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starkstruck27 · 11 months

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I headcanon that today (June 14th, but I might not get it posted by midnight because time management is not my strong suit lol) is Steve's birthday, and we just had a book signing at the bookstore I work at tonight, so I was inspired to write this. It's modern day, and slightly aged up characters, but not by much. Enjoy!

Steve couldn't believe his luck. It was his birthday, and it seemed like everything was going just right today. First, he woke up before his alarm and actually felt energized, then Robin had promised to take him out wherever he wanted to go later on (even volunteering to drive so she could show off her new license and car), then his favorite coffee place gave him a discount and a free pastry since it was his birthday, and to cap it all off, he had gotten back a test from one of his most difficult classes, and he'd passed it with flying colors. All in all, it was a good day. But then, he saw a sign outside the campus bookstore, and it went from good to great.

The sign was advertising a book signing with a local author, who just so happened to be Steve's favorite author of all time. The guy's name was Ronnie Fitconi, a mysterious man who never had his picture in any of his books. He didn't write much about himself in the little "about the author" section of his books either, the only things he said was that he was 23, just a year younger than Steve was, he lived somewhere in Indianapolis, he preferred tea over coffee, he loved the beach, he was a cat person, and he was gay (which was pretty apparent from the books he wrote, but whatever).

The book that he was promoting with the signing was his fourth, pretty impressive for a guy so young, but Tik Tok had managed to make him blow up practically overnight. That and how secretive the guy was. Seriously, if you looked the guy up on Google, it was like he didn't even exist. There were no pictures of him, and no record of him except that he was a writer that blew up after his first book was released three years ago. This was the first book signing he had ever done, and it was only to the local college bookstore and a few others in the area, but all were small, and none were at big chain stores, only locally owned.

As soon as Steve saw the sign, he took a picture of it, then immediately called Robin as he rushed back to his car.

"Dingus!" She answered, her smile evident in her voice, "Happy Birthday! What's up, buttercup?"

"Hi, Robbie. Thanks for that. But also, you know how you said you'd take me to do anything I wanted tonight for my birthday?" He asked, practically vibrating out of his skin.

"Yeah. Did you finally decide what you want to do?" She asked.

"Yes, and I know it's probably not going to be the rip-roaring time you were planning, but just hear me out, okay?" He said, "How would you like to come with me to meet Ronnie Fitconi?"

"That author you like?" She asked, "Yeah, of course! I told you, anything you want to do, I'm down. So, what's the plan? Are we breaking into his house?"

"What? No! You are seriously so weird. He's doing a book signing at the campus bookstore, I was gonna bring my books and buy his new one and then I get to meet him and get his autograph! No breaking and entering required."

"Well, that's a lot less fun, but I'll be there. What time does it start?" Robin asked.

"6:30 tonight," Steve replied.

"Let's get there at 6:00, we don't want to have to wait forever, so it'd probably be better to get there early."

"Good thinking. In the meantime, we have a couple of hours, and my classes just ended for the day. Will you meet me for dinner and help me pick out what to wear so I don't look like a total idiot?" Steve asked, already heading towards his dorm.

"Of course. I'll bring tacos. I'll be there in ten."

With that, Robin hung up the phone, and Steve drove off towards his place. As soon as he got there, he went to his desk to get his copies of Ronnie's first three books. Steve would probably never admit to liking them as much as he did to anyone but Robin, because the guy wrote only romance novels, but he really did love them. He didn't read much, and when Ronnie's debut novel came out, he didn't have much interest in that, either. But then he read the second book when it came out, and he was hooked. He read the third one when it came out and only got further hooked, and finally he buckled and read the first one, too. He hadn't expected to like it, but he found that he couldn't put it down, and now that another one was coming out, he couldn't wait to read it, too.

The first book the guy had written was called "Kings of the Lost World", and it was a dystopian sci-fi romance. It was about a young man who thought he was king of all he saw, but just as he's settling into the position, the apocalypse hits. The king gets taken down a peg, having to team up with the same guy who had been in his position before, but got kicked off his throne before the new king had taken over, but now, they have to learn to lean on each other to survive. They have a rocky start at first, but eventually, it turns out that they fall in love, and they manage to find a place where they are safe and get to live out the rest of their lives in happiness. Steve honestly didn't think he'd like the book, since he typically hated both sci-fi and dystopian, but he ended up loving the book when he finally read it. It almost reminded him of when he was in high school, when Billy Hargrove came and kicked him off his throne for good, all except for the romance bit.

The second book the guy had published and the one that had gotten Steve hooked on the guy's writing was probably his saddest one, called "Blood of the Innocent". It was a noir thriller set in the 1920s, about a gay man who sang in speakeasies as a drag queen who got accused of murdering a bunch of young men that went to the clubs he sang at. The detective in the story, who was closeted himself, fell in love with the guy while trying to clear his name and solve the case, but after they'd started their affair, they were found out. This book didn't end up as happily as the first, with the two of them being able to run away together, rather they were both killed for their relationship and the original case was mostly forgotten about and covered up, only to go cold and remain unsolved. When Steve read it, he could not put it down, and when he got to the ending, he would be lying if he said he hadn't flat-out bawled over it. He had finished it around two in the morning one night, and Robin was not exactly happy about having to wake up to his call at that time to listen to him rant to her about it, but she read the book later at his insistence, and she soon forgave him once she got to the end.

The third book the guys wrote was called "Don't Fence Me In", and was a cute, sweet, rom-com kind of book about two young men who worked together on a horse ranch. The one man had lived there his whole life and who's father owned the place, but was getting too old to run it, so they hired a farmhand. That's where the other man came in, a handsome guy from out of town who had just been looking for work anywhere, and who the first guy thought was much too prissy and posh for the kind of manual labor that was expected of him. He had come from the city and was the son of a rich businesswoman, so why he wanted to run from that cushy lifestyle just to work on a rinky-dink ranch, the first guy didn't know, but he teased him about it relentlessly. But where he expected the guy to get offended and ditch his position, the other guy just took it lightly and met it with laughter, until they became friends, and eventually, even more than that. At the end of the book, the first guy's father, who, once he found out about the relationship supported it 100%, gave up ownership of the ranch to his son and his boyfriend, and the two were married on their land with the help of a fat check from the second guy's mother, who also supported them completely. Steve had gushed so hard over the book that when he was reading it, he found himself lying on his stomach with his legs kicked up and a permanent smile on his face as he twirled his hair. It was probably his favorite of all three books.

And now, as he held each book in his hands and placed them in his favorite tote bag to take with him to the signing event, he couldn't help but wonder what the next book might be about. That was another reason he loved this author so much, he always kept you guessing on what he might do next. Most authors picked one or two genres and stuck to them, but this guy was all over the place. And yet, everything he wrote was absolutely amazing, and had Steve captivated within a few pages. He could not wait to see where things would go this time.

After a few minutes of thinking about it, he heard a knock on his door, and he knew Robin was there. He went to let her in and immediately, the two of them set up the tacos on his desk and ate while Steve threw practically every piece of clothing he owned around his room, trying to find the perfect outfit. There was still an hour and a half before they had to be at the bookstore, but Steve refused to leave the apartment until he knew he looked perfect.

"Seriously, is it really that big a deal? I mean, you're gonna see him for like, five minutes. If that. You don't have to be in a tux or anything for that," Robin said as Steve continued to fret over whether he should wear his blue sweater or his green button-down as if the fate of the world depended on it.

"Yes, Robin, it is that big a deal! I don't want to look like an idiot! I'm already gonna look like a creep because of how much I love his books, and if I blank on him and say something stupid or can't speak at all, I want to at least look my best so he can't gossip about that to people, too!" Steve said, finally deciding on the sweater, but then having a whole new meltdown over which pants would go best with it.

"Okay, point taken, but also, you're selling yourself short. I'm sure he won't think you're an idiot, and he'll probably be flattered that you like his books so much. I mean, he wrote them for people to read and enjoy, right? And if you freeze up, I'll be right there with you to bring you out of it, so you really don't have anything to worry about. And go with the brown pants, the gray ones don't look right." She said, finally deciding to be helpful.

"Okay, I guess you're right. Now, which shoes should I go with? Dress shoes would probably be too formal, right?" He asked, holding his selections up to himself in the mirror.

"Yeah, just wear your converse or vans. We might still get stuck in line since this guy is so popular, so you should wear something comfortable. And wear your white dress shirt under your sweater so that the collar and cuffs stick out. It'll give you that cute academia look with your glasses and make it less weird to think of you as a bookworm." Robin said, helping him pick out the final few things and then leaving to give him privacy as he changed. Not that he needed it, they've both changed in front of each other countless times, but still. She also had a surprise for him, and she needed an excuse to count her cash without him seeing.

Finally, he was finished, and after he was finally satisfied with his hair, they put the leftover tacos in the fridge and Steve grabbed his books. They hopped in Robin's car, and got to the bookstore right at 6:00, ready to go inside with the others already on their way. The bookstore employees were apparently already checking people in, so Steve was anxious to get in there and get a good spot in line, but before he could jump out of the car (and his skin), Robin grabbed his arm.

"Wait, you're missing a few final things," she said, rummaging around in her little backpack that had the little video game character Kirby all over it.

"What?" Steve asked, his heart beating hard enough already. What could he have forgotten? Was his breath bad after the tacos? Did he have something on his face or in his teeth? Had his hair gone flat?

"One, a breath mint, just in case," she said, opening her pack of Altoids and giving him one. "Two, your inhaler, also just in case. We don't need you hyperventilating in front of your hero. Three, some lip gloss, just like back in our scoops days to really complete the look and make you just that much cuter."

She handed him a tube of her favorite lip gloss, strawberry banana flavored, the same kind she used to lend him way back when that made his lips pink and full. He slathered on a layer and handed it back to her, then popped the breath mint and slipped his inhaler into his pants pocket, fixing his hair and taking one last deep breath before turning to her and smiling nervously.

"You think I have everything?" He asked.

"Almost," she said, "You still need one more thing."

With that, she reached into her bag again and pulled out her wallet, handing him forty dollars in cash with a big smile on her face. Steve stared at the money, dumbfounded, trying to hand it back on instinct.

"No, keep it. You need it if you want to get his new book. Besides, it's your birthday present. You don't get to argue, I'm paying for it. Now let's get inside before they sell out!" Robin said, smiling widely at Steve's confused spluttering.

"Robin, you don't have to pay for me. Thank you, but you really don't-"

"Shut up your face, Dingus! I want to. Besides, like I said, it's your birthday present. Now, let's go, for real. We don't want to be the last ones in line, do we?"

Finally, Steve relented, climbing out of the car and meeting Robin at the front of it to give her the tightest hug he could muster before they walked in. They may be strictly platonic, but Steve loved her more than he ever loved anyone before, and he had to make sure she knew that.

Finally, they walked into the bookstore, where they were greeted by an overly chipper employee who already looked tired, and the event hadn't even started yet.

"Hi! Are you guys here for the book signing?" She asked, her customer service smile and attitude something the two of them were all too familiar with.

"Yeah, we are," Robin said, grinning widely at her.

"Great! Do you have your tickets already or do you need to purchase a copy of the book now?" the employee asked, covering her mouth against a yawn.

"No, we need to buy a copy," Steve said, holding tightly on his tote bag straps.

"Okay, that's perfectly fine. Just go on up to the front registers, Gigi will be there to help you out, and then just keep your receipt and you can jump in line. Have fun!" The employee smiled, then greeted the next people that came in behind them.

Steve and Robin went to the counter and did as instructed, asking the girl there for a copy of the book and paying for it before getting in line and waiting for it to start moving. As they did, Steve was practically on pins and needles, and Robin took the opportunity to examine the cover of the new book. It was called "Court of Royal Rivalries", and the pun was evident when you saw the cover. It was two boys playing basketball, one a brunet in a green and white jersey and the other a blond with not shirt on, just green shorts.

"Hey Dingus, can I see your book for a second?" Robin asked, and Steve handed it over.

"Sure, why?" He asked.

"I just want to read the back and see what it's about," Robin said, flipping it over.

"Ooh, read it out loud, I want to know, too." Steve encouraged, and Robin began to read.

"Seth Haner is the king of his high school, with everything his heart would desire. He's got money, he's got looks, he's got charm, and most of all, he's got his peers groveling at his feet for even a scrap of his attention. But after having been dumped by his girlfriend Natalie seemingly out of nowhere, he realizes that what he really wants, a love that will last, is the one thing he doesn't have. Enter Ben Holden, a new student transferring into the sleepy rural town from California. Suddenly, Ben is the hottest commodity in the school, easily dethroning Seth and taking over his court. Seth can't stand the guy, and is dreading it when he finds out that they'll be playing basketball together, the one things Seth has left after losing practically everything. Ben is a monster on the court, and Seth feels like he's losing basketball, too, when the coach tells them to work out their differences or they'll both be nixed from the team. Can Seth and Ben put aside their differences to find their similarities? Or will the blood of the two kings be spilled as they fight for the crown on the court?"

Steve stared at her as she finished reading the blurb, his jaw hanging open as she finished.

"Okay," he said, debating whether or not he needed to use his inhaler, "Either this is one hell of a coincidence or... Well, no, that has to be it! That's so fucking weird."

"I know! I mean, that's like your high school career in a nutshell. And look at the cover! I'm willing to bet my life that the brunet one is Seth and the blond is Ben, because this is too fucking uncanny. That is the creepiest shit ever. It's like a glitch in the matrix or something!" Robin agreed, handing the book back to Steve.

"Wait a second, hang on, I want to see something," he said, pulling out the other three books from his bag as the line began to move. He flipped them each open to the title pages, and Robin watched as he found what he was looking for.

"Okay, wait, look at this," he said, showing her the first one, "This book is dedicated to his sister, apparently, who 'taught him what it was like to live through the end of the world'. Then this one," he opened the second book to the same page, "This one is dedicated to his mom, who 'kept him safe until things got hard and then left him to the wolves'. And this one," he opened the third one, "is dedicated to his father, who 'should have supported him like Mr. Montgomery supported River'. So I wonder..." Steve said, then opened up the fourth book, and his heart nearly stopped when he read the dedication.

"What does it say?!" Robin insisted. They were only a few people away from meeting the guy, but Steve felt like he knew him already, and it only raised more questions that he couldn't figure out the answers to as he handed the book to Robin to read for herself.

The dedication read, "To my Pretty Boy. You know who you are. This is the way I wish our story ended up. I'm sorry."

Robin finished reading it and her eyes went wide as she looked up at Steve, the both of them utterly baffled. This was just impossible. Neither of them could believe it, and neither of them knew what to say. They were both trying to come up with some way to explain it, but before they could, another bookstore employee, a man about their age with dark hair down to his shoulders, ushered them through the backdrop screens that were set up to keep the interactions private and told them to have fun.

Steve and Robin didn't know if it was more or less confusing when they stepped up to the table and saw none other than Billy Hargrove sitting in front of them, a sharpie in his hand and his blond hair tied up into a knot on top of his head. He had a slight beard now and more tattoos now than back in high school, in fact, he had a whole sleeve on one arm and a few standalone ones on his other arm. He was wearing a short sleeve button up, but unlike back in school, all the buttons were done up, except for the top two, exposing the pendant he still wore and just a sliver of his still golden skin. His eyes were still the same sparkling blue, but they were partially hidden behind a pair of round brown glasses. He still wore his dagger earring, but he had a few more piercings up around the shell of his ear and a stud in his nose now, too. Overall, he looked fantastic, he took Steve's breath away, but he was still completely floored that he was sitting there in front of them.

"Hi, how are yo-" Billy said, finally looking up at them and seeming to choke on the words, literally. He began to cough as his face went red, and the manager of the bookstore ran to get him a bottle of water while another employee, the dark haired man, came over to make sure everything was okay.

"Yeah, yeah, everything's fine, thanks," Billy said, waving the man off, "Just wasn't expecting to see any familiar faces today."

The manager finally returned with the water, and Billy drank it, and once he caught his breath, he finally seemed to get himself collected. At least, collected enough to turn on his charm and start acting like he hadn't just choked at the sight of two blasts from his past.

"Well well well, Steve Harrington and Robin Buckley. I never expected to see you two around here. How've you been?" He asked, motioning for Steve's books and readying his sharpie.

"Um, fine, I guess?" Robin said, "Wow, sorry, it's just a trip seeing you here. I honestly thought you were dead or something."

"Aw, I wish!" Billy joked, smiling as Steve finally handed him the books and he began to scribble in them. "But no, seriously, it's a trip to see you guys, too. I never expected to see anyone from Hawkins ever again once I moved out here. I'm not surprised you thought I was dead, I tried to bury my old self. That's why I don't let anyone take pictures and why I write under a pen name. I didn't want to be found."

"Jesus, what, are you on the run?" Robin asked, Steve still speechless beside her.

"No, just living happily by myself for once and not wanting anyone to find out and ruin it for me. I guess you guys know, but the fact that you're here means you're fans, so I don't think I need to worry too much about you posting my yearbook pictures all over Twitter as long as I ask you really nicely." He grinned, and Steve nearly lost his breath all over again.

"Well, Stevie's more of a fan than I am. It's his birthday today, so I told him we could do whatever he wants tonight and since he loves your books we ended up here, but either way, my lips are sealed." Robin said, finally stepping back and pushing Steve forward to make him interact with the other guy.

"Y-yeah, no, I wouldn't tell anyone. I mean, after all you've gone through to make sure no one knows who you really are. Like, I couldn't even find you when I googled your name, and you can find anyone on google." Steve rambled, hoping that Billy couldn't hear his heart beating practically out of his chest.

"I appreciate that," Billy said, his smile big and bright on his face. "So, how've you been, Stevie? I hear you're a huge fan. What did you think of the last one?"

"I-I loved it. 'Fence' is probably my favorite of them, but I love all your books. You're a really talented writer, I never would've thought- Wait, no, that came out wrong! Jeez, I hope I didn't offend you, I just meant that you always seemed more street smart than book smart- shit, I didn't mean that either, I just meant- Oh, hell," Steve stammered, his face going as red as Robin's t-shirt, "This is coming out all wrong, I didn't mean that, I hope I didn't just piss you off, because I really do like your books and I'm just nervous cuz it's you and you're like, the last person I expected to see here signing them. I'm so sorry!"

"Hey, calm down, Stevie Boy. It's fine, I get it. No need to be sorry for anything. And anyway, I'm the one who choked when I first saw you," Billy chuckled, finally finishing writing in the last book and capping his sharpie before he handed them back to Steve to put in his bag. "I'm glad I got to see you guys again. I think I needed some familiarity. It was starting to get a little lonely being a ghost. Hopefully I'll see you again sometime soon."

And with that, he stood up, gave them each a quick hug, and then motioned for the dark haired man to bring in the next group. Steve and Robin left through another set of screens and to the door, the both of them seemingly in a daze until they got to Robin's car.

"Well, that was... certainly something," Robin said, staring straight ahead, just like Steve, both of them still trying to wrap their heads around it.

"You can say that again. I mean, Billy fucking Hargrove? I never would've guessed in a million years." Steve said, his eyes still wide.

"Neither would I." Robin agreed.

"And to make matters worse, he was so fucking hot! Like, that was not fair for the universe to make me look like such an imbecile in from of him!" Steve ranted.

"Okay, it really wasn't that bad, you were just star-struck, I'm sure he gets that all the time. And besides, he looked happy to see us, especially you," Robin replied, then she seemed to remember something, perking up and turning to look at him. "Wait, what did he write in your books? He wrote for a long time, it couldn't have just been his signature."

Steve nodded his agreement and took the books back out of his tote, starting with the first one and flipping it open to the page that Billy had written on.

"What does it say?" Robin asked, trying to lean over to see, but she couldn't read the cursive Billy wrote in.

"It says, 'Pretty Boy, since you're a fan and you already know, here's some more tidbits you might not have guessed about...(1/4)' then his signature." Steve opened the second book, and read on, "This one says, 'First off, my pseudonym is a joke. I always liked the name Ronnie, and Fitconi is an anagram of the word 'Fiction', because it's a fake name. Clever, huh? (2/4)'. Then his signature again." He flipped open the third book, his heart pounding in his ears as he read, "This one says, 'Secondly, and probably most importantly, all my books-'"

Steve cut himself off as his heart got caught in his throat, but he swallowed as he started over, "'Secondly, and probably most importantly, all my books are about you and me, and the way I wish they'd been for us. (3/4)', and his signature again."

"Holy shit!" Robin said, practically lunging at him as she begged him to read the last one.

"And finally, this one says, 'Lastly, I'd like to see you again. Maybe I can elaborate what I mean by all this, because I really want to. Enjoy this book, and even if you don't let me know your thoughts. Don't be giving this out to people, but-'"

Steve cut himself off again and slammed the book's cover shut, his face flushing even worse than before as he hid his face in his hands.

