#her side was knows as the greens because she basically weaponized the color. I image it became her favourite too
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Hello, I would like to know some headcanons of Rhaenyra and Alicent, the black queen and the green queen, things like their favorite colors and food, their personal relationships and which father they looked like the most.Did they really get along in the past? Does Alicent always hate her? Were they envious of each other? Which was the most intelligent and beautiful?
hello and thank you for your ask! I'm really digging their rivalry and dynamic and lord knows how much I like to think about the short lived days when they were getting along.
Before starting let me disclaimer: these are just my headcanons. Obviously anyone can disagree and have different interpretations. These are just what I have in mind for these two.
bk Rhaenyra & bk Alicent headcanons/dynamic
food wise I don't have much to say much because I barely pay attention to asoiaf meals but with no proof other than my gut instinct, I feel like Rhaenyra has a serious case of a sweet tooth. Girly loves anything that's on the sweet aide. Meanwhile I think Alicent might have been into some spicy food, both to be contradictory and because she grew to enjoy it.
Did they really get along in the past?
We know from f&b that for a short period of time things were okay between the two. Rhaenyra celebrated when her father got married and Alicent kissed her and called her daughter. So safe to say that's a nice start. We have to keep in mind however that Alicent was only 18 and Rhaenyra was 9. Getting along with that age difference would differentiate compared to how it'd be of they were in the same age range.
Did Alicent always hate her?
This might be a hot take but no, I don't think Alicent always hated her. As funny as it is to poke fun at her having a beef with a child (which she did), i think the hate Alicent grew to have wasn't there from the start.
This is the section we get from f&b:
The amity between Her Grace and her stepdaughter had proved short-lived, for both Rhaenyra and Alicent aspired to be the first lady of the realm…and though the queen had given the king not one but two male heirs, Viserys had done nothing to change the order of succession.
The Princess of Dragonstone remained his acknowledged heir, with half the lords of Westeros sworn to defend her rights.
^ This paragraph comes after being told of Alicent giving birth to Aegon, Helaena and Aemond and we find out that in 109 AC Otto who was a hand at the time pushed so far for the "issue" of succession that he was stripped of his chain of office.
This happened a year before Aemond was born, so on terms of timeline I think that's when the "getting along" period run out. I can go into more details into what I believed happened but to keep it short; Helaena was a suitable potential bride for Aegon II. if Rhaneyra wasn't in the picture, Aegon would be the heir, with Helaena most likely his future bride and that would be Alicent's happy end. However, Viserys persisted in keeping Rhaenyra as his heir - even after Alicent gave him Helaena. Alicent could have thought that maybe Viserys simply didn't want Rhaenyra for Aegon for x delulu reasons and thought by giving him a daughter it'd get him to finally see her vision that her son should be the heir since he now has a future bride to be match with.
Viserys' insistence was what set her off. And because it's Westeros and blame always goes on women, in Alicent's twisted mind it was the 12-year-old Rhaenyra who was at fault for being favored.
Does that sound logical? no. But Alicent is a very hypocritical character
were they envious of each other?
In the section I quoted we're old that "both Rhaenyra and Alicent aspired to be the first lady of the realm" and while I can definitely see this developing into a rivalry when Rhaenyra is a teenager. I cannot envision 12 yr Rhaneyra trying to top Queen Alicent in public image.
We know that Rhaenyra was already a very beautiful child who grew into an even more beautiful woman. 12 year of age for Westeros probably counts as a "blooming" age where girls grow into womanhood. So the attention Rhaenyra already had takes a different direction and ofc Alicent is jealous because she's only a human and her stepdaughter's existence pisses her off by that point; her husband is set on keeping her as his heir, everyone sings praises for her only for existing and now they also start desiring her.
in Alicent's mind it's illogical (along with other more insulting phrases) so she tried to compete with working on her own image even more. And of course Rhaenyra eventually noticed it and because they were already in a bad place nothing would keep her from fighting back. But I truly believe their early years of the so called "competition" was Alicent's one-sided beef.
Which was the most intelligent and beautiful?
Most beautiful was hands down Rhaenyra. We have so many moments where her beauty was brought up. If there was even the tiniest of chances of Alicent being more attractive the narrators of f&b wouldn't have missed out. They already attempted something when Rhaenyra gained weight due to her pregnancies and Alicent remained slim.
Still doesn't change the fact that all the songs, titles and fighting was done for Rhaenyra.
Now intellectually, that's a bit of a challenge. I adore Rhaenyra but we never had the opportunity to see her in action.
She made some smart choices when Viserys started getting sicker and she opted for her own people to take care of him (it showed her observation and understanding that something was stirring) but when the war was started she was already so emotionally beat up due to her miscarriage and then lucerys death... And it never got better because her children started dying.
She didn't have the opportunity to shine because emotionally she was getting multiple hits and she was a person acting more on emotion than sense.
So, I don't know. On the other hand, Alicent was smart enough to know to take advantages of moments she could twist in her favor (like Viserys death), she knew instilling hatred for Rhaenyra into her children's minds would pay off, and she knew the spot to hit her step daughter when she'd try to harm her public image. So safe to say the woman wasn't dumb.
Of course Rhaenyra gave back as much as she took. So I truly do think with a clear mind she could show to be smarter. When it comes down to it, Rhaneyra is a very emotional person (hence naturally more vulnerable), whereas Alicent is a guarded person, acting on logic and ambition.
#ask reply#canon alicent hightower#canon rhaenyra targaryen#f&b meta#my headcanons#Alicent vs Rhaenyra#^ none of these are about hotd btw#oh also I forgot to include fav color but I think Rhaenyra would have loved the Targaryen colors back & red#and maybe gold because it reminded her both of her beloved Syrax and her dearest uncle Daemon who dressed in gold & silver#as for Alicent we all know she's petty so she'd stick with the green dress she wore at her wedding anniversary#her side was knows as the greens because she basically weaponized the color. I image it became her favourite too#(small note: I haven't forgotten your other ask! I'm planning to answer it soon ♥)
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Ok I had a cool Idea about a dp x dc au that i want to throw out here.
The story takes place after the show. Everyone is in their early-mid twenties, (I'm thinking the Trio is around 22-23 and Jazz 26-27, depending), Everything that happened in the show happened here. It's been over five years now and Team Phantom is a well-oiled machine of ghost kick-assery.
The Drs Fenton are retired from the ghost hunting business. Inventing new gadgets and theories is their game and they enjoy it. They have gladly passed the torch to their two kids that they are so so proud of. (Maddie insists that they call at least once a week to chat).
Everyone has stuck together. Amity is healthier (ghost-wise) and is particularly peaceful. The gang goes to the same college (take your pick, i prefer Gotham thanks to ghosty biz), and realize just how much their ghostly know-how is needed outside of Amity. (Maybe Gotham calls in a favor and asks them to [spiritually] clean up her streets to help with the strain of everything?).
Team Phantom comes out of retirement to address the spiritual turmoil, hunt down naughty ghost, help the dearly departed to the other side, and steal mementos, haunted artifacts, and other dangerous occult items best left to the dead. The more morally-grey parts of the job force the Team into stealth mode. They work mostly at night but can work during the day depending on the mission. In order to stay anonymous they have motorcycles (with their assigned colors, the sporty kind) with helmets. (I'm imaging so many motorcycle chasing scenes. Maybe the Fentons invent a ghost whip that snags ghosts mid-chase? That sounds cool).
It's easy to get what they need between Sam's and Danny's wealth, Tucker's programming skill, Danny's engineering skills, Jazz's organizational skills, and Sam's ability to see the big picture. It's just like old times.
In a sense they make themselves a superhero group. To everyone else, however, they have come out of nowhere and are way to skilled to be newbies. It has the bats and other heroes scratching their heads. Shenanigans ensue. Constantine loves them and loathes them in the same breath. The Bats are running in circles because How do they keep getting away?
Everyone gets a superhero identity:
Danny: Sticks with Phantom. I know, boring, but no one outside of Amity really knows about him. (I'm thinking an info blockade from the government like in so many fics). He specializes in all the ghostly, magical parts of their exploits. Anything that needs to be done regarding ectoplasm and weird symbols is his business. Also is the only one able to make chemicals needed for their weapons and handle a hammer for repairs to equipment. I imagine him in either a black trench coat or motorcycle jacket with combat boots, black jeans, and regular black t-shirt. He wears goggles like Maddie's. (Like mother, like son). They make him look unhinged.
Sam: I'm leaning towards the name Thorn? She's the sharpshooter. The muscle. She can and will crack your head between her thighs and possesses 90% of the trio's impulse control (in most situations). I imagine her in knee-high, laced up, goth boots, leggings and killer skirt with a leather jacket and crop top. Her colors are still black, purple, and green. She is SWOLE. I love her.
Tucker: Now, I'm not sure what his name would be but he's basically the field tech. Having an on-site hacker is super useful. He's got twenty ways to get into every building. Security means nothing to him. He's great at stealth (not counting Danny cause ghost powers) and is great at thinking on his feet. His color are black and orange. Instead of wearing his red beret and yellow shirt duo he wears sneakers, tech glasses, a motorcycle jacket with a hoodie attached.
Jazz: Prophet is her codename. She's the lady in the chair. Tucker may make the programs that run the computer, but only Jazz can run them efficiently. She gets them where they need to go, gets them out of tough situations, gets info, assists Tucker, and so much more. Also, I want her to fly a ghost jet. I dont know why but she would be so cool doing it.
#dp x dc prompt#dc x dp#dp x dc#had ideas for sketches but they're not coming out rn so i thought id throw this out here in the wild#I may add the art later if i can get it out so stay tuned#Also had a cool scene in my head I may write out later#anyone is feel to run hog wild with this#if anyone writes anything tho please tag me!
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Review: Miraculous "Queen Bee" Fashion doll from Playmates Toys
Every year, my family does a "Secret Santa" gift exchange on Christmas Eve, but considering half of us can't do the shopping ourselves, pretty much everyone knows who has who, so this year, we called it the "Not-So-Secret Santa", and we all knew who drew who.
My 5 year old brother got me, and I got a Queen Bee doll, and my stepdad picked out one with the best face.
Queen Bee retails for $16.99 USD.
Queen Bee has the standard box style, with an image of herself on the side, and a message reading "Be Strong, Be Brave, Be MIRACULOUS!" on the back, along with pictures of Ladybug, Cat Noir, Rena Rouge, Queen Bee, and Marinette against a pink background.
Queen Bee comes with three accessories: Pollen, her Kwami, her Miraculous, a bee comb (which is actually a clip), and her weapon, a spinning top with a string attached (which doesn't actually spin).
Queen Bee comes wearing a one piece black and yellow suit, and plain black ankle boots.
I think the printing on her suit is pretty good, slightly crooked, but neat enough to not bother me.
Her boots are the same mold as several of the other heroes, such as Ladybug, Lucky Charm Ladybug, Cosmobug (basically all the Ladybugs), Rena Rouge, and Bunnyx. I noticed they're a softer plastic than most of my more recent dolls, who have very hard plastic shoes.
She has 15 points of articulation, with movement at her:
Head
Shoulders
Double-jointed elbows
Hips
Double-jointed knees
Her joints are nice and tight, and she feels quite solid! After several looser, hollow feeling Miraculous dolls, Queen Bee is a breath of fresh air to handle.
Queen Bee has blue eyes, pale pink lips, and wears a black mask with yellow trim, which is molded and painted onto her face. I think she bears a close resemblance to her character in the series. Not quite as close as Vesperia to her doll, but still very close. I really like her face!
Her head is very round and large, especially in comparison to the other Miraculous dolls, but I feel like Queen Bee has a rather large head in the series, so it's pretty much accurate.
Queen Bee has long blonde hair styled in a high ponytail and gelled into a large ringlet, with two pieced pulled back, and two tendrils framing her face.
It's a touch messy at the top, where it was pulled aside in the box, but I'm very happy with how the ringlet looks. My particular doll has a tighter curl, which I actually prefer the look of.
You can also see her Miraculous, a bee comb/clip, with yellow "prongs", and a white bee with black stripes. Vesperia's Miraculous uses the same mold, but the colors are swapped. I slipped it onto one of the sides of hair that are pulled pack, because I didn't want to risk messing up her ponytail or curl. It's very large in comparison to her head, but if I'm being honest, it would be more difficult to handle if it was any smaller.
Queen Bee's spinning top is yellow with a black stripe and a hook for her finger, and a black string attached to it, along with a loop for her hand.
Something I immediately noticed was the length of the string. It's much longer than both Vesperia's top and my sister's Queen Bee from last year's top.
I can definitely see the longer string being more fun for kids to play with, but it's now too long to put the loop on the string through the hook on the top to have it sit around her waist. It sits more at her thigh now without some manipulation (like in my first image). Newer Ladybugs also have a longer yoyo string, but her yoyo can be winded up to fit better.
I do prefer the longer string to the shorter string, but it would be nice if it were an adjustable length.
And here's her Kwami, Pollen! I think she's pretty cute. I've mentioned before that I don't like most of the Playmates Miraculous doll's Kwamis, but Pollen and Plagg are exceptions. She's mostly yellow, with black trim and yellow-green irises with blue sclera.
Her sculpting is pretty nice, she has a little smile, but it's unpainted, like Tikki, but she has enough painted details to not look like an afterthought.
My only major complaint is that I can't get her to balance (she's laying down in this photo). Other than that, she's a fun addition to Queen Bee.
Overall, I'm very pleased with Queen Bee. She feels very solid, with tight joints, looks quite accurate to her television counterpart, and all of her accessories look great. I don't find myself wishing she came with more or that her accessories are disappointing, like some of the other Miraculous dolls I've reviewed. I give Queen Bee an A+!
#miraculous dolls#miraculous ladybug#playmates toys#miraculous#playmates miraculous dolls#dolls#fashion dolls#queen bee doll#queen bee
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A Better Way
Because I am unhappy with our beloved wife’s death I decided to write my own.
That being said...SPOILERS!!!!!!!!
I wrote this based on and referenced canon events in the game. If you wanna skip this and wait for the game’s official release in a few days I completely understand.
Alcina’s form trembles atop the pile of rubble she created during their fall. Somehow that lowlife Ethan survived the fall as well. Fuck, what does it take to kill that man? Even in her monstrous form, she failed to stop a flimsy little mortal man. Is he really that powerful? Or is she simply the weak little rat Mother Miranda always said she was? The answer is obvious now.
Alcina knows this is it for her. There is no winning or even recovering from this. She’s lost way too much blood and is in no state to replenish herself. She hears him stumble to his feet somewhere beside her and grab his gun. It doesn’t bother her anymore. Even now as she turns to stare down the barrel of a shotgun she knows she deserves what’s to come. She failed in her task.
Everyone that depends on her is now in grave danger and it’s all her fault. Because she wasn’t good enough to protect her family from a single human man.
Her family....
Images of her beautiful daughters' lifeless piles of ash lying abandoned on the floor like yesterday’s garbage hurt her more than any weapons could hope to. What kind of mother let her daughters, her own flesh and blood, get slaughtered because she was too incompetent to take care of a little pest? A failure of a mother. Their blood is on her hands, not Ethan’s.
Mother Miranda will have to make the call to Heisenberg to let him know why Ethan is on his way to the factory. And about them. After everything that this woman has done for her and her family and this is how Alcina repays her? How pathetic of her. And her little brother as well. She’s failed everyone she cared about on this god-forsaken earth.
Alcina sighs as Ethan cocks his gun and inches closer and closer to her. After letting out a long exhale she opens her eyes and stared down at him. He’s in shit-shape but he’ll survive. Suddenly that doesn’t sound so bad. If he can finish the job, at least.
“Do it,” she whispers, and her voice cracks. Alcina will not cry in front of this vile creature; she refuses. “I am nothing without the love of my daughters. I’d rather die than live a day without their presence.”
She could have sworn she saw a hint of remorse flash across his bloodied features before he grounded himself once more. He probably didn’t even believe her. Why would he? All he sees is a hideous beast that needs to slain. Not a broken-hearted mother mourning the loss of her darling children. No one has ever seen them for who they really are. Pity.
Her head hangs and she catches a glimpse of his shadow, his arms raising.
“I deserve this,” Alcina thinks to herself.
BANG!
Karl Heisenberg was sitting in his office, legs stretched atop his desk glazing over files. Pretending to work so no one would bother him. He was so lost in his own little fantasy land that the phone ringing next to him nearly started him out of his chair.
He let out a dramatic groan, knowing full well it was Alcina calling to continue their petty argument from earlier. A chuckle escaped his mouth remembering how he told her to drop dead before hanging up.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and begrudgingly brought the phone to his ear.
“Didn’t I tell you earlier to-“
“Heisenberg!” Mother Miranda’s voice spoke. The man nearly choked on air when he heard her voice.
“Miranda! Apologies, I thought it was Alcina calling me.”
Mother Miranda paused, but only for a moment. Her tone was as it always was; calm with a hint of disappointment. “That is what I am calling about, actually. Alcina failed to keep Mr. Winters under control and he escaped. I can only assume he is making his way over to you now.”
“Alcina and the girls, are they-“
“No longer assets we need to be concerned about. The Ceremony will continue on schedule with or without them, is that understood?”
He was completely floored. His beloved, pain in the ass, older sister is dead. And what of his adorable little gremlin nieces? They’re gone too? How can Miranda possibly expect him to just-“
“Is that understood, Heisenberg?”
He cleared his throat and nodded as if she could see him. “Of course, Miranda. The preparation will continue as-“
She hung up.
Heisenberg put the phone down and buried his head in his hands. He didn’t feel anything. Only numbness. The longer he sat there thinking about them the harder to became to think about the stupid ceremony. Or that human parasite on its way to him.
His anger got the best of him and he slammed his fists down on the desk. “To hell with Mother Miranda.”
He called one of his lackeys in and filled them in on the basics of the situation, warning him about Ethan mostly. Heisenberg was to depart for Castle Dimitrescu as soon as possible. Let the lycans have fun with their new incoming chew toy until his return.
The ride up to the castle was ghostly. He expected to hear the girls’ laughter as he entered the main doors as they always do when he visits. They were always happy to see their dear Uncle Heisenberg.
Cassandra’s ash pile was the first to be found. Simply because it was out in the open by the entrance leading down to the basement. It was obviously her because the smell of her lilac perfume was still infused in her ashes. He kneeled beside it and stroked it gently between his fingers, whispering apologies and words of comfort. Both for him and Cassandra. Then he took an old pendant necklace from his pocket and ever so gently, scooped some of her ashes into it.
“There you are, Cass. Safe and sound with me.”
On a hunch he decided to look around the basement before searching the rest of the castle for Bela and Daniela. He already knew where Alcina was resting. Bela was indeed laid in one of the extraction rooms of the basement. She collapsed behind a pillar as if she were trying to hide or shield herself. Heisenberg did the same thing and scooped up her ashes in his necklace, this time kissing the pads of his fingers and laying them on the ash pile.
Daniela was next. She was in the library, literally on the other side of the door. Heisenberg cursed himself for unintentionally spreading her ashes as he opened the door and nearly stepping on the poor girl. He stayed with her longer because of this, whispering a thousand apologies to her. The way she was laid down made Heisenberg think Daniela tried to escape and came really close to doing so.
A few tears streamed down his cheeks as she gathered her ashes in his pendant. That man will pay for what he’s done. For taking such innocent souls from the world that had so much more in store for them.
