#he could technically break that leash but he’s being so polite | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whetstonefires · 4 years

Text

mcu ethics bad

The thing is that, while I was angry at Tony during Age of Ultron, particularly when he rode over Bruce’s compunctions about building a giant combat super-robot and pressured him into the project like a very very bad friend who happened to also be wrong...

...and when he equipped Hulkbuster armor and fought the Hulk in the middle of a city rather than attempting de-escalation or attempting to haul the Hulk out into the giant adjacent desert....

(And my suspension of disbelief snapped like a frayed cable when he brought down a skyscraper that had had no time to be evacuated on a street full of fleeing people and the only reason we were given to believe he hadn’t just cold-bloodedly created massive civilian casualties was that he told his AI to find the impossible magic angle where doing this wouldn’t kill anyone...)

While I was angry with him then, and unspeakably relieved that he recognized his own damage and retired at the end, haha psych, I was revolted by him during Civil War.

It’s supposed to make us sympathize with a character more, spending so much time with them, getting into their heads, being shown their emotional drives and reactions to things, and we spent so much time with Tony during that film, understanding his point of view. And...I did understand him. He’s not complicated. I even sympathized with his emotional state.

But in the context of his actions, throughout the film, I gazed into that understanding the way I did into Kylo Ren’s face in the seconds after he first unmasked. I see you, I know you, everything you are is written here, and the lines of your shame and self-revulsion are so thick upon you, and you should be ashamed but your self-destruction does not expiate or justify one jot of the harm you do.

Because everything Tony did in Civil War came from a place of selfishness. He was selfish all throughout that movie down to his very spine.

And selfishness isn’t itself necessarily bad--you need a little, to get through life, you have the right to your own portion of it. Your boundaries and your needs. But the type of selfishness that is forcing other people pay dearly for your emotional comfort and sense of control: no.

That is tyranny. That is not acceptable.

And you know how I know he was being selfish? Because his motive for pushing the Sokovia Accords was his personal guilt for the destruction of Sokovia.

But the Accords didn’t address that at all! They were tangential to the issue! None of the terms of the Accords would have saved Sokovia--in fact, the existence of them could easily have prevented the evacuation and harm-reduction the Avengers managed there, without saving a single soul.

The Ultron crisis was something Tony did, not as Iron Man but as Tony Stark, with Bruce Banner’s help, and which Wanda as criminal fugitive later helped exacerbate, and which all the other Avengers were involved in only to mitigate harm.

Legislation, or...treaties, idk, the UN isn’t actually empowered to pass laws so who knows what this thing was...aimed at preventing another Sokovia would mandate constant ethical oversight of billionaire science man’s mad science. At the very least! He never has to run things by ethics boards because he’s self-funded, at the very least let’s invent a mechanism to make up for that.

That would address the actual Sokovia issue, both in terms of risks and in terms of Tony’s personal guilt feelings.

But no one suggests that! It’s not even on the table! Because no one, certainly not any government, can tell Tony Stark what to do unless he lets them, that’s been a clear matter of record since Iron Man 2.

And because no one writing this legal instrument of whatever description was actually motivated by wanting to avoid another Sokovia, or even another ‘Wanda tries to neutralize a suicide bomber but merely gives him a different, smaller victim pool’ incident.

They didn’t care! They blatantly didn’t care! The entire thing was a ghoulish use of the dead to gain enough political leverage over the Avengers to put a leash on them!

(Which might not be a bad thing in principle, everything needs its checks, but when the last quasi-governmental organization you worked for turned out to be Nazis who were only prevented from staging a mass slaughter of undesireables by the skin of your teeth, I think you’re well within your rights to be very choosy about who you agree to obey, and to be firmly against pledging your honor to follow people whose first move was dishonest coercive tactics.

Actually you’re well within your rights to demand to negotiate the terms of even a much less sweeping contract, even without the Nazis. The whole approach to this thing stank to high heaven.

The fact that it was written by the UN like a treaty, expected to be signed by private individuals like a contract, and then enforced like a law except not because 1) laws are for everyone 2) if you break a law you get a trial not extrajudicial incarceration and 3) being pressured to consent to a restriction and then punished for refusing consent is hypocritical circular logic and in fact police corruption at its finest, all continues to show it was a bullshit nonsense franken-document.)

The whole movie is people ghoulishly using the dead to manipulate Tony into making bad decisions in response to his emotional pain. That’s. The plot of the film.

Then Zemo staged T’Chaka’s assassination and framed Bucky for it to raise the tension, ramp up the pressure, and prevent any sitting-down and talking reasonably through this, which might have allowed for the recognition of how extremely bullshit the entire concept was.

Tony was being used. Tony was a tool of bad people for most of that movie, and while Zemo banked on using his wrath for it, the politicos were leaning on his guilt.

And there’s honestly little I hold in deeper scorn than going out and hurting other people to assuage your own guilt and treating this as having the moral high ground. No. You don’t have the moral high ground on account of your guilt motivation. You have it if the actions you took were just, or at least could reasonably be assumed to have been so at the time.

And Tony fucking knew they weren’t. He didn’t even last to the end of the movie before recognizing that he’d been manipulated and fucked up, and doubling back.

That he then walked into a different manipulation, turned on a dime, and had to be stopped from doing a murder doesn’t unwrite that.

And it drives me nuts that people will say Tony was acting out of principle while Steve was acting out of personal attachment. Because sure, the Bucky thing was important, was the reason he was walking forward against all opposition instead of standing still to argue, but it wasn’t the reason Steve said no, while...

Tony wasn’t acting out of principle. Tony isn’t...very good at having principles. That’s not even a criticism or condemnation, it’s just how he functions. Since Iron Man he’s been substituting good intentions and emotional investment, which has worked out to varying degrees. It works best for huge, difficult, very straightforward decisions like ‘ride the nuke through the portal and save my hometown.’ It works less well for nuanced situations.

Tony was, as usual, acting out of emotion. And some awful shitheads who’d figured out where his levers were had calculated how to jiggle his emotion switches in the right places to make him do exactly what they wanted.

And you can tell he wasn’t acting out of principle because, for example, someone who was trying to get the superhero community under outside control for the sake of harm mitigation...

...well, firstly wouldn’t have chosen to stage a massive battle? But it’s possible someone in the UN specifically told him to do that, and in theory they at the very least signed off on it, presumably for its PR value of making Captain America look deranged and violent since it’s a deranged decision from every other angle, so yay, he can pass that responsibility up the chain and not have to angst about it, as promised.

But I was going to say would not have approached a minor who (this timeline takes pains to show us) had no prior experience of battle or even, somehow, serious violent crime, to recruit him to go be a government child soldier on another continent, without his guardian’s knowledge or consent. There were overtones of blackmail in Tony’s approach, before it turned out Peter was such a big fan he didn’t need that. What the fuck frankly.

That is not the action of someone who wants to start doing things by the letter, scaling the violence down, keeping within the law and putting the power of decisionmaking in other people’s hands because he’s realized he can’t trust his own.

And frankly even if he did act like that I wouldn’t necessarily support his choices, in particular his snap decision to behave coercively toward other Avengers with vastly less social power and security than he has.

And that’s the other thing! Everything about ‘Tony + Accords BFFs’ rings so hollow because he has never thought rules applied to him, and he knows perfectly well the entire time he’s fighting to force this surrender of agency down other people’s throats that he is going to be practically immune.

This man was technically a terrorist, proabably the most prolific single terrorist in world history until his rogue android exceeded his body count, but he was immune to prosecution because he was in tight with the United States military-industrial complex and basically untouchable due to his status within capitalism, and pursuing their international goals anyway. In the time between Iron Man and Iron Man II he was basically a one-man upgrade of the US drone program, and so good at it that the crest of blood he carved through the Middle East allowed him to announce he had ‘privatized world peace.’

(You are never going to get a world peace worth anything on the basis of a giant flying gun, okay.)

He went to war as a private individual, against non-state actors who were not directly threatening him, which is very much defined as ‘mass murder’ in all domestic and international law, and the US army in response sued him for control of his weapon. And lost! Lost.

No one attempted to press charges. No one. Because Tony Stark is above all that. And he knows it.

And like. I’m willing to accept the mass murder under the heading of ‘superheroing’ within the terms of this setting! Even if, after his vengeance rampage on his specific kidnappers, this violence was kept strictly off-screen for a reason. I did that! I bent that far! Genre convention!

But this history is kind of vitally important to any analysis of what he thought he was doing, and what he actually was doing, when he decided to become the iron gauntlet of the Sokovia Accords.

The currently active member of the Avengers who needed muzzling most was very manifestly Iron Man, and he knew even as he jammed the muzzle on all his comrades to make himself feel better that it would affect him the least, even if he didn’t finally retire for real this time. You don’t force Tony Stark. Not if you want anything out of it but blown up. You persuade him.

And once you have...oh, look at what he can do.

#hoc est meum #mcu #tony stark critical #i am so angry with this man and i will never stop #i throw salt #an ocean of it

371 notes · View notes

grayintogreen · 3 years

Text

It’s technically WIP Wednesday (even though it’s 1 AM...) and I don’t have Inventory today BECAUSE IT WAS CANCELLED AGAIN THE DAY BEFORE. SO WHO WANTS TO SEE SOME OF THAT CLIFFHANGER RESOLUTION FROM SHATTERED STAGE???

Lucien is on the world’s worst field trip with like 10 HP left and no weapons, everybody. It’s not going great.

“If the whole world is destroyed, what makes you think you won’t be destroyed along with it? The Chained Oblivion doesn’t seem the sort to negotiate even for his most loyal.”

She chuckled, drily. “You assume that I don’t want to be destroyed.” She spun on her heels again so fast that he almost bumped into her. “Your beloved pattern was endless creation, limitless and undying, but it is the most unfathomable, horrific idea of existence. A prison of flesh and thought united under one common mind that can never die and never truly live. You want to know my dream, oh Nonagon of the Eyes of Nine, the martyred dreamer who came back to his precious Somnovem a tyrant? My dream is the end of existence. I want to see this world salted and burned.”

Lucien stared at her. “Why?”

She canted her head. “Oh no.. You think there’s an excuse. My father didn’t buy me a pony. My mother ignored me. I was picked on in school for being unique and setting fire to small animals. I had an uncle who touched my hair a little too much. Is that what you’re imagining?” Every word dripped with condescension.

She leaned closer and spoke slowly, making sure he understood every word in her lilting accent clearly. “Everything I have ever done and will ever do- womb to tomb- has been in pursuit of this singular goal. For four generations, we have been his loyal priestesses waiting for the time when one of us would be called to break the chains and release Oblivion. My mother thought it would be her, but I got her first, and I’m sure she was very proud of me. So no, Lucien, there is no excuse. There is no tragic narrative. I do this because I am fucking crazy, just like my mother and her mother before her and so on, and I like it.”

And with that, she took a step back, smiling sweetly. “Not all of us have an excuse, because when it comes down to it, what excuse is really good enough to justify the systematic murder of millions of people?” She pivoted and continued her walk. “Now come along. Don’t make me put you on an actual leash.”

“It’s going to be glorious when I get my hands around that lily-white neck of yours,” he snapped, falling into step behind her- not necessarily because she ordered it, but because he felt his options were limited.

“Promises, promises. One more hit from me and you’re dead, which would be inconvenient, but fixable. You have no weapons; most of your tricks aren’t that useful on me, and all that power in your blood doesn’t matter a bit if you have nothing to bleed on. Also I’m sure you have the upper body strength of a fucking child.” She glanced over her shoulder, tilting her head eerily. “You’re a bit fucked.”

She wasn’t wrong, but hearing it laid out like that didn’t make him any less livid. He stalked behind her, trying to calculate a means of attack- she had magic, yes; she had additional, dangerous abilities, yes; he was fucked, yes.

He swore under his breath. “Where the fuck are we going?”

“Back to where it all began,” She glanced over at him again. “Do you remember how to get to the Aether Crux?”

“It’s been ten years,” Lucien snapped. “Why would I remember that?”

“That was a rhetorical question. We both know you do. You’d know it blind.”

Why the fuck did this woman have to be right about everything? She tortured him, trapped him in the monument to his sins for the sake of probably torturing him more, and then she had the gall to think she was smarter than him, like she had firsthand knowledge of precisely which buttons to push to make him crazy.

Well. Two people could be fucking insufferable. “You seem to know everything. Why don’t you know where it is?”

“Because I’m asking you to take me and I think I’m being quite polite about it. I could do to you what I did to your wizard friends at any point, but it’s not enjoyable taking people’s free will when they’ll hang themselves with enough rope without it.

“So this is really just a game to you?” Gods, and people called him crazy. At least he’d had a plan, an excuse, a fucking sense of reason. Jayne had none of those things- well, clearly a plan of some kind, but it seemed to be entirely based on releasing Tharizdun and profiting from the impending destruction using himself, Kingsley, and Molly. “Tryin’ to wear me down so I’ll bend to your will.”

Once more, Jayne spun in place and then backtracked to get right back into his face. “Now you’re getting it.”

She reached up and squeezed his jaw again and this time his hands were free. He could grab her by her wrist and squeeze it until it snapped. She had delicate, bony little caster wrists. His so-called upper body strength of a toddler was more than a match for those twigs. He wrenched her wrist backwards, trying to break it, but she pivoted along with it and swiped his legs out from underneath him, dropping him back onto the ground. She followed it up by slamming her equally bony little knees right into his stomach and grinding down. He felt his vision go gray for a moment before he forced himself to remain conscious. Gods, he was fucked up. By all rights, he shouldn’t be able to even walk. Most of his wounds were internal where Jayne’s touch had tried to eat his vital bits from the inside out, and it was only sheer stubbornness that kept him motivated to keep moving.

Jayne lifted her hand and he recognized the sickly green glow around her hand as she danged it precariously close to his face. He’d seen plenty of blight spells between Fastidan and Caduceus, and he didn’t particularly enjoy the idea of having one this close to his face.

“You know for someone who values politeness, you’re shamefully rude. Is it something I said?”

He didn’t dignify that saccharine sarcasm with a response. If he did anything to her, she was going to melt his flesh from his skull and then who even knew what would happen. Would she bring him back? Could she just take the lock around his neck and throw it into the Abyss and be done with it? He couldn’t possibly guess. All he knew was he didn’t want to die in Cognouza again.

So he went, seething and bitter, docile once more, and Jayne dismissed her spell and stood up, brushing her dress off as she did so. “I’m glad we’ve reached an understanding,” she murmured. “Now would you kindly show me to the Aether Crux?”

#critical role #critical role fanfic #jayne merriweather #lucien the nonagon #wip wednesday #shattered stage

8 notes · View notes

boomstyle · 3 years

Text

Sonic Boom: Friend or Foe

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters and settings of Sonic boom. Oh, watch out for OCs!

Roboken War

(Force field cage)

Well, that was just as quick as it's. Now, where are we?

Tails and I reach the cage in just a zip. I thought Lyric will just put mind control device or at least send them far away from our reach. Well, I guess Lyric may not be as smart and cunning as I thought after all.

Speaking of cunning and smart, I can't stand a breathe anymore. I wish we can get out of here. Wait! We can't. Lyric closed the entrance of the central power station with a force field. I guess he's smart and cunning after all. Ugh...

While I was desperate to get out of the room, Tails was busy tinkering on the force field cage. Hurry up Tails, the gas is getting stronger. Now, I feel nauseous.

"Tails, would you mind speed it up a little?", I asked Tails politely.

"Sorry, Sonic. This may take a while. I can't find the key just yet. It must be somewhere up here.", Tails explain the technical thing but I am not sure what. What I really know is that I am gonna vomit for real.

(45 minutes later)

Ugh... What's taking Tails so long?

"Aha... I found it. The key to the force field was at the upper edge. Just gonna rotate it to the right and here it goes.", Tails was busy tinkering.

"Once I open the secret key, it will be easier to disable the force field."

"Yeah, Tails. Just pretend I don't hear it!", I replied in a cool manner. Not exactly a cool manner though, I was being slightly rude. If Amy heard me saying this, she might just taichi me or whip me or worse hit me with her so-called "legendary hammer". What's so legendary about her hammer? It's just a regular oversized hammer. Sometimes, I don't understand why she's super obsessive about her hammer. If she loses her hammer, she could have just fought in hand to hand or use her enerbeam whip or sword. I mean, she's athletic and has amazing martial art skills to top it off so she didn't really have to bother the whole team to search for her hammer or be like "My hammer is my whole identity. It's a gift from fate.". Tsk...whatever.

Yep, Archie Sonic Boom Issue 3 (HammerSpace). You got it. No need to beat the bush like that, Amy. I feel really bad for Sonic.

I was drowning in confusion until Tails snapped me out. He didn't exactly snap me out, more like bringing me to reality.

"Done it! I've taken out the force field from here.", Tails said in excitement. Team Cyborg is released from the cage. Now, time to open the forcefield!

"Oh, finally! Now, how do we open the forcefield barrier, Cyborg me?", I asked in desperation and relief at the same time.

"Right here!", Cyborg Sonic replied. What? The forcefield entrance key was literally close to us but I see nothing.

"Where? It's just a freaking wall?", I scolded him out of impatience. Ugh, I can't take it anymore. The gas...(cough)...

"Just do as I said!", Cyborg Sonic instructed.

"Fine! Just gonna touch this...(surprised) wall (slowly)", I am stunned. I can't believe it. They're right. Just gonna press the bottom and it's done.

"Yay, we did it! Teamwork rocks! Now, let's move it!"

Just as I thought our business is done from the moment we escape from the central power station filled with gas and traps. I was hell wrong. I heard an invisible siren tone with a beaming red background while we ran away. Talking about disco light, this is worse.

*Lol* (Remember when Dave fool himself in "Next Top Villian", Sonic Boom Series Season 1.)

(Siren Alarm Beam Tone)

"Ugh... Come one! We just escape from it.", I complained.

"Sonic, our escape caused the siren to beam. So this is expected.", Tails calmed me down.

"But we just get out like a few hours ago.", I argued. Technically, it's been 45 minutes but it feels like hours already.

"Are you guys done with your blabber, Sonic?", Cyborg Amy shouted. Ooo... She's just as scary and temperamental as Amy.

"Fine! I'll shut it."

"Good. Let's keep moving! We didn't have all day."

Okay, okay, Amy! Is it necessary for you to be so demanding? Just chill out, Cyborg Amy! Regardless, she's right. There's no time to waste. If we don't get out, we might as well got caught by Lyric. Yep, we did.

"Where are you going right now?", Lyric asked.

"You think you can escape from me, Sonic. Think again!"

"Rise my armies! I command you to finish them once and for all!"

"We can call your robot quit in just a zip, Snake-head.", I deride Lyric confidently.

The infected robots shoot lasers at us as instructed. Tails and I started off dodging their attacks while Team Cybonic launched their special attacks. Well, more like duplicates of our attacks. Hehe...

Just as the battle started, my gangs came to my aid. Oh, just in time but where's Shawn? I mean, the East bender faker. Yeah, he must be planning this whole thing. I bet but regardless, I am glad that my team to the rescue. As I dodge a laser, I spot FriendBot along with Amy, Knuckles and Sticks arrive at the scene and prepare for combat.

"Anyone need some backup?", Amy asked.

Amy, Knuckles, and Sticks charge down and destroy some robots. Sonic dashes towards Amy.

"Amy. I'm glad you're here.", I started a conversation but Amy just shrugged me off. I wonder what's bugging her. Surely, Shawn must have manipulated her. Now, that she ignored me as if I didn't exist. This is just not like her.

"Oh, so you're just gonna ignore me, your boyfriend. Alright, sure. Go ahead."

Oops, did I just said b-word out loud? Not that I care or whatever but we're totally busted right now.

"Hmph... Like I even have one...", Amy shrugged me off.

Oh, is that it? You're just going to going to act negatively out of character toward me. That's it, I had it enough of your rudeness. This is just not you. He's literally turning you into a cold-headed girl. I know she can get temperamental, snarky, rude, or slightly selfish at some point but this is way too far.

"That's it, Ames. I had it enough. If you want to break up, just say so. (punch and kick robot nearby) No need to buzz over me like that.", I confronted her.

"You're saying I got too far. Well, that describes you, Mr. Hedgehog. The way you treated Shawn was totally unacceptable. And besides, you're not so good after all. You're snarky, reckless, messy worker, impatient and impulsive.", Amy talked back.

"Like you have the best personality, I'm sick of your bossy, demanding, and overbearing attitude behind your mature act.", I argued her back.

