#Where he was once a victim of hatred he lashes out with the same hate against the spiriters | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

inkykeiji · 3 years

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you be the match, i will be your fuse

fluffy anon said: dabi coming home after an absolutely horrid day at work and just needing to be absolutely BABIED by reader (i’m talking cuddling in bed, taking a bath with him and washing his hair then getting out just rubbing his back as he sleeps with his head on your chest)

genre: angst + fluff, laced with just a hint of smut (like two sentences)

notes: aaaah happy birthday dabi!!! this has absolutely nothing to do with your birthday but eeee ily | title cred: sure thing by miguel

warnings: 18+, implied/mentioned death of a child, one instance of implied past physical abuse, self-destructive behaviour + coping mechanisms, co-dependent toxic relationship

words: 3.5k

It’s thundering the day it happens, ferocious growls that rumble through your apartment—a tiny, quaint space you share with Dabi, full of faulty appliances and cracked linoleum—rolling, fluffy grey clouds blanketing the entire sky, swollen with restrained rain droplets as a storm brews within them. Little fingers idly toy with the yellowed pages of your worn pulp fiction novel, flipping through them and bending corners as your eyes search the angry sky, chewing on your cheek.

Dabi should’ve been home by now. It’s not like him to be late without calling, without letting his babygirl know what’s going on—he knows the way you worry, the way you overthink yourself into a frenzy, the way you’re so clingy and needy, teases you about it incessantly and tells you he thinks it’s cute—and a deep sense of dread takes root in the pit of your stomach, dark and bitter and unfurling, quickly spreading throughout the cavity of your chest.

His phone must be off—no, it’s never off, he doesn’t do that anymore, not since you stumbled into his life—his phone must be dead, your repeated calls growing increasingly frequent and urgent every time you’re greeted with the drone of his automatic voicemail.

Something’s wrong, horribly so.

It’s evident the moment he arrives home, scratched brass doorknob slamming against the wall, deepening the crater its left from past incidents of a similar manner.

It infects the air around him, hanging heavy and thick, its dense presence nearly suffocating. His shoulders slump under the pressure, the weight of whatever he’s carrying practically crushing, as he drags his crimson splattered boots through the front door, soles scraping against the cheap hardwood, bringing the putrid scent of charred flesh with him—his or someone else’s, you don’t know.

You swear you can almost see it, this—this thing, this aura, enveloping him in its haughty embrace as his chest heaves under a deep, controlled breath, pausing in the foyer as the door shuts behind him.

Bare feet pad against the floor, your legs moving without your explicit permission, drawn towards him in an almost instinctual manner, the desire to care for, to comfort, burning as it bubbles up in your chest, mixing with that intense sense of trepidation and invading your veins.

He permits you to wrap your arms around his torso as you nuzzle against him, body going rigid for a moment, still and stiff as marble, before he exhales again, melting into your embrace.

Several questions race through your mind at such a speed that they crash and clash together, becoming nothing more than incoherent jumbled lettering, tiny fingers curling in the fabric of his clothing as you try to pull him closer, nonsensical babbling spilling from your lips. A vacant ghost of a chuckle leaves his lips, nothing more than a simple huff of breath, and he squeezes you closer.

“Bad day?” the words are mumbled against his dirty t-shirt, what was once a pristine white now tarnished with ash and blood. You don’t get a response—you don’t expect one.

He doesn’t talk much, not on days like this.

He doesn’t need to.

Bad days—really bad, terrible, awful days such as this one—are surprisingly rare with Dabi. Sure, he’s had the typical ‘bad’ day before, where someone pisses him off, or he gets into a fight with his superior, but those bad days usually require railing you into your creaky, springy king-sized mattress until you’ve forgotten everything but his name and he’s fucked all of the anger and hatred out of his body.

They are not like this one. No, on days such as this, on days where he’s killed someone he deems to be innocent, someone who—like him—is a victim of heroism, he’s quiet, distant, unpredictable, bordering on unhinged, and you’ve learned to tread with extreme discretion.

But you don’t push, either, resolving to communicate through gentle touches, soft fingertips that run along his tense, broad shoulders and press into the hard coiled muscles, tender fingers that thread through inky tufts of hair, sapphire eyes closing as he hums and leans into the motion like a cat.

It’s only for a second, though, just a moment of weakness before he’s breaking out of your embrace, pushing past you and clearing his throat, glass door to the balcony sliding shut a moment later.

You don’t follow. You know better than that now, a phantom sting in your cheek serving as a reminder, the resounding sharp sound of glass shattering as it’s hurled at the floor slicing through your mind with such viciousness it makes you wince.

Instead, you sit. And you wait. Like you’re supposed to, like a good little girl, a book clutched between your quivering hands, unblinking eyes staring at the words on the page, nothing but incomprehensible symbols—lines and lines of black ink in meaningless shapes—as scorching sapphire loops through your mind.

Be a good girl, give him space, let him come to you. Be a good girl, give him space, let him come to you. Be a good girl. Give him space. Let him come to you.

It’s standard procedure, really.

And eventually, he does, comes back inside with an empty bottle of whiskey clutched in a hand, along with a crumpled package of cigarettes. You don’t know how long it’s been, muscles sore and joints aching from sitting in the same position for so long, eyes dry from staring at the same page, barely moving, barely breathing. His hand is bleeding, knuckles bruised and gleaming with sticky scarlet that’s still fresh and flowing, but it could be worse. It has been worse.

The harsh clink of the bottle against the kitchen counter makes you flinch, and he sighs, heavy and full of derision, eyes flicking up to glare at your side profile.

“I can hear you thinking,”

“You’re filthy, baby,” the words tumble past your lips, uncontrollable, involuntary, almost reflexive in your response, eyes snapping to his face and voice whiny, voice pleading. “Take a bath with me,”

And you can see it—can see it in the dark cobalt of his irises, what he needs, the very thing he’s fighting himself on, the very thing he’s fighting so hard against. Always so stubborn, so reluctant, so cautious.

Because, fuck, he used to be able to resist it, this pathetic ache for comfort—something that’s only managed to grow in your presence, that’s shifted and morphed from a dull smoldering to a raging fire, an insatiable longing for your fingers in his hair and your breath on his skin and your voice against his ear—a skill he’d been constructing, developing, perfecting, since he was thirteen years old. A skill you succeeded in shattering in the matter of a few measly months.

Because you—you’re different. And he hates it sometimes, he swears to the good Lord he does, but hating it doesn’t make it any less true. You break him down, you make him weak, you make him want, and the longer he spends around you, the more he finds that he doesn’t fucking care. And that’s irritating, that’s exciting, that’s terrifying, that’s new.

Fury blisters his chest, his lungs, his throat as he holds your stare, jaw clenching twice. But you don’t falter, not like the rest of them, not like anyone else—everyone else. You never falter, always so eager to see the good in him, a snort leaving his nose at the thought. The good in him. Is there any good left in him? Was there ever any good in him in the first place? Are you the good in him, now? Does he care?

And he’s not sure he’ll ever understand it, but he’s beginning to realize that, maybe, he doesn’t have to.

Maybe, it doesn’t matter. Maybe, it’s okay, if you love him, if he loves you.

Maybe.

It’s too much, and he can feel frustration stinging his eyes, long delicate eyelashes fluttering as he quickly blinks it away. Spears, sharp and cold, splinter your chest at the sight, but you know if you begin crying too, you’ll lose him. You know that if you begin showing what he considers weakness, he’ll pull away, even though this is what he so clearly needs most.

So you steel yourself, swallowing hard against the pain collecting in your throat, will the tears away and force your body to stay calm, approaching him slowly as if he’s some sort of feral animal prone to lashing out.

Apprehension is clear in his azure eyes, head tilting a little as they narrow, regarding you with skepticism, with suspicion.

It’s bold, and dangerous, and—as far as Dabi’s concerned—fucking stupid, but you don’t care, determined to prove to him that you aren’t going anywhere regardless of how many tantrums he throws, no matter how many times he hurts you in his anguish. It’s almost desperate, really, this sheer need to prove to him that you aren’t scared of him, that irrespective of how soft he seems to think you are, you are strong, even if it’s in ways he could never understand, that you can be strong for him, when he needs it, that he can borrow some of your strength, if he needs to.

And that—that’s why he loves you. It hits him hard, as this realization always does, kicks him in the chest and knocks the breath out of him every time, and he’s not sure he’ll ever get used to it.

A tiny hand hangs in the air between the two of you, Dabi regarding the offer with a wary hesitance. Wiggling fingers attempt to entice him, earning a tiny smirk—a massive victory—as sapphire flits up to gaze at you through thick lashes, an eyebrow raised.

You match his expression, quirking an eyebrow of your own and nodding at your hand, speaking a moment later.

“Let me in, baby,” the words are barely above a whisper, but they’re so raw, filled with so much unadulterated love it hurts, pure and real and everything he’s never had before. “Let me help,”

And, God, it’s fucking overwhelming, how badly he wishes to give in to this unfamiliar compassion, how desperately he desires your affection, despite the malicious voice echoing off the walls of his skull, berating him for being so pathetic, so weak, so vulnerable.

But the urge to accept, to seek out consolation in you, wins, just as it always does, that nasty voice reverberating in his mind silenced the very instant his skin touches yours.

You let him make the last move, allow him to make that final decision entirely on his own accord, to grasp your hand in his, warm and rough, and pull you towards him, crushing you against his chest as he buries his face in your hair, eyes squeezed shut against that annoying burn of tears, chest stuttered with a hitched breath, air that gets caught in his throat as he chokes on the words he wants to say.

But he doesn’t need to say them. You already know.

“Come,” you murmur to him, fingers threading through the tufts of hair at the nape of his neck. “Let’s take a bath,”

✰ ✰ ✰

The bathwater stings your skin, just a hint too hot to be comfortable, but you say nothing as you settle onto his lap in the cramped little tub, encompassed by frothy bubbles, dainty scent of orange citrus tickling your nose.

Heated fingertips press into your hips as he finds comfort the only way he knows how to, in your precious little whimpers and broken moans of his name as he bounces you on his cock, so vigorously you’re positive you can feel him in your tummy, the pads of his fingers searing his prints into your skin.

It’s heady, it’s intoxicating, it’s addicting, heightened emotions both pleasant and unpleasant swirling together with the symphony of your cries and his grunts as the water you’re submerged in begins to bubble and boil, to crack and pop, sudsy liquid sloshing over the side of the tiny tub as he forces you to ride him, faster and faster and faster until you’re whining and convulsing around him, and he’s filling you with thick cum, cock throbbing aggressively as he spurts load after load into you.

After, as he leans back against the cold tile, residual droplets sizzling into steam as his heated skin touches them. Gentle fingers card between his hair, water cascading through onyx strands as it pours over his head from a worn plastic cup—a faded Darth Vader staring back at you as you rhythmically repeat your actions until the tresses stick to his forehead and cheeks, drenched and shining in the low light of the washroom.

Heavy lids obscure the most brilliant sapphire from you as shampoo is massaged into his scalp, slow and unhurried and thorough, every stroke, every comb through inky clumps easing the turmoil in his mind bit by bit, calming the storm that’s been raging inside of him for hours now. Deep hums rumble in his chest as your fingers continue their ministrations, your eyes trained on your motions. And you can feel it, the tension dissipating from his body with each circle of foam rubbed into his soft hair, shoulders finally beginning to relax as he subconsciously nuzzles into your touch, following it, longing for it, aching for more.

He shifts then, after you’ve rinsed the soap from his hair, manhandling you into a position between his thighs, bare chest pressed tightly against your back. You work hard to keep your body from tensing, forcing your breathing to stay even, to stay calm as you brace yourself for what’s coming next.

“He was eleven,” he says after several long moments of silence, voice low and trembling, hoarse and heavy with remorse. “This time.”

This time. That’s the third innocent civilian—innocent by his standards, at least—this month.

That’s the first time it’s ever been a child.

You don’t turn around to look at him, not yet—he isn’t finished—simply opting to lace your fingers through his and bring your joined hands to your lips, kissing each wounded knuckle, crude staples catching in the dim warm light of the tiny bathroom.

You want to tell him it wasn’t his fault, even though it was. You want to tell him anything that’ll make him feel better, that’ll absolve the guilt so evidently gnawing away at his insides, even though you know there’s nothing you can say.

“What are—I don’t even—” his voice breaks and you feel his chest stutter against your back, feel him exhale harshly, breath cool on your damp shoulder, feel him swallow thickly as he tries again. Because as much as he doesn’t want to admit it, as much as he would never admit it, you know he needs release this from the confines of his mind—you know you’re the only person who can offer him such an outlet. “Why the fuck were there kids there in the first place? Huh? They shouldn’t—They shouldn’t have been there,”

Orphans are everywhere in this city, you murmur, lips moving against his rough skin. He knows. Orphans of heroes. He knows.

“I’m gonna kill Shigaraki, I swear to Christ. Sending us to a—a fucking place infested with fucking ch-children,” his fingers curl around yours, hand beginning to shake as it clutches you like a lifeline, like that guilt will devour him from the inside out, like he’ll disintegrate into nothingness, if he doesn’t. “I bet you he fucking knew—nah, I-I’m positive he did. Asshole only cares about himself, though. Doesn’t matter that—that the cause we’re supposed to be fighting for affects these stupid kids,”

You’re right, love.

The words leave your lips in a gentle breath, leaning your head back against his collarbone and staring up at him. Cobalt eyes stay trained on the cracked tile wall, jaw methodically clenching as his molars grind together, an attempt to quell the trembling of his chin, exhaling hard harsh breaths through flared nostrils.

“Whatever,” he huffs, voice still wavering and not nearly as self-assured as he wishes. “Th-That brat shouldn’t have been there in the first place,”

He shouldn’t have, you agree, finally squirming in his grasp, turning to face him, to straddle his hips again in the tight space of the tub. And he welcomes your affections readily this time, arms encircling your waist as he holds you tightly to him, blunt nails digging purple-tinged crescents into your flesh as he shoves his face against your neck, finally allowing those emotions he’s been fighting to leak from his eyes and absorb into your skin.

Little palms rub soothing circles into his back as he shudders against you, allowing him to empty his soul onto you as soft lips press chaste kisses to his damp hair, waiting until there’s nothing left, until his eyes are drained, azure glassy and bloodshot, nose twitching and red.

And after he’s done, when he finally pulls back, scrubbing aggressively at his nose as tiny sniffles hitch in his chest, gentle fingers begin to lather soap into his skin, washing away the dirt and grime and blood from the day. Fingertips carefully trace along the metal sutures decorating his body with immeasurable adoration, you whispering all of the things he so desperately needs to hear that he’d never dare to ask for, complimented by the tender touches that cleanse his soul with their unconditional love.

He’s bigger than you are, but that doesn’t stop you from trying to wrap him in a fluffy white towel, using another in an attempt to dry his hair as your hands move in shaggy motions, heart soaring in your chest when you pull a soft laugh from his lips, wet and wobbly and croaky, but a laugh nonetheless.

A mutual silence, gentle and comforting and stuffed full of an immense love, a special kind of love, a love words do not exist to explain, swathes your bodies as he allows you to dress him, pulling a ratty old band tee over his head and a pair of plaid PJ pants up his legs.

“You always look so cute in my clothes,” he rasps from his spot perched on the edge of the bed, glowing crystal eyes watching as you pull one of his t-shirts over your naked body.

A genuine bubble of laughter erupts from your throat as you climb into bed with him, immediately allowing him to latch onto you, to pull you towards him, to hold you close like his own personal plushie.

“Sleep,” you murmur as the two of you settle into a comfortable position, limbs tangled together, his head resting on your chest, fingers threading through his hair and then tracing down his neck, his back. “And then I’ll make you ramen,”

“The spicy kind?”

“Of course,”

I love you.

“Extra spicy?”

Laughing again, you feel his lips curve into a smile against your skin, grip around your torso tightening. “Extra spicy. Now, rest,”

More than anything else.

“With the little fish cakes?”

“Your favourite little fish cakes,”

More than words could ever tell you.

“And the pork belly?”

“And the pork belly,” you feel his chest rise with an inhale, hastily adding, “And those little cream puffs you love so much, from that dingy convenience store downstairs, for dessert. Now sleep, baby,”

He laughs, even though his vision is blurring, even though it comes out more strangled than anything else, because he doesn’t want to cry again, because his chest stings and aches and swells and warms, full of inexplicable emotions, feels like it’s going to fucking burst as it chokes and reinvigorates him all at once, and—God, he loves you, he loves you, he loves you.

Because even though he’s terrified beyond belief, he’s willing to try—just for you, only for you—as he continually realizes with each passing day that he isn’t sure what the fuck he’d do without you, now. Because you’re too entangled up in his life, too deeply embedded in his very soul, for him to ever remove you, now. Because as petrifying and unfamiliar as it is, he doesn’t want to, now.

Because even though he’s broken, irrevocably so, and you can’t fix him, won’t fix him, you’ll still stay, to hold those pieces so gently, so tenderly in your hands, you’ll still protect those fragments and keep them from shattering further, you’ll still give them the affection and devotion they need, the affection and devotion they deserve. Because you love every part of him, even the bad ones, even the shards with jagged edges that cut into the soft flesh of your palms every time you caress them.

Because you accept him wholeheartedly, flaws and all, and that’s—he’s never experienced anything like that before, this unlimited, unreserved, unquestioning love. And although he doesn’t know how to say this, isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to find the right words to communicate it, he’s beginning to learn that unfamiliar doesn’t always mean bad; that sometimes, it’s okay—it’s good—to be vulnerable. He’s beginning to learn that with you, in the warmth of your shitty little apartment, with the stove that only has two functioning burners and the fridge that’s perpetually too cold, he can be, without judgement, without fear, without trepidation.

Because you are his only salvation, and he wouldn’t trade this for the goddamn world.

#dabi x reader #dabi x you #dabi #todoroki touya #dabi fluff #dabi angst #aaaah this HURT #anyway big big big thank yous to mister for helping me come up with what we think dabi's favourite food would be #HAPPY BIRTHDAY DABIIIIIII

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izzymcfeegles · 3 years

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Yet another post about Sebastian Stan:

I'm seriously tired of making these posts, but over the past few days, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding Sebastian's most recent IG post, and as a result,more things are resurfacing and its become impossible for me to ignore. I'm going to try my best to give a fair assessment, but if I'm being honest, this all appears to be a pretty troublesome pattern of behavior. Before I get into any of that, I think it's important to mention where I stand on cancel culture. As someone who is a longtime fan of wrestling and classic rock, I'm no stranger to seeing some of my favorite artists act in ways that would be considered unacceptable by today's standards. I do think that stan Twitter has a tendency to be a bit harsh when it comes to judging things that people have done in the past. That being said:

Context is important. The reality is that there were many things that were considered to be socially acceptable at one point in time, that we've since learned can be harmful, particularly to those who are marginalized on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. Something that was considered to be acceptable 2005, we later find can be toxic and harmful. Do I think it's productive to cancel for someone for something they did decades ago that was considered to be acceptable at the time? Not necessarily. However, if this person continues to exhibit the same behaviors to this day, then yes, they should be rightfully taken to task.

In Sebastian's case, he has a documented history of saying and doing things that are ignorant and tone-deaf. In the early 2010's he made an comment about playing Bucky as a "transvestite," a word that is considered to be dated and offensive to Trans people. If I'm being honest, if I saw the interview the date it aired, I probably wouldn't have blinked twice as I was not as educated on Trans issues at that time. I now know that the comment was unacceptable and hope Sebastian does too.

Regarding the Jeff!Seb pedo memes, I'd be lying if I said my edgy 2009 self wouldn't have found them funny at one point, however in 2017, my adult self was not amused. And coming from someone who was playing an abuser at the time, liking those memes was a bad look. Same goes for the Kneegate meme, especially when you consider the amount of hatred black NFL players were receiving from people including the President of the United States for kneeling in protest during the national anthem. It was tasteless, tone-deaf, and he should have known better. The fact that his "apology" over the incident was surrounded by quotes, and as some fans speculated, copied and pasted did not help matters. Mind you, many fans were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and forgive him, and for a while things seemed okay.

