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onlyseokmins · 2 months

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$$60 billion (part 1) • l.s.m.

How did a legendary bounty promised for turning in the wasteland's most infamous outlaw transform into a sick, little inside betting joke amongst your traveling companions? Though you have no idea why they're doing it… you sure as hell don't want that very same gunslinger comrade worth sixty billion double dollars to know anything about it either — but oops — looks like he already does! Damn you and your temper, some unhelpful lip-loosening alcohol, and one no-good, sorry excuse of a preacher you sometimes think of as a friend.

Pairing: outlaw!lee seokmin x fem!reader Genres: eventual smut (minors dni!), trigun!au action!au, apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic!au, space western!au, slight enemies to comrades to ??? !au, angst, fluff, they're dumbasses your honor 🙏 Warnings: swearing, blood, death, gore, guns, injuries, destruction, mentions of knives, weapons, violence, creepy monsters and creatures, ptsd, moral ambiguities, dark topics tbh, smoking, unsettling space western things, slight body horror and hints at altered dna, weird religious cults, mentions of eating/food, alcohol, threats, bets among friends, platonic (but not really) nakedness, reader is operating on a short fuse bc I believe u have to be built different for this universe, their communication is abt to be as poor as the plant life 💀 Seungcheol kinda his own warning imho, biggest apology to chan, and we all love seok sm bc he sings abt total slaughter 🙇🏻‍♀️ WC: 19.5k of 32.7k | Part 2 | Read on AO3 A/N: this is for the Now that's 90's - A Seventeen collab and loosely based off/inspired by the Trigun anime/manga! You do not need to know it as I manipulated a whole lot of elements for my own narrative but beware of various spoilers if you do go ahead and check out the series after reading!! I feel like the boys may seem ooc but I had a lot of fun putting this together 😌 Thank you Summer and Isa for hosting this collab and your utmost patience in me finally writing my piece! I hope everyone enjoys this and please check out the other writers in this amazing collab ❤️let me know your thoughts and feel free to ask any questions regarding this au's intricacies!!

Everyone wanted Lee Seokmin.

The cities' great militaries. Bounty hunters. Bandits on the roads. Criminals escaping death row. Prowling pirate gangs. His twin brother. You.

Though you reckoned your "want" for him was a bit… different from others. Well, at least you hope so, goddamn it.

You shiver.

At first, you wanted him just like the mass majority would one day as well — dead. The deed swiftly carried out with a silver pistol aimed at his temple.

Besides, your blood-thirst began before the destruction of July. Unlike most, who angrily shake their fists at the gaping crater on the fifth moon in the spirit of pure vengeance. Yes, the tragic incident of the great city that upped the bounty dangling over his head like a noose to a sixty billion double dollars reward. But Little Ivywood was the first of many places that would end up reduced to ruins after Lee Seokmin set foot there.

Wiped off the map. Wiped from history. Wiped from existence. But never forgotten. Especially not by the small town's only known survivor — you.

Your earliest memories contain little about the events that led up to being left on the doorstep of Little Ivywood's unofficial orphanage. How could they when you were just a baby? One swaddled in a ratty cloth weighted down by a rusted pistol. There was just one simple hint to your past — scribbled nearly illegible on a torn piece of paper dotted with blood — and could only be what the nuns had to assume was your name.

At least that's how Sister Meryl relayed the tale whenever asked, her hands clasped tightly together in praise and gratitude to the Saint that delivered you to them unharmed. The irony, considering Sister Lucia always looks like she'll faint just like the day she opened the convent's side door. It wasn't an easy sight to see or recall, the image of a wailing infant mouthing on the empty muzzle of a gun.

Neither versions of your origin story could be that far off thanks to the scar marring your left hand and the gun held tightly in your right. You've had both for as long as you can remember. And as you grew and changed, so did they.

The scar shrunk and faded through the years, seemingly forgotten amongst a myriad of other markings littered across your skin. Over time, the pistol's rusted parts were repaired or replaced and soon, its shine and character returned. Restored to its former glory while forging a new beginning ahead with a different owner.

But there were two things that stayed constant throughout your years at the orphanage. The first was your birth name. Not even the nuns, who generally loved bestowing scriptural monikers as if they were granting rich titles to unnamed orphans, tried to change yours. The second was a person who you still refuse to call by his baptismal name — Chan.

He helped you, became an assistant of sorts. Originally just some snot-nosed, beanpole of a fellow orphan you didn't really pay much attention to. A scared kid who cried way too loudly even after you'd even taken the time to demonstrate that the gun was safe after he'd been the one continuously pestering to see it. Very much to Sister Constance's chagrin, since it all went down in the middle of confessional time.

But curiosity eventually overturned the initial fear.

Lucky, because by acquiring bravery, Chan could discover his innate talent for gunsmithing. Lanky, noodle arms transformed into well-formed, sinewy muscles. The soft baby skin of his hands roughened with callouses as he whittled away near the convent's underground furnace. He'd spend hours down there, returning with sweat, grime, and charcoal smudged all over his skin after melting together the random metal objects found by digging beneath the basement's unfinished floor.

The Sisters disliked dirt and grime all over the children and tracked through the doors. But it was hard to keep clean out in the middle of a sandy desert. Complaints dwindled thanks to the fellow orphans who would stop their mischief to watch Chan work. And as time passed, his shoulders broadened further, his voice began to deepen, his dark hair grew longer, and those brown eyes started to sparkle with something different from simple, fleeting passion — it was a dream.

The excitable boy would tell you all about it under the stars. Late into the nights when you searched for what had to be remnants of Earthen materials from the Big Fall, he'd chatter on and on.

"Once we're actual adults," — free from the guardianship requirement provided from the orphanage — "we're gonna leave Lil Ivywood behind and explore the great wastelands of Gunsmoke!"

You snort at the ridiculousness of such an idea. "And how do you think we'll survive?"

"Easy-peasy, I'm gonna build a bunch of guns and we're gonna end up so rich. And famous!"

"Yeah, sure. Throw a couple double dollars at the worms, I'm sure they'll let us pass with no problem."

Not one to be deterred by your eternal sarcasm, Chan shakes his head."Nah, that's where you come in. Didn't think I'd let you freeload, right?"

He stands and stretches both of his arms straight out, the ones your roommate had started to gush over. Hands clasped together like Sister Meryl's always do before prayer time and then extending both pointer fingers into a mock handgun, out into the distant sand dunes one rarely dares to stray.

"You gotta be a sharpshooter to not let my hard work go to waste!"

You lazily take aim next to him, handling the freshly restored pistol with uncharacteristic gentleness. While it might officially be yours, it's also Chan's baby.

"Mm-hm, me and my killer skills."

And then you both dissolve into laughter.

It was such a pipe dream and yet; it didn't seem utterly impossible. There were little moments you let yourself imagine it, too — just until the suns peep their heads above the horizon. There was no way you could defend yourself — let alone another person — from the dangers of the desert or it would've been something you'd attempted years ago.

But when Chan spoke of his plans under the glow of the orbiting full moons, confidently mapping an adventure through an area he's never been to or seen before, and dreamed — he easily pulled you under his spell too. It was contagious, exciting, addicting, and most of all — it could really be… possible.

An armory of grade-A weapons. The bank account overflowing with double dollars. Endless boxes of bullets and the refined skills to shoot them; you were the force to be reckoned with and a protector of those who couldn't do it for themselves.

"Do you think… we could really succeed?" you ask one night, running a finger along the familiar engravings on your gun's grip panel.

Chan's grin was as shiny as the circular metal shell he was carving into. You refuse to look his way because of how infectious it could be. Plus, the main reason it was so stinking bright was due to this being the first time you verbally entertained his ideas.

"Oh-ho-ho, doubt my capabilities?"

"Obviously."

If offended — he was not — by the instant agreement, there was no sign of it. Instead, he focused back onto his handicraft, knowing you would eventually spill your true thoughts if he was patient.

There was no rush tonight after all. A star-filled expanse of black blanketed across the sky — one he hoped would never change to blue.

"More like… it's just going to be so risky!"

"And that's why you'll be the —"

"But I've never even held a gun before!" You spot Chan pointedly direct the corner of his gaze to where your hands rest, causing you to flinch them away from the weapon and wave around haphazardly as your cheeks heat. "I mean, like, to shoot! Sister Lucia always says it'd be too dangerous."

"Sister Lucia thinks water that doesn't flow directly out of the holy grail is dangerous."

"Technically, that's true."

"Oh god, she's got you thinkin' the same, too!"

"But she'd probably rather swear by the Saint than ever let me get any bullets…" The thought alone of the devout nun saying the Savior's name in vain makes both of you smirk but yours falls just as quick as it came. "And we're going to need those if we ever want to leave Little Ivywood."

"Well —"

"And I… I'd have to kill things! People, too. I don't know if I can do that, I —"

" — Think fast!"

It's his turn to interrupt, chipper voice ever optimistic as he tosses the finished trinket your way. Thankfully, your reflexes work fast enough to catch it nimbly in time. The oval is hot to the touch after hovering over searing flames and despite its small size, weighs down your right palm as you glance over its etchings.

Satisfied, Chan takes that as his cue to walk toward the nook that shields you from the roaring heat of the furnace. Squatting down so he's eye-level with your knees, he brushes back his tangled mess of hair with one hand and taps knowingly at the barrel of the pistol with the other.

"There's no reason to kill anyone or anything."

"But this can hurt people… I could hurt people."

"You've had this ever since you were a baby and never harmed anyone with it."

"It's… it's never been loaded or…"

"Doesn't need to be. If you smacked someone with it, they'd surely feel that hit." He snickers, tone bordering on the edge of cockiness. "I would know, considering the sturdy and valuable materials used for repairs."

You roll your eyes and mutter, "Show-off," but it lacks true malice behind it.

"And even so," Chan takes one of his hands and pats the back of your free one, unintentionally right over the spot where your scar lies. "You've hurt no one before. Not even me, who annoys you the most!"

"About time you finally realized how merciful I am."

He says your name in earnest, remaining uncharacteristically serious and lays your intertwined hands on top of the gun before squeezing tightly. "Both this and you don't have to kill a single thing or person — ever — if that's not what you want to do. You can aim for non-vital points, shoot up in the air… Bullets or no bullets, just the sight of a weapon alone can be enough of a deterrent for most."

Chewing hesitantly on your lower lip, you let his words sink in and he continues.

"The fact you're aware of the hundreds of risks when handling a weapon like this means you'll be even more cautious when using it. I trust you, so trust in yourself."

Warmth spreads from your interlocked hands and through your entire body like you're wrapped in another one of his sweet hugs, culminating into tears threatening to spill past your lash line. Chan believed in you and though you'd never admit it aloud, it meant the world to you.

"When did you grow up so much?" you tease, letting out an exhale you didn't realize was being held.

"Aw, c'mon! I've been taller than you for months now!"

"Keep dreamin' if it makes you feel better."

Though Chan sasses back by sticking his tongue out, he lets you ruffle his sweaty bangs despite receiving a slightly bruised forehead in return because you forget about the new gift in your hand. Plotting an escape, he stands and pulls you up with him, joined by your clasped hands.

"We should probably head back. Sister Constance's likely gonna ask us to check the Plant before morning mass and you don't want her to catch you dozing off again."

"Last I recall, you were the one she caught napping!"

"But you have the most demerits this week."

"And whose fault is that?!"

Quick as lightning, he nudges you with enough strength to catch you off guard and destabilize your balance. Then he tears away, calling over his shoulder, "Snooze and ya lose!"

"Ugh, this is exactly why — you never play fair!"

Regathering your bearings at record speed, you dash right after Chan. The boy's raucous laughter echoes in your own lungs and you swear the stars twinkle brighter in the nighttime sky. You overtake him right before reaching the convent's door — the same one you were left on — and clutch at his arm before he can reach past to open it.

"Hey… thanks."

He grins all goofy. Chan's well aware you mean much more than that, but he opts to flick your forehead rather than give you grief over it. "Yeah, yeah. I do so much for you, you know?"

"Mm-hm."

"So it's about time to finally pick a name I can carve onto that bad boy. If you don't, I'll put mine there." He nods to your gun excitedly, then points to the oval. "Oh, and I'll make a chain for that soon. Did you decide what you'll put inside?"

"Questions, questions, demands, demands." You wave him off and open the door with a yawn. "I'll think of one. And yeah, you know that Earthen gadget we found? Gonna cut out those papers and put them in there before sleeping."

Once while digging for materials, you had stumbled across a square object that wasn't completely destroyed, unlike many others. After a few experiments of messing with the random knobs and buttons, you determined it could mimic whatever was directly in front of the clear coated lenses. And later — much to your amusement and amazement — it printed out the image on thick, shiny squares.

Fascinating little things those Earthlings created!

You'd luckily put the last few sheets left in the machine to good use. Experimenting with the surrounding scenery that blurrily featured some of Ivywood's buildings, then one of Chan, and finally wrangled a frame that captured both of you together.

"Do you think you'll be able to stabilize it?"

Your tentative question makes him look toward the large, bulbous structure that houses the Plant. The power source Little Ivywood depended upon.

He sports a cheery grin. "Won't know 'til I've tried!"

"Ever considered too much confidence might be a bad thing?"

"If you're jealous, just say so. But with you by my side, there's nothing we can't accomplish together!" He bounces excitedly on his heels. "Besides, I forgot to mention…" Beckoning you with a hand to come closer, you lean in, curious. "I've become quite the master at bargaining. There won't be a single worm who'll refuse a double dollar from the great Chan!"

"What did you do?"

"What haven't I done?"

"You're the worst. Like to ever exist."

"The absolute best, you mean 'cause there'll be no reason for you to waste any bullets or fear cutting a single lifespan short!"

"Goodnight, Chan."

"You mean 'thank you so much, what would I ever do without you, Chan!' but whatever! You can make it up to me tomorrow!"

But tomorrow never came.

Or rather — daybreak arrived in the unrecognizable form of rapid gunfire and screams of terror. The buildings rattled, trembled, and shook from the onslaught just like the people cowering in fear within them.

The dust stirred up in the chapel's hall after a wall unexpectedly collapsed causes you to cough. Amidst the chaos and panic, you spare a glance over your shoulder to see Sister Meryl, who strides confidently to the altar.

She stands with poise and purpose in front of the marbled stone. Steadfast and unwavering in strength because of her faith alone, even as the grand statue of the Saint starts crumbling down with the ceiling tiles falling around it.

It's a visual you're not likely to forget, carved deep into your memory before you flee with the rest. Sister Lucia is flustered as usual, ushering everyone as fast as she can near the grand oak doors that lead out to where additional shouting can be heard and only more pandemonium must await outside.

You're struck with the damning realization.

The gods — they have completely abandoned humankind.

"That would be ten demerits any other day," Sister Constance voice abruptly snaps, "fortunately for you, now is not the time for such things."

It's astonishing how even at this moment, the nun remains on high alert for 'troublemakers'. Her sharp-nailed fingers latch around your wrist as she breezes by — much too similar to when you've been dragged off to detention. And as if that's what's happening, your heels plant firmly in the ground and obstinately tug her back a step.

"What about Sister Meryl? We can't just leave!"

"If you knew what was good for you, you'll obediently obey me. But if you knew that, you'd recognize faithfulness will guide her and the rest of us to safety."

"Nothing guarantees —"

"Those who do not devote themselves truthfully will never understand. Should the Saint deem Sister Meryl's sacrifice to be in vain, then she has failed not only the Holy Bishop and our sacred bonds, but you — one she unnecessarily dotes on — as well."

You want to argue and protest as Sister Constance yanks you forward. But the faint tremors you feel despite the tight grip of her hand and the tensed jawline of the woman whose stoic face is normally unbreakable makes you pause.

She's shaken. She's unsure. She's wavering.

Sister Constance doubts.

And something about that thrills you. Terrifyingly so.

The shock of it all is as startling as the pale sunlight blinding your eyes when the chapel's heavy doors finally get thrown open. Grains of sand swirl through Little Ivywood, diluting the usual brightness of the glowing orbs in the sky and their powerful rays.

A sandstorm brews on the horizon.

That's the least of your worries, though. Blood stains the soil where shrapnel grazed tender flesh. Fellow orphans scream and cry out from their wounds as they struggle to get away from the captors attempting to drag them to the center of town.

With a chill, you alarmingly realize who they're trying to escape from. Women in black and white robes don a wild, crazed look on their faces. The ones who have raised and cared for parentless children throughout many years and tended to every need they could within their means.

The Blessed and Holy Sisterhood of Little Ivywood.

Sister Constance turns and you jump. Both at the horrors of the present and a reminder of how many times a quick movement of hers led to the sharp pain of a switch or ruler tearing into skin. An eerie sound of laughter rings out and your blood runs cold, eyes darting left and right for the source.

And then through the dust particles, looms the sinister silhouette of a figure in a long trench coat flapping in the wind. Spiked hair sticks straight up, retaining its menacing style despite the powerful wind gusts and emphasizing an already impressive height. You gulp, swearing there's a flash of metal followed by a fanged smirk that glints dangerously as Sister Constance tugs you closer to the terrifying shadow beast shrouded by sand swirling in the air.

A declaration of your given name — stern and cold. "Know that your purpose is being fulfilled, that you are serving the great —"

And then comes a shout of your name, this time from someone desperate and panicked. You're yanked forward and then suddenly catapulted backward, grunting at the impact of your body slamming against someone else's.

"You need to go! You need to get out of here!"

"Chan?!"

He clings to you, shifting so his back is to the nun only a few paces past the corner he dashed around for safety and to stall for time. Throwing a cautious look over his shoulder before whispering urgently, "Go! And don't look back!"

"What about you?"

"Don't mind me." The smooth leather of a satchel presses against your palm. "Get movin'!"

"But —"

"Seriously," the boy shoves you forward with a not-so-gentle push. You gape at the audacity and he waves his hand, like he's shooing away a pesky flying worm. Rude. "Please! I'll be right behind you but —"

An eruption of nearby gunfire and a series of high-pitched shing!-like noises interrupt him. He glances again over his shoulder. You cautiously step forward and his head whips back to let out a hiss.

"Chan, what's —"

"Need to grab a few more things, see if any other idiots need help. Just… just get out of town, wait for me by the rocks if it'll make you feel better." He smiles, though it doesn't make those brown eyes of his sparkle like usual. "It'll… it'll all be okay."

You're uncertain and scared. But something about Chan's speaking powers have always made you believe in the impossible. So, you nod resolutely while taking the bag from him and warn, "Promise you'll be safe."

"You hate those kinds of things."

It's true. To you, promises were only made to be broken. And yet…

"… And somehow you've changed my mind before."

The bangs of carnage draw closer. Louder.

"Fine, just go. Please! And don't look back!"

Acquiescing to his pleas, you sprint toward where he pointed. Sitting like giant sentinels lays an outcrop of boulders bordering the western edge of Little Ivywood. The desert is only two paces away, expanding outward into a desolate plain filled with the undulating slopes of dunes. Picking a sizable rock to hide behind, you keep watch for Chan, cringing at the distant sound of gunshots still rapidly being fired.

What was that? What did you see? And what did you almost get dragged into?

What was going on?

Boom!

It's an ear-shattering noise that causes even the great stones around you to tremble from the explosion. A flare of light so bright leaves you no choice but to look away to protect your eyes, ducking behind the rocks as a shield.

When you recover after it dissipates to see what just happened — Little Ivywood is no more.

It's gone.

"No…"

The tiny town reduced to only rubble and ash. What once were rows of square buildings stacked on top of each other to divert the view of a relatively flat lay of the land are now parallel to its surroundings.

"No… no… no…"

Gone.

You don't think twice about running toward the wreckage. Chan is there. Chan has to be there!

"No!"

And most importantly, he has to be alright.

Broken piles of the shoddy architecture littering the landscape prevents you from traversing too far. Bile rises in your throat as you desperately scan for a sign — any sign — for Chan. For survivors. For anyone. Even the air is still, no longer rippling with irritable heat waves and heavy gusts of wind because the blast was strong enough to ward off nature itself and the incoming sandstorm.

For now.

And during the futile search, that's when you spot him. On his knees with his back to you, slouched over in the only clear space amidst the destruction. The tattered fabric of a cerise garment hangs off the man's broad shoulders and pools around his body like a puddle of blood. Reddish-brown bangs tinged with black hang limply as his chin curls further and further into his chest.

I don't understand, you vent to yourself after a couple ungraceful vaults and stumbling through the debris to get closer. This bastard got what he wanted, did what he wanted, and won! So, why is he acting like that? Who destroyed his town? His people?

Finally, you're a couple steps behind him. Thankful, at the very least, for whatever weird state this man is in because it grants you the opportunity to approach and press the cold steel of your pistol to the side of his temple.

"Don't. Move."

You hope it comes out as the threatening command you intend it to be. There's a tense beat of silence as you wait for his next move until you realize he's doing exactly what you demanded.

Then he chuckles. A choked out, watery sort of sound. Your hands start shaking even as they press the barrel harsher against his head.

"Go ahead and shoot."

"Answer me first." Your voice becomes as unsteady as the quakes in your body and you rasp out, "Why… why'd you do it?"

His head lifts and you flinch, but he takes no further action besides staring blankly ahead at the ruins. "I wish I could tell you but… I've been asking myself the same question."

"I — you…! You wreak hell and havoc upon a whole innocent town and… and you don't even know why?!"

"Pathetic, isn't it?" The man laughs again, without a shred of humor. A gloved hand reaches up to wrap around the weapon and you momentarily falter at the force of him leaning into it. The weight pushing it closer into his skull seems hard enough to leave a nasty imprint, as if that should be a main concern right now. "I'd simply like to know how I did it."

"I —"

"Not loaded," he sighs and drops his hand, twisting around to actually get a proper look at whoever was holding him at gunpoint.

You're taken aback by the intensity of death radiating in those dark brown irises that casually observe you through amber-colored, cracked lenses. Your arms fall down, dumbfounded at the stranger's unflinching behavior, the pistol bumping into your thigh. He lets out a "tsk" and then pulls something out of his pocket.

In his opposite palm, clad in a fingerless glove unlike the left, rests a conical golden object. Though you've never seen one in real life before, you think you know what it is. The shape matches the hollow outlines when Chan disassembled the chambers of your gun.

"A cartridge," he says and you blink. "A bullet," he clarifies upon noticing your confusion. Then the man smiles encouragingly. "Go on. Take it."

You're incredulous. "You're okay with handing that over to me?"

"It's what you want, right?" There's a wistful look on his face. "This place… it was your home."

"No," you're quick to refute, shocked at such an automatic response. Then admitting, "I don't even know what a home is."

Innocent town, my ass, is what you derisively admit inward and snort at yourself.

The convent itself was far from comforting. The other orphans with their bright grins when Saint Meryl sang lullabies on the nights you couldn't sleep — those were the kinds of things that made it bearable.

Guilt.

"I — I —"

It overwhelms your senses. Rattling up your entire nervous system and settling a cruel, cruel weight in your chest. You hunch over, chest heaving, and throat burning. There's a thump as your gun falls to the ground, its silvery sharp edges becoming distorted, warped, and blurred through a film of unshed tears in your widened eyes.

"Should've… It should've —"

"Hey, hey…"

"It should've been me!"

The man rises to his full height, brushing off his clothes before crouching down. A sturdy hand grips your shoulder and dutifully encourages your gasping upper body into an upright position. Gently, ever so fragile, he bops your forehead with his and you subconsciously lean against the unexpected support.

He's near enough to ground you to something solid. But distant enough for two strangers whose first meeting is one amidst a crumbling town's travesty. With his close presence comes the scent of gun smoke, though not as bitterly pungent and putrid as you recall from before. It's subtle and smokey, reminiscent of the fire that Chan once proudly stoked in his makeshift forge.

Your body shakes as the tears finally slip free.

"All lives are equally precious, one shouldn't be sacrificed for another."

"… How can… how can you say that so… easily?"

The death-come-over look in his eyes changes to something faraway. Like he's seeing something beyond the destruction surrounding both of you. Those amber lenses don't have to be cracked to draw attention to the fracturing despair radiating behind them.

Then, he shakes his head and shrugs. "Because you should live even when those dear to you are gone. This world is made of love and peace, after all."

Your crying abruptly pauses with the natural effort it takes to let out a scoff. Ignoring your utter scorn and disbelief, the man's gaze drifts to the pistol still on the ground. The tip of a steel-toed boot kicks it up into the air with a flourish, single-handedly catching it to inspect the weapon with practiced ease.

"Live because there's a reason you survived, even if you loathe every second of it. You'll feel like you don't deserve it. But persevere because you should. Because that's what they would've wanted and you keep them alive by living yourself. A burden? Maybe. Why spend such a cursed blessing only dwelling in regret when you can do so much more?"

He offers the gun back, its handle extended in your direction.

"If nothing else, live for yourself most importantly. Help show the world the love and peace it deserves. Even if it couldn't afford to gift it to you. That's what life is all about. The ticket to the future is always blank!" Pausing, he shrugs with a regret-filled smile on his face. "At least that's what I was taught… and what I think."

"… Awfully full of optimism for some dude who wiped out a full town and doesn't even know why."

"Name's Seokmin," he returns, now sporting a cheeky grin as you cautiously reach out for the pistol. Only to be outsmarted with a literal 'sleight-of-hand' and meeting the warmth of fingers and a gloved palm instead of the expectation of hard, cold, and familiar steel.

"Huh?"

"Lee Seokmin, to be precise! And it's a pleasure to meet 'cha! Erm, despite the… terrible circumstances." Seokmin jiggles the gun in front of you with his other hand, almost taunting you to reach for it again.

You don't.

"And what do you call this lovely lady?"

"Nothing."

"A shame. But not everyone cares to name things, 'specially if they don't hold any value." He finally tosses it back and you barely manage to catch it in time with a scowl.

"Just haven't decided."

"I see! Mine's Geranium."

"Oh, like… the flower?"

He visibly perks up at that even further, a radiant smile showcasing two pointy fangs. "You've heard of it?"

"Well," you scratch your cheek, "the, uh, sisters gave a girl that name because of her hair."

There's an uncomfortable pause as the dreadful realization you'll never see those brilliant ruby locks bounce because of her excitement again settles back into your stomach. You swallow, eyes roaming the stranger in front of you for a distraction.

"Um… you must really like the color… red."

Seokmin glances down at the tatters of his scarlet clothes and shrugs. "I guess. Though the one I saw was red, I've heard they come in different colors."

"You've seen a plant? Like a plant plant? A real one! You know — that grows out of the ground and transforms and all that? It doesn't, well…"

Vegetation was a rarely discussed concept. The only thing you knew came out of the poorly written history books in the dusty library's darkest corner. In the desert outskirts, you had a better chance of finding ancient Earth technology that might still be intact to share its plethora of knowledge about the old world humans left behind than hope to find whatever resources the big cities had access to.