His beloved sister was last. She wasn’t where he thought she would be, which he found odd, but taking a closer look around it all made sense. The damn burst behind his eyes and he openly cried for the first time in decades.
“Fuck,” he sobbed, soothing his sister’s large heap of ashes. “I didn’t mean literally, Alcina.”
He grabbed a fist full of ash and clutched it to his chest. “I’m so sorry, sister. I should have helped you trapped that rat when he escaped me the first time. But I won’t let that happen again.”
Just like with the girls, he scooped up some of her ashes in the pendant. But this time instead of putting it back around his neck he gave it a few delicate shakes, mixing the four of them together as one.
“There. Now you’ll always be together; in this eternity and the next.”
He stayed there next to her for the rest of the night. They talked for hours (though it was a one-sided conversation) and watched the stars flicker into existence as the sunset. When there were enough of them out he pointed out the various constellations to her. The entire night went on like this; acting as if nothing had changed since they were children.
The sun was just starting to rise over the grassy green hills. Radiant shades of pink and gold colored the sky like never before. It was almost like looking at heaven itself. Early birds sang their song of the morning as they flew swiftly across the sky to wake the rest of the woodland creatures and the residents of the village.
Heisenberg exhaled a shaky breath. “I better be off, Sissy. Miranda will have my head if I don’t deal with that rat before the ceremony. But don’t you worry, I’ll take care of all four of you once this shitstorm has passed. You’ll be given proper burials and everyone will have a chance to say goodbye.”
He could feel the tears starting to build up again. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you or the girls. You’re a royal pain in my ass, but you’re still my big sister and I love you.”
The ride back to the factory was comforting. There was still a heavy weight on his shoulders, but he never expected it to go away. It will only go away after exacting his revenge. When he finds that man, oh boy is he in for a treat. The lycans should have done some damage to him already or at least exhausted him. Ethan is weak now. It’s time to strike back.
No one harms Karl Heisenberg’s family and gets away with it.
#Lady Dimitrescu#lady Alcina#tall vampire lady#alcina dimitrescu#resident evil village#resident evil 8
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Assassin AU - Red Son’s News
Here’s another piece of this new AU idea i’ve been playing around with. It sort of serves as a basic introduction to some of the world building? I would love any feedback you guys have, as i think it feels a little rushed, as well as any questions or things you want clarified, as that will likely be the best motivation to get me to write more stuff.
________________________________________________
“Ahem.”
The gentle sound drew everyone’s attention to the doorway, where Red Son was standing rather awkwardly.
“Hi Red!” Mei chirped, “Is this a murder everyone run or a pick up noodles for me and my Mom run?”
Mei started laughing at the flushed stammer that Red Son immediately spouted, so MK did the same.
“I’m not! That’s not! It’s not!” Red Son was clearly not having an easy time understanding Mei’s form of teasing. Which, to be fair, MK had needed Mei to explain she was teasing to know to look for it and respond to it, so…
“ANYWays,” Red Son huffed, fixing his hair, “I’ve designed to come down to this peasant shop,” He paused to glare at MK and Mei who had been mimicking his patented ‘Peasant’ stance, “because it has come to my attention that, that there are things you are unaware of that I cannot in good conscious continue to allow you to be woefully oblivious to.”
He was met with blank stares and multiple blinks.
“Umm, come again?” Tang asked from his place at the counter.
“I.. That is there is…” Red Son was pacing back and forth, waving his hands, clearly frustrated, but unsure how to continue. “Look, you know what? I’ll just show you.” Red Son slammed to door shut, both locking it and flipping the OPEN sign, despite Pigsy’s protest in the background. He then pulled out a small square device that could almost be a phone.
MK’s blood ran cold.
Red Son flicked it on and the room darkened while simultaneously filling with a 3-Dimensional projection of multicolored webs and lines connecting clusters of colored cubes in various spaces.
Tang put down his bowl of noodles as everyone stared.
MK was staring with everyone else, but inside he was panicking. Why had Red Son brought this, why was he showing them the—
“This is what is commonly referred to as the BlackNet.” Red Son took a deep breath, as if steadying himself, “It’s got a lot of names, the DarkNet, the Demon Web, the UnderNet, the Assassins’ Web, the Hit List,” Each name had MK’s friends growing paler, “but regardless it serves as a… compilation of sorts. Anyone who’s anyone has an entry and profile here. And, more importantly at the moment.” Red Son took another steadying breath, “Is this.”
He walked forward, tapping on a small cluster of white cubes. They expanded revealing images of various people, all obviously dragons, or of dragon decent. And there in the midst of them—
“Wait! Is that me?” Mei was at Red Son’s side in an instant, staring up at the projected image of her, laughing next to her bike. “I don’t remember taking this!” She reached up to poke her image before Red Son could stop her, and the image shifted to the side as a whole profile spilled out.
Name. Age. Address. Heritage. Fighting Proficiency. Preferred Weapons. Known Special Moves. Awards. Skill Sets. Regular Routines. Relations. Categories of information spelling out Mei’s entire life sat there in green.
More importantly a large red CONTRACT, with a fifty thousand Yuan posted underneath it, glowed on the other side.
“I think,” Pigsy growled coming around the counter, “That you need to start talking faster.”
“I told you,” Red Son responded, “Everyone who’s anyone is listed here. It’s a fact of life for most high-profile people, especially demons. I’ve been listed basically since I was born. Now that you peas… now that you all have gotten involved in demon affairs, and are fairly high profile at that, you’ve popped up in the listings. I didn’t think much of it, just having a listing doesn’t mean much, there are thousands, and it usually doesn’t mean much. But when this…”
He gestured vaguely to the glaring red CONTRACT that was making MK’s insides twist in a way that had him clenching his jaw to keep from snarling. “Was listed I got a notification. BECause—” Red Son immediately raised his hands to ward off Pigsy who had immediately moved into his personal space, “I have you all book marked, in case something changed. Because you’re my adversaries. But that’s when I realized despite being form a proper family Mei— Dragon Girl didn’t have a set counteroffer.”
Red Son was obviously choosing to ignore the way Mei had fake gagged at his ‘proper family’ comment because he plowed ahead. “Which brought to my attention that, as self-proclaimed ‘heroes’ you might not even be aware of the BlackNet’s existence. So. I’m rectifying that.”
“Aww Red!” Mei Cooed, “You do care!” She then glomped him causing a minor scuffle as he worked to remove her.
MK knew that his response should be to join in, but he had needed to shift his hands behind his back to disguise the way his clenched fists were shifting into claws so he would have to settle with a smile and laughter at the antics.
“Right so, just to make sure I understand this correctly.” Tang said, adjusting his glasses. “There’s an entire dark internet for demons to take out… contracts, on each other. And we’re on it. And there’s a contract out for Mei.”
“Not just demons.” Red Son scoffed, “Anyone with enough power or money or connections to be important. And Mei’s on it. As is the Blue one and Noodle Boy. You however are fine.”
“Is it a big payout?” Mei questioned, from where she was still attached to Red Son’s side.
“It is not… insubstantial.” Red Son admitted. “It appears to have been placed by someone who wants you eliminated as completion from the racing circuit. The decent sum is do to your skill with the dragon blade, as well as the difficulty of the task and the time frame, as it appears to be required to look like an accident before the West City finals next month.”
“Wait back up a minute. You’re telling me, that someone wants to have Mei killed because they don’t want her winning a race!” It was obvious Pigsy was fighting to keep his volume down.
“What! No!” Red Son shook his head. “Not killed. Well. Ok, that would likely also be acceptable, but it wasn’t specified. That would at least double the price.”
When that didn’t calm Pigsy down at all Red Son sheepishly added, “Demons and rich humans tend to be petty?”
“But it’s fine, right?” MK cut in before Pigsy could compose himself enough to open his mouth again. “Now that Red’s told us about it, we can be prepared and nothing will happen. Right?”
“You mentioned something about counteroffers?” Tang added thoughtfully.
“Yes,” Red Son nodded, “It’s a standard practice to have a counter proposal set on oneself. My family for instance has a standard Triple Each offer. Say if someone were to by some miracle managed to fulfill a contract on myself, then what ever the payout was, my family would pay triple for the head of each individual who but out the contracts, as well as the agents who collected.”
Everyone blinked at that.
“That’s. A lot of money.” Mei said slowly finally letting go of Red Son.
Red Son just nodded. “Which usual means that it’s not worth it to fulfill contracts with counteroffers.”
Another pause.
“Wait,” Tang spoke up again. “That implies you know who put out the… contracts, as well as who fulfilled them.”
“Of course.” Red Son’s voice took on it’s haughty tone again, “Basically everything in the DarkNet is public knowledge. We aren’t barbarians after all. The only things locked for most people is their own profile, easily mitigated.” He gestured to Mei’s profile still up, “And a section exclusively for agents.”
“Agent’s meaning Assassins.” Pigsy grumbled.
Red Son shrugged, “Assassins, Professional Thieves, Hit Men, Bodyguards, Hackers, Saboteurs, Con Artists. There are a lot of different types of jobs, and a lot of different types of agents.”
“But you know who put out the contracts and who accepted them?” Mei questioned, that dangerous look in her eyes as she focuses in on the CONTRACT next to her image.
“Agent’s can… basically tag that they’re interested in a contract.” Red Son confirmed, “If someone’s high profile enough, then the others leave it to them. Otherwise, it’s a first come, first serve. You just have to list proof of completion and everything owed, money, favors, items of power or value, are transferred to the agent’s account.”
“What makes an agent high profile?” Tang asked, clearly having shifted into scholar mode.
Red Son scoffed, “Being dangerous. Being someone that attempting to mess with isn’t worth it. They’re also the ones who have ‘NO HIT’ Lists.”
“Which are?” Tang pressed, glasses glinting in the light.
“A list of people they won’t fulfill contracts on.” Red Son replied, obviously slightly unnerved by Tang. “It’s the only thing better than a counter contract. There are agents good enough to not have to worry about those, because going after them is basically a death sentence, no matter how much money someone’s willing to pay out. But if a high profile agent has ‘No Hit’ list, it’s basically having one of the most dangerous people on the planet promise to make you regret every moment of your existence if you mess with someone on their list. Unofficially, anyways.”
“And all of them have one of these?”
“Most of them?” Red Son shrugged, “There’s a lot and it’s not like I’ve ever tried to contact one before. I know that they usually also have general rules attached to their profile, either things they’ve put up or general information that’s been gathered about them. A lot of them have rules against messing with kids for instance and contacting them about a job like that would probably get you killed.”
“Nobble Assassins, right.” Pigsy scoffed, moving back behind the counter. Probably to stress cook “And have we forgotten that someone wants to get rid of Mei!”
“It’s fine!” Mei chirped. “Mama’s just gonna keep this—” she snatched the small device out of Red Son’s hand, causing it to turn off and him to squawk in indignation. “And keep an eye on things. Besides, me and MK got this, right MK?”
“Right!” MK affirmed before he’s even full realized Mei has spoken. “If anyone tries anything, we’ll just whoop their but! Monkey Kid style!” He pulled out the staff and did a few swipes and poses, just to cement the energy and sentiment he was aiming to put off. It appeared to have worked because Tang laughed, and Mei cheered and Pigsy groaned about ‘mystic monkey magic’ and the atmosphere seemed to have lightened.
Although that might have been the fact that the projector had been turned off.
Mk followed his cues, keeping everyone laughing, dragging Red Son into staying to eat the noodles Pigsy had whipped up to de-stress, cracking jokes with Mei and playing up being the hero and saving the day, but it all felt… distant. Detached. Performative.
In a way it hadn’t in a long, long time.
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LoZ AU: The Courage of Running Away Supplementary Post FOUR
I think it’s four! I don’t know for sure at this point!
The next actual story post is going up right after this don’t worry
#AU August
#LoZ AU: The Courage of Running Away
So I mentioned early on that I don't think about game mechanics too hard with CoRA because it's more focused on the story
And I mentioned last post that I've been thinking about it more lately as we've been getting fight scenes lmao
I don't think as many people are interested in this but it does have a lot to do with how I'm managing what the characters can and can't do, specifically Queen Zelda, so here's an overview of what's in my head:
CoRA's game play, if it were a game, would try to marry the botw gameplay with both alttp and Age of Calamity
(why try to include something that's technically a different genre? More examples of a higher variety of characters than just Link, that's why)
The major thing this means is that all characters have both a stamina wheel and a magic meter, and the magic meter also functions like the A-move bars in aoc; if you can't do general magic you can still use it for things that take immense effort, which covers things like A-move style attacks but also probably includes shit like making a wish so hard that it comes true.
[Image Description: Part of a fake screenshot of CoRA as a game. Link is running across a green field, hard enough to sweat. He has a bright green stamina wheel by his head that’s partially depleted, twelve full hearts across the top left of the screen, and to the left of the hearts is a long thin blue meter that’s been partially depleted as well. End ID.]
(The Magic Meter is blue here because that way all three Goddess Colors are represented in Link’s personal resources.)
The magic meter can be replenished by three things: rest (both sleep and meditation), potions designed for it, and success in battle (smacking dudes in the face successfully). It cannot be replenished by food the way that stamina and hearts can but since on average most people don't use their magic every day, most people are walking around with a full meter at all times.
In other words, Queen Zelda used the equivalent of her A-move to blast Astramorus through that wall, because she could afford to do so.
That's also why she was being slightly less active in some of the other fight scenes, including why she didnt step in when Astramorus was getting slapped around by Ghirahim, because she didn't know that she COULD afford to waste an A-move when Ghirahim's rather obviously a high level threat.
She did spend one on the Silver Hinox but as anyone who's played aoc knows it tends to take more than one A-move to take out a red hinox.
There's items that draw on your magic meter and then there's items that have their own internal reserves, like the wizzrobe rods.
As for the stamina wheel, it functions more or less like the one from botw. Some people use it for different things depending on their aptitudes; Marla and most other Zora wouldn't use stamina for normal speed swimming and Rito wouldn't use it when gliding. An old man might use his stamina wheel for a trot he didn't need it for as a youth. After Marla gifts Link with one of her scales he doesn't need it for normal speed swimming either.
Generally weapons would have a more complicated durability interplay than what we see in the botw system; cheap weapons and wooden weapons would have durability that looked similar to that but metal weapons in general would never break until Link got the power gloves in Subrosia, and then they'd start wearing down more quickly and sometimes shatter after an A move. The flipside is that Link can hit harder. He CAN turn the effect of the power gloves off, which is good because he'd keep breaking cups.
The Master Sword wouldn't break at all but he's not getting it until the sequel.
The power gloves also increase Link's strength just in general and he absolutely went around Subrosia picking up huge rocks when he got them. If he wanted, he could probably go moblin tipping.
[Image Description: A blue round globe or disc, it’s unclear, labeled “Moon Pearl.” It has sparkles under its surface. End ID.]
The Moon Pearl, which is what Serenumbra used to awaken Ghirahim and summon him to where he wanted, does basically whatever I want that makes sense (if the Dungeon Master in my brain likes it that's what I go with.) It largely works in things that involve interworld travel, but it can also transform things according to reflections on their souls OR it can protect the bearer from general interdimensional shenanigans.
I actually tend to think that he hasn't fully understood what this means yet but that Ghirahim has been made slightly more "human" by having its powers worked on him. The main thing this has meant that he's already noticed is that he's been eating and sleeping, but it's also probably a factor in why he was too dazed by the process to do anything about Serenumbra right then and there.
The thing that the Scarred Woman used to summon Chekov the hinox is a Force Gem like from Four Swords Adventures, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, because if my inner gamemaster thinks she can use something she does. I think in CoRA they're basically little shards of power left in places gods and other powerful spiritual beings have trod, and they're less rare than you'd expect, because there are little gods everywhere. Serenumbra has a lower level spell of some kind that lets him use them as warp points for various purposes, hence why the Scarred Woman could put a hinox in the middle of the castle throne room with one.
[Image ID: The Scarred Woman in her fox mask holding up a small glowing green crystal with triangular sides. End ID.]
If anyone hasn't connected the dots yet, that's ALSO where the hinox Link fought in the tutorial dungeon came from. Astramorus wouldn't see this as absolving him of his own responsibility for how things played out but it's absolutely true that Serenumbra has been actively encouraging, aiding and abetting every worst impulse he's been able to catch out of Astra and has planted just as many as he's helped along.
Anyway that all got longer than I meant but it's relevant for the incoming posts, so!
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I posted 279 times in 2021
100 posts created (36%)
179 posts reblogged (64%)
For every post I created, I reblogged 1.8 posts.
I added 96 tags in 2021
#dream smp - 25 posts
#waite draws shit - 19 posts
#technoblade - 15 posts
#philza - 10 posts
#hbsmp - 7 posts
#hoisin twitter archive - 6 posts
#ill informed sword talk - 4 posts
#my beloved - 4 posts
#hell yeah hell yeah hell yeah - 3 posts
#dream mcyt - 3 posts
Longest Tag: 130 characters
#i think its because i was consuming probably about equal amounts american and british media while i was relearning how to not talk
My Top Posts in 2021
#5
sick and tired of pig/human buff/noodle techno design discourse i wanna know everyone’s takes on what The Fuck is going on with his legs
so like presumably we’ve got red pants/shorts and then the uhhhhhhh chain mail/fishnet/checkered patterned whatever and like either maybe two toned boots or hes got like, leg? warmers? anyways
i feel like, i should be pretty confident that the bottom black part is shoes right?
but
they don’t have any soles????
like, they’re the same as his hands hooves are just out; biblically accurate techno doesn’t wear shoes? you’re telling me this man has 4 distinct leg sections and none of them are shoes? king how many layers of legwarmers do you need?
but
that isn’t fucking all-
id like to direct everyone’s attention back to the “pants”
are they pants? are we sure? because they’re a very similar color to his coat
“but waite, they’re clearly separated from the coat by the trim“
oh are they?? are you fucking sure???? dear reader have you ever noticed that the trim just stops at the front? it doesn’t wrap around
are His PANts attached?!!? To hIS coat? is IT a jumpSUit???
whatisthetruthimlosingitoverhere
716 notes • Posted 2021-08-13 08:27:48 GMT
#4
Taking a quick break from spreading rapier technoblade propaganda to instead spread messer nihachu propaganda
What is a messer?
Its a big knife, just a hugeass fucking knife, sword sized but knife shaped which is the vital distinction. Messer is like literally german for knife.
C!niki should have one and heres why i think that:
German
I think this one is self explanatory
The history of the messer
So basically messers exist to exploit this lil old loophole in 15th century german laws where most people aren't allowed to make or have swords but they are allowed knives. So a messer, in a very "behold a man" sort of way, is technically a knife bc of the construction of the handle and only having the one sharp side. (I think there's more minutia to that distinction but im too lazy to look it up rn, handle, sharp on one side is the broad strokes)
So anyway remember how during the Schlatt administration Niki specifically got her taxes raised n stuff? Now ok hear me out, hc that at some point during that time period Niki also gets disallowed from owning weapons for like, probably similar petty reasons to the taxes so she just, gets a Really Big fucking knife and goes on her merry way.
Knife like cooking like baking? Slice bread in bakery with giant knife?
C!niki is a baker so having her weapon b kind of tangentially culinary is p neat i think. Also the mental image of niki like, serving pie w her Huge Knife amuses me.
In conclusion niki nihachu deserves a giant knife, thank u for coming to my ted talk
1196 notes • Posted 2021-08-12 05:30:42 GMT
#3
So like, the new skin Phil's got on namemc huh? I know that logically probably I should be going buckwild over like is this another death flag? Wings got blown up canon??
