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laundrybiscuits · 1 year

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(purify our misfit ways tag | AO3)

So, Eddie goes back to Scoops. What else is he gonna do? He’s not sure if Robin's aware of it or not, but he’s not going to be saying no to her for a while; at least not until he stops feeling guilty about certain things that they’re not ever talking about again.

He looks at himself in the water-flecked bathroom mirror and says, out loud: “He’s just a guy. Just a typical…guy. You can be normal about this. Be fucking normal for once, Munson.” Then he grabs his keys and hurls himself out the front door before he can talk himself out of it.

It’s usually a twenty-minute drive, but he makes it in a tight sixteen. He thinks if he slows down enough to give himself any kind of excuse to weasel out of this, he will. Plus, the less time he spends thinking about it, the less likely he is to fuck this up for Robin somehow. Because—right, yeah, this whole thing is about Robin, and how Steve’s still the kind of asshole who won’t take no for an answer.

Actually, getting mad about that is helping Eddie get a grip on reality. It doesn’t matter how hot the guy is, if he doesn’t fucking listen when he’s told to back off. But it's not like Eddie can come roaring in like a jealous boyfriend, that’ll just make things a million times worse; he’d love to be able to follow Robin’s lead on this, but if he knows her at all, she doesn’t have any kind of plan aside from pointing at Eddie and going see? Not boyfriend material.

Which, yeah, obviously he’s not. He doubts Steve will see it that way, though—probably thinks Eddie’s a perfect freaks-and-geeks match for Robin, with her refusal to be any of the things that Hawkins High rewards. So, Eddie needs a plan, and he needs one fast, because he can't keep sitting in the parking lot like this, stewing in his own indecision.

Fuck it. He'll have to improvise, he's good at improvising. It'll be fine. It has to be fine.

He sidles into Scoops Ahoy, sees Steve and Robin bickering, and doesn't immediately tap out. That's progress.

"Robin," he says, nodding. "And…Harrington."

"Hi. Eddie." Steve looks really fucking uncomfortable, and why wouldn't he be?

The three of them stand there in a weird suspended tableau, until Robin throws her hands in the air. "Oh my god, just get over it already. Eddie got spooked last time when his high school nemesis appeared out of nowhere like a total psycho, and he was too embarrassed to come back until now. Okay? Everyone caught up yet?"

"He was not my nemesis! Christ, Robin!" Eddie sputters.

"Um, nemesis?" says Steve at the same time.

Eddie glances over at Steve, feeling a kind of kinship in the face of Hurricane Buckley.

"I wasn't…your nemesis, was I?" asks Steve. He sounds a little confused, and Eddie wonders uncharitably if he knows what the word nemesis means.

"No, Harrington, you were just generally a dick. My true nemesis is and always has been the collective insanity of Hawkins High itself. The esprit de corps, so to speak."

"God, I see why you and Robin get along so well," sighs Steve. Eddie suddenly remembers that he's here for a purpose, and he currently appears to be failing very badly at that purpose.

"Yeah, well…" he shrugs. "All I'm saying is, I'm willing to live and let live. It's a character flaw."

"So, what, we're just gonna forget high school and be friends now?"

"Whoa whoa whoa," says Eddie, alarmed. He's about to add nobody said anything about friends, but his Spidey-sense is going off. It doesn't actually take fictional-level superpowers to hear the way King Steve doesn't sound as disgusted by that prospect as he should be.

Robin had mentioned something about Steve being sort of a trainwreck, but Eddie had (unfairly, as it turns out) written that off as Robin blowing stuff out of proportion like she does sometimes. He does it too, that's why he knows not to take her at face value too much.

But it seems like maybe if anything, she was underplaying how fucked Steve's life must be right now, to have that poorly hidden thread of eagerness in his voice when he talks about being friends with Eddie "the Freak" Munson.

What the actual fuck.

All of this flashes through Eddie’s head in a jumbled rush, just quick enough to stop him from inadvertently completely crushing Steve’s spirit or whatever, so instead he just says, "I mean, forgetting high school's not so much an option for me. Buckley might not have mentioned, but you're looking at a genuine two-time total failure here, man."

Great. Real smooth move there, Munson. Never a bad idea to announce how much of a loser you are to cute boys as soon as possible. Once his obligation to Robin is discharged here, Eddie is going to move to Siberia and live in a hole in the ground. He bets it's nice and quiet there, with a minimum of indecently tight blue sailor suits that clearly have mind-altering powers.

But hey, on the bright side, he might be able to salvage his primary quest here after all. Maybe if he just leans into what a fuckup he is, Steve will stop seeing him as a viable match for Robin’s genius brain.

"You’re not—" Steve is starting to say, weakly, and good god does Eddie not want to hear how that sentence ends. He cuts Steve off by spinning around, arms outflung, only colliding a little bit with a nearby chair.

"Oh, but I am, Ser Harrington. Scourge of teachers, they call me. Object lesson to degenerate slackers everywhere. Blackboards quake and tender schoolgirl hearts break as I stalk the halls which have ensnared me lo these many years. Decades in the future, my agéd corpse will be found within the walls of Hawkins High while my spectral remains wail: run far away, lest the Munson Curse befall ye too."

Steve stares at Eddie for a second, then bursts out laughing. To Eddie’s consternation, it doesn't sound mocking or derisive at all. "Shit, you're funny, man. You remind me of—of a friend. You would like him. He's kind of a shit sometimes, but you'd like him."

"If you're telling me I remind you of Hagan, I'm gonna drown myself in the Raspberry Ripple," says Eddie, genuinely horrified.

"No! God, no. You're not anything like—no. I was thinking of my, uh, my friend Dustin."

"And…who is this friend of yours who is perchance my long-lost twin?" Eddie frowns, trying to scour his memory for any Dustins at Hawkins High.

"Not—" Steve's going suspiciously pink. He looks away in poorly feigned nonchalance. Eddie wants to dip him in chocolate and eat him with a spoon. "Friend isn’t, I guess…he's really just a kid I looked after for a while. Like as a favor, I mean. I was—it doesn’t matter. Anyway, he's a cool kid, that's all. Kinda hyper, like you."

That is…a lot to digest. Eddie doesn't really know where to start, but luckily Robin’s there to pick up his slack.

"Oh my god, are you comparing Eddie to one of the infants you let use the staff corridor last week? Is that what's happening?"

"No!" yelps Steve. "...he's not even in town right now."

"But he is in some way affiliated with those toddlers," drawls Robin, not really a question.

Eddie cocks his head. "I would like significantly more information about any alleged toddlers I may be accused of resembling, please."

"Christ, how are there two of you," groans Steve.

"Man, you keep comparing me to other people and I'm gonna start getting offended," says Eddie. "You've known me for about five minutes at this point. No," he adds, seeing Steve start to protest. "High school does not count. I will bet you a million bucks you don't remember me at all from high school."

Steve frowns. "Of course I remember you. You were kinda hard to miss."

"Fucking liar," says Eddie, rolling his eyes, but he grins so Steve knows it's not that big a deal.

"No, you were in the play, a couple years ago," says Steve. "You were…the magic guy, right? The, uh, elf king."

"Close enough," says Eddie, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels, a little dazed. Because yeah, he'd been Oberon that year, he just—really hadn't thought Steve Harrington had paid any attention to the drama nerds at all, much less remembered the specific part Eddie had played. "Shit. Guess I owe you a million bucks."

Steve smiles, bright and boyish and also kind of annoyingly smug, and leans his elbows on the counter. "Guess so. I'm willing to figure out an installment plan, if you wanna start coming around more often. Bet Robin would appreciate it."

“Right,” says Eddie. “Look. I don’t know what you think’s going on, but Buckley’s like a sister to me.”

“And Eddie’s like a sister to me too,” Robin chimes in, smiling all sweet and venomous.

“Okay,” says Steve. “You can still come visit her, can’t you? Free ice cream samples, man, you can’t turn that shit down.”

This is a trap, clearly, but Eddie can’t find it in himself to do anything but give in.

“Yeah, okay then,” he sighs. “Keep me sugared up and I’ll keep on coming around like a bad penny. You two are gonna be so sick of me by the end of the summer, that’s the Munson Guarantee.”

#fic: purify our misfit ways #I wrote a lot of this on my phone which was an interesting experience #I think the smaller screen makes me less focused on the scene as a whole and more stream-of-consciousness #also just super bad at judging length. this is 1.6k. why.#I guess this is just the fic that has hella rough tumblr drafts

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hazbincalifornia · 4 months

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Hazbin Episode 1 Liveblog

In order to avoid this post getting Way Too Long, I'm going to make one post for episode one, and one for episode two!

I will say, I'm kinda sad we don't have a 'proper' theme song/intro, just the little jingle :( I do get it, but ah well.

Oh my god the commercial is even better in full.

How the fuck did he get Charlie to keep the name if it was still him???

Al's so fucking offended they're making him use a camera he made it one giant middle finger. I love it.

The voices are definitely going to take a bit of adjustment. It's probably because I've rewatched the pilot a zillion times, though.

I like how Alastor didn't even look at Angel. "Never going to happen!"

Awww, Charlie's ringtone for her dad is cute.

I DO really love Keith David as Husk right away, he suits the role perfectly.

"I like being forced!" and I love you, you weird little gremlin. Hoping for some good CNC stuff with her now, tbh. She'd be fun for it.

The flat delivery of 'crack is expensive' made me wheeze out loud.

Aaaa and here we go, full animation for Happy Day!

Why... why is the 'shoving barbed wire in your hole' guy an imp. Is that, like, his job or something. Is he just an asshole?

Ooooo, that was VAGGIE singing the 'bloodthirsty and deranged?' line? More fodder for her being a fallen angel/exterminator.

'Helluva post' for the mail. Ha.