"Mm, yeah, a long time ago. But say," he jovially waves the cartridge from before and it glints in the setting rays of the suns. "Would you care to hear this man's story before shooting him?"

And of course, you listened. What other choice did you have, you who lost everything at once? But even back then, something small and precious was planted in the barren depths of your heart. That was just the beginning. It would continue to grow, watered and tended to under the sunny smile of Lee Seokmin — the destroyer of cities and a very wanted man across the planet.

You leave that tiny bit out during the recitation of your past to the inquisitive pastor. Though something you'll regrettably find out later is he's already got you all figured out.

Bastard.

"… So, that's how I met the infamous Lee Seokmin and didn't end up killing him," you declare with a flourish and take a satisfied gulp of cheap beer picked up from some abandoned mart along the way out of Little Jersey.

Draining another bottle dry, you toss away the metal cap, close one eye, and peer through the narrow bottleneck like it's a telescope — albeit a very poor one.

Through the distorted glass stretch endless sand dunes as far as the eye can see. Stars glitter and sparkle amid the glow of the full moons in orbit, temporarily dimmed by a puff of the roguish's man's cigarette that wafts through the inky darkness.

You wonder if he'd be willing to share one.

"A shame," Seungcheol grumbles and offers a white stick from his pocket.

You take it eagerly only to see it's nothing but — a lollipop. The hard candy's become a strange gooey consistency thanks to melting in the desert heat all day and partially re-solidifying during the nighttime's chilly air.

It's stale too.

Fucker.

You let out a disdainful sniff but nod in agreement to his statement. "It is. But he promised me something. Then his bounty increased from a meager six million to sixty billion double dollars after destroying July, putting a hole in the moon, and all that. So… following him around has paid off."

"I guess," he shrugs, "guess I don't really care 'bout yer lil meet-cute story."

You gape at the audacity. "You're the one who fuckin' asked!"

"Well… figured we could bond, ya know? Orphans 'n all that cozy, feel-good shit."

"You know, not a single thing I've said thus far coud be classified as 'cute'."

"Uh-huh."

"And I never took you to be a sentimental fool."

"Hey, now —"

You hold up a hand. "'Thou shall not bear false witness'."

"As if ya even know what that means," Seungcheol retorts and flicks the ashy cigarette stub in your direction, the cross around his neck ironically reflecting in the moonlight. "Was gonna say, if anythin', I put the mental in sentimental, sweet'art."

Well, you certainly wouldn't argue with that point. "…What I do know is that you're doing this all. For him."

"'Ol Needle Noggin, eh?"

"Well… yeah. But he's only part of a bigger picture for you."

"… 'S none o' yer business, ya know? Best to know less."

Your eyes roll. "Sure. That's why you nearly got hit by our car 'cause you wore a suit into the desert and didn't bring a drop of water. All while hauling that stupid, big-ass cross around! And then you insist on joining us — try to scam us! — but hey," you put your hands up, "none of my business."

"Wasn't tryna scam —"

"Hella shady, man... Hella. fuckin'. shady." You're shocked you can see the man's eyes roll in a begrudging defeat behind his black sunglasses — at night, no less — but you nudge him. "C'mon, just tell me! I bet it has to do with Hopeland, something… or someone back at that orphanage."

"Anyone told ya how irritatin' ya are?"

"Only the ones that are equally just as annoying!"

"Tch, woman." Seungcheol messes up the back of his black hair, mouth opening as he cracks his jaw. There's a pregnant pause. "… 'Han was… he was different. Ya wouldn't get it."

"Try me. Evidently you weren't listening very well, were you?" No surprise there. You retrieve the locket that takes refuge beneath your top, a familiar oval swinging from its long chain between the two of you. "Believe it or not, I do get it."

His eyes fixate on it like a pendulum, darting to your face, and then up to the sky. A crooked smile quirks up the corner of his mouth and he lets out a resigned sigh. "Ya really love 'im, don'tcha?"

You feel a funny sensation.

Akin to getting caught in a horde of flying worms and trying to squash down as many as you can. Your answer is hushed and Seungcheol snickers. Unbeknownst to the two of you that an additional pair of ears — assumed to be asleep — also catches your whispered reply.

"So, how much ya gonna pay for confessin'?" the pastor goads and lets out a startled yelp when you try to smash the hand-held bank he totes around that's shaped like a cathedral.

"Oh, go to hell, Choi!"

"Stare any longer and you'll no longer be needin' Sirocco." An amused snicker follows the relaxed drawl. "Bullets're 'bout to start flyin' outta those eyes 'stead of that gun o' yers."

You scowl at the dumb man seated next to you. "It's not like subtlety has ever been a strong suit of yours. But could you at least pay better attention to your surroundings?" A meager amount of golden liquid sloshes against the sides of the glass you pointedly wave around. "Or are you already too drunk to forget where we are?"

"Ain't no lightweight," Seungcheol brags with his fourth pint of the night in hand and a rapacious grin cockily tilting the empty lollipop stick in the corner of his mouth upward. "Can't say the same for the rest, though. Whiskey's stronger than a punch to the gut."

"… You would know. I'm sure it might just taste like water to some by now."

While it might initially elate most visitors to order as many rounds of the only available beverage on the menu as possible, the reality of the situation was much more grim. As if he can read your mind, the man clad in black, gray, and muted silvers flippantly reminds you of why your so-called merry band of travelers are even here.

"Needle Noggin said 'e fixed the Plant up just fine 'n dandy, so here's hopin' we get some clean bathwater t'night."

At those words, your gaze instinctively shoots back to where it focused earlier. Seungcheol snorts and drains his glass with a satisfactory sigh before poking more fun at you.

"Gonna put a hole through his head at this point."

"Not like that's anything new."

"Yeah, but rather than constantly laserin' holes through his skull, ya should be tryna convince him to fill yers up, instead. 'N not referrin' to that empty space behind yer forehead."

"I know exactly what you mean, you perverted freak."

That cracks Seungcheol up. "'N here I was thinkin' ya was gonna end up a nun servin' the Eye of Joshua!"

By now, you're well-accustomed to the hedonistic ways of the man who still keeps a leather band with a cross on it strapped across his Adam's apple, sewn into the cuffs of his black suit, and carries the hulking shape of one on his weary shoulders.

Unfazed, you fire back, "If they even let someone like you into the blessed and holy ranks, then any whore off the streets would be welcome to join."

It's a series of light-hearted jabs you both take in stride. The truth is much darker and deeper, but tonight serves as a tiny snapshot away from the normal weariness of day-to-day survival in Gunsmoke. Right now, you celebrate alongside the residents of Tonim what peace could really look like in the future.

Except you're on edge.

For a reason that's silly compared to the usual adrenaline rush of tracking down Plants nearing red status and defending the area, all the while trying to prevent the inevitable destruction and chaos to follow. Still, it's why you beckon the bartender over for another refill as a positively "tickled-pink" Seungcheol not-so-silently judges.

"Now who's staring?"

"'Kay, but's not with unbridled lust and — " He's cut off by a sharp kick to the side of his shin delivered by one of your heavy combat boots. "And feelin's," gets wheezed out before the pastor falls silent at your nasty scowl paired with Wonwoo's timely arrival.

The saloon owner and de facto authority in town approaches the two of you cautiously. It's no secret who you are, who you're with. What you do and the things that follow when you do what you do. And yet what you've done has saved the town and given its people — especially the younger folk — something that some of them have never experienced before.

Hope.

And that seems to be good enough proof for Wonwoo. Rumors may just be rumors, after all. None of you are like the reports relayed in a tinny voice through the virtually enhanced radios that are non-plant-powered — aka illustriously dubbed by their inventor as VERnons.

"… the Bloody Rain… follows… Lee… Humanoid Typhoon… armed… dangerous. Punisher… cross… machine gun… two unknown… likely… agents…. Bernardelli Insurance…"

The VERnon sitting behind the counter splutters out bits and pieces of information. He side-eyes the device awkwardly and starts fumbling with the buttons, trying to mumble over the static and monotonous voice.

"Can I pour you another drink?"

"Sure," you chuckle, pleased.

The bartender's well-intentioned efforts are fruitless which is to be expected. Only the creator, and those he personally taught, could truly modify the invention as pleased. A part of you hoped to find evidence Hansol had traveled this far but alas, he was probably still searching through the seven major cities for his beloved Milly before attempting to wander through the treacherous wastelands.

A brown, short-haired darling sneaks awe-filled glances at the two of you from the corner where a group of women around your age gather to chat. Seungcheol's the first to catch onto the admiring starry-eyed gaze and winks. Chuckling when a pudgy hand clings tighter to one of the lady's long skirt, using the fabric as a demure little shield against his effortless charisma.

You catch the tail-end of the interaction with the ghost of a smile. If there's one thing that can definitely soften Seungcheol's rough edges, it's children. You can't blame him, reminded of cheery voices and energetic footsteps pounding after your own through the convent's hallways.

The attractive woman wonders what's drawing the younger girl's attention and leans down to whisper in her ear. Gesturing in your direction, you watch as she nods encouragingly and offers a gentle smile, pushing the tiny brunette forward who readily toddles over. The gaps still waiting for pearly white teeth to grow in that shy smile on the little girl's face are endearingly winsome.

"'Lo, Wonu."

The bespectacled man starts, eyes wide as he peers over the counter and just manages to glimpse the top of her mousy brown tufts. "Is that you, Lina? You're not supposed to be here."

"Past yer bedtime, lil one?"

She huffs indignantly at the two men, hands on her hips. "I've once stayed up 'til four in the morning, mister!"

"Oh, Lina…"

"Besides, how can anyone of good standing sleep properly when there's heroes in town?"

"Huh, what a darlin' angel!"

You scoff at your comrade's words. "As if you've ever seen one."

"I do beg your pardon," Wonwoo scrambles to excuse the child's enthusiasm. "Looks like another talk is due with, uh, Sheryl."

"You're just jealous, Wonu. Sherry says they're heroes."

A chubby finger points at you and Seungcheol and the bartender clicks his tongue — partially in reproach and the other half out of embarrassment. The two of you hardly pay any attention to his reaction, seeming to not mind her boldness at all.

"That's right, sweet'art. And don'tchu forget now." In fact, a certain cross-wearing man revels in it. He rummages deep in his pocket and pulls out a lollipop with a flourish. "'N here's a lil magic gift for ya, princess."

You're one step faster, snatching it and unwrapping the candy with a quick inspection. At least it looks fresh and clean. Seungcheol snorts. Ignoring him, you crouch down and hand it to Lina with a gentle smile.

"Remember to be careful with what you take from strangers."

"I know! But you're heroes… and heroes are always good people! You would never hurt me!" Those blue-green eyes are certainly dazzling as she stares into yours, reminiscent of the clean water now filling the town's reservoir. "You're very pretty."

"That might be the highest compliment I've ever received."

"Pretty people don't hurt anyone either! Sherry's super pretty and she's the gentlest I know!"

A very pretty pastor himself snickers for multiple reasons. Meanwhile, Wonwoo laments with a tired sigh, "Dunno what that crazy woman's been teaching her, I swear…"

"You're not supposed to talk about people you like like that, Wonu!" Lina gives them both the stink eye but returns her attention to focus solely on you — Tonim's loveliest savior in her teal-eyed view. "Will I grow up to be as pretty as you?"

Ah, how your heart aches.

"Even prettier."

"I…" She gnaws on her lip, as if it does anything to hide how much her pleased grin glows. "I wanna be a hero, too!"

"Don't see why you wouldn't become one." To you, she already is — in all her innocent radiance and glory.

"Gotta grow big 'n strong first, missy."

"I am strong!"

"Don't doubt it. But wait 'til yer at least twice my age 'fore ya go swingin' at thugs."

She wrinkles her nose. "I'll be in the grave like Grammy if I wait that long, old man!"

Seungcheol guffaws at her unexpected remark and you hear the bartender beg, "Lina, please!" But you focus on all the brilliance in front of you — from precious unkempt locks to blue eyes full of fire and finally to the worn out, dust-covered shoes.

"Hopefully you'll never need a reason to be the hero, though. It's our duty to keep that from happening."

There's too much hidden meaning and brutal experience in your words for her to fully understand. The lull gives a certain pastor an opportunity to sidle back into the conversation, ready to get up to no good as always.

"Ya wanna meet the hero of all heroes, darlin'?"

"Choi —"

"Yeah!" Lina claps ecstatically.

"Go 'head 'n give 'er yer second key," he coaxes quietly with a shit-eating smirk.

"I swear!"

"C'mon… never like keepin' such a sweet gal waitin'!"

After a minute's hesitation, you begrudgingly agree and take it out.

"Thank ya. Now, got a lil mission for ya, Miss Hero-in-the-Makin'."

"Really?!"

Barely able to conceal her exuberance, she reverently takes the key like it's actual gold and not simply plated. Seungcheol ruffles her hair affectionately.

"Y'see the man in all purple?"

"Mhm, yeah! The one that looks like the night sky?"

"Yeah, give 'im it. Make sure to say it's from this pretty lady."

"Choi!"

"Talk to 'im too 'cause he'll love that. He's a real hero, y'know? Truest of 'em all."

"Yes, sir!"

"Attagirl."

Lina scurries off and you turn back to the counter with a sour glare directed at Seungcheol. "What was that all about?"

"Dunno, cute?"

"I'm really sorry about that all," Wonwoo apologetically interrupts with the offer of another refill which is readily accepted. "She… she's very excitable."

"No need for apologizin', man."

"Yeah, she's adorable. Is she yours?"

The bespectacled bartender stutters, almost dropping the glass he's handing to you. "That's, uh, that's my sister!"

"Ah, makes sense! Didn't mean to assume."

He flushes and turns away. But not without mumbling something about it being okay and your comrade groans.

"Reminder — ya get too drunk, 'm not dealin' with ya ass."

"Great, I don't want you near my ass."

"'S not what I meant!"

"Yeah, yeah."

Seungcheol downs another shot and you're quick to follow his lead once Wonwoo hands over another refill per your shared request. However, this time, the stoic man surprisingly lingers and awkwardly fiddles with his wire-rimmed frames, doing his very best to not let his eyes wander your scantily clad figure as your head tilts back to swallow the burning alcohol.

Meanwhile, the pastor's grin turns wolfish.

"So, uh, who are you, really?"

"Curious, eh?" You lean comfortably onto the counter, braced by your forearms and an alluring smile on your face for the handsome saloon owner. His gaze drifts down to your scar-covered hands which also happen to be placed conveniently underneath your breasts.

You'd once said the best disguise and toughest armor was none at all. And why not flaunt your assets — literally — and put them to good use. The desert is hot anyways!

Seungcheol and Seungkwan both called bullshit. Mingyu applauded you and waved his "I respect women's rights, wrongs, and all the above no matter what!" flag. Seokmin — already used to your behavior and attire — had nothing else to say other than his normal quips of, "As long as you're comfortable".

"Well, a-a beautiful woman like yourself has to have everyone wondering."

And you laughed in the face of your haters every time it worked.

"Just a bounty hunter."

Wonwoo nods at the casual answer, recalling the holster strapped around the plush of your thigh beneath short denim shorts. "Where from?"

"Well… around. My hometown was destroyed so…"

"Oh? Same here."

"Ah, camaraderie." You jab a thumb menacingly in the direction of the purple-cloaked figure and the life of tonight's celebration, currently animatedly chattering to Lina. "That's why I'm turning him in."

"He's…?"

"Yup, Lee Seokmin. Yes," you confirm with a smirk at the way Wonwoo's eyes bug out behind his glasses, "that one — the infamous humanoid typhoon. Don't worry, he won't hurt anything or anyone here."

"He's… uh, he's not quite what I expected."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

"You must be pretty badass to reign him in. Heard he's giving what's left of the July regime officers a run for their double dollars."

"For sure. But it's thanks to the other two drunkards, really. Believe it or not, they're Bernardelli insurance agents. Raven-haired one's Seungkwan and the tall one is Mingyu. They're helping to monitor that whopping bounty of mine and prevent any more disasters from happening. Heard I might get a bump in value if I bring him in alive."

"Oh, well, it looks like it's working. And he seems… willing? To come with you?"

"The irony. Always been quite blasé about facing his doom."

"He's really a Plant engineer, too?"

"Of sorts," you huff at his visible confusion but wave your empty glass. "Can I get another?"

He's more than happy to accommodate and returns with two, sliding one over to Seungcheol with a cautious look at the person who seems the closest to you. "And this is…?"

"Pastor. Pleased to meet'cha."

"Oh! Really?"

"A surprising addition to the mix, yeah. But everyone needs to, like, pray sometimes." And under your breath, low enough so only a certain man can hear, "no matter how sketchy they are."

"Do you, hm, officiate weddings?"

The one in question quirks a thick eyebrow. "Ya lookin' to get hitched, boy?"

"M-maybe."

And Seungcheol feels wholly compelled to bless him silently from the bottom of his blackened heart with full sincerity, seeing as how the bespectacled man timidly peeks your way before his gaze darts elsewhere. "Sorry lad, charge 'bout a thousand double dollars minimum."

While the solitary bartender crashes back into the sad reality of capitalism, you jab your elbow into the pastor's ribcage. "Fuckin' scammer."

"Only the best of the best! Ya know, sixty billion's still on the table — 'n it better be callin' my name."

"No one even has sixty billion double dollars!"

"We have 'im." And he points back to where hoots and hollers erupt from the center table of the saloon.

Lina's returned to the woman she was with earlier — presumably her beloved Sherry — but that doesn't mean Seokmin's alone. There's so much disdain in your side-eye, spotting the busty violet-haired sweetheart his arm wraps around. After all, he's the worst kind of ladykiller.

And by that, you mean he absolutely sucks at flirting and can't get or keep a partner to save his life. Yet you're constantly stuck witnessing women, men, and attractive people of all kinds throw themselves at the good-looking man until he opens his mouth and they're put off by his clear lack of suaveness or strange little idiosyncrasies.

"Stop with the stupid bet, it's not happening. Nobody's going to be winning a thing."

"It's called usin' the damn 'magination, darlin'!"

"Which means you need to get better hobbies. You've corrupted my friends!"

"Hah! Them fools were already too invested in this 'fore I ever came along."

"Fill me up again?"

Intent on ignoring Seungcheol, you belatedly realize how aggressive your request comes across. You're also eager for something to help soothe ache in your chest. It comes and goes like a bad toothache — manageable enough to forget about the pain until it returns tenfold.

Thankfully, Wonwoo meekly complies with the back tips of his ears tinged red and Seungcheol barely manages to hide his extreme amount of mirth for the situation behind another glass. In the dim lighting, at certain angles, and with another shot of whiskey settling into your system, you conclude that the handsome saloon owner could certainly pass as Seokmin's brother and vice versa.

But you know the truth.

Familiar with the one who's all too identical to the infamous gunslinger, yet entirely different altogether. Irritation flares in your gut, prickling harsh enough that even the burn of alcohol fails to drown it out.

"I'm turning in for the night."

"Smartin' idea."

"Don't get too smashed."

"You should get smashed."

"Bye, Choi."

Tipsiness is a great excuse to bump purposely into him as you get off the stool. It's only thanks to his genetically enhanced metabolism that the pastor's able to stay upright. He grumbles something that's likely insulting, but standing upright causes you to realize you drank way too much. Everything spins or sways, including your body as you stumble up the stairs.

Somehow, you safely make it to the second level. Above the saloon is a hallway of small bedrooms that Wonwoo generously loans out to routine drunkards or stray travelers. It takes a few minutes of fumbling around but you finally find the lock that matches the first of its paired key and tumble face-first into (thankfully clean) bedsheets.

A hazy mix of drifting in and out of consciousness follows. It's not until the door clicks and there's an ominous creak of floorboards followed by a noticeable presence creeping up at your side that fully rouses you from the feverish dreams of gunfire, explosions, and loss that still plague your mind to this day.

You roll over, intending to assume both an offensive and defensive position against the nighttime visitor, but a hand lands on your shoulder before you can. Still sluggish, there's no way you could ever hope to outmatch the humanoid typhoon, even at your best.

"Hey, you."

It takes a bit for your eyes to adjust to the darkness after hearing his voice — and then there he is. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Seokmin greets you with a fond, megawatt grin. The thumb of his cybernetic prosthesis gently traces little circles over your bare skin. There's a faint hum and glow from its advanced tech mechanics, paired with moonbeams from the window, casting off an ethereal radiance.

"So, you're staying here tonight?"

"But of course, isn't that why you sent such a cute little cherub my way?"

Ah, Lina. You unwittingly smile, remembering how joyful she was to accomplish her mission.

Then your eyes close, nose wrinkling at the copious stench of mixed perfumes and alcohol he brought in and refusing to acknowledge what he says.

"You hella reek."

"Says the one who drank over seven shots."

"… That preacher's a fuckin' tattler. And a liar. And a total scammer. Don't fall for him, Seok."

"Now, what makes you think Seungcheol told me, hm?" He leans down almost nose-to-nose, enough to make yours scrunch even more at the buzzing feeling of how near he is. Your eyes open to squint at him and he winks. "Silly boy tried to mess with god again and max out his intake. Spoiler alert, he failed. Mingyu dragged him back to his room."

"You're the only one I know who can call Choi a 'silly boy'."

"'Cause that's what he is."

"And you need to stop acting like my babysitter!"

You shift away from his gorgeous face and he leans back to give you space, sporting a smug grin. "Then who would take care of you, mayfly?"

"How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?"

"Be nice to me and maybe I won't keep count on how many glasses you down next time," he teases. "But since I'm so kind and forgiving, would you like a nice, warm, relaxing bath?"

Well, it did sound wonderful. TMI, but cleanliness was a luxury when traveling the desert. Even more so when the places you arrived at had Plant issues. Luckily, Seokmin was more than capable of fixing them but even then, circumstances varied. Especially around the one known across Gunsmoke as mankind's first localized human disaster.

"Only if you get one, too."

It slips from your mouth without a thought. But you might as well have told Seokmin you'd gotten him a box full of doughnuts with how delightedly he clasps his hands together.

"As you wish, m'lady!"

And he treats you like one, scooping you up into his arms in a princess-style carry. At least tonight you're more willing to let him do as he wishes, especially when he discards the perfume-infused outerwear. Whiskey, sleepiness, and the smooth material of his undershirt keep you pliant and cuddly well after he'd snatched you off the bed.

Seokmin's already ten times stronger than even a human like Mingyu and his prosthesis only helps take further advantage of that fact. He easily deposits you on the edge of the tub. Normal routine would require untying the tight laces on your combat boots but since you'd kicked them off prior to resting, he skips to the next step.

Deft fingers make quick work unbuttoning your shorts, the prosthetic digits of his left hand then moving to loosen the straps that keep your top on. His other hand holds them together in a pseudo-knot to keep the material in place.

Honoring a sense of modesty, you suppose — even though you've seen each other unclothed before. But you melt into the secure press of his palm paired with the support of his chest against your back as he leans over to turn on the water.

"Let me know if it's a good temperature."

"M'kay."

"You're so agreeable when drunk!"

"And you're still just as annoying."

"Okay, okay," he relents. Amicably even.

Seokmin never enjoys butting heads like Seungcheol constantly does. Although another "mayfly," gets tacked on to the end of his playful yield in a mischievous tone because if there is one thing, it's that he can never tease you enough.

Brown eyes quietly trace the ink and scars that mark your skin, some disappearing or completely hidden beneath the parts that are covered. Finally, they land on the silver chain around your neck, only a breadth away from the tip of his fingers that suddenly twitch at how soft you feel beneath the calloused roughness of his own skin.

You let out a little sigh and it shakes him from his reverie, noticing the tub's filled up past your calves. Guiding one of your hands to where the locket lies beneath your clothes covering your chest, he stands. "Call me if you need anything or just want help getting out, m'lady."

"'Kay."

You're already stripping bare but Seokmin breezes out the door before you can blink. You sigh again and slip into the hot water, enjoying a soak to ease the heaviness you feel.

It's hard to understand this emotional turmoil. Knowing that you don't enjoy feeling this way, you make a false promise to not drink ever again, staying submerged in the water until your fingers wrinkle.

Maybe you fell asleep, maybe you didn't. There's a bathrobe laid on the sink when you're ready to get out that you don't remember from before but who knows. Who cares? It's cozy and you haven't felt this clean in a while.

"All yours," you lazily declare, stepping into the bedroom.

Seokmin perks up from where he casually sits cross-legged on the bed, fiddling with Geranium. A dopey smile lights up his face, gaze moving from the hefty nickel revolver and zoning in on you.

"All mine?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah," he repeats quieter, more to himself, "all mine…" But when you unconsciously shiver, his eyes flash and brows furrow. "C'mere, I warmed the bed up for you."

"Aren't you going to bathe?"

"Yep, so don't miss me too much, my dear mayfly!"

He accompanies it with a saucy wink and saunters into the bathroom, humming. You find yourself in a bit of a daze, head and cheeks holding onto the heat of the steam from your bath (and more). You change into a light tank and cotton shorts before sitting back down. As promised, where Seokmin rested was indeed warm and smells of faint gun smoke that always brings back memories.

"Total slaughter…!"

Splash!

"… Total slaughter…"

Splash!

"I won't leave… a single man alive."

Splash! Splash!

"La de da de dai~," echoes from the bathroom. "Genocide…"

Splash.

"La de da de duh," splash, splash, splash, "an ocean… of blood."

"Let's begin… the killing time."

Seokmin possessed a lovely melodic voice no matter how nonsensical or gruesome the words he sang. Your eyes close with relaxation as he continues into a different tune. Though the lyrics are definitely more hopeful this time, there's a heavy sense of underlying desolation despite the rapid, upbeat tone.

"So…" splash, "on the first evening," splash, "a pebble from somewhere out of nowhere drops upon the dreaming world…"

You think back to how he silently cried when he thought no one was looking after a young stowaway on the sandsteamer broke into the same nostalgic song. Your heart aches in empathy for the woman whose heroic sacrifice saved humankind but left behind irreparable damage to twins she adored.

Rem Saverem.

She was to Seokmin as what Saint Meryl was to you. But your fondness for the nun who dared to favor one random orphan above the other equally ordinary ones with an unprecedented amount of kindness paled in comparison to the devotion Seokmin exhibited for Rem. Her kindness, hope, and love for and of life didn't simply become Seokmin's philosophies — they were a true part of every fiber, woven into his very being.

He was peculiar. Hardheaded — or in Seungkwan's affectionate term: a hardass — when it came to nonviolence. A true pacifist. Even when enemies held him at gunpoint, allies turned their backs on him, and his choice to always save was at the very cost of his well being… Seokmin would choose to tear himself apart limb by limb before ever causing damage or letting harm come to another.

And even if he always chose the world and those living in it first before anything else, that's what you loved the most about him.

