#edit for all might vestige
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WHAT DOES IT MEANN
#bkdk#bnha spoilers#i have exactly two (2) bnha fans irl to talk to and theyre both izuocha advocates what do i do with this information#HELP#bnha#edit for all might vestige
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Plus One For All
so guys. can we talk about how there’s somebody chilling out inside of Katsuki’s mind who’s not supposed to be there.
hello there Mister All Might Vestige sir. you should not exist, just FYI. you’re not some Nighteye-type plot hallucination. because if you were, you would not be appearing here as Cloud Might, a version of yourself whom Katsuki has never met and has no frame of reference for. ergo he did not imagine you. ergo you are, in fact, real.
which means Katsuki has One For All.
because that’s the only way he could have a Vestige -- which is indisputably what this is -- inside of him. he has OFA. so. where did he get it. how does he have it. and why is it only making its presence known now.
let’s discuss.
okay so I’m going to try and lay this all out as clearly as possible while also attempting to be as succinct as I can. but knowing me, I’m probably going to wind up sacrificing the latter in pursuit of the former. I’ll do my best though. here goes.
1. Heroes Rising is canon.
which is a fact we’ve recently been reminded of not once, but twice -- first with the appearance of Katsuma and Mahoro in chapter 405, and then in chapter 406 with the “Bakugou no Kacchan” callback. the timing of this almost certainly isn’t coincidental. Horikoshi wants this to be fresh in our minds.
mind you, it is extremely unusual for movies, even technically!canon ones, to actually be relevant to the plot. but BnHA may be one of the few exceptions. we’ve already seen movie 1 impact the series both with Star & Stripe’s backstory, and with Deku’s new gauntlets. so there’s precedent, and it’s something I am paying very close attention to.
2. Deku giving OFA to Bakugou is canon.
just in case anyone here hasn’t yet seen or been spoiled for Heroes Rising, that is in fact what happens in that film! so yeah, that certainly seems like an extremely relevant detail right about now.
3. we never found out why and how Deku got OFA back at the end of the movie.
okay so I was looking for a clip to link before we discuss this next part, but I unfortunately couldn’t find one that hadn’t been edited to avoid copyright issues, so you’ll just have to make do with this.
skip ahead to about 7:10 for the relevant part. for the purposes of this theory, we’re just going to ignore everything All Might says here, because tbh he has no fucking clue what’s actually going on and is just guessing wildly lol. however, I do want you to take note of one thing which will be important later. and that’s the fact that, when OFA “returns” to Deku’s body, it’s only his body which starts glowing, and notably not Kacchan’s. the latter just keeps lying there unglowingly. nothing to indicate any kind of transfer is actually happening between him and Deku, in other words.
moving on.
4. OFA and AFO are probably the same quirk.
as summarized here and here. which is relevant because if they are the same quirk, or close to it, then OFA can most likely do anything AFO can do. so file that away for later.
5. AFO was able to split his quirk and give it to Tomura while still keeping a piece of it for himself.
what’s more, he was able to do the same with Garaki/Ujiko’s quirk, and presumably other quirks as well. while it’s possible that this quirk duplication has nothing to do with AFO and is simply something Garaki was able to figure out using ~*~Science~*~, I think it’s more likely that the two of them used AFO’s quirk in some way to accomplish this feat. particularly since Tomura not only received AFO, but a bunch of its stored up quirkdata as well, such as the information stored in Ragdoll’s stolen Search quirk.
6. OFA responds to Deku’s feelings and desires.
or at least this is the case according to Banjou in chapter 213. recall this interesting conversation on how Deku first activated Blackwhip.
he was thinking that he wanted to capture Monoma, and so OFA obediently activated his “capture Monoma” quirk. despite him being unaware he even had said quirk. it responded to his need, even though he wasn’t consciously trying to activate anything.
now then, let’s revisit that scene in Heroes Rising one more time.
7. during the climax of Heroes Rising, Deku was NOT thinking, “I need to give OFA to Kacchan.”
here’s the scene one more time for reference. this time you’re gonna want to skip to about 3:57.
here’s where we are going to get extremely technical, because this scene right here is the key to everything. Deku’s lines in this scene are, and I quote: “a way we can protect [everyone]... there’s just one way...!” but he very notably does not specify exactly what that “one way” is.
until we get to this scene a minute or so later, which spells it out for us very clearly.
two One For Alls. as in, “with two One For Alls, we could win this battle and save everyone.”
that’s what he was thinking at the moment of the “transfer.” NOT, “give OFA to Kacchan.” but, “we need two One For Alls.”
which, I think, may have made all the difference.
8. OFA created a copy of itself to share with Kacchan, so that both of them could have OFA and use the two OFAs to defeat Nine.
let’s recap. OFA is AFO. AFO can clone itself. so it stands to reason that OFA can presumably clone itself as well. and that’s exactly what Deku wanted to do. make a second One For All.
he didn’t know that he could do that. but as previously established in the Blackwhip incident, OFA is more than capable of making its own executive decisions in key moments just like this in order to help him out.
which would mean that what we saw at the end of Heroes Rising was not OFA being transferred from Bakugou back over to Deku. it was actually just Deku’s OFA briefly self-activating (possibly in response to his delirious apology to All Might -- kind of a “no worries bro, you’ve still got your quirk actually, so go back to sleep and stop stressing over it” type of thing). and Kacchan’s OFA doing... absolutely nothing. it didn’t actually transfer back into Deku. it didn’t actually go anywhere.
let me repeat that: it didn’t actually go anywhere.
in other words, Kacchan still has OFA. and has had it ever since Heroes Rising. he just didn’t realize it. and neither did anybody else.
9. Kacchan’s OFA went dormant once Nine was defeated.
okay, so. remember all of this exposition from chapter 304?
basically, if someone who already has a quirk receives OFA, using it will slowly destroy their body until it kills them. the Vestiges learned this from All Might while he was researching the past generations of OFA in chapter 241, incidentally. Heroes Rising takes place right around this same time (immediately following MVA if I recall). so by the time the film’s climax rolled around, the Vestiges would have known that giving OFA to Kacchan could have devastating consequences down the line if they did not take action immediately after the fight.
so they did.
once Nine was defeated, the Vestiges shut the whole thing down. the crisis was averted, and they no longer had need of a second OFA. they have this boy who is way too similar to Deku in terms of his willingness to put himself in harm’s way in order to achieve his goals. and they absolutely do not want any harm befalling this boy. more on that momentarily.
so they go dark. and they even seal his memory so that he’s no longer aware of even having the quirk. they are essentially in sleep mode. and if circumstances hadn’t eventually become desperate enough to force their hand, they might have remained inactive for the rest of Katsuki’s life.
now, you might be wondering to yourself, “why is OFA willing to go to such unusual lengths in order to protect Katsuki?” and well, the answer to that is pretty simple.
10. Kacchan does not have the same version of OFA as Deku.
Deku is ninth gen. Katsuki, however, is tenth gen. which means that his version of OFA has one additional Vestige. a Vestige whose presence immediately explains why OFA is so goddamn determined to protect him at all costs.
:’)
long story short, while Deku’s version of OFA has proven itself all too willing to enable him in his increasingly suicidal mission, Katsuki’s version of OFA is very much a different story, on account of it being under the management of what I’m guessing is the most willful Vestige ever to exist. and said management being just the slightest bit unhinged when it comes to Katsuki’s safety in particular. seriously, you can’t tell me this is not exactly how a Deku!Vestige would behave. “oh hell no. no OFA for you!! and no memories either, because you can’t be trusted, goddammit. we never should have done this. what the hell were we thinking. if anything happens to him I will kill everyone in this room and then myself.”
so yeah. dormant.
right up until they literally couldn’t afford to be anymore.
11. OFA can self-activate in moments of crisis to protect its user.
Sports Festival. chapter 33. Deku vs. Shinsou.
aw yeah. it’s all coming together.
12. OFA reactivated itself in order to save Katsuki’s life.
I would now like to briefly draw your attention to this scene from chapter 405, in which Edgeshot explains how Katsuki was finally saved. please note my man is very clear that he did not restart Katsuki’s heart himself. he was basically just performing quirk CPR up until Katsuki’s own quirk returned him to life apropros of nothing.
“what brought you back... was the power you’ve honed.”
except... that should have been impossible. because Katsuki was dead. meaning he should not have been able to activate his quirk on his own, on account of the whole “being dead” thing.
however, if he by chance had a quirk with just enough of a mind of its own to activate in critical situations in order to help its user. situations like being forced under mind control. or, perhaps, being stabbed through the heart. well then. that would certainly go a long way towards explaining all of this.
and oh hey, when exactly was it that we saw this guy, again?
oh? it happened at the exact moment when his heart was stabbed through? you don’t say. well that certainly is interesting.
in summary:
Deku cloned his quirk in Heroes Rising and gave Kacchan a copy of OFA. owing to the hyperprotective Deku!Vestige inside Kacchan’s copy of OFA, it shut itself down once Nine was defeated, and all of Katsuki’s memories of having OFA were deliberately wiped, or sealed away. OFA itself remained inactive until TomurAFO stabbed Katsuki through the heart, at which point OFA was forced to reactivate itself to save his life. which it did, by forcibly restarting his heart.
that’s it. no idea how close to the money any of this is, but I think it would explain most of the lingering mysteries and questions about what exactly is going on with Katsuki. and I’ll throw in one last observation as well -- Katsuki has a nine in his name (BaKUgou), but not a ten. which I know sort of contradicts what I was saying earlier about him being the tenth gen, lol. but he both is and isn’t. if Deku split his quirk, Kacchan would in theory receive everything that’s currently in Deku’s quirk right now, and that includes Deku’s own power that he’s been adding to the mix. so he’d still have the Deku!Vestige. but he’s also still ninth gen, because he and Deku are sharing that distinction now. or at least I think the argument could be made at any rate.
so yeah. I’ve been obsessing over all of this for the past few days lol. what do you guys think?
#bakugou katsuki#midoriya izuku#one for all#bnha meta#bnha theory#bakugou meta#bnha#boku no hero academia#bnha spoilers#mha spoilers#bnha manga spoilers#makeste reads bnha#it's also possible that I put way too much thought into this and in actuality katsuki is just using the OFA embers#or something else along those lines#we'll see lol#but in the meantime it's fun to speculate
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I woke up thinking about vestige Katsuki casually having a chat with vestige All Might. WHAT THE DUCK was happening there if not something seriously fruity and why did we not circle back to it once we’d got over the fact that his heart had exploded?!
What must non-bkdks think is going on? I’m not even sure if we’ve fully discussed what is going on? Whyyy would he have a vestige if he doesn’t have OFA?
It’s not ghosts because a) ghosts haven’t been introduced as a concept in-universe and b) AM is there and he ain’t dead.
SO WHAT IS HAPPENING? Did we just totally overlook the fact that Hori made it canon that Katsuki either has OFA or just has access to the vestige realm for reasons unknown?