Fast forward to 2020. After the man made it a point to shame Miami spring breakers for vacationing during the pandemic, he is seen months later vacationing in Ibiza and later Tulum. The fact that he used his money and Romanian passport to go on vacation while many of us were either stuck at home or worse, putting our lives at risk to put food on the table, understandably did not sit well with many people, especially when taking his previous comments about pandemic vacationers into account. The fact that his traveling partner is a socialite who has a history of doing cultural appropriation, including doing brown face and using the word "savage" in reference to her friend doing a native war cry made it sting even more. I'm not going to go into depth about her because she doesn't deserve the attention and this is about holding Sebastian accountable, but the fact that he is still with her and they appear to be inseparable, it's clear that her history of CA is a non-issue for him. Make what you will of that.

Moving to recent actions. The current project Sebastian is working on is controversial in its own right. As someone who has been a Mötley Crüe fan for almost 20 years, I am familiar with the history of that relationship and how toxic is was and will never defend Tommy and the abuse Pamela suffered at his hand. While my issue is mostly with the producers, it doesn't change the fact Sebastian and Lily are still willfully participating in a series that Pamela herself does not wish to be made.

Sebastian's most recent post seems to be catalyst for the most recent wave of Twitter outrage. I am well aware that Tommy is/was a practicing Buddhist and that things like Buddha statues were part of his home decor. That's not the issue. The issue lies in the face Sebastian chose to make in the photo where he appears to be prying to the statue, along with the caption "find your zen fuckerz." Once again, I am aware of Tommy's speech patterns and get that it was "in character," but to use the combination of that photo and that caption as a non-Buddhist, it's understandable why some Buddhist fans were offended and saw it as disrespectful. And as a non-Buddist, I don't think it's right to tell these people what they should and should not be offended by.

So for those of you who hate paragraphs, TL/DR:

Sebastian has a documented history of ignorant behavior and posts and as of now does not seem to be interested in addressing these things and learning about why the aforementioned behaviors are problematic and why some fans are hurt. This is not okay and we should not be defending him.

I understand that for many of you, he has been a source of joy. Bucky is still my comfort character and I will always be grateful to Seb for portraying the him with the nuance and care he deserves. I'm not asking anyone to stop staning Bucky or to take down your Seb x Reader fanfics. Life is short and you're entitled to the things that make you happy. Just understand that his actions have hurt a lot of people and why fans are upset and lashing out. While I do not condone any threats or doxxing aimed at his direction, the same goes to people who criticize him. I've seen people go to some vile lengths to defend him, from going after Pamela, a victim of abuse, to telling Buddhists how they should feel about their own religion, to anons telling the blogs who call him out to go kill themselves. None of this is ok. At the end of the day, Sebastian is a 38-year-old white man who has a great deal of money and influence and has more social capital than the people calling him out. He will be fine regardless of what happens and does not need people to protect him. The same cannot be said about the people he hurt through his actions.

#thats my ted talk folks. thanks for coming #if you're not happy with any what i posted i suggest you either do some relfecting or keep scrolling but dni. i am not here to debate #just getting my thoughts out #sebastian stan

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evolutionsvoid · 3 years

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Serpent of Hate, Guardian of the Wrathful River, Styx is one of five aquatic beasts that dwell in the rivers of the Underworld. Her territory is within the most famed river of this realm, both their names found upon many tongues in the mortal world. The two share the same winding body, slithering through the depths of the Underworld. In this twisting home, she spends all of her time patrolling its waters and shores, keeping an eye out for any who may intrude. Of all the rivers in the Underworld, hers is the one that receives the most warnings. It is not just the trapped souls who are told to avoid these waters, it goes to the regular denizens, guards and higher-ups as well. Do not even dip a single toe into this river, as it is a death sentence to any who violate it. As the regulars down below often say, "there is a reason no one else guards these shores." If one takes a dip or tries to cross this river to escape the Underworld, the wrath of this horrific serpent will come crashing down like a tsunami. The waters will surge and churn, as the massive creature barrels through the depths. All victims usually see is a wave of blue and teeth, then darkness. While all the other rivers of this realm are incredibly dangerous, there is a reason this one is most avoided. Of all the other beasts, she is the strongest by far. Her incredible length and muscly bulk makes her entire body a weapon. Charging through the waters at lightening speeds, she can strike an opponent with the force of a typhoon, obliterating ships and mortals, while sending more durable foes flying. Her length allows her to coil around larger foes and crush them with her powerful muscles, while a single whip of her tail can turn humans into a fine mist. Her raw strength alone makes her a terrifying enemy, but that is not the only weapon at her disposal. In fact, she has many, all which are presented in the form of razor sharp teeth. Styx is bristling with hooked fangs and sharpened teeth, sprouting from the various maws that line her body. All of these pale in comparison to the massive jaws upon her face, as they are large enough to swallow a ship. Simply opening this toothy chasm is enough to create a powerful vortex that sucks in water, fish, vessels and victims. If that whirlpool is not enough to capture prey, her throat is lined with a multitude of clawed tendrils, each eager to seize flesh and draw blood. They reach out like blind arms and strike like hungering serpents, dragging prisoners down into her cavernous maw. Waiting for those who fall in is another boney set of jaws, one that is more suited for slicing and chewing. The glowing hooked teeth on her face are mainly used to trap prey in her mouth, while these skeletal fangs are meant to shred them. It is said that this inner jaw is capable of biting through any material, be it mortal metal or heavenly armor. Everything is devoured and sent into the abyss of her gut, regardless if they are friend or foe. Even if one is lucky to avoid this massive mouth, the rest of her body is covered with hungering teeth, each ready to clamp down on any poor soul. Once the teeth sink in, crushing muscles will pull the victim into her body, where they will be dumped into her horrible stomach. It is said that there is no death within this organ, as victims are left to suffer in this excruciating pit of acid. The wretched fumes of this foul liquid awakens buried grudges and contained anger, turning prisoners into savage, crazed beasts. They will turn on the others trapped in her stomach, turning her body in a cruel and endless bloodbath. How long one must suffer in this pit of blood and poison is unknown, but a way out is known. Eventually she will vomit out unwanted things, be it trash, pardoned sinners or beings she wasn't supposed to eat in the first place. These refuse piles are found deep in the Underworld, as she is very specific on where she dumps her gut. These are foul and miserable spots, but some denizens may be seen rooting around in the filth to find interesting objects or bizarre valuables that wound up inside her. The Styx is known as the River of Hatred, and there is no better beast to guard these waters than her. She is an incredibly angry and violent individual, constantly in a state of seething anger. She views this river as her territory and she refuses to let a single soul intrude upon it. Her insane aggression has her lash out at any beings who dare touch her water or try to cross it, regardless of their power or authority. Her senses appear to be fine tuned to this river, as she immediately knows when someone dipped their foot into it miles away. With her strength and speed, she practically teleports to the site of the offense and immediately goes on a rampage. Any who are in the water will be quickly devoured, while those on shore will be seized in her tendrils and fed to her grinding maw. Boats and dinghies are not safe from her wrath either, as she can also sense when an unwanted craft touches the surface. These vessels barely stand a chance against her, as she reduces them to splinters in moments. It is said that guards near this region of the Underworld turn a blind eye to souls that try to fashion ways of escape, as they get endless amusement from watching these fools be devoured. She doesn't seem to find it so fun, as she throws a tantrum when anyone treads her territory, even thrashing and screaming long after the last offender has been eaten. This hatred she embodies even seems to emanate from her, coming off in that strange blue glow. Those who gaze at any of her numerous lights will begin to grow irritated and frustrated. Their anger will rise with each passing moment, until they are blind with rage and throw themselves into the river to extinguish this infernal glow. Those who succumb to this spell rarely last a second in these waters, as her wrath is far greater than anything they could muster. This insane territorial nature goes with any body of water she inhabits, as she is just as furious with intruders when she winds up in the mortal realm. If she is somehow dumped into one of humanity's oceans, she will be on the warpath. Trading routes and fleets will be demolished, as she views every one of these vessels as a threat and an annoyance. Crowded waterways and popular beaches will turn into a feeding frenzy, as she swoops in to devour dozens with each gulp. While these appearances seem to be caused by random chance or cruel fate, some say Styx is actually tricked into entering the mortal realm by the rulers and denizens of the Underworld, who are desperate to be rid of her.

Though she is a valuable guardian, it is well known that Styx is not a popular member of the Underworld. Her endless rage and furious nature causes her to turn on practically anyone. It is not an exaggeration when it is said she will attack anyone who disturbs her river. Guards, officials, rulers and even gods are considered enemies in her eyes, and she will throw herself at them if they dare make a single ripple. There are many stories of her causing chaos and destruction at inopportune times, especially since the river is a sacred site for ceremonies and pledges. Many oath swearings have been ruined when an audience member accidentally disturbs the waters and summons Styx and all her fury. There was also the instance when a certain guard dog decided to take a drink from the rushing river. It took hours to pull the two screeching creatures apart, as it was a tangled chain of bloody teeth and locked jaws. There are even rumors that the god of this very realm is not safe from her fury, as she refuses to acknowledge his divinity. It has been noted that he only crosses the Styx upon the ferryman's boat, which officials claim is for ceremonial purposes. Others secretly believe it is because there is no other way he can cross without angering the vile serpent. Even though she flies into a blind rage whenever any breathing creature looks at her funny, there are a scarce few beings that Styx tolerates. It seems that the ferryman is the only sailor that can cross her waters undisturbed, as she will never bring harm to his boat. At first it was believed that his vessel had some kind of protection or spell that warded her away, but further observation has shown that she is passive around this fellow. When he is crossing the river, she will be swimming close by, keeping close to her friend and also waiting to see if any fool falls from the boat. At times he may sit upon the shores of the river, and she may rest her head upon the sand for both company and comfort. Of all the beings in the Underworld, he is the only one who can seemingly rein her in. When she starts attacking a sacred ceremony or is trying to eat some divine guest, folks are quick to find the ferryman and bring him in to stop her. Styx also seems to begrudgingly tolerate the other river keepers, always grumbling and growling but never fighting. She does admit that their respective rivers are their territory, so she does not invade them without permission. She does also observe the great marsh where the five meet as neutral ground, she is just always cranky about it. Regardless, it has been seen or heard that Styx has some hidden fondness for the other river beasts. She has been seen watching Acheron's sadistic hunting techniques and appears to enjoy the show, though if anyone asks, she will say that Acheron is an immature child who is incapable of taking her role seriously. Cocytus is often seen as an grating annoyance, with Styx having no time for her wailing. Her singing and crying is met with shouts and demands for her to shut up. Styx often chastises her for being so emotional and not getting over these stupid worries. However, Styx has been seen being quite miserable after these cruel outbursts, often hiding away somewhere to stew in self-loathing. She knows quite well that Cocytus is not the only one plagued by emotions she cannot control, and she hates herself for inflicting this pain on another victim. While she may grumble about Lethe and her absent mind, Styx is able to find peace and calmness when bathing in her forgetful waters. When hanging close to Lethe, Styx is momentarily freed from her endless anger, giving her a rare chance to relax. When she is free from this influence though, she is quick to return to her rage, suddenly thinking that this was some ruse or trick to get her to drop her guard. As for Phlegethon, Styx says that the fiery beast is a constant source of irritation with her stupid dances and vain attitude. As a vigilant guardian, she believes Phlegethon has gotten the wrong job, as there is no time for extravagant shows and grand performances. The burning slug's ego and self-praise really gets Styx wound up, and every self-compliment that arises is met by biting insults and angered muttering. Though Styx often yells and mocks Phlegethon, the two have been seen together quite often. Styx insists its because the egotistical dancer is obsessed with getting her approval, which she will never give. However, the serpent is quite bad at hiding her enjoyment of these performances or when Phlegethon gives some subtle flattery. Styx would never admit such a thing, as the burning hatred that flows through her body makes such confessions difficult. Thankfully, it seems Phlegethon is aware of this curse, and sticks close with the fuming serpent in hopes of finally breaking through. --------------------------------------------------------------------- And end it with a sea serpent! Excellent! That is the last of my Beasts of the Infernal River and boy was it a blast! I love these gals and Styx was a really fun one! This project was nice and easy for me, as there were only five this time! Now I must return to the hunt, to find the next big thing to chip away at. Hopefully I can find some other short ones, as it gets quite tough when I got to come up with ten or more unique designs for something! This is also the end of Kaijune for me! Hope you guys enjoyed what I made! Now that I am done making monsters, I can get back to making monsters!

#styx #monster #creature #sea monster #kaiju #kaijune #sea serpent #gulper eel #eel #art #drawing

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whump-tr0pes · 3 years

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Honor Bound 5 - 14

Honor Bound 5 - 14 (Forcibly Stripped) @badthingshappenbingo

Requested by @gottalovethemwriters

This is a series. Start here, continued from here.

This is a sequel to Honor Bound, Honor Bound 2, Honor Bound 3, Honor Bound 4, and the prequel Vera.

AO3

Content warning: death threats, thoughts of death throughout, self-hatred, discussion/thoughts of hanging, blood mention, noncon nudity (shirtless only), mention of parent torturing child

Gavin’s eyes were red and stinging when Schiester and his men pulled into Crayton’s main square. There was a thin line of pink along the horizon to the east, the only hint of the coming sun. Gavin swallowed hard. His throat felt dry and gritty.

I’m never going to see the sun again.

Gavin shivered. He squeezed his eyes shut at the stab of agony that went through him as he caught a hint of Isaac’s smell again. His hands clenched into fists and he winced as the zip tie rubbed against his chafed skin.

He opened his eyes and stared blankly out the window. The square looked different, without all the snow. The light posts that lined it shone in the near-dark, and the scars on Gavin’s back flared to life as he saw the post he’d been tied to and caned, months and months ago. He chewed his lip and shifted in the seat. He knew, with a strangely detached blankness, that the caning was nothing compared to what Schiester was going to do to him.

“Once you have suffered what I deem appropriate for your crimes, you will be put to death.”

Gavin’s throat bobbed and tears sprang to his eyes. I begged them to kill me. I begged Vera to kill me.

The car pulled up to the town hall and turned down an alley next to it. Gavin couldn’t find it in him to be afraid as the driver pulled into a sally port behind the town hall and turned the car off. He felt desolate on the inside, frozen, empty. The sally port door began to slowly close behind them. A light flicked on overhead, casting the garage in a dim, sickly yellow.

The sally port closed, and the guards opened their doors. Schiester stepped out and straightened his coat – thick gray wool, stretching all the way down to his knees. Gavin thought it might be the one he’d been wearing when the family first arrived in the north. He couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter. He shivered in the cold, protected by nothing but Isaac’s t-shirt. The guards reached in and roughly dragged Gavin out of the car. He sucked in a breath. His toes curled away from the freezing cement floor.

Schiester looked down at Gavin’s bare feet, and his brow wrinkled. “Where are his shoes?” he said casually, his breath fogging lightly in the cold of the garage.

“Didn’t bring them,” one of the guards grunted. His hand tightened around Gavin’s upper arm, so hard Gavin could feel it bruise.

Schiester blinked once, and then slowly brought up his gaze to look at the guard. Gavin shivered at the coldness in Schiester’s eyes, the tightly coiled violence that he kept perfectly in check.

“You what?” Schiester said, his voice carefully even.

The guard hesitated. “We… didn’t bring them. Sir.” His hands tightened even more on Gavin’s arm, and Gavin couldn’t hold back a whimper.

Schiester drew in a slow, deep breath and let it out. It fogged around his mouth like he was breathing fire. “And what,” he said softly, “Do you think his people will do when they find him missing, with his shoes still there? A coat I can almost understand. But shoes? They’ll know he couldn’t get far, and when they fail to find him…”

The guard blanched and in the cold yellow light of the garage, he looked like a wax statue – or a corpse. “Um,” he mumbled. “Sir… I apologize.”

Schiester pierced the guard with his gaze. The guard squirmed and stared at the floor. After a moment, Schiester blinked slowly and wet his lips. “Well,” he said softly, with a glance at Gavin. “At least this one’s suffering will be brief, if they come for him.” He turned on his heel and headed for a door at the back of the garage. One of the guards tripped forward to open the door for him.

The guard holding Gavin jerked him forward and dragged him towards the door, as if he was expecting Gavin to resist. Gavin stumbled forward on legs that felt disconnected from his body. His hands and feet were numb from the cold. He shivered so violently his muscles ached.

Schiester disappeared into the doorway, and Gavin was pulled behind. He blinked as he was led down a short hallway with cement walls, cement floor, and no windows, lit by the same pale lights from the garage. He panted in short, whimpering exhales that clouded in the air. Icy dread trickled down the back of his neck as he was led deep into the building – then down some stairs to the floor below.

This is what I did to Isaac, he thought with a crashing wave of despair. I paraded him through my fucking warehouse and took him down to the basement and chained him up and beat him and hurt him and— He did his best to hold down a whimper as shame pulsed dully through him.

Schiester glanced back at the sound, his footsteps echoing in the stairwell. He turned back with a slight smile on his face and said nothing.

Gavin heaved a sob and ducked his head, trying to catch another hint of Isaac from his shirt. He clutched for a shred of comfort, a moment of relief from the throbbing terror that pressed against the inside of his skull. He’ll think I hated him. He’ll think I lied. He’ll think I never loved him. I’m going to die and he’ll blame himself… I didn’t mean… Shame lashed him as he breathed in the faint scent of Isaac’s sweat and soap and skin.

He hated himself for his selfish need to keep that scrap of Isaac with him. He knew when Isaac woke up, that letter would break him. Gavin was going to break Isaac again with the rising sun, with that letter by lying to him, confirming Isaac’s worst fears – but he was desperate. He was desperate to feel something good. He could almost feel the shadow of Isaac’s arms around him as he breathed Isaac’s faint and fading smell from the shirt.

As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Gavin looked around with blank despair. His gaze went straight to a set of gallows built against the wall. A wooden platform stood about three feet in the air, with two nooses hanging from the ceiling above. There was a lever at the side of the platform that could be pulled to let the platform drop.

Gavin’s throat ached as he swallowed and choked on the memory of the rope around his neck – the burning in his chest – the bitter cold against his skin – the sound of Isaac screaming – the smell of Isaac’s blood after Schiester’s men cut him to prove Gavin was broken.

Even then. He tried to protect me even then.

He realized then why Schiester’s people tried to hang him in the square, instead of just putting him on his knees and shooting him dead with one of the pistols they carried on their hips. As his gaze moved numbly over the gallows, he knew. Schiester had been killing people like this since long before then. Gavin’s vision blurred with tears.

That’s how I’m going to die. He shuddered as he stared at the nooses, imagining how it was going to feel when one of them tightened around his neck, the rope rough against his skin, cutting off his air while he kicked and strangled and died. He wondered what they would do to his body afterwards. Would they bury him? Did they have a graveyard of innocent people killed because of the choices they made to survive? Was Gavin going to be buried with them, a killer and a sadist and a torturer beside the people he would have tortured and killed?

Gavin looked around, his heart beating faster, pounding in his chest to the thrum of his own terror. Just like the hallway upstairs, the room was cement walls and a cement floor. The ceiling disappeared in the glare of lights that made his head ache behind his eyes. Just opposite the gallows was a mirror; Gavin wondered if it was one-way glass, placed there so people could be executed without ever seeing their accusers’ faces.

Along the walls were five barred cells. They were all empty. Gavin wondered how long they ever stayed full. When Gray found out Schiester was killing people, they said one of his victims was killed the same day he’d been found. But Gavin wasn’t like the kid Schiester killed – Caleb, that was his name. Gavin glanced at the gallows and shivered as the temperature in the already cold room seemed to drop.

There was no one else in the basement. Gavin wondered, dimly, if they turned on the heat for the guards when they had someone to watch.

He hissed in a breath as the guard’s hand tightened on his arm and dragged him to the center of the room. The guard threw Gavin roughly to his knees. Gavin grunted and pulled weakly at the zip tie around his wrists. He could see Schiester’s boots as he stopped walking and slowly turned to face Gavin.

Gavin sobbed weakly as a hand gripped his hair and dragged his head up so he was forced to look at Schiester, who looked down at Gavin with a hint of vicious satisfaction on his face. Gavin pressed his trembling lips together. Words burned in his throat, filled his mouth until he felt like he would be sick if he didn’t say them.

Please. Please, don’t kill me.

A tear rolled down his cheek as he bit back the desperate plea.