This just made me fully realize how much the cannibal colony probably considers the post-extermination like a feast day.

Awww, the music note background is a fun touch.

Something about the fact that the 'touch my parts!' guy is a completely shapeless slug-creature instead of just keeping the dick offscreen makes it funnier.

Oh, I love Adam. The fun kind of punchable prick.

The animation seems a bit... overacted? I've noticed it all along but with Vaggie in the scene where she talks about making a new commercial especially. It sort of felt like they wanted to match the pilot's very snappy energy but weren't quite sure how, so everybody makes kind of... aimless motioning instead of moving with purpose, if it makes sense? It feels more like 'moving body parts for the sake of moving things' over 'moving with intent'. It's sort of awkward and distracting. The shifting proportions don't really help, but I just know people are going to be Fucking Annoying about that when it's unfortunately part of the package of making a whole season at once by a regular animation studio.

Oh yeah, Blake's perfect for Angel, lmao. It was more of a change than I expected from the few lines we'd gotten since they sounded more like the original, but he's got the energy.

Charlie didn't know Adam ran the angel army? That seems like the kind of thing she should have known. I wonder if she was relatively sheltered growing up.

'Call me dickmaster' why do I get the feeling the Chaz fans will like him, lmfao.

Since I'm on Adam though, another little groan to myself about the lack of fat characters in the hellaverse that aren't either gross stereotypes or background characters. Adam falls into the misogynist type, (like, the 'redditor', you know the one, just sort of mixed with a sleazy rockstar) Mammon's literally Greed and a talentless abuser, the lady at the pound was gross/uncaring and ugly, and I still think the Nurse was the only one that really broke the pattern and I've seen approximately one piece of fanart or mention of her ever (despite her clearly-developed positive relationship with Barbie!) and it was porn. I'm allowed to bitch on this after people were so fucking annoying about how wanting Bee to be fat was wanting her to be a 'gross ugly blob' and then saying other people were being fatphobic for pointing out everybody's skinny. Somehow. Anyway.

Well, at least they got the vagina joke out of the way early.

I love how his deal isn't for anything that would genuinely screw Vaggie over, he's just pissed they want him to deal with TV.

The fact that the pilot's still 'soft canon' makes sense with how Angel just immediately starts admiring his new clothes without any surprise, since it's happened before. Also, Niffty with the Marilyn pose is cute.

Oh, I'm definitely going to like Lute. I still like my idea she used to be close to Vaggie but when Vaggie was cast down, she stuck tighter to the rules.

Adam's song is fun!

So season 1 takes place over the course of six months? Huh. I'm guessing we'll have some time skips if we only have eight episodes.

I wonder what the Heaven Embassy is for? I can't imagine it's only for meetings like that considering there's couches in the lobby and stuff. Can sinners communicate with loved ones in heaven or vice versa, maybe, just using the holograms?

Oh my god the Katie voice IS basically just Brandon's Bryce voice. Amazing.

Ohoooo? VERY curious who managed to pull off killing an exterminator, and 'can't let them catch on'... hmm.

#shadow says stuff #hh spoilers #hh

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eldritch-spouse · 2 years

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Breg's s/o thinks he's blind so they walk around scantily clad because he can't see me and maybe they're I little bit of a voyer so if they're getting off and he's in the room they'll just be quiet because he doesn't need to know.. or does he?

[This is so good and absolutely hilarious, holy shit-]

(Minors dni)

Breg should have told you he wasn't blind a long time ago.

In retrospect, it makes sense why you'd assume he's blind. As a human, seeing a creature with smooth skin where eyes should normally lie, and no other vaguely ocular-shaped organs anywhere, you'd naturally assume he's visually impaired in some form. But Breg didn't realize you thought so until it was already too late for the reveal to not make him look like an awkward buffoon. Or an asshole.

He should have known when you asked for his hand to bring him into the supermarket. You thought he was lost outside, couldn't find his way in. Really, Breg was just looking at the display pictures outside- He was standing around, bored. Not only was it a great shock to see his soon-to-be mate approach him, to have you ask if he needed help, take his hand, and lead him in to go shopping for him... The breeder couldn't even put two and two together. He just held onto your tiny hand and nodded along to whatever you said, swooning the entire way.

And thus a weird sort of friendship formed. More of a pity thing, he can tell. Breg is not sure if you pity him because he's supposedly a huge blind monster in a world where everything is out of proportion for his stature or simply because he's a friendless, awkward loser who clearly craves companionship. Maybe a bit of both. Eitherway, even when Breg finally understood you thought he was blind, he couldn't bring himself to correct you. Because you'd treat him differently. You wouldn't care for him the same near zealous way you do now. The breeder doesn't want this to stop. Ever. And it's not like he has to pretend very hard, he can excuse some of his suspicious accuracy on his admittedly enhanced hearing and other inhuman qualities that you're not likely to question.

Plus, he gets to see some... Curious things.

Like you changing right in front of him as if it's nothing. Breg nearly had a heart attack the first time you did it, clawing your poor kitchen table and trying his damnedest to act normal- As if you weren't tits out staring at him. Please, every time he remembers that Breg bursts a blood vessel.

Don't even get him started on the times you've looked him up and down like he was a steak, such as now for example. Here Breg is, merely existing on your small living room couch, and you're sat on the other end, pretending to enjoy TV with him. Pretending, because he can clearly tell you're ogling him every single time he twists his head a little. Having your eyes so shamelessly poised on him is so fucking hot.

You look at the breeder as if he's the most attractive thing in the world and Breg is struggling so very hard to not just shatter the illusion and take you. Would you care if he let himself get hard? What if he pretended to not be aware of it? Is that too on the nose? Probably. So the monster suffers instead, taking note of the way you almost drool at him. When Breg sees you focus on his bare slit, not the first time you've done it, the monster shifts his legs apart subtly. Come on, touch him, fuck him, take a fucking picture or something, just- Calm down Breg, calm down.

It's probably just morbid curiosity. You were hospitable enough to let him undress in your home when he told you how much clothes bother him, and now you're just curious about his anatomy. Yeah, that's it- You're definitely not looking at his slightly flush slit like you want to stick your tongue right in it.

" Are you enjoying the movie so far, Breg? " You ask, angelic voice sounding perfectly normal even as you seem to be sizing him up. He damn near chokes when you silently remove your shirt. There's nothing underneath, you've been in your scarce pajamas ever since the movie started yet spoke as if you were fully dressed to the nines.

" Y-Yeah, sounds cool. " The breeder's tail wags idly. You might mistake the motion for glee concerning this frankly uninteresting comedy flick, but really, he's just a mutt happy to see you half-naked.

" Sweet, I'll go fetch more popcorn for us. " Ah yes, the popcorn he's been indiscriminately shoving in his gullet to distract himself. Right, great choice.

Breg's moment of respite lasts for a couple of blissful minutes until you walk back into view. Sure enough, there's a new bowl of popcorn in your hands. But you're also fucking naked. He understands why humans need religion now. He perks up immediately, and you notice this time.

" Hahah, were you able to smell the popcorn from there? " You laugh almost innocently.

Oh, the popcorn isn't the only thing he's smelling right now. " Yep. "

" You can have it, I don't want any right now. " And you hand it to him, bending to give him a perfect view of your tits. Breg has to force himself to remain impassive even as he gulps and takes the bowl.

" R-Really? Oh- Okay then. "

His mate sits opposite of him on the couch and spreads her legs, eyes fixed on him as she starts mutely playing with herself in plain sight. Are you serious right now?! The breeder makes a strategic move, placing the bowl on top of his lap to cover his slit and prevent him from getting exposed.

There's an expression of mild suffering on his face as Breg weeps internally over not being able to do anything but watch and smell while you get off. This... This is punishment for something, the monster's sure of it.

As is, Breg can only sadly gobble more popcorn in self-consolation and resist the urge to sob.

#Bregory #funny ending because I could not resist torturing him

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mothwingwritings · 8 months

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I hope I’m not the only one here on your blog just for the Tokyo revengers content because I never watched Baki should i thought??

I have been very Baki focused as of late, huh? ^^; You are def not the only TokRev fan though, I assure you! My first really sizable chunk of followers came from my Taiju fic, and though I have been slacking a bit on posting anything TokRev related, I promise you much more is planned/being written currentl. A large chunk of bigger fics I am working on are actually mostly TokRev, I just wanted a lil break and so I focused on smaller stuff for a bit, and pretty much all of that happened to be Baki.

Now, as for if you should watch Baki…

Short answer: Yes! :D

Thoughtful answer: I think Baki is a very interesting take on the fighting genre, and I do highly recommend it. The saga of the Hanma family is as engrossing as it is entertaining, and there is a colorful cast of characters that support the series that you can’t help but love, hate, or love to hate. I have been kind of waiting for a Baki renaissance for a while now-I feel like other than in Japan, it really isn’t a super popular series and that’s a bit of a shame because it truly is an entertaining watch/read. The Netflix adaptation I think has helped the series a lot (and we are all grateful for it, to see our lovely boys animated so beautifully :)) and put it on the map for newer audiences to enjoy, but I definitely recommend the manga too. It’s a pretty fast read because a large chunk of it is action, but it’s pretty cool to see how Itagaki’s art has changed over the years and also how he has grown and changed as a story teller. Earlier Baki is much different than newer Baki, and some of the characters feel a bit foreign when you go back and reread some of the earlier stuff after being immersed in the newer content.

Baki also has some very bizarre and downright comical aspects as well that kind of put it on par with JJBA while making it very charming. The mangaka def adds some quirky flairs to his story telling, which while sometimes I can get a little annoyed/bored/confused with them, I feel like overall they make the experience of watching/reading the series its own unique and fun experience.

