#tumblr staff have been shit for a long time and in some ways i wish something else was the last straw for me
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i've just made a cohost account under the same username here if anyone's interested in keeping in contact and trading usernames
#i'm very grateful now that i started the IWSY website months ago when the funding scare happened#i would not have enjoyed having to start that process Now#it's late and i should think this over more but. this is the last straw for me#i'm jumping ship. almost definitely#i'll still be around probably but i'll be trying to use tumblr less beyond keeping up with news on some things#and interacting with some people who i don't have contact with elsewhere#tumblr staff have been shit for a long time and in some ways i wish something else was the last straw for me#but this is it
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Been working on a basic height chart for all my TES characters, so here are my dysfunctional babies (and here’s to hoping tumblr doesn’t kill the image quality, but if it does, just click on it to see it better.)
From left to right, we have Ilyavanthra, Evelynn, Morganne, Delilah, Taka-Xil and Jacken.
More info on these guys under the cut!
Ilyavanthra Atyreni is my resident villain, a Thalmor superior who thinks she’s god and refuses to acknowledge the Divines out of spite— which won’t go down well with the rest of the Thalmor, but that’s fine, she’s got big plans for them along with the rest of the world. The pivotal point for her was when she went missing, lost her legs under mysterious circumstances, came back wrong, refused to elaborate. After that she began frantically planning some kind of ultimate design and built new legs as proof of her efficiency. She’s positively obsessed with the Dwemer, their ideologies and methods and studied them for a large part of her life. At some point she was married to Evelynn, but their relationship is… difficult. All in all, giant scary lesbian Altmer with religious trauma and one hell of a god complex about to make it everyone else’s problem.
Evelynn is my favourite child, she’s my Bosmer Vestige and has lived for a very long time after the events of ESO, in which she has spent the years going from outright saving the day to falling into the background and preferring to work on the preservation of Tamriel from behind the scenes, as she knows no other purpose. Super complicated bisexual disaster love life, let me tell you about it, sheesh. She’s been around to help put down Mannimarco whenever he pops up, but has been running from Molag Bal and the looming feeling of impending doom he carries— little does she know she’s in a rat trap. Because of her extended life, her mind has far outgrown her body and by the time the fourth era rolls around, she’s less than all there, susceptible to any forced that would wish to control her (she’s also the character I put through the Vicn Trilogy, because putting her back in Coldharbour sounded like the worlds sickest joke.) I love female characters who have been put through extreme tribulations and come out of it little bit off the rails RAHHH!!
Morganne is my Imperial Dragonborn who remembers absolutely nothing prior to the carriage ride except her name. She fulfils her destiny in not only slaying Alduin but also taking up the role of Konahrik, which only strengthens her power as Dovahkiin. But what does it mean about you if you managed to destroy the destroyer of worlds? Does that not make you just as, if not more, dangerous? Perhaps. She’s still young and pretty naive but by god, is she as stubborn as a dragon should be, and keeps doing impulsive dumb shit she gets in trouble with everyone for. She refuses to kill Paarthurnax, who she ends up considering her father figure, refuses to kill any more dragons considering it ‘kinslaying’, as well as arguing that she believes Odahviing and Durnehviir to be her most loyal brothers, and instead of killing him at the summit of Apocrypha, releases Miraak and keeps him on a leash. They hate each other’s guts (code for they are deeply in love and cannot resist one another but both won’t make the first move out of pride)
That tiny lass is Delilah, a Breton with big dreams of being a sorceress but unfortunately also sucks at magic. See that staff she’s holding? She doesn’t know how to use it aside from thwacking people. She does however have a mass aptitude for Restoration locked away, she just has to figure out how to harness it, because without control, her emotions dictate her powers in miraculous ways, even resulting in resurrecting the dead. See that big fella beside her? He’s proof of that. Also, don’t let her baby face fool you. She’ll bite your ankles and she has a thing for monster boys.
The big fella in question is named Taka-Xil, and oh boy, does he run on pure spite. He’s not had a very good start to life, despite being born under the Hist, he seemingly had no connection to it whatsoever and couldn’t properly read the social cues of his kin or fully understand them. For that reason, he was deemed soulless, and no matter how much sap he consumed he couldn’t connect to the Hist— the amount he drank only made his scales much tougher, his tongue golden and his height drastically taller than by Argonian standards. So he runs off to join the Dark Brotherhood and developed a great deal of reverence for Sithis. He becomes Listener and lets out all that steam on contracts, until he meets Delilah, who teaches him that being soft is just as important as being strong. She’s the only one he sees any light in and he adores her. Big gruff guy soft for sunshine girl plus dramatic height difference trope here.
Lastly, we have my most experimental OC, the wonderfully unhinged Jacken Archanymia, the very last Cyrodiilic bird person. He’s been alive all these years due to a curse bestowed upon him by Peryite, and has since dedicated his life to creating the cure to everything. Yes, everything. Beginning with his own terrible affliction. He’s a brilliant alchemist and doctor, and regardless of how spooky his attire is and how… rotten he is beneath it, he’s very charming and animated, and does his very best to act gentlemanly. Just don’t get too close or you might get sick. That mask is more for your protection than his.
#dunno if anyone will read all dat but those are my disaster babies#if the quality is bad just. pretend it isn’t#my ocs#oc: Ilyavanthra#oc: Evelynn#oc: Morganne#oc: Delilah#oc: Taka-Xil#oc: Jacken#the elder scrolls#Skyrim#dragonborn#vestige#Jade’s art
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The Price Of Love (Modern!Ivar AU)
A Modern!Ivar x F Reader
Warnings - See individual chapters. STRICTLY 18+
Synopsis - Money isn’t everything.
Word Count - 1685
Note - This is the second fic I ever wrote and I’m not sure why I never posted it. I think I started writing The Arrangement not long after and kind of fell out of love with this one. Still, it’s been festering in my completed docs for well over a year so I figure I might as well post it 😬 It’s fluffy, and maybe a little cheesy (and by a little I mean a lot!) so if that’s your bag I hope you enjoy it!
Moodboard - The beautiful moodboard is made the magical, amazing @serasvictoria. Thank you so much xxxx
This was beta read by my aussie wife who has left Tumblr. All love, all the time Lou x
Tag List - Let me know if you want on or off :)@smears-and-spots @punkrocknpearls @youbloodymadgenius @momowhoo @zuxiezendler @not-another-viking-fanfic-blog @ivar-s-my-brat-tamer @pieces-by-me @heavenly1927 @berryonasummerevening @synnersaint @out-of-the-box-and-into-alchemy @petite-hime @serasvictoria @mimiiinspace @itsmysticalmystery @lonewolf471 @mylifeisactuallyamess @draculasbride-blog @love-all-things-writing @southernbe @redhead7799 @kaybee87 @ivarlover @ivarhoegh @idgafiamallthefandoms @darkphoenix5037 @profoundtyrantharmony @snarling-through-our-smiles @crazyunsexycool @xceafh @bragisrunes@noway4u @batmandallyboy @complicatedbutrare @readsalot73 @meandmycherrytree
Masterpost
CHAPTER 13
The dress comes, it doesn't quite fit right, it’s too long and the bust area is too big. You start to panic.
“My mother has a seamstress on staff, I will call her.” He's on the phone before you can stop him and your heart starts pounding. He leaves the room to speak to her, leaving you to stew in your own nervousness. Surely you won’t have to meet his mother? It will just be the seamstress? Shit.
“They are coming over in an hour,” he announces.
“They?” you gulp.
“Mother is coming. She wants to meet you,” he says, as if it’s nothing, as if you haven’t almost just lost your lunch with fear.
“OK,” nerves are coursing through you and no more words are forming.
The elevator pings an hour later and out strides Aslaug and an equally elegant woman with a pull-along case dragging behind her.
“Ivar, darling,” she pulls him for a hug.
“Mother, I would like you to meet Y/N,” he pulls his mother to you and you can see her run her eyes over you. You wish you had changed out of the short leather skirt and tucked in Nirvana t shirt before she got here, You suddenly feel like an imposter in her presence, like you don’t belong here at all.
“My dear, lovely to meet you,” she shakes your hand. “Esmé, shall we go into Ivars bedroom and get this dress fitted?”
You follow her into his room and Esmé is opening the case of her tools.
“Hi Esmé, thanks so much for doing this, the dress is too long and it’s a bit roomy around my boobs,” your head whips to Aslaug when you say ‘boobs’, is there an acceptable way to mention your tits in front of your boyfriends mother you met twenty seconds earlier?
“That is an issue I always have as well, Y/N,” Aslaug smiles at you briefly.
“So, which designer are you wearing?” Esmé asks you. “Some are easier to alter than others.”
“Oh, it’s not a high end designer, I sourced it from a supplier I use for my shop,” you tell her, walking over to Ivars en-suite where you have hung it on the back of the door.
“Oh! Ok, let me see it then,” Esmé says, you can tell she is a little shocked at your words.
You bring it out and hold it up for them to see, you slowly turn it around for them to see the back.