"What?! What did it say?!" Robin demanded, her hands waving around as she got more excited.

"He gave me his fucking number!" Steve practically screamed, pulling his hands away from his face as he looked at her with a weird smile. "Then he wrote happy birthday and signed his name again! Fuck, I don't know whether to scream or to go back in there and kiss him right on the fucking mouth! This is fucking Twilight Zone levels of insanity and I don't know whether to be happy or terrified!"

"Let's go with happy for right now, he wants to see you again! And all his books are about you! That's so cool! And he wants to see you again! This is definitely a win! I think you should call him tomorrow." Robin said, trying to hype Steve up.

"I don't know..." he said, picking at his sweater sleeve, "What if I make a fool of myself again? I wouldn't even know what to talk about with him. I'd just look dumb."

"I highly doubt he would think so. He practically lit up like a light bulb when he saw you!" Robin said.

"He choked on air when he saw me." Steve deadpanned.

"Yeah, but after that, he lit up! And he told you that his books, which are all romances, are about you! Seriously, you should call him. At least once you finish the book, that way if you don't talk about anything else, you can talk about that!" Robin argued, and Steve reluctantly agreed.

He was finished with the book by that time the next day. He loved it, every word, and he knew from the beginning that it was about him, but it was honestly both weird and heart melting to read his own life (albeit with a different outcome) written down on paper. He remembered the dedication in the book, how Billy said that the happy ending he wrote for Seth and Ben was how he wished things had gone for them back in high school, and finally, Steve buckled.

He called Billy.

#steve harrington #billy hargrove #harringrove #billy hargrove x steve harrington #robin buckley #ficlet #robin is the best best friend and she and steve are too cute #i need to write about their friendship more #stranger things

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thisismostdefinitelynotablog · 2 years

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Undeniable - Finn Wolfhard x Reader

Hello! I'm so sorry I've been so inactive lol. School & work & shit :,)

Anyway, I've gotten a lot of requests for a Finn x artist reader so here is my attempt at that! (Please keep requests coming, I promise I do read them!! You guys have great ideas!!)

Also the art for the picture on this one is mine! I don't really talk about many of my interests on here other than music, but I do genuinely love drawing so this one shot was sort of very self indulgent haha

Thank you for reading!! Gender neutral as always! <3

Masterlist

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The Velvet Underground was playing from the stereo in the kitchen. White Light/White Heat. You insisted on only playing their early records because you always said that they had gone downhill since Lou Reed left. Finn was obliged to agree. Finn Wolfhard. He was one of your closest friends, staying for a while in your cramped little apartment so he didn't have to commute to the recording studio to work on his next album. You lived within walking distance to the studio, so offering him your couch was a no-brainer.

Your apartment wasn't the only thing you shared. You had so much in common. Music tastes, your favorite weird hole-in-the-wall restaurants and vintage stores, an affinity for obscure literature.

And art. Though you expressed your love for art in different ways. He was a performer, an actor and a musician. You were a visual artist. You drew, and you painted. He was in the spotlight, you were in the background. And that was the way you liked it.

Or, perhaps, that was what you told yourself. As much as you loved being his friend, a shoulder to cry on, a couch to sleep on, you wished that he would notice you the way that you noticed him. You wished he would love you the way you did him. Maybe you didn't want to be in the spotlight, but you wanted to be in his.

Lou Reed's voice faded out and the next track began to play. It was a beautiful clear night, or it would have been if you had noticed anything around you. But you had tunnel vision when you were drawing. You sat at your tiny dining table, knees to your chest, sketchbook against the tops of your thighs. The only thing you did notice was Finn, your reference of choice for tonight's drawing (and a few others in the past, though he could never know that). You looked up at him every now and again as he fried some eggs on your stovetop just across from where you were. "Breakfast for dinner?" you said. "Mealtimes are social constructs." he said.

The conversation had faded into silence again, after that, and so did the room. The last song stopped playing, and the only sounds that filled the kitchen now were the soft scratching of a ballpoint pen and the sizzle of scrambled eggs.

"I think it's my turn to pick the record now."

"I believe so." You smiled, not looking up from your sketchbook.

Your drawing was done, you decided, so you closed your sketchbook and looked up as Finn turned off the stove and stepped over to the little stack of records you kept as a centerpiece on your table. You really had meant to organize them and put them on your bookshelf, but never got around to it. He flicked through the records.

"What were you drawing?"

"A portrait. I think it came out okay."

"Can I—"

"No." You laughed as he shook his head in feigned disappointment. There was a pause, a comfortable silence, as you looked at each other. One of those fleeting moments when the air seemed to sparkle with possibility. And then it passed. You set your sketchbook down on the edge of the table and picked at your cuticles.

"Oh, I love this album!" He picked up a record. You didn't see the cover, but you couldn't mistake the song that began to play for any other. "I Wanna Be Adored" by The Stone Roses. How very fitting.

That familiar baseline moved through the kitchen as the guitar riff sang through your ears. He was looking at you again, reaching out a hand and smiling. Now it was your turn to shake your head, but you put out both your hands anyway. Scrambled eggs long forgotten, Finn pulled you up and said "Dance with me!"

And how could you possibly refuse?

Neither of you could actually dance, but you didn't care. It was a bit of a tradition at this point, poorly dancing to some record in the kitchen. You moved your linked hands up and down to the beat of the song, spinning and laughing every time Finn sang along, dragging out the syllables of every word like he was singing in some elaborate Elizabethan cursive.

He used your clasped hands to pull you into his chest, moving your hands to his shoulders and his down to your waist. You swayed back and forth to "She Bangs the Drums" as though it were a slow dance. It was not a slow dance.

You made a point of telling him this, leaning into his ear. You could hear your smile in the way you whispered, and it was only when he whispered back a joyous "I could not care less" that you really realized your proximity in that moment. He smelt like your shampoo, and a hint of his cologne. It was subtle, though. A soft underlying cedar, and something that was just Finn. You felt his hands on your waist, gentle but firm as he spun you around. You felt his chin on the top of your head and his sweater on your cheek as you laid your head on his chest.

And there was another moment. A moment where the air was sparkly and the music faded into the background and all of your senses were consumed by Finn. A moment where it was undeniable how far gone you really were for him.

And then you bumped into something and you were back in your kitchen. You felt his hands shift on your waist as he pulled you back into reality. His grip was firmer, now, as he pulled you away from the edge of the table. You heard something clatter to the ground and you couldn't help but laugh at the concern in his voice when he asked if you were okay. You had barely bumped into your dining table, and here he was, desperately making sure you were entirely unharmed.

His hands remained on your waist, but he took a step back so he could see you. His eyes scanned all over your face, starting at your hairline, moving down the bridge of your nose, the curve of your cupid's bow, until they landed back on your eyes. Your eyes searched his face for a moment and then you gingerly removed your hands from his shoulders and looked down at the sleeves of your sweater, giggling and saying something along the lines of "I'm good. I think your place is better for our dancing, though."

"Maybe..." He seemed to trail off, a stark contrast from the eye contact he had been making before. His eyes focused on a spot on the floor, and you studied his facial expression for a second before following his gaze to see what he was looking at. But it was too late. His hands left your waist in favor of picking your sketchbook off of the floor.

Your sketchbook. That you had just knocked off the table. Your sketchbook, which had ever so conveniently fallen in a way that exposed the portrait of Finn you had been working on.

Shit.

You were scrambling to get your sketchbook from his hands, but he held them out of your reach, holding his portrait above his head, leaning back and staring at it with an expression on his face you couldn't quite pinpoint.

The Stone Roses were long forgotten, the music fading into the background as white noise filled you ears.

"I'm so sorry! You probably think I'm so creepy right now." You jumped up, reaching for the book.

"I just, you were there and I wanted to draw someone and you have a really nice face and can you please give that back—" You were still swatting at his hands, nervously babbling and laughing as he began to flip through the pages.

"This is beautiful." He finally spoke. His voice was soft, and he didn't need to look back at you for you to recognize the expression on his face. Admiration. Love.

Love?

"What?"

"I mean, these are actually amazing. You're really talented, Y/N."

He lowered his arms, laying the book open on the table, sitting down to properly look at his portrait. You stood, frozen. Somehow, he had just said the words you had always wished he (or anyone) would say. But that's the thing about wishes, isn't it? They aren't really meant to come true.

But this one did. After shaking your head and willing yourself back into reality, you sat in the chair next to him and folded your hands in your lap.

"Thank you." Your voice came out quieter than you wanted it to. "And I really am sorry."

"Why are you apologizing? I love being your... muse?" That garnered a small breathless laugh out of you, and he finally tore his gaze away from the page to make eye contact. He laid the side of his head on his hand. "You made me way hotter than I am, by the way."

"What? No. I think I depicted the accurate amount of hotness." You leaned over to look at the drawing, scooting your chair even closer to his.

"So you think I'm hot?"

"How very presumptuous of you."

"Uh-huh."

You reached over, closing the book and mimicking his head-on-hand posture.

And there was another moment. Your chairs were so close together that your legs were touching. You felt electricity everywhere your skin made contact. You could hear every breath he took, every exhale. You could smell him and you could watch his brown irises as they toured around your facial features, lingering on your lips for just a second too long.

And you felt heat rise to your face. And a buzzing in your fingertips. And you felt some courage rise to your chest as you filled the silence with your voice.

"I...really like you." You said.

"Yeah, I like you too." The corners of his eyes crinkled up into a soft smile.

"Like, romantically." You half-whispered, just enough for the two of you to hear. A quiet intimacy settled over the room. A quiet filled with words you had said that nobody but Finn would ever hear.

And his eyes trailed back up to meet yours. And the corners of his eyes crinkled up as a smile spread across his face. And there was that look. And that expression. Admiration. Love.

"I like you romantically too." He said. There was a confidence to his soft-spoken voice, like the word "romantically" was a parenthetical. An aside, just for you.

And his gaze flicked to your lips once more. And yours to his. And there was a silence, and then an inhale, and then Finn whispered an almost inaudible "Fuck it" as he used his free hand to cup your jaw and plant a kiss on your lips.

And he pulled away for a moment, scanning your face for any sign of rejection. And he could've looked at you forever and not found it, because there wasn't. There was only love in your eyes. That and the overwhelming desire to kiss him again. So you did.

And his lips were chapped because you had forgotten to chastise him about using the chapstick you had bought him earlier that week. It was a nice one from Burt's Bees, you said, and so he made a point of texting you a photo of himself using it every time he did. And he thought it was annoying, and funny, but for you it was all the reason to love him more. And his hand on your jaw was rough and callused from playing his guitar for hours a day, giving you "free concerts" and playing your favorite Velvet Underground songs whenever you asked. Or didn't ask. And only the ones from their early records because you always said that they had gone downhill since Lou Reed left.

Your hands fiddled with the curls on the back of his neck and you kissed him a little harder. His other hand cupped the back of your head, tilting it just so. You felt euphoric. Like you were floating. And you wished you could have seen yourself right now and painted this moment. Relived it a million times. The air was sparkly and covered in a wash of some rose gold watercolor.

When you finally had to pull back and take a breath, you laughed and rested your head on his shoulder, still messing with the hair on the back of his neck. His hands glided to the back of your head and he took a breath as though he was about to speak. And then he cut that breath short and let out a sharp whisper for only you to hear. And when you told people the story of your first kiss, you always pretended like it was something romantic. Another "I love you," perhaps. But no, this was Finn.

No, he had whispered "Oh shit, my eggs."

And you wouldn't have had it any other way.

#finn wolfhard imagine #finn wolfhard #finn wolfhard x reader #finn wolfhard x y/n #fluff #oneshot #x reader #one shot #reader insert #stranger things x reader #stranger things #stranger things cast #st cast

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akihabaradivision · 4 months

Text

ARB Birthday Special: Keiko Yumi

~~ December 22nd ~~

"The first draft is just you telling yourself the story."

*Sighs* "Finally done! Hopefully once I send these in, my publisher will get off my back for the next month or so. ...And in record time too! Once I drop these off I can head to work and see what assignments Nemu-san has for me. ...Hmm? A message from... Nemu-san? 'Work is canceled. Enjoy your birthday.' My... birthday?!"

"How foolish can I get? I've been so busy with work I neglected to notice today was the day of my birth! I messaged Nemu-san back thanking her, though canceling work was unnecessary. ...She didn't message me back, but I assume it was because she was busy with work of her own. ...But still, what am I going to do with this free time I have?"

Voice Lines:

"I received a lot of 'happy birthdays' and such from the people of Akihabara, which is nice. ...You know, it's funny. Back when I was younger, nobody really paid me any attention. I was just another face in the crowd, so to speak. And if they did pay me attention, it was usually always negative. I can't count the number of times I got bullied back in high school. I definitely don't miss those days."

"...I don't believe it. Otome-sama, herself, sent me a 'happy birthday'! I don't believe it! I always figured that I wasn't worthy enough to be in the Prime Minister's shadow. That I was just one of the many people working under her. I mean, not that I don't mind working for Chuohku, but... too be recognized by the Prime Minister, herself. This is an honor I don't take for granted!"

"What the...? Where did all these gifts come from?! Are these all for me? Most of them are from my friends at school. ...Ha. Like I mentioned earlier, when I was younger I was used to being ignored or bullied. But now, I'm adored. I don't know if its because of my manga or just because I'm in the D.R.B. ...One thing is for sure, I definitely don't miss high school. Uni beats that place any day."

"Sheesh, it's going to take a while to get through all of these gifts. Here's a fancy one! It says it's from... my mom. Tch, great. What did that hag have the audacity to send me for my birthday? ...Some cash for my birthday? How original. And what's this now? ...A photo of my high school graduation? ...Tch, I won't ask how she managed to take a photo of me like this. Probably asked grandma for it. The nerve of her! She thinks me so soft sending me this will make me forgive her?! To hell with that, and her!" *Throws the present in the garbage, not giving it a second thought*

"Criss? What are you doing here? I mean, not that I'm not glad you're here, but I thought you mentioned in your last letter you were stranded on Hokkaido exploring a haunted hospital or something. ...You hitched a ride with someone? How many times do I have to tell you that's not safe? There are a lot of dangerous people out there, Criss. Any one of them could do something to you if you're not careful." *Sighs* "Well, I suppose the important thing is you're back home and safe. But please be more mindful next time."

"...You got me a birthday gift? Not that's it not unappreciated, but how? I thought you were out of money? ...Ah, that explains it, I guess. So, what is it? ...A hoodie? Oh, and it features a manga artist on it. Cute. It looks really nice. Plus, you got it in pink, my favorite color. Thanks Criss. This was really sweet."

"Nikki? You're here? Wow, someone alert the papers! The recluse actually left her room, for my birthday, no less! I'll definitely have to mark this date down on calendar! ...Haha! Sorry, I couldn't help myself. But really, I'm glad to see you've gotten out of your room, at least, once this week."

"Anyway, are you here to wish me a 'happy birthday' too or... A gift? From you? ...Wow, I'm definitely going to have mark this day down. ...A drawing tablet? ...Wait, this is a Wicom Cintiq Pro, isn't it? Do you know how expensive these things are, Nikki?!" *Sighs* "Fine, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. But I really find it disgusting that you earn more than I do when you work far less. ...Yeah, whatever."

Criss Lines:

"Hey Keiko! Happy birthday! ...I was stranded, but thankfully, I managed to hitch a ride with some nice gentlemen who gave me a lift back to Tokyo! Oh, come on, Keiko! They were really nice gentlemen! Trust me, I have an inkling if I feel someone is dangerous or not. ...Alright, I'll be more mindful, but I'm really okay, as you can see."

"Anyway, here's your birthday gift! ...Oh, my check came in from my YouTube videos! It wasn't as much as usual, but it was enough to get you a gift. Ta-da! It's a mangaka hoodie! I saw it on the way here, and thought it would really suit you! ...Thanks Keiko! Glad you like it. Promise me you'll wear it, okay?"

Nikki Lines:

"Hey Keiko. ...Are you quite finished? ...You know, if you're going to act like this, then I'll just leave. I don't have to stand here and be ridiculed for my life choices. ...Whatever. Anyway, here's your birthday gift. ...Yes, it's a drawing tablet, one of the most expensive ones on the market, FYI. The guy I ordered it from said this would help with artists who draw digitally. ...Look, if you don't want it, I can always return it and get my money back. ...What can I say? Video games are my bread and butter and they earn me money."

#hypmic #hypmic oc #hypnosis mic #hypnosis mic oc #hypnosis microphone #keiko yumi #criss hiromi #nikki yoshie #otaku corps #akihabara division #happy birthday keiko 2023 #happy birthday #event #alternative rap battle #hypmic arb

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rays-of-fire-and-ice · 1 year

Text

As Months Go By, As Seasons Change - Part II

Rating: K+/Teen

Setting: through the 17 months between the end of the Fake Karakura Town arc and the beginning of the Lost Agent arc.

Synopsis: Momo resumes her duties as lieutenant, Shinji returns to a role he was forced out of long ago. Both of them are not who they used to be, and neither is the division they must work together to rebuild.

AN: I…I can’t believe it’s taken me this long. To @whipplefilter and anyone who has been waiting on this, I am so sorry!! For those not aware, this is part 2 of my fanfic As Months Go By, As Seasons Change, which you can read here. Some notes before we begin:

Although I recommend reading part 1 to know what’s happening here, in short: Hinamori and Shinji begin to work together to lead the Fifth Division after Aizen’s defeat. Hinamori is trying to come to terms with not knowing who Aizen really was and with working for a new captain, while Shinji is working on building trust in the division and feels responsible for what happened to the division after Aizen took over and betrayed them all. Both are starting to get along, but they’ve still got a ways to go.

A denreishinki is the phone device Shinigami use, and it works both in the Soul Society and when calling from the World of the Living.

There’s a few hints of hitsuhina here, but please feel free to read the interactions as platonic if you want. Also, I don’t go into detail here about how Hitsugaya and Hinamori reconcile. If you’re interested in how I can it’d happen, check out this headcanon post and scroll down to the section where I discuss it. I changed a few details for the sake of this fic, but otherwise it’s basically the same.

The music record Hinamori likes is by Ryo Fukui can be listened to here. The track I imagine she’s listening to in the scene is ‘It Could Happen to You’.

The first recruitment brochure Shinji sees is this one (sorry for the picture quality). The responses on the brochure can be found in the BLEACH Color + databook.

Neirkiri is a type of wagashi, a Japanese sweet/confectionary. I was inspired by the winter collection of this wagashi set here. They're apparently very hard to decorate and even make in some cases, but with Hinamori being as good at baking as she is, I think she'd like the challenge of it and try her hand at making some.

If you want some background music while reading, then I recommend the usuals (basically any somber or calming BLEACH ost track, all of which you can now find on either Spotify or here at Shiro Sagisu's offical youtube...for those who don't know which songs I usually refer to: Recollection I-III, Nothing Can be Explained, World #05, going home, compassion, etc) but also Stronger (Acoustic version) by Through Fire and the entire Losing Today EP by The Living Sleep.

There were quite a few deleted scenes from this fic. However, one did make it as a fic of it's own: For All That Was Lost. It serves as an epilogue for this fic, so check it out if have time.

For anyone who was waiting for this part, thank you so much for your patience! Thank you also for all the kind comments and encouragement from the first part, it really means a lot and motivated me to get this last part done. I hope you enjoy this part as much as the first! :D

____________________________________

The quiet of the office is interrupted by the ringing of Shinji’s denreishinki.

Hinamori bites the inside of her cheek, trying to focus on writing up a report for the latest mission in the Rukongai. It’s the second time it’s rung since her captain went to go get lunch for the both of them – his treat, he’d insisted, but she already made a mental note to shout for him next time. The tune is not the standard beeping most devices have. Somehow, Shinji had gotten a tone she can only describe as ‘jazzy’.

She’s half tempted to answer it, if only to stop the ringing and let the caller know Shinji will be back soon.

What she finds strange though is that Shinji may have warned her a situation like this might happen. Three months ago, when during their first week working together, he gave her permission to answer it if it rang three times and he wasn’t there to answer it. He told her chances are the calls would be from his Visored friends in the World of the Living.

Had he known something like this would happen? How often did he speak with these people?

Eventually the ringing stops, and Hinamori relaxes. However, it’s not even a minute later when it starts up again. Whoever is calling must urgently need her captain, but it feels rude to answer another’s denreishinki, even if she was given permission to do so.

Her hesitation keeps her rooted to the spot for five rings, but it becomes too much. She forces herself to stand and rush over to her captain’s desk. Before she can think twice, she answers the device. “Hello, this is Hi-”

“Who is this?!” a young woman’s voice shouts from the other end. Hinamori holds the denreishinkai from her ear as the woman continues to yell, “Why do you have Baldy’s phone?!”

Surely this can’t be one of his friends. “I, uh…this is Lieutenant Hinamori?”

There’s a few seconds of silence. “Has he got others answering his calls now cuz he’s too much of a coward to face me?!”