And if you love delinquents, Kaoru Hanayama is like… one of the best and coolest delinquents. If you put that man in Toman he would be running the whole gang within days and 90% of the bullshit everyone had to go through in Tokrev probs would have been resolved fairly quickly, if it even happened at all. This man would grind Kisaki to paste in the blink of an eye and I would pay to see it happen. :)

THAT ALL BEING SAID: Not everyone likes Baki, and that’s fine too. I know personally a lot of people are turned off by the art/how the characters look and honestly… That’s valid lol. I remember I once showed my friend a picture of Biscuit and her direct response was “Why does he look like he’s made out of balloons, like a clown constructed him?” LOOOL and often times if my friends mention weird body proportions in comics/manga someone inevitable asks when I am gonna chime in with a Baki manga panel. ^^; Most of the rest of my friends don’t really have any desire to partake in it though, and a few that have just really weren’t in to it. It’s very heavy on fighting and martial arts, and though the fighting is rather fantastical in a lot of cases, it (usually) doesn’t have supernatural elements or magic involved. So if that seems kind of bleh to you, you may want to avoid it.

Horny answer: Incredibly sexy men who are at least half naked a large majority of the time beating the shit out of each other is very fun, nice, and fulfilling to watch. :)

So I say give it a try if you are interested at all. At the very least, some of the fics on here may make a little more sense.

REGARDLESS THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE!!! Please stay tuned for more TokRev in the future, I have at least one more alphabet ask that is for a Tokrev chara so that may be the first thing I post, but bigger stuff is coming soon too~ <3

#I miss my delinquent boys #there are so many of them I want to write for and so many ideas i have begun uwuuugh #also dont feel bad-as far as minorities go I know there is at least ONE person who followed me after i posted my Zenos fic #who was solely here for FFXIV content #if you are still out there and see this... I love you and you are free to hit me up and tell me about your WOL at any time #<3 #anyway thank you for the ask!#if you do watch/read Baki let me know what you think of it! :3 #mothresponse

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quartings · 6 months

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Finally reading the full XY volumes!

For context, XY is my least favorite Pokespe arc, so I decided to give it a second chance hoping that the extra chapters and better art in the full volumes would help me like it more. But did it?

What I liked:

I will say that the extra “filler” chapters really helped pace out the story much better and warmed me up to the characters! The Pokemon-Amie and Super Training chapters in particular. It felt weird not having an explanation in the originals for Y’s Sylveon, let alone an Eevee. This is why I disagree with people nowadays hating filler content. Done right, it helps with character and worldbuilding in small subconscious ways that can help an audience enjoy a story more!

I do enjoy how bold the arc starts, having Vaniville be decimated by the legendaries in the first chapter!

Reading the XY arc chapter-to-chapter and mini volume to mini volume, it felt like X took much longer to even help his friends. Now reading the arc all at once, he feels much less stubborn and selfish, which is good!

Minor thing- removing Y’s nudity is the only instance of censorship in Pokemon Adventures that I actually appreciate. It doesn’t disrupt the plot or make no sense like censoring Green’s Pokeball booby trap, Emerald’s pee joke, or especially Norman and Mirei’s abuse.

Apparently, a lot of the Gurkinn stuff was added in the full volumes? My memory on it’s a bit foggy but that’s wild to me if true- it just feels so plot-important. No wonder I felt the arc was badly-paced on my first readthrough!

Speaking of which, I love that we get chapters dedicated to non-dexholders again! It feels like we last got stuff like that with Keldeo in BW or the Hoenn Gym Leaders!

A lot of the other things I like about XY have been said by most other people already and apply to Pokespe as a whole. Battles are fun and creative, making great use of Pokemon trivia from their dex entries, the leads are unique and well-written compared to the rest of the franchise, there’s a good mix of dark and light themes, and the returning characters are fun and meaningful cameos!

What I disliked still:

It’s still really hard for me to suspend my disbelief that Team Flare managed to silence or arrest everyone who saw the Xerneas-Yveltal battle or its aftermath, especially in the age of the internet.

The gang learning most of the important plot stuff from Team Flare constantly spilling their plans kind of killed some of the tension for me, to be honest. Also them letting all the grunts go instead of capturing them for info or just to turn them over to the authorities.

Sycamore not realizing Lysandre is evil is stupid in any version of XY’s story, I’m sorry.

Team Flare’s brainwashed victims having the “same personalities” felt a bit lazy still. Brainwashing is one of my least favourite tropes though, so I might be biased there.

I think the manga over-corrected with Shauna, Trevor, and Tierno. Instead of all being overly positive and aimless like in the games, being put in constant danger in the manga means they’re all similar levels of scared and stressed, so their personalities don’t stand out all that much either. Shauna especially just being a similar aggressive and serious type like Y, just with less of a backstory. That one weird sexist quip Shauna had in the Sylveon chapter also rubbed me the wrong way, too.

Minor- I still don’t get why Kusaka aged the main cast down from 17/18 to 12 in this arc. It just makes X and Y look like they got hydraulic pressed proportions-wise, and makes the aforementioned scene with Y feel gross.

Speaking of which, why is Clemont drawn SO short in this arc?! He’s normal-sized in the official art and the anime, so that’s another baffling change to me.

Minor- Malva gets her Pyroar back from Aliana after the Diancie chapter where she already has Pyroar- is there something I’m missing here?

While the pacing has vastly improved compared to the mini volumes, it still feels off in the final two volumes. Suddenly taking an intermission from the Ultimate Weapon to introduce Zygarde practically out of nowhere just feels clunky. Compared to the anime where they had both Zygarde and the Megalith planned months in advance with proper foreshadowing. Or a better comparison would be the RS manga, where both evil teams planned on using Groudon and Kyogre from the start, and that’s what we end the series on.

TLDR: Overall I’ve really warmed up on this arc! I had way less confusion reading through it thanks to the extra chapters, and I’ve grown to understand X a bit more as a protagonist. I still have some problems with the arc, namely how the rivals are handled, and how Team Flare is presented as an omnipresent all-controlling shadow government when their members at all levels constantly spill their secrets. If you have any other thoughts, facts, or even disagreements, I’d love to hear them!

I’d say this reread has put XY above B2W2 and maybe SwSh in my ranking of all the arcs, which is still something! Now we all have to wait and see how ORAS’ full volume release changes its place on the rankings, hehe…

#pokespe #pokemon adventures #pokespe xy #trainer x #yvonne gabena #q speaks #review #positivity #negativity

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mars-ipan · 1 year

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let’s be honest it was only a matter of time before i babygirlified an old man

closeups and (many) design notes under the cut :)

ok design notes time (these r mainly for the narrator bc. well. stanley has an actual physical appearance):

- while thinking of how to design the narrator i got the idea that he took one of the models in the audience for the ending where stanley gives a speech and edited it to make his “human” form

- because of this i wanted to include a bunch of little things that he “got wrong” during the process of mimicking a human. most of them get ironed out when stanley points out how weird they are but some of them stay

- to name a couple, his teeth are all flat- no canines or molars. also his little headset + glasses have nothing that actually attach them to his head. they just Are There. not to mention his interesting fashion sense of tie + turtleneck + blazer (he defends this choice no matter how much stanley laughs at him). he’s just weird enough to be slightly uncanny- it’s an imitation, not the real thing

- since i’m indecisive as hell he’s a bit of a shapeshifter. he actually doesn’t use his physical model in-game a lot and tends to just show up in things. shadows, reflective surfaces, screens, etc. even more often than that he’s just his voice

- bc he plays the guitar in the out of bounds ending i am now convinced that he can play many instruments. that little piano in the memory zone before the first review? yeah he’s there playing that in-game he’s just not visible to you

- designing his hair was SO DIFFICULT i literally went searching thru the tag for inspo and i liked so many different things. after a struggle (you can see a slicked-back attempt in the shadow idea doodle) i eventually decided on the style shown in his main drawing. every time i draw it i fight so hard to make it distinct from miles edgeworth. to make this easier the cowlicks aren’t too pronounced and the larger bang is more of a fringe. it still sometimes looks like miles edgeworth whoops

- some of my favorite fanon design things are the Line™ tie the square glasses and the little gay ass highlight so i knew i had to include them. those were my only definite choices going into this

- once again bc i’m indecisive the narrator can scale his model up or down as he pleases. he prefers to be bigger than stanley but stanley complains that it “makes his proportions weird” because he’s “short-coded” so sometimes he goes to a more human size.

- the narrator being stout just makes sense to me it’s correct in my soul (i actually think i drew him too skinny in most of these. i just didn’t wanna redraw shit bc i am tired but if/when i draw him again he will be less skinny)

- i wanted to work with shape language a lot because the narrator’s whole character is a voice- i wanted to make sure i captured the vibe of some stuffy old writer who has an undeniable silly streak. so he is squares and circles (his tie is the only triangle save for maybe the hair)

- for similar reasons stanley is squares and triangles. felt right

- speaking of stanley his soul patch is a goatee now bc i hate soul patches with a boiling passion. so now it’s a goatee

- i also gave him a little beauty mark by his right eye. i don’t know why i just knew in my heart that it was correct

- stanley uses asl and not bsl because i want to learn asl sososososo bad and this just might be the thing to get me to actually do it. he can project his thoughts to the narrator but he doesn’t like it so he almost always signs

#martzipan #the stanley parable #should i tag stannarrator. i probably should #stannarrator #fun fact this file is saved in my art folder as 'old man yaoi.png'#oh also i'm not fully decided on the colors i chose so these r more indicative of value than hue #ANYWAYS. hyperfixation go brrrrrrrrrr #i've drawn so many things for the first time in this. asl. a chin grab (it was so difficult to pose that btw i still wanna fix it). wrinkles #tbh still don't fully know how wrinkles work but i think i got it.#besides it would not be a human narrator design to me if it didn't have wrinkles #anywho. what if you and the narrative doomed... each other?#this was inevitable i am a sucker for mutually assured destruction #i deffo have fav doodles in here btw. those being the tbh the catboys and 'you wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid'#what are they if not silly

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basedkikuenjoyer · 1 year

Photo

Eh, 1078's worth it’s own post. We open with an interesting little exchange between Stussy & Sentomaru. The way they talk about the mission and the delicacy has me wondering if at least one big outcome is about to pop off. There’s another reason in this chapter I’m wondering, it’s not even that crazy of a theory. I definitely think it’d be a cool end, Wano’s time hops give the Grand Fleet a lot of time to move in assuming the awakening made Luffy’s vivre card act weird. Capturing Saturn would more than adequately fit the bill for historic proportions.

