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pupandangelscoffee · 3 years

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Thank you, Next

Eddie x Reader / Buck x Reader

Genre: Fluff, slight angst

Warnings: mentions of blood, the fire truck crash from season 2, basically injury, creepy perverts, being locked up (small mention of it)

Taglist: @enterprise-medical

It was a stormy night in LA as Buck navigated the firetruck back to the fire station. He had taken it out for a ride, with Bobby’s permission, after you had called his sister saying you were stuck in some creep’s apartment. Maddie had befriended you after you opened your café again despite usually closing half an hour ago. So Buck didn’t really expect that you would look so cute while cuddled up in his jacket, something he normally wouldn’t give it away, but you seemed so helpless and like you were freezing in just your underwear. Besides, he promised his sister that he would take care of you as he brought you back to the station, where she was going to pick you up.

Jumping out of the door, Buck closed the door as quietly as possible before shushing everyone in the firehouse and only getting your sleeping form out of the truck after everyone quieted down. Maddie watched as her baby brother carried her sleeping friend up the stairs, trying not to smile or squeal at how cute the scene was. She had tried to convince you repeatedly to go on a date with her brother, though you would always decline stating that hot firefighting fuckboys simply weren’t your type. But apparently “I-am-cute-lemme-lock-you-in-my-room” was your type or well at least seemed to be your type because this was not the first date that went horribly wrong that Maddie witnessed you having, usually having to find some way to bail you out. Although, it has never gotten this bad.

“Earth to Maddie,” Buck grumbled, waving his hand in front of Maddie’s face as he tried to get her to come back to them instead of being lost in her own little world. Shaking her head to regain her vision, she chuckled as you sat up to wave at her. “Looks like sleeping beauty is awake and waiting for their prince charming,” she teased you and wiggled her eyebrows while glancing in Buck’s direction, earning a groan and the bird from you. “I am never ever going to go on a date with anyone again. Nunca!!” You grumbled, hiding your face in a pillow as you did kind of feel bad for making someone steal a firetruck just because you were incapable of reading a person. “Qué pena.” Eddie stated, walking past you and sending you a wink when you look up in shock. “Habla Español?” You asked, not having expected it. “Sí.” Eddie nodded and send you a cheekish grin before handing you a bottle of water. “Do you feel a bit better? You seemed quite out of it when you arrived with Buck.” He continued, immediately checking your vitals and reactions to make sure that you were actually doing alright. “You get locked in an apartment by a creepy guy in his 40s and then tell me you wouldn’t be out of it.” You retorted, sticking your tongue out at Eddie causing him to poke your sides to see if you were ticklish. Squeaking, you jumped up and tried to run away from the firefighter, not wanting to get tickled. However, Eddie’s reflexes were a lot quicker than yours and he immediately started chasing you, quickly managing to catch you and pick you up.

The rest of the Firefam, including Maddie, just stood there watching you and Eddie. When Buck had brought you in, they had agreed that you seemed more of Buck’s type than Eddie’s as the older of the two was known to be the more serious one of the two. Yet somehow you managed to light him up in a completely new way, something they had never seen before and slowly they changed their minds on who’s type you really were. Even if Buck did not look pleased while watching you two, after all, he had “stolen” a firetruck and almost broken a window just to save you from some creep, yet instead of thanking him properly, you were playing and laughing with Eddie. “They are really cute together,” Hen stated, a smile playing on her lips though quickly putting on a stoic facial expression upon seeing Buck’s glare. “Well they are, though I still think she would suit you better, Buck.” Maddie whispered to her brother before ruffling his hair.

A few months have passed since you had met Eddie and to say that you two have gotten close would be an understatement. You had actually shared his bed with him on multiple occasions now after a long day with him and his son Chris, who you immediately adored after meeting the first time. At first, it took some time for Chris to warm up to you, however, now he seemed to always be attached to your hip whenever you were around. Sometimes, Buck would hang out with you three, though he would have a bitter expression on his face whenever no one was looking.

Right now, you were sitting on the couch in the firehouse when the news hit that the firetruck was crushing Buck’s leg and your heart froze watching the pained expression on Buck’s face. You tried to see as much as possible of the scene, scared that any of the other members of the firefam were injured but the camera simply did not have a good view. So without another thought, you grabbed your car keys and raced to the scene, terrified for Buck’s and the other’s fate.

When you arrived at the scene, they would not let you close as there was still a bomb threat. As soon as Bobby took care of the threat, a frown on your lips as you watched the young man who felt like he had lost everything, and the crowd ran to help lift the truck, you ran with it. However, instead of moving to lift the truck, you dropped on your knees right in front, cradling his face in your hands. “Hey beautiful, come here often?” Buck asked you, a small grin on his lips as you giggled, shaking your head a bit at the young firefighter. Always such a flirt, even in a situation where he could lose his leg and possibly never work in the job he loved ever again.

All throughout Buck’s recovery you stuck to his side, cooking him meals, and coming to all of his doctor meetings with him. You would be lying if you said that you two didn’t grow closer during that period of his life, even sharing a drunken kiss. He had initiated it after one too many beers and you just melted into it, not wanting to upset the already broken firefighter. Yet at the same time, it certainly had been one of the best kisses you have shared with someone. And you could now proudly say that your gaming skills have improved, while Buck’s baking skills improved as well, due to you dragging him along to your little café and allowing him to bake as many goods as you wanted. You even ate them willingly once they stopped coming out of the oven looking like a piece of charcoal.

Soon enough, he was cleared to go back to working as a firefighter and despite feeling slightly upset that you would no longer be spending your days with the sweet, smart and cunning young firefighter, you were happy to see the light return to his eyes. But then the party happened, he coughed up blood, because he was pushing himself too harshly and you had to watch the light fade again. After Bobby told him that he was clearly not ready to be in the field yet, you stood by Buck’s side as rage took over his whole being and he decided to sue the city and Bobby, leaving you to be stuck between a hard place and a rock.

Now you were standing in front of Buck and Eddie after they had a big fight and they were expecting to choose. Will you choose Buck and stick by him as he destroys all his relationships for his job? Or will you choose Eddie and leave Buck to fight this battle all alone?

BUCK

EDDIE

SURPRISE

#911 fanfiction #9 1 1 fanfic #911 fanfic #9 1 1 x reader #9 1 1 fanfiction #eddie diaz x reader #eddie diaz imagine #evan buckley x reader #evan buckley imagine

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concealeddarkness13 · 3 years

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WHG 15 Post-Games Brains and Brawn Part 3

This is a few days after part 2! Tagging: @sparkles-and-hens, @knmartinshouldbewriting, @maple-writes (also thanks for Skyler, Aurora, and Volt!), @pen-of-roses, @thoughts-of-nora, and @ratracechronicler!

A few days later, and I had nothing to do. Shine hadn’t even come by the room to check on me today. I was so bored. Volt had mentioned Skyler was still here, so I could find him. Better than sitting in this room any longer.

I found him in a bigger room (really, how many rooms were in this apartment?), and when I saw him, I automatically got a little bristly. He had beaten me last time, so it was time for a rematch. “I finally found you. Volt told me you were around here somewhere.”

He tensed up when he saw me. “What are you still doing here?”

“‘Still’?” I scoffed. “I’m here to save my friend. But I was told I couldn’t do anything because someone cut my legs open.”

He glared at me, putting down what he had been working on and facing me head on. “What do you want?”

I pointed dramatically at him. I was in a mood. “To spar with me, pretty boy. If you need incentive, you can insult me for the rest of the day if you win.”

That didn’t go over well. He drew his knife and pointed it at me. “Don’t fucking call me that!” he snarled.

I knew how to get on his nerves now. I pretend curtseyed. “Oh, does pretty man suit your tastes better?”

And he was in front of me and shoved me against the wall in a heartbeat. Perfect. A fight it was. “Don’t call me pretty. Don’t think of calling me anything else either, handsome, whatever, unless you want to get hurt.”

I laughed a little, pulling out something Triel had called me as a joke. “Loquacious and charming then?” I slipped my knife into my hand and elbowed him in the stomach.

He backed up, holding his knife out and almost yelling. “Didn’t you get beat up enough already?”

Hell no. Not with my mind being the only company I had at night around here. And sometimes during the day. If I did get beat up, it would be fair punishment for how much I had fucked up everything. I smiled. “I’m used to getting beat up. What’s a little more?” I paused, grinding my teeth a little. “I can’t just sit around and do nothing all day.”

“You’re fucked up,” he spit. He had no idea. “Why not go back to wherever you crawled out of if you like it so much?”

Nah. At least here I was relatively safe. I went to kick at him, but the wounds there throbbed, and my legs gave out. I cursed as I fell to the ground, but when I tried to stand back up, I couldn’t. Shit.

He watched me as he circled me, and he gripped his knife tighter, but after he looked away, he seemed to change his mind. He just crossed his arms. “Dumbass.”

Tell me something I don’t know. I cursed under my breath. “Hey, you haven’t won yet, so you can’t insult me.”

He just stared down at me. “I’m not the one on the floor.”

Well, that could change. I reached out and snagged his legs so that he fell down too, and I held onto his legs as he tried to grapple with me. “Now we’re both on the floor.”

“Let me go!” He tried to bite my arm, and I gladly obliged, scooting away from him.

“Shit! Shit. Sorry.” Noted. He didn’t like being held down.

He sat up as he held his injured arm and glared at me. “Happy now?”

Shit. I was so useless. I was just basically annoying him because I was bored. How stupid was I? I shook my head, fighting tears but not letting a waver appear in my voice. “No. I can’t find Shine anywhere, and Volt’s nowhere to be found either, and I don’t trust anyone else besides you and Richard. And he’s not up for competing. And I can’t sit around all day and do nothing. But I can’t fight either. Shit.” I took a shaky breath. “I hate being useless.”

He blinked. “You trust me?”

Why wouldn’t I? “You fight well. What’s not to trust?” I paused. I should at least apologize. I had been mean. “And sorry I insulted you. I’m in a bad mood,” I mumbled.

He kept staring at me. “Oh.” He looked away after a little bit. “You look like you got hit by a truck or something and survived so there’s that.”

I shook my head. This was nothing, honestly. “I’ve had worse.” I sighed. “But hey, since you did win, you can insult me all day.” A smile tugged at my lips. “That doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to insult you back.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a prize.” He leaned back a bit.

We both had knives. What was the logical conclusion? “Well, we could see who’s a better knife thrower and whoever wins can laugh whenever the other falls the rest of the day. Which for me would be a lot.” I gestured at my legs. No need to tell him that I had no idea how to throw knives.

“Fine.” He got up and glanced down at me, but I just stood up on shaky legs and gripped my knife tightly as I pointed at a farther away vase.

“Whoever breaks it wins.” I threw first, and it landed point-first in the wall right next to the window which wasn’t very close to the vase. Shit.

He took the next throw and actually grazed it. But it just wobbled but didn’t fall or break. He cursed under his breath as we both grabbed our knives. My next throw was still too far away, and his next throw bounced off the table. This could take a while.

For my next throw, Skyler made a move as if he was going to try to trip me, and my throw went a little wilder than normal, and it smashed right through the window. Brilliant. I stared at the window for a little bit. “Okay. So that’s your fault. So, you have to come with me to go get it.”

He crossed his arms. “What, scared you might fall down the stairs or something?”

No. It was just common courtesy. I crossed my arms back. “It wouldn’t be like you could keep me from falling anyway with those arms.”

“I only need the one,” he grumbled, but he did start heading toward the door.

I huffed and followed him. “Yeah, sure. I’m not that light.”

We left the apartment without anyone seeing us, and when we got to the bottom floor and the door outside, he waited for me.

I went toward where the window was pointing, but when I turned the corner, I froze and scrambled out of sight. Meras, one of the Shades, was here. Why? What business could she possibly have here? And there was a woman with her who looked a little like Skyler. Shit.

Meras spoke up enough for me to hear. “The crash came from over here. And what’s this?” She probably found the knife. Double shit. I slipped another knife into my hand even though it wouldn’t do any good. She would recognize my knife. I had had it when I escaped.

I hadn’t even noticed that I had bumped into Skyler, and he was about to say something, but he stopped and spoke quieter instead. “What’s wrong?”

It took me a little bit to speak clearly. “That’s someone I…knew when I was a child being held by the Capitol.”

“You what?” He shoved past me to look around the corner.

The other woman started talking. “Well that’s not something you see everyday, knives falling from the sky.”

Skyler tensed when he saw her and pressed himself against the wall. “We have to get back inside,” he hissed at me.

Shit. She would recognize it, tell Churi about it, and he would investigate the area and find all of the tributes. There had to be something I could do. I had already fucked something else up. “But—but if that get’s back to Churi, he could recognize the knife. And anyway, they could figure out where it came from.”

Skyler started shaking and looking in every direction. “What the Hell do you want me to do about it? I can’t go out there!”

You don’t have to do shit. I have to. But could I? Willingly give myself over to the Shades? Just the thought made me sit down and start rubbing at my scars as I started shaking. “I’ll go out there. Tell them it was mine. Should be able to keep suspicion from the apartment and all of you.”

He stared down at me. “Shut up!” He grabbed me and tried to drag me back to the building. “If she hears you and finds me I’ll fucking kill you!”

I couldn’t go back into the apartment and just hope they didn’t do anything. I had to do something. I yanked my arm out of his grip and started walking toward the corner. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t, so get the fuck out of here,” I hissed.

“Whatever, let them find you. I don’t care.”

Fine. I walked out into the open, shoving my other knife into my pocket so I wouldn’t look threatening. Meras looked around and smiled. “Nesri, darling!” I had to stop myself from flinching. “I thought this was yours.” She rolled the knife in her hands.

The other woman looked over at Meras. “You know her?”

“Oh, she’s just a wayward child Churi has been obsessed with for a while.”

The woman gave a short laugh. “Small world isn’t it?” She put a hand on her hip, smiling over at me and nodding. “We heard something and I was wondering where in the world this would have come from in this neighborhood. Practicing for something or just messing around?”

I still stared at Meras. She was the bigger threat. “Messing around.” I forced out a laugh. “You know me. I’m a reckless fool.”

Meras smirked over at me, but glanced over at the other woman when she checked her watch. Meras nodded. “Just one more thing, dear.” She looked back at me, and I did flinch under her stare. “You know, Churi would kill to get you back.” She paused, and I took a deep breath and nodded. This was it. She would take me. But it would be the right punishment for what I had done. Meras shook her head. “But I’m not him. And you were too much of a problem for me to want you back.” Wait, what? She walked forward and handed the knife back to me before caressing my cheek. I stiffened. “Be more careful next time, darling. If any other Shades found you, they’d take you in a heartbeat.” She laughed lightly and nodded at the woman.

The woman waved. “Good to meet you, Nesri.” She headed off, and Meras followed after her.

I wasn’t going to be taken? What? Why? I stared after them until my legs gave out, and I collapsed to the ground and started sobbing. Shit. I should have been taken.

I didn’t notice Skyler until he was right beside me, and I didn’t recognize him right away, so I jumped up and pointed the knife at him before I recognized him. He went to hit it out my hand, but that didn’t work, and I just lowered it and took a shaky breath. “I thought you got the fuck out of here.” He shook his head, and I swallowed hard. “Well, they won’t bother us. Meras only cares about someone if she thinks they’re pretty and not annoying. Which I was neither to her.” All right. No more talking about this. “Well, I’m fucking hungry, so I’m going to make some popcorn. I’ve never had it before, and Triel didn’t have any on her airship.”

We started climbing back up to the apartment, and I kept trying to not think about what just happened. The breakdown could happen when I was alone. But then Skyler stopped and sat down as tears welled up in his eyes and he breathed shakily.

I looked back at him, and my will to keep it together broke down as well. I cursed under my breath at my inability to keep calm, and I sat down next to him as tears started spilling down my cheeks as well. I tentatively took his hand, since I normally liked human touch to anchor myself, but he just took it back.

He leaned against the wall, and we both took a moment to just let the tears fall before we could get it back together. I took a deep breath and spoke up first. “That was my fault. I’m—I’m sorry.”

He glanced over at me and shook his head. “I made you mess up the throw.”

How sweet. But it certainly wasn’t his fault. “But I shouldn’t have suggested that in the first place.”

“And I shouldn’t be here,” he mumbled.

Wait, what? He was so cool. I frowned. “And why would you say that?!”

He rested his head against the wall. “It was stupid for me to come here. If she’d seen me…” He stopped, swallowing and rubbing at his face.

“Well, if that’s the case, I shouldn’t have come here either. But here we are. And she didn’t see you.” And I added under my breath. “Maybe I should have punched her as a farewell gift.”

“She might be back.” He hunched over a little. “And she won’t be happy that I’m still alive and she’ll probably send people after me again.”

Well, she was awful. “And I’ll punch those people too.”

He was quiet for a little bit. “She’s my mother.”

I barely remembered my mother, but they were supposed to love their kids, weren’t they? Fuck her. I nodded. “I’ll certainly punch her if I see her again.”

“Is that how you solve every problem?” he asked lightly.

I nodded again. “It’s the only thing I’m good for.”

“You really think so?” He smiled a little. “You really are a dumbass then.”

It was a kind sentiment, but yeah. I was only good for fighting. I didn’t know anything else. I was a dumbass. I snorted. “If I was good for something else, I would have been able to get away from Churi and keep the crew from getting involved so that they would have been there to help the tributes escape.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, and I wouldn’t have needed someone to hide me my whole life.”

