#i knew this section was gonna be the real meat of the chapter
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Heartfirst: A Ted Lasso Story - Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven: Movin’ On Up
Plot: Y/n receives some surprise visitors on moving day, and Richmond suffers a shocking blow to their lineup.
Word Count: 5.9k
Warnings: f!reader, language, (16+)
A/N: I really don’t know how I’m managing to crank these out so fast. Maybe shorter chapters? Anyway, this one was fun. We’re getting into the meat of the story, so hold onto your butts, and enjoy!!
(Forgive any typos, I wrote the bulk of this one at midnight 🌙)
——————
If there was a magical force at play in Richmond, it had made Y/n its latest target.
Not only had she found the perfect apartment, she’d toured it, signed the lease and booked movers in the same week. In all her post-university years, she’d never seen real estate move quicker.
Y/n wandered the flat, directing the men and whatever piece of furniture they were holding to its corresponding room.
A knock sounded from the stairs.
“Oh, the dresser can go to-“ Y/n spun around to help guide the mover she’d just seen downstairs, only to find the last person she expected.
“Hey, there, neighbor,” Ted greeted, standing at the top of the steps.
Y/n quickly plastered on her Monday-Friday grin, “Ted. What are you…how did you…?”
“Well, you said you were movin’ into your new place this weekend,” Ted hopped a step inside the apartment to let one of the movers pass by, “Took a guess that the van that came through this morning was probably yours.”
Y/n tried to laugh off the intrusion. The safety of living thirty minutes away was long gone…
“Brought you a little ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ gift,” Ted held up a little pink box and set it on Y/n’s kitchen counter. It was the same one that he dropped on Rebecca’s desk each morning.
“Thank you,” Y/n replied while pointing one of the movers in the direction of her bedroom.
Ted stuck his hands in his pockets and took a look around the living room. He let out a whistle, “I wish you’d’ve told us you were movin’ in sooner. Coaches and the boys coulda saved you some money, get you settled ourselves.”
That was exactly why she hadn’t told anyone she was moving until the day before. She knew Ted would have assembled the Greyhounds and she would have had 15+ footballers funneling in and out of her apartment, invading the little bubble she had left.
“Oh, I wasn’t gonna inconvenience you guys,” Y/n replied, watching Ted as he maneuvered around the boxes, “Especially with the match tomorrow.”
Ted made a raspberry, “Pish posh, Oshkosh. Woulda been happy to help. Hey,” Ted swirled a finger toward the ceiling, “This place got A/C?”
Y/n nodded.
“Whew,” Ted exhaled, “I gotta tell you, biggest surprise comin’ over here.”
“You get used to it,” Y/n replied, a deep double meaning to her words.
“What about you? What was the biggest shock for you, movin’ here?”
Y/n thought back to when she was eighteen, fresh out of high school and starting a brand new life in another country. Even if it had only been a few years, it felt like a decade ago.
“I don’t know,” she sighed, “Probably the difference in English. Chips versus fries, that sort of thing.”
“Man, I still slip up,” Ted said, “Took me months to get the football lingo down.”
“I still call the pitch a field sometimes,” Y/n admitted, settling on one of her barstools.
“Well, now I don’t feel so bad,” Ted chuckled as he came to sit across from Y/n, “Hey, what’s the thing you miss most from home? Just a little thing, y’know?”
Y/n sighed, thinking about the region-specific foods she couldn’t find in the international section of the market or the channels missing from her television. Truth be told, there wasn’t anything she missed so much it could be considered missing.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged, “It’s been so long since I’ve been home.”
“When was the last time you went back?” Ted asked.
“Uh…” Y/n traced back the list of holidays, “My sister’s birthday…two years ago?”
Ted whistled once more, “That’s a long time. Bet your folks miss you.”
On cue, Y/n’s muscles tensed. Her smile returned to conceal her discomfort. “My sister visits,” she said, “Every year.”
“Aw, that’s nice,” Ted cooed, “For me, it’s gotta be good barbecue. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they do food dang well over here, but I miss a good southern BBQ, y’know?”
“I actually do,” Y/n admitted with a small laugh, “4th of July’s always weird.”
Ted smacked a hand against the counter. “Thank you,” he said loudly, “Last year, we had a game. Felt like Beard and I were betrayin’ our ancestors or somethin’.”
Y/n chuckled, Ted struck her as someone who went all out for Independence Day.
“Hey, truth time,” Ted continued, the humor draining from his face, “Yea or nay on tea?”
Y/n shrugged, “I like it.”
“Dang it,” Ted bobbed his head, “Beard, you…us ex-pats keep droppin’ like flies.”
“It takes some adjusting, I’ll admit that,” Y/n raised a finger, “Not exactly a frappachino.”
“Mm-mm,” Ted shook his head, “I have tried and tried with that tree piss. Warmth ain’t goin’ anywhere north on that one.”
Y/n snorted a little, imagining what that might look like, Ted sipping on earl grey.
One of the movers asked Y/n where she wanted a bookcase and she gave him directions. For once, Ted sensed the moment.
“Well, I’ll get outta your hair,” he held up his hands and hopped off the barstool, “But I’m just down the street so you ever need anything, don’t be a stranger.”
“Good to know,” Y/n watched Ted walk away, “Ted?”
He stopped at the top of the stairs, “Hmm?”
While Ted was still a lot, after all her years spent as the foreigner, it was almost…nice to talk to someone from home. Someone she didn’t need to explain her references to or rearrange her vocabulary for.
“Thank you,” Y/n said, quickly concealing the truth of her gratitude, “For the biscuits.”
“Anytime,” Ted saluted before heading on his way.
Y/n let out a loud sigh once she was sure he was gone. She wandered back over to the counter and opened the pink box, finding the signature biscuits Rebecca raved about. Out of curiosity, she broke off a bite and ate it.
“Shit,” she mumbled, they were better than anything she’d ever found in any of London’s cafés.
Despite his line-crossing, Ted was good-natured. He had a heart of gold and tried to make sure everyone he encountered felt like they had one too. Y/n could call it tolerance or simply learning to deal with him, but deep down, Ted’s efforts were starting to poke and prod a little harder at her walls.
—————————
That evening, after the movers had finished and Y/n had gotten the basics unpacked, she started on the non-essentials. She was stacking dishes when the doorbell rang.
Y/n was perturbed as she descended her stairs, there were exactly three people who had her new address, the absolute minimum. Lisa, who handled payroll at the club, Ted, who’d stumbled upon her apartment by sheer luck, and her sister.
Looking through the peephole, Y/n sighed. She’d forgotten there was a fourth on the list.
Jamie smiled smugly as Y/n opened the door, “You went with mine.”
Y/n rolled her eyes, “I didn’t ‘go with yours.’ I was the one who found it, you just deemed it worthy.”
“And I was right,” Jamie stuck his neck out and lifted off his heels.
She’d never give him the satisfaction of knowing, but Jamie was completely right. The night of the West Ham match, the two of them had stayed at the Crown and Anchor till Mae kicked them out, pouring over each apartment until they’d eliminated 75% of the stack. The one Y/n had settled on was also the one that Jamie had decided was the best.
Jamie held up a plastic takeaway bag, “Come bearin’ sustenance.”
Not only was Y/n tired, she didn’t want to entertain anybody else from work. But, starving as she was, she was in no position to turn down free food.
“Entry permitted,” she snatched the bag from him, “Barely.”
Jamie took an exaggerated step over the seal and passed Y/n. They’d gotten to know each other better over the last few weeks, Jamie stopping Y/n anytime he saw her to ask about the apartment tours she was taking on the weekends. They’d gotten many laughs out of the stories of Y/n going against Jamie’s advice and visiting the properties that did indeed turn out to be crap.
In another world, they’d almost consider each other friends.
Upstairs, Jamie swung his arms as he took in the living room, “Not bad.”
“‘Not bad?’” Y/n turned around from where she stood in the adjoining kitchen, “You pick this place out and then it’s just ‘not bad?’”
Jamie cackled, spinning on his heel and pointing a finger at Y/n. “That’s an admission.”
Y/n internally cringed, her sharp edge was dulled by exhaustion. She could usually keep up with Jamie. “If you want any of this,” she unpacked the styrofoam container of kebabs, “You’ll stay on my good side.”
“Can’t have any,” Jamie replied, coming to lean on the bar, “Diet, ‘member?”
Y/n shook her head, popping a stray piece of chicken into her mouth. “I still don’t get why you’re doing this.”
“You know why,” Jamie crossed his arms on the counter, “Gotta get back to being the best.”
“Yeah, but is being better than Zava worth missing out on things like food and sleep?” Y/n asked. She could appreciate Jamie’s drive, but this dedication seemed overboard.
“It’ll be worth it,” Jamie stated.
Y/n decided to play the asshole, sliding across the kitchen to wave the kebab box under Jamie’s nose. She watched his willpower waver ever so fleetingly.
Jamie glared up at her, “You’re evil.”
Y/n snickered as she went back to her spot, stealing a bite before going back to unpacking. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be with Roy?”
“Night before a match, I’m off,” Jamie swung around the bar to the kitchen.
“So shouldn’t you be resting?” Y/n asked as she un-bubble wrapped a stack of plates.
“I will,” Jamie shrugged, bending over to peel the tape off a box.
Y/n glanced over, watching as Jamie began to unpack various glasses. He didn’t offer, he didn’t ask, just went about it as if it were his business. It was slightly intrusive…and also kind.
Jamie Tartt, Y/n had come to learn, was nothing and everything like what she’d thought he’d be. He had more depth than he let onto and he’d shown a side of it by trying to help her find a place. And though she knew the Zava battle was a personal thing for him, she also knew how much Jamie cared about his team. He wanted to be at his best for them just as much as he did for himself.
Unlike Keeley, who announced her efforts to get Y/n to crack at every turn, or Ted, who went overboard, Jamie hadn’t tried to enter into Y/n’s life. He had simply occurred.
“Do you get nervous?” Y/n asked out of pure curiosity, “Before games?”
“Not really. I mean,” Jamie answered, lining up coffee mugs in a cupboard, “Sometimes. Depends.”
Y/n stretched on her toes to put away china she never used, “On?”
“I dunno,” Jamie replied, a particular trigger or two popping up, “Lots of things.”
“So what about tomorrow?” Y/n continued.
Any slip Jamie’s mind had made was caught with quick footing. “Nah,” he said confidently, “Nah, we got that.”
“Well, good,” Y/n exhaled, setting the empty box on the floor, “It’d be nice to get a win. And hey, if it doesn’t work out and you’re forced to retire after this season, I’m sure the reality tv world is still thriving with opportunities.”
Jamie managed to grimace while smiling, “How the fuck did you find out about that?”
“You thought the PR department wouldn’t know about that?” Y/n strode past him to get another box, “I also live in England.”
“You at least vote for me?” Jamie asked, a playful lilt to his tone.
Y/n hoisted another box of kitchenware into her arms and balanced it on her knee. “Yep, you caught me,” she sarcastically grunted, “I have a weakness for crap tv featuring mediocre footballers.”
Jamie set down the mug in his hand with a particular harshness. Mediocre footballer. “Now, hang on-“ he began.
“Less talking, more working,” Y/n cut him off, she stopped to check out the cupboard he was finishing. “That’s also not where they go.”
“What?”
“The mugs,” Y/n gestured to where her coffee maker was, “Disrupts the flow if they’re all the way over there.”
Jamie rolled his eyes, only playful annoyance accompanying. “God forbid we disturb the flow,” he lamented, grabbing a mug in each hand and heading to the correct cabinet.
They unpacked in comfortable silence a minute more before Y/n decided it didn’t matter if Jamie wasn’t nervous about the match. They needed all the encouragement they could get.
“It’ll happen tomorrow,” she said, referring to their recent losses.
Regardless of whether he was hiding any feelings or if they’d pop out the moment he stepped on the pitch, Jamie stopped what he was doing to absorb the kind words. Y/n was a recent addition to his life, certainly an unexpected one, but she felt…safe. Like even if they didn’t know anything about each other past their mutual taste in real estate, he didn’t have to act so much around her.
“Thanks,” he replied, making effort to meet her eyes.
Y/n gave a small smile, “It will.”
—————————
It didn’t.
Over the next month, Richmond’s lack of luck turned to a 7-game losing streak. Some weeks were better than others, but they all ended the same way: with the Greyhounds leaving the pitch with their heads hanging in defeat.
Luckily, Y/n was kept occupied on the eighth week. Jack Danvers was coming into the office for a meeting and Keeley had asked Y/n to be there as well.
“You’re all business-y,” she’d said, “You know way more than I do, plus, Jack really likes you.”
Y/n sat on one side of Jack, with Barbara on the other, as she and Keeley recounted the conversation and clash of opinions they’d had recently.
“I completely understand where Barbara’s coming from,” Keeley said, keeping a kind tone as she turned to her CFO, “But as I was explaining to you, I’m worried that by adding more clients that could mean less attention paid to the wonderful people we already represent.”
“And then,” Barbara chuckled, though she lacked any humor, “I reminded Keeley, as you’ve said so many times, Jack, that if it does get to the point where we feel we’re spreading ourselves thinly, then we’ll hire more people,” she grinned politely at Keeley, “It’s called ‘growth.’”
Y/n and Keeley glanced over at one another fleetingly, the tension was so poorly concealed, it was getting uncomfortable.
“I’m sure you can see that as well, Y/n,” Barbara gestured towards Y/n.
“Actually, Keeley’s absolutely right, in my opinion,” Y/n answered, spotting her boss a smile, “There’s big firms, there’s small firms. Both have their allure, but I think our personability is the biggest thing we have going for us.”
“Oh,” Barbara’s grin grew scarier, “Wonderful, wonderful…”
Jack looked sweetly towards Barbara, “Okay. Let me weight in here.
“Oh, please,” Barbara obliged.
“I agree with Keeley,” Jack finished.
“Oh, that’s great,” Barbara beamed.
“Being a small boutique firm is exactly what sets you apart, like Y/n said,” Jack went on, “You want a restaurant to look successful, you take out half the tables and you have a line out the door. I say, let’s go for it.”
Keeley and Jack shared a smile.
“No, that’s wonderful. Yeah,” Barbara forced out as she rose, “And instead of salaries, we can give away the tables we threw out.”
“Don’t worry, Barbara,” Jack called, “It’ll be great.”
Barbara mumbled some dishonest agreement as she left the room, leaving it open on her way out.
Jack turned to Keeley and Y/n, “Do you ever think sunshine gets jealous of her?”
The women shared a laugh just before a knock at the door revealed Shandy. “Knock, knock.”
“Hi, babe,” Keeley greeted her friend.
“Now that your little cool girls meeting’s done,” Shandy leaned on the empty chair, very visibly unhappy, “Just wanted to share the exciting news that I’ve started an app.”
“Oh,” Keeley replied.
“It’s like Bantr, but it’s better and cooler,” Shandy’s tone was even and icy, “And actually cares about helping people have sex with celebrities.”
Y/n kept her head down, sharing an awkward glance with Jack. This was strictly Keeley’s business to handle.
“What? Shandy-“ Keeley began.
“It’s called ‘Star Fuckr,’” she announced before looking to Jack, “And yeah, we are looking for investors.”
When Jack didn’t offer to write a multi-zero check right then and there, Shandy stood tall, shot daggers at Keeley and strutted her way out of the room.
“I take it she’s still angry about the whole Bantr thing?” Jack asked.
“Oh, yes,” Keeley nodded, “Shandy does not have a good relationship with rejection, or her ex, or with her workplace, or most nouns, really.”
“‘You are so passionate, but I have to let you go,” Jack said, pulling Y/n and Keeley’s attention, “‘I’m sorry, but I know someone as brilliant as you will land on their feet.”
Keeley struggled momentarily, “What did I do?”
“No, no, no, no,” Jack reached out across the desk, “Keeley, sorry. That’s what you say when you fire Shandy.”
Y/n and Keeley both exhaled forcefully, laughing after.
“Sorry,” Jack apologized.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Y/n’s hand was pressed to her chest, “I just saw my lease flash before my eyes.”
“It’s called a compliment sandwich,” Jack explained, “You give someone bad news, but to soften the blow, you slap it between two delicious slices of compliments.”
Keeley nodded, “But I can’t fire Shandy. She’ll hate me. And she really thinks she’s killing it.”
“I am sure she does,” Jack exhaled, “The worst people often think they’re the best. My dad calls it ‘talent dysmorphia.’”
Keeley laughed while Y/n stayed silent, knowing what was coming next.
“What do you think?” Keeley turned to her hardest worker, “Do you think it’s the right decision?”
Y/n looked down at her notebook, taking a deep breath to see if it would help the force of what she wanted to say dissipate. Jack was waiting on her too, and she couldn’t lie to her or Keeley.
“I think…” she started slow before shutting her eyes and letting it fly, “Keeley, if you don’t fire her, she will literally run the company into the ground and strut over its mangled corpse.”
When she opened her eyes, Jack and Keeley were leant back an inch or two as if to avoid the splash of her opinion. Before she could try and explain it more eloquently, the two women started laughing.
“No, no,” Jack chuckled, “Don’t hold back.”
Y/n exhaled with a small smile, turning to Keeley, “I’m sorry.”
“No,” Keeley reached a hand over and poked the back of Y/n’s, “That’s why you’re my best. You don’t hold back.”
It was ironic, they both knew, considering how withdrawn Y/n kept herself. But with Keeley, it seemed to be a bit of a joke between the two of them.
“You two wanna get some lunch?” Jack asked when the giggles had died down, “My meeting just got pushed.”
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Keeley smiled, “Yeah, my stomach started grumbling when you said ‘compliment sandwich.’”
“You guys enjoy,” Y/n rose with them and collected her purse, “I’ve gotta get back to the office.”
“Oh,” Keeley reached back over her desk and handed Y/n a sheet of paper, “Give this to Zava. A couple more people called requesting interviews.”
Y/n glanced over the list she’d originally made, it seemed like the Zava craze still hadn’t died down. In fact, the more Richmond lost, the more people wanted to hear what he had to say. “Are we sure it’s a good idea to do so many interviews on a seven-game streak?”
“That’s the thing,” Keeley grabbed her coat, “The press eat up whatever Zava says. Can’t get enough.”
Quirking an eyebrow in understanding, Y/n tucked the list in her book and tried to imagine the ridiculous headlines that would be tied to Richmond this week.
—————————
Returning to the office after having taken lunch by herself, Y/n rapped two knuckles on the open locker room door. She still knew to wait for the all-clear.
“Everybody decent?”
A chorus of various ‘yeses’ were her key in.
“Zava,” Y/n turned to the star player, “Here’s your interview schedule. The press is really eager this weekend in particular. Let me know if there’s any changes you want to make.”
Zava pressed a hand to his heart and touched Y/n’s arm with the other. “Thank you,” he said softly, before looking to his teammates, “Men.”
Taking hold of both her shoulders, Zava guided Y/n to stand in front of him. “Okay,” Y/n stuttered as she was stood in front of the entire team. Seated in the middle of the room with Isaac, Jamie matched her confused gaze.
“This is what your hearts should be seeking,” Zava began to wax his odd form of poetry, “Brains, talent, warmth-“
Y/n’s brow creased, what the fuck had she walked into?
“Outer beauty will fade,” he continued, “But a smudge like this,” Zava smiled down on Y/n, “It will last forever.”
Zava patted her shoulders once more before throwing his towel over his shoulder and exiting the room. Not only was Y/n left with every Greyhound staring at her, contemplating Zava’s words, but with his schedule still clutched in her hand.
“Can someone make sure he gets this?” Y/n asked, failing to keep her tone even.
“Oh,” Dani raised his hand and climbed over Jamie’s leg to get to Y/n, “I will.”
Y/n willingly handed it off, “Thank you, Dani.” Not caring to spend another second in the room, she turned on her heel and left. She backtracked her steps quickly, “Is a smudge a good or a bad thing?”
Colin scrunched his face up, “It’s not…not…a good thing.”
Pressing a hand to her temple, Y/n decided she didn’t need to know any more about whatever conversation she’d interrupted and left the locker room.
—————————
The Man City match came about like every other one, but the air of anticipation heightened with each week. Would this be the day Richmond finally broke their streak? Or would they take another step towards double digits?
Not more than a second after Y/n had parked in the car lot, her phone rang with a call from Higgins.
“Hi,” she answered, “What’s going on?”
“Are you here yet?” Higgins asked, his tone nervous.
Y/n shut the door to her car, striding towards the back entrance to the stadium. “I just pulled in.”
“Could you pop into the coach’s office?”
“Yeah,” Y/n hung on the syllable suspiciously, turning in the other direction and swinging the door to the office building open. “Be right there.”
Y/n took long steps down the hall, passing by the locker room and heading straight for Ted’s office.
“Hey,” she said as she entered. Coach Beard, Roy and Higgins were standing around the desk clump, huddled together in conversation. Ted was already on the pitch. “What’s wrong?”
Beard kept his hand pressed to his mouth, Roy scowled at the air.
“It seems that Zava hasn’t showed up yet,” Higgins answered, “No one knows where he is.”
Y/n’s lips parted in confusion, “He’s just…not here?”
“Apparently so.”
Setting aside her annoyance, Y/n snapped into work mode and pulled her phone from her coat pocket. “Alright,” she scanned her contacts, “Let me get on the phone with some people. See if I can track him down.”
“He’d better fucking be here,” Roy growled at no one in particular.
Y/n raised her phone to her ear and pointed to Roy and Trent’s office, the former nodding for her to take it. She started at the top of the list of Zava’s personal team he’d given to her, Keeley and Higgins. Why a fecalist needed to be considered an emergency contact, Y/n would never understand, but she’d try whoever she had to…
Except the fecalist hadn’t heard from him.
Or his agent.
Or anyone Y/n dialed.
Defeatedly, and beginning to grow anxious, Y/n rejoined Beard, Roy and Higgins. “No one knows where the fuck he is,” she answered.
“Fuck,” Roy muttered.
“We got three minutes,” Beard shrugged, “What the fuck do we do?”
“Start Colin,” Roy resolved before looking to Y/n, “If you track that prick down, I don’t care, you fucking get on the pitch and tell us.”
Y/n gave a definitive nod, “You got it.”
With not so much a plan as a temporary fix, Roy and Beard left for the locker room while Y/n and Higgins headed for the hall.
“I told everyone to call me if they hear from him,” Y/n reported as they walked.
“What could be so important to make him miss a match?” Higgins pondered as they made their way to the stadium.
“I don’t know, but so long as his wife and kids are breathing and in possession of all their limbs,” Y/n practically growled, the cheering of packed house of Greyhounds growing louder with each step, “I’ll drag him onto the field myself.”
—————————
Rebecca took to the news…as expected.
“Who the fuck does he think he is?”
Y/n sat on one side of her boss, raising two fingers of the hand rubbing at her temple, in agreement.
“So just, no one’s heard from him?” Rebecca asked.
“No one,” Higgins grimaced.
“Well,” Rebecca let her palms fall against her legs, “There goes any chance of a win.”
“Let’s pray otherwise,” Y/n scanned her phone for the fifth time since she’d sat down. It was then that she realized there was a very vocal presence missing. “Where’s Keeley?”
Snapping out of her most likely violent thoughts, Rebecca unlocked her phone and held it up to Y/n. She found a text thread from Keeley including a message that said she’d be missing the game. Below it was a picture of a baby lamb standing on the table of the KJPR conference room, surrounded by its own feces.
Three months ago, Y/n might have had a question or twelve. Now, she simply nodded and sat back in her seat. “So Shandy’s gone,” she mumbled to herself.
The game went as well as the last ones had. Colin, though talented, couldn’t rival Zava’s skill. Jamie’s extra training wasn’t the solution either, and Man City walked away with a 4-0 win against the Greyhounds.
Rebecca retired to her office while Higgins and Y/n headed to touch base with the coaches. Trent met them along the way.
“No one heard from him?” Trent asked Y/n on their way.
“Not a single text or call during the game,” Y/n scrolled her phone as they walked, an Instagram notification popping up, “Shit.”
Higgins looked over, “What?”
Y/n stopped midway to their destination, hitting play on the video.
“Hello, how are you?” Zava spoke, dressed in casual wear, “I’m just - I have to share something with you, my friends. You are not my followers. You are my believers.”
Trent and Higgins came to stand beside Y/n, expectantly waiting for an answer.
“And so it— I have to tell you,” the man paused, “Zava has played his last match. I will now dedicate all of my time and all of my energy to my family and my avocado farm.”
The rest of whatever utter nonsense Zava had to spew, Y/n didn’t listen. She was infuriated, partially because of his actions, and partially because they’d all allowed themselves to think it was ever a good idea to hire him. He’d fed the Greyhounds to the wolves with no regret and it affected all of AFC Richmond.
When the video ended, Trent, Y/n and Higgins shared a hopeless look.
“We’ve got to tell the boys,” Higgins finally spoke, shrugging slightly.
The three of them made their way down the rest of the hall where the locker room door hung open. The scene inside was dismal, each of the men sat on the benches with their heads hung.
“Hey, guys,” Higgins greeted in an attempt to stay positive, “Good effort today.”
“Mr. Higgins,” Colin spoke up from his seat, “Is it true about Zava?”
Y/n cast her gaze downwards, avoiding eye contact with any of them.
“I’m afraid so,” Higgins replied.
Dani, cradling a towel to his face, began to weep into the fabric.
“Maybe some tissues for Dani,” Higgins muttered quietly.
“Hey, hey, guys,” Sam stood with his phone in hand, “Zava just posted a video.”
“Oh gosh,” Y/n grumbled under her breath as the Greyhounds circled up. Everyone except Jamie, who remained sat on the floor.
The boys watched the video, clinging to every last word at the start, and walking away with mumbled curses and shakes of the head. Any love or respect they had for their former teammate had been lost within thirty virtual seconds.
Y/n snuck a glance over at Jamie, expecting to see him struggle to keep his joy under wraps. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Even he was in shock.
“Gentlemen,” Ted said as he entered, quickly noticing Y/n’s presence, “And lady. That was a tough one tonight. Okay? Man City has still got our number. That’s all right. We gonna get another crack at ‘em later in the season. Uh-huh,” Ted looked to Beard, “Coach? No practice tomorrow.”
Beard nodded, “That’s right.”
“Okay,” Ted looked back to the team, “Well, I’ll see y’all on Monday.”
