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tenebraevesper · 2 years

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Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer, Issue #44: Zeti Hunt (Part 4)

We are starting the final part of The Zeti Hunt! Arc, and I have a lot to say about this one, with a special focus being on the conversation between Sonic and Zavok, Belle’s backstory and Starline going full mad scientist.

We start off with Sonic talking to the Zeti, who are still disabled due to the Zeti Zappers, and telling them how they aren’t going to overpower Tails’ tech. Then, with the most smug grin on his expression, points at the rocket that Tails has delivered.

I said it before and I’m saying it now - I adore smug Sonic.

Zavok attempts to attack him, but gets zapped by the Zeti Zapper and steps back, with Sonic giving him an “Dude, are you serious?” look. Zavok just glares back, wondering what Sonic and Tails are planning to do with them. Sonic replies how they’re sending them home, surprising Zavok.

Tails walks up to them, explaining how the Zeti Launcher would carry them back to Lost Hex and the systems would self-destruct and the Zeti Zappers would deactivate. In short, they’ll be stranded on their own planet, making sure they’ll never bother anyone again. Sonic just waves at them, grinning, making quips and telling them how he really doesn’t give a damn what happens to them.

Zavok is genuinely stunned, noting how, after everything the Zeti had done (taking control of the Zombots and Chaos Emeralds, destroying a bunch of towns and attacking the Restoration HQ), Sonic is still willing to show them mercy.

Sonic responds how they have already won and humbled the Zeti, so that’s enough. Zavok... just laughs at him (and I assume that there are some readers out there who just face-palmed when they read Sonic’s response).

Yeah, we are back to that topic. Zavok tells Sonic how he’ll make him regret showing restraint and how this moment of compassion will be repaid tenfold in violence and misery. This is followed by showing us flashbacks to Sonic and Shadow’s argument over Tinker!Eggman at Sunset City, Espio saying how he shouldn’t have let Sonic convince him to leave Tinker!Eggman alone, Sonic meeting Metal Sonic again after the Neo Metal Sonic/Master Overlord battle, and Sonic confronting Eggman over the Metal Virus.

Now, I had gone over this stuff several times, I guess this bears repeating.

For starters, I had explained that I was both on Sonic and Shadow’s side during their argument regarding what they should do with Mr. Tinker. Yes, Shadow was absolutely right to be paranoid, but Sonic was also right since at the time, they had no clue about Starline’s existence and there were several witnesses to Mr. Tinker absolutely having none of Eggman’s evil personality in him.

Next, if Espio was so adamant that Sonic shouldn’t have convinced him to leave Mr. Tinker alone, why didn’t he or Vector or Charmy keep an eye on Mr. Tinker? Sonic only told him that they shouldn’t kill him, he didn’t say anything against supervision.

As for Metal Sonic, you can claim that this was on Sonic for letting him go, as he was the one who ultimately brought Eggman’s memories back, but don’t you dare deny that this wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for Starline kidnapping Tinker!Eggman and bringing him to the Egg Base, because Metal Sonic had no damn clue about where Eggman was and he was completely harmless without him.

Lastly, well... Sonic does see the good in people, and this was his desperate attempt to reform Eggman. It failed, for obvious reasons, but it was to illustrate that Sonic still has some hope for his arch-enemy.

Also, before any of you start coming at me with the “Sonic never suffers from consequences of his actions”, may I remind you that I just analyzed 40+ Issues worth of Sonic constantly having to save the day because a domino effect of all kinds of things happening (including his own decisions) forced him into a situation where he actually suffers form the consequences of his actions and even needed a miracle power-up and support from Silver to save the day.

...

I rest my case.

Sonic is clearly troubled, well-aware that if the Zeti indeed return, things will get even worse. However, he grins back, replying how he won’t sacrifice his principles out of fear and beat them up if they return again. Zavok admits that he can respect that, and I do to.

Yes, Sonic will give you a second chance if he believes that there is a way for you to reform, but you’re done for if you try to hurt anyone. It is a simple philosophy Sonic lives by, and one many probably don’t understand.

The Zeti then pile into the Zeti Launcher, with Zavok glaring back at Sonic as the door behind him closes.

Sonic and Tails observe as the rocket flies off, with the Zeti never to be seen again (I’ll address this down further) and they call Jewel if she had heard from the Chaotix, basically explaining why Sonic and Tails didn’t go searching for Belle after they were done with the Zeti.

While they sent the Deadly Six back to Lost Hex, our trio of detectives was already searching high and low for Belle and Starline. Sonic assures a worried Jewel that the Chaotix are professionals and that they’ll find Belle. However, he also decides to go search for her. Tails warns him to be careful, as while the Zeti are gone, they still have Eggman and Starline to worry about.

Speaking of Starline, we’re met with a rather disturbing situation, something I can only describe as open brain surgery. Belle wakes up, strapped to an operating table, with Starline, who is wearing her hat, having opened her head to tinker with her brain and awaken her, commenting how she has the most obtuse start-up routine. I swear, if Belle were a real anthropomorphic animal just like Sonic and the others, this scene would have blood in it.

Belle is clearly freaked out, not understanding what is going on, while Starline tells her how her unorthodox design is precisely what he was searching for. Belle responds how she is nothing special and how she does repairs and stuff, messing things up... and I just want to give this poor girl a hug already. But we haven’t come to the worst part yet, as Starline tells her how there’s more to her than she thinks and they both know it.

Belle pleads with him to not disassemble her, which would mean certain death for her, but Starline tells her how he’d never do that, as he holds Eggman’s work in high esteem.

Cue Belle screaming how she wasn’t made by Eggman, but Starline responds how this is only true to an extent and how there is indeed a story behind it.

Starline explains how Eggman lost his memories after Sonic Forces and became Mr. Tinker, at least until Starline kidnapped him and attempted to “cure” him of that state of mind.

Huh, at least he’s crediting Metal Sonic with the help, as again, Metal was the trigger that snapped Eggman out of his amnesia.

Belle is shocked to learn that Starline turned Mr. Tinker back into Dr. Eggman, while Starline notes how the only loss is Mr. Tinker’s alternate design perspective. He keeps on talking how Belle’s unique design won’t be replicated so soon and that’s why he wants to study her, while Belle loses it, screaming how Starline took her father away from her.

If there are people who want to punch Starline, please give it a moment. You’ll soon have even more reasons for doing that.

There’s pinging coming from the computer, showing a screen Belle’s data and Starline being rather excited about it.

Starline marvels over Belle’s passion and raw emotion (you’re calling them simulation, I’m calling them real) and Belle yells at him for not even listening to her. Starline replies how he’s actually listening to her and that she should just let it out and tell him everything. Belle just screams at how he’s an insensitive jerk and that he ruined everything, but Starline turns the conversation back to her origins, looking quite smug and pleased.

Belle, clearly depressed, responds how this is Mr. Tinker they’re talking about, describing him as sweet, kind and funny, and she loved him very much. She loved her job fixing all the rides he made for the children and while the villagers were nervous when she was first introduced, they were still willing to give her a chance.

However, one night, he vanished and we already know that this is when Rough and Tumble kindapped him on Starline’s orders. Not long after, the Zombot fiasco happened and while Belle was safe, thanks to being a robot, she felt lonely and scared.

Once everyone was cured, they returned and blamed Belle, calling her an Eggman spy. It’s really heartbreaking, especially since Belle did nothing wrong, but lost everything thanks to Starline and ran off after she realized that the villagers hate her. She went to look for Mr. Tinker, or rather, Eggman, hoping she could talk some sense into him, and that’s when she was found by Sonic and Tails.

Considering how Belle was designed to fix things and didn’t even know what kind of person Mr. Tinker was before his amnesia episode, it isn’t surprising that she decided to search for him and talk to him.

As for Starline... yeah, he’s totally ignoring her, focusing only on the desired results. All he wants is the code needed for his own pet project. Belle realizes that he’s paying no attention to her story and that no one cares about her, only for her hand to get freed.

We see an invisible Espio, telling her to keep quiet and how he’s here to help her escape. Belle doesn’t take it well, backhanding Espio and screaming about ghosts... until she realizes that she just slapped Espio and alerted Starline. Gotta say, I love this moment; it’s pretty hilarious, all things considered.

Vector and Charmy, who were just hiding outside, barge in, telling Starline to give up and how they had surrounded him.

Starline just claps in response, seemingly impressed by the fact that Team Chaotix found him so quickly. Vector boasts about this being all part of being a good detective, while Charmy proudly announces how they found his evil lair.

Starline just laughs in response, questioning him whether they really think this is his HQ and Charmy is hit by the slow realization that, yeah it probably isn’t. I gotta give a point to Starline here; I may have called him an idiot in the past (mostly regarding the Zeti stuff), but he’s still smart for not dragging Belle to his actual base.

Vector notes how it doesn’t matter, as they’re raiding the files on the computer to learn what he’s up to, but Starline says how he already uploaded everything to his personal cloud server, so there is nothing for them here.

But, as a precaution, he then smashes the computer. Damn, another point for this move, Starline is on a roll today!

He then uses the Tricore to dodge Team Chaotix’s attacks, landing gracefully at the entrance.

After changing to the Speed Core, he zooms away, followed by Espio and Charmy, while Vector checks on Belle and... damn, this is so sad.

Vector asks her how she’s doing and Belle tells him, tears filling her eyes, that Starline broke her heart. At first, Vector wonders if she meant it literally, offering to take her to Tails to repair it, but Belle replies with a quiet “No...”

Vector enters Dad Mode again, consoling her, and I’m feeling so bad for Belle and for everything she had to go through.

Meanwhile, on Lost Hex, Tails’ rocket lands and the Zeti exit it. The rocket breaks apart and the Zeti Zappers deactivate. Zavok notes how Sonic and Tails were true to their word, but Zik calls it a weakness. Zeena and Zazz are bummed about being back and beaten.

Zavok is surprisingly optimistic. Despite their defeat, he tells them how they undertook a conquest far greater than any Zeti did before and how there’s knowledge in defeat. I have to say, I love how much depth Zavok gets here as a character, showing his cunning side and especially how his words had an effect on Starline.

Zavok then continues how Lost Hex won’t contain the Zeti forever and how they will make their return eventually, even more ruthless than before.

...

Okay, show of hands; how many of you guys believe the Zeti will return as the main antagonists once again?

*cricket noises*

Yeah, I don’t know how many of you voted for their return, but I’m fairly certain that this is the last we’ll ever see of them. For starters, the Zeti are stuck on Lost Hex and unless we get a character as idiotic as Starline, they have no technology or magic that would allow them to go back to Sonic’s world. They’re officially written out of the story (but, I guess they can be kept as back-up).

The other reason why I believe they won’t return is that, despite them being written well here... okay, despite Zavok being written well here, they aren’t just popular enough to be brought back, and if the grapevine is correct, they’re seen as one of the worst villains by the fandom. Admittedly, I also have a hard time imagining them next to villains such as Black Doom, Mephiles or Infinite, and I don’t think anyone wants them to steal Eggman’s spotlight as the main villain.

So yeah, these guys are not coming back (and color me surprised if they do).

With this, we end The Zeti Hunt! Arc. For next time, pack all of your gear, because we’re going on a camping trip!

Links:

#Previous Issue

#Next Issue

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer #sonic the hedgheog #miles tails prower #belle the tinkerer #dr starline #vector the crocodile #espio the chameleon #charmy bee #zavok #zazz #zeena #zor #master zik #zomom #jewel the beetle #sonic idw

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wyverian-lady525 · 1 year

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Could we just get a cute platonic story of Alwin's first visit to Mahana? Because I can imagine the rider being SOOOO excited to show their home to their favorite wyverian. Just excitedly showing all their fave spots in the village and on the island as a whole and introducing Alwin to everyone and also introducing him to the monsties he's yet to meet before now! Just cute wholesome stuff <3

Sure! He would enjoy this XD Hope you like it!💖

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A First For Everything

Alwin has seen Mahana now and then when he traveled with you, but this was the first time he’s been properly introduced to it.

Alwin has seen Mahana Village before, but he never truly visited it, even when Red was still around. But he imagines that the village hasn’t changed much, being a peaceful coastal riding village. And plus, you seemed too excited for him to ever turn down a tour of Mahana Village.

“I know it’s all new for you, but you’re gonna love it! I mean, the people are so nice, and the scenery is...” As you guys flew over the sea and towards the island village on your respective monsties, him on Shaulk and you on a rathian (Ratha was recovering from a hunt), your words got lost as Alwin went to his thoughts.

He’s just never seen you so happy before.

During the whole Razewing Ratha ride, you were putting on a fake smile. You were a kid with a huge burden on your shoulders, and the support you had was minimum due to the loss of your parents. I guess that’s why he and Ena had such a soft spot for you. Not only were you their best friend’s grandchild, but you also needed some guidance, and they were old enough to give it.

And now that it was just you and him going to see your home, you seemed to be all energetic.

“Alwin? Did you hear me?” Your voice interrupted his thoughts and the wyverian looked over to see you staring at him with a smile.

“No, um, what did you say?” He asked you and you laughed.

“I said we’re here!” You beamed with a grin as you pointed ahead. Alwin looked to see the small island village that he’s visited once or twice with you in the past. However, this time, he was getting the proper Mahana welcome and tour.

In more ways than one.

“Hello again!”

“Alwin right?”

“Welcome to Mahana Village!”

Everywhere Alwin went since he arrived, every man, woman, and child would grab his face and do that ridiculous greeting that Red tried to do to him so long ago. However, this time, he didn’t push away. Alwin just grinned and bore it because seeing you so happy was worth his discomfort.

But he stopped when the felynes approached him. Luckily, you were there to intervene.

“Come here Alwin! I want to show you my house!” You grabbed the wyverian’s hand and dragged him over to your boathouse. Alwin was amazed by the ingenuity of your people and how they were able to make a place so livable. It was small yet cozy.

“A little bit of everything from my journey is here.” You said while showing him around the one room. Indeed, there were things from Alcala, Loloska, and so on.

