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maddiefriendlovesbilly · 3 years

Text

Back by literally zero request:

Once More, This Time With Feeling: Pt. 2

Rating: PG13 for violence and graphic descriptions, SFW

Ship: Ghost/Spooker

Warnings: Graphic Descriptions of intense panic attacks and dissociation, derealization, depersonalization, implied traumatic events, similarities to alters switching (Jimmy and Gregory, not intentional but is still there due to the nature of the scene), Graphic Descriptions of violence, Major Character Death (temporary) and probably more (please tell me if there is anything else that needs to be tagged!)

Summary: Ghost learns that watching someone die in front of you is a very quick way to find out how much you actually care about them - even if you're not quite ready to admit it just yet. (Contains lots of fluff with a decent amount of angst mixed in! Could be considered hurt/comfort)

Wordcount: 2634

Nothing can be compared to the sound of an axe splitting a head clean open. Ghost can’t move. He can’t think. This can’t be happening. He’s gonna wake up now...Now...Now.

But nothing happens.

He glances down, numbly, at Spooker’s lifeless body on the ground. Blood spills from the crevice in his skull. Ghost’s stomach lurches, so he looks back up at the doorway, wondering if he’s next. It barely registers that there is no enemy. Just an axe swinging gently back and forth on a rope attached to the ceiling. A trap. It was a trap all along, and they fell for it. Distantly, he wonders if brains can be repaired once they’re split open like that. He thinks, Probably not.

Ghost feels like his world is sinking, crashing, burning. Why isn’t he getting up? Billy’s powers should still hold up here - they’re well within range of the Acachalla house, so why?

He realizes he’s been staring vacantly at Spooker for the past who knows how long, and when he looks up Katrina is standing in front of him, staring at him from behind her mane. She gurgles, sounding somehow both sympathetic and smug despite saying no actual words, and Ghost wavers between collapsing to the ground and sobbing, and strangling her on the spot. Something twitches inside of him, vile and immoral, waiting for its moment to strike. He considers indulging it just this once; doesn’t get the chance to decide whether he really will because Katrina pounces, claws digging into his ribcage like she’s searching for something - and in his last moments of consciousness, he watches something pulse in her hand, once, before all goes dark.

Even in death, it seems he’s not allowed to rest.

As soon as his eyes close, they blink open. He can’t see anything, but he feels a doorknob under his hand and feels his mouth finishing the words, “--what about the others?”

Behind him, Spooker’s voice replies, without a hint of caution or worry, “No luck over he-Woah!”

The door hits the wall and Ghost’s eyes widen with fear. He hears himself stutter out, “H-Hey, you good?”

He mouths the words as Spooker says them, glad at least that the room is too dark for Spooker to see it. “Yeah...yeah, I’m alright, just caught me off guard. Let’s go.” He pivots, lunging blindly for where Spooker’s voice came from, tackling him. Something sharp nicks his cheek, and he feels a slight breeze pass overhead. They hit the ground hard, but Ghost decides he prefers that over the alternative.

“Ghost! Wh-What was that for?”

He fumbles for his emergency batteries and reloads his flashlight as fast as he can, knowing Katrina could appear any second. He shines his light towards the doorway, where the axe takes a final swing inwards, before disappearing behind the door for good.

“Holy crap Ghost, how...how did you know that was there?”

“Instincts or something, I guess…” He pants, out of breath.

His mind buzzes and whirs, and he can hardly think through it, but he can’t just lay on top of Spooker forever, so he forces himself to stand, peeking around the corner cautiously.

Katrina is nowhere in sight. His chest aches with how coiled his muscles are - ready to spring at any moment.

Spooker dusts himself off and peeks over Ghost’s shoulder, searching the room and finding the exact same thing Ghost did — nothing. Ghost just barely restrains himself from putting a protective arm between Spooker and the empty room.

Cautiously, he steps inside, Spooker close behind. The only sound is that of their boots clicking against the tile floor. Despite everything, he finds time to thank any gods watching that Spooker has been too distracted by the new surroundings to baby him about the second cut across his cheek. It’s only a matter of time though, he knows.

Glancing around cautiously, Ghost takes in the decrepit machinery dominating the room’s layout. Most of it has decayed beyond recognition. In the far right corner sits a row of industrial shelves containing what at first looks to be scrap metal and wires, but as they approach them, turns out to be an assortment of batteries and other miscellaneous electronics.

“Score!!” Spooker shouts, and by some miracle Ghost quells his roaring panic into a tense, “Spooker, be careful, we don’t know if the entity is nearby.”

Spooker appears duly contrite, so he lets it go this once, if only because he doesn’t fully grasp the peril they are in. Hell, even Ghost’s not sure what the bigger picture is. If that entity is truly Katrina, then what are her motives? And if it isn’t, did the others see someone else?

Spooker is currently loading some new batteries into his flashlight, so Ghost feigns at inspecting some old flip phones on one of the shelves near Spooker and asks hesitantly, “That girl earlier, you saw her too right?”

“The one with the sharp claws and hair all in her eyes? Yeah, why?”

“Hm. Interesting,” is all he can say.

So if it’s something pretending to be her to toy with him, why did everyone see Katrina, instead of their own illusions? Is it just another layer to the deception? Why bother?

What is the point?

“Is that Nokia particularly thought-provoking, or are you gonna tell me what you’re thinking about?” Spooker had apparently appeared over his shoulder sometime while he was lost in thought, and Ghost jerks around, slamming into the shelf of Nokias, now behind him.

A loud CLANG resonates throughout the room, reverberating off the surrounding machinery in ways that seem almost staged -- it’s hauntingly ethereal.

Spooker’s hands fly out to steady him immediately, a look of concern clearly written on his face. For some reason, despite all logic, the first thing he notices is how close they are to each other. The second is the pain in his back. He hisses.

Spooker’s hands flit about nervously, from Ghost’s shoulder to his face before he curls his fists at his sides, nails digging into his palms. “I didn’t mean to scare you like that -- okay maybe a little but-” Ghost’s mouth twitches upwards in amusement involuntarily. “-I didn’t think you’d startle that badly! Really! I’m so so sorry-”

Ghost realizes that Spooker could probably apologize all day if allowed to, so he cuts in, “I’m fine Spooker.” it’s mostly the truth, he’ll probably bruise like hell tomorrow morning, but other than that he’s okay. He’s been through much worse on a mission, so he tries to seem sincere when he smiles slightly and says, “Seriously, it’s nothing to worry about, I’m alright.”

Spooker seems placated for all of two seconds before he suddenly squints at Ghost with heavy suspicion. “Are you saying that because you’re actually fine, or because your pain-rating scale only has the options of ‘not bleeding out or missing limbs, so doing fine,’ and ‘currently bleeding out or missing limbs, might need assistance if the situation is truly dire?’”

Ghost glances away, he’s not exactly wrong - not that he’ll admit that. “It’s actually fine, just a small bruise.”

“Uh huh.” He doesn’t sound convinced. “Turn around, let me see it.”

“Wha-Why? I told you it’s fine!” He is not whining right now, that would be childish. He’s just...objecting loudly. Yes.

“Yeah, and I totally believe you. Turn around.”

Ghost eyes the space under Spooker’s arm, calculating possible escapes. “We have much more important things to do than play doctor Spooker. Like finding a way out of here perhaps? You can swaddle me in bubble wrap when we get out of here for all I care, but right now I’d like to keep moving forward.”

Spooker seems to debate this for a few moments before blinking a few times and replying, “Fine, but if you start struggling to keep up I’m not going to be so nice.” He moves back, letting Ghost slide past him and out from between the shelves. Ghost has to push aside the very strong feeling that he’s had that conversation before.

Ghost ignores the inexplicable heat in his cheeks and starts scanning the room for an exit. For some reason it feels like the temperature has risen quite a bit since they entered, maybe the next room will be cooler. It could be some sort of elaborate trap to slowly boil them to death without them noticing. Who really knows with ghosts.

The walls around the machines are solid grey concrete, smooth and uniform. Ghost searches for some sort of inconsistency, a flaw somewhere, and eventually he finds a small notch in the otherwise perfect walls, and moves to investigate.

As he starts to approach it the sound of something metal hitting the floor ricochets from behind the shelves. “S-Sorry! My...My bad....”

“You alright?”

“Fine! Fine! Everything is fine!” Spookers voice is an octave too high to be deemed truly fine, but Ghost chalks it up to being startled by the loud noise. He looks back at the notch in the wall. Suddenly, he realizes that engraved just above the notch is a long string of symbols he’s never seen before. He wonders how he didn’t notice the intricate carvings until now.

“ᚱᛖᛋᛏ ᛁᚾ ᛏᚺᛖ ᚨᚱᛗᛋ ᛟᚠ ᚹᚺᛖᚱᛖ ᛃᛟᚢᚱ ᛋᛟᚢᛚ ᛁᛋ ᚱᛟᛟᛏᛖᛞ. ᛒᚱᛖᚨᛏᚺᛖ ᛁᚾ ᛏᚺᛖ ᚨᚢᚱᚨ ᛏᚺᚨᛏ ᛃᛟᚢ ᛋᚺᚨᚱᛖ. ᛟᚾᚲᛖ ᛏᚺᛖᛋᛖ ᚲᛟᚾᛞᛁᛏᛁᛟᚾᛋ ᚺᚨᚹᛖ ᛒᛖᛖᚾ ᛗᛖᛏ, ᛏᚺᛖ ᛈᚨᛏᚺ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛟᛈᛖᚾ.”

Squinting at it, he decides to call Spooker over. Spooker scampers up, yet again hovering just over his left shoulder. Ghost is starting to think he just likes being there. For some reason this doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t know why.

Spooker looks at the symbols for a few seconds like they’re familiar, before finally he exclaims, “Oh! I know what those are - Those are Nordic Runes - specifically Elder Futhark!”

“You just...knew that?”

“I’ve always been into occult stuff, y’know? Apparently people still use these for divination today! But it’s also a language - like right here...” He points at one that looks like a fancy M over Ghost’s shoulder, and he’s beaming so brightly that Ghost is pretty sure he’s found the reason it’s so hot in this room - the warmth in his smile as he talks could rival the sun. Spooker keeps talking, explaining what different runes mean and their individual names, and Ghost realizes he’s been staring at Spooker’s face instead of paying attention, so he looks back at the runes and hopes he hadn’t noticed. Spooker doesn’t mention it if he does, just keeps talking about runes and their meanings, and it settles a part of Ghost he hadn’t even realized was jittery until now.

Something in the notched section of wall clicks twice, and not a second later does the wall slide open in one smooth motion. Behind it lies a rather dull looking corridor, with plain, dark walls, and a sharp turn about twenty feet ahead. They both jump slightly at the sudden change, but just as quickly steel themselves and enter, unwilling to test how long it would remain open. “Do you know what opened it?”

Spooker’s eyes flick side to side like he’s debating with himself. “Well, the clue was really vague...So I’m not really sure..” He scratches his chin. He’s pretty sure Spooker is hiding something, but asking what the clue was when he probably said it earlier is practically announcing that he wasn’t actually paying attention, so instead he just replies, “Huh, weird. Well as long as we’re making progress it can’t be a bad thing. Let’s go.”

Spooker, for one reason or another, stays silent.

Oh. It seems he forgot where he was.

As they round the corner they are met with the one and only Katrina - or whatever it is that’s pretending to be her - standing about thirty feet down the hallway. Ghost could swear she’s smiling under her mop of hair. He wants to run, or scream, or just, at the very least, move, preferably somewhere where the blood red eyes piercing through her veil of hair can’t follow him. But he can’t. He’s stuck to the spot, like he’s been sautered to the floor. He feels a presence behind him - and it can’t be her because he’s staring right at her; so it must be Spooker hovering just over his left shoulder, just like always, and if he wasn’t frozen in place he might have cried with relief. He manages to drag a shaking hand backwards until it meets Spooker’s, intertwining their fingers with a bruising grip. Katrina observes this, before nodding her head in what looks like approval. She turns on her heel and shambles back the way she presumably came.

“Wh-” His voice cracks, forcing him to pause and gather himself. “What was that. Why did she-I don’t, I don’t understand. Why-Why would…I don’t understand-” The jittery fragment grows restless, feeding off of his panic. He doesn’t understand what it is, he doesn’t understand what just happened, he doesn’t understand anything at all.

The fragment is growing agitated now. He doesn’t know why or how or what it is. It’s hungry. It’s so hungry. How did he end up on the ground? When did he start laughing? There’s someone talking somewhere. They feel familiar, safe. Who were they again? He’s still holding their hand. A face has come into view, or maybe they lifted his head. He feels like he’s watching through a window. The face - so so familiar, yet completely unrecognizable - wipes tears from his cheeks. Is he crying? They look worried; it looks wrong on their face. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong--

It’s all wrong.

This isn’t happening. It can’t be. It’s not real.

Spooker - that’s his name - looks at him with a frantic, desperate, fearful look in his eyes. He’s still laughing, he realizes.

“I saw you die,” falls from his mouth, unbidden. He doesn’t know why. “The axe. It killed you.” He giggles hysterically, but it’s choked off by more tears.

“I know,” Spooker says in a soothing voice, like he’s talking to a caged animal, “I know, I’m sorry.” They’re still holding hands, even after all of this. He looks down to see that his nails have dug deep enough into Spooker’s hand to draw blood. He starts to pull away, but Spooker catches his wrist. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ll be fine. You can hold on for as long as you need, okay?”

“Okay. Okay.” Everything is still so foggy, but the red haze is gone. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. Nothing is wrong with you okay?”

“But, normal....normal people don’t.” He swallows thickly. “Don’t do this.”

“No, no they don’t,” Spooker agrees.

“So why am I?”

“We’re gonna figure it out, okay? We’ll figure it out together.”

“Okay.” He feels very small. Vulnerable. Scared. He finds himself longing for a mansion he’s never seen before; tall and green and empty, so empty. Home.

He suddenly feels exhausted. “I-I can’t,” he blinks rapidly, trying to stem the drooping of his eyelids.

“It’s okay, you can rest. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

“Alright…”

The next time his eyes close, he drifts off into a dreamless sleep.

#jess writes #venturiantale #venturiantale pie #taleblr #ghost/spooker #ghooker #fred spooker soup #fred spooker #johnny toast #johnny ghost #chris colon ghostie #vt pie #paranormal investigators extraordinaire #fuck uhhhh #ill add more later prolly

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meetthetank · 3 years

Text

Beast Code Chapter 1: The Twilit City

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Category: F/M Fandom: NieR: Automata (Video Game) Relationship: 2B/9S (NieR: Automata) Characters: 2B (NieR: Automata), 9S (NieR: Automata), Original YoRHa Characters (NieR: Automata) Additional Tags: Transformation, gothic horror, Android Lycanthropy...sort of, Inspired by Bloodborne (Video Game), Everyday i get closer to just writing a Bloodborne AU

Summary: Break the vicious cycle with tooth and claw. Unleash the beast within and destroy your chains. But the strength to defy fate comes at a grave cost. Will it be enough, little doll? Or will you succumb to despair once more?

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31546982

The assignment to the Twilight Belt comes as a shock to 2B and 9S. Rarely, if ever, are YorHa units sent to this border of perpetual daylight and eternal night. Conditions are always reported as unstable by the infrequent scans by one of the other satellite bases that orbit earth, too dangerous to deploy scanners by themselves, and too depleted of resources for the Council to care about. The mystery surrounding the strip of permanent twilight goads curious operators and scanners alike to comb through files searching for nuggets of data, image or video files, anything they can get their hands on. All but a few pieces of data reveal tantalizing scraps and clues to the puzzle of the Sunset Belt. Photographs of dead machines with toothy, gaping maws that split their spherical heads in two and minerals warped in peculiar shapes. According to one of the situation reports from a scanner that had been sent there, there was an eerie, foreboding feeling about the place; that strange and frightening sounds would echo across the landscape and that he felt close to a forbidden barrier that separated this world from another. Though the file and its contents are now treated as a human “ghost story”, many androids, including 2B and 9S, believe at least some portion of the tale.

9S relays this story to 2B as they descend to Earth’s surface, his chattering easing some of 2B’s trepidation. The pair had fallen into an easy rhythm over the course of several assignments to Earth, most of which involved retrieving data from lost servers buried in rubble or clearing out an area of machine lifeforms. Despite her outwardly cold demeanor, 9S wormed his way past all of her defenses, forming a strong, solid relationship with the battler android. His voice is a centering point for her and assists in ignoring the gut churning possibilities of what could be waiting for them below.

“...What do you think, 2B?” his voice crackles from the comms system inside her flight unit.

“Hm?” she shifts her head to the side, glancing at his jet black flight unit cruising beside hers.

“What do you think made the target go rogue?”

She bites her lower lip. There are a thousand possible answers as to why a normally punctual, efficient YorHa Battle unit would suddenly stop responding to command and not checking in at required times. Only a few of those options were machine lifeform related complications.

“We’ll find out when we arrive, 9S.” she says curtly, eager to shut down the conversation, “Focus on landing protocol.”

He sighs, a sound of annoyance and frustration, “Yeah, yeah.”

“One affirmation will-”

“Fiiiiiiiine.”

