#with dell it seems to be all or nothing when it comes to the level of sweetness he will tolerate

[triptych-of-voids]

out of curiosity why is dell not allowed by the sugar?

well i suppose its less of him not being allowed near sugar, and more like i just dont want him putting sugar anywhere near my drinks heh. he offered me sweet tea one time and i naively accepted thinking 'well, i do like tea when its sweet!' but i learned very quickly that his version of sweet tea is more sugar than tea! its sickeningly sweet. headache inducing. however sweet you are likely imagining it to be, triple that. no, hes more than welcome to shovel as much sugar into his cup of tea as he would like (no matter how awful that may be for his health....), but not mine

#i do have a sweet tooth myself #but there is a limit.... #with dell it seems to be all or nothing when it comes to the level of sweetness he will tolerate #black coffee one minute and then completely drowning a stack of pancakes with syrup in the next #the doc is in #replies from the void #tf2

[lampmanliveblogs]

Seeing Eda acting like some kind of responsible adult is wild. Though not completely out of character. She has been taking her role as a mother more seriously as of late… and both of the kids under her wing (pun unintended, but hilarious nonetheless) have gone through a lot, Luz especially. Telling them that they need to find someplace to hide while the adults take care of the dangers is reasonable enough.

You know, one of the  reasons a lot of young protagonists have dead parents or abusive/neglectful parents/guardians is because most parents would try to stop their kids from going on dangerous adventures. This has been brought up in the show in the form of Camila. Luz fearing that if Camila ever found out about the Demon Realm, she wouldn’t let Luz go back there has been a thing ever since season one.

Contrast with Eda, who’s allowed Luz to go along on these dangerous, but exciting adventures… until now. I can see why Luz might not agree with Eda’s decision on this* but at the same time, I fully understand where Eda is coming from. 

(*i can kinda see this leading to a moment where Luz is like ”You can’t tell me what to do, you’re not my mom,” or something like that and oof, that’d hurt Eda on a deep level)

This image right here? Good shit.

Let’s break down this plan. Lilith suggests sending the kids off to the island to find out about King’s family and possibly gather powerful allies. That’s good. She suggests sending Hooty with them as protection. Which is not a great idea. The island is far away from the main body of the Titan, far away from Belos and danger, which is good. Unless there is danger on the island, which would be bad.

Luz suggests they can go there with the crew of the ship she journeyed with to slay the Selkidomus. Which is a god idea, they all liked Luz.

As the kids leave the room, Lilith says that she has already explored that area and that there is nothing there, dismissing the letter as some kind of prank. She does so with one of the best puns in the history of this show. A wild Luz chase. Brilliant, Lulu, brilliant.

…then again, she said that the island with King’s tower shouldn’t have been there either, soooo… and that rock thing he got in the letter is clearly some kind of key, soooooo…

Aw man… everyone’s sad today, huh?

This is what I was talking about before. Luz and King being children really shouldn’t have to deal with all of this and Eda, who has realized how big this all is, is terrified of them getting hurt. On top of that, she feels a bit guilty for getting Luz involved in this. If only… if only she hadn’t left the portal open that one day, if only she had sent Luz home right away instead of involving her in the Confomratorium break-in, if only, if only. That kinda thinking isn’t going to do much to help in the now, but it is understandable that she feels this way.

Oh, and Lilith? i admire your optimism, but one(1) week to come up with a plan to overthrow a tyrant who controls the entire military and everyone with magical powers is… not a lot. Especially when all you have to work with are two(2) middle-aged witches who can’t use magic (though one has a cool harpy form) and maybe like… Gwendolyn is pretty strong I guess? Dunno about Dell, he seems pretty frail. What other adults might be on their side… There’s Raine, Darius and Eberwolf, but they’re doing their own thing. Alador, maybe (I’m still holding out hope he has some override to turn all the Abomatons against the Emperor). Maybe Gus & Willow’s parents. The Bat Queen, possibly (her leading an army of palismen against Belos might be kinda cool actually).

Yarr me mateys, Luz is back to being a pirate! Call her Monkey D. Luzzy.

(i’ve been sitting here for like five minutes giggling at my own pun. who gave me the right to be so funny?)

The captain of the ship, Salty, says that his mateys had to leave the ship after they no longer worked for the Golden Guard. Like Eda said back in Separate Tides, the Emperor’s ships are the only ones worth robbing. So i guess even Salty the sea captain doesn’t get to be happy in this episode.

Hooty mentions that large rock formation on the island kinda looks like a finger, which I briefly considered saying before when I saw the drawing, but didn’t. I also thought it looked a little like one of King’s horns, although the shape is different. Upon closer look, it does looks more like a finger.

Looking at one of the few shots we get of the Titan’s whole body I notice that we don’t get to see the Titan’s left arm or hand. So that part of its body might be submerged and this is one of its fingers sticking out of the water. Unless… there was a mention once of there being remains of other massive creatures on the boiling sea, but only partial ones. This could be one of those as well. The finger bone of some other massive, long-dead creature. Another Titan? Or something else?

And tonight on ”If The Lampman had waited just a few more seconds…” Salty confirms that this is not part of the Titan. He says it’s ”a different bestie.” Which kinda makes it sound like it’s a completely different creature, unrelated to the Titan… though I think it might still be another Titan.

#the owl house #liveblog #the owl house liveblog #toh s2e17 #edge of the world

[lunamagicablu]

Un grande numero di bambini sono nati con una frequenza più alta per aiutare il mondo a risvegliare la sua coscienza collettiva .Se ti ritrovi in 2 o più di queste caratteristiche sei sicuramente un essere di alta frequenza con lo scopo di risvegliare la frequenza del mondo:– Hai il profondo desiderio di incontrare il tuo partner spirituale, la tua famiglia spirituale, la tua casa spirituale; –Hai eccellenti qualità e un alto livello di intelligenza, ma ti sembra di non riuscire a raggiungere ciò che desideri; –Percepisci che ci sono entità e angeli intorno a te. A volte puoi addirittura sentire delle voci; –Il tuo umore cambia facilmente, così come le tue energie e le tue emozioni; –Hai dei momenti che ti senti strano dove ti sembra di comprendere tutto, ma non durano a lungo; –Hai sogni lucidi; –Vorresti costruire relazioni e responsabilità di forti radici ma ci sono anche momenti in cui vorresti lasciare tutto e andartene, come se nulla fosse; –Percepisci il tempo che passa molto più velocemente degli altri; –Credi che ogni cosa accada per un ragione, ma credi anche che sei tu a crearti il tuo destino con le tue proprie scelte; –Hai una forte intuizione; –Hai influenza su molte persone intorno a te. –Hai un forte senso di speranza e conoscenza universale, caratteristiche che la maggior parte delle persone solitamente ci mette una vita per apprenderle; –Il tuo stato naturale è allegria, divertimento, amorevolezza e positività;-Hai un sistema immunitario molto forte.In poche parole, se ti ritrovi nella maggior parte di queste caratteristiche sei libero dal dramma della pianeta terra. Sei qui per ricordare al mondo che c’è un piano più grande. E fai ciò a livello subconscio con le tue azioni, emozioni, pensieri, presenza e creazioni. Le persone percepiscono la tua aura quando sei attorno a loro. Per alcuni puoi essere strano, per altri una sorgente di energia positiva, ma tutti quanti sentono che il tuo essere è alto. Grazie per rendere il mondo un posto migliore!

www.camminanelsole.com          

***********           

A large number of children have been born with a higher frequency to help the world awaken its collective consciousness.If you find yourself in 2 or more of these characteristics you are surely a high frequency being with the aim of awakening the frequency of the world:– You have a deep desire to meet your spiritual partner, your spiritual family, your spiritual home;  –You have excellent qualities and a high level of intelligence, but you seem to be unable to achieve what you want;  – Perceive that there are entities and angels around you. Sometimes you can even hear voices;  –Your mood changes easily, as do your energies and emotions;  –You have moments that feel strange where you seem to understand everything, but they don't last long;  –You have lucid dreams;  –You would like to build relationships and responsibilities with strong roots but there are also times when you would like to leave everything and go away, as if nothing had happened;  –You perceive time passing much faster than others;  –You believe that everything happens for a reason, but you also believe that you create your own destiny with your own choices;  –You have a strong intuition;  –You have influence over many people around you.  –You have a strong sense of hope and universal knowledge, characteristics that most people usually take a lifetime to learn;  –Your natural state is cheerfulness, fun, lovingness and positivity;-You have a very strong immune system.Simply put, if you find yourself in most of these characteristics you are free from the drama of planet earth.  You are here to remind the world that there is a bigger plan. And you do this on a subconscious level with your actions, emotions, thoughts, presence and creations.  People sense your aura when you are around them.  To some you may be strange, to others a source of positive energy, but all feel that your being is high.   Thanks for making the world a better place!

www.camminanelsole.com 

[ebaeschnbliah]

For some time Frodo and Sam managed to keep up with the others; but Aragorn was leading them at a great pace, and after a while they lagged behind. They had eaten nothing since the early morning. Sam's cut was burning like fire, and his head felt light. In spite of the shining sun the wind seemed chill after the warm darkness of Moria. He shivered. 

Frodo felt every step more painful and he gasped for breath ...

At last Legolas turned, and seeing them now far behind, he spoke to Aragorn. The others halted, and Aragorn ran back, calling to Boromir to come with him.

'I am sorry, Frodo! ' he cried, full of concern. `So much has happened this day and we have such need of haste, that I have forgotten that you were hurt; and Sam too. You should have spoken. We have done nothing to ease you, as we ought, though all the orcs of Moria were after us. Come now! A little further on there is a place where we can rest for a little. There I will do what I can for you. Come, Boromir! We will carry them.'

Soon afterwards they came upon another stream that ran down from the west, and joined its bubbling water with the hurrying Silverlode. Together they plunged over a fall of green-hued stone, and foamed down into a dell. About it stood fir-trees, short and bent, and its sides were steep and clothed with harts-tongue and shrubs of whortle-berry. At the bottom there was a level space through which the stream flowed noisily over shining pebbles. Here they rested. It was now nearly three hours after noon, and they had come only a few miles from the Gates. Already the sun was westering.

While Gimli and the two younger hobbits kindled a fire of brush- and fir-wood, and drew water, Aragorn tended Sam and Frodo. Sam's wound was not deep, but it looked ugly, and Aragorn's face was grave as he examined it. After a moment he looked up with relief.

'Good luck, Sam! ' he said. 'Many have received worse than this in payment for the slaying of their first orc. The cut is not poisoned, as the wounds of orc-blades too often are. It should heal well when I have tended it. Bathe it when Gimli has heated water.'

He opened his pouch and drew out some withered leaves. `They are dry and some of their virtue has one, he said, but here I have still some of the leaves of athelas that I gathered near Weathertop. Crush one in the water, and wash the wound clean, and I will bind it. Now it is your turn. Frodo! '

'I am all right,' said Frodo, reluctant to have his garments touched. `All I needed was some food and a little rest.'

`No! ' said Aragorn. `We must have a look and see what the hammer and the anvil have done to you. I still marvel that you are alive at all.' Gently he stripped off Frodo's old jacket and worn tunic, and gave a gasp of wonder. Then he laughed. The silver corslet shimmered before his eyes like the light upon a rippling sea. Carefully he took it off and held it up, and the gems on it glittered like stars. and the sound of the shaken rings was like the tinkle of rain in a pool.

`Look, my friends!' he called. `Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven-princeling in! If it were known that hobbits had such hides, all the hunters of Middle-earth would be riding to the Shire.'

`And all the arrows of all the hunters in the world would be in vain,' said Gimli, gazing at the mail in wonder. `It is a mithril-coat. Mithril! I have never seen or heard tell of one so fair. Is this the coat that Gandalf spoke of? Then he undervalued it. But it was well given! '

JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Lothlórien

#the lord of the rings #the fellowship of the ring #lothlorien #jrr tolkien #gandalf #frodo #sam #merry #pippin #aragorn #legolas #boromir #gimli #mithril shirt #gates of moria #mirrormere #kheled-zâram #movie pics #peter jackson

[djino04]

OmegaVerse - Training

I got this idea while reading the story Just a Kiss by @theyhaveacavetroll

POV Andreas

I'm about to go to bed except as I close the blinds, I see light at the specialist platforms and more importantly there's a figure looming up that seems to be making moves with a sword. I think I'm going to kill the student who decided to do this at midnight. As such, given the level of mediocrity of most of the students, I think it's great that there is one who decides to do extra training. I would applaud the effort if it wasn't well past curfew and he didn't require me to have to get dressed to join him and ask him what he's up to.

I get dressed quickly and head for the training grounds. The wind chills me the second I step outside, which does not improve my mood. I hope this student likes running because he's going to have a few field trips to do morning and night for a pretty long time. 

I'm quickly a few feet from the platform and even though I don't recognize the person yet, I bellow: 

"What the hell are you doing here? It's been over two hours since curfew!"

"I didn't think teachers had to respect it."

Saul... I clearly wasn't expecting this but it's definitely him. I had already recognized the sound of his voice but now that I'm at the foot of the platform and he's facing me, I recognize his face very well. I am even more confused now than when I thought he was a student. So I ask him again: 

"Why are you training in the cold in the middle of the night?"

"Ah, because you're talking to me now? I thought that was reserved for when we were talking about classes. Just so you know, this has nothing to do with the students, so you can leave me alone and go back to being warm if you're that cold."

I wasn't expecting this response either, Saul is angry and I don't understand why. A big part of me wants to do exactly what he's asking, because after all he's of age and vaccinated and he clearly doesn't want my help, so I don't see why I'd bother. But another part of me says that the Saul I knew rarely got angry and it was often when he was trying to hide something. On top of that, I still remember all too well the smell of distress in Rosalind's office and the alpha in me has a hard time not reaching out to an omega, let alone this particular omega.

So I lean against the platform, resting my arms on it and explain: 

"Rosalind can't hear us here so yes I am talking to you. And explain to me why you're risking getting a cold by training at night when you can do it during the day. Our dear headmistress is going to kill you if you can't keep up with classes because you got sick."

There is a silence that lasts for almost a minute before he sighs and comes to sit next to me. His legs drop to the floor and he looks at the ground as he answers me: 

"I need to train out of sight of anyone. You got a good look at my body, considering you took my clothes off the other day, right? I mean, I assumed it was you."

He glances at me, probably hoping for an affirmation: 

"Yes, yes, it was me. And what's wrong with your body?"

 "I lost all my muscle tone in prison and now I almost look like an omega, not to mention I have trouble with some complex movements. I can't decently practice in front of the students, you've already undermined my authority, I don't want to add to it."

I climb onto the platform to sit next to him: 

"So one, from what I've seen, you've already recovered quite a bit since you got back from prison. Two, it looks to me like you won when we fought and I didn't let you win. And three, even an alpha would have lost fitness after such a long time of inactivity. You should have seen me after Aster Dell. Rosalind didn't let me out for a year and I had lost everything. But with time and training it comes back, as you've already seen."

Saul shakes his head and denies what I just said: 

"You don't understand. You don't know the effort I usually had to put in to keep my fitness. And my body wasn't betraying me."

I frown: 

"What do you mean your body wasn't betraying you?"

He sighs again and lifts his hands from his lap to show them to me. I wonder how I didn't notice before that they were shaking. It can't have been that long ago because I didn't notice any problems during our demonstration fight and I think I would have seen that anyway. I ask him: 

"Has this been going on for a long time?"

"Since the session with Rosalind. They do it every time I force a little now. How do you expect me to hold a sword and especially use it with my hands in this state?"

I almost breathe a sigh of relief, I was afraid that the torture in prison or the arrows in his back had damaged something permanently but the symptoms came after the session with Rosalind. Obviously, this whole thing is making Saul anxious. I figure if his blocker wasn't in place then his smell would have changed. But instead, I still smell his constant alpha smell because of the perfume. And again, I wonder how I didn't notice it in the past. But that's not the point today: 

"Look, neither of us are doctors, but I'm not sure if there's anything wrong. Your body has been through a lot of trauma lately and I know that Rosalind's torture can cause temporary nerve damage. It's probably just that if it happened right after."

He shrugs and says: 

"Maybe..."

It feels weird to be the one to calm the other down, usually Saul has that role. But that doesn't stop me from answering him: 

"Let's make a deal. Let's wait another week, if it's still the same, I promise to find an excuse for both of us to go into town and see a doctor. But in the meantime, you shouldn't push too hard. Deal?"

He doesn't respond verbally and he nods his head. I briefly shake his knee and drop to the floor. I continue talking to him: 

"Let's get inside before we turn into an ice cube. The students will be here early tomorrow and we'll need to be in shape to deal with their nonsense."

 I see a mini smile appear on his face and that is exactly what I wanted to see. When he's feeling better, I'll offer to practice with him. I'll find some excuse to explain this to Rosalind. It's always more effective to have a real opponent. And then I can keep an eye on my omega. He's always had a tendency to push himself too hard and that hasn't changed, obviously. But I'll keep an eye on him now that I'm back, even though he'll probably hate it.

#saul silva #andreas of eraklyon #fic #ftws #fate the winx saga #fate winx saga #omegaverse

[theskyexists]

gundam last eps

fourth last ep

shaddiq is great. i just do not understand why he would involve the assembly RIGHT THEN when he was still gunning for president? (he literally could have simply NOT confessed to guel and let his father get away - then they would not have had any evidence. they could have said: why were you fighting us? but actually GUEL attacked him first lol) anyway his talk with Miorine proves that they understand each other perfectly and have the same moral DIRECTION.

Miorine says she’s just as guilty but she is really not. thats really overestimating herself. she killed lots of people because of negligence not deliberate attempts at assassination or endangerment

its really funny that im un-yuri-ing because of all this. Suletta has been an infinitely uninteresting protagonist the whole second season. she’s copying Earth House now i guess - giving people food when they feel bad.

genuinely feel like separating Miorine and Suletta was the stupidest decision this anime could have made. for me

wow the inside of that tomato looked disgusting wtf

SHE REFRIGERATED THEM???? THAT FUCKS UP THE FLAVOUR!!!

Nika is going to turn herself in??? GIRL!!!!!! you were under duress!!!!

this whole Nika and Martin plot is soooooooooooooooooooooo boring

‘sorry for ratting you out as a terrorist’

‘hey without you guys as friends i wouldnt have survived. ill just go to prison for a bit’

‘you can come to me with anything in the future’ (except being unwillingly complicit in terrorism)

‘thanks’

the most tell insted of show in the whole damn anime

why da fuck would shaddiq involve the assembly if it was only gonna dissolve benerit group....what the fuck. this is another higher level of politics that is completely ungrounded in anything we know

why does cathedra answer directly to benerit group anyway. how big is benerit group. is cathedra funded by benerit group? surely it doesnt have jurisdiction over ‘all fronts’. what other conglomerates have facilities on Earth? oh wait cathedra is apparently bigger than Delling/Benerit these two are just his most loyal members

oh ok elan is just hanging out here liek hes totally ok

suletta should have been called ‘grace’. no one who embodies this more. i liked her speech. finally we get a focus on her jfc

what why would they deliberately put suletta in the machine that kills pilots against her mother. they’re such nasty fucks

if ericht can sync perfectly with the data storm why can’t suletta? shes a genetic replica. you’re telling me she somehow synced by being exposed to shit in the lab? or specific experiences rewired her brain?

so WHERE is quiet zero, and why even manipulate miorine if she didnt NEED HER TO REACH IT. LOL!!!!!! THE WRITING IN THIS GIRLS AND GALS!!!!

i mean - so - why is Suletta no longer necessary for Eri to control shit. (such an unsatisfying development holy shit. WISH suletta was a cyborg. WISH they had to rip something from her to revive eri. WISH eri was supposed to take over her body. WISH prospera was planning to put Miorine’s biometric data into Quiet Zero that wold all have been more interesting than jfc discarding teh main characters as significant at all. and secondly. why isnt this enough then? because she cant walk around in her giant suit? she seems to literally be alive in there all the time now

Eri literally killing about 50 men. Eri truly is like - a terrible older sister lol. this really didnt seem like the person from the short story

somehow the assembly and miorine&guel both found quiet zero at the same time but not before prospera who thought blowing up some earth ochs gundams was more important than making sure quinharbor stayed intact and its people didnt die

literally paralysing and then killing some 50 more men. the anime presents this like its nothing.

where is Dawn of the Fold anyway....

killing about threehundred more men

miorine is like: the only one who understands at all that people losing lives = bad. but for some reason (which is untrue but which the narrative wants us to believe) she thinks its her active responsibility

random leida going for miorine. this shit truly is all over the place

------

ep third from the end

miorine being angsty would really hit harder if she was actually responsible

literally so goddam stupid that norea died after all. fucking sucks dude. goddamn

why have suletta fly calibarn when they have pharact right there AND schwartzette lol

‘she’s my fiancee now, you think ill let you talk to her?’ what is he doing....he said he liked her, she rejected him for miorine, then he stole her girl in the worst fucking way possible BY CHEATING. and now hes useless at gettign Miorine back on her feet so...he tries to scare off the one person who might be capable very lol

what the fuck.

lets duel over it? he wants to lose the duel again so that he can ‘wipe’ that HORRIBLE win from history. THIS IS SO JAPANESE OH MY GOD. are all pilots taught  FENCING???? WHY HAVENT WE SEEN THIS. thats fucking cOOL!!