Of course, this pair having this conversation also is worth pointing out. Sentomaru & Stussy are both figures we’ve pointed out keeping that thematic bleedover from Wano firmly in Kiku’s territory. Look at em side-by-side, I’d say they each serve as a good representation of one of her halves standing alone. We’ll circle back to how that idea bookends.

The fuck Luffy? Just deadass calling Kaku Usopp. Seriously bro...what a heads up move! I mean, gag aside it was quick thinking to both not leave himself 2v1 with CP0 and to account for Zoro’s big weakness. But it is also really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really funny he called Kaku Usopp and Kaku’s just grumbling about it. I couldn’t not mention it. Seriously though, this flashback.

First off, it’s a great quick version of the big idea I’ve been on about. Does that make sense? We’ve had the little breadcrumbs hiding in plain sight. Just like Kanjuro by the end people had actually strung together a few good points about who it was. In essence, what we saw with York is a lot like the structure I laid out. What I’ll say is this though; I just don’t think it’s done. Too truncated. Same logic as getting Vegapunk’s big lore dump out of the way early. Mr. Narrator is coming in to make it very clear we’re not done yet. This is about to pop off into something much bigger. Egghead might be more Punk Hazard-length than Zou, who knows?

This panel is also why I’m excited for the Grand Fleet! Just...does it not feel like the iconic End-of-Dressrosa panel about their future exploits? For the here and now though, of course we do see the traitor plotline ended up being rather straightforward in an interesting way.

Bookends. Much like the angle of starting through Sento/Stussy, York is someone interesting to end on. This last stamp here made her a foil. Oh, so it was the tall, cute unassuming one? The gluttonous, vulgar one who’s goal is the absolute antithesis of Kiku’s egalitarian ethos? I’ll take it.

One Piece is always hard to predict but that seems like an easy way for all of this to end. The scrum goes on a little longer, Robin is moving down to this basement with Chopper so we can confront York easy enough. Kizaru ratchets up the tension but now we are finally ready to face an Admiral. His plan to buy time is thwarted by the arrival of the Grand Fleet demolishing the reinforcements. If we want to, there is ample thematic territory to weave in a new quartermaster orchestrating that. We can see what happened just like we did this chapter or we can finally pull the trigger on the Chekov’s Gun of X Drake’s report. Either way, you have a defeated admiral and potentially a captured Gorosei to cement the Straw Hats as the cream of the crop in all of these worldwide rumblings. In a way that otherwise leaves a completely blank slate to set up whatever we get into from this island on.

#One piece #chapter 1078 #post-wano musings #okiku #sentomaru #stussy #VP York

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quill-n · 1 year

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I think Tsu is actually the most unhinged hero. Everyone sees him as this prim and proper hero who takes his image very seriously, and he IS, but he’s also just so CHAOTIC.

Seriously the man was in full nude during a fight In vigilantes because he had to use his own hero costume. And he wasn’t even EMBARRASSED. He has absolutely no shame, and I love him for it

No fr, he's genuinely one of the strangest characters I've ever encountered because every time I learn something new about him, he gets weirder

and I ADORE him for it

I think I'll actually go insane if I don't write it all down, so that's going below the cut

All this information is canon, take that how you will

Let's start with the fighting in the nude thing since you already mentioned it— He was totally naked that scene, he used up his entire costume (which makes sense) but he still actively chose to leave the part covering his face. Not only does he have no shame, he has priorities.

His denim puns... was that something he always did, or did he come up with it to stay on brand??

The fact that he's always adjusting his hair. I would be too, if I also chose to rock that weird side sweep

This one's a little funky, but there's something about the way that he stands— Idk, it just sets off something in my brain (affectionate)

Yeah

I don't think I even need to mention his neck

His proportions in general????

He has pockets on the back of his. collar? jollar?? They're on the back of his head is my point and they're like the ass pockets of pants and just WHAT DOES HE USE THEM FOR??

(My personal headcanon is that's where he keeps his comb)

The fact that he has an S+ rank in fashion sense, but the way he canonically dresses is... yeah

He just looks so strange (affectionate)

(Ik it's not actually that out of place, but there's something about the four buttons on the pants and the suspenders/scarf (bandana??) combo and the. the bowling shoes. It just throws me off a bit. I feel like he can do better /lh)

SPEAKING OF HIS CLOTHES, we've seen at LEAST three or four different iterations of the same stupid costume. The changes are always so unnoticeable and it drives me a little bit insane

THE FACE BELT.

His taste in interior decor is... on brand

Wow I wonder what his favorite color is (sarcastic, affectionate)

(His home isn't actually that bad imo, but the office.) (There's more scenes of the office interior somewhere out there but they won't fit on this post, apologies.)

(The thread spool table. I can't tell if it's genius or insane.)

He was the president of a crafts club at a school that doesn't allow hero students to join clubs (anymore?) and now he's one of the top heroes of the country and I think that says a lot about him

He won the Best Jeanist award eight years in a row, which for a while SEVERELY confused me because did he name himself after the award, or was the award named after him? Because one of those is a little weird and the other one seems just a little unfair.

(This is how I learned that the Best Jeanist award is a REAL THING in Japan so he named himself after the award and that sent me reeling for a while)

The BJ belt buckle.

This image:

His hands are bigger than his face, which means that the fact that he's been hospitalized multiple times makes PERFECT sense

(my friend found a whole Stanford article written in the most hilarious way about the hand thing, and it's haunted me ever since) (I'd need to ask for the article again if anyone's curious but it's an... interesting read)

edit: I LIED I LIED THE ARTICLE IS SATIRE IT'S NOT REAL IT'S NOT REAL THE HAND THING (probably) ISN'T TRUE (it's still a hilarious read though so I'm still linking it)

(I'm going to pretend that it's real just because it is absolutely hysterical to me. Sir Nighteye and All Might also have hands bigger than their faces btw. For the record. Which is why I think it's awfully funny.)

Anyways

There's also this from Vigilantes, and I'm not even sure what to make of it

It talks about how he's always so serious even when the situation is........ ridiculous

He's so eccentric I love him

Also that specific image gives fish want me, women fear me vibes /j

He drives the fucking Batmobile except it can shoot out metal wires

(I've never read any DC comics; if the actual Batmobile can also shoot out metal wires, please forgive my oversight)

The fact that he JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE WITHOUT A PARACHUTE and STILL landed on his feet?? gracefully? on a cable???? With not a single hair out of place?????

ALSO the fact that he keeps on having such close encounters with death (he lost a lung, the whole Hawks and Dabi situation...) and yet he's. not dead. yet. somehow. Maybe he has multiple lives.

Is he just a cat?????

New conspiracy theory just dropped /j

Moral of the story is: Best Jeanist is, in fact, unhinged (and we love him for it)

#god I adore this man #tw caps #quillnbox #bnha spoilers #<- just in case #bnha #bokunoheroacadamia #best jeanist #hakamada tsunagu #tsunagu hakamada #take a drink every time I say (affectionate)#newt <3

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centaurisolarflare · 1 year

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no I just read your analysis in König's hands and I cannot possibly understand if someone can have hands like that, I EVEN GOT MY TAPE MEASURE OUT AND IT SCARED ME

basically, I'm 4'11 and my hands are small, like barely 5", my phone has the same height and it's too big for me to use with one hand only and I still can't comprehend how is that possible. It doesn't make sense (I mean that's the fun part of it but damn, sometimes I forget how much of an oompa loompa I am)

anyways thank you for your writing! it's absolutely amazing, sorry if something doesn't make sense, English is my second language. Take care, love you!

@boingboingboom NO BECAUSE I WAS LITERALLY SITTING THERE WITH MY STYLUS AND TAPE MEASURE GOING “what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck”

That’s why I did three different photos, each with their own reference and scale, so I’d be able to get a collective average, but he just kept being huge. He’s fucking huge.

We know there tends to be a positive correlation between height and the size of someone’s hands — the taller someone is, the more likely they are to have bigger hands.You’re 59 inches tall with nearly 5-inch hands. I’m 68 inches with 7-inch hands. I’m 9 inches taller than you and my hands are 2 inches longer. Our dearest König is 82 inches with, presumably, 10-inch hands. So, he’d be 14 inches taller than me and his hands would be 3 inches longer. He’d be 23 inches taller than you with a nearly double hand length. That is fucking terrifying, but it does make some proportional sense.

I was poking around in NBA height/hand size listings because I was like “hey that’s a bunch of absurdly tall people with publicly listed hand measurements” and it does line up that people around Königs height have about 9.5/10-inch hand lengths.

I don’t know anything about basketball so don’t ask me who these people are, I was just looking at their measurements, but for example:

Greg Smith is 6’10” with a hand length of 9.8 inches, he’s our boys height and literally 0.2 inches away from my wonky estimate. Connie Hawkins, at 6’8”, was 2 inches shorter than König with a hand length of 10.5 inches Kawhi Leonard, at 6’7”, is a whole 3 inches shorter than König with a hand length of 9.75 inches

The bit about your phone is so funny because I found out there’s this dude (Boban Marjanovic) who’s 7’4” and uses an iPad as a phone. A fucking iPad. Human genetics are so fucking weird, I swear.