Also why is he fully clothed and able to speak, when poor Izuku spent every vestige scene nude and mute? And why is the background white not black? Vestige purgatory? A vestige waiting room?
I feel like when you suddenly realise you haven’t studied and the class has all moved on to new topics and you’ve somehow missed a key, fundamental part of how The Whole Thing works.
If anyone has meta on this please point me towards it because at this point I’m—
Edit 19.01.23: before anyone else tells me he had OFA in the movie, I know. 😙 I wrote a whole ‘nother bit about it here:
Edit 21.01.23: added All Might’s vestige for reference. ✌️
#bakudeku#bkdk#deku#bakugou#kacchan#vestige Katsuki#mha#bnha#pyj rambles#please help me#ofa vestiges#mha 362
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Ask game: All Might is under the effect of a sleep quirk so Izuku hangs out with Flame Might. Please.
I dub thee Sleeping Almighty AU
Izuku’s vestige form sat beside Flame Might in his dreams. Despite its inability to talk or react much, Flame Might’s inherent warmth helped Izuku with getting through on being unable to speak with All Might on the first day.
Three days after All Might was forced asleep, Izuku missed talking with his mentor so much that he—who often believed that he was undeserving of kind touches—decided to initiate physical contact and rested his arm beside Yagi’s.
Yagi was still unable to talk in the Vestige World, and his consciousness’ access to his Vestige form was limited. But he could hear and listen to Izuku’s stories, and express his feelings through his eyes. It took like a day or two to learn how to move his vestige form’s limbs, but his first act was to pat Izuku’s head and pull him close.
When Yoichi taught Izuku how to conjure stuff in the Vestige world, like a Heropoly board game or MightUno cards, Izuku and Flame Might were a team, as sometimes AM’s Vestige connection would fluctuate.
Izuku became skilled enough at conjuring things that he managed to dream his textbooks just so he could read under Flame Might’s glow. If he brought storybooks, he would read them aloud.
There’s a point where Tsukauchi revealed that the person who put All Might to sleep wouldn’t reveal how to get him to wake up.
Izuku started to spend longer and longer sleeping, and naps often just so he could spend time with Flame Might. It didn’t help that he’s also expelling energy as a Vestige when resting. Worried, All Might scolds Izuku through JSL. When Izuku wouldn’t stop (and started worrying his class and teachers), Flame Might snuffed its light out and refused to reappear unless Izuku took care of himself again.
(Inspired by the Maleficent movie) Only when a lonely Izuku pressed his lips on the side of All Might’s forehead did Yagi finally wake up.
Thank you for the DadMight AU submission, Gentry!!!
🌻For the promotion of the launch of the Successor: A DadMight Anthology Applications, this 5+ Headcanons AU Game: DadMight Edition series is sponsored by @mhadadmightzine. (For legal reasons, this is a joke.) If you're a DadMight fan, please it check out!🌻
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[“If the indigenous peoples of North America aren’t being imagined as living in a separate time, or as vestiges of some earlier stage of human history, then they’re imagined as living in an entirely separate reality (‘ontology’ is the currently fashionable term), a mythic consciousness fundamentally different from our own. If nothing else, it is assumed that any intellectual tradition similar to that which produced Plotinus, Shankara or Zhuang Zu can only be the product of a literary tradition in which knowledge becomes cumulative. And since North America did not produce a written tradition – or at least not the sort we are used to recognizing as such – any knowledge it generated, political or otherwise, was necessarily of a different kind. Any similarity we might see to debates or positions familiar from our own intellectual tradition is typically written off as some sort of naive projection of Western categories. Real dialogue is thus impossible. Perhaps the most straightforward way to counteract this sort of argument is by citing a text, which describes a concept the Wendat (Huron) called Ondinnonk, a secret desire of the soul manifested by a dream:
Hurons believe that our souls have other desires, which are, as it were, inborn and concealed … They believe that our soul makes these natural desires known by means of dreams, which are its language. Accordingly, when these desires are accomplished, it is satisfied; but, on the contrary, if it be not granted what it desires, it becomes angry, and not only does not give its body the good and the happiness that it wished to procure for it, but often it also revolts against the body, causing various diseases, and even death.
The author goes on to explain that, in dreams, such secret desires are communicated in a kind of indirect, symbolic language, difficult to understand, and that the Wendat therefore spend a great deal of time trying to decipher the meaning of one another’s dreams, or consulting specialists.
All this might seem like an oddly clumsy projection of Freudian theory, but for one thing. The text is from 1649. It was written by a certain Father Ragueneau in a Jesuit Relation, precisely 250 years before the appearance of the first edition of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), an event which, like Einstein’s theory of relativity, is widely seen as one of the founding events of twentieth-century thought. What’s more, Ragueneau is not our only source. Numerous missionaries attempting to convert other Iroquoian peoples at the same time reported similar theories – which they considered absurd and obviously false (though probably, they concluded, not actually demonic) and attempted to refute, in order to bring their interlocutors around instead to the truth of Holy Scripture.
Does this mean that the community in which Kandiaronk grew up was composed of Freudians? Not exactly. There were significant differences between Freudian psychoanalysis and Iroquoian practice, most dramatically in the collective nature of the therapy. ‘Dream-guessing’ was often carried out by groups, and realizing the desires of the dreamer, either literally or symbolically, could involve mobilizing an entire community: Ragueneau reported that the winter months in a Wendat town were largely devoted to organizing collective feasts and dramas, literally in order to make some important man or woman’s dreams come true. The point here is that it would be very unwise to dismiss such intellectual traditions as inferior – or for that matter, entirely alien – to our own.”]
david graeber and david wengrow, the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity, 2021
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time for some dnd heavy theorizing about our beloved eddie, the banished
as we all know, we saw eddie die in the upside down, where his body was left. assuming this since there has been no proof of his death or whereabouts in the public eye. but what if there was a way he could be brought back? what if there was a way vecna brought him back?
there is a character in DnD named kas the bloody handed. he was once a human turned vampire during a battle against vecna, as his former first lieutenant turned betrayer. while i understand its not likely we will see eddie roaming hawkin’s as a vampire - this means that kas was at one point vecna’s puppet. all of the creatures in stranger things have their DnD counterpart who don’t LITERALLY have all the attributes of said counterpart. before eddie is killed by bats (a link to kas’ vampirism in DnD) he plays master of puppets by metallica. which you would think has no literal bearing on the story at hand... unless that is foreshadowing eddie’s fate in the upside down after death. eddie has bats tattooed on his arm, along with the master of puppets himself.
and not only that but while eddie is fighting and is eventually slain in the upside down, hopper picks up a sword which has a striking resemblance to the sword of kas. and imo there was a lot of emphasis on it as hopper picked it up off the ground... based on the prior fights that had happened in the pit there literally could have been anything there, an axe or WHATEVER. (there was actually nothing in the pit when joyce and hopper got down there so it almost seemed like it appeared in front of him, but that could be an oversight on the show productions part.) but THIS sword is what hopper picks up from the ground, as eddie is in the upside down keeping the bats off to the best of his ability.
A BIT OF A RESEMBLANCE, NO? i’m going share some stuff from the kas section of the greyhawk wiki.
“Kas is perhaps best known for the infamous artifact that bears his name, the Sword of Kas. The Sword of Kas first appeared in the Original D&D supplement, Eldritch Wizardry. It was one of the first artifacts detailed for the Dungeons & Dragons game. The sword has been updated many times and has even been the object of quests as in the adventure Vecna Lives. The sword, variously described as a short sword, longsword, or greatsword, was crafted by Vecna. The blade is said to have been magically honed to a razor's edge, enhanced the wielder's strength, and could be used to call down lightning bolts from any storm clouds that might be overhead. The sword itself is intelligent, possessing a vile and murderous spirit. “
“After years of loyal service to Vecna, Kas eventually turned betrayer. It is said that the sword itself whispered to Kas, convincing him to slay his master and usurp his power. The battle destroyed Vecna's Rotting Tower, cost the lich his left hand and eye, and Kas himself was flung across the multiverse to Vecna's Citadel Cavitius on the Quasielemental Plane of Ash. The time he spent so close to the Negative Energy Plane changed him into a vampire, and he decided he would be called "Kas the Destroyer." “
eddie, the banished → eddie, the bloody handed → eddie, the destroyer
“When Vecna was defeated during his bid for control of Oerth, Kas was freed from his centuries of imprisonment, only to find himself facing a shapeless wall of mist. When it cleared, he was master of the domain of Tovag, across the Burning Peaks from Vecna's domain of Cavitius. Kas waged an endless war of attrition with Vecna's forces in the hopes of retrieving the Sword of Kas from Vecna's citadel, where he erroneously believed Vecna held it.”
“According to Dragon #341, when Vecna escaped from Cavitius, both realms were destroyed (explaining, in-fiction, their absence from 3rd edition Ravenloft). Kas was caught up in the destruction and very nearly obliterated; he survives only as a vestige, a soul outside time and space whose powers can be used by users of magic known as binders.”
i think there is a very high possibility we will see eddie munson, albeit changed, in season 5. there is also an additional theory linked to peter gabriel’s cover of “heroes” which plays in season one when it is believed that will has passed after his decoy body was found in the lake. this song also played after hopper “died” in season 3.. this song is also apparently heard after eddie has passed in the upside down. i’m not sure if this is confirmed because i was literally bawling my eyes out after and could have missed it so if anyone has an answer to this, please let me know!!
anyways with all of this symbolism it would be honestly pretty bonkers if it’s not true. this would give eddie a chance to fight in hawkin’s against vecna, in front of everyone, finally proving who he really was in life. even if at the end of it he is also destroyed. i know we all miss our boy and i just think this would be such a cool way to finish his arc as a true and known hero. which is what he DESERVES!