‘what a fool i am’ - for what? for thinking he might win or for doing this stupid fight at all lol

‘ive relied on mom and ericht all this time’ youre allowed to rely on people suletta. you’re like....sixteen. what is this stupid propaganda. ok, you’re supposed to learn to make your own decisions like: lets not kill 1000 people

‘i cant give you a convenient peptalk. you have to decide on your own’

she just said shed decided

man. the writing team really decided to have miorine spear suletta’s heart for zero reason and for suletta to go: ah well. my fault. i get it also now. and yknow miorine im grateful bc i met you.

is that the message here? like. uh. who cares what pain your loved ones inflict on you. just make up. im too wrathful a person.

oh how romantic lets go to earth together, ill open the door to meet you bla bla. sulemio is dead to me and i am sad about it

suletta’s hands always look so nice, strong and warm. but damn they still skimping on miorine’s animation

they shut quiet zero down and the assembly wasnt like -hmm maybe this is our chance. nope. no tactical mind to be found not in the whole military

Delling: again: it’s ok that he put Miorine through HELL so much so she almost killed herself bc again: you care about him so lets make up

oh. somehow quiet zero is already at plant quetta

so how is the data storm going to 1. allow eri to live more than she does already. i mean she’s using datastorms left and right right now. 2. why would it necessarily cause problems for communications? thats up to eri no?

so why are they going on about driving a mobile suit thats not calibarn now. what.

I do not understand what is going on in Guel’s head. He’s trying to watch out for Sulemio. Then he slaps himself.

oh ok. ‘youre all students, leave the responsibility to us adults’ THEN WHY SEND THEM INTO DEADLY COMBAT AT ALL LOLLLLL!!!!!!!

genuinely ship shaddiq/miorine now. HOW DID IT COME TO THIS OH MY GOD THIS IS IDIOTIC

so sad mio’s mother never became relevant with her genetic research and tomatoes.

the tomato-eating is disgusting in this anime

why cant suletta co-exist with the datastorm. whai

‘so it’s suletta’ - does NOT call off the lasers. when she knows exactly what calibarns effect is. i despise both eri and prospera

why is guel always pitted against his fam

Eri literally shooting to kill Suletta. I mean. this gonna be a happy ending. i saw something about farmland meemaw prospera. uh-huh. what about eri big sister mass murderer - guess i both discard you and murder you.

ep second to last

Eri not just shooting to kill suletta but literally putting everything into the battle including all her GUNDbits to kill her. uhhhhh???

‘youve gotta go back’

‘no i cant turn a blind eye to you’

what kind of fucking response is that. shouldnt she be saying; ERICHT YOU KILLED HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE JUST NOW

why should i care about war crime war arms dissappearing people benerit group?

‘i dont want to hurt you’ THEN WHY DID YOU SHOOT ENDLESS LASERS AT HER BEFORE

‘is it ok to gobble up all these fronts, end all these lives?’

‘eri wouldnt do that’ huh? interesting

oh damn. uh-huh. ‘i care about you’ - yeah, its like prospera and eri could not even CONCEIVE of that. shit like that happens so often in anime it makes me wonder so seriously about the japanese psyche

Ericht. who. said in the short story that she cared about suletta and wanted her to be happy. now. LITERALLY KILLING HER because shes like: i care about you guys. my god. what a horrible little piece of shit

HOLD UP. HOLD UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AERIAL IS A DIFFERENT ENTITY FROM ERI???????????????????????????????????????????????????????? evil eri is not the same as actual big sis Aerial???

they threw in Elan even though hes not a trained soldier, can only pilot but isnt right now even. what the fuck. theyre on a strike team conssisting of....kids.

lol. he was about to fucking explode and he was like eh i guess i just will  - i liked that jeturk sibling moment. man lauda is lucky he didnt get guel right in the body - like guel did his dad

yeah isnt elan fucking pissed at that cathedra guy. hes got the fuckin idiotballs to complain about elan ‘rubbing it in’  i.e. making a snide comment about how he murdered norea

the whole plant has been taken over by prospera but they didnt think she would change the password AHAHAHAHAHAHAAA

eri literally leveraging miorine’s life.... wow shes so fuckign awful. wow!!!!!

how the FUCK did Nortrette know that Miorine would ever need admin rights on Quiet Zero. what in the fuck

‘all of us will be a famil after all’

WAT

SHES INSANE MIORINE. SHES INSANE!!!

ok but evil eri still stopped a laser to protect suletta and prospera. we all good then?

ok so i guess i wont get an answer to whether theres an Aerial in there that is a better person and better sister than eri

wow. just when suletta was going to do something significant - she died

what? suletta went straight back into a gundam?? after already sustaining huge damage to her body. these episodes are just excuses for ten space battles in arow

the stakes arent even clear. one side says: oh this is liberation. the other side says: oh this will destroy billions of lives.

who is right? the show doesnt say

sappy old anime shit pasting over the very real way suletta’s shounen shit got people killed because capitalists are merciless. god theyre even destroying the strengths of season 1

somehow suletta magically fused with eri through the permet link

what the fuck she can just dissolve the whole group and sell all the assets to earth???? HAAAAA. only does this under severe duress

MIORINE HAD THE FUCKIN POWER TO SELL ALL THEIR ASSETS THIS WHOLE TIME AS PRESIDENT??????????????????OH MY GOD SHUT UP THAT IS FUCKING HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this league guy was like: oh its recharging? well just send some mobile suits then. now their own mobile suits pilots are in teh system thats about to get fucking blasted.

did miorine EXPECT to be able to broadcast to the whole damn system??? could have literally told the assembly that she’d dissolved the group BEFORE THEY ATTEMPTED TO FIRE A LASER AT EVERYBODY

Do love this soundtrack.

Assembly leader guy is going ahead with the laser just cos i guess

oh shit they projected the datastorm across like - literal space systems. wow lol. suletta really was like: fuck quiet zero i can do way bettter!

but also. then what the fuck was quiet zero even supposed to do then. and why was it bad

suletta raised eri’s score. because...uh theyre mystically bonded? but eri literally was like: shut up and get out the way ill kill you dont test me! so i dont really get it

suletta is literally like: eh who cares that you killed hundreds and would have killed billions. i support you! then why did you even fight her

so you’re saying that what we’re seeing now is a super datastorm. that doesnt look too bad. why was anybody complaining. everybody meeting their dead loved ones for some reason. oh ok but the permet breaking apart at particle level destroys steel. uh what about mio

savingg suletta from space like suletta saved mio once. ok they’re still parallelism kings. where is everybody. who got dissolved? whats going on

why is miorine screaming at suletta in space when she needs to get her inside the gundam and breathing oxygen

NIKA WENT TO PRISON FOR THREE YEARS????????????? BY WHOSE JURISDICTION??????????????? BENERIT GROUP IS DISSOLVED???????????? THE ASSEMBLY FUNDED HER ORGANISATION????? THREE!!!!!!!! YEARS???????????? AFTER SHE RISKED HER LIFE ?????????????????????????? SHES A MINOR!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK MAN!!!!!!!!!!! sorry ok that was not prison? no thtat was definitely prison. she just instantly aced her exam afterwards. fuckin hell

how is guel still head of jeturk when the company has been dissolved. how is astiassia still open when it was funded by benerit group and when its graduates were trained for work within the group. how is the dissolution not an enormous hit to lagrange4 or whatever. how the fuck, once again, is jeturk still a company. where did elan get the money to help keep asticassia open? he left peil high and dry. who is he?

oh damn shaddiq is going to prison and his compatriots are all already out. how is miorine still an ‘official’? why is she speaking with the victims? i guess shes still pretty damn rich from liquidising the whole group. but benerit group is dissolved so who is administrating. ANYWAY

IM SORRY. IM SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAAHA the anime explains its happy end by saying: nobody understands how eri remained alive. THE END.

ill say: suletta’s hair is hella cool here. everybody seems to have shucked the stylish mullets thogh :/ though it looks nice. except nika’s hair which is dissapointing as hell. and miorine finally got an actual suit

Finally: i thought that for sure, like, for SURE, this story was going to be much more complex, interesting and emotionally compelling as well as coherent on both the social and interpersonal level. its like they were told suddenly: you get one more season and then CRUNCHED.

which probably happened eh.

weak ending. again. but it’s true: you gotta keep going and keep trying to do better even if you’ve made mistakes. even if the mistakes are unforgivable.

#my stuff #personal #why do so few writers stick the landing....so few.... #gundam #vidi #i am so sad about shaddiq though dude what the fuck

[cooper730]

Its 2 am in the morning

Ever since Covid, I developed a horrible sleep pattern. Nothing like being isolated and alone in a place with no friends or family to start questioning everything around you. I believe it largely started due to being laid off right at the start of the pandemic and starting off 2020 in Colorado where I new very little people. I am a very competitive person, especially when it comes to hustling in the job market. I excel in opportunity. I always have. I never feel like the odds are stacked against me. But rather this is my opportunity to shine. "I'll show em all" type of mentality. From the people I interacted with through various internet and social media forums in quarantine, it seemed like they weren't even trying. It was like apathy or something on an extreme level. Like if the world is going to shit we might as well have fun and drink and stay up all night. My personality type would never allow me to do this. From the point of being laid off, I hit the job market. Insanely enough I was getting a shit ton of hits. At one point I was interviewing with 5 different companies a week in 2020 from Feb until about July. I interview with Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Nutanix, Dell Computers, some start ups, ServiceNow, Google. You name em, I interviewed with em. As glad as I was to be interviewing with these companies, I had never faced such harsh and critical components of the hiring process. I was doing mock sales calls, presentations, behavioral, case studies, etc. Never had I had to try so hard for a job than in 2020. But I was in pure survival mode. That's the way my mind and body was trained. I don't give up. There has to be a tomorrow. As I went through this process, the realism of the surmounting "End" came to the forefront of my mind. I started to feel like I couldnt breathe anymore. Every day was pent up anxiety. We weren't meant to live this way. No hope. No future. Every interview would last up to about 5 to 10 stages. It was always wind up something like "Our HR departments gave us new numbers, what was once 10 positions for this role, is now only one, IF that" I was chasing ghosts while I was wasting away So much of this, it truly started to affect my sleep. I'd go to bed with nothing in my bones except anxiety and hopelessness. Every day for 6 months straight, I'd wake up between 2 am and 3 am with a huge shot of adrenaline and start obsessing over anxious thoughts. I didn't even remember them half the time the next day. Finally I would get up walk around and analyze the clock. I wanted so much to feel home. To feel warmth. To feel family. I would watch YouTube videos of Texas football media at those hours. Highlights of the boys in burnt orange always brought me happiness. Turning on a show or a movie was completely out of the picture because any little point of negativity would send me down a negative spiral. Because of my love for youtube research, I started to really research my sleep anxiety. What I found was the "fight or flight response" "The fight or flight response is an automatic physiological reaction to an event that is perceived as stressful or frightening. The perception of threat activates the sympathetic nervous system and triggers an acute stress response that prepares the body to fight or flee."-Psychology Today As I did more research I found that in order to conquer my sleep anxiety, I would need to regulate my emotions, not let my emotions have control over me. I needed to use my prefrontal cortex to determine what is rational and what was not. Are these crazy anxious thoughts I am having at two am rational? Is the world gonna end? Was that bill paid? Is my car gonna break down, again? Am I going to go into debt? Will I ever be able to afford the life I wanna live? Will this pandemic ever end? Will life ever be normal again? Did I really miss my chance at happiness by not going after that girl I really liked? Are these things I can solve at 2 am in the morning? No. Even if I was awake could they be solved tomorrow? Probably not. I did more research on regulating the physiological symptoms of anxiety. I feel like I was trying to outsmart my anxious thoughts by creating more problems, inadvertently of course. What I learned? BREATHE SPENCER, JUST BREATHE By allowing oxygen into my brain and control my breathing, I came to discover that I had my control over myself. Fight or Flight. Allowing oxygen into your brain will allow you to think rationally. Think about it. If you are choked up or have a stuffy nose are you usually thinking clearly? Not really. Allowing oxygen into your brain on a regualted level will allow you to have so much more peace. Once I started doing this. I came to find that I was able to sleep better. Waking up at 2 am still happened but by breathing I was able to get back to sleep and get better rest. I know it feels like the world is on fire most days. Take a deep breath and enjoy life every once in a while is what I've learned.

[octavare]

TF2 Headcanons: The other engineers (long lore dump)

So the comics establish that there are other teams besides Team Fortress. I was thinking about how Engineer’s (will be referred to as Dell from here out to distinguish *the* Engineer from other engineers) buildings are considered his inventions. Only he has them. So what does mean for other the other teams? What exactly do their combat engineers use on the field?

It’s important to reiterate two things in the official lore: one, the original designs for the sentry and dispenser were came up with by Radigan Conagher, Dell’s grandfather. And two, in Meet the Engineer, Dell says that the sentry and dispenser were designed by him. What I assume happened here was a retcon by the writers, however, this can be reinterpreted as Dell made improvements on the designs initially created by Radigan. The Loose Cannon comic supports this.

Now into HC territory:

On high profile and important teams (the ones in the thick of the Gravel Wars) such as Team Fortress, engineers are given more reign over the equipment they use in battle, whether that be their own inventions and improvements (see: Dell) or otherwise.

On less high profile and importance teams (the worldwide ones, etc), equipment used by combat engineers is very different.

First off, unlike Dell’s equipment (which is custom design), they use standard issue equipment, provided by RED/BLU. This equipment is based off of Radigan’s original designs of the sentry and dispenser, but made more ergonomically viable. The combat engineer’s job is upkeep (in and out of battle), and positioning.

The standard issue equipment is less advanced than that of Team Fortress’s. The most glaring difference being all equipment takes more time to set up, meaning all set up needs to be done before battle. It can’t be easily packed up/collapsed and set up again.

That being said, the combat engineer has access to a finite amount of equipment per battle and they must make it count. Upkeep and good positioning are extremely important.

Sentries and dispensers are generally strapped onto wheeled platforms so that they can more easily be pushed into position (since they can’t be collapsed and carried). This can be seen as a positive in some ways, though, as it is less equipment the engineer has to carry. But it is also another responsibility.

There are no standard issue teleporters. The teleporters used by Team Fortress are an invention of Dell’s, and only his team and other high profile teams have access to them, as they are new technology and expensive to get the resources to manufacture (this is also why they dont have access to Dell’s sentry and dispenser design improvements). The opposite team seems to have simultaneously came up with a functioning teleporter design as well, so there are multiple designs outside of Dell’s.

Standard issue dispensers can either dispense health or ammo/metal, depending on the model. The latter is usually employed more due to the field medic being able to cover healing, but not ammunition costs or scrap for repair.

Standard issue sentries come in two variants. One is functionally identical to the level 2 sentry, but cannot be collapsed nor upgraded. The other is similar to a mini sentry and can be moved around due to its small size and weight.

As for the engineer’s arsenal, they are usually given the stock equipment as seen in TF2. Depending on preference, however, you’ll occasionally see one with a Panic Attack or other shotgun variants. Sidearms are usually either like the stock pistol or a precision based sidearm (like the Spy’s revolvers). They do not have access to luxuries such as the Wrangler, though I guess nothing is really stopping them from getting behind their sentry and literally manually aiming it.

Justification for the welding goggles: they aren’t used for welding when in combat obviously, so why do the engineers all seem to wear them?: This became commonplace due to them serving as both eye protection and, well, sunglasses (this is TF2, it is allowed to be as stupid as this). At battles taking place at night, you are more likely to see traditional eyewear (or none at all) for protective purposes. But in the day time, they serve two functions, neither of which was their intended purpose.

#tf2 #tf2 headcanons #tf2 engineer #engineer tf2 #MP talks

[winxlava]

Where Fate: the Winx saga fails

As a winx fan of 14 years (in and out), this fate thing is really scandolous. I’ve seen lots of ups and downs the winx fandom. As I’ve watched all of the development that fate had, I've had some thoughts, but I’ve waited until I watched everything.

This is going to be a reaction to all 6 episodes of Fate the Winx saga. This is coming from a fan of the og show so expect lots of comparisons.

If this bothers you, please don't keep reading. A lot of this is only my opinion. If you like it and think its great, that’s good! I’m not here to ruin it.

There is a list of what I liked most near the bottom of this post. Spoilers Ahead!!

Anyway, back to the post.

What made the Winx work

Lets start with the basic idea of Winx. Bloom, a normal girl, finds out that she has magic powers and is from another dimension. Seems like a simple concept? Well, Seasons 1-3 (and 4?) expanded this idea to the max.

Likeable characters galore and lots of fun, fashion, and magic.

For a lot of us that’s what sold the show. 

So lets talk about tone and why its so important 

The idea that teenage girls were exploring a world we could never see or experience. And the darkness that came with it.

Remember when Daphne, bloom’s dead sister, clung to life to help bloom figure her life out? When bloom became evil and nearly killed all of her friends? When Flora drowned to save her sister, only to get enchantix? (Actually all of enchantix was like this). When Musa gave up seeing her dead mom to save the world? When nabu died?

The show was full of these small, intense, dark moments. That’s what made winx special. The light came with dark.

By making the show dark and “eDgy” it takes away the impact of the dark moments. I’ve been saying this since the beginning. 

Point of view and how Stella is affected 

Stella was very misunderstood in the remake and it shows. The thing is, Stella was the first entry point into the magical world in the original show. She carried Bloom and her parents to Alfea. She was the transfer point to a whole world for the audience.

Her spunk and optimism and snark made her a fan favorite, but that’s not what made her character work.

She was Bloom’s first friend, and because of the that, we saw her in a good lens. She was reckless, but a pure heart nonetheless. She was confident, cunning, and powerful. 

It was because we saw the good in her first that made us like her. She was good before she was bad in our eyes.

The remake takes all of that away. She’s just a generic mean rich girl now. To be honest, Stella is accurate, but the way she was introduced put her in a whole new light. In this version, she is annoying and trifling, seemingly taking the place of Diaspro in her liking for sky.

Also she hates her mother? Stella would never! She loved both of her parents dearly and was mad simply because she felt they never loved her as a result of their divorce; they never talked to each other and she felt split between the two of them. (See Stella’s nightmares sequence season 1 :https://youtu.be/wuvyw0OHA6A?t=129). She was lonely and her father, though he loved her, spoiled her with gifts instead of the love she desired. 

You see this side of her when Chimera comes in and tries to take her place in season 3. Her worth is tied to what she has and looks like. Her title as a princess rules her.

Not only that, Stella learns about “commoners” through her friends. She was spoiled and never saw people who couldn’t afford things; it was new and she was a bit rude about it, but can you blame her, she was always put above everything else in her home country.

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgzCfOQ696rvwa51Z_J4AaABCQ?lc=UgzCDSxfcNaP9XogBSB4AaABAg

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgzCfOQ696rvwa51Z_J4AaABCQ?lc=Ugxl_sOsUSGBXEwagxJ4AaABAg

^^ These are comments of people saying similar things.

Stella also vents to Sky a lot in the remake. She seems like she is chasing him pitifully, something og Stella would never do.

Edit: Check the “liked” section; she has been upgraded to sort of like in episodes 5 and 6.

Aisha

They did Aisha dirty as well. (Just like Bonnie from Vampire Diaries, why am I surprised?) I would write a lot here, but someone else summarized it well:

https://rainbow-whitewashing-jar.tumblr.com/post/639787632624369664/its-just-there-is-so-much-background-on-aisha.

https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugx4WL5rIPTS1suGOed4AaABCQ

Tldr: Aisha was a very lonely princess of Andros. She only had one friend growing up but then they moved away and she was lonely all over again. She copes with her princess duties by being great at sports and even beating some of the men! She stood up to her parents when they wanted her to be arranged married, until she fell in love with Nabu HERSELF. She decided her own future from that point on.

Also, her relevance to the plot has been dwindled to being Bloom's right hand man; the black best friend sterotype! What a let down for one of the PRINCESSES of the original!

She had her own goals, drive, and motivations in the original! She did things for all of her friends; she definitely wasn't only driven by one person!

And she was closer to Musa than Bloom that's for sure!

Bloom

The fact that bloom transforms before everyone else gives bad vibes, considering that one of the reasons she was insecure about magic was because everyone of her friends was better than her and could transform. Why would she feel insecure when they are all around the same level?

The theme of sisterhood

Ever notice that none of the girls had the same taste in guys?

Bloom liked goody guys like Sky and Andy. Stella liked guys who were fun and flirty like Brandon.

In fact, none of the girls ever fought over a guy, they fought over things that actually mattered like someone being rude or a mission gone wrong.

That's what made them relatable. They weren't petty about guys and they mostly respected each other's relationships.

https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugz6TEOmGRV2Cfqy12F4AaABCQ?lc=UgwhLsToVbhLDYpFphB4AaABAg

^^ Look at highlighted comment

Not only that, but the winx represented a positive sisterhood. They stood by each other and respected each other; they never let men come between them and shared their power with each other.