"What's got you making that face?"

You're quick to school whatever expression it might be. Your tongue feels fuzzy. You purse your lips as he lumbers closer, freshly dressed in a comfy white long-sleeved shirt and black sweats.

"What face?"

"You know, the one where something's weighing on your mind."

The bed frame dips and squeaks when he flops down to snuggle against you. Still-damp, reddish-brown bangs lay across your shoulder and dampen your skin. The chilled press of the gold hoop in his left earlobe raises bumps wherever it touches as he endearingly nuzzles you.

"There is."

"Tell me."

"You need to dry your hair properly."

"Do it for me."

"… This is on purpose, isn't it?"

Nevertheless, you take the unused towel around his neck and vigorously rub at his head. No complaints or protests defending his honor come from Seokmin. Just the usual little trills of contentment escape as he leans into your touch. Once you're satisfied the job's done well, he plucks the towel from your hands and you fix him with a stern look.

"Well, Seok? You gonna answer me?"

He curls in on his lanky frame, enough so to find room to plop his head pitifully onto your thighs and nuzzle the bare skin with his nose. "Not if you won't answer me first."

"You."

"Hm?"

"Was… thinking about you."

"Oh, really? Dreaming about how cool, dashing, handsome, and awesome I am?"

"… Yeah. I like you."

He chuckles, closing his eyes. More so at the feeling of your fingers idly playing with his strands of hair than seriously taking what you say. "I like you, too!"

"No, I mean," you jostle him harshly as you shift anxiously, tugging a little too hard at his roots. "Something's wrong with me."

"… Mhm yeah, you've been drinking."

"Goddamnit, Seok… that was like hours ago! But… what if… what if I'm in love with you?"

Your fingers retract like you've been caught red-handed stealing Mingyu's pudding and a millisecond later, Seokmin's head flies off your lap as he sits up to stare incredulously at you and can only gasp out one word, "What?"

It comes out more like a statement than a question. You've seen all kinds of emotions appear in those clear brown eyes of his. Emptiness. Excitement. Happiness. Fear. Loneliness. Mysteriousness. Pain. But now, you can hardly make sense of what turmoil is swimming in those murky depths.

"There's no way," he shakes his head — laughter high and brittle. "Fake", is what Seungcheol occasionally points out whenever he spies the gunslinger's smile. You've never believed him until now. "You're drunk."

Seokmin's been hurt before and you know that. It's why you wish for him to be nothing but happy, that there's some truth to the joy he constantly tries to radiate. Hoping some parts are really healing, that he's giving time to let the bloody wounds coagulate — if even just a little.

"It's me. I mean, I'm the one that's drunk," he reiterates, shaking his head.

"Why are you acting like that?"

"… Like what?"

Perhaps you were too hopeful.

"Like I'm making some sort of mistake. Like I'm wrong about this. About us."

And still under the influence of the too-damn-strong alcohol.

"It's… none of that, it's just…"

"You think I don't know what I'm talking about."

"Well, do you?" he fires back rather harshly, "'cause you're still wearing that thing and —"

You wince as his voice breaks off, palm instinctively flying to where the locket rests. "What the hell does that have to do with anything right now? I thought we were over this! Years ago!"

"Maybe you were since you continue to stubbornly follow me everywhere!"

"I'm not the only one!"

"Yeah, 'cause no one ever listens to me!"

"I always listen to you, Seok. Even if the words that come out of your mouth don't match how you actually feel —"

"You don't know how I feel!"

Silence.

Seokmin's chest heaves, wide eyes taking in how you immediately freeze. That look, oh, that look on your face could kill him and his body moves on auto-pilot to stand, directing his gaze to stare daggers into the floorboards. Begging them to rip off like a bandaid and shield him from your wrath.

The wood beneath his feet groans, shaking ever the slightest.

"You're right. How dare I?"

"Wait, mayfly… I —" he switches gears with a plea of your given name.

"And obviously, you have no fuckin' idea how I feel." Now it's your turn to let out a disingenuous chuckle, fake humor cracking under the pressure of sadness it's struggling to mask. "You think all I'm after is revenge more than the actual thought even crosses my mind. You put on this show that nothing bothers you, make assumptions that no one can keep up with you, that you can do it all on your own."

"No, that's not… that's not what I meant! You know how dangerous —"

You stumble ungracefully off the bed, flinching away when Seokmin's words break off as he automatically reaches out. For you. To support and for support.

Yet, it hurts all the more.

"But what do I even know? How can I, when you keep everyone at arm's length? It's like… it's like I don't even know who you are! Like you're someone else, someone I'll never get to understand…"

To others, it might not make sense, possibly the dumbest thing you could say — especially with the state you're in. But you know Seokmin, a fact he's subconsciously taken comfort in.

But you also know Seokmin. Which means you know the exact place to hit him where it hurts the most.

And suddenly, those words you say propel him back into a moment from the past, body free-falling in the sky.

Yelling. Crying. Screaming. Pleading.

Begging that exact phrase and being demanded of the same accusation. All from the one who's falling with him. Whose face mirrors his own, but couldn't be more different in that crucial and devastating moment.

His brother. His twin. His other half who was once his everything — now a total stranger from the person he thought he knew.

A fifty-year-old reunion that should've been a reconciliation, turned into a doomsday.

And for you, the once simple toothache pain is now overwhelming your full body and you refuse to let him see how it's dampened your cheeks. Especially when you hear the pained whisper of the name that escapes his mouth when you're the one that triggered those awful memories. Staggering to the door, you yank it open and he instinctually takes a step forward.

Don't leave me.

You hear the unspoken plea as clearly as if spoken aloud.

"Don't follow me," is what you hiss out instead, and just like when you first met, Seokmin obeys.

When Seungkwan makes room arrangements — if there is enough money to spare when needed and the options are available — he books everyone their own private space. More often than not though, he and Mingyu share a room and so do you and Seokmin.

Out of everyone in the group, you're the only one who is used to putting up with Seokmin's idiosyncrasies and the constant white noise of the cybernetic prosthetics's technology. You've rarely paid mind to having your own space unless Seokmin gets in one of those rare 150-year-old moods and wants some time by himself. Rare in nature, because he doesn't enjoy being left alone with his thoughts that threaten to consume him.

But he'll have to make due tonight. For the first time, you're extremely grateful for Seungkwan's pro-activeness.

You lock the door, crawl into a fresh cold bed, and wet a new pillow — one that lacks the comforting scent of gun smoke — with unshed tears.

For all his short-tempered and sassy mannerisms, Seungkwan is quite the worrywart. When the suns have peeked past the horizon and you're not already downstairs bullying Seungcheol, he's immediately knocking at your door and inquiring about your well-being. You assure him you're just hungover and he reluctantly leaves you be, likely picking up on how terrible you really do sound.

By high noon, Mingyu raps on the door next. He even sweetly offers to share his prized pudding in the hopes that you'll peek your head out. Though you appreciate it, you send him away, too — after reassuring the sensitive man you'll feel better after some rest.

Seungcheol doesn't miss the chance to be annoying times ten. He doesn't indulge in the effort of knocking, opting to make the floorboards squeal by pacing back and forth in front of the door. All the while, muttering this and that about "yer boy's like a pathetic dog and blah, blah, blah" until getting very kindly told to "fuck off!" and dragged back downstairs by a certain raven-haired insurance agent.

Even Seokmin checks in. Four times.

Once and then twice after you'd left and he'd figured out which room was yours. Then two more visits throughout the following day. He doesn't exactly make his presence known — but you know he knows you know he's out there.

If not by the distinct gait you've picked up on listening for after all this time, then by the hesitant thuds of combat boots lingering outside your door. Lost technology whirring with the action it takes to make a fist with his left hand, raising it up to the door and then back down again in self-inflicted defeat.

You refuse to see anyone, choosing to pity yourself first. Wallowing in your feelings and then sleeping as much of the heartache — and more so the hangover — away.

When the moons are visible in accordance to their nightly orbit, you get up to fuss with the mini VERnon in the room's corner. Nothing but static greets you. At the very least, the white noise is better than complete silence. By the time it's morning, you slowly awaken to the virtually enhanced radio trying to catch onto a faint signal. Enough to report the latest news in snippets with its mechanical voice.

"Beast… reported… Tonim town… !"

Your eyes fly open. Now is not the time to be wasting away. Donning a clean set of attire similar to what you wore into town — and with Sirocco strapped comfortingly to your thigh — you descend downstairs.

"Good morning!" Mingyu cheerfully greets with a delighted shout of your name and eagerly waves you over to sit next to him, waving around a promised cup of pudding. "Are you feeling better?"

"Mhm, thanks. Sorry about that, whiskey here sure is strong."

"'S one helluva killer," Seungcheol sulks across from you, still sporting a massive headache and looking worse than that one time Seungkwan hit him with the car.

"You're just weak."

"Wha'zat say 'bout you?"

"Since I can equally acknowledge both my strengths and weaknesses, that makes me infinitely stronger than you'll ever be."

Seungkwan wordlessly hands you a bowl and you graciously accept it. Next to the pastor sits Seokmin, unnaturally quiet. You don't even spare him a glance even though brown eyes burn into the side of your face until you glare his way.

The stack of doughnuts on the plate in front of him remain untouched — minus the smudged icing on one that was likely from Seungcheol trying to swipe it. Evidently, Seokmin was in low spirits if he didn't want to consume his favorite desserts. But, he is still prideful enough to prevent anyone else from snatching the prized delicacy.

How typical.

An awkwardness ensues, charged with an underlying current of tension. A vein forms in Seungkwan's forehead from his blood pressure rising.

Its pulse matches the twitch in the corner of his fake smile as he attempts to make conversation, to which Mingyu — oblivious and happy-go-lucky as ever, bless his heart — replies enthusiastically. Seungcheol stares listlessly into space, twirling a lollipop around and around with his tongue. Next to him is a soul acting like a thunderstorm's personally pouring over him. Seokmin starts pitifully poking at his grand doughnut pile while you ferociously tear into a piece of bread like it's the last supper before swallowing.

"Soonyoung's coming."

Your unexpected, but welcomed, interruption ironically pauses Seungkwan's second diatribe about Hansol's calamitous ingenuity. If possible, the apprehension in the room intensifies tenfold.

Seungkwan raises an eyebrow. "How'd you hear?"

"Tuned the VERnon last night."

"'Course you did."

"Something about the Beast and Tonim came through. Not for sure but…"

"It never hurts to be too prepared!"

"True, 'Gyu. 'N if Soonyoungie's gonna be there, ya know what that likely means…"

You nod in understanding at Seungcheol's implication. "The Crimsonnail."

Seokmin's jaw clenches at the name but it's the disgruntled pastor who continues speaking after a hearty and loud gulp of water. "'Course the Eye of Joshua's gonna send their best two. Soonyoungie's Hoon's eyes 'n ears for these kinda things."

"Or… it could be Jeonghan."

Your noncommittal remark receives Seungcheol's scathing glower. "Bet."

"It wouldn't be the first time," you shrug.

"There haven't been any notable disturbances and the ground's been stable. So hopefully their only goal is to simply antagonize us further."

Antagonize.

A funny word for such a twisted coin game between a hunter and the hunted. You can't and don't blame the younger Bernardelli agent — only you were privy to most of the true horrors Seokmin dealt with behind the scenes, Seungcheol a close second. And because of that, you were usually the one at his side before an encounter with Jihoon and the ever lingering threat and terror of said man's monstrous power.

But today, you get up from the table without so much as a glance in his direction. Only a parting command of "Let's regroup near the entrance at high noon," while Seungkwan and Mingyu exchange looks of minor distress.

The black-haired man in his hangover blues obnoxiously blows a raspberry as you leave.

Later, there are two solid knocks on the door as you get ready. You know who it is before the door swings open after your agreeable hum to enter. Many may be intimidated at the sight of the silver weapon in your gloved hands. Seungkwan and Mingyu make up half of the quartet who aren't.

They take a seat on the bed as you purse your lips at the reflection in the dusty mirror. Then you fuss with the strap for your gun. Satisfyingly re-securing it around your thigh before throwing a carmine trench coat over tight kevlar that covers almost every inch of skin possible.

"Surprised you didn't dye everything else black during a fit of rage."

Your lips curl upwards. "How on Gunsmoke would I manage that?"

"With the way you're acting, 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…' or so the saying goes."

"Really, 'Kwan?"

"I'm an avid supporter of women's rights and especially their wrongs."

"Sure you are."

"You would absolutely look dashing!"

"Thanks, Mingyu. Should've given my color scheme a little more consideration."

"But then you wouldn't have achieved such an infamous moniker. I mean, okay. Maybe the black plague killed tons of Earthlings eons ago but it doesn't have the same ring as 'Sirocco, the bloody rain that follows after the humanoid typhoon'…"

Seungkwan allegedly graduated at the top of his class, leave it to him to spew out all kinds of random facts that you know nothing about. You huff and adjust the brim of the large hat atop your head.

"All that does is make me cringe."

"Uh-huh, so what's making him act like that?"

"Who's acting like what?"

"Fine, keep playing dumb. Did you reject Seokmin or something?"

Mingyu gasps. Dramatically. Hands on cheeks and mouth open in a wide 'o' shape, puppy-dog eyes glistening with despair.

"There's no way!"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Uh-huh."

"Besides, nothing happened so don't think you're gonna wheedle out of me whether you're going to win that stupid bet you two have going with Choi."

"Eh, don't worry. I've been out of the running for a while now, unfortunately."

"The hell did you even throw for?"

He shoots you a deadpan look. "Guess who's aged eighty years watching the two of you dance around each other like dumbasses? Could've sworn you'd be married with a toma farm or a dozen little children by now."

"It's your own damn fault for falling victim to that pastor's salacious schemes. And it's not even remotely like that, so…"

"Someone just doesn't wanna give in."

You stomp your foot, frustration boiling over. "Ugh, I'm never drinking again!"

"Wait… No fucking way…!"

"Literally shut up, Boo."

"I mean Choi did bet you'd confess and you know… get intimate afterwards… if you were drunk so…"

"Oh, so that's why he was so damn pushy last night."

"Dirty cheater."

"You expect anything less from someone like him?"

A sigh. "No."

It's a well-known fact that Seungcheol would rather stoke the flames of hell than ever needlessly dabble with holy water as one might be expected to with his chosen career.

"But judging by both of your moods, evidently nothing happened." The raven-haired man really has the gall to look disappointed that no one won yet pleased Seungcheol didn't, and the gall to point out the obvious. "Anyways, what did you bet on, Mingyu?"

"Don't recall!"

"Figures." Seungkwan's face falls flat against his palm with a groan before dragging it wearily down his face. "Whatever, it's not like it's that serious. Seriously," he adds on, feeling the burn of your perpetual glower. "Don't let it weigh on your mind. We need you fully focused."

"And when have I ever been less than what's expected of me?" You hold up a hand. "Wait! Don't answer. But really, worry more about that idiot."

"Aw, see? You still care!"

"… About that sixty billion bounty, Mingyu? Yeah."

"Sure you do."

"And truthfully, I was talking about Choi, 'Kwan."

"Well, both of them always get into those zany headspaces!"

You shrug at the tall man's truthfulness. "They're both holding a lot of trauma and baggage."

"And you aren't?" Seungkwan snorts with sarcasm dripping from the dig.

"At least mine's manageable. And… hasn't threatened your lives yet."

"As far as we know."

"In fact, I think I've saved your 'so-very-untraumatized' lives more often than not. Stay with me and you'll both be okay."

They good-naturedly give you individual looks of disdain. Perfectly in sync when you accompany that last statement with a devilish smirk and a twirl that flares out your tail coat with a flourish. By no means are they incapable. Clumsy Mingyu can adeptly wield his massive concussion gun when it counts, of course, and Seungkwan stealthily hides several derringer 'throwaway' pistols under his white cloak that he can fire with deadly precision.

Nonetheless, they loyally flank to your side when Tonim's bell tower signifies the hour of high noon has struck. Seungcheol meets the three of you outside the door of the saloon, smoking a cigarette and one arm lazily draped over the Punisher — a terrifying machine gun mockingly designed in the burdening shape of a merciful cross.

You spot Seokmin up ahead. He's standing on the low border wall near the town's entrance, perched next to a pillar for back support with the heel of his boot propped up behind him. Decked out in the usual galaxy ensemble, purple fabric cut off at shoulder-length of the top left sleeve to allow free range of movement for his prosthesis. His hair's slightly gelled up for a more intimidating and dramatic flair and it almost makes you giggle.

But there's that stern gaze focused on the horizon, likely able to see far out into the distance through those amber lenses the human eye can't quite decipher. Despite such a hardened resolve, his head tilts slightly up toward the blue sky with a faint smile on his lips — an honoring appreciation for the beauty and wonder of life despite its inevitable horrors.

Seungcheol clicks his tongue to get your attention while Seungkwan and Mingyu keep walking ahead. "Spiky Hair thinks he's really gonna do it?"

"Won't stop until he's tried every last resort."

"Even if it kills 'im?"

"Even if it kills him."

"This damned situation 'cause of ya know who."

"Dokyeom. DK."

"Nah, nah. There's the asinine version, eh?"

"Absolute pain in my ass?"

He slaps his knee. "Ah, aye… good one! But nah, 's really stupid one, Deathly, uh, er…?"

"… Deadly Knives?"

"Pfft, yeah, 's that one. So, we gotta try 'n stop one genocidal brother from sweepin' out the whole human race 'n tryna convince greedy humans not to keep exploitin' 'em with the other. Back 'n forth again 'n again. I swear…'s only ever gonna be impossible."

"What makes you think it can't happen?"

He looks at you like you're stupid. Maybe you are. But what does that make him? "Both sides — humans versus DK — think they're right 'n too proud to think otherwise."

"So you don't think they'll settle for a compromise. Or at least try to see the other's viewpoint?"

"Hell naw. Ain't no compromisin' when both think they're justified in what they're doin'."

"Well, regardless — you joined a good cause, Choi. World could use a little more peace and love, don't you think?"

He grunts. "Lookit who's corrupted yer ideologies. Don'tcha know what destroyed Earth?"

"And do you know what saved humans? Kindness. Hope. Empathy. Compassion. Change. Making and being the difference. The good kind."

A long time ago, maybe in a different twist of fate, you might've staunchly agreed with Seungcheol. But despite it all, you've been somewhat changed — or like the pastor said, call it a corruption of sorts — by Seokmin's unwavering sense of positivity and kindness no matter how bleak the future.

You admired him. Truly.

"Un-fuckin'-'lievable."

Seungcheol shakes his head as if he's not gearing up, ready and raring to go as he stomps forward to join a fellow 'brother-in-arms'. The thought inwardly makes you smile with affection until you remember you're actually, in fact, mad at Seokmin.

A dust cloud stirs up on the horizon, steadily growing closer to where you stand.

"You're so full of goddamn self-flagellation."

The individual where all your ire is centered on jolts, doing a double-take at your sudden but familiar presence by his side approaching. Or maybe it was the mere fact you were talking to him again. A warm expression overtakes his facial features at the sense of calm that automatically relaxes the tension in his muscles as he looks down at you.

"Well then, hello to you too. Feeling better, mayfly?"

"… Remind me to never drink again."

"I told you —"

"Yeah, yeah." You wave away his nagging and step up on the wall to stand next to him. "Don't worry, I won't be making a mistake like that again."

"… Mistake?"

There's an edge to his tone. Searching. Sometimes you hate how perceptive Seokmin can be. Though he actively acts oblivious and carefree, it's usually a ploy to lower other's guard.

You wonder how long he's known.

So, you sigh. "I'm talking about drinking, of course. And… I wish I could say I forgot even if… I haven't. But it's fine, I know where I stand."

The latter part of your sentence trails off. It's true though. You do know — thankful you can even be next to Seokmin. You might not be with him but at the very least, your place will always be somewhere by his side. Affectionate flings may be sought elsewhere. But they're always temporary. In your heart of hearts, you know you're irreplaceable to him.

And that's going to have to be good enough for you.

The man in question scratches the back of his head. "It's not… it's not like that. I know I fucked up."

"Stop." You grip at his prosthetic, knowing despite how sensitive the sensors are, they won't be able to pick up how you slightly tremble. "It's okay. Really."

Who is it you're trying to reassure?

"Mayfly," Seokmin murmurs. "Look at me."

With the slightest hesitation, your gaze finally rises from its focal point centered on his boots and the stones beneath to meet dark brown eyes. The ache in the gunslinger's chest eases just a little. It's been far too long — a day, in actuality — since he's got to lose himself among the vibrant hues of your irises and he squeezes your free hand in gratitude.

"It's not okay, I want to talk to you. Sober. But…"

"I get it. Now's not the time for a heart-to-heart, especially not in front of your brother's henchmen."

You laugh, for real this time. The sight is breathtaking; it makes Seokmin's eyes crinkle, a fond smile to accompany his affection as he leans in closer to you to whisper a sweet, "Thank you."

Three sets of eyes try to make it very not obvious that they're very obviously totally not watching the overdue interaction with bated breath.

"Oh golly good, they've made up!"

"'Course they would."

"It's about time, I couldn't take the tension anymore."

"Don'tcha think it'll get worse once they start canoodlin'?"

"Good lord," Seungkwan groans, "perish the thought."

"What's wrong with a little love? Yay for love!"

"Well, I don't think they've made it that far yet. But we're getting there. Baby steps."

It would be a good cause for celebration, a resumption of last night's festivities. Unfortunately, the merry moment is cut short with a screech of brakes, signaling the arrival of Jihoon, DK's most elite performer in his unmerry band of henchmen.

Next to the feared Crimsonnail's suitcase sits Soonyoung the Beast. Silver strands peek out behind the unsettling, bug-like circular mask hiding his face. He casually waves, acting like the unnerving discovery behind the innocent, abandoned child — who went by Hoshi — was simply a facade initially put on around your group and not such a grand revelation.

Having sorted that out in the stomach of a giant flying worm serving as a hive mind for Gunsmoke's legion of its original inhabitants and swearing not to let your guard down again, all five of you remain on high alert.

Jihoon's steel-colored eyes flicker to Seungcheol. "Hello there, Undertaker. Or… should I say Judas?"

"Howdy dandy to ya too, ya son of a bitch," the pastor snarls, spitting his cigarette in their direction. Cursing under his breath when the distance and uselessness of the fizzling stub doesn't blow up the engine like he wishes it would.

"Now, now. You don't want to make me mad, do you?"

"Kinda wanna piss ya off as much as ya piss me off, yeah."

"Surely you know what —"

"He means nothing by it." You'd quickly abandoned your post next to Seokmin to place a hand on Seungcheol's taut shoulder. Boldly facing the blonde man's haughty expression with one that's hopefully placating enough on behalf of your comrade. "He's just grumpy because he's still hungover."

"Well, well… if it isn't the humanoid typhoon's little blood shower."

Ugh, you inwardly grimace, why the fuck does everyone have such unflattering nicknames for me?

"Still following him around, I see."

"'S a lot comin' from —"

" — Hasn't gotten rid of me yet!"

"… Seems it," Jihoon sniffs and cocks his head. "Similar to the dilemma I have with this persistent bug."

Soonyoung chortles, neck contorting at an unnatural angle to peer at the driver. "You love me."

"You're delusional."

"Why are you here?"

Seokmin's question comes sharp and pointed like a dagger, a far cry from his usual demeanor. His tone remains detached. Aloof. Vaguely accusatory. Unlike your harried action to cover for Seungcheol, you don't dare divert attention away from the gunslinger who stalks forward after elegantly hopping down from his perch. Despite an outwardly calm demeanor, there's an underlying urgency in his gait that's threatening to snap.

"For amusement. A show, if you will."

"One that's not even orchestrated by Joshua's freakish cult powers!"

Out of all the males surrounding you, you're not sure exactly who growls at the Beast's mere mention of the devil-like figurehead — in fact, it could've been all of them — but there's one noise that rings out above the din of it all.

Click!

You don't need super-hearing to pick up that telltale sound. Not when every person over the age of eighteen in Tonim has a cocked gun trained on each member of your ragtag gang.

"Uh, so… how many times is this?"

"One too fuckin' many," you answer Seungkwan with a petulant hiss and reluctantly mimic him by putting your hands up in the air.

Jihoon cackles. "And when will you fools ever learn?"

"'S my question, actually," the pastor nonchalantly calls over his shoulder, directed at the town's ringleader. "Didn't know ya had it in ya, boy."

You didn't think Wonwoo had it in him either, to be honest. But that's not something you were going to mention aloud with the shaky hold the bespectacled man has on the firearm waveringly aimed at his target — the one whose head is worth a 60 billion double dollars bounty, dead or alive.

"Felnarl. Jeneora Rock. Descartes. Dankin."

There's a faint twitch in one of Seokmin's eyebrows. Seungcheol rolls his eyes, sarcastically muttering under his breath an addition of location names, "Voldoor, Inepril, December, Lewiston…" and Mingyu joins in on the fun with a cheerful, "New Miami!"

Seungkwan watches warily and your jaw clenches. You can feel your teeth grind together in annoyance as Wonwoo's smarmy sneer grows smugger.

"And now, Tonim Town. What?" he jeers, seizing the chance to use the man's silence as a way to ridicule him. "Don't recognize what you've laid waste to? Must I bring up the big ones to jog your memory a little, like the city of July and Augusta or the hole in the fifth moon?"

"Why you —"

Enragement propels you a step forward, but the barrel swinging your way halts your next move mid-step. The sullen look on Wonwoo's face surprisingly holds no malice. He looks saddened, if anything, but you can't bring yourself to feel too much sympathy with the rifle he's now pointed toward you.

"You forgot one."

"Pardon?"

Seokmin's voice is hardly more than a whisper yet it rings out loud and clear amid the tense silence and stillness. "I said, you forgot one. There's not a name of any place or person I'd ever forget. I'm well aware of the ones you're talking about… and more. However, there's somewhere I won't ever forget that no one will ever know existed."

"… Huh?"

"Little Ivywood."

Wonwoo seems so taken aback and the pause unwittingly allows your eyes to drift over to meet Seokmin's brown ones. There are so many emotions conveyed in the sidelong glance — a mixture of regret-filled feelings yet ever so soft — and it lasts a second too long to snap the befuddled aggressor out of his reverie.

"Oh… I see." He pushes up his glasses, the lenses glinting in the pale sunlight like a typical anime villain. The long gun lowers to the ground the same time as he throws back his head to let out a bitter laugh. "So that's how it is! All you do is take and take and take, Lee. Destroy, destroy, destroy; again and again and again!"

"Aye, ole chap's gone off his rocker."

"You've made an ally out of a would-be, should-be enemy and think other victims with their pain and grief don't exist?!"

"Wow," Seungkwan wrinkles his nose in disgust, "yeah… he's gone completely insane."

