a knowing look to one another.

“It’s nothing too bad,” Macaque concluded after he checked both her ears, medians, and body. “You should be fine after some rest and water, which you will do even if I have to strap you down to that damn bed.”

“You got it doc!” She saluted him and walked off.

He rolled her eyes at her antics and didn’t even flinch when Ahmed sat down beside him. “Please don’t tell me you got injured in some way as well.”

“Don’t worry, I did not,” he gave a deep chuckle.

“Thank fuck,” he sighed and felt the lion began to come closer to him and began to nuzzle the top of his head. He knew exactly what was happening, “Going through one of those moods again?”

“Yeah, sorry bout this” he murmured.

“Eh, it’s fine. Just do what you want,” he flippantly said and felt a purr of appreciation as he felt his fur getting licked.

And if the nuzzles didn’t catch Wukong’s attention then the lion demon currently licking his longtime crush did as he had to hold back a screech of displeasure at the sight, but that didn’t stop his whole body from twitching.

“Yeah, Ahmed does that sometimes,” Min smirked as they watched the brown monkey's eyes twitch. “Apparently lions do this for some social bonding and whatnot, but he especially likes to do this with Mac.”

“Oh does he,” Wukong let a small hiss out.

“Mmmhmm, sometimes hours would go by and he would still be at it,” Daiyu added and watched as his fingers dug into the cushion. Ohohoho she knows that look, it is the same look her sister gave to another male when he was trying to court the same chick as her, needless to say he can never land the same again, especially since he’s missing a foot and all.

“Hours then they're rather…close then,” he had to put on a wide grin, but he couldn’t help but bare a few teeth.

“Oh yeah, we might have known Doc and Med first before they met each other, but when the two met, it was like a perfect match.” Bohai drew out. He knows exactly what his friends were trying to do and he finds no shame in joining in. Even without the stories of the two monkeys' relations, it was too easy to see the fondness that was coming off from the both of them.

“Like a puzzle piece fit together,” Sheng emphasized. They know that the Monkey Pleb had quite the temper on him, not even counting his impulsiveness, and they couldn’t help but taunt the ever-loving fuck out of him. Life threatening, perhaps with all the killing he does, but fun, it is starting to look so much fun. Besides they already had their fun teasing Mac about this, now it’s the dumbass monkey's turn for his time in the spotlight.

He said nothing as he watched the two demons curl closer together.

‘A perfect match? Fit together?! Like hell they are! I’ll show you-no calm down and breathe,’ he took a deep breath and relaxed. ‘It’s okay. Moonshine trusts him and is okay with the…grooming the lion is doing. They have known each other for quite some time, so of course he wouldn’t mind.’ He glanced back at the scene, watched Mac's content face and he further relaxed. ‘I’m really glad that he had people watching out for him and besides it’s not like there is any bigger reason behind this than bonding.’

Then Wukong’s eyes caught Ahmed and as the monkey was about to smile wider in his direction the lion gave a little smirk and nuzzled his face a little bit harder into the long black fur and let out a content purr. Ahmed may not have any romantic feelings towards the smaller demon, but that doesn’t mean that he will willingly let go of him that easily. Macaque is a part of his pack and he is known for being…violently protective over each and every member of his small pack.

The Sage Monkey froze and barely stopped the growl coming out of his throat as he gritted his teeth while his eyes glinted a faint golden glow. ‘I’m gonna skin that overgrown cat!’

The rest of the demons subtly gave a thumbs up to the lion as they held back their laughter. Oh yes, they were all going to have so much fun with this.

A pack of fossa laid still in the grass as they quietly stalked their prey from behind. They followed the figure for some time waiting for the opportunity to strike as the prey continued a steady walk. The leader could almost feel the tender meat upon his teeth as he gazed upon their oversized prey. They have been only getting the small rabbits and birds and that wasn’t enough, it’s never enough to fill them so they're quite…hungry.

Then the prey stopped and so did they.

“I know you're there,” they all stilled as a soft voice called out. “I know you’ve been following me for quite some time.”

They all glanced towards the leader for guidance on their next approach, so he hunched down low and began to crawl closer in preparation to pounce on him.

“Ah ah ah,” the voice tutted, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Though I am talking to mindless beasts, so perhaps I should speak in their language.”

Before any even had the chance to feel offended by the words, they all smell a strange odor before-

EYES. THEY WATCH WATCH WATCH WATCH ALL

SEE THEY SEE SEE SEE EVERY LITTLE

STEP

NO ESCAPE

STEP

CAN’T RUN

STEP

CAN'T HIDE

STEP

FIGHT NEED TO FIGHT FIGHT CANT FIGHT

WIDE WIDE WHY SO WIDE

TEETH TEETH SO MANY TEETH WHY WHY WHYWHYWHYWHYWH

They’re brought back to the field, their back with their bodies, back with their heads with no teeth about to snap it right off-

“I’m in a good mood, so I’ll let you off easy okay,” they all flinched at the soft voice. “Well, what are you waiting for? Run.”

And they did, they ran and ran and ran so far that not even the growl in their stomach bothered them. They just needed to run away fast, it was no wonder they didn’t spot any other prey on the way here, they all must have sensed the predator. The terrifying predator with the teeth, why teeth, why so many teeth.

And they kept running.

“Well that’s enough excitement for one night,” the voice sighed as he continued back on his path and threw out in the distance the illuminating sight of a city. “I am almost there, I’ll see you soon my love.”

While there was a moon high in the sky there was still vast darkness upon the path as not a single critter chirped nor a single rustle of leaves as he walked upon the path. The animals all cowered away from the frightening presence and hoped that the predator wouldn’t look at them. But there were a few that were brave enough to slightly peek out from under their leaf or quietly look a smidge over their hole and get a glance at the predator retreating figure. All that they could see as it got farther and farther away was a black and white striped tail swishing softly behind him.

#mk #lego monkie kid #monkie kid #macaque #PlumTeaAU

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anthropwashere · 4 years

Text

Phic Phight: over and outside and under

Prompt from @ectopal: After the accident, Danny is stuck on the wrong side of the now broken portal. What does he do to try to get home?

@currentlylurking @phicphight

Word count: 5,498

Danny wakes up.

Considering just how hard he got pitched out of consciousness before this, it’s kind of a relief.

The first thing he's aware of is being sore, more sore than he can ever remember being in his life. Breathing hurts. The instinctive curling up in wordless protest to this whole 'being awake' thing hurts more. He doesn't know what he's laying on but at least it doesn't feel like the cold tile floor of the lab. He stills, takes shallow breaths, reluctantly cracks his eyes open.

All he sees is broad, smeary strokes of greens, unnaturally bright on a gloaming backdrop deepening to blacks and violets. He blinks to clear his vision. His vision remains uselessly blurred. He swallows, grimacing at the dry click of his throat and the way his chapped lips stick when he opens his mouth. "Sam...? Tucker?"

His voice comes out in a low croak; weird to his ears in a way he doesn't know what to think of, so he doesn't. He's more concerned about how there's no answer anyway.

He tries to brace himself despite his soreness, to sit up and rub the bleariness out of his eyes, but he sort of—wobbles, instead. There's nothing under him to brace against.

There's... nothing under him...?

He squints around harder, trying to make sense of all this too-bright green and backlit black. Perspective is virtually non-existent. All he can tell for sure is that he's floating in empty space.

"Uh," he says intelligently.

"Uh," he repeats with more appropriate panic.

"What—augh—AAA—!" And other similarly useful comments sputter out of him while he flails around like a drowning man for a while, clawing around in a blind panic and catching purchase on a big heaping pile of zilch. Where is he, where is this, what is this, he's falling, is he falling, he can't tell if he's falling—

Something catches his eye, weird enough to slow his scrambling. His glove, to be exact. He's still wearing his embarrassingly tacky jumpsuit, but... its colors have inverted? Black gloves are now a white so bright to make his eyes hurt if he looks too closely; the white of his upper arm is now a black so dark it seems to suck the diffuse white light coming from—his gloves? Are his gloves glowing?

He peers closer at the hem of his glove to the body of the suit, compares it to collar, belt, and boots, all of which are the same eye-wateringly bright white. Yup. That is a noticeable, low-level glow. Aura. Something. Why the fuck is he glowing?

He notices something beyond his immediate focus, something that wasn't there before. Or he got turned around while panicking about this whole 'is he falling or isn't he' insanity. Who cares. There's something a lot closer than all this freaky, acrylic paint-like smears of color all around him. There's the Portal. He's never been happier to see it in his life, and starts dog-paddling towards it even as he belatedly registers something's different about it. He can't make it out at this distance; he's maybe... 20 yards from it? 30? Perspective is still out the window even with something solid to focus on. It's farther away than it looks from the foot of the stairs down to the lab, anyway.

It takes roughly an eternity to paddle to it, though really it's probably only a couple minutes. Everything around him—and above, and below—remains terrifyingly empty and impossible the whole way over. It's so quiet. Dead of night quiet. He pushes that observation away to deal with later as his gloved hands make a satisfying smack against the Portal's riveted steel frame. He's—floating, ugh—near the top of it, giving him a bizarre top-down angle that makes it seem alien simply for having never seen it this way before. It's still the most normal thing around by a country mile.

Maybe literally.

Maybe he shouldn't think about that.

He hooks his fingers on the edge of the frame to keep from drifting beyond it, only noticing then that there's nothing past it. Empty swirling void continuing ad nauseum, sure, okay, that's still obviously, weirdly, a thing. But the Portal itself isn't just a big frame slapped up against the lab's wall, it's got a tunnel going back about 12 feet. It's what he was standing in when the whole world went electric-white and vanished on him.

And the tunnel’s not here now.

There's just the octagonal frame with the red alarm light flickering weakly a few feet from him, its black-and-yellow striped doors half shut on empty space. There's only the frame.

Carefully—and with no small amount of growing dread—he leverages himself down along the frame for a closer look. Confirmation that this really is all there is. A big, useless hunk of steel to cling to in an otherwise empty stretch of who-knows-what. He swallows, fighting panic. There's an on/off switch next to the Portal back home—is this that Portal? A copy? Where's the rest of it?—but there's nothing next to this one. He pulls himself back up to tap his fingers on the alarm light; it flickers a little more urgently, but nothing else. Nothing useful.

"Okay," he whispers shakily. "Okay. This. Don't freak out. There's gotta be a way back—"

His voice fails him as he realizes the extent of what's happened to him. He's not in his parents' lab. He's not in his house, not in Amity Park, not on Earth. Nowhere real looks this—this weird. This impossible. This is impossible, but here he is all the same.

His parents were right. Their Portal worked. It tore a hole right in reality and dumped him out....

He has to focus very, very hard on keeping his breath even, his heart hammering in his chest in a way that feels—off in a way he wouldn't know how to explain if there were anyone else here to ask. He scans his surroundings with fresh eyes, taking in again the smearing, dripping neon colors splashed across a swallowing darkness as far as he can see in every direction. Far, far away, impossible to even hazard a guess how far, he can make out vague green lumps clustered together. In another direction he can see dots of purple in a sort of uneven stripe. In a third there's something blocky colored a bone-white; at this distance it seems to twinkle like a star.

This is the Ghost Zone. The Portal turned on somehow while he was standing inside it, and it shunted him into the Ghost Zone.

He's in a parallel dimension where ghosts are real.

"Okay," he chatters. "It's fine. I'm okay. There's nothing around me—literally! Ha ha, ha, hngh. Nobody around. There's no—no ghosts. No Sam or Tucker either. They must've been too far away to get—zapped, or whatever. So. Just me here! Alone!" He smacks the Portal again for reassurance. The gesture fails spectacularly. "Just me and this busted Portal. No way to get home—"

No way home.

He has no way to get home. No way to tell Sam and Tucker he's here. No way to tell his parents they were right after all, but can they save the celebration for after they've rescued him?

They're not even going to know he needs rescuing. How could they? From Sam and Tucker's view he just vanished. Blinked out of existence. Literally, ha ha ha.

...Right?

He lets go of the Portal to look at his too-bright white gloves again. Definitely glowing. Definitely not the same color configuration as when he put the stupid jumpsuit on.

...is he dead?

Did he die?

He can't help the deflating balloon squeak that slips out him, immediately backtracking. No way. No no no no, ha ha, absolutely not. He's not dead, he can't be dead. He can't. There's got to be a more logical explanation for ending up in the world's biggest lava lamp. Right?

Okay, okay.

So.

He huddles in on himself, floating in a tense knot as he goes back over—whatever it was, exactly, that happened to land him here in the fucking Ghost Zone.

Sam wanted to sneak into his parents' lab while they were out to take a bunch of pictures, because her grandmother had somehow gotten her hooked on scrapbooking. Danny figured, whatever, they always took a million years grocery shopping, so what was the harm of going down to the lab for ten minutes? Then Tucker'd found the jumpsuit rack and made fun of Danny for having a custom ghost hunting jumpsuit, which was fair. For all that Danny'd never asked his parents to make him one, he still had one. Jazz did too, for that matter, but she wasn't home for Tucker to make fun of her too, and if she had been she would've blown a gasket at Danny for going in the lab without their parents. Then Sam got the bright idea to get Danny to put the stupid thing on and pose around the lab. Tucker salvaged his best friend cred by agreeing with Danny that that was stupid, but there's never been any talking Sam out of an idea once her eyes light up that eagerly. So, into the suit he got, zipping it up over his clothes and fidgeting when it bunched his jeans up uncomfortably—

He's not uncomfortable now.

Well, aside from the whole-body soreness and near-overwhelming panic, that is. Point is, the jumpsuit feels fine now. He fumbles for the zipper at his throat and tugs it down enough to see if—

Yyyyup, he can unhappily confirm he's not wearing a shirt under this stupid jumpsuit anymore, which likely means the rest of his clothes are... gone. Apparently.

Where the fuck would his clothes go if he's still wearing the stupid jumpsuit?

He takes a shaky breath. Right. Getting off track. So. He put the jumpsuit on, posed around the lab feeling like an idiot and increasingly worried his parents would come back home in time to see him looking like he cared about whatever craziness they did down here. Then they ended up in front of the Portal, and they talked about it. His parents have been trying to make a functioning hole in reality since they were in college, something like 20 years ago now, with no luck. The three of them talked about what it would be like if his parents did get this thing working one day, how cool it would be to have a portal to another world full of creatures straight out of horror movies. Sam had taken a shot of him alone outside the Portal, then goaded him into the tunnel itself. He'd reluctantly gone in and, mindful of all the thick cables tangled up on the ground, kept one hand on the tunnel wall for balance.

But.

But he'd heard something click, felt something shift under his fingers, right before the world dissolved in white-hot blast of pain.

Well.

Okay.

That explains the soreness. And also the maybe-deadness.

Fuck.

"I really hope I'm not dead," he half-jokes to himself, intending to make a self-deprecating crack that he'd make a really boring ghost, but at that exact moment there's a harsh flash! of white light that leaves him blinking green afterimages at his suddenly bare hands.

Then he's falling.

Like, for sure this time.

He doesn't scream so much as make a tortured shriek like an abused dog toy as everything around him becomes a dizzying and flashing stream of bright and dark, bright and dark. Mostly shades of neon green and too-dark black, interspersed with purples and blues and one startlingly huge red thing that makes a sound like a jet engine as he plummets by it. He sees chunks of earth that look like they'd been scooped up from somewhere Earth-adjacent and dumped here to float in empty space, stained deep blues and maroons and almost-normal shades of green. He glimpses a few crumbling ruins, big wandering shapes of stone blocks and wood and polished metals. He chokes out a mangled cry for help once, twice, three times, and still he's falling. Still he's alone.

He hits a chunk of earth about the size of his mattress and it falls apart to smoke, only slowing his momentum for the moment of painful impact. He can't tell if he broke anything, but it sure did knock the wind out of him. He spends a terrible eternity gasping for air, clawing at the green patches of mist and praying to grab something solid.

No such luck.

He falls.

It occurs to him, once he's gotten his breath back, that he wasn't falling before. In fact, he was doing a bang up job of floating just fine. So what changed?

Doing his best—admittedly an all-time low, but his current circumstances are, to put it frankly, pretty fucking sub-optimal—to ignore his horrible situation, he looks at his hands. Definitely not wearing gloves anymore, somehow, and also definitely not glowing for that matter. He looks down at the rest of himself nervously—then sighs with relief. Oh good, not naked. He's back in his jeans and T-shirt, and not a scrap of him is glowing.

So he needs to be glowing to float here? Maybe? Sure. Why not. Okay, so how does he start glowing again? Why did he stop glowing?

"I really hope I'm not dead," he repeats, though he's falling so fast his words are torn away before he can hear them. "Okay, sure, why not. I hope I am dead?"

Nope.

"Jumpsuit. Jumpsuit. I want my stupid jumpsuit!"

Nope.

"I'D LIKE TO STOP FALLING PLEASE!"

Nope.

"FLYING! FLOATING! I'M DEAD! GHOSTS FLY! STOP FALLING! CHANGE BACK! CHANGE CHANGE CHA—"

Another harsh flash!

Now he's falling, but in a stupid glowing jumpsuit.

For fuck's sake.

He scrunches his eyes closed and imagines as hard as he can that he's no longer falling, feeling like a complete idiot but well on his way of trying the Peter Pan route of scrounging up as many happy thoughts as he can if that's what it'll take to save his probably-dead idiot ass from double-dying on any of the chunks of land hurtling up at him at what feels like Mach 7.

Come on.

There's a hard, choking yank that whips him around like the farthest a bungee rope can strain before snapping. His limbs go flailing, his neck pops painfully, but the horrible whistle of wind in his ears stops abruptly. When he dares to open his eyes he's gratified to find himself looking at a patch of ground thick with overgrowth he'd barely managed to hit not ten feet below him. "Ha! Haha! Yes! I did it! I—whoa—!"

His recovered floating ability bails on him again, and he goes crashing face first into a very thorny bush. Hot lines ignite all over his exposed head and scalp. Even while yelping and trying to shake himself free he's grateful for the stupid jumpsuit. It's thick enough to keep the three-inch long brambles safely away from his skin, and dead or not he's apparently something enough to still feel pain.

Eventually he pulls free of the death-bush, falling on his ass with an undignified but thoroughly relieved, "Oof!"

He decides sitting there for a while is an excellent idea. At least until the world, or zone, or whatever, stops spinning so dramatically. It sure feels like his heart's going all out in his chest, which is an important tally in the Not Dead column. He drags one shaking hand across his face and ends up with neon green smeared all across his palm instead of blood from where the brambles scratched him, which is an unhappy tally in the Fuck I AM Dead column. Glowing and floating probably belongs in that column too. Things look grim.

It's at that moment the death-bush snarls.

He looks at it, already leaning away in case of—something, and yelps when a skeletal arm shoots out and grabs his ankle.

"No," he tells it firmly. "Absolutely not. Off."

"Graaakhhhhugh," says the death-bush, or the ambulatory skeleton lurking inside, or maybe it's some sort of horrible plant-skeleton-ghost combination. Who cares, Danny wants nothing to do with it.

"I—said—get—off!" He punctuates each word with a wild kick of his leg, then yelps again in disgust as the arm falls apart at its green-limned joints. Bits of bone float to the reddish earth too slowly, like they're underwater, or on the moon, or in a dimension where gravity's some kind of optional. That little middle finger to physics is maybe the most upsetting thing Danny's seen so far.

A pair of red lights flash deeper in the depths of the bush, which all in all seems like fair warning of things wanting to go from bad to worse. He's back in his jumpsuit so floating's an option again. No way he's staying on this hunk of rock with whatever's growling at him. He throws a mock-salute in farewell at the death-bush, firmly stomps all over the instinctual 'don't jump you absolute moron' his brain-stomach-heart all pitch at him, and jumps off the little island.

Naturally, he goes plummeting.

He's torn between screaming and sighing, and ends up making another prolonged deflating balloon squeak all the way down a few hundred feet before he figures out floating again. God, but he's lucky he's dead or dead-enough that whiplash isn't something he needs to worry about, apparently. He definitely would've broken his neck by now otherwise.

Ha ha, look at him, trying to find a positive spin on 'death by lab accident.' And Jazz always says he's got a negative outlook on life. Joke's on her!

Ugh.

Splayed out like a cat being held by an idiot and just as certain he's going to fall to his impending death, he very carefully cranes his head to look back the way he came. He can't even see the Portal anymore. It's a lava lamp hellscape as far as the eye can see. Great.

Okay.

Hovering, he's figuring out. Falling, he's already an old pro at. Maybe flying's on the table? Some semblance of control, some way of going any direction other than 'straight down.' He'd be happy with some good old-fashioned 'falling with style' at this rate. Buzz Lightyear, don't fail him now.

He moves at a snail's pace, eventually angling himself vertical again. Up, he thinks as an experiment.

Incredibly, it works.

Of course, he's so surprised by this unexpected achievement he stops thinking in a vaguely upward momentum and so of course goes hurtling downward another hundred or so feet—right into another earthen island.

He lays there awhile, blinking stars out of his eyes.

"Ow," he says eventually.

"HHHHHHHRRRRRRGRAAAAAAAAUGH," something very, very big says.

Danny would very much like to wake up from this bullshit nightmare now. Alas.

This island is a lot larger than the previous one, so it's something like thirty seconds before he finds an edge to throw himself off of. All the while the very, very big something knocks trees the size of redwoods aside like they're so many dominoes, the purple-ish ground shaking like an Etch-a-Sketch. It's all Danny can do to keep his feet under him. He manages one look over his shoulder and immediately wishes he hadn't; those were some teeth.

He jumps. He falls. He keeps falling until the horrible garbage disposal-esque roaring of whatever-that-was fades, then catches himself again. It's less painful this time, so maybe he's getting the hang of it? Sure, why not.

He takes a minute to catch his breath again and get a look at his new surroundings. Neon green on a black backdrop. Cool, cool, loving the variety. Details, details, anything unusual, anything that might try to eat him, apparently—

There's another stretch of island beneath him, maybe about fifty feet below. This one's big enough that its edges disappear into the distant green fog in a way that feels just a touch too Silent Hill for comfort. Not that he's had an abundance of comfort since he woke up here, but still. If anything remotely like the four-legged mannequin monster starts wriggling around down there he is out.

He eases himself down at a far slower pace than he's failed to manage before this, pleased even as he tenses in case of whatever might charge out at him to defend its territory or whatever.

When he touches down something crunches underfoot. He can't help the full-body flinch, bracing for a blow even as all his aching muscles protest.

Nothing happens.

No growling, no snarling, no earth-shaking stomping. Nothing.

Warily he looks out between his forearms, raised to protect his head. No sign of movement. This island's a lot darker than the others he landed on, as well as all the others he hurtled past. Unlike the others this island is entirely barren, just rolling hills of jutting dark green stones in every direction he looks as he lands in a narrow clearing.

A narrow clearing which happens to be full of bones.

He swallows, wincing when his other foot crunches on something despite his care as he steps down fully. Nothing reacts. It's just him in what is, essentially, some kind of ghost ossuary. So that's fun.

Oh. Oh that is definitely a human skull. Time to go.

He takes one step and hears a growl directly behind him. Before he can panic and bolt up the nearest rocky hillside, a woman's voice says, "Hold."