Only the trix, the bad sisterhood, fought over men and power. The trix were foils to the winx and what they stood for! That's what made them some of the best villains in the series!

Instead of that, we get useless relationship drama! 😒

And that brings me to...

Stella/Sky/Bloom & Riven/Dane/Terra

What was the point of Dane? I'm still asking myself that question. He doesn't really do anything except act as relationship fuel for a love triangle.

Don't get me wrong, the representation is needed. But he adds nothing to the real plot at all except that Terra thinks he likes her, and he has a crush on Riven.

In terms of the Stella and Bloom love triangle with Sky, apparently she BLINDED someone because they flirted with sky. What?!? Stella isn't that cruel at all. The show clearly flanderized her to a cruel mean girl so....

Edit: Check the “liked” section; she has been upgraded to sort of like in episodes 5 and 6.

Lets not forget about “diversity”

Male fairies did exist before Fate:

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgziTWMf44kv0fkDt8x4AaABCQ

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgxWAFZRmqt_k3iBMhZ4AaABCQ

Flora/Terra, Musa, and Whitewashing

Terra and Musa are wonderful! Their actress' do a great job; their personalities are so similar to the original (except for musa's mind abilities and Terra's talkative personality)! Whenever one of them interacts with the other main cast, you feel actual friendship chemistry between them!!

But there is an elephant in the room: the whitewashing. If these characters were the correct race, they wouldn't be in this critical review.

Terra isn't flora, but her character was clearly based on her! Also, she has a cousin named Flora, so Flora is clearly in this universe.

??

Why change her race and swap her out! The personalities are spot on, which makes it even more disheartening to know that they would rather replace two POC characters with white characters who essentially are the same people and have the same plot importance.

What a shame and low blow that is! Especially since I am a black woman myself!

Sky and Riven

Them being bros make no sense really. Before they were more like enemies who were forced to work together.

Why are they friends?? What's the backstory?

Other than that, sky is pretty spot on. He's the pretty boy with good intentions. Not interesting but not very boring either.

Riven is cringy like I feared. He was also sort of cringe in the og but because of the darker setting in the remake he just feels even more so.

Other Criticisms:

- we gets some pretty cringy dialogue (mostly from riven). Some of the clingy dialogue (not from riven) ironically could have worked in a lighter setting and become "campy".

- The fact that there are no wings for 5 whole episodes, just makes the entire thing feel like Witches or something...

- why does everyone have the dead parent trope??

- no tecna

Things I do like:

- bloom missing her parents and feeling left out

- Musa and Sam before Musa and Riven (hopefully)

- Terra in general

- Terra’s dad and brother

- Musa in general

- Stella funny quips

- the scenery is gorgeous

- Stella's clothes are so fashionable! She has great outfits!

- Sky and Bloom taking during the party and/or being friendly with each other

- the magic cgi looks good 👍

- the rooms of the girls dorms and the castle looks great on the inside

- Aisha's personality

- Farrah Dowling is good as well

- Bloom is pretty spot on

- Stella's mom's powers are awesome

- imagine the genocide plot but with the happy fun show vibe and with the trix. The trix want to get revenge on faragonda for killing their cult, who wanted to revive the ancestral witches or something💥💥💥

- Stella in episodes 5 and 6 is cool

- the inclusion of the witches of aster dell (Beatrix said she was born there = witch)

- the inclusion of musa’s mother’s death

-Her transformation was lackluster to me, but I appreciated the effort to include it.

Conclusion

The pacing was all over the place to me; it felt like some episodes lasted forever and all of them seemed to have the vague theme of : be careful who you trust.

By trying to separate the winx from the og and have them have "their own lives" (which they already had), they ruined the intriguing backstories the characters already had in the og. Some were somewhat kept, but others were kind of left in the dust *cough*Aisha*cough*.

They took away with made them special: the teamwork, love, and friendship that brought them together and made them stronger. *They try it in episodes 5 and 6, but to me it just falls sort of flat.*

That said it isn't completely bad, it's mediocre at best, but it isn't Winx and that's that.

Edit: I know that it’s not supposed to be winx per say, but it has characters from the og and even the “winx” name in the title!

Credits: WCD channel on youtube, rainbow whitewashing jar on tumblr, and Youtube videos by the official winx club youtube channel.

#fate the winx club saga #fate the winx saga #winx club #netwinx

[wickedmilo]

YOU’RE REALLY NOT MY TYPE | MILO & LUCE

PLACE: A dive bar TIMING: 1:13 AM SUMMARY: Tired of drinking alone, Milo approaches Luce and makes an attempt to befriend her. It does not go well. WRITING PARTNER: @divineluce CONTENT WARNINGS: Addiction, alcoholism, inebriation, PTSD

Milo was drunk. If he considered being inebriated a regular occurrence before his death, he had taken things to an entirely new level after waking up as a vampire. Even with Harsh making an effort to help him learn and understand, things were difficult. Beyond difficult. He missed his old life, missed being in the centre of a crowd, making friends with every single stranger in the smoking area, going home with someone without even knowing their name. He couldn’t do any of those things anymore. Not without an overwhelming desperation for blood. Not without fear, and anxiety clawing viciously at his chest. That didn’t ease the need to drink though, his body was still craving what it had been relying on for years. There was only so much he could do before being alone and sober became too much. Which was how, not for the first time, he found himself at a bar. 

It was stupid, he knew it was stupid. But he was so tired. If he could steal even a semblance of his old life back, then he was going to try. He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting alone, staring down at the dregs in his glass, before he finally forced himself to his feet. There was a girl who didn’t look too far from his age, sitting alone just across from where he was lurking in the shadows. If she didn’t want company, he would leave. And if his bloodlust became too great, he was confident he would find a way to excuse himself. With that justification playing over in his mind, he set down his empty glass on her table. “Any chance you’ve reached the point of realising how depressing it is to drink alone, and wouldn’t say no to some company?” He asked, his voice lazy, drawn out by the alcohol in his system. “I mean, tell me to screw myself and I’ll go- I swear, I just- well, I’ve reached that point.” 

The nightmares were still coming. She’d heard bits and pieces of the weird dream situation from fucking Leah of all people, a fact that irritated Luce to no end. She’d heard that whatever supernatural bullshit that had been fucking with the town’s collective sleep schedule was over. But, tonight-- just like so many other nights-- Luce’s dreams had jolted her awake and driven her from the place she called home. She could see Lydia’s face, staring at her, wide eyed as she stalked towards her. She could see herself, blood rolling down the wound in her leg, dripping from the knife she’d yanked out of her own flesh. Luce had watched, hovering behind Lydia, and had seen the unrelenting rage in her own eyes as she’d lunged forward and stabbed the iron spear through her body. Luce had felt the iron burn and sear against her skin, she’d heard the begging, pleading screams that still haunted her to this day. And then she’d woken up. And dragged herself here. Some shitty hole in the wall bar with shitty, cheap whiskey. But at least it was cheap. 

Staring at the bottom of her glass Luce paused mid sip as some random kid approached her table. He looked as though he’d been drinking just as long as she had and he sounded it too. “If you’re making a pass, you’re barking up the wrong tree.” She said, more tired than irritated for once. “If you actually just want to drink. Sure. Go for it.” She said and gestured to the chair next to her.

Milo laughed, unable to stop the sound from escaping his lips. “Don’t flatter yourself.” He teased, his tone lighthearted, as he took a seat. “You’re really not my type.” Getting comfortable, something that was all too easy to do considering how inebriated he was, he tapped his fingers absentmindedly against his glass. If he leaned back against his chair a little, he could almost ignore the close proximity, the smell of his company’s blood. “So,” he started, watching the girl sitting across from him with an open curiosity. People didn’t just drink alone at bars when they were happy. Not in his experience, at least. “Do you get hit on by strangers very often?”

“Good cuz you’re not mine either.” Luce snorted. This guy looked like he was Nell’s age. A fucking kid. But, hey, if he was old enough to drink, so be it. And even if he wasn’t, she didn’t really give a shit. As he made himself comfortable, Luce stared at the ice cubes in her glass, willing them to melt. She wanted them to melt. For them to bubble and froth and to sublimate straight to vapor. But, they sat stubbornly whole in a pool of amber. Glancing over at the kid, she laughed. “No. Other way around.” She said before lifting the glass to her lips, “Usually, not right now though. Not really looking for that kind of company tonight. And if I was, it wouldn’t be here. Flaming Mo’s, Friction, anywhere but this shitty little bar.” She said, rattling off the usual haunts. Well, usual before shit had gone down with Remmy and Nadia, before her magic refused to flow through her veins.

Milo smiled. The easy, playful nature of the conversation was allowing him to relax. There was still a faint voice in the back of his mind telling him he couldn’t afford to, but it was the same voice that occasionally told him not to drink, or not to accept an unnamed substance from a stranger. He had been readily ignoring it for years. “Oh, really?” He asked, grinning easily at his company’s admission. He had a feeling he was going to like her. “So what’s got you drinking in this shitty little bar?” He asked. “There has to be a reason you aren’t at Flaming Mo’s, or Friction.” He downed what was left in his glass, dregs, really, before turning his attention back to the girl. 

Still staring at the ice cubes in her cup, Luce’s lips curled slightly at his question. Nope. A lot of shit had happened in the last year. A lot had changed, including her. But, she still wasn’t the type to just fucking unload her problems to some stranger at the bar. Let alone some kid who looked like he could barely afford his drinks. “Sometimes people just want a change in scene. Nothing wrong with that.” She said coolly, lifting her glass back to her lips. “What about you, huh? What’s got you here? There are plenty of other places in town that don’t card. And they’ve at least got a more lively scene than this,” Luce gestured to the sleepy looking bar, filled with other people who had been doing the same as her before this kid rolled up. They were all quietly stewing in their own thoughts, in their own misery, with a glass in hand because it was easier than sitting in the dark at home.

Milo knew from the look the girl gave him that she wasn’t about to tell her story. Which was only fair when he considered the fact that he definitely wasn’t ready to share his own. “A change of scenery like a downgrade?” He teased, glancing around at the less than classy establishment. There were posters tacked to the walls, thrown into focus by dingy, yellow lighting. The bar was small, the bottles behind it suspiciously dusty. And the lack of patrons was a sign of just how poor the customer service was. In a way, he almost liked it. It felt good to be somewhere so… unbothered. Whoever owned this place wasn’t out to draw crowds, or make money. They just wanted to give people a place to mournfully drown their sorrows, and he respected that. 

“Me? Oh, I really was looking for a downgrade.” He countered, sarcasm dripping from his tone. His eyes were shining though, a sign of his good nature. “You think I’m not old enough to drink? I’m 22.” He assured her, amused by the assumption. He had a list compiled in his head of every place in town that didn’t card at the door. Even though he didn’t need it anymore, the information seemed to be seared into his brain. Waving his hand, brushing off the mention of a livelier scene, he wrinkled his nose. He wanted a livelier scene, it just wasn’t an option for him right now. He had begrudgingly been forced to settle. “I’m kind of avoiding people right now…” He realised approaching her contradicted his statement, but it was the truth. Or sort of the truth. “Trying to, anyway.” He added. “Guess I’m not cut out for drinking alone.” 

Lips pressing together in a thin line, Luce finished off the last of her drink. “Change of scene like people not bothering me here.” She said pointedly. This wasn’t a place where people made conversation, or met with some friends after work for drinks. That was what places like Dell’s was for. This bar was a dusty hole in the wall where the people here were for one thing only-- cheap drinks.  “Uh huh. Sure you are.” Luce said with a shrug as she drummed her hands on the table. She should go home. She should just go home and just… deal. She should just go home and face it. With a sigh, Luce waved to get the sleepy-eyed bartender’s attention and gestured to call it quits.  

“Well,” Luce said with a long sigh, knocking on the table as she stood up from her chair, “Sounds like you’ve got some work ahead of you if that’s the case.” She said before putting a twenty on the table, gesturing to the kid as she made eye contact with the bartender. “Use whatever’s left to cover his drinks too.” She said before making her way out the door. “Good luck with whatever’s got you drinking here. Check out Mo’s when you have a chance. It’s a better scene than here.”  

Out in the cool night air, Luce paused outside the bar and pulled out her phone. She could Uber home, which would be fine. Or she could walk, it was how she got here in the first place. Without meaning to, Luce realized she was flicking through the contacts on her phone. She still had Remmy’s number. Which didn’t matter-- they’d left town. They were better off away from White Crest. Away from all the fucked up shit here. Away from her. Swallowing, her finger hovered over the delete contact button.  

She took a deep breath and hit the button. She had to move on, she had to move beyond her past. And that meant letting go. Stowing her phone back in her pocket, Luce headed back into the night. She had to go home.  

Milo frowned, suddenly feeling guilty for disturbing the girl. Although his motivations were often selfish, he never intended to cause trouble for anyone, and now he was forced to wonder whether she had agreed to his company to be polite. Or even worse, maybe she had felt as though she couldn’t say no to him. He stayed silent, listening to her brush off his comments. He liked to think he was self-aware enough to accept the fact that he wasn’t incredibly personable. On multiple occasions he had argued with people purely because they didn’t like his attitude, and looking back on said arguments, he couldn’t exactly blame them for getting upset. But he had kind of, almost been trying here. At the very least he had made a conscious effort not to be a dick. He watched as she flagged down the bartender, dropping a twenty before standing up to leave. “Oh- I… okay.” He couldn’t hide how miserable he felt, though he wasn’t sure why the rejection hurt. He had been alone five minutes ago, did it really matter if he was alone again now? Especially not when somebody had willingly paid for his drinks. 

Tapping his fingers against his glass, he downed what was left of the contents, thinking about the last time he had visited Mo’s. He wanted, more than anything, to trust himself in such a busy environment, but he had already taken too many risks. He wasn’t in control. When was he ever in control? Letting out a huff of breath, a habit he had yet to shake, he pushed away from the table too, uncomfortable in the sudden silence. Pulling his cigarettes from his pocket, he had one in his mouth by the time he reached the door, desperate for a distraction from his thoughts. The cold air hitting his skin the moment he stepped outside, the vague scent of the girl he had been talking to still lingered in the air, but she had long since disappeared into the night, apparently desperate to get away from him. He sparked up, leaning against the brick wall behind him as he struggled to force down his emotions. It wouldn’t be the first time he had chased his feelings away with a trusty combination of nicotine, and alcohol. It certainly wouldn’t be the last.  

#milo and luce #c:luce #ptsd tw #drug mention tw #alcoholism tw #addiction tw

[bearpillowmonster]

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom

There are no difficulty modes, you could see that as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you think of its base. I hear some people say it's hard because they don't grind enough and I hear some people say it's easy because they grind too much or they're just really good at figuring out what to use for stats and building their kingdom, which I'll get to shortly.

There's a pretty smooth transition from fighting to traveling and vice versa, the only downside is that once you're engaged in combat, it locks you in so you can't escape until you defeat them or they defeat you. You do have a chance to run before they catch you though.

One of the the best things about the game is that it's not turn based. I've seen Dragon Quest XI gameplay where it looks like it should play more similar to this and I actually prefer this over FFXV combat. So it's not the same as the original for those who've played it. The other best thing about this game is its visual design, the whole reason I bought it. There were some character designs that I really liked as well as some that lack but all in a Ghibli-esque style.

In the grand scope of things, it’s a big world with tons of side quests. With some of the side quests, you HAVE to look it up, like this one where you make a tart for this guy in Goldpaw (pretty early in the game) but you can't actually make it until you beat the main story, I get having side-quests in areas that you can't do yet so no one area is deemed irrelevant and they do have certain side-quests and NPCs open up after beating certain missions but why not these? Why were these the exceptions? It just doesn't make sense to do it this way, if anything, give me the resources readily available. There's no reason I can't have a certain market or lumber yard when they're all the same but with different names.

Now my biggest complaint so far is the potential. Sometimes the person you do the quest for will join your kingdom but the game requires you to keep your kingdom a certain way in order to progress, so you can't just pick and choose your villagers, there's a minimum amount you need to have. That breaks the illusion of being able to customize your kingdom and getting to interact with your villagers in an engaging way because most of the time, you're just filling in another space. There's a specific point where the difficulty ramps up overall which was around the end of Hydropolis for me but it makes it very easy to fall behind on leveling your kingdom as well as your party. There are also "skirmishes" which have a similar playstyle to Pokemon Rumble (cool in concept) but in reality is pretty annoying. You even have to work on your skirmish forces' level separately through the kingdom research (as well as just doing more skirmishes) so there's a lot to keep track of.

That kingdom research (for whatever department it may be in) says things like "this will take 9 minutes" or "this will take 25 minutes" but that's annoying when you have nothing else to do but wait for those to be done, when you need to level up in order to progress your missions. The kingdom is just a mandatory mobile game! You can actually speed up research but you have to spend your money, and not just regular money, oh no, this is a special currency that you only get from your kingdom, for your kingdom. The whole thing seems pretty counterproductive if you ask me, especially considering it's done in increments. To speed up a single research task you could be spending purchase after purchase to lower it by 10% each time, mere minutes to sometimes a wait above 45. All it needs are the microtransactions to purchase them with real money and you got yourself a gacha.

I believe MGS5 has something similar to the research part, but the difference is that I actually had fun with Mother Base in MGS, this one just makes me feel like I'm playing Clash of Clans. Once you get enough gold steadily coming in, it's not as big of a deal but it's definitely tedious. Combine that with the grinding, which took me way too much time just to keep up with the level gap of "Recommended strength" and my actual level. You're taking down hordes at a time and the XP just seems to slow down. I would be fighting enemies way above my level and barely even a scratch so I looked it up and it said it's more quantity over quality, (or in this case level) which is nuts to begin with but even doing so barely increased it at a solid rate, I got the exp necklace, messed with the tactic-tweaker, did side-quests, did a bunch of stuff with the kingdom itself and it was just never enough, it was like the game was trying to unnecessarily inflate its playtime. Now my best advice that actually ended up working, is to do the optional boss fights littered among the world (tainted monsters). I don't like them but they're the only things that seemed to give me a reasonable amount of xp and even some decent weapons. Mornstar, The Sword of Unity, end-game item with 270 damage? Try my Giant's Tooth or whatever it's called with 290!

The story isn't necessarily priority here, it kind of sets itself up from the start. You go to each kingdom, beat their boss, unite them. That about sums it up, that's not bad for a game like this but it's not as rich as many JRPGs and I hear even the first game so I doubt you would have to play the first one to understand it (at least I didn't). It also starts out as a sort of isekai where Roland is a president who gets sent to Ding Dong Dell to service a furry king...what a fanfic.

The first half peaked and then just became unenjoyable for me after Hydropolis. There was a boss late-game that I was into but it was sandwiched between 2 really dumb bosses, so it evened out. I'll give it a 2/5 or 4/10 overall. I don't really recommend it but if I did, I would recommend the Nintendo Switch version (which is apparently out now) because I got this on PS4 around launch (yeah, it took me this long) and I felt that it was best suited for the Switch as soon as I started because of the quest system. The only downside is that I hear that version runs poorly, which is a shame because honestly, I might've dropped it if the PS4 version ran that poorly. It actually ran pretty well, barely had any load times and has a massive world with consistent quality, quite impressive.

#ni no kuni #revenant kingdom #ps4 #game #review #4/10 #2/5 #ni no kuni 2

[concussed-to-pieces]

Whether It Works Out Or Not Part Two

Fandom: Red Dead Redemption 2

Pairing: Eventual Arthur Morgan/Named OFC

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: I'll see you guys on Friday with the conclusion to this tale. But first, we howl at the moon. Enjoy!

[Spoiler warning for the first three chapters of the game!]

Tag List:  @huliabitch @cookiethewriter @pedrosbigdorkenergy @thirstworldproblemss @anonymouscosmos @culturalrebel @karmezii @teaofpeach @crookedmoonsaultpunk @wrestlingfae @zombiexbody @nelba @gabrielle1776 @toxiicpop @mstgsmy​ @misty-possum​

Part One: Strangers

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains attempted suicide and brief mentions of previous abuse. Stay safe!]

Irene, or rather, Frank, her face layered with a fresh coat of grime, was just putting the finishing touches on saddling her horse when Arthur made his presence known the following morning. He looked...surprisingly decent for the amount of drinking that he had done the day before, only slightly disheveled. The large man strode into the stables, looking around wildly. "Frank!" He bellowed, making Bluster rear in panic.

Irene went to take a step back and toppled over a hay bale, barely avoiding braining herself on the packed-dirt floor. "Yes, Arthur?" She grunted wryly, catching hold of the binds on the bale and going to sit back up.

"Where the hell were you yesterday?" Arthur questioned, offering her a hand and easily pulling her to her feet. "I thought you was comin' back to the party!"

Irene furrowed her brow in mock confusion. "I did, Arthur! I hung around the outskirts, though. Pilfered some treats and kept to myself. It was all so loud, you know how much I like my peace and quiet."