But I will be completely honest, I just can't unsee the black as one big shirt and the green as overalls and thats the thing that my brain has latched onto today
1479 notes • Posted 2021-02-24 08:05:22 GMT
#2
"Don't talk to me, or walmart me, or Philza Minecraft, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog, or my dog ever again" -Techno probably, canon killing the next sorry fucker who tries bothering the tundra cottagecore retirement bois
1862 notes • Posted 2021-01-10 08:17:46 GMT
#1
I love bird mumza as much as the next guy however if there is not enough panda!death goddess art out there I guess I will make it myself.
Well yknow,, shes American so shes got the right to uh, b-bear arms?
3751 notes • Posted 2021-06-05 06:55:33 GMT
Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →
#my 2021 tumblr year in review#your tumblr year in review#Heard it here first boys all i know is dsmp lukewarm takes
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Pry Open The Cage Bars (You’ll Find Me There)
Saskia x Red Daughter / Supercorp The 100 AU
Father leads her past the cages where dark shapes are huddled. Weapons, that’s what Father says they are. Children taken by the Commander, twisted and broken until there is nothing human left in them.
One of the dark figures in the cages shifts, and Kasnia pauses, her curiosity getting the better of her. She approaches the cage cautiously just as the shadows shift and the dim light reveals a child.
She is smaller than Kasnia, likely younger, and so covered in blood and dirt that it’s almost impossible to tell what color her complexion is. However, Kasnia can see a pair of bright green eyes peering at her from behind matted black curls.
Kasnia doesn’t come closer, afraid of what this ‘weapon’ would do. But she smiles tentatively at the other girl, “Hello.”
The other girl doesn’t respond, and Kasnia wonders if she can speak Trigedasleng. She wonders if the other child can even speak at all. The thought saddens her, and she reaches into her pocket.
Chocolate is her favorite treat, and a rarity. Father so rarely comes to Mt. Weather, but when he does and if he hears Kasnia has been good, he gives her a bar of her favorite chocolate. That makes it even more special to Kasnia.
Carefully, she breaks the chocolate bar in half. When she’s sure the other girl won’t attack her, she reaches through the cage bars and offers half of her chocolate to the little girl in the cage
“It’s my favorite.” Kasnia tells her in Trigedasleng.
“Kasnia!!”
From the end of the dim hallway, Father barks out her name sharply. It startles her, and she drops the chocolate into the dirt inside the cage. “Coming, nontu.”
Kasnia gives the other child an apologetic look before trotting over to Father. He looks at her oddly for a moment, and she shifts uncomfortably under his intense glare. When Father’s back is turned, just before she follows him out the door, she turns and gives the little girl a sad smile and one last little wave.
In the dark of the cages, a small hand picks up the chocolate from the dirt, and green eyes watch the door long after Kasnia leaves.
Basically, this AU was born because Brenda Strong is in both The 100 and Supergirl, and I’m thinking “oh perfect, let’s make Nia Lillian”, so I blame the excellent Miss Strong for this.
This AU actually begins in the Ark. When twins are born in the Ark, one is usually floated, or released into space. It’s considered a necessary measure of survival to conserve oxygen on the Ark, and a warning to those who would keep more than one child.
Twin baby girls are born to Alura and Zor El. To the family, it’s both a blessing and a curse.
Alura, however, refuses to have her second daughter floated, so they built a small capsule that could propel both Zor El and the baby to earth. They have no idea what would be waiting for them there, but it has to be better than the horrible death that she was marked for.
The capsule, by chance, lands in Azgeda territory. Zor El is killed upon impact, but the baby survives.
In Azgeda, Nia is Queen. She rules with an iron fist and maintains power through fear. More than that, she presents herself as a goddess, making her people see her as a diety – someone untouchable and fierce, someone they cannot defy, someone they will kill and die for.
She has two sons, Lex and Roan. Lex was the golden child, and Roan was the screw up
This is younger Lex, because I just cannot see Jon Cryer!Lex as Azgeda
Lex was beginning to come to his own. He had changed his name to Thorul and was amassing a following of Azgeda
He presents himself originally as a sort of rising hero for the Azgeda.
He convinces people that the Azgeda are a wild force of nature that are being restrained by the Coalition that is being forced on them by Lexa. He convinces many of them that they don’t need the Heda.
Queen Nia tolerates this for now because she resents being forced into a treaty with Lexa, and Lex is helping her curry favor with the people, and Nia needs her people on her side. However, she knows they have to stay int he Coalition because its forces are 13 clan-strong and too massive even for the Azgeda to overcome
Not only that, but a problem is threatening her image as a deity. Her husband had a dalliance with a Trikru woman, which resulted in the birth of twin girls. (yeah, this is a little far-fetched, I know, but stay with me)
Nia had her husband killed, and had the mother of his children tracked down and killed too. She had word put out that her husband died in a raid.
Both infants were seized and brought to her. She had them both examined, and found out that one of them was a Nightblood, and the other was not.
Now, Nia already had a Nightblood whom she kept secret in captivity, Ontari. She was trained day and night to be a bloodthirsty psychopath, deliberately isolated from people so she would not develop compassion or loyalty to anyone but her Mistress who fed and clothed her.
So, Nia sent the Nightblood twin, Saskia to be raised in isolation with Ontari. They are kept separately, so that no bond might form between them, and they are pitted against each other to sharpen both their skills.
The other twin, she was going to kill, but Roan stayed her hand before she was able to kill the infant.
“She can be useful to you, my Queen. Your husband is dead, but this, his child, is alive. She will be a symbol of hope for the people. That life is born anew even in Death.”
So the other twin, Lena, is kept in Azgeda with Nia. She’s touted as Nia’s (and her husband’s) daughter, born after her husband’s death, a holy symbol of Nia’s fertility and hope for the future. It adds a Madonna-esque patina to Nia’s image as a fearsome queen-goddess.
Lena grows up in the halls of the Azgeda, with a dominating and controlling Mother, and a brother revered throughout the land as a savior of the Azgeda.
And another brother Roan, who’s rarely home because his mother sends him on scouting missions and assassinations, so he can make himself “useful”
Lena and Roan are not close, the Azgeda regard such bonds as weakness. But there’s a sense of kinship between them – the two runts of the litter that Nia barely tolerates.
Lena knows nothing of her own sister, Saskia, held in captivity in the harshest lands of the Azgeda.
Lena’s brothers, though they rarely visit, are her only source of solace from Nia
Lex, who now calls himself Thorul kom Azgeda, brings home a fascinating piece of machinery – something none of the Azgeda have ever seen, let alone know how to operate – and teaches his bright little sister how to use it. Lena takes to it quickly, not knowing that it was given to Lex by the Mountain People, the enemy (whom he has made a deal with)
Roan always brings Lena back some pelt he got one of his hunts, or some shiny new thing he bartered for from the Trikru, or once a dagger he whittled himself.
Both brothers, though, are not any less culpable for Saskia’s fate.
Lex knows exactly where she’s kept. He doesn’t like her – she’s too unpredictable, too insolent to be malleable. He agrees with his mother that a cage is the best place to keep her
Roan doesn’t know where she is, but the knowledge of her existence eats at him, especially whenever he sees Lena.
He’s the one who eventually frees Saskia, and he gets himself exiled for it (but more on that later)
Now, back to the baby in the capsule that landed in Azgeda territory. She was retrieved by some Azgeda and taken to Lex. At that time, he was making a deal with the Mountain People, and he saw his opportunity in this little sky-girl.
He used her as a bargaining chip, and gave her to the Mountain people to study her blood and anatomy, with the caveat that the baby, whom Lex named Kasnia, wouldn’t be killed, and that he would be able to visit her
Lex’s plan was to study her so he could potentially use her as a weapon. He dictated his terms to the Maunon – that she would be raised in isolation, and that only he and a few select carers could visit her. After all, he had seen it work with Ontari, and he wanted to avoid a possible wild card (like Saskia would later become). So he kept her there in Mt. Weather.
Essentially, she was a lab rat for the Maunon, and an experiment for Lex. He kept her occupied and trained her, and made sure he was the only one who treated her gently. The other Maunon soldiers were brusque toward her, but Lex made sure that they never mistreated her, and made sure that Kasnia knew this was because of his influence.
Lex teaches her Trigedasleng and Azgedasleng. He tells her of the might of the Azgeda, and one day, she hopes to join them.
Saskia and Kasnia met once, when they’re around 8 or 9, before the truth about them was revealed.
Lex took Kasnia along with him to visit the prison where Saskia was kept. Lex was showing her that “the Commander” was an unjust tyrant, and that she was making weapons of children. Since Lex is trying to challenge Lexa’s power as Commander, even though she was the one who united all 12 clans
(see the scene above the cut for Saskia and Kasnia’s first meeting)
Kasnia is so full of questions for Lex about “the little girl in the cage” when they get back to Mt. Weather, and tells him about how she wishes she could see her again, and help her, and be friends with her
And Lex sees that his plan is not going as he’d hoped.
He accuses Kasnia of being “too soft”
“I thought you would be different. I thought I was raising you to be strong, but I see now that your heart is weak too.”
Kasnia’s eyes widen and she suddenly feels her heart drop. She’s disappointed him. “No, nontu! I’m not weak. I am strong like the Azgeda, let me prove it!”
“But you are not Azgeda, yongon. You are not of the earth, but of the skies. You are not like us. Others will seek to use you as a weapon, as a specimen, but I am raising you to be strong, to be a warrior.”
Lex eyes her steadily. “That little girl in the cage is dead now. She was far too broken. The Commander and her people broke her long before you met her. I am raising you to be a strong warrior, so that you may fight against the Commander. So that this will never happen again. So that no other child can be hurt again"
Kasnia’s eyes fill with tears. She wants to cry for the caged little girl, now dead. But she knows Father would take tears as weakness, so she balls her hands into tight, determined little fists instead. “I will be strong, nontu. I will make sure they can never hurt another again!”
Saskia, on the other hand, is still very much alive. And very much enamored.
When Roan frees her from the cages, he delivers her to Lexa so she can be safe with the other Natblida. (this is one of the reasons why Lexa somewhat trusts Roan)
When Saskia’s identity is revealed, it creates an uproar, because tradition demands that Nia be killed for daring to keep a Natblida secret from the Heda
But Lexa wants to keep the Azgeda within the Coalition, and Nia knows that Lexa can wipe her out with the Coalition’s combined forces
So to avoid compromising herself, Nia shifts the blame onto Roan
She spins the tale of Roan discovering that his newborn sister was a Natblida, and stealing her from his Mother and telling her the baby was dead
And Lexa, knowing that this is the only way they can avoid bloodshed between Azgeda and the rest of the Coalition, publicly accepts this story, denouncing Roan
This is why Roan is banished from the Coalition. For his mother, it was punishment for disobeying her and for Lexa, it was a compromise to avoid bloodshed
It’s also why Roan hates Lexa. On the one hand, he understands it. On the other, now he’s banished because of her
Saskia was never a sociopath like Ontari, but she has to relearn how to trust and develop bonds with other people
Lexa is one of the first people she opens up to. She rises through the ranks of the Natblida very rapidly, and she quickly becomes Lexa’s favorite.
Saskia’s compassionate nature begins to come out, with the help of the other Nightbloods
It’s not an easy or a quick process, and it comes with so many trials, but two years afterward, she becomes the Commander’s Second
(This is around the time of the show’s timeline)
She tells Lexa about the meeting
"There was a little girl, Heda. I met her before I met you. Before the Skaikru came. When I was still in the Cage."
They are in Lexa’s quarters where Lexa is teaching Saskia to read. It’s one of Saskia’s favorite things, reading. There are so few books left in the Grounders’ collection after the nuclear war, and Saskia has been so deprived of knowledge that she has all but devoured Lexa’s collection of books.
"She looked like…. Like one of those creatures you showed me in that one book, the beautiful ones with wings. What are they called, angles?”
Lexa smiles softly. “Angels.”
“Sha, Heda,” Saskia nods vigorously. “She looked like an angel. The guards at the Cage talked among themselves about her, the little girl who came from the Sky. Her eyes were so blue like the sky, Heda, that I believed them."
When the Skaikru came down, Lex realized that there were more of them
Lex thought that Kasnia wasn’t actually special and therefore was of no use to him, so he abandoned her in Azgeda territory to die. She grows up feral in Azgeda territory, using the skills Lex taught her to survive until adulthood.
Kasnia believes that Lex died at the hands of the Commander and that’s why he didn’t come for her.
She grows older and stronger, vowing to take revenge on "The Commander” for Lex, for that little girl in the cage who died
The rest of the world has no idea she even exists. The Mountain has fallen. Outside of the Mountain People and Lex, no one knew about Kasnia.
The only other person who saw her was Saskia – when she was a feral prisoner who was shown a small but unforgettable act of kindness by a little girl with golden hair and sky-colored eyes
And there is only one other little girl with gold hair and blue eyes.
Kara and the other Skaikru are eventually integrated into the Grounder culture
Upon Queen Nia’s death at Lexa’s hand, the whole Azgeda clan is thrown into chaos. Lex refuses to bow down to Roan, refuses to acknowledge the Commander’s authority and attempts to take the capital. His attack is foiled with the help of the Skaikru, and he is badly injured by a bomb built by Clark, who is one of the engineers from the Ark. He is taken in by some of his followers (maybe Mercy and Otis), and kept in secret.
For their aid in thwarting Lex, the Skaikru are integrated into the Coalition as the thirteenth clan. With Saskia, Lena and Kara all in Polis at the time, the three girls meet and become friends.
Saskia, seeing her golden-haired “angel”, thinks she’s the same girl who gave her the chocolate.
Except Kara doesn’t remember her.
Kara is enamored by Lena. And Lena, who shares Saskia’s face, is equally enamored by Kara.
Saskia sees this all clearly. They never turn her away or make her feel unwelcome, but the two of them seem to have their own world together that Saskia cannot penetrate, even as they grow older.
Lena eventually has to return with Roan to the Azgeda. Kara stays with the Skaikru, and Saskia stays within Polis to continue her training for when she succeeds Lexa
She rarely sees Kara, but Saskia holds her in her heart as that little girl who showed her the first glimpse of kindness, the first person who taught her that hope was a possibility for someone like her
Even if Kara doesn’t remember it, Saskia does, and she holds it in her heart for both of them.
But Saskia is the Commander now, and there is no place for love in her future. Only duty.
And more than that, she sees how Kara looks at Lena, and how Lena looks back at her. Kara has never looked at Saskia like that. And even though they have the same face, Kara always knows the difference between them. She always knows Lena.
So Saskia distances herself more from Kara. There are greater things expected of her as the new Commander.
It’s for the best, because Saskia knows Kara will never hold her in her heart the way she does Lena.
In the meantime, something stirs in the borders of the Azgeda. A creature that moves with the grace and speed of a deadly silver Snowbird flits between the trees, stealing livestock and supplies, moving south.
Kasnia travels to Polis and begins reconnaissance on The Commander. She’s very careful to keep her distance, to avoid detection. She catches only glimpses of this woman who has been the cause of so much pain and suffering, who took Kasnia’s nontu away from her. But glimpses are enough.
This dark regal figure pretends at nobility when the sword at her hip is stained with the blood of so many.
Kasnia hates her.
Except sharp green eyes catch sight of her (how? She was so careful. She’s a skilled hunter, no prey has ever seen her before she attacks) and Kasnia is pinned by a clear piercing gaze. There is recognition there and perhaps some… confusion?
The din of the public market allows Kasnia to slip away, feeling shaken. It’s not often she has to look her prey in the eye before she kills it.
She decides to lay low, bide her time. The Commander had recognized her somehow (how?) and surely she would be wary and increase security around herself.
Kasnia is so shaken that she doesn’t realize that she’s being followed until she’s on the outskirts of the city. She barely has time to whirl around and drop into a defensive stance when a figure appears from the shadows.
“What are you doing here, Kara?”
___________
By SorrowsFlower
#supercorp#supergirl#the 100#katie mcgrath#melissa benoist#saskia de merindol#red daughter#kara danvers#kara zor el#lena luthor#supercorp au#brenda strong#i finally managed to put this down#yeah that's as far as i got#saskia x red daughter#my writing
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Stories written on the wall of one of the rooms in the game Armikrog.
It’s about everything happened before the game, P’s parents life, how they met and how she appeared.
Reading sequence:
The Blank Miner. Part 1
The Blank Miner. Part 2
Tools, Weapons, Food, Plants, Medicine, Magic and Pets
A Meeting in the Woods
Punishment and Crime. Part 1
Punishment and Crime. Part 2
Punishment and Crime. Part 3
Desperation
Desperation
No water for four days. Could be five.
Everything is empty. There is no food on this craft.
P does not seem to mind. She remains healthy, but seems sad at the sight of Meva and I starving. No more giggling. No more crystals.
For awhile, we could make her laugh, and she would provide the P-tonium to power the ship.
We are too weak.
The ship is moving but we don't know where it is going. If I take the last crystal out of the grid, the ship will stop, but so will the life support system. The color in the last crystal is fading. We could be dead soon.
I have tried in vain to learn the controls… too alien and strange.
I declare my love for Meva to whoever finds this.
More Desperation
I have decided to do the only thing that might save us. I will use the soul transfer device to put myself into the ship. Then I might be able to figure out how to operate the ship’s foreign controls.
At first, Meva begged me not to do it. She reminded me of the risks and of the strange things that had happened to some of the spirds. But eventually, even she saw the necessity of it. I would either die from starvation, lying on the floor of the ship, or I would die trying to save us. Meva kissed me and relented.
A Crazy Plan
We clamped one of the soul transfer device’s arms onto the control panel, and the other onto my arm. Meva reminded me that she would only give me one minute. She wasn't going to risk any more time. I nodded and she pushed the button. The purple fuzz-ball beating inside the device cast light around the room, and I went into the ship.
The first sensation I felt was a lack of feelings. The aching hunger was gone. The pangs of starvation that wracked my body had slipped away in an instant. It was a relief. But then I remembered the short time I had and turned my mind to other things.
I could sense our place in space. Nearby planets and stars took shape in my mind and their names came to me, although I'd never seen them before. I realized the ship must have some navigational computer or log. At this thought more information poured into me. I could see the ship’s entire history in a moment. But my mind grasped at another image; P's crib.
P’s crib was being pulled aboard by a desperate looking crew during the heat of battle. The ship's door was sealed before taking off. The crib was chained to the wall. P was force-fed cans of beans to increase her output of P-tonium. She didn't laugh or smile. The crew's planet needed the P-tonium to survive. There were other planets that wanted the P-tonium too, and were willing to kill for it. As far as the ship’s computer identified P as the last of her kind.
Meva's voice echoed inside me. She was telling me to hurry. She was going to transfer me back.
In a panic, I pulled my mind from the computer, though there were so many more questions I knew it could answer, but I had to get to that control panel. Its levers and knobs were instantly familiar to me. I dimmed the bright lights that made it difficult to sleep. I discovered a water generator had been switched off. I turned it on, and the ship’s water storage began to fill.
But something was wrong. Not all of the controls were working. I could only make a minor adjustment to our speed. I could not reverse our course, and I could not change our trajectory. I dove deeper into these controls, tracing their connections until I found the problem. There were two dents in the hull where the ship had been hit by missiles while escaping. One had torn the metal open and damaged the ship’s controls.
I used the navigational computer to quickly chart a course. We were headed for a nearby planet. I calculated how long it would take to reach it.
