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Happy Valenslime's Day!

(old Cardmaster Conflict card art)

Bulletproof Boys Drabble #2

Word Count: 1,146

Tag List: @ghostlyvenus

TWs: A hint of suggestive content at the beginning and end of the story, children being in the line of danger, gun usage, general violence, blood, hospital mention.

Synopsis: I haven’t written anything in which Jude has visibly used his powers yet so I came up with this. An old enemy from his X-Men days resurfaces, and he feels it’s his duty to defeat the threat once again... Alone. To which Wade is not having at all. (Dani & Lottie will be briefly mentioned, ages 4 and 7 respectively)

Disclaimer: Yes the conflict is a bit lazy, I’m not super experienced with writing that sort of thing, bare with me.

[Jude’s P.o.V]

I silently put on a bulletproof vest to wear beneath my sweatshirt, unsure of what The Cardmaster could have in store for me this time around. I had made up my mind, it was my duty to finish this guy off, once and for all, without somebody else’s help. I glanced over the extra gear Wade had offered me, contemplating if I should take it...

Think of the devil, he suddenly appeared behind me, wrapping his arms around my chest and kissing my neck.

“Baby, please. Come back to bed. We can let the respected heroes take care of it... I mean, come on, we sent Dani and Lottie to your cousin’s, we have a whole morning and afternoon to do whatever we want!” His hands fell away from my chest and instead began groping my rear and thighs.

“Wade, you know I’ve decided already.” I reminded him sternly, refusing to melt into his touch. I could picture him pouting as he gave me one final squeeze before backing off.

“I can’t promise you I’ll stay put,” He says softly, “You mean too much to me.”

“I know,” I sighed, turning and kissing his forehead, “I’ll be safe, I promise.”

We stared at each other briefly before falling into a passionate kiss, only interrupted by the beeping of my watch. I picked up the “care package” Wade made me, gave him one last, loving glance, and left the apartment.

I put on my headphones and caught the subway to The Cardmaster’s proposed destination for a rematch. Cardmaster was a crafty devil from my X-Men days who’s powers revolved mostly around cheap street magic. Tacky, right? However, the guy made some contract with some all-powerful being of some sort, and now that “cheap street magic” is infused with real magic. As far as I’m aware, the guy doesn’t have a tragic backstory or anything like that... He’s just drunk with power.

As I arrived at the “arena” I immediately recognized his dorky costume.

“Hey, middle school talent show reject, you ever wash that cape of yours?” I called out to him, grabbing his attention. He laughed dryly at my insult.

“So, we meet again, Vibration. Word on the street is,” He began to shuffle a deck of cards, “you’ve become rusty!”

“I’ve taken a bit of a break, sure. But sound doesn’t rust.” I quickly caused a piercing ringing to happen in The Cardmaster’s ears while I looked for a way to keep him completely distracted before I went in for the kill. He stumbled but powered through the pain, using his magic to smack me around with giant cards.

“Word also is, you have two bouncing baby brats!” He cackled at my disorientation. I saw red.

“Don’t fucking bring my children into this you two-bit antagonist.” I growled, using my telekinesis to rip a window completely out of a building, throwing the glass sheet at The Cardmaster, who dodged like this was the fucking Matrix or something. His cackles turned dark and cruel at my outburst. A cage appeared, and in it, Lottie, dressed up in a cheap Easter Bunny costume.

I screamed, enraged. I pulled out one of Wade’s guns.

“I’m not messing around, Cardmaster!” I shouted, aiming the fully loaded weapon at his stupid costumed figure.

“Oh-ho-ho! But if you kill me now, you’ll never see my greatest trick of all! I’m going to pull this lovely, er, ‘rabbit’ out of my hat... Limb by limb!”

I lunged forward, rather than shooting him, blinded by hatred. I dropped the gun as I tackled him to the ground, wrapping my hands around his neck as I practically destroyed his eardrums with my powers. However, I quickly lost stamina, feeling lightheaded as my grip on his neck became weaker and weaker. He easily pushed me off of him, picking up the gun I had so carelessly dropped.

