#My very cool take on how to fix Film Sonic
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AGH!
I have another brainworm today, courtesy of scrolling through @gayemeralds blog last night and seeing their take on the Sonic films, which I haven’t even watched except for a few clips this morning. And it may or may not be apparent at this stage, but when my brain sees something broken in a fandom I love, IT STARTS SPITBALLING WAYS TO FIX IT, so... Here we are again.
(I’mtryingtoworkonONEFICrightnowandtumblrjustkeepswaggingfixationsinfrontofmystupidbrainadfadfasdflsdafjslik)
Primary issue with Filmverse Sonic: the themes don’t match. Not within the canon of the filmverse, but against just about every other iteration of Sonic that’s ever existed; there’s a de-emphasis on freedom and exploration and more of a focus on security, home being a single place, and finding happiness staying still.
NOW, part of the reason for that is that Sonic is given good cause to feel more nebulous about a nomadic on-the-move lifestyle than other incarnations, as the opening of the first movie shows us. Instead of running being his personal freedom, it’s framed as necessary for his safety against a threat that’s immediately made very tangible, so the idea of not having to run anymore and finding a place he can return to would be a source of comfort, not unrest for him (barring dealing with the trauma of his guardian sacrificing herself for him, natch.)
Simple enough to remedy, methinks; if you want to maintain Longclaw’s role in the story–and actually, the first few minutes does pretty decently setting up the ‘chosen one AND just some guy’ dichotomy for Sonic–then just spice things up with a little subtlety.
How about Longclaw realizes one day that a threat, may or may not be made clear it’s the Echidna tribe, has found the island and so she pulls one of the cons parents sometimes do; “Say, Sonic, I think we should play a game today. You’ve been good about staying cooped up, I know it’s hard. How about you take these rings and see if you can hide out on a different world? I’ll come looking for you in a little while; make sure you do a good job hiding! Take some extra rings in case you get lost.”
Obviously, she doesn’t follow, Sonic waits her out until he realizes she isn’t coming, he might find his way back to Mobius and discover her fate or he might not; in any case, he still ends up on Earth, running from his past (and from those looking for him, whether or not he knows it) and in doing so, learns to find comfort in being on the move.
Bonus, that initial betrayal of his trust makes him wary of bonding with anyone, adults in particular. Also, if the movie knows what its doing, don’t reveal all the origin stuff outright in the first five minutes; hint at it throughout and then give the audience a WHAMMY when he finally talks about feelings because he learns to trust later in the film, or even in the second film.
Alternate opening: slow fade in, a scene of grassy knolls, gradual pan out to reveal a highway and power lines, confirming we’re on Earth and not Mobius. Still shot, music, then SHOOOOM! blue blur tearing past breaks the soundtrack.
Cut to a stretch of highway farther on, SFX tell us the blurs’ moving from stage right and going to come into shot; a car appears in eyeline first, and the streak of blue leaps into bushes off the main drag.
Car passes. Spines pop out. Green eyes glance after the car’s rear bumper. Sonic’s voice starts narrating over his actions.
“I know what you’re thinking; you’re wondering, who’s that handsome blue devil?” etc. etc.
Maybe that’s just me. ANYWHO. That explains Sonic’s fierce independence and initial wariness to interact with others and why he feels the way he does about a static life in the same place. We’ve gotten rid of that part of the “happiness can be found standing still” theme. The other portion stems from Tom’s existence, which was another complaint and I’ll get to that, but first!
What breaks Sonic’s status quo of hiding and self-isolation? Who does he interact with first?
Maddie.
He finds an injured animal–bird, rodent, any small critter he could actually carry–and being the inherently good dude he is, wants to help. He tries on his own, since anything else would require approaching humans, before he admits the problem is beyond his capabilities and he looks for a vet: hence, Maddie.
Maybe initially he goes at night to help him avoid being seen, before it sinks in that people and even vets have working hours and so he camps out as near town as possible while remaining hidden until it opens and drops off the injured critter at the back door and making a racket to guarantee someone will find it. He only watches the place long enough to assure himself that the birdie’s been helped properly before he runs again.
He hopes that’s the end of things, that he doesn’t have to put himself at risk of being seen again, but no; he keeps finding wayward, inexplicably weak/injured creatures in the forest (OOH, this can tie into Robotnik) and so against what he thinks is his better judgement he keeps making drop offs.
At some point, he becomes just a touch too comfortable with it, because the animals are getting help each time and he isn’t getting caught, and one night he naps a little longer than he means too outside the back door to the clinic and Maddie sees him. *Cue awkward beat of silence as they both realize several things, and Sonic wants to flee but he can’t move too fast before he passes off the injured birdie*
Lacking anything else to say to the bright blue talking hedgehog that’s been dropping off nearly half of her recent patients, Maddie politely asks if he’s had any problems he wants looked at. Sonic gives her a wary glance and a shake of his head before disappearing again.
Contact established, an acquaintance and subsequent friendship can develop. Sonic lingering longer at drop offs, checking in on his tiny rescue critters, Maddie inferring that he likes being off the grid and takes pains to hide lingering quills or other traces he leaves behind without meaning to, she starts smuggling snacks into work because she doesn’t know whether this skittish little friend-shaped creature last ate, inevitably Sonic shows up at her door injured himself.
Maddie reaches a point where she realizes Sonic should probably be exposed to more interaction/socialization/beings who can talk to him than the quasi-daily five minutes he spends with her.
Enter Tom.
Now, whether or not Tom needs to exist in the filmverse at all is up for grabs, but let’s run with the thread of keeping him. First and foremost, he cannot be a cop, or at least cannot stay a cop unless he’s only there for a minor comic relief part and showing police ineptitude when it comes to or compared against Sonic. SO.
We make him a liiiiiiiitle bit of a human parallel to the blue blur. Let’s say he’s... a few years younger. Not a teenager by any stretch, he still lives on his own, but he’s lost; emotionally, spiritually, whatever. Got his own sad story to tell or not tell, pretty new to the force, certainly not a sheriff. In limbo w/ no family, not unlike Sonic, not particularly interested in being a cop but applied to for the job “For security, I guess. We need to put down roots, right? (he said, sounding only marginally sure at best)”
Closet nerd–might be relevant for second film when he meets Tails and they can mutually geek out over ancient stuff–secret desire to explore the world, possible amateur history buff, and the last thing he shares in common with Sonic is that he’s friends with Maddie. Since Tom doesn’t take his job all too seriously and, in Maddie’s words “Only thinks he’s a grown up” she figures he’s the ideal person to just hang out with Sonic a little. “Y’know, if you want to talk to somebody while I’m at work.”
(Also, Tom’s holding onto a power ring that’s since lost its luster, though he obviously doesn’t know what it is and this could help break the ice between him and Sonic so they have more than superficial conversations and also tie into lore about the emeralds being on Earth later and Tom’s obviously not got some super important lineage or anything he’s just some guy like Sonic but the ring found its way to him and adfsdfsdf MOVING ON.)
Then, Robotnik. He’s.... very very clearly characterized in the films to cater the stories toward young children to get them into Sonic. Or to be what some people think cater more toward young children; it’s not that kids wouldn’t like the other incarnations of Eggman that already exist.
The aim of his portrayal’s another issue: fact remains, he’s only just kinda gets a pass as Eggman. There’s not really much trace of the hyper-calculating straight up mean bastard we all know Robotnik is. He does mean things, sure, but I mean... eh. Rather than investing quite so much in him being funny, nudge that aim slightly to the left closer to unhinged. Because as anyone on this site will tell you, unhinged leads to some downright hilarity.
Make his status as a respected intellect on Earth more begrudging, establish somehow that a lot of people think he’s lost a fair bit of the plot because he’s held the existence of Mobius as a pet theory for years and no one’s listened to him. Remember when I mentioned him earlier? Have him doing experiments and screwed up things to the wild critters because his machines have detected traces of peculiar energy signatures lingering around them; energy that emanates from Sonic.
Also, that guy who apparently... makes him coffee? Simps for him? Haven’t watched the films, and even seeing clips I don’t remember his name, but HO BOY THE POTENTIAL THERE. You could take either the Snively route from SatAM or something closer to the comics/games and have one of the extra clips at the end of the first film’s credits (or in the midst of the second film before revealing Eggman’s returned) be the crony’s robotization. It’d be so easy to frame things in a way that’s funny enough on the surface for kids while the millennial fans will be laughing for entirely different reasons (”WHAHAHAHAHAAAAT THE FUUUHUHUHUUUCK!”)
Ahem.
Finally, the plot: my brainworm hasn’t quite progressed that far yet. But Robotnik would somehow discover evidence of Sonic’s existence and thus get an absurd amount of funding for hunting the hedgehog from the government, the police get involved, Tom Does Not Like how the police handle getting involved, Sonic ultimately grows enough to declare that he’s made friends and/or trusts the humans who’ve helped him, decides to start fighting instead of hiding, beats Robotnik (sends him to another world? I think that happens at the end of the first film?) and Tom is called in for doing some or many things against orders/regulations/whatever and he’s told he’s on suspension.
Then, in a subversion of every other scene we get when a cop is being suspended, when he pulls off his badge and looks at it and we get the close up shot of him holding it–contrary to every other such shot I can remember–it’s dirty. Damaged in action instead of something pristine, something to feel conflicted about. Someone says “It’ll be detailed and good as new when you come back.” Tom ends his role in the scene with “Don’t bother. I don’t want it.”
And he makes his exit.
Movie closes out (I thought maybe a spark between Maddie and Tom could model for Sonic a different kind of love than the one of a guardian or a friend, but it’s not essential) with the question of what Tom and Sonic are going to do now that the former’s quit his job and the latter’s existence has been outted.
Tom: “I dunno. But actually, I’m... I think I’m okay with that.” (Growth enough to let go of the idea that he could fix his restlessness by tying himself to one spot)
Sonic: “Lay low, I guess. Might pop over to another world for a bit,” (in response to sad looks) “I’ll definitely visit, though. Need my chili dog fix.”
“Nothing else?”
Cue Sonic opening his mouth for a wisecrack, and instead he chooses to let some vulnerability show through on his face. Maddie discreetly pulls out her phone to take a picture, realizing she doesn’t have any of her two friends in the same place at once.
Click.
Tom, for some reason, blinks, looking a little dazed, and Sonic refuses to make eye contact with either of them. They say their goodbyes and he speeds off.
Cut to Maddie checking her camera roll, only for a small miracle to greet her.
An almost perfectly captured millisecond of Sonic hugging Tom.
Soundtrack fades in over Tom driving into the sunset, driver’s side window rolled down and most of his life packed in the bed of the truck, a map for South America splayed open in the shotgun seat, the power ring hanging from a string around his neck. Close out on Sonic narrating again, introducing himself, upbeat tone notably more genuine than at the start of the film.
“I’m Sonic–Sonic the Hedgehog!”
#Sonic the Hedgehog#Sonic#Filmverse Sonic#Eggman#Robotnik#Tom Wachowski#Maddie#Mobius#Movie Sonic#Brainworm#Fixing things#AAHHH#That feels better#Thrown into the void#I'd label this a ramble#But I just reblogged that other thing#So#Uh#My very cool take on how to fix Film Sonic#Why can I only churn out 2k words for this#In one sitting#And not my fic#Bruce talks about
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Week 86 - 8/28/23 - A BLUE BEETLE MOVIE???
Hi there,
It probably isn't news as it's a pretty popular film in theaters right now, but there's a Blue Beetle movie out! And it's a lot of fun!
If you didn't know, Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle, is my favorite superhero. There's a pretty good joke in the new movie about the difference between Ted and Batman, and not to step on the punchline, but it boils down to Ted knows how to laugh. He's a character frequently written to have a sense of humor, to know a good joke, and to be the dramatic superheroic straightman when it counts. He is not exactly an everyman--he's a genius, he dresses up in a silly costume, and he's rich--but in a lot of ways, he's just a guy trying to do the right thing because he can.
And he casts a long shadow over the new movie, which is about Jaime Reyes--fantastically played by the dreamy Xolo Maridueña--who I don't love quite as much as Ted, but who I think is himself a great and important character. He's a very different hero. He's got a sense of humor, he's got a good heart, but his relationship with his family, with his friends, with the scarab, and with the Blue Beetle legacy allows him to be something totally apart from Ted. The movie takes a lot of liberties--it's part Spider-Man, part Ant-Man, part Green Lantern (though... honestly probably better than the past few recent film adaptations of those characters)--but it doesn't run from the truth of who Jaime is as a character, which I think makes it all the better. The best superhero movie projects don't try to be just an adaptation, but to take what makes the hero great, understand it, and share it in a way that makes them more accessible and loom larger as a hero.
I don't want to spoil anything, but there was one extremely stupid part that made me tear up (out of just finally getting to see a thing on-screen and knowing there's some practical version of it out there and honestly, a little bit jealousy). If you see me, or want to reach out and ask about it, I'll gladly tell you.
But there's a Blue Beetle movie. And even though I saw it and really quite liked it... I kinda still can't believe it.
Next week: No blog on the website/newsletter! There is a Patreon post scheduled if you need your fix, going out to all backers at $5 or more a month! But I'm outta town and will see you when I return.
What I enjoyed this week:
Blank Check (Podcast), Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links (Video Game), Craig of the Creek (Cartoon), Honkai Star Rail (Video game), My Adventures with Superman (Cartoon), The Broken Room by Peter Clines (Book), Dumbing of Age (Webcomic), Solve This Murder (Podcast), The Venture Bros: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (Movie--which my pal Phil Murphy worked on!), Kaiju No. 8 (Manga), Kaguya-Sama: Love is War (Manga), Blue Beetle (Movie--duh), Oldboy (Movie), Witch Watch (Manga), Becca playing a little more Persona 5, Tangled (Movie), Jurassic Park (Movie), D.E.B.S. (Movie)
New Releases this week (8/23/2023):
Godzilla Monsters & Protectors: All Hail the King TPB (Editor--on the latter half)
Final Order Cut-Off next week (8/28/2023--last day to get your preorders in):
Sonic the Hedgehog #65
New Releases next week (8/30/2023):
Godzilla Rivals: Vs. SpaceGodzilla (Supervising Editor)
Sonic the Hedgehog: Endless Summer (A very silly credit)
Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island TPB (Editor)
Announcements:
Becca is at Cartoon-a Palooza in Temecula on 9/15 & 9/16. It's a cool free all-ages little con, so come on out and see them!
Wanna support me? Consider joining my Patreon! I've got a bunch of cool stuff coming up and already on there. As well as some silly stuff like a tour of my desk, so you can see where the comics magic happens! I've got a bunch of stuff scheduled for September already and there'll always be more!
I have a webstore! It does look like I'm going to get a small supplement to my Beast Wars Vol. 3 stock, which is nice, but most everything else, I am not going to have more of anytime soon! Maybe give it a look!
I've still got a few things on my eBay, if you're looking for stuff! But obviously, anything that would get shipped out won't until I'm back!
Pic of the Week:
It was National Cinema Day yesterday, which is why Becca and I went to Blue Beetle ($4 tickets to the movies!). But they had to work, so I went and saw a second film, the 20th anniversary screening of Park Chan-wook's Oldboy. And the theater that was showing Oldboy had a special Cinema Day deal on the Blue Beetle backback popcorn bucket, so I did pick it up because that with a popcorn and a drink was still significantly cheaper than the bucket usually is by itself. So here's a photo of Becca modeling it.
#comics#sonic idw#godzilla idw#blue beetle#national cinema day#popcorn bucket#popculturepunk#Ted Kord is my no. 1 guy
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So Caro how do you like "butter"?? 😳🤔
i’ll be cranking out my media major, let's review butter stylistically. ✍️ in four aspects — sonically, visually, lyrically, and concept-wise.
sonically: 9/10. here’s an interesting comparison i found, this can be calculated by looking at the stats of a musical piece. if you want to do harmonic mixing with another bts song, seesaw (!) is the most similar to it. with the exception that it’s written in f minor but other than that, the bpm/energy/danceability is uncanny. mindboggling. in other words, two bts songs can have the same anatomy and be entirely different worlds. that’s seriously hard to pull off. talking genre, recalling that namjoon said it's a "super retro disco pop new age acoustic ballad", that description is right on 😂it gets very daft punk after 1:38, groovy, the production is quite proper. especially in the second half, it’s a firework and all transitions VERY well. what i liked less, the voices are quite meddled with and as last time, the pitch gets higher and higher so the baritones need more pressure on the voice to be heard (i salute taehyung, my mezzo would be breaking apart). it’s a miracle that rapline can handle these songs. they put a heavier bassline under yoongi’s and rm’s bars, and separated hoseok toward the end since his tone is higher so, i hear you, someone knows what they’re doing. as for the tenors, looking forward to the live rendition of the mixed register bits and the vocal runs. bts are stable like that and jk’s timbre carries the song effortlessly (as is everyone’s great english pronunciation, these guys work so hard) so they wouldn't need autotune, figure it's been added for artistic effect, the retro vibes. a bonus on the other hand, jin getting his lines, hell yes, the spotlight for him. and the arrangement of their parts in general is quite ingeniously done, that looks like the workings of namjoon’s giant brain.
visually: 9/10. the dancebreak being the highlight — this is the sexiest thing i've ever seen — we get to see some really fancy moves from everybody and the hairstyles are quite a feast. jimin and jk have been much-talked-about so i'll emphasize the extravagance of hobi's 2013 MAMA g-dragonesque neon yellow here. he’s the smooth like butter guy they’re talking about indeed, butter hair, butter attitude, butter on his plat! 😂it’s seriously good thinking to have one member embody the concept with a color so, pretty clever. making him stand out as the ending fairy and then blending in the butter logo is equally smart. they wanted to catch our eye, they achieved it. the couture: yep, fashion youtube will have a good time going through all the outfits. from tae's chanel earrings, jin’s skirt, to white suits to jackets over the shoulder. very stylish. someone put a lot of thought into it, and i'm a sucker for some gnc undertones so very cool stuff. the only (very trivial) minus i noticed, a lot of the tailoring does not exactl fit the boys’ bodies to a t, see jungkook’s or jin’s sleeves, though you can’t expect bts to have a tailor come in and fix so many outfits with so many comebacks at once. the dance, it's a compilation of many classic bts moves. i feel like it could be tiny bit more distinguished with a whopping new complex signature formation that bts is famous for in creating, then again the full dance practice isn't out and the head nodding part is quite a visual anchor. also: i noticed they put yoongi in front row a lot. someone’s shoulder is finally better again, we can prepare for some good stuff.
lyrically: 4/10. the song fulfills its function, it creates the mood, but i’m hard to please in that regard as mentioned before. why: time and again i realize that yoongi, rm, and pdogg spoil us with comforting or on-fire lyrics that hit home and are on brand. same idea as in dynamite here, we're hit with a lotta english catchphrases that we usually wouldn't hear from bangtan. it's party mode, it's the summer hit kinda writing, so yeah it does what it’s supposed to do anyway and anybody can sing along. it’s catchy and solid for sure. the 'smooth criminal/superstar/heartbreaker' idea is carried through as a red string so thematically, it's coherent at least. a lot of lines are downright hilarious with random analogies and i don't know if the writers are serious or not. they could go all the way to make it clearer that humor and braggadocio is the concept here, exaggerate it even more. you can’t always tell if it’s a parody of a ‘yeah i’m the man you all fall for me’ sentiment or if it’s 100% business. in some parts of the song it works, in others it makes less sense. where i’ve seen bts execute this well with their own writing is converse high, that’s the bar. it’s also a personal lesson for me since i write crack often, butter tells you where to put the punchlines and where to keep it neutral. a lot of it is all over the place. on the other hand, it fits right on the beat. and perfectly executed pop so i'm a bit torn. i like the ‘got that heat’ part they gave jimin. 'side step right left to my beat' is a good chorus entry as well. making light of it, every lyric works as a witty gif or tweet tagline and we'll be circulating these phrases to eternity. every line works as a good comeback in any situation of life. yoongi's verse legit made me giggle. TLDR: the lyrics are partially confusing but they blend with the music well.
conceptually: 8/10. hit the bell for that black and white intro, that was a good idea, same with the latest teaser. and: range, darling. only in a bts video could a cotton candy jimin go from a mugshot to being the president to a basket ball court hero to going full saturday night fever to flexing his legs in less than three minutes. jokes aside: it all fits in the universe of boy with luv and dynamite so points for consistency. bts's directors have outlined a new style for sure. the worldbuilding could go even deeper, but lumpens did a good job giving us many different eye candy serves and an innovative theme that hasn’t been tackled before, k-pop and pancakes why not! there are less actual film sets (and the difference shows, e.g. in Fire or Daechwita it really gave it some oomph), but it's not really needed. butter has no requirement for an agust d-ish plotline with historical buildings and the members' looks are in the center of attention. then again, i like those details of hoseok sitting in a retro apartment at the end — cozy, i love — with a radio. once again, they could exaggerate the vintage even more, it wouldn’t take away from the idea and visuals. i wish they would’ve expanded even more on the melting butter aesthetic shots as well, although it’s neatly tied into the song so it makes sense. the lyrics really have been blended with the choreograpy theme (the side step as a central move) so i’m thinking the art direction and choreographer had quite an in-depth discussion how to create a bigger picture. as for my weakness: cuteness melts me like butter, extra points for jungkook and yoongi being adorable in their seats.
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Independent Project Reflection - FN2
Air Mail - https://vimeo.com/542596568
I think from the beginning our group was very certain that we were going to choose John’s idea just because it was already so charming and complete that we had to see these characters on the screen. This film was heavily inspired by Pixar shorts - Paperman and Geri’s Game - as we wanted it to have this kind of comedic feeling with these really ordinary yet lovable characters. We also felt that most Pixar films may have clichéd storylines, but somehow always feel new and fresh, which is something we wanted to translate into our film. Thankfully Leo did mention that our film did feel similar to a Pixar film which we were so glad to hear!
Once the script was complete, the biggest challenge we had was finding a suitable location. We all went away and took pictures of any windows we had access to that could possibly be of use. Unfortunately our communication at the start of this project wasn’t the best so we were quite late in getting to the filming stage. Katie did some filming at home but her footage was not used as it didn’t match the other footage we had which is a shame but understandable. John and Jeff managed to get the entire thing filmed in a day and the footage turned out really nice!
During pre-production, I made up a moodboard inspired by my interpretation of the script, you can see it here. In my feedback for the fiction project I was told that I could’ve included a colour palette in my moodboard as I had done for a few of my extra posts in my blog, so I decided to make one up this time round.
John took on the role for the picture edit. We were told during the crit that the fast paced jump cuts worked really well with the comedy and in creating rhythm. I contributed in sending a lot of feedback to John, mainly pointing out that certain clips could be cut down or extended to fix the pacing. I wish I could’ve contributed more to the edit itself as editing is probably the thing I feel most comfortable doing (at the moment), so hopefully I will have a chance in the near future to contribute to my team through an edit :). We all also spent a lot of time searching the internet for a suitable, copyright-free, soundtrack. Luckily Katie chose one that actually matched up with the edit quite well and fit the theme of the film! It was pointed out to us that the fade to black in the middle killed the pacing and broke the film into two when it really didn’t need to be. It also split the music in two which didn’t feel right as it was played linearly throughout the entire film. Regrettably, this is something that we only noticed after submitting the final cut which, in a future edit, we will be very quick to change.
One area where our film was really lacking was sound design. Although some of the foley turned out well, like the planes hitting the wall around the window and the paper landing in the bin, we missed our chance of trying to tell the story through sound as well as visually. Leo mentioned that our sound was very naturalistic and needed to be more cartoony which would fit in with the comedic side of the film. I do not blame John at all for this, I don’t believe any of us really thought that deeply about how to creatively use the sound design to match our film and I think that this is something that we’d most definitely put more effort into if we were to ever reshoot this film. I think after this project I’ve come to understand just how useful and important sound design and creating a sonic atmosphere is in completing a film and I’ve definitely developed some motivation to really learn that. I’ve never experimented with sound before so maybe that is something to practice over the summer??
I feel this group worked really well together as we were all always on the same page and agreed with what direction this film should take. At times our communication could’ve been a lot better which may have resulted in a more perfected film but I believe considering we were placed all over the country, it may be forgiven. I am really looking forward to seeing what this group is capable of in the future when we can all meet up in person to work on a film!
Blog posts I enjoyed !! :
Rosie so cool !
Jack :’)
Bonnie :ooo!
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Sonic Vs Harley: Send In The Hedgehogs - Quill’s Scribbles
Unless you’ve been meditating in the desert for the past couple of weeks, you’ll know that there’s a bloody epidemic going on in the world right now. The coronavirus outbreak has dramatically changed our very way of life for the foreseeable future, and us plebs have been having to get used to all these alien concepts such as social distancing, self isolation, vaccines being good and Gal Gadot murdering John Lennon with a tuneless rendition of ‘Imagine.’ These are scary and uncertain times we live in, and this goes double for the movie industry as productions are halted and/or delayed, and cinemas around the globe are shutting shop. This means that streaming services, initially dismissed by pompous filmmakers like Steven Spielberg as being lesser than cinema, has now become Hollywood’s saving grace. Oh the irony!
But I’m not here to talk about that. Today I’m here to talk about how a blue CGI hedgehog seems to be more profitable than Margot Robbie.
Jokes aside, this is actually a fascinating topic of discussion in my opinion. Both Sonic The Hedgehog and Birds Of Prey (I categorically refuse to type the whole title because I’ve got better shit to be doing other than trying to remember how the fuck you spell ‘fantabulous’) were released within a week of each other just as the coronavirus outbreak was gathering steam, and yet the box office earnings of both films are poles apart. Sonic has now become the highest grossing video game movie of all time and is, at the time I’m typing this, the second highest grossing film of the year, beating even Disney Pixar’s new film Onward if you can believe it, whereas Birds Of Prey... well... it’s not exactly flopped as such. The film’s low budget protected it from that, but it’s hardly what you’d call a success, making just shy of the $200 million it would need to break even. How did this happen? Especially when you consider that public opinion of both films a year ago would have you believe that the opposite would have happened. Everyone was massively excited for Birds Of Prey, especially after the string of successes DC have had with Aquaman, Shazam and most recently Joker, whereas Sonic...
...yeah, lets not talk about that.
Now before we start, let me just make absolutely clear that this is just my opinion. Mu subjective opinion. Normally I’d expect my readers to be smart enough to know this, but I’m talking about a DC movie here and I know from personal experience how ‘passionate’ a certain tin foil hat wearing portion of that fanbase can be sometimes. You may recall back in 2016 I received rape and death threats when I had the gall to say that I didn’t enjoy watching Suicide Squad. You know? That beloved classic that nobody fucking remembers or talks about anymore? Also there was that time when Harley Quinn fans started spreading fake rumours that the Sonic movie was homophobic in the hopes of salvaging Birds Of Prey’s box office earnings. And yes, I know it’s not all DCEU fans that are like this, etc. etc., but considering that it only ever seems to be DC fans that pull shit like this, you’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly in a very generous mood right now. Basically, if you’ve seen Birds Of Prey and liked it, that’s great. More power to you. I’m not even suggesting that Birds Of Prey is a bad movie. I’m just exploring the reasons why I think the film may have underperformed and why, possibly, Sonic The Hedgehog overtook them despite outside circumstances. This is not fact. This is just my opinion. It’s my opinion. An opinion. A subjective opinion. It’s my opinion. Okay? Okay.
Also I should point out that out of the two films, I’ve only seen Sonic, not Birds Of Prey. Believe it or not, this will be relevant later on. Again, this is not about the quality of either film. This is merely my subjective observations regarding their respective marketing and box office performance.
So why, according to the fans and the media, did Birds Of Prey underperform at the box office? There are three popular reasons for this. The first is obviously the coronavirus. Less people willing to leave the house and buy a ticket, therefore less box office earnings. Makes sense, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. Lets not forget, Sonic The Hedgehog came out a week after Birds Of Prey and practically steamrolled over the competition despite coronavirus fears. So I’m not entirely convinced of this. The second reason is that Birds Of Prey only has niche appeal because it’s based on a lesser known comic book property. Again, makes sense, but so was Guardians Of The Galaxy and Deadpool, and they were both hugely successful. Obviously I’m not saying Birds Of Prey needed to be as big as those movies. Even if it just made the same amount of money as Shazam did, it would have been successful, but it didn’t. The third reason is good old fashioned sexism, and yes, I agree that may have been a contributing factor, but I think it’s naive to place all the blame on the anti-SJWs who feel threatened by a gang of women kicking butt. Look at the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters for example. That film received a tirade of misogynistic comments from butthurt fanboys, but it still made roughly the same amount of money at the box office as the original Ghostbusters did. The reason it flopped wasn’t because of the fanboys, but because of Sony spending a stupid amount of money on the thing in the hopes of jumpstarting a shared universe. If Ghostbusters 2016 had the same budget as Birds Of Prey, Sony would be laughing their way to the bank right now.
No I think there’s a little bit more going on here. Lets bring Sonic into the discussion and explore it, shall we?
The most blatantly obvious reason for Sonic’s success and Birds Of Prey’s relative failure is the age rating. Sonic is a PG, family friendly film with a cuddly animal as its main character. The film even stars Jim Carrey being his usual goofy self. Kids love this shit and parents will no doubt be prepared to risk a zombie apocalypse to let their kids see it. Birds Of Prey, on the other hand, is a hard R. Strong bloody violence, sexual references, everyone says ‘fuck’ a lot. No kids allowed. Of course that hasn’t stopped films like Deadpool or Joker being such giant hits, but they didn’t have to contend with a global pandemic. Plus, according to what I’ve heard from certain critics, apparently Birds Of Prey’s R rating doesn’t seem wholly justified. That if you were to cut back on the swearing and the gore, it would make no difference to the film. Now you see this is something I’ve been afraid would happen ever since Deadpool’s surprise success back in 2016. That studios and filmmakers would take the wrong lessons from it and make their films R rated just for the sake of making them R rated. We see this with movie studios all the time. One studio finds success and suddenly everyone tries to copy it without considering why it was successful in the first place. The reason Deadpool as well as other R rated films like Logan and Joker worked is because the films justified their R ratings. You couldn’t have told the same story without that R rating. An R rated Harley Quinn doesn’t seem necessary, especially when you consider that there have been Harley Quinn adaptations before that did just as well without being strictly for adults. Hell, the original Harley Quinn story from the Batman animated series was PG rated. So the inclusion of a R rating feels less like a genuine artistic choice and more like trend chasing. And now that Joker has become the most profitable comic book movie ever made, I fear this is only going to get worse in the future.
Another factor that needs to be considered is audiences’ trust and expectation. Sonic The Hedgehog’s journey to the big screen has in some ways become the classic redemption story. After the initial reveal of Sonic the Manhog, fans were understandably pissed off that a beloved video game icon was given such a grotesque re-imagining for the sake of ‘realism’ (snort). As a result of the backlash, the director Jeff Fowler announced they would revise the design and the film was postponed for three months in order to fix it. The result was a Sonic design much closer to the games and this generated a lot of goodwill from the fans. Subsequent trailers were much better received and there was a lot more positive buzz around the movie. Birds Of Prey on the other hand demonstrated the inverse of this. Everyone was hugely excited, but as we got closer and closer to the date of release, audience anticipation began to wane. The trailers received little fanfare. In fact a lot of people were largely unimpressed by it. Why?
Well first we should address the elephant in the room. The fact of the matter is Sonic has a bigger and much more passionate fanbase than Harley does. That’s not to say Harley isn’t a popular character. She is. But I think Warner Bros and DC seriously overestimated how much people wanted to see Harley Quinn get her own movie. She may have been the best thing about Suicide Squad, but considering what a total trainwreck Suicide Squad was, that’s hardly saying much, is it? I mean the villain Sandman was the best thing about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. That doesn’t mean I want a whole movie based on him. It just means out of all the things I hated about Spider-Man 3, Sandman was the thing I hated least.