Daniel Schiester tilted his head as he looked down at Gavin. Gavin squirmed under his gaze and couldn’t help but feel, not for the first time, that Schiester was looking for someone else in the lines of Gavin’s face, the set of his jaw, the frame of his shoulders. Gavin shivered and wet his lips. He could taste his own tears on his tongue.

“Y-you knew my father,” he said softly.

Schiester snorted. “Yes,” he said with a casual nod of his head. “I did.”

Gavin opened his mouth to speak again, then closed it. His knees ached against the cold floor. His stomach roiled as he wondered what his father must have done to Schiester to make him hate Gavin so goddamned much.

I’ve done enough things for him to hate me for. I’ve done so many things.

Schiester tilted his head and glanced up at the guard holding Gavin on his knees. “Alvarado,” he said softly. “Show me his scars.”

Alvarado grunted, and there was a pinch at Gavin’s wrists as the zip tie was cut away. Gavin gasped as Alvarado dragged his shirt up over his head and yanked it off his arms.

“NO!” Gavin screamed as he clawed at the shirt. He heard seams pop as Alvarado snatched it out of his grasp and kicked him onto the floor. Gavin cried out at the icy floor on his bare chest, and scrambled to his hands and knees before a boot on his back shoved him to the ground again. His breath froze in his chest.

“Interesting,” Schiester drawled above him. “It seems someone felt the need to redo Gray and Isaac’s handiwork. Did they make those cuts themselves?”

“I-it was my bodyguard,” Gavin heaved as he shivered on the floor. “My mom, my mom told him to, to hurt me so I’d… tell her how I…” Tears burned in his eyes and dripped onto the floor beneath him. His voice cracked and he heaved a sob. “Sh-she tortured me so I’d tell her how to… h-hurt Isaac.”

Schiester scoffed. “Fabricating a story like that will not spare your life, Gavin Stormbeck. I’m afraid you assume I feel enough affection for those people to be moved by the notion of you protecting them.”

Gavin sobbed weakly, and he pressed his forehead into the floor. The scars stung in the cold air. Pain pounded inside Gavin’s head, the sickness and agony of the moment when he’d broken and told his mother everything. Everything she needed to torture Isaac. Everything she could use to torment Gavin’s family, while he just stood there and watched.

The boot let up from his back, and he dragged in a breath. He lay prone on the floor, shivering, watching Schiester’s boots where they stood inches from his face. After a long moment, he dared to look up at Schiester with terrified eyes.

Schiester’s lip curled as he stared at Gavin. “Get him up,” he snapped. “And tie him. Fifty lashes, to begin his sentence. And this time, I’ll administer them.”

Continued here

@untilthepainstarts, @womping-grounds, @free-2bmee, @quirkykayleetam, @walkingchemicalfire, @inpainandsuffering, @redwingedwhump, @burtlederp, @castielamigos-whump-side-blog, @whatwhumpcomments, @cursedscribbles, @whumpywhumper, @stxck-fxck, @omega-em-z-02, @whumps-the-word, @justwhumpitwhumpitgood, @justplainwhump, @moose-teeth, @whumpywhumper, @finder-of-rings, @inky-whump, @thatsthewhump, @orchidscript, @insanitywishes, @this-mightaswell-happen, @newandfiguringitout, @whumpkitty, @pretty-face-breaker, @cinnamonflavoredhugs, @pebbledriscoll, @im-just-here-for-the-whump, @endless-whump, @grizzlie70, @oops-its-whump

#honor bound 5 #bad things happen bingo #forcibly stripped #Gavin whump #death threats #thoughts of death tw #self-loathing #Gavin/Isaac #hanging tw #blood mention tw #manhandling #noncon nudity tw #abuse tw #my oc: Gavin

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wordstro · 3 years

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omg okay so here are yeosang’s and wooyoung’s more indepth backstories in the hero/villain au because in between working on my wips I’ve been thinking about this universe as a whole a LOT lol. this also includes everyone else's powers (the backstories aren't as in depth yet) as well just a little worldbuilding establishment:

yeosang’s powers are persuasion. he was always a quiet, shy boy who liked to keep to himself. he wasn’t always quiet though, not until the day he activated his powers. when he was 13 years old, he’d been upset about something he didn’t even remember, that’s how insignificant it was, and he screamed and shouted at his parents. his mother sighed, and his father crossed his arms over his chest and said stop being a brat and tell us what happened. ironically, yeosang hated being told what to do. he stomped his foot in anger and shouted, “leave me alone! go away!”

then he turned and stomped up the stairs and slammed the door shut. when he emerged from his room hours later and tiptoed to the kitchen in search of food. the apartment was eerily quiet, the tv still running and the lights still on. he’d gone to sleep peacefully that night, unknowing that his parents would never return.

to this day he did not know where they were.

he’d lashed out a boy prodding at him during gym class, still reeling from his parent’s abandonment. he remembered the boy’s insult. you’re so useless and ugly. no wonder your parents left you, he’d spat. yeosang saw red. he hissed, “go jump off a bridge, asshole.” the boy’s eyes went blank and he turned away. yeosang stared after him in confusion but the bell rang and he was herded back to the school. the next day he learned that the boy jumped off the highway bridge still dressed in his gym uniform.

that’s when yeosang knew what he could do.

he did not speak and kept to himself since then, festering in guilt, always on the look out for his parents. in high school, he met a boy with a big smile on his face and mischief in his eyes. he witnessed one of yeosang’s bouts of anger, when he cornered some bully behind the school where the CCTVs were broken and kids came to smoke and skip class and he told him to forget about his victims and leave them alone, to focus on his grades and family and stop bullying innocent people. he’d owed one of the bully’s victims for her help with keeping him from failing math. jung wooyoung witnessed it all. the boy’s blank eyes and listless nod, yeosang’s test afterwards, everything. before yeosang could persuade wooyoung to forget, wooyoung flicked a finger and blue flames sparked to life at the tip of his fingers.

yeosang suppressed the relief and a sudden onslaught of tears at the sight, the knowledge that he was not alone anymore.

wooyoung used it to light his cigarette and wordlessly offered it to yeosang. yeosang grimaced.

i hate smoking, he’d said. me too, wooyoung replied with a grin, tossing the cigarette to the ground and grinding it with his heel. he swung his arms over yeosang’s shoulder and the rest was history.

yeosang spoke again and wooyoung helped him control his powers and outbursts. yeosang promised he would follow wooyoung to the ends of the earth. and he did, to the hero-villain alliance where he acted as a villain, to the underground meetings, to the coup, to his fights with a team he’d come to love just as strongly as he loved wooyoung. he followed wooyoung through everything and he would do it again and again. still, why did he feel so guilty? why did he feel so much regret?

wooyoung can control fire. his backstory was nothing horrifying. it was kind even compared to the others. he’d simply lost control one day, overwhelmed by emotions as teenagers are, and he burned down his house with his family still in it. he’d left severe burns on his mother and brother, but no one died. when the police came to investigate, his parents covered for him.

his mother reminded him that she loved him and stroked the tears from his face, reminded him that he’d made a mistake and she forgave him for it.

his brother said he forgave him too, but the fear in his eyes remained and wooyoung saw it. he worked to remove it but he saw it. it stayed with him. the fear changed him. not death nor hatred, just the way people looked at him when they found out what he could do, even when he played a hero.

when he and yeosang joined the hero-villain alliance, he’d basked in the kindness in their eyes and though he told himself that he would stop being soft, that he only cared for the people he cared for and that’s it, just his parents who were too old and exhausted and his brother who feared him and yeosang, the team wormed their way into his heart. he loved them. he really did.

they taught him to embrace his softness. they taught him to care. he’d been chosen as a hero by management. but he saw the injustice done to his kind. he despised the fear the public felt towards his villain counterparts, his best friends. it angered him.

because it wasn’t fucking fair. though wooyoung was soft he never agreed with peaceful protests. he believed in fighting and sacrificing for the greater good. peaceful protests rarely changed anything. the ends justified the means. always. so he staged a coup. he had to. for his people. for the world. for the greater good. he betrayed the people he loved most in the world and he would do it over and over again. for the greater good.

jongho’s powers are invulnerability/absolute durability. he has indestructible skin. it’s said he could withstand a nuclear bomb, but no one lets him try it no matter how many times jongho asks. jongho likes danger. it’s the only thing that keeps him entertained and gets him through the numbness he feels every single day. they made him a villain and jongho wondered if they knew that he feigned his optimism. he wondered if they knew how much he despised himself. he wondered if they knew that he used to beat people up just to feel something.

san’s power is intangibility. he can phase through objects by vibrating his molecules to pass through objects. recently he learned to phase his body parts so when someone tries to attack him, they fly straight through him. he tries to learn the science behind it but frankly he doesn’t care. jongho asked once if he could make his molecules turn into a nuclear beam, eyes alight with hope. san would always scold him, but he could see the sincerity in jongho’s eyes. san joined the hero-villain alliance last, plucked from jail for petty theft and given a second chance.

he loved too deeply, and he grew attached too quickly. it was a fatal flaw of his.

so when they betrayed him, yeosang and wooyoung especially, he grew so angry, he was terrified of the force of it. he never knew he could hold so much resentment, but he figures that if he could hold so much love, he could hold just as much hatred too. he fought with a vengeance with anger, but more than anything, with deep, deep hurt.

mingi’s power is light manipulation. he can manipulate light, blind people, create burning heat from it, and even create entire illusions by fracturing light particles. he’d blinded people with his power and he casted an illusion of himself, forever living in his hometown, suffering the consequences of a crime he should have been, and he fled. he’d met yunho on the streets before the hero-villain alliance and they quickly became best friends, brothers even.

hongjoong’s power is dimensional storage. he can store objects and people away for safekeeping. he’s been told that if he trained hard enough, long enough, he could advance his skills. he could manipulate space itself, erase people from existence, create wormholes and paradoxes, warp reality. it would be hard for him.

wooyoung spoke of the possibilities with twinkling eyes.

hongjoong couldn’t admit that his powers terrified him. he still couldn’t bury the guilt of what he did when he couldn’t control his powers. he still didn’t know which dimension he placed his hometown in, whether they were still alive, and it’s nearing twenty years since the accident.

that’s why hongjoong advocated for peace, for treaties and regulations. he hoped for the best in people because that’s all that kept him going. he didn't want to fight. he advocated for his team every single day. he loved them.

that’s why he ignored the signs that wooyoung was up to something until it was too late. every day since then he fought to bring them back, to right his shortcomings.

bonus:

technically this ateez hero/villain au takes place in the same timeline as the astro hero/villain au i have on here on AO3. so the juxtaposition between how fluffy and how much of a fun time astro/the ioi unit/etc are having vs ateez shows how much public opinion of people with powers changed over such a short period of time. especially as super powered people began emerging in droves.

astro’s stories take place when people with superpowers just started emerging. and villains and heroes hated each other but it wasn’t ever as serious as it now is. superheroes were a commodity. no one was extremely afraid of ppl with powers to the point of murder and villains only stole for the paycheck. that’s why they were all best friends. but as the government began to start regulating people with superpowers and ppl began to protest their existence, more government-run academies opened up and all of astro joined the hero-villain alliance as a team. that’s when they joined the biochemical weapons sector. at first it was fine - they didn’t work out on the field often but they hoped with their research they could help their kind and learn more abt themselves. until the experimentation got worse, more invasive, forced. eunwoo was the sole survivor. he lost his shit, but they managed to contain him at a high security facility. when jongho broke him out, eunwoo swore he would avenge them.

#ateez #ateez scenarios #astro #astro scenarios #hero/villain au

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marshmallowprotection · 3 years

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so...I'm someone who kins Saeran very heavily- each different Saeran included, though I tend to lean most into SE Saeran. and for me, Rika is a pretty severe trigger to the point I have to mute her voice in the game & max speed through most her dialogue because I'll end up shaking and getting so angry because she's so similar to who was my main abuser. like. I hate her so much I go into a blind rage just seeing her name and especially when she justifies abusing, drugging, gaslighting, etc. Ray & Saeran in his route.

anyways, because of how angry she makes me, as an mc, I know I'd be outwardly very hostile and aggressive towards her. so I was wondering...if Rika came around in the SE timeline at some point to "apologize" to Saeran (in quotations bc I know she very much plays the victim which is disgusting and don't believe she could be genuine here), how would SE Saeran react to an mc s/o who's normally very timid and quiet being, for her, surprisingly hateful towards Rika?

Ik GE Saeran wouldn't want this bc he has a different way of processing his trauma and how he wants to heal from it. He wants to forgive Rika so he can move forward with mc...but I'm not so sure where I land with how SE Saeran would feel seeing something like that...even as a kinnie lol

SE Saeran isn’t like GE Saeran. He isn’t kind and he isn’t forgiving, per se. He just cannot imagine ever letting go of his frustration and anger because it’s the only thing that he has. He won’t lash out anymore... at least, at Saeyoung or the RFA, nor you. His anger is muted but it exists within him and he knows that it’s okay for him to hold onto it because it’s a reminder that he was hurt and that he needed to know that none of this was a dream or sick joke.

It’s why he hasn’t got his tattoo covered. It’s a reminder to not fall back into the way that he used to be and the way that he doesn’t want to be anymore. He’s not forgiving people and letting go of his anger, he’s not had the same chance in his life that the Saeran in AS has. He wasn’t given a chance to get help before he hit rock bottom and lost himself, and he’s just lucky that he’s able to be here now after Saeyoung yanked him away. Sometimes he feels like he’s trapped in the bunker, and in some ways, it does feel like that.

There’s no agency but their dad is still out there and Saeyoung is rightfully worried. Sometimes he can be smothering about it, but deep down, Saeran gets why he’s like that, but it doesn’t mean he is kind to him all the time. He’s not going out of his way to scream at him and be angry, he’s realized that there is no point in that. It’s not Saeyoung’s fault, no matter what his mind tells him, but it’s not going to be rewritten in a day. He just let everything happened when he was robbed of his choice over and over again.

Everyone always forced him to do what they wanted. Even now, even though Saeyoung has good intentions, he dragged Saeran from the hospital and took him away to protect him, but Saeran would have liked a chance to decide for himself what he wanted. He gets why Saeyoung did it, but that doesn’t mean he’s let go of what it feels like to be forced into something. Saeyoung decided, V decided, and Rika decided. When does he get to decide?

Never?

This plays into his attitude and how he feels about things, and there are points when he can be generally standoffish and overwhelmed with everything as his tired eyes rest on the ground. It’s not worth the energy anymore to lash out at other people, and he’s trying, but it’s so fucking hard.

You were the first person he had ever met that told him it was okay to be angry and that it was okay to be hurt. You were the first person to let him decide what he wanted, you let him pick how you spoke and interacted. You were the first person to let him decide what to do.

From the smallest things to the biggest things, it was always, “Saeran, what do you want to do? Is it okay to ask?” You’re always kind to him. Always so caring for someone that seems to be untainted by the hatred of the world. He likes that about you. He feels a sense of peace when he’s with you. He knows that he can be close to you and feel alright. When he’s with you, it’s like the stormy sea has calmed its flooding waters of his mind.

That being said, he avoids almost everyone in the RFA. Jumin Han reminds him of Jihyun Kim. Yoosung Kim reminds him of Rika Kim. The other two are okay to him but he... feels dread and sick when he’s close to the aforementioned two on this list. It’s not their fault, but their proximity to his triggers is a lot for him to go and deal with. It’s better not be near them in the long run.

He’s admitted to you some of the things that have happened to him over time, but not everything... just enough that you could know how suffocated he feels in this place. You listen to every word and you respect him. You know what’s going on in his head and you always listen and validate his pain. That’s why he likes being close to you. He just never thought that...

Well, let’s just say that he never thought that he would have to deal with Rika again except for his nightmares. There’s not a lot of chances for her to find him and really, if Saeyoung knew, he would never let her get close to his brother, so it would have to happen when he was away from the bunker and away from his twin for this to occur. He feels like he can’t breathe when she finds him, and it feels like he’s slipping into hell.

That’s when you stand up and you quite literally in no uncertain terms tell her to fuck off. He’s ripped from the dread in his gut to stare at you with wide eyes, it’s not every day you see someone so kind become so serious. He can’t find the use of his voice because of what this has triggered, but he can see so-very-clearly how you stand up for him when he doesn’t have the power to do that for himself. Normally, it would upset him to lose that control, but it’s you, and he knows that you don’t pity him.

You respect him.

Because you respect him, you tear into her verbally and let her know that she’s not welcome around Saeran ever again. He doesn’t want to see her and he’s made that clear with you, and you make sure that she knows that. He has no idea how you’ve managed to keep yourself afloat with your anger, every word, every trace, every second, he can hear you tell her what she did was wrong, and how she should be facing punishment for it instead of walking the streets like this. It’s so... brutally honest.

You’re gripping your fist, and for some reason, he’s never respected anyone more in his life.

You’re... using your anger... as a shield.

You’re standing there to protect him using that anger. He never knew that anger could be used like this. Anger was always... a weapon, which Rika made him so he could use it to destroy things and he is still so wrapped within his anger now that it’s hard to untangle himself from it. He felt like his anger was a horrible thing because everyone always wrenched away from him when he lashed out or was honest about his pain.

You’ve shown him that anger isn’t something to be ashamed of. You turn away from that woman, and look at him, asking for his consent to take his hand to get away from that area. Your anger is a virtue. You use it for good. He never knew that it could be used like this.

He never thought he’d see Rika again, and he’d never knew how he would react, but his body is uncomfortable and screaming but you’ve managed to ground him in a storm.

He takes your hand.

And, leaves.

A choice he was never able to make for himself in the past. He is free, he is free and he can make his own choices now, no matter what anyone makes him feel like. You’ve proven that to him. It felt like he was trapped in a haze until that time but... seeing anger used as protection instead of a weapon makes him feel like he has a lot to learn about the world. Even if he breaks down and cries later when he’s alone with you, he knows that you will always respect him and never once judge him.

Because your heart is a sweet place, even with the hum of anger, and he wants to feel safe within it.

#se saeran #saeran #saeran choi #choi saeran #secret ending #ask #anon #mod kait #mm #mysme #mysticmessenger #mystic messenger #character analysis #mystic messenger saeran #saeran mystic messenger #saeran mm #mm saeran #mysme saeran #saeran mysme

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linkspooky · 5 years

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What are your top 5 Tokyo Ghoul characters?

I love to talk about how much I love my faves. If you ever ask want to ask me who my faves are for a series feel free to send me an ask.

1. Who do you Fight for? - Koori Ui

Seidou has the best character growth, but my undisputed favorite just in terms of character in Tokyo Ghoul has been Ui. What I like about Ui is that he hides all of the good things about him, and shows all of his most unlikable qualities on the surface. He’s jealous, spiteful, vindictive and far too judgemental on the other people around him. He basically acts like a hardass who has no friends because his entire life is his work.

But then once you actually get to know Ui as a character, you understand the profound sense of loneliness that affects him and all of his actions. The reason Ui acts so impersonally and even looks down on others so much is because he’s a soldier in a brutal and terrible war that has caused him to cauterize all of his emotional wounds with the burnt end of his cigarette in order to try to continue living.

Ui cares so deeply, but he never lets that caring show because he’s afraid of those feelings. He’s actually the most emotional character in the cast, the most sincere, the most deeply invested, but he is so afraid to let those feelings out of him because they will completely destroy him.

The most intersting thing about Ui’s character is that they do, we see his own grief destroy him. We see his mind deteriorate with loss after loss. Yet, Ui is so self aware in an ugly and visceral way of exactly what kind of terrible person he is, and the awful things he’s doing that he never stops being relatable evne in the middle of his descent to hell.

Ui can’t properly love other people, but he’d willingly walk into hell for the sake of the people he loves. And in the end, unlike Kaneki and Amon who are blind to their own selfishness, Ui admits he was doing it for himself, and his own grief. Ui’s selflessness, and his deep connection to others has the opposite effect, it does not make him a good person it drives him insane and makes him more selfish. His empathy is not a magic fix-it-all glue that makes others love him, it’s a trait that actively harms him for caring.

2. Hurry up and Die, Hurry up! - Hairu Ihei

It’s obvious that Hairu is one of my faves, she’s the other half of my all time OTP for this series. What I love about Hairu is the opposite about what I love with Ui. Ui cares too much, whereas Hairu only cares about herself. She’s physically incapable of caring about others, at least not in normal ways.