“It’s very nice, Y/N. I didn’t expect things to be so tidy.” Alwin commented while folding his arms with a smile. However, you immediately got embarrassed, like your parent just praised you.

“Hey!”

You also wanted him to see the Mahana Village stables. When you first met Alwin, he was kind enough to offer the Rutoh stables to you. Now, you can do the same thing to him.

“Shaulk can stay here during your visit.” You said and the legiana was quick to run over and make himself at him. Not only that, but your other monsties came over to see the new monstie that is now in their space. Most of them were monsties that Alwin has never seen before.

“Is that...an elder dragon?”

You were mostly on your own after Oltura, hunting down rare monsters and eggs. Right now, Alwin was looking at your teostra who came over to say hello. He was sniffed by not just your teostra, but some other monsties that he doesn’t recognize. Some were even other elder dragons, like kushala.

But one face was familiar.

“Hello again Ratha.” Alwin greeted the rathalos warmly as he made his presence known, walking through all the monsties as they parted for him. The rathalos purred as the wyverian started to pet him, allowing the teostra to move away.

“He missed you. You were one of the first friendly faces he ever saw.” You told him, smile on your face as you rocked back and forth on your heels. Alwin grew slightly embarrassed, but smiled at what he took as a compliment.

“I feel the same.” He said as he pulled his hand away from Ratha.

“There’s someplace I want to show you. Ratha can even come with this time.” You said in a bit of an excited manner. Alwin couldn’t say no to your happy face.

After showing him where you hatched your first egg because it just clicked into your mind, you hopped on Ratha and had him (with Shaulk in tow), lead you guys down to the beach. Afterwards, the monsties rested up in the warm sand while you led the wyverian down to the shore.

“Since you never get out much, I thought you would enjoy seeing the beach! It’s one of my favorite spots!” You informed him, letting go of his hand as you moved to allow the waves to lap at your feet. A pleasant smile grew on your face.

“I get out.” Alwin retorted with a frown despite coming to join you by the tide.

The two of you stood there for a bit before you pulled something out of your pocket. It was one of those special donuts from Mahana Village. He’s yet to have one, not being into the sweets as much as people like you or Navirou.

But still, when you offered him half with that excited look on your face, he took it.

“Thanks for showing me around today. It was nice to see where both you and Red grew up.” Alwin stated with a fond smile as you bashfully looked around, slightly embarrassed.

“Of course! Your welcome here always!” You told him with a grin, quickly getting over your embarrassment. Alwin smiled lightly at that. However, his peace quickly turned flustered when you hugged him.

“Thanks for being my friend.” You told him.

Alwin then thought back to what he was thinking on the fly over here. About how you’ve lost so much, been through so much, yet you still carry yourself so high. Even to an old wyverian like himself, the action was admirable. And you were thanking him? Alwin would’ve known naught of the outside world and humans in general if it weren't for you or Red. He then tenderly placed a hand on your arm as you hugged him from the side, a smile on his face.

“No Y/N. Thank you.”

#monster hunter stories #monster hunter stories 2 #mhst #mhst2 #alwin #mhst2 alwin #monster hunter stories 2 alwin

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sims-inmymouth · 4 months

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Delilah Five - Ep. One

If lost, please return this journal to: Ruth Givens

Reward: Six bottles of fresh cow’s milk!

How to milk the Cow

Gentle

Slow movements

Clean cow clean hands

Right side

Two at once

Squeeze down

Deflated

Jan 12, 20XX

A very cold morning in New Willow Creek! I got up extra early so I could help Tamah with the cow. I’ve never milked a cow before, so I made sure to take notes (see above). Though, I think today was a bad example of what to do, because something spooked Delilah and she knocked over the bucket. Tamah went BRIGHT RED. She tried to hide it, but you could definitely tell she was pissed.

Nevertheless, we got six bottles of the good milk! If we can salvage some dark chocolate, Tamah said we could make chocolate milk. I asked, but Tamah was too excited to just be entertaining me.

This happened earlier this morning, before the sun fully came out. I cleaned out the kitchen while Tamah pasteurized the milk. That bit I don’t get, something about a smaller pot in a bigger one. She seemed to know what she was doing.

Hossannah made grits with tomato, eggs, and even some bacon (or at least, meat Tamah found and convinced us was bacon). The tomatoes came from the farm. Theodora had been working on them for a while now. They weren’t growing right, and the last few plants she worked on died before they could sprout fruit. She wasn’t even mad, just kind of sad. The kind of sadness where she would just sit there and sulk all day. Tamah called her a baby, but honestly, that’s just rude of her.

The grits tasted bad. I forced myself to eat what I could, and everything else I snuck out and gave to Delilah.

After we ate, Tamah gave out our assignments. Tamah wanted to clean out the animal pens, especially after Delilah made a mess. And the chickens were just getting angry at everything. Plucking their feathers, trying to chase us. She wanted to whip some sense into them, she said. I’m assuming she meant she would do to them as she does to us—she can shut us down with nothing but a glare. Tamah is kinda scary. Hossannah wanted to fix up our linens since it’s been bitter cold.

Theodora and I were sent off on a scav run. We wanted to see if the Ministry of Labor was still active so I could get registered as a farmer. Tamah said we’d be sent more money from the govt that way, since we have more workers. Of course, they haven’t given us much to begin with. I think they forgot about us. We also wanted to check for more survivors.

Outside of the farm, a lot of the land was dirty and dusty, everything covered in a thin layer of yellow grime. Hills were covered in dirt and trash and shrapnel. I didn’t tell anyone, but I saw what looked like a hand in a pile of rubbish. I think it was a zombie. At least, I want to think it was a zombie. Theodora found some actual ones, shamblers coming towards us, and she shot them with her hunting rifle. They were slow, so I wasn’t very scared. I haven’t been given a weapon yet from Tamah, so all I could do was hide behind Theo. I don’t like feeling helpless.

There were lots of abandoned buildings. Family homes, shops, schools, hospitals, all reduced to a bunch of scrap. I walked on the balls of my feet. There was lots of broken glass everywhere.

Can you believe we found a water heater? It was on the side of an infirmary, I think, and it looked promising so we lugged it home. The metal scraped against Theo and I, our jackets ripped and skin irritated. It was all worth it, because Theo installed it and it worked! It really worked! Now we can finally have warm water! We made no good on the electricity thing, but we do what we can.

Tamah and Hossannah were so proud of Theo that they let her pick dinner. She chose fried green tomatoes, her prize from the farms. Great. I really, really hate tomatoes. Don’t tell anyone, but I really fucking hate tomatoes. I hid by the fruit trees and filled up there, and when dinner came around I said I wasn’t hungry. Could’ve gone worse!

We ended the night by listening to the radio. A couple of survivors a few miles south give reports of where the zombies are and where they seem to be headed. We’ve been wanting to meet them. A bigger horde is expected to come our way mid-morning tomorrow. I trust Tamah, Theo, and Hossannah to keep me safe. Though, I still really want to try my hand at zombie slaying.

Signed,

Ruth Givens

#sims 4 #sims 4 gameplay #sims 4 screenshots #simblr #simlit #sims 4 zombies #delilahfive #sims #my sims #sims story #formatting on this app is so hard

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carnivoraformes · 4 months

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//Arlecchino animal motifs for the lols: Black Mambas, Gaboon Vipers, King Cobras and all that. No pictures of snakes below, I promise but all of them are as pretty as they are terrifying IMO. Also partly blame my enabler for this post and obsession with watching professional venomous snake handlers sharing their passion with people on youtube. Don't expect complete accuracy here on snake behavior but I'm trying okay.

Generally speaking she doesn't always pick violence as a first resort, unless she is on a 'hunt'. It's always on the table, especially if the opportunity or necessity arises but her time and energy are as expensive resources as snake venom is for the snake. So she doesn't want to squander it unless she believes that the payout is worth the loss.

Just as an example when she was about to kill Furina she stopped because her 'prey' was not Furina. Her prey was the Hydro Archon at the time. When the doubt that she was in fact a fake archon came into question she lost all interest. Think of it this way; why would a predator waste energy chasing something when the loss of valuable resources (energy, calories, etc) and risk of injury is more than the benefit of possibly catching the target.

For more specific notes...

Black Mamba: Black Mambas are one of the fastest striking snakes and (according to what I've heard) are very very unforgiving. In turn she is a woman that strikes first, strikes hard and strikes repeatedly to ensure her enemy or prey is not walking away or at least not getting far.

Gaboon Vipers: Gaboon Vipers have the largest fangs in the world with enormous venom glands, meaning they are not a snake you take lightly twice, that said a great deal of the time despite their fearsome reputation they are docile most of the time, until they feel antagonized. In turn there is a reason she is considered dangerous but unlike Childe she is rather calm most of the time, she doesn't kill or attack indiscriminately but the second someone thinks they can step on the viper they have to face her fangs and find she has no shortage of venom when she decides to fight back.

King Cobras: Well outside of the sheer amount of volume a king cobra can give in one bite female King Cobras tend to also build nests and guard their young before they hatch. While she isn't the most doting or loving parent Arlecchino didn't simply create the House of Hearth to raise up children soldiers, though the fact many of them serve her as such is a bonus. The House of Hearth first and foremost is her 'nest' and the children are her 'eggs/babies' and while she isn't necessarily above putting them in 'controlled' danger, when push comes to shove she favors doing it as a last resort. And her way of showing love and affection to her 'children' is by providing safety and protection to her children.

#*conure screaming intensifies* (ooc) //#a venomous animal injects venom (headcanons) //#tw; snake mention

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mediadiscord · 1 year

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The Last of Us – Season 1 Episode 8 – Recap and Review

Hey everyone welcome back to my recap and review of another episode of The Last of Us. The show which I'm liking, based on a video game I've never played on a system that that I didn't continue playing after the second generation. As per usual this review will not feature any Easter eggs, because frankly I wouldn't know what one would be if I came across one. This episode ran 50 minutes it was honestly so fast paced, interesting and all around well done that the time flew by. I had to look at a clock at the end of the episode to make sure I wasn’t going to walk away and miss a significant chunk of the episode. I don’t know who sold what to whom, but this show has had consistently great episodes each week. I’m done gushing, let’s get into the review/recap. We start the episode off with a group of people in a big room getting read what sounds like a sermon by a gentleman. The sermon ends with it actually being a low grade funeral for a wife and daughter’s father who was killed. When the daughter asks if her father will be buried the man gives a look to a few others in the room and then lets her know that the ground is too cold and he’ll be buried in the spring. Right here is where the alarms are going off and the red flags go up. There’s something about religion and the apocalypse that brings out nothing but bad. There’s no story out there where there’s a disaster and the religious folks with a following aren’t monsters. It’s a simple trope that gets followed and every post-apocalyptic story has at least one religious faction side story. After the meeting the is identified as David and speaks to James who is played by no other than voice acting treasure Troy Baker. It was known that Baker would make an appearance in the show, and it’s nice that he got a good chunk of time and then…well…we’ll get there. The discussion is about food and the lack there of. They determine that there’s only about a week or two worth of food left and they make a plan to go out hunting at some spots where animals may have been seen. We then cut to Ellie who is still caring for Joel, and she takes out her ration of food, which looks really like a small cluster of almonds. Surely not enough to live by, so she grabs the rifle and heads out. After a botched sneak attack on a rabbit, she finds a dear and knabs a shot. Like most hunts, if the animal isn’t taken out with a kill shot then it runs until it bleeds out. Fun fact, most deer will run towards water to die. Cut to David and James who have come up on Ellie’s kill and they determine that they’re just going to take it back to the village before the person who shot it comes to claim it. Ellie surprises them and takes charge and David offers her a trade as he tells Ellie the deer is too big for her to carry on her own. It's agreed medication for an infection will be given for half of the deer and David sends James back to the village to get it. David offers to start a fire as it’ll be a while before James comes back with the medication, so they go to a nearby cabin and have a chat over the fire. We learn that David started preaching after his quarantine zone and before the apocalypse he was a teacher. He left the QZ with a group of people and picked up stragglers here and there, also it’s at that time he found religion. This is pretty much textbook cult behavior. A person finds those who are lost and at their wits end, promises then safety and aid in a very convincing way and slowly gathers followers. Ellie calls him out on being a cult leader and eventually James returns with a gun trained on Ellie. No one is shot, but it’s revealed that the father that was killed and spoken about in the beginning of the episode was the person Joel killed in the last episode at the university. David knows she is with him and that Joel killed the man, but lets Ellie go with the medication and he keeps the deer. The village is eating dinner when David and James return with the deer. He addresses the rumor that they have found the man who killed their friend and the daughter says they should kill him and not bring him to justice as David suggests. David promptly backhands her and tells her that that’s not what they’re going to do. We cut to Ellie not knowing how to apply the medication via the syringe that she was given, so she injects it directly into Joel’s would that she had sewn up at the end of the last episode. The next day she wakes up and checks on Joel to see if he has a fever and then gives him another needle full of medication. She goes out to get some ice so their horse can have something to drink and she notices that men are coming. She runs back to Joel and tries to wake him up, but he’s too out of it. She leaves him with a knife and says she’ll lead them away. She goes out and get their attention and fires some shots before riding off. They give chase and James shots and kills the horse and Ellie falls off and eventually passes out from the fall. James and others decide to kill her, but David tells them not to and to take her back to the village. David addresses the others to locate Joel and be careful. This is the beginning of Joel being a complete bad ass as he takes out members of the party and leaves two alive to interrogate them. He finds out where they are and where the village is then takes the last two members out while showing just how much of a persuasive person he is. I don’t believe I have ever seen a situation where a knife is stabbed behind the knee with the promise of popping it off if the person doesn’t do what they want. We cut back to Ellie who has been locked up in a make shift jail cell where David is there waiting to speak to her. They have a brief chat where we learn David is not a nice man at all, he has violent tendencies and admits to eating people to help keep the village alive. Ellie questions if she will be killed and eaten and David says no, and then implies that he will take care of her in all ways, even the very adult ways. Please remember that Ellie is suppose to be underage in this show, so this is all kinds of bad. Ellie used David holding her hand to break his finger, so David runs off and gets James to take Ellie out and kill her. James and David remove Ellie from her cell and throw her on the table, but Ellie manages to grab a meat cleaver and stick it in the side of James’ neck, so long Troy Baker. She runs out up top and David grabs the clever and runs after her. We see Joel entering the area where everyone is and coming across a small building where the deer that Ellie shot is laying along with three hanging bodies where they have been taking meat from. We cut back to Ellie who is in a cat and mouse situation with David. She grabs a hot burning piece of wood and throws it at David, only to miss and start a fire on one of the walls. She hides and pops out and stabs David in the leg with her knife. He gets on top of her and attacks her as well as implies he is about to sexually assault her. Ellie is in reach of the clever and so she grabs it and hits David with it, then gets on top and starts whacking away at his body. She emerges bloody and in shock and as she is walking in the snow a man comes up from behind and grabs her, it’s Joel. She turns around, still in shock, and hugs him. He says, “I got you baby girl” and the episode ends. Oddly enough, my wife was putting down my daughter for bed and she muttered “ok baby girl” and I got a little emotional. While David was talking to Ellie as they were waiting for James to come back with the medicine, he tells her that Joel really cares for her and this goes back to two episode ago where he kept seeing his daughter. This truly shows Joel has becoming a full fledges father figure to Ellie and will do anything to keep her safe and be her guardian. You could look at it as a second chance as his anxiety attacks seem to come with thinking about his daughter. In some cases a person in that position will take blame and think that the situation, even thought they had no control over it, was their fault and carry that burden. Mental health doesn’t take a break during the apocalypse, everyone is having issues. Read the full article