And that’s another thing. The fact that Birds Of Prey didn’t try to distance themselves from Suicide Squad I don’t think did them any favours. While Suicide Squad was a commercial success at the time, people haven’t exactly been kind to the film in subsequent years. I mean feel free to read my review of Suicide Squad for an exhaustive list of reasons why the film was less than enjoyable to sit through. One dimensional characters, poor editing, ugly colour palette, casual sexism, David Ayer trying desperately to look cool and edgy, I could go on. So when the first trailers for Birds Of Prey came out and we saw the neon colour scheme and Hot Topic wardrobes make a comeback, I can’t have been the only one who was slightly put off.
Which leads me to the biggest issue of all and that’s the stonking unoriginality of the whole thing. For all their boasting about how feminist and progressive they are, what is it about Birds Of Prey that makes it stand out from other comic book films? Granted Sonic wasn’t wholly original either, but at least they had the novelty of a blue CGI hedgehog to piggyback off of. Birds Of Prey really doesn’t have anything if you think about it. Here’s the impression I got from the trailers. It has the same aesthetics as Suicide Squad, so already I’m getting PTS style flashbacks, and its story doesn’t seem all that intriguing or unique. Think about it. A violent anti-hero has to protect a delinquent child from some sadistic big baddie. How many times have we seen that done in these films? Terminator 2, Deadpool 2, Logan, even Ghost Rider has told this story before. The fact that the characters in question happen to be women doesn’t change a damn thing. They even have Harley Quinn breaking the fourth wall. Like... guys, come on! Surely we can do something more original than this! It feels like the only thing Birds Of Prey has going for it is that its main protagonists are all women. But after the likes of Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, that’s no longer a real selling point anymore. You need something else to entice people. Something that Birds Of Prey sorely lacks.
Now I’m sure any Birds Of Prey fans reading this must be getting pissed off at me, so I’d just like to remind everyone yet again that I’m not necessarily saying Birds Of Prey is a bad film. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen it. And that’s kind of my point. A week or so ago, my friend and I knew this was probably going to be our last opportunity to go to the cinema for quite some time, so we knew we had to make our choice of film count. We had a choice between Sonic The Hedgehog and Birds Of Prey, and we ended up going to see Sonic. We don’t regret it. We had a good time watching Sonic. It was a fun movie, well made and surprisingly moving at points. (interesting to note, Sonic also has the main protagonist protecting a child plot, but unlike the films I mentioned, Sonic’s story is told from the perspective of the kid. It’s a little thing, but it’s enough to make the whole thing feel fresh and unique because it’s something not even the games tend to acknowledge. Sonic is a kid and the film plays around with that, which adds to its overall charm). Maybe Birds Of Prey is a better movie than Sonic. I don’t know. But that’s not what this is about. When picking which film we would watch, it was the factors I mentioned before that we considered and I suspect what many other people took into consideration too. Basically we looked at these two films and thought to ourselves which one would we be prepared to go outside and risk our health for in order to see it in a cinema. In the end, Sonic won because, out of the two films, it looked more exciting and more unique than Birds Of Prey, and ultimately we trusted that this film could deliver what it promised. Is that fair? Probably not, but sadly that’s often how these things play out.
Birds Of Prey may have had a good critical reception, but it ultimately shot itself in the foot thanks to some of its creative and marketing decisions. And if studios take anything away from all this, it should be that relying solely on the gender of the main characters as a means to sell something just doesn’t cut it anymore.
#sonic the hedgehog#birds of prey#birds of prey (and the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn)#quill's scribbles
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I was tagged by @hepatosaurus and realized that if I wanted to do this, I'd better do it right away or it’ll get lost in the mists of time (aka my drafts)
ONE / name / alias. Mel
TWO / birthday. Late April
THREE / zodiac sign. Taurus
FOUR / height. 5'6"
FIVE / hobbies: Reading, art, video games, knitting, ukulele. A lotta these've fallen by the wayside on account of The Depression but I'm working on it!
SIX / favourite colours: green (so many different shades of green - the verdegris patina on old metal, the golden-green of light filtering through new leaves, the aqua colour of the sky a bit after sunset) but a new favourite lately has been mustard yellow. It's like navy yellow. Also blue is pretty great - don't make me choose!
SEVEN / favourite books. Oh gosh, so many books. The Discworld series and the Vorkosigan Saga to start with, anything by T. Kingfisher or Ursula Vernon (especially Digger), the Bordertown anthologies, are all very good and had a big influence on me. More recent books that knocked my socks off are This is How You Lose the Time War and Empress of Forever, but if I don't stop with the book list now we'll be here all day. Science fiction and fantasy are my jam.
EIGHT / last song listened to. Out of Time, by Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, who are AMAZING and I saw live recently.
NINE / last film watched. I saw Venom for the first time last week, and it was just as much fun as I'd been promised.
TEN / inspiration for muse. Man I don't even know, I'm struggling with this lately. I'm working on my fundamental drawing skills in the hopes that it helps me get over the hurdle of getting my ideas out. I can imagine some pretty cool stuff but it's like path to getting the ideas out of my brain and onto paper is clogged or something. (clogged full of feelings about failure and success and fear, I'm pretty sure, but I don't think a drain snake can fix that; we'll see how a therapist does) Anyway, I want to be able to share some of the cool imagery in my head - underwater grottoes full of bioluminescent fungus, cities built into canyons criss-crossed with bridges and trams, all sorts of cool fantasy shit, but when I try it feels really bad at how far what I can draw is from what I WANT to draw, and learning how to be ok making "bad art" so that you can build your skills to the point you're making good art is the real thing I need to learn. That's hard, though.
ELEVEN / dream job. working on re-wilding and conservation, restoring wetlands and tallgrass prairies, like actually getting out into the field and doing the work on-site - but as this is a *dream* job it takes place in a world where that work is well funded, well supported, and well paid. Ah hell I should probably try and figure out how to get into that line of work anyway, it’s not like it doesn’t need doing. Maybe once I’ve gotten my technical communication certificate like I’m working on I’ll write grant proposals for organizations that do that kind of work so they can get funding, or I’ll make infographics for fundraising drives for ecological conservation or something.
TWELVE / meaning behind your url. I love the visual effect of opalescence, and I also love the humble potato, truly the underappreciated rock star of foods. I also think that complex word + simple word = funny. I also don’t appear to be much at first glance but are really interesting when you take a closer look.
let’s tag….
@elsajeni @opalescentdragon @byronicproclivities @acciomjolnir @terriblesplitends @tyrannosaurus-trainwreck @ohsilverplease @boomvagynamite
#memeplex#this isn't the right tag for that but i can't seem to pinpoint the right word#quizzes?#man i dunno#gpoy
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Theirs this cool post by @springs-and-starposts talking about how Shadow or Metal Sonic could exist in the movie version of Sonic and how they could work. It's something that seriously makes me think and seems possible. But here's a funny and basically out of character joke just.... concerning these two characters and two characters just watching the conversation.
Metal Sonic: I should be in the first sequel. Because I am the original doppleganger that was built to surpass Sonic is every way. I am one of his greatest threats. A enemy not to be messed with.
Shadow: Pfft! Your nothing because ever since my first game I've become the 2nd most popular character in the series. My story is something to be amazed by especially if it's on the big screen. Where the hell you've been at. You haven't been a major character in canon unless it's Sonic Mania. But also that was a fake version of you in Sonic Forces what the hell was that for. Besides they'll easily pick me.
Metal Sonic: Bullshit your story has too many plot holes that the movie needs to fix and considering how simple they are probably gonna be with this movie. They will have to make your story more simple. Compared to me my story is more simple. I'm a robot who's was built to kill the original Sonic. Especially I think I'm the real Sonic and it's a test to see who the real Sonic is. Your story is you and one of your dad's going ape shit because a person you considered a sister was shot. But the problem is we didn't see or know much of her. Especially she might of died of NIDS early so her death would of came anyway.
Shadow: How fucking dare you say that you don't know that. Besides last time I checked your only greatest version of yourself was from a OVA made into a movie. Especially it was a pilot for a Sonic anime that never came to be. Also even if Sonic Boom portrayed well in season 2 of that show. Your status is weak which shows how much of a bitch you are!
Metal Sonic: YOU WANNA GO AND INFINITE WAS RIGHT MARIA DESERVED TO GET SHOT!
Shadow: YOU WANNA GO YOU PUNK ASS ROBOT!?
Metal Sonic: YEAH I WANNA GO YOU ULTIMATE BITCHASS!
Sonic: Hey Tom should we help out.
Tom: Nah besides I brought lawn chairs and some popcorn. Including some chili dogs with some Pepsi wanna have some?
Sonic: Sure man.
*they both lay down on the lawn chairs**
Sonic: Honestly what about Chaos before Shadow....also Tails, Amy, and Knuckles, Rouge.... seriously that's a lot of characters.
Tom: Yeah seriously putting characters in these sequels seem difficult......what about put Metal and Shadow first appearing in the same film?
Sonic: Oh no we aren't going back to GeekGem's ideas where I basically die in the first sequel in a way.
Tom: Oh okay WAIT WHAT YOU FUCKING DIED!?
Sonic: Well not really I was stabbed but Chaos Controlled to Blaze's dimension.
Tom: Oh okay.....but just....wow....a death of Sonic the hedgehog in a film that introduces with Metal Sonic and Shadow the hedgehog.
Sonic: I'll be honest GeekGem had ideas that seemed nice. Thinks he's like Zack Snyder with the Crewinverse with Rebecca Sugar maybe. But seriously he realizes he sounds like Sony with them announcing films that sound very difficult to make and whatever else. Me teaming up with you against Eggman sounds more simple then what he thought. Especially he was taking that leaked script with Perfect Chaos and other stuff to heart.
Tags done I've decided to charge my phone in case it turns off. Seriously just wanted to make this.
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In a way its really wierd to me how angry people get over Super. It's clearly just trying to be a simple comedy action series aimed at kids. Though I suppose there is the ageold ruining my childhood thing. But it doesn't really strike me as very provocative to inspire such strong negative feelings. Im just mostly looking at what it's trying to be. It doesnt strike me as tryhard either. The most powerful being is a audience selfinsert that just wants to have fun. Its so selfaware on many levels.
A lot of people obsess over Dragon Ball and want it to remain this (In their heads) perfect, untouched work of art I think. I’ve never agreed with that sentiment, but Dragon Ball IS one of the most iconic and influential anime and mangas of all time and has a special place in millions of peoples hearts. With that kind of pedigree, I get a lot of people having very high standards for any kind of a follow up.
There are legitimate grievances to be had with Super, and plenty of things that can theoretically go wrong with continuing Dragon Ball’s story (Just look at GT for proof of that).
So it’s perfectly reasonable to have concerns… but, unfortunately the Dragon Ball fandom has the same problem as the Star Wars fandom, Sonic fandom, and really a lot of other major fandoms out there: They let their nostalgia and obsession with the series get completely out of hand, and treat every mistake, big or small, as a sign that the end times have come and that the series is ruined forever.
Some of this does come from nitpicky aspects of the series that only certain obsessive fans actually care about and the majority of viewers are actually casually ignorant to (Like power scaling), some of it does come from places of genuine concern (Animation issues and messed up production early on, stuff like the Future Trunks saga ending, the show running in circles with certain characters rather than letting them progress further, etc), but a lot of it is, frankly, people just wanting an excuse to complain because “It’s not like Z!”.
As someone who grew up with the Star Wars Prequels and 3D era Sonic games, and prefers them to both franchises earlier outings (Mostly… 06 WAS a complete mess, nostalgia aside), I tend to have little sympathy for people whining about how a flawed sequel has completely ruined their favourite series and thus their childhood forever.
And while I do sympathise with more reasonable fans who have fair reasons for disliking it, I think people in general are being incredibly myopic if they think that Super can actually damage Dragon Ball as a whole.
Like, you want to know why I keep comparing it to the Prequel Trilogy? Because for all the handwringing from petulant manbabies about how their precious (Dated and somewhat overrated, FTR) sacred movies had supposedly been ruined forever… the movies didn’t actually hurt Star Wars much in the long run, let’s be honest.
The Original Trilogy still exists. They’re the same movies they’ve always been, and if you don’t like the Prequels you’re free to ignore them and enjoy the original three movies for what they are, since they do function as a self contained story. There’s still plenty of tie in material from the old and new EU for people who want MORE Star Wars content not related to the Prequels too.
And on that note, we’ve had PLENTY of good Star Wars content since the Prequels came out too, with the tv series Star Wars: The Clone Wars frequently being hailed as one of the greatest works in the entire franchise, if not one of the best cartoons ever made, with some Prequel detractors even arguing it SALVAGED those movies. And let’s not forget how the first installment of the sequel trilogy became the first franchise film to gross over $2 Billion at the box office.
That’s not even getting into the fact that the Prequels also brought in a whole generation of new fans and lead to their love of the franchise, myself included.
For whatever problems the Prequels had (Real, imagined or grossly exaggerated), in the long run… Star Wars was fine.
Even now with the Last Jedi, which many argue is a horrible movie that hurts the overall story of the Star Wars Saga (Funnily enough, I’m actually in that camp this time), I think similar logic applies. I, and other fans may not like it or a lot of stuff the Sequel Trilogy has done, and with stuff like Solo the Star Wars franchise may be going through a bit of a rough patch in terms of public interest at the moment… but honestly, I don’t think things are going to be bad forever.
People will eventually move on with their lives. People who don’t like the Sequel Trilogy can move on and enjoy the old movies while pretending they don’t exist, and enjoying whatever other spin offs they like, while fans who do like the Sequel Trilogy and modern star wars content can look forward to more stuff they enjoy.
I can complain about certain directions the series has taken, but as someone who’s endured having people tell me that my childhood favourites ruined their lives (To which I have to say… please go outside and get some air, for Christ’s sake), I have no interest in wangsting about the state of things when I have a lot of better things I should be doing.
That’s not to say no one should complain of course, there are legitimate failings to the Sequel Trilogy and Last Jedi in particular and people have every right to complain (As long as they’re not the toxic fanbrats whining about the “SJW AGENDA!” And bulling the cast, those people can jump off a cliff along with the people who bullied Jake Lloyd and drove Ahmed Best to contemplate suicide). In fact, it’s a good thing for people to be critical since actually constructive criticism is necessary and good feedback for studios responsible for these pop culture franchises.
Going back to Dragon Ball, I personally enjoy Super. I think it’s done a lot of good things, though also had various missteps along the way. But despite those issues and while I hope future works take steps to fix and improve on things, I’m fairly happy with the current state of the franchise and eager for more.
I do think you have a point too, anon. Super itself isn’t honestly trying to be anything revolutionary or even on Z’s level. If you actually examine the show as a whole, it’s basically extended filler that mostly serves to expand the universe, create a big sandbox for future stories to possibly build on, and further develop several characters. The only time it really tried to do anything particularly ambitious was in the Future Trunks saga, where we had villains who questioned the state of humanity and there was an ideological battle going on between them and our heroes, mostly Future Trunks.
Other than that though? We got two movie retellings that were basically self-contained conflicts, a small-stakes tournament that mostly served to introduce a bunch of new recurring characters, and a multiversal tournament that, while it did do some interesting thematic stuff here and there… was mostly an excuse to introduce EVEN MORE new characters, give old ones a chance to shine and develop some more, and have a lot of cool looking fights.
Super isn’t really trying to be Z. It just wants to be a fun show for kids and which nostalgic fans can hopefully enjoy. If anything, I think it was mostly a test run to see whether continuing the franchise with more stories beyond the occasional movie was viable.
There’s certainly gripes to be had, but really Super’s status as a fill-in for a time gap in the Z anime to me just makes it feel a lot more low risk than an immediate sequel to the end of Z, since things do still end the same way they did regardless at the moment. It exists for fans to enjoy if they want to, but it can be easily ignored for fans who don’t and prefer the previous series.
And personally, I don’t think it’s really possible to truly “Ruin” Dragon Ball because the story already got an ending. The original manga, and the two anime adapting it, are a complete story on their own. One with a very open ending that leaves the door open for future stories, yes, but it’s a complete story nonetheless. Whatever directions future series may take, good or bad, it’ll never truly change the story as it originally was, because that manga and it’s anime will always exist for people to enjoy as it was intended.
I hate GT and I’ve complained about it plenty, but while I have very personal reasons for why it annoys me… at the end of the day, it’s irrelevant now. We got a different continuation that ignores it, it’s divorced enough from the original canon that I can just go about my days pretending it doesn’t exist, and I got my closure over it with that last re-watch sorting out my feelings on the series.
So, really, flawed as it is there’s nothing to be REALLY mad about, is there? It exists, but it doesn’t do me any real harm, and it’s there for people who do enjoy it (For whatever weird reason, lol) to watch at their leisure. So in effect, it’s harmless… or at least it will be once we get another post-EoZ series to prove it didn’t completely close the door on those being made.
Dragon Ball’s kind of lucky in that way. It got to a point where it had a satisfying resolution where it can hopefully stand the test of time as a classic work of fiction, but people who want more still have the opportunity for that.
And people who don’t think it should continue, or just don’t like those continuations, are free to not watch those works and enjoy the series the way they want to. Or, even if they don’t like Super, it’s still possible a better series or other products like movies can be made down the line that they can enjoy better.
Just like with Star Wars and the Sonic games.
I may have issues with Super from time to time, but overall I think it did a lot more good than bad, and most of it’s faults could be improved on in future series. The worst thing it actually did was destroying the original future timeline, but even that’s fixable if they just have another story with Future Trunks coming back and have somebody go “Hey, maybe we can use the Super Dragon Balls to bring your timeline back”.
I get having personal attachment to the series and it’s characters, I do too. And I get people getting emotional when they feel something they like is being disrespected in any way. If people think the show handled Goku’s character badly or did something to hurt the overall ongoing story, then they’re within their right to complain and be upset about that. TO A REASONABLE EXTENT.
I do also get the feeling a lot of people just can’t handle Dragon Ball having a flawed follow up, aswell. Given that Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z are influential classics, it makes sense that a lot of people would be unhappy with anything that didn’t live up to that quality. But I think some people do get overly worked up about it.
Fact is, all franchises have both flawed installments, and a number of duds to show for them. Star Trek has bad movies and the bad series here or there (Enterprise). Doctor Who has had bad seasons. Marvel and DC have had plenty of bad comics and media adaptions. Mario and Sonic and Pokémon and lots of others have had bad games or adaptions. But that hasn’t ruined everything that was good about those series, or stopped them from putting out good new content.
Every piece of media has it’s flaws to be frank, and every franchise will inevitably stumble here or there. Dragon Ball has had plenty of duds before Super. The Broly movies, GT, Return of Cooler, Episode of Bardock, a bunch of bad video games most people don’t even bother to remember, FREAKING DRAGON BALL EVOLUTION. And plenty of stuff about the old series themselves has aged terribly (Especially in early Dragon Ball). But none of that has managed to kill the franchise.
We’ve had bad, mediocre and decent though heavily flawed Dragon Ball stories and products in the past, and we’ll have plenty more in the future. And while there’ll be stuff that is worth griping about, really at the end of the day it’s not the end of the world, and people who do get legitimately angry thinking it is need to relax now and again.
I get people thinking that things should have just stayed the way there were, thinking that Dragon Ball shouldn’t have been continued if that continuation wasn’t going to live up to it’s predecessors. And I’m never going to argue that people shouldn’t complain about things (I certainly do).
But realistically, Dragon Ball was going to have follow ups sooner or later. It’s the biggest franchise Toei and Shueisha have, and one of the most iconic series of all time. Whether I or anyone else thinks Dragon Ball needed a follow up or not, it was bound to happen because we live in a world where milking popular franchises is the name of the game.
People can complain about it, people can and should have issues with flawed products. People can insist on Dragon Ball’s legacy needing to be preserved. But like I’ve said... the series as you loved it isn’t going anywhere. No one is obligated to support everything the franchise does. So I don’t think getting overly angry or worked up about Super or GT or whatever not being everything they wanted them to be is something to freak out over.
Fact is, for all the complaints... a lot of people still love Super and enjoyed it. A lot of people still love Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. Super has brought Toei nothing but monetary success, and interest in the franchise is at the highest it’s been since Z finished airing in the West over a decade ago and the franchise went truly dormant for the most part. If anything, I think Dragon Ball actually gets more respect these days than it did for most of the latter half of the last decade, where it became sort of an internet laughing stock in the West.
We’re still getting plenty of high profile and quality products, like FighterZ, which along with Super itself and the movies preceding it has helped draw in a lot of new fans and brought back a good chunk of lapsed ones. There’s a generation of children the world over that are going to have grown up on Super as their first Dragon Ball series, and it’ll be an important part of helping them get into the franchise and the previous series, much like Kai before it.
And we’ve got a new movie coming out that’s generating a lot of hype and which looks to be giving the franchise a much needed and exceptionally positive visual overhaul, which it’s needed for a while now.
For all the ups and downs, and there have been plenty... Dragon Ball is doing fine. Regardless of what any individual person thinks of Super, Dragon Ball’s legacy isn’t in any danger. The franchise isn’t collapsing, and the overall story and all of it’s characters haven’t been completely ruined beyond repair.
Things could be better. But Z and Dragon Ball could have been better in a lot of places too. It’s okay to be unsatisfied about the current state of things and to voice complaints, as much as it’s okay to be loving the thrill of having Dragon Ball really make a comeback.
Things will be fine. With Super currently off the air, I think now’s the time for everyone to just take a chill and relax. The world didn’t end, and it’s not going to any time soon. (Well, unless Trump throws a hissy fit and launches nukes at everyone but, you know, hopefully that won’t happen).
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Saw Black Panther for the second time tonight. I’m gonna put my thoughts below the cut because they won’t be spoiler free.
I just want to start by saying that this movie changed my life, and if it had that much of an impact on me, I can’t even begin to understand how much more it will mean to people of color who finally get to see a superhero who looks just like them. This movie is long overdue, but worth every ounce of hype it’s received.
The mixing of Wakandan and English shows how much their culture means to them, and also gives them the ability to talk about people right in front of their faces, like T’Challa and Okoye do in South Korea with Ross.
The tech, as anticipated, is out of this world. Shuri is the smartest person in the entire world at just sixteen, and she uses her resources to her benefit. The use of holograms in both the rescue mission and in their everyday life are so casual but so crucial to their way of life.
There were so many small moments of humor, and none of them felt forced or awkward. Shuri especially brought humor in, which I feel is expected when you have a sixteen year old involved, even if she is a genius.
Okoye tells T’Challa not to freeze when he’s going to rescue Nakia, and he says that he never freezes when he sees her. Turns out he does end up freezing and letting out a really awkward “hi”, and when he returns home to Wakanda, the first thing Shuri asks is if he froze. Okoye says, “Like an antelope in headlights” and T’Challa says, “Are you finished?” It’s a nice little exchange.
It’s also great to see Shuri wearing more contemporary clothes in different scenes, a sign that she’s branching out with her fashion but also staying close to her roots.
The interactions between Shuri and T’Challa are so heartwarming and feel very natural for a brother/sister pairing.
When T’Challa returns home and Shuri says that she wants to upgrade his tech, he asks her why she needs to do so when it worked perfectly.
Shuri says, “How many times do I have to teach you? Just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.” T’Challa replies, “You are teaching me? What do you know?” and Shuri follows it up with a quick “More than you.”
There’s so many great cultural moments in the movie, like when all the different tribes are dancing on their rafts on the way to the ceremonial challenge. Each tribe is represented and has the opportunity to fight for the throne, but no one wants to. Until Shuri raises her hand and says that her corset is too tight and they should all just hurry up so she can go home. I love that she does it for the drama of it all. M’Baku shows up and when he walks toward Ramonda and Shuri, the Dora Milaje automatically get into a defensive stance.
I love the burial/rebirth ritual, and I love the shot of T’Challa in the ancestral plane. I especially love T’Challa’s white robe and the contrast between that and the black panthers in the tree, and also himself bearing the mantle of the Black Panther. Also white usually means purity or good intentions, and I think in that part of the film, T’Challa has the best intentions when he goes to speak with his father. He really does have a sort of innocence to him, because he hasn’t experienced much in the way of being a king yet.
“I am not ready to be without you,” he says to T’Chaka, to then continue on by asking him how he can be a good king.
Shuri showing her brother all of her inventions is a great chance to see her lab, and also get a taste of what she’s making at this point in the MCU. I can’t wait to see what else she invents as the years go by.
I love that she’s always teasing him, from what shoes he’s wearing, to filming him getting blasted with kinetic energy from his suit. Speaking of, it’s so awesome and resourceful of her to have the suit build up the energy in order to use it.
Nakia and T’Challa matching when they’re in South Korea is the best thing in the world. Also it’s so cool that T’Challa understands Korean. Shuri using her tech and driving the car from Wakanda is...so cool, I don’t even know what else to say about it. The moment when she runs over someone and asks what that was, and T’Challa says, “Don’t worry about it, you’re doing great” is so good because I’m sure eventually she found out she technically ran someone over.
Also I’m not sure what Shuri made Okoye’s shoes out of, or what tech is in them, but they’re also pretty cool.
One thing I loved about the movie was the constant talk of the white characters being repressive or just not useful, and the Wakandans are almost always annoyed with them. Especially when Klaue is being interrogated in South Korea, and T’Challa and Okoye are speaking in Wakandan about what they’re going to do with Klaue once Ross is done interviewing him. Ross touches T’Challa’s shoulder and Okoye says that if he does it again, she’ll put him through the desk in the room. Then Ross asks T’Challa, “Does she speak English?” and Okoye replies, “When she wants to.” When Ross leaves the room, T’Challa has to remind Okoye to play nice.
It’s clear that T’Challa really cares for Nakia, and obviously so since they mention him having a crush on her and them being exes, etc. There’s a moment after Erik (N’Jadaka) breaks Klaue out where Okoye calls T’Challa back and when she mentions Nakia’s name, T’Challa goes running because he thinks she’s hurt.
When T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia bring Ross back to Wakanda for Shuri to help heal him, she says, “Great, another broken white boy for us to fix! This is going to be fun.” Nothing has ever been more accurate in a Marvel movie. Then later when he wakes up, she says, “Don’t scare me like that, colonizer!”
While Shuri is explaining her inventions to Ross, she’s also explaining them to us and giving us a better idea of how things work, like the sonic stabilizers in the trains.
While T’Challa is grappling with the fact that his father wasn’t the perfect man he thought, Nakia reminds him that no one is perfect but he doesn’t have to be the same kind of king T’Chaka was. She tells him that he gets to decide what kind of king he’s going to be. He takes the advice later on when he nearly gets beaten in a ceremonial challenge against N’Jadaka and has to basically be reborn. He sees T’Chaka and tells him that he’s going to be a different king, and that he can’t die yet. Nakia’s advice is also what leads him to open Wakanda’s borders and share their technology and inventions with the world at the end of the movie.
When everyone believes T’Challa to be dead, Nakia asks Okoye to run away and work on overthrowing N’Jadaka, but Okoye says she can’t go because she is loyal to the throne, and therefore the king. Nakia mentions that Okoye is the greatest warrior Wakanda has. That line makes me wonder why she wasn’t sent with T’Challa in Civil War when he was meeting with the others in Germany, but why Ayo went with him instead. Okoye is also the leader of the Dora Milaje, but maybe he had her stay behind in Wakanda to look after things.
Another big thing about the Dora Milaje is that they’re all so revered in Wakanda, and it’s an honor to be a part of the Dora. It’s such an amazing thing, seeing a group of strong black women acting as the security force for the king of the richest country in the world.
The one part of the movie that is the most gut-wrenching is when N’Jadaka is watching the sunset before his death. T’Challa says maybe he can still be healed, because there must be something Shuri can do, and it shows his compassion to offer healing to the man he stabbed. N’Jadaka says he won’t be healed because he knows he’ll just end up locked up. Then he says, “Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, ‘cause they knew death was better than bondage.” I don’t know if I’ll ever get through that scene without crying.
T’Challa, after deciding to open Wakanda’s borders and share information, goes to California, where N’Jobu died at T’Chaka’s hand. He buys the building, and the ones surrounding it, and then tells Shuri that she’ll spearhead the science and information exchange, and Nakia will be in charge of the social outreach for the first Wakandan international outreach center. There’s a group of boys outside playing basketball and one looks at T’Challa and asks who he is. You can see in his eyes that he’s amazed by this man, who looks like him, dressed like royalty. Of course he’d wonder who T’Challa was, and he’d want to know more about Wakanda.
Finally, in the end credits, Bucky returns. His hair in its half bun is one of the things I’ve wanted to see for years. Literally ever since Winter Soldier when I first saw him with long hair, I imagined what his hair would look like in a half bun, and Black Panther finally made that dream a reality for me. But beyond that, it was so nice to see Bucky looking relaxed and rested and feeling safe.
Shuri will give him a new arm, replacing the metal one that had the communist star on it. I’m sure it’ll have some incredible technological abilities, and I can’t wait to see what they are. For now, it was just great seeing Bucky able to relax and feel safe for a while. Shuri started by calling him Sergeant Barnes, but he said, “Bucky,” reminding her to call him by his nickname. When she asked how he was feeling, he said, “Good” and I think that’s probably the first time in over seventy years that he’s been able to say that. It’s good to see him at peace for a while.
But Bucky is absolutely not the focus of this movie, and in fact, he’s nowhere close to being the focus. As always, the end credits scene just pushes the narrative forward, and sets us up for Infinity War. I don’t think they could’ve gone without mentioning Bucky because he was in Wakanda for a few months, and it would’ve been nearly impossible to think that Shuri hadn’t come up with a way to fix his head in that time.
More importantly, the film is about much more than Bucky Barnes being out of cryofreeze; it’s about the lack of representation for people of color in film, and showing what African countries could’ve been like without colonization. I can’t wait to learn more and more about this movie, the cultures, and the people involved as time goes on, and learn more about small details in the film the more times I watch it.
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Episode 139 : Safe & Sound
"Give your mama enough money to bury ya."
- E-40
We've just about dragged ourselves to the end of the year whose name shall not be spoken, and we're not out of the woods just yet. The winter is drawing in, and so we have not a festive selection, but one which in many parts sonically fits the season. There are some deep album cuts, B-sides, and mixtape tracks here, making it one of those months where pretty much everyone is going to learn at least one new tune! Get those headphones connected and let's go...
Twitter : @airadam13
Twitch : @airadam13
Playlist/Notes
E-40 : I'ma Teach Ya How To Sell Dope
The title of this track from "Revenue Retrievin' : Day Shift" wrong-foots you, because this is A-grade "B-side of the game" material, as Ice-T would say. If you ever thought the drug game was glamourous, E-40 lets you know that it's a dangerous, paranoid, and depressing dead-end - even for the few who live long enough to make a bit of money.
The Cool Kids : Tires (Instrumental)
This had just the right slow pace, boom, and space to form a bridge between the tracks on either side. The vocal version appropriately comes from the 2009 "Merry Christmas" EP and features Boldy James, but this instrumental is available as part of the "Gone Fishing : Instrumentals" mixtape (despite not being on the "Gone Fishing" album, so far as I'm aware!)
Jane Child : Loot$ville
Take the rhythm section alone and you could imagine someone like Above The Law or The Dogg Pound getting busy on this track. It's been a very long time since the release of the "Surge" LP, the last from Jane Child, but it still stands up! Child's production and playing skills, alongside those of Cat Gray have this instrumental growling along at the low end, and then her vocal elevates the whole package into a quality song.
Jay-Z : Where I'm From
A clear standout from "In My Lifetime, Vol.1", this is one of the tracks for the streets, and a stark contrast to the many songs on the album that were obviously aiming for mass appeal. Jay lays down the facts of life in Brooklyn's Marcy Projects over a menacing beat from D-Dot and Amen-Ra, with DJ Premier contributing the cuts.
Scarface : The Fix / Fixed
I decided to blend the opening and closing tracks from Scarface's "The Fix" LP here, since both are excellent, but also very short. Scarface and Mike Dean handle the production, and it would surprise many to know that Scarface is also the singer here! This musical motif was re-used by the great Pimp C for UGK's "Still Ridin' Dirty", which also featured Scarface - another track to check out.