There are people as tall as König irl — there’s even people taller than him — they’re just way above the average. I’m fairly tall for a female born person but like, one of my friends is 7 inches taller than me so I forget that I’m “tall” until my other friend reminds me that I’m 6 inches taller than her. I think you’re short, but König would think we’re both short lol.

But yeah, I’ve been freaking out about how big König is since I did those measurements, like holy fuck.

You’re welcome, thank you for reading! Absolutely do not apologize for being bilingual, that’s an amazing skill, and everything made perfect sense. Love you too!

#asks

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n7punk · 9 months

Text

Okayyyyyyyy now the informational version of the doll post is up, I get be all silly casual editorial over here :3c I was gonna do it as a reblog but honestly the doll post is already so stupidly long, I'm just gonna do it separately and I'll link it in the replies on the main post, but this post is Not gonna make sense unless you read that first lol

a) I dont think the bodies coming from two different lines is super obvious, but once you know it, things click. Bow's arms are weirdly narrow for his size compared to the girls’ proportions, for instance, and though he is the tallest in the show, he's especially tall in this line. You can even see it down to their underwear. Often dolls have a few molded lines on their body to represent underwear and give the illusion of "decency" when undressed. The girls have a single thin waistband line, She-ra has none (she needed not to if her Battle of Bright Moon doll was going to work), and Bow has a much thicker waistband with further details like seams and a fly (for some reason, but Bow now wears tighty whities I guess).

b) I know the bodies “came of DC Super Hero Girls” but I really wish I had more details than just that quick comment. That makes it seem like Adora, Glimmer, and Catra all came from the same line. I know Adora and Shadow Weaver are using the same body, and I’m pretty sure Catra is too because I found photos of Adora undressed on ebay and she had a weird circle outline on her back like there was an optional hole that was filled in, but like, why did that line even have a model with a tail hole? We know Glimmer is a “curvier sculpt,” so did that line already have some body diversity or did she come from another unnamed line? I don’t know, and I don’t have the dolls to compare. I'm just assuming it's a different body type from the same line since that’s all that was said (listen, I need to be told things very directly and clearly or I feel like I might be getting them wrong. Remember when I didn’t think I was autistic? Wild).

c) She-ra's accessories (well, her gauntlets and boots) are a little big for her and there's gaping. You can see it a bit even in the promotional pictures and it’s not surprising given the budget on these dolls. It probably gets worse with heat, though, so shipping might exacerbate the issue. Maybe the best time to move these dolls is winter LOL

d) She-ra's peplums are attached to her clothes and not her plastic emblem, which I think you can guess, but putting it out there in case. It's still confusing to me why her peplums are sparkly (and transparent for the core design). It's the one big "miss" in the designs from the show (well, Catra's outfit is also weirdly mesh up top and the color is off).

dd) Honestly all of She-ra's skirts are fucked, but everything about her Battle Armor doll is weird. I did a whole other post about how weirdly budget Battle Armor She-ra was compared to the other dolls despite being twice the cost. I mean I know Swift Wind is in that set so two models raises the price, but he seems pretty budget too, so like… what the hell Mattel.

ddd) Oh yeah, the tulle of the regular skirt is actually shockingly high quality. Like tulle is a Bad Texture for me (go back to the autism bulletpoint) and I don’t mind this. I mean I’m not gonna seek it out, but it doesn’t make me recoil and it’s soft enough to not cause me issues. I can say that about very few tulles.

e) I don’t know if this is a difference between digital model and final production or if SDCC She-ra got a slightly different accessory cast then the regular one, but if you look at the 3D model for She-ra’s chest emblem, it shows one thick bracing bar up her spine. In the final doll, it’s two bars, thinner and a bit further apart, that basically frame her spine, with one bar attached to each half of the emblem. And of course, it hooks together with pegs. Those aren’t shown on the model either and that's why I’m inclined to say that is just an earlier model of it. No stock photos of SDCC She-ra show her back under the cape, though, and checking it would necessitate removing her from the packaging, which I’ve never seen anyone do.

ee) Also, I didn’t know how to describe it well so I just didn’t put it in the post, but her regular cape isn’t straight across in the back. Rather, it has a v cut and “straps” that are sewn to each shoulder, so the top set of pegs and the crossbar for the emblem actually show through, but her hair covers it anyway. Once again, IDK about the SDCC one because I've never seen the back of her.

f) Shadow Weaver’s stand is hot garbage. It’s just a stick between her legs with tiny curves to (supposedly) cup each leg that she’s supposed to essentially balance on. Traaaaaaash. They're assuming no one will take her out of the packaging, ig.

ff) Okay also, Shadow Weaver's top isn't exactly a monastic scapular, but idk how else to describe it. Usually those drape over the shoulders and then are tied around the waist, while hers actually has a sleeve and is sewed together on one side, but then it has the long extension from a scapular, so I'm just going to use that to describe it since it's a fantasy bullshit amalgamation.

g) I know it seems like I have a Monster High bias (and I do) because I mention it multiple times, but since the guys leading the SDCC exclusives were two big minds behind it, it seemed like a valid comparison to draw. I researched what else the other team members did, but when I only turned up 3 out 4 of the modelers (Arpine, Kittaya, & Sean) working on Barbie and I couldn't say "all of them" anymore, I stopped looking since it really wasn't relevant. Monster High ended up being a good touchpoint due to being made by the same team/company, one of the dolls having its body come from that line, and it being the only other doll line I know literally anything about. Since Monster High (G3, anyway) costs nearly twice as much as these dolls (15$ vs 25$), they also felt relevant when it came to things like painted hair. Annalise specifically hyped up the dolls all having real hair? So I'm just kind of guessing that's something that isn't a given on dolls at this budget (and probably, unfortunately, especially so for textured hair). Again, pretty much everything I've learned about dolls has specifically been because of this line lol. I like looking at the new Monster Highs but I really don't know shit.

h) Also, I don't know how doll hair length is measured so I just went with 6 inches in the post, but regular She-ra has 5-7 inches of hair, depending on if you're supposed start at the base of the head or top of the head. Also I was using a ruler so. Not the most accurate.

i) I got kind of ambiguous answers on what counts as an articulation point, but at the end of the day the She-ra dolls have less than Monster High (I can say this definitively) and Monster High is listed as 12 on Dollect while She-ra in incorrectly listed as 13. There are 11 separate joints, with some also including a hinge so you can properly pose them, but I can't give you a list of what joints bend multiple ways or if any are ball joints (IDK how to identify one, I think I’ve made it obvious I'm out of my depth here). The joints are really stiff in my experience but they would probably loosen up if you worked them more, I’m just not going to take that risk.

j) Actually this should be up with the She-ra info so it's out of order but I'm not positive Battle Armor She-ra has the same hair as regular? In listings it looks shorter but it's hard to tell because it could just look different from being played with and when she's in box you can't tell since it's behind her. It seems really weird to me that every She-ra is so similar and so different at the same time so I really don't know. They might even be made out of different kinds of fibers. Like for the SDCC exclusive I'm pretty sure they prioritized looks so the hair might be made out of "worse" material as a result if it displays well (I mean, I know there's reflective strands in it, and those usually feel Bad). There's a lot of upgrades and really cool packaging for only an added 5$ for each doll so cutting some corners on those might make sense. These dolls are made on a relatively tight budget at the end of the day.

I wish I could get hands on with all these dolls because I think I could make the post way better then, and if I ever do manage to learn new info I’ll update the post, but I've done my best lol. Hopefully this post answers any questions people might or might not have about the dolls since they're kind of Difficult to actually get and check out yourself

#listen i'm not paying three figures for these dolls. or even three times retail price (which is still half of what most listings charge)#shoutout to the damaged out of box catra going for over 100 fucking dollars #i've got what i could beneath that barrier and i'll wait out the others lmao #though i don’t know that there’s any waiting out catra 😑#mylife #this addition wasn't meant for reblogging anyway so doing it separately works out #i Do have another addition to that post coming up that im. trying to figure out what im gonna do about #because i want to add photos of the packaging details that stock photos dont show but i dont like to take my own photos lmao #and i cant rn anyway so i'll wait until i can and figure it out then ig #merch #spop dolls

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mangoisms · 1 year

Text

wolves without teeth ━ miyuki kazuya

━ chapter three: when i watch the world burn, all i think about is you / read chapter two

━ word count: 6.3k

━ warnings: brief mention of sex trafficking, description of blood, death, and injury (both in the first part of this chapter, then in the flashback after). allusions to stalking and a brief mention of animal/pet death, as well as another brief mention of suicide.

━ a/n: trafficking and blood/injury are the only warnings for the first part of this chapter; the rest of the warnings (including blood/injury) are for the flashback, which is the large chunk of italicized paragraphs towards the middle, so feel free to skip over it if need be. i posted a summary of what the first part and the flashback cover. everything after that doesn't warrant any warnings, as far as i know

━ masterpost

The next time Spider-Woman makes an appearance on the roof, you’re hurt.

The cuts on your side throb every time you swing, so you flub the landing again, landing harder than you usually do. The exhaustion dogging your senses doesn’t help.

It’s why you completely miss him.

Only until you hear the shuffle of feet.

You whirl around, one hand against your side protectively.

But it’s just Kazuya.

The look on his face is unreadable. Even to you. But his eyes are on your side, the suit stained with blood.

Crashed through a window tonight fighting some traffickers. The pop of gunfire still rings in your ears. You don’t usually encounter guns. That’s probably one of the things about crime here that remains true — guns are hard to come by. Most often, gangs are the ones with them. It wasn’t yakuza but some foreign players. Russian, you think.

Doesn’t matter much now. They were left webbed up in the alley, their guns still burning hot, their plans to kidnap their victims with them. The police will take care of them.

You have to take care of yourself now. Mostly by picking out the shards of glass still in your side.