He stays put, shaking. He looks around, seeing nothing but green rocks, green rocks, green rocks, red—

A sphinx roughly the size of a school bus looms over the hillside he fully intended to flee toward, never mind that its—her?—voice sounded like it had come from behind him. It—she? yup, she is definitely a she because those are definitely breasts he definitely shouldn't be staring at. He hastily focuses on her face and instantly wishes he could look elsewhere, because everything about her face screams uncanny valley. Every inch of her is shades of neon red, garish to the point where it hurts his eyes to look at her directly. She has a human face stretched terribly across a lion's skull; her mouth far too wide, her almond-shaped eyes unblinking, her nose a flat arrowhead shape, her cheekbones and jaw jutting harshly. She's bald, or at least doesn't have any more hair—fur—on her head compared to the rest of her. Her shoulders have a distinctive human hunch to them, at war with her lion body and overlong neck. Her wings are the darkest shade of red on her, and even folded Danny can tell her wingspan is ludicrous. All of her is, really, but he's too busy reeling at the toothsome smile she's baring at him to think of the rest of her details.

"Little ghost," she says. He knows she's speaking, but her mouth doesn't move a centimeter. Her voice is low, slow, like the unhurried rumble of a thunderstorm in summer. "Little ghost, you are trespassing."

He breathes.

His heart—or something like it—hammers in his chest.

"I'm sorry," he stammers out. "I—I'm new—here. In this place, I mean. I'm still trying to figure out—everything, really. I keep falling. I fell here. I wasn't trying to come here. I swear."

She considers him with eyes the size of dinner plates. Her irises are the same bright green as the not-blood drying on his palm. Her round pupils are the same shade of red as a human's in a badly timed photograph. "Even so," she says. "You have trespassed on my domain, and so you must answer my riddle."

Oh, great. Danny's never been any great shake with Classical mythology, but he does remember the gist of this one. If ghost sphinxes work anything like the mythological ones, then he's got three options: answer correctly and proceed (to where is a big ol' question mark, but whatever), answer incorrectly and be eaten alive (which explains all the bones), or walk away. Considering he's not trying to go anywhere on this island, and in fact has zero interest in exploring it further, he is A-OK taking the coward's route.

But considering how easy it must be for ghosts—or, ghosts that know what the hell they're doing, unlike him—it must be incredibly easy to skip her riddle entirely and just fly off. And considering just how many bones there are here, he's missing something. He's missing something very, very important.

"I don't get to walk away without answering you, do I?" He asks quietly.

The sphinx makes an even deeper rumbling sound that settles in Danny's diaphragm. It takes him a moment to realize she's purring. "You are wiser than you look."

Considering the size of her fangs, he bites down the snarky retort on the tip of his tongue and shrugs sheepishly instead. "Any chance you'll give a new guy an easy riddle?"

The purring stops.

Fuck.

Her head cocks, birdlike, as she leans forward to appraise him. He tries not to shake, really, but she's enormous. She could swallow him whole if she were so inclined. Considered the cracked heap of bones he's standing ankle-deep in, she is. And he kind of doubts she’ll make quick work of him. She'll kill him slow.

Double-kill him. Whatever. Who cares. He really doesn't want to be eaten by a giant monster lady.

He exhales slowly, dropping his gaze to her huge paws. Though she has something roughly akin to thumbs, her nails are feline enough to retract wholly. He can only stand there and imagine what they look like, how they'd feel tearing him open. "Okay," he says.

Another bassy purr. Then she asks him, "What disappears as soon as you say its name?"

Well, shit. And here he was hoping she'd ask him the riddle from the myth. So much for blurting out, "Man!" then bailing as fast as humanly—ghostly?—possible. He rocks back on his heels—wincing when more bones crunch—racking his brain. Math is honestly his strong point. English is something he gets, sure, but all the wacky linguistic tricks that can accompany it are just... not something that comes up in his day-to-day, so he can easily ignore it. Riddles and word problems are things he's always been able to wave off as not worth his time.

Well, today's just chalk full of firsts, isn't it? Make or break time. Or, more accurately, answer correctly or be eaten time.

Nngh.

"Is there a time limit to answering?" He asks nervously.

The sphinx shakes her great head, and takes his question as cue to sit. Her stretched face doesn't twitch an inch from its beatific grin, but her lion's tail does lash irritably. So that's technically a 'no,' sure, but definitely not one he should try to take advantage of.

So. Crunch time.

Maybe don't think of that too literally.

Disappears as soon as you say its name....

Disappears if you speak it.

Disappears if you say it?

Disappears if you speak?

He swallows, looking back up at her large, large eyes. "Um. Is it silence?"

There are three terrible seconds where she only looks at him, as unreadable as a marble statue. Then her eyes wink shut, and she purrs, and Danny just about goes to jelly with relief.

Scratch that. He does go to jelly, at least under the belt. His legs have fucking melted to a twitching black streak of semi-transparent smoke. He makes a very undignified shriek and flails around, only succeeding in losing whatever subconscious grasp on hovering he'd had and landing in a painful heap of well-chewed bones.

The sphinx leans far, far over to peer at him curiously. The grin on her freaky face has shrunk to something that Danny's sure is amusement at his expense. "You are new."

His traitorous legs reappear with a small pop! He glowers at them rather than meet her eyes. She's still sitting on the edge of the bone clearing, and sure she's big, but not big enough to explain how she's stretched out so far that her face is only two scant feet from his.

"What gave it away?" He grumbles, shaking his arm out of a rib cage that is, thankfully, not human-shaped. It's also a lovely shade of pale purple, or his eyes are playing tricks on him.

"How long since your arrival?"

"Uh. Hard to say." He gets to feet, patting he doesn't-wanna-know off his stupid jumpsuit. "Twenty minutes? Half hour, tops."

Her stretched-out mouth gains an unmistakable pitying curl. Great. That's his cue to leave before she decides to put him out of his misery. With her enormous teeth. He clears his throat, drums up a happy thought—not being here, oh, if only—and manages a wobbly hover. "Right. Um. Thank you. For not eating me."

She sits back and this time Danny's looking to see that yup, she was stretched out like a length of taffy. She stretches again, this time more like a normal cat-shaped thing should. Her hooked claws drag deep white furrows in the rock; her yawning mouth—also neon green—is lined with at least twice as many teeth as any cat-shaped thing should have.

Well. That was only mildly horrifying.

She settles back into a stiff sitting position, lion's tail curling over her paws as she looks down her nose at him. "You would be wise to take greater care than this," she cautions. "I am not so terrible as what slumbers in the deep places."

Danny shivers, more than a little dismayed to be fed a line straight out of a cheesy fantasy novel. By a sphinx, no less. But mostly he feels like he's in dire need of a magic sword or something to deal with whatever other horrible monster he comes across that might not be as chill as this one. Or Gandalf. If sphinxes are real here maybe he'll get lucky and come across a ghost wizard on the next island he crash-lands on. Hopefully it won't want to kill him too, though with how things are going so far his hopes are pretty low.

He musters up a weak smile. "Right. I'll try my best. Um, actually, now that you mention it? I'm kinda having a hard time going any direction but down. Any advice?"

As answer she unfolds her wings, confirming that her wingspan is, in fact, ludicrous. It's not especially helpful though.

"Uh, that's... they're very nice. Very pretty. But I don't have wings, so—"

The rest of his stammering is mercifully cut short when he's sent ass over tea kettle by the heavy downwash of her wings as she takes off, so much faster than something her size should be capable of. By the time Danny's figured out which way is up again—a feat in itself, considering how everything everywhere looks like technicolor vomit—she's a red blip in the distance.

Well, damn. If she expects him to follow her she better not hold her breath—

The heretofore now perfectly solid ground chooses at that moment to flicker out of existence. Once again, Danny falls. This time he has the delightful addition of several hundred bone bits falling along with him.

"Grrrngh," one of the skulls complains, a single pale light bouncing around its crunched-in sockets.

Danny sighs and musters up the effort to halt himself again. After wincing through a small deluge of dubiously sentient people and animal bones, he's entirely alone again. There's another floating island not too far from, maybe fifty yards above him and a full football field's length off. It'd be a great test of figuring how this flying without wings work, if not for the waterfall of something that's definitely not water careening off one edge. It's a dark red, and thick, and Danny's not sure if he wants to get close enough to confirm whether or not that island is bleeding.

Well. Nowhere to go but up, right?

Well, no. There's still a lot of down under his feet—nope, back to a creepy ghost tail again. Cool. Great. Excellent. Whatever. He peers down into the dark below him, swallowing nervously. It gets a lot darker down than in any other direction. There are streaks and dots of light down there sure, but a lot fewer, and clustered together like they're nervous of what might be down there with them—

And a long, long gray tentacle is swimming up out of the mist. Coming straight for him, no less.

Flash!

Aaaand check it out, there goes his magic glowing jumpsuit and his ability to float with it. Great.

#danny phantom #my writing #phic phight 2020 #aka the one where danny has a panic attack while falling for half an hour

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who-even-needs-marbles · 4 years

Note

I don’t know if you’re still interested in prompts, but in case you are… This may be the most phone-it-in prompt ever, but I thought your “Jaskier gets paralyzed” headcanon looked angsty and wonderful, and I keep hoping you’ll do something more with it. Maybe write us a scene or two from that ‘verse?

Hi anon! I know this took really long but life just be like that, good newn is that once I started writing this I decided to write the whole thing! So if all goes well that will be on my ao3 once I finish it.

This takes place somewhere around chapter 4 and 5 (yeah it’s going to be a long one) just after Jaskier woke up. He got stabbed in the head but Yennefer and Geralt managed to save him, what they didn’t realise at first is that brain injuries almost always have lasting affects, this time making it that Jaskier, the once so alive bard couldn’t even get one real word out of his mouth.

___________________________________________

The mumbling wouldn't stop, Jaskier was just making sounds and acted like he was actually saying something, like he was still flailing his arms around and using every tone he could to get his point across. But he wasn’t. By the gods he was barely moving. His eyes were dancing and he was producing sounds but it meant nothing. The poet lost his words, he lost the life he had. It would take years for him to even walk again- let alone dance around the tavern enchanting everyone with a voice like honey. If he’d ever got to do that again. Brain injuries have disastrous results. He knew that, but he’d never seen it from this close. He never expected Jaskier to end up like this.

He’s met people who were blind, deaf, couldn't feel their left arm or just lost their sense of smell. Never someone who seemed almost fully paralised, not even knowing that they were.

He just kept mumbling, he just wouldn’t stop and it didn’t take the sorceress and the witcher long to realise that they needed to tell him, before he found out himself while they couldn’t do anything but watch. They needed to say something, anything to at least comfort him. He needed to say something and not just watch, Jaskier needed him but the words were stuck in his throat, stuck like they’ve never been, like the tightest screw in the world's heaviest tower.

“Jaskier'' Yennefer seemed to be able to talk. It made Jaskier snap out of his ramble session and look at her. She walked closer and grabbed his hand. Slow and ever so careful. Like it was made out of glass. Slowly lifting it off the bed into the air, letting their conjoined hands rest in the air. She looked at him contemplating what to do. Letting her violet eyes rest on the blue ones across of her.

Even the great Yennefer of Vengerberg didn’t seem to find the right words, or maybe even the heart. She always was brutally honest when it came to things like this. She’s a smart liar, only twisting the truth, but not fully lying.

She redirected her attention from Jaskier’s eyes to his hand. And the blue colour filled with confusion followed. She slowly let go of his hand. Not putting it down, but slowly taking her support away from his arm. And just before she let it fully go she told him something.

“Try and keep your arm up.” Confusion filling his eyes until she let go and the arm fell right back onto the bed, blue eyes grew wide and looked at Geralt, his words still stuck, and back at Yennefer, her violet eyes full with everything he needed to know.

He needed to lift his arm. Jaskier couldn't figure out why it fell when Yennefer let go, he didn’t know what was even happening. He felt okay, besided the thobbing pain in his head he felt okay, so why did his own bloody arm fall?

He just needed to lift his arm. Lift it like he’d always done. Using his upper arm to lift the rest. He’d do it. They were just fucking with him, he was just fine. This was just one of Yennefer’s sick jokes.

Just lift it.

1.. 2.. 3 -

Nothing.

Why not?

His heartbeat started picking up, along with his breathing. He could still do it. He’d been out for a while, his body probably needs some time. His eyes grew smaller, more concentrated and a little angry. He tried again, and he kept trying but nothing happened no matter what he did. He tried, and oh god he tried but nothing happened.

“What happened?”

But all he got were two worried looks. Why didn’t they answer him? They always answered him, and if they didn’t they wove him off, they didn’t start a group therapy session where he spoke while they just looked at him, worried.

“Answer me!”

Still nothing. Why? Why not? In Melente’s name WHY!

“Jaskier”

“Geralt tell me! What’s happening!?”

“Jaskier, I need you to listen.” Geralt’s breath got caught in his throat “You’re trying to talk right?”

“Trying? What do you mean trying? I-”

A hand got a hold of his own, Geralt's hand to be exact. The witcher brought their hands closer to his face and placed a gentle kiss on the bard's hand before looking him in his blue wide eyes.

“You’re not saying anything.”

It hurt to tell him that. It hurt that he wasn’t okay. It hurt that he didn’t even realize it. Oh he hated how he needed to tell him how bad it had gotten. Geralt needing to tell his beloved bard all that he loved doing. How he wasn’t able to do the things he loved most. Talking, singing, dancing, playing, writing, he didn’t know where the list would end. For as long as he knew Jaskier he was talking and moving and full of life. Now there was a man on that bed, paralised from his neck down and unable to string together the words he used to be so good with. And now he even had to explain it all to him.

He had to bite through the piercing eyes that were wide with fear, and confusion.

“You’re not saying anything. Not words, just tones. You can move your eyes right? Blink twice for yes”

Jaskier wanted to scream, scream until every word came back. He tried to answer, but just like his arm, his mouth wasn’t working with him. Just how he thought that he was moving his arms at first, now that he listened -really listened- he heard the notes escaping. How it just sounded like low grunts, how it didn’t even sound close to the voice he once had. So he just blinked twice. Geralt would find a solution, he always did. He just had to get through now.

Geralt sighed with compassion. “Do you remember what happened? Once for no, and still twice for yes.”

Did he remember? He dug through his memories, trying to find an explanation for why and how he ended up here. He tried to find it but he didn’t remember himself getting hurt. He remembered the Nilfguaardian threat and how he swore he wanted to help. How he found a way that didn’t involve getting a sword and smashing every black soldier he saw. It wasn’t safe, he knew that, but as long as no one caught him he’d be fine. He needed to pull a big stunt. He needed to be out in the open to get to the Nilfguaardian commander tent, steal the plans, and leave, act like a lost bard, having no idea how he got there. He remembered the plan, but not the execution. Like the day never came to light. Like he fell asleep the night before the big day, and woke up like this. In a condition he just couldn’t put his finger on and with the most terrible headache ever.

“Jaskier. Do you?”

He blinkt once.

“We were going to resist Nilfgaard. I found you struggling with a higher soldier, possibly a commander. I tried to save you-” He hadn’t let go of his hand, but now he squeezed a little harder. A comfort after he choked on his words. And Jaskier forgot, just for a split second that he couldn’t squeeze back, and swallowed the lump in his throat when he remembered again.

Yennefer decided to step in. Realising that Geralt couldn’t find the words he needed. “He stabbed you in your head, Jask. I’m sorry. You even died for a while, but your spirit hadn’t left yet, so we managed to save you. You woke up for a few seconds, after that you fell asleep for the whole week.”

He wanted to make a snarky and clever comment. Just a little something to say that he’s okay, even though he isn’t. To bite at Yennefer and have her bite back. To show Geralt how good they could get along and how their comments could be turned into the best theatre show on the whole continent.

A try won’t hurt right? It was just a dagger in his head, and he survived that. He survived and he’d always pulled through everything. He had to try, for this wasn’t a life for a bard.

“Well at the very least I’m-”

“Jaskier.” Geralt said. Eyes closed and lips moving in no particular shape. Testing the words before saying them. “Please, stop.”

“Unfortunately I’m going to have to agree with him” Yennefer said, her stoic and direct self. She wasn’t always like that, but she knew when not to show your emotions. He just hoped that she was in fact hiding them, instead of not caring about him at all. “You’re still not saying anything and this hurts us Jaskier. We will find a way but for now, just stop talking, please.” At least he knew that she cared now, but he still couldn’t believe them. How could they just give in? He was going to be fine, everything will return to normal after a drink, some food, and a good night’s rest. Right?

He didn’t know how his plea was heard, but Geralt knew him all too well. Decades of friendship and love making sure they knew each other all better than anyone else on the continent. Knew what the other was thinking when not a word was said. He sat onto the bed, only letting go of his hand to pull him into a hug. One he could not return no matter how hard he tried. He liked the feeling of Geralt being close though, so he didn’t complain. He just had one question, one question Geralt might even understand without actual words.

He would be okay right? This would pass like it was nothing right? “Right?”

He got pulled even closer. His arms still stupidly limb and his neck only staying up because Geralt was holding it.

“I’m sorry Jask.”

The thing was, he knew that he was right. A voice deep inside of telling him that he wasn’t okay for once, but he still chose to ignore it. Ignore Geralt, ignore Yennefer and ignore that voice, because this couldn’t be true.

It just can’t go like this.

“I’ll fix you Jaskier, I promise” He whispered, only pulling him closer. “Just make this easy for us, please”

He didn’t want this. He wanted the life he had back. And yet,

here he was.

Because he thought it was a good idea to fight against that stupid emporer. Because he just felt the need to fight it all. To give up the life he had for one of heroics and heartbreak. Not just following it, but being in the centre of it all.

Only he planned for his heart to break.

Not for him to break his friend's heart.

Not for him to lie there not being able to do anything. Not being able to get up and deal with it in some way.

He didn’t know when the tears started to roll but he knew he was crying. Sobs escaping his throat and they still didn’t sound like his sobs. They sounded lower, like his throat was full of snot from the world's worst cold.

What a shitty way of the world to show him that the heartbreak he oh so romanticised isn’t great. That isn’t worth the one song he might not even be able to write. This wasn’t worth his heroic story he didn’t even get to write until the end.

“I’ll stay with you, Jask, I’ll get you through this.” He’d lie if he didn’t feel a kiss on his hair. He liked it, liked the feeling of still being something to someone. Liked the feeling of Geralt caring for him. “I’ll help you, Jaskier.” His sobs only got louder and he wanted to pull himself even closer to Geralt’s chest, hide in the safety and the warmth of the person he loved most. “I’ll help you through.” He whispered before placing another kiss in his hair. “I promise.”

Geralt didn’t know how long he’d been holding Jaskier, but he knew that they were there for a long time. He held him and pulled him as close as he could, afraid to lose him if he even as much as looked away. He knew that Yennefer left after a while, he wasn’t sure if she grew bored or couldn't take it anymore. Either way he was alone with Jaskier. And he kept crying until his eyes were swollen and red. He didn’t have a lot of energy anymore, even Geralt could see that, but he still wouldn’t go to sleep. He could understand why, sleep always felt like it made things real. Sleep made sure that the next morning you could see what really happened. He knew how tempting it was to tell yourself you were okay, that you’d be just fine and that no one needed to worry their asses off.

It took him long enough to accept Jaskier’s help when he needed it, telling him that he didn’t need help. Not even when stabbed, poisoned, beaten, yelled at, kicked out, or to put it simply, when he was hurt and not okay. Jaskier would always patch him up, no matter how loud he told him that he didn’t need it.

He knew he was probably off way worse, if not dead had Jaskier never helped him.

He mostly realized that in the mornings when that freshly stitched up wouldn't sting as much as before. How he did lose a lot of blood in hindsight. And how he did sometimes need someone to tell him that he wasn’t the monster they made him out to be.

That’s why he didn’t need to think for one second when he found out that he wasn’t okay for once. He already stitched him up before of course, but not like this. Not in a situation this hopeless. But despite the bad view on the future he wouldn’t leave him. Not the man he loved, not the man who helped him through all those bad times.

“I love you, Jaskier.” He got a hold of him and held him upright, looking him in those red swollen eyes. “I love you.”

He saw the other man look up, his eyes just a little bit less sad than before he said those three little words. Geralt gave him one of his most sincere smiles, smiles only meant for Jaskier and no one else. He could see that Jaskier wanted to talk, wanted to say those words back, but he also saw that he gave up without even really trying. Probably feeling just as tired as he looked. Instead he saw him try to smile, which still seemed hard, but he also still seemed to have some sort of degree of control over his face. His lips still didn’t seem to work with him, but his eyes did. Telling him the words unsaid.

“Thank you, I love you too.”

They sat like that for a while, stealing a few more seconds together before Geralt spoke up again.

“You should sleep.”

And with two blinks he lowered him back onto the bed. Only keeping his hand on his cheek, softly brushing his thumb over it. “I’ll be back when you wake up.”

And with those words he saw his eyelids close and heard how his breathing slowed. He still stayed like that for a while, not really wanting to leave his side. But after a while he did. He got up and took one more look at him before he really left the room.

One more glance at him before the real strom settled in.

#geraskier #injured jaskier #hurt jaskier #geraskier fic #asks #paralised!jaskier

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ask-chaos-kin · 5 years

Text

Chaotic Adventures in Babysitting Chapter 4

Warning! Long chapter! Along with a lot of exposition to characters and mention of Scoutit. Co Written with @royalbabble

“Alright, Rose is finally asleep, there’s no Freaks wanderin’ around, and the base is locked down for the night,” Pancakes announced, trudging into the living room with his warhammer slung over his shoulder, exhausted.

“I’m honestly surprised the others have been gone this long,” Roseflame stated from the kitchen while putting away the last of the dishes they used for dinner.

“I mean, it’s only been a day,” Pancakes shrugged, his warhammer disappearing. He slid onto the couch and sighed, “I mean, it’s Nightmare Medic of all Freaks, there's gonna be a few hold ups,” Pancakes yawned, “Jester might have gotten distracted by a cat, Spypers van could have broken down, they could be trapped in his lair, who knows,” Pancakes shrugged, “Only thing I can say is that it’s a good thing Scoutit ain’t around them. She’d hold everyone up and probably try to fight Chaos. Weird considering Chaos is Ace and all,” Pancakes yawned again.

“Knowing her, she’d ask Jester for the flag and hold it up to Scoutit. Then again, I’m only a few months into being even slightly considered a freak myself. You and Chaos have been the only people I’ve gotten even remotely close with,”

“Yeah. Speaking of which, aren’t you Ace too?” Pancakes asked, sitting up.

“Greysexual,” She responded going to the loveseat, “You?” Pancakes shrugged.

“I have no fucking clue,” Pancakes said, “Maybe bi. I don’t know yet,”

“Probably bi,” She turned on the TV to the local news and weather station.

“Our forecast predicts severe thunderstorms tomorrow throughout the day and into the next morning. In other news, Nightmare Medic has been seen roaming around the streets of Big City. No one knows of his current motives but things have been on the sketchy side. Back to you Claire,”

Roseflame sighed but didn’t know if she should be relieved or worried worse.

“Hopefully this means he’s distracted with something else and not after our friends,” Roseflame commented.

“Hopefully. I mean, chances are that Jester will have him distracted from everyone else,” Pancakes said.

“I mean, part of me knows I shouldn't worry seeing as well, most of them are trained killers already, but then you have ones like Chaos and Jester,” She looked to Pancakes to see if he understood.