Sean Price ft. Buckshot and General Steele : Apartheid
This tune from "Imperius Rex" is the exact kind of darkness and coldness that matches the current season, especially in a year like this. Crummie Beats provides the score, and Sean is accompanied by two of the absolute foundation BCC members to go all the way grimy with it. Check the video - as well as all the artist guests, Sean's wife Bernadette and daughter Shaun both make appearances.
Mad Cobra ft. The Geto Boys : Dead End Street (Instrumental)
From the early 90s, when all sorts of Hip-Hop groups were trying to add a little Jamaican flavour (to wildly varying effect), there were a few artists from JA with the budget to cross over the other way. This 12" had multiple versions of the GB-featuring gun tune headed by dancehall don Cobra, and this is the thumping instrumental to the main mix.
Bronx Slang : Copy That
Jerry Beeks and Ollie Miggs are back with a new single, which just had to be shared here. Beeks has been doing his thing for a long time and continues to tweak and refine his approach - his flow here is alternately conversational and then more dense, and shows a real level of comfort expounding on serious subject matter on the mic. Grab this either as a single or on the "Bronx Kill" mixtape!
Ghostface Killah ft. Trife : Be Easy
The horns on "Copy That" brought this track to mind, and it's a worthy follow-up. One of the big singles from "Fishscale", it's a triumphant Pete Rock blast flipping "Stay Away From Me" by The Sylvers (this info is already out there), and Ghost leading the charge over the top with an assist from Trife in the hypeman role.
Phat Kat ft. T3 and Black Milk : Danger
All the Detroit on this cut, which has appeared in a few places - Phat Kat's "Carte Blanche" LP, Black Milk's "Sound Of The City", and even the "Saint's Row" soundtrack. As "SOTC" was released two years before the Phat Kat album came out in 2007, I guess that kind of makes it Black Milk's track and may explain why he's on the first verse - although Phat Kat is a beast on the third verse cleanup. Black Milk is on the beat, of course.
Dilated Peoples : Clockwork
I'd somehow forgotten that DJ Premier had done this beat for Dilated, but it's a great bi-coastal collaboration between him and this LA crew! The "Expansion Team" LP, their second, is full of heavyweight production, with Alchemist, Da Beatminerz, and JuJu from The Beatnuts among the boardsmen on the project. This track bumps but has a kind of thriller film soundtrack energy at the same time, and Rakaa and Evidence do it justice on the mic.
Fingathing : You Fly Me
The pairing of bassist Sneaky and world-class turntablist DJ Peter Parker was not the kind of thing that was at all common when they started out, but their original concept went from sensational live performances to quality recorded output. This number comes from the first full album, "The Main Event" (which was preceded by the "2 Player EP"), and is a glorious mix of bass and strings with some jazzy drumming action.
Zo! ft. Phonte : Everything She Wants
Now this is how you do a cover version! The last track recorded for "...just visiting three", this was a left-field idea from Zo that Phonte loved, as he'd always loved the original Wham track and wanted to remake it himself! It's much slower than the original, and as Zo points out, it helps to maintain the focus on the lyrics, which were some of George Michael's best from that era. The multi-talented Phonte kills it on the lead vocal (as well as some choice ad-libs), and Zo has the beat sliding and slumping, with a great switch-up at the end if you go and get the full version...
Freeway & Jake One : The Product
I hadn't played "The Stimulus Package" for ages, but it's still really good. When this was released, it seemed like an idea from a bygone era to pair one MC with one producer for a whole album, but one that was very welcome. Philadelphia's Freeway's addiction-themed lyrics are pretty much timeless, and as is usually the case, Jake One's beat nods to tradition while not being bound by it.
Sadat X & El Da Sensei ft. Bumpy Knuckles : 3 Rounds To Spar
Wall-to-wall rugged MCs right here, with the pairing of Sadat and El joined by the king of the third verse, Bumpy Knuckles for a pure mic workout over some heavy boom-bap (which is never a perjorative round here) by Divine Drummah - a producer I could only find this one credit for, but who definitely cooked up a track with the appropriate weight for the MCs on it. If you check the full version from the "XL" album, you can enjoy the intro where you hear the main sample in a more open form before the chops and drums come in.
Boot Camp Clik ft. Twanie Ranks : Smile In Heaven
This one probably snuck past most of you, as it was buried on the end of the Black Moon "Rush" 12" and didn't appear anywhere else except the "Collect Dis Edition" compilation in 2003. It turned up when I was digitising vinyl and I thought it was a fitting one to play mood-wise, with the contemplative street lyrics and the sombre vibes of the Beatminerz' instrumental underscoring it all. Twanie Ranks adds to the whole with his reggae-styled vocals at the end of the hook sections.
K-Def : The Final Thrill
One of those guys you could describe as a producer's producer, New Jersey's K-Def quietly has an amazing discography! I went back to his "Willie Boo Boo" album for this one, which is so short I had to loop it up a bit to make it long enough to work here - that said, there's no downside to hearing a beat like this for a little longer :)
Tribeca : Charlie Hustle (Pony Express)
With a sample that almost everyone will recognise, even if you can't name it, Tribeca does double duty as MC and producer on this 2003 12". On the mic, he takes on the persona/viewpoint of the former baseball player Pete Rose, who was banned from the major leagues for gambling, and as such is also excluded from the Baseball Hall of Fame (the "Cooperstown" you hear mentioned). When it comes to the production, he pounds the MPC in his characteristic fashion to supply the low end to complement the piano track.
Please remember to support the artists you like! The purpose of putting the podcast out and providing the full tracklist is to try and give some light, so do use the songs on each episode as a starting point to search out more material. If you have Spotify in your country it's a great way to explore, but otherwise there's always Youtube and the like. Seeing your favourite artists live is the best way to put money in their pockets, and buy the vinyl/CDs/downloads of the stuff you like the most!
Check out this episode!
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{Partners in the Storm}
Completed: July 12th 2020
An infectious mantra of the vindictive scourge of New Asgard had calamitously seized him into gluttonous-possessive dregs of Vanaheim conjury; the prevalent valiance—the invincible—thunderous fusion of his warrior—Asier spirit became exceedingly cleaved apart in rapid succession of a hoggish thrall; a nauseous stench raunchily enwreathed over discarded packets of super-size-emptied Cheetos, pizza boxes and KFC buckets of grease-fried drumsticks as implosive hunger accelerated in a heart-wrenching tenfold.
It was a vacuous slop-heap worthy of gourmand Asgardian hog, bowls of iced Coors beer scuzzily adorned over the stone mantle of his crackling hearth; the murkier ambiance reekingly contrasted his unabated torrents of heart-arresting depression within the Nordic environs of Tønsberg—a Misgardian fjord anchorage of western coastline fishing.
Drunkenly Thor had painfully deafened out the apparitional—grievous volumes of his unendurable-plaguing- failure that was staked down the battle-razed Wakandian grasslands as the prophetic harvesting of mortal souls devastatingly scythed the cosmic branches of Yggdrasill with the Nidavellir forged Infinity Gaunlet.
The barbaric general of the Black Order--slayer of Xandar-Proxima Midnight denizen commanded monstrous symbiote ranks of Outriders who berserkly claw through kinetic barriers that were sonically pulsing out of Mount Bashenga-a hellish diversion of mobilized carnage. When Thor arrived with his cybernetically-altered friend Sweet Rabbit and animoprhic Tree by the dimensional-prismatic salvos of Bi-Frost, he had driven his reckoning of merciless vengeance on the slaughterous planet-massacring titian who cataclysmically purged out the refuge cruiser vessels of his Asgardian people-his family. He craved the rancid blood Thano's grotesque head to victoriously drip over his battle-ax Stormbreaker...The blindness of his banked grief careened the ferocity his murderous precision-he missed.
He was on the hairbreadth of a knife-edge of victory-the empyreal vitality of his beloved father-Odin- viscerally pulsed infinite reckoning. In that gracing -controlled fusion, he ferally propelled Stormbreaker into the carnage-reaping dreadnoughts' armored chest with the rampageous momentum of unwarrantable heartache that he stowed for the stout-hearted sentinel of All-fathers Heimdall and his prankish-weasely- brother Loki; only to hear defeat suffocatingly paralyze him in those fissionable—detonative seconds of a titanic-incendiary unity of the Soul Stone. In that earth-breaking snap of his purplish hulking fingers, Thanos had devastatingly conducted his apocalyptic-genocidal holocaust of eradicating humanity into astral remnants of ashy mulch to herald a paradisal rebirth.
' Y-You should've gone for the head...'
After those unprecedented five years of detachedly wallowing in his unstinted grief, Thor was pursuingly beckoned to fight with the Avengers, using the subatomic paradoxes of quantum dimension to engage a Kronos heist-a downsized flashpoint race of seizing all the Infinity Stones with salvaged Pym Particles—a suicidal mission to bridge an unvanquished reality—hope. Everyone who 'blipped' out of existence was resurrected out the celestial dawn of the Soul Realm. The high detriment of their callback victory was unforgivingly staked with an insurmountable price of losing his dearest friends: Tony Stark and the fiery Natasha Romanoff.
Returning to his earthen throne of New Asgard, Thor was severed from his rebellious-brawly- joviality; he chasmically surrendered to the grievous-pathetic reality of being an obese shut-in, listlessly reveling on imported kegs of Scottish ale and Netflix streaming collections of the Hobbit trilogy and Dreamwork animated films- he was hopelessly reaching the breaking point of chubbily being a languorous-indignant hog: ogre.
He was being piggishly induced with a distractive horde of his fattening snacks when the exquisite- viperous maiden of Nordic witchery- Amora; who played a deceptive charade against him, nefariously using Jane's fair maidenly visage to enticingly breach his desolated solace with her sirenical-vengeful tactics of punishingly fouling him into a lovesick thrall, maniacally conceiving a quenchless entity of gorging-bestial impulse that suffused his veins—ushering hunger mania to ignite a revamped onrush of beefier pudginess over his muscled Asier flesh.
Roaringly, in tactless precision, with his grungy blonde tresses shaggily weaved into leonine dreadlocks, grouchily, Thor dug the chubbier flesh of his hand through a bag of Doritos as his bulbously fattish mass was saggily braced against frayed cushions of his sectional couch, his isolated hovel became a domain of junk-food indulgence and Playstation4 video games with the rivalrous basement gamemaster- Noobmaster.
At the moment Thor was engagingly viewing his favorite Midgardian cartoon of a humorous portrayal of Vikings-How to Train Your Dragon-he cherished the scenes with obsidian scaled bat-winged dragon: Toothless. A magnificent beast of skydiving ferocity that was spawned out from Muspelheim, who explosively blasted out electrified salvos of voltaic firebolts. "By Odin, now that's my kind of dragon..." he slurred in bearish pitch, huffishly easing up a brewskie can, as broken-off cheezies disgustingly jutted out the grizzly swatch of his mussed-thickening beard."Friend Barnes, come watch this very cool drake unleash my power..."
Bucky sat at the edge of the kitchen island as he stared at the series of text messages Steve and Selina had sent to him. 'Please don't let Thor out of your sight, Buck.' 'Don't get stir crazy, handsome. I'll keep in touch.' The brunette released an audible sigh as he ran a hand through his thick dark tresses, wondering how he got roped into playing babysitter to a depressed thunder god with an eating-disorder inside this bedraggled house. He should be out there in the field, helping Steve and Selina chase down this evil witch that had been causing the Avengers trouble the past few months. But since Steve had more experience with this Enchantress, he had to take point, and he also needed backup-enter Selina, who under no circumstances had the patience to play babysitter to Thor's antics.
So that left Bucky to look after Lebowski as the Avengers had come to joke about Thor. Bucky thought he looked more like an out-of-shape Mufasa who spent too much time playing video-games. Hearing Thor call him, Bucky sighed as he pocketed his phone, feeling his stomach grumble with hunger. "Yeah, I'm comin'." He made his way into the living room, kicking a few empty bottles of alcohol before finding a seat near to the snack-table. "You're the King of Asgard, Thor. Doesn't that afford you some kind of butler?" Bucky asked pointedly as he dusted crumbs off the sofa before sitting down.
Nonchalantly easing back against a cushion, with sluggish intent, against a deep-throated belch; Thor clumsily reached out his sheathed-cloth hand towards a bowl of chilled beer on a cluttered table as he registered Bucky's derisive pitch scathingly fringed in his gravelly Brooklyn drawl, his electric-cerulean irises fleetingly glanced at the charcoal-gray vibranium of Bucky's cybernetic arm, Wakandian gold skeins mechanically embellished the bionic plating, that readily poised into tensing fist, dragging a warred grip over his denim-clad knee.
The sniper Avenger-White Wolf- had returned from his latest recon stint with military-honed Sam Wilson, with the 'greenlight' order of CIA Agent Everette Ross, fully-decked with a tactical arsenal, they destabilized the underground installations of rogue HYDRA and traitorous Jarbai guerrilla alliances with the seamier -notorious EKO Scorpion commander of Sokovian Armed Forces- Zemo within the graffiti borders of a dystopian crime den: Madripoor.
The governmental sterilization of the World Council had marked the Avengers as verminous deviants-'loose cannon' fugitives to the Accords. The valorous mantle of freedom-home-grounded idealism was more than a cheat-face sham worn on a recruited patriotic soldier named John Walker-U.S. Agent.
Grumbling under breath in a hearty timbre, muzzily, Thor yanked on the metallic ring of his clutched beer can, thirstily relishing the fizzed noise as his heavy-lidded gaze dazedly fixed on the athletic solidity of tauter ridges of heavy-corded muscle that athletically delineated underneath Bucky's tactical slim-fit bomber jacket. Every fluid shift of bulkier -enhanced resilience was predatorily edged with a flex of bestial readiness- intimidation. James Barnes was an invincible-legendary warrior that hailed from Brooklyn; who had been mercilessly stripped by HYDRA demons from his soldiery valor."I-I don't need a Midgardian servent called...ugh- a but-butler..." He admonished, belchingly." My stout friend Volstagg kept these massive Dwarfish hogs to clean such grand messes..."
If he had seen a pot-bellied hog wobble its way into the living room, Bucky wouldn't have been the least bit surprised. Thor was a pitch-perfect example of a modern-day Viking living in a lazy squalor. Not that he would say that to him of course. He thought the world of Thor who had been an invaluable ally and friend to the Avengers. He respected him and thought he was a fun guy to hang around with, but his state of living over the past few years made Bucky feel as if some form of intervention was necessary if someone were only physically up to the task of taking on a grumpy/grieving thunder god.
"Did he also eat three boxes of extra cheese with jalapenos and a whole quart of Coors?" Bucky remarked in a state of bewilderment as he fished through the empty pizza boxes for any leftovers. There was an entire keg of beer beside the couch that made Bucky wonder if Thor simply chugged the entire thing due to the lack of cups surrounding him. His stomach groaned again just as Thor barked with laughter as he watched his movie.
Attuned to his impassive-standoffish bunkmate's amplified barrages of rigged hunger, smirkily, emitting a full-bellied chuckle, haphazardly the Asgardian shifted the protrusive-tubbier flabbiness of his blubbery girth in lumpish succession. "Hold on, friend Barnes, I'll get you a box..." he snorted, woozily, grabbing an unopened box of S'mores pop tarts with a rampant stretch of his fleshier arm. Stacked on a threadbare ottoman was an excessive horde of imported pop-tarts in flavorous variety that was evident to his draconic gorging.
Broodingly to his vexatious chagrin that wouldn't detract his menace-honed poise, Bucky drove the razored steeliness of his grayish-aquamarine irises down at the generous box appetizingly landing on his tauten-cords of athletic sculpt of his thigh. Clenching the stubbled heaviness of his dimpled jaw, graven ruggedness of his boyish features cuttingly delineated underneath unkempt wolfish chestnut tresses shaggily ghosted over his furrowed brow that raptly tensed into a dumbfounded pinch as he consciously flexed his bionic hand in reluctant tenor over the boxed pop-tarts. "Here...Have a go with these boxed delights first..." Thor demandingly grunted, in huffier pitch. "I have many revels to share..."
Bucky stared at the box of proffered treats with hesitation. He prided himself on maintaining a good fit regimen. True he had the super-soldier serum in his blood that helped him to burn calories faster than a normal human could, but he still felt as if he could be picking up a bad habit if he were to start now. But as he looked at the jovial look on Thor's face, Bucky knew it would be rude to refuse this nice gesture from him. Besides he could also do 50 push-ups to burn whatever calories he consumed. "Of that, I have no doubt. But thanks." Bucky took the box of S'mores pop tarts and popped open the box, settling in further into his seat to watch the movie.
"Didn't take you for an animation guy. Did Jane show you these movies?" Bucky hoped he wasn't touching a sore subject with the thunderer as he felt generally curious to know how taught Thor much about modern pop-culture and entertainment.
An errant blear of stowed anguish mistily gleamed in Thor's stormier cobalt irises as he crestfallenly hefted up a beer can-liquid anesthetic to desperately deaden out a concussive pulse of soul-consuming heartache; after the reddish tentacles of vaporous Aether-the Reality Stone- had possessively effused in Jane's veins during the galactic convergence of Yggdrasill's transcendental-wormhole gateways of the Nine Realms, he became detached from his Jane's quirky-gorgeous presence, her pixieish smile that dazzlingly grew alight when he stared into her brownish-amber irises, stoking up girlish curiosity -incarnate virginal grace of true Asgardian maiden.
He desired to return to her-to fully surrender his warrior's heart -to foster the inventive name of Donald Blake and ignite a new reality on mortal ground. Sniffily, Thor did his utmost to choke back a throat sob, feigning indignance he gulped down a breathless swig, crushingly denting the emptied can with flexion of his reined strength. "I rather you do not mention her name..." he urged out, bluntly."We had a mutual dumbing when the mechanical demon Ultron was sired by Stark ..."
Too many regrets led the way to self-destructive instincts, Bucky knew. Thor's grief stemmed not just from the loss of friends and family, but also from broken relationships that he probably, until now, didn't fully appreciate. Or probably couldn't. No one ever said the life of a thunder god/Avenger was an easy one that offered spare time for dating. He knew it wasn't his place to question Thor and bringing up Jane would be a sore spot, but he also knew that Thor's unresolved issues were what made him an easy target for this Enchantress that was gunning for him. "Some things happen for a reason, Thor. I won't bring her up if that's what you want, but I wouldn't be much of a friend if I didn't tell you there are healthier ways to deal with this."
Bucky left it at that as he opened the box of pop-tarts and pulled out a wrapper. Thor maintained this glum look on his face as he reached for another can of beer. Bucky wasn't sure if he was reflecting on what he just told him or if the Asgardian was simply too absorbed in his own perpetual grief that he was just blocking out everything that turned into noise. Bucky bit into the pop-tart with a small bite; tentative and testing. His tongue immediately watered and his taste buds burst with unimagined flavor. "Hey these are pretty good," he said, taking a much larger bite this time, and then another.
Unbeknownst that an inchanted- rhapsodical-tenor of the Dwarven curse was chimerically suffusive through his veins in the burgeoning divergence of chastened throes that grappled him into a stuporous vigil; Bucky noncommittally chewed on a chocolatey piece with a blatant quirk tugging at his shapely-wide lips, the sugared gooeyness of marshmallow had stickily clung over his cleft-dimpled chin as he aggressively tore open a fresh packet.
Against the porcine deviance of his burgeoning thrall, gruntingly, akin to a debauched hog, Bucky wolfed down the entire box stuffily in one hand-full. "Relish in these delights, my friend," Thor chuckled jocundly, as he gazed at emptied wrappers clinging messily to Bucky's denim-clad thighs. "More rounds to come..."
Bucky was too absorbed in the rich chocolatey taste that had assaulted his taste-buds to give Thor's words another thought. These pop-tarts tasted too good. How did dessert snacks come so far? Was there another box around here? What else had he been missing out on? He had to buy more. More! More! A trickle of drool escaped his opened mouth as he chewed and he let it trickle down his stubbled chin unimpeded. His blue eyes were fogged by a cloud of gluttonous hunger that had been awakened with a single bite. "Roouuu aaahht ooorre?!" He asked through a mouthful of sugary delight. His lips were caked with melted frosting and crumbs had trickled into his neatly trimmed beard.
To his utter dismay, the box of pop-tarts was empty and his feet were carrying him towards the snack table in search of something equally delicious to consume. "C'mon, Thor. Where's your secret godly stash?" Bucky said absently after swallowing down the entire mouthful he had stuffed into his mouth.
A rampageous fervency of hoggish abandon-mania- had effusively clashed over Bucky's warred restraint with no avail; stomping his tactical boots with sniper-honed precision menacingly fringed with headlong momentum, clunkily he sashayed paces, advancing back into the pig-sty of a kitchen.
Grunting against -throaty drags of heavier breath, he poised his bionic hand with mechanized readiness to blindingly swipe off an untouched pepperoni and cheese Bronx-style pizza that he recalled Steve leaving on the obstructive countertop. "Friend Barnes, do not touch what has already been claimed..." Thor belted out, thunderously, detecting a portentous revelation being serpentinely conducted by Amora's soul-damning spell cast veined within his infective stash as Bucky with a telltale play of boyish cockiness, toothily quirked up his shapely-bow lips into a rascally smirk. "You are not acting like yourself..."
It was like his nose had taken on a life of its own as it carried Bucky into the kitchen where he furiously searched for something sweet to engulf in his taste buds. His thick dark tresses were a disheveled curtain of strands across his temple that he paid no mind, too consumed with the intoxicating allure of a mouth-watering pastry he could smell inside of the fridge. His metallic hand yanked open the door and his blue eyes were wide and hypnotized by the sight of a strawberry cake with whipped cream pasted on its edge. The white static in his ears deafened Thor's booming protest from the living room when he pulled the cake out from the fridge and unceremoniously planted his mouth into its sweet expanse.
"Mmhhmhm!" He released an uncharacteristic sound that was too animalistic for a human to make as he indulged his rapidly increasing appetite with large messy bites that left clumps of pastry spilling onto his chest. Unbeknownst to Bucky, something primal and sinister had taken control of him. His human mind howled with anguish at the back of his thoughts, telling himself to stop. He could feel someone grabbing him, wrestling the plate of cake away from his grip which triggered an onset of visceral aggression. "Graaahh!" Bucky snarled throwing his weight against the blonde doofus in front of him who held his sugary treat.
The two heavyweights collided like titanic forces, stumbling across the kitchen in grappling holds in an explosive mess that sent plates, tables and dishes spilling across the floor as if struck by a tidal wave. Bucky grunted and heaved with delirious eyes as he pulled on Thor's hair, trying desperately to grab the plate. Thor's teeth clamped onto Bucky's hand, only to howl in pain when he realized he bit the wrong appendage that was too metallic for his liking.
"Argh...!" Thor yelled out boomingly, as his gums numbingly pinched with throbbing strain against the cold vibranium scraping against his incisors, a crescendoing rush of eruptive fierceness, vertiginously emitted a guttural roar, he bodily gut-rammed Bucky with unstoppable linebacker tackle, hulkingly fueling a bull-rush into the granite island. Gnashing his teeth against panty breaths, snarlingly, thrust his cybernetic arm, Bucky delivered a vicious haymaker of breathless-mechanized ferocity that robotically scythed the deadlier precision of a straight-arm chokehold over the bulging swatch Thor's beardy throat on immobilizing accord.
"Y-You're distracting me from that lightning dragon ..." Feverishly with aggressive-seething- reaction, Thor bashed his head bruisingly against Bucky's forehead with skull-breaking- 'knockout' momentum, as he alarmingly registered a heavier—globby tubbiness ballooningly sheathed over bracketed ridges of taut-edged muscles swelling increasingly underneath Bucky's leather jacket in bulbous tenor: he was fattening up.
The cake he had been attempting to retrieve had long since slipped off from its platter, staining the floor in thick discarded clumps. A normal human would've lamented the waste of such a tasty treat now soil by germs and bacteria upon the floor, but Bucky's mind was too engrossed by, too consumed by gluttony that he felt no care as he lunged for the floor, wobbling on all fours to claim his prize. But something felt wrong. The cold hard slap of reality struck him with a jolt of agony lancing up his back. A strangled gasp escaped him and he fell haphazardly onto his side. "T-Thor…" he groaned, barely able to see the blonde through his blurry vision. His subconscious collapsed from exhaustion and his waking thoughts crept over, making him realize what was happening. The overwhelming aches in his body, the suffocating scent of sugar, and the sight of thick patches of dark fur sprouting from his skin.
"T-Thor, what's happenin-NGGHH GAAAH!" Pain had become a malevolent entity that attacked him from head-to-toe in an onslaught so sudden, he couldn't control the spasming of his body. His voice transitioned into a deep guttural squeal that shook the walls of the kitchen, the sound of clothes tearing was an unending chorus that joined.
A bilious-mordant reek of hoggish sweat had vomitously wafted off his sweat-glazed flesh that meltingly sloughed into doughier pudge flabbily over rubberized muscle; arching his back in convulsive torque of a jackknifing momentum, corded-litheness of his muscled thighs rampantly bridged against chunkier-horrified traction as bone-cleaving onslaughts gruelingly atrophied him into dregs of morphic submission. "Urgh...What the hell..."
Raggedly, Bucky choked out quivery—oinking breaths in heaving staccatos as his leather bomber jacket tatteredly shredded over the globby pudginess of his outstretched mid-drift as tauter washboard ridges that were hunkily bracketed with graven- cut thews of his gladiator-defined muscles bloatedly fused into a protrusive rotundity that globosely swelled into a bulging girth. Rigid veins that cuttingly threaded his muscled arm dissolved under skeins of chestnut fur."Hr-Argh..." he gutturally railed out in distressed pitch, as the jutted extension of his tusk-like incisors grislily pierced his deforming underlip that hung agape with a bloodied stretch as dragging heaves of throat-belching oinks became thrashingly coupled with voiceless havoc.
Blearily against a fevered rush, Bucky grimacingly eased his cake-smeared hand off the floor, as unkempt wolfish tresses grungily webbed askew over hawkish-edged contours of his pudgier stubble jaw, the feverous heat of his deadened grayish-aquamarines irises blanked owlishly wide as he mortifyingly gazed at the smooth-virile- length of his fingers bone-splittingly dwarfed into varicose—furrier blobs of mutative flesh, puffily swelling in bubbled unison over cleaved bone—pig hooves.
Bracing deformed servos of his cybernetic arm over the blubbery chubbiness of his ballooned-out stomach, against white-hot upheavals of stark panic, jerkily Bucky reared his enlarging head back against vertiginous—dredged agony, wrenchingly pinching his eyelids shut as the masculine sculpt of his taut nose inflatingly elongated in a fleshier—wedged-like length of a hideous porcine snout: he was riding on the divested fringe of sorcerous—hoggish infancy. "Der'mo..." he grunted with coupled seethes of Russian cadence, thrashing on his back frantically against the bone-cripplingly pressure that immobilized his rivaled momentum against hammering-punches of contractive throbs racking blobbily over the swollen expanse of his furred girth as he vented out a full-throated snort, distressingly. "Arghh..."
His mass had both expanded and shrunk into a ball of pudgy fur upon the kitchen floor. The world grew bigger as he grew smaller, unmade from the inside out as he became entangled in a mess of torn clothes and discarded food. Bucky couldn't hear his own voice anymore despite his urging cries to Thor for help. His face ached as if his nose had been pulled out from his skull. A piggish squeal ripped from his new snout that protruded from his head. His beady blue eyes were floored with panic as his thumping hands turned into hooves. The blonde Avenger could only look on in muted shock as one of his newest friends was subjected to the cruel sorcery of the Vanaheim witch who had cursed him. Bucky Barnes was no more-all that remained in front of him was a disgruntled and distressed Dwarven Hog.
"THOR! What happened to me?!" Bucky cried out as he began to run in circles.
The beastlier resonance of the enchanted sniper hog's snorting utterance ragingly caromed through his odorous shack; harnessing the massive burliness of his Asgardian strength that countered with a breakneck rush of Bucky's stoked adrenaline, reactively Thor hefted up a cleared-off platter bracing it smudgily over his paunchy chest as Bucky's protruding tusks were dauntingly angled to lance into the Asgardian's exposed flesh.
Grunting out a long-drawn breath of grogginess, in defensive cadence, the grayish-chestnut furred Dwarvish boar ferally poised his bugly head, the stormier heat of his razored-sapphire irises piercingly slit as he readily grounded his fatter mass to deliver battle-ramming force into fleshiness of Thor's muscled calf. Huffing out a vehement snort, Bucky draggingly waddled his languorous paces on stubbed hooves."I see it's this has become a good challenge for us, friend Barnes..." Thor chuckled, in gregarious cadence, towing an unopened bag of spicy Cheetos a breadth from the chubbily rotund Brooklyn hog's fore-hoof that welded with silvery flecks of defective vibrainum-alloy. "I do relish a challenge that I easily can win..."
The insurmountable weight of his predicament was a load Bucky desperately wanted to discard. Questions of how and why ran through his mind in a ceaseless loop until he remembered what Thor was enduring because of that evil witch. She didn't just curse Thor, she tainted all the food that he touched. Bucky released a deep and abysmal wail that was a myriad of rage and remorse. He shouldn't have eaten that pop-tart. He knew that if he compromised his regime that he would regret but now he was feeling it in spades. "No. No. NO. NO!" He squealed, battle-charging towards the fat Asgardian King and ramming his tusks into the platter he thought he could use to shield him.
"Damn it, Thor! You knew this would happen!" This knowledge inspired only feelings of anger and frustration towards the big blonde doofus in front of him that tempted him to eat those snacks, and made him become this fat disgusting hog.
Brandishing his vestigial ferocity against the unyielding hog's bludgeoning momentum that ferociously equaled a bilgesnipe-a monstrous reptilian triceratops-like beast with curved antlers. With a quirk smug nonchalance tugged at his bristled lips, unflinchingly Thor clutched onto the shaggier thatch of chestnut bushily adorning over Bucky's humped back, in that apparent moment of stilted trust, he stoppingly reined down the ensorcelled boar's aggressive, nasally snorts that lividly gusted over his flabbier hand with a painstaking flex of his controlled strength.
"The Enchantress...Is just the worst for traitorous conjury on Midgardians..."Thor grumped under breath, sorrily."She was in the great company of my mother until the witchy maiden practiced the forbidden sorcery of Nidavellir turning Einherjar soldiers who defended Asgard into..." He feigned a terse grimace, as Bucky scathingly glared at him with knifing intensity. "Stout-bellied... urgh..hogs like you, friend Barnes..."
Seconds passed as Bucky found himself unable to wrestle his way out of Thor's godly strength that hadn't diminished a bit despite his weight-gain. Bucky's turmoil was like a burning fire that slowly began to dim until his rage was replaced by fatigue. It felt as if he had been running a marathon and was only now coming to a breathless stop. His stamina felt drained and he wanted to do nothing more but to lay down and sleep. Why? Why did he feel this sudden urge to just lay down and do nothing? Why did his stomach groan as if he hadn't eaten a thing? Bucky groaned as he digested Thor's words and their implications.
"Story of my life…Always being someone's weapon." He grumbled. He was only ever used as such. By his own country, KGB, Hydra and now some Asgardian witch who had a bone to pick with Thor and the Avengers. When Thor realized that he was calm enough, the Asgardian released him and Bucky fell onto his backside, gloomy and exhausted. "This isn't what I signed up for," he groaned as he looked down at his hooves, stained with strawberry frosting. "There's gotta be a way out of this Thor?"
The deep-timbered huskiness of Bucky's murmurous drawl agonizingly conveyed soul-gripping rawness of underlying disgust, angling his pudgy furred snout against a ghoulish—sulfuric miasma of carrion reek eerily sailing over them. With his ears floppily drooped over his fuzzier cheeks, the sniper-hog jumpily reeled back on his stubby-cloven hooves, vigilantly detecting a proximal-tenebrous breach of a celestial pulse encroaching vaporously around them.
Stuntedly in an intrusive wake, Bucky tensed against phantom throbs racked bristlingly over his muckier, bedraggled fur as vitreous Nordic sigils of crimson-telestic - aster fierily branded wooden floorboards in demonic fruition of incanted acerous stalactites- a paralytic mantra of Amora's execrable noxious witchery had barraged around them.