You can’t even mime anything to him about not calling the cops before the back of your neck bursts into tingles.

You shoot to your feet.

He flinches.

You ignore the way the motion stabs at you and tense as the sound of a window opening makes it to your ears.

“Yo, Miyuki,” comes Kuramochi’s voice from the side of the house. “Did you roll off the roof and die?”

Silence hangs heavy. You landed too hard and made noise. The others noticed. They should be asleep by now, even Kazuya. It’s nearing two in the morning but it is the last month before summer break. Finals are coming up in a few weeks.

Kazuya’s eyes slide to your face, eyebrows furrowed now.

You look back at him.

“No,” he finally calls.

“Too bad.” Then the window slides shut.

You collapse onto the roof — quietly this time. Finally stationary, the rush of adrenaline wears off. Your side screams in pain.

Kazuya strides around you, heading for the hatch.

Just like last time, disappointment hits you hard. But after the night you had, it’s not just disappointment, but a wet sting surging up your nose. You squeeze your eyes shut. Now isn’t the time.

First, you have to climb back into your room, pick out the glass in your side without alerting anyone, then you can cry.

The hatch shuts with a quiet click.

You sit there for a minute, dreading having to sneak back into your room with the others awake. But the sooner, the better. With the arsenal of weird powers you received like making your own web fluid, sticking to things, the proportional strength of a spider, agility, flexibility, quicker-than-human reflexes, and your own sixth sense — spider sense — you have a healing factor, too. Your body will heal around the glass if you let it.

You had to learn that lesson the hard way.

The hatch clicks open. You whirl around, ready to leap off the roof but —

It’s Kazuya.

You falter, entirely flabbergasted now as you watch him climb back out with a first aid kit.

He stops a few feet in front of you, lips pursed, the look on his face conflicted.

Nothing happens for a minute.

You pluck up the courage, pointing at him, then yourself, and shaking your head.

“I don’t like you,” he agrees. “Not at all. But if you bleed out on our roof, we might not get our security deposit back.”

You smile.

“I’m not a monster, either, you know,” he adds begrudgingly. “Besides —” he sighs, kneeling to set the first aid kit in front of you “— if you died of an infection or something because of this and my friends ever found out I just let it happen, they’d kill me.”

Well.

You’ll take it.

You grab the first aid kit. It’s something you all keep close by just in case Eijun or Kuramochi want to try their luck in the kitchen. You have no idea how many times either of them have sliced their hands open attempting to chop something quickly like Kazuya is able to.

“Ah. Stop.”

You stop, looking up at him, blinking.

He eyes your hands. “You’re not seriously going to do that with your gloves on?”

You deliberate for a second. It’s just your hands. He doesn’t look at your hands much, if at all, you think. You… Yeah, you’re kind of guilty of admiring his hands sometimes. They’re just nice, okay!

Anyway… as you decide you will take off your gloves, the little voice at the back of your head remains quiet. So, it shouldn’t be an issue.

You peel off your gloves accordingly.

Kazuya nods, his eyes flickering away from your now-exposed hands, then he sits down, a few feet of space still in between you.

You wipe your hands two times with antiseptic pads, then grab the scissors, cutting the rest of the fabric at your ribs. No use in trying to save it. You’d need to sew it all up again no matter what.

Warm air touches the skin there, smeared with blood, still slowly leaking around the small pieces of glass embedded in the skin. Not very pretty, to say the least.

“What the hell happened?” Kazuya asks, looking mildly grossed out.

Well, you can’t mime that, so you just make a phone sign with your hand, then gesture at him.

“Check the news?”

You nod, then grab the sterilized tweezers and a piece of gauze.

The glass is embedded in your left side, so you raise your left arm, take a deep breath, then start.

He waits a minute, continuing to watch you pick out the glass. It plinks quietly onto the roof. You bite your tongue so hard it bleeds, your breathing rapid.

As the glass comes free, the blood starts flowing more rapidly. You hurry, heat swallowing you, making you dizzy.

The last one is the largest, a quarter of the size of your palm. You’ll have to use a butterfly bandage for this one.

You pause and take another breath, setting the tweezers aside then reaching for it with your fingers.

Kazuya keeps watching. You don’t know why. You know the look on his face. Horror. Disgust. Yet, he seems to force himself to watch.

You slip the shard free, pain flaring hotly, a noise escaping you. But it’s choked, overrun with pain. It doesn’t flag anything for him. You could probably say something softly in this moment and you don’t think he’d notice, his eyes stuck to your side.

A tad self-conscious now and also dizzy with the relief that you’re done, you grab the butterfly bandage, closing that one, ignoring the way your blood smears onto your fingers. Then you grab a piece of gauze, pressing it to your side.

You’ll need two of them at least to cover the whole area, the skin mottled from the glass. But your fingers are covered in blood, slippery from having pulled out the bigger shard and closing it.

“Stop,” he says when your fingers slip from the tape again.

You stop breathing, going very still as he raises onto his knees, plucking the tape from your hands, careful not to let his hand touch yours.

The blood on it still smears onto his fingers as he yanks a strip free.

You stare at him, your right arm crossed over your stomach, holding the gauze to your side.

“Let me do it before I change my mind,” he snaps.

You switch hands, ignoring the way it pulls at the cuts, and grab the second piece of gauze, layering both of them. Then you let him tape it down.

He is vigilant not to let his fingers brush your skin at all. But you still feel an impression of him, in the way he smoothes the tape down, the heat of his fingers palpable through the thin adhesive.

“Whatever you did to get this tonight better be worth it,” he says gruffly when he finishes, moving away quickly. He tosses the tape back into the kit, then snatches up the bloody tweezers and scissors, swiftly cleaning them with an antiseptic pad. After, he cleans his own hands, looking away resolutely all the while.

You wave a hand at him. His eyes flicker back to you. You clasp your hands together then bow your head. Thank you.

“Whatever,” he mutters. “I didn’t do it for you.”

Still.

Kazuya lets out a big sigh, digging around the kit. He pulls out a pack of aspirin, holding it out to you.

You shake your head.

“Don’t be such a hero.”

You shake your head again. That’s not it.

“What? Worried I switched them out? I don’t care about you that much.”

You grin and shake your head.

“Christ,” he mutters, frustrated, suddenly jumping to his feet. “Stay here.”

He tosses another antiseptic pad at you — “Clean your hands, they’re still gross” — then packs up the kit and heads for the hatch.

Okay.

You have no idea what just happened. Or what is going to happen next. And considering how well you’re supposed to know him, that’s saying something.

Sure, he was rough with you — well, verbally, he was actually quite gentle when taping down the gauze — but… he helped. He didn’t have to. And Miyuki Kazuya doesn’t do things he doesn’t want to do.

I didn’t do it for you. I did it for my friends.

No matter the reason, one fact remains undeniable — he helped.

You clean your hands like he asked, smiling faintly. After, you tug your gloves back on. Best not to let yourself indulge.

A minute later, he returns, tossing something at you.

You snatch it out of the air, blinking as you find yourself staring down at the cracked screen of his old phone.

He cracked it last year, during an informal game of baseball with all of you. His father, still working to make things right with him, bought him his new one.

Curious, you click the power button. The display flickers on. It was only cracked; that was what he had said to his father but he insisted, said one rainy day would ruin it. He wasn’t exactly wrong.

Kazuya sits in front of you again. “There. You can text me. It should be connected to the Wifi.”

You nod, grimacing as you bring your elbows in, the motion tugging at your side. You still persist, unlocking it and opening the messaging app.

About the aspirin — it wouldn’t work on me. I need more than that. Like half a bottle of it for it to work on me.

His phone vibrates with the text. He blinks. “Why?”

My metabolism. It burns too fast through stuff like that, so I need more to feel the effects (;;)

“Oi, none of that now.”

Why not? (;_;)

He shakes his head. “Anyways. Why does your metabolism do that?”

I use up a lot of energy to do what I do every day. The strength, the webbing, the healing. It’s a lot.

His eyes track your words on the display of his phone, then flicker to you, to your side. A distant look comes on his face.

“So, you aren’t going to die.”

Most likely not. Thanks, by the way. For all your help tonight. Miyuki, right?

“How —”

Your fingers are already moving.

Your roommate (friend?) said it earlier. Thanks for that, too. For covering me, I mean. All of this, really. I appreciate it.

“Whatever.” He swipes out of his messages quickly, uncomfortable. “Speaking of, why don’t we check out what exactly warranted all that?”

I could just tell you through text.

His phone vibrates with the message, the banner appearing at the top of the display. He swipes it away.

“I’d rather get it from a trusted news source, no offense.”

Fair enough (^-^)

Eventually, noise fills the air.

“— confirmation that it was Spider-Woman who apprehended the men taken into police custody. The six men were found with guns and other weapons —”

“Six men?” he says, eyebrows raising as he looks at you. “Seriously?”

You shrug.

Gotta do what you gotta do. No matter how many there are.

He scoffs quietly and resumes the video.

“— as well as possessing sensitive private information about women in the area. Police Chief Amano ascertains that these men, suspected members of a foreign gang in the country for sex trafficking, were on the police department’s radar and that they had plans to take them in eventually.”

Your fingers fly across the screen, the click of the keyboard rising above the poised voice of a news anchor.

But when would ‘eventually’ come? Before or after those women were kidnapped and on their way out of the country to be sold off to the highest bidder?

He reads the message with a frown and doesn’t say anything.

“Chief Amano maintains his condemnation of Spider-Woman’s activities despite what she did tonight. This is in spite of increased support for her and decreased support for the police department. Especially as this comes after the police department’s failure to stop the killing of Asayama Itsumi by her manager, Endo Goiichi.