"I was doing it for your good. You could get a little bit too far with your prank games, jokes or worse run head log in trouble. So I have to step in AS THE MOTHER FIGURE OF THE GROUP(shouted and smash the robot)", Amy defended.

"Yeah, like I need one.", I grunted.

"That's the problem with you. You act as if you're the coolest top speedy hedgehog ever but you're not thoughtful. The way you badmouth and suspect Shawn when you yourself were the one who introduced it to the whole team explains it. You're saying you're responsible for him but what I got is empty promises.", Amy berated me while she was busy beating robots near her just like I did. Speaking of which, what she said reminds me when I introduced Egg man's so called brother without even consulting the whole team. She's kinda right at this. I should have been more considerate and premediated next time. The way I just invite Shawn and Steve Eggman in the group without much consideration indicate my impulsiveness. Looks like I really realized how impulsive and unthoughtful I have been but still, she's literally overreacting just like usual. Thus, why should I be blamed for it?

"Oh come on, why do I get blamed for it? You're literally falling your heels over him anyway so why should I have to get the portion of the blame?", I threw the blame on her. I admitted I am being impulsive and inconsiderate considering how I just invite Shawn in without any consultation.

"Responsibility, Sonic! You can't just introduce someone and suddenly come up with a conclusion that his guy is bad when YOU CAN'T EVEN PROVE IT!", Amy reasoned with me. In some way, she's right but she just didn't understand the issue here. Shawn is...

"Yeah, you're right. I don't have proof but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. You know why? HERO!", I am enraged and boastful, yes and I don't care.

"That's it! I can't take it anymore. You, sir, are impetuously boastful and arrogant being. Have you even take my feeling into account when you said that? it's like you don't consider me a girlfriend anymore. You know what, let's break up!", Amy leashed out on me.

"You wanna break up. FINE! Who wants to be with a Bloodthirsty and indicative hedgehog in a cute and friendly package?", I said.

"And who wants an egomaniac, reckless and immature guy in a speedy hero PACKAGE?", Amy retaliated. She's going super angry and yep, this is good and bad at the same time.

"HAYAK(smash)... (spin hammer attack other robots)... (pull the further robot near her with enerbeam rope) HAYAK (smash, smash, smash until every infected robot disintegrated)... (stand in her ninja-style pose)Ha... Time to take on, Lyric."

Just as we broke up, Amy turned into a temperamental monster. Then, she started to crash all of the infected robots in just a zip. Sticks, Knuckles and Tails as well as our cyborg duplicates are unimpressed. Wow, I was surprised they're not shocked at our break up and Amy's sudden temperamental combat.

"What a lovely couple indeed? I suspect that the alien overlord must have spelled them apart.", Sticks said.

"To be frank, this robot apocalypse has sent Amy mad too.", Cyborg Sticks said. Well, she's partially right. The robot apocalypse really sent Amy crazy after the break-up. Not the best answer you've got, Cybonic Sticks but you sure have Sticks' paranoid DNA with you. Am I okay? Why do I agree with Sticks' paranoid statement now? Oh no, if this happens again, I might need to consider seeing a psychiatrist.

"I don't know Sticks but surely, the secretive skinny couple has finally come to a devastating breakup. If Sonic and Amy were the one, I may be gigging out in shame.", Cyborg Knuckles replied sadly.

"Yeah. Not cool, Sonic. First, you deny that you dated Amy and now, you just let Amy cut off the relationship.", Knuckles said while holding his clenched fist.

"Well, this gets little it out of hand. let's just help Amy fight off Lyric!", Cyborg Sonic said.

"Yeah", Team Cybonic and my gangs except Knuckles and Amy agreed.

While they're battling Lyric, we're in the middle of a pointless argument because of Knuckles. This is the first time we ever battle each other in the middle of a war.

"Knuckles, don't get me started!", I ordered. What the heck is wrong with Knuckles? Sure we kept the relationship in secret and just broke up but this is not an excuse for Knuckles to just burst up like that.

"Do you think I'm not smart, Sonic?", Knuckles asked.

"What? Not, it's not that... It's just", I tried to persuade him but Knuckles cut me off.

"It's just that I'm not smart enough to figure it out that you're dating.", Knuckles straightened his point. What? I don't mean to hide our relationship just to shame you. It's just that it's not a good time yet. If Eggman and other villains know about our relationship, the worst scenario is that the whole team and anyone related to us would be in a threatening situation. Seriously, Eggman may not be you know the victorious one but he's surely dangerous when unexpected. And besides, the group will be awkward if everyone knows we date.

"What's up, Sonic? Scared of me?"

"Knuckles. this is madness. You got to snap out, man. That snakehead was literally your battle.", I persuaded while trying to dodge his punches. I don't want to attack him. He's my friend.

"I've heard you said enough already"

We battle with each other until we heard Amy, Tails, and Sticks as well as our duplicates got smacked down in the middle of battle.

"Guys! Oh no!", Knuckles and I gulped.

"At last, I finally got to end you after a thousand years.", Lyric smirked while approaching us.

"I guess it's the end of Team Knuckles", Knuckles said. Team? Oh, forget it! I'm not going to argue. Besides he's right. It's the end of Team Son...ic.

"Lyric, I said I will find you", Shadow appeared. Uuu... Looks like the edgelord will end the robot apocalypse. He must have a reason as to defeat Lyric. He will not just be here to save us but anyway, it's our lucky day.

Shadow punch out Lyric and take out his technopathy. As the result, everything was back to normal except that all Roboken's army got dismantled, and yeah, things get messed up when Shawn approached in.

ugh... Finally, it's nearly the end of the book chapter. Sorry, I got too personal with the Sonamy relationship and rivalry between Knuckles and Sonic but I just can't help it. Anyway, How do you think Shadow and Shawn were able to come in? What will be the consequences afterward? Find out in the next chapter.

#Boom!Tails #boom!sonic #boom!amyrose #BOOM!SHADOW #Boom!Knuckles #sticks the badger #cyborg #lyrictheancient #breakup #loveandrelationship #coupleissue #robot apocalypse #robotbattle #intrigue #Friend or Foe? [Anonymous]#friendship #sonicboom #sonic the hedgehog #sonicfanfiction

9 notes · View notes

niqhtlord01 · 5 years

Text

Humans are weird: Super Soldiers

Recorder: *Muffled inaudible sounds* Volhime: This is investigator Volhime questioning prisoner 11375 Unknown: I have a name you know. Recorder: *Sound of guard smacking prisoner* Volhime: The prisoner will not speak unless addressed directly. Unknow: *Cough* Whatever you say bitch. Recorder: *Sound of guard smacking prisoner again* Volhime: These recordings will follow the interrogation of prisoner 11375 after their capture on the human world of HG75, also known in their language as “Freehold”. Volhime: Prisoner 11375, please state your name and profession. Prisoner 11375: I could but I have a feeling this jackass next to me is just going to smack me again. Recorder: *Guard smacks prisoner 11375* Prisoner 11375: *coughs* Called it..... Volhime: Please answer the questions directly. Prisoner 11375: *Sighs* My name is Joseph Maker, and I was head researcher at the Vale Foundation facility on Freehold. Volhime: You were captured at the facility during the invasion and caught in the act of destroying valuable documents. Joseph: Is that a question or a statement? Recorder: *Another smack from guard* Joseph: This will go a lot faster if you leash your attack dog here from striking me every time I say something he doesn’t like, because I’m going to be saying a lot of that. Recorder: *Muffled sounds and alien speech* Volhime: What documents were you destroying? Joseph: Research data, records, personnel files, browser history’s. Volhime: Would that information pertain to... Recorder: *Sound of pages being flipped* Volhime: “Project Crow”? Joseph: They were. Volhime: Can you explain in detail what the project was? Joseph: Take it you didn’t get any intact files then from my lab you fuckers ruined. Volhime: Explain in detail what project crow is. Joseph: Project Crow was the combination of genetic, augmentation, and robotic engineering research coming together to create a super soldier. Volhime: To be used against our empire? Joseph: No, to mow my lawn and shine my shoes. Joseph: Of course to be used against you alien fucks! Volhime: What exactly is “super” about these soldiers? Joseph: Combining centuries of knowledge of the human body and the latest technological advancements, we set out to alter the average human soldier on the genetic level and then further augment them with machine components. Volhime: What genetic alterations? Joseph: Enhancing natural human abilities while combining them with favorable animal traits. Volhime: Such as? Joseph: Human enhancements would include faster wound mending, improved blood flow, condensing of bones to be hard as diamonds, increasing lung capacity, increasing muscle density, etc. Volhime: How would these have affected the war with our people? Joseph: Well for starters when one of your toy soldiers tried to stab a subject of project crow their blade wouldn’t even break the skin. Volhime: *Writes down notes* Volhime: And the animal traits? Joseph: Regrowing missing limbs, enhanced sense of smell and night vision, ability to lower body temperature, thermal vision, adaptive camouflage- Volhime: I remind you that failure to speak truthfully will result in more extreme measures of interrogation. Joseph: I’m being entirely honest with you. Volhime: I find it hard to believe that you could combine so many alterations into a human without side effects. Joseph: The first few test subjects didn’t handle the treatments well. Joseph: Organ failure was common, but we were unable to operate as their skin became so hard we had nothing that could have pierced their skin. Joseph: Animal traits also needed to be spliced with human genes on a microscopic level otherwise they wouldn’t bond and the human body would begin attacking itself. Joseph: After several failures we were able to bypass such setbacks. Volhime: I assume these subjects were prisoners? Joseph: No, military volunteers. Volhime: What kind of soldier would risk themselves with such experimental procedures? Joseph: The desperate kind. You should know, your people pushed mine to that point. Volhime: *silence, more note taking* Volhime: You mentioned augmentation as well. List out the procedures. Joseph: The genetic modifications resolved most of the issues we had with reinforcing the human body, so we focused the technical augmentations to embed various weapons throughout the body. Volhime: Would the human body not reject them? Joseph: Normally they would, but we were able to rewrite portions of the genetic template to list these alterations as natural. Volhime: This must be false. Your race lacks the understanding to perform such complex modifications. Joseph: We know more about our bodies than you think, have known for years. We’ve just lacked the technology to implement our understandings until a few years ago. Volhime: What was the purpose of these super soldiers? Joseph: I’ll tell you if you answer a few questions of my own. Recorder: *Sounds of a guard approaching to smack prisoner only to be waved away* Volhime: Very well. What is your question. Joseph: When you captured my facility there were other members of my staff with me, are they present in this facility? Volhime: We captured roughly thirty members of the research division including yourself. They are being interrogated here as well. Joseph: And where is here exactly? Volhime: You on our homeworld, the most secure location in our entire empire. Do not think of escaping. Joseph: Oh, I’d never dream of it. Volhime: Now, what was the purpose of project crow. Joseph: To create super soldiers that could infiltrate enemy lines and eliminate high ranking individuals. Volhime: *Chuckles* Volhime: It’s a good thing we stopped before you could create any. Joseph: I wouldn’t say that. Volhime: You mean you actually created a super soldier. Joseph: More like “soldiers” since there was more than one successful implementation. Volhime: Where are they now? Who are their targets?!?! Joseph: As for the who it’s mostly your high ranking generals, political leaders, and support teams stationed far behind enemy lines. Joseph: As for the where you should already know. Joseph: You transported all thirty super soldiers right to your front door and invited them in for a chat. Volhime: Wh- Recorder: *Sound of ripping clothing followed by several shouts* Recorder: *Sounds of long metal object protruding from flesh and slicing shouting guards* Recorder: *Sirens begin blaring, pounding on door and shouting of Volhime in background* Recorder: *Shouting suddenly interrupted by cracking of bone and tearing of metal doors* Record ends...........

#HUMANS ARE WEIRD #humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space oddities #scifi #story #super soldiers #infiltration #augmentation

792 notes · View notes

im-fairly-whitty · 4 years

Text

The Witcher Wolf 2: Geralt’s POV

It's been two weeks since Geralt drove Jaskier away from him on that mountain top and Geralt's been doing his best not to think about it by accepting every contract he comes across. But when a job goes badly he find himself cursed into the form of an injured wolf and is then saved by none other than Jaskier himself, who has no idea that the animal he's taken under his wing is his own witcher.

Geralt must now try to alert Jaskier to his real situation and adjust to his new life traveling with the bard, learning several hard but very much needed lessons along the way.

Thank you all for your lovely support and comments on [Part One]! I was going to make part two another oneshot but it keeps getting longer and it feel right to break it into two chapters so here you are, extra content for you all. :)

I wanted to try to focus on scenes that happened in between the ones in Jaskier’s POV so be sure to go back and read that one if you haven't already so you can see where the timelines weave through each other.

Chapter 1

“Good girl Roach, good girl.” Geralt said, panting as he patted the horse’s neck, leaning heavily against her side.

The mare tossed her head, ears still twitching nervously toward the massive carcass toppled in the middle of their camp. Geralt’s eyes stung as the cat elixir slowly wore off, but he could still see faint wisps of steam rising from the hot spilt blood into the cold night air.

Geralt heaved another deep breath and pushed himself off Roach, straightening his back with a crack as he tiredly made his way to the felled creature to get a closer look now that the ugly thing wasn't lunging for his jugular.

And it really was quite ugly, some twisted amalgamation that could have been part boar judging by the tusks, part griffon by the sleek winged body, perhaps even part spider by the dozens of glossy jet-black eyes scattered across its face. At first glance in the dark he’d thought it might have been a fiend, but that assumption hadn’t lasted more than an instant.

At Geralt’s age it was very rare for him to see a creature he didn’t know the name of and even rarer for it to ambush him in his own campsite. He didn’t like to think how close a call it had really been this time, he was lucky he’d already been preparing for the hunt or else it might have been him lying on the ground. Geralt had been accepting any contract he saw for the last two weeks ever since the dragon hunt, eager to get his mind off...things...but with this one he’d assumed the villager’s descriptions had been laced with exaggeration.

They quite clearly hadn’t.

“It reeks of magic.” Geralt said to Roach, placing a boot on the monster’s side and heaving it over with a hefty shove. “Whatever it is, it didn’t come about naturally, that’s for sure. But not something that’s been cursed either I think. I’d wager this was some lunatic’s pet project, magically bred from the start.”

“More pet than project, I can assure you.”

Geralt spun, his sword unsheathed and leveled in an instant, his sword tip pointed at the man who’d appeared at the edge of the clearing behind him. And he must have literally appeared out of thin air, otherwise Geralt’s heightened witcher senses would have detected him a mile off in this state, the dregs of his hunting potions still flowing through him.

“Care to elaborate?” Geralt asked warily, shifting his stance slightly as Roach wisely startled away from them, taking cover in the thick trees beyond the clearing.

The man wore what looked like two expensive outfits of very different and clashing styles mixed into one ensemble, all useless ornamentation and rich textures in swathes of periwinkle and burnt orange. Laced in between were chains dripping with bones, trinkets, and what looked suspiciously like human fingers. Geralt wasn’t sure at all how the man managed even to move in such a cluttered get-up, but his frantically humming medallion was more than enough to let him know that the man wouldn’t have to move at all in order to pose a deadly threat. That and the fact that the man’s scent matched the slain creature’s.

“I’d say the time for elaboration is far past.” The man said, something between anger and grief coloring his voice.

Geralt blinked and the man was kneeling beside the creature, stroking its bristly gold hide as if it were a beloved housecat. Geralt’s too-slow heartbeat picked up a bit at that show of speed, he hadn’t even seen the man move at all.

“You a mage?” Geralt asked, trying to cast his mind back to if he’d ever seen Yennifer display the same ability, but each mage’s favorite tricks seemed to be determined more by their personal style rather than any one curriculum.

“Don’t be crass.” The man said, squinting hatefully at Geralt. “I have far too much self respect to be counted among those political chess players. I much prefer caring for my pets, like poor Truskawka here who you’ve slaughtered. Do you have any idea how many generations it’s taken to perfect her bloodline? And now look at my poor strawberry, cut down in cold blood, just before she was about to have a litter too.”

“Your poor strawberry weighs four tons and has been disemboweling travelers for weeks now.” Geralt said dryly. “Should have kept her on a shorter leash if you really cared for her.”

“I’m not about to take advice on caring from you White Wolf.” The man said, looking Geralt right in the eyes in a way that made a sticky cold feeling drip down his spine. “Your kind only know how to harm.”

With a certain collection of songs ragingly popular across the continent it wasn’t unusual for Geralt to be recognized by his medallion and white hair alone, but he had a creeping feeling that somehow this man didn’t know his moniker because of a tavern tune. He also had the feeling that he somehow knew more about him than just his title.

“So if you’re not a mage then what are you?” Geralt asked, raising his sword a bit, quickly tiring of this increasingly unsettling conversation.

“Angry.” The man said, glaring at Geralt and snapping his fingers in a blinding flash of white light.

***

Geralt was no stranger to passing out in battle—it was something you got used to when you made a profession of competing with monsters to see who could lose the most blood last—but he had never woken up running before.

At first he thought he was dreaming as he slowly filtered back to consciousness, his senses gradually coming back to him as air whipped past him, a dirt road under his feet, but suddenly everything clicked back into place and he skidded to a stop. His chest heaved as he looked around, blinking hard to try and get the last tendrils of grogginess out of his mind.

The sorcerer. He growled as he scented the air, remembering what had knocked him unconscious.

The first rays of sunlight were starting to scrape up across the grey clouds on the horizon, signaling a dawn that meant he must have been wandering blindly for hours by now. The blasted magician must have hit him with some unusually strong spell to disorient him like that, most magic simply rolled off a witcher, but the man had seemed extremely upset at his “pet” having been dispatched. Geralt just had to hurry his way back before he-

Geralt stumbled as he took a step forward, his legs suddenly feeling strangely uncoordinated. He fell on his face, rolling onto his shoulder with a growl that suddenly sounded entirely different than his usual ones.

He looked at his hands and blinked in shock at the large white paws he found instead. He twisted around to get a look at the rest of him...

...only to see the massive white furred body of a wolf.

Geralt sat frozen in the middle of the dirt road, feeling his ears swivel back in canine shock as he struggled to process his discovery.

Well. He’d been right about it being a strong spell he’d been hit with.

A very strong spell.

Geralt got to his (four) feet and shook himself, wincing only momentarily at how disarmingly full bodied the shake was. He was a witcher, he’d seen hundreds of transformations far more gruesome and unsettling than this. He could handle a sorcerer with a sense of irony, he just had to find him and either barter or threaten his way to a cure.

He sniffed the air, nose...er...snout scrunching at how different it felt. He seemed to still have his unnaturally sharp witcher senses, which was a relief, but it still felt different. Somehow. Like...like when he had to buy a new riding saddle. It was still technically a saddle, but different feeling all the same.

He snorted at his own metaphor, the noise coming out in a huffing sneeze. He could practically feel Jaskier’s laughter at both his metaphor clumsiness and at him discovering in that moment that wolves did not roll their eyes, his head instead tipping up and to the side a bit when he tried.

Leave the metaphors to me Geralt, can’t have you putting me out of business with your unprecedented lexical brilliance.

Geralt huffed again, ears flicking back at imaginary Jaskier’s teasing. He scented the air again, searching for the sorcerer’s scent as he did his best not to think about the bard, where he was, or if he was safe. Something he’d gotten in the habit of trying very hard not to think about for the last two weeks.

Besides, he told himself yet again as he trotted down the road, following his own scent trail back the way he’d come, in the end it really was for the best that they’d split up. Jaskier was always annoying him and getting in the way, and...playing that lute incessantly...and...and getting hurt...and...

Geralt’s ear flicked as he heard footsteps approach and he lifted his head to see several men emerge from the woods. They were laughing and chatting amongst themselves, armed with bows and arrows, one had a brace of rabbits slung over his shoulder. An early morning hunting party returning from a successful forage no doubt.

They seemed harmless enough. Being a witcher meant Geralt had built up a sense for what people would end up causing him trouble or not, and with these men he could easily just-

Wait. No.

Geralt remembered the vitally important and brand-new piece of his daily social puzzle an instant too late, and one of the men spotted him.

“Wolf!” The man shouted, knocking an arrow at his bow with expert speed.

Geralt threw himself sideways into the bushes, hearing the whistling hiss and thwack of an arrow lancing into the dirt where he’d stood. He gathered up his limbs as quickly as he could and dashed into the undergrowth, pelting away from the road and the hunters.

He bared his teeth at himself as he ran. Stupid stupid stupid. He was a wolf, an animal. Had he really subconsciously assumed the men might simply ignore him with uneasy sideways glances like they did normally?