'Forbli i kongens skalor ...(Remain in your king's squalor...)'
"W-What the hell is that..." Bucky grunted starchily in dumbfounded pitch, flashing his silvery-aquamarine irises with rapt confusion at the nacreous-runic glyphs consumingly veined the over floor, incinerating emptied pop-tart boxes. "That can't be good..." He scrunched up the overlapping pudge of his jowelly snout, against gruffer quip of breathy snarkiness, downcastly. "Hell, what's next M' gonna pop out some wings like a Valkyrie horse..."
The urge to sate his growing appetite had been an overwhelming constant for Thor the past number of days. Amora's enchantment against him was more than just an act of petty vengeance for spurning her in the past; it was also a surgical strike against the hierarchy of New Asgard. Brunhillde had gone off-world to seek out Sif and her other sisters among the stars, leaving Thor in charge-and vulnerable. Thor would've been content to endure this familiar punishment to amuse himself.
But as he watched Barnes suffer the under the same spell, being turned to a disgruntled hog before his eyes, Thor ignored the hunger cravings and listened to the unmistakable roars of unwelcome guests coming to his home. "You may need them, James. For I fear this is a threat that cannot be simply outrun." Thor mused. At that moment, the front doors in the foyer were struck viciously by an oppressive weight outside causing a visible dent to be seen from inside. Twin vicious growls breached the silence, sending chills of anticipation down the spines of both Thor and Bucky.
Tilting the pudgier heftiness of his furred snout with repugnant ease, arrestingly Bucky sniffed a whiff of miasmatic reek smellily ghosting underneath the shack's wooden door against earthshaking vibrations monstrously ricocheting feral momentum from their unwanted-destructive-company. "Great..." he seethed out a throated grunt, ploddingly shifting on his stubbed hooves with clunky traction, as his floppy ears twitched up, Bucky registered a snarling cadence of bloodthirsty rabidness; they were unquestioningly being hunted.
Clamorously in demonic mania, the door hinges bent against the undeterred barreling force that propelled outside in stomach-curling tempo, as the periphery of Bucky's sniper-vision heatedly caught a glimpse of two massively-ghostlier Asgardian wolves-hog reapers- gouging their jutted incisor fangs tearingly into splintered wooden planks in vicious succession. Every vicious rush of their predatory-wolven- agility was raptorially sired to abandon visages of mercy in their kill-zone. "Well, M guessin' the big bad wolf is huffin' at your door, Thor..." Bucky quipped, stuffily, and fixed his aquamarine depths beadily on Nidavellir forged battle-ax-Stormbreaker propped against hearthstone. "Now might be a good time to use your...uh... thunder ax?"
"Hmm? Oh yes." Thor realized, snapping from his initial daydream then lazily held his hand out. He appeared neither concerned about the wolves' moments away from breaking down his door, nor the telltale signs of animal fur that were also beginning to slowly sprout like watered grass, from his skin pores. It was a familiar itch-an irritation that he'd endured in his past-time, and he knew that Amora's curse would not spare him for much longer. "Now might also be a good time for you to practice your trotting, Friend James. I will give you the head-start while I teach these beasts some manners."
Bolstering the rotundity of his obese mass, against the instinctive - adrenalized tenor racking over his shaggier chestnut fur; underneath of denim that sheathed over his flabbier backside, warding off suffusive disgust, Bucky pinched his eyelids shut as the wiggly burst of a corkscrew tail uglily twitching out—he was fully an oinking blubbered-ball. "Damnit ..." he grunted in vexatious breaths, throatily, stomping a fore-hoof in evident disgust, as he glowered at the beckoning flex of Thor's outstretched hand blurringly thrust up to clutch the hailing ax- Stormbreaker. "M' not leavin'..." A railing snort vented out of him; he wouldn't become a defective-balloon-ass tub of hoggish flab. Pivoting on his stubbed hooves with heavier footing, clumsily he torqued back the sagginess of his protrusive underbelly, aggressively jutting his snout up. "Give me somethin' to hit..."
The moment he said those words, Bucky wished he could take them back. The door to the front of the apartment suddenly came crashing down in a roaring explosion of wooden splinters. Two gargantuan shapes lunged through at the same time, breaking apart the door-frame as their colossal weight crumbled the structure like paper. Beastial roars shook the interior, causing the glass cups to shatter and the dwarven pig to squeal in shock. These weren't wolves. They were enormous hellbeasts that looked like they crawled from the pits of hell. Their dark charcoal fur made them look pitch as shadows. Their glowing red eyes were wide with malice, and their grueling chops dripped with hunger.
Thor released a war-cry as he swung the hammer-edge of his axe against the first beast to charge at him, smacking it through the kitchen wall in a shower of debris and crackles of electricity. "Graaaggh! Have at thee!" Thor kicked a chair, sending it skidding across the floor towards the second wolf who lunged up high to avoid the object, which left it wide open for Thor to swing the blade-edged of his axe towards its neck. Blood and viscera sprayed across the kitchen and the beast howled its death-wails. Thor snarled as he pried his weapon free from the dead-carcass, face stained with its blood.
"Down, James!" Thor cried out as the wolf he sent crashing through the wall, reemerged with its predatory gaze set on the hog close-by.
Suppressing a neasous onrush of unrelenting viciousness malignantly straddling him against the fridge's door; thrashingly in a defensive variance, Bucky gnashed his tusk against the immobilizing pressure of the draconic wolf's power-slamming-bulkier weight that crushingly forced him to emit a guttural squeal as he rampantly thumped his fore-hooves with side kidney punches only to feel the wolf's fanged incisors graze agonizing intent of a deadlier assault viscidly over the doughy globbiness of his blood-dampened back. "Grah..."
Fostering onto vestigial dregs of his enhanced resilience, snarlingly in combative tempo, Bucky launched his bulgy form with plow-driving steam, unerringly angling his tusks down, in wonky rapidity of a half-somersault, he punchily bowled underneath the Asgardian wolf's exposed girth, as he arced back onto his hooves, bodily jackknifing up his bestial opponent against a logged wall. "P-Pick on someone your own size..." he drawled out gratingly in heaving grunts, drilling his tusks slashingly deeper as he gut-hooked into the bloodstained muscle with gouging precision, not faltering in his blinded momentum. "M not done yet..."
The wolf thrashed and howled as the tusks dug into its abdomen and spewed its blood onto the floor and Bucky's back. Bleeding like a...stuck pig, courtesy of a pig. Thor ignored the irony of this as he marched forward. The beast had stopped moving as it went limp. Thor seized its head and snapped its neck just to be certain. He shoved the dead-weight off of Bucky's back and released a shudder of discomfort. It had been weeks since he exerted himself in this fashion, and while Thor would've ordinarily enjoyed the feeling of battle, the increase in adrenaline made the Enchantress' spell easier to race through his body like a poison.
Amora knew of his proclivities for battle and debauchery and made them into deadly ingredients to fuel his peril. He grimaced and fell back against the wall. His enormous gut hung from the bottom of his shirt. At one point he was a vain man who prided himself on his handsome looks to appease Asgards finest maidens. He no care for how far he drifted from the physical specimen he once was. But now he couldn't ignore the stabbing feeling of dread that entered his abdomen. "T-There will be more of them, James. We are no longer safe here," he groaned.
"Yeah, I kinda figured that..." Bucky grunted, huffily, narrowing the pudgy length of his snout as he strenuously attempted to drag his metallic fore-hoof over the smeared trek of bloodied drool. "Oh c'mon...Tamping down a guttural resonance of rubbery oinks, that was scathingly underlying his chagrined exhaustion, groggily he waddled against the drooping strain of his barrel-sized girth closer to the slump-faced Asgardian-Thunderer with apparent measures of enforced caution in his molasses-paced advances while Thor rumbled out a slobbish belch, unmovingly at his puckered snout. "Urgh..."
The jowelly folds of his porcine snout rapted with teeming disgust, as the lascivious potency of the viperish witch's demented-nidorous conjury became sordidly obstructive against boozy fumes enwreathing the chubbier fleshiness that blobbily sheathed over bohemian Thor's ogre-sized belly, furrier blondish swatch damningly fringed over his lubberly navel: soon they would soon mirror blimped-out hoggish visages. They needed to locate a rendezvous point within the forestial proximity to stealthily dodge another hunting party of a wolven blood-storm. "We gotta move fast..." Bucky urged, pressingly, flashing the glacial smokiness of his beadier irises unwaveringly at hiking backpack that he omitted on the kitchen's countertop."Use that to carry the stuff we need...Don't even think about packin' those damn pop-tarts..."
"I did not tell you to eat the entire box," Thor said, releasing a dry chuckle as he pulled himself up to stand straight on his feet. The world spun on its axis and the Asgardian groaned as his head throbbed with an intense migraine. The result of too much mead and no doubt his slow physical transformation into the rotund beast that Amora intended for him. "Besides given our present predicament, I doubt sugary snacks will agree with us." At that his stomach groaned an affirmative to which Thor held his sagging stomach with one hand and picked up the backpack with the other, stuffing it with various fruits and bottles of water that he had, until now, never thought to consume.
"For what its worth, Friend James, I am sorry you have to endure my peril alongside me." His apology must've surprised him as Bucky cocked his head and then shook it. They both started with anticipation once they heard another howl in the distance. Right it was time to go. "Come. I know somewhere we can go." Thor kicked open the backdoor and let the cool night air wash over both him and Bucky as they made their way out into the night of New Asgard. The town was mostly asleep, and Thor and Bucky had to wonder just how Steve and Selina were doing on their end.
'Whatever it takes...'
It was a symphonious anthem that had unitedly resonated on the obliterated grounds of the Avenger's Compound as mechanical-galactic leviathans thunderously haloed a doomsday reckoning over the collapsing edge of assembled mortality; fusion cannoned salvos barraged in rapid succession from monolith Accuser warships, harrowingly conducting a hurricanic pandemonium of ear-splitting-slaughterous carnage. Staggering exhaustingly on bulldozed slabs of cement and smoldering hulls of the dismantled QuinJets, like a bloodied sentinel-defender of enduring humanity, Steve had voluntarily challenged a tyrannosaurus-scale deathmatch with the behemothic Mad-Titian- or what Tony snarkily deemed him as- the cinematic planet-consuming villain of a 1980's animated series: Unicron.
Bracing the vibrainum shard of his broken shield over his bruised forearm, adamantly Steve harnessed every heart-surging fiber of his soldiery valor-determination as injurious bone-crushing assaults of monstrous power-dives chokingly robbed his breath. Nothing derailed his full-measured paces of chivalrous traction as Outrider hordes rabidly swarmed out grounded obelisk-like hive ships to macabrely gorge on his teammates-family.
With the hulk-sized gauntlet that was enhanced with the comic-fused ingots, the ragtag Avengers had one 'skin of teeth' chance to end Thano's prophetic soul-massacring apocalypse before humanity was atomically exterminated by the Infinity snap; with the sling-ring portals wheeling in astral unison that Steven Strange conducted with a play of illusionist deception: Bucky, Sam, T'challa, Shuri, Wanda, and Groot trudged out of the vacuous-celestial elysian of the Soul Realm, as they mightily assembled with salvaged echoes of valiance-as the odds were rigged against them. He owed his best girl-Tasha-one last dance.
Like stampeding quarterbacks the Avengers cleared the homefront battleground, as the proton galactic defender-Captain Carol Danvers propelled her supersonic momentum, torpedoing warship vessels into junker heaps. She was a starlight beacon of mortal invincibility-jet-fuel surged through her veins.
When Doctor Strange gestured his scar-marred finger commandingly to Tony, everything went into flatline numbness of white-noise as the hot-red armored gauntlet of Iron Man anguishedly thrust up with sacrificial ease-as he direly became a conductor of scything celestial-gamma energies of the Infinity Stones; purging Thanos into cindery remnants of phantom mulch that heralded their victorious daybreak; the immeasurable loss of his -friend-punishingly sledgehammered against Steve's torn heart: he couldn't shake it off.
After the lakeside gathering as mourning Pepper Potts embracingly hugged little Morgan on the dock, tearily gazing at the small raft adorned with petaled ivory roses that wreathed over the cherished keepsake arc-rector- the heart of Tony Stark-sailing away from their reach. Carrying out the bargaining promise that Banner made to the Ancient One in 2012, Steve had finished the time-heist mission, using the quantum tunnel dimensions as he navigated through subatomic bridges-wormholes of reserved time in a light-speed acceleration that imploded with Pym Particles; he was a delivery-boy.
As Steve reached the final dropoff point of Vormir's snowy dolmens, he engaged an unfathomed audience with a demonic chimera that was ghoulishly cloaked in vaporous tatters, hiding wraith-like contours of a jutted crimson skeletal visage-the Red Skull- who became a phantom stone-keeper when the Space Stone banished him out of reality. For seven decades, he accepted the trial of condemningly being a modernized Charon-ferryman, ushering beckoned souls into astral vistas of eternity.
The Red Skull had reactively accepted back the Soul Stone, in return for payment, allowed Steve to glance down into the infinite void as he achingly harbored onto the unbearable-contractive apparitions that eternally pulsed a visceraous-tragic frequency of expandable heartbeats over the mountainous edge; Steve tried his damndest not to gaze down at the bloodied smears were grimily painted on granite dais carved with runic mezzotints of Yggdrasil; gut-wrenching evidence of harvested souls offered to the celestial ether. Traces of Natasha's sacrificed blood hauntingly outlined where she had readily swan-dived after her suicidal backflip off the cliff-out of Clint's desperate grip. 'Let me go...'
Against the celestial auroras of explosively converged with the incendiary voltage of quantum lightning over the obelisk-dolmens etched with fanatical-spookish- glyphs that revealed the Soul Stone was a harvesting sentient entity that galvanically suffused wielding hosts to usher felled souls into bridged transatlantic—crossways of the Elysium Planes—a tradeoff payment with no retractions of that irrevocable cost.
He couldn't bring her back, or infinitely offer his soul in exchange to gain a warrant of Natasha's resurrection as he reluctantly gazed with a naked trek of anguished tears into the cosmic etherealness of vacuously stole her away; surrendering his wartime GI tag dogs that were engraved for a hellbent Brooklyn kid in the snowy gales to reverently grace the phantom memory of her against knifing rush of denotive heartache. 'We won, Nat...' he murmured against choked-off sobs, onrushing feverish surges of pent-up wetness blearily dampened over the fringe of his lashes—he couldn't look down as the final seconds of his Pym time-watch subatomically propelled him back into the quantum dimension. 'We won...'
Clutching onto his timeworn compass with tightfisted strain, guardedly in measured reserve, in dismal ease, warringly Steve braced the enhanced bulkiness of his sculpted back against one of the Quin-Jet's hydraulic pole as the ramp painstakingly descended over forested terrain of southwestward Norway, sconces from lampposts mounted on a stone bridge flickered hazily over iron spires of castellated environs gothically adorned a Neo-Renaissance castle-the Romanesque marble stronghold that Enchantress-Amora- had covetously staked her invidious reign.
Evicting another onslaught of unbidden heartache that crescendoed in tenfold that he rode out; being disconnected from his chivalrous-Brooklyn kid- bravado felt inexorably dormant as knifing pulse dragging over his battle-torn heart. On the grounds of war, the victorious-irretrievable cost of salvation-new dawn was casualties; he lost Tony and his best girl-Tasha- to the last stand of their Endgame mission. Nothing would change that soul-demolishing reality.
With steeled impassiveness vigilantly brandished over hard-edged planes of his angular-boyish features, tactfully against a combative flex of his stowed determination, Steve adjusted the leather-buckled straps of his legendary patriotic shield over his Kevlar-garbed forearm. Blonde-golden tresses featherily hung over his temples, roguishly intensifying his Adonis -honed virility, that hunkily contrasted with his dark navy-blue Strike uniform.
As unfeigned soldiery valor ricocheting in his tensed veins, the First Avenger tautly pressed his sensuous-chiseled lips in a half-grimace, cementing his battle-readied stance as the steeliness of his turquoise- azure irises piercingly roved over the forested grounds of Amora's caliginous domain. Everything felt penetratively close to vest; the Vanaheim temptress-viper- had graspingly marked down his burly friend-Thor into her perfidious-morbific crosshairs of a fattening scourge that perpetually overhauled Asgardian indulgences in unquenchable-rapine- tenfold. He needed to impede Thor's piggish junk-food binge."Look sharp..." he cautioned in a deep-timbre drawl, sonorously."I get the feelin' Amora won't go down easy..."
He was met with silence. The only noises to be heard were the crickets chirping into the night. The blonde glanced over his shoulder to search for his partner for this mission. He found her still seated in the c***-pit of the Quinjet; strapped in and deeply immersed with her phone. The impatient tapping of her finger against the screen told him that she was waiting for a message. Steve released a troubled sigh, not at all bothered by the fact Selina was distracted but more to do with the wistful longing that came by the absence of his traditional partner these past several years.
"Hey." He called out to her from the entry-ramp. "Everything okay?"
Brandishing an impassive charade of distractive nonchalance, grudgingly, with distractive ease, Selina had arced her stiletto-heeled boots unerringly over the co-pilot's chair armrest-she was riding shotgun. Hearing the brotherly cadence stoically fringed in his low-pitched Brooklyn drawl, inadvertently, against the offhand rapt of cool vehemence clenching in the delicate contours of her jaw, Selina feverishly clutched her iPhone, as she unblinkingly gazed at the ''decrypted' message LD screen-countermeasures of tactical infiltration were subtlely employed.
After receiving a 'tip-off' location-blackspot from a Stark network grid surveillance AI drone E.D.I.T.H, that alertly detected a high-level occultic-arcane threat generating within the mountain borders of Norway, they had stealthily engaged mystical recon within shadow-zone proximity. Asgardian vendettas were destructively unstable in avalanche-like effect, burying everyone into a cataclysmal-slaughterous crossfire—the Enchantress was a malefic, devouring siren incarnate of carnal thirst—who played the smokescreen charade of Jane Foster to bewitchingly violate Thor's frayed-out heart, only to chasten him into fattening oblivion.
The Eldritch hardware-accessories that Doctor Stephen Strange had delivered them were activated by a Tibetian-Kamar-Taj -incantation that composedly weaved fiery veins of astral energy into a mystical barrier of protection. "Just figuring out how to play with Tricks wordgame," she deadpanned in a sassier undertone, bluntly, as the tigerish decadence of her brandy irises vixenishly epitomized against the bordering slits of her sleek domino mask. "I think Bucky might leave a few dents in Thor's slop-heap if we don't curb this down..." she rasped, jauntily, with collective flexion of her lithe hand, she holstered a 9mm Glock on her neoprene-clad thigh while Steve adamantly took point. "You ready to have some fun knocking on this Asgardian hag's door, Soldier boy...?"
Steve shrugged with a small smile tugging at his lips. "So long as it's fun we can handle." He watched as she sat in deep thought with her deactivated phone still in hand. "He'll be all right. Believe me, Bucky's handled a lot worse than looking after Thor." He knew Selina didn't need any kind of reassurance, but it felt like the right thing to say-if not for her benefit than his own. "Let's try and make this quick."
He held his hand out, beckoning her to follow him down the ramp. He watched her hesitate as she put away her phone. She was still worried, Steve knew. From what he knew about their relationship, Bucky and Selina rarely if ever worked so far apart without communication. This was a stealth and incursion mission, one that Steve hoped they were prepared for as he held the magical dampener that Bruce and Shuri made. Hopefully, it would work on the Asgardian sorceress and they could safely capture her.
With a sardonic quirk playing over the pillowed lushness of her voluminous lips, curvaceously, as she utilized her feline-honed momentum of sashaying accord, coolly Selina descended the ramp, the silky glossiness of her waterfall-straight mahogany tresses entrancingly cascaded over the svelte fineness that athletically toned her neoprene-garbed shoulders, despite, she preferred a measured extent of personal space, Selina had grounded herself tensely at his soldiery—virtuous side; their dynamical caliber was blindsided—overrated trust was viscerally akin to mechanized precision of a scalpel and hammer: an incarnate tactical reliance nakedly fueled by an electrified—addictive dosage of high-octane shunting in their veins.
Emitting a breathy scoff, as her full-bow lips quirked, deviantly, Selina glanced at his alloy-vibrainum shield readily braced over corded flesh of his muscled forearm as she unnervingly feigned an eye-roll. "I think you need more effective toys to play here, Rogers, tossing your frisbee isn't going to work..." she rebuffed in a coquettish undertone, banteringly, with a thievish swipe of her gloved hand, deftly she palmed a Kimoyo -taser- bead that Wakanda's spunky impish fashionista Princess Shuri had virtuosically designed with a kinetic destabilizing pulse as Okavango tribal sigils electrified in sync with purplish amethyst--a pocket accessory for a girl to never dance without. "Lucky for you I always bring a backup piece..."
Steve offered a gracious smile with a bemused quirk of his head. "Not really my style, but I guess we can't afford to be choosy here." He said as he accepted the taser bead and fixed it to his belt. His style of combat had evolved since the days he only wielded a shield and pistol into combat. The modern world offered too many variables and opponents that meant to be Captain America, he had to take things up a notice.
From wielding a magnetic shield, to a mystical hammer, Steve figured a taser was the least outlandish thing he could carry.
"Bucky always said you were resourceful in a fight-adaptable." He commended the domino-masked brunette who eyed him thoughtfully.
"Playing safe is never my style for kicks, Rogers..." Selina retorted back, coyly, as she bolstered herself with controlled poise at the bottom of the ramp. Not wavering his battle-ready stance, the heavier tautness of graven-ridged muscles flexed bulkily underneath his tactical Strike uniform-a resilient-invincible solidity edged over his enhanced flesh as Steve reservedly clenched the broad-set of his jaw; impelled by a gut-sense resonating through his veins, he gleamingly flashed the stormier intensity of his azureous irises piercingly at the obstructive bridge —something wasn't right.
In a balletic variance of her reactive grace, felinely Selina mid-crouched low on the sleekness her neoprene-clad haunches, as instinctive strain tellingly became invested in the conscious drag of her lithe fingers over gnarled roots snarking out of the ground. She was precariously aware that Asgard's viperous bane had deceptively rigged them onto a sorcerous powderkeg; obsidian sentinels of Gothicesque twined stallions were eerily mounted on the bridge passageway as verdigris sigils of astral heat tectonically pulsed over the razed stone in detonative fruition.
Involuntarily her kittenish nose scrunched against the morbific stench of putrefying flesh odiously wafting out of the stagnant-corpse-infested bog that luridly captured the backlit sconces of ghoulish torchlight—carrion hordes of desiccated Nordic-Viking- warriors macabrely adorned with crescent-edged Breið-øx axes deathlily clutched in their leathery skeletal hands. "Yeah, this place is kinda spooky..." she gritted, threadily, and with her unerring trajectory of dead-straight precision, she pitched the activated Kimoyo bead, without faltered deterrence of his back-catcher agility, Steve had openly caught the Wakandian gadgetry as tremorous—paranoic vibrations of earth-quaking force ruptured cacophonously underneath the Quinjet: a seismic wakeup call for Amora's zombified legion. "We need to stay at this level of ground..."
Steve held his balance but was just as concerned by the seismic activity as Selina when it felt as if something evil was ready to erupt from the Earth. The First Avenger held his shield in one hand and the kimoyo bead in the other. "Stay sharp, stay close." He cautioned as they began to move across the landscape. The cover of trees kept them veiled from the moonlight, but at the same time made their trek all the more hazardous. "Take point," Steve called once the path became too pitch dark for him to see. The Gothamite activated her night-vision goggles and spied the path ahead. The gnarly trees were like teeth protruding from the ground into the skies. But in the distance, the Enchantress' fortress glowed like a spire of unholy magic.
That she had her fortress erected so close to New Asgard would've been as strange as Baron Zemo renting an apartment across the street from the Avengers Compound. Steve repressed a shudder as a gust of howling wind moved down his back. He ignored the unsettling feeling that he and Selina had walked into a horror movie of some kind. But the fact that they could hear no birds nor crickets said that something was off out here. "Selina?" He called worriedly as she came to a stop. "What is it?"
In fleeting reaction, haltingly Selina felt the apparitional 'white-noise' pulse over the forested warren, a banshee frequency demonically amplified in a manic tempo; crimson incandescence of astral heat veined nocuously over skeletal deformities of hollowed-sockets —dismembered bones of exsiccated flesh thrashed jerkily around the helmeted-Viking denizens in possessive rabidness; mobilizing cavalcade of death-walkers screechingly converged onto the bridge in defensive succession—answering the stygian hail of infinite battle.
With a thievish flex of her gloved hand, blindingly Selina unholstered onto her Glock, undeviatingly aiming point-blank at tarred-maggoty corpses that ghoulishly ascended out of the boggy trenches. "Tell me, Soldier boy, are you afraid of ghosts..." she bantered, snarkily as cold vaporous rust knifed scrapingly down her throat. Whirlingly with a balletic rush of her poised footing, Selina tactfully crouched onto her razor-edged heels; rapidly slotting out a full cartridge with a staccato hailstorm as she punched back trigger shots as resin mucus-like ooze from blow-off skulls dropped gloopily over the alloy rim of his shield. "We need to crash this witch's party... Fast."
Steve smirked despite himself. "Let me guess, Bucky?" Steve queried with a knowing look. In the darkness, he imagined Selina was giving him a puzzled look over her shoulder. "He loves Ghostbusters."Sometimes he thought he could hear him humming the song in the shower. He didn't get to dwell long on the funny memory when his enhanced hearing began to pickup the telltale groans of death coming towards them.
If it weren't for a marathon of Night of the Living Dead movies with Sam Wilson, Steve would've been mildly confused by the sounds. Instead, he was now clutching his shield and the kimoyo bead with a vice-like grip in anticipation. So this is what Selina meant. "How many are there?" Steve asked. His eyes glared into the darkness. He thought he saw a glint of moonlight reflecting off of metal. A twig snapped closeby and the Avenger didn't hesitate to throw his shield. It buzzed like a saw through the air, cutting down a ghoulish monstrosity in half. The shield returned to his hand in time for him to smash in the head of a second one.
What alarmed him wasn't the fact he had just killed an undead zombie. It was the sight of decaying flesh and empty eyes staring into nothing. Those clothing worn were modern humans-New Asgardians. "This is not good."
As the patriotic shield metallically boomeranged into Steve's readied clutch, with unwarrantable ease of her incredulous traction, fringing her paces a breadth from the skeletal Asgardian remains; dragging out a terse breath, Selina flipped her sleek cat-eared googles up and fixed her brandy irises stiltedly down at the swampy -ghostlier mist creepily arcing over the deflated heap of soiled garments-an exorcised soul. "This is a really cheap trick to play against Thor..." she rasped, grittily, as the clothing meltingly dissolved back into the ground-a soul-numbing revelation that Amora was a reaping siren, collecting traumatized Asgardian strays into her mutative- orcish legions. "We need to figure out this damn hag's angle..."
Steve didn't pause as he smashed, kicked and punched his way through the rapidly growing throng of undead Asgardians that were now beginning to surround him and Selina. Their battle had moved them from out of the woods and into the open field. The cloud coverage caused a clap of thunder to boom in the skies. If Thor wasn't in such an isolated state, Steve would've taken the noise as backup. But they were on their own on this. Strange had left with Wanda to settle a threat in a different dimension, Bruce was helping Tony in his coma, Carol was off-world, Rhodey and Sam were injured from Amora's last attack. Steve and Selina found themselves back-to-back, moving as one as they unleashed a flurry of attacks.
Kicks were landed, bullet-casings were spent. The smell of decay was suffocating just as the groans of death were deafening. Steve didn't stop and didn't relent as he raised his hand, calling for his last resort to aid him. He felt the kinetic pull as the magic of Mjolnir responded to him and flew out from the quinjet. Like a star shining in the darkness he could see the enchanted hammer closing in towards him, feel its power singing with anticipation to reach his hand. His hopes were obstructed when a green-sorcerous field of energy engulfed the hammer like a bubble, causing it to fall like dead-weight to the ground. A familiar and sinister laugh descended on them as the undead horde came to a stop.
Steve and Selina panted for breath, focused and still ready for a fight. The horde still surrounded them, trapping them, allowing their master to come forward.
"This is an unwelcomed surprise, dear Captain..." A throatier huskiness of a feminine undertone of malevolence rasped smokily underneath a vampiresque hooded cloak, with ceremonious prowess, serpentinely the conjuring-galactic blight of Vanaheim advanced passed her Élivágar ghoulish ranks in cobra-like haughtiness of queen entity; eroded war-axes berserkly thrust up in reverent—inchanted unison as verdurous stalactites of tenebrious heat veined twistily over jutted out bones welded into chainmail armor.
Arcing the delicate litheness of her Nerco-gauntleted hand, sneerily, with sensuous ease, Amora distractively pulled down the darkish hood, as rope-braided platinum-blonde whorls disheveledly cascaded over the cool seraphic fineness that wickedly contrasted with her exquisite witchy features as the vitriolic intensity of her grayish-teal irises malignantly glinted with demented thirst at the vibrainium shield-a Midgardian trophy she covetously desired. "The Odin spawn has gluttonously deigned himself to become a grieving hostage of his utmost failures..." she hissed in envenomed pitch, raveningly. "A new reign of power will conquer over the desolated vermin of Asgard once I cut the loose ends..."
With a guileful charade quirking hypnotically over the cherry lushness of her voluminous lips, carnally Amora radiated a decadent-aphrodisiac fragrancy that was headily penetrative to damningly breach masculine arousal, Selina detected the intrusive reek as the odious stink ghosted fervidly over her kittenish nose with seductive-tactile precision of viperish inducement—a siren's coaxing of bewitchery to exponentially drag Steve into her amorous-morphic thralls. On breakneck accord, urgently Selina gripped the Kelvar material delineated tauter-muscle cords of his forearm, knowing that he was on the septic-compromised fringe of Amora's demented-viperous play of chimerical havoc.
"I do relish severing your wretched humanity into a craven existence..." she taunted against waspish breaths, poutily, gazing at the plushier firmness of Steve's chiseled lips ardently set into a half-grimace, evident to his disarmed resolve. "You really think coming here will purge that drunken Odinson's piteous curse, when another dear friend of yours, Captain, fatteningly bloats out his grunting defeat..."
"Bucky…" Steve and Selina share an uneasy look between each other at that, feeling dread encompass them. Their entire focus had been on saving Thor that they hadn't stopped to consider any potential contingencies the Enchantress would have in place if they tried to intervene in the Asgardian's decadent state. They had left Bucky in charge of Thor's care. That meant… "What did you do?!" Steve demanded hotly. His greater inclination was to be diplomatic in the face of hostilities but he knew this was one woman that wouldn't be bargained with. She wanted Thor to suffer and would have no qualms about making his friends pay the same price. Steve gripped his shield tight while Amora smirked at his clear agitation. "What did you do to him?!"
Sneeringly with a painstaking steadiness of her extended palm, witchily Amora beckoned astral fusion of verdigris energy, indulgently fashioning vapory tendrils into a lucent orb that she hefted up stoppingly to the fiercer gleam of Steve's oceanic azure irises; sweat-damp blond tresses fringed his bruised temples, with vigilant tact of his steeled focus, he unwaveringly gazed into candescent auras merging into a Nordic glyph of 'playback' memory. "If you wish to see your beloved Sergent Barnes's shackled visage all you have to do is peek, dear Captain..." Amora coaxingly rasped, gliding her fingers over the astral luminescence of the vitreous jade bauble.
Suppressedly against rampageous viciousness, gnashing her teeth, breathlessly Selina angled her Glock to deliver instant kill-shot, as her gloved finger shakily grazed over the hammer trigger-lock."It seems the handsome fool blindingly reveled into the gluttonous flavor of my curse..."