Which is why she’s such a perfect example fo what happens to children in the garden. They are all of them, broken and unable to ever be fixed, and all of them trying to live in this broken, half formed state. Hairu thinks that love is the magic glue that will fix her and lives her entire life for the sake of that love. She literally murders people en-masse because she believes that will get her a little more praise.

What is so interesting about Hairu is how affection starved she is. Literally, one person comforting her by patting her on the head once earns him her lifetime devotion. She lives and dies for the person who showed her the bare minimum of affection.

Hairu is literally off in her world because she can’t uderstand people. She can’t emotionally connect to them, because she’s broken and she’s about to hit her expiration date as well. And we see this in her character, how desperate she is to connect, and yet at the same time how distant she is from others and how little empahty she has for their pain. Hairu is brutal, she slaughters people, she plays around with them like a cat playing with their food, she could not care less about the suffering of ghouls if it gets her what she wants. But she’s so driven to that point by desperation to be loved, not geniune malice.

She’s in her own world and doesn’t understand people’s feelings because she’s always been alone, but everything she does to try to escape being alone only isolates her further until it all ends on her at once. A perfect princess, Hairu Ihei’s tower collapses on her and her head is crushed underneath a falling rock.

3. I would dream of that day, saving you guys, making me a hero - Seidou Takizawa

Seidou’s character is someone I admire for how relatable they are for all of their faults, but also how strong they are for constantly grappling with those faults. In a manga where characters constantly run away from who they are and their uglier sides, Seidou is completely honest with himself and knows the terrible things he’s done. He’s introduced as a selfish, entitled little brat, but then we see him actively get punished for that by being given everything he wants. He gets to be a special person like Juzou and Akira, he gets to be strong like them, he loses everything like them and it drives him completely insane.

Seidou is a walking inferiority complex, and he’s also someone who genuinely wants to be a better person so he can help the people around him. He genuinely desired to do good and be a hero. Seidou stays true to both of these traits at once, even when he flips from human to ghoul. They are both essential to the core of who he is.

What’s interesting about Seidou is he’s constantly fighting himself, because he thinks he’s so unworthy of the other people around him. He’s self destructive and always puts himself down, but his feelings of caring for others eventually become so sefless. He loves other people while being aware of their flaws, and aware of their own flaws.

And constantly confronting himself, his own trauma, and the terrible things he’s done like this is something that only hurts him, isolates him, and drives him insane but he’s the one who decided to live that way and he follows through until the end. No character is more human because Takizawa actually owns up to his human flaws and is constantly facing with them and deciding to live with them.

4. I hate all of them. Everyone go die, everyone drop dead. - Urie Kuki

Urie is such a bad person, and that’s such a sexy trait to have in a character. I don’t think people who like Urie grasp what a terrible person he is, and really that’s such a shame they’re missing out on all the fun. It’s not just that he’s mean to Sasaki, or verbally dismissive of others. Urie is two-faced, he secretly despises and looks down on everyone. Urie is a child soldier raised in an abusive system, and espite being a victim of that system he has no awareness at all of how much the system victimizes people and devotes all of himself to rising to the top of that system. He actively abuses and endangers the other people around him constantly to rise to the top of that system.

Urie is so selfish that everything he does in the end is for himself. His strength is to protect his weak self, his hatred for others is to keep them at a distance because he feels constant inferiority to them. Even when he tries to protect others, it’s because he doesn’t want to have to confront feelings of loss ever again.

Urie is just such a terrible person at handling his own little weak emotions, that he always buries them so deep and gets surprised when he goes berserk and lashes out on everyone around him. He’s not strong or even a particularly good leader, he’s a pitiful coward who can’t even have the smallest of humna conversations or confrontations with Mutsuki out of paralyzing fear of losing them.

His entire identity has been based around this oppressive system and because of it, Urie is utterly destroyed as a person. He’s just a total human failure. Which makes him my type of man.

5. “People who need reasons to do things are just trash” - Furuta Nimura

Furuta Nimura is the main character of the tragedy, the hero that tragically falls at the end. Nimura was born in the center of the tragedy, and let himself become as ugly as the world around him. But yet until the end he always used that ugliness in himself to fight against it, rather than succumbing to it.

Nimura is paradoxically, one of the most selfish, violent and cruel characters we see in the series, and yet he does not do a single thing for himself, and everything he does is for the sake of a peace which he himself never expected to live to see.

Furuta is a terrible person who does terrible things, but he’s also actively aware of this in everything he does. He’s so painfully aware that it crushes his identity and he has to live as something other than human, to continaully wear masks and hide himself in order to just survive. He chose to be the villain instead of the hero because that’s what the world needed him to be.

What destroys Furuta in the end is the human side he repressed, because he never allowed himself to be human. Not only that but the world around him would never allow him to be either since the day he was born. He’s a child soldier planning a double suicide with the world. He takes all of the ugliness he has witnessed and throws it back in the face of others. There’s no character driven by more powerful, darker emotions than Furuta, and start to finish his tragedy is the backbone fo the entire story. He’s the strongest connecting thread, which makes him a character as ugly, painful and complex as the world around him.

But that’s all just a joke. He’s actually just a memelord without feelings. There’s no way he’s actually sad about his life, he’s too busy laughing at others.PS: Laugh, it’s fun!

#furuta nimura #seidou takizawa #hairu ihei #spooky speaks #urie kuki #koori ui #metasks #Anonymous

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wotnahq · 4 years

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Lucy Marie Cage • 26 • Female (she/her) • Metahuman • Astral Manipulation • Civilian

BIOGRAPHY

TRIGGER WARNINGS: STRONG VIOLENCE, BLOOD AND GORE

Lucy was born to Alec and Bianca Gale on 17th June 2019 in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina. She was the second child of her family, and the only blood descendant of her parents: Brendan, her older brother, was adopted before Lucy was born; Felix and Harriet, the twins among them, were adopted together when lucy was 2; Lily was fostered when she turned 8, shortly after Lucy’s 13th birthday. Cora was the eldest, a runaway from an abusive family - she sought shelter in their home, and ended up staying to become part of the family. Their father worked as a history professor at Queens University of Charlotte, while her mother was a secretary for a law firm, and so they lived in a large apartment near the city centre.

Despite their wealth, Alec and Bianca attempted to provide their children with as ordinary a life as they could. The siblings were sent to a nearby public school, where Lucy’s kind nature made her extremely popular, and her diligence for study propelled her through elementary and middle school. She was even offered a scholarship for a prestigious private highschool when she was 13. Although she would be attending a different school to Cora and Brendan, she jumped at the opportunity - taking a particular shining to the theatre and dramatic arts classes, she quickly found her niche and settled into the routine relatively quickly. The variety there astounded Lucy: she was part of the training group for cheerleading and played for the girl’s basketball team, but especially loved the opportunity to be a part of the school production that year. The time commitments placed a heavy strain on her, although she ensured she kept the stress and panic away from her family.

Three weeks before her 15th birthday, Lucy was woken up in the middle of the night with an excruciating burning sensation on her arm. In front of her eyes, a transparent black rune scorched itself onto her flesh, and she quickly showed it to her parents. Alec was confused, but Bianca already knew, from her position as a secretary, about the stories of the Metahumans that had recently begun spreading after an incident on the east coast. She knew in her heart that her daughter was another one. Initially she wanted to take Lucy for tests, to see if she was in danger, but Alec convinced her to give it time. Lucy herself was scared of the pain, as the rune burned like oil against her skin, but after seeing the panic and fear in her mother’s eyes, she did her best to keep a brave face and hold it in. It wouldn’t last long.

A year passed. Time revealed a dramatic alteration to Lucy herself: she became angry, hateful, and confessed to her parents that she had urges to hurt and even kill people. These initial shifts were contributed to her natural development, however the increasing urges were never diagnosed properly, even by mental health professionals. Although her parents were prepared for Lucy to change over her growth, especially with her differences, it quickly escalated - anger turned to threats, threats turned into violence, and violence turned to danger. Her father ended up locking her into a modified cell he had been building in a back room of their apartment, and there she remained for 5 years. The family claimed whenever necessary that Lucy was busy most of the time, which many believed after her dedication to work growing up, and all the while they kept her in the cell to prevent her from lashing out, with almost daily visits from her siblings and parents in her calm periods. Lucy would read books, play video games, and try to let them see that she was the same girl she’d been years ago, but keeping up such a façade became more and more of a challenge for her skills. The solitude of her new life - no more school, no more friends, no more nothing - combined with the violent thoughts and hatred that had spawned in her head began pushing her further and further from the girl she once was, and yet she kept it suppressed to convince her family she was okay.

On the night of her 22nd birthday, Lucy’s increasing talent for manipulation and acting paid off, and she was finally let out of the room to celebrate with her family. But this was the first time she’d seen the life they led without her, and it only fuelled her anger - how could they keep her trapped in that tiny room for years, while they lived like nothing was wrong? Did she, their own daughter and sister, mean so little to them? Nevertheless, keeping up her act of 5 years, she managed to get through the night, and stashed the knife they used to cut her birthday cake down the side of her boot before she was locked up again. The experience of that night brought back her happiest childhood memories, and she began to have second thoughts about her plan, but the later the hour became, the more those thoughts morphed into hatred: her childhood, a time that could’ve been filled with joy, was stolen from her by the ones who promised to give her the best life possible. They had promised her they’d never hurt her, that they’d do what they had to to protect her, but locking her up was not what they’d had to do. It was what they’d wanted to do. And she needed to make them pay.

Lucy used the knife to crack the lock of her cell and initially returned to her old room, to find that Cora had now moved in. Her bedroom, completely erased of her memories and made up for a girl who didn’t belong. The anger flared in her and buried any remaining hesitation lacing her heart, and after pinning the sleeping woman to the bed, she began garrotting her using wiring from the utility cupboard. The struggle didn’t cause her to think twice, she felt no guilt hearing Cora struggle to breathe, and she continued to slice the wiring deeper into her flesh. But it was now that Lucy finally discovered the purpose of her powers: as her sister ran out of oxygen, the essence leaked from her lips and curled up like a mist, and Lucy unwittingly breathed it in. Her adrenaline, her bloodlust, shot through the roof, and hatred overwhelmed the only human elements she held in her heart - her newfound strength turned the wire into a blade, removing Cora’s head under her push. Blood coated her hands, pouring across the sheets, and black mist poured from the parted lips of the head, filling Lucy’s lungs. It made her feel more powerful than she had ever been, but more importantly, it gave her the strength to decide that Cora would only be the first to die that night.

Each of her siblings fell victim to her one by one. Brendan was next, and a knife through the throat put him down quick enough. The twins would be harder, as one would attempt to save the other if Lucy was too loud, and so she slit each of their throats, leaving them to bleed out in mere seconds. And Lily… poor little Lily. Lucy would have fun with her. She nudged the girl awake, ensuring she hid any of the blood that dyed her hands, and let her give the killer one final tight hug. She soon lay in her bed, knife wounds dotting her stomach and chest, her eyes devoid of life. Lucy’s lungs were filled with each of their essences, her rune now pulsating on her skin, and her parents were next. She remained silent entering their room, and soon had her mother at knifepoint, drawing drips of blood as she taunted Alec to his feet. Every plead that the man made, every grovel, just pushed Lucy to realise how truly pathetic he was - he’d stolen her childhood because of his fear of what the girl could become. And now he saw how sadistic she could be: she slowly slit Bianca’s throat, absorbing every drop of essence, and let the bleeding corpse fall onto their bed. For Alec the knife wouldn’t be necessary, so she dropped it and pounced at him to pin him to the wall, her hands locked around his throat. Her transformed eyes finally revealed to him the last traces of his true daughter - dark, hollow, filled with nothing but hatred - before she snapped his neck. His essence was the strongest from the overwhelming pain and fear he’d felt in his final moments.

Now came the complex part: disposing of the bodies. A burial would raise suspicion and open Lucy to witnesses, so a crude disposal might be necessary. Only a few miles outside of the city was an old abandoned meat packing plant, and so every day, one by one, she transported the bodies to the plant to dump them into the grinder, smuggling them into the car Alec’s keys unlocked by stashing them in her gym bag when she left each day. Within a week her family’s bodies were disposed of, but even after the month ended, she felt not a tinge of guilt or sadness for what she’d done: finally she was allowed to feel the sun again, to leave her apartment, and if that meant she had to eliminate the obstacles, so be it. Lucy finally understood what her power was and what it could do, and she knew it was all that would keep her going now. The strength, the power, the control, it all flowed from the rune she’d once considered a curse and that had changed her life, and she had to keep it satisfied. But to do that properly she’d have to find a new home.

Lucy allowed herself a year to readjust to life, and over that year, she heard of the Nephilim’s attack on Pansaw, California. The organisation had quickly dropped into hiding, but their motivations sparked a thought in her head: what if her parents had only done it because she was a Meta? What if it was only for her differences? She managed to get access to her father’s money, which would help to maintain the façade that he was still alive, and used it to fund her identity change and facial surgeries, transforming her into Lucy Cage. Two months later, with every trace of blood and flesh cleaned away, Lucy called and organised removalists, and soon her family’s apartment was nothing but an empty shell, waiting for the next group to move in. She moved soon after to Pansaw, renting an apartment in Bostwick, and easily passed off her rune as a tattoo - nobody suspected her of being Meta, and there was no way she’d register with this new system. The Nephilim were right - they were the supreme kind, and humans would one day face a newly reformed Nephilim, with her as part of it.

By 2045 Lucy has settled into life in Pansaw - she has no work, but instead extorts and steals from victims she meets, and uses the money to fund her training in the dramatic arts at Pansaw University. A variety of disappearances and gruesome murders by a seemingly nonexistent killer have earned her the nickname of Ghost in the media, but now trained in her abilities, Lucy is in little to no danger of getting caught. She’s a new girl, with a new personality, new career, and new life, and no human will lock her or her kind up again - if they ever dared to try, she as a Metahuman would slice them down like she’d done to her family. She’s done it once, what could stop her from doing it again?

POWERS

ASTRAL MANIPULATION: Using essence harvested from dying souls, Lucy can create, shape and manipulate astral energy, allowing her instantaneous manipulation over the astral plane. She can interact with and see spirits, make spirits visible to others, tear holes in the barrier, and potentially even harm or kill the living utilising the spirits that cross. She can manipulate her own physical form and cross between the planes, allowing her movement and combat enhancements, as well as increase her strength and endurance using a liquefied version of essence.

WEAKNESSES

Her actions and powers can be suppressed, nullified, or reversed by other Astral Manipulation users. Steady source of essence is required for any and all powers. Very low levels of essence causes extreme grogginess, slower reaction times, and lowered coordination of any kind. Requires consistent concentration to maintain Astral Pain Suppression, Astral Attacks or Astral Phase. Concentrations of corruption, whether by natural cause or Lucy’s abilities, nearby in the astral plane has a severely adverse effect on Lucy when her rune attempts to absorb the excess as fuel. It then overflows into her physical form and temporarily causes extreme pain, as well as physical malformations.

PERSONALITY

+ Intelligent + Resourceful + Charismatic

– Fiery – Brutal – Destructive

#lsrp #mutant rp #superpower rp #oc rp #jena frumes #character #lucy cage

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fangirl-imagines · 5 years

Text

Hatred//Barry Berkman x Reader x Sally Reed

Warnings: Brief homophobic language, violence, and mentions of past domestic abuse

Prompt: You have never hated anyone as much as you hated your girlfriend Sally’s ex-husband. When he comes to town you can’t keep yourself from lashing out.

“How’s she doing?” Barry asked coming up beside you, eyes glued to Sally on the stage just like yours.

You glanced up at him for a second before bringing your eyes right back to Sally. She was standing tall, running through her lines like a true professional actress.

“Amazing.” You answered Barry proudly, letting your head fall gently against his chest.

Barry smiled and shook his head as he watched Sally, in awe of how strong she really was. You both watched her proudly, knowing how hard she worked to be here.

That’s your girl.

You heard the heavy clang of the audience door opening and glanced over briefly. Your eyes flickered back immediately though when you saw Sally’s ex husband standing there watching her. You tensed beside Barry and swallowed harshly. Looking at Sally it was clear she hadn’t seen him yet and from Barry’s relaxed posture next to you, you knew he hadn’t either. You glared harshly at Sam.

You had never felt a feeling inside of you like this. Like your entire body was flushed and burning. You had never felt hatred towards anyone like you did towards this man. Sam must have felt your eyes boring into him because he looked over at you. He looked you over unimpressed before turning his gaze back to Sally. He watched her for a moment before shaking his head and turning to storm out of the theatre.

You glanced up at Barry who was still watching Sally. He only nodded, distracted, when you told him, “I’ll be right back.”

You walked quickly out of the theater in long strides, your hands clenched by your side in tight fist.

“Hey!” You called out loudly to Sam as he strode towards his car.

He glanced back over his shoulder at you uninterestedly, “Hey.”

His nonchalant attitude only pissed you off more.

“Hey, Sally said she didn’t want you seeing that!”

He scoffed, “No, her little boyfriend said he didn’t want me seeing it! It’s my story, I have the right!”

“You have no right-!” You started, raising your voice when he stopped by his car and turned to look at you.

“Hey, if he’s her boyfriend, what does that make you?” He cut you off with a smirk.

You glared coldly at him. “Leave. Now.”

He shook his head, “You chicks are all so fucking overdramatic.” He scoffed.

“I’m telling you to leave one more time before I call the cops.” You seethed, nails digging into your palms.

He stared at you for a moment like he couldn’t believe you would actually threaten to call the police. You guess he wasn’t use to women threatening him. He took a step closer to you, invading your personal space slightly but you stood your ground. The hatred you felt made it hard to be afraid of him.

“You know I wouldn’t expect a dike like you to understand but I’ve got a family now! Something like this could compeltly fuck up my life!” He pointed to himself like he was the victim being ganged up on.

“Oh you have a family now?”

He nodded, “Yeah.”

“So tell me do you beat them too, tough guy? Or maybe I should call your wife and tell her what kind of man she really married?”

In retrospect following a violent man out into the parking lot by yourself to yell at him probably wasn’t a great idea. You heard the heavy theatre doors opening behind you at the same time you felt your head whip to the side followed by a harsh, stinging sensation in your cheek. The bastard had slapped you. Your hand flew up to your face, covering the spot where Sam had hit you. There was a shout and when you looked up Barry had Sam pinned to his car, his hand wrapped around his throat.

Your eyes widened in surprise as you saw the rage painted on Barry’s face. You had seen Barry mad before you thought, but you had never seen your sweet, awkward boyfriend like this before.

Like he could kill a man.

You straightened up as you watched Bary throw his fist into Sam’s face.

Again.

And Again.

“You don’t fucking touch them!” He shouted in Sam’s face.

You looked around the parking lot nervously but the three of you were the only ones outside. You knew this anger wasn’t just for you but for Sally too and all the pain Sam had inflicted. There was blood pouring from Sam’s nose that sat at an awkward angle on his face, clearly broken and his eyes were wide as he tried to pry Barry’s hands off of his throat. Barry was still squeezing Sam’s throat and for a second you were afraid that he was going to kill him in front of you.

“Barry!” You shouted, coming to your senses. You rushed forward and put your hands on his shoulders trying to push him back. “Barry come on, he’s not worth this!”

Barry looked over at you, eyes wild as they looked into your frightened, nervous ones. He looked between you and Sam. With his eyes still on you he pulled his hands off of the other man’s throat and took a step back, grabbing your wrist and taking you with him. He pushed you behind his back slightly as if Sam could still be a threat. As if Barry hadn’t just beaten him bloody. Sam was slumped against his car, touching his bloody face gingerly as he stared at Barry in shock.

“Leave.” Barry spoke coldly.

For once, Sam didn’t argue. He scrambled up and got into his car. He stared at you both and for a second you thought he was going to say something. But he stayed quiet as he raced out of the parking lot. Barry waited until Sam was gone before whirling around to look at you. He took your face in his hands gently, looking concerned as he turned your face from side to side to take in whatever damage Sam had caused. It was almost startling how gently he touched you after having beaten a man with those same hands.

“Are you okay?” He swallowed as he looked at the swelling spot on your cheekbone that would certainly leave a bruise. He clenched his jaw and shook his head, “I’m going to kill him.”