“Got it!” Esmé says excitedly, “we might also want to make sure the fabric near your bum is snug, don’t want anything on show when you sit down.”
“Oh god I hadn’t even thought of that,” you say with a worried look on your face.
“Don’t worry, will we make it fit like a glove,” she gives you a tiny wink.
“It’s rather plain.” Aslaug says suddenly, eyes on you waiting for an answer.
“Oh, yes it is, I suppose. The back is quite dramatic. It’s totally my style though,” you answered awkwardly.
“What you are wearing now isn’t plain,” she looks at you, but her face is totally neutral.
You can’t read her. Is she just making a statement? Is she being rude?
“Well, Mrs Lothbrok. This is the first time I’ve been to an event like this. I want to wear something that I am totally comfortable in as, honestly, I’m pretty nervous about the whole thing, I’m worried I will mess up in some way, that I will embarrass Ivar. If I am wearing something I love it will be one less thing for me to be stressed out about,” you tell her honestly.
She nods slowly, eyes not leaving you.
Esmé breaks the exchange. “Let's get you into it and we will see what we are working with.” She leads you into the bathroom, closing the door. You turn to face her, you don’t say anything, but your face must have an expression of fear on it. She walks to you, runs her hands up your arms in a comforting way and whispers “you handled it well. She appreciates candour.” You give her an appreciative smile.
“Right!” Esme says in a breezy loud voice, “put it on.”
When it’s on you both leave the bathroom and walk to the full length mirror. Esmé takes out her step and has you stand on it as she surveys the length.
“Y/N, I’ve got some shoes that would be perfect with that dress if you would like to borrow them?” Aslaug offers, “Ivar told me the colour of your dress and we are the same shoe size so I’ve bought some with me, he said you hadn’t found any yet.” Her face is almost hopeful.
“Thank you, that’s very kind Mrs Lothbrok, my heel collection isn’t big and I don’t think boots or Nikes go with this attire,” you joke. You see her smile as she pulls out some beautiful black stilettos with a line of sparkly stones running over them.
“These I think. Do you like them?” She walks over with them in her hands. You can see the name of the designer inside and your eyes widen, knowing how much the cost.
“They are beautiful, Mrs Lothbrok, thank you. I will take very good care of them.” Your eyes don’t leave them.
“Please, call me Aslaug.” Your eyes meet hers and you smile and nod.
“Aslaug. Thank you.”
You slip the heels on and Esmé sets about her work as you and Aslaug chat about your shop and, of course, Ivar. Your face lights up when you talk about him and you can see it pleases her.
When the dress is pinned in place you turn to the mirror to give yourself the once over. Esmé has worked wonders. It looks sensational on you, it’s like she’s waved a magic wand and made you look ten times better than you usually do.
“Jesus, Esmé. You are amazing, look at it!” Esmé laughs at you.
“Now we have the task of getting it off you without stabbing you with any of the pins. I will only need a couple of days for the actual alterations, shall I drop it back here when I’m finished?”
“No, I will come and get it from you, I don’t think your place is too far from my shop so I’ll give you my number, just text me when it’s ready and I will pick it up.” You smile at her. “Thank you so much, I’m so happy with it.”
“You do look radiant in it, Y/N. I take back my comment about it being plain. It’s classic.” Aslaug nods at you. “Jewellery?” She asks, eyebrows raised.
“Sorted, my best friend is a jeweller and she’s making me something special,” you reply.
“Thank you for hooking me up with Esmé and the beautiful shoes. It’s much appreciated,” you smile at her.
You all head towards the door of the bedroom when you get a sudden burst of bravery.
“Aslaug, can I talk to you alone for a minute?” You smile at Esmé who leaves the room quickly.
“I just wanted to address this ‘‘gold digging’ title I’ve been graciously bestowed by the media,” you say awkwardly, your heart is beating so hard you think it might bust out through your chest, you are wringing your hands together.
“I want to assure you that I am not that. I have never taken anything from Ivar, and I have no interest in his money. I own my own shop, I do alright for myself, I have a strong work ethic and I’m not with him for any other reason than I’m very much in love with him.” You take a massive, steadying breath.
“I know dear, he has told me all about you. Endlessly.” She laughs. “I know that you took him to task over the bracelet he tried to give you. I’m aware you don’t like material things,” she says slowly.
“I like nice things, Aslaug, I just like them better when I’ve worked hard for them and can buy them for myself, that’s what I’ve always done and that isn’t going to change just because my boyfriend is successful.” You shrug. Her eyes narrow at your words.
“There’s no harm in letting the man you love spoil you a bit though, Y/N,” she whispers with a cheeky smile on her face.
“Without wanting to sound like a chess ball, I prefer it when he spoils me with attention and affection. I just hope you understand that I don’t need him. I want him.” You reply. You can see on her face she approves of your response.
“I appreciate how upfront you are, Y/N. Ivar is a brilliant judge of character, and he trusts you completely and therefore so do I,” she tells you and you nod quickly.
You both see them out to the elevator and when the doors shut you feel all the tension leave you.
“So how did it go?” Ivar asks excitedly.
“I’m not really sure if your mother likes me or not,” you grumble.
“Of course she does, I heard her use the word radiant, she’s not free and easy with compliments.”
You notice his gait is more laboured than usual as he comes toward you for a kiss.
“Ivar, please tell me you didn’t spend the whole time I was with your mother pacing the apartment? You are in pain, I can see it.” You hold his hand frowning at him.
“Not the whole time…” he looks at you with puppy dog eyes, trying to avoid a telling off. You tut at him.
“Go and sit down, I will get your medicine.” You walk back into his bedroom to get the tablets he needs. You head back out to the living room and see him lying on the couch.
“Will you rub my legs, please?” he asks tentatively. He’s always shy about asking for this. You smile at him, hand him his pills and a drink and get into position.
“Anytime.”
Chapter 14
#modern ivar#ivar lothbrok#ivar ragnarsson#ivar the boneless#modern vikings#vikings au#vikings modern au#ivar fanfic#modern!au#vikings#ivar vikings#ivar smut#ivar x reader#ivar imagine#vikings ivar#ivar the boneless x reader#ivar#ivar x y/n#ivar x you#ivar fluff#modern ubbe#ubbe ragnarsson#ubbe#ubbe fanfiction#ubbe lothbrok#ubbe imagine#ubbe x you#ubbe x reader#aslaug
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I have at least 5 unpublish posts about r/wby and me be fucking “why you hate your own characters” or “why you still in this vol1 mentality about your writing” or “WHY HEADCANONING SHIT WHEN YOU CAN DO CANON?????” but im just stop on every post in the middle because...bitch i can relate some problems or start to talk about my stuff, especially on “why you hate your own characters”.
Like...how you can write some character and be just “oh i hate this motherfucker\they deserve this\this asshole is dead now, that it.” and thats all? Its fine to hear stuff like this from viewers and its nothing new to hear shit like “if you like this character - you \insert word there\!”, but you the writers and you dont have any other emotions about your own antagonists? (unless its female antagonist, but i cant confirm this because i cant watch commentaries, only read from someone or notes, but from what i can tell at least about them they can say something positive or stuff that they honestly like about this character).
I can understand they scare about writing some scenes and make this look interesting because you can like this one specific scene but have fear that your viewers will have different opinion about this. But its been almost a decade, writers long time ago already told us that they dont want to see opinion that “sound too mean”, so i cant be like “community bully writers into be scared to write this series” (and to be honest its sound pretty fucking strange). Like i will not believe that they read rwde tag or critics subreddit or some social media\tag that is not have at least 90% fans positive posts because they dont want to see too much hard criticism about they story. Again, i kinda can understand that from some perspective (nobody like hearing some hard stuff about your art work), but...it doesn't feel like they get out of their comfort zone at least once in a while. If there was some trying to do this, we would have seen and heard it more in the series. But when they have some good moments - its accidental. A whole vol7 fell like accidentally sometime good writing after vol8 because what a continuation we got in vol8. Penny arc, Ironwood arc, Qrow\Ironwood, this whole r/wby/Ironwood conflict in general, Salem attacking Atlas, how Staff or Creation working and other stuff (not only characters arcs or conflicts, even character relationships got hurt in one way and another.) And even vol9 kinda hurt vol7 and EVEN vol8 and i wish i can say “oh its just because they have to cut two episodes and working on movie and a little bit on game, this is why some arcs got scratch or rush ending” but we still got half of the season that hardly matter for a whole volume. Penny dont matter at the end of the volume, Jaune story dont matter, Ironwood\Fall of Atlas conflict dont matter because “we want to believe we did at least a little bit good”, Ruby arc have to have rush and hard progress because we really want to show you Red Prince birthday. racoon joke and give conflict with Jaune, that will reset at the very end of the season, and tell you that ascension is not death. Oh and also - tree is the main creators and Two Gods is just Tree-childrens. And we will tell this at the very end of this season (good for you not brining there Oscar\Ozpin or Salem).