At that moment, I woke up to the sensation of liquid on my face. Meva had pulled me out. She was smiling, holding a container of cool water. I drank it down in big gulps, but it did little to satiate the gnawing hunger in my stomach, or the growing fear in my mind.
I told her the bad news. We were about to crash land, and there was nothing we could do to stop it.
Life After the Crash
A crash landing is difficult to describe with accuracy. When in the middle of it, I did not think the tumbling would end. It was more like an assault than an event to my mind. Surrounded by noise and violence, papers, paneling and even my own clothing blurred past my face. I remember the weird details in times of crisis that come for no apparent reason; I saw a metal tool tumble by, I looked at my own hand and considered my own anatomy in slow motion. I do not know why these are the things I remember.
When it was finally over, we climbed from the wreckage, with few injuries. Meva's arm was broken. I was bleeding from a gash in my forehead. P's crib had landed on top of her, but instead of harming her it kept objects from crushing her. At the time I thought it probably saved her life.
Behind us was a jagged line scratched into the planet’s surface that documented the trajectory of our landing. Pieces of our ship was ripped from the hull by trees and rocks and scattered to either side of that line. The air was thicker than our home planet, but gravity was comparable and a yellow haze protected us from direct sunlight.
Meva knew enough of the healing arts to talk me through resetting her arm … a difficult ordeal. She and P took shelter under low hanging branches while I went in search of anything that could be salvaged from the wreckage.
Over the course of that day I dragged chunks of the ship’s carcass back to Meva, where she, using her one good arm, assembled a makeshift shelter. P seemed oblivious to the peril of our situation. I would put bushes on my head and dance around for her which consistently made her giggle. P’s happiness was a comfort to Meva.
The first night we huddled together in our shelter and listened to strange animal noises that put a chill in our bones. This planet sounded all the more threatening and I knew it would be a matter of time before a beast broke into our temporary housing.
Most days I worked on the water generator. The few stores of water we had were nearly exhausted, and a survey of the area revealed no water though there were plants growing on the hillside that I assumed used water to survive. The water generator wouldn’t power on and I considered leaving Meva and P to go on a more exhaustive search for water. Another howl, deep and brooding came from the forest as if to threaten me if I ventured too far from camp.
Our love for P motivated us to keep trying and it kept us from falling into despair.
I fused three wires on the water generator and it came on for a few seconds, then made a popping sound and seized up in a cloud of smoke. I feared I might have damaged it beyond repair so in desperation I used the soul transfer device to put myself into that infernal machine! Once inside, I could clearly see what must be done. I also discovered that the water generator was actually a matter generator. It could pull water from anywhere because it changed the array of any molecule into water. With a little work, the water generator became a matter generator. I was able to make simple objects with it. I started with bricks, then made hammers, screws, bolts and basic levers.
I repaired the power grid! Using the green engine room as a power generator, we fed Ptonium into the grid it offered more than enough power for anything we needed.
Previous Visitors
During the day when there were less animals roaming around, Meva and I explored the surrounding area to discover we landed on the far end of a long valley. On the opposite end of the valley we found a rock with testimonies of previous visitors scratched onto its great surface. We do not know who wrote them, but wrote a commentary on each of them to acknowledge that they are part of our history:
BOHRAM
He was a great scientist who flew to this planet hoping to perform experiments using an artifact of time bending. The date next to Bohram’s name suggests that he landed on the planet some five hundred in the future, and the space maps he drew are beyond the accuracy and scope of contemporary maps. Bohram discovered a planet he named 26229 and was considered by the future scientific establishment as having similar parameters to his home planet. Bohram applied his time bending theories to space travel and blasted off to live on planet 26229. His last words are here carved into stone before leaving, "Let us get this show on the road."
OKROG
He was a great military commander. Okrog’s body was so badly injured in various wars that it was mostly replaced by machine parts, including fifteen-foot robotic legs. One day his suit was so badly injured in battle that he used a furnace-tending suit as a replacement. He could no longer fight in wars, but he could still tend to the furnace so he remained thankful. He had a strange pet, a flat faced Tentable Mane Cephia Kraken.
ZILETH
An adventurous blind girl named Zileth wore the 7th Ring of Eureka while hiking and it transported her to a far away land. She lost her old guide animal and went hunting for a new guide animal, known as a half-mongrel. A half-mongrel will not tolerate being stared at so he never got mad at blind Zileth. She scratched his soft fur and felt his facial expressions to learn his moods. They became inseparable friends. Zileth never returned home but always had company to keep her warm thanks to her half-mongrel.
HEVERKROG
There was once a scientist who spent so much time in his laboratory alone that he went mad. This is Heverkrog, the inventor of the Procrastinator Ray. He hated this planet but found he could not leave. This made him angry because he thought that he was so smart (and he was smart) that he would be able to find a way off of the planet. He began work on a portal to another dimension. This technology is fictional at best, but he claimed to get the idea from his deceased wife who visited him in a dream while in feverish delirium. Heverkrog built his interdimensional gate, which looked like four logs bound together by rope.
We found "the gate", but also found a book of Heverkrog’s mad theories next to his skeleton which lay at the base of the gate. For reasons of my own, I believe Heverkrog has something to do with the disappearance of Bohram.
BLACKTON
Claimed to discover cave walls covered in ancient finger-paintings. His devices of measurement dated the paint used on the wall to be at least five thousand years old. These could be the oldest inhabitants of the planet. The most fascinating thing about the cave paintings was that they depicted ninety nine generations who came before them. The first of that line could be the first being ever to live. The long lineage could also imply that this lineage went on forever into the past and that only ninety-nine beings could fit on the wall before the most recent generation ran out of space. One other being is scribbled on the edge of the wall, he has a head, two arms and two legs like most beings we know, but he is covered in warm flesh, has hair on his head and wears unique hat and shoes. A translation of the inscription under this cave painting says sounds something like, "HUMUN BING. FRUM URTH" but none of us know what that means.
LUGNESS
Lugness is an honorable and noble being who lived just over twelve hundred years ago. He invented an R.G.Ba’bomb that altered the light of any area within a stone’s throw. Lugness discovered a distant star that radiated green Ptonium energy. One day, that distant planet mysteriously stopped emitting Ptonium energy. This is speculation but could this have something to do with P?
NICKELNAUT
Walter "Nickel" Naut was the first astronaut from the planet Ixen to find this world some two hundred and seventy two years ago. His ship did not run on Ntonium, but on magic. That was back when magic was real. He came to this planet entirely by accident when he crossed a then-unknown hyperspace lane. Nickelnaut was jettisoned across the universe sideways before ejecting from his craft just before crashing to the planet surface.
This concludes my commentary on the history written on stone.
Building Statues
I used the generator to build statues of my own likeness and I gave them simple mechanized skeletons so they could help me work. They were capable of working even if I left the room. They were linked by a nerve net so if I transferred my soul into one, I could move between them. With my crew of mechanical workers we built three great towers and one lesser tower that would be modeled after Meva’s likeness. A great surrounding wall was erected to keep any hostile animals out.
Meva and I wrote out laws on walls, over doorposts, and in journals. Even the statues were capable of repeating the laws. We wanted P to be raised in a family that respected each other first and the self, second. We assume that P would long outlive us. It is our desire that these laws be the foundation of our little society.
The Name
This fortress has been built to protect my family and our ways.
These words have been written so that you may know us better.
If you are friend, then take shelter, for to you we freely give this place.
But be warned, however, if you seek to bring harm to this family, I have already bent my will against you. Though I am a kind and gentle friend, I am an even fiercer, terrifying enemy. If your designs are for harm, I will unleash Meva's wrath upon you. The three engines will ignite and the harbinger will be awakened!
Enemies, know the name of this fortress and fear it; “Armikrog.”
#armikrog#armikrog game#armikrog stories#armikrog lore#armikrog story#neverhood#the neverhood#neverhood 2
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Daegu Quarantine
Jungkook x reader
Gang/ zombie apocalypse au
Warnings:
Gore, violence, zombies, mention of drugs and drug dealing, weapons discharge in self defense, main character death, zombies, course language, zombies, drinking, did I mention zombies?
Summary:
They were the top of their game, known throughout the city as the smartest and most dangerous crew to ever hit the Daegu streets. But what’s going to happen when this group of young men encounter something right out of a horror film?
Word count: 2394
Part 10===Part 11===Part 12
“Alright Tae Bae, let’s see what’s going on with your system.”
In the time it had taken us to clean up after dinner, Taehyung had already set up everything he needed in order to communicate through remote video feed with his mentor.
I’d decided to join Taehyung and Jeanette in the security area of our basement living room, sliding in beside Jeanette on the overly large sofa and snuggling up beneath her blanket with a smile sent her way before focusing in on the conversation unfolding before us.
Tae was posted up on the floor, feet crossed in his lap and a large keyboard situated on top of his knees as his eyes roamed the information displayed on the massive tv hung on the wall. The screen itself flashed a myriad of information, lines of code and text along with a small set of squares at the bottom left corner that gave us a live view of the surrounding grounds and security checkpoints.
In the top left was a video feed of Black Rose, a sweet looking woman roughly my age whose smile lit up her whole face every time her eyes glanced back to what I assumed was Taehyung’s face displayed on her own screen. I couldn’t help but feel there was something more than the connection of mentor and apprentice between the two.
“I managed to trace the outside signal as far as the local area before I got cut off from it. Whatever it was that let them in was enough for them to feed my cameras a signal to loop come a certain time of day. That’s when the attack happened.” Taehyung frowned, glancing at the video image of the ashen haired woman and blushing brightly as he averted his gaze elsewhere.
“Sounds to me like they’ve been in your system before. Or are at least familiar with the type of code you were writing for it…”
I couldn’t help but glance over at Jeanette who seemed just as bewildered as I felt with all the technical jargon being thrown back and forth between them.
“Any idea what they’re saying?” I asked in an overly dramatic stage whisper.
Jeanette shook her head, blowing a bit of curly hair out of her eyes with a huff. “None in the slightest honestly. I’ve heard Jangmi talk like this before but it always goes way over my head.”
Tae snorted, his eyes darting to the two of us for a moment before focusing back in on his job. “Since I’ve got you here, could you run a backdoor screen for me? At least then I’ll know what I’m missing before we go whole hog on the fuckers.”
Black Rose shook her head, sighing lazily before typing quickly on her end. The sound of high speed clicking filled the speakers along with the sound of Taehyung’s own. The screen glowed a dark green color as line after line of letters and numbers and symbols flashed across it. Everything moved so fast that for a moment I grew dizzy just trying to keep up with it all.
Jungkook at that point wandered into the room, coming around the sofa to sit on its arm beside me and throw an extra long arm around my shoulders.
“Anything?” He asked, knowing that his words would interrupt Taehyung’s focus, he’d spoken in a low whisper just as Jeanette and I had.
“No clue to be honest, but damn if I wouldn’t be able to tell you anyway.” I glanced up at Kookie, blushing as he threw me a charming smile that, no matter how many times I’d seen it, still managed to make my insides flutter.
“Well let me see…” He looked over to the tv, eyes darting back and forth as he watched the words fly by.
“Every computer system, no matter how complicated, has a back door. They’re usually protected by something called a firewall, basically a shield the system has in place so your information can’t get stolen or your software can’t get hacked.” Jungkook’s fingers trailed along my shoulder, leaving trails of heat in their wake as he continued to watch the two computer geniuses work.
“What’s basically happening is Jangmi is attacking Tae’s firewall, trying to find any weaknesses in it to see how exactly the hackers got into our system.”
“HA!” A triumphant shout echoed through the speakers, jolting Taehyung out of his hyper focused stupor and causing him to stare at the screen in shock.
“Are you serious? That one line of god damn…”
“And here I thought I taught you well, little grasshopper. Such a shame that a tiny bit of code like that could cause such a massive amount of damage…” Black Rose hummed.
I couldn’t help but to watch in fascination as Taehyung basically melted down in front of us, rolling on the floor after discarding his keyboard and gripping his hair. He wailed like a little child, cursing and fussing and drawing full on belly laughs out of each of us as we watched him go on.
“One!! One goddamn misplaced comma...are you kidding me?” He groaned, reluctantly righting himself and pulling the keyboard into his lap once more.
“Well, fix it ya soggy noodle.” The woman paused, pulling a large cup into view and sipping from it before groaning in pleasure at the flavor of whatever her drink of choice was.
“I see you’re taking full advantage of the macchiato machine I got you.” Tae grunted, though his fierce typing belied the brief moment of a glance he’d made at her screen.
“Ya damn right I am.” Contrary to the accent she’d been speaking with, these words took on a distinctly New Yorker accent, one I’d only heard in movies and on youtube, but the change was so incredibly adorable I couldn’t help but giggle at her.
“I don’t uh...I don’t wanna interrupt but.” I glanced over to Tae who’s full attention was now on me.
“What is it Boss Lady?”
“Well, I’ve heard of like espresso machines but...a macchiato machine?”
Taehyung and Black Rose chuckled together, grinning a secret grin between the two of them.
“It’s not really like an espresso machine. Think of it like one of those industrial mixers you see in gas stations and stuff.” Tae typed into his keyboard, pulling up an image of the machine he mentioned. “It’s like a frozen yogurt machine but for macchiato mix.”
“It’s rather ingenious actually. All I had to do was get the right kind of mix and I’ve got all of my caffeine needs right here at my desk.”
“I prefer mine through a direct iv line.” A muttered voice spoke from behind the couch, drawing our attention to Yoongi who’d apparently been listening in on what we’d been talking over this whole time.
“Ah! A man after my own heart!” Black Rose grinned, giving Yoongi a thumbs up which he returned with a small smile in kind.
“Boss, we got an issue with Seokjin upstairs.” Yoongi frowned at Jungkook, though the look seemed to be more one of frustration than actual danger.
“What happened?” Jungkook stood, giving me a kiss to my forehead before heading back upstairs with Yoongi.
“Apparently his ‘second’ and I quote, ‘Is a no talent hack who couldn’t strip the paint off the broad side of a barn.”
“Overwatch?”
Yoongi sighed, “No, campaign mode on Halo…”
Taehyung snorted, returning his attention to the tv screen. “Alright. Let’s get that firewall fixed up and reverse track the signal.”
***
“Rose and Tae make a pretty incredible team huh?” Jeanette smiled softly as we watched the two work. We’d decided that speaking quieter gave us less of a chance of interrupting their focus as they worked.
“Yeah, But I kind of get the feeling there’s something between them. Don’t you?”
“Hmm…”
I’d known Tae for only a short time, he’d come to us only a few years ago. And even though it’d been going on nearly 4 years I still couldn’t help but notice that the young man hardly ever really smiled unless Jimin was around.
Of course it could have been because they were so close in age, but it seemed like he preferred to stay by himself. With his line of expertise and the type of work he did I ended up, well not really avoiding him so much as just giving him space. But he seemed to really appreciate it. We became close in our distance. And that was okay.
“Are you seriously eating gummy bears while you’re at your computer?” Tae snorted, shaking his head as he watched his partner sheepishly grin.
“Hey, the last time we worked together like this you fussed at me because I was eating seaweed snacks over my keyboard. I’ll have no more of you fussing at me you hear!”
The two laughed, seeming to enjoy egging each other on as they worked. It felt comfortable, and was definitely a side of Taehyung I’d never seen before.
“Any luck?” Jeanette asked. She cuddled further into the blanket, seeming on edge as she watched the interaction happen.
“Does East Side ring a bell?” Black Rose’s eyes wandered her screen, eyebrows furrowed and a small frown tugging at the corners of her lips.
“Yeah...actually it does.” I grunted, pushing further back into the comfort of the sofa.
“We were joined with them. A smaller branch of our main group that was in charge of keeping the East side of the city safe.Tension’s been high with them, even before all this mess came along.”
“I see. Well it seems like it was more than just tension.” Rose leaned back in her chair, iced coffee in hand as she pulled up an aerial view of the city for us all to see.
“This is satellite feed from a remote military camera that was monitoring the area a day ago. From the looks of things and going solely on the data I traced from Tae’s security hack, seems like these bastards have been plotting something for a while now.”
We watched intently as the feed zoomed in on the warehouse Kook, Yoongi, and I had run a rescue mission on not too long ago.
A group of people approached the front side of the building, busying themselves with something we couldn’t see while keeping a lookout for chatterers that happened to come their way. Rose accelerated the footage and we watched as, after moments more of fussing with whatever they were up to they retreated from the door.
“What the actual hell?” Tae whispered before yelping as a bright orange ball of what we could only assume was flames erupted at the door.
“So that’s how those things got in…” My body had tensed up at this point, anger pouring from me in waves as I leaned forward to glare at the tiny bodies pouring into the warehouse.
Rose cut the footage, a frown creeping onto her face as she glossed over what we now couldn’t see. “Looks like they made off with a bunch of stuff, some boxes and shit but dipped out before they could get overwhelmed. There’s no way anybody in there survived the wave of creepos that poured into the building after the fire settled.”
“Two of them survived...but not for very long.” I spat the words out bitterly, rising from the sofa and letting the blanket fall from my form as I began pacing behind the sofa.
Namjoon walked in, eyes following my every move as he walked around the sofa to sit in my place beside Jeanette, though he sat back at a respectable distance.
“I take it there’s bad news?”
Jungkook’s second in command was nothing if not astute and true to form; he'd gauged the atmosphere with no trouble.
“No oppa...shit news actually.”
I glanced over at him, eyes burning a hole into the back of his head despite the blush of red creeping up the back of his neck at the term of endearment.
“Well?” He turned to Tae, an eyebrow raised in question. But before the younger man could speak the sound of an explosion roared through the speakers, one so loud I could have sworn the ceiling above us rumbled along with the noise.
“What in the actual fuck?” I bolted over to the sofa, eyes wide as I scanned Rose’s video feed.
It seemed she’d been knocked out of view of the camera, which itself had been thrown from whatever stand she had set it up on and now lay on the ground. The only thing we could see was the trembling of the floor and a pale set of feet.
“Rose??? Rose can you hear me?” Jeanette had jumped from her seat, rushing over to the tv monitor and hastily scanning the live feed in the hopes of seeing her friend move.
“Shit...I’m okay...fuck...fucking god damn it what the hell?” A continued string of curses poured from the speakers as the feet finally began to move before disappearing from view.
Rose’s face finally came into focus as the camera lifted from the ground to focus on her dazed expression.”I don’t know what the hell that was but holy shit that fucking sucked donkey dick hole.”
“Bruh, the mouth on this woman I swear…” Namjoon shook his head, though the look of concern on his face never wavered.
“You good kid?” I asked, knowing the answer wouldn’t be pleasant.
“Yeah, though, the building I’m in probably isn’t.”
“Talk to me Jangmi, what happened?” Tae sat on his knees, seeming as if every inch of him was screaming to come to her defense.
“Well. From what my screens are telling me. Looks like those East Side assholes found me and are on their way up to my room.”
“Excuse me?” Jungkook had come down, surely drawn in by the commotion coming from the speakers that’d probably been heard all through the house. The others followed closely behind him, each wearing matching faces of either murder death stare or concern.
“I’m at the Daegu Grand Hotel. Have been for a while now. And like I said, from the looks of things the very people trying to get all of ya’lls shit are on their way up to greet me with a very impolite Korean gangster hello.”
#bts boulangerie#bts fanfic#bts jeon jungkook#bts jeon jeongguk#bts jungkook x reader#bts gang au#bts zombie au#bts angst#bts fluff#bts reactions#bts imagines#bts scenario#bts reader insert#bts x reader#bts jungkook#bangtan sonyeondan fanfic
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So......Are you ready for the encore?