The final phase of their descent is spent in silence. They pass through the Earth’s atmosphere in streaks of fire and light towards the border of day and night, and a continent that humans called Europe. Even as they descend, the outlines of ancient, massive structures come into view. Both androids are used to the thick vegetation eating away at the remains of human structures, but here the trees are gnarled, twisted, and void of leaves or blossoms. Their branches reach to the crimson sky and permanently setting sun like bony hands in prayer or a stag’s antlers. As 2B and 9S set their flight units down a few miles away from the outskirts of a sprawling, ancient city. It amazes 9S, as he exits his own unit, that the buildings are in such good condition considering the millenia that have passed it by. Great spires of countless cathedrals pierce the heavens, casting an ominous, looming shadow over the otherwise barren landscape. A well worn cobblestone road, lined with rusted iron lighting fixtures long since burnt out, leads into the city proper.

2B and 9S stand at the precipice of this ancient beast of stone and metal in awe of its size, and terrified of what might lurk within. A hoarse bird’s caw, jolts the androids back into awareness, 2B drawing her katana and prepares for battle.

“Heh,” 9S laughs, trying to calm them both down, “Just a raven, 2B.”

“What?”

“A large black bird. Harmless to us.” He doesn’t tell her about the chill he gets down his spine as he watches the corvid gaze down at them with beady black eyes, or how humans saw these birds as ill omens or prophets of death.

They begin the trek into the forgotten city. 2B doesn’t put Virtuous Contract away.

Pod 042 alerts 2B to the presence of an unidentifiable android signal, marking the location on both hers and 9S’ map. Since the area has yet to be properly mapped out by satellite imagery (as inaccurate as that process is) only a vague street layout is available through a very low power scan. They have no way of judging what might block their path to the target beyond featureless grey masses depicting buildings, rubble, large trees, or whatever else may lie in wait. Their target, represented by a small orange dot on the map, appears to be near the city’s main gate and inside one of the larger buildings. 2B refuses to admit it to herself, but she’s relieved to not have to delve too far into this labyrinthine city.

“I’ve never seen the sky this color…” 9S muses as he stares up, transfixed by the blood red sky and orange sun hanging low.

Though hauntingly beautiful, she won’t deny, 2B keeps her gaze fixed on the wrought iron gate ahead of them. The heavens disturb her; they are the color of death. Of war. And the sun is… wrong.

She snaps at 9S to keep focused as they approach the gate to the city. Though scans indicate there are no machine lifeforms, or any lifeforms beyond their target, she’s learned from countless combat assignments to not rely totally on what the support unit reports. She’s encountered and seen machines that mask themselves from scans or camouflage themselves in the environment, and in a place like this anything could be hiding in the shadows just outside of view.

The iron gate lies ajar, worn from millennia of neglect. Clouds of rust particles burst from the hinges as 2B shoves it open further, the metal grinding against itself with a horrible grating shriek. The sound makes them both wince, and they slip through the partially opened gate as soon as they can.

Standing inside the city gates, 9S can’t shake the uneasy feeling that claws at the back of his mind. The great ancient human structures loom above them, and though he knows that the buildings themselves aren’t alive, he can’t shake the notion that he’s being watched by them. The windows are dark, but when he passes by the light of the setting sun reflects off of them, giving them the illusion of intelligence. Suddenly, 9S feels as if he’s inside a cave, or locked in a room with no exit. Suddenly… He finds it hard to breathe. 9S tugs at the collar of his jacket as if it's tightening around his throat. His synthetic lungs fill with air as much as he can take, then he releases it moments later. It calms him, if only a little.

2B’s gaze is fixed ahead on the building Pod 042 marked as the rogue android’s hiding place. It’s a much smaller structure than the others that choke the sky, but its reach stretches across the streets like a tree’s roots. Judging by the well preserved signs that hang from crumbled doors it looked to have multiple uses. 9S commands his own Pod to run scans on the words and symbols for later analysis.

“The target’s in here…” 2B murmurs, holding her free hand up in a tight fist, signaling 9S to stop behind her.

This portion of the sprawling building is similar in structure to the massive spires above. It has the same pointed section on the roof, but much smaller in scale, and similar symbols decorate the exterior. A cross, winged humans, various flowering plants, and a number of human figures bowing their heads or supplicating themselves to the winged humans.

“This must have been a place of worship,” 9S muses aloud.

“Focus.”

He nods. Typically 9S argues with his partner about the necessity for recording data like this, or excuse his wandering attention to his designation as a scanner, but he knows the danger within the house of worship, or rather, he doesn’t know. Neither one of them knows what this rouge android is capable of.

2B presses her hand against the wooden doors to the chapel and pushes it open as slowly as possible. It groans in protest, dust falls from its hinges and frame, but it swings inward. A rush of warm air washes over them carrying the scent of stale incense and dead machines. Clouds of smoke billow out of the doorway, rising into the red sky like twisted fingers. 2B enters first, sliding in sword arm first. She motions for 9S to wait for a moment, then commands Pod 042 to switch on its flashlight.

9S peeks his head around the door, keeping a few paces behind his partner. He switches on his own Pod’s flashlight to illuminate more of the pitch black interior. Long wooden benches are pushed up against the walls, opening up the center space. Ornate candle holders, rotting books, charred incense burners, and pieces of artwork among other things 9S has no name for are scattered across the ground, each one a priceless human artifact that could fuel hours of study. Yet it’s not these that hold 9S’ attention, but the statue at the far back of the chapel, and the figure kneeling in front of it.

It looks to be made of some kind of marble, a pristine white stone that has been sheltered from time and the elements. The subject is another winged human, this one wearing splendid armor and wielding a great spear. Beneath them, a grotesque, writhing beast bares its teeth and claws at the warrior as the blade pierces its throat. 9S has never seen anything like it in person, and very few records of these kinds of sculptures remain at all. It’s both horrific and beautiful at once. He wonders what the human who made this saw that inspired it. Did creatures like these roam the world during their time?

2B steps in front of him, Virtuous Contract at the ready. The figure in front of the statue rises to their feet as the Pod’s flashlights center on them. A cloak made of feathers conceals most of their form but they appear to be a female android, perhaps a YorHa model. Though, if that were the case it would have been in the mission briefing. That is, unless...

The android turns her head to the side, glaring at the pair over her shoulder.

“So, Command sent the wolves, did they?” She asks, a distinct rumble in her voice.

2B raises her blade and keeps her gaze steady. She hears 9S also ready his weapon, the golden katana Cruel Oath.

Lazily, the android turns her body to face them. Her clothes confirm her origins; there’s no mistaking the sharp white embellishments and black velvet of a YorHa uniform; however each piece is ripped, tattered, and stitched together with other scraps of clothing or… animal hide.

The rouge android drags the blade of a bloodied top heavy sword between her fingers, cleaning the gore from it. “It doesn’t matter, dog.” Her eyes shine with a strange, purplish light that refracts around her collapsed, twisted pupils. “You will fall like the rest.”

It isn’t until the rogue android rushes forward, sword raised, that 2B sees the corpses of YorHa units piled in front of the statue, and the blood that soaks it.

She dashes backward and shoves the bewildered 9S out of harm's way. The android’s bloodied sword crashes into the stonework floor, sending thousands of years of dust into the air. 2B lunges, her katana poised to take advantage of the enemy’s opening, but she sidesteps much quicker than anticipated. The rogue’s fist slams into 2B’s chest, distorting her internal sensors and throwing her off balance. 2B watches in horror as the rogue drives her sword towards her, but a golden flash knocks the blade away.

“2B!” 9S shouts, brandishing Cruel Oath. “Are you okay?!”

She shakes her head as if it would clear the internal errors from her vision, but she assumes her battle stance next to her partner. “Fine.”

Both androids launch into an assault on the rogue, attacking in tandem. Despite 2B’s scrambled sensors, she and 9S have an undeniable synergy that comes with countless missions. 2B forces the rogue back with singular, powerful blows, while 9S jabs at any opening he can reach from the sides. However, even with their combined might the rogue deflects and maneuvers out of the way of each attack as casually as one would flick away an insect or step around a puddle. She looks to be expending no effort at all as she dances around the two YorHa. Anger and frustration rises in 2B, culminating in a harsh growl. She mimics the rogue’s tactic from earlier, rushing forward and feinting with a crushing overhead strike that is easily dodged but allows no time for recovery. She slams her fist into the rogue android’s face, sending her stumbling backwards. Before 9S can dive in with a horizontal slash the rogue dashes backward, putting crucial distance between her and her hunters.

The rogue android lowers her gaze at the pair, sizing them up, taking stock of their abilities and assessing their weaknesses. 2B watches her eyes dart back and forth between her and 9S, then linger on 9S. Sensing the rogue’s motive and deciding at that moment that the outcome is unacceptable, 2B dives in front of the strike meant for 9S. The rogue’s sword slices cleanly through her chest, coating the rogue’s clothes in splatters of fresh blood. The battler falls to her knees, clutching the wound with one hand while supporting herself on her sword.

“No!!” 9S screams and lunges at their target. “2B!!”

“Hm. Interesting.” The rogue murmurs, easily deflecting the scanner’s wild strikes.

2B watches through blurred, error obscured vision as 9S drives the rogue back. If she didn’t know any better it’d seem that he has the upper hand, but the rogue’s eyes glint in a way 2B recognizes all too well. She’s baiting him.

9S slams his blade against the rogue’s, pressing all of his power and weight into the strike. It’s the moment she had been waiting for. Suddenly she pulls back, letting 9S’ weight fall forward and forcing him off balance. She kicks his legs out from under him then shoves him into the floor. 9S lets out a startled, choked gasp as his weight and the force of the rogue’s attack cracks the stone floor, sending up more clouds of dust into the air.

Clutching her chest, 2B roars and charges at the target with blinding speed. When she sees the smirk twisting the rogue’s lips and the pointed iron rod in her grip, it’s too late. With a flash of her crowfeather cape, the android meets 2B’s charge with her own, the skewer aimed at her wounded chest. 2B tries to divert her body away, but the momentum is too strong. It’s just enough to roll her body to the side so that the spike pierces clean through her shoulder, clear of critical systems.

The pain, however, is agonizing.

It’s different from the injuries 2B has suffered in the past. Countless machine swords, spears, and axes have torn through her body and of course all of those injuries hurt, but they were manageable. When the iron bar rips through layers of cloth, skin, carbon plating and frame, and synthetic muscle fibers it's as if her shoulder has been set on fire. She clenches her teeth, muffling a scream to a low growl. Her hand wraps around the skewer, close to the wound itself. Instinct tells her to tear it out immediately, but she knows that without treatment doing so would only worsen her condition. 2B doesn’t get to make that decision, unfortunately. The rogue grabs hold of the end of the iron rod and twists it side to side, driving it further into 2B’s shoulder.

2B sinks to her knees and tries to hold back the cries of agony. Her injured arm stops responding to commands and lies limp and useless against her side. She swats at the rogue android with her weakening other arm, desperate to escape from this torment. Her strength fades along with her vision; it becomes impossible to even hold herself upright.

She must not fall, she must not… she must stay strong, she must stay alive.

She will not allow him to die…

Not for the sake of a monster like her….

9S leaps into the fight as the rogue android prepares a killing blow. A flurry of Pod fire, sword strikes, and furious movement all blur together into a white, gold, and black haze. She fights to stay awake, she fights to stand, but her body begins to shut down non-vital systems and conserve as much energy as she can. First her tactile sensors switch off, leaving her in a numbing cold. Then her hearing, quickly followed by sight. A warning flashes across the last vestiges of her vision that she is entering a forced shutdown state, and despite her audio sensors being deactivated, she swears she hears 9S cry out for her.

….

…….

………

……….

……..

….

2B opens her eyes to the blinding, sterile white of hacking space. This itself is not shocking. Oftentimes she would run diagnostics on her critical systems when in a forced shutdown, both to manage critical systems and to keep herself busy.

But now, in the distance, there is an anomaly.

A single figure, black as night, approaches her. It’s shape is human up till its head, which sports pointed ears and a long snout like that of a dog or wolf. It looms over her and leaves a black, fragmented mist in its wake. But most troubling of all in this world of stark monochrome is its eye…. or what 2B believes is an eye. In the center of its lupine face is a strange geometric sigil that emits a highly saturated purple light. It feels… malicious. The thought itself is insane to 2B. Light cannot possess intent or emotions, and yet…

“This is an unacceptable outcome.” A voice booms in her head. Somehow she knows it is the entity speaking.

2B opens her mouth to respond, but instead of words, thick crimson fluid leaks from her throat.

“You will die. He will die. You cannot abide by this.”

She shakes her head. Droplets of blood fall to the pristine floor. The entity is right. If she has any strength left, 9S will live.

“Stand, little doll,” the entity commands, “Stand and unleash y-...Be——…..d.”

The entity’s voice becomes warped and distorted with audio glitches, yet 2B understands its words with frightening clarity.

“Take-......l-...s within.”

It holds a hand out to her, offering her something she can’t quite make out. The shape in its palm is amorphous, colorless, and flickers with lines of jumbled code. Somehow, she knows this piece of herself in intimate detail, yet cannot remember what this does or what its relation to the entity is.

But it promises strength enough to save 9S.

2B reaches out and takes the code in her hand…

….

………….

…………………………

………………………………………………………..

Her eyes snap open. A current of raw energy runs through her body, electrifying every nerve and sensor within her. She shakes with each pulse of her circulatory apparatus as a new, terrifying strength takes hold. 2B rises to her feet, flexing her hands, legs, arms. One arm’s movement is restricted by the iron bar still stuck in her shoulder. She tears it out with little effort, casting it to the floor. The rattling, hollow sound echoes against the stone chapel.

The rogue’s head snaps up from her combat with 9S, who is barely able to hold his sword. Something in her expression changes. She kicks 9S and points her sword at 2B, her arms shaking in a way they had not before.

2B lunges forward, her sword raised high. The rogue raises her own sword to deflect, but 2B’s newfound strength breaks her guard with one mighty strike. With blinding speed 2B slices through the rogue android’s body. Her crowfeather cape flutters to the floor, soon followed by her arm. The rouge android staggers back, an expression of shock and horror twisting her face. 2B drives her sword through the rogue’s chest, forcing her back further. Instead of drawing her sword back for another strike, a terrifying feeling takes over 2B. She leaves the sword inside the rogue’s chest and tackles her to the ground. With her bare hands and horrible strength, 2B delivers blow after blow to the android’s chest, shoulder, arms, head, and abdomen. Each piece is reduced to a pulp of flesh and metal one after the next until nothing remains but scrap.

2B throws her head back as she straddles her victim, a horrible, twisted grin plastered across her face and arms outstretched. Her body feels wrong… horribly wrong, yet for the first time since she can remember, her chest is light. She gazes up at the morbid sculpture with an emotion she can’t quite describe. It isn’t the same as a combat high, she is intimately familiar with that heady rush. This is something akin to… euphoria. A laugh begins to bubble up in her throat-

“2B?”

She’s forced back to reality by the 9S’ voice, right beside her ear. Suddenly, the terrible strength from moments before fades from her body. Her arms go limp by her sides, and it becomes hard to sit upright. Even breathing is laborious. 9S wraps his arms around her shoulders and tugs her gently, laying her head and shoulders against his chest.

“I’ve got you. We… I think we’re safe.” His breathing is uneven and ragged, much like 2B’s. He swivels his head back and forth, searching for any lingering threats as quickly as possible. “Pod, run a scan for machine lifeform or android signals in the immediate area,” he commands.

Pod 153 is silent for a moment, then emits a grating, hideous garbled noise. Words try to break through the audio distortions but neither 2B or 9S is confident it isn’t simply what they wish to hear.

“Alert:” Pod 042 begins, “Interference from unknown source is preventing accurate scans of the surrounding area. Proposal: Relocate to an elevated aaaaaaa…..a-r-....rrr……”

The same audio distortions come from 042, mingling with 153’s until they both cut off, leaving the androids in silence. “Pod?” 9S calls to the floating support unit. “Pod, respond. ... Pod?”

2B mutters weakly to her own Pod, but it's the same as 9S’. No response at all.

9S pulls up a small data screen, map data, from what 2B can tell. Or… where map data would be. Instead, there’s a blank, grey screen and a little message box that reads No Data.

“What the-...” 9S whispers, flipping through different screens at a frantic pace. “Where-... There’s… all the data is gone!” he shouts, “No map, no signal scans… I can’t even connect to the Bunker…”

“We’re stranded…” 2B muses aloud.

Silence passes between them. Only the ominous wind passing through ancient wood and stone reminds them that the world hasn’t stopped moving around them.

“We should move to a higher area, like your Pod said.” 9S suggests, rising to his feet. “Can you stand?”

When 9S offers a hand out to her, 2B takes it without thinking. His touch, even through his thick gloves, calms the beast pacing inside her.

Beast?

…..What does that mean?

2B rises to her feet, her hands lingering in 9S’ for a moment longer than she normally would. There’s a fog in her head that distorts her equilibrium. She leans on 9S for support, to which he wraps his arm around her waist and positions himself under her shoulder.

“I got you.” He says with a small smile.

2B feels just a bit lighter.

They exit the chapel and make for higher ground. 9S rationalizes that if they simply continue up stairs or inclines they would find a space clear of whatever is interfering with the Pod’s satellite connections. Perhaps it’s the fog that creeps across the cobblestone streets or the odd angle of the sun (not that it makes sense to 9S or 2B but they have to consider all possibilities), or perhaps it’s something beyond that. There’s a strange, eerie feeling about this city that neither can explain, and neither want to talk about. As if there’s a presence constantly watching over them.