Actually, I was looking forward to have someone smarter than me hide me. I hadn’t done a good job of it after I had escaped. I leaned back and closed my eyes. “Well, isn’t that a mood. Triel’s planning on doing that for me too. I just have to get her out so she can follow through on her promise.”

“It was like that when Volt got reaped. We couldn’t just let her go after what she’s done for us.”

I opened my eyes again and nodded. “I’m glad you were able to get her back. She is a good person.”

“Yeah.” He wiped his eyes. “I think she’s the first person who really ever cared about me.”

I just stayed silent, and we sat there for a while. I didn’t want to get up until my tears were exhausted, and Skyler seemed to agree. But then after a while, Volt and Shine walked up the stairs and stopped and stared at us.

Shine was holding a file, so they must have gone somewhere to get something (smart, right?). They frowned and signed slowly so I could actually tell what they said. “What happened?”

I responded in their sign language, mostly spelling out the words. “Where were you two?”

Volt looked over at Skyler and spoke. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

I nodded but still faced Shine so they could read my lips. “Just a little misadventure. Where were you two?” Shine signed something so fast, I couldn’t tell what they had signed.

Volt helped both of us up and held Skyler against her side. “We had something to attend to, but we can talk more inside.”

When Shine and I were alone in my room, I pulled out my phone to text them. “Okay, where the hell were you?”

They grinned and held out the file they had so I could look at it. I frowned. It was packed with blueprints of machines. My phone buzzed. “I’ll share one fact for one fact of yours. I went to Indigo Carmine’s lab.”

I sighed and texted back. “I found Skyler and tried to fight him.”

They huffed. “I was looking for the blueprints for Richard’s machines.”

Well, that was lucky that she had the blueprints. “I was bored and wanted to do something.”

“While I was looking for the blueprints, I ran into Indigo herself.”

I frowned. They had to have gotten out of that safely, right? “I threw a knife out of the window, and Meras and someone else came across it.”

Shine’s lips thinned, but they continued on. I’d get a text rant about it later. “I pretended my name was Geoff, but that didn’t fool her, so Volt threatened her to help me get out.”

“I revealed myself to keep the apartment and the rest of the tributes safe from prying eyes, hopefully, but she didn’t take me, as you can see. She wasn’t interested in dealing with me again, I suppose.”

Shine sighed and typed rapidly on their phone until a paragraph showed up on mine. “You’re supposed to be resting. Please don’t be reckless. If you would have been captured, I would have cried.” With their perfectly neutral expression watching me at the moment. “Please, I want you to take care of yourself.”

I frowned. “You were reckless too. What if Carmine had captured you?” I sighed. “I’ll try not to be so reckless. But that means that you need to find me something to do.”

They grinned. “No problem. You can help me with the machines.” They grabbed the file and ran off to probably get some of the machines to my room. I sighed. I could do something, but was it really helping Triel? How could I help her? She had to still be alive, didn’t she?

#writeblr hunger games #writeblr

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asleepinawell · 3 years

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hi Sarah, idk if I missed it but have you posted your thoughts on pathologic before?

hmm, I don't think I have. it was pathologic 2 specifically that I played. never tried the first one

I generally really liked pathologic 2. the atmosphere and aesthetic were completely on point and I actually bought it without knowing a thing about it after my friend sent me a screenshot of the plague doctor executors. I was just like ah yes a game for me. also playing it during a pandemic was, uh, quite something. but I like the tone of it and the mounting sense of desperation and how random and surreal it is. like the one part where you have to report to the town hall and the whole town freezes and you follow the trail of pointing tragedians was super cool. also the soundtrack was great and that opening where you walk through the doomed town gave me chills. and I loved the bulls! and artemy's snarky dialogue

oh also the mind map as the 'journal' or task page or whatever was a really cool system and I wish other games would try out something similar

on the flip side I had a low tolerance for some of the meta stuff with mark immortell which just felt kinda pretentious. I know a lot of people loved it but not my thing. to add to that I didn't like the very similar tone the actual devs took when they were finally convinced to add difficulty sliders for the game. that said something like 'we understand not everyone wishes to be enlightened by their experience' or something equally pretentious. their whole shtick has been making games so difficult and grueling that most people will never finish them. and no thanks, I will never think that adding accessibility options to games is a bad thing

on a somewhat related note, I had the misfortune to play it on console which I would really strongly advise against. the console versions crash constantly, corrupts your save files (sometimes multiple saves in the stack), has ridiculous load times to....walk down the street and while your game is trying to load the next area and you're frozen in place the rest of the game might start back up and oops you've been stabbed to death or caught the plague before you get control back. considering that each time you die you get a permanent penalty applied retroactively to all your saves, this sucks and makes the game even more miserable to play on top of the intended frustrations. so don't play on the console. (the pc version is much better). but yeah when you die because the game froze up briefly and then have to go listen to mark immortell, who embodies the devs, be condescending to you about your death that was caused by the shitty optimization of the game it's just like...fuck the entire way off my dude

my other sort of complaint was about the endings. I generally prefer the nocturnal ending, but I've done both and it felt kind of lame that there wasn't a middle ground ending. not because I wanted a perfect happy ending or anything like that, but because the conflict that was set up between the kin and the townsfolk mirrors a lot of real stuff in the world and it felt very lazy and unimaginative to be like well you can only ever have one or the other there's no other choice! it felt like it kind of negated some of the themes in the story too.

I've complained a lot in this post but I swear I really did enjoy it a lot and I'll probably play the other two parts if they ever come out (not on console though lol). I'd recommended it if you enjoy very challenging games with immersive narratives and high stakes and love the creepy surreal aesthetic. Also there is absolutely nothing wrong with turning down the difficulty sliders and just enjoying the story with the minimum amount of annoyance because it's (intentionally) hard to experience the full story on the intended difficulty, something I have opinions about that you can probably guess

I also enjoyed the marble nest, the dlc that went with it. it had more of the meta game stuff in it but I found it more tolerable and it was just a cool little game with those same great aesthetics

as a final note, I've seen very mixed opinions on the portrayal of the indigenous people of the steppe, the kin (who I don't believe are based on a real people but I won't swear to that), and I don't feel qualified to sort through that myself especially with only a couple vague tumblr text posts to go off of but I do think it's worth noting that there are some criticisms there and keeping that in mind while playing

#mp #asks #not putting this is the main tag because I do not need any crazed fans telling me to git gud or whatever #I did play it on both the intended and an easier difficulty both #and the easier one was more enjoyable to be #listen guys I'm a big soulsborne fan and I'm proud of having beaten them all and if they put in an easy mode I wouldn't play it #BUT I 100% support them putting one in #get over yourself and let people have fun in the way that suits them best #on this blog we love and support everyone who plays games on easy mode #thank you for coming to my ted talk #lol my tldr review could be summed up as loved the game hated the devs

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stormtodoroki · 4 years

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Love Sparks

Pairing: Kaminari Denki x Reader

Soulmate AU

Warnings: None

P.O.V: Reader's

Word Count: 2,644

The knowledge about how and when Quirks came along goes far beyond my family's history, at least I think. My name is Aizawa, (f/n) and I am preparing for my UA entrance exam, thankfully my mother has allowed me to come to Japan from America for schooling. She mentioned something about being able to meet my grandparents as well as my biological father, if I get the chance. She hasn't told me much about him, every time I'd ask her she'd get really mad and tell me not to ask again, but I was persistent, I just had to know. But that's not the only thing I had to know, not only are quirks a fascinating part of our lives but so is the way we find our forever person, our body's receive a shock that courses through our bodies when we make skin to skin contact with our soulmate.

I stood at the main gates and took a few deep breaths, this was it, the beginning of my future, if I passed this entrance exam I will officially be a hero student at UA High. As I took my steps over the threshold and moved closer to the designated building I let out a shaky breath I didn't realize I was holding. What if my quirk might not be good enough to get through? What if someone has a similar quirk and they have better control over it than I do? I stopped walking all together and was about to turn around when someone crashed into me.

"WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING YOU DAMN EXTRA! STAY OUTTA MY WAY."

I looked up to see what I could only describe as an angry porcupine, his face contorted with rage if I looked at him close enough I'd probably see steam coming out of his ears. I let out a quick apology and nodded, he tsked and walked away grumbling, boy I would hate to be in the same testing area as him, I'm just grateful that I didn't say anything back to him. I shook my head clear and walked into the building, looking for my number I sat next to a kid who looked like he was in the wrong place, he dressed a bit too formal. I wonder if he's going to take the exam in that?

I took a quick glance around and gulp, there's a lot of kids here, I knew how prestigious the school was and how low the acceptance rate was, but this was just insane. My attention was soon directed to the front where- oh my gosh it's the Pro-hero Present Mic., he's giving us the run down for the practical? This should be good.

Present Mic. walked to the middle of the stage, he turned to all of us and screamed,

"Welcome to today's live performance. Everybody say, hey!"

We were all silent. You could hear crickets chirping.

"Well, that's cool, my examinee listeners! I'm here to present the guidelines of your practical, are you ready, there was silence, yet again as he screamed, "YEAH! "

Listening to Present Mic. screaming and talking loud like he always does began to give me a headache, rubbing my temples I tried to focus on what he was saying. A few rows or so away, I heard what sounded like muttering, I quietly turned and looked towards it, there was a boy with unruly green hair next to, I can't believe it… it's the angry porcupine from earlier who knocked into me. Though he didn't seem too happy to be next to the green haired boy.

"This is how the test will go, my listeners! You'll be experiencing 10-minute-long "mock cityscape maneuvers"! Bring along whatever you want! After this presentation, each head to your assigned testing location."

"Is that so kids from the same middle school can't help each other out?"

I heard from the duo behind me, shaking my head clear I was happy that I didn't know anyone from Japan so it'd be easier for me to take the test and not worry about any of my friends who were also trying to get into UA, all I have to do is worry about myself.

"Each site is filled with 3 kinds of faux villains, points are rewarded for defeating each according to their respective difficulty levels!! Use your quirks to disable, these faux villains and earn points! That's your goal, listeners! Of course, playing the anti-hero and attacking other examinees is prohibited!"

I noticed during this part of Present Mics. explanation, the boy dressed in formal attire next to me was twitching in his seat, he waited for Present Mic. to finish talking before he up abruptly stood up with his hand and paper in the air.

"Excuse me, but if I may ask a question?!"

Oh boy, this ought to be great…

"There appear to be no fewer than 4 varieties of faux, the one on this handout, such a bland, if it is one, is highly unbecoming for you. Japan's top academy we're all here today in the hopes of being molded into model heroes."

He then turned and pointed to Green Bean.

"And you with the curly hair, you've been muttering this whole time, it's distracting if this is some sort of game to you then please leave immediately! "

He muttered, sorry and put his hands to his mouth, I covered my mouth with my hand and fought back a giggle.

"Alright, alright, examinee 7111 nice catch thanks, but the 4th faux villain variety gets you zero points this more of an obstacle, have you all played Super Mario Brothers, the old retro games?"

"It's kind of like a thwomp! Only one at each site, a "gimmick" that will rampage around in close quarters."

I heard quiet murmurs about the zero pointer all around me and just shook my head in pity, clearly this is a decoy. Yes, there may be a zero pointer but it's more likely to be the biggest one there is otherwise there'd be more stationed at each site. They expect us not to worry about said faux villain, yet it'll probably be the most important one in the whole exam, I'll have to keep an eye out for it.

"Thank you, sir, I apologize for the interruption!"

With that the formal guy next to me took a bow and sat back down.

"That's all for me, I'll leave my listeners with our school motto, the great hero Napoleon Bonaparte once said, 'true heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life!' plus ultra!! Break a leg everyone! "

With that everyone got up from their spots and filed out in search of where they were to go. As I looked around the battle center I was sent to a breathed out a sigh of relief, neither the formal dude or the hot head were in sight. I looked around for the green bean to ask him what the hot head had shoved up his butt, but to my dismay he wasn't assigned to my battle center either. Looking around I see people meditating and conversing with each other, I don't need to do either. I began walking towards the front of the crowd marveling at the city front before me. I looked around and saw Present Mic. on top of a platform and smiled up at him and waved, like a buffoon he looked and and pointed to himself in confusion then waved back before pointing to the city urgently.

I took that as my cue to go so I took a deep breath and ran in, I made in about 10 feet into the city before I heard him call out.

"What are you waiting for?! There are no timers in real battles! Begin!"

I knew if I turned around I'd see all the kids running towards me so I decided to get some air coverage. Sticking my arms and hands out to my sides I shot up into the air leaving a trail of water spiraling down below me. I landed on a high rise and looked around the city, seeing a 1 pointer and a 2 pointer approaching I summoned a ball of water into my hands and contorted it into a spear.

I began to run and jump the rooftops closer to the faux villains and replicated the spear before throwing them both at each bot, taking them down. As the bots were falling I hopped onto them and used my water to slide down to the ground. Looking around them I did a double check to make sure nobody made it this far and accidentally got crushed by a giant falling robot. After seeing it was clear I decided to make way to the center on food, as I began to jog I heard a scream from behind me. I turned to look and saw a 3 pointer ready to crush a girl with pink hair and what appears to be horns? I looked closer and saw her foot was stuck and she was trying to get out without using her quirk on herself. I definitely wouldn't make it to her by running, so I had to muster up my energy and use my quirk from afar, something I'm not too good at.

"Hey! Close your eyes!"

The girl looked at me and nodded, I then stood next to one of the fallen faux villain bots and took a stray piece in a ball of water I expanded to its size, quickly I released the piece and expanded the water ball more until it was the size of the bot. I hurled the ball of water at the bot and encased it in my water ball before throwing the water ball into the air, it disappeared from the center and past the clouds.

"Okay, I may have been a little too extreme… "

I muttered to myself, as I walked over to the girl and helped free her.

"You good?"

She nodded and thanked me.

"Don't mention it, just go get some more points for yourself. I'd hate for you not to be able to get in because you were stuck and couldn't stop thanking someone who saved you."

After taking down a few more bots and saving a few people I estimate that I have around 35 points right now which means I should be in good standing. I was so lost in thought that I bumped into someone, they sent a shock through me and I froze for a second before shaking my arm.

"Oh my gosh I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hit you with my quirk are you okay?"

'What? Wait? He hit me with his quirk?'

I cleared my head and looked at him in confusion, that wasn't just the electric shock that goes through your body when you meet your soulmate?

"Oh… uh. Don't worry about it. I'm all good."

'Lies, why would I be alright? You know damn well it wasn't your quirk.'

He gave me a look of uncertainty and smiled.

"Hi, I'm Kaminari Denki. Nice to meet you uh… what's your name?"

I scoffed internally, 'really? That's how you're gonna ask me my name? Dude just how dense are you?'

"F/n L/n. Crap, sorry. L/N, F/N. Nice to meet you as well Kaminari. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go and rack up more points so if you don't mind I'll just be o-"

Kaminari cut me off by yelling.

"That's a zero pointer! No way! That thing is huge!"

Looking up I saw what he was talking about, I smirked.

"U.A. definitely lives up to its prestigious name. I am impressed. Wow. This zero pointer is glorious."

Kaminari looked at me like I was insane, as if I somehow sparked a fire in him he puffed out his chest in glee and smirked.

"All the more reason for me to prove my strength. Stand back L/N I'm gonna light this bot up."

I blinked in surprise as he ran towards the bot and he charged up- no way, he wasn't kidding. Large amounts of electricity sprayed out of his hands to the bot, it froze in place for a few moments with electricity spazzing all around the bots frame, but it didn't go down. Kaminari turned to me and gave me a thumbs up and a dumb look on his face.

"Kaminari you fool! You fried your brain with that foolish attack!"

The bot soon was out of its shocked state and raised it's foot ready to pummel the poor dunce. I quickly mustered up my strength and formed a water ball and sent it at Kaminari, once he was inside I whipped it at me. Kaminari and the water ball collided into me just as the bot stomped down where Kaminari was seconds before. I stood up and slapped Kaminari, feeling another jolt of electricity surge through me.

'Awh hell. This fool is my soulmate and he's too dense to realize it's not his quirk.'

I turned to the bot and watched it moved closer before turning back to Kaminari.

"After this exam you're taking me out for ice cream for saving your fried ass not only once but twice."

I turned back to the bot and sent two water balls towards the next spots where it would step, not satisfied with the ground I sent more until the bot stepped and sunk a few feet.

"Yes! It worked!"

I happily then made a few water spears and threw them at the bot before I took a deep breath in, closed my eyes and concentrated on a tiny ball of water in my hands, I needed to focus all my energy if I wanted to make this work. I slowly enlarged the ball in my hand and listened as it started to crackle and pop, taking another deep breath I slowly opened my eyes and smirked before shrinking the softball sized water ball and throwing it at the exposed part of the bot. Once it was a foot from contacting the bot I spread my arms out enlarging the crackling ball and watched as it downed the bot.

I looked to Kaminari and sighed. I need to get him somewhere safe until this wears off, if I leave him here he'll be an easy target for the other bots. I'm pretty sure there's five minutes left meaning I can still get a few more points if I hurry up. I took some gummies out of my pocket and threw them in my mouth, I'm lucky we were allowed to bring things in that would help us, otherwise I'd have been out for the count when I helped that pink girl. I led Kaminari to a safe area and smirked as a three pointer came out of the alley next to us, I jumped up with my water and formed water around my wrist as I plummeted down and punched the bot. It went down just as Present Mic. screeched.

"It's all over! Good job everybody!

Within moments Recovery Girl was by my side looking at Kaminari, she shook her head and gave him a kiss on the forehead. Kaminari blinked and looked around in a state of confusion before looking at me.