People barely tolerated him when he could speak, there was going to be no thin mercy or stiff civility extended to him in this state. He didn’t even have weapons to fight back with. No elixirs or magic signs or even opposable thumbs to save him now. If he didn’t find the sorcerer soon he was going to-

A white hot pain slammed into his shoulder, sending him tumbling into the bushes and sliding haphazardly down a rocky embankment. He gritted down a yelp of pain as he slammed against boulders at the bottom of the dry streambed, decades of training pushing him down and close to the deepest shadows of the boulders as he forced his frantic breathing quieter.

“I think I hit ‘em!” A voice shouted from above. “Dunno where the bastard went, but I swear I hit ‘em.”

“You? Hitting a running wolf?” Another voice guffawed, the bushes rustling. “Your head’s gotten too big from your flask.”

“Shove off, didn’t I get two rabbits this morning?”

“Only because one was old enough to practically roll over on your boots.”

Geralt’s ears twitched as the laughing voices slowly moved away, the sound of crashing brush receding as the hunters took their conversation back to the main road.

As his adrenaline started to ebb Geralt could feel the pain in his shoulder far more clearly, the burning ache creeping across him as he turned to get his first look at it in the growing light of the morning. He knew it was an arrow, had had arrows in him before, but it still didn’t make it much easier to see the blasted thing sprouting from his shoulder.

Especially since he was realizing with a sinking feeling that he had no idea how he was going to get it out.

He could feel a doggish whine spring to his lips as he pushed himself to his feet and accidentally put weight on his bad foreleg, but he choked it back out of habit. He was still in the middle of nowhere with enemies nearby, he couldn’t do anything to further expose himself to danger until he was somewhere safe.

Geralt felt his tail tuck between his legs a little as he looked around, scenting the unfamiliar air. There was certainly no chance of him getting back up the steep embankment, it was going to be enough of a chore to even walk at all across even the uneven rocky stream bed.

He had no way to get back to the sorcerer, no medical supplies, no equipment or way to get to a town where he would be able to find any of those things. Not in this state.

He grit his teeth as he forced himself to take an unsteady step forward. He was a witcher, he could do this. He’d survived this long, hadn’t he? All he had to do was focus on surviving one more hour, and then one more hour after that. That’s how he was going to get through this.

It took some doing to figure out walking on three legs after only having just managed with four, but soon Geralt had picked up an unsteady pace that was getting him across the riverbed in search of cover. He was going to survive this, he was going to be fine.

***

Geralt had now gone three days with that bloody arrow in his shoulder and had long since stopped pretending that things were going to be fine.

He’d managed to wander his way out of the stream bed, had managed to narrowly avoid some drowners he normally could have dispatched without breaking a sweat, and had managed to chew off half the arrow shaft in his exhausted frustration at not being able to treat his own stupid wound which had definitely only made things worse for himself.

Not that he really cared too much anymore though, because at this point he’d logically thought through his situation and had begun coming to terms with the fact that this was was how it ended for Geralt of Rivia. As a wolf he was completely cut off from both outside help and being able to help himself. No one would come looking for a witcher who had last been seen two weeks ago, he’d gone long months before without seeing acquaintances.

He curled up a little tighter in the clearing he’d settled in a few hours ago, the never-ending pain in his shoulder dully pulsing along with his heartbeat. He knew his witcher mutagens were valiantly fighting back infection as well as they could, but he wasn’t invincible. After three days with a wound that kept opening and bleeding around the arrow shaft he knew it was probably only a matter of hours before something deep and deadly finally set in, and that would be the end of it.

The only silver lining he’d been able to find was that as a wolf four days without food or water hadn’t taken the same toll it normally would have. Not that it kept him from forlornly scenting the prey animals that trailed through the brush around him, maddeningly close and completely out of reach.

Geralt stared at the ground, head resting on his useless wolf paws.

He missed Roach, having been unable to stop worrying about her being left alone in the woods with the psychopath who’d cursed him. Hopefully she’d at least stayed far enough away that he’d ignored her.

And he missed Jaskier.

Geralt let out a long whine, having given up being quiet a day or two ago. He never liked to admit it to himself, but as the years had gone by Geralt had come to enjoy his times traveling alone less and less.

As gruffly as he treated his bard sometimes he always felt more lonely than usual whenever they parted ways, somehow missing the man’s incessant prattling and singing and bothering and smiling and interfering. There was no way to count how many wounds Jaskier had stitched up for Geralt over the last twenty-two years too. His careful, even stitching and gentle chastising left far less of a scar than Geralt’s rough and hasty work always did.

And now the last time he ever saw his bard would be that awful day on the mountain, something that still made his stomach sour whenever he accidentally forgot not to think about it. Of the way Jaskier’s face had fallen. Of the immediate regret Geralt had felt, but that he’d smothered down under his anger. Of the way he hadn’t immediately tracked Jaskier back down the mountain when the bard hadn’t returned by the next morning.

Because for the first time Jaskier had actually left after Geralt had snapped at him. And how could Geralt follow after him if he’d really left?

But it didn’t matter anymore, because-

Geralt startled into a surprised snarl as his flagging senses warned him of danger too late, his attacker already nearly falling on top of him. He lurched painfully to the side, a shot of adrenaline coursing through him as he spun to see...

...Jaskier?

Geralt blinked in shock as Jaskier tumbled to the ground across the small clearing from him, yelling and clutching at his lute like a shield, looking as surprised at Geralt was.

“Sorry, very terribly sorry to bother you.” Jaskier said weakly, smelling of fear. “I was trying to find someplace to camp and I was wandering and wasn’t looking where I was going and I didn’t mean- Really that arrow business looks like it hurts, how long have you had that nasty thing stuck in you?”

Geralt’s brain scrambled to process what was happening. Jaskier was here and talking to him normally, did he recognize him despite his canine form? Had Yennifer somehow sensed what had happened and sent Jaskier to fetch him?

But no, it couldn’t be, not with the fear he could smell on Jaskier. Jaskier was frightened all the time, but Geralt had never smelled Jaskier’s fear directed at him before. It made him feel sick. Jaskier must really think he was just a regular wolf.

Perhaps it was the fact that Geralt had just resigned himself to death only to be shocked back to hope, or the fact he’d gone four days without food or water, or just the surreal feeling of it all, but instead of reacting intelligently he found himself just watching the bard, tucking his aching wounded leg closer.

“Say you’re not bad for a wolf.” Jaskier said, his voice getting softer as he started to edge closer. “What if I took a look at-”

Geralt’s habitual annoyance with the bard resurfaced all at once, resulting in a growl that stopped Jaskier’s approach. What on earth was he doing? If Geralt really was a wild injured animal then his current behavior would be the perfect way to get his face bitten off. How Jaskier survived when Geralt wasn’t around to yank him back from poor choices was truly beyond his comprehension. If Geralt could speak right now he’d be getting the lecture of his life.

But Jaskier, being Jaskier, was of course stupidly undeterred, instead keeping his voice puppy soft and high pitched as he rambled on, even digging some dried rabbit meat out of his pouch and tossing it to Geralt.

For a moment Geralt was tempted to mock lunge at the bard, give him a bit of a scare to try and teach him some badly needed self-preservation. Teach him to stay away from things that would only harm him.

…just like he’d done on the mountain?

The uncomfortable realization jolted enough common sense into him that he ate the rabbit jerky without protest and lay still, allowing Jaskier to approach. Larger concerns about Jaskier’s sense of danger aside, Geralt was not a real wolf, and he did very badly need help. If Jaskier had found him and was willing to provide that, then Geralt would be a fool not to shut up and accept it.

“That’s it, there’s a good boy.” Jaskier said gently, getting close enough to pet him, which Geralt endured long-sufferingly. “You know I’m not sure you’re much of a wolf at all. There’s no way I’d still have both my hands at this point if you were really wild. For which I thank you by the way, playing the lute one-handed isn’t a skill I have much interest in picking up. You act more like some kind of massive dog, did you have a human family that raised you? Have you been abandoned by your person?”

Geralt still smelled fear, but not nearly as strong as Jaskier’s curiosity and excitement now. The fool was probably already planning a song about this.

Geralt growled at him. Just get on with it already.

“You know you remind me very much of a friend of mine.” Jaskier said with a wry smile that quickly dropped away. “Or, acquaintance I suppose, he never did anything but growl either. In fact you’re probably much more in tune with your emotions than he is I’ll bet, although most rocks probably are if I’m being strictly honest. The man’s really a complete imbecile.”

Geralt snarled, tired and insulted. Did Jaskier bad mouth him behind his back to every woodland creature he met? It was no secret Geralt wasn’t as outwardly emotional or articulate as some people, gods knew Jaskier had never hesitated to tell him so. Albeit in far more teasing terms than this.

“Alright, so here’s my terrible plan.” Jaskier said, ignoring his snarl entirely. As usual. “I’m going to try and remove this arrow, which is going to hurt terribly, and then I’m going to patch you up. I’d be extremely grateful if you didn’t dismember me in any way while I do, but if you can’t help yourself I suppose that’s fair.” He shrugged. “I’m not in a very self-preserving mood at the moment, so I suppose a final act of misguided heroism isn’t the worst way to go. The last white wolf I hung around mauled me emotionally, so actually it would be terribly poetic if you did finish the job physically.”

Geralt’s growl trailed off at that. “Mauled” was a bit harsh... Geralt had gotten angry, had taken out his anger on Jaskier unfairly yes, after two weeks of regret Geralt was willing to admit that. But Jaskier’s wry tone of voice wasn’t the kind he used when he was exaggerating for dramatic effect.

Had Geralt been able to speak he probably still wouldn’t have, choosing to sidestep the uncomfortable emotion. Thankfully as a wolf he didn’t have to choose, instead focusing on sitting still and quiet as Jaskier finally finally set to work removing the arrow from his shoulder and treating it, rambling the entire time as he always did when he helped patch up Geralt. Geralt was too focused on gritting his teeth against the pain to hear most of what Jaskier was saying, but found himself grateful for the familiar chatter nonetheless.

“There we go.” Jaskier said as he finished wrapping the wound. “Nothing like impromptu feral veterinary care to get the old heart pumping, eh?”

Geralt sighed quietly, exhaustion and relief sweeping through him to finally have the wound cared for. He wished he could mutter his customary “thanks.”

“You’re sulking.” Jaskier accused, petting his head.

Geralt huffed, shaking off the patronizing hand. He was not sulking, he was tired. And a wolf.

“Yes you are,” Jaskier insisted with a smile. “I know that look anywhere. Probably terribly embarrassing to be the king of the forest and have to accept help from a lowly human bard eh? Well I suppose wolves aren’t really the king, not if there’s griffins or something about.”

Geralt stared at him, all kinds of blunt corrections about biologically correct monster food chain structures running uselessly through his head. Instead his annoyance had to be communicated by shifting himself to face away from the bard and his obnoxious declarations.

“That settles it.” Jaskier declared as he started to gather sticks, evidently unbothered by Geralt’s huffing. “I’m calling you Geralt Junior. The both of you would get along splendidly in your stubborn grumpiness.”

Geralt looked up. He was Geralt, if he could just get Jaskier to realize that.

“Geralt Junior? You like that name?” Jaskier asked with a grin, seeing his reaction.

Geralt hauled himself to his feet. His shoulder was already feeling better as it started to mend in earnest, but not fast enough, making him stumble when he tried walking toward Jaskier.

“Whoa whoa hey, settle.” Jaskier said quickly, dropping his armful of sticks and kneeling beside him, carefully pushing him back down. “Lay down, stay. You shouldn’t be walking any more tonight, you’ve got to heal alright? Lay down boy, do you know commands?”

Geralt stayed down with a growl, hiding his nose under his paws in frustration.

“That’s right, you go back to sulking, Geralt Junior.” Jaskier said happily, evidently none the wiser as he tried to pet Geralt’s head again.

Geralt shook his hand off, trying to focus on said sulking. If he was going to get Jaskier to realize it was really him he was going to have to try harder.

***

Geralt woke up long before Jaskier did and decided to celebrate his shoulder already feeling far better by scratching around in the ashes of the fire. It was messy, but by the time Jaskier woke up he’d managed to scratch out a decently legible “Geralt” in charcoal across the ground.

Not legible enough though apparently, since the bard of course barely even glanced at his work as he cheerfully greeted him upon waking. Geralt felt fully justified in his sulking after that, sticking around only long enough for his bandages to be removed before trotting off into the trees to find a stream for a much needed swim, not having bathed since before slaying the beast that started this whole mess nearly a week ago.

The bath ended up lifting his spirits far more than anticipated, the ashes and blood finally gone and his fur coat drying to an ivory shine in the summer sun. His upswing in mood definitely also had to do with the fact that the pain in his shoulder was quickly fading and that he was no longer hopeless and alone.

It was easy to keep tabs on Jaskier’s noisy progress down the road throughout the day, making it simple enough for Geralt to keep nearby as he wandered the woods. Now that he was finally able to move freely again it only made sense that he take a day on his own to really get used to how this new body worked.

By the time evening arrived Geralt was capable enough to hunt down a couple rabbits with no weapon but his teeth on his way back to Jaskier for the night, and the look of delighted surprise he got for it nearly made the last four days of pain worth it.

“So you’re not sick of me after all, huh?” Jaskier grinned. “I’m truly flattered you know.”

Geralt allowed himself a single tail wag in place of a smile as he dropped the rabbits at the bard’s feet. Had Jaskier actually thought he’d gone? That he wasn’t going to come back for him?

The silly bard.

***

Geralt was used to entering towns and villages with a sense of cautious unease, a lifetime of being a Witcher having taught him the hard way to be on guard around humans, but he couldn’t recall the last time he’d been afraid like he was as he went into town with Jaskier the next day.

Perhaps it was some element of animal caution that came with his new form that had him so on edge as he stuck to his bard’s side, but mostly it was the knowledge that he was literally helpless if something went wrong.

As a Witcher he could bully his way through most trouble with a stern look at best and his twin swords at worst, but as a wolf the only defense he had against the wary eyes of the villagers around him was Jaskier’s reassuring presence and the “collar” around his neck. If something went wrong Geralt wouldn’t even be able to defend himself without putting Jaskier in danger of retaliation. There would be no galloping off on Roach this time, whatever happened would result in Jaskier taking the full consequences.

And yet Jaskier still pressed on, letting Geralt even come into the inn with him and vouching for his character despite not at all knowing that Geralt wasn’t really a wild animal after all. All in all the bard’s behavior was reckless and stupid, this kind of thing never would have been allowed had Geralt been a person, but as it was he could only be grateful for it. He’d die before admitting that the thought of being left out in the yard where any number of humans could take another shot at him while defenseless terrified him. The least he could do to show his gratitude was to shoulder his pride and play along with Jaskier’s plan, acting as tame and doggish as he knew how in order to gain the innkeeper's approval.

And it worked, the innkeeper handed over a room key and Jaskier was soon leading them to their room, dumping their things on the low bed and smelling of as much relief as Geralt felt.

“Well it’ll be supper time soon, so I’d better head downstairs to earn some coin.” Jaskier said, unpacking his lute from its case and tuning a few strings. “It might be best for you to stay up here since I don’t know how many people will be around tonight.”

Geralt got to his feet from where he’d been lying by the fireplace, leaning against Jaskier’s leg and looking up at him as pleadingly as he knew how. He’d noticed himself becoming far more outwardly expressive than normal, but with no other form of communication available to him he had no other choice. Monosyllabic grunts giving way to overstated body language to get his point across in ways Jaskier would hopefully understand.

“...or you can come down with me.” Jaskier said with a wry smile at his behavior, petting his head. “Really Geralt Junior, I had no idea wolves were so clingy. I certainly wouldn’t mind the company though.”

Geralt shook himself with a whine. He wasn’t being clingy, he just didn’t want to be left alone locked in a room all night. Could he really be blamed for that?

As they descended the stairs to the main area Geralt looked around at the evening crowd of patrons, scenting the busy evening air. Normally at this point he’d leave Jaskier to set up shop in the center of the tavern area and head to the back of the room. Somewhere out of the way that he could keep an eye on the bard’s performance while being left alone to his own meal and drink in relative peace. As popular as Jaskier’s witcher-themed songs were, he knew that having a real witcher sitting beside him would only hurt his chances at getting coin. No, much better for both of them if Geralt minded his own business in the back of the room.

Besides, he didn’t mind the frequent moments he’d catch Jaskier looking for him in the crowd during his performances, meeting his eye with a smile and a wink.

But tonight was different, and as Jaskier settled on a stool and cheerily began playing his lute Geralt found himself curling up at the bard’s feet. Jaskier started off with a jaunty tune that soon got the crowd’s attention, people looking up from their conversations and meals with smiles to get a look at who was performing tonight. That didn’t surprise Geralt one bit, in his (very) private opinion Jaskier was the most talented performer he’d seen or heard in all his decades of travel, especially as the years had gone on to sharpen his talents.

What did surprise Geralt was how long the audience’s gazes lingered not on the bard but on him. Specifically kind, surprised and intrigued expressions.

Geralt fought to keep from ducking his head, forcing himself to remain stoic as onlookers started to gather as Jaskier’s performance went on, but it was starting to get downright unnerving.

Because no matter where Geralt looked in the crowd he couldn’t find a single look of disgust, annoyance, or fear. Not even a nervous attempt at casualness, the expression he was most used to seeing directed at him. It almost made Geralt wonder if he’d become invisible on top of becoming a wolf, it made far more sense for these kinds of expressions to be directed at Jaskier.

“Doggie!”

Geralt’s ears pricked and his head tilted a bit as he heard an excited young voice in the crowd, small enough that likely only he could hear it over the noise. He peered through the legs of the audience to see a little girl straining to get away from her mother, pulling toward him.

“Sarah no, you don’t know that dog and his owner is performing, you stay right here.” came the hushed voice of her mother from the back of the crowd.

“But I want to pet him!” The girl cried. “He’s nice!”

Geralt saw the moment that the little girl squirmed out of her mother's grip and as she slipped through the crowd. His eyes were still wide in shock as she threw herself right at him with a delighted giggle. Geralt sat stock still for a long moment.

He had...never...been hugged by a child...

Never.

He’d saved hundreds over the years of course, from all kinds of dangers. Had even carried them, screaming, crying, and all too often silent with death back to their parents to be handed off as quickly as possible. Sometimes in exchange for a hurried thanks, sometimes a gruff dispute over coin, sometimes for nothing more than a frightened slur thrown back in his face to get away from them.

Because everyone knew that witchers stole children, all the important bedtime stories and old wives tales said so. Children and cats always knew a Witcher was coming before adults did too, their simple natures sensing something unnatural approaching, sending them scrambling out of the way with instinctive fear. Geralt had never thought to resent children for being frightened of him, they were vulnerable and needed to be cautious in this world. This was just the way things were. It was no blow to him.

But as the little girl hugged his neck and whispered delighted childish praise in his ear he felt something inside him give way, opening an empty, hollow place in his heart he hadn’t even realized was there. But one that must have been there this whole time.

A happy whine escaped him and his tail swished across the floor as he nosed at the little girl’s ear, making her laugh. Had he ever made a child laugh?

He found himself thinking, not for the first time, about his child surprise. The promised child bound to him by an ill-worded agreement and supposedly destiny. The young prince or princess would probably be about the same age as the little girl by now, wouldn’t they?

But then all too soon her mother was there, yanking her away from him crossly, apologizing to Jaskier as she hauled her daughter back.

“Not a problem ma’am, as you can see he’s quite tame.” Jaskier said with a dazzling smile.

As Geralt came back to himself and looked up at the bard he realized the poor man reeked of well-hidden fear. If Geralt could have laughed he would have, instead panting happily. Because of course Jaskier had only seen a young girl fall on a wolf of unknown character that he’d stupidly brought into a tavern, trying to pass it off as an old pet. Geralt was glad he had, and the bard of course had had nothing to worry about, but just the same he was aching to be able to tease Jaskier for the scare he’d gotten.

Jaskier quickly picked up the rest of his song, ending his performance well enough to get a hearty round of applause that ended in a more than decent offering of coin before the crowd happily dispersed.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you for being so tame.” Jaskier said in a hushed tone, dropping to one knee in front of him and stroking his head. “Gods above, I thought we were finished for a moment there, you’re truly a magnificently patient beast.”

Geralt ducked his head away from the attention, but really only on principle at this point. His tail was still wagging as he followed the bard to the table where the innkeeper had set out a meal of stew for Jaskier, and a wooden bowl of scraps for Geralt.