“Yeah. I mean, Jester isn’t in any real danger. They’re body is...um...Shit how do I explain this…” Pancakes said, searching for his words, “They’re body is like, a projection. It can’t actually be harmed in any meaningful way. It’s...Ok I mean yeah they can still feel pain and all that, but they’re body isn’t where they’re vulnerable at. It’s their artifact. Destroy the artifact, you kill Jester. And luckily,” Pancakes said, reaching over to pick up his bag, “Jester left their artifact here, so they’re safe,” Pancakes grinned, pulling out the golden item.

“Well, at least they’re safe. What about Chaos though? We both know she can take damage and her resilience can only last so long,” She wondered, always the worry wart like Pure. Pancakes scowled for a moment and bit his lip.

“Her i’m not too sure about. Jester can easily give her and anyone else cover or could absorb any damage for her, but I don’t know how long or how effectively they could do that for,”

“Exactly why i’m worried,” Roseflame slumped further into the loveseat. Pancakes was silent for a moment, wracking his brain for something to say.

A lightbulb went off in his head and he began digging into his bag.

“Actually, I think we can see what’s going on,” Pancakes started, formulating the beginning of a plan. He picked up the artifact again and held up the cube that Jester had given them, “Jester can use this artifact to spy on other Freaks-don’t ask how-and the artifact reacts to Jesters power in order to do that. So what if we use the magic in this box and use it on the artifact to try and look in on what the others are doing?” Pancakes suggested, grinning like he’d just solved the mystery of the universe.

“I dunno, what if we accidentally get ourselves trapped in Jesters artifact?” Roseflame asked him.

“I mean, as far as I know, the only way to get stuck in this thing is if Jester themselves allowed us in in the first place,” Pancakes said, turning the artifact over in his hands to look at the rose colored gem inserted into the item.

“True,” She moved over next to him on the couch, eyeing the gem as well, “It’s such a pretty gem,” She commented. She had been known to spend hours of her time looking at gems in stores with spiritual items.

“Wonder how they even got locked in this thing,” Pancakes commented, “Oh well. Let’s get started,” Pancakes twisted open the cube and watched as the strands of magic danced their way out, spinning and swirling until they knitted themselves together into another small Jester, this one red and green. Pancakes held up the artifact to the tiny projection, hoping that the magic would know what to do. As he held up the golden item, the Jester frowned at it and crossed its arms as if befuddled by what was being presented to it.

“Oh come on, we want to see what’s going on with our friends! Can’t you show us or something?” Pancakes pleaded. The mini Jester looked up at him and then back to the artifact, shrugging. Pancakes scowled.

“Can it not-?” Pancakes began before being abruptly cut off by a bright flash of light that burst from the gem of the artifact. The tiny Jester spun into the air, exploding into a dizzying display of twinkling starlight. The artifact began to violently shake in Pancakes hands, emitting what sounded like music at an almost deafening volume.

“What did you do?!” Roseflame shouted, covering her ears.

“HOW WOULD I KNOW!?” Pancakes screamed, throwing the artifact to the floor which only seemed to make things worse. A blinding array of colorful lights flashed from the gem, covering the room in a rave of colors from across the spectrum. Then, with a loud hissing sound, two beams of energy shot towards Roseflame and Pancakes, turning their bodies into colored clouds of smoke that were sucked into the gem in an astonishing spiral of psychedelic music and light, both screaming as they did not know what was going on.

As they slipped further and further down into the dazzling world of colors and light, the aggressiveness that was seen upon first being sucked in faded, and the colors softened to gentle swirls that were no longer painful on the eyes. As the colors faded and their vision became unclouded, the two Freaks found themselves standing on some kind of platform high up off the ground, as evidenced by the clouds swirling around them. Roseflame looked around and went stiff, clinging to Pancakes arm. An understandable reaction, especially from someone who had a fear of heights. He now was the only Freak to know this. Pancakes looked around for a moment, trying to get his bearings. He inched forward onto the platform and gasped, completely bewildered by what he was seeing.

It was a giant, sprawling, lively carnival with colors, lights, and music all around. The rides and attractions that stretched for as far as the eye could see also reached as high into the sky as far as the eye could see. It was crazy to now know exactly what Jesters home looked like

“How high up are we?” Roseflame asked shakily, the elevation they were at being the only thing she cared to know at the time. Pancakes looked down and swallowed hard.

“It...it looks like we’re up a good 300 feet,” Pancakes said carefully, mindful of where he was stepping.

“Oh sweet lords… And I thought that the monsters in the Slender realm where bad,” She was gripping tighter, he never would have guessed she could have such a death iron grip.

“Uhm…” Pancakes turned to his left and his right, searching for a way down. He took a step back away from the edge and hit the wall behind him. The surface seemed to cave inward against the pressure causing Pancakes to stumble backwards through an opening in the wall. Roseflame jumped back from Pancakes and staggered to stay on the platform, waving her arms as she struggled to stay balanced. Righting herself, she saw Pancakes on his ass, having fallen through a secret passage behind them. Wasting no time, she threw herself into the building and kicked the door shut behind her, just happy to we away from the platform edge.

“I hope to god this isn’t payback for abusing their magic,” She groaned as she looked around the new area.

“I doubt it. One, Jester doesn’t hold grudges. Usually. Two, they specifically gave me some of their magic to use whenever needed,” Pancakes groaned, getting up.

“... Is it just me or does this look like a trap door like in one of those carnival fun houses?” She looked down after helping Pancakes to his feet.

“Yeah...it does, doesn’t it?” Pancakes said slowly, rubbing his head. They both slowly looked at each other, there was nothing else around them in this room but what looked like a trap door.

“Fuck,” Roseflame swore. Pancakes began walking around the room and feeling around the walls for some kind of switch to let them out. Walking along the wall, his hand hit a slight indent in the brick. Brushing his palm over it, he could feel a slight draft coming from behind the wall. That must be the way out. He pressed down onto the small indent and the brick wall caved to the touch. Pancakes took a step back as several mechanical clicks sounded off from the wall and crept it’s way up into the ceiling, the two Freaks following the noise until it stopped directly above their heads.

“What the-”

The floor beneath them flew wide open, sending the two hurtling downwards into a brightly lit abyss. Screaming and flailing about, the two Freaks could only tumble through the air past the several hundred floors of the building, watching as the lights flashed past their vision.

“WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUCK!!” Pancakes screamed, flailing and clawing at the air as he tumbled downwards. The only thing else to be heard was the ear piercing screams of Roseflame as she floundered about.

Rushing to ground level, Pancakes covered his eyes and braced for impact, Roseflame beside desperately trying to right herself in the air in the hopes that landing on her feet wouldn’t result in her becoming a red smear on the floor.

Whump.

Pancakes smacked hard against a bouncy surface before being sent skyward again. Utterly confused by his predicament, he tried to look down to see what he had hit.

A bouncy castle!

Pancakes hurtled back down at it, this time trying to land in such a way that would prevent him from being sent upward again. Roseflame smacked down beside him as he landed, visibly jarred by the several hundred foot freefall drop.

“WE’RE ALIVE!!!!!” Roseflame announced in relief, throwing her arms up in victory. Pancakes flopped down on his stomach, the wind having been knocked out of him. He crawled his way out of the inflatable and tumbled out onto the floor, dizzy. He looked up upon climbing out and saw several floors above them, hundreds of people congregating on those floors for whatever reason. Beyond those floors, he could see where he and Roseflame had fallen out of. A small hole in the ceiling over 300 feet up slowly closed itself, as if it hadn’t sent the two Freaks to their supposed death. Roseflame crawled out after him.

“Not revenge my ass...” She looked him in the eyes.

“Oh come on, this is a carnival, we’re bound to run into things like that,” Pancakes said shakily.

“Name one time you went to a local fair and fell over 300 feet,” She looked like she was about ready to smack him.

“Does this look like your local fair!?” Pancakes exclaimed, making a massive broad gesture to the giant building they were in, “Besides, Jester can’t exactly die, it makes sense they’d be a little reckless with this place,” Pancakes wheezed, still in shock from the fall. He carefully got up, his legs shaking.

“You and me both know we got jello legs right now. And some of it looks like it. But not really,”

“Let’s just find a way out of here,” Pancakes sighed, looking around. He blinked in confusion as he turned away from the bouncy castle, “Woah, why are there a bunch of mercenaries here?” Pancakes asked. Roseflame followed his gaze and found him staring at an entire swarm of RED and BLU mercenaries, all dressed up in different outfits as they went about their business in this crazy place.

“I think they inhabit this place. Kinda like imaginary friends but denizens of this place,” She looked to see just how many there were.

“Huh. Didn’t know there were people in their artifact to be honest,” Pancakes remarked.

“They might just be something Jester made so they weren’t so lonely in here. Makes me feel bad for them,”

“Maybe,” Pancakes said. He waved over to a BLU Spy that was passing by, “Hey!” The Spy stopped from the crowd he was walking with and looked over to Pancakes. He was wearing a dark blue fedora with cards lodged in the hatband. He wore a decently formal suit with a large red bowtie. He smiled happily and sauntered over to the two Freaks.

“Hello there!” The Spy greeted cheerily, “What did you call me over for?”

“Yeah um, we got stuck in Jesters artifact by mistake because we were trying to use it to check in on our friends. Do you know how we get out of here?” Pancakes asked calmly. The Spy shook his head, grinning.

“Tsk tsk tsk. I’m afraid to inform you that that’s not how things work around here,” The Spy informed, “You see, Count Jester owns this place. They control everything here, and everything is directly tied to them. Whatever they want, this place can provide. As such, people cannot leave or get in without their permission,”

“But we didn’t get in with Jester. We used a box containing some of their magic-”

“And here’s where the problems present themselves,” The Spy interjected, raising a hand, “You using their magic does not automatically mean you have access to their artifact. Did the artifact react aggressively to you using Jesters magic on it?”

“Well...yeah but-”

“Then the artifact didn’t know what to do. It was being presented with Jesters magic, but not Jesters permission or presence. As such, it became confused and in a word-crashed. I saw it. Some of the carnival was pushed into the real world and the artifact tried to pull it all back in. In doing so, it brought you two with it. Now that you’re both in here with no access to Jesters magic at all, you’re stuck here until Jester themselves gets back to let you out,”

“Oh my god. We just left Rose by herself in the base. She’s gonna wake up crying,” Roseflame was pacing as the realization struck her. They left a five year old by themselves in a base without anyone to watch over her. Anyone could take her without anyone to rescue her. Her mind was going into hyperdrive in worry and she began to hyperventilate.

“Well..eheh...You see,” The Spy began, turning to Roseflame, “It appears that the blast from the artifact was just a bit larger in size than you thought,” The Spy said.

“What?! Is she gone?! HURT!?!!” Pancakes had to put a hand on her chest to calm her down slightly. She was extremely shaken.

“Well, no. It’s rather difficult to get hurt here-”

“SHE’S HERE!?” Pancakes screamed, it now being his turn to worry endlessly.

“...Yes,” The Spy confirmed matter-of-factly. Without another word, Roseflame fainted, and Pancakes wasn't too far from doing the same.

“Where is she?” Pancakes demanded. The Spy wrung his hands together with a nervous laugh.

“Well...I have no clue,” He admitted, “But! She is somewhere nearby,”

“And how close is ‘nearby’?”

“About halfway across the carnival,”

Now was Pancakes turn to faint.

***

Rose blinked out the swirling colors in her eyes, disoriented from the strange transition she’d just gone through. Rubbing her eyes and getting in grip on her senses, she sat up. Opening her eyes, she gasped in wonder at her surroundings. She was at ground level, in some kind of brightly lit building filled to the brim with stuffed animals. She looked around, a crazy grin spreading across her face. It was like a giant Build-A-Bear workshop! She stumbled to get up and check out her surroundings, wanting to see what this strange new place had to offer. She waddled to one of the giant stacks of stuffed animals and reached out to take one, but they were situated above where she could reach. Even standing on the balls of her feet she couldn’t quite grab any of the toys.

“Hey kiddo, what you doing over here?” A voice similar to Anthony’s called out to her. Turning around, she found a BLU Scout standing nearby, wearing goggles, a down vest, and what looked like a pilots hat. He grinned at her and ambled over to the stack of animals and pointed at the one she was reaching for, as if to ask if this was what she was after. Rose nodded quickly and extended her arms out to it. He got it down for her carefully so nothing else fell on her.

“‘Ey! What are you doing over there? We have more stuffed animals to make!” Another voice called. Rose watched as a BLU Engineer wearing a cowboy hat and what looked like winter clothing rounded the corner, holding a half finished stuffed crocodile.

“There’s a kid over here!” He called, waving the Engineer over, “I think she got pulled in when the carnival nearly got out,”

“Aw shucks, another one?” The Engineer sighed, “That makes three in just a day,”

“Think we should try to take her to the others?” The Scout asked as Rose walked over to him, tugging on his vest to be picked up. He obliged and carried her, “Who knows how long until Jester gets back,”

“Here’s hoping nothing happens to them,” The Engineer said, “Well, I mean, if something DID happen to them that was enough to destabilize their form, they’d come back here immediately to reform, but Jester’s not the kind of person to deliberately tolerate pain,” The Engineer shrugged.

“Yeah, from the chit chat I heard around, they other two got the High Drop. They’re currently at one of the rest areas since they fainted not long after,” The Scout stated while Rose looked around the area, admiring the many stuffed animals around them.

“Well then we better head over there,” The Engineer said, “The Centerpiece is halfway across the carnival though,”

“I could make it no sweat. It’ll take me less time to get there. Unless you wanna use the cart dat is,” The Scout suggested, looking at a golf cart that was parked near what looked like a garbage that led out of the workshop. It looked like it was used for getting stuffed animals from place to place while Jester was gone.

“Yeah let’s use that,” The Engineer said. The two climbed into the cart and set Rose in between them while the Engineer cranked up the vehicle, “Wonder if Jester will be ticked off when they get back,” He thought aloud.

“Who knows. Knowing them, they'll ask the two what they were trying to do in the first place,” The Scout said while buckling Rose in.

“Probably,” The Engineer sighed. The cart roared to life and the Engineer backed up the vehicle for a moment to give enough room to drive out of the workshop, “Hey! Look after the workshop while we’re gone!” She called. Rose peeked over the dashboard and saw a RED Heavy lean from behind another pile of stuffed animals. He smiled and gave a thumbs up and disappeared back behind the tower. The Scout then looked around for oncoming people.

“You’re clear to go,” the Scout announced, still keeping an eye out. The Engineer turned the cart towards the garage and drove through, mindful of the people within taking stock of several other items that were stacked high to the ceiling.

“Don’t you worry sweetie, we’re gonna get your to your friends soon enough,” The Engineer assured calmly, glancing down a Rose. She smiled at him, not seeming to mind her current predicament.

***

Pancakes jolted awake, dazed and confused. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he shifted in the bed and rolled over onto his back with a groan. Roseflame was still knocked out in the bed beside his. He’d probably have to wake her up himself. With a grunt, Pancakes forced himself to sit up, being confronted once again by the bright colors of Jesters world. He scooted to the edge of the mattress and slid off the bed, stumbling as his feet hit the floor.

“You sure you should be walking around right now?” A nearby RED Medic said, this one wearing a vest with clear bottles and syringes stuffed into the pockets, surgical equipment that was wrapped around his left arm, and a surgical mask. Strange. Pancakes didn’t expect Jester to put actual doctors in their world. The Medic approached briskly, wasting no time in crossing the distance between himself and the Freak.

“I can walk-” Pancakes said as he was abruptly interrupted by himself plopping back onto the bed.

“Now just sit down for a moment. You weren’t hurt or anything, but because you fainted your blood needs some time to get back up to your brain,” The Medic said, “Just take it easy for a moment and you’ll be on your way soon,”

Roseflame let out a small groan, she looked like she was about to wake up. That was until she turned her body to her side that he realized she had just entered REM.

“Well, she’s not waking up anytime soon,” Pancakes sighed. He rubbed his face and attempted to stand again, “Where’s Rose? You guys said Rose was here too,” Pancakes asked.

“Like we said, Rose is halfway across the carnival,”

“Ok but where exactly?”

“We don’t know. We can only tell the general location of outsiders to this world, we can’t actually pinpoint their location,” The Medic explained, shrugging. Pancakes sighed as soon as he heard Roseflame snoring slightly. He glanced down at his bed. He had an extra pillow he could throw at her to wake her up. He snatched up the pillow and took a moment to fluff it up before hurling it at Roseflame, hitting her right in the head. She snarked and flailed a bit before shooting her glare at him.

“Asshole,” She looked at him before noticing the Medic, “Oh, hi there,”

“Hello,” The Medic greeted kindly.

“How long were we out for?” She asked, concern in her voice upon realizing they were in a different location.

“About 30 minutes. Maybe. Time works a bit differently here than in the real world,” The Medic said with a vague gesture towards nothing in particular, “When you fainted you were brought here to one of the rest areas,”

“So this isn’t a hospital?” Pancakes quizzed, looking around.

“Ehe, no. The hospital areas are halfway across the carnival,” The Medic explained as he ambled over to a set of curtains and pulled them aside to reveal a balcony that led out to a perfect view of the carnival. The Medic pointed to a large structure straight ahead from the rooms view, “That is the Infirmary. Jester made this world in such a way that it’s impossible to be hurt, but they decided to put in a hospital area anyways just in case,” The Medic said.

“I mean, in our case we fainted from shock. So we weren’t really hurt or anything,” Roseflame commented, forcing herself to sit on the bed.

“I work at the Infirmary but the Partygoers here called me in to check on you two,”

“Partygoers?” Pancakes asked.

“That’s what we’re called,” Said the Medic.

“Makes sense, given this is Jesters world after all,” Roseflame commented, “It still begs the question, what are we supposed to do until Jester gets back? We don’t belong here, especially without Jester around,” She wondered. There was no doubt in her mind that they would be miffed at the two teenagers.

“You could stay here in the rest area until Jester gets back. Or you could go outside and enjoy the carnival for the time being. Or you could go and search for the little one,” The Medics suggested, looking out to the carnival.

“Probably look for her, and enjoy the carnival. Haven’t been to one before, well-”

“Other than local fairs?” Pancakes snarked, giving her an annoyed look whilst finishing her sentence.

“Yes, other than local fairs,” She groaned out. The Medic sauntered over to some kind of system nearby with several tubes running up from it into the ceiling. He plugged in a few numbers into a keypad. He then opened up a compartment on the terminal and removed a container and placed it inside one of the tubes. With a whoosh, the container was shot through the tube and carried away.

“Must be a delivery system or somethin’,” Pancakes pondered aloud. After a few moments, the container came back through the tube with something inside it. It came to a halt back at the entrance point of the tube and emitted a soft ding. The Medic removed the cylinder and popped it open, removing two bottles of flavored water from inside.

“We’re running short on flavors, so all we have at the moment is orange flavored water,” The Medic said sheepishly. He placed the container back into the terminal and came back over to the bed to give the two Freaks their respective beverages.

“How in the fuck?” Pancakes breathed, looking at the bottle.

“That system,” The Medic said, jabbing a thumb back at the terminal, “It's how we Partygoers ask for drinks and food from all over the carnival. All these tubes are connected to food courts, and if we want something to eat or drink, we just plug in the respective calling number for it, put the canister inside a tube, and then off it goes for pickup. Then it comes back with whatever we ordered and we put the canister back into the terminal,”

“Talk about fast food. So where are we right now? I know we were at some Big Top/Casino earlier before we fell over 300 feet onto a bouncy castle,” Roseflame asked, starting to drink her water.

“Oh, you’re still in the same building,” Informed the Medic, “This place,” The Medic said with a broad sweeping motion around him, “Is The Centerpiece. Count Jesters home. This is where Jester watches over the carnival, where some of the most extravagant parties are held, and where most of the madness goes down. It also happens to be where we all go to tuck in whenever Jester goes to sleep. This place is like a giant castle crossed with a Casino. Minus the gambling of course,”

“Holy fuck, how big is this place?” Pancakes asked, surprised.

“Hard to say,” The Medic said slowly, “I mean, it’s big enough to comfortably hold over 10 million Partygoers-”

“10 MILLION!?” Pancakes cried, thunderstruck by the sheer size of the population that could somehow fit inside a single building.

“...Yes that’s about how many Partygoers live here…” The Medic affirmed.

“Wow, guess Jesters never really been alone huh?” Roseflame stated. At least they’ve been in good company for a while since they’ve gotten their powers.

“Never,” The Medic confirmed.

“How long until we’re given the go ahead to leave?” Roseflame asked as she was finishing her water.

“You have to wait until Jester gets back,” The Medic replied.

“I mean medically, go from the rest area,”

“Ah. Well, you can go ahead and leave right now,” The Medic said, “The door’s unlocked, you’re free to roam around if you like,” And with that, the Medic headed out of the room.

***

Chaos and her team were leading the Freaks carefully towards Nightmare Medic’s lair, everyone on edge and minding exactly where their footsteps fell.

“He could be nearby so everyone stay on guard,” Chaos explained as they reached the edge of the forest towards the lair. Brutal was bored out of his mind following orders. He listened to Pure enough as it was that everyone else doing something similar disinterested him to no end.

“Any signs Major?” Chaos asked their escort.

“No sign of Nightmare anywhere,” Major Scout Guy remarked, looking around the area of the base, “Anything Soldine?”

“Negative,” Soldine responded, his robotic voice coming through in a mess of static through the handheld radio Major had brought with him.

“If Jester had brought their artifact with them they could just pinpoint where Nightmare is and we’d be on our way,” Brutal groaned.

“And they could have also been put in worse danger than we already are in. But these BLU’s still deserve a rescue, even if we have to put cones on your hands once we get them out of the dungeon,” Chaos commented.

“I don’t enjoy working with him, but we do appreciate the help Chaos,” Major Scout Guy gave a smile to her.

“My team’s closely associated with you guys, even if you threaten to kill my extended family,” She commented. Her new Soldier and Demo were part of HECU before joining her team. They kept ties in order to better help the association.

As they continued walking, Jester kept an eye on them from the sky, their form having shrunken down tiny enough that they could easily be mistaken for a bird and nothing more.

“Seeing anything Jester?” Chaos asked through her own small radio.

“Nothing up here,” Jester radioed back, “I’m really wishing I had brought my artifact with me, I could find Nightmare in no time,” Jester sighed.

“Least it’s in good hands, well Roseflames if not Pancakes,” Chaos assured, quickly radioing to her Sniper to move to a nearby cliff, “Speaking of which, was that on purpose or accident?”

“On purpose. I’d rather not risk being destroyed,” Jester said, “Now I'm just wishing I'd brought it with me to speed things along,”

“On the bright side, we have Soldine and Major with us,” Chaos motioned to Major.

“So you’re that Count Jester we’ve been hearing about, the one who helped take down Grave,” Major Scout Guy entered the radio chat.

“Yep, that’s me,” Jester said.

“Good to know we have people like you on our side,” He gave them a thumbs up.

“Just don’t give them any sugar or you’ll have them bouncing off the walls like a goddamn pachinko machine,” Brutal added.

“No readings of anomalies, Nightmare is out of the building. We should be able to quickly get in and get the team out,” Soldine informed everyone over the radios.

“Good to hear. As much as I understand you guys bringing me along i’d rather not be thrown around by the spawn of sata-OW!” Jesters words were abruptly cut off by a pained yelp that peaked the speakers of the radios.