They climb the stairs of one of the massive sprawling religious buildings. From what 9S assesses, it seems to have one of the tallest spires in the city. Only a larger time-keeping building looming in the distance is larger. If he could reach the top he should be far enough above whatever is interfering with the Pods. When he relays his plan to 2B who only nods, her eyes unfocused and breathing shallow, worry starts to lace its icy fingers through his chest. Something is wrong with her.

9S’ first instinct is to prepare a data backup with the bunker, but the Pods are both out of commission for the time being. His next is to contact command and ask how they should proceed, to the same conclusion. Climbing the spire is the only course of action he can take, but first, he has to make sure 2B is safe.

He leads her through the castle of worship, now supporting most of her weight. That… frightening show of strength must have exhausted her power supply. There are plenty of well preserved wooden benches that stretch across half of the main worship chambers, at least it would be more comfortable than the stone floors. Under watch by the countless grotesque statues that sit in the rafters, 9S helps 2B onto a long bench, laying her on her back. She hisses and grinds her teeth as she moves. She must have sustained internal damage from that fight…

“I’ll be right back,” he promises, “I’m going to go to the roof to get a clear signal.”

All 2B gives in response is a slow nod. He lingers by her side before leaving, a moment longer than needed.

Now alone in this spacious, hollow, human structure, 2B takes stock of her condition. There’s pain in her shoulders, particularly her right arm. Her legs are tight, most locking up from the strain of the previous battle and trekking up to her current location. Her back, as well, is tense beyond discomfort. It spasms and jolts if she breathes too hard. At least these are injury related, explainable. The black wolfman with purple eyes lingering in the corners of her vision, is not.

She sees the entity in the shadows, lurking just out of view. 9S walks right past it, not even sparing a glance at the tall, gangly creature. It doesn’t respond to 9S either, instead focusing on 2B and only 2B.

The sight of it makes her stomach turn. She tries to close her eyes, but the glowing, purple sigil is burned into her vision. With a groan she digs her knuckles into her eyelids as if she could carve the hallucination out of the air. Defeated, 2B lets her arms down once more. One hand touches the cool stone floor, decorated with elegant mosaics, and she suddenly realizes how warm she is. According to the warning messages displayed in her vision her body temperature is ten degrees above normal levels.

“Pod,” she groans, forcing herself to sit up, “retrieve water from storage-”

“Report: Mail notification received from Command.”

The monotone voice of her support unit shocks her. Pod 042 had been silent up until now due to whatever interference was in the area, and now it’s getting messages from Command? 9S must have established a connection from the roof.

Her heart sinks. If that’s the case he would contact her. The first thing she’d hear would be his voice.

She opens the message, dreading its contents.

Subject has accessed confidential records. Eliminate the Target.

At the top of the spire 9S takes in the view of the entire city, the wind rushing through his hair. It’s breathtaking. It’s unlike anything he’s ever seen. The sky dyes the entire urban sprawl red, as well as the mountains on the horizon. His pulse races as he drinks in the terrifying awe of what the ancient humans were capable of, hoping to remember every last detail of the buildings, the streets, and the magnificent sculptures that litter the city. It’s all so well preserved that he feels as though a human might appear, walking down the cobblestone streets as if nothing were wrong. As if they didn’t go extinct.

Reluctantly he draws his attention away from the splendor of humanity’s ruins, and shakes away the creeping emptiness that comes with that line of thought. He can’t think about that now. He and 2B are stranded. 9S produces a holographic terminal that mirrors Pod 153’s settings menu. Pod’s diagnostics on his end show buildup of foreign material in and around certain receivers, something that 9S expects, but that is only part of the problem. It seems that the atmosphere in this place is clogged with various chemicals and particles that make satellite transmissions more difficult. Considering all of the decaying metal and stone it’s no wonder that there’s so much particulate in the air. Once Pod’s receivers are clear 9S has Pod 153 hover just above the spire’s tip. It stays suspended in the air, the small light on the top of its body turning on and off at regular intervals.

“Connection established.” Pod 153 announces moments later. “Proposal: Contact the Bunker for support.”

“Great! Set up a relay connection for Pod 042 as well.”

“Affirmative.”

9S opens a data screen laden with information and begins composing his message to Operator 21O. With an unreliable connection a live call would be too risky, a simple text based message won’t be distorted or cut out. He records a brief message, attaches a transcription of his words, and sends it to the Bunker. Hopefully 21O would send something quickly-

A flash of movement in the streets below catches his eye. Something running on all fours... “Pod… run a scan for machine lifeforms…” He says, a chill creeping up his spine.

Pod 153 floats down to his side. “Alert: Multiple machine lifeforms detected. Proposal: Regroup with Unit 2B.”

“But-”

That thing didn’t look like a machine…

“Alert: Anomalous signal detect-”

Pod 153’s words are drowned by a horrific, mournful howl that reverberates through the entire building. 9S clings to the ornate decorations on the spire and covers his ears with his free hand. His body runs cold. He’s never heard a sound like that before. Nothing the machines make comes close to that. The pain and sorrow in that noise is something that no animal could produce either. That left only one possibility…

Another roar wracks the building from within…

2B clutches the sides of her head, the data screen long dismissed.

No…

Her chest strains under her panicked breaths.

No.

She hadn’t been watching him. She hadn’t been keeping track of his questions and behavior…

No… No.

And now she…

No no no no no .

She has to…

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

NO.

She will not do this. Not again.

Her skin feels… tight.

She will fight off every single goddamn android Command sends until there are none left but her and him. She will not be a part of this cycle again. Her hands curl into fists as a surge rushes through her body, alighting her nerves with energy. With power.

A shadow moves across the stone floor of the castle of worship. The entity, its form inky black, its sigil emitting a baleful purple light, glides towards her. It bathes her in the highly saturated light, a light not even shielding her eyes can diffuse. It bores into her core, it peers into her mind. It speaks into her mind.

“You will not allow this to happen.” Its voice echoes off the hollow shell of where humans once sought God. “But strength comes at a price, little doll.”

The entity plunges its claws into her chest. Heat explodes throughout her body to the point where she fears she might self-destruct. The boiling tendrils of this ethereal monster sink into her artificial heart and her Black Box. Something activates, or… unlocks, and suddenly she feels… confined. Her body… it’s too small….

“Time to pay the toll…”

It rips its claws, now writhing shadow-like whips, out of her chest, then vanishes. 2B’s vision is obscured, but not by warnings and error messages, by blood. Red veins pulse on the edges of her sight in time with her heart. Each beat sends waves of heat, electricity, and agony through her body.

“Stand, little doll. Stand, and unleash your beasthood.”

A scream forms in 2B’s throat, but it cannot break through her swelling throat and gritted teeth. She takes frantic, shallow breaths. Her limbs shake, her fingernails dig into the stonework floor. It’s so hot…

2B rolls onto the floor and rips away her tight uniform. Far too tight. Parts of her dress were already beginning to tear as her muscles swell. Blood trickles from various wounds where her skin has split, revealing the thick, synthetic muscle cords that lie beneath. Her blindfold is next, but removing it does not help her vision. One eye is unfocused, blurring all of her vision.

She drags her fingernails across her body and lets out a deep, animal snarl when she tears into her own flesh. Looking down at her hands, she recoils at the sight of long, black claws that split her fingers down the center. Skin falls from them in long strips to the point where the mechanical joints of her hands are exposed.

Something snaps inside her, somewhere in her upper back. She howls in agony, in sorrow, as her spine lengthens, twists, and grows too fast for her body to maintain. Her insides are compacted and grind against each other, sending sickening vibrations throughout her. Her throat finally opens up, allowing her to breathe. She watches as puffs of steam escape her mouth into the warm twilight air.

Another crack and something explodes out of her lower back. Her balance is thrown off and she falls forward, smashing her face into stone. Another snarl, this one combined with the gnashing of fangs. Her mouth warps, splitting out of her face into a muzzle. Eyes follow, one swelling to fit its now spacious socket while the other stunts and refuses to change. She claws at the peeling skin of whatever she can reach, spilling more of her blood in the process. Everything hurts, everything itches, but oh god the power feels so good.

A growth springs from above her unchanged eye, weighing her head down and hunching her body over. She supports herself with one enormous hand, the other scooping the wires and tubing that spills out of her torn stomach and forcing them back inside her abdominal cavity. The twisting extension of her spine, a tail, thuds against the floor and counters the weight of her head.

2B shakes the mane of bloodied, white hair from her functioning eye, turns her head to the sky, and roars.

#nier automata #2B #9S #2B9S #fanfiction #nier fanfiction #Tanks fics

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vanzhuo · 4 years

Note

do you have any tips on how to start a writeblr, specifically how to meet more people and make some cool mutuals? :D i wanna start a writeblr but i don’t know anyone from the community and i feel like it’s not as fun without friends :(

ok so hey, first of all, i’m not good at articulating my thoughts well but here it goes -- there isn’t any one way to start a writeblr. when i’d started mine, i lounged around idly for a couple of months reblogging things from other writeblrs. when i finally mustered up wits to post an intro, some writeblrs reblogged and boosted it so that’s how many people found my blog. but like, at the beginning, i was clueless enough (don’t you dare laugh) to ask @semblanche what a taglist was because i was confused about why everyone was asking to be on it. so yeah. i’m gonna jot down a couple of things you should do if you want to like join the community under the cut since this is getting too long and you should all be saved from making the same mistakes i made at the start. and of course, some tips on networking around the community and finding new mutuals!

1. make an intro post. so the one thing i’ve learnt after changing blogs twice is, make an intro post you are satisfied with. it can be simple one, a text post where you use the header option to announce your writeblr (ex. if i were to make an intro, i’d say kalki’s writeblr) and then i’d put in my name, the kind of stuff i like to read, the kind of stuff i like to write and the wips i am writing. point is, it should be something you like, something that tells something about you. like the first time i did this, my intro said: this girl doesn’t know what she’s doing. the second time: she’s being too pretentious, move on people. so on and so forth. some people prefer using fancy images (i am some people) to introduce their blogs with an image post instead, but you’re fine with or without. one thing you should keep in mind is to like tag a few of your favorite blogs. i didn’t do this the first time round because i wasn’t sure what exactly i was doing but you should all know that if you tag your favorite blogs, then those blogs will (mostly, sometimes mentions mess up like it does with me and tumblr doesn’t notify you about being tagged) definitely reblog and boost it. that way, a lot of people will, if not engage with you, then at least know of your existence. here’s my intro post for this blog, if you want. it’s not very, um, formal because i was sleepy and thought it was funny.

2. don’t be discouraged by the amount of notes on your intro. listen, i know we’d all feel bad if we had like 7 likes and 2 reblogs alright but don’t be discouraged. i mean now that i go back, my intro post has only about 36 notes. it really just depends on the timing. however, when you start posting content, those 10 people who’ve interacted with your post will like it and will reblog it for everyone to see and when people start seeing your content, they get interested and slowly, you’ll have more people to interact with and more people will discover your content and i think what i’m trying to say is that, the note count does matter but don’t be discouraged if it isn’t enough. it’ll take time but you’ll find a solid footing really soon, writeblr’s a really warm engaging place minus the anon hate people get sometimes. (see: @inheriting. all queen elle did was breathe, guys.)

3. interact with other people and their content. so yes. it’s not a one side deal. if you want people to find your blog, you’ll have to start looking for more content too. when you see something good, reblog it or comment on it or even send an ask telling them it’s god tier content. that stuff makes up half the amount of serotonin in our brains. seriously. there’s nothing writers like more than people reblogging their posts with incoherent screaming or coming into their asks to tell them something they think is funny. you could even post something like: hey, i’m a new writeblr and i’m looking for content like (enter the genres or tropes you prefer) and if you have wips similar to this, then pls reblog this with their tags. i wanna start engaging more. something like that. yeah.

4. message other writeblrs? ok so this is a thing that i would not recommend doing ONLY because sometimes everything gets lost in my notifs and i don’t see messages for days and i know other writeblrs probably face this too. tumblr automatically reads them and doesn’t lmk and stuff like that. and secondly, most of us don’t really, like, answer dms all the time. sometimes i got something important to say so i’ll go to minnie @medusaswrites or to chel @starshots and scream about it and then when the topic of conversation closes, and it gets awkward (i do this so many times you don’t even know) we go back to ghosting private messages and instead blasting each other’s ask boxes with love. that’s just how this stuff works. but there are plenty of writeblrs who aren’t awkward with private messaging and they will LOVE to talk to you so there’s also that. honestly, i don’t know where i’m going with this so i’ll stop now.

5. graphics and other things. ok so the main part, and the most important part, about a writeblr blog is the writing. so you’re a good writer, you’re a great writer. that’s not all though. sometimes you need to organize your blog. you use coded tags like tags for a particular character (say, my character tag for katya is oc: katya) and tags for a particular wip and inspo tags, resources tags, aesthetic tags, etc. this helps you organize your blog better. and finally, look, i know most people can’t do photoshop, either because it’s too expensive or too complicated and i get it. photoshop isn’t required honestly, there are tons of other things you can use. what mostly attracts attention is how attractive a blog can be. the layout for your blog for one. the picspam for your wip intro. that sort of thing. they are a couple of apps on phone that are free to use like picsart and canva (it’s on web too and honestly, the one thing you should use. it’s not like photoshop but it does the job and it does the job really well. if you want to ask someone about canva, you should go to raye @vigilantscar. she isn’t a writeblr but she’s good in that department.) also, if you’ve got something to ask about layouts or simple intro post demos and arrangement or the kind of pictures you should choose for them then slide into my dms, i’ll be happy to help.

i think that’s all? like true, writeblr isn’t fun without friends but this community is so nice and open that anyone can join anytime and you’d feel welcome. i also feel like i’ve not been able to get a few points across without sounding ignorant/awkward? or like i might have forgotten a few things? but honestly, i just woke up. also, i’m gonna tag a few blogs here that you should check out for good content in no particular order: @starshots @medusaswrites @carumens @vandorens @liarede @aelenko @inesnenci @kiesinger @medeaes @noloumna @emdrabbles and @inheriting. there are tons of other writeblrs with good content that i’m pretty sure i, with the memory of a goldfish, forgot to mention but. yeah. if you ever get round to posting an intro, tag me! i’ll be happy to interact!

#listen ignore the typos #c: asked.#w: resources.

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1989dreamer · 4 years

Text

Full Offense (no offense)

Cross-posted at my AO3

Summary: Stiles lives in an apartment below the worst neighbor in the world. Derek always submits false complaints about Stiles and his roommates to the front office. Well, tables are turning. Derek is hosting a party this Saturday, and Stiles fully intends to crash it and confront Derek over his asshole-ish-ness.

Main Relationship: Sterek

Rating: T

Tags: Angry Stiles, Human AU, drunk characters, Derek cooks, dub/non-con drugging, attempted assault mentioned, over-protective Laura, enemies to lovers, asshole Jackson

~ * ~

“I’m offended,” Stiles announces to the room in general. No one looks up, too used to his outbursts by now to pay much attention. The fools.

He marches up to Scott sitting at the breakfast nook, a large bowl of Fruity Pebbles in front of him. He stares him down while Scott keeps shoveling cereal into his mouth.

Finally, after about five minutes, once his bowl is empty, he looks up as if just noticing Stiles for the first time. “Sorry,” he says laconically. “You’re offended?”

“Yeah, and you wanna know why?”

“Not really.”

Stiles ignores Scott and forges ahead. “That bastard in 3A wrote another complaint about us.”

“Really?” Now Scott looks interested. “What’d he say we did this time?”

“Something about an over-loud party last weekend.”

“But we weren’t even here last weekend,” Scott protests. He shoots a look at their roommates, Boyd and Jackson, sitting on the couch and playing a first person shooter game. They both shrug. Boyd had been at his girlfriend’s. Jackson had been who knows the hell where. Stiles doesn’t keep track of him. As long as he pays his rent, they are cool.

“So I’m thinking he’s targeting us,” Stiles says. “Why, I don’t know. That is something I intend to find out.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” Scott asks.

“A little bird told me that 3A is planning to host his own bash this weekend. So guess who wrangled an invite?”

“You’re going to crash 3A’s fancy shindig?” Jackson snorts. “In what outfit?”

“In this one?” Stiles points down at his button down, left open over a graphic t-shirt and baggy khaki pants. The only thing he might change is his shoes. He’s got a fresh pair of sneakers just waiting for a spin out in the world. Might as well break them in at 3A’s party.

Jackson snorts again, but he’ll be waiting a long time if he thinks Stiles either wants or needs his fashion advice.

“And how exactly did you get an invitation?”

“The front desk clerk gave it to me.” Stiles pulls out the blue paper and waves it in Jackson’s general direction. “Look, ‘Derek Hale formally invites you to Apartment 3A to partake in games and alcohol from the hours of 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Cabs will be called for all attendees who do not wish to stay overnight.’”

“Wow,” Scott says, “this Derek fellow sounds awfully polite on paper.”

“Yeah,” Stiles admits. “It’s probably to disguise how much of a shithead he really is.”

“Well, have fun,” Scott says. “I will be at Allison’s this weekend.”

“I’m heading back to Erica’s,” Boyd adds.

Jackson rolls his shoulders. “Any chance that invite has a plus-one on it?”

“Fuck off,” Stiles says, but he checks anyway. “Nope, sorry. Nothing about that. Seemed pretty exclusive from what the front desk clerk said.”