A glowing light emanated from within the Orb as if it took on a life of its own. Clouds of magic circulated from within and images fluttered past. Steve and Selina could see Thor and Bucky inside of Thor's house. They were talking in the living room until Thor handed Bucky a box of pop-tarts. Bucky didn't just eat one, he ate the entire box like a starving pig, making a mess of himself. What happened then was a nightmarish symphony of events that saw Thor and Bucky grappling each other in the kitchen over a piece of cake until Bucky began to change before their very eyes.
"Oh no..." Steve voiced with a sorrowful look. Selina's expression was stone-cold empty but the pain in her eyes was unmistakable as she kept her mask in place. The vision of events culminated with Thor and now a pig-Bucky fighting off pair of wolves inside of the kitchen until the beasts were killed. Once the images had ended, Steve and Selina couldn't tear their gazes away from a hypnotic concentration of energy building up from within the orb. It grew brighter and stronger until it burst like a shockwave, hitting both Steve and Selina, sending them falling to the ground.
A vertiginous onslaught dizzily grappled her into deadened submission; circlet glyphs of Amora's Nordic incantation eldritchly ravined over the ground, chasing her warred heartbeat in an exhaustive-vomitous rush as whitish salvos of incandescent energy flaringly careened through Selina like a depth-charge shockwave-an eruptive anesthetic that searingly assailed her bone-deep in paralytic succession. Each pulse agonizingly surged an implosive -accelerated numbness as onrushing barrages of her charmingly hunky sniper-wolf becoming an oinking tub of blubbery-piggish flab had suffocatingly exorcised her resistance in heart-knifing tenor-the parasitical-invidious magery of Amora's venomous thirst amplified in slumberous-cursive deviance of unbidden surrender. 'No..."
Motionless like collapsing marionette of granite, Selina was bruisingly dragged onto the svelte planes of her back as jutted tentacles of gnarled roots slithery bracketed over the delicate contours of her wrists—everything deafened out against the infective fusion entombing her. Blurringly, in a cottony haze, her lashes damply flitted as virescent skeins of morphically fused over ridged bulkiness of Steve's mid-drift, as he chokingly railed out a throated-voiceless screech against torpedoing force that slammed him against a diseased tree with back-breaking momentum. "S-Soldier boy..." she gurgled threadily, disheveled length of her mahogany tresses slickly webbed askew over the feverous, elfin curvatures of her delicate jaw as she desperately thrust her gloved hand with notched-up strain, reaching for him. "Steve..."
"I-I can't-GAAAH!" Steve couldn't contain the cry of agony that breached his lips. He gnashed his teeth and groaned through a hailstorm of sorcerous torture. The Enchantress' magic permeated his body, his bones, his cells, and began their heinous work of undoing the man from the inside out-transforming him into a creature to suit her will. His shield fell from his grip, his trembling posture brought him to his knees as he struggled to fight through the spasms that controlled him, and face the evil woman that was doing this to them. Selina couldn't move. It was as if her entire body had been shut down and she lost all feeling to her limbs.
The tension in the air was morbid in the seconds that followed. Steve's entire body caved in on itself as if he were imploding from within. Gazing at his gloved hands he watched as they slipped off his rapidly decreasing mass. His face and neck itched as if he had a colony of bugs invading his skin. But in reality, it was patches of bird feathers sprouting from his skin. His blue eyes closed, accepting the inevitable of what was happening as he built a mental wall around himself, taught to him by Doctor Strange, to protect the one avenue of himself that was more important than his body: his mind-his soul.
Within moments, Captain America had vanished in a mass of crumpled clothes and equipment. His tactical vest flayed on the ground as something else reemerged, squawking and thrashing to escape the prison of garments that kept him confined.
Temperstously heralding a butcherous—cyclonic valance of her earthen- corpse armada, Amora crouched a breadth at the discarded vibrainum shield with vulturous poise, hungrily Amora glided a possessive tracery of gauntleted palm over the alloy star insignia without a deterrence of hesitation, manically the rapturous heat of her ophidian depths gazed at remnants of navy blue Kevlar sheathed over feathery checkered wings of silvery-ivory as raptor-talons rampantly gouged into clumps of dirt in blinded traction, screechingly in a throat-piercing cadence, the Avenger hawk lurched joltingly on his curvaceous girth, as the steely-bluish plumage of his silken tufts ethereally delineated the virile litheness of his ensorcelled—passerine form. Jutting the sleekness of his golden-curved beak, Steve uttered, in a squawking hitch raspily. "T-Thor's gonna stop you..."
"It seems your valiant warrior beauty has been stunted into a craven form that is befitting for you, dear Captain..." Hearing the monstrous grunting of her orcish, skeletal denizens, Amora virulently glanced at the malachite-ebon Necro spears—demonic instruments forged out of the chasmal—tenebrious veins of Helheim being arced up, as torn black Einherjar pennons grotesquely ribboned over corroded poles gripped in the skeletal clutches of her resurrected breed of wraithlike 'carnage-reapers' that nightmarishly spewed out of her sorcerous cauldron; as the maggot-ridden phalanxes were staggeringly advancing out of her forested warren in a rabid fusion of murderous barbarity-a death march.
Underneath warped helms, reddish embers fierily crescented within jutted-edges of hollowed eye sockets—a soulless bloodlust that wouldn't be contained. "Now I'll leave you to lament in the skies," Amora gestured to his feathered wings, sadistically. "...while I bring forth my carrion legion to fully deliver my reckoning of mortal harvest over New Asgard..."
"Leave em' alone..." Against a hawkish screech in his raw-pitched timbre, Steve urgently conveyed his unbreakable measure of Brooklyn valiance in the wake of a cabalistic-hellish mantra of phantom starved battle-cries that dissonantly crescendoed in a demonic ambiance like terror knells; latent skeletal heaps of desecrated Einherjar warriors of Odin jerkily convulsed as matrix infusions of celestial-psionic energy of tapped out of Nastrond-the Shore of Corpses- electrifyingly melded greenish heat into the detached-gutted bones that creepily spider-clawed to become realigned with iron-forged limbs for Amora's slaughterous-apocalyptic conquest of mortal butchery.
Half-exhausted by the divested strain, joltingly defiant tension grounded him, Steve reactively braced his feathered wings into a taut arc over svelter curves of his lithe girth as he gaspingly felt the hammering momentum of a ghoul's armored foot, bodily propel a blinded assault of careening ferocity into his feathery back with merciless-breakneck traction. The bone-knifing spasms of racked anguish exceedingly caught his stunned heartbeat as incendiary throbs of white-heat blearily robbed his vision-it was a death blow. "No..."
This wasn't how he imagined himself finally fading away. Death wasn't something he feared for as long as he'd been a soldier in life. But this wasn't the end he envisioned for himself. The agony of defeat only hurt him by the thought of having failed. Failed the mission, his country, his friends, his family. Steve Rogers tried to cling to whatever avenue of hope that he could muster to safeguard him into the next life. His one comfort was a life-giving allure of cool teal eyes that often used to smile at him with warmth. His thumping heart swelled before it began to steady. He could distinctly feel tears trailing down his now feathery cheeks as he closed his eyes and welcomed the dark embrace.
'See you in a minute…Natasha.'
{Flashback}
Surgically bred to exist as a Soviet marionette of weaponized seduction, Natasha had utilized the identity of being a loose cannon deviant-fugitive as the blotches creed of the Accords denoted a firestorm of inevitable -rigged-betrayal against the Avengers, just one matchstick throw of deception had cleared the decks against governmental protocols of sterilization, dissecting out warrants of liberty- justice into the relevance of 'high rolling industry of lucrative degeneracy.
Everything was staked down by militaristic-seditious paragons of ironfisted authority erased margins of error off the chessboard-they were vermined selloffs. Reality had double-clutch into maximum overdrive when Steve rejected branding his freedom-soldiery valor- on a warranted contract that was designed by the World Council. By the upheaval deadlock tensions of hard-core Brooklyn defiance, voluntary he became a nomadic resistance operative; discarding the 'A' insignia off his threadbare uniform-never looking back.
'I'm not the only one who needs to look over their shoulder...'
For painstaking months of harboring onto encrypted arsenals of SHIELD contingency safeguards to evade Interpol surveillance -beating dodge with a Clean Slate algorithmic hardware that was covertly delivered to her by an unknown Gotham alliance of Selina Kyle-calibrated devices of preservation, Natasha had remained in the shadow zones, marked as a rogue insurgent after traitorous-egotistic- back-stabber- Tony Stark betrayingly sold her out to Thunderbolt Ross.
Using her intentive tradecraft of furtive espionage, she went back to a harbor point in Budapest, smoking out her fostered sister of the Red Room: Yelena Belova-she trudged into a warzone as the mutative legacy of the Widow operatives evolved into combative-disposable ranks of tactical-balletic supremacy, programmed to leave bloodied silhouettes in the chastened wake of reactivation.
Her Russian family reunion ended at a grievous- deceitful cost when a genetically-enhanced viper strike penetrated her compromised heart. She went blindly deep into the macabre crosshairs, damnably resurrecting ghosts of the past-only to lose everything because of the conditioned measures of heart-driven restraint, she had evicted charitable tenets of Siberian mercy, and inexplicably hesitated to pull back on the trigger-that visceral dynamic that was promisingly salvaged became cleaved apart when Yelena was retired; to give her a redeeming chance to run-live.
Within the slummy-humid ambiance of a rumpy safe house in Atlanta, Georgia gripping onto the plastic mold of a half-emptied lime flavored Gatorade bottle, impassively, with stark tension riding through her veins; standing on fractured ground Natasha detachedly isolated herself from the installations of a dispatched rabble of SHIELD agents-corrupted enforcers that pegged her down for profitable bounty.
Now, she was on a tipping point of the knife-edge-fostering to the synthetic relevance of normalcy; she couldn't invent new spycraft devices of her convenient incarnations; everything was jeopardized-even her trust bracket with Fury. Easing down the bottle onto a makeshift table; faint electric sconces of light burnished her unkempt copper-auburn whorls as she was ravishingly garbed in a black camisole that was curvaceously fitted snug over the bustier curves of her voluptuous breasts, shiveringly Natasha registered a galvanic pulse of rivalrous -indescribable anticipation: she had a visitor.
There was a soft brush of movement coming from the kitchen that would've been almost impossible to detect if she hadn't been standing in total silence. It could've been construed as something as ordinary as a rodent moving through the walls. But then she saw a tall shadow creeping across the wall and knew that her instincts were as sharp as ever. Before she could draw her pistol from its holster, the intruder stepped clear into the room and she had frozen in bewilderment to see who it was. Then again, given how much he'd learned about her over the past few years she shouldn't have been so surprised.
"There was a spare key under the swan statue on the porch step." Steve said as he rested his tall broad form back against the wall, hands stuffed into his pockets. "Didn't think you'd mind if I let myself in." His blue eyes flicked up to meet her teal concentrated orbs that were boring into his soft expression. His handsomely cut features weren't the clean-shaven presentation of Steve Rogers, Captain America. Instead, they were the bearded residue of an exiled wanderer. He was dressed in a dark pair of blue jeans, black sneakers and a black overcoat with the collars drawn up against his neck. Not the kind of clothing you'd expect from America's golden-boy who was a public figure. Exiled had changed more than just his appearance, it also made him look as hollow as the subaquatic prison-the Raft- he sprung their friends from.
A high-voltage surge of dredged-up awareness evocatively rushed through her veins-her revving instincts were being sidetracked as she headily registered the addictive vetiver mintiness of Gucci aftershave, a distinct virile scent ardently igniting up a feverous abandon. The graven-angular planes of his boyish- chiseled features were hawkishly edged with untamed virility-a rugged fierceness as his tousled golden-blonde tresses unkemptly clung askew over his dirt-scuffed cheekbones: he appeared emotionally blunted.
Pillowing the cool suppleness of her silken cheek against her denim-clad knee, with an evident play of guarded nonchalance, Natasha unerringly fixed her grayish-teal irises in the direction her makeshift kitchen. "If you looking to raid out my fridge, the best I can offer is a peanut-butter sandwich..." A jaunty quirk half-tugged over the voluminous lushness of her lips, as she coaxed with a smokier huskiness in her undertone, brusquely gazing the hunkier solidity of his Brooklyn-Adonis corded bulk imposingly delineated underneath the cloaking length of his black long coat. Placatingly, as his cool azure depths fixed observant intensity on her stockpile of peanut butter jars and loaf Wonder bread, setting his broader jaw into a firm clench, Steve measured the intrusive breach of his driven advances with chaste precision towards her blackout proximity. "Not that I will, since you didn't knock, Rogers..."
"Had a bite on the way over if you could count beef jerky as lunch." He responded with his own brand of wit with a small smile to accompany it. Being out in public wasn't something he could risk these days when his face was plastered all over the news. As a wanted fugitive, the days of eating at cafes and diners were gone and now he would have to settle for quick stops for snacks at the local gas stations. If this reality unsettled him, he didn't let it show. "But I didn't come here looking for food. I came to find you." He said, suddenly serious as he leaned off the wall and crossed his arms. "You've been on the news, Nat. Ross almost got to you…" He was worried when he saw the broadcasts all the way from Wakanda. He had been hesitant to leave until that image of Natasha surrounded by guns burned into his consciousness.
"Things got complicated..." Natasha murmured edgily, the harshness of her grated pitch was underlying her a fallback of phantom betrayal; nothing would suppress her unwarranted failure; not when she was downplayed by the ability-replicating leach who harbored a photographic-combative arsenal, lethally becoming a mirrored 'knockoff' opponent. He was geared up like a demonic Power-Ranger, stealing all tactical endurance-fight versatility that he nightmarishly imitated from her teammates-the Avengers.
Staring at the greenish tactical vest that her baby sister-Yelena had worn for their point-break mission to end the final rebirth- evolution on the Widow-markers, Natasha felt achingly paralyzed by a traitorous onslaught of soul-crippling heartbreak. "In this terrible business, there's no guarantee to beat the dodge..." Quashing down a knifed sting of remorse, edgily she gnawed on her underlip. "I had to finish something close to home... Dig up my old ghosts...Only to make new ones. "
"Some fights can't be avoided." Steve agreed with a somber look. Hiding the past never changed the fact it would always be there ready to catch up to you. There was no use in ignoring it, doing so would only make things harder for you and those you cared about. If he had known that then, maybe...maybe he and Tony wouldn't have gone to war with each other. "But it doesn't mean they need to be fought alone." Something in his expression must've given him away as he noticed Natasha's inquisitive eyebrow raised at him. "I got them out of the Raft. All of em. Bucky he…" He swallowed a lump of emotion that had suddenly built up in his throat, threatening to seize his strength of will and cause him to expend a torrent of emotion down his cheeks. "He's gone back under. Doesn't trust himself anymore than the whole world does right now."
As Steve dragged out a heavier breath against his sonorous timbre, Natasha understood the fractionable ground he crossed, the soul-damaging reality of Bucky tragically plunging into the icy gorge of Swiss Alps, Steve had indefatigably tethered himself to a perpetual crusade to avenge his best friend; only to agonizingly discover that James Buchanan Barnes was remade by the operational-enhanced butchery conducted by the obsessive-sadistic insanity of the HYDRA parasitoid Armin Zola; hee endured cerebral PSTD deterioration of electrical anesthetizing of the lobotomic mind-sweeps of the dentist chair, that had punishingly violated him to become an unhinged-mechanized amnesic.
The dossier file NO 17 unveiled extreme details about the mangled flesh of his left was surgically amputated for a HYDRA cybernetic implant of titanium bionic alloy and electro psychiatric conditioning that gruelingly mutated Bucky into the robotized ghost operative of Russia's endless winter-the Winter Soldier. For seven decades of being unthawed out a cryogenic pod of liquid nitrogen; murderously he existed as hybrid sniper-wraith, a reactivated Siberian phantasm for termination. Within the Novgorod dormitories of the Red Room Academy, James was chemically sterilized-training her virginal classmates-little ballerinas- under the brutish command of the maniacal warren General Vasily Karpov.
'I have no place in this world.'
Against pessimistic tension of contagious vulnerability that resonated behind the stage light, little Natalia became his elite protegé of combative kata supremacy -Система-, every balletic evade was invigoratingly dynamical-addictive, they harnessed elemental mastery-a gladiatorial ruthless that defiled operative compliance. Trysts of juvenile affection became vitiated when she felt the scalpel blade cut her deep-purging out her womanhood-humanity to finally evolve her into a 'corrected' instrument of venomous seduction.
When she awoke from the removal procedure, Natasha felt the woven stitches painfully brand her forever into the septic reality of a deadened heartbeat. She remembered when James had deftly carried her defective-comatose form bridal-style out of the paralytic whiteness of the operating room-never leaving her side. "If T'challa knows Barnes's is worth a risk of saving..." A nostalgic quirk tugged over her full lips, coolly. "...then I guess HYDRA didn't fully erase him..."
"There's an old saying, 'you can't keep a kid from Brooklyn down' when the going gets tough." He smiled as he felt a touch of nostalgia. "These days though its hard to know what we're fighting for when the lines are blurred. I thought that by standing up to the Accords we were protecting not just the world, but each other… But now...now I feel like we're all alone out here." He sighed with a downcast look.
There was a part of him that longed for the simpler times when the world wasn't such a chaotic mess of politics, ideals, and intergalactic threats that loomed on the horizon. He might've been lost with his place in the world but he felt at peace with it. The modern world he had found a place in it as Captain America. The shield of liberty who would always find a new battle to face. He wasn't at peace, but he wasn't lost. Not with those surrounding him that he called friends and family. The pinnacle of which was the woman in front of him who not only uplifted him in his moments of sorrow but helped him to steer his course moving forward. "I...missed you, Nat."
The valid reverence of his Brooklyn timbre reached her compromisingly deep, stoking up an intimate demand of unspoken-forbidden desire; nothing would be leashed down against the headier rush of long-denied havoc; there was no flirtatious play of bantering snarkiness, she couldn't break for distance as his roughened-tip fingers cherishingly dragged feathery ministrations of a tactile-dexterous caress of errant grace over the daintier contours of her lithe knuckles. "Steve..."
It was reckless surrender against the hell storms of their betrayal -they were no longer SHIELD operatives-Avengers, just directionless fugitives who daringly made their own symphony of resistance-they needed this grounded moment. "Don't say anything unless you mean it,.." she murmured hushedly, against gritted breaths, each shift of whisper-soft pressure ardently echoed a sensuous fervency against her pulse in a wonderous-naked accord. Under the curly fringe of her lashes, on volatile reaction, she entrancedly gazed at the plushier sculpt of his chiseled lips, beckoning with a sheen of virile heat that became cravingly addictive."We've played this game of affection before, haven't we...?"
He knew he had begun to cross a line that had been toed between them for the past several years. Steve wasn't very good at flirting with women. Not in the way that Bucky and Tony were, so confident and playful in their banter they could charm even the most reserved of individuals. Steve was direct if not subtle in his intentions as most honest men were in his past-time. But there was always something about Natasha that brought out a side of him he never knew existed. A bolder sense of confidence that made him feel fearless. His blue eyes that were once so quiet were now speaking loudly the words he wanted to share with her for so long. "It was never a game to me." He said as his digits caressed the her palm, beckoning her to come closer to him. "And I think you know me well enough to know how I've always felt about you, Nat." His eyes gazed deeply into hers, lost in the sea of bluish-green that were mesmerizing and made him ache inside. They were so beautiful and captivating, he could feel himself easily getting lost in her enchanting stare that affected him in a way no other woman before had. Not even Peggy.
Her rosebud lips parted and he felt her warm breath flutter and send tingles across his skin. Her expression was torn in a way that he was familiar with. The line between friendship and romance was slowly being erased as they drifted closer. "Tell me to stop, and I will." He said to her, eyes genuine but hopeful. "Tell me you don't feel the same, and I'll believe you..."
"Alright, since I do owe you a good answer..." Disarmingly against the visceral-hungered command, she gazed into the smoldering coolness of his oceanic azureous depths as the kneaded flexion of his smooth-calloused fingers adoringly echoed tentative-featherlike steadiness, a novel-masculine heat that arrestingly invested with each unfeigned shift of cherishing reverence. A blinding need that outpaced against her warred heartbeat—abandoned urgency of rhapsodic ecstasy—a glorious mania—she knew it was damn real.
The heated contrast of the bulkier stretch of well-defined muscle underneath his shirt tautly aligned with svelter cushiness of her aching breasts, Natasha breathtakingly felt the unbeatable vitality of Captain America; the steeled bands of his enhanced-invincible solidity became her anchoring strength. It was an undeniable-exhilarative promise that fervidly coupled in the fiercer tempo of his reined arousal, their faces were so close, as the arrowing drift of his nose shadowily grazed over her temple, so achingly tentative in feathered succession. Under the long fringe of his eyelashes, a glacial blueness of his silvery-turquoise irises became seraphically vitreous-gleaming with a tempestuous intensity of the Aegean sea; her infinite reality of uncharted paradise.
Unhurriedly, she felt the clamping pressure of his larger palms bracket over the delectable lushness of her denim-clad curves in rhythmic unison, with driven momentum, Steve backed her against the wall, as she dragged out a feverish breath. "I think we both need this..." Natasha coaxed, huskily against the bristled planes of his thickened jaw that starkly rasped over the alabaster flesh of her beard-pricked cheek; as rakish golden-blonde sweltry tangled with her fiery copper tresses. Heart-poundingly an exquisite floodtide of answering heat readily contrasted as the firmer grip of his shifting fingers dizzyingly tugged at her flimsy camisole straps with raging urgency, as his muscled forearm braced over the sleek planes of her back, arching the flush swell of her ampler breasts with a definite-sweeter cadence of headier euphoria against heavier corded rigidity of denser muscle brawnily sheathing his garbed chest. "No holding back, Rogers..."
Without an instinctive deterrence volition, groaningly Steve angled his sensuously-chiseled lips with a surging rush of irresistible wet heat, decadently fusing with the aphrodisiacal cherry of her voluminous lips. They engaged hungered duel of rampant pressure shudderingly careened them on into panting drags of mirrored-intimate release, the flavorous throb of their melded lips hotly deepened under the crushing pressure of headier rawness; everything cindered as the reverent gentleness of his palm cradled over the delicate contours of her jaw with sensual tacks of his razed sanity-he was reaching for her through the riotous eruption of breathless heat-a dynamite nova, trapped flamingly between them.
"Y'know we probably needed this break..." he drawled in throatier heaves, breathily against her kiss-swollen lips, as she blindingly clutched the bunches of his shirt with a sirenic litheness invested with each flexing-possessive knead of her fingers, urging him to dare beyond the symphonic- gloried rhythm of their bone-liquifying communion.
A fever-burned trek of wetness errantly glided off his bristled cheeks, unabashedly Steve drew out a guttural moan that was breathly caught between the bruising stretch of their opened-mouthed kisses, devouringly increasing ardent -breathless- ferocity that was steamily incendiary; he supped on the passion-heated lush of her swelled lips, edging her into their mindless-dizzier oblivion. The subtle graze of his thumb featherily brushed the underside of her feverish jaw, anchoring her into his virile heat, as he bitingly tugged on her jutted underlip with breakneck traction; every seared thrust of his plush lips viscerally countered with tenors of her soul-deep awareness-nothing was held back as they surrendered to high-octane maelstroms of untempered ecstasy that stole the world away. "Just live again, Steve..."
To live again meant to return to a place where he was happiest in life. The blissful memory he kept himself enclosed within a sanctuary where his friend, his partner, and great love Natasha Romanov would embrace him was what kept him going. It gave him the strength and will to see through the agony that awaited him in the real world where he couldn't find her beside him. He felt the memory slipping away as the darkness was disturbed a pale sickly light. A salvo of verdigris energy that was anything but benign in its intentions as it jerked him back into a choking fit of discomfort. His eyes snapped open and a strangled gasp for air rattled through his body.
His feathery body… Questions swarmed through his subconscious. Who was he dreaming about? Why was he entangled in a pile of human clothing? Why couldn't he flap his wings? He tried to wring himself from his prison of clothing before his hawkish eyes landed on the blonde human peering into him with a hypnotic stare. No. This was no human woman. This was someone much more. Her beauty was spellbinding just as the luminous field of green energy that sulfurously encompassed her body. Understanding passed through him as the feathery hawk squawked and bowed his head obediently. "Mistress…" he cawked. "How do I serve you?"
Malevolently, Amora relished the craven docility that gratingly edged in the Avenger-hawk's low-pitched timbre; a stuporous intimacy had been conceived, as the valorous tension that rode through every tauten-edged muscle of warrior-honed solidity was doused into a pathetic vessel enchantingly sheathed in bluish-silvery feathers. With demented swiftness, as her ashen lips quirked evilly into a vampirish sneer, Amora beseechingly, outstretched her gauntleted arm, sconces of moonlight gothically exposed the intricate viridian sigil of Helheim.
"Come to me..." Amora gestured her newest-feathered captive to latch his clawed-talons over her wrist as skeletal-walkers twitchingly advanced in battlemented legions of necro-craft weaponry towards her destination of sanguineous conquest-warpath. "You shall prevail over the Midgardian heights, my beautiful Captain," she commanded, spitefully."By the morphic designs of my scourge, you will find me that gluttonous spawn of Odin..."
Amora's voice was like a magnet drawing him towards a state of immobility. A prison where he was helpless to do nothing but obey her. His mind was resisted despite the fact his body was betraying him. "Fight it…Fight it...Steve." The enchanted hawk flapped his wings and trembled as the pull became ever more intense, sending waves of agony through his head until he could take no more and cawed loudly into the night. It was like the walls he erected to protect his mind were being bulldozed to the ground, leaving him at the mercy of his oppressor. The hawk blearily searched and allowed his eyes to roam his surroundings, trying desperately to ignore the evil woman's viperish nails that petting the back of his neck with sharp strokes.
Not too far from him the score of undead ghouls still surrounded him like a pack of wounded predators eager to feast. That was when his eyes landed on a strange but alarming sight. The crumpled mess of empty neoprene garb where a familiar pair of kimoyo beads lay along with a domino mask. Ivory feathers flapped in the pale moonlight as a small dark shape shifted, giving light to a beak and beady eyes. A second passed, maybe two, but it was enough time for reality to once again lay a cruel fact upon the hawk as he stared upon the enchanted swan. "Selina…"
A vertiginous pulse mephitically suffused in a rampant- nauseous wake; as the Brooklyn drawl of Steve's exhausted timbre brushingly graced a tentative-brotherly caress of telltale urgency over the lithe svelteness of her deadened form. Blurrily, Selina warded off arrestive onrushes of knifing contractions; lithely dragging her mahogany-tipped ivory feathered wing in blinded precision, slumberous grogginess feverishly overlapped her vision as she deftly gripped onto shreds of tactical neoprene that restrictedly encompassed over her lady-bird form. Involuntary, with a conscious variance of her tempered mobility, Selina eased the delicate-sleekier curvatures of her feathered head queasily off the putrid rancidly of clumped dirt."S-Steve..." she murmured against threaded breaths, raspily. "Ooh..."
"I got you," the feathery hawk reached out his talon-feathers to try and gently steady the swan on her webbed feet. The world spun and they held tight not to fall into a spiraling daze of dizziness. But the waking reality they were facing didn't change the irrefutable fact that they weren't human. Not any more. The Enchantress had done the very thing she had sworn to do to Thor, and perhaps Bucky. "Stay with me," he trilled beneath his beak. He could feel the Vanaheim witch's shadow looming over them and knew that whatever control she had over them was about to be exerted. "Just play along, we'll get out of this." He urged the swan.
As Steve's lengthy feathered wing chastely ghosted pacifying heat over the svelte lankiness of her elongated neck; against the cursive raid hear-splitting of her morphic deviance, gawkily on her black-webbed feet, involuntarily the Venetian swan braced the fringe of her mahogany-tipped wings over the roughened bark of a tree, voluptuous-feathery- exquisiteness of her ravishingly-enchanted sylphlike form unstintingly eased with balletic traction of her wonkier footing, as her autumn-brandy irises mistily gleamed with the naked rawness of evicted alarm. "S-Soldier boy..." she rasped out voiceless heaves, and distressingly gazed at Avenger-hawk's lithe contours strikingly adorned with bluish-slivery feathers that virilely contrasted with streaks of blonde-he was adamantly gorgeous for a patriotic bird. "Can't say I'm liking your new look..." she bantered with a, flintier pitch, sultrily, nothing detracted her brazen play of deadpanned snarkiness. "I guess we did rattle the witch's cage, huh?"
Before Steve could respond he was blasted by a field of green sorcery that ensnared him like a noose. He didn't struggle this time, finding he had almost no strength left to resist the Enchantress' wrath as she levitated him off the ground and held him directly in front of her. Her green eyes, beautiful but vicious, smiled at him as she clicked her tongue, ready to command him.
"You will not defy me, dear Captain..." Flexing her gauntleted wrist, vitriolically, against a raving hiss, with kneading ministrations, Amora brushed her index finger in a possessive succession over Steve's curved beak, as telekinetic pulses of verdigris skeins of energy bone-grippingly infused his tuffed feathers, the predatory steeliness of his azure orbs blanked owlishly with astral heat of her resolve incarnate as he flappingly thrashed his wings. "Embrace the shackled dregs of your wretched form," Waspishly, she cast a sidelong glance at the snowy feathered lady-bird uneasily nesting on her ripped tactical garb."...or I will destroy James Barnes's adoring swan maiden without a flit of consequence..."
Her threat breached his defiance and Steve felt himself brought even lower to a point he could find no means of fighting back. The evil woman wasn't just powerful but also cunning in her way of manipulation. Steve was never a man willing to sacrifice the lives of those he fought with and cared for. He would be the one willing to lay down on the wire and let the others climb over him. Selina didn't sign up for this. Neither did Bucky. But as he watched the creature that was Selina discreetly begin to waddle her way towards the woods, he knew that sometimes the path to victory meant temporary defeat.
The swan was a symbol of purity to the world and one that a deadly hawk would dutifully protect, even if it meant taking the fall. Gazing into the Enchantress' eyes, Steve found his resolve to hoped to God that he was making the right decision. "All right...You got me." The mental barriers he used to protect himself shattered like glass in that instance, and the Enchantress' raw power consumed his mind, causing him to let out an ear-splitting screech into the night skies.
Harnessing the furtive collectiveness of her inventive precision, thievingly Selina reached for her iPhone, conveniently the electronic device was still intact as she briskly hefted up her feathery wing, gliding the length of her ivory skeins with virtuosic delicateness over the phone's tinier keyboard; every hazardous-dicey- second felt atomically rigged against insatiable-ghoulish mayhem concussively encompassing the forested warren, she couldn't allow the grief-stricken Asgardian newcomers to become demonically harvested for Amora's zombified death-walkers. "This better work..." she gritted thinly, sending an'urgent text' message to Wanda's dialing number as she gazed at the Avenger-hawk soaring upwards as he propelled out his wingspan like jet-rushing warbird above her. "Bring the heat, Wands..."
As the brackish stench of Norwegian sea refreshingly sailed from the darkened cliffside, mossed-sheathed henges of the ancestral Viking tribes bordered the craggy edge, dolmens engraved with the runic- circular sigils of the Bi-Frost. It was a transcendental-gateway that branched from the cosmic veins of Yggdrasil, a conductor that Odin had electrifyingly utilized when he descended to Midgard during the Bronze Age of Scandinavian warcraft-now historic sentinels of Viking lore-forgotten -hellacious emergence of mortal strife that vented on the carrion-razed grounds of bloodshed.
Carrying the incarnate mantle of his beloved father wouldn't valiantly define Thor's sired-thunderous- reign of being a true son of Odin, all traitorous errors-deception- that conceived his bloodline needed to be staunched out: for good.
Clutching onto the knotted-Groot arm- handle of Stormbreaker with a voltaic flex of his pudgier cloth-sheathed hand, broodily Thor registered lament knells of Nordic ambiance -orchestral requiems to grant worthy passage for the befallen souls of Asgard to the gloriously majestic halls of Valhalla (Valhöll)-where the victorious-noble-hearted slain of Asier journey into vales of eternity after crossing the rivers of Fólkvangr-the banks of his mother's reign.
