#gauntlet blaze black 2 run
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Time to meet the rest of the Gauntlet kids!
[February 3, 2023, third part of this conversation]
{Krizste:}
quick rapid fire me the other crazy kids
{Haji:}
N / Nia I'd feel awkward doing a rapid fire for because I only really know my lore for them 😂
But a few things of note:
- She's sometimes called "The Wurm Queen" because early on we had like three notable Wurmple before settling on one that became a Dustox and made it to the Hall of Fame
- Her relationship with Norman is usually portrayed as pretty friendly. This incarnation of him is awkward and doesn't know how to dad, but that's okay because she's such a nature girl she doesn't come home often either. They care but... They're just friends.
- In BB2 because of the mod, all of the Hoenn leaders showed up like you guys saw in Volt White 2. There were jokes that as leader of the region, she probably brought them all with her to help with whatever is going on in BB2.
Some lore has her as literally N since it's her name so she's able to talk to Pokemon and is seriously a Disney princess but much like N, that doesn't mean she won't kick ass if she sees Pokemon being abused.
Her Aggron was named ATM and is sometimes portrayed as a literal machine 😂
Also like with N we seemed to change our team after every town but around Slateport is when we started to stabilize. Possibly because Team Aqua made it clear she needed a set team to take on these guys as her usual "whatever is in the area works" tactic wasn't good for dealing with serious criminals
This sometimes causes her to butt heads with Izzy.
Isabelle Bow aka Ice has a few interpretations for her
All of them have her being a studious and relatively serious young lady though. She's very no nonsense to a point where the main joke with her is her post game team had Giratina, Dialga and Arceus and she totally doesn't believe in gods (despite accidentally creating one in the form of God Fish)
So different lore branches
- The bow aspect made her a contest star and she'll be happy to show that frilly girly girls can still beat your ass.
- A big part of her skepticism is because she works as a paranormal investigator and is out to prove none of this hocus pocus actually exists
- A member of the Interpol on Galactic's trail. Undercover name is Ice while her rival Diamond is more of a friendly fellow agent keeping each other up to speed and up to snuff because these space men are no joke.
- .... Possibly all of the above are true with her being a paranormal investigator who does contests between projects and was recently enlisted by the Interpol to help due to her expertise on disbanding cults if she can just prove Cyrus and this whole 'new world order" is a fraud
The blonde hair in her design came up because the last Animal Crossing game had just been released and people made the connection to the adorable dog secretary Isabel. Combine that with the meme of Isabel and the Doom Guy are friends and she occasionally goes into the Doom world to hunt and stress relief and welp :tppWowee:
Didn't help that we had a Torterra named BFG
Which could be Big Friendly Giant, but also had some portrayals that the tree on its back is a BIG FREAKIN GUN 😂
{Mitzi:}
yes, yes, i should be in bed. quick personal gauntlet kid characterisations:
red: obsessive antisocial glitchmancer/hacker who discovered his original timeline self started an apocalypse cult at age 10 and has never been quite the same since. is exactly as Like That as red and abe, but don’t tell him that
dipper: just wanted to look at plants and it all got a bit out of hand. token sane guy, probably the closest they have to a leader, poor kid
n: n. smiles serenely, befriends eldritch abominations, obeys no law of god or man, possibly immortal. extremely good at wrecking everything while remaining kind and enthusiastic throughout
izzy: discovered she lived in a lovecraft short story and immediately started investing in legendaries. won’t back down, won’t take no for an answer, won’t admit she might not actually be able to do something
reese: flamboyant dresses, acting stardom, and also maybe some plot if she absolutely has to. fought iris purely to steal her dress
esther: look she’s 9. likes hats and (association) football, is friends with an eldritch horror but that’s basically the most unusual thing about her. gonna grow up into an absolutely terrifying adult though, no question
BONUS:
team release the fossil gods: n, esther (kinda)
team do not release the impossibly ancient lovecraftian deities, they will literally destroy the world: red, izzy (when she doesn’t have more pressing things to worry about)
team please stop fighting: dipper
team you literally could not pay me to care about this: reese
{Krizste:}
{Haji:}
But yeah, so the longer version with Reese is Red0 is trying to be edgy and chaotic and darkness and stuff, Reese is literally a natural. Not even trying. S/he ignores the plot in favor of whatever has caught their interest at the time, which ended up being the first (?) Unova host to 100% the PokeStar Studios.
- Also the game did something weird where we got Darkrai to appear before the post game and it became our ace for that run.
- Reese loved fashion and bright lights, I think they'd get along with Yuu in the worst ways possible. Reese doesn't do explosions though, but would probably enjoy the flair if running the catwalk with pyrotechnics.
- There were questions about the relationship with Darkrai, whether Reese was being puppeted for dark purposes or if Reese was the bad influence and now Darkrai is a big name director making some of the worst movies but we love them anyway. Either way, we think the other hosts may have shown up in the post game because Reese was perceived as a threat whether they actually are or not.
{Krizste:}
{Mitzi:}
HOW BAD EACH GAUNTLET KID WOULD BE TO FIGHT, FROM MOST SURVIVABLE TO LEAST:
reese: a lot more collected than her gender presentation would imply, and if you did actually manage to piss her off her immediate recourse would be mean girls bullshit. if you do get into a pokemon battle with her, beware: her signature strategy is cheese
esther: her being friends with a fossil god comes up less often than you might think, she prefers to fight her own battles. if you do manage to hurt her badly enough though, there is that small omnipresent all-but-omnipotent sentient-piece-of-the-universe wrinkle to worry about
izzy: big jump here. izzy’s hobby is strat-o-matic-ing battles with universe-devouring lovecraftian monsters, cross her and you’re basically doomed. best you can hope for is register as an insignificant enough threat she’ll forget you exist after dealing with you
red: look the thing about glitchmancers is that they’re only moderately in control of their crazy powers at the best of times, and sometimes red will even admit that. he’ll either ignore you or make you wish you’d never been born, and you’ll probably not know which is which until all your insides have been swapped with chewing gum
n: oh god. n is even harder to piss off than reese but makes up for that by being (1) an ambiguously human unaging immortal of unclear origin and powers with friends in some very high places and (2) completely unpredictable in every possible way. n follows n rules, n does whatever they want, and n’s been known to bring regions to their knees. i’m honestly not sure what they’re capable of, but i’m sure it’s Bad
dipper: is he hiding some sort of secret rage mode superpower or angsty superpowered dark side? nah. dipper is exactly as kind-hearted and harmless as he appears, a true sunshine boy. you’d have to be a real tool to even think about hurting him
you know who agrees with me about this assessment?
the other gauntlet kids
{Haji:}
The question seems to imply you've already pissed them off, so for me it goes Esther, N, Red0, Dippy, Reese, Izzy. But as you said, the problem with some of these is they aren't so quick to attack. Esther is more likely to get in a fight than Reese, but the image of Dippy being the worst one to upset is because the others will all jump you is amazing 😂
I still find it hilarious with Dippy too because I'm sure most Trainers would look at the squad and go "Go for the tree hugger! He's the weak link!" And then Dippy has a fucking bear and steel giant and other things they probably weren't expecting a simple botanist to have :OMEGALUL:
YOU COME FOR THE TREES, YOU DEAL WITH THE FOREST
Oh and I will note in the branching lore for Reese to save on future confusion, some will say girl, some will say guy so decide your own pronouns. Reese may actually not have any
Or all
That's just a very Reese thing to do
{Krizste:}
reese pronown officially Thon
:^>
{Haji:}
I think I actually remember us joking at one point about Reese trying to physically hold all the pronouns. 😂
{Krizste:}
reese going to abooth with pronown stickers/badges and taking them all and decroating a hat wit hit like roark
{Tranzi:}
i was just thinking of reese as a drag queen but this interpretation is funny so i accept this :Keepo:
{Haji:}
I have him as a drag queen in my head :tppPika:
{Tranzi:}
when reese discovered the beautiful world of nounpronouns it was the time when darkrai actually tried to use dark void on its own owner to prevent world from a catastrophe
:Keepo:
{Mitzi:}
… i generally think of reese as a she/her gay man, but thinking about it yeah, she probably doesn’t give much of a shit
her gender is ✨gorgeous✨
{Tranzi:}
her gender sparkles so much that lil'd is crying in his french corner
:tppWait:
{Haji:}
Oh! Actual last thing I'll say about Reese
The run kinda soured towards the end because in order to beat the game, we had to be the Gauntlet PWT where the devs brought the previous four kids back. ... In a gauntlet... With boosted levels and items... And some "interesting" abilities for the Red and Crystal mons since they didn't have them. And no healing in between. This went on for days(? Certainly felt like it) until we had run out of other stuff to do to cool off from the frustration of losing and most were ready for this to be over with. We even traded in for a Landurus grinded to 100 and still couldn't win. Finally chat got mad enough to go into democracy mode to use healing items and I think we stayed in demo to fight too. Because we knew it could be done but it was so precise that it seemed like one wrong input could cost the whole thing which couldn't be done with the crowd we had for this. And then when we FINALLY win, the devs had put in the original gauntlet with the S1 kids for us to fight as well. I like to think Reese was so pissed by this point they just steamrolled it.
Hilariously, I actually hc that after this experience at the PWT, Reese was so mad at the others after the GKids found out Reese wasn't the world ending threat they thought, (HE was trying to stop THEM), they weren't on speaking terms for years. Reese has been living in Kalos under the name Diantha for some time by the time Esther came around
D has been well acquainted with this sparkle bun for some time now
{Mitzi:}
oh did we mention that reese is diantha? (in gauntlet y, anyway)
reese is diantha
{Haji:}
That was coming up when we got to Esther stories XD
I mean, that's just my hc, but going back to earlier when I said Wikstrom had Red0's team, Diantha had Reese's. Drasna had Izzy, Seibold had Dippy's, and Malva had N's
Some say just go with the game explanation where the E4 got to borrow them, some say the GKids came in during the post game, but like I said, me and a few others like to think the Diantha we see throughout the game was Reese all along
I missed a lot of X so I'll let others explain. A few key points though
- Esther being into sports came up from the Amie mini games iirc. This was the first time we had enough control to legitimately play them.
- Had Sail, which even if some other others had fossils, this was a first for TPP so there's some depictions that Esther may be an Acolyte (like Red is to Helix). Sail is an interesting god because it's usually said to be in charge of relationships; friends, family, lovers, meetings and partings, it's no surprise given how many friends Esther has either. Between the in-game group you travel with and the GKids asking her to join, she's pretty popular.
- notably we have a Ducklet named Fucklet and some tease that Esther doesn't know what that means, others say she totally swears up a storm surprising people given her age.
#twitch plays pokemon#tpp#lorecord archive#gauntlet emerald run#gauntlet platinum run#gauntlet blaze black 2 run#gauntlet x run#red (gauntlet red)#dpk#n (gauntlet emerald)#.iecbw#♀♀r#etr#😫😫w#sail#n (gauntlet emerald) is regular n#♀♀r is... not cis#loremaker haji#loremaker mitzi#loremaker krizste#loremaker tranzi
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Here are some of my silly doodles from the TPP Lore Discord server! I didn’t want to delete them, since I really like them.
I came to the server to learn more about the lore, and I learned that the new host’s name was Yuu.
They described him as a pop-star who was very flashy and fashionable. He has a pretty face too, so it reminded me of Lil’ D, a fashionable host from the X run. I wondered what it would look like if they met, so I made this:
[Image Discription- A young man in a coat and turtleneck sweater, gestures to two outfits. He smirks with closed eyes, saying, “Behold! My amazing outfits…” The first outfit has a coat and pants. The bottom of the coat has two large buttons attached to it with a thunderbolt pattern underneath. On both shoulders, two black striped triangles poke upward. The sweater underneath the coat has two stripes on its neck. The shoes have cotton fluff on the top, with jewels in it. Two jewels sit on the shoe, with stripes leading down. The second outfit has three leaves as the vest’s collar. There is a furry collar behind that looks like flames. It comes with a necklace. The vest has a long tailcoat that looks like leaves. The bottom of the outfit’s pants are folded up to make way for the shoes. The young man on the lower right looks amazed. His fedora leaps out of his head in shock. Next to him is an exclamation point.]
First, we have Yuu showing Lil’ D his outfits. D seems very shocked, but impressed!
These outfit designs were created by “Tranzi72,” a creative artist in the TPP fanbase. Yuu’s first outfit in the upper right was inspired by the designs of Plusle and Ampharos. The second outfit across from it was inspired by the designs of Tropius and Typhlosion.
[Image Description: A young man with blond shoulder length hair, cries out of happiness. He is wearing a purple jacket. He hugs the green vest with the furry flame collar.]
Of course, I imagined that D would love the outfits. So much so, that he would hug one.
The topic of Pokémon inspired outfits came to mind, and I remembered that I tried to make a Mega Charizard X outfit once.
There were many designs, and I can’t believe that this was something I considered:
[Image Description: A grumpy blonde man is wearing a onesie that looks like a black dragon with blue wings, and a blue flame on its tail. He hunches forward with his arms on his hips. Two people laugh in the foreground. The one on the left is colored purple and is wiping a tear from their eye. The one on the right is colored pink and laughs openly.]
Grumpy D in a Charizard X pajama onesie. With guest stars Reese and Yuu, laughing their heads off at how ridiculous it looks…
Reese, from the Gauntlet Blaze Black 2 Run, and Yuu, from the current Grand Colosseum Run, are considered to be one of the more fashionable hosts.
But of course, one could never forget the man who started this whole fashion thing… Napoleon, from the Platinum run!
[Image Description: In the first panel, three people walk in the distance happily. One person is left behind, looking at them. The second panel shows the same person, with an exclamation mark next to him. He has a calm and stoic expression.]
If Yuu, D, and Reese manage to become fashion buddies, why not let Napoleon in the group? He’s as good as them (or maybe even better).
We joked around that he would host a fashion show just to bet on the winners. I think he would secretly bet the most on D, just because he’s family.
[Image Description: A man wearing a blue winter jacket, cravat, and red beret raises a gleaming coin to the sky. He is wearing a determined expression. The text next to him reads, “bets on D because he’s family.” Another man wearing a purple jacket smiles bashfully. The text next to him reads, “D, once he finds out.”]
D would be very grateful for his cousin betting on him (once he finds out, that is). Napoleon’s shy younger brother, Pepe, would be watching from afar, supporting D. He’s very proud.
[Image Description: A man with a shy and friendly expression holds a flag. It says, “Go D!” He wears a winter jacket and cravat.]
And plus, there hasn’t been much art of the family together, so I give you this:
[Image Description: Three men wearing smiles make a heart shape with their arms. The man on the left makes the left side of the heart. The man on the right makes the right side. The man in the middle makes the bottom of the heart. There is a tiny pink heart above them.]
Napoleon, Pepe, and D, all together! They all are very different, but they still are a loving family in the end!
#twitch plays pokémon#nqpppnl#pp#d#twitch plays pokémon platinum#twitch plays pokémon randomized platinum#twitch plays Pokémon colosseum#twitch plays Pokémon blaze black 2#twitch plays Pokémon Xy
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Lost in Space Part 12: Ch 2
Previous
Summary: The fate of the universe will be decided in the final five chapters.
Lost in Space on Tumblr
Lost in Space on ao3
Two pieces. Two halves dropped to what was once an empty, white floor. A golden pool of their blood spilled out from the gash and rippled as my watery eyes met with it. I stepped away, stomach-churning, seeing One’s added reflection. The Lord’s ring and middle fingers pressed against the cigarette and raised it to where their lips should be. Somehow the Lord sucked in its toxic chemicals. A greyish ball spun inside their eye, then seeped out and blew away with a smile.
Something is vibrating from the tension. As I am slowly realizing, those are the tendons from what I thought I killed seconds ago. They’re reconnecting, twisting, and pulling the halves back together. I take a step back. I take another when the revitalized corpse pounces. Its blood seeps back into its body. After a deep-throated cough, the Watcher looks up at me with dirty yellow eyes. The fragments of my sword spun around my arm one moment, and the next, they’re lunging at the ominously silent Watcher who’s sprinting, seemingly teleporting from left to right, without losing eye contact.
Both their whips reappear in their hands and come zipping through the air and at me. I outmaneuver both and am about to respond with a heated ball of rich, golden light, but they vanish.
Looking around the room, I try to sense where the Watcher went. I try focusing to the best of my abilities, but to no avail. So, I wasn’t able to stop the knee to the face, and both straps of electric currents tightly looped around my body, electrocuting and spinning me about as they slid off my frame.
Above me, the reminiscence of the guard’s commander is charging their hand. It glows. Rays shone between their fingers, but my focus turned elsewhere. One mouths that I have thirty seconds left. Looking up at the opposing figure, I tell them, “This isn’t the end, and I’m sorry about that. I wish I could’ve done better than me that brought you here.”
The blazing light disappears from their lowering hand. “I can’t forgive you because I won’t forget.”
“I understand. I don’t think I could either. I am the monster.” Two hands charged, I release a massive energy blast that finally puts to rest the still Watcher. Two summons a shield that absorbs the explosion before it could hit One and Five. The Lord struggled a bit, arms shook, and they were pushed back as they fought to best the roaming energy. When they do, the Lord looks at me with a mix of interest and respect as the both of us are exhausted, I am a lot more so, but it marked the end of my one-on-one fight. The outnumbered fight continued on with the return of hundreds wanting to blast my limbs off, hundreds more wanting to tire me more out with hand-to-hand combat, and eight of them hoping to slit my throat with a solidified, sharpened aura.
I survive it all not because I’m a fighter but because of this cheapened state. So, I don’t take pride in what I’ve done. But I don’t feel disgusted either. With each blink, I can still see and hear them. They’re crawling onto me, piling up, covering the light, pushing me deeper into the emptiness beneath, and moaning in agony. The flames of my gleaming light envelop us, killing not only them but my emotions as well. My vision, too, apparently, because I can see a familiar red-headed figure lifting me up from my collapsed state. She looked like an angel with how the light circled around her edges, softening it too. The blinding, heavenly sight brings me to push myself once again as I reach out towards her. Resting my trembling hand on my love’s face, wiping the tears with my numb thumb, brings her to rest her other hand above mine. It’s warm, unlike mine. For me, it’s only been minutes since the last time we touched, but for her, it’s been years. Her eyes are baggy, and wrinkles are prominent. There’s a thick, white strand of hair at the center of her synthetic red hair. Most associate the color with seduction, but I switch it with blue’s symbolism. It brings me sorrow and tears in my eyes because I left her alone in this confusing place we call the universe for far too long.
Instead of me forcing out an apology, it’s her letting her heart out, “I’m sorry for everything.” She then proceeds to hug me. It hurts, but not because I have hardly any strength left. Instead, I’m in pain because I love her so much.
One dismisses their cigarette as they get up from their throne. “A minute off.”
Raising a single finger, they shoot, and I try creating a shield before her. Something sparks in front of her, but it poofs out of existence. I’m far too weak to do anything but cling onto Ashley, who’s looking confidently directly at the spinning light. I shut my eyes, and with the ringing, loud resonant sound that followed after, I reopened them to see a large blue shield between us and the attack. Turning my head back, I see Saamuki with a rich blue coat, brown boots, and a red sash to tie it all together. Her arms are raised, holding up her makeshift shield. On her ring finger is a ring sparkling because of the blue light. Two Tauvoxes, one a long-time friend and the other a prisoner the last time I saw him, are on either side of her. Like Saamuki, and now that I notice Ashley too, Mikrovos is wearing Quadrant Forty’s fifth battalion uniform and has a prosthetic horn. He also has a ring on, which has me crack a smile. The four of them aren’t the only ones here. Sakhra, Bichak, and that leafy, fearsome giant from the fallen Zeq’s town are here too, with the same clothing as well. Syco is not matching. He’s also the least clean, having scuff marks and untamed hair. An odd reunion, but a welcome one.
“So, this is where you’ve been. I knew it would take a lot more than that to kill you,” the musty Tauvox professed smugly.
The smaller Tauvox rolls his eyes before replying with, “We can do the whole ‘I told you so’ after we beat the Lords. Bichak, what’s your status?” Bichak, who’s quickly skimming through the floating book Four gave to him, slides his free hand into his coat and takes out seven dull crystals. Three, Five, and Six join with One. Saamuki encases us in a bubble as Two separates from the Lords and teleports behind us with a battle cry and a flaming fist. It cracks but holds.
She’s gotten a lot stronger but not all-powerful yet. It’s the reason why she blurts out, “We are all going to die if I’m the only one defending us against four Lords.” The silent vegetation presses his hand on Saamuki’s back. Soon after, she burst with a blue glow, which is almost blinding. Blue symbols etch onto her skin, peeking between her scales, as well. They’re the same ones I’ve seen plenty of times, and as I learned not too long ago, they are words from the very first language. Finally, with Saamuki overflowing with her powers, he pushes past to get to me. He motions for Ashley to hand me over to him. She hesitates, looking into his eyes as she tightens her grip on me.
“Kaishi,” Sakhra hissed.
Ashley has changed her name. Of course, she’s changed a lot, but she’s still the same woman I’ve grown to love. Respectfully feisty as she grabs hold of the green alien and orders, “Don’t do anything that will make me regret bringing you along with us.” He slowly nods. “We’re all going to make it out of this.” She lets go of him before turning to Bichak. “We only have one chance at this. The Nantos won’t be giving the second time.”
“Just a quick memorization,” Bichak assured.
“Right. Saamuki, the bubble.” Coming from her back, liquified metal slides down to her hands. They solidify once they cover them and shoot through the newly formed opening. “Syco. Sakhra.” The two nod to her. As the Lord stumbles back, holding their wounded eye too, the three dart towards the rest of the Lords. They easily dodge Three’s, Five’s, and Six’s blasts. While the three of them are against the four Lords unless Four and Seven decide to stop being spectators, it’s Saamuki and Mikrovos against the one beefy Lord who’s been trying to smash through.
The bubble does, but it smashes against Two. It flew towards the Lord, who could’ve just moved out of the way but trying to push it back towards us interested them more. A shield comes flying towards the Lord and then another. Another comes. Each time Two tries to punch through it. It takes five times until they unleash a solidified, sharp aura in the shape of a sword to cut right through the sixth time. Mikrovos, with two blades from his gauntlets, blocks the colossal sword. Two’s much greater size pushes Mikrovos back, but Saamuki quickly returns to the fight by transforming her sash into a sword again. It floats next to and follows her as she runs across the makeshift, see-through blue staircase. She jumps the final step and thrusts the barreling long red blade towards Two with its tip pointed directly between where the Lord’s eyes should be. The Lord sidesteps away but is cut by Mikrovos in the process.
Saamuki strikes the floor. Her sword comes back right next to her. It spins in the air as it once again tries to contact Two, but it clashes with the Lord’s sword. Mikrovos proceeds towards Two’s weaponless right, jumping over Saamuki’s blast, but Two realizes this between having their sword gliding against Saamuki’s, and so forms another one. Both of the Lord’s hands are preoccupied with the lover’s swords, and they are also busy swerving away from the serpent’s blasts. The trio seemed to match until the titan’s right foot stomped across the floor, causing the floor beneath Mikrovos to rip open. A pure black hole appeared beneath him, it swallowed him, but he didn’t disappear for long because he came crashing into the ground from the newly conceived tear above.
Five is about to grab Kaishi, but because of their weight, it slows them down, making it easy for Sakhra to defend her with a ferocious punch. Amazingly, the collision didn’t crack the stones that makeup Sakhra’s right arm. Sakhra’s other arm grabs the Lord’s wrist and, with ease, throws the figure who’s more than four times his size and weight. Five’s fats jiggle as they spin in the air, going between the recently distanced One, Three, and Kaishi. The three watch the bulbous Lord land at Four’s feet. The landed Lord asks for Four’s hand, but Four peaks up from their book for just a moment and then slides it back up, ignoring Five’s continued pleas. The two reconvene when One and Three send disembodied fists, which Kaishi shoots. As for Six and Syco, the two are engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Like with Sakhra, Syco cannot yield against the far more powerful force that is Six. Nevertheless, he’s holding his own.
Everything seems to be going well. I thought it was until I noticed the subtle look Four and Seven give to each other as Seven’s crusty fingers stroke against their chains. I feel my body revitalized. I’m glowing brighter than ever before with symbols from the ancient language I’ve grown accustomed to pulsing across my skin, so with the boost thanks to the nameless hulking figure over my shoulder, I set myself towards the suspicious Lords until I’m scolded by Bichak. “What do you think you’re doing?” The seven crystals are spinning around the small four-eyed figure who also has the same symbols across his arms and face, coloring, no longer a hideous gray.
“Helping my friends.”
“Commander Kaishi ordered us not to get in the way. Well, you weren’t a part of the order as everyone assumed you were dead, but she’d see it best for you to stay here. Protecting these crystals until they’re ready is everyone’s priority. Besides, I’ve seen how angry she can get. So I don’t want to be on her bad side this time.” All four of his eyes side-eyed the green giant.
I turn with the snap of One’s fingers. With it, all around us, Watchers appeared. I tried looking away to not be reminded of the atrocities I committed, but they are all around. I covered my mouth and began to quietly cry. The two enemies turned allies just looked at me, but I wasn’t expecting sympathy from either. I sure wasn’t expecting Saamuki to be enraged. Well, The Speaker is the one enraged as they punch through Watchers left and right in what I assume is them freeing the blood.
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1hey are u bored at home, wanna chill and netflix....... but just can’t find some thing nice to watch? here’s a list of movies for u watch
A Ghost Story (2017)
Director David Lowery (Pete's Dragon) conceived this dazzling, dreamy meditation on the afterlife during the off-hours on a Disney blockbuster, making the revelations within even more awe-inspiring. After a fatal accident, a musician (Casey Affleck) finds himself as a sheet-draped spirit, wandering the halls of his former home, haunting/longing for his widowed wife (Rooney Mara). With stylistic quirks, enough winks to resist pretension (a scene where Mara devours a pie in one five-minute, uncut take is both tragic and cheeky), and a soundscape culled from the space-time continuum, A Ghost Story connects the dots between romantic love, the places we call home, and time -- a ghost's worst enemy.
Airplane! (1980)
This is one of the funniest movie of all time. Devised by the jokesters behind The Naked Gun, this disaster movie spoof stuffs every second of runtime with a physical gag (The nun slapping a hysterical woman!), dimwitted wordplay ("Don't call me, Shirley"), an uncomfortable moment of odd behavior ("Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?"), or some other asinine bit. The rare comedy that demands repeat viewings, just to catch every micro-sized joke and memorize every line.
A24
American Honey (2016)
Writer/director Andrea Arnold lets you sit shotgun for the travels of a group of wayward youth in American Honey, a seductive drama about a "mag crew" selling subscriptions and falling in and out of love with each other on the road. Seen through the eyes of Star, played by Sasha Lane, life on the Midwest highway proves to be directionless, filled with a stream of partying and steamy hookups in the backs of cars and on the side of the road, especially when she starts to develop feelings for Shia LaBeouf’s rebellious Jake. It’s an honest look at a group of disenfranchised young people who are often cast aside, and it’s blazing with energy. You’ll buy what they're selling.
Anna Karenina (2012)
Adapted by renowned playwright Tom Stoppard, this take on Leo Tolstoy's classic Russian novel is anything but stuffy, historical drama. Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander are all overflowing with passion and desire, heating up the chilly backdrop of St. Petersburg. But it's director Joe Wright's unique staging -- full of dance, lush costuming, fourth-wall-breaking antics, and other theatrical touches -- that reinvent the story for more daring audiences.