While the rest of the team began to talk amongst themselves, Sam looked up confusedly at Ted. “Hey, hey. Hey, Coach,” he called till the manager stopped in his tracks, “What about Zava?”
Ted glanced over at Zava’s multiple lockers, his empty chair.
“He quit the team,” Sam stated, as if it unheard news.
“I mean, technically he retired from the whole sport,” Ted clarified, “Which makes it feel a little less personal, yeah? You know, like if your girlfriend runs off with some dude and it turns out they were soulmates.”
The Greyhounds replied quietly in agreement.
“But look, look, look, look,” Ted redirected their focus back, “I hear you, okay? Zava is gone. And you know what? I think it’s a good thing.”
The boys began to argue back in shock.
“Well, I do. Okay, look,” Ted spoke over his players, “Do I wanna win? Heck yeah. But I also wanna do it with folks that wanna be here. It’s not like we could handcuff him to his locker and make him love us.”
“We could have tried,” a desperate Dani replied.
As the initial surprised faded, Y/n was beginning to match Ted’s opinion. Zava may have taken them for a temporary ride to the top, but this ultimate insult had shown that his heart was next in Richmond.
“Hey, guys. Guys, look,” Ted held up a hand, “We got a good thing going here. All right?” Ted’s eyes fell to his left, meeting Jamie’s, “We didn’t need Zava. Yeah?”
No one dared disturb the silence as the truth washed over each of them, including those who weren’t players.
“Yeah,” Ted said quietly, “All we need to win are the fellas in this room, right now,” he pointed to the men on the benches, “And all you fellas need to do is believe it.”
No sooner than when Ted had uttered the last two words did the bright yellow ‘Believe’ sign hanging over his head split itself down the middle. The Greyhounds jumped to their feet and cried out to various degrees. Even Y/n gasped a little, having learned of its significance.
“It’s a sign,” Bumbercatch called out.
“That’s it,” Colin held up his hands, accepting fate, “We’re doomed.”
As the locker room grew louder, Ted held up his hands and attempted to settle things down.
“Now hold on. Hey, knock it off, okay? We’re not doomed. No one is doomed. But Bumbercatch, yes, you’re right. It is a sign. I agree, Yeah.”
Ted turned around and removed both halves of his handiwork, folding them together. “In fact this, it’s just a sign.”
Without any hesitation, Ted tore the paper into four pieces, sending the locker room into chaos again.
“All right, guys, listen to me,” Ted commanded the room, “Belief doesn’t just happen ‘cause you hang something up on a wall. All right? It comes from in here,” he touched his chest, “You know? And up here,” he touched his temple before hitting his stomach, “Down here. Only problem is, we all got so much junk floating through us, a lot of times, we end up getting in our own way.”
Y/n had yet to be present for any of Ted’s locker room speeches, as she had no reason to be. But immediately, like some spiritual presence moving through the room, she felt his words take hold of her.
“You know, crap like envy or fear, shame,” Ted continued, seemingly speaking to himself as well, “I don’t wanna mess around with that shit anymore. You know what I mean? Do you?”
He wasn’t speaking to her, but the question still penetrated Y/n all the same. She could feel a familiar ball of anxiety beginning to build in her stomach.
“No, me neither,” Ted shook his head after the boys answered back, “Hell no. Well, you know what I wanna mess around with? The belief that I matter, you know? Regardless of what I do or don’t achieve.”
One blade inserted itself into Y/n’s gut, the omnipresent pain causing her heart rate to speed up.
“Or the belief that we all deserve to be loved,” Ted went on, “Whether we’ve been hurt or maybe we’ve hurt somebody else.”
A second blade settled in Y/n’s chest, this one causing the muscles to contract. She closed her eyes in an attempt to keep the rising emotions at bay.
“Or what about the belief of hope?” Ted asked, “Yeah? That’s what I wanna mess with. Believing that things can get better. That I can get better. That we will get better.”
Better, Y/n thought on the word. Better. Did things ever get better? Or did ‘bad’ just shapeshift into something else? Did it just wait along the road in the shadows, waiting for ‘better’ to come merrily on its way?
“Oh, man,” Ted sighed, “To believe in yourself. To believe in one another. Man, that’s fundamental to being alive. And look. Yo, hey. If you can do that,” he pointed to each player in the room, “If each of your can truly do that-“
Ted made one more rip down the sign’s tatters, walking to the center of the room. “Can’t nobody rip that apart.”
As the remains of the sign slapped against the metal bench, Y/n’s anxiety reached its brim. She placed a near shaking hand on Higgins’ shoulder to signal she was leaving before slipping out the back door. Blearily, she made it down the hall and outside, the fresh air of the parking lot slamming into her.
Once in the safety of her car, she allowed herself to weep.
Zava was the furthest thing from her mind. The incoming headlines, another loss on the scoreboard…all of it. She couldn’t have cared less if she’d tried. All she could feel was the crippling ache in her chest, the sting of her tears, the overwhelming feeling that came with being utterly alone. When a person became aware of just how much bigger the world around them was and how infinitely small they really were. The pain that could be remedied with a simple hug or a comforting word.
Y/n let out a silent sob, the familiar ache of all she wanted having taken a new form, once again. It would certainly kill her to allow herself her basic needs, to walk back in and hurt with the people inside. And it would break her all the same to continue hiding.
————
Heartfirst Taglist: @lalla-04p @optimisticsandwichgladiator @makingmunson94 @taytaylala12 @storysimp @sokkigarden @lightninginab0ttle @poohkie90 @alipap3 @verra-nerevarine @shineforever19 @spaceagechimera @burnafter-reading @qardasngan @cyberpvnk-enthusiast @sogoodtoheritsvicious @buckybarnex @angelsunflxwer @blueanfield @thewildestwonderland @sablecities
#ted lasso imagine#ted lasso fanfiction#ted lasso fanfic#ted lasso fic#jamie tartt x reader#jamie tartt imagine#ted lasso x reader#keeley jones x reader#rebecca welton x reader#heartfirst
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14 again, but this time “Meat or Candy” interpreted as narrative philosophies rather than the halves of the epilogues
aghhh this is so mean!!! i've always read the meat/candy dichotomy as sides of the same coin rather than two discrete narrative philosophies, and homestuck itself as a structural exploration of various ways to balance/unbalance the split. picking between one or the other is like picking between air & water!
i certainly write godfeels with an eye towards finding a balance. serious drama needs to be offset by goofy comedy, cool anime fight scenes need to be offset by cursed bullshit or drydick exposition. chapter 8 especially is meant to be a tonal roller coaster. 'the shadows left behind' for instance is an almost 40,000 word long section about a depressed idea slowly clawing back personhood from their out of control death drive. there's murder attempts, there's suicide attempts, there's gore, there's psychological torture-- it's some of the heaviest shit i've ever written! and yet that same chapter also contains some of the funniest shit i've ever written. a story like this NEEDS that kind of variation to maintain reader interest, otherwise you get bogged down in seriousness or get so sucked up into lightheartedness that you lose all sense of substance.
like that's very much the reason ch8 ends with an epilogue full of jargon and exposition and obtuse metaphysics. i knew, at the close of ch8 act 5, that we were finally opening the door to what i consider The Good Shit. but it wouldn't be right to jump straight from that endpoint to where 3.2A begins. from an archival reading perspective, you need a palate cleanser to pull you back out from the thick of it and re-examine everything that just occurred from the outside. within the rest of ch8 there is a constant ebb and flow between meat tendencies and candy tendencies; what the epilogue reveals is that it was all candy in some sense, because it was functionally one extremely long action scene. it does this by serving as the meaty parallel, something much closer in tone and purpose to the author-insert sections of homestuck proper. it's meant to feel tedious and tantalizing at the same time, something you have to eat slowly and chew on to properly digest after the insane fast pace of [s] saturday. and even the epilogue swings back and forth between funny and serious! it's meat/candy all the way down!!
i suppose like any red-blooded american of the toonami generation, i have the most fun as a writer when i'm indulging myself in the candy of dumb anime bullshit. most of 'the shadows left behind' was back-constructed from the scene where Dare's "body" gets impaled and cut to shreds by X and they just keep walking towards it anyway. especially that moment where X tries to swallow them a second time, and Dare grabs it by the jaws and throws it off-- that whole sequence popped into my head and suddenly it clicked for me, oh shit, Dare is the secret shonen anime protagonist of godfeels! everything beforehand was a prelude to that moment when June really sees Dare for the first time, asks if they're real, and they shout defiantly, YES!!!
probably every writer does this to an extent, where they write towards some cool/interesting shit they can't get out of their head. there's a temptation to just go there, just get to the good stuff, because ultimately it's what you're there for and you KNOW the audience is gonna lap it up. but if you give in to that temptation and just string together all those keystone moments with bare-minimum bridging material, you paradoxically rob those moments of all their meaning and energy. did 'the shadows left behind' need to be 40,000 words long in one go? probably not. but i don't think the final culmination of that story would have hit nearly as hard otherwise.
you need meat to sell the candy. i wanted 3.2 A1 for instance to be much shorter than it wound up being, because god damn it i want to get to The Good Shit already!! but i realized very quickly that everything i wanted to get to would be poorly served by a cast of characters whose reasons for participating are murky at best. so i decided to invest in more of those meaty chapters between jade and various characters, which themselves needed their own fluctuating balance between meat tendencies and candy tendencies. from a structural standpoint it sort of becomes a meat/candy fractal, as each subdivision of each narrative unit has to maintain the same relative push-pull frequency that the entire fic as a whole does. does that make sense? i have no idea if that makes sense lmao.
anyway that's my take on the meat/candy split. hope it was satisfying u_u
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—
Debriefing the Crucible Knights went about how Axa had expected it would. She and her companions had staggered out of Heritage Hill only to be immediately escorted back to Crucible Keep along with the little girl they'd rescued from her family crypt, the poor waif falling asleep on Edér's shoulders as they'd made their way through town. Once inside, they'd had their wounds tended to and their bellies filled as they recounted the events of their harrowing mission, repeating themselves over and over to one bewildered Knight after another. By the end of the evening, rumors, misinterpretations, and half-truths about the "end of the Curse of Heritage Hill" were all anybody in Crucible Keep could talk about– unless one preferred to gossip about the mysterious Watcher of Caed Nua instead.
Restful sleep was coming harder and harder to Axa, and the troubling trend had continued as they'd bedded down in the barracks that night. She'd woken the next morning feeling worse than she had when she'd laid down the night before, and her attitude had very much reflected it. She'd particularly let her ire show when her breakfast had been interrupted by a man who'd introduced himself as Penhelm, a name she recognized as the one belonging to the Knight that Osric had sent her after the day before, hoping she could recover his family's breastplate from the snooty little gossip.
"Is it true that you're not actually a Watcher, but merely a Cipher? Like the... others of your kind down at Hadret House?" Arrogance and curiosity mingled in his insufferable smirk as he spoke, not even having had the decency to wait until she'd finished chewing.
"That depends," she'd replied, her mouth still full of bacon. "Is it true you steal people's family heirlooms after talking shit about them and getting them kicked out of the service?"
Needless to say, she had gotten nowhere trying to convince him to do right by Osric. So on her way out, she'd passed through the scriptorium and, with a careful eye and a whispered word to Aloth, she'd left Crucible Keep that morning with Penhelm's soul lineage affidavit tucked away in her satchel.
She had been on her way to Hadret House to have the affidavit examined for authenticity, hoping to gain a bargaining chip that might pry the heirloom armor from the little bastard's hands, when a messenger had appeared at her shoulder, letting her know that her presence had been requested... at Hadret House. She'd almost laughed at the absurd coincidence– until the messenger told her exactly who had summoned her there, his tone low and reverent.
"Who is Lady Webb," she'd asked, "and what exactly does she want with me?"
The messenger had been young, with a casual, almost flippant air about him, but he had still had the good sense to lean close and keep an eye out for eavesdroppers. "You don't know her, milady? She's the directress of Dunryd Row, Defiance Bay's investigative peacekeeping force. No one's actually met her face to face, in... I don't know, a long time. But they say that despite her advanced age, her mind is a steel trap and her will is an iron fist. She and her Cipher operatives keep the city safe from threats that most kith are never even aware exist..."
Axa had listened, at first. She'd tried to listen. But as he'd spoken, as he'd thrust the wax-sealed summons into her hand, she'd found herself distracted by an all-too-familiar feeling. Something was pulling her toward Hadret House, something that had nothing to do with Dunryd Row or Ciphers or Lady Webb, and she'd turned away from the messenger in the middle of his speech to pursue it, helpless to resist.
He was there. Just outside of Hadret House, on the far side of Brackenbury. He was there, and she approached him–
–she approached him, any confidence she'd had before dissolving now in her sick stomach, trickling down her trembling limbs. She couldn't do this.
She had to do this.
He was already watching her, but the impact of his gaze was no less powerful than if he'd turned dramatically to face her. It was as though he knew what she was going to tell him already.
Of course he does, she thought. He knows all. He knows what I've done. What I–
"You look as though you've seen a ghost, dear."
Lady Webb chuckled in her throat, but her face did not laugh with her. "Although, perhaps you have. After all, you are the Watcher who wrested the ruins of Caed Nua away from poor, mad Maerwald, as well as the Watcher who ended the... 'curse' of Heritage Hill, if my reports are correct." The old, frail woman rose from her desk, crossed the room with a deceptive grace. "And they are."
Axa kept her head low, but lifted her eyes to meet Webb's gaze. "Why have you asked me here–"
"–You know why I have asked you here, child." With anyone else, she would have felt that she was being chastised, but with him, she only felt kind, fatherly concern. "Your fellow missionaries have reported a change in your behavior recently. You neglect your duties, you are quiet and distant. What troubles you so to make you act this way?"
Tears stung her eyes. Her whole body quaked. Her breath caught in her throat. The quivering pit in her stomach broadened and her heart fell into it, and for a second she thought she might actually vomit, but instead it was her confession that flew from her mouth:
"Your Eminence, I... forgive me, but I wish... I wish to leave the order."
He folded his hands, frowning–
"You're not a stupid woman, Axa Mala. You should know why I've asked you here. Defiance Bay's concerns are my concerns, you see, and evidently, they are yours as well. But neither of us is overly fond of beating around the bush, so let's cut straight to it, shall we?" Lady Webb stopped at her bookshelf, turned to face Axa again, her keen eyes piercing the other woman's mind, her soul. "Why do you seek the Leaden Key?"
She had known, somehow, that Webb would ask her that, but it still took her by surprise. Nevertheless, Axa didn't waste time asking how she'd known. "I'm looking for someone. A man I saw in the ruins of Cliant Lîs. He... did something to me. And I need him to undo it."
The wizened old Cipher nodded at her, then, let her eyes slip shut, her face twitching–
–"You have been nothing if not an extraordinary asset to us," he said, slowly pacing as he spoke. "Your conviction in our cause has inspired your contemporaries to greatness, and together with them you have brought the light of redemption to thousands, if not more! What could possibly shake your faith in yourself like this? Your faith in us?"
Somehow, without her realizing, he had ended up crossing the room to stand directly before her. He looked into her eyes, worry and sorrow emanating from him. "What's wrong, Anthea? What happened?"
She squeezed her eyes shut but she still saw him in her mind, still saw the compassion in his eyes that a despicable sinner like her could never deserve–
Lady Webb opened her eyes, gasping softly.
"The gods are cruel," she murmured. "The man you seek is none other than the grandmaster of the Leaden Key himself: Thaos ix Arkannon."
The name echoed in Axa's head, the bearded man's masked face floating before her mind's eye. It felt like she'd always known him, or at least known of him, but only now could she put a name to the face.
"Thaos," she whispered–
"I cannot stay, Your Eminence. I'm... I'm tainted, wicked and weak." Anthea lowered her head, letting her tears fall to the floor. "I've done something terrible, something I can never undo, an unforgivable act of blasphemy. I fear– no, I– I know I am beyond redemption."
She curled in on herself, wracked with sobs, unable to continue. Shame and guilt burned her face, but she knew she deserved to burn for real, to burn forever. But even to cleanse her soul with holy flame would be too kind a mercy for a traitor of her magnitude. How could he, how could the gods ever forgive such a miserable wretch like her?
His hand fell onto her shoulder, steady and strong–
"He is a man unlike any other," Webb explained, her voice quiet and serious as she made her way back to her desk, hands folded behind her back. "The Leaden Key is an organization dedicated to obscuring, muddling, and destroying information, including any evidence pertaining to themselves or their activities. There's no way to be sure, but what little we've found suggests that they have supposedly existed for over two thousand years." She looked pointedly at Axa, one eyebrow cocked. "And it was Thaos who founded them."
"But that's impossible," Aloth blurted. "Even the longest-lived elves haven't even come close to..." He trailed off, twisting his fingers together anxiously, dropping his gaze to the floor.
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Webb sighed, one drooping corner of her mouth briefly lifting into a smirk. "But when it comes to the Leaden Key, little is as it seems. If what we've managed to learn about him so far is true– and there's no guarantee that it is, but it's the best explanation we've got– he is one of Woedica's Favored, an agent of the Queen Who Was who has been gifted with the blessing of eternal life. In practice, this means that every time he dies, Thaos' soul is guided by Her hand to be reborn in an almost identical vessel, and once he reaches puberty, he Awakens to all of his past lives at once, in order to continue the work of his Mistress on Eora. So strong is his soul, in fact, that he can supposedly even project it out of himself and into others, crushing the will of lesser souls and usurping their bodies for his and his Queen's own ends." She regarded Axa with pity. "He is almost certainly the most dangerous, elusive, powerful man on the face of the planet. And while I can't deny being grateful for the company, you have my deepest sympathies that your path has also crossed with his."
"Why was he in Teir Nowneth the night the machine was activated in Heritage Hill?" Axa demanded, her head spinning. "What was he doing in Cliant Lîs? How did he Awaken me–"
–"So you have sinned," Thaos proclaimed gravely. "You have erred, stumbled on your path, and now you would cast yourself into the Void. Is that it?"
Anthea wanted to cover her face with her hands, wanted to run, to hide, but she could barely even find it in herself to draw the breath to answer him. "What I've done, no god could forgive me. Now or ever."
He brought his other hand around, then, gripped both of her shoulders firmly. "My child, my dear child, if you truly believe that then I have utterly failed you, as a teacher and as a leader. There is no sin so grevious that it cannot be absolved, no path so dark the gods cannot light the way to salvation! As long as you do not turn your back on Them, They will never turn Their backs on you."
She knew it couldn't be true. It was too good to be true, and nothing in her life had ever been half so good. Not since she was a child. But... would he really lie to her like that? He never had before. At least, she didn't think he had. Anthea slowly lifted her head to look at the man who would save her from herself–
Lady Webb sat back down, letting her chin hover just above her steepled fingers. "That's what I'd like to know. There's quite a lot I'd like to know about Thaos ix Arkannon and the Leaden Key, as I rather imagine you would, too. That's why I summoned you here today– to work with you, pool our resources, compare notes. The Key has been... active as of late, and where they go, you seem to follow, righting their wrongs. As you did in Heritage Hill." She smiled, her thin, red mouth like a slit cut into her face. "I'd like you to continue to do so, and to report your successes back to me. In return, Dunryd Row's resources shall be at your disposal should you need them, and with a bit of luck– well, a lot of luck, in truth– perhaps we two can corner him and get our answers at last."
There was something behind Webb's eyes, something mysterious and passionate and unrelenting that Axa couldn't quite place, but she knew instinctively that it wasn't for her. Whatever it was that drove this woman, whether it was a thirst for vengeance or a desire for the truth or a need for justice, the ferocity behind her eyes was only for Thaos.
She could respect that.
"Very well," Axa replied, "I accept–"
–"I... I want to believe that's so, Your Eminence," she stammered, "but even if it were, I don't deserve Their clemency."
"Some among the gods would see you punished, it's true," he murmured. "But the sting of the lash passes in an instant compared to the eternity afterward in which you shall enjoy the boundless mercy, the cleansing forgiveness, the all-consuming love of the gods. That is what makes one deserving– devotion. As long as you devote yourself to Them, They will return the faith you place in Them a thousand fold."
The tears fell afresh from her eyes, this time from sheer relief. Somewhere deep in her heart, she must have known he could make it all right, could show her the path to absolution. He always did. That was the real reason she had come here, wasn't it? What had she been so afraid of?
Thaos smiled warmly at her, his hands still gently clutching her shoulders. "Stay with us, Anthea. We need you. The gods need you. They have entrusted you with the truth of Their Word– will you return that trust?"
"I will," she whispered–
"Now, before you go– what was that bizarre display you put on just outside our door?" Lady Webb was already looking through another stack of documents, but she spared Axa a bemused glance. "It's not a good look, dear, standing around with your eyes glazed over and your mouth agog. You're liable to catch flies."
"I'm an Awakened Watcher," the orlan retorted curtly. "The memories from my past life tend to be a bit more vivid than the ones other Awakened kith might experience. And I don't exactly control what I see or when I see it."
The old Cipher shrugged. "I meant no offense. Only trying to warn you that you may have unwittingly broadcasted your whereabouts to someone who seems to have a bone to pick with you." She gestured vaguely toward the door to her office, and it swung open, an orlan man stepping in as though he'd been expected.
Webb looked at Axa the way a jaded teacher might at an impudent pupil. "Well? Show him the affidavit."
She blinked, and somewhat reluctantly, she reached into her satchel and produced Penhelm's affidavit, the one Aloth had pilfered for her at Crucible Keep. "Uh... Can you tell me if this is genuine?" she muttered.
The older man took it from her, looked it over briefly, and shook his head, wrinkling his nose in disgust as he handed it back. "Not at all," he pronounced. "Being perfectly honest, it's a rather shabby forgery, too."
Webb sighed, shuffling her papers. "Thank you, Kurren; you may go." The orlan gave her a respectful nod and left to return to his work downstairs as the directress of Dunryd Row grinned wryly at Axa. "Now you have your bargaining chip. Penhelm is waiting for you on the street outside. Do exercise caution, dear, and try to keep the blood off of my siding. We've only just had it repainted last month."
"Actually," the little woman smiled slyly, "I think I've got a better idea."
—
#pillars of eternity#poe anthem infinitum#fic wip#i knew this section was gonna be the real meat of the chapter#i'm doing a Thing with capitalizing the gods' pronouns#one more section and then a new playing and planning phase can begin bghfghbfghfhh!!!!#thanks for reading ♡
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I did it! Finally fucking did it! I 100% the support log for 3H….Holy shit, that took longer than I was expecting, lol.
(Long rant, so heads up.)
I came in thinking “Oh they finally time-locked the supports, so I don’t have to have the damn cursor mocking me every time I open the menu like in Awakening and Fates, hurr hurr”. No no no no no. At least for Awakening and Fates, it was on my dumb ass for pressing the S-support and saving when I knew I shouldn’t. First off, if they wanted us to regain supports for Byleth in NG+, why the heck are supports for characters like Edelgard, Rhea, Dorothea and Lindhart locked? I don’t mean time-locked like the post-TS supports in a regular playthrough, I mean deadass “you can’t buy this, period” locked. “Oh it’s because you haven’t advanced that far in the story yet”. I can buy post-TS supports for the other characters, what makes El and Rhea exceptions?! The only thing that would be lost is that I don’t have to replay their entire route to get their S-support twice. It’s not like there’s enough differences between Bylad and Bylass to warrant the supports being locked, none of the characters specify a specific gender in their dialogue, and as far as different models go, changing models during a cutscene is coded into the game, so that should be no issue.
After going through the monastery option enough times, the hubworld is in this weird limbo state where it feels like it was made specifically for Byleth’s benefit (faculty training, recruiting party members, etc,) but the rest of the party seems to benefit from it instead (Instructions, Motivation points, etc). The Explore vs Battle options just don’t mix well, which feels like poor design choice. You can focus on auxiliary battles to raise your party’s level, but at the cost of potentially missing out on more party members. You can instead focus on the monastery to recruit party members, but at the cost of Byleth falling behind due to splitting activity points between recruiting and faculty training, and being in the monastery means less time grinding for levels. This isn’t as much of a problem in NG+, but if a game needs NG+ to lessen a design problem, then that’s more of a sign to me that the idea itself needed more ironing out.
As far as using the monastery to raise support points goes, the hubworld definitely needs a revamp. The only (good) options available are Meal Time and Choir Practice, with the latter being limited to once per week and the former making me think that the monastery must eat their own weapons to survive due to how fucking scarce food ingredients are. Getting meat and fish isn’t too big of an issue so long as you have enough money, but produce might as well be an urban legend. There were too many times where I had 60+ fish/meat, but produce was at fucking 1. I get that they wanted to be “realistic” in having seeds grow once per week, but if it’s at the cost of a gameplay element being nigh unplayable, then some more thought needs to be put into it. Sothis is a goddess of life and time, maybe her powers allow Byleth to make plants grow faster. Just something to make this section actually playable.
The final thing I wanted to talk about when it comes to the monastery is that, for some baffling reason, it is entirely possible to lock yourself out of key events like S-supports or being able to choose CF, simply by skipping to the end of the month. I’m not sure why this is a thing. It’s not like the game was designed with speedruns in mind (I mean, it is possible to beat a route in an hour, but fuck me if I ever succeeded in that), and nothing happens like a prompt popping up that you have to explore the monastery during that month or even limiting your options to just Explore (which the game has done before). This is especially weird for the quest in getting Jeralt’s ring (how to access S-supports), since Byleth is supposed to be sad in this month, so not being able to do seminars or Byleth being undeployable during auxiliary battles would make sense.
The option to choose CF is even worse though, because at least for Jeralt’s ring it’s a Red Quest that doesn’t allow you to finish exploring unless you complete it. For Edelgard, however? A dime-a-dozen quest prompt you can entirely look over and skip. No prompt by the game, no indication to talk to Edelgard, nothing. FFS, Rhea’s tea time quest was given more thought. At least her quest marker is a unique color.
(End of rant…sort of)
…So anyways, that was my experience with the game, lmao. Now you or someone else may be thinking, “nonnie, if you had this many problems completing the game, why did you bother?”, and the answer to that good question is…I’m not completely sure, lol. I know there’s more than one reason why, so bear with me here. I know part of it is due to sunk-cost fallacy (“I’m already this far into the game, I might as well fully complete it”), but I think a bigger reason is because I knew ahead of time that the routes were so similar to each other that there was little point in having a route split to begin with (except for CF, but who gives a fuck about that?). Despite all of my bitching, I do really like 3H even if I admit that it’s my least favorite FE game that I’ve played so far. I guess a part of me just wanted to like the game more despite my issues with it.