“What’s wrong Jester?!” Chaos called over the radio, she and Major watching as Jester was returning to normal size and floating down. The two quickly rushed to their aid. The energetic Freak dropped back down to earth and staggered for a moment, holding the side of their head.

“I just got a sharp pain in my head,” Jester winced.

“Need some help standing up?” Major Scout guy moved into a position to help them keep stable.

“Thanks,” Jester huffed, rubbing their temples.

“I didn’t know you could even get headaches,” Brutal remarked beside.

“Neither did I,” Jester said. They took their hand away from their head and briskly turned around to face the direction where Chaos’ base was. They blinked for a second and then scowled, “Someone is gonna get smacked,” Jester bit, folding their arms. Chaos earned a shocked and confused face.

“Who?” Both freaks stepped back as Jester started to get an angry glint in their eyes, “They’re at the base?” Chaos asked in concern

“Yes,” Jester snapped, sparks began to fly off their body. Everyone took a small step back from the Jester, both to keep themselves clear of the sparks and to avoid any potential outburst, “Someone,” Jester started, turning back to the rest of the group, “Has invaded my personal space. Without my permission,” Major Scout Guy gulped, worried he might have upset the normally jovial freak.

“Welp, that’s not good,” Brutal remarked.

“L-look, I didn’t mean-”

“What do you mean Jester? Was it Major?” Chaos asked in worry.

“No, it’s wasn’t him. It was someone else. Three someone else’s to be exact,” Jester said. Soldine landed near them and gestured to the lair. Chaos’ eyes went wide and she looked back in the direction of her base. That wasn’t good...

“We can solve this problem at a later time, I suggest getting the BLU team out before more trouble is caused,” Soldine suggested. Everyone jumped-except Soldine-as a portal opened behind him without warning, and a white spy walked through to join them.

“Sorry to pop in unannounced, but hopefully you don’t mind me joining this time,” Pure announced, looking upon the startled group.

#Count Jester #Chaos Kin #Ass Pancakes #Chaotic Adventures in Babysitting #Christian Brutal Sniper #christian pure spy #Spyper #Major Scout Guy #Soldine #Freak Fortress 2 #Roseflame

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royality-and-kittens · 5 years

Text

Roles & Rehearsal: Chapter 1

Chapter Description: Roman is an overdramatic theatre nerd doing his best, Logan his best friend, who’s overextended as heck, and Remy is their drama teacher who will be leaving the school soon. Drama (get it) ensues. High school theatre au.

Warnings: It’s pretty tame. Remy says one cuss word, and there are is some minor anxiety. Also Remy is genderfluid in this story. Added note, you should probably read the prologue first if you haven’t already so that this chapter makes sense.

Words: 4.6k

Roman was vaguely aware of the world around him, and an unfocused voice trying to tell him… you know what, he didn’t care what it was trying to tell him. Focusing was too hard when his brain felt this fuzzy. He was fairly sure that he was supposed to be awake, but he was much more aware that the lumpy couch under him now felt so soft he could melt into it, being absorbed into a world of fantasy where he didn’t have any bothersome responsibilities like waking up and having to do anything productive…

What felt like a second later, Roman was rudely awakened from the sleep he had been drifting back into, when the blankets above him were thrown off. He opened his eyes, only to immediately regret it when his vision was assaulted by the blinding light that had just switched on.

Covering his eyes with his arm, he flailed his legs, failing miserably in his attempt to find the floor and somehow managing to flop disgracefully onto the floor in his clumsy movements.

“Light and gravity, my two most powerful foes, have teamed up against me. I am no match for their force…” Roman’s voice cracked as he used it for the first time that morning. He heard a sigh, signaling the presence of Logan somewhere nearby and above him, although he still had an arm over his eyes, so he couldn’t quite be sure. “I am slain!” he shouted after a moment of silence. “Save yourself, my good friend, run while you still can!”

Logan still didn’t respond, but from another room, Valerie called, “Good morning, Roman!” clearly unsurprised by both his melodramatic outburst and his presence at her house.

Finally, Roman slowly opened his eyes. The light was much less bright than it had seemed at first, and his eyes adjusted rapidly. On the couch above him, Logan had just finished folding the blankets that had been wrapped around Roman a few minutes before and that had been so thoughtlessly snatched away, leaving him shivering and alone in the dark cruel world.

“Are you done glaring at me, or should I just leave without you?’

Roman sighed in a way that was probably louder than necessary, mocking Logan’s earlier one. “I shall forgive you if you apologize for treating me in this dishonorable way,” he said. Then, he started working on sitting up, so he could have some dignity.

“I’m so incredibly sorry for letting you stay at my house, explaining to my parents why you were here so they didn’t freak out, making your breakfast and setting out clothes for you so you could sleep in, then waking you up with the offer of driving you to school. It was definitely selfish of me, your majesty,” Logan said dryly.

“I’ll take it.” Roman said, deciding to ignore that Logan sounded even more exasperated than usual in favor of being as stubbornly happy as possible. True, he could remember his breakdown last night. He had initially been devastated when his friend Mariah woke him up by calling him, letting him know that his drama teacher, her aunt Remy, would soon be leaving the school to pursue her dream career on Broadway, moving hundreds of miles to the North. He also remembered arriving at Logan’s house, although the drive and the decision to go there were mostly a blur. Still, like always, he felt infinitely calmer now, in the soothing reality of the morning. He knew Logan would do everything he could to keep the play going smoothly. All that he had to do was make sure that this year’s play went absolutely perfectly, and everyone loved it. Then the school would have to keep the drama department going.

Roman leapt to his feet suddenly. “Oh my heckity heck! We have a drama meeting to get to!” His head started spinning from moving so quickly, and his ankle whacked Logan’s coffee table, but at least he was awake now. “And they’re announcing the show today!”

“Yes.” Logan said, his tone implying that he had already said this many times to a sleepy Roman who refused to wake up. Still, Roman decided to continue his streak of stubbornness by not letting Logan’s negativity get to him.

“Thanks for letting me stay the night, by the way.” Roman looked around, trying to see if there was anything he could do to help. Alas, the blankets had all been folded, and breakfast was already on the table.

“It wasn’t really the night.” Logan said, never one to take a compliment if he considered it factually inaccurate. “You’ve only been at my house for about two hours, and giving you space to sleep on my couch is hardly a gift. Based on your previous behavioral patterns, you likely would have crawled in through a window and slept in my abode even if I hadn’t invited you to.”

“First of all, it was one time, be like Elsa and let it go, specs. Second, I’m getting dressed.” He grabbed the stack of clothes Logan had placed on the coffee table and ran to Logan’s room before Logan could point out that the window incident had happened only last month. In his defense, how was he supposed to have known that Logan’s parents had so many alarms? Ducking into the bedroom, He quickly replaced his sweats with jeans and a t-shirt (because Florida decided it was a good idea to have summer in the middle of January). He ran back out, almost colliding with Valerie.

“Have a splendid morning, V! Happy drama season!” he half sung, sliding around her to avoid her mug of hot tea. He entered the kitchen and grabbed the fruit and granola that he assumed was his breakfast, judging by the sticky note that said “ROMAN’S BREAKFAST” in Logan’s neat block letters.

“I put my backpack in your car last night, so it’s already there,” he called, knowing that Logan was well past the point of judging him. He whistled happily, heading for the door, when Logan grabbed his arm.

“Are you going to be wearing shoes today?” Logan asked simply, nodding towards Roman’s bare feet. Roman looked down, slightly embarrassed. He was about to think of some snarky comeback when he actually looked at Logan for the first time, and his train of thought stopped suddenly. Logan was standing with the same impeccable posture he always did, and wore his usual slightly bored look on his face, but his eyes seemed just a little too unfocused, and there were definitely some pronounced bags under his eyes. Had he slept at all?

Knowing that Logan wouldn’t react well to his concern, Roman decided not to mention it. A little more slowly than he had been going before, Roman pulled on his tennis shoes. Within a few minutes, he was in the passenger side of Logan’s car, the two of them carpooling like usual while Roman’s car was left on the Torres’ driveway. The pre-dawn light, the Florida humidity, and the silence in the car that Logan refused to turn a radio on in (“it’s statistically much safer this way”) made Roman painfully aware of sleepiness creeping back up on him. He also felt something much less pleasant settling in. Maybe he wasn’t as calm about the play as he had thought. His stomach grumbled, loudly reminding him to eat the food in his hands instead of just playing with it.

Roman swallowed difficultly. There would have been a cheerful conversation going on if Valerie hadn’t decided to walk to school, leaving him with only a very tired Logan for company. Why was he cursed with two best friends who were so healthy and functional?

After barely surviving the painful drive, Dove High School came into view, looking as mediocre as ever. He and Logan were the first arrive in the music wing, so every footstep and cough lingered in the air.

“So…” Roman started, being interrupted by a yawn. He hated to be interrupted by anyone, even himself, and he was feeling more tired every second. Naturally, he decided to combat this irritating drowsiness by talking as much as possible. “What show do you think we’ll be doing this year? I hope it’s something Disney related, like Beauty and the Beast last year. Thomas was such a great Gaston, wasn’t he? It’s so unfair that he’s gone now. Can you believe he left us to do more school? Why would he ever even consider something so unimaginative?”

“He had already graduated, so it wasn’t as if he could’ve stayed at this school any longer even if he’d wanted to. Also, pursuing a degree in chemical engineering isn’t what I’d consider a poor life decision.”

“I was joking, Lo. It is hard to imagine Thomas as a scientist, though. I bet you ten dollars he’ll be back to acting as a career within a few years.”

Logan grunted noncommittally. He was already beginning to set out chairs for the meeting. Remy must have texted him this morning, asking him to prepare for the first meeting. In the silence, the sound of metal chairs scraping against hard flooring echoed even louder than usual, and Roman felt the sudden need to help Logan out so he could focus on anything other than the aggravating noise.

Roman started carefully stacking anything that he could, hoping to create more of a clearing for Logan to work. The drama room wasn’t the most organized area on campus, but that always seemed to add to its charm. It was the size of two classrooms, with a broken curtain that was theoretically meant to divide it down the middle if the need arose. The center of the room was matted with layers of old tape, different colors from each year, outlining the shape of the stage and set so the actors could picture the stage around them until the drama club could get access to an actual theater, at another school that had a real theater. The walls felt like a huge time warp every time Roman looked at them, lined with props, some new and some older than he was.

In his efforts to somewhat tame the chaos, Roman stacked up the old wooden backdrops that had each been painted over countless times, stopping to smile at the castle pattern from last year still on one. He easily remembered the steps to the dance he had done in front of it, dressed as a fork. He started humming,” Be Our Guest” under his breathe, already nostalgic for last year. He moved on, trying to straighten up (as if he could do anything straight) everything from old prop staircases to a picnic table that had crumpled newspapers hot glued to it for some reason. Meanwhile, Logan was busy “stealing” the drama class’ chairs back from the band room.

“What’re you guys doing? It’s the drama club, no one is going to sit in a chair.”

Roman almost dropped the box of Styrofoam apples he was holding. “Mariah!” He tried to wave with his foot. “You gave me a heart attack!”

“I assure you, his coronary arteries are fine,” Logan said. Roman couldn’t quite tell if he was joking.

“Thanks, L,” Mariah responded. “Anyway, how’s my second favorite dancing fork doing?”

Roman held a hand to his chest in mock horror. “Less good now that I know I’m not your favorite! I practically stole the show with my artful grapevines.” He started stepping across the floor in time to prove his point.

Mariah laughed. “I think we both know that I was the coolest fork on the stage.”

“Whatever makes you happy.”

Mariah was the first of a wave of other students to rapidly arrive. Valerie showed up a few minutes later, then a freshman girl who introduced herself as Laurel. After that, it was just a confusing mess of new and familiar faces, actors and crew, laughing and gossiping. A group of freshmen in the corner had already started singing Hamilton, which Roman took as a good sign. Also, Mariah was right. Everyone was either standing or sitting on the floor right next to the chairs.

“EVERYBODY SIT DOWN!”

The room suddenly got uncharacteristically quiet. Most people weren’t obeying the command, they were just confused and trying to figure out where the shout had come from.

“People, I’m glad your quiet, but if you could all like, sit for a cool minute, that’d be great. I know it’s super early, just try to focus for one freaking second.” Various teenagers sprawled themselves across the floor as the woman continued talking. Her tone of voice seemed to conflict with her harsh words. “Hey,” she said “I’m Remy, for those of you who haven’t been blessed by meeting me yet. I’m going to be your director/ choreographer/ music teacher/ crew coordinator/ whatever else is needed for the next two months. I also teach the drama class here. Basically, if anything goes well I did it, and if anything goes wrong you can just blame the school district for not sending me any help.” She took a drink from her Starbucks cup. “Also, I have a few basic rules that the newcomers need to hear. If you’ve already heard them, you can listen again because life isn’t fair.”

“Okay, so, if you’re going to be late, you need to let me or Logan Torres know (Logan raise your hand!). That’s Logan. Both of our phone numbers are on the sheet of paper he’s handing out right now. Also I’m gonna need your parents to sign a contract so they can’t sue us, because God knows we don’t need anything else going against this club. Also, it may feel like you’re moving into this room, but it’s still not your house, so none of you can bring food or drinks in here. We do not want a repeat of last year.”

The new freshman, Laurel, raised her hand. It was very obvious she was new, because none of the alumni would have thought twice about shouting something out. “If there’s no food or drink allowed, why do you have Starbucks?” She spoke tentatively, probably afraid she’d get in trouble for disrespecting authority or something. Roman knew from experience that stage would end quickly.

“I said YOU all can’t, not no one can.” Remy smirked, taking another drink, then continued with the rules. “Also, we ask everyone to help out with whatever fundraisers we’re doing. Legally, I can’t force you, but I can shun you forever if you don’t. Is that all of them?”

“Social media!” A senior named Terrence called out.

“Oh yeah, you’re not allowed to post any pictures of you guys rehearsing on social media without my approval, because of weird copyright stuff. We can’t have any pictures of costumes or sets going around.”

Remy took a deep breath, and sat on the floor along with the students. “I also have an announcement to make to all of you students. A few of you already know, but I was recently offered a job as part of the ensemble in Wicked, so this is going to be my last show I’m doing with you guys.” A few students gaped.

“Don’t leave us, we’re useless idiots!” Mariah called, at the same time as Terrence said “That’s amazing, congratulations!” and a few students just squealed excitedly.

Remy smiled, obviously relieved that the news had been taken well. She almost started talking again, but Valerie cut her off by hugging her, and Roman, not to be outdone in semi-dramatic gestures, had to join, too. In a few seconds, Remy was encased in a giant group hug, with about twenty students surrounding her.

“We’ll miss you,” Roman said, trying to fight back tears threatening to spill over.

“Okay, I get it, you all love me. Please sit back down everyone, I can’t move.” Despite her words, Remy didn’t seem to be able to stop smiling. When everyone was mostly settled down, Remy looked at the clock.

“Shit, I have to get you all out of here in one minute so you can go to class. Okay, so, this year’s play is going to be Bye Bye Birdie, so that’s cool. And, um…” she pulled out her phone and started flipping through notes. “Auditions are going to be… this Thursday after school, let all your friends know, you can sign up in that notebook-” she gestured vaguely to a corner of the room “-it should be here all week. Or you can just text Logan, he-“ The school bell interrupted her loudly, and most students just ran out of the room immediately. Remy sighed, turning to Roman, one of the few students still in the room. “You ready to do this show?” she asked.

“Not really,” Roman said, trying to smile and begging himself not to cry. He was Remy’s Teacher’s Aid for all of first period, and then he had actual drama class second period, so he’d be here for a while. “But I’m sure it will turn out fabulously, so I’m not worried.”

“I think it’ll be utter chaos until the last possible second.” Remy stared at some of the props on the wall, her face unreadable. “But isn’t that the best part of it?”

“Sure?” Roman said, preoccupied by laying the art supplies on a bare stretch of floor, so he could start making posters. He had only counted nineteen students in the room, and that could not form an entire cast and crew, so he knew they would need to advertise a lot more over the next few days.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

“I’m thinking we start by lining each entrance with our glitteriest posters, so any unsuspecting citizen who walks into school is slapped in the face by the glory of theatre!”

“While that some rather convoluted figurative language, I do think that putting the posters in a place where every student passes is going to be the best way to effectively advertise.”

“Excuse you, my figurative language is as perfect as a dragon in a castle made of chocolate chip cookies.”

“That was, objectively, much worse.”

The halls were quieting down again, and Roman was once again helping out the drama club with Logan. This time, there were a few other kids helping out, but they were all in different wings of the needlessly spread out school. There were a lot of students who never left a specific area of campus, so they needed to have posters everywhere if they wanted to get the word out.

Logan blew his hair out of his face, because his hands were full of posters. “If we can’t attract anyone else to join the drama team, I am going to place the full blame on whatever idiot architect designed this place.”

“We will get more people, though,” Roman said, hoping that he was keeping the panic in his voice mostly hidden.

“We usually get a few more this way, but we also usually have a few students drop out in the first week or two, so it’s hard to say if we’ll actually end up with a net gain in number of students.”

“That’s just supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” Roman muttered.

“Did you just use that word as an explicative?”

“Anything’s an ‘explicative’ if you try hard enough.” Roman joked, hoping that Logan didn’t remember the childhood phase where he’d sprinkle the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious into conversations whenever he felt stressed, in an attempt to cheer himself up. It was no use to dwell on the fact that the entire show was doomed if they couldn’t get a bigger cast and crew. Nope.

What could have almost passed for comfortable silence fell between them. Roman moved to set his stack of posters carefully on a bench. He stopped at the last second when he realized that every bench in the area was covered in a mess of gum and food wrappers.

“Hold these!” He called, tossing the posters in Loans direction. He didn’t have to look to know that Logan had the coordination to catch them without bending any. Roman had a theory that Logan didn’t actually need his glasses, and they were actually giving him some kind of super vision. Or, it could’ve been Logan’s fourteen years of dance lessons, if you wanted to go with the boring explanation, which Roman never did.

With his hands free, Roman was able to slip a roll of tape off of his arm, slipping it into his hand so he could actually use it.

“What role do you think you’ll get?” he asked, starting to cover the back of a poster with rolled-up tape as Logan held it up. “I think you’re going to be Albert; you can become an adult onstage so perfectly. I bet you and Remy can do some advanced choreography during ‘Put on a Happy Face,’ too.”

“You seem very familiar with the play.” Logan said, sounding begrudgingly impressed.

“We watched the movie in drama class today, well, technically we started it in drama class, and I finished watching it on my phone throughout the day.”

“Are you implying that you abandoned your academic studies for-”

“Shhhh,” Roman melodramatically covered Logan’s mouth with his hand, almost hitting him in the face with the tape. “What my Calculus teacher doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”

“It can hurt you, though. Advanced mathematical skills are necessary to understand how the universe works, they help us to see repeating patterns in nature and our own designs, not to mention how beneficial it can be when working with finances or electricity.”

“Yeah, I know, you’ve told me.” Apparently Roman had said those words much more sharply than he intended, because Logan looked hurt. Well, it wasn’t his fault that Logan was practically perfect in every way, always the shimmering star, while Roman was stuck as just being there, cursed by being good but not great. He wasn’t jealous of Logan, that would’ve been childish and weak of him. He was totally fine with Logan being the best at literally everything he tried. Why would he care?

“Roman, are you all right?” Logan asked. Before Roman could make up an excuse for his sudden brashness, the two were interrupted by one of the hall monitors blowing her whistle, the sound reverberating through Roman’s skeleton.

“What are you two doing here after school hours? Do I need to write you boys up for trespassing?”

Roman huffed angrily. “What are you doing shoving yourself in everybody’s business?” He muttered under his breath, hoping that he was quiet enough to not be heard.

“We’re putting up posters for the drama club.” Logan said, with the mask of patience he wore when teaching dance to small children.

“Without a permission slip?”

“No, we have a permission slip, it’s in my binder.” He tossed his school bag onto the knees, squatting to look through its contents. In that second, his phone started buzzing.

“I’m so sorry, I have to take this.” Logan handed a purple binder to Roman as he stepped outside to answer the call.

Roman quickly showed the pass to the hall monitor, who looked disappointed that she wouldn’t be sending anyone to detention. As soon as she had turned a corner to another hall, Roman dashed outside, catching the end of Logan’s phone conversation.

“I’m sorry, Olivia, I already committed to help with my school’s drama club today… I’m not sure why you’re contacting me, you know I’m not signed up to come into the studio until the evening on Mondays… Is there no one else who could step up?... Okay, I can be there in about half an hour.”

Roman watched as Logan hung up the phone, looking even more defeated than he had this morning.

“The modern dance teacher is sick, and Olivia wants me to cover for the class.” Logan tried to fake a smile, but even his acting skills couldn’t save him. Olivia, the manager of Logan and Roman’s dance studio, was amazing at running the place, but she also had a frustrating habit of taking advantage of Logan’s inability to say no to more work.

“I’m going to have to drive you home right now, I’m sure the other students won’t mind hanging up these posters for us. Then I can teach modern dance, I’ll have some leftover time for AP calculus homework and my psychology essay. I can teach my evening dance classes, do ballet and jazz, I’ll probably home in time to start working on…” Logan’s voice drifted off into unintelligible muttering.

Roman knew that Logan wasn’t bringing up his formidable schedule for pity; he was just trying to do his best to get organized, but honestly that was the thing that made him feel the most terrible. He had been at least partially responsible in keeping Logan from sleeping, and he had been the one who literally begged Logan to hang up posters with him.

“No.” Roman said.

“Pardon?”

“You’re not going to be teaching any dance today, you’re clearly more ready to take a nap than Sleeping Beauty. I don’t even know if it’s safe for you to be driving right now.”

“I’m perfectly fine Roman, I don’t need-”

“How much sleep did you get last night, then, Lightning McStubborn?”

“That wasn’t even a pun.”

“Don’t dodge the question.”

Logan looked very uncomfortable for very long second, and Roman could practically see him consider lying to convince Roman he was okay, which was not right. Exaggerating his well-being to seem more put together was Roman’s job, not Logan’s. Almost inaudibly, Logan said “about 15 minutes?”

Roman fought to not look as concerned as he felt. He knew that he always felt miffed when Logan tried to overprotect him, but he was used to randomly staying up until the crack of dawn whenever he got caught up in a project. Logan, on the other hand, hadn’t gotten less than seven hours of sleep in the entire time Roman had known him.

“That’s what I thought, you obstinate nerd. Okay, so here’s what’s actually going to be happening tonight. I am going to be driving you home. You are going to rest. I am going to text Olivia at the dance studio, and let her know that you are not able to come in today.”

“But I am able come in today.”

“That’s funny, I know for a fact that your sister will agree with me as soon as she gets the text I just sent, and will physically guard your house, making it impossible for you to even get near the dance studio until you no longer look like you’re seconds away from passing out.”

Logan looked personally offended. “Roman, you can’t-”

But Roman had already pulled up Olivia’s number and started typing, narrating out loud. “My deepest apologies, Olivia, but Logan has been tragically kidnapped by a terrible dragon witch, and I shall have to cover for him at your dance school until he is rescued. And, send.”

Logan appeared physically pained.

“Relax, Logan, I was joking. About the dragon witch part, not anything else,” he amended. “I just told her something came up for you, but I’d be happy to take your place. I’ve taught a few classes for her before, I know she’ll let me do it again. Now let’s get going, I don’t want to be late for modern dance class!” He tugged on Logan’s arm, and the two of them made their way back to Logan’s car.