Had Geralt not been in an excellent mood he might have managed to become gruff at having been reduced to eating his meals on the floor. As it was he didn’t mind terribly, and really it certainly beat some miserable excuses for meals he’d endured out in the wilds in his time.

“Can I pet your dog?” Asked the man eating across the table from Jaskier.

Geralt looked up, glancing at the man who smelled of ink and parchment, a pair of spectacles perched on his nose.

“He reminds me of a hound my father owned and he seems agreeable enough,” the man continued with a smile. “But I’d rather ask first than be bit second.”

“I...of course.” Jaskier said, pulling on a smile through a mouthful of stew. “I wouldn’t have brought him in if he weren’t friendly.” Geralt could smell a bit of nervousness from him.

“Well he certainly is a magnificent beast.” The man said, reaching over to scruff the fur between Geralt’s ears. “I bet he puts some fine catches on the table after hunts.”

Geralt accepted the petting with a stoic look, not so much as shaking off the man’s hand. He could smell the relief and happiness on Jaskier.

“Oh Geralt Junior’s not much of a hunter.” Jaskier laughed, relaxing as he launched into his fiction. “He can take care of himself well enough I suppose, but really he thinks he’s a lapdog. You know my sister used to read him bedtime stories when she was young, it’s a miracle I was able to steal him away to travel with me instead of her keeping him.”

Geralt sneezed in amusement at the tale of Jaskier’s invented sister.

“Geralt Junior?” Another man at the table said with a guffaw. “I get it now, after the witcher you sing about? That’s a clever joke if I ever heard one, white wolf indeed.”

“Well where’s his silver sword then?” A woman said cheerfully, coming up from behind Geralt and stroking his back without so much as a warning. “Such a handsome witcher wolf needs his tools of trade don’t he?”

“I’m afraid all he’s slain are the hearts of those who offer him treats. And the occasional rabbit.” Jaskier laughed, warmed up to his audience. “His silver coat is far more useful than a silver sword in his line of work.”

“Well he’s excellent at his trade.” The woman laughed, slipping Geralt a bit of sweetbread from her pocket. “Consider me slain by the mighty white wolf. Oh and look at him taking the bread all dainty-like with his teeth. Afraid he’ll bite my fingers? What a gentleman.”

If Geralt properly considered the positive attention he was currently drowning in he was going to become dizzy with it. Instead he focused on eating the sweetbread, which was followed by a bit of ham from another admirer, and a bit of jerky afterward by another.

The little girl had been one thing, but this much attention was downright mystifying. It was beginning to border on actually terrifying even, sending his heart beating faster than it did when he faced down griffins.

What Geralt was used to was people being careful not to even brush fingers as coin was exchanged, afraid they’d catch mange or worse from touching a Witcher. Aside from a hearty pat on the shoulder once in a blue moon from a particularly gutsy short-term adventuring partner, Geralt was used to only getting affection at brothels where he paid extra to girls who managed to hide their discomfort from their expressions. (But never their scents.)

But now it seemed like the entire village was trying to get their hands on him, and not even to try and drive him out.

Geralt found himself pressing against Jaskier’s leg under the table as the attention really began to become overwhelming, but luckily the bard seemed to pick up on it, looking down at him with concern and resting a calming hand on his flank. Jaskier may not realize that his wolf was enchanted, but nonetheless the bard had always had an uncanny knack for picking up on Geralt’s moods without a single word spoken.

“Well you’ve all been perfectly lovely, but I’m afraid we must take our leave for the night.” Jaskier said, getting up from his seat and bowing grandly to the table. “We wish you all a lovely evening and hope to see you tomorrow for our next performance.”

Geralt kept close to Jaskier as they climbed the stairs to their room for the night, already feeling better once they were out of sight.

“So not a huge fan of people for too long. That’s alright, we can be more careful in the future, no sense in you hanging around people if you aren’t enjoying it anymore.” Jaskier said with a smile, rubbing Geralt’s head.

Geralt tail wagged slow in gratitude as the bard looked through his pockets for the room key.

“Well tonight’s over my friend and you’ve done magnificently.” Jaskier yawned as he unlocked their door. “We’ll curl up in bed and that’ll be the end of it. I can’t tell you how excited I am for a real bed. I can only assume you’ve slept on one before, I highly recommend them.”

Geralt’s tail kept wagging as they entered the room, greeted by a warm fire and a clean smelling mattress. Over the years he and Jaskier had shared a bed dozens of times when inns were small or coin was short, even sleeping rolls out in the wilds when the weather was too cold for the bard to safely sleep alone. That was a warm and familiar kind of touch that Geralt never tired of, even though he’d never admit it.

In fact, now that he thought about it, he hadn’t exactly been as starved for touch as he’d thought. Jaskier was forever touching him whoever they were together: grabbing his arm, leaning against him, helping shuck off his armor at night, sharing a bed, stitching him up, even helping him bathe when he was particularly incapacitated, or they were to attend an important social event.

Jaskier’s touch had never felt overwhelming like the villager’s had. In fact Geralt had perhaps taken it for granted, so comfortable with it and expecting it to the point of no longer appreciating it properly.

He’d never once thanked Jaskier for making him feel like a real person who could be so casually touched.

That...seemed unfair of him...

“You perfect thing.” Jaskier said with a yawn, closing the room door behind them. He scratched between Geralt’s ears.

Geralt nearly ducked away in guilt but didn’t. After all, it seemed very likely that there wouldn’t be any other possible way than this that he could use to apologize to the bard for a long time.

[Read Chapter 2]

#geraskier #geralt #jaskier #wit writes #the witcher wolf

166 notes · View notes

dlamp-dictator · 3 years

Text

Allen X Rambles about Chapter 7

“I hope Episode 7 is focused on only 2 or three characters with little distraction... Amiya maybe finding out that Ch’en is slowly becoming Infected and helping her come to terms with that. Ch’en revealing her past to Amiya and the two connecting over losing so many close to them due to Oripathy. The two standing up to the political corruption of Lungmen, shoulder to shoulder, as women that refuse to see another life lost due to the indifference of a city’s politics.”

-Allen X, October 2nd, 2020, Rambling about Chapter 6

Man... I’m starting to believe it when they say Arknight’s story mode is longer than the Harry Potter series. Things are getting crazy in Chapter 7 and crazy-long to in terms of length. This chapter really had me on the edge of my seat as I read through it and as I played through because 7-16 and 7-18 were a bitch to get through that require some of the most precise timing I’ve seen in this game yet. That aside, I enjoyed a lot what I read and experienced.

And I wanted to talk about it a bit.

But first, as always, a synopsis.

Coming off the heels of Frostnova’s death and the realization of Wei Yenwu’s purging of the Lungmen slums, tensions are high and trust has been fractured between Rhodes Island and Lungmen. However, in the midst of Ch’en hot temper and Amiya’s cool head, Reunion is plans to send the Russian Ursusian city of Chernobog on a collision course with Hong Kong Lungmen, giving Ursus a cause to make war against Lungmen and its great region of Tawain China Yen. However, through some rather amazing political maneuvering and passionate words by Wei Yenwu’s wife Fumizuki, Rhodes Island agrees to mobilize in order to save Lungmen, the Infected, and the beloved daughter of Lungmen, Ch’en. But beyond Chernobog lies Patriot, Reunions greatest commander next to Talulah herself, who’s rage toward his daughter’s death is only matched by his disciplined mind and even more disciplined soldiers. It’s a fight to the center of the Chernobog to save as many lives as possible, even at the cost of this great general’s life.

An Addendum to 7-18

So between my venting about 7-18 when I talked about some fun Arknight’s lore a handful of people wanted to give me some advice on how to conquer that stage. Admittedly that venting was said out of anger and was much more acidic in tone than my usual essays and opinion pieces. I have since beaten that stage and I can give some of my thoughts on this advice. Some of it was helpful... some of it.

“AmIyA cAn TaNk PaTrIoT’s SpEaR tOsS!”

This is technically true and I was technically wrong. When Amiya’s S3 is active she gained increased Max HP and can in fact survive with a sliver of health. However, Amiya’s S3 takes quite a long time to charge even with her talent, and unless someone is actively blocking Patriot her can honestly spam his spear through for how long it takes Amiya to get prepped for her S3. This is more of an issue of Amiya’s balancing than with the game, but I’ll talk about that later.

“jUsT sTaLl PaTrIoT tO kEeP hIm FrOm UsInG tHe SpEaR tOsS!”

This would be pretty viable advice if Patriot didn’t one-shot my units. Yes, defenders like Cuora, Nian, Hoshigumi, and even tankier vanguards like Zima and Siege can tank at least one hit from Patriot without dying, meaning a squad of healers can just focus-fire on them while they do chip damage to Patriot and stall him out. However, Patriot’s phase 2 has him do constant damage to nearby units with his aura ability, so if he can get lucky enough, he take someone down to a sliver and let his poison damage finish off your staller before they get a chance to be healed. That strategy needs luck and some damn smart unit placement. Neither of which I honestly have.

“uSe SpEcTeR aNd DeBuFfErS!”

Again, this is also a pretty good strategy. Specter’s S2 makes her immortal for a limited time and pairing that with healers like Breeze and Celycon who reduce stun damage isn’t a bad idea. Characters that ignore or lower defense like Pramanix, Shamare, and Meteor are also good. This doesn’t work for me however since I only have Pram and the other debuffers are way too underleveled and not on my priority at the moment, and E2-ing units this late in the game just to take out one boss feels like madness.

“f12 CaN dOdGe ThE sPeAr ToSs!”

F12, W, Jessica, and FEater have a dodge chance. Their dodges are not guarantees. Yes, Patriot will target the ranged operator furthest from him and there are range tiles pretty close to his spawn point for that purpose. However, some of those operators have some pretty damn expensive DP costs and waste that on a chance to survive isn’t worth.And feeding Patriot ranged units that take over 30 seconds to redeploy is a waste of DP in general. And those either dodge chances aren’t viable. Them surviving isn’t a strategy, it’s a fluke, and you can’t depend on flukes in auto-deployment.

“Allen, you’re being kind of an asshole to what’s actually sound advice.”

Yes, I am.

I don’t care.

7-18 does things to a person, man. That stage breaks people. I lost sanity IRL just doing that stage or 20 times with a guide... dear lord this stage.

Anyway, moving on.

Story Notes

My, this story sure was thick, wasn’t it? It’s been while since I’ve been on a ride that wild. And this time around I don’t have any small issues to bring up. All the characters felt in character without breaking my suspension of disbelief. There weren’t multiple character arcs going on at once. And I even tolerated Kal’tsit berating the Doctor for reasons beyond his understand since she wasn’t discussing too many things that were above my head as the player.

No... I only have big issues.

But before that, I wanted to hit on some actual important notes that were very good and smartly written.

Rosmontis and Child Soldiers

This was probably the biggest takeaway for me. I know the Arknights community likes to poke a lot of fun about the child soldier thing and how Kal’tsit is harboring slave children, but... man, it makes so much since now.

These kids aren’t just kids, they’re all infected people with some rather scary abilities. Popukar has a history of mental instability coupled with monstrous strength. Ifrit has powers she can just barely keep under control and could set Rhodes Island ablaze at any point. Frostleaf and GreyThroat are deeply traumatized from their past. The Ursus Self Government are full of kids with hatred, resentment, and fear of both the world and themselves. The list goes on, but the fact is that these kids all either have abilities that would be a danger to themselves and others if they aren’t trained, or have emotional hang-ups that might very well have them lash out at innocent people if not put on a leash. Wouldn’t it be better to at least give them some training and let them hack and blast away at the actual bad guys? Wouldn’t it be better to at least make them a weapon for some kind of greater good? And would anyone else really treat these broken, powerful children as anything but weapons and warriors anyway?

I know this is about chapter 7, but I remember in Children of Ursus Rosa asked Zima why she fought, and Zima casually answered that she just liked fighting. It’d be far better to have someone with that mindset working for an organization like Rhodes Island than ending up in Ursus’s fold and blindly hacking at something she shouldn’t.

And I think it’s important to remind everyone that Amiya is the head of Rhodes Island and not Kal’tsit. She’s a big part of the organization, but it’s the bunny in charge. And the bunny that is herself close to a living nuke and is also has empathetic superpowers understands this probably better than anyone else, which is why she okays it.

Patriot and Reunion

As much as I despise, and I do mean despise, how cagey this series can be with it’s portrayal of Reunion’s morality I can understand why a lot of its members can see the group as being just. Patriot is a warrior of such renown and praise, and Talulah has so much charisma and power that I can see the group overlooking characters like Mephisto and W when the other two do so much for their members and general people. The Guerillas under Patriot behave like soldiers. They don’t rampage, loot, pillage, or harm everyone in sight, only those that halt, stagnant, and harm the infect. Talulah has a charisma about her and attracts people, and seems to come from some sort of royal/noble line to match. And while Faust wasn’t mentioned much in this chapter, he was a soldier that started at the bottom, worked his way to the top, and made sure to play by rules that kept his moral high ground. Mephisto seems to be the only outliner here for some baffling reason.

But... there are some major issues with this story. I hint at them every time I talk about Arknights’ story, but I’ll go into depth here. And I’ll present these two issues I have in the form of a two question:

Who is the Doctor?

I don’t mean this the sense of the story, but what is his function as a character? Is he a self-insert for the player, or his own character to be explored and examined?

And either answer, to me, is wrong.

The Doctor Isn’t a Self-Insert

It’s straight up impossible for the Doctor to be a self-insert character. Most self-inserts are blank enough to let us place our own personality onto them and the situations their in the choices they make are meant to be more or less choices we’d make or at least a general audience could make barring some specifics. Their personalities tend to be blank or at least bland to let us, the players, live through them and project our personalities onto them.

The Doctor isn’t this.

There are too many moment where our choices are clearly pointing to one conclusion and most choices, though varied, give a clear idea that the Doctor is someone that care about the operators’ wellbeing deeply and hates seeing them used, abused, or manipulated. They are strategist and commander, but they have enough humanity to not see people as tools. They are passionate when they see other operators and especially Amiya in harms way and tries to come up with strategies to minimize lost and causalities. Awhile we, the player, feel the same in this regard the Doctor has dialogue that feels more conversational and toward specific directions than what a player would likely want and gives us some bits and piece about what they’re actually like.

The Doctor hates Kal’tsit and wants little to do with her, only tolerating her presence as much as she is with the Doctor. The Doctor is a bit of a bleeding heart that doesn’t fully grasp that they are constantly in a warzone despite their strategic competency. The Doctor has an extremely weird diet and eating style, devouring live animals and ingesting foods that would probably need to be probably mixed and brewed before consumption. The Doctor still sees Amiya as a child despite her mature nature.

The list goes on, but there’s enough there for me to say the Doctor is more like Hakuno Kishinami of the Fate/Extra series, a character that seems like a self-insert but has a number of traits and character tics that keep them from fulfill that role. However Fate/Extra, for all I have against it, makes Hakuno work by giving them their own internal thoughts outside of the player’s actions that explain their dialogue choices and actions outside of the player’s control. The Doctor doesn’t, so them being a self-insert feels really weak and irritating when the dots stop connecting.

But despite this...

The Doctor Isn’t Their Own Character

Too much of what the Doctor does is passive. For a clear as their personality is, at least to me, they don’t have much agency in the plot. Not enough for me to call them their own character at least. They commander the battlefield, but they don’t have a place on it. They don’t have much reason to interact with characters like Patriot and Talulah unless its on the metaphorical and literal chessboard we’re playing on.

Every time the Doctor says something that advances the plot in some way I feel like it could be said by another character and work better. Amiya trying talk down Patriot and explain that Frostnova fought bravely did not need the Doctor’s interjections, especially when Patriot shoots them down in the same manner. In chapter 6, being trap with Frostnova would had worked much better with Amiya since that chapter was giving them parallels anyway. The only thing that really works is the Doctor trying to call out Kal’tsit for her treatment of Rosmontis as a soldier despite her age, as that’s only something that someone who didn’t have the full context could do.

But... Jessica, Frostleaf, Frostnova, Melantha and several other Operators are young teenagers and even children. Specter and Lappland are clearly just as mentally damaged and still going into battles. The Doctor knows the kinds of people that fight for Rhodes Island, so isn’t this just another young fighter like Popukar and Suzuran? Hell, in chapter 6 we canonically had Beagle and Fang in a stage where they had to fight and tank Faust, why is the Doctor so surprised that someone like Rosmontis exist and works for Rhodes Island?

See?

See how trying to give this character separation from being a self-insert and actively slot them in the active story does more harm than good?

I think games like Girls Frontline and Honkai Impact 3rd do this better, where the player character is clearly more behind the scenes and is only a passing influence, if any.

But that leads me to my next question, which is...

Who is Amiya?

Amiya falls into the trope of being a cute anime girl with a mysterious past and dangerous powers. More accurately, she has a mysterious past and powers to the player, but everyone in Amiya’s inner circle seems to have a clue about it. I don’t mind this being a mystery, but... when our main character’s plot revolves around things the player doesn’t know, it’s curious at best, and infuriating at worse.

Folks, I’m not someone that looks to theory-crafting. I’m not someone that reads every scrap of dialogue in this game to find out more about its lore. The lore, to me, is just fun and interesting. I honestly do not have the time and energy to spend on making theories and predictions that could be wrong and a waste of mental energy. However, with all this stuff about the King of Fiends just feels like a waste of time, or at least a last minute addition to something I could had been added properly in Chapter 8.

A lot of it feels like you had to know about the Darknight Memoir side story to really get a feel for what’s going on. The Sarkaz civil war, Theresa, W’s role back when Rhodes Island was Babel, a lot of things that don’t come up in the main storyline. Especially with that bombshell about the Doctor maybe killing Theresa.

I don’t like it when a story expects me to have read the spinoff to understand the mainline story. This is why I don’t like the Dragon Age series and I’m really getting annoyed with Arknights right now.

This bombshell of the King of Fiends also kind of sours a bit of Amiya’s character as this young child who rose through the ranks of Rhodes Island as a charismatic leader being able to steel optimism with the reality of war to forge ahead as a proper leader through her abilities as both a commander and an empath. Instead it’s beginning to come across that her skills as a leader comes from something more supernatural, or at least something more forced than "small child is a good leader and can lead an army,” which is surprisingly more believable and nuanced given how seriously the series takes Amiya’s character.

That said, I recognize this criticism is more my wish of what was rather than an issue of what is. I completely understand that essentially wishing for my own fanfic and limited fan theories to come true isn’t a sound criticism, but it's a criticism I have regardless.

But moving on, there’s one more issue that bugs me.

W’s Importance

I’ll keep this brief since I already discussed my bigger issues of the story and this is an admittedly small portion of the story:

W wasn’t utilized much in this story despite being a main feature of it in the promotional material. She has a pretty lengthy intro, disappears from the story for most of it, then reappears at the last bits of chapter 7 to make mean looks at Kal’tsit and the Doctor before being literally shoved offscreen again. I’ve already discussed my issues with the Doctor’s agency so I won’t bother here.

W’s banner should had been during Darknight Memoir, it just makes more sense given she was the feature character of it and her high physical damage would had been a goodsend among all the arts-resistant Sarkaz units of that series of chokepoint-heavy maps, similar to Weedy’s inclusion her is helpful as a lot of these maps could use a good pusher, especially 7-16.

Speaking of, Weedy, the other operator on this limited banner, has no presence in the story at all. Need I remind you in the last limited banner Aak and Hung at least had cameo-esque appearances in the Ancient Forge event. Weedy’s inclusion feels like an afterthought because they didn’t want the limited 6-Star to have a good chance to be pulled for the whales.

Anyway, I believe those are all the big issues I had with this story, so...

In the Future

As I always tend to say, I don’t like the idea of trying to fix something that has already been made and has already passed. It’s too late to change the past, but I see nothing wrong with asking for things to happen in the future as a way of giving feedback.

To that end, I still have hope that Chapter 8 will have a focus on Amiya and Ch’en tackling Talulah together. From my understanding of some spoilers this is more or less what is going to happen. I also hope that we’ll have a more detailed idea on this whole King of Fiends thing is about. As much as I personally don’t care for it, it’s already be discussed in the story so I at least hope we get the full idea on what’s going on with that plotline.

I also hope the Doctor either plays less a role or becomes their own character outright away from any player influence. Us speaking through a character that already has a personality feels weird to me and I’d rather not have it at all.

Anyway, that’s it for me folks. Next time... maybe I’ll talk about anime or something, who knows.

#your dictator is speaking #arknights

9 notes · View notes

youngster-monster · 3 years

Text

After me comes the flood

christmas gift for my dear friend @baronetcoins. love you bud, and merry christmas ✨

[set in an AU where their Awoken Hunter, Ayin, came in time to save Cayde during Forsaken, but not his Ghost.]