Now that I think about it, maybe the main reason was for fear of future mainline games. People are fear to like whatever part of a game that they wish, but I do think that 3H introduced some fundamental storytelling flaws that I’d rather not see repeated in the future, with me focusing on 3 in particular: 1) The Monastery, 2) Route Splits and 3) Byleth.
Aside from what I already talked about in regards to the monastery, if we are going to get another hubworld in the new FE title, have it to where it doesn’t conflict with how the rest of the story is presented. Is it better to simply tell us that the Western Church is xenophobic in an easily skippable side quest early on, or is it better to show us? Enemy Western Church NPCs going after foreign party members like Dedue or Petra more aggressively and calling them “animals” or the like, the map having Duscari NPCs locking themselves indoors for fear that the Western Church will persecute them, things of that nature. Is it better to tell us that there has been civil unrest in the Empire and the citizens revolting against Edelgard, or is it better to show us? Enemy Adrestian Civilian NPCs, assassins specifically going after Edelgard in a map, maybe one where a large farmland has been stripped bare. Things like that.
I’d rather do away with the Persona-calendar/Monastery hubworld, but if they are here to stay then they need enough content in it to keep the player engaged for 20-odd chapters, because there isn’t enough content in Garreg Mach to even hold up 12 chapters. Speaking of more content, if there’s going to be another route split in the next title, then there needs to be enough differences in the routes that actually warrants having a route split. Fates already did this well in having the route split be early in the game, along with the plot and story maps of each route being different, you could even skip to the route split moment on subsequent playthroughs, so 3H’s approach in having to play the same 12 chapters 3-4 times just felt like a massive downgrade. Playing multiple routes should feel rewarding rather than tedious, is what I’m trying to say.
Finally, and most importantly, I know that no one at IS is reading this but on the off chance that someone is - please, for the love of God, do not make another blank-slate/self insert main character like Byleth. Or at the very least, don’t have them be the focal point of the story, it’s a big reason why AM just works better than the other routes. For a game like FE, “self-insert” and “protagonist” goes as well as oil and water. Now, out of those three flaws listed, the Byleth one is what I’m hard set on. The monastery and route split flaws, my opinion might be flexible within reason, but the Byleth one…not so much, lol. If we really do get another self-insert doll for a main character, that alone is going to make the next game a hard sell for me, because seeing all the praise Byleth got (and has been getting) makes me fear that IS is going to take the wrong lesson from this and think they don’t have to put effort in making their protagonist anything resembling an actual person and their audience will still lap it up. It would be one thing if I just hated the character, but I don’t. I’m disappointed, which is even worse.
…With that said, it’s still better than whatever the heck Cap’n’Crunch is doing. Okay, rant over. For real this time.
—
I agree with a lot said here! But I do have a few disagreements, though they’re mostly my opinion than anything else lol
And this first one is probably like, extremely unpopular given how much shit I’ve seen flung at this aspect of 3H, but like… I actually really like the Monastery? Like yes, absolutely, it should have done more to not shelter the player from how bad the war is and it should change more with the world instead of being in this mostly limbo state where apparently seasons don’t real. I definitely also have those complaints, but to me, the Monastery was fine for the most part. A lot of the issues you brought up, like supports and Faculty Training and supplies for eating, weren’t a problem for me almost at all. My only real gripe is with how hard it is for Byleth to get training in Flying, Mounted and especially Heavy Armor without NG+ unlocking weapons ranks, since they don’t have access to Weekly Chores. I do believe I still managed to recruit everyone while only unlocking C in Faith on my Maddening playthrough of GD, but it certainly wasn’t easy. But I feel a lot of the problem people have with it are on subsequent playthroughs where they’re trying to do things like 100% any aspect of 3H, which yeah is gonna exacerbate the issues tenfold. Cuz like, while those three weapons ranks I mentioned are hard for Byleth to raise, on Normal mode you have unlimited auxiliary battles to help with all the other ones.
Like, I wanted to get Claude’s Dex to the max amount right? Just cuz I felt like it. And in doing that I found out just how tedious it is to get levels once a unit gets to a certain point, just cuz while Normal Mode gives you the Retreat option that lets you keep exp so you can drop a unit down on a yellow spot and get a decent boost in exp… you can do that like, twice or thrice on a story chapter. Once if it’s auxiliary (and not the freebie one). And that’s if you even have internet. And using the greenhouse to get Ailiell Pomegranates was a pain because they weren’t really guaranteed even if I used nothing but the right seed - doing that is more consistent, but not always, and I usually only got one anyway. It was annoying! But I was also doing a specific thing that’s gonna heighten the flaws in the system that I never would have noticed - didn’t even notice - unless I did that. The flaws are still there, don’t get me wrong! The Monastery definitely still needs improvement, battles still need to be a little more streamlined for future playthrough, but the flaws can seem a bit bigger than they are once you do certain things outside of a casual playthrough, know what I mean?
But, for example, when replaying 3H on hard mode and looking to recruit everyone after my no recruitment run, I didn’t come across any dilemma over “recruitment or Byleth being good, pick one.” That was the run my Byleth was usable, in fact - my first blind run that was no recruitment (save for Shamir) had my Byleth be pretty much completely useless while literally everyone else was fine. Also never came across problems with supplies for cooking (or at least not any big enough to comment on). So like, while these (and the above stuff) can certainly be problems for players trying to do everything everything in 3H, at least from my experience I just haven’t come across them. The monastery itself definitely needed a better story implementation, but yeah. I could’ve just been lucky tho lmao
I don’t mind how they implemented trying to get on CF at all tho lol. If you’ve been playing the game like it suggests you do - supporting characters and exploring the monastery there’s no reason for players to have missed getting on CF. If players wanted to ignore one of the biggest aspects of the game I don’t really feel that bad for them when they miss out on very achievable things. Plus, CF’s requirements are nothing in terms of FE’s madness when it comes to getting on a route. It may be more specific than any other route, but like I said, playing the game as the game tells you to would naturally land you in it (the only thing that might be a bit unfair is that I think if you talk with Edelgard at all that month you have to decide right then and there, and then the whole month is lost. Kinda ass).
Binding Blade, for example, requires you to do specific things that few first time players would think to do in multiple, random chapters in order for you to get the best ending. With absolutely no warning as to when these chapters happen and what to do in them. And some of these requirements are not fun lmao, I’d prefer how they did it with CF than with how they’ve handled ~secret~ stuff before personally
Pretty much agree with everything else though! While 3H is actually one of my more favored games in the series, I’ll be the first to admit that its storytelling is in dire need of improvement. Having the story and lore of the game just be spat out in lore dumps and this or that NPC just isn’t that good. Or if they are going to do that, at the very least give some visuals to go along with it! Imagine how much impactful Rhea’s story would have been if it was in a visual format, like CGs and/or a cutscene. It still would be an info dump, but at least we can see for ourselves how horrific the Red Canyon was for her! And I do not want another avatar in whatever next mainline game we get, personality or not. We’ve evolved past the need for self-inserts that all the characters Just Like lmao
But thanks for sharing your thoughts!! And sorry that it took so long for me to get to answering ;w;
#submission#anon#exqueuese me princess#but hey I found the og submission at least!! for some reason it got thrown in like the middle of my drafts?? weird lmao#but yeah overall I do think 3H could've done with some refinement for later more intensive playthroughs#and on the other hand I get why they didn't immediately think of them if that makes sense#also lol yeah the base game is infinitely more fun that whatever Cap'n'n doin' lmao
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The Head and the Heart, Part 4
Hello everyone,
I submitted this for @just-the-hiddles‘s The Damnit Jim, I’m A Vampire, Not A Landlord Fic Frenzy.
This chapter is less action heavy, but just as important. Thanks for hanging in there and reading!
Series Masterlist: The Head and The Heart
Summary: The twins are taking a night off from their graduate studies-- or at least Tessa is; her twin sister, Antha, is just trying to keep her out of trouble. What starts as a night of good old-fashioned fun and flirting quickly changes as they find themselves at the doorstep of the Hollow House Bed and Breakfast.
Characters: OFCs Antha and Tessa King, original characters/vampires
WARNINGS: 18+ for suggestive themes and violence, cursing, implied drug use, implied rape, stressful/scary situations, vampires, and characters with incredible hair-- you’ve been warned. Read at your own discretion.
Word Count: 3812
Part Four: The Aftermath
The weathered professor seemed very confused but stood her ground and insisted, “Miss King, take the summer off.”
“I just need a week, that’s all—and then I’ll get the methodology section to you—Dr. Watts I just need another week, please!” Antha pushed back. Dr. Watts set her glasses on her desk and then waved her over to a deep-tufted-leather sofa.
“Antha,” her voice lowered, “I’ve known you for what—five years? You don’t become a valedictorian because you don’t like to write. You have been moody these past few weeks, you barely passed the final exam, and you’ve pushed back the thesis methodology three times. Last class, you were so distracted I would have rather you skipped. I know you, talk to me, what’s going on?”
“My sister and I had a Friday night out with some friends and something happened.” Antha murmured, staring down at her feet.
“Friday nights aren’t what they used be; did you hear about the fight that broke out at that dive bar off of—oh, what’s it called? You know the place—well, it was all over the news,” she paused gravely, “you weren’t there were you?”
The twin nodded slowly. She felt overwhelmed in front of her advisor. She pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut before replying. “Tessa’s date got into a fight with an old flame, it was a whole thing. But after…” She couldn’t continue. The advisor took her hand gently.
“Did someone hurt you?”
Antha’s eyes welled and all she could do was stare. As if she said the words out loud, it would become more true than it already was. The doctor’s forehead wrinkled as her brows gathered together. Having lived through the revolutions of the sixties and the proceeding struggle for equality, Dr. Watts knew the dangers women faced. She didn’t need an answer; she just wanted to offer shelter to a young woman. She knew just from looking at her student that whatever happened, it was beyond words.
“You’re taking the summer and fall semester off—or at the very least take the summer off and go to a student counselor; its free, it comes with your tuition, so please use it. If you need anything you know you and your sister can come to me.” She wrote down her personal number and one for the counselors’ office. Antha held the little shred of stationary. She promised she would do just that.
Shortly after, she left her advisor’s office and floated through the campus green and then waited by the bus stop. Her feet told her she was going home, yet her attention was somewhere far away. What can I say to a counselor? Who would understand what we saw at Hollow House? Without realizing, she had retrieved something from her pocket; she stared dumfounded at the pewter-colored iris that gleamed back.
Antha couldn’t get rid of it. But in a moment of frustration, she chucked the marble-like eye into a nearby drain. She returned to her spot and tried to focus on scheduling a counselor. Moving forward, that’s what I need, she figured.
A familiar wheezing crawled up the street. The sluggishness of a muffler that had seen better days filled her ears as she dazed at the phone number-laden scrap paper. “—Antha!” Someone yelled. To her surprise she peered up to see Doug hanging out of his rusty Buick, looking just as timid as ever. He seemed anxious, for what reason she didn’t know. “I’ve been calling your name. You’ve gone deaf ol’ girl—you want a ride?” He asked with forced humor in his voice. She watched him blankly as his expression fell. “You alright?”
Antha thought about it and suddenly felt stupid. All of her gusto about moving forward had evaporated; she lamely shook her head like a weary child. She felt like a little girl in a world that was too big for her. It all just seemed too much.
The July swelter didn’t let up even with the windows down. The two didn’t speak as they made their way to their favorite pizza joint. Thrilled to be out of the unairconditioned Buick’s steel embrace, they collapsed into the far back booth of the pizzeria. All the servers knew it was Doug and Antha’s spot; they habitually kept it clean and empty, knowing they would eventually roll in. They made it to the “golden hour”. The sacred three hours between the lunch and dinner rush. It was their favorite time.
“Whatchas want?” The straggly blue-haired waitress chewed her bubblegum like a goat.
“The usual—uh hold on—when did you eat last?” Doug asked. Antha shrugged and realized she didn’t know. She couldn’t even think that far back. “Can we get a double order of the usual? But make two of them to-go?” The waitress didn’t even answer as she went to get drinks. “You want to talk about it?”
“Nope. I said everything already.” Antha wasn’t mad at him, she was just tired. She was more annoyed that he would ask about the matter and then dispute the realism of what she explained. Doug grumbled when the waitress slopped the pitcher and straws down, vanilla coke-a-cola splashing everywhere.
“—Hey, don’t we get like a punch-card or something? You know, for every hundred pizzas we buy, we get the next one free?” He politely suggested, his way of being confrontational. He was growing exasperated with the women in his life; he didn’t mind taking it from his close friends, Zoey and the twins, but he was having none of this waitress. She paused, chewed her gum, and left again.
“Whoa, cool off killer,” Antha snarked, her spirits lifting with each sip of her fountain soda. She looked him over and thought on their friendship for a moment as he griped about that one particular server.
Doug was a shy, lanky, ginger-bearded young man. He was passionate about things and supportive of the people he loved, but didn’t reserve much attention for the people outside of that parameter. He lived in vintage band t-shirts, had friendly light eyes, and a funny smile. No one could resist his unkempt wolfish hair or his corny sense of humor; he had a way of growing on a person. But he always showed up, his guitar in tow. That’s why Antha didn’t fight him when he asked about that night; she knew he actually cared and was trying his best to understand. He couldn’t help her though. No one could help.
“How about we hang out this weekend, do a barbeque? Nobody grills a burger like you—and Tessa can make her sangria, huh, what do you think?” He tried to turn the conversation to open her up.
“Uhh… I don’t know. I can’t plan that far ahead, I’m real busy.” She declined. The sausage pizzas arrived faster than expected and Doug dropped slices on their plates.
“Busy yeah? Mmm-hmmm,” he bit into his slice, cheese tangling in his five o’clock shadow, “busy not writing your thesis, not eating, and not sleeping? Ant, the last time I saw you eat was a few days ago when I brought pizza over. You gonna talk to me?”
Antha sighed loudly and glared at him. She was worn-through with the people in her life too. I’m too tired for this shit, she thought. She pushed her plate forward and abandoned her half-eaten slice. He saw her mild protest and his cheeks tinged pink. They silently stared each other down, him chewing as loud as he could manage while she obnoxiously slurped her soda in reply.
Before they could hash out their issues a patron burst through the front entrance. “Hey—hic—you seen Ant? Where she at? The back?” Tessa was hiccupping and talking all sorts of loud, like she was in a club on a Saturday night. “Oh hey girls!” She pointed at the staff and sashayed herself to the booth; her bedazzled sandals slapping the linoleum like a jackhammer in the quiet place. The front door jingled again and in rushed Zoey.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized to the front of the house and then chased after Tessa. “I picked her up because she was texting me weird messages—I thought I could calm her down with something to eat.” She explained to the table as she took a seat next to Doug.
“I already ate today.” Tessa insisted, sliding in next to her sister and almost toppling over a pizza.
“Oh yeah, what did you have for lunch?” Doug asked, his patience wearing thin.
“GIN and uh—” she had to think about it but excitedly rebounded, “and uh water ice. Breakfast of champions!” Tessa thought she was quite funny, regardless how everyone else disagreed.
“How about we have a little slice of pi—” Doug pandered but she wasn’t going to hear any of it.
“Now who would put sausage on a pizza? Oh, no. I have enough meat in my life—you know what I’m sayin’ Zo—you feel me?” She howled.
“That’s cute.” Doug’s patience officially went on vacation as of that second. He tore the sausage off some of the pie and then thrust the mangled slice in front of the drunk twin. “There ya’ go, just cheese—And you eat your damn slice too! This has gone on long enough—we’re going to have a barbeque and chill like we always do! It’s Fourth of July this weekend, did you know that?” He directed at the other twin.
“This white boy’s hollering at you, oh lord…” Tessa cackled; her cheese dripped down the side of the table as she reached for some ice chips from an empty cup. Zoey was mortified and motioned to Antha for help, her friend was out of control.
“Yeah—well this boy’s about tired of this foolishness! I don’t know all of what’s happened that night, but neither one of you will talk to me about it! Ant you’ve been practically dead, a walking zombie for three weeks—and Tessa, it’s three o’clock in the afternoon, what the hell has gotten into you?”
“Gin.” She giggled.
“Hey Katy? Can we get all this to go, with some two liters?” He yelled across the full length of the restaurant.
Zoey handled the food transport as Doug buckled the twins into his car. He mumbled to himself, “…goddamn vampires my ass…” as he cleared his fogging glasses. Tessa began to mildly complain about the heat when the car stopped at a red light. They all noticed a young man struggling to get into a car at the gas station across the way.
“Is that José?” She whispered. They witnessed his mother trying to steady him, juggling his crutches and searching for a spot on him that wasn’t bandaged. Adorned in a neck brace, shoulder sling, full posterior elbow splint, and full left leg cast. Poor José appeared like he faced-off with a combine. Doug glared at the girls in his rear-view mirror. The light turned green and not another word was said.
He parked the Buick under the tree closest to the house and got the girls inside. Zoey did the same and brought the provisions to the shaded porch. It was too hot to do anything other than sit around by the fan or stay in the AC. Tessa went to her room when they got in; she felt awful about what she had seen at the gas station.
They worked together to set up the tall pedestal fan on the porch, because the porch fan just couldn’t combat Mother Nature alone. They were in the midst of dawdling about when Antha accidentally fell asleep on the porch swing while Doug played the guitar. Zoey elicited his help inside to leave Antha to nap. The two were shocked with the state of things.
Momma’s house was a frightful mess. They never saw it in its condition before: Dishes with dust, articles of clothing haphazardly dropped, laundry either half started or half done, it was difficult to tell. “Momma would roll over, I swear…” Zoey whispered. They agreed to tidy up while the twins rested, lest Momma rise up and haunt them. That woman was meticulous and was not above coming back from the grave to tell everyone what’s-what.
As if life had been frozen in time from the month prior. The twin’s incident hit like a meteor and their friends now saw the wreckage. While they hadn’t admitted it out loud, they had stopped living too; obsessed with what happened that night at Hollow House. Grasping for a truth that they couldn’t reach.
The overloaded dishwasher whined as it cycled and it reminded Doug of seeing José, busted up and struggling. That’s what really happens after a bar-brawl. There’s always a winner and always a loser. He half-heartedly swept the floor and thought to himself: these are the parts they edit from movies. The aftermath. The guns, the glory, the blood all made the cut; but the estranged motions we go through to try and find the thread leading back to our lives doesn’t. These are the quiet moments without answers, like loose ends dangling.
Zoey crept into the kitchen and signaled for him to follow her to the porch. She had just hung the last load of laundry on the line for the afternoon. They were both beat and sweat through from cleaning. They shimmied the big metal ice bucket to the front, fearing they’d disturb Antha. She was so far gone that an earthquake couldn’t wake her. They popped two well-earned beers and exchanged the bits and pieces of what they learned from the twins over the past few weeks.
“…that’s crazy, right? Like there’s no way what Tessa told me could be real, right? Did someone roofie their drinks?” Zoey asked him as she tied his wavy hair into a top-knot.
“I’m just worried that something happened they won’t say, like they’re traumatized—I mean, Zo, I was driving to the bar and I seen them covered in blood on the side of the road. Tessa was screaming in the ER that a vampire attacked her sister—and then Antha all of a sudden, calms her down and explains to the doctors that they were lost in the woods, came upon the bed and breakfast for help, and that a strange man assaulted them there. Said they used a fireplace poker in defense, bloodied him up real good, and they escaped to the main road.” Doug took a swig of beer to recuperate.
He was getting worked up just relaying the story, “But the cops, they investigated that place and found six bodies—slaughtered—in the basement, two of them the owners. The bodies had been sitting there for days before the twins got to ‘em. I’m scared that maniac’s out there. I mean—I’m scared in my own damn apartment when I think about it. What if they were found in that basement? What if we couldn’t find them?” He shook his head.
“What can we do for them? Are there groups for people like this, who think they’ve seen something supernatural?” Zoey mused aloud as she pinned her jet-black pixie cut hair out of her face. The two pulled fresh beers out of the ice bucket and vowed to do some research after the weekend. They agreed their first goal was to get the twins fed and cared for.
They watched the sun set into folds of purple, pink, and orange over the high grass. The heat of the day receded with the light, but the humidity persisted only to remind them that it was an intermission; the threat remained that the summer’s full force would return at tomorrow’s dawn.
The grasshoppers were summoned as Doug strummed his guitar, not truly playing anything particular. Zoey brought out cards to shuffle, waiting on Tessa to play. The evening began to set in peacefully until a rumble cut through the twilight.
A huge pickup truck barreled down the long drive and parked in front of the house. Out jumped the infamous Flake. His blond hair contrasted against the lavender sky, budding starlight glinting off his aviator sunglasses, and a tooth pick in the corner of his mouth completed his redneck-chic visage. He swaggered up to the porch and was met with a startled Antha; she had jumped up like a viper at the sound of his wheels. He donned a large patch like bandage over half an eye and his hands were wrapped too.
“Tessa around?” Franco didn’t even offer small talk which had Antha go straight from just waking up to furious.
“Not for you.”
“Well, I wanted to check in on her—haven’t been able to call on account of that scuffle at the bar. Them boys got my tires and my phone.”
“Looks like they got your eye too.” She scoffed.
“Yep,” he laughed and pulled his sunglasses down to reveal those piercing big blues, “you should see the other guy.”
“We did.” Her disdain seemed to suck the air out of the whole yard. Franco leaned on the porch banister and pulled a smoke from behind his ear. Her eyes burned so hot on him she could have lit his cigarette.
“I can see you’re not much for visitors, so I’ll just leave this. If you could give it to Tessa, I’d be mighty grateful.” He handed her a number, but she walked away not even considering it. Zoey jumped up and took the note. “Night ya’ll.” Franco flicked his butt into the yard and made his way back to his truck.
Long after he left and the noise of his truck faded Antha sat, her arms crossed, on the porch swing. Her friends idled by, every so often glancing in her direction waiting for her to speak her mind. The disgruntled twin couldn’t connect the pieces of her dislike for Franco. It wasn’t as simple as his jeans were too torn, his truck too loud, or his gaze too heavy; it was the fact that she knew nothing about him. No one did. Where did he come from—and where was he going? It didn’t add up to Antha that he was the first hillbilly she ever met without a tan. What working man doesn’t have a farmer’s tan? Finally, after a good twenty-five minutes of contemplation Antha announced, “I need a drink.” With a flutter of Zoey’s sundress, she presented a liter of honey whiskey, lemon wedges, and shot glasses.
A few shots and some pizza in her stomach, Antha started to feel somewhat whole. The four-hour nap revived her a bit, or least lessened the haze she had been wading through. She could finally take in her surroundings: she was lucky to have her friends. When the mosquitos really started to bite they brought their party inside and relished the cool—and now clean—house. “I don’t know what I’d do without you two, I’m sorry I can’t,” she paused, “I just can’t right now.” Before Antha could work out her sentiment the queen bee descended from her room.
“That’s it! I have decided!” Tessa announced, thumping down the stairs like a sentinel charge. “I’m going to visit José tomorrow—even though it’s not my fault he got his ass beat, I still think it’s only fair to show love.” She waited, her hands on her hips, for their unyielding approval or preferably a round of applause.
“Look at you growing a conscious,” was the general consensus of the other three. Tessa saucily tossed her braids as she dusted her shoulders. They all scooted into the kitchen table and fed her dinner. Just like a heart, she had a way of pulsing life into a room. Before they knew it, they were swapping stories like always.
Tessa was laughing and teasing Doug when she took a shot. She threw her empty glass down on the table as was customary, but when the glass met the table it then clinked as if something had been dropped into it. They all sat forward to see a silvery-gray eye in the bottom.
“Did you just spit that in there?” Doug’s eyes were wide.
The twins beheld each other knowingly.
In the beginning, they initially freaked out over the eyes returning. Now it became a sickening fascination of what they could do to them. The eyes always returned. They burned them, they drowned them, and they threw them away; every time the eyes returned to the twins.
“I tried to tell you, but you’re not listening,” Antha began, “these eyes are following us. Ever since we killed that thing at Hollow House, we’ve had them.” Doug and Zoey’s faces were pained in disbelief.
“Here.” Tessa got up roughly and held the eye over the sink. She turned on the garbage disposal and dropped it in; it made a grotesque metal sound and then after a few rotations, crunched like glass. Antha showed the eye that was always in her back pocket and explained she threw it away in a drain across town earlier that day. She threw hers in too, directly into the disposal.
“Well, how long does it take for them to come back?” Zoey asked.
“They’re not coming back—this is a trick!” Doug looked like an angry leprechaun with his reddened face and stubble. The twins’ faces didn’t even shift with the accusation.
“Sometimes its seconds, sometimes hours, or a day. It doesn’t matter, they’ll be back.” Antha confirmed and the twins took their seats at the table. The room became solemn as Tessa popped another round of beers and poured a flight of shots for them all, knowing the liquid courage was needed. Doug jumped up from his seat and began checking under cushions, searching cupboards, and drawers. The girls sat back and waited as he processed.
He huffed, “…you got back-ups, or hiding ‘em somewhere—I don’t know why you’re playing with me right now…it’s not funny…” But then a loud plop sounded on the kitchen table, like a golf ball dropped from the ceiling. He turned to watch a second oversized marble drop seemingly out of thin air. He returned to the table and gawked at the two eyes sitting in front of the twins. “You got to tell us what happened at Hollow House.” Doug’s voice was hushed as he shakily accepted the whiskey shot from Tessa. In unison they saluted and threw back the shots with beer chasers.
While the four friends went over the sordid events, in gruesome detail, a mysterious figure watched from the unlit porch window. The uninvited guest crept off through the yard, down the dirt-path driveway, and made a phone call:
“They got them eyes,” it reported, “I reckon there’ll be a war.”
Twinning Taglist: If you want to be added or removed just let me know; please share with anyone that might be interested. I would love any and all feedback so I can learn and become a better writer. Thank you! I tagged some people that I thought would be interested in this. @myoxisbroken @just-the-hiddles @vodka-and-some-sass @nildespirandum @yespolkadotkitty @latent-thoughts @emeraldrosequartz @villainousshakespeare @hopelessromanticspoonie @caffiend-queen @poetic-fiasco @lokimostly @dianamolloy @marvelgirlonamarvelworld @brightsunanddarkmidnight2-0 @cateyes315 @mooncat163 @nuggsmum @myraiswack @wolfpawn @plastic-heart @confusednerd09
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A Lady’s Tail Chapter 3
Someday i’ll actually finish a chapter for upload in the evening instead of night, but today is not that day. Anyway enjoy!