#eddie munson#st4 spoilers#stranger things 4#stranger things volume 2#stranger things theory#stranger things meta#stranger things#dungeons & dragons#vecna#kas the bloody handed#sword of kas
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i'm going into blathering oaf mode which i need to type out because otherwise i will literally sit and stare at a blank wall full monkey cymbals instead of doing work that, ya know, pays the bills
buckle up, i think ur going to want to read this one (and if not obvious by the Read More, spoilers ahead)
right im watching s1 again because it is literally my comfort show and i will have it on in the background whilst im working
and im on Hard Times (ep3) and it's just got to the You Go Too Fast for me Crowley scene which obviously HEARTBREAKING
but it just suddenly occurred to me - when we leave the 1941 scene, it feels like the metaphorical ice has been broken and they've like non-verbally agreed to let go of the Holy Water Tantrum
and on top of that we see aziraphale realise he's in love with crowley, and THEN we see the dinner scene in the s2 trailer like solidifies that theyre all cosy and bashful and intimate and seem to have certainly forgotten the whole argument
BUT THEN we get to the 60s scene. and suddenly there's atmosphere. there's suddenly tension. it's awkward and cold and almost a bit nasty. and there is absolutely no reason for it, if you judge only on the linear events given to us in ep3
(EDIT: i watched it again last night and the only other reason i can think of for az being such an arse is that he found out about the robbery by hearsay and not directly from crowley which ok yeah is plausible absolutely and probably the reason for all of it but sOMETHING in my hind brain is just nagging at me that it's more than that so i stand by the following musing....... you may proceed)
what the fuCK happens in that dinner scene??? what in the last circle of hELL prompts az to come up with the "you go too fast for me Crowley" line????
because im telling ya, im betting my last vestige of sanity, that it is NOT the holy water thing
im fairly certain that there's going to be a discussion of the holy water thing in the dinner scene, i think that's a given - when you take into account that az's gut reaction to Crowley asking for holy water was to refuse him because ✨IT WOULD KILL CROWLEY✨, i think that is going to be discussed in that dinner scene
but
BUT.
ahem
i full pussy, honestly and truly (but absolutely fine if im proven wrong), will die by this BELIEVE that there's going to be an a love confession of Some Sort from one of them
Let's face it ---- probably from crowley ("why did you save my books?" "...")
in this scene.
going a step beyond that, i even think there might be a move made from crowley (not The Kiss, mainly because the costume/hair doesn't match but also doesn't seem like the right one) but like maybe he leans in or crowds into az a little too close in this dinner scene and it's going to absolutely scare the beejesus out of az
HE. 💔 GOES. 💔 TOO. 💔 FAST. 💔
like az has literally just realised he feels something that, let's be real, he SHOULD NOT feel bc a) he's an angel and b) crowley is a demon.
but then crowley alludes to having feelings for az? possibly suggest to him that he has for ThousANDS of years???? and that he saved his books because he knew it was important to az????????
nopenopenope toO FAST BOY
az is an angel. opposite side to crowley. literally challenges everything az believes about being an angel and belonging to heaven. this could mean he falls. nopenopenope. too fast.
this is literally the onLY reason i can think of that would result in what appears to be a lovely cute scene, where az is quite blatantly moon eyeing crowley over a bottle of chateau, but immediately swings 30 years later to being cold and distant and "You Go Too Fast for me Crowley"
i will live and die by this, so help me god
and now....... discuss
#good omens#good omens season 2#good omens spoilers#ineffable husbands#azicrow#like the tone difference between the nazis and the 70s scene always irked me before#and now the s2 trailer has come out it was a veritable light bulb moment#as for the other Kiss i think thats when az finally confesses to crowley#it just has to be im not accepting anything else#good omens speculation
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Interesting fanfic concepts that I may or may not write (not sure yet):
EDIT: crossed out the ones that I already wrote!
- During the 1st light novel, Black Whip manifests due to the belief that Inko is genuinely in danger
- 1A not trusting Aizawa outside of life/death situations, leading to the other teachers calling him out on this
- A sub idea to the above: the other teachers and students noticing how Izuku is singled out by Aizawa, and Aizawa gets called out on this
- At the UA Apology Tour conference, the journalist pushes back on Aizawa's claim that Bakugou's hard work absolves him of his behavior - pointing out that he got no rescue points during the Entrance Exam (someone leaks it to the media, idk) and that Aizawa has expelled other students for much less, leading to the students coming to the press conference to call him out
- A sub idea to the above: the media points out Fumikage's attempted kidnapping (realistically he would have told the police) and Izuku being on the LOV's priority kill list, as well as his kidnapping and attack in the mall just days before
- ANOTHER sub idea: the media calls out UA for prioritizing their ego/face over the students' safety in holding the Sports Festival so soon after the USJ attack, since the Sports Festival led to the attack on the forest
- Being at home at least meant Izuku had some time away from Bakugou and Aizawa. Being in the dorms takes that freedom away, and Izuku isn't adjusting well
- Aizawa finds out about Izuku accidentally destroying his room in his sleep. His past treatment of Izuku leads the boy to be less than forthcoming about what caused it
- The OFA vestiges are quite protective of Izuku and show it in their own ways
- Class 1A (especially certain members) noticed that they've been put on the backburner for Shinsou, and so have the other teachers
- All Might and King Vlad take Midnight and Aizawa to task for not interfering sooner when Black Whip manifested during the training exercise (or the Black Whip fiasco leads to some completely preventable injuries)
- After Izuku leaves UA, the teachers and Class 1A reflect on how he's been treated by everyone around him while shouldering the burdens he's been carrying
- A sub idea to the above: the Class 1A vs Izuku fight results in Izuku calling them out on following Bakugou and ignoring his reasoning for leaving, resulting in him running away and succumbing to his injuries (featuring the vestiges, the second one in particular)
- A sub sub idea to the above: Class 1A and the teachers finally have an actual talk with Izuku about his issues when he's brought back to UA and put under Recovery Girl's care (because there's no way in hell Izuku was fine after just a bath and a nap)
- UA's traitor reacts earlier, leading the staff to realize that they shouldn't have dismissed Present Mic's traitor theory
- Present Mic reflects on Aizawa's treatment of him, his students, and how Oboro's death turned them both into different people
- Izuku is allowed to be resentful of how people tear him down and dismiss him (namely, how Bakugou received over 3,000 offers despite his behavior while Izuku received only 1, Izuku being the Problem Child despite not even being the mastermind behind Bakugou's rescue, and that his mumbling is dismissed/made fun of)
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Okay. I need to get this out because this idea is literally haunting me.
So, welcome to my brainrot on how the fight between Izuku and Shigaraki / OFA and OFA will play out and how Katsuki could play a part in it 🙌🏼 Even though I know it's never gonna happen like this but anyways, let me dream a little.
[Edit: I wrote this before chapter 403 came out and our beloved returned 🧡]
I always come back to imagining the final, crucial confrontation would somehow end up happening in the vestige realm with Izuku und Shigaraki being on opposite sites and AFO trying to steal OFA from Izuku, just like in the Paranormal Liberation War Arc.
And I feel like this time the battle of emotions might be more challening for Izuku and the former OFA holders. Because, yes, they are still seven people and All Might's vestige has even more to bring to the table after his fight against AFO but so has AFO himself and Shigaraki as well. I mean, the LOV has been defeated, all his friends are in critical states, he's feeling used by AFO etc. etc.
So imagine, the forces collide and it seems to look not so well for our heroes, doom hanging not just over them but over all of Japan.
But that's when Katsuki steps in.
And in my head it plays out like this: Katsuki is entering the scene, maybe only a panel of his shoulders (him being in his UA uniform) is shown, the his feet, the drawing just hinting on him and suddenly the OFA side gets brighter and stronger and all sorts of emotions fill the space.
Namely, Katsuki's confidence, his anger, his ambition, his insecurities, his determination - with every step there're more emotions.
And then he stops, right next to Izuku. The greenhead is just shellshocked, not understanding how Katsuki is in the vestige realm to begin with and he's also so overwhelmed to see Katsuki looking like himself and not like the corpse Izuku had to witness earlier.
Katsuki, now standing next to his nerd, looks at Izuku with that soft expression that has been driving us all crazy lately and a new wave of Katsuki's emotions starts filling the realm: Tenderness, deep regret about his past behaviour, the frustration he used to feel towards Izuku when they were little and a new frustration about Izuku being too reckless, mixed with gut wrenching worry and fear, pride about Izuku's development and so, so, so much more, but all of this is nothing compared to when Katsuki holds out his hand to Izuku and-
Love. The love-kanji becomes dominant, taking up a full panel or even a full page, boosting OFA's fight against AFO's grip.
Izuku is still too stunned to think or understand anything but he would never reject Katsuki, so his hand moves on its own, wanting go grap the blond's but then he staggers, the thought of "control your heart" paralyzing him.
Because how can Izuku control his heart when it comes to Kacchan? Suddenly he's way too scared to take Katsuki's hand because everything could blow up in their faces and they can't risk one single slip against their opponents.
Daigoro, the fifth holder, who said those words all those months ago, is the one to snap Izuku out of his spiraling by saying: "Don't worry, kid, following your heart is important too."
That's all Izuku needs. He launches forward, intertwining his fingers with Katsuki's and slinging his other arm around the blond's shoulders.
Izuku lets all his suppressed feelings for Katsuki come to the surface, a storm of emotions rages through the realm and that's when AFO is hurled out of the domain, maybe even Shigaraki but leaving little scared Tenko there.
And there they are, Izuku and Katsuki, clinging to each other for a heartfelt moment until Katsuki mumbles something like "Don't you still have an ass to kick out there?"
Izuku leans back, tears in his eyes and makes Katsuki promise that they'll see each other again in the real word, that Katsuki has to come back to him. Katsuki makes the promise with a smirk, asking Izuku where else he was supposed to go.
Sharing a last, calm eyecontact in all of this chaos, Izuku gets back to end things with what's left of AFO and maybe even Shigaraki and the final fight is over, Edgeshot and Jeanist manage to save Katsuki, hero society needs to be rebuilt and all of that stuff and ~ the end.
And I'm very aware of the fact that it's not gonna play out like this but storywise it would work! Balancing the "control your heart"-theme in a more healthy way because up until now, it only has lead Izuku to supress stuff. And it would also resolve Katsuki's presence in the vestige realm and would make him the key to winning against AFO.
Because we all agree he has to play some part in it, right? But in my eyes, there's no way Katsuki could return to the real live battle field. I mean, half of his face and his dominant arm have been crushed, not to mention his heart (!) exploded (!!).
So. Yeah, that's it, that's the brainrot living rentfree in my head.
Okaythankyouforreadingthisbye ♡
#hori-san please make them canon#bkdk#bakudeku#bakudeku brainrot#bnha#bnha headcannons#bnha spoilers#katsuki x izuku#bakugou x deku#decchan#mha#my hero academia
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Do you think Izuku and Tomura continue to have a connection through the vestige world after the war? But like it's like an always open channel, like sibling telepathy. At least from the outside. I think it would be funny.
*In the hospital, after the war*: Shigaraki is eating Izuku's lunch, because of course he is. Being a pain in the ass is a lifestyle and Tomura likes to be petty. All might won't say no to his "nephew".
Inko: Tomura, is that Izuku's lunch?
Tomura: He gave it to me since he can't eat it.
Izuku's ghost: No, I didn't!!!
Tomura: He says it's the heroic thing to do.
'Inko smiling but visibly angry. Allmight and Izuku will see future problems when they continue to be heroic and throw away their health.'
Inko: I see. Izuku. Can't. Eat. Yet.
*Shopping with Dadzawa (guardian)*. Tomura is holding a special edition Allmight figurine box.'
Tomura: We have to buy this.
Aizawa: Why?
Tomura: My head hurts.
Aizawa: And how does that correlate to the box?
Tomura: Izuku won't stop talking about it.
*Living on UA grounds* after the war because it's easier to rehabilitate the most powerful villain and his friends than try to fight or kill them again. Tomura is asking for directions for the cold medicine from Katsuki.'
Katsuki: Izuku is sick?
Tomura: Yep.
Katsuki: You already wrote to Aizawa?
Tomura: Yep.
Katsuki: And we don't say anything to Izuku to he doesn't try to run away?