Arthur seemed agitated and she said as much, making him chuckle sadly. "Ah, I'm just outta' sorts. Got a little too in the bottle last night. It's all a blur." He mumbled the next bit, "not sure if she's real or not."

"Who?" Irene asked.

Arthur started, like he hadn't thought she would hear him. "Uh, a Miss Irene. Never got her last name." He admitted.

"Oh, the fiddler!" Irene said, feigning comprehension. "Spoke to her this morning, actually. I play as well, so we had a brief discussion on the topic while she saddled up." Irene patted the sturdy case for the fiddle, affixed to the side of Bluster's saddle. "But she was off like a shot shortly afterwards."

"Dammit." Arthur cursed. "Did she say where she was headed to?"

"Afraid not, Arthur. She did tell me to tell you 'thank you', whatever that means." Irene winked at Arthur, laughing when he flushed bright pink to the tips of his ears.

"Shut up, it ain't...it's not like that." Arthur grumbled bashfully. "Listen, I ain't got time for this. I have to-" he paused, rubbing a hand contemplatively over the fresh stubble on his face. "Actually, Frank, you wanna' tag along? Might be more useful to have two of us, we can corral him easy that way. Jamie's prone to startlin'. More nervous than a cat in a room fulla' rockin' chairs."

"What are you off to do now?"

"Fetchin' somebody's kid brother back from the Chelonians."

"No rest for the wicked or for you, I suppose." Irene didn't mean to sound like she was scolding him, but 'Frank's' tenuous tenor had a decidedly chastising tone to it. After all, she knew why he was doing this, though Arthur didn't know that she knew. "Well, I've got nothing particularly pressing that warrants my attention, if you would like my company." She allowed. Then, she cast her mind back over what he had said. "Wait. What's a Chelonian?"

Arthur groaned. "I'll explain on the way, Frank."

...

The boy named Jamie was apparently Mary's younger brother, and he had gotten caught up in a cult.

Irene whistled once Arthur seemed to have talked himself dry, swatting at a horsefly on Bluster's flank. "What a mess."

"You're tellin' me." Arthur growled. "Woman shows back up and just...drops her damn problem into my lap like a pile of hog shit. And I'm the fool that agreed to see what I could do!" He shook his head, seeming disgusted with himself. "All it took was her sayin' 'I think of you often' and it was over. She knew it too, that's the worst part. She knows exactly what I'll do for her." He slapped his forehead, moaning, "God Frank, I'm such a fool."

"It's admirable of you to help a former beau. I know many men wouldn't give the object of their affections the time of day once they had broken something off." Irene commended him, though it was admittedly reluctant as she privately thought that Arthur was being used. "Granted, leaving her to sort problems out for herself every once and a while probably couldn't hurt."

"She's real worried about Jamie. She thinks these fellers will hurt him." Arthur made his excuses and Irene didn't begrudge him them. It was no doubt just nice for him to feel wanted again, even for a brief period of time. Judging from how sad he had been last night, he had clearly cared deeply for Mary at one point. Perhaps he still did.

"Will you court her again? Now that she's a widow, I mean." Irene asked. All she received in reply to her question was a bone-deep sigh and a shake of his head. After a moment, Arthur spurred his horse to a brisk canter. Clearly, the time for their discussion was over.

They made good time towards Carmody Dell, the weather beautiful and the roads relatively dry. Arthur stayed silent for the duration of the trip, the man obviously deep in thought. Irene let him be. This couldn't be a simple thing for him to handle.

Jamie, of course, as teenagers were prone to do, fled at the first sign of someone coming to drag him back home. As soon as Arthur had convinced the loony leader of the Chelonians to let him speak to the boy, Jamie was off like a shot. "I'm not comin' with you, Arthur!" He yelled over his shoulder while fumbling into the saddle of his horse.

Irene swore nearly in sync with Arthur, rushing to mount her own horse and pursue the kid. "Just come and speak with Mary, then make up your mind!" Arthur shouted after Jamie, his tone exasperated.

"Leave me alone, Arthur! I didn't ask for your help!"

Arthur growled something under his breath and jerked his chin at Irene, gesturing for her to give him space on the trail to let his horse have her head. The horse's gait lengthened into a smooth, ground-devouring gallop, and as the terrain leveled out he called, "Frank, split off, try n' stop him before the crossin'!"

Irene nodded, clicking her tongue at Bluster and then choking up her grip on the reins to change the horse's course. Bluster almost immediately stuttered in his step, the horse fidgeting wildly as the rails parallel to him began to sing, indicating a train was approaching.

"You ain't stupid Jamie, you can see this is crazy!" Irene heard Arthur boom at the younger man before she ducked low along Bluster's neck, the horse's mane whipping her face as she urged him from a canter to a gallop. Clinging to her hat with every inch of tenacity she had in her body, Irene flew over the embankment beside the train tracks. A gun cracked, but she didn't dare raise her head to see who was shooting. The three-thirty engine was making it's way inexorably forward, overtaking her now, and Jamie showed no signs of slowing.

"Jamie!" Irene shouted. Bluster wasn't fast enough, they wouldn't get there in time-!

The boy's horse was nearly crushed by the cowcatcher of the locomotive, narrowly avoiding disaster when he crossed the tracks directly in front of the barreling engine. Arthur reined his horse in as the train cars rattled past, and Irene heard a few choice oaths out of him that made the tips of her ears turn pink.

Jamie had actually dismounted his horse on the other side of the tracks, and continued to rant at Arthur over the sound of the train cars passing between them. "I've found somethin'--a callin'!" He insisted.

"You're just a kid!" Arthur yelled in reply. "You're makin' a big mistake!"

"I'm not takin' advice from you!" Jamie spat. "You're an outlaw!"

Whatever else he said faded into the background to Irene. Outlaw. An outlaw? Arthur was…

Another gunshot shattered her thoughts, Jamie discharging his pistol into the air and accidentally frightening his own horse. The animal fled in a panic, leaving the young man stranded. "Leave me alone!" He shouted at Arthur as the last train car vanished into the nearby tunnel.

"Please, kid." Arthur implored, his hand out in a placative manner. "Put that gun down."

"I warn you, Arthur! I'm--" Jamie floundered, still not actually aiming the gun at Arthur. "I don't wanna' live anymore!" He cried abruptly, startling Irene with the sheer emotion in his confession. The woman all but pitched herself off her horse, then halted when she grimly realized if she got any closer Jamie would doubtlessly make a terrible choice. Her hand twitched towards the rope coiled up on her belt as she weighed her options.

Arthur seemed stunned, both hands out now as he tried to talk down the tumultuous young man. "Kid, just calm-"

"Leave me alone!" Jamie screamed, pressing the revolver to his own temple.

"Wait!" Irene pleaded, "Jamie, just wait!"

The boy did actually hesitate for the barest split second with the gun against his head, and Arthur somehow managed to get a shot off to knock the pistol out of Jamie's grip. Irene hadn't even seen him draw his own gun, let alone fire! Jesus Christ, maybe he was an outlaw!

Jamie staggered back a step, holding his hand. He had probably felt that impact all the way up his shoulder. Irene didn't envy the dead-limb tingle he would no doubt be dealing with shortly.

Arthur stormed forward across the tracks, biting his words out as he scooped up Jamie's revolver, "now calm down. Let's go see your sister." Like he witnessed people trying to kill themselves in front of him all the time. Jamie's lower lip quivered and he flung himself at Arthur, leaving the older man to pat him awkwardly on the back while he wept. "It's okay, kid." Arthur soothed, his tone gruff but his eyes betraying the relief he felt.

"Have I been a terrible fool, Arthur?" Jamie sniffled.

Arthur chuckled dryly, handing the younger man back his revolver. "I dunno'. I don't know enough about it." He gestured for Irene to approach with the horses, giving her a grateful smile and a nod of thanks. "One thing I do know: there ain't no shame in lookin' for a better world."

"I missed you, Arthur." Jamie told the older man sincerely as Arthur mounted his horse. "Are you and Mary sweet on one another again?" Irene watched with a certain perverse interest as Arthur went still, then shook it off and reached down to help Jamie up behind him on his horse.

"Ah, nah. That's all a long time ago son."

"Thanks for stoppin' me, mister. Sorry I caused you two so much trouble." Jamie apologized to Irene, his head bowed in shame.

She rode up alongside Arthur's horse, reaching out to give Jamie's hand a comforting squeeze. "I get it, Jamie. Everything is just...hard, and ugly sometimes."

"A-Are you an outlaw, too?" Jamie asked shyly.

Arthur snorted derisively through his nose before Irene could reply. "Son, this man right here has moral fiber that's tougher n' a damn grizzly bear. He ain't no outlaw. Frank Craft, I'd like to introduce you to the infamous gunslinger Jamie Gillis."

"Aw, shut up Arthur." Jamie whined, his pale face bright red.

Irene waved off Arthur's praise, still concerned about the younger man. "What drove you to the Chelonians anyway, Jamie?"

"My father. He's…" Jamie hesitated. "He's always yellin' at me, tellin' me how I won't never amount to anythin' or be a proper man. I-I had to get away, I couldn't take it anymore!" He insisted, like he was still trying to convince himself.

Arthur sighed heavily. "Forgive me, but your father is a bully and a coward, don't listen to him."

Irene shot the older man a sidelong glance as Jamie scolded him for saying such things about his patriarch. "I wouldn't say that, but maybe your father doesn't have your best interests at heart." She tried for a gentler approach. "He might be caught up in worrying about lineage or some such nonsense."

"He's right though. I'm no good for anythin'." Jamie continued dejectedly.

"Whoa there, I won't tolerate that kind of talk." Irene said, keeping her voice stern. "A lot of people in my life told me I was useless, good for nothing aside from a...very specific task." She could feel Arthur looking at her from under the brim of his hat. She ignored him for the moment. "But I'm not letting anyone else dig my grave and usher me into it. You shouldn't either."

"I'm just so scared of bein' a disappointment." Jamie murmured. "The way he looks at me, all heated on account of me sayin' somethin' foolish…" he shook his head.

"So learn! Engage him on his turf. My father was a doctor, you can imagine the bullshit he put me through for the sake of pretending to have a conversation." Irene encouraged, "there must be something you're good at. You can certainly ride a horse damn well!"

"Arthur taught me how to ride." Jamie informed her quietly.

"Too well, apparently." Arthur griped. "Frank's right though, you went like the damn hounds of Hell were after you."

"Felt that way." Jamie shot back, making the older man smirk and reach over his shoulder to muss Jamie's hair.

"Good. Means I ain't lost my edge yet."

Jamie prattled on to Irene for the rest of the ride to the train station, seeming grateful to just have a willing ear to bend. Irene, for her part, tried to offer him what little helpful advice she did have. Her own father had been overbearing, but she had also never had a chance to really get out from beneath his presence before he had passed on.

Arthur asked Irene to wait outside once they arrived and she willingly obliged, understanding that he probably wanted some time to speak with his old flame in private. So she settled down against the ramp railing and tipped her hat forward over her eyes, intent on dozing off in the sunlight. She had been up pretty late last night, plus rising early that morning…

…

A boot nudging her ribs roused her and Irene yawned, accepting the hand up almost on reflex at this point. Arthur looked terrible, his eyes dull in the shadow of his hat with a sadness that seemed bottomless.

"Went well, then?" Irene asked, wishing more than anything that she could simply pull him into an embrace.

Arthur cleared his throat, looking wistfully in the direction of the departing train. "As well as anyone would expect, given...everythin'." He answered, his voice hoarse. "I...thanks for comin' along, Frank. If you wanna' stick around I could use the company, though I won't be very good company m'self." He warned.

"I'll have to check my schedule, but I'm pretty sure I'm clear to ride with you." Irene tried to joke, gripping his shoulder in a not-hug.

Arthur exhaled, covering her hand with his own as if to voice his thanks. "I'd just...rather not be alone right now. This time, anyway." The older man rasped.

"You don't have to explain anything to me." Irene assured him. "I'm here if you need someone to listen, but I'm also just here."

"You're a good man, Frank Craft." Arthur choked out.

"Not nearly as good as you, Arthur Morgan."

They mounted up and Irene let him lead their path, his thoughtful silence softened by the sounds of the forest around them. It felt...companionable, instead of stoney.

Arthur broke the quiet after a time to say, "keep an eye out for somethin' edible. Ain't gotta' be army-sized." Irene had her bow drawn before he could finish, nocking an arrow in preparation.

"Rabbit?"

"Huh? I mean, sure, that'll-"

The bowstring sang as she let the arrow fly into the underbrush, and Irene dismounted to scoop the small animal up and retrieve her arrow.

"Shit, you're a regular quick draw on that bow." Arthur drawled, palming over his own bow that hung by his leg. "Mine's got a hell of a lot less give to it, but it'll send the arrow clear through a damn log if I haul it back enough."

"You've obviously got me outgunned, if earlier with Jamie was any indication." Irene pointed out. "I didn't even see you draw."

Arthur shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. "Practice." He replied tersely. "Lots and lots of practice, Frank."

"I don't doubt it." She hoped she didn't sound judgemental.

They made their camp for the night atop a high, grassy mesa. Arthur set to building a fire while she skinned and quartered the rabbit, the silence back but still not overly heavy.

Irene kept her voice soft when she did speak, feeling almost as though she needed to treat Arthur like a skittish animal. His answers were monosyllabic, gruff, but not rude. Once they had eaten, he settled back on his bedroll and just stared at the fire for a good long time.

"I took in a lady bounty a few weeks ago." He remarked out of the blue. "Real oddity."

Irene looked up from where she was darning the hole in her overcoat. "Oh?" She asked, wondering privately what had brought this on. "What did she do?"

"Killed her mother. String of husbands too." Arthur shook his head, "a Frank, Henry, Howie and Willie."

"Willie?" Irene's heart tripped in her chest. "Do you...what was his last name?"

Arthur fumbled with his satchel, digging around for a moment before producing a tattered poster. He squinted at the printing. "Willie, Willie...ah! Willie Carson, apparently."

It was him! Her husband's name falling from Arthur's lips sent a tremor through her body. "I knew him." Irene tried to keep her voice steady. "Whatever she did to him, he deserved it."

Arthur's eyebrows shot up and he fixed her with an incredulous look. "Christ Frank, I ain't ever heard you say boo to nobody before. I gotta' know this story. Bad blood between you two?"

"He was very heavy-handed with his spousal correction and discipline." Irene gritted out. "To the point where his wife was kept in the house for the sake of his reputation."

"Oh." Arthur's voice was a low rasp. Then, hesitantly, "you ain't gotta' sugarcoat it with me, Frank. We both know that spousal correction is just a fancy way of sayin' wife beatin'."

"She lived in constant fear that he would get her with his child and then, then she knew her life would be over." Irene knew that she probably sounded far too angry. "The local authorities wouldn't listen to me because Willie was an affluent man in the community." She snapped, hurrying to amend a second later, "I-I mean, her. Wouldn't listen to her."

"At least you tried to help her." Arthur pointed out, seeming to misunderstand her verbal slip-up. "Lotta' folks just accept that shit and turn a blind eye. I personally can't abide by wife-strikin'. Shit gets me heated."

"Well yes, because you're a decent man." Irene retorted.

Arthur shrugged. "I'm too ornery. Last time I let my temper get the best of me, I beat a feller to within an inch of his life." He stared down at his hands. "I just…I can't abide that shit. Women are s'posed to be protected an' loved, cherished, all that. Granted, that colorful bitch from earlier can swing for all I care, but I hate thinkin' about the kinda' life she must have had to turn out like that. In my experience, most people don't just up and kill someone. There's plannin', or somethin' that makes 'em flip their lid."

"Good riddance. To both of them." Irene huffed, making Arthur sigh.

"S'pose you're right. Ain't much use thinkin' about it. The feller's dead anyhow, and accordin' to you it weren't no great loss." He grumbled, rubbing at his eyes wearily. "But anyway, I brought it up 'cause she was talkin' the whole ride back 'bout how she was sick in the head. Needed help. She begged me to bring her to an asylum instead of the jail, then she tried feedin' me some horseshit about needin' a big strong man to--to keep her in line." Arthur looked aggrieved. "I ain't...I'm not that kinda' man, Frank. I hope you know that, at least, even if Daddy Gillis never believed it. I get mad sometimes and I do stupid shit when I'm piss-drunk, but I promise I ain't that kinda' man." He clenched his fists, staring down at them.

Irene's heart softened at the sight of him so pensive, and she put down her neglected darning. "Arthur," she called quietly to get his attention. When he looked up, she stated, "you could never be like him."

Arthur appeared momentarily relieved, before a new thought seemed to strike him. "Wait, but what happened to his first wife? He married Miss Swan--"

"She just disappeared one night." The woman kept her eyes down, pretending to focus on the jacket. "Nobody knows where Irene is or what happened to her." Hopefully, she added to herself.

"Irene? Her name was Irene?" Arthur asked sharply.

Shit. "Yessir, Irene."

"What did she look like?"

"It's been ages since I saw her, Arthur. I've all but forgotten." Irene lied. "I probably wouldn't recognize her even if I did see her again. If she's still alive, she must look like an entirely different person. A new woman."

"She didn't look like the woman from last night? The fiddler? You said you spoke to her this mornin'."

Shit. "Arthur, when I spoke to your friend this morning, I was saddling up Bluster. I wasn't really...paying attention." She mentally congratulated herself on her quick thinking, simultaneously hating how clammy her hands had grown. Why had she even decided to return to being Irene for the night?! It had been so foolish. If she had known about Mary, she doubted she would have gone forward with her little scheme. A shameless cry for attention with no definitive end goal.

Had she wanted Arthur to simply bed her and be done with it? No, of course not. She held no love for that particular portion of married life. She had wanted…

She had wanted the attention, yes, but more than that she had wanted to feel safe as herself again. Being Frank offered her a shield of deceit that, while nigh impregnable, doomed her to a solitary existence. The longer she was around someone, the more comfortable she would become and the more likely it was that she would make a grievous error.

Arthur, with his honest strength and blunt speech, had her interest from the second he hadn't taken advantage of her being caught in a trap. And the way that he had treated her last night…

Fine ladies deserve a proper gentleman, he had said, the words resigned and melancholic. As if he was used to being treated poorly when it came to these matters. From what little he had mentioned of his past (orphaned at a young age, in with a bad crowd), there was no doubt in Irene's mind that he had experienced a certain amount of prejudice regardless of whether it had been truly earned or not. The world could be such a cruel place.

Arthur, meanwhile, visibly deflated at her reply. "Oh. Shit, sorry. That makes sense." He mumbled, sounding crushed. "I...well, I guess a coincidence like that would be pretty far-fetched."

"Why do you want to track that woman so badly? I mean, there's a million other gals out there that are easier to find." Irene queried. "In Valentine alone, nevermind elsewhere."

Arthur scoffed, "Hell no, I ain't sayin' shit. You'll make fun of me!"

"About something as important as this seems to be to you? Never!" Irene tried to keep her tone nonchalant. "I'm just curious is all. Don't think I've ever seen you this antsy in the admittedly-brief period of time that we've been acquainted."

"She…" Arthur hesitated, squinting at her suspiciously. "You promise not to laugh?"

"Cross my heart." Irene swore, making the hand motion.

"She made me feel...I dunno', seen, I guess." He admitted quietly. "I mean, I'm used to bein' a target. I'm usually the biggest feller in the room. Probably the nastiest too. But I get looked over a lot unless it's for a fight, and she...well, yeah. She saw me." He heaved out a heavy sigh. "She called me some shit that really stuck to my ribs, brave and kind and loyal and all that. It's...it hurts, hearin' that stuff if you haven't heard it from another woman. Makes you feel like your insides was carved out. And she didn't know me from Job, but it was like she knew that was what I needed to hear."

"Oh." Irene's heart ached. I would say those things to you every damn day if I could, Arthur. "Well, they're true! I'm glad she told you that." She said cheerily. "You've been a very good friend to me, after all, and every time I bump into you it seems like you're doing something for someone else."

"Eeyup, I'm a regular errand boy." Arthur replied ruefully. He clapped his hands together after a moment, nodding to the fiddle case that was propped up on a nearby log. "Hey, how about a song? If you ain't too beat."

"Of course! It would be my honor to play for you, Mister Arthur." Irene answered grandly, giving him a lavish bow. He waved off the gesture, finally blessing her with a grin. It didn't take her long to tune the old Hyde and she got to her feet, folding her bandanna to tuck between the instrument and her chin. "Any requests?" She quipped.

Arthur shook his head and she hummed softly, drawing the bow downwards a few times to spread and warm up the coat of rosin.

She stuck to some familiar songs at first, moving her whole body in time to Sir Roger de Coverley and whistling to Rye Whiskey. Arthur's spirits seemed to be improving, the man eventually nodding along with the music and humming baritone notes. The moon rose overhead and she played on, making it up as she went.

Irene wasn't sure what came over her. Maybe it was the huge sky full of stars, or the way Arthur's eyes had warmed once more...maybe it was simply the audience of one. But she felt a surge of courage race through her body, tinged faintly with longing. She wanted to sing. Even though it might expose her for who she was.