“Oh, no, he’s just gone to get lunch. I can pass on a message? W-Who am I speaking to?”

“I ain’t saying until I know Shinji is there. It’s an emergency and we need answers!”

“Hiyori, calm down. Who’re you talking to?” says a man in the background.

“Some lieutenant!” the woman says to the other. “I think she’s Shinji’s.” Then, back to Hinamori. “So he’s got a girl as his lieutenant, huh? Has he told you’re his ‘first love’ yet?”

Hinamori bristles. “H-His what?”

“Huh, guess he hasn’t then. If you really are his lieutenant, I don’t know how you put up with him. When you see him next, kick him in the back of the knees for me, will you? And tell him to – oi, give that back! Hey, Love!”

There’s a scuffle, but after a moment, the man’s voice comes over the phone. However, Hinamori can still hear Hiyori yelling and carrying on in the background. “Sorry about her,” the man says. “Who am I talking with?”

Hinamori swallows with a nervous smile. “This is Lieutenant Hinamori. Who am I speaking with?”

“Aikawa Love. We’re calling because we need to ask Hirako something, but doesn’t sound like he’s there.”

“Uh, no, I’m afraid not. I can let him know you called though.”

“Yeah, if you co – Oi, Yamada, Hachi! You were supposed to hold her back! Hiyori, stop clawing at my arm!”

Aikawa and Hiroyri argue on the other end, clearly fighting over the denreishikai. Hinamori attempts to say something but falters. To think one of them is Hiyori, the same person Shinji was livid had been cut down in the fight several months ago. These really must be his friends, but they seem so…dysfunctional. She feels bad for thinking that, but the arguing hasn’t stopped on the other end.

Just as she considers hanging up, Shinji slides the door open. “Sir…”

“What’s got you looking so freaked out?” Then he notices the denreishikai. “Who’s calling?”

“Aikawa-san and Hiyori-san.”

Shinji’s eyes widen at the mention of the last name. Without warning he drops the two bento boxes on to her desk and snatches the phone off of her.

“The heck did you say to her, Hiyori?!” he exclaims into the phone.

“Ha, I knew it!” she hears Hiyori yell back. “You were using your lieutenant to answer the phone!”

“I was not! I was getting lunch!” He pulls the device away from his ear and rushedly whispers to Hinamori, “Start eating without me, this’ll take a while.”

He gives a snark retort to Hiyori as he storms out of the office and into the courtyard. Without looking away, Hinamori takes one of the bento boxes, opens the lid, and starts eating. From her desk, she can make out pieces of their conversation – if she could call the gnashing of teeth, sarcastic remarks, and exasperated sighs a conversation. It sounds like Shinji hadn’t paid rent on the warehouse they were staying in before he left, but he insists he did and that they needed to talk to the owners. He insists not leaving that warehouse because it’s the best one they’ve ever had and that the owners never once came to see what they were actually using it for.

It's so strange to see him loud and argumentative, moving so fast and making wild gestures with his free hand. He’s usually so nonchalant, at most grinning or laughing when something amused him. These people though, his friends, they got a different side out of him.

Hinamori didn’t know what to make of the Visoreds when she’d been told about them by Nanao. The fact there existed beings out there with both Hollow and Shinigami abilities bewildered her, almost made her consider just how blurred the line can become from thinking on the implications of having such powers. She hasn’t asked her captain about the powers he isn’t allowed to use anymore and she doesn’t plan to, but she still can’t help but wonder what it’s like for him, Rose and Kensei, and for the others on the other end of the phone.

As the minutes tick by, Shinji mellows little by little. The frown disappears and his lips are twitching, wanting to smile despite the exasperated tone his voice holds. The conversation moves on to other things she doesn’t understand – Shounen Jump, cafes, magazines, humans. As he speaks he slowly walks around the garden and fans himself under the summer sun. Hinamori thinks to gesture for him to come under the shade, but she doesn’t want to interrupt. Eventually, he walks back and sits on the veranda steps, back turned to her.

Why did he come back?

It’s not the first time Hinamori has wondered, but this is different. Until now she’d thought about the question in relation to why he’d come back after being away from the job for so long, or why he’d come back to place that’d once banished him. Now, seeing him like this with the people he called friends, and hearing how he spoke about the World of living, obviously missing some aspects of it, she wonders what drew him back to being so far away from it.

Regardless, Hinamori gets the feeling this is the first of many times she will witness her captain be like this with these friends of his.

______________________

“Is that…a fan?”

Shinji halts. Half bent over, he peers over his shoulder at his puzzled lieutenant. “Yeah, figured it was getting too hot in here. I didn’t think you’d know what this is. Was hoping to give you a demonstration and ‘wow’ you.”

Hinamori shakes her head, trying to hold back a smile. “I already knew because Hisagi-san brought one back from the World of the Living a decade ago. This won’t cool down the whole room though.”

As if to emphasis her point, a gust of hot wind blows in from behind her. Autumn was only a few weeks away, but it seems summer wasn’t going to go without being the hottest Shinji had ever experience.

“Well, unless you can get someone with an ice-type zanpakuto in here, this’ll have to do,” Shinji says, only half meaning to sound affronted.

Something shifts in Hinamori’s expression, her eyes blinking in surprise. Did she think she’d actually insulted him?

Shinji presses the first button to make the fan move from side to side and the second one for the highest setting. He almost sighs in relief when the cold air smacks him in the face.

“As is, there will only be fifteen of us in here,” he says more neutral. “So, it should be fine, right?”

“Actually, Higuchi-san told me this morning he won’t be coming,” she says while sliding the door closed. “He got advice from Fourth Division to not do any advanced zanjutsu or kido training until they’re sure his sprained wrist is completely healed. Also, Isawa-san isn’t feeling well, he has a cold.”

“At this time of year?”

Hinamori shrugs as she hands him the training agenda. “I’ve had a few in summer myself.”

“Explains why I didn’t see him at the mess hall this morning. I’ll visit him later.” Shinji looks over the document. “We got everything ready?”

Hinamori gestures to the far end of the room, where the practice swords lay on the racks. “We only need those if I’m not mistaken.”

“Yeah. I guess we should do a run through before the others arrive.”

When Shinji hears the low inhale and exhale from her, he knows Hinamori is about to say something a lot of weight behind it.

“Before we do, sir, I’d like to make a request.”

He looks up, and resists the urge to raise a brow at her apprehensive expression. “What is it?”

“If possible, I’d like to request half a day’s leave this Friday.” Before he can speak, she quickly adds, “I promise I’ll complete all of my work by Friday morning and I won’t leave anything for you or Isawa-san to finish. However, it’s okay too if you’d prefer I don’t go on leave, I understand.”

Shinji snorts in bewilderment. “Well, this isn’t like you. You finally learning the importance of taking a break?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. You can go on leave, Isawa and I will handle things.”

She lets out a breath, her shoulders falling in relief as she bows her head. “Thank you, sir.”

“You could take more time if you wanted. You’ve been nonstop since you started again.”

“Oh, no! I couldn’t, and there’s no need as it is! I just need the half of day.”

“To do what? Going to visit your friends in the Junrinan? World of the Living?”

“No, none of those…” She stares down at her shadow, cast along the floorboards to her left. “I’ll be speaking with Captain Hitsugaya.”

His smile drops. He’d been wondering when this would happen.

He hadn’t missed the way she looked at Hitsugaya a few weeks ago at the joint captains and lieutenants meeting. Shinji had glanced back at her at one point, only to find her head turned in the direction of the Tenth Division captain. Her sadness and apprehension were apparent, as obvious as the melancholy she experienced whenever she says Aizen’s name. He’d looked away, but in his peripheral, he knew Hitsugaya was glancing at her too.

The way she walked out of that meeting, as if the wind had been knocked out of her, it almost made him order her to go talk to Hitsugaya. He didn’t, instead asking her what was wrong and receiving a vague answer. He hadn’t pressed further, seeing that this was probably territory he wasn’t equipped to deal with. There was something personal about it, something he felt only the her and Hitsugaya would know how to navigate through.

He lowers the training agenda documents to his side and asks, “I take you’ll be meeting up with him then?”

“We agreed to meet at Tenth Division’s main barracks. It shouldn’t take long.”

He almost clicks his tongue, but instead shakes his head. “Take the whole day off.”

Hinamori's mouth falls open. “There’s really no need-”

“For something like that, you’ll need the whole day. Isawa and I have things covered.” When she’s about to argue back, he leans forward and uses the training agenda to point at her. “Don’t make me order you.”

That stops her in her tracks. She blinks once, and her surprise dissipates to an incredulous smile and snort. “You’d order me to take more leave, sir?”

“If I have to, yes.”

“But that’s…that’s so silly.”

“It ain’t if my officers aren’t taking the leave they need. For something like, you’ll need it. Trust me.”

Her small mirth fades, as if remembering why exactly she was taking leave in the first place. The fan arcs back, blowing cold air over them, but neither moves or says anything.

Again, he feels he’s treading into something he knows very little about, but he decides to put the final nail in the coffin. “How long has it been since you two last talked? A while I bet. You’ll have a lot to catch up on then, yeah? Not just about what happened back then, but other stuff. Stuff you always talk about when you see each other.”

For a brief moment he thinks back on his few phone conversations with Visoreds in the World of the Living. He’s certain he’ll get used to communicating with them like that, but a part of him misses not seeing them in person.

She sighs through her nose. “I suppose. Even before the fight against Captain Aizen, it’s been so long since I last spoke with Hitsuga – I mean, Captain Hitsugaya.”

“Well, if that doesn’t tell you you need the whole day off, I don’t know what will.” He continues, with a lighter lit, “Clearly you’ve been working too much that all though think about is getting back to work.”

Her lips tilts in a tiny smile, and she bows her head. “Then, thank you, Captain.”

____________________

After she shuts the door behind herself, Hinamori lets out the breath she’s been holding in.

Her heart flutters, her eyes sting, and the jitters are starting to calm down, but none of it dampens her relieved smile.

It was a moment in the making, something she simply couldn’t avoid for the rest of her life even if she wanted to. Regardless, she’d been so afraid of how she would approach it all. Hyourinmaru makes her apprehensive still, and to feel that way about a part of her childhood friend is enough to break her heart a little. His zanpakuto is more than just a weapon to him, but that is all she can see it as for the time being.

She’d never seen such expressions on Hitsugaya, his face transforming from guilt to sorrow to unfiltered relief. She’d told herself she wouldn’t cry, but it happened not even five minutes within meeting him.

It had started with apologies and tears, then long pauses and uncertainty. It wasn’t until she brought up her recent visit to the Junrinan that things started to calm, and it was almost like falling back into their old rhythms. Of course, it wasn’t exactly like before, and perhaps it never will be again. That thought doesn’t sadden her, for she already had hope from reconnecting with him today.

What had partly inspired her to finally take the plunge, she realises, was Shinji’s conversations with his friends. Seeing him speak freely with those he hadn’t seen in months, people he had lived and struggled with for decades, it made her think of her own friendships. It made her remember what it used to be like for her and Hitsugaya.

The memories of that day on the battlefield won’t leave her, but their power over her has diminished.

It’s been a long day, and despite her mirth, exhaustion weighs heavily behind her eyes and limbs. She considers whether she should have a nap or get dinner. As she does, her curtains flutter in the gentle breeze. She’d been so anxious this morning she’d forgotten to shut her window.

She closes it, and as she turns back to her room, her gaze lands on her bookshelf.

The warmth in her is cools when she spots a book Aizen gifted her decades ago. It occupies its own space at the top. She’d put it there to get it far out of sight as possible, but to also not forget it was there entirely, for the day she’ll get rid of it.

She prays that one day she’ll have the strength to burn it to ashes.

____________________________________

“Sir?”

“Hm?”

“May I ask you a question?”

Hinamori watches her captain step down the ladder with a tome. He hands it to her before going back up.

“You don’t have to say that before you ask me something,” he says, nonchalant.

She’s aware, but it still feels wrong to just ask personal questions without a lead up. She takes the second tome he passes down to her and shuffles to the side, allowing him to move the ladder further down the bookcase.

“When will you be going to the World of the Living next?” she asks.

Shinji freezes. He's deciding whether to take her question seriously or making a joke out of it. It doesn’t take him long to choose.

“Trying to get rid me already?!” he chuckles.

“Of course not, sir!”

“Oh suuuuure. Bet Matsumoto-san has a party planned and you volunteered to use the barracks’ hall, didn’t ya? I know her birthday's coming up, she strikes me as someone who holds big drinking parties to celebrate.”

Why does he have to escalate things like that? Her indignation must show because his chuckling turns to laughter.

He waves a placating hand. “All right, all right, in all seriousness. I don’t plan to go for a while. Did you want me to get you something while I was there? I can just ask Urahara to convert something and send it over if you want.”

Huffing out a breath, Momo continues, “I only asked because it occurred to me that you, um…haven’t seen your friends in a while.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, a slight tightness coming around her heart. “We used to encourage our subordinates to see their friends outside the division when possible. Captain Aizen said it was good to socialise outside of the groups we know.” Then, quieter. “In hindsight, maybe that was… something else he, um….”

With his back to her, she can’t gauge her captain's reaction. His fingers continue to slid along the spines of books and tomes, only stopping when finds one they’ll need.

“It might’ve been a tactic, but regardless, it’s good advice.”

She’s too bewildered to respond, and only snaps out of her stupor when Shinji waves a book in front of her face. She wanted to say the same, but feared doing so would somehow align her with Aizen.

As he climbs down, Shinji says with a smile, “It went that well with Hitsugaya, huh?”

At times like this he surprises her with his perceptiveness, so much so she forgets to correct him on her childhood friend’s title. “What makes you say that?”

He shrugs. “You saw him yesterday, right? So, judging from that question and that you’re not moping about, I’m guessing it went well. You don’t have to talk about it, though. It’s your business.”

She smiles softly with a nod. “It did go well. I’m glad I spoke with him.” She casts her eyes back to Shinji. “I suppose it’s made me reflect on connecting with those you haven’t seen in a long time, especially when you’ve known them for so long.”

Taking the hint, Shinji’s face falls into one of contemplation. Hinamori only has under a minute to take it in, because then he resumes his usual grin. “I get your point. Once we wrap things up for the new wave of recruitment, I’ll think about visiting the World of the Living.”

“…I’m glad, then.”

He steps down and then off the ladder. “Actually, speaking of, the first lot of graduates for the year are due soon, right?”

“Yes, in three months I think.”

“Right, we should get on to promotion. Lets work on it next week, yeah?”

___________________________________________

Shinji frowns at the clock on his desk. Taking her sweet time getting here.

He wouldn’t mind normally, but this is Hinamori; in the six months he’s worked with her, she has never been late. At worst, maybe she’s a few minutes behind, usually rushing in and apologising for ‘being late’. Now it’d been almost thirty minutes since they were meant to start work on the recruitment brochure.

Another minute passes before he’s had enough. He walks briskly out of the office and to the archive storage room. He’d asked her last week while arranging this task to get relevant documents and older brochures so he could get a better idea of how they were done these days.

She isn’t in the archives, but his eighth seat, Katsuro Hoshino, is.

“Yo, you seen Hinamori around?” Shinji asks him.

“No, sir,” Hoshino says, closing the tome he holds. “I just came in, but I do sense traces of her reiatsu here.”

“She probably left a few minutes before you came then.” He goes to leave, but the tome his subordinate holds catches his attention. “What’re looking at that old thing for?”

“Oh, ever since the Lieutenant did that demonstration a few months ago, I’ve been looking to improve my bakudo spells.”

Coming from you, this isn’t a surprise at all. Hoshino is always looking to improve himself, always asking for feedback on his performance in training or after a mission. If he ever messed up, he insists on correcting his mistake. If he ever got praised for something, he’d ask how he could make it better Sometimes it’s too intense for Shinji’s liking; it reminds him of the officers from Second or First Division, always perfectionists with ambitious goals or too strict of a code.

But then, he did come from one of the lower districts, and the captain found one of the main types of officers to come from there were like Hoshino: ambitious, always looking to reach higher, always looking to provide for anyone they had back in the Rukongai, and generally sympathetic to those who came from the lower districts. He needs people like Hoshino, to understand those from the districts he was never in.

“What about the manual in our library?” Shinji asks.

“All copies are on loan, sir.” Hoshino hoists up the tome with a smirk. “It may look old and doesn’t include certain spells or have the depth of the more current edition, but it’s still helpful. We kept it around for a reason, right?”

“…Sounds like she inspired some of you.” And judging from the way they spoke of her before, it’s not the first time that’s happened. Shinji turns to go. “I’ve gotta find her. I’ll see you around.”

Out of the archives room, he puts out his senses for her. It takes a moment, but he detects her reiatsu coming from the back of the division, near the training grounds. The heck is she doing there? But what’s more concerning, what makes him start jogging in her direction, is the way her reiatsu flickers, like a flame caught in a gust of wind.

It’s not a minute later when he finds her leaning on the veranda railing, her back turned to him and her head bowed. She hasn’t noticed him, doesn’t even flinch when an orange autumn leaf flutters down from the maple tree and brushes past her arm. It lands at Shinji’s feet, joining the others on the floorboards.

It takes a lot to make Shinji concerned or worried, but something about the way she holds herself, the way her reiatsu flickers, and the fact she was here instead of closer to the office has him on edge. Rather than say anything, he watches her carefully as he steps outside and shuts the door behind himself, loud enough for her to hear.

Hinamori startles and twistsaround, eyes wide and face pale. “Oh, Captain…”

He frowns at the papers in her hands and slowly approaches. “What’re you doing here?”

“I was…” She bows her head in shame. “I got distracted.”

“I can see that. What by?” he asks, trying to keep his voice neutral.

She holds out the papers to him without raising her head. He waits several seconds for an explanation that never comes before he takes the documents. At seeing a familiar face on one of the old brochures, his frown deepens. He shuffles through them, and almost all of them have Aizen on their covers, and her name is credited at the bottom of each as the artist. If it weren’t for the subject matter, he’d compliment her again on her drawing skills. “Ah, I get it now.”

In his peripheral, she lifts her head, eyes still wide. “I’m so sorry! I got caught up in….” She straightens, trying to put on a brave face. “Come on, let’s get back to the office, you can look at those and get started on the brochures.”

He tucks the documents into his sleeve and steps in her way and holds hands up. “Hey, take it easy. We gotta get back to work, sure, but nothing wrong with taking a breather. Besides, I just finished that paper stack you left me and I could use a break.” For emphasis, he rubs the back of his neck. “Feeling a little tense, you know?”

The urgency leaves her, but in its place is guilt. He withholds a sigh, and instead jerks his chin at the barracks over his shoulder. “Come on, let’s go grab a tea.”

A few minutes later they’re in the kitchens, with Shinji pouring boiled water into a teapot. Normally Hinamori makes this – she brews some of the best teas Shinji has ever tasted, had the whole thing down like an art form as far she he’s concerned. However, at her slackened shoulders and tired expression, he’d gone to the cabinet and pulled out the canister of tea leaves without a second thought.

She watches him now from the island counter, sitting on one of the stools they’d purchased a few weeks ago. Aside from the teapot, it’s one of the few ‘modern’ looking things in the division. It’d taken some convincing, but he brought her around on the idea of some new furniture. She’d even mentioned thinking about getting a couch for the office just two days ago while glancing through one of his magazines.

“Wanna go back to the office or somewhere else?” he asks while tossing the leaves into the infuser.

She fiddles with her hands for a beat. “Can we stay here?”

Well, most of the division is out, I guess. Just for assurance, he slides the kitchen door shut. “Sure.”

When the tea is brewed, he brings the teapot over and pours it into two cups. As he comes to sit on the stool next to her, he hands her one. She smiles at him while wrapping her fingers around the clay sides. “Thank you, Captain.”

She blows over the rim, dispelling the steam, and takes a tentative sip. At her small nod, he knows the tea good enough.

“So, wanna tell me what happened out there?” he broaches.

Whatever small comfort the tea had given her flows out. She stares down into her cup, the ends of the steam brushing over her face and the shadows under her eyes growing darker without the light on them.

Shinji considers himself a patient man – with a few blonde-haired, red tracksuit-wearing exceptions – and knows despite his own concerns, there are just times he shouldn’t step into something someone isn’t ready to share yet. “Look, if you don’t wanna talk about it, it’s fine. Just don’t let it stew in you, yeah? Keeping that stuff in can mess you up, so whether it’s me or someone else, don’t let it build up.”

“I’m sorry, Captain.”

“Don’t apologise.”

She hesitates. “It’s not my place to question your decisions, but…”

“Isn’t it, though? If a lieutenant can’t question their captain’s decision and choices, what kind of division is that? There’s a reason why they put two of us in charge, and it ain’t just because if one of us gets sick the other has to take over.”