Taffy’s Take: Dark Nights Death Metal #1
Written by: Scott “Hallowed Be Thy Name” Snyder
Pencils by: Greg “Panikiller” Capullo
Inks by: Jonathan “Motorbreath” Glapion
Colors by: FCO “Fixxxer” Plascencia
So....it has all finally come to this. The finale. The ultimatum in a long saga of stories that started in the original Dark Nights, began showing its hand in No Justice, and was fully fleshed out with Snyder’s Justice League run. And it opens with a resounding boom that rivets your attention straight to the story and won’t let go until the pages run out.
We open with Sergeant Rock, preparing himself and an unknown audience for a conflict to come. When or where this is set is somewhat unknown, but the massive futuristic assault rifle he levels to emphasis his last line says that Rock is somewhere in the modern day.
After the credits page, featuring a map of the current world of the DCU and a message that calls Death Metal an “Anti-Crisis”, we cut to Wonder Woman, hard at work deconstructing the invisible jet with a buzzsaw-like device in the literal depths of hell (Originally Themyscira) when someone interrupts her over approaching people. Said person is the flaming, green-covered skeleton that Swamp Thing has become in this world and he says that someone is coming with prisoners. And as Diana walks through her prison to meet these people, we get to see the absolute myriad of villains entombed in the place, including Joker. Once they reach the quartet, we get to meet Batmage, a red-suited Batman, a cloaked figure, and.....Bat-Tyrannosaurus. After some very terse banter, Diana is forced to throw this unknown prisoner into the pits of Tartarus. But before he is cast into the depths, he mutters something to Diana that makes her recognize the person for a moment.
After that, we are shown Castle Bat and given a backstory of a specific field within that area and the rebels who died within the tunnels underneath it before pulling back to a panel of a castle, with The Batman Who Laughs’ twisted Robins and Joker dragons dominating the structure. And then we meet The Batman Who Laughs’ League, composed of pairings of heros and Dark Multiverse Batmen. We have Harley Quinn and Dr Arkham, Aquaman and Bathomet, Wonder Woman and Batmage, and Mister Miracle and Darkfather. With each of them, we get a small question about their current work, with the most noteworthy being Mister Miracle revealing that Superman has almost succumbed to the Anti-Life Equation. Content with their briefings, The Batman Who Laughs begins to explain how Perpetua, the god who created their multiverse, has destroyed another of their universe, leaving only 8 before The Batman Who Laughs and Perpetua can remake the multiverse however they desire. Before we can hear more, we’re dragged into Diana’s perspective as the true Batman engages in a psychic link with her, trying to advocate for a small victory rather than the sweeping final win that Diana desires. As her thoughts turn towards what happened to result in the current state of the universe and her lack of memory about what caused it, The Batman Who Laughs interrupts her as he can tell that she is hiding something.
And at that moment, an explosive arrow fires out of the nearby woods and nearly vaporizes The Batman Who Laughs. Sacrificing one of his Robins, we soon see Bruce stride out to exchange threats with The Batman Who Laughs, who takes with some jest before ordering an entire squadron of Dark Multiverse Batmen to kill Bruce. While the enslaved Justice League does their best to take advantage of the distraction, their Dark Multiverse minders are quick to detain them from any rebellious actions. So Bruce is left alone, simply standing in this field to face down an army. And as The Batman Who Laughs monologues about how disappointed the brave men and women who died in this field would be at Bruce’s actions, he asks him what he would say to justify himself.
His answer?
One word.
“RISE.”
And so, with a BLACK LANTERN RING ON HIS FINGER, BRUCE WAYNE SUMMONS AN ARMY OF UNDEAD REBELS TO FIGHT THE DARK MULTIVERSE BATMEN JUST PURELY TO DEMONSTRATE WHAT HIS METHOD CAN DO TO DIANA BEFORE RIDING OFF ON A SKELETAL MOTORCYCLE AND LEAVING ZOMBIE JONAH HEX TO CONTINUE LEADING THE ASSAULT.
And now, as the audience both in the know about all of that and not in the know but hyped as hell because BRUCE WAYNE WENT FULL FUCKING NECROMANCER sits in the afterglow of that amazing moment, we cut to a single page depicting the planet Ossex as the Main Man, Lobo, unearths something from underneath the living bone of the planet.
Having made it back to Themyscira, Diana is quick to continue with the rebellion, setting off into Tartarus to see who this mystery prisoner is. And its...Wally West, with a Dr Manhattan-style hydrogen atom drawn into the forehead of his costume. And with Wally, we finally get an explanation of what the hell is going on. See, with the traditional multiverses, they are created using the positive energies that were explored in the Justice League run, things like the Speed Force, the Emotional Spectrum, Imagination. The inverse, stuff like chaos magic and the forces of doom that Perpetua wished to bring to power (and succeeded at doing) are what Wally calls Crisis Energy. And whereas the positive energies wish to create a strong united universe, Crisis Energies wish to simply make only one thing, one moment, one person important. And so, when Perpetua was trapped after her attempts to make a universe of war out of crisis energy, she did her best to instigate crises and came back empowered with all that energy. Meanwhile, the league, empowered by the slightly failed efforts of Dr Manhattan to ‘fix’ the multiverse, gathered all the positive energy they could and then, between the last issue of Justice League and Death Metal, the two forces clashed. Which, since they were basically smashing tow inverse forces together, resulted in both sides burning themselves out.
Now, that block of text could be extremely dry feeling, but it works really well in the two page spread, with the word balloons beginning to form an infinity symbol as images of past crises ranging from the original Crisis On Infinite Earths to Emerald Twilight to Dark Nights Metal in the background.
But back to the story. With that explanation done, Wonder Woman begins to theorize potentially going back to those crises and gathering this information for themselves in order to reshape the universe themselves. Resulting in....”The first Anti-Crisis” The Batman Who Laughs interrupts with, striding into Tartarus to cut his own deal with Wonder Woman to let him take control over Perpetua. If she helps him, she gets all the people Perpetua has trapped and their own planet. And after that, he emphasizes how she can’t out-plan him, how he’s already prepared for her to knock him out, use the invisible jet she was being forced to deconstruct and melt down to give her armor that would render her undetectable. Wonder Woman is quick to counter that despite all the knowledge The Batman Who Laughs says he has, that entire plan is what Bruce would do. So he is quick to counter, stating so then she’d make a weapon, some sort of sword?
But it seems The Batman Who Laughs didn’t account for two things. One, for Diana to have already made her weapon before he showed up. Two, she didn’t need to make a sword. And so, with a pull of its ripcord, THE CHAINSAW OF TRUTH CLEAVES ITS WAY THROUGH THE BATMAN WHO LAUGHS IN A SPLASH PAGE OF PURE ENERGY ERUPTING OUT OF THE DEMON WHERE THE CHAINSAW IS CUTTING THROUGH HIM!
The comic ends with two quick one panel stories. The first, with Batmage executing a final plan that The Batman Who Laughs had in place to unleash a final Bruce Wayne. Which only sounds mildly menacing, unti the art shows both a button with a watchmen-style frownie face and the final Bruce Wayne in silhouette, a glowing hydrogen atom on his forehead.
The other is a cut back to Sergeant Rock, still continuing with his tirade from the beginning of the comic before he is taken out of the moment by Batman coming to retrieve him for the big fight. And as Batman promises One last fight with everyone together, we get to see in silhouette that Sergeant Rock is missing his everything below his torso, revealing himself to likely be another resurrection from Bruce’s Black Lantern ring.
So, in summary, IM PUMPED TO SEE WHAT HEIGHTS THIS THING HITS! THE BIG MOMENTS WERE SO DAMNED COOL! THE ART IS STILL THE ABSOLUTE ALL KILLER NO FILLER THAT CAPULLO ROCKED OUT WITH IN THE LAST DARK NIGHTS METAL EVENT AND I CANT WAIT TO SEE WHAT NEW SPORES OF MADNESS HE GETS TO CREATE FOR THIS STORY!
And while I’d like to be pure hype beast, that feels a little disingenuous when I do have some small moments that seem like they could be tweaked. Both of the long exposition scenes for the Dead Bats and the Positive Energy vs Crisis Energy could have potentially stood for another pass just to really tighten them up, but I will also admit that both those scenes kinda deserve to be long-winded. The Dead Bats to make sure that the setup for Batman with a Black Lantern Ring summoning an army at that point works and the Energy one because its explaining the entire setup for the rest of the event series and it helps lull things down so that the hype of Chainsaw of Truth can hit like it should.
So yeah, this thing is absolutely something any Scott Snyder fan, any DC fan, heck Id almost venture to say anyone interested in comics read. None of the story elements of the comic intrinsically need you to know the backstory behind them, but there are definitely rewards for knowing DC continuity in general and Scott Snyder’s previous works in this arcing story. So yeah, I am going to sit here, vibrating in anticipation as I await the next issue of Death Metal from the Cowboys From Hell on their encore tour.
#dark nights#death metal#dark nights death metal#the batman who laughs#batman#superman#wonder woman#justice league#dc#dc comics#comic#comics#comic book#comic books#taffys take#comic review#comic reviews#review#black lantern#chainsaw of truth
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Damian Wayne x Reader: All I Ever Wanted (Part 1)
Soulmate AU where you can’t physically hurt your soulmate.
Damian Wayne x Fem!Reader
Requested: No
Warnings: Swearing. There is one F-Bomb. Angst, mentions of blood, mentions of killing. Basically, like a weak M-Rated movie.
Other: Reader is 16. Damian is 17-ish. I tried my best to make your ‘parents’ names as unique as possible. But if you know anyone with that name, just change it in your head.
Word count: 4,102 (dAmN).
Things you probably wanna know, for all you ‘x reader’ illiterates:
(Y/N): Your Name
(H/C): Hair Colour / Color
(E/C): Eye Colour / Color
**
Truth be told, you did not expect to find your soulmate. You didn’t expect to see him in a million years, and you really didn’t mind. Growing up in a villainous family, soulmates were naturally looked down on. Your own parents weren’t even soulmates; they had murdered them the first chance they got. They forced you to follow in their footsteps, and really, you knew no better.
Your parents were psychopaths. Okay, even that was an understatement. Your parents murdered innocent people, messed up people’s lives, just to get what they want. Whether that be jewellery, money, weapons, or revenge, they were bound to get it. They would stop at nothing- nothing! - to get what they wanted.
By the time you were 16, your parents agreed that you would never find your soulmate. After all, for 15 years of your life, you had been hurting more people that you could count. You never needed to worry about the fact that they could be your soulmate. You were sure that it was never going to happen either way.
Half of you didn’t mind not having a soulmate. How were you going to tell them that you were a cold-hearted murderer? Not only that but how would your parents react if you brought him home? He would be dead within seconds.
But the other half of you wanted a soulmate. Somebody to hold you when you were weak, to wipe away every tear… ‘Get a grip, (Y/N),’ you had scolded yourself when you began thinking such foolishness, ‘what would mother and father say if they found out?’ You certainly didn’t need any reprimanding or punishments.
“(Y/N)!” You heard your mother bark from the other side of the house. “Come here!”
You ran as fast as your two legs could possibly carry you, standing straight as a pin when you found them. “Yes, Mother?”
“There is a heist. You will, of course, be joining with us. After all, it is in your blood.”
“Right,” you mumbled. “Will I be lookout again?”
“Of course you will,” Your father snapped at you. “You should be grateful that we are even taking you along. You still have a chance to meet that horrid… soulmate of yours.” He spat out the words like they were poison.
“I… of course. Thank you, Mother. Father.” You forced a small smile before leaving to your room.
**
You sighed, playing with your throwing knives as you stood guard. Your job was simple- take down anyone who tries to ruin the operation. You were so busy day-dreaming; you almost didn’t notice the soft ‘whooshing’ sound from above. Keyword: almost. You looked up, only to see about an inch of fabric tuck away on top of the large metal crates.
“Bats and the Bird are here. We have to go. Now.” You said into your earpiece.
“Honestly, Spitfire. Hold them off. We are not leaving this port until we get those jewels!” Your father spat.
“But-”
“Do as your Father says!” You mother snapped, leaving no room for retaliation.
You grumbled slightly but complied. You climbed up the side of the crate, calling out to the vigilantes. “Oi, Batsy! We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.” You readied your stance.
Batman muttered something to Robin who nodded and brought his katana out.
You rolled your eyes. “Hard way it is.”
Without warning, you threw your knife directly at him, expecting it to embed into his thick skull, when it disintegrated in red and black ash. Apparently, he and Batman were pretty shocked as well.
“Shit,” Robin swore, gaping.
“I am going to die,” you whispered, taking a step back.
“Spitfire, what is going on? Have you gotten rid of those pests?” Father demanded.
“I can’t hurt them.” You said as bravely as you possibly could.
“We trained you to be better than this!” Your mother’s voice shrilled.
“No, I mean, I really can’t hurt them.”
“That can’t be,” Your mother said in a dead whisper.
“Well, it happened. We have to go. Now.”
But it was already too late. Batman was already fighting your father, throwing multiple punches at him. Your mother was getting the smoke bomb ready for a quick escape by the time you managed to get to them. Robin was still trying to secure the area and get rid of the shocked feeling that his soulmate was a villain.
You ran to your father’s aid. Just because you couldn’t hurt the sidekick, doesn’t mean you can’t hurt the Bat himself. “Spitfire! Pyro! We’re leaving!”
And, with smoke pouring around you, you were gone.
**
“I can’t believe this,” Damian muttered to himself, pacing the Bat Cave. He ran a hand through his jet black hair, scowling. “I won’t believe this.”
“There’s no point in denying, Demon,” Jason smirked, taking a bite of his apple. “You’re destined to be with that freak. Not that you aren’t.”
“Shut it, Jay,” Dick sighed. “This is pretty hard for Damian.”
“Come on, Todd! We weren’t this bad when we found out that your soulmate was that musician. I don’t know about you, but fate was pretty cruel on her,” Tim hummed, working on a case.
Damian huffed, sitting on his chair and spinning around on it. He typed a few words into his computer, muttering to himself. “Spitfire. Where have I heard that name…?” Multiple images showed up on the screen, his green eyes
scanning each one. “(Y/N) Keynes.”
“How…” Dick began but Damian cut him off.
“She was in the League of Assassins. She was in the year below me, kidnapped at the age of 8.” He scoffed in disbelief, glaring at the screen, “she was no safer there than she is now.”
“What are you talking about?” Tim demanded.
“If the Leaders ever found out we were… you know…” he trailed off slightly but continued to speak. “One of us would have died. And because my mother was one of the Leaders, I would be spared.”
“Wait, so you’re saying…” Jason frowned.
Damian rolled his eyes. “TT, slow as ever, I see. She would have died, idiot.”
The man muttered under his breath. “I know that, demon spawn.”
**
You looked at your feet as your parents discussed their next move. “You know I’m right here, right?”
“Not another word,” your father hissed. “You failed this mission.”
“It’s not a mission if the motive is bad!” You argued. Your father lunged at you in anger, but you swiftly dodged to the side. “I am not hurting him.”
“If you’re talking about that insolent Bird Boy-” Your mother began.
“Don’t talk about him like that!” You snapped, glaring.
“Don’t give me that tone, young lady! I might not be your biological mother-” She stopped short.
“What are you talking about?” You queried. “What do you mean that you’re not my real mother?”
“We stole you,” your father, no, Odium said with a scowl, giving up the secrets. “From an assassin’s camp. You were the strongest child. Well, apart from that wretched Al Ghul.”
“You will help us kill!” your not-so-mother, Saeva, yelled.
“Never!”
“That was what you were trained to do,” Odium snarled.
“I don’t care! I’m not going to help you kill him!” You yelled back.
“Just because you’re not going to kill, doesn’t mean we won’t.”
Odium lifted his gun and aimed. Your eyes widened and you bolted out of the apartment. You ran down the stairs as faced as you could, sliding down the railings when you could. You forced your way between people, pushing through as you heard Odium yell your name. You continued to run faster, ignoring the burning of your lungs, legs begging for you to stop. You felt around your shins, feeling slightly more secured as you knew that your throwing knives were still on you.
You ran deeper into the streets of Gotham, only stopping when you knew that the coast was clear. You let out a breath, feeling the pain coarse through your body. You whimpered as you felt blood drip from where you scratched yourself on a metal fence. You had to keep going, you told yourself. You have to run. But you couldn’t. Your body could only take so much. You tried desperately to keep your eyes open. The sun was still high in the sky, torturing you with its warm rays of light.
“Stay awake,” you murmured. “Don’t fall…” you were on your knees, feeling the sweat drip down your face.
The last thing you heard was people yelling. Someone had yelled, “That’s her!” but you were too tired and too pained to move.
You closed your eyes.
**
By the time you had opened your eyes, your wounds were treated and you were panicking. You shot up on the hospital bed with a scream. “Where the heck am I?! Who the heck are you?! Why the heck am I here?!”
“Relax, (Y/N). You’re in the Bat Cave.” A person said.
“Who are you?!”
“And we spooked her. Nice one, Dick Face.” Another person said.
“Why does he have a gun?!” You demanded.
“You’re the one who spooked her,” another person said, taking a sip of his coffee.
You were silent for a minute before feeling for your knives. “Where did you put my knives?”
“They’re on that table,” ‘Dick Face’ said helpfully.
The man with a gun covered his face with his hands. “You’re not supposed to tell her!”
“Oh.”
A few moments of silence passed, only to be interrupted by a certain green-eyed boy entering the room. “So, she’s awake.”
Your head snapped to see the direction of his voice, cocking your head in confusion. “You’re… Damian Wayne. That means…” Your eyes trailed loosely over the other three men. “Dick Grayson, Jason Todd and Tim Drake.”
“Oh, so now she recognises us,” Jason scoffed, throwing his arms up in the air.
“Shut up, Todd,” Damian rolled his eyes. “I’ll tell Ari that you’re being rude again.”
“Sorry to intrude,” you cut said in the middle of their conversation, “but can I go now?”
“(Y/N).” The youngest boy looked at you. “Do you know who I am?”
“I… how do you know my name?”
“Facial recognition,” Tim said with a shrug.
“Right…” you looked at the four wearily. “I mean, you can’t really miss the fact that Bruce Wayne has a biological son, can you?” You let out a forced laugh.
Damian deflated slightly. “TT, so you don’t know me.”
“I guess? I mean, unless you were at some League of Assassins meeting and your father did the do-do with your mother there,” you snorted. “What are the chances of that, am I right?” The four boys looked at each other and your jaw dropped to the floor. “For once, I do not want to be right.”
**
You sighed, sitting in the room that Bruce Wayne gave you. Damian had explained everything to you; who he was, secret identities, the whole shebang. The room that they gave you was really quite beautiful. The bed was a super king-sized bed with royal blue sheets made with delicate silk. The desks and drawers were a beautiful mahogany with an endless shine, unscratched and flawless. The balcony outside gave an incredible view of the city; the sunset surely was beautiful that day. A bookshelf filled with famous books stood next to the window, basically begging for you to read one.
You groaned, rubbing your eyes with the palms of your hands.
Collapsing on the bed, you let out a huff of annoyance. You weren’t supposed to be thinking, especially not about him. His gorgeous emerald green eyes, his flooooofy jet black hair, his confidence… ‘stop it,’ you scolded yourself, scrunching your nose in distaste. ‘You barely even know him.’