Countless lives of his displaced people were tragically cleaved apart when the merciless alien executioners- the Black Order had bloodthirstily massacred Asgardian refugees on the transport ark vessel that Loki had stolen from the freakish-crazed Grandmaster during Korg's gladiator ranks uprising—by the vaticinal helm of the 'crab-sack' Mad-Titian, who impaled a genocidal pandemonium of traumatic-butcherous devastation within the decimated transport ship, all to obtain the energy cube-Tesseract- because of Loki's insidious-damnable play of sabotaging trickery. He defeatedly lost his brother under the skull-crushing grip of Thanos's colossal deliverance of neck-breaking mercy.
"The sun will shine on us again, brother...'
Grunting raggedly, as Bucky stubbily trotted down the hillside notches of eroded stone, as his warred resistance became numbingly deadened against the catatonic-fattening divergence of unabated hunger throes; he churningly felt the morphic bloatedness of Amora's penetrative-abdominous witchery was exponentially outstretching the protrusive rotundity of his girth into squishier flab—nothing availed.
"Grah...I kinda feel like a furry marshmallow," Bucky quipped snarkily, as fissionable onrushes of his untrammeled appetite crescendoed in a stuporous wake as the nectareous sugariness of juicy plums had arrestingly revamped his gluttonous impulse piggily ravage the backpack of rations strapped .
Jutting the furred length of his tusked- snout, Bucky demandingly nudged against Thor's booted calf, against the unalterable strain of his tactless aggression, he gnawed ornerily at threadbare leather, biting the ratty material with harsher tugs. "C'mon Thor..." he grunted in raspier timbre, snobbishly."Quit hoggin' everything to yourself..."
"This is where my father said Asgard is not a place but people..." Thor sniffed in a grumblier resonance, sullenly, digging his pudgy sheathed hand into the backpack, rummaging for another beer can. "Odin vanished into dust specks because Loki stripped his Asier power and banished him before I had a chance to save him ...Everyone I loved is gone, for some twisted miracle, I endure because that's what failures do..."
Unkemptily tresses of shaggier brunette errantly clung over his puckering snout, as he glaringly drove the grayish-sapphire of his unwavering irises at the bedraggled Asgardian ZZ Top, lifting a crushed beer can sloppily to his bristly -swelled lips with glugged moan. "Y'alight Thor..." the sniper boar drawled, throatily in murmurous grunt, quashing down an oinking breath, as he sniffed telltale wetness-angst dampening greasily over Thor's grizzled beard. "Hell, you gotta stop blamin' yourself for what happened..." he treaded, gromlessly in croaky pitch, twitching his furred snout. "What M' try'na to say... uh...we can't let this damn weight gain put us on the ropes..."
A sarcastic chuckle had fluttered past Thor's wet lips that were awashed with the repugnant taste of alcohol. "I don't suffer needlessly, Friend James." He said with a frazzled voice that sounded as if he were half-asleep. "Have you never stopped to think perhaps we are suffering the price of our past misdeeds? Our failures?" His empty expression never left as he stared at a wet splotch in the ground that was revealed by the rivulets of blood on the leaves. As he listened to the hog grunt in apparent confusion, the bloated Asgardian shrugged as he sank back against a tree and slowly slid to the ground. "I've seen the same pain in your eyes-the same remorse of killing so many, and failing so many. How are we not guitless?" He said with a broken voice, so unlike the boastful proud warrior that could inspire legions, but rather like a withered soul close to leaving its empty shell.
Trying his damnedest to ground his bulbous mass, grimacingly Bucky hoofed a brewskie can with sluggish precision towards a stone marker, every collapsible second of undeterred restraint had consumingly saddled him into porcine dregs as his grayish-aquamarine irises dismally gazed at the crestfallen Asgardian Thunderer's flabbier hand indifferently slipping into a frayed satchel that was loosely strapped underneath lumpish pudge of his globbed-up swelled paunch-clutching an irresistible jumbo-sized Kit-Kat bar; his furred snout raptly pinched into a taunted scrunch. "Yeah, it's a question that kinda pops in my head," he quipped in throatier pitch, dryly. "Guess a kid from Brooklyn never quits..."
With a cautious wabble, innately Bucky hankered down on his chubbier backside near the massiveness of Thor's bulked-Aesir solidity, emitting a half-exhausted grunt. "I know bad things are gonna keep happenin' to guys us.." he admitted ruefully, angling his snout down with heart-racking ease. Thor was the heir of Odin-a true champion of Asgard, not a mechanical-enhanced' Siberian beast machine', surgically condemned to a traumatic -lobotomized penance of guilt-riddled amnesia.
While in a catatonic-bloodstained drift as HYDRA's muzzled ghost sniper operative, he did unforgivable horrors of HYDRA killswitch terminations. Every choked-off scream distorted into an electrical-mechanized frequency of radio static. "You're not damaged goods, Thor, hell, not like me...I've done things you can't shake off..." he grunted with a contemptuous scrunch, despairingly. "If anyone deserves this damn strike-out...It's gotta be me."
A remorseful Thor looked at the hog beside him in a new curious light as he realized his speech was becoming further from human and yet he understood him still all the same. The All-Speak of course afforded him such a blessing, but the Asgardian knew enough to realize that he understood the hog because as the seconds ticked by he was succumbing to the same fate as him. He knew his words of despair had inadvertently caused his friend emotional pain by reminding him of unwilling sins from the past. Thor leaned towards him with a hand raised. "James, you cann-aauggh!"
It was as if he had been pierced by a knife in the darkness. The jolt of agony that ripped through his body was unseen, dark, and cold. The bloated Asgardian king tumbled over onto his side with a hand held against his massive gut. His bluish-gray eyes were wide with his lips pressed tight into a harsh grimace. It spoke volumes of the discomfort surging throughout his body that he wouldn't abate. "I-I can't without it any longer." He groaned, spasming as his flesh became enveloped in patches of fur spreading like wildfire across his body. The hog in front of him oinked and looked on in distress.
A tremulous aura of voltaic heat pulsed flashingly over the furrier pudginess of Thor's fisting hand, as the bladed Uru edges of his Stormbreaker ax, became disarmingly cemented into the ground. In gut-lurching reaction, Bucky wobbled back, as rampant pants of oinkish cadence snortingly vented out of his upturned nostrils, as the floored rawness of his beadier aqueous depths trepidatiously narrowed at the bloodied-mutative extensions of Thor's jutted incisors freakishly crooking out of his quivery underlip with bone-splintering traction. Nakedly, a possessive barrage of sorcerous anguish forced his globous rotundity into deadweight, the strained material of his lounge pants tearingly ripped as excessive-lardier mounds of glozing flesh became alarmingly pinkish as skeins of blonde fur hedged over his muscled thighs.
Underneath the ratty muss of Thor's straggly braided dreadlocks, the rounded flesh of his ears floppily widened into a beastly length of the morphic accord, groaning out pained breaths raggedly, in vertiginous-uncontrollable tempo, he anchored the fleshier bands that melded his bulgy forearms with heavier momentum as phalange bones of his deforming hands split into an engorged mass that irrevocably fused into a bloodied obsidian hoof. Convulsively in blinded distress, the hulkish Asgardian warrior-king flailed spasmodically within his rumped garments against the ballooning wake of porcine obesity as the sagged of bearded jaw grossly fused with blondish-gray fur —emitting out snorty -guttural heaves, Bucky urgently nudged his tusked snout into cushiony globbiness of Thor's blimped-out girth. "You gotta fight this...Damnit." he grunted, pressingly."C-Can't let her win..."
"D-Damn you, Amora…" A disgruntled curse spewed past his drenched lips that spewed saliva onto the floor. A heaving lurch rattled his rotund mass as he struggled to right himself. Instead, the blondish furry pig released a choking roar and emptied the contents of his stomach all over the ground in a violent spasm. "Aarrgggghh...What was that- that I ate?" Thor mumbled. He felt considerably lighter and more focused. This wasn't his first foray into the realm of transformation, but he couldn't recall it being this unpleasant in the past. He listened to the groan of disgust coming from his porky companion and flashed him a friendly smile. "Ready for another adventure, my new friend?" He waddled forwards bumped his mass against Bucky's shoulder in what would've been the human equivalent of a pat on the back.
Emitting a derisive grunt, with an onerous scrunched wrinkling his tusked snout, Bucky uttered out 'ooph' as he backslid wobbly on his stubbed hooves against the burlier Asgardian hog's affable momentum flabbily ramming into the humped blobbiness of his tensing shoulders. Keeping himself poised with tactical impassiveness, he became attuned to forested dissonance of nocturnal denizens that ravenously marked their paunchy-hoggish forms into a kill-zone. His floppy-spaded ears twitched on a defensive accord with a cautious tilt of his snout. "Yeah...Okay we gotta make sure that we're not really..." He oinked moodily, with a droolier breath globbing over his puckered underlip, and shifted his aquamarine depths towards a notched dolmen shadowing the cliffside-they needed to hide fast."... being followed, cause I get the feelin' those attack dogs are gonna us on helluva of a run..."
"Verily. Amora won't rest until she has us strung up and ripped apart by her ghouls." Thor added which did nothing to soothe Bucky's increasing anxiety over their situation. For his part, Thor only appeared as bothered as if his favorite shoes had been stained. The Asgardian boar was of course larger than Bucky in both stature and mass. His natural height and weight had apparently transitioned over to his new form which meant he was not an entirely helpless hog waiting to be gutted. But it also meant couldn't be as stealthy and would make it much easier for their pursuers to catch on to. As Thor waddled between the trees with Bucky beside him, they found it harder to make their way through the darkness that seemed to stretch for miles until they stopped dead when a screech pierced the night skies.
A galvanic pulse of visceral urgency had electrifyingly imploded over towering pines, as whitish auras of moonlight ethereally flashed over a hawk-like silhouette that predatorily sailed above them with vigilant precision; it was definitely a raptor-hawk. Stretching out his flesh-gouging talons to deliver a lashing strike, the feathered intruder screechingly readied for a dive-bomb sweep, his vitreous-azure orbs widened into a soulless back as he slashingly delivered his attack over the chubbiest boar's furred rump, viciously thrashing his dagger-edged wings in fiercer-blinding succession. "Y-You're not gonna run..."
Thor released a gut-wrenching squeal that before none would expect to draw from the Asgardian Avenger. The knife-digging excruciating pain of talons ripping into his furry flesh sent licks of white-hot agony through his body that couldn't be ignored. The stinging pain was like a scolded burn that pulsed and took on a life of its own as the hog grunted and heaved, throwing himself back into the shadow of the trees while Bucky did the same. "Stay out of sight," Thor groaned, shuddering as the pain slowly began to subside but leaving him feeling shaken by the suddenness of it. What the hell had just attacked him? That was no ordinary hawk.
Unkemptily, as his shaggier chestnut tresses strayed over the jowly pudge of his tusked snout, banking down his tenacious-hellbent spirit, with combative tack, Bucky enforced his wobbling pace a breadth underneath a canopy of pined branches as he reacted to the sky-diving aggressiveness that swoopingly over them; a whipsawed assault of raptor-like talons cuttingly dragged bloodied treks over furred lumpish of globbiness of Thor's exposed back."Damnit..." A half-drawn grunt scathingly rented out of the Brooklyn hog, as he furrowed the overlapping flab of his brow into a concentrative pinch, and lowered his blobbier rotundity into a mid-crouch on his cloven-hooves, as jacked-off awareness exceedingly drove the razored coolness of his sniper vision unblinkingly up at the high perch, gazing at their winged attacker-a bluish feathered hawk- latched over a gnarly branch. "There-" he jutted out his snout against a full-throated grunt, breathlessly. "We gotta knock him off..."
"Aye. Leave that to me," Thor took in deep panting breaths, his mind suddenly far from the thought of a warm comfortable couch and a box of pop-tarts and now diving into the thick of confrontation. Literally. His rotund heavy mass was dragged and thrown from its hiding spot as he charged into the trunk of the tree. He threw his waist rather than his head, the heaviest part of his body that could withstand a club. His weight smashed against the trunk of the tree, causing its branches to groan and snap. "Hyraah!" He cried as he did it a second time, harder than the last. The cawing of the hawk pierced the skies as the winged predator lost grip of his perch and fell between the branches, trapped as he tumbled down to the ground.
A strobing onslaught of phosphorus white blindingly racked through him, numbingly akin to high-voltage of a kimoyo taser; against a careening headrush, the Avenger-hawk screeched out deafening pitch, arcing the sharpened-edges of his bluish-gray wings to instinctively shield the graven litheness of his feathery girth. "Argh...T-Thor-" he choked out stammeringly in Brooklyn timbre, losing defensive grip on his dagger-edged talons, backstroking his wings he thuddingly collapsed on his back. "G-Get out of here...They're comin' fast..."
"...Steve?" Thor and Bucky exchanged a mutual look in their disconcertion. It couldn't be. Had they imagined his voice? Part of them hoped that they had; holding onto the hope that Steve and Selina hadn't suffered the same fates as them. The bird-hawk's feathers were a distinct indigo blue with flecks of azure. His eyes didn't reveal dilated pupils but a distinct awareness-a familiarity that was undoubtedly human. "Damn." Thor cursed with dismay. "I suppose the mission did go off as planned?"
"Y-You gotta run. Both of you," Steve cawed before he suddenly swiped at the startled hog with his wing, causing a gust of soil to swash into Thor's face. "C-Can't fight her...for long," the Avenger-hawk's talons dug into the earth, trying desperately to keep himself rooted and not surrender to the urge to pierce the pig's throat with his beak. "B-Buck...Selina, she…"
"Steve, my friend..." Tamping down a heart-knifing throb at the alarming revelation at his shield-tossing-teammate-friend- was morphically downsized into a predatory bird, Thor curbed down the unwarrantable tenor of onrushing defeat that was skyrocketing into detonative acceleration as reality became tectonically fissionable like he was trudging on depth charges; an empyreal convergence of psionic aster eldritchly scythed over the Bi-Frost dolmen henges—the earthen conductors of the Nine Realms—the deistic vitality of the All-fathers. "We must stop Amora's madness..." Thor grunted, boomingly, as he stomped his chunkier forehoof with hammering momentum over the hawk's thrashing wing. His cerulean depths grew fiercer alight with turbulent intensity as bluish-white of voltaic heat stormily pulsed as he gazed at his Titian-slayer battle-ax. "We need to fight together..."
Bating out a tremulous breath as she registered distressing screeches emanating out of Steve's beak, daintily Selina waddled out of the shadowed underbrush; the cool satiny pearlescence of her milky-white feathers ethereally contoured against the sleekier-fineness of her curvaceous girth, making her appear like an untouchable sirenic incarnate against the radiance of moonlight that burnished over the svelte arc of her mahogany-fringed wings. Involuntarily with practiced variances of her balletic graces, she twirlingly pivoted on her webbed-feet; her dark irises captured vaporous glyphs energy merging with the dolmens-a beacon point to lure the zombied swarm at their proximity-they were the fresh appetizers. With a brusque snap of her beak, she quipped under breath, snarkily. "This is better a good thrill...'
Slung lankily over the delicate curves of her graceful neck, knotted scraps of neoprene concealed the salvaged arsenal of Wakandian kimoyo beads; the skeletal Élivágar cavalcade was hellishly swarming their advance as she caught the vomitous reek of decayed-wormy flesh stinkily assailing over the northward forest."The spooky party is coming fast, boys..." Selina prompted in threadier pitch, raspily, as the clangourous volumes of corpse-worn armor deafeningly amplified in rabid-berserk succession. They pegged in a warzone.
Incredulously, Selina flashed her dark-brandy irises at the heart-devastatingly sight of two obesely blimp-out hogs; the furrier grayish-chestnut boar dumbfoundedly stretched his jowelly underlip agape, hitching out nasally snorts. "James..." Against the mirrored cadence of irrevocable-stunned- breathlessness, with ephemeral coolness of her feathery wing, Selina achingly caressed a phantom brush of visceral-sensuous reverence over a shagged thatch of wolfish brunette fur that grungily draped over the chubbier folds of his tusked-snout.
"Don't say anything..." she coaxed, breathily, edging her delicate beak shiveringly over the bulging flab of his sagging cheek with nameless urgency as she tearily gazed into mesmeric frostiness of his aquamarine irises-gliding the headier silkiness of her curved feathers kittenishly over his swelled underlip, even behind the fattish grossness of his beastlier-hoggish form, undeniably she reached for him."Well, you do make an exception for an oinking chubb-ball..."
The sudden appearance of the ivory-feathered swan caused Bucky's mind to ground to a halt as he entered total shock. If the appearance of the hell-diving hawk turning out to be his best friend wasn't alarming enough, the presence of the mesmerizing swan speaking to him with the voice of the woman he loves pushed things over the edge. "Selina?!" He was equal parts amazed but also saddened by what his kitten had endured. This chaotic mess had delivered one tragedy after the other to him and his teammates but now that they were together, even as transformed animals, Bucky couldn't help but feel mildly reassured. He took in the swan as she waddled forwards towards him, pausing near a shrub of bushes where the moonlight offered a clear view.
Even in the dim-night, he could see trace amounts of her in the swan's stature as she c*** her head at him. He couldn't help but release an amused grunt. "Its a good look on you, darlin'." In an attempt to lighten the mood, his countenance turned playful. "Does this mean you'll be layin' some eggs soon? I mean, it has been a few days since we…" He let that comment hang in the air for her to grasp, and he half wondered what sort of sassy comeback she'd deliver to him in her new form.
"Better play down a different card on that, handsome..." Selina retorted against a laconic breath, snarkily and with a blithe quirk of her beak, utilizing distractive-ambivalent coolness of her lithe poise, vehemently, she played deviant nonchalance as the gravelly suaveness of his oinking timbre became arrestingly evident to Bucky's toothily smirk that conveyed piggish-boyish- dorkiness as he unabashedly snorted out a throaty chuckle. Dazedly, on his cloven-hooves, feigning a heavier wobble, angling his furred snout Bucky headily nudged a chaste tracery of amorous pressure over her wing—just enough to feel her with virile sweetness; the contrast addicted her as every moist graze of his snout nakedly invested a tangible-cherishing reverence of over her ivory feathers. Giving him a sardonic glare of tigerish- brandy, Selina teasingly whirled around on her webbed feet with a subtle vixenish sashay that unnervingly flitted her tail feathers. "Careful, Barnes, I might enjoy keeping you guessing..."
"I'm rather good at this guessing you speak of..." The rotundest of the ensorcelled-warrior- hogs interjected in gruffer pitch jocosely, easing his brawlier weight off the Avenger-hawk's slacken wing; Thor gruntingly shifted his vitric- cerulean depths at the infuriated-bodacious-swan maiden who pointedly knifed him with a dead-straight glare of her rapt disgust, as he smugly gestured a forehoof intently at the neoprene sash that readily adorned over the busty curves of her feathered girth."I like feisty lady-bird of yours, friend James, she can gladly join us the battle..."
"Knowing her, I'd say she's a few steps ahead of us, Thor." Bucky impishly praised her with a knowing glint in his blue eyes. Those who underestimated a cat and tried to cage them were met with claws when they least expected it. Before he could continue with his line of thought, the group became alert to the snarling noises of undead drudgery encroaching on them.
"Unfortunately, so are they." Steve cawed with a painful grimace as he hid his head between his wings. The telltale sliver of sorcery creeping up his spine was like a knife being dragged upon his skin, warning him that his oppressor wasn't quite through trying to reign him back in. "We-We can't stay out in the open like this," he flapped his wings furiously, perching himself up on a rock to get a good view of the 100 or so undead Asgardians that were trudging towards them.
He knew their chances of defeating a score of monsters like this was small if not impossible in their current state. But he knew there were different ways to fight and outsmart the enemy.
As the miasmal fumes of carrion flesh stinkingly assailed over their exposed proximity, Selina quickly unknotted her neoprene sash, revealing her Wakandian arsenal. "Yeah, it's not much to beat the dodge with boys..." she quipped under breath, ruefully, and with painstaking ease of unhampered reaction, she grazed her feathered wing shiftily over the vibranium EMP bead, activating a nano pulse wave as the nsibidi sigils glowed bluish amethyst in sonic fruition."We need to keep these worm-fests distracted from reaching Tubby's new home..."
"You know I love it when you come prepared to a fight, darlin', but I'm not so sure its gonna be as easy as that for us." Bucky sighed with a pitch of anxiety creeping into his bones. His hoggish form gave him something of a sixth sense when it came to observing the world around him. He could hear as far as the wind blew, and what he was hearing was the gnashing snarls of ravenous hunger that begged to be sated. Those ghouls were undead and hunting them down, and something told him they weren't in the mood for birds on the menu. Thor for his part didn't appear too bothered which probably meant he was too used to these sort of scenarios involving monsters. 'Well good for you, blondie.' Bucky thought with a touch of annoyance. "We need a plan of attack. Steve?" Bucky asked their new eyes and ears in the sky who seemed to be in deep thought.
"Enchantress wants us to feel helpless into what she made us. Wants us to give up and become chow or her puppet on strings; prove to the world that we're all muscle and no spirit. I say we prove her wrong." The hawk snaps his gaze to his friends, an elusive swan, a headstrong pig, and a reckless boar. They had their strengths and weaknesses, but together they could prove to be a devastating combo, and maybe-just maybe, they could aggravate Amora enough to get her out into the open.
"Someone needs to play the hag's mark of interest..." Selina murmured cunningly, gesturing a wing intently on readied accord at the blondish furred-dumpier Asgardian boar who sloppily munched on pieces of granola bar that he undoubtingly snagged out the raided backpack. "Time to work up your fast charm, Tubby..." Gritting against sardonic breaths, she angled her taut beak with a fleering smirk, challengingly. "Or maybe you should roll on your back for a belly rub..."
Thor released an uncharacteristic snort that the others weren't sure was a chuckle or a scoff as he finished chowing down his snack. Bucky half-wondered where he was keeping these granola bars he seemed to be pulling out of thin-air. Steve shook his head at their candor and began to flap his wings to gain altitude. "Just don't get killed out there. Your best weapon is to evade and distract. Bucky and I will draw as many of Enchantress' bogies away from the city. Thor we need you to draw her out into the open. And when she is...that's your cue, Selina." Steve could feel the unease rolling off of Bucky's shoulders at the thought of Selina putting herself so close to that witch's wrath.
But as a swan, she had the best chance of all of them at getting close to Amora. Once Steve flapped away into the skies, Bucky hesitated a moment to follow after him as he shifted his dismal gaze to the ivory-feathered swan. "You gonna be all right, darlin'?" He asked worriedly.
Despite they were on the conjured fringe of butcherous throes of a nightmarish warzone, smirkingly as Selina heard the pudgy sniper-hog's murmurous drawl edged with suaver a timbre, in a naked-headier contrast of unabandoned precision invested with the feather-light pressure of her wing, she caressed his drizzly snout in reverent tempo; she pillowed her tinier head against cushy flab of his cheek, stoking up an implosive rush of breakneck adrenaline. "Don't worry about me, handsome..." she urged, bluntly, as he grunted in fervent strain, cravingly riding out another duel of heartbeats with her. "Besides when do I ever get caught..."
"Never before, so don't start now." He murmured against her slender neck. He immersed himself in their intimate proximity, and the comfort it brought him to know that no matter what forms they were in, they were together. But as he listened to Thor's anxious grumbling while the snarling undead drew closer, Bucky knew that they couldn't stay this way for too long. "See you soon, kitten." With that, Bucky watched her flap away to carry out her role in this plan. Thor meanwhile released a deep grunt as he stepped out into the clearing to face the oncoming horde.
In an undeterred measure of teeming seconds, verdigris salvos of telestic energy blindingly lanced through forested darkness; cacophonous banshee-like screeches of demonic rabidness emanated out berserker unison 'army of one' as greenish-acid sigils veined over mottled skeletal flesh underneath gnarled layers of black chainmail as the Élivágar ranks ghostily mobilized to battle-charge their first wave of terror assault on the seaside ridge. Helmed deformities of jutted cheekbones lolled on iron-armored shoulders erratically, as hollowed-out visages of Odin's slain-honorable warriors who defended the citadels of Asgard had tragically become the Enchantress's wraith slayers-vessels of her conquesting-massacring butchery as their leathery fingers thrust up warped edges of Nerco spears, hailing to usher tides of slaughterous carnage. "T-This can't be..." Thor grunted breathlessly, staring at the disgraced fallen.
In the midst of Thor's sorrow over his fallen brethren, a cinder-furred hog and a blonde hawk charge towards the ghoulish horde by land and air. The cold night air nipped at them with the roaring wind smothered by the monstrous groans carried by the horde. They numbered in over two dozen, men and women charged with building a new settlement on the outskirts of New Asgard until Amora's deathly magic sucked away their life-force and then reanimated them as lifeless constructs. They were spread out to cover more ground on the barren fields, which made it easier for the hog and the hawk to run through them.
Bucky suppressed the knife-digging fear that came with the anticipation of being tackled and ripped to pieces as he charged through the numerous walking undead, stealing their focus as they gnashed their teeth and snarled at him in pursuit. Others were unprepared for the bird of prey swooping down on massive wings only to dig its talons into their eyesockets and scrape the dead flesh from their withered faces. Aerial combat was something Steve never felt comfortable at, preferring to keep his feet on the ground, but as he dived, attacked and retreated he found himself falling into an easy pattern that enabled him to carry out their diversion.
"Whoa!" Bucky squealed as he saw three undead prepared to block his path as they converged on his location. He didn't need to turn around to know that he was being surrounded. Acting on sheer adrenaline, the hog continued his break-neck pace and barreled right through the calves of a construct, causing its limbs to tear completely by the sheer force of his charge. Bucky ignored the gruesome feeling that wafted through him and continued on his path. He looked upwards to see Steve circling the horde, cawing at them in loud piercing volume. "We got em', Steve!" Bucky grunted as he realized the horde had their entire focus on both him and Steve and not on Thor and Selina.
With a serpentine variance of her encroaching pace, bedizened in her emerald cloaked garment, as the intricate winged-curved headpiece aesthetically fused over the sleekness of her cheekbones, skeins of viridian-Nordic- runes etched hypnotically giving her an ophidian visage of a tyrannic cobra; Amora haughtily sidestepped discarded remnants of chainmail armor melded with sloughed bones that dissolvingly glozed with tarry resin that viscidly seeped into mud-dampened earth; gripping onto the leather-buckled straps of Captain America's vibrainum shield, tauntingly Amora upped her seized Midgardian trophy as the alloy deflected off whitish scones of moonlight as her steel-grayish irises covetously became fixed on Nidavellir forged ax-Stormbreaker- a harvester weapon of mortal cleansing.
"It seems you have lost your worthiness as that fattened Dwarven vessel conceived by my will, Odinson..." A viperish sneer wickedly tempered over the voluminous swell of her ashen lips, as she glared at the porkier blondish-furred hog, who slouchily dragged the bulbous expanse of his protrusive underbelly over emptied Élivágar helmets. "By your continuous failures..." Vauntingly, Amora gestured her lithe fingers over skeletal dregs of carious flesh. "You have damned those wretched souls of your craven realm to become gutted out by my Twilight legion..."
The hollowness of the abyss he felt within himself and made Thor feel lifeless for the past few years. Ever since he lost his home, his lover, his friends, his family...his brother. He had tried to fill that void by indulging in gluttony and discord. But the pain never abated. If anything, his string of failures had seemed to become a constant as he found himself without the will to raise himself up from his pit of squalor and self-pity. That was until a fateful meeting with his mother-compassionate Friggia-across time and space and set him back on a path towards resurgence. The way back to fighting strength was a path to becoming worthy again-worthy of the thunder, of becoming king of Asgard.
"Failed?" He huffed with a deep snorting breath. "Perhaps I did once, allowing my rage to blind me to my duty. Of being decisive as my father taught me to. But I am not Odin, Amora. Nor am I any longer the Thor you would charm with honeyed words and love potions. I am an Avenger." The boar stomped his hooves, grunting with such ferocity, the ground shook as a clap of thunder roared in the heavens, unsettling the Vanaheim sorceress. "And If I must die to save what remains of my brethren, so be it. But I won't be going it alone!"
Dredging up his thunderous ferocity that jacked through his bulgy flab, ragingly on his cloven-hooves, with an immense onrush of his full-strength resilience of battle-honed gnarl, bearishly Thor propelled his unstoppable momentum into headlong-charge of apparent ramming, heftily angling the jutted curves of his tusks with flesh-gouging precision into her ironclad calf. Animalistic hostility was notching-up as the blondish grizzly hog snorted in ragged-guttural abandoned.
Not wavering in her grounded footing, cobra-quick readiness, Amora slithery caught his reckless trajectory of defensive intent, evading his bull-rushing pace. "If you dare to strike me down, Odinson your wretched friends will serve to feed my legion..."Amora fumed, seethingly, gazing at the voltaic embers of his whitish-cobalt irises become searingly electrified-the uncontainable-untamed vitality of Asgard -lightning of the Nine Realms was infinitely converging through him.
Bracing against the heavier gusts of Thor's hoof-stomping momentum, as her platinum-blonde tresses whip-lashed over her tensing jaw, venomously, Amora flexed a gauntleted hand with conducting prowess-orchestrating her rhapsodic symphony of blood-smeared mayhem. "Perhaps you must endure a graver reality of true defeat when I snuff out the heart of valor you have anchored onto ..." she hissed out with crazier pitch, ravingly, gazing at the hellbent sniper-hog aggressively punctured a bonier torso of a zombied Élivágar soldier with screwdriver precision of his tusked snout, blackish-oozier sludge of glopping leathery flesh pulpily hung over crimped armor. "Or should I chasten, dear James, further into his gluttonous oblivion...?"
Gliding over the battlemented corpse-infested warren, stealthily against exhilarative rushes that surged over her ivory wings, become a white silhouette of ethereal radiance against nocturnal contrasts of shadow cuttingly Selina flapped with diving graces in an instinctive succession of weightless momentum, keeping her black-webbed feet tucked under the silken velvetiness of her tail feathers as involuntarily she registered tremulous quakes that ratcheted ground-deep, vaporous tentacles of Eldritch-mephitic energy had cyclonically morphed into obsidian-verdurous Nerco spires that deafeningly jutted out with bursting force creating an obstructive bulwark, that chased her exposed flight path."I guess it's gonna be a hard play..." she quipped, breathily, narrowing her dark irises calculatingly at Thor's derailed position. "Great..."
Thor felt the power of the thunder surging throughout his boarish body, engulfing him with the might of a thousand storms. But without the physical strength of his Asgardian body to channel his power, he was like an electric eel aimlessly moving about in the hopes of striking his oppressor. Amora was cunning, swift and knew him well enough to anticipate his maneuvers. He did not expect to defeat her on his own.
With her focus squarely concentrated on himself, it left her blind to all that surrounded her such as the ivory swan diving towards her for an attack. Only to his dismay, he watched as the Enchantress proved herself more attentive than he had given her credit for as she maneuvered and struck Selina with a compulsion spell, causing the swan to drop the beads held by her beak and to wander listlessly off. An evil cackle wafted from Amora's emerald painted lips, mocking their efforts to subdue her.
"Enough, Amora! This is between you and I!" Thor stomped his hooves into the ground with such anger it caused a bolt of lightning to strike a tree, setting a fire into the night. The cawing of a hawk breached the chaos as Steve circled the field and made a desperate dive to retrieve the kimono beads that Selina had dropped. But Enchantress' eyes followed him with a gleam of malice.
Against the feverish periphery of her vision, scowlingly Amora gazed at the Avenger-hawk razoring the length his wingspan over barren heaps of smoldering armor; she hefted up the shield, white forks of electrified heat discharged in atmospheric succession as cosmic energy of Yggdrasill galvanically impaled branches through anvil-sized of thunderheads dauntingly looming over the Northern horizon. Carnally with unslaked vulturous thirst, she flashed Thor a viperish sneer as implosive seismic tremors became a distraction in the damning wake of her sorcerous mantra that balefully resonated in commenting tenor, as reddish-astral- glyphs of a destroyer incantation demonically arced over her flexing hand. 'La krigerånden gi etter for dødelig nederlag ...(Let his warrior spirit yield to grounds of mortal defeat...)"