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Apostle (2018)
For his follow-up to his two action epics, The Raid and The Raid 2, director Gareth Evans dials back the hand-to-hand combat but still keeps a few buckets of blood handy in this grisly supernatural horror tale. Dan Stevens stars as Thomas Richardson, an early 20th century opium addict traveling to a cloudy island controlled by a secretive cult that's fallen on hard times. The religious group is led by a bearded scold named Father Malcolm (Michael Sheen) who may or may not be leading his people astray. Beyond a few bursts of kinetic violence and some crank-filled torture sequences, Evans plays this story relatively down-the-middle, allowing the performances, the lofty themes, and the windswept vistas to do the talking. It's a cult movie that earns your devotion slowly, then all at once.
Back to the Future (1985)
Buckle into Doc's DeLorean and head to the 1950s by way of 1985 with the seminal time-travel series that made Michael J. Fox a household name. It's always a joy watching Marty McFly's race against the clock way-back-when to ensure history runs its course and he can get back to the present. Netflix also has follow-up Parts II and III, which all add up to a perfect rainy afternoon marathon.
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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
The Coen brothers gave some big-name-director cred to Netflix by releasing their six-part Western anthology on the streaming service, and while it's not necessarily their best work, Buster Scruggs is clearly a cut above most Netflix originals. Featuring star turns from Liam Neeson, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan, and more, the film takes advantage of Netflix's willingness to experiment by composing a sort of death fugue that unfolds across the harsh realities of life in Manifest Destiny America. Not only does it revel in the massive, sweeping landscapes of the American West, but it's a thoughtful meditation on death that will reveal layer after layer long after you finish.
Barbershop (2002)
If you've been sleeping on the merits of the Barbershop movies, the good news is it's never too late to get caught up. Revisit the 2002 installment that started Ice Cube's smack-talking franchise so you can bask in Cedric the Entertainer's hilarious wisdom, enjoy Eve's acting debut, and admire this joyful ode to community.
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Barry (2016)
In 1981, Barack Obama touched down in New York City to begin work at Columbia University. As Barry imagines, just days after settling into his civics class, a white classmate confronts the Barry with an argument one will find in the future president's Twitter @-mentions: "Why does everything always got to be about slavery?" Exaltation is cinematic danger, especially when bringing the life of a then-sitting president to screen. Barry avoids hagiography by staying in the moment, weighing race issues of a modern age and quieting down for the audience to draw its own conclusions. Devon Terrell is key, steadying his character as smooth-operating, socially active, contemplative fellow stuck in an interracial divide. Barry could be any half-black, half-white kid from the '80s. But in this case, he's haunted by past, present, and future.
Being John Malkovich (1999)
You can't doubt the audacity of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Anomalisa), whose first produced screenplay hinged on attracting the title actor to a script that has office drones discovering a portal into his mind. John Cusack, Catherine Keener, and Cameron Diaz combine to create an atmosphere of desperate, egomaniacal darkness, and by the end you'll feel confused and maybe a little slimy about the times you've participated in celebrity gawking.
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The Blackcoat's Daughter (2017)
Two young women are left behind at school during break... and all sorts of hell breaks loose. This cool, stylish thriller goes off in some strange directions (and even offers a seemingly unrelated subplot about a mysterious hitchhiker) but it all pays off in the end, thanks in large part to the three leads -- Emma Roberts, Lucy Boynton, and Kiernan Shipka -- and director Oz Perkins' artful approach to what could have been just another occult-based gore-fest.
Bloodsport (1988)
Jean-Claude Van Damme made a career out of good-not-great fluff. Universal Soldier is serviceable spectacle, Hard Target is a living cartoon, Lionheart is his half-baked take on On the Waterfront. Bloodsport, which owes everything to the legacy of Bruce Lee, edges out his Die Hard riff Sudden Death for his best effort, thanks to muscles-on-top-of-muscles-on-top-of-muscles fighting and Stan Bush's "Fight to Survive." Magic Mike has nothing on Van Damme's chiseled backside in Bloodsport, which flexes its way through a slow-motion karate-chop gauntlet. In his final face-off, Van Damme, blinded by arena dust, rage-screams his way to victory. The amount of adrenaline bursting out of Bloodsport demands a splash zone.
Blue Ruin (2013)
Before he went punk with 2016's siege thriller Green Room, director Jeremy Saulnier delivered this low-budget, darkly comic hillbilly noir. When Dwight Evans (Macon Blair) discovers that the man who killed his parents is being released from prison, he returns home to Virginia to claims his revenge and things quickly spin out of control. Like the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple, this wise-ass morality tale will make you squirm.
WELL GO USA ENTERTAINMEN
Burning (2018)
Some mysteries simmer; this one smolders. In his adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story, writer and director Lee Chang-dong includes many elements of the acclaimed author's slyly mischievous style -- cats, jazz, cooking, and an alienated male writer protagonist all pop up -- but he also invests the material with his own dark humor, stray references to contemporary news, and an unyielding sense of curiosity. We follow aimless aspiring novelist Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) as he reconnects with Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), a young woman he grew up with, but the movie never lets you get too comfortable in one scene or setting. When Steven Yeun's Ben, a handsome rich guy with a beautiful apartment and a passion for burning down greenhouses, appears, the film shifts to an even more tremulous register. Can Ben be trusted? Yeun's performance is perfectly calibrated to entice and confuse, like he's a suave, pyromaniac version of Tyler Durden. Each frame keeps you guessing.
Cam (2018)
Unlike the Unfriended films or this summer's indie hit Searching, this web thriller from director Daniel Goldhaber and screenwriter Isa Mazzei isn't locked into the visual confines of a computer screen. Though there's plenty of online screen time, allowing for subtle bits of commentary and satire, the looser style allows the filmmakers to really explore the life and work conditions of their protagonist, rising cam girl Alice (Madeline Brewer). We meet her friends, her family, and her customers. That type of immersion in the granular details makes the scarier bits -- like an unnerving confrontation in the finale between Alice and her evil doppelganger -- pop even more.
THE ORCHARD
Creep (2014)
Patrick Brice's found-footage movie is a no-budget answer to a certain brand of horror, but saying more would give away its sinister turns. Just know that the man behind the camera answered a Craigslist ad to create a "day in the life" video diary for Josef (Mark Duplass), who really loves life. Creep proves that found footage, the indie world's no-budget genre solution, still has life, as long as you have a performer like Duplass willing to go all the way.
The Death of Stalin (2017)
Armando Iannucci, the brilliant Veep creator, set his sights on Russia with this savage political satire. Based on a graphic novel, the film dramatizes the madcap, maniacal plots of the men jostling for power after their leader, Joseph Stalin, keels over. From there, backstabbing, furious insults, and general chaos unfolds. Anchored by performances from Shakespearean great Simon Russell Beale and American icon Steve Buscemi, it's a pleasure to see what the rest of the cast -- from Star Trek: Discovery's Jason Isaacs to Homeland's Rupert Friend -- do with Iannucci's eloquently brittle text.
Den of Thieves (2018)
If there's one thing you've probably heard about this often ridiculous bank robbery epic, it's that it steals shamelessly from Michael Mann's crime saga Heat. The broad plot elements are similar: There's a team of highly-efficient criminals led by a former Marine (Pablo Schreiber) and they must contend with a obsessive, possibly unhinged cop (Gerard Butler) over the movie's lengthy 140 minute runtime. A screenwriter helming a feature for the first time, director Christian Gudegast is not in the same league as Mann as a filmmaker and Butler, sporting unflattering tattoos and a barrel-like gut, is hardly Al Pacino. But everyone is really going for it here, attempting to squeeze every ounce of Muscle Milk from the bottle.
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Divines (2016)
Thrillers don't come much more propulsive or elegant than Houda Benyamina's Divines, a heartwarming French drama about female friendship that spirals into a pulse-pounding crime saga. Rambunctious teenager Dounia (Oulaya Amamra) and her best friend Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena) begin the film as low-level shoplifters and thieves, but once they fall into the orbit of a slightly older, seasoned drug dealer named Rebecca (Jisca Kalvanda), they're on a Goodfellas-like trajectory. Benyamina offsets the violent, gritty genre elements with lyrical passages where Dounia watches her ballet-dancer crush rehearse his routines from afar, and kinetic scenes of the young girls goofing off on social media. It's a cautionary tale told with joy, empathy, and an eye for beauty.
Dolemite Is My Name (2019)
Eddie Murphy has been waiting years to get this movie about comedian and blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore made, and you can feel his joy in finally getting to play this role every second he's on screen. The film, directed by Hustle & Flow's Craig Brewer, charts how Moore rose from record store employee, to successful underground comedian, to making his now-cult classic feature Dolemite by sheer force of passion. It's thrilling (and hilarious) to watch Murphy adopt Moore's Dolemite persona, a swaggering pimp, but it's just as satisfying to see the former SNL star capture his character at his lowest points. He's surrounded by an ensemble that matches his infectious energy.
The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
As romanticized as adolescence can be, it’s hard being young. Following the high school experience of troubled, overdramatic Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld), The Edge of Seventeen portrays the woes of adolescence with a tender, yet appropriately cheeky tone. As if junior year isn’t hellish enough, the universe essentially bursts into flames when Nadine finds out her best friend is dating her brother; their friendship begins to dissolve, and she finds the only return on young love is embarrassment and pain. That may all sound like a miserable premise for a young-adult movie, except it’s all painfully accurate, making it endearingly hilarious -- and there’s so much to love about Steinfeld’s self-aware performance.
FOCUS FEATURES
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Romance and love are nothing without the potential for loss and pain, but most of us would probably still consider cutting away all the worst memories of the latter. Given the option to eradicate memories of their busted relationship, Jim Carrey's Joel and Kate Winslet's Clementine go through with the procedure, only to find themselves unable to totally let go. Science fiction naturally lends itself to clockwork mechanisms, but director Michel Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman never lose the human touch as they toy with the kaleidoscope of their characters' hearts and minds.
The Evil Dead (1981)
Before Bruce Campbell's Ash was wielding his chainsaw-arm in Army of Darkness and on Starz's Ash Vs. Evil Dead, he was just a good looking guy hoping to spend a nice, quiet vacation in a cabin with some friends. Unfortunately, the book of the dead had other plans for him. With this low-budget horror classic, director Sam Raimi brings a surprising degree of technical ingenuity to bear on the splatter-film, sending his camera zooming around the woods with wonder and glee. While the sequels double-downed on laughs, the original Evil Dead still knows how to scare.
The Firm (1993)
The '90s were a golden era of sleek, movie-star-packed legal thrillers, and they don't get much better than director Sydney Pollack's The Firm. This John Grisham adaptation has a little bit of everything -- tax paperwork, sneering mobsters, and Garey Busey, for starters -- but there's one reason to watch this movie: the weirdness of Tom Cruise. He does a backflip in this movie. What else do you need to know?
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The Florida Project (2017)
Sean Baker's The Florida Project nuzzles into the swirling, sunny, strapped-for-cash populace of a mauve motel just within orbit of Walt Disney World. His eyes are Moonee, a 6-year-old who adventures through abandoned condos, along strip mall-encrusted highway, and across verdant fields of overgrown brush like Max in Where the Wild Things Are. But as gorgeous as the everything appears -- and The Florida Project looks stunning -- the world around here is falling apart, beginning with her mother, an ex-stripper turning to prostitution. The juxtaposition, and down-to-earth style, reconsiders modern America in the most electrifying way imaginable.
Frances Ha (2012)
Before winning hearts and Oscar nominations with her coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig starred in the perfect companion film, about an aimless 27-year-old who hops from New York City to her hometown of Sacramento to Paris to Poughkeepsie and eventually back to New York in hopes of stumbling into the perfect job, the perfect relationship, and the perfect life. Directed by Noah Baumbach (The Meyerowitz Stories), and co-written by both, Frances Ha is a measured look at adult-ish life captured the kind of intoxicating black and white world we dream of living in.
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Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2019)
Everyone's favorite disaster of a festival received not one, but two streaming documentaries in the same week. Netflix's version has rightly faced some criticism over its willingness to let marketing company Fuck Jerry off the hook (Jerry Media produced the doc), but that doesn't take away from the overall picture it portrays of the festival's haphazard planning and the addiction to grift from which Fyre's founder, Billy McFarland, apparently suffers. It's schadenfreude at its best.
Gerald's Game (2017)
Like his previous low-budget Netflix-released horror release, Hush, a captivity thriller about a deaf woman fighting off a masked intruder, Mike Flanagan's Stephen King adaptation of Gerald's Game wrings big scares from a small location. Sticking close to the grisly plot details of King's seemingly "unfilmable" novel, the movie chronicles the painstaking struggles of Jessie Burlingame (Carla Gugino) after she finds herself handcuffed to a bed in an isolated vacation home when her husband, the titular Gerald, dies from a heart attack while enacting his kinky sexual fantasies. She's trapped -- and that's it. The premise is clearly challenging to sustain for a whole movie, but Flanagan and Gugino turn the potentially one-note set-up into a forceful, thoughtful meditation on trauma, memory, and resilience in the face of near-certain doom.
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Good Time (2017)
In this greasy, cruel thriller from Uncut Gems directors the Safdie brothers, Robert Pattinson stars as Connie, a bank robber who races through Queens to find enough money to bail out his mentally disabled brother, who's locked up for their last botched job. Each suffocating second of Good Time, blistered by the neon backgrounds of Queens, New York and propelled by warped heartbeat of Oneothrix Point Never's synth score, finds Connie evading authorities by tripping into an even stickier situation.
Green Room (2015)
Green Room is a throaty, thrashing, spit-slinging punk tune belted through an invasion-movie microphone at max volume. It's nasty -- and near-perfect. As a band of 20-something rockstars recklessly defend against a neo-Nazi battalion equipped with machetes, shotguns, and snarling guard dogs, the movie blossoms into a savage coming-of-age tale, an Almost Famous for John Carpenter nuts. Anyone looking for similar mayhem should check out director Jeremy Saulnier's previous movie, the low-budget, darkly comic hillbilly noir, Blue Ruin, also streaming on Netflix.
The Guest (2014)
After writer-director Adam Wingard notched a semi-sleeper horror hit with 2011's You're Next, he'd earned a certain degree of goodwill among genre faithful and, apparently, with studio brass. How else to explain distribution for his atypical thriller The Guest through Time Warner subsidiary Picturehouse? Headlined by soon-to-be megastar Dan Stevens and kindred flick It Follows' lead scream queen Maika Monroe, The Guest introduces itself as a subtextual impostor drama, abruptly spins through a blender of '80s teen tropes, and ultimately reveals its true identity as an expertly self-conscious straight-to-video shoot 'em up, before finally circling back on itself with a well-earned wink. To say anymore about the hell that Stevens' "David" unleashes on a small New Mexico town would not only spoil the fun, but possibly get you killed.
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The Hateful Eight (2015)
Quentin Tarantino has something to say about race, violence, and American life, and it's going to ruffle feathers. Like Django Unchained, the writer-director reflects modern times on the Old West, but with more scalpel-sliced dialogue, profane poetry, and gore. Stewed from bits of Agatha Christie, David Mamet, and Sam Peckinpah, The Hateful Eight traps a cast of blowhards (including Samuel L. Jackson as a Civil War veteran, Kurt Russell as a bounty hunter known as "The Hangman," and Jennifer Jason Leigh as a psychopathic gang member) in a blizzard-enveloped supply station. Tarantino ups the tension by shooting his suffocating space in "glorious 70mm." Treachery and moral compromise never looked so good.
High Flying Bird (2019)
High Flying Bird is a basketball film that has little to do with the sport itself, instead focusing on the behind-the-scenes power dynamics that play out during an NBA lockout. At the center of the Steven Soderbergh movie -- shot on an iPhone, because that's what he does now -- is André Holland's Ray Burke, a sports agent trying to protect his client's interests while also disrupting a corrupt system. It's not an easy tightrope to walk, and, as you might expect, the conditions of the labor stoppage constantly change the playing field. With his iPhone mirroring the NBA's social media-heavy culture, and appearances from actual NBA stars lending the narrative heft, Soderbergh experiments with Netflix's carte blanche and produces a unique film that adds to the streaming service's growing list of original critical hits.
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Hugo (2011)
Martin Scorsese hit pause on mob violence and Rolling Stones singles to deliver one of the greatest kid-centric films in eons. Following Hugo (Asa Butterfield) as he traces his own origin story through cryptic automaton clues and early 20th-century movie history, the grand vision wowed in 3-D and still packs a punch at home.
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)
A meditative horror flick that's more unsettling than outright frightening, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House follows the demise of Lily, a live-in nurse (Ruth Wilson) who's caring for an ailing horror author. As Lily discovers the truth about the writer's fiction and home, the lines between the physical realm and the afterlife blur. The movie's slow pacing and muted escalation might frustrate viewers craving showy jump-scares, but writer-director Oz Perkins is worth keeping tabs on. He brings a beautiful eeriness to every scene, and his story will captivate patient streamers. Fans should be sure to check out his directorial debut, The Blackcoat's Daughter.
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I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017)
In this maniacal mystery, Ruth (Melanie Lynskey), a nurse, and her rattail-sporting, weapon-obsessed neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood) hunt down a local burglar. Part Cormac McCarthy thriller, part wacky, Will Ferrell-esque comedy, I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore is a cathartic neo-noir about everyday troubles. Director Macon Blair's not the first person to find existential enlightenment at the end of an amateur detective tale, but he might be the first to piece one together from cussing octogenarians, ninja stars, Google montages, gallons of Big Red soda, upper-deckers, friendly raccoons, exploding body parts, and the idiocy of humanity.
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
With a bullwhip, a leather jacket, and an "only Harrison Ford can pull this off" fedora, director Steven Spielberg invented the modern Hollywood action film by doing what he does best: looking backward. As obsessed as his movie-brat pal and collaborator George Lucas with the action movie serials of their youth, the director mined James Bond, Humphrey Bogart, Westerns, and his hatred of Nazis to create an adventure classic. To watch Raiders of the Lost Ark now is to marvel at the ingenuity of specific sequences (the boulder! The truck scene! The face-melting!) and simply groove to the self-deprecating comic tone (snakes! Karen Allen! That swordsman Indy shoots!). The past has never felt so alive.
Inside Man (2006)
Denzel Washington is at his wily, sharp, and sharply dressed best as he teams up once again with Spike Lee for this wildly entertaining heist thriller. He's an NYPD hostage negotiator who discovers a whole bunch of drama when a crew of robbers (led by Clive Owen) takes a bank hostage during a 24-hour period. Jodie Foster also appears as an interested party with uncertain motivations. You'll have to figure out what's going on several times over before the truth outs.
DRAFTHOUSE FILMS
The Invitation (2015)
This slow-burn horror-thriller preys on your social anxiety. The film's first half-hour, which finds Quarry's Logan Marshall-Green arriving at his ex-wife's house to meet her new husband, plays like a Sundance dramedy about 30-something yuppies and their relationship woes. As the minutes go by, director Karyn Kusama (Jennifer's Body) burrows deeper into the awkward dinner party, finding tension in unwelcome glances, miscommunication, and the possibility that Marshall-Green's character might be misreading a bizarre situation as a dangerous one. We won't spoil what happens, but let's just say this is a party you'll be telling your friends about.
Ip Man (2008)
There aren't many biopics that also pass for decent action movies. Somehow, Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen and director Wilson Yip made Ip Man (and three sequels!) based on the life of Chinese martial arts master Yip Kai-man, who famously trained Bruce Lee. What's their trick to keeping this series fresh? Play fast and loose with the facts, up the melodrama with each film, and, when in doubt, cast Mike Tyson as an evil property developer. The fights are incredible, and Yen's portrayal of the aging master still has the power to draw a few tears from even the most grizzled tough guy.
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The Irishman (2019)
Opening with a tracking shot through the halls of a drab nursing home, where we meet a feeble old man telling tall tales from his wheelchair, The Irishman delights in undercutting its own grandiosity. All the pageantry a $150 million check from Netflix can buy -- the digital de-aging effects, the massive crowd scenes, the shiny rings passed between men -- is on full display. Everything looks tremendous. But, like with 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street, the characters can't escape the fundamental spiritual emptiness of their pursuits. In telling the story of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a World War II veteran and truck driver turned mob enforcer and friend to labor leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian construct an underworld-set counter-narrative of late 20th century American life. Even with a 209 minute runtime, every second counts.
It Comes at Night (2017)
In this post-apocalyptic nightmare-and-a-half, the horrors of humanity, the strain of chaotic emotions pent up in the name of survival, bleed out through wary eyes and weathered hands. The setup is blockbuster-sized -- reverts mankind to the days of the American frontier, every sole survivor fights to protect their families and themselves -- but the drama is mano-a-mano. Barricaded in a haunted-house-worthy cabin in the woods, Paul (Edgerton) takes in Will (Abbott) and his family, knowing full well they could threaten his family's existence. All the while, Paul's son, Trevor, battles bloody visions of (or induced by?) the contagion. Shults directs the hell out of every slow-push frame of this psychological thriller, and the less we know, the more confusion feels like a noose around our necks, the scarier his observations become.
WARNER BROS. PICTURES
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Jupiter Ascending is one of those "bad" movies that might genuinely be quite good. Yes, Channing Tatum is a man-wolf and Mila Kunis is the princess of space and bees don't sting space royalty and Eddie Redmayne hollers his little head off about "harvesting" people -- but what makes this movie great is how all of those things make total, absolute sense in the context of the story. The world the Wachowskis (yes, the Wachowskis!) created is so vibrant and strange and exciting, you almost can't help but get drawn in, even when Redmayne vamps so hard you're afraid he's about to pull a muscle. (And if you're a ballet fan, we have some good news for you.)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Perhaps the only movie that ever truly deserved a conversion to a theme-park ride, Steven Spielberg's thrilling adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel brought long-extinct creatures back to life in more ways than one. Benevolent Netflix gives us more than just the franchise starter, too: The Lost World and JP3 sequels are also available, so you can make a marathon of it.
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Killing Them Softly (2012)
Brad Pitt doesn't make conventional blockbusters anymore -- even World War Z had epidemic-movie ambitions -- so it's not surprising that this crime thriller is a little out there. Set during the financial crisis and presidential election of 2008, the film follows Pitt's hitman character as he makes sense of a poker heist gone wrong, leaving a trail of bodies and one-liners along the way. Mixed in with the carnage, you get lots of musings about the economy and American exceptionalism. It's not subtle -- there's a scene where Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn do heroin while the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" plays -- but, like a blunt object to the head, it gets the job done.
Lady Bird (2017)
The dizzying, frustrating, exhilarating rite of passage that is senior year of high school is the focus of actress Greta Gerwig's first directorial effort, the story of girl named Lady Bird (her given name, in that "it’s given to me, by me") who rebels against everyday Sacramento, California life to obtain whatever it is "freedom" turns out to be. Laurie Metcalf is an understated powerhouse as Lady Bird's mother, a constant source of contention who doggedly pushes her daughter to be successful in the face of the family's dwindling economic resources. It's a tragic note in total complement to Gerwig's hysterical love letter to home, high school, and the history of ourselves.
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The Lobster (2016)
Greek style master Yorgos Lanthimos' dystopian allegory against romance sees Colin Farrell forced to choose a partner in 45 days or he'll be turned into an animal of his choice, which is a lobster. Stuck in a group home with similarly unlucky singles, Farrell's David decides to bust out and join other renegades in a kind of anti-love terror cell that lives in the woods. It's part comedy of manners, part futuristic thriller, and it looks absolutely beautiful -- Lanthimos handles the bizarre premise with grace and a naturalistic eye that reminds the viewer that humans remain one of the most interesting animals to exist on this planet.
Mad Max (1979)
Before Tom Hardy was grunting his way through the desert and crushing tiny two-headed reptiles as Max Rockatansky, there was Mel Gibson. George Miller's 1979 original introduces the iconic character and paints the maximum force of his dystopian mythology in a somewhat more grounded light -- Australian police factions, communities, and glimmers of hope still in existence. Badass homemade vehicles and chase scenes abound in this taut, 88-minute romp. It's aged just fine.
Magic Mike (2012)
Steven Soderbergh's story of a Tampa exotic dancer with a heart of gold (Channing Tatum) has body-rolled its way to Netflix. Sexy dance routines aside, Mike's story is just gritty enough to be subversive. Did we mention Matthew McConaughey shows up in a pair of ass-less chaps?
The Master (2012)
Loosely inspired by the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard -- Dianetics buffs, we strongly recommend Alex Gibney's Going Clear documentary as a companion piece -- The Master boasts one of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s finest performances, as the enigmatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd. Joaquin Phoenix burns just as brightly as his emotionally stunted, loose-cannon protege Freddie Quell, who has a taste for homemade liquor. Paul Thomas Anderson’s cerebral epic lends itself to many different readings; it’s a cult story, it's a love story, it's a story about post-war disillusionment and the American dream, it's a story of individualism and the desire to belong. But the auteur's popping visuals and heady thematic currents will still sweep you away, even if you’re not quite sure where the tide is taking you.
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The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)
When Danny (Adam Sandler), Matthew (Ben Stiller) and Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), three half-siblings from three different mothers, gather at their family brownstone in New York to tend to their ailing father (Dustin Hoffman), a lifetime of familial politics explode out of every minute of conversation. Their narcissistic sculptor dad didn't have time for Danny. Matthew was the golden child. Jean was weird… or maybe disturbed by memories no one ever knew. Expertly sketched by writer-director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) this memoir-like portrait of lives half-lived is the kind of bittersweet, dimensional character comedy we're now used to seeing told in three seasons of prestige television. Baumbach gives us the whole package in two hours.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The legendary British comedy troupe took the legend of King Arthur and offered a characteristically irreverent take on it in their second feature film. It's rare for comedy to hold up this well, but the timelessness of lines like, "I fart in your general direction!" "It's just a flesh wound," and "Run away!" makes this a movie worth watching again and again.
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Moonlight (2016)
Chronicling the boyhood years, teenage stretch, and muted adult life of Chiron, a black gay man making it in Miami, this triptych altarpiece is at once hyper-specific and cosmically universal. Director Barry Jenkins roots each moment in the last; Chiron's desire for a lost lover can't burn in a diner booth over a bottle of wine without his beachside identity crisis years prior, blurred and violent, or encounters from deeper in his past, when glimpses of his mother's drug addiction, or the mentoring acts of her crack supplier, felt like secrets delivered in code. Panging colors, sounds, and the delicate movements of its perfect cast like the notes of a symphony, Moonlight is the real deal, a movie that will only grow and complicate as you wrestle with it.
Mudbound (2017)
The South's post-slavery existence is, for Hollywood, mostly uncharted territory. Rees rectifies the overlooked stretch of history with this novelistic drama about two Mississippi families working a rain-drenched farm in 1941. The white McAllans settle on a muddy patch of land to realize their dreams. The Jacksons, a family of black sharecroppers working the land, have their own hopes, which their neighbors manage to nurture and curtail. To capture a multitude of perspectives, Mudbound weaves together specific scenes of daily life, vivid and memory-like, with family member reflections, recorded in whispered voice-over. The epic patchwork stretches from the Jackson family dinner table, where the youngest daughter dreams of becoming a stenographer, to the vistas of Mississippi, where incoming storms threaten an essential batch of crops, to the battlefields of World War II Germany, a harrowing scene that will affect both families. Confronting race, class, war, and the possibility of unity, Mudbound spellbinding drama reckons with the past to understand the present.