A quick draw across the strings, a little flair to show off, and then she opened her mouth. "I wish I could play the violin," Irene sang, her voice rasping a little as she struggled to keep up the facade of timbre. "I'd play 'til tears roll down your cheek and chin. And if you sang along, we could write the saddest song."

Arthur settled back against the log he had rolled next to the fire, his body stilling as he listened to her voice.

"Sometimes I indulge my every whim, and piece by piece I build the cell I'm in." Irene continued, gesturing at Arthur with the bow and smiling when he laughed ruefully. "But I only stay here long, enough to write the saddest song."

The heel of her boot hit the ground rhythmically, keeping time with the tune she played.

"I dreamt I stood on a hill, that I wished was a mountain, to look back on all my accomplishments. Well they must have been small, because I couldn't seem to find them, so I took a leap off of a precipice."

"Christ, you tryin' to tell me somethin'?" Arthur teased, "don't do anythin' foolish, Frank!"

Irene stuck her tongue out at him, feeling triumphant over his joviality. "I wish I could play piano well...I'd hit the keys that make your spirit swell! And if you sang along, we could write the saddest song." She noticed that Arthur was actually humming along when she repeated the chorus, and that gave her an idea. "Alright, this next part I'll sing first, and then we can do it together!" She urged, grinning when he grumbled. "C'mon, don't be a spoilsport!" The young woman cajoled, showing off a bit on the strings as she shifted her weight back and forth.

"Oh, fine, I guess." Arthur agreed reluctantly. "I ain't much for singin' though, so you brought this on yourself."

"Whatever the cost, whether it works out or not," Irene sang, "whatever the cost, whether it works out or not, I'll follow you, I'll follow you, I'll follow you with my heart." She inclined her head at Arthur, encouraging him to join in.

The man was tentative, his voice so deep she could barely hear him when he did humor her. "Whatever the cost, whether it works out or not…"

"Whatever the cost, whether it works out or not…" Irene stayed silent for the last portion of the bridge, listening to Arthur as he appeared to finally loosen back up.

"I'll follow you, I'll follow you, I'll follow you with my heart." He drawled with a pleased little smile, like he was proud of himself.

"I dreamt I stood on a hill, that I wished was a mountain, to look back on all my accomplishments. Well they must have been small, because I couldn't seem to find them, so I took a leap off of a precipice." One last indulgent bar on the strings, a high note and then she swept into a deep bow, laughing as Arthur whistled and clapped. "Yes, thank you, thank you, my adoring public." Irene waved him off dramatically, still chuckling as she plopped back down on the ground alongside him.

"Hell, I can't believe you ain't on a stage somewhere makin' honest money right now." Arthur praised, making her blush. "You're damn good, Frank!"

"Oh I'm not nearly good enough for all that." Irene protested bashfully. "I haven't practiced in ages, so I'm rusty." She picked at a mended area on her pants, unable to fight back her smile. "I'm pretty mediocre."

"You don't get it." Arthur rebuffed her bluntly. "It don't matter whether you're good at it or not, Frank. You like doin' it. A blind feller coulda' seen that. You were havin' a good time. Perked me right up to see you just jauntin' to your tunes, singin' prettier than a choir boy," he grinned. "You're somethin' else, Frank Craft."

"And you're far too kind, Arthur Morgan." Irene hesitated, the question on the tip of her tongue. "Hey Arthur, what Jamie said earlier..." She saw Arthur straighten up out of the corner of her vision. "About you uh, being an outlaw and all. Was that true, or was he just being spiteful?"

"Would you think less of me if it were true, Frank?" Arthur asked her instead of answering, his voice gone gravelly. His eyes watched her intently from beneath the brim of his hat, the blue glowing nearly green in the yellow light from the fire.

Irene hesitated, chewing her lower lip as she deliberated on her reply. On the one hand, she was in a very isolated area with a man who may or may not be an outlaw, and who may or may not be desperate to keep that a secret.

But on the other hand, good people did bad things every day. She was certain that the rabbit she had caught didn't think her particularly merciful or just. And there were tales about people who were wrongly accused, imprisoned or punished. Maybe…

"I don't think I would, Mister Arthur." She answered him truthfully. "If you are an outlaw, you must not be a very good one."

Arthur startled her by roaring with laughter, the man bent nearly double. "Truer words ain't never been spoken, Frank." He finally panted out, still chuckling. "You don't know the half of it."

Irene scowled. "Hey, c'mon! I'm being serious!" She protested.

"So am I. If I don't go down in history as the worst outlaw ever, I'll be sorely disappointed in myself." He grinned, but it soon faded. "Before she left, Mary...she said I'd never change." He murmured, posture folded in on himself once more. "I guess she was right. Worst outlaw this side of Saint Denis."

"Well, it may be more beneficial to her if you don't change." Irene reasoned, her tone probably a bit too pointed.

"How d'you figure?" Arthur asked in confusion.

"Arthur, c'mon. You said it yourself earlier today! She popped out of nowhere with a problem for you to solve!"

"Well, yeah, but ain't you said it was admirable that I was helpin' her?" Arthur challenged, seating his hat further back on the crown of his head.

"Oh absolutely! Don't get me wrong, Arthur. What you did was a very good thing. But from where I'm sitting, it looked a lot less like someone asking for your help and more like someone expecting something from you because they know how to manipulate your nature." Irene lowered her voice, dropping her eyes to stare at the dirt her boots were methodically scuffing up. "It just...seemed like she was taking advantage of your kindness, that's all."

"She's always played me for the fool, Frank." Arthur said gently. "It wouldn't work if there weren't some truth behind it, I reckon."

"It's wrong, though!" Irene retorted hotly.

"Well, maybe." Arthur allowed. "But if I didn't help her, I doubt anyone else would." His sigh sounded like it came from the bedrock. "Even if I am bein' toyed with, I...I think it's okay, y'know? As long as I can help, it don't matter what a person's intents are, I s'pose."

"I take back what I said." Irene grumbled. "You're not a kind man, Arthur Morgan, you're quite possibly the kindest man. Making my life damn difficult."

His warm laughter in reply was the best sound she had heard out of him yet, only intensifying when she continued to grouse and complain good-naturedly about his Samaritan habits.

Irene eventually got back to her feet, mischief on her mind as she listened to the wolves howl to each other. The violin sang out again, this time mimicking their long, mournful calls. "Beautiful, aren't they?" She said after a few moments. "They always sound so lonely."

"Sure." Arthur drawled. "But you know as well as I do that there's probably sixty of the bastards all together, yellin' n' carryin' on. If there's one thing most wolves ain't lackin' in, it's company." He pointed out. "Them and the damn coyotes."

Irene carried on imitating the howls, tweaking the pitch and draw by ear as she went. "I think I'd like being a wolf."

Arthur chuckled, "is that so, Mister Frank?"

"Yep. Get to yell at the moon all the time, rip things apart, enjoy pleasant company…" Irene shrugged. "What's not to like?"

"Frank, I'll let you in on a trade secret." Arthur actually made the effort of leaning forward, propping himself up with a hand on his knee like he was sincerely about to impart some age-old wisdom. "You can yell at the moon any damn time you please out here."

"What? Will the wonders never cease?" Irene gasped playfully. "Truly this is God's country."

"You tellin' me you ain't never acted on them primal urges?" Arthur's grin was slow, but no less devastating for it. Irene was hard-pressed to tear her eyes away. "Ain't no way our forefathers ain't howled at the moon, Frank." He spat into the fire and then rose to his full height, rolling out his shoulders once he stood. "C'mon, I'll go first."

"You'll go-?" Irene didn't have the chance to finish her question as Arthur swept the hat off his head, tilted back and unleashed an extended, rumbling howl. The far-off wolf pack set to yapping and cacophony, then a few of them seemed to howl back in reply. Irene actually giggled, struggling to stifle the feminine noise.

"Alright, your turn." Arthur said, cocking his head at her. "Don't be shy." He teased, giving her a heavy pat on the shoulder. "It's gotta' come from your belly. They can tell the difference if it don't."

Irene gulped. If someone had told her on the night she left her husband's house (well, late husband's house, she realized with a rush of guilty relief) that she would one day find herself on a bluff alongside a potential outlaw, hesitating while said potential outlaw cajoled her into acting on some wild, juvenile urges, she would have laughed them out of the room.

Now, though?

She raised her face to the moon, cupped her hands around her mouth and offered her piercing, lonesome howl to whatever deity might be listening.

…

It had been almost a month since the two of them had parted ways, Arthur looking significantly more lighthearted and whistling as he waved farewell.

Now well into summer, it seemed like a thunderstorm happened every single afternoon. One such tempest had been hovering on the horizon for hours now, the air humid and sticky and frankly, Irene had had enough.

Bluster shook himself off like a dog, whickering at her when she swung into the saddle and wiped the sweat from her brow. "Shush." Irene grumbled, directing him off the beaten path to a small deer track. With any luck, she would find a watering hole where she could give herself and her clothes a quick rinse and then dry in peace. Anything to combat this unbearable heat!

Fifteen minutes at a brisk trot brought her to a clear spring, deep in the woods and all but hidden by a thick carpet of ferns and moss. Irene dismounted with a sigh of relief, leading Bluster to the edge so he could get a drink while she built her fire. She kept it small, not wanting to draw extra attention while she was in a vulnerable state.

The water was freezing, but after the heat of the day and the stickiness of her clothes, she welcomed the bracing chill on her bare skin. Rinsing her gear was a simple enough affair. She spread her clothes out on some bushes to dry and then settled back to relax a little in the water, trusting Bluster to alert her to any suspicious activity.

So of course, today was the day that she didn't secure Bluster and he ended up wandering off as she dozed in the sun-dappled water.

The woman was jerked awake when she heard a booming voice yell, "Frank! I found yer horse, the cowardly little shit. Hey! Frank, where are you?" It was Arthur. Because of course it was. Irene cursed her luck even as she spotted the man approaching through the trees, leading Bluster and his own horse between the dense trunks. "Frank! You here?" Arthur called, sounding a bit more concerned now.

She debated going under the surface and just letting herself drown before she hurriedly ducked behind the lone, half-submerged rock that graced the spring. Her attempts to hide would prove futile however, as Arthur tied up Bluster and then sauntered down to the spring with his docile mare in tow, presumably so she could drink her fill.

The large man knelt, observing the now-dead fire and footprints that Irene had left and then he shrugged, moving forward to the small pond to splash some water on his face. As he straightened back up though, he caught sight of her and jumped about a foot, flinching back with a curse like he had been burned. Irene felt her face heat while she watched his eyes travel down what little of her body was visible before he quickly tore them away. "I...Irene?" Arthur asked incredulously. "What are you...why are you out here with Frank's…" he paused, his brow furrowing. "Are you two--I mean, i-it ain't none of my business I s'pose, but...I mean I..." His voice trailed off and Irene wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. This was probably the singular most embarrassing moment of her life.

"Arthur, there is...something Frank's been keeping from you." She began evenly. The look of absolute betrayal on his face gave her pause, but she soldiered on doggedly, "I suppose it's something I was keeping from you as well."

"Stop. Don't you dare, I...shit woman, I thought you were different." Arthur hissed, his grip tightening on his horse's reins. "How many times do I have to make a damn fool of myself?"

"Please, let me explain." Irene implored, swimming over to the edge of the pool. "This is a little more complicated than you realize, I promise."

"Oh shoah." Arthur drawled sarcastically, turning his body and keeping his eyes fixed on a point across the small spring as if to afford her some vague semblance of privacy when she climbed out of the water. "Make it real simple-like for me, Miss Irene. You know I'm a little soft in the head." Irene tried to walk past him to where she had laid her clothes out to dry but Arthur caught her wrist, the man still refusing to look at her. "I'll ask for this much honesty, ma'am. Was you two already involved back in Valentine?" He growled.

Irene narrowed her eyes and slipped her hand beneath his chin, forcing him to turn his head. He still wouldn't truly look at her, glaring off to the side. "Arthur, I am Frank." Her voice trembled slightly as she said the words, feeling like she was signing her own death warrant. She had gotten used to this life.

"You think this is some kinda' joke, woman?" Arthur snapped harshly, "if there's one thing you clearly ain't, i-it's a man!" He made a vague up and down gesture, his jaw set firmly as he locked his gaze over her shoulder somewhere.

"It's me, Arthur. Frank and Irene are the same person." She insisted, her other hand coming up so she could cradle his jaw. God, how many times had she dreamed about touching him like this? "It's me." She murmured, her thumbs grazing the deep scarring on his chin.

Arthur's arm flew up and he pawed at the back of her neck, his fingers roughly raking through her wet hair until he appeared to find what he sought. The divot from when she had hit her head, the one he had personally seen to. His eyes finally met her own and he swallowed hard. "But...B-But…" Arthur stammered, brows drawn low and tight. "Frank was…"

"I didn't want to get hurt, Arthur. I was a lone woman making her way in a hard world." She took a deep breath. "I am...I'm so sorry for lying to you. I know you've been hurt before and...I never wanted to hurt you, Arthur. But I also didn't want to be hurt anymore. I had to keep myself safe."

"That stuff you said, 'bout Willie Carson and his spousal disciplin'? You and that Irene, you're the same person, ain't you?" Arthur snarled.

"Yes."

Arthur swore under his breath. In a surprising twist, he dragged her nude form against his chest, embracing her tightly. "I'm so sorry, Irene." He breathed into her hair. Irene relaxed in his arms after going momentarily stiff out of fear, her hands gripping his shirt. "You could have told me. I wouldn't...I mean, hell."

"I wasn't sure, Arthur. I've been so afraid."

"Of...of me?"

"No, Lord no! Of practically everyone aside from you." Irene assured him. "You've been nothing but kind and gracious to me since our first meeting, Arthur."

"I've spit in front of you, Miss Irene." Arthur sounded mortified. "I've...shit, I've talked real rough around you too. I am--I'm sorry, ma'am." He apologized, his shoulders drooped.

"Arthur, you believed I was a man. You have nothing to be sorry for."

"You must think I'm a real fool, not noticin' what you was from the start." Arthur mumbled. "I mean you...you're just lovely, an'..."

"I dressed like a man, talked like a man and lived like a man, Arthur. I got very good at doing what I needed to in order to keep my secret." Irene tried to crack a joke, "all it really takes is some dirt and a hat. The rest just fell into place."

"Oh, I'll bet." Arthur grunted, releasing her and covering his eyes with his hand. "Now put your gear on, chrissakes. I ain't in the habit of bein' a pervert."

"Nothing is dry yet!" Irene protested, wrapping her arms around herself as she mourned the loss of his body heat. "I had to wash everything, it was revolting."

Arthur groaned and turned to dig through his saddlebags, coming up with a shirt that might have been white once. "Here, put this on at least. I ain't  got any underthin's for you, but it's better n' nothin'."

"Maybe I prefer being naked." Irene said haughtily even as she accepted the long-sleeved undershirt.

Arthur huffed out an exasperated breath. "Trust me, I prefer you that way too," he fired back. "But I'd like the whole damn story and I know I ain't gonna' get it if I'm distracted on account of you bein' buckass."

"Arthur Morgan, you flatterer!" Irene laughed, struggling into the large shirt while he grumbled to himself. It grazed her knees, hardly decent, but as long as she paid attention she doubted she would risk exposing herself all over again. "Alright, I'm clothed. Or...whatever you might consider this to be."

Arthur motioned for her to sit down beside the smoldering embers of her fire, and he took up his own position across from her. It was as if he was deliberately keeping something between them. Irene's heart tripped when she realized that it was possible he was doing it for the sake of her comfort. Maybe he feared he had already misstepped with the hug?

"I promise I'm not scared of you, Arthur." She reiterated with a smile.

"I know," he muttered in reply. "Just...tell me the whole bit, okay? Don't skimp."

"You...are you sure?" Irene asked softly. "There's a lot to tell."

"I'm countin' on it, passin' the time while your kit dries out."

(The song Irene was playing)

Part Three: More

#red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 fanfic #rdr2 spoilers #rdr2 community #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x original female character #rdr2 arthur #rdr2 fandom #slow burn #Eventual romance #high honor arthur #woman in disguise trope #hurt/comfort #Arthur is a good man

[spoon-writes]

Ends of the Earth | Chapter 24

Fandom: The Mandalorian

Pairing: Mando x OC

Read on FFN or AO3

Summary: When Sinead's husband is ripped from her, she escapes the Hutt Empire and goes on a quest to find him. Since being a runaway slave in the Outer Rim isn't exactly easy, she makes the Mandalorian an offer he can't refuse, and soon they travel across the galaxy looking for her missing husband.

Chapter index

Chapter 24 - The Searchers

Sinead stood at the bottom of the ramp, hands on her hips. They were back on another forest planet. Or moon rather, and this one seemed more hostile than the last one. The trees were older and darker, covered in thick moss that swallowed the sounds of nature. The trunks were too wide for her to reach around, and the branches intertwined to make a nearly impenetrable canopy that covered the ground in shadows.

The tracking fob had led them here, to this place.

She let out a deep breath.

Inside the Crest, Mando placed the child on top of the bed. "You gotta stay here. It's too dangerous."

The child let out a sad coo and tried to climb down before Mando grabbed him and put him back.

"You can't come. I'm sorry."

Sinead smiled for the first time since they left the mining station. Mando still seemed ... hesitant around the kid sometimes, like something was stopping him from fully committing.

At last, Mando appeared at the top of the ramp. "According to the tracking fob, it's close by."

"Great." The forest swallowed the sound, making her voice sound faint and weedy.

"You can stay with the kid. I can do this myself." Mando pressed a command into the device on his vambrace and the ramp went up.

"You've already done enough heavy lifting, it's time I earn my keep, don't you think?" Plus, she'd rather not do a repeat of what happened on Zessol; somehow, the deep forest felt more dangerous than a city populated by pirates and other miscreants.

He wanted to say something more, she knew it; the way his head tilted slightly to the side made her feel exposed, vulnerable, and she turned away before he had the chance. "Where are we going?"

There was a long pause, and she could feel Mando's eyes on her back.

"This way."

She followed him away from the ship and into the overgrown forest. The ground was spongy, moisture seeping up around her feet when she stepped on the moss that carpeted everything. The way every surface was some shade of green messed with her depth perception. If it hadn't been for Mando, she would've gotten lost minutes after losing sight of the ship.

She took a deep breath of the still air, tasting the decomposing leaves on her tongue.

"You miss it?"

Mando was quiet for a moment. "Miss what?"

"Doing this. Bounty hunting."

Seconds ticked by while he thought. "It's the only thing I've ever known."

That wasn't an answer, but in a way, she was grateful that he didn't elaborate. She wouldn't have believed him if he said no, but she didn't know what to do if he said yes.

The forest grew deeper and darker as they went, fed by their silence. Now and again, a rustle went through the treetops, or one of them would become stuck in the peaty ground and have to pull their foot out with a wet squelch.

"It's kinda ironic, isn't it," Sinead said when the silence became too much. "A former slave now turned bounty hunter."

Mando rounded on her, and she took a step back, nearly tripping over a root hidden under the moss. "This isn't the same. You're only doing this to find Kyen."

That did nothing to quell the tight feeling in her chest, but she managed to force a smile. "Thanks."

They stared at each other, standing in the twilight under the trees. A shiver ran up Sinead's back.

Suddenly, a fast beeping broke the tension like a rock through an icy lake, and Mando pulled out the tracking fob.

"It's close?" Her voice sounded shrill.

"About one klick east."

"Then let's go."

After a small climb, the ground plummeted into an overgrown dell. One wrong step from a careless wanderer and they would tumble down the steep side and disappear into the foliage.

"You see a way down?" Mando silenced the screaming tracking fob.

"Not one that won't result in a broken neck." She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes; she wanted to get rid of this lingering unease that made her skin itch.

Eventually, they found a faint path snaking between the trees, which led through a thicket and into the dell. The forest seemed less dense in there, and for the first time since stepping in between the trees, Sinead got an uninterrupted look at the sky.

At the bottom of the dell, the forest opened into a clearing, with a farmhouse and a dilapidated barn that was only standing due to sheer stubbornness. Behind that, there was an empty pasture. Once upon a time, someone had painted the house white, but now it had faded into a dull grey.

"You sure this is the right spot?" Sinead whispered, eyes scanning the area. "It looks abandoned."

"Be on your guard." Mando drew his blaster.

"How do you wanna do this?" Sinead asked.

"Careful. Find out where he is."

Mando reached the steps that led to the front door when a thump sounded from the barn.

"Mando-"

"I heard it. Stay behind me."

He crept towards the barn, placing his feet deliberately on patches of moss that hid his footsteps.

The was another thump, and a shadow moved behind a crack in the small door set into the side. The tall double doors looked like they had been welded together with rust.

Sinead held her breath as Mando reached the door. He looked back at her, holding up three fingers.

One.

Two.

Three.

With a hard kick, the door came apart in an explosion of splinters.

A young human girl tumbled back with a scream.

"Oh, shit!" Mando froze halfway through the door.

Sinead was the first to snap out of it, and she pushed past Mando while shoving her blaster back into its holster. "I'm so sorry! We didn't know you were in here."