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silvermuffins · 1 year

Text

POkemon Scarlet Liveblog! Part 10ish

bc i am Getting Going even if I'm still scraming about Hades 2

first order of business: breed some ducks for friends. Gets Daya a nice date.

got a nice supply of duck eggs!

accidentally sent someone a gothita egg instead

Okay! I hav now filled in Dreepy, Sprigatito, and Gothita in my dex. Next to evolve is Crabrawler. And also Salandit. Wait how to evolv Crabrawler without Mt. Lanakila? Oh, ice stone. Okay we'll volve Monch and move right along. Phanpy nxt! xcellent, volution already. Nxt will b Cufant.

What's it man if a raid marker on the map is xtra sparkly? Oh ther's on right by a fly point, lt's find out. Shiny four stars??? I faild th raid bcaus th Tyranitar kpt spamming EQ....let's try it again. GOT IT! You'r Adgha.

stops in to say hi to mom rq. MOM TAUGHT ME RECIPES.

reexplores th inlet grotto....o this cave has multipl exits! whre am i!!!

ok i rachd th lighthouse

OKAY god we are Trying with this E key. i have been encouraged to be a curious little thing.

how DID i beat you here, Arven? I dilly dallied so much!

....knew it. He really was raised by the dog.

...The lab looks dusty. Doesn't look like anyone's done anything here in years. The computers come to life, and Sada asks for help. But is this a recording? Or a direct mssage? I stg if she's secretly dead or something....

"the great Professor Sada's glorious research" don't lik the sound of that one bit. Need the scarlet book, huh? We've already been using that. An experience worth treasuring. Tmpting, but lady I am afraid the Great Crater is absolutely off limits for the Treasure Hunt. You got legs, and if you don't you got wheels. Maybe expend half an iota of effort on COMING TO FIND YOUR SON.

cybernetic security systems???

Ohh....Mabostiff got hurt down there....Arven has ben there. Arven I know you treasure Mabostiff but w have more to find. More to see. More to do and feel and love. I'm nto doing this for Sada. I'm using her as an excuse to see it all.

HE CALLED ME HIS FRIEND. yah, that's the spirit! We're gonna go down there and punch your mom in the face! Yeah! Lt's duke it out, but also I need to rifle through your mom's shit for clues.

MOnitors covered in data. Mystrious machine. ...Bed with "Maschiff" written on by a kid. Whiteboard mess of scribbles.

Occulture. Roaring Moon, primeval Salamence. Oh shit it aparently looks similar to what I can only assume is Mega Salamence. Flutter Mane, ghost pterosaur...misdreavus....

A fram with no photo. Picture books for kids, including one about sandwich. Heavy fridge door. Cooktop was used recently! Microwave was not. Sasonings ar expired. Sink hasn't ben usd, mirror is foggy. FUCK went outside I hope I can go back in okay ys good...okay i think I found verything

The cooktop and the empty frame stick out to me as the most important things. Time for a battle! ....PUPPY WANTS TO FIGHT ME I LOVE PUPPY

oh you always lost to nemona yeah she's kind of so much all the time. not a bad person in the least. whatever tho im fight you! not her! no matter how sh acts it's not cheating on her to battle other people

i love Arven so much. Hy! First time I've battled an opponent with a full team! ...th fuck is toedscruel made of??? wham wham wham. Come to see it, Arven also looks like the tera orb is a little hard to control.

you did pretty good Arven. Not good enough to have really stood a chance, but pretty good. And now Linny is evolving! W can switch out.

ohhh we need to recruit Nmona and Penny (who I bet is Cassiopeia) huh

tumblr cool your jets. Honstly I think Nmona would help if w just askd but you're right we probably need to earn Pnny's aid. Also my guy i hav champion rank skills by now. ven if it's not official.

yanks another stak from th earth. yanks anothr. FOUND ANOTHR. ooh Bramblberry th applin will join us.

okay maybe let's gt on with things....like dealing with Cassiopeia. Hi, Clive. I know that's not really your name. But I'm not a snitch. And I am always one for indulging dramatic reveals. Impressive hiding long pants under your shorts.

wait wha??? You're Cassiopeia? I don't buy it. ...No you're angling for a battle bfore the real big boss. You could have just asked, you know. Oh I forgot to swap Linny out. This bgm is far too pleasant to b the finale. Hammer off! Abomasnow's Wood Hammr vs Pebbles's Gigaton Hammer!

Man even Clavell has some trouble controlling the orb. maybe it's just Hard. Anyway Chank is volving, so I'll swap in som new Pokmon after the cutscene. There's no way in hell Clavell is really Cassiopeia.

No shit you're not. Yah....yeah I thought you were trying to spare me some pain. Just. Let me learn the truth.

??? Tyme?

right, so, you'r gonna handle that, right professor? WHile I go battle? Okay it's Gibl and Wingull next. But I gotta wait for nightfall. So, friendship! I have nothing for Riafort and Saguaro right now but ooooh hi Miriam! I look forward to your classes next year~

discovers a whol chunk of msagoza I didn't explore before, somehow...ther's nobody in tsi Every Which Way? Not ven the recip guy?

am on roof!

am also sleepy

okay good morning

i think it's nighttime in game by now, so I have a constellation to fight

yeah that's penny alright. It's okay swetie you hid your identity fine, I'm just genre savvy.

Huh, so you didn't decid to do Operation Starfall until that day...? Mayb the two mmbers talking about quotas and trying so hard to convinc you....mayb the outliers in th tam were what told you it had to nd....strayd too far from what you wanted. Team Star lived long enough to see itself become the villain, that's what you thought, right?

yes penny listn to the part of you that wants Team Star to live on!!! They'v been waiting for you! You could guide them back to what you want to be!

oh hey clive, I se you escapd Ms. Tyme

Penny....is just so scard of being hurt.... Penny they're your friends. You never ven met them in person but they treasure you so much they've waitd for you for eighteen months.

i know from experience that even just a year is a long fucking time to wait. it hurts. physically, it hurts. it tears you up.

Thank god the bosses still had one another, and their squads, because I know how hard that is and I genuinely do not think I would have survived without my important people.

anyway protct Penny protect Team Star

sorry penny don't mind me taking care of this wingull while I dal with you

this music is sick. thanks Giacomo!

she has entirely eeveelutions....but she can't hav all of them, I wonder what will be left out? and what will be her tera?

Her Leafeon is causing me the most problems thus far just because I have no effective counter to grass.

Penny struggles to control the orb too so I guss it's just hard?

somehow I feel like we have arrived at the only outcome nobody wanted.

wll. Humphry is evolving, so we can swap out for somthing....mayb somthing that handles Grass....though most of my options aren't gonna b a viabl lvel by the E4 huh? still I gotta think about my championship team and I know what I need. I need a ground type, dark typ, and something to handle grass. Oh, Gorp is evolving too. Gorp is Ground....might b worthwhil to kep on my team....

anyway tim to hurt

Penny....

the bosses had better turn up right the fuck now to talk som snse into you

Penny.....who hurt you that you feel like you need to hide and scheme and tie everything up in operations? Can't you even trust your friends...?

fuck it I'm sharing my mom with you too

penny why ar you throwing your treasure away

awww clavell got her, at least

OH YES THEY ARE ALL HERE AREN'T THY

FRIENDSHIP, YOU DIPSHIT

jfc

clavell being a Good Adult and acknowldging how fucked up this whole situation is

HUG HER. HUG ALL OF THEM.

babies

i finally understand....Pnny's ben all twisted up with guilt, and has kpt hrself distant and alone all this time. Sh nver got to reallyse that Team Star was the best thing that ever happened to the others. There's a difference between hearing somthing said and knowing it with your heart.

All this time she was trying to carry everything herself whn the whole point was that she didn't need to be alone.

thy're all still in trouble.....community srvice huh. ...Star Training Cntrs!!! Oh my gosh....sir you're dressing a reward up as a punishment

Penny they love you and want you to be with them, why do you need my opinion.

does some tam planning before I continue. I will need to grind a bit.

kay Scoots is back on the team! And w also hav a Sandile.

awww the League is like "you know what Penny, you're a genius, so use your talents for good and we'll waive the problem"

also penny I am kidnapping you to go crater diving

god pnny is being praised that foreign to you...?

Starfall Street....complete!

now tim to grind....I wish autobattling didn't giv so much less exp

oh well grinding grinding grinding. yanks a stake.

huh, i found a cave with the elemental hyper beams. Holy shit, Wild Spiritomb! Nam you Jacks. Some Candy later, I hav a Krookodile and everyon's at least to endgame-ish levels.

Okay! To Msagoza!

We have a league to beat but first, time to see if this cav's any good. Is it a real victory road???

....litrally it's not even a cave, wow. th Pokemon up here are worth no exp. Child why are you attempting the League with just a level 14 Meowth. He has no badges. Literally what the fuck???

okay this cabbi is a bit better

this is probably th most underwhelming league leadup ever

I can probably at last take down on elit as I am and if it's too much of a struggle, I have rare candies and plenty of them

Geeta could honestly kill a man with that hair of hers.

oooh Rika is interviewing me!....this is a wirdass intrview. Oh, memory games.

"You passed the interview on your first try?" "What, like it's hard?" Nobody's done it since Nmona huh...

heeeeere goes. Oooh w're back to a specific order, eh? ha'ent done that with a real elite four since gen 4.

Other than Hassel, I'm not sure of anyn type specialties. Rika's gone with Whiscash, so we're probably looking at watr or ground. ...And it's ground! Gt out hre Daya. oooh water absorb, that's nasty....well all else being equal, I have a bird!

I do wonder if it's going to b actually back to back, or if i'll hav a chance to heal first. Oooh Poppy's nxt, and I think it might lgit be back to back to back?! OH NO i do get to heal up

also this arena is bland as fuck

oooh she deals in steel eh. easy peasy. Jupe sweeps. Oh my god the steel crown is just an axe.

....LARRY???

WHY IS LARRY HERE LET HIM REST

well jupe will sweep again and Daya has whatever Jupe doesn't deal with-- oh he's not pulling a gen 7 on me actually. Oh he's using Flying, so Jupe still sweeps.

oh okay an altaria merits Pebbles. lol okay some swapping shnanigans at the end....

Larry down! I hope I get neat glovs if I win this. Okay, Pebbles is all dressed up and ready to go!

I bet he uses dragon and if not dragon then rock because th rest of the E4 have used the Titans' typs. Either way, Pebbles is the answer. k yah it's dragon.

oh so geeta strong armed you all huh....is Paldea's league some kind of mafia?!

....wait. there was no final rival fight, and it's been a while...am i going to be fighting Nemona??? SOmehow? Like that maks better plot sense but verything seems to be Geeta....

okay yah it's Geeta.

it's fin if you can't hold back I'm a protagonist.

Espathra...and THIS is why I specifically got a dark type! Gogoat? And THAT'S why I grabbed Scoots! Kingambit? King, king...leeeet's stay in for now? Fire's gooooo oh Scoots is down. Un, when in doubt, Jupe? Kingambit down and Scoots back up! Avalugg...I have several things to deal with ice but lt's try Sotero. ...bad moves. Okay, Pebbles! Veluza, that's gonna b Cabrande territory. I hav her backd into a corner and sh has Glimmora... That sounds like th Rock/Poison type I caught earlier? Uhhh what is this thing... Let's use Daya so Daya can appear in this fight, let's Do This! Terastallize, signature move, annnd...oh my god Glimmora's tera hat is just the fucking. Olympus Colisseum.

oh holy shit. Tera STAB crit type advantage, that's uh, that's...every fucking damage modifier basically. No wonder I OHKO'd

Geeta you were mildly troublesome.

THERE'S Nemona! Yeah sure we can be best rivals or whatever now come do a crime with me. We're going crater-diving. Ah, you haven't changed a bit.

awww I'm her treasure. Nemona you realize that's a marriage proposal, right?

oh fuck hr speech there was really cute...Nemona you're actually pretty cool aren't you~ Let's go!

Lycanroc? No biggie, I have a little pink menace with a great big hammer. Orthworm is steel, I think, so get out here Jupe! Dudunsparce is normal, so yeah, Jupe, keep it up! Hee, here comes her own Pawmot, and THIS is why I brought a Ground type onto the team! Goodra? Aighty, let's get Pebbles back in here! Wait, that's five already? Aw well, okay Daya! Just like we did to Geeta!