“Are you absolutely sure about this?”

“Have I ever been unsure about anything, even when I was wrong?” Roman asked back, shutting Logan up for a few minutes as they drove in silence once again.

“Roman?” Logan actually yawned, his exhaustion becoming more apparent now that he knew he couldn’t hide it.

“Yes, my sleep-deprived prince?”

“Thank you.” Logan hesitantly smiled, and Roman knew instinctively that he would flail around on the floor with a bunch of elementary school kids a million times if he could see Roman look as genuinely happy and grateful as he did in that split second. It was really nice to feel needed and appreciated.

“You’re welcome.” Roman said, pulling up into the driveway. “Now get out and go take a break. I’m sure I’ll show up uninvited again tomorrow morning.”

“Hopefully at a more reasonable hour, and with an actual jacket this time.”

“Don’t count on it.”

With that, Roman pulled out of the driveway, his thoughts already returning to the show. He wasn’t worried about the dance classes; he knew enough to handle them for a day. He just hoped he could handle the knowledge that this may be his last play. He pressed play on his phone, starting up the soundtrack to Bye Bye Birdie. He’d be fine, he decided. The show would be perfect because it had to be, and because he would destroy any obstacles with his sword. And Logan’s help. For now, he’d just focus on dance classes, and then he’d deal with whatever happened at the auditions on Thursday.

Notes: I hope you liked the start of the story. If you’d like to be added to my tag list, you can message me at any time. Also, the next chapter is going to focus on Virgil and Patton, I promise I haven’t forgotten them. Just a reminder, if you reblog this, especially with a comment, I’ll love you forever. Thanks!

#sanders sides #ss logan #ss roman #platonic logince #sanders sides fanfic #theatre au #roles & rehearsal #Ch1 #food mention

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teenager-probs · 6 years

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The Styles Effect Pt. 3

Part One Part Two

Requests Open

Warnings: Cursing, fluffy prince!harry, Slight Kidnapping, Nudity (according to Harry #3), hella gifs

Pairing: Reader x Harry(s)

Summary:

Y/n finds a notification on her phone asking to make a wish.

She thought nothing of it when she decided her wish, a wish for all the fanfiction Harry's she’s read, to become real.

Sure she thought nothing of it- until it came true.

"Are you fucking kidding me here! Do you know how many fucking psycho daddy demon fanfics I've read in my lifetime?!"

*Y/N = your name

A/N: This story was originally posted on wattpad by chingyonce. I give her full credit for this. I have changed some things and I’ve taken some things out. But overall this is her original idea and content. I wanted to have this story on this platform so if you don't have wattpad you can read the story here.

Also, none of these images/gifs are mine- full credit to the owners

"By God, it doesn't even work on horsepower. What do you call this magnificent creature?" I looked over at Prince Harry, my face scrunched with distress as I watched him repeatedly stroke the leather seats with wide amazed eyes, trying to move closer to the passenger window only for his body to be restrained back by his seat belt which I could tell was annoying him even though he tried to hide it.

"A car..." I answered, looking away as I blew out a small breath, hearing Teacher Harry in the back groan silently in his sleep.

It was actually Teacher Harry's car, I found his car keys in the pocket of his jeans and just kept clicking the button on it until I found his car lighting up and beeping in the parking lot.

And I did that swiftly after I ran into Prince Harry and hastily dragged him along with me in my desperate escapade in rounding up all these Harry’s I’m slowly running into.

Anyways, back to now.

So, all I have to do is find the rest of them, all the Harry’s. Which might not be too hard, if it wasn’t for the fact that I am a slightly obsessive fangirl who just can’t get her fix on all the AU Harry’s that she can read about.

I’ve already gotten three including the new addition -Prince Harry- who was aimlessly wandering around my school for no apparent reason.

"So, what were you doing at my school again?" I asked, looking down since Prince Harry was laying flat in his passenger seat, playing with the recline button on the side.

"Funny you say that I was lounging about in the marble-floored living room of my castle with a handful of beautiful maidens in silk waiting at my feet... and then, I find myself looking for you." He began, his British accent much stronger than the other two Harry's, as he placed his hands behind the back of his head and sighed, staring intently at the ceiling of the car.

He seriously sounded like some rich multi-millionaire tycoon who laughed at different varieties of soft cheese and owned his own grape vineyard in the countryside.

"Me?" I asked, flickering my gaze between him and the road.

"Yes," He confirmed, his chair still back as he shifted, resting on his elbow to study my face.

"I awoke in the strangest place, with minuscule blue doors everywhere-"

"Lockers."

"And then this vision appeared in my head. Of you." He said in a slow voice as if trying to piece all the parts together in his head while he spoke as I felt his intense gaze on me before a long silence fell upon us.

"Maiden, are you my father's whore?"

I swerved the car at his words, my eyes wide as I gripped onto the wheel, my heart racing as the tires screeched, hearing Teacher Harry slide and hit the side of the car making him let out another groan before I regained control as Prince Harry watched me with wide eyes.

"My lady-"

"No, I am not your father's whore and ya know what, and I may not know what Narnia medieval world you come from but here, in this land, you don't call women whores, not here, not there, not anywhere. You, ‘Sam I Am’ asshole." I snapped at him, shaking my head at Harry.

“My lady I apologize, my intention was not to offend you, but to address the fact you indeed are not the mistress of my father is jolly blinding." He said, clasping his hands together as I scrunch my face while he grinned.

"Blinding?"

"It means excellent, superb, great- oh bloody hell woman! Your ankles!" He suddenly exclaimed, looking down at my legs in my seat with wide eyes as I leaned away from him in surprise.

"My ankles yes! They're there!" I yelled back at him, trying to control my driving as I looked at Prince Harry who was blushing furiously.

"My lady, your bare legs, your skin is showing for god's sake you're practically naked!" He flailed in his now upright seat, averting his gaze from the skirt I was still wearing as he tried to cover his blushing face.

"Did you not notice that when we first saw each other at school?" I asked, rolling the car to a halt at a stop light.

"I might have possibly missed that detail when I noticed the body of a man you were dragging who, I do say, is quite devilishly handsome." He said in a haughty voice, looking over his shoulder at unconscious Teacher Harry before he looked back at me and flashed me a flawless cocky smile that almost made my heart stop.

I swear on my life I saw a sparkling gleam on one of his pearly white teeth.

Prince Harry suddenly began to take his large gold embroidered expensive looking coat off, leaving him in an off creme baggy -sort of see-through- shirt before he politely placed it on my lap to cover the exposed skin of my legs, adjusting and smoothing the fabric before retracting his hands back.

"Uh, you didn't have to-"

"No, I insist, please. I must admit it's more for my sake rather than yours and I regret to inform you that the mere sight of your exposed skin distracts me more than I'm comfortable with." He explained, rubbing his jawline and clearing his throat awkwardly as he looked out the window, the tips of his ears a light shade of pink from his blushing.

I couldn't help but laugh.

"Do I amuse you, madam?" He smiled, a playful look on his face as he turned to meet my gaze.

"Yeah, you could say that. Every time you talk it's like you're always quoting some smart person’s essay, oh, and you can stop with the whole ‘madam’ thing. My name's Y/n." I explained, driving forward before Harry took one of my hands off the wheel, the cold metals of his gold and silver rings on a few of his fingers brushing against my skin before he brought my hand to his soft lips.

"Y/n hm? What a pleasure it is to be in the presence of such a fair maiden." He said, his voice held such a rich timber and a small smile spread across his lips. Still holding my hand, he ran his thumb gently over the back of my hand.

I then belched out a loud burp, making Harry let go of my hand and retract back in his seat in surprise.

"Oh, you definitely my fav so far," I commented, putting my hand back on the wheel with a smile on my face.

"Wait! Take me there!" Prince Harry suddenly exclaimed, leaning forward in his seat as he pointed out the window.

"Burger King?" I asked, hesitant as I followed his request and drove over to the fast food place, parking the car as I looked over at him while he fumbled with his seatbelt.

I guess fanfiction characters do eat.

This pussy...

As Prince Harry got out of the car, I looked behind my seat at unconscious Teacher Harry, his body splayed across the back seats.

"You want a burger?" I asked him, trying to see if he’s at least a little conscious.

I heard him let out a little groan, his brows creased before I nodded.

"Burger it is then," I said, surprised when I spotted Prince Harry outside my side of the car, trying to keep his composure while opening my door for as he nodded his head for me to exit the car, and then took my hand to lead me out while I held onto his jacket.

"Thanks", I said, trying not to freak out that Harry Styles -excuse me- Prince Harry Styles just opened the door for me.

“Oh this is yours”, I added, handing him his jacket back as he swallowed, giving me a quick, but polite nod and smile while he tried to avoid looking at my legs.

Find a man who can appreciate naturally hairy legs I thought to myself, smiling at Prince Harry as he dramatically entered Burger King, pushing both glass doors open abruptly as he strode in.

"Peasants, you may stay seated!" Harry announced to all the customers at their tables making everyone in the room, including the people waiting in line for their orders, all stop to stare at him in bewilderment.

"Oh my god," I mumbled under my breath, standing behind him as he stood in the front of the restaurant, chin high and arms outstretched as if preparing himself for a speech.

"I only beseech you to lead me to your ruler, King Burger." He said in a loud tone, his voice carrying out and echoing through the room mixing with the sound of thick potato slices being fried in the back.

"No Harry this isn't-"

"Ah, you must be him." Harry smiled when a chubby little boy wearing a cardboard Burger King crown approached him, slurping on his large coke as he looked up at Harry with wide eyes.

"I must say, the Kings are a bit... younger here," Harry whispered, leaning back for only me to hear before he went down on one knee, bowing his head down in front of the little boy who was shaking his drink, trying to slurp more coke.

"King Burger, my name is Prince Harold the fourth and I come in peace. I have journeyed from a far-off land-"

The boy suddenly threw his cup of coke onto Harry, splashing him with the sticky liquid.

Harry sputtered out in surprise, standing to his feet drenched in coke, his long darkened hair a bit wet as he stumbled back in surprise before I caught him from behind and stabled him.

"Is this not a declaration of war! By all that is high and mighty, your kingdom will fall and I will behead you from which you stand King of Burger!" Harry bellowed through gritted teeth, his jaw locked as he pointed at the little chubby boy before Harry started to retrieve something from his waist, my eyes widening when I spotted the sheathed sword at his side.

"Okay! That's enough! That is really enough!" I nervously laughed out, grabbing his wrists and stopping him from taking out his weapon as he continued to glare at the kid with narrowed furious green eyes while everyone stared at us in shock.

"Come on Timmy, get away from the weird man." A woman who had just come out of the bathroom said, fast walking to her son before she dragged him away as he stuck his tongue at Harry who began to charge at him again until I intervened.

"Woah, Woah, Woah, let's just go get you some food dude," I said, placing my hands on his broad chest, slightly pushing him back as he calmed down, still gritting his teeth before I brought him to the front register, the people in line, backing away eyeing us as I sent all of them an uneasy smile.

"What can I get you." A lanky pale teenager said in a blank tone, blinking at me with an expressionless face as I helped dry Prince Harry with a bunch of napkins from the front counter as he mumbled curses under his breath.

"Uh, two burgers please and a-"

I felt a tug on my shirt, turning to find Harry looking at a little girl skipping with her dad wearing an identical cardboard Burger King crown on her curly-haired head.

"I say, is there more than one ruler in this kingdom?" He asked me with a confused expression that was absolutely adorable before I just smiled and pointed behind the cashier at the array of cardboard crowns stacked in the back causing Harry's eyes to go wide in amazement.

"May I have a crown?" He asked me with a childish grin before I nodded.

"Yeah and one king junior please."

••

Prince Harry stayed in the passenger side, sucking on the straw of his own cup of coke, looking through his kid's meal with the cardboard crown on his head falling slightly.

"When Teacher Harry wakes up just hand him the burger and calm him down, make sure you explain that I'll be taking care of you guys," I said, nodding my head towards the other Harry who was still knocked out which was kind of worrying me but I honestly had other stuff to take care of at the moment.

"You're like a noble knight my fair lady." Prince Harry said in awe, looking at me with wide green eyes as I stepped outside and closed the door, locking everything.

"Or a pimp, anyways I'm taking the keys but the windows are open alright, I'll be quick," I told him, making him nod before I turned and headed toward Target that was in the same parking lot as the Burger King.

I immediately looked for the whistles in the dollar section, wanting to find one loud enough like a rape whistle.

So far the Harry's I've come across weren’t as bad as I was expecting. I mean the one I've read a while ago were pretty, bad, so I was going to prepare myself.

My advantage here was that I knew their stories, although I've read so many that I might have forgotten some of them, but I’m pretty sure I still remember the gist of most of them.

I walked out of the store, a whistle, and pepper spray in my hand that I had purchased before I heard the crash of a stand of items and products fall to the floor along with a loud curse from that same British voice that's been haunting me all day.

I turned the corner, finding a different Harry this time by the look of his attire, this one was wearing a dark oversized sweater and his brown hair was a little past his shoulders in soft cascading subtle curls as he mumbled to himself, trying to pick up the groceries he had spilled from his brown bags.

According to Prince Harry he had a vision of me and tried finding me, so maybe it was natural for all Harry's to come to me eventually... I just had to find out which one this one was.

"Here, let me help you." I approached him, crouching down in front of him as I collected his things on the ground making him snap his gaze up to meet mine.

"Thank you, sorry I'm just- I'm a tad clumsy." He smiled, chuckling to himself a bit averting his eyes back down to the floor as we gathered everything.

"It's fine." I politely said, studying him as I placed my whistle and pepper spray in the pocket of my jacket before picking up the stand that was on the ground as this Harry stood to his feet, holding his brown bag of groceries in his arms again.

"I really do appreciate it, I've been flustered lately trying to get this Greek recipe I'm currently working on and I was worried I got my spices mixed." He said in a shy tone, sending me a grateful smile as I blinked at him.

Recipe... okay, this was definitely Chef Harry in that one fanfiction I read.

This one was the culinary perfectionist, alright, not bad.

"Uh, that seems like a lot of stuff you're carrying. Would you like me to help you take it to your car?" I asked, wondering how the hell I was going to get him in my car.

Prince Harry went with me willingly so that was easy, maybe I could just knock this one out just like I did with the teacher.

"Oh I actually walked here, my place is like right across the street from here, yeah it's pretty convenient but uh- I would actually appreciate some help." He said, blowing out a breath of relief and nodding as I took one of the bags from his arms.

"I'm Harry by the way." He said, trying to maneuver the other bags in his arms to outstretch his free hand out for mine with a friendly smile.

"Y/n." I introduced, shaking his hand while trying to come up with a plan on how I was going to kidnap him.

We walked away from the store, me holding a few of his bags of food and vegetables as we talked and he leads me to his house across the street.

He wasn't bad, he was actually pretty normal especially compared to the other Harry's.

"Uh- you can just place the bags on the kitchen counter," He said, biting his lip as he walked inside his house first, trying to keep the door open for me with one of his long legs as I went inside, checking the room.

Wonder if I could just tie him to a chair and then drag him outside to the parking lot where I parked the car.

Where can I get rope though... I placed the bags down on his kitchen counter, my eyes wandering around the cozy welcoming neatly kept living space as Chef Harry started to straighten out all his spices.

"Make yourself at home, I just need to look for- oh god did I break the eggs." He murmured the last part to himself, a worried expression on his face as he peered down at one of the grocery bags while I made my way into his living room, taking in every detail.

This place looked familiar, the white furniture, the gray and black pillows. I took in a deep breath, smelling the scent of fall leaves and pumpkin making my eyes flicker to the candle on the mantle of the fireplace.

Why did this all seem so familiar?

"Hey pumpkin, you think you could try out the new recipe I'm using? I could use some good constructive criticism." I heard his voice call from the kitchen, the sound of a knife dicing food in the other room echoing through his place as goosebumps formed on my skin.

My body stiffened, my palms immediately sweating when a quote from a fanfiction I had read a long long time ago popped into my head.

He called me pumpkin.

The quote in my head began to expand and everything became that much clearer.

He called me pumpkin because he loved to carve, he loved to hear the screams I would make when he pushed me down to the floor of his plush carpet, gently running the tip of his knife against the bare skin of my back.

I gulped, looking down to find myself standing on that same dark rug that was mentioned in that one fanfiction.

Oh god.

No, anything but that fanfiction story.

This wasn't Chef Harry at all.

I walked back out into the hall, breathing heavily as I peeked my head and watched Harry in his kitchen, smirking to himself as he sharpened two large knives together, the metal scraping against one another before his dark green eyes flickered up, connecting with mine before he placed the knives downs with a mischievous smile on his face.

"So pumpkin, how about you stay for dinner".

I’m trapped in the house with fucking Psycho Harry.

Fuck.

#harry styles imagine #harry styles #harry styles au #Prince Harry #au harry #one direction #one direction imagine #daddy #harry styles daddy #burger king #psycho #psycho harry #smut #the styles effect #au meme #harry styles fanfiction #fanfiction #harry styles preferences

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hozukitofu · 5 years

Text

james bond can piss right off

okay, fine.

maybe wooyoung has too much pride in espionage. maybe thinking that he is the best won’t help him in the long run.

fine.

that doesn’t explain any of this though. it doesn’t explain the unsuspecting traps, the literal net and poison combo deal that nabbed him the moment he rigged into the warehouse.

wooyoung is good at his job. it’s how he can demand a ridiculous sum of payment up front and collect even more after the job with guarantee that he will do well. but right now? he can kiss that diamond encrusted knife collection goodbye as he slumps sideways and hit the floor.

vaguely he can hear soft footsteps and a small chain of giggles as his vision tunnels and shutters off.

he wakes in a really undignified lump - flailing and rocking on a bound chair, legs coming off the ground. he’s inside a warehouse - surroundings are unclear to determine if it’s the one he’s meant to break into - tightly knotted to a chair. just a simple kitchen chair, wooden, can easily topple if he decides to rock a little too hard and fall over, breaking his nose on impact.

he received training to get out of chairs in these very specific situations, yes, but wooyoung’s fatal flaw is that when a situation hasn’t arrived in more than two years he tends to be slack on the details of how to deal with it specifically.

his mortal undoing will be his carelessness with a side of pride

“you’re up!” a soft voice cheers. “i thought we had to resort to a cold bucket of water to the face if you didn’t wake up and leave the party.”

“that wasn’t a very fun party,” he grouses, peeking open an eye. tall, his capturer is tall. male, so that makes fighting his way out probably a little bit harder. “where are all the music and terrible alcohol?”

“didn’t have that, but you did take in a healthy dose of chloroform,” the culprit bends down, lower, until he reaches eye level with wooyoung, goggles and a face mask obscuring all signs of possible identifiable features.

yeosang is going to cut him open and eat his liver if he returns without either the intel needed or some form of identification on the one who managed to usurp his unshakable post as Master Spy.

“no wonder my mouth still tastes sweet,” he laments, though not bitterly. everything is still too woozy and baffling that he can’t exactly put a finger on it.

“i try my best,” the man in the shadow, the thing with the sweet voice - seriously, is that a real voice? is he just hallucinating? can he tell how many fingers are there in front of him if someone does try to test his sight? “apologies for the ambush. i can’t have others jeopardising my objective.”

“i can understand that,” wooyoung grunts, working a wrist free as he wobbles and pretends to have terrible balance on a bound, shaky chair. uneven legs, ha ha, he can claim. “emphatically.”

“i’m so glad we have something in common,” he can hear the smile and the genuine pleasantry, dripping from his culprit’s drawling tone. why does he speak Like That?

“yeah…” he inches away, shaking loose and sweaty hair from flopping even further into his eyes and eyelashes. “so glad…”

“your sarcasm wounds me. i thought we had a connection,” the person laments, hand clasping the front of his long sweeping coat - can people genuinely move in that, wooyoung just want to talk.

“we would, if you would show me your face,” he coughs, hoping that it’s loud enough to mask the rip of fabric that just went on in the back of his tightly bound hand. he thinks it’s the handcuff, hybridised with something that hitches on top of holding him in. unlike the chair situation, he actually paid attention when the knots lectures came about. his long lost dream was to be a sea pirate, so he obsessed over knots and ship diagrams when he was younger, and then that dream had to be adapted to becoming an internationally hunted espionage agent, occasionally boarding ships to dig through people’s loots and information before escaping through the steam room’s window and swimming to a canoe waiting nearby.

but pirate childhood dream aside, he still can’t get out. the problem is that while he is great at tying people up, he can’t get his brain to do the reverse of untying himself from difficult knots that he can do himself fast enough to avoid a rapid round of gunfire or a hostage situation, which, he is unfortunately in one at the moment.

“i don’t do interrogation until the third date,” there is a wink in there, wooyoung can tell. damn, his brain is bad with memorising voices. he is a visual learner, and right now the entire assemble this guy has got going for him is really bloody effective. he can’t ascertain a definitive height, body shape, face shape, eye - nothing. nada. zilch. Zero.

argh yeosang and hongjoong-hyung are both going to gang up and dangle him on the top of a telecommunication tower somewhere, for failing this mission. there is no winning if he isn’t in the specified location that he was meant to target and rob the intel of, there is no winning if he had been gassed and bound and definitely no victory in not being able to pinpoint who captured him and jeopardise his mission.

“damn,” he sighs, dramatic and dejected. wait. date.

maybe -

perhaps…

he’s good at what he does because all his skills and arsenals are trained towards efficiency at spying and getting himself out of compromising situations. he himself had never been a. been in a seduction mission before or b. been on the receiving end of an odd proposition in the middle of a mission gone sideways.

there is a first for everything. there are always ways out, you’re not looking hard enough, hongjoong’s voice nags at him in his coconut numbskull.

okay. okay. he can do this. play this game, and see if he can do anything about it.

“what do you normally do on your first dates?” he throws himself forward, dragging his chair with his lurch frontward.

his kidnapped in black only laughs, catching him across the shoulder and righting him. he doesn’t smell like anything, deceptively free of cologne or aftershave or a brand of detergent. nothing. zero signs given to him. damn. not even a crumb.

“well, we’d tell each other what we would go by, but i can see that you’re at a slight disadvantage - i did a bit of a facebook stalking round, don’t feel bad if you haven’t done the same yet. the woes of blind dating,” the voice is charming, and it’s nice to listen to, but the fake cheeriness is slowly bleeding out to genuine cheek. okay so wooyoung is mostly an obstacle to be removed, but he also garnered enough interest to prompt this chat and the subtle veneer of maybe mockery in his cheery voice.

he can tell that much, but he’s not an idiot. he knows he’s been researched inside out to be rendered into a chair and bound, and that’s the kind of research he’d like to have insight to, because wooyoung is a ghost story among the spying world. people don’t think he exists, and have to go through a chain of convoluted communication lines to reach out to him and request his service, with money always at the ready. he is famous, but literally only ten people know his face, because his face is similar to many others - a curse, but now a blessing. he had pretended to be park jimin too many times for him to count, an apology to the politician himself, but, if the shoe fits, he’ll take that shoe and running off with it.

so maybe this is just an opportunity to gloat - look at me, i one upped the great wooyoung, got him tied up in a chair, as i skip away with the intel he was meant to collect for his mission.

that is deeply uncomfortable to think about. wooyoung has to one up him back, return the favour. he’s playing this game with literally no arms, no sight, just his ears and his brain working overtime. he thinks he might scrape a crumb from this situation yet.