The girl scrambled to her feet, wide eyes glued to Mando. Her scruffy overalls were at least three sizes too big, and it looked like someone had taken a dull scissor to her hair, leaving it uneven and frizzled. Still, there was a determined spark glinting under her fear.

Sinead crouched down to her level. "Are you here all alone? Are there any adults around?"

The girl's eyes flickered from Sinead to Mando. Then she took a deep breath.

And screamed.

It was like a siren going off right by Sinead's head. She slapped her hands over her ears, but the explosion of sound was an icepick through her eardrums.

At last, the girl ran out of air and her scream tapered off, leaving a thunderous silence. A hand grabbed Sinead's shoulder and pulled her to her feet.

"What was-"

The door to the farmhouse exploded open, and a human shot out, a raised rifle in his hands.

Sinead didn't have time to react. Mando shoved her behind him and leveled his blaster at the human.

"GET AWAY FROM HER!" he screamed, voice shaking.

The little girl darted around Mando and Sinead and ran up the stairs to hide behind the man, wrapping her arms around his leg.

"We're not here for your family," Mando yelled.

"I want you gone. Now!"

"We're looking for someone. A Twi'lek-"

"There's no one here but us! Leave, please!" He had a distinct Core World accent.

A young Togruta boy, clenching a blaster in his hands, appeared in the doorway. His lekku only reached his shoulders, and even though he was as tall as the human, it looked like someone had grabbed him by the feet and montrals and pulled, leaving him lanky and awkward.

The tip of the rifle wavered in the air before the human blinked hard and held it steady. "Take your sister and get back in the house."

"Wh-what's going on? Who are they?" The young Togruta squared his shoulders but his hands shook as he lifted the blaster.

"No questions. Just go!"

Sinead's eyes widened. A cold barrel pressed into the small of her back, and her blaster slipped from her fingers. She slowly raised her hands.

"Put down your blaster," a sharp voice sounded behind her ear. "Or I'll sever her spine."

It seemed like Jami had found them before they found him.

Mando turned with lightning speed, but Jami was quicker, grabbing Sinead by the shoulder and pulling her out of reach.

"Don't try me! I'm serious! And step back!"

Sinead felt her eyes meet Mando's through the helmet and gave an imperceptible nod. Blood rushed in her ears.

Mando's hand tightened around the blaster for a moment before it thudded to the ground, but he didn't step back, didn't try to keep the human in his field of vision.

"Kick it away."

Mando did so, his entire body tensed like a spring ready for release.

"Laar," Jami said, raising his voice, "take the children inside and stay there."

Sinead could see the human - Laar - over Mando's shoulder. He nodded tightly and grabbed the little girl before bodily pushing the Togruta back into the house. Sinead felt a warm exhale on the back of her neck when the door banged shut.

"Vekkass sent you, didn't he?" Jami pressed the blaster harder into her back, and she winced. One shot and no amount of bacta would fuse her spine back together. Best case scenario she would be paralyzed for the rest of her life.

"Let her go." Mando's voice dipped into a growl.

"I just want to be left alone, do you understand? Whatever he thinks I stole, I don't have it." Jami started to back up, dragging Sinead further into the barn and out of sight of the house.

She wet her lips. "Let me go, and we can talk about this."

Jami dug his fingers into her shoulder where the Trandoshan bounty hunter had shot her years ago, and an echo of old pain shot down her arm. "I don't want to talk. I want you to leave."

A crash from the farmhouse made him start, and the pressure on her back disappeared for a second, but it was enough. Sinead brought down her heel on his foot and twisted out of his grasp. The blaster went off, the bolt hitting Mando's armor with a ping.

Mando pounced and ripped the blaster out of the Twi'lek's hand, kicking his legs out from under him. Jami fell back with a yell, and as he tried getting to his feet, Mando kicked him back down.

"Stay."

Sinead snatched the nearest blaster from the ground. The spot on her lower back prickled like the blaster was still there.

Jami stared up at them,red-rimmed eyes burning with anger. His blue skin stood out from his clothes that were all a dull brown or grey, speckled with dirt and dust, his cheeks hollow like he hadn't eaten in a very long time. He didn't particularly look like a pirate. "If you're gonna kill me, do it now. Just don't hurt my family, please. Don't let them see my body." He closed his eyes.

Oh, shit.

Sinead looked at Mando, trying to gauge what he wanted to do, but the helmet remained frustratingly blank, and the seconds ticked by. Usually, she could at least read something from his body language alone, but now he was betraying nothing. The thought of dragging him back to Vekkass hadn't sat well with her before, and now it felt like her body might revolt against itself if she tried.

When nothing happened, Jami opened his eyes.

"Get up," Mando ordered and took a step back, his blaster following the Twi'lek as he scrambled to his feet, lips curled over sharp teeth.

The barn creaked in the stillness. Stalls lined the walls on both sides of the big double doors, but it was clear that they'd been empty for a long time; clumps of grey straw and fossilized dung piled up on the floor. A keedee had made a nest in the rafters and was watching the situation with a disapproving glare.

"So." Jami's tongue darted out to lick his dry lips. "What happens now?"

That was a good question.

Sinead gestured over her shoulder at the house. "Is that why you left?"

Jami pressed his lips into a thin line.

"Okay." She pressed her free hand to her temple. "Where's the loot?"

Silence.

"If you don't talk, I can go-" she took a step back in the direction of the house.

"No!" Fear flashed across his face. "Keep them out of this."

Mando adjusted his grip on the blaster. "Then talk."

Jami took a shuddering breath. "I ... look, there isn't any loot."

"You mean you sold it?" Sinead said.

"I mean, there never was any loot at all."

"Explain."

His mouth moved silently as he thought and a vein popped out near his temple. Then, "Vekkass sent us out to ambush a freighter on the Triellus Trade Route, running spice from Dubrava to Nal Hutta. It would've been a suicide mission even if the Hutts hadn't been involved-" he paused, tensing up until the cords stood out on his neck- "but Vekkass didn't care. Made us go anyway. I couldn't ... I wouldn't go to my death just to please some boc'ara." He spat on the ground between them.

"Vekkass thinks you absconded with the loot."

"Of course he does. Can't fathom anyone doing anything if it's not about the money. They sent me out to die in the name of a couple of creds. How did you find me?"

"Someone saw you on Trillu."

Jami bared a row of sharp teeth. "Frang! I knew it was a bad idea …"

"What's the story with them, then?" She nodded towards the house. The earthy smell of mold and old hay tickled her nose.

"They have nothing to do with this."

"I know."

He sighed. "I met Laar shortly after I left. We ... I wasn't the only one running from something. We decided it would be safer to stay together, at least for a while." His voice softened as he spoke, and his face transformed into something more gentle for a second before morphing back into a venomous mask.

 Shit.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek and watched him intently, trying to gauge his sincerity. Fear and anger radiated from him, but he seemed genuine enough. "Why even throw in with Vekkass' crew if you hated it so much? He didn't exactly seem like the deceitful type. What you see is what you get."

"I had no choice."

"We all have a choice." She felt the burn as his eyes met hers.

Jami scoffed. "Vekkass ... If you asked him, he'd say he rescued me from the spice pits on Nimbal."

Sudden cold hit her core as realization struck; she knew of Nimbal, had seen slave transports stop on Sriluur on their way to the planet. "And what would you say?"

Jami bit his tongue and looked away. "I'm not kidding myself. The only reason he kept me around was because I knew my way around a blaster, and the second I stopped being useful, he'd put a bolt through my brain. I did what I had to to survive. I don't expect you to understand."

It felt like a punch to the gut. She had nearly dragged a runaway slave back to his former master. This was all so wrong.

Jami's eyes roved across her face. "Look, I don't … I know I have nothing to bargain with, and you have no reason to help me, but please, I'm begging you ..."

"Go." It took a second before Sinead realized the word had come from her. "Just … go back into the house." She felt Mando's eyes fall on her.

"What do you-" Jami eyed Mando's blaster still aiming directly at him. "You're letting me go?"

Her mouth worked while her brain spun to come up with an answer. "I don't… I don't know."

Slowly, Mando lowered his blaster and nodded once towards the house.

Jami took a step towards the house, pausing for a moment before breaking into a run. The door to the farmhouse banged close behind him, and Sinead closed her eyes. It stung like she had been straining to see for too long.

"What do you want to do?"

She kept her eyes closed. "You're asking me?"

"It's your decision."

She finally turned to look at him; he was watching her intently, head cocked to the side. "We can't drag him back to Vekkass. Hunting a pirate is one thing, but I will not be a slave catcher."

Mando looked at the farmhouse. "He could be lying."

"I don't think he is." She couldn't explain why, but there was something about him that reminded her crushingly about herself. "In any case, I'm sure he's telling the truth about the loot. Look at this place." She spread her arms wide to encompass the barn. "Pure spice from Dubrava will net you more than a rundown farm on some backwater planet. More security, too." She bit her lower lip hard enough to break the skin. "Let's just go back to the ship. I'm sure the kid misses us."

Mando's voice modulator rustled as he sighed. "He'll run."

"Then I guess the decision's been made for us."

Mando shook his head, staring back at the house for a moment as he holstered his blaster. "C'mon, then."

Sinead stopped as they reached the edge of the clearing and looked back. The farmhouse sat cold and dead, a strange grey box amidst the vivid green of the forest. She wondered where they'd go. Then, stepping between the trees, the forest closed around her like a wall.

Mando led the way out of the dell and through the forest. She stared at the fabric of his cloak until her vision filled with grey. With every sodden step, she got further and further away from Kyen, but what was the alternative? How much was she willing to sacrifice to find him?

"What would you have done?"

Mando turned at the sound of her voice, nearly hidden in the perpetual dusk trapped under the canopy. "Does it matter?"

"Just answer the question, please."

His hands flexed in annoyance. "Sinead, I don't ... I don't know. My hunts don't usually end like this. Vekkass is the best lead we have."

Sinead looked down at the water slowly rising around her feet. "We should've just bonked him on the head before he had a chance to talk."

"You wouldn't have wanted that."

Her eyes met his through the helmet, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Suddenly, the forest seemed so quiet. "No. I wouldn't."

A noise echoed through the forest, and Mando drew his blaster, gestured at her to get down.

"Doesn’t sound like an animal.” Sinead hissed.

“It wasn’t.”

Mando retook the lead, moving slowly between the trees, keeping low to the ground. Another sound echoed through the forest closer and louder than before. Mando crouched down behind a fallen tree and signaled her to stop. She sidled up next to him and peeked her head over the moss-covered trunk.

A gunship stood in a small clearing, the metal body nearly black with carbon scoring. Seven sentients filed out of the open side. A Duros tested the springy moss with a foot before stepping out on a tussock. "What a hell-hole." He spied into the darkness with narrowed eyes, and Sinead and Mando ducked down behind the tree. "Who in their right mind would willingly live here?"

“Who in their right mind would steal from Vekkass?" Another voice rang out, to an immediate reprimand from the Duros.

"Not so loud, you idiot!"

Sinead closed her eyes and fought the urge to bang her head against a tree. As if the day hadn't been hard enough already.

"What about the others?"

"We'll go on without them," the Duros said. "Heard from Lenk they've found the ship. They'll try to break through, see if the Mando’s got any neat toys."

Cold fingers of dread closed around Sinead's throat.

"It's fine. S'not like we need 'em."

"What about the Mandalorian?"

"They don't know we're coming. If they've already killed Jami, then one less energy bolt needed, right. Vekkass said he doesn't care about the woman, but he wants the armor. Was a stroke of brilliance, it was, leaving them to do all the heavy lifting.”

Sinead's hand shot out to grab Mando's shoulder a second before he launched himself over the fallen tree; fighting seven pirates would take too long. She stabbed a finger in the direction of the Razor Crest and mouthed for him to go. He looked back towards the pirates and his shoulder tensed under her hand before he nodded once, and she let her hand fall to her side.

Mando disappeared in the direction of the ship while she slunk back the way they came. Once she was out of earshot, she broke into a dead sprint. The forest turned into a green blur as she jumped from rock to tussock to avoid getting caught in the boggy ground. Lungs burned with every breath, and her ears filled with the sound of her own heartbeat.

She bulleted through the thicket that hid the entrance to the dell, ignoring the sting as branches snagged on her clothes and hair. The farmhouse looked small and lifeless. Maybe Jami and his family had already left. She took the steps up to the door in one jump and crashed into the house, the door bouncing off the wall. She found herself in a small kitchen barely big enough to fit a table and four chairs.

Something smashed on the ground.

Jami flew up from a chair, the rifle held in a white-knuckled grip.

"Wait!" She held up her hands. "Don't shoot!"

"What do you want?" Jami's voice shook with every word.

"Vekkass' men ... in the forest ..." a stabbing pain accompanied every word.

"What?"

"I swear they're not with us ..." she rubbed her ribs, making Laar start and reach for a blaster. "They must've followed us from the base. They know you're here." She looked over her shoulder at the wall of green—no sign of them.

"If this is a trick-"

"It's not. Do you have any defenses?"

Laar lifted a shaking hand and pushed his bangs out of his eyes. "N-no. We thought we were safe."

"We were," Jami hissed and pushed his chair away with such force it clattered to the ground. "Until you showed up."

"We don't have time for-" a deep whooshing sound filled the air as something passed overhead. Sinead’s heart skipped a beat as she ran out and looked; the Razor Crest made a turn above the barn, the wind from the turbine flattening the grass and made her braid whip around her head, and it landed heavily on in the muddy pasture.

Sinead was climbing over the fence when the ramp came down, revealing Mando with a pronged rifle in his hands, the kid by his side with one little hand wrapped around the frame of the entrance.

A shout cut through the air, "what's going on?"

Sinead whirled around to see the Togruta boy running outside, the little girl attached to his leg.

"Take Elia back inside," Jami yelled, just as a blaster bolt struck the side of the ship, and all hell broke loose. The first pirate burst into the clearing.

Elia screamed as Jami grabbed her and threw her back into the house, the Togruta following close behind. Sinead jumped behind an empty watering trough just as another bolt whizzed over her head.

Shots rained through the air as more pirates appeared between the trees surrounding the farm. Sinead rolled to avoid getting hit, found her feet and ran to the ship. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw a human woman take aim.

Mando ran out of the ship, vaulting over the fence in one smooth motion and sliding behind the remains of the barn door. He fired his rifle, the bolt hitting the human in the chest who disappeared in a cloud of smoldering ash; the stench of plasma and burnt flesh filled the air.

A large Twi’lek rounded the corner of the farmhouse directly behind Jami, who was crouched behind a water-barrel, doing his best to keep the pirates away from the front door. Without stopping, Sinead took aim and fired.

Suddenly, the wind was knocked out of her and she hit the ground with a dull thud. The Duros stood over her; a broad-brimmed hat cast a deep shadow across his face. Her eyes focused on the blaster trained directly at her head.

Sounds of the battle faded out as she stared into the hollow point of the blaster.

The Duros’ face froze in a grin, the blaster tumbled from his hand that stayed outstretched in an awkward position. He made a weak gurgling sound, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. Sinead blindly grasped around for her dropped blaster, hands sinking into the soft earth.

Sinead’s ears popped as the Duros was lifted into the air by an invisible string. Whatever force had frozen him in place disappeared, and he thrashed, clawed at her as she got to her feet and looked around.

The child stood at the top of the ramp, tiny hands lifted into the air, wrinkled face contorted in concentration. His body shook like every muscle was tensed, and there was a slight pull on the world she had never felt before.

A bolt shot past her, hitting the pirate in the chest and his body collapsing into ash with a whoomph of sudden vacuum.

The kid slumped to the ground.

She got up on shaky legs. The sound of fighting faded into nothing.

A blaster bolt struck the ramp just below the child, and a current of electricity shocked her into motion; she sprinted towards the ship and scooped the kid into her arms just as another bolt grazed her leg, leaving a burnt strip of flesh across her calf. Then, they were safe inside the ship.

The kid felt weightless in her arms. He stared up at her with heavy-lidded eyes and curled a small hand around a strand of hair which had come loose from her braid.

“Sinead?” Mando stood in the opening, the strange pronged rifle clutched in one hand. They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity before Mando left the rifle leaning against the wall and pulled the kid out of her arms.

“Wh-what was that?” Her tongue felt thick and unwieldy.

Raised voices cut through his reply, and Sinead moved numbly to the opening; Jami and Laar were in the middle of an argument, heading towards the ship. When they stopped at the bottom of ramp, Laar pointedly didn’t meet her eyes.

"Well, thanks to you, I guess Vekkass knows we're here,” Jami said between clenched teeth.

"He would've found you eventually." Mando reached inside a pouch on his belt and produced the tracking fob that went into a wild staccato beeping. "He has your chain-code. He was about to send someone else when we got there."

"And you decided to take the job."

Sinead swallowed. "He has something I need.

"And what is that?"

"I'm ... I'm looking for someone. Vekkass knew him."

Jami's eyebrows shot up. "From his crew?"

"No. This was before." She didn't know why she couldn't just tell him the truth; if anyone understood it, it would probably be him.

"What are you gonna do now? I doubt he'll welcome you back with open arms."

"You can't stay here. It's only a matter of time before he sends other bounty hunters after you," Mando said.

It dawned on Sinead what he was trying to do. "And they won't be as forgiving as us."

She watched a lot of complicated emotions flicker across Jami's face. "I know." He gave Laar a pointed look. "Unless we take the fight to Vekkass, he'll never leave us alone."

It was like Laar suddenly came back to the moment; he threw his hands into the air with a yell. "Going after him is suicide!"

"Staying here isn’t any better! You want to just keep your head down, hope that he forgets about us?" Jami swung round to face Laar, his lekku twitching with agitation.

"I want us to run!"

"I'm done with running."

Sinead looked away as an embarrassed flush crawled across her cheeks. She wished they would’ve had their argument in private.

Mando cleared his throat, and both men stopped mid yell; Laar looked like he had forgotten that they were even there.

Jami stepped back and pressed a hand to his temple. "You need Vekkass alive. I need him dead. If you help me with this, then I'll do whatever I can to help you find who you're looking for."

The sun glinted on Mando's armor as he leaned on one leg and shifted the kid further up his arm. "You know how we can get inside the station?"

"I’ve got a plan."

<- Previous chapter - Next chapter ->

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x oc #mando x oc #din x oc #din djarin x oc #din djarin #fanfiction #ends of the earth #oc: Sinead

[moonlightreal]

Fate looks toward season 2

Where you reach the bad ending, where do you go from there?

In season 1 we got the bad ending.  The school had been taken over by Rosalind, Queen Luna, and Andreas, who are all extremely sus people!

Queen Luna believes in being in control, and you only get control by having power.  This is most obvious in the way she tries to crush her daughter’s spirit, thinking she can force Stella to be perfect. She’s also a believer in the Sith philosophy of using hate and anger to fuel magic.  Oh, and she covered up what happened at Aster Dell, which is super sketch.  We’re not totally sure what did happen, but if it was “heroes destroy town of blood witches and Burned ones!’ she probably wouldn’t have needed to cover it up.

Andreas is… he’s an odd one! Is anybody else getting crazy-eyes vibes from him?  His eyes are not actually crazy but there’s somethin’ off about the dude.  Badass Marco mentioned him as having “bloodlust” and said it was maybe good that Sky didn’t take after his dad. Andreas respects Rosalind to the point of drawing sword on his friend to follow Rosalind’s orders.  We hear from Silva that Rosalind had given Andreas a sense of purpose and he felt indebted to her.  For what, I wonder.  

He also seems to have hidden out of the public view for sixteen years on Rosalind’s command!  I wonder where he was hiding!  Was it just him and Beatrix in a cottage somewhere?  Also, why did Andreas neglect his son but agree to raise Beatrix?  Maybe he thought she was the chosen one, that’d be a good enough reason but B honestly seems to care for her foster father.

Also, and this is something I don’t think the show meant to imply… sometimes kids who are abused grow up to be overly sexual, since they learn the wrong kind of love from adults when they’re young.  That suggests a whole ‘nother level of grimdark and I do not think the writers meant to go there.  I think they just went “raised by Andreas” and “evil = slutty stereotype” and never put the two thoughts together to see the icky implications.  I sure as blazes hope not!  There’s dark and then there’s just ew.

And then there’s Rosalind.  What do we even know about her?  She was headmistress before Dowling, and mentor-slash-commanding-officer to the adults.  And she knows more about magic than the teachers at the school.  A lot more.  She knows about the nature of the Burned Ones and the Dragon Flame, and she taught Bloom how to transform in like an hour when no fairy has done that in ages!  Maybe it’s easier for Bloom, but still, Rosalind has loads and loads of lost knowledge. Where did she learn all this?

At any rate Rosalind is responsible for nuking Aster Dell, though how and why that went down is unclear.  She nuked a place.  And she manipulated her friends into helping without giving them the full story either.  They were so upset they locked her up in stasis for sixteen years until Bloom let her out.  Dowling calls Rosalind a manipulator several times, and from what we see in the show that’s spot on.  

Rosalind is also happy to murderize Dowling to take over the school so they can turn everyone to Sith philosophy.