“Oh pity, you are about as weak as I thought you’d be,” Cardmaster sighed, “Fine, you know what? I won’t hurt your little girl! I’ll just beat the shit out of you instead.”

Panting, I attempted to get my footing again, but he easily kicked me down.

“Ugh, this is almost too easy! You’re a worthless hero, always have been!” The Cardmaster complained as he kicked me again, “Whoever you’re raising those girls with must be blind! What about you is worth it, Vibration? Tell me.”

“Shut up...” I spoke weakly, barely being able to use my telekinesis to keep his kicks from hurting me too badly.

“Useless! Incompetent! Talentless! No wonder you left the X-Men, it wouldn’t surprise me if they-”

Several gun shots rang out and The Cardmaster’s body fell backwards, his blood spattering onto my clothes and face. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as a figure broke the bars of the cage Lottie was in, ushering her over to another person out of my sight. I closed my eyes, the pulsing pain from where I was kicked now spreading throughout my body.

Someone ran over to my side, shaking me while a muffled voice sounded panicked. I felt myself being picked up before blacking out.

When I woke up, I was laying in a hospital bed. I looked around groggily, noticing Wade snoozing in the chair across from my bed. He looked completely ragged. I noted the faint hints of a wound healing between his eyebrows, knowing he’d resorted to shooting himself in the head to get some sleep. Suddenly, his eyelids shot open, as if he sensed I had awakened myself.

He almost fell out of the chair trying to scramble over to my side.

“Jude, oh thank fuck, oh Jude...” He spoke quickly, hugging me as gently as possible, trying to keep calm, “I told you not to go alone, dammit. Why didn’t you listen to me, I knew you weren’t ready to face that fuck...”

I swallowed, gripping onto him tightly, glad to be alive.

“I’m sorry.” I croaked, my throat feeling clogged with mucus.

“No. Nonono...” Wade hushed me, stroking my snow white hair, “You don’t say anything. All that matters is he’s dead now... Very, very dead.”

“And Lottie?”

“She and Dani are with the Tin Man, nothing to worry about.”

I exhaled and Wade released me from his very long hug.

“I knew you weren’t dead, your telekinesis kept him from breaking anything but... You know me. I was scared as hell, Jude. Please, never do something like that again. We fight together,” He gripped my hand, “Got that?”

I nodded in agreement before leaning in to kiss him. It quickly got out of hand, turning into a full-on frenching session and Wade trying desperately not to tear off my hospital gown.

“When we get you home,” He spoke lowly in between breaths, “and you’re feeling better. I’m going to have so much fun with you.~”

i always describe the cardmaster as a control freak, and he is, but he’s also way too good at pretending for his own good sometimes, so there’s a bit of a conflict there between being the sort of person who has everything under control and being the sort of person who throws everything into the closet and then spends 5 hours cleaning and redecorating the room and putting a new coat of varnish on the floor all while pretending the closet doesn’t exist (then eventually building a wall over the closet because every time he sees it he remembers What He Did and it bugs him a little bit). His ability to ignore things he doesn’t like is clearly a coping mechanism. Nothing is ever Perfect, but he can’t enjoy himself unless he’s on some level convinced that everything is Perfect, so he’s gotta be good at tricking himself into thinking Good Enough is actually Perfect if he wants to be able to move forward with projects or enjoy anything ever. And that’s really a pretty useful skill. He’d be too neurotic to function if he weren’t able to do this. We all probably do this on some level. It’s just that he’s developed it to a point where it kind of makes him a less competent than he could be. Like, he could easily have cleaned the room without the closet shortcut, and then organized the closet. He usually organizes the closet! But in that moment for some reason it felt like Too Much and he flipped and took the pretending route and after that it was Too Late.

fyi

Eleni Grey’s Journey to Development Hell

An ancient unfinished comic about a girl with big dreams of playing Cardmaster Conflict with her friends.

Spoilers: Her legend does in fact remain very much folded.