“wouldn’t it be common courtesy to let your date know something to call you by? i’ve been so kind as to show up to the date. you wouldn’t break a poor man’s heart by leaving him in the dark like this?” he thinks this is a good attempt of a breathy, seductive voice, from the vague corners of his memory of how ‘seduction’ is supposed to work.

“ah,” there is careful consideration in that one sound. wooyoung hopes it’s an hmm i might indulge in your silly requests and give you a fake name, and not now i have to kill you because you’re getting more annoying by the minute and my gloating moment is over. “i thought you don’t play the seduction game.”

wooyoung nods until his brain catches up with the words and he’s nodding as his brain plays W H A T to the accompaniment of a cambodian gong as everything goes off in flames .

“you’re special,” wooyoung winks, greasy and disgusting, and lets the playful expression slides off his face completely. “also you one upped me and i have to play you right back.”

“that’s not very gentlemanly of you,” the stranger chides. “now how can i give you a name or a hint?”

“a hint cannot be any more misleading than a name, so,” he hangs his head, aware that there are hands still planted on his shoulder. he shrugs them off, hopping back on his chair, brain thinking hard. a wrist of his is loose enough to twist around and smack this one across the face, but then he has to let that distance be regained. gain back the weird tantalising space that hostage and kidnapper allow between them, prey and predator, moments before disaster strikes.

“well,” and the first step is taken. wooyoung watches, narrowing his eyes, as the distance between them is lessened, as the shadowy figure kneels in front of him, hand pressing into his vest. “if you interest me enough, i promise to give you a useful hint.”

he doesn’t know jackshit about being interesting or anything pertaining to that, but he knows an opportunity when it presents itself to him, and he rips an arm socket nearly loose from his shoulder joint, swinging it across the face of his kidnapper, the reaction going exactly to plan, dislodging the ugly pair of glasses away, revealing the temple and mellow skin, sweet golden baked pastries.

damn wooyoung needs to eat something. he keeps thinking of people and things in terms of edibility. he half wanted to munch on his handkerchief just hours before. snack, whenever he gets back, and a lot of it.

“ah,” hard pressed eyes, really deep brown - almost black, squeeze into a pleasant line of smile at him - can a person smile with their eyes? he’s not sure, but this one is doing it, and doing it brilliantly.

he has some eyes. he’s literally never seen anyone with those eyes before. surely yeosang can do something, like scan security footages with matching eyes or something.

eyes are really not much to go on for, but look, he scraped himself a crumb, at the cost of nearly dislocating his arm. he should get some brownie points for that.

“i guess you already ripped the hint away from me,” the eyes, animated and lively, squeeze themselves into two crescents of pleased surprise. wooyoung can take comfort in not being sniped in the chest by this guy, but, once again, he still thinks there are guns hidden somewhere in that ridiculous billowing coat and the stupid cowboy hat. he himself had hidden twenty guns and fifteen knives in his suit before, and it was a semi-casual suit. it’s not that hard with weapons nowadays.

“what a damn shame,” he drawls right back, vicious and petty, just like who he is, deep down, when he loses at a game. “i was going to beg, but,” he shrugs, half checking on his shoulder, half flexing on this guy. one all, bastard. your move.

“but you are above that, i am aware,” the eyes mirror the amused tone the voice puts out, flashing brief caramel under wooyoung’s chloroform gassed up head. “it wouldn’t be a fun game if one of us has the upper hand perpetually.”

those are really pretty eyes, and under different circumstances, outside of his job, when he’s just jung wooyoung, international politics graduate, dance enthusiast, not WY, elite spy master, then maybe he could’ve gone for it.

not now, not here. they’ve started on a bad foot already. he doesn’t know what he might do if they do encounter each other, mask completely stripped off from each other.

“yeah, gotta keep my standards high, my guys lower,” he winks, trying to wriggle his way out of his hold. “what are you going to do with that intel?”

a gloved hand taps the inner lining of his coat, an eye blinking into a wink.

“sell it.”

wooyoung breathes out harshly. of course he would.

“of course you would,” he rolls his eyes. “and i was just a little bit later and less experienced in coming up against you.”

“i wouldn’t say you’re less experienced,” the man twirls a long finger, gloved, completely black. “just a little unprepared. i had the element of surprise on my end this time. next time, well,” he leaves that hanging, stopping right in front of wooyoung. “it’s fair game.”

“i don’t know how long you’ve been playing on this field for, but there is no such thing as fair game,” he hooks a finger into his stun gun, drawing it out, pointing point blank, between the nice eyebrows and expressive eyes. “it would only hurt a little.”

“you never cease to surprise me, wooyoung,” is all he gets, before the mask is tugged down, a line of a hooked nose ridge, before a shower of smoke, and the complete disappearance of a master ghost spy.

okay. okay hongjoong and yeosang would not be happy with this.

nobody should know wooyoung’s name. how did this one know?

part 2!

#ateez #spy au #choi san #san is wearing that cowboy get up in the hala hala dance practice vid #wooyoung is so mad that he's being one upped by san #are they flirting or threatening each other - unknown #san is trying to flirt but it looks like a hostage situation #he's trying his best #wooyoung's uniforms are always suits #jung wooyoung

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margridarnauds · 6 years

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2, 8, 9, 20, 30, 31, 32, 40, 51 (for the abominaton)

Thanks!

2. Favorite part of writing.

I love the feeling that comes with putting the thoughts that I’ve been visualizing in my mind on the page, I love getting to work with characters that I love dearly and putting them where normal circumstances wouldn’t, I love dealing with a wide cast of characters that help me learn more about myself.

8. Favorite trope to write.

In general, I like to write emotionally constipated characters dealing with their gay emotions for the first time. Also, I tend to work with straight-up fix-its or dealing with post-canon events (and, when I say “post canon” I mean “post my very, very specific version of canon).

9. Least favorite trope to write.

This is probably surprising, but I tend to not be fond of actually writing depressing endings. Like, even in the universes where I kill characters off, I like to at least give them some closure, even if it’s an afterlife AU. (Which…the Afterlife AU for Pour la Peine is going to be fun if I ever get around to it).

Also, I don’t like Modern AUs all that much, even though I have numerous ones for 1789. It’s probably mostly a matter of translating 18th century politics to the modern age. That and I hate writing anything set in the modern age on principle.

20. Post a snippet of a WIP you’re working on.

Tw: References to animal abuse, bullying, and Lazare being a 13 year old with slightly homicidal tendencies (BUT HE’S STILL VALID)

Lazare didn’t know how he got involved. One moment he was gritting his teeth in anger at them, his rage reaching a boiling point after one of the punches caused Ronan to cry out, the next one of the bullies was on the ground crying, Ronan was putting another one on the ground nearby him, and he had his hand wrapped around Denis’ throat, feeling his fingernails tighten around skin that had never been bruised before. All those military exercises his grandfather had made him run had their uses, he thought, as a strange thrill ran through him. Thibault Denis couldn’t do anything now, couldn’t hurt anyone; he was completely under his control. No matter how much he tried, flailed, choked, the little pretend tyrant was weak. So this was what authority meant. All that time when his grandfather had tried to explain it to him, and he’d never fully understood it.

“Lazare!” He was vaguely aware of Ronan shouting, and that was enough for him to release his grip. The boy fell to the ground, looking at him like he was Death incarnate, all widened eyes and quick breathing before he ran as fast as he could, his legs barely supporting him. The others followed suit, and it was just him, Ronan, and the cat. He flexed his hands, remembering the touch, looking at Ronan, wondering how he would look at him now that Lazare had hurt one of his own, but if he’d seen anything unusual, he hadn’t noticed, lavishing attention to the cat instead.

“Why would someone do something like that, huh? It’s just a cat, it wasn’t harming anybody.” Ronan held the wretched thing in his arms, petting it, with its torn ear and matted, faded fur and bony spine. “It probably just wanted to make friends.”

“The world can be cruel.” It had been the first thing he’d been told, when he was left on the steps of the Chateau de Peyrol and greeted by a stern, sharp man who introduced himself as his grandfather, and it had been something that he’d made sure he’d remember. The world had been cruel since time began, it would remain cruel. All that was important was ensuring that he himself did the best he could in the role he was given and to support the Crown in its efforts to keep order amidst the destructive forces that would bathe the world in fire otherwise.

Ronan shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be.” He held the cat a little closer, letting it burrow its face into his chest weakly, its pink tongue flicking over his fingers slowly. “It doesn’t have to be.”

30. Favorite line you’ve ever written.

There was a sadness in du Puget’s eyes, and Peyrol felt like he was a schoolboy again, missing some obvious point that he had just explained to him in vivid detail. Only instead of the immediate reprisals, he got this. A beating he could deal with, scorn he could deal with, pity he could not. “We are all human beings, Monsieur de Peyrol. We are all human beings with a child’s longing for the companionship and love of our fellow man. If you cannot do that basic amount for him, then you will never deserve his trust or his love, no matter how many livres you pour into it.”

31. Hardest character to write.

In general, any of the kid characters. I HATE writing children in general, and in the first part of the Abomination in particular SO MUCH rests on selling the kid versions of Ronan and Lazare and their relationship because literally the rest of this universe depends on them. I consider having to type “How do children make friends” and “What do children do with friends” to be on par with me trying to think about how long it’d take me to bang the man who (hypothetically) killed my father as far as Signature Abomination Moments.

For the non-historical characters of 1789, I’ve talked repeatedly how hard Solene is to write because of how little we get on her and how downright contradictory a lot of it is (see: her talking about how ambition and bloodlust have blinded Ronan…while she and the girls lynch a baker and march to Versailles. You go girl?) And you want to do a solid job with her, especially since her storyline touches on subjects that are STILL pretty damn sensitive, but you also don’t want to accidentally put her into any of the contemporary stereotypes of The Fallen Woman, The Victim, The Fury, etc, or any of our modern stereotypes when it comes to what a sex worker should look like and behave. That and trying to develop her relationship with Olympe is going to be slightly harder than usual, given that I still…need to figure out how they’re going to meet. With Pour la Peine, it was easier, since they had an easy way to meet up (Ronan’s funeral, RIP bro), but here, this is taking place in the canon era.

On a larger level, writing ANY of the historical figures that we have a decent amount of documentation for is hard, since these are people who are still highly controversial to this day and who can kind of….shift between different sources. Not necessarily the ones they wrote themselves, but, like, if you ask ten different people about Robespierre, you’ll get ten different responses. You’ll think you’ve caught onto him, and then he slips away. Likewise for Antoinette or Fersen or De Launay. Even Papa du Puget is rather hard for me to grasp, not the least because I know that the sources I need are locked behind an archive in France, untranslated and mostly obscure. (Funnily enough, the easiest for me to grasp is the Marquis de Sade, because the man’s just a dick. I will proudly proclaim the man’s a dick. He deserved to spend the rest of his life rotting away and I consider it an eternal tragedy that far better men than him in every way died during the course of the Frev while he managed, despite himself, to survive.) With some characters, like Danton and Desmoulins, I sense that my interpretation of them is going to be much different than the normal interpretation of them.

Basically, there’s a lot of pressure with them that isn’t necessarily there with the canon OCs, I don’t have as much freedom, and it can be damn hard to put them into a given situation to see how they’d react. (Incidentally, I’m going to put a tentative guess that they won’t react well to L/R. Just a guess. Though I’m sure Lazare can win them over with his A+ social skills, charm, and tact.)

32. Easiest character to write.

Laz and I get along very well at this point, even as I torture him.

40. Original Fiction or Fanfiction, and why?

Fanfiction, actually.

With original fiction, there’s a lot of pressure when it comes to constructing the world you’re working with and the characters and how they interact with it. And, believe me, it’s a lot of fun, but it’s also damned hard to visualize it. Like, I fucking specialize in Early Irish Lit, and yet my retelling of CMT is hard to write 90% of the time because I have a hard time working with this world and how it works (which…given that the rules themselves weren’t concrete in the original lit, I don’t feel all that bad, but still). To tell you the truth, even after looking at tons of pictures of longhouses and hillforts and costumes from the Book of Kells, I still can’t get a decent idea for this stuff. It’s even harder for the main WIP, where I have to do a lot more construction, working with inspirations from multiple time periods, and it’s a real mess because I’ve never entirely gotten those inspirations under control and the characters keep shifting out from under me.

With fanfic, on the other hand, you have characters, you have a setting, and you have a decent idea with how the world works. Now, you can always do what I do and completely throw canon out anyway, BUT you still have some basics. No matter what, I have some baseline for the characters and some baseline for how the world works and I can build my research off of that.

51. Describe the aesthetic of your story _______ in 5 sentences or words.

Doing this for the first part because it’d be literally impossible to do it otherwise.

A gloved hand on a black walking stick, a slightly bent, silver wolf’s head gleaming from the top.

A sea of golden wheat over flat land as far as the eye can see, a sharp blue sky hanging over it.

An old, faded book with a decrepit spine.

A blue parrot locked in a gilded cage.

Two boys against a tree on a slightly chilly summer night, looking at the stars, unaware of what they hold for them.

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inferno-loop · 7 years

Text

Hiraeth: Chapter 1

JUNGKOOK X READER wolf!AU

Words: 3693

Prologue | Chapter 2

“Here’s your green tea with banana chocolate chip cookies and muesli bars! Enjoy your meal, ma’am!”

You looked up from the book in your hands to see a young girl smiling brightly at you, her grin spreading from one ear to the other. A bit too sweet, a little too false. You realised that the thought was oxymoronically absurd but you knew it wasn’t without reason.

You thanked the girl and gave her a small smile before turning back to the book in your hand and continuing to read.

You had wandered amidst humans for a long time now, 505 years to be exact, and while it had been difficult, you had learnt to adapt. It was strange, the world of humans, no doubt. Ever since you had known the species, which would be since the time you had ruled over them to now, they had been greedy. However, just like the species itself, the way to express that greed had evolved as well.

Back in the days, when humans had not explored the idea of shared power and the world was aware of the existence of creatures that were unlike humans, greed manifested itself in their minds in the form of blind ambition for power, which in those times meant the throne. You knew this because, you had been alive in that time and more so, you had been a princess.

A wolf princess.

You had had your fair share of human kings waging war on your kingdom to claim your stronghold, your people and your kind. None of them succeeded, of course. Humans driven by greed for power tended to overestimate themselves and they truly believed they could defeat your ‘kind’, as they referred to you, in battle. An unbelievably stupid estimate, if someone asked you.

However, you had long since realized that humans were not only driven by greed. They were driven by fear and…by love. Take the chirpy, overly sweet girl who had just served you. She was eager to please you and you knew by your experience in observation, her smile was so forced that it physically hurt her. So why did she do the job? Fear. Maybe she was poor, maybe she was in debt, maybe she was trying hard to make ends meet and survive.

Maybe it was love. Maybe she had a future to build, maybe she had a sick companion. You did not care to go into the details.

If there was, however, something you understood after centuries of cohabiting with humans, it was that if you wanted to survive in the world of humans and blend in, you would have learn the unique skill of acting. That was something humans were absolutely brilliant at.

To be fair, you weren’t so bad yourself.

You had changed professions and countries so many times now that you did not care to remember all of them. You had done your adequate share of acting. In fact, you were currently in midst of exactly that. In this lifetime, in this disguise, you were a professor of Zoology, named Diana Moon.

You finished the last bit of your muesli bar and gathered your belongings, as you checked the time. 10:21 AM. You smiled a little to yourself as you left the café and quietly walked back towards the campus.

You would be lying if you said that you weren’t more eager than usual to deliver today’s lecture, because the topic of today’s lecture was more personal to you than anyone could imagine.

You opened the entrance to the lecture hall and walked to your desk. Taking the board marker, you turned around to write the topic for today’s lecture on the board. You let out a deep sigh as you finished writing across the white board.

Canis Dirus, the Dire Wolves.

Your brethren.

A lone hand was up in a sea of curious students attending a zoology class being taught by a very special professor, miss Diana Moon a.k.a you. To a passer-by it would seem to be a very normal day of teaching.

Nope.

This was the hand of a very ignoramus and moronic bully who went by the name ‘Rocky’. Now, after spending more than 500 hundred years trying to accommodate yourself with the humans, you would have liked to say that you were not the one to judge people, especially on the basis of names.

But seriously, Rocky? Even you could have come up with something better than that and you were ancient.

Anyway, coming back to the point, it was unlike you to get annoyed or even pay attention to this punk, knowing that the only reason he put his hand up in class was either in an attempt to sound sassy and cool in front of his classmates or to waste the class’s time for his entertainment. Now, in normal circumstances, this would have hardly mattered to you, since you were well aware that these kids cared less about gaining knowledge and more about getting a degree. You knew most of these kids were not here to learn something but rather to just comfortably spend some years in college, getting a degree that could help them get a job in the future, and that was okay. You were used to this routine and it did not affect you.

However, it did irk you when you were interrupted by a rude human kid when you were explaining to the class, the history of your kinsfolk.

You looked at Rocky with a blank expression and decided that for once, you would answer his query.

“Yes Mr. …” You slightly frowned as you tried to recall what the kid’s real name was but shrugged as you realized you had never bothered to find out his real name.“…Never mind. What is your query?”

Rocky sniggered, “What, Miss Moon? You can’t recall your own student’s name?”

“The matter of recalling your name would come up if I knew it in the first place. I don’t know your name at all.” You deadpanned, while the entire lecture hall seemed to have become a hall of laughter yoga. “Now, will you please share your query so that I can continue the lecture?”

“Y-Yes.” Rocky said through grit teeth, visibly humiliated by the little scene he had caused, but apparently he was still not discouraged to back out from announcing his downgrading comments about the topic in hopes to regain his lost honor. If anything, he seemed more fueled by anger now. Enough to forget that he was student speaking to his professor.

“It’s a fucking stupid topic that’s not going to help us in anyway in the real world.” He scoffed. “Dire wolves? Canis Dirus? The most powerful predators? Who cares? They’re dead anyway. Why do we need to study some stupid wolves who’re dead?”

Students around him gasped, some even openly gaping at the use of his language while others just shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

You, on the other hand, were casually leaning against your table, arms crossed and face entirely devoid of any expression. Your eyes, however, were flashing a dangerous red color, which did not go unnoticed. Rocky stiffened in his seat as he saw the change in your eyes. He looked around to see if anyone could see what he was seeing but as soon as he turned his head around towards his class, he let out a gasp of horror. It was like everyone was frozen, in midst of whatever they were doing. It was as though time -in that very moment- had stopped.

“Y-Yah, what’s wrong?” He asked the boy who was seated to his right, apparently frozen in midst of eating his lunch sneakily. “W-Why aren’t you moving?”

No response.

He turned towards your direction to see you standing in the exact same position that you had been the entire time; only you were doing it voluntarily. You were not frozen in time.

“P-P-Professor Moon, what’s happening? Do you see this? W-We’re going to die! Call for help!” He looked at you, visibly panicking.

“Be quiet.”

Rocky looked at you in disbelief. Could you not see what was happening? Or…were you the one doing it? Yes! That’s it! You and him were the only people who could move and he was obviously not the one causing this…so that left you.

“It’s you! You’re doing this, you hag! I-I’m gonna tell everyone.” Rocky flailed around.

“I said be quiet, child.”

Immediately, Rocky went rigid in his seat. It was as though his limbs had been held in place with invisible strings so strong, he would have to destroy every bone in his body to break even one of those wretched strings. He could only hear and process what was going on. He looked at you, completely terrified. He tried to say something, but not even a whimper came out. He had lost his voice.

You appraised the kid. He looked terrified out of his wits and his eyes were begging for mercy. That made you sad. You had not wished to do this and if you were to admit it, Rocky or any of the kids in this room were not worth the trouble of you using your divine powers. However, you could not forgive the words that had come out of his impertinent mouth. It had been a long time since you had let go of your family, perhaps many lifetimes, but the memory was as good as new to you.

The red in your eyes burned brighter.

“Listen to me carefully punk. I’m not going to harm you; you’re not worth it. However, I’ll have you know this. The legacy of my forbears is not easily forsaken. The next time you open that rotten mouth of yours, you’ll do well to remember my words because if you do not,” Your voice became dangerously low. “Those will be the last words you utter.”

Rocky closed his eyes in a desperate attempt to show he understood. As soon as he opened his eyes, everything was back to normal. The kids around him were looking at him weird as if he was the one doing bizarre and crazy things like freezing time. He immediately got up and frantically looked around the class, running from one seat to another and shaking his mates to confirm what he was seeing.

“Hey, kid. What do you think you’re doing in my class?”

Rocky froze. He slowly turned in your direction to find you leaning against the desk with a book in your hand, looking at him with an annoyed expression. As if…as if you hadn’t just threatened him, as if you hadn’t just stopped time, as if you hadn’t just called those stupid dire wolves your ancestors.

“You…you just stopped time.” He pointed at you, a maniacal expression on his face.

“Dude, sit down before you get all of us in trouble.” A kid called out behind him. But Rocky was not done. He had almost lost his life because of his zoology professor who flashes red eyes and makes time stop. He was not going to stop until he got an answer.

“Are you guys fucking blind?!” He screamed at his classmates and then pointed at you. “She just stopped time, she just froze everyone, she-she almost killed me!” He cried. “Y-you’re a monster.”

Before anyone could react to that, the bell went off signaling the end of that study slot.

“Right. That’s it for today. I’ll see all of you soon and by that time I expect you to be…”

Rocky tuned out the rest of your words. He felt like he was losing his mind. Nobody was ready to believe him. Hell, even you seemed to not know what he was talking about. Had…had he really just imagined all that?

He picked up his bag, deep in thoughts and gave you one last glance. You weren’t even looking at him. He really must be losing his mind. He looked away and walked out of the class with the rest of the students, missing your amused smile.

“_____!”

There he stood, your old friend. He was leaning against your luxurious car, parked at least a kilometer from the university. You couldn’t take chances with small stuff like this. A university professor could not possibly have that much money, could not possibly afford a Mercedes Maybach built for richest of the rich.

You smiled at Dae-seok. “I am not called by that name anymore, old friend.”

Dae-seok was a child when you found him, no more than 10 years of age. A child trapped in the fires set by an arsonist. He had lost his family and yet, he was only a child. He was scared of dying. He kept crying out, for someone to save him and his family trapped in the building where his father once used to work. No one heard his screams, no one but you. You had listened for a while, even thought of leaving the scene since you were hardly in any position to disclose your identity. Yet, you could not allow yourself to abandon the boy. After all, how different would you be from the people who had abandoned you when you were crying out for your family?

So, for that moment you let go of your disguise. Stealthily, you entered the building still in human form and saw the young child weeping for his burnt family around him. They had passed. You had picked the child up and dropped down straight from the 11th floor to the ground and took him to your house. There you had nursed him back to health and by the end of his healing process, you knew you could not let the child go.

So you sponsored him, you nurtured him. You helped him get his education, you fed him, you let him stay with you until he was old enough to venture out alone and make a life for himself.

Dae-seok looked at you with fond eyes. He may be 65 years of age now, but in front of you, his eyes were still like that of child, for he knew your secrets.

“I’m sorry!” He let out a hearty laugh. “Miss Diana Moon, is it?”

“That is correct.” You moved forward and opened the passenger’s seat for him to get in. “Get in, Mr. Da-Seok. It appears you have something to talk to me about. How about dinner?”