“Endo is currently in police custody, facing charges of first-degree murder, battery, and breaking and entering. After his arrest, evidence came out from an anonymous source revealing that Endo had stalked Asayama for months, with footage showing other incidents of harassment at their work place, as well as documentation that Asayama had even gone to the police department to report him. However, her case was dismissed and shortly after, she died.”

“You?”

You blink, the video paused.

“The source,” Kazuya clarifies.

In a way.

That was Delphi and their thorough work combing through hours of CCTV footage. Hacking the CCTV footage. They sometimes say they are your partner in crime and while you maintain you are not doing anything wrong, you can’t always disagree with that part.

Regardless, Kazuya purses his lips, not liking your vague answer, and clicks play on the video.

“A representative for Tokyo PD claims that the dismissal for her case was a faulty glitch in their internal systems. But many in online spaces are speaking up, sharing personal encounters where they were also dismissed by the police. Since the arrest, the country has been embroiled in tension. Many also point to Spider-Woman, saying ‘she is willing to take care of the ones forgotten or ignored —”

The broadcast cuts off as he closes it, an unreadable expression on his face.

Every breath you take feels heavier than the last.

Slowly, you push to your feet. He looks up at you but you turn your attention to his old phone still in your hand.

I know why you don’t approve of me. I get it. I wasn’t able to stop Asayama from being killed. She died because of me. How many others will I fail to save?

He reads the message, then looks up at you. You still can’t distinguish the look on his face.

“It’s reckless,” he says. “Dangerous. For the others. And…” His eyes flicker to your side, exposed to the air, covered by gauze. “For you, too. It makes no sense to go out there and face fights you can’t win.”

To him, maybe. But Kazuya was always more willing to cut his losses than you ever were.

Spider-Woman always gets back up.

He frowns at you. “This isn’t a comicbook. This is real life. I seriously don’t understand. Why don’t you just give it up?”

You shake your head and send it again.

Spider-Woman *always* get back up.

You set the phone down gently on the ground, then with one hand pressed to your side, you leap from the roof, swinging away.

The next couple days are unbearable.

You’re still healing, for one.

But the reminder of your first failure has you tossing and turning most nights. So, you can’t even get the sleep you need to help heal yourself and build up your energy again.

Instead, you dream of her.

You already know something terrible has happened when you arrive.

The stillness of the air, nighttime critters and bugs silent. Not because the sun is about to break the horizon but something else. Something darker, staining the air. The way your senses whisper. The sick feeling welling up in your chest as you sneak through an unlocked window into the apartment.

Right into the living room.

Copper hangs heavy in the air. Whispered prayers fill the silence. In a corner, a man hunches, leaned against the wall. The kitchen knife in his hand still glints with red.

In front of you, Asayama Itsumi, a thirty-year-old banker who lives alone, has a cat named Chobi, goes to a neighborhood book club every week, and dreams of publishing her own book one day.

She doesn’t move.

“What did you do?” you whisper, rage swelling inside you like a tsunami.

Endo freezes, whipping around. The white button-up he wears is smeared with blood. Something like a handprint stains his shoulder.

He raises the knife. Metal glints under the light.

Webbing catching his arm, pinning it to the wall before he can bring the knife to his throat.

You web his other hand. He struggles, and you glimpse long, red scratches in his cheeks as he starts to blubber, jumbled words you don’t understand — don’t care to understand. Begging you to… what? Let him kill himself?

“No,” you say. “That’s too easy. You deserve this. To live with it. You will.”

He starts crying.

You lunge, your knuckles catching his temple. He falls silent, knocked out by your fist.

Your fingers itch to do more but you turn, sliding back to Asayama’s side.

Relief courses through you when you find a pulse. Delphi said they were already calling the police when they’d alerted you about movement from Endo. But then you’d gotten caught up in a pile-up. A little girl stuck in her carseat while a fire burned through the engine. You got her out in time.

Maybe you can say the same for Asayama.

Blood stains the satiny blue of her sleep shirt. Your stomach heaves as your eyes find the wounds gouging her abdomen.

“Asayama-san, can you hear me?” you ask, yanking a throw blanket from the couch and tearing it into strips.

She stirs as you apply pressure to her wounds.

“Asayama-san. It’s me, it’s me.”

“S… S-Spider-san?”

You chuckle, the base of your throat aching. You told her she didn’t need to call you that. But she insisted, since you were helping her.

“I’m here,” you say softly. “I need you to hang out for a few. EMS should be on their way. We’re gonna get you taken care of, okay?”

Her eyes flutter. “C-Chobi. Chobi. Is he okay? Where is he?”

You swallow thickly as your eyes find the mass of fur near the end of the couch. Unmoving.

You finish packing the wounds and reach up to push her dark hair out of her face. Even through your gloves, her skin feels too cool.

“He’s right here,” you assure her, your voice shaking only a little bit. “Did a bang-up job on Endo.”

She smiles. “Chobi is… is a good kitty.”

“Very good kitty.”

Her eyes flutter again, head struggling to stay up.

“Hey, hey, Asayama-san, none of that. Come on. Stay awake for me.”

You scoot closer, your hands finding her cheeks. “Come on. Please. Please.”

Her eyes crack open, dark, dark brown eyes gazing up at you. “Spider-san… I’m tired.”

“I know,” you whisper, the reality of the situation sinking in, petrifying your insides. “I know.”

You glance at Endo, held up by his arms, head hanging low.

With the assurance that he will not see, you push back your hood and slip off your mask.

Asayama’s eyes take you in, widening slightly. The surprise of your actions puts a little more alertness into her system, which is what you were hoping it would do. That and… well, you owe her this.

A wheezy laugh escapes her. “Spider-san… you… you’re just a kid.”

“Hi,” you whisper softly, throat aching. Your name falls from your lips in the next second.

She repeats it, a soft smile on her lips. Her hand raises, wavering, and you quickly slip off your gloves then take it. Her fingers are cold. You squeeze them gently.

“Thank you,” she breathes. “Thank you.”

You know.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you in time.”

“But you did,” she whispers. “You did. I could die alone. With him here. But you’re here. You’re here, Spider-san, and thank you.”

Your throat closes up. You pull her head into your lap, running your fingers through her hair.

“Take… take care of Chobi, please,” she whispers

“I will,” you promise, your voice strained. “I will.”

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you. Please don’t blame yourself. Please don’t, Spider-san.”

You can’t say anything. Your throat aches, tears blurring your vision. You squeeze your eyes shut, biting your lip hard enough to break the skin.

She coughs and you turn her head so she doesn’t choke on the blood bubbling up inside of her. It splatters onto the wood and stains her lips and teeth. Close, your senses whisper. Close.

“It’s okay, Asayama-san,” you murmur, stroking her cheek soothingly, ignoring the tears on your cheeks. “Everything is okay.”

“I wish… I wish I could see the sunrise. Just one last time. What… time is it?”

You lift your head, blinking the tears out of your vision.

Like an answered prayer, the room is lightening, shadows from the blinds cast onto the walls.

You hold out a hand, webbing shooting from your index and middle finger, snagging the cord to the blinds on her windows. You pull it.

Early morning sunlight spills forth. Golden rays of light warms every surface in the apartment, seeming to wash away the darkness that had crept in.

“There it is,” you whisper to her. “Do you see it?”

“Yes,” she breathes, the sound wet from the blood slowly filling her lungs; her eyelids flutter. She feels so cold. “I can see it.”

You hear the sirens in the distance. Wailing. While the rising sun chases out the darkness for you here, others will wake to devestation, to the sound of someone lost. Someone who could’ve been saved.

Asayama whispers your name. “Watch the sunrise for me every now and then, okay?”

“I will.”

With the gold light of the sunrise on her face, Asayama Itsumi takes her last breath in your arms.

You wake with tears on your face.

But even now, she looks out for you, because when you look at the clock, sunrise is only a few minutes away.

With a heavy heart, you slide out of bed.

The house is silent. Faint snores from Eijun’s room downstairs reach you. Birds start to chirp outside. You tiptoe into Kazuya’s room.

His head lifts just as you shut the door. “Hey.”

“Did I wake you?”

“No.” He sits up, squinting at you. “Are you —”

“We should watch the sunrise. It’s only a few more minutes.”

Kazuya studies you for a second then nods, pushing off his blanket and pulling on his glasses.

You let him pull open the hatch and go up first at his insistence.

Outside, the air is warm, the sky lightening to a softer shade of blue — twilight. You approach the edge of the roof, sitting down there, your legs hanging off. Kazuya sits down carefully beside you, keeping his legs crossed underneath him instead of hanging down like you.

You can sense him looking at you, concerned, but you keep your eyes ahead, watching as the horizon tints orange, the rest of the sky soon following. Deep orange, to a softer shade, yellow from the rays of the sun, the sky paling to a soft purple color.

Then finally, the corona of the sun peeks over the western horizon, brilliant in its glory. Gold washes over you, chasing away the cold inside.

“Hey.” Kazuya’s thumb brushes your cheek, where your tears leave trails. You didn’t even realize.

He turns you toward him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks softly, brushing away your tears, looking so concerned that more come.

“What’s wrong?” you echo back, sniffling.

He was awake, too. Not an emotional mess like you but more subdued, you’ve noticed. Since last week, when he patched you up. You haven’t been back here since. As Spider-Woman, you mean.

“I’m just thinking about some stuff,” he murmurs.

“So am I,” you whisper and it’s not a lie.

You’re thinking of Asayama Itsumi. How her parents had to bury her. How they buried her with her beloved cat, Chobi.

How she won’t be the last one you fail to save.

How you came back that morning with her blood on your hands. How you spent the next three days in bed, refusing to say anything to any of the others, even if they knew something was wrong. First they thought you were sick, then that someone had done something to you — none of that was true. None of that could ever come close to the truth.

But while some of their patience ran thin, Kazuya remained at your side, holding you as you cried, never once demanding an explanation from you. You don’t know why. Other than the usual answer, that is, he is your best friend.