“Well I guess I’ll just have to get my own then,” Jackson says with too much nonchalance. He’s a bad liar. Stiles knows his tells. When he’s this relaxed, he’s worried.

“What? You think I’m going to his party to hobnob?” Stiles forces out a laugh. “Buddy, I’m going to confront the bastard and see what his fucking problem with us is.”

“Oh of course,” Jackson snipes back. “Couldn’t be that you’re finally fucking picking up culture.”

Stiles snorts. “If you consider going to Derek Hale’s wine-and-game-night culture.”

“Well,” Scott says, “it is more cultured than beer and C.O.D.”

“Hey, don’t shit on C.O.D. nights. That’s culture too.”

Boyd gives Stiles an air-five.

“Anyway. It’s just a party. If I can get Derek Hale off our backs, isn’t that a good thing?”

The others agree, and Boyd and Jackson go back to their game and Scott gets up to wash his bowl and spoon.

Stiles goes to his room to plot his speech for this Saturday. Derek Hale won’t know what hits him when Stiles walks into his apartment. It just might be the last thing Stiles ever does, but by God, he’s taking that asshole with him.

~ * ~

The rest of the week passes so uneventfully that Stiles is scared that things are going too well.

The day of Derek’s party dawns bright and beautiful and quiet.

Boyd left last night to Erica’s, and Scott didn’t even come home before he headed out to Allison’s.

Jackson is still around, but Stiles is ignoring him. As far as he knows, Jackson never managed to get an invite to the party, so he’s hoping to sneak out before Jackson can attach himself like a barnacle and slip into the party as a plus-one even though it really isn’t that kind of party.

Stiles spends most of the day in his room, on his computer practicing his speech until he can recite it without notes. If he was being graded on it, he’d accept nothing less than an A+. It’s that good.

Stiles has his outfit picked out already. Despite what he told his roommates earlier, he’s actually going to be wearing a fitted gray blazer over a buttoned down blue shirt and pressed khakis. He also managed to find his dress shoes from graduation. So, he’ll be decently dressed and can pass for one of Derek’s swanky friends.

At least, Stiles assumes they’re swanky. Derek dresses nicely all the time—at least whenever Stiles runs into him in the hallways.

About an hour before the party, he dresses in complete silence and then uses the fire escape outside his window to get down street side, and then he just chills at a small park about five blocks away.

Once 5:45 pm arrives, Stiles heads back and jogs up to Derek Hale’s door. The front desk clerk who’d given him the invite is nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s an older, lecherous man that Stiles calls Uncle Bad Touch in his head. UBT waves at him as he hurries past.

Thankfully, UBT only works once in a long while. Usually it’s one of two clerks who look remarkably the same aside from different hairstyles. Stiles likes Cora best. She is abrasive in a good way, and she gives things to Stiles, like extra soap when he forgets to buy some or the invite to Derek’s party.

Despite all his careful planning, Jackson is waiting in front of Derek’s door, dressed even more smartly than Stiles. Hell, that might even be Jackson’s high school prom tux, and it really isn’t fair that he still fits in it, even if the shoulders look a little tight.

“Ready?” Jackson cocks an eyebrow at Stiles. He knocks before Stiles can answer.

The door immediately swings open, and Derek stands before them. Stiles can’t help fist-pumping a little when he notices that Derek is dressed in slacks and a button up shirt instead of a suit or tux like Jackson. He does bite back the “Culture,” that wants to come out, though.

“Welcome,” Derek says, looking from one to the other, a frown of confusion pulling his brows low over his eyes.

Stiles clears his throat and shoves the invite from Cora at Derek. He takes it, tucks it into his back pocket and then steps back to allow them in.

“Drinks are in the kitchen. Thanks for coming.”

He leaves them standing just inside the door as he makes his way to what must be the kitchen. The layout is similar to their apartment just downstairs, and Stiles heads for a couch in much nicer condition than theirs. Jackson follows him, perching on a loveseat across from him, a sturdy metal coffee table between the two sitting areas, and clutching at his knees. He seems far more nervous than Stiles feels.

There aren’t any other people here, and for a moment Stiles thinks he might have arrived too early, and then Derek reappears with a tray of finger foods just as the door slams open.

“What’s up, asshole!” the not-Cora front desk clerk yells, bouncing into the room, closely followed by a guy dressed identical to Jackson.

Jackson doesn’t look any relieved to see that.

“Hey, Laura, hey, Jordan.” Derek gives them an awkward sort of wave. “This is Cora and her fiancé.”

“Really now?” Laura peers at Stiles and Jackson with pretend interest. “Coulda swore those are your downstairs neighbors.”

“All right, you got me. Cora and Lydia were busy tonight so they gave their invite to Stiles and Jackson.”

Jackson shoots a sort of smug look at Stiles, completely ruined by the fact that he also looks like he wants to throw up. Stiles refuses to react, but he is a little bummed that it actually was a plus-one invite.

“Cool.” Laura looks marginally more interested. “Are they any good at Risk?”

Derek rolls his eyes so hard that Stiles waits for them to pop out and bounce along the floor. “We’re not playing Risk. I donated the game after last time.”

Laura turns a funny shade of red while Derek all but runs to where the door is being timidly knocked upon.

All told, five more people show up; a vivacious blonde couple, Rachel and Sean, who seem more interested in flanking Jackson and making him blush hotly before Derek makes them move; Kira with cat-headphones and a shy smile when she catches Stiles admiring the many fandom pins on her bag; permanent-frat-boy Sammy, with a backwards cap and saggy basketball shorts; and thin, elegant brunette, Abigail, who has an aloofness to rival a freezer. Derek keeps running back and forth from the kitchen until his tasteful coffee table is loaded down with cups and food. He encourages everyone to eat, and it’s delicious. Stiles eats way too much and drinks only enough to wash it down. He manages to put away two loaded potatoes, too many breaded mozzarella sticks, fried mushrooms, jalapeño poppers to count, and half of a small cheesecake. Only Abigail eats more than him. Derek is a fucking fantastic cook (even if most of the foods are pop and bake) and bartender. He’s also the quintessential host, and Stiles really feels bad about what he’s going to do.

He decides to wait until everyone else is too drunk to stop him before he confronts Derek about his well-hidden asshole-side.

~ * ~

About three hours later, the food is gone, drinks are back in the kitchen, and Laura is drunkenly trying to set up Jackson with Jordan. Despite wearing matching clothes and red faces, neither seems to actually mind her meddling.

And Derek keeps staring at Stiles with a heated gaze that is definitely not helping the stomachache from too much food.

Stiles wins every game they even try playing because everyone else, including Jackson, is smashed. Then, once they’ve settled into just conversation, he begins putting away the games. Derek tries to help, and Stiles has to bite back a fond smile as Derek rests his head on his shoulder while he tries and fails to sort the Monopoly money.

“So, how’d you get an invite?” Derek slurs against his ear when Stiles takes the money from him.

“You said it earlier: Cora gave it to me,” Stiles says honestly. “She also told me that you filed another complaint against us.”

“What?” Derek hiccups on the word, pulling back and staring wide-eyed and innocent at Stiles. He isn’t buying it.

Not at all.

Derek hiccups again, and then lets out a low burp. He blushes, covering his mouth. “Sorry. But I didn’t file any complaints against you. You’re great neighbors. You haven’t done anything at all. Even your get-togethers are quiet and respectful. Why would I complain about you?”

“If it isn’t you, then who…?” Stiles looks away from Derek. For some reason, he finds his gaze locked onto Jackson. Who is staring back at him with a kind of terrified look on his face.

“Jackson?” Stiles asks.

“Yeah?” His roommate swallows hard.

“Why has Derek been filing complaints about us at the front office?”

“He hasn’t,” Jackson whispers. “I have.”

“Why?” Derek asks. “You guys are perfect! My parents love you.”

“It’s stupid,” Jackson mutters. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop. I’ll move out too. I’m sorry, Stiles.”

“What did you hope to accomplish by filing complaints against us? You realize you would be kicked out too, right?”

“Yeah, but…” he pauses to blow out a breath that he doesn’t seem like he can spare. “I just. It’s just so stupid. I’m so sorry, Stiles. I just wanted to get you evicted. I knew the rest of us could play off as quiet and nice tenants while you’d probably have a loud reaction and get kicked out. I’m sorry.”

Hurt, Stiles leans back like that can even begin to give him the distance he needs right now. Jackson does look reproached but sorry doesn’t make up for the fact that his roommate, someone he thought was his friend, filed three noise complaints against him. One more and the landlords would have no choice but to investigate and possibly kick him out.

Derek pats at Stiles’ arm. “I’m sorry you have such a shitty friend,” he says.

Stiles nods. “Me too.” He stands up. “I’m sorry, Derek. I came here to yell at you for unfairly complaining about us, and you’ve been nothing but awesome. I hope I get to see you again someday. Right now, I just need to go. I need to find a place to stay for tonight.” He looks back at Jackson and then away just as quickly. “I can’t stay at our apartment right now.”

“Everyone was just leaving, right?”

“Fuck no,” Laura says. “We’re stealing your bed, Derek. You can sleep on the couch.”

Derek frowns at her. “Okay, so we’re all a little too drunk for this. Stiles, why don’t you stay here tonight and Jackson will go back to the apartment. We’ll sort it all out tomorrow when we’re not drunk anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Jackson says again. “Really, Stiles. I am.”

“I get it,” Stiles tells him, “but right now, I don’t care.”

“Jordan, walk Jackson back to his apartment,” Laura orders. “My buzz is fading and that’s not what Saturday night’s all about.”

It’s definitely an awkward end to what had been a fun and kind of sweet night.

Stiles sits back down on the sofa as the door closes behind Jackson and Jordan. Derek watches him, eyes soft with concern. Stiles isn’t sure that he wants whatever sympathy Derek has for him, but he’s glad at least someone seems to realize how hurt he is by Jackson’s betrayal.

Laura grouses a bit and then stumbles to the bedroom, half the rest of the party following her while the other half goes to the other bedroom.

Derek sighs, leaning against Stiles. “Are you okay?”

“Not really, but I guess I will be. Anyway, I better call our other roommates and let them know that I’ll be moving out.”

“You can stay on my couch tonight, and if you need a place to crash, I’ve got a spare bed.” He glances at the second door. “I’ll clean the bed and put out fresh sheets tomorrow,” he promises.

“Why would you do that for me?” Stiles asks. “I’m practically a stranger to you.”

“Well, my sisters like you. Cora especially. So,” Derek shrugs, “I like you too.”

“That is, ostensibly, the worst reason I have ever heard to like someone,” Stiles says.

Derek rolls his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “It’s worked out so far,” he replies. “Anyway. I should let you get settled.” He pauses, studying Stiles with a serious, contemplative expression, lip between his teeth. Honestly, it’s a little adorable.

Stiles sighs and shakes his head. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Derek, you’re being a real friend, unlike Jackson.”

It’s Derek’s turn to sigh. “I’ve had my share of bad friends,” he admits. “I do my best to not make anyone feel like they’re unwelcome even if I don’t know them. I guess it makes people think I’m soft or something, so I try to keep my true emotions hidden when I’m out in public…” he trails off, blinking. “I don’t remember where I was going with that, but yeah, I really just want you to know that you’re welcome here as long as you need it.”

“Thanks,” Stiles says sincerely. “That really means a lot to me. Thank you, Derek.”

“No problems.” Derek does a two finger wave as he stumbles to a trunk set between the bedroom doors. He returns with a couple of blankets and pillows, thumping one set into Stiles’ chest. “You take the couch. I’ll sleep in the kitchen. Wake me up if I’m not already up when you get up.”

“Okay.” Stiles refuses to believe it’s a promise, but the hopeful look Derek gives him before he disappears into the kitchen makes him think that whether he meant it or not, Derek definitely took it as a promise.

Could be worse, he decides, dropping the pillow onto the couch and following it down.

His brain, usually wired too fast to get much sleep must be as exhausted as he is because almost as soon as he buries his face in his borrowed pillow, he’s out.

~ * ~

Stiles wakes up when one of the guests trips on their way to the bathroom, and because it’s daylight outside, he decides it’s not worth chasing that last minute of sleep, so he gets up and goes to find Derek in the kitchen.

Derek is rolled into his blanket, face smushed into his pillow. He’s adorable, and Stiles is struck by the sudden realization that someone needs to be kissing and loving up on him, and that maybe it should be him.

The floor creaks a little as Stiles moves closer, and Derek snuffles a bit and then sits bolt upright, bleary-eyed and yawning.

“Wha’ time’s it?” he mumbles, a hand flopping out of his blanket wrap to scratch at his beard.

Stiles pulls out his phone. “It’s almost 6:30,” he says. “Are you okay from sleeping on the floor?”

“’m fine,” Derek says around another yawn. He scrambles up and stretches until his back pops. “So, do you want something to eat? If I know Laura and her hangover, she’ll want the greasiest thing I can make. I’ve got three types of bacon—regular, thick, and turkey. I have eggs, cheese, hash browns, biscuits, and gravy.”

Stiles laughs in disbelief at the size of the menu. “Just how many guests do you have?” he asks. “Jordan’s still with Jackson. That means there’s eight of us left, including you. Do you really thing we can eat all that?”

Derek grins at him. “You don’t know hungover Laura. She’ll put it all away if we don’t stop her.”

Stiles rolls his shoulders. He’s not inclined to stop Derek if he’s planning on cooking again. Besides, it’s not like he has anywhere he has to be. Not until Jackson is out of the apartment because even though he’s the one moving out, he doesn’t want to be in the same room as his former friend.

Instead, he sits at the little table tucked under the window and watches Derek dig out everything he talked about and more. He tosses an orange at Stiles and then hums under his breath as he heats up a skillet and begins cracking eggs into a bowl. He pops what look like homemade biscuits on a baking sheet and starts a pot of country gravy.

“You know,” Stiles says, contemplative, “you’re handsome, can cook, and are so sweet. Why don’t you have a significant other?”

Derek’s shoulders tense for a brief moment before he continues, using a fork to beat the eggs. “I’m un-datable,” he says easily. Certainly far more easily than Stiles could have in his position.

“And why is that?” Stiles digs a thumb into a groove of the table while he waits for Derek’s response.

“Because he’s a fucking martyr,” Laura says from the doorway. She saunters in and sits down in the chair across from Stiles, wincing as her chair scrapes the floor. “Way back in high school, he wasn’t always so reserved and cool. He was dorky as shit. There were a few girls—popular bitches. You know the type, rich, never had to work for the things they had. Anyway, some of them targeted him because while Derek was never ugly, he wasn’t the cutest boy in school.” Laura pauses to rub her temples. “We have money. Obviously. Our parents own this apartment complex. So they just wanted to fuck with him. The last one was the worst.”

Derek’s shoulders are shaking, and Stiles stops Laura. She looks over at her brother and swears colorfully.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I’ll stop talking. We won’t say anything more. I promise.”

“It’s okay,” Derek says, calmly sliding several slices of the turkey bacon into the pan. “It’s been years. It’s not like she’s out yet.”

Stiles startles, a soft, “What?” slipping out.

Derek sighs heavily, reaching for a spatula. “My last girlfriend drugged me. She was trying to record something incriminating and ended up getting busted by a chaperone.”

“It was junior prom,” Laura fills in.

Derek nods. “She got five years. It was extended after she fought her cellmate and almost killed her. So, she’s got another five years. She’ll be released in two years.”

Stiles quickly counts up on his fingers. “So that makes you, what, twenty-five?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Twenty-three.”

“I’m thirty,” Laura interjects, shrugging when both her brother and Stiles look at her. “Yeah. I had an outside perspective.” She goes quiet. “I was the chaperone.”

“That’s some heavy stuff,” Stiles says. “No wonder you don’t date anymore.”

“Anyway. Breakfast is about halfway done. You should call the others.”

Derek moves onto the potatoes next. Laura leaves, probably to rouse the other guests. Stiles sits back at the table, rolling the orange one way and then the other.

After a few minutes of nothing but the sizzling of potatoes, Stiles clears his throat. “So,” he says softly. “Are you ready to date again or still…?”

“Probably ready,” Derek answers, so low that Stiles has to strain to hear him. “Been ready for a while, but Laura feels so guilty that she kind of sabotages my relationships.”

“If it were me, I wouldn’t let her push me away.”

“Are you insinuating that you’d date me?” Derek turns just to raise an eyebrow at him.

Stiles waits until he turns back to stove before saying, “Maybe more than insinuating.”

Derek doesn’t respond, so Stiles assumes he hasn’t heard him. That’s okay. Stiles can just sit here and enjoy the view. Maybe after breakfast he’ll bring up the insinuation again. He doesn’t want it to be awkward if he’s going to crash with Derek before finding his own place.

But if it goes well, aside from Laura, then maybe they can move in right away. Derek has two bedrooms. It’s not like they’ll jump right into bed. Stiles is still virginal and a bit self-conscious about it. And besides, Derek might be ready for dating but dating is miles from having sex. At least, Stiles thinks it is. It’s not like he has experience there.

He finally peels the orange to give his hands something to do and then Derek clears his throat. Stiles looks up.

“So, uh, about what you said, about it not being an insinuation. Did you mean that?” Derek sets a plate of the fresh biscuits onto the table and then grabs the pot of gravy too.

“Yes?” Stiles coughs, feeling the flush rising in his cheeks. “I mean, yeah, yes. Definitely. I definitely would like to date you. I mean, technically, we’re already on our second date.”