"Come on Kaminari, you owe me an ice cream."

I poked his cheek and was sent another shock of electricity, which he definitely would have felt as all and leaned into his ear.

"After all we are soulmates, and I just saved your butt."

I gave the shocked boy a knowing smile and grasped his hand and began leasing him away towards the exit. If we both somehow get into the hero course this was going to be one exciting year...

A/N: this is AU prompt was brought upon you thanks to the bnha discord server. You can find other works by member of the discord here:

https://liliesoftherain.tumblr.com/post/614256302090223616/mha-x-reader-discord-prompt-masterlist

#bnha au #mha kaminari #kaminari denki #x reader #denki x reader #mnha #bnha x reader #mha x reader #bnha kaminari #kaminari x reader #denki x you

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hippychick006 · 4 years

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15.11: The Gamblers - Episode Review/Recap

This ep follows directly on from last week. The episode was very mixed, there were 2 distinct storylines that merged at the end. I had a few issues with the Castiel/Jack side of the story, which I’ll cover later, but the Sam and Dean scenes, for the most part, I was able to enjoy. I even caught myself smiling… fucking smiling at several moments, because this? This was a glimpse of what my show once was. This also explains to the “Just stop watching” brigade why I’m still watching. The brother scenes were a nugget of gold amongst the dross and worth watching for.

Thank you, Davey Perez, Meredith Glynn and Director Charles Beeson for reminding me, albeit briefly, why I fell in love with this show, and at the same time, why I dislike much of Dabb’s run, which in my humble opinion hasn’t just veered the ship slightly off course; it crashed into an iceberg in 11.21 and has been slowly sinking since then. I think last week’s episode brought us to the point where half the ship is now vertical, ready to plunge into the depths of the icy ocean...

...Anyway, enough about sinking ships, the key thing I struggled with going into this episode is the obvious fuck up from the previous week; the entire premise of the Winchester’s losing their “luck” and being reduced to “normal” people, and I want to talk rant about that for a few more minutes before we get onto this episode. If you want to skip that, I’ll put start and end of rant, so you can skip forward.

Start of rant

In order to enjoy this episode, you pretty much have to ignore much of the previous episode and… that doesn’t sit well with me. Last week wasn’t just a single scene you can forget ever existed (e.g. the trench-coat scene or Dean’s apology to Cass). What Dabb did fucked with the entire concept of the show; that the Winchesters are ordinary people who do extraordinary things. So, it’s really difficult to shake that epic fuck up off and just move on.

I just can’t ever buy in to the concept that the Winchesters were “favoured” or have more luck than “normal” people. I mean look at Sam’s life for starters; he didn’t know his mom, he was fed demon blood as a baby, was dragged up in a life he hated, constantly moving, being brought up in crappy motels and forced to train to become a hunter. The love of his life is murdered, and he becomes an orphan at 22. He died at 23 (for the first time) and then he loses the last remaining member of his family at 24. The Winchesters are far from “lucky” and if I could be bothered, I’d go looking for mentions of “with the Winchester luck” that have been peppered throughout the series. Chuck has not “favoured” the Winchesters at all and they haven’t had Charmed lives because of Chuck’s interference.

I also can’t buy into the concept that the Winchesters are anything other than “normal” in the first place. Sadly, they showed last weeks “fight” scenes during the recap and it did nothing, other than enrage me again. Sam and Dean are excellent fighters and hunters because they trained from a young age to be as good as they are. They weren’t “given” anything and certainty not a free ride and fuck Dabb once again for writing that bullshit. It was nothing less than petty because we rejected his instant Hunter!Barbie fiasco that wasted too much of season 13.

So, how do I move forward from that and manage to enjoy this episode? The answer in my opinion, is you can’t, because even with a few good brother moments, the entire premise of this week’s episode fails to make sense, because the previous episode fails to make sense. I’ll cover why that is when we get to the pool game.

End Rant

The episode opens on a recap, and I ask myself why they are using all the bad bits from the previous few episodes, before I remember there weren’t many good bits to select from. That clip of Jensen with the teeth is still funny. 😂

I love the intro again this week. The setting was good, the guest actors, the camerawork, the music choice – North to Alaska - which complimented the scene, rather than felt like nails being dragged down a chalkboard. All classic spn so far, so it has my attention.

Two men (Joey and Leonard) are playing a game of pool and you can tell this is a high stakes game from the get go. What the stakes are, we don’t yet know, but when the game ends, we see 2 coins being held in a contraption above the pool table; one glows green then dulls with the coin head disappearing, the other glows green and gets brighter with the coin head gaining in definition. I don’t think this looks good for the loser. He agrees and tries to attack the winner with his pool cue. He’s stopped from doing so by a bouncer who turfs him outside. 👋 cutie tall bouncer. There’s an absolutely great shot of the loser tossing his coin in the air and the music gets loud again (Hey, I’m here as much for the settings, lighting, music and camerawork as I’m here for the Winchesters – sue me) and then…. Splat. He’s hit by a truck. Poor Leonard, red shirt of the episode. RIP my friend.

As an aside, I like how you guys announce which pocket the 8 ball is going into, we don’t do that.

This was a great into, interesting premise that immediately sucked me in, wanting to find out more. This is my show. Great job so far.

The next scene though shows once again how useless, at least for me, the writing is around Castiel. They wrote an entire scene with him walking into the bunker, seeing a note that has been left, going down to read it “Cass, we’ve gone to Alaska, Sam”. I’m not going to rant about the twats that insist on saying Sam has spelt it wrong, I’ve already done a post about the arrogance of fans trying to tell the show that created the character that they are wrong with the spelling of that character, so I’ll save you by moving on.

This entire scene, while I liked the shots of the otherwise empty bunker, was just wasting time for me. I’ve seen people say Sam left a note because Castiel was in heaven and wouldn’t get a text message and how clever of Sam to resort to paper. I don’t know about anyone else, but I dip in and out of WiFi zones all the time and the moment I dip back in, my phone pings with multiple notifications, so I personally thought this scene was dumb. It would have been better to see Castiel appear back at the sandpit and get a text notification from Sam with the same message.

Even better, you could take this scene away and it changes nothing that happens so why include it? *Whispers* J2 wanted time off and the writers are incompetent of filling that space with something more interesting so use “filler”.

Interestingly, my computer froze on Castiel’s face for 5 minutes so fuck you Norton or Windows 10 Update for your bad timing in running something in the “background”

BROMENT ALERT

We’re finally with what I’m watching the show for. Dean and Sam are in baby and driving towards Alaska. Sam’s phone is lighting up with messages and we find out through Dean that it’s Eileen. 🙄. Oh, Eileen’s being shoved into the narrative now? Sorry Eileen, the third wheel position on the show has already been filled since Season 7. And fuck you again Dabb because I loved Eileen as a friend of Sam and it’s just yet another thing your reverse Midas fingers have screwed over this season.

Dean: Silent mode is always an option

Me: I love you, have my babies… wait, that came out wrong

Eileen thinks the plan is a little too good to be true. Sam thinks she might be right. He’s not convinced the place even exists or that it can fix their problem. Dean thinks it couldn’t hurt and he’s done with normal, including the constant heartburn.

Sam: You know if you changed your diet…. Dean’s frown 😂

Sam insists that no one other than Garth has heard of it and it isn’t in the lore. Dean believes it’s got to be there. He believes Chuck isn’t messing with them,

Dean: He [Chuck] wants us off our game, he wants us weak, ‘cos he’s coming for us Sammy, and when he does, and we haven’t figured this out, we’re DOA.

Mostly a great brother scene, apart from the forced insertion of Eileen – are we incapable of getting a broment in the final chuck damn season, without the completely unnecessary forced inclusion of a third party???! The scene ends with a great shot of baby.

Back at the bunker and Castiel hears a phone ringing, and… I’m trying not to nitpick, but the way this case comes about just annoys me. There are better ways of bringing this about, than how they did it. But moving on, Castiel answers a random phone that was ringing in Sam’s room, and it’s a sheriff (Jeb Evans) looking for FBI agent, Watts. Castiel tells the sheriff that Agent Watts is working a case in Alaska, and that he is Agent… Lizzo. I can only assume Dean gave him that alias as I don’t think Castiel would know any musicians on his own. I like Jeb, who tells Agent Lizzo, they have a homicide and the suspect is someone Agent Watts flagged into the system… and guys… Sam is back to hacking into police systems and I just… I need a moment here as they’ve remembered Sam can hack into systems!

The agent tells Castiel that the suspect is Jack Kline.

Ummm… Castiel, are you... okay? Do you… do you maybe need to use the bathroom? Oh, you’re emoting? Okay dokay then. I can’t with this. I got more out of Leo in the less than 2 minutes he was on screen than I got out of Castiel since his return in season 7.

Back with the impala, which rolls into a diner stop. Sam is asleep, and Dean whacks him to wake him up. Sam wonders why they’ve stopped at “Round up café”. Dean says it’s the last stop for food for a few hundred miles.

Sam (frowns): Grab something out of the cooler

Dean: Yeah, no, I polished off the last of the sandwiches while you were out

Sam (annoyed): We’re on a budget!

Me (sighing): platonic soulmate Husbands! 😍

Last weeks puppy dog eyes fiasco aside, Dean’s still wrapped round Sam’s fingers, they enter the diner, slap some coins on the counter and ask what they can get for $4.60. Apparently, it’s a slice of pie and a coffee, and I’m moving to Alaska when they secede from the US because that would barely get you just the coffee here.

Dean asks for two forks for the pie

Me (sighing): platonic soulmate Husbands! 😍

Long story short on this scene, they get out of the waitress there’s a local urban legend about a magic poolhall in the middle of nowhere, that if you win, you come back lucky. She says though that no one ever comes back. Turns out she knew Leonard from the intro, and he went up there because the bank was going to take his house and he met with an accident.

Sam says at least they know now what the downside is. Dean doesn’t agree, he thinks it could be great, pool is the game of champions, kings, his game, our game, and they have great memories of hustling pool

Sam: yes, because we had to… to eat!

Still not seeing the “luck” Dabb wrote about. Imagine thinking they were remotely lucky; running scams or hustling pool to put a roof over their head or food in their stomach. And this is where I disconnect with this week’s episode, because of last week’s writing. How are they going to even be good at pool, a game that takes practice and skill? The things taken away seem to be random and plot devices; lock picking, fighting, hot metal burns, while it appears Dean can still drive okay, fix baby and I’m guessing their pool is going to be okay too, otherwise what’s the point of this episode? There’s no believable rules to this “bad luck/normal” and I’m left completely drifting and because of it. It's just badly thought out and executed.

Dean: if pool is the way we get our mojo back then maybe we ain’t as screwed as we thought

Waitress: Hey, you guys drive an impala?... I think you guys have a flat.

😂

Back with Cass and sheriff Jeb, Cass has managed to set up the laptop and access a video the sheriff has sent him. The video is of Jack killing a doctor and eating his heart. 😷 Jack, no! I’ll come back to the heart eating later.

Back with the boys, another shot of baby as they pull into “Lurlenes”. Baby isn’t sounding too good and I think I missed that earlier, but it did somewhat register that she was sounding louder than normal. Good touch.

Dean walks over one of the coins as they head for the entrance which I guess might be Leonard’s from earlier. I like little details like this. Once inside, Sam points out they don’t have beer money, much less what it costs to buy into a game. Dean says they’ll figure something out and goes to the bar and orders two waters. I’m guessing that’s going to hit Dean more than health conscious Sam. Dean asks the bar person, Evie, how they get into a game. She calls Pax over and it’s the tall, cutie bouncer from earlier. Sam asks Evie if she saw Leonard and she says no, but you can tell she’s lying.

Pax takes them to his office and explains the rules of the game, that they don’t bet with money, they bet with luck. He gets Dean to touch a coin he puts down and it turns green. Pax looks at the coin and says “not great”

Dean: And that means?

Pax explains that everyone walks in with a certain amount of luck, that the green glow was Dean’s and it was “about average.” Dean thinks that sounds about right. I’m going to head-canon that Dean’s luck is about average of the people that find the pool hall, but below average in general, due to Chuck screwing around with them.

Pax says if Dean wins a game, he might see his fortunes improve.

Sam: And if he loses?

Pax says he can keep playing, but if the coin goes blank, that means you’re out of luck, and you’ve got to leave. He asks if they’ve got any questions.

Sam (a bit pissy): What is this place? Who owns it?

Pax says he doesn’t know, but if they don’t like it, they are free to leave.

Dean: When I win, can I split it (indicates Sam)… the luck?

Pax (sighing): platonic soulmate Husbands! 😍 Oh, wait, sorry, that was me

Pax: it’s yours, you can do what you want

Sam asks for a second to talk to his husband brother.

Sam: no, no, no, no, no way (complete with shaking finger)

Dean: man, I’ve been slinging pool cues since before you were born

Snarky!Sam: when you were four, really? In between snack time and nap? 😂

Dean (internally): damn, I forgot you were my brother for a second and I can’t bullshit you

Dean tells Sam that they need to do this, and that Sam is pretty much better than him, at everything, he’s not mad about it, he’s proud… but he can wipe the floor with Sam at pool. Dean takes Sam’s epic eyeroll as silent permission he can play.

Back with Castiel, he investigates the doctor’s office and finds a weird case which has a sword inside. We flashback to a previous episode with Sam tied to a chair (🙄 it must have been a Thursday). Anyway, the flashback tells us the doctor was one of the Grigori, a brotherhood of perfect beings. I’d forgotten about them and might have to look them up before I touch the heart eating thing. Note: I did look them up and it was a Claire episode, so never mind, that’s why I forgot about them.

We transition from Cas to Jack and he seems to be following someone with the same case as the doctor, so another Grigori. He follows the Grigori into an abandoned building.

Back at the pool hall and no one is biting to play with the noob. Okay, I’m ashamed to say I laughed at this next bit, Dean deliberately breaks badly and loudly proclaims that he’s rusty at this. Oh Dean. No one’s going to fall for… Surprisingly he actually gets a taker and asks Dean to rack up. Sam goes back to the bar to speak to Evie. She asks if he plays and he says not really. Sam asks Evie what the woman’s deal is that’s playing Dean (Moira). Evie says she’s been here a while and her sister is in a coma.

Sam goes into awkward question mode, and I have flashbacks to the earlier seasons. He asks about rotten eggs. Evie responds: Just Charlie… We pan over to Charlie and he’s playing pool badly. Sam then asks if she’s seen “little bundles” laying around. She says no, but she gets that he’s trying to figure the place out. Sam says places like this don’t exist for no reason, she answers that most people think it’s a godsend. She gives him information on a couple of people playing, they won at first, could have walked away winners, but kept playing until their luck ran sour. She repeats they should have walked away which is a clear warning for Sam who looks over at his brother who wins the game.

Back with Jack, he’s got an angel blade and is still after the Grigori. Unfortunately, the Grigori twigged he was being followed and now has Jack at blade point.

Back at the pool hall and Sam is trying to convince Dean they need to leave, and I’m trying not to be distracted by the picture in the scene behind them.

Dean (brandishing his coin at Sam): Come on man, I’m on a roll

Snarky!Sam: Dean, you won one game!

Sam thinks the place sucks you in and that if Dean keeps playing, he’ll lose and end up like Leonard. Dean convinces Sam who reluctantly allows him to have one more game.

Me (sighing): platonic soulmate Husbands! 😍

Dean finds his mark, which is Joey from the intro. We see Dean playing well and Joey asks what his name was again.

Dean: my name is Dean Winchester and I am going to kick your ass.

Sam: 😍 that’s my platonic soulmate husband brother

Joey smiles.

They talk as Dean clears the table. Turns out Joey used to work the bull riding circuit.

Dean (cocky smile): tell me, how was that?… corner pocket. He misses the shot

Joey (grinning): good times (he pots and all he can do is hide the cue ball behind another ball, giving Dean a very tricky shot on the 8 ball)… and some not so good.

Dean goes to take the shot and Joey challenges double or nothing if Dean misses. Sam doesn’t like it. Dean asks if Joey is trying to hustle him.

Joey: I thought you were going to kick my ass

Dean smiles and agrees to the deal, does a trick shot with the cue ball jumping over the other ball and potting the 8 ball.

Joey closes his eyes. Sam looks happy, then Joey says: a hell of a shot.

Dean watches as the coins glow green and Joey’s coin is now dull, and this is sad because even if Sam and Dean haven’t realised the implication yet, Joey is not long for this world. Joey leaves, and Sam and Dean follow. Joey congratulates Dean on the game yet again and says, “I guess you can’t hustle a hustler.” Sam’s concerned when Joey starts coughing. Turns out Joey is dying, he has cancer, he came to the pool hall to beat it, and Sam and Dean have finally caught up with me that this game sucks. This is the first time in a long time, I’ve felt anything for a character on this show that we only meet for a limited time in a single episode, so I’m going to kudos the writing and the guest star for this one. This is what happens when you actually put some characterisation into your writing.

Sam and Dean go back inside. Dean said the plan worked so they should hit the road.

Sam: What about everybody else?

Sam wants to stay and figure out how they can help them. Dean reminds him they are in a fight with God and they just got their mojo back. Sam challenges whether there’s even enough luck in the coin for them. Dean says they’ll give it a try by him going for a drive and if baby’s okay, they are leaving. End of.

Back with Castiel and he meets sheriff Jeb at the abandoned building Jack was captured in. A transient spotted Jack going into the building so called the police. Castiel asks Jeb if there are any other abandoned places around. Jeb tells him about a church.