With these three at the helm Alfea will become a scary place.  The baddie adults will be teaching magic fueled by anger and hate.  Also, we’ve just had the first fairy transformation in ages.  Will the rest of the students be pressured to transform also?

I worry the most about Stella in this situation, her heart’s already fragile after being battered by her mother for years.  Stella could just collapse, especially is her mom stays around at the school.  Or she could go full Stockholm and embrace the Sith ways.  After all, she just tried letting friendship in and THIS happened.

And I worry about Terra, the bravest of the girls and least likely to sit down and shut up for the sake of survival.  How much trouble will she get into surrounded by adults acting in bad faith?

Bloom will be Rosalind’s special student, probably under her mentor’s eye the whole time.  Wonder how long it’ll take Bloom to have the awful realization that Rosalind is not her friend.

And Musa and Aisha should get a chance to shine as spies.  Musa by reading minds to tell which students have accepted the Sith teachings and which have not, and Aisha I hope at least kept the magic thingy that eavesdrops on Dowling’s office.  Be nice if Aisha stayed the secretary, but I bet Rosalind puts Bloom in that place.

Beatrix will be official queen bee with her two-dude harem of Riven and Dane. But the three of them could turn out to be a problem, because they’ve all had moments of not-evil.  Riven is friends with Sky; what happens when the baddies threaten Sky?  Or when Dane gets squeamish?  Beatrix is a straight-up true believer in Rosalind and Andreas, but they’ve built that belief by making her desperate to find the truth.  What happens when the truth doesn’t match what her idols tell her?  Beatrix is everything she is, but she’s got a brain and there are moments when she seems to have a heart for her two fellas.  

Our nice adults are in trouble.  Ben Harvey is a good dude, but if he tries anything Rosalind can always threaten Sam and Terra, so he’s well and truly pinned.  

Silva has been hauled off to a dungeon somewhere!  I can guess that Sky and Bloom will launch a rescue mission as soon as Sky works out that his biological father is not a good dude and Silva really was on his side the whole time.

And poor Farah Dowling is dead and buried!  Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t see her again.  We don’t know the limits of Dowling’s powers, only that she is very badass indeed, so it seems totally possible that she could heal herself under the ground.  Or she could still be alive now, having sent a magical decoy to talk to Rosalind.  Dowling’s smart enough not to sit and chat with a magical baddie without taking precautions.  But I think it’ll be a tree, just because Faragonda got turned into a tree once.  A tree will grow on Dowling’s grave and she’ll step out of it alive.

Oh, and there are a “shit ton” more Burned Ones out there, and they’re ‘nothing compared to what’s coming”.  According to Rosalind who knows a lot but lies a lot.  

So our heros and heroines need to keep themselves from going to the dark side, protect Stella from her mum, rescue Silva, defeat the worse-than-Burned-Ones and rally their fellow students to kick the baddies out of their school!  They have a lot on their plates!

And there will be new characters, at least one.  There is no way that Netflix won’t bring a very latina Flora in after the backlash.  But is there really a place for her in the story?  Terra has a very different personality from Flora, so if they lean on Flora’s “gentle earth mother” side it could be ok.  But really the cast doesn’t need another earth fairy.  Or, might they kill off Terra?  Have her die awesome protecting her father? 

A black Tecna would be way more interesting, but I do not think that would appease the fandom since it’s such an obvious pander to the whitewashing accusations.  Also, there’s not much emphasis on technology in Fate so there’s really not much place for her either.

I’d rather like to see Ricki come back.  Stella’s bestie who Stel accidentally blinded.  Is she still blind?  Does she know it was an accident?  Does she hate Stella now, or did her horrified family forbid her to stay in touch?  Has Luna turned her against Stella, just in case the evil queen needs one more way to squeeze trauma-fueled magic out of her daughter?  What’s it like being a blind fairy?  We don’t know what element Ricki was, so maybe she could do the “see through the ground” thing like Toph, or as a mind fairy see through the eyes of the people around her.  Ricki would be interesting!  But I bet we never hear of her again.

Possibly I should write… no. Get thee behind me, plotbunnies!

But what do you think?  What do you think the baddie adults will do to the school?  How do you think the students will react?  Do you think Dowling is alive?  Who will Netflix add to the cast to try and calm the angry fandom, and who do you wish they would?  Are you glad we’re getting a season 2 or would you rather just let this part of Winx Club’s history vanish in the rearview mirror?

#fate the winx saga

[self-ships-ahoy]

My Heart in Your Hands

Saturday (Feb 13th) Heart / Soul / Confession

Summary: During the events of Mann vs. Machine, Technician faces her greatest fear for the good of her friends - and the love of her life.

Warnings: General depictions of surgery (nothing too graphic, but there is a lot of talk about Tech’s heart in the second half)

Word Count: 1,307

A/N: Ok...I am very very nervous about posting this fic. I had to scramble to find a good reason for Tech to have this surgery done (i.e. if lives were on the line), and I’m just always nervous when presenting my writings with Medic. I have seen quite a few people be critical about his depictions, if he’s ‘in character’ enough, and I was afraid of being met with that kind of criticism. But writing is supposed to be for fun, and IF I’m a little ooc with him, so what? I put a whole lot into this fic, and you’re going to really see the extent of their feelings, so I’m proud of it. (Also, about the end, I am totally one to use wordplay even if I’m just coming out of anesthesia, so yeah Tech is like that too.)

~ 💖 ~

     For as long as she could remember, Technician's greatest fear and weakness had been anything related to medical procedures. From the smell of a sterilized office to the mere sight of a needle, it all made her anxious at best and panic-stricken at worst. Everyone at the RED base knew this, since they heard how she ‘freaked out’ during her initial physical examination. Fortunately, although her phobias still remain, her reactions have started to become less severe over time, thanks in big part to her relationship with Medic. Forming a friendship, and later a romantic affair, with him helped her tolerance to her fear triggers greatly. Her desire to see him had her visiting the medbay often, where she soon became accustomed to many sights and smells of the lab. The doctor remained supportive of Technician working to overcome her fears, and he took an active role in the process. Still, Katie had a long way to go, and he knew that. He knew, by now, what kind of answer he would get to a proposed surgery, even though he only offered what was for her benefit. "It's very sweet that you care that much, but it's just not worth it to me." So, he would sigh in defeat and drop the subject, loving her too much to breach the boundaries she set.

     This pattern continued until 1971. Mann Co. was under siege by Grey Mann, effectively taking control from Saxton Hale with an army of robots. Both Red and Blu teams were hired to take back the company, so far with little avail. It all seemed pointless to Technician, at first, if not fortunate; this could be her ticket out of here, if she could convince Grey to fire her. Then the game changed. In an effort to drive the mercs away for good, Grey's forces managed to sabotage and shut down respawn - for good. Now, they could actually die. After so many years of being alone, Katie couldn't bear the thought of losing her friends. With Medic's new reviving invention still a work in progress, that thought could become a reality. She would do anything to keep them safe, even just to increase that chance by a fraction of a percentage. This was what she came to talk to Medic about, one quiet afternoon at the base.

     The two of them sat on the couch in his office. The programmer remained silent, a hesitant and apprehensive frown on her face. She had yet to reveal why she called Medic here, and the longer she waited, the more concerned he became. However, his patience was finite, and spending the whole day on this conversation could be time otherwise spent working on his invention. "Darling," he addressed her gently, but with seriousness, "Vhatever is troubling you, don't be afraid to tell me about it; I cannot help you if you don't tell me...nor do I have time to vait much longer."

     Technician's chest tightened, her eyes squeezing shut for a moment. She couldn't wait forever. Sighing nervously, she began, "...I need you to...do something for me."

     "Anything," he answered without question.

     Another short pause. "I'm scared. I really think we could die out there..." She held his hand for support. "I can't lose you, Ludwig. You're the most important person in my life...and you're all my friends... You're the closest thing I have to family. So, I want to do whatever I can to help protect you."

     "...Vhat are you saying?"

     "...I want you to put Über in me."

     Medic couldn't believe what he heard. Technician seemed to have a knack for surprising him, but, understandably, this was a big deal. Thus far, she had refused every surgery offer presented to her, and now she comes to him and requests one? The man was no reader of emotions, but judging from the tension on her face, and how she squeezed his hand, it didn't seem like she was completely positive of the decision. Excited as he felt, he had to make sure they were on the same page, or he could lose her trust in him forever. "You are...absolutely sure of zhis?"

       Technician went quiet again before answering. "I don't know. But...I want to be. I don't want to be afraid of this, especially if it could help you stay alive. With how often I've fallen onto front lines, it could even protect me, too. But..."

     "If it's pain you're concerned about, I promise zhe pain medications I use, in addition to zhe medigun, vill decrease anything you feel down to manageable levels." He couldn't help but try to convince her to go through with it. Despite her indecision, he agreed with her points that supported the procedure; this could protect her and her friends, should she fall into danger. "You won't even need stitches," he added with a small smile.

     He was getting excited, she could hear it in his voice. Technician expected as much, but she had to finish. "It's not just about the pain. I just...I don't like operations, I never did. You know that... And...I wanted to make sure I could...trust you with it. And I do, now. It's just...hard."

     Medic's smile grew when he heard that he finally earned Technician's trust. That alone made him feel so accomplished. "I promise you, I vill handle zhe procedure vis as much care as I handle our fledgling doves. You have my word as a doctor - license or no." He tilted his head down to further meet her gaze. "Does zhat ease any of your fear?"

     "...Yeah. It does."

~~~

     On the day of the operation, Technician's friends all came to give their support. She was facing a great challenge for the good of the team, and for her own safety, a decision that they all could commend. Soldier told her she was making her country proud by pushing through the fear; Scout brought her some comic books to read for when she's in recovery; Sniper and Engineer pledged to stay by her bedside when she goes under and when she wakes up; even Spy said he would anticipate hearing her wake from a successful operation. Their faith and encouragement helped Technician move forward with this, and she kept their words and gestures in mind when nervously changing into her special hospital gown. Above all, she remembered all Medic promised to do for her, to keep her as comfortable as possible.

       Placing her jewelry in a plastic bag, her thumb brushed over the heart-shaped pendant of her necklace. That was a prized possession now, a symbol of how much she was cherished. As she stared at it, her mind began retracing every instance of Ludwig prioritizing her happiness. This...this was a man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. And why: because she knew she could entrust him with her very life, even on the operating table. She knew that if she asked him to do or not do something, he would take that request seriously. She's going to go into the operating room with full confidence that Medic will do nothing more than implant the Über device in a human heart. That was true love.

     Technician made her way to the hospital bed, and squeezed Dell's hand as the I.V. went in her wrist. As she settled down from that, Medic gleefully presented his patient with precautions he doesn't usually take during surgery, such as a clean pair of gloves and keeping Archimedes at a distance, so the dove doesn't get tempted to play assistant surgeon. In the time between now and the first Über implantation, Medic had even been experimenting with his invention to make it more efficient, i.e. less likely to overload the patient's heart and what not. There was a good chance that Technician could come out of this with her original heart in tact.

     At last, the time came for her to be put under anesthesia, per her request. Katie kept her eyes away from the sight, but listened to Medic's voice as she slipped into unconsciousness. "You'll be awake and feeling good as new in no time, my dear. Don't worry..." he told her calmly as he watched her drift off. Engineer and Sniper then left the room, and the procedure began.

     Everything was running well. Throughout the procedure, Medic talked to his patient as if she was awake, from making light (one-sided) conversation to commenting on each step he was taking. (He said she had very healthy ribs, for instance.) At last, Technician's heart was successfully removed and resting in the doctor's delicate hold. He was being timely about each step so far, never stalling or rushing; but here was when he began to pause, staring at his love's heart while the medigun kept her on life support. The power he felt was indescribable, surmounted only by the honor of being granted the chance to literally hold Katie's very life in his hands. He, too, understood the significance of being allowed to perform this surgery on her, the amount of trust it showed she had in him. There was excitement from finally getting to operate, yes, but...it had yet to truly sink in until this moment.

       As he cradled the tiny, life-giving muscle, a euphoria began to overtake him. This was more than just the thrill of practicing medicine; this was finally realizing the meaning of his beloved not only allowing, but asking without prompt, to partake in her greatest fear. The love she had for him was stronger than her fear and doubt, for she realized that he would never hurt her. And for all the love he felt for her, and how much closer he would feel to her if given the chance to do this, hearing her finally approve was his strongest wish. Ludwig was already sure he had found The One, but now - oh, now he was 100% positive and then some. His breathing cut short a couple times as his eyes began to well up. But, instead of crying, he began to laugh - slowly, quietly, then rising in strength with his elation. It was a laugh of pure joy, unlike anything else ever heard in the operating room.

~~~

     Awaking from the anesthesia was a slightly difficult task, only due to Technician's penchant for prolonging sleep. With the pain medication still in her system, she had almost forgotten for a moment that she had underwent surgery. But a growing echo of voices helped pull her out of her induced slumber.      

     "I think she's comin' to, doc. Hey, Tech, can ya hear us?"

     "Come on, mate..."

     "Vake up, meine geliebte~. Zhe surgery is all over now."

     The sing-song tones of Medic's call lured her out of her sleeping state, and cerulean eyes fluttered open to the sight of the doctor's beaming smile. To her left, Engineer and Sniper sat with their own happy expressions. Technician turned her gaze back to Medic, attempting to speak through her haze. "Did...everything..."

     "Everything vent perfectly, darling, visout a hitch." Medic answered her, "I hadn't completed a procedure zhat smoothly in years, heh." In truth, there had been one or two slight deviations in the plan - minor errors that he was able to work around, and certainly not worth mentioning to the tomophobic programmer. That being said, it was still one of Medic's more successful operations. "How do you feel?"

     She thought for a moment, hesitant to feel her heart in case she might feel the Über implant. "Strange...Tired... Chest feels tight. Is my heart okay?"

     Engineer spoke up with more words of reassurance, "Heart's a-OK, Techie. Doc said it survived the whole thing, no transplants 'r anything like that."

     "It vas remarkable to witness," Medic commented with glee, "For a heart of such small size, I vas expecting more resistance to zhe device. My upgrades must have made an even greater improvement zhan anticipated!"

     The corners of her lips began to curl as she heard the great news. Above all, she was worried about her heart needing to be replaced with something bizarre for the device to work. But, the doctor fulfilled his promises and kept her heart intact...as did another force unbeknownst to her. Should someone tell her of it, she would show no surprise at the fact.

     Facing Medic again, Technician inched her hand closer to him, a kind look in her sleepy eyes. "I knew you could do it... I was in good hands."

#i also wrote that epilogue just because i could practically hear medic call out like that #with that nickname in particular #i really wanted to use it X3 #and an important note about the added surgery measures: #he still didn't feel they were necessary; but he complied to help tech feel comfortable #both because he loved her that much and cuz he didn't want her to back out #i'll stop my desire to overexplain there XD #dontneedavalentine2021 #dontneedadispenser #💗 Remote Surgery #self ship #self shipping #self ship community #selfship #self ships #selfships #selfships commuinty #selfship community #self shipping community #self shipper #self ship writing #📝 My Writing #fictional other #romantic f/o #🔧 Engie #🎯 Scopes #self ship fanfic #tf2 self ship #tf2 #self insert x canon

[junipersgarden]

metanoia 3. | Waves

PAIRING: Peter Parker x Superhero!Reader

SUMMARY: Touching down in Venice, Y/N is trying to figure out a plan to get rid of Brad Davis politely and Peter is trying to commence his plan; Venice should be calm and peaceful... right?

WORD COUNT: 5556 words

WARNINGS: N/A

a/n: i am on such a huge writer’s block and i am extremely bloated from all this Christmas food but who’s still gonna eat? duh me. anyways, hope you enjoy and ohmygod action scenes are hard to right... :)

[NOT MY GIF]

...

At Venice Marco Polo Airport...

...

The dreadful 9 hour flight was finally over; no more being cramped next to Brad Davis, at last free to roam the city of Venice.

Mr. Harrington had packed everyone off to the side into a small group, keeping everyone close together and secluded while everyone gathered their passports in a hurry to get outside and see Italy and what it holds. Eventually with passports out, Mr. Harrington and Mr. Dell merge all the kids to join the line to exit the airport.

Brad Davis. He was still by your side but all you wanted to do was hang out with Peter and Ned, even Betty and MJ as well. A summer vacation with your friends is a dream come true, but Brad Davis wasn't making it easy for you to even talk to Peter or anyone else.

It's not like Brad Davis is insufferable or anything... you just, would rather he stayed a distant away from you than constantly being by your side 24/7 for  2 days. You really just wanted to spend this time with someone else.

Among the commotion and sea of people in the airport, you search aimlessly for any sign of anyone to catch up to after you got past the line to wait on the other side for everyone else. The line was full of people standing close together, bouncing impatiently with suitcase and luggage balanced with the rest of their belongings.

From afar, your eyes catch the blur of a familiar blue flannel speed walking down the hustle of people, also looking for something or someone.

Peter.

A sly smile grew on your face as you watched Peter from the distance walk up to Ned, Peter heaving out a breath as he obviously started to rant. You couldn't make out exactly what he was saying but whatever it was about, it had him real worked up and concerned.

This is my chance!

Turning on your foot to budge through, a hand grips on your arm and stops you.

You pivot around and find Brad gawking at you with a funny expression; he clearly wants to know why you're leaving the queue, Brad's eyebrows are raised and he chuckles slightly.

"Sorry, just go without me. I forgot to ask Mr. Harrington something." You straight up lie.

"Oh cool! I'll see you soon!" Brad gently lets go of your arm and you hurriedly rush to Peter and Ned.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

"Hey man, did you see Brad and Y/N/N on the flight? They were watching movies and laughing the entire time..." Peter exasperatedly huffs out to Ned.

For the whole time Peter was sat behind Brad and Y/N, he was forced to endure the torment of Brad leaning closer to Y/N, countless times of them 'accidentally' knocking both headphones into one another, hearing Y/N laugh... it was a nightmare.

Peter wished so badly that it was him sitting next to Y/N on the plane and not Brad Davis.

"Dude, don't worry okay? I'm sure it's nothing." Ned answered in a strange tone.

"Hey babe? Can you hold this for me please?" Betty suddenly strolled up next to Ned with heart eyes.

Peter was taken back by what Betty referred Ned as: babe?

Betty then pecked Ned's cheek which caused Peter to stagger faintly back and furrow his eyebrows in disbelief and puzzlement. Ned then proceeded to boop her nose before leaving.

Peter's eyes linger on Betty as she walks away, still dazed and confused and still lots of questions remained.

"When was that?" Peter blurts out quickly.

"Ah well, we actually got to talking on the plane and turns out, we've actually got a lot in common... so now we're boyfriend and girlfriend!" Ned grinned brightly.

"Who's boyfriend and girlfriend?"  

Y/N.

To Peter's side, Y/N slid next to him and gave him a soft nudge.

"N-Ned and Betty." Peter peered at Y/N, still shocked himself.

"You and Betty?!" Y/N jerked to look at Ned. Ned grinned even more and nodded his head furiously. "I'll admit, it's new and like a surprise but congratulations?"

"But what happened about being an American bachelor in Europe?" Peter questioned.

"Peter, those were the words of a boy. That boy, met a woman, a very strong and powerful woman and now, that boy is a man."

"Well, that's new... but we're happy for you Ned." Y/N beamed.

"Babe?" Betty feebly called.

"Coming babe! I'll see you guys later!" Ned whispered the last part before making his way to Betty.

With Ned going to Betty, it left Peter and Y/N standing there, the both swinging around on the spot. The both stayed silent for a couple of seconds until the realization of why they were there hit them so the both without telling one another, starting catching up with the rest of the class in the line and were fortunate it was shorter than before.

"H-how was your flight?" Peter croaked out with a cough, embarrassed by his voice.

"Not as bad as I thought it'd be for 9 hours! What about you? You were next to Harrington and lemme guess: he rambled about his wife?"

"He said her name in his sleep!" Peter quietly yelled.

Y/N placed a hand to the chest, leaning back and letting out a giggle. I love that...

Flinging the hand back down, it mistakenly stroked Peter's, a blush arose on his cheeks. Y/N clenched their fist and averted to the ground.

Come on Peter. Peter encouraged himself, Ask to hang out!

"Hey Y/N/N?"

"Mhmmm?" Y/N glanced up at Peter. Don't chicken out, what's the worst that's gonna happen?! Come on Peter!

"Well, I-I was wondering if you wanted to-" Peter abruptly stiffened. Peter had felt something soft on his leg.

Y/N leant to the side, staring in Peter's eyes, waiting for him to finish his sentence.

A security dog was brushing against his leg and suitcase and then jumped up on Y/N, a yelp escaping as the German Shepherd started burying it's nose into her bracelet, growling and barking.

The security guard lead the dog down to sit and guided her hand to grab Peter's suitcase but as she edged closer, a robotic beeping erupted from her metal detector and was triggered by Y/N's bracelet.

The guard grasped Peter's suitcase and walked up to the examination desk, signalling Peter to follow, his breath hitched to the back of his throat nervously. Another guard swooped to Y/N's side and immediately clutches the bracelet.