A small knock on the door alerted you, and you let out a small, “who is it?” before sitting up.
“It’s just Alfred, my Lady.”
Silence.
“I brought food.”
That did it. “Come in!”
A metal trolley rolled its way into the room, Alfred pushing behind it. “You did not come to dinner.”
You looked away. “I couldn’t bring myself to.” You forced a chuckle. “It seems as if Damian doesn’t like me much.”
“Master Damian has lived most of his life without a soulmate. So have you,” Alfred said as he carefully placed dishes on the desk. “I believe you have the same problems.”
“Not exactly,” a small smile made its way onto your face. “I never really wanted to admit it, but I’ve always wanted a soulmate. I just thought that I would never find them.”
“I suppose Master Damian thinks that he doesn’t need one,” the butler shrugged. “Now, I must be off. I believe Master Bruce wanted me to supervise Master Jason and Master Tim’s sparring.”
“Right.”
Glancing at all the food that was on your desk, you bit into the steak. Dang, that stuff was good. After you had finished what you could (literally one steak and some mashed potato. Were they expecting you to eat all the broccoli?) you began to read Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Only managing to get through one chapter, the door was opened, revealing Damian himself.
“I see you have finished dinner.”
“I have. It was very kind of your father to let me stay,” you offered a smile.
“So when are you leaving?”
You looked up at him, surprised. “Leaving?”
“I assumed your stay was… temporary,” he shrugged. “Perhaps you could go to back to your parents.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?” You demanded, glaring. “And my parents want me dead!”
Another shrug. “You’re no better here.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” You challenged.
“You killed for longer than I have,” he pointed out. “At least I stopped.”
“Are you saying that only you can change your ways?” You scowled at him. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“You think I asked to be raised as a killer?”
“Do you think I asked for my parents to be psychopaths?” Your voice was beginning to rise as your (E/C) eyes flashed dangerously.
“I didn’t ask for you to be my soulmate! I was better off without one!” Damian scoffed at you. “You’re only going to slow me down.”
Your heart almost stopped. Tears began to prickle in your eyes and you furiously blinked them away. “My parents wanted me to help them kill you! They told me to help them, and that if I didn’t, they’ll kill me. They’ll kill me, Damian! They threatened me, threatened you, and do you know what I did? I defended you!” A teary laugh erupted out of your throat. “I defended you. I vowed to myself that I would protect you. I promised myself that if I died, at least you would be safe. I wanted you to be fucking safe. And this is where it gets me. You may not have asked to be the son of Batman. But I didn’t ask to be the soulmate of some idiotic, egotistical moron who doesn’t know who to shut his mouth.”
Just as Damian was about to blow his fuse, Dick’s voice ran through the halls. “Hey, Damian! B wants us to spar.”
The Arabian boy huffed. “I’ll be back.”
You rolled your eyes. “I count on it.”
**
Two hours later, Damian returned from his training, somewhat exhausted. It was past nine o’clock and Damian was almost convinced that you were asleep. Still, he found himself wandering to your room. The door was slightly ajar and a chill crept up the boy’s spine.
He carefully pushed the door open, expecting you to be asleep on the bed when he realised that the room was exactly the same way as he had left it. The dishes on the desk were stacked neatly and the bed was still made. His attention snapped to the balcony. Its door was open and the white curtains flowed in the wind.
“No…” the word was almost soundless as Damian searched the room for clues. On the desk, there was a small note written in clear cursive writing.
‘Don’t look for me.’
“Shit.”
**
“What do you mean she ran away?” Dick demanded. “What did you do?”
“That’s beside the point, Grayson,” Damian spat. “We need to find her before she gets herself killed.”
“(Y/N) was raised with assassins,” Tim pointed out, typing into the computer. “She should be able to handle herself.”
“Her parents are psychopaths. They want her dead,” Dick told him.
“Shame, I was starting to get used to her,” Jason hummed, sharpening his knives. “She was pretty cool. Sick aim as well. You’re lucky, Demon Brat.”
Damian looked away guiltily. It was his fault that you’re gone. “We need to find her.”
“We don’t have any information about her. We don’t know who her parents are, we don’t know where she lives, and we don’t know where she went.” Tim scowled. “Great. She messed up our tracker!”
“How does she do that?!”
“It was part of the training,” Damian huffed. “We had to be able to hack into any computer or gadget.”
“Well, what are we even supposed to do? We’re running on empty.” Jason rolled his eyes.
“Drake, can you access the security cameras of the Harbour? The one where we stopped (Y/N) and her parents from completing their heist.”
“Uh… I guess? But, Damian, what’s that supposed to-” Tim paused before gaping. “She’s there! With… with her parents! Well, the footage is from an hour ago, but there are clear images of their face.”
“Great, run facial recognition,” Dick said, suiting up. “We need to find them. And get that tracker working.”
**
-An Hour Earlier-
“We should have known that you would run back to us,” Saeva cackled.
“Join us, Daughter. We can rid this world of those rotten soulmates.”
You began to walk to them, head hanging low. Just as you were within arm’s reach, your head snapped up and you swiped your knife at them, drawing blood from their arms. “Not if I could help it.”
“Fool!” Odium yelled, lunging for your arm. “You’re a traitor if you go with that pesky bird!”
“Better him than you,” You hissed. “He doesn’t kill innocent people to get what he wants.”
Letting out a cry, Saeva attacked. With her sword, she attempted to slash your skin. You jumped back, kicking her sword from her hands and catching it.
The fight raged on, leaving you bruised and wounded. A trail of blood trickled from your lip as Odium punched you in the mouth. You growled, fighting back and flipping him over onto his back. All weapons were abandoned and you tried your best to keep up with the fight.
Before you could react, Saeva had an arm on your throat, muttering in your ear. “Surrender now, (Y/N), or face the consequences.
“Never,” You managed in a raspy voice.
“So be it.”
**
“Sharp left here,” Time said through the intercom. “Take a right now.”
“Can this thing go any faster?” Damian demanded, adjusting his utility belt.
“This is the Bat-Mobile,” Dick rolled his eyes. “Of course it can.”
Jason let out a whistle, “Relax, Demon. We’ll save your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Robin quipped.
Red Hood scoffed. “Yeah, sure.”
“(Y/N)’s in there,” Dick cut in, parking the Batmobile beside the warehouse. “Be ready. They might be expecting us.”
The trio carefully tread into the warehouse, on guard for any traps or attacks. A rat’s small footsteps were heard from the railings above, squeaking quietly. Just as they made it to the centre of the warehouse, a loud bang was heard. The door had closed from behind them. In another second, the lights began to flicker, revealing you tied up to a chair, head lolled to the side.
Saeva and Odium walked into the room not even a second later, proud smirks on their faces.
“You,” Damian hissed, glowering at Saeva and Odium. “What have you done with (Y/N)?”
“That’s beside the point, Lover Boy,” Saeva, waved a hand dismissively. “You should be worried about what we’re going to do.”
“But your little girlfriend was the perfect bait,” Odium snickered. “You came running right to us. Oh and don’t think about trying to free her. No one can get in or out of that force field.”
Before long, punches were thrown, shots were fired and injuries were made. Nightwing and Red Robin were on the ground, bruised and battered. A trickle of blood made its way down Dick’s forehead, while Jason was tending to his dislocated arm. Saeva had been knocked unconscious and was wearing Batcuffs on her wrists. Odium, on the other hand, was a different story. He put up a much bigger fight and was doing a reasonable amount of damage to the others. Damian let out a cry before putting him in a headlock.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, boy,” the man spat before twisting his body around and breaking free. In a blink of an eye, he was standing upright, a gun pointed directly at you. “You wouldn’t want her to die, would you?”
“Let her go,” Damian snarled as dangerously as he could. “Leave her out of this! It’s me you want.”
“That’s so cliché isn’t it?” Odium snorted. “But you’re wrong. I want my daughter back. The girl who didn’t care if she had a soulmate or not. It’s your choice really. Give yourself to me, or watch her perish.”
“You’re bluffing!” Dick managed desperately, his grip tightening on his escrima stick. “No one can get into that force field.”
“I didn’t say nothing.”
“Take me, then,” Damian said slowly. “Just leave her alone.”
“Smart choice,” the corners of his lips twitched. “But not smart enough.”
Just as he was about to fire, Dick threw his escrima stick as hard as he could, hitting Odium in the back. Losing his aim, the bullet found its way into your shoulder. Letting out a scream, Damian unsheathed his sword, attacking Odium the best he could without killing him. The man didn’t even put up a fight. Before long, Dick had Odium on the ground unconscious, attaching Batcuffs around his wrists.
“I managed to hack into the system,” Tim’s voice echoes in Damian’s ears. “The force field is down.”
“(Y/N)!” Damian yelled, cutting through your bounds. Just managing to catch you as you fell, he began to panic. “Come on, wake up! (Y/N), wake up!”
“We need to get her back to the Cave,” Dick said softly, a hand on his bloodied arm. “Alfred can fix her up. Red is already in the Batmobile, securing her captors.”
“Right, of course. You better not pay attention to any of the road signs, Grayson, or I’ll kill you.”
**
It has been almost a month since you were in a coma, and it was enough to drive Damian crazy. He visited you as often as he could (considering the fact that the Cave was in his basement, it would be safe to say that he probably didn’t leave) and he talked to you through your unconsciousness.
“(Y/N)… please wake up,” he mumbled, looking at your sleeping form. The steady beeping of the heart monitor was somewhat reassuring. At least you weren’t going to die.
Your eyes moved from underneath your eyelids and you forced your eyes to open. “Ugh, where am I?” you groaned, sitting up in an awkward position.
“You’re awake!” Was the first thing you heard. You looked around, only to see Damian with the biggest smile on his face.
“Sorry to disappoint,” you said with a lopsided grin.
“You’re going to be okay,” the boy promised. “You’re going to be okay. Father said you could keep the room you stayed in. Or you could move. He said it didn’t matter, but I was wondering if…” he trailed off.
You really liked where this is going. Peering at his emerald green eyes, you cocked your head in confusion. “If what?”
“If you… wanted the room next to mine?” A blush crept up his neck as he looked at you expectantly.
“This coming from the guy who didn’t want me as a soulmate,” you smirked at him. “Admit it, you like me.”
Damian looked away as blood rushed to his cheeks. “Shut up, idiot.”
You laughed. “I would love to have a room next to yours.”
The Arabian boy offered a smile at you, brushing a strand of (H/C) hair from your face. “I truly am sorry, (Y/N).”
“I know. I’m sorry if I wasn’t what you expected.”
“Beloved, you’re everything I ever wanted.”
#Damian Wayne x Reader#Damian Wayne#Dick Grayson#Reader Insert#x Reader#Jason Todd#Tim Drake#Red Hood#Robin#Red Robin#Nightwing#Batman#DC superheroes#DC comics#fluff#cute#SFW#Soulmate AU#alternate universe
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Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 205 “Cinematograph”
So, I’m back, scanlations are finally out and we can see that the new chapter, despite being still a light one, is likely preparing the ground for something big.
In fact we start with a colour cover of Tsurumi, curled up on a mountain of weapons (remember? Tsurumi wants the gold to buy more weapons and then he plans to open his own weapon factory).
Although Tsurumi is curled up, his position differs from Ogata’s almost foetal position when he was sleeping curled up while clinging to his rifle in chap 107.
The drawing is disturbing.
Tsurumi has no pupils or irises, his eyes completely white. It’s the first time we see this happening with him as far as I can remember but it usually happens when Sugimoto has completely lost it and his into berserk mode.
Although the background below the weapons is red (not a bloody red but it still makes me think of blood), no red or variations of pink are used on Tsurumi but they’re replaced by red’s complementary color, green, which us western associate to zombie representations. Tsurumi, the self defined Shinigami, comes out as an undead. It doesn’t help he’s showing his clenched teeth (another recurring symbol of the zombies’ hunger) or how the veins are very visible on his hands.
He seems a hungry undead, clinging to his weapons, pressing against them and burying himself in them (part of the weapons are above him), one arm also between his legs as if to try to grab the weapons that are there. Greed, hunger, those are the vibes I get from that picture and that reminds me of Tsukishima’s words about how Tsurumi (and Arisaka) have an addition to war (chap 94).
But now let’s move to the plot. Tsukishima and Sugimoto are plotting. Well, more than plotting they’re having a ‘secret’ meeting in which Tsukishima is reporting his and Tsurumi’s interpretation of what had happened to Asirpa. She was ‘kidnapped’ by Kiro because he hoped to awaken her memory so that she could remember the key to the code and he also wanted her her to meet with Sofia.
Tsukishima thinks that in the end Asirpa has remembered the code and this is why Ogata separated Asirpa from Kiro and why Asirpa mumbled something to Kiro that allowed him to feel relief before dying and entrust everything to her.
Long story short, Asirpa and Kiro had been careless.
Kiro had let his feelings come out when he had learnt his plan had worked, inadvertently ‘revealing’ with his body language what Asirpa has whispered to him… though I can’t really blame him much as the poor guy was dying and, in the end doesn’t fully seem to realize Asirpa can’t just leave and reach Sofia as he told her to do.
Asirpa, of course, can’t really be blamed as she’s a child but she has obviously revealed too much of what had happened (she didn’t need to say Ogata had parted her from Kiro deliberately, it was clear it would arise suspicions, she could have just told they got lost searching wood and then argued) and hadn’t been clever enough to hide behind a lie what she had told to Kiro (for example she could have said she would take care of his kids, of reporting he died fighting well, that she would do her best to remember the key even without him… whatever).
Of course, since Asirpa is a kid, it makes sense she was careless but really, I wonder how Wilk expected her to become the Ainu leader NOW.
Her actions clearly reveal she is still too naïve. She obviously didn’t tell Sugimoto the code and wants to hide she has remembered it but by partly revealing what had happened with Ogata and by not explaining what had happened with Kiro, she had given away the truth, she has remembered, Ogata knew about it which is why he has left the group with her and she has told Kiro the truth, which is why he found peace.
Tsukishima puts is sentence in shape of a question, just to check if Sugimoto knows if Asirpa has remembered or not, but his question is a retorical one. He’s sure she has, the real question is if she has told Sugimoto or not. I doubt Tsukishima trusts Sugimoto blindly, he’s studying him to see if he’ll give out he knows the code.
That’s why Tsukishima goes on and delivers the final blow, suggesting Ogata wanted to kill her because she told him about the code and therefore she became useless to him.
And this is interesting.
Of courseTsukishima is wrong in his assumption and I think he knows or getting the code would be even more urgent and he also wouldn’t have wanted Ogata to die as two people to question about which is the code are better than just one.
So why he’s suggesting this?
I wonder if Tsukishima’s speech was actually suggested by Tsurumi.
In fact by suggesting Asirpa opened her heart to Ogata and Kiro whom Sugimoto sees as bad guys, never mention he loathes Ogata, they’re likely trying to damage their bond. It would be a heavy blow for Sugimoto, who prizes himself as the person Asirpa trusts the most and views her as some sort of saviour, if Asirpa has chosen to open up with Kiro and Ogata but not with him.
By now Tsurumi had all the time to discover Sugimoto’s best friend married the woman Sugimoto loved while Sugimoto wasn’t there.
Suggesting Ogata got Asirpa’s faith while Sugimoto wasn’t there with her, and now Sugimoto can’t even win it back enough to have her open up with him too should feel similar of that situation only now the culprit wasn’t Sugimoto’s best friend but a person Sugimoto loathes and wants to kill.
It’s interesting how Sugimoto in the past scolded Koito for calling Ogata a ‘Yamaneko’, claiming it was a pathetic joke...
...but then, when asked why Ogata is searching the gold, goes and says ‘he’s just scratching around and playing’. Yes, the translation said ‘he’s just stirring up things for the fun of it’,
but the Japanese version uses ‘hikkaki mawashite asonderu’ (引っ掻き回して遊んでる “playing scratching around”, “playing clawing around”) which hints more to a cat behavior than to a human. In short he’s subtly agreeing with him being a ‘yamaneko’. It makes me think Sugimoto is trying to be a good person when criticizing the tasteless joke but, deep down, agrees to it.
I wonder why Sugimoto ALWAYS intensely disliked Ogata, right from the start.
His ‘spider sense’ is pretty bad, he couldn’t recognize Henmi or the fake Ainu as criminals and murders, nor he could realize Vasily is not Ogata so it’s not like his instinct is reliable.
Ogata isn’t the only person who left the 7th, Tanigaki did so as well yet Sugimoto harbours him no ill feelings and went along with Vasily, who shoot Shiraishi, just because Vasily is also hunting for Ogata.
Hijikata used Shiraishi to spy him, Shiraishi didn’t reveal he was also ‘working’ with Hijikata (well, he’d been blackmailed but...) Inkamart betrayed them all to Tsurumi but... Sugimoto is just obsessed with Ogata, with keeping him outside the group, putting him down, killing him. he can trust Kiro, he can trust Hijikata, he can’t trust Ogata.
I’ve always wondered if this was tied to the third feline in the story, Toraji, whose name meaning ‘next tiger’ (寅 “third sign of Chinese zodiac, which is the tiger” 次 “next”), If Ogata somehow managed to remind him of the negative sides of Toraji or of a negative experience tied to Toraji. We’ll see.
Anyway Sugimoto hurries to say there’s no way she would have told Ogata... as if Asirpa too should have loathed him, when actually Asirpa didn’t think ill of him at all.
Sugimoto’s gaze is lowered, he’s not looking at Tsukishima and his eyes are partially shadowed by his cap.
His words sound confident but his posture is not. He’s even frowning a tiny little.
He then goes on saying he’ll be the one to talk about it with Asirpa and Tsukishima doesn’t have to get in between them.
He’s still not looking at Tsukishima, who has however turned to look at him, and he’s looking glomy. I wonder if, despite his words, Sugimoto is afraid he won’t get Asirpa to open up to him.
But going back to the plot, it seems the guys believe they’re short on time as Tsurumi is about to come and, according to Sugimoto, although Asirpa hadn’t met Tsurumi yet, she wouldn’t open her heart to that type of man… implying that instead of course she would open up his heart to him.
Below the scene we see a creepy image of Tsurumi in which again his eyes are completely white and he’s showing his teeth and it seems as if, something is… well, rising out of him, like an evil energy or an aura, or maybe it’s just me.
I’m not sure if the idea is Sugimoto deep down finds Tsurumi creepy or think Asirpa would find him creepy or that Sugimoto is actually walking straight into Tsurumi’s trap.
Tsurumi is stalling them there and letting Sugimoto handle things the way he let Ogata handle his brother. Honestly I think nothing good will come out of this because Sugimoto thinks Asirpa will tell him the code and he’s not prepared for a ‘no’.
He’s aimed with good intentions as well as slightly selfish ones and he expects Asirpa to give in to his request… and doesn’t really seem to be considering Asirpa might say ‘no’, that she might decide not to give him the code.
Nor he’s really considering the Ainu cause, and how Tsurumi’s actions, should he get the gold, would reflect on them. Sugimoto is projected on the present, without really thinking at the future. He means well but lacks foreplanning. There’s no way he can win against a master at foreplanning like Tsurumi is… but the part that worries me the most is how he’ll try to get the code out of Asirpa.
Not only he doesn’t think she’ll say no but he had promised it to Tsurumi and she’s basically prisoner of the 7th. Tsukishima and Koito might play nice with her for now but wait for when Tsurumi will be there and will demand the code. What is Sugimoto going to do then?