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My Happy Family (2017)
At 52, Manana (Ia Shughliashvili) packs a bag and walks out on her husband, son, daughter, daughter's live-in boyfriend, and elderly mother and father, all of whom live together in a single apartment. The family is cantankerous and blustery, asking everything of Manana, who spends her days teaching better-behaved teenagers about literature. But as Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß's striking character study unfolds, the motivation behind Manana's departure is a deeper strain of frustration, despite what her brother, aunts, uncles, and anyone else who can cram themselves into the situation would like us to think. Anchored by Ia Shughliashvili's stunningly internal performance, and punctured by a dark sense of humor akin to Darren Aronofsky's mother! (which would have been the perfect alternate title), My Happy Family is both delicate and brutal in its portrayal of independence, and should get under the skin of anyone with their own family drama.
The Naked Gun (1988)
The short-lived Dragnet TV spoof Police Squad! found a second life as The Naked Gun action-comedy movie franchise, and the first installment goes all in on Airplane! co-star Leslie Nielsen's brand of straight-laced dementia. Trying to explain The Naked Gun only makes the stupid sound stupider, but keen viewers will find jokes on top of jokes on top of jokes. It's the kind of movie that can crack "nice beaver," then pass a stuffed beaver through the frame and actually get away with it. Nielsen has everything to do with it; his Frank Drebin continues the grand Inspector Clouseau tradition in oh-so-'80s style.
The Notebook (2004)
"If you’re a bird, I’m a bird." It's a simple statement and a declaration of devotion that captures the staying power of this Nicholas Sparks classic. The film made Ryan Gosling a certified heartthrob, charting his working class character Noah's lovelorn romance with Rachel McAdam's wealthy character Allie. The star-crossed lovers narrative is enough to make even the most cynical among us swoon, but given that their story is told through an elderly man reading (you guessed it!) a notebook to a woman with dementia, it hits all of the tragic romance benchmarks to make you melt. Noah's commitment to following his heart -- and that passionate kiss in the rain -- make this a love story for the ages.
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Okja (2017)
This wild ride, part action heist, part Miyazaki-like travelogue, and part scathing satire, is fueled by fairy tale whimsy -- but the Grimm kind, where there are smiles and spilled blood. Ahn Seo-hyun plays Mija, the young keeper of a "super-pig," bred by a food manufacturer to be the next step in human-consumption evolution. When the corporate overlords come for her roly-poly pal, Mija hightails it from the farm to the big city to break him out, crossing environmental terrorists, a zany Steve Irwin-type (Gyllenhaal), and the icy psychos at the top of the food chain (including Swinton's childlike CEO) along the way. Okja won't pluck your heartstrings like E.T., but there's grandeur in its frenzy, and the film's cross-species friendship will strike up every other emotion with its empathetic, eco-friendly, and eccentric observations.
On Body and Soul (2017)
This Hungarian film earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film, and it's easy to see why. The sparse love story begins when two slaughterhouse employees discover they have the same dream at night, in which they're both deer searching the winter forest for food. Endre, a longtime executive at the slaughterhouse, has a physically damaged arm, whereas Maria is a temporary replacement who seems to be on the autism spectrum. If the setup sounds a bit on-the-nose, the moving performances and the unflinching direction save On Body and Soul from turning into a Thomas Aquinas 101 class, resulting in the kind of bleak beauty you can find in a dead winter forest.
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The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
Don't go into Orson Welles' final film expecting it to be an easy watch. The Other Side of the Wind, which follows fictional veteran Hollywood director Jake Hannaford (tooootally not modeled after Welles himself) and his protegé (also tooootally not a surrogate for Welles' own friend and mentee Peter Bogdanovich, who also plays the character) as they attend a party in celebration of Hannaford's latest film and are beset on all sides by Hannaford's friends, enemies, and everyone in between. The film, which Welles hoped would be his big comeback to Hollywood, was left famously unfinished for decades after his death in 1985. Thanks to Bogdanovich and producer Frank Marshall, it was finally completed in 2018, and the result is a vibrant and bizarre throwback to Welles' own experimental 1970s style, made even more resonant if you know how intertwined the movie is with its own backstory. If you want to dive even deeper, Netflix also released a documentary about the restoration and completion of the film, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, which delves into Welles' own complicated and tragic relationship with Hollywood and the craft of moviemaking.
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Guillermo Del Toro’s dark odyssey Pan’s Labyrinth takes a fantasy setting to mirror the horrible political realities of the human realm. Set in 1940s Falangist Spain, the film documents the hero’s journey of a young girl and stepdaughter of a ruthless Spanish army officer as she seeks an escape from her war-occupied world. When a fairy informs her that her true destiny may be as the princess of the underworld, she seizes her chance. Like Alice in Wonderland if Alice had gone to Hell instead of down the rabbit hole, the Academy Award-winning film is a wondrous, frightening fairy tale where that depicts how perilous the human-created monster of war can be.
Paranormal Activity (2007)
This documentary-style film budgeted at a mere $15,000 made millions at the box office and went on to inspire a number of sequels, all because of how well its scrappiness lent to capturing what feels like a terrifying haunted reality. Centered on a young couple who is convinced an evil spirit is lurking in their home, the two attempt to capture its activity on camera, which, obviously, only makes their supernatural matters worse. It leans on found footage horror tropes made popular by The Blair Witch Project and as it tessellates between showing the viewer what’s captured on their camcorders and the characters’ perspectives, it’s easy to get lost in this disorienting supernatural thriller.
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Poltergeist (1982)
If you saw Poltergeist growing up, chances are you’re probably equally as haunted by Heather O’Rourke as she is in the film, playing a little girl tormented by ghosts in her family home. This Steven Spielberg-penned, Tobe Hooper-directed (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) paranormal flick is a certified cult classic and one of the best horror films of all time, coming from a simple premise about a couple whose home is infested with spirits obsessed with reclaiming the space and kidnapping their daughter. Poltergeist made rearranged furniture freaky, and you may remember a particularly iconic scene with a fuzzed out vintage television set. It’s may be nearly 40 years old, but the creepiness holds up.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Taking Jane Austen's literary classic and tricking it out with gorgeous long takes, director Joe Wright turns this tale of manners into a visceral, luminescent portrait of passion and desire. While Succession's Matthew MacFadyen might not make you forget Colin Firth from 1995's BBC adaptation, Keira Knightley is a revelation as the tough, nervy Lizzie Bennett. With fun supporting turns from Donald Sutherland, Rosamund Pike, and Judi Dench, it's a sumptuous period romance that transports you from the couch to the ballroom of your dreams -- without changing out of sweatpants.
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Private Life (2018)
Over a decade since the release of her last dark comedy, The Savages, writer and director Tamara Jenkins returned with a sprawling movie in the same vein: more hyper-verbal jerks you can't help but love. Richard (Paul Giamatti) and Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) are a Manhattan-dwelling couple who have spent the last few years attempting to have a baby with little success. When we meet them, they're already in the grips of fertility mania, willing to try almost anything to secure the offspring they think they desire. With all the details about injections, side effects, and pricey medical procedures, the movie functions as a taxonomy of modern pregnancy anxieties, and Hahn brings each part of the process to glorious life.
The Ritual (2018)
The Ritual, a horror film where a group of middle-aged men embark on a hiking trip in honor of a dead friend, understands the tension between natural beauty of the outdoors and the unsettling panic of the unknown. The group's de facto leader Luke (an understated Rafe Spall) attempts to keep the adventure from spiralling out of control, but the forest has other plans. (Maybe brush up on your Scandinavian mythology before viewing.) Like a backpacking variation on Neil Marshall's 2005 cave spelunking classic The Descent, The Ritual deftly explores inter-personal dynamics while delivering jolts of other-worldly terror. It'll have you rethinking that weekend getaway on your calendar.
NETFLIX
Roma (2018)
All those billions Netflix spent paid off in the form of several Oscar nominations for Roma, including one for Best Picture and a win for Best Director. Whether experienced in the hushed reverence of a theater, watched on the glowing screen of a laptop, or, as Netflix executive Ted Sarandos has suggested, binged on the perilous surface of a phone, Alfonso Cuarón's black-and-white passion project seeks to stun. A technical craftsman of the highest order, the Children of Men and Gravity director has an aesthetic that aims to overwhelm -- with the amount of extras, the sense of despair, and the constant whir of exhilaration -- and this autobiographical portrait of kind-hearted maid Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) caring for a family in the early 1970s has been staged on a staggering, mind-boggling scale.
Schindler's List (1993)
A passion project for Steven Spielberg, who shot it back-to-back with another masterpiece, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who reportedly saved over 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Frank, honest, and stark in its depiction of Nazi violence, the three-hour historical drama is a haunting reminder of the world's past, every frame a relic, every lost voice channeled through Itzhak Perlman's mourning violin.
A Serious Man (2009)
This dramedy from the Coen brothers stars Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern physics professor who just can't catch a break, whether it's with his wife, his boss, or his rabbi. (Seriously, if you're having a bad day, this airy flick gives you ample time to brood and then come to the realization that your life isn't as shitty as you think.) Meditating on the spiritual and the temporal, Gopnik's improbable run of bad luck is a smart modern retelling of the Book of Job, with more irony and fewer plagues and pestilences. But not much fewer.
WELL GO USA
Shadow (2019)
In Shadow, the visually stunning action epic from Hero and House of Flying Daggers wuxia master Zhang Yimou, parasols are more than helpful sun-blockers: They can be turned into deadly weapons, shooting boomerang-like blades of steel at oncoming attackers and transforming into protective sleds for traveling through the slick streets. These devices are one of many imaginative leaps made in telling this Shakespearean saga of palace intrigue, vengeance, and secret doppelgangers set in China's Three Kingdoms period. This is a martial arts epic where the dense plotting is as tricky as the often balletic fight scenes. If the battles in Game of Thrones left you frustrated, Shadow provides a thrilling alternative.
She's Gotta Have It (1986)
Before checking out Spike Lee's Netflix original series of the same name, be sure to catch up with where it all began. Nola (Tracy Camilla Johns) juggles three men during her sexual pinnacle, and it's all working out until they discover one another. She's Gotta Have It takes some dark turns, but each revelation speaks volumes about what real romantic independence is all about.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
The late director Jonathan Demme's 1991 film is the touchstone for virtually every serial killer film and television show that came after. The iconic closeup shots of an icy, confident Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) as he and FBI newbie Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) engage in their "quid pro quo" interrogation sessions create almost unbearable tension as Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) remains on the loose, killing more victims. Hopkins delivers the more memorable lines, and Buffalo Bill's dance is the stuff of nerve-wracking anxiety nightmares, but it's Foster's nuanced performance as a scared, determined, smart-yet-hesitant agent that sets Silence of the Lambs apart from the rest of the serial killer pack.
THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and David O. Russell’s first collaboration -- and the film that turned J-Law into a bona fide golden girl -- is a romantic comedy/dramedy/dance-flick that bounces across its tonal shifts. A love story between Pat (Cooper), a man struggling with bipolar disease and a history of violent outbursts, and Tiffany (Lawrence), a widow grappling with depression, who come together while rehearsing for an amateur dance competition, Silver Linings balances an emotionally realistic depiction of mental illness with some of the best twirls and dips this side of Step Up. Even if you're allergic to rom-coms, Lawrence and Cooper’s winning chemistry will win you over, as will this sweet little gem of a film: a feel-good, affecting love story that doesn’t feel contrived or treacly.
Sin City (2005)
Frank Miller enlisted Robert Rodriguez as co-director to translate the former's wildly popular series of the same name to the big screen, and with some added directorial work from Quentin Tarantino, the result became a watershed moment in the visual history of film. The signature black-and-white palette with splashes of color provided a grim backdrop to the sensational violence of the miniaturized plotlines -- this is perhaps the movie that feels more like a comic than any other movie you'll ever see.
Sinister (2012)
Horror-movie lesson #32: If you move into a creepy new house, do not read the dusty book, listen to the decaying cassette tapes, or watch the Super 8 reels you find in the attic -- they will inevitably lead to your demise. In Sinister, a true-crime author (played by Ethan Hawke) makes the final mistake, losing his mind to home movies haunted by the "Bughuul."
NETFLIX
Small Crimes (2017)
It's always a little discombobulating to see your favorite Game of Thrones actors in movies that don't call on them to fight dragons, swing swords, or at least wear some armor. But that shouldn't stop you from checking out Small Crimes, a carefully paced thriller starring the Kingslayer Jaime Lannister himself, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. As Joe Denton, a crooked cop turned ex-con, Coster-Waldau plays yet another character with a twisted moral compass, but here he's not part of some mythical narrative. He's just another conniving, scheming dirtbag in director E.L. Katz's Coen brothers-like moral universe. While some of the plot details are confusing -- Katz and co-writer Macon Blair skimp on the exposition so much that some of the dialogue can feel incomprehensible -- the mood of Midwestern dread and Coster-Waldau's patient, lived-in performance make this one worth checking out. Despite the lack of dragons.
Snowpiercer (2013)
Did people go overboard in praising Snowpiercer when it came out? Maybe. But it's important to remember that the movie arrived in the sweaty dog days of summer, hitting critics and sci-fi lovers like a welcome blast of icy water from a hose. The film's simple, almost video game-like plot -- get to the front of the train, or die trying -- allowed visionary South Korean director Bong Joon-ho to fill the screen with excitement, absurdity, and radical politics. Chris Evans never looked more alive, Tilda Swinton never stole more scenes, and mainstream blockbuster filmmaking never felt so tepid in comparison. Come on, ride the train!
The Social Network (2010)
After making films like Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, and Zodiac, director David Fincher left behind the world of scumbags and crime for a fantastical, historical epic in 2008's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The Social Network was another swerve, but yielded his greatest film. There's no murder on screen, but Fincher treats Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg like a dorky, socially awkward mob boss operating on an operatic scale. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's rapid-fire, screwball-like dialogue burns with a moral indignation that Fincher's watchful, steady-handed camera chills with an icy distance. It's the rare biopic that's not begging you to smash the "like" button.
SONY PICTURES RELEASING
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
In this shrewd twist on the superhero genre, the audience's familiarity with the origin story of your friendly neighborhood web-slinger -- the character has already starred in three different blockbuster franchises, in addition to countless comics and cartoon TV adaptations -- is used as an asset instead of a liability. The relatively straight-forward coming-of-age tale of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a Brooklyn teenager who takes on the powers and responsibilities of Spider-Man following the death of Peter Parker, gets a remix built around an increasingly absurd parallel dimension plotline that introduces a cast of other Spider-Heroes like Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glen), and, most ridiculously, Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), a talking pig in a Spider-Suit. The convoluted set-up is mostly an excuse to cram the movie with rapid-fire jokes, comic book allusions, and dream-like imagery that puts the rubbery CGI of most contemporary animated films to shame.
Spotlight (2015)
Tom McCarthy stretches the drama taut as he renders Boston Globe's 2000 Catholic Church sex scandal investigation into a Hollywood vehicle. McCarthy's notable cast members crank like gears as they uncover evidence and reflect on a horrifying discovery of which they shoulder partial blame. Spotlight was the cardigan of 2015's Oscar nominees, but even cardigans look sharp when Mark Ruffalo is involved.
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
No movie captures the prolonged pain of divorce quite like Noah Baumbach's brutal Brooklyn-based comedy The Squid and the Whale. While the performances from Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney as bitter writers going through a separation are top-notch, the film truly belongs to the kids, played by Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline, who you watch struggle in the face of their parents' mounting immaturity and pettiness. That Baumbach is able to wring big, cathartic laughs from such emotionally raw material is a testament to his gifts as a writer -- and an observer of human cruelty.
SONY PICTURES RELEASING
Starship Troopers (1997)
Paul Verhoeven is undoubtedly the master of the sly sci-fi satire. With RoboCop, he laid waste to the police state with wicked, trigger-happy glee. He took on evil corporations with Total Recall. And with Starship Troopers, a bouncy, bloody war picture, he skewered the chest-thumping theatrics of pro-military propaganda, offering up a pitch-perfect parody of the post-9/11 Bush presidency years before troops set foot in Iraq or Afghanistan. Come for the exploding alien guts, but stay for the winking comedy -- or stay for both! Bug guts have their charms, too.
Swiss Army Man (2016)
You might think a movie that opens with a suicidal man riding a farting corpse like a Jet Ski wears thin after the fourth or fifth flatulence gag. You would be wrong. Brimming with imagination and expression, the directorial debut of Adult Swim auteurs "The Daniels" wields sophomoric humor to speak to friendship. As Radcliffe's dead body springs back to life -- through karate-chopping, water-vomiting, and wind-breaking -- he becomes the id to Dano's struggling everyman, who is also lost in the woods. If your childhood backyard adventures took the shape of The Revenant, it would look something like Swiss Army Man, and be pure bliss.
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Tallulah (2016)
From Orange Is the New Black writer Sian Heder, Tallulah follows the title character (played by Ellen Page) after she inadvertently "kidnaps" a toddler from an alcoholic rich woman and passes the child off as her own to appeal to her run-out boyfriend's mother (Allison Janney). A messy knot of familial woes and wayward instincts, Heder's directorial debut achieves the same kind of balancing act as her hit Netflix series -- frank social drama with just the right amount of humorous hijinks. As Tallulah grows into a mother figure, her on-the-lam parenting course only makes her more and more of a criminal in the eyes of... just about everyone. You want to root for her, but that would be too easy.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Travis Bickle (a young Bobby De Niro) comes back from the Vietnam War and, having some trouble acclimating to daily life, slowly unravels while fending off brutal insomnia by picking up work as a... taxi driver... in New York City. Eventually he snaps, shaves his hair into a mohawk and goes on a murderous rampage while still managing to squeeze in one of the most New York lines ever captured on film ("You talkin' to me?"). It's not exactly a heartwarmer -- Jodie Foster plays a 12-year-old prostitute -- but Martin Scorsese's 1976 Taxi Driver is a movie in the cinematic canon that you'd be legitimately missing out on if you didn't watch it.
FOCUS FEATURES
The Theory of Everything (2014)
In his Oscar-winning performance, Eddie Redmayne portrays famed physicist Stephen Hawking -- though The Theory of Everything is less of a biopic than it is a beautiful, sweet film about his lifelong relationship with his wife, Jane (Felicity Jones). Covering his days as a young cosmology student ahead of his diagnosis of ALS at 21, through his struggle with the illness and rise as a theoretical scientist, this film illustrates the trying romance through it all. While it may be written in the cosmos, this James Marsh-directed film that weaves in and out of love will have you experience everything there is to feel.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Paul Thomas Anderson found modern American greed in the pages of Upton Sinclair's depression-era novel, Oil!. Daniel Day-Lewis found the role of a lifetime behind the bushy mustache of Daniel Plainview, thunderous entrepreneur. Paul Dano found his milkshake drunk up. Their discoveries are our reward -- There Will Be Blood is a stark vision of tycoon terror.
Time to Hunt (2020)
Unrelenting in its pursuit of scenarios where guys point big guns at each other in sparsely lit empty hallways, the South Korean thriller Time to Hunt knows exactly what stylistic register it's playing in. A group of four friends, including Parasite and Train to Busan break-out Choi Woo-shik, knock over a gambling house, stealing a hefty bag of money and a set of even more valuable hard-drives, and then find themselves targeted by a ruthless contract killer (Park Hae-soo) who moves like the T-1000 and shoots like a henchmen in a Michael Mann movie. There are dystopian elements to the world -- protests play out in the streets, the police wage a tech-savvy war on citizens, automatic rifles are readily available to all potential buyers -- but they all serve the simmering tension and elevate the pounding set-pieces instead of feeling like unnecessary allegorical padding. Even with its long runtime, this movie moves.
STUDIOCANAL
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
If a season of 24 took place in the smoky, well-tailored underground of British intelligence crica 1973, it might look a little like this precision-made John le Carré adaptation from Let the Right One In director Tomas Alfredson. Even if you can't follow terse and tightly-woven mystery, the search for Soviet mole led by retired operative George Smiley (Gary Oldman), the ice-cold frames and stellar cast will suck you into the intrigue. It's very possible Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, and Benedict Cumberbatch are reading pages of the British phone book, but egad, it's absorbing. A movie that rewards your full concentration.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Of all the entries in the rom-com revival, this one is heavier on the rom than the com. But even though it won't make your sides hurt, it will make your heart flutter. The plot is ripe with high school movie hijinks that arise when the love letters of Lara Jean Covey (the wonderful Lana Condor) accidentally get mailed to her crushes, namely the contractual faux relationship she starts with heartthrob Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo). Like its heroine, it's big-hearted but skeptical in all the right places.
Total Recall (1990)
Skip the completely forgettable Colin Farrell remake from 2012. This Arnold Schwarzenegger-powered, action-filled sci-fi movie is the one to go with. Working from a short story by writer Philip K. Dick, director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop) uses a brain-teasing premise -- you can buy "fake" vacation memories from a mysterious company called Rekall -- to stage one of his hyper-violent, winkingly absurd cartoons. The bizarre images of life on Mars and silly one-liners from Arnold fly so fast that you'll begin to think the whole movie was designed to be implanted in your mind.
NETFLIX
Tramps (2017)
There are heists pulled off by slick gentlemen in suits, then there are heists pulled off by two wayward 20-somethings rambling along on a steamy, summer day in New York City. This dog-day crime-romance stages the latter, pairing a lanky Russian kid (Callum Tanner) who ditches his fast-food register job for a one-off thieving gig, with his driver, an aloof strip club waitress (Grace Van Patten) looking for the cash to restart her life. When a briefcase handoff goes awry, the pair head upstate to track down the missing package, where train rides and curbside walks force them to open up. With a laid-back, '70s soul, Tramps is the rare doe-eyed relationship movie where playing third-wheel is a joy.
Uncut Gems (2019)
In Uncut Gems, the immersive crime film from sibling director duo Josh and Benny Safdie, gambling is a matter of faith. Whether he's placing a bet on the Boston Celtics, attempting to rig an auction, or outrunning debt-collecting goons at his daughter's high school play, the movie's jeweler protagonist Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) believes in his ability to beat the odds. Does that mean he always succeeds? No, that would be absurd, undercutting the character's Job-like status, which Sandler imbues with an endearing weariness that holds the story together. But every financial setback, emotional humbling, and spiritual humiliation he suffers gets interpreted by Howard as a sign that his circumstances might be turning around. After all, a big score could be right around the corner.
Velvet Buzzsaw (2018)
Nightcrawler filmmaker Dan Gilroy teams up with Jake Gyllenhaal again to create another piece of cinematic art, this time a satirical horror film about the exclusive, over-the-top LA art scene. The movie centers around a greedy group of art buyers who come into the possession of stolen paintings that, unbeknownst to them, turn out to be haunted, making their luxurious lives of wheeling and dealing overpriced paintings a living hell. Also featuring the likes of John Malkovich, Toni Collette, Billy Magnussen, and others, Velvet Buzzsaw looks like Netflix’s next great original.
COLUMBIA PICTURES
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)
Oscar-baiting, musician biopics became so cookie-cutter by the mid-'00s that it was easy for John C. Reilly, Judd Apatow, and writer-director Jake Kasdan (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) to knot them all together for the ultimate spoof. Dewey Cox is part Johnny Cash, part Bob Dylan, part Ray Charles, part John Lennon, part anyone-you-can-think-of, rising with hit singles, rubbing shoulders with greats of many eras, stumbling with eight-too-many drug addictions, then rising once again. When it comes to relentless wisecracking, Walk Hard is like a Greatest Hits compilation -- every second is gold.
The Witch (2015)
The Witch delivers everything we don't see in horror today. The backdrop, a farm in 17th-century New England, is pure misty, macabre mood. The circumstance, a Puritanical family making it on the fringe of society because they're too religious, bubbles with terror. And the question, whether devil-worshipping is hocus pocus or true black magic, keeps each character on their toes, and begging God for answers. The Witch tests its audience with its (nearly impenetrable) old English dialogue and the (anxiety-inducing) trials of early American life, but the payoff will keep your mind racing, and your face hiding under the covers, for days.
Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
Before taking us to space with Gravity, director Alfonso Cuarón steamed up screens with this provocative, comedic drama about two teenage boys (Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal) road-trippin' it with an older woman. Like a sunbaked Jules and Jim, the movie makes nimble use of its central love triangle, setting up conflicts between the characters as they move through the complicated political and social realities of Mexican life. It's a confident, relaxed film that's got an equal amount of brains and sex appeal. Watch this one with a friend -- or two.
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Zodiac (2007)
David Fincher's period drama is for obsessives. In telling the story of the Zodiac Killer, a serial murderer who captured the public imagination by sending letters and puzzles to the Bay Area press, the famously meticulous director zeroes in on the cops, journalists, and amateur code-breakers who made identifying the criminal their life's work. With Jake Gyllenhaal's cartoonist-turned-gumshoe Robert Graysmith at the center, and Robert Downey Jr.'s barfly reporter Paul Avery stumbling around the margins, the film stretches across time and space, becoming a rich study of how people search for meaning in life. Zodiac is a procedural thriller that makes digging through old manilla folders feel like a cosmic quest.
13th (2016)
Selma director Ava DuVernay snuck away from the Hollywood spotlight to direct this sweeping documentary on the state of race in America. DuVernay's focus is the country's growing incarceration rates and an imbalance in the way black men and women are sentenced based on their crimes. Throughout the exploration, 13th dives into post-Emancipation migration, systemic racism that built in the early 20th century, and moments of modern political history that continue to spin a broken gear in our well-oiled national machine. You'll be blown away by what DuVernay uncovers in her interview-heavy research.
20th Century Women (2016)
If there's such thing as an epistolary movie, 20th Century Women is it. Touring 1970s Santa Barbara through a living flipbook, Mike Mills's semi-autobiographical film transcends documentation with a cast of wayward souls and Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), an impressionable young teenager. Annette Bening plays his mother, and the matriarch of a ragtag family, who gather together for safety, dance to music when the moment strikes, and teach Jamie the important lesson of What Women Want, which ranges from feminist theory to love-making techniques. The kid soaks it up like a sponge. Through Mills's caring direction, and characters we feel extending infinitely through past and present, so do we.
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put me back together vi || quentin beck x reader
chapter six: cut me open, take my heart
a/n: chapter title from ‘’when you walk away’’ by 5sos. i may be taking a short break from this while i figure out where to go from here. i don’t have an exact ending in mind- should it be sad, or happy? or somewhere in between? who knows? not i.
warnings: manipulation, mentions of character death, quentin being a lil bitch, sad mcu scenes mentioned, also (almost) changes to the main plot of the mcu lol that i can’t say here w/out spoiling it. hope ya’ll enjoy.
a/n 2: major liberties taken with the timeline in ffh, the chain of events in ffh, and astral projection. (you’ll see).
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(GIF is not mine)
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stephen answers the phone on the final ring, just before it cuts to voicemail.
‘’ yes? ‘’
‘’ i need to astral project. ‘’
‘’ or hello, as people used to say, ‘’ the sorceror replies drily.
‘’ i don’t have time for pleasantries. this is urgent. how can i do it on my own? ‘’
on the other end of the phone, strange sighs. ‘’ i suppose warning you against it due to the potential dangers of the act is pointless? ‘’
‘’ yep, ‘’ you respond, popping the p.