‘You almost did.’ You thought to yourself but just shook your head, pulling Barry’s hand from your face and squeezing it.

“Look I hate him too Bare. But Sally needs us both right now. Not you in jail for assault.”

He nodded, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.

“I know, I know. I just everything he did to Sally-, and then I saw him hit you and I just-!”

He shook his head, jaw clenching. He looked back at you in surprise when you brought his hand up to your lips and kissed it. His face softened some at your gentle, understanding gaze.

“Thank you for trying to protect me.”

He shook his head. You never had to thank him for that. He leaned down and kissed your forehead gently.

“Why don’t you go back inside and check on Sally okay? I’m gonna head home and get cleaned up before she sees me.”

You nodded, “Yeah, yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” You glanced back at the theater where Sally was waiting inside, completely unaware of the scene that had just played out in the parking lot. You looked back at Barry. “Are you sure you’re okay?” You hesitated.

He forced a smile to you and nodded. “I just need a minute. I’ll be fine. Take care of Sally for me okay?”

Now that you could do. You leaned up and kissed him quickly before rushing back into the theater. With your back turned you completely missed the murderous look that had made its way back on Barry’s face.

Sally was crossing something out on her script when you got back into the theater.

“Hey, what do you think about-?” She turned to look at you and stopped mid sentence when she saw the bruise on your face. “What happened?!” She set her script down, crossing the stage quickly, brushing the hair out of your face to get a better look at the bruise on your face.

“It’s nothing.” You shook your head, “Just a misunderstanding.”

But Sally saw right through you. You watched realization dawn on her face and her expression drop.

“It was Sam wasn’t it?” She whispered.

With a sigh, you nodded. Tears welled in Sally’s green eyes breaking your heart. She shrunk back from you and lowered herself down to lean against the small table on stage.

“I left! I left and I moved halfway across the country and he is still trying to hurt me! Why can he still keep doing this?”

“Hey,” You breathed, rushing forward and rubbing your hands up and down her arms gently. “Hey, he’s not gonna hurt you ever again, okay? I promise.” She looked up at you and you smiled reassuringly, “This bruise? This is nothing. And did I tell you Barry kicked his ass for it?”

She sniffled shaking her head. You gently brushed the tears back from her eyes.

“He’s never gonna hurt any of us again Sally. You, me, and Barry have each other now and Barry and I aren’t gonna let him do anything.”

You were crying too now as you pressed your forehead to hers. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“I’m sorry.” She muttered.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.” You whispered back. “Not a damn thing.”

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hustlebonezzzz · 4 years

Text

We need to talk about Courage the Cowardly Dog

In what seems like a stream of relentless plagues, wildfires burn around the world, billions of desert locusts swarm and threaten African crops, and of course, COVID-19. How could we forget about COVID-19? The bright side of a world-wide pandemic is that this quarantine has provided ample time to revisit shows the shaped my childhood. When I was a kid, Courage the Cowardly Dog was my absolute favorite, hands down.

The title sequence explains the show perfectly:

“We interrupt this program to bring you… Courage the Cowardly Dog Show, starring Courage, the Cowardly Dog! Abandoned as a pup, he was found by Muriel, who lives in the middle of nowhere with her husband, Eustace Bagge! But creepy stuff happens in Nowhere. It's up to Courage to save his new home!”

And that’s it. Crazy stuff happens, and Courage is left to try and save the day. As I watch it now, I can’t ever picture a show like this being aired today. Many times I’d catch myself thinking, “They let this air??” Some of the episodes are straight-up disturbing or tear jerking

An episode that is both disturbing and tearjerking is “The Mask.” This episode tackles subjects such as same-sex relationships, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. These elements are heavily present within the episode, yet are veiled behind a funny children’s show. The veil is lifted when viewing the episode with adult eyes, and it becomes a realistic animated drama.

The beginning of the episode starts with Courage relaxing outside his home and minding his own business. Suddenly, a frightening masked individual walks onto the scene and beats Courage, all while proclaiming a hatred for dogs. This scene is hilarious as a child for the sheer slapstick humor element.

The masked figure smashes Courage with a sink because “Dogs are evil.”

We later learn that the masked individual is a cat named Kitty. Kitty hates and beats Courage because he is a dog, and she associates all dogs with an evil dog that is keeping her best friend captive in an abusive relationship. Her best friend is a bunny named Bunny, and her abusive boyfriend is called Mad Dog. Mad Dog is a thug.

Courage, being the gentle and kind soul he is, decides that the best way to get Kitty to leave him alone is to save her best friend Bunny and show that not all dogs are like Mad Dog. So, in the dead of night, Courage sneaks out and goes to the rundown industrial zone where Bunny is being held captive. A car with blaring hip-hop music comes to a screeching halt in front of a building with busted and boarded up windows. Courage watches and cowers behind another car while Mad Dog aggressively pulls Bunny out of the car. Her facial expression is empty and sad. They enter the building and Courage spies through the window. Mad Dog is upset that Bunny is visibly unhappy, and suspects that she’s thinking about her best friend, Kitty.

Although we don’t see it, Mad Dog decides to beat Bunny up for thinking about Kitty and not being happy with him. We are only left with this frame:

Bunny is shoved into a pot after being beat by Mad Dog.

As I watched this scene, I was in shock. As a kid, you just assume that he throws her around and roughs her up a bit before throwing her into a giant pot with dirt. Hell, this scene might even be funny to a child. Now, this appears to be an obvious metaphor for feeling dirty or soiled after being sexually assaulted. Bunny was not just being beat up. This episode also does a great job of showing the psychological manipulation that is a part of an abusive relationship. While yelling at Bunny, Mad Dog says “I told you to forget her! I take you from a two-bit joint and make you a class act and you want to make me second rate!” It’s incredible how Mad Dog tries to manipulate Bunny into thinking that this life is the best she could ever get as he screams at her in a dirty, run-down apartment.

The emotional manipulation only continues as Mad Dog tries to comfort her afterwards, asking why things can’t be like the good ol’ days when she still loved him. He makes it seem as if it is her fault for being clearly depressed because of this physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive relationship.

Mad Dog tries to comfort Bunny after lashing out on her for thinking about Kitty.

By the end of the episode, Courage the cowardly dog saves the day and breaks Bunny out of her prison. Kitty and Bunny are reunited and run away together by hopping on a train and never looking back.

Bunny and Kitty embrace each other after finally being reunited

So yes, this series has always maintained a creepy and provocative vibe throughout its duration, and undoubtedly has some dark themes and screwed up moments intertwined. These subverted themes only become more prevalent the older you get. You don’t notice these surreal elements as a child, and I don’t think you’re supposed to. I certainly didn’t see anything wrong with “The Mask” in my youth. Yeah, of course I felt sympathy for Kitty and Bunny, but there was a happy ending and that made it all okay for me. I saw the slapstick humor of it all, which is the kind of humor that really resonates with kids. It is a vital part of most children’s programming. Without it, this show wouldn’t be for kids, that’s for sure.

“The Mask” of course isn’t the only episode that touches on sexual abuse. In “Freaky Fred,” Muriel’s creepy barber nephew comes for a visit. Fred speaks through child-like rhymes and always ends it with how he’s been very “naaaaauuuughty.” Naughty is said in a way that is all too sexual, uncomfortable, and violating, whether you are a child or an adult. The innuendo behind the uttering of “naughty” becomes more apparent to a mature audience.

In this episode, Fred the creepy barber corners Courage in the bathroom and forcibly shaves his pink fur, all while confessing to his compulsive urges to force himself upon others and shave off their hair. He recites a poem about his first victim while doing so: “This dripping here, this droopy curl, unfold sweet memories of a girl, whose tresses, oh they’d twist and twirl, and tempt me to be… naughty.”

To put it bluntly, it seemed like this scene was mirroring sexual assault based on the dialogue and the overall mood portrayed. Fred likes to force his apparent hair shaving fetish onto anyone who is vulnerable that he can get alone. By the end of the episode, we find out that Fred was committed to a mental institution and escaped. The authorities show up to Courage’s home and take him back.

Fred’s character design alone only points to him being up to no good, and the smile never leaves his face.

Fred gazes menacingly at Courage before proceeding to forcibly shave his fur off.

If sexual abuse is on the table for this series, they certainly wouldn’t shy away from covering parental abuse. In the multiple episodes that feature Eustace’s mother, the audience comes to learn why Eustace’s character is a crotchety old man who takes joy in tormenting and scaring Courage. Throughout all of the episodes, Eustace yells “Stupid dog!” at Courage. It’s even a part of the opening title sequence. When Eustace’s mother, Ma Bagge, is introduced, we quickly notice that she is just like Eustace. She constantly yells “Stupid boy!” at Eustace and berates him at any chance she gets. For the first time ever, we feel sympathy for one of the most hated characters on the show. Eustace’s whole shtick comes from being mean and cranky. It all comes together and we see that Eustace is but a product of his mother’s emotional abuse, a cycle that we often see in the real world. Other episodes detail his painful childhood, showing that deep down, a mean and cruel old man is not who he truly is. Episodes show that throughout his entire life, he constantly tried to win the love and affection from his mother, however, she always found fault in him and he was never good enough.

Eustace presents gifts to his mother, Ma Bagge, in hopes of winning her approval.

As said previously, many of the episodes aren’t dark and twisted on the surface from a child’s point of view, but an episode that is heartbreaking whether you are a child or an adult is “Remembrance of Courage Past.” This episode details Courage’s origin story. We see that Courage once had loving dog parents that adored him. Courage’s parents take him to the vet, but in a strange turn of events, his parents are locked in a rocket and blasted into space by the sadistic veterinarian. There isn’t really any rhyme or reason, the vet is just plain evil. The vet asks to speak to the parents in private, and Courage is ushered into the waiting room. He later hears his parents crying out for help and he sees them being carried away in a net by the vet. Baby Courage follows them and sees his parents stuffed into a rocket. Baby Courage is unable to save them because the veterinarian notices that he is in the room and begins to chase him. Baby Courage escapes through a shoot that leads to an alleyway. From here, he watches the rocket blast off and waves goodbye as he cries. This is where Muriel finds him all alone and adopts him as her own.

Left: Courage’s parents cry out for help from inside the rocket.

Right: Muriel finds Courage all alone in the alley and takes him in.

Seriously, this episode is so sad. We learn that Courage wasn’t truly “abandoned as a pup.” Courage deeply fears losing his current family because of how his real parents were ripped away from him. It was a tearjerker then, and it still is now. Now, he simply can’t bear the thought of ever losing his family again. This motivates him throughout the entire series to save his family no matter what the obstacles and no matter how scared he is.

Now all of the episodes that have been covered thus far were terrifying in their own way, yet there is one episode that continues to linger in the minds of its viewers. The episode in question? “King Ramses Curse.” But why this episode?

First, a quick plot overview: Courage finds an ancient artifact in their yard. It turns out to be a cursed slab that was stolen from a museum. The police were hot on the museum robbers trail, so they ditched it in Courage’s yard. A resurrected King Ramses appears at their home to retrieve it. However, Eustace found out earlier that day that the slab is worth millions and won’t let King Ramses have it back, despite King Ramses threatening to send 3 plagues, each worse than the last.

King Ramses first tries to drown them, and for a kids show, I’ll admit that it’s pretty intense, but expected at this point. I audibly uttered “Now that’s a curse” as I rewatched. The next plague is just forcing them to listen to a really bad song, bringing the humor element back in and giving a break from the horror. Back to the horror, the last plague is a swarm of locusts that destroys everything in its path. In the end, Eustace refuses to relinquish the slab as Ramses menacingly looms over him. The episode concludes with Eustace being trapped in a sarcophagus, crying out for help. But the unfolding of these surely traumatic events isn’t what scared me as a youngin’.

So why did this episode scare so many children including myself? Simply put, the visuals.

King Ramses, was a 3D-animation overlayed on a 2D-background. Frankly, late 90s and early 2000s 3D-animation was a little creepy looking in general. The art of 3D-animation was still a work in progress. Hell, Disney and Pixar were still trying to perfect it with Toy Story.

King Ramses stands outside the home of Courage.

Courage the Cowardly Dog had a highly experimental animation style considering the time in which it aired, 1996-2002. The animators didn’t stick to only 2D-animation alone, but instead incorporated elements of live-action, claymation, and 3D-computer animation, amongst other things. The show really had a knack for mixing mediums. What made this show so generally creepy was the way the mixed mediums didn’t fit in with the familiar 2D-animation style. It was unexpected and unsettling.

Left: Example of live-action element

Middle: Example of 3D-computer animation

Right: Example of claymation featured in the show

While revisiting Courage, I can’t help but notice how this series hones in on the feeling of helplessness and life’s unpredictability. These aspects are part of why this show can be a bit traumatizing to young viewers. Yet this series still shows the value of hanging in there no matter what and doing the best you can despite the circumstances, just like Courage the cowardly dog.

At the end of the day, elements like the underlying adult themes and the visuals made Courage the Cowardly Dog stand out when it first aired, and it's a show that continues to stand out against the ever changing social landscape. Comedy and horror aren’t synonymous in most of today’s cartoons. It’s been nearly 18 years since the last episode of Courage aired, and 18 years since Cartoon Network has aired a new horror cartoon. That alone is telling. Courage the Cowardly Dog was truly a product of its time and still sparks debates today with its gloomy narratives on society. Cartoons like this are so special because there may never be anything like it again. Even the creators were surprised that they got the OK to air the show, and I’m grateful that they did.

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bazz-b · 4 years

Text

Race

There’s a sense of reasoning to Bazz-B’s inherent racism and superiority complex surrounding the Quincy, and like all things of this manner it is deeply rooted in ignorance and fear. Not that he would ever admit to it, nor has he enough introspection to understand it. Stick with me here, I’m sleep-deprived but hopefully there’s a light at the end of this rambling.

Bazz-B hates almost all other races outside of those he can connect with on some biological level. He has a very conscious hierarchy of them, too:

Hollows / Arrancar (they are the same thing to Bazz-B)

Visored (almost identical to Arrancar)

Shinigami

Despite going to war with the Shinigami, they are actually at the bottom of Bazz-B’s list of scum and villainy. His opinion here might match that of the Wandenreich, for while they sought to defeat the Shinigami they carried out a methodical extermination and enslavement of the Arrancar.

These feelings for the Hollows / Arrancar might stem from the fact that a Hollow is poison to a Quincy. If any Hollow-like substances enter the Quincy system, it will literally spell death for them, making even a single bite deadly (Quilge, bro, don’t absorb Hollows). Bazz-B also fancies himself a Knight of sorts (Stern Ritter = Star Knight) and it is therefore his duty to slay these beasts and protect weaker Quincy and helpless humans. Arrancar are absolutely no different; dangerous, mindless animals that need to be put down before they get hungry.

His view on the Shinigami is a learned hate. Due to a Quincy’s high spiritual power, they were naturally targeted by Hollows. The Shinigami disagreed with how they should best defend themselves, which lead to a nearly successful extermination of their race. This is of course a very basic recount, and doesn’t address the balance of souls the Quincy were destroying, but Bazz-B is all about self-interest and the narrative that best suits his agenda. In that war, the Quincy were the victims. They’d never be called that again.

Visored sit somewhere between these two races. They are Shinigami, an enemy due to the actions of their predecessors, but now they have also become mindless animals due to the meddling of another Shinigami-- Aizen. They retain the effects of Bazz-B’s hatred of Shinigami, amplified by their connection to the Hollows. Perhaps a tiny bit less disgusting than Arrancar, they’re definitely worse than your run-of-the-mill Shinigami.

There are anomalies out there that Bazz-B doesn’t hate. The Fullbringers represent a faction of Humans that Bazz-B thinks are rad. Although their powers originate from a similar source to the Visored, there is absolutely no risk to other humans. For example, Riruka (using a fellow Pinkette here because of representation) isn’t going to eat a human or lash out wildly. They’ve developed this power and can now use it to kill Hollows. They even had a run in with the Shinigami. The Fullbringers, to Bazz-B, as a powered-up human, represent a type of racial-cousin to the Quincy, and should be made honorary members of the Wandenreich.

Post-TYBW, Bazz-B’s feelings towards the other races have stubbornly persisted, with the sole exception of the Shinigami. It’s not a change he really understands or will acknowledge, but at some point they were his allies. They banded together to help take down Yhwach, and once it was done they didn’t put him down (this is now canon-divergent). He doesn’t understand why, and he certainly doesn’t trust them, but in the wake of a world now miserably short of Quincy, where revenge doesn’t go the way you planned, his options are running out.

He just needs a good shove, punch or kick in the right direction for some sort of evolution.

#hit 'em where it hurts: headcanon #((I don't know if I lost my point somewhere))#((but here are thoughts into words))#((thank you for coming to my ted talk))

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saviorgenius · 5 years

Text

Drowning Alone

Ship: Spencer Reid x Reader

Genre: Angst with self-deprecating humor

Summary: The reader is having a weird day and feels off. The team gets called on a case where a psychopath is emotionally traumatizing victims while holding them captive. The Unsub targets the mentally ill and the last victim is going to be a certain person. WARNING!!!!!! there will be talks of depression and self-loathing as the unsub and as the reader but it will have a happy ending ish

Writers note:I’m not going to go into detail with the kidnapping part because I suck at it and also it would end up messing with my head and putting me in a bad place so I apologize if it seems skippy towards the end. Plus I kinda feel like this story sucks and no one will like it so I just want to get it over with lbs.

Key:

(Y/N)- your name

(D/P/N)- Derek’s pet name for you

(P/N/N)- Penelope’s nickname for you.

You woke up this morning and just knew in an instant that it was going to be a sucky day. There wasn’t really anything you could do about it but pretend that you feel fine and head into work. Little things went wrong from the time you got out of bed until you made it to the BAU helped you remember the fact that today was the worst. You hit your toe on the bed frame, you dropped your toothbrush in the toilet, your hair is an untamable mess so you wear it up, the hot water in your apartment isn’t working and after you get dressed you make coffee and then that same exact coffee ends up being worn by you. That wasn’t even all of it, that was just the stuff that occurred in your apartment. When you eventually made it to work, you immediately went into the kitchen area to find a donut or bagel since you didn’t have time to stop and eat. All the foods you liked seemed to be out of stock, it honestly didn’t even surprised you. Then as you leave the kitchen Emily calls out for you, “We got a case!” and then everything else stops. You walk onto the jet and go straight to the seat that you normally sit in, it’s in the corner by the window so you can watch the sky go by as you fly to each and every place that you go. For some reason that one seat is the only place in the entire jet that you are able to fall asleep or feel calm. It was like your safe haven, nothing bad could go wrong there, and hopefully, today won’t change that.

“Hey, (Y/N),” Spencer says as he walks over and sits in the seat across from you, he noticed you showed up late and that you weren’t exactly your normal talkative self.

You look over from where you were staring out of the window, “Hey Spence.” It wasn’t how you normally talk to Spencer, normally you smile and light up slightly just because it was him. There is something there that no one talks about, you believe it’s one-sided but in reality, there is a reason he is always around you, there is a reason that your favorite snacks are always available at the times you eat with the team.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, (Y/N), but are you alright?” He looks so concerned, you think about telling him the things you are thinking in your head just because he is super approachable but he’s also your team member. “I’m always here if you need to talk, I’ve been told I’m a very good listener.” A small smile appears on his lips as a way to try and cheer you up, it almost works but not quite.

“I know you are but I’m okay, don’t worry.”

“But I do.”

That is the simplest response to get from someone when you tell them not to worry yet when Spencer says the words, it gives you pause and makes you feel guilty that he even wants to know. “I’m just having an off day.”

“What do you mean?” He furrows his eyebrows and leans into the conversation.

“It’s just like I said, I’m having an off day.” You shrug and let your head fall back against the seat as you glance from the window to Spencer, “I just have a bad feeling in my gut about today.”

That didn’t sit well with Spencer, but he thought some positivity might help. “I’m sure everything’s going to be okay, don’t worry.”

Don’t worry. You laugh internally at the fact that Spencer just told you not to worry, that everything was going to be okay. Sure okay, how could you have missed such a simple solution. For the rest of the flight you sit in silence, you close your eyes and try to find a way to sleep for the amount of time you have left.