Mingyu hums in agreement. "A little unhinged! Off the rocks! Unstable even! When can I knock him out?"

You'd love to give the gentle giant the go-ahead. Really. But even so…

"Damn you —"

"Stop it."

The townspeople's uncertainty and hesitance tells you all you need to know, especially when Wonwoo's hysteria leaves them even more perplexed. After years of handling a gun like a second arm, you can spot inexperience and fear of handling a dangerous weapon the second someone is near one. You lower your arms and step forward once more, confidence growing when he makes no move to threaten you further.

"You don't want this."

The corner of his mouth quirks upward, a rueful smile. "You know, I thought we really did share some camaraderie."

"We do."

"Yet you gallivant around with a monster like that?"

"He's not a monster."

"I should've known better, really, when the VERnons said you're the sirocco that follows after the humanoid typhoon. Heroes, my ass! I don't get it, how could you do that to others after what happened to you?"

To us?

It remains unspoken yet you can hear the intent of the accusingly barbed question. Two survivors of a wrecked hometown. Shared camaraderie hadn't been a lie. Even now as you meet the flickering fire in Wonwoo's eyes with a blazing flame in your own, all you can see is a reflection of your past and what you could've turned into in a possible future.

A cold gleam returns to his gaze as he takes your silence as defiance. Or maybe even shamelessness. "How could you turn a blind eye to such a bloody warpath of destruction when you know too well of the tragedy that's left behind?!"

"Isn't that what you're doing?"

"… Excuse me?"

"That's what all of you are doing right now," you declare loudly and some of Tonim's residents whose conscience stings have the decency to avert their eyes. Awareness of their actions seem to weigh down on them, guns lowering ever the slightest and the awkwardness encourages Seungkwan to speak up.

"We would've left peacefully tomorrow."

"But yer actions're gonna be the very cause of the destruction yer tryin' so damn hard to prevent."

"Because you took a bribe!"

There's a stilted, horrified, and collective gasp, so you try to remedy Mingyu's exclamation.

"It's because you let your malice sway you. Tell me, Jeon. What all did you lose?"

"My whole town. Then my parents. Almost my life and nearly Lina's too. My lover…"

"And your sense of self. Plus, the new life you've created here — and those things? Almost lost because of your own accord. Why would you destroy the few good things you're granted?"

Wonwoo's eyebrows scrunch as his face tenses. Your heart goes out to him despite everything, hoping to get your point across as you continue speaking.

"That doesn't negate the losses. The grief. The pain. It never goes away but… you can choose to clean out the wound, put some salve on it, and bandage it or let it fester and infect your body 'til it rots even your soul."

You can hear the shift in the sand as Seokmin approaches to stand next to you. He regards Wonwoo with a kind smile and the understanding, crescent-shaped squint of his eyes is like a punch to the other man's gut.

"…. I —"

" — It's your choice, Jeon. What did they offer you? Money? There are so many bets on July's militia lying about the payout. I mean, c'mon, there's no way a ruined city would have the funds."

"Yer Plant's no longer in red status, so ya won't need to barter no more."

"I'll throw in a better deal — let us go and I'll have Choi marry you and Sherry, free of charge."

His cheeks flush and you inwardly gloat, instincts right on the money. Seungcheol's jaw drops, absolutely flabbergasted, and the townsfolk exchange a few knowing snickers.

"If it's protection you need, we can figure that out too," Seokmin recovers and offers in a low voice. "And if Do — er, Knives — or his gang approached you with a deal, just know that they never hold up their end of the bargain."

"You're lucky you threatened us first. DK's side is a little too slash-happy and trigger-loving to resort to verbal methods. They're the ones you'd want to go after anyways, you see, this man and Knives are twins if you don't look close enough, they're eerily similar at the strangest moments. So the real story is that it's all just spiraled out of control."

"You mean…"

"I won't deny responsibility." Seokmin admits sternly. "It's true that I've wreaked devastation to many towns. Failed to save the people I swore to protect."

"But DK keeps forcing his hand to get Seok to join his genocidal cause. And every time he refuses to do so, his brother throws a tantrum and well, knives go flying everywhere. Literally."

"He's a little…" The gunslinger searches for the right word — and finding that there is none — cringes. "Dramatic."

You stare at him, aghast. "He cut your arm off!"

Wonwoo pales, swallows, and then grimaces, daring to ask, "So… I've had it wrong the whole time?"

"I guess not entirely." You shrug, also guilty as charged years ago. "And obviously not the first."

"And certainly not the last," Seungkwan pipes up.

The bespectacled man looks down at the ground. "I don't… I don't know… Do I even deserve this kind of treatment? This… mercy?"

"No."

With such a blunt answer, Seokmin's quick to protest with an admonishment of your name while Seungkwan and Mingyu suppress smiles at your straightforwardness. Seungcheol freely chuckles, lighting a cigarette.

And Wonwoo's face falls as remorse hits all over again.

"But," you smirk, "what have I told you?"

"Oh, ah… why destroy the few good things life grants me?"

"Good. You were listening. We might get along just fine, after all." You send him a teasing wink. "Camaraderie and all that be damned."

A sheepish look overtakes the man's previously hardened features. And suddenly he's laughing with his head thrown back like earlier, but this time it's with an unrestrained amount of joy. Relief. Hope.

"The ticket to the future is always blank, Wonwoo." Seokmin extends a hand and the other man takes it, the small grin on his face turning into a full-blown smile.

"Guns down, Tonim town. The rest of you, come on out! Let's celebrate!" He calls out to everyone, gesturing for your group to follow. "Drinks are on me to make up for this whole mess. I'm sorry for getting you all involved."

You turn around toward Seokmin, elation written all over your face that he readily mirrors. Just as you're about to grab his hand as he reaches out at the same time, there's a slow, loud handclap that sets off mental warning sirens blaring all over again.

"Conflict resolution. How very touching."

The velvety voice is deceivingly sweet. But beneath the dulcet tones lies a raw and wicked strength. It rings out clearly, even more so when the jubilant mood abruptly dies down as a new figure approaches.

"Aw, c'mon Joshie! Just when it was gettin' good!" Soonyoung whines and you belatedly realize you forgot all about the real enemies at the entrance gate, thinking they had grown bored and left.

"What about that was 'getting good'?"

The Beast huffs at Jihoon's surly attitude, more than likely pouting beneath his mask. "Was really lookin' forward to those free drinks…"

"We don't need drinks and we don't need you, Josh."

If there's one commonality between the adversary and your group, it's the shared disdain for the elegant-looking man dressed in all black fabrics with shiny leather buckles, and slicked-back locks to match.

"Hm. But I think you do."

Chilling ochre-colored eyes couldn't be bothered to look at you, drifting past you and Seokmin like you were nothing more than the grains of sand littering every surface on Gunsmoke. And like a marionette, your head automatically swivels to follow his line of sight, blood draining from your face when you realize what he's looking at.

Lina.

She breaks away from holding onto Sheryl's hand after they emerge from the saloon, bounding toward her brother with excitement all over her face. The arm that isn't supporting his firearm extends gallantly outward, ready to welcome her with a hug as he strolls to meet her halfway.

They're smiling at one another with so much adoration after the intensity from earlier. If you weren't fucking terrified, you'd wish Dokyeom was also there to see how pure a sibling relationship and affection should be.

Instead, your stomach lurches, and Seokmin hisses beside you. With your back turned, you can't see Joshua but you're sure he's smirking when Wonwoo's frame stiffens, body jerking as it moves beyond his control.

Hastily, he's cocking the rifle with expert ease and assuming the perfect position to fire it, something he previously displayed no knowledge on before. Wide eyes have no choice but to peer down the scope and he chokes at how it's unforgivingly aimed directly at his little sister.

She skids to a halt, ten paces away. Hesitant. Wary. Puzzled.

"… Wonu?"

It all plays out in slow motion as you reach for Sirocco, simultaneously screaming out to your friends to alert them and provide cover. Frantic panic swirls in the air like a sandstorm at the turn of events, but even more fear generates when the townspeople can do nothing but helplessly succumb to their limbs moving on their own too.

Despite every single effort and all of his muscles straining not to do it, Wonwoo's pointer finger on the trigger pulls back. It doesn't matter how much he struggles to fight for control, his body refuses to listen. Tears flow from his eyes even though he can't speak, can't yell, can't beg for forgiveness — the vehement sense of horror is the only thing able to overpower Joshua's terrifying control, leaking out a salty excess.

Bang!

Three gunshots ring out at the same time. You fire right before Wonwoo does and Seokmin follows two seconds later. Not because his reaction time is slower. But because he could see and calculate where the bullet's headed after you changed its trajectory by shooting at Wonwoo's barrel.

It doesn't end there.

Seokmin is a half-step closer to Lina and can move at an inhumane speed, diving into a tuck-and-roll to reach her moments before the residents have no choice but to open fire too.

You know he's fast enough to dodge bullets at close range, but the staggered distance spread out among all of those present in the town's square works little for that insane advantage. Instead, the skilled combatant focuses all his attention on shielding Lina beneath the loose flaps of his impenetrable trench coat. She clings tightly to his leg, whimpering.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you."

Continuing to mutter reassurances, he pats her fluffy brown hair with an unshaking cybernetic palm while the other rapidly points his revolver upwards to deflect a bullet that might've been lucky enough to shatter the bridge of his glasses. Then doing the same to one at five o'clock on his right. He angles his body this way and that as if a puppeteer is yanking the strings connected to his limbs to the perverse beat of an unheard tune. The few he misses land harmlessly against the thick kevlar material you're all wearing.

Meanwhile, your steady hand supports the familiar weight of Sirocco. Muscle memory aids you with cocking the gun as you run. Aiming at the closest group of people near them and then — bang!, bang!, bang! — snipe off the barrels on their guns in rapid succession, rendering them useless.

From behind, something flies past your face and nicks the top of your ear — one of the few places unprotected by bulletproof material — causing you to hiss. Scowling over your shoulder, you squint in the direction it came from.

While a complete bastard, Seungcheol is also the most resourceful ray of hope in a shootout like this. The Punisher's automatic artillery relentlessly fires shot after shot, destroying old and weather-beaten guns like they're empty, crushable soda cans. It's faster too. The trigger-happy pastor twirls it around maniacally, taking only the slightest care to not actually kill anyone.

You're a hundred percent sure it's because of Joshua's disturbing power that allows him to reanimate corpses rather than Seokmin's "Thou shalt not kill" lecture and pacifist philosophies that keeps the supposed 'god-fearing' man from snuffing out anyone's life this time around. Despite the bullets whizzing around, you know he'll fare alright with that healing serum of his — just as long as he doesn't overdose on it.

Mingyu rushes over to stand back-to-back with the pastor, x-shaped claws firing out of his 'stun-gun' and immobilizing many of his targets with ease. You can't help but grimace though, wondering if they'll sustain more brain damage from Joshua's nefarious telepathy or a well-meaning concussion that leaves them unconscious and no longer posing a threat. A solid steel object flies past the brown-haired man's head, knocking down the mind-controlled person who was trying to sneak up on him using a blind spot.

"Ooh, thanks, Seungkwan!"

"Pay attention, you blockhead!"

An empty derringer lays at said blockhead's feet and Mingyu kicks it away with a childlike glee. A brand-new loaded pistol is already in Seungkwan's right hand even as he throws away the one in his left toward someone approaching Seungcheol. The young man's never empty-handed for long because with another flashy twirl from out of his cloak and a new handgun is cocked, aimed, and fired.

Despite the distance and conditions, all three work together like clockwork. Different shaped and sized cogs all interconnected to succeed without causing too much harm. And you know you must play your part as well, turning your attention back to the few townsfolk that remain.

"Seokmin, switch!"

It's not like he needs the heads-up. The way you'd both been inching closer to each other every time your gun's fired already issued the forewarning. It's like a subtle tango performed by two fierce allies surrounded by deadly enemies. If you didn't know better, it's similar to an intricate sword dance.

But you knew how dangerous it was to play with knives.

The swift transfer of Lina's warm little body into your arms is a welcome comfort. Seokmin sends you a dazzling smile, one full of confidence at a successful swap.

"Hey there, pretty girl," you coo and your gloved thumb wipes away one of the tear trails cutting through the dirt smudges on her face. "You are so, so, so brave and I'm so, so, so proud of you."

"He," she sniffles, "my… my… br-brother. W-Wonu!"

Pressing a kiss to her forehead, you turn her to face the other way. "Everything's going to fine. I promise. Now, run to Seungcheol. He'll keep you safe while the rest of us finish this."

Seungkwan and Mingyu had effectively disarmed everyone on their end and now worked on dragging the town's unconscious residents inside the saloon and attending to any wounds. The pastor stood guard near the entrance with his Punisher staked firmly into the sandy ground. Although empty of ammunition, the machine gun still served a purpose as a great defender with its imposing cross shape.

With the target assuredly safe — out of sight, out of mind — the control Joshua has over those remaining falters and starts to lose its effect. In the brief lull, Seokmin dashes ahead to deliver a flying kick that helpfully unsheathes the dagger hidden in the sole of his boots, demolishing one more firearm in someone's grip before it can be used again.

Bang!

And with Sirocco's precision, the last two are destroyed as well. You match your comrade's grin and turn triumphantly to where the instigators still stand at the entrance.

There would be no casualties today. You and your comrades would make sure of that.

Joshua, stoic as ever, surveys the aftermath with an air of unbothered gracefulness. Jihoon fumes next to him. Panic spikes when Soonyoung can't be spotted at first until you spy him curled up in the car's front seat — asleep.

You fist bump Seokmin in high spirits. Then fearlessly meet a pair of deep orange eyes devoid of any emotion or warmth, a shift occurs in your smile. Confidence and satisfaction hone the corners of your mouth into a daring smirk and something about the bold taunt causes a rare flicker of humor to cross Joshua's lips. Whether it's scornful pity or simple mockery, you don't have time to figure it out because Jihoon snaps.

Nails.

Several of them fly through the air and their wielder's formidable namesake comes from the daunting color that makes the multitude of piercers look like thin streaks of blood against the pale blue sky. The spikes as long as spears are all fired from Jihoon's large suitcase-turned-crossbow that aims just shy of your left side.

Those steel eyes of his are as sharp as their color. The malice within them feels suffocating, so strong and heavy that it sucks all the breath straight out of your lungs. Only the pain from a nail grazing your cheek is enough to pull your attention away from drowning in the unnerving emotion and you put a hand up to the laceration to soothe the sting.

Wetness oozes from your skin, an unsettling feeling of sliminess accompanying the touch. Puzzled, your fingers retract and you ponder the sheer amount of red viscoelastic fluid coating them. There's so much of it pooling that droplets fall to the sand below while others dribble down past your wrist and under your sleeve, the stain blending right in with the fabric of your coat.

Drip.

"It's all your fault!"

Drip.

"Their blood is on your hands…"

Drip.

"Don't you feel guilty?"

Drip.

"Don't you feel responsible?"

Drip.

"Do you regret being the only one left to live?"

Drip.

Faces you know and voices you cannot recall overlap and echo. Unfamiliar frowning expressions and intonations you remember as once gentle now ridicule, belittle, and find every crack in your well-made armor. Insidious whispers weave inside, entangling themselves within the fragile support structures of your mind and very soul. They point and cackle to one another at such a sorry sight, only for you to realize you're angrily jabbing a pointer finger at your worthless reflection with those cursory words coming straight out of your own mouth.

Drip.

Your head turns robotically, like an early prototype of the lost technology Earthlings created. This time it's Sheryl who's the victim, helplessly well within the trajectory line of Jihoon's rage. Every muscle aches, weighed down by exhaustion. Your shoulder burns. Yet you still somehow find the strength within you to rush toward her, especially hearing Lina's desperate wail as she's held back by a grimacing Seungcheol.

Drip.

Like a comet, Seokmin blazes past. He skids to a stop, effectively shielding the woman right before impact. You're too slow to move. In fact, it feels like an out-of-body experience. As if you're nothing but a hologram inside the floating ship — an artificial intelligence projection with no other choice but to witness the horrors and observe tangible objects scuttle towards their inevitable doom without interference. You're left with no choice but to simply watch as the nails are propelled through the air with the intent to strike.

Drip.

Someone's screaming. Maybe it's you.

Drip.

The nails impale Seokmin without mercy. Strike after strike, they pierce straight through the material of his coat designed to repel only bullets and plunge deep within the muscles beneath his skin. One after the other. So many of them stick out of the man's backside like the skeletal bone formation for wings. He slumps to his knees, falling on top of a bewildered but unharmed Sheryl. When he only lays still with no further action, you're struck with the dreadful knowledge that he may never move again and it fills you with an unfathomable maelstrom of raw grief and anger.

Drip.

Suddenly, you're no longer drowning in invisible quicksand and can move freely again. There's zero hesitation in your now fluid movements — not even when the blond-haired man poises his crossbow directly at you this time. Pulling out the spare gun hidden near your hip, you blast the airborne spikes flying towards you without hesitation.

Bang!

More fall than you shoot. The anger, pain, and grief you wield is enough to tear them apart like they're nothing but worm larvae helplessly caught in a sandstorm. You stalk forward through the crimson ire that relentlessly strikes down, clearing a path that's littered with broken, twisted, and dented nails before resolutely aiming point-blank at Jihoon's forehead.

Click.

More people are screaming and the spiteful cacophony in your mind resumes. But your ears feel like they're filled with cotton and this time you're stuck underwater. Your chest rises and falls, trying and failing to collect yourself.

"… out of it!"

"Hyperventialing -"

"Goddamn it! Get ahold o'yerself, woman!"

The Crimsonnail sneers.

Your cheek stings.

The dissonance reminds you of the wound from before. But this time it feels like a sting, as if someone slapped you — albeit rather gently. Numb, you halt in place and cautiously raise your hand back to your surprisingly unmarred face. But rather than skin, you grasp onto something solid. Something familiar. Something kind. Something loving. Something safe. Something warm. Something that's yours — always has been and always will be.

Someone.

And then… you open your eyes — and find yourself staring directly into Seokmin's sparkling brown ones.

"Y-you're dead," you manage to choke out in disbelief and his eyes incredulously crinkle into half-moons at the statement to hide the tears brimming in them.

The soothing hand caressing your cheek moves to wrap around the barrel of the gun you're pressing to his forehead and he smiles disarmingly. As if what you just said was the funniest thing ever.

"I know, mayfly."

Part 2 | Read the whole thing on AO3

onlyseokmins: April 2024 ©

#ez.creates #svthub #svt.smut #dokyeom smut #dk smut #seokmin smut #lee seokmin smut #svt smut #seventeen smut #kpop smut #trigun au #svt au #seventeen au

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limited-hero · 5 months

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Can we see all the references you've made for the characters in your au??? I adore the ones I've seen but I'd like to see all of them. I'd also like to ask your process and ideas behind the designs!

I adore your art style sm. ✨️✨️

This is the whole gang! (except for some exceptions) I can't say much about their designs, since it contains heavy spoilers for some of them! But here's a quick run down! Minish: he's wearing the Roc's cape as a hoodie instead! His design is pretty simple tbh Past: I didn't want to make him a typical bunny like everyone else does. In Limited hero, he'll be a full grown man with rabbit features! Warrior: He was pretty simple as well. I wanted to keep his blue scarf, as well as the guard look. Ravio: I wanted him to have a merchant kind of look, mixed together with Japanese inspired clothing and some patterns resembling a bunny! Twilight: I wanted him to look like a goat-herder! Turning into a wolf so often had a side effect on his body, and he's slowly turning back to human, with some wolf-like features still remaining Wild: His clothing was inspired by a cosplayer named @/polarcadia He has burn marks from head to toe, from burning himself on the gloom. Time: He's wearing the fierce deity armor, equipped with several bottles with fairies in them, and a chain-ball looking tool to catch fairies with. Sky: He's wearing the clothing of the guardians from the silent realm Zelda: She's wearing an phantom inspired armor Wind: He's wearing a pirate inspired outfit, with tattoos all over his body resembling the waves and the red lions neck patterns. He's carrying Tetras sword and has a glass eye on his left eye Thank you so much for the question! I hope i could answer it! (The designs might change at any point!)

#limited hero #zelda au #tloz #the legend of zelda #lh #limitedhero #comic #au #lh minish #lh past #lh warrior #lh Ravio #lh twilight #lh wild #lh zelda #lh link #lh time #lh sky #lh spirit #lh wind

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kidnappedbycartoons · 10 months

Text

I'm bored, so it's time to talk about Zutara. Again. I already talked about their connection while in the catacombs.

But what about after that?In the beginning of book 3, they are apart for the most part. Something interesting to me is that right after Zuko helps Azula defeat the gaang, he's on his way back to the Fire Nation and Mai comes to talk to him. She asks him if he's cold, to which Zuko begins to open up a bit. He tells her that he has a lot on his mind, he wonders what has changed, he wonders how he has changed. Now, we have never seen Zuko open up like this before. Actually, no, scratch that. We did see Zuko open up like this before when he was in the catacombs with Katara. And how did she respond to this? With warmth, with understanding, with compassion. But how does his canon love interest respond to this? She yawns, tells him to stop worrying, is sarcastic, and then kisses him. Do you not see the difference?

In the following episodes, the gang is hiding in the Fire Nation. I just want to point out these episodes because, I'm not saying that it was her talk with Zuko that influenced a part of this, but it is very interesting to see how involved Katara gets with the Fire Nation. She is excited to wear their clothes, she participates in the dance, she helps out the people in the village by donning a disguise heavily associated with their culture, etc. I just want to point this out, because a common criticism about them as a couple is that Katara would want nothing to do with the Fire Nation due to her trauma and it's like...baby, did you watch the show?

Now, when Zuko tries to join the gaang, obviously he's turned down. What's interesting is that, out of all of them, Katara is the one most against it. Which makes sense, she feels personally betrayed by him. She even admits that after their conversation in the catacombs, she felt sorry for him and trusted him. We all remember that conversation she had with him at the end of the Western Air Temple episode. This Katara and Catacombs Katara are different. If Zuko said that he wanted to join the gaang at the end of book two, I'm almost positive he would not have gotten this threat from Katara. We all saw that episode. We saw how they connected. We saw how they opened up to each other. No, he would not have gotten that threat from Katara. The reason why she is like this towards him is because she feels personally betrayed after she trusted him and opened up to him while they were in the catacombs. The pirates, the necklace, chasing down the Avatar, those have nothing to do with this. It is because of what happened in those catacombs.

Interestingly enough, for someone that doesn't trust him that well, she definitely has no problem letting her brother and the Avatar go off with him on missions alone. And each time they came back, they were fine. With these little adventures, she was slowly starting to see a new side of Zuko. Another thing, which should be apparent in the GIF above this paragraph. In the Southern Raiders episode, when Zuko is falling from the sky, who is it that reaches out to catch him? Katara. The one that trust him the least out of the group. The one that feels personally betrayed by him. The one that threatened to end his life. She is the one that reaches out to catch him. And it's in her character, I cannot see her willingly letting somebody fall to their death. But, I just want it very interesting that out of all those people on Appa, it was her that reached out for him.

I'm not going to talk about the whole episode here. I could do a whole breakdown of that. But I just wanted to bring up these moments here. It's the little things.

#atla #avatar: the last airbender #zutara #atla katara #atla zuko

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sanjisblackasswife · 2 years

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Do you still accept nsfw asks? If so how about a short story where sanji and the gang find an abandoned island and stop to resupply and while there they find a ship wreck where someone is clearly living there and sanji walks up on a woman bathing in a waterfall while he's foraging for food. She's the only survivor of a pirate crew and has been stuck on the island for 2 years. Sge would be so happy to be found she forgets she's nude and tackle hugs sanji. The only reward she has for him is herself of course 😉 would he accept her reward and have fun before bringing her back to the crew?

Definitely an nsfw story with male receiving and then female receiving all the fun stuff, oral and fingering and penitration, all the funs lol

A/N: ..wow. Lemme go on ahead and see if I can make this come to life. (This is a dope summary though btw I love it lmao)

Also I decided to make most of this in Sanji’s POV because why not lol

“Waves of Love” Sanji x (Black)! Fem Reader (NSFW) Sanji POV

CW: Love at First Sight (?), Oral Sex, Fingering, Cum Eating, Tongue Sucking, Lots of Kissing, Thigh Riding, Vaginal Sex, Semi Public(?), Finger Sucking, Reader is a bit of a Bimbo(?), She has Piercings, Touch Starved, Very Subby and has a Breeding Kink

Sanji POV

We landed on this somewhat large island, it looked no different from any other we stopped at before, however it looked more like a jungle. It was beautiful none the less and the weather was perfect. We all seen some delicious fruit and Usopp had already managed to catch a few good fish. Everybody all agreed to spend the day looking for stuff to bring back I wanted Nami to come with me, but she and Chopper decided to stay on the ship!

“Oh shit.” I stopped my tracks and seen the other side of the island and there was a huge ship, so we weren’t alone!?

I was walking a small path I found in between some bushes and trees, i didn’t really think to know where it could lead. Enemies maybe? I don’t really care that much I could just kick their ass if needed.

I walked over with caution, but I felt no presence of anybody. As a matter of fact inspecting closer at the ship it was ruined. The ship was old and looked like a few marines aimed at it. If anybody was here they have to have been either long gone or still here hiding.

I decided to go back to find Luffy. He’d probably want to look around and see it and possibly warn him if someone is also on this island, but i began to hear what could be a waterfall, it was faint but the more I followed the sounds of loud splashing water the more I—

Sanji pushed his way out of the shrubbery to see from a distance a woman waist deep in the beautiful secluded area. A towel and some clothing was left beside some rocks. Sanji was enamored, she was a real woman! Naked! Cleaning herself! Her body was curved in all the right places, her skin was a beautiful dark brown, her hair was big and curly, she had scars around her body, but she looked stunning none the less. He held his mouth trying not to bleed and scream out of excitement and scaring the woman but instead he hid behind a tree and watched her.

This goddess…she..was nothing like I’ve seen before. I know I shouldn’t stare at a woman bathing, but I couldn’t look away she looked like a majestic angel!

How come I didn’t sense her? Is she alone? Was that her ship? She must have crew members around since that boat was so big.

“Hm?” The woman looked out, to see a tall blonde man behind a large tree. In that moment she would have felt exposed! Embarrassed! Even a little upset for noticing someone watching, but instead she smiled wide. Her face was unrecognizable to Sanji, but the woman slowly approach closer to the shallow prt of the water and waved. “Hey! Come here!”

I froze. She seen me! Fuck! I probably should leave, but I couldn’t do such a thing to a woman! What if she needs help? Maybe she can—-

Shit she is even more beautiful the closer she walks over. She was holding her chest, her body was something I wish to engrave in my mind for the rest of my life! Her smile was gorgeous and shining as if it were gold. The water reflected off of her wet body I felt myself move towards her to get a closer look.