Nemona didn't change a bit, she just became more of herself.

Now. Nemona. Crimes. Crater. First a little friendship. Thn picking up some fly points I never hit. Now! To Medali! To the Zero Gate!

damn it looks kinda beat up. Oh! New plotline! The Way Home!

Powr saving mode.... eeee Arvn and the girlsquad are going on an adventure~ God I feel so bad for Arven, it must hurtto get treatd like this in front of pople he hasn't trustd with everything...

Nemona, no. We are not going to battle the professor excitingly. We're going to beat her face in.

Oh man...this is SO cool. Are we all gonna ride Koraidon together?

That cutscene. That was everything to me. That was it, that was the essence of everything I seek, everything I long for, everything I dream of. That was the essence of why I always com back to Pokemon.

Koraidon doesn't wanna be here....buddy what happened? ...Oh shit we lost Nmona! How'd she fall off?! She was in the middle!

oh no she's fine

....somthing's off. Arven's reaction here, and his "probably" on identifying his mom earlier...

disable four locks in research stations on the way down. can do!

OH MY GO THEY'RE JUST GONNNA FOLLOW ME AROUND we're really i this together

holy shit the music

holy shit this PLACE. Is this supposd to give me Nier Automata vibes?

lmao my friends trying to compet over who's my bestest frind

i wondr what the fuck even made the crater....like. It's a cratr. Something made it, right?

WOO fighting shit! And Pnny being the straight man to our shenanigans. To the extent that she is either straight or a man, that is.

man vrything here looks so weathred

oh yah rsearch stations man NOTES. Stuff about the origin of the tera phenomenon! Ooh and a telportr.

awww my frinds are bcoming friends!

holy shit so much to explore

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

okay here's the second station

oh that is SO not a jigglypuff. Scram Tail! Jigglypuff, but Screamo!

okay base 2. once again Sada just kind of dropping eaves. Gonna give som plot? oooh ancient pokemon! ...Sada just. Has a time machine. Sh just, has one.

Wait so the ancient pokemon don't liv here naturally, sh just. Brings thm here? Then what the fuck is the cratr?

squints at this convrsation. ...the cost was catastrophic...

It is theoretically possible to travel to the past, but a human can't return to the present. Somehow I get the pictur that's involved with the catastrophic price.

i guess that's reasonable enough. Some conversations are important to have face to face. MOre specifically, within punching range.

Arven....your dialogue here.....

"Paradise will be ours to create" because THAT always ends well....unstable crystals, nrvous financial backers....

i am getting sleepy and also lost

see you in a few line breaks

screams i would like some time to myself. and some focus.

literally like three days later

cheesus christ i have no memory of this place. thre's a big rock with an item on top i can't reach bcause i can't ride koraidon.

something isn't adding up. If the ancint Pokemon were only brought here via time machine, whcih Sada only got working sometime in the last several years....why's there a picture of Great Tusk in the Scarlt Book, and what made the Great Cratr so dangerous?

man the crater goes deep.

...

watches Nemona, Arven, and Penny slowly fall off a cliff and disappear into the abyss?!?!?!?!?!?

found a cave....i have noooo idea how thoroughly i have xplored this bit of the crater...nother research station! eyyyy it's tusky boy. Penny is right that IS kind of a hug problem. Thing is they've been on the prowl for months, if Occulture is to be believed.

oh nemona this is why you're the muscle. Sada just, taking over for Arven.... Koraidon was the first pokemon retrieved from the past, huh...and, yp, confirming that it's the past form of Cyclizar.

...two specimens? why are we assuming they're family. that seems likely to end poorly. i doubt it WILL but like....it COULD. and even if they are family, like??? so were Lusamine and Lillie, look how THAT ended.

'I was expecting one new life to treasure' THAT MEANS ARVEN IT HAS TO

okay that tunnel is clearly the way forward so imma keep exploring here for a bit

hm. Okay. Intrsting history with Koraidon Arven has there, and yeah I see why he felt that way. ...wait. goddammit I ned like, a timeline of Arven's personal history, because who lived where when with whom is not adding up.

Tons of Chansey down here, it'll be great for grinding levels for the dex latr. ...Okay yah I definitely need to explore again when I hav Koraidon. Let's carry on!

WILD SCREAM TAIL I wanna catch it! ...Oh this thing is beefy. Okay just get in the ball, GOT IT alright Pita.

Man...what on earth made this place? "feels like maybe you already died and went somewhere" huh...and yeah Penny im p sure this place is the source of the energy used to terastallize Pokemon.

we must go deeper

...i guess you could say we're gonna get t the bottom of this! ...nmona, no. ...nmona. Nemona, NO. Penny is correct, as ever.

Okay if Sada took Koraidon into th cratr and hasn't com out since, how'd Arven get Koraidon's ball?

Th crystals get biggr the farther down we go...oh what fresh hell is this? What happened in here?

Sada???? U good???

So, I know the game's a bit buggy, but it looks like Sada is too? uhhhh

"That man walked out not long after the boy was born" im sorry? sorry WHOMST? Turo????

....if only. thre were two of me. sada YOU HAVE A TIM MACHINE.

th scond koraidon was broguht later and was aggressive...

"You know what you need to do." All locks released. I feel like I did a bad thing. Like I got tricked into reviving Dracula or instigating the Fall or something.

man do clavll and th othrs even know we're here

WEIRD MISDREAVUS. Flutter Mane....you'r gonna b Yooki. STAY IN TH DAMN BALL. GOT IT, finally, that took like 20 ultra balls.

Metal plate with a wird symbol, and a map of Paldea, and...thre's an enormous crystal here... you know, it would scan if th crystal crashing from space made the crater, I think?

I wonder if I can breed paradox Pokmon or if I'm gonna need to catch som mor the slow way?

what the fuck, ar thos VENTS in th crystal. What the fuck did th crystal absorb the lab?!

This is a much bigger area than thy're gonna let m explore isn't it...oh no wait. WAIT oh my.

Man it's not a Lost Continent plot so much as a Journy to the Center of the Earth plot

where am i

i find it kind of intriguing that Geeta's ace is th pokemon found in abundance all the way down here. Sorry to Arven, Nemona, and Penny, but if thy're gonna let me be the leader they're gonna have to run around, them's the rules.

chews on thoughts and questions and nihilego. glimmora. hmmmm

I am here I hav explord it is time to enter the Zero Lab. I get cell service down here? Sada you're presumably right insid you could come to the door and greet us.

okay the lab really is getting eaten by tera crystals but what is this about them optimizing the performance of machinery? If the tera orbs are made of these crystals why can pokemon centers recharge them?

well. that IS why we brought Nemona.

you dipshits. listen to penny. penny is wise. Oh, you're letting me choose? ...I guess if no is the wrong choice, the game will But Thou Must me. yep it did. but aww, Nmona that's sweet.

guuuuys this is baaaaad....OH SHIT THE OTHER ONE. Oh god it's been lockd outside the lab. Sada said the Pokemon insid would probably make a break for it, but instead, othr Koraidon went in....

they made mine sooooo expressive though like BABY im sorry I brought you here :c

THANK YOU PENNY ugh Nemonaaaaa why.

oh here the other ones come. YES DO IT NEMONA. Oh Scoots is a reliable partner now! Oh no, are Nemona and Penny running off to stop a breach?

oh no is Arvenn staying behind too!?

aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

okay this is a weirdass doorway. oooh dislike that the exit is a hole in the wall. Sciecne stuff....oooh there's sad....eactivating slep mode....

she keeps th aggro one in a mastrball. and sh is a robot. Not hard to see this coming after the trek down hre but....wow POkemon really making some bold moves here.

the real sada is dead...in the incident....ohhh boy. oh shit she sacrificed herself to protect MY koraidon.

Stop the time machin. Sure. That's a sane thing to ask a GODDAMN TWELVE YEAR OLD to do. We're going farther down but ma'am i have snooping to do.

i am going to sic my tinkaton on this mtal lady

Pokeball lock system to defend the lab. Rocklike thing in the tube. A picture of a young boy with a Maschiff...more rocks in tubes.

down w go.... Robosada can't lav because the crystals make her possible.

primal nergy? tera?

no SHIT they wreak havoc on the modern ecosystem!!! anyone with a basic understanding of ecology could have told you that! these things are invasive species of a magnitude ONLY surpassed by literal fucking aliens!

holy shit the robot copy of the profssor has BETTER thics than the professor maybe i don't need to sic my tinkaton on her

okay this place is gorgeous

oh this is why robosada needed th help of a formidible trainer. because i DO need to sic a tinkaton on hr.

To protect my treasure....to protect the whole of Paldea!

Why yes, AI Sada, I am familiar enough with a great many Pokmon to guess at patterns and detect weaknesses even in unfamiliar Pokemon. And yes, my human brain can overcom your wealth of data using two tools: innovation, and brute. fucking. force.

Had a lot of luck play out in defeating her third POkemon...next is Sandy Shocks so I think I want a ground type? aaaaaaaAAAAAAAA. Roaring Moon...I know that one! Oh, that was it? No terastallization?

okay AI down. Time for Feelings. god she really did love Arven, didn't she? She just loved her insane dream more.

oh damn that interface screw....oh shit. Our Pokeballs are locked, other than the ones rgistered to Sada's ID...which means this is designed to allow Sada and the protocol to brutally maul intruders who cannot fight back.

som intnse M.I.K.E. flashbacks ngl

But, thankfully....I have Koraidon. So does she. It? Koraidon, the guardian of paradise. Yeah...yeah, myKoraidon is!

oh DAMN transformation sequnce! We got this, Koraidon! Let's check out your summary bc this is SO cool. Uh, be great if I had the chance to fix this moveset. Hooboy that was close.

i knew I'd hav to trastallize....and I have a superffective tera type and all, plus this will be the first time I've ever used Tera Blast...

Victory is mine

oh...sh has to slfdestruct doesn't she....oh. No. She's going to disappear into the ancint world she loves so much. To unbind herself...and to stop the machin...

whre is the button to hug arven

arven this is your cheerup crew. FRIENDSHIP. holy fuck im almost taring up.

credits roll

#letty plays pokemon scarlet #letty plays shit #livebloggin #we in endgame for this one #aaaaaaaaaaaaa #WHERE IS MY HUG ARVEN BUTTON

0 notes

twistedtangledfate · 2 years

Note

He looked out the window the waves crashing in the distance. He remembered when he'd been young trailing after his father - how he'd nearly lost him in the thicket of trees. The forest had seemed so vast and dangerous then. He'd been so scared whining for his father.

He remembered flattening to the ground as he felt a great shadow over him. A huge wolf with red eyes, fur a mottly gray. He'd picked him up by the scruff of his neck and taken him to a small den.

He'd somehow fallen asleep against the older wolf-shifter. He woke to the scent of his father, Ragnall had picked him up whispering how sorry he was to have lost him.

Narcissus hadn't known then his grandfather had found him and protected him. Hybern was friend to those who earned that title - but it was still wild and cantankerous. Children shouldn't wander too deep into its old forests.

Narcissus had found his grandfather and visited him more after his father had died at sea. After his mother began her lessons of posions and knife work. She never did like when he shifted and ran. But the forest was his lifeblood, it had honed his skills. It had made tracking and listening to the sound of wind and earth second nature.

He hadn't seen his grandfather in many years. Perhaps he'd left the forests or died. Old fae like his grandfather usually spent their elder years in their animal form. Many died in them, slowly loosing the fae mind and customs they clung to. Narcissus hoped he hadn't missed him. Sure he and Amarantha didn't have any children, and truth be told he hadn't really brought it up. He liked what they had, that he got to wake up to her every morning.

Still in lieu of his father this felt right. He looked back at the broken holly twig in his fingers. He twirled it between his fingers. He could smell his grandfather on it. He rose and crossed the room to where Amarantha stood. He smiled softly kissing her cheek, pulling her into a tight hug.

His eyes closed her scent grounded him in a way nothing else did. It made the thoughts stopped, it made him focus on the moment - like his hunting did.

"Would you like to meet my grandfather? I am not sure if we'll find him today but I have his scent. I found it when I did my dawn patrol. Bandur will like you, he taught me everything I know - the good bits anyway."

He didn't want to let her go but he also really didn't want to hamper her. He kissed her shoulder pulling away to lean against the vanity his back to the mirror watching her. He gave a sly smile tugging on her hand wanting her to look at him.

"No morning kiss for me Amie?"

//how long post The War idk! Also enjoy the little Easter egg!!!! I had the thought last night about Bandur and I was like - THIS HAS TO BE CANON NOW//

@an-endless-saga

Amarantha had been in the midst of reorganising her collection of books, classifying them based on their rarity. There were some tomes that were missing, ones that would be costly to acquire but worth it. She remembered seeing the royal library of Hybern and her fingers had itched to touch those books and take them. Some of them have even sang to her as her fingers had brushed against their weathered spines. They held some of the oldest magicks in their world.

She felt Narcissus move before she felt his arms around her. She allowed the contact, leaning into his touch, her body aching for the feel of his lips against her neck again. The warmth of him bled into her and for a moment, a small, singular moment, she forgot who she was and her purpose and position. She was just simply a female with a male and desired.

“Ah, it seems you have decided I am finally worthy for the mighty Bandur.” She replied, her voice light and teasing. If he called to her, she would for the most part be glad to go with him.

When he pulled back, Amarantha followed, pressing her body up against his own, her teeth nipping at the soft skin of his throat. She could tear it out with a single movement if she so wished but she never would. “Is that sufficient or would you prefer something more lasting?”

#ask meme #the never fading flower (amarantha)#//I totally got the reference and I am living for it

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lucemferto · 3 years

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I’ve been sitting on this for a few days now and …

What is the point of having Technoblade be stuck in prison?

I’m serious. Like, Technoblade being stuck in prison with Dream has so little effect on anything, I’m confused why they didn’t just go with a straight jailbreak from the beginning.