The corners of her lips twitch up into a ghost of a smile for too brief of a moment. “Well, then, if I may ask…why did you reappointment me as lieutenant?”

He thought she’d ask sooner, but now that she has, he changes his approach at answering her question. “Well, why did you decide to come back in the first place? What made you decide to become a Shinigami?” he asks instead.

She gives him a puzzled frown, but when he says nothing else, she answers, “I couldn't leave my position behind. I feel responsible for everyone in our division. I wanted to make sure they were all right, and to try and help them through everything that happened.

"As for your second questions...I came here from the World of the Living, and while I no longer remember anything from my time there, I do remember a Shinigami sending me here. I don’t remember his face or voice, but he was kind. He assured me when I was scared that I would be okay, that I’d be going to somewhere safe and live another life.

“I wanted to help other Souls the same way, but also…” She clenches and unclenches her hold on the cup. “I think I always knew there was something in me. I didn’t know it was spirit potential at the time, but I could feel something burning in my veins. I needed to find a way to channel it, and I had a feeling the Academy could help me with it.”

It was just as Shinji had suspected; he almost felt like patting himself on the back for guessing it correctly. “And there you have your answer.”

She blinks at him. “I don’t see how.”

He smiles sincerely. “Truth is, it doesn’t matter too much why I kept you on. What matters is you didn’t forget why you wanted to stay on as a Lieutenant or became a Shinigami in the first place, and the reasons you gave are enough on their own.”

“That sounds…awfully sentimental for you, sir.”

“That’s because it is, but it’s the right answer. My previous captain taught me that when I asked him why he promoted me to third seat.” He gives his usual grin. “Needless to say, I wasn’t an idiot and didn’t question him again when he promoted me to lieutenant a few years later.”

At her deepening frown, he wonders if he went about this the right way. He sighs through his nose. “You asked me because you’re doubtful about your position. Am I wrong?”

He takes a sip of tea, and she eyes the sleeve where he’d stashed the brochures. She purses her lips and takes in a breath, making her shoulders rise.

“I thought if I just looked at him, maybe I could move on. It didn’t work, all it did was bring back memories I don’t want to remember.” It came out of her in a rushed confession and Shinji froze midway through it, leaving his cup a few inches from the counter.

Something in her crumbles, but she doesn’t hunch over into herself or turn away from him. She swallows before continuing. “When you asked me to go get the brochures, I thought I could handle it. I don’t know why, but I never realised how often I drew Captain Aizen on the covers. When I saw his face over and over again, it made me not want to be here.” She shakes her head. “I almost ran away, but I stopped myself. I can’t run from this, but even so…I’m still not strong enough to be a lieutenant or…” She trails off, at a loss for words, then takes a long sip of her tea.

It’s a risk, but Shinji puts his cup down and brings out the brochures, laying the pile on the counter but not spreading them out. The one on top is of a smiling Aizen, wearing those blocker glasses and with a branch of Sakura behind him.

“You chose to not run after seeing these, and you should give yourself credit for that. You could’ve chucked them, or burned them.”

"B-But they’re official documents, I couldn’t.”

Shinji snorts. “A shame, but I’m thinking Central Forty Fix wouldn’t take you to task if they found out who’s face is on these.” He let’s out a bitter sigh. “I would’ve, if nothing else to get rid of the blocker glasses. They always pissed me off, especially when I found out he never needed them in the first place--"

“How do you do it?” The question practically burst out of her, and it catches Shinji off guard. He blinks at her almost horrified expression; he's not sure he’s ever seen her so stricken.

“How do I do what?” he eventually asks.

“You…You talk about him and say his name without…”

“Time.”

“Huh?”

He slides the top brochure, revealing the second one beneath. Aizen stands in profile on a veranda, head tilted back and smiling at something in the sky; behind him, in Hinamori’s neat writing, it says ‘Come join Fifth Division’. The way she drew him made that smile look so genuine, but he can imagine it was the same one he’d given everyone over a hundred years ago; it never quite reached his eyes, and perhaps she’d also seen it but drew it as though it did.

Shinji finds himself remembering moments with Aizen he’d pushed away for years. The good and the bad. He imagined his lieutenant is experiencing the same as she taps a finger on the corner of a brochure from four years ago.

“It takes time,” Shinji elaborates, listing his head to one side. “I had a hundred years to think about what happened. I don’t hate him any less, but it gets easier with time to think about what happened and to talk about him.” He narrows his eyes. “You know what he did back then, right? To me and the others?”

She nods, somewhat apologetically. “Kira-kun and Ise-san told me.”

“Right. There’s one thing they wouldn’t have told you though. I knew from the start something wasn’t right about him. I could never put my finger on it, but I just knew there was something creepy about him. I thought keeping an eye on him would stop him from doing something. When he revealed himself to be behind the attack, he showed I’d been the fool this entire time. I played right into the bastard’s hands, had been this whole time.”

“H-How so?”

He gulps down his tea, his mouth suddenly drier. Even after all these years, for all his talk of ‘it takes time’, he’s nervous to bring up that night with her. What’s he so anxious about? “I thought I chose him, but as it turns out, he chose me. I was the perfect candidate to keep up his façade, because he knew my suspicion would only blind me to the true him.”

Tears rim in Hinamori's eyes. It hits close to home, and he can understand why. Aizen had used his suspicion against him, and he’d used her admiration against her. Like with Shinji, he’d chosen her, but made her think her admiration led her to him. He took whatever emotion he strongly resonated within others and used to it to hide his intentions and true self from them.

The silence between them stretches out for another minute before she speaks up, voice quiet. “I’m sorry you went through that.”

He shakes his head. “Not your fault. It’s no use comparing suffering, but even so, what you went through I imagine was worse.” He taps the brochures. “The way you drew him, it shows what you thought of him. I bet that bothers you too, huh?”

For a moment, her lips draw into a tight line while she thinks of what to say next. “Sir, forgive me, but…why are you telling me all of this?”

Because he wants her to know she isn’t alone, that what Aizen had done to her had been done to him too. Also, on some pathetic level, he wants to own up for his costly mistake and apologise to her indirectly. He’ll be dying before he ever admits the latter though.

"Did I say too much?" he says. "Sorry, probably made ya feel uncomfortable."

"Uh, no, it's not that!" Hinamori quickly reassures. "It just seems like so much to share is all. If it were me, I know I wouldn't be able to."

"It kinda the reason why I did." He gestures to himself with his cup. “It was so you get an idea of what’s ahead. It’ll take a long time for you to deal with all this. Based on experiences, there will come a day when wake up and go about your businesses, and you realise you haven’t truly thought about him or what happened. You’ll think about it there and then, sure, and there will be days where it has you by the guts. It’s just a matter of remembering that those days come and go, like any other.”

He pours himself another cup of tea as she sighs quietly.

“Out of everyone, you’re the only who talks about him to me,” she says.

“I figured it’s good to talk about him, the good and the bad. Well, it’s all bad, let’s face it, but…he had his moments, every now and then, whether I liked it or not.”

Hinamori thought the same, he can tell – like her expression when he agreed that seeing friends outside of the division was good advice.

He raises the refilled cup to his lips. “Unfortunately, that can make it harder, but if you accepted it as ‘it was what it was’, that gets easier too.”

Somehow, Hinamori’s shoulder fall even further when she sighs. “I wish I was older.”

The sombreness prevents him from cracking a smile at that. “What’d mean by that? Most people your age wanna stay young forever.”

“It’s not like that.” Her fingers trails away from her cup and rest on the edge of the counter. “There’s nothing great about being young, because you don’t know how to handle things like this properly. I feel like everyone in the division is moving on. They even pulled up the ayame, the calligraphy he did isn’t on the walls anymore, and barely anyone but you says his name around me. It’s like he never existed, and maybe…maybe that’s how it should be. It feels like the right thing to do…and somehow, also the wrong thing. He existed here, and I hate…I hate that I still remember good things about him. It’s been so long since…since I didn’t feel like this. I wish it was…”

He frowns; something about her words struck a deep cord within him. “Wishing ain’t gonna solve your problems, dummy! You think you got out of that Fourth Division bed from wishing? You think I kept you on as a lieutenant because you could wish things in and out of existence? You gotta face it every day, head on, all the memories you have him, whether they’re good or bad. Those feelings and thoughts will be there when you wake and still there when you go to sleep, but you don’t let it keep you lying there doing nothing. Yeah, maybe getting rid of things around here helps some, but everyone’s got their own way of dealing with this shit, right?”

He softens a little when he realises she taken aback. “It’s okay to take a breather, though. You don’t have to force yourself so hard into getting over it. You’re figuring out how to deal with this shit, but you don’t let it get to you, I’ve seen it. You get up everyday, work your ass off, and look out for everyone. Give yourself some credit.”

He has the sudden urge to busy himself, and he does so by flipping over the top brochure and reading the back of it. His brows furrow deeper at the responses Hinamori had provided to the four questions. Shit. He’s quick to flick it aside and flip over the next brochure. She answered for this one too, but the responses were more positive. He doesn't bother to read Aizen's answers.

“I understand.”

He turns his attention back at her. Her eyes are still rimmed with tears, but there’s also a new, hard clarity in them. It reminds him of their first week when she’d affirmed that a division would need change but it couldn’t be done all at once. Her determination is fierce, but now it doesn’t come from a place of wanting to do right by her division. Right now, it’s come from having overcome something inside and wanting to keep moving forward, one step at a time.

“I should be more present, is what you’re saying,” she clarifies. “I don’t get to be being an adult who can deal with things like this by wishing in the present. To become that person, I need to do something in the here and now. I become that person by facing everything head on, not by retreating or wishing for it.”

His grin reflects his pride – at this rate he’s going to start acting like one of those proud fathers he used to cringe at. “Well, look at you being all wise. By the time you get older, you’ll be wiser than the Head Captain!”

She gives an incredulous snort. “That’s too much, sir!”

“I don’t know, you’re on the right track to being that way.” He tips his chin upward. “Though I probably shouldn’t say too much, it’ll go to your head. How about we make it that I said all of that just now? I’ll give you credit as my inspiration, and this way you don’t have to feel all shy about it!”

She’s laughs, almost doubles over, as tears streams down her reddening cheeks. He finds himself chuckling along with her. It’s the longest she’s laughed around him, and there’s something freeing about it. Perhaps it’s to comfort herself, to release the stress this entire situation had brought about.

After their laughter died down, and she has regained her breath, her smile becomes shaky. “It seems easier said than done.”

“Well, no one ever said it was easy, and if they did, they’re an idiot. You’re on track, just remember that.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says after a pause.

They both take a sip of tea, sitting in silence. At some point they’re both looking at the brochures. Shinji only leaves the first ten out, deciding the rest weren’t needed. They stare at the covers, all but one with the man who had brought them down. Yet, Shinji thinks, he also ended up uniting them them.

The good and the bad, Shinji thinks, allowing a bitter smile. He hates the irony of it.

The only one to not feature Aizen is of a shrub of suzuran. It takes up move of the page, expect for a space where Hinamori had written ‘We look forward to meeting you! Let’s work hard for Fifth Division!’

For some reason, the question his captain once asked him comes to mind, and Shinji’s smile softens. Say, Hirako-kun, why did you become a Shinigami?

____________________________________

Shinji hitches his scarf higher up, but it does little to brace him for the cold outside. Stepping out of the First Division, a gust blows through the courtyard, dusting the bridge in front with thin patches of snow that had gathered on the railing.

Around him, the captains all have different reactions to the cold, most showing their dislike for it by either huddling into themselves or commenting on it. However, there’s a few who barely flinch, and one of them is walking on the bridge like it’s just another sunny day. He’s also the one Shinji needs to talk to.

“Yo, Captain Hitsugaya!”

Said captain stops and looks over his shoulder at Shinji as the other captains move past him. “Hirako.”

Shinji slows his walk and waits for the other captains to be out of earshot. “Huh, still not referring to me by my title,” he teases. “Have some respect for your elders, will ya?”

“Most ‘elders’ act their age,” he retorts, but there isn’t much bite behind it. “Besides, you’ve told the others to not refer to you by your title.”

Despite his grin, Shinji frowns in annoyance. “I still can’t figure out how you and Hiyori weren’t two peas in a pod.”

Hitsugaya only snorts derisively in response while looking off to the side and folding his arms into his sleeves. With the snow falling on either side of the bridge and the white that already covers the courtyard below, he looks very much like he belongs in the landscape as an icy figure in the middle of it all.

With all the other captains gone, closes the gap between him and the younger captain as he digs his hand into his sleeve. “I won’t keep you long. Just had to fulfill a request.”

Hitsugaya turns back, eyebrow rising. “Request?”

“You have a birthday tomorrow, and I only know that because…” Shinji pulls out a small box, tied closed by a blue-ribbon bow. “…Hinamori told me.”

Hitsugaya switches his bewildered gaze from the box to Shinji and then back again.

“Hey, don’t get your hopes up, this ain’t from me,” Shinji snarks. He holds it out to him. “She wanted me to pass this on to you, seeing as she’ll be too busy to come by and visit.”

Hitsugaya is slow to take his gift, but Shinji gets the impression it isn’t because he’s surprised. He tries to make it look business-like, but there’s a slight reverence to the way he takes hold of the side held out to him, and the way his eyes are glued to it, following it until he draws it right in front of himself and holds it in both hands, it’s as if it’s the only thing that mattered right now.

Shinji expected Hitsugaya to just thank him and head off to his division. Instead, he deftly undoes the ribbon, letting the ends hang over the sides of one hand while he pulls the lid off.

For a few seconds, the furrow in his brow disappears and his lips part. Save for a few glares, Shinji’s never seen any expression other than a stoic, determined frown on the boy’s face before, but he’s isn’t sure what he’s more surprised by: the subtle softness that settles in the younger captain’s eyes or the strange jolt of relief he feels. Where did the latter come from? And what exactly was he relieved about?

He sets the thought aside for later and watches as Hitsugaya plucks out one of the treats from the box; a nerikiri with snowflake decorations on it.

“She made them this morning,” Shinji explains. “She was actually pretty torn up about not getting to see you on your birthday, but she’s got a long meeting today, then tomorrow she’s organising some missions and then we’re wrapping up some admin things.”

“It’s fine,” Hitsugaya says under his breath. He puts the sweet back with the others and closes the box. “Birthdays aren’t a big deal anyway.”

“Well, they are for her, so you better thank her next time you see her.”

The look Hitsugaya gives him says, Obviously I will.

Shinji can’t help it though, and he raises his hands defensively while teasing, “Hey, don’t freeze me, I’m just the courier.”

Hitsugaya sustains his glare for a moment longer, but then mellows, his usual frown returning while he stashes his gift away in his shihakusho. “In that case, tell her I’ll thank her when I see her next.”

“Like when you have one of your lunches planned?”

The younger captain’s eyes widen at that.

“She told me about your plans together. I always keep telling her to take all the time she wants but she insists on getting back in time to finish her work. I think it’s nice you two still catch up every now and then.” Shinji starts to leave, raising his hand in a casual wave. “Well, my work here is done. I’ll pass on your message.”

He only gets a few steps away before the younger captain speaks up. “Oi, Hirako.” He stops, and after a beat, Hitsugaya shuffles a step towards him. “Hinamori mentioned last time that you were thinking about a joint training session with my division.”

That makes Shinji twist back around. “It was just an idea. I noticed in the records our divisions haven’t done any joint training in a while. Thought it might be good for both of our subordinates to become reacquainted with each other.” His grin widens. “Who knows? Maybe you and your men can learn a thing or two from Hinamori about kido, and we’d learn something from you and Lieutenant Matsumoto.”

Hitsugaya nods to himself.

“Is that a yes then?” Shinji asks.

“I’ll ask Matsumoto what she thinks, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she agrees to it. We can discuss it further next month.”

“All right, I’ll hold you to it.” At the fresh breeze that blows through, Shinji crosses his arms and asks, “Hey, in the coming days, reckon you could shift this weather away? Make a little warmer maybe?”

Shinji knows the urge to resist an eyeroll when he sees it – Hiyori and the others had done it enough times. He’ll take it over the piercing stares the younger captain used to fix him with during the first month back as a captain.

“No,” is all Hitsugaya says.

Shinji shrugs in defeat. “Ah, well, I tried.” He spins on his heel and continues his exit. “See you around, and don’t be a stranger to the division.”

He can feel Hitsugaya’s gaze on him for the entire length of the bridge, but unlike his first month, he can sense it’s not out of suspicion.

He’s almost halfway back to his division when he thinks back on the relief he felt, but now he has an answer.

We grew up in the same district and have been friends since. He always works hard, and he picks up new skills really quickly. He can be a bit mean too, but really, he’s kind. It took me a while to realise, but he looked out for me during the Ryoka invasion. That’s what has always stood out about him though…He looks out for everyone, even when no one sees it.

Shinji had to admit, after interacting with the younger captain the first few times, he’d thought Hinamori’s view as being too biased. She saw the good in others, and perhaps it affected how she recalled certain memories about them. He hadn’t told her about how her friend had damn near interrogated him, asking probing questions about his Hollow powers and his intentions for the Fifth Division. He’d initially concluded that yes, the kid was a genius, but he was also a brat.

But then he thought about what had happened in the battlefield more, and then learned more about the captain through Rangiku.

He may have grown up in the Junrinan, but that boy would’ve gone through hell. With hair like that and the icy aura that radiated off him, Shinji can imagine Rukongai Souls, with and without spirit potential alike, would see he wasn’t like them. Hinamori had befriended him though, had known him for several decades. She saw the good in others, believed in them wholeheartedly, perhaps to a fault, but even so…

She must have been kind-hearted and compassionate since she was young. It wasn’t something Aizen had fostered within her to further his plans somehow.

Despite knowing this for months now, it feels good to finally get confirmation in a way. Knowing that, Shinij suspects Aizen thought two ways about her kindness: that it was both a weakness to exploit and he also a trait for a good lieutenant, even if it was for appearances sake.

In some bitter way, he wonders if even Aizen on some level knew her true strength, and had treated her the way he had after he revealed his true self to punish her for it. The same may have gone for Hitsugaya, who had both his left limbs severed by Aizen. The cruelty of such an attack hadn’t escaped him, not when he and others had received smaller wounds in comparison.

Shinji grins, because despite trying to prove otherwise, those two were still standing because of the very things Aizen saw as a weakness.

____________________________________

Hinamori catches herself bobbing her head to the record playing in the background. If she were alone and didn’t have so much to do, she could see herself abandoning the paperwork and dancing around the room to the tune. It’s strange how the music can help her focus on her work but also make her want to dance.

“Who’s this one by?” she asks her captain.

Shinji is lounging on the couch with a music magazine, a scarf around his neck in place of his usual tie. “Fukui Ryo. Why?”

“I like it.”

Shinji grins without looking up. “Well, finally. See, I told ya there’d be one you’ll like, and a good choice too.”

She eyes the record collection, now taking up two shelves of one of the bookcases. He has more in his room, stacked in his closet with no space to keep them. “I’ve been meaning to ask, sir.”

“Hm?”

“Where did you get so much music?”

“I worked in a music store for a little while. Got a bunch of records for discount prices.”

“You had a job in the World of the Living?”

She sounds more incredulous than intended, and it’s likely why he laughs. “Of course I did, dummy! How else do ya think we could afford to stay in a warehouse?”

Hinamori lets out an embarrassed chuckle. “Ah, yes, of course.”

“It wasn’t my only job either, but it was one of the better ones. Aside from getting records, I learned about different musicians and got into collecting CDs too.”

At least Hinamori knows what the latter are, Hisagi had brought a stack of them and a CD player back from the World of the Living a decade ago. “You don’t have any CDs though.”

“I prefer vinyl, there’s something classy about them.”

Hinamori thinks to end the conversation there, but now she’s too curious. “You mentioned other jobs, what were they?”

Shinji closes the magazine and leans back, and Hinamori takes it as a sign this is going to be a long story. As he begins, she sets aside her writing tools and shifts away from her desk.

“I worked in a café at one point, learned how to make coffee. It’s nothing like the instant stuff, it’s better. Next time you’re in the World of the Living, you should go to a café and try for yourself. Before that, I worked in a department store for a few years, mainly in the accessories section. It’s where I learned how to tie a tie, so it ended up coming in handy I guess.”

She thinks of the numerous accessory and clothing stores in the Rukongai. Maybe it was because the tie he wears around his neck or the clothes he had from the World of the Living, but she can see him working in places like those.

“Had a couple of desk jobs too, but they got boring fast.”

“What’s a desk job?” she asks.

“Basically what we do, but more soulless.” He grins at his own pun, and Hinamori tries to decide whether to let out a pitiful laugh out or cringe.

She cracks in the end, both cringing and laughing. “Honestly, sir.”

“Hey, you think I’m joking, but it’s true! They got me to sit down all day and just write stuff that wouldn’t make much of a difference to most humans. It wasn’t fulfilling and I quit the first one. The second one I got fired from. Hiyori was pissed at me both times.