This case was an abduction case, the unsub takes women who have struggled with mental illness and use all their judgments about themselves to torture them. It was sickening to you, how could anyone do something this horrible to a person. The worst part is that he isn’t killing them, normally that would be seen as a good thing but the way that he gets into their heads changes them entirely. They become reliant on the things they hate about themselves, the only thing they can think about are those things. So far they haven’t been able to ID the man through the victims because none of them have seen his face and he used a voice manipulator while speaking to them.

As the case went on you and the team split up and began working different leads to cover more ground. The unsub took another two girls and you have 22 hours left to find them before their damage is unrepairable. You usually get paired up with Spencer or Emily, only because you and Emily are really close and bounce ideas off each other well. Sometimes you go with JJ, you don’t have anything against the rest of the team but Spencer and Emily are the two you are closest with just like how Derek is with Penelope and JJ acts with Spencer. Today though, you weren’t paired with anyone and honestly, you were fine with that. You wanted to be alone and if Spencer was with you he would have just tried to pry more into what was wrong. He means it in the best way possible, you know, but sometimes when you are having a bad day you just need to be left alone.

JJ and Spencer were sent to talk with the first victim and their family, Derek and Emily went and talked to the people who had found Nicole, the first victim. Luke and Tara went to talk with the second victim, Katie, who was just found last night. You were sent to check out the second dumb site by yourself since you were down a team member. Rossi decided to take some personal time so that he can spend time with his daughter.

The dump site was weird, it was like no one had ever set foot in the area for years yet for some reason the unsub left her there. You start to look around, this place gives you the creeps. The bad feeling that you have had all day grows stronger and causes you to physically stop in order for you to catch your breath. “Calm down, (Y/N), you’re just in a creepy place by yourself that’s all.” As you walk around the building making sure that it was secure you feel something like pins and needles all over your arms and the back of your neck, it causes you to touch your hand to your gone and swing around. There isn’t anyone or anything there so you calm down but there is still that feeling there, that someone is watching you. He picked this dump site meticulously, he must have considering how annoying it was for you to get here. At first, you thought maybe it was random, it’s an abandoned building, but now that you’ve seen it you can feel the ambiance it gives you and you see the resemblance to a psychiatric facility. It goes with his MO, making people hate themselves more than they already do, teaching them that they can’t live without it. It almost seems like the unsub is trying to talk through the victims, telling us that’s how he feels and that he believes he should be in a psychiatric facility. He doesn’t know how to control himself from his psychotic episode and he enjoys it at the same time. Pleading to be caught yet making sure he’s organized enough not to be. With what you found out at the site you decided to head back to the station that you guys set up in, the rest of the team was already there and you walk in mid brainstorming session.

“Got anything (D/P/N), you’ve been gone a while.” Derek smiles at you and Emily rolls her eyes because that nickname for you is just too much not to.

“Yeah, I think I do actually.” You walk all the way in towards the board where Spencer was still pinning things up onto, “I think the unsub is lashing out at the victims the way he wants to lash out at himself. He needs help, well he wants it but doesn’t know how to ask for it while at the same time it almost seems he’s conflicted with how he wants this all to turn out. The site I was just at where Katie was left is an extremely specific and thought out place. It’s almost like he thinks, somehow in his mind, that he’s saving them.” You cringe at the thought, everything that he’s doing is beyond horrific, you couldn’t believe that those words even came out of your mouth.

“Saving them?” JJ says trying to follow your train of thought.

“Yeah, I know. It’s just a theory.” You immediately shut down, usually, you don’t jump in on throwing out theories but this one was begging for you to say it.

“No, I think I see it,” Emily tries stopping your retreat. “We went to the first disposal site and there was this psychiatric hospital vibe. It was secluded too, the people who found Nicole were only there because they wanted to cut through and get home.”

“Nicole kept repeating things he had told her almost as a mantra, ‘I don’t deserve to live’, ‘I am a burden to the people I love.’ She almost looked helpless like she wanted to stop but the few days that he kept her he must have scared her enough to make her unable to stop even while she’s safe. That deep seeded hatred had to come from somewhere, the fact that he doesn’t kill them may represent how he tried to end his life once but either failed or couldn’t go through with it.”

You start piecing the different factors together in your head as you turn to look at the board, Spencer had just finished marking the locations of Nicole and Katie’s homes as well as where they were found. In retrospect, they didn’t live that far away from each other nor were the dump sites far so he definitely has a small comfort zone.

A thought crosses your mind and you say it in a whisper not realizing it left your lips until Spencer asked you what you said. “What if the Unsub is the victim's therapist or counselor, it said in the file that Nicole and Katie were both on antidepressants and seeing counselors.”

Derek immediately calls Penelope, “Hey baby girl, you’re on speaker. Behave.”

“Or what you’ll spank me?”

Derek couldn’t help but let a smirk cross his face, no matter the situation if Penelope was involved it just felt wrong to be serious.

“What can I do for my favorite group of crime fighting badasses?”

“Can you check and see if Nicole and Katie have the same therapist?” You ask as you sit in one of the chairs around the table that Garcia, or the phone she is in, is sitting on.

“Let me work some fabulous magic that can only be provided by me really quick aaaaaaand, that’s a negative sweetcheeks. Sorry.”

“Can you maybe check if they at least go to the same center?”

Garcia pauses for a moment before a slight noise of surprise leaves her mouth, “I didn’t notice at first because the company that was in Nicole’s therapy building bought the company that Katie’s therapist is at. They meshed into one big pile and are officially the same.”

“Thanks, Garcia,” you say and turn to look at the victims before looking back at your team as Derek hangs up with Penelope. “Anyone else thinks this was too easy?” Spencer furrows his eyebrows and you get a few other confused looks, “what? it usually takes a little longer to understand what the unsub is doing let alone where he is.”

“We still don’t know who he is.” Derek points out, “his organization and cockiness are what may be his undoing. He thinks that we won’t catch him since he wasn’t caught the first time.”

After a day of searching through all the overlaps that were possibilities of having to do with the case, they decided to call it a night and head to the hotel in order to get some sleep. You, on the other hand, were not in the mood for sleep and this guy was getting to you. It was almost like he was taunting you and you were making it personal since you’ve struggled with mental illness most of your life. Instead of going to the hotel you decided to go look at the last dump site one more time. Before you even made it to the SUV you were hit in the back of your head, next thing you feel is the cement scraping against your clothes as you are being dragged. The rest of the team was still inside, you hoped with everything in your body and soul that someone- anyone would walk out and stop this. You had no such luck, instead, the pain in your head overtook your sight and you started to black out.

“All the people we have talked to so far aren’t a match to the profile. Yeah, some have parts of it but without the psychotic behavior he wouldn’t be kidnapping the women.” Emily and Spencer were walking out of the station talking about the case, they were waiting for you but didn’t realize that you had already left. Once it was apparent that you weren’t in the building they left and headed to the parking lot.

“I think it’ll be smart to get some sleep, we’ve been working on this for the past 36 hours.” Emily rubs her temple under her bangs as she closes her eyes for a minute trusting herself to be able to follow Spencer’s voice for a moment.

Something hits the tip of her shoe and she opens her eyes as she watches a phone spin in the direction her foot kicked it accidentally. Spencer looks at it in confusion before going to pick it up, “someone must have dropped their phone.”

He clicks the home button and the picture that pops up stops his heart, it’s a photo of the team at one of the get-togethers they had over at Rossi’s. The only person who wasn’t in the photo was you because you are the one who took it.

“It’s (Y/N)’s phone.”

“What, are you sure?” Emily takes the phone and looks at the picture, they both know that’s been her lock screen since she took the picture so there was no mistaking it as hers.

They both stand there for a moment in shock as they think of all the different possibilities of what happened before rushing back into the station where everyone else still was.

Time goes by and no one hears from you. Right now everyone is just assuming that the Unsub took you which would be a good assumption since it’s what happened.Spencer feels responsible somehow, he thinks there was a way he could have stopped it from happening. Maybe if he had just left the station with you or maybe if he would have asked you to wait for him before leaving you wouldn’t be in this situation.

Everyone is working harder than before, which is saying something because that shouldn’t even be possible, Penelope called with an update saying that there were no men fitting the description they give her earlier that have had contact with both Nicole and Katie.

It was like Spencer had an epiphany, he turned around and looked at the phone sitting on the conference table where Penelope is. “What if it’s not a man.”

Everyone stopped the work they were doing, “A woman?” Tara asks and then it all seemed to click for them, they have been so focused on it being a man because of the vague description the victims gave that it wasn’t even a thought. Now that it has been said though, all the pieces fit better. A woman would be more likely to try and kill herself and fail, woman are also more in tune with other peoples emotions and better at twisting words around.

Penelope was already searching for a woman that crossed Nicole and Katie’s path as the team started discussing possibilities. One of the most likely one is that the drop site that you went to was important to the unsub and when you went to check out the scene she saw you.

“Got her! Her name is Jennifer Riley, she’s a counselor who specializes in special cases and by special I mean the people who are ready to take their last breath. They come to her and she works them back to as much mental stability as possible.”

“Do you have an address?”

“Who do you think I am? It’s already sent to your phones now go save our (P/N/N).”

You told Spencer today was going to suck but you never realized how much. This was the day from hell and you honestly wish that you just wouldn’t have woken up this morning. You have no idea how long you have been knocked out but it’s really dark so either you’re in a room with no windows or it’s night time. “Fuck,” you say as you try and pull your hand up to your head to touch the area that hurts but ropes around your wrist don’t allow you. You clench your eyes shut and let your head fall back, your head was pounding.

“I see you finally woke up, I was starting to think you wouldn’t.”

“What a shame that would have been for you, huh.” Your eyes open as you search the darkness for the voice, you can’t see anything until a bright overwhelming light flashes on and blinds you. A sharp pain slashes through your head and once again your eyes are closed. You hear footsteps walking towards you and then suddenly they stop, something doesn’t feel right once again.

“You don’t sound too upset that you could have died.”

“I’m pretty sure that was in the non-disclosure agreement I signed when I joined the BAU.”

“To not care about living or dying?”

“No, that it’s a possibility to be injured or die.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t still be scared of dying.”

You stop and listen to what this psychopath is saying, didn’t they just kidnap you? What does it matter to them? “Why do you care?”

“I don’t. It just proves I was right about you when I saw you earlier.”

“Right about what?”

The unsub clicks a button and then the next voice you here surprises you, “that you want to die.”

It’s a woman.. It makes sense, all of the behaviors felt a little off for it to be a man but not enough to say it wasn’t one. You hope that your team has already found this out or that they at least realize you’re missing.

“I don’t.” Your voice was hesitant, not purposefully, you’ve had your reservations about living but you though you were done with those thoughts. Now your depressed days are just your ‘I have a bad feeling’ days.

“No need lying dear, we’re the only ones here and we both know the truth.” She walks up to you and you beat yourself up for not realizing she was anwoman before.

“Go to hell.”

She just laughs at you as she takes a few more steps in your direction, “I’m already here. Now, let’s get started shall we?”

“If I say no does that mean I can go home?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.” You hand your head as a way to calm yourself down, you were already having a bad day so the things she’ll say to you may push you to a point you’ve not gone to before.

The things she says to you, you try to go to a different place in your head but it’s so hard. It’s like she knew what you thought of yourself or maybe it was just so obvious to other people because it was true- no it’s not you’re just horrible to yourself it’s not true, it can’t be. She keeps pushing and it’s hard to control the pain you feel, it’s like you’re being told all the things you already think about yourself are true. You chose to stay quiet and just give as little expression as possible, maybe that will make her want to stop.

It doesn’t.

She doesn’t stop.

You want her to stop.

You don’t even care if she stops anymore,

You just want it all to stop.

Tears are streaming down your cheeks but your face is blank. There are shadows of blue and red barely visible in the room, they must have found you.

She looks in the direction that you are and noticed as well. Next thing you know you’re being untied but yanked against her, you can’t even focus because of your mind feeling so full and lost. There is shouting from your capture, she’s pushing you towards the exit and on the way you trip over the floor since she wasn’t giving you enough time to walk. You land on your knees and she yanks you back up before continuing to walk out of the building. You feel something hard against your head but don’t register what it is until you turn your head and she’s pointing a gun directly at your face until you turn it back.

You see Emily and Spencer standing in front with the rest of the team, the moment that you two walk out everyone aims a gun at you and her except your team. They don’t want to hit you, the rest of the squad doesn’t care though, they just see the woman who has been torturing the people living in their town.

“DONT SHOOT, LOWER YOUR WEAPONS.”

Emily shouts and pushes the guns close to her down as Spencer continues making eye contact with you. “(Y/N), we’re going to get you out of this.”

You watch him, he believes what he said but all you can think is it even worth to save you? What could it hurt? Then your pain turned into self sacrifice, if you die here they will kill her too. She deserves it. “Shoot her, what she does to people is fucked up!” You start struggling and pulling away from the woman who hits you and holds you tighter putting the gun to your stomach to have a better grip. Spencer starts rushing forward but Emily holds him back as much as it sucks to do. If they aren’t going to do it then you have to. You look into Spencer’s eyes and he knows, somehow he knows you’re about to do something idiotic, stupid, dumb, which ever word works better. Both him and Emily notice and start to try and calm the situation but it’s too late, you grab the trigger on the gun aiming at your stomach and pull. It shoots through your stomach and into the woman, Spencer and Emily rush forward along with the team as the others apprehend the suspect.

“No no no, (y/n), why would you do that. God you’re so stupid sometimes, it’s going to be okay.” He adds pressure to the wound and you just look up at him, your hand moves and takes hold of his bloodied hand on your stomach.

“It’s okay.”

“No it’s not, WHERE IS THE MEDIC?” Spencer looked around and back to you, Emily got up to find the medic to bring them to you. “You’re not dying (Y/n).”

“Told you.” You cough and take a breath.

“What?”

“I’m having a bad day.”

He didn’t find it funny, not one bit but maybe later he would. Right now probably wasn’t the best time to make a joke as you lie in the cold ground bleeding. “Sorry too soon.”

Once the medics get to you they stabilized you and got you into the ambulance before rushing you off to the hospital. Spencer came in the car with you while the others drove behind following. He wouldn’t let go of your hand, you didn’t really want him to anyways. At the hospital you had to go into surgery, it took a few hours but once you were out and in a room the team surrounded you. This was your family, these are the people you’d hurt if you left them. That was more than enough of a reason to stay. What you didn’t realize is Spencer was still planning to have a conversation with you about what happened. The end.

#criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #emily prentiss #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #emily prentiss x reader

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written-in-flowers · 5 years

Text

Kicker: Pt. 1

“Kicker”- A Poker term, a "kicker", also called a side card, is a card in a poker hand that does not follow the card rank sequence. It may be used to break ties between hands of the same rank.

Pairing: NamjoonxJungkook

Genre: Angst, Smut, Crime / Prison!AU

Words: 4k /

Disclaimer: Graphic Depictions of Violence, implied/referenced sexual assault, recreational drug use, gang violence.

*****

Chapter 1

He honestly never meant for this to happen. He’d gotten so caught up in the moment he only saw red. His hand reached for the candlestick without even thinking about it. He’d acted out of impulse and rage. He’d never felt anger like that before, he thought. Yes, Jungkook did get upset, but this was different. Seeing them in that bed together filled him to the top with this boiling hatred that exploded. He’d screamed all kind of hateful words. His mind turned blank; his body moved on autopilot with no break switch. All he’d wanted was for Derrick Staton to feel the way he did: torn up and broken inside. Once it passed and he stood in Derrick’s living room, he realized what he’d done.

“You called the police,” the prosecutor, a middle-aged woman with curly brown hair, said. “Why?”

“I felt bad. I realized what I’d done and...and I didn’t want him to die.”

Derrick didn’t. The doctor on the stand said Derrick is in a coma, and will make a full recovery. Jungkook felt thankful for that. He’d never wanted to kill Derrick. He’d loved him once. Derrick used to bring mountains of joy and made his heart sing. Now, he only thought of Derrick’s blood staining the carpet and police sirens in the distance. He’d laid on his front on the floor, blood pooling from his head. They said he’d still been breathing when they took him out. Jungkook didn’t see how that could happen. He’d looked so broken. Jungkook kept his eyes focused on the table in front of him while witnesses came forward.

His best friend Yugyeom stated that Jungkook loved Derrick deeply. He’d even dropped out of college and attended another one so they could date.

His other friend Bambam, and Jungkook’s father told the prosecutor he isn’t capable of things like this. Whatever happened in the house was an accident. He’d never intentionally hurt someone.

Derrick’s ex-wife said Derrick might’ve been a cheating bastard, but is a good father. His daughter claimed to know nothing about her father’s past infidelities. Jungkook didn’t even know he had a daughter.

Then Jinsung testified. Jungkook immediately resented him. Yugyeom joked Derrick must have a thing for Korean twinks. Jinsung, small and skinny, stood dressed like a Sunday school teacher. He put on the innocent boy role well. People pitied him as the boy who got caught in the middle. Jungkook noticed his broken nose, busted lip and arm cast. He’s a victim; a boy Derrick tricked into sex. He’s a young man who’d gotten caught in the crossfire. Jungkook wanted to throttle him again. He’d pursued Derrick. He’d seduced him for a few easy grades. Jungkook loved him, while Jinsung used him. He sat there and told the prosecutor everything.

He and Derrick went out for dinner that night. Derrick offered a night-cap back at his place, which led to them flirting and making out. They then went upstairs for sex. Jungkook scoffed at this. He’d done the same thing with him. Jinsung went on to say Jungkook barged in on them, furious and hysterical. He claimed Jungkook lashed out and began throwing things at them. Jinsung said he feared for his life since Jungkook seemed so hostile. Derrick tried calming him down, but then Jungkook ended up hitting him. When he tried leaving, he said Jungkook attacked him. He got his broken arm from falling down the stairs as he made his getaway. Derrick chased Jungkook down the hall and into the living room where the assault occurred.

After a few hours of discussion, the jury returned. They found him guilty. Jungkook’s heart sunk into his already twisted gut. He should have known. The evidence piled up around him and he’d confessed right away. He couldn’t back out of his plea if he’d asked. Involuntary manslaughter normally carries a sentence of up to ten years in prison. Since Jungkook is a first-time offender, they reduced it by two years. Eight. Eight years in a state prison. The bailiffs took him away to be processed. His mother sobbed into her hands. His father held her and glared at him. Both his friends looked on tearfully, telling him they’d visit him once they found out where he’d be going. His entire body shook all the way down the hall. An array of awful scenarios played out in his head. He thought of every prison movie and tv show he saw. His processing felt humiliating. They stripped him down and examined him. He’ll be getting his new uniform when he gets to the prison.

The entire way there he thought about it all. Derrick is in the hospital, linked up to a bunch of machines and eating through a tube. The doctor said he’s in a coma. Perhaps he’ll wake up. Perhaps Jungkook can apologize. But, as the bus rolled on through plains and forests, he knew it’d be pointless. He liked thinking Derrick may learn from this. He’d get some humility and remorsefulness. He’d loved him so much. He’d done so much to be with him. Derrick then went and threw it back at him. He wanted to tell Jinsung he’ll just do it to him too. Men like that never change...no matter how many times they’re hit by a short candlestick.

The bus pulled up to a large beige building. On a sign it read “Rickshaw State Penitentiary”. Dread refilled him as they entered the property. He saw a fenced-in area miles away where blue and beige figures walked around. He’d be in there soon surrounded by other inmates. They’ll be bigger, tougher and more dangerous than him. He’s a baby who threw a fit while some of them are cold-blooded killers. His body turned numb when the bus stopped. The guards led him and three other inmates to a building beside the main prison. There he received his blue scrubs, toiletries, bedroll, and slippers. They explained the rules to the newcomers as Jungkook expected. He had trouble paying attention. His mind stayed alert to everything but the guards. He took in the men beside him; he felt eyes on him though he couldn’t see them. His stomach churned in every step he took afterwards. When they left the building, they’d marched the three into the population. They assigned one man to A block; the other ended up in C. Jungkook, they said, will be residing in C.

“I knew they’d put him in Chinatown,” a burly, bearded guard said to his comrade, signaling for the gate to open.

“Come on, Sharp,” the woman-blonde and slender-said, “They can easily have put him elsewhere. There’s Asians in other blocks.”

“Yeah, but they’re all mostly here.” He looked over his shoulder to Jungkook, “Don’t worry, kid. You’ll fit right in.”