Have her escape? Fight Tsurumi and his men? Honestly I fear we’ll end up into a very dark part of the story soon, hence that’s why the previous chapter and this one will contain such a light note.
It’s also interesting how Sugimoto is refusing to believe Asirpa might open up to Tsurumi. Evidently he doesn’t know yet how easily this guy can have a youth open up with just one sentence or two...
...and can even go so far as to present himself as a saviour...
...a best friend....
...someone who can help you shoot your mother leave the nest.
Honestly I don’t think right now Sugimoto will manage to get the code out of Asirpa but... I’m not sure if Asirpa would manage to resist Tsurumi.
I’ll say she would merely because the story has made a parallel with Tsurumi being the devil and Asirpa being Jesus and therefore she should resist temptation but I think Tsurumi, AT THE MOMENT, has way better means at his disposition to get Asirpa to talk than Sugimoto.
Anyway the story switches to the two cinematographers explaining Asirpa and the rest of the group about cinematographs, how cinematics of Japan had gotten trendy and how moving pictures work by showing them a projection FOR FREE, likely as a thank you for Asirpa’s help against the wolverine as normally they ask money for this.
They also introduce themselves as the cinematographer Girel and the director Inaba Katsutarou, showing how @osomanga guessed correctly the people on whom they were based.
Asirpa is impressed by the projection and asks if they have also filmed folk tales but she’s informed they didn’t as the machine can’t record sound.
I wish I could inform Asirpa there’s a way to record sounds as well as the gramophone existed from 1887 so she could technically record sounds as well and let them too survive, although parted from images… but well, I’m not in the GK cast.
Anyway Asirpa decides she wants to film an Ainu legends so as to leave it for future generations. Inaba is doubtful and suggests what I mentioned previously, to just use a phonograph to record the audio as Ainu don’t even have plays (he mentions he recorded a Kabuki play previously).
Asirpa thinks the meaning will get across better with a video though and that people who speak a different language would still get the meaning behind their stories if they were to see the images and I’m really sorry to tell her this but while images get across a meaning MORE than just audio, if you don’t understand the audio, part of the contest still remains very obscure unless you’re VERY GOOD at transmitting things with just the visual.
The idea she can do this with random people who aren’t professional actors is well, beyond optimistic.
Proofs are when not Japanese speaking people saw the raw of this chapter, while many could get the general gist of the story, at the same time they couldn’t really understand well what was going on in the myths she was narrating…. And how people need subs when an apisode of an anime is out to fully understand what’s going on.
Silent film still used to use silent cards as they acknowledged dialogues or explanations were necessary to understand the visual.
Long story short, silent stories exist and can be very good and deliver their message well but it’s not so easy to make them, especially if you’re narrating a story based on a different culture.
Sugimoto seems to be impressed by her determination...
...but the director isn’t really interested.
Now… I know some people will be amused by Sugimoto forcing the director to do what Asirpa asked him to do but I’m not really finding that funny.
He’s not just asking the guy to humour her because she saved his life, he grabbed the guy’s scarf and ordered him to comply with Asirpa’s request, his whole behavior threatening. Inaba and Girel aren’t touched by his words, they’re scared. You can even notice how the balloons and the font used for Sugimoto’s words in the original (and in the scanlations too)
imply this is not Sugimoto asking nicely, this is Sugimoto threatening them.
But those guys aren’t bad guys and Sugimoto isn’t asking them just five minutes of their time. Taking a film isn’t something that gets done for free, especially in those times. They had already repaid Asirpa by showing her and everyone else the movie FOR FREE. If Asirpa saved their life for a reward this would cheap Asirpa’s actions.
Long story short no, I don’t find this funny and whoever has a work and, all of sudden, is threatened by a stranger to do what he wants for free and against his will, likely will feel the same.
We can claim that Asirpa’s intentions are nice but this doesn’t mean people HAS TO humour her.
They should do it out of kindness, not out of Sugimoto threatening them and it should be their decision.
So, long story short, the guys are forced to do Asirpa’s or better Sugimoto’s bidding as they’re agreeing merely because threatened by him, not because interested in helping her.
The Karafuto expedition is also forced to help (though I think they were more willing to do it than Girel and Inaba), Vasily included, who gets to draw the scenery.
As Asirpa of course as favourites, Sugimoto gets the role of the lucky guy Pananpe, whose actions always make him rich, with Koito in the role of his ‘pretty wife’, while Shiraishi gets to do the role of the unlucky Penanpe who always ends up having his dick cut and dying a miserable death because he’s apparently scum and always fail to properly imitate Pananpe (why he’s scum is never explained and it’s not like Pananpe is a saint) while Tsukishima plays the role of Shiraishi’s ‘prosperous wife’.
Inaba hands them out the scripts he wrote according to what Asirpa told him. I wonder if he just passively wrote down what she said or also worked it so as to improve it.
Asirpa basically plays the part of the bossy movie director, wearing sunglasses, ordering people around, scolding them claiming they can be easily replaced (they can’t) and even demanding to destroy houses which are in the way.
Meanwhile Tsukishima tries again to plot with Sugimoto by reminding him that since they’ve no time (before Tsurumi will be there) they shouldn’t waste it like this... while Sugimoto insists Tsukishima shouldn’t get in his way as he’ll handle things…
...which somehow worries me as it seems he’s humouring Asirpa in this merely to further his purposes (I hope not, I love Sugimoto but I’ve been fearing the moment he would have to keep his promise to Tsurumi by a long while and I know it won’t be pleasant).
Koito misunderstands and thinks Tsukishima wants to just have more scenes for himself, because sadly Koito is still not thinking in the slightest at his mission.
As the filming goes on Asirpa realizes whose two silly stories won’t convey anything nor, likely, impress people enough to remain passed down, and torments herself.
Well, she’s not wrong, if there’s a moral in those stories, I missed it as well.
Sugimoto suggests her to try for a serious myth instead than just a silly story about dicks being used in weird ways and cut off.
Asirpa accepts, decides to do a Kamuy story and Cikapasi gets the main role of the new story… which is actually better as finally a real Ainu will portray in an Ainu story… not that anyone in Asirpa’s cast has any acting experience anyway but, theoretically Cikapasi should portray better how an Ainu is or feel as he should just act natural. Enonoka also gets a small role as the younger sister of three (the two other sisters being Koito and Tsukishima).
I’ll dig into the plot a little because this time it’s slightly relevant as Cikapasi plays the younger brother of three (the two other brothers being Tanigaki and Sugimoto... whom I guess is added to the cast only because he’s Asirpa’s favourite as he does nothing relevant... Shiraishi gets the role of the bad guy/shapechanging bear by the way). Due to a series of adventures Cikapasi gets to marry the younger sister and finally have a family of his own.
At this point it turns out the brother Tanigaki was playing wasn’t a human or Cikapasi’s real brother but a Kamuy who turned into a bird and left the little brother now that he finally have a family of his own (no idea what happened to the brother Sugimoto was playing, as I said Sugimoto was irrelevant to the story).
As Asirpa, in order to get Cikapasi to make a good expression, reminds him the brother Tanigaki was playing was the one who, in the story gave him protection, took him along, fought evil and grew him and that was now leaving him forever.
Cikapasi, basically emotionally recognizing his own story in the story they were playing, cries, showing Asirpa the expression she wanted.
Note that although Tanigaki should supposedly cry, he doesn’t. I wonder if this is a hint of how Tanigaki and Cikapasi feel very different about what had happened, for Cikapasi he had been ‘adopted’ by Tanigaki, but, for Tanigaki, Cikapasi just went along for the ride and so he’s not as emotionally involved as Cikapasi when ‘leaving him’.
Meanwhile the system that was helping Tanigaki to pretend it was a bird flying away rips and Tanigaki, now dressed only in his fundoshi, crashes down comically (as he makes no attempt to protect himself from his fall and just fall spread eagle).
Asirpa is satisfied.
I’m… not particularly impressed.
Of course I can’t see the whole play, just some still images with explanations about what’s going on but still, I’m not sure such an amateur product could work to transmit the story of a foreign culture behind it so well it would remain left behind.
Asirpa has just discovered what moving images are, she has no knowledge of plays or whatever. Sure, maybe the director is helping her (we don’t see it though, all we know is he wrote down the scripts according to WHAT SHE SAID) but since he was threatened into this he likely just wants to get the work done and be done with this. Also she seems to be left in charge, which means he’s not contributing much.
So, while I was all for her using movies to leave behind Ainu culture… somehow I’ve no trust in how such an amateurish product who basically left behind two funny tales and a myth without really explaining them could accomplish what Asirpa wish. Not only we saw how Koito distorted the Meko Oyasi myth, interpreting it as a suggestion to kill it first sight, even though he heard it being narrated... but really, it’s not so easy to accomplish what Asirpa wishes with just a movie, even when done by a professional.
When the narration is unclear and poor… what will remain behind?
It’s not enough to just film a story, the message has to be clear or it’ll end up being misunderstood.
But well, for now I’ll try to delude myself Asirpa and Co secretly had an impressive talent as director and actors so their production was actually impressively clear… or at least interesting enough people would research for the real myth and the explanation behind it.
We’ll see if the next chapter will confirm they made a masterpiece or will reveal it was just not worth the effort.
On a sidenote though, it’s entirely possible the manga will just wave away the problem giving Asirpa ‘genius filmmaker ability’. In short it doesn’t matter if she’s a child who has just discovered movies, she’s the new Mozart of the film world and her work came out as perfect. Honestly I think this is very likely what’s going to happen, her movie, instead than amateurish, will look very moving and intriguing worth winning multiple Oscars and being awarded the Golden Lion… but well, this is GOLDEN Kamuy after all.
Something else worth mentioning is how the whole myth seems to raise a flag about how Cikapasi and Tanigaki might end up parting ways, with Cikapasi remaining with Enonoka. That or the whole thing was meant to be a nice what if, and things will end up rather dark.
Honestly I hope the movie is just foretelling Tanigaki and Cikapasi parting ways, as I would prefer this to the other option.
Last but not least let me go back a little to talk about Sugimoto.
When Tsukishima had accused Asirpa of having remembered and shared the truth with Ogata and Kiro… Sugimoto hadn’t tried to deny it.
He could have, he could have lied and told he heard Asirpa saying something reassuring to Kiro, not that she had remembered but that she would care about the Ainu’s interests or something like that.
Asirpa might not have thought to disguise her actions as such but she’s a child, Sugimoto is a man and could cover up for her, in the same way as he could have told Tsukishima how Asirpa doesn’t know why Ogata wanted to kill her since she’s the key to the gold and wondering if he really wants it,
which are all clear hints she didn’t tell him the code and therefore Ogata’s actions aren’t tied to her having turned useless.
Sugimoto could have suggested everything else really, like how Ogata might have believed he wouldn’t have the time to get her to tell him a code she hadn’t remembered yet and therefore, instead than letting Sugimoto get her and learn the code from her, he wanted NOBODY to have the code. After all he told Asirpa he believed Ogata was in this just to play around, why not to use this with Tsukishima too?
Why Sugimoto should have done this?
Because regardless of Asirpa having remembered the code or not, it could be better for her if Tsurumi DOESN’T THINK she has remembered because Asirpa might not want to share that info with him or not truly not remembering it.
Sugimoto should remember how Tsurumi stuck sticks through his cheeks to get him to cooperate as well as he had him beaten up.
If Sugimoto doesn’t get her to talk or if Asirpa still doesn’t remember, Tsurumi might not necessarily feel he needs to be kind with her, that’s why it’s imperative Sugimoto makes sure he won’t think Asirpa has remembered. But the problem here lies in how Sugimoto is likely sure she would tell him the code, why shouldn’t she?
So there’s no reason to hide from Tsurumi she has remembered, because Sugimoto can hand to him the code on a silver plate… and maybe I’m just being pessimist but I fear this thing will backfire horribly.
I’ve been dreading the moment Sugimoto would have to keep his promise to Tsurumi from chap 139. We’re at chap 205 and that moment is coming close by the minute… and I’m honestly dreading it because I doubt it will be pretty.
We’ll see though and I won’t mind for Golden Kamuy to prove me wrong on this one.
#Golden Kamuy#Asirpa#Sugimoto Saichi#Tanigaki Genjirou#Cikapasi#Enonoka#Tsukishima Hajime#Tsurumi Tokushirou#Koito Otonoshin#Shiraishi Yoshitake#Inaba Katsutarou#Girel#Golden Kamuy Ramblings and Theories
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A Wonder Women Night’s Dream: The recreation of Shakespeare’s amazon
Abstract
Wonder Woman, one of the most popular superhero in history, is a feminism symbol. She is the most known female character of comic books and together with Batman and Superman compound the three Gods of DC Comics. Diana’s origin reminds the Greek mythology, but it may be not only that. In this paper we compare the story of Wonder Woman origins with the Hippolyta character in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Shakespeare. We also discuss about the reasons why it can be based on Shakespeare’s play according the women social context at the 40’s.
Key Words: Wonder Woman, Comic book, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
An Introduction
Thirty eight million dollars. This was the number collected during the first Avengers weekend premiere in Brazil. It was only in Brazil. That’s huge. Superheroes are a global fever just like never before. They are everywhere: cinema, internet, television, games, music, art, clothes, objects and, their first platform, comic books. Marvel Studios and DC comics are the companies responsible for and both compound the empire of the mainly superhero circle: Captain America, Captain Marvel, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and so many others. It is noticeable the common idea of “These superheroes are children subject”; It’s is also common being said that Comic Books are just entertainment. However, the origins of superheroes are meaningful and history proves that.
The Golden Age
After Great Depression, the economic situation of United States (US) was a chaos. Unfortunately or not, some years later the world lived the event which had changed everything forever: the World War II. Adolf Hitler, his army and beliefs impacted directly art and culture. At the boundaries of war, US were raising his economy through selling weapons and basic supplies to others countries. A cheap option of entertainment and also a way to spread patriotism ideas and hope inside the country, in 1938 emerge the first superhero in history. Created by Jerry Siegel e Joe Shuster, Superman wears the nation colors while he fights against villains and still wanted to be a simple man, making people believe – in subjective way - which the Great Depression would end fine, II World War as well. Clark Kent was the first of so many others – Captain Steve Rogers and Bruce Wayne for example – heros who were succeeded in sells and popularity. This emergency period of superheroes was known as Golden Age. The comic books heroes remained until the year of 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the United States entered at the war and the first female superhero took the stage. One year later was born Wonder Woman.
Page 01 : A dream called Hippolyt
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a famous play wrote by William Shakespeare. The characters and places are based on Greek mythology and every aspect of the plot compound the theme of love, his obstacles and consequences to the human rational mind. Hippolyta is a secondary character; Theseus fiancé, her marriage is the event which unfolds the plot and the lovely triangle: Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander. Even located at the second level of the story, Hippolyta has some important characteristics for us to analyze.
First of all, her character is based at the Amazons Mythology. According to the original story, Hippolyta was the Amazon Queen, the best warrior already known at Paradise Island. The Amazons wouldn’t have relations with man, that’s why Hippolyta is forced to marriage with Theseus when he won the battle against her nation. But at the Shakespeare’s play it didn’t happened.
Hippolyta and Theseus wanted to marriage because of love, but a rational kind of, differently from Romeo and Juliet. We can suggest she left her land for him – the story happens in Athens. She also talked with Theseus at the same level of rationality; she was an obedient wife, but not a voiceless one – just like Catharine in The Taming of the Shrew. The same image was reconstructed four centuries later in a female superhero.
Turning the page: Wonder Woman is coming
Created by William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman appeared for the first time at the edition number 8 of All American’s All Star Comic in December, 1941. According to her origin story, Hippolyta created a statue and after loved it, she asked to Aphrodite turns it to life. This was how Dianna was born and years later became an admired Amazon. Everything was fine at Paradise Island until one day a man called Steve Trevor, a pilot soldier of US inside war, flew his airplane there. He was completely lost and Amazons decide to help him chosen one between them to take his back to the US. Dianna won the championship, but she falls in love for Steve and he falls in love for her. So, she decided to leave her land and help Steve and his country at war, adopting the identity of Diana Prince, the army nurse.
Wonder Women, as well as others superheroes, had a big importance during war. Her image was created to send a message to women, because at that moment the nation needed them to leave their houses and help the army. Women also was needed to occupy men jobs inside society and do things that only men was able to do, because their husbands, sons, brothers were at the field and manufactures can not stop. The American way of life had changed. So, mostly men had to change their ideas, the “perfect woman” was not that one who stayed at home waiting for her husband anymore. The “perfect woman” now was the one who didn't care leave her house and help the country for love. Women needed to be and feel empowered. That’s what Wonder Woman is about.
The recreation: Shakespeare and the POP culture
Diana Prince and Hippolyta have more in common than simply being an Amazon of Paradise Island. They are mother and daughter, warriors whom love another warrior, but in different contexts. Both left her homes and take opposite sides of their own creation. The enemies – Theseus and Hippolyta – whom can just be together inside a dream in Shakespeare, to Marston starts to be a reality. Beyond two stories, Diana and Hippolyta are examples of how women, living at 16th ou 20th century and inside a masculine society, can be empowered. About how this women can have a voice. About how this women can exist, taking the control of their on lives.
Conclusion: This is not the end
Superheroes fever or not, each one of them represents an aspect of history. For us, women, Wonder Woman represents our past, our present and our brighter future. A future where women can be strong and own her on “Self”. This was impossible at English romanticism, it was more believable at last century. Today it is more closer than never Shakespeare dream become true.
“Of all people, you know who I am…who the world needs me to be. I’m Wonder Woman.”
Infinity Crises – Number 01
Bibliography
CAIXETA S.P. A Anos dourados: Amulher-maravilha e o papel da mulher norte-americana durante a 2a Guerra Mundial. <http://periodicos.ufpb.br/ojs2/index.php/tematica/article/view/23753> Available on june 29th , 2015.
COMICS, D. Wiki database <http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page> Available on june 29th 2015
COOGAN, P. Superhero: The secret origin of a genre <http://resources.desmet.org/bergman/a%20ink%20to%20screen/peter%20coogan%20webster%20university/4_Coogan-Superhero.pdf > Available on june 29th , 2015
SHAKESPEARE, W. A Midsummer Night's Dream <http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/full.html> Available on june 29th , 2015.
WEEKLY, C. Fightin' Femmes: Unmasking Female Superheroes with Author Mike Madrid <http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/fightin-femmes-unmasking-female-superheroes-with-comic-book-historian-mike-madrid/> Available on june 29th , 2015
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Costume designs and the role of the Skirt in the Modern Female Hero.
With recent discussions over costumes in regard to not only She-ra but in the past few years in regard to Wonder Woman and several other prominent female heroes, I wanted to step back and take a look at why a skirt, in a lot of cases, is actually a better option for a fight then say a very tight leather outfit.
I had this discussion with my male friend who had just started to read Wonder Woman with the New 52 and he asked why it was that people were upset over the redesign with the pants. My answer at the time was, they look like jeans, you can’t really fight well in jeans designed like that. They will rip and tear, and she is a warrior and shouldn’t have to be restricted by what’s on her legs for moving. A skirt or shorts would work better for her.
He at the time replied that she should wear pants. We went back and forth for a while until I brought up the fact that having a lady wear a skirt isn’t meaning she’s a weaker fighter, skirts are actually less restrictive for movement and one of the reasons why the Romans and the Greeks wore them into battle, along with the Scots who wore kilts. The idea of the skirt as a worn by a warrior predates a lot of modern conceptions as women and men wore the style when fighting. Lets we forget that part of the idea of armor during the time of the knights was because of the newer weapons that had supplanted the bronze age swords of the period with harder steel weapons, so they needed more to protect them than the light armor and leather that they were wearing.