“The others had jobs too, but you didn’t hear anything I’m about to tell you, all right? Lieutenant Kuna was the first of any us to get a job, usually got them in candy stores or at themed cafes. Captain Muguruma was working in a kitchen at one point, it’s how he learned to cook as well as he does. After that he worked on construction sites or in warehouses. Captain Ohtoribashi worked in the same department store I did for a little while, but he got bored and went to work at an antique store, was a background extra on some TV show, then at a concert hall.

“Hachi never got a job, his size gave him away and we needed someone to keep an eye out for Hollows, so he just stayed at wherever we had our base at the time. Love tried becoming a mangaka for a bit but never had the talent for drawing, so he ended up working in convenience and book stores to get manga magazines on discount. Lisa worked in a couple of adult stores, at a themed-café, gave being a hostess a shot but it didn’t last long, and then at a bookstore, and Hiyori always struggled to hold down a job.”

“W-Why was that?”

“Come on, you’ve heard her over the denreishinki. She’s had the most jobs out of all of us. She’s been a housepainter, courier, janitor at a lab, had a few stints as a lab technician – they actually double checked her records every time she applied for those jobs, ‘cause she didn’t look as old as her identification said. There were others she had, but I can’t remember them all.”

Shinji rests his head on the back of his chair. “We didn’t go looking for jobs initially, first we had to control our Hollow powers. After that, we more or less took it in turns. A few of us would go get a job while the others trained, then we’d switch or one or two of us would keep working for a little while longer. Helped us stay afloat in the World of the Living and integrate into it better.”

“But with you all not being human, how did no one see that you didn’t age? Did you have special gigai?”

“Nah, just regular gigai. We didn’t all get jobs in the same area and got some in towns and cities nearby. Also kept low profiles outside of work, didn’t get too friendly with anyone at any job, didn’t stay at the job for more than four years, and never made contact with anyone from old workplaces. Think we only got caught out a few times, but usually came up with some excuse.” He looses a chuckle, but there isn’t much humour behind it. “Remember one time I bumped into a co-worker from one of the jobs I had. Didn’t recognise her at first, she’d gotten really old, but she sure as hell recognised me. Had to lie to her and say I was the son of the man she used to work with and that my ‘old man’ died years ago. Didn’t feel good to lie, but couldn’t risk her finding out.”

Hinamori knew about Shinji’s first time as captain of the Fifth Division, but what he and the others had done in the gap between when they’d been forced out of the Soul Society and now hadn’t even occurred to her. He’d lived amongst humans, had to learn their customs and ways, and at times lied to them to keep his true self from being known, all the while likely dealing with the betrayal of someone he thought he knew and the place he’d once called home turning their backs on him. She didn’t know much about the Hollow powers he possessed, but if what Kira and Hisagi had told her was true, it’s something each other captains had struggled with for decades to reign in. They only had each other in a world they knew very little about.

Her heart tightens, and she raises a fist to her chest. “It must have been hard for all of you.”

“It could be at times, but we didn’t have a choice. Just had to keep going, a step at a time.”

The words he’d spoken to in autumn come back to her.

I had a hundred years to think about what happened. I don’t hate him any less, but it gets easier with time to think about what happened and to talk about him.

You’ll think about it there and then, sure, but then it’ll happen again, and again, and again, until the time you spend thinking about it gets less and less.

You gotta face it every day, head on, all the memories you have him, whether they’re good or bad.

Hinamori wonders if she should finally ask him ‘why did you choose to come back?’, but thinks better of it. She has grown to not feel uncomfortable asking more personal questions, but that one still feels like a bridge too far for her. Still, hearing him recount about his friends the way he does, she wonders once again why he and the other two Visoreds decided to leave them to come here.

“You know, now that I think about, I reckon you and Hachi would get along real well.”

Hinamori comes out of her thoughts, but realises her captain is talking to himself.

Shinji leans forward, as if a great idea had just dawned on him. “He’s an expert in kido, can cast spells level eighty and above with little trouble. He could probably teach you a few things, maybe you’d show him a thing or two as well.”

She shakes her head to herself with a smile, doubtful she could show such an experienced user anything new.

Shinji crosses his leg over his other knee and looks to the ceiling in thought. “Love would probably get you to draw his characters for the manga he’s always wanted to write once I tell him how good you are at drawing. Lisa is a reader beyond the perverted stuff, reckon she’d have a few recommendations for you, and Hiyori…actually, you should stay away from her, she’ll probably try to soil my good name and get you to tell her stories about me.”

Hinamori laughs nervously at that, but Shinji is focused on whatever idea he has going on in his head. Without his grin, it’s one of the most serious expressions she’s seen on him, but there’s something open about it at the same time. She thinks to ask him if he’s all right, but stops when he nods to himself. “Yeah…One day, I’ll take you to meet them.”

She’s stunned for a moment, but it slowly dawns on her. It feels like she’s been let into something exclusive almost, and she smiles. She’d only heard these people over the phone, knew how chaotic they could be, but also now realising how close-knit they must be. They only had each other in a world they knew very little about; despite their arguing and antics, she knew from watching her captain to talk them he cares about them, and they care about him just as much.

To meet the people who he had led, and who had helped him survive and deal with Aizen’s betrayal, it feels special. “I think I’d like to meet all of them too.”

He gives her a lop-sided grin. “And while we’re there, let’s grab a coffee at a café. Maybe then that’ll convince why we need to get an espresso machine in the kitchens.”

______________________________

“Oh…”

It only hits Hinamori once she steps through the doors to small courtyard

“Something wrong?”

Rangiku looks back at her with her brows raised in question, but Hinamori can’t get over her revelation.

I haven’t thought about him at all this morning.

In fact, now that she thought about it, it wasn’t just this morning; she can’t recall thinking about him yesterday either. She’d been so occupied with planning an excursion to the World of the Living and then the reports she had to catch up on, she hadn’t thought about him once.

When Hinamori doesn’t answer, Rangiku fully turns to her. “Did you forget something?”

The question shocks her, and she laughs at the irony of it. “Actually, I did.”

Rangiku’s eyebrows raise further and raises the stack of reports in her hands. “That’s not like you, you’re usually organised for this sort of thing.”

“Ah, no, it’s nothing like that.” At her fellow lieutenant’s puzzlement, Hinamori finds herself smiling wider. “It’s just a thought I had for a while, I hadn’t thought about it.” She sighs. “Although now that I’ve realised it, I’ll probably start thinking about it again.”

But now that she’s had the reminder, will she go back to thinking about him? If she did, would the fleeting moment of freedom disappear to never surface again?

You’ll think about it there and then, sure, and there will be days where it has you by the guts. It’s just a matter of remembering that those days come and go, like any other.

Shinji’s words give her courage, but looking at her friend, she can’t help but wonder how she’ll judge her. Even now, more than a year after the battle, everyone avoids speaking Aizen’s name in front of her. She knows they mean well, and although not as painful as it used to be, hearing his name still brought some sadness to her heart.

Of course, there are some she can’t mentioned him to still. When she said his name and title in from of Hitsugaya on one of their lunch breaks together, he tried to keep his expression indifferent, to appear as if it didn’t affect him, but she didn’t miss the way his shoulders hitched up a fraction, the corners of his eyes tighten, or the clenching of his jaw.

She knows everyone means well, but it can’t keep going on like this. She can’t grow that little bit more if she doesn’t share this with one of the people who helped her get to where she is now. “I just realised I hadn’t thought about Captain Ai…no, Aizen Sousuke. I hadn’t thought about him since yesterday morning.”

Rangiku’s expression shifts to one of sympathy. Hinamori wonders if she’s had a similar experience when it came to Ichimaru. Did she have moments where she realised she hadn’t thought about him that day?

“What do you need to do?” her friend says.

It’s refreshing to be asked rather than told. You should go rest. Don’t strain yourself. Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to bring him up. “Nothing. It’s funny, though… sometimes he comes up in conversation when I talk with Captain Hirako. I would’ve thought it’d make me feel worse, but actually, it’s been helping somehow.

"It’s okay to say his name, and it’s okay it talk about him. Even if it makes me sad, I think I’d rather that than avoidance now.”

Her response surprised Rangiku. After a beat however, a soft smile curves on her friend's lips. “If you’re sure.”

Hinamori nods, then lifts up her own pile of paperwork. “We should get stuck into these before Captain Hitsugaya gets back.”

“I’ll owe you more than a shopping trip for helping me with these!”

They sit on the veranda, completing reports that Fifth and Tenth Division were involved in. One was for the three joint training sessions they’d completed over the course of last week, others were field reports. It’d been Rangiku’s suggestion to work outside, and although not usually Hinamori’s first idea when working on official documents, she can understand why now that she’d settled down to work. It’s a clear spring day, with no wind and the sun warming their feet. Scents of various spring flowers fill the air, and somewhere in the distance, there’s both the clashing of training swords and light-hearted, indiscernible chatter amongst a group of unseated officers.

Rangiku breaks the silence as she hands a report over to Hinamori. “When I think about it, it’s been a year since you started working with Captain Hirako, hasn’t it?”

Hinamori hums in ascent. “It was a year last week, actually.”

She’d reflected on the morning of the ‘anniversary’. It had somehow both been a slow and fast year that’d passed, filled with struggle and triumph for herself and her division.

Sometimes she’d find herself wondering down the halls and temporarily be transported back to how things used to be, with everyone happy and content, smiling and jovially greeting each other in the hallways. That had remained the same, but there was something different about it too. A few subordinates sported new accessories, some had gotten haircuts, and others simply spoke more freely than before. There was a time where she both longed for the old days and feared that any reminder of those memories would make her stop, becoming unmoveable and unchanging, fearing to stake another step forward.

Those memories will remain, there is no escaping them. It didn’t mean she couldn’t create new ones though, similar but different. Better, in some regards.

She hadn’t brought up the ‘anniversary’ with Shinji, but she thought he remembered too when he brought up – more than once - how he needed a holiday after working so hard. She went to voice her agreement with him, but he’d turned to her with a rare sincere, close-lipped smile, and she lost her words as he’d pat her shoulder on the shoulder on his way out to – at his instances – buy lunch for them.

He is a strange man to her, even to this day. His default expression were either nonchalance or a wide, toothy grin. His tastes in music, fashion, and decor are bizarre but oddly charming in their own way. He spoke freely, sometimes with no filter whatsoever. He wasn't afraid to show his annoyance or tease her or speak about a man who had caused both of them so much grief.

He's sharp too, able to perceive things beneath the surface, and he worked hard to gain everyone's trust. He did so not to manipulate or for some ulterior motive, but to work and collaborate with the subordinates to make the Fifth Division better.

Regardless, he still loathes paperwork and makes almost any excuse to get out of doing it. At worst it drove her up the wall, forcing her to show her annoyance through a tight smile or calling him on his denreishinki and asking him to return to the division. He could be flippant with orders too, usually issuing them for minor or trivial matters rather than situations that called for a direct and authoritative response.

He didn't always outward show it, but she knows he cares deeply for others, especially his Visored friends. It was a genuine care, one that ran through the conversations he had with subordinates asking how a relative was going, or if they had visited that store in the Rukongai yet. He was patient too, allowing her to speak her mind when she was troubled, but also knowing when the conversation needed to end. His kindness also showed in those moments, when he'd offer her advice or a glimpse into his experiences with Aizen.

He believed in her, even as she sat in the Fourth Division confused and melancholic. He had given her a chance she imagined would have made some hesitant. His unfiltered approach inspired a sense of freedom in her, to express herself more openly.

She owes much to him, and hopes perhaps selfishly, she has been able to help him just as much as he has helped her.

Looking at Rangiku, she recalls all the times they’d spent together since she regained her position. At lieutenant and Women’s Association meetings, she was always by her side. On the rare chance they had break times that aligned, they spent it together, shopping in the Rukongai. She always had words of encouragement, believing in her even before she was out of the Fourth Division.

There was a time when she’d apologised for being a burden and for taking so long to recover. Now, bows her head. “If not for you and Captain Hirako, I don’t think I would be where I am right now. Thank you again, Rangiku-san”

“Like I said before, it’s nothing. I’m just glad you’re feeling better.” Her soft smile returns. “You’ve definitely come a long way.”

Hinamori gives a tepid shrug. “Thank you. I just have to keep going, no matter what.”

“We all do. In the end, all we can do is keep moving forward, right? ”

She thinks about Genji and the rest of the Fifth Division, about the Renji, Izuru, Nanao, and the other lieutenants, about her friends in other divisions, and about Hitsugaya and those in the Junrinan.

She recovered in Fourth Division believing she was alone, being left behind by the very same people she thought about. I will have to move forward on my own, but how? she'd thought.

When her captain comes to mind, when she pictures him with the people in her life, it brings a peacefulness she she hadn't felt in a long time, and a single word comes to mind.

Together.

_____________________________

The world moves in streaks around Shinji, and the air is thicker than before he went into First Division’s meeting hall. The news is still fresh in his mind, threatening to break his nonchalant expression.

Hinamori, who jogs to keep up with him, is looking at him wide-eyed with shock and disbelief. “We’re at war…with the Quincies? H-How can that be?”

“Those bastards were crafty, they found a way to survive.” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter who it is, we’re at war now.”

His words are slow to sink in, but after a moment she nods. “Then we have to let the division know.”

She summons a Hell Butterfly and relays a message for Genji to gather all their officers in the main hall for an emergency division, even those patrolling the Rukongai and the World of the Living. After sending the butterfly away, Hinamori asks, “Do we have a prediction for when they’ll strike?”

“All we know is what they did in First Division. Anything else, we’re shit out of luck. Don’t know when they’ll strike or how.” Shinji is sure his expression has well and truly cracked now.

“Sir, about my lieutenant’s meeting.”

“What about it?” He’d snapped the question without meaning to, but Hinamori doesn’t flinch.

“Kira-kun brought up something that might be of interest” she says. “He suspected that the invasion, the disappearances in the Rukongai, and the disappearances of Hollows were all connected. He noted that the report for the missing resident was conducted by Twelfth Division, and also that sandal prints were found in district sixty-four, but residents don’t have footwear in the lower districts.”

“What’s his point?”

“Twelfth Division may have taken those Souls. Kurotsuchi-san couldn’t provide us with any information, but Kira-kun is going to report this to the Captain General.” She shakes her head. “If it’s somehow connected to the Quincy invasion, why would Captain Kurotsuchi take those Souls? It’s so callous.”

“Shit. So Twelfth is up to something too? I should’ve known, Kurotsuchi is always up to some shit.” His eyes narrow. “What the hell is happening?”

Less than two years of being a captain and now he has to lead his division into a war. Organising the inevitable patrolling and drills around the Seireitei he can handle, but breaking this news to them, what the hell was he supposed to say?

He only comes out of his thoughts when Shinigami scramble past him and Hinamori. They go to different divisions, rushing to emergency meetings no doubt. He hadn’t even realised until now she’d been listing off everything they’ll need to do.

“…patrols for the lower districts, in case they go missing. I know we shouldn’t interfere with the matters of other divisions, but if Kira-kun doesn’t report to the Captain-General right away, Captain Kurotsuchi might try to expunge more Souls, especially now that Kurotsuchi-san knows we’re aware. Then there’s…”

She fades out again, because far in the distance up ahead is the Fifth Division insignia. Beyond the main entrance, Shinigami are running to get into the main barracks, a few almost tripping over themselves to get inside.

He can’t take the traditional route. Without a second thought, he leaps from the balcony to the rooftop down below and Hinamori follows. Any other time he’d tease her for breaking conduct, but the gravity of the situation weighs heavy on both of them.

They’re three jumps away from landing on the wall of Fifth Division’s main entrance when Hinamori calls out to him. “Sir, wait!”

He almost stumbles when she grabs his sleeve. He whips around and any exclamation he has dies in his throat when he sees her hunched over despite the firm grip she has on his uniform.

She’s a little out of breath, but she asks, “What’re we going to tell them? We have to get our plan straight before we address them.”

How the fuck should I know? No, he knows exactly what he’ll have to say. He’ll have to look every single one of his officers in the eye – seated and unseated, new and old – and tell them they’re at war, and they all know what that means. It means life won’t be the same, whether it’s for a few days or a few years. It means the new recruits get their first taste of real battle not against Hollows, but against opponents probably even stronger than them. It means the division member next to them is more likely to wind up dead. Shinigami are taught to be prepared for battle, to die in combat against enemies of the Seireitei and those that threaten the World of the Living and the balance all the worlds stand upon. It doesn’t stop them from fearing death or battle, doesn’t stop them from forming bonds with each other and mourning the losses of fallen comrades.

It’s over a hundred years ago all over again. It’s waking up to discover he has a Hollow residing in him, whispering in his ear, threatening to take over. It’s the pitying but determined look of Urahara swearing to make things right for him and the others somehow. It’s realising he didn’t know what to do or where to go in a world so foreign to all of them. It’s realising the others are looking to him, confused and unsure, to be a defacto leader. It’s knowing he took on said role in part because he was partly responsible for the what they had all become.

And in the decades in the World of the Living, it was not just the Visoreds he was responsible for. Even from afar, he was responsible for every officer in the Fifth Division and whatever Aizen was doing to them.

And perhaps Hinamori sees the conflict within him, because she straightens, let’s go of his sleeve, and leans away a fraction. Whatever she’s about to say, he gets the impression she’s been waiting to speak aloud for a long time. “This is likely not the time or place, but maybe, somehow, it will help you as it helped me.” Then with more certainty. “Why did you come back? And…why did you become a Shinigami?”

He could almost choked at how she threw his own words back at him.

Why did he come back? Because in his foolishness, he’d let the bastard in. And then when he and others were cast out and left to pick up the pieces in the World of the Living, Aizen took his place and shaped the division how he saw fit. He manipulated everyone, deceived them into being blinded to his true self no matter how close he seemed to let them get to him. Shinji had let him in, thinking he could stop him when needed, only to become part of his plan.

He’d let the bastard in, and the damage he had caused to everyone in the division was on his hands.

But that was neither here nor there. It’s been over a year, in fact, since then. The division isn’t what it used to be, sure, but it isn’t how Aizen left it after his betrayal either. And there was always that one thing that remained, that stood against every test thrown at it: the division’s sense of comradery and dedication in the face of horrendous odds.

He looks at his lieutenant, who just stares right back at him. Of all of them, she embodied those very feats.

He gives her a strained smirk. “Ain’t that a little personal for a time like this?”

She doesn’t back down; it doesn’t surprise him. “Perhaps, but maybe now is the time to remember why.” She turns to their division in the distance. “All them will be thinking it, on some level. ‘Why am I here? Why did I join the Gotei Thirteen?’. I know during times like these, you can forget why you’re here, so you ask yourself those questions to try and remember.

She softens a fraction when she brings her attention back to him. “The day you asked me why I became a Shinigami, it reminded me why I joined in the first place and why I chose to resume my position as lieutenant of the Fifth Division. It reminded me that there was a time before all of this when things were different, better maybe, but that I had a goal to work towards.”

She takes another step to him, now having to crane her neck slightly to look him in the eye. “You don’t have to tell me why, but remember, Captain.”

It hadn’t been for any noble reason. He knew he had spiritual potential and knew he couldn’t stick around in the Rukongai if he wanted to get anywhere in this next life. He’s briefly taken back to different moments in his life: to his first day as an unseated officer, to meeting Hiyori and the other Visoreds before they were changed, to meeting Aizen and knowing something was off, to having to say goodbye to his old captain, and finally, to becoming a captain the first time.

Somewhere along the way, on some level that he’d only ever spoken aloud to a select few, it had become about helping others. It had become about protecting those he cared about, and ensuring he could call somewhere ‘home’ with them.

When he becomes present again, he knows it’s not a time to get sentimental. You need more than sentimentality to win a war, but you also needed more than a skilled swordsman who fights only for duty. In an indirect way, that’s what he’d learned while at the Academy.

It’s neither the time nor place to be vulnerable; he’ll thank her for grounding him and helping him remember why he was doing this beyond some attempt to make amends later. However, he gives a determined grin as he says, “See, this is why ya need two people running a division.”

Her smile mirrors his and she gives a firm nod. They’re a team, a good one. A better one than either of them had in the past as Shinigami in the higher positions. However, the moment vanishes when his smile drops and he glances at Fifth Division’s insignia.

“We ain’t gonna mention the stuff about Twelfth Division,” he advises. “If Lieutenant Kira really is going to the Captain General about that, then that’ll be dealt with. I reckon Kurotsuchi isn’t going to lift a finger to get more Souls, not when he’ll have to answer to the Old Man.” He swallows and has to resist the urge to grit his teeth. “We’re going to tell them we’re at war, and whatever you listed off before. Sound good?”

“Yes, Captain.”