Externally, there’s no change. It’s not like Technoblade’s absence has any noticeable effect on the outside world. Quackity is not leading a campaign of doom to take over the world now that his biggest nemesis is out of the picture. He’s just doing the same stuff he’s always done.

It has no effect on the Syndicate. It’s not like they're falling apart without Technoblade or are lost and worried – the Syndicate once again doesn’t exist without Technoblade. Ranboo is basically part of Snowchester now and Phil and Niki have – to my knowledge – not streamed any lore.

It’s not like the Egg is suddenly unleashed or the Eggpire is starting to rise again now that the strongest force against them is locked away. Technoblade’s absence has no effect on anything negatively or positively. It might as well not have happened.

It also has no internal effect. Technoblade remains completely unaffected by his time in the little torture box – nominally he has been there for over a week with barely any food, but by the way he plays it seems he’s really just there for as long as he streams.

Compare and contrast with Hog Hunt (yeah, I’m as surprised as you are that I’m using Hog Hunt as a positive example). Technoblade joked and was largely light-hearted during Hog Hunt – like during the boat ride with Tubbo – but he turned it on when it was needed. When the Butcher Army forced him back into violence, we felt the resignation and regret. When Quackity threatened his horse, Technoblade played desperation – just as he did when he saw Phil under house arrest.

Hog Hunt had a profound effect on Technoblade’s character journey and internal world. It felt like an event that had weight and actually happened to him. It justified its own existence.

His imprisonment does nothing. And by extension it just kinda defangs the prison and Dream’s struggle of any sort of weight. Technoblade doesn’t care, he doesn’t make the audience care, so why is Dream’s struggle something worth caring about? I mean, a prison-stay is just a nice little vacation that doesn’t have any effect on someone, right?

The only thing, that this Imprisonment seems to do is facilitate some Dream-Technoblade-bonding, which just as easily could have happened outside of prison. Why does this have to take place in Dream’s torture-box?

(Which is aside from the fact that saying, in response to Dream revealing that he’s being tortured, “That sounds like a you-problem” is just kinda weird and bad in the best of times)

Like, if you don’t want to deal with the heaviness (which, why even involve Technoblade in the prison-storyline in the first place?) why not have Technoblade getting stuck in prison and then immediately cut back to the Syndicate, ready to break him out.

Make it a fun heist/prison break. Have it all take place on the same day. That would even kinda justify Technoblade’s general unconcerned attitude toward getting stuck. He knows that help is coming to get him out, because they all planned it. No need to tiptoe around it and drag it out, if the outcome is clear to the viewers anyway.

The longer he is stuck in prison without any indication that the Syndicate is about to do anything, the hollower that confidence rings.

#dream smp #dsmp #dsmpblr #dreamsmp #dream smp analysis #dsmp analysis #critical #pandora's vault #dsmp pandora's vault #dream #dreamwastaken #dsmp dream #dsmp dreamwastaken #technoblade critical

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officialleehadan · 3 years

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Specimen Hunting

“You know, Sir, I don’t think I actually got your name.”

I look up at Zack, who rubs the back of his head apologetically, looking for all the world like a somewhat-ashamed puppy who got caught eating a pillow.

Then again, thinking back, I think I only got introduced to the soldiers once, and they all call me ‘sir’. The scientists mostly pretend I don’t’ exist, which is honestly easier for all of us. They don’t like that I tell them not to touch anything, and I don’t like it when they touch things.

“Charlie,” I tell him. “Use it if you want. I like it better than ‘sir’ anyway.”

I don’t’ think he’s gonna stop calling me ‘sir’ but it’s worth a try. He surprises me when he just nods and sits next to me. We’re on what I’ve generously termed an ‘away mission’ whereon we go off with a few of the scientists, something tries to eat us, and we all run away.

So far, we haven’t lost anyone else, which I mostly blame on the scientists being a skittish lot, and the surviving soldiers having a reasonably good sense for when something is trying to eat them. Today, I’m escorted by two of my favorites. Zack and Círce. They stay close, stay alert, and don’t bother looking at me when they could be watching the trees instead.

“Charlie,” Zack says to himself, and nods again. “You really don’t like it when we call you ‘sir’, do you?”

“Hate it,” I confess with a sigh. Something moves in the leaves and I whirl on it. Zack, professional that he is, levels his gun on it before I even stop moving. It turns out to be a truly immense tarantula that stands about the height of my knee. They’re not as dangerous as most of what’s on this island, but they’re creepy. Good eating though. “Those are safe to eat.”

“I like crab,,” Zack says without hesitation, and shoots it through the middle. It rattles and clicks, and staggers, but collapses. I wait until it curls up, firmly dead, before I unroll a sack and load it in. Zack doesn’t bother watching me do it. He stands guard. “Ate a lot of those?”

“Everything eats a lot of these, they’re everywhere,” I tell him. Two of the scientists with our group amble over, curious about the gunfire. The lack of screaming must have told them that there wasn’t anything trying to eat them. On this occasion, it was accurate. I eye the head scientist, a man named Carson, who does not appreciate my ‘kill it dead or run away’ approach to his samples. “You can dissect what’s left of the squishy parts, but I’m eating the legs.”

Carson’s face does something indescribable when he realizes I’m referring to the spider, but he’s a city boy from the States, and thinks that eating anything with more than four legs is icky.

I survived on this island for a month with almost no supplies. Turns out that three days is about long enough to get over the ‘it’s icky’ when it comes to strange food.

“Yes sir,” he says reluctantly when I drag the bag of tarantula over to our supplies and leave it there, knotted closed in case it decides it’s not dead. They do that sometimes. “Are there… more such specimens?”

“Haven’t looked.” It’s a good thought, though probably not the way he thinks. Fresh food is valuable, and we’ve been eating processed rations all week. I’m not above hunting whatever isn’t trying to hunt us. And maybe some of what is, if the scorpion-pig, the Tusker we saw a few nights ago, comes around again. “Give me a few minutes. Zack, want to bag dinner for tonight?”

“Is dinner gonna try and eat us?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Sure, Círce! We’re going spider-hunting.”

Círce jogs over. She’s a slight woman who is truly, astonishingly, lethal. She carries a rifle that packs a serious punch, and is widely considered to be the best sniper in the whole team. She’s also Greek, and doesn’t much care about American sensibilities.

“What to I aim at?” she asks without preamble, her rifle over her shoulder and ready to rumble. “Food hunting, sample hunting, or killing it flat?”

“Food hunting,” I tell her, pleased by her aimable approach to the concept of spiders as food. “Aim for the middle bits. Extra points if you get the fangs in he first shot. They’ve got kind of a nasty bite.”

That’s an understatement. They’re as lethal as anything else on the island, they’re just small enough to be prey, not predator. They don’t tend to nest in groups, but the eggs aren’t bad eating either. The babies are pretty scary though. They tend to ball up, so there’s a lot of them in one place.

“No big,” Círce agrees brightly. “Handguns or rifle?”

“Rifle for the adults, sidearm for the babies if we find any.” It’s a risk to leave the scientists, but there are six more soldiers guarding them, and I scouted the area before we setup here. I haven’t heard a doun-doun in hours, the nearest spindle-shell is well up in the rocks, and this area doesn’t have a lot of the nastier giant insects. “Stay alert. We haven’t seen everything around here yet, and we don’t’ want to be surprised.”

Together, we ease through the bushes, wary of the smaller spiders that build their webs here and there. Some are probably toxic, but I didn’t get bit when I was here last, so I have no idea how toxic they are.

The bushes are full of animal trails, made by animals that are mostly bigger than we are. It makes for easy going, and I keep an eye out for the thick sheets of web that marks a tarantula burrow. We find two. One is closer, and it’s empty, so I assume it belongs to the one we just killed. The other isn’t empty, and has a tarantula even bigger than the last one. This one stands around the height of my hip, and watches us balefully from the burrow’s entrance.

“You ready?” I ask Círce, who takes aim confidently. “It’s gonna be fast.”

“I’m fast too,” she said without a hint of doubt. “Zack?”

Zack chucks a stick into the web, just outside the tarantula’s reach. The spider, triggered by the feel of something in its web, lunges out. Círce’s rifle cracks once. The spider collapses to the ground, cored out by her perfect aim. Zack eases closer and shoots it a few more times, just to be sure. Together, they edge onto the web, wary of a second spider inside. Nothing appears, so they each grab a leg of the carcass, and haul it free quickly while I stand guard.

“Right, I say, very pleased indeed by our little hunt. Not bad, considering how much death crawls all over this island. “Let’s get it back to camp. We’re eating well tonight.”

+++

The Monster of the Isle:

He survived once. now they want him to do it again.

Isle of Monsters

Return to the Isle of Monsters

Monsterpedia

Doom in the Distance (Subscriber Only!)

Eight Down

In the Trees (Subscriber Only!)

+++

More Stories!

+++

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thecreaturecodex · 3 years

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Gyaos Juvenile

Image © Lluis Abadias. Accessed at his Twitter here

[Commissioned by @majingojira, based most closely on the version of Gyaos from the 90s Gamera trilogy. The Gyaos are the enemies that have appeared in all incarnations of Gamera, and it’s not hard to see why. The original Gamera vs. Gyaos is the best movie of the Showa series, and the hook of “what if Rodan was also a vampire” is a pretty good one. Since the Kaneko films made Gyaos a flesh eater instead of a blood drinker, I went in that direction. But I still included a few references to the 1967 version of the monster, both in flavor text and abilities.

And yes, this means that “kaiju, Gyaos” is forthcoming. But considering how many people have commissions with me at the moment, it will be a while before it posts. Stay tuned!]

Gyaos Juvenile CR 14 NE Magical Beast This avian reptile has membranous wings growing along its arms and strong hind legs with talons. Its leathery hide is reddish-brown in color. Its skull is shaped like an arrowhead, a wedge flattened on top with an underslung jaw filled with small, sharp teeth.

The gyaos are a biological weapon devised in an ancient war. They are superficially pterosaur-like, but their anatomy has a variety of strange quirks—they have glowing patches that burn red when the creature is distressed or badly injured, their eyes can move independently in their sockets from one another, and most notably, they are always hungry. The more a gyaos juvenile eats, the more they grow, eventually reaching the size and strength of a kaiju. In this form, a gyaos can begin to lay eggs, which hatch into more gyaos in a matter of days—a single monster can become a global plague in a surprisingly short period of time.

A juvenile gyaos in combat is remarkably agile and mobile despite its size. They fight from the air whenever possible, making hit and run attacks with their claws and teeth, or firing lines of slicing sonic energy from their maws. Against a single opponent, their typical strategy is to grab it in their claws, carry it to a secluded area, and devour it. A gyaos juvenile can heal its wounds, but it requires rapidly metabolizing its own body to do so—only a well fed gyaos can accomplish this feat, and most wait until they are out of combat to do so.

Gyaos juveniles are vulnerable to bright lights, and so are nocturnal. They hunt in aggregations, but these are competitive, not cooperative associations. Juvenile gyaos have even been known to turn on and eat each other if they are hungry enough. During the day, they retreat to caves, deep forests and other dark shelters. They are not site-specific or territorial, roaming over great distances in search of flesh.

Gyaos Juvenile CR 14 XP 38,400 NE Huge magical beast (air) Init +9; Senses darkvision 120 ft., Perception +12, scent Defense AC 29, touch 18, flat-footed 19 (-2 size, +9 Dex, +1 dodge, +11 natural) hp 200 (16d8+112) Fort +17, Ref +19, Will +9 Immune sonic; Resist acid 10, cold 10, electricity 10; SR 25 Defensive Abilities evasion; Weakness light blindness, light vulnerability Offense Speed 30 ft., fly 90 ft. (good) Melee 2 talons +23 (2d6+9/19-20 plus grab), bite +23 (2d8+9) Space 15 ft.; Reach 10 ft. Special Attacks breath weapon (1d4 rounds, 80 foot line, 14d6 sonic, Ref DC 25), devour, mobile grappler Statistics Str 29, Dex 29, Con 25, Int 4, Wis 20, Cha 22 Base Atk +16; CMB +27 (+31 grappling); CMD 47 Feats Dodge, Flyby Attack, Improved Critical (talons), Lightning Stance, Mobility, Power Attack, Skill Focus (Stealth), Wind Stance Skills Fly +18, Perception +12, Stealth +11 Languages Aboleth (cannot speak) SQ metabolize, sprint Ecology Environment any land Organization solitary, flight (2-6), flock (7-12) or swarm (13-40) Treasure none Special Abilities Breath Weapon (Su) The breath weapon of a gyaos juvenile ignores the first 10 points of hardness of any objects in the area. Devour (Su) Whenever a gyaos juvenile consumes 16 HD worth of creatures, it gains 1 growth point. It gains a bonus equal to its growth point total on attack rolls, CMB rolls, saving throws and skill checks. Its maximum hit points increase by 10 for each growth point. For every 2 growth points it gains, its natural AC bonus and SR increase by 1, and its breath weapon deals an extra d6 of damage and its length increases by 10 feet. For every two growth points it has, it gains +1 to its CR. When it has 6 growth points, and again when it has 12 growth points, it gains the giant simple template. When a gyaos juvenile has 16 growth points, it transforms into a gyaos kaiju. Light Vulnerability (Su) A gyaos juvenile takes damage from searing light, sunbeam, sunburst and similar spells and effects as if it were undead. It does not need to save or die when exposed to a sunbeam or sunburst. Metabolize (Su) As a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity, a gyaos juvenile can expend 1 growth point to gain the benefits of a regenerate and cleanse spell. This growth point is lost, reducing the gyaos’ bonuses as appropriate, but the gyaos cannot reduce in size category due to this loss. A juvenile gyaos can use this ability up to 3 times per day. Mobile Grappler (Ex) When a gyaos juvenile succeeds in a CMB check to move a grappled opponent, it may move up to its speed. Sprint (Ex) Once per hour, a juvenile gyaos can move up to 10 times its fly speed on a charge.