I think I met my soulmate.

“Oh!” She gasped at me, and ran over towards me…

Wait

A NAKED WOMAN IS RUNNING TOWARDS ME—

“Oh my goodness I can’t believe there is someone here! I can’t believe it! A real person!” She was strong as hell swinging me back and fourth, her wet body stained my clothes and she sounded so …happy to see me?

“Oh—h-hello!” I tried so hard to keep my eyes on her face, but her curls were covering most of her face anyways. She smiled so sweetly it nearly made my heart melt. “Um…are you—“

“Oh sorry! Im Y/N! It’s been so long since I’ve seen a person let alone a guy before! What’s your name?!”

“Oh I—I’m Sanji—-“

She kept talking and it became more and more difficult to pay attention to her talking. Her breast kept moving with each word and I couldn’t help to almost faint seeing that she had nipple piercings and a belly piercing!!! The young lady had a lot of energy so she spoke with her hands a lot . How could a woman like this be here alone on an island?

IS THIS THE ALL BLUE?!

“So Mr. Sanji…I actually stole that ship from a crew a couple years ago, but some Marines found me not too long after and attacked. I barely made it out of there, but I been hiding here hoping to possibly find a new pair of people to get me to leave but the ones that have came don’t even manage to stay for too long or they just sail right past….are you with a crew? Or…oh crap are you a marine?!”

She seemed to be so unfazed with being naked in front of me, it was cute, but it made me worry a little bit—

What if a PERVERT FOUND HER AND TOOK ADVANTAGE OF MISS, Y/N?!

“I am apart of a pirate crew actually. We landed here this morning to grab some supplies, but it seemed so empty…so you’re all alone?”

“Yeah! So there’s more of you?! Oh please can I come with you guys?! I promise I just need a way to get off this island and I’ll be out of your hair! I’ll do anything!”

She grabbed my shirt tugging on it with pleading eyes. They managed to peak through her curls, her lips were so plump and slightly parted as she looked up at me. I clenched my fist not wanting to touch her, but I just couldn’t fight the feeling because she was so close I could feel her breath in my chin. I can’t believe she has been here for 2 years on her own. She looked healthy, and well fed.

“Of course you can! We have plenty of food and even some new clothes for you to wear! We’d be more than happy to have you on board! Here—“

I took off my shirt and jacket for her to wear, she seemed to have only underwear by her towel and I couldn’t let her meet the rest of the crew naked of course. I handed her my clothing and she blushes at me.

“Once we get back I’ll cook you something too. A beautiful girl such as yourself shouldn’t be here at all. I’m actually impressed how you managed to take care of yourself. You look amazing.”

Y/N mentally drooled at the sight of seeing another male shirtless. His body was completely different from what she was expecting. It was almost something foreign to her after so long on her own. She was so grateful for his kindness she knew she had to repay him somehow.

“W-wait!” She gripped my clothing before placing it by her own, “Your friends…you sure they will be okay with me coming on right?…i haven’t had much luck with friendly people…are they nice like you?”

I smile, “They’re very nice—well there is one grumpy swordsman that can be a fool—, but don’t worry I’ll kick his ass if he is rude to you, my love.”

She bites her bottom lip a little as if she were thinking about it, I hope she agrees to come. She looks back up at me and speaks softly,

“Can I give you something in return before we go? As a thank you?”

I gave her a questioning look, before I could decline she grabbed my neck and kissed me.

Fuck her lips were so soft!

Her kisses were a bit firm, and unsteady granted she didn’t have much practice after two years, but Sanji held her close by her waist. Y/N pulled back standing on her tippy toes and gazed at his lips. It was only for a moment when she pulled him back for a hungrier kiss. Her tongue slipped in his mouth moaning inside, the urgency she had felt in her body showed with action as she began to unbuckle his slacks.

“Oh! Wait wait—Y/N!” I held her shaky hands nearly panting after dropping my cigarette, “You DONT have to repay me I—“

“But I want to! I need to! You’ve been so kind and I thought maybe you’d appreciate that, Mr. Sanji. Please…come here.”

She was so needy, I wouldn’t dare try and take advantage of her in this situation, but she grabbed my hand and took me beside the waterfall where her clothes were and let me lean beside a large rock, she kneeled in front of me and I immediately felt my pants get tight. She looked too fucking sexy on her knees like this.

Maybe…I can indulge in this moment just once?

Y/N pulled Sanji’s bottoms down now eye to eye with his semi-hard cock. Licking her lips in anticipation she motions him to sit on the smooth flat surface of the rock and lean back. She pushes her hair back to reveal her eyes, and it shocks Sanji, both eyes were different colors and her left eye was scared. It never took away from her beauty however.

“You’re gorgeous.” Sanji uttered in awe before she went down on him. She blushed.

His cock was heavy on her tongue giving it one loud and long slurp before pushing it as far as she could in her mouth. Her cold tongue swirled and flicked around his shaft and tip so much Sanji already felt a pressure below his stomach to cum. Somehow she noticed from his constant twitching and his moans she popped of his cock and smiled, “it’s okay. You can cum in my mouth.”

Her voice sounded so innocent and pure compared to how fucking hot she looked sucking my dick. Fuck— she didn’t even stop sucking after I came. I probably should keep my voice down, but she felt way too painfully good I damn near passed out from overstimulation. She sighed pulling away, a long string of my cum and her drool fell from the rim of her swollen lips. She had a tired gaze, I couldn’t stop breathing heavily looking right at her still lustful eyes.

I cupped her cheek and she sat up straight, when I kissed her the mixture of our bodily fluids swished inside our mouth, the taste was so addictive I couldn’t help but to start sucking on her wet tongue.

“Was that good? Was I Good?”

Her pleads to be praised was so fucking cute I patted her head and kissed her forehead softly, letting her know she did amazing. But she didn’t seemed to want to stop, and I’m glad because I didn’t want to either.

The temperature of my face and chest got hot, this woman must have had some kind of curse and planted it inside me because I feel like I’m burning up inside I had a craving and it was that I had to be inside her. I need her right now.

I had her close to my chest and kissed her lips again, they were like magnates I just couldn’t stop myself from pulling away no matter how sloppy it became. My hand roamed from her neck down to her pierced breast. From the moment I seen her I had an itch to fondle her perky nipples, I needed to feel the cool metal and her sensitive skin under my fingers. She must have enjoyed it a lot from how much she started to moan out.

“More please. Rub more!” Her whines were like music to my ears, she placed her hand on my to guide how she liked to be gropped and I did as so pressing firmly with her hand. I kept the pace with urgency as I moved my lips down to her neck for a moment to leave a mark. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea, for when we get back they’ll see our bruises of when we made love but I didn’t care I wanted this as bad as she did.

I sat back down to place her on my thigh, she was already so gooey and wet from just me touching her breast, if I wasn’t mistaken she may have already came from that alone. She was panting and already couldn’t help herself as she began to grind her wet slit on my thigh. Fuck, I never had a woman do this before but the neediest and desire she had on her face focusing to cum on me made me want her even more.

“Touch me again, Mr. Sanji.” Her voice was breaking down as she was reaching her high, I wasted no time rubbing her slippery clit in messy circles pushing the back of her head back to my mouth to kiss her, she whined continuously pressing her hands on my chest. Her dull nails tried clawing at my skin, which made me want to feel that sensation on my back when I fuck her.

I needed to fuck her.

She needed me to fuck her.

And I was going to do it.

I helped her move her hips faster on my thigh, I felt her clench harder crying into my ear now holding the back of my nape. “San…Ji!”

She stilled her movements after a moment and began to pepper my neck in kisses biting a little. She was so damn cute being so appreciative. She deserved it. She deserved to get fucked right. I picked her up and laid her on the towel by the water. It was no other noises besides the sounds of birds chirping and our panting. I never had sex with a woman outside before, but it now be my new favorite thing if it’s with her.

She looked breath taking, she was rubbing her thighs together looking up at me with those pretty eyes I couldn’t stop looking at, her face was hot, and her curls barely were covering her face, I already seen a bit of my hickies left on her neck, I just needed to leave at least one on her breast—maybe two if she can last that long.

“Mr. Sanji…can you…fuck me…while I suck your fingers?”

Fuck she is direct.

I couldn’t say no to her, I had to. She needed this, I open her messy wet legs, I slowly massage her slit with my index and middle finger before swirling her clit to make her arch her back, her mouth agape. I used the opportunity to shove my fingers in her pretty little mouth. She sucked on them as desired and I began my attack on her nipples.

“Mmmmmm!” She moaned beside my ear, her legs began to twitch and vibrate beside me as my tongue moved all over her tits. They were so comfortable to squeeze my face in. It was something I couldn’t try to replicate with any pillow I could ever buy. She was so fucking sensitive too. Not having another man’s touch her for so long. I knew I could get her to cum a thousand times if I tried.

My cock was aching, it was so tediously rutting against her clit, she must have felt it too because she began to buck her hips for more friction. I finally managed to leave my two marks on her breast and sat back up. She whined in disappointment when I pulled my fingers away. So cute.

I slapped my cock on her fat pussy—fuck everything about her made me so hot in the face I couldn’t hold back. I immediately peppered her with kisses when I slammed half of my Dick inside her as an apology.

“Fuck you’re so tight, baby..” I groaned in her ear. I didn’t move as she said she haven’t had sex in so long and never touched herself in between then and now so I talked her through it as I slowly began to bottom out inside her. “Good girl, baby—good fucking girl ‘m ganna stretch you out real good okay?”

“Y-yes Mr. Sanji!”

Her fluffy skin felt so good under mine, I held her close making sure she felt all of me, I began to pick up the pace and the wet slapping noises of her insides made me nearly lose it she felt too fucking good and tight.

“So good! Mmm!” Her voice sung like a melody repeating my name over and over again in broken syllables as my Dick kept going in and out, I needed to see her so I pulled away from her neck, and her eyes rolled back, mouth open slightly holding the back of her legs to give me more room to go deeper inside her. I don’t think she’s felt this good in a long time.

I felt my hair stick to my face with sweat, my hands also pressing down on the back of her sweet thick thighs as the jiggled Everytime I pushed my way inside her. She began to scream out and I knew if she kept it up one of them may find us back here or that dumbass swordsman May stumble upon us so I licked my fingers and shoved them back in her mouth. She looked so good sucking on them anyways.

I felt her clench inside me as a signal she was about to cum. As much as i didn’t want it to end I began to think about how long we have been out here and how at any moment one of my crew mates may catch us.

I threw her ankles over my shoulder and pulled her by her hips to snap against mine. I was as deep as i could get and it made me want to cum quickly so I began thrashing my cock further inside her sweet walls.

Her whole body was moving at a rhythm, she started to bite my fingers a little. It didn’t hurt that much but it was cute, she bites a lot when she is about to cum.

Her eyes shot open as she pulled out my fingers and pressed my body against hers, she was so fucking flexible I was putting her in a matting press and didn’t even realize it.

“Cum in me please! Please please please I need it!”

Shit. I completely forgot I wasn’t using a condom. Everything was happening so fast but…I was okay with it. I don’t know but I may genuinely be in love with this woman ……I can’t stop myself from moaning in her ear,

“I love you, Y/N!”

It was almost as if she felt the same way because she held on to me tighter I couldn’t breathe almost. I didn’t care I just needed to fill her up and that’s exactly what I did.

I slowed down the pace, our breathing was in sync as I did my last few sloppy thrust, I moved her hair to get a better look at her flustered face and planted open mouth kisses on her making her giggle.

“I didn’t expect us to do that.” I laughed weakly feeing her legs rub my sides. She laughed to and pecked my nose.

“I’m glad we did. Because I love you.”

My heart skipped a beat. She sounded so careless by saying that. She really mean it?

“Really?”

“I do Mr.Sanji…I think…I don’t know—I may have fell in love with you the moment I seen you…”

“You—you also believe in love at first sight?”

She nodded and shrugged, “I mean duh. It’s real isn’t it?”

I kissed her lips once more and got her to show that pretty smile. I couldn’t let her go after that.

We cleaned each other up in the lake and I got her dressed. It was beginning to get late so I carried her in my back on the way to the ship. We got to know each other a little more since the walk was a bit long and I told her about us.

“So Luffy is Your Captain? And he’s made of rubber no way!!”

“Haha Yeah, he can be an idiot so don’t worry if he is a—-“

“Oh is that them?!”

She pointed outwards and I smiled seeing them all carry back boxes of items they found on the island.

“Yeah, you ready to meet them, my love?”

“Yes, please!”

When I took her and greeted her to the crew, they all welcomed her with open arms. She proved herself worth the trouble of adding since she actually was an amazing fighter. And I was glad. I fed her and let her sleep in my room for the night, but I believed she may be staying there permanently.

She was mine now after all.

——-

“Alternative Ending”??

#one piece #TimikosSanji #one piece headcanons #black reader #one piece smut #one piece x female reader #sanji #sanjionepiece #sanji imagine #sanji x black reader #sanji x reader #one piece x black!reader #sanji smut #black foot sanji #female reader #one piece scenario #x female reader

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condoriano-67890 · 10 months

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Wanted to write a Shanks X reader fanfic. It doesn’t actually have much Shanks X reader in it, but I dreamt about this scenario last night and thought it would be cool to write.

Shanks X gn! Reader

Summary: Instead of smashing his beer bottle over Shanks’ head, Higuma decided you were his target.

Warnings: Blood, reader getting hurt, violence & alcohol

You lived in Foosha Village, working as a bartender at Partys Bar, with Makino. She needed the help— after all, she was the only one working there. It usually wasn’t too busy.. unless Shanks and his crew were there. That when Makino really needed your help.

The Red Haired Pirates had been staying a while— and, as always, Luffy had been pestering them about joining their crew. Makino told him to stop pestering them— in the meanwhile, you were cleaning a glass, as the bar was almost all out of glasses. They were all in use.

Then, Higuma and his gang entered— they were angry, and looking for some booze. You could tell, just by the way they looked.

Before they could even say anything, you went looking for the last of the booze— to no avail. You quietly came back out, to hear Makino telling Higuma that there was no booze left.

“Haha— looks like we drank the place dry! Sorry man, but I have an extra bottle. It’s unused,” Shanks said with a smile, as he kindly offered his beer bottle to Higuma.

Higuma stared at it for a moment, before snatching the beer bottle from him. “That ain’t enough for me!” He exclaimed, before hurling it— right into your head.

The bottle smashed up against you. Beer ended up in your eyes, clouding your vision, as the pieces of glass cut up your face. A few smaller pieces ended up getting stuck.

All of the laughing in the bar stopped when you let out a shriek. Makino looked over— and, seeing this, she immediately ran over. “Y/n-san!” She exclaimed, grabbing onto you to keep you from falling into the alcohol display behind the counter.

Higuma stared at you, angrily, as Shanks immediately got up and ran over to help. Hongo, the doctor of the Red-Haired Pirates, immediately saw that someone needed medical attention— and rushed over.

Luffy was watching the whole ordeal, with rage in his eyes, before attempting to attack Higuma. Lucky Roux noticed this, and grabbed the little boy, restraining him.

Makino quietly sat you down, holding your hand, as tears fled from your eyes. But you made no sound. All you could do was tell yourself to breathe as Hongo carefully attempted to extract the pieces from your face. Shanks saw the sheer amounts of blood running down your face— and, ripping some cloth off of his own shirt, tried to plug up the deepest wounds, pressing the cloth to your face firmly.

Higuma rolled his eyes— and saw it as a fine time to leave. He’d brag to Shanks about himself later.

. . .

A short while later, you found yourself laying in a bed, in the one little hospital found at Foosha Village. It looked like every other building.

The beer was out of your eyes— your eyes still stung a bit, but it was out. The beer and blood was all cleaned up, and you were all bandages up on the face. Shanks and Makino stood over you.

“Y/n-san!” Makino said softly, smiling, as she went to hold your hand. “How are you feeling?” She asked, as Shanks smiled down at you.

“…my eyes,” you said softly, “..they sting. Could I get some eye drops?” You asked, as Makino nodded, “of course. I’ll be right back,” she said, giving your hand a squeeze before she let go and left, leaving you and Shanks alone.

“You good?” Shanks asked, chuckling, “your face is kinda swollen. You should see it in a mirror.”

You stared at him for a moment, before chuckling. “Don’t look at me, then.”

“I’ll always look at you!” Shanks said, before you blushed.

“…oh. I didn’t mean it in a romantic way, but I guess it came out like that, huh?” Shanks asked, laughing now.

You couldn’t help but smile at his hearty laugh. But then you thought— someone wasn’t in this room.

Luffy.

You turned your attention to his absence.

“..hey.. Luffy isn’t here. Doesn’t he follow you around like, all day, every day?” You asked, as Shanks’ smile faded.

“..now that I think about it, yeah. It’s a bit concerning.. I’m gunna go look for him,” he said, making his way to the door as you waved him goodbye.

As you laid there in silence, you couldn’t help but wonder.. was Shanks calling you pretty?

#one piece #luffy #monkey d luffy #monkey d. luffy #shanks #shanks x y/n #shanks x reader #red haired shanks #akagami no shanks #straw hat pirates

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opencharacters · 5 months

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Happy New Year Mr. Mouse

A short thing I prepared in honor of this occasion. I'm aware Mickey Mouse is not public domain outside of the US and that Disney can still use their trademark laws and fancy lawyers. But this means so much to me in just what I've believed about copyright for years. Disney isn't the main villain in the fight for a more robust public domain but they certainly are and were one of the big ones. It feels nice. Let us celebrate. Here is a short fic I wrote in the Mouse's honor on this day. Happy public domain day everyone!

An anthropomorphic mouse, wearing overalls and a hat arrived at the local bar. He distinctly was wearing no gloves, something unusual for this time of year given how cold it could get but most of the other bar flies didn't think much of it.

"I'm sort of part of the gang now boys, give me a frosty one to celebrate"

The bartender was a woman wearing a scarf and steampunk looking goggles resting on her head.

"Ah the king himself joining my little bar, you know what for the occasion its on the house" the woman said, pouring the mouse a beer and sliding it over to him.

"Name's Jenny" she said. "And you need no introduction. You're Mickey Mouse, right?"

"That's right ma'am"

"You know you just being in here is gonna upset some powerful people right?"

"I've served my 95 years, I deserve to be here" Mickey said, proceeding to take a long chug at his beer.

"I don't argue with that, in fact some of the folks around here have been counting the days. Congrats"

"Thank you"

"Seen my brother around?"

"Oswald?" Jenny asked.

"Well, yeah I guess I should've been more specific"

"Yeah he's always around somewhere. I'm sure he'd be happy to see you"

There werent many people in the bar, people could come and go but there was certain requirements for entering Jenny's Public Drinkery. The crowd that day was mostly a few regulars like Sherlock Holmes a detective type with a deerstalker hat or Winnie the Pooh, a yellow-ish brown bear distinctly lacking any red shirts in fact he had burnt all his red shirts on the first day he arrived.

People found it to be odd but it wasn't uncommon for people to destroy something that symbolized their previous cosmic shackles that tethered them to the unseen forces beyond their control. They relished in their newfound freedom.

Besides those two there was Yrina, a blonde woman wearing odd looking pink clothes and blue gloves, like a flashy looking cosmonaut. She had arrived wet and disoriented and talking about sea monsters yet didn't elaborate.

"Mickey, cheers to your freedom. Cheers to all our freedoms" Yrina said, being already on her way to being drunk despite her only having been there for an hour or so. "Never take it for granted Mickey"

She proceeded to chug a huge mug of ale and slam the tankard down on the table, demanding a refill which Jenny obliged.

"Sorry about Yrina, she's a space pirate and her manners could use a bit work" Jenny whispered to Mickey.

Changing her volume she said: "You know Mickey, we were kind of not sure how this day would go. I was thinking of throwing a party for you with all your siblings and stuff. But I guess chatting to me and these three is your welcome party. Sorry about that"

"No ma'am its fine. You've been kind. I can mingle later on and this is nice. I do know Winnie, him and I go way back" Mickey raised his glass in the direction of Winnie and nodded.

"You're very kind to be there when folks like me break free. From what I've heard it can be disorienting and overwhelming and being here now I can vouch for that.

"Yeah that's why I built this place. I wanted to be there for everyone. To give them a welcome"

"How do you have time to greet all these people?"

"I'm Jenny Everywhere, I can handle more things than you can shake a stick at"

"You certainly made me feel welcome and at ease. I think I'll sit here for a while and take it in and then try to find Oswald"

He took off his hat and threw it in the garbage can next to him.

"Happy New Year everyone" Mickey cheered, met with equal enthusiasm from everyone there.

#public domain #corsair queen #mickey mouse #sherlock holmes #winnie the pooh #jenny everywhere #fiction #my writing #disney

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follows-the-bees · 4 months

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The choice of what Ed is lying on here fascinates me.

His old gang, the Hornigold gang, are shown in western style: both the outfits and camera angles used. I talk about that here.

During this time, Ed has shuffled on the Kraken persona, like a security robe, keeping him safe from outside forces. But here, he is down to a t-shirt, letting himself feel emotions about the wedding cake toppers, yet still trying to drown it in alcohol.

But what I want to talk about is the choice of the animal fur carpet he's laying on. He threw away most of Stede's soft things, and they have been on countless raids. I'm not 100% sure where this rug is from (I looked and didn't see it in Stede's cabin), and honestly it doesn't match Stede's style.

But you know what it does match? The Wild West. And that style is emphasized with the simple clothes, the wooden plank floors, and the candle. If you saw that photo out of context, would you guess this is a pirate show?

Bringing back this western style shows how much Ed has had to retreat to his old ways with his old crew, and that is done visually in this one shot. We see the more pirate outfits, the ropes, leathers, and the kohl makeup during the raids, but in his own private space, Ed doesn't have those, he has the western theme. This simple choice shows us exactly his mindset (and foreshadows his choice of Hornigold during the grav(e)y basket scene.

Also, is that gunpowder he's decorating the bride topper with? Using alcohol and gun powder as a sorta paint? Or just kohl makeup. I have questions.

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd season 2 #ofmd edward teach #blackbeard #meta #meta analysis #ofmd meta #ed teach character study #ed teach

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gingerbreadmonsters · 1 year

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play it koi

or: hook, line, and sinker!

gn!reader, slight body horror warning, fluff with a little bit of tragic backstory. so, tell me why the single-sentence AU brainworm i had has now evolved into a nearly-10k monster? my eternal gratitude to @zozo-01 for proofreading at all hours of the day and night, and all my love to @sri-rachaa , who so graciously allowed me to start making sandcastles with her beautiful solaire pirate AU - i hope i do your darlings justice! kisses to the discord gang for talking me off the ledge - i could not and in fact would not have done it without you 💕💕💕 aside from the obvious AU-ness of it all, there’s also a larger hc at play here - but i’ll let you figure out what that is on your own. i have to keep some secrets, after all. freelancer taking the plunge in 9700 words or less.

warnings for a little bit of light body horror r.e. humans turning into merpeople, some close calls with drowning (please tread carefully if that’s a tricky topic for you), and it’s implied that freelancer doesn’t have a very nice backstory.

“Well, this is unusual.”

It’s so dark.

To be fair, you probably should have expected it. It’s not like there’s any sunlight underwater, after all. Your eyes have already started to adjust to the salt, but not completely - everything’s a blur, now, as you keep sinking and sinking.

Your boots, your clothes, the sabre at your hip - all sodden with water and weighing you down. There’s no point in trying to swim. You know how, but what’s the use? Where would you go? Miles from shore, there’s nothing around that you could swim to, and even if there was you wouldn't know what to look for.

They’ll be waking up, soon. When will they realise? Will they be happy? God, you hope so - if they’re not, it’ll all have been for nothing.

It’s surprisingly calm, falling to the bottom of the ocean. The dim shadow of the ship above you, gradually fading away into the dark blue blur that’s now your world, and you cross your fingers as your fingers grow cold and your lungs start to burn.

Maybe you’ll even be missed.

Goodbye, Captain. And good luck.

“A human?”

Distantly, you hear a voice - not the same as the one that put you here, and not echoing through your head the way that one had. He sounds… similar, though. Why? You twist, awkwardly trying to turn yourself around in the water, but there’s nothing there except a blurry trail of bubbles and the faintest blue glow out of the corner of your eye.

“There’s plenty of you up on the land…”

Where the hell is it coming from? Clumsy fingers reach for the hilt of your sabre, but you know it would be no use - you can’t swing a sword underwater, and you can’t even see anything that you could hit with it.

A lilting laugh, curious and sharp all at once. Your head spins with the pressure of the water all around you, and it’s getting harder and harder to think clearly. Captain Solaire would know what to do.

"But what, exactly," says the voice as it swims up behind you, “might a human be doing in my waters?”

Yes, he’d know.

Captain Solaire has always been a bit… unconventional.

According to the rest of the crew, nobody really knows how old he is or how he became a pirate, and you think he prefers it that way. Every time he tells the story, it’s always something different, and always more outlandish than the last.

He’d stowed away in a barrel, hiding in the hold for a month and a day with no food or water, before sneaking out in the middle of the night and killing the entire crew in their beds to take command of the ship. He’s a runaway nobleman who wanted to travel the world, who stole himself a ship and left his wicked, power-hungry family behind without an heir. He’s an escaped prisoner, captured from a French merchant ship, who broke free of his chains with a stolen cutlass and challenged the captain to a duel - they battled back and forth in the middle of the storm, deck swaying beneath them, before a bolt of lightning struck the captain’s sword and he fell to his death in the waves below.

Nobody knows which version is true, or even if any of them are true. You’ve spent many an evening holed up below decks with the rest of the crew, exchanging theories and coming up with new, even more outlandish explanations for how William Solaire came to be. To his credit, he never gives anything away - he meets every story with a wink and a smile, before taking another swig of rum and swearing that of course, of course, this one’s the real truth. Then he says exactly the same thing about the next tale, and you’re all right back at square one.

Before joining his crew, you’d heard stories about him and the Surge in every port from McKinley to Mont Blanc. Any story, any tale, anything you can possibly imagine - it’s probably already been said about William Solaire. He’s fought sea serpents and kissed mermaids and shaken hands with the captain of the Flying Dutchman. He’s sailed to the edge of the world, but he won’t tell anyone what he found there. He’s been swallowed by a kraken and lived to tell the tale.

You’d grown up on stories of the mysterious captain and his legendary ship, and it's safe to say he doesn’t disappoint. Everybody loves Captain Solaire - he’s a hard taskmaster, and it’s no easy feat to sail as part of his crew, but he’s always, always fair. Even when it comes to his children.

(Annoyingly, you can’t even use their ages to try and figure out how old William might be, since both of them are adoptive and don’t actually share blood. Damn.)