With that, they leap off the rooftop and land in their division’s main courtyard. They waste no time as they race to the main hall with their fellow officers. Some try to ask him and Hinamori what’s going on, but all his lieutenant does is to gather in the hall for a briefing.

Everyone’s gazes are on him from the moment he and Hinamori enter; to think more than a year ago, half of the room couldn’t look him in the eye. There’s a barrage of questions from some as he and Hinamori traipse to the front of the hall. Somewhere, Genji and a few other seated offers call for a hush.

By the time he stands before all of them, most of the talking and shouting has stopped. What strikes him more than seeing every officer in the same room together for the first time since Hinamori returned is how most of them look at him. They see him not as a lifeline or an answer, but as a captain. Yes, there is confusion and fear, but there’s also trust.

Then there’s his lieutenant, who stands at his left, completely quieting the room with a firm order. She wasn’t even two years away from the battle that had plunged her into a deep depression. She’d barely had time to breathe and rest. She still called Aizen by his title, though thankfully without the melancholy that used to plague her voice and posture when she referred to him. Hell, he’d even heard her refer to him without his title twice in the last month.

She doesn’t realise her own strength – in her compassion and belief of others – because it had been turned against her. If she can make it out of this war - no, he's going make sure she absolutely does - there’s a long road ahead for her still. Even so, she’d come so far. There’s a confidence in her stride where once there had been hunched shoulders and muted steps. She smiles far easier and can say Aizen’s name without the melancholy she’d been weighed down by. Shinji would like to take credit for it, but really, she pulled herself out of it.

He won’t fool himself into thinking he’d ‘redeemed’ himself somehow by nudging her in the direction of recovery, but knowing she has his back in this, it’s a comfort he never realised meant as much as it did now.

She looks to him, and in her gaze is not the doubtful and lost girl he first met in Fourth Division. There's concern and worry, but she’s strong, has proven as much time and time again since they started working together. There isn’t a hint of admiration for him, but there’s a belief in him. And after everything that happened over a hundred years ago and everything they’d worked on together, he believes in her too.

He shifts his attention back to all of subordinates. He finally addresses them, his voice echoing around the hall.

"I'm sure most of you are already aware of what's happening. There are some things you all need to remember before I get into the details. During times like this, don't forget for one second that our duty is to protect the Soul Society and the worlds beyond our own. We are Shinigami, we are to protect the Soul Society at all costs, and with our lives.

"More than that, however, remember we are the Fifth Division. We went through hell recently, but we have come out the other side. That wouldn't have happened without all of your strength and commitment. We will protect each other and we have each other's strength.

"We will not let the Seireitei fall, and through hell and high water, we will not let the Fifth Division fall."

#momo hinamori #shinji hirako #toshiro hitsugaya #rangiku matsumoto #bleach #sousuke aizen #genji isawa #hiyori sarugaki #love aikawa #fanfiction #brotp: the fifth division #hitsuhina #IT'S FINALLY DONE!!#I'll probably have to come back and edit for grammar and spelling #later though...I need to take a nap

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liebgotts-lovergirl · 1 year

Text

Fire On Fire: Chapter 11

Gallery II Taglist Application II Symbol Guide

(Ch. 10) ... (Ch. 1)

Summary: Alix prepares for her next mission despite still being haunted by her last. WARNINGS: Death, Survivor's Guilt, Angst, a protective Joe, the usual war stuff Taglist: @softguarnere @latibvles @brassknucklespeirs @mccall-muffin @auroralightsthesky

Contemporary: September 15th, 1944. Aldbourne, England.

Unlike the rest of Easy, Alix hadn't gotten any free time in England.

She hadn't seen Joe, Skip, Don, or any of Easy Company, save for Nixon, in about 2 months because she was practically living with the SOE.

The British were in charge of the latest operation, meaning that Alix had to rely on the Strategic Operations Executive for all additional training and intel, much to her chagrin.

Rumors were swirling in the intelligence community that the SOE had been compromised but no one wanted to believe it.

One of the foremost Allied espionage organizations, compromised?

It was truly a harrowing thought.

Every time she was in an intelligence briefing or doing combat training, she couldn't help but wonder if her opponent was actually an enemy agent. There was almost no way to know until it was too late, like with Jean-Pierre.

You should've known.

It pounded like footfalls on pavement in her head.

You should've known.

He was a fucking kid, for Christ's sake, still a teenager, not even old enough to buy a drink back home in the States.

He liked playing chess and Benny Goodman records.

But he was an enemy spy.

He was the Milice and Gestapo Liaison.

He was the mole.

He had betrayed her friends.

And now he was dead.

The gunshots, the blood spatter, the dull thud of his body hitting the pew, those lifeless gray eyes staring into space...

She saw them every night in her sleep. Alix couldn't remember the last time she'd woken up rested.

Every day, she fought monsters and every night, they just came back in some twisted Sisyphean dance, and she'd wake up with her heart just about beating out of her chest.

Does it count as survivor's guilt if you're a murderer?

Are you still a murderer if it's your job to murder?

Alix didn't have the answers.

As the agency in charge of the next operation, British Intelligence had done their best to remedy the damage that Jean-Pierre had done to her operations but there was no telling if it would work. A fake obituary had been planted in the French and German press to kill off her old identity and erase any Gestapo suspicion of her escape from France. But that meant a new identity needed to take its place so she could continue her work, an identity that the SOE would be supplying...

"Adelina and Niccolò Duchamps?" Alix read, turning the forged passports over in her hands before looking up at the man standing at the opening of her tent. "We have a joint cover now? You've got to be joking."

"Believe me, I wish I was," Lieutenant Nixon replied grimly as he entered from the night, nursing a flask full of what Alix guessed was his usual whiskey.

"But they're sending me with you this time. Orders came in this morning."

"Why?" Alix crossed her arms, bristling at the insinuation. "I completed my mission just fine without you before. I think I'm well-past needing a babysitter."

HQ was constantly undermining her, like she hadn't been training for two whole years for exactly this type of solo mission.

What was the point of having highly-trained female operatives if they wouldn't let them into the field because they're female?

It was maddening.

"Trust me, I don't like it any better than you do but we don't have a choice."

He grimaced.

"You had Toulouse's support in France but we don't have that in Holland. It's heavily male-dominated and they won't take well to a female agent unless she's accompanied. HQ figures a brother/sister team is the best way to go."

"Well that's stupid," Alix remarked, putting her hands on her hips. "I was trained for fieldwork. They need to let me do my fucking job."

"You're preaching to the choir, kid." Nixon replied dryly. "Not that it's much consolation but I tried to make the same argument to HQ earlier and they read me the fucking riot act so if you want to try, be my guest but don't cry to me when they pull you from the mission completely."

Alix cocked an eyebrow.

"You really stuck up for me with HQ?" she asked, not quite believing her ears. "You told them I was ready to go into the field alone? Am I hearing this correctly?"

"And look, I'm already regretting it," Nixon deadpanned.

Alix rolled her eyes at him and sipped her third coffee of the day out of her godawful tin mug.

So her handler believed in her after all.

How about that, she thought. Better look up when I'm outside tomorrow morning. Might see some pigs flying next.

She would've killed for something stronger than coffee to steady her nerves but her handler had a strong No-Drinking-On-the-Job rule, which naturally seemed to only apply to her.

"Well I still don't like the joint cover idea," she groused doggedly and Nixon took another long swig from his flask before clinking it against her mug like they were exchanging cheers on New Years.

"Join the club."

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Contemporary: September 17th, 1944. Membury Airfield, England.

Alix could hear Bill from halfway across the airfield, arriving at the moral of a colorful story he'd been telling some spellbound replacements, presumably to keep them from getting too nervous before the jump.

"And that, kiddies," he said sagely. "is why you never piss off an Italian woman, 'specially when she's from Philly."

"You talking about me again, Guarnere?" she teased as she approached the cluster. "Starting a fan club or something?"

"Well, speak of the she-devil!" Bill exclaimed with his usual welcoming grin, clapping her on the back like an old friend. "Where ya been, Pyro? Joe's been real lonely! Ain't that right, Lieb?"

"Nah, hardly noticed."

Alix's heart leapt at the familiar rasp. One of the taller replacements shifted to the side and there was Joe, her Joe, standing just behind him, the gold flecks in his eyes catching the sunlight as he looked at her.

They didn't even need words; the way his face had brightened upon seeing her said it all, but he spoke anyway.

"Hiya gorgeous," he remarked, his usual smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "Long time, no see."

God, I missed you, Alix thought.

"Sorry, do I know you?" she teased and Joe broke into a grin, tugging her into his arms for a hug.

"By now? You'd fuckin' better."

Snaking his arm around her waist proudly, Joe stayed attached to her side the whole time preparations for the jump were taking place.

Neither of them voiced it but Alix knew in the pit of her stomach that they were both afraid.

Soon, forces beyond their control would rip them apart and every parting held the risk of a more permanent goodbye.

Spies operating radios in the field had a life expectancy of 6 weeks. It was only a matter of time before she got caught, they both knew that.

And caught, for a spy, almost always meant torture and death.

Their love was very much on borrowed time.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

As usual, Joe insisted on checking her chutes before his own and when he found that her reserve was damaged, he just about lost it.

"Who the fuck rigged this?" he demanded, momentarily separating himself from her to interrogate a couple unfortunate PRs who happened to be passing by.

She could hear the shaking rage in Joe's rising voice, threatening the Parachute Riggers with every conceivable danger he could think of as he pushed for the name of the person who'd unknowingly endangered the life of someone he cared for.

Alix shook her head, a little embarrassed and a lot amused.

She didn't think she would've ended up using the faulty reserve anyway because her primary was fine but she still pitied the person who'd packed it whenever the infuriated Joe got ahold of him.

Meandering away from the argument over her damaged chute, Alix wove her way through the crowd as she searched for her two best friends, squinting in the sunlight as she scanned for the recognizably bright red hair of Don Malarkey.

Locating Don was a sure-fire way to locate Skip as well because in all the time she'd known them, she'd never seen them apart.

The three of them had been attached at the hip since they'd met at the White Rose several months earlier when a bored Alix had accidentally talked her way into a drinking contest with the two of them, eventually resulting in the trio stumbling outside into an alleyway and violently throwing up their dinners onto the bricks and bushes nearby.

Out of the goodness of his heart (and perhaps out of sheer exasperation), Skip had eventually declared a Three-Way Tie but even all those months later, both Don and Alix each remained insistent that they were the true winner.

It didn't feel right being away from them, Alix thought as she surveyed the crowd. She missed her favorite dumbasses.

Stopping a passing trooper at the edge of the larger crowd, she was about to inquire if he'd seen the pair when a yank on a strand of her hair and a loud "Ahem!" answered her question before it was even asked.

"Scuse me, trooper," a voice from behind said, trying and failing to adopt a gruff, businesslike tone. "But your hair's not in regs."

"Gonna have to take a knife to it, I guess!" another voice chimed in, brimming with laughter.

"Do it and die, you two," Alix threatened jokingly, turning around to see the grinning faces of Skip Muck and Don Malarkey standing just behind her.

"Thought that was you, Pyro," Skip beamed, giving his friend a bear hug. "Either that or one of the fellas got real comfortable with hair curlers all of a sudden!"

"'S good to have you back," Malarkey added as he joined the impromptu group hug. "We missed ya!"

"I missed you guys too," Alix replied with a grin. "Hope I didn't miss out on anything too fun while I was gone. SOE briefings are a nightmare!"

"Oh yeah, you missed a swell time," Skip snarked with a friendly nudge of her shoulder. "Nothing like sitting around, twiddling our thumbs while there's a war on. Does wonders for morale."

"Yeah, I bet," Alix quipped.

She was about to ask Skip if he and Faye had decided on a song for their first dance yet when the loud rumbling of a nearby Jeep interrupted.

All three of their heads perked up at the same time as it passed, each bearing a similar expression of consternation and horror as they realized who was inside it.

"What is he doing here?" Alix hissed and Malarkey blanched at the sight.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered just as Sobel approached them, with the same vicious smugness as he’d had so many months before, like a hungry snake staring down its dinner.

“Well, if it isn’t Muck, Malarkey, and Martinelli," he sneered, his voice practically dripping with sarcasm. "Our Three fucking Musketeers."

Unpleasant memories of 5 mile runs and digging ditches flashed through Alix's mind like a film reel of her most miserable moments and it took all her strength not to haul off and punch Sobel right in his stupid fucking face, consequences be damned.

"Sir." She saluted but glared at him as she spat the word, wanting him to know just how it burnt like acid to have to address him as a superior.

But he looked straight past her as though she wasn't even there.

"Malarkey," he barked and Alix could feel Don's shoulders sag in defeat.

"Sorry Mal," Alix whispered out of the corner of her mouth and she could see Skip slipping away as well, a half-apologetic, half-amused expression on his face.

“What’s that all about?” Alix asked as the pair ducked their way out of earshot.

“Oh Mal and Moore stole a bike for a while,” Skip answered as casually as one talks about the weather.

“They took it for a spin or two…maybe three... Anyway, Sobel’s pissed about it, as you can see.”

“Damn Skipper, sounds like I missed more than I thought.”

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Like magic, Joe reappeared beside her just before she was due to leave.

“Took care of the fuckin’ moron who packed your chute, Zees,” he remarked, handing her a new pack.

“This one oughta work as your spare.”

"Not bad, Romeo," Skip commented as he helped Alix attach it. "Hope you didn't scare the poor kid too bad though. We need all the manpower we can get."

"Nah," Joe replied with a wry smirk. "Didn’t scare him too bad. Just enough. Shouldn't be packing chutes if he can't pack 'em right anyway."

Skip and Joe were still conversing but once she was properly outfitted, Alix couldn't help but tune them out, releasing a shaky sigh.

Soon she would be jumping into Occupied Holland and during the day, no less.

They would be completely exposed, in broad daylight: a spy's worst nightmare.

All it would take was one trigger-happy sadist in a gray uniform to end the lives of herself and everyone she cared about.

She tried to keep her face impartial but Joe could feel her unease and lightly brushed his arm against hers, leaning into her just enough that she could feel the weight of him next to her.

I love you, Ziskeit, the gesture said. I'm right here.

Alix did the same and gave him a wan smile in return.

I know. I love you too.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

The jump into the Netherlands wasn’t too bad, all things considered. The air had a pleasant autumn feel, the sky an endless stretch of soft pastel blue instead of a bitter rain, and for once, nobody was shooting at them on their way down.

Alix, Lieutenant Nixon, and a small cluster of pathfinders had left England and dropped in hours before the rest of the Airborne arrived. It would be easier to connect with the Dutch Resistance without worrying about crowds of paratroopers causing unnecessary attention.

The dense blanket of low-clinging Dutch clouds made it near impossible to tell where they were dropping, so when the time came, it seemed like everyone was simply giving it their best guess.

Alix landed a little harder than she'd planned to, smacking the side of her hip against the ground with a thud, but she recovered quickly.

After freeing herself of her parachute and stumbling to her feet– which was not an easy task in civilian clothing– Alix jogged to catch up with Lieutenant Nixon, who was already several strides ahead of her.

"You’re clear on the mission, targets, and cover story, correct?” he asked as she approached, his Italian almost as flawless as her own. “Because if you have any last minute questions, now is the time.”

Alix took a moment to ponder, running though everything she’d read in the past couple days, before asking,

“If we’re supposed to be the children of a Swiss-Italian socialite, then why did the SOE change our father’s surname to French? It was De Rossi before, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Nixon agreed. “But they wanted to give us an out. So they made the mother’s maiden name De Rossi and made her married name Duchamps instead. There’s a lot of anti-Italian sentiment going around in Resistance groups lately due to the Italian Campaign and we don’t need any friction. This way, we can switch as needed.”

Alix inspected her false identification papers one final time before tucking them back into the waistband of her trousers with a simple nod.

“Fair enough.”

As the pair approached the outskirts of the city, rustic farmhouses and rows upon rows of brick townhouses stood before them, a sea of orange flags marking each one like bright traffic cones.

“You ready?” Nixon asked out of the corner of his mouth as they both scoured the urban landscape for their Resistance contact.

Alix snorted.

"Ready as I'll ever be."

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technician-the · 7 months

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Hi! First off, thanks for listening! Second, I love your sound! Now for my question... I noticed that you work with hardware instruments - that modular synth and oscilloscope setup is pretty striking. Currently, I do my work on a dinky little computer, and it's all software based. I was wondering: if I got into the world of actual audio equipment, where would you recommend I start?

Hi! Ive really liked what Ive heard of you music so far!

okay, so, I would recommend you start with an interface, A microphone, and a analog mono-synth.

Specifically, a scarlet 2i2, a Shure Sm57, and one of the Behringer desktop monosynths.

You can't move out of the box without an interface, so If you don't already have one, I think the 2i2 is a good choice.

I used a 2i2 years ago in school, and recently bought one for my dad. I've also repaired several, So I can confidently say they are beginner friendly and well made. you could also consider the 4i4, which will give more i/o for analog effects (pedals, ect)

Having a microphone is incredibly useful, even for electronic musicians. you can make your own samples, record vocal hooks, use a vocoder, ect ect.

the Sm57 is both standard for instrument recording, and essentially indestructible. it is also cheep, and with a foam windscreen the 57 is an acceptable vocal mic.

My first hardware synth was a behringer model-d, which I LOVE. it's very well made, sounds very good, and is an authentic reproduction of the vintage unit its based on.

I have since also gotten the 2600, k2, and td3, and I am happy with all of them. I believe any of those units could make a great first hardware synth, depending on the sound a person was going for.

I personally don't use any hardware samplers, digital sequencers, or standalone keyboard controllers, all of my music is done with a DAW. So I dont/cant recommend anything along those lines.

hope that helps! :)

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embervoices · 1 year

Text

Brain Fog Song

I wrote this song years ago. The lyrics have shifted and expanded over time. I haven't gotten to record it yet, but I shared the lyrics today with a friend, and realized folks here would appreciate it, too:

Pain fog, brain fog get me off the floor Nerves fire, I tire just a little more

I can't sleep through the itching, I can't sleep through the pain And when I finally get to sleep I'm sleeping through the day! The bed's too soft, the chair's too hard, the shower's made of knives It makes me wonder how it works in other people's lives.

With pain fog, brain fog I'm done before I start Can't breath, just leave Before I fall apart I know - You don't believe me I know - You think it's easy Nothing you can percieve Must make you believe I'm making-believe This

Pain fog, brain fog who invented this? can't think, one drink now I'm getting pissed

I woke up feeling like I have a hangover and flu If I keep waking up like this what am I gonna do? My doctors don't believe me, and my friends just think I'm sad But who would want to hear me cry about the life I had?

Pain fog, brain fog Yet another pill Lines pale, words fail No one's really ill

You think I'm in it for the pills? The pills are half the pain With pills I'm dodging suicide, without them I'm insane The first one makes me nauseous, and the next one makes me fat I need the third one just to sleep, but on it I'm just flat I know you don't accept it You think I overslept, it Makes me want to give up I'm not making up What's waking me up It's

The pain fog, brain fog Another day in hell Your nice advice Some trick to make me well.

So exercise will make it hurt, or make it hurt less how I'm supposed to exercise is anybody's guess It's like I'm always angry, that's just what I have to do To build up any energy so I can push on through

The pain fog, brain fog Oh god, just let me die For now somehow I'll smile another lie

I know no one can cure this. Who knows how I'll endure this? I'm at the end of my rope Maybe I can hope There's some way to cope with pain fog...