Tomura: Always the one with the braincell.
*Izuku did try to go to school.* Uraraka is making Tomura's job easier and makes Izuku float.'
#bnha manga#shigaraki tomura#shimura tenko#midoriya inko#midoriya izuku#I wonder if I start their name with the surname because in my country it's this way too#my art#bnha
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— The Unlikely Adventures of Bitchface and Go F*ck Yourself (18+)
And oh, how it burns.
Chapter WC: 8,996
Warning(s): explicit sexual content
{READ HERE ON AO3} or below the cut ˏˋ°•*⁀➷
9 months, 7 days remaining
Zadimus woke with a dry mouth, fluffy hair up his nose, pins and needles in multiple limbs, and a very small, very cold foot pressed threateningly into his hip. Even in her sleep, Dillon was feisty. Thankfully she was curled up high on his chest, a pillow saving her cheek from the bony ridge of his clavicle. The evidence of how much he enjoyed her ever-present attitude would need to be taken care of at some point, but he imagined she wouldn’t be as happy to see it as it was to see her.
And what a sight she made — her black-and-blue mop of curls framing her face, for once at peace and not scowling; one little hand tucked protectively over her heart and the other wrapped around three of his fingers, her surprising strength clearly the reason for that particular extremity’s numbness; naked as the day she was born, and if he moved the wing he’d tucked around her like a security blanket, he had an unobstructed view of the bats flying over her hip, the soft creases of her belly, looking for all the world like a painted cherub edited to look edgier.
Dillon, however, woke up far too hot in some places, and so cold it hurt in others, and her blanket felt weird, and wouldn’t move, and yelped when she roughly yanked and shoved it away from her.
“Those are attached, I’ll have you know,” a deep, husky voice groused next to her ear.
She punched blindly toward the direction of the sound, hoping to hit whatever it was attached to. Hard.
And then she remembered she had, in fact, gone to bed with Zadimus — though not in the same bed, and she’d address that eventually — and had half an apology formed before something firm, velvety, and a little damp prodded her hip.
Another part attached to Zadimus. Also hard.
“I’m no longer sorry for punching you,” she huffed.
“You wound me. What have I ever done to you?”
“Besides slamming me against multiple walls and slapping my ass to make a joke about turning the lights off?” Dillon simpered.
His eyes were drawn directly to her bare chest when she leaned forward.
She hit him again.
“I distinctly remember there being a clause about bodily injury in our contract,” Zadimus chuffed, grabbing her tiny fist in his hand when she moved to hit him a third time. He yanked her forward into his lap. “You forget the part where I ravaged you against those walls, little one, and on the table, and in the very bed which you seem to have vacated during the night. ” Maybe it was the soft gasp that obliterated the last vestiges of his self control, or perhaps the way her pupils flared, or chills spread over every inch of her, or the subtle twitch of her hips that dampened his bare thigh.
He almost caught her free hand, thinking her sudden move heralded another swing towards his face, but she grabbed the tousled braid at his left temple instead, and the move surprised him so much, he loosened his grip on her other fist; it did the same, going right for his braid, an action he decided he quite liked when she yanked his head forward. Her inexperience showed plainly in her hesitation a breath away from initiating a kiss. Her heart fluttered frantically in a vain attempt to escape its cage.
He was to teach her, after all, was he not? Making love carried its own sort of magic, the initial stages especially so. Zadimus closed the distance between them, grunting in surprise when the gentle swipe of his tongue over her lower lip to request entry was met with a bite to his own. She was a quick study, it seemed. She tugged his braids again — anyone else probably would have lost their hands for the transgression, but he was quickly finding he liked when the little human got a bit bossy — towards her bed, and he didn’t blame her; the trundle might break if they went at each other with half the vigor they had the previous night.
Dillon didn’t fight him as he lifted her onto her rumpled pile of blankets, for which he was grateful. His effort to make her more comfortable, however, was met with a sharp bite to his nipple when he leaned over her to grab one of her pillows.
“Do you not remember what I told you last night about starting things you don’t intend to finish?” he chided, slipping the pillow under her head despite the click of her teeth as she snapped her jaws at him with a giggle that he didn’t know if he could be angry at if he tried.
“Who says I don’t intend to finish?” Her eyes glowed radioactive green with the challenge. He wondered if she knew, if anyone had noticed it before, or if she was reacting as much to his proximity as he was hers. “I intend to finish at least twice.”
“Oh, do you?” Zadimus clucked his tongue. “Such a demanding little thing,” he teased, “and she doesn’t even know what she’s asking for, does she?” The rapid blush was all the answer he needed. “No, I don’t think you do.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking for, Zadimus, I’m not some sheltered little wallflower, and we did plenty—”
“No, but if I wasn’t your first, I’m certainly on a very short list.”
Dillon shut her mouth in a scowl. It deepened when the victory split his face in a smug grin.
“And we barely did anything at all, Dillon,” he rumbled, his mouth pressed against her ear. “I’ve done things that would make a sailor blush, but you? My dear, sweet little thing, you would melt right through your sheets.” To prove his point, he snapped his own jaws and reveled in the shiver that traveled all the way to her curling toes. She squirmed beneath him, every movement only serving to get her more and more tangled in her blankets. “Shall I tell you a few?” She squirmed harder, grumbling under her breath. “I think that’s a yes—” Zadimus raised his voice in a mocking falsetto “— ‘oh, yes, Zadimus, you bastard, please ravage my sweet mind with tales of your lewd and lascivious escapades!’ Oh, Dillon, I’d love to, but are you sure you can handle it? I’ve been a very nasty boy.”
A glare was his answer. A glare and a fruitless attempt to fight an involuntary jerk of her hips. “I’ll bite your nipple again,” she hissed.
“And I’ll bite right back,” he sneered in her face before traveling lower, nipping at her clavicle, kissing between her breasts, grazing his teeth over the left one in a silent threat. “Eventually, you’ll learn, but for now, I think I’ll let you keep lighting those matches.” Zadimus nipped a trail down her side. “Anyway.” He flipped Dillon’s legs over his shoulders. “If we didn’t have places to be, perhaps I could spend more time fulfilling all my nasty promises.”
Dillon gasped as he yanked her hips higher until her shoulders rested on his thighs. She wondered why he bothered with the pillow at all, then, or if he just didn’t have a plan in the first place and wanted her to be comfortable in case she didn’t antagonize him immediately.
Clearly he didn’t know her that well yet.
The new angle had the fan blowing directly between her legs, and that was as good an excuse as any to explain away her tremble. It was just the breeze cooling the flood, not the heat of his gaze raking coals down the soft line of her body. Not the proximity of his mouth to where she wanted it but was too stubborn to say so. Not his breath, so much hotter on every ragged exhale than the chill wafting over her, lingering between breaths like smoldering embers. Not the overwhelming evidence he was clearly as affected by her as she was by him, namely his length roughly jabbing her in the kidney. It was just the fan. Not him.
“As it is,” he drawled, and she swore internally when every breath made her twitch and squirm, “you’ll just have to settle. Pity.” That particular puff of air was nearly her undoing.
“You keep stalling like this I’m, I’m gonna start thinking maybe, maybe you’re the shy, inexp— oh, fuck.” She couldn’t help it, her eyes rolled all the way back and somewhere on the edge of her awareness, she thought she might have kicked him when he shut her up with a rough drag of his tongue through her center. Her throbbing heel and his offended grunt confirmed it. “S-sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for and you aren’t sorry, regardless,” he rumbled. Every word sent a jolt of white-hot lightning straight up her spine. “But as I was saying—” he flicked his tongue stud across her bud “—if we didn’t have places to be, I could take my time here—” He closed his mouth over her and sucked hard, like he was trying to mark her again; the sting of his teeth dragged a sound from her throat she’d never heard before, halfway between a groan and something deeper, darker, older. It was agony of the purest kind when he released her to speak again.
“F-fuck you,” she whined. It wasn’t her most graceful moment, but she didn’t imagine she could manage much more from her current position, upside down with a demon between her legs.
“That could be arranged, but I think we’d have to get creative,” he teased. “As you’ve pointed out previously, you are quite small, and I think you’d need a step stool just to— ack!” Zadimus lunged then, once his head stopped spinning from her kick, and for a breath she was almost afraid, but then her chest was compressed by her own legs and his weight. “Such a violent little thing,” he hissed.
“It’s not my fault you’re such a good punching bag,” she snapped back.
“Forgive me if I’m not very intimidated by your indignant display.”
“Forgive me if I’m a little cranky you’re doing nothing but teasing.” Dillon struggled to free herself, but it was useless.
Zadimus clucked his tongue, giving her ankles the final push they needed to be fully pinned to her pillows. “Oh dear, has the violent little thing forgotten how to ask nicely for things she wants already?” Zadimus ground his hips against her, nowhere near where she wanted, and the small, angry sound she made utterly delighted him. “Has she forgotten how patient I can be?”
Dillon’s mouth turned down. “I thought you said we had places to be.”
“We do.”
“So why are you wasting time?” His smile sent icy chills down her back.
“I believe every interruption so far has been your own doing,” he purred. “And I have no intention of delaying our plans. I don’t think you’ll get two before we leave if you keep it up at this rate, so if you’d like to get even one, you’ll stop being such a brat and politely ask me to stop talking and fuck you properly.”
Oh, if looks could kill. Dillon’s face tacked on additional charges after the initial murder with every second he chuckled at her displeasure. He supposed it was that preoccupation that kept him from noticing her hands weren’t bound like her legs, and further that it was his own fault she managed to wrap her hand around his shaft and twist. It didn’t stop the surprised yelp, the groan, the shudder, or the quiet command to continue that escaped him.
“Sorry, didn’t hear that,” Dillon goaded, repeating the twisting-squeezing motion. “If you want me to keep going, you’ll have to ask nicely.” She returned his cold smile. “I’m also open to trades.”
“You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Maybe that’s the plan.”
Unable to stand it any longer, Zadimus lifted up just long enough to give the little shit what she wanted, lining up and pressing in with a little more care than she most likely thought she needed. “And then who will teach you how to harness your abilities?”
In an instant, she had his braids firmly wrapped around her hands and yanked him down to meet her gaze. “I’ll just bring you back.”
That wasn’t at all how things worked, but in the moment, his dick didn’t care and, quite frankly, neither did he; he held her stare as he pumped his hips harder, faster, refusing to look away and let her best him again. It didn’t take long to chuck her bodily over the edge of climax with how close she already was, and watching her come undone had him leaping over after her. They fell hard and fell together and he didn’t stop, couldn’t — he shouldn’t make it a habit to give her what she wanted when she stomped her little foot, he thought, but goddammit, he liked the sound of his name when her voice cracked around it.
She was close again, right there, his wings flared out of some deep-rooted instinct and what he expected — more screaming, another wave of endorphins, drowning in the hazy afterglow — was instead replaced by a loud crash and a sudden sharp, throbbing pain spider-webbing across the membranes.
He’d forgotten about the fucking ceiling fan.