AO3
Kelpie chilled on a long branch, her tail coiled tightly around it and her upper body leaning against the tree trunk. Below her, Goren was digging out sections of dirt. He had a pouch in his hand that he’d pull a white crystal from and drop it into the hole to bury. This was the preparations for extending her alarm network. She had already set up anti-scouting enchantments and magic traps, so this was the next step for their security. Each crystal had an alarm spell enchanted on it. The goal was to have their security network extended about a kilometer away from the cave. She didn’t think anything in the forest was strong enough to threaten them since Goren had already defeated any strong creatures, but having it there would make her more comfortable. Goren was taking care of it because of his miner class. It sped up the process considerably and it would probably be done within the next hour or two. She had tried to help but from his vehement refusals, she decided to just sit back and let him do it himself.
She let her eyes drift away from him to the small leather bag in her hand. It had a decent weight to it. She shook it slightly and it jingled as the items inside collided with each other. The drawstrings fell away limply with a light tug. Inside were crudely made coins of different sizes and metals. Their circular shape was bent and misshapen in many places and had no consistency. Almost as if the coins were meant to be a child’s toy instead of currency. But no, it was the real thing. She knew because Goren had stolen it from the insolent man.
They had kidnapped him late last night when he had been locking up his shop. It was very amusing hearing his smug and cocky voice warp with pain and fear when Goren beat him into unconsciousness. The man was currently locked up inside one of the trap rooms. She didn’t really know which one since she left it to Goren in fear of another frenzy. He was given permission to improve the desired room in any way he wanted, with the stipulation that the man be alive at the end of it. It was obvious that Goren had done so because if she listened closely, she could hear the faintest agonizing screams in the wind. Her mouth watered when a particularly pain filled scream echoed. The snake in her wondered what he’d taste like after the torture? Would the flavor be intensified by his terror? Would the meat be more tender?
She ground her teeth together with a shake of her head. No, bad! This was not the time for that!
The coins in the bag clinked together as she moved. She idly grabbed one of the largest. It was very shiny and bright silver. One side had a dragon’s head on it, while the other had two clashing swords and an axe. From the size, it was probably the highest valued coin of the rest. The metal didn’t feel that strong though. If she squeezed hard enough, it’d probably break in half. She knocked the knuckles of her hand on the bark of the tree to get Goren’s attention, then tossed the coin down to him.
“Goren, what metal is that made of? It's different from the other silver colored coins, but I can’t figure it out.”
The coin landed with a twirl on top of his palm. Taking it between his fingers, he examined it closely and scrapped a corner of it.
“It appears to be made of Platinum, My Lady.”
He moved his arm to throw the coin back to her but she waved her hand in a stop motion.
“Keep it. In the future, i’m gonna have you go back to the city to act as a merchant. It’d be better for you to have the money. Here.”
She pulled the drawstrings tight and tied them into a bow before tossing the entire bag down to him.
“The rest of them. Learn what the values of them are the next time you are in the city.”
Goren gave a curt nod, put the pouch on his waist, and went back to digging. She leaned back against the tree and crossed her arms loosely. The repetitive actions of him digging and planting, digging and planting were interesting for her to watch. What made Goren so invested in being ordered around like a servant? She had given it a lot of thought these past few days, but could never get a satisfying answer. He had mentioned her being some kind of “supreme being”. Did he truly think of her as superior? If he did, where had it come from?
It’d barely been three days in this new world and she had learned much more about the world than she had about Goren. Sure, she had created him, but him as an NPC was very different from the being below. How could a single programmed personality account for him as a three dimensional person? Could she for sure say she knew everything about him? What intricacies of him as a living being existed besides the ones she knew? They would be stuck together for who knew how long, she should actually try to learn more about him as a person.
Her hand sunk into the abyss that was her inventory and pulled out a bright purple Amethyst that flickered and glowed. The gem was extremely cold to the touch and sapped the warmth from her fingers. It was aSpectral Amethyst. An extremely rare gem drop that could be added to armor and weapons to give them “soul damaging” attack bonuses. But that was really just an edgy description of the effect. What would really happen was the enemy would get a random curse for a variable amount of time. The rarity and nature of the item were so valuable that it could be sold for an insane amount of in game currency and a decent amount of real money. It was so rare that she had only found it three times in all of her Yggdrasil life. She had sold the first one for a motherlode of gold and kept the other two for future uses. Thinking back to her habits in game, she was never going to use it and would only hoard it.
She played with the gem, bouncing it up and down in her hand, as she addressed Goren.
“I didn’t ask this before, but why do you consider me a supreme being?”
The sudden question caused the shovel to slip from Goren’s grip and fall to the ground. There was a moment of pause as he turned to face her and bow.
“You are the one who created me and brought me to life. Only a supreme being is capable of such a thing.”
She peered off to the side and hummed, still twiddling the gem in her hand.
“I guess I can see that viewpoint. But do you really not feel any doubt? You’ve seen me at my most vulnerable. I’m certainly not the all powerful and all knowing type. If you think about it, we’re not even that different from each other.”
Goren tilted his head to the side as if pondering it.
“If I may be so bold, I have no right to doubt you. How can someone like me, a creation made by your hands, begin to understand someone as lofty as you? As you’ve said before my existence is for you and you alone.”
Kelpie looked into his eyes. They were unwavering and shone with absolute conviction. So that's what it had been about. It wasn't wrong that she had created him, but it still wasn’t as amazing as he thought. With a few lines of code, data crystals, and items, he had been born. But she couldn’t really explain that to him in good conscience. There was really no other option than to roll with being the goddess he thought she was. With a sigh, she straightened her back and held her head high.
“Alright, I understand. You’ve certainly shown your conviction. I’m happy to have you as my bodyguard, so as reward for your loyalty and hard work, I'm giving you this.”
She held out her hand with her palm down and dropped the Spectral Amethyst. His eyes lit up excitedly as he scrambled to catch it. The sight made her smile, so he still liked gems. That was good to know. The gem was tilted towards the sun so he could admire the shine and cut of it when his happy face suddenly contorted into a frown. He lifted his head to say something but her words cut him off.
“Don’t say you are not worthy. I’m giving it to you because I deemed it fitting to give you.”
Goren didn’t have a mouth and therefore couldn’t smile, but if he did, she imagined he’d have a giant grin on his face. He was radiating pure happiness and pride. Popping off one of the amethysts on his side, he slid the spectral amethyst into the slot. Purple light flashed from it and it melded perfectly into his body. He caressed it lightly with one hand.
“Thank you My Lady, I will treasure it!”
She gave a small nod and rested her head against the bark. A tide of drowsiness washed over her so she closed her eyes for a nap and fell asleep to the soothing sounds of Goren resuming his digging .
________________
“Momon-san, may I ask why are we entering into this forest?”
The large imposing figure of a pitch black armor wearing warrior stood in front of the forest entrance with his arms crossed. Next to him was a beautiful black haired woman with a brown cloak covering her body. Both had shiny Adamantite plates hanging from their necks.
“Ah that’s right, you weren't present at the briefing. We were asked to investigate the creature behind the deaths of a whole village. It was a one sided slaughter with several bodies ripped apart, seemingly for no reason except for fun. The guild believes the wise king of the forest has some sort of twin and, since I tamed Hamsuke, has tasked us with taking this one down as well.”
“Understood! Though is that likely? I find it hard to believe there would be a similar creature so close and it not be known.”
Ainz nodded his head and turned to her.
“I have similar thoughts. Hamsuke, being as intent on finding a mate as she is, wouldn’t miss a being like her that is just one forest away. But even if she had, they would have similar fame. We would hear stories of another “Wise King of the Forest”. Plus Hamsuke is just territorial, not blood thirsty. This creature would be the same way due to species behavior. This has to be a different beast that has settled into new territory.”
Nabe nodded her head with an excited expression that said as expected of you.
“So then will Aura-sama be joining us again?”
“Yup Yup! Here I am~”
The cheerful voice of Aura drifted down from a tree. The heterochromia dark elf hung upside down with her legs bent across a branch. She gave a victory sign to an unphased Nabe and smiled cheerfully.
“I didn’t scare you this time Naberal! Hehe.”
Aura lifted her legs and dropped. Moments before she hit the ground, she twisted her body and landed perfectly on her feet.
“No you didn’t, thank you for that Aura-sama.”
Aura beamed and gave a thumbs up. She then twirled to face Ainz, waiting for orders. Reaching out his hand, he ruffled Aura’s hair. An almost unnoticeable look of jealousy crossed Naberal’s face, but vanished quickly. Pulling his hand back, Ainz addressed Aura.
“Thank you for coming. What were you able to find out?”
Aura blushed and giggled.
“Yes! I’ve scanned the forest and found several animals around but none that match what you’re looking for. There’s a section near the mountains where I was unable to see with my skill. I believe that the beast will be there but we’ll need to investigate it in person.”
Ainz rubbed his chin in thought.
“I see. Lead the way, but be cautious and discreet.”
Aura nodded and strolled into the forest with her hands clasped behind her head. Ainz and Naberal trailed closely after her.
Ainz kept his eyes, well non-existent eyes, peeled on his surroundings. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. It was just normal trees and foliage, but he couldn’t help but feel the suffocating weight of suspense. He was apprehensive about Aura being unable to investigate the area. As a level 100 NPC, she was vastly more powerful than any creature or person he had encountered so far in this new world. A ranger of her caliber should be able to see past any concealment a common or even above average adventurer could create. Was this a hidden power of the new world or did it have something to do with Yggdrasil? What if the reason she couldn’t see was related to the people who had brainwashed Shalltear?
The thought of retreating quickly entered his mind. Afterall, it’d be hypocritical for him to continue on blind and unprepared after he had lectured Narberal on the same thing previously.
Ainz sighed and slid his swords from their sheathes. He couldn’t really do so though. It was a request from the adventurer’s guild, so he was limited in the actions he could take. If it was possible, he’d prefer to drop Perfect Warrior and proceed as a magic caster, but there he wasn’t prepared to risk having his identity as Momon revealed so soon.
“Aura, what else can you tell me? Even the smallest of details could prove useful.”
“Hmm~ Well, I noticed that all of the animals in the forest seem to largely avoid where we’re headed. It's like a powerful and highly territorial beast lives there. I’ve seen that several of the more powerful animals had severe injuries. I assume that whatever resides where we’re going just recently fought with them and obtained the territory. I couldn’t find any tracks or feeding indicators, so I have no clue about what it is. It’d be interesting if it was an undiscovered beast! Ainz-sama, if it is not necessary for your plans, could I have it afterwards?”
Aura’s eyes shined brightly and resembled puppy eyes. It wasn’t quite a pout but it was close enough to affect Ainz.
“Ahem, If it is not useful, sure.”
Aura grinned and began to hum, internally thinking about what kind of creature she hoped it’d be.
Ainz gazed at her carefree back. Bukubukuchagama had designed her to be very cheerful and laidback. It showed well in her actions. Was it her endearingness as a child or her personality that made him want to spoil her? He viewed all the guardians as his children, but he felt especially protective towards Aura and Mare. But they viewed him as a superior so would him acting as such cause issues in the future? How should one act as a father and a boss anyway? The life of a superior was full of-
Boom
The ground under Aura exploded in fire, dirt and root debri flying in every direction. The force threw her into the air, sending her flying. She reacted quickly, her whip splitting the air and attaching to a tree branch.The forward momentum allowed her to swing around the branch until she had slowed enough to drop down to her feet.
Nabe shifted in front of Ainz, her arm outstretched and glowing blue ready to attack. Ainz felt panic shoot through him as he watched the events unfold in front of him.
“Aura! Are you alright?!”
Aura made a show of brushing the dirt and soot away from her clothes. There were no visible injuries or blood at all. The impact had left her unharmed.
“I’m fine, no damage at all!”
The panic ebbed away into relief then into nothing as Ainz’s emotional suppression kicked in. He took a battle stance, his swords raised and ready to strike, and scanned the area. But only the greenery surrounded them.
“Ainz-sama, we weren’t attacked. I tripped an Explosive Land Mine.”
“What? But how? You should be able to detect these types of traps with ease.”
Aura approached the hole the explosion had left and examined it. Now that the trap had activated, she could feel the magical residue left behind of it.
“I don’t know. I was using my detection skills but wasn’t able to notice it.”
Aura ran her hand along the hole and analyzed the dirt. The casual cheerfulness from before was replaced by a heavy seriousness. Even though Aura did not have trap detection skills, she should still have been able to identify traps of a certain level. There were many things that Ainz was certain of and one of them was that so far they had not directly encountered anyone that was capable of rivaling the guardians. There was something of considerable strength in these woods for sure. Forget the adventurer’s guild for now. He’d come up with an excuse for them later. It was too dangerous for them to stay here with their current attack force.
“Aura! Nabe! We’re falling back! There are too many unknowns here for us to continue.”
Ainz turned to retreat towards the entrance of the forest, but a chain of screaming alarms and the panicked voice of Narberal stopped him.
“Ainz-sama! We’ve tripped an alarm.”
“Shit! Shit! Shit! Prepare for an attack!”
All three of them raised their weapons and waited for the incoming enemy. A beat then two went by with nothing until-
Shriek
An invisible blade scratched against the surface of Ainz’s shoulder, leaving a long gouge on its surface. Ainz slashed down in front of him and only sliced through the air.
Shriek
Boom
The blade cut across his back, a large scratch left in its place. Dirt flew through the air as the area behind Ainz blew up in smoke as a spell hit nothing. Narberal’s arm was outstretched from casting and the blade sliced across her arm, causing blood to well up.
“Use detection magic!”
Ainz screamed to Narberal, tensing his body in preparation for another attack. She nodded and quickly cast it, but nothing changed. The enemy remained undetectable.
“I can’t see it! It’s concealment is more powerful than my detection!”
“Protect Ainz-sama!”
Yelled Aura, rushing to him with her whip in her hand. She slashed horizontally in an arc and felt an impact on the end. The whip swung outward once more, but hit nothing. Slight pain erupted from her back as the blade sliced across her armor, but the dragon scales integrity held, causing no direct damage. A slight breeze brushed against her side and she swung her leg towards it. Her hit connected to something and it flew into a tree, wood chips flying everywhere. The tree groaned and snapped, falling over with a loud impact. Combining their attacks, Aura and Nabe struck but they only hit the fallen tree. The invisible enemy had recovered quickly.
Both focused their hearing on the surroundings, but they could only hear the ambience of the forest. Suddenly, both felt the gash of the blade slicing their respective shoulders. Narberal drew her sword and slashed behind her but missed once again.
“There’s more than one!”
Aura exclaimed, switching out her whip for her bow. She drew the string and, using her targeting skill, let it go. The arrow shot straight out at lightning speed until it suddenly curved, chasing the enemy. It pierced into the air and stayed lodged in the enemy’s body. The arrow bobbed as the enemy tried to pull it out, but it was impaled too deeply in its body.
“There’s one!”
“Good, distract the other one too!!”
Ainz yelled to them, attempting to undo Perfect Warrior. The battle was too disadvantageous for them at the moment. If they just had assassins, Solution or Cz, here the battle would be different. He could hear the voices of Albedo and Demiurge in his head telling him to retreat for now but he ignored them. He couldn’t bear to leave the Aura and Naberal behind. If he could just switch back to being a magic caster and use Arcane Vision, the tides would be turned.
The air with the lodged arrow was barraged with lightning as Narberal focused her attacks. The enemy lit up bright blue as the lightning struck them and coursed through their body. Aura loosed another arrow and it zoomed forward. The two ends stopped and fell limply to the ground as it was sliced cleanly in half. The arrows were continually shot and cut as they got closer and closer to where Ainz was standing. She shot one last arrow and, as she watched it get slashed through, lashed her whip forward, wrapping tightly around the torso of the enemy.
Lightning surged through the body of the arrow impaled being one last time as the invisibility shorted out and its body flashed into view. The silver and gem filled being only stayed visible for a second, then evaporated in black smoke.
Ainz was a second away from dropping Perfect Warrior a strong force slammed into the side of his body. He slid back a few meters, his feet digging into the ground and sending dirt and grass flying as he prevented himself from going airborne.
Instantaneously, a barrage of inky black arrows rained down from the sky. They slammed heavy into all three of them. Aura gripped her whip tightly, not willing to let the enemy free. Blood poured down the side of her head from her injuries. Narberal forced herself through the arrow storm to Ainz and cast Shield Wall above him. The air above them lit up with a cyan wall that was textured like a turtle’s shell. Time seemed to slow for Ainz as he hurried himself to drop perfect warrior.
Tick, the arrows colliding heavily against the shield.
Tock, the blood dripping down both Aura and Narberal’s body.
Tick, the enemy breaking free from its confinement.
Tock, Perfect Warrior finally disappearing and revealing his skeletal form.
Tick, the chaos halting immediately.
Arrows no longer fell from the sky and the invisible being was no longer attacking either. For a moment, he wondered if time had actually stopped, but the sounds of Aura’s and Narberal’s heavy breathing dispelled that thought. What happened? He hadn’t done anything yet.
The enemy dropped his Perfect Unknowable and revealed his silver and gem laden angelic body. Aura and Narberal tightened their grip on their weapons with a grimace as Ainz prepared a spell. For a minute, there was nothing except for the thick tension bearing down on them all. The sudden and unexpected voice of the angel broke the silence.
“Understood, My lady.”
The angel leaned forward to give them a bow.
“I apologize for attacking you. I was unaware of your true identity. If you allow me, I can heal your injuries.”
Aura and Narberal stared at him in confusion before turning to Ainz for guidance. He paused to think, but eventually gave them a small nod. They all watched vigilantly as the angel stepped forward and cast healing on them. Their wounds stitched themselves together instantly and the blood disappeared in a red mist. So the angel hadn’t been lying. What was it thinking? Did it actually know about their identity? Or was it some kind of feint to get their guards down?
“My lady would like to meet you. If you would follow me to meet her, please. She said you are welcome to refuse, but she hopes that you don’t.”
My lady? Could it be? Was it possible that one of his guildmates had made it here as well? His undead heart jolted with happiness. Bukubukuchagama, Yamaiko, Ankoro Mocchi Mochi, Zoba, any of them being here would be amazing.
Ainz smiled internally and nodded to the angel.
“I’d like to meet her as well.”
________________________
Kelpie was jolted awake by the screaming alarm of the crystals. The sudden movement caused her balance to break and she slipped off the tree. Her tail was still firmly wrapped around the branch so she hung pathetically upside down. Looking around, Goren was nowhere in her sight. He had probably already finished up the setup, evidenced by the racket coming from the crystals, and gone to investigate who had tripped the alarms. She forced her upper body up and grabbed the branch. Letting her tail slacken from the branch she dropped to the ground. She landed easily, a small thud resulting from the impact, and brushed her hands off. The alarm didn’t worry her too much since there were still animals roaming around the forest. Any of them could have caused an unexpected triggering. Eventually, she would understand the animals’ habits and routines and would be able to configure the alarms to ignore them.
She rolled her shoulders back and sighed when they gave a satisfying crack. The nap had been a much needed moment of peace and relaxation, but it hadn’t been as comfortable as it could have been. Maybe she should create some kind of tree hammock for herself. She could even experiment with the various materials she had to discover some new interesting effects. Maybe some kind of sleeping enchantment to make napping easier?
She pulled her research book from her inventory and started jotting various ideas down. When Goren got back, she would ask his advice on them. Perhaps some of the animals in the forest would have some good fur to use as well. She turned her back to go to the cave, still brainstorming ideas, when a distant crack and crash gave her pause. It was the sound of a tree being knocked to the ground violently.
She whipped around and stared into the forest. That wasn’t a natural sound for a sunny day. Was something fighting currently? She closed her eyes and listened closely. Faintly, she could hear the clashes of metal on metal.
…
Shit!
Some people were fighting and she had a feeling Goren was one of them. She rushed back to the tree and scaled to the top.
“[ Sky Eye ]”
She closed her eyes and when she opened them, she could see the bird’s eye view of the forest. At first she could only see the green tops of trees, but looking around, she was able to find the fight. Three people fighting against an invisible foe. It didn’t take much for her to realize the foe was Goren fighting against the intruders. The two not in armor seemed slightly familiar to her, but the memory of them danced on the edge of her memory. She did not try too hard to remember though. Right now, they were intruders and needed to be taken care of.
Kelpie watched as Goren fought on. So far, he had the advantage of being undetectable and having his shadow clone. She found it interesting to see him fight since she had never had the chance in Yggdrasil. He had good tactics and was able to avoid attacks and deal damage well, but that was as expected. He was proficient in both the assassin and ninja class. Only high level players could actually see through his invisibility.
She frowned when an arrow impaled one of them. She didn’t know if it was Goren or the clone, but she hoped it was the clone. When the dark elf wrapped its whip around the other, she slid her bow from her inventory. It was a blue and purple gradient longbow with inwardly curving long black spikes with small purples stars on the surface. She readied her shot at the elf, but paused when she noticed the large warrior. He was standing completely still, not even reacting to the sliced through arrows getting closer and closer to him.
What was he up to? Probably not something she wanted him to do. She shifted her aim over and let loose the inky black swirling arrow. It cut through the air and slammed into the warrior, sending him skidding across the ground. Her mouth quirked up into a smile. Good. She pulled the golden string taut, the arrow ready to fly.
“[ Arrow Barrage ]”
Arrow after arrow appeared in front of the bow, lined in rows, until there were around twenty of them. Her arms trembled as she pulled the string back another inch and then let go. The arrows flew forward, whistling through the air, towards the group. Without waiting for the first barrage to hit, she kept shooting.
The mage set up a shield and she clicked her tongue in annoyance. It was a good move, annoying but good. She forced her arm to release the arrows faster and faster. Her heartbeat synced in time with her shots as she was unable to pierce the shield.
“Fuck, [ Comet Blast ]”
The arrow in her string glowed icy blue and emitted a cold mist. She pulled the string back tight, letting the arrow grow larger and larger until the tip formed a sharp icicle tip.
One second, she took a deep breath.
Two seconds, her body tensed, ready to release the arrow.
Three seconds, the warriors armor disappeared, revealing an imposing skeletal mage.
Four seconds, the string slipped from her hand, the arrow barreling into a random tree.
Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at the figure.
It was Momonga…
Momonga!
A laugh escaped her. He was here! He had been transported here as well!
Realizing the current situation and acting quickly, she sent a message to Goren.
“Goren! Stop attacking and reveal yourself! He is a friend of mine.”
“Understood, My Lady.”
The return message came immediately and she could see Goren following her orders and healing the two women. She remembered now. They were Narberal Gamma and Aura Bella Fiora from the guild of Ainz Ooal Gown. Seemed like Momonga had been transported with his base and NPCs too. She smiled widely at the thought. Her and Goren wouldn’t be alone anymore.
“I’d like you to escort them to me, but respect their answer if they say no.”
She waited with bated breath as Goren relayed her request. The moment Momonga nodded, she twirled around in happiness, her tail thumping the branch excitedly. She jumped off the tree and stood by the entrance of the cave for when they would arrive.
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OFFAL HUNT REMASTERED LIVEBLOG // CHAPTER 22
IN THIS EPISODE OF SURPRISINGLY TENDER TENDERNESS:
It had her soul by a hook, a barbed arrow digging into her flesh, gouging her bloody the more she tried to escape it.
JUST KIDDING
okay i’m just gonna HOP RIGHT IN if u dont mind me cause we in it now and i DON’T have time to catch you all up go read the fic!!!!!!!!!!!! DONT ASK ME SHIT
A direct line suited her better. From up here, with only the rain between her and the sky, the path ahead was so clear. The tether was a straight line.
a gaydar so refined it comes with its own overlay. sweet.
the planet below her resisted, no matter how she insisted
even when she persisted?
She pushed, and the force released like a broken dam, propelling her body away from the unyielding world beneath it—she leapt, high into the air, and it was like flying. With huge bursts of Aura, she cushioned her falls and leapt again, from rooftop to rooftop, making a straight line across the city.
can u imagine yr in umbraroot having a grand old time minding yr own business and then u see Very Famous Tenured Professor of Beacon Academy, Glynda Goodwitch, pinging herself across the sky? nobody would believe u. do u think it’d b on the news.
The rain fell hard. It was pitch dark. Glynda had the phantom of a scent: like the last breath of a campfire before it died, like a kinder version of the acrid stench of Grimm, Cinder’s trail was clear as day to her. She was getting close; she could sense it, like blood on the wind.
ISNT THIS NOSTALGIC,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, wow. its like glynda’s abt to ruin vale’s infrastructure all over again,
If Cinder was in a fight, this rain would muzzle her. Glynda remembered it vividly: how frustration tainted Cinder’s face in Forever Fall, how her fire sputtered and died. Even Cinder would lose her edge here, in this cold downpour. If she was in trouble—if she—
remember when glynda realised this for the first time and was like ‘hoho’ only now its made a thousand times worse because u have a crush emotions r hell and yr in the soup now!!!!!!!!!!! YR IN THE SOUP NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She almost ran right past Cinder—might have missed her entirely, if not for the painful yank at her own soul.
did cinder just hit the ground like a wet grape
“Don’t touch me!” Cinder’s voice was raw. She snarled the words out like a cornered animal and lashed out with one arm, hitting Glynda’s hand away. The other arm was limp, still tucked to her chest.
BE GENTLE WITH KITTY,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, lure her ass out w/ some shrimp on a string,
She shook like a frightened fawn under Glynda’s touch, ratchet tense and wholly spent of strength.
i cannot even describe how many of these scenes i am seeing so vividly in my head and my GOD do i wish i were better at sequential art cause i want to draw them ALL........................ I WANNA DRAW OUT THIS WHOLE THING!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
god i cant like. TALK ABT THIS SCENE WITHOUT COPY-PASTING THE ENTIRE THING BUT AAAAAAAAAA god. GOD. i just. phew. PHEW. its REAL TENDER. GLYNDA PICKING CINDER UP LIKE A LIL GRAPE AND wait diesel is this the thing you drew art of. diesel. diesel look at me is this that art--
Her fingers bunched in Glynda’s shirt. They were drenched and cold and Glynda hurt so much inside for her—whatever had happened to Cinder this night had destroyed her, that much was clear.
