When Thunder stays with Clear Sky for a while, does Clear ever insist on referring to him as Thunder Sky?
Towards the end yes, as the final detail to Thunder Storm that Clear Sky doesn't love him. He wants to ERASE him.
If Clear Sky recognizes he's made a mistake in casting Bright Storm away with their child, he's incapable of seeing it was wrong because it was cruel. He wants what he realizes he threw away, because he now sees it has value. He wants to own his oldest son the way he wants to own the entire forest-- as a reflection of his greatness.
Anything that makes Clear Sky uncomfortable about Thunder Storm has to be sanded down. The assertiveness was the first thing, he feels insecure when he's challenged, the child must learn to follow before he may learn to lead.
The second is that leg, presenting a prosthetic as a gift (that he isnt allowed to refuse), because he can't have been wrong about the choice that killed his younger brother-- here is a SOLUTION that simply didn't exist before! Behold how resourceful and wealthy his cats are, compared to your old group. We've fixed you.
(This prosthetic is a clunky piece of shit that is annoying to strap on every day, gets in the way and makes a ton of noise, and itches like hell, but the change in Clear's demeanor is immediate if Thunder doesn't wear it.)
But somehow, Thunder Storm was willing to take all of that. In hindsight, it bothers him that the tipping point wasn't the other two things.
Bright Storm gave her son her own last name. When Clear Sky sent them away and the Mountain Cats permanently split, it was pointed. "My only survivor is named for myself." SHE would raise him, alone.
Bright Storm herself slowly seemed to lose sight of the meaning, encouraging him to understand his father's good aspects, but in the meanwhile it took on a new meaning to Thunder. His mother raised him. He found a father in Shaded Flower. He grew up next to Lightning Cry and Acorn Swoop. Thunder Storm means this. It's the person he made himself, and the love they've all put into him.
Thunder SKY is just another monument to Clear Sky, stripping away the life he lived without him. And WHY? For ego? For comfort?
"What am I letting him DO to me?!"
It wasn't the final STRAW, but it was the tipping point. Once Thunder Storm had this realization, the minute he was not going to budge on something, that confrontation was inevitable. The blowout fight was making reservations.
Sunlit Frost is still the breaking point, the injury from his burn going sour, but I'm going to emphasize the way that Clear Sky only called that meeting in the first place as an abuse game. Thunder Storm knew it was coming-- but it still sickens him that it was something THIS monstrous.
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Yusuf is there when Nicolò enters the old temple, not a vision of him, no portal behind him that will take him somewhere Nicolò cannot follow yet again before he has the chance to reach him, just Yusuf. He's alone, his head tilted upwards and eyes closed, illuminated by the shafts of sunlight that fall through the cracked ceiling. The sight of him - here and safe and whole, finally, after everything Nicolo's fought through to reach him - takes his breath away.
"Nico," Yusuf says, and opens his eyes to look at him. He smiles, and he's still Nicolò’s Yusuf, even after everything that's happened.
Nicolò can't wait another second, then, sheaths his sword at his back and walks up the stone steps towards him. Yusuf's smile widens, and then he's stepping into Nicolò's already open arms, laughing. "I missed you."
"Missed you too," Nicolò says. He kisses Yusuf's temple, holds him close. "So much, Yusuf, you have no idea-"
Yusuf leans back, cupping Nicolò's face in one hand. "I know. It's okay. I'm here."
But Nicolò knows him well enough to know something's wrong. "What is it?"
"It's not over, yet." Yusuf steps out of Nicolò's arms and back a few steps, leaving him cold. "There's so much more you don't know yet, but we're running out of time. He will return, soon, and we're not ready."
"Tell me what I need to do," Nicolò says immediately. He can't bear the idea of Yusuf disappearing again, not now when he's finally here, when every other time Nicolò has tried to reach him he's been a second too late. "Anything, and I'll do it, whatever it is. Just tell me what you need."
Yusuf smiles again, sad. "It's not you, Nico. We need more time. And I can buy it, but-" He cuts himself off.
"Then I'll help you."
Yusuf shakes his head. "You don't understand. For this to work, I need to reform the seal, and I can only do that by" - there are tears in his eyes, now, and dread running down Nicolò's spine - "by sealing myself away along with it."
Nicolò realises just a moment too late what that means. "Yusuf-"
"If I seal myself here, in the past," Yusuf continues, "when you return to our time, it will be just strong enough to hold. You will have the time you need to finish this. And once all this is over, the seal can be broken in our time."