If short abandoned comics are your sort of thing, then click here to read it. (unless you're on mobile, because tumblr sucks)

@lilac-buttons​

How does exporting work? In the past, the Cardmaster’s denizens could make deliveries for him. He’d even deliver very special products himself. But since the immunodeficiency problem got really bad it’s not been safe for them to venture beyond the White Desert. These days stuff can be exported in the following ways: 1. Cardhousians meet with their trade partners in the White Desert and exchange there. 2. Trade partners come to the house to pick up what they want (security is a bitch tho) 3. Flying delivery robots. (this doesn’t work so well for high-value items tho cuz fairies intercept them and steal shit, but they’re very cute little contraptions and it works for small stuff) 4. Stars. Stars actually do a lot of delivery and pick-up, especially with trade partners or clients who are either too dark to be around cardhousians or can’t (or don’t want to) come to the White Desert.  Who are their trade partners? Most fairies who live anywhere near the Cardhouse trade with it, either directly or indirectly, though some fairies really do hate the Cardhouse and refuse. Likewise there are some poeple the Cardmaster refuses to trade with (directly, anyway). The local necromancer actually wanted to trade with the Cardhouse, but the Cardmaster turned her down on principle (they more or less still trade indirectly though, or she’ll just steal his products from people he does trade with). The White Weaver is the only major trade partner i’ve named & designed so far. She makes magical tapestries and other woven things---like little squares that can fit in your pocket but you can take them out and they grow into a wall or a tent or some shit. She works pretty exclusively with very light magic for a lot of her stuff and relies on a lot of Cardhouse products. What does the Cardhouse Get in Return?  Usually, raw materials. The Cardmaster will buy finished products from a few very special partners (the White Weaver is one of them, a fairy who runs a tea plantation is another), but usually he exports products in exchange for materials. The Cardhouse is a hungry machine. It can harvest a lot of what it needs directly from reality, but Faerie is a landscape, and there are a lot of things he likes to work with that take form “naturally” in other parts of that landscape, and those can’t be harvested directly from Reality.  Does Lux run a full legal system? Hmmm not really, not on the level that modern nations have it. This is mostly because the Cardhouse population is pretty small, and everyone is like half-robotic and programmed basically, so a lot of what our legal systems deal with isn’t really...relevant? I mean, they do have Law in that they have rules and regulations and consequences if you don’t follow them. Infractions and conflicts definitely happen, and Lux has the authority to deal with most of the minor ones herself. She and the Cardmaster deal with the more serious ones together (they will have, like, a tiny trial). Eh, idk, i might work out a more elaborate legal system for her to run later, but I imagine lots of her duties as more CEO-type stuff.  Has Lux ever had to stop the Cardmaster from doing something bad/foolish? ffFFFFFFF YEP. That’s...that’s a very important part of her job. Most routinely, she has to drag him out of drug-induced uselessness. She also sometimes advises him when he’s shuffled the deck in a way that’s causing a lot of problems and doesn’t seem to realize it, or when he’s being a dick to the denizens he works closely with to the point where they malfunction. Sometimes he’ll try to let a Star into a space where they’re not allowed, or (this is another super frequent one) attempt an experiment that doesn’t follow his own Safety Preacutions and she’ll pop up in his lab like CEASE AND DESIST. Idk, the Cardmaster has a lot of rules that he aspires to follow, and it’s not infrequent that he breaks them in minor ways. Has the Cardmaster Ever had to Unmask Anyone? Yes. He’s also broken masks before, which un-makes the denizen irreversibly. This is a huge waste of resources though, especially if the denizen is very powerful. Consequently it’s reserved as an extreme form of punishment, and seldom happens, but on some level every denizen lives in fear of it. (It’s quite possible that the Cardmaster had to unmake a past version of Lux at some point---that’s really the only thing he could do if he truly wanted to defy her).

the fun thing about vide noir (album) is that various songs/parts of songs work equally well for  - cardhouse drugs & the general appeal of the Cardhouse, esp to stars - the CM’s immortality elixir and personal addictions - late stage mischance/LV and cardmaster-mischance dialogue - LV’s “method” necromancy (if anyone is literally getting high on a pure black void it’s her) - the cardmaster’s supremely inconvenient void kink - HQ & her deluded quest (how she relates to CR, the Cardmaster, and LV) - Syrine & her conflicted relationship w/ all things cardhouse - LOST HAND I JUST REALIZED,,,many excellent 1st person mor songs (like...vide noir especially) - probably more things that haven’t occurred to me yet

Moon Bunny: A hare who lives on the moon in order to avoid sitting at the bottom of the terrestrial food chain.