/sips drink
see if i were an asshole id say hoohoo the karma but as i am not i say only this: babey 😔
If they recognized her name, they were determined to act normally when arranging the room she asked for.
“hey didn’t we just see her ping across the city a couple of hours ago--”
“greg don’t even ask”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Cinder mumbled. “Leave me.”
“I won’t.”
ough,,,, directly in the kokoro i see
The shower was a collaborative effort; Glynda inspected for injuries while Cinder sat in the tub, warm water pelting down on them both.
other slowburns when they share a shower: hoohoo,,,,,,,, the tension,,,,,,,,, the s k i n
offal hunt: what if you got in the shower with yr ex-enemy,,,,,,,,,, to inspect her wounds,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, and you were both girls 😳
Glynda gently roused her own, pressing a tender flow of it through her palms, offering it to Cinder.
Cinder’s Aura was hollow and hungry. Her soul lapped up everything it was offered. Cinder leaned back slightly, like that would help the boost go through faster; or maybe like all she wanted was a kind touch. She didn’t look back. Slowly, the various cuts and scrapes that littered her body erased themselves.
i am loving this mirroring which you probably already guessed but im like wriggling in my chair abt it all,,,,,,,,,,,,,, THIS GAY SHIT. FUCK YEA. FUCK YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEA
She turned off the shower and stepped out, gathering up the biggest towels she had found, bundling Cinder up in one and fluffing her hair again. This time the white towel came away clean. Cinder peered out owlishly, her face a far healthier color despite the purple bruising that remained around her eyes, telling plainly of her weariness.
OKAY straight up that description is so cute i physically clapped a hand to my mouth and went ‘AWUGH’ because BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! B A B Y
There was a gulf between them in the hotel bed.
It wasn’t at all like their nights at Cinder’s house. This was closed off. Distant. A thousand questions and answers hung unspoken in the air, heavy like the rain clouds themselves. The two of them were warm and dry, but not much else. There was little comfort to speak of.
see the real slowburn experience is having progress and losing that shit again. we take one step forwards and two back. u get the HIGH and then u get the real low but rn i hope cinders round face smiles once again. nobody who looks that baby like should ever b so sad and thats a fact 😔
Cinder, in her sleep, started crying again. It came and went in disconnected pieces, until she finally cried herself awake, startling out of her dreams.
i sent this crying cat in response to the update announcement but i never knew how real it was until now
again there’s a whole ass section where i cant pick one bit cause its ALL good but GOD this fucking. whole silent conversation theyre having. OUGH. THE SOULMATES.
When Cinder didn’t answer the question, Glynda held one arm out, lifting the blankets between them. “Cinder.”
Glynda didn’t know which surprised her more: that she had offered, or that Cinder accepted.
OH???????????
She settled quietly, face pressed into Glynda’s collarbone, her breath flitting warm over scar-marked skin. Glynda’s arm, curled around her back, weighed her down. Cinder did not hold on to her in return. She was folded up around herself, fitting into the space Glynda had made for her, taking to warmth and shelter like an abandoned child.
OH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;w;
also whuh-oh:
The fear was eating her alive, and bit by bit, her skin seemed to unravel, every layer of her body sloughing off into just meat, rent through by that light—it felt like teeth, like destruction, like being twisted apart in some giant’s hands like an insect having its wings pulled out. It held fury like she had never felt. She quailed before it, and it bared its teeth, black tar and grave-rot spilling from between yellowed fangs.
Glynda tried to close her eyes, to look away, to run away, but it seized her like a bear trap sinking its jagged teeth into the wrong prey, snapping a much more fragile deer bone with ease. It sieved her being out from between her ribs, drinking only the cacophony of her soul, lapping up every part of her inheritance—all the while she was fighting, struggling helplessly in its grasp, her mind mere shatterings of bright-red pain, with only slivers of meat and fragments of bone remaining of her body—torn apart by lances of sunlight, burning like fire, a dawn that came with the sound of a scream.
firstly: 👈😎👈
secondly: do i gotta say how i love how visceral this fic is? i say it like in every liveblog. BUT IM SAYING IT AGAIN FOR GOOD MEASURE. IM SAYING IT AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was coming. It would destroy her. With ease, with relish, it would tear her still beating heart from her chest and discard it, offal from the slaughter—and then it would dig deeper still, to draw out of her that very engine that kept her moving.
is this the closest we’ve gotten to an almost title namedrop?
Glynda stared through the darkness, seeing nothing, but knowing without a doubt that her gaze pointed north like a compass.
HRM............................................. I N 👈 T E R 😎 E S T I 👈 N G
THATS CHAPTER 22 BABEY. it was VERY good. i mean rip cinder’s whole ass but i do love her. i love this evil baby. i also love glynda picking her up with all the effort of picking up a bag of crisps,
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Point(s) of No Return
I finally got real internet in France, so the first thing I did was purchase Final Fantasy VII Remake.
A few days and 10 million Cura spells later, I finished it. (Term used loosely. I got to the credits.)
It’s fantastic in many ways: gorgeous, obviously (I didn’t experience any of the texture issues (beyond some occasional pop-in) that others have complained of); charming and funny; deeply stylish.
I never knew how much I needed more Moulin Rouge in my FFVII.
I’m perfectly comfortable with what the ending did, though I’m not wildly impressed by the execution. And I’m excited for what comes next while holding considerable reservations about how it’ll be handled.
I also found it an incredibly frustrating game in a lot of ways: every time FFVIIR surrenders camera control to the player, for example, you can feel the game’s resentment; there’s a fair amount of repetition of spaces that doesn’t serve the action; while a lot of people seem to like the combat, I found it pretty messy, inconsistent, and frustrating (though loads improved from FFXV), to the point that I turned down the difficulty towards the end just to spend less time fighting battles.
But none of that’s what I’m here to talk about today. I instead want to discuss a suite of specific design decisions that, in my opinion, really hampered the narrative flow of the ending of the game.
SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS under the cut.
Many games, especially RPGs or other games with open worlds, display a confirmation UI or impress upon the player through dialog (or both!) that the player has reached what we’ll be calling a Point of No Return.
Though sometimes awkward to experience, this is a Very Good Thing (tm): it lets the player know that they’re about to depart the meat of the game for its conclusion and that if there’s anything they’d backburnered and want to take care of, now’s the time to do it.
Theoretically, this also allows the developers to pace the ending of their story in a way that builds towards a climax, something that’s otherwise difficult to do in an open world game due to the player’s nigh-complete control over the pace of play.
And while FFVII:R is by no means open world, it has some open world elements, especially towards the end of its second act. It’s no surprise that it fires the expected Point of No Return bulletin.
But later it does so again.
And again.
And again.
The first of these is frustrating for a number of reasons, not least of all its dubious accuracy.
When the characters decide they’ll go after Aerith at the beginning of Chapter 14 (IIRC), the game suggests that doing so will instigate the endgame. This is not true.
What this moment actually serves to highlight are a bevy of new sidequests. Thing is, there should almost certainly NOT be a bunch of new side content dropped on the player at this point. Not because that content is bad (some of it is quite nice), but because the game has just significantly increased the stakes and the pace of its main narrative, and taking time to futz around the slums looking for things to do dramatically undermines that pacing.
I’m not suggesting that this content shouldn’t be there at all - if the player takes time to explore and find sidequests, it’s nice if there’s something there to reward them; otherwise the world might feel empty and unreactive (to the massive tragedy that just occurred). Alternatively, this content could have been placed between (or before) saving Wedge and deciding to go after Aerith (in the period of the game that’s actually focused on the fallout (no pun intended) of the Sector VII Plate).
But having the game beat the player over the head with it right after saying “we’re gonna go storm Shinra now!” (and using Tifa, a character almost as invested in saving Aerith as Cloud, as the mouthpiece to do so) strains character verisimilitude and kicks the legs out from under the story.
But I suppose that’s kinda her bag.
The second Point of No Return comes after returning from, er, the return to the sewers.
This is the actual Point of No Return from the open(ish) world, and the game does a very good job of stating both explicitly through UI and dialog that that’s the case (while going so far as to justify it in the fiction). Had it not been for what came before or after, I’d’ve said “well done” and been on my way.
(I could be wrong here - it may be that some of the Chapter 14 sidequests close off after the return to the Sewers, but if that’s so, it doesn’t seem necessary. Certainly one of those sidequests requires the player to do the return to the sewers, making that initial Point of No Return warning misleading.)
The game then progresses into its Final Dungeon, a sequence at turns confounding and at others fun and impressive. A few hours (and sixty flights of stairs) later, Hojo traps you in his lab and makes you jump through hoops to get out. I have a lot of issues with this section in general, the one most germane to this conversation being the obliteration of the pacing. The game has quite literally told the player to “get to the choppa,” but instead throws them through a pretty low-stakes series of trials without much sense of pressure from time.
Like this, but forever.
Still, the designers manage a couple of tricks towards the end of this sequence to ramp the energy back up (Red XIII’s fall, the big fight with the blade fish).
Then you hop in the elevator, realize that Jenova’s missing, find a trail of alien goop to follow, and make your way to the exit...
Only to hit Point of No Return #3: This Time, For Reals Though.
I like this one as a teaching example, because it’s very clear what the intention is and how it might tweaked to flow a bit better:
What the devs needed to accomplish, in no particular order:
Let the player know that they’re leaving the more open area of the Shinra Building. (Or possibly just Hojo’s lab... you might not be able to backtrack to the lower floors. If that’s the case, I’d argue for cutting this Point of No Return entirely.)
Set up the encounter with Jenova in the next space.
Raise the tension and the stakes. Jenova is clearly an entity of horror. Horror is about tension.
How FFVIIR approached this in the shipping game:
The player finishes the lab area’s final fight, the two parties are reunited, and they take an elevator to Jenova’s tube in the central lab.
Player finds Jenova missing.
Player locates elevator to Shinra’s office.
Game produces a “Point of No Return,” explicitly telling the player that if there’s anything left to do below, they should go do it.
Player may go looking for new stuff to do (or stuff they left undone), ballooning the time between step 2 and its pay off while dramatically undermining tension.
I’d argue that this flow could have been made dramatically better by setting the point of no return prior to returning to Jenova’s tube.
Like so:
The player finishes the lab area’s final fight, the two parties are reunited, and they find the elevator that will take them up.
The game fires the Point of No Return. This makes a lot of sense narratively, too, because last time the party was up there, Sephiroth was up there, too. (This elevator also goes up or down from this floor - the only elevator in the lab that does so - making it a perfect place in the level to put this kind of choice.)
Player can put off the return upstairs for a time if they want.
Player takes elevator up and finds Jenova missing.
Player takes elevator up to Shinra’s office and 4 pays off without the loss of tension.
BAM!
Anyhoo...
We can play backseat developer all day. I’m sure there were reasons this choice was made the way it was, and I’d be surprised if this exact conversation didn’t happen in someone’s office at some point.
I don’t know what the various moving pieces were that led to the choice that shipped. It’s just not the choice I’d’ve made in a vacuum, because I’m confident in saying that - whatever the decision was made in service to - it harmed the narrative’s pacing.
And that’s something that happens. Development is give and take, and sometimes (often) narrative hangs lower on the priority pole than other things.
The last Point of No Return occurs right before the final boss.
Like the first, I’d argue that this one’s unnecessary. The player’s forced by the level design to pass immediately by the very vending machine the Point of No Return suggests that they use, and there’s nothing else for the player to do in that map prior to confronting the Big Bad. The narrative has made it plenty clear that there’s no telling what’s on the other side of that light.
(I actually thought it was a portal to the ending cinematic and credits prior to seeing the Point of No Return text, and would have been very pleasantly surprised by the twist of facing another challenge. Albeit frustrated said challenge was yet another combat in a system I was entirely over by then.)
An autosave at that point would have protected the player’s experience without interrupting flow.
Like whatever hidden trickery moves Cloud from that hole to the top of the slide.
So to bring this to its conclusion:
Points of No Return, while wildly useful, can dramatically interrupt the player experience and undermine narrative tension. They probably shouldn’t be viewed as an opportunity to unlock a bunch of side content, and they should definitely be placed prior to a series of interconnected events rather than in the midst of them.
Until next time,
<3 <3 <#
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6 Inch (chap 5/dd) {Lemonade Series}
Prompt: Each song from Lemonade tells a story in one way or another, the story of love being tortured and ruined to finding a conclusion that will work. You and David had been together for years, 3 years of marriage and one child. Although, David and You have been through some hard times. Rumors of infidelity had begun to spring about, leading to a one night binge of you re-thinking your love for him.
Word Count: 2,120
Chapter 5- 6 Inch
It was a late Friday night in 2017. I was dressed to impressed, I mean at least impress the guys who come to the club who give me the money. I wish I could say I was the Hugh Heffner of this operation, but in all honesty, I was the playboy bunny. I moved out to LA with 1600 dollars and nothing to my name. I dreamt of starting my own clothing company, something I wanted to do since I was 12. I knew damn well with 1600 dollars the most you could get in LA was a shitty cubicle apartment. I was out there for 4 months, working as a waitress in Echo Park. The dinner was shut down and I was earning maybe 9 dollars a day, my tips lower and weaker with every service. I was evicted from my apartment, 8 months in. I was homeless. Surviving out on Skid Row. I never envisioned giving up. I wasn't the type to give up. I thought I would have to go home, I didn't wanna go back to Nebraska. I met Marty Karrington in downtown Los Angeles, Skid Row. I recall him saying, "A pretty girl like you shouldn't be out here on her own." I replied with, "Well I am, 1600 dollars can't get you enough." I scoffed, I rolled my eyes. Marty was in his late 40s and had the look of a Hugh Heffner. "You came out here with 1600?" He asked, his eyes widened as he took a seat next to me on the curb. I recollect thinking 'why am I letting this dude talk to me?'. I was at the point where I didn't care about where I was or where I go. I felt emptiness within me. I just couldn't go home. "Yeah, but it didn't work out quite," I said, gesturing to my current circumstances. Marty gave me a pitiful smile, he stared at me and glanced back at the streets. The next sentence he said would lead me to a whole new direction. "I know a way you could tripe that 1600 in 1 night." He said. I looked at him, I didn't quite get what he meant. "Wait I'm confused," I said. "What's your name?" He asked me. "(Y/N)." I replied. "Well (Y/N), are you over 18?" He asked me. I started to slowly understand what he meant. "20," I said. "Where's the strip club?" I asked him. "Burbank." He responded. "I don't think your a whore or anything, but I think you could use the money. The girls are great, the people pay, famous people come, it's a scene." He said chuckling. Marty reminded me of a childhood friend I had. He gave me an odd source of comfort. "When can I start?" I asked, my voice fracturing. I never thought in a million years I would turn to a strip club as my source of income. I remember my first night there, Megan Crawken was my mentor. She was an attractive brunette with blue eyes, blue seemed to be her color. She said to me, "Okay, so I showed you how to dance, and-" She was mentally going through the list in her mind. I lived with Marty momentarily, he took care of me and another girl named Claire Holland. "So, you get the gist of what goes on here?" Meghan asked me. I nodded yes, "Thank you," I said. "Oh please, It was nothing! Oh, one last thing-" She said turning around to face me, "Work hard, be smart, don't crave the materials, think more about your next meal. We both know this isn't the end goal for us, and it won't last forever. Watch your money and stack it up." She told me, looking me dead in the eyes. "Got it," I said. I went back to get dressed. I felt like meat wrapped in butcher's twine, which would make sense as I was about to be a carrot dangled in front of men's faces. I put on my 6-inch heels, courtesy of Meghan. It was different from what I pictured. Yeah, people paid attention, but at the same time, they didn't. Some dudes got drunk instead and just watched, some got really into it, throwing 100 dollar bills at us and others were too scared. It was a very intimidating process, I felt like I was on display for quite a while. By the time David came into the picture I had made quite a name for myself out there, I had worked there for 7 months, I had made thousands in a week. I finally got to move out with Marty and get my own place in Burbank. Yet, leaving Skid Row was bitter-sweet. Bitter because when I felt the emptiness, Skid Row gave the excitement back to me, I met Marty there, oddly I turned my life around there. Sweet because while I was turning my life around, people were losing theirs. Homeless was growing, the danger was more frequent and others kept feeling the emptiness I once felt. Claire went home, she couldn't kick it. I made a promise to myself that I would never go home. It worked, I sat in the living room of my apartment talking to Meghan. "Which shoes tonight?" I was going between a pink pair with fuzz and a gold pair with glitter. "What about these?" Meghan asked me. It was the simple black pair she gave me the first day I worked there. "Yeah, I'll wear them." I said. We both put on our shoes, put on coats and left my house. We strolled through the streets of Burbank until we made it to the club. "There are my headliners!" Marty said. We laughed. He wasn't disturbing as you'd expect from a dude running this type of work. He was actually incredibly caring and kind. He wanted to see us all grow from here. He knew Meghan was gonna be leaving soon, he was looking for his next Meghan and he believed that it was me. We walked past him to the dressing rooms. We got all ready and put our stuff down. Hannah L'Laome walked in. She was the youngest out of everyone here, freshly 18 off Hollywood Boulevard. "Hey, Hannah." I said. "Hi (Y/N)." She said, she plugged in her curler and began waving her hair. She had stars in her eyes. "Hannah, you should really get a day off!" Meghan laughed. Hannah worked the most out of all of us. "No, I gotta make money. That's the only way to pick it all up." She said, laughing but I knew she was serious. I patted her on the back as the music started to fill the club. Meghan and I walked out, doing our jobs. Having a hundred dollars bills, fifty dollar bills and twenty dollar bills were thrown at us. In the first hour, I made 700 dollars. Then, my whole world changed. In walked David Dobrik, a vlogger who has a 2.6 million dollar house. He was cute, he needed a haircut but he was cute. An older man walked in behind him, he started talking to Marty. I tried to overhear the conversation but I couldn't with the music blasting behind me. David looked at me, I looked at him back. He blushed, he was one of the shy kids. Marty started shouting for me to come over. I strolled off the stage and headed towards Marty. My heart-racing. "Yeah?" I said. "Meet David Dobrik and Jason Nash." He said shouting. I felt like I was gonna pass out. "Hi! (Y/N)!" I said my name back. David was enamored. I couldn't help but not keep my eyes off him. Cute was an understatement. "They need two strippers for a video, do you wanna do it?" Marty asked me. "How much am I getting paid?" I asked. Jason went to answer but David cut him off, "500". "David what?!" I remember Jason reprimanding him. "Wait! I have an idea!" David said walking away with Jason. Marty and I were perplexed. I went back to doing what I was doing, by hour 3 I doubled my 700 into 1400. David came back with a whole group of boys. Some cute, some not. He went back to Marty and held up his camera. Marty shook his head 'no' and pointed to the door. David shrugged and visibly got upset. I walked back over to them. "Marty, what's wrong?" I asked him. "They wanna film" I rolled my eyes at Marty, David watching my every move. "Let them film!" I said. "But-" Marty tried to argue with me. "Marty, you're crazy if you don't think other people aren't filming." I said. He nodded and let the group pass through the rope. David was smiling wide, "Thank you." He said. I nodded and brought them to a table, a section of their own and went back to doing what I was doing for the third time. I watched David film. Meghan pointed out to me something, "Yo, just go over and dance!" She said laughing. I laughed, there was no way I was gonna do that. As the night grew on and I rolled into my 5th hour David and his friends were still there. Getting crazy shots. I started getting really into it, moving my way to all the tables. Of course that included David's. I did a bit where who I know now as Zane and I danced on a table. Alcohol sprung up around us, I was having the time of my life. I sensed someone slide something into my leg band. It was a little white piece of paper. I smiled at them and left. Shortly after I heard they split. I didn't see it because I was making 4x my 1400. It was a good night for me. I went back to the dressing room putting all my money in my mesh bag, the white note fell out. I opened it and it read: Hi, here's my number (xxx) xxx-xxxx -David. My stomach erupted with butterflies. That night in my apartment we started texting, we called and then facetime for hours. I told him my dreams and he told me his. This routine kept going, I work, I come home and we facetime. Until one night we had a deep conversation. "You've been doing this for 18 months now. When are you gonna start working for the company start-up? You have the money now, you have the place." He said. I realized that he was right. I was working Monday to Friday and Friday to Sunday. I wasn't working for the dream anymore, I was working to work. I became addicted to the money. The next day, I gave Marty my resignation. It was almost like some mystical being brought back my emptiness from a year ago and delivered it to Marty. "(Y/N), thank you for all that you've done for me and the girls. I really appreciate it." He said, he smiled. A real smile, for the first time I had seen. He scribbled something on paper. "Here's my REAL telephone line, call me, keep in touch." He said. I told David I quit and he was ecstatic, taking me out for dinner that night, the first time we had seen each other since our ordeal. I found out 5 months later the club was shut down, Marty went on to live his own dream. He opened a restaurant out in Studio City. A very successful restaurant, the one that David and I would go for our 8-month anniversary. I thought about how that one night changed my life tremendously. I own that clothing company now. I watched Meghan end up on the runway, I watched Hannah become a fashion designer. I think about how they may even know my troubled relationship. The emptiness resurfaces in me. I want David back. I want him to love me again, to come back to me and fall at my feet. I want him to come back. Come back home. The baby monitor in my room started making noises. Through all of Kaela's whines, I heard the word, "Dada?".
#david dobrik#david dobrik imagine#david dobrik imagines#david dobrik fluff#david dobrik smut#vlogsquad#vlogsquad imagine#vlogsquad imagines#vlog squad#vlog squad imagines#vlog squad imagine#jeff wittek#zane hijazi#lemonade series
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Prowl [2] | b. hargrove
SUMMARY: Billy doesn’t believe in werewolves.
PAIRING: Werewolf!Billy Hargrove x fem!Reader
WARNINGS: Language, graphic depictions of violence, blood, pain, smut, you’ve been warned
RATING: 18+
NOTES: Wow guys, thanks so much for all the feedback on the last chapter! I’m glad y'all are enjoying this! This chapter is 3.2k words long so grab a cup of tea, cuddle up and enjoy! Honestly this could have gone longer, but I figured you guys would appreciate a part four over a longer chapter ;) As always, feedback is appreciated! Reblogs and comments and replies mostly!
CHAPTER 1 / CHAPTER 2 / CHAPTER 3
chapter two.
The next morning, you woke with a crick in your neck from sleeping in the arm chair. Billy wasn’t on the couch, but you could hear someone digging around in the fridge in the kitchen. Rubbing your eyes, you stood up uneasily, knees wobbling from being cramped on the chair all night.
“Billy?” you asked around a yawn. Your boyfriend was bent at the waist, his entire top half buried in the fridge. “What the hell?”
“Do you have any hamburger?” he asked, shoving aside juice, eggs, and yogurt. He yanked open the vegetable crispers, the sandwich meat drawer, before slamming all of them closed. “I need to go get hamburger.”
“Billy, what the actual fuck? It’s 9 in the morning! Why do you need hamburger?” You were pretty sure your brain was spinning in effort to keep up with him. He barely looked at you as he closed the fridge and headed to the door. You grabbed his arm to stop him. “Wait, wait, wait. Let’s slow down here, okay? I need to get dressed, and I need to check that wound before we do anything, okay? Then we can go get a real breakfast that isn’t hamburger.”
“Fine,” he grumbled and then he proceeded to pace around the kitchen.
“Can I trust you to stay put?” you asked with an arched eyebrow. The look he gave you was withering, but you were used to his foul moods. His body warmed with the effort of glaring, something he’d never noticed before but didn’t put much thought into now.
You backed away from him, keeping your eyes on him to make sure he didn’t bolt for the door. When he appeased you by dropping heavily into a kitchen chair, you turned and headed down the hall to your bedroom, changing quickly and swiping a brush through your hair.
Billy sat quietly but in annoyance, his knee bouncing as his ravenous hunger put him in an even worse mood. He couldn’t remember being so hungry. And everything was louder—the clock on the wall ticked a loud beat that echoed inside his head, bouncing off his skull like a pinball machine; the faucet was drip drip dripping and he thought he might go crazy; the fridge was humming, a low sound that, to anyone else, would have been barely noticeable, but to Billy, it was as loud as the music he played in his car.
His fingers curled into his jeans, leg jittering more rapidly as his aggravation mounted. He could hear you humming to yourself in your bedroom down the hall, and it stalled his souring mood for a second as he smiled fondly. But then he heard your cat in the living room scratching at his post and he growled deeply in his throat. In the back of his mind, there was a flicker of confusion over his suddenly-acquired sharp hearing, but the annoyance over the offending noises outweighed it.
Billy’s head fell into his hands, fingers tangling in his curly mullet as he willed the sounds to just go away. Then his ears pick up the sounds of your footsteps, your socks soft on the carpet, and there you were again. Eyebrows furrowed, you stepped over to him, kneeling before him.
Any other time, Billy would’ve had an innuendo to go along with the action, but his head felt like it would explode, both from the overload of sounds and from his anger climbing higher.
“Billy?” you asked worriedly, pulling one of his hands out of his hair. “Billy, what is it?”
“Everything,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “I can hear everything. I’m about to rip that fucking faucet out of the sink.”
Confusion muddled your mind as you laid a hand on his collar, bloodied from his wound. The gauze was stained red, but the blood was dry. You peeled off the tape, lifted the gauze off the wound, and felt the color drain from your face.
Billy picked up on the change immediately. You smelled different. Your face was stark white as your eyes, wide and fearful and tremendously confused, stared at his shoulder.
“What? What is it?” he asked, tilting his face to see, but it was futile.
“It’s…. It’s gone,” you mumbled. Billy stood up from the chair, nearly knocking you back on your ass as he did so, and hurried to the bathroom to look in the mirror.
Sure enough, the wound was gone, the skin healed over as if it had never been there to begin with. But his skin and his clothes were still stained deep red, the only evidence that it had, in fact, existed.
“What the fuck?” he whispered, terror eking into his voice despite his better judgement.
“Billy, what the hell is going on? Unless you have some badass immune system, that- you—” You huffed a breath, trying to rein in the panic that was quickly flooding your system.
“I know,” he said, turning to you and grasping your face between his hands. His blue eyes met yours, and in them you could see his panic as well. You took a steadying breath, hands rising to hold onto his as they held your face. “What the hell is happening?”
“I’m not sure, Billy, but we’re going to find out.” Your voice was soft, comforting, because the panic in his eyes was growing. You’d have to be the reasonable one in this situation. “Come on. Let’s go get something to eat and then we’re going to the library.”