But maybe that’s the only answer. Maybe there isn’t anything else underlying that.

After all, you’d do the same for him, wouldn’t you?

Something in his face softens. “Come here. Get away from the edge.”

You pull your legs up, scooting back and closer to him. His arm comes around you, tucking you into his side. Your left side is still sore, though the cuts are on their way to scars.

Your chest aches when he leans your head on his shoulder.

He still doesn’t know. Can never possibly know.

But for now, as Kazuya holds you as the sun rises, this is enough.

And you’ll keep mourning Asayami Itsumi in your own time.

Kazuya has never liked seeing you cry.

This is something he didn’t learn for a while.

Not until later in your friendship, when you were older.

At thirteen, when he said something stupid, and your eyes had welled up with tears. It wasn’t a point in which he knew exactly what you meant to him, where he realized how lucky he was to have you, but even then, without the tools to know how or why, something inside him crumpled at seeing you cry.

At fifteen, when he undermined you on accident, when he walked right over what you wanted and thought he knew best. But by then, he’d started to figure it out. Figure out how much it meant to even have you in the first place. Especially as Chris hurt his shoulder and starting catcher landed right in his lap without a fight. As the others remained suspicious of him, distrusting of a first year catcher who had the skill to back himself up, sure, but outside of that, outside of a nasty personality, mediocre grades, and only one friend, what else did he have?

You.

He had you.

You’d been saying I love you since you were kids.

Back then, he said it, too.

But then, Mom was gone and so was Dad. They loved each other. Look how that ended up.

You’re my best friend, he would say. But never what really needed to be said.

You don’t hurt the people you love. Not on purpose, anyway.

But look at what he had done. He’d laughed in your face at the idea of you on the cheerleading team.

The hurt on your face stays with him to this day. Along with the tears that had followed, as you said, If that’s how you feel, don’t bother.

Don’t bother with what?

You’d just glared at him, tears rolling down your cheeks.

Then you were gone.

And he had no one.

And Kazuya isn’t saying he only apologized because he didn’t want to be alone.

Well, that is part of it, but that goes in hand with the fact that he wanted you with him. If it wasn’t you, then he didn’t care.

Then he realized something else in that moment and in the moments that followed after, in the hurt that made its home in his chest when you didn’t look at him during class, when you expertly avoided him. All of that, all of these feelings, it all sharpened into clarity. A realization that he had always subconsciously known but could never say. An irrefutable truth.

He loved you.

And he didn’t like seeing you cry. Didn’t like making you cry. You were his best friend. Is that how he repaid you? After years of support? Years of you loving him with no strings attached, never expecting anything in return. Sure, he supported you, too, it was never all just about him but this is the one thing, the most important thing, that needed to be said. Something that should’ve been easy. As easy as breathing.

He never said it.

Not until the height of the summer of your first year at Seido, when he realized that the miserable state of things with his senpai and the pitchers — none of it mattered. None of it compared to the feelings he had about you, with how he’d hurt you.

If you’d asked him to quit right there, he would’ve. He would’ve done anything.

But it’s not about him, is it. Or, rather, not in that way.

Kazuya went to you the night before summer regionals were set to begin and told you everything.

I’m sorry. I love you. I don’t want to sideline you, either. I want to support you. I’ll be your number one fan, from here on out. I promise.

You’d forgiven him.

Well, you cried first and that… that didn’t hurt as much because you’d stammered out that you were just happy to hear him say that. But then he really thought about it and oh, never mind. That does kind of hurt. How could he deprive you of that? Of the simplest truth he’s ever known?

The sky is blue, the grass is green, he loves you.

Something that should’ve been easy.

No, it is easy.

Loving you is as easy as breathing.

Saying it is another task entirely sometimes.

But as he gets older, he recognizes the meaning behind it and sometimes he thinks of how he treated you when you were kids, so mean, so cutting, especially when you had disagreements, and everything inside him aches.

You had your limits, of course. But most of the time, you let yourself be cut on his sharp edges, stubbornly, refusing to leave, bleeding out just for him. Because you loved him.

Sometimes he wants to go back in time and shake his teenage self. Tell him to just admit his feelings and realize how lucky he is instead of lashing out.

He guesses that’s just a part of growing up.

First year, he realized how much he loved you. Second year, he realized those feelings weren’t entirely platonic. Third year, he realized nothing would ever come of it and he would be lucky just to have you at his side as his best friend and nothing more.

And he is lucky.

He thinks of the meeting with the MLB scout in your third year of college, in April, right before school started.

Leo Mardon, an assistant manager with the New York Yankees. Plenty interested in trying to sway Kazuya to go pro in the US as soon as he stepped off the stage with his degree. Even if the signing rules were shitty, would be shitty until he turned twenty-five and there was not a cap on how much a team could pay him.

Kazuya’s grasp on English is good. More than good, you say. Your dad knows the language, having spent time in the US. You two were raised on an amalgamation of Japanese and Western media. He spent more time with your family than his own, especially after his mom died.

So, yes, his English is good.

But he wanted a buffer. Needed it. He asked you to interpret for him, to make sure nothing was lost in translation because while his English is good, yours is perfect.

The meeting was fine. Mardon complimented him endlessly, dropped several offers with the Yankees. But then he picked up on how close you two were.

“You two are friends?” Mardon asks, having seen he and you laughing while he went to the restroom.

You’re still smiling, eyes twinkling in a way that makes Kazuya’s heart do a weird wiggly thing.

“We’ve been friends since childhood.”

Mardon takes his seat again, looking interested. “And you have an excellent grasp on English and Japanese?”

Kazuya nudges and says, in Japanese, “Tell him about the other ones.”

Mardon tilts his head, curious.

Your smile turns a little exasperated but no less fond. “In Spanish, Korean, and German as well. I’m starting courses in Mandarin this term.”

Mardon blinks. “Wow. That’s… wow. That’s impressive. So, then, are you two planning for you to be his interpreter?”

Silence.

You look at Kazuya, stammering through a translation, though he already knows.

The truth is, he never considered that.

Why would he?

He’d assumed what you wanted once. He would never do that again. He would never… No.

When you two were applying for colleges in the beginning of your third year, you two agreed not to say anything about it. Mostly for him, because he didn’t want to hold you back. Didn’t want to coerce you into following him and he knew he’d get the urge to follow you, too, to wherever you went.

Just to be safe.

You both ended up at Waseda, anyway. From there, it’s been something like, well, if we end up here, then we’re meant to be here. He believes that.

But Kazuya doesn’t want to make the same mistake he made in your first year. So, he stays composed.

But you — you… You’re looking at him with a kind of wonder he’s never seen on you, like new possibilities have opened up.

“To tell you the truth,” you say to Mardon. “We never once thought about that. But that…” you look back at him, nudging his knee under the table. “Doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”

Mardon swoops in. “Well… the Yankees would be happy to accommodate you as his interpreter, if he’d like to come with us.”

And, Kazuya thinks, if the freakin’ Yankees are willing to do that, who else will?

You talk about it a little more. He makes sure you know he doesn’t expect you to follow him.

But then you say, “Is it bad that I’d like to?”

No, he says. And he doesn’t say he wants you there, too, he’ll always want you there. But not as a friend.

He doesn’t say that.

Instead he says, “I’ll take care of you. When we go over there.”

It’s the least he could do.

Whatever you wanted — it was yours.

But what did you want?

You still weren’t certain about your plans after graduation. Interpreting was the most likely path. But…

“It’s always been fun with you, Kazuya,” you had said to him that night. “So, if you aren’t tired of me yet, I’d like to go with you.”

And that was like saying he’d ever get tired of baseball.

But the difference between you and baseball is his age would kick him from the latter eventually. If he was lucky, and he means lucky, you’d stick around after that, too.

Mardon, in the interest of getting in his good graces, Kazuya is certain, leaves his contact information with you. Says he’ll get you connected with the organization and see about an internship.

So, that summer break, you packed up and headed to Seattle, Washington, where — Kazuya still finds this hilarious — you ended up shadowing the Mariners’ newest pitcher, Narumiya Mei.

You complained endlessly about him. About having to tail him from sunup to sundown. About how he was none too grateful, either, and pestered you with questions about Kazuya, then a couple insults about Eijun.

But you also sent so many pictures of the city, of Mount Rainier, the national park in Washington. Rolling mountains of green, snow-capped peaks, like something out of a travel magazine.

And you came back rejuvenated, having spent the second to last month of the MLB’s regular season experiencing the thrill of working there.

It was fun. So much fun, Kazuya, like you couldn’t believe. Even if Narumiya was being a brat the entire time.

So, you see. Kazuya is lucky. Maybe the luckiest person on this entire damn planet, to have you by his side.

But that was then.

Now, in your final year, he is… he is worried.

With how distant you are sometimes.

How it feels like you’re slipping away bit by bit.

You feel so far away, like you’re in another world, and you won’t talk about it.

Not even to him.

But turnabout is fair play.

After all, he’s out there on the roof, talking to Spider-Woman, and he hasn’t breathed a word of it to you.

Kazuya doesn’t even understand why.

It just doesn’t come out when he looks at you. It should. Should be easy. But it’s not. He looks at your face and keeps it to himself.

Maybe because… he knows nothing will come of it.

Even if seeing her hurt on the roof bothered him, the way she picked out the glass in her side without making a sound.

Even if something about her niggles at him, feels familiar in a way he cannot articulate or a way that even makes sense.

Even if, with that uncomfortable sense of familiarity, he suddenly found himself considering the weight of what she does, the responsibility on her shoulders.

How it seems like the weight of the world.

How it is.

#miyuki kazuya #daiya no ace #ace of diamond #miyuki kazuya x reader #daiya no ace x reader #ace of diamond x reader

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