#pain fog #brain fog #song #lyrics #my work #I wrote this

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the-firebird69 · 9 days

Text

There are several things going on and one of them is just abject poverty his people don't care to do anything and make any money and do anything positive make changes get things they need they're just sitting around waiting for some sort of hand out that will never occur. And it's true we know about it and apparently they know that's the way it's going here. There are reasons for them to distribute the funds that they owe to our son first

-first and Paramount is that they are getting pressured from all sorts of people to do so hang on

-secondly those that were kicked out want them to do it to get them kicked out and they said if we get him this then we get kicked out and they don't believe it and they say they're going to and they don't and they say we stopped you and it goes on and on

-another reason is that technically they're breaking the law because they don't pay and if they know about it and a lot of them get fired because they see it and they don't pay or they trying change the record erroneously and they're getting fired a lot of them and yeah after a while there won't be anyone but that won't be for years at this rate even with all this stuff going on no that's one thing that's happening people cannot stand them anymore and it's extortion they did figure it out too and against pseudo empire foreigners us they want to extort stuff so kind of overrides the other reasons they say they haven't gotten anything so you have to prove it and we are others are too

-in his meanderings our son and sometimes daughter have figured out that if they pay out from social security something happens and we know about it and we know what the code is and it is to pursue those of different races and mixed races and people who are have messed up DNA and they don't want that and it is not really now this group is very large maybe issuing a hit against themselves they say and against minority warlock and minorities and by getting him funds and we have people on government support too but we did say this it needs to be lit up a little bit and take a look and see what you're doing these people who are running it have wasted their time doing anything and I'm not paying their people and they're not giving them bonuses and anything else

-if they paid our son he was saying he's our people and they be paying theirs in gaps and say it was real and think it kind of prove it cuz they really don't do anything and there's a whole bunch of gaps because they always make you wait and they were others there doing that so a lot of it is legitimate you can start with that and then start peppering it in and it's kind of tough there's so many and they don't want to do that and we've talked about it for 2 years solid

-another way is if they were to arrest those who are not doing it properly and going after their conspirators their groups and make large arrests and big nets and yeah it's ridiculous you're never going to go anywhere and do anything and people are looking at the problem saying it's too trumpsters and they find out it's not just them it's a bunch of pokey losers and they work for the higher ups and their bunch of s*** having a fight thinking one side will win by all of them being mean but this method is risky and that it exposes the issue and the issue is that they don't feel like paying it out at all but it has been done and quite often recently so it really is getting out I guess that they're not doing anything with it they don't want any security in in the masses or social security they call it which is absolute IDC they're the ones who receive these checks mostly their own people are mad let me see them with robots and ai and it's not there computer program so they're angry and you have Jesus Christ and Mary came back and others they be running it so they try and go after them all the time to kill them

-there's another reason that they would pay it out is if they had to try and move him so far they don't have to and it's taking a while there won't be as long as people think they went out there to fight over possible thorium and lost and died large armies of them and now they're being sought out globally and they're being killed

-and it is also a matter of timing the empire plans on disproofing it to dispersing it to our son and to try and find us and to go after corners and minority morlock and morlock but they're not there yet and they're supposed to get help from others and our son and daughter for free it didn't happen now they're up against the wall and we hear rumors that they might not even go through with it so we have to use force on all of them except foreigners and they have a reason to do it

+ what's happening now the pseudo empire is getting beaten up by the morlock in the rings even though they lost the forces there are beat up and they're going to get beat up tonight and the hardware and stuff will be taken away the max are taking it away too they don't like these folks and what they're doing here is gross and foreigners with the max missing most of their fleet they are not likely to pay out money to our son since they think it's uswho has it further they're trying to cut off social security to a lot of people and have nothing get to people and we are out there pulling these Max in and getting information a lot of it is very valuable and we're going to start taking their bases over underground and topside they've had their time to talk out loud and flab and foreigners are starting to get to them and the clothes took over 400 laser bases and it's precedent and we should go for the jugular while we can and he and she said that last night I put it forwards and they said you're right they look weak and they don't seem to care just like these morons

-that's a heck of a pile of people against you for having anything these people are dog s*** and only to be executed you're f****** losers and I tell you there's a ton of them they're running around circles like it's Halloween saying that they're awesome because they look like someone else for 20 minutes and you can't hold it then they have scoliosis the bones break and then in the hospital for a day and they're better than anybody else at it and they don't have a fleet pretty soon we hate them there are other reasons for it to be paid out but the foreigners will do it and will do it once these guys are held a day and it will draw the max out who are going to end up sitting there like you said it's did just as these idiots did

More shortly and it's a good and powerful announcement it is something to be afraid of these Max need to go none of them are going to help society they need to be cut out of almost everything in the pseudo empire is furious as if we don't have an accident of anything you pieces of s*** and our son has been suggesting to go for the Air supply and they agree they didn't even threatened that might change things

Thor Freya

Olympus

So he's saying an Air supply song to Michael too and he got up and he said the man was brilliant and he talked to the big guys then he talked to the idiots and he said we have a problem here and this might be a solution and it might be what Moonraker is all about but you don't have the gumption to do anything and there's no air intakes right now so they got really mad and they said we know where some are they said there aren't any that's why it's the air supply and it said there must be air going out of the bunkers and into the cavern and out of the cavern so they said oh this tunnels and yeah he said a little but really this is what it is so he got really excited and they start working on it and then he said these guys have been isolated near thorium you thought we had it and you know we don't and also this madness they're going mad and they're going to get angry they hardly flinched when their fleet disappeared and just want to be mean and extort and think it works

I was in the top part of this the wow this is great

Hera

Zues

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brooklynsummers · 4 months

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Black trans woman/singer-songwriter trying to sell my music to raise money for safer apartment

I'm a black transgender woman and singer-songwriter trying my best to promote and sell what I believe is the best song I've ever written, performed and recorded. I also mixed and mastered it myself. It's called "Be W/U" and I'm hoping to raise enough money to move into a safer apartment in a more trans-friendly area that's about 25 miles away. I've been alone for the past 4 years stemming from family rejection and I've just been displaced living in motels and hotels and once in a homeless shelter for trans women in Los Angeles. Last year I finally moved into my very first apartment and it's been very painful, to say the least. I've been harassed and bullied by the upstairs neighbors constantly and though I've complained to the landlord countless times, they've done absolutely nothing to help me. I've gotten chased out of the grocery store twice by transphobic lunatics and I had to quit my job after being attacked by a mother/daughter duo after correcting the mother, who intentionally kept misgendering me very sarcastically. I had to end up running in the back of the store and locking myself in the bathroom. To add insult to injury, my manager refused to ban them from coming back in the store. This area is not a trans-friendly area and my manager let me know just how much he cared by refusing to ban these people so they could have just came back in at any time for a round 2. This is not a trans friendly area and I was afraid to press charges. I'm already 3000 miles away from home and it's scary enough trying to just co-exist. I ended up quitting, scared to go back in the store. My manager just did not care about making sure his employee was safe. I was super offended when he told me he wasn't gonna ban them. It's been difficult to find another job and the past few interviews I had ended abruptly after they would inquire if I've used another name in the past 10 years. That would force me to have to reveal to them I had an old name but I now have a new legal name and gender change because I'm actually a transgender woman. That would cut the interviews short and I never received any call backs. The past few years have been painful, but God has kept me safe this whole time. My trans sister was murdered last August and I've still been trying to cope with that. She was the only friend I had. I was sexually assaulted and diagnosed with PTSD as a result and I've been trying to cope with that too. There are no trans support groups in this area and I'm beyond fed up with being here. It's been difficult finding another job so I figured I would try to see if I might can sell my song and raise the money to leave. It's a long shot but I need to raise $10,000 to move to a better area in this LGBT community not too far from here, get an apartment and pay at least 4 months rent in advance, which will give me plenty of time to acquire a job where I'm working around more people who can relate to me. I don't drink, smoke or do any drugs, I don't hang out and I never go outside after dark. I'm not sexually active in any kind of way and have no desire to be, so there's been nothing to "numb the pain" sort of speak. Holidays and birthdays have all been very lonely and depressing so I also plan to get a puppy and a cat so I won't be so alone. I'm sure that would do wonders to help my mental health. I'm just really hoping I can have your support. Please share this, click the link and listen to my song, donate and help me to finally live and work in peace. I believe in this song. I think it showcases my singing and writing skills and my skills as an engineer, all self-taught. Thank you for reading this. God bless you.

Cashapp:$earlyberries

Venmo:Brooklyn-Summers-1

#transgender #transgender women #trans pride #lgbt pride #transgirl

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danidanialsblog · 8 months

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noxshade · 10 months

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For the Record.

This is about my fanfiction, so I don't know why I feel weirdly anxious about this.

So I just posted chapter 32 of Things You Cannot Forget, and it had some issues. I sort of swerved into this super-fanservicey crossover territory that made no sense in the story, but satisfied the nerd in me.

I sort of knew going in that it would be a leap from the rest of the story, but the real problem is that it was done mostly to amuse me. Which is fine, it is just fanfiction, but I want to make a cohesive story that flows naturally. The fic itself is already a crossover of two different series, it doesn't need me hinging major plot points on references to further other works.

So surprise, surprise, it was not a terrific chapter. It's not a piece of writing I'm not proud of, but it's also I realized I had made some pretty big writing errors and just introduced shit that was of no consequence to fill time when I should be moving towards the conclusion of this story. After getting feedback from a few different sources, I decided to totally re-write the offending scenes. Not all of it is different (the intro and outro scenes are almost untouched), but the middle parts where I dump SMT and Lovecraft lore with little-to-no explanation was Not Great.

All in all, I do like the new chapter much better. It flows better, it focuses on the right things, and it feels more in tone with the rest of the fic. I do want to keep the old chapter up somewhere, and a random ass Tumblr post is as good a repository for this as any. So below the break is the original version of chapter 32, titled Sand Dune.

After a day to recover, the Phantom Thieves reconvened at Leblanc, with the intent of exploring the bottom of Mementos. Makoto, ever the stickler for efficiency, pointed out that there were a few requests they could handle while they plumbed the depths.

“I’m surprised that there’re any requests at all,” Ryuji said, scrolling through the Phansite. “Figure’d Maruki would have gotten all these desires sorted.”

“There are some things even he can’t fix,” Sumire said, her tone worried as she also scrolled through the page. “But these requests are really dire.”

“Some of it might actually precipitate from Maruki’s perfect world,” Akechi commented. “This mother who abandoned her child might be fulfilling her ideal life. Or perhaps Maruki’s brainwashing just missed a detail or got a wire crossed in her mind.”

“Do you send calling cards for these little missions?” Rin asked, standing behind the counter and staring up at the jars of coffee beans.

“No,” Haru explained. “Futaba-chan usually just messages the target in the real world. We found that method simpler and just as effective, provided they don’t have a Palace.”

“Then Chika was right,” Rin said, turning back to the group.

“Your friend?” Yusuke asked.

Rin nodded. “She said that a bunch of people claimed they got a calling card after posting on the internet. She didn’t believe any of them.”

“Wait…” Ryuji said, leaning back in the booth, staring at the ceiling. “Does this Chika go to Kosei?”

“Yes,” Rin answered. “She’s a super-Phangirl. Runs the school newspaper. Or maybe she did. I haven’t been able to check in Maruki's world.”

“Is she datin’ a Shujin boy with short black hair?” Ryuji asked.

Rin thought for a moment. “Yes. They met in Hawaii.”

“Huh. And here I thought Mishima was just lyin’,” Ryuji said, then explained: “He said he had a girlfriend he was spendin’ Christmas with when I texted him, and I called him out, but he said she was a Kosei student, and a Phangirl. I just kinda figured he made’er up. I was going to ask Yusuke about it, but then we got all caught up in this bullshit.”

“Mishima with a girlfriend…” Ann mused. “I guess the world is just full of surprises.”

“I think we should get going, if you’re all quite done gossiping,” Akechi said, a familiar venom in his voice. Akira reluctantly agreed, and they gathered their things and took the train to Shibuya, then passed into the Metaverse and down into Mementos proper. They all gave Rin and Sumire a run-down of Mementos, and answered the odd question that followed. Akira gave a nod to Lavenza, who stood by the door to the Velvet Room, still invisible to the others. They noted the gray, metallic strands that snaked across the ceiling, so similar to what they had seen in Maruki’s lab.

“That has to be the good doctor’s work,” Yusuke said, gesturing up as they all sorted out items and equipment.

“It’s certainly new,” Haru commented. “Oracle, can you scan it?”

Futaba looked all across the pattern of material, her goggles humming slightly. “Nothing special. Whatever he’s doing with this, we’re so far away that my Persona can’t pick up anything. If we follow them deeper, we might get some clues.”

“Well, they will probably lead back to the Prison, if what he told Witch is true,” Ann said.

They finished their preparations, and Morgana was eager to show the two newcomers his amazing transformation, but when he bounced to the ground in van form, neither seemed that surprised or enthused.

“Really? Nothing?” Morgana whined at Sumire’s quiet ‘Oh,’ and Rin’s stone-faced reaction.

“With everything that’s happened, and everything we’ve seen, I guess a talking cat turning into a talking automobile just isn’t surprising,” Sumire admitted. Morgana moaned his disappointment.

Rin was quiet, her eyes squinting behind her mask. “Does the air conditioning smell like cat breath?” she asked, finally.

“Wha- No!” Morgana protested.

“A little bit, if we drive for too long,” Makoto added.

“Are the seat cat fur or cat tongue texture?” Rin continued.

The headlights that served as Van-gana’s eyes bulged, and the purring engine seemed to sputter before he responded. “Gross! They’re fine leather, I’ll have you know.”

“It’s not fine at all,” Yusuke commented. “It's passable, at best.”

Rin didn’t seem to notice, and continued her barrage of questions: “Do you have to eat or fuel up? How does your exhaust work?”

“It just works, okay?!” Morgana shouted back, becoming increasingly flustered.

“Do you get hairballs in your engine?” Sumire asked, joining the inquiry.

“Just get in!” Morgana huffed, rearing up back, then back down on his front tires, as if putting a foot down. “Jeez.”

They all piled in, only to find it cramped with their two new members. Eventually, Makoto opted to step out of the van, and ride on her Persona, which was newly awakened into the vehicle Agnes. Akira took Morgana’s wheel, and the two of them descended into the depths.

After a few minutes of driving and some light banter made awkward by the cramped interior, the Thieves arrived at the entrance to what used to be the Prison of Regression. The gray metallic threads had been woven into the fabric of Mementos, and they had grown thicker as they descended, eventually looking more like roots of a plant. They passed the enormous black stone slabs that marked the beginning of the Prison and disembarked from their modes of transport. The area beyond the entrance was no longer an overwhelming red, but a pale blue color; not at all dissimilar to Maruki’s laboratory. They found the panopticon-like temple not far from the entrance. Instead of the veins of red desire and a enormous red chalice, the space was now filled with cables and wires; with massive lenses and blue floodlights.

“I think we can safely assume Doctor Maruki is behind this change,” Makoto said as she gazed about at the lines of neon cyan and reflective metal that criss-crossed the space. Akira looked up the thread of gold woven into sheets of wires and fiber-optics that held camera lenses the size of large trucks above them, each shifting its internal mechanism in a way that made Akira feel distinctly… observed.

They scaled the root-tentacle-cables down the space, past the now-empty cells and down to the floor of the space. A massive pillar of neon cables rose from the floor, then split apart into separate, glowing streams of energy, bounced between hexagonal plates and leading away from the entrance, to a new hallway at the back.

“This is almost certainly the ‘lynchpin’ Lady Elizabeth mentioned,” Morgana said as they approached.

Akira looked at the structure that had been created… or perhaps grown? It struck him that this was a particularly powerful location: the nexus of thought in Tokyo. From what Elizabeth had said, they were not the first to fight a mysteriously powerful cognitive being. This space had either been created by the Holy Grail or had created the Grail in turn, and now Maruki had been drawn to it by his own Persona, if Rin had interpreted his words correctly. What other beings might it draw from the Sea of Souls or beyond?

“So all the threads he wove through Mementos are anchored here?” Yusuke asked, glancing about. Akira was also shocked by the transformation the space had endured. He recognized most of it, including the plaques on the ground with the Latin names of the deadly sins on them. They had fought the Holy Grail here. They had defeated Yaldabaoth here, in a way.

“Not quite, Inari,” Futaba corrected, scanning the mass of cables and metallic mesh. “It’s the other way around. They don’t converge here; this is where they begin: the stuff we’ve seen all around Mementos starts here and spreads like roots.”

“This must be what he made on Christmas,” Rin said, staring up at the space, her eyes lazily following the glowing lines of the cables.

Ryuji wandered closer and gave the cables a smack with his bat, to no effect. “Doesn’t seem like we can cut it off here,” he said.

“It all looks really similar to his Persona,” Ann said. “If he created this, it makes sense.”

“Meaning we probably have to deal with Maruki to get rid of it and separate the two dimensions,” Akechi added.

“It seems that he may have expanded the space since we were last here,” Haru said, having walked to the side. She gestured to the hole in the wall where the lines of energy were directed out, there were a series of escalators out of the space now. They all circled the central structure with her and approached the dark moving stairs. “I doubt the escalators were something the Holy Grail decided to include.”

“You never know,” Rin said, as they stepped on the moving stairs and traveled beyond the panopticon. The area behind that looked like another floor of Mementos, but… infused with Maruki’s Palace. The subtle white glow, the posters talking about happiness, the blue-veined metal roots burrowed into the ceiling. The Metanav buzzed in Akira’s pocket and notified him of the new area they had uncovered as they did, and a massive new section appeared on the map, one that had them ascending, but on a new path, parallel to the original descent.

“And having reached the bottom of the Inferno, we must climb our way to Purgatorio,” Akechi commented. From the looks other Thieves gave, it seemed only Makoto, Yusuke and Akira had understood his reference to Dante’s work, but Akira’s rebuttal was cut off as a toy car honked its way up the escalator, trailing balloons. The tiny Jose waved at each of them, driving his one-child car.

“Hello, Jose,” Ann greeted with a wave.

“Oh, hello,” he commented to the Thieves. “Are you exploring this new area too?”

“We have some business here,” Akira said, glancing over to see Sumire utterly lost, and Rin tilting her head. “Have you been following us, Jose?”

“No, but I thought it might be a good idea to try this area’s new flowers,” he said. “I’ll see you later!” He honked the car’s toy-like horn again, then sped off down the train tracks.

“Anything else I need to know about this crazy place?” Sumire asked. “This is so weird, it’s like Alice and Wonderland,”

“Alice in Wonderland,” Akechi corrected. “The mental world is bound to not make sense from our rational perspective. That child is no stranger than any Shadow.”

“Why does he have yellow eyes like Elizabeth and Margaret?” Rin asked, to which Akira simply shrugged.

“I don’t really think it’s any of our business,” Akira said. Rin seemed to accept that, and they set off into the new layer of Mementos that the Metanav had labeled the “Path of Da’at.”

They found the targets of the requests with relative ease and handled them. As they ascended the floors of the path, the Shadows grew more and more powerful, each battle chipping away at their resources. New, strange Shadows appeared; not just the ones from Maruki’s Palace and the Qliphoth World, but others; ones that had no interest in negotiation. There were pairs of Obsidian Gargoyles with unnaturally long arms and no faces that hovered in midair, along with bright red crustaceans with wings that Al Azif called Crimson Fungoides. They each had odd, bizarrely powerful attacks that caught the Thieves off-guard, but the hardest fight was the pack of five dog-like Shadows they fought close to the top, each called Canine of Corners. They were oddly immaterial creatures, each with a long, bladed tongue and their solid outlines trailing away into geometric, fractal smoke.

They stopped to rest on an empty floor right before the end. Akira passed out snacks, coffee and medical supplies. The climb had been pretty taxing.

“What’s with these new Shadows that don’t wanna talk?” Ann asked as she helped Rin with an energy drink.

“They all feel like those bizarre things we fought in the warehouse,” Haru commented. Akira shared a brief glance with Rin, neither wanting to bring up that they had discussed this exact scenario.

They packed their snacks and moved on. The further they moved into the Path of Da’at, the more Mementos resembled Maruki’s lab. Eventually, following one final set of escalators, the Thieves found themselves in a large, metallic room. Glowing cables snaked back and forth across the floor, all feeding into a large glass tube that rose all the way to the extremely high ceiling. There were futuristic workstations all around, each with a holographic screen that showed some part of Mementos. The group surmised that they had reached the heart of Maruki’s data-gathering effort. Futaba moved to try and see what could be done about it, but from behind them, they heard someone walking in. They turned to see a human figure approaching. Yusuke and Ryuji readied their weapons, and Akira even caught Makoto pulling the hammer back on her revolver, but when they could see who it was, they were all surprised.

“Lady Lavenza?” Morgana asked. The small girl approached them with a smile on her face, her expression calm.

“I thought you could use some assistance in this matter Trickster,” she said, bowing slightly. Her yellow eyes flicked between the different members of the Thieves. “This place has become exceedingly dangerous, after all.”

“I thought…” Akira began. “What changed? I thought this world was too taxing for you and your siblings to manifest. Why-”

“It’s not her,” Rin said, taking a step forward. Lavenza stopped short, her smile dropping to worry.

“Your confusion and distrust is expected, but-” Lavenza began.

“Witch is right,” Futaba cut her off, her goggles glowing a faint red as she scanned the short figure. “It’s not Lavenza. She and her sister registered like Mona. This is some kind of Shadow.”

‘Lavenza’ dropped all pretense, the emotion sliding right off of her face. Her kind yellow eyes suddenly looked dead, and her voice changed to one of an indeterminate gender, but with a Shadow’s distortion. “You all continue to surprise me. I settled on this form after much debate as the most trustworthy and the least suspicious, and you still saw through it.”

A dark haze began to gather around the thing that looked like Lavenza. In a blur, its form changed to Sojiro with yellow eyes, then to Sae, then to Wakaba, then finally to Maruki in his old lab coat and sandals. The Shadow stared at them from behind his glasses and flop of curly hair.

“Good thing we’re not that stupid,” Akechi said, drawing his serrated blade. “I assume you’re some security measure Maruki put here to try to protect this area?”