Normally Billy would fight you tooth and nail against going to the library, so when he just nodded compliantly and followed you, you knew he was desperate. You drove to the little breakfast diner in town, knuckles white on the steering wheel. You and Billy chose a booth away from the door and away from the few other patrons.
“Okay,” you sighed, reaching into your purse for a pen and sliding a napkin across the table, “let’s make a list of what’s going on, okay? So, first one: rapid healing.”
You wrote it down as the waitress appeared with two mugs, pouring bitter, burnt coffee into both. You fixed yours with hefty amounts of cream and sugar, ignoring Billy’s wince before he prattled off a massive breakfast order to the waitress.
Slightly wide-eyed, she scribbled everything down, repeating the order of sausage, two pancakes, hash browns, toast, three scrambled eggs, and extra bacon, extra crispy. Once she was gone, you wrote down ravenous hunger on the napkin and then, more as an afterthought, improved hearing, as you thought back to his comment in your kitchen.
When the food arrived, Billy drained his coffee in one swallow and tore into his breakfast like a man starved. Your food sat mostly untouched as Billy inhaled his bacon, alternating between chewing and gulping heavily from a tall glass of orange juice. A few of the patrons at the bar sent him and you dirty glances; you hoped your returning expression was apologetic.
“You gonna eat that?” Billy asked around a mouthful of bacon. He then reached over and stabbed your sausage patty and tore off a huge chunk.
“Slow down, Billy,” you hissed, eyes bouncing to the people at the bar. “You’re drawing attention.”
“I can’t help it. I’m so hungry,” he whined, swallowing the bite and draining his orange juice. His plate was completely cleared of food, and he was staring at yours with a pleading expression. With a roll of your eyes, you pushed your half-eaten plate across the table to him, and it was empty in minutes.
“My, we were hungry,” the waitress commented as she appeared to collect your plates. She shot a wary glance over at Billy, whose hands were fidgeting on top of the table. No doubt he was tempted to ask for more food, but you spoke before he could open his mouth.
“Everything was delicious. Can we get the check please?” You smiled sweetly at her, apologizing with your eyes for Billy’s behavior.
She dropped the receipt on the table and you snatched it, glanced at the total, handed her some bills and told her to keep the change. Then you all but dragged Billy out of the diner, glaring half-heartedly at him. His eyes were sweeping up and down the street and then he suddenly winced as a car alarm blared. Your glare softened to a look of sympathy, and you laced your arm through his to lead him to the library.
“I’ll buy you a burger later, okay? Let’s just figure out what the hell is going on with you.”
The library was nearly dead, fortunately. The librarian, a middle-aged recently divorced woman, peered over her glasses at you and Billy, her lips tilting downward. No doubt she knew who he was and did not approve of his being in her library. You smiled tightly at her before leading Billy to the back, sitting him down in a chair while you scoured the shelves. Your first stop was the medical section. Billy frowned at the pile of books in your arms as you hobbled back to the table. He stood and took half the pile from you, and the two of you settled in.
It was two hours later when you slammed your book closed, groaning in frustration. None of the medical textbooks yielded anything of import. None of the symptoms Billy was experiencing matched up with any of the illnesses in the books, and you were close to giving up. Billy was faring no better. His frustration and rage was mounting rapidly, his teeth and fists clenched tightly, even though there wasn’t really a specific reason for his rage.
Until he realized that his mood was feeding off of yours.
He looked across the table at you to see your head in your hands, fingers tugging at the roots of your hair. Forcing himself to calm down, he reached across the table and pulled your hands away from your hair, thumbs stroking gently over your skin. Immediately he felt a change, a slight calmness, as your shoulders slumped in defeat.
“I’m at a dead end,” you muttered, voice thick with frustrated tears. Yours eyes met his for just a quick moment before darting away, and Billy frowned. “Are you sure we can’t go to the hospital?”
Billy sighed and gave you a look that had your shoulders dropping further. “Fine. Let me go back to the books then.”
You pulled out the napkin, reading and rereading Billy’s symptoms as you walked up and down the aisles. Somehow in your wanderings, too far deeply into your thoughts, you’d ended up in the Horror fiction section. Your eyes skimmed the titles, not really seeing them, until the cover of one caught your eye and you froze. Spinning on your heel, you went back to Billy, who was leaning his head backwards, staring at the ceiling.
“What did you say it was that bit you?” you asked hurriedly. Billy’s head flopped forward and he shrugged.
“Not sure. It was big, and it looked and sounded like a dog. Why?” He sat up straighter as you whirled on your heel and went back to the Horror section. “Y/N!”
Picking up the novel that had sparked a possibly stupid idea, you cradled it gently as you moved onto the Mythology section, focusing primarily on cryptids. Eyes flitting over the spines, dancing across titles, until your eyes found one that might contain the answer to the question bouncing around in your head. You yanked it off the shelf, along with a few others you found further down the shelf.
Billy jumped when you dropped them onto the desk and slid the first book off the pile. His eyebrows pinched together as he read the title.
“The Book of Werewolves?” he read. “Are you serious?”
“God, I hope not….” you muttered, tucking into the first book.
“You really believe in werewolves.” It wasn’t a question but a statement, with an inflection of disbelief. Your eyes snapped to his.
“You believe in secret government agencies messing around with other dimensions?” you shot back, sufficiently shutting him up.
It was no longer a town secret, what happened at Hawkins Lab in 1984. After the death of Bob Newby, the lab was forced to come clean about both his death and about a girl named Barbara Holland’s. You’d gone to school with Barbara, though you’d belonged to different friend groups, but you and Barbara talked here and there in the classes you shared.
Somehow the notion of werewolves seemed more believable than other worldly dimensions and monsters with petaled visages.
Billy’s knee jittered under the table as the two of you skimmed the pages. Finally, after the fourth hour of sitting in the library with fuck all to go off of, you yelped in happiness.
“Found it! Look at this.” You turned the book around and pointed to a paragraph. “Subjects stated they experienced sudden rage or mood swings, insatiable hunger, improved hearing, and brute strength. Later they claimed they also experienced excruciating headaches and aching pains similar to those of arthritis. Rapid healing was also observed from subjects who had injured themselves or received injury. Billy, this is everything you’ve been experiencing!”
“Yeah,” he began skeptically, “except for the small fact that werewolves don’t exist!”
“They could!” you responded indignantly. “I mean, what else could have bitten you in the woods?”
“A coyote?” He held his hands out in a helpless gesture, and you could only cock an eyebrow.
“A seven-foot coyote?”
Billy groaned and dropped his head backwards. “I know it sounds stupid but….fuck, how can I just all of a sudden believe I was bitten by a werewolf?!”
“Keep your voice down,” you hissed, glancing around the nearly empty library. Billy rolled his eyes as you looked at him again. “Werewolves might not make sense to you, but I for one am not ready to say they don’t exist. Now, I’m going to check these out because if it turns out that werewolves do exist, that means that you are eventually going to turn into one.”
Billy watched the color drain out of your face as he felt himself go faint, as if that realization suddenly came to both of you all at once. Not once did you think that those bitten by werewolves would become them until you said the words aloud, and now that they were out there, you felt a sudden, all-consuming fear for Billy. He was going to become a werewolf.
Billy’s eyes flitted over your face as you calmed yourself down. No sense worrying until there was something to worry over. This could all just be a coincidence right? A horrible, freaky coincidence.
You invited Billy over after the library, holding true to your promise of a burger in exchange for his patience. Billy ended up ordering the biggest burger Benny’s offered, piled high with cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and onion rings. With a side of fries. You got it to go, but Billy tore into the french fries in the car, chewing noisily and grunting every so often. You looked fleetingly at him worriedly, wondering if that insatiable hunger for anything would graduate to a hunger for meat.
You sat at the kitchen table as Billy dumped your food out onto the tablecloth, not even bothering with dinnerware before tearing into his gargantuan burger. Grease dribbled down his chin as he chewed, taking breaks only to sip from the soda he’d gotten. You, on the other hand, handled your burger much less animalistically, one of the werewolf books open beside you. Careful not to get grease on the pages, you dipped a fry in ketchup and chewed slowly, taking in every word about werewolves.
Halfway through your burger, you sat up straight, pushing the burger away and pulling the book closer to your body.
“Billy! Look at this!” He grunted around a mouthful of food and you grimaced at the grease trails on his chin. “Okay, you’re not a total animal yet so please, clean yourself up.”
The look he gave you was highly unimpressed but he swiped a napkin across his face anyways. Tossing the soiled paper down, he scooted his chair closer to you and found the passage you pointed to.
“A werewolf will cease to change when the werewolf that bit him is killed either by silver bullet or by wolfsbane poisoning.”
“Okay….so there’s a cure, but how do we even figure out who bit me? Can’t werewolves go out in sunlight?” Billy asked.
At some point between the library and your kitchen table, Billy had decided to say fuck it and go along with the werewolf theory. It was the only plausible thing to explain the constant pains his stomach was putting him through. Not to mention your faucet was still dripping and he was pretty sure there was a mouse in the cabinet.
“They can…. Wait, did you ever see Silver Bullet? It came out last year,” you said. Billy shook his head, causing you to sigh and drop your shoulders. “Uncultured swine. Anyway, in the movie, Marty meets the werewolf face to face and he sets off a firework that takes out the thing’s eye. Then the next day, his sister goes around to houses under the guise of collecting cans for a drive and she basically rules out anyone who doesn’t have an eye patch. Long story short, they end up discovering its their priest who’s the werewolf and they kill him.”
“Okay, so we should lure this thing out, injure it in some way that’ll be obvious, and they once we know who it is, either shoot him or poison him…. Yeah, yeah that’ll be a piece of cake,” Billy muttered, burrowing his head into his hands. He groaned loudly. “Can you fix the goddamn faucet? It’s driving me insane!”
You tried to ignore the snapping tone of his voice, knowing and understanding that it was a symptom of the bite, but it didn’t stop the slight pang in your heart. You scraped the chair back and walked to the sink, twisting both knobs until they were tight and the dripping stopped. You took a deep breath, dropped your head between your shoulders, and let the gravity of the situation pull you in.
After the events of 1984, you thought the supernatural mumbo jumbo was over and done with. You hadn’t been directly involved, but you knew the ones who were—Steve Harrington, Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers…. Not to mention Nancy’s and Jonathan’s younger siblings and their friends. Senior year was rough for them, and they were excused often from class to go see the guidance counselor. More than once you caught Nancy or Steve staring with glazed-over eyes out the window, while Jonathan suffered from panic attacks.
Now you were directly involved with the fact that Billy may or may not be a werewolf. You didn’t look up as Billy’s chair scraped backwards on the linoleum floor, but you relaxed into him as he stepped up behind you and wrapped an arm around your chest, the other hand settling on your hip.
“I’m sorry I snapped,” he muttered, kissing your temple with a sigh. “I can’t really control my mood anymore.”
“It’s okay,” you responded quietly. You leaned your forehead into his cheek, your fingers dancing across the skin of his forearm. “We’re going to figure this out okay? We’re going to fix you.”
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#billy hargrove#billy hargrove x reader#billy hargrove imagine#billy hargrove au#billy hargrove smut#billy hargrove fanfiction#werewolf!billy hargrove#werewolf#werewolf fic#werewolf!billy#stranger things#stranger things 2#stranger things fanfiction#stranger things fic#stranger things au
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Blood Borne: Sanguine Ardente Chapter 1
Daigo made his way down the stairs with the church acolyte leading the way. He only had on small clothes at the moment but that was why they were heading to the tailor and armorer. He stepped into the room once they reached it and looked around. The wall was lined with silver swords, black and white articles of clothing, and a row of simple fire arms. He nodded and got to work. The acolyte left him and he got ready. He put on a pair of black slacks and knee high boots and socks. He then grabbed a belt with slots for holding bullets, vials, and other tools onto his waist to both hold up his pants, but to also insure he had supplies on hand. He then put on a black shirt, vest, long coat with shoulder cape, and also a wide brimmed hat. He put on good sturdy leather gauntlets as well that he sliced the fingers off of so he could have more dexterity with his fingers. He then grabbed a silver sword and sheath, and then grabbed a pistol that he then put into a holster that he grabbed. He now looked like a right proper member of the church.
As he finished getting ready, Ludwig walked in. Daigo turned to look at the man and held out his arms. “Do I look respectable enough?” He asked with a coy grin.
Ludwig nodded. “Yes, you certainly pass as a church member...though perhaps you may wish to actually join us someday?”
Daigo burst into laughter. “No offense Ludwig, but my faith in holy men at the moment is very, very small. Because when push comes to shove, they’ll look out for number one every time.”
Ludwig shook his head. “A pity that is how you see us. But perhaps in time our actions will speak for themselves.”
Daigo drew his sword and gave it a few practice swings. “We’ll see. I’m not so jaded as to not give people a chance to show me that they’re better than what I’ve seen in the past.” he sheathes the sword and walks out of the room. “Having said that.....forgive me if I maintain my aloofness.”
Ludwig nodded in agreement and the two men left the room and proceeded to head out of the building. It was a bit of a lengthy walk but in time they found themselves out in the streets, watching the city of Yharnum go about its daily business. As they walked, Ludwig began to explain more about the city. “This is Old Yharnum. The city’s oldest section. A rather lovely spot in the city with the most history. Its also home to the oldest cathedral in the city. Its a popular visiting spot.”
Daigo looked around as the man spoke, seeing the old buildings, and people move. It was so peaceful it seemed amazing that there was any sort of beastly plague at all. “I like it. It has a very quaint charm to it.”
Ludwig came to a stop at one of the doors that lined the street and opened it. “Here is where you will be staying.” He said as he walked in.
Daigo followed him in and was led up stairs of what he could now see was a boarding house. They went to the top floor and came to a large black door with the communion symbol of the healing church on it. “This is your room.”
Daigo walked in and saw a cozy room with a large trunk, a work bench, a praying altar, a large number of books, and a beautiful view of the main square where the boarding house was at. He took out a cigarillo and lit it, taking a puff and inspecting the room closer. The bedroom was off the side of the main room and a wash room connected to the bedroom on the other side. Once he saw everything he looked to Ludwig. “So...when do I get to work?” He asked.
Ludwig reached into his belt and pulled out a black pocket watch with a golden communion symbol on it, tossing it to him gently. Daigo caught it with his free hand. “That is a Hunter’s Watch. It will alert you when a night of the hunt starts.”
Daigo opened the watch and inside he saw your typical black clock face with golden roman numerals inside of it. Each arrow gold as well. On the underside of the front clip opposite the watch face was an inscription: Praise the Good Blood. He smirked at that little statement as it reminded him of times past. He attached the chain to his own belt and put the watch away. “And what am I to do in the meantime pray tell?”
Ludwig leaned against the door frame. “Well, you are to be given a weekly allowance to use as you see fit of 100 gold coins. You can use it for food, weapons, supplies.....or if you so fancy....there are mmmm..... special ladies about town who offer other more..entertaining services.” He said in a straight manner.
Daigo cocked a very skeptical brow. “Huh...usually religious groups tend to teach its members to stay away from that.”
Ludwig shrugged. “For what we do...sometimes a good distraction is needed. At any rate, make yourself cozy. The Hunt starts three days from now.”
Daigo nodded. “Then I’ll have to make sure I’m ready. I look forward to seeing this...beastly scourge of yours.”
Ludwig grinned. “It will really get your blood pumping.” He then turned and left.
Daigo took another puff of his cigarillo and then noticed a book on the work bench, A History of Yharnum. Daigo shrugged his shoulders and sat down. Deciding to learn about the history of the city. He sat down, flicked some ashes off the tip of his cigarillo, opened the book, and began to read.
According to the book, the church had been here for a rather long time, almost a decade and a half. They first came to Old Yharnum when the city was suffering a plague of something called, Ashen Blood. A lot of people had been dying of the disease and there was no cure for it. But then the healing church appeared and began to administer blood healing to the populace which not only healed the sick, but made them even stronger than before. It was no surprise to Daigo then as he continued to read that the church eventually became the true power of the city and built many cathedrals, hospitals, clinics, and other such places all over the city to the point that it surrounded old yharnum and then grew outward. Turning a smaller city, almost a town really, into a metropolis of medical experimentation and progress. Its healing blood being hailed as a miracle from the gods. Now the whole city was dependent on the church’s blood healing for medical treatment, but also for the economy. Apparently blood is made in such high quantities here they mix it into their drinks, and women known as Blood Saints go about distributing vials of their own blood for charity purposes. Daigo looked out the window for a moment upon reading that and wondered if he had not been summoned to a city of vampires. But he shrugged and resumed reading. Certain businesses not of the church were also in the blood brewing business though instead of healing it was in the making of sweets, liqueurs, sauces, seasonings, and any other form of edible goods. Apparently the effects of their healing blood was intoxicating. Though it begged the question...how many people willingly gave up their blood? And even among the willing, do they check to see if they are diseased in anyway? This would be something Daigo would have to look into on the side. In fact, Ludwig said he had three days before the hunt started. That meant he had three days to do what he did best...dispensed the most thirst quenching forms of justice...Frontier Justice.
His thoughts were disturbed however when he heard a very heavy knock on the door. He went and opened it, and to his surprise he saw a giant of a woman with long red hair tied in a pony tail. She looked down and said in a husky voice. “You Daigo?”
Daigo nodded. “Indeed...and you are?”
The woman responded, “Name’s Gratia. I’m gonna be your partner for the time being for nights of the hunt.”
Daigo took a step back and looked her over more. She was clearly well muscled. Had quite a few scars on her knuckles as well as one on her lip. She had eyes as green as emeralds and on her hip hung a large hatchet. “well, would you like to come in?” He asked her.
She shook her head. “Sorry, got places to be. Just wanted to stop by and get an eyeful of ya.”
“And do you like what you see?”
“You’re a bit on the short side. I was told you were a real tough fighter but..then again people think I aint all that smart either.”
“And are you?” He asked.
“Nah, not really. But,” She held up a first, on it was a lump of metal that had finger holes in it, obviously for punching things. “Brains don’t do a lot of good against a strong right hook.”
Daigo could not help but chuckle in amusement. “On that we can certainly agree.” Oh he knew he was going to get along with this one.
“Well, nice meeting you mate. See you on the night of the hunt.”
He nodded and watched her go. Now that was certainly an interesting encounter. He closed the door and made his way to the window. He opened it to let in a bit of the cool evening air. Down below was a man selling meats. He could hear him crying out to come and buy his fine imported meats. He could hear the slice and dice of his meat cleaver and heard people doing business with him. He sat down in his chair and took off his belt, coat, and hat. He propped his feet up on the window sill and leaned back. Now this was the life. He thought.
------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, not far from Daigo’s new home, someone watched him from afar with a spy glass. So...they had managed to summon the Pyromancer. That...was going to complicate matters...
#Bloodborne#Short Story#Fan Writing#Fan Story#Story#Fan Fic#Fan Fiction#From Software#Pyromancer#Soulsborne#beast scourge#healing church#dark fantasy#fantasy#dark#the healing church#soulsborne fiction#the old hunters#ludwig#gratia#Daigo Belfir#the Pyromancer#Daigo
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My Lovely Assistant- Chapter 5 (Junkenstein Meihem) (NSFW)
“You…You tried to make me a stew? And it was so bad it killed me?” Mei folded her arms, long sleeves shuffling over her black claws.
“Okay look, that was an easy mistake to make. And for your information, I poured my heart and soul into that stew! That stew was going to make you swoon! And uh…I guess it did, just really not in the way I expected. So that’s about half a success?”
She looked at him, slowly pushing her glasses up her nose, and Dr. Junkenstein quailed a bit.
“All right, a failure! We can count that as a failure if you like, turtle dove. I’ll give you that one. It wasn’t supposed to, ya know, off you.”
“Open.”
Mei had recovered quickly, with the potent new blood coursing through her system. And before Junkenstein could seem to blink or even welcome her back properly, he had been carried up to his room and deposited into the sick bed where she had been laying for so many days. Not long after, she had bustled in with a no-nonsense air and a tray with a steaming bowl of soup and crusty bread, which she had insisted on feeding him, sitting in a chair next to his sagging four-poster bed. Even now, he obediently leaned forward and opened his jaws, looking a little chagrined as the jiangshi deposited another spoonful of chicken and rice into his mouth.
“You don’t need to,” he mumbled around the food. “Can feed m’self.”
She pointed the spoon at him sternly. “The others say you have not been eating at all, worse than usual. And you were hurt, during the um…the plan. To help make me better…Thank you.”
He opened his mouth for more soup, blowing at the wafting steam before speaking around a mouthful of broth and meat. It was probably the heat from the soup that made his cheeks pink up, coughing lightly. “N-no problem, darl. I mean, it was an honest mistake for a gentleman to make, so I had to come up with an honest solution. Managed to get all the blood I needed to get you back up and ticking like normal. I don’t know what’s in the Witch’s blood, but the language thing is definitely a bonus. You know, if she gave me a little more, maybe I could-”
He found another spoonful of soup cutting off his words as Mei leaned over. “No! You really shouldn’t bother her too much, she’s very busy…and you, um, did have one of your creations attack and wound her and her followers to steal their blood and…Why don’t you focus on getting better!” She smiled down at him, the dots on her plump cheeks stretching with the motion, little dimples appearing around her fanged lips. “And it is nice to be able to understand you a little better. Or well, I’m still not sure I understand you, but…”
He wilted visibly.
Mei smiled again quickly. “But that’s all right. I knew you were strange and brilliant right after meeting you. You woke me up and after hundreds of years, I was suddenly surrounded by such odd, amazing new things, all made by one person? I knew you were very special…even if you are a little difficult to understand sometimes, even with language. And you need to take better care of yourself. Open.” She spooned in the last of the soup, pausing before tracing one claw along his pale jaw. “And, you weren’t afraid of me. You’re the only human I know who surrounds himself with monsters and doesn’t see them as monsters.”
“Who could ever see you a monster, love? Now my other creations, I’ll admit, they might be a bit of a hard swallow. Mostly Scarecrow. Especially Scarecrow. But you? Sure you’re a little pale and maybe a tiiiiiny bit clammy, but really, so am I. We both got sharp chompers, but they look real good on us! And you may be an undead creature living off stolen blood and the essence of the living, but honestly, I’ve eaten worse. You’re a real good cook, by the by.”
She gave him another little smile, this one a little more sly with her fangs glinting. “I wish I could say the same, but that stew…”
He groaned and leaned back against his pillows. “You’re gonna dog me about that one, aren’t you?”
“Well, you did kill me. Again. And you don’t even understand how hard it is to kill one of my kind. It’s almost impressive, even if you got it wrong,” she nodded.
“I hear that a lot, actually.”
“But you did bring me back again, and almost killed yourself doing it.” She leaned to adjust his covers, examining the bandages over the massive cuts on his chest, placing her gloved claw against his ribs to trace the wound and felt his lungs flutter a little beneath her touch. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, everything’s apples, now that I know you’re back. And with your soup and all. You sure know how to make a bloke feel better.”
Her dark eyes slanted towards him a bit from behind her glasses. “If…you want, I could make you feel even better? Maybe celebrate a bit? Help you relax, if you’re feeling up to it? We could-”
He smiled back at her, patting his stomach. “Oh, I couldn’t eat another bite, but thanks. Honestly, I feel ace. I’ll just finish up some of the work around here. Be a sweet peach and get me my lab coat, eh?” Before she could stop him, he held his shoulder and eased up out of the bed, movements still sluggish as he started pulling on his shirt and fresh clothes before she could really voice her disagreement . “Argh, have you seen the thing? Where’s the thing?! Oh there, it is. Gotta start making things up to the Witch and the others so they don’t just off me in my sleep one of these nights, eh? Darl, coat?”
With a bit of a disappointed look, she reached up to start draping his lab coat around his bony shoulders. “I meant…er…Right away, Dr. Junkenstein…”
***
He kept making silly mistakes; putting in two drops where it should have been one, misplacing papers under other papers, or losing things altogether. True, he’d always done that, and very frequently- but this was worse than usual. The exhaustion must have been getting to him, but with Mei back and everyone else angry at him, he had a lot to do to make sure their plan of attack went off successfully enough that they would forget his folly. Even if this was another successive night without any rest and some of the last zomnics were turning out a little odd, and he’d nearly burnt his remaining hand of a few times, this was more of a matter of pride. Nobody would doubt Dr. Jamison Junkenstein after all this was over…
“Doctor? Doctor?…”
A snore escaped his nostrils and he startled awake, abruptly realizing his head had been drooping perilously close to one of the sharp metal bits scattered around his table. Through the fog in his brain he heard that familiar voice calling to him from somewhere up the stairs. Pushing his chair away from his lab table with a screech, he ambled towards it, the metal of his peg leg thunking and echoing up the stairwell. “Huh? Is everything all right, sugar pea? Honey bee? Soy sauce bear? Uh…Rice and beans?” He held his spinning head for a moment as the pet names started to go off the rails. “Mei? Where you at, darl?”
There was a little noise behind the door of his study and he tilted his head as he opened the door, squeaking noisily as he peeked in before moving inside. He saw nothing, standing in front of the roaring fireplace and scratching at his wild hair. “You in here? Mei, did you need me? If you’re in here, just say aaaaaaAAAUUUGGGHHHH!”
A shape coalesced out of the darkness from the top of the book shelf, her powerful legs springing her almost off the ceiling as she descended on the shrieking scientist. She bowled him over, knocking him flat onto his back on top of the animal hide rug in front of the hearth, bringing him to the ground even as her arm wrapped around him to cradle his wounded upper section. He fell backward, sprawling out his wiry form as he struggled to lift himself onto his elbows, goggles reflecting blue light up at her and almost hiding his shocked expression. Lifting herself up from where she sat astride his midsection, she curled a delicate claw around their straps and went to ease them up and off his head. “Nǐ hǎo, doctor.”
His face grew steadily redder, starting from his cheeks and spreading outward to splotch his skin down around his ears and neck. “H-hehe! Well, you sure got me, love! Wh-why don’t we just-”
She dropped his goggles off to the side with a little thud, tightening her knees on either side of him. “You like me, Dr. Junkenstein?”
“O-of course I do! You’re the best assistant I ever had, and I promise you that once I rule this place, we’ll do all sorts of proper things together like dates, chocolates and flowers, normal things like-”
“I like you too. But I am not normal,” she said gently, bending her elbows so she leaned down atop him. “We are not normal.”