They scared of writing some scenes not because its they first season\this new season got crush by other decisions like crossover movie and they scared to cut new seasons\they REALLY that much scared by critics or some really scare tags on tumblr. If this was the point i fell i wont not say that good moments in some volumes was “accidentally good”.
We all scared to get bad comment about your work, but sometime you have to get this “bad comment”, otherwise you will not grow as a artist. I not gonna lie and say that sometime i jealous to see sometime GIGANICAL posts or videos about some aspects of this series with every details and even without harsh comments (like dude if you dont like when some critics call you bad names - there is posts\videos from people, who wholeheartedly LOVE your series with everything but still can be “there is this moment that can be better”.) Its like...”oh someone spend some time to analyze and then write\tell\even show what moment they wish to see better or what can be better?”. I dont know how to tell you but for me - this is extremely cool stuff. For me personally that mean someone saw my stuff, potential, and spend some time to think and tell me what was wrong, what was right and now maybe do this better. This shit help a lot even when its not about your art, but about someone art that have the same errors like you have or never thing that there was error (especially when you dont have people who can tell you what you doing wrong or tell more that “i like it”, and you just sit there in the box.)
I personally dont think that...MKEK is really bad and not redeemable writers. They have they moments, otherwise we wouldn't be sitting here. A lot of us got there because cool fight and colors aesthetics but somehow managed to still sit there. But stuff like this REALLY hurt show and make less fun to watch every season.
Can i be wrong? Oh absolutely...
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I don't care for Peggy Carter. I think as a character, she's just okay. I'm pretty indifferent about her. But Jesus Christ. The "Peggy Carter bad because Hayley Atwell bad" discourse is so exhausting. You can dislike a character. I dislike many characters. But going after the actress and accusing her of things repeatedly on this blog is so weird to me because I have no idea what any of us is supposed to do about it.
*If* Atwell is guilty of anything (again, *if*) I'm sorry to tell you we don't have the power to do shit. "But there's evidence-" We still can't do shit. It's not our job. Police exists, judges exist, lawyers exist, etc. Something similar happens with Tumblr's security. Sometimes users and blogs get hacked here, I'm sure you're familiar with some cases. Some people lose their blogs, some others are lucky and get them back/never lose them to begin with because they're still logged in and change their passwords, but I'm sure you're already familiar with the ridiculous amount of bots and... well, sometimes users get hacked. Plenty of people constantly complain about how Tumblr's security is not safe because they have day one exploits and vulnerabilities that staff refuses to fix, which makes this site a laughing stock for hackers. Okay. If staff refuses to fix them, what the hell are we, the users, supposed to do? We can't fix their shit for them. Staff needs to do better, not us. The fuck. There is no use in screaming at me or any other user about it. All I do is reblog superhero stuff. Complain to staff, not to us. Similarly, there is no use in screaming at us about how bad Hayley Atwell is and how bad Peggy Carter is. Because we can't do jack shit. Is it really so hard to understand? We're just trying to watch superhero movies, here. And she happens to be an actress playing a character.
At the end of the day you're just being repetitive. You're not engaging in constructive debate or making anyone agree with you. Giving us 3000 potential "better love interests than Peggy Carter" or repeatedly attacking Atwell is not going to have the effect you think. It's sad. It feels like some sort of wish fulfillment for you. I get it, the MCU has attractive people, we can dream. Self-insert fics exist for a reason and are valid. It's cool. But don't try to censor people or tell them how they should think or feel about a particular character. I am friends with people whose ideas about certain characters are completely different from mine, but we have fun debating because... these characters aren't real.
People are going to like what they like and ship what they ship, just like you do. Maybe you're struggling and feel like this is the only thing giving your life meaning, because I don't understand being this invested and fixated on a particular thing (and I say this as an autistic person. Hyperfixation has been a trait of mine since childhood, but I was never this full of hate - I've hated people, but not to this extent). I get it. No, really. For so long I've been emotionally attached to the GOTG because they are my comfort characters. But I never want to become a shitty person for them. I like them precisely because they make me better. I don't mean to say this in a condescending way, but get help. If you can't accept that people have different opinions, you are going to live a very unhappy life.
No fandom is perfect, clearly. But the world is crazy - wars, pandemics, suffering. Let's maybe try to be a little kinder to ourselves and each other. I expect this advice to be ignored, but I want to put it out there regardless. I think we need to humanize each other more often, especially when we're online. That includes actors, directors, etc. Ignore Hayley Atwell if her existence makes you this angry. You'll be happier. Let's not spend our limited time on this floating rock in space being angry all the time.
And for fuck's sake... it's fiction. Don't forget.
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Hey guys; it’s been 84 years but I’m back with an update! Sorry it’s been so long. The feedback has been so kind and so meaningful, and I really wanted to continue much sooner. I wish I could have. I am glad at least I can now. As per the norm, Tumblr gets the slightly less polished update a day or two before AO3 -- And thank you, so sincerely, all for the continued interest, and for liking my story. Hope you have fun. [Fate/GO AU – The Kid (pt: 1, … 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, ?)] {Some spoilers for original Grand Order run/through Temple of Time}
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“Alright,” comes Doctor Archaman’s voice in my ear. So funny to be wearing earpieces to get orders like I’d get from a Master, instead of just hearing them in my head. Guess, since he’s not one, though, there’s no way around it. “I’ve got a visual. Ritsuka’s group is in position to breach, so we’re cleared to start.”
‘Alright’ indeed: go time. This’ll be fun! I’m feeling great, with my spirit core not ripping in half, and I’m very ready to tear some arms off. Crack my knuckles and my neck just for fun, limbering up.
“Any intel before we go?” asks the Doctor.
“There’s a few guards, some drones. We can all sense a few wards up, but it’s nothing beyond what we expected,” answers Archer, “Hard to guess what they’ve got inside, but, right now it’s quiet out here. I’d add there’s a lot of retractable plating up, so I wouldn’t be shocked to find some external turrets, but that’s about it.”
“Good,” says the Doctor, making a typing sound I can vaguely hear over his mic.
“So, we’re supposed to make this as real as possible,” I say, nudging Archer to get his attention. I am given a slightly irritated glance. “Like we’re trying to wipe them out, for another mage group. How would you do that, if you were here to wipe them out for real?”
“I’d have done more reconnaissance,” he answers in annoyance.
I internally roll my eyes. “Yeah, well, if you didn’t have a perfect Master, and you were just ordered to go in like this.”
He sighs. “I’d hit them with a mid rank noble phantasm from my arsenal, and see what an attempt to nuke the place did, without pulling out my best tricks and losing my major mana supply right off the bat.”
Mid-rank phantasm. ‘Course this fucker can do that shit. He just fucking copies other peoples’ phantasms and fires them off like arrows; annoying as hell. I guess that’s not a bad approach, though, tactically speaking, so I give a grunt of affirmation as I consider it.
“That what we’re going for?” I ask the Doctor.
“No!” says the Doctor in frazzled distress, “Because for all we know, their defenses are terrible, and that might actually work! We’ve got five people in there we don’t want vaporized off the face of the planet.”
Right, right. “So then?” I prompt, twirling my spear and then leaning on it.
“Okay,” says the Doctor, “Given what I can see on the cameras, I think our best bet is a frontal assault.”
“Isn’t that always the worst option,” asks David casually, matching my stance on his shepherd’s staff and leaning forward to survey the area.
“To win, sure,” agrees the Doctor, “To stall? No. It’ll buy us time, with an easy open escape behind us when we need to cut and run, and we should have plenty of room to maneuver, while keeping it mostly on the outside, to avoid collateral damage to the building while our people are inside.”
Fair enough. Frontal assault works for me.
“That said, I do have a plan beyond ‘go up to the front and start swinging,’” adds the Doctor, “Archer, from what I understand, you have wide barrage capabilities, and access to a large arsenal.”
I was going to ask which Archer, but I think we can all tell from that description.
“Correct,” affirms Archer.
“You’ll hit them first then, from the front. Lay out as wide and harsh a first barrage as you can; I want it to be overwhelming, and confusing. Keep at it once you’re in. You don’t have to do endless damage, so long as it looks like you can,” says the Doctor, “We want them guessing at numbers here: off balance, overwhelmed, and feeling as under immediate and immense threat as possible. I want everyone in that building out here, shooting back.”
Archer gives a nod, I guess more to himself than anyone, since it’s not like Archaman can see.
“Keep up the heavy fire. As soon as they come outside and start to fire back, I want you on top of the group and tearing through their forces, Lancer. You’re our battering-ram.”
Sure am. “Sounds good to me,” I agree, straightening up and twirling my spear because I enjoy the sound it makes.
“I want them terrified,” adds the Doctor.
I grin. That’s a can-do.
“Avenger, you have the ability to cast fear like an aura around you, right?” he continues.
“Yes,” agrees Salieri. He’s wearing full body armor and a mask now, which I have to admit, while not my color, is pretty sick, and definitely makes him look a lot more threatening.