"NO!" Thor released a chilling squeal as arcs of nefarious sorcery shot towards the hawk with the precision of a lance cutting through the air. The hawk had no time to react before he was struck mid-air with the burning grip of eldritch magic ravaging him from the inside out. A strangled cry ripped from his beak, as he spun in concentric circles like a smoking turbine. Time ground to a halt as the second hog watched in muted horror as the hawk that was his best friend began to fall from the skies.
"STEVE!" Bucky squealed, unable to control his stride as he slid across the ground, coming to a stop beside Thor. Down the hawk fell in free-fall, giving neither movement nor sound as he plummeted into the lake where he vanished beneath the surface.
Within seconds of heart-stunned reaction, like a silvery bullet against the gleams of moonlight, irrevocably Selina dove into the darken murkiness of the disturbed lake, urgently she pushed every unbridled limit of her curvaceous form as her feathery wing throbbingly reached through drifts as she deftly scooped up the motionless hawk- that alarmingly became deadweight-she didn't let go. Breaching the surface in a desperate rush against gnarled lashes of muggy reeds, nakedly she felt a visceral tempo of dynamical -brotherly grace; a virtuous heartbeat stoppingly flat-ling against ivory contours of her feathered girth. Angling her delicate beak on the reverent accord, she cradled Steve with tentative hoist over her tremulous wings, as straying heat of feverous wetness errantly dampened his bluish feathers. "S-Steve..." she murmured in choking hitches, sobbingly, feeling no pulse edging back under her unfeigned caress. "W-We can't let this damn hag cheat us out..."
The Hawk couldn't respond with the strength to offer reassurance as he teetered on the brink between life and total darkness. He felt cold, detached from his own body despite the fact he was being uplifted from the cold murky waters that were once a mystical site for the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings that ferried their honorable deceased into the next world. Some called it Avalon, others believed it was a fjord into Valhalla itself between mighty cliffs far ahead. The moonlight streaked across the clear surface, allowing the hawk to look upon his rescuer and release a soft chirp.
"Didn't think cats could swim," Steve said with a weak sense of humor. Amora's magic still burned inside, mercilessly seeking to shutdown his body and reap his soul. "Apparently neither can eagles...She's got us on the ropes, Selina...I don't know if…"
"Hey, we're going to get everything back..." Threadily, Selina urged against gritted breaths, as her brandy irises flitted mistily down at the paralyzed hawk, he was bone-chilled slack in the bow of her silkier wings, the mesmeric vibrancy of his silvery-bluish feathers sickeningly abated, flexion echoes of his invincible-valorous spirit became suffocatingly exorcized as he forcibly strained against the contractive onslaught, thumpingly his tinier heartbeat was fading out-notch by notch.
With subtle pressure of her whisper-soft ministrations gliding over his motionless form, composedly in beckoning variance, Selina gazed at the cool azure of his hawkish orbs soullessly blacken out —the indomitable vitality of the First Avenger was being purged. Reversing direction, Selina assuaged onto definite-unwarrantable relevance of hope, readily shifting the litheness of her bustier girth with evident paddling strokes of her webbed-feet as she reacted to the urgent cadence of her votive-expandable choice, fringing depths; snorting in deep-throat heaves, the beasty sniper-hog rubberily thrashed on his stubbed hooves against Thor's obese rotundity in desperate tenor as Bucky chokingly oinked out his breathless anguish-her unabandoned readiness to save his best friend-little punk, was direly registered in hundredfold. Incandescent auras of the opalescence moonlight had gleamingly haloed over her ivory-mahogany feathers—it was a callback payoff-that would chasmically leash her down into sacrificial elysian. "Whatever it takes, remember..."
"Lina...Kitten!" Bucky released a hapless cry as he watched a brilliant light engulf the lakeside where the ivory swan had cradled the dying hawk against her bosom. It was benign in the sense it offered hope but sorrowful at its expense. It had captured the attention of Enchantress which gave the focused Thor the opening he needed to charge with a brutish grunt, barreling his weight towards the legs of the distracted sorceress, toppling her with such force it was like she'd been hit by a speeding car. Bucky was snapped back into focus, feeling a surge of emotions grip him in the face of watching his kitten vanish in a burst of light only for the shape of a man to emerge from within it.
"She did it…" Bucky oinked, torn between sorrow and gladness but feeling as if he were far removed from this fight as he charged towards the now motionless swan.
The light was unlike anything he had seen before, it made him think he had transcended the mortal plane and entered the next phase of existence. But he could still feel. He could still smell and taste the murkiness of the lake water on his lips. He felt life-he felt freedom from the invisible shackles that had been restraining him for what felt like a lifetime but it had only in fact been a couple of hours. But freedom was priceless, but the price paid for his had been too great to him. Steve Rogers collapsed onto his knees and coughed a small of puddle of water from his lungs. His blurred vision sharpened into focus as the light faded and he was left gazing down into the alarming sight of a motionless swan at his knees.
His knees. Hawks weren't supposed to have the smooth creamy surface of human skin covering bone and muscle. A trembling hand entered his line of sight and he flexed his digits, watching them respond to his will. He was back-he was human. "Selina..." He remembered the swan that had dived into the lake to save him from being swallowed whole. His bewildered features became morphed with sorrow as he laid a hand on the swan's head, tearfully stroking her feathers. "The fight never ends...Thank you." He sniffed, vowing not to let her sacrifice be in vain. His muscles coiled and he repressed a shiver once he realized he was naked. The remnants of his gear was ahead and he took long purposeful strides towards it, jaw clenched with determination. "Whatever it takes..."
Against cacophonous rabidness of the bludgeoned ferocity that bruisingly careened her into the monolithic henge with back-breaking force, ear-splittingly, Amora released a demonic screech, as her fingernails clawed in vicious traction over cindered mulch; she glared at the fattest of the Dwarven hogs' -Odinson with maniacal heat of bloodthirsty lividness, her steely-grayish irises melded into rapine lazurite as she arched her back up with vampiric momentum, as the length of her cloaked garment spookily draped over her braced arms while she clutched onto an ebon Nero-spike, tauntingly leveling the conjured armament with executing precision over the blondish swine's repulsive head. "On this crimson night, the verminous spawn of the Allfather will choke on my reckoning..." Witchily, she hissed, and relishingly drove the spike a hairbreadth from the lumpish sagginess of his furred neck."Your traitorous blood will cleanse my Helheim legion, Thor Odinson..."
Thor could see his end in sight, knowing that he had finally pushed Amora far enough that she was no longer interested in torturing him. Only the feeling of his blood coating her hands would satisfy her sadistic nature as she brandished the spike between her fingers and began to drive it low. His thoughts sped rapidly, allowing him to glimpse many faces he had come to love and mourn. But he felt peace, feeling no sense of failure to fall as a warrior and not as a pitiful hog. That was when his ears detected a buzzing pitch in the background that was as familiar to him as the friendly face it invoked.
*WHAM*
Amora cried out in shock as a cylindrical object smacked into her, causing her to stumble off of the defenseless hog and lose track of her weapon. Thor listened to the telltale sound of metal bouncing off of a hard surface before the object sailed back through the air and into the hands of it wielder. Captain America-Steven Rogers. "YES!" Thor roared with jubilation. Steve didn't relent as he stormed in on his downed foe with his shield in hand, ready for her as she climbed back onto her feet and began to conjure a projectile of magic.
"Y-You dare..." Seethingly in venomous tenor, Amora glowered at the navy-blue Kelvar of a tactical- patriotic uniform that fittingly delineated over corded bulk of graven muscle, surges of enhanced vitality rode every curve of heavier flesh as the avenging-timeless soldier adamantly poised in a mid-crouch with his vibranium shield readily braced over his forearm; like a hunkish Percus who challengingly dared to breach her grotesque domain. The hawkish virility of his chiseled features edged with fiercer sharpness as he unwaveringly grounded a stand of Brooklyn defiance. "So you lost your wings, little warbird..." she lashed out, nastily appalled by his evasive tack of resisting her possessive conjury. "Perhaps you will prevail better in a hoggish form like your dear James Barnes, to wretchedly fatten in your mindless revels while I gut out the swan maiden's worthless heart..."
"You won't be hurting anyone else tonight, Lady." Steve resisted the urge to lash out in anger at her cold taunt. His focused mind watched her movements closely, gauging her for any signs towards her next attack. Amora relied on her wit and cunning to get her opponent to lower their guard. Her horde had been effectively cut off from aiding her when Thor's lightning strike had toppled a burning tree that blocked them. She was alone and Steve wasn't. "Thor?" Steve beckoned to the hog as he climbed up on his hooves and stomped them, causing a rumble of thunder to rattle the skies.
"Aye. Let's make this quick!" With that the Asgardian hog charged, his body like an electrical conduit in motion as it sizzled off his body. The Enchantress grimaced as she opened a small rift for her to escape from while another opened nearby. Steve pitched his spear at the rift, narrowly missing the blonde sorceress as she tuck and rolled across the floor. His shield bounced just in time for Thor to catch it between his teeth and give it an extra added electrical boost-sending it on its continued trajectory towards the Avenger.
Amora engaged Steve in hand-to-hand combat; finding her physical strength to be greater than his as she broke through his boxing guard and landed a palm strike against his torso. *WHAM* She released a cry of both pain and rage as that accursed shield hit her in the back, sending a surge of electricity throughout her body that toppled her to her knees. Steve recovered from his attack and recovered his shield, bringing it upwards in a swinging arc hitting Enchantress beneath the jaw in a devastating uppercut.
"That was for Selina!" Steve hummed with a deep breath. His blue eyes were ablaze and his body burned with adrenaline. Thor charged at a downed Amora only to seize up in a strangled cry as she struck him with a paralytic spell. Steve raised his shield in time to block her assault but could feel the pressure mounting on him.
Bracketing her armored calves with vising sync, rapaciously Amora straddled herself commandingly over the athletic solidity of bulkier tautness fused with his Kevlar midriff investing carnal demand; platinum-blonde tresses sweltry webbed over her exquisite-thinned cheeks as she viciously drilled a pulse-stealing throb with her fingernail into angular contours of his broad jaw that raptly became hard-edged against her injurious-divesting assault. A raptor-like gleam of her steely irises entrancedly belied her merciless intent as the knifing pressure of her ebon-winged headpiece jutted into his bloodied cheek, delivering a waspish sting of penetrative-infectious entity of her sanguineous vengeance.
Gnashing his teeth, forcibly with deadened momentum, Steve hefted up his shield, drawing out ragged heaves as he bashingly clashed his arm-driven thrust of reactive pressure against her throat as her gauntleted palm vitriolically splayed a kneading caress over graven-edged ridges of muscled flesh on wanton accord of her serpentine thirst.
At the shore of the lake, a desperate hog trots into the cold ripples in panting grunts to envelope the seemingly lifeless swan in a sorrowful embrace, spilling rivulets of tears onto her beak. "Come back to me, kitten." He cried, hoping and praying for a miracle to bestow upon them.
On the field, Amora's aggression was something Steve couldn't withstand for long as he could feel her magic begin to pour into once again. Like a knife slowly being dug into his sternum he felt as if struggling would make it much easier for her to cleave through him with her magical shards that dug their way into him. The magic poured through, reshaping his mass into the desired state of the wielder who wanted him to be as vulnerable as his friends on stubby hooves. The mass of cheeks had begun to fatten with patches of golden-blonde fur sprouting from his skin.
"I will savor watching you fatteningly burgeon into a dormant hog, Captain..." Amora raved, dementedly clamping her fingers over his leather-sheathed wrist. Keeping him arrestingly captive in her ravenous throes, she predatorily gazed into the feverish rawness of his glacial azureous irises, oblivious that reddish-magenta flares of psionic energy had telekinetically whooshed over maggoty-skeletal heaps of her subdued ranks. "You will never throw this wrenched shield again..."
"Get away from him..." Blazingly as crimson salvos grew into Eldritch beacons of hellfire, feeling a telepathic rupture pulsing from the astral bridges of Multi-verse plane; earthen barricades of Nerco spires crushingly warped against ignitable shockwaves of kinetic fusion that propelled out of the fiery sling-ring portal-dimensional gateway of occultic convergence. With pythonic swiftness, infuriatingly Amora roved a basilisk glance over her armored shoulder at the auburn-copper haired Slovakian Avenger-a 'scarlet phoenix' who had crushingly quashed the deviant-prophetic Titan-the genocidal equalizer of the Nine Realms into fused contortions of dismantled metal husks: a vengeful cradle of restraint.
Stepping over discarded skulls and ebon spears, playing off a hair-trigger deadlock of her sorcerous challenge, vixenishly Wanda grounded her laced boots near a stone dolmen, as her delicate-elfin waifish features heated bakingly under unkempt tresses draping over her Gothicsque corset, psionic auras of mutative energy fierily veined over burgundy leather of her Burlesque Victorian-steampunk jacket as her eased her wrister-sleeved arm, genetically conjuring a vapory pinkish flare as her irises glowed laser-red. "I said..." She blasted a crimson salvo blindingly into an Einherjar death-walker as skeletal flesh meltingly dissolved into sifts of cindery ash. "Get away from him...!"
"Wanda?" Steve choked out deep breaths, unable to mask his surprise. He could feel his humanity slowly creeping back to him after Enchantress' spell was interrupted by the most unexpected of saviors. He pulled himself up to his knees with his shield in tact while the Sokovian Avenger took point in front of both him and Thor, staring down the infuriated Asgardian sorceress.
"As a friend of mine would say, "you are so screwed now", Amora," Thor boasted with renewed vigor at seeing the second most powerful Avenger arrive (second after him of course, he was certainly still the strongest ever!).
Wading against a denotative fringe of her ruinous-unslaked indulgence, painstakingly in malodorous fruition, Amora shifted on her lithe haunches with a viperish rush against the blubbering-hog- flab that plumpishly stretched under the Kevlar of Steve's inflated midriff and dragged her fingernails on the deceptive tenor of a scorpion-crawl over a helmeted skull as virescent glyphs burningly etched over desiccated bones in conjuring-hellacious unison. "This foolish annoyance will, unfortunately, become a piteous vessel of my craven throes of butchered mercy..." she crackled in sadistic pitch, lashingly easing her gauntleted hand up as the possessed skull grisily catapulted with a vicious thrust of unstoppable gravity akin to a volleyed soccer ball, cannoning down at Wanda like a shell bomb. "You might have cleverly ensnared Thanos within the grips of your faulty power, but make no mistake you will fail this time,..."
With trembling hands that were now free from the shackles of dark magic, Steve picked up his shield and tightened the straps around his forearm. He felt like himself, but more importantly, he felt whole. His calculating blue eyes narrowed on the sorceress who wasn't idle in her attempt to gain the upper-hand despite being outnumbered. Her long dainty digits spiraled and conjured a myriad of emerald glyphs that he surmised was to form a defensive barrier for herself. "We can't let her defenses rebound. Thor-bring the thunder! Wanda, distract her!" Steve urged his team who looked apprehensively at him.
"And you, Captain?" Thor grunted.
"I'll keep her busy." Steve didn't wait for them to agree to his plan knowing that speed was the essence. Each moment they wasted meant their enemy could regroup or retreat. No. This needed to end now. For Bucky. For Selina. Steve charged towards Enchantress and raised his shield just in time to repel a projectile of burning energy that burst towards him from one of the glyphs he was charging through. Hot pain licked at his shoulders but he pushed through barrier after barrier using his shield until his target was in striking-range. Lunging forward, Steve kicked Amora off-balance, allowing Wanda the chances to use her hex-energy to dispel the defensive glyphs surrounding the sorceress.
Amora regained her balance by kipping up to her feet. She feinted a leg-swipe only to land a right-hook to his shoulder. And then another. It felt like being beaten with a club, but Steve reacted in time to raise his shield to block the next attack. Amora roared with pain as her fist struck the most versatile metal in the galaxy, causing spasms of pain to lance up to her shoulder.
"I can do this all day." Steve panted to the infuriated witch who glared at with a newfound hatred to rival that of Thor's.
"I will make you choke on those words," Amora seethed, lividly, her steel-grayish irises pulsed with draconic heat as the First Avenger tensely leveled his shield with controlled poise of combative defense invested with each drag of his footing, a bloodied gash revealingly smeared over his graven-contours of his dirtied cheek as the vigilant flit of his cool azure irises betrayed no deterrence of submission-he wouldn't relent. The orcish cavalcade of her wraithlike Einherjar soldiers was on the implosive breadth of unleashing their apocalypse-run over New Asgard; the miasmatic rabidness of insatiable bloodlust oozily wafted off skeletal flesh-they were bred out of the hellish-phantasmatic cauldron of her portentous witchery to slaughterously raid-out anything that echoed a detected heartbeat on their carious path.
Against vertiginous onrush of dizziness exhaustingly rode bone-deep, Steve grounded his athletic bulk, measuring each predatory-viperish tenor of her shadowed assault, reacting as skeletal fingers of unearthed denizens creepily jutted out of the sludgy ground in manic sync, twistingly clamping onto his Kevlar-padded calves to paralyzingly grapple Steve onto his knees in the accelerated dissonance of a flesh-slashing onslaught. "As much as I desire to allow your Midgardin spirit to prevail, your spirit will become an extension of my reborn army..."
Before she could renew her attack against him, Amora caught sight of the fleeing hog heading to the clearing holding out his hoof. An arc of lightning flashed in the distance and there was a brilliant light being conjured from the ground up to the skies! An impossible act of nature, unless...the Stormbreaker! The Odinson's newly forged weapon sang through the air as it came towards its intended bearer. Amora watched as Thor commanded it from afar, calling down bolts of lighting to scorch the plains where her undead horde had begun to climb over the burning log.
With a screech of rage, Amora sent a whip of eldritch magic towards the hog and ensnared his throat in her talons. Before she could snap his neck and end her vengeful crusade, she was levelled by another blast of that accursed psycho-energy from that upstart Midgardian witch!
"Its over. Surrender!" Steve yelled at Amora as she powered through Wanda's next assault. The witch's furious green eyes landed on him once more.
Harnessing cobra-quick ferocity in the nefarious cadence of her ghostlier prowess, with a geomatic circlet of verdigris energy rotating chimerically around her gauntleted wrist, in a beckoning command of sorcerous unity, thievingly Amora blazoned her veins with the astral gateways of tenebrious vistas of Helheim, rampantly infecting Steve's corded flesh with a benumbed -morphous paralytic of soul-immobilizing deviance she had morbifically conjured to amputate out his pathetic humanity into a languorous-obese vassal of boarish gluttony. "Få ham til å oppblåse sin verdige ånd ... (Make him bloat out his valorous spirit)" The Nordic utterance of her penetrative mantra condemningly assailed over her earthen warren in explosive-damnable frequency. "Let this mortal soldier carouse over the battlefield in ranks of mindless swine..."
Steve knew a cornered animal when he saw one. The unbridled desperation that emanated off of Amora meant the sorceress was through fighting for dominance she was now fighting to survive-or to escape. A reckless state of mind but also a dangerous one that spelled disaster for whomever stood in her way. That being him. She was like a live grenade about to go off. Having experience with such a scenario from so long ago, Steve knew what he had to do-and that was to jump. The emerald sorceress had opened a portal behind her just at the same time she prepared to unleash a familiar spell from her fingertips. It lanced through the air like a javelin, seeking its prey in the form of a battered soldier ready to sacrifice himself for his friends.
Gritting his teeth, the soldier raised his only defensive weapon and clung to it with such strength it caused his muscles to strain against the tight fabric of his undershirt. The projectile slammed against the shield causing a deafening gong to billow out into the field, only for the projectile to be sent back to its source. The sorceress's emerald eyes widened and she had no time to react before her own magical spell struck her down.
"No..." A breathless timbre of railing alarm rubberily deafened into a hoggish grunt, the morphic deviance of her calamitous scourge irrevocably knifed through her stunned veins, defeatedly, squealing in urgent pitch, the Enchantress convulsed in a thrashing upheaval onto her knees as her viper-like incisors bleedingly protruded over the voluminous swell of her jutted underlip; the cascading length of her platinum-blonde tresses dauntingly ebbed out of her deforming skull, evident to a droppy twitch of her floppier ears that widened in swelling-grislier tenor underneath her ebon headgear.
Within rigged seconds, Amora inflatingly felt her the suppleness voluptuous breasts fleshily meld into girthier roundness of her outstretching abdomen -like a prolific sow. Cradling her gauntleted arms frantically over the globular pudge, Amora snorted as viscid mucus gloopily out of her upturned nose that jutted in mutative deformity of a piggish snout as she uglily blimped into an ogrish mass. "You honestly believe you're still victorious, dear Captain..." she emitted a snide rasp, grudgingly, mirroring the niveous coolness of his silvered azure irises, that didn't waver. Flexing his leather-gloved hand, with apparent ease, Steve reined the blondish Asgardian hog with an unshakeable measure of passive 'stand-down' impedance against the electrical surge of high-voltage. "Your precious James Barnes and his swan vixen will endure the rest of their evanescent days as pitiable creatures..."
Steve maintained a stoic facade in the face of the sorceress' words that were meant to diminish her defeat. He gave no reply nor reaction even as Wanda came to stand beside him and the deep panting of an approaching hog came up from behind. Thor and Wanda watched with him as Amora's own magic began to undo her from the inside out; twisting and transforming the beautiful woman into an unremarkable sow no different from the animals she had forced others to become. Her whimpering cries had now transitioned into guttural squeals of distress that unnerved Steve and Wanda, but greatly satisfied Thor as he watched her roll and struggle to move in her new form.
"She was always a sour one in defeat." Thor remarked. What surprised Steve and Wanda was how much more discernible Thor's voice had suddenly become. When they both looked over towards him, the Asgardian hog was shimmering with a benign unnatural glow, no different from the one that had encompassed Steve. "Well now, this is a bit odd…" Thor murmured.
The cacophonous mantra of Eldritch tenor coupled quakingly with a nacreous surge that prismatically emanated over Bi-Frost dolmens; utilizing her sorcerous caliber, Wanda formed a mystic barrier enwreathed over the oafish Asgardian hog as whitish strobes of lightning blindingly discharged over the horizon vistas of the Norwegian coastline, boomingly heralding the apparitional-thunderous resonance of Odin's caroming voice commanded Stormbreaker to raise off the fissionable ground as recalling knells of Asier worthiness launched the Nidavellir battle-ax with skyrocketing momentum.
As electric salvos arced over the repulsive fattening sow-vaporizing her ebon Nerco-spires into smearily misted ash over the furrier sagginess of pudge of her snout, Amora belted out a huffish-voiceless squeal, only to register a hoggish cadence echo back. After receiving an expected text on her Stark-phone, involuntarily Wanda had used a Tiberian sling- ring to pull an undetected vanishing-act out of Manhatten Sanctum Santorum before Master Wong returned from his periodic tuna melt run-Steven Strange had critically instructed to read Kamar-Taj manuscript collections of Eldritch intentions-tapping into subtonic paradoxes the quantum plane. Being a mystical sentry, Wanda understood the unstable measures of her restraint-to never fully pull the pin. "Everything you took from us is now reserved back.." Wanda addressed smirkily with blunted terseness in her Slovakian timbre. "No one will fear you anymore..."
The relief of his enemy's defeat had led to an influx of surprises to the assembled heroes who watched as Thor trotted over towards Stormbreaker. His trusted weapon gleamed in the pale-moonlight, beckoning him closer to its comforting thrawl. The energy humming off its surface made the fur on his body tingle and rise on end. Thor understood what it meant and could not help but to send a silent thank you to the all-fathers and the norns. Thor brushed his snout against the bark handle that was once a limb of his friend Tree. Stormbreaker sparked and a salvo of lightning enveloped him. Instead of feeling pain, he felt relief.
From head-to-toe the vile dark sorcery was purged from his body like an evil poison. He felt himself grow and was now standing again on two feet as the strong powerful man he always was. Releasing a chuckle he could not help but run his hands over his face, finding a wise bushy beard and smooth skin. He was Thor-he was a man. He was...still fat, and very much half-n***. "I miss the spells that could restore my clothing." Thor lamented as he wrapped the torn vestments of his pants around his modest parts and offered Steve and Wanda a sheepish smile. Wanda rolled her eyes while Steve appeared both relieved and thoughtful.
"Not just you," Steve agreed. "But if you were restored, maybe…" he was almost too afraid to hope. It was familiar in a sense of desperation that once the dust settled a wrong could be made right. The lost would be found.
"What?" Thor wondered aloud as he lifted his axe over his shoulder. Instead of saying anything, Steve took off towards the shore of the lake, leaving Thor and Wanda to stand guard over the still squealing sow that was imprisoned in a cage of hex energy.
The skies were now a lighter shade of blue with dawn approaching on the horizon. Steve dashed through the trees, able to find his way easier now despite the clusters of trees and vegetation. His eyes landed on the two shapes nestled close against one another beneath a shade of trees. His feet come to a halt and he feels his breath pause within his chest as he took in the sight of a man and woman locked in a tearful embrace. They were both half-n***, covering each other by their arms circling each others backs. Her face rested against his shoulder as he stroked her hair and the small of her back.
Bucky and Selina lean back long enough to gaze into each other's eyes and then come together again in a passionate kiss. Steve recognized them immediately and had to avert his eyes with a small smirk forming across his lips. "Same ol'Buck." He muttered. He gave the couple a moment before gently clearing his throat. "I'd ask if you two are all right but something tells me you're better than that."
"Don't spoil the moment, Soldier boy..." Selina bantered out snarkily, against the implosive abandon that cravingly surged headier in the gloried tempo as she threaded her lithe fingers brushingly through the unkempt length of Bucky's wolfish chestnut tresses with quenchless urgency as he bracketed chaste pressure of his flesh-hand over the delicate contours of the underside of her jaw, featherily gracing a pulse of amorous heat that swelteringly coupled with the reverent glide of his splaying thumb-the virile strength of his evocative caresses demanded an intoxicating tracery of phantom awareness.
Each tactile drift of his intimate steadiness became a kiss-starved rapture of dueled-boneless serenity contrasting into aphrodisiacal decadence, the mesmeric smokiness of his aquamarine irises had smolderingly beckoned as the ivory skeins of her feathers vanishingly melded into cool pearlescence of her nakedness- the blobby pudginess of hoggish flab tautly dissolved into hunkier corded flesh that sculpted over graven-ridges of his muscled solidity.
The mechanized coolness of his cybernetic arm shiveringly ghosted a possessive rush over the svelte planes of her back as Bucky throatily jutted the open-mouthed stretch of his shapely-wide lips over the glossier lushness of her flushed pillowy lips that delectably cushioned against the shifting drag of his kiss-swollen lips, abandonly moaning in feverous cadence, he bruisingly thrust passion-damp heat, catching her breath with sensuous ferocity as they were floored into liquefying release-deliverance. "B-Buck..." she urged raspily, as the hot wetness of his mouth blindly surged the kiss deeper-not letting her go. "Okay...Slow it down, Barnes..."
Bucky couldn't quite explain what had come over him, but he was like a man who had just come out of the desert dying of thirst. And Selina was freshly drawn water from a well that he just couldn't get enough of. So he had kissed her, drank in her exhalations with mind-numbing relief as he basked in the feeling of her touch, of having her in his arms again. It was heady and addicting-were it not for Steve's presence nearby he had a good feeling of where things would lead to, and he had to repress the groan of annoyance that begged to be released once he and Selina parted lips. He could see the mutual frustration in her eyes and conveyed a silent message to her that spoke plainly, "Later." Once that was done, he flashed his best friend with a sardonic smile. "You always did have impeccable timing, Steve."
"So I've discovered," Steve replied with a guilty smile. Together both Bucky and Selina rise to their feet. His torn pants still fit snug around his waist and he tears off the remains of his shirt for Selina to tie around her chest as a make-shift tank top. They hold hands as they follow Steve out from the tree-line and into the open.
"Its mornin'," Bucky murmurs. They all sigh as a ray of sunlight washes over them, bathing them in a warm feeling of reassurance. The field however is still littered with dead corpses that used to be the people of New Asgard. Steve, Bucky and Selina all become crestfallen at the sight, knowing that their victory had come at a great cost. "Did we win, at least?" Bucky asked Steve who beckons them ahead. They see a surprising sight none had anticipated as Wanda uses her power to transport a visibly distressed sow through a sling-ring portal before stepping through it herself. "When did Wands get here?" Bucky asked genuinely shocked until he glanced at Selina with an inkling of suspicion. "I'm guessing we got you to thank for that, darlin'?"
Registering the suaver timbre of his gravelly drawl, kittenishly Selina quirked the fullness of her burgundy lips, unstintingly evident to the vixenish gleam of her brandy-coffee irises that held devious light, bracing her supple-toned arm with pacifying -feminine heat over muscle-cords of his tenser back as Bucky clunkily grounded traction in his warring paces-shaking off the sluggish wobbling that had bulgingly controlled his piggish momentum—only hours before. The berserk-o Vanaheim scavenger—hag was on the receiving end of her bestial-morphing conjury-a fattened prisoner of her cheated-out devices."Well, I did make a fast call, farm-boy," A deviant scrunch of her pert nose evidently conveyed with a jaunty quirk over her full lips as she purred huskily against the hard-edged ruggedness of his stubbled jaw. "Besides you know how I like to bend the angles when I play ..."
"That's my girl," Bucky kissed her brow lovingly and hugged her closer against his side. Steve watched them with a bittersweet smile across his tight lips. Despite the scope of this threat and the lives lost, he was happy to see that Bucky wouldn't have to endure the same loss as himself. Some wounds took longer to heal, but eventually, they would be made easier to live with. Shifting his gaze he watched as the only remaining member of their group made his way towards them with a swagger in his steps which made the roundness of his belly more noticeable. Still wasn't a sight any of them had grown used to when it came to the thunder god of their team.
"Everything good, Thor?" Steve asked the blonde as he came in front of them, Stormbreaker held against his shoulder.
"Ms. Maximoff will see Amora off to the Wizard Supreme where she won't be troubling us again. At least we should hope not." Thor grumbled with a weary frown across his face as his gaze spanned across the hundred dead citizens of New Asgard he had failed to protect. Men, women and children who paid the price because of a vengeful woman he had scorned. "But, I am afraid Amora made a lasting impression that won't be ever forgotten."
His melancholy must've been noticeable to his friends. Bucky of whom had stepped forward to place a hand on the blonde's shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly. "Your people will come back from this Thor. With you leading them, I know it." At Thor's confused frown, Bucky lightly jabbed his shoulder. "If there's anything I've learned about you, it's that you could be as stubborn as a pig."
"Buck…" Steve groaned with a look that said 'come on, man.'
Thor caught on immediately and released a deep hearty chuckle as he patted his heavy stomach. "Well played, James. You yourself made an entertaining ally in our quest for triumph. You should come by more often. You and I would do well as Fortnite teammates on the PS4."
Bucky looked at Thor with incredulous eyes and a lopsided grin. "You're on, Blondie." He looked down at his own heavy stomach and surprisingly didn't feel nearly as indignant about it as he would've before. "I have the stomach to keep up with you too."
As the group make their way towards the Quinjet, Thor and Bucky amicably discuss their favorite choices in entertainment and foods, leaving Steve and Selina a moment to themselves. Steve looked down at her with remorseful eyes once she realized he was staring. "Thank you for saving me," he said with a tight smile. "I'm used to someone else having my back, but you're a helluva partner."
With flit of her lashes, brandishing a visage of guarded nonchalance Selina ruefully gazed at feathery remnants of bluish-ivory tuffs that contrastingly whirled over her lithe hand against the frigidness sailing over the Northern sea- an exhilarative beckon of wonderous freedom- an elemental conquest that starvedly urged her to dare those rushing heights of implosive adrenaline.