Ayin paces outside the hangar like a cabal warhound waiting for its beastmaster to cry havoc. The City has been long emptied by the late hour. She’s thankful for it. There is no one here but the Traveler to witness her agitation, the way Light bleeds out of her in fiery sparks trailing down her fingers. She hasn’t had such a weak grasp on her Light for years — not since she was a kinderguardian — but tonight she doesn’t care to control it.

She’s not supposed to be here. In fairness no one’s supposed to be anywhere but in bed at this hour, but she in particular was meant to be out of the City two hours ago, bound for Europa on a mission with her team.

Something came up.

Something is yet another group of Guardians in the Crucible encasing their opponents in ice coffins. Something is the Kinderguardian she met earlier, who turned to stasis out of curiosity. Something is the complete silence from the Vanguard while the protectors of the City collude with the Darkness.

If they won’t do anything about this, then it’s her duty to convince them… before she does it herself.

Resolution renewed, she strides into the hangar.

It’s empty as expected, mechanics and engineers gone to catch some shut-eye as ship traffic slows for the night. The only source of movement left is the flicker of an old camping light propped up on Holliday’s workbench. Cayde is bent over it, grumbling over some piece of intel or other. Every so often he’ll shift and obscure the feeble light, casting his long shadow over the floor.

She clears her throat lest she catches a knife in the throat. He gets jumpy without Sundance warning him of approaching people.

Cayde whirls around, lifts a hand to his chest as if to still a beating heart he doesn’t, technically, have. “Oh,” he says, relaxing. “It’s you. Hi!”

“Waiting for someone else?”

“Kind of expecting Ikora to come drag me to bed, actually.” He turns to fully face her and folds his arms with a tired sigh. “Lemme tell you, if you’d told me during her Crucible days that she’d be such a mother hen I’d have called you mad.”

Ayin is hardly prone to mothering anyone, let alone Cayde, but even she can’t deny the spark of concern igniting inside her at the sight of him. His eyes are dim with exhaustion, whatever machinery that keeps him alive running on a third of the power it needs. But more than that he looks weary. Havy. There’s something weighing him down that wasn’t there before.

(Its name is grief, the same one that hounds his footsteps since the Prison of Elders, taking the space Sundance used to fill. He’s better than he used to be — better at hiding it in the daylight at least. But here, with only her as a witness, he lets the full brunt of it show plain on his face.)

“You look terrible,” she says, because it’s easier than I’m worried about you.

“Thanks,” he replies, only half sarcastic, because it’s easier than putting into words the anger-grief-bittersweetness that comes with pity or concern (both interchangeable). Like so many things, Ayin only knows to notice it because she’s done it herself, learned it from him. “So, what can I do for you, Crusader?”

The nickname is affectionate, an in-joke. It’s also a reminder, though he never means it that way.

“I have…” She pauses, unsure how to bring it up. “Concerns.”

“Concerns?”

“About Guardians using stasis.”

“Aah, that’s what I thought.”

Cayde chuckles, but his whole demeanor changes as he steels himself for a serious conversation. She’s more familiar than most with the seriousness he hides under his jokey behavior, but it’s always a relief to see him take this so seriously. Even if everyone stopped listening to her, she knows Cayde would always let her say her piece.

“Do you know what I saw in the Crucible today?”

“No?”

“Ice bursting through armor. Tornadoes of hail. Stasis, everywhere. And all Shaxx had to say about it was that it’s a tool. ‘A weapon like any other’. He let it happen, like it’s not the very thing we’ve been fighting against all our lives.” Again she starts to pace, almost against her will. Tension runs through her limbs, fingers curling around the hilt of an imaginary knife. She hates this game of politics, of begging the Vanguard to take action when it would only take a word from them to unleash her on this new enemy. “This can’t go on, Cayde. You — the Vanguard — can’t turn a blind eye this time. The Darkness has already taken Io, Titan, Mercury- and now it’s taking Guardians? It’s not going to stop. Not unless we stop it. And this? This ain’t it.”

Out the corner of her eyes she sees him shift, tilt his head in consideration.

“So, what are you suggesting? That we should ban stasis?”

His sceptical tone makes the spark of righteousness flare. He doesn’t get it— be he will, soon. He has to understand she’s right on this. “Yes, exactly!”

Calmly, almost placating, he replies, “People are gonna try their hands at it whether we allow it or not.”

“But if you forbid it, I can hunt them down for it. Bring them to justice.”

Her voice rings in the heavy silence. For a moment, nothing breaks the silence but her breathing and the soft whirring emitting from Cayde. Then,

“Ayin...”

He sounds nearly pleading, but she can’t allow him to interrupt her. Not yet. She can still convince him, she knows it. He has to see her point. He must.

Breathing deeply, she tries to leash her enthusiasm lest he mistakes it for fanaticism.

Without his support, she can’t reach the Vanguard, and without the Vanguard, there’s nothing she can do. She learned that from the new Dredgens, and the Renegade who runs after them. It takes more than a single man to take such widespread evil down. Aying doesn’t have that much time. She needs resources, the space and power to lock up her targets, keep them off the streets. She needs the system on her side.

“It’s our job to keep the people of the City safe. Our duty. How can civilians trust us to do that when any Guardian could be another Dredgen Yor in disguise? How can they trust us, when nothing is done to keep them safe from ourselves? We can’t bother with compromise with so much on the line-”

“Ayin.”

She stops her pacing, turns around, ready to beg for a moment more of his attention—

His eyes stop her in her tracks.

Why does he look so sad?

Cayde holds her stare for a second. His shoulders are tense, betraying his seemingly-relaxed position. He looks just like when he has to announce the loss of one of his Hunters, or when he has to send a fireteam on a mission they’re unlikely to come back from unscathed, if at all. Like the words are stuck in his throat, tangled in the wires.

Eventually he gives up on words altogether — she can see it in the working of his jaw, the way the light behind his teeth dims as his vocal processor goes idle again.

Slowly (like he doesn’t want to do it. Like he’s afraid he’ll spook her) he offers her his hand, palm up. Under her watchful gaze, he shifts his fingers minutely—

And frost blooms over the leather of his glove.

Ayin’s breath freezes in her lungs.

Silence settles over them like the second before thunder. Both stare at the ice crystal suspended over his hand. Ayin with mounting horror, and Cayde as an excuse to avoid her eyes. Then, a flick of his wrist shatters it. The shards turn to fine glittering dust on their way down, and then to nothing, never touching the ground.

For a moment Ayin is overwhelmed by feelings — shock, betrayal, sadness, fear, burning anger. They tangle together, blades interlocked into a sharp ball of hurt, until all she can feel is an odd sort of numbness. Like she’s been cut open and sedated.

“Why?” She whispers.

His sigh turns into fog, briefly leaving his face as nothing but two burning eyes staring at her through the faint cloud.

“You know why I hate being Vanguard so much?”

Ayin snarls at the non sequitur.

She’s not usually so prone to losing her temper, but the betrayal lit a fire inside her she doesn’t feel like quenching.

“Is this really about hating your job?”

She hates the way her voice cracks at the end, but Cayde, mercifully, doesn’t react in any way to it. He just shakes his head, faceplate shifting minutely in frustration like he’s trying to explain something and can’t find the words that will make her listen.

“I wouldn’t- It’s about doing the damn job.” He rubs his head like he has a headache, pushes his hood back as his hand trails down to the back of his neck, resting there for a moment. “You said it was your duty- you know what’s a Hunter's duty? It’s being out there, charting unknown places, going where no one’s gone before, all that jazz. Not being stuck in the City. Being a Vanguard, it means sucking at being a Hunter, and- I’m good at being a Hunter, right?”

He’s got the stereotypical recklessness in spades, that’s for sure.

Not, that’s unfair. Cayde has a core of steel that won’t let him back down in the face of insurmountable odds. That’s what makes him a good Hunter. Reckless as it may seems, it’s a true quality, one she admires and has always tried to emulate. It only makes her angrier at the powder ice still caught in the folds of his clothes. He should have known better.

Unphased by her lack of response, he continues.

“Turns out that might not even be true, huh? Told them spending that much time in the Tower would make me go soft.” He does that heartbreaking thing, where he tilts his head slightly like he’s expecting Sundance to appear just over his shoulder with something witty to say. “But- it made me think about it. The whole duty thing. I spent all of my time as a Vanguard doing everything I could to go back in the field like I’d do my job better there- and when it went wrong, I had to reflect on like- my mistakes and stuff. And I thought- maybe I approached the issue the wrong way, you know?”

“You’re not answering my question.”

She’s proud to hear her voice stay level despite her frustration. She wants to trust Cayde, trust that he’ll eventually get to the point and explain to her… What? That it all makes sense? That it’s going to be fine? At this point Ayin’s not sure whether she’d rather hear reassurances or apologies.

Actually she might punch him if he apologies. He’s made a terrible choice: the only thing worse than this would be that he’s unsure about it himself. And as little as she’s willing to be convinced— she wants to be. She wants, for once, to be proven wrong, to see that stasis isn’t as evil as she assumed.

Anything that will make Cayde’s use of it more bearable.

“I’m gettin’ to it! What I mean is- Hunters are s’posed to scout ahead. First ones in the field, to gather intel and make sure everyone’s got the info they need to do their job and come back safe. We’re the literal vanguard. And with the Darkness moving into the system- we need that kind of assurance. We need someone to jump into the unknown and tell us how far the bottom is.”

“Somebody always needs to go first,” Ayin says softly, like muscle memory.

Cayde doesn’t bother finishing the saying. She knows it as well as he does. “I can’t do much without a Ghost, but I can do this. I can be there when Guardians need someone to turn to when their new powers go awry. And… yeah, I can be here when one of them needs to be stopped. That’s good enough for me.”

Ayin crushes the hint of pity that rises in her. It wouldn’t go appreciated: Hunters, as a rule, would sooner die than be pitied. And if she lets herself feel pity then she’ll start to think about it.

She’ll think about the fact that her best friend, her family, is running out of time.

It’s already a miracle he survived the Prison of Elders. Most ghostless don’t make it an hour past their Ghost’s death. But she was there, and she couldn’t save Sundance, but she could save him, and she did. When the night is dark and she finds herself regretting not being fast enough, she always turns to that thought for comfort: she got him out alive. He won’t be there forever, but at least she has a few decades left with him before he ends up like Banshee and starts forgetting her face.

(If she told him about that fear, she knows the first words out of Cayde’s mouth would be “I’d never forget you”. But he doesn’t get to choose. She’s long given up on hoping for the best.)

And now— now he looks her in the eyes, and he tells her he made the one choice that’s sure to shorten these years they have left. She’s seen what happened to Eramis. She can’t bear to imagine it. The dark ice crawling over his limbs, choking what’s left of his light.

It breaks her heart.

Not only because she loves him, and she doesn’t want him to be hurt. But because he made the one choice that could drive her away from him.

Taking in the Darkness, supporting the Guardian who made the same terrible decision, accepting help from the very enemy you seek to destroy. This— this isn’t a mystery that needs to be solved. This isn’t terra incognita that needs to be charted. At least not by them. if anyone should do it it’s one of the Awoken Techeuns, or the Warlocks already banished from the City because of their heretical research. Hell, even Eris could do it. Someone who’s already dipped into the dark and is eager to learn more.

Someone who’s already lost.

Not the one person Ayin can’t bear to lose.

She swallows past the lump in her throat. She closes her shaking hands into fists. Her heart beats unevenly with anger and grief. She pushes all those useless signals aside, tries to find her way to the rational mindset that earned her the nickname of Crusader.

Don’t think about the implications. About the pain and the loss. Set it all aside. Just like in battle.

A great calm settles in her.

“How… could you.”

Her voice is nearly as cold as the power she came here to plead against.

“I’m sorry, Ayin, but-”

“Don’t. Apologize,” She grits out through clenched teeth. “You’ve seen what happens to those who use stasis! How could you be so- so stupid?”

His eyes narrow, light dimming ever so slightly. “I’m not an idiot, Ayin. I know what I’m doing.”

There’s an edge to Cayde’s voice this time. A note of warning.

But Ayin is far past listening to the sirens. She is the warning. The receding of the water before a tidal wave; the purple skies before a hurricane.

“Do you? What is this, then, an overly complicated suicide attempt? I didn’t save your ass in the Prison of Elders so you could throw it away-”

“Throwing it away? There’s more to fighting a war than killing the enemy faster than it can kill you. At least I’m helping people.”

The anger simmering in her guts flares, shattering her artificial calm. Her whole body tenses like it’s getting ready to go for the kill.

“Are you saying I’m not?”

He takes a step forward, gestures toward the Hangar — the damage from the Red War that they never got to repairing, the pictures of Guardians swallowed by the encroaching Darkness they pinned to a wall as a memorial. Proofs of past catastrophes.

“Nothing we’ve done so far managed to stop the Darkness. Maybe stasis will help, maybe it won’t, but we have to try.”

“And risk playing right into their hands?”

“If that’s what it takes to survive, yes!”

“We’re supposed to fight the Darkness, not join-”

“World’s changing, kiddo. We do what we have to do to survive-”

“Don’t. Call me. Kid.”

Cayde is reckless, impulsive, and he doesn’t know when to quit. Dogged determination has gotten him out of problems more often than he can count.

But sometimes, it also means he doesn’t think before he talks, and he says things such as,

“Why should I, when you’re just as naive?”

The silence that follows is a living thing. It stretches until it fills every inch of the space and curls around Ayin, swallowing her as well. It’s like she’s trapped inside of her own body, deaf to anything but the hammering of her heart and the roaring of the fire inside her chest. Her mind is stuck in a loop—

(how dare you how dare you how dare you)

(why would you cut me off like that why why why)

(betrayer)

When she comes back to herself there are sparks slowly dying on her fingers, and Cayde’s pinned against the pillar he was leaning against.

They make an odd tableau, the two of them. Her, hand outstretched, still as a marble statue, and Cayde, stopped mid-movement, his own hand reaching for her as if to apologize again, a knife sticking out of the hood of his cape, inches from his neck.

“Ayin, I didn’t mean-”

Then why did you say it?

She doesn’t voice the thought — doesn’t trust herself to stay calm, to miss the next time a knife slips from her fingers. She flexes her fingers, forces herself to relax, slows her breathing.

He lets his hand drop.

When she leaves, she doesn’t look back, and he doesn’t call for her.

#writing #destiny 2 #cayde-6 #ayin seeks

6 notes · View notes

blahblahblippyblah · 4 years

Text

Chapter 2 of The Magic of Dust

Read on AO3 as well.

Peter

Peter felt a little intimidated going to Hogwarts. Not because he was worried about being bad at school, but more because he was worried about fitting in. Growing up the was often teased by local kids for being, weird, or fat, or both. His mother always told him that other kids were just jealous because they were silly muggles who didn’t understand how special he was. Peter didn’t believe this though, he knew he was teased because he was different. When he got his letter he was excited because he thought he would now get to be around other kids just like himself, and he could finally make some friends, but fear crept back in slowly when he got onto the platform and saw that muggle children and wizard children seemed to be exactly the same. His mother however told him that he would soon be sorted and then he would make friends in his house and not to worry. She said any other boy would be lucky to have him as a friend. She reminded him to stay polite and kind, and to share the sweets on the train, before kissing him farewell with tears in her eyes.

The first two first years he ran into didn’t seem interested in making friends. Well the boy named Severus didn’t seem interested, his friend Lily was kind and even talked to him about how excited she was, but her Severus quickly distracted her and left Peter out of the conversation.

Then the boy in the car had only said hello before going back to his book, and Peter was starting to fell put out. Maybe making friends wasn’t something he was going to be able to do. He was about to get up and go look for somewhere else to sit when Sirius and James came in. Peter knew immediately they were purebloods, there robes and accents said it all. Plus, one was a Black. Everyone in the wizarding world knew the Blacks, his mother often told him that the Blacks came into the antic shop she worked in looking for rare books, and magical objects. Well, technically they sent others to find these objects for them, but none the less the Blacks were wealthy and powerful. Peter was super nervous, but the one named James had actually struck up conversation with him and Sirius joined in too. They were much nicer than Peter thought they would be. His mother once told him purebloods only consorted with other purebloods, and to try and not get on their bad sides. He also vaguely recalled him mom’s boss once saying the Blacks were crazy, completely mad in the head, probably because of the inbreeding. However, Talking to Sirius and James Peter didn’t get this impression. Maybe his mom had been mistaken.

After the altercation he was starting to feel awkward again. But if anyone was good at breaking tension it was him. Aspecta nudged him with her elbow to encourage him. Peter knew what she was thinking. ‘Go on. Make friends’. So Peter did exactly that.

“So we know what house James want to get into. What about you Sirius?”

Sirius looked at him and blinked. He looked upset and Pete was worried maybe he shouldn’t have asked. But then Sirius broke into a smile that reminded him a little of the look the crazy old man who lived above his mom’s flat. Maybe that was the madness his mom was talking about.

“I’m not sure. My whole family have been in Slytherin for decades. But I don’t think I want to go into Slytherin. I think I’m going to try for Gryffindor. Man, that’s going to give my mother a heart attack.” Sirius said with an excited voice.

James smiled at him approvingly.

“What about you Pete?” James asked.

“Ohhh I don’t know” Peter looked over at Aspecta who was now munching away on a licorice strand she pulled out of his pocket. She shrugged, showing she had no idea what house they would be put in.

“My mom was a Hufflepuff, no idea what my dad was, but I would be happy in anything but Slytherin.”

“Nothing wrong with Hufflepuff” James said. “Not as great as Gryffindor, but Hufflepuffs are cool. Plus, your dorm would be right beside the kitchens so that’s a bonus”

“How do you know where the kitchens are already?” Sirius questioned.

“My dad told me. He wouldn’t tell me how to find it or get in, but he said to start looking by the Hufflepuff common room.”

“Wow your dad sounds cool.” Sirius said. “My dad just told me to stay out of trouble and listen to my cousins”

“How many cousins do you have?” Peter asked genuinely interested. Maybe Sirius would have insight into how the sorting happened, or how Hogwarts was.

“Umm well from the first cousins I have 3. Andromeda, Narcissa, and Bellatrix. Andy’s in her 6th year, Sissy is in her 4th year and Bella is in her second. There all Slytherins’, but Andy’s the only one I like. Sissy is a bore, and Bella is a phycho. She once pushed me out a window into the garden because I called her ugly. Worth it though”

Both Peter and James laughed.

“Hey do you guys like Bertie Bots Every flavour beans?” Peter asked pulling out the giant box his mom gave him out of his bag.

“YES!” James said.

“Never had them” Sirius confessed but scooted closer to look at the box.

They shared the beans and the conversation continued along the lines about houses and sorting. James kept speculating how they sorted them. He seemed to think they were probably going to have to fight each other even though none of them knew and magic yet. Sirius put his bet on some sort of blood test potion. Peter thought both these were probably not likely, but his mother didn’t tell him how the sorting happened so for all he knew maybe they were right.

The boy named Remus who sat across from them by the window snorted in laughter right after James suggested some sort of obstacle course. They all looked over at him but he kept his eyes on his book.

His daemon a small rabbit peaked out at them from under Remus’s arm but didn’t say anything. She seemed more curious than mocking.

James and Sirius looked at the boy curiously probably trying to figure out if he was laughing at something he read, or he was laughing at them. Then Sirius’s daemon Fid quietly jumped down off the train seat and slowly walked over to the reading boy and his daemon.

Ileuda stayed still but sniffed a little as Fid got close. Fid’s tail was wagging and he sniffed aggressively at the rabbit then he launched forward and ran his slobbery wet tongue across the rabbit’s face. The rabbit jumped up and let out a disgusted “Eck” before jumping up on the boys shoulders and started rubbing her face into his faded patched robes. Remus dropped his book and scrunched his face in displeasure. He rubbed his face to probably out of sympathy.

“Haliwr!” The boy swore in Welsh. “What in Merlin’s name was that for?”

“Ahhh so he does talk” Sirius said with a laugh.

Fid was now on the seat beside Remus trying to get to Ileuda again tail wagging. Ileaud was having none of it and crawled down into Remus’s jumper. Remus went to pick up his book but James got to it first.

“Hogwarts: A History.” James read. “Cool, does it say how the sorting happens?” He asked handing Remus back the book.