Back with Sam and he’s talking to Charlie, who is apparently playing so his team can win the Super Bowl and part of me is 😂 and part of me is, I feel you my friend, because Canucks and the Stanley Cup, and desperate measures at this stage.

Sam: that’s great, it is, but is it really worth your life?

Me (picturing the Stanley cup being paraded through the streets of Vancouver): …Yes?!

The puppy dog eyes fail again, Charlie says “just one more game.” And goes back to playing

Evie says at least Sam tried but no one will listen. She says none of “us” are going anywhere. Sam asks if they are trapped here, if Evie was trapped here. She leaves rapidly.

Dean arrives back, baby’s dead again, he didn’t even make it out of the parking lot. Sam takes a look at the coin Dean slams down. He believes Dean should have won more luck than he did, given how many people Joey likely beat before Dean played him and all that accumulated luck should have gone to Dean when he won, but it doesn’t seem to. Sam thinks someone is stealing the luck, skimming off the top.

Dean: You mean like the house?

Sam (lifts coin showing head): her… I think

Dean takes the coin and reads: Atrox Fortvnta

Sam says she’s the Roman goddess of luck. So, Sam’s allowed to be smart as a plot contrivance this week? *cough* hot metal burns *cough*.

They go speak to Evie about who runs the place. She says she can’t help them. Sam asks why she warned him in the first place. Evie says so he would take his brother and go. Dean asks why Evie is there, does the god have something over her. Evie says she played and lost and is only alive because she lets her stay as long as she keeps working. Sam asks if the god is here, but Evie doesn’t know, she only talks to Pax and drops the revelation that Pax is the god’s son.

Back with Jack and the Grigori has injured him and holding him captive. He knows what Jack is and that he’s powerful. The Grigori wants to know why Jack killed his kind. The Grigori have their own frequency of angel radio. Me, 🙄 of course you do because easy plot device. Before his brother died, he called to the Grigori. He asks Jack if he did that to draw him out, to kill him too.

Back with Sam and Dean, Sam approaches Pax wanting to ask a question. While Pax is focused on Sam, Dean grabs him and holds him at knifepoint.

Sam (niceness gone): Where’s your mom?

Loved that bit

Pax doesn’t answer so Sam shouts “Fortuna.” Dean follows with, “We have your son”

Moira walks through the pool hall and we know she is now Fortuna.

Sam says they know she’s skimming luck and they want it back. Dean threatens to kill Pax if she doesn’t

Fortuna: well, you probably could, his daddy was human, but no

Pax (shocked pikachu face): Mom!

Fortuna: I’m sorry baby, I can always make more sons

Sam and Dean (shocked pikachu faces).

Uh oh, leverage gone. Dean releases Pax, but not before the blade cuts his throat a little.

Dean demands Fortuna to play him for it. She says she’s already played him and got a read on him. He’s just a “beach read”. Sexy, but skimmable.

Dean (how dare you face): beach read? lady, I’m Tolstoy

Fortuna laughs and says, “That’s very funny” and approaches Sam: this one here, now he could be interesting

Dean (Protective big brother mode activated): Wait, no, no, that’s…. Uh uh

Sam (I’m 36 years old Dean, not a kid anymore mode activated): Fine… Yeah, okay, but not for our luck. I’ll play for the lives of everybody in here.

Fortuna doesn’t agree, she says the deal is only for their luck and if they lose, she wants their lives. She wants to make an example of them.

The Grigori is torturing Jack, cutting his skin. Jack says he can’t kill him. There’s then expose on the Grigori feeding off souls, and this one feeds off children. I think I’m supposed to not feel sorry for the Grigori when Jack eats his heart, but I do have a few issues which I’ll come onto later. Jack looks to the side and it’s clear he catches something. The Grigori reaches for his sword and points it at Jack’s throat. He asks who told Jack that. He answers Death.

The Grigori senses someone behind him. Now given the Grigori are supposed to be elite and much more powerful than ordinary angels, I’m embarrassed for this one and have no idea how on Earth this Grigori managed to survive to being last of his kind as even Castiel despatched him fairly easily, without too much of a fight, but “new canon” I guess. 🤷‍♀️

With no tests whatsoever, Castiel releases Jack from his bonds. I’m presuming one of Castiel random powers of the week is being able to automatically tell it’s Jack. We get a Cass and Jack hug and I … don’t really care to be honest. I can’t watch Cass without viewing that awful scene in Purgatory so I’m over him.

Back at the pool hall, Sam breaks, potting 2 balls immediately. I love, love, love this next bit: as Sam lines up his next shot, we see Dean nodding in agreement, because yep, that’s the shot he would have went for too. Sam proceeds to knock down a couple more, Fortuna has said a couple of things, but Sam is focusing on the game. She asks why they need the luck so bad, girlfriend problems? Liver failure? (She looks at Dean here). Sam answers: “a curse by god” and misses the next shot.

Fortuna: Life’s a bitch and then you die

Me: Hey! That’s my philosophy!

Dean: THE god literally cursed us

Fortuna (sarcastic disbelief): You’ve met

Dean: Yeah, Little guy, squirrelly as hell

Fortuna: Yeah, that’s him… well, welcome to the club

Dean: the club?

Fortuna answers with exposition while winning the game. God created the world, but humans created the gods, kind of, which led to God creating the other gods. Dean asks why, which makes her angry and she misses the next shot. She says they were created to take the blame for anything that went wrong. That only worked for a while before his ego got the better of him, now he hides behind whatever religion pays the biggest syndication deals. She keeps talking about how pissed she is and that she’s holding a grudge. Sam meanwhile is quietly potting balls and winning the game. She realises this and shakes off her mood, “oh well, what can you do?”

Dean: we’re going to fight him

Fortuna: are you now? And when you lose?

Sam’s voice from off screen: we lose swinging

He then appears in shot and says “8 ball, corner pocket” and she realises the game is nearly over.

Sam lines up for the shot, looks at Dean briefly, then… he wins. I wasn’t expecting that, and Dean is happy too.

Fortuna (to Sam): you little minx, you got me talking!

Sam smirks

Fortuna: you’re good

Sam: I learned from my brother

Dean approaches: all right, you know the deal, even up

Fortuna offers to make it interesting, if they are going to fight God, that’s the stuff of heroes and they are going to need the luck of heroes. Hercules, some other people, she helped them all. Sam asks what the catch is. She says another game, double or nothing.

Dean: Double? That’s how the cowboy died.

Sam agrees to play, “but not for more luck,” he indicates the room, “for them. If I win, you have to let them go.”

Fortuna: I’m not stopping them

Sam: Okay, when I win, you have to give back the luck you stole, close up shop

Fortuna: What is with you and these losers? They’re nothing, they don’t matter

Sam: they matter to me

Dean: they matter to us

Everyone in the poolhall (sighing): platonic soulmate Husbands! 😍

Fortuna agrees. She breaks, and it all goes downhill from there. Sam doesn’t even get to play a shot.

They lost. There’s silence

Fortuna: you challenged the goddess of luck in her own joint, what did you think was going to happen?

Me: pretty much this tbh, I’m actually surprised Sam won the first game

Dean: well, we had to try

Fortuna: well, that was stupid

My poor boys. They leave the poolhall.

Dean: I thought she was going to kill us

Sam: well she doesn’t have to, our luck will do that on its own … Dean, we can’t just…

Dean:… leave ‘em? Yeah, I know.

Me (sighing): platonic soulmate Husbands! 😍

Dean: all right, well let’s go get WiFi and see what kills Lady Luck, we’ll circle back

Sam’s agreeing when Evie comes out, followed by the other players. They ask her what happened. She says Fortuna shut it down. They ask why

Evie: Because of you, she said she thought your kind had gone extinct

Sam: Our kind?

Evie: Heroes, like the old days

Fortuna also gave her a message to pass on, “Don’t play Chucks game, make him play yours.

She hands Sam a coin which he somewhat reluctantly takes. He holds it in his closed fist as she walks away. He opens his hand and we see the coin glow green on his skin. Dean “grabby hands” Winchester snatches the coin, getting a glare from Sam and the coin glows green in his hand too.

They get into the car and Dean fires up the engine. “We’re back baby!”

Aww, Dean called Sam baby.

Me (sighing): platonic soulmate Husbands! 😍

Also me: You can take your “Castiel is a lamp” sub zero text and whack yourself over the head with it.

They drive away. And I’m left behind wondering if they’ve got their “normal” luck back or the supercharged hero luck that Sam said he didn’t want and that’s why he was reluctant to take the coin.

They arrive back at the bunker. Dean’s scratching lottery cards and doesn’t win. So much for the superhero luck.

Sam consoles his husband brother that they might not have won the lottery, but they have no car trouble, the credit cards work again, and Dean was able to eat back to back bacon double cheeseburgers, that didn’t kill him. So…

Dean: that was beautiful by the way… I’m just saying, would it have killed her to give us a little extra?

Sam: well, she thinks we’re really heroes, maybe they don’t get all the answers

Well hopefully that conversation answered my concern from earlier.

Cass appears, looking shifty (when doesn’t he tbh). They know something is wrong and Sam asks him. He steps aside and Jack appears. Jack dorky waves hello and we all melt and immediately forget he killed their mom and did some other really naughty stuff that at the very least should get him a time out. Apparently, Dean and Sam forget too. This scene is shot with Jack and Cass at one side of the reading room and Sam and Dean on the other.

Sam: Jack?

Castiel (to Sam): it’s really him

Sam walks over to Jack first and gets quicker as he reaches him and we get a Sam and Jack hug, and since I didn’t get one in season 14, I’ll ignore the mom killing, heart eating etc. for a few minutes and enjoy the hell out of this one. Yes, I’m fickle! But I loved this nougat eating baby before Dabb ruined him.

Dean walks across more slowly, reaches and grasps Jack behind his neck, staring into his face as if checking it’s really him. I think he’s struggling to see past the burnt-out eyes which was their last view of him. He looks briefly at Cass once. To me it’s a silent thank you (headcanon for bringing Jack back for Sam in particular), and an equally silent, you’re welcome. Jack looks a little apprehensive as obviously the last time he was alive, Dean was going to shoot him, stopped only by Sam.

They all have a beer at the map table, Sam asks Jack about eating hearts, so it’s good that hasn’t been hidden. Jack said he had to.

Dean (to Castiel): and you let him?

Castiel nods (likely waiting for the anger for doing the wrong thing)

Dean (shrugs): hmmm

And… that is not my Dean. They’ve turned him into a neutered house cat and idiots are calling it “growth”. And all I can hope is that his natural instincts fight their way through, I believe it’s wrong to trust Jack is okay eating hearts, even of ones that eat children’s souls and I hope we see that develop as we progress.

Sam: you could have called us

Jack: every day I wanted to come home, but I couldn’t

Dean: why not?

Jack: because if I don’t stay hidden, if I use my powers, my grandfather, he’ll know I’m back, and try and kill me… again… he’s afraid of me, and that’s why we had to wait.

Castiel: Billy kept him hidden in the empty, until Chuck went off world

Jack: she let me out when it was safe

Dean: safe to what? Eat a bunch of angel hearts?

Jack: safe to do what I have to.

Turns out the hearts were just the beginning, they made Jack strong, but not strong enough. If Jack follows her plan, he’ll get stronger and he’ll be able to kill god.

Sam and Dean (in winsync): bitch please, this is our show!

Not really, that was just me and we end on that note. I could wish we had ended on “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers, but season 15 music budget. Sigh.

So, I have a few other issues with this episode, particularly with the Jack side of the storyline, off the top of my head;

1) I’m hoping we aren’t sweeping what he did in season 14 under a rug, a la Castiel.

2) I’m hoping we aren’t just going to support him eating hearts (even of bad angels) without fully investigating what this supposed plan is.

3) I’m struggling with the heart thing anyway. I don’t believe an angel has a heart to eat, only the human vessel does so I’m going to need an explanation on why eating human hearts is supposedly goring to make jack stronger, and why we don’t care about the human vessel

4) I’m struggling with how a lesser god can give back what God took away, even if that lesser god is the goddess of luck, God still trumps her.

Other than that, I think Death is bad now, or at least Billy’s version of death is. I think they changed course on wanting to kill the Winchesters a couple of seasons ago when they realised they could play a part in them reaping God. Possible reason, just being tired after all this time, and wanting it all to end. And it can’t end before Chuck dies. Possible power play.

I still think Chuck will die. I still think the Winchesters will become firewalls, not sure what Jack is, other than a toddler whose power needs to be bound until he can wield it responsibly, and Castiel is going to sacrifice himself at some point. And the less we say about Eileen, the better.

Next episode is up after Hellatus the welcome break from the caricature this show has become

#spn spoilers #15.11 #The Gamblers #episode review #episode recap #anti castiel #spn critical #anti saileen #anti eileen

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adcrias-blog · 5 years

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kim jiyeon/kei + cisfemale + she/her + computer virus physiology.┊ ❛ ━ hey, is it just me or do you hear q&a by cherry bullet playing in the distance ? oh, that’s just jane kwon, a twenty-three year old student intern. according to my sources, i heard she can be chaotic good and is earnest, but also nosy. that’s probably why they remind everyone of colourful video games, burnt photographs, the wind rushing through your hair so much ! anyway, whether or not they’re in favor of the supers, crystalline city is keeping a close eye on them !

hello !! i’m sarah and i’m super excited to be here it’s been like 2 seconds and everything on the dash has me like :O !! but if you wanna plot hmu <33

EARLY LIFE

so jane comes from an upper class family, her father is a successful ceo of a media company and her mother was one of his employees until and after they were married and had jane.

her father was always a workaholic with constant hours in the office while her mother was far more reasonable, balancing her time between being with jane and being at work. when neither parent was at home, she had a nanny to look after her.

everything was fine for a while until jane’s parents began fighting. sometimes it was about little things, like who forgot to tell the maid that the study was off-limits or who was supposed to change jane’s nappy when the nanny wasn’t on the clock. sometimes it was bigger things, like when her father’s workaholic tendencies were brought up and he’d constantly defend himself against accusations that he didn’t care about his family, or when he thought her mother was cheating on him and demanded to know where she was at all times at all hours of the day.

jane’s mother eventually became sick of the controlling behaviour and lashed out. to this day, jane isn’t sure what happened despite being a witness to it. one second, her father was standing upright in the kitchen, and then he was suddenly on the other side of the penthouse, sprawled on the ground, but still conscious.

jane’s father ordered her to go to her room, so she isn’t entirely sure what happened next. all she knew was that the next day, her mother and all her stuff was gone and her father offered no explanation. it wasn’t until she was a little older that she realised her mother was a super.

her father’s had a hatred for supers since that day, or maybe he already wasn’t fond of them and the ordeal with her mother just cemented the whole thing. either way, he would either rant about them when they were mentioned on tv or just flat-out ignored their existence. jane didn’t share his opinions, especially after she realised that her mother -- the parent who genuinely cared for her -- was forced out of her life because of that mentality

GROWING UP

since her father wasn’t around, jane was allowed free reign of the penthouse from a young age. she had nannies when she was younger, but they had no issues with her doing what she wanted since she was polite.

that being said, she didn’t let any super friends she had in her home, for their own sakes.

due to her father’s work, she took an interest in media and technology from a young age, and while she was interested in all aspects, computer science was her main focus, and she decided that she wanted her future career to revolve around that

unfortunately for her, her father was adamant on her selecting the high school classes he wanted for her, then the university he wanted for her as well as her major and classes etc etc, claiming that it was because he had an interest in her future and education, but she called bullshit on that

he gave her an ultimatum: do as he says and be fine or choose her own path and have to start from scratch, earning her own money and living in a place she has to pay for. he believed she wouldn’t want to be rid of the lavish lifestyle and told her to think about it

jokes on him tho she was gone by the time he got home from work the next day

INVESTIGATION + DISCOVERING HER POWERS

jane’s intention was to grab her money from her bank account before her father froze it, moving it into another account that was under her name and her name only. when doing so, she asked for a rundown of her account activity and was surprised to learn that money wasn’t just coming in from her father, but another unknown source

she sorta put this discovery on the back burner while she got herself sorted out, enrolled at university and rented herself an apartment, etc etc

after all that’s done, though, she decided to track down this unknown source, believing and hoping that it was her mother and so the Hunt™ began

computer science student by day, nancy drew by night tbh

this investigation probably led her into seedy parts of town, probably got her into a few scuffles, ruffled a few feathers, but she didn’t really care about that, she was determined to find out who this person was

her search led her back to her father’s place, which was easy to get into since he was hardly ever home, and after going through his draws decided to search his computer

she found some files that were confidential, but they were protected by a bunch of code, and by this point she was frustrated so she just let out a sigh and leaned her hand on one of the computer wires

and boom she was sucked into the computer

there’s obviously more to it than that but long story short, she was inside the computer, staring at this wall made of code, and when she waved her hands a certain way, she could make it move

it still took a while, but she unlocked the code faster than she would have on the outside, and when she went in she found files and exchange receipts that pointed to her mother being in a research facility

when she went home and researched on her own, however, she found that the facility was abandoned a long time ago, leaving her at a dead end

PRESENT

she’s still thinking about finding her mother of course, but with no new leads and her internship to deal with, it’s been put on the back burner

ever since she found out she was a super, however, she’s wanted to help the heroes in any way she can, she just doesn’t know how to approach them

that’s why she chose to do her internship at haggis tech, as she heard the rumours that heroes tended to frequent the place

she hasn’t revealed her powers to anyone yet, only because her father’s attitude towards supers made her somewhat paranoid, even though she probably has friends who are supers etc etc, she just doesn’t want her father to find out and maybe even get rid of her like he did with her mother

PERSONALITY

jane is very bright and enthusiastic person, always ready to take on a new challenge, even if she’s in over her head

she insists on helping and can be pretty stubborn about it, which sometimes rubs people the wrong way, but it all comes from a good place

she’s also kind of a dumbass who will put herself in danger if it means saving someone else, she’s very self-sacrificing and i’m surprised she isn’t dead yet tbh

despite being an outgoing person, she doesn’t confide in others much. i doubt anyone really knows about her investigation, nor what situations she’s gotten into during it. she’s the type of person who wants to hear how you’re doing and what you’ve been doing

she can be super whiny, though, a small remnant of when she was given everything on a silver platter. it usually happens when someone’s denying her information or access to something

POWERS

so jane has computer virus physiology but imma try and explain how it works for her specifically let’s see if i’m coherent

VARIANT: CONTROL/ORDER: the type of virus jane is. rather than destroying everything in her path, she can take control of the system and everything within it, providing she isn’t interrupted, of course. she can move things, delete things, and she’s currently working on being able to add things, but it’s a work in progress

CABLE TRAVEL: the way jane can enter a computer system is via the wires attached to it, so she sort of rides the current, so to speak. if that computer is connected to wires that connect to another computer, she can travel to the second computer without returning to the real world

POWER-UP: she can grant herself power-ups for a limited time by reconstructing her data while she’s in the computer. this power-up will follow her into the real world, but will drain faster than if she was still inside the system

WEAKNESSES: if she’s in the computer and someone shuts it down, she shuts down with it until the power is restored. system crashes are the most dangerous as the data becomes harder to control and it’s possible that the system will shut down and never reboot, leaving her trapped inside for eternity. strong anti-viruses are also a major threat and can potentially kill her for good

#this took way longer than i thought #idek if it's coherent i'm so sleep deprived #but don't hesitate to ask me for clarification !!#gloryhqs.intro #violence tw #for like 2 seconds but just in case !!#( jane kwon ; isms )

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thetrueenemyofhumanity · 6 years

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I got a request, if this isn't too complicated. So, the S/O of Tracer/Mercy/DVa is killed in a building collapse during a high risk mission, but no body could be found. A year later, The Nameless Soldier emerges, a ruthless vigilante hellbent on the death of Overwatch. It's revealed that The Nameless Soldier is actually the S/O, who's still alive and now hates Overwatch, believing they were abandoned by their allies. Kind of like or The Arkham Knight. Thanks for running such a great blog!