#gyaos #gamera #kaiju #pathfinder 1e #commissions

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fragileizywriting · 3 years

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C'est la Sea

pairing: Luka / Marinette word count: 9,111 chapter: 1/2 rating: E summary: There’s a mermaid in his bed. A pouty, pretty mermaid on his bed. “Why are you wrapped up like a sushi roll, sweetheart?” “It’s cold,” Marinette shivers, just to prove her point. She collects an edge of the blanket to cover herself back up and make a bigger mess out of the covers, trying to tuck in her tail. “Why is it colder on land than it is on sea? How are you able to withstand this much frost, Luka? Even my scales are starting to go stiff.”

AO3 | Chapter One | Chapter Two

I just can't stop myself from writing Lukanette...

Written for my lovely and beautiful friend @valiantlyjollynightmare !!! Your mermaid AU is so wonderfully written and it gives me so many feels that I had to get the mermaid fever out. Please enjoy!!!

Life is simple and stagnant on land and it goes like this.

Wake up. Put on clothes. Find breakfast somewhere in the tiniest kitchen he’s ever been a witness to. It’s compact to the point that it’s hysterical, and it would probably fit someone of normal size. She’d fit in the kitchen just nicely, because things are about her height and eye level, but he has to crouch in order to see inside the fridge. Why are things so small?

Either way, after breakfast he leaves the house and goes to class.

And the classes are mind-numbing, and repetitive, and after the longest chapter of marine ichthyology he almost sleeps through, he’s on his way to find his friends. He’s made a couple of friends for the few months he’s been around, and tries to socialize with them after most of his morning classes have finished, and attempts to enjoy their company before the second block of afternoon classes happen. His friends are kind, and also in the same field as him, so they’ve mostly come close out of the nature of being in mutual classes, but they’re not anyone he’s really gotten close to.

So he’ll eat lunch with them, at some point. Start his next block of classes, and try his best not to roll his eyes at the casual inconsistencies referenced in the slideshow. Find his friends again, if any are available after class, and eat dinner at some point. Walk home, and politely decline any and all attempts to hang out after they’re finally done for the day— after all, everyone knows that he’s extremely busy studying for his classes.

They ask about her often, ask if he’ll be going to visit her for whatever break they have that gives them a sliver of days between classes, asking for pictures of her and well wishes. They ask about her students, ask if she’ll be getting anything for teacher appreciation week that’s common in Canada, and ask about how his life and family are back there before he transferred.

He makes up lies as he goes, of course, because he’s never actually been to Canada and certainly has never been to Quebec, but it seems to be working. His vague knowledge about the West Atlantic works in his favor because none of his classmates are from there, nor have they ever gone themselves. His friends mean well, knowing the feeling of longing when it comes to missing another person, and always offer condolences to the transfer student who seems to be a fish out of water in a new country with a funny Canadian accent, but they aren’t aware of the true nature of his relationship with her.

They know that he’s married. Human customs are similar to his, and the gold band on his left ring finger is a clear sign. Some people he’s met over the past couple of months have shied away and lost interest in him when they’d looked down to see that he never takes the ring off— he doesn’t hold it against them. His friends speculate about how she manages to handle the long-distance without him, but they have no idea just how hard it actually is.

Because they don’t know about the bond fever.

The fever that makes it harder and harder to breathe without her.

Every moment not thinking of her is just a distraction. Every moment not being next to her is biding time. Food tastes bland, music sounds wonky, and all his body wants to do is move. Staying still will make him curl up and stagnate for the rest of his days, and if he wants to leave this part of his life as fast as possible, he can’t afford to stop moving.

So, he’ll arrive home after school, and check up on the coral and fish in his tank to see if everyone in there is fine and not having a turf war without his knowledge. He’ll attempt to have a conversation with his fish, and feed them until they complain, because he’s never gotten the hang of actually taking care of pets. He’ll spin his ouroboros as he continues to waffle between staying and powering through, or the second option of leaving everything behind and dropping everything in favor of her. Work out to get rid of feelings of loneliness— of this horrible, aching bond fever that grips his heart enough to squeeze and hurt and make him regret ever turning to the surface in the first place.

He’ll take the scenic route, along the shore, looking over the ocean he knows and loves dearly. The sun will set over the sea as he takes a break when the buildup of lactic acid in his body gets too painful. It’ll take him hours, probably, of hard running down by the water, but it’ll be enough to get him to stop thinking about her for even a smidge.

Take a shower, afterwards, and making absolute-positive sure that his ouroboros is safely and securely wrapped around his wrist, lest he loses his sea legs— and try to talk to his fish again to get a conversation. Try to finish his homework before passing out asleep on his bed.

Sometimes he remembers to pull the bedsheets up on him. But most of the time he falls asleep in whatever position he’s laid himself down onto the bed, waking up with his arms and legs facing all the wrong way and the alarm on his phone blaring at him to wake up. He wakes up stiff, and sore, but there’s barely any time to sit back and relax before his day starts all over again.

Rinse.

Wash.

Repeat.

Over and over until the days glaze and mesh in his head.

He’s tired— the fish are his only true company, for now, and they rarely talk to him unless they’re begging for food. Sometimes they have a conversation with him when he really gets personal and deep with them, but they don’t really offer much advice, other than the occasional idea to spice up his diet and take a new route to school.

There’s nothing that can get him out of this slump. Nothing above land, anyway. Some days, on the weekends when he has enough time to, he opens the windows that box his mattress as well as the windows in the living room, and lets the salty breeze fly in through the whole houseboat— indulges in the idea of being back home with her— before he begrudgingly faces back to the stacks and stacks of homework piled on his desk.

It’ll be worth it. Just a year and a half left. The ring on his finger is proof enough of that. The bond fever may hurt, and may try to push him to go home, but he knows that she’ll be upset with him if he doesn’t finish school. She’ll probably shove him back up here herself, with her pouting and determined face. She’s docile, but bull-headed, and sometimes the storms in her eyes are as terrifying as the sea he’s from, and he’s certain that she won’t be satisfied until he has that diploma in his hand.

So, he puts his bag down by the door, kicks off his shoes, deadbolts the door behind him, and goes hunting for anything in his fridge that is available. He’s hungry, and he’s far more metabolic in this form than in his normal one, something about being on land just makes him hungrier— and nothing is safe from him when it comes to food.

His houseboat is about the size of a clam, the kitchen itself smaller than a pearl, but the ceiling is tall enough so that he doesn’t have to keep his head down whenever he walks around, so he can’t exactly complain— even when he opens the door to his fridge the size of a child, there’s nothing but a lettuce head that is definitely more white than green, a small box of blueberries he buys every time he makes eye contact with it in the store and thinks of her, and his leftover carton of eggs. The box of blueberries is full, still, and he’s convinced that he leaves it in the fridge until it rots just in case she ends up showing up and wants her favorite food.

But…

Life is simple, and stagnant on land, and he’s forgotten to do groceries this week.

Rinse, wash, and repeat.

He makes quick work of making the saddest scrambled eggs he could possibly produce in his lifetime, using up all of the leftover eggs— six of them, and he won’t be able to regret the amount of food he’s eating until he wakes up tomorrow with absolutely nothing to eat— and proceeds to bin the shells immediately. He eats over the sink, a utensil in one hand and the handle of the pan in the other, spooning and chasing runny eggs into his mouth, barely paying attention to the flavor.

He’s famished. And it’s not like he’d even be able to taste the flavor, anyway, from how bad his heart hurts. Bond fever is a finicky thing.

At least he remembered to throw the eggshells away in the proper place, instead of letting them clog up the sink.

He’d compost them, if he had any plants to take care of— but that’s always been her department, not his. The walls of his one-bedroom one-bathroom boat are sparse and empty— simply just a bed with a comfortable duvet and blue sheets, his tank full of fish that don’t offer enough company, a desk with some shelves to study at, lined with textbooks, and a wobbly table to eat at. He’d splurged on the extra desk— he could’ve just used the eating table— but knew it was probably better to keep his school papers and food away from each other. Besides, the back left leg of the table definitely looks like it’s about to cave at any point. It’s why he’s started just eating standing up and over the sink.

But she would never let him live like this.

It’s a clean house, and everything has its place, but it’s barren. Almost as if he doesn’t really live here.

And to be honest, he doesn’t. Physically, he spends most of his time here, but— bond fever makes him completely and totally disoriented. Mentally and emotionally he is nowhere near land, but rather in her arms, away from this simple and bland house.

But if she were here… truly here, instead of a fleeting moment…

She would decorate the walls with paint. Put up shelves. Print out photos, and frame them, because she’s enamored with the idea of ink and stains and items that permanently stain other things. She’d taken up to painting quite well, the last time— buying a selection of beginner’s acrylic gouaches in many different colors, and had set to work painting for the first time in her life. The world had exploded onto the canvases. Boats, sunrises, shores from distant islands, a turbulent and salty sea— she’d painted like she was taking a photograph and was developing it right onto the canvas.

He wishes he had the paintings with him now. Anything and everything to keep him company— any remembrance of her is such a blessing. He’ll take it all, if he can. Somedays, the ring on his finger just isn’t enough to keep his heart from hurting. He’ll catch sight of a bolt of ruffled pink fabric in a store window that is so glossy and sheer and delicate that he’ll find himself spinning his ring nonstop, dreaming of being together with her again.

Just a year and a half…

She’d line the shelves with rocks. Trinkets. Keychains from cities they’d gone to together, braided knots, and beautiful jewelry. And how could he forget the plants upon plants she’d shove into every square inch of the place, to the point where the houseboat would be a living and breathing creature from all of the greenery? Sunflowers— peonies— roses— lilacs— geraniums— tulips— every flower she could possibly find at a flower shop would somehow make it onto a flat surface in the houseboat.

This houseboat is empty without her. He spins the ring on his finger, thinking to himself about her— wishing and longing to see her. Just a year and a half more. He can visit on holidays, if he can afford it— but this isn’t just for him. It’s for her, too.

He flicks the light on in his room after washing the dishes, in the process of taking off his shirt, getting ready to try talking to the fish today in the far corner, the furthest away from his full-sized mattress, before giving in to go on a run along the docks. He almost throws his shirt onto the bed— when— well.

That’s when he notices the mermaid on his bed.

The sleeping mermaid on his bed.

She’s dozing off— hidden under his blanket, the mass of blue covers pulled tight around her naked shoulders. One of her pale arms has escaped from the mess she’s made of the fabric, and it hangs off the bed— steam rising softly off of her skin like she’s slowly being cooked, matching ring glinting in the light of the lamp on his nightstand. His eyes widen at the sight of her— the slow and soft drag of her tail fins against the floor as she inhales and exhales, because even curled up she can’t fit all of her on the mattress. She’s never been considered large, not proportionately, but the tail fins are long and delicate, and the mattress is far too small to fit the both of them if he were in his normal form too.

Pink, shimmery and translucent fins flutter as if caught by a slow breeze— petal-like in shape and it always feels silky against his fingertips whenever he’s touched her in the past, and today it looks no different. He follows the line of her fins back up to her tail that disappears underneath the comfortable blanket, where she’s wrapped herself to keep warm from the stale and stagnant air that permeates the room. He’s always liked the temperature around him to be colder, because of how he grew up, but she’s never been able to handle the slight freeze unless she’s been charmed, the little reef-dweller. Either charmed or wrapped up so tightly around him in order to soak up his body heat, nearly squeezing him to death. He sleeps with an eel of a woman, whenever they’re together, completely and totally reluctant to ever let him go.

Like now.

She’s here.

Here.

Strangling the blanket around her shoulders to keep the cold away from her.

His heart squeezes, and he finds himself on his knees, not exactly kneeling on the mattress but rather the floor just in front of her— gently parting the blanket enough to locate her other arm. She hums at the back of her throat when the cold air reaches and pebbles her porcelain skin— face pinching softly at the cold— before she blinks awake when he whispers her name in order to rouse her.

He’s always loved her blue eyes. Especially when they look at him, shining and shimmering like diamonds. “Mmmm?”

“Hi,” He checks her ears for her own magical charm. They’re there, and safely secured on her ear lobes, two perfectly beautiful pink pearls. They had been wedding gifts to her from her job at the school, that many of the parents had chipped in to get her a charm that would be able to withstand long periods of time outside of the sea, and he’s never been so grateful as now to see her wear them. “How long have you been here for?”

She’s always been a slow riser when she wakes up, so the first few seconds of her being conscious again are routinely docile and sweet, and today is no different. Her face softens the moment she recognizes where she is and who she’s looking at, a certain sweetness in her eyes that makes his heart hurt. “Luka? Oh, oh— Luka—”

She latches onto him tightly, pulling him close by her arms around his neck and shoulders with a happy noise. She smells of the ocean, even though she’s dry— her soft black hair just as silky, and just as long as it’s always been. It spills between his fingers as he combs through it, almost liquid on the web of his fingers and down his wrist, and he spends a moment or two just basking in her warmth, basking in the way she sighs against him. She kisses the closest skin available to her, which seems to be his shoulder, his collarbone, his chest, and his bicep— smiling happily up at him when he pulls away enough to look at her in the eyes.

“Marinette— Marinette— I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Her eyes look glassy with tears. “Your fish told me you would be home later— why are you here so early? I thought I had time to surprise you and greet you at the door.”

“You must’ve slept for too long,” He noses at the shell of her ear. “This is about the time I get home every day. But little pearl, what are you doing here? Did you travel safely? Don’t get me wrong, please— I’m so thankful— but when did you show up? No injuries? It’s not a holiday at home, I don’t think, is it?”

“I’m okay. Everything’s okay. No one saw me, and no one tried fishing for me. I just couldn’t keep waiting for you to come back,” She hums. Marinette’s always been a singer, ever since they met for the first time. Always a tune in her voice, always singing and humming away like a never-ending record player. “I’ve missed you so much, Luka, you have no idea— so I just decided that today was enough waiting. I dropped everything off and told my parents that I needed to see you— you, my darling sky.”