‘’ and asking you why you need to astral project? ‘’
‘’ i don’t have time. ‘’
‘’ of course you don’t, ‘’ he mutters under his breath, before releasing a breath and turning serious. ‘’ okay. listen carefully, and follow these instructions exactly as i lay them out. ‘’
within thirty minutes, you’re set up and ready to go. taking some steadying breaths you lay in the rectangle of lit candles and close your eyes. focusing on where you want to go.
how long it takes, you can’t be sure. maybe seconds, maybe minutes, maybe hours. eventually, the familiar floating sensation overwhelms your senses and when you reopen your eyes, you look down at your prone form on the ground. weird, you think, never getting used to it no matter how many times you do it.
right. you haven’t got long. ten minutes or less, any longer and the more difficult it will be for you to return to your physical form. you focus on the image of quentin in your mind; sparkling eyes, razorblade smile, smooth charm, slick hair. green smoke and fishbowl helmet, thick armour, flowing cape.
you drift through the plane and find yourself in a nondescript building, worn down and aging badly. quentin’s voice reaches your ears, loud and irritated.
‘’ what do you mean a drone was damaged? why didn’t you go and get it? ‘’
a man, bespectacled, behind a mass of computers. ‘’ it won’t matter, mr.beck, the loss won’t be noticable. ‘’
‘’ except, ‘’ the man himself, centre stage, through gritted teeth, ‘’ that peter parker has found that drone and will figure out the truth. ‘’
a cold breeze shifts around you; no. no. no.
‘’ when i have to kill that kid, his blood will be on your hands! ‘’
quentin roars, gone is the soft tenderness you experienced only hours ago, here is pure rage. this is a tantrum in a man, a storm of pure emotion.
‘’ kill that kid. ‘’
peter.
fuck.
you close your eyes and focus on getting back to yourself. the fear and panic creates obstacles, when you return, night has fallen outside - to your horror.
‘’ shit. shit. shit! ‘’
—
how many times can i screw up? you think to yourself, as you wait for quentin in your hotel room.
how many more people can i hurt, by not realising things until it’s too late? you close your eyes as a montage of painful memories plays across the screen of your mind.
steve’s secrets, tony, broken and alone in siberia. stephen and peter, the guardians, fading away to dust in front of your eyes. natasha’s hand slipping from yours on vormir; tony with the gauntlet and the stones swallowing him up in an easy gulp.
your hands start to shake. peter. please be okay. peter has to be okay.
‘’ honey? what’s going on? ‘’
you hadn’t even heard him arriving. you don’t look up, too fearful of what you may see in his face. too fearful of what he may see in your own.
he calls your name softly, worry in his tone. angry voices bite inside you. liar. falsehoods. trickster.
his footsteps grow closer and you raise your head, never opening your eyes.
this is where your illusion shatters. this is where his begins.
—
‘’ quentin beck - formerly employed by tony stark, under the illusion technology department. ‘’
quentin’s blood runs cold.
‘’ fired in 2014, due to instability and potential to become a danger to those around him. ‘’
his jaw clenches tight enough to ache. no. no. he will not let tony stark ruin this for him.
‘’ following beck’s departure from stark industries, tony stark unveils a new therapuetic technique, named BARF - binarily augmented retroframing. ‘’
your eyes open to meet his. brutal, unforgiving, a fire of ice blazing. mouth a harsh snarl, a far cry from the usual kind expression he sees.
‘’ listen to me. i can explain. ‘’
you don’t let him.
‘’ so, hang on. let me see if i’ve got this right, ‘’ you start, ‘’ you work for tony for years. you give your blood, sweat, and tears to a project that is more like, say, your baby, than a project. that’s right, yeah? ‘’
quentin tries to steady his breathing. ‘’ please, just - ‘’
‘’ so, tony fires you. right after you’ve made a big break in your work. cites the reason that you’re not stable enough to keep working on this project. you want to weaponise it. tony doesn’t, having shut down manufacturing of weapons years before. so ... what? you spend the next ten years working on this revenge plot? ‘’
you cock your head to the side and narrow your eyes. ‘’ or do you wait until he’s dead? because you know you can’t actually pull this shit off with him around. that he would figure it out in a nanosecond. because you can just about compete with a child? ‘’
he yells your name, reaching his breaking point.
you ignore him but match the volume. ‘’ did i i get it right, mr. beck? have i missed anything out? ‘’
‘’ you don’t understand and now you won’t listen! ‘’
‘’ i have heard enough from you! ‘’ you laugh, rolling like thunder, low and dangerous. you sober up suddenly. ‘’ the only thing i want you to say? where. is. peter. ‘’
quentin falls silent. you can hear your own heartbeat as he refuses to meet your eyes.
‘’ where is he? ‘’ your tone, edged with desperation, grows aggressive, causing quentin to nearly wince away.
‘’ he had to be dealt with. ‘’ (quentin hopes he sounds more confident than he feels.)
you laugh again, no mirth, just sharp edges. ‘’ don’t. don’t you dare- quentin, where is peter? ‘’
he looks at you with sorrow weighing down his handsome features; features that you now want to punch, hard.
‘’ i’m sorry. it wasn’t supposed to go this way. ‘’
like ice water flooding your veins, everything around you freezes. you shake your head, words failing you.
‘’ you can’t have - you can’t - ‘’
quentin holds up his hands and slowly walks up to you. ‘’ i’m so sorry, ‘’ he repeats, and you’d almost believe him, if you could process anything in this moment.
peter. dead?
you let him down - again.
a ragged breath rips its way from your chest, knees buckling.
‘’ please, let me - ‘’
you rear back when quentin comes close enough to touch. ‘’ no. no. don’t. don’t you fucking - don’t you put a hand on me. you liar. liar. cheat. evil, manipulative, lying- ‘’
‘’ now, now, ‘’ quentin chides, almost hurt, ‘’ that’s not very nice. hmm? like i said - it wasn’t supposed to go like this. poor peter, he just - i tried to get him out of the way but he just. kept. interfering. ‘’ quentin chuckles, in a way that says ‘’i mean, what else was i to do? ‘’
you stare, swallowing down tears.
‘’ it’s a shame, ‘’ quentin sighs, ‘’ because i liked the kid. really, i did, ‘’ he insists, searching your face for something that will let him know you believe his words. ‘’ but, casualties happen. ‘’ he says it so matter-of-factly, you can’t even stop yourself.
he’s lying on his back and your knuckles are burning in the blink of an eye; it’s a good thing for quentin that your powers aren’t on full blast, otherwise the blow most likely would have killed him.
as it is, when he sits back up, stunned, his nose is crooked, streaming blood. he winces furiously when he touches two fingers to the swollen appendage, and then tilts his head and clicks his tongue against his teeth.
‘’ i really wish you hadn’t done that. ‘’
you open your mouth to speak - just as the room falls away beneath you. leaving you stranded in a black box. empty. vacant.
‘’ quentin? ‘’ you call out, trying to keep the anger in your voice. ‘’ quentin, don’t. ‘’ the warning comes as more of a plea and you hate that.
‘’ it’s gonna be okay, honey, ‘’ his voices comes from everywhere and no-where at the same time, disorientating as you get to your feet and stumble around the space. ‘’ don’t worry. you’ll see, soon. you’ll understand. ‘’
a low buzzing begins in the distance. your heart hammers against your chest, panic tightening your throat as breathing grows more and more difficult. ‘’ quentin, please- ‘’ you whisper, brokenly, and he almost wants to cut the scene. end the illusion. have you in his arms again, feel you kiss him, touch him, smile at him.
the buzzing grows louder and he watches you spin around and around as you try to make sense of your surroundings.
you don’t understand, not yet - he has to make you understand.
‘’ it’s gonna be okay, honey, ‘’ he promises a second time, sad and hopeless.
a swarm of wasps descend upon you, you shriek and slap them away, more appearing out of thin air. quentin tries to block out your yells of fear and pleas, ‘’ quentin, stop - stop it! please, stop it! ‘’
it’s okay, he whispers to himself, it’s gonna be okay. he draws out a syringe from a pocket on his hip, approaching you quietly.
you punch the air and twist and turn. trying to escape the flurry of buzzing wings swallowing you whole. one of them stings you, a pinch in your neck. dizziness warps your vision, loosens your limbs, throws the world up in the air.
you drift away into nothingness, peter’s face the last thing you see, in your mind.
quentin’s voice the last thing that you hear. whispering in your ear.
‘’ we’ll get through this, honey. don’t worry. i’m gonna keep you safe. ‘’
—
tag list: @djjffkd @kellzogg @bucky4cap45 @tuliptx @evee550 @stargeek727 @hrrykim @angeli-fucking-cat @glitter-rian
#personall~#quentin beck x reader#quentin beck imagine#mysterio x reader#mysterio imagine#jake gyllenhaal#spiderman#spiderman ffh#tom holland#peter parker#qb:pbmt
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Quarantine Rock
Been a minute. I’ve been driven back to the ‘net by the unfortunate situation the entire world is in. I’m trying hard to keep occupied and keep cool instead of binging news and Instagram, and music, as always, has been a salve. Most of the below titles are just new to me, though not necessarily new - but we’ve pretty much all got the time to reminisce or to go back and search for buried gems, so here goes.
Tori Kudo, The Last Song of My Life LP (An’archives) / Tori Kudo & Kayo Makino, Ein Traum Für Dich LP (Black Truffle)
Tori Kudo’s always been on the periphery of my listening, but aside from the Mu Ji Ge 7″, this is really my first time diving into his extensive body of work. His newest solo LP is The Last Song of My Life, where as bandleader Kudo leads a melancholy saunter meditating on one motif for its duration, occasionally pocked by noise, apparently “depending on their response to the film work that was being projected.” You don’t need the film to get to the emotive heart of this, and the motif will be stuck in your head for days. Strangely beautiful, and somewhat disarming, even if the errant elbow strikes you in the ribs now and then. My go-to reading soundtrack lately. Beautiful presentation by An’archives, as usual. This one flew off the shelves, so be sure to grab it if you see it in the wild.
Last year Kudo released a collaborative LP with Kayo Makino on Black Truffle, and if you’re daunted by The Last Song of My Life, this one goes even further down the rabbit hole. I prefer Ein Traum Für Dich though; Kudo’s on piano, playing Satie on the A-side and some meandering progression on the flip, and Makino digitally distorts and heightens Kudo’s playing, occasionally adding spoken word samples and processed noise. The A-side is interesting, both of them playing with the possibilities of this pairing, Makino layering and offsetting Kudo’s melody to nauseating effect. The B-side is the reason for tuning in, though: Makino’s static stretches and overwhelms Kudo at points, making for a hypnotic and immersive 20+ minute ride. It’s a trip, the whole album acting as an audial blackout curtain, or the mesmerizing escape we all could use. Grab the LP from Forced Exposure for 15% off now.
Hardijs Lediņš, Tiny Crabs of Deep Waters LP (Musiques Electroniques Actuelles)
Been digging into the NSRD collective’s work a bit lately, though I’m not gonna pretend like I’m some sort of expert - the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art published a comprehensive book about the group a few years ago if ya wanna become one, though. I’m partway through the book; my takeaway so far is that the NSRD collective, led by Hardijs Lediņš and Juris Boiko, found ways to subvert oppressive Soviet rule through a freedom of expression and thought seldomly encountered. Part of that expression was of course music, and the Workshop For the Restoration of Unfelt Feelings compilation on Stroom is the best introduction (good luck finding the LP). The music was largely electronic, somewhat ahead of its time and also totally cracked given the relative isolation of Latvia during this time. Tiny Crabs of Deep Waters is another entryway to the group’s music, this time a reissue of an impossible-to-find CDr from Hardijs Lediņš. The synth-heavy, largely instrumental record should appeal to fans of the soundtrack work of Tangerine Dream or John Carpenter, but the whole thing carries this strange sense that something is a bit off. Cartoonish keyboard effects collide with rich bass tones in a conventional yet dizzying manner, if you lean in close. The LP’s been a great shot in the arm when the day gets too sleepy, especially when the beat kicks in on the 13-minute “La Danse Binoculaire De Paris.” Top notch reissue, released at the end of last year, and can still be had on Discogs.
Teitanblood, Death 2xLP (Norma Evangelium Diaboli/The Ajna Offensive)
Yeah, this one makes sense right now: absolutely blistering black metal from Spain, the 2014 follow-up to modern classic Seven Chalices that I didn’t check out for some reason until now. Teitanblood is smothering and chaotic, and hardly conventional, but an admittedly complicated method exists behind the screen. There’s hardly a more cathartic record available to me than Death, especially the duo of “Plagues of Forgiveness”/”Cadaver Synod” that takes up face B. The band released The Baneful Choir last year, and that one smokes, too. Grab both LPs from Hell’s Headbangers or direct from the Ajna Offensive and burn straight out of this reality.
Martina Lussi, Diffusion Is a Force LP (Latency)
A totally engrossing and absorbing sound world created by Switzerland’s Martina Lussi on Diffusion Is a Force. The samples used - wheezing breaths, dribbling basketballs, roaring crowds - introduce a human element to the rich, warm tapestries. No beats to ride on here, but a track like “Higher Energy” cuts to the core with a Loren Connors-esque guitar part, which is then slowly displaced by rumbling, punctuated bass. The album feels very light and warm, as if in a fog, and the careful sequencing shifts the mood imperceptibly from track to track. Obviously I am not well-versed in electronic music, and there’s probably a name for what Lussi does so well here, but whatever it is, Diffusion Is a Force hits me right in the chest while gettin’ the synapses firing. Find the LP on Discogs, or support 2 Bridges Music Arts during this time of small business strain.
Reek Minds, s/t 7″ (Edger) / Suck Lords, True Lords Music 7″ (Edger) / Pig DNA, Mob Shity MLP (La Vida Es Un Mus) / Pig DNA, Strong Throat 7″ (Square One Again)
It’s inevitable that some anger will boil over from time to time, from the ineptitude shown by governments worldwide to the jackass hoarding hand sanitizer right here in Tennessee. These four records will stomp the anger right outta ya so you can get back to staring at the ceiling and forcing yourself to breathe calmly. Reek Minds’ 7″ is new this year, and they blaze through 8 tracks, coming off like the late, great Sickoids while still sprinkling in some mosh-worthy bits (see “A.M.”). Matt K. at Yellow Green Red thinks Iron Lung will be calling for Reek Minds to join their ranks soon, and I agree. Apparently there are 2 copies of Reek Minds’ self-titled 7″ left at Bandcamp as of this writing. They share members with Suck Lords, who somehow play even faster, approaching powerviolence speeds, their drummer giving Jerry’s Kids’ Brian Betzger a run for his money. The Lords are a little more goofy than Reek Minds, though you wouldn’t know it if they hadn’t included a lyric sheet and a “Getting to Know the Lords” insert with last year’s True Lords Music record. Grab some Lords from Not For Everyone.
Pig DNA, for their part, drop an atomic bomb on the whole thing, their 2015 MLP Mob Shity sounding strangely prescient and utterly unforgiving. From the opening track “Foire,” Pig DNA throw down the gauntlet, every track seeming to possess more ludicrous levels of noise smothering the piledriving riffs than the previous one. There’s d-beat in there somewhere, but I’m not gonna stick my hand in the caustic stew to find it. “Scums (City Rockers)” is my pick, but the whole thing is an unrelenting assault and worthy successor to Kriegshög’s s/t LP. Hard to handle nuclear material, so it’s still available for as low as $6. The band followed up Mob Shity with Strong Throat, possibly the shortest 7″ record I own, that continues down the same path. It’s worth hunting down (here ya go) for the B-side, where the drums drop out and the band still gnashes and claws at the walls with all its got. Insane. May their message live on in these chaotic days ahead.
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Wellspring [2/14]
AN: Think I’m going to post Mondays and Fridays, going forward here.
Warnings for this chapter: Sad vampires and an incredibly graphic description of cinnamon rolls, which may or may not induce cravings for same.
*
The place is still a maze, and Trevor would swear they’ve covered some of these hallways twice without ever circling back on their path; it’s like walking on the back of a snake that’s too busy eating itself to realize it’s got passengers, endlessly looping from nose to tail and back again. Still, despite the dizzying geometry, despite the identical furniture and carpets and artwork and bloodstains, it doesn’t really feel like the same place they invaded early in the spring. It’s no mystery why: every single window in the place has had its shutters thrown open, and a lot of the ones above ground level have their glass opened too, letting air circulate and carry away the stench of demons and blood and battle that permeates the lower entryway. Sunlight falls in thick parallel stripes across the corridors, blazing white against all the black and red and grey like a declaration or a warning, and up here at least, it feels… airy. Pleasant, almost, if you ignore all the context.
“Well, none of those bastards are going to get to him during the day, at least,” Trevor drawls out, mostly to himself. “Not through that gauntlet.”
Other than the windows, though, not much seems to have been done over the past few months. There at least aren’t any birds nesting tucked up under the vaulted ceilings, which he’d figure would have happened if the place were truly unoccupied with the windows left open like that. Likewise, some of the hall carpets are less dusty than others, implying recent foot traffic, and he follows that trail as easily as fresh deer prints through the woods.
By the time they find him—sprawled in one of the sterile, unlived-in spare bedrooms, face buried in an armful of dark green bedsheet—Trevor’s mostly gotten his worry under control, because details matter and most of the details have been implying a present, if not particularly productive, inhabitant. It’s still a shattering kind of relief to see the proof of it; Alucard’s visibly breathing, the bedding is free of bloodstains, and judging by the faint, entertainingly undignified snoring, this is normal human-like sleep, not the deathless suspension they’d inadvertently kicked him out of under Greşit.
“Okay,” Sypha says, both of them drawn close. She sounds a little shaky still. “Okay. Better than the coffin, at least.”
Trevor runs his hand over his face, breathes. “Better than a lot of things. Kind of weird he hasn’t woken up, though, we’re not exactly being quiet. Alucard,” he says sharply, clapping his hands once.
Alucard startles awake hard, mumbling a bunch of urgent nonsense in who-knows-what language, mouth full of fangs and eyes a little too red. He peers at them for a moment, getting his bearings and swallowing back the startled panic as Sypha sits down beside him. His eyes clear quickly, to no small relief. “Sypha? Belmont. Why are you here?”
And because he’s who he is, and is trying to forget the last few hours’ fear, Trevor smirks and says, “We fell down a hole.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Alucard moans, running a hand over his face. “Not this again. I swear, Belmont, if you pull that whip on me I will truss you up in it like a Christmas goose.”
“Whoa there,” Trevor laughs.
“My goodness,” Sypha adds, leaning to playfully nudge at Alucard’s shoulder with her own. “You almost sound happy to see him for once.”
“Never,” Alucard grumbles, but there’s a hint of a reluctant grin through the curtain of his hair, a hint of fang.
Trevor, as suicidally reckless as ever, takes that as an invitation to plunk down on Alucard’s other side, lounging back on his hands. It’s a nice bed actually, really soft, kind of springy. He bounces on his hands a little, testing it.
“I really would,” Alucard continues, “like to know what brings you here. You’re not unwelcome, but if there’s some new disaster going on that you need my help with—”
“We just wanted to see how you were doing,” Sypha supplies.
“Yeah, make sure you’re doing a good enough job looking after everything,” Trevor adds; then, as Sypha somehow manages to kick him in the leg without so much as grazing Alucard: “Ow, fuck’s sake, Sypha. Fine. Annnd to make sure you haven’t sulked your way into a hole in the ground.”
“I appreciate the concern,” Alucard says after a moment, though it’s anyone’s guess as to whether he actually does; his voice is flatter than Trevor remembers, and there’s not much to read in it. “if not the exact phrasing, but I fail to see how that justifies the two of you invading my bed.”
“You are just full of innuendo today,” Sypha teases, but there’s a tension in her voice; he hasn’t answered the question. “Having interesting dreams when we woke you?”
A rushed, dismissive head-shake. “No. I don’t dream.”
“Yeah, you do,” Trevor says knowingly, head cocked to one side. He had a bruise on his flank for a week after that night in the woods near Argeș to prove it. “But I don’t think you were. I don’t think—”
“—at all.”
“I don’t think,” Trevor continues, volume ticking up a bit, “I’ve ever seen anyone as dead to the world as you just were.”
“You have no idea how soundly I slept under Greşit.”
“Yeah, but that was magical coffin sleep, wasn’t it? This was just like,” he waves a hand, encompassing the whole scene: the rumpled sheets, Alucard’s rumpled hair, the rumpled clothes he’s been sleeping in; Alucard himself, even now still rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Black out at 3 in the morning after finally finding the wine cellar, working your way through half of it, and then making a serious attempt at spending the next three days sleeping it off. You know. Normal sleep.”
Alucard looks at him with an expression halfway between horror and regret.
“No!” Sypha says, disbelieving. “You didn’t.”
“I didn’t,” Alucard grits out, turning to her. “I’m just appalled to realize that that’s what Belmont considers normal sleep.”
“Well—”
“And,” he cuts Trevor off, “I’m not yet awake enough to process your inane ramblings in real time.”
“You can insult me for rambling if you want,” Trevor says, pointedly, suddenly serious. “I’m not the stupid half-vampire with delusions of invincibility who let two people creep up on him while he was sleeping. We could have killed you.”
Alucard runs a hand over his face. “And why would you do that? Foolish of me maybe, but I sort of thought we were past that stage.”
“Well, I mean. We wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be us—”
“You know what he means,” Sypha cuts in, worry giving her voice an edge of sharpness. “The castle is wide open, we could have been anyone.”
A distracted nod, hair failing more into his face. “Again, I appreciate the concern. But trust me when I say that I would have known the difference.” Another glint of fang. “And responded appropriately.”
Trevor figures he’s supposed to feel menaced right now, but eh, this all feels rehearsed. “What, in your sleep?” he scoffs.
“Yes, actually,” Alucard says, taking the opportunity to stand, extricating himself from between them. “You two are distinctive, and as much as I’m loath to admit it, my subconscious has apparently decided that you’re… safe.”
“Safe, huh?” Trevor wants to believe that, despite his best efforts, and despite the fact that Alucard handles the word ‘safe’ like one might handle a seventeen-legged insect. But also: “That why you woke up a fangy horror?”
“Did I,” Alucard asks, sounding only vaguely interested in the answer. Now that he’s standing, looking around the room, looking away from them, there’s a wilted quality to him that reminds Trevor of an unwatered cornstalk.
“Truly,” Sypha says, reaching up to touch Alucard’s arm. “How are you doing?”
For just a second, he leans into the touch, then straightens and turns back to them with a smile that is no smile at all; it looks like someone’s pinned the corners of his mouth up. “I’m… fine. Things are going well.”
“Really.” Trevor narrows his eyes; that’s the poorest excuse for a lie he’s ever heard, from man or monster alike.
The not-smile falters. “Why would I have said it, if I didn’t mean it?”
“I have no idea,” Trevor says, pushing himself up from the bed, “why anyone would say anything that’s so clearly, obviously a lie.”
Sypha’s brow pinches. “But you lie about that kind of thing all the time.”
Oh fucking hell. Of course he does, because he’s the rugged stoic one, he doesn’t have to talk about his feelings. That’s just the way of things. “Fine. Right. I know why you’d lie about it but. Don’t. Okay?”
Alucard just eyes him, accusation of hypocrisy clear as crystal on his face. It’d taken a while to learn how to sort out all the different kinds of disdain he was capable of expressing through the set of his mouth alone, and now that Trevor is back to deciphering it again, he finds he hasn’t lost his touch.
“Look,” he continues, scrubbing at his face. Give a little, get a little. “We just rode for a week to get here, to see you, and we got here and the place is such a shambles we were sure something had happened to you, so just. Don’t lie to us.”
After a long moment of stalemate, Alucard wilts again, sighs. “I’m… tired, I suppose. A little hungry? It’s hard to say.”
Sypha runs her hand up his arm, resting on his shoulder. “When did you eat last?”
Alucard just makes an indecisive noise, less like he’s hiding something and more like he simply doesn’t know.
A sigh, disappointment and concern ringing through the sound. “Okay,” Sypha says, turning to steer Alucard out the door. “Breakfast.”
* *
This kitchen is the cozy one, the one his mother had insisted on having put in when she’d gotten tired of using the massive, majestic oak table in the luxurious grand hall to feed porridge to a squalling infant. Too much of an ordeal to clean up afterward, she’d said when recounting the story once, and Adrian had gone as red as he was capable of at the sheer embarrassment of it. She’d told him afterward though, that there was no shame in being undignified at certain ages; that was the way of the human world.
He wonders, habitually and without any real venom, what Belmont’s excuse is.
Once they’d taken in the state of the place—dusty countertops, torches broken, cobwebs in the corners, very little surviving except for dry goods—they’d sat him down at the table and had a little conference, lowering their voices in an entertaining bid to avoid his hearing. Adrian sets his chin on his arms and listens, regardless. Apparently, Belmont of all people is being put in charge of the food, Sypha darting out to retrieve some things from the wagon—milk, butter, eggs. Something else he doesn’t catch. They must have found a town nearby, on their way here. It occurs to him that he probably should know if there is another town, besides the one spread out in the shadow of the castle down below.
Truth be told, he’s feeling a little dazed. He feels dazed a lot lately, which helps with bringing sleep on but not with much else, including processing the sudden reappearance of these two, with their high-strung patter and endearing demands for honesty. He’s missed them, or at least, he’s missed the sound of voices that aren’t his own. Footsteps that don’t sink gracefully and noiselessly into the carpets. Someone to keep an extra ear out, to tend the fire—
No, he thinks, as Sypha returns to the kitchen with their foodstuffs and sets a warm hand on his shoulder, as Belmont accidentally upends the canister of flour and gets it all over himself and the counter in a laughable avalanche. No, he is fairly sure he missed them, specifically.
And Adrian honestly expects breakfast to consist of raw meat on sticks or something equally barbaric, but half an hour later, he’s watching Belmont wipe the last of that scattered flour from his face, the cooktable covered in sugar and bits of dough and more flour, a deep cast-iron pan of rolled dough resting in the oven. There’s a vaguely sweet, spicy smell in the air, magnified tenfold when Belmont starts heating a second pan with a sugary white-brown slurry coating its interior. It’s familiar, somehow, tugging at memory the way mystery odors sometimes do.
“I have to admit, I didn’t expect you to be so versed in cooking,” Adrian says, a bid to distract himself. The barb feels lazy even to him, but if they wanted him at his best then they ought not to have woken him after so little sleep. “Seems too civilized a skill for someone whose hobbies primarily include hitting monsters with sticks.”
“Yeah, I’m full of surprises,” Belmont says, with a twist of quiet self-deprecation; the strike doesn’t even land. If Adrian’s being honest with himself, he’s a little impressed. Sypha has been a good influence. “To be fair, you’ve only ever seen me sleeping in the dirt next to a campfire. Not exactly civilization.”
“I think,” Sypha says, “your family library counts as civilization.”
“His library,” Belmont corrects quietly, then, more loudly, “Also, believe it or not, not a great place to start a cooking fire. Being a giant hole filled with paper and all.”
“What exactly are you making?” Adrian finally asks, trying to temper the curiosity in his voice with detached annoyance.
Belmont shrugs, not turning. “Just a family recipe.”
“Full of garlic and holy water, then.”
Belmont barks a laugh. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d eat it just to prove you could. But no. Just a sort of traditional breakfast for special events. Holidays, big victories, uh, homecomings…”
That spice smell has been building up in the room, and it’s honestly lovely, and tickling at Adrian’s memory now with a persistence that’s becoming hard to ignore. “…and what is that I’m smelling?”