And Dillon, the merciless, bloodthirsty little shit she was, cackled as he crumpled to the ground in a heap of frustration and wounded pride. “If you broke my fucking fan, you’re replacing it,” she wheezed from her pile of blankets like an utterly unsympathetic emperor, only upset her coliseum was damaged, not her favorite gladiator.
“Not an ounce of pity,” he scoffed.
Her face appeared over the edge of the bed, and through the frame of his twitching wings, he saw the eager gleam in her eye. “Nope!” The fluffy curls framing her face no longer looked like a halo.
“You’ll regret that.”
“That’s a problem for future Dillon,” she quipped. Her clammy, bare toes dug into his hip as she climbed over him. “I’m getting in the shower.”
Zadimus wasn’t sure if it was a statement or an invitation. He laid on the floor for a little longer before his unsatisfied erection decided on the latter for him. It wasn’t fair, and he didn’t very much care if that reasoning made him sound like a petulant child who’d gotten a smaller piece of cake.
He yanked the shower curtain back and watched her eyes blow wide and follow the rod to the floor as it clattered against the tile. Another protest, perhaps, or another threat of financial penalties bloomed and died on her tongue with his approach. For a moment, he thought he’d gone too far, but rather than shrinking back, she rose to the challenge. Defiance flared to life in her eyes, goading him to follow through, to finish what he started.
He wouldn’t make it a habit to give her what she wanted when she stomped her little foot, perfect pert tits be damned.
The angry stream of swears he got for shoving his wings under the spray, completely blocking the water from rinsing the suds from her hair, went a long way towards healing his emotional distress. She was rather precious with her eyes screwed shut to keep the soap out and her nose scrunched up in annoyance, but he wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t take pleasure in her agony, so he parted his wings just enough for the blast of water to hit her right in the face.
“You dick!” she screeched, sputtering water out of her mouth.
“Oh dear, and not a drop of sympathy in sight,” he drawled as he undid the braids at his temples. The benefit, he supposed, to moving in with three women was the overwhelming amount of choices regarding toiletries; he took his sweet time perusing the options, sniffing each one, blissfully ignoring the pitiful little slaps to his abs. He had the forethought, at least, to angle his hips away from her wrath – he might have liked it when she got a bit rough with his little buddy, but smacking it about like a pepped-up kitten wasn’t exactly what he considered a good time.
Dillon’s attempt at a growl was endearing. “We have places to be! I can’t bathe efficiently with you in the way!”
“Mm, perhaps you should have thought of that before being so cruel and laughing at my grievous wound,” he simpered, working the lather through his mane. “I need the extra heat, Dillon, my poor wings are injured.”
“The only thing you hurt is your pride, you overgrown bat,” she snapped as she shoved his wings out of the way like an unruly umbrella.
“That isn’t a very polite thing to say to an injured person, Dillon.” The water suddenly shut off before Zadimus had finished rinsing his hair. He heard the splash of little feet landing in whatever hellacious puddle his melodrama created and the quiet rustle of Dillon toweling off just outside grabbing range. “Really?” he scoffed.
“You’re the one that said we were on a time limit,” Dillon quipped, rubbing the towel vigorously through her hair. It was pointless trying to do anything with it until it dried; the curls would just fight against the brush and leave her with a worse headache than she already had from dealing with the demon grousing in her shower. She tossed on her shirt from the night before and a pair of pants from the clean hamper in the hallway and went downstairs to eat breakfast, trotting along to the rhythm of a blinded demon slapping the wall in a poor attempt to find the water controls.
Dillon had already wolfed down two slices of cold pizza by the time Zadimus sauntered downstairs, a towel twisted atop his head in a monument to his vanity.
“There’s a ley line not far from here,” he said, stealing the third slice of pizza from her hand for his own breakfast. “A few minutes by car, at most. What are you staring at?”
“How is the towel staying up?”
Zadimus blinked slowly. “I’d imagine the same way your mother and sister manage it, since they too have long hair.”
“But they don’t have horns.”
“And I’ve had mine long enough to understand how to work around them. Car?”
Dillon shook her head. “My mom took hers and McKinley picked Daisy up.”
“We could call—”
“No!” Dillon cleared the outburst from her throat. “I mean, no, I don’t want to bother Moira this early in the morning if it’s not even that far. We can walk.”
At least Zadimus didn’t acknowledge the explosive defensiveness. She wasn’t ready to tell her best friend what was going on, nor was she ready to deal with how Moira might react.
She should have known he wouldn’t just let the rest of the morning slide, however, as ten minutes later she found herself clinging to his chest like her life depended on it — and it did — several hundred feet above the neighborhood. “I thought your wings were injured!”
A snort was all she got in response. Dick.
He landed with far more care than she expected; she barely felt his feet hit the ground. She was less pleased about her lack of footwear, soft ground or not.
“Most beginners cast barefoot,” he explained before she could ask. “Some don’t wear shoes even after they’ve advanced. You’ll be able to feel the ley line if you focus. You’re going to use that to ground yourself.” Zadimus gently brushed his fingers over her eyes to close them. “Try it. I have your shoulders parallel to the line.”
Dillon took a deep breath and held it, trying to picture the line in her mind. Her toes wiggled and dug into the cool, damp earth. Another breath, and she thought she felt a faint hum of energy beneath the arches of her feet.
“Good,” the demon’s voice echoed on the edge of her awareness.
“Can you… see it?” Her voice felt distant.
“I put you on it, did I not?”
“My connection to it, asshole,” she snapped.
“If you weren’t doing so well concentrating, I’d switch you for the attitude.” Something stirred in Dillon’s belly at the idea. “Try to pull it up to your feet.”
Dillon’s brows furrowed as she tried to do what he asked, but the energy didn’t budge.
“You look like you’re constipated,” Zadimus chided. “Stop straining so hard, you’ll get nothing but a burst vessel. Energy follows the path of least resistance. Relax.”
Taking another breath, Dillon pushed all thoughts of Zadimus being an asshole out of her mind. He was right, not that she’d admit it out loud. The line of energy glowed a dull violet as it stretched on and on, deep underground, as far as she could sense. She flexed her fingers towards her feet, then closed them, trying to feel the hum solidifying in her hands as she guided it upward. The less she strained, the easier it got to pull, and the higher it rose, the stronger the buzz became until finally she felt it right beneath her feet, tingling her arches where she balanced on it like a tightrope.
She opened her eyes, smiling so wide it hurt. “I did it,” she whispered as she glanced down at her feet. She wasn’t sure what she expected to see, but she found herself a little disappointed it was just her bare toes dug into the soft dirt. There was a fleeting ghost of an emotion crossing the demon’s face when she looked up; it was gone as soon as she blinked, carefully schooled back into its usual smug mask.
“That was the easy part,” he said, and she thought she heard a tiny waver of awe in his voice. Before she could question it too much, he lifted his hand and summoned a palm-sized ball of energy. It was a deep black that all at once sucked the light from its immediate vicinity and emitted an eerie glow from within. “Catch.”
Dillon put her hands up to block the impact, but it never came. There was a jolt when the ball connected to her hands, a slight vibration in her palms, and when she opened her eyes, there it was, hovering over an invisible barrier.
“Well done,” Zadimus purred. “Now hold its form.”
She shook off the bubbly feeling his approval left behind, wondering why she cared in the first place. “What do you mean—” The ball started wobbling, blurring at the edges, and before she could try to pack it back together, it dissipated into the air. “A little instruction before throwing a ball of unstable energy—”
“Magic*,”* he corrected gently, and it was the gentle part that made her forget everything else she wanted to say. “I created it from my own reserves. Energy is summoned, magic is created, and regardless, it wasn’t unstable, it just was. It won’t come to you in conveniently prepackaged forms and stay that way until you use it. You have to manipulate it.”
“But I—”
“I don’t care if you liquefied that ball of toxic masculinity and pomade,” Zadimus chided. “Using it isn’t the same as controlling it, and you learned that the hard way, didn’t you?” The corners of his mouth followed her gaze to her feet. He sighed, moving closer and lowering himself to her level. “It isn’t a toy, and before you get defensive and tell me you know that already, understand that you’re no good to your sister if you melt your own brain.”
She flinched when he put his hand on her shoulder. It awoke something nasty, an oily ichor that made his mouth taste bitter and overloaded his senses with a desire for vengeance. It was excessive, unnecessary, and wasn’t at all conducive to teaching. “Settle yourself. If you try to cast while you’re angry, it will control you rather than the other way around. That’s why you get headaches and nosebleeds.” He gently guided her left hand up and placed another ball in her upturned palm. “Try again. Pack it together with both hands.”
“Like a snowball?”
Zadimus chuffed. “Yes, something like that.”
Dillon sniffled once, then waved her right hand over the little void. The edges condensed further and it hummed a little less. The corner of her mouth twitched. She moved her left hand over and around it, then her right, and with each pass, her smile grew.
“Now try giving it a different shape. Use your will, not your hands.”
The first thing Dillon could think of, and the easiest, she thought, was to make a stick. It was simple enough to stretch it out in her mind. When she opened her eyes again, it was… well, she stretched it out at least. It was less of a rod and more of a long, fat jellybean, and she was proud of it until she looked up.
He got points for attempting something adjacent to tact, but Zadimus wasn’t subtle at all trying to hide the laugh fighting to come out; his eyes were watering with the effort of pressing his mouth into a thin, twitching line. His efforts lasted three breaths. “Dillon, I’m flattered, but mine isn’t quite so thick.”
There was a flare at the bottom edge of her vision. The void had formed itself into a hand making a rude gesture.
The demon’s brows nearly shot off his face. “Impressive. See what you can do when you don’t try to force it?”
“You’re an asshole,” Dillon huffed, letting the energy dissipate.
“I’m actually quite nice compared to the rest of my kind.” Zadimus looked around the empty lot for something Dillon could lift. The old car was probably a bit too much for her first try, he didn’t want her to hurt herself. The barrels were a bit too small, and — “Aha, you see that disgusting couch on the edge of the lot?”
Dillon squinted, then frowned when she saw the state of it. “Bit too early for victory sex, and we’re sure as fuck not fucking on that.”
“The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind,” he drawled. It wasn’t a complete lie; the thought hadn’t crossed his mind until she reminded him what awaited him when they got back to the house. “You’re going to lift it.”
“With… energy?”
“No, with your tiny arms, yes, with energy.” Zadimus held his hand palm-up and made a lifting motion, and the couch floated right off the ground, hovering a few feet in the air. Stagnant mud and things Dillon didn’t want to think about dripped from the sagging bottom. “Now you try,” he said as it dropped back down with a squelch.
Dillon braced herself and mimicked the motion. Nothing happened. She tried again. And again.
“Focus, Dillon.”
She took a deep breath through her nose, then tried with both hands. The couch didn’t budge. She tried again, and again, and she felt like a fucking idiot. Her face heated with embarrassment and frustration, she’d just made him proud and now she was struggling to do something he made look effortless.
“You aren’t focusing,” he chided. “You’re just waving your arms about like a fledgling sparrow that’s fallen from its nest.”