The battle-tested grounds of her partnership wasn't expandable in their combative dynamic; infestations of lunatic-schizoid chimeras were becoming alliances with spawns of HYDRA orchestrated by Baron Zemo. The dance of mayhem wasn't over. Shifting a collective glance of her coffee irises at the Quinjet hovering over the lakefront, Selina decisively gnawed on her underlip, tellingly clutching the silken feathers as she purringly challenged, as she gazed into the hawkish intensity of his cool azureous ireses-a tempestuous-banking ferocity that wouldn't be curbed down. "Well, you do owe me a flying lesson to call it even...
Steve smiled graciously. "I like the sound of that." He always had a knack for skydiving without a parachute. Something told him the fearless Selina Kyle, like a real cat, would land on her feet without one. The thought made the Avenger feel a twinge of nostalgia but also an inkling of anticipation moving forward. He wondered how many more missions Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, would be willing to partner up with him on in the future.
2 hours later…
The Quinjet flew in a holding pattern above the eastern shore of the Avengers Compound with the landing door open. The auto-pilot kept the bird flying high at a safe distance above the lake below, but to the two remaining occupants seated in the pilot and co-pilot's seats, they were blissfully at ease with themselves as they kicked back and enjoyed their third cup of beer, despite it only being 8am.
"You know, Thor, even for a god of thunder, 8am has to be too early for you." Bucky remarked as he sipped his drink. Thor was far too into his cup to respond as he chugged a huge pint then let loose a thick belch.
"It pays to be King, my friend, I can revel as early as the sun rises. You should do like our friends, and enjoy the splendors of our victory to their fullest." At that, they both watch as two shapes zip past the windshield of the cockpit in a free fall dive, gliding in the air like two birds soaring majestically.
"10 bucks says it's a draw." Bucky offered to which Thor gave him a flat look. "What, you can't expect me to pick favorites between them."
"Then that is not a fun wager...100 says they won't concede defeat without a rematch." Thor challenged to which Bucky chuckled and took a larger swig of his beer.
"Fine, 100." The two friends clinked their cups together, and resolved to enjoy the skydiving spectacle that was sure to invigorate their spirits after such a long hard-fought victory. Nothing felt more hopeful than the forging of new friendships and partnerships moving forward.
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Development blog
Sonic performance documentation
So this performance took a long process of pre thought to come into fruition, numerous experiments and many strands of inspiration from many performing artists. Namely - fourtet, floating points, binkbeats and Christian Loffier. Thankfully there is many online resources available and even direct explanations of there live sets by the artists themselves, so this really helped get a clear understanding of what they are doing.
What I hope to achieve with my own performance is a unique and one off creative play through of a set recontextualisations and and freshly realised versions of previous musical works of mine.
Kit list
Ableton live + Ableton push
Numerous plugins (notable plugins I’ve used - Crystalliser, Ableton FX rack for multiple macros at once)
Midi keyboard
What I learned from studying other artists work
So there’s a couple videos that really pushed me to figure out a way to perform effectively, one being Fourtets rundown
Fourtet red bull presentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KIvnLBF7vU&t=108s
Key information
One computer running Ableton that has the main bodies of the tracks
The way he organises it is each channel is a different song, so the whole track is broken up and then looped.
He has pads to use that launch midi clips separate to these channels
He uses some ambient found sounds eg. Film reel, as a bed of sound. I could do this with foley
These free loops generally fit the track at anytime
Uses a dj mixer or fx and general mixing the 3 channels that he has generating sounds
Uses cool edit to create really fast loops
He holds off his most recognisable parts of the song and does unique versions of the song before bringing in main hooks etc.
Christian Loffier in the lab
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsTdB4s_zK8
Key information
Ableton launching clips, being routed and effected by a live mixer (this is a great basis for me to start)
Elektron rytm for drums
Strymon and soft synths playing off Nord keyboard
Really great foley percussion
Particularly like how fluid he keeps it, can see that a lot of what he does it live mixing
Sounds like crystalliser for some of the textures
REALLY well mixed
- I particularly like the aesthetic presentation, clean wooden minimal, will adopt this for mine perhaps
Developing and building the core / stems
So at the very start of this project, I decided to work from stems to create the clear direction and foundation. I’ve worked on some new materials and decontextualised different parts of my musical history in this project, So to do this I’ve discerned what parts are most suited to be transformed live and how I can best stem them and implement them. After choosing these building blocks, I kept them all pretty flat, there is no dynamic change added artificially, all the flourishes/drum processing I wanted to keep to being live which I talk about later, as one thing I felt from the beginning is that I really want to avoid just simply activating scenes with Ableton, as part of the problem I had to solve on how to keep this engaging for a third party. So this explains the core of my live set, stems bounced in to looped scenes, triggered throughout to create the arrangements, photographed below.
The method I’m exploring in this area of my performance is assigning the knobs of my Ableton push to pre made FX rack macros. The audio effect rack in Ableton is really great for this, as you can stack up numerous plugins and assign them to one knob, and repeat across all 8 knobs available, essentially every track would have some iteration of this. There was a lot to solve in terms of the most effective ways to assign and perform the effects as instruments.
So for example selected stems eg. The “fort blue” track, I got the main chords and drum/foley as stems and then added new elements that differ to the original. So on this level there is a readapting to create something new or eventful which differs from the usual track to support “liveness”. I created an FX rack to Marco that is essentially a with a low cut and a reverb wet dry signal mapped to one knob, so this is a clean way to bring certain melodic sounds in and blend and into textures on the fly, you hear this in the intro for example, as I leave the live looping stuff and enter into the first song.
So with building an alternate arrangement from the core stems bounced from the original project, I and created parameters of performance, aka planned areas to be improvised with, eg playing with pre made macro assignments to create variation and excitement and also aid in a fluid arrangement. The macros generally consisted from 2-5 assignments, with delays, reverbs, filtered and more twisted fx. A good example of this being implemented of this is from 9.15 -10.45 with all 8 fx rack knob s loaded, specifically made to twist these drums in a certain way (screenshot below), although unique variations of this are being used through out, like from 4.10 - 4.30 (and onwards) to introduce the drums.
Adding free floating audio/live recorded loop techniques
By “free floating” I mean unattached to the clock/brain of Ableton. So I’ve began doing this by adding synth flourishes played on my midi keyboard throughout, this adds a good performative element.
In the intro, I thought it fun to create loops based on the Ableton plug in Echo, to create infinity loops of a synthesiser. So the first minute is completely improvised and entirely generated on the spot. I manipulate it live with crystalliser (this effect is rife in the first half).
Aesthetics
I wanted to set “the stage” carefully following the kind of thing I found visually appealing, taking inspiration from lots of people, like christian Loffier and the way Ableton displays its performers.
I used a Panasonic Lumix g2 shooting in 4k. My cat sleeps on my desk, so she was invited to the concert. I wanted it to catch the general vibe of the room, and show what I was doing. Unfortunately on my favourite take it cut my hands, but this will be something i fix in the future. I decided to hide with a self portrait as I haven’t shown my own face on my work before, and I don’t intend to.
I had an audience of one, sparky. She helped convey the feeling of the room in her natural habitat which by my side as I work.
Reflection
I wish I ended up integrating more live audio objects, but in the end I just couldn’t fit it in with the time constraints. I would have liked to have had more time doing things like the intro with the Echo delay looping/effecting, but I’m glad I at-least go to add parts of it to the stem bases performance.
Overall I am happy with the result, although it had lots of challenges, I felt I got a good production standard with good musical content, I really focussed on getting a solid mix before starting, and felt I achieved that, which Paul mentioned is massively important. This has created a really beneficial springboard for me to launch deeper into live performance.
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God Eater 3 Review: Low Effort Manic Monster Munchin’
I’d never played a God Eater before this third entry. I’d seen them on Steam, but they were all low-quality handheld console ports. Yuck! Finally, with God Eater 3, we have an entry developed for PC claiming high-quality visuals, fast-paced combat, and a serious story!
As someone who put 100+ hours into Monster Hunter World last year, I loved the idea of getting another dose of monster hunting fun, but does God Eater 3 deliver? Absolutely on the combat side; not really on the ‘everything else’ side. Let’s dive in.
Last Gen Called; It Wants Its Visuals Back
Let’s begin with the bad. God Eater 3 looks and feels like a last-gen game. I could have sworn this was a port from a 2012 or so PS3 game because it feels like the developers accidentally built the game for last-gen hardware specs.
Some scenes have decent graphics in still images, but the in-game details are quite poor.
This low fidelity feeling is especially unfortunate considering the series’ chief competitor delivered a next-gen visual showcase with 2018’s Monster Hunter World. Whoops!
Outdated & Repetitive Content
Apart from lacking visuals, the game’s content feels outdated, too. There’s only a handful of actual game environments. These are nothing more than glorified arenas without any creative twists or clever layouts. Again, this feels so much like the developers thought they were working with PS3 era memory limitations and crafted functional but boringly basic level designs.
Yes, this is an entire arena…a couple hallways and rooms.
God Eater 3 reminds me of Dragon Age 2. Anyone remember that game? It had a handful of lame arenas you’d play over and over again on a supposedly epic quest. God Eater 3 is exactly like this.
Time and time again the game will excitedly exclaim, “Look, an epic battle awaits!” What actually loads is the same exact arena you’ve played 20+ times. Seriously? Low effort!
This location is pretty cool…but I’ve seen it dozens and dozens of times.
Attempted Grand Story; Totally Tiny Presentation
The same lack of developer effort goes for the story. The game, to its credit, attempts to tell a proper story, with ups and downs, character growth, and emotional weightiness. The game even delves into some quite dark subject matters like human rights, indentured servitude, and outright slavery.
Everybody get in their places and pose for the camera, please!
I do think at the core of God Eater 3 is an appealing story of friendship and freedom that’s worth hearing out. Sure, the dialogue is all very basic and there’s no true exploration of the game’s serious themes. But at least there’s an attempt to build a logical, thought-provoking story and world. Kudos for that.
Sadly, God Eater 3 succumbs to the all-too-common low-budget storytelling pitfalls of tell, tell, tell and show basically nothing. The game ostensibly plays out across a fictional version of Europe, but it feels like a film shot in just a few set locations.
It’s almost laughable how many scenes involve your team standing dramatically across the same backdrops over and over despite supposedly traveling to all these grand locales.
There’s a big world map for the story, but there’s actually very few in-game environments.
This lack of quality presentation kills much of the story’s momentum. If you tell me there’s an epic battle before me, you need to show me an epic battle. If you say something really matters, you’d better not totally forget about it fifteen seconds after the cutscene ends. It feels…low effort!
Here’s a nice tea time cutscene. Too bad these events don’t get expanded upon…
Despite my misgivings, by the end I did care about the story and had grown fond of my ragtag group of former prisoners and oppressed people. I genuinely cared about building a future filled with freedom and peace for my friends. Moreover, the game’s got a very strong ending and nice epilogue.
Only one with the power to resonate may pilot this ship. Thankfully, I can resonate…engage!
The Gameplay Flow
This is the flow of the entire game: load into the tiny mission hub, listen to serious talk, accept an important mission, manage your gear, warp to a tiny arena, engage in a manic brawl, get your loot, maybe see a cutscene, and then get dumped ingloriously back at the tiny mission hub to repeat. It’s not terrible… just simplistic.
Ash Crawler Chrysanthemum: Home, Sweet Home
In regard to the mission hub, most of the between-mission gameplay takes place on your own mobile base, known as an Ash Crawler. There’s real Mass Effect vibes in how you can walk around and explore your crew’s living spaces, talking with them about recent events.
However, the quality of Mass Effect isn’t present. Most of the crew banter is very basic and not voiced, and there’s not much payoff for exploring your tiny base. Low effort base design, basically.
Chatting with some of my crew, discussing philosophy.
Even more unfortunately, often the game forces you to talk to specific people at your base before you can proceed on your next story mission. It would have been nice to have some marker telling you where they’re at instead of wandering around until you find them. A minor annoyance, though, since your base is quite small.
Hyper-Combat Mania!
So far I’ve given you a bunch of reasons to not play God Eater 3, but now it’s time to get to the game’s saving grace. Yes, God Eater 3 redeems itself thanks to its wild and epic combat!
I told you the combat is manic! See me doing some crazy flip while lights flash everywhere?!
Battles in God Eater 3 have a chaotic ultra-frenzied fever dream feel to them. Yes indeed, this game has brilliantly mad fighting. So fast, so furious. Monster Hunter World looks like a slow-motion creaking antique compared to God Eater 3’s hip, stylish, and light-speed stabby-slashy-crushy mayhem!
God Eater 3 versus Monster Hunter World feels very much like Sonic versus Mario from back in the day. On one side you have the meticulously polished Mario and Monster Hunter, but what Sonic and God Eater lack in quality they make up for with a cool and confident “gotta go fast” attitude!
I think I’m winning…wait: is that my lightning or the enemies? Oh well, keep smashing!
God Eater 3 will have you rushing, flipping, slashing, bursting, and linking at break-neck speeds. Jump, double-jump, zoom across the screen, panic as you flip through your items while two gigantic beasties rip you to shreds. The poor camera finds itself dragged about, bewildered, and woefully inadequate, but when combat is this crazy, you just go with it!
Thanks to the incredible versatility of the combat systems, there’s an unexpectedly addicting rush from one combat encounter to the next. A large part of the appeal comes from the countless ways to improve your play and try new things to go faster and kill better next time around.
You can break parts of the monsters for loot and fun! Pretty orange monster part particles!
Combat Gear & Fancy Moves
What makes combat so diverse? Let’s start with the fact you get both a main weapon and a ranged weapon, unlike Monster Hunter World. You also get to pick a shield type. Then you get to select dozens of unique Arts. Those Arts can be augmented and leveled up. And all your gear can have Skills (the equivalent of Monster Hunter World’s Jewels) installed on them.
Naturally, you can also craft and upgrade your gear using monster parts. There’s numerous upgrade trees and paths for each weapon, just like Monster Hunter. Then there’s the four elements, allowing you to have weapons on hand for every monster murdering occasion.
You get a lot of strange loot from each mission. It’s all a bit confusing at first.
Beyond your gear itself, there’s many more combat moves than you’ll find in Monster Hunter World. You’ll be side-stepping, lunging, and performing crazy aerial combat that feels very much like the Devil may Cry series, interestingly enough.
To put it another way, if you enjoyed the freedom of movement of Monster Hunter World’s semi-flying Insect Glaive weapon (my personal weapon of choice), this is what every weapon can feel like in God Eater 3. When you can quickly fly around the combat space, why ever go back to boring attacks on your feet? Ponder that one!
Here’s one of the nicest looking locations. I enjoy zooming around and seeing the sights.
It’s All About Speed-Eating Delicious Gods!
In God Eater 3 we’re all about eating (called devouring) gods (big monsters), and I choose to believe God Eater 3 is called such because it does the god eating three times as fast as other games!
Everything is designed to get you into combat as quick as possible. You can get a mission, get in the arena, and get to fighting within a minute of loading the game, which makes this game perfect for quick-fix gaming.
Load the game up, start devouring monsters, and do it all over again as fast as possible!
What also cuts down on the tedium this genre is often know for is the removal of all that boring hunting for monsters so common in that one series…what’s it called…oh yeah, Monster Hunter. Basically, God Eater 3 serves up the monsters right in front of you, so get devouring!
The combat does have some issues. Many monsters fly about the arena at too-fast speeds with annoying area of effect attacks that often cancel your commands. The targeting system is wonky, and the camera doesn’t help much either. Sometimes combat does devolve into button mashing, but skilled players will learn how to deftly deal with even the most seemingly unbalanced encounters.
So Many Confusing Systems
Another problematic element with the game overall is the over-implementation of strangely worded gameplay systems. You’ve got Burst Arts, Burst Arts Effects, Engage Mode, Link Bursts, Acceleration Triggers, Charge/Quick/Air Devours, and a bunch more systems. It took me a good 10 to 15 hours to finally come to grips with what in the world the game was babbling on about in regard to all this.
There’s a lot of gear to equip and terms to study. (Yes, my weapon is called “King Baboon.”)
Music & Sound
There’s some standout music tracks in God Eater 3. You know the problem with them? Here’s a hint: it’s the same problem with all the content in the game. Yep, repetition. The excellent tracks get played over and over for every emotional or victorious story scene. There’s just not enough variety.
Sound design is minimal. Like most of the development, the game gives you just enough sound effects during combat to make things feel semi-powerful, but there’s almost no environmental audio touches. Cutscene audio has the basic stuff like footsteps, clinks of swords, and bangs of bullets, but that’s about it. Passable but not passionate (the effort…it was low).
One of the many short cutscenes between battles. Clinky clank!
Smart AI Teammates & Multiplayer
One of God Eater 3’s best features is your actually intelligent AI teammates! Perhaps the developers didn’t get the memo: AI teammates are supposed to be stupid and infuriating, duh! Yet somehow this game never once frustrated me with dumb AI. If I was downed in battle, my AI teammates would always rush to rescue me.
Throughout the entire game my companions would heal me, buff me, and help me in every single battle. They’re even powerful and capable of killing many monsters by themselves. Any Monster Hunter World player will tell you your companion AI in that game is infuriatingly stupid, so score a huge point for God Eater 3! Massive kudos to the developers!
We’re all being very serious here…meditating on how best to devour more gods.
Besides AI teammates, you are able to engage in either story-based multiplayer missions or larger 8-player “assault” missions with matchmaking (AI will fill the empty slots, thankfully). Honestly, most people will want to play this game solo since the game already features robust AI teammates. But if you’ve got a good friend to play with, that’s always fun of course!
Technical Performance
On the bright side, this game runs like a champ. It was rock solid for me, with nearly perfect framerates. This is expected given the very dated visuals and lack of complicated rendering techniques, but it’s nice all the same to have a game run very well. So kudos to the developers for delivering a quality PC game with acceptable customization options.
Difficulty & Controls
You’ll probably find the game to be pretty easy if you’re an action game aficionado. I never once in my entire playthrough wiped (had to restart a mission). You get ranked for how efficiently you complete missions, and I probably triple-S ranked (the top rank) about 75% of the missions on my first try.
Just getting another SSS rank in 5 minutes or less. It’s pretty easy, really.
Granted, I’m a serious fan of the Devil may Cry style genre that God Eater 3 borrows heavily from, but I was surprised at the ease of progression compared to Monster Hunter World. In that game I wiped many, many times, so in a way God Eater 3 was a nice change of pace. I liked being able to breeze through the game without worrying about all the micro-management of items and gear, like in most Monster Hunter games.
The game is definitely designed for a controller. The mouse movement is very sensitive, and there’s far too many weird button combinations to make keyboard usage very friendly. Even the default bindings on the controller are a bit weird. Thankfully you can rebind just about everything. I’d recommend changing the guard button to something much less obnoxious.
Dude, Where’s the Armor?!
One very lacking element in God Eater 3 is armor crafting. In fact, there is zero armor crafting. There’s zero armor at all, to be precise. There is optional cosmetic clothing crafting, but these top/bottom items are a bit boring (realistic jackets, tank tops, cargo pants). It’s like you’re shopping at some trendy shopping mall…what is this?
Do you like my raincoat and oddly-taped cargo pants? I got them on sale!
The armor department is yet another way God Eater 3 proves how woefully deficient it is compared to Monster Hunter World. Where are all the awesome looking armor sets to prove how much of an elite hunter I am? Oh…I guess the developers couldn’t be bothered to implement all that…what’s the term I’m look for here? Oh yes, low effort!
Warning: Scantily Clad Girls & Large Breasts
Yes, God Eater 3 continues the dubious anime stereotype of scantily clad girls and jiggly boobs because clearly breast physics is an important development priority over more battle locations or monster armors, right? Methinks they’re pandering to the sexualized anime crowd.
Then there’s the captain of your ship, Hilda. She’s a very strong and smart and capable woman with great voice acting and good writing. Hilda’s basically classy and awesome, but the developers gave her enormous scantily clad breasts for some reason.
Hilda is an excellent character, but her visual design egregiously clashes with her persona.
To add insult to gravity-injury, they didn’t even give her a bra…and put her in an almost bursting top. Seriously, her breasts are so large she may need breast reduction surgery. A lot of people don’t realize the very serious health problems that come along with being in the extreme end of the breast-size bell curve. Maybe God Eater 3 is trying to raise awareness of the issue? Yeah…I’m sure that’s it…
Concluding: God Eater 3’s Target Audience?
God Eater 3 is the perfect case for discounted games. The developers have chosen to give us a content-limited, low effort version of a Monster Hunter game. All told it only took a little less than 30 hours to finish every mission and obtain the highest rank gear. That’s lightning-quick compared to other games in the genre.
Besides all that, they haven’t even reached current day graphical standards. Plus they reuse the same arenas and monsters over and over. Yet they have the audacity to charge full price. Nope!
You’ll be seeing a lot of monsters up close and personal. Over and over.
However, many Monster Hunter fans will absolutely love the ultra-fast change-of-pace from the more plodding and tedious Monster Hunter World. There’s a real scrappy charm to this sort of budget monster hunting experience. It’s a bit of a palette cleanser, letting you chomp up and devour a few gods here and there before returning to the real-deal Monster Hunter World experience.
The Final God-Eating Verdict
God Eater 3 is very much a guilty pleasure sort of game. I really did love playing it, even though the whole time I fully recognized how lacking and lackluster many of the elements are. There’s fun to be had here, and the story is compelling enough that I kept dreaming of what could have been if the developers had put as much energy into this game as Capcom put into Monster Hunter World.
I just devoured this god known as Anubis. He was quite delicious. Next!
When its rival series can deliver a full-fledged modern-generation, immerse evolution of the series, God Eater 3 is simply too limited, too aging, and too stuck in the past to compete. It’s a darn shame, too, because what the genre really needs is a merging of Monster Hunter World’s quality and expansiveness with God Eater 3’s story-building and hyper-fun combat.
Once God Eater 3 goes on sale for 75% off or so, then I’d say it’s a real value and worth your time. For now, it’s probably best to avoid paying such a high price for such a low effort production.
Addictive, manic combat
Smart, helpful AI teammates
Colorful cast of characters
Comfortable mission grind
So many weapons and skills
Lengthy story, many missions
Strong ending, nice epilogue
Technically solid, runs great
A scrappy charm to it all
Very repetitive gameplay
Not enough diverse locales
Locations are basic arenas
Every mission is the same
Lacks armor crafting
Reuses enemies too often
World needs show, not tell
Outdated visuals and design
Sexualized anime stuff
Playtime: 28 hours total. Nick blazed through the main story and every optional mission in 24 hours (not nonstop!). Another 4 hours was spent farming for the best end-game gear. And that was that!
Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using an Intel i7-3930k CPU, 32GB of memory, and a nVidia GTX 980 Ti graphics card.
Also read the God Eater 3 PC Performance Analysis.
God Eater 3 Review: Low Effort Manic Monster Munchin’ published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/
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Sonic Movie Franchise Concepts
This.......I've been wanting to make this yet I'm nervous. Including I discarded the intro making the first time. Yet just I feel this needs to be made. But I was thinking DeviantArt or Tumblr first. Then I thought maybe Tumblr cause I'm a bit more popular here. I'm gonna say this all of this is mainly a parody yet I'm wanting to be honest. The whole Sony Sonic movie 2018 gets to me and the fact I've thought of ideas for a franchise. I'm really wanting to share stuff like quotes and synopsises which are explaining what the story is in a short way you know. I was really inspired but I did not want to rip off this persons funny picture thing with Kevin Fiege and Zack Snyder. Let me say I really like both of them, I like both MCU and the DCEU. They are both not perfect and mainly...this is a parody thing but it's me being honest. Including with myself. I'm thinking yeah copying this and putting it on DeviantArt. So let's get started. GeekGemCorduroy: "Hey there I'm GeekGemCorduroy, and I'm a Sonic fan with ideas and concepts of how I feel about the Sonic The Hedgehog series as a film franchise that's questionable yet good intentions of being great as best it needs to be" Serious side of GeekGem: "umm okay nice start a bit questionable like you said" GeekGemCorduroy: "I have no history in film making, or even being involved yet I've learned some things and keep thinking ideas that I feel would work. Also I hate Studio interference bullshit yet I really wanna make the best movies possible and hope the make the greatest video game movies ever made" Serious Side Of GeekGem: "Worrisome yet it's just ideas and the intentions are there and they are great. Yet wait you said movies wait I understand and you want to say more of more great video game movies" GeekGemCorduroy: "I've been a Sonic fan my entire life. Even at times I feel silly of myself yet I really like the franchise cause it seriously means a lot to me. The concept of a movie is a serious thing cause like what people say movies are more accessible to everyone and you need to do a damn good job. When it comes to my films I wanna remain authentic and true to the meaning of the characters and why people liked them. Along with making necessary changes to the characters story and looks to fit with how where going. Yet also I wanna make them badass everyone's a BADASS! Yet also give them depth. Including to characters I feel need depth cause I want to make them more interesting. Make everyone deep as best and much as you can or some what, more emotion so people can take it serious like how I do. Make the stories on a epic scale in a way" Serious Side Of GeekGem: "okay...just asking are these films live action or animated okay you wanna be animated. Including that's all really good. Yet I feel you need to remember even if Sonic has had serious stories it depends of how it's written. You are making a movie or movies about a blue hedgehog who runs very fast that destroys robots. You need to be careful" GeekGemCorduroy: "Realism hmm kind of weird yet imagine how the world would react to animals with God like powers, they take it seriously yet question why do they looks like cartoons and shit. Also don't worry theirs color cause color makes thing stand out. Product placement haven't thought of much I mainly wanna create knock off parody versions of places like restaurants, and not reference any other media thing in case of weird crossover. But I think I want some Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Target, Me N Ed's, and Little Cesar's Pizza product placement, that's the good shit. Sure yeah but I don't wanna put it in your face it's a little thing it's just there, we don't wanna make it too distracting" Serious Side Of GeekGem: "......that's mainly good yet I'm questioning the final part of that. He's right about product placement" GeekGemCorduroy: "I wanna tackle certain themes and story. Such as we need more positivity in the world, having the courage to stand up to opposers, family being important and how far would you go, that at times you may need help. Developing relationships between characters cause that makes the world more believable and you care about characters. Yet I also want people to react to a God like beings which are at times animals, and robots, along with other things. Including literally Sonic going to a court hearing and official's questioning do we need a Sonic The Hedgehog which makes him question himself and it honestly breaks him. Also in the same movie people realize we need a hedgehog to save our asses but help him too in the same movie where he's dealing with the God Of Destruction in his perfect form. Also robots questioning their life such as Metal Sonic who at times in my fan fiction ideas has had thought about commiting suicide cause his whole purpose in life and how he is and depressing, yet that's revealed in a Metal Sonic spin off comic if Archie Comics can do it. Also themes like corruption like Eggman or Robotnik named in this universe Eggman's an insult mainly by Sonic and others, that Eggman has the power that he's friends with certain powerful people. Including give a brutal comeback to these people then realize you'll be worse then them. Also Shadow and Chaos realizing the world has changed and not to stereotype cause they focus all of their anger in one thing. Chaos is a bit more simple, yet Shadow is more deep, cause he doesn't wanna let go of Maria and is straight up helping the plan go forth, getting the footage of Gerald's exucation, playing it for the world, GUN doesn't destroy the ARK in case if they wanna destroy a hostile country. I really don't like governments, Shadow knows what he's doing and to change his mind he almost kills somebody who found tapes of what happened 50 years ago. Including when Shadow see's other trying to protect this character he realizes the monster he's been wanting to destroy. He has PTSD and is mentally ill. Seriously he doesn't like to cry and hearing the name Maria said by someone else unless it's him or Gerald get him upset. It's genius and emotional also fixing plotholes makes it better too! Also the idea Shadow along with Sonic but it's mainly Shadow saves the planet, gets stabbed, they think he's killed including he falls to the Earth. People legit make a statue of him in memory cause he sacrificed himself. It's deep just like Metal Sonic having Sonic's memories freaking out and asking why Sonic said Amy, Super Sonic fighting but also talking to Chaos that the world's changed, also E-102 Gamma at Station Square too deciding if he should live or release the bird, and Amy and Metal Sonic see Gamma blow his face off with a gun releasing the Flicky. Along with Metal Sonic giving a Chaos Emerald to Sonic realizing robots like him can think beyond his Ai it inspires and the world needs more positivity. It's serious yet meaningful. The themes are strong here man" Serious Side Of GeekGem: "......that first part was good but the rest.....I understand Sonic Adventure 2 was dark, just.....that's a bit ummm extreme okay not really. People are gonna question that a bit I understand wanting a deeper story with themes but you have to be careful" GeekGemCorduroy: "I wanna take time with world building cause give it time. Including that idea of a Sonic cinematic universe I got some time ago. Let's build stuff up first yet in the first movie we have Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy Rose, Dr. Ivo Robotnik/Eggman, and Metal Sonic in the same movie. Along with mixing story stuff from Sonic 1, 2, 3 and Knuckles, CD and even the OVA cause I want to make a new version of the, "Strange Isn't It". The Death Egg is part of all of this too. Including human characters that are important but Sonic is still the main one. Yeah theirs no Little Planet but maybe later. Including were not going off stuff like comics mainly video games cause Archie might not like that, also Ken Penders is stupid. The game characters are more important, give them more meaning. Yet maybe the OVA, X, Sonic Boom are okay if Sega allows it hope so. Don't worry some characters have already met. Mainly Sonic and Knuckles haven't met" Serious Side Of GeekGem: "so wait your taking elements from those games and even a cinematic universe. Okay I like it that your taking your time but seriously be careful man" GeekGemCorduroy: "we want to plan carefully which is why the story of Sonic Adventure is the first sequel, and Sonic Adventure 2 is the 2nd sequel. I wanna do a Unleashed adaption but we have to wait. Including dropping a few easter eggs here and there. Yet I really want Metal Sonic so he's in the first film cause he needs more love, and makes the film more interesting and meaningful cause Metal is awesome" Serious Side Of GeekGem: "It's good your planning carefully. Yet you need to be careful" GeekGemCorduroy: "I'm mainly a crowd pleaser. I wanna impress both general audiences and fans alike. We wanna put easter eggs such as a mention or a reference if you see something. Yet they won't be important for the movie their in, sometimes in the background, or mentioned causally like Eggman being related to Gerald, and also even post credits and end credits scene cause those help. Even one setting up the first sequel about Chaos, and after that setting up the second sequel about Shadow and how it connects with the first sequel. Along with even a scene during the credits with Eggman's robots finding Shadow on Earth unconscious, in a huge meteor like crash hole and he's still alive. Also I thought of cool titles that reference and are important to the movies such as Sonic The God Of Destruction hope other world countries don't mind that, and Sonic The Ultimate Lifeform. Really cool and I thought about putting the word the for the Chaos one. Sorry also.....yeah I guess everyone yet I like to put deep stuff in it. I really want people to understand why Sonic is loved and that they can like it too, maybe they could become a fan. Give them a good movie, that's what's important. So yeah I guess all ages I forget that at times" Serious Side Of GeekGem: "the fact you forgot about that kind of worries me oh wait you forgot that at times" GeekGemCorduroy: "I'm not perfect yet if theirs a problem we'll fix it yet...the deepness it's good.....along with I want these to be fresh on Rotten Tomatos" Serious Side Of GeekGem: ".....I'm gonna be honest no offense I thought this would be more crazy" GeekGemCorduroy: "I'm GeekGemCorduroy and I want to make a really good Sonic film that makes millions or billions at the box office also I REALLY WANT THAT SONIC MOVIE IN 2018 TO BE GOOD sure Disney would be better yet still petty of them cancelling Wander Over Yonder savewoy, yet the Marvel and Star Wars films but why Sony maybe Disney thinks they have enough yet imagine if Disney Infinity was around Sonic Disney Infinity figures but also less risk yet it's more safe but yes a PG-13 Sonic film like the rumors said or were they true.......I wanted to mention this Serious Side Of GeekGem: ".....I don't know this is a parody" I just got up and.....just saying I was looking at the picture from DeviantArt ha..... Was trying to find good tags ha and...I'm the kind of guy forgot to mention this who doesn't like the custom character much in Sonic Forces...lol meh it's normal to smile a lot even now I made this littertly
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