“True. So, formally, Stiles-I-don’t-know-your-last-name, would you like to go on a date with me?”

“Stilinski,” Stiles says, “and yes, Derek Hale, I’d love to go on a date with you. Formally.”

Derek makes a face. “Your name is Stiles Stilinski? Who named you?”

“Excuse you, I did.” Stiles makes a face back at him. “It’s a nickname, duh.”

“So what’s your real name?”

“Ah,” Stiles waggles a finger at him, “that’s a third date kind of question, don’t you think?”

“Are we going on a date tonight?”

“Probably,” Stiles says, and then realizes what Derek is getting at. “Cheeky,” he says. “Maybe I’ll never tell you until the day we get married, and then you’ll be like, ‘What happened to Stiles?’ and ‘How the fuck do you even say that?’”

“Wrong.”

“How so?”

“I’d never be so crude as to swear on our wedding day. That’s for the honeymoon.”

“Oh yeah, and what’ll you be saying then?”

Derek blushes and doesn’t answer, but Stiles can guess and it makes him blush too.

“Oh isn’t this cozy?” Abigail says as she drops into the chair next to Stiles. The rest of the guests file in, grab food and file out, all shuffling in some kind of zombie-walk. Only Laura joins them at the table. Abigail adds, slyly eying Laura, who has piled a plate high with a lot off food, immediately stabbing a fork into the mess and shoveling it into her face, “Are you finally going to admit your big, fat crush on little old Stiles here, eh, Derek?”

“Yeah, actually, we’re way past that,” Derek says. “We’re on our second date.”

Laura chokes on her eggs. “What?” she demands, glaring at Stiles. “When did this happen?”

“Um, well, the party last night was the first date,” Stiles says. He holds her gaze, giving as good as he gets. “Breakfast this morning is date number two.”

“And we’re going on a third date tonight,” Derek announces. He stares down Laura, almost daring her to challenge him. Instead, and Stiles gets the distinct feeling that this is rare, Laura sinks back in her chair and digs back into her eggs.

Briefly, Stiles thinks he made a mistake agreeing to date Derek so easily, but the first moment Derek looks up from his plate and grins at Stiles as he reaches for more food, he knows he was gone the moment he sat on Derek’s couch and listened to him make his friends leave Jackson alone, the way he let them in at all. The way he’s been nothing but gracious despite his semi-drunken confession to purposefully putting on a grumpy air in the hallways. Derek Hale is a sweetheart and Stiles realizes that he wants to date Derek in all the ways. He wants to learn his favorite color, which movies he loves, what he reads, why he gives up his bed to his friends and his couch to a stranger. He wants to know Derek, and Derek’s gentle smile lets him know that Derek wants to know him too.

So maybe Jackson deserves a little credit for this, but Stiles is still mad at him. Even if it’s the best thing that’s happened to Stiles in a long while.

“Mieczysław,” he says suddenly, aware that he’s interrupting some weird bantering between Abigail and Laura.

“What?” Laura asks.

Derek just grins wider. “Mieczysław,” he repeats and he doesn’t completely butcher it, but it could use some work.

“Yeah,” Stiles says.

And that’s how he knows they’ll work out, eating breakfast foods at a table with Derek’s older sister and special friend, on their second date, Derek’s blanket and pillow still shoved into a corner of the room, the sound of the rest of Derek’s friends chattering in the living room.

Derek and Mieczysław sitting at the table, making eyes at each other over eggs and bacon, gonna get married and say bad words on their honeymoon.

Yeah, it kinda sounds perfect.

~ The End ~

#Teen Wolf Fanfiction #Stiles Stilinski #Derek Hale #Enemies to Friends to Lovers #Fullmoon Ficlet Prompt 373 #My Story/My Writing

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nicknimmin · 6 years

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spvg · 6 years

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(Not so) Secret things about Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild’s development

So last year, between august 30th and September 1st Yokohama, Japan, held the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference or CEDEC.

The information gathered here has been talked about before but I wanted to analyze it, and thanks to Matt Walker, a Production manager at Capcom who translated a lot of the exposition done at the conference, through articles in 4games, Esuteru and IGN Japan, I can talk about the development of an amazing game, even one of the best games I’ve ever played, Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild!

The beginning of the presentation was about fun in the game, one could argue that is something obvious in a game, but there are a lot of details needed to have in mind when thinking about how players will find fun in your game, and in BOTW that is no exception, changes were made constantly during the game’s development, and the big question was always, “How to make this game more enjoyable to players” In the picture below are two maps, where you can see marked the diference in paths players would make, when playing first time through. In the left map, we can see players were making fairly the same journey, as shown by the dark blue lines, everyone was having a similar experience while ignoring smaller trails, and landmarks that strafed from the main roads. After the changes though we have a much more disperse map traversal, with a significant change, not only in the amount of people that go near the edges of the map, but how people travel along the center of it as well, there’s a significant increase in the overall exploration of the terrain,

These changes, made after testing the design of the first map incite players into exploring and traverse the map in different ways depending on what sparks their curiosity, and leads to a better distribution, not only of the exploration players have, but the experience they have while playing. The problem with the first map was that initially the team though they could place Sheikah towers scattered around the map and place events and game interactions in between the paths that connected them, this wasn’t the case though because players weren’t compelled by that way of exploration, test players said that they felt guided through the game or it felt too linear, (now you see why most players were having a narrow route on a map that spans quite wide) Weirdly enough this was diving players into two very different experiences, either they would follow the intended path and found a lot of what the team wanted but in a very short time, or they would miss most things because they strafed away from the Sheikah towers and connecting roads trying to explore the world map, their travels were just empty. This lead to the team creating a solution based on the concept of Gravity, that’s right, placing structures with different visibility and importance in different places, they could attract player’s attention to various areas of the world, and appeal to their curiosity, leading players away from the main path and into their own adventure. This was the spark that lead to the notion of “infinity gameplay” an idea that focuses on having the player travel between various landmarks depending on their curiosity at any given moment, plus the map will change its look depending on the time of day, as light creates changing shadows, and visibility changes from night to day, places like the Sheikah Shrines like you can see in the image below will have pretty low visibility during the day, because they’re small, usually hidden, and you can see much better big natural landmarks, roads on the ground and the Sheikah towers.

During the night however structures that emit light will pop much more in the darkness, the glowing blue and orange veins of the Sheikah shrines become the most noticeable thing on the map, along with stables and enemy camps, because of it’s fires and torches. This interchanging noticeability between structures means that not only will the player be excited to travel to new places but they may even run back and forth between things they might have missed during the day and only realized were there at night, this actually happened a lot to me while playing (and still does sometimes) where I want to climb a mountain and when I reach the top it’s getting dark already, from there I look on the world only to realize there are a bunch of shiny spots on the map for me to explore! and who doesn’t like shiny things?!

This obviously might change depending on how players tend to play a game, but it only means that more people will experience the same game different ways and it will be better tailored to their way of being and interacting, it makes the game more of a personal experience. players not interested in fighting monsters will gladly avoid their campfires at night and might instead look for stables, and vice versa, this means the way people will interact with the world is tied to the way they perceive the surrounding environment.

Now for the thing I see as the greatest design idea of BOTW, to lead players into that amazing sense of mystery and adventure. this is a technic of environmental design the developers call “Triangle rule” it is part of the whole gravity idea and it is pretty much what it sounds like, a rule based on using triangles to hide, show and guide players, all at the same time, we can see how the rule is implemented all across the map in the image below

What does this effectively do? The utilization of the triangle offers different options to the player, on how to face the obstacle ahead, you could climb up to it and get a better view of your surroundings, you could go around it keep ing a low level, and both these interactions will produce a different outcome on how you see what’s ahead of you, the triangle can also be used to partially or completely hide an item behind it

These were divided in three different scales, each one with its own purpose when it comes to player’s interaction, and gameplay, if you’ve played the game you certainly can remember which ones they are and how they are used. Out of many I think the most notorious are the small hills or rocks used to hide chests or enemies, (among others), big triangles to hide larger landmarks such as big bridges or ruins, as well as orient player’s movement, and finally Gigantic triangles in the form of mountains, to serve as not only points of interest but reference when traveling around, these are locations you can see almost from everywhere on the map, and are great guiding aids.

The rectangle is also an important shape, even if not as noticeable, mainly used to completely hide other elements on the map or important map locations (but you can also see it as trees hiding enemies in the woods or gathering items for instance). This kind of layout gives the world a dynamic and fluid feel, that is very organic and real, but thought to give players a greater feeling of discovery and adventure that the legend of Zelda games tend to strive for. we can see this working in a sequence of pictures used at CEDEC 2017

This environmental construction creates a chain of interest, in this particular case it works like this: Hill -> Bridge Entrance -> Sheikah Tower, So we have a triangle hiding a rectangular structure of interest that is hiding another structure behind it. And if you pay close attention left of the Sheikah tower behind the right hill you can partially see an enemy camp, all the rules of this particular design are in play here! Now that’s all for game design (for now), but what about the tech that got the team there? As far as tech goes the team as also implemented some new ideas, most noticeably, integration of editing control tools into the game itself, this way no two people would ever see something in the debug log and work on it at the same time, for lack of communication. So a job could be created inside the game and a signal would pop up in the world, clicking the sign would reveal all the technical details as well as a way to contact the dev who put up the task. A “Field task view” was created, as a window of observation so the team could see and manage tasks of greater importance.

According to the team, this was a great way for devs to share ideas with each other about different tasks. In an interview with IGN japan it was said, about the debugging process, that a member of the team realized how hard it would be to wait until the end of production to begin the working on the debugging, so they tried to implement an action of constant debugging side by side with the regular development. This way the team could block specific errors and tag programmers specifically to make sure these were fixed. Along with this a tool was created that allowed any member of the team to report an error, practically fusing the tools to find and fix bugs creating an in game system called “#ZELDA_ERROR” Finally I want to tall about the way the game looks, how the UI looks more specifically, the thing most players will have in front of them for the longest time. The user interface or UI, is the first thing a player sees when they boot up the game, and in this game there was a very important message to give straight away, this is a new Legend of Zelda, this is a new generation of games. So the look of the UI had to be new, reformed, the team had to rethink how a new look would be born, maintaining a very crucial integration between four categories, Graphics, Font, Design, and Animation. following one simple concept, only the necessary should be visible, nothing should stand out in a negative way, and all the information should be concise so players wouldn’t have to look around, and would find everything relevant to them in the same space. Having this in mind we can see it working from the very first screen. Pay attention to how the space is used as soon as you turn the game on.

See how all the information is stored on the right side of the screen and you have this huge open landscape with Link in front of it (triangles again see) what’s beyond link? what is he seeing? just hit play already! these are the things this first screen wants you to feel. ( Side note: the devs even created the color “ZELDA white” which is basically a slightly yellow tinted white, to make sure the UI was clean but not to tiresome to look at. Sweet devs are aware of your eyes.)

Now, there are things that will be different if you have the Original Japanese version or a translated version of the game, in Japan the letter font goes much more in line with the less is more philosophy of the game’s UI, in japan the fonts already existed, they’re “Logo G Black” for Katakana, and “Raguran Punch” for Kanji (Katakana and Kanji are two different ways of writing in Japanese). Now even if the western versions of the game don’t exactly break the rules, they do shy away from them a little and there was a specific font made at least for the Latin alphabet.

(If you’ve played the game you might have also seen the Pro HUD, this is an even cleaner version of the UI Presumably made as a request from Nintendo America or Europe, in an attempt to clean and help with the immersion in the game) Even the Sheikah Slate was designed along with the artists, specifically so it would have a more decorated design that would separate Sheikah objects as artifacts from an older age than when the game takes place. This is particularly more interesting when you realize that the team only had two UI designers, and they were so overwhelmed with work that they had to work together with programmers to implement small tricks, expanding the exclusive nintendo system “Layout Editor” which is a system to edit the visual composition of the game, this way designers could animate sections of the game and give programmers control over them, the big change BOTW brought to this system was the ability to see various interface images and their animations running at the same time over the main game.

Next, to make the work over the great map easier this was divided into 120 different sections, distinguishing between outdoors and indoors (done through colors) these could be loaded as needed with 4 zoom levels so the map would be easy o analyze with precision, because of this technic 2,344 different areas were created that would be impossible to fully make manually, so the map was procedurally generated (as a Minecraft map would be for instance) and every night textures were generated to each section of the map, so environmental artists would work with them later, this was done using a screen capture technology which allowed artists to add filters and make color adjustments to later harmonize with the UI, after this they’d copy the environment and hide anything that needed hiding using masks, any handmade redesign in the environment was also done here to create a real and dynamic world.

Now making a game of course is no easy task, much less a game with the scale BOTW has, and I find it very impressive to play a game that is so consistently good is so many different aspects, even if you’re accustomed by now to that sweet nintendo polish, but in my opinion, it is always great for us consumers, when we get the opportunity to dive a little into the amazing work and dedication put into the games we play, and learn a bit more about them.

Have different ideas? something that I clearly missed, suggestions? Write them to me, and we’ll be Speaking of Video Games!

To write this post I went around to these cool places on the web: 4gamer - http://www.4gamer.net/games/341/G034168/20170901120/ ESUTERU - http://blog.esuteru.com/archives/20018343.html

IGN JAPAN - http://jp.ign.com/cedec-2017/16963/news/botw

Matt Walker’s page - https://medium.com/@gypsyOtoko Polygon article on Matt Walker’s translations - https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/3/16412614/legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-development-game-design

#Zelda #legend of zelda #botw #zelda botw #game design #video games #Speaking of video games #spvg #nintendo #nintendo switch #switch #link #opinion #speaking #breath of the wild #games #text post

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fnlrndcllctv · 3 years

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REVIEW: SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium (1999)

When it comes to 2D fighting games during the early/mid 90’s, there’s two names that absolutely dominated the scene with their releases and became household names;

SNK and Capcom.

To this day they remain some of the most well respected and most loved games companies in the fighting game genre, so the prospect of a crossover between the two companies back then was certainly a tantalising thought.

In November of 1999, we got just that in the form of SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium for the Neo Geo Pocket Color system.

While this wasn’t the first time we’d see the brands clash in a single game (that award goes to SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash, released earlier that year), it was the first time they would meet in the setting of a tradition versus fighting game.

The game was a critical success, and was followed up with entries in the genre that many consider to be the best fighting games ever made.

So, with the bar set so high with this historic title, it finally sees a re-release on the Nintendo Switch almost 22 years later as part of Nintendo’s Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection series, alongside games such as SNK Gals’ Fighters, The King Of Fighters R-2 and Fatal Fury: First Contact.

So, does it still hold up all these years later?

Let’s find out…

Gameplay

First of all, there’s a number of different ways in which players can play through the tournament mode (and regular versus mode); you can either go 1-on-1, fight a 2-on-2 battle as a tag team, or as a team of three in an elimination match. This variety of battle styles appeals to players who may be used to fighting in different forms.

Want to play this like a King Of Fighters game? Go ahead!

How about like the Marvel Vs Capcom titles? Play as a tag-team to your heart’s content, my friend!

For a game that utilises just two attack buttons, there’s a surprising amount of depth to how special moves are executed as well. Instead of relying on the four-button approach that SNK based their games on or the usual six-button layout in many of the Capcom fighting games, SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium’s control scheme actually focuses on how long the A and B buttons are pressed.

The longer a button is pressed, the higher the amount of damage it causes (but takes a hit to how quick it is), mimicking the LP/MP/HP and LK/MK/HK button functions in games such as Street Fighter II and Darkstalkers.

It’s a simple system that works wonders, and makes the amalgamation of each games franchise’s special moves work together seamlessly.

The game also boasts three different “power gauge” command styles to choose from too;

AVERAGE - This is similar to the traditional super gauge in the Street Fighter games, where once the gauge is filled up, more powerful versions of normal attacks can be pulled off.

COUNTER - This is a more defensive approach that allows counterblows while evading enemy attacks. It also has an exclusive function in the form of “critical hits”, which do greater damage if they successfully hit an opponent.

RUSH - This one only fills up when chain combos are successfully executed, and although this gauge nerfs your normal attack damage, super moves can be done at any time (as long as there’s enough juice in the tank, so to speak).

So no matter which side of the fighting game coin you land on, there’s definitely a playstyle in SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium that will suit you perfectly.

In the original release, if players wanted to play against each other, a link cable and another console were required, making it something of a inconvenience. Thankfully this new Switch port has 2-player versus available straight away by using the two joycons.

Story

The game’s main storyline centres around a not-so-subtly named fighting tournament known as the “Battle Tournament of Evil”, which promises the victor the title of “World’s Mightiest” and a ridiculously high amount of prize money.

The benefactors and organisers of said tournament? None other than Fatal Fury’s Geese Howard and Street Fighter II’s M. Bison!

This newly formed alliance of nefarious (and powerful) psychopaths has an ulterior motive with the tournament, and intend to create an “immortal military” whose first wave of elite soldiers are to be the captured contestants.

The character stories vary slightly depending on whether an SNK fighter or a Capcom fighter is chosen, and the game’s ending depends on the outcome of a specific match during the tournament where a player faces off against their rival.

Putting together the two “Big Bads” that are synonymous with their respective franchises is a great move and the fact that players can get a “bad ending” through poor performance in just a single match ups the ante somewhat as well.