Dillon whipped around to face him. “Are you fucking serious right now? You tell me not to strain so hard and let go and then you tell me to fucking concentrate,” she snapped. “Which one is it?!”
“Focusing isn’t the same thing as straining. You can be calm and focus at the same time, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
She stared extra hard at the couch and made her lifting motion even more aggressively.
“Calm down and focus.”
“I am!” she screamed, slicing her hand through the air. There was a whoosh just out of her line of sight and a loud crash in the distance. A car alarm chirped in distress. When she turned to look, the couch was gone.
“Well, would you look at that, I do believe that’s the class bell,” Zadimus rattled off, grabbing her roughly around the waist. “Time to go, little one!”
The sudden takeoff snapped an ache into her neck and punched the air from her lungs, but it didn’t stop her from shrieking as loud as humanly possible. She didn’t stop when Zadimus clamped a hand over her mouth, or when he carefully rolled her around to cradle her head to his chest, or when he softly begged her to be quiet, pressing kisses and apologies into her wind-tousled hair.
Zadimus thought for a moment the ripple in the air current he rode was just a spot of turbulence, until his panicking passenger’s screaming reached another crescendo and the current nearly buckled his wings with a sudden downdraft. He doubled his efforts trying to soothe her, frantically singing a lullaby against her scalp while looking for a safe place to land.
At least his theory was more or less proven, but it would all be for nought if Dillon sent them both flying into the sun.
They were so close to the house, and he almost got his feet under him when an updraft sent him ass-over-tea-kettle a hundred feet in the air. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he hissed as he pushed through the pain searing his wing anchors, finally resorting to expending the last of his reserves pushing back against the wind.
He wanted to kiss the ground when he skidded to a halt in the backyard, but that would require dropping Dillon, and from the wet pinpricks on his back, he wagered she wouldn’t let go any time soon. “Little one, look at me,” he urged, trying to pry her from his chest. “Dillon, we’re on the ground, it’s fine, look.” Zadimus dropped to his knees and doubled over so her back touched the grass. It only made her cling tighter, and she definitely broke skin with her little nails.
And she was definitely hyperventilating.
He gently worked his arms between them and cupped his hands over her mouth. “Breathe slow,” he directed, kicking himself internally when she didn’t. He pinched her nose shut until she started struggling and batting at his hands, then released. She took a deep breath. Exhaled. “Again.” He released her after a few repetitions, once her breathing was back to normal, albeit a bit shaky, and her trembling had mostly subsided. “I won’t promise I’m not going to get us out of a sticky situation as quickly as possible again, but—”
Dillon silenced him with a hand on his mouth. “It’s not that,” she said. Her voice was hoarse. “I just don’t like heights.” A wrinkle appeared between her brows and she moved her hand lower, over his pounding heart. “Were you… worried about me?”
“Yes,” he lied. “I’ll be sure to carry a few emergency paper bags to our next lesson.” She snorted and hit his bicep. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. He was worried, that part was true, but he couldn’t tell her how she’d nearly killed them both. Luckily, she’d been too lost in her panic attack to notice how rough the flight was. “I do believe there are a few slices of cold pizza left with my name on them, shall we?” He rolled to his feet and helped her to hers before ushering her inside, away from the deep gouges his landing had left in the ground.
As it turned out, there was, in fact, an entire pizza left, and Zadimus gleefully piled half of it on a plate destined for the microwave. The slices wouldn’t heat evenly at all, but after his near brush with death, he didn’t particularly care. He turned to see what had held Dillon up — she was ravenous any time he’d offered food and he half expected to have to fight her off with a stick just to get a single slice — and found her slumped over the table. “Tired already?” He frowned when his teasing tone didn’t get so much as a twitch.
There was still half a pizza left. He set the plate he already heated in front of her and ruffled her hair before returning to the counter to claim the other half.
“Thanks,” she mumbled. She sounded like shit, even to her own ears, and if she focused on that and the pizza in front of her, she wouldn’t have any brain power left to dissect why Zadimus had given her the plate he meant for himself.
“I pushed you too hard,” he replied quietly, barely audible over the steady hum of the microwave and the pounding in her head. “We can take tomorrow—”
Dillon cut him off. “No, I want to keep going. You don’t quit working out just because the pushups made you a little tired.”
“You can’t get a brain hemorrhage from doing too many fucking pushups, Dillon,” he sighed as he made his way back to the table with his own food.
“You played pranks on us for like, an hour the other night.”
“I’ve also been alive for over a millennium and defy this side of the Veil’s laws of physics,” he countered, pausing only to wolf down a slice of still-steaming pizza. “I have pants older than your mother’s mother and you can’t even direct the energy you cast in any sort of controlled manner. I’m not saying it to get a rise out of you, I’m stating facts.”
Dillon tore a small piece off one of her slices and washed it down with a soda she didn’t remember — “What, and this isn’t rubbing it in my face?” She held up the can he’d willed into existence.
“It’s called kindness, Dillon, I’m not incapable of it.”
“So, what, you just… care about me that much?” She gestured to the food, the drink, herself.
Zadimus pinched his mouth shut around an answer, then let out a breath. “Eat, it will help the headache.”
For a few more stressful breaths, he worried he’d have to hand feed her, but then she broke her silence with something that sent his head reeling. “You controlled the wind, didn’t you? When things got rough, so we would land safely.”
“Yes,” he said, voice tight. “I did.” And so did you. She’d just almost killed them both in the process.
They ate in silence, Dillon keeping unwavering eye contact with the demon’s face while she waited for an elaboration, and Zadimus doing his level best to look anywhere but at her. He would be faced with questions he wasn’t ready to answer and answers he wasn’t ready to receive.
She loudly dusted crumbs from her hands. “I suppose I should fulfill my end of the deal, then.”
Zadimus jolted from his trance. Despite his best efforts to hide the mild hurt crossing his face, his wings still drooped behind him, dragging across the floor as he stood from his chair. “I’m not going to force you into anything.”
“You’re not forcing me, I brought it up.” She tossed her plate in the recycling bin.
“Oh yes, and you sound so very enthusiastically consenting,” he drawled.
“Maybe you should do something about that,” she challenged, slapping his ass on her way out of the kitchen. She thought for a moment she’d crossed a line, actually hurt his feelings, but three steps into her room, her door slammed shut and a large, clawed hand spun her around to face the demon attached to it.
The heat in his gaze was unmistakable. “Strip.”
“No,” Dillon huffed, crossing her arms.
Zadimus’s face screwed up in offense. “What do you mean ‘no?’ You were just—”
“Yeah. Was. You wanted enthusiastic consent rather than a business transaction, and you did a piss poor job just then of boosting my enthusiasm.”
“You—!” Zadimus assumed a mockery of her stance, though the defiance she exhibited was replaced with the indignant pouting of a man used to getting his way with little to no resistance. “You know I can just—” he made a gesture towards her and let out a breathy whistle “—poof!”
“Oh, I’m so fucking drenched right now,” she deadpanned. “Really? Those are my choices? Strip like you’re gonna hand me a paper gown and inspect my bits or you’ll—” she snapped twice and found out she couldn’t whistle “— poof my shit out of existence?”
“You’ve got a mouth on you, little miss,” Zadimus chided.
“And you seem rather fond of running yours, big man.” Dillon dropped her hands to her hips. “Why don’t you come over here and strip me yourself if you’re so inclined? Where’s the seduction?”
“I’m a demon,” he spat.
“And I’m a lady.”
“You’re a saucy little appetizer who took that ‘great power’ line straight to your head and think you’re untouchable.” Zadimus smirked, knowing from the tick of her jaw he’d hit a nerve. “Don’t you forget why I’m even here in the first place. You need me. That great power is useless if you can’t even tap into it consciously and consistently, and I have half a mind to teach you what happens to little girls who tangle with forces unknown.”
Dillon’s brave facade flickered for just a moment, but it came back tenfold. Good girl. “What’re you gonna do, spank me?” she goaded.
Zadimus considered his next move for a moment. He shouldn’t push her. He said he wouldn’t, but he wanted to find out if it was a fluke — needed to find out — and it wouldn’t be the first time his curiosity overtook his sense of reason.
Besides, she was cute when she was angry.
His hands went into his pockets and his stance loosened as he sauntered a few steps forward.
Dillon took a few back, but if she was afraid, he’d need a microscope and a doctoral degree to find it. Even with sweater paws in her oversized hoodie, she still painted a formidable picture. Zadimus was almost impressed.
With a casual flick of his hand, a wall of air blasted towards her. Dillon didn’t even react as her will sliced it in two. It ripped the posters off the wall behind her, knocked a pillow from her bed, shook the window on the opposite wall, but had all the effect of a light summer breeze on her, merely tousling her curls a bit.
Theory confirmed, then. She was quick, her instincts impeccable; it wasn’t just fluffy, meaningless pillow talk when he told her what he felt lurking just under her skin. He knew she’d counter it. He’d counted on it, in fact, because while she was busy silently gloating, he flashed behind her in a crack of energy, grabbing a fistful of her hair before she could blink. “That’s exactly what I plan to do, yes.”
He didn’t count on her reaction. Sure, she matched him wit for wit in a verbal spar, and she had no problem getting a bit rough in bed, but he wouldn’t have pegged her for a fighter.
He was dead wrong, and that underestimation cost him.
Dillon grabbed his wrist and pushed off the carpet, swinging her legs around to nail him right behind his knee. Her feet may have been little and bare, but she knew her pressure points. It buckled beneath him. The takedown had forced him to release his hold on her hair and he barely got his hands back up to catch her as she lunged. He let her momentum topple him onto his back, managing to fold his wings around her to reduce the impact of the fall on the more delicate ribs.
“Asshole!” she barked as her fist made contact with his palm. He barely blocked it in time, and had he not, she might have actually hurt him a little. Broken her hand, too.
“Ah, the little arsonist likes lighting matches, but still doesn’t expect the consequences, I see,” he goaded. Better she tired herself out now rather than ripping his wings off mid-coitus.
Dillon released a sound halfway between a shriek and a snarl, and very much not something he’d expect out of a human, as his tail snaked around her ankle and tried to yank her up and off him. At the last moment, she caught his braids and drew a slightly less intimidating sound from him. The brief stab of pain in his scalp was nothing compared to her toenails clawing at the tender underside of his tail; she’d wiggled her other foot into the coil and dug in until he had no choice but to release her if he didn’t want to bleed.
“You were saying?” she taunted, squeezing her knees on either side of his chest. Someone smaller might have been winded by the move, but as it was, her knees didn’t even reach the ground.
“Oh dear, you’ve foiled my plans,” Zadimus drawled. He brought his wrist to his brow in a mock swoon. “How compromising a position I have found myself in, on my back and at your mercy! It would be so very terribly unfortunate if someone small and angry were to ravage me!”
“You’re an ass.”