“I’m so glad you’re here.” He kisses her. And then again. And then again. And again. He keeps doing it until it hurts to not breathe— but even then, he doesn’t really find the desire to pull away. After all, this is much easier than what he’s dealt with for the past year. “Every day, my heartache just keeps getting worse— this is horrible. How are we supposed to keep this up for another year?”

“And I thought the wedding would’ve been the hard part of all of this— turns out that the bond is just as real as they say.” She giggles as she pulls him closer. He leans over her, wrapping an arm around the smallest part of her waist, resting his open palm on her upper back to support her as he lays her back down. She’s handsy— he doesn’t blame her— brushing her fingertips on all the skin available to her, making an unsatisfied noise when she reaches his jeans. “Take these off?”

Ah. Lovely Marinette. Always so handsy and desperate for close contact— as if he’s any better. He hasn’t seen her in so long, he’s seconds from stopping the pleasantries and letting her know just how much he’s actually missed her. “But—”

“You’ve never been shy before.” She clicks her tongue with a silly little eye roll. She traces his tattoo on his arm, a small smile on her face, following the compass rose’s north tip up his arm. She makes it to the boat with seven sails, before looking up at him rather confused. “There’s nothing you haven’t already shown me— I’ve seen every single centimeter of you and every last scale. Unless— uhm— has something changed?”

“No, nothing has changed— relax that worry in your eyes.” He laughs, and can’t help himself when he kisses her again, slow enough to distract her as he pulls his jeans off, leaving his boxers behind. Her eyes blow wide at the sight of him naked, save for the jade ouroboros around his wrist and the band of his underwear. He hopes it isn’t inside out. “I just meant that I’ve barely been able to look at you, and I know you won’t let me go until it’s tomorrow if I let you have your way. You’re hidden underneath the blanket— let me look at you first before your tail disappears. Why are you wrapped up like a sushi roll, sweetheart?”

“It’s cold,” She shivers, just to prove her point, attempting to pull a fast one on him and reaching for the waistband of his boxers before he snags her wrist with a laugh. Thin and soft shoulders curl underneath his palms in an attempt to stop heat from escaping, and she collects an edge of the blanket to cover herself back up and make a bigger mess out of the covers, locks of her hair spilling over the blanket, pooling to where her waist should be. She tries to tuck in her tail with mixed results. “Why is it colder on land than it is on sea? How are you able to withstand this much frost, Luka? Even my scales are starting to go stiff.”

“Reef-dweller,” He grins.

“Yes, yes, continue to make fun of you poor wife who cannot contain heat because of biology. But you don’t have your scales on you right now, you sea serpent.” She pouts. “I should be much more suited for this cold than you should be, right now.”

He guides her burritoed form closer with a warm smile. Her fins flutter, delicate and sweet, as he pulls her close enough for her to rest part of her tail on his lap as he gently reaches for the edges of the blanket again. “It isn’t actually that cold. You’re just losing heat so you can get your sea legs, remember?”

“Unfortunately, I’m starting to remember the hard way. Stars, I keep forgetting how uncomfortable the transformation is. Maybe I’m doing it on purpose.”

“Let me see you,” He noses at her jawline.

“Only if you promise to warm me up after,” She teases, and she actually manages to snap his waistband against his hip, making him hiss at the sensation. She giggles, kicking up her tail delightfully at the noise he makes. “Please, sky?”

They’re politely ignoring the way he’s starting to fill out his underwear already at the sight of her. It’s instinctual, of course, because of bonds and magic and, well, it is Marinette that’s looking at him like she’s famished. “Of course. You don’t even have to ask.”

Steam billows from the opened pocket of the blanket the moment he unwraps her and finally takes a good look at her. Sweet stars, he’s missed her so much, and he shows her just how much by touching her everywhere. She shivers under his fingertips as he traces the small scales that line her chest and stomach. They’re starting to retreat and fade, now that the drying process is finishing up, but she’s still completely smooth and too scaled to have her human characteristics just yet.

“You’re shivering, my sweet pearl.”

“Yes, but— your hands are so warm,” She sighs.

There’s a gentle swell to her chest, hidden beneath the neat rows of hazy pink scales, but the swell isn’t as much as what she has in her human form. He’d learned early on, when they’d first tried their magic charms and had gained their sea legs, that he loves all versions of her body— including when her chest fills his palms with such softness he feels like weeping, with pink peaks that make her sing whenever he tweaks them. Everything about her is delicate, like the world’s most fragile flower.

But very soon, he’s going to end up with an entirely naked woman on his bed instead of a mermaid. Both are lovely ideas. He’ll be able to watch her wobble on her sea legs for an hour or two before she relearns her balance, and have to guide her by her naked hips if she wants to leave the room. She’ll probably want to stretch her legs, and take a turn about the very small boathouse, but they probably won’t be able to leave the house today. That look in her eyes is telling.

As if he’s any better.

He traces the rows of scales down her stomach, the scales getting thicker and larger as he reaches just about where her tail technically begins at the hips. Her arms, too, have patches of translucent pink scales that are starting to disappear in favor of just skin, and he follows the long line of her tail down with a palm.

He skirts over the area that he knows she so desperately wants to guide him to, gaining a brief huff and pout from her as he instead grazes along her scales all the way to her long and beautiful curtain fin. His touches are soft, and barely noticeable— but it’s enough to get her to twitch.

He starts to tickle her.

“Luka,” She slaps her tail on the mattress in an attempt to make him stop tickling her, and her hand grabs for his— but her laughter is so contagious he can hardly stand it himself. “What— ha— what are you— oh, stars— d-doing?”

“I haven’t seen my wife in almost a year,” He gives her a smile, laughing at the way she squirms uselessly under his hands. “Can I not touch her?”

“You can touch— but—” Such sweet laughter! “But why— oh! Why touch me there when I’m ticklish?”

“Oh? Would you rather me touch you higher?”

“Yes,” She giggles. “Oh, please, I know exactly where I’d like you to touch me. But buy me dinner first, at least.”

“I’ll do more than that, sweetheart.” He licks his lips, watching the way she shifts to prop herself on her elbows. She blows her bangs out of her face when it starts to fall across her lashes, looking at him with sparkling beautiful eyes. She’s so pretty. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all of that, but his love for her has never diminished in the first place. Sweet beautiful melody. “What is it that my lovely girl wants?”

“Hm…”

“Make it count, of course. Your tail is going to disappear soon.”

“How about: you tell me that you want me like this, sky,” She peeks at him from under her lashes.

He wants her in any form, this won’t be too hard. “I want you.”

She’s feeling cheeky, isn’t she? That smile is proof alone. “Tell me you need me.”

“As if I have to say that.” But she prods him with a cute pout when he rolls his eyes, and he acquiesces: “I need you.”

“Tell me you can’t live without me.”

“I’m miserable without you. So miserable.” He means it. And she knows it. “I don’t want to keep doing this long-distance anymore. I’ve never been so miserable.”

She tilts her head to the side with another hum, looking around the room. “Tell me you’ll let me decorate our home— it’s so bland in here. Where are all the flowers? The music?”

“Please decorate—” His brain flatlines. “Wait, decorate? This house? This— our— house? Home?”

“Surprise!” Another peal of laughter escapes from her, and it follows through her body to a delicate flick of her tail.

His eyes widen. “You— you’re staying?”

“Yes!” She nods, shimmying on her elbows as she grins. “Yes yes yes!”

“But— Marinette— you—” Sweet stars, she’s staying. She’s staying. How could he ever want her to go? The love of his life, the jewel in his heart, and his wife— staying for longer than a few fleeting moments when she can afford to slip away from home? Oh— oh— his heart could burst.

“I can’t stay away from you.” She confesses, cupping his hand and kissing the gold band on his finger. She balances her upper weight on her other elbow, but doesn’t seem to struggle under her own weight. “I’m tired of being away. The bond is making me miserable, Luka, and I’ve had just about enough of it. So, I decided to make it easy on the both of us.”

“But—”

She winks. “I know.”

“And—”

“Yes, that too.”

“Also, your job—”

“I know,” Her laughter is so sweet. He can’t even finish his sentences without her answering as if they’re on the same wavelength— oh— he’s missed this woman so much. “I know, sky. I know. But all of it will be there still when we go back next year. My students won’t go to the next teacher until five years from now. I’ve already talked to the other teachers about me disappearing off with you for a year.”

She… she would really be willing to give up everything, just like that, just for him? Her students, her daily work, her desire to teach? Her desire to nurture? All of it, just to be with him? “I can’t do that to you, little pearl. I know how important your students are to you— I can’t ask you to stay away from them. Maybe I should just go home with you, instead.”

“Luka, honestly! You’re not doing this to me, I want to stay with you— and you better finish this degree of yours. You’ve worked too hard! You know why I couldn’t come with you in the first place, but a year has changed and things are better now, my parents got help from a new family that’s moved into the reef. We can afford a year away from home now, my sweet. A real year away. You know I get one year off to stay with my bond.”

“But that was only as soon as you get married— that was, sweet stars— it was eleven months ago.”

“And I never used it,” She informs him, as if he hadn’t also spent the last year lonely and miserable. “So it’s still viable. I told you, I already talked to the other teachers.”

“But our family—”

“—is completely and totally better off without me constantly sighing in their ears.” She shrugs with a soft smile. It’s a little difficult, given that she’s still propped up on her elbows, but she makes it work. “If I touched my ring one more time in front of my mother, she would’ve personally pushed me out of the ocean herself. Not to mention your mother, telling me that ‘it’s not good to leave your bond alone, lassie. Bonds need to be cultivated, lassie’. Two mothers pushing me up onto the docks, telling me to sleep easy for at least one night. Better me than your mother dragging you back home to deal with me and my nightmares.”

She looks thin. Thinner than usual for springtime, and her face definitely looks a little darker than usual. His poor Marinette, how could he have done this to her? But it’s not like he isn’t affected in the same way, either… all of those nightmares and dull days, wishing to see and hold her. “Have you been eating? You’re looking thin.”

Perhaps they shouldn’t keep trying to test the universal truths with their bond. They really need that year together, don’t they?

“Me? You look thin, Luka.” There’s a frown making its way to the edges of her lips. “Is there not enough food for you? When was the last time you ate?”

“Tuttering pearl,” He murmurs. “Always worrying about me.”

“With good reason to,” She pouts. “Of course I worry about you, sky. What kind of spouse would I be if I didn’t ask my husband if he’s okay? Not a very good one, right?”

“I’ve been eating okay. I eat more in this form.”

“You look pale, my sweet.”

“You’re not the only one who’s been having trouble,” He admits. “Life has been so stagnant without you that I’m kind of just running like a machine. The days are all a blur, and it’s gotten to where I don’t even remember days unless I have a test or homework due that day. I already knew that university was miserable, but— ah, little pearl— don’t cry. It’s alright.”

Marinette’s going to burst into tears. “How stupid of me, leaving you alone.”

“No, sweetheart. You didn’t leave me alone.”

“You’re not as healthy as you usually are,” She hushes a bit when he kisses her, but it’s not enough. “I should’ve been here.”

“No. No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I was the one who left, and I shouldn’t have done that to you. To us.”

“I should’ve come with you.”

“I should’ve waited.” He kisses her again. And again. And again. “I should’ve waited just a little longer to come back up here.”

“You would’ve missed the scholarship if you had. Life could’ve waited for us back home— I should’ve come with you.”

Her tears taste like the ocean, too. “It’s okay, pearl.”

“Oh, sky,” Her eyes are so watery, even as he tries to calm her down with a gentle hand running down her scales. “What idiots we were.”

He tries for a smile. “Everyone told us this would happen.”

“They did,” She nods, sniffing into his palms as he cradles her face and wipes her lower eyelids free of tears. “They did, and we didn’t listen, and it’s cost us a whole year away from one another. How were we supposed to know it got this bad? It hurts to breathe without you.”

“I guess we were just supposed to listen to them,” He kisses her when she tilts her head up in an indication that she wants his lips on hers. He kisses her enough to make her eyes slip shut, and for her body to shiver as he reaches around her again to hold her at the waist. Sweet, sweet Marinette.

“Never again. Never ever again. I’m so thankful I’m here— I won’t let you go. I need you so much. Will you have me forever?”

There’s no need to ask. “Always. I did end up bonding with you, after all.”

She snorts, almost surprising herself with the noise. “A wise choice, you know. I’ve been told I’m very ‘agreeable’.”

Luka finds himself smiling. “Which parent said that?”

“Her child was impossible to console, every morning there was a new battle with this student. Every afternoon his mother would tell me that if no one ends up bonding with me by the following winter, she’ll start courting me herself, completely oblivious to the ring on my finger. She’s amazed at how easy I handle children, and I’m amazed she can just ignore the clear signs of me having bond fever for this long.”

“You’re perfect at your job,” They both laugh when he’s close enough to her to press his forehead onto hers. “But remember that you’re not the only one that wants to take care of their loved one. No more bond fever. I promise.”

“Definitely not. I’ll make sure to chase it out of our bodies on my own, if I have to.”

“Won’t stop until it’s gone?”

“Making up for the time we spent away,” She nods. “It might take us a little longer than normal, from how bad the fever’s gotten, but I don’t think you mind.”

“Greedy.” He grins. “How will I survive?”

She folds herself around him, encircling him as tightly as possible while still allowing him to move his arms. There’s genuine muscle behind the delicateness of her scales and fins— and while she can’t actually hurt his skin with her scales from how tough-skinned he is even in his human form, he is worried that she might accidentally hurt herself by how brittle and fragile they are. She’s still drying out, going through the process of getting her sea legs, meaning that her tail and fins aren’t as slippery as they usually are. “You’ve been captured, sky. No use trying to escape now.”

Their charms soak up most of the oils on their body, allowing them to fully dry out and gain human legs. Marinette is in the final moments of the transformation, which gives him about thirty more minutes of enjoying seeing his wife like she normally looks before she’s safely hidden amongst other humans.

But still, unbeknown to his wishes to see her completely laid flat, she continues to wrap around him, humming at the back of her throat as she soaks up his body heat, coiling around him like an eel. Cold little pearl. “Still freezing, my sweet?”