He swallowed noisily. “Okay, point there. Uh, guess I never really done this sort of thing before…I mean, I have! Lots of times! With all sorts! Just a little startled, was all, not used to ladies physically jumping on me and- nnnggghhh-” His voice changed into a high-pitched gurgle as the jiangshi sat back, sliding herself along his slender torso and grinding down before sitting up just atop his groin.
“We don’t need flowers or chocolates. I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time that I like you.” She tilted her head down at him, lips pursing a bit petulantly around her fangs. “I like you a lot. I want…just you. Is that too much? Do you want me to stop?”
His arms flew around her of their own accord. “No! No, I like you too! Just, I was trying to do things the right way! The way you deserve! And then I sort of killed you and all, and then had to bring you back and thought they might kill me for it, and I thought you’d be mad and I’m kinda tired and everyone’s pissed at me, and I just-” Her clawed glove’s finger suddenly came to rest on his lips and he stared up at her, a drop of sweat rolling down his temple.
“Kiss?” She asked gently, and he nodded dumbly as she removed her finger and replaced it with her own lips with no hesitation.
Dr. Junkenstein’s eyelids fluttered slightly, his fingers tightening slowly against the fabric of her robes. He’d had a few stolen kisses in his youth, back before the villagers had started to avoid him. When had that been? How long had he been locked in these lonely halls? He vaguely remembered blond hair and a green dress, a quick press of the lips and a grope on the bottom behind the tavern before she’d lost her nerve and made an excuse and fled. He couldn’t really remember much else. Maybe it had been a little warmer, with less fangs and less tongue, but also far less enthusiasm. Mei’s mouth tasted like strange spices on top of the iron tang of even stranger, otherworldly blood, and she showed no signs of stopping or fleeing. He made a little noise, and her head tilted as she deepened her kiss further, and he realized he was supposed to open his mouth and kiss her back.
His mechanical arm seized around her shoulder, pulling her down towards him, and he felt her grin against his lips. She was liking it! She was liking it, and he was definitely liking it, and her mouth tasted so good once he got used to it all, and maybe he was using just a little too much tongue and there was just a little too much saliva, and for a moment he panicked when she drew away. But after a moment he realized it was to let him breathe, sucking in air through his open lips, down to lungs he hadn’t realized were aching. Greed got the better of him, and he lifted his head to try and follow after her, cupping the back of her head to bring her back down.
They kissed again, then again, and again; and then there was a sharp sensation in his lower lip and the taste of blood- his own blood- overwhelmed him. He jolted back a little, his tongue moving to the little pierced area on the inside of his lower lip, and Mei looked on the verge of panic as she sputtered, “Sorry! Sorry! I’m sorry!” and tried to pull away. But the mad doctor merely stared up at her for a moment before dragging her back down, kissing her again, and her eyes shot open as his fangs closed down on her lip as well. She did not bleed, barely felt the sting of his sharp canines, but it seemed to startle her for a moment before melting into his grip.
When he managed to finally draw back again, a smear of red across his lip, he looked up at her breathlessly, head falling back against the animal skin rug.
“Uh,” he said. “Th-that’s…that’s real nice? You were wantin’ to, this whole time?”
She nodded.
“Hell’s bells, I’ve been an idiot.”
She nodded again, but smiled. “Well…I wanted to do more than that?”
The jiangshi sat up, legs still astride his hips, and his eyes nearly fell out of his head when he saw her clawed gloves move to the front of her robes, starting to undo the snaps of the crane sigil upon her chest, twisting and pulling at her buttons. A very undignified noise like air squealing through a pinched balloon came from out of his nose, watching her every move. They’d always looked ample, bound under that embroidery of the bird, anyway, but he never thought she’d be here like this, with him, pulling her robes open and unbinding the cloth that wrapped around her chest…until they finally sprang free, falling from the cloth bindings and bouncing in an impossibly soft, fleshy manner right in front of his face. His pupils dilated, and for a moment he thought that he could feel his nose bleeding as well as his lip, from some wild misfire inside his head as all his brainmatter tried to cram together at the front of his skull, near his eyes, trying to get a look. All thoughts of gentlemanly manners were driven from his mind.
Breasts…Big, beautiful, bouncing breasts…
Mei blinked down at the unmoving man, a string of red-tinted drool running down the side of his mouth. Adjusting her glasses, she went to take his hand, frozen on the side of her ribs. He didn’t even seem to notice as she carefully peeled the glove from him, her fingers curling around his before gently guiding his hand inside the front of her open robe. The first touch of his skin against her chest almost seemed to electrify him, his hand jolting in her grip. But she stayed firm, and another brush of his hand against hers soon made it clear that he was not only allowed, but encouraged. His hand slid inside the draping fabric, tracing the curve of her chest as he shuddered beneath her.
“Soft…soft, soft, soooo soft…” he mumbled, still drooling as he brought his other hand into play, massaging and squeezing, not even daring to blink, like she might disappear in that split second if he even once closed his eyes. She merely ran her pink tongue along her fangs, leaning down so he could bury his face into the top of them. His pointed nose huffed audibly as he nuzzled into her cleavage, his fingers still rubbing into the plush flesh on either side.
Her hips were grinding down on his, a slow back and forth as she rode him. Combined with her strange kisses and the feel of those amazing breasts, his trousers were feeling unpleasantly tight, the pressure in his groin even stronger than the feelings he got when he saw electricity surging through metal, or a nice big explosion, or the rush of triumph and discovery on a successful new invention. Those were pants-tighteners all right, but this?… Why was he even wearing pants, especially ones that seemed several sizes too small all of a sudden?
The mad scientist almost whimpered when she pulled him out of her chest, but she shushed him, laying him out on his back on the animal hide, the fire crackling merrily behind her and outlining her form in red light. Despite her shadowed features, he could see the glint of pearly white as her fangs lengthened from out of her gums, hanging over her lower lip. Dipping down next to his ear, she whispered one soft word.
“…Bite?”
He nodded.
Mei’s claws reached up to grasp his hair, pulling his chin up and baring his long neck. Her mouth opening wide, she aimed for the pulsing vein beneath and bit down, her fangs piercing into his pale throat. Junkenstein’s jaw dropped, unable to make a sound beyond a tiny wheeze as his eyes flickered shut, darting wildly beneath dark lids. The beating of his heart thudded loudly in his ears, a potent mixture of nervous adrenaline, and trying to make up for the lost essence that was being drained down the hungry jiangshi’s throat. She suckled audibly at the flesh, purple and red bruising appearing under her tongue and teeth as she devoured him. The sluggish twitching of the man beneath her was hardly unusual, but what was unusual was his…eagerness. Far from afraid of the monster atop him, he blindly curled one arm, his hand grasping onto the back of her head and pulling her into him. His lips made wordless shapes, mouthing “More…more…more…”
She gave him more, even as she took more from him. The mad grinding against him continued, the bulge tangible even through the fabric of his trousers and lab coat. He twitched and kicked out one leg, his hips surging up against her all on their own. The friction! The friction and the overwhelming sensation of the biting melded together until he was a mindless thing beneath her, unable to stop the upward motion of his thrusting hips, planting his foot and peg against the ground to brace himself and lift up into her. Like a damn brainless animal, humping uselessly away at her, that’s what he was. He pulled her hips down, clawing and grasping at the top of her pants. Had to get them off. No fabric. No more anything separating them. He could figure out what to do on his own, just let instinct guide him. Give him more… More…more…more…
“Nnnnghhhaaah!” It was a strange sound, guttural and wild. Probably him making it, then. He wasn’t sure anymore. It didn’t matter anymore.
And then she gave one last hard suck to his throat, and he wasn’t even aware of what happened when his vision whited out, and something tightened and then was set loose all at once. His vision was white, then gray, with little tinges of red on the edges, and then black.
***
He awoke some hours later, feeling more drained and relaxed than he could ever remember feeling. The roaring fire warmed his body and helped soothe the tingling in his limbs, and when he shifted them, he felt movement against his side. Mei lay cuddled against him, leaning to press soothing wet kisses against his neck when she felt him awaken. Her robes were closed and buttoned, chaste as ever, and she rested her chin on his shoulder to look at him adoringly as he turned his head.
“How are you feeling?” she asked softly.
He giggled deliriously. There weren’t really words he knew to describe it, so he muttered something about being ‘okay’ as he lifted his fingers to touch at his neck. There they were, two tiny and rapidly-healing puncture marks on his neck, lovingly cleaned of any more trickles of red by the doting jiangshi. How long had they been laying there? It must have been too much there at the end, on top of his prior exhaustion, too many feelings and too much everything at once. But it felt all right. More than all right.
“Er…did we?…”
The jiangshi’s fangs were tiny and cute again as she offered him a sheepish little smile. “I didn’t want to hurt you…you’re still all cut up and tired but…” She trailed off for a moment, cool lips pressing to his forehead. “I wanted you to feel good. And I was so hungry for you, was it too much?”
“Nah, nah, it was…” Junkenstein groaned a little as he started to roll to face her, but a strange look came over his face. Mei blinked at him. He looked a little shocked, then disgusted, then thoughtful, then disgusted again, then happy, and then finally…embarrassed. “Er, Mei? Could you do me a favor, darl?”
She nodded quickly. “Anything! A blanket? More soup? Fresh bandages?”
He winced at the cold stickiness beneath his lab coat. “Bottom drawer in the- Well, you already know where they are. Could you er, fetch me a pair of fresh trousers and underthings, please?” He looked away, face burning red.
On cue, her face reddened as well, his own hot blood surging through her in reaction. “Oh!” she exclaimed, hopping upright and hiding a little grin. “Right away, Dr. Junkenstein!”
#meihem#meirat#junkmei#junkrat#junkenstein#mei#mei-ling zhou#junkensteinAU#overwatch#fiction#fanfiction#funkymeihem
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All-American Boy chapter 2
Chapter 2
And I cast a spell over the west to make you think of me the same way I think of you.
-Fall Out Boy, Bang the Doldrums
Cas:
Trying his best not to wake the sleeping man, Cas and Gabe unloaded the plastic totes and put them in the corner of the room. Cas figured he could stack them on top of the wardrobe once they were empty. After everything was off the cart, Cas walked with Gabe to return it so another student could use it.
“Your roommate’s pretty dreamy,” Gabe commented, nonchalantly.
Gabe was the only person in the world, other than a handful of people he used to hang out with when he was with his ex, who knew he was gay.
Cas shrugged. “I’m not here to get laid, Gabe. I’m here to get an education. You know I want to be a vet someday. And Birchwood has a fantastic pre-veterinary program. I’m not gonna blow it over some crush.”
Gabe quirked an eyebrow at him. “You have a crush on him already?”
Cas scoffed. “No, of course not,” he lied. “I’m just saying. Even if it develops into a crush I’m not going to pursue anything. Besides, he’s probably straight.”
“What makes you say that?”
Cas shrugged. “Most guys are.”
Gabe put his hand on Cas’s shoulder. “Maybe he’ll surprise you,” he offered, squeezing reassuringly. “Hey, kiddo, I gotta get back to the office. You sure you’re gonna be okay?”
The ‘office’ was Gabriel’s candy store. Much to their mother’s dismay, Cas’s older brother used his business degree to open a candy store at Water Tower Place in Chicago. Apparently owning a sweet shop at a mall wasn’t ‘respectable’ and Gabriel became the family embarrassment… Well, after Castiel that was.
Of course, Alfie was still in middle school but had dreams of becoming a teacher. At a respectable Lutheran private school, of course. Anna was in seminary school, hoping to become a pastor, which was enough of a scandal in the Novak household since women were not permitted to become church leaders under the teachings of Marian Luther. Although, that was rapidly changing, many in Pontiac were still old fashioned like that. Nick was the vice president of a company called Roman Enterprises. At only thirty-two, he was the youngest VP in company history. Richard Roman, or Dick as he prefered to be called, was a complete and total monster. On top of screwing over the working and middle classes at every opportunity, he was also the biggest campaign contributor to Donald Trump in 2016. Hence, why Nick was called ‘Lucifer.’ It also helped that Nick and Dick rhymed.
Uriel bragged about the missions trips he took to India and how he was giving children there a ‘Bible based education.’ Every time he talked about how many children came to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, Cas couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Not only was the church erasing these children’s cultural gods, they also weren’t offering them a real education. One that would help them later in life. Cas desperately hoped his brother’s ministry cared just as much about what happened to these kids here on Earth as they did about their souls going to a supposed afterlife.
And finally, Zach was a movie director specializing in films of the spiritual nature. Currently, he was working on making yet another Karen Kingsbury novel into a two hour piece of tooth rotting garbage. Oh, how his mother loved those books. She was extra proud of her eldest son. She was especially drawn towards those who used their creative nature to ‘please the Lord’ hence why she was currently dating the music director of their church.
“If you want me to stay a couple more hours, grab some lunch, I can,” Gabe offered when Cas didn’t say anything.
“No,” Cas shook his head. “It’s a Saturday. I know you need to get back.” He hugged his brother, putting his chin on the shorter man’s head. “Thanks for all your help, Gabe.”
“No sweat, Cassie,” Gabe said, pulling back from the hug. “Just… Call me if you need anything, okay?”
“I will,” Cas promised.
Back in his room, Cas began unpacking the totes as quietly as possible. He put his clothes in the wardrobe/dresser and filled the desk with school supplies. He put his shower caddy near the door to the bathroom suite that was between their room and the room next door. At Norman, there was only four students to a bathroom. Each room also had a sink so that students wouldn’t take up the bathroom just to brush their teeth. It was much better than the bathrooms that were shared by the whole floor at Lawrence Complex. He put his extra toiletries, miscellaneous items, and snacks in the end table by the bed and made his twin XL. Why college beds were longer than standard, Cas would never understand. He sat down at the desk and opened his laptop but was distracted by the sun shining from the window to his right. If he could just put the desk on the wall near the door and move his wardrobe/dresser combo to where the desk was near the door to the restroom it would fix the problem.
Forgetting his roommate was still asleep he began pushing his desk towards its destination. It made a nails-on-a-chalkboard noise as it scraped across the ugly tile, and only then did Cas remember the gorgeous man sleeping in the next bed.
“Sorry,” Cas said with a wince. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just… I prefer the desk over here, otherwise the sun is in my eyes and-”
“You must be Jimmy,” the boy said, sitting up. He stretched his arms above his head and Cas was once again rewarded with a flash of stomach. His mouth basically watered at the sight of defined, yet soft abs.
“Uh… Actually, I prefer to go by Cas,” he said, his mouth suddenly dry. He swallowed and tried to look away, but found he couldn’t.
“Cas? Is that a middle name or something?” the boy asked, staring at Cas as if he were appraising him.
“Yeah,” Cas answered, feeling shy. “It’s short for Castiel.”
The boy swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and stood up. “The name’s Dean,” he said, extending his hand for Cas to shake. Castiel shook his hand. It was callused and warm. “I take it you’re a freshman,” Dean said, gesturing towards the purple Boyd Hall lanyard Cas was wearing around his neck. “You guys all do that your first semester.”
Cas looked down at Dean’s jeans and noticed a Batman lanyard hanging out of his pocket. “I see you decided not to use the lanyard that came with our key,” he observed and Dean huffed a laugh.
“Nah, stopped doing that second semester last year. It kinda paints a target on your back as ‘fresh meat,’” he explained. “Buy your own lanyard, don’t wear it around your neck, and keep your keycard in your wallet instead of attached to your lanyard. It’s much less dorky when you take it out to pay for meals and stuff.”
“So the card that lets us into our hall is also our meal card?” Cas asked since Charlie hadn’t explained how the keycards worked yet. They were supposed to have a freshman meeting the following morning at ten.
Dean nodded. “Yep. It also gets us into Norman after midnight and doubles as a library card and laundry card if you have Bulldog Cash. Multi-purpose.” His roommate flashed him a charming smile and Cas almost swooned.
“Cool,” Cas said, removing his lanyard from around his neck and slipping it into his pocket as Dean had. “So are you a sophomore?”
“Yep. Engineering student. You?”
“Pre-vet,” Cas said and Dean nodded.
“I guess we’ll both be spending a lot of time in the science building then,” the man observed.
“I suppose. I… I took a tour when I got accepted but I don’t quite remember where everything’s at,” Cas admitted.
“Basically, everything down one of three streets. The main stretch, Michelangelo Boulevard, the one with the big-ass statue of the university's founders, is where most colleges are located, like the architecture building and Teachers’ College, as well as Birtch Library and a few other buildings. Lakeside Avenue and University Way are the other two main streets. But, uh, you’ll get the hang of it,” Dean explained, charming smile never leaving his lips.
Cas couldn’t help but look down at the man’s plush mouth, licking his own lips as he did so. “I suppose I will. I’m just nervous I guess,” Cas said, looking up to meet the man’s bright green eyes.
Dean nodded, eyes trailing down to Cas’s lips as well. Or was that just Cas’s imagination? “Yeah, it gets easier after the first week or two… There’s also the Quad. That’s where the science building and the museum are located. Near that giant-ass clock tower.”
“So, just go towards the tower and I’ll be fine?” Cas asked, still a bit nervous about finding his way to class on Monday.
Dean nodded. “Basically.” He looked at the alarm clock by his bed, making note of the time. “Oh shit is it two o’clock already? Lunch ends at three. Wanna get some with me…? Uh, that is if you haven’t already eaten.”
Cas shook his head. “No, I’ve been unpacking for a couple of hours. I completely lost track of time," he said sheepishly.
Dean looked around Cas’s side of the room. “Yeah, that side has less room because of the bathroom and the sink. Sorry about that… You need help moving your desk?”
Cas nodded and pointed towards the wardrobe combo. “I want to switch it with my wardrobe so I’m not distracted by the sun.”
“No problem,” Dean said, rolling up the sleeves of his flannel and offering him another one of those million dollar smiles.
Dean showed him the fare Norman Complex had to offer. There was a salad bar, a grill, a pan pizza oven, a sandwich station, a ‘southern comfort food’ area and a stir-fry station as well as a pastry station with enticing looking desserts. There was also an al-la-carte section where students could buy foods they could bring back to their rooms. Every eating area had one. You could also find toiletries in this area like shampoo and soap, and to Cas's surprise, condoms.
“I see they have lot of healthier options as well,” Cas said, getting in line for the stir-fry.
Dean nodded. “Yeah, between that, all the walking, and the recplex, it’s real easy to avoid the freshman fifteen if you want to… On the other hand, pie for every meal doesn’t exactly help that,” he said, looking longingly at the pastry station. “You get your fried veggies, I’m gonna go grab a burger,” Dean said, heading towards the grill.
Cas waited for his stir-fry, noting that the price took up almost all his allotted eight dollars, and got an iced tear from the soda station. He then went to pay for his food. Since he didn’t have his meal card yet, he used one of the cupons Charlie gave out in the welcome packet.
Meal paid for, he found Dean sitting in the middle of the cafeteria next to none none other than his RA and another boy Cas didn’t recognize.
Cas sat down next to Dean and smiled at Charlie.
“Hey, Cas,” she said putting down her sandwich. “You settling in okay?”
“Yes, I am,” Cas said, picking his soy sauce packet and opening the corner. “Dean has been very helpful. I’m rather lucky to have an upperclassman as a roommate.”
“Damn right you are,” Dean said, taking a big bite of his cheeseburger. “Cas, this is Garth. He also lives on our floor and is one of my best friends. He’s a creative writing major.” Dean gestured towards the skinny guy sitting across from him eating what appeared to be meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
“Nice to meet you, Cas,” the brown-haired boy said. “Is that short for Casey or somethin’?”
“Uh, no. It’s short for my middle name, Castiel. My real name is James, but I’ve never gone by it,” Cas admitted shyly as he snapped open his chopsticks.
“Nah, you don’t exactly look like a Jim,” Garth said, taking another bite of buttery looking mashed potatoes.
“Thanks?” Cas said as he began to pluck at his rice and veggies. He’d gone with the shrimp, which took a little longer to cook, but after one bite he realized it was totally worth the wait. He let out a groan and he chewed.
“Wow,” Dean said with a smirk. “Pornagraphic, Cas.”
Cas blushed. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t expect the food here to be so… Good.”
“Best in the state,” Dean replied, popping a greasy looking fry in his mouth.
Cas nodded, continuing to eat his surprisingly good food.
“So, what’s your major, Cas?” Charlie asked.
“Pre-vet. I… I just really love animals.”
Charlie looked at Dean, excitement in her eyes. “Your brother would be excited to hear that,” she said and Dean huffed a laugh.
“Uh, no. He couldn’t do the dissections at school,” he said, shaking his head. “Went vegan shortly after freshman bio. Poor guy. Threw all hope of becoming a vet out the window.”
Cas smirked. “Yeah, that happens to a lot of kids. At least he went vegan for the right reasons, I suppose. So many people give up meat as some sort of fad, but your brother seems to be in it for the animals, which I respect.”
“Yeah,” Dean nodded, taking another bite of his burger. “He’s a hippie weirdo but he’s my hippie weirdo.”
Cas couldn’t help but look at the man beside him with fondness. He really seemed to care about his little brother, much as he tried to hide the affection.
“I’m a computer science major myself,” Charlie said, forking at the bits of her sandwich that fell out the back. “With a minor in digital media. If I don’t get an IT job somewhere I could always work as a social media rep or a web designer or something.”
“So, tell me about yourself, Cas,” Garth said, pushing his finished tray away and taking a long drag from his soda.
“Uh, there’s not much to tell really,” Cas muttered into his food. He didn’t exactly want to subject his new friends to his family drama just yet. “I’m just a kid from Pontiac.”
“I’m from Topeka,” Charlie said. “Dean’s also from Kansas, small town called Lebanon.”
“Originally from Lawrence, the city not the dorm, but my dad moved away after my mom died. Guess he couldn’t stand to live in the same house anymore, you know?” Dean shared.
Cas’s stomach felt suddenly queasy. “I am so sorry, Dean,” he said with genuine sympathy. His parents sucked, but at least they were still alive.
Dean shrugged as he polished off his fries. “No big deal. I was really little so…” the man trailed off, picking up his fork to start on the slice of apple pie he'd given in and gotten.
“From Lebanon as well,” Garth said. “Not a very big town, just about the only thing there is Singer’s Auto. I worked there in high school but always wanted something more. Got a full ride to Birchwood and never looked back.”
“Lucky geniuses here,” he said, gesturing to Garth and Charlie, “received academic scholarships. Charlie ain’t on a full ride, which is part of the reason she took up the RA job. I’m here for soccer,” the man explained.
Cas frowned down at his almost finished plate. “I didn’t receive a scholarship or anything like that. This was just one of many state schools I got accepted to. Fell in love with the campus after I took a tour. It really is very pretty here.”
Dean put his hand on his shoulder. “No need to feel embarrassed just because you aren’t here on scholarship, man. There’s no shame in paying your own way.”
Cas smiled softly before taking a sip of his tea. “Thank you, Dean,” he said after a moment.
Dean:
That evening, Dean tried to convince Cas to join him at Kevin’s apartment for a small get together, but after learning that there’d be alcohol there, the guy decided he was just gonna stay in and play some video games. Dean respected his decision, of course. He knew pre-med and pre-vet majors would get kicked out of their program if caught drinking under twenty-one and didn’t want Cas to do anything he felt uncomfortable with, especially his first week.
Kevin and Charlie were both juniors, whereas Dean and Garth were sophomores. Other than the four of them, the only other people at the ‘party’ were Channing, Kevin’s long-term girlfriend, and Gilda, Charlie’s new gf. They’d met in the RA program and had only been dating a month. They had to come in a few weeks early for training, which Dean did not envy them for. But, hey, at least they got paid.
Dean was a few beers in when Charlie sat down next to him on the couch.
“So… Your new roommate is cute,” said the lesbian.
“Didn’t know you swung that way, Bradburry,” Dean said with a chuckle, taking a sip of his beer. Thankfully, Channing was twenty-one now and could legally purchase alcohol for them all. Dean didn’t really trust the fake IDs Charlie made them all last year.
Charlie giggled. “Well, he’s cute for a guy,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. She was the only one who knew Dean’s secret.
“I guess,” Dean said, leaning back. He was attempting to pay attention the the episode of Rick and Morty they were all watching but the show was just a little too quick paced for how drunk he was getting. Not to mention everyone was talking over it.
“You gonna go for it?” she asked and Dean scoffed.
“Nah, we both know that boy’s probably straight. I’m tired of crushing on straight guys, for one,” he said as quietly as he could, so as not to have the rest of his friends overhear. “And even if he did go for other guys, he probably wouldn’t be okay with me having been with women. Very few gay men actually want to date a guy like me. And considering I’m still not out about it, that adds a whole new set of problems to potential relationships...”
Charlie looked at him with sympathy. “You don’t know that. Gilda’s bi, and I have no problems with it. The LGBT community is getting more and more inclusive each day, Dean. Bi visibility is becoming less and less of an issue because people like her are speaking out about it. You should come to a Prism meeting. It’ll help you come out of your shell.”
Charlie had been trying to get him to come to the campus LGBTQIA+ alliance, Prism, ever since his first semester.
Dean shook his head. “I’m not ready for that, Charles. Told you last time you asked.”
Charlie wrinkled her nose at the offending nickname. “You did, but I thought you might want to give a chance. It’s been a whole summer since I’ve asked.”
Dean took another sip of his beer. “I’ll think about it,” he promised.
Dean spent all of Sunday - after sleeping in and nursing his hangover of course - showing Cas around campus. He took him through all the important buildings, showing him the library, the science building, and all the eating areas. They even stopped for lunch at the Student Center he picked up some Jack in the Box, which they could get with their meal plan. Other than that, the student center had a salad bar and a Tropical Smoothie. Cas got himself a sandwich and a smoothie instead of a deep fried taco like Dean.
After that, Dean took him through the Quad, even showing him the free art museum. On their way out, they picked up a few posters a tent was selling, since Cas’s side of the room was rather vacant of art. Dean promised him he’d show him the ‘Villa’ on Friday. It was basically this place off campus with a shit ton of restaurants, stores, and bars. It was within walking distance to campus and was a major weekend hangout for most students. That, and Friday Nite Live, a cheesy ‘party’ put on by the student association each and every Friday. It was themed and offered a wide array of activities and crafts. It was mostly for freshman, but even upperclassmen stopped by before hitting the bars to get a slice of free pizza.
“Let me see your schedule,” Dean said, and Cas fumbled to pull it up on his phone. “Ugh, you got running at eight Monday, Wednesday, Friday?” he said, making a face at Cas’s choice of PE class. “I don’t have to take phys ed since I’m in a sport, thank god.”