“How does the human adage go? ‘You are what you eat’ isn’t it?” The light blush flashing across her ears and all the way down to the swell of cleavage peeking out from the gape of her hoodie was well worth the light slap that did nothing more than stir his loins further. “You have a brilliant point, actually, riding me is quite enthusiastic. Do carry on.”
Dillon blushed impossibly deeper. “I thought you were worried about my health,” she deflected.
Zadimus tsked. “You parted that wind like the Red Sea with a look, little one, I think the time for worry is long since past.” He sat up, sending her tumbling into his lap, her knees splayed awkwardly by her ears. “You want seduction? Fine.” Grabbing her waistband, he jerked her pants to her knees and followed shortly after with her underwear. He relished her gasp, the way her pupils dilated as he loomed over her, slowly leaning in to puff a breath over her glistening flesh. “What do we say when we want something?”
He expected a fight, a biting remark or a thinly veiled threat with which they both knew she wouldn’t follow through. Between the exaggerated rise and fall of her chest, the gentle part of her lips, and the lazy droop of her eyes, he wasn’t sure why he expected anything other than the half-sobbed ‘please’ she whimpered between her shins.
It threw him off. Apparently, he’d been still for too long, however, because the familiar indigence to which he’d become accustomed manifested in the form of grumpy squirming and cold toes on his ear. “Why?” he sighed.
A petulant whine was his answer.
Her foot melted away when he finally dragged his tongue through her cleft. “Better?”
“You ate pizza without a single smug remark,” she huffed.
“Oh, my sincerest apologies, Princess Dillon of Kingdom Monroe, how dare I displease Her Highness by checking on her well-being. I shall rectify this grave offense at once.” She managed half a rebuttal before he plunged his tongue deep inside her. Zadimus was having a grand time playing her like a soundboard with his teeth and tongue, relishing how she writhed in his hands. He chuckled when she grabbed his horn, and again when she tried in vain to kick. “That good, is it?”
“What the fuck is that?!”
His smug grin sank into a scowl. “You liked when I used my teeth on your clit last—”
“Not that!” she screeched, struggling until she escaped his grip. “I like that a whole lot, please do that every time, look behind you, dipshit!” She scrambled backwards and tripped over her pants tangled around her knees as he turned to look at the door.
A tendril of greasy black slithered under the door. “Ah, that’s just a soul.”
“That’s just a soul,” she mocked from across the room.
“Yes, it’s a nasty one, but it can’t hurt you. It’s probably looking for a way out, please come back, my cock is cold.”
Dillon whipped around with a wild look in her eyes and a lamp brandished like a weapon. She’d done away with her pants entirely, and wearing a hoodie as a dress did nothing to make her look less feral.
Zadimus rolled to shield his groin between his body and the bed. “On second thought, I have two hands, and I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
She ignored him in favor of hauling ass across the room and yanking open the door. Without hesitation, she brought the lamp down on the vaguely human-shaped shadow, again and again and again. Thick, oily ichor splashed across her face like battlefield woad. She thought for a moment the soul was screaming, but she caught a glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror, mouth open in a war cry and eyes burning with rage. A trick of the light made her think for a moment they were glowing, but when she blinked, they were back to normal, albeit a little unhinged.
A deep rumble rattled her bones as a monstrous shadow stretched over her. Dillon spun on her heel to nail that one with the lamp too – it was just Zadimus, so she lowered the lamp slightly, but the big teeth and black eyes stopped her from dropping it altogether. “Zaddy? You good, big guy?”
He shivered from head to toe, emerging from whatever spell he’d been under. “Fine, fine, just… hungry, I think.”
“You ate half a pizza.”
Zadimus laughed, and only then did Dillon finally feel safe. She never thought she’d be glad to see the lackadaisy asshole persona surface. “You really don’t know anything about what you tried to summon, do you?” He held up a hand when she took a defensive breath. “I’m not mocking you, it’s a genuine question. Not everything is a targeted attack against you, Dillon, I’m not some snotty teenager with a grudge against the world and neither are you, stop projecting your general distrust in people onto the Veilborne who, might I add, could swat you like a fly and clearly hasn’t.”
Dillon opened her mouth to reply, but a crash in the basement launched her into the air and right into Zadimus’s waiting arms.
“Not exactly the trust fall I expected, but—”
“More important things to worry about right now, Zadimus, like figuring out what the fuck is in my basement,” she snapped, wriggling around like a displeased cat until he released her.
She took up her lamp again and it took every remaining ounce of his willpower not to take her again and again and again. The picture she painted — shoulders squared and ready for battle, dark, smoky tendrils rising like signal fires from the ichor war paint slashing across her eyes — stirred something in his loins that hadn’t been awakened since he’d last hunted souls on ancient battlefields. Flashes of leather and metal, a sword sparking on his claws, a long red braid he’d wrapped around his hand while her hands wrapped around his throat—
He cleared away the lingering ache with a cough. “Your mother keeps a perfectly good baseball bat in the hall closet, what did that poor lamp ever do to you?”
Dillon looked down at the device in her hand; the neck was bent at an awkward angle, the head dangling loosely by a single wire. “It’s a piece of shit from SWEDE, I can get another one.” She retrieved the bat from the closet on her way to the stairs anyway, just because it was more practical, not because Zadimus was right. “My mom is gonna be so pissed if that motherfucker broke anything.”
“Doubtful,” Zadimus scoffed as he trotted ahead.
“That she’ll be pissed?”
“No, that it broke anything, I have no doubts your mother will skin us both alive if there’s a mess she has to clean when she gets home from vacation.” He snapped and the basement door swung open, and shortly after, he dove into the darkness with a single beat of his wings.
“Showoff,” Dillon huffed under her breath. “At least turn on the light, not all of us have super demon vision.” She hit the switch at the top of the steps.
Something oily and black was leaking out of the deep freeze.
She turned the lights back off.
There was a flash, a growl, a crash, and a series of wet crunching sounds that, like a train wreck, Dillon didn’t want context for, but she couldn’t stop her curiosity. She turned on the lights.
Zadimus ripped into the soul’s abdomen, spraying ichor across the wall and ceiling beside him. It faded to vapor almost immediately, but it didn’t stop the visceral fear holding Dillon’s heart in a vise.
Maybe she could be afraid of him.
She turned the lights off again and shut the door, then went to the kitchen to get a drink to nurse at the table while she waited for Zadimus to do his thing. Clearly he had it handled. It was easy to forget what he was while he was smug and smarmy and being so very good at sex. “I thought you said it was immediate,” she said softly as his claws clicked quietly on the tile with his approach.
“I have to chew, Dillon, I’m not a snake.”
She glared at him.
“I said your soul would get sucked into the Holy Holding Tank immediately,” he corrected, picking her up to steal her seat and set her in his lap. She didn’t fight it; the way he held her close to his chest and buried his face in her hair felt vulnerable, like he needed it more than he was willing to admit. “Evil souls are… sticky.”
“Sticky?”
“They don’t get put back into the reincarnation cycle, so there’s nothing to hasten their natural detachment from their corpses.” He tilted her chin up so he could give her a wry look. “Cutting them up and shoving them in a freezer makes that process take even longer.”
“Yeah, well,” Dillon huffed, “waste not, want not.” She shifted around until she could lay her head on his chest. “So, what, the good ones get yoinked right up? Who does that, demons?”
Zadimus snorted. “Absolutely not. Angels are in charge of creating and caring for the souls, we’re responsible for cleaning up the nasties before they wreak too much havoc.”
Dillon’s brows crinkled in the middle. He wasn’t sure why, but he had the overwhelming urge to kiss it away, so he did. The furrow came back deeper, but at least it brought a subtle smile with it. “I thought you said they couldn’t hurt anybody.”
“As souls on this side of the Veil, yes,” he explained. “But they’re very much corporeal on our side of the Veil, and they can just as easily slip into an empty vessel that’s recently been vacated and make an Abomination that can absolutely hurt a lot of people.”
“And the angels don’t do anything about it?”
Zadimus grimaced against her scalp. “Not until they start hurting people. They’re creators and caretakers of souls first, defenders of Life’s most precious creations second. Demons are just Death’s loyal janitors.”
“You sound bitter.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re a bad liar for a demon.”
“And you’re terribly brave for a human.”
Sensing the end of Zadimus’s willingness to divulge information for the night, Dillon slipped off his lap and stretched. “It’s late,” she announced. Her eyes drifted to the locked basement door. Fat lot of good that lock did earlier. “Do you think maybe… you could stay here tonight? In case another one leaks out.”
“It’s doubtful, but I was planning on staying anyway.” If he heard the little tremble of fear in her voice, he didn’t indicate it.
“Awfully confident in ourselves, aren’t we?”
Dillon wasn’t sure she liked the sneer she got in response. “Yes, but I already moved in before we ever struck a deal.”
“Excuse me?” she shouted at his back. He was already a third of the way up the stairs and she had to scramble to catch up.
“I claimed your house as my lair, you’re welcome. Now no one else will come sniffing along to feast on the endless souls, salads, and breadsticks your mother creates.” He snickered at the statue she’d become in the hallway, frozen in shock and sputtering in offense. “Would it make you feel better if I wore heels and an apron around the house? I’ll be the perfect housewife for my lovely little breadwinner.”
Dillon shoved him into her room. “It would not, and I’m not your anything. We have a contract, and we’re roommates with benefits, that’s it.”
Her dismissal almost stung. Almost, because when he quickly blinked the disappointment from his eyes and turned to face her, she was red from her shoulders to her ears. “Oh, come now, at least admit you like me a little bit. Just a smidge. I ate a soul for you.”
“You ate a soul for you, and I don’t completely hate you,” she huffed, crawling under her blankets in a solid sulk.
“How romantic, I’m swooning.” He fluffed up his own nest of pillows and blankets on the trundle mattress. Zadimus extinguished the lights with a snap and ruffled his wings until he was comfortable. “Goodnight, wifey,” he simpered.
There was a muffled grumble from the mattress above. For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t respond at all, but just as his eyes were closing, he heard a soft, “Night, asshole.” A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. She definitely liked him.
Arsonist Chronicles Taglist: @sparatus @thetrashbagswasteland @writernopal @tabswrites @starknstarwars @sparrow-orion-writes @captain-kraken @teamdilf @void-botanist
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#the arsonist chronicles#unlikely adventures#my fic#paranormal romance#chapter update#working on the latest chapter of brhp it's just a major slog so have zadimus being a smarmy fuck in the meantime
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"Well, even if you don't want my help, I won't let you do this alone, understand??"
yknow how long it's been since All Might has shown up in the anime? long enough for me to forget how talented the dub is but especially Chris Sabat. dude had me in tears toward the end of the recent episode . that "dad who's terrified for his kid but is trying to put up a tough front". that voice crack, *-chef kiss*-
Edit: on the flip side, there were some terrible volume choices for the Vestiges scene. I understand what they were trying to do but yikes. way too muffled n crunchyroll doesn't believe in translating text or CC, it seems.