Roster

SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium’s roster is comprised of 26 different fighters (18 of which are immediately playable, with a further 8 that are unlockable) from across the various SNK and Capcom franchises;

From the King Of Fighters, Fatal Fury and Art Of Fighting games, we get Kyo, Terry Bogard, Iori, Ryo Sakazaki, Mai and Leona.

From Psycho Soldier, we get Athena.

From the Samurai Shodown series, we get Haohmaru and Nakoruru

From Street Fighter II, we get Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile and Zangief.

From the Street Fighter Alpha series, we get Sakura and Dan

From Darkstalkers, we get Morrigan and Felicia.

The unlockable fighters in the game are from a good mix of the various games series, and there are 4 to unlock for each side.

It’s an impressive roster for a game that was released on a platform like this, and does a great job of bringing together the more familiar faces of Capcom’s games with some perhaps lesser known fighters from the SNK side.

Graphics

SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium’s stylised graphics are one of the most immediate things players will notice about the game.

The character sprites are more cartoonish versions of each fighter’s normal likeness and all strictly adhere to a 3-colour palette. Considering the history of alternate looks for 2D fighting game characters being simple colour swaps, this simplistic look works really well for the most part (well, Zangief might be the only exception here…).

Seeing the fighters in motion is also a joyous thing too, as the movement during fights is fluid and animated to a brilliant degree. Even the animations when characters are idle feel charming in this game!

A large problem with fighting games on handheld systems during this era was that they all too often felt like an attempt at creating a scaled down version of the bigger, more technically advanced games to fit the lower specs of the systems, ultimately resulting in a crappy version of the game.

Games such as this, along with many other titles in the Neo Geo Pocket Color library, always felt like they were made from the ground up to fit the system, so they not only played well, but they also looked very unique in a really positive way.

SNK Vs Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium is arguably the best of the bunch, and it deserves praise for it.

As is par for the course with retro fighting game re-releases on modern hardware, there’s also some extra display options to help things feel like the real deal, but with this (and the other NGPC releases on the Switch), there’s the option to view the game in a mocked up fashion on a number of different Neo Geo Pocket Color models. It’s a nice touch that effectively shows the amount of care being put into this port.

Stages

The stages in the game are essentially a megamix of different locations from several SNK and Capcom games, ranging from the helicopter wreckage in The King Of Fighters ‘94’s Brazilian jungle, the Great Wall Of China from Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams and the crashing rocky waves of Japan from Samurai Shodown to the cloudy Japanese castle of Ryu’s Street Fighter II stage, Morrigan’s spooky Scottish Darkstalkers cave/lair combo and the moving train carriages that pass by Mount Rushmore (over and over again) from Fatal Fury 2.

There’s plenty of references for longtime fans of these games to spot, and they have been recreated perfectly to fit in with the game’s visual style.

I mean, sure, some of the characters in the backgrounds do look a little murky and lack detail in places, but when you consider that the screen on a Neo Geo Pocket Color was a smaller, low resolution affair, it can be ignored for the most part!

Replayability

SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium’s gameplay experience is essentially split into two halves.

One one side, you have the regular versus game modes and a story mode to fight through, as one would expect from pretty much every fighting game. On the other side is the unlocking all of the hidden characters and beating a plethora of minigames to earn new special moves.

This is where the game’s replay value truly shines through, and its nice to see that it’s all present in its original form on the Switch port.

These extra games are known as “Olympic Mode”, and is divided up into separate SNK and Capcom sections. While both sections do share some of the same minigames, such as the 100-round survival match, Time Attack and the “whoever gets connects with the first hit, wins!” mode, there are also a couple of games that are unique to each brand.

On the SNK side, managed by Samurai Shodown’s Rimiruru, we get “Targets” - a shooting game that sees players assume the role of Marcus from the Metal Slug franchise as he shoots down as many aliens as possible. We also get “Blade Arts” - where players take on the role of Samurai Shodown’s Jubei as he slices through as many straw dummies as possible before a timer expires.

On the Capcom side, managed by Street Fighter Alpha 3’s Karin, we get “Ghost Trick”; which sees Ghosts ‘n Goblins’ Arthur having to jump across platforms to collect treasures on each side of the screen while avoiding a pesky Firebrand that pops up between them. The other challenge - “Cat Walk” - is a Dance Dance Revolution-style minigame that sees players have to quickly input buttons as they are announced so that Felicia can dance along.

These extra modes are pretty challenging, and undeniably make the game feel so much more complete, while also showing some much deserved appreciation for other iconic games in both companies’ back catalogs.

Final thoughts & overall score

SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium is fondly remembered by many as one of the best handheld fighting games ever released, and the Switch port further cements that notion, bringing the series into the modern era.

The visual style of the game still oozes charm, the gameplay system still feels immensely satisfying and the wealth of extra playable content that is packed into it puts many of the more well known titles of the era to shame.

With the features of the Nintendo Switch implemented, the small handful of nagging issues that came with the game’s original release are now completely fixed, making this not only a cool item of interest for fans of either SNK or Capcom, but an absolute essential for any fighting game fan.

For the purposes of this review, a review copy was provided by Renaissance PR on behalf of SNK.

Do you agree with our review of the SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium?

Let us know in the comments section below!

#Review #Capcom #2021 #Nintendo Switch #Neo Geo Pocket Colour #SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium #1999

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thedragontamerying · 6 years

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More young Artemisia! It’s a sort of continuation from this story, focusing more on Artemisia and her family coming into the FFXV story. Just a heads up, SBM and other stories probably won’t be on a regular schedule like it was before. I just don’t have enough free time to get a whole chapter done in a week. When I do have a story or chapter done I’ll post it on Fridays. I hope you enjoy this and all future installments, regardless!

Tagging: @insomniasix @theyearofdiamonddogs @zoeyredbird1 @seal-pai @ffxv-ocs-unite

The Future Belongs to the Curious

It had been several months since Artemisia officially met Noctis. Those months had been enough for the two to become the best of friends, though that wasn’t surprising considering their first meeting. Artemisia would go to work with her mother as often as possible just to visit her new friend. Often enough that her father childishly complained about he doesn’t get to see her as much now and that he should still be the most important guy in her life. Her quiet stare didn’t help his overly emotional response. Maybe it was the flu medicine he was on.

She would visit Noctis when she could after school, usually walking there herself straight from school or asking her father to drop her off later -- either way, her father wasn’t happy and made his displeasure very vocal. Artemisia’s mother had to remind him that the boy he was complaining about happened to be the prince. His only response was that if Artemisia didn’t care about nobility then neither did he.

That went out the door when Artemisia told him that Noctis liked one of the books he wrote.

Regardless, her time at the Citadel had earned her not only the friendship of Noctis, but some of the other residents as well. Most of the staff knew Artemisia now and their first response is usually to take her to wherever Noctis may be. Sometimes she would run into Ismene or Clarus, who would both greet her with gentle smiles and gestures. Ismene would usually stay with her and Noctis for a time when they would spend time together. Artemisia could tell that she was trying to see if there was any signs of improvement in Noctis’ condition during those moments of childish happiness and carefree attitudes.

Unfortunately, positive attitudes can’t fix everything. For months, the doctors and nurses tried every form of physical therapy and medication to help the young prince regain his legs. No matter what they did or used, he was never able to move or feel his paralyzed limbs. Failure after failure, everyone was noticing that it was starting to have an affect on the prince emotionally too. Artemisia’s presence helped for a time, but the frustration and hopelessness was taking a toll on his psyche. He was sleeping more, even without the aid of pain medicine, and becoming more closed off.

King Regis, seeing how miserable his son was and fearing the worst, made the decision to travel to Tenebrae with Noctis. There, they would seek the healing powers of the Oracle. It was seen as a last resort. Tenebrae and Insomnia were close allies, what with the history of the Oracle and Lucian kings, but Tenebrae was also far away. And with Niflheim becoming bolder each day as they grow and conquer, to say that everyone was worried about their safety would be an understatement. But this was the only chance they had left.

Artemisia ran towards the Citadel as fast as her short legs could go. Noctis had told her about them leaving for Tenebrae the other day and she wanted to see him before they left. She had brought her backpack filled with miscellaneous things to entertain themselves with. She knew that Noctis had tons of things that they could play with -- he was a prince after all -- but he always seemed to enjoy using her stuff more. Something new that isn’t royalty related, she supposed.

She hopped up the stairs to the royal palace and tried opened the hulking, engraved doors. She was greeted by two guards who helped her inside, opening the doors for her. She gave a nod in thanks to them before jogging past them to the elevator, ignoring their directions to where her mother was at moment.

She pressed the button for the floor where Noctis’ room was, waving at the two confused guards as the door closed. Noctis and the king were leaving for Tenebrae in three days. She couldn’t waste any time.

The elevator dinged as the doors opened to her floor. Artemisia skipped out of the elevator and down the hall to Noctis’ room. She gave a warning knock before opening the door just enough to peak through. Noctis wasn’t in his bed, his usual spot as of late. She opened the door all the way, looking around the room to see he was completely absent. His wheelchair was gone too. Perhaps he was somewhere else in the palace?

Artemisia wandered around looking for her friend, looking in all the area’s he might be in. He wasn’t in his room. He wasn’t in the garden. He wasn’t in the study. Artemisia even looked in the palace library as a last resort. Noctis didn’t usually go to the library on his own accord, but there’s been a few times that she’s found him in there with an older looking boy with glasses. He would usually complain about the whole experience afterwards.

She started looking in the more obscure and unfamiliar parts of the Citadel in hopes of finding him. The palace was huge, with so many floors and twisting hallways, and Noctis usually only stuck to a few places in the whole building so her knowledge of the whole layout was limited. She found herself in a darker hallway with a bunch of closed that had plates of people’s names next to the doors. She stopped when she read the name of someone she recognized:

Aetius, Ismene

She blinked, realizing that the door was slightly open. Ismene did spend time with the two of them every once in a while, perhaps she would know where Noctis was. Artemisia knocked on the ajar door before opening it the rest of the way to the room. It looked like it was Ismene’s office space. There was a giant desk in the middle with stacks of paper and folders spread out throughout the room. Some looked like they were in the middle of being organized in one of the many filing cabinets, but must have been needed again along the way as they were opened with the papers in a disarray. There was a small laptop amongst the papers on a desk further back against the wall, though it looks like it was push aside to make room for the other items. The only thing that the office was missing was the owner.

Artemisia was about to leave before her eyes caught something through the mess. She walked over to the middle desk, looking over the desk the best she could despite her short stature. There were small figurines atop a large terra graphic map. Artemisia couldn’t tell what it was a map of; it was somewhere beyond Insomnia. It would explain why Artemisia didn’t recognize anything on the map. Insomnia was the only land she knew after all. The figurines were grouped in different colors, one group blue and one group red.

She reached over and grabbed one of the figurines from each group, turning them over in her hands curiously. They looked exactly the same, minus the color differentiation. They looked like the pawn pieces in a game of chess. She noticed that there were a few of them that looked like that while the rest varied in shape and size. Balancing on the tips of her toes to look over the side of the desk, she moved the two figurines around the large map pretending they were climbing up the 2D mountain.

“Artemisia?”

The little girl jumped, the pieces dropping from her hands and clanking against the desk. She whipped around to see Ismene standing at the door with some files in her hand. Her eyes darted between the figurines she dropped and the older woman in front of her. She tucked her hands behind her back, trying to make it convincing that she hadn’t been playing with something that isn’t her’s.

“What are you doing in here?” Ismene walked in, looking over Artemisia and the map where she saw her pieces had been moved. “Your mother is in her usual spot downstairs.” Artemisia shook her head, looking down at the ground with a light blush on her chubby cheeks. Ismene noticed the backpack on the floor and put the pieces together. “Are you looking for the prince?”

The little girl nodded.

“Oh sweetheart, Noctis left for Tenebrae already.” Ismene exclaimed, walking around to the other side of the desk and taking a seat. “The king and his son both left early this morning. It will take them about three days to get there, so they needed to leave as soon as possible.”

Well, Noctis was a bit loopy from the pain medicine when she originally asked him about the trip. He must of gotten the time they leave and the time it takes to get to Tenebrae mixed up. Now this left Artemisia unsure of what to do with herself, awkwardly looking at her feet.

Ismene glanced down at the map and the toppled figurines before looking back at the young girl before her. “Your mother should be finishing her shift in a little while,” she leaned over and started to arrange the different map pieces, “Would you like to play a little game until then?” Ismene chuckled at the immediate sparkle in Artemisia’s eyes at the offer. “Here,” she scooted another seat next to the table, “I’ll show you how it works.”

Artemisia hopped onto the seat, resting on her knees to look over the desk. Ismene separated the figurines by their colors, keeping the red ones to her side and pushing the blue ones to Artemisia’s. “Have you ever played chess, Artemisia?” The quiet girl gave a one shoulder shrug. “Well, this is similar to chess. These are your pieces and they represent different units that you can use to win.” She held up the pawn piece from earlier and a piece that looked more like a shield at attention.

“And they don’t all move the same. For example, this one,” she held the pawn, “Can move further than this one,” she wiggled the shield. “The pawn represents a small unit of soldiers, while the shield represents a large group that are meant to defend an area.” She then picked up another figurine. It was the only one of its kind: it was shaped like a crown and was the largest piece in the ensemble. “And this is the goal. You want to capture this piece, and if you do then you win.” She put the piece down at the back of her figurine army. “The rest of your pieces are suppose to protect the goal by defending and capturing enemy pieces. Are you interested?”

Artemisia nodded enthusiastically, grabbing at her pieces and arranging them on the map. Ismene explained a few other rules: the purposes of other pieces, movement of the pieces, what pieces overpower others and how turns are taken. It was a lot to take in -- and those were just basic, beginner rules -- but Artemisia always enjoyed to keep her mind busy.

The two soon began their game. Once the first move was made all talking ceased and the only sounds were the clinks of the figurines against the desk. It took a while for Artemisia to fully grasp all the rules and limitations, but she soon fell into it. Though, as the game progressed and the situation became more havoc she needed more and more time to think of her next move. Turns out that was bad too because if she waited too long then Ismene would make her own moves, complicating things further.

Artemisia bit her lip, trying to force her brain to keep up with the ever changing game. She glanced up at her opponent and wasn’t surprised to see her as cool as a cucumber, leaning against her chair casually as she stared down at the map. Ismene noticed the girl’s attention and smiled at her. “Take your time.” She chirped as she moved another piece forward.

Artemisia lightly bit her finger as she brought her attention back to the map. Ismene, while obviously the superior mind, didn’t seem disinterested in how everything was playing out. Artemisia knew the older woman wasn’t playing to the best of her abilities, but she wasn’t making this easy on Artemisia either. If Ismene wasn’t going to back out of the challenge, then neither would she.

It was after Ismene moved another piece that her brain finally clicked. Her brought her hand down from lip, quickly reassessing the map with eyes wide with realization. She nearly lunged forward to make her move before Ismene, bringing one of her shields closer to the main battlefield. Ismene had flinched back slightly at her abrupt movement, glancing back between Artemisia and the map before continuing her move.

The game continued and while Artemisia still struggled a little to keep up, her thinking was clearer than before. The two were focusing their pieces towards a choke in the middle of the map where it became a battle of which figurines overpower which. Ismene had more available and more powerful pieces, but Artemisia kept her area fortified with a crowd of pieces. It looked as though the game became a battle of time as Ismene’s forces would slowly decimate the remaining pieces on Artemisia’s side. Ismene’s eyes trailed over the field, looking over her possible moves before her eyes noticed a few rogue pawns straying away from the main battle. With each move they would slowly inch their way further from the main party and closer to Ismene’s side, the pawns diverging to their own paths as they centered on one center target.

Well, someone’s a little clever.

A small knock echoed from the other side of the door. “My lady, I was told to deliver these to yo--” Artemisia’s mother, Sotiria, opened the door with a small stack of papers in her hands. Her eyes widened in shock. “Artemisia!” Said girl sprung from her chair, quickly finishing her move before jumping off her seat as her mother ran over to her. “What are you doing in here? You shouldn’t be bothering Lady Aetius!” Her mother looked up at Ismene, utter embarrassment and panic in her eyes. “I am so sorry, my lady! I-I didn’t know that she was here! I-If I did--”

Ismene looked up from the map at the red-faced woman before her. “Mrs Thanos, could I talk to you in the hallway?” She lifted herself from her seat and patted Artemisia on the head as she passed. “Artemisia can stay in here while we talk.”

Sotiria stood frozen as the older woman walked past her, a small gulp indicating her nerves. Artemisia patted her mother’s hand comfortably before turning her attention back to the map. Her mother wished she had her daughter’s confidence.

Sotiria stepped out into the hallway, with Ismene softly shut the door behind them. “I’m really sorry about her! I keep telling her to not wander off but she always finds ways. I’m so, so, sorry--”

“It’s alright, it’s alright.” Ismene insisted, calming the worried woman’s animated bambling. “I’m not mad at you or her. If anything I have to say I’m… intrigued.”

Sotiria blinked. “Huh?”

“Mrs Thanos, your daughter demonstrates exceptional skill in strategic thinking. Thinking above the typical level for children her age. And with her initiative to pursue her curiosities, I believe that your daughter could make a wonderful future tactician, with the right training of course.”

“Wait, what?” Sotiria gasped flabbergasted. “T-Tactician? She’s always been at a higher level than most kids her age, but isn’t that a bit much? A-After all, children are curious about everything. That’s not exclusive to Artemisia.” She rubbed her shaking hands together, a nervous smile on her face.