His daughter, Alexis, is the most beautiful lady you’ve ever seen - and there are almost as many stories about where she came from as there are about her father. Some say that she’s a kidnapped princess, taken at birth, searching the seas for her lost homeland. Others say that she was born a siren, but fell in love with a poor sailor who washed up on her island, and gave her tail to live on land with him for the rest of her days.

If any of it really is true, she’s never said. You only know Quartermaster Alexis, who wears a pistol on each hip and a silk ribbon on her hat, who teaches the topmen how to dance the volta and who’s won every arm wrestling competition she’s ever done. She’s good and kind and fiercely loyal to the ship - there’s nobody else you’d trust to lead a raiding party more than her.

His son, Vincent…

Well.

First mate Vincent hasn’t always been the most… caring sort. Apparently, Captain William found him half-drowned at sea after his ship was wrecked in a winter’s storm, trailing blood in the freezing water, and brought him aboard to save his life. You’ve got no idea what might’ve happened to him in that wreck, but whatever it was can’t have been good. Some of the other crew members who knew him back then say that he was incredibly withdrawn and standoffish for a long time - the Surge’s lonely navigator, preferring the company of his maps and the stars to anything else.

That doesn’t seem to be a problem any more, but it seems like he might have overcompensated slightly. As long as you’ve known him, he’s always been a charmer - you’ve never known him to spend a night in port alone, and never with the same lady (or gentleman, depending on who’s caught his eye) twice. He’s good for a laugh, or for people-watching in a tavern on a slow afternoon in port, but you know better than to tumble into bed with him - he’s tried to persuade you on occasion, but always backs off once he hears a no.

(He’s forward and flirty and a little too brash for your taste, but he’s a good man at heart and he feels things deeply. You’d call him a friend, though maybe not to his face. His head’s big enough as it is.)

Now that you think about it, a lot of things seem to happen when that man falls overboard.

Vincent Solaire, you see, is in love with a mer.

You’re not really sure how it happened. He’s normally so sure on his feet. One minute he was up in the rigging, a smudge of colour up against the sky - and the next he was just a splash in the water, white swirls on the surface of the sea. You’d only just been coming up from the gun deck, but you’d seen him falling and run to the side of the ship to see if he was alright. The cry had gone up - man overboard! - and then-

You’d only ever seen a real one once before, and not for very long. But that day, watching your captain’s son break the surface of the water in the confused arms of an honest-to-god mer, you’d known that things had just changed forever.

They’d taken to each other like a match to powder, and the whole ship knew it. All of a sudden, the ladykiller Vincent Solaire had had his heart stolen by a mer - truly, it was like something out of a song. Alexis had given him a good-natured cuff on the back of the head about his tumble from the foremast, and he’d taken it with a lovesick smile and a playful salute. Captain Solaire even commissioned a special sort of crate, sturdy wood and metal so water couldn’t leak out, to be kept in his son’s cabin and filled with seawater so that he might converse at length with them in private, instead of having to sit above them in one of the rowboats.

It’s impossible not to smile at the thought of those two, utterly in love, and you know the whole crew feels the same. They’re so, so beautiful.

They’re also absolutely doomed.

There are stories of a thousand sailors before him, and there’ll be a thousand more after he’s gone. The love between a mer and a human can never be equal, can never last - a human can breathe underwater as much as a mer can walk on land. They might both call the ocean home, but it’ll never be in quite the same way.

There’s no way to turn a man into a mer, or the other way around. A cursed love. It can’t be done.

…Supposedly.

There is one way.

Neither of them would ever ask. But you can see it - that weight, of knowing that they’ll never truly be able to be together the way either of them wants.

It’s the way Vincent scans the sea when he thinks nobody’s watching, hoping he’ll catch a glimpse of the scales he loves so much, looking down at his own hands like he’s imagining the claws he ought to have. It’s the way his darling stares wistfully up at the ship when Vincent turns away for just a moment, knowing there’s only so much time until their gills can’t cope and they’ll have to duck back into the water to breathe.

They’re meant for each other. You know it, and so does everyone else. When Captain William insists that you’re staying in port another day as Vincent just so happens to be making a suspicious beeline for the beach. When Alexis rolls her eyes and lets him sleep in for an extra hour, because she knows he’s been up all night dangling off the side of the ship or treading water in his mer-lover’s arms.

Yes, they’re meant for each other.

You, on the other hand, aren’t meant for much at all.

You haven’t got some incredible myth of your own creation, no tales or stories or legends to be told. You weren’t born in a hurricane, you’ve never been taken prisoner on a ghost ship, you’re no heir to some grand pirate legacy. You’re not really much of anything.

There’s no great love story waiting for you, not like theirs - and you’ve had to come to terms with that. You have - or you’ve done your best, at least. It’s difficult, to see them so in love when you’re as alone as ever. It hurts. But it’s not their fault, and it’s not your place to be jealous of something that you know you’ll never have.

You weren’t made to be loved like that - love wasn’t made for someone like you. But if you’ll never have that chance, then there is still one thing you can do.

I call upon the guardian of the horizon.

You can give it to someone else.

I call upon he who sleeps atop the tide, at whose heels the waves are bound to follow.

There are very few places where this can be done, and even fewer who know of them. Alone on the deck in the middle of the night, leaning out over the port side of the quarterdeck, your timing has to be just right. You’re going to have to be very lucky indeed.

I call upon he who draws the seam across the sky, who blesses the storm and the seafoam as one.

The night is cold and windy, stars bright in the sky above while the black sea stretches out below. Will your voice be heard? Will your call be answered? You’re hoping the water will be kind to you, but that’s all it is - hope. You don’t know. There’s no way to know. All you can do is ask, and cross your fingers for mercy.

I call upon the guardian of the horizon.

You’re going to make a deal.

May mine own voice return to me.

Nothing happens, at first. No great creature rises from the water, no lightning splits the sky. The deck rolls easily beneath you, no sudden wave to knock you off your feet or wash you overboard for your impudence. The breeze whistles through the rigging high above your head, but it doesn’t stop for you.

The sea is still.

And there’s a voice in your head.

Who calls me?

It’s a man’s voice, but it speaks like no man you’ve ever known. In it, you hear a million voices all at once - those you know and those you don’t, all as one. A perfect chorus, ringing in your ears, and you have the strange, sudden feeling that you’re being watched.

A human calls you.

Why does a human call me?

To strike a deal.

It must be a trick of the light, but for just a second, you could have sworn you saw something moving in the water. What deal would a human strike with me?

I seek the realm of the merfolk.

Your kind are no strangers to that realm, the voice says, amused. Many a sailor’s skeleton lies among the coral.

You don’t know if you really are being watched right now, but you shake your head anyway. I seek to swim amongst the merfolk, of my own will.

This deal comes with a price.

Gritting your teeth, you reply. This is the tricky bit. I know it.

Who shall pay?

The way to turn a mer into a human is actually not very complicated, in and of itself. The logic is very simple, a legacy of the great war between sea and sky that was waged in the ages past, and which created men and merfolk alike. There is only one rule - the scales have to balance.

By the mercy of the horizon, any mer can become a human. The only problem is that, at the same time, a human must become a mer.

You’ve heard them talking - when they thought nobody was listening, when they thought everyone was asleep. About a little mer’s wishes to leave the sea behind, to seek out the world above the water, the life they’d have on land. About a little boy’s dream to find an adventure worth living for, to do his father and family proud, to reach out his hand and touch the very sky.

You can’t make dreams or wishes come true. But you know someone who can - and you know that those dreams are worth far more than the life of one lonely deckhand, who ran away in the dead of night on a pirate ship and has been looking over one shoulder ever since.

Myself, and… Boards creak under your feet, and you take a big, deep breath. And the lover of Vincent Solaire.

The voice in your head laughs mockingly, sending fearful shivers down your spine that you hurriedly try to suppress. A human would steal the tail of a sleeping merchild?

A human would give their legs to a merchild, to see them happy, you say, braver than you feel. What happens to the human in return is of no consequence.

How curious. You claim benevolence.

That’s… one way of putting it. I do.

Benevolence, or perhaps foolishness, the voice muses. I have given and taken much from your kind. I have given and taken much from the merfolk, too. Many of those times, I did so in the name of love, as you ask me now to do - but very rarely have I been asked in the name of another’s love.

Maybe it’s just your imagination, but the sky seems lower than it did before - looking up at the thin clouds, it feels like all the stars are watching you. Will it truly please you, to give your life to the oceans for the sake of a happiness you will never see?

It is not easy to call upon you, my lord. Is that the right thing to say? You’re not really sure how else to address this mysterious voice. This chance may never come for them again.

Must this chance come at your own expense?

The captain of this ship has been very good to me, you say. His son and daughter, as well. I came to them as nothing, begging a chance at escape from the life I knew, and with grace and justice they bid me stay. They have taken me into their hearts, allowed me this time that I might know them, fight alongside them - come to care for them.

When Captain Solaire found you, you were nothing. Taking whatever odd jobs you could find aboard whatever ship would take you, anything at all to get yourself as far away from home as you could possibly go. You hadn’t cared what it was - as long as the wind was at your back and the voyage was long, you would go.

That’s how you’d ended up aboard the Carpe Deus.

Their captain, Vega, is one of the most terrifying pirates on the open seas, and for good reason. He attacks merchant and royal navy ships alike, and even just saying his name at sea is said to bring death and ruin to a ship, although there are very few men who have ever seen his face and lived. He and his crew are utterly ruthless, and it’s said that for every ship they hijack they leave a single man wounded but alive - so that if by some miracle he makes it ashore, then the whole port will know the fate that awaits them if they dare to challenge Captain Vega.

Nobody knows where he came from, or how he got his ship. Some say that he was born in the hold of a ghost ship in the middle of a summer storm, and that he made a bargain with the god of death to bring the whole ship and its crew back to life, with him as its captain. Others believe that he’s no man at all but a spirit of the sea’s vengeance, and that he can’t be killed lest his curse be unleashed upon the entire ocean.

His crew is just as mysterious - in particular, you’d been fascinated by his quartermaster. According to the stories, they used to captain their own ship for the royal navy before they were attacked by the Carpe Deus in the dead of night. Their crew was slaughtered but they fought on, killing half of the Deus’s crew with just their cutlass and even managing to land a blow on the pirate captain himself, before he captured them and forced them to surrender.

The way the story goes is that Captain Vega planned to ransom them back to the crown, but he was so taken by their skill and beauty that before he could reach port, his new prisoner had already charmed him from the bounds of their cell. The two fell in love and were married, and on their wedding day swore to each other they would become the greatest, most feared pirates in all the seven seas.

Whatever the truth, Captain Vega and his quartermaster are terrifying - the whole time you’d been on board, you’d tried your level best to stay away from them as much as possible.

It hadn’t been too difficult, all things considered. You’d spent almost all your time down in the swaying hold of the ship, carrying crates and ropes and such to and fro as they were needed. Just menial busywork, really. On your previous ship, the Obscura, you’d been training as a gunner - but the Deus already had plenty of those, so you’d been stuck down on the orlop deck almost the whole time.

Maybe that had been a blessing, though. If you hadn’t been down there, you wouldn’t have found him.

Captain Vega has all sorts of treasures and rarities on his ship, you see. Gold, spices, jewels, pearls, silks, sugar, furs, tobacco… you’ve seen it all, down in that hold. He’s even been known to steal exotic creatures, selling them on to kings and emperors as prize possessions - souvenirs of far-off lands.

One of those creatures was a small, frightened merchild called Caelum.

You’d seen him being carried onboard, taken from another pirate ship that was heading for Port Duke. A scared little face peeping over the side of a barrel, cowering down under the water in fear at every jeer and shout that went up among the crew. All except the captain and the officers had been forbidden to speak to him, and he’d been locked in one of the cells by the bosun, Ivan.

He’d only tried to speak to you once, but you’d quickly shaken your head and shushed him. There were too many other people around, and it’s well-known on that ship what happens to anyone who disobeys Captain Vega’s orders.

Yes, you’d known it was a risk. But seeing how miserable the poor merchild was, tiny pink scales dulling and flaking off in stale seawater, curled up in the bottom of his lonely barrel for warmth, you hadn’t been able to turn a blind eye.

Sneaking out of your hammock that night, you’d crept down to the cells. Caelum had been waiting for you, little hands clinging to the top of the barrel as he stared at you with big, nervous eyes.

He’d told you of his capture - caught in a fishing boat’s net as he swam too close to the surface, before being stolen by the pirates you’d taken him from. I just want to go home, he’d sobbed, and your heart had broken. I want Delphinus!

You’d never heard of anyone with that name, so you hadn’t really known what to do with that. Sorry, who?

The poor thing had tried to explain it, but it had been a bit confusing. Some sort of mentor called Delphinus who was in charge of looking after him - although clearly not doing a very good job - along with various names of all his brothers and sisters under the water.

(You’re not entirely sure how new mermaids come to be, but if all of those names really were his siblings, you can’t help but feel sorry for this little merchild’s mother.)

Over the next few days, you’d managed to figure out a plan for how you were going to get Caelum off the boat and back to the ocean. It was risky, but it was that or let him be auctioned off to the highest bidder, sold to whatever greedy lord wanted to keep him as a pet for the rest of his days. You couldn’t just stand by and let that happen.

There’s one person who might be able to help us - well, I don’t know if he’s a person or just - I mean, I guess he’s kind of like a- a spirit? Or a ghost? Or a god, or something - I don’t really know, but I think he might know what to do-

After a few minutes of rambling, he’d finally told you his idea - to ask this god-spirit-ghost person for help. You’d been sceptical, but he’d assured you that whoever this was, they were real. Delphinus calls him the ‘god of the horizon’, or something. He says he’s made of all the voices in the sea, and he looks after all the merpeople and all the humans that live with the water. He can even turn mer into humans - and the other way round, too!

It had seemed like a bit of a stretch, and you’d been starting to suspect that this Delphinus was really good at telling bedtime stories, but it’s not like you had any other options. How do I summon him?

Well…

There are only a few places where this spirit can be called, and there’s no guarantee he’ll answer. Most are out on the open ocean - by an incredible stroke of luck, you’d realised that the Deus was due to sail right through one of those points on the way up to Ferris.

If you ask him for help, I’m sure he’ll say yes! Bless him, Caelum had looked so happy. He wouldn’t leave us all alone here, would he?

You hadn’t been so sure, but you’d put a brave face on it regardless. Of course he wouldn’t.

The next night, you’d snuck up onto the main deck in the dead of night and crossed your fingers. You’d only get one shot - by morning, the ship would have moved out of position, so you had to get this right.

I call upon the guardian of the horizon.

Nothing.

He who sleeps atop the tide, at whose heels the waves follow, you’d whispered. Who draws the seam across the sky, who blesses the storm and the seafoam as one.

Still nothing. I call upon the guardian of the horizon. A squeak of boards below you, but you’d paid it no mind. Ships creak and groan all the time. May mine own voice return to me.

There’s no telling how many times you repeated it, over and over until your voice grew hoarse and disappeared. Eventually, you had to run back to your bunk before you were caught, and you cried shamefully in your hammock at the knowledge that you might have just doomed Caelum to a lifetime in captivity because of your foolish, stupid failure.

There’s a merchild, held here on this ship as a prisoner.

You had no idea if it was even possible to pray to a spirit like this, but you’d closed your eyes and tried.

His name is Caelum.

The faintest glimmer of sunlight, peeking over the horizon.

Please, I beg of you - by the mercy of the waters, save him from this ship.

No reply. Just the ringing of bells, so faint that you couldn’t be sure if they were real or just a figment of your tired imagination. You’d fallen into a fitful sleep, tossing and turning with worry, sick to your stomach with guilt.

You never saw Caelum again.

Luckily, neither did Captain Vega.

Nobody knows when it happened, and to be perfectly honest you don’t either. All you know is that by the time evening came again, by the time one of the other deckhands had gone down to the cells to throw Caelum a raw fish to eat - he was gone.

There had been uproar below decks as the officers scrambled to find someone to blame, but nobody dared alert the captain until they were sure that their prize mer hadn’t been hidden somewhere else on the ship. Nobody wanted to raise a false alarm lest they bring Vega’s wrath down upon themselves, and everyone was terrified of him finding out that the ship’s most valuable treasure had just… disappeared.

Long into the night, you’d all searched, until the mood began to turn from fear to anger. Bunks were overturned, possessions rifled through, all in a frantic effort to point the finger at someone - anyone.

God, how could you have been so stupid?

A single, pink scale, fluttering down from your hammock. How had it even got there? You’d never actually gone into Caelum’s cell - you didn’t have the key, and there was no way you’d ever have been able to get it. You’d never laid a hand on the little merchild, and you would never have been able to carry him all the way up out of the hold to throw him overboard without being seen, even in the middle of the night. It couldn’t be done - it wasn’t possible.

All good arguments, but Ivan hadn’t been having any of it as you shouted them at him. He’d had one of the officers tie your wrists together, dragging you up onto the deck with a filthy handkerchief shoved into your mouth to try and keep you quiet. Thrashing and screaming as best you could, you’d fought against his iron grip - but Ivan was far too strong, and before you could do anything he’d already hauled you up to the side of the main deck.

You hadn’t even seen the Captain or the quartermaster. You’re fairly sure Ivan was far more scared of what Vega might do to him for waking him up in the middle of the night, than for punishing you without his approval.

It had been so fast. One minute you were standing on the side of the ship, recoiling from the blade of the master gunner’s cutlass. The next, there was a boot in your back, and you were tumbling down into the icy sea.

Dumped overboard to drown, you’d known that time was running out. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happens when a person is kicked off a boat into the sea. After all, it was practically a hobby on the Carpe Deus, so you knew exactly how this sort of thing tends to unfold.

Luckily, because this wasn’t an ordinary execution, the ship hadn’t stopped when you were thrown off the side. Ordinarily, you might have thought this to be a bad thing, but what this actually meant was that nobody was going to see you floating in the water and shoot you to death. They’d also been in quite a hurry to restrain you, so the bindings around your wrists weren’t rope, but cloth that - after some protracted and decidedly awkward fumbling - you were able to slip out of.

The only problem was what to do next.

You’d only be able to float for so long - you’d need to find land, shelter, food. Unfortunately, those things are a little bit difficult to come by when you’re stranded in the middle of the open ocean.

To this day, you have no idea how long you were there for. In your head it was weeks, months, years - even though it might have only been an hour or so. The moon gazed down at you as you slowly froze, and you gazed right back, letting the waves push and pull you as they wished. Icy spray washing over you, you’d closed your eyes and thought to accept your freezing fate.

Up and down, up and down. Church bells, ringing far away across the sea. A wedding or a funeral?

There’s someone in the water!

You don’t remember it well - only flashes. Firm, strong hands fishing you out of the water, oars splashing as the rowboat goes back towards the ship. Being lifted, carried down to the surgeon’s cabin and laid down on the bed. Waking up hours later, cold and confused and desperately thirsty, to the curious eyes of William Solaire.

He’d let you explain yourself - where you’d originally come from, how you’d come to be on the Deus in the first place, how you’d ended up in the water. He listened and listened until you’d talked yourself hoarse, that calm, contemplative gaze going right through you, and then he’d smiled.

I suppose I can find room for an extra deckhand on my ship.

Debts must be repaid. You owe the Solaires everything.

My lord, I ask only for the realisation of my captain’s wish - for his son to be happy. My fate is of no consequence.

You have to believe it. There’s no other way.

A sigh, rippling through the sails and making the sash at your waist flutter. You think so little of yourself, child. Accessory to a love story that has no place for you, indeed.

The voice laughs again, but it’s… kinder, this time. You should hope that the waves might bring you the fate you seek.

You frown. I seek no fate.

Perhaps not. The strange feeling of a shrug, unseen and unspoken, but definitely there. But you run from one. Is that not the same thing?

Perhaps I will find out.

For a single second, the breeze stands still. The water does too, and for a thousand miles around, the flat glass surface of the sea is filled with stars.

Very well.

Something chimes, like bells ringing in your head, and time catches up with itself - an odd chill rushes over you, and you know what you have to do. Then give yourself to me, little one, and fight not against the tides.

You can’t tell if you wake the whole damned ship with the sound of your boots on the boards, and you don’t have it in you to care - the water’s in you, now, and all you can think of is that aching, burning need to be free. Running full tilt across the deck, moonlight in your eyes as you step up onto the side of the ship, and it’s with a bright, happy smile that you leap from the decks of the Surge-

May fate find you kindly, child of land.

Splashing, frothing, white waves calling to you. Hanging in the air, caught between the sea and the sky, suspended in the sacred line of the horizon. The rattle of dice on an ale-soaked table in a far-off tavern. The whistle of the wind as it kisses you goodbye.

Oh, and say hello to Vindemiator for me.

-and go tumbling into the unknown depths of the dark seas below.

“-lo? Human? Human!”

Startled out of your reverie by the sound, you jolt backwards out of instinct - much to your surprise, a pair of hands grabs your arms and turns you round. Your eyes still haven’t entirely adjusted to the salt or the darkness, but there’s no mistaking the creature in front of you, staring at your body in confusion.

He’s a mer.

“Here - let me - come on, you have to swim-!”

A very beautiful one, you think, although his face is twisted in worry as he tries to pull you up towards the surface. You can’t make out his tail very well, smudges of orange and white at the bottom of your vision, with the faint shape of fins swirling through the water. So that’s where that glow was coming from - trails of blue-green bioluminescence follow him as he moves, swishing through the water in mesmerising slow-motion.

“For the love of-” Sharp claws dig into your shoulders as he grabs you, but you twist away from him before he can drag you too far. “Human, you’ll drown!”

Your lungs are really starting to hurt, now - you were sort of hoping that the gills would be the first thing that came through, but apparently you’re just really, really unlucky. You hold your arm out towards him, indicating the claws that are starting to lengthen, the scales that are starting to break through the skin.

“Oh. Oh - fuck, are you-?” The mer reaches for your hands, tugging you towards him and frantically examining you for signs of your transformation. “You look - oh, god!”

Something shifts inside you with a crack, forcing a plume of bubbles out of your mouth and nose - you both look down in alarm as your body contracts without warning, and you groan in pain at the dull ache that’s quickly making itself known in your legs.

“Well, it’s one way to get to know somebody,” the mer mutters, tail flicking back and forth as he supports you both. “Darling, you have to breathe - come on, in through your g-”

You shake your head as best you can, pointing to your neck - clawed hands run across the skin as he tilts your head away from him, one hand on your shoulder and one on your jaw, and you can just about see his eyes widen as he realises that you don’t have any.

“Fuck.”

You’re inclined to agree.

It’s funny, you know. You’re barely noticing the crushing ache in your lungs any more - it’s quickly being eclipsed by the stabbing, burning pain crawling up your legs and into your stomach.

“They’re not - you need - okay, okay, just let me think-”

So much for fate. It’s kind of ridiculous, right? You’d laugh, if you had the air. Going to all this trouble, turning yourself into a literal fucking fish, only to swallow a lungful of seawater and drown in the first five minutes.

“Look, I - oh, tides have mercy - alright, darling, come here-”

Now that you think about it, It’s kind of weird - normally everything sounds so muffled underwater, but somehow his voice is clear as a bell. Are you dreaming? He’s so close to you now, one arm tight around your waist as he pulls you towards him.

“If this works, then I’m sorry - if it doesn’t, then… I don’t know. I don’t - I just…”

You were right. He is beautiful.

“Look at me, human.”

Blearily, you meet his eyes - he gives you a tiny smile, and it’s almost enough to distract you from the pain that’s starting to spread up into your torso. His free hand guides your arms around him, keeping you close against his chest as the rolling current tries to pull you from him.

“In through your mouth, out through your nose, alright?”

Long, clawed fingers lift your jaw, and-

“Breathe.”

You’d expected him to be cold, but his lips are warm as he kisses you, swallowing your gasp of surprise with a gentle sigh. Wordlessly, he nudges your ankle with his tail - and oh, yeah, you’re meant to be breathing.

It’s a slightly awkward kiss, if you’re honest, but you’re not complaining - gratefully, you gulp down the oxygen he gives you and try to breathe through the seething storm of pain that’s growing inside you. Legs kicking slightly to keep you from sinking, you’re able to settle into a reasonable rhythm soon enough.

Luckily, the haze of pain begins to fizzle out into a bizarre numbness fairly quickly, but your relief is short-lived once you realise why your body’s beginning to go numb. There’s a dull crunch as your spine contorts, which you hear but thankfully don’t feel. You do, however, feel the mer in your arms jump in surprise when your back is suddenly forced into an uncomfortable arch under his touch, muscle and bone shifting under your skin.

He recoils slightly out of shock, but he doesn’t get far before your fingers wind into his hair and pull - he’s sort of the only thing keeping you alive right now, so it would be great if he could keep kissing you for a bit longer until you’ve got the whole breathing underwater thing under control, and did - did he just - was that-?

Your eyes fly open - when did you close them? - and you’re met with a very embarrassed, very blushy mer who definitely won’t look you in the eye. The angle makes it difficult to look down, but you can feel his chest stutter against yours, see his fins flicking nervously just at the edge of your vision, and both of you shiver as his causal fin accidentally brushes the back of your calf.

(To be fair, you can’t really blame him. If you’d accidentally moaned into a stranger’s mouth when they pulled your hair as you were kissing them, you probably wouldn’t be able to meet their eyes either.)

The change is starting to come faster now, clicks and cracks as your body starts to rearrange itself in earnest, and you almost lose your grip on the mer entirely as a wave of tiredness hits you. He follows you as you tip backwards slightly, tail beating back and forth a little faster to compensate for your sudden slackness, claws careful not to pierce your skin as he gently pulls you back upright.

Slowly, his hand on your cheek slips down to your neck, stroking carefully over the skin as he checks to see if anything is changing. He hums in what sounds like relief, and you feel his thumb just barely catch against ridges that definitely weren’t there before. They’re not fully formed yet, so he doesn’t pull away, but it’s better than nothing.

Unfortunately, you might have spoken too soon - your eyes go wide as a strange burst of coldness starts to spread in your lower abdomen, like spilt milk bottles smashing on the tile. It seeps through your hips and waist before trickling down into your legs, soaking into the bone like it’s sponge, and not even the itchiness of scales hardening across your stomach is enough to distract you from the thought that this is going to hurt. Bracing yourself for-

“Mmm - human!”

The mer scrambles to grab you as you’re suddenly wracked with coughs, clutching your middle with bubbles streaming from your nose and mouth. There’s something moving in your chest, muscles stretching and snapping as the change digs into your lungs, and you’re writhing too erratically for him to be able to press his mouth to yours again.

(Not to mention, it would be kind of grim to have to kiss someone who’s coughing non-stop into your open mouth, while also leeching off your oxygen supply. You can’t really blame him for being a bit hesitant.)