They walked down another long hall to the words “C-3 BLOCK” written in blue letters beside a gate. From the outside, he saw a sea of tables kept within the perimeter of columns. He spotted a second floor that looked down onto the first, the cell doors solid and not barred. A guard station sat up top overlooking the entire block; he assumed they watched cameras and kept an eye out for trouble. He thought he might faint. Sharp and Resnick led him into the block and people instantly noticed him. A few of them hooted and hollered things that made him sick, while some glared suspiciously. He wanted to go home. He wanted to hide. Despite the sickness and nervousness, he never shed a tear. Perhaps his subconscious worked on that for him. Perhaps he’d wasted them all crying over Derrick. He pushed the dead man from his mind as they came upon a door.

“You’ll be in C5,” Sharp told him, “Enjoy your stay, kid. You’re gonna be here a while.”

The two of them left and Jungkook looked into his cell. One bunk bed set, a tiny desk, and a window to look out of, it resembled most cells. He saw posters of idol singers on the wall, a small stack of magazines and books on the window sill, and a drawing pad and charcoal on the desk. He took a timid step inside where he saw his bunk mate. Slim, brown hair textured and combed to his nape, he might be a supermodel. He laid on his bed, propped on his elbow flipping through a magazine. He only just noticed Jungkook when he glanced to the door.

“Oh hi,” he slipped off the top bunk and stood by the set, “You must be my new roomie.”

“I am.” He clutched his bedroll and bag.

“I’m Taehyung,” he stretched out his hand, “Most people call me Tae.”

“I’m Jungkook,” they shook hands.

“You can take the bottom,” he told him, nodding to the empty half below. “I’d give you top but I claimed it right after my old roomie left.”

“That’s-That’s fine.” He’d never expected this. The handsome boy grinned at him, then took the bedroll.

“Let me do it,” he said, unrolling the bedroll and sheets. “There’s a certain way you gotta do it. They say they clean these when they get them back, but I don’t believe them. You put this white sheet over it,” he put the green mattress on top of the barred bed frame, “Instead of sleeping under it. Some guys get ringworm if their mattress isn’t cleaned right.”

He watched Taehyung fix his bed for him. He noticed a tattoo behind his ear; two trapezoids facing each other topside in full black. The numbers 053 inked underneath it. It didn’t look like an gang tattoo he’d seen. Then again, how many gang members did he know?

“There,” he breathed, “All done. It’s not the most comfortable, but what’d you expect?”

“Not much.”

The man climbed back onto his bunk, returning to his magazine. “Do you have a work detail yet?”

Jungkook took timid steps into the cell. He set his bag down as he said, “No.”

“You’ll probably end up in the kitchen with the rest of us,” he said. “It’s where they put most of C Block.”

“What if they don’t?” why did that worry him more?

“Then you’ll go somewhere else like sanitation or the library or laundry. Sanitation isn’t that bad if you don’t mind scrubbing toilets. Laundry is alright, but then you’ll be stuck with Miles, and well...you’re definitely his type.”

Jungkook needed to lay down. His insides never stopped crunching up. He stared up at the bottom of Taehyung’s bed. This will be his view from now on. That and the metal toilet across from him. It can’t be all that bad, right? He can always end up in worse places. He thought about his parents. His father only stared in disappointment and disgust. He’d told Jungkook in jail they’d never visit him. He couldn’t stand even looking at him. He’d brought disgrace and shame to their family. His mother told him she still loved him though. She’d try visiting when she could; call him every day. He hoped she’d forget. It’d already pained him to hear her crying in person; over the phone will only make it worse. His mind drifted back to that night. He remembered Jinsung’s screams, and Derrick trying to calm him down. He’d held his hands up before Jungkook hit him. He’d never hit anyone before. Nobody told him it’d hurt so much.

Taehyung’s head then popped up next to him. “Are you gonna cry?” he asked, not teasingly but blatantly. “If you are, it’s okay. I won’t tell anyone you did.”

“I don’t think so,” he answered, looking back to his ceiling. “I’ve done enough crying.”

“Hm, I know what you mean. I felt the same way too. You can only cry so much before you get tired.”

“You did?” Taehyung did not seem the crying type.

“Yeah,” he rested back on his bed, disappearing from view. “It was a deal gone bad. A friend and I went to drop off some stuff to this guy, right? He’s a huge dude. I’m talking like a walking vending machine. He’s there with some of his boys, yeah? We show him the drugs. It’s prime coke, okay? It wasn’t no cheap shit. Anyways, we’re there discussing payment when suddenly-bro, this shit was crazy-he pulls out a fucking badge!”

“He was a cop?”

“Yeah! Feds, dude. It was a setup the whole time! I felt so fucking stupid! I was telling my boy that I didn’t think it was a good idea because we didn’t know the guy that well. He said it was good because he did. Still, we went. We both ran out, right? I mean, I wasn’t planning on going to prison over some dumb shit like that. My friend decided to be all gangsta and pulls out a gun. The idiot starts firing back at the cops while we’re running. One of the bullets hits a cop in the neck and the guy starts bleeding out like superbad. I didn’t see it, but they said there was blood like all over him. I’m there running hearing guns popping off and sirens and I start freaking out. I thought my heart was gonna bust out of my chest. I made it back to my mom’s house, but they caught me there and arrested me. My mom was super pissed.”

“I imagine she was.”

“They charged me with possession with intent to sell and involuntary manslaughter.”

“The officer died?”

“Yup. My friend got straight murder, so he’s locked up for life. They were easier on me because I didn’t fight them and didn’t have a weapon on me at the time,” he said. “What about you? What’d you do?”

He tensed up on the woolen blanket. “Same as you. Involuntary manslaughter…” it sounded worse outloud.

“What? No way!” he slid back off the bed and sat on Jungkook’s bed. “For real?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Wow. I thought you did like theft or something. You don’t seem the hurting type.” He then faced him, “What happened? Who was it?”

“My-My boyfriend…”

Taehyung smiled, “Caught him fucking around behind your back?”

“Yeah…”

Taehyung thankfully sensed his hesitation, “It's not as bad as they make it seem. Honestly, the food's pretty decent here. I've gone to some places where they only feed you twice and it's like this slop that comes in a bag. Ugh,” he shuddered. “The guards aren't complete dicks either. They're just people doing their jobs. Do what they say, don't give back talk, and you're good. Unless you're with Jones or Marsh. They're both such assholes,” he shook his head. “I mean there's still scraps and stabbings and stuff, but other than that it's pretty chill. Well, easy for me to say. I'm in Bangtan 053,” he showed the tattoo, “So it's okay for me.”

“Why are you being nice to me?” the question came out before he could think.

“Because you're one of us,” he patted Jungkook's shoulder.

“Us?”

“You know, Korean,” he said.

“So if I was another race you'd hate me?”

“Nah, it's not like that. I'd be careful around you for sure, but I don't hate people. You have to be suspicious about people you meet in this place, you know?” He then said, “RM will want to meet you though.”

“RM?”

“You two talking about RM?”

Standing in the doorway was another gorgeous man. No doubt smaller, his tied back shirt shaped out his slim body. Full lips shined a soft pink color, and brown eyes that sparkled. Jungkook swallowed thickly at the sight of him. He didn’t look like everyone else; he seemed better kempt. He swept back his orange hair and grinned at Jungkook.

“Well hello handsome,” his flirtatious smirk made Jungkook worse.

“Jungkook, this is Jimin,” Taehyung introduced. “Jiminie, this is Jungkook.”

“Hey there,” he entered the room, sitting on the chair in front of him. “You're cute. You'll definitely be popular around here.”

“I...I don't want to be.”

“Too bad neither of us gets to decide that,” he sighed. He withdrew a lollipop from his pocket and unwrapped it. Jimin locked eyes with Jungkook as he slowly took the red candy in his mouth. “Have you met RM yet?” he asked, giving a firm suck that made Jungkook gulp thickly.

“No.”

“You will once he hears about you.”

“And you're going to tell him?” Taehyung raised an eyebrow.

“That's my job, Tae.” He glanced to Jungkook then back to Taehyung, “Shouldn't you be, you know, gardening anyways?”

“I already did, thank you very much,” Taehyung replied.

“Gardening?” Jungkook sat up, leaving against his pillow.

“It's…” Taehyung faltered, “Only RM can tell you really. We're not supposed to say.”

“Who is RM?”

“You’ll find out eventually,” Jimin said, sucking the lollipop more. “You don’t go to him. He asks for you.”

This ‘RM’ guy didn’t sound very pleasant. Then again, it’s prison. Taehyung and Jimin decided they’d show him around during their leisure time. Taehyung, Jimin and him took seats at an empty table in the center. He found people still eyeing him from where they sat. He wondered which one of them is RM. It must be someone big and tough. Though, he understood why guards called this block ‘Chinatown’. The name still bothered him, though Jimin and Taehyung seemed fine with it. It’s not as if there is a choice in the matter or that guards will care. Though amongst “his people”, he did see a few different faces, so the name didn’t make complete sense.

“Since we’re not allowed out of here unless we got a reason,” Taehyung pulled out a paper from his pocket and unfolded it, “I made a map.”

“A map?”

“Yeah, so newbies know our turfs. You don’t want to get shanked your first week because you walked into the wrong place.”

“What about guards?” He felt this is something that can’t be helped either way.

“They know too, but if you’re with a guard, the others don’t mind,” Jimin explained. “Most of them are cool anyways.”

“The only ones you really have to worry about are the Skinheads, who are here,” he pointed to a rectangle nearthe edge.

Taehyung drew a intricate layout of the prison. Complete with lush trees and barbed wire for perimeters, he gave the buildings 3-dimensions and bolded the words. It was quite impressive. The four main blocks (A, B, C, D) boarded the land across from one another. Each rectangle split into three labeled in numbers. He pointed to D block which was opposite theirs. “Don’t get us wrong,” Jimin added, “There’s other races mixed into these places. The nicknames are for the majority living there. In D block, it’s the white guys.”

“Some are pretty okay, you know like biker gangs or guys not part of anything,” Taehyung said. “But Alabama is where most of the Skinheads and Nazis are. They’re all split into different factions apparently, but nobody here really gives a shit, you know? A Nazi is a Nazi.”

“Right. Alabama, white guys.”

“Naturally, the Skinheads sit farther away in a corner,” he pointed on the cafeteria section, “And are near the exercise equipment. Mind you, we take the gym stuff in shifts so nobody gets into it with anyone else.”

“Seems violence is really avoided around here.”

They chuckled, “Not really. There's still fights and shit, but the system keep us separated most of the time.” He then pointed to B Block, “Then there’s B Block. All your black guys live there. There’s different gangs there-like here-so they have their own feuds. We’re pretty okay with them; RM and Donte go way back since they got locked up around the same time.”

“Donte?”

“Runs a Bloods chapter,” Jimin answered.

“They’re usually posted up on their side of the yard close to where they’re dropped off,” Taehyung noted. “You play basketball?”

“Not really.”

“You should learn. They play dirty with outsiders though, so watch out.” He noted their section of the cafeteria which is closer to the windows, “Never, ever, ever, sit in someone else’s section unless asked,” he warned. “It’s one of those unspoken things around here.”

“Okay.”

“Latino gangs are in A Block,” he tapped on the building towards the back, “It’s kind of the same as with B Block. We don’t mess with them, they don’t mess with us. Their leader is Ale, short for Alejandro.”

“He’s super fine by the way,” Jimin smiled.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Taehyung waved the comment away. “Now businesses, never buy anything from anyone outside of C Block.”

“Like what?”

“Drugs, cellphones, tattoo equipment, alcohol, you know contraband stuff,” he said. “There’s two guys you can usually get rarity items from in our block. There’s Aoki, the tall one,” he nodded to a tall, long haired man sitting in a group nearby, “And there’s our boy Yoongi. Don’t let Yoongi catch you buying from Aoki though; they’re in competition with each other.”

“Alright.”

“I don’t want to make guarantees,” he said, “But RM will probably rope you into helping us.”

“Oh, I don’t...No, I’ve never…”

“You don’t have much of a choice when it’s RM asking you,” Jimin told him. “What he says goes. If he wants you to smuggle in blow, you do it. If he wants you to plant drugs in our hiding spots, you do it. Well, you can decline but…”

“But what? He’ll kill me or something?”

“No, you’ll just be shunned by our entire gang,” he shrugged, “And in this place you don’t want that.”

“This place will eat you alive.”

The entrance doors opened, and the room broke into applause. A smug look on his face, a lean, tanned man walked in escorted by a guard. Jungkook noticed the bandage wrapped around his wrist and a break on his lip. The guard unshackled him and left him to the group greeting him. After the men dispersed, he turned to Jimin and Taehyung. The pair stood up to hug him tightly.

“Hobi!” squealed Jimin, who latched to him like a koala. “You’re out! Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve gotten you something special.”

“Trust me, you already have something special,” Hobi smirked, giving Jimin’s ass a small spank. “Tae,” he hugged the other man, “I got your gift in there. It’s well appreciated.”

“The nurses give mild stuff,” said Taehyung. “Yoongi got them for me.”

“Then I gotta thank him too.” His eyes landed on Jungkook. Jungkook noticed a tattoo similar to Taehyung's on his other wrist. Except 053 ran through the middle instead. Other small tattoos connected to one another covered one arm. Sweeping back his short, brown hair, he moved towards him, “And who’s your friend?”

“This is Jungkook,” Taehyung introduced, “He’s my bunk mate. He just got here.”

“Ah, so a new guy,” he noticed the map on the table, “Giving him a tour?”

“Yup,” he nodded. “There’s things he needs to know before he runs with us.”

“Don’t count your chickens before they've hatched, alright?” said the older man. “RM decides that. Not you.”

“Well, why wouldn’t he?” Jimin stepped in. “Jungkook’s cute and unassuming. He can get by people easily.”

Hobi looked him over, “Hm, maybe. I guess. I’m Hoseok,” he stuck out his good hand, “But call me Hope. Everyone does.”

“Hope?”

“Because people hope they might live after fighting me,” he replied in a smile. “Where’s RM?” he asked the other two.

“Playing cards with Yoongi and Jin,” Jimin told him.

“Does he know about this kid?” he gestured to Jungkook at the table.

“Was going to tell him,” he answered. “Got caught up in talking to him.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell him. Nice meeting you, Kook.”

“Um, yeah. You too.”

He watched Hoseok walk away. Once out of earshot, Jungkook looked to Taehyung. “He’s in Bangtan too,” he said, sitting back down, “He was in the infirmary because he got into a fight with a Skinhead.”

“Hoseok hates the Skinheads,” said Jimin. “Like with a passion. He’s always looking for a reason to fight one of them.”

“Pretty relatable.”

“Also RM ordered it, so it was done.”

“Why?”

“He caught one of them trying to steal from our drug hideouts,” said Taehyung. “That’s one thing everyone knows. You see drugs or anything else contraband, you leave it alone. It’s not for you.”

“Noted.”

*****

“Full house, boys!”

“Again?! How?!”

Jin looked at him in disbelief, throwing down his cards. Namjoon didn’t always win twice in a row, but when he did Jin automatically protested. Yoongi took the cards and began shuffling them as the elder continued.

“You’re cheating,” he said to Namjoon.

“How? How am I cheating?” asked Namjoon, amused by him. “Jin, this game is pure luck. All card games are based on luck.”

“Except blackjack,” Yoongi chimed in. “You just do the counting in your head.”

“I still think you cheated,” said Jin, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t know how yet. But I’m watching you, Namjoon.”

Namjoon’s jaw clenched. “You’re lucky you’re older, hyung,” he sat back to watch Yoongi deal cards.

Jin smirked, “And it’s a beautiful thing.”

Yoongi, pale and thin, dealt each of them cards to continue playing. This is what they did. They did this every day. Every day they went through the same routine until someone grew antsy. Namjoon preferred his schedule. It kept a good consistency in his life; there’s rarely any surprises. Looking through his cards, he had a pretty good hand. His eyes peered around the room. Dinner will be coming up soon, so naturally there’s more people in the middle than usual. He noted the other gang leaders in the room who all kept to themselves. Peaceful. Civil. The way it should be. Obviously, Bangtan is the largest, so the others respected them. Nobody turned their way or walked up to them.

Except Hoseok.

“Oh, our own Rocky Balboa returns,” says Jin, putting down his first card. “How was the infirmary?”

“Lovely,” replied Hoseok, sitting across from Namjoon. “The bed was semi-comfortable and the room had a nice view.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah and her name was Kassandra.”

The other three men laughed, but Namjoon simply put down one of his cards. “Is it done?” he asked once the laughter died down.

Hoseok’s smile faded, and he gave a curt nod. “Yeah. I think fuck-face got the message.”

“I did hear that Harris is in pretty bad shape,” said Yoongi. “Taehyung told me when he went to visit.”

“Good. Next time he’ll think before sticking his hand in places it doesn’t belong,” Namjoon grimaced.

“Fucking supremacists,” hissed Hoseok. “Think everything belongs to them.”

“We gotta watch them from now on,” Namjoon told Jin. “Make sure that little one in the kitchen doesn’t get near the lettuce.”

“I won’t. I keep him peeling when it comes in. Taehyung and Jimin unload the truck.” He nudged Namjoon’s arms, “Relax. I got this. It was a one time thing; it won’t happen again.”

He wished he could believe him. “Speaking of unloading,” Hoseok began, putting down a card, “Have you seen the new inmate?”

“What do those two things have to do with each other?” asked Yoongi.

“No, I haven’t,” Namjoon glanced around the room again, “Where is he?”

“With Jiminie and Tae. They’re giving him the ‘tour’.”

“They should bring him to you,” Jin declared. “Every new guy has to go through you first.”

“They want to get him settled,” Yoongi suggested. “Give it a day or two before you call him over here.”

Not all new inmates met Namjoon. He left it to Jimin or Taehyung to choose candidates for him. He trusted their judgment. Throwing down his last card, sighing in his defeat, he looked back to the room. He found Jimin’s orange head in the sea of black and brown. In front of him sat a man not much older than their youngest. A sweet face with wide-eyes and cute nose, he definitely didn’t belong here. He reminded Namjoon of a skittish cat. As Taehyung explained his map, the boy continued looking around closed up tight. He waited. He waited for the moment someone will approach him and not be so nice. It is inevitable. A boy as soft and pretty as him will gain at least some attention. Yoongi started a new game, Jin and Hoseok talked about Nurse Kassandra, but he watched this new inmate. He wondered what got him in Rickshaw. It can’t be anything dangerous. Maybe theft or possession; a non-violent crime. But if it were, he’d be in a minimum security prison, not here.

“You think he killed someone?” Yoongi noticed his silence. Yoongi noticed everything, and it became bothersome at times. “It’s always the quiet ones who do the worst damage,” he glimpsed to Jin.

“Don’t you go side-eyeing me, Min,” warned Jin.

“Just saying. It’s possible.”

“Maybe,” Namjoon answered. “You never know these days. The outside is fucking crazy.”

“One thing’s for sure,” a smirk went across Hoseok’s face, “He’s definitely your type.”

“My type?”

“Soft and pretty.”

Namjoon looked to the man again, seeing him follow Jimin and Taehyung back to his cell. The idea of having him close, smelling his sweetness and kissing his supple skin did stir something in him. But then the block door doused out any fantasies.

"Jung H, Kim S, Kim T, Min S, and Park J,” Officer Sharp appeared in the doorway, reading off a clipboard, “Let’s go. Kitchen detail.”

The three men groaned as they stood from the table. He saw Taehyung and Jimin line up with them. The new one most likely will be assigned somewhere else. Someone so angelic won’t last long anywhere but the kitchen. Namjoon called new players and distracted himself from the newbie.

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stagekiller · 5 years

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Cont from x.

@crimescupid

Why is it that he always goes on these rants when Harley is around? Whatever it is that’s happening, Jerome DESPISES it. Yet, at the same time, he can’t seem to put a halt to his own tongue when it starts - perhaps driven by some deep rooted need to share the things no one else wants to hear. Maybe he thinks Harley wants to hear them. Or maybe he’s instinctively laying out victim cards on the table to lure her in; it is no secret by now that she’s the only person he hangs around so often, seeking approval for his deviant acts - that she gladly encourages on the daily.