Remus took the book back carefully and scanned James with bright amber eyes. This was the first time Peter got a good look at them and they made him nervous for some reason. He suddenly felt as if Remus was the most dangerous person in the room, even with a cute little bunny for a daemon. They seemed to glow, like a candle placed very far at the end of a hall. It was made worse by the scars that ran across his face one new and other indifferent stages of healing.

Remus hesitated but then answered with a short quiet “Yes”

“So? Care to share in your knowledge stranger?” James coaxed.

Remus just frowned his lips thin and tightly shut and looked at James. He didn’t look upset, but sadder. Or maybe that’s just how he looked normally. Remus didn’t answer but his daemon stuck her head out of the neck of the jumper and spoke.

“We’ll tell you for one of those chocolate frogs” She said looking over at Peter’s bags bag which was open a little showing the top of a chocolate frog box.

James smiled and reached above to his own trunk and pulled out 4 jumbo sized chocolate frogs. “Deal”

James passed everyone a box, including Remus. Remus took it carefully. He broke off a piece and gave it to Ileauda. Then Ileauda nudged his chin with her nose encouraging him to talk.

“I’ll tell you but you gotta keep your dog on a leash” Remus said to James with a more light hearted voice, gesturing to Sirius.

“Deal. Down boy” James joked lightly smacking Sirius on the nose with an empty chocolate frog bog. Sirius pouted but smiled and feigned being sad. Fid came back over and began wrestling with Bahaadur on the floor.

The three boys turned towards Remus eagerly.

“Ummm apparently Godric Gryffindor enchanted his hat to sort people into the houses.”

“Cool so like how does a hat do that?”

“Ummm I’m not sure. Maybe it reads your mind?”

“It’s a hat, it can’t read minds.”

“Maybe it transforms depending on the house?”

“Well I guess we’ll find out tonight”

Sirius

Sirius was nervous. They had spent the train ride eating an ungodly amount of candy and joking the whole way. Sirius really liked the new friends he had made. Even Remus once they got him to actually talk with them. He had enough creative swear words to put a dragon tamer to shame. James was a riot. He was the funniest guy Sirius had ever met. He wasn’t like the other pure blood guys his age he often had to hang out with at social events. James didn’t care what others thought of him and instead of trying to always out do everyone he instead just enjoyed himself and tried to make everyone laugh. Peter too was awesome. He looked quiet and awkward, but his funny comebacks were always perfectly timed.

By the time they had changed into their school robes and the train was pulling into the station Sirius was getting nervous. Even though he didn’t want to end up in Slytherin he was starting to worry about not having a choice. His whole family had always been placed in Slytherin.

If this mythical hat knew that then he might not have a choice.

This stayed in the back of his mind the whole time they debarked. He forgot for a little bit when they met the old hunched game keeper whose name was Ogg and his dirty matted chipmunk daemon. Beside him was his assistan,t a giant size man with big bushy hair and beard with a terrifyingly large boarhound daemon. They led all the first years down to the lake and they boarded boats to cross the water to get to school, which was apparently a tradition for first years. Being on the water was freezing cold, and beside him Remus shivered and hugged his daemon closer.

Fid was so excited his whole butt swung as he wagged his tail as he sat between his legs and stared up at the castle. Fid hadn’t shown any desire to change back into a King Snake since they arrived and both he and Sirius were super happy with the new name Sirius picked out for him. It was sort of freeing naming his own daemon, he truly didn’t understand why he and other Blacks weren’t allowed to do it. It helped him relate more to Fid.

Getting out of the lake James was so excited him and Bahaadur jumped out of the boat so quick and aggressive poor Peter who was standing up at the same time fell out of the boat into the cold water when it violently shook side to side. Luckily Hagrid came over and helped him back up with one large hand. James spent the walk up to the castle apologizing profusely. Peter said it was alright but shivered until the entered the warm entrance hall of the school.

The castle was jaw dropping. It was nothing like the castle he had been in growing up. His grandfather’s castle in France had been dark and claustrophobic. Filled with thick tapestries and, rugs, and art pieces that Sirius and Regulus had to tiptoe around for fear of breaking any and encoring the wrath of his parents. Other manors and castles were the same. But Hogwarts was open and warm. The walls seemed to only echo laughter. And the air tingled with magic.

They were led to a set of huge ornate oak doors and told to wait. After some time the door opened a little and an witch came out. She was dressed in a large set of black robes with a pointed witches hat over her greying hair which was pulled back into a tight bun. She wore a tartan scarf around her neck and her Tabby cat daemon sat beside her regarded all of them with lamp like eyes.

“Welcome to Hogwarts. My name is Professor McGonagall. I am the assistant Headmistress of this school.” She said with a slight Scottish brough. “In a moment you will be led through these doors and sorted into your houses. They are Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin. While you are here your house will be your home. Your triumphs will earn you point, and any rile breaking will lose point. At the end of the year the house with the most points will win the house cup. Any questions?”

The crowd of nervous students stayed quiet. Professor McGonagall survey them all with a thin smile. Then she caught sight of Peter.

“Pettigrew why are you soaking wet?” she asked sounding stern. Sirius had no idea how she knew his name, but she did.

Peter’s mouth gaped open, but no sound came out.

James instead answered for him.

“He fell in the lake Professor”

McGonagall turned to him. “Well we can’t eat dinner soaking wet, now can we” She waved her wand and instantly Peters clothes dried and radiated heat. Peter sighed happily. Beside him Aspecta tuned into a large brown rat and ran up his leg to get inside his now warm robes.

“Next time Mr. Potter you will allow Mr. Pettigrew to answer for himself. Now straighten up all of you. And come along.”

James

The hall was awe inspiring , candles floated all over the hall above 4 long wooden table filled almost entirely with students all in seas of black robes with pops of colour from their house ties. The ceiling was shining with twinkly stars and a swirling galaxy which seemed to mirror the sky outside but brighter. At the front of the room a long table sat on a raised dais where all the professors sat surveying the hall.

After the initial shock of the seeing the hall for the first time James was solely focused on the old dusty wizard’s hat sitting on a simple wooden stool ahead of them.

It didn’t seem magical. It was just and old dusty hat. McGonagall went up to it and was talking but James wasn’t listening, he was staring at the hat both confused and afraid. Then McGonagall pulled out a parchment and read out the first name.

“Avery, Nathan”

Nathan, a tall stocky boy with short cropped brown hair went forward and sat on the chair. McGonagall picked up the hat and placed it on top of his head. The thing was so big it fell down over his ear and eyes. He sat there for a while in silence. The whole school had eyes on him.

“SLYTHERIN!”

The voice boomed across the hall as a slit opened in the hat like a mouth. The table on the far left broke into cheers and applause.

Avery took the hat off, handed it to professor McGonagall and ran to the cheering table.

“Black, Sirius” McGonagall called.

Beside him James saw Sirius freeze. Fid had shrunk into a small banded snake and was crawling up Sirius’s leg to his robes sleeve. Sirius stayed put and James pat him on the back.

“It’ll be fine mate. No matter where you go.” James said happening to help Sirius in his fear. Sirius then stepped forward slowly. The hall was silent again but it seemed as if more people had bothered to turn and pay attention to Sirius’ sorting. James understood this. He also grew up hearing about the Blacks, one of the most powerful pure blood families of the sacred 28.

Fid was now tightly wound around Sirius’s hand as if he was holding his hand. Sirius sat down with perfect posture befitting of his upbringing. McGonagall placed the hat on his head and as soon as it touched his head it didn’t need a moment to ponder.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

When the hat came off Sirius’ face turned from blank to pure happiness. However, the clapping from the Gryffindor table was delay, and once it began it was muddles with whispers coming from the Slytherin table. Sirius didn’t seem to care though. He jumped up and punch the air triumphantly. Fid instantly feel out of his hand and landed and a big black shaggy dog who barked so loud and jumped so high some 1st years jumped back. The hall erupted in laughter at this display. Sirius ran over to the Gryffindor table and sat down beside some confused looking but smiling prefects.

James wolf whistled from his spot in celebration. It took fair longer for the crowd to calm down this time since most people where now whispering loudly with each other about what happened. Eventually when it quieted McGonagall began again. A lot few more students went up and got sorted. After a few “Evans, Lily” was called up and the red headed girl from the train went. The dove daemon was now a Butterfly sitting in her hair like a giant beret. She was eventually sorted to Gryffindor much to James’ dismay. She didn’t sit down next to Sirius though, and instead chose the further seat she could get to him.

After almost half the students had gone, they called “Lupin, Remus”

Remus went up a looking pale and sick, He sat down and the hat went completely over his eyes and nose.

The hat paused for a long time. James was worried since this was the longest pause yet, but it was eventually broken with a

“GRYFFINDOR”

When they hat came off Remus didn’t look scared anymore, but he didn’t look happy. His eyes were open wide like the hat had told him something terrifying. He got off the stool and headed to the Gryffindor table. Sirius had stood up on his chair to watch the sorting without an obstructed view and was now clapping furiously. The prefect beside him had to pull on his to make him sit.

Soon after it was Peter’s turn. Peter was shaking and he tripped walking up which some people snickered at. James stared daggers at them till they stopped. Peter got a long pause too, but not as long as Remus’.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Peter looked shocked but was smiling ear to ear and went to sot across from Remus and Sirius.

One more student went before James, and he fidgeted the whole time knowing he was next. Bahaadur seemed unsure what to do as well. He had gone into his stag form and tapping his hoof steadily. James patted him to both comfort him and ground himself.

“Potter, James.”

“YOU GOT THIS JAMES!”

James heard Sirius shout out as he walked up. The hall started snickering.

James sat on the stool just in time to see Sirius get pulled down again but this time by Remus.

James at down and put the hat on. It went over his eyes making everything go dark and quiet, then a voice spoke in his head.

“Ah Potter.” A booming bright voce spoke to him, but not out loud in his head, bounding around in his skull.

“Yes, well no need to think about where you belong”

“Wait!” James thought and surprising he heard his own voice bounce around in his head.

“Yes?” The voice asked sounding interested.

“Ummm, If you were made by Gryffindor then is this his voice?” James asked. It had just got to him that this hat was made by his hero, and this was probably the only chance he would have to ask it anything.

The hat laughed out loud in his head. “Oh you are a true fan Mr. Potter. It is indeed… GRYFFFINDOR!”

The last word was shouted out to the hall and followed by applause, and loud wolf whistles and barks James assumed where Sirius and Fid. James took of the hat bright eyed. There was no doubt his hero was Godric Gryffindor.

Peter

Peter was flabbergasted he got into Gryffindor. The hat had first thought to put him in Hufflepuff, and although Peter loved the idea of being in Hufflepuff he couldn’t help but think of the fact all 3 of the friends he had made, his first friends ever, were in Gryffindor. This made the hat pause enough for Peter to promise to be braver if he could be in Gryffindor. The hat had laughed but didn’t sound mean more amused. “You have already started” the hat had said before shouting “GRYFFINDOR!”

Now he got to sit beside 3 friends who looked so happy to be together.

“This is the best thing ever! All of us together! We’re going to be the best Gryffindors to ever walk through this school.”

And in this moment Peter felt that James was probably on to something.

When the feast appeared Aspecta clambered out of his pocket and began reaching for a buttered bun. Peter loaded his plate with a little of everything. The food was the best thing he had ever eaten and that was saying something since he was already full on candy from earlier. He still managed 2 plates and 2 desserts before giving up.

When the plates cleared Dumbledore stood up and addressed everyone. He introduced the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Professor. Nettles. Then some notices. Stay out of the forest, no banned items, and a apparently new rule to avoid a newly planted Whomping Willow “unless one wants to meet a painful end.” A student beside him whispered to her friend.

“Why would they want a Whomping Willow. Are they mad?”

Peter once heard about Whomping Willows in a stories he read, and if what he knew was true he agreed.

Finally, they were told to head off to bed and the whole hall started to get up slowly heading for the giant oak doors. Two prefects called them over and told them to wait with them so they could head back together. James and Sirius had started poking each other in their full stomachs when a shadow fell over the four of them.

“Mr. Lupin can you please come with me?” Professor McGonagall asked and started towards to doors.

Peter went to ask Remus what was happening, but Remus was already following her.

“Why do they need to see him. We haven’t been here 3 hours” James said sounding outraged that Remus had been taken.

“I’m sure it’s fine, it’s Remus there’s no way he did anything bad”

James nodded but didn’t look convinced. But that had now gotten them on the subject of pranks and they began quietly planning all the things they could do now they were in the same house.

Remus

Professor McGonagall led him down some halls and a staircase until they reached a large set of doors in the middle of a hallway. She opened the doors and he followed her in. They were in the hospital wing. The wing was pretty large at least 2 sets of hospital beds where set up in two rows each flagged by tall frosted windows. The placed smelled of clean sheets, and the strong thick sent of brewing potions. Remus scrunched his nose. His sense of smell was stronger than the average human and the potion currently bubbling in the cauldron at the far end on a desk smelled strongly of wolfsbane. It made his nose and eyes burn and his breathing to become fiery so that he coughed a few times.

The matron came out of her office to their right and quickly came over. She was older with a stern face that had warm kind eyes that gazed at him up and down as if assessing his vitals by just looking. Her daemon was a small Orangutan that had the same warm caring eyes. He immediately went over and asses Ilueda with concern.

“Oh dear you have a cold” She said running over and pulling out her want and tapping it to his head. Nothing happened and she looked confused.

“It’s not a cold ma’am just the potion” Remus coughed out trying not to sound disrespectful of the matron’s potion brewing.

“Oh the wolfsbane in it put in this morning. I am a fool.” She said walking over and turning off the burner underneath.

“Let’s talk down there then Poppy” McGonagall suggested.

“Good idea” The matron replied and the 3 of them headed out. This time they walked out onto the grounds. But not through the entrance hall, through the back of the castle. They came out into a courtyard that led down the steep hill that was a little overrun with weeds and long grasses.

Far down the hill they passed a small hut with a giant pumpkin patch. They kept going till they got close to the lake, there Remus saw it. A giant Whomping Willow close to the edge of the Dark Forest. Near it the large game keeper Hagrid was waiting his big boarhound dog holding a lamp in its mouth for light now that the sun was set.

“Remus this is Madam Pomfrey. She is our matron and will be taking care of you before and after the full moon. This is Rubeus Hagrid our assistant Game keeper, who will be watching over the Willow during the full moon from his hut.”

Remus nodded. He knew the plan but was still worried it might be too dangerous. Hagrid was big and probably could stop a wolf from killing him, but Remus would feel so bad if that ever happened. Not to mention even if Hagrid survived how far would he still get before he ran into someone else.

“I can assure you Mr. Lupin your safety will be 100% safe in this place. Under the willow there is a tunnel. It leads directly into Hogsmeade. To an old abandoned house far from the village. Dumbledore himself as well as a few professors have put every ward imaginable on the building. Not to mention the boards that were installed on the windows and doors. There is no possibility of you getting out or anyone getting in.”

Remus nodded again. She sounded genuine in their efforts to keep people safe from him, he could only hope it worked. At home his father locked him in the cellar. It was stone and concrete all the way around with no windows and door, just a silver trap door that was covered by a large crate on the other side.

“On the day of the full moon you will arrive at the Hospital Wing immediately after classes. You will report to Madam Pomfrey and will eat in the hospital wing. 2 hours before sundown you will walk down to the willow with Madam Pomfrey who will let you into the willow. Once inside you will walk until you reach a trap door. Once up through it and inside the house you will be free to transform safely. Madam Pomfrey will arrive back to help you to the castle after sunrise. Do you understand?”

Remus nodded again.

“Very well I will now take you up to Gryffindor tower.”

#the mauraders #james potter #sirius black #remus lupin #peter pettigrew #lily evans #severus snape #hogwarts sorting #hogwarts #harry potter crossover #harry potter #harrypotter fanfiction #his dark materials #daemons #daemon au #dumbledore #minerva mcgonagall #wolfstar #jilly

16 notes · View notes

frasier-crane-style · 4 years

Text

It’s time again for the internet equivalent of picking at scabs, rewriting The Last Jedi. I recently rewatched the Plinkett review of this--perfectly normal way to get ready for Rise of Skywalker--and I had a few thoughts about how to better do the plot.

The gist of it stays the same. The First Order and Resistance are both feeling for the losses incurred, whether victorious or defeated, in the Battle of Starkiller Base. Deciding to go for a knock-out blow, the First Order sends their fleet to the Resistance base. This wouldn’t be like a million billion ships, but basically a carrier group. They still heavily outnumber the Resistance, they just don’t rule the galaxy.

Rey’s gone to find Luke, so she’s out. Finn is still in a coma, can’t be moved because of the medical treatment he’s receiving, so while they evacuate the base, the Resistance has to simply hide him and hope the Empire doesn’t look around too closely.

A short time later, he wakes up. Stormtroopers are searching the base. He GTFOs out of there. In a fit of irony, the Stormtroopers are guys from his old unit, maybe led by Captain Phasma, and they start hunting him down as he hides in the hostile wilderness. Since this is Star Wars and not Rambo, I’d probably make it so that C-3PO volunteered to stay behind and watch over them, and maybe he could run into a primitive alien whose tribe is in danger from the Stormtroopers. But you get the idea, he has to run and hide, practice guerrilla warfare, befriend the natives, deal with his legacy of being a Stormtrooper, that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, Poe and the Resistance fleet are on the run. Hyperdrive tracking, that’s fine, but the white bronco chase isn’t. I also don’t want to rip off BSG’s “33″ by having them constantly jumping to lightspeed, being attacked by the Empire, and then jumping away again. Instead, let’s say they’re going through some outer space phenomenon like the Maw. They can’t jump to lightspeed inside it, which on the plus side means the Empire can’t cut them off. But this nebula thing is basically a storm in space, wrecking havoc with their shields and instruments, so that only a capital ship can survive. And when they emerge into a calm spot--like the eye of the storm, y’know--that means the Empire can send out starfighters to try and disable their engines. And once the engines are disabled, a cap ship will fall behind and be overtaken by the Star Destroyers. So: weather the storm, take damage from the environment--seek shelter, get attacked by TIE fighters.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Rey is training with Luke. Now, this is a thirty-second spitballing, but I imagine the theme of this story to be introspection. We’ve met the characters, so now we’re digging deep into who they are and what makes them tick. So it’d be handy here to go back and rewrite TFA so Rey, uh, is a character--not to mention the other two--but let’s not take all day. So let’s say that Luke is trying to get her to meditate, to realize her place in the vast universe, but Rey keeps getting sidetracked by obsessing over her parents. She thinks she can use this Force Cerebro mode to hear them and find out where they are, while Luke tries to encourage her to let go of the past and focus on the present.

Similarly, Finn would be dealing with his past as a Stormtrooper, the old comrades who seem him as a traitor. And Poe would be dealing with, I don’t know, the burden of command. Realizing that he has to order people to their deaths and make the hard choices instead of flying out on a million-to-one odds.

This doesn’t give Kylo Ren much to do--maybe he’s leading the pursuit of the Resistance, shooting up the cap ships, then boarding them once they’re disabled. Just rampaging through, killing everyone, interrogating them, still trying to find the coordinates Rey ran off to. Maybe he manages to catch BB-8, or maybe he’s on the planet, going after Finn--it takes time to encrypt all the files, so the Resistance had to ditch with the process still going, now Finn has a data chip and he has to keep it away from the Empire. But eventually Kylo finds out where Luke is and goes to capture him and bring him to Snoke, with Luke going along quietly.

I sort of see the climax as being, yeah, a twist. It turns out that Leia’s master plan--oh, by the way, we’re getting rid of Holdo and making it so that Poe knows the plan from the beginning, he just has a hard time sticking to it--is a rope-a-dope. They’ll lead the Imperial fleet through this storm, crippling the ships on both sides, only to lead them right back to their headquarters, where not only can they land and seek shelter with the help of some shield generators that were cleverly hidden, but the remnants of the New Republic fleet show up to kick the weakened Imps’ ass.

So I imagine the final fight as being a big climactic battle. We have Finn and the surviving Rebel forces and the aliens he’d befriended on the ground, fighting off a siege, while Poe and the remaining Rebel starfighters link up with the New Republic’s fleet to take the fight to the Star Destroyers. Also, Poe and Luke and Kylo Ren and Snoke are there.

I suppose instead of replaying the Death Star throne room confrontation WITH A TWEEST, we could stage some kind of showdown that takes advantage of our Palpatine analog and Obi-Wan/Yoda analog both being alive and active. Not necessarily them picking up mountains with the Force, but something like Luke and Snoke sitting down across from each other and trading words while Rey and Kylo glower at each other like attack dogs being kept on the leash. Almost a philosophical discussion--maybe Snoke could point out that hey, the universe keeps falling to the Dark Side, the Jedi keep being wiped out, and the Empire keeps taking over, so why keep fighting? And Luke countering his arguments. Technically, we don’t need a lightsaber duel at all. There’s plenty of action with the land battle and space combat. I kinda imagine Luke winning the ‘debate’ when Kylo betrays and murders Snoke, while Rey stays loyal to him.