“That,” Sypha says proudly, swiping the tiny stone jar from Belmont’s elbow and handing it to Adrian with a flourish, “is cinnamon.”
Hm. Interesting; he cracks open the jar to take a careful sniff of the contents. This close to the source, the memory finally clicks: a single winter holiday spent among the villagers of Târgoviște with his mother while his father was off travelling in the east. She’d changed him into simpler clothes, brushed his hair down over his ears and reminded him to keep his teeth in his mouth where they belonged, and sent him off into the group of children playing in the freshly fallen snow. He’d been predictably self-conscious at first, but the others didn’t single him out or make fun of his eyes or force him to posture for a place in their play, tugging him laughing down into the snow with them. And after, there’d been these delicately tiny cinnamon biscuits made by one of the wealthier merchant families, reserved strictly for the children. For a brief few moments there, his hair ruffled under a stranger’s hand and a warm treat in his grasp, shoes filled with snow and eyelashes dusted with ice and another child’s arm at his back—he’d felt acceptance, maybe even belonging.
He closes his eyes, takes another deep breath of the spice, then seals the jar back up. Peels himself out of the memory, because that does not matter now. “How on earth did you acquire this?”
“My people,” she says, still preening and prideful, and for good reason evidently, “do a lot of trading while they travel, especially on the eastern routes. Not to make money of course, just to carry pieces of the cultures they encounter with them. And they were very grateful for what the three of us did—risking our lives, fulfilling the prophecy, saving the world, all of that.” She waves her hand in a circle, comically dismissive. “They sent us back with some gifts—nothing traditionally valuable, but—”
“Valuable enough,” Adrian says, handing the jar back. “Nearly worth its weight in gold last I checked.”
“Yeah,” Belmont chimes in, “But gold tastes like shit.”
“Which begs the question,” Adrian continues, ignoring him, “why you’re wasting something this precious on Belmont’s cooking.”
“Hey now, I know what I’m doing.” He’s retrieved the pan from the oven, the dough risen now into puffy golden-brown rolls swirled with heat-darkened cinnamon, and is drooling the glaze from the other pan onto them. It looks positively decadent; Belmont looks insufferably self-satisfied. “The real question is why I’m wasting it on you, vampire.”
The pan hits the table unceremoniously, and Belmont slumps into a chair, prying one of the rolls out and taking a ravenous bite of the hot, sticky, spicy mess. Sypha follows suit, groaning in happiness after the first taste.
“Homecomings, hm?” Adrian mumbles.
“Mmf,” Trevor says around his mouthful, a hesitant affirmative. He gestures to the pan, expectant.
Adrian leans forward, extricates a roll delicately—lets the spiced smell permeate his senses before taking a bite, and for a fleeting moment, there it is again: belonging.
*
<--- Part 1 Part 3 --->
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Ala Mhigo
The heat of battle nearly overwhelmed her. The resistance had been discovered...but they just needed to hold out for a little while longer. Just long enough for the women and children to escape.
Evangeline reached out with a hand covered in a gauntlet of black steel, easily bypassing the guard of the Garlean soldier. Her hand gripped to his fully masked face, clinging to it as if it was magnetically attracted. Darkness swelled from her palm, enhancing her strength once more as she closed her hand, crushing the man's helmet and face in one swift motion. She tossed his corpse to the side and scanned the battlefield, moving her now bloody gauntlet to the hilt of her sword. She drew it forth-a massive sword of black steel with edges lined with glowing yellow runes.
The others seemed to be holding out well enough-Solenna was only a few yalms to her left, flitting across the lake that lay in the center of Rhalger's Reach, firing off flashes of elemental spells in all directions. Her feet barely touched the water, the air beneath her carrying her gracefully towards another group of Garlean soldiers. Evangeline couldn't help but smile at the sight. Solenna was unparalelled in her talent for red magic. She made every fight look like a dance, weaving the delicate balance between darkness and light into her movements, her magic, and the swift piercing death her rapier brought.
Evangeline casually cleaved another Garlean soldier nearly in half, sending his body tumbling into the dirt at her feet. His blood decorated her armor now. She moved to look for the others, but a yelp caught her attention. Her eyes barely caught a glimpse of Solenna as she flipped backwards, soaring through the air away from...Zenos Yae Galvus.
"Solenna!!" Eva cried out, making to run in her direction. Her path, however, was blocked. There were more Garlean soldiers here than she had expected-more than just a scouting party. This had been fully premeditated. A wall of dark garlean armor hemmed her in, soldiers approaching from all sides, carefully holding their blades towards her poised to strike at once...and they did. But each and every blade stopped short. A wall of shadows rose to meet them, surrounding Evangeline, encasing her in darkness, runes of red and black spiraling across the bubble that protected her from the Garleans.
"Get out...OF MY WAY." She screamed, the darkness around her roiling with her fury. The soldiers stumbled back, directly into the blades of darkness that punched up through their armor from the black pool swirling underneath Evangeline's feet. The platoon collapsed around her, impaled by seething darkness, their empty eyes staring up at the sky. The sky over Ala Mhigo. The sky they tried to take from Ala Mhigans. Evangeline immediately broke into a run, moving towards Solenna as she danced with Zenos.
Solenna dodged effortlessly around Zenos's wildly slashing blades, the winds carrying her well clear of his reach. Electricity lit up upon her fingertips, and she threw her armo forward, emitting a bright red bolt of crackling power that struck Zenos directly in the chest, causing him to stagger backwards, spasming. He righted himself, only to find his armor exploding out from his chest, fire consuming the entire front of his body and blackening his skin in the blaze. With that, Solenna was upon him. A blur of motion that Evangeline could barely make out at the distance she was from the two of them. Her rapier pierced his arm, his side, gouts of blood spouting from his open wounds.
And that's when he started laughing.
Evangeline could hear it even from yalms away, a haunting, horrible laugh that chilled her, spurred her forward.
Solenna pressed the attack, blasting him backwards once again with a gust of air.
Evangeline was almost upon them now-she was so close, just a few more yalms and she would bring her wrath to bear upon Zenos. She noticed something though...out of the corner of her eye. A flash, a glimmer on Zenos’ body. Something so subtle Solenna had missed it in her eagerness to end the threat to Ala Mhigo.
Evangeline stopped, shadows pooling towards her, and outstretched her hand. A thin thread of darkness emitted from her fingers, hurtling towards the battle, until it wrapped around Solenna, a barrier of deep darkness that thrummed and hummed and stopped Zenos’s hidden sword as he pulled it from his side, slashing towards Solenna’s stomach.
Zenos struggled, attempting to break the barrier, but couldn’t seem to find the strength. He drew back his sword, bashing and slashing at the barrier, a petulant child in his rage. His laughter turned to screams of fury, echoing through the reach, almost overpowering the roar of battle. Evangeline drew back her hand, stepping forward to join her ally...but she felt a hand on her shoulder. A whisper in her ear.
“Time to get some sleep, Evangeline.”
No...Evangeline looked down. A blade protruded from her stomach. It had pierced cleanly through her armor, utterly destroying it and sending blood spattering across her torso and the ground in front of her. She knew that sword....that voice…
“Fordola...you bitch…” She could feel herself getting weaker. The lifeblood seeping from her body onto the ground. She fell to her knees as the traitor pulled her sword from Evangeline.
“I will end the resistance. Now. And I will start with your girlfriend. You just sit back...and watch.”
Tears began to flow, mixing with the blood pouring from her mouth. “Stop…” she said weakly, as Fordola approached the dark barrier.
Or she would have, if a pair of heavily armored feet hadn’t collided directly with her skull. A pair of feet followed by a full 7 fulms and 2 ilms of Au Ra fury that drove Fordola directly into the ground.
Andreas Adeliger leapt backwards, executing yet another perfect backflip and landing cleanly a handful of fulms from Fordola, who was now clearly unconscious. He stepped forward to finish her, his spear raised in the air.
“Solenna…” Evangeline was able to utter, her vision fading.
Andy turned to her. “What?”
“HELP SOLENNA!” She yelled, reeling.
He turned, his eyes set on Zenos as he continued to batter away at the shield. “I’ll be right back.” He growled. “And don’t you dare die on me.” He seemed to yell something else, but she couldn’t be sure what. She couldn’t really hear anymore. For that matter, she couldn’t really see anymore either. Evangeline’s vision faded to black and she felt her body slump to the ground. Maybe it really was time for some sleep.
-------------------------------------------
This was so much fun to write! Hope everyone enjoyed :) The characters in question are mine (Evangeline) @eremiss (Solenna) and @antihypnophobia (Andreas).
#ffxiv#evangeline cross#solenna redashi#andreas adeliger#warrior of light#ffxiv zenos#ala mhigo#red magic#dark knight#its a freaking battle#holy shit this was so much fun to write#writing
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Green Wounds, Ch. 2
And we’re back! I’m thinking I’ll post the chapters every Saturday, because I’ve got like, at least half the story done at this point, so posting every week gives me time to work on it while also letting me focus on college stuff. I’ll tell ya tho, I’ve been excited to post this all week!
Enjoy the chapter!... Well, enjoy it as best you can. Things get pretty... pretty bad for Starchild near the end. On the bright side, his look in this chapter is his bitchin Dynasty-era costume.
As the years passed, Ace’s ambition called him away from Starchild, and towards the temptations of the human kingdom, while Starchild, the strongest of the faeries, rose to become protector of the Moors.
A black form flew through the morning sky, twisting through the air and bursting through the clouds. The form drew his wings around himself and twisted into a spiral, higher and higher into the air, until he spread out his wings and floated in the sky.
It was Starchild, now a fully-grown faerie of twenty-six years. He had grown from a young boy into a rather good-looking man (according to the water nymphs anyway). His long, curly black hair cascaded down his back, blowing slightly in the morning breeze, and perhaps with his black hair and splendorous wings and his purple tunic and black pants, along with the black star on his white face and red lips, he would make for a rather intimidating man. But one only had to look at his eyes, which were bright as they looked down at his home, and the smile that graced his red lips to know that they had no reason to fear this man.
Well, unless they threatened the Moors. Then they might as well pray to whatever higher power they believed in that Starchild would show mercy.
But right now, Starchild had no reason to be the fierce protector of the Moors that he was. Instead, he was just another dweller of the Moors on his morning flight.
Starchild leaned forward and went into a dive, flying expertly over, under, and between the various rock and cliff formations. At this point he knew the Moors so well he could have flown around it with his eyes closed… if he hadn’t tried that once and nearly broke one of his wings. Gene had given him a serious scolding over that one. So he kept his eyes open and continued flying, past many dwellers of the Moors, and if he hadn’t been flying so fast he would have shouted a good morning to them.
He passed by a waterfall and flew to be down over the surface of the crystal blue loch, and below him he saw the water dwellers break the surface, diving above the water then splashing down again, and Starchild could feel the spray of the water as they dove back down. Smiling brighter now, he did a few twists and loops in the air before tilting himself up, soaring higher and higher above the Moors. He flew through the clouds, feeling the cool water on his face and hair, until he broke through the thick layer and was above everything. He was so high up that nearly all the clouds were below his feet, and he saw nothing ahead but the bright sun against the morning sky.
Starchild closed his eyes and floated there for a long moment, taking in long, deep lungfuls of the clear, crisp air and feeling the warm rays of the sun on his face. He loved it up here, almost as much as he loved to fly. There was nothing in the world like flying; being free from the ground to soar weightlessly through the air, made even better by his strong, dependable wings. When he was in the air, he could leave everything behind; could forget his duty to the Moors (even though he wore his title with pride), whatever was happening on the ground, and could forget…
The smile faded as Starchild thought of Ace. And it was the thought of Ace that made him remember he couldn’t stay in the air forever, despite how much he wanted to. He leaned forward and flew down back to the Moors.
Starchild often wandered alone, and sometimes wondered where Ace might be, for he had never understood the greed and envy of men. But he was to learn. For the human king had heard of a growing power in the Moors, and he sought to strike it down.
It was while Starchild was wandering through the Moors one day that he saw it. He was up on a cliff, looking out at the dark, cloudy sky, and he would wonder later if the dismal gloom had been an omen for what was to come.
Then, between the edge of the Moors and Jendell, he saw a huge cloud of dust, slowly inching toward the Moors. He squinted, and through the dust he could see strips of cloth being held up on sticks. Flags; human flags.
Starchild’s eyes widened, and he spread his wings and took off towards the edge of the Moors.
-*-
When the army had approached the standing stones, King William raised his gauntlet-clad arm. “Halt!” his generals yelled, and the army stilled.
King William looked out at the Moors. There was no sign of any of the odd… things, that dwelled in the kingdom, or any of the terrifying giants made of trees that were rumored to guard the borders.
King William spurred his horse forward, and turned it to look out at the army. “There they are!” he shouted. “The mysterious Moors, where no one dares to venture, for fear of the magical creatures that lurk within. Well I say: crush them!”
The knights and soldiers cheered in agreement, the flag-bearers waving the flags in the air.
Suddenly, King William heard the sound of flapping wings. He turned around, just in time to see a human-like man with large black wings swoop down and land on a boulder between two standing stones.
On his boulder, Starchild stood up and looked out at the distant human army. What had before been a bright face with sparkling eyes and a perpetual hint of a smile was now dark and stormy, with his eyes blazing with anger and his red lips in a hateful scowl. His eyes fell on the king, and their eyes locked.
Starchild’s fists clenched. “Go now, forever!” he roared.
King William looked at him with maddening superiority. “A king,” he said condescendingly, “does not take orders from a winged elf!”
Laughter went up throughout the army. Starchild’s frown darkened; he was a faerie, thank you very much. “You are no king to me!” he spat.
For a moment, there was silence. Starchild glared defiantly at the king, daring him to attack. Then he saw King William lean his head toward one of his commanders. His voice was no longer a shout, but Starchild still heard what he ordered: “Bring me his head.”
“Battalion!”
There was a ringing of swords as they were pulled from their sheaths.
“Attack!”
The soldiers began to move, inching closer to the Moors. But even though they had shields and iron swords, Starchild was ready for them.
He clenched his fists. “Arise, and stand with me!”
The ground began to rumble, making the humans stop and look around. “Hold the line!” he heard someone shout. The rumbling intensified, until he saw some of the humans begin to stumble and even fall.
Then from out of the ground burst gigantic tree hulks. They burst through the dirt and crawled out, roaring fiercely at the army. From out of the trees behind Starchild came the border guards, riding on the backs of huge warthogs with their spears in their hands, Gene leading at the front. The ground in front of Starchild rumbled again, then enormous snake-like creatures made of earth burst from the ground, screeching and howling at the army.
Starchild looked back at the army, waiting for them to attack. For a long moment there was nothing. Then he heard King William yell, “Charge!”
The humans began to run towards the Moors. Starchild narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth, then spread his wings and took off into the air. His takeoff was the signal for the army of the Moors to charge, and for a moment he hovered in the air, watching the two armies draw closer to each other. Right before they collided, Starchild swooped down and flew towards the Jendell army. He shot through the ranks, knocking soldier after soldier off their horses, distracting the humans enough for the Moors’ army to overwhelm them.
The battle seemed to last moments, when really it went on for hours. Although the humans certainly tried, they were simply no match for the power of the Moors. Gene and the other border guards knocked humans off their horses and impaled them through the chest with their spears. The tree hulks crushed many at a time with their huge fists, jumping and leaping around and roaring fiercely. The tree snakes burrowed through the ground, breaking the surface to snatch humans up in their mouths before diving underground again.
And at the forefront of it all was Starchild himself. He used his wings to his advantage, leaping into the air and tackling humans to the ground, smacking away humans trying to run up on him with his wings, and curling them around his body to protect himself from spears thrown at him. He jumped into the air and swung his fists, bringing them down on a human and knocking him down. The entire time, his face was twisted in a ruthless look, letting every human know he was ready and willing to tear them apart. He was not willing to show any mercy to these people—they, in their greed and arrogance, were trying to invade his home, and if they weren’t going to show mercy than neither was he.
But they weren’t the ones who had led the attack. Starchild flew up into the air and over the battlefield, scanning it for the person he wanted to find. Finally, he caught sight of King William. The arrogant man was still on his horse, and from the looks of his still-pristine furs and armor, he hadn’t even taken part in the battle. Coward.
Starchild’s eyes narrowed in anger, and he beat his wings faster, shooting towards King William’s horse. “YOU!” he roared.
It took only one hit to his torso to send King William off his horse, and he fell to the ground with a cry of shock and pain. Starchild hovered in the air above him, and he saw that his strike had considerably dented and damaged the king’s chest plate, though Starchild suspected it was more for show than practical use. The king lay pathetically on the ground, and for a moment Starchild snarled down at him, feeling satisfaction at the sight of the arrogant human king lying on the ground in defeat.
Then he heard someone yell, “To the king!” Soldiers began to run towards the king, aiming their swords up at the faerie. Well, Starchild was not going to let it be that easy. He violently beat his wings, sending powerful blasts of air at the soldiers and sweeping them off their feet.
“You will not have the Moors!” Starchild yelled as he flew down towards the king, until he was leaning over him. “Not now, not ever! You—ah!”
King William had flung out a hand to push him away, and the iron of his glove landed right on Starchild’s bare chest. Yelping in shock, Starchild flapped his wings and flew back, placing a hand over his burnt skin. As his skin healed, he looked back up to see what was left of the Jendell army finally retreating, running back the way they came towards the human kingdom. He even spotted soldiers lift King William off the ground and onto a horse, then get on horses of their own and ride away. The tree hulks slammed their fists down on the ground one last time, roaring after them.
Behind him, Gene rode up beside him, growling questioningly at him. Starchild turned and nodded, letting him know he was all right. Satisfied, Gene bowed his head to him. Starchild bowed respectfully back, then turned to look back at the retreating army. He blew out a sigh, allowing himself to relax.
They had won. The Moors were safe again.
-*-
When Ace had gotten the opportunity to work in the castle, he leapt at the opportunity and never looked back. He began as a kitchen boy, as far away from the king as possible, but stayed patient. That was the key; having patience. Good things came to those who waited. And eventually, he rose through the ranks of the servants, proving time and time again his strong work ethic and unwavering loyalty, until finally he was one of the personal servants of the king himself.
This, of course, meant that he’d had to stop visiting the Moors, and Starchild. Sometimes, when his luck was bad, Ace would think about Starchild, the starry-eyed faerie he’d shared more than a few kisses with. But he couldn’t mention that he’d been romantically involved with a creature of the Moors, or else everything Ace worked for would go up in smoke. There were times where he missed his Starshine, but surprisingly, these moments didn’t happen as often as Ace thought they would. So much the better; this just meant he could better focus on his goals.
One day, when Ace was twenty-six, King William amassed his army and left for the Moors, decreeing that after so many years, he would finally live up to the promise he’d made to Jendell: that he would invade and take the Moors for their people. For a short moment, Ace considered trying to find a way to warn Starchild that the army was coming, but by the time he made his decision, the army was too far gone. So he’d simply shrugged and carried on preparing the king’s chambers for when he returned. He didn’t know of any way to contact Starchild anyway, and besides, he was sure the creatures of the Moors would be able to defend themselves.
The army was gone for four days. Then on the fifth day, they returned. Ace was able to figure out the outcome of the battle when the king’s head generals burst inside the king’s chambers, with soldiers behind them carrying the king. The king was completely stripped of his armor, and his chest appeared to be wrapped in bandages. If the king had been any younger, there would perhaps have been a better chance of him surviving. But as it was, King William was an old man, and so the palace healers gave him a month before he passed.
It was late at night, now. The king’s generals were standing around his bed, while the king himself lay propped up on pillows. Ace kept quiet and out of sight, drifting around the room lighting candles, and listening to what was being said.
“When I ascended to the throne,” King William began, and his voice sounded raspy and pained, “I promised the people… that one day… we would take the Moors, and its treasures. Each of you… swore allegiance to me… and to that cause…” The king began to cough violently.
Ace immediately went over to the bed, grabbing another pillow and propping the king’s head up. “Your majesty,” he whispered. Once the king’s coughing fit had passed, Ace respectfully stepped back, listening as the king began to speak again.
“Defeated in battle… is this to be my legacy? I see you waiting… for me to die… It won’t be long… but what then? I will choose a successor… to take the throne… and care for my daughter. Who among you… is worthy? Kill the winged creature… avenge me… and upon my death, you will take the crown.”
King William’s words never left Ace’s head. When he was dismissed to go back to the servants’ quarters, he went over to the water basin and splashed water on his face. He looked up and stared at himself in the mirror, thinking and turning the king’s words over in his mind.
-*-
The next day, Ace worked faster than he’d ever had in his life. Normally he worked slowly and efficiently, making sure all his duties were done perfectly, and asking for extra work, and so it was normally in the evening that he finally finished. But today, he worked quickly and didn’t ask for extra work, and so it was the early afternoon by the time he finished. As soon as he was dismissed, he threw on his hooded cloak and left the castle, making a stop at an apothecary before eventually leaving the kingdom altogether.
It would normally take a person the entire day to reach the border of the Moors. But years of trips there had allowed Ace to figure out shortcuts, and so it only took him a few hours. He didn’t stop walking until he came to the old spot where he and Starchild would meet each other. Grey clouds had taken over the sky, blocking out the sun and casting a dim light on the forest and standing stones.
Ace lowered the hood of his cloak and looked around, walking cautiously towards the entrance to the Moors. “Starchild!” he called. Silence. “Starchild!”
Still, he heard nothing. Ace waited for a short while, but when he saw no sign of the faerie he turned around. This trip had been for nothing…
Right after he thought that, he heard a rush of air and feet land on the ground. He whirled back around. There behind him was Starchild. Since he hadn’t seen the faerie in years, he took a moment and looked at him. He hadn’t changed much, but had grown taller. He still wore purple clothes. On his face was an odd look; to anyone else, it would have been rather stony, but Ace knew it was just an act, an act he was struggling to maintain.
“So,” Starchild said to him, and Ace got the impression he wasn’t sure how to react to seeing him again, “how is life with the humans?”
Wasting no time, Ace stepped closer to him. “Starchild, I came to warn ya… they’re gonna kill you.” That caught Starchild’s attention, and he continued, “King William’s men… they’ll stop at nothing to kill you and take the throne.” He held out his hand. “Let me help you… I’ll keep you safe.”
Starchild tilted his head and frowned slightly at him, and for a moment he didn’t reply. “What makes you think you can keep me safe?”
Ace exhaled urgently, and kept his hand outstretched. “Please… you gotta trust me, Starshine,”
Starchild’s face immediately softened at the nickname. He looked down at Ace’s hand, unmoving. Ace waited patiently. That was the key; having patience.
And his patience was rewarded when Starchild reached out and took his hand.
They spoke of many things, and the years faded away, and Starchild forgave Ace, his folly and his ambition, even sang for him again, and all was as it had been long ago.
“Mmph!” Ace let out a laugh as Starchild eagerly pressed his red lips to Ace’s. They were in a remote part of the Moors near the back border, sitting on the bank of a small lake while fireflies dotted the night air. It was a spot no one else knew about, only them. “Gotta warn me when you’re gonna do that, Starshine.”
Starchild broke away, laughing sheepishly. “Sorry,”
“Hey, I didn’t say I wasn’t enjoying it.” Ace kissed his cheek, then picked up his waterskin and handed it to him. “Thirsty?”
Smiling in thanks, Starchild took the waterskin and took a drink of the fluid inside. He handed it back to Ace, and his eyebrows furrowed as he swallowed. “What is that?” he asked quietly.
“Light ale,” Ace answered easily. “Humans drink it. Good stuff, right?”
“I… I suppose…” Starchild moved closer to Ace until their bodies were touching and leaned his head on Ace’s shoulder. His eyes began to slowly droop closed, until they had shut completely. Starchild’s body relaxed, his wings sinking down to slump lazily on the ground, and within moments he was sound asleep.
Ace looked down at him and placed a hand on Starchild’s cheek. He was a little surprised; the man at the apothecary had said the sleeping potion would work quickly, but he hadn’t expected it to work that quickly. He slowly laid Starchild down on the grass, the faerie’s back facing upward.
“Starchild?” he said aloud, just to make sure. No response. He was completely out.
Ace reached into his bag, and pulled out a long-bladed knife. He closed his hands over the hilt of the knife and placed it so the tip of the blade was just above Starchild’s upper back. He took a deep breath, and slowly blew it out.
“Kill the winged creature… avenge me… and upon my death, you will take the crown.”
This was it. This was the moment, and Ace had to seize it before it was gone. He hadn’t expected to get very far in life, being a peasant boy, and up until now he’d been content as a personal servant to the king. Even if he admittedly had been hoping for more, he wasn’t a fool. It was the farthest he’d thought he would ever go… until last night. Last night, the opportunity had presented itself for him to go even farther. And he wasn’t going to let it pass him by.
“I’m sorry, Starshine,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. Then he lifted his knife above his head, ready to bring it down in one killing blow.
His arms shook, but no matter how much Ace braced himself, they didn’t come down. Finally Ace moved away, falling onto his back. He tossed his knife away, breathing heavily. He couldn’t do it. Despite how much he wanted the throne, to be king… he just couldn’t kill Starchild.
Ace turned his head. Starchild was still sleeping peacefully, and he didn’t have to see his face to know of the tranquil look he was sure to have. He was absolutely still and unmoving, even his wings—
His wings.
Ace reached out and ran his fingers over the smooth black feathers as an idea formed in his mind. He couldn’t just return and simply claim he’d killed Starchild. Even if he’d been able to bring himself to kill him, he would have had to bring back proof.
“Your ring… Iron burns faeries.”
Ace turned and reached into his bag again and pulled out a long iron chain.
-*-
The first thing Starchild felt when he woke up was pain. He opened his eyes and sat up—and immediately regretted it when his upper back screamed in pain. “Ah!” he hissed. He looked up to see where Ace was; there was no sign of him. He was alone.
The next thing that Starchild noticed was that he felt… lighter. But far too light… like something had been taken away. His stomach plummeted as dread set in. No, no, no…
Starchild reached his hand over his shoulder, ignoring how his back screamed in protest, and ran his hand over his back. He felt the material of his tunic, then the holes that were supposed to be there…
But his fingers never touched the glossy feathers of his wings. Now panicking, Starchild twisted his head around to look.
All he saw was his bare back. His wings were gone.
Starchild’s mouth fell open, and a series of strangled, shocked noises fell from his mouth as his mind raced to catch up. His wings were gone. And Ace was gone. Which meant…
Tears flooded his eyes, and he began to cry. No… no, it couldn’t be true. But it was.
Ace had taken his wings.
Salty tears streamed in rivulets down his face as he cried. There was another pain now, a pain in his chest, and somewhere in his mind Starchild realized his heart was shattering. He lifted his head and let out a long, heartbroken wail.
His arms gave out and he collapsed back to lying on the ground. He stayed like that for what seemed like ages, his back throbbing in pain and his body wracked with sobs of grief, mourning the loss of his heart and his wings.
-*-
Damn wings, Ace thought briefly as he shifted their position slightly. He’d had to tie them together with rope, wrap them in a tarp, then heft them over his shoulder. There were a few times as he was walking back to the front border where he could have sworn he felt the wings twitch. But that was ridiculous, and besides, he was too busy thinking about how his shoulder was suffering under their weight. He’d never realized how large and heavy they were; perhaps that was because they always looked light as… well, a feather on Starchild. Couldn’t Starchild have had lighter wings? And the smell—he’d never known before what burning feathers smelled like. The wings had stopped smoldering, but faint traces of the stench still lingered in his nose. He decided he hated it.