“That will not be necessary, captain.” He fake saluted you but with a laugh he got into the car. You shut the door after him and made your own way to the driver’s seat. You got in and sat down facing forward, looking through your car’s front pane at the empty and abandoned road ahead, surrounded by trees on each side.

“____.”

You did not turn towards him.

“I told you not to call me that, Dae-Seok.” You sighed.

“I can’t help it.” He muttered. “You’re not Diana Moon or whatever. You’re ____.” He asserted. He was trying to prove some point. You finally turned towards Dae-Seok suspiciously. He had a very old look on his face, marked with wrinkles and craters of old age. However, that was not what worried you. It was Dae-Seok’s eyes. Those eyes, which had held childlike excitement, a few moments ago, were now etched with fear and worry.

“Dae-Seok.” He looked up. “What is worrying you, my child?”

It was then Dae-seok started to silently cry. It reminded you of the time you saved him from the fire. He was shocked, keeping silent the first few days after he gained consciousness. He didn’t want to show his fear and his pain. It was only after a week of staying together, when you had just come back from the market, that you found him on the doorstep of your house, crying endlessly. You had put down the vegetables that you bought to cook for the boy and bent down in front of him. He had thrown himself in your arms and continued to cry until you took him inside, tucked him in bed and sang him a lullaby till he slept. It was only later that you found out, he was scared that you had abandoned him and left. After that day, he did not leave your side for a minute. Not until he left your house for good.

“You’re my only family, ____.” A lone tear fell from the old man’s eye.

“Don’t say that. You have your own family.” You told him.

However, the next second, your brain started working over-drive. He was talking like something was about to happen to him. Was he ill? Terminally-ill?

“You’re okay, aren’t you?” You let the worry inside you show on your face this time. “Are you ill?”

Dae-seok laughed a little, wiping his tears. “You’re such a mother.”

“Dae-seok.” You warned.

He looked at you and the worry slowly crept back in his features. His wrinkles became deeper and his smile was faint.

“It’s you.” He finally said. You narrowed your eyes in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

Another tear fell down Dae-Seok face.

“You are the one who’s in danger. Not me.”

9:30 PM, Millenium MARRIOT hotel, Seoul

Jeon Jungkook walked briskly in the vast halls of his luxurious hotel. For once, he did not even glance at the people greeting him. The facts that had been buried for centuries were now beginning to surface. He had heard tales by his elder brothers, his hyungs, for a long time. The tales and legends of the white wolves, blessed by the moon goddess. He had heard of the betrayals that lead to the annihilation of the Nuntis pack.

If someone were to ask him, Jungkook would say it was needed. The white sun wolves of Nuntis pack were too powerful for their own good. They had become the rulers of their time without question because who would question heavenly beings with divine powers? Everything happened at the discretion of the White wolf King and Queen. Yes, they were kind rulers but till when? If a time came, where they were displeased, they could kill at discretion and have no one to answer to but more so, no one to stop them. No one was strong enough to go against the white wolves. The only way to be free of them was to kill them, and to kill them the only tools, which could be used, were deception and betrayal. He had heard the gruesome tales of their deaths. He had heard how the wolf princess was forced to kill the King and Queen to protect her brother and how her brother was deceived into believing his family had died and was beheaded. There were no tales about the end of the wolf princess but she was killed as well. That’s what the Yawa tribe, who had led the revolt against the Nuntis tribe, always affirmed. However, the new enigma that had just presented itself in front of them said something else entirely.

The elevator doors opened and Jungkook walked out and took his first right to the VIP suites section. He stopped in front of suite 0009 and knocked in a hurry. The door opened and he was greeted by Jimin, one of his brothers. Jungkook could smell the tense atmosphere from the door. Jimin turned around and Jungkook followed him inside to be greeted by the sight of his brothers spread out in the entire room. Yoongi and Namjoon sat near the huge windows overlooking the city. Hoseok and Jin sat on chairs placed on either side of the ground table while Jimin and Taehyung made the couch their temporary home. On the bed, however, he saw the leader of the Yawa pack.

Durion.

Durion was a cunning and filthy being. He prided himself as the killer of the Nuntis tribe and was a self proclaimed ‘enforcer of the divine laws of wolves’. A pompous scum, if someone asked Jungkook. However, he was a strong pompous scum. Jungkook didn’t like to admit it but he would probably have a tough time fighting the guy. He might even lose. However, that was not something he needed to worry himself about. Durion was an ally…or at the very least both packs decided to become allies for the sake of peace.

Jungkook never liked Durion- or the Yawa Pack for that matter. Survival instinct said that white wolves needed to die and Jungkook was not about to put himself on a moral high ground and say he would have done things differently but he would probably not have been so cruel. Durion was cruel beyond measure.

“Ah.” Durion rose from his makeshift throne. “My dear friend Jungkook.”

Jungkook didn’t make an effort to hide his distaste as he gave the elder wolf a slight nod. He turned towards his leader and bowed in respect. He needed answers but Durion was not the one he wanted answers from.

“Is it true?”

The leader of the pack finally looked at the youngest member of his pack. Namjoon was a wise leader. He was aware of the distaste everyone held for the Yawa, especially for Durion. He was not a fan of their sly ways either. However, he could not afford to battle for power with this cunning tribe. Ráka was a strong tribe, beyond the shadow of a doubt but unlike Durion- who had warriors to lose, Namjoon had family to lose. He had chosen to become a ghost ally of Durion to observe him closely rather than risking open war and losing his family.

Of course, that didn’t mean that they actually had to be friendly. Namjoon never stopped Jungkook from misbehaving with Durion. He quite enjoyed it.

“Namjoon-hyung?” The youngest one’s voice impatiently called out, eager to get an answer.

“Ah, yes. Sorry.” Namjoon’s face turned grim as he recalled why everyone had been called with such haste. Immediately, the uneasiness in the suite increased exponentially. Watching the leader tense was not something the men in the room were used to.

“Why, Hyung? Is it really true?” Taehyung spoke.

Namjoon sighed as he shook his head. “Yes. It is true.” He took another deep breath.

“It seems like the princess survived the war.”

Yoongi stepped forward, keeping his hand on Namjoon’s shoulder. “Are you sure?”

Namjoon nodded.

“The wolf princess is alive and…she is in this city.”

Much love,

Inferno-loop

747 notes · View notes

dotshiiki · 7 years

Text

CoL, chpt 4

IV: PERCY

Over the next few days, Bella filled Percy in slowly with more details about the life he couldn't remember. No, he'd never known his parents; they'd died when he was a little kid. He'd met her a few years ago—him a street kid and her a high school sophomore trying to get into college. Now he mostly bummed around her house while she majored in kinesiology at Arizona State. She talked about using her magical powers to help people in physical therapy, which at least explained the collection of prosthetics cluttering up her apartment.

'The demigods won't believe we could do good, though,' Bella said bitterly. 'They just want to drive us extinct.'

The tattoo was a result of something the demigods had done to him when he'd first gotten drawn into Bella's world. Bella wasn't sure why they'd marked him, but she speculated that it was so they could identify him as an enemy.

Percy traced the thin letters curiously. 'Why didn't they just kill me?'

'I guess they didn't realise then that you weren't going to leave me,' Bella said. Her voice grew soft and inviting. 'They thought you'd fall in with them, but you stuck by me. You're so good, Perseus.'

She lingered over his name like it was a piece of candy she was savouring in her mouth. And it was always Perseus she called him—maybe 'Percy' just didn't have the same sweetness. He wasn't actually sure where he'd picked up the nickname. Had he heard it somewhere?

Bella's eyes locked on his. It was like drowning in a pool of gold. All the questions he had about his background faded into it. His thoughts clouded over. He forgot what he had been asking.

Bella lay her head against his shoulder. Her hair smelt like the outdoors: grassy and pine-fresh. It jolted his brain with something he'd meant to bring up.

'I was thinking,' he said, 'maybe I should go out today. You know, go round the city and see if anything jogs my memory.'

Bella's head snapped up.

'No!' The vehemence in her tone made him jump. She took a deep breath and then continued in a more modulated tone, 'You're safe indoors, Perseus. The demigods are still out there, remember? They already got you once. I would just die if they finished the job.'

'Yeah, but…'

Bella shuddered. 'Don't even think about it.' She handed him a glass. 'Drink your water.'

He sipped obediently at it. The taste was starting to grow on him. He'd disliked the warmth of it at first—why she couldn't add ice, with the weather this hot, he didn't know—but it did go well with the soothing calm that always seemed to spread through him while drinking. After he drained the glass, the only thought left in his head was how lucky he and Bella were to have each other.

That night, he had another strange dream. He was standing on the banks of a river that flowed sluggishly towards a setting sun. Although the riverbed was wide, the river itself cut a narrow course down the middle, so that its dry banks extended out a good fifty feet on either side. The ground beneath his feet looked like it might once have been flooded over, but over time, it had forgotten its life as wet marsh and turned into cracked, hardened mud.

On the other side of the dwindling river, a dark-haired man lounged in a blue and white striped deck chair. Next to him, a long fishing pole was planted firmly in a crack in the hard ground. Its line extended into the water, drifting loosely in the current.

The fisherman raised his hand in greeting to Percy.

'Is there even anything in there to catch?' Percy asked. The river looked dangerously close to the end of its life. The scent of salt hung in the air, so thick he could practically taste it on his lips.

The fisherman scrutinised his line. 'Maybe not any more,' he said. He got up, took his fishing rod, and started to walk towards Percy. When he stepped into the water, the river expanded, rising over the banks and filling its bed.

Percy took a wary step back from the water's edge as it lapped towards him like the waves of the sea. The fisherman kept coming closer, wading through the water, which rose only to his waist, as though it was nothing more than a field of wheat. Finally, he reached Percy's side. Up close, the weather-beaten contours of his face stood out sharply. They fell in kindly wrinkles about his mouth and eyes. Eyes that were the same shifting green of the sunlight-dappled water.

The same shade as Percy's own eyes.

'This river won't harm you, son,' the fisherman said, looking at where Percy stood, hanging back from the water's edge. 'The Salt River is kind to those who carry the Curse of Lethe. It runs under the city of rebirth, after all.'

He handed Percy the fishing rod, and then with a warm, fatherly smile, he glowed so brightly that Percy had to avert his eyes to avoid the blinding light. When he looked back again, the fisherman was gone. The river was retreating as well, shrinking back into its narrow path in the centre of the channel.

There was a tug on the fishing line. Percy started to wind it up, but the bite on the other end was so strong, it dragged him forward towards the dwindling river. As though he was the one being reeled in, the line pulled him straight into the salty water.

It was deeper than should have been possible, given that it had only come up to the fisherman's waist. Percy gasped as the waters closed over his head and he kept going down and down. To his surprise, no water filled his lungs—he was breathing as easily as he did on land. The water seemed to clear his head and heighten his senses. His body felt fresh and ready for action.

The currents continued to carry him along underground. Little golden bubbles floated up to him here and there, bearing disjointed images inside them: a grey stone cabin with seashells embedded in its walls; two tiny figures locked in a tight, underwater embrace; a stone statue of a bearded man with a trident, who looked uncannily like the fisherman in the river.

Then he heard Bella's voice calling to him, 'Where are you?'

'The Salt River,' he called back, though he wasn't sure how he knew this.

'I'll find you!' Her voice sounded a long way off. 'I'll find you, Pers—'

The rushing of the water drowned her out. Percy woke up, feeling like he'd just emerged from a long, dark tunnel.

'Where's the Salt River?' he asked Bella the next morning.

Bella frowned. 'It runs south of the city. Well, used to. It's really just a dried-up riverbed now. Why do you ask?'

When he told Bella about his dream, she went so pale, he was afraid she might faint.

'What's wrong?' he asked.

'Demigods,' she whispered. 'Oh Hecate, they're getting to you. Perseus, you need to try and block the dreams. That's how they track you. Oh, I should have guessed they'd try it. I'm so sorry I didn't warn you before.'

'It's okay,' he said. But he couldn't shake the sense that the dream was trying to give him a hint.

The next day, when Bella was in class, he snuck out of the apartment.

Bella had locked the door from the outside, but Percy managed to squeeze out of the tiny window and lower himself onto the fire escape of the apartment below. He felt a bit guilty, sneaking out when Bella had gone to such great lengths to protect him, but he had to know if the clues in his dream were worth following.

Phoenix wasn't the easiest city to navigate; every other block looked like the one before. Percy struggled to keep track of how many turns he'd made so that he could find his way back again. The weather was as hot as ever, and he found himself longing for Bella's water. He was starting to feel a little silly, coming out here. He didn't even have any real idea where he was meant to start looking.

It must have been around noon when he finally realised that the dry, cracked stretch of land he'd just hiked across actually was the Salt River. Unlike in his dream, not even the thin channel of water in the centre remained.

His mouth tasted of dusty disappointment. There wasn't anything to find here after all. For a while he sat by the freeway, wondering if maybe the river was running underground beneath the concrete city. He didn't know why the idea made him feel better. It wasn't like he had the means to find an underground river. But the thought of the river not existing at all had a bitter tang to it.

Finally he got up and headed back into the city.

He stopped to get a drink from a public fountain at a cluster of orange buildings on a street lined with palm trees. There was a stone statue next to it, a carving of some dude with a long beard and a stick in his hand.

No, not a stick. It had three prongs at the upper end.

Percy's eyes widened. He'd seen this statue in his dreams: one of the images in the golden bubbles—the fisherman with a trident.

He didn't have time to look more closely, though. No sooner had he recognised the statue did someone yell at him from across a parking lot.

'Hey you! Punk!'

The girl yelling at him would have fit in well with a biker gang. She was practically twice his size, with biceps like tree trunks and a nasty scowl on her face. Her expression said clearly: I'm gonna pulverise you.

Percy didn't hang around to find out if she really meant to. He took off at a sprint in the opposite direction.

'Wait! Get back here, punk! Percy!'

The use of his name filled him with dread. The biker girl was probably a demigod, one of those Bella had warned him about, who were out for his blood. He turned randomly down side streets, trying to throw her off.

Several twists and turns later, the sound of her footsteps pounding the pavement behind him faded away. He slowed to a jog and chanced a look over his shoulder.

She didn't seem to be chasing him any more. That was the good part.

The bad part: he had no clue where he'd ended up.

And unfortunately, the demigod girl must have known the city a lot better. She appeared out of nowhere, leaping a fence and tackling him from above. Percy hit the ground hard, pinned under her massive bulk.

'Gotcha!'

Percy flailed, trying to buck the demigod off his back. She was obviously an experienced wrestler—her thighs and knees kept his body pinned expertly while she twisted his arms into a painful lock behind his back. With one free hand, she tossed a gold coin into a puddle inches from Percy's head. It landed in a rainbow spill of oil.

'Iris, accept my offering!'

Percy had no idea who Iris was. Probably back-up. He wriggled harder against the demigod's iron grip.

'Hold still, punk!' She pressed his head down against the ground so that all he could see was gravel. 'Annabeth Chase, at Camp Jupiter.'

'Clarisse, what—oh my gods, you found him!'

The voice coming from the puddle sounded so much like Bella's, Percy stopped struggling for a second. No, it couldn't be. There was no way Bella would be in league with a demigod who wanted to kill him.

'Yeah, he keeps trying to run from—OOF!'

The weight lifted from his back. Someone had barrelled straight into the demigod girl, knocking her off. Perseus scrambled to his feet, fists balled. It took him a moment to recognise Bella, who was moving so quickly she was a brown-haired blur, attacking the demigod with one of the prosthetic legs from her collection.

The demigod was quicker than he expected. She met Bella's blow with a spear. The air crackled when it connected with the metal leg. Bella shrieked and flew backwards into Percy. He caught her before she could hit the ground. Her skin prickled with static.

The damn spear was electric.

'That's not fair!' Percy growled, though it was probably pointless to expect an enemy to play fair when they were out to kill you. He grabbed the prosthetic from Bella and ran at the demigod. Surprisingly, she didn't charge at him with her spear.

'What the hell, punk!' she said, dodging his swing. It caught the end of the spear instead and smacked it out of her hands.

'Oh no, not again!' hissed the demigod as she dived for it.

Bella grabbed his arm. 'Percy, RUN!'

He didn't need telling twice. Taking advantage of the demigod's momentary distraction, he followed Bella's lead, once again sprinting away from his demigod pursuer. Either the demigod was tired now—or maybe more hesitant to chase after prey that outnumbered her—or Bella just knew the city and which alleys to take. This time they managed to lose her for real.

They finally collapsed, totally winded, at the entrance to a dead-end alley lined with pipes that ran along both sides of the walls.

'You were right,' Percy gasped. 'The demigod girl, she recognised me—'

Bella flung her arms around him. 'I can't lose you now, Perseus,' she whispered in his ear. 'You're a part of me.'

She kissed him, and this time he didn't fight it. His adrenaline-filled body responded, inviting her in and kissing her back.

It was like taking a gulp of fiery whisky. His legs trembled and threatened to buckle under him. Bella pushed him against the wall, her lips sucking fervently on his as if she were breathing in his essence. The burning intensity of their kiss had an overwhelming gravitational pull. He couldn't break away from it even if he wanted to.

Why had he been fighting this again? It felt good to be a part of her, like they could fuse their very souls together…

'Get off him, empousa!'

It was Bella's voice, but it wasn't coming from her. Bella herself snarled and whirled around to face the intruders, breaking off their kiss. Percy pressed his palms against the wall to steady himself.

Three figures had simply melted right out of the shadows. There was simply no other way they could have appeared there in the dead end of the alley. Two were shorter: a goth-looking dude with olive skin who was holding hands with a buxom African-American girl with wild, cinnamon-brown hair.

The last one…

Percy did a double-take when he saw her. It was like looking at a replica of Bella, if Bella had blond hair and grey eyes that flashed angrily with the threat of storms.

Bella's fingers clamped around his wrist. 'Get back,' she spat at the intruders.

'Get away from him!' repeated her look-alike. The girl drew a sword that looked like it had been made of sharpened bone. Her two companions unsheathed their weapons as well. Goth-boy's sword had a blade as black as night. The African-American girl's was longer, made of silver, and dead straight.

'He's mine,' Bella said. Her arm curved around his neck.

The African-American girl snapped her fingers. 'Show yourself!' she commanded.

The air in front of him wavered like a shimmer of heat. Bella shrieked and released him, hissing angrily at the African-American girl. Percy yelped when he turned to look at her.

Bella's entire form changed. Her brown hair sizzled with orange flames, lighting her eyes a demonic red. Her teeth elongated into sharp fangs and her nails grew out into pointed claws. Her shapely legs gave way to a pair of mismatched limbs: one a shiny bronze prosthetic like the ones littered about her apartment, the other furry and crooked at the knee, ending in a cloven hoof.

'How dare you use the magic of mother Hecate against me?' Bella screeched.

'Please,' said the African-American girl dismissively. 'Hecate taught me to manipulate the Mist herself.'

'What did you do to her?' Percy demanded. 'Turn her back!'

'Percy,' cried Bella's look-alike. 'She's an empousa! She's trying to kill you.'

'Nice try,' he said. 'You realise you're the ones attacking us with swords?'

Bella laughed. 'You see, demigods? This one is mine. I already have his soul.'

Percy stared at her. What was she saying? Was she trying to confuse the demigods? Trick them so that she and Percy could escape?

'You're lying,' said Bella's look-alike.

'Oh no,' Bella assured her. 'I have waited to find the right soul for a long time, the one that can fulfil the legendary promise to my kind. A soul of a true hero…and this one Lethe-clean to boot! Once I finish binding his soul to me, I will be immortal!'

'She's telling the truth,' said Goth-boy. 'I can sense it. But you haven't finished. And we won't let you.'

Bella grabbed Percy's neck again. 'Try and stop me,' she hissed at the demigods.'

'Bella, what—'

'Hush,' she told him. 'Trust me.'

'Wait,' said her look-alike. 'We can trade. You can have me instead.'

Bella laughed. 'Even if I were to believe that, you're a useless girl. No empousa would spare you a glance—except to kill you like the pesky demigod you are.'

Percy's head was ready to explode. Bella wasn't making sense. Nothing about this exchange was making any sense, and it definitely wasn't just because he couldn't remember his past.

The pressure of his confusion built up in him, like boiling water confined in a covered pot. At any moment, he was going to spill over. It twisted sharply, deep in his gut.

Then the pipes along the walls exploded, drenching them in a warm shower that reeked of sewage. They had to duck as metal debris rained down. When he looked up again, Bella's look-alike had vanished. Only Goth-boy and the African-American girl remained, advancing on them.

Percy grabbed the top of a trash can and held it up like a shield. Not that it would do much good against two demigods with swords and magic that could mutate people and make things explode. But he wasn't about to go down without a fight.

Beside him, Bella let out a sharp gasp. Percy turned and watched in horror as the point of the missing demigod girl's sword emerged from her midriff.

'No—Perseus—my soul—' she breathed. Her hands, now scaly claws thanks to the African-American girl's dirty magic trick, stretched out towards him. Percy reached for them.

His hands swiped through air as Bella disintegrated before his eyes into a shower of fine ash. For a moment, it looked like she was returning to her proper appearance. Then he realised it was her look-alike, standing where Bella had been, the sword with which she'd impaled Bella in one hand, a baseball cap in the other.

He heard Bella's last whisper: 'I will find you, Perseus.' Then a stabbing pain erupted in the small of his back. He fell to his knees in Bella's ashes, at the feet of her look-alike. Her murderer. His hands hit the ground and his fingers closed around a small, hard object.

Bella's murderer grabbed his shoulders, supporting him.

'Percy,' she whispered.

Red hot needles radiated up his spine from his lower back. One of his other two assailants must have gotten him. He was going to die here after all, killed by the demigods just as Bella had warned. And he'd gotten her killed, too.

Well, he wasn't going to die in the arms of her murderer if he could help it. Percy grabbed the demigod's arms and twisted them away from him. Then he drew back his fist and punched her in the face—the only revenge he could exact for Bella.

Strong hands pulled him away and held him down. Something hard slammed into the side of his head.

The last thing he saw before he blacked out was the shocked grey eyes of the girl who looked like Bella.

OoOoO

Bella was speaking to someone in a soft, low voice.

'We were almost too late. Will checked him out—he was being drugged the whole time, and she probably twisted the Mist, too. She almost got him. We nearly delivered him straight to her.'

A dream, he thought in relief. Then, more guiltily, I was supposed to block them.

He opened his eyes. He was lying in a soft bed with light blue sheets that smelt of lemons. The room was windowless, lit only by a standing lamp next to his bed, so he couldn't tell what time of the day it was.

Behind the closed door, the two voices were still speaking.

'It was all my fault,' Bella said. 'The whole reason he's in this state—I got overconfident and he got hurt. And then—'

'Stop,' said another voice, this one male. 'Annabeth, you can't blame yourself.'

Annabeth. Not Bella.

Because Bella was dead.

Percy rubbed his forehead. So it wasn't a dream. There really had been that chase through Phoenix, and Bella's fierce, desperate kiss, interrupted by three demigods…

Bella acting like she wanted to kill him, too.

Pipes exploding. Bella with a sword through her middle, dissolving into ashes.

Why wasn't he dead, though? The demigods had caught him. He definitely remembered their swords pointed at him.