Cas frowned at him. “I like running,” he said defensively. “I was on cross country in high school.”
Dean chuckled. “Yet another thing you have in common with my baby brother.”
Cas crossed his arms, looking like a petulant child. It was kinda cute if Dean was being completely honest. “Well, Sam sounds like a wonderful young man, if you ask me.”
Dean clapped him on the shoulder. “That he is,” he agreed.
Cas:
Cas found his way to the PE building next to the recplex at eight in the morning the following day. The air was damp and dewy and a bit muggy, as was common in late August. He walked into the building and found himself at an ancient indoor track, much more outdated than the track at the recplex Dean showed him yesterday.
A few other kids were seated at the bleachers so he sat down to join them until the instructor showed up. Since it was their first day they only went a mile, much to Cas’s disappointment. But at least they went outside to do it. They wouldn’t actually be using the indoor track unless the weather was bad.
After that he had an hour break, which he specifically scheduled so he could shower and eat breakfast, and then he had his first bio class at ten. At eleven he had French, and then at noon he’d scheduled lunch, which Dean teased him for since all the dining areas would be extra busy that hour. He called it ‘typically freshman.’ Cas was only slightly disappointed he wouldn’t be able to dine with Dean during the week. At one Cas had speech class, which met for lab Mondays and Wednesday and lecture on Fridays. And then Cas was done for the day. Dean’s last class was over at three so Cas went back to his room to wait for him, popping in Dragon Age Inquisition to pass the time. The first week was syllabus week, so he didn’t have any homework yet.
He and Dean went to the Globe, a cafeteria named after Shakespeare's theater, for dinner. It had a Taco Bell, Quiznos, and a Burger King as well as yet another salad station and more stir-fry. Cas got himself a sandwich while Dean ordered Taco Bell.
That evening, the two of them played Super Smash Bros with Charlie and Garth. It was probably the most fun Cas had ever had in his entire life. It wasn’t as if he had many friends growing up.
On Tuesdays he had his lab for French since it was a four day a week class, and his two Tuesday/Thursday classes, Theatre and Calc. With all the core classes he was required to take, he had a pretty full semester this year at nineteen credit hours (French was worth four).
That evening he, Dean, and Charlie ate at the most popular cafeteria on Campus, Westwood. It was the only all-girls dorm on Campus and hosted the campus sororities. It had a flat top grill for stir-fry instead of woks like the other eating places had as well as a full side brick oven for pizza, spinning salads instead of a salad bar, comfort food, pasta, and sandwiches. Once a week they did breakfast for dinner (although he was told that was always packed) and even had a mini-Starbucks. The only eating places he hadn't tried yet were a few grab-and go al-la-carte places, Lawrence's shitty cafeteria, and the buffett at Norman, which he was skeptical of because he found those to be germy.
Of course, the line for the stir-fry was long af, but Cas didn’t mind. It reminded him of hibachi, he way the chefs tossed his veggies and beef around on the stove. He even rewarded himself with a slice of chocolate cake, promising to go for an extra run that week to burn it off.
He and Dean hung out every single night, which was good because he knew it would be especially hard for him to live with someone he didn’t get along with. Thankfully, the pair of them got along great. It was Friday after class when Dean walked in. Cas paused his game to greet the man.
“How was class?” he asked, moving the controller to the floor.
“You know, first week stuff. No homework yet, so that’s good. Well, aside from reading chapter one of damn every textbook, but who the hell reads the chapters if they’re just gonna go over them in class?”
Cas frowned. “The books are so expensive. Seems like a waste not to read them.”
Dean chuckled and shook his head. “So, what, you gonna spend all weekend reading?”
“No,” Cas said, standing up to stretch. “I was planning on doing that Sunday afternoon since it won’t be that time consuming.”
“Okay, good,” Dean said, smiling shyly. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I… I was kinda hoping you’d come LARPING with us.”
To be continued...
http://archiveofourown.org/works/13196649/chapters/30538008
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Harry and the Ink Demon Chapter 2- Discovery
Joey Drew, Harry had decided, was utterly barmy. The building had looked confusing on paper, but apparently the former studio director had thought it would be a grand idea to turn the place into a full on maze.
Harry had already gotten lost twice, but after living in Hogwarts for six years he had quickly gotten his head around his mental floor plan of the building. Though even that was a work in progress as he discovered the various changes Drew had made to the building. He was going to tear out a few of the walls, that much he'd figured out. But he'd found a few interesting things during his exploration.
He'd found a handful of tape recordings left by a few old employees (and they didn't sound very happy with their boss, not that he blamed them), some old drafts and model sheets of Bendy from the animator's cubicles/closets (he'd bagged those, even the one sticky note of an overly cutesy version of the little devil), an employee cafeteria (he was keeping that, unless the there were nasty magics on the lower floors), and a couple other knickknacks that may have belonged to former employees that he'd stowed away in his satchel. He wouldn't keep all the things he'd snagged, but having a few things to bid off to collectors would certainly help fund getting the studio up and running again.
He knew could be a klepto at times, a hold over from when he'd had nothing to call his own, so a good portion of it would be stowed away at home.
Maybe he'd give a few of the toys to Teddy. Or Luna, she'd grown rather fond of the toons when he would draw them with her menagerie of creatures (She wanted to help at the company once he got it going).
But that hadn't been the most bazar discovery he'd made in the dilapidated studio, no. That honor belonged to the machine he'd found early on in his exploration. A contraption that looked like a warped chimera of a water heater, a fire hose pump, and a clockwork engine of some kind. It had made his skin crawl, and his magic roil inside him. Something about it just felt- Unnatural. He wanted to blast the thing teeny, tiny pieces and hand the remains over to MASUCA's Department of Mysteries. He didn't like it one bit, and when his instincts gave him those kind of warnings, he would usually listen to them.
But with how the piping from the machine wove into the building, he wasn't sure if destroying it was safe or a smart idea. For all he knew, it could have brought the studio down on his head. And now he had to turn the blasted thing on. He didn't want to, not even the curious side of his that had survived the war wanted to touch it, but he wasn't getting a choice in the matter. For one single reason.
Drew had somehow turned the machine into the main source of power for the entire Studio.
It was worse since Harry had been allowed to see the reports and knew for a fact certain doors in the studio could only be opened if the power was on. And the light would be needed as he went deeper into the building, what with all the windows being boarded up.
And if Harry was cussing out Drew as he stalked through the halls? Well, who would know other than him?
Harry rubbed his brow, struggling to ward off his impending headache. This was not what he wanted to be doing.
THUD! Clatter!
He jolted in alarm at the sudden noise that cut through the mostly silent studio like a freshly sharpened knife. Harry's head shot up, green-eyes flicking about to find the source of the sound. His shoulders sagged in relief when he spotted what had caused the noise. It was just a board that had fallen from the ceiling of the t-section ahead of him.
"Bloody stars, that gave me a start. This place is gonna need more work than I thought," the wizard said with a tired sigh, running a hand through his bangs. He would need to re-tie his tie his hair soon, he noted, feeling various strands snag on his fingers. He strode further down the hall, squinting up at the spot where the board fell from.
"That's odd..." He muttered, squinting upwards.
Harry couldn't find the spot where the board had fallen from. There were no holes in the ceiling that matched it, and the boards that were there were pressed too close together to even be loose. It couldn't have fallen from there, unless...
He growled.
"Is someone pranking me? If there is, this ain't funny lads!" He called, aggravation showing through in his tone and bringing out the slight Scottish/Irish verbal ticks he'd picked up from Seamus and Professor McGonagall. He glared at the ceiling, as though he thought if he glared at it long enough that it would make the hidden prankster reveal themselves and grovel for forgiveness. It didn't.
He let out a frustrated huff, shaking his head.
'Now then, left or right?' he thought to himself, 'Let's try right.'
He turned down the right path into a small room with six pedestals, and a large switch framed by two large black pipes against the opposite wall. It looked strangely, well, toony. Almost like someone had drawn it onto the wall, if it weren't for the faint shadows being caste, Harry would have thought he'd been punk'd by the same person who may-or-may-not have rigged the falling board. He didn't know how to describe how just plain weird this place was.
"Well, I guess I've finally found the break room Franks mentioned in his recording Now how do I get this thing working?" He approached the switch (lever? It was hard to really tell), which was oh-so-helpfully labelled 'Main Power' with a little 'Caution' placed right under it. A flashing screen sat next to it, reading 'Low Pressure'. He stifled a groan. "Oh, why can't anything ever be easy? Just once in my life I'd like things to be simple."
He knew from the recording that he'd need something from each employee's desk to get things running, and there were six pedestals in the room. It wasn't much of a leap to assume he would need that many items (and he wasn't going to call them sacrifices, the term didn't sit well with him. At al). Now the question was, what exactly did he need?
He looked back at the pedestals, there was a picture behind each one. Perhaps the pictures were what he needed to find?
"Let's see here, I'm going to need a wrench, an ink bottle, a toy, a gear, a book, and something related to music." He muttered, Harry dug through his bag for the things he'd picked up while wandering through the studio. Surely there were a few that would do the trick.
"I think the record I found would go with the music note." He set it on the pedestal, and froze when a soft light started up, casting light on the object he'd just placed. Either there was one of those pressure switches he'd heard about there, or there really was magic at work there. He swallowed nervously, eyeing the pedestal with distrust.
"Th-then the ink well from one of the animator's desks." He hesitantly put it in place, and jolted when the same thing happed again.
"And the wrench." The process was repeated, right down to the eerie light. They were the only things he'd found that matched the pictures, he'd have to go back through the studio to find the other three objects. He shook he head trying to ward of his anxiety. He really didn't like this.
"Now, where would those- ACK!!" Harry jumped in alarm when he turned around the corner and almost walked into a Bendy cutout that had most certainly not been there a few moments ago. It was positioned right in the middle of the hallway, almost like it was trying to block his path. "Who put this here?!"
Harry scowled, his nerves still somewhat addled from the 'sacrifice' room. Someone had to be pranking him. And it really wasn't funny. He started to wind himself up to track the prankster down and give them a piece of his mind ala Molly Weasley. But a flickering light caught his eye.
"What the-?" He knew that kind of light. After spending years in the magical world (where electricity was practically non-existent), he would have had to be a fool not to.
That was the light of a candle. More than one. Who would be lighting a candle in a building full of flammable items like paper and rubber ink? Were they mad?! They could make the studio catch fire! Harry side-stepped the cutout, his expressions furious.
There was someone in the room with the candles. Someone wearing dull brown overalls and standing far too still. Harry quickened his pace, he anger fading with each step. He inhaled sharply once he reached the threshold of the room.
There was a body strapped to something that looked eerily like an operating table, hanging limply with their chest ripped open, ribs broken and wrenched wide, showing a hollowed out chest. Like their heart had been ripped out, and the rest of their body left to rot in the open. The scene looked even more horrifying with the light of the candles illuminating the from. And the wizard, though he'd never met them, recognized the person in question.
'This-this can't be possible...'
"B-Boris?" Harry stared in open horror at the scene before him.
Boris the Wolf had been Bendy's closest, and rather absent minded, friend. A sweet, lovable character who was more like an oversized puppy and didn't have a angry bone in his body. Harry had always had a soft spot for the wolf, he'd reminded the wizard of Hagrid and Remus. Intimidating in some aspects, but almost bursting at the seams with kindness for the people around him.
Seeing him strapped up like that, his insides exposed and with toony X's over his eyes, it seemed too surreal to be possible. Toons weren't real, it shouldn't be possible to-to kill them like this. But the rancid smell that permeated the room said otherwise, a horrid combination of rubber ink and rotting meat. Harry reacted in the only reason way to finding and impossible cadaver, he bent to one side and retched.
Braced against the wall, the wizard kept heaving until there was nothing left his stomach to force out. He coughed hard, grimacing at the taste of bile in his mouth.
Harry wasn't a squeamish person, not since the war, but he just... He hadn't been prepared for that. He hadn't been prepared to find the-the corpse of one of the cartoon characters he was so fond of. He raised his eyes to see inky writing scrawled on the wall.
"Who's laughing now?!"
'Not me, that's for sure.' Harry thought, turning his mournful gaze to Boris' prone form.
"I wanted to know if magic had been used here, but this wasn't what I expected. This is just- Oh Boris," He breathed, his voice quivering as his eyes roamed over the Wolf's form. Flashes from the war flickered at the back of his mind, but he forced them back with a shudder. This was- He had to find out what happened here, how this was even possible, and more importantly, find out who had done this.
Harry tore his gaze from the gruesome sight and started searching the room for something, anything that could explain what had transpired here. But there was nothing, just Boris, the table he lay on, the writing on the wall, and an old, rather pathetic looking plush doll of Bendy. He would have to find his answer's elsewhere.
He carefully picked up the toy, knowing it was one of the things he needed, not daring look back at the wolf.
He hesitated at the door, he wanted to pull Boris down from the table and give him some respect by not leaving him like that. But MASUCA, from what he'd gathered, was far more strict about following the laws they laid out. They were closer to muggle procedures about law enforcement, Harry could respect that. He could respect them trying to keep the scenes from being tampered with and not risking important evidence being damaged. Even if his morals weren't happy about leaving a victim in such a state.
"I'm so sorry Boris, I can't do anything for you right now. But I promise, once the authorities know about this, I'll make sure you get the proper respects. You have my word." Harry said, his voice sounding pained as he looked back at the wolf. He had no idea if anyone, let alone Boris could hear him, but making the promise helped ease his mind. He steeled his resolve and headed back into the halls.
He had to locate the last two items he needed to "appease the gods" (and that was an incredibly worrying phrase for something like this) to get things going. He could only hope ho could find his answers once that was done. But as he left he couldn't help asking,
'Just what have I gotten myself into this time?'
-
-
AN: Well, done with this one. It's a lot shorter than the last one, but I wanted to focus on the important pieces of the story. After all, listening to Harry wander around a studio with nothing really going on is actually kind of boring, right?
I think the descriptions came out pretty good, don't you?
#Harry Potter#hatid#harry in batim#Harry and the Ink Demon#bendy the dancing demon#Bendy and the Ink Machine#batim#fanfiction#fanart
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The Fence Chapter 2
chapter 2
*Flash back ended*
V's P.O.V
I felt so bad but after what jack told me i felt bad for him as well. i was slowly walking back to our house when i heard foot steps behind me. i took out my gun and pointed it at the direction where i heard the noise and saw wolfie behind me. "it's just me put the gun down you fool!" She told me "sorry i didn't
know" i replied to her "are you still mad at me?" i asked while we were walking "well yeah, but if you have really really good explanation then i won't be mad" she told me "ok let's go home then and i will tell you" i replied. we were walking home and i tried to intertwine our fingers but she wouldn't let me, that's how i know she is really mad at me. we made it home and i ran tot he door to unlock and told her "go shower and put on some warm and comfortable clothes i'm taking you out" "umm... no you're not you are going to explain to me what happened earlier" she replied. " i know and i am but i am gonna tell you at the tree" i said " why do we need to go to the tree?" she asked but i didn't reply i just pushed her towards the stairs and she groaned while walking up.
*Time skip to the tree*
(The tree is our secret place where we talk about secret stuff and random things so yeah). we climbed up the tree and sat on the branch we always sit on and i started. " ok so long story short, jack didn't want to turn you he was forced by his dad, he said that if he didn't do his dad will kill you himself. so it took me a while to trust him but when i saw that he would always bring meat for you to eat when you turned i realized that he really was telling the truth so please, i know it will take you a long time to trust him again but at least let him tell you himself ok" i told her and " i don't know VV he changed my whole life and not in a good way, i can't be around my friends i can't eat the way i used to and the worst of all i can't show everyone my true self it's hard for me ya know" she said. it was true she was never the same when he injected her with that stuff and i don't blame her when she says she can't trust him. " i know wolfie but let him tell you, i'll come with you if you want ok" i said " o-ok i guess but you have to come with me" she said hesitantly "OK! let's go get ramen i'm starving".
i jumped down the tree and so did she it was only a 10 foot jump we've jump down higher places than that. we walked to the convenient store i went to grab her hand but before i could she grabbed my hand and pulled me into an alley and behind a dumpster. "what the hell are you doing?!" i whisper yelled at her but she put her finger up to her lips signaling me to shut up so i did. "it's Darcy remember the one that got her boyfriend to beat you up i'm gonna get that bitch" she said i panicked and grabbed her before she could reach her but it was to late Darcy saw her. "oh hi wolf of should i call you Samantha that's your real name right?" she said to my sister " who told you that?" wolf asked "oh park jimin did, you remember him the one who cheated on you with me because you didn't give him what he wanted?" oh no wolf was getting pissed off " oh well at least i'm not giving my goods to every boy in the school" " what did you just say 'Samantha' " Darcy was threatening her now. " don't call me that" wolf told her but Darcy wasn't giving up " i heard your parents don't love you is it because you were the cause of your brother zack's death?" Darcy said * oh shit no body ever dares to mention him in front of wolf knowing what she will do*. before i could grab wolf she ran towards Darcy and pushed her up against the wall and said soflty " you wanna repeat that Darcy?" Darcy was scared but tried not to show it " y-you -h-heard me." "oh yeah i heard you i was just giving you a chance to redeem yourself but i guess not"wolf said to her. "first don't YOU EVER MENTION MY BROTHER UNLESS YOU HAVE SOMETHING NICE TO SAY!!" she said stabbing darcy in her thigh with her dagger "and second.. don't call me samantha understand?"
darcy screamed out in pain again when wolf twisted the dagger that was in her thigh. " HEY WHAT ARE DOING TO MY GIRL!?" some guy yelled at us "oh perfect the guy who beat up my twin and broke his finger perfect timing." wolf said. Wolf walked towards the guy and stopped in front of her and said "do you recognize that guy over there? the guy that you beat up? that's my twin brother and i know you know who i am and now you know that you're screwed"
after she said that she grabbed him by his hair and dragged him to darcy and stabbed darcy in the chest but not to kill her and next she stabbed the guy in the heart to kill him. " next time check with who you're messing with".
I called our butler " hey Sebastian we need a clean up near the convenient store please, yeah, thanks man" i hung up and said "let's go i'm still hungry and you need to change your clothes. go home and i'll meet you there with food ok" i told wolf and she replies with a simple nod. i walked into the store and went through the isles i grabbed 2 24 packs of ramen because we were running low on food so this will last us a couple of weeks i went to the drink section and grabbed a 12 pack of soda and a 35 pack of water. before i left i asked the butler if he could help carry this stuff back to my house. we carried to my house and i told him to just leave the stuff at the door step and he can leave, after he left i took the stuff in and put them away. i went to go look for my sister which wasn't hard she was sleeping on the floor of her room *god this girl sleeps everywhere* i went to wake her up but i noticed that her face was swollen like she was crying. she must've been crying because she was thinking of our brother, he didn't die because of her he died because he was doing something he shouldn't have been doing. i picked her up and put her on the couch in the living room so i could make us some ramen. when i came back to wake her up i saw that she was up and watching a movie so i went back to the kitchen and grabbed her bowl for her to eat. we were sitting down watching movies and eating our ramen when she said "it was my fault that he died wasn't it. i could have been there to kill that guy who shot him but i wasn't and he died because I wasn't there" i looked at her like she was crazy." no it wasn't your fault don't you ever say that zack knew he shouldn't have done that but he did it anyway don't blame yourself ok?" i told her and wiped the tears that were slowly falling down her face "ok" she replied. "let's go to sleep we have to got to school tomorrow and after school we are gonna talk to jack, sorry you have no choice we are gonna go talk to jack now go to sleep." i told her while cleaning up our mess. "ok" is all she said before walking upstairs i watched her and i saw her go into the bathroom to shower. after she came out i went in and showered then came out and we said our good nights and went to our rooms to sleep.
*next morning*
Wolf's P.O.V
I woke up to the sound of my alarm telling me to wake up, i got up and stretched out my muscles before going to the bathroom. i went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and shower. i came out of the shower and wrapped my towel around my body and went to get my school uniform out of my closet we can wear where whatever shoes we want but the uniform is mandatory(https://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=230763403) i changed into my clothes and packed my bag after that i went to wake up V but surprisingly he was already up and getting dressed so i went my car and started it so i was sitting in the AC and playing on my phone. i beeped my horn like 5 times until V finally came out of the house and locked the door. we drove to the school which is weird because we usually walk to school but today we were to lazy so i drove us there today.
(that is the end of this chapter please leave feedback on what i should improve on or if you want me to add something).
#bts#taehyung#jungkook#jimin#rapmonter#jin#suga#j-hope#bts reactions#bts scenarios#taehyung imagine#jungkook imagine#jimin imagine
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The Azure Beacon: Chapter 3
I slipped in and out of consciousness a handful of times. I don’t remember any of the times I had awoken, I just remember desperation from both of my friends, and an eagerness to return to the surface. I had an intense dream while I was lucid. I dreamt of a stag on an open field, grazing alone. It had antlers that rose and curled behind its head in a vein-like pattern. It’s eyes were beacons of light, and it raised its head and looked at me. Two lanterns of light consuming my flesh, and eating my breath. It seared my being away, and I was then reborn into a entity of light much like the stag. I felt rejuvenated, and cleansed. I also felt an almost overwhelming burden fall onto my shoulders as I stood up. With that burden came immense strength and power. A frightening amount of power. The kind of power you could only dream of, the kind that you envision when you hear the names Marick, Vork, Assandra, or Kardeneya. I blinked twice, and on the second blink, the stag and the open plain had vanished. In its place was the same woman I had briefly seen when I passed out. She flashed me a tiny smile, and then she too was gone. I was left alone in a world of white light, and then my eyes shot open, and I was among the living once more.
“Oh sweet Nyra, give me the strength I require to heal this man.” I heard Syla pray just above me.
“For fuck’s sake, can you not do anything, Druid? He’s dying!” Jarick panickedly hollered.
“I need silence if I’m to do anything!” Syla yelled back.
I opened my eyes then, and saw their faces. I was frightened for my life once I took a drink of their expressions. Their countenence seemed to have aged years, and they were harried. Jarick was in a cold sweat, and his eyes were bloodshot. Syla was sweating as well, her hair a mess as she kneeled above my prone body casting what I assumed to be healing magics.
“He’s awake! You need to lay down, and be still Warrior Wyran. You are gravely injured.” Syla said calmly, which eased me a tad.
“What happened?” I hoarsely gargled out. My throat felt like a tube of razors. I tasted blood, and something incredibly bitter which I would later learn was from some medicinal herbs Syla had fed me.
“Do not speak, Warrior. You need your strength.” She responded.
I sat up. Not the smartest decision on my part for two reasons. The first being that my body did not like me moving around. At all. I knocked myself back out for a few minutes. The second reason being that I found out why they were panicking so very much when I tried to lift myself up. My right arm was gone. In its place was a gnarled stump that hung off my shoulders. Exposed bone, sinew, and flesh garnered a macabre painting. I wiggled my arm and watch as my tendons flared, open to the air. I knew then how dire my circumstance was, and I grew sickly pale, and descended back into that plane of unconsciousness that I had been so acquainted with in this day. I would not awake for a long while and there were no dreams to cradle me in that time.
It was three days later by the time I awoke. I was rested securely back in Corey thank the gods. I found myself in a short, cozy wooden attachment to a neighboring building. Inside was quartered off into sections by cloth, each housing a bed, chair, and a table. This was the medical bay that we had. As I lay there, staring intently at the stump that had been tended to and was now neatly tucked away inside gauze and bandages, I couldn’t keep my thoughts off of the woman I had dreamt of. She was so very familiar to me. She was so real. What did my dream mean? A holy stag? Were these portents, or were they machinations of a mind struggling with shock and battling death? I couldn’t possibly know.
I heard a knock at my door, and then a woman entered without a response.
“Oh, hello. You’re awake. I was told to bring these to you.” She said softly, her eyes never leaving my arm.
“Thank you. How long have I been under?” I said, gnawing at some bread that I was handed.
“Three days.” She replied.
Not favorable, but I had expected it. I only nodded slightly and let my eyes fall down to my arm. The woman nodded back and swiftly left me to my misery. I tried to move my right arm, and I felt the ghost of what had been, and a single tear rolled down my cheek. I allowed myself that much. I allowed myself a moment of grievance. However, after that, I resolved myself to look forward. This was only a hurdle, and it would not set me back. I wouldn’t allow it to. I sat up. I instinctively propped myself up with my ghost arm, and a shock of pain surged through my body. I would have to remember not to do that.
When I got up, I made my way across the room to my clothing that sat on a chair. I donned my dingy white shirt, and pulled up my pants, then strapped on my boots. I assumed my uniform was in the barracks. I downed the water I had been given, and felt the refreshing coolness of it sting my parched throat. I took a single deep breath, and held it for a long while. Then I finally grabbed the door and stepped out into my home town. I exhaled after a couple seconds, and peered around.
Everything was the exact same, yet it all felt absurdly different. Eerily different. As if the town had been wiped clean from the surface of this world, and replaced with an exact replica. All the smiles were the same, all the sounds echoed what I had previously heard in my countless patrols. Yet, it was different. No. No, it was the same. It was the exact same. Nothing had changed about this place. The town square still held the fountain in the center, and there were still families and people gathered around unceremoniously, sitting on benches or playing with the water. There were still friendly folk passing by, greeting me with a nod. There were still old, yet sturdy buildings surrounding the square, branching out from it like oil in water. I smelled that familiar scent of bread and meat vendors posted around, scattered along the edges of the square. No, nothing had changed about Corey. I had changed. It was something far more than a gimp arm, and a sense of newness. This town remained the same, yet I had not. It was as if I was staring through the eyes of a new person. I looked down toward my good arm. I clenched my fist once, twice. I stood an inch higher, straightened out my back more. My eyes seemed sharper, my instincts quicker. I noticed the details more, and I felt amazing. I took one step. Curious. I took another. What was this? My arm has gone, and yet I felt amazing. Not just physically, but mentally. I felt renewed, I felt incredible. I took giant strides towards the barracks. Found myself in front of the Captain’s Quarters. I reached out my arm and pushed the door open, and stood confidently in front of the Captain. He was sat at his table in his chair. There were two figures across from him. Jarick and Syla. They turned toward me, and they looked stern, and worn out. Bags sat heavily under their eyes. They only looked toward me and said, “Wyran, you’re gonna wanna sit down for this one.”
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