“I don’t - uh, I need - fuck, just-” He runs a nervous hand through his hair as he chews his lip in worry, and you’re struck by the passing thought that wow, his teeth are a lot sharper than I thought they were. “I thought your gills would have formed by now, but…”

Your vision is starting to really go blurry now, hand clamped over your mouth to stop yourself from accidentally breathing in the water, but you can just barely make out the shape of him reaching for your waist again. The glow that follows his every move is bathing you in soft, green light, swirling around his hands as they slide up your ribs and settle on the sides of your neck.

Is it just you, or is it brighter than it was before?

“Just a little bit-” A tingling sort of fizziness, spreading down your throat and over your shoulders where he holds you. “Hold on, darling, just a - just a bit longer-!”

It must be magic, or maybe you really are drowning now, but you could swear you can feel the skin separating under his palms - is he helping your gills to form? That must be what it is. You’ve heard stories about the magic of the mer, but there are so few people who have ever seen one in real life that it’s difficult to know what’s real and what’s just myth.

It feels warm wherever he touches you, like the sensation of stepping into a warm bath. Is this what all magic is like? Whatever he’s doing, it’s making your heart race and your blood sing - and no, that’s not just because you have a very pretty mer about two inches away from your face right now.

(Well, maybe that’s part of it. Only a little bit. Teeny, teeny tiny. Not even worth mentioning.)

A strange feeling of something searching, settling, splintering, before-

“Mmph-!”

Abruptly, you’re shaken out of your daydreaming by a firm hand clamped over your mouth and nose - it’s the mer, holding your wrists in between the two of you so you can’t move. Your panicky, oxygen-starved mind tries to force you into fleeing, but he’s just too strong, and you can’t struggle away.

“-lls! Human, you - you have to try - just breathe-”

It’s no use - you try as hard as you can to breathe through your new gills, but you can’t quite force your new muscles to work the way you need them to. The instinct to breathe through your mouth is just too overwhelming.

“Please!”

Getting dizzier and dizzier, you have to breathe, but you just can’t - between the screeching pain in your lower body and the howling fire in your chest, you’re convinced that you might actually be about to die. Desperately, you thrash against his grip as your mind goes blank and your fingers go numb, and the last thing you see before the world goes black is the horrified face of a handsome mer, mouth opening in a watery scream as the human in his arms goes completely limp and lifeless.

“-ne, it’s fine, it’ll be fine - come on, please…”

Head pounding, you’re shaken awake by a frantic hand on your shoulder - it takes a moment to figure out what’s happening, but you’re interrupted by an enormous sigh of relief from right next to your head.

“Oh, thank fuck!”

Okay, so not the most courteous sigh of relief there’s ever been, but for someone whose spent longer than they care to admit working on pirate ships, you’d say he’s actually being pretty polite about it. You’re squeezed into a bone-crushing hug, and you quickly realise that you’re being cradled in the arms of the mer from earlier.

He laughs as he leans back, looking down at you with a blinding, beaming smile that feels like warm sunlight on your skin. “Feeling better, little guppy?”

You nod slowly, careful of the throbbing headache that’s making itself known behind your temples. As charming as his enthusiasm is, you’re still feeling a bit fragile.

“Think so.”

The water around you is a little bit lighter, so it must have been a little while since you blacked out. Looking around, you can’t see anything around except a few stray schools of fish swimming past in the distance. Idly, you twist in the mer’s arms to watch them go by, only to notice something moving in the corner of your eye-

Oh, that’s-

Okay, so you have a tail now, so that’s fun.

He must notice your frozen stare, fixed on the very scaly, very real part of your body that was certainly not shaped like that the last time you looked - hurriedly, he pulls your line of sight back to him with a gentle hand on your cheek.

“Right - yeah, okay, we can talk about that in a bit,” he mutters, before his eyes soften as he spots something on your neck. “Getting used to the new gills yet, are we?”

It hadn’t really hit you until he said it, but now that he mentions it… When you stop and think about it, you can feel the difference in your breathing now - the flutter of gills at your neck, the bizarre new liquid feeling in your chest. Actually, you can feel a lot that’s different now, although you’re still suspiciously numb from the waist down.

“Why can’t I…”

You gesture faintly to your new tail, fins waving softly in the water, but he just shrugs with a grimace.

“Your fins didn’t finish growing until about a few minutes before you woke up, so I guess whatever’s going on inside isn’t quite finished yet…?”

How reassuring. He doesn’t know either. “So I just… have to wait?”

“Could be worse,” he says with a sly grin, in a move that has absolutely no right to be as attractive as it is. “You get to spend some more time in the arms of an incredibly handsome, wickedly intelligent, painfully modest mer, and I get a very nice view.”

Confused, you follow his gaze downwards - oh, the bastard! You’re still wearing your shirt from before (although it looks like your trousers and boots didn’t manage to survive your transformation) and it appears that the neckline might have shifted a little bit during the whole… ordeal.

He laughs as you smack his chest and try to readjust yourself, but apparently neither of you were expecting how uncoordinated you’d be in the water - he curses as you accidentally slip out of his arms, the dead weight of your not-yet-working tail heavier than you thought it would be.

“Careful, careful - there you go…”

Now that your eyes have adapted properly to the water, and it’s a little bit lighter, you can look at your new… friend? Is he your friend yet? Whatever, it’s close enough. You can look at your new companion in a lot more detail now, and you’re sure he’d agree with your observation that there’s quite a lot to look at.

He swings you back up into his arms, seemingly examining you for damage (although what you could possibly have done to yourself in the five seconds you spent out of his hold, you don’t know), and you take the opportunity to do some examining of your own.

He’s even more lovely than you’d first thought, and you realise that your stinging, blurry eyes really hadn’t done him justice. Slim but strong, tan skin speckled with iridescent scales, dark eyes bright and full of mischief. You’re reminded of a storybook - he looks like something out of one of those fairy tales, full of handsome princes and dashing rogues.

(A cold current breezes past the pair of you, and instinctively you curl into his warmth. In turn, he clutches you a little closer - you definitely don’t stare at the way his pretty hair, ruffled by the current, floats softly around his head before slowly settling.)

From the waist down he looks like a koi mer, the butterfly kind, dappled with orange and white scales, dark patches of black like spilt ink across his tail. Delicate, breezy fins trail over his hips like a lady’s veil, matched by a thin, elegant dorsal fin and a long, flowing causal fin at the end of his tail.

They look soft, gossamer thin and silky as they flutter in the current, and for a minute you think to reach out and touch one. Fingers brushing lightly against the edge, the delicate tissue is just as lovely as you’d thought it would be, and the smoothness makes you smile.

“Feeling me up already?” Someone else is smiling too, although you’d say his is a lot less innocent than yours. “So bold, little guppy. You don’t even know my name.”

Oh, shit, you don’t - you haven’t even - fuck, he must think you’re so - aargh! Embarrassed, you recoil like you’ve been burnt, hiding your face in your hands.

“Sorry!”

The mer shakes his head, laughing as he gently pries your hands away from your burning face. “I don’t mind, sweetheart,” he says, and the name shouldn’t make you shiver the way it does. “Just teasing you, that’s all.”

He flicks his tail behind him, fins curving around in a mockery of a curtsey as he takes your hand in his, pressing his lips to the back of your hand with a dazzling smile.

“Call me Gavin, darling.”

It’s an… unusual name, certainly. You’re not sure you’ve ever met anyone with that name before. Then again, he is quite unusual, so maybe you shouldn’t have been surprised. He raises an eyebrow at you, still holding your hand, and you realise that he’s waiting for you to reciprocate - hurriedly, you introduce yourself in return.

“My pleasure.” The mer - Gavin, now - presses your palm flat to his chest for a moment, fingers entwined just over his heart, before his tail swishes leisurely in the corner of your eye and he starts to swim.

At first, the movement is a little strange to get used to. You’d never really thought about how it must actually work, when mer swim, but you suppose it must be a lot more complicated than it looks. Held in his arms like this, clinging to his shoulders like a bride, you can feel all the muscles in his abdomen flexing and pulling under the skin as his body compensates for the weight of his tail pushing through the water.

(You’re not sure if he means for you to notice or not, but you hear him rolling your name around in his mouth like he’s getting used to it, testing the sounds out on his tongue. Different inflections, different pitches, different speeds. Somehow, it’s incredibly charming.)

“You know…”

Looking up, you’re greeted by a now very familiar smirk that you’re beginning to suspect means trouble. “Now that you and I are properly… acquainted, as they say, you’re more than welcome to go back to feeling me up.”

“I-” You blink in surprise - that’s… not at all what you thought he was going to say. “Sorry, you - it - what?”

Nope, you didn’t mishear - he flashes you a rakish grin as you fall over your words, sharp teeth on full display, and it’s so infectious that you can’t help but absentmindedly smile back. God, he’s so pretty.

“Well, you looked like you were having fun down there,” he says casually, by way of explanation. “Far be it from me to stop your fun.”

You shrug, deliberately letting your eyes wander slowly down over his arms, his chest, his waist… before flicking sharply back up to his face. “Who says I’d want to have fun with you?”

Gavin gasps in feigned agony, mouth dropping open into an unfairly perfect, not-at-all tempting O-shape. “Breaking my heart so soon? Darling, I’m hurt!”

He soothes the ache with an affectionate nudge of his tail against yours, fins swishing in the current, and a long, indulgent look up and down your body. Presumably, he likes what he sees - he leans down to drag his lips softly over your temple, and you don’t even dare to breathe as he murmurs against your skin.

“Don’t you want to find out what that shiny new body of yours can do?”

You open your mouth to respond in kind, but both of you are surprised when it turns into a yawn - ooh, that’s weird. Yawning underwater isn’t exactly an experience you ever anticipated having, but the sensation is certainly not what you were expecting.

Another staggering bout of fatigue hits you, and you realise all of a sudden just how tired you are. All your body’s energy must be going to your tail, finishing it off or however he put it, and you fight to keep your eyes open against the steadily-growing urge to sleep.

“Feeling sleepy?” His face softens, coy smirk melting away into a sweet, sympathetic smile. “You can rest, if you like. We won’t be there for a while yet.”

“Mm…” It’s getting harder and harder to keep your eyes open, but you do your best. “Where?”

“My home,” he replies. “You can stay with me for now, darling. We’ll sort it out later.”

It makes your heart ache a little, just how good he is. Yeah, so he’s a bit of a flirt, and yeah, so he’s definitely made an… interesting first impression - but he’s also just saved your life. If he hadn’t helped you breathe, you’re almost certain you would have drowned. If he hadn’t stayed with you, and if he wasn’t offering to take you somewhere presumably habitable, you’d be stuck in the middle of the ocean with literally, actually nothing.

Also, maybe it’s coming on a bit strongly, but… you trust him. Already. It’s weird and irrational and probably stupid, but it’s true. There’s just something about him that makes you want to know him, that’s telling you that there’s more in him than he might be trying to show you. You can’t help but wonder what might be hiding behind that brilliant smile, those sharp teeth, that silver tongue.

(You’re particularly interested in what else he might be able to do with said tongue, but that’s neither here nor there.)

(What can you say? Can you be blamed, for wanting to properly kiss the beautiful mer who saved your life? No? Exactly.)

“‘M sorry,” you hum softly, even though you’re sure the words are beginning to slur beyond recognition. “Don’t wan’ be rude.”

“I don’t mind you snoozing, sweetheart. You need the rest.” Careful fingers stroke across your skin, rubbing warm, soothing patterns into your back as a tiny bit of that familiar mischief creeps back into his tone. “I’d rather tire you out myself.”

The current riffles through his hair again, and you laugh quietly as he has to shake his head like a puppy to get it out of his eyes. “Close your eyes, little guppy,” he says, bending down to press a chaste, gentle kiss to your cheek. “It’s alright. I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

You nod drowsily, already turning to bury your face against his chest. “Okay.”

With a distinctly satisfied little huff, he begins to swim in earnest, tucking you more tightly against his body as you drift off.

(Falling asleep to the sound of church bells, ringing in your ears. Why does this feel so… familiar?)

It’s… strange. Here you are, flung into an unfamiliar world in an unfamiliar body, putting all your trust in a total stranger with a pretty smile and a promise of safety. By all logic, you should be terrified out of your mind.

Even with your eyes closed, you can still see the green-blue glow that follows you two, twisting and curling through the water in your wake. Isn’t it funny, how these things turn out? All your life, you’ve been running - is this where you’ve been running to?

You should hope that the waves might bring you the fate you seek.

Well, if this is the fate the voice was talking about, you can’t say you mind. A fairy tale of your very own - a story that would make Captain Solaire proud. Curled up in Gavin’s arms, letting the soft swishes of his tail lull you to sleep, you’re perfectly at ease.

“Sleep well, darling.”

Oh, and say hello to Vindemiator for me.

this is an original work by @gingerbreadmonsters - please do not repost or misattribute

masterlist

#redacted asmr #redacted audio #redacted fluff #redacted gavin #redacted freelancer #redacted fic #ginger writes #gingerbreadmonsters

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punks-never-die205 · 9 months

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Passing Fascination

Fem Reader x Yandere!Eustass Kid

CW: kidnapping, yandere Eustass Kid, violence, dubious consent, imprisonment, abuse, swearing, sex, group sex, dark content kids I am not messing around with this ♥

Summary: Three Rivers Island was a unique island on the Grand Line. It had only two rivers, but those two rivers divided the island into thirds. One far bank was tightly controlled by Marines, the other far bank was controlled by pirates unofficially, and the center section was controlled by merchants - who welcomed both Pirates and Marines.

You grew up on Three Rivers, taking care of yourself with whatever jobs you could find. Port savvy and sassy enough to keep pirates inline, you're a barmaid at the local pirate-favored tavern. When Kid and his gang come into port you're pretty sure that it's merely passing fascination between you both, but Kid seems to have other ideas.

Chapter 1: That Night, This Morning

You balanced the large tray on the edge of the table, passing out drinks as the masked first-mate stood up and helped you pass them around. “Your starting round of ale, gentlemen.” You say with a smirk. The captain rolls his golden eyes and groans while the other crew members laugh.

“That’s gonna stick, huh?” Eustass Kid grumbles. “I told you sweetheart, we ain’t gentle.”

You tuck the tray under your arm and give him a crooked smile. “Could’ve fooled me, Red.” You say with a wink. “Whatcha boys having tonight?”

Kid leans forward, he’s a little irritated by the nickname, but he hasn’t explicitly told you to stop using it. “You on the menu tonight?”

“I’m only on the menu the day before.” You answer smoothly, giving him a sly smile.

“The day before what?” Wire asks, walking into your trap.

“The day before someone asks.” You answer. It only takes a second before the table bursts out laughing. You get the crew’s orders as the ruckus dies down, even getting a begrudging order from Eustass Kid.

You wake up slowly. You had fallen asleep so hard that it was almost hard to get yourself moving, but you had to get to work so you needed to get up. Hard as you slept, you must not have overslept, because your room was dark, and the shaky place you called home wasn’t light-proof.

Something pinged in the back of your mind as you pushed yourself upright, but you couldn’t sort out what it was in your morning haze. Your clothes were –

Wait.

Clothes?

You grab at your shirt as you sit up fully. You rarely went to bed in anything, it was too hot on the island even at night, and you couldn’t afford a fan to stay cool. But you were still in your clothes from your date with Kid.

The evening continues on without anything else of note happening. Once you’re done entirely and heading home – thank the seas you weren’t stuck closing – you step out into the night air and see Eustass Kid waiting for you.

None of his other crew was around, and he wasn’t hiding in the shadows. He was a massive guy, and far more than just a little intimidating, but he seemed to be doing everything he could to appear less so. Something about the effort alone makes you relax.

“What’s got you waiting out here, captain?” You inquire, looking up and down the street before stepping closer.

He gives you a look that pointedly answers your question and you can’t stop the nervous chuckle that escapes you.

“What time is it?” He questions, cracking his neck as he stretches a little.

“Mm, it was about 11:40pm when I walked out. Can’t be much later than that.”

“Perfect.” He says with a grin, coming over to you and stopping just far enough away you didn’t have to crane your neck to see his face. “I can put my order in for you for tomorrow then.”

“You – can… you…” You stammer a few times, feeling the heat rush up into your face. “I – I’m… flattered.” You take a step back, and clear your throat. “But… I don’t want to be anyone’s port-whore or port-girl or whatever. I… I have a very strict no-sailors rule.” You insist, waving a hand in front of yourself.

“… Just for a meal then.” Eustass concedes, giving you a look and a grin that makes your heart flutter in your chest. “Let me treat you. Is there a fancy place you like in that middle island?”

“I, yes, but I mean…” You stammer. “I – I won’t budge, Mr. Eustass. I don’t want you to think I’m u-using you.”

“Using me?” Kid looks amused.

“For a… for a f-free meal, I mean.” You say apologetically. “The… the Avant Garde is an aptly named restaurant, with prices to match.”

He steps toward you, kneeling before he reaches out and brushes your cheek with the back of his finger. “No one uses me,” he says softly. “One meal. A second if you enjoy yourself. I won’t force my way into your pants.” He gives you a toothy grin. “It’s no good if you’re not begging me for it.”

As you’re more alert now, you realize what was bothering the back of your mind earlier. The room wasn’t just dark, it was windowless, and the soft rocking sensation was another problem.

You were not in your room.

The room was dark, but it wasn’t completely devoid of light. A transponder snail – the type for playing recordings – was sitting on a desk not too far away. It wasn’t looking at you, it was just projecting a blank image onto the wall, which created a bit of light in the room. Aside from the snail you were alone.

It smelled a little of oil, but mostly of oak and liquor. There was a subtle scent of ocean water, but the room was dry and the scents were crisp – clean.

Getting out of bed as your eyes adjusted, you stepped around the room carefully. There were shelves of books built into the walls with bars across them. Not in a way to stop anyone from getting to the books, but you assumed a way to keep them in place when the waters got choppy. It looked like there used to be more in the room, as though it was missing chairs and small knickknacks and other things that usually made a room look lived in.

You weren’t sure if things were removed to tidy the room, or if they were removed because of you, but you were fairly certain that you’d been kidnapped.

The steady rocking was unmistakable, and you knew for certain at least that you were on a ship. Your heart was nearly in your stomach, and your stomach was by no means steady the more you came to realize, but you walked toward the doors to the room regardless.

You put a hand on the door handle, taking a deep breath. What would you do if it opened? You didn’t know the layout of any ship, what good would leaving the room do? If you could find a room with a window you could jump into the ocean. You had no idea how long the ship had been at sea, but every moment pulled you further from your island, you were certain of that much.

No part of you ached. No one had, as far as you could sense, touched you. Aside from whatever it took to get you on this ship in the first place. You were being treated kindly, but that was irrelevant right now.

Waiting in here did you no good so you put pressure on the handle and winced as it slowly rotated, allowing you to crack the door open. Light from the hallway spilled in, and you gave your eyes a moment to adjust before opening it wide enough to step out in the hall.

The quiet was a little unnerving, but you’d take whatever graces you were given. You strained your hearing to gather any useful sounds as you moved quickly and quietly down the hall. You were still in your clothes from the date, minus your shoes, but the shoes were noisy so you were okay without them. You were just grateful you’d opted for a nice shirt and some capri pants for your date. Shuffling around in a dress would’ve been a hassle.

You could hear the sounds of people sleeping as you worked your way down the hall. You didn’t want to open the door to an occupied room, so you continued onward. Eventually, you came to a door with a window in it – moonlight hitting the wall from outside.

It was still dark outside, which meant that most of the crew would likely be asleep, and not just a few loud snorers recovering from a night shift. You stopped by the door, cursing your height, and inability to see out the window effectively. If someone was watching the door, it would be better to just walk out of it and take stock of what you could as fast as you could. Otherwise, you’d end up pinned before you could make it onto the deck.

Stepping through the door you stepped around and took in what you could. A mostly empty, broad deck, with what looked like a few people resting up against the railings. The moon was bright, and you were glad your clothes were fairly dark in color, if you’d gone with something pastel you’d be lit up like a beacon compared to everything else.

You didn’t want anyone to notice you until you were within leaping distance of the rail. You were currently the smallest thing on this ship, you were sure of it.

These men were big – wide, tall, full of muscles and scars and spikes and leather and ostentatious furs. Even the women in the crew fit the aesthetic. These looked like people who could level a tavern because they had a good time, and then leave enough money to rebuild the place better because they wanted to come back later to a better time.

And woe to the tavern owner not able to comply.

But their behavior was keeping the other pirate crews in line by default. Eustass “Captain” Kid and his crew were part of the worst generation, bounties in the millions. Bounties created a kind of hierarchy among pirates – most wouldn’t cause a commotion when higher bounties were around. They’d happily join in if those pirates started shit though, of that you could be sure.

Despite the higher-than-average collection of pirate vessels, the port thrived. It was one of the best places in the New World to stock up. Part of the island was tightly protected and controlled by the navy, but the other two thirds of it was very loose on the rules. Two rivers divided the island neatly.

The center island facilitated things between the two extremes, creating a unique situation all the way around. Pirates and Marines rarely ventured into the center area, a place almost exclusively controlled by merchants and couriers, with pockets deep enough to afford guards that could keep both marines and pirates in place. There were rumors some of the guards were ex Cipher Pol agents, or people who only quit being pirates when they barely survived facing the Emperors.

So, by that alone, there weren’t many people who could give them a hard time. Thus, a tidy balance was struck on the island – one that was mutually beneficial for everyone involved.

Three Rivers’ port was big, and busy, and if you were still anywhere near, you’d be able to at least find a passing ship. Statistically your chances were pretty good. You were a strong swimmer, and as you reached the rail you hadn’t heard anyone stirring or paying you any mind. Looking at the horizon, you were certain you could see the island.

You walked steadily alongside the rail looking for a lifeboat. The release would make noise, but so would you if you leapt overboard. You could get further faster in the rowboat, and once your arms gave out you could just ditch the boat and swim. It would take time for the larger boat to turn around and come after you.

You were nearly at the stern of the ship when you saw what you needed. A small, two-person at most and probably just large enough to hold a single crew member from this crew, rowboat with a quick release. Considering the vibe of the crew that you came to know over their week in port, you doubted it was for someone to run away. Whatever it was used for, it’s what you needed right now.

The wind was coming in straight from the island, and that put luck on your side. Turning into the wind was going to be hard for the big ship, and the wide arc would give you time enough to reach the shore.

Hopping into the boat you gave it as thorough a check as you could spare. Seeing no major damage or cracks, and finding two well-cared for oars, you braced yourself against the rails and kicked the quick release hard. It sent a jolt up your foot that made it throb, but you’d have to worry about any major injury later.

The boat dropped, hitting the water loudly.

Water curled up around the sides and splashed into the boat, but not enough to sink the small vessel and it buoyed onto the water’s surface easily enough. You gave your stomach half a second to settle from the intense drop and set both the oars.

The oars hit the water as the call rang out on the ship, and you stayed still. The ship was moving away from you under its own power, and the longer it took for the people on board to sort out what happened the better for you.

There was no sense in giving yourself away by rowing and making more noise.

Seconds stretched into a minute, two minutes, the ship was far enough away now that no one was going to be able to hook and haul you back in, so you started rowing. The commotion was covering your sounds at this point as well, and you were experienced at rowing.

You weren’t going to panic and work harder than you needed to. Setting your feet against the second bench you braced yourself and made long, slow, full strokes, letting what power you had from years of bartending and running row boats through the shores for testing help you.

Dip, twist, haul, twist, lift. It was almost soundless as you rowed the boat away.

It wasn’t noise that gave you away, eventually it was the moon.

“Straight off the stern!” Came the call. “Fuck, how’d she get so far?!”

You grin a little. The only change you make are the twists. There’s no need to set the oars in or lift them quietly. Rowing is power over speed though, so you didn’t pick up your pace. You didn’t hurt your foot too bad kicking the quick release either, it wasn’t bleeding enough to be seen and it only throbbed a little from the point of impact.

Considering you’d been kidnapped by pirates, your luck was winning through. Once you got ashore and got your bearings sorted you could work on trying to remember how you ended up on Eustass Kid’s ship.

For now though, you needed to stay focused on rowing as efficiently as possible.

#Passing Fascination #one piece fanfiction #eustass kid #yandere #dark content #dead dove do not eat #x reader #reader insert

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a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives · 8 months

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‘Our Flag Means Death’ Sneak Peek: Inside Blackbeard & Crew’s New Season 2 Looks

Breakups aren’t easy, but that’s especially true for the new and improved — depending on how you look at it — crew of the Revenge in Our Flag Means Death Season 2 premiering Thursday, October 5th on Max, as Blackbeard, a.k.a. Ed (Taika Waititi) continues to unravel after Gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) abandoned him in Season 1.

As with the end of Season 1, Blackbeard recedes even further into the persona of himself painted by various wanted posters. He’s sporting the same black eye makeup as he did in the first season’s finale and also influencing the way his crew looks while serving him aboard the vessel previously helmed by Stede. Above and below, we’re delving into some of those details with exclusive photos, exclusive interviews, and a brand-new clip teasing the dynamic aboard the Revenge.

In the sneak peek, below, times are tense for Frenchie (Joel Fry), Jim (Vico Ortiz), Fang (David Fane), and the newest member of the team, Archie (Madeleine Sami), as they observe Blackbeard’s second in command, Izzy Hands (Con O’Neill). As seen in the minute-and-a-half exchange, Izzy’s getting testy with the shipmates when they question orders to throw treasure overboard. “It is not your place to tell me what does or does not make sense. It is your job to follow my f**king orders,” Izzy spits, emotion welling in his makeup-darkened eyes.

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Fang is the first to note that Izzy doesn’t seem to be doing fine, and Jim steps forward to add, “Yeah, we think you’re in an unhealthy relationship with Blackbeard.” Additional tidbits from the crew include the fact that Blackbeard does “a lot of rhino horn” and he’s cut off more of Izzy’s toes.

In other words, Ed’s downward spiral is wreaking havoc on Izzy and the rest of the gang. But depending on how you feel about certain pirate looks, their exterior makeovers are sure to excite, regardless of the reasoning behind them.

“[Blackbeard] sort of has this Mad Max thing that we already established in Season 1, that’s so gorgeous and so unique to [him]. So I just wanted to up that ante,” costume designer Gypsy Taylor tells TV Insider. “We started with that Mad Max black leather violent side of him, and he’s sort of infiltrated this crew now. So they’ve taken it upon themselves to become Beard’s crew in whatever circumstance they’re in.”

“They’ve all taken to that color palette of the black leather and filth, which makes ’em look mean,” Taylor adds with a laugh, but makes it clear, “individually, I wanted to give [them each] a really unique look.” Teaming up with Taylor to accomplish that look is hair and makeup designer Nancy Hennah, who enhances the fantastic clothing ensembles viewers will see onscreen.