“Intelligence is given to those that are motivated enough to pursue it. Curiosity, and the desire to find the answers, that is something that can be lost if not nurtured and encouraged. Which I would, if given the opportunity.” Ismene clasped her two hands together, holding them down in front of her pelvis in a relaxed position. “Mrs Thanos, I believe your daughter, if given the opportunity, could rise above expectation and make a difference. The prince will need people he can trust in upcoming days. Royalty has its charms but it’s not all glitter and gold. Having a friend with him -- beside him -- can make a world of difference.”

Sotiria’s gaze shifted to the ground, unsure about the offering before her and her daughter. One isn’t just offered to suddenly train with the royal line of Lucis; especially one with no royal blood.

Sotiria furrowed her brows slightly when a thought came to mind, a thought that every mother would want to protect their child from. “If… If Artemisia did train with you, does that mean she would have to fight?” Most citizens were able to ignore the war with Niflheim, taking their safety behind the Wall for granted. Anyone involved with the king, however, was more than aware of the dangers outside of the Crown City. Despite most of her time being restrained to watching Noctis, Sotiria had seen some of the Crownsguard and even a few Kingsglaive. The Crownsguard members were always covered in bruises and scars from fighting and the Kingsglaive usually faired worse. Sotiria would go into a slight panic when she saw the slightest bit of blood on her daughter, there is no way she could handle seeing anything worse.

Ismene opened her mouth to respond before closing it once again, glancing down at the floor for a moment before returning her attention back to the woman before her. “Yes, she would.” No point in sugar coating the truth. “Eventually, that is. I would primarily focus on academic study and training her brain on how to think tactically. The combat training would come later, when she’s older and officially accepted into the position.”

Ismene could still see the uneasiness in Sotiria’s eyes. “In the end, it’s a decision that Artemisia will have to make when she’s ready.” Ismene reached into the pocket of her uniform and pulled out a small sticky note and pen. “In the very least, I would highly encourage you to enroll Artemisia to this school. It’s an intensive educational program that I think would benefit her, regardless if she decides to take the position or not.” She handed the written piece of paper to Sotiria. “I can see what I can work out with the school to see about covering the admission fees and what not.”

Sotiria stared at the paper in her hand. Everything was happening too fast, her brain couldn’t keep up. It was bewildering enough for her family to be friends with royalty, and now this? This was too much. “Do you…” She trailed off before hesitantly looking back at the councilwoman. “Do you really think she could do it?”

“I do. I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise.” Ismene assured confidently. Even then, she could still see the uncertainty in the other woman’s eyes. “I encourage you to at least consider it.”

The door behind them squeaked, catching the two women’s attention. Artemisia pushed it open enough for her to squeeze through, looking at the adults with great interest. Her mother waved her hand, signalling her to come to her side. “Come on, Artemisia. We should be heading home soon.” Artemisia came over and held on to her mother’s hand as Sotiria looked back to Ismene. “We’ll think about your offer.”

Ismene smiled. “Thank you.”

Sotiria looked down at Artemisia and gave her hand a little comforting shake. “Say goodbye to Miss Aetius, sweety.”

Artemisia smiled and gave a small wave as they walked away. Ismene’s smile grew a slightly and waved back to the little girl before she went back into her study.

After arriving home, Sotiria told her husband about the offer before them. He seemed more excited at the idea than Sotiria, but he held the same concerns. Artemisia was only nine and the idea of having such a huge responsibility placed on her was enough to overshadow his previous excitement. They tried to discuss it privately, but that was proving difficult with Artemisia constantly following them. Why did their kid have to be so good at eavesdropping?

Dinner time was the only time they got any kind of relief from Artemisia’s intense stare. The parents looked over at each other from across the table, both picking at their food absentmindedly. The two were practically having an entire conversation with just their eyes, making strange faces and odd eye movements as they tried to avoid their daughter catching on.

Finally, Artemisia’s father was the one to break the awkward silence as he cleared his throat. “So Artie, I heard you played with Ismene today?” He asked, ignoring the small glare he was getting from his wife for his casual language. Artemisia nodded, her smiling face full of food. “Did you like spending time with her?”

Artemisia swallowed, nodding vigorously.

Sotiria glanced back her husband before placing her utensils down and bringing her hands together as she focused on her daughter. “Artemisia, are you interested in the things that Miss Aetius does?” Artemisia looked back at her mother with questioning eyes. “Miss Aetius made an offer, where she can teach you how to do what she does. You would have to transfer to a different school, but Miss Aetius thinks you will do well there and you would be able to learn how to do all the things that she does so that you can be…” she hesitated, “She wants you to train to become an tactician like her.” Artemisia blinked, digesting her mother’s words. Her mother wrapped her hand over Artemisia’s smaller one.

Artemisia opened her mouth before closing it again and looking down at her plate. Her father rubbed her shoulder comfortably. “It’s your choice, honey. But Ismene seems to think that you can do a lot of good in the future.”

Artemisia stared down at her half empty plate, a highway of thoughts coming and going through her mind. In flashes she saw King Regis, Ismene’s flooded office, the game they played earlier, and then she saw Noctis.

“...I want to try.”

#ffxv fanfic #ffxv oc #ffxv game rewrite #noctis lucis caelum #artemisia thanos #ismene aetius

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maxolrg710-blog · 4 years

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Could This Record Be The Definitive Solution To Your Cat Mario?

Mobile Apps And Mobile Gamings.

#toc background: #f9f9f9;border: 1px solid #aaa;display: table;margin-bottom: 1em;padding: 1em;width: 350px; .toctitle font-weight: 700;text-align: center;

Content

Xmas Shop Online.

Games You May Not Know Concerning

Gameanalytics Puts Every One Of Our Kpis In One Area, And Also Helps Us To Track Layout Events And Also Optimize Our Video Game Circulation.

The 50 Finest Gamecube Games Of All Time.

Modern Times Group Advertises Redin To Ceo.

Agos: A Game Of Area.

Is IGG games a virus?

IGG Games has always been considered a safe site here, but I just read the new piracy mega thread and it says never to use them because they inject adware amongst other things. The site doesn't have malware and doesn't have adware.

Xmas Shop Online.

In addition to showing your kids critical STEM abilities, LEGO has popular culture on their side, with interactive mobile games set in the Star Wars, Marvel, and DC universes. For parents that want their children to have much less of a well-known experience, look into LEGO Tower, LEGO City, or LEGO Maker Island where the extra you build, the even more of your atmosphere you open. We took a look at several of the most effective mobile video games available for more youthful children, and also right here are a few of our favorites. So let's claim we're running the advertising for a mobile game and the mobile video game is a brand-new IP, it's not a license as well as no one's really come across it. Allow's claim when Candy Crush came out, you assume you have a spin on the match-three classification therefore you produce a game that's called Treasure Crush rather than Candy Crush.

Gamings You Might Not Know About

Actually the whole inquiry of exactly how to earn money off mobile games is presently causing the entire market to shake. Mobile games send a lot of information back to individuals who make them. It's all anonymous and aggregated, but make indisputable, the gamemakers know how much time we play, how much time a level takes us, where we get stuck, when we give up. The Dots group circulated early variations of the game at Betaworks. They understood they were on to something when people started playing Dots in the middle of the evening.

Gameanalytics Places Every One Of Our Kpis In One Place, And Also Assists Us To Track Design Events And Also Maximize Our Game Circulation.

Rewards can vary from added time playing the video game to power-ups as well as features generally offered only via in-app purchases. Rewarded advertisements will certainly make video clip advertisements as well as interactive advertisements, such as playables. In the summertime of 2016, complying with AdMob's launch of rewarded ads, Avid.ly chose to take the next action and also include compensated ads to a few of its mobile games. Although Avid.ly originally fretted compensated advertisements would certainly cannibalize IAP revenue, the outcomes showed the opposite result. In one of its mobile games, Avid.ly saw a 40% rise in typical earnings per user, an 18% increase in in-app acquisition profits, and a 20% increase in session length.

The 50 Finest Gamecube Games Of Perpetuity.

Consequently, Avid.ly currently implements compensated ads across its whole portfolio of mobile video games. Because of its minimal time and clear financing objective, a crowdfunding project is a wonderful method to drive a sense of seriousness amongst advocates that is otherwise missing in the mobile game space.

Below are the very best mobile games of the previous decade-- the ones that affected the sector. An awarded ad experience occurs when individuals decide in to engage with an advertisement in exchange for a "benefit" within the app.

There's likewise an option for one-handed controls to make using your phone even much easier.

As with a lot of points during the coronavirus pandemic, how those games look, feel and are played will be far different than typical.

All video games in the AL Division Collection, which are presented by Utz, will be played in San Diego as well as Los Angeles, while the NL Department Collection, which are presented by Doosan, will certainly take place in Arlington and also Houston.

Share your proof on the impact of loot boxes in computer game.

Is fortnite bad for kids?

It's not gratuitously violent like the M-rated Call of Duty series. It's rated “T” as being appropriate for teens and up, by the ESRB. Players are “eliminating” rather than “killing” other players. Thus, parents are more inclined to allow their kids to play Fortnite over the more graphically violent games available.

With the current enhancement of a 5v5 mode, there's been no far better time to enter for some mobile MOBA action. That stated, while free-to-play is commonly related to predatory in-app purchases, that does not always have to be the case. Here are 25 fun free-to-play games that will allow players enjoy themselves without needing to repeatedly take out a credit card. Sure, all of these video games do have in-app purchases for those that intend to throw some money about, but you can download these titles recognizing that you will not be nickel and dimed every which way.

Paul Murphy, left, and also Patrick Moberg are the Chief Executive Officer and also CCO of Playdots, that makes the hit mobile video games Dots and 2 Dots. Zynga is a worldwide leader in interactive enjoyment with a mission to connect the world via video games. To day, greater than one billion people have played Zynga's franchise business including CSR RacingTM, Empires & PuzzlesTM, Merge Dragons! TM, Toon Blast ™, Plaything Blast ™, Words With FriendsTM as well as Zynga PokerTM. Zynga's games are offered in greater than 150 countries as well as are usable throughout social platforms as well as mobile devices worldwide. For more information, see or follow Zynga on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or the Zynga blog site.

What is the size of PUBG PC?

The download size of PUBG PC is approximately 30 GB. It is purchasable for ₹999 on Steam, which is a video game digital distribution service.

Many thanks to the advent of mobile phones, however, we can currently take the very best mobile scary video games on the move. Harry Potter won't be the only augmented truth phone video game to make a big sprinkle this year. Minecraft Planet will certainly present in beta later on this summer, possibly appealing mainly to the under-21 crowd-- however do not ignore the size and power of the Minecraft fanbase.

Where can I download PC games?

Here is a list of top 8 websites to download games on your PC. 1. 1 Steam. This website for downloading games is developed by Valve Corporations and has been https://unblocked-games.online functioning for the past thirteen years.

2. 2 GOG. GOG.com is operated by GOG Limited.

3. 3 G2A.

4. 4 Origin.

5. 5 PC games.

6. 6 Ocean of Games.

7. 7 Softpedia.

8. 8 Skidrow reloaded.

So what you're doing is taking advantage of someone else that has developed momentum without trying to build any kind of resonance or association with your very own version of that. You can make advertisements that look comparable to Candy Crush ads. As well as you will probably obtain a good deal of people who will be interested, click as well as download and install the game, plus possibly spend a little bit of money at an early stage. A great deal of computer game nowadays have very long lives, like World of Warcraft is now in its 17th year.

Below are some fast honorable points out if you're seeking a lot more great choices. Fortunately is that lots of video games with no in-app acquisitions still exist, and also below is a handful that we've had a good time playing ourselves. Launched in 2016, Pokemon Go is an increased truth and also location-based mobile video game made by US-headquartered Niantic. Formerly Niantic Labs, an interior startup within Google, the firm first obtained attention for Ingress, an additional AR, location-based game.

Mahjong Games.

Spaceteam is the best mobile game that you've never ever heard of. First points first, you need some buddies to play with, and also they need to install the application on their iPhone, iPad, or Android device. There are a plenty of number of "build your own community" video games out there yet Mixture Community is certainly one of the most one-of-a-kind take we have actually seen. Mixture Town is a current release that allows players develop their very own craft brewery. Beer followers can call their beers as well as also design the tag on the containers.

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afangirlrambles · 7 years

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Let Me In (2/?)

Summary: You are a new addition to the Avengers, and have only ever seen your teammates with their walls up. However, one by one they slowly start to let you in, and you finally see them as human.

A/N: I feel like this series will just get better and better. I’m starting to hammer out what I want the tone to be, and this was just a blast to write. I kind of want to talk about this part so I’ll put a longer author’s note after the tags for anyone who wants to read my thoughts about this part. Enjoy! And a giant thank you to everyone who read Tony’s part and liked, reblogged, commented, sent me an ask, etc. I was so motivated during this part and I know that that feeling will just get bigger and bigger!! :)

Warnings: language (some stronger swears here friends), mild (non-graphic) violence

Words: 1900 (yeah buddy)

Tony Stark (Part 1)

Natasha Romanoff

“Natasha!”

Gunshots rang in your ears, and you could physically feel the electricity crackling in the air from Thor’s hammer.

“Get down! Clint, is the quinjet on the ground?”

Everything felt underwater, and you found you couldn’t really move that well. Battlefields were supposed to be mad, but this was something else entirely.

“Look out! Tony, take out that sniper now!”

You heard an explosion come from somewhere nearby. Another bomb went off significantly closer this time. Someone yelled and then the world faded to black.

(Four hours earlier)

You took a deep breath and relaxed your shoulders, aiming your gun at the target. You exhaled through an entire magazine of rounds, only blinking once the ringing of the shot had stopped echoing around the range.

“Nice grouping.”

You turned around, surprised to find a smug redhead smirking back at you. She was wearing her patented black leather bodysuit, posture stiff and tense.

“Steve sent me to get you. We got a lead on a Hydra base in Serbia. Liftoff’s in 20. Cap wants us all in command central for a briefing.” She turned abruptly on her heels and walked out of the range, obviously expecting you to follow her.

You put your gun back in your hip holster and hurried after her. There was no part of her that was Natasha Romanoff in that moment. She was all Widow, carefully constructed exterior and guarded interior.

Thinking about it, you weren’t sure you’d ever seen the real Natasha. Maybe a few moments here and there when she was talking to Clint or watching a movie with Wanda, but never when she was around you.

It made sense given her past why she’d be more than a little closed off to strangers, but it still hurt that she didn’t consider you enough of a teammate to open up. At least Bruce had said more than five non-mission related words to you, and he turned into a green rage monster.

You’d definitely been warned about the Widow before you joined the team, but nothing could have prepared you for just how hard she was. You tried talking to Tony about it, but all he could tell you was that there wasn’t any special formula for Natasha. She either trusted you or she didn’t.

The whole team was geared up and waiting for the two of you when you walked into the briefing room. It was still a little intimidating to see Captain America and the Winter Soldier in full gear, if you were being honest with yourself, but you were slowly getting used to it. Each mission you went on made you feel a little more comfortable with standing toe to toe with the Avengers.

Steve gave the team a rundown of the layout of the base and how many Hydra agents to predict. It was a relatively small base with no seizable assets, meaning all you had to do was eliminate the agents and blow up the base.

Clint flew everyone to Siberia on the quinjet. Tensions were high as they usually were before a mission, and you found everyone’s pre-mission routines interesting. Bruce listened to classical music, the twins talked to each other in Russian with as little personal space as possible, and Thor had arm wrestling tournaments with Vision.

Today, however, you found yourself staring at Natasha more often than not. She was in the copilot seat next to Clint, just sitting in silence. They seemed to stabilize in the other’s presence, and you could almost see them mentality gearing up for a fight.

When the quinjet touched down, everyone stood up and waited for the ramp to drop down. Tony gave you a pat on the back before taking off into the sky with Vision and Thor. Sam, Bucky, and Steve cleared the upper floors of the compound, while the Maximoffs and Bruce maintained a perimeter. You, Clint, and Natasha cleared the lower floors while also planting explosives to be detonated after it was cleared.

“Hey, Capsicle, you wanna look out a window and tell me what you see,” Tony buzzed in your ear.

“Stark, I don’t see anything. It looks all clear.”

“That’s my point, Rogers. We were expecting minimal resistance, not a ghost town.”

Clint added, “Tony’s right. We’re almost done with these floors and we’ve only taken out four operatives.”

Wilson was incredulous as he said, “You’re almost done? We’re not even halfway through yet!”

“Friday, run a thermal scan on the compound’s main building.”

The three of you came to a Y in the hallway. Clint took one side, while you and Natasha stalked down the other.

“What are you thinking, Tony?” You spoke up.

“It should have taken you much longer to sweep the place. It’s small but not that small. I think maybe- son of a bitch! Damn it! Get out of there now!”

Natasha’s eyes started frantically sweeping the hallway. “Talk to us, Tony. What’s happening?”

“The place is red hot! Agents crawling the place. They have to be in the wa-”

That’s when the hallway exploded.

Doors that weren’t there before started sliding open, and the hallway closed itself off, leaving you and Natasha trapped with nearly a dozen Hydra agents.

The two of you went back to back and went to work. You didn’t let more than three feet of space get between you, not wanting to get separated. You worked better as a team.