“I want you to flank them, once the fighting has already started. Go in on our right, and cause as much chaos as you can. As much as possible, I want them to struggle even understanding what is attacking them,” says Doctor Archaman.
“Understood.”
“And David,” finishes the Doctor, “To the best of my understanding, you’re the only one with strong defensive capabilities.”
That ain’t true—I’ve seen Archer whip out a fucking shield based noble-phantasm before, twice now, and it’s really fucking annoying, but Archer doesn’t seem to feel a need to bring that up, and I don’t really either.
“I want you to hang back, and offer whatever protective support you can from the rear, while sniping—stick to your class strengths,” says Doctor Archaman.
“Hey,” I say in Archer’s head, “How come you’re ‘Archer’ and he gets to be ‘David’?”
“Because they know each other,” says Archer in tired annoyance without looking my way, “And he can’t call us both ‘Archer’. Besides, I actually prefer this. Archer is better than being called by name,” he adds almost bitterly.
Damn, if I’d known that it would bother him, I might have stopped calling him ‘Archer’ a long time ago, but it’s way too late to do it now. Ah well.
“Alright,” agrees David happily, “Shall we, then?”
We trade glances, and Archer gives a nod and flexes his arms in preparation.
“Go,” says Doctor Archaman.
Archer takes off so fast I don’t see him for a second, then there he is, taking the leap from the hill we’re on overlooking the building, into the sky by the front gates. The area is kind of secluded, well, for the city. It’s on the outskirts, surrounded by parks and bus stops. The building itself is an ugly, several story flat rectangle, with barbed wire fences and sensors, sentries, automatic lights. It couldn’t scream ‘compound’ much harder if it tried.
That’s not really going to be a problem for us, though.
For a moment, I hold, watching Archer wave an arm in mid-air, and a line of a hundred swords appear in the air behind him and slam into the building front like missiles. The mana explosions they cause when destroyed is impressive, even though I know how much he’s holding back, and about forty different sirens go off and I hear shouts, see people move. He strikes again, and again, working not just to do wide damage, but to change attack angle so its hard to tell it’s only him firing, and to kick up smoke and dust, lower visibility. Perfect.
The front gate opens.
I am vaguely aware Salieri has vanished, though I can sense him off to the far right, through our bond as servants to the same master. In place. Behind me, a few stones start to whizz past, now that personnel are rushing out. David’s sniping not for major threats, but for anyone shouting out warnings or directions, I have to assume for the fear-factor of hearing your comrades go down again and again mid-word. Not bad.
Yeah, not a bad amount of chaos.
But now it’s my turn.
Almost gleeful, I ready my spear and run.
There are golems amongst the humans firing mana rounds and bullets together from machine guns up in the smoke by the front gate. There are homunculi, and quite a few robots. All expected. I didn’t except the first thing I saw up close to be zombie though, and I’m almost thrown, because the fuck kind of military is using the least controllable familiars they can find as front-line defense? But hey. If it dies, it dies. And I run it through, spear taking what was its head in an instant, and flash pat it, ducking under a blow from the nearest golem, and slicing off the legs off a large tank-shaped robot as I go. I come up on a knee and swing in an arc, cutting open the four nearest humans, then throw my spear through the head of a golem on my left, as another barrage of Archer’s swords cuts a path through the enemies around me.
Fun, I think, calling back the spear, But not enough.
I scream. The chilling, inhuman cry of blood-lust to a warrior, and rush them. Loud, fast, laughing. I swing the back of my spear to knock some back so hard they crack against one of the large robots, then leap and carve a hole through a golem, jump through its broken stomach out the other side to send my spear zig-zagging through the heads of twenty zombies near me, kicking a human with enough force to send his body slamming into the open door and knock back several gunmen rushing to join, call back the spear and catch it in mid-air, and send it flying back to impale itself along seven bodies in a clump.
Wait, didn’t our master ask us to use less lethal force or something...? Eh, I can’t remember so it’s probably fine.
Gun spray slides past me as I move too quick, and I land in front of a line of humans and let one hit me, just for fun. For the intimidation of it.
It fucking goes right through my chest and I’m knocked back.
The fuck just-?
I-I recover, fast, but-
“Doc, they’ve added something to the bullets—I could sense mana, but the concentration’s enough to hurt,” I call to coms as I cut a swath through this new round of humans, then jump back and start tearing through the wave of zombies and ghosts on my right, sending bodyparts flying and doing my best to add to the chaos. The hell do they have so many damn undead?
“The regular rounds?” I hear the doctor ask in surprise.
“Yeah, at least some of the guns,” I say.
I can almost hear the guy thinking. Well, whatever. Just means work a little harder dodging, to the rest of us, and we’re all on coms, so we all heard.
I am far enough right for a moment that I can see Salieri tearing up a group of automatons that were on the wings, flanking right on cue. He’s taking pretty heavy fire from the snipers and turrets these guys have on the roof, and seeming to ignore my warning entirely.
…Right. Wait. Don’t Avengers get some kind of boost from taking damage for some bizarre reason? I’ve barely seen them around, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it works. Guess it doesn’t matter to him, then.
Jeeze, what a way to fight though. Kind of cool, honestly. He’s soaked in blood and has gashes in his arms and legs, bullet holes riddle his torso, and it’s not slowing him down at all—hell, I don’t think it’s even broken the man’s concentration.
Good for you, buddy, I think, spinning on my heel and launching my lance at the nearest turret, then mentally carving its path in the air so it takes two more before swinging in an arc and darting back into my hand.
“I think this is going pretty well,” I call as I pass Archer for a second, enjoying being in a real scrap. He’s darting in and cutting people up with his swords off and on, but mostly hanging back to send barrages in like he’s supposed to. Poor guy, I think with glee and no sympathy, Finally have to fucking use ranged attacks like an Archer. It must be killing you.
----------------------------------------------
“I’m not sure I understand,” I manage as we rush down a hall.
Everything feels like too much. I-I’m struggling to think at all, a little. I can barely even try to believe this is even happening to me, but, I’m doing my best.
“We don’t either,” calls the Archer who identified himself as Billy the Kid with chagrin, taking a corner so fast he jumps and pushes off the wall not to lose momentum, and I follow suit.
“We only know that’s what happened and that we need to get back out there to help quick as we can; we have no idea why they’d be working on some kind of mental corruption thing against spirits, or why they’d use it like that,” says the girl who saved me, “We don’t even really know what Mercury is…”
I glance at her for a second as she speaks. It’s hard to do. I feel…
My head. It. I can think again, I can move. I’m not in pain. But. It’s become so strange to me, after all this time caught in the moment of death, I-I don’t know quite how to do it right anymore. I feel like every moment is too much, and there’s no way to quite filter it all. It’s hard to look at her, harder than looking at anything else. The air is hard to breathe, because it doesn’t catch in my throat and choke me and hurt, because it doesn’t only smell like blood and burning and steel. Because it brings relief instead of pain. There are so many smells I forgot existed, it’s hard to experience them. They overwhelm me.
It is hard to look at light, after so long in darkness. These walls shine, and they blind me. Even my own skin, my clothes. I forgot the saturation of color. I forgot what it felt like for the act of trying to see not to send spasms along the back of my neck, and stinging in my eyes. For it to not feel like straining. So many things do not provoke pain just to be, and the normalcy of them overwhelm my head. I have forgotten how to process anything but pain and fear quickly, I-I’d gotten so used to it.
It's hard to hear sounds again. To hear footsteps, and breathing. Talking. They don’t make my head ache to try and understand. My own movements don’t send pain that cascades and echoes for hours. It’s strange. It doesn’t hurt to be. It doesn’t hurt to think. But, it does. Differently. It hurts like fear—it hurts in that it overwhelms me; it feels like trying to hold too much at once. It is all hard.
It is impossible to look at her for long.
I cannot think about everything that just happened, because it’s too much, but I can’t look at her long without thinking about it.
I don’t understand. Not just what they’re telling me about the people who purchased my body and spirit like a pound of spices. Them. I don’t understand them.
She’s so small. Little. She must be a teenager. Japanese, like me, but her hair is red like mine is. I am not afraid to see her, and it’s become strange to see a human and not be afraid. I am…overwhelmed. She saved me. I thought I was going to be dying forever. I don’t know how much of my head is left—I-I know I’m struggling with it. But some of it is still here. She saved that. Why? I don’t even know who she is. Or what. And she doesn’t even want to own me in return.
It is very strange.
It’s beyond what I can understand right now. It hurts and confuses me to look at her, and try. But, I want to at the same time.
I just can’t. Not yet.
The cowboy isn’t easy to look at either, but at least he is so different, from everything I am used to. It helps. And it is…nice. We’re somewhat close to the same age, I think. And he told me he wouldn’t lie to another spirit about a thing like this. I appreciated that. I don’t think I’ve told him, but, it helped. I should. I should think of…
“There!” calls the girl, pointing. Up ahead, I can see it too. I had forgotten to look at all, I was just following. This isn’t good. I’ll be cut down in battle before I can be of any help at all if I don’t remember how to use focus.