1) I’m so sorry for the delay

2) I’ve never played that game sadly, so I apologize for these inaccuracies I didn’t know what I was doing (but do i ever)

Tracer

The chronal accelerator’s beeping became more frantic as thebattery got weaker and weaker with each blink. However Tracer could barely hearit over her own laboured breathing, blood rushing in her ears and the constantfire of her pistols. But each shot felt like a waste considering no matter howmany she landed it barely slowed down her opponent. But their weaponry didn’thave the same issue. All it took was one well aimed shot to bring the Britcrashing down, her pistols sliding across the floor where they are crushed by aheavy boot. Panicked, she tried to recall, only to be met with the same franticbeeping to tell her she had no juice left. Her pounding heart stopped when shelooked up to be met with the barrel of a gun brushing her nose.

“Stay down, Lena. I wouldn’t like to blow that pretty headoff those shoulders,” you warned, finger tensing on the trigger, As much as youhated Overwatch and all it had done to you and taken away… You just couldn’tbring yourself to shoot her.

“You may know my name, but if you think I’m just gonnasurrender then you don’t know the first thing about me!” she snapped, suddenlygrabbing the gun and pointing it into her chest. On instinct you pulled thetrigger and for the briefest of moments fear filled your heart. It had been fartoo long since you felt anything other than rage and this icy grip froze youuntil your senses were knocked back into you by Tracer slamming you into theground, pinning your arms to your side. Your vision cleared from the dizzyingblow to adjust to the blue light you were bathed in. Looking into the chronalaccelerator a smile tugged at your lips as you realised you could see rightthrough it. Clever girl. Despite your position, you found relief washing overyou that she wasn’t dead. All this time you thought your heart was too burnedand blackened from the incident. But evidently, against your better judgement,you still cared.

“I know you better than you think,” you told her, wrestlingan arm free and striking her in the side before throwing her off of you and gettingto your feet. “And I know whats best for you. And that is getting out ofOverwatch while you still can before you burn with it.”

“You’re warning me about a threat that you pose,” she hissedthrough gritted teeth as she rose, “Look, I don’t want to hurt you, let me helpyou instead. That’s what Overwatch does! It helps people and we can-“

“Help?!” you spat, crossing the distance between you in aninstant. “Leaving me in that rubble was ‘helping’, was it?”

The colour left her face and she inside she crumbled allover again. Her wide eyes finally showed fear for the first time as they welledwith tears. She shook her head and backed away, covering her mouth to hold backa sob.

“No… No no no!” she cried, “It can’t… You’re dead!”

“Only on the inside,” you scoffed, turning your back on herand beginning to walk away, “Which is why you’re only getting this one chance.I’ll bring down Overwatch and you can’t stop me. I don’t want to go throughyou, but I will do whatever it takes.”

Mercy

“Come on, get up! We still need you,” Mercy pleaded with theinjured agent, working furiously to get them to their feet. Just as they werefinally rising from their knees they suddenly fell backwards and Angela’spristine white Valkyrie suit was bathed in red. A shriek burst past her lipsand she scrambled back in fear of being the next target.

“I don’t think that’s something your little beam can fix.”

She whipped around at the sound of your voice and drew herpistol, but she was shaking far too much to even hope of making a decent shot.You knew she wouldn’t shoot and, despite her brave façade, she knew it too.Your heart was not as kind as hers, so why the hell were you lowering yourweapon as you strode over. Your boots squelched as you walked through the bloodtowards her, only coming to a stop when her fallen staff rested before yourfeet. Rather than step over it, you looked down at it for a moment.

“Could have been useful for when I dragged myself out of therubble I was left in by your dear Overwatch, huh Angela?”

The silence that followed was broken by her gun clatteringto the floor as she brought trembling fingers to her mouth with a broken gasp.

“(Y/N)… You’re alive?” she whispered.

“Well no thanks to Overwatch for that. Unlike them, I’mgoing to be efficient. I’m going to make sure they’re dead,” you promised her.

“No!” she said firmly, biting back the fear and forcingherself to her feet to face you, “No, this is not you. The one I love is not akiller-“

“Love? Love is not leaving someone to die. Love was me inagony waiting for rescue. Waiting in hell for my guardian angel to save me.They took everything from me. But why would they care? I was just fodder, not aperson,” you stated bitterly.

“You were someone! You were part of our family and we werebroken when we lost you. You think I did not care? That I just forgot you? Idug for days through that rubble. Day and night, without food or drink orsleep. Every inch of my hands bled and even then I refused to give up. Itwasn’t until Jack and Lena physically dragged me away that I was forced tofinally gave up. I shouldn’t have given up, I am sorry. Those are my sins, donot punish anyone else for them. If you want vengeance take it against the goodDoctor Frankenstein that created you,” she pleaded. Her gentle hands wrappedaround the gun you held. Believing she was trying to take it from you, yourgrip on it tightened. But those were far from her intentions, which becameclear when she raised it to press against her forehead.

“Angela I’m not-“ you began, but were promptly cut off.

“I am Overwatch. I am your enemy. I am the cause of yourbroken heart. It is time I pay for my sins.”

D.Va

It took several hard kicks for the busted latch to eventuallygive and the twisted metal to finally break free. With a grunt and plenty ofshimmying, Hana slid through the opening, now free from the broken shell of heronce great mech.

“Should have stayed in that armour, little bunny.”

That voice. It sent chills through her and stole the airfrom her lungs. Thoughts of retrieving her pistol vanished and were replaced bymemories of your smiling face, your loving embrace, and your funeral. It was anempty coffin they buried but it was heavy with the weight of her broken heart. Thatday the light in her life was extinguished, buried beneath six foot of earth. Herheart had never mended, but she had to keep fighting. In her lowest moments heronly fuel came from telling herself that she was doing it for you. To make theworld you died for better. And here you were alive. And trying to set the worldon fire.

“The only person who called me that is buried beneath a tenstorey building,” she replied in a quiet voice, slowly turning towards you. Herexpression was a mixture of fear, despair and betrayal. She would have beenovercome with joy were this reunion under different circumstances. All thedreams she had of having you back in the land of the living didn’t involve youtrying to kill her friends.

“Twelve, but at least you were in the double digits,” youreplied with a shrug, “Hana, you’ve seen what I can do to your mech and Ididn’t even break a sweat. I suggest that you get out of here.”

“When have I ever been known to back down?” she asked,stepping closer to you and narrowing her eyes.

“Now is a good time to start. Because I sure as hell wontbe. I’ve thought of nothing but vengeance since… Since they left me there.”

“So you haven’t even thought of me? Because I never stoppedthinking of you. Or is there no room for love in a heart full of hate?” shedemanded as she crossed her arms. A tense silence filled the room, broken onlyby the whirring of her dying mech. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks and herlower lip trembled as she tried to hold herself together. Your jaw clenched andyou took a deep breath as you finally decided.

“Not anymore.”

#overwatch #drabble #tracer x reader #dva x reader #d.va #d.va x reader #tracer #dva #mercy #mercy x reader #mercy writing #tracer writing #dva writing #d.va writing

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molonara · 6 years

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Something really weird happened....

So, I got the new version of OFF, version 3.0, which has an updated version of the English translation. I have Mac, so obviously, I got the Mac version available. I start a new game (and what I didn’t notice immediately was that Continue was an option) I play until I get to Judge’s tutorial, then somewhere in the middle of it, the game froze and crashed. I start the game up again, and now notice the Continue, which has a single save file that I didn’t make yet for further along after Batter get’s his first Add On.

Since I had a version 2.0 still on my computer, I assumed this was a save file for the old game I played and didn’t finish (though thinking back on it now, I usually save my game in sequence down the slots, so why there was just one save file was odd.) I try new game again, it crashes during the tutorial again, so I decide to skip the tutorial and manage to make it to the save point, where I saved the game in the second block space after the one already made, just in case more crashes kept happening, which they did when the Elsen tried to tell me about the Element. Unable to progress, I decide to open up the old save file available. It starts me out in front of the calendar page puzzle to go into the post office. I go back and battle monsters, no crashes, though I still want to start a new game.

Then I deleted the game file, trashing it and emptying the trash, downloading a new file. Now, the website said that the save files were contained in the application, so I assumed that deleted the application would destroy the save files, but upon opening up the new application, the save files were still there.

Frustrated, I go with the further along save. I suddenly find out that some of the questions have changed, which came with the new English translation I suppose. I managed to figure it out after a while, and make it through the Elsen talking about the Meat Element with no crash. I save my game up ahead.

But then the weirdest thing occurs. When going to Zacharie to buy from his wears, he says “Welcome Gabrielle,” Gabrielle? That’s not a name I would put down, ever. At first I thought I was mistaken, perhaps this was a new translation, but upon going back and watching someone else’s play through (Markiplier) the rest of the dialogue is as it should be, except for the player name, a name I know I did NOT create.

Obviously perturbed, I close out the game, trying to go to the older version of OFF I have on my Mac, but it would no longer open. I got to delete both files, redownloading version 3, thinking perhaps there was something wrong with saved data on version 2. But, upon opening the game, there were the save files, not reset like that file had been included with the game, but the one that were on my computer. Though try as I might, I don’t know how to find where these save files are on my Mac. I decided to give the game one last dict effort to progress to see if indeed this was the name that was given for the protagonist, but the game kept crashing before I could even call up a padalo.

I’ve ultimately deleted the file for the game and not redownloaded it, though I suspect there must be save files for it somewhere on my Mac (perhaps connected to the wine application that is used to run OFF). Though, a buggy game doesn’t explain the appearance of the strange save file named for ‘Gabrielle’.

This whole thing sounds like the beginning of a creepy pasta and as such I am a little perturbed, though also saddened because I really wanted to play OFF but now I can’t because it keeps crashing. If anyone out there know what the issue was, let me know. I hope in the future OFF can be put up on Steam or something, because then I would feel a bit safer downloading it.

#off (mortis ghost)#off mortis ghost #mortis ghost #off game #off english translation #off version 3.0.1

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massielandnetwork · 3 years

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Important Economic Trends During Anarchy

2021 – Let the Games Begin

6. A Christian Secession – Priny’s Castle

65 days into the Demented Marxists’ coup, here are some quick observations of events that will impact our economy:

1. The 10-year Treasury hit a new high for the last 12 months when it closed at 1.626% last week. One mortgage broker told me the residential mortgage market froze that day and his mortgage brokerage company raised their 30-year fixed rate loans from 2.75% to 3.25%. That took some of the home buyers out of the market and is a warning sign.

2. Voting on party lines, the Democrats passed the $1.9 Trillion “Virus Relief Bill” in which only 9% provided any relief to Americans. Did your friends in California, Illinois, and New York whose state government debt and pension funds just became everyone else’s debt to pay, send you a thank you card. No, I did not get any.

3. Also voting on party lines, the Democrats passed HR-1 with no hearings and little debate. This bill legalizes all of the vote fraud “techniques” used by the Demented Marxists (DM) to “win” in November. Who will be the first Democrat/DM to reach 1 Billion votes in a country of 330 Million folks? Watch for it.

4. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported the number of illegal immigrants that crossed into the USA in February exceeded 101,000. Many were wearing Biden T-shirts. Bidenharrris reinstituted the Obama “Catch and Release” policies that considered 15,000 per month a crisis allowing Biden to beat Obama’s record. One Texas Sheriff has stated that the Biden administration is actively recruiting illegals denied asylum under Trump. The Texas Governor has called out the National Guard and DHS has asked for “volunteers” to go help the border patrol.

But the DHS Secretary insists “This is not a crisis” even with 3 times the number of “Kids in Cages” as happened under Trump. Surprise, the propaganda mills ignored the whole situation. Apparently, under DM logic this situation would only be a crisis if you happened to give a D**n about illegal immigration and its negative effects on Americans. DMs do not care, so there is not a crisis.

5. State of the Union – Did you watch it in February? Since it was not held, either (1) the faux president (fp) was not able to string enough coherent sentences together to give a one hour State of the Union speech, or (2) the DM consider the Clinger Deplorable Chumps, a/k/a peasants, unworthy to know what is happening. My vote is both.

6. Note this Democrat “Insurrection”. Iowa’s 2nd District House of Representatives office was won by a Republican by 6 votes. Her election has been certified. But the Democrats in the House refuse to seat her. DMs continue to play by their own set of rules which assume the law applies to everyone but them. Actually, this means is there are no rules.

7. Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) take control of the Nevada Democratic Party – The DSA self describes as communist. The new Chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, Judith Whitmer, and several individuals elected to leadership positions in the Nevada Democratic Party are actively DSA. It is refreshing to have a confirmation that the Democrats are Marxist/communists. When does this happen in Virginia?

Pelosi’s Castle: Did you see that the Pentagon has approved another $500 million to have the National Guard patrolling for another two months the fenced off former United States Capitol. That suggests that the cost of protecting faux elected officials against phantom attacks will be at more than $1 Billion. Now Pelosi wants to replace the temporary fencing, etc., with, permanent structures and military guards. Is the American Taxpayer going to pay to transform the former “Capitol” into “Nancy’s Castle” making her the Princess? Her nickname now … “Priny”.

It would be so much less expensive to just not commit vote fraud. That would have saved $1 Billion. Sorry, I forgot, we are currently controlled by DMs and “Priny” wants to have a castle so she can safely eat her designer ice cream while viewing the White House (now a nursing home) where the fp lives. When did the lord of the castle ever care about the use of the peasants’ tax money? Priny says “Let them eat cake, I have my designer ice cream.”

Meanwhile the American economy is similar to a diabetic on a massive sugar high just before the sugar crash hits. Oil prices have almost doubled and gas prices have increased approximately 20% since November 4, 2020. That is the equivalent of a huge tax increase for the average American (the DM’s peasants). The Fed appears to be controlling the 10-year Treasury market, but those rates still increased from 0.65% on November 4 to 1.55% today, approximately a 120% increase. Mortgage rates have increased from 2.75% to 3.25% just last week marking the peak of this real estate cycle.

One of the best leading indicators and economic growth engines in America is the new home construction industry because new home sales ripple through about one third of the American economy. Residential sales are very highly correlated to mortgage rates with an inverse relationship. In this case that means that when mortgage rates go up, sales will go down.

We saw that relationship displayed in 2018 as The Fed started that year reducing their Balance Sheet by not replacing Treasures and mortgages that were paid off (thus raising interest rates) plus actually raising interest rates by increasing their Federal Funds rate. The booming new home market in the spring of 2018 slowed in the summer and stalled in the fall. As we then predicted, The Fed stopped raising interest rates in February 2019 and reduced rates plus restarted Quantitative Easing (QE) in the spring of 2019.

Bubble Alert: Increased mortgage rates always negatively impact the housing market. If we had fully functioning capitalistic financial markets, the recent increase would signal to batten down the hatches. Unfortunately, The Fed is disrupting the financial markets signals which heightens the risk. Witness the six-month period of December 2018 to May 2019 when Chairman Powell in December 2018 promised more rate hikes but by May 2019 had completely reversed course. In the future, The Fed will allow an increase interest rates abruptly.