He looked around the room, as if figuring out his surroundings might help make sense of the insanity that was his life. Unfortunately, everything in it was as conflicting as his memories. The closet on his right had one door open to reveal jeans and t-shirts hanging untidily off hangers, with a small pile of clothes accumulated at the bottom. At the far end of the room, an overturned skateboard lay under a table. However, a lacy sweater draped over a chair next to it looked like it might belong to a girl. And stacked in the corner between the table and the door was an assortment of battle gear: scuffed bronze breastplates and shin guards, a gold helmet with a blue feather sticking out at an angle, and several other mismatched pieces of weaponry and armour.

Above the table was a corkboard to which a number of pictures were tacked. Percy got out of bed to have a closer look. Many of them were crayon scrawls—squiggly lines that barely connected and made no pattern that he could decipher. Several were polaroid strips featuring different groups of people. He recognised his own face in some of them, but none of the others were familiar: a sweet-faced middle-aged lady holding a chubby baby with wispy brown hair; a grinning teenager with bad acne, a goatee, and a colourful rasta cap on his head; a freckled redhead sticking her tongue out at the camera; an entire group of friends with their arms slung around each other's shoulders.

If that was indeed him in the photos with these people, he couldn't remember any of it.

Or maybe this was all another elaborate hoax.

In the centre of the table was a large framed photo. Percy picked it up and studied the two people in it. He was obviously one of them, dressed in the armour that stood in the corner of this room. He was leaning towards his companion, who also wore armour, but looked far more attractive in it. Her sun-bleached hair was pulled back into a poofy ponytail under a bandanna. She carried her own helmet under one arm. She wasn't looking at the camera but towards him, her free hand reaching for the plume on his helmet. The expression on her face was a mixture of exasperation and fondness.

She was the same girl who had attacked him and Bella in the alleyway. The one who looked like Bella.

The one who had run her through with a sword.

The photo frame slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor, creating a jagged split in the glass between him and the girl in the picture.

The conversation in the other room stopped abruptly.

'I think Percy's awake,' the girl, Annabeth, said. 'I'd better go. Thanks for Iris-messaging, Jason.'

'Good luck,' Jason said. 'And remember, break it to him easy.'

A knock came at the door seconds later. 'Percy'? Are you awake?'

When he didn't reply, the door opened anyway. The curly-haired blonde in the picture entered. He was once again struck by her resemblance to Bella—just like a twin with dyed hair.

Except for the eyes. They were unfathomably deep, like staring straight into the eye of a hurricane.

They darted now to the fallen picture frame. Annabeth swallowed hard, but didn't comment on it.

'How are you feeling?'

'Why didn't you kill me yet?' he blurted out.

Annabeth's eyes widened. 'Percy…' She put a hand to her temple. 'Oh gods.'

'You're a demigod,' he said.

'Yes…'

'You're dangerous—you…' He tried to recall all of Bella's warnings about them. His head buzzed uncomfortably.

'Percy, you are a demigod.'

She didn't say it with any vitriol, but it hit him like an accusation. The words crashed over him in a roaring wave. It was as though the fisherman's line in his dream was pulling him beneath the water's surface again, only now he was drowning in a river of everything he thought he knew about himself. Except the facts that he'd accrued over the past week were slipping away from him like he'd tilted his head and poured them out into the current. Panic pooled in his gut as he tried to scoop them back in. What had Bella told him again? Who was he?

Annabeth was still talking, but his ears were ringing so badly, he could only make out one word in ten—son, Poseidon, camp, monsters…

She kept repeating his name, Percy, like it was a collar she was trying to force around his neck.

I am Perseus Jackson.

The name was his only lifeline; his history was once again evaporating into misty vapour, leaving him with only the events that had happened since he'd found himself in Phoenix. Bella, a vague week at her flat, and—this last the sharpest of all—Bella's final moments.

'You killed Bella,' he said, cutting Annabeth off.

'Bel—oh, you mean the empousa. She was going to kill you.'

He shook his head. 'She was keeping me safe from you. She told me you'd find me if I went out, and she was right. I should've listened.'

'She was drugging you, Percy. She needed you to be compliant so she could capture your soul. I don't know what she told you, but—'

'She was my girlfriend!'

Annabeth looked as if he'd slapped her. Thick heavy silence twisted between them. Percy unclenched his fists, which he didn't even realise he'd balled up in the first place.

When Annabeth spoke again, her voice was slow and measured, as though her words were broken glass that might cut her on their way out

'It was all a lie, Percy. Empousai—they prey on men and drink their blood. They use magic—the Mist—to make things look different. It can make you believe things that aren't true…like false memories. That one—Bella—wanted more from you. That's probably why she kept you alive for so long.'

Once I bind his soul to me, I will be immortal.

There was just enough logic to Annabeth's words to make him question everything he knew—or thought he knew. But even if he did believe Bella had been deceitful, who was to say Annabeth wasn't trying to rewrite his history, too, and recast him into a mould she'd created?

How did he know if her story was any more real than Bella's?

'Percy, you have to trust me. You're safe now.'

'I have to trust you,' he said flatly. 'You're telling me that a vampire demon pretended to be my girlfriend, made up all these lies about who I am, and set up a whole elaborate trap to get me to fall for her so she could steal my soul.'

'Yes!'

'And of course this,' he waved his hands around the room, 'definitely isn't a set-up either. I should definitely trust another hot girl telling me I'm safe with her.'

Annabeth took a step back, as if he'd just taken a swing at her. 'I'm not pretending, Percy.' Her voice was small and hurt and for a second he wanted to take back his harsh words, apologise, and meekly agree with everything she'd told him.

But then his rage and panic flooded back. They churned in his stomach, threatening to boil over. There was a sharp tug in his gut, like the twisting of a knob.

Something outside exploded. Water seeped under the gap of the room door.

Annabeth pushed the door open to find the entire floor of the apartment outside flooded to ankle height. The plumbing had come to life: the faucets in the kitchen went off like a sprinkler system; in the bathroom, a toilet bowl spouted its contents in a lively fountain.

Percy put a hand to his stomach. He remembered the pipes exploding in the alleyway in Phoenix. Just after he'd experienced the same tugging sensation in his gut.

Maybe there was some truth to what Annabeth was telling him. He was a demigod. And his powers were every bit as lethal as Bella had suggested.

The walls of the apartment seemed to close in on him, the jaws of a trap snaring him into an identity the demigods wanted to force upon him. To them, Percy Jackson meant something—but what? And was that who he really was, or was it a clever lie?

Perseus, Bella had called him. Which was his real identity?

He pushed past Annabeth to the end of the hallway, to the exit of the apartment.

Annabeth reached for his arm. 'Percy, stop—where are you going?'

'Out,' he said, pulling away from her. 'Or are you going to tell me to stay inside where it's safe, too?'

Annabeth's mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Percy felt a grim satisfaction at getting the last word. He wrenched the front door open.

There was a soft whisper—'Percy.' Annabeth had found her voice after all. His stomach clenched against the claim she tried to exert on him.

Without turning around, he fired back: 'Stop calling me Percy. My name is Perseus!'

And he slammed the door shut behind him.

Continue to chapter 5 | Back to content page

#pjohoobigbang2017 #pjohoobigbang #curse of lethe #percy jackson #oc #annabeth chase #nico di angelo #hazel levesque #clarisse la rue #jason grace #percabeth #percy jackson fanfic #pjo fanfiction #hoo fanfiction

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cyb-by-lang · 7 years

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OSF AU - All the Little Children (8/?)

Part 8: In which everyone is confused, killing intent backwash is a thing, and Isobu is a Squirtle.

Content warnings: Coarse language, death threats.

In the months since he met her, Sabo had never seen Fū look so afraid. She didn’t shake like that even when confronting the Lord of the Forest or brainstorming with them on how to take on Gramps for the next round. She smiled like Luffy did, all bright sunshine and blue seas on a cloudless day. She didn’t even seem afraid of Bluejam, or of his father, and Sabo had found himself expecting her to stay solid even when the situation changed over and over again.

It was like trying to stand his ground on sand.

Then Sabo looked sidelong at Gaara, mentally revising his thinking. No, sand was about as steady as rock at this point. It was just that Fū was looking at the woman on top of the trash heap like she was the worst kind of pirate or maybe a monster in human form.

“Keisuke?” Gaara asked, and the woman nodded just like she had after Naruto addressed her. “When did you get here? How?”

“And what took you so long?” Naruto wanted to know.

Keisuke or Kei-sensei or whoever she was held up one hand and, instead of answering their questions, just asked, “Naruto, which one of them tried to kill you?”

“We’ve got it handled,” Naruto said, though Sabo saw him immediately looked to Bluejam and Outlook. Naruto wasn’t a great liar, but he was usually better than that.

The woman made a neutral noise. Then, “Gaara?”

Gaara glanced between Kei and the captive pirates and guards, then crossed his arms over his chest. The sand that he’d been holding everyone with started to wisp away, but he didn’t stop blocking his captives’ eyes and ears.

“Very well,” she said, to the general lack of response. With deceptive ease, she stood and made her slow, disinterested way down the trash heap. She never stumbled or paused, simply taking step after step down to the real ground. “Naruto, Gaara, please take your friends and leave. I’ll deal with this situation.”

Sabo froze. The way she said it, this woman was as cold a killer as Bluejam’s pirates were. As detached as Outlook. It was just pointed at people who’d kill his brothers and his friends instead. And now the people who had been trying to hurt his family were the ones in danger, and yet…

“Kei-sensei…” Sabo blinked as Naruto gripped his shoulder. “Don’t kill them.”

She paused in the act of drawing one of her swords, even as her pet turtle rolled to meet and greet the other monsters. “Why?”

Sabo stepped back, out of Naruto’s grip, and Luffy latched onto him with both arms. Across from him, Ace grabbed Fū’s wrist and dragged her along as they started to retreat. Sabo couldn’t quite tear his eyes away from Naruto and his…bodyguard, as the two of them stood in front of the people who’d once held all the power. People who were now at the mercy of a woman’s whim, just the same as they’d held their lives before.

Sabo swallowed.

“I’ll tell you later,” Naruto said to the woman, “but it’s important.”

After a painfully long pause, the woman finally nodded. “Go, Naruto.”

Naruto set his jaw, just like Ace would, but he listened. Gaara abandoned his attempts to restrain anybody once they had all gotten out of sight, or at least Sabo thought so. Before long, they were running right out of Gray Terminal, with nobody following them at all. Even the usual crowd of beggars and poor people who stuck to this area had long since abandoned it, sensing trouble. It wasn’t hard to tell that they probably had better survival instincts than anyone who would spend time near that woman.

They were in the forest by the time it happened.

The only warning any of them got was a muffled “Oh shi–” from Naruto, and then Sabo’s world collapsed.

It felt—it felt like being underwater and cold and insignificant, choking on nothing while his lungs froze in a half-taken breath. Sabo hit the ground, Luffy landing on him, but he hardly felt it. He had to get away, get away—

And then Naruto grabbed his wrist and pinched. “Ow!”

“Hey!” barked Ace, as Gaara pulled on his ear. He flailed with his pipe, but only struck Gaara’s sand shield. “Hands off!”

“Sorry,” Naruto said, letting go of Sabo’s wrist, “but usually this kinda stuff needs pain so you can block it out.”

Fū was stretching Luffy’s face, to limited effect. “Wake up, Luffy! It’s just a–um…”

“Wh-what was it?” Sabo stammered, unable to stop himself from clinging to Luffy even so. “That—that didn’t feel like…”

“It’s killing intent,” Gaara explained, which wasn’t much of an explanation at all. He’d let Ace go, at least, but his sand was still distinctly not on the ground like it was supposed to be. Or in the gourd on his back. He looked spooked. “I didn’t know she could do that.”

“Kei-sensei was really pissed off.” Naruto frowned. “Usually she aims better than that.”

Sabo shuddered. He didn’t want to know what it would be like if someone that scary was on the verge of losing control, and yet heard himself asking, “What’s she gonna do? Naruto, you’re the one who knows her…”

Naruto grimaced. “Um…”

“She said she’d leave them alive,” Ace recalled, still looking unnerved under his usual mask of bravado.

“You’d be amazed what you can live through,” Fū mumbled, shivering. Her hands shook as she reached back over her head and pried Chōmei out of his resting place on her back. Then, mid-motion, she froze in place.

Chōmei’s voice said, in a slightly peevish tone, “Fū, it’s safe to lift me out. Isobu just wants to be able to see.”

Fū shrieked like she’d been set on fire, scrambling out of her backpack straps and tossing it to the ground in a blind panic. She brushed frantically at her back and hair, but Chōmei just wriggled slowly out of the backpack before turning to allow the next passenger out.

When it unrolled from its armadillo-like ball, Sabo recognized its green-gray shape. It was the same shelled creature that had been on the woman’s lap earlier.

“Hey, Isobu,” Naruto said, greeting the little monster without a hint of fear.

“Naruto,” it said, nodding. “Where did Yang Kurama and Shukaku go?”

“We’re right here, Three-Tails,” said a voice from Gaara’s direction.

After a few seconds, Naruto’s orange fox monster companion surfaced from the mass of Gaara’s sand, followed shortly by the weird raccoon. The fox shook out the sand, then stalked over to the misplaced rock turtle and said, “What took you so long to get here?”

“Don’t yell at Isobu for things he can’t help,” Chōmei said, bristling all the way down to his tail stubs. “Not everyone is lucky enough to end up in the same spot.”

“He can swim,” Shukaku grumbled, his tail lashing.

“And did you honestly expect him to leave his partner behind? Really, now,” Chōmei huffed.

“I can speak for myself,” Isobu complained.

“That’s great and all, but seriously what the fuck was that?!” Ace demanded, breaking into their little war council. Of animals the size of bread boxes. Ace made a flailing gesture in the general direction of Gray Terminal. “Who the hell was that woman? What are you all doing here? And why is Fū so freaked out?!”

“I’m not freaked out!” Fū protested, though she was still shaking.

“Fū is brave…” Luffy trailed off. Then he shook his head. “Fū isn’t afraid of anything!”

Fū latched onto that thought for dear life. “That’s right!”

Ace rolled his eyes. “Naruto.”

“Kei-sensei has a really bad reputation,” Naruto admitted, sitting back on his heels right next to the monster huddle. “But she aims it at people who’re trying to kill me and people around me. She’s not as scary as she acted back there.”

“Normal people,” Fū muttered fervently, “don’t get ‘flee on sight’ orders.”

“So did my dad,” Naruto said, unbothered. “And he’s Kei-sensei’s teacher, so… It’s kinda expected.”

Fū looked away, her knuckles white as she crossed her arms.

“Your dad?” Luffy piped up. “Who’s he? Is he like the Pirate King?”

Ace tensed, though Sabo wasn’t sure anyone but him noticed.

Naruto shrugged. “Doubt it.” As Yang Kurama climbed up onto Naruto’s shoulder, he added, “Let’s just get out of here. Even if there’s no one out here, this place doesn’t feel right.”

“But we didn’t get the stuff to repair our place,” Sabo mumbled. No, once Outlook had showed up, they’d forgotten everything. While the treehouse wasn’t unstable or anything, they couldn’t keep the wind out…

“Then we can take you to ours,” Gaara rasped, before the sand reared up and they were already on their way.

It was the worst ride ever. Though Sabo had seen Fū fly and knew she could do it pretty fast, even she seemed unhappy with the weaving path Gaara chose for them as they shot through the forest. Gaara didn’t care, obviously, and Naruto and Luffy and Ace all looked like they were actually enjoying themselves (if reluctantly), Sabo felt his stomach roll and leaned back against Fū in the hopes that her lack of sensitivity would wear off on him.

#Ocean Stars Falling #All the Little Children #Sabo #Fu #Portgas D. Ace #Monkey D. Luffy #Naruto Uzumaki #Gaara #Chomei #Shukaku #Isobu #Keisuke Gekko #Yang Kurama

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bapawowo-blog · 7 years

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A Bicoastal Matchmaking Experiment with New York Women and San Fran Men

Connecting New York women to men in the tech mecca of Silicon Valley so both can meet suitable singles to date sounds like a plot from a cheesy summer rom-com, but in fact, 16 women signed up for the chance to take on this real-life bi-coastal matchmaking experiment. The founders of the dating start-up The Dating Ring recently launched a campaign to fly single New York women across the country to meet San Francisco men in a whirlwind weekend of dating. Co-founders Lauren Kay, Katie Bambino and Emma Tessler launched the start-up first in New York City. The service typically matches people in the same cities, but as their business grew, they noticed that more women than men where using the service in New York, and in San Francisco, they saw the opposite. "In New York, we had twice as many women signing up as men. In San Francisco, we had almost twice as many men signing up as women," Kay said, so the duo put two and two together and expanded the company to San Fran. Looking to bridge the gap between the two dating pools, Kay used the crowdfunding site Crowdtilt to launch the "Cross-Country Love: Help Fly NYC Women to SF" campaign. Through Crowdtilt, they raised more than $10,000 to fly 16 single ladies from New York to San Francisco for a long weekend of first dates. The women were given four days to go on two one-on-one blind dates with different men, mingle at a massive party, and then take a day to reconnect with a man of their choice. "Nightline" was along for the ride as these East Coast ladies traveled almost 3,000 miles to take a chance on love in Golden State, and at least one of the women decided to take the long-distance plunge. Watch what happens on "Nightline" HERE. Traveling across the country to meet someone for a blind date can be daunting, to say the least, and if that first date turns into a long-distance relationship, it takes commitment, but Tessler offers her tips to help couples navigate those unsteady dating waters. Click through the next two pages to find out more. 5 Things You Should NEVER Do on a First Date 1. Never Trash Talk an Ex "Here is what happens when you trash talk an ex," Tessler said. "1. You sound like an a------. Trash talking of any kind makes you sound like an a------. 2. Your date will immediately think, 'Is that how they're going to talk about me someday?' 3. Did I mention that you'll sound like an a------? ... It doesn't matter if they were the worst ex in the entire world -- be graceful." "If you simply have to bring up an ex, whether to explain that prominent tattoo of their name, or because you really want to tell that story of how you saved them from pirates in the mountains of Bhutan, be nice," she added. 2. Never Order For Someone (Without Asking What They Want First) "People have mixed feelings about being ordered for," Tessler said. "Some folks think http://www.sibdating.ru/ it's hot to see their date take charge, others think it's antiquated and rude. But everyone agrees, if you're going to order for someone, make sure you know what they want. It's always awkward when your date orders you a shot of expensive tequila before you get a chance to tell them that you will definitely, 100 percent, throw up all over their face if you take it." "Did this specific experience happen to me? Maybe. Was it at least their shoes instead of their face? Yes," she added. 3. Take Your Phone Off the Table and Put It in a Pocket/Purse/Garbage Can "Looking at your phone during a date makes you look disinterested and shallow," Tessler said. "Are you disinterested and shallow? Maybe. But excuse yourself to the bathroom to check Instagram or text an SOS to your roommate. Do not do it at the table. This is mean." "Oh you aren't looking at it? It's just sitting on the table lighting up and buzzing and notifying you of the other things going on in the world besides the real live human sitting in front of you? This is still mean," she continued. "The real live human will probably 1. be offended, 2. be too distracted by your pocket robot to notice all the other wonderful things about you, like your beating heart and the blood running through your veins. And this will cause them to ... politely excuse themselves and run to the bathroom to text their roommate 'OMG. SOS. They just keep looking at their phone blowing up on the table. So rude. I've got to get out of here.'" 4. Never Be Late "This isn't just for first dates," Tessler said. "A person's time is valuable and they used some of that ultra-valuable time to make sure they were on time for you. They checked the train schedule and allotted extra time for delays and made sure that they were at the bar 10 minutes early, sitting in a flattering position, nonchalantly reading a book that they would never ordinarily read, so that when you roll up, there is a punctual, good looking, intellectual waiting for you. The least you could do is show up on time." "Besides, you only get to make a first impression once," she added. "And being late guarantees that you will come off either 1. rude, or 2. really sweaty and out of breath. Gross." 5. Don't Decide on the Person Within the First Two Minutes of Meeting Them "Remember that time in college when you were at that party and that guy was flailing around on the dance floor to that one MGMT song? And you thought, 'Hey Super-Sweaty-American-Apparel-Model-Reject, could you flail a little less?' And then you dated him for 2.5 years? You are not alone. We've all been there. So let's give our post-college dates the same leniency," Tessler said. "That person you met online might not wow you when they walk in the door, but that's OK. Crushes can take a while to blossom," she added. "Think of it this way: there are a whole lot of weirdos out there. If your first date is with someone who you could see yourself hanging out with, even for another hour, then give them a second date. It could be really really really worth it. And if it's not, then it's just an hour of your life. Besides, if you showed up late to a date and put your phone on the table and started trash talking your ex before you ordered a round of tequila shots, wouldn't you want someone to give you another chance?" 5 Things Couples Should NEVER Do in a Long-Distance Relationship 1. Cheat "This sounds pretty obvious, but I'm still going to mention it. This is an extremely bad idea," Tessler said. "Even if you mess up once and you're wasted and no one ever finds out, you will still know. You'll know how easy it is, and then every time you talk to your significant other, you'll wonder, 'Did they hook up with someone last night?' If you're capable of it, what's to say they aren't? And so begins the spiral of doubt and generally yucky feelings." 2. Drunk Dial Your Significant Other and Tell Them What a Hard Time You're Having Not Cheating, and Then Expect Them to Congratulate You for Your Iron Will "Don't do this," Tessler said. "Yes, it's hard to be drunk at a bar when you're really far away from your S.O., and yes, you're doing the right thing by not making out with the extremely gross man buying you Fireball shots. But you do not deserve a medal for this. This is basic human decency that you are displaying, and people don't get commended for basic human decency." "Furthermore, if you would like some praise, ask your roommate/friend/the bartender who is plying you with cinnamon deliciousness. Do not ask your significant other," she added. "The moral of this story is that you should never drink and dial." 3. Don't Be Jealous of Their Happiness "Social media makes this one really hard," Tessler said. "It sucks to be across the country from the person you're dating and have to see all their Facebook pictures of happy-laughing-without-you-fun. But try really, really, really hard to just be happy for them. It's good that they're happy. It means you're not in a codependent relationship where you both stop getting out of bed and subsist only on microwaved rice when you're apart. Congratulations!" "If you get jealous every time you see them having a good time, it is basically 100 percent guaranteed to breed resentment," she continued. "Your significant other has to be able to tell you about the great alligator barbeque they just came back from without worrying that you'll freak out about the hunky alligator hunter. Basic stuff, you guys." 4. Don't Forget To Have Your Own Life "It's not fair to put your entire existence on one person," Tessler said. "And sometimes in long-distance relationships, that happens. You become so consumed with missing the person that all you do is pick out new emojis to send them. You have become a really dull individual. Your friends will starting calling you Ol' Boring Dull Face behind your back... So go! Have a life! Have fun! Your relationship will do better because 52Burritodates.com of it." 5. Don't Spend All Day Texting "Even if you have a life, you might find yourself texting your lady or fella all the live long day, because it's nice to stay in touch. I get it," Tessler said. "But then when you sit down to have a good long Skype session that inevitably turns into some steamy Skype sex, you realize you have nothing left to say to each other, because you've been talking all day, then you'll feel like you lost the spark, and you didn't. You just channeled it into your phone, instead of into the other person." http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/bicoastal-matchmaking-experiment-york-women-san-fran-men/story?id=23993470

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