The exit—an exit, I-I suppose. A door. Open, and past it I see night sky.
Oh, that is also too much. I had forgotten the look of anything but the inside of a building, and I am trying hard to readjust to a version of me that was ready for things like this, from before, but a part of me hasn’t accepted that it’s even over, and I’m alive at all. That I’m not still in that room, with my head halfway off, dying and dying and dying and dying and dying and dy-
“Kotarou!”
? O-Oh. That. The cowboy.
I remember to focus again as we near the exit, and take in that Billy the Kid is pointing to something outside.
Oh.
----------------------------------------------
SHIT!
I hear the shouts—mostly their own guys, but a few from us. It’s chaos.
God damn it! This was going so well! What kind of idiot-!
“We’ve lost visuals on Salieri!”
That’s the doctor, calling out. Shit, that is bad.
“Lancer, was he hit? Could you tell?” The man is frantic. One of Archer’s swords swings in my direction at random and almost takes a chunk out of my side, and I slide about five inches left just in time to avoid it. He’s shooting massive barrages at everyone—I don’t even really think he’s aiming. Wait…
Shit—okay—what did the Doctor ask? –‘Was he hit?’
No, I think, irrationally angry, scanning for the Avenger myself in case he’s been hit since the first barrage. They’ve shot their fucking missiles at least twice now. I don’t see him though. Which I should—hell—I should at least hear him! We were close like eighteen seconds ago! How fucking far did he go? I can sense him at least, faintly, but it’s weird? Erratic. Not in the way Archer is, at least… All I can tell for sure is he’s somewhere to my far, far right.
“He’s back the way he came from!” I call, trying to avoid more swords as about six slice in my general direction, pivoting to use my spear to cut down a golem in my way as I go, doing my best to fight toward the hoard of undead, demons, and ghosts now moving like a slow wave towards the exit gate, “That’s all I can tell! But he’s not hit!”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure!” I snap back. Of course. Of course he would do that!
A barrage of smaller swords comes spinning out in every direction again, and I hop out of the way of three and deflect a fourth with my spear, finally zeroing in on Archer, about 20 yards away. Shit.
“Cu Chulainn—”
Shit. The doctor must be worried for real to be using my true name.
“—drop back! We need to find-“
“—No!” I call back, “We fall back, and this gets worse! Just don’t let the rpgs hit you—something in them makes things frenzy, got it?! Like a fucked-up madness enchantment!”
“-I know! -But—no, head back—We’ve lost connection to Salieri and Emiya! Even if the Avenger isn’t hit, something’s gone very wrong with him! We need to-“
“—Regroup, I know—I know!” I snap back, starting to carve my way forward in the crowd again, taking advantage of the chaos to down enemies so preoccupied with the guy on their left going rabid with his arsenal of swords that they barely register me. I run a mage clean through without him even having time to turn his head and look. “Get someone else! We leave Archer alone or give them time to regroup too, this shit gets worse—I can keep the mages distracted, and I can handle Archer! Take David and find Salieri, and try to do something about the fucking wall of undead shit heading for the city!”
“—Handle?! –How! Lancer, you realize you can’t kill him, right?—and holding back,” starts the Doctor desperately.
“—Yeah, I ain’t gonna kill him!” I snap back, annoyed more by the situation itself than him, but pretty irritated by now. A couple of mages finally take notice of me and try to land a few mana shots and a stun spell, but they’re so slow that I can dodge easily and take a shot back without even losing my breath. “I’ve fought him non-lethally before! He’ll be fine. I’ll see if I can’t snap him out of it, and I know I can take him. Worst comes to worst, I’ll drag his unconscious husk back and let you people fix him. That’s more than the rest of you can say about the other half of this! I’ve got this—you two handle the city!”
“… You’re absolutely sure?” asks the Doctor.
“I’m positive,” I reply. I’ve almost caught up to him. About fifteen feet off now. I ready my spear.
“Okay,” says the Doctor, and his voice is gone from my head.
Past Archer, I’m very aware the rpgs have gone off about six times now—one almost took me out—and they’re hitting their own people to have a shot at us. The effects are sporadic, but less pronounced on the mages it seems. It’s like they panic, more than go rabid, but it has some weird effect for sure. No real effect at all on the golems and robots at all. The homunculi and anything undead though? They get caught in the blast radius, and suddenly they’re a seething mob, gunning for anything in sight. It won’t take long for them to crawl over the growing stack of bodies by the far wall, and make it out of the compound entirely, and the homunculi and undead aren’t even the biggest problem! It’s all the fucking ghosts. Before they were a pain; now with whatever magic shit this is coating them, they’re all trying to be the fucking star of a bad Hollywood paranormal horror flick. Things are flying past and screams echo in the night. I’m at a distance from the worst of it, but I can feel the hatred and chill in the air from the malice on those things alone. They aren’t so big, which is great, and a second ago they weren’t shit as a threat, but they’re more than a little suped up now, and there’s just way too many of them. And the idiots with the guns are still firing! Guess…maybe we scared them a little too much, huh, I think with a grimace.
Still, we ain’t handling any of that shit well as long as we’ve got a heroic spirit like Archer going berserk in the middle of it, so he’s the top priority. If the idiot hadn’t taken a round straight on like this, he’d be better than the rest of us are at holding these things back, with that area of effect he’s got with his phantasm! But noooo.
Idiot!
I mean. I get it, I guess. I know why he did what he did. I get it. That first rpg round went off, he sensed something we didn’t, and the Avenger was going to just take the round head-on like he’d been taking everything else for his damage-boost Avenger thing, and yeah so of course he—I mean, sure, probably something like Salieri going full-tilt monster on us would have been a lot worse, and it was the only tactical choice, and I guess his stupid shield just didn’t quite make it up in time, and it was one of them or the other. But even so! Even so! This fucking guy! With his endless ‘heroic sacrifice’ shit, while being the edgiest motherfucker I know, just…it all pisses me off to no end, and this is no exception to that rule! Kind of glad I now have an excuse to slug him.
“Hey, ARCHER!” I shout. I wonder how much he’s in there at all, and how much it’s just the spell running his body. He turns at his name, in a stunted way, like a man asleep, and I slam the back of my spear into his head.
He moves back, quick even with something this wrong with him, but I catch him enough to slice his forehead open, and I’ve sure got his attention now.
Alright. Perfect.
“Wake up!”
I go for another hit with the reverse of the haft, and he jumps to try and get some distance on me, summoning his little shortswords, and just barely parries it, but the force alone knocks him back out of the air and into some of the closer automatons. Barely even registering them, he’s up again in a second, slicing through the ones close enough to try taking a shot, and running for me.
“Get it together!” I snap, catching his shortswords with my haft as he swings at me, “You’re still alive in there, right? So shake it off!”
He ducks under my lance and goes for my gut with a blade, and I swipe his legs out from under him before he can. I leap after, trying to capitalize on him being on the ground, but he’s too fast—rolling out of the way so my speartip hits concrete, and hopping up and back, firing off a barrage of swords at me as he goes.
Okay, how in there?
I’ve seen my fair share of shit. There’s a sliding scale from ‘madness enchantment,’ to ‘under command seal,’ to ‘the grail got them,’ to ‘totally fucked up by magic,’ and he seems…
-He stops retreating mid-motion and shoots forward so fast I barely see it, and I have to duck to avoid a dagger, spinning on my heel and elbowing him in the gut as he goes for a second swipe, and knocking him back.
Shit, it’s hard to get a look at the damn guy’s face!
Okay.
I said I could take him, and I can, but I was kind of hoping this would be easier than literally beating him unconscious and dragging his body back. I mean, I’ve done it before. I can do it again. But shit. He doesn’t make it FUCKING easy, and I’m not exactly looking forward to the state my spirit origin’s gonna be in after that, either.
Maybe he won’t be as tough. He’s fucked up. That’ll help, right?
He’s back even faster this time—Well, at least I got his undivided attention—and attacking with a vengeance. Swings for my head, and I knock the first blade back with my haft, catch the other with my speartip just in time. I swing for an uppercut, quick, and rake him across the chest with my spear—not deep, he’s too quick for that, but this is good, because it means he is reacting slower than usual.
Okay. Alright, I can work with that maybe.
Archer ducks forward and makes a slice for my leg, and I parry him easily, but the barrage of swords he summons to run me through the back at the same time almost get me. Thank god my hearing’s so good. I catch the whistle of wind just in time to twist and slide out of the way, knocking one aside with my spear. I know he’ll go for my back the second I show it to him, and he does, and I’m about to dodge, when I decide it’s better to just let him. I need the guy to fucking hold still –for just two seconds—and he’s more floaty than a fucking kite! This might be my best shot at that. This is going to hurt.
I’m ready to dodge to limit the damage, but as I feel it coming, I realize I don’t have to. The dagger goes in at my abdomen, on the right side of my back, and yeah, it hurts, but also, what the hell? That’s the best opening he’s had, and he blew it—I mean, only our heart or our head being destroyed can actually kill one of us, so-?