"I can't," Nicolò says. "There has to be another way. This can't be it."
"It's the only choice we have," Yusuf says. "I cannot - this was always my path, Nicolò."
She's manipulating you, Andromache had said, the goddess. She's using Yusuf to make you do what she wants, can't you see? If Nicolò hadn't understood then, he does now - neither of them ever had a choice in this. Yusuf was chosen because Nicolò would follow him anywhere, and Nicolò was chosen for the same reason.
Nicolò realises something else then. "If you seal yourself here, you'll be trapped for thousands of years."
"I'll be asleep," Yusuf says, soft. "It'll be like the blink of an eye. So when this is all over, you'll have to come wake me up." He smiles, then, even through his tears. "Just like old times, no?"
And before Nicolò can say anything else, the air around him begins to glow gold, condensing around Yusuf, who tilts his head back and closes his eyes, and Nicolò cannot move, frozen in place by something beyond his control. All he can do is watch as the light gathers around Yusuf, blindingly bright, until Nicolò cannot see him anymore. Whatever's holding him releases, and he runs towards Yusuf even though the light hurts his eyes, and just as he reaches out the light fades.
Before him is what looks like a crystal, tinged orange, clear enough that he can see Yusuf inside, his eyes closed. He looks like he's just sleeping, like this is one of the mornings Nicolò had had to wake him but had paused for a moment just to watch him.
Nicolò lifts his hand to the crystal. It's freezing cold when he touches it. Yet again, he's too late.
"I'll come back for you," he tells Yusuf, even though he knows Yusuf can't hear him. "I swear it. I'll finish this, and I'll come back for you." His voice is trembling, but he can't let himself break down now, not when there's still work to be done. The faster he finishes his task, the sooner he can wake Yusuf.
(Nile is the first to ask when he returns through the gate, waiting for him with Andy, Quynh and Sebastien nearby. "Where's Yusuf?" she asks, looking behind him - the plan had always been that Nicolò would bring Yusuf back with him, after all.
Nicolò can't bring himself to say it out loud.)
--------------------
It feels like an age before Nicolò returns to the temple, now in the present. It's over, finally - the five of them have sealed the demon king away for good. The others are outside.
The crystal is overgrown with vines, now, just like their old favourite meeting place on the island where all of this had started. Its surface is scratched and clouded with age, but Nicolò can still make out Yusuf inside it, looking exactly as he had when Nicolò left him in the past. He hates to think of the crystal here, alone, for so much time.
There's a glowing mark on the crystal's surface that hadn't been there before. Nicolò approaches it carefully and places his hand over the mark.
Almost immediately, glowing cracks begin to grow from where his hand touches the crystal, spreading across the whole thing until it's glowing as brightly as it had when it was formed, but he can't look away. When the light dies down, Yusuf hovers in the air for just a moment before whatever spell had held him there finally breaks, and he collapses, but Nicolò is there to catch him, sinking to his knees and cradling him close. He doesn't move for a moment, and Nicolò is terrified, because what if something had gone wrong-
Yusuf gasps awake, his eyes fluttering open. He looks around frantically before catching sight of Nicolò above him, who nearly sobs with relief, holding him impossibly closer.
"Nicolò?" Yusuf whispers, his voice hoarse. Nicolò nods, unable to speak just yet, blinking back his tears and brushing Yusuf's curls away from where they've fallen into his eyes.
Then Yusuf asks, "Did I oversleep?" and Nicolò has to laugh even though it comes out sounding more like a sob, kisses his forehead and smiles. "It's over, then?"
"It's over," Nicolò confirms, and then, "I love you."
Yusuf sits up and wraps his arms around Nicolò's neck, buries his face in Nicolò's shoulder and holds on tightly. "I love you too."
(When they return, Nile is the first to them, hugs Yusuf so tightly he laughs, and then it's Sebastien's turn, then Andromache and Quynh both.
They choose to stay on the surface, all six of them. And neither Yusuf or Nicolò are the same people anymore - sometimes Nicolò wakes screaming, sometimes Yusuf gets a distant look in his eyes and it takes a worryingly long time for him to come back to himself. Sometimes there are things Yusuf still can't tell Nicolò, and vice versa.
They make it work, though. They find a quiet place in the woods, far away from the temple and any danger, and they're safe, and happy, and together.