Or hey, this debate about galactic politics could have the personalized counterpart of Kylo Ren. Luke is arguing that hey, no matter how bad things have gotten, no matter how many mistakes were made, it’s never too late to turn it around. And Snoke’s arguing no, universe is fucked, Kylo’s evil, there is no coming back for either of them so let’s wallow in the darkness, grab as much shit as we can, enjoy ourselves as much as possible while everyone else burns.

Although, hypocrite time, I do imagine one massive show of Force on Luke’s part where he summons that interstellar storm from earlier to break up the fleet battle. Both sides are in shambles and have to flee to lick their wounds, but the Rebels are able to definitively flee and the Empire has suffered a devastating setback without accomplishing its objective. Maybe in the starfighter battle, Poe was able to take out the specialized hyperspace tracking ship. Maybe that’s what his storyline was about: he wanted to make a kamikaze attack on the tracker ship, while Leia was saying no, no, stick to the plan. Could be a metaphor for trusting the Force, like Luke’s position in his and Snoke’s philosophical debate.

#star wars

7 notes · View notes

brieannakeogh · 5 years

Text

Dog Days of Summer-Ch 7

Dog Days of Summer- Chris Evans X plus sized reader. Dog days of summer are usually defined as the hottest of the year, some define it as lazy days. This year ‘hottest’ has nothing to do with the outside temp. You meet Chris and Dodger Evans while taking your own dog to the park.

Previous Chapter / Master List

Warnings: Cursing and fluff, mild angst

Chapter 7

You were a ball of anxiety on the couch that night. Chris wanted to ‘talk’ after he calms down. Welp it was nice to date him for 2 days anyway, also multiple kisses, yet you knew this was it. He wouldn't want to deal with your ex drama, and if Matt did go to the tabloids, it was easily deniable if the two of you had no contact. No proof, no pictures, no story. Honestly it was the smart play, it just sucked.

Chewing your nails to give your hands something to do while watching Chris’ new favorite drama series. You couldn’t even follow along with the plot anymore, making plans in your head to watch the episodes again without him, so you could be ready to watch more tomorrow night. Wait no, scratch that, he wouldn’t be here tomorrow night would he? Back to chewing.

The sound coming from the tv stopped, but it took you a few moments to notice, or at least that was the impression you got from Chris’ expression.

“You’re not going to be able to calm down are you? You’re worried.” He watches you nod your head and he lets out a deep sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Ok...ok…” He mumbles seemly more to himself than you. His hand rubbing your arm with his that is slung over your shoulder. “It’ll be fine. I mean it’s been what? A week or so since we met, but other people do it all the time. It’ll be good.” Again it feels like he’s more talking to himself and not to you. It’s like he’s trying to convince himself that leaving you wouldn’t be hard since it was such a short time.

You felt very differently, but you couldn’t blame him, it was the smart thing to do. He was a freaking superstar and he had to protect his image and subsequently his job. Public perception was everything nowadays. You can feel your chest tighten and throat closing as you fight back tears that are inevitable. The feel of you stiffening in his arms has him look down at you, seeing you start to break down. You watch as his jaw locks and he pushes you off the couch, standing up as well.

“Go pack a bag. If it has you this upset we’re not staying here.” Your eyes snap to him, wide and confused. “I don’t think he has another key but if you’re are that worried that it has you crying you can stay at my place for a night or two, at least until you can decide what to do.” You don’t move from your spot near the couch. “I’ve got a spare room, don’t worry.” He smirks. Did this mean he didn’t want to stop dating you? “Was there something else that you’re worried about?”

“You said we were going to ‘talk’. I just had my ex break into the apartment he’s technically paying for, see you and recognize you and admit we’re dating, while trying to get back with me, probably just so he has a place to live, and you said you wanted to ‘talk’. In what universe is that not ‘we’re no longer dating’?”

“Shit did I use the ‘T’ word?” Chris winced.

“Yeah, ya did.”

“I just meant about you and him and the key situation with the housing. If you were going to stay here or we needed to look at more places, security systems, that sort of thing. It never even crossed my mind to not see you again.” He stepped into your space and placed his hands on your neck and face.

“Huh...you’re kind of strange you know that?”

“I’m sure I’ve been told that before. Probably will be again.” He smirked.

“It would be smart to not see me anymore. Make life for your manager a lot easier, so he doesn’t have to catch a story if Matt is stupid enough to leak the information.”

“He needs a little excitement in his life. I’m such a boring celebrity. He should be put to the test to see if he can handle a scandal.”

Your arms are now around his waist as he places a kiss on your forehead. “You know you called me your girlfriend earlier.”

“Caught that did you?”

“Were you trying to be subtle?” A grin on your face.

“I learn from the best, or worse in this case.” You slap him on the chest but end up hurting your hand instead, which just makes him laugh, but he kisses your hurt palm anyway. He grows quiet for a moment, his thumb rubbing the back of your hand gently. “Even though you were thinking of something else, did you still want to come to my place? Until you can get the locks changed at least?”

You’re chewing on your lip again and look at your feet. “While I would feel more comfortable not being here until that happens, that’s an insane step to offer. You barely know me. You can’t possibly be comfortable with this.”

“But you would be, right?” You shrug, not looking up. “We’ve known each other the same amount of time, why do you get to be comfortable letting me into here but I can’t be comfortable letting you into my home?”

That has you glancing up, eyes narrowed in a very ‘really? It’s very obvious why I would be more comfortable.’ look.

“Hey I could be a bad person and I just interview well.” He counters, which makes you giggle snort.

“Are you sure? Like 100%, die on this hill sure?”

“Having to ask that many times makes me less sure....” He laughs. “Yes, go pack a bag. You can call the landlord to get a locksmith out here from my place.”

“She actually lives on the first floor. We can stop by on the way through if she’s home. I think it would be easier if I explained the situation in person.”

He nods and you move into the bedroom to pack a bag. Making sure to pack clothes for the next day and some pjs, along with your toiletry. When you come out, you see Chris has grabbed a few of Popcorn’s toys and treats and is currently looking through the cabinets for his food.

He holds up Popcorns bowl. “Are you out?”

“No, he’s just a spoiled little shit that now will only eat the refrigerated food. The bag’s in there.”

Pulling the little plastic bag from the fridge, he puts that in the bag with the toys and treats. “I think I’ve got him all set, what about you?”

“Thanks and yeah I’m good.” You smile and suddenly get nervous. It didn’t actually hit you to what you were agreeing to until right now. Yes it seemed necessary, your ex invading you space and then raging over Chris being there, not a safe situation if he came back, but this was going to his house. If he deemed you crazy, you would know where he lives. It was a much bigger step than a phone number that he could change at any moment. This was a trust you’re not sure you deserve.

The dogs get their leashes back on and you tote the bag with Popcorns items, and Chris took your bag, while he grabs your hand with the other. You get down to your landlady’s apartment and knock on her door. A dog barking and a muffled “Shhhh” on the other side, let you know she’s home.

“Hey Ms. Daniels. I’m sorry to bother you, but I need something done on my apartment.”

Her smile is pleasant and she looks from you to Chris, who is standing a few paces behind. She was familiar with the situation with your ex and was sympathetic. “Sure, did something happen?”

“We got in and found Matt in the apartment. He apparently didn’t give back all the keys. Is there anyway we could get a locksmith out here and change them? He said it was the only copy he had left, but he said the same thing before.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. Your name is on the lease too so I just need one of you to sign the work order. I’m assuming you’re not staying there at the moment.” She asked, eyeing the duffel and leashes in Chris’ hand.

“No I’m staying with…” You glance behind you. “A friend.”

“Alright dear, I’ll text you when it’s done. Let me go get one of the order forms for you to sign.”

Once the paperwork was done, you thanked Ms. Daniels again and headed out to walk to Chris’ apartment.

“I’m sorry again, this wasn’t how I was expecting our night to go.”

“You can stop apologizing.” Chris squeezed your hand in his as he said it. “You didn’t do anything wrong, and it’s still early. We can make up for it.”

He tugs on your hand, stopping you in front of a building, a nice building, a very nice building. Even with it being only a few blocks away from your own apartment, you can see the difference in the neighborhood and the details in the building itself. It all screams expensive.

There is an actual doorman that opens the door for you and Chris. He even has the little hat and outfit that you had only seen in tv shows. Tipping his hat with a polite “Mr. Evans” and a smile to you, Chris says a quick hello before leading you to the elevator doors.

Once the doors are shut, and you are alone in the little box, you turn and fully face Chris.

“You have a doorman.” Your tone flat, almost accusing.

“Yeah….?”

“He has an outfit and a little doorman’s hat.”

“And?”

“I didn’t know those existed.”

“The doormen or the outfit?”

“The outfit, specifically the hat.”

The doors open to a short hallway, at the end of which is a single door. You look around and don’t see any other rooms or doors. Swallowing, you hold Popcorn closer, trying hard to not think about the fact he has a full floor to himself.

“Why the hat?” His question seems out of place now that he has gotten the door open and ushered you inside. Dodger running around, excited to be home. Taking a moment to get your bearings and to pet the insistent Dodger, you use the silly conversation to hide how awkward and uncomfortable you’re feeling. It’s hitting you again just how very much out of your league he is.

“It’s adorable. I think I want one.” You set Popcorn on the floor and remove the leash quickly. He’s starting to get annoyed with Dodger sniffing him and jumping around and you know he wants to go hide somewhere.

“Exactly when and where would you wear it?”

“I’m sure I can come up with an eclectic outfit to pair it with. Or better idea! You come in from a long day of shooting and I’m just standing around in a set of lingerie and the hat. Sexy right?” You giggle and turn back to him to see him frozen at the door. Crap you went too far.

He shakes himself a bit before he answers. “How about no to the hat. Although the other, you are more than welcome to do any time.” A hand smacks your ass as he goes past you, further into the living room, earning a yelp and a groan from you, your whole body growing hot. You shouldn't have started it, because now you didn’t know how you were going to survive a night at his place.

Next Chapter

Sorry later in the afternoon, lots of things on my day off to do lol. Let me know what you think. She has to stay at his place for a night or two hehe. Also sorry it’s so short again V.V

Tags are still open as well.

@spidey-babe-parker, @stevieang, @albinotigerpython, @paintballkid711, @katykyll, @avengersrulez1536, @ultrafreespirit, @wantingtobekorra, @i-had-a-life-once, @ghostssss, @babybeluuga, @bodhi-black, @kanupps06, @hatterripper31, @grandloser, @reniescarlett, @kjidhzyx, @normanreedus5150, @ilovethings-somuch, @spiderman-2013, @bloodyvalentine93, @xx-raven, @passionghost, @prettybubblesintheair, @averyrogers83, @ria132love, @patzammit, @whom-the-fack, @pooslie, @3dsaunt, @kristiedwyer, @janeyboo, @theonelittleone, @aslandia726, @itsmysticalmystery, @stanclub, @geminimoonbeamx, @lookwhatyoumademequeue, @eyesfixedonthesun22, @mrsalh32611,

#chris evans x reader #Chris Evans #chris evans x plus size reader #plus sized reader #Dog Days of Summer

132 notes · View notes

weptfire · 5 years

Text

IT’S GONNA TAKE A WHILE to compile every little detail that changes with Celene as the Herald of Andraste. Honestly . . . everything is different or damn near it. The way events unfold in DA:I is very much so a result of the fact that the Inquisition is a dark horse. It is an upstart organization which was meant to be answerable to the Divine but ended up answerable to no one. The Inquisitor themself is an outsider that no one thought much of. The gradual rise to power, succeeding when no one thought much about them, is an integral part of the narrative. With Celene, that all goes out of the window because she’s the empress of Orlais. There’re just a lot of complicated politics to go into tbh.

I’m gonna try to bullet out some differences I can think of off the top of my head, though. Fair warning, however, that because Michel acts as Inquisitor, I’m having to make my own guesses as to how he would handle certain situations. If anyone who writes Michel wishes to interact in this verse, I absolutely will not expect them to adhere to my hcs regarding him. Your character, not mine — you get final say.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

➺ Celene is only the Herald of Andraste. She names Michel Inquisitor. However, Michel answers to her. ➺ Technically, though, the Inquisition is considered Chantry-aligned. ➺ Celene plays up the Divine’s writ and her Hands’ involvement to give the Inquisition increased access. ➺ Look, no one’s gonna allow an Orlesian Inquisition past their borders, but the Chantry is everywhere. The Inquisition is still viewed as Orlesian, but this small technicality can be played up, and people cave because they don’t have much choice. ➺ The biggest decisions are made by her, but the others by and far fall under the purview of Michel. He’s the one who announces the big decisions, though, so they seem like they’re his / ostensibly they’re his. ➺ Thus, the members of the Inner Circle interact with him more than her, although they do have access to her.

➺ Being the Herald helps bridge the gap between Gaspard’s supporters and hers. Seeing as she’s the only one with the ability to seal rifts, she must “lead from the frontlines” to do so. ➺ However, those who compare her to Kordillus I expect her to follow his example and spread the Chant to all corners of Thedas through conquest, forcing them to submit to Orlesian rule. ➺ They are frustrated (even angered) by her continued commitment to peace.

➺ Operating within Orlais is much simpler because she’s the empress and she knows how to handle the nobility. ➺ Operating within Ferelden, however, becomes damn near impossible. ➺ They are forced to allow her access to the rifts to seal them, but she is only ever accompanied by Michel and 2-3 members of the Inner Circle (usually Vivienne, Solas, and/or Cassandra). ➺ There is a group of Fereldan knights and a representative of the crown (probably Arl Teagan) sent to “aid” her. They are cold at first, but she manages to win them over eventually.

➺ Additionally, relations with Nevarra quickly deteriorate. ➺ Beind Herald actually makes it more difficult to maintain peace. ➺ Tbqh, war is on the horizon, and I don’t mean the war against Corypheus. Whether Orlais or Nevarra will make the first move is anyone’s guess.

INNER CIRCLE CONSIDERATIONS.

➺ Final decisions about the Inner Circle ultimately fall to Michel.

➺ I assume Sera doesn’t offer to join up. Even if she did, Michel would most likely turn her away. ➺ Vivienne undoubtedly still joins up. She could do so while maintaining her position as Enchanter to the Imperial Court, though. ➺ Of course, she is given the snowy wyvern heart. ➺ She is supported as Divine. ➺ It’s debatable as to whether Blackwall / Rainier joins up, but he has too much spine and too little sense, so we’ll assume he does. ➺ This is one of the few DA:I judgments Celene would handle herself. She wouldn’t allow the Inquisition to have him once he hands himself over tbqh. His ass gets hung for his crimes. ➺ Michel could talk Celene into sending him to the Wardens, though, and I think he would. ➺ The Iron Bull most likely gets turned away. (Then again, Michel does like to think he’s clever and can outwit people.) ➺ After what happened with Imshael, Michel most likely tries to kill Cole. ➺ Dorian is probably allowed to stay on account of the aid he’s rendered. ➺ I can’t imagine Michel encouraging reconciliation with his father. ➺ Cassandra, of course, is there from the start. ➺ Her companion quest is completed, and Celene herself would encourage her to rebuild the Seekers. ➺ Varric is also there from the start. ➺ His companion quest is completed. ➺ Solas is, once again, there from the start. ➺ Honestly, I’m not sure Michel would even receive his companion quest.

➺ Michel would likely favor Josephine’s plan of elevating the du Paraquettes, but Celene would favor Leliana’s. As this is one of the quests I can absolutely see Celene being involved in, her opinion would win out. ➺ Michel could convince her to change her mind if he wanted to, though. ➺ Leliana ends up steeled. ➺ Cullen is supported in breaking his lyrium leash.

MAIN QUEST CONSIDERATIONS.

➺ Champions of the Just — It’s highly debatable as to whether Corypheus would even attempt the gambit with the mages. He might, but ultimately the Inquisition wouldn’t go for it. It’s too great of a risk for an organization whose position in Ferelden is already so precarious. They would have precisely zero trouble attracting the attention of Lord Seeker Lucius / Envy, though. Their questline would become available almost immediately. Celene would be involved in this quest in her role as Herald, but she would ultimately allow Michel to announce the final decision because he is Inquisitor. However, he knows her mind, and, I would say, even agrees with her. He would tell the templars to rebuild as the Inquisition’s partners. The fact that the Order was originally a part of the Inquisition will be emphasized, and this partnership will be used to further play up the angle that the Inquisition is technically Chantry-aligned, not Orlais-aligned.

➺ Here Lies the Abyss — I don’t think this particular quest would be much affected. Celene would be involved in the siege at Adamant, but you know they’d try to keep her away from the heart of the battle — keep her safe on the sidelines. However, because it’s so important to the storyline, I say that the bit where they end up physically in the Fade still happens. Hawke is left behind. The Inquisition allies with the Wardens. However, because Blackwall / Rainier is supposedly a Warden-Constable (making him the highest ranking Warden present), he is the one chosen to lead the Wardens / become the new Warden-Commander. This undoubtedly causes him to turn himself in much sooner.

➺ Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts — This quest never happens. Because the War of the Lions ends with Gaspard’s death after Celene closes the Breach, there was never a need for this ball. Florianne was subsequently exiled from Orlais even though Celene didn’t really see her as a threat. (Better safe than sorry.) However, she did obtain an audience with Celene, ostensibly to beg her pardon. It was then that she attempted to assassinate the empress. She failed and was killed herself. ➺ Her remains are still delivered to the Inquisition to be judged, however, and Michel returns the trade routes to Celene.

DLC CONSIDERATIONS.

➺ Jaws of Hakkon — Celene would make at least one trip to the Basin to seal rifts and receive some updates, but the bulk of this quest would be handled by Michel. He’s the one who discovers the truth about Ameridan — which is made public knowledge — and slays Hakkon. Professor Bram Kenric’s writings on the subject are supported by Celene and subsequently popularized at court.

➺ The Descent — Handled entirely by Michel, who I would wager completes it. Celene’s just glad she never had to meet the Nug King.

➺ Trespasser — Never happens. The Inquisition disbands not long after Corypheus’ defeat, making an Exalted Council unnecessary. (The Divine — in this case, Vivienne — could choose to keep the Inquisition intact, but Celene would not be pleased about it.) The storyline with the Viddasala, Solas, the Inquisitor (Michel), and the Herald (Celene) could still happen. It just wouldn’t happen during an Exalted Council. Most likely, Celene hosts a ball to which leaders from around Thedas (especially Nevarra and Ferelden) are invited as an attempt to prevent war. Michel, although no longer a chevalier, would have resumed his duties as Celene’s champion, and thus he is in attendance. The Anchor meltdown, chase through the eluvians, identity reveal, etc. still happen. ➺ In addition to losing her arm, Celene narrowly avoids war, but tensions have heightened further. Her ball was a failure. Thanks, Solas.

#this is very surface level tbh #there are a lot of complicated politics to go into here #but like . . . that's a lot #each thing would need its own post #I'm not proofreading this rn #I'll proofread it later #⊰ headcanon | herald ⋄ you forget to hide the little tells ⊱

1 note · View note

yourkeeperoftherunners · 6 years

Text

Gentle Monster Epilogue

Plot: AU All he wanted was a home, but it seemed like he was never going to get one. You wanted a friend who would keep you company. Upon stepping into the mystical pet shop tucked in the back alleys of a tourist area of town, you had no idea what you were getting into when you signed the paperwork.

Rating: PG (Language)

Characters: Dog Hybrid!Chanyeol x Female Reader, Magic Pet Store Owner!Kris, Dog Hybrid!Baekhyun, and mentions of other OT12 hybrids and owners

Notes: This is part of @oh-beyond‘s hybrid series – she gave me her blessing to write one for Chanyeol. The premise is slightly inspired by the manga Pet Shop of Horrors with differences (Ex. Chanyeol’s human form is only visible to the reader and Kris in private and Kris matches pets with appropriate owners versus Count D who used the animals to teach owners a lesson.) Chanyeol’s breed is a Great Dane Doberman mix (called a Doberdane), which is inspired by the writer’s own dog. The title was inspired by a real life experience when a young girl (same height as my dog) rounded the corner in a shop and saw my dog for the first time. (She dubbed my dog “a monster dog” when she ran to tell her dad because she had never encountered a dog as big as her.)