However this idea of the skirt still stuck around regarding fashion for women, because, well, people like legs (although for a long period showing any legs off was a bad idea). Women, and men, in the entertainment world tended at the time to stick to shorts and it was shown in how Strong men were used for the Superhero look (see DC and Marvel with the outside underwear) while ladies like Wonder Woman were given more of a swimsuit/athletic look. Now the change to this started around the time of the whole issue with the Comic book Panic that came about because of the book Seduction of the innocent came out and freaked people out about various things in comics. Women at this time were wearing skirts, though they were limited.
This changed by the 1950s to Female heroes wearing skirts to show their feminine side. The idea had always been there that women could wear make up and look “dolled up” in comics way back in the days of Wonder Woman, because she wore make up all the damn time in the stories. Also a number of the female heroes were Girls, and seen as well teens and children. The reason being that girls in the period wore skirts. It was pretty much ordered by the schools that girls had to wear skirts at the time. It was the 50s. Into the 1960s things changed and you saw skirts replaced with pants, shorts and in some cases the start of the bathing suit look. The trend continued into the 1970s, and some what in the 1980s where the suits changed some, but were mostly one piece swim wear for the most part for costumes of some characters. It really wasn’t until the 1990s that you saw this “Overly sexy” look come about and I can point to the shift being by the late 1980s you had a lot of cheese cake showing up in movies, so to drive sales of comics (which the industry screwed up on it’s own) a lot of artist started to turn to making women look more desirable and wearing less. You can kind of thank Image Comics for a lot of that as well.
So why talk about any of that? Well to give an idea of where the skirts came from. Most heroes that wear skirts were invented in the 1950s and the look was popular among the female population. So of course you would have the characters in books wearing skirts. This never though replaced the fact that they were strong and independent characters that had their own villains to fight and later on allowed for newer female characters to come in and stand out as leads.
By the way for those that think that a strong character can’t wear a skirt and still kick butt, well here are a few characters that do wear skirts and are seen as iconic, independent and strong females that have inspired both men and women in all walks of life.
Starting with Super Girl.
Kara Kent, or Kara Zor-el is as strong as her cousin Clark and can pretty much take on anyone he can. She has the same set of powers that he does, and one version of her later became Power Girl who, depending on the writer, can in some cases lift twice as much as he can. She also almost single handed beat the Anti-moniter.
Marvel Girl -aka Jean Gray
Early costumes for Jean was this green piece after graduation. Her reason for it came down to her wanting to look different than the other members of her team and fashionable as well. She is, bar Xavier, arguably the strongest mutant on the planet with her mental capabilities, and has been shown to have so much power that the Phoenix force stayed with her for many many years after the first Saga finished.
Mary Marvel
Mary is the sister of Billy Baston, aka Captain Marvel aka Shazam. Like her brother when she calls down on the power of Shazam she can become Mary Marvel, who is just as strong and powerful as her brother, and blessed by the gods. This girl can do what her brother can, and, on top of all of that, has proven to be able to go toe to toe with Super Girl and Power Girl in recent years. She is a force to be reckoned with. (And Ignore the Black Mary Marvel stuff that Johns wrote for Countdown it made no sense.)
Flamebird aka Bette Kane
The niece of Kate Kane, Elizabeth “Bette” Kane started her career as a wanna be side kick and a fan of Robin. She grew to be as good a fighter as her aunt, and pre -52, she ended up becoming a teacher who was a strong detective in her own right. Her Aunt has taught her various forms of martial arts and the two train together as Bette intended to become a person that could protect others the way that she saw Robin (Dick Grayson) protect people during his tenure.
Bomshell version of Batwoman
Basically Kate Kane as a baseball player and wears the outfit that her team wears when she fights. It’s pretty much all the awesomeness of Kate Kane but just wearing a female baseball uniform worn in the 1940s.
Ms. Marvel aka Kamala Khan
While technically considered a tunic, the top part of Ms. Marvel’s outfit is considered a dress and can be worn as such. Kamala added the tights and other aspects because of her preference for dressing. However, yes that is a dress she has on. Also let’s not forget how powerful she is and how cool she can be even when geeking out. See her meeting with Wolverine for the first time.
The Sailor Senshi
When Naoko Takeuchi first created this group of girls she had one thing on her mind. Sentai. You know, Power Rangers. But she wanted to use fashion as it is one of her passions. So she created these strong girls who grow as the series goes on, but every one of them wears an outfit that is recognizable to the female population in Japan, that of the school girl uniform. Yes the skirts are short, but that allows for their movement and is part of the Sentai look of uniformity with color co-ordination. Also did I mention that Sailor Moon literally saved Earth and everyone from a darkness by the power of her love for it, and killed parts of Chaos, an entity that has existed since the dawn of time. Yeah, girls in school skirts can crush monsters.
Jun from Gachaman
Jun, or princess if you go by BoTP, is one of the strongest fighters of the Gachaman team. Her skills as a master of Kagaku Ninpo allow her to use her aglity to create powerful kicks and hits on her enemies. She also uses a Yo-yo as a whip and flail and it’s electric.
Wonder Woman aka Princess Diana, Diana Prince
Do I even need to talk about her? I think not.
Xena Warrior Princess
Played by Lucy Lawless until the early 2000s, Xena was a huge character, powerful and full of compassion. After being a battle hardened character who at one point was an enemy of Hercules, she later went on to spin off on her own show and became not only a mother, but also was seen as a gay icon for many women and men.
The Female lead in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
A Spartan by birth, our canonical lead here, as said by the development team and the books, sports the same fashion as her non cannon male counter part.
Both run around in a skirt and are warriors trained by birth to do battle with the forces that are causing issues for their people.
Chun li Street fighter
One of the oldest Video game heroines. Chun Li is an interpol agent and has many awards under her belt. A known master of various martial arts, she also is a sharp shooter. Her outfit is that of a Chinese qipao, a type of dress made popular in the 1920s, which she wears in honor of her late mother, and which she modified for movement.
So with that in mind I would like to Add She-Ra to this list of Bad -ass females that wear skirts when fighting.
She-Ra aka Princess Adora
With a strong sense of morality, the same strength as her brother when he’s in He-man form, and the skills with a sword and a gun, (and a strong jaw line to boot) She-Ra fights in a war that has nothing to do with her directly and left home to help her friends in the Rebellion. Her transformation is much like that of Mary Marvel, in that she calls down the power from Gray Skull and becomes a more powerful version of herself capable of fighting off Hordak and his evil Horde.
So, with that in mind. Anyone else know of any bad-ass female characters that wear skirts?
#she-ra#she-ra discourse#princess adora#wonder woman#princess diana#diana prince#mary baston#mary marvel#chun li#street fighter#assassins creed#assassin's creed odyssey#xena#xena warrior princess#the swan jun#jun the swan#gachaman#sailor senshi#sailor moon crystal#sailor moon#kamala khan#ms marvel#marvel girl#jean gray#batwoman#kate kane#dc bombshells#bette kane#flamebird#kara kent
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Ninjago & TLNM: To Be Green
Chapter Nine: History Never Always Repeats Itself
Lloyd thought his high school day couldn’t get worse. It came in the form of History Class.
The good news was that all six of the ninja shared this class. After Physics, Nya took Lloyd back to his still partially open locker and gave him a thick textbook with a huge “History” on the front cover with collected images of villages, people, and what looked like Ninjago City. In the middle was a yin-yang symbol.
Finally, Lloyd thought to himself. A class I can actually excel at. I know all about Ninjago’s history, thanks to Master Wu and my dad.
One glance into the History book confirmed everything Lloyd knew was a waste. He didn’t recognize any stories within the pages. Even worse, when the teacher wrote two words on the board, Lloyd had no idea where to start.
“The Ebon Year.” The teacher droned, her voice tight and lacking energy. “Who knows what that is?”
A girl a few rows over raised her hand. When she was called on, she answered, “It was the year Lord Garmadon attacked the city of Ninjago for the first time.”
“Okay,” the teacher responded as Lloyd felt his eyes widen in surprise. “And what makes the Ebon Year stand out in Garmadon’s years of conquering?”
After a pause, the student finally said, “It was because there wasn’t ninja, right?”
Lloyd finally flipped to the page in the textbook where the chapter was recounting the events of the Ebon Year in great detail. And on the front page was none other than the four armed king of shadows himself.
“Close. There were no ninja, so who protected the city?”
The class spoke a very tired chorus of “police”, “coast guard” and “soldiers”.
Loots. Kidnappings. Death. Destruction. The more Lloyd scanned through the chapter, the worse the feeling in his stomach felt. He remembered when his dad was evil like it was yesterday, but it was never this bad.
“Now,” The teacher grabbed a piece of chalk from her rail. “Who can tell me the most important date from that year?”
“The Darkest Day. July 12th, 2015.”
The answer came from Nya, who was to Lloyd’s right. They met eyes, and Nya gestured with hers to look back at the book.
Sure enough, there was a large section just about the Darkest Day. And the pictures...
“What makes the Darkest Day so important?” The teacher followed up while writing the name on the board under “Ebon Year”.
“It’s the first day Garmadon attacked using mechanical weaponry.” Nya replied plainly. “The destruction was uncanny, and it was the first time his attacks almost overcame the police force.”
“Very good. Someone did their reading.” Nya grinned. Lloyd however, was about to throw up.
Finally, the teacher spun on her heels and her eyes snapped right onto Lloyd. “I’ll let Lloyd go ahead and say what happened next.”
Oh no, Lloyd panicked in his head. Oh no, no, no, no-
“Um-“ Lloyd took a shaky breath and quickly flipped to the next page, where he suddenly saw a very familiar green ninja head off the chapter. The chapter name? The Green Years.
“The start...of the Green Years...?” Lloyd hesitantly answered. A few giggles rose from some of the classmates.
“You sound unsure,” The teacher chuckled lightly. “Have you forgotten about your own personal history, Lloyd?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he felt his cheeks go red. With a wink, she turned back to the rest of the class and began to ask for important dates from the Green Years. Lloyd however, began to read as much as he could in the history book as fast as possible.
Suddenly, it just ended. The next chapter was about culture, not true history. There was no mention about how the “Terror Of Lord Garmadon” ended in the book anywhere. Does that mean....?
The bell went off. Lloyd shut his book and joined his friends. Kai looked like he had just woken from a long nap, and Cole still looked as if he was still mad at Lloyd. Uncomfortable, Lloyd clutched both his book and lunch nervously. “So, uh....now what?”
“Now,” Nya beamed. “We all go to lunch!”
_______________________________________________
“Gosh Jay!” Nya yelled over the alarm as they all ran out of the room. “It’s way too loud!”
“I’m sorry!” Jay shouted back. “I just installed it a few days ago, remember!! I haven’t tinkered with it yet!!”
“Forget the alarm!” Lloyd joined in the conversation. “What’s the threat?”
The ninja burst out of the doors of the temple and tore across the lawn that was still scattered with training equipment. “Bank robbery, armed, with hostages.” Zane informed them all.
Cole groaned. Lloyd stared at him in horror. “Another bank robbery? Wasn’t there one last night?”
The team nodded as they approached he edge of the island. Then, each with a twisted face of effort, they jumped off one by one.
“What the-“ Lloyd shouted in shock as they dropped into the sky. Then, they were suddenly surrounded with a colorful cyclone-tornado thing and they hit the ground safely.
“Airjitzu,” Kai told Lloyd. He was the only one who hadn’t of jumped. “It’s gotten harder lately, but it still has its uses. Ready?”
Lloyd stepped back, terrified. “What? No!”
Kai raised an eyebrow. “You don't know Airjitzu? Do you even know Spinjitzu?”
“Of course I know what Spinjitzu is,” Lloyd snapped back. “But...this flying stuff is messed up.”
“Noted.” Kai nodded. “Then hold on!”
Before Lloyd asked to what he should hold onto, Kai grabbed his arm and pulled them both off the edge.
The screaming came immediately. The air rushed past them in a way Lloyd had never felt before. He was dropping faster and faster and the road below him where the ninja were getting into weird vehicles was getting closer every second.
At what seemed to be the last second, Kai wrapped his arm around Lloyd and suddenly the area around them shimmered red. The air under them felt like it thickened, slowing their descent. No, it wasn’t that, the “Airjitzu” had made them fly upwards, but at the speed they were falling all it did was grant them a relatively soft landing.
Kai let go of Lloyd and the blonde teenager promptly collapsed onto the ground, panting for his life. Kai grinned a side smirk. “I hope you enjoyed the ride!”
Still gasping for breath, Lloyd lifted a finger to point at Kai. “Don’t- don’t ever do that again.”
_______________________________________________
Lloyd trotted next to Jay on the way to lunch. Jay was having a grand time telling the blonde teen all about the giant cat and the adventure to the Temple of the Ultimate Ultimate Weapon.
“-and then boom!! I exploded the door and we all ran out and escaped!! Master Wu and all of us sped back here to stop your dad and then we battled more and I zapped so many of their planes out of the sky- and then the cat ate Garmadon but you talked to the cat and then it spat him out and Garmadon has been good ever since.”
For a few steps, Lloyd let Jay’s words settle in his mind. “And how long ago did you say this was?”
The curly haired teen squinted his eyes. “Like....two weeks ago?”
So for two weeks Garmadon had been good. He thought back to when he had defeated the Overlord and his own father had been relieved of his evil. Within two weeks the two of them had become inseparable. If he was captured by his ex-generals who had tried to kill him...
Finally the group arrived at the huge cafeteria. Walking up to what seemed to be a table at random, Jay and Zane took their seats while the other three walked off to join the long lines to get school lunch.
As Lloyd plopped down and opened his bag of food next to Jay, Zane watched Lloyd carefully. “What?” Lloyd asked as he pulled out his food.
“How old are you?” The robot finally asked. “You do not appear to be sixteen.”
Lloyd snorted. “Sixteen? You’re funny. No I’m older than that.”
Jay and Zane exchanged a look. “But...” Jay wore a puzzled expression. “You just turned 16, like...two weeks ago.”
A lot happened two weeks ago, Lloyd couldn’t help but think. “I’m not entirely sure how old I am, but I’m definitely not 16.”
Kai, Nya, and Cole chose that moment to rejoin, each with a very basic looking lunch on a tray. Kai ripped open his milk carton.
“So,” The spiky haired teen put his elbows next to his tray and stared at Lloyd from across the table. “What are you not telling us? You’ve acted weird in every class today. Something’s really up.”
“It’s what I’m trying to tell you guys,” Lloyd replied as he ripped open his sushi. “I’m not your Lloyd. I’m from somewhere else.”
Cole’s head perked up some. “Like...from a different world?”
Lloyd shook his head. “I don’t think it’s the same thing. I’m from a different realm, a different reality of Ninjago. My best bet is that your Lloyd is there in my place, and that we somehow switched.”
Silence. They all stared back at Lloyd with blank expressions. Lloyd stuffed some sushi in his mouth. “Wha I thouwght.” Lloyd mumbled. To his surprise, Kai suddenly drained his carton of milk and crushed it in his fist.
“I believe ya.” He finally told everyone, but especially Lloyd. “Lloyd could never lie, and by the sounds of it you are telling the full honest truth, even if it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Wow Kai,” Cole snorted as he picked at some greasy broccoli. “That was the first thing I’ve heard you say that actually makes sense.”
The group all giggled, Lloyd included. Suddenly he forgot he was at school, in a new realm, or even surrounded with what really was a group of strangers. He felt back at home.
Home.
It felt like a ton of bricks had dropped on him. It did feel like he was back at home... and suddenly Lloyd realized that he had a mission in this world. For the first time, his circumstance felt like it had a purpose. There was something he- and they- had to do.
The other ninjas have seen their Lloyd’s serious face turn on many times before. But even that had a hint of easiness he could never rid himself of. But when the Lloyd sitting at the lunch table suddenly sat up and put on his game face, every ninja couldn’t help but feel his sheer confidence radiate off him like he was a power source of seriousness.
“After school we are going after those shark-wanna be’s.” Lloyd announced to the table. A small grin grew on all of their faces. With one last nod, Lloyd picked up another piece of sushi and excitedly said, “We are going to go save Lloyd’s dad.”
_____________________________________________
Once Lloyd finally found his breath, Kai pointed at a car on the edge of the road. “There’s yours. Hop in, we don’t have much time.”
His breath was gone just as fast as it came back. The car was sleek, powerful, and best of all- green. “This is my car?!” Lloyd shouted with enthusiasm. He jumped in and grabbed the weird half-wheel.
“No, it’s Jay’s car!” Jay replied sarcastically.
“Actually, it’s my car!” Nya inserted pointedly. “I built it. But I built it for Lloyd just a month ago. I call it the....the....”
“Names aside, I love it!” Lloyd grinned ear to ear. Then, feeling back in the zone, he pulled his mask down dramatically, revved the engine, and shouted, “Alright ninja! Shout out your call signs!!”
The comms fell silent. Lloyd waited a few seconds. Finally, Jay spoke. “Uh...ninja...go?”
“You all don’t have call signs?” Lloyd gasped. “How do you all get ready for a fight?”
“I dunno, we just...go.” Cole replied. “Speaking of going...can we go now?”
Right! There was a robbery right now. “Oh...uh, yeah! Zane! Lead the way!!”
Zane nodded from the seat of what appeared to be an ice tank. It wasn’t like the one he knew...this one was an actual war-like tank ready for true battle. Cole, in an off road looking buggy swerved after him, followed with Kai and Nya on matching motorcycles. Finally, Jay saluted to Lloyd and took off on a blue bike of his own.
Lloyd quickly adjusted his seat (gosh the other him has long legs) and then sped off after the ninja into the city.
It didn’t take long to get to the scene of the crime. The police were still in a stalemate with the robbers on the inside, but the ninja parked far enough away so the crooks didn’t know that the cops had back up. They jumped out and off their vehicles and quickly grouped up. For a second, they all looked at Lloyd, then Kai cleared his throat.
“The game plan,” he started, but Jay interrupted him.
“Who said you were giving out the orders, flames for brains? When has one of your plans ever worked out?”
“Jay’s right,” Cole butt in. “We need to listen to me-“
“I wasn’t supporting ‘Team Cole’ either!” The shorter teen snapped. “If anything we should listen to Nya! She’s the best strategist here, no question.”
Zane blinked. “Wow, Jay, I’m hurt.”
“Suck it up roboto, the truth hurts sometimes.”
Lloyd couldn’t believe his ears. Here they were, standing nearby an ongoing robbery, and they were arguing over who to lead them.
Finally, Lloyd snapped. “Listen up- I want three teams to infiltrate. Jay, Kai- you guard the front door. No one leaves. Cole, Zane- you are the first wave. Use your brute force to hold them back. Nya- you and me are going to deal with the hostages while Cole and Zane distracts the crooks.”
All five of them blinked in surprise. “That...is actually a good plan.” Jay muttered.
With a nod, Lloyd dispersed the team. Nya quickly grabbed something long from inside the car Lloyd drove in. “You may need this.”
Lloyd accepted the long samurai-esque sword. His name was engraved on the metal in red. He nodded his gratitude at Nya. She placed her hand on his shoulder.
“We saw how good you are at dodging this morning,” Nya told him. Glancing at the sword, she added, “Now show us how good you are with combat.”
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