No time to really think about it though. The second the blade is in, I reach back blind and clamp my hand around his wrist with a death-grip. I hear a bone crack and a cry of surprised pain from back there, and with my right hand still firmly around his own, I step backwards and ram my back into him, kneeling a little as I do, and I drag the arm forward simultaneously and use his sudden stature above me and all my body weight with it, to push him on top of me and then launch him over my side and onto the ground on his back. As he goes over, the guy rakes the knife in his free hand across my back, but I don’t care, because I’ve got him then, and quick as a blink I ram my lance through the arm I have the death grip on, clean through and into the concrete below, pinning him by it.
He cries out as the blade goes through, and I use the second of shock to make it on top of him, using my weight to keep him pinned down, one hand on my spear, the other catching the hand he still has in use as he makes a swipe for my head with it, leaning forward and using my body weight to force it against the ground, when usually we’d be evenly matched in a grapple. I’m breathing hard, leaning over him up close, and I’ve finally got a look at his face.
He's grimacing, teeth gritted, but not anger so much as intensity. Sweating too, breathing hard. There’s a film over his eyes, like if he’s in there at all, he’s down deep past something else. Not like a Berserker, then. Berserkers are too much all at once: not there, but for another reason. Ah, shit. So, I know less about what’s going on or what to do about it than I thought.
Well, let’s see if I can get any real reaction. He did focus on just me when I attacked, so there’s some amount of logical reasoning left, at the very least.
“Archer!” I snap. He’s struggling with me, trying to get a leg positioned so he can kick me off, and I gotta say, he’s pretty fucking good at that and it’s getting on my nerves. I should hit him. Yeah, that might help, but if I do, I have to let go of his hand, and if I do that, he’s going to throw me off. Shit.
Oh, wait.
I ram my forehead down against the bridge of his nose as hard as I can.
It makes a very satisfying crack, and he cries out, surprise and pain, but more surprise.
I jerk my head up fast, trying to get a look if there’s anything different in his eyes. He’s wincing, still struggling, but that hasn’t done much except hurt him, looks like. Maybe if I hit him harder?
“Come on! Snap out of it! This is getting irritating! You think I want to babysit you all battle, bastard?” I spit in annoyance. He looks up at me, and there’s almost something there—or maybe there is, for a second. He’s listening for a second anyway, and there’s a glint of almost…confusion. And he winces, like the confusion hurt.
Yes! It’s working, I think, and trying to keep the magic off guard, I slap him in the head with my own again, cutting open a cheekbone this time.
“Ow!”
That’s almost a word! Great! More defined than just a cry of pain. He tries to lash out in return though, and actually gets a good kick against the inside of my knee—hurts like SHIT, but I power through, and ram my knee into his in return—not exactly a win for either of us, I gotta admit, and curse under my breath.
Behind me, I hear sounds of the battle. No WAY I can look—if I do, I’m gonna get run through. I’m actually not sure why he hasn’t tried that already. Maybe he thinks I’d snap his neck? I could. I would, usually, in a fight like this. If he doesn’t remember we’re on the same side, I guess that logic path makes sense. Anyway, I hear crazy amounts of fighting still, but it’s getting further away. Kind of good, because while I took him down in the middle of enemies we’d already taken care of, no way they’d avoid taking shots at me for more than a few seconds if the battle wasn’t being drawn off. Bad though, because it sounds like David’s still alone. I can’t hear music at all—no Salieri. And that’s a hell of a lot of crowd control for one guy with a rock.
I gotta speed this up.
“This is going to hurt you a lot, but you’ll just have to get over it,” I decide, and I rip my spear back out of his hand and go for his chest.
There’s panic in his face for an instant, and then I hear the ‘shing’ of swords in the air all around me. Holy SHIT he summoned a lot of them. I have to roll off him to the side on a knee, and swing my spear behind me in an arc, deflecting as many as I can, and one still slices through my arm. He rolls backwards and springs up, but I haven’t lost focus, and I’m up to meet him, slashing at his chest. The man barely gets one of his daggers up in time to parry the blow, and I shatter it, press on hard, harder. No more swords being summoned around us; it’s all he can do to parry and dodge as I press him harder and harder.
UGH he’s so flighty though! It’s always hard to pin him down.
Wait. He doesn’t remember, then-
Hopping back suddenly, I give him a little room. He’s breathing really hard now, wary and intense, surprised, until he sees me ready my spear to throw.
“Your heart is mine,” I call, voice cold, and I see the realization and horror on his face. Immediately, an arm goes up—I can only assume going to desperately try and summon that shield of his. Perfect.
I try not to grin.
“Gae—” I let the mana surge around me, and then dash in with every ounce of speed I can muster, leaving the phantasm unfired.
It works. Taken off guard, he falls back a step in confusion, going for a normal counter suddenly instead of a shield, and I slice into his chest. I’m quick—I get the rune carved in just two motions. I think I’ve done it perfect until I realize his sword is in my side.
Shit, I think, mind registering pain faintly and on a delay. No stopping now though. I get my haft up and ram it into his neck and push him back against the building wall, hard, try to hold him while I wait for it to work. Please work.
I feel the dagger go in deeper as his back hits the wall, and twist. I expect it to rip out and try to come in again, but it doesn’t.
We stop, panting, me with a forearm pressed against my haft and his neck, a hand keeping it steady, him with one arm holding a knife in my side, another just limply hanging there with an unused dagger. I meet his gaze, and he looks…confused. No, distressed. Both, but. Maybe distressed about being confused. Blinks, then winces.
It’s working. I notice he didn’t aim very high, either. Kill shot for one of us is only head or heart. I’m going to walk off a stab in my side, and that’s twice he’s done that now. So, whatever control that magic has on him, it’s imperfect, or it’s weakening fast. I need it to go faster, though, so I let go with one hand and dig my fingernails into the rune I carved, Algiz, for protection, and I flood the mark with mana.
He jerks like he’s been shocked and gasps, or tries to with my spear crushing his throat, and I can feel the crackle of mana as my spell dispels whatever that shit was that got on him. Its energy sloughs off, like mud, and suddenly he’s looking back at me with focus and an expression I remember.
“Welcome back,” I pant, grin with an edge to it, “Now get your fucking sword out of my side.”
Archer glances at his hand like he didn’t realize it was attached to him, blinks, and rips the blade out. Hurts like shit, but I don’t show it, and I back off, relaxing my stance and letting him breathe freely.
“I don’t remember anything that happened after—” He stops, brow furrowed, and glances down at his chest and the faintly glowing rune there under his ripped shirt.
“Seems to have worked,” I offer, glancing off towards where the battle has moved to now that I can. They ain’t far, but it doesn’t look great. Well, least we’re back to almost our original numbers.
“Okay,” he says, not pursing that line of questioning. “Salieri—did the blast-“
“—Yeah, yeah, you did what you wanted.” I give him a look. “Only hit you. He went MIA right after though, anyway. No clue why. The rounds fucked up their undead pretty badly too, and they’re trying to rampage towards the city.”
He lets out a sigh, then winces and looks down at his right hand and the hole through it, then holds it up and gives me a questioning look.
“You’re lucky I didn’t take a limb off,” I reply.
Archer decides to let that go and follows my glance towards the fighting instead. “Let’s go.” He summons his daggers.
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” I say, spinning my spear into a better grip and turning to face them with him.
----------------------------------------------
“We’re here!” calls Robin into his earpiece. We took the roof exit like we did to get in, for speed and the vantage point. I’m pretty relieved now that we went with that, because the entire front of the building has become a sea of utter chaos.
“Great! Robin Hood, circle back towards your left—the compound wall facing the city! The biggest problem right now is the spirits and undead,” calls back the doctor, “Caster, the last we could tell, our Avenger was headed in that direction too, but we’ve lost him completely since.”
“You sure you don’t need someone to back up the Lancer?” asks Robin.
“He was very sure,” says the doctor.
“Okay,” says Robin, unconvinced. He glances at me.
“You go ahead,” I call, surveying the scene myself, “I’ll do what I can to help on my way, but I’m not the tankiest member of this party, so don’t expect too much. I’m going to get Salieri.”
“Okay, but how?” calls Robin, taking off for the left side of the compound.
“Don’t worry,” I say into the coms so they’ll both be able to hear me, “I don’t have to find him. I just have to be loud. He’ll come find me.”
“Are you sure that’ll work?” asks the doctor, sounding relieved at the potential fix.
I am more than sure. There is no sliver of doubt in my mind.
I run for the far side of the roof. Robin has vanished, probably literally, but I want to be as noticeable as possible. I summon music around me. I am certain anything would do, but I want him quick, so I call up ‘Per la Ricuperata Salute di Ofelia,’ our song, and I blast the piano melody with all my might.
Out ahead of me, in the oncoming storm of corpses and ghosts crawling for the city, there is a sudden flash of pitch black energy that shines, and I hear a piano answer my call, filling in the next phrase.
Oh? I feel my energy surge, in a way it never has before. Almost like…
Filing that away for much future use, I increase the volume of my own energy, playing with a note of desperation. To me!