Dawn had broken by the time he arrived back at the front border of the Moors. He knew of a way back from the hideaway that he could take without being spotted by a creature, but he’d been extra careful this time around. He glanced around briefly, then went for the wheelbarrow he’d stashed behind a thick patch of bushes. He set the wings in the wheelbarrow and covered them with a tarp, then let out a groan of relief as he rolled his shoulder. It would definitely be aching for a while. But the ache would be worth it.
As Ace turned to leave, a sudden loud wail in distance made him stop and look back. For a moment, he felt a flash, just a flash, of guilt.
Then it was gone as quickly as it had come, and Ace lifted his hood over his head and set off. When he became king he was going to have to work on not being so soft-hearted. But for now, he supposed he could allow himself to feel guilt just this once. It was better this way, he said to himself.
-*-
King William was still asleep by the time Ace returned. He wasted no time in barging into his chambers, marching up to the king’s bed, and throwing the bundled up wings at his feet. King William startled awake and turned his head down to look at the bundle. He looked up at Ace. “What is this?” he rasped.
Ace bowed his head and removed the tarp, revealing the black wings. “I have avenged you, sire,” he replied.
King William sat up as much as he was able, eyes widening in incredulity. “He is vanquished?”
For some reason, Starchild’s wail echoed in his ears. But Ace nodded all the same.
For a moment, King William’s eyes turned from him to the wings, then him again. Then he smiled, in what looked like amazement, and gave a laugh. His laugh was weak, but when Ace heard it, he knew right then that everything he’d done had been worth it. “Oh, you have done well, my boy,” he said, and the feeling Ace got from seeing that look of approval was more intoxicating than seeing any of Starchild’s bright smiles. “You have done what others feared to do… You will be rewarded.”
A part of Ace wanted to pinch himself, to see if he was dreaming. But it was a very small part. The rest of him was savoring the feeling of sweet victory. After so many years, years spent working himself to sometimes-exhaustion, bearing the looks of superiority from nobles, and repeating to himself over and over again to be patient, he had finally reached his goal. Even as a boy, he’d always thought becoming the King of Jendell would only ever be a fantasy… if only his boyhood self could see him now.
“I will do my best to be a worthy successor, Your Majesty.”
#green wounds#chapter two#as before I got the photo off google images#well actually I switched to ecosia bc ecosia plants trees#so ecosia images I guess#little starchild's all grown up!#we get to see him kick some human ass!#gene does too so shout-out to him too!#also king William is supposed to be bill aucoin#hoo boy ace is... he's going pretty dark here man#jeez the scene where maleficent woke up after Stefan stole her wings just tore me up#it's honestly worse than if Stefan had just killed her#I hope I managed to inject some of that into this#poor starchild#maleficent au#kiss au writing#my writing#hope you enjoyed!#stay tuned for chapter three!
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Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite? - Part 9: CAPTAIN WHISKER
There are some villains I like. And there are some villains I don’t like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That’s where this comes in.
This is a series of mine in which I go into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the villains in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I’ll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves in the game(s) they featured in. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don’t bite. :>
Anyhow, for today’s installment, we’ll be starting a new venture as we discuss the scourge of a faraway dimension's seven seas, and the envy of frozen food mascots everywhere: Captain Whisker.
The Gist: Aboard the Tornado, dynamic duo Sonic and Tails were en route to a mysterious energy signal, in the hopes of uncovering what it could possibly be. They were instead greeted with an actual tornado.
They died.
Credits.
"Ahh! We’re getting sucked in!” “Yeah! Alright! Cool!”
Nah, not really. They washed ashore on Southern Island (presumably not too far from Western Island and Angelern Island), where they met a young girl named Marine, whose ambition quickly proved to eclipse her capabilities a bit too much. Initially, the heroes simply want to return home and have a Winston break, but upon being attacked by a mecha T-Rex, they soon realise someone must be causing trouble around these parts. And Sonic doesn't let evil relax for long.
They soon come face to face with the leader of the nautical-themed robot army they're facing: Captain Whisker. Something about the captain looks... familiar.
“...What’s going on to my right? I can’t see anything on that side.”
As it turns out, Whisker wants the Jeweled Scepter, a vastly powerful tool that is said to harness the Power of the Stars, which in Sonic lingo basically means "Get fucked, Goku." He steals it, but not before he gets ambushed by the dramatic arrival of Blaze the Cat... who fails to stop the theft, and doesn't even land a hit on the guy.
E Rank.
It doesn't take long for Blaze to explain to the confused Sonic and Tails that they're the ones in her world, not the other way around. It's assumed that the power of the Jeweled Scepter was responsible for bringing them here in the first place. Blaze also acknowledges that Marine in fact exists. Together, they continue to take on the robot pirates, all the while Whisker continues to commit some dastardly, whisker-twirling crimes. Like freezing the local vikings.
“It’s one of my most famous abilities, right up there with spinning around the globe to turn back time. I’m also quite good at superweaving.”
With everywhere else in the sea covered on the map, the do-gooders eventually arrive at Whisker's front door, where they trick the captain into giving them the info on how to get in. After a bit of backtracking (and telling Marine to fuck off and stop wasting their time), they make it in and kick some ass in the pirates' Soleanna-looking hideout. They corner the pirate leader, but his second-in-command, Johnny, arrives just in time to even the odds.
“No, Sonic. The emblem on my chest is a coincidence.”
They proceed to have an all-out brawl with frankly amazing music, but Johnny chickens out and runs with his pipe between his hydraulics. Crestfallen, but not willing to yield, Whisker insists that he will deliver the Jeweled Scepter to an unnamed client by hook or by crook, and Sonic and Blaze ain't gonna stop him.
But they do. With a little help from the surprise return of Marine, they take back the Jeweled Scepter, defeat the captain's Ghost Titan mech, and blow his ship to kingdom come. With the pirates taken care of, the royal guards assure Blaze that they'll take better care of the magical device. The princess expresses relief, confident that her loyal subjects can defend their kingdom's treasure and honor.
They can't.
In less time than it takes to complete the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time, the Jeweled Scepter gets itself stolen again, this time by the fallen captain's creator and superior: Dr. Eggman... and Eggman Nega, but whatever. Retreating underground, Eggman proceeds to show off with his newfound power (the ladies love the magma dragon trick), but he is eventually defeated by the combined efforts of Super Sonic and Burning Blaze... with a little help from Marine. Again.
The Jeweled Scepter is reclaimed. Sonic and Tails head home. Eggman gets sued by Michel Ancel.
The Design: Captain Whisker is an Eggman robot. He's Eggman's robot. He was built by Eggman. But you wouldn't know that by looking at him.
The logo doesn't grin. Totally different.
Sarcasm aside, I'm actually a fan of Whisker's design, because it strikes a good balance between comical and badass, which reflects well on his bumbling exterior masking a capable fighter. The skull gauntlets are stylish, and I especially like how one of his eyes lacks an iris, as if to stand-in for his hypothetical eyepatch. For a design that can literally be summed up as "Eggman but if he were a robot pirate", there's a surprising amount of thought put into it.
If only the same could be said for Nega...
(By the way, Johnny has a kickass design as well. The torpedo-for-a-head is a winner.)
The Personality: Whisker doesn't just one-up Nega with his design. He one-ups him in personality too. Sure, he shares some traits with vanilla Eggman. He's loud. He's hammy. He takes his moustache grooming seriously (even though his is made of metal). He doesn't like it when people aren't paying attention to him.
But here's the thing. He's got his own distinctive flavor. Rather than copying Eggman's mannerisms beat for beat like Nega does, Whisker offers a different spin. He trades the megalomaniacal theatrics for a buccaneer swagger. He trades the spotlights and the statues in favor of singing shanties and using words that were probably out-of-date even when they were in-date. He's more of an airhead compared to the brilliant Eggman. And he actually expresses fear, in particular at the thought of his master's ire.
“You wouldn’t know him. Big guy, ‘stache like mine, hates hedgehogs, sounds an awful lot like Mike Pollock...”
Compared to Nega, Whisker simply makes much more of an effort to be his own character. In spite of his physical resemblance, he's not just Eggman #2. And in a world where Eggman #2 is an officially approved thing, I can appreciate that.
The Execution: Captain Whisker isn't your Eggman, or your Chaos, or your Black Doom. He's not the final obstacle. He's here to provide a few hijinks before the real mastermind turns up. In the role that he plays, he plays that role marvellously.
While the Captain sadly lacks much screentime outside of evading the heroes' wrath, he makes up for it with a memorable presence and a barrel of laughs. They could have completely phoned it in here. Why wouldn't they? He looks like a ripoff, and he's ultimately the equivalent of a filler villain anyway. And yet somehow, this decoy antagonist has more life and character put into him than a sizable margin of the "serious" villains in the Sonic universe, including Eggman Nega, Mephiles, and every single Archie recolour you can shake a lawsuit at.
Look, if Blaze absolutely MUST have an arch-enemy, and if said arch-enemy absolutely MUST look like Eggman... why not pick Whisker over Nega? He provides a better contrast with Eggman and with Blaze, and you can even handwave his presence as Eggman's way of keeping tabs on Blaze's world whenever he's too occupied with his own. Surely that would be a little better than having an identical looking guy running around in a different dimension (or the future) for no reason.
Well, until then, I'll keep supporting the good captain. I have to. He might kill me.
"Omae wa mou ye scurvy shindeiru. *hic*"
Crusher Gives Captain Whisker a: Thumbs Up!
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Endgame Alternate Ending
Loosely based off Jean kicking Apocalypse’s ass [here]
The X-Men had gotten into the jet, having picked up on readings of Thanos and his army reappearing in New York after 5 years of being MIA, delayed by Sarah sensing half the universe return to life. Xavier is keeping her steady, they’re all able to pile into the jet and start on their way to the Avengers Facility. Flashes of many futures that could result from this standoff running through her mind. But one possible future stands out to her. There’s only one where they all could make it out alive. She needed to make sure that happened.
They deployed the surviving half of the Snap’s X-Men to the battle scene, the ladies joining in with the Avengers’ female half of the team to try and get the gauntlet to the van. It didn’t work. Blue eyes scanned the field around them and Sarah sees her newly resurrected family guarding Spiderman; X-Men and Avengers working together to protect each other. Xavier himself, having been out of his wheelchair these last 2 years was going toe to toe with Thanos--but he wasn’t doing well. He hadn’t fought this hard since Apocalypse all those years ago. And that’s when she senses it.
Her gaze focuses on Tony when he adheres the stones to his Iron Man suit, ready to make the ultimate sacrifice and the telepath sees what goes through his mind. Pepper. Morgan. Peter. His parents. Everyone else who was dear to him starts flashing through Tony’s mind as Sarah launches herself between the Mad Titan and Iron Man. Thanos lunges for her but is intercepted by Xavier, whom the purple titan throws to the ground and pins. “You’re finished, Avengers,” Thanos growls, gaze narrowing at Tony as he keeps the elderly man crushed beneath his fist. “Give me the stones or he dies.”
Tony hesitates, and Sarah whirls on her heel to face Thanos, using herself as a human shield between the Titan and the man in the suit. If Thanos wanted the stones he’d have to get through her. Xavier coughs up blood and wheezes out a response, one that Sarah knew all too well from her mother’s memories of that moment with Apocalypse. “You...will never....win.”
Thanos smirks down at the pinned telepath beneath him and Sarah senses her mother approaching, to which the younger Grey pushes her back. No. This was the future they needed. If Tony was to continue to live, and be a father to his little girl, she needed to let this play out. “And why is that?” Thanos whispers, having seen Tony’s hesitation and holding out his hand for the stones before Xavier telepathically forces the Titan’s hand down. “Because you are alone, and I am not.”
Sarah feels The Oracle stir within her, a hand moving to give Tony the worldwide signal to stand down as she stood tall before Thanos, eyes narrowing as the Titan saw that she was where Xavier was staring. “Little girls don’t scare me,” Thanos growled, but Sarah knew he was spooked. He’d been scared when Wanda came after him, he was scared when Carol kicked his ass, and he was scared now...because he didn’t know what she was capable of. It had been 4 years since The Oracle hid itself away. The remaining Avengers dispatching Thanos all those years ago allowed Sarah to return to the surface, despite the pain, and she hadn’t had a use for it until now. She’d been holding back. Now was the time. It was time to prove to herself, to Thanos and to the world, that she was indeed her mother’s daughter.
“Let....go...” She hears Xavier’s voice in her mind, always a calming influence in the almost 20 years she’d been in this universe. The grandfather she never had and the parent she needed these last 5 years after the loss of her own. He always told her never to give up, to always embrace her powers. She didn’t listen as much as her mother had. Too stubborn. She embraced them when it was convenient but not always when it was needed. And now, she knew it was time. It was time to unleash the full wrath of the former Phoenix. If she didn’t, they would lose another light in the universe, and despite her differences with Tony....she wasn’t about to let that happen. She needed to get over the fear of the Oracle taking her over just as the Phoenix did to her mother. It had promised her long ago it would never do that, and it has kept its word. Now was the time to fully trust it.
“Unleash your power, Sarah. No fear. Let go!”
She steps closer to the Titan, blue eyes blazing with fury as she feels her mother summon Iron Man via telekinesis away from the scene that would be unfolding, Wolverine and Shawn staying close to Spiderman and the other Avengers as she approached. Now there were four voices in her head. Xavier’s, her brother’s, her father’s....and even her mother’s. Jean knew this was something Sarah had to do. Sarah had to conquer the fear just as she did all those years ago.
“Let go, Sarah! SARAH LET GO!”
Arms raise and eyes glow a fiery blue, the woman releasing a SHRIEK as sapphire flames erupted from her body, wings extending as she was lifted in the air. The sky was set ablaze and the earth rumbled beneath their feet. Stark and Rescue immediately lunged to shield Spiderman, Black Panther tackling his sister and using himself as a human shield as the fire bird appeared around its host. Thanos’ army exploded in blue flames as the Titan himself stumbled back from the screaming woman, only to find he was soon frozen in place. A blink of an eye and The Oracle’s snatched his throat in her hands, his throat on fire in her grasp before she speaks. “Behold, Thanos: bringer of death, your destruction. LIFE INCARNATE!” she shrieks, the fire bird engulfing him in flames as he screamed, dissolving the Mad Titan into ash.
(Edit: Cut to Okoye, 2 seconds later: “WHERE WAS SHE WHEN THIS SHIT HAPPENED THE FIRST TIME?!”)
Eventually she calms down (whether it be by a S.O. coming to calm her, Peter running over to her, her family, verse dependent) but by killing Thanos her way instead of using the stones it saves Tony’s life. She also goes back with Steve to return the stones and catches Nat before she falls all the way and them returning the stone keeps the timeline in tact bc Sarah makes Clint and Red Skull both believe that Nat is dead but in reality she absconded with Nat back to the present.
Because everybody deserves to live and it’s up to Steve whether he goes back or not but she’s bringing Nat home. And we already established that Pietro didn’t die in AoU because Sarah was SMART ENOUGH TO PUT HIM IN THE CRADLE RIGHT AFTER because W.headon is a dumbass. Happily Ever After: The End.
#❂| the oracle [sarah jean grey]#my drabbles#more like a novel but whatever#❂| doesn't it feel like our time is running out? [sarah headcanons]#❂| v; put on your war paint [sarah mainverse]#nobody's ALLOWED to be dead okay? okay
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Colress’ seasons-long scheme to get one up on RR vs Reese’s absolute refusal to be involved in any plot, go!
[February 7, 2023]
{Haji:}
So tldr Rainbow Rockets got Colress seriously messed up. It's not the only reason, but one does have to wonder how a guy who told Ghetsis to his face how much he hated him and possibly systematically tried to murder him ends up working for the guy again.
And the answer boils down to r e v e n g e
But like I said, that's painting things way too simple. Looking at my timeline and family trees a lot happened between Ultra Sun and Gauntlet Red and a big part of that is Colress' fault. He is keenly aware of this and every attempt to "remedy a grave miscalculation" has only seemed to make things worse.
So Ultra Sun being our vanilla run, the RR episode happened and members were scattered around the world but that started off trouble with things like Soul Silver we see Rockets looking for their lost leader, by Dual Red and Blue oh look they found him. The Archie and Maxie from Flora are more nutso than usual because they're the "this totally worked before..." pair from RR too. So on and so forth.
Between this and Necrozma stuff leading from US to RUM (another error of judgement, he gave Roark the fusers after witnessing the capture. Did he tell anyone? No. Because it was interesting at least until it became personal. Not that he knew Roark was in there, just seeing what Necrozma was capable of) he's finally starting to realize this isn't just bad, but the apocalyptic stuff people built the -cough- "Vault White" to escape from is becoming tangibly real. And worse, one of those being RUM seems to be breeding more "monsters" so to speak with the new and much more organized under Grimsley RR have started making their move in the global takeover during the chaos.
There's still previous RR floating around but people like Cyrus and Ghetsis are smart enough to play the long game unlike some of their more impatient allies who've already been taken out. But this time, Colress is plotting while also waiting because the long game is fun in a way
So then we get to Gauntlet and it seems the professors have been planning for this too. Could blame the cycle, but it could be they've also been given the heads up by someone with more intimate knowledge on the situation in creating The Dex. This cursed thing that seems to have a life of its own as it grows and changes with each new host, absorbing information on multiple journeys in a relatively short period while the professors sit back in mild horror to realize every kid who's touched this thing has been put in danger. Before you could say it's just coincidence that Dex holders are Chosen first who happened to be setting out and need a dex for the road. Here its a debate if somehow giving someone the Dex ends up drawing the Voices to it. Especially since again, this Dex is uh.... Warped. And it's the same one each time. :tppS:
(fun note: Elm wants nothing to do with this, and while he's glad Dippy turned out okay, he's still going to be over here judging the others for encouraging this.)
{Trollkitten:}
And then you have Reese, who doesn't get the Pokedex and thus his title of Main Character gets pushed onto his rival instead
{Haji:}
Yeah. :Jebaited:
{Trollkitten:}
...to be honest, I think his rival was the better choice regardless
{Haji:}
Which brings us to Reese...
Actually back up for those who don't know.
So in Gauntlet, as implied, part of the gimmick was that we were supposed to be able to transfer all of our catches from game to game. Something went wrong in Platinum where this screwed us over in the Nation Dex (because we technically already had one?) And then further broke when it didn't work at all in Blazed Black 2 so we joked that our rival must have taken off with it since Bianca offered both Reese and Yang a Dex when they got their Pokemon iirc
I would say this is where things get weird, but we're way past that point :tppLUL:
So at the beginning of Blazed Black and Volt White (or maybe just the sequels. I haven't checked in a while) with Juniper showing up for the introduction but then saying this may look like Juniper but it's Drayano using her to say welcome
{Newbie:}
it is in fact a thing with Blaze Black and Volt White 1, yes
{Haji:}
In my lore, Yang was the one who received the mystery pack saying he got a letter and a device saying it could help him in his personal desire to go after Team Plasma. He showed it to Reese and they both got sucked into the device where they've been in stasis in Dream World for like five years or something before they wake up to find the world has gotten weird. Like it's had its soul sucked out of it and somehow they're the only ones who were spared. Or at least until they start finding others who are "awake" enough to realize things aren't right. Yang thinks they're inside the device since that's the last thing he remembers and Reese is all like... Cool. Then Yang can go be protag and he'll just hang back and play side kick while checking out all the features. :3
Meeting Colress doesn't set off any warning flags, but Colress is quick to pick up that Reese has the Voices and after his "trial run" with Aqua to take out Ghetsis, Colress is careful and curious to study both boys as things play out. It's obvious by the time Frigate happens that Reese is the better fighter of the two and Colress is both bitter and delighted to utilize this weapon to fulfill destiny and whatnot because that's what Chosen do~~ EXCEPT REESE WON'T DO IT
This confrontation is somehow simultaneously going exactly to plan and not going to plan at all filled with a lot of "HOW FUCKING DARE YOU" "NO, HOW DARE YOU!" emotions as Colress has found out how to spur Reese into action. The same way he finally got into action. Make it personal.
Yang has no idea what he's caught up in |D;;;
He's lucky he didn't get killed
Honestly, only reason he's not dead is because Nia showed up
{TrollKitten:}
I imagine that in Colress's position, I'd be frustrated too
{Haji:}
Colress was the ~mysterious benefactor ~ Yang signed up with, Colress has legit planned on going after Lana and Grimsley himself if he had the power to do so, but he ends up infiltrating Team Plasma to try to get the boys to go after them by pursuing him. Is this a bad idea? If course. Colress is aware he's full of bad ideas by this point but in this case it's worth it if only to get the intended result
And he is obsessed with power and can't decide if Reese is only so strong because of the Voices or if it's because the love for his friends and teammates (despite the calls to get rid of some of them) fuels him to only get stronger.
But with all of the collected Chosen in the area at once, this can't fail right? :pogsire:
I mean... He's right in that Grimsley is destroyed and the RR is officially dead in the water, but now we have the problem of these power houses turning on each other. It all works out but sheesh
At least by the time Gauntlet X comes around, the world isn't "fixed" but it's in a far better state than it had been
Honestly not sure if the Colress of Volt White 2 Redux is at all related to this one, but if he is he's at least had the chance to breathe a while and enjoy having his family back after Stars released everyone from their own accidental prison. This Ghetsis isn't RR, but miiiiight be the disgraced gym leader from RW2. Colress is just curious more than anything, but I still honestly think these two are new by that point. (Or unrelated timeline shenanigans because so close to Scarlet and Violet) :tppLUL:
But yeah! Reese is not at all happy about being someone's pawn and ready to go Void on anyone in the manipulation game between Colress and the RR
(and by that I mean Dark Void)
#twitch plays pokemon#tpp#lorecord archive#gauntlet blaze black 2 run#colress#♀♀R#y (gauntlet blaze black 2)#team rainbow rocket#loremaker haji
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Breach Pt. VI
Here’s the Finale!!! (there’s going to be an epilogue after this chapter, though) but thanks for your patience with this update!
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
---
“Don’t you wraith-form away from me! I’m talking to you!” Sombra shouted, chasing after Reaper.
“You’re not talking, you’re yelling and shooting at me,” said Reaper.
“IT’S CALLED MULTITASKING, GABE!” Sombra hollered and hurled a translocator past him, and phased forward, barely outpacing the surging nanite amalgams behind them. Lúcio and D.Va were only just behind them as well. Several blasts from Lúcio’s sonic amplifier phased through Reaper’s wraith form, but Lúcio was forced to pivot, skating backwards and using a soundwave to knock back the tendril of black that clawed out at him and slow the amalgams’ progression down, allowing Reaper to reform briefly.
“How could Talon make babies of you!?” Sombra wrung her free hand while shooting at Reaper with her SMG, forcing him to wraith form again, she glanced over her shoulder at the surging wave of nanite amalgams. “Babies? Baby?”
“If you want to ask Moira about all the technical stuff, by all means,” Reaper rasped.
“Why would you let them make something like this!?” said Sombra.
“I don’t know, Sombra,” said Reaper, reforming once more and coughing raggedly, “Maybe I thought it would help my body’s constant agonizing state of decay and regeneration. Looks like we’ve got no choice but to scrub this batch, though.”
“Scrub--?” Sombra started but Reaper glanced upward at a ventilation shaft on the ceiling several yards ahead of them, “Oh don’t you dare---”
Reaper shadow-stepped and wraith-formed up into the shaft, disappearing in the vent.
“Ay que bastardo hijo de---” Sombra cut her own cursing short and riddled the ceiling with pulsefire as she sprinted under it, knowing even if her bullets could make it through to the shaft, they couldn’t harm Reaper in wraith form, “Dammit...” she muttered as she turned her attention back to sprinting.
“Hey! Hop on!” D.Va shouted as the Meka caught up with her, Lúcio glided along the wall next to them, using the hard-light acceleration field of his sonic amplifier to speed them up. Sombra leapt up and managed to cling to D.Va’s left gun as the mech thrusted forward.
“We need to regroup,” said Sombra, bringing up a purple screen in front of D.Va’s HUD, “I’ve got Doc and the Shimadas’ locations here. Next left!”
“Got it!” said D.Va, reeling around the corner as Lúcio blasted another mass of nanite amalgams back. They followed a path of fallen Talon grunts and enforcers and the odd assassin here and there. Arrows littered the hallway, caduceus blaster rounds and shuriken littered the walls. They knew they were on the right track. Lúcio stuck to the walls but occasionally had to dip and weave through littered talon bodies on the floor, some were only unconscious and groaning, but those groans turned to screams as the nanite amalgams passed over them.
“Eugh...” Lúcio bit his tongue, as he wall-glided once again, trying not to get nauseous and trying not to think of what the black sludge was actually doing to people. While he was looking back at the amalgams he suddenly felt a sharp pain slice across his forearm and quickly withdrew it. One of Genji’s shurikens littering the walls had snagged him. Nothing too serious, but bleeding a decent enough amount for Lúcio to instinctively crossfade his sonic amplifier’s speed-boost to “heal.” The mass of nanite amalgams suddenly froze and seized, making that same sick sucking sound as one of Moira’s biotic orbs, then surged forward, at Lúcio, forming a great inky maw and screaming.
“WOAH!” Lucio pushed off the wall, knocked the surge back with a soundwave and had the wind knocked out of him as D.Va caught him on the spare gun arm of her mech.
“Speedboostspeedboostspeedboost--SPEED BOOST, DAMMIT!” D.Va shouted as she thrusted away from the mass of nanite amalgams. Lúcio quickly crossfaded back to acceleration and turned up the volume on the sonic amplifier, sending all three of them speeding forward. They put a slightly more comfortable distance between themselves and the nanite amalgams, but all their systems were still abuzz with adrenaline.
“Okay uh... quick note--Don’t use biotics around these things,” said Lúcio.
“Oh jeez, the Doc!” said D.Va, continuing to charge forward. Two more hallways and turns later, they saw Mercy, Genji and Hanzo, apparently catching their breath after a skirmish with a bunch of Talon guards. D.Va only slowed but didn’t stop as they pulled up to them.
“We gotta move!” shouted D.Va.
“More reinforcements?” said Genji.
Hanzo fired a sonic arrow down the hallway D.Va, Lúcio had just came through. “I thought we were pretty thorough,” he mumbled.
“Doc, you gotta lose the staff!” said Lúcio.
“Wh--But I need my staff! What if Rei’s hurt!?” said Mercy, instinctively pulling the staff closer to herself.
“There are these gross reaper baby things after us!” said D.Va.
“Reaper what?” said Genji.
Hanzo was squinting down the hallway when suddenly his face dropped and he nocked an arrow as the mass of inky plasma surged around the corner and started flooding down the halls towards them. Mercy’s hand went over her mouth.
“Uh... it’s going to take a bit more than an arrow to stop those things...” said D.Va.
“I’m sure,” said Hanzo, pale blue light spiraling around his arm as he drew his bow back. He kept the bowstring taut, waiting one beat, two beats, as the nanite amalgams surged toward them. The wave of slimy, smoke-like amalgams clawed forward, only about twenty feet away before Hanzo cried out “Ryū ga waga teki wo kurau!” The twin dragons blazed around the arrow as he fired it, the dragonstrike clearing a path down the hall and leaving only dark stains on the floor in its wake.