As the Demented Marxists in DC and Richmond destroy our Democratic Republics, the “Christian Secession” continues to grow. Clingers Deplorables Chumps are exhausted with the bulling and arrogance, so they are taking actions on individual, county, and state levels. No mention is made in the propaganda machine/ former news media, but the conservative electronic media is full of articles discussing trends and actions some are taking.

One of the newest trends is the “Super Straight Movement”. Using the same language and tactics as the LQBT folks but greatly superior in numbers to the LQBT, this will be fun to watch. The abused majority has realized that “What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”. A majority denied their rights by a minority is a powerful force. The DMs don not understand the full ramifications of what they did in November, but they will. Listen and you can hear the deep throated diesel engine of the train that left the station on January 6, 2021, when the majority realized they had been screwed by the minority.

Unsustainable things continue until that unpredictable moment when they stop. It is like the game of musical chairs we played as children where the music stopped and not everyone had a chair. Make your financial decisions now so that you are prepared and remember that in times of financial crisis “Cash is King”.

Those who perpetrated the fraudulent elections and are fraudulently in leadership positions are consumed by their desire for money and power. They and their similarly motivated enablers, the propaganda mills/former news media are as misinformed as the folks mentioned below.

“Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!”

(Mark 15: 29 New Revised Standard Version, Oxford University Press)

It is Friday, but Sunday is coming. This is a miserable experience and dark days full of fear are in between now and Sunday. A great piece of land remains The Best investment long term unless the DMs get us to full-fledged Marxism. Capitalism builds wealth, Marxism/Socialism consumes it in self destruction. Pray for a return to honest elections in the USA. God is in control. Men make plans, but God ALWAYS wins.

Stay healthy,

Ned

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court-of-forever-undone · 3 years

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My Sister’s Love | Taryn POV Chapter 2

Summary: Taryn pieces together her memories of Cardan and Jude's early interactions as she reflects on how their relationship came to be and the events of the last year. As happy as she is for them, she can't help but feel jealous of the moments they share.

Tags: Taryn’s POV of Jurdan, Jealousy, Mild Angst

Read on AO3

When Cardan showed up at Vivi’s house after Madoc took Jude, thinking she was me, the distress was clear on his face. Vivi tried to stall him at the door, while I ran to hide; my heart almost burst at the thought that Jude had been caught and he was there to arrest me.

Cardan pushed through and entered the small apartment. I could hear muffled voices from where I was hiding in the bathroom. Vivi’s voice was more clear than the others. I pushed my ear against the bathroom door to eavesdrop, until Cardan called to me by name.

“Taryn, please come out. I know you are here and you are needed as well.”

I froze. I thought of a million courses of action. I could run but I would not get far. He likely brought protection. I would be sliced down before making it out of the complex. Running, or fighting for that matter, was a Jude plan, one that I would be unlikely to succeed at.

Before I could try a futile attempt at escape, he continued, “I don’t care about what did or didn’t happen with you and Locke. I promise when this is over, you will be found not-guilty of all charges. But right now, your sister needs you.”

Impatient as ever, Vivi came to the door and led me out before I could fully dissect his words for a trick. For the first time I noticed the disheveled look of his clothes. The dark color under his eyes told me that he had not slept well in sometime. He was accompanied by a gruff-looking goblin who stood silently in the corner.

Cardan explained what had happened: He played along with the switched twin charade, but when he took Jude to his rooms so they could talk, Madoc decided to launch an attack to save “me.” Jude was knocked out and taken somewhere.

Cardan’s jaw tightened as he recalled how he tried to stop Madoc from taking her. I recognized shame on his face before he turned away from us, angrily pacing in the cramped space.

He had hoped that I would know where Jude was, but I didn’t. Madoc had not contacted me for most of Jude’s exile, likely to protect me in case a letter was intercepted by Cardan’s spies.

The conversation only lasted mere minutes, leaving me with little time to process everything Cardan had revealed. Not only had Cardan recognized Jude from the moment he saw her, he kept her identity a secret and then tried to protect her. She had broken her exile, that he imposed, and yet he was desperate to save her from Madoc.

It made me wonder who Jude considered to be a bigger threat to her, the High King or our foster father.

My sister and Cardan agreed to contact each other if either of them learned anything. I wasn’t sure what sort of news we hoped for. The only thing we could hope was for Jude to keep up the act until she could rescue herself. But she couldn’t pretend to be me for long. If her missing finger hadn’t given her away already, her attitude surely would. A court is easily fooled, Oriana and Madoc not so much.

When it was time to leave, Vivi slipped out the door behind Cardan and the goblin, who I heard Cardan refer to as “the Roach.” I crept to the window in the living room that faced the front of the apartment. From my spot I could hear her lecturing Cardan.

“I know what you both did. I know what she is to you,” Vivi said leaning back against the building. She was turned away from me, but I could hear the smirk on her face. Cardan’s face revealed nothing other than exhaustion. The king turned to walk away, when Vivi reached out and gave his arm a light squeeze. Only Vivi would dare to touch the king, in front of his bodyguard no less.

“You might want to try being more explicit about your feelings the next time you have the chance. Or at the very least, stop giving her more reasons to distrust you.”

Cardan pressed his lips into a thin line. He nodded once before quickly descending down the stairs.

The following days were a blur. We had gotten a letter from Oriana about Jude. It looked like a trap, but it was our only hope. We hired Grima Mog, which apparently Jude had beat in combat, and the three of us, plus Cardan and the Roach went to save Jude.

The Roach had insisted that Vivi and I’s presence were a liability, while he also threw a few unimpressed glances at Cardan, who expertly ignored them. Without his crown or regal attire he was almost unrecognizable, still I can understand why the Roach wouldn’t want the added risk of protecting the High King during a rescue. I imagine Cardan had already played the king card to silence any further opposition to his presence.

Vivi had asked me if I wanted to go or not to save Jude. I said yes without hesitation, but as we traveled to the camp my thoughts were riddled with conflicting feelings as I played out possible scenarios. Jude was the one who sided against Madoc, so any fury he still had towards her was from her own doing, but Jude was in Elfhame because of me. My foster parents were my family, but if it came to having to pick my sisters or them, I would pick my sisters. I had hoped it would never come to that.

When we arrived, Cardan and the Roach went ahead, insisting that the lot of us could never sneak in undetected. The minutes felt like hours as we waited, listening and watching for any sign of Jude and the others.

I chewed a hole in my cheek as the time went on. I was thinking about what I would say to Jude when I saw her again when the loud clashing of metal had us all on our feet and running.

We were still too far away when I saw Madoc plunge his sword into Jude. My scream caught in my throat, as Grima Mog barked at us to keep running. We needed to get there before he delivered the final blow. If we could intervene first, maybe we could heal her. It wasn’t until I was at her side that I saw how deep the wound was.

I can still remember the heavy metallic smell of Jude’s blood pooling on the white snow. I could see the blood seeping out of the wound on her stomach. The color was disappearing from Jude’s face as she began talking deliriously about packing her wound with the earth and being accepted as the true queen. It was alarming to see the life fading from the face identical to my own.

My head spun as Vivi confirmed Jude’s nonsense and admitted that she was in on another of Jude’s secrets; Jude had married Cardan. The High King. Making her High Queen.

Suddenly, Vivi’s words on the porch clicked.

If Jude wasn’t minutes from dying, the sting of being left out again would have hurt more. But at the time, I could only deal with the absolute shock that my sister was the High Queen of Elfhame and we were relying on a miracle that the land would save her life.

I wouldn’t allow my thoughts to wander to the idea that if Jude died that night, it would be my fault. My fault for helping Madoc get his army. My fault for asking Jude to come to the palace in my place. My fault Madoc stormed the palace and brought her back here. I didn’t want to think of it then, but I certainly have thought about it since.

I regret trusting that Madoc was looking out for us. He taught us to look at everyone as pawns to use to win at our own games. I should have realized I was also a pawn of his. A pawn that helped him get an army that answered to his command. Jude was a disposable pawn as soon as she refused to obey him.

It was one thing for Madoc to make his move against Cardan, but another to be willing to kill Jude. But after all, he is our parent’s murderer.

Jude, of course, lived. The earth saved her. Through the red stained snow, bloomed the most beautiful flowers. I watched them grow around her as the blood flow slowed from her wound. I continued my stitches, trying to keep them as neat as I could given the circumstances. Slowly, life came back into her eyes, even though she was still in critical condition.

When she flew off into the sky on the ragwort pony, my legs trembled under the weight of my emotions crashing down onto me.

Fear. Guilt. Jealousy. Anger. Sadness.

All at once.

Less than a year ago, we both had been sitting in our lessons. We both had fears we didn’t talk about, but life was good. There was trust between us, even though we didn’t always see eye to eye. We ate our lunch on our blanket and joked and teased each other. I spent my free time practicing my needlework and Jude trained to be a knight. We had our family and each other.

Then everything started to change and Jude had climbed higher than any of us could have ever imagined. The High Queen of Faerie. It still seems impossible to think about.

And after nearly dying in the snow, Jude’s only thoughts were of protecting Cardan.

When did she begin to care about him? I am not sure even Jude knew the answer.

When we finally arrived at the palace, we found Cardan next to Jude, his face paler than normal. He didn’t bother to let go of her hand as we entered. Jude’s blood was stained into his tunic.

Cardan insisted Jude stayed in the royal chambers until she woke up; moving her would have risked reopening the stitches and likely caused her pain, still it felt wrong leaving her alone in Cardan’s bed.

Although, they are married after all.

Likely anticipating Vivi’s demands, Cardan ordered the guards to let us in any time we wished so we could visit her. Vivi, Heather, and I spent most of the day watching over her and only left when it was time to sleep. We had made residence in Jude’s old chambers since they had remained untouched since she left. It didn’t seem okay to have a sleepover in the king chambers, even if Cardan was never anywhere to be found at night.

Cardan made a point to visit whenever he was in between official kingdom business. Apparently, when Cardan publicly declared Jude his queen, it had created an uproar among the advisors and the lower courts were demanding meetings. He never stayed in the room long, but a few times he took a spot in the chair next to the bed and whispered to her so quietly that I couldn’t make out his words from where I sat across the room.

I thought it was a pointless endeavor until I heard her mumbling his name a few times as she drifted in and out of consciousness. An unmistakable blush spread across the king’s cheeks. A few moments after she slipped back under, he made an excuse about being needed elsewhere.

Once he was out of the room, Heather and Vivi burst into giggles. I wanted to join them, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile. Seeing Cardan so affectionate soured my stomach. It hadn’t been very long since Jude and I had been very keen to avoid crossing his wicked path. He may love Jude, but that didn’t mean I trusted him. At least, that is what I told Vivi when she raised an eyebrow in question. The real reason was too painful to acknowledge.

Jude’s lies and bloodshed brought her love and power.

Mine left me as a pregnant widow. It hardly seemed fair.

The thought sickened me more as I thought about my sister who remained unconscious, healing from what should have been a fatal wound. Both of our choices had led us to this moment, but while Jude dreamed of serving as a knight, she became a queen who could command armies. I dreamed of marrying and having a happy home full of children, now I am alone except for my tiny bump. Cardan promised to declare my innocence in Locke's death, but what future do I have? I cannot return to live with Madoc and Oriana. I could live with Vivi, but what life could I make for me and my child in the mortal world? If I could be granted ownership of Locke’s estate, I might have hope to provide for us.

Jude will wake up with the world in her grasp, while my future is more uncertain than ever.

The night Jude finally woke up, Cardan had invited us all to dine with him. Oak blatantly refused to go anywhere that would require him to dress up, so Vivi agreed to leave him behind with Tatterfell.

Together, Vivi, Heather, and I made our way to the banquet hall where we found Cardan sitting alone at the head of a small table, built for eight instead of the typical 12 foot long tables that normally occupied the space.

Heather broke the silence first, thanking the king for the invitation and complimenting his choice of decor. Vivi joined in the conversation as the first trays of food were brought out. Heather happily entertained all of Cardan’s inquiries into mortal life. For the first time since Jude's was taken, a spark had returned to his eyes as he listened intently to Vivi’s description of human holidays.

By the time dessert had been served, I could not hold my tongue any longer.

“Why did you marry Jude?” I blurted out.

The silence was interrupted only by the sounds of Heather suddenly becoming very interested in scaping all of the pudding from her bowl.

Cardan met my gaze with a daring smirk. “Sorry, we didn’t invite you. It was a bit of a last minute thing.”

His face remained unreadable. I tried again.

“But, why did you?”

Cardan leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh as if wondering why he did give a mortal girl the status of High Queen if not simply on a whim.

“Jude learned a lot about running a kingdom as my seneschal. It only seems fair she got recognized for her work too.” Cardan said with a shrug.

“Why did you exile her?” I could feel my face growing redder with every question. Oriana would be disappointed to know that both Jude and I had seemingly forgotten all her lessons. Here I was interrogating the king. Brother-in-law or not.

I could feel the air shift in the room. Suddenly I found myself clutching tighter at the shawl covering my shoulders.

When Cardan spoke again, his words were slow and deliberate. “I am sure you heard Jude dearest killed my brother.”

I flinched as a memory of my own bloodied hands pushed into my conscience. I looked down at my half-eaten plate. My words slip out no more than a whisper, “You love her though.”

I dared to glance up enough to see Cardan go rigid. All three sets of eyes were on him, waiting for his response.

“Your sister and I seem to make a habit of misunderstanding the other’s intentions. I hope to remedy that as soon as she wakes up." After a pause, he added, "We all do questionable things now and then, as I am sure you would agree Taryn.”

At that, Cardan rose from his chair and excused himself.

#taryn duarte #cardan greenbriar #jude duarte #vivi duarte #the wicked king #the queen of nothing #taryn pov #tfota #tfota fanfic #taryn tfota #jurdan #jude x cardan #vivi x heather #jude and taryn #duarte sisters

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pidgezero-one · 6 years

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does using a blogging site for #pastebinmonday defeat the purpose? who cares

speedrun PBs:

overall this has been a great year for me. i didn't meet all the goals i set at the start of the year, but some of them i became less invested in while developing others.

i achieved top 300 in super mario kart, which is a big deal for me considering the level of competition in that game developed over 19 years. pretty proud of that, and i know i have so much more potential to climb.

i'm pretty happy i got a bunch of people to run crystal caves for a while. i talk a lot of shit about my runs but my WR is actually not that bad. i think with the route i'm using i can save half a minute at most. i'll get it soon.

i got a time i'm somewhat happy with in smrpg any% and took a hiatus from that category. i started running smrpg most of the stuff and it quickly became bar none my favourite thing to speedrun. i almost have my time under 4 and a half hours, currently sitting at 4:31:56. that's wild considering how good i thought my 4:47 was, lol. i'm having so much fun improving my times and finding time saves and helping flesh out the route and all that. i also had fun routing Beat Culex and am going to return to working on that category soon. think it'll always be my favourite game.

dkc2 is hard but i'm enjoying learning it.

i'm very happy with my mario land 2 time. submitting to agdq for the first time and not seeing a wall of red was neat even if it is a lottery. i was only a backup runner but i know that my time being decent allowed for that. i'll grind this game again soon.

i dunno if im gonna return to EB pajama. i really liked the all sanctuaries routing, and it's obsolete now. we'll see.

current plans:

i haven't streamed much this week because i'm having capture card issues =( so instead i've been doing the following:

-uninstalling drivers from device manager and reinstalling over and over

-trying old drivers

-attempting to test in amarec, which crashes, bc the native software also crashes

-testing from usb ubuntu, which wouldn't load and started hanging when i tried to manually run casper

-testing from usb linux mint which worked, but i don't wanna change OSes

-forcefully installing an obsolete windows 7 update to bypass a sha256 error

-bricking my OS with the above step, unable to boot to command line or use system restore from repair disc

-taking the drive out of my laptop and using an old win7 install on a 3rd hard drive to copy my files on the dead drive to an empty partition on the laptop drive

-the copy operation froze up so i made a backup instead

-was able to unbrick my OS after all and deleted the backup

-deleting the empty partition and attempted to fresh install windows 7 on it

-turns out my optical drive isnt reading discs at all which explains why i couldnt run startup repair

-made a boot usb of windows 7

-saved an image of my OS to the empty partition

-reinstalled windows 7 on my drive

-swapped the pcie slots of my cap card and usb card

-tried very old drivers to flash the card which also hung when i let it run overnight

-card somehow flashed itself successfully after i uninstalled the drivers

-upgrading to windows 10 which i left running while i go to work

so yeah... this is an adventure lol. as soon as i can restore my OS i'll get back to streaming, speedrun calendar coding, and drawing your emotes

luckily there's plenty of stuff i can stream that doesn't need a capture card! until i can get game capture working again, i will likely be streaming the following:

-return to the Crystal Caves 1 any% grind! my standing WR has about 30 seconds of mistakes in it. would like to get that 22.