Something about this sick mutual enabling feeds his ego, unbeknownst to his knowledge. And there’s also the prestige of being seen around her; cocky & flamboyant, she has the air of a princess - which is equal parts annoying and yet somehow rewarding when it comes to living up to shallow reputation standards.

Either way, here they are, sitting by the river bank, throwing pebbles as if he doesn’t have a billion chores lurking behind his doorstep and she probably will be late to practice as well.

“ Eh, not sure about that, dollface. ” The response is immediate, but for once Jerome’s chuckles hold an uncharacteristic trace of bitterness. “ Mine’s kinda rottin’ away at the bottom of some ocean. ” Spoken quickly, the sentence seems to leave a certain TASTE on his tongue, for he keeps clicking it against his palate after uttering the words, as if he just tasted something sour. Though, when he speaks again, his tone holds the usual vibrant hue, however stiff & aloof his body might feel.

“ He was a sailor, y’see. ” Voice starts to fluctuate as it often does when Jerome performs. Hands wave about as he narrates, occasionally stealing a glimpse of Harley’s expression to feed off of her reactions - or be fueled by the lack thereof. “ You ever been on a ship? I haven’t. But I always wanted to be; can you imagine the freedom? ” His hands extend to draw a big circle around himself, as the ocean would, should his dream have come to fruition. “ The view of an endless sea around you, no limits, no fences, no - ” Face scrunches up and a childish mock follows; “ - ‘ muck the dung out Jerome’ and ‘ do the dishes Jerome ‘ and ‘ stop trying to kill your brother Jerome ’. ”

Pause. This brings him back to the point he was trying to make when he referred to his father to begin with; it’s bad to have feelings. And the present situation re-affirms the validity of that statement in his head, because now he can feel that pain in his chest that he oh- so HATES, but that hate is married to conflict; because a lot of the time he finds himself indecisive as to whether it’s best to feel such deep hatred ... or nothing at all.

“ I always dreamt of the day he’d show up - ” He continues, voice growing softer. It is doubtful whether the tenderness it conveys is sourced from genuine emotion - a wounded child - or part of his act - a talented actor. But this bipolarity is in Jerome’s nature; add to that the fact he probably can’t tell where one ends & the other begins himself. “ I’d see his carrot top peak through the ticket booth and I’d run up to him - ” Eyes sparkle, his hands hovering right over his knees as they’re folded loosely over his chest. “ ...and he’d take me away. ” He swallows hard, blinks, withdraws his gaze to examine the pebbles they’ve been sitting on, pick one up and toss it in the river. ‘ Clack ! clack ! splash ! ’ Jerome’s voice is stern as he continues.

“ It kept me goin’, y’kno? When she’d slam a kettle down my back I’d think to myself ‘ Don’t worry, Jerome, dad is coming - one day’. ” Bitter words are blurted out with disregard for the subject itself; as if Jerome doesn’t grasp just how morbid it is. The only thing that bothers him is how effortlessly the words flow, without shame, and how he knows it’s Harley’s presence that causes this. Does he mean to shock her? Perhaps it’s the LUST for reactions that has him go on. “ Then one time I asked her ‘ mom, what’s the name of dad’s ship he works at ‘ and she turned to me an’ said - ” Head slowly turns around to meet blue hues, expression falling to a deadpan, voice grows COLD. ; “ ‘ He’s dead, Jerome.’ “

Albeit not the most horrible thing to have come out of the ginger’s lips, the sentence held an imposing tone; it fell heavy between them, because to Jerome that sentence had been far from a mere announcement.

“ Just like that.” It was funny how much unprocessed GRIEF he held for that day; the day that dream fell apart. One by one, handles securing him to a place where he could still HOPE for the future had crumbled; first his father, then his brother, men in his life seemed to have a pattern - but it wasn’t as if his mom was much better. “ Bloody bitch.” Words are forced through gritted teeth, upper lip scrunching into a scowl. The amount of disdain that radiates in his tone is admirable; his throat vibrates with a shaky breath, an obvious attempt to control his wild temper.

There follows a silent pause, during which Jerome becomes unresponsive, staring off to the distance with a glare that’s far from frozen; unlike what you’d expect from him, when he’s always so unattached to everything, almost floating over reality itself with his cockiness & vanity. He hates moments like this; moments of WEAKNESS.

Thus, when vision grows FOGGY, thick lashes bat the feelings away, glassy eyes fixated on some distant spot as lips purse and a hard gulp rolls down his throat. The sentiment is discarded and when the ginger turns around to meet his comrade, sorrow & rage have dissipated from his expression; a brief sniffle is all indication of what may have just been a breakdown, before his nose scrunches up, emerald eyes darting to the side as a thoughtful hum escapes rosy lips.

“ Hmmm... I’m feelin’ a slushie. Wanna join? ”

#// their bonding time is basically they each get turns at doing a dramatic monologue #{ crimescupid }#♥ Familiar taste of poison | Jerome Valeska & Harley Quinn//crimescupid ♥#// and yes its kinda old but i FELT it ok leave me be

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linkspooky · 5 years

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Shigaraki vs Redestro

Every time Shigarak goes through an arc in which he is not the main villain, but rather fighting another villain, starting with Stain, then Chisaki, and most recently Re-Destro it not only becomes a battle between them but also a comparison of them as people. Shigaraki is not just fighting his own villains, he is up against his own shadows, people who are like him but not. A battle against them is a battle against himself in a way. Every single one of the antagonists Shigaraki faces is actually a foil with several things in common with him, I already wrote a similiar post on Chisaki here.

Below the cut, the several things that Shigaraki and Redestro have in common, and the difference that will allow Shigaraki to grow in a way that Redestro hasn’t, making Redestro his stepping stone.

1. Upbringings

We do not get to see Re-destro’s backstory nearly to the extent that we see Shigaraki’s but, there is still enough there to give us a lot to infer. First, Destro similiar to All for One is someone who at one time held a lot of power in quirk society, Destro in his army fighting for quirk liberation and All for One being the king of the underworld. They are also both people who have fallen considerably out of power, Destro was defeated and his army had to go into hiding, and All for One was wounded near-fatally by All Might and was put on life support. Which makes both Shigaraki and Re-Destro the successors to a considerable legacy behind them, they’re kings who basically inherited a crumbling empire.

Not only that but both of them inherit it from what is primarily their father figure. Destro is Rikiya’s biological father, whereas Shigaraki took the name “Shigaraki” from All for One who renamed him from Tenko Shimura after the death of his family and raised and groomed him into being his successor.

Also, important to both characters is that while they were raised as a successor and modeled off their father figure, in both cases neither All for One nor Destro was ever a true father to them. Destro apparently did not even know that Rikiya ever existed, which makes Rikiya a bastard who got saddled with the legacy of a man he never even met. Whereas All for One never intended to act like a father, just use Shigaraki Tomura as an extension of himself.

All for One never saw Tenko Shimura as an individual person or a child to raise, he is a tool to further his legacy and that’s it. He is an object that All for One left behind as his lingering regret and revenge against All Might. What happens to Shigaraki the person he could care less, as long as Shigaraki fulfills his obligations and designs in his place as All for One’s life force fades away.

Which is why the two of them both have this similarity, their fathers have defined their entire lives. Re-destro does everything for the sake of a father that he never met. Not only did Shigaraki live in a household where his father, the patriarchal authority of the house decided who Shigaraki got to be and restricted him from becoming a hero like he desired, but afterwards he fell into the clutches of All for One who then further shaped him to be hateful, and despise the world to better fulfill All for One’s desires.

Their entire lives have felt the weight of this burden, just because of who they happened to be born under. Remember, Tenko is the child of the son Nana abandoned. He literally has no idea that Shimura Nana was a possessor of All for One, and yet he had to suffer the lingering effects of Shimura Nana’s decision to abandon her child. All for One targeted him because of his bloodline that he had no control over. Not only that but Rikiya is once again a child his father never even knew about. He was just once a fatherless child who got dragged into all of this and burdened with his father’s legacy.

Considering the fanatacism of using an entire city to attack six people, and their devotion to Rikiya it’s extremely likely that Rikiya was raised in a cult-like environment where the followers of Destro in hiding controlled basically his entire world, and cut him off from the outside world. The same way Tenko Shimura was raised in a small room by All for One with only limited contact with the outside world that All for One allowed, and only negative violent contact because he knew it would foster even more hatred in Tenko’s heart for the world. Which means at one point both of them were just indoctrinated children. Imagine forcing a grudge of several generations all on the shoulders of a child, it’s no wonder both of them carry so much stress in them.

2. Emotion Based Quirks

Both Shigaraki and Re-Destro have quirks that increase in power and potency depending on their emotions, and they also both have personalities where they accumulate stress and then at the last moment lash out and destroy everything around them.

They were both raised to think that way as well, that their quirk defines entirely who they are as a person. It’s quite obvious in the way Apocrypha was raised, and what he spouts as the Liberation Army’s Doctrine. People are only worth the strength of their quirks. Their quirks began to define who they were. However it’s important to remember just because they were born with those quirks, does not mean they were born that way as people. Rather, they were both raised to believe that they were always born to be this way.

So then, let’s look how each of them see both themselves and their quirks. Rikiya has the narrative that he is Re-Destro’s son, therefore him and all of his strength exists to carry everything Destro left behind. He believes because Destro’s blood runs through his veins, that he was born to carry the burden of history that Destro left behind for him (even though Destro never even realized he had a son in the first place).

Therefore narratively, both his tremendous stress and his tremendous strength makes a lot of sense. He is an atlas, believing that he carries the whole world on his shoulders because his father put it there for him. He needs that massive amount of strength to remake the world as Destro sees fit, but not only that Re-Destro has been impossibly burdened since he was a child. That is a lot of stress all to throw onto one child who did not even know he was Destro’s son to begin with.

Re-Destro seems like a fanatical who is completely happy to carry on his father’s legacy, but remember at one point he was just a child who got taken in by a cult and indoctrinated. He probably forces himself to believe in all of it because the other possibility, that his father did not even know about him, and did not leave him anything behind, and that the burden that has been stressing him out his entire life is just imaginary something somebody else forced on him instead of something he was born to do is too much for him to face. The truth is it Re-Destro isn’t defined by who his father was, and he doesn’t have to do anything based on whose blood runs in his vein, but he imagines that he is compelled to take on Destro’s legacy because he is his descendant. He believes that there is meaning in that, because it gives meaning to his suffering.

Re-Destro calls his acts for the purpose of liberation, but really he’s more restrained than anybody else. He’s tied to a destiny of a stranger, and who he has no true idea what his wishes were, but fanatically convinces himself he has no other choice but to follow in his footsteps. It’s a massive burden to put on a child. Re-destro doesn’t have a family, he has a man who he has modeled his entire life after despite never meeting him. Part of him secretly desires to be free from all of that, which is why he envies and wants to destroy Shigaraki who he sees as being an upstart brat who was never forced to carry the tremendous burden every day that he was, and simply gets to do whatever he wants.

He can’t see Shigaraki as a victim of the legacies that they both carry, because that would be admitting to his own victimhood as well. Therefore, Re-Destro’s quirk is a metaphor for how much the burden he is carrying on his shoulders, makes him want to lash out and destroy everything around him to feel some semblance of freedom not from the suppression of quirk society, but rather his cult-like environment which raised him to feel like his only choice in life was to inherit Destro’s will. His environment is one of constant stress and burden which he can only accumulate further and further until he lashes out. The person who wants liberation is more restrained by his own ideals then anyone else.

Re-Destro feels a constant throbbing in his chest due to his resentment for his lot in life that he’s suppressing. Shigaraki feels a constant itching which is also due to the stress he feels towards his own environment.

It’s not confirmed yet, but Shigaraki’s allergies and his scratching are at least suggested to be stress related. He always does them compulsively, and shows signs of the mental illness exociration when he scratches at his own neck.

One of my theories which I will go more into depth later is that the itching feeling, is his quirk activating on his own body since it’s not totally compatible with it the same way that Dabi’s is not compatible with his body. However, due to Tenko holding it back subconsciously almost all the time his face only gets mildly irritated.

The itch is also most likely a psychological feeling in reaction to the stress of his environment. Tenko is raised in an abusive household where he is not allowed to be himself, he feels a constant itch and unease. Abusive households are stressful because children feel constantly in danger in them, children can even develop post traumatic stress disorder from having to adjust to living in a constantly unsafe environment. Tenko even says if someone had rescued him from that environment, he thought the itch might have gone away.

However, instead he moves from one unstable environment to another. Tenko is taught that hurting other people and lashing out will make the itch go away temporarily. Abuse victims often lash out in ugly ways, and hurt the people around them to temporarily vent the feelings they are carrying with them, but once again this never works to make the feelings permanently go away.

All for One even says this directly, that Shigaraki’s quirk is related to his emotions hence why we see much more destruction during his initial use of the quirk against his family as a child then much later when he is fighting Aizawa for example. Which is why All for One not only encourages to keep his resentment in his heart, but also to chain himself to the memory of his family, because it’s a way to guarantee his quirk will only be used for destruction while at the same time also keeping Shigaraki under control and chained to him.

Shigaraki is freer than anyone else because he believes he simply does whatever he wants to do being a villain who lives in the underbelly of society, and yet at the same time Shigaraki is chained to All for One’s legacy, and the man who has had a hand in manipulating a significant portion of his life. That way he is both free and burdened like Re-Destro, and that is why his stress only continues to accumulate. Shigaraki’s quirk, much like Eri’s probably does not only have to have negative uses but All for One shaped him in a way that he would only lash out, only use his quirk in the most destructive way possible, only allowed to act on his worst impulses. Shigaraki believes he was born this way not moulded.

Shigaraki’s true desire deep in his heart has been to be free to be his own person, not a hero necessarily, not a villain either, but to be able to be the person he wants to be. He believes that by following All for One, because he can do whatever he wants without attachment or the oppression of his previous household he is allowed to do that but once again he’s deluding himself.

If Shigaraki’s true goal was to be free to do whatever it is he wanted, then he would just massacre all of his allies like he did really on in his character arc. However, we see that what Shigaraki really wants isn’t freedom from all of his attachment, because he genuinely values his attachment to those people. What he needs to realize is that there are healthy and unhealthy attachments, and while he claims to have rejected everything from his past he is still acting in the narrative All for One gave him, in the way All for One wants him to. True freedom is something he has to define for himself. It’s a meaning he has to create after he’s tossed away all other meanings. Re-Destro secretly wants to throw away all his burdens and attachment to the meta liberation army, whereas Shigaraki is someone who in a much healthier environment is accepted for who he is already by his comrades and just needs to learn to be that person.

Once again, in both cases lashing out does not solve either of their problems. It only makes them believe that the feeling has gone away temporarily. Rikiya believes Shigaraki is free, because destroying his family legacy is what Rikiya has always secretly wanted to do to taste that freedom for a moment. Yet, as long as he still is trying to prove himself to be worthy of being All for One’s successor Shigaraki cannot truly be free, especially since he defines freedom the way All for One wanted to rather than his own way. If he exists as a Symbol of Fear, than he has yet to become a person, he’s restrained to being a symbol for others the same way All Might was restrained as being the Symbol of Peace.

Shigaraki’s gotten the power up that he needed, but the problem that accumulates the stress in the first place has not been solved by this. In fact, the doctor intentionally put him in a stressful environment and risked his life and harmed him intentionally just so Shigaraki would get stronger to further his own purposes.

Therefore, neither of them Shigaraki or Re-Destro can reach the full potential of their quirks just yet, because neither of them can self-actualize. However, between the two of them Shigaraki is much closer. As he at least is conscious of his desire to be free of things, even if he is still following the narrative All for One gave him.

Ultimately that’s the irony of the two successors, Shigaraki believes himself destroying everything for no purpose and with no meaning and yet he’s still defining things in a narrative sense. A symbol of fear is still a symbol, it still has meaning, it’s still a role to play which All for One gave him. Whereas, Re-Destro sees meaning where there is none because he did not have to magically become his father’s successor because of shared blood. Re-Destro was allowed to become whoever he wanted to be and yet he only ever became what others told him to be. Both of them see each other as fools, because Shigaraki sees Re-Destro as restricted by the legacy of his bloodline (in the way Shigaraki is) and Re-Destro sees all of Shigaraki’s actions as meaningless and not attempting to build anything, and him being a nobody just a child dragged into this conflcit (in the way Rikiya is).

3. The Power of the League of Friendship

In both cases, the league of villains and the meta liberation army are all fanatically devoted to their leader. Unlike Chisaki, Re-Destro does seem to actually care about his followers. He personally interacts with almost all of them and moulds them, which is the reason they are so devoted in the first place.

However, the way they treat individual lives in their organization differs greatly. Re-Destro demonstrates this in his introduction, he seems to genuinely know his subordinate as a person, and values him quite a bit he even extolls the reason why however the second that subordinate expresses an opinion of his own that disagrees with him Re-Destro snaps his neck.

He also cries over it. I genuinely believe those tears, and his expression of remorse is not fake at all. Remember, Re-Destro is burdened to do things he does not want to do, and was indoctrinated that way since childhood. That is why so much of his stress accumulates. He probably believes genuinely that he wants to value his subordinates lives more than anything else, but has been taught the opposite that they have to be willing to give their life for the sake of the cause. Hence another reason why Re-Destro secretly hates the cause he has been burdened with his entire life so much.

Compare this to Shigaraki’s introduction in this arc, a subordinate grabs him and screams his opionions in Shigaraki’s face, and yet Shigaraki just calmly accepts it all and tries to explain himself.

In the league of villains they are allowed to express themselves as individuals, and they are equally valued and accepted for who they are. Even the less sentimental members like Dabi, are still trusted by Shigaraki to go off and do their own thing.

The league of villains are all still outcasts and degenerates, but as a whole they are much more sane, much more their own fully realized individual people. They question Shigaraki, they joke at him, they even complain to him constantly. They are treating him like a person even if they are loyal to him. Whereas, All for One’s subordinates are all completely devoted sycophants who seem to lack any thought in their heads besides what they can do for All for One’s sake.

Compare the way Shigaraki treats his members to the way Rikiya leverages them. Shigaraki risks the entire league just to save one member, but not only did several members of the league ask him to do this, but they also consent to following along with his plan because it means saving one of their own.

Not only that, but in the past against Chisaki, when Shigaraki risks the league again to get revenge against Chisaki for Magne’s sake after losing her, he once again asks for Twice and Toga’s cooperation and tells them his true feelings on the matter that he wants them to do this for all of their sake even if he’s asking them to put up with something hard.

While Rikiya may genuinely value the lives of his subordinates and feel pain when they die in a way Chisaki never did, that does not change the fact that he basically wasted thousands of them and risked all of their lives to settle a personal grudge against seven homeless hoodlums. The ideals of his organization are far more important than individual lives, and everyone in the meta liberation army is raised to value their life second.

Which is where the inherent hyporisy in Rikiya’s ideals comes from. He believes people should be free to use their quirk without suppression, and should be defined by their quirks. He believes that the current society that represses individuality because some quirks are more dangerous than others should be destroyed. And yet, he indoctrinates people to believe their entire worth is based on their quirk, he wants to make a society where people are entirely defined by how strong their quirks are. His liberation is just another form of individual suppression under the banner of liberation.

Apocrypha apologizes for having to make Re-Destro show him the most basic level of concern. Really it is a cultlike atmosphere where even though it seems on the surface to be all-welcoming, ideals are valued far more than individual people, and that sense of acceptance is only used to prey on others and indoctrinate them further into their radical ideals.

Which is why the concern the league shows for Shigaraki’s life comes off as much more genuine from them. Every single person in the league is valued as a person, and while they are sometimes asked to do things for the sake of the league and cooperate they never disappear as individuals.

Even when people like Giran fail the league, they get rescued, and they aren’t punished for failure because they as a person are more important than just what their powers and abilities can bring to the league.

Which is why Shigaraki will triumph over Re-Destro, to Shigaraki people are far more important than ideals. Shigaraki is able to become a person in a way Re-Destro will never be or realize, because he was too busy trying to become an ideal, a legacy left behind, a symbol rather than Shigaraki who is making steps towards becoming his own person no matter how thorny, or long that path may be.

#mha meta #shigaraki meta #shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko #yotsubasa rikiya #re-destro #destro #my hero academia meta #league of villains meta #meta

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