It's all Nicolò's ever wanted, really.)
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i want to know the scene give it to me NEOW
ok but im going into Actual Writing Mode for this rather than just Description Mode 👍👍👍👍this is half stream of conscious and half referencing the original version of this scene so it might be kind of jumbled
Backtracking through Hell is an arduous task, even with an ally or two though by Violence the layers are all but cleaned out and slowly beginning to decay.
Having chased V1 back upwards from there, the game turned into a treacherous game of cat and mouse until it leads back to where it's life as an angry ghost began.
Layer four, Greed.
The slow breakdown of the upper layers had finally reached it, an inhospitable heat from the now-dying sun reaching far into the shadows, clawing down the connection to Wrath below as the angry star above consumed the sky. This was it. It would either succeed, or die its final death trying. Its oversensitive overheat warnings were screaming at it.
V1 sees it coming, across the melted sea of gold that laps at the burning sandstone platforms below, and it knows it has nowhere to go. If it could reach the hole in the side of the pyramid it would, but the wall is just too steep, too hot, it'd be fried or cast in liquid gold before it had a chance to do anything about it.
It would give everything it had to fend V2 off, red light glinting off it's plating, off the cobalt sword it's successor had borrowed from it's new companion (who, previously, had torn away it's primary offensive arm, which V2 now sports-- ironic) but the agonizing heat would prove too much for its systems to react quickly enough to the inputs it receives and outputs it gives.
It would've never been a fair fight, anyway. There's too much anger for that now.
Even as V2 faces the same problems, it persists, nothing else mattered to it anymore (or so it tried to tell itself, over and over) but the thought of dying right back where it started terrified it to no end, it could not allow itself to fail now, as the two once identical machines stare each other down on that fateful platform, the blood baked into the shattered sandstone having been there longer than either of them.
And then it makes its move, tunnel vision blocking out the fact that V1 is practically unloading its entire arsenal into it, red being cast not only by the sun above but by the visceral hatred being expressed by the way its shattered wings burn bright, lunging forwards with the sword practically the same size as V1 itself, forcing it back further and further as the edge nicks it bit by bit, and only then does V1 realize that V2 has no plans of truly fighting--these wounds would only be caused with the intent of inflicting suffering upon an organic creature, and in the split second it's distracted by the revelation, V2 finds an opportunity to kick it's predecessor to the ground, eliciting a rare buzz of alarm from it as it drives one of the hydraulic spikes it's salvaged legs provide through its plating to pin it down.
As the two lock eyes, V2 plunges the blade through its mechanical guts until it hits the slightly-molten sandstone underneath, twisting it slowly; it can see so much of itself in V1 and it hates that, as it realizes just how large of a shadow its predecessor has cast upon its life until this very moment, stretching all the way back to even before it was constructed.
They created V2 just so the model line would stay relevant and then failed to accomplish that.
They made a war machine without war, a V-model copy without any of the things that made the first one unique. And then they couldn't figure out what to do with it.
They couldn't make another V1, so they gave up trying, left it to have to figure itself out. Its been trying to do that ever since, haunted by the mere existence of the machine it's looking down at now, as its body heaves as if breathing heavily, its fans desperately trying to pump air over it's inner workings. Blood sizzles on the stone underfoot.
It practically collapses in the process of trying to kneel down, having to use the sword in V1's guts to support itself as it takes it upon itself to begin dismembering it. It takes more than what has already been taken from it, finding it hard to think as it feels more and more like an ant under a magnifying glass. V1 can barely react, with warnings about overheating and missing components blocking out any external stimuli.
It was this close.
And then, unceremoniously, it's ripped out of its focus.
It sees where it is, it hears the sheer number of warnings screaming at it in the back of its mind. Overheat warnings, component integrity and fuel level warnings, frying to death in it's own blood under the sun of greed surrounded by bits of metal.
Briefly it forgets about finishing off V1, terrified that it really did just end up right where it started, overwhelmed by everything this place meant to it now-- but it couldn't just quit, not now.
With the last of its strength, its senses, as its hardware starts shutting down to protect itself from further damage, it takes the blade and plunges Justice down through V1's chest plating, tearing through the soft material of its heart and the vital components of its brain.
It was over. For it, and now seemingly, for her.
Its body slumped against the corpse below it as its consciousness blinked out.
It's over.
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