-maybe i'll pick up CC1 any% cheat codes... /maybe/

-got lots of smrpg science to do. i'm planning on documenting every timed hit in the game. i might stream this casually

-speaking of smrpg science, i'm planning on rerouting the Beat Culex category to skip pandorite, i might stream that too since i can do it mostly with web tools

offline i'll practice dkc2 and mario kart.

other speedrun stuff:

rpg limit break 2017 was a huge turning point in my "career". i'm very grateful i had that opportunity and did a good enough job with it. to this day i still have ppl contacting me on twitter to say how much they enjoyed my run. that's cool. i will be submitting smrpg most of the stuff to 2018.

doing a billion marathons was great. i love to entertain, i love to perform, despite being mildly antisocial irl lol. got to meet a lot of amazing people that way and have no regrets.

thank you everyone for the support this year, it makes it a lot more fun. it's still wild to me that ppl actively wanna watch me play video games

i don't know what marathons i'll be going to next year.

smash stuff:

i miss you guys so much you have no idea

good personal stuff:

holy crap guys i got really thin, im not sure if 160lbs is a good goal anymore. if i see my ribcage protrude too much more i'll stop lol

i'm still reeling from friday. if you don't know what happened friday, read this thread: https://twitter.com/pidgezero_one/status/941905358259408897 i love my friends so much and i'm very very lucky to have you guys in my life... i dont even have the words for what i was feeling during and after that

in case it wasn't obvious enough from that thread and also this https://twitter.com/pidgezero_one/status/942742039158018048, grats to everyone who suspected that i'm in love with mishrak! unfortunately i dont have a prize 4 u. but this is definitely why i've been in higher spirits lately, lol

is it too soon to fall for somebody again after my last relationship only ended 3 months ago? idk. you can't really control at what time someone amazing shows up in your life and steals your heart. but that's why the option of taking things slow is there. anyway he's great and i'm really really happy. this is also why idk what marathons i'll be going to in 2018 yet :)

selling all that stuff helped me a ton financially. debt escape will be soon hopefully.

im gonna start resuming language lessons soon. time to stop being lazy.

i put a bag of frozen shrimp and a canister of lawrys salt in my lunchbox today rofl

bad personal stuff:

i'm still hurting over losing my best friend. it's been almost 5 months now. i miss him so much every day. i never got any closure or real understanding, so i'm doing everything i have to do to not let it consume me anymore. this means i've left some of your discords and i'm sorry about that. i just wanted my life back and to not be overwhelmed with anxiety all the time. but i'm trying harder to just focus on the friends i have who never left my side and make me feel cared about and made me keep my head above water when i wanted to sink. thank you and i'm sorry i was absent and unreliable for a long time. i feel like i took the people who care about me for granted and i'm just trying to do better.

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lunaragk · 4 years

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The Fog Murders of Inaba, Ch: 5, Ugly Truths and Broken Detectives Pt 2

((Quick AN: Going to be using some skills from older/newer Persona games to better fit Shinichi/Conan’s Shadow and Persona. Also, writing fight scenes is HARD.))

4/20, Wednesday, Cloudy.

-Yukiko’s Castle, 5th Floor-

The tar and blood-stained shadow made a sweeping motion with its hands, “Move, the only one I want is the Lair, stay, and die.” It moved back, gripping broken glass and hard metal. It’s yellow gaze cold and impassive.

Yu stood at the forefront of the group, his katana’s edge glinting. “Sorry, but that’s not going to happen.” Chie and Yosuke moving into position behind him.

Stained claws grasped the edge of the mirror tighter, mouth twisted in a sharp scowl. “Then you get to die with him.” The Shadow released its grip on the broken edge and waved its hand. “Swift Strike!” was called out, the claw tipped arms of tar balled into fists as they lashed out at the teens.

“Move!” Left Yu’s mouth as his legs were already pumping to get him away from the flurry of strikes. Yosuke began weaving around the dark limbs, Chie hopping back, lashing out with a kick when one got too close.

Steel sings through the air, biting into the dark tar from both Yosuke and Yu. The limbs jerk as Shadow Shinichi all but hisses, letting the damaged tar fall to the ground, new clawed hands bubbling from the stumps. “Teddie! Any weaknesses?”

The blue furred mascot was hovering nervously by the shrunken teen, “I don’t know, Sensei!” Teddie grabbed the top of his head, worried, “It doesn’t seem to be strong or weak to physical strikes. Try elemental attacks!”

Yu glared at the Shadow, elemental hits could be very effective, but always ran the risk of burning them out faster. And it would be a guessing game until they got lucky.

Shadow Shinichi took their moment of hesitation to lash out again. It had moved up to Chie, raising itself up before trying to slam the back of the mirror on top of her. The brunette noticed and just barely got out from under it, the shock-wave of the slam sending her skidding.

"Chie!" the pair called out, worried.

"I'm okay, that was close though." She panted, sending the Shadow a glare as it floated back. She got back into her ready stance. A blue card floated down before her, a sharp kick shattering it with a fierce call from the girl. "Tomoe, Bufu!"

A female figure in a yellow and black jumpsuit manifested behind her, twirling a double headed naginata in arcing paths as ice crashed into the Shadow. It flinched slightly from the impact, but otherwise didn't seem too harmed.

"Ice doesn't seem very effective, try something else!" Teddie shouted in a panic.

This was very bad, they weren't mentally prepared to fight someone else's Shadow right now, it was going to cut into their time-frame for rescuing Yukiko. They'd need to end this fast. Yu held his hand out as a blue tarot card formed, crushing it. "Izanagi, Zio!"

A black and silver figure stood behind Yu, yellow eyes glaring out from behind a steel mask. Hand outstretched as the figure's blade was swept back, lightning arcing towards their foe.

The bolts struck true, and the Shadow roared as the electricity lanced through it. The floating mirror holding it crashed to the ground, the shadow slumped in a daze.

"You did it, electricity seems to really do the trick!" The blue bear cheered from the sidelines.

The trio on the battlefield surrounded the stunned Shadow. Yosuke turned to Yu. "What do you think, Partner? Time for an 'All Out Attack'?" He clenched his hands tighter around his kunia.

Yu swung his katana around, pointing to their foe before charging forward. "Go for it!" The group piled on top of Shadow Shinichi, blades biting and kicks flying in a frenzy to get strikes in while it was still downed.

Conan, still being propped up by Teddie, looked over at the fight going on. A part of him couldn't believe this was actually happening. That his new neighbor, Yu, and the young man's friends were fighting a monster wearing his face. All on the other side of the T.V. He was half convinced this was all a hallucination from one too many smoke bombs at KID's heists.

But, no, the carpet under his fingers and softness of the bear costume holding him up were all too real. "Why," he choked out, "why is this happening?"

Any chance for a reply was cut short when the Shadow got back up with a roar, the trio forced to disengage. It’s singular yellow eye glared at them. “Why won’t you just stay out of my way?!” The eye of the shark on the mirror frame began to glow blue, and the Shadow pointed a single, bloodied claw at Yosuke. “Aqua!”

“Wha- Shit!” He quickly dove out of the way of the mass of water that had nearly enveloped him. “That’s new. Teddie?” Yosuke scrambled back to his feet, kunia at the ready. Everyone was more on edge now that the Shadow had pulled out something new.

The bear was in a near panic. “I-I don’t know, maybe some subtype spell from the ice skills?”

“Everyone just be careful, we don’t know what else this thing can do.” Yu ordered, a wary eye kept on the detective’s Shadow.

Yosuke spun one of his kunai around, “Okay, let’s see what it thinks of this!” He let the quick becoming all too familiar tarot card form in front of him. A spin and a call as he shattered it. “Jiraiya, Garu!”

What he summoned could be described as a ninja-like figure in a white disco suit with themes of camo and a vaguely frog-like mask. The being threw its hands forward, giant gold throwing stars on its palms spinning rapidly as winds buffeted the Shadow.

A hiss of anger let them know the attack had done its damage. Tar arms lashed out at the trio, anger seemed to coil around the Shadow as the group managed to get away with glancing blows. Seething, it bellowed out a spell. “MAEIHA!”

Yu, Yosuke, and Chie braced themselves as black and red energy erupted beneath them. The energy was dark, so dark, and so cold it seemed to burn, like the chill of having someone walk over your grave.

The trio got up, slightly shaky from the attack. Yosuke, panting, “Wha- what was that?” Teddie was sobbing from the sidelines. “I was so beary worried! That looked like a Curse skill! I thought you all were done for!”

Yu took a moment to check over himself and his friends, “It doesn’t seem to be a one-shot like Hama or Mudo, but that did hurt.” He made a quick mental note to not switch to Angel during this fight.

Silver-grey eyes narrowed at the Shadow, tarot card floating back down into his hand. “Zio!” was called out as lightning arced out at his target. “As soon as it goes down, hit it!”

Shadow Shinichi howled as the electricity tore through it, falling prone, limbs jerking slightly. The teens fell onto it, tearing into it with renewed fury.

“Why?” the Shadow whispered, shaking, “Why are you protecting a liar like him?” It shrieked as it threw the group off of itself. It tried to right itself, but seemed to lose balance if it tried to float too high from the ground.

Panting, it narrowed its singular eye at them, “Why? After his lies have caused so much pain?”

Shinichi had to wonder that himself. Why were these people, who barely knew him, fighting so hard to protect him. His nails bit into his palm as he clenched his fist, hating that was just stuck there, helpless, again.

The trio gave the Shadow a hard look. “Because we made a promise, to save anyone who wound up here, and to find the truth behind this case.” Yu stated with a weight behind it.

Chie piped up, “You really think we’re so heartless at to leave someone behind and just let them die? Are you crazy?”

Yosuke quickly added, “Yeah, you’d have to be mental if you think we’re just going to let you do that.”

Tarry limbs coiled against the frame of the mirror. “Even if I told you there was blood on our hands?” The Shadow held up its own blood stained ones as to drive home the point.

The teens froze at that, shock and confusion painting their features.

Clawed hands lashed out at them, Shadow Shinichi taking advantage of their shock, shouting as it did so. “People we could have stopped, people we could have saved! IF WE HAD JUST PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER A LITTLE FASTER! IF WE WERE MORE FOCUSED ON SECURING THE SUSPECT INSTEAD OF SHOW-BOATING!”

That got them all moving again, trying to get out of the way of the blows, a few hits glancing, a few more solid ones.

Yu found his footing first, and stared down the ranting Shadow. “Regardless, we’re still going to stop you.” His silvery eyes seemed to glow blue for a moment as the card floated down to his hand. “Izanagi, we’re ending this, now. ZIO!”

The card shattered, as the black and silver specter formed behind him, planting its blade in the ground, both hands aimed at the shadow as it unleashed their largest blast of lightning yet.

Electricity seemed to boil the tar making up the extra limbs of the shadow, sending it crashing to the ground. Black and red smoke shrouded its form, before clearing and revealing it to once more resemble a golden eyed Shinichi.

Yu planted the blade of his katana in the ground, leaning his weight against it. It seems that he’d worn himself out with that last blast.

Conan shakily got to his feet, anger on his face as he walked slowly to the Shadow, watching it’s blank, impassive golden-yellow stare. “You-” He tried to start once he was in front of it before he was cut off.

“Don’t.” It was Chie that spoke. “Don’t reject it again. It’ll just go berserk.” She walked over, before kneeling down next to him. “Everyone has a side to themselves they don’t want to admit to, but denouncing it now will only start the fight again.”

Yosuke walked over next. “Look, I can’t even begin to imagine what happened to cause…” He trailed off, waving at Conan’s appearance and then at Shadow Shinichi, “this, but you’re not alone with this Shadow business, at least.”

The sound of metal scraping stone caused Conan to turn his head and look at Yu. The silver haired teen was slowly making his way over. “Con-” he stopped, shook his head, and started again. “Kudo-kun. No matter what has happened, or will happen, you’re still you.”

Far too old eyes looked back at all of them from a far too young looking face. Conan, no, Shinichi sighed, letting any and all pretenses fall away as he took off his glasses, folding them away as he spoke.

“You’re right, all of you.” He turned to the face he used to see in the mirror, the face he lost due to his delusion of invincibility that so many teens his age tend to have. “You more so than any other.”

The shrunken detective looked down, “You’re right, even though I know, objectively, it’s not my fault those people died, I still can’t help but blame myself.”

Kudo turned to the other teens, regret on his small, childish face. “And yes, I have lied, a great deal, but that’s because the truth would only end with more deaths.”

He turned back to his Shadow. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t eating me up inside.” Shinichi ran his small hand through his hair. “I’m just, so… tired. But I can’t stop, and I won’t until I’ve put the ones who’ve done this to me away.” He looked up at the form he used to have. “But you already knew that, didn’t you, Me?”

The Shadow looked back at him, it’s blank expression morphing into a small, sad smile as blue particles of light engulfed it.

When light cleared, floating where the Shadow had stood was male figure, clad in black yukata, a shark’s tail in place of legs, a mirror hanging around its neck, black veil covering its face. It held one hand up, an orb of water floating above it.

Shinichi’s new Persona vanished as quickly as it came, the detective started to sag as he let out a low chuckle, “Shinigami, huh? Someone thinks they're funny.”

Teddie’s squeaking footsteps quickly approached as he helped the team catch the shrunken teen nearly collapsed. “Easy there Conan, we’ve got you.”

He turned his head to the group, “Why am I so tired all of a sudden?”

“This world just does that to you, the fog is draining.” Yu said, picking up Shinichi.

Yosuke gave a rueful chuckle, “And the mental drain from dealing with one's Shadow doesn’t help.”

Shinchi gave a half-hearted glare at him, “Do you really need to do this?”

“Yes, you look about ready to collapse.” Yu gave back as a short reply. Shinichi only gave a resigned huff in return.

Chie looked at the group, a little dejected. “We’re going to need to stop for the day, aren’t we?”

Yu and Yosuke shared a look, “Unfortunately. We need to get…” They both looked at the teen turned grade-schooler in Yu’s arms, “Would you prefer we call you Conan or Kudo?”

The not-child gave a short sigh, “While we’re in here. Kudo or Shinichi is fine, but in public? It’s going to need to be Conan. I already have one person who knows that slips up far too much as it is.”

They nodded in understanding. Yu resumed, “I feel like there’s a story there. Regardless, we need to get Shinichi out of here for now.” He turned to look at Chie, “We’ll resume tomorrow, don’t worry, we will rescue Yukiko before the fog clears.”

Shinichi gave all of them a look. “I’m coming with you all tomorrow. I’m not going to drop this case.” He gave a jaw-cracking yawn. “And I want an explanation when I don’t feel like I’m about to fall on my face.”

“So long as you help us with this case? Deal.” Yu returned. “But for now, let’s get you back to the Mouris before they panic.” He dug around in his pocket, pulling out something. “Gather up everyone.”

Once everyone was clustered around them, Yu tossed it up into the air. There was a bright light, and once it cleared, they were standing back in front of the castle.

-Yukiko’s Castle, Entrance-

Shinichi looked around confused. “But how did- We were just-” He whipped his head around to stare at Yu. “What. Just. Happened?”

The silver-haired teen shrugged one shoulder, “It’s something called a Goho-M. Toss it up, and you’re back outside the dungeon. I try not to think about it too hard, enough about this place doesn’t make sense as is.”

There was a frustrated noise from the not-child before Shinichi let his head thump against Yu’s shoulder. “You know what, my head hurts enough as it is.”

“Smart move, now let’s head back.” Yosuke said, before turning to Teddie. “Mind leading the way Ted?”

“No problem!” Teddie exclaimed, turning around sharply before marching off into the fog, “Just follow me folks!”

Late Afternoon

The group emerged back into the normal world, Yu waving at his friends before heading off. “I’m going to go get Conan home.”

“Alright later you two.” Yosuke gave them a quick wave before wandering off, muttering under his breath. “Well, this was a wild day.”

“Isn’t that the truth. Later.” Chie said while wandering for the exit, slightly morose that saving Yukiko had been delayed again, but at least they got some good help out of it.

Evening

The odd pair of Yu and Conan made their way closer to their homes. A small hand tapped on the taller of the two’s shoulder. “You can put me down now, Narukami-san.” Conan said softly.

Yu obliged, stopping to let the shrunken teen down. “You know, you can call me Yu, Conan-kun.”

“Oka-” Conan tried to start before he was cut off by a yell.

“CONAN-KUN! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!” Mouri Ran came rushing up to them, plastic bags bouncing in her grip as she approached.

He gave Yu a slightly panicked look before turning to Ran. “I was out exploring Inaba, Ran-neechan!” He quickly turned back to the taller teen and mouthed ‘play along’ at him. “But I guess I exhausted myself, and then Yu-niichan found me and offered to bring me home.”

Ran turned and gave Yu a grateful look. “Narukami-kun, right?” At his nod, she continued. “Thank you so much for bringing Conan-kun home. You would not believe the amount of trouble he seems to find.” She added with some level of exasperation.

Yu gave her a small smile, and Conan a slightly larger smirk, “Somehow, I think I just might.”

Conan gave him a flat look before turning to Ran. “Yu-niichan is so cool, Ran-neechan! Maybe even cooler than Heiji-niichan!”

That caused her a small bit of surprise, “Really now?” A small smile crossed her face. “Well then, thank you again, Narukami-kun.” She took Conan’s hand with her free one after shuffling some of her bags around. “Good night, we’ll see you tomorrow.”

The small boy turned and waved to Yu as they entered the house, “Bye Yu-niichan, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He waved back to the pair before entering the Dojima household. They may not have made as much progress as he would have liked, but they had gained an interesting new ally in this odd case.

#The Fog Murders of Inaba #Persona 4 #detective conan #Crossover fanfiction #fan fiction #the dragon mun is writing fan fiction again #after years of stalling on chapter 5 #writing fight scenes is HARD #tFMoI #brought to you by #Persona 4 the Golden #now on Steam #I can write again because I can play through while I write to keep events in order #not actually sponsered

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askspiderqueen · 7 years

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PROJECT E.L.I.S.E. - Escape

Read PROJECT E.L.I.S.E. - Discovery (Part 2)

Read Niraius Company Encrypted Folder (Part 3)

Felix leaned back in his chair, lazily playing the latest expansion of a card game on his phone. The muted security feeds flickered before him, showing various people in white lab coats tinkering with glasses of various toxic concoctions. A few screens, in particular, showcased a white room with a shadowy figure in a large tube. It was clearly not human, judging by the two extra pairs of appendages sprouting from its back. More scientists milled back and forth in the room, a large portion of them gathering around a control panel. “Fuck!”