“Phew,” Sombra wiped her forehead, “Maybe we should have kept you with our half of the squad,” she said smiling.
“We would not have been able to clear this path without you distracting Reaper,” said Genji.
“Reaper split pretty much as soon as those goo things showed up,” said Lúcio, “I don’t think they’re supposed to be just... splashing around like this. They were hurting Talon agents too.”
“Perhaps you opened some kind of containment in the lab when hacking this facility?” Genji suggested, looking over at Sombra.
“Don’t look at me! All I had time to do was shut down Talon comms, freeze up some quarantine doors, and knock out most of the lighting,” said Sombra, “And I know Talon too well to try letting loose any of Moira’s nasty little science fair projects.”
“If not you then... internal sabotage?” said Hanzo.
“Maybe it was Rei!” said Mercy, her face lighting up, “Maybe she’s trying to escape!”
Sombra brought up a screen. “Makes sense for why I couldn’t access the camera for the lab she was in before...Well... she’s in the hangar now, but... she’s not moving.”
Mercy paled. “What’s the fastest way to the hangar?” she asked.
“This place is a maze,” muttered Sombra, we can reach her in maybe 10 minutes.”
“She might not have ten minutes!” said Mercy.
“...so we make a new route,” said D.Va, “You guys better get out of the way,” she said shrugging both Lúcio and Sombra off of her mech’s guns and pointing the guns at the ceiling. The rest of the team backed away from her as she let loose a salvo of micromissiles straight upward.
Several hunks of concrete fell down and D.Va stepped out of the way of it. “They build these facilities tough these days, huh?” she said, holding down both the triggers of her guns and firing away at the now heavily damaged ceiling. There was another slimy sound down the hall.
“Better hurry, D,” said Lúcio, “I don’t think all those things are gone.”
-----
In the hangar, Aedan pulled off the labtech’s mask. “How... how did you find us?”
“Call it maternal instinct,” Moira gave a tap to one of the small black triangles just above her eyebrows.
Aedan’s own fingers traced along the same black triangles on his own forehead, “The biofeed...” he said softly.
“Mine can always pick up the location of yours. I didn’t want to believe it but...” she let out a weary sigh, “I’m disappointed, a thaisce.”
“Mum—” Aedan started.
“Hurt, Aedan,” said Moira, walking towards them, “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
“I--” Aedan looked back at Rei. Rei stood with her gauntlet blades ready, her eyes flicking back to him, panting, shoulders slumped, clearly exhausted by having already used the dragon and backing towards the steel doors of the hangar. “We can’t do this,” Aedan said, looking back at Moira.
“You’re being manipulated,” said Moira.
“Manipulated?!” said Rei.
“Whatever she’s told you---” Moira went on.
“She didn’t have to tell me anything,” said Aedan. His jaw tightened. “I’m just trying to get her home,” he raised his hand, extending the biotic rig towards Moira, “This is my will,” he said, a slight shake in his voice.
Moira stared at him, processing the hand raised toward her. Rei’s eyes were flicking between them, not sure if she could attack a mother in front of her son... no matter how apparently flexible the title of ‘mother’ seemed.
“Very well,” she said at last, extending a hand towards him, “This is mine.”
Aedan flinched at the sight of her withered hand, a visible shake overtook his arm, and he had to wrap his other hand around his wrist to steady it. Rei stepped up alongside Aedan, blades at the ready.
“You’re not going to hurt him,” Rei’s voice was dripping with venom.
Moira tsk-tsked. “Just like your mother--- So quick to judge and so easily mistaken,” her gaze turned to Aedan and softened, “A thaisce, you know I could never hurt you.”
Moira raised her other hand and Aedan immediately understood completely what she meant.
“Rei—Run,” he said, “RUN—“
Rei moved to sprint but in an instant they were both caught up in a rush of yellow and violet light as Moira unleashed coalescence on them both. Aedan’s feet slid backward across the cement floor with the force of the beam, and he heard the thud of metal with the force of the blast throwing Rei into the steel doors behind them. The soft chiming sound of biotics had turned to a roar all around him. It was only disorienting for Aedan, but he could hear Rei screaming. He saw the vague shape of her, a shadow struggling to get out of the roaring beam of biotic energy. The world was blurred, terrifying. It wasn’t the first time he had seen coalescence, but being caught up in it? It was almost paralyzing. Almost. Rei’s screams wound down to a whimper and that paralyzing fear seized his entire chest with a sharp pain.
She’s dying, he realized, Mum’s killing her. This is Talon. This is her will.
Suddenly the roar of biotics faded around him and he only saw the beam of violet and yellow rushing right next to his head, slightly angled at the floor now. Finally able to gauge his environment and where Moira was, Aedan rushed forward, faded, used the momentum of his fade to catch Moira off-guard. He seized Moira’s wrist and shoved her hand upward, the beam of coalescence pounding the ceiling. It was off of Rei at least, but Moira didn’t even fight him as he kept her wrist thrust upward as his heart pounded in his ears. Moira was staring at him, caught off-guard by the tightness of his grip of on her wrist. The coalescence faded and Aedan became aware of the silence that now hung in the hangar. He turned around.
Rei was on the ground, not facing him. She wasn’t moving. Biotic decay rose off of her like smoke. Aedan broke away from Moira and ran over to her.
“It’s done,” Moira said calmly.
“No—“ Aedan fell to his knees, grabbed Rei’s shoulder and turned her on her back. Her eyes were closed, her face was deathly white, violet veins were lining her temples and branching out from her jawline, “No-” Aedan said, “no nonononono—”
“Come away from her, Aedan,” said Moira, rolling her wrist, “We can put all this behind us.”
Aedan brought a hand up behind Rei and propped her up slightly against his leg, her head lolling back. “Rei--” he started, “Come on, you can...” he trailed off. The metal of her assassin armor was cold in his arms. He put two fingers to her neck, waited a beat.
Except there wasn’t a beat.
Aedan’s breaths went short, panicked.
“She’s gone, a thaisce,” said Moira, before muttering “What a waste...”
“You... you didn’t have to...” Aedan’s voice was quiet, hollow.
“I’m protecting you,” said Moira, “You’re emotionally compromised, but Talon won’t understand that. Someone needs to take the fall for what you’ve done. It has to be her. It’s your only chance. Now come away from her and we can---”
“No,” said Aedan, his voice hard and flat.
Moira blanched. “Excuse me?”
“No!” Aedan snapped. His eyes met hers and in that moment he never felt more alone in the world. The utter confusion in Moira’s eyes---the questioning as to what he was. He squeezed Rei’s still form to himself, biting the inside of his lip.
“Don’t tell me you---” Moira’s brow crinkled, “No... you don’t know her. You don’t know the people she associates with. Aedan, I told you, she’s a weap--”
“She’s not a weapon!” Aedan’s voice seemed to reverberate against the shoulder plates of Rei’s assassin armor as he squeezed her close, “She’s not...” his arms loosened around her and he looked at her face, “She’s not their weapon,” he said softly, before his eyes trailed up to Moira, “No more than I’m yours.” He looked back at the smoke-like biotic decay rising off of Rei. His face felt wet. Crying? Rei’s body slumped in his arms slightly as he brought up a hand to his face to wipe the wetness off his cheeks. Tears, yes, he could feel them running warm from his eyes, but it wasn’t just tears. His palm came away black.
Nanite secretions, he realized, now aware of the slight buzzing of every cell in his body, Of course. The coalescence. The life may have been sucked from her, but you’ve just been blasted with pure biotics.
Her body is a raging cesspool of biotics, he remembered his mothers words from the first time he saw her in the facility. He remembered the way the dragon faded off of her. The dragon, he thought, It’s biotics too. Her body can generate the bloody stuff. This is why Talon wanted her.
“Aedan--Aedan come away from the body--It’s not sanitary---” Moira’s voice seemed far away, blanketed in fog as Aedan moved a hand over Rei’s chest.
It was a simple matter, to manifest the biotic energy from her. The smoke rising off of her behaved as if it was a part of him, responding as if it was merely an extension of the biotic rig, forming a sphere of red and black just next to his hand. He pressed a thumb to his wrist to switch the biotic rig to heal, and clawed his fingers around the sphere. Please work, he thought, Please, please, please work. Faint yellow lights threaded themselves around the sphere, and sank through, the black smoke of biotic decay dissolving, forming what looked like a little flicker of yellow flame. Pure healing biotic energy, linked specifically to Rei. Moira seemed fixed in place, the pragmatist in her knowing she should stop him, but the scientist staring transfixed, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
“Fan liomsa, le do thoil,” Aedan muttered under his breath before closing his hand around the yellow flame and shoving it down into Rei’s chest. A bright flash of yellow light surged from Rei’s body, she jerked and gasped sharply, the violet veins lining her face fading as she huffed short hyperventilating breaths. “It’s okay!” Aedan said, bringing her up to a more upright seated position, “It’s okay...”
“...Biotic decay conversion...” Moira’s voice was hushed, awed, “I--” she pressed her fingertips to her forehead. She stepped toward them, “In theory it was feasible, but in terms of actual physical execution---”
“Stay back!” Aedan flailed out a hand toward her, his other arm still supporting Rei, and Moira stopped. Her face scanned his, her own eyes filled with confusion, then her eyebrows raised slightly, “Just... just stay back...”
“So you really are choosing this,” she said, her voice hushed.
Aedan looked down at Rei, still trying to catch her breath.
“They’ll clip your wings, you know,” Moira went on, “They’ll never trust you, never accept you. They’ll never share your vision. They’ll tether you, not for what you have done but for what they fear you might do. You’ll never accomplish with them what you could accomplish with us. I cannot guarantee that they’ll even see you as human.”
“He’s a lot more human than you,” Rei’s voice was breathy, weak, but not lacking in intensity.
The corners of Moira’s mouth were shaking and her lips were tight as the smoke of biotic decay curled in her withered hand. “You... you wretched little---”
There was a sick sucking sound and Aedan ducked over Rei, expecting a biotic orb from his mother, but he glanced up to see Moira looking over her shoulder.
“Aedan...this was your doing too, wasn’t it?” Moira’s voice was quiet. Aedan craned his neck to look around her narrow frame to see a black ink-like substance seeping under the door on the opposite side of the hangar and surging toward them.
“...Is that the stupid part?” said Rei, trying to bring up her assassin blades but finding her arms terribly heavy. She sheathed them as Aedan hooked his arm in hers and pulled her up to a swaying standing position with him.
“Yes,” said Aedan, “That... would be the stupid part.”
“Stupid part?” Moira arched an eyebrow, “It’s brilliant. The amalgams wouldn’t cause lasting damage to the facility, but would be more than enough of a danger to keep its organic inhabitants occupied. Clever boy...” Moira turned on her heel and a yellow sphere alighted on her hand, “But biting off more than you can chew, as usual.” She hurled the yellow sphere forward and the nanite amalgams curled around it, spiking and surging into it hungrily. “I can keep them contained,” she said, easily extending a hand toward the gyre of black and watching it wither as her biotic grasp sucked the life from it, “But you need to leave.” There was a resignation in her voice, falling back on the matter-of-fact, with a certain stiffness to it that betrayed the very emotion it sought to distance itself from.
“Mum....” Aedan’s voice trailed off.
“Talon will destroy you for what you’ve done if you stay here. You know that,” said Moira, sending out another biotic orb to keep the next wave of amalgams back. Her shoulders slumped only briefly, her back was to them as she kept back the nanite amalgams. “You.... you were my greatest creation, Aedan. Now go.”
In spite of doing her best to frame it in a scientific context, Moira couldn’t rid herself of the vulnerability of that statement. “I love you,” soaked every syllable of it. “I love you, I will always love you, I will never love anything as I have loved you.” Aedan remembered the image of Moira’s withered hand pressed up against the glass of his amnio-tank and he opened his mouth but his breath and his words seemed to be falling away from him.
Rei touched Aedan’s arm gently and looked at him. The black nanite secretions that streaked down his face were diluted gray by tears. “Come on,” her words were soft. Aedan’s mouth was hanging open slightly, he just closed his mouth and nodded and together they hurried toward the massive doors leading out to the airfield.
“And Rei,” Moira spoke and Rei stopped. Though it was hard to tell with all the drugs Talon had put her on in the past two days, Rei realized it was the first time Moira called her by her name. No “Dears” or “Darlings” or “Wretched girls.”
“He’s throwing everything away for you. I hope you appreciate that,” said Moira, “If anything happens to him, I will find you.”
“Well if he’s throwing away kidnapping and brainwashing, maybe he’s better off,” thought Rei, but she couldn’t seem to force that comeback past her lips. Rei gave a glance over to Moira and a wave of calm seemed to wash over her. Moira looked terrifying, nanite amalgams surging around her, her face drawn with grief and fury and acceptance that possibly the only person who would ever love and understand her was leaving her in the company of the child of her rival. “I understand,” Rei said, her voice steady, before Aedan’s hand curled around hers and they stepped out into the night. Rei didn’t see the black of biotic decay surge off of Moira as the nanite amalgams swarmed around her as they fled from the hangar.
----
“Ryūjin no ken wo kurae!” the dragon flared off of Genji’s sword as he slashed through a new mass of nanite amalgams. Mercy had taken to damage-boosting D.Va as she let loose another salvo of micromissiles, though looking around at the rest of the team with anxiety, knowing that if she set her staff to ‘heal’ that would result in all the nanite amalgams rushing to her. Sombra was firing around at the nanite amalgams as well, and Hanzo, perched atop the Meka, fired off several storm arrows as well, the ceiling buckling beneath the force of their impact.
“Anytime would be nice, D!” said Lúcio, knocking back another section of the black plasma amassing around them.
“Structural integrity readings are at 19%! That’s as good as we’ve got time for! Lúcio! Sound barrier!” shouted D.Va, hammering down on her thrusters and shooting straight upward.
Lúcio’s sonic amplifier slammed on the floor, sending a ripple through the mass of the nanite amalgams and enveloping the team in green light, before he clung to one of the rabbit ears atop the Meka and held a hand out to Sombra, who grabbed hold.. Mercy hooked one arm around Genji and flew after the meka as it flew upward. The pink Meka rammed through the concrete of the ceiling and Mercy and Genji both ducked their heads down as rubble rained down around them. The cool night air seemed to hit them as a second wall outside the stuffiness of the facility. as the six of them landed on the roof and took off running across it.
“Sombra, what are Rei’s coordinates?” asked Genji as they ran towards the roof of the hangar.
“Still in the hangar,” said Sombra, bringing up a screen.
“She’s... been in there an awfully long time, hasn’t she?” said Mercy.
Dread suddenly gripped the organic remains of Genji’s insides. “Hanzo,” he said, running alongside his brother, “The tracker you put in Rei... does it also say her physical status?”
“It’s meant to be untraceable by almost all current technology, so it’s not very sophisticated beyond giving her location,” said Hanzo.
“Would it tell us if she died?” The question slipped out of Genji and Hanzo stopped running.
“Genji--” Mercy’s voice cracked a little.
“No,” said Hanzo, “No, it wouldn’t. It would tell us if it were destroyed, but...”
“She’s not dead,” said Mercy, her grip tightening around her caduceus staff.
“We don’t know how she’ll be when we find her, Angela---” Genji said quietly, “We have to be ready in case---”
“She’s. Not. Dead,” Mercy’s voice was raw.
“Beacon’s on the move!” said Sombra, “She’s moving! She’s on the tarmac!”
“I’ve got her location on my HUD!” shouted D.Va, rocket-thrusting over the rooftop, “Lúcio! Boost me! We’ll head her off!”
“Got it!” said Lúcio, racing after D.Va.
----
The air was cold and damp on the tarmac as Rei caught up with Aedan as he sprinted toward one of the dropships.
“Hey--” Rei started and tripped a little, and Aedan suddenly skidded to a halt on his heels and turned around.
“Are you okay?” he blurted out, pulling on her arm slightly and looking over it, his eyes flicking down her assassin armor with alarm as he stepped around her, “Lightheadedness is to be expected, but the biotics should have prevented any major damage--”
“I’m fine. I mean, I just passed out, right?” said Rei.
All color drained out of Aedan’s face. “Well...”
“...right?” said Rei.
“Yes!” Aedan said, clasping Rei’s hands in his, “You just... passed out! That’s all! Spot on!”
Rei’s brow crinkled a little, “Aedan...” she brought her hand up and wiped some of the black and gray staining his cheeks off with her hand.
Aedan ran a hand through his red hair, his already thin face drawn with anxiety. “You.... may have... died... a little.”
“I what!?”
“Just a little!” Aedan said, putting his hands on her shoulders in a reassuring motion.
“A little?! I died!” Rei pressed her hands to her face, “Oh god am I all messed up and-and Reap-y looking?!”
“No!” said Aedan, “No you look...” Rei pushed some of her hair back from her face worriedly, revealing a streak of gray and white in her hair at her left temple and Aedan’s eyes flicked to that for a moment, “Grayy--Great! Great. You look great,” he patted her shoulder.
Rei smiled at Aedan a little bit, then her eyes widened at the biofeed still on his forehead. “You should uh...” she tapped at her forehead, “So your mom can’t track us.”
Aedan’s hand went to his forehead and his fingers traced over the two little metallic triangles on his forehead that formed his biofeed. “Right,” he said quietly. He dug his fingernails underneath them and pried them off, grunting and wincing as he did so. He looked at the two little triangles in his palm with some sadness before dropping them on the concrete of the tarmac and crushing them under his heel. He arched his eyebrows, first both at once, then one at a time, then furrowed them and scrunched his face up.
“What are you doing?” Rei said with a weak snicker in her voice.
“Making sure all the nerves in my face still work. You’re not really supposed to... rip them out like that,” said Aedan.
“Oh--you’re bleeding... let me---” Rei reached forward and touched the bleeding indents on Aedan’s forehead, waited a bit, then furrowed her brow. She withdrew her hand and touched the indents again.
“Something wrong?” said Aedan.
“It should be healing,” said Rei, looking confused. She looked at her hands and she suddenly seemed terrified.
“It’s--it’s probably exhaustion. You’re back from the dead, after all,” Aedan said, “Don’t worry. Biotic rig, remember?” He wiped his own hand across his forehead and in a yellow glow emanating from his palm, the bloody marks all but disappeared.
“Right,” said Rei, still looking at her hands, “Right.”
A cold wind blew through and Aedan was reminded of their situation. “Look,” he said, moving towards the dropship, “We can figure it out on the flight to Gibraltar. We still need to get you home---”
There was a whistling through the air and the dropship closest to them exploded in a salvo of micro-missiles. Aedan screeched and stumbled back and Rei flinched back hard, then squinted her eyes to see a familiar pink shape glide overhead and land atop the flaming wreckage of the dropship.
“Rei! It’s okay! We’re here!” D.Va’s voice sounded through the Meka’s speakers.
“Wh-what?” Rei’s eyes widened.
“I thought you said you weren’t being track---” Aedan started but was suddenly knocked back several feet by a burst of green light and a warbling blown-out subwoofer sound.
“Get BACK!” shouted Lúcio as he skidded to a stop next to Rei.
“Lúcio?!” Rei’s jaw dropped.
“Sorry we’re late, kiddo,” said Lúcio, keeping his sonic amplifier fixed on Aedan, who was groaning on the ground, “But don’t worry, that talon creep’s not going to--”
“Wait--Wait! Aedan’s not with Talon! I mean he was, but he---” Rei started but then a clear voice cut through the night air, sounding even over the crackle and roar of the flamed of the dropship.
“Rei!”
Rei turned her head and was only briefly able to register the bright white shape framed by yellow feathers of light hurtling toward her before it made impact. Mercy all but tackled her in a tight embrace. “Rei--Rei--Sunneschii--” Mercy’s arms around her were so tight it hurt but Rei welcomed it. Everything seemed to hit her at once, the fear she had shoved to the back of her mind that she might never return home, never see her family again, welled up and released all at once like a wave swelling and breaking as Rei felt hot fat tears blurring her vision and sobs closing her throat. She buried her face in her mother’s shoulder and cried hard, Mercy stroking her hair as she did so. “It’s okay,” Mercy said softly, “We’re here. I’m right here.” Rei only managed to pause and catch her breath as she felt a hand on her shoulder and looked to see the glowing green ‘V’ of her father’s visor.
“Dad?” Rei said quietly, her voice half-muted and half-raw by the tightness of her throat from crying.
Genji pressed at the catches at the back of his helmet and clicked off his faceplate with a hiss of steam, revealing a scarred, exhausted, but wearily smiling face with wet shining eyes. He cupped one hand to the side of Rei’s face and kissed her on the side of the forehead. “It’s all right,” he said, wrapping both Mercy and Rei in a tight hug, “We’re going home now.” Rei made a noise that was half nervous laugh, half sob, like everything could fall apart and everything was coming together at the same time and for a brief few beats only focused on trying to feel the warmth of her parents’ bodies through her assassin armor.
Aedan watched these proceedings with one ear ringing but no lack of awe. He turned on his side, grunting a little with the pain of being thrown off his feet and onto the cement ground so suddenly, and then when he looked at Rei, she was being hugged by both her parents. Mercy was pecking Rei’s face with fussing, teary kisses. They were all crying. Aedan smiled a little. Not a weapon, he thought. He couldn’t help but think of his own mother, the way she lovingly smoothed his hair, the way her hand rested on his shoulder and she would smile at him and he would feel like the brightest star in the sky. He wondered briefly if he would ever experience what Rei was experiencing now again. He moved to get up but froze at the sound of a bowstring creaking behind him.
“If I were you, I would choose my next words and actions very carefully,” a voice spoke behind him. Aedan glanced over his shoulder to see an arrow nocked and drawn, pointed at his head. Hanzo Shimada’s thick eyebrows raised slightly at the sight of Aedan’s face. Moira’s heterochromia was instantly recognizable in Aedan’s panic-widened eyes.
“The clone from Oasis,” he said, his jaw and his bowstring still tight.
“Uncle--wait!”
Hanzo broke his glare away from Aedan, slacking the bow slightly but still keeping the arrow nocked, and looked over to Rei, still wrapped up in both Mercy and Genji’s arms.
“He saved me,” said Rei, “He’s on our side.”
“What?” said Mercy.
“Him?” Genji looked over at Aedan.
“I---I just... Well I was trying to---” Aedan was falling over his words.
“He got me out of the lab, gave me this armor, and we were... going to steal one of the dropships,” Rei looked over at the flaming wreckage of the dropship, before shaking her head and looking back at her parents, “He has to come with us. They’ll kill him if he stays here.”
“No, that’s not--that doesn’t make sense--Nothing Moira makes could ever---” Mercy was pressing one hand to her forehead, “It has to be a trick. He has to be lying to you---”
“Mom,” said Rei, “You don’t have to trust him, but please trust me. We can’t leave him here.”
Mercy stared into Rei’s eyes for a few moments before she shut her eyes and her mouth tightened. “Fine,” she said stiffly, before touching the side of Rei’s face, “But only because I trust you.”
“If he tries anything, we drop him out of the Orca,” said Hanzo, flatly.
“Uncle!” Rei addressed him harshly but Aedan was willing to take what he could get at that point.
“So you’re defecting?” Genji looked at Aedan.
Aedan gave one glance back to Urdr, thinking of everything he had known and accepted and loved his whole life, his lab, their apartment back in Oasis and the view of the city. He thought of his rabbit, his music, Seye, but those images were spliced now with the memory of Rei dead in his arms. He looked to Rei, never wanting to feel what he felt back in that hangar again. “Yes,” he said.
Mercy looked at Rei, cupped a hand to the side of Rei’s face and brought her other hand to the side of her own halo biofeed. “Jack,” she said calmly, “Rei is secured. Bring the Orca around.”
“ETA 90 seconds!” Tracer chimed over the comms.
Rei looked at her hands, sincerely hoping the reason she couldn’t heal Aedan’s forehead was because of exhaustion, and that the new horrible hollow feeling inside her was only a residual ghost of all of her stuffed down fear and adrenaline. The orca swept in, its fat-yet-streamlined shape a sight of comfort in and of itself. She had only been at this facility for two days and three nights, but home felt so long ago and so far away. The orca lowered and Mercy pretty much scooped her up and flew her into it as soon as the door was opened and the rest of the team all followed in. Jack gave a skeptical look to Aedan.
“He’s with us,” said Genji. Jack sighed and waved him in.
---
Jack kept his pulse rifle in his lap and didn’t take his eyes off Aedan for the entire flight to Gibraltar. Hanzo too, kept a steely glare on the clone. Lúcio slept with his head in D.Va’s lap, and D.Va, in a semi-asleep semi-awake haze, mindlessly ran the back of her fingers across his locs. Sombra had several screens open, frowning and only occasionally glancing over at him. Tracer piloted the orca in silence, though even she gave an uneasy glance over her shoulder at him from time to time.
I cannot guarantee that they’ll even see you as human, Moira’s voice echoed in his head and he rubbed his forehead. The initial sting of ripping out the biofeed was gone, but there was still a slight ache.
Aedan sat a bit stiffly, though now that he was finally not running or fighting, he could feel exhaustion in every cell in his body. Across the orca (as far as physically possible from him while still being on the Orca, Aedan noted), the Shimada-Ziegler family was in a pile--Rei slumped against Mercy, Mercy slumped against Genji. Mercy didn’t seem to care at all that she was more or less sandwiched between two people in armor. Rei and Genji’s eyes were both closed asleep, and Mercy’s eyes were half-lidded, clearly exhausted as well, but staring down at her daughter as she ran her fingers through Rei’s hair. Aedan noticed Mercy’s head twitch with some alarm and then swivel with a glare toward him.
She found the streak, thought Aedan. He probably would have been more intimidated by Mercy’s glare, but at this point the exhaustion overrode that feeling. He glanced down at Rei, still slumped against Mercy’s collarbone. He watched her chest rising and falling steadily. She was alive. They made it out. He glanced out the window of the orca, watching the clouds rush by in a deep gray-blue light of the early hours of the morning. He leaned his head against the window, closed his eyes, and let his exhaustion swallow him up in darkness.
---
As soon as Sombra was gone from Urdr, Talon comms were easily re-established and Reaper made a full sweep of the facility with an incineration team. The air stunk of burning plasma and kerosene as several Talon agents overseen by Reaper blasted back the remains of the nanite amalgams with flamethrowers. The hangar was one of the final sectors to sweep, and Reaper opened the door only to see any nanite amalgams still remaining in the hangar decaying on the floor in dark stains and smoke. The trails of black stains spiraled across the floor in almost fractal patterns, and Reaper followed these trails with his eyes until they spiraled around a thin figure slumped to her knees, staring into space. Reaper looked back at his incineration team. “O’Deorain has this area secured,” he said “I’ll debrief her. Move on to the western sector.”
The incineration squad saluted and headed off as Reaper walked across the hangar to Moira. He stopped a few feet away from her.
“He’s gone...” Moira was saying softly, “He’s gone...”
“The Shimada kid too?” said Reaper.
Moira nodded.
“Well Akande’s not gonna be happy about this,” said Reaper, folding his arms.
“Gabriel, if you value what sorry, hollow, decaying scraps of life you have left, you will not be cavalier at a time like this,” said Moira, her voice tensing and coiling like a snake.
“I’m sorry,” said Gabriel.