The answer is immediate. I may as well have shouted his name, and I feel very smug. There is a frantic flash of light from near the gates, and I see a figure moving so fast it’s a blur even to me, and it vanishes and he’s here, dripping blood and covered in that horrifying armor of his I can’t say I care for, but certainly him, right at the edge of the roof as I’m about to reach it.
“Antonio!” I call happily.
He’s breathing raggedly. “What? Why did you call me?” he manages, “-There is no emergency?”
“No one could contact you,” I say, “We were worried.”
He stares at me. I can’t see his face with the mask, but I know his body language by heart. “… The negative emotions of the poltergeists, the regrets and rage and wrongs. It...pulls me in.” he offers in a somewhat stunted way after a moment.
Ah. That makes sense, after having experienced his fear aura myself once. “Wow, and you heard me through that and came out?” I ask excitedly.
I can tell he gives me a look. “…You…”
“Oh, I was in trouble,” I infer from his tone, explaining quickly, “Look.” I point out at the place where hoards of zombies and homunculi are trying to climb over each other to scale the outer wall. Ghosts are just passing through, unbound. Oooh…too quickly. I see David out there, taking out scores with his staff and sling, and then there are some bursts of poison that must be Robin’s work, but there’s just so many enemies.
“See all of that?” I ask, gesturing, “I am supposed to go stop it, and I’ll surely be cut down to ribbons on my way alone. I’m just a Caster.”
“I...” He gives me the shakiest, blankest look voice I’ve ever heard.
Hmmm.
“...will be swallowed again like before, if I go out there,” he says slowly, turning to look himself. Watching Robin and David trying to hold back the tide of chaos.
I watch him for a moment, thinking about the inflection in his voice, and then quietly walk up beside him. “You can never fight ghosts, then?”
“They are usually no trouble at all,” he replies without moving, eyes still fixed on the battle somewhere beneath that mask, “Maybe even easier than many things to absorb the hate of into my own strength. But whatever spell hit them that lost us the Red Archer has made them frenzied; it has made them too loud. Like their heads are screaming. Seeping into me with a clarity and frantic need they don’t usually have. I am inundated by their memories of fears and pain and wrongs, everything they can recall that has ever made them want to lash out and flee. Without my trying. ..Too much to absorb the way I should. And I cannot shut them out.”
“…But you shut them out to come to me,” I say.
He glances at me.
“That is different. I did not shut them out. You overpower them.”
I raise an eyebrow and blink.
“I can always sense you, even if you’re on the throne,” he explains, a weariness in his voice, “You are like the sun to me. I was made to end you. There is nothing that can hide you from me, not in this world or the next. I am bound to you. When you try to draw me, you eclipse even myself.”
I stare for a second.
“…Well then,” I offer, beginning to smile, “we go together. If you’re with me, you won’t be pulled in by them.”
He turns to me. “If I am with you, I will kill you, Amadeus.”
“You aren’t right now,” I offer as a cheery counterpoint.
Oh, the wrong thing to say. There is a very sudden scary spark in the aura around him and his posture changes. He radiates hate and intent to kill at a level that makes me want to jump off the roof.
“It is a mistake to continue considering me a joke,” says Salieri in the most completely empty, unattached voice I’ve ever heard.
“But I’m not mocking you,” I offer, raising my hands quickly and grinning at him. “I just mean this would work! Even if you’re…” I gesture at the whole…thing, he’s got going in front of me. “You are still a Servant. You’re capable of following a Master’s instructions, aren’t you? And we’re supposed to go fight those things. Isn’t it a pragmatic offer?”
The bloodlust slightly lessens.
“You can stick close to me, so I’m the loudest thing you hear, and I’ll bring you to things to kill. I don’t get mowed down by a mob, and you don’t get buried in the noise—and you can not kill me for a while, can’t you? Like I said: pragmatic.” I smile and place my hands on my hips, proud. “Well, what do you think?”
Salieri reaches up and removes the mask, and sighs. His face is haggard and pale, and so very recognizable to me. It makes me smile more.
“Must you keep grinning at me?” he petitions quietly in this voice he keeps using like he thinks everything I do is a joke at his expense.
“Yes, I think so,” I reply readily.
He looks up and meets my gaze, so sadly. I smile back at him.
“…Very well. We cannot stay here together, doing nothing, and it is our order. But you’ll need to stick close. And watch your back, or I may well run you through it,” he says wearily.
“Okay!” I reply happily.
He gives me a look and replaces his mask, then draws his sword.
“Shall we?” I ask with a little nod, and I leap off the roof.
I hear the thud of armored boots land behind me, and race off for the battle. I suppose I should check to make sure he isn’t swept away or something, but I feel like he’s probably as reliable as he used to be, so I just decide to assume he’s there and keep my eyes on the prize up ahead.
“Doctor! Salieri is recovered!” I call proudly mentally.
“Uhm—That’s great!” comes back Ritsuka’s voice in my head, “But uh, the doctor can’t hear you unless you talk into the coms.”
Haha, oops, I think, and hurriedly call, “Salieri is with us again—on our way to join the archers by the gate!”
“Wonderful—thank you!” comes the doctor’s voice over coms, saturated with relief, “Billy, Ritsuka, and Fuuma Kotarou are heading our way now, and Cu Chulainn got Emiya—they should be there with you already.”
No more class code names, I see, I think, amused. He’s not doing so bad for trying to help direct a battle from miles away though. And true to his word, I see the Lancer and our last Archer up ahead, hitting a flank about the time I’m reaching the back of the group. They seem a little bloodier, but mostly unharmed, and they’re really tearing through enemies here, so I’m liking our chances more and more.
Time to focus on my own battles, though.
Robin and David have done a wonderful job of slowing their progress, but the numbers haven’t dropped as much as I expected, and some of them have made it over the fence. I see David at the front, taking them down headshot after headshot with his little sling like it’s a carnival game, but they have breached containment. Well that isn’t very good.
How are we having such trouble?
No time to answer that, because there’s a score of zombies here at the back by me, and I call up a burst of music and send it crystalized in the air like little daggers, slamming into their backs, throwing them against the ones in front, and that takes a little focus. The ones not downed turn, and make horrible moaning shouts that send a shiver down my spine. About ten crawl over the bodies of their downed compatriots and make towards me, and I summon up another burst and kill them, pushing on.
I haven’t got a real plan here though, beyond kill stuff. Man, I hope ‘kill stuff’ works. Or. That someone else is actually thinking. Someone else is thinking, right? Surely. So many of us.
The zombies are slow, and that’s great, but some ghouls with sharp hearing are near the rear too, and tearing back towards us now, so running over bodies of things I’ve killed, I summon up another sonata and slice at stomachs and heads. A few of them fall, but two lose limbs and keep coming. I cast again at the one in front, and its severed clawing hands hit the pile of corpses below, but it keeps coming, stumbling in an armless rage, and makes a lunge for my arm with its teeth. A sword flickers past me and Salieri is through it, swinging his little silver blade in an arc around him and felling six more, glancing back at me as they fall. I beam at him, ecstatic. It’s so fun! This is like having my own bodyguard.
I do not see the demon behind me until Salieri lunges at me and drags me towards him with a hand, and I’m seeing it where I just was as I trip forward.
Exactly like having a bodyguard!
“Pay attention!” he snaps, cutting the thing in half for me.
I am suddenly feeling like it would be really fun to see what happens were I not to, but I suppose he has a point and I have some kind of blah-blah-blah duty whatever to a master as a servant. Well, I do actually like this one at least. ...Yes, alright.
I spin on my heel and send a cascade of music out in a half circle past us, knocking shades back, and cutting down another zombie.
There is the sound of a grand piano behind me and I see flames like shadows explode from inside the nearest dozen ghosts, who go shrieking to the ground.
We continue, side by side, or back to back, ducking past each other to hit threats, or swinging at a larger ogre together, trying to fight our way towards the others. It’s easy, the fighting. They’re not terribly strong, and Salieri is slaughtering things like death itself around me, and yet, somehow, we are making extremely slow progress towards the goal.
“How are there so many?” I ask, suddenly confused in a not good way, glancing behind us as I cast a barrage at some ghouls charging us, from behind the safety of Salieri’s shoulders. There are…more monsters back the way we came. Again? How? “They aren’t summoning more, are they?”
“No,” answers Salieri, raising a hand by his neck, and suddenly there is a bright red bleeding gash through his armor, clear across his throat, and I think for a horrible second that some monster I can’t see has slit it and feel real fear, but then he rips strands of blood from his own throat and holds them like the strings of a violin and raises his sword like a bow and plays them.
I think it’s most singularly horrifying thing I’ve ever seen. Dear God, I’m so glad he has the mask on right now. I think if I’d seen him do that like this with his face, I might have fainted.
This is a thing??? This is a way he fights??
I hear the music, beautiful, which is horrid, and for once not even a little funny at all, and a shrieking wraith headed our way is blown to bits.