Felix threw his phone down in frustration as his opponent beat him by barely a point. He groaned, staring at the feeds for a moment before reaching for his soda. Drinking noisily, he rolled his eyes at the excitement clear on the scientists’ faces. Something about a test drive today. What a bunch nerds. Whatever, at least this job paid well. He stood up to replace his cup, accidentally knocking his phone off the table. “Oops.”

The young man pushed his chair away, crouching under the monitors. Just his luck. The device had somehow managed to wedge itself into a small crevice between all the wires. Felix was by no means a large person, but he wasn’t quite that small either. He reached for his phone, trying to shove his hand into the small space. He could feel the plastic of his cover, but couldn’t quite get a grip on-

RIIIIIIING

The alarm scared the living shit out of him, and Felix jumped, banging the top of his head hard against the table. “Oh for fuck’s sake!”

They were always running goddamn response tests these days, trying to keep the guards on their feet. He scowled. The alarm could wait a minute. He reached for his phone again, grunting. It took a few minutes, but he finally managed to push enough of the wires out of the way. Aha! Pulling back, he held his device up, grinning.

Then the lights went out.

Not three seconds later, the backups turned on, bathing Felix in an uncomfortable red glare. He stood up, automatically looking at the monitors. They had all gone white. The young man rolled his eyes. This had happened before. Sometimes the electricity would cut for no reason, although there was a storm outside today. All he had to do was reset the generator....which was on the other end of the building. Seriously, who designed this place?

Felix pawed around for his flashlight, flipping it on once he found it. He exited the security room, finding the hallways dark as well, save for the flashing red lights of the alarm. There was no one around, but that wasn’t surprising. People not part of security were supposed to stay where they were. Dangerous chemicals and all. Felix hoped one of the scientists would trip and fall into a vat of acid during this blackout. That’d be funny.

His metal toe of his shoes tapped against the ground as he made his way to the other end of the floor. He had to take the stairs; the elevators would not work at this time. Humming a quiet tune, Felix threw open the heavy door, heading towards the ground floor. His flashlight bobbed left and right as he walked. Luckily, the alarm was no longer sounding so he wouldn’t have to worry about going deaf. He passed the heavy duty doors of the classified projects, each having a sign to warn people away. Turning the corner, Felix let out a yelp as he slipped backward. His flashlight slid across the floor, spinning to a stop facing the wall. Groaning slightly, the young man pushed himself into a sitting position. His hand was wet where he had used it to break his fall. Pants too. Damn janitors must have just run off in a panic when the alarm went off. Would it have killed them to at least clean up a puddle they left?

Felix sniffed as he sat up. His brow furrowed in confusion. What was that smell? He wiped his hand on his trousers, then paused. This wasn’t water. It was...sticky. He crawled over to the flashlight, picking it up with his clean hand, and shining it on the other. Felix froze.

His hand was bright red.

The fuck? The young man shined his flashlight around in a panic, backing into the wall. It was blood. He had slipped in a puddle of blood. There was a streak of it on floor, as if someone had been dragged. Felix tried to look down the hallway, but he saw nothing except red. No bodies. No one. He whimpered and shined his flashlight upward.

And screamed.

One of the scientists was hanging from the ceiling by something white, his mouth open and face frozen into an expression of fear. His throat was slit open and blood dripped down to where Felix had fallen. There was a sudden loud hiss somewhere to the side. “FUCK THIS!”

The young man broke into a sprint, running back the way he had come. There was a crash somewhere behind him, and he instinctively turned back to look. He only spotted four glowing red eyes before the slick blood on his shoes made him loose his footing again. Felix tumbled to the floor, his efforts to escape turning into a crawl as he sobbed with fear.

He was shaking so much he could no longer run. Whimpering, Felix held his head, curling into a ball as something loomed over him. There was a loud screech, and he screamed.

It was abruptly cut off, the only remnants of the event being the slight echo down the hallway.

Then all was silent.

The red lights flashed, and a tall dark figure with four spider legs sprouting from its back stood alone in the corridor.

#Project AU #Drabbles #Elise

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thomasroach · 5 years

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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

The post Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night appeared first on Fextralife.

In this Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Review, we’ll take an in-depth look at the latest kickstarted game by Castlevania’s lead creator. “I know they are wrong!” Proudly proclaims Koji Igarashi in a video four years ago, speaking in his Kickstarter video for his new project Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Defiantly, he assured that he would create another Castlevania-style game worthy of his legacy. More enemies, more items, more bosses! Did he succeed? Is this one of the few true Kickstarter success stories? Or have we been left crying like vampires on sabbath night?

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Review

Genre: Metroidvania Developed by: ArtPlay Published by: 505 Games Release date: June 18th, 2019 Platforms: PC (Reviewed), XBox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch Website: https://505games.com/games/bloodstained/

Game Features

Spiritual successor to Castlevania made by Koji Igarashi

Revival of 2D Igavania RPG in a dark gothic fantasy setting

Deep, rich single player narrative adventure

13 FREE DLCS! Some available at launch, others as post-launch updates.

Tons of enemies, bosses and secrets to conquer

Multiple playable characters

Bloodstained Review: Story and Setting

As the Industrial Revolution proceeds, people begin to move away from spirituality and towards science. This is not good for the Alchemist’s Guild, who see their patronage shrink. Panicking over the loss of so much power and desperate to survive, they summon a demon filled castle to ‘prove’ that people need them. The people of the world have a few issues with this, and after the Exorcists drive back the demons at horrible cost the Alchemist’s Guild is disbanded. 10 years later, the castle has returned with the demons. This lovely and cheerful tale serves as the backdrop for the adventure of Miriam as she tries to keep her promise to her childhood friend Gebel and figure out the secrets of the castle.

This is a Castlevania game through and through, in mechanics and in story. The only way this game could be more Castlevania is if Konami allowed ArtPlay to call the game Castlevania. This means that the setting is, frankly, nuts. Most of the castle doesn’t make a damn bit of sense, with things getting crazy and more video-gamey as things progress. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Castlevania games have never been what you would call grounded and it would have been very strange if Bloodstained suddenly decided to follow logic. You have waterways, desert caves full of sand, lava caves and oriental gardens all in the basement of this castle. The castle parts themselves aren’t boring either with a wide range of backgrounds and styles clearly marking which section of the castle you are in.

Monsters follow a similar pattern. There are of course some monsters that seem right at home in a haunted demon-infested castle such as bats, ghosts, and skeletons. Then you have the giant puppy head on a chain that tries to eat you. Or the heavy-metal guitarist that spews purple flames at you if you get to close. They have a decent rift going too as they try to melt your face. Logical? Consistent? Not even slightly. But then again, that’s not what a Castlevania game is about and as I said earlier, Bloodstained is Castlevania in all but name.

Which, unfortunately, leads us to the first weak point of the game. The story itself is nothing to fawn over. So many times during this game I was able to say “Yep, saw that coming a mile away” with the occasional “Of course this character is misunderstood”. Only at one point did the story actually rise above mediocre, where the story beat and the mechanics of the game perfectly meshed together in a way that made me say “Wow, that is really neat!”. It’s not a bad story by any measure and it certainly didn’t subtract from the game, but the story didn’t really add anything to it either. If you buy this game for the story though, chances are you’ll be disappointed.

Bloodstained Review: Gameplay

Gameplay is the core of any Metroidvania game, as story has never been a strong point for the genre. I’d go so far as to say the story and dialog in Symphony of the Night is laughably bad, though in a good campy way. The gameplay though, the gameplay is what keeps us fans of this genre coming back time and time again. Bloodstained fully delivers on that gameplay, including parts that I really wish it hadn’t delivered on. Before we get into details, let’s talk some technical stuff first. On PC, this game has minor problems that, while not huge, are there and need patching. Now I didn’t keep an official tally, but I suffered around 5 crashes/freezes during my play through. It got to the point where I would travel a couple rooms out of my to hit a save point just in case. Most of my crashes happened on room transitions which is a fairly critical issue as I’ll discuss in a moment, but one time I froze just looking at the warp map! Not cool Iggy, not cool at all. There are also the occasional missing words in dialog, and the infrequent VO/dialog mismatch as well. Nothing major and nothing that ever interfered with the game, but it is there.

Combat & Weapon Variety

Combat in Bloodstained is ye-old standard affair: press a button, and swing in front of you. That’s it. No attacking up or at a diagonal unless you use magic. You can crouch and attack at a downward diagonal, but with few exceptions you never need to do this. Oh, and you can attack while you’re in the air. Now at first glance this doesn’t seem like a great system, but there’s a beauty to the simplicity of the design. Choosing a direction to attack and then attacking is only a very small part of the equation. Every weapon class has a different attack animation. Great swords have an overhead arc and are slow while katanas swing straight out and are faster. Further complicating things are enemy movement speeds and patterns. Great swords are good for hitting things at range or slightly overhead, but your timing has to be perfect to hit bats and other fast-flying monsters. Stomping attacks with boots are great for rapidly and safely crushing large slow enemies, but only if they don’t have an overhead attack. For the most part i never wished that I could attack up or at angles, with one exception: The guns.

I will be frank. I feel the guns are a pointless and useless addition to the game. They shoot slow and don’t do a lot of damage unless you have ammo. You can only carry so much ammo and it can be a real drain on your resources. Even with the ammo damage boost though they always felt really weak to me. Perhaps I’m just not using them correct, but I probably used guns for a total of 30 minutes out of the 18 hours I’ve put in so far. I might have been more inclined to use the guns if I could aim them, but just like every other weapon they can only shoot straight. Only certain spells can be aimed.

Magic & Grinding

Speaking of spells, we come to one of the major weak points this game inherited from its pedigree – grinding. Almost every enemy can drop a shard when killed. These shards give you a variety of abilities, from passive buffs to rays of doom to summoning a chair to sit in. No, I’m not joking. You can get a shard that allows you to summon a chair to sit in. Now while you have some of questionable usefulness like the chair summon (that seems to recover MP at higher levels), they’re all fun to use. Now here’s the rub – the more shards you have, the more powerful the effect gets up to 9 shards held. The only way to get shards is to kill monsters. Over. And Over. And OVER. Traditionally the best way to do this is to find a room that has a decent concentration of the monster you’re farming, kill them, and then leave and instantly return to the room. Again and again and again and you get the idea. Oh and remember earlier when I was talking about how I was getting infrequent crashes on room transitions? Ya, that doesn’t help the process. Now you don’t have to do this. There is another upgrade path for the shards, and I beat the game only having 1-2 copies of the shards I had equipped. But if you want to max out your power, or get every shard in the game, brace yourself. That way lies grind.

Crafting

There is also a crafting system in the game. As you kill monsters and collect treasure chests, you will get materials. Chests always have the same materials and the blue ones restock when you return to base which always gives you a source of materials. Might even be worth it to mark on the minimap (yes you can do that and yes it is awesome) the location of all blue treasure chests you find. Some crafting resources can only found on monsters though, which means yet more grinding. This is especially true if you want to try and cook and eat all the foods for the permabuffs they provide. While it can be a bit of a pain at times, you definitely want to check in to see what new recipes have unlocked when you get a new book. Crafting new weapons and armor can be a valuable upgrade source for your character.

Secrets and Exploration

Exploration is of course another major component of Metroidvanias, and this is one of the few areas where I feel Bloodstained has added to the genre. First of all, the map is freaking huge and filled with secrets. 100% this game is going to take some serious dedication with regards to exploring this place. Thankfully there are some good quality of life improvements here, otherwise the size of the castle would work against the game. First is the ease of movement. Right from the start you get access to waystones, a cheap instant recall consumable. As far as I can tell, the only time you can’t use these things is in a boss fight. I probably went through 20 of these things. There’s also a decent network of warp points throughout the map and it swiftly became a priority of mine to find the warp point whenever I entered a new area.

Some other features that prevent exploration from becoming tedious are personal map markers, quest markers, and chest markers. At any time you can press a button (the red B on my Logitech) with the minimap open to place a marker, and press the button again to remove it. This allows you to mark anything you wish, though it doesn’t allow you to enter in notes. One of your quest giving NPCs will ask you to kill X of Y. Once you accept the quest, you’ll get a little green scroll icon on your map to show which rooms contains monsters you need. Finally when you encounter a chest for the first time, a marker will be placed on the map until you open it. I cannot begin to express how much suffering this feature saved me, as early on in the game you’ll walk past many chests you can’t reach and have to come back to.

Boss Fights

Of course we can’t talk about gameplay and mechanics without talking about bosses. They are all well designed and with one exception, they all play out very differently. Some of them even have a cool little movement gimmick to them, which I won’t spoil here. Even the exception are understandable, since it’s literally the same boss each time, just upgraded on the second round. Most bosses I was able to beat on the first try, with none of them taking more than 5 tries. The exception to this are two of the optional bosses I found. Let’s just say it didn’t end well for me and I decided to beat the game, write this review, then come back to them. Oh and buy 99 pizzas and cheese the heck out of the fights.

Multiple Endings

Sadly my closeout on the mechanics is not going to be a good one. Many of Igarashi’s games suffer from the same problem: Stupidly concealed requirements for endings. I’m not talking about secret endings here, I’m talking about having the basic, satisfying ending hidden behind poorly or not at all explained requirements. For example in Symphony of the Night you had to have a specific familiar equipped when you entered a room, or you couldn’t get the item you needed to reach half the game. In Harmony of Dissonance if you didn’t have two specific rings that don’t give you good combat stats equipped for a boss fight, you don’t get the good ending. So on, so forth, this is a pattern that is repeated across many of his games including Bloodstained. Have no fear, there’s no spoilers here, but I had to hit the internet three times to get unstuck towards the end of the game. One of those times I would have solved on my own, one I might have solved on my own, but the third? Nope. Very unlikely that I would have solved that one. There’s having trust in your player’s intelligence, then there’s assuming they think exactly like you do. I am in fact sufficiently steamed over one of these items I plan on writing a separate article about it, but there is nothing more I can say here without spoiling things.

Bloodstained Review: Audio and Visual

It is very rare that I will put my foot down and say something is objectively beautiful, but gosh darn it this game is objectively beautiful. Within the style of a 2D game, I legitimately don’t have anything negative to say here unless I dig deep in the barrel of nit-picks. For example: If you choose a long-hair style for Meriam, her hair acts more like a spazzy scarf that it does hair. Or, hmm, let’s see, oh I got it! It’s a bit confusing at first what all the green scroll icons are for on the mini-map. That took me a bit to figure out they were showing me the rooms where my quest targets were. Nit-picks aside, the visuals are just about perfect here. The background and foreground are both beautiful and distinct, the monsters are fun to see, and the bosses are epic.

Sound also is incredible. In fact I’m listening to the OST as I write this review. Every castle section has it’s own distinct theme in addition to having a distinct look. Give me a little more time with the game, and I’d be able to tell you what general area of the castle I’m in without looking at the screen. Even the SFX is awesome. Weapon swings, hitting the enemies, enemy death cries, it’s all good. There are some silly sounds, like the death “Oooooh!” from some of the large humanoid enemies. Nearly giggle inducing at times. Also the Toy Shoe SFX is a bit much. It was a good weapon when I got it but oh, that sound effect.

Bloodstained Review: Replayability

With all of the additional game modes Bloodstained has, I have to say this game has a lot of potential for replay. First up we have New Game+. Now I’ve only had time to poke at this mode, but it does seem to alter enemy placement. I can’t tell if it changed the enemy stats or not. If it did I’m still so overpowered for the first area that everything is dying in one hit. Given the scaling in the original game I probably wouldn’t be able to tell until several areas in. Still it’s nice to have, and it even shows you in the minimap where you went in the previous game which I thought was a nice touch. Completing the game on Normal also unlocks Hard and Nightmare difficulty settings, as well as speedrun mode which has built in per-room saves. Boss Rush is another mode you can enjoy, and it has rewards for your normal game as well making it worth while to at least check it out. All in all I don’t foresee that I’ll stop playing this game anytime soon.

Bloodstained Review: Pricepoint

Depending on how skilled you are, a basic run-through of this game is going to take you about 15 hours. Really depends on how hard you get stuck/get lost in the latter portion of the game. If that is all that I was going to do, if I was going to put the game down right now because I beat it, I would still consider this a good buy. Currently on sale for $36 with a regular price tag of $40 on the PC, I consider this to be reasonable. While I’ve gotten more hours out of less money, I had a very enjoyable 15 hours with this game. Factor in the New Game +, Boss Rush, and Speed Run modes that are the game right now and you’ve got one heck of a good purchase here. Further factor in that if they deliver on just half of the promised post-launch features I wouldn’t have any problems recommending this game at $60. There is some serious content for your dollar here. If you have even a slight interest in this style of game it is well worth your money.

Bloodstained Review: Final Thoughts

Bloodstained is Castlevania, with all of its beauty and all of its flaws. While some of the flaws do run deep in my opinion, I still greatly enjoyed the game. Flawless execution on aesthetic, incredible sound, levels that are fun to navigate and monsters that are more fun to kill, this game is a love letter to Koji Igarashi’s previous works. However, that is all that it is, though fortunately all that it needed to be. Bloodstained has done nothing to push the genre of Metroidvanias down new paths, but it is a shinning example of what they can be. And with that, I suppose I should end this review with a paraphrase of a very common quote: “What is a review? A miserable pile of numbers! Have at you!”

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