“I’m feeling a little better. I don’t think I’m losing any more body heat, but I’ll take any opportunity to be attached to you. I don’t want to let you go for the next ten days. Or weeks. Or months. What do you say to a whole year of us together in this bed?”

“We need to eat at some point.”

“I believe you said that there are delivery services available?” She hums. “I really liked pizza the last time. Do they make pizza with blueberries on them?”

“I’m not sure they do.”

“They should,” She makes a happy noise. “The taste would be sublime. Blueberries are so wonderful. Or how about blueberries and peaches on the pizza?”

“Humans would probably tell you that the pizza you’re craving is a crime.” His laughter is genuine, bubbling out of him at the idea of Marinette eating a slice of what humans consider revolting. “They don’t put fruit on them.”

“They’re missing out on flavors they never would’ve imagined.” She pouts.

“What are we going to do with your horrifying taste palette? You have the appetite of a sea-dweller. Are you sure you’ve lived your entire life in the reef?”

“All of my years, yes.” She giggles. “I don’t imagine I would be a very good sea-dweller. Much too cold down there.”

He smiles when a shiver travels down her tail at the thought of the water. “Oh, yes, how could I have forgotten that I promised to warm you up? Maybe I should cash that in now.”

A hand makes it to his boxers. She snaps his waistband with another version of her soft smiles and those wandering, glittering blue eyes, and, oh— it’s impossible for him to take off his underwear like this, with her tail completely wrapped around him like she’s a snake— but his wife is nothing short of persistent as she kisses his side. He shivers when her tongue sneaks against his skin, wet and moist, and he can feel himself involuntarily twitch his toes at the feeling. “Maybe I should warm you up instead, sky. You look like you’re having a rough time.”

“Absolutely not.”

“But—”

“You are hopelessly mistaken if you think I’m going to allow you to have free reign of my body before I’m able to enjoy the last sights of you like this.” Even as his toes continue to twitch with the way she mouths at his ribs. “You ravenous woman. You’re terrible at sharing, and I’ve missed you very much.”

“Oh, it’s not as if I can’t just take off my earrings and let you enjoy touching my scales some more.”

“You know what I mean,” He scrunches his nose. “Let me do this properly.”

“I’ll let you do whatever you’d like as long as I get to go first.” She tugs at the elastic. “Please? Just a few minutes, Luka? A decently sized amount of time to get my mouth on you?”

Oh, conniving mermaid. “I do not make deals with you. The last time I did, I ended up getting married to you.”

“As if that’s a bad thing!”

“I don’t regret it,” He shares a grin with her. “Definitely not. But you just have a way of convincing me to do things.”

“Oh, so I convinced you to marry me? Funny, I remember something about how you were convinced you were bad for me, but couldn’t help yourself but to keep trying to court me…” She giggles when he attempts to squeeze out of her grasp, rolling his eyes affectionately. “There’s no escaping, sky. Not with your sea legs, I’m afraid.”

It’s true. He is a lot stronger than her with his tail. With just about anything, really, because merfolk from the reefs are nothing compared to the ones out in the open sea with hardened skin and longer figures, but…

“This bed will break if I get rid of them,” He manages to get one of his legs out, much to her complaints. She’s far too dry for her to keep a genuine grip on him, poor thing. “Stretch out, little pearl. I’m curious to see how well you can last.”

“Will you take me like this?” She gasps, letting him unwrap her enough for his other leg to slip out from underneath her. “Oh, sky, yes please! I’m not sure—”

“We’ll do that next time. I have something else in mind.” Although he’s willing to try. Maybe when she isn’t on the cusp of transforming out of her tail, because that would take a little longer for them to find the best position— she’s always so small and tight as it is. It would be easier in water, of course, so that she’s in whatever position is more comfortable for her, but with his ouroboros on he breathes like a normal human. Sadly, he would probably drown himself.

Marinette would kill him.

A good way to go. But still killed and drowned all the same.

She’s still ticklish under his fingertips when he brushes over her scales again, but her cheeks are slowly pinking as they make eye contact. She’s not shy— definitely not. Honestly, she’s much more adventurous than him, in this aspect, but it’s been so long since they’ve been together, and he hopes that he remembers how to please her to the point she sings. Even though she’s excited, and he can tell by the way her fins twitch at the end of the bed, she mostly keeps still as he follows her scales back to where she’s wanted him to be from the very beginning.

Ah, there she is.

This spot is definitely not dry.

Soft, and full of slick, she opens gently to his prodding fingers with a sigh. Her nails are blunt, but they feel like little needles on his shoulders as she grips him, trying her best not to squirm and overwhelm him. Her body is tightly wound, almost hurtful, and even with the slick she’s not that easy to sink into down to the knuckle like he’d imagined. He hisses at how tight she is, feeling his cheeks heat and something stir at the base of his spine, panting as he hears her squelch as he pushes in more and more. “Why are you so tight, pearl?”

“I— oh— haven’t had much time to myself, the school keeps me so busy—” She makes a noise of contentment anyway, brushing her hair back and around her as he fingers her open. She’s a pretty sight, with her hair long and flat like ribbons near her waist. If he twists his finger this way… maybe she’ll… “And you know I don’t like doing it— oh, stars! Luka, yes, more of that—”

“Easy,” He grins, making sure she doesn’t squirm completely away from his hands. She wants to stay, she does, and he knows that, but she’s always too excited to keep still and let him finish. She wants all of it. She wants all of him, and always ends up rushing to the good parts instead of enjoying the moment. “Finish what you were saying, sweetheart.”

She huffs when he stills his finger, batting her tail along the end of the mattress. “I don’t like doing it alone, you know, and it’s been rather lonely doing it.”

“I know what you mean,” He fills in the silence between her panting, twisting his finger again and making her eyes roll as a groan leaves her.

She bites her lip. “I’d rather you help me out, it always feels so much better— oh— you’re just so good, sky.”

“Oh, am I?” He meets her gaze almost challengingly, slowing his fingers down enough to get a shine back into her hazing eyes. “So does that mean you thought about me?”

Does he really deserve that fin slap onto his shoulder? He would say no, but, there’s not much of an argument to be made when she rolls her eyes. “Of course I thought about you. What kind of ridiculous question is that?”

“Let me guess,” He tilts his head to the side, blinking at her with shaggy hair in his lashes. “Did you think about the last time we did it? How I’d made you sing for hours?”

“No— I mean, well, yes— but—” She moans.

He hums. “You almost woke up our neighbors with your sighs. Pretty little thing.”

“You know, I also thought about my husband hurrying up whenever he decided to finger me,” Her smile curls silly when all he does is laugh and continue to stall. Slicking his fingers against the soft and wet slit, only gently sinking in only to pull out again, making her mewl out. “I want to get you out of those boxers, damn this tail! Your cock is calling my name, I know it— if only I had the legs to catch you with, you’d see the summit of my desires.”

“Oh, I’d love to see that. A reef-dweller, trying to outmaneuver a deep-sea dweller.”

“You’re not as scary as you think, sky,” Her shoulders shake from laughter, and he retaliates by curling his fingers just so in order to get that whine back into her voice. “I’ll— oh my— h-have you know, I got over your differentness—”

“My ‘differentness’?” He grins, but she doesn’t elaborate.

“—within the first year of meeting you. Maybe even the first month— I knew from the moment your eyes turned into gold that I was going to marry you. Our friends were confused and terrified of it— but I knew that you’re nothing more than a guppy. And I knew it from the moment you scales changed colors to match the reef that I had found my eternal love.”

“Sweet,” He muses, trying his best not to blush. “But you are still no match for a deep-sea dweller, my love. They’re tougher than nails. The bullies of the merworld.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s true.” But she doesn’t make eye contact with him anymore, instead looking down at his boxers with a knowing look. His body stirs as she continues to look at him, wetting her lips with a slow drag of her tongue, enraptured by what she sees. “The ever scary deep sea, with their terrifying personalities and scary men who want nothing more than to please their wives.”

“And I, of course, wouldn’t know anything about that.”

Something in her switches, and her gaze snaps up to his. He looks at her shining eyes, watching them widen into a lovely shape as she whines at the back of her throat. “Let me have you, Luka, before I lose my mind from how much I need you.”

His finger goes back to making her sing. “I love it when you beg, sweetheart.”

“Ridiculous man,” She rolls her eyes but it almost feels forced as her face turns redder and redder. “Just— oh— watch out, sky, because once you’re done I’ll return the favor.”

She drags him closer for a kiss. He eases another finger into her, desperate to make the humming noise turn into a full-on shout, but he gets distracted by the way her tongue presses into his. Inquisitive, as usual, his pearl is frantic for him as she curls her tongue into his mouth, parting her own lips in a moan when he angles his head to the side and nips at her bottom lip with his teeth.

She’s alive under his fingers. Tight, yes— warmer than a furnace, too— she’s everything he loves and craves. He’ll chase the bond fever out of her, too, even if it takes him all night, but the way she sings praises of his fingers curling and uncurling in her as he works her open is a sign that it might not be long before his pearl is gushing over his fingers.

But the bond fever won’t be that easy to solve. They have a whole year to make up for, of course, but he’s certain that this is in the right direction. To hell with obligations of tomorrow, or even all of the groceries he knows that they have to go and get when he has her gasping and moaning from his actions— he hasn’t heard her sweet and moaning voice in months. It’s a sweet song that he’ll hold forever in his heart.

“Luka— Luka—” She purrs.

Or tries to, at least, since they’re outside of water and the sound doesn’t travel like it should. Regardless, it’s a rumbly and poetic noise that warms him all over, evidence that the strain in her shoulders is starting to lessen, and evidence that she’s relaxing completely. He almost straddles her, his knees on either side of her tail and careful not to step on her hair, pistoning his fingers in the way he knows will alleviate that curl in her spine.

“You’re so beautiful, sweetheart,” He could watch her come undone by him for the rest of his life. “Nothing in the world compares to you.”

Oh, and he knows she loves hearing him say that. Luka knows she’s the happiest when he pays attention to her and goads her with endless amount of praise. None of it is ever lies, or forced— which is probably the reason why she loves it so much.

As if to prove his point, slick squelches out of her as she sighs. She’s taking his two fingers so well, even as it’s a tight fit, even as her body attempts to push him out because his fingers are much bigger than what her body reasonably allows to penetrate her, but still, she’s doing so well— even her scales are shining in the lamplight from the amount of fluid she’s producing, and it makes the pink scales look all the more vibrant. “Sky— oh, please, sky—”

“Just a bit more,” He whispers. “I want to watch you just for a little longer. My darling. My wonderful and absolute darling.”

“Please—” She’s babbling a bit, leaning into his hand he has at her cheek, looking at him with those diamond blue eyes. “Please, Luka, please— oh—”

Oh, he loves it when she begs.

“Come for me?” He nips at her jaw and mouth. He’d bite and lick her at the chest if she had her sea legs, but there’s nothing but smooth scales to mouth over, and it would probably be best not to get any lacerations just because he couldn’t wait for a bit longer. “Be a dearest for me and come for me, little pearl.”

Her tail goes completely rigid when she does.

He feels his fingers get squeezed just as she throws her head back, and catches sight of her earrings starting to glow. He pulls his fingers out just as the magical charms release and stain her skin, and he blinks at the sight of beautiful cream-colored legs wrapped around his hips. Not to mention her pink slit, sticky from his help— he can’t stop himself from going back to her and using his fingertips up and down the sensitive flesh that has her twitching and mewling behind a hand.

“Oh! I— I forgot I’m more sensitive—” She flinches when he comes into contact with her clit. He rolls her flesh between two fingers, enjoying that cute face she makes, before— wait— are her thighs locking because she’s— “Luka— oh stars—”

“Twice back to back, pearl?” His eyes blow wide when she comes back from gasping and crying. “Oh, sweetheart.”

“Oh. I didn’t expect— oh.”

“Sweet Marinette. You’re so perfect, just like usual.” He murmurs as she starts to settle back down, starting to slow her twitching from his fingertips. “How are you feeling?”

“Mmmm,” She hums instead of answering, and he can’t fault himself for chuckling. “That one is going to cost you.”

“Is it?”

But the sight of her is mouth-watering, so breathtakingly mouth-watering— and he’s halfway to just opening her up again with his fingers and exploring all of her new skin available. After all, the swell of her breasts is so appetizing, her face flushed and glowing as she loses a bit of steam in favor of drowsily blinking up at him— he wants nothing more than to suck bruises onto her porcelain skin and have her continuously cry out.

His own arousal is an afterthought, so long as he can keep her with him looking this beautiful and this dazed.

But the world tilts very much soon after he makes that thought.

“Yes, my lovely sky. My turn— I’ll make sure you to give you two as well.” She smiles, saddling him with a fervor that he should’ve expected by now. The space between her legs is sticky and warm, and he can feel her wetness through his boxers as she sits right where he’s sure is most comfortable for her. Her thighs feel like the perfect weights against his hips, slotting against him like a perfect pair.

Her eyes are brown, now, just as dark and vast as the sea he grew up in before meeting her. Her human eyes are beautiful and nostalgic to his past, and he finds himself captivated by them every time. He loves her in all forms, after all, bond or not— she’s beautiful to him in all versions he’s ever met her, even as he plays with the strands of her slightly shorter hair, relishing in how soft it still is against his fingertips.

“Go easy on me, scary serpent, you know I bruise easily,” He grins at her, palming up the soft flesh of her legs. She shivers at it, still sensitive after just transforming. No doubt her body is still trying to make sense of the sudden change, but she seems to be more in favor of putting all of that on the back burner and focusing on him. She captures his wrist, and kisses softly at his ring when she brings his hand up to her face— he tries his best not to pay attention to how her breasts feel like silk against his arm and elbow.

“Not a chance, my dear.”

AO3 | Chapter One | Chapter Two

#pro lukamari #pro lukanette #fragileizyfic #fragileizylukanette #lukanette endgame

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