All content is fictional!

Banner created by me. Absolutely no reposting anywhere else as your own!

Ch. 3

Chanyeol stroked your hair as you slept soundly, smiling as he gazed upon your peaceful body. Out of concern for your well-being, he had turned off your alarm, reasoning that you could use the rest after a stressful night. Sure you might not be happy to learn what he had done, but he thought you needed a day off.

He frowned when he heard your phone in the other room and pouted, wishing he didn’t have to move from his spot beside you. You were still asleep and hadn’t heard the phone buzz on the counter in the kitchen. He slipped out from under the covers and tried not to disturb you as he headed out to the kitchen to see who it was.

He frowned as he looked down at the screen and saw a woman’s name, unsure of who it could be. Well, it seemed rude to not answer, so...

“Hello?”

“Oh Y/N? Did I dial the wrong number?” the secretary asked.

“Oh no this is her phone,” Chanyeol responded as he pressed the phone against his ear. “I’m her...friend! She’s sleeping now but I can –”

“Chan, who are you talking to?” you asked as you stumbled out into the kitchen, messing up your hair.

He ducked his head and mouthed that it was a woman. You held out your hand for the phone and he passed it over with a sheepish look.

“Hello this is Y/N.”

“Hey! Wanted to call and check up on you – we heard about the incident at your complex. My God, are you okay?” the secretary asked.

Your eyes widened when you heard her voice and you glanced over at the clock to see what time it was. Crap, you slept in and had missed a meeting already! What happened to your alarm clock?!

“Your boyfriend answered and said you were sleeping,” she continued. “By the way, he sounds cute. Anyways, we just wanted to hear if you were okay – glad they caught that guy harming you.”

“Please tell our boss I’ll in right away!” you said as you began speed walking to your room.

“Oh no sweetie, stay home please! You have plenty of vacation banked up – take a day or two! The boss understands and he said you deserve a break. Don’t rush in here after a stressful night,” she reassured you. “No, I mean it! Stay home, pet Puppy for me, and let the cute boyfriend take care of you. Okay?”

You frowned at her sentence and stared back at Chanyeol. Wait, she could hear his human voice? Hold up – she thought he was your boyfriend?!

“Did we lose connection?”

“Oh um no! No! I’m sorry, uh yes I’ll take a day off,” you said as you sank into a chair. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Thank you.” You hung up and Chanyeol padded over to you with a guilty look.

“I’m sorry Y/N, I turned your alarm off so you could sleep more,” he admitted. “Last night was scary and you needed the rest. I heard your phone and didn’t want to ignore it so, I answered.” He clasped your hands in his and gave you a pleading look. “Please don’t be angry, I only wanted to take care of you.”

You tilted your head and shot him a knowing look. “Next time Channie, please don’t turn my alarm off unless its the weekend. But you were right, I needed to calm down after last’s night nightmare.” You closed your eyes and mulled over the secretary’s words again. She heard his human voice.

“I promise I’m not sending you back Chan,” you began, “but if my secretary could hear your voice, then I think we need to see Kris again to figure out why that was possible. I know she does not have a pet because her husband has allergies, so something’s up. Do you feel any different?”

He shook his head and agreed that seeing Kris would make sense.

“Did you lose a dog miss?” an elderly gentleman asked as you passed him, Chanyeol’s leash in hand.

“Oh um, no – I’m uh, going to adopt one!” you came up with quickly. You pointed in the direction of Kris’s shop and explained there was a pet store down that area.

Chanyeol caught up to you and he smiled brightly at the elderly man before greeting him. The man returned the greeting before noticing Chanyeol’s dog collar and frowned.

“Is that one of those punk trends you young bloods are into these days?” he asked as he pointed to the collar.

Chan tilted his head in confusion and you fibbed that it was, grabbing your dog’s hand as you hurried toward Kris’s shop. Once both of you had gotten cleaned up, you brought the leash but felt funny clipping it onto Chan’s neck, instead choosing to carry it. This time when you went out, people commented on the cute, child-like young man who was behind you, greeting everyone with a big smile. A few noticed the collar around his neck and you were regretting keeping it on him.

A random girl had stopped him during your walk over, flirtatiously trying to give him her number. Chan looked surprised but he quickly grabbed you in a back hug and murmured in his deep baritone voice, “Sorry Miss, but I’m hers!”

“Welcome to my – oh um, hi there!” Kris greeted when he saw both of you enter. He bowed his head and apologized to the mom and daughter who were admiring Tao on the counter. You shot him a polite smile and mouthed to take his time, gingerly leading Chanyeol over to a tank of fish to look at.

“I like this cat, he’s handsome!” the daughter remarked as she stroked Tao’s head.

“You’re going to take care of him?” the mother asked.

The girl rolled her eyes and huffed dramatically, “Mom, I’m 18! Not 8, I can handle a cat like a grown adult!”

Kris chuckled at the daughter’s response and produced the contract for the pair to review and sign. Chanyeol glanced over at Tao for a moment before you tugged on his arm to keep his eyes on the fish. You shot him a look and he took the hint, nodding as he remained silent. These two had no idea what kind of a pet shop this was and you didn’t want to scare them away if it meant Tao getting his forever home.

Once the pair finished the paperwork and departed, Kris walked over to you, motioning to the back. You and Chanyeol followed him and he led you to his office, closing the door behind you.

“First off, Chan’s not coming back,” you stated before Kris could ask. “We’re here because something’s changed.”

“Actually I was going to ask if you were okay,” Kris replied. “Saw the papers today and was glad they caught your ex. Albeit he should have been locked up sooner, in my opinion.” He glanced over at Chanyeol and tapped his index fingers to his lips. “Changed how?”

You relayed the accounts of this morning up to the street encounters on the way to the pet shop. Kris listened carefully and he glanced over at Chanyeol occasionally. After you finished, he pushed his chair back and produced Chanyeol’s file from a cabinet and placed it on the desk.

“That’s Chanyeol’s file,” he began, “my father brought him over from South Korea before he passed. At the time, he was mum about the shop and what it was like. Like everyone who steps through these doors, I had no idea what I was getting into.” He opened the file and pushed it towards you.

The documents stated that Chanyeol had one other litter mate that survived – a sister who was adopted after birth. The parents were split up and adopted by other owners and Chanyeol was taken overseas. Chanyeol frowned as he tried to picture his life before the shop but gave up and pouted.

“You were very young Chan,” Kris said. “Technically you should have been raised by your mom until you were fully grown, but the owners of your parents didn’t want to deal with puppies, hence the quick arrangements.” He flipped to a scribbled note in Chinese and translated it for you. “His father was a regular Doberman. Mother was the Great Dane and while my old man never saw her human form, he sensed something different about her. Also unusual that she only had 2 pups instead of more.”

“So...this condition is from Umma?” Chanyeol asked after a long pause.

“Possibly,” Kris said. “Apparently your sister never had the ability to take on a human form, which is why there’s some confusion about you receiving the trait. My guess is that it passes down maternally to male descendants – this would fit with Baekhyun-ah and some of the other dogs that were here in the shop.” He flipped through the rest of the file and tried to read his father’s spidery handwriting. “Import and customs docs – not much help there...hang on! When I was a boy, my father pointed out Chanyeol to me and said that he was a unique case.”

Chanyeol blinked and pointed to himself in confusion. “Me? How?”

“That’s just it, my old man was a master of theatrics!” Kris sighed. He leaned back in his seat and huffed. You pulled out your phone and started researching magical dogs for grins. You used your thumb to scroll through the results and you chose one on the fourth page about an old Anglo-Saxon myth on a myths fan page. You sat up straighter and showed it to Kris.

“I know Chan’s from Korea, but this myth from Anglo-Saxon mythology kind of fits with what happened to me,” you replied.

You glanced over at Chan as you read off the blurb, which mentioned a story of a family attending an animal auction when they needed protection. Because they couldn’t afford much, they were only able to adopt the runt of the litter, which the town mocked them for. Their youngest daughter of the large family took to him because she was always ignored in her family, raising him to be a loyal, helpful dog. One night wolves invaded the town and began killing and eating livestock. The youngest daughter was out trying to retrieve eggs from the henhouse when she was cornered by wolves. Hearing her cries for help, the family dog came to her rescue and defended his little mistress. He sustained wounds from the fights but refused to leave his frightened owner’s side until she was safely inside. He collapsed and the youngest stayed with him, crying that her dog had died saving her. But a god had looked down on them and healed her loyal dog, having fulfilled his purpose of finding love and protecting someone selflessly. Knowing the youngest was next to marry, the god changed her dog into a human, who would eventually become her husband.

Kris hummed once you finished and he nodded his head. “I know you found it on a fan site, but I have a feeling I’ve heard this somewhere too. ...So are you the youngest in your family?”

You nodded and explained that you had an older brother and a sister. “Brother’s 5 years older and sis is 2 years older,” you said. “I wasn’t planned but they welcomed me all the same. But I didn’t get everything I wanted like your stereotypical bratty youngest born. Remember when I said I never got to have a pet as a kid?”

Kris nodded and reassured you that he never assumed you had been a spoiled youngest child. Chanyeol had been silent, listening to both of you discuss the possible reasons for why he seemed to be stuck in his human form. He wished he knew why this was happening, but with the way things had transpired, he wasn’t complaining about his situation. He knew you would be a good owner who wouldn’t mistreat him and maybe you needed someone to share a little love that was missing right now in your life. His hands closed around yours and he squeezed them with a smile.

“I said I’ll keep you safe – that meant for as long as you have me,” he reminded you. “I’ll admit I like the sounds of that story you told us – maybe that’s why I’m human now.”

“Works for me,” Kris murmured with a nod. “Oh and Y/N? I think its safe to ditch the collar – doubt you want people thinking you control Chan in, um, some kind of way.”

“Kris-hyung, what do you mean? She is my owner,” Chanyeol protested with a confused look.

You blushed and stood up to loosen Chanyeol’s collar. Once you made it bigger, you prompted Chan to close his eyes before tugging it up and over his head. He was like a wide-eyed child, naive to the innuendoes you’d have to explain at a later date.

“Channie, I’ll explain it to you another time,” you said with a fond smile. “For now, let’s go home.”

Chanyeol was on his feet in seconds and he eagerly began leading you out the door. “Can we cuddle under the blankets when we get back?”

You laughed and ruffled his hair. “Course we can.”

#Gentle Monster #EXO Chanyeol #EXO Chanyeol imagine #Park Chanyeol imagine #Park Chanyeol #EXO AU #EXO Baekhyun #EXO Tao #EXO Kris #EXO Lay #EXO Sehun #EXO Suho #EXO D.O.#yourkeeperoftherunners original #number 2196

281 notes · View notes

queenjunoking · 3 years

Text

Wolf Taming Pt 10

CW: Noncon - Shock Collar - Pain - Petplay - Drugs - Kidnapping - Manipulation

Sasha was going to be in a vulnerable mood for a little while. Now would be the time to try some risky ideas. It would take her longer to reach the boiling point and it was hard to imagine her trying to immediately attack me.

I flipped on the camera while I prepped the room. I had struggled to decide how I wanted to use that vulnerability against her. Several rooms of fun toys, different things for Sasha to enjoy.

I had so many fun toys I could use to hurt her. I desperately wanted to see her cry again. I wanted to see her afraid of me again. But I knew that would burn bridges. I brought her into a low headspace and if I hurt her she might shut down.

I dreamt of the reaction she would have if I decided I didn't want the wolf. I wanted to see her shattered in my hands. The moment that big strong person just completely break to protect themself. It tempted me so much I thought about how easy it would he to just… do it. Literally nothing could stop me.

But I wanted my wolf. I had to treat her differently. I couldn't just hurt her. I had to guide her. I had to train her. Pain and suffering were only things she did to herself. I would never be at fault, if there were no broken rules there would be no pain. I couldn’t help but feeling the world was unfair, that forcing me to choose between the options felt like there was some kind of conspiracy against me. Why can’t I have both?

But I rationalized my choice. I could always get a different thing later. I wasn’t the kind of person who wanted a mansion filled with “things”. I only wanted things that grabbed my attention. Sasha grabbed my attention. How could she not? But I wasn't sure where I might go from here, Sasha was wonderful but would I want other projects? Another pet? Something else entirely? I knew some people picked up enough things that they were wasted as art pieces. That seemed cruel, even to me. Why bother getting them if you don't want to interact with them? I saw a poor little thing locked away in a statue once and I felt so bad for it, it should have someone to play with it. You could just have a statue and it was fine. That poor girl was still just wasting her potential locked away inside that contraption. Why get a toy if you’re just going to leave it sealed away in a box? You play with toys. I did desperately want a toy to expend my more… mean energy on. Eventually. I didn't want more than one project going at a time.

I finished prepping the room and looked back at the camera. She was still sullen, I saw that she had eaten a few more pieces of chicken. I doubt she wanted to eat, but she probably didn't want to pass up the real food that was in front of her. After double checking the equipment I decided it was time to take my risk. Maybe I could lift her spirits and she would see I wasn't so bad after all.

I put my comforting face back on and peaked out of the door and into the den. "Sasha? How are you doing sweetheart." She looked at me and acknowledged I had said something but didn't speak. "You can talk as much as you want right now sweetheart, I will tell you when the collar is back on."

She gave me a soft sigh. "What do you want?" It wasn't an angry question. She didn't sound rude. Our conversation had just taken the wind out of her sails and she obviously just wanted to be left alone.

I walked over to her and sat down in front of the cage, just barely out of reach. "I think I have something for you that you'll really like. And if you feel like working with me just a little bit you get to leave the cage for a little while."

She visibly perked up when she heard she might get to leave the cage. She had been inside of it for days. But it was gone quickly. I saw it though, she was so tempted to say yes before even hearing what the catch could be. To just work with me so she could leave. She huffed at me. "Oh? And what do I have to give up for such V.I.P. treatment? What do you want from me this time? Going to lock those paws on again? Have you figured out a way to give me a dog tail yet?"

I had to resist the urge to laugh. If she only knew. But her comment let slip something very tantalizing to me and she didn't even know it. She was clueless about kink stuff. I had so many fun things for her to experience and she sounded like she was going to be completely clueless about it. She was living the dream of some people and she didn't even realize it. People would pay a lot of money to be in her place. Not that I wanted anyone who would pay for this.

"Sasha, I'm not attaching any strings to this. I am simply offering you some time out of your cage where you will get to see something I truly think you'll love." I could see her interest growing. "However. I have to protect myself if you are going to leave the cage. I'm not giving you the paws, but I have a few things for you to put on while we move. They will be removed in the next room. Can you work with me on that?"

The wheels turned in her head. She wanted out so badly, but she was giving up more ground. It took a minute before she spoke. "Can… I see what these things I have to put on are before I make my decision? If I can't…I'd… rather stay in here." She struggled through the last part. In a way she was giving me an ultimatum. I was obviously excited to show her something, but if I didn't offer her a concession she was going to take that away from me.

"Of course! I'll go get what we need and then you can decide." She was surprised to see how readily I agreed. I could see mental math going through her head, wondering if she had somehow made a misstep. She had in a way. Had she just agreed she had the excuse of being forced into whatever I brought her. Surely I would punish her for going back on what she agreed too. But now she got to see what she would be wearing and, after seeing it, would have to say yes. If she wanted out she had to agree to wear what she saw.

Luckily for her I wasn’t offering her anything too hard. I popped into her toy room and came back with a small armful of things. A pair of wrist cuffs, leg cuffs, a harness and a leash. It was pretty barebones.

"Before you say anything, do you want to know why I chose these specifically so you can consider it when making your decision?"

She hesitated but she wanted to understand what might happen. "Ok. What is all… this for?"

I tried to give her a reassuring smile. "The leg cuffs are to hobble your movement a bit. Until we reach the next room you can only take short steps so you can't suddenly run off or run at me. The wrist cuffs will keep your hands behind your back so you can't grab me. The harness is to lead you into the next room and the back here. Each will be removed once we are in the next room.”

I tried to make this just feel like a conversation between us. Nothing insidious. If anything I was being vulnerable. I had to explain how each piece of equipment was to stop her from hurting me. Sure, the collar worked great to make her think twice. But realistically I could only do so much to defend myself from her if she was out of her cage and unrestrained. I was at risk if she acted out. But it was a conversation that seemed to be assuring her.

“And… I’m only wearing these between the rooms. Then I get to take them off?”

“Except the harness. But that harness isn’t a restraint exactly, its a safety tool. Not only for me, it’s for you as well and you’ll understand it when you see what I want to show you.” There were technically other options than the harness, but it was a safety tool for her. Plus it would be good for her to get used to wearing it.

"I… I'll put them on. Please let me leave the cage for a little while." She was extra polite, I hadn't even needed to ask for it.

I walked her through what to do. I handed her one piece at a time as well as the locks that were meant to be attached. First was the harness. She got it on mostly by herself, but she needed to come near the bars so I could adjust it. I ran my thumb over a part on the back and felt the pieces lock together. I had always had an interest in fun gear, but the things I could buy now still surprised me.

I let her put the cuffs on herself. First her legs. She had a small moment of hesitation as she snapped the locks shut. The soft click seemed very loud to both of us. She didn’t have the keys to them, I was holding them for now. Unlike the harness or the cage or the doors the cuffs had visible locks that required a key. She gave the chain connecting the cuffs a bit of a pull to test how strong it was.

“Feel free to stand and stake some steps, so you know how it’ll feel.” It was cute watching her trying to stand up, she really had no idea what to do with her feet so close together. She used the bars to just pull herself up and take a few shuffling steps. I gave her another smile, I was having a lot of fun. “Do you want some help with the other cuffs? It can be hard when you can’t see what you’re doing.”

“No. I can do it myself.” She sounded a bit embarrassed and irritated. It was adorable. She was acting so independent, she didn’t want help. Of course all that independence was accomplishing was her locking herself away. I liked it this way. It only helped me when she did things to herself. From punishments to rewards everything was because of what she was doing, it was out of my hands.

It took a minute or two of some awkward flailing but I finally heard the soft click of the locks shutting. She was restrained now. I examined my beautiful wolf. It took her a moment to realize it, she was testing the restraints and wasn’t paying attention to me. She blushed a bit when she realized I was looking her over. But she could no longer cover herself. She had given up covering herself surprisingly quickly. After the first day she had stopped trying to cover self at all. But now she was shifting uncomfortably under my gaze, she wanted to cover up but she no longer could.

“You’re very beautiful Sasha.” It was the only thing I was thinking at the time. Sasha was gorgeous. But I was a little surprised that she flinched at my comment. It wasn’t surprising that she didn’t want to hear that from me right now. But it felt like I hit a nerve. I knew enough about Sasha. I knew about her life, her studies and her various other activities. But the people I hired to bring her to me told me they didn’t find any dating history when they were making me a list of people who would notice her disappearance the most.

I mulled it over in my head a bit and mused out loud. “Sasha, has no one ever said that to you before?”

“Can I please leave the cage now? You said I could if I put all of this on and I did.” She was trying to change the subject. She wouldn’t look at me. I found something new I could use. Not something scary to use against her. Something soft and nice. Something she obviously didn’t want to hear, but something I was sure she had always wanted to hear.

“Of course Sasha. Please stand away from the door.” Things became tense between us the moment I unlocked the cell. I was open, but she was too restrained to do much even if she wanted to attack me. I walked in confidently and attached the leash to the ring on the front of her harness. “Follow me. I’ll be walking slowly, try to stay far enough away that the leash stays taut.”

She was visibly more relaxed when she left the cage. It gave me mixed feelings. I loved to see her feel calm and relaxed, but I wanted the cage to be a safe place for rest. But obviously I did something wrong, it wasn’t a relaxing place for her right now. I’d have to consider how to change that.

Restrained or not, she wanted more freedom to move. It wasn’t too far to get to the next room, it was a slow walk though. It’s not like the chain hobbled her, she had enough space to walk slowly. But if she moved too fast she ran the risk of falling over without her arms to stop her from hitting the ground.

“You ready to see my surprise? Or has this been enough already?” I had my hand on the handle, but I was giving her a chance to go back to her cage.

“I-I’m ready.” Her breath caught in her throat. She had no idea what she was going to see. Obviously my ideas of what fun and enjoyable were seemed to be different than what her ideas of them were. For all she knew I had just lied to her and led her into a trap, making her tie herself up just for my own amusement.

“Ok, let’s go in.” I opened the door and walked in, giving the leash a bit of a tug when she hesitated to follow me. I wasn’t sure what her reaction to the room was going to be. But it surprised us both.

“Wow.”

0 notes