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It had been hours, and still Aiden hadn’t resurfaced from exploring the vestige he had found. Yakumo wasn’t one to really keep track, sure, but he knew that at most the longer memories only took about thirty minutes, tops. No one else had gone in with him, which was a bit unusual -- even for the ones at home, Aiden said that Io was usually with him, or witnessed them. Yakumo, Louis, and Mia all were here and conscious, keeping guard while their friend was occupied.
Not for the first time he looked at the … altar, really, he wasn’t sure what else to call it, that had cradled the vestige. No other vestige was like that, usually they were sitting innocuously on the street, just waiting for someone to pick them up. This one was nestled between what looked like two white thorns, and had a halberd stuck into one of them, almost like a talisman. Yakumo had never seen any of the Queen’s Thorns himself, but the ones that held the vestige reminded him of the descriptions he’d heard.
“Is it a full on code that you found?” He asked, not expecting an answer. “Maybe, but you didn’t pass out when you picked up that Hunter code in the city. So what is it? Maybe the person who built this place…”
The sound of footsteps had him lurching to his feet, blade at the ready and reaching for his Gifts when he caught sight of Louis’ mop of dark brown hair. He relaxed a bit and shook his head, trying to get at least some of the tension to go away.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you,” Louis said as he got closer, and his eyes flicked past Yakumo and onto Aiden’s still form. “He’s still not awake?”
“No,” Yakumo sighed, and leaned his back against the railing. “He twitched about twenty minutes ago, but that’s about it.”
“Damn. Well, I suppose all we can do is wait,” Louis sighed and moved to stand next to him, placing his hands on the railing and letting his weight rest on it. His gaze flicked over the rest of the structure.
“... How are you holding up?” Yakumo asked after a moment. “This place is… well. Not really fond of the fact that the Lost can teleport .”
Louis snorted softly, and his fingers fiddled with one of the spikes on the railing. “As well as can be expected, I suppose. Truth be told, I’ve actually felt better while we’re here, out exploring.”
Yakumo paused and looked at him again, vaguely startled to see dark circles under his eyes. “Louis, you alright man? I know you get antsy when we’re not making progress, but…”
-Raven Feathers, Ch 9: Things Long Buried
I deleted chapter 5, as I will be editing it and inserting it into a later portion of the story. It's not gone, just put somewhere else for now as I wasn't exactly happy with the flow of things. I might post it here for archival purposes. This is now the new chapter 9.
Please be aware that the rating has changed, due to discussion of various mature topics. Full content warnings are inside the chapter's notes.
#code vein#code vein fic#yakumo shinonome#louis amamiya#queenslayer#creator writes#fic: raven feathers#post announcement
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Reading List, Art is Sustenance edition.
[Image via Kelly Beall]
*
"I've been holding off on writing this particular story until I knew how it ended, but it occurred to me the other day that that's exactly the wrong instinct. We pretty much only ever hear about failure when it's been redeemed by success. And maybe that'll happen eventually, but it doesn't seem likely right now, and anyway, the point isn't what's coming. The point is how it's felt to sit here for the last two years, trying to make something happen that just does not seem to want to go." Zan Romanoff
"I was sure that a coffee shop in my hometown would change my life. I would have more friends, more zines to read, more bands to listen to, and other cool things to get into. The coffee itself was a secondary, even tertiary, aspect of this desire." [Alicia Kennedy, Yes! Magazine]
"When I was a teenager, avoidance was not an option. Sometimes, I would just resolutely not do things, because I was physically unable to. But many, many other times I just had to do the things that made me feel anxious. I’m not advocating for this approach entirely: believe me, sometimes nothing good came of it. But sometimes, and this is the really important bit, I did what made me anxious – and good things happened. Interesting things. Exhilarating things. Hilarious things. Useful things, too: GCSEs, A-levels, getting a driving licence, a place at university. If I had been told from the age of 10 that I could get out of doing things that worried me, I would simply never have done anything at all." Treating anxiety as a permanent problem might just make people feel worse [Lucy Foulkes, The Guardian]
"They keep telling us to move on; to accept that Brexit is done. The problem is, Brexit isn’t done with us. It isn’t a single disabling event. It’s a degenerative disease." The next phase of Brexit will be bad for our diet, health and wealth [Jay Rayner, The Guardian]
"I cannot overemphasize how little there was to do before we all had smartphones. A barren expanse of empty time would stretch out before you: waiting for the bus, or for someone to come home, or for the next scheduled event to start. Someone might be late or take longer than expected, but no notice of such delay would arrive, so you’d stare out the window, hoping to see some sign of activity down the block. You’d pace, or sulk, or stew." What Did People Do Before Smartphones? [Ian Bogost, The Atlantic]
"As flawed as the idea of “selling out” was, it captured one incontrovertible truth: only a fool would write a song to make money. You write a song to surprise yourself, to give other people what they never knew they wanted. Perhaps what is missing from popular culture in the 21st century is sufficient contempt for those who give us what we asked for already." On "selling out", a concept lost to history [Dan Brooks, The Guardian]
My first laptop [Rachael Maddux]
The last vestiges of roadside Americana [Sam O'Brien, Gastro Obscura]
The strange survival of Guinness World Records [Imogen West-Knights, The Guardian]
'Felt presence': Why we sometimes feel invisible others [Claudia Hammond, BBC Future]
"This mundane view of a perfect life elevates tedious activities to the status of aspirational living. Your best life will be accessed by taking “pretty pictures”, wearing matching pyjama sets, cooking dinner at home, working out at 5am, buying flowers, lighting candles, stretching." Beware the ‘beige-fluencers’ [Sarah Manavis, The Guardian]
"Most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about poetry. Right? They have a life to live, and they're not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg's poems or anybody's poems, until their father dies, they go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart, they don't love you anymore, and all of a sudden, you're desperate for making sense out of this life… 'Has anybody ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?' Or the inverse…something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes. You love them so much, you can't even see straight. You know, you're dizzy. 'Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?' And that's when art's not a luxury, it's actually sustenance. We need it." - Ethan Hawke, via Nitch
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when’s the next chapter 😚😚😊☺️☺️☺️☺️😍😍😍
early in the upcoming week (or the next), hopefully!!! life stuff has been getting in the way, but i am so very [mentally] ready to have it posted.
a not-finally-edited excerpt is attached under the cut!! as a teaser, but also as a thank you for caring enough to ask (it's pretty spoiler-free, plotwise) <3
Chapter 14: Where Did You Go? Do You Wanna Talk?
…a memory of:
One of the days at the very, very beginning. Early morning. When they were still new enough to be bundled up in hesitancy and shyness: layers intending to be protective, but begging to be popped and thrown away, like bubble wrap, or tossed aside in the face of more comfortable circumstances, like snow-drenched coats upon their owner’s entrance into a warm room.
At the beginning. Pearl wants to touch Rose. So badly, and always. It just about eats her up from the inside out: turns everything inside all mushy and rotten, like overripe fruit; cloying, syrupy-sweet. And she does touch Rose some, of course, but it’s in just the same way that she does everything else. With caution. Caring (always, always), but a little nervous, too. In a way that feels like it might never be enough.
But Rose catches on. There’s a night where they’re together, stretched out under her puffy white comforter; a night where Pearl finds herself dawdling. Leaning in for soft kisses only to pull away; using light, grazing fingers to brush pink hair away from soft cheeks, rosy enough to be hot, without thinking—before realizing and retracting one hand to cradle it safely in the palm of her other, instead.
And she is so happy; happier than she’s ever been, but. Anxious, too. Just a little. And Rose sees.
“Pearl?” in a voice like honey, but with raspy, burned-woodsmoke-smelling edges. Enough to make Pearl want to tear herself apart, at least a little.
They’re too close for Pearl to look at Rose properly. She starts to shift backward; only finds herself being tugged closer. And it’s so much—all blown up like it is. The smell of Rose’s hair, light and coconut-beachy, mingling with the scent of an almost-burnt-out candle—sizzling ash holding onto the vestiges of Pumpkin Spice Caramel Latte (or whatever the hell) and something else, too, something that is uniquely and inherently Rose, like standing outside in April after it rains and breathing in deep—not just the smell but the feeling, too. And there is bright morning light, enough to make everything go all cotton ball soft around the edges; a snapshot image of a fallen eyelash landed just near a mole, or maybe a freckle (Pearl considers blowing it away; thinks better of it). And hands. Warm, too warm, belonging to Rose and reaching for Pearl.
It is so much—too much. She has to shut her eyes. Just for a second.
“Pearl?” again.
If she was lucid enough to play a trick, she might think to stay silent. Just to keep Rose talking; to keep her saying her name until she’d said it enough for Pearl to drown in the depth of the nectar dripping off of each letter.
Pearl opens her eyes. Looks into Rose’s—nearly dark enough to be black; dark enough to replace the night sky; dark enough that Pearl might trip and fall into them and just keep
falling
(forever).
You love her.
Tell her you love her.
No—kiss her.
Keep kissing her.
Tell her you love her.
Let yourself—just let yourself.
Stroke her hair.
Cup her cheek.
Tell her you love her.
Pull her in; press your lips against hers, against her forehead, to the tip of her nose.
Hold her hand.
Let yourself.
Do it all: everything you’ve ever imagined.
None of it will ever be enough and you’ll never have enough time or all of the right words but you should do it anyway. You love her. Tell her you love her. Let yourself love her. As best you can.
Forever. If she lets you...
#asks#trying to hold the wind#please send questions or thoughts or musings in the meantime tho i love to talk about this fic 😭
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*Breaks in through your window* I want to know about your Haunted House WIP 👀 - Love, Redacted
Ooh okay, this is funny because it's the only wip on the list that I've sort of published already? I wrote it out in response to an ask game, but it has lots of little flaws and quirks to iron out before I actually post ut on ao3, so it's going through a bit of an editing and extension phase rn. Here are some little facts about it bc I still want to talk regardless
Afo has already taken over Japan. All Might is dead, and the majority of the students of class 1a are imprisoned
This likely wouldn't have happened had Yoichi not contacted afo through the (apparently lasting) mental connection formed between the quirks afo and ofa in the war arc in order to barter using the heroes' positions and plan of attack as a bargaining chip
Yoichi, anticipating defeat and experiencing severe imposter syndrome regarding his role as a mentor and pillar of hope, decided that his best option was to exchange Izuku and his friends' safety for what he believes to be an infinitesimal chance at victory (this is in large part due to his regret and perceived responsibility regarding the deaths of the past holders, esp second and third)
Although Yoichi didn't plan for All Might to die, because Izuku is his nephew (dfo is all I know) he considers rescuing him and his closest friends (he is DEFINITELY projecting) to be his top priority
Afo immediately revealed Yoichi's involvement to Izuku upon the completion of his plan. While Yoichi managed to essentially shut down the other vestiges quickly enough that none of them heard about his betrayal, Izuku did, and he is understandably pissed
Now trapped in a very gilded cage with no one but afo and Yoichi, now desperate for reconciliation, for company, Izuku realizes he has far more control over the ofa mindscape than he originally assumed. The consequences of this are somewhat unfavorable for Yoichi :)
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