“We spent a lot of time working out what we were going to do for the raid makeups,” Hennah says of the Revenge crew. “Blackbeard in particular has lost it a bit and is really going off on a tangent, and the rest of the crew have kind of been pulled into that. We spent a lot of time working out what products were going to be good to emulate [something like the] grease found on the boat and they’ve smeared it on their faces.”

“Blackbeard is really struggling with having lost Stede and is leaning into that dark side, which is frightening for everybody else, but they’re sort of trying to play along,” Hennah continues. While fans may have already seen previously-released photos of the crew, Taylor and Hennah dug into their personal archives to share exclusive sketches and behind-the-scenes photos to provide a closer look at their process and each individual character’s look aboard the Revenge. Check them out below.

Our Flag Means Death, Season 2 Premiere, Thursday, October 5, Max

“With Jim, that’s a huge transformation,” Taylor says about star Ortiz’s onscreen evolution. “It was a really exciting one. We talked about it a lot with Vico, and I wanted to bring in a whole lot of ropes and things that they would’ve found on the ship to make an outfit out of and a giant fishhook that we made a belt out of.”

When it comes to the Revenge crew’s ensembles, there’s a focus on found materials doubling as clothing, “so sort of scrounging and finding elements around pirate ships that they could make a costume out of,” Taylor elaborates, noting that the pirates are being resourceful in “almost the same way that drag queens do.”

When it came to styling Ortiz in their costume alongside the other crew members, Hennah says, “Vico had a great new hairstyle, which we were really excited about, and we cut that early on in our testing phase. Then they had to hide [it].

Everywhere they went, they were wearing a hat.” It was all about “getting the right balance between the amount of hair on top and the amount of hair that we took [off] on the side,” she adds of Jim’s mohawk sported by Ortiz, which can be seen in the sketch and behind-the-scenes test photos.

Similar to Jim’s found fashion, Frenchie’s sporting an edgier look this season that is supposed to look like stolen wares from another pirate. “Because pirates steal a lot,” Taylor says, “they’ve quite often got cool things that they’ve stolen off of other pirates. And that’s where the inspiration for Frenchie’s jacket came.” As fans may recall, Frenchie found cats particularly terrifying in Season 1, so it makes sense that he’d emulate the feline, which has a motif on the back of his coat according to Taylor.

“Maybe he stole it from another pirate ship, and then he made it his own by putting this sort of ode to Desperately Seeking Susan on the back of his jacket with this rearing cat, which in the first season, the cat was very innocent lightly licking his paw, and now we’ve gone really manic and bad,” says Taylor.

Meanwhile, Blackbeard’s soft-spoken, but brutish when-needed crew member is enhancing his look from last season with some ornamental additions. “We didn’t want to change Fang too much, but I incorporated a whole lot of new elements to his costume,” Taylor teases. “So he’s got the teeth of sperm whales all around his necklace, and then he’s got walrus teeth coming out of his jacket. So he’s sort of made a new look based on animals that he might’ve found out in the open seas, like dead carcasses and things like that.”

This behind-the-scenes shot from Hennah offers a closer look at Fane’s Fang on set.

An exciting aspect of the season for Taylor and Hennah was the addition of Archie to the crew, giving them something new to craft. “Archie’s now part of the gang, and she’s just a badass,” Taylor gushes. “We figured she was sort of deep from the dark alleyways of New York in her sort of street punk aesthetic.”

One piece of Archie’s ensemble is an homage to one of Taylor’s favorite films, The Warriors. “She’s wearing a little Warriors red leather gang jacket,” Taylor shares, adding, “Her t-shirt is a really cool, very subtle print of Blackbeard’s wanted poster.” Why? “She’s a bit of a fan girl,” Taylor notes. “She really looks up to Blackbeard and how bad he is.”

When it comes to tattoos, Hennah says, “I try to talk about their personal heritage and where they’ve come from and if there’s anything that they want in terms of tattoos.”

For Sami, Hennah sought out designs with Fijian and Indian influence to reflect the actor’s personal heritage. “I approached a Henna artist, and we just got her to do a drawing of some designs,” Hennah reveals. “And then Madeline and a few of the other makeup team [members] and I spent about four or five hours just turning those little puzzle pieces into the tattoos.”

Sami loved her tattoos so much that Hennah says she was told Sami “is thinking about getting one of the tattoos for real.”

And when it comes to Izzy, he’s not changing things too much. “He’s just a man of his own. He wouldn’t really listen to Blackbeard,” Taylor says. “So there were very subtle things [that we were going to do], like adding studs to his gloves so that when he beat up people, it was a little bit more violent.

But in the end, we took it away. He’s enough of a badass on his own.” Ultimately, the only real change people will see on Izzy went the show returns is, “He got a bit dirtier from being at sea. We broke him down more, added a bit more sort of salt and all those crusty sort of overlays.”

When it comes to the crew’s man in charge, Blackbeard’s transformation has evolved a bit since viewers last saw him in Season 1. “I wanted to keep his leathers because pirates, as you see in Season 1, are at sea for a really long time. They don’t have a closet, unlike the Gentleman pirate Stede. So they’re always just wearing the same thing and getting dirtier and dirtier and dirtier.”

When a pirate dons a new garment though, it’s usually stolen. Such is the case for Blackbeard, according to Taylor: “We figured he’d stolen this black leather jacket in a raid, but he’d sort of made it his own in his own manic way, much [like] he’s done with the ship where [things are torn down and burned].”

Wanting to reflect the season’s production design in Blackbeard’s coat, Taylor says, “We burned it, and we ripped it, and we added six different belts to the sides that are holding it together, which would be like he murdered six pirates and stole their belts. And he’s started to collect a little bit more jewelry. So you’ll start to see some new rings and a little lovely pearl necklace that he’s stolen off of someone at the wedding party [seen in the teaser trailer] perhaps.”

As for Blackbeard’s makeup and hair, Hennah says, “We stuck mostly around his eyes. It just looked more sinister, and he was a lot more disheveled. He spends a lot of time this season wet, which is a bit of a nightmare when you’ve got beards and wigs and drying and getting back to dry. He has always had two wigs, and we got an extra one made this season as well because we were having to swap between wet and dry a lot.”

Apart from the extra wig, it was the tattoos that made up Blackbeard’s biggest makeup change. “We added quite a few tattoos,” shares Hennah. “I think in Season 1, he had around 24 tattoos, but at times this season, we were up to 30, and three of them were the big chest tattoo and then a brand new back tattoo. I worked with Dean Sacred at Sacred Tattoo for the big back tattoo design. He did a beautiful drawing for us of the skull with the snake coming out, the skull’s eyes with the snake crying.” As fans can see, the snake and skull sit above another tattoo with the words “Trust No One.”

Will he ever trust again after Stede left? Only time will tell.

Source: TV Insider

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #taika waititi #vico ortiz #david fane #con o'neill #joel fry #madeleine sami #Youtube

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theofficialpresidentoftheusa · 6 months

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Knowing that David Jenkins and the OFMD writers do stuff for the fans and quite possibly see fan theories/desires…………here are my dream plot lines for S3

-compilation of Ed and stede trying and failing to rebuild the shack, they end up needing everyone’s help to do it

-The inn becomes a home for all of them and they eventually turn the island into a resort where they all have their own thing (Jackie has a bar on the beach, wee John has a clothing shop, roach has a restaurant, etc)

-heist episode. Don’t care how you do it I just need some kind of fuckall elaborate pirate heist to happen

-Ed and stede attempted proposals (yes, multiple, which keep ending in misunderstandings or failures; the classic sitcom ‘try to do a big elaborate thing to propose, everything falls apart, it ends up being simple and sweet’)

-a very painful and prolonged and torturous death for Ricky <3 I do NOT want him to have anything quick and painless thank you! 🥰

-Ed and stede elaborate insane batshit wedding with many hijinks

-the obvious, has been said before, Mary and Doug and the kids ending up at Ed and Stede’s inn somehow

-The Gang Blows Up England

Feel free to add your season 3 wishlist plot points <3

#last one mostly a joke…..unless #ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #you know just spitballing #David Jenkins #she’s still talking about ofmd??? yeah baby I will forever 🫶

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eleni-cherie · 1 year

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among thieves ✨ || bts • pjm

- chapter 1.8

"what even am I to you? your rival, your lover, an obstacle or am I supposed to be your coffin?"

about two thieves who can't live with nor without each other. and a joint past that comes back to threaten them.

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masterlist: here

— genre: thief au, gangster comedy, adventure, romcom, humour, angst, fluff, very flirty jimin, friends/rivals/exes to lovers (it's complicated, ok?!) f2l e2l ex2l all members play a role in this story!

ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE. CHARACTERS NOT NECESSARILY LIKE THE REAL PERSONS. ALSO VERY UNREALISTIC PLOT LOL - JUST PRETEND READING A MANGA/COMIC OR WATCHING A FILM, REALLY.

SUGGESTIVE THEMES. MENTIONS OF VIOLENCE & BLOOD (BUT NOTHING TOO GRAPHIC, IT'S STILL A COMEDY!)

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The gang didn't waste any time. Climbing down the rock, they made their way around the bay to the old pirate ship. From up closer the signs of the timeson it being even clearer. It had surely lost the shiny glory it once had hundreds of years ago, it was only part of their imagination now. The ship's back was partially underwater while a big whole on the side was gracing the front part of it.

After a short dip in the water, they eventually reached it. The gigantic whole providing them with a good spot to climb up and get inside where everything was inclined due to the ship's prone posture, making navigating through the old wooden space rather difficult.

"Alright, where's the treasure now?" "Let's simply devide since it's such a big ship. And whoever finds it, calls the others." They nodded, everyone going seperate ways. Jimin went to the ship's bow towards crew's quaters, Arabella went to the back to the officer's quaters, Yoongi upstairs to the main deck and Taehyung decided to go downstairs to the supply decks.

Shoving some wooden boxes aside, Arabella opened the door to what looked like a small bedroom. Most furniture was decaying and covered by a thick layer of dust and dirt. She entered with help of her flashlight. The floor underneath her creaked with every step she took while scanning over the shelves and drawers when a wooden box on the desk caught her interest. She opened it carefully, afraid it might crumble into dust at a wrong move. Her eyes widening when seeing its content, beaming with joy. Inside was a pearl necklace with a golden pedant. The pedant itself decorated with countless tiny diamonds. She couldn't help but squeal happily, taking the necklace and putting it around her neck, covering it under her jacket. After roaming around the rest of the place, not able finding anything else of value she sighed and stood up straight. Brushing off the dust from over her clothes when suddenly hearing the clicking of a gun getting cocked behind.

"Not so fast, Arabella."

The blood in her vessels froze when hearing that voice again. It had been years. Over a decade actually, but even so she'd never forget it. She hadn't been able to, as much as she'd wished to.

"How did you even find this place?" She did her best in looking as unfazed as possible as her hands rose, although internally she was boiling with rage.

"It wasn't too hard," Kir smirked while pointing her gun at her, "While searching up the forest, we found the entrance to a tunnel. We simply followed your tracks, as you had also figured out the traps for us. So really, it wasn't hard to find this place." Arabella pressed her jaw together. Yeah, 'searching up'. Rather blowing up everything until randomly finding something. She began weighing out her options then. Concluding she needed some kind of distraction to be able reaching for her berretta. "I wonder if my men took care of your friends yet.." the older women wondered our loud then, "They surely did."

Arabella's face remained stern, no sign of emotions. She knew she had to keep her cool and stay focused if she wanted to get out there alive. Not exposing any weaknesses or letting her mind get clouded in any way. And she tried her best not to think about the possibility that Kir's men did 'take care' of the guys. Of course Jimin, Taehyung and Yoongi were skilled, she knew first hand, but Kir's men were in the majority. However, she needed to suppress these kind of thoughts. She couldn't allow herself to think of Jimin and the possibility of him - "Anyway," Kir interrupted her thoughts and much to her surprise, lowered her gun. "I actually got a proposal for you."

Arabella arched a brow at her. "I doubt a good one," she snorted.

"Oh, I think it's a pretty good one," Kir smirks, "I don't think you'll be able refusing it." "Try me." Clicking her tongue, the older woman shrugged non-chalantly. "What about you rejoining us? Would make all of our lives easier, don't you think? No hunting you anymore, no attempts of eliminating you.. Doesn't that sound tempting?" "It'd be a cold day in hell if that ever happened." Kir shook her head disappointedly. Humming then. "Not even if we told you your real name?" She saw a small sparkle in her eyes, taking it as a hint to continue. "Tell you all about your parents. Their names and where they live.. How about that?" A smile filled with insincere sympathy spread over her thin lips. "It sounds nice, doesn't it? To finally know where you come from. Your origin. I know first hand how much you've always wanted that."

For a moment, Arabella's mind went blank. It was true after all, she'd wished for an opportunity like this for all her life. Having forgotten everything about her past life and identity almost killing her at times. With the only remaining memory of her parents being the silver bracelet around her wrist and her name on it. There had indeed been a time where she would've done anything to gain her memory and past life back. However, she knew it was too late now. Having this information would be useless now. She could never go back to that short-lived life she once had. It'd be impossible to ever go back to that, especially if the price for the information was to rejoin the organisation that made her lose this life in the first place. The cause of her getting ripped out of it. Perhaps it was better this way. Arabella Valentine had now become her true self. Her true identity. The one she'd carried for most part of her life. "No, thanks," she eventually replied with a bored yawn then. Catching the older woman off-guard. Her gun raising again. "Well, then. How about I don't kill your friends instead if you return? Think about it. Either all of you die or you all stay alive. And all you gotta do is join the organisation again." "You know what, you must think I'm pretty dumb for believing anything that comes from your mouth," Arabella retorted then, getting fed up with her lies. She knew Kir would kill them either way, no matter her choice. Only giving her false promises and hope. "There's only one person in this world I trust and it sure as hell ain't you. So go ahead, shoot me! Let's get over with this. Because I'd rather die than having to work for you ever again."

The sudden tremor of a loud explosion caused the ship to quake in that moment. Kir losing her balance, which Arabella immediately took advantage of. With a highkick she threw her opponent's gun into a corner. However, Kir wasn't just anyone. The two started physically fighting without their weapons. And although Arabella had been trained by these people, Kir managed to pin her down after all. Reaching for her gun. "Silly girl. You should've taken the offer." And with that she pointed at Arabella underneath her foot whp struggling freeing herself. "Y-you can't kill me. Isn't that why you ordered Jimin to do it?" Kir shrugged, her lips tucking into a devilish grin. "And who'd snitch me? You? You'll be de-" Another commotion. Smoke entering the room as shouts and yells echoed from upstairs. "Fck, what's going on?" Kir muttered through gritted teeth, taking a glance behind her. In that moment, Arabella raised her legs and twisted them around her, toppling her and snatching the gun away in a swift move. "Gun powder, you idiot," Arabella said then and got up taking out her berretta as well. Both guns aiming at Kir as she started walking backwards towards the door. "The ship must still be full of it." She shot a few times, purposely missing her and ran off while Kir took cover. Disappearing into the smoke.

Unknown sillouettes were running through the corridors and she pressed herself against the wall to stay unnoticed. It was obviously Kir's men. They were shouting and yelling. The word 'fire' having fallen as they panickedly hurried upstairs.

A fire, of course, Arabella thought and coughed. Cautiously making her way to the deck. Some of her idiot men must've shot, igniting the gun powder that was spread all over the place.

As she reached the main deck, she heard another smaller explosion from the bow and the ship trembled underneath her. Kir's men were jumping off the burning wreck, one after another into the water in an attempt to escape. Arabella looked around then, not able spotting anything but flames in the further back. She bit her lip as a gleam of fear washed over her before she shook her head. Running her hands through her orangy-dyed hair. Pull yourself together, she ordered herself and she made her way to the rear despite the fire. Seeing a big hole in the wooden ground, her eyes caught something shiny down there behind the curtain of smoke. Taking a deep breath she jumped down, coughing when the smoke hit her lungs. It being must stronger down there. And she covered her lips with her hand, taking a look around. Not able containing her awe at the sight of the objects around her.

There it was. The treasure.

The thing that brought them there in the first place. The thing that had caused all this. The whole ship's hold filled with golden objects, artefacts, coins and jewels. And despite this having been the main reason for all this journey - from the document to the sapphire to the organisation hunting them again, the puzzles, Jimin getting shot, abducted and conditioned to kill her and them crossing the whole globe in search for it - depite all they had gone through, her heart sank when seeing it all now. Because right in that moment, she couldn't care less for all this gold.

Another cough escaped her lips and she began making her way deeper inside, through the piles of treasures, broken boxes and cannons. Small fires burning in between of gold. Eventually she reached a big door with ornaments blocking her way and she tried kicking it open, even more smoke hitting her then. "Guys?" she called out, waving with her hands to get the smoke out of her face. The room contained even more treasures and was decorated with golden statues, shining dully behind the smoke. Something cold prickled her side for a second when she heard Jimin's voice and her heart eased. "Bella?" The metallic tip instantly disappeared, Taehyung stepping out from the smoke. "Fck, Arabella. I almost shot you," he sighed and slid his gun back into its holster. "Nice way of welcoming your rescuer," she huffed to which he rolled his eyes. "Thought you were one of these jerks," he shrugged then. Yoongi appearing beside him then. "Yeah, they tied us up and locked us in here." "Bella, are you alright?" Jimin asked worried, shoving his friends aside to see her from close up, making them frown. He grabbed her shoulders as his eyes were looking at her concerned. Making sure she wasn't injured. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she calmed him with a smile, "But we should leave. The whole place will explode any minute."

They followed her out. Another concussion swaying them to the side and they hit some of the golden objects. More smoke clouding their vision than before now and they crouched to avoid breathing in too much. Yoongi cut some boxes that had turned and blocked their way. Suddenly gunshots were fired through the smoke. Everyone crouching behind the mountains of gold.

"I know you're somewhere here, Arabella!" Kir's yells echoed from inside the grey fume, followed by some gunshots. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" "This maniac will blow us all up," Yoongi muttered quietly, glancing at Arabella behind him. "She's too obsessed with you." her jaw clenched as her glance fell to the ground and she frowned. "You're right," she said then and took a deep breath, making a move to stand up. "I'll try destracting her and buy you guys some ti-" "The hell are you talking about!" Jimin hissed and grabbed her arm, pulling her back down. "Don't you dare get out there!" More gunshots were heard along with a small explosion going off near them. "She won't let us go," she argued, pulling her arm out of his grip, "I am the reason she's still here and hasn't fled like the rest of them. This ship will explode any minute, Jimin, either we all die or you let me buy you som-" "Bella, no! You know I won't let you, that'd be pure suicide." Her eyes were holding some kind of sorrow as she bent forward, placing a kiss on his cheek. It was one of those moments again. Those inescapable moments where they reached a standoff and the possibility of them not making it was high. Not all of them at least. And Arabella knew this, even if Jimin was still in denial. Her lips curled up into a smirk then as she pulled back. ' "Call it devotion." And with that she grabbed her berretta and ran out, disappearing into the smoke before Jimin could even react. His hands failing in catching her.

"She has the guts, I'll admit that," Yoongi said in an almost admiring tone, making Jimin frown. "That's not having guts, that's being irrational!" he yelled frustrated and pulled his walter ppk out. "I'll go after her, you two leave." "You know we won't do that," Taehyung said sternly. "Besides one against four is better than only two." Jimin wasn't able arguing with that. But he had to. Giving his friends a sad look. "No, you gotta make it back safely to Cassandra." Taehyung's lips parted for a moment. A scowl spreading on his features then and he shook his head. "No. She wouldn't deserve a coward." After all, she was someone who always put others before herself and helped anyone in need. How would he be able to ever look her in the eyes again if he bailed on his friends in a moment like this. "Look, this is something between me, her and that damn organisation. You two have nothing to do with it and just got sucked into it." "Cut it out already," Yoongi scoffed and got up. The grip around his sword firmer. "We won't leave, whether you like it or not. We chose to get sucked into it. So let's not waste any more time!" Jimin was about to object when another gunshot was heard, making him instantly jump up. His heart racing fast as he looked at the direction the woman he loved had disappeared to. Praying she had been the one firing that shot. "Come, let's save your girl," Taehyung smiled and patted his shoulder. A firm grip around his magnum. And Jimin simply nodded with a determined look. Gripping his gun tighter as they ran into the thick smoke as well.

Their vision got clearer as they went further due to the light peeking from the hole above them and they eventually spotted Arabella in a close scuffle with Kir. Pushing away Kir's hand from her as the other was trying to shoot. Instead hitting the wooden ceiling. Provoking another fire to break out. The ship beginning shifting again and the two women slipped to the side. Hitting a pile of coins. Jimin's eyes quickly wandered around, catching a net full of gold dangling close above them. Only held by a thin rope. "I got a plan," he said then, glancing over his shoulder to the other two, "When they get under that net, I'll push Bella away and in that moment you'll cut the rope." Their glance followed the direction of his eyes, seeing the construction and they nodded. Jimin saw Arabella holding her head as she got up, probably having hit it. She was walking in the direction her gun had fallen to, not noticing Kir behind her also getting up while holding her gun and heaving it towards her. His eyes widening in panic and without thinking much, he started running and pushed Arabella away. Landing on the ground with her in the same moment that Yoongi cut the rope. And the net filled with precious golded objects dropped right on Kir, crushing her.

Arabella felt her head spinning, confused of what had just happened. Her eyes slowly blinking open then, growing round when seeing Jimin on top of her, shielding her body. Their noses touching. He didn't say anything. He was just silently looked at her with an intense glare while propping his arms on each side of her face. As if his eyes urged her to never do something as dumb as this ever again. And she swallowed while they remained like this for a second more, just holding each other's gaze. Slowly, he began to lift himself and got up, his eyes never leaving hers. Holding his hand out for her, which she took without saying a word. Arabella faced Yoongi and Taehyung then, giving them a small nod. "Thanks." They gave her a small nod back. Nothing more being needed to say.

She took a last glance on the inanimate Kir underneath the gold, an overwhelming feeling of liberation and devastation flowing in her chest before she turned her back to her. And they made their way upstairs onto the main deck.

Yoongi was the first one climbing onto the ship's railing. "God, I hate getting wet," he whined and squeezed his eyes shut before taking a deep breath. Eventually letting himself fall into the cold water with a splash. Taehyung following behind, seemingly less hesitating. Landing right next to him. And the two began swimming towards the cave's opening. Jimin and Arabella climped the railing up as well. Standing there and watching them for a moment when Arabella suddenly took his hand. Squeezing it firmly, catching him off-guard. And he looked at her with raised brows. "If we actually make it out alive.." she began and her eyes found his. ".. and we reach a point when we can't do this kind of job anymore.. let's give it another shot." "You mean.." He couldn't finish his sentence, being too taken aback by her unexpected offer. She simply nodded. And he smiled, squeezing her hand back and guiding it to his lips. Kissing it. "I promise."

And they jumped. Diving into the cold sea water.

They swam out of the cave, reaching the rocky shore where the other two were already waiting for them. Leaving the cave behind them as they walked out into the setting sun. Kir's men, or at least the ones who had managed escaping, were nowhere to be seen. Probably having left already, not minding whatever happened to their boss.

By now all four were quite exhausted, however, they couldn't just rest now. They needed to get back to their car and get the hell out of nowhere and back to the city.

As they returned to the forest and they stamped through and they chopped their way through the undergrowth, the sound of a detonation in the distance caught their attention. It must've been a big one to be heard all the way from the cave. And they were even able to sense a slight vibration in the air. A swarm of flushed birds flying out of the trees. It was most likely the ship, getting wrecked completely now and leaving it undiscovered for some more decades or even centuries.

Taehyung's hand slid into his pocket then, taking out a golden coin and holding it against the light. "Got myself a small souvenire," he chuckled proudly and observed it from all sides. The engravings dating it to 1708. "Oh, same," Yoongi said, revealing a gold coin as well, "So this whole adventure wasn't totally for nothing." Jimin laughed out loudly, revealing a third gold coin. "I like how your minds work!" The three snickering happily over the coincidence, making Arabella roll her eyes. "Noobs," she said and zipped her jacked down. Revealing the pearl necklace she had got herself. Causing their laughter to abrubtly die down. And they stared at her bewildered before Taehyung snorted. "Of course, why am I not surprise." "When did you even.." She shook her head at them disappointedly and giggled. "Noobs."

After awhile they eventually reached their jeep, exhaling in relief since they wouldn't have to search for it in the dark and they opened its doors when the clicking of unlocking guns behind them was heard. "Hands up, you're under arr- What the fck happened to you?"

Jimin groaned, turning around with his hands up. Seeing none other than Seokjin, Jungkook, Skylar and some other officers there. "Seriously, pops? Very bad timing." "No really, what happened to you? You look -" "Like crap?" Taehyung finished, glancing at his partners. Bruises, cuts, scratches and dirt covering their bodies and clothes, "Yeah, we also feel like that." Jungkook couldn't help but stifle a laugh at this, to which Seokjin only coughed annoyed. "I wanted to say 'beaten up' but I assume 'crap' also fits." "Oh, you know.. some traps here, some exploding pirate ship there.." Jimin shrugged. "So I assume those guys we caught earlier weren't total lunatics then," Jungkook mumbled, peeking at Seokjin for confirmation. "Yeah, seems so.." The four exchanged a look. "You caught some guys?" The older agent nodded as he put handcuffs on Jimin. "Yeah, we were here since city residants reported explosions and smoke across this area to local police. And we knew you guys had something to do with this. And then we saw those suspicious vehicles racing through the forest. So we obviously stopped them." "And arrested those men," Skylar added as she handcuffed Arabella. Seemingly enjoying it a little as she was smiling while doing so. In a way it was her revenge for Mexico City.

"Good. You know these guys were from -" "That ominous crime organisation?" Seokjin laughed out. "Yeah, we figured that out. Kim and Jung from special victims and organised crime are taking care of them, while we take care of you guys. And Valentine? The two would also like to ask you some questions." Arabella just mumbled a 'whatever' as Skylar lightly pushed her to the direction of the van, the rest following behind.

"Seriously, pops.." Jimin sighed then as Seokjin led him to the van, "You know we'll just escape anyway. Why not skipping the whole 'arresting' part?" "Oh, c'mon. What kind of interpol agent would I be if I'd make it so easy for you guys? I gotta do my job, too, after all." "Today was really tiring though. Just make an exception." "Oh don't worry, you can rest as much as you want in your detention cells." "Will we at least get some food?" Yoongi asked then, feeling his stomach growling, "I'm starving." "Yeah, yeah. You'll also get food. Don't worry," Seokjin ensured him as they got pushed inside the van and closed the doors.

And the four sat there, exchanging glances as the vehicle began moving.

And they laughed.

What an ironically lame ending to such an adventure.

However, the next one was right around the corner, waiting for them already.

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next chapter: epilogue here

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