“You are very wrong, distorted echo,” the Shadow said. Akira raised an eyebrow at the term it used for Akechi, but pushed past it. “I am here of my own free will, as the doctor’s goals and mine align.”

Rin’s eyes narrowed and she shifted in place, brushing her combat sandals on the metal floor. “If you’re here to stop us, then you’re too late,” she said.

“Far from it,” it replied. “You are too late to stop the world that is to come.” It darkened, abandoning the shape of a human, growing to monstrous size and adopting a new form.

“I prefer to use intermediaries for this kind of base violence,” it said, its voice deepening and growing in volume. “But you have defeated the other roadblocks I created. So I shall show you all the truth.” Its form resolved into a massive, three-legged monster. Its head was nothing but a mouth, shrouded by tendrils and contorted into a permanent scream, its head a wriggling, serpentine tentacle. Blue orbs dotted its black body as its green-tinted hands dripped with dark oil.

The entirety of the Phantom Thieves lined up against the creature Futaba’s Persona labeled the Moon Howler. Cornered as they were, it would be hard to not use the whole group in battle.

Looking back on what Akira would remember of this battle later, he would pinpoint that as their mistake.

“Hahaha! Perhaps the time for pawns has not yet passed after all!” it boomed, then raised its hands and unleashed a deep magenta pulse of energy from its gaping mouth, its shroud of tentacles parting. Akira recognized a status effect attack, but his fears were soon exceeded as Ryuji turned and swung at Akira with his mace. It was a brainwash attack.

“No! It got Skull!” Futaba shouted over their mental link from within her Persona. “And Queen, Noir and Fox!”

Ryuji branshied his weapon again, trying to bring it down on Akira’s head. Akira blocked with his dagger as he saw the entire team descending into chaos. Ann was desperately dodging a series of ax swings from Haru, Morgana and Sumire were trying to restrain Makoto as she thrashed about wildly, and Akechi squared off with Yusuke in careful sword duel. Akira looked back into Ryuji’s eyes, only to find nothing there, just a dark void.

“Skull!” Akira shouted, trying to hold back Ryuji’s attack. “It’s me! Snap out of it! It’s just another trick!”

Rin ran full-tilt at Ryuji, tackling him off Akira, and quickly putting him on a kind of leg-lock where she held both his arms behind his back with her legs. Akira was momentarily impressed by her ingenuity, but looking over the internal battle tearing his team apart refocused him on the threat: the Shadow.

“I’m working on something to help, Joker,” Futaba said. “But… It's fighting back. This isn’t just another Brain Jack. This Shadow, it’s different.”

Akira summoned his metallic angel Persona Sandalphon to blast the Moon Howler with a bless attack, but it just laughed at him.

“You face me alone, Akira Kurusu?” it asked. Joker reeled back. How on Earth did this Shadow know his name? “Yes, I know you. I am the darkness of the human heart. I know all humanity, and I know your soul. Nothing you will do here can possibly matter. Free will is an illusion. You think you have escaped the doctor’s prison, but there is no freedom, only larger and smaller cages.”

“You’re wrong!” Akira shouted. “I know we can make a difference. We can’t… we can’t…”

“Fail?” it said, completing his thought. “Hahaha! You already have. I have seen it. This world is one of many, and I have seen the world where you fall. In this, and all others. Nothing you do can ever matter, because in the future of another world, you have already made the opposite choice. There is no hope!”

“That’s bullshit!” he and Futaba shouted together.

“Don’t hit us with that ‘multiverse’ crap, you overgrown tripod!” Futaba said.

“I don’t care about other timelines- I’m still here, and I’m still going to stop you!” Akira shouted. He swapped Personas over to the robed and spear-wielding Odin, who called down lighting on the Shadow. It seemed to injure it, but only a tiny fraction.

“No, you can’t,” the Moon Howler taunted. “Your mind already cracked when it touched oblivion. Let me show you the futility of your actions.”

The Shadow raised its hand at Akira, and suddenly his mind was assaulted again. He screamed and doubled over as images and sensations crashed through his mind. He felt burning heat, smelled decay, and could taste the void. He saw Tokyo. A dozen different Tokyos; each with something terribly wrong with them. The red-veined Mementos Fusion they had averted was there, but then there were more. One where a yellow fog shrouded the entire city as a multi-colored eye gazed down as the citizens slowly disintegrated into mist, then one where the people on the street were replaced with crystal coffins as the moon grew larger and larger in the green-blue sky.

He tried to shut them out, keep his wits about him and remember the techniques for mental control that Maruki had taught him, but the screams of an entire city dying filled his ears. He saw Tokyo turned inside out, the souls of its inhabitants consumed to birth a new god as angels and demons warred over the sand-blasted hellscape that the city had become. Then a chillingly un-fantastical vision of Tokyo: missiles raining down and vaporizing the city in a mushroom cloud.

Each of these visions were compressed with dozens more, like individual frames of a film that made no sense, but played so loud as to drown out all else.

“This is no time to keel over, Joker!” he heard Akechi say at the same time he saw the world end. Vision, after vision, after vision cascaded over him. He wanted to scream; he might already have been screaming, but he couldn't hear his own voice over the thousands of lives being ended as Maruki smiled at him and the world faded away into the roar of the void.

“Joker!” he almost heard Futaba shout. “Something happening… I can’t see… I can’t…”

The rest of what she said was lost as Akira’s entire world became the thrumming laughter of a malicious god.

---

Futaba Sakura looked around herself. She was supposed to be at the bottom of Mementos, supporting her team, but she wasn’t. Instead, she was standing at the top of a ruined building, in a lifeless, ruined Tokyo that was buried by sand.

Her mind raced as she looked around. Her goggles were gone, but she was still in her Metaverse outfit, with its skin tight bodysuit and neon green lines. She gazed out over the city around here. There wasn’t a single living thing in sight. The building she was on was slightly askew, leaned up against a massive hill of sand that was so tall that the top of it spilled over onto the roof, just a bit. All around her were the sand-blasted ruins of Tokyo. Gone was the sea, gone was the horizon, like the city now existed in a permanent sandstorm. She could see the Tokyo Skytree past another row of office buildings, partially destroyed.

She tried to think back. She’d been trying to support her teammates after several of them had succumbed to a powerful brainwashing spell. She had just prepared a special cleansing effect, but then her vision had begun to dim, and Al Azif had warned about… what was that warning it had given her? “Dimensional…” something. Futaba swore, not used to not remembering something. And now here she was, trapped in some kind of dream or hallucination. She was still not quite over spending a week with her dead mother, and now whenever the hell this Shadow was had trapped her in another illusion. Al Azif had given it another name beyond Moon Howler, something Egyptian-sounding. Was that related to the sandy expanse before her? There were no pyramids here, just her memories of her own tomb, and a blazing, dry heat.

Was there anything here? It felt like a post-apocalyptic landscape, like those Australian action movies with the cool cars. Was this nothing more than a figment of her dying imagination? Or had she been-

“Hello, Oracle.”

Futaba spun around to see a person on the roof with her, where there had been no one else moments ago. He looked to be a man of perhaps twenty or thirty. He was tall, with an slender, almost androgynous figure and well-coiffed blond hair that was carefully slicked, but feathered in the back. He was dressed in an immaculately tailored double-breasted black business blazer, with an orange tie and spotless black dress pants and shoes. Everything about him was far too clean and slick to fit in with the sandy surroundings. Futaba focused on his eyes, and saw that he was heterochromatic: his left eye was a deep red, and his right was a rich blue.

“Who are you?” Futaba found herself almost shouting. “Where am I? Are my friends… Did you do this to me?”

“You have so many questions, but only some of them are relevant,” he replied, his voice smooth and even. He was unnaturally calm. Futaba knew instantly that he wasn’t human. He couldn’t be. If she was even still alive.

If any of this was even real.

“My name… well, I suppose you can call me Louis,” the man said, scratching his chin with a ringed finger. “As for where you are, it’s Tokyo. But not your Tokyo, in either the past or the future. You might call it a… possible Tokyo.”

“I know what a parallel universe is,” Futaba responded, slightly annoyed. “I’ve seen movies before. You dragged me to some apocalyptic timeline… for what?”

Louis smiled. “To save you,” he said, turning and walking down the slope of sand piled against the building. Futaba was annoyed, but hurried after him, sliding past him down the bank of sand.

“Are my friends safe?” Futaba asked as Louis finished walking down the slope, the sand sliding right off his dress shoes.

“That depends on a great many things, Oracle,” he said. “They were attacking each other, and at the mercy of an Outer God, so I would say no, but you were preparing to aid them. So perhaps the answer is yes.” Futaba was quickly burning though what little patience she had. This cryptic super-being was more annoying than any Shadow they had faced, but she had to go along with him if she wanted answers.

“What do you want?” Futaba asked.

“I want a certainty of outcomes,” Louis said as he passed Futaba and kept walking. Futaba followed after him.

“What outcome do you want to make certain of?” she asked.

“Your victory,” Louis said. “Your world is one I have always treasured, because He was unable to influence it. And even though He is unable to directly affect your world, His design and intentions can still manifest. Patterns propagate, regardless of intent. You handily defeated His shadow in the Grail, but now this doctor with the Idiot God in his heart is trying to carry on a dream that will bring about a vision of the world very close to His.” Louis stopped and looked back at Futaba. “Too close.”

“Can you just skip to the part where you help me?” Futaba asked, frustrated by his rambling.

“My, the children are impatient these days,” he said, snorting a small laugh. “I had to convince Stephen to help me contact you like this, in this imaginary pocket space, and you just can’t wait to leave.”

He kept walking, and Futaba was forced to follow him as he made his way around the ruined city. “Your world is important to me, Oracle. More than you could ever know. But I can see that you are concerned for your friends, so I will keep this brief.” They arrived at a clearing, what might have been the Shibuya crosswalk, buried under sand. It was hard to tell where they were with so many landmarks eroded. “The location you are fighting at in your world is one of immense significance. It can empower lesser, banished Shadows like the unwelcome guest currently making a mess of your group, but it can also allow those outside your world to cross over, if they are powerful or interested. And I am both of those things.”

“Then you can help us fight that… thing?” she asked, remembering the other name her Persona had assigned it. “That… ‘Nyarlathotep’?”

Louis shook his head, his blond hair fluttering slightly. “Each transgression across borders invites a reaction and reprisal. Even I dare not interfere beyond this chat. But this fact can be used against your foe, for he is an interloper. He should not be there. If you can attract the attention of higher powers, then the reprisal he deserves will deal with him and remove him from your world.”

“So I… call his bosses and tell them to come deal with it?” Futaba asked. It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

“If it is helpful to think of it that way,” Louis said. “I can give you a phrase that will summon a being that will ‘deal’ with him. Though it will only work once, and only at your current location, as that is the only location where such a summoning can occur.”

“And you’re sure you can’t come back and help more?” Futaba asked. “You’re clearly some kind of big-shot metaphysical super-boss.”

Louis smiled and chuckled. “My aid and power is available in your world to those who have cultivated the power of the Star. Your Joker can call upon me, but he has chosen to avoid summoning me, as he is frightened of what my power may represent. If you make it out of this mess, tell him this from me: it is not the effect of great power he should be concerned about, but what those with power will do to those without.”

Futaba swallowed hard. That particular sentence felt ominous. The wind picked up and pelted her with sand; she felt it was time to go, but she had one last question to ask.

“Why me?” she said. “Why not tell this right to Joker if you know him?”

“Because I want to minimize my involvement,” Louis said, reaching into the pocket of his blazer. “And you hold the tome of forbidden knowledge in your world, so you are much easier to contact.” He withdrew a small, rigid rectangle of black paper: a business card. He extended it towards Futaba, between his index and middle finger.

Futaba reached a hand out, but felt herself recoil with doubt. “And there are no catches for this help? No fine print?”

“Normally, there would be,” Louis said. “But in this, I offer only knowledge, and I offer it freely. Our objectives align.”

Futaba reached forward again, and tentatively took the black business card from his fingers.

And before she could form another thought, she was gone.

---

Akira’s head felt exceedingly empty. The visions had stopped, as had the screaming from his party. He stood, shaky at first, but was helped to his feet by Ryuji and Yusuke, who had apparently been cured of their brainwash-effect. He looked around, and saw four of the Thieves lined up against the Moon Howler. Morgana, Akechi, Sumire and Ann held the line against a wave of Almighty attacks from the Shadow.

“You feelin’ better, bro?” Ryuji said as he steadied Akira and helped him stand. Rin, Haru and Makoto were a few feet away, hiding behind a computer console and patching each other up with their medical supplies.

Akira was about to respond, when he looked up and noticed that Futaba’s Persona was glowing with… unusual colors. The runes on the underside of the triangle shifted and changed, and Akira could have sworn he heard… chanting? What was happening?

“Oracle, what are you doing?” Akira asked, his throat sore like he had been screaming. (Had he been screaming? He couldn’t remember.)

There was no response as the droning, chanting sound from her Persona and shifting lights reached a fevered pitch. Then, without warning, the metallic triangle stopped and a noiseless pulse of sound emanated from her Persona. Everything in the room stumbled at the sudden lack of noise, even the Shadow. It seemed to look around, its green tentacles writhing. It seemed… shock? Anxious? Akira could hardly be said to be an expert in its body language.

“No!” it shouted. “No human has had that knowledge in a century!” Akira looked back up at Futaba’s hovering Persona, but something else caught his eyes instead: an eye.

On the impossibly high ceiling of the cavernous room they were in, was an eye. A human eye had opened, and it was the size of the entire room. Akira blinked, and it wasn’t an eye anymore, it was a glowing, luminous ball of energy. Akira blinked again, trying to make sense of it, and the ball had multiplied, and not instead of giving off light, they looked like bubbles filled with swirling nebulae and stars. Akira glanced down at his teammates, only to find each of them also staring up at the sight unfolding above them. Akira looked back up only to see even more spheres, but instead of bubbles they now resembled spheres of flesh and blood, with fibrous tendons holding them together and black ichor flowing across their surfaces, dripping upwards.

At that moment, Akira knew what it meant to see something your mind could not comprehend.

The spheres grew and multiplied downward, each time shifting and changing, until the entire space some ten meters above them was occupied by human eyeballs, each wildly swinging about.

Then, each eye turned on the Moon Howler.

The Shadow seemed to shrink under the pressure of the many-eyed gaze. “Guardian-Gate, I-”

You have transgressed beyond your role, Crawling Chaos.

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It was a deafening silence that reverberated in every fiber of Akira’s being.

You can not remain where you are not permitted.

“All-in-One, no!” the Shadow protested. “If this world ends then, our kind may be free again. I have aligned the stars, you need only let me fulfill-”

You will not remain where you are not permitted.

Akira glanced down from the unblinking eyes to see the Moon Howler be rent apart, shredded by invisible forces down the green and black dust.

It didn’t even have time to scream.

The eyes turned to look at the Phantom Thieves. They all tried to prepare themselves for whatever might come next, but Akira still felt exhausted. Instead of any attack or another thunderously quiet voice, the orbs shifted again, rapidly shrinking and multiplying until there was nothing but a sea of light brown specks suspended above them. It was sand, he realized; an inverted sand dune. The sand began to fall in a narrow column in front of all of them, like it was the top of hourglass. The frontline backed away, but they were all too exhausted to put up any real defense if whatever this thing was turned out to be hostile.

The falling sand reshaped itself into a human figure. Tall, but completely obscured by a pure white shroud. As it emerged, Akira noticed Futaba touch down on the ground next to him, her Persona recalled.

“Greeting, children of men,” the white-robed figure said to them, his voice strangely accented, but smooth and pleasant.

“Who are you?” Makoto asked, standing up from behind the console.

“Do you mean to harm us?” Yusuke asked.

“I am called ’Umr At-Tawil by some,” the figure said. “And I mean you no harm. The Crawling Chaos was banished from this world, and as a relation from the other side of what you understand as the Sea of Souls, I was bound to hold him to the law.”

“So that thing is gone?” Akechi said, his sword still drawn.

“And you’re not going to harvest our eyes or anything?” Rin added.

“The Crawling Chaos can no longer access your minds, or the minds of mankind,” the figure said. It made some indecipherable gesture beneath its shroud. “Your destinies are your own to shape.”

And with that, the figure vanished in white mist.

“That was fucked up,” Ryuji said.

Akira agreed. They all wanted to talk, but no-one had much to say. They were all injured from the battle, and Akira could feel that most of them just wanted to get this over with. Futaba hacked the system controlling how Maruki gathered data, which cleared a path forward back in the Palace.

On their way out of Mementos, Futaba slipped Akira a small black business card. There were dark gray characters that looked like Arabic on one side, but it was what was on the other side that shocked him. In silver letters he saw a name:

LOUIS CYPHER The Morning Star

Akira recognized the pseudonym. He swallowed hard and looked back at Futaba, who shrugged at him. “Where did you get this?” he whispered to her.

“I think my Persona gave it to me?” she said, her brow creasing in confusion. “I don’t really know what happened. It’s hard to remember… But something tells me you should have it. Like the star Jose gave us: it feels like it’s for you.”

Akira wondered what force could possibly evade Futaba’s near-eidetic memory, and felt a chill roll down his spine considering that question. He still felt sick from the Shadow’s assault. They’d have to take some time to recuperate. Hopefully things would be smoother for them in Maruki’s Palace.

---

Nyarlathotep is ejected from the Metaverse. His no-quite corporal form that he projects from his exile is spat out on a rooftop in Tokyo, one that overlooks Shibuya. His disguise is failing, so he reverts to an older form: the man with long gray hair and a red suit, the one with the monocle.

How dare that brat call upon the All-in-One? How dare the One-in-All banish him? This is their only chance to return. There is no other way. The Crawling Chaos seethes, rapidly pacing on the deserted rooftop, trying to put together a new plan. He overstepped his bounds, directly confronting Persona-users like that, but he needed to stop them soon. It was a calculated risk, and the math is rapidly changing now. The odds of them being able to overcome the doctor and his expression of Azathoth are too slim. But he needs to hurry. This transgression will attract the attention of his opposite, and in his weakened state, he is no match for Philemon’s tools. If he-

“There you are.”

Nyarlathotep stops as he hears the voice behind him. No, no, this is not the end. Even those who rule over power can be tempted, after all. He turns to see which of them has tracked him down. The man suddenly sharing the rooftop with him is tall, with platinum hair slicked back under a blue cap. He is dressed in a blue outfit reminiscent of an elevator attendant’s, a thick tome with a mauve cover held in his arm.

“You evaded us for some time,” he says, his yellow eyes staring into Nyarlathotep’s illusory ones. “But you must leave. You were defeated and banished. Your interference is unwelcome.”

“You’re not looking at this right, attendant,” Nyarlathotep says. “You’re not thinking of the possibilities.”

“There are no possi-” the man begins, waving a hand.

“You could bring her back,” Nyarlathotep says.

The man freezes.

“Oh yes, Theodore, I know about her”, he continues, sensing opportunity. “I know your sister left her duties when she lost him, but you chose to stay when you lost her. In this world, humans’ hearts are being mended and even the dead may live again. She could return.” The man called Theodore takes a step closer as Nyarlathotep continues: “The barrier between desire and reality has never been weaker. If you stay, keep this world in place, you can finally save her.”

“And what would you know about her?” Theodore asks, his voice low and dangerous. He waves his hand, and Nyarlathotep’s human guise falls away. Where the red-suited man with a monocle stood, now there is a thin humanoid with black, stonelike skin. It has no hands or feet, only sharp claws at the end of its spindly limbs. Small red wings spread out behind it, motionless as it floats just off the roof. There is no face on its head, but black orbs set all around its head are surmounted by a golden crown made of endless spines.

“You are the darkness of the human heart manifested,” Theodore says. “You misjudged their potential when you thought humanity would destroy itself. Because of that, you have failed to grasp why she made the choices she did, because you cannot understand sacrifice. You are selfishness, greed, spite, nihilism and misery, given form. Nothing more.”

“You cannot destroy me,” the mouthless creature says, its voice calmer, more accepting. It knows what comes next. “I am undeniably part of the human heart. I am eternal. Where there is darkness, there are Shadows.”

“And to the shadows you shall return,” Theodore says, opening the book in his arms. “You do not belong in this world.” He thrusts his hand forward, and the crowned creature disappears in a flash.

His quarry finally banished back to beyond the world of humanity, Theodore sighs deeply. He looks over the edge of the roof, to the busy street below, where humanity remains enthralled. Shutting the Crawling Chaos out of the world won’t undo the damage he has done, but now he can do no more.

Theodore feels his arms grow weak. This reality has already worn him down, he can’t handle much more of it. He needs to return to his master and report. Then he and his sisters can return to their duties.

The fate of the world falls to a group of young Persona-users yet again. Perhaps that is how it is meant to be.

Wearily, Theodore opens a door back to the Velvet Room, and disappears.

#NoxContent #fanfiction #cthulhu mythos #archive of my own

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