The Black Widow was clearly better in hand-to-hand combat, but you had been assigned to the Avengers for a reason. You could do more than hold your own in a fight. Your weapons of choice were two knives, about the size of your hand. You could throw them up to 60 feet with deadly accuracy and were faster than any low level Hydra agent with a handgun.

You heard bones crack behind you just as the hilt of one of your knives disappeared into the back of the last agent on your side of the hall. Turning around, the Widow flashed you her signature smirk and said, “Nice aim. You really should teach Clint how-”

You’d heard rumors of a guy somewhere in Asia that could see what was going to happen before it did. Like future echoes of people that he could see and predict. Damn it if that wasn’t what was happening now.

An agent crumpled on the ground behind Natasha raised his gun at her, and instinct took over. Her eyes went wide as you shoved her out of the way.

A shot went off. You felt pain in your stomach right before you crumpled to the ground.

Four weeks into rehab and you still couldn’t walk more than half a mile on your own. You really owed Bruce for stabilizing your bleeding on the jet, but if he made you do another set of trunk twists you were going to strangle him in his sleep.

You probably weren’t going to return to missions for a couple months, but Tony insisted you came to briefings, mainly so he could make gimpy jokes but also so you could still be a part of the team.

Every time you walked into that command center now, you had flashbacks to that day. When you got shot. And not necessarily in a bad way, but you couldn’t help all the events from replaying over and over in your mind.

“Hey, gimpy!” Tony grinned at you, as you hobbled your way into the room.

“Really? Every time, Stark?” You rolled your eyes, but gave him a sly smile back.

Steve launched into his speech about where they were going and what they would encounter. There were some pretty big fish in Hydra’s organization they were hoping to fry. He started passing out files on different higher-ups and their profiles.

“Damn it,” muttered Steve.

Tony gave a mock gasp and said, “Language, Captain!”

Taking the higher ground and choosing to ignore Stark, Steve said, “I left some files in my room when I was gearing up. Y/N, would you mind-”

Before you had a chance to process the question, Natasha was jumping up to get the files. She was doing that a lot lately, doing things instead of you, for you. She still didn’t really talk to you, remaining mysterious as ever.

And she did it with everything, practically all the time. She fueled Bucky’s motorcycle during training after he asked you to. She grabbed a wrench for Tony from the kitchen while he was working on a new suit. She even covered most of your research for future missions that Fury asked you to do.

She never asked you about it, she just did it.

And you knew why. Because you felt like you’d cracked Natasha Romanoff.

Obviously not fully or even close to the way Clint knew her, but through this whole process you had learned a very integral part of who she was.

“Y/N, here’s that profile on the agent we arrested last week that Fury wanted.” Natasha put a file in front of you and started to walk away.

“You can stop, you know.” You set down your mug of tea and held constant eye contact.

She visibly bristled and turned around to face you. “Stop what?”

“I know that you’re just trying to make up for what happened. Because you feel guilty.”

Besides training, which definitely does not count, you’ve never been against the famed Black Widow before. But in that moment, she was the Widow and prowled towards you with all the vengeance she brought to the battlefield.

Through gritted teeth, she said, “Do not tell me what I feel. I’m not guilty, I’m angry. You had no right to make that decision. It’s part of the job, MY job, and I knew that when I joined the Avengers. You had no right, Y/N! What were you thinking? You could have died, your heart stopped. Do you get that? It was so reckless! Why did you do it?”

You took a deep breath and stood up so the two of you were on equal ground. “We’re teammates. I have your back. Always.”

Her eyes were wide as she recoiled slightly at your words. “I-I owe you.”

You shook your head and said, “No, you don’t. And not ever. I know you’d do the same for me. There will never be a counter between us, okay?”

Always controlled, always poised Natasha was speechless. She just stood there staring at you, and you could tell she didn’t quite believe you. She was trying to read you, figure out your angle. And you watched it cross her face when she realized you didn’t have one.

“I think Clint’s in the gym. We should probably go teach him how to properly throw some knives. What do you say, Romanoff?”

“Nat.”

Your eyebrows frowned at her, not quite understanding.

“You can call me Nat, if you want. And yeah I think Barton’s been needing a lesson for a while now.” She smirked at you and stalked off toward the gym. But it wasn’t like her old smirk. It was the one you’d seen her flash Steve during a meal, or at Tony when he was giving Peter a particularly hard time.

She’d let you in. And you knew that with Roman-

You knew with Nat that wasn’t something to take lightly.

Forever Tags: @ spectaculicious @ captain-amelia-bradley @lilasiannerd

Let Me In Tags: @ cornflax01 @ aubzylynn @purplekitten30 @ravenclaw-geek24 @tatortot270 @buckyywiththegoodhair @pressigh @feelmyroarrrr @c-maximoffs @fall-down-stand-up @shortiiqt16 @glittervelvetandlace

(I’m horrible at tags please let me know if I missed anyone or tumblr didn’t tag you I really don’t know what I’m doing I love you and it wasn’t on purpose O_O)

Closing A/N: So I love Natasha Romanoff, you guys. Like to pieces. I have so many headcanons and ideas about her character, but there was only so much I could fit into one part. I obviously took the “I owe you” bit from Winter Soldier, but I did it for a reason. I think Natasha looks at life with a score/counter. She views most relationships as a series of owed debts and it takes a lot for her to just let someone help her as a friend. So when the reader took a bullet for her, she was only left to assume that she needed to do something for the reader in return.

Also, I think she’s not really comfortable with touch. In Tony’s part, the reader put her head on his shoulder right away. He (in my opinion) can handle that level of physical contact from people. I really don’t think Natasha can from many people outside of the team. And even within the team, she’s a little wary of it from certain people. I wanted to show this, so that’s why I went with the name thing. It’s Natasha’s way of letting people get close without them needing to get physically close, if you catch my drift. I think in future parts I may show her and the reader interacting physically to show that the readers relationships with the people from past parts still grow and evolve even if they’re not shown in the part.

Sorry for the ramble, but I felt the need to about this part a tad! If you ever want to have discussions like this (or anything else) with me PLEASE drop by my inbox or asks!! I’m super friendly and am always willing to talk!! You’re always welcome here!!

#marvel #marvel fanfiction #mcu #mcu fanfiction #mcu fic #natasha romanoff #redheaded badass #reader insert #natasha romanoff x reader platonic #let me in #afangirlrambles #black widow #avengers #avengers fanfiction #nat

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Mingle - Multi-purpose WordPress Theme

https://opix.pk/blog/mingle-multi-purpose-wordpress-theme/ Mingle - Multi-purpose WordPress Theme https://opix.pk/blog/mingle-multi-purpose-wordpress-theme/ Opix.pk LIVE PREVIEWBUY FOR $79 A WordPress and BuddyPress Theme Mingle is an amazing WordPress theme and it’s BuddyPress ready! If you’re not familiar with BuddyPress, it’s a social network plugin for WordPress allowing your website to become a fully functional community portal. BuddyPress lets your users interract through groups, forums, friends, status updates, private messaging and a lot more. Mingle has been designed as an adaptable and highly intuitive WordPress theme. It includes administration features giving you complete control of your website’s layout and design. The unique and easy to manage design ensures your site will stand out and be remembered. Looking for theme support? Post support questions to our Help Center for faster responses and better support. Parallelus Help Center Drag and Drop Layout Manager Using the drag-and-drop “Layout Manager” you can create custom layouts for any page or post. Attach custom headers and footers to your layouts and interchange them as needed. This provides incredible flexibility so that you decide how your site looks instead of the theme deciding for you. Contact Form Builder You can add custom fields to your contact forms from the admin options. Any number of custom fields can be created and attached individually to any form. Includes options for custom validation, custom error messages, CAPTCHA and more. Unbranded White Label Admin An unbranded administrative interface with options to add your logo to the admin as well as and other company details, set permissions to restrict client access to theme options and more. To disable access to advanced developer features you can optionally hide the developer panels before turning the site over to your client. Sidebar Generator Create unlimited sidebars and add them to your custom layouts. You can also insert sidebars directly into any content area using a special shortcode! Coded with Care The theme uses HTML5 and CSS3 to create advanced styles using the latest technologies. Proper heading tags and coding standards are used to ensure outstanding search engine optimization. We take pride in creating well formatted and easily managed code. And a lot more! We’ve built this theme jam packed with so many incredible features and functionality they can’t all be listed here. Find out more and see the theme in action on the Mingle Demo Website. Some nice things customers are saying… You would be crazy not to purchase this theme, itís got Everything!!! – furious373 Congrats on a great theme. I only wish I had found this sooner and not wasted my money on other themes. – Cheers Tony This great theme is created by someone with a great vision. Iíve been playing with it for a while now and all I can say is ìwowî. This could very well be the future of WordPress. I really think it is! It is just beautifulówell crafted and deep in its options. Thank you for the fine work. It’s actually the best theme out of more than the 100 themes I bought on the forest… This is an amazing looking theme. YOU HAVE JUST RAISED THE BAR when it comes to themeforest designs. Thank you!!!. I just bought this theme like 2 days ago and wanted to say, out of the hundreds of WordPress themes Iíve used this is literally the best and pretty much makes the rest obsolete since you have so many options, with containers/layouts and shortcode especially. I won’t even have the need to look for another WordPress theme for a long time. 35 dollars is a steal!! Firstly this is a fantastic theme. Iíve never seen a slider like that before, and the admin options are astounding. This Theme may be the best theme ever made. I am a novice at WordPress, but Andy has built a templete even I can use. It takes some time for sure to find all the cool things you can do. I have already begun to migrate my Joomla corporate site over to wordpress because this theme has everything I need. The most powerful feature may even be the custom forms. I have purchased about 10 themes on here and the support given by this seller is clearly the best! Another awesome theme! I think I own all of your themes! I bought this theme sometime last week and have been working to set it up on my test site, learning the ropes as they say and I think there is a lot of power in the theme. It caught my eye from the first moment and I purchased it. I think the power lies in the fact that it can be customized for almost any page, different settings for headers, layout, footers etc. Above and beyond what others are doing, it has endless possibilities. This theme rocks! OK, so I am a fairly experienced WordPress Developer but you can slot together a website in 60 minutes flat! That has to be a record! Nice job with this theme. Love the new config options, whole new way of putting together a WordPress theme Iím just beginning to understand the features of this WordPress theme and I can say, damn, this is the best WordPress theme Iíve ever seen! Get News and Updates Looking for information about new releases and theme updates? Subscribe to our emails or follow us on Twitter and we’ll do our best to keep you informed. Updates and notifications THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.5.1 (August 30th 2018) Fix. Fixed a PHP v7.1+ incompatibility. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.5 (July 24th 2018) Fixes. Fixed some more PHP notices. Disabled the Gutenberg plugin and nag. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.4.3 (December 20th 2016) Security. Strengthened sidebar security. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.4.2 (September 1st 2016) Fixes. Fixed some more PHP notices. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.4.1 (April 8th 2016) Fixes. Fixed some PHP notices. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.4 (December 8th 2015) Bug fixes. Fixed missing activity Post Update button. Fixed missing Crop Image button when adding/updating profile photo. Fixed some PHP notices. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.3.2 (January 1st 2015) Bug fixes. Fixed layouts editor not working with WordPress 4.1. Fixed tag not working with blog shortcode. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.3.1 (July 4th 2014) Bug fixes. Fixed Parallelus shortcode inserter. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.3 (May 6th 2014) Updates. Updated layout manager for custom post types, register template files and bbPress. Updated translation strings. Fixed [slideshow] shortcode generating JavaScript error. Fixed templates defaulting to Home Page layout. Fixed layout and template settings for BuddyPress pages. Fixed displaying issue in “Members” and “Single Member” pages. Fixed Events Calendar plugin not displaying post thumbnails. Fixed included_items notice. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.2 (October 14th 2013) Bug fixes. Fixed debug information in template engine. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8.1 (October 12th 2013) Bug fixes. Fixed avatar sizes in BP groups and widgets. Fixed missing sidebar settings in layouts. Fixed assigning layouts to BP areas. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.8 (October 7th 2013) Various updates. Updated template engine. Updated version of Colorbox lightbox. Fixed conflict with NextGEN Gallery plugin. Fixed BuddyPress tabs display. Fixed BuddyPress avatars in widget areas. Fixed pagination for BuddyPress areas. Fixed slide show paging display for large monitors. Fixed some notices displaying. Fixed drag and drop feature in Layout Manager. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.7 (May 17th 2013) BuddyPress updates. BuddyPress 1.7 Updates THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.6.5 (February 19th 2013) Updates. Update to lightbox script for fullscreen Vimeo Added BP translation references for JS files THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.6.4 (December 17th 2012) Updates for WP 3.5, bug fixs, etc. Drag and drop layout manager update for WP 3.5. Updated the $content_width variable for WP embed tags. Update to prevent error if menus are not set. Corrected typos in admin. Fix for custom body font setting. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.6.3 (October 10th 2012) Bug fixes. More fixes for BP AJAX requests. Updated search resluts page. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.6.2 (August 9th 2012) Bug fixes. Fix for BP AJAX requests. Fix for “Load more” button on BP activity page. Admin bar style fix for logged out users. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.6.1 (August 8th 2012) Bug fixes. Admin bar style fix for BP v1.6. Fixed BP user name not always showing in activity. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.6 (August 6th 2012) Minor bug fixes and BuddyPress 1.6 update. BuddyPress v1.6 compatibility updates. Added missing semi-colon to header graphic CSS. Updated Cufon font list. Fixed error in field height of contact form. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.5.3 (March 16th 2012) Bug fix for BuddyPress areas. Updated BuddyPress registration page. Updated BuddyPress forums tab on member page. Updated BuddyPress members header. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.5.2 (February 6th 2012) Feature, bug fix and security update. Modified loading of design files – Improves plugin support. Added missing translations in login popup. Contact form – CAPTCHA update and apostrophe fix. Minor updates for WP 3.3. Modified settings export function. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.5.1 (October 20th 2011) Minor update. Added custom template file for search results. Updated translation files. Fixed BP Grops “create” link. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.5 (September 22nd 2011) Feature update. BuddyPress v1.5+ Compatibility Update New feature: BuddyPress links menu. Changed load priority of scripts. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.4.2 (August 28th 2011) Bug fix update. Changed #LoginPopup path in WP menus to ignore WP added path. Fixed typo, BP avatar image tag. Fixed bug, error showing avatar in admin. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.4 (August 22nd 2011) Major feature update. New feature: BuddyPress integration – This theme is BuddyPress ready. New feature: Breadcrumbs – Via shortcode or PHP funciton add and configure breadcrumbs. New feature: Login popup – Open a login lightbox using custom links. New feature: Menu filtering – Dynamically show/hide menu items with class names to test conditions: “function-is-home”, “function-is-user-logged-in”, etc. New feature: Shortcodes in menu titles and URLs (limited by WP menu functionality) New feature: Inline content popups – Open hidden page content in a lightbox. Updated tab styles on Skin 4. Changed z-index of menus for better results. Fixed bug, search layout reset by first search result. Fixed bug, thank you message in contact shortcode not working. Updated jQuery to v1.6.2 THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.3 (May 20th 2011) Minor feaature updates as well as bug fixes. New feature: Post list, images open in lightbox if “media” field populated. New feature: Slide transition speed opton. New feature: Pause slide show on hover option. New feature: “1/4 – 1/2 – 1/4” container to layout manager. Styled image shortcode, modified to accept lightbox=’no’ or media ID as image source. Added support for multi-page content Fixed issue with multiple slide shows on same page. Fixed Vimeo videos in slide show. Fixed bug, “read_more” in shortcodes didn’t fallback to default setting. Fixed bug, HTML characters (», etc.) in “read_more” option. Fixed bug, z-index of menus with top graphics in IE. (Thanks cagger) THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.2 (May 16th 2011) This update includes new feaatures as well as bug fixes. I recommend upgrading your install to this version as it catches many common errors and alerts the user before they become a problem. Below is a list of new features: New feature: Disable auto paragraphs in editor (wpautop) to fix common layout issues. New feature: Exclude from search, hide selected page/post from search results. New feature: Added shortcode for “[page_title]”. New feature: Added optional “Read more…” link in blog excerpts. Includes new blog shortcode parameter “read_more”. Added new error message for contact form if fields exist. Added check for image resize to ensures destination folder is writable. Updated menu functions for improved error checking and customization. Updated layout function to recognize custom “context” settings. Updated error message text for common errors. Minified core CSS files. Fixed bug in JavaScript returning “unknown” for “this.href” with contact forms. Fixed bug, home page skin not changed when setting default skin. Fixed bug, not using default layout if no layout set for current page/post. THEME UPDATE – VERSION 1.1 (May 5th 2011) This update includes new feaatures as well as bug fixes. Below is a list of new features: Translation ready – the theme is now fully translation ready including all administration panels. Shortcode button on editor – insert shortcodes using a custom editor button. Added tabs and toggle (FAQs) shortcodes – for details see the demo site: http://para.llel.us/themes/mingle-wp/shortcodes/tabs-and-toggles/ Added pricing table shortcodes – for details see the demo site: http://para.llel.us/themes/mingle-wp/shortcodes/pricing-table/ Improved mobile device support – the theme now displays properly on mobile browsers. Fixed home page layout bug. Fixed localhost error reported in “email-functions.php”. How to Update You can re-download the new version from your account: “My account > Downloads”. After the files are downloaded, copy the new theme folder to your server using your FTP application, overwriting the existing version. Source

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