Old art I made for Cardmaster Conflict. For those of you new to Tumblr, this is only a summary and clicking Keep Reading will show the full post... 

Originally created for a Shigatsunobaka event card, which in the game’s early years pretty much meant a card inspired by arbitrary Japanese mythology (in this case. the moon bunny legend).

It was given the ability text “Share some mochi”, as a reference to the Japanese folklore, which also obscured what the ability actually did (a terrible idea for a TCG that we later rectified). As rice cakes don’t lend themselves towards any particular effects, we looked towards Chinese folklore for inspiration, which has its moon bunnies create elixir of life for Chang’e. What we decided on was inflicting two status effects on a target unit: Protection (nullifies the next damage taken) and Poison (takes 10 damage at the start of its owner’s next turn). The combination meant that the Protection wouldn’t stick around indefinitely as the Poison would cancel it, and if the Protection was used to block a hit then the unit would essentially take a delayed 10 chip damage.

(My desktop computer’s currently busted, so I can’t add a card image right now)

The moon bunnies are now a faction of bunny henge who, in ages past, enlisted the aid of a powerful moon kami to transport themselves to the moon and to make it hospitable to them, as they were fed up of the whole “being eaten” thing. To almost everyone else in present times, including the still surface-dwelling hare henge, the moon bunnies are nothing more than a myth. The only interactions that they now have with anyone on the surface is to send down the occasional strike team, outfitted with their superior technology, to advance the moon bunnies’ mysterious agenda - and unlike the ninjas, who carry out their missions with stealth and subterfuge, the moon bunnies perform theirs with speed and explosions - blasting their way in and out before anyone realizes what’s even happening.

Pathwinder Kitsune: A mischievous fox, hiding high above a bamboo forest, warping the very landscape to confuse and misdirect the intruders below.

Old art I made for Cardmaster Conflict, a trading card game I ended up co-running before Things Happened™ and it was declared dead. More comments below the cut...

The same travelers appearing at both sides of the picture, approaching their own rather conspicuous footprints, is meant to give a sense of them being obviously lost; kind of like that lost forest map every other JRPG has, with screen transitions that warp you back to the start if you don’t follow the prescribed route.

The background itself is kind of an ugly mess, but I think the nonsensical perspectives and vanishing points contribute towards the idea of the travelers being led astray by unnatural means.

The name “Pathwinder Kitsune” was also a play on the term “pathfinder”, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what he’s doing here.

But you’d forgive that face if you caught him, right? :3

Combat in Cardmaster Conflict was kind of like combat in Hearthstone, except the active player declares all of their attacks for the turn and then they all occur simultaneously (rather than one at a time), and each of the defending player’s units can only be attacked by one unit per turn (no ganging up to kill them quicker). If a defending player’s unit isn’t being attacked, they can choose to block a unit which is attacking the defending player directly instead.

Between declaring the attacks and those attacks actually happening, players get a chance to use abilities, such as Pathwinder’s. His ability forces one of your opponent’s units to attack you instead meaning: • The unit which was previously under attack has been protected for the turn • That unit is free to either block a bigger threat or something smaller that it can survive if you wanted • The opponent’s unit attacking you directly can now be blocked by something more capable of dealing with it.

For comparison, there was a much more common (and more expensive) ability to “dizzy” the opponent’s units, removing them from combat altogether. Pathwinder’s ability was generally worse, but could be much better in the sorts of decks where you had trap cards or strong defensive units that you wanted the opponent's units to run into.

Overall I think his ability fits the flavour of a kitsune tricking others and sending them down the wrong path pretty well :3

I’m planning to queue more old card art and commentary, maybe once a week or so.