“Are you?” said Moira, looking over her shoulder at him, “He was more than my son. It’s one thing to have your body bombard itself with oxytocin while a parasite brews in your uterus, it’s another thing entirely to take a part of yourself out and shape it, base pair by base pair, into something more beautiful and more brilliant than you could ever hope to be. You could never understand. Don’t even begin to pretend to.”
“I’ve lost people too, Moira,” said Gabriel, stepping forward.
“You don’t lose people. You drive them away. You firebomb them. You drove him away,” her voice creaked on the last sentence as she raked her long nails through her graying red hair with agony, her eyes shining wet.
“...Jack?” said Reaper.
“Aedan, you absolute bastard!” Moira sprung up to her imposing height, “My son! You told him something. You showed him something. I don’t know what it was but I know you had something to do with it.”
“Why--?”
“Because I know you, Gabe,” said Moira, “I helped make you. Who else but Gabriel Reyes in all his--his,” She thumped the back of her hand against his chest with disgust, “Complexities, his doubts, would inflict something like this on someone who has only ever shown him trust and loyalty?” Her voice went strained and her mouth quivered as she brushed her hands down her face, preemptively ridding herself of her tears before they could run down her face, “What did you tell him, Gabriel?”
“...I gave him the footage from Widowmaker’s treatments,” conceded Reaper, “No one told me what was going on with Amélie when it was happening. I thought he should know what was happening to Rei.”
Moira’s shoulders slumped. She seemed to be working very hard to keep her composure, her lips pursed, her eyes shut as she furrowed her brow. Then all at once she let out a half-grunt half-cry and slapped him hard across the face. His bone white mask flew off with the force of the slap and clattered across the cement floor of the hangar.
“WHY!?” her voice was half a shriek, then a softer, weaker, broken “Why?”
Gabriel Reyes rubbed at his scarred and worn face, biotic decay trailing off of it and chunks of it falling away in smoke. Moira stared straight into his red eyes unflinchingly, her own eyes wet and bloodshot and her lips drawn back from gritted teeth.
“Because,” Gabriel said, “You were right. You gave him everything you never had.”
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The Element’s Clash
Part 2
Civilian casualties...
The man let out a frosty scoff-like sigh as his eyes, obscured by the crow mask, gazed across the fire scorched street. Whoever this attacker was, their intentions far outweighed their morals, so much so that they didn't even give a second glance to the poor, innocent souls the fire had blazed across. Particularly, the young man - no older than fourteen, maybe fifteen, he'd say - who was burned alive in front of his even younger sister. Damn brute... he thought, beginning to shift his weight as he rose from his crouch position on the rooftop, his eyes catching the site of what he believed was the perpetrator of this dark attack. A woman - a bit of surprise - whose hair blazed just bright as the flames she created, her outfit as fantastical as it was inefficient. And most importantly, the metallic device which dispatched each guard with a mere click of its trigger... the deadliest weapon known to man yet. She's awfully righteous... he admitted to himself, leaping from the building suddenly as her bullets began to carve through the skulls of each guard. One... two... But she's too slow.
Landing on the opposite side of the street from her, a sudden lift of cold air seemed to catch his fall as he landed with ease, small stones being displaced by his boots as he shifted to gaze towards the careless criminal. Three... four... His teal gloves began to hum slightly as a blue aura encapsulated them, a thin layer of frost forming on them and curling up his arms as he suddenly began to sprint towards the burning cart, moving with unprecedented speed brought by the unnatural winds which carried him. Five... six... Letting out another cold sigh he charged straight through the wall of flames, a shield of pure frost forming in front of him which punched straight through the wall, the man breaking into the bloody ring as he moved silently into the cart, the woman just barely distracted still.
Seven... The Dark Magician coursed through the cart as if he had been inside of it millions of lifetimes before. His movements were quick, calculated, and always had a sense of purpose. His hand glanced across the entrance which he had crested through, a sudden flash of light appearing where his hand graced before the entire doorway was filled by a wall of pure, solid ice. Spinning his hands together thereafter, he'd conjure a frosty mist which would further surround his hands, covering them in icy gauntlets that came to a sharp point. Eight... The woman finishes off the last remaining guard, the bullet bursting his eye as he screamed out for but a solemn moment before collapsing back into silence as his brain was completely splintered out of the back of his own head. And not long after, the very same woman who so easily rid Leonguard for more than ten of their top guardsmen came charging towards the cart, heading straight for the opposing entrance, the very same one he hadn't covered in ice yet.
And so, with one final sigh, the man whispered a silent incantation under his breath as multiple invisible sigils appeared on different pieces of the cart's interior... hidden, inactivated, seemingly anticipating something... just as the Dark Magician stood tall and anticipated the other's arrival. This wasn't going to be easy, no, but he'll be damned if he didn't say he wasn't enjoying the adrenaline.
By ravenous-...she knew there was someone else here.
But, quite apparently, she had hoped for too much, because as the last knight met their end to the cold impact of her bullet, something had been caught in her peripheral. The inferno on the other side of the flaring ring had seemed to open, marking the entry of -...*Someone.* The narrowed end of her wide chapeau had turned toward the interior of the cart, done so in such a way that let the man know-...he had mere seconds to either run, talk, or be ready. Though what she had oddly noticed was that he had simply stood there, formally awaiting her confrontation, he was either bold- or incredibly foolish.
Now rushing the cart, her boots thumping against the stone street, the woman grappled at the air beside her as she ran, yanking some unseen chain toward her; the fire obeyed, and the ring of flames shrank. Her two revolvers had retreated to their stables, she didn't need them, this was obviously a...misunderstanding....with this desperado~ they could ration this out, for his sake at least. Soon enough, the woman was hauling herself up the entrance of the cart,- all the while the radius of the ring had significantly shrunk to the simple exterior of the wagon itself- and stepped inside the wagon. It was only then that her head tilted upward, and her bright, radiating eyes of pure flame evidently narrowed into his gaze. Her left hand, free, relaxed as the bare and visible dark maroon skin seemed to boil with the lava-like blood that flowed through her body. Her right, stiff as it poised to grab the firearm within the open holster; her arm tightly bound with black armor that went up to her bicep.
A bat of the eye at the large wooden chest that was firmly restrained to the planks of the wagon's floor. Her whole reason for traveling across the continent, as the artifact that was said to be in there~...she kept her daydreaming to a minimum. Her eyes then looked past him and toward the wall of ice behind him, solid and frigid. Lucky her, as it seemed ice would be soon to meet flame.
After a considerably long fifteen seconds, the woman spoke, her voice holding no affiliation of friendliness, in fact, the sound of her words alone was a belligerent warning. "Obviously-...you know what I'm here for." The more she thought about his mere audacity to show up, the more the thermometer climbed the numbers. Why, the joint that had been laying between her lips had turned to ash right in front of the stranger. She paid no mind to it, in fact, she barely noticed its sudden lack of existence,- but this man.
"So what'll it be..." She then asked him as her left arm ignited with a wild malevolent flame. The fire around them seeming to become more furious and turbulent as her patience grew slimmer.
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Issues 2-4 rewrite part 1
I think I’m going to spread out the fights out a bit more since I’m not constrained by cramming everything into 4 issues. Also since I’m adapting it to fit Powered Up. Speaking of Powered Up I wanted to add dialog from that game for every Robot Master but none of Bomb Man’s lines seemed to fit so I made up my own. Guts Man was easier and I even put in his digging move from PU. I also decided to go with the PU continuations that the RMs are fighting Rock because they think he’s the bad guy, it seemed to fit our interpretation of how reprogramming works.
Rock teleported to the middle of the city and looked around. He then pressed a button in his helmet to turn on his communicator.
“The teleporter worked, I’m already downtown, but it looks like the others have already left.”
“Ok, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out where they went. Find them before they do any more damage.”
“Got it.”
Rock turned off his communicator and looked around to see if he could find where his brothers might have gone.
“Oh man. Another one!”
“Shh, it hasn’t seen us yet.”
“Huh?” Rock turned around to see two armored soldiers hiding behind a car. “Oh hi.”
“Ahh!”
The two men stumbled back and one of them raised their gun at him.
“Whoa hey it’s ok I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help.”
The soldiers looked shocked but the one with the gun did lower his weapon.
“Do you guys know where the other robots went? I need to find them so I can stop them.”
The soldiers looked at each other and shrugged.
“Uh they all went off in different directions.”
“The one with the explosives is probably the most dangerous, he went that way.”
The soldier pointed down one street and Rock nodded.
“Thanks.” He waved to the two soldiers as he ran in the indicated direction. “Guess I’m doing Bomb Man first… ok I can do this.”
Suddenly several small robots, that looked kind of like fish, started to swarm around him.
“Ahh! Dad, a bunch of little robots are attacking me.”
“They look like the old flea model. They were failed crop protectors. Dr. Wily must have found an old supply and reactivated them. They’ll attack anything that comes into their designated protection zone.”
“So what do I do?”
“You’re going to have to clear a path for yourself. It’s alright these robots have no AI systems and are only acting on preprogramed movements.”
“Ok, if you say so.”
Rock let off a shot from his buster and it hit several of the flea at once, the others not even reacting to what had happened. Rock continued to run and blast away any of the small robots that got in his way. Then out of nowhere a blast, similar to his own, came down and he only barely managed to escape getting hit by it.
Rock looked up to see a green robot, with a singular red optic and a shield pointing a buster down at him.
“What is that?”
Dr. Light stared shocked at the screen for a moment before Rocks cries for help reached. “Sorry, that’s a Sniper-Joe, one of the military robots I made that I told you about. How did Wily get his hands on one?”
“Dad what do I do?”
“Hit it when its shield is down. Like the flea it’s only acting on preset attack patterns.”
“Ok.”
Rock jumped out of the way of another blast and let loose on the sniper. The shots hit and it was sent off line.
“Ok, I got passed the Sniper-Joe, now what?”
“I’ve found Bomb Man’s location in an unfinished evacuation bunker; the entrance should be close by.”
Rock looked around and saw a large metal door leading to something that could only be underground.
“Found it.”
“Good. Bomb Man should be in there. Good luck Rock.”
“Thanks.”
The metal doors opened and Rock jumped in. He landed in a large open room with the only thinks inside were Bomb Man and the bulldozer he was perched on.
“Bomb Man, it’s me, Rock!”
“Rock? Never thought I’d see you running through, guns a blazing. Guess the doc was right about you turning into a fighting robot.” A bomb appeared in his hand. “Don’t worry this should knock you back to your senses.”
He through the bomb down at Rock who jumped out of the way just in time to avoid the worst of the explosion. Reflexively he aimed his buster at Bomb Man and let off a shot. It made contact and sent him falling off the bulldozer. Bomb Man groaned as he got back to his feet and looked down at the scorch mark on his armor in a bit of dazed shock. A dark expression then crossed his features.
“I didn’t want to have to do this but looks like you’re not leaving me with any choice.”
He jumped into the air and rained more bombs down on Rock. Rock ran to dodge them but he couldn’t escape all of them and one explosion sent him sprawling across the floor.
“Rock, I know you don’t want to hurt him, but Bomb Man won’t stop until you make him.”
Rock grit his teeth and stood back up.
“I know.” He raised his buster at Bomb Man. “I’m sorry.” He let off another blast that hit Bomb Man squarely in the chest.
He fell back and Rock let off another few shots at him. Bomb Man’s optics widened in fear and he raised his arm in an attempt to shield himself, but it wasn’t enough and he was sent offline as the shot hit.
Tears formed in Rock’s eyes as he walked over to his fallen brother.
“It’s ok Rock. I’ll be able to fix him when this is all over. But now that he’s down you can interface with him and copy his weapon. All you have to do is touch him.”
“Ok.”
Rock knelt down and placed his hand on Bomb Man’s gauntlet.
“Good, looks like the copy chip is working.
“So does that mean I can make bombs too now?”
“Yes, but you’ll have to shut off your Mega Buster to do so. Your systems can only support one weapon at a time.”
“That’s fine with me. I don’t really know what I’d do with two weapons at once.”
“Are you ready to move on to the next one?”
“Yeah I’m ready.” Rock looked to Bomb Man one more time. “I’ll come back for you.”
In a beam of blue light he was gone.
-
The beam brought Rock to a large open quarry with metal beams and pipes everywhere.
“I’ve sent you as close to Guts Man as I can. I’m not able to pinpoint his location but he’s somewhere in the quarry. Be careful, if getting to Bomb Man was any indication, Guts Man is probably not the only robot around.”
“I know, I will be.”
Rock looked around; so far the quarry seemed quiet. He took a few steps and noticed what looked like a hard hat lying on the ground.
“Huh that must have belonged to a quarry worker.”
He took a step closer and suddenly the helmet moved to reveal a round black face with yellow boots underneath.
“Wha..?”
Several more of the same robots then appeared from behind rock mounds and flying drones flew down at him.
“It’s an ambush!”
Rock ran and dodged attacks from the robots around him and let off a few blasts to get rid of some that were getting too close. As he was running he saw a mine cavern blocked off by a large metal door with a Wily insignia on it.
“That must be where Guts Man is.”
He ran to the door and jumped through just as it opened. The door closed behind him, cutting off the other robots from following him.
“Hey Dad, I think I found where Guts Man is.”
“Alright be careful.”
Rock turned a corner and found Guts Man standing in a large cavern next to a pile of very large boulders.
“Hey, men only. Little boys don’t belong here. Go home before you get hurt.”
“Guts, it’s me, Rock.”
Guts Man narrowed his eyes. “Rock? Since when do you go around with armor and a gun?”
Rock quickly turned his buster back into a hand and raised both of them in a sign of peace.
“They’re just for protection. Those construction robots out there were really aggressive.” He smiled placatingly with his hands still up. ‘So far so good, Guts hasn’t even been that hostel. Maybe I’ll be able to talk him out of fighting.’
Guts Man didn’t move from his spot and continued to eye Rock suspiciously. His shoulders slumped and a look of resignation appeared on his face.
“You know when Wily said you’d been turned into a fighting robot I didn’t want to believe him. I couldn’t believe him, I knew you’d never hurt anyone.”
“Um… Guts Man what are you saying? Of course I wouldn’t hurt anyone, you know that.”
“Then I guess you showing up in full armor right after Bomb Man’s communication went down is just a very big coincidence.”
Rock’s optics went wide and Guts Man frowned.
“I’m sorry for this Rock.” Guts Man picked up one of the boulders from the pile next to him. “But you know I can’t let you get to the rest of our brothers.”
The boulder was launched right at Rock and he did not have time to get out of the way. It hit him square on and knocked him to the ground. If it wasn’t for his armor he’d probably have several error messages popping up from that hit. Even with his armor he was pretty dazed.
He got up just in time to see Guts Man jump into the air and aim a fist right for him. Rock just managed to jump back away from both the fist and the blast it caused. He turned his hand back into his buster and sent a few shots Guts Man’s way but unlike with Bomb they didn’t do quite as much damage. Eventually Rock was forced to take shelter behind one of the thrown boulders.
‘Oh man, oh man, oh man. Taking him down with the Mega Buster is going to take forever. I need something more powerful.’ Rock glanced down at his buster. ‘Like the hyper bomb!’
His buster and armor then changed as he switched his weapon. Taking a simulated breath he jumped out from behind the boulder and let loose a hyper bomb right at Guts Man’s feet.
Guts Man looked down at the bomb in confusion for just long enough for it to go off and send him flying. He slammed into the far wall of the cavern and slid down. He clutched at his chest and looked to Rock with a mix of horror and rage.
“Was that…?”
“Guts I’m sorry, please just stop fighting.”
“You expect me to just give up after finding out that you not only attacked my brother but stole his weapon too? Oh no. I’m not going to stop fighting until one of us stops moving.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Guts Man started to charge at Rock and he sent another hyper bomb his way. This time Guts Man was able to not let it hit him point blank though it still caused some damage.
Guts Man grimaced at the impact then jumped in the air again, but this time instead of causing another earthquake he instead burrowed himself into the ground.
“What? Since when could he do that?”
Rock looked around frantically to try and find where Guts Man went but there was nothing to indicate where he would come up. That was until he felt the ground under him start to shake. Rock braced himself as he was sent into the air as Guts Man burst from the ground underneath him. However, instead of just taking the hit Rock twisted himself to aim one more hyper bomb to fall down on Guts Man as he landed out of range of the blast.
Guts Man stumbled back then fell to the ground, offline.
“Guess you were right about not stopping the fight until one of us stopped moving.” He went over to Guts Man and placed his hand on his gauntlet to copy his weapon as well.
Once that was over he made his way back out of the mine and noticed that all the construction robots that had been attacking him before had left. Seemed once Guts Man wasn’t able to send out the Robot Master command signal to them they had nothing to keep them there.
Rock’s communicator then crackled to life and Dr. Light’s voice came through.
“Rock, are you there?”
“Yeah…”
“Thank goodness. The cavern walls were blocking the communicator signal from reaching you. I’ve located where Cut Man is…”
“Fine, let’s go.”
“Are you sure? Do you need to recharge first, or…?”
“No thank you. Let’s get this over with.”
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RPT Phoenix Report: Back to Back!
Part 1: Preparation
“How should I begin this? I’m just so offended; how am I even mentioned by all these fucking beginners?”
Let’s back up a bit.
I’m coming into this half season fresh off a 5th place finish in the last MC, which means I’m qualified for RPT1/2 and PTFinal 1.
From what I could make of the shoddy convoluted details at the beginning of this year; I believed I had a serious upper hand in the Rivals race.
Only 4 tournaments count. The 3 I am qualified for and the 2nd PT final which I’ll have multiple chances to que for as well.
Almost everyone else has at most 1 RPT Q and a pipe dream.
With this info, I decide I am going to go for it. I know I am still an underdog, but I believe I am one of the few people in the world in this spot to somewhat reasonably set this goal of top 12 paper rivals for myself.
At the same time, the world we live in is an Arena dominated one.
I hate it of course.
Like most of you reading this; I play the game for mostly 1 big reason [the fierce competition]. Arena is severely lacking in this department.
Only standard, a mindless ladder with the only reward being a single lottery ticket into a ~15k USD 0.5% equity drawing. (that requires you to play standard for 8 hours on a saturday there will assuredly be a GP you want to play.)
A petty, infuriating chore.
Bc standard is so chalked and flooded with players anyway; You are forced to play casual [but ranked] drafts against the bots.
Slamming BO1 games with 15 land decks until your eyes bleed and the mythic achievement is reached!
Then you close the unbearable program down not to be touched again until the next time this chore is required; or the lottery drawing is happening.
Nice system!
All that being said, I’m still not going to handicap myself, and so I decide I will go for Arena as well.
Unfortunately I have no early advantage there, and the spots are obviously unbelievably high variance.
There are only 2 Invys and 2 Mythic point challenges, and if you miss the first invy you are almost drawing dead at a 1-12 spot. Especially with special invites and re-ques for top finishers all factored in.
So far I am failing on the Arena front.
I was too attached to my beautiful Urza Oko deck (I didn’t prepare enough for the first MCQW I would be double queing along side the modern GP in Austin. It cost me as I woke up and played poorly to a swift 2-2 exit with Jetski Fires before heading over to the GP)
I lost a win and in and got 17th there. Never have I played a tournament with a bigger edge over all non mirrors in the field! Unfortunately I played 7 mirrors and managed a lowly 4-2-1 in them.
I can’t make it through these gauntlets on autopilot anymore.
I’m only 27, but my seemingly rapid reduction in processing speed has made me feel like I’m somehow getting too old for this grind.
The way I have dealt with it?
Accepting it.
As much as I hate to admit it; I am not the same 17 year old wunderkind anymore and the young guns have a big edge on me.
I have to take all the necessary steps to take care of myself and do everything in my power to make sure when I’m in the trenches; inside the matches in the important tournaments; I can be as focused on the games as possible. This is just so I can make the playing field close to level.
Otherwise I am going to be reading cards, and playing slow unconfident magic.
This is a big one; I believe.
I think one thing a lot of players are lacking in pushing themselves to higher levels is the confidence in their decisions. I used to struggle with this a lot (still do sometimes) and I would constantly second guess things multiple times every turn.
Over time, I’ve learned that if you put in the work...
You practice;
Play actual games and learn the interactions;
You can really lean on your instincts and exude confidence in yourself that goes a long way in winning matches of Magic the Gathering.
(Look at almost all of the best players. They are confident in their decisions in the games, even when they end up making mistakes.)
But enough with the nonsense; let’s get to the tournament prep so we can blaze through that boring shit and get to the sweet 16 PT rounds
(spoilers: there may be more than 16)
Collin Rountree is torn between testing with Me Ty Will and the Houston Slack, and testing with team 5% captained by Allen “The Process” Wu.
Of course the choice is obvious, but Collin doesn’t want to leave all the local bangers in the dust.
He lobbies on our behalf, and Me Ty Will and Eddie all join team 5%.
I am not a stranger to large testing teams.
I spent four PTs testing with team TCG/SCG and we averaged around 15 people. The difference was that we always met up in person a week or more ahead of time for an intense testing period, and also I guess we had more dueling personalities.
Shoutout to everyone on those squads those were great times.
But when you have Steve Rubin Seth Manfield Corey Burkhart Andrea Mengucii mixed with Brad BBD Martell Kibler mixed with Me Fennell GerryT Josh Cho mixed with Ari Lax trying to organize everything for everyone.....
Anyone who knows these people can see how this led to some logistics issues and some heated arguments about who is not pulling their weight, or who is just showing up late and mooching, or who keeps brewing decks with no mana bases and sideboards and bringing them to Brad telling them they are great and we have to play games with them (another shoutout to Fennell, hope he reads this and fires up a modo draft tonight. And shoutout to Brad for creating the no 75, no games rule. You can’t fucking say you made a deck if you don’t have a manabase or a sideboard, and some brewers out there may need to hear that again.)
Team 5% (7.1673746%) is all online testing.
We use a discord with dedicated channels to all the constructed decks, all the limited topics, logistics, and chalkdiesel/washed bad beat/rant rooms/RIP Rimrock Knight etc. etc. so you can see how it stays pretty clean, organized, and simple.
But no really, having so many people gives us an edge on many fronts.
There is usually always someone available to battle. We can cover a lot of ground really quickly. Multiple people are brewing and many people are tuning the known decks. Lots of different opinions and we end up covering all the limited archetypes quickly as the drafts pile in.
All of this being said, my best two PT results from the past are when I worked alone.
I usually draft infinite (75-100) times (when I lose I drop and draft again. And sometimes I drop when winning just to draft again) and I just try to play the best deck in constructed.
This I have learned is a recipe for success for me.
But I was happy to join this team. My intention was to just do the same thing, but have some people to talk to while I drafted 75-100 times and tuned the best deck.
I worked with a few of these players back in the TCG days (shoutout to Ari and Corey, and again to Corey for winning the PT let’s gooooooo) and everyone that I heard was currently on this 5% team; I liked.
So for my testing I did almost purely magic online.
I did around 60 drafts after all was said and done. In constructed, I played a ton of UW control and small amounts of all the other stock decks, and watched a lot of streams.
I wanted to be familiar with the format but not go too hard until the days leading up to; during; and right after the first 2 RPTs.
What a weird dynamic, having 2 pro tours 5 days before deck submission for your pro tour.
It really worked out in our favor because our team is so big and we were able to quickly attack the new and perceived future metagame.
Nothing at those two tournaments made me waiver from wanting to register UW control.
I was still beating everything, and I predicted the metagame would be 20%ish UB invertor and then spirits, red, black, and sultai delerium/invertor uro decks would be all around 10%.
When I say I was beating everything, I was beating everything.
Granted these were in leagues, but it was mostly all against real decks and my constructed rating was skyrocketing above my limited.
Not a thing I am accustomed to.
I had a 17-1 record against mono red, and no cap. I had a 12-2 record against mono black. I had a 8-1 record against UB invertor.
I crushed Collin so badly with our teams current front running mono white devotion that he decided to add 4 Gideon Ally of Zendikar to the maindeck and try again.
A 4-0 for me later in which he resolved 5 Gideons led to him telling the discord he is off it. “Bursavich just beat me every single game and I resolved gideon in all of them.”
The only deck I ever lost matches to was spirits but I still won more than I lost against it.
Around Monday our team was all piling on to the breach deck realizing how good it was, and I joined in to.
I played a prelim and a league and immediately bought all of the cards from cardkingdom. But after my next few matches I was feeling very conflicted.
I was very worried how bad UW was against breach, but I didn’t think breach would break 7-8% or the metagame anyway. And I can tweak UW some to have a shot I tell myself.
The breach deck is obviously busted, but it’s a combo deck with a weird puzzle-like 3 step combo.
First you have to get 2 lands into play and then play lotus field, then u have to play a thespians stage and copy it, and then u have to kill your opponent with ur huge amounts of mana.
But the deck is so consistent and sort of resilient that I found myself trying to play it like a midrange deck.
I have these faes and grazers and pores and viziers, I can block! And Fae for planeswalkers and grind people out or take all these weird dynamic lines... and then I realized I was fucking up a lot.
The games are not always intuitive to me, and I won’t be able to live with myself if I register this and play horribly to lose games I should win, considering there will likely be some number of games my deck fails and I can’t win (or my opponent is prepared with damping sphere or one of the other 1-2 cards that do anything at all to stop this abomination of a deck)
So a few hours after ordering the breach cards I am going to bed Monday night and I know I’m going to play UW control...
Shoutout to the squad though!
They really crushed it over these few days and perfected the breach list and had all the matchups figured out down to the T.
Our limited meetings were great and I believe they really helped everyone a lot and we had an overall great showing in limited.
I spend all day Tuesday and Wednesday with magic online open and the discord on my other monitor.
I occasionally jam some games with teammates but for many many hours I just stare at my UW decklist while catching up on the latest breach tech.
I just stare at the deck.....
For hours
I went to get lunch and came back and stared some more.
It was perfect and there was just nothing to cut.
I wanted another hard counter in my deck but could not find the space.
I have been moving 1 card around here and there, swapping 3rd field of ruin for the 4th Glacial, swapping back, then swapping back again. going down to 1 absorb and back to the 2/2 split back to 1. Moving around seal away D sphere narset lantern thassas intervention Mystical Dispute elspeth etc. etc. but mostly keeping the same core 73-75 cards the same.
With a few hours left in submission and all the data pouring in, we realize that LSV Huey and a large swath of great players have all been spotted in leagues today playing breach.
I am suddenly panicked bc the matchup is still quite bad.
I have a few good cards, but nothing to swing it past like a 33% matchup at best.
I know damping sphere is my only real option if I want to respect it, and I’m of the mindset that doing so is normally a bit silly.
While the deck is obviously busted, it’s been 5 days and many players are uncomfortable playing decks of this style.
My general guess is that it breaking 6-7% of the field will still be unlikely, and I think it pushing above 10% would be crazy.
So I can expect to play vs it once on average??
Not so fast.
This is a new RPT with a wide open field, but still a lot of goats at the top.
Turns out you almost always have to defeat multiple goats to get the trophy in PT’s...
And I didn’t fly to Phoenix just to have a good ole time and settle for 6th place, so I man up and delete 2 Monastery Mentor for 2 Damping Sphere.
This will hurt me in mirrors and vs Invertor, but I am confident I will be fine anyway.
With 10 minutes left in submission I consider adding a 3rd sphere but am too lazy to open back up my laptop and know I won’t be able to cut any of the beautiful cards in my sideboard for it anyway.
Enough with the boring shit; let’s get to the tournament!!!
Part2 coming tomorrow!
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