The lady who took Peter's stuff returned without the dog and politely asked him to come with her to the desk.

Peter hesitated at first because 1. Y/N was getting inspected and seemed uncomfortable and 2. Y/N would be left behind.

She continued to insist but Peter kept focusing on Y/N but Y/N nodded, letting him know it'll be okay.

Oh this is great...

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Crap! Crap! Crap!

Peter was no longer with you and now you were stuck with this buffoon wrangling and fiddling your very expensive and dangerous invention that held your even more valuable suit.  It didn't help either that the metal detector's high pitched alarm was blaring into your ears.

The guard was repeatedly twisting and turning your arm, looking from alternate sides and angles at the piece of jewelry, trying ever so hardly to identify it.

What the detector had picked up was possibly the aluminum in the bracelet alongside the various nano particles, frequencies and energy levels vibrating off it. The complete situation wasn't the one thing you were worrying about; you just hoped and prayed that he didn't noticed the black cross binding the sides was floating or that ARIS didn't sense your state of panic and activate anything.

"Would you mind explaining to me what exactly this bracelet is Miss?" The security guard questioned, his thick eyebrows raised, eyes observing for any sign of hesitation or lie.

Think of an excuse. Think of literally anything Y/N.

"It ease my wrists. You see, I have a condition with my hands that causes them to flame up and the bracelet cools it down." You speedily let out.

Let me go....

"I see... but why is it made of aluminum though?"

Damn it!

"It uhhh... regulates and releases the flow of coolness when my hands flame up and it also measures my blood pressure... since my blood pressure is high... I really need this bracelet to like, get by." You emphasizes the last part.

"So like some case of arthritis?" The security guard loosens his hold, staring deeply at you.

"Yeah, something like that."

The security guard took one last final at your bracelet and you.

Please buy it, please buy it-

"I'm letting you go but next time when you're travelling internationally, bring a medical certificate kid."

You nod your head vigorously just wanting to get out of there and back to Peter, you slowly step back and begin speed walking to Peter.

The woman from before was standing behind the counter and holding a banana with an an extremely unamused frown.

"No- no banana got it..." You hear Peter meekly murmur as he zipped up his suitcase.

A banana? What a dork...

"A banana? Really?"  Stepping up next to him, you crack a smirk by his reason he was called up.

"M-May packed it for me and I didn't know-" Peter flusteredly stuttered.

"Relax, I'm stirring you up." You can't help but giggle at his stance. "But we should be off Peter, everyone's waiting."

"Oh, uh yeah... lemme just-"

"Let's go Pete!" You urged in a jokingly but serious way; if Mr. Harrington counted you up and realized people were missing, how he would freak out.

"O-okay, oh-" Peter audibly gasped quietly; you had intertwined both of your hands together.

Peter felt his face burning but thankfully you were too busy maneuvering between the bundles of people.  You led the both of you through the frantic airport, relying on the signs to guide you.

"T-there!" Peter pointed out; the group was all huddled next to the information booth and Mr. Harrington was counting the students.

"We're here! We're here!" You urgently shout of your and Peter's presence.

Mr. Harrington as well as everyone else turns around to face you and Peter, his face falls with relief and you slow your pace.

"Oh thank goodness..." Mr. Harrington sighs.

Peter and your face are both puffed from running half way across the airport and as you go to wipe your forehead, you feel something lift up with your arm; you were still holding Peter's hand.

At once you drop Peter's hand from yours and avoid him, coughing awkwardly and side stepping away to get out of the uncomfortable position, subconsciously rubbing your arm.

All of that was way too close Y/N.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

After the airport fiasco, all of you clambered into a canal to do some brief sight-seeing as you all were going to your hotel.

Everyone, (mostly Flash), was hiding behind their screens; taking photos rather than enjoying the views in front of them, you had scored a seat at the tip of the boat with the summer breeze.

The architecture of Venice was so much more traditional and classical; embalming the Renaissance era through its buildings and its textures; to you the history behind it was fascinating.

You'll admit, you maybe did sneak in a few distant stares at Peter but he wasn't going to notice or anything.

As a hotel with workers and renovation equipment was in sight, the canal boat began to slow and made an eventual stop. Surely we're not-

"Looks like we're here! They're... doing some renovations in place, getting some upgrades!" Mr. Harrington quirks up optimistically, answering with your unwanted answer.

Looks of disgust and amazement were shared around with everyone as they picked up their luggage to enter the runned down place.

One by one, everyone single filed out of the canal, cradling their precious belongings in hand and went with Mr. Harrington and Mr. Dell inside.

Examining the hotel from the small and cramped entrance, you could make out random objects scattered all around, it was weird and unusual... but it was alright.

"Okay everyone, we're here-"

"Woah..." Mr. Dell tried to warn as Mr. Harrington stepped directly into a massive puddle.

"This place is sinking." Flash bluntly called out.

"I think you mean charming." Harrington corrected him.

Passing Mr. Harrington and his wet shoes, Mr. Dell started telling everyone of the plan of the day: drop bags and sort out roommates and explore Venice before meeting up at the Da Vinci Museum at 3.

"Vamonos!" That's Spanish sir.

"It's andiamo."  You jabbed at Harrington as you walked past.

MJ hearing you pick up on his error, peaked over her shoulder to give you a sly smirk.

You return a smile to her before quickly mouthing "roommates?" to her from below the stairs (since you knew Betty was bunking with Yasmin) and MJ replies with an approval nod.

Following MJ and everyone else to the rooms, you see MJ enter Room 11 and dump her bags on her claimed bed and put yours on the remaining bed.

Tidying yourself in the mirror, you take off your coat and neaten your hair before heading down to explore the streets of Venice.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The Main Square, the very heart of Venice was full of eager tourists like yourself; with people splitting into groups to try and cover as much ground as possible, you decided to take your time and go to anything that caught your eye.

"Yo Y/N!"

A flock of pigeons ascended into the air, startling you a tiny bit, you find the source of the person: none other than your best friend Brad Davis, with a camera in his hand trotting to you.

"Hey Brad." You greet him with a plastered fake smile on your face.

"Where did go you? You just like vanished and I-"

"I had to do something. Important."

"Oh. Anyways, I wanted to-" Before Brad could ask you whatever he wanted to, two pigeons landed on your arms.

Brad's mouthed gaped open in shock as he chuckled at your appearance; you really wanted to wave the birds off but to make matters worse, two more pigeons landed on you.

You nervously laugh because you had no idea how to get the birds off or why they landed on you and then Brad supposedly laughed with you.

"I-I gotta take a photo of this!"

"Oh you really don't have too..." You try to steer him away from the idea.

"No this is great! It's a perfect shot of you; the sun's hitting you just right, come on Y/N/N!"

"Umm I don't- GAH!" A pigeon lands on your head as you were speaking.

Brad doesn't get the memo and scrambles for his camera and points it to your face.

"Are you a camera Y/N?"

"Not that I'm aware of why?"

"Because each time I look at you, I smile."

Wait wha-

"Show me that gorgeous smile!" Brad encourages you to smile for the photo.

Giving in to his shenanigan, you spread your lips for that 'gorgeous smile' of yours as Brad snaps away; Brad keeps complimenting you, causing you to feel all queasy because it isn't right coming from him necessarily and you can't get out because of the pigeons on you.

Peter on the other hand, could only see Brad Davis taking numerous photos of you on his camera, the sun perfectly shinning on you, your smile competing with it.

Peter couldn't help but feel a slight tinge of jealously; Brad and you were hanging out with each other every second and how he wished it was him instead; Brad didn't even know half of the things he knew!

Leaning on a pillar, Peter then knew now was the third stage of his 6 step plan with the first 2 steps being unsuccessfully; pushing from the pillar, Peter was determined to find a shop that could made his white gardenia necklace for you, Peter typed in his phone for locations of stores and journeyed forward.

The sensation and sound if your phone going off managed to shoo away the pigeons, you hooked your phone into your hands and recognized the caller.

"Sorry Brad, I gotta take this." Excusing yourself, you swipe the accept button and jog off to the side with your phone next your ear, far from Brad's hearing range.

"Hello? Yes I know, I know. I never thought Venice would be this pretty... and yes the water looks perfect. Alright, talk to you later."

I need space... You conclude and establish that taking a brisk stroll by yourself will fix you.

Sheltering yourself from the beating sun and protecting yourself from Brad's sniper like vision, you take cover in a small alleyway and sigh exclusively.

Roaming the alleyway, an old antique shop at the end captures your attention; paintings and furniture pieces with plants planted on top of them decorate the front, you sneak quietly into the shop with the owner not comprehending since it appeared he was busy making some sort of glass item.

Admiring the bits and bobs, a figure wearing blue walks past the aisle your in and into the next aisle. Curious, you pursue to uncover what or who the figure is; scanning through the cracks of the shelves, you tell by the brown curls and blue flannel collar who it exactly is: none other than Peter Parker.

Intense his eyes are, Peter was too busy and focused in his mini world to gaze at your E/C eyes were admiring him; Peter had a silver bracelet in his hands, studying its complexions and smoothing its chain.

"Ragazzo!" The shop owner yells specifically at Peter. Peter excitedly ran straight for the counter with a goofy smile on his face.

"Fiore bianco." The shop keeper said as he dangled a necklace in the air; to you, the necklace wasn't beautiful but was ethereal; the way the stained white glass of the flower's form glistens truly was extraordinary.

"It's perfect..." An awe struck Peter Parker breathed out; in Peter's eyes, the necklace was everything and more than he thought it would be and imagined you wearing it and he swore he felt his heart skip a beat.

Tenderly giving the necklace back for it to be wrapped, you took a couple of steps forward to announce yourself.

"Buongiorno!"

Confused by his hello, Peter shifted to his stare and was met with you.

"Y-Y/N!" Peter's high pitched voice broke out.

"Is that for Aunt May? I-it's magnificent." You ponder and move closer to him.

"Oh the n-necklace? Um it's for-"

"Una ragazza!"  The shop attendant perks up.

"For a girl you say?" Folding your arms, you bump into Peter's side.

"Y-yeah it's for a girl..." Peter defeatedly professes.

"Well, tell me about her." Peter has a crush? When? And who?

"S-she's uhh... she's really pretty. And smart; she's always there and makes me the happiest person I can be just by smiling... she means the world to me. D-do you reckon she'll like the necklace?" Peter with puppy dog eyes inquires.

"Yeah... whoever the lucky girl is, she'll love it Pete."

"Grazie" Handing a little golden bag to Peter, the owner thanks him of his purchase and grins to you and Peter, waving a sweet goodbye as Peter and you exit the shop.

"Since when do you know so much Italian? It's impressive." Peter breaks the silence.

"I might of studied a tiny bit before the trip so I can get around with the locals. Just tiny stuff though, nothing impressive. What about you though? I heard you talking to the guy."

"Aunt May; she taught me a couple of things. She's Italian so... guess it's a family thing?"

"That's cool and impressive Pete."

Peter rubbed the back of his neck from your compliment and you could feel your cheeks going pink.

"Hey look!" By the water's edge, heaps of crabs were crawling out of the water, Peter and you edged closer to get a better look.

"What's up losers- oh woah cool." MJ interrupts her welcoming to the both of you, distracted by the crabs.

Reaching for her phone, MJ records the crustaceans and quickly looks back to beam at Peter and yourself.

"MJ get back-" As you harshly warn, Peter feels the hairs and goosebumps on his ends stick up; his Spidey Sense knew something was up. MJ ignored your request as a sickly feeling buried deep inside your stomach.

Tilting his head to the side, Peter notices the water on top of the drain sink back down; something isn't right.

"MJ please-" Is all you get out before an explosion erupts from the water.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The water shoots off into different directions; flooding the streets and gushing violently from the motion, creating massive waves which boats are caught onto.

MJ slips from the water and can't seem to stand so you snatch her up from her satchel strap and pull her toward you and Peter, Peter steadily and firmly balances you into place, sticking you close to his side.

The screams and shouts of Venetian's and traveler's fill the tormented air with the stomps of their feet. A creaky, rocking sound from the water gains your interest; Ned and Betty.

The love bird's canal boat  was coming in fast and about to crash next to you guys and rammed into the wall.

Peter, MJ and you dash to get Ned and Betty out, you and MJ managed to grab Betty while Peter grabs Ned.

"Guys, guys, GO!" Betty shrieks but no one moves even an inch; the water had started to spiral toward the sky, its form changing and growing into something humanoid.

"W-what is that?!"

"I-I dunno!"

"What are you gonna do?!"

"I left my suit at the hotel room!"

"WHY?!"

"Because I'm on vacation Ned! Everyone's gonna see my face, just get everyone out of here!" Peter spat out and pushed Ned to everyone else. Betty laced her fingers around Ned's as MJ trailed but you on the other hand, you couldn't leave Peter; not up with this thing. So you rounded around a corner of a wall and kept a close eye on him.

"ARIS?" You call into your bracelet. The black crucifix lifted from the bracelet and spun itself around twice and a blue light shone from the sides, indicating ARIS was awake.

"Ms. L/N, how may I assist you this afternoon?"

"Suit up."

"I'm afraid I cannot."

"WHAT?!  W-why?!"

"It seems from the Venice Marco Polo Airport, the security guard accidentally combobulated some circuits from the detector as it disturbed certain amendments with your suit and commands."

"DAMN IT! Can you at least scan the threat?" You aim your arm to the water monster.

"Result found: a sailor named Morris Bench was exposed to an experimental underwater generator and obtained hydro abilities, Bench's alias is known by the public as Hydro-Man. Weaknesses are unknown as of the moment."

"They got that information up fast. Now, rest up because I'm gonna need my suit."

"Commencing Power Nap Protocol."

Now what to do? Wait- where's Peter?!

Panic arose in you as people blocked your sight and Peter was no where to be seen; this single second of idiocy could kill him... I promised I wasn't going to leave...

"Please.." You whisper for the universe to show mercy, just this once.

At your wish, it was granted at once as you spotted Peter leaping from beam to beam at a haste speed.

Thank you.

Reacting instantly, you pick up a quick pace and bee line to Peter; Peter lunges off the final beam and grabs a hold of an oar and bounds off it, landing with perfect form onto the bridge. You follow on suit; repeating his actions precisely.

Hydro-Man however, has other plans and slams a punch on the bridge, a tidal wave rocks the waters and knocks your oar's stability, the pole slides and then you feel a cold sweep of water crush your body, waves tossing you like a grain of sand in the ocean, so violently and so destructively, your body hits boats and debris of the bridge, marking cuts and scratches on your skin.

Through the clarity of the water, you rotate the crucifix and desperately plead for that blue light to shine. The black crucifix rises from your bracelet once more and twists twice in two circles and delicately lands back.

"Commencing Fish Out of Water Protocol."

Nano particles latched onto your skin tightly and rapidly, working on your helmet first to lock out the water and allow you to breathe, it fully regenerated and you gasped for a huge breath.

From your helmet, the nano tech molded itself onto your chest, to your arms and lastly to your legs.

The boosters on your feet whirred and transformed to function in the water.

"Y/N, I can only fly you out; my power is still weak. Once you are out, the armour will fully disappear;  are you sure you can land safely?"

"You know I will. Just get me out of here."

"Good luck Y/N." ARIS's voice malfunctions as your suit takes off.

The water was murky from the debris and destruction; there was no knowing where you were or where you would land.

Gradually, the flight power increased more and more by the second and then, you were free; but you were also feet above the ground and plummeting to your evident fate.

ARIS's promise was fulfilled as your black and suit faded from your body.

Free falling in the air, all you could see was chaos and demolition and most importantly, there wasn't anywhere you could land.

Breathe Y/N. Breathe. Focus and look, it's okay.

On the surrounding buildings, you survey the webbings and an idea pops in your head; I could stick to it.

This is crazy, but the best and only option I have to live.

Angling your body to the webs, you stretch out further to even at least grab any loose threads.

Brace yourself-

Your fingers touch the webs and you throw your body onto it and close your eyes, bracing for the worst.

But nothing happens. You open your eyes and see your body has fully stuck to the webs; Spider-Man (Peter Parker) saved your life. You glare up at the sky and dryly laugh; "Not today."

Sliding down from the webs, you touch down and plant one foot in front of the other, racing to find Peter but as you turn a corn, something suddenly hard collides into you and knocks you off your feet. Hitting your head on the concrete, you groan in pain and feel a shift of heaviness leave your chest.

"Hey are you okay? I'm so sorry I-"

"B-Brad?" You look up and see Brad hovering over you.

"Y/N! Thank god you're okay! Come on, we gotta go-" Brad wraps an arm around yours and forcefully stands you up.

You look up and see Peter swinging from building to building, you go to see where exactly he is going to and then you see it; a bell tower split from the bottom was toppling

"Brad stop-"

Brad ignored your requests completely and attempted to hold your hand but you leave it out of his hand's way and sprint to the others.

"Stay low kids, we'll be safe here!" Dell assures and crams everyone under a supported building.

Hydro-Man and a mystery green hero were fighting directly in front of you but you were worried about Peter; he couldn't hold that bell tower tower forever...

"He's kicking that water's ass!" Brad exclaims joyfully.

"He looks like a Doctor Strange rip off." You mutter as you turn to go after Peter.

Brad sensing you were about to run off, he sternly yanks you closer to him, a stone cold facial appearance portrayed on his face and now there was no chance of you sneaking off to help Peter or use your powers.

God damn it Davis!

An eruption of water sprays across from two sides and uproars, shaking the terrain and releasing its final cry, Hydro-Man was defeated.

How in the hell did he-

The ring of a bell made you snap your neck; the bell tower fallen and you couldn't see Peter.

No, no, no-

With a fleeting look at the bell tower, from it's corner you squint and find Peter's flannel sticking out like as he were standing. Peter's okay... it's okay...

Cheers and cries of rejoice for the mysterious hero blow up from the citizens,  praising of their work, the hero salutes the people and then, flies off into the sky on their gust of green smoke with the one question on everyone's minds.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

"Who is that guy?"  Betty asks about the elephant in the room (or more the elephant on the TV screen).

"He's like Iron Man and Thor rolled into one." Brad inaccurately compares.

He wishes-

"But he's no Spider-Man."

"What is it with you and Spider-Man?" MJ finally mentions Flash's obsession over the superhero; everyone knew of Flash's undying love for Spider-Man and how his Instagram account is literally spideyno1fan but no one actually knew why he adored the vigilante.

"What? He's just awesome okay? And he protects the neighbourhood and you know, he's inspiring; he inspires me to be a better man- sup dickward, thought you drowned." Flash sends a wink at Peter.

If only you knew...

"Sounds like his name's Mysterio." Brad states from the obvious news headline.

"No. It's Italian for 'mystery'; it isn't his actual name." You correct Brad from the staircase but he can't tell from your tone that you meant it to be rude; you were still incredibly pissed at Brad and what he did and you'd loss all respect and tolerance for him.

"Mysterio..." Ned starts as he nods to himself.

"Cool name." Ned and Betty finish each other sentences and freak out. What a power couple...

"So," Peter began and swayed his body and tip toed near you, "How much of that did you actually see?"

Not much because I was drowning in the surprisingly polluted canal. "Not much. You know when you're running for your life, you don't really look back."

"Right me too; I was also running away." Peter stammered. He can't lie for anything.

"So Paris tomorrow... go to the Eiffel Tower, should be great."

"Did you know people originally didn't like the tower? Excused it of being something useless and a monstrosity to France but then over time, turned into the heart of France?"

"Oh. I didn't know that." Peter shyly mumbled.

"That's why it's my favourite destination on the whole trip." You can't help but smile.

Peter chuckles softly and smiles at you and you do as well, the both stare at each other for what seems 'too long', Peter and you look away from each other and awkwardly laugh.

"Well, I'm probably am going to call it early tonight. It's been a long day..." You yawn and stand up from the stair and stretch.

"I'll walk you!" Peter uttered suddenly.

"Walk me up to my room? O-okay." You blush at his response.

Treading up the stairs, Peter and you arrive shortly at Room 11; your and MJ's shared room for the night.

"I-I hope you're okay from today Y/N/N," Peter sincerely conveys his concern, "and I if you need someone to talk to, I-I'm here because I know with everything, it's hard and I'm your friend and care a lot about you and just want you to be happy and stuff with Tony I know it's-"

"Thank you Peter." You softly let out, a shy smile plays on your face. "And same goes Peter... I care a lot about you too..."

The pair of you stand for what seems like a life time until the stampede of footsteps snaps the both of you out of your trance.

"G-Goodnight Y/N." Peter whispers with a giddy grin.

Too cute...

"Goodnight Peter." You playfully drag; you don't realise the effect it has on Peter though but to Peter, it was sweet like honey and he loved it.

Closing the door quietly, you slump down, with pink cheeks you lean on the door and exhale out heavily; what a day...

Brad was extra, extra today, Ned and Betty are dating, there was a monster on the first day and craziest of all, Peter has a crush?!

Feeling a vibration from your back pocket, you fish out your phone and turn it on to see a wonderfully timed message.

from: F/N ✌️

are you okay?! wth is happening rn?!

Wouldn't you and I both like to know...

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