“They’re re-forming.”
‘Re-forming’? I try to echo Salieri’s words in my head.
“How?” I manage to ask, trying to get my head focused back on not being stabbed by nearby ghouls.
“I’m not sure,” he replies, ducking as a large ghost summons a scythe and swings it at him, and slashes it through the side as he comes up again, “But I would guess it’s whatever magic they used that made things frenzy. If it’s got enough power to disrupt even a heroic spirit, it must be formidable in intensity. And they can’t have just been trying to hit us, the way they were firing.”
A solid point. Why didn’t any of us think of that?
I guess because it seemed so un-helpful to them or anyone.
Which, it still rather is. But I guess it wasn’t pointless.
“Doctor,” I call into the coms, “We’ve got a problem. We’re blowing them away, but they keep coming back, almost immediately. Like—a rapid resummoning, almost. We think maybe whatever was shot into the crowd, it’s uh…given them the magical energy to keep coming back. And we have no idea how long that will last!”
“What? All of—” There’s some muttering from the doctor on the coms then that I can’t make out, and then he’s back, “Okay! Okay. Uhm. Let me think. Let me think…If…if they’re reforming, but without anyone doing active summoning…?”
“No, no active summoning,” comes Emiya’s voice over the coms.
I shoot down a ghost and glance up to see he’s right—far as I can see, anyway. No humans left out here. There were some, at first, but they’ve either successfully retreated, or one of the spirits who got here before us has already taken them down. Or…their own monsters ate them. Also possible.
“Okay. Then, that means they used some kind of mass summoning to the area itself, for these, not ritual summoning as familiars,” says the doctor, clearly thinking a mile a minute, and I think from his tone, onto something.
“What does that mean?” comes Ritsuka’s voice worriedly over coms, “F-For us?”
“It means…It means we can’t kill them.”
----------------------------------------------
Oh.
The girl who saved me and the cowboy said there were a lot of monsters waiting, but I wasn’t expecting the scene outside.
I guess it’s a good thing. For once. How familiar this sight feels. The ground past the open door is littered with corpses—some human, more golem, or mechanical, some monsters. Some things that must have been human once, but, a long time ago. It’s like the aftermath of a battle, and the horror of that feels more familiar than the rest of the world, and the part of me that has the best chance at continuing to survive right now recognizes it and steps forward.
Only, this is not the aftermath of a battle yet. The...the cowboy was pointing when he called my name—at what? –Ah, there!
Off to the far left, the fight continues. Down by a gate and fence, leading away from the building. I see—…huh. Ghosts, yokai, undead. Very little of anything else. It seems strange to me that those would be the strongest, among all the piles of dead things I see around, but I move the thought back and focus on the present. There are several heroic spirits fighting the throng—they seem to be in sets of two right now: a red…saber? and a blue lancer, trying to contain the far right side, a caster and something else I’m not quite sure of on the left flank, and out front I see another archer, and someone with a staff and a sling who might be several things. They’re struggling, though—not to not be injured, but to keep this many things in one place. There must be…something between two and three-hundred creatures here, and they’re all moving erratic and fast. Towards the city lights I see in the distance—towards life, like they said.
They aren’t even focused on the immediate threat.
That’s very strange.
“Come on!” calls the cowboy, pausing ahead of me to look back. I….hadn’t realized he was moving, and I was not. This is very bad. I’m going to be cut down for sure, I think with some real worry.
“Right,” I call back hurriedly with a nod, taking off after him.
As we get close, he sets the my rescuer down and says, “Just call if anythin’ starts to come close, got it?”
She gives him a nod, and he tears off like a lightning bolt for the fighting, revolver flashing. I see an undead thing twice his size go down, and two behind it with it as the bullet goes through it and into them.
Kunai in hand, I start to follow, but I hear the girl call to me, and so I stop.
“Are you sure you’re okay to fight?”
I turn, and her face is worried for me. How impossible to think of. ...She...She is still so hard to even look at. To try and think about? I...
“You were almost dead a minute ago,” she adds nervously.
“…I am fine, My Lord,” I promise, because I don’t know what else to say.
“Okay,” she replies, “Be careful.”
The worry is still there, with her words. It is so…unprocessable to see that.
I. I wish I had time to ask her…a-anything. I would like to know a lot of things. She is very hard to look at, though, and I have orders, so I turn away and face the fighting. Try to think where I’m needed most, and fulfil my task well. Okay. I don’t have much power, but, if we’re trying to keep these in a small area, redirecting should be fairly…simple. Right. So, even with my abilities, I don’t need to go where anyone else is for backup, if they don’t need me. That helps. The caster and whatever is with him are having very little trouble in the back, and the saber and lancer together if anything are doing better. Which leaves the front, or the left side. The cowboy has joined the front, which makes three there now, and that seems to be helping, but even with them all, it’s a struggle. There are just so many. The left side near the front seems the weakest spot to me, though. The spirit with the sling is keeping an eye on it—I see him catch a straggler through the head as I assess the scene—but, still. It’s the weakest. Alright. There, then.
I conceal my presence, and start to move, when I hear my rescuer again—I-I think she’s speaking to me, and turn, but, she isn’t.
“What does that mean? F-For us?”
I....guess she’s speaking to another spirit.
I refocus on my task and start to move again, but, the moment I do, I feel something. …Behind me...?
Something’s wrong.
I stop, look. And...Nothing around us has changed. Battlefield behind us, gone still, continued battle ahead. That’s all. …A-and yet. … Usually…u-usually I would listen, to my senses immediately. They keep me alive. But. But, I-I know I’m not fully myself right now. I have an order—to help, with the fighting. I should go. I was told to go.
But, I don’t want to. I take a step again, and the ground under my foot feels wrong.
What is this?
It’s like something is…calling to me. Telling me I shouldn’t be here…like this is…something…else’s turf. It makes my blood feel wrong. A boundary. A warning? What?
I lean into the feeling. I reach for the part of me that isn’t human, and smell the air. There is something very wrong in it.
…What is this? It’s bad. I don’t know what it is, but-I feel—I-I feel something stirring.
‘This ground is cursed,’ the part of my blood that is not human says, and I feel it beneath my feet.
Oh.
Oh, I felt it when I stepped out, but I was still too dead to recognize it. Which means- No no no!
Panic in my chest, I whirl around. Where. It would wait, for something to attack, and it has something now. It has my new lord. –There! There, behind her! The humans, the golems, the machines, the beasts, they stay, unmoving corpses and unconscious bodies in a silent grave of a battle, but the oni, the ghouls? Bodies start to shift. There is a chill like hate in the air, and I see something translucent and pale rising up from the ground like smoke behind her, far too close, and it is big.
She doesn’t see it. I don’t even think to call—I just run and grab her, and I-I am still so half-here at all I forget I concealed my presence, and she does not see me either, until I snatch her off the ground, and she shrieks in surprise as I leap back and the big spirit swings at empty air with hollow claws, and howls in rage.
“Sorry, My Lord!” I say worriedly, landing as far back towards the other spirits as I can. Five—eight—fourteen? Fourteen monsters back there up by the building, probably more will rise, and the spirit is coming after us fast. I turn and bolt.
“Kotarou?” she gasps out, and then seeing the scene, “Th-They weren’t dead either?”
“They were,” I say hurriedly. The roof? No—the hill outside. Vantage point, no monsters there yet. No spirits to come back. I change course for it.
“I-I’m okay!” she calls in my head—I think to all of us spirits, “But more of the things came back to life by the building!”
The ghost is still coming after us—a few of the ghouls too. The others, I was fast enough they don’t seem to have seen us. Good.
I jump and turn in the air and strike the flint at the end of the fuse to a bomb against my armor, then fling it with my free hand, aiming for the ghouls. I hit three of the four and they stumble and fall.
The spirit’s close now—big—the size of a horse.
“Hang on!” I call to my lord, landing on the little hill between her and it, and I move my hands in a flash of practiced motions, “Rin-Pyo-Toh-Sha-Kai-Jin-Retsu-Zai-Zen!”
The cuts hit the ghost and it explodes. I send a kunai after the last ghoul, and turn back to my lord as it falls.
“You should be safer here, but one of us should stay to guard you, My Lord—those things are looking for life, and you’re the nearest living being. S-Some of them might be drawn to you before the town.”
Eyes big, she gives nod. “No, I’m okay,” she says out loud—not to me, so I’m confused for a second, until I notice she’s tapped something in her ear. Oh. There must be other humans helping too, then. “We both are. Uhm—S-Sorry, you were saying?”
She listens for a second and then something occurs to her, and she looks at me. “Oh! You don’t have—hang on—”
Ritsuka takes out her earpiece and holds it out. It takes me a second to get that she wants me to lean in and try to hear it with her. I move stuntedly, on a delay, and go to lean the side of my head by hers—almost against it. I use every bit of precision I can to avoid actually touching her. I think it would be more than me head can handle right now, and kill me if I did. Even this feels so surreal.
“Okay, keep going,” she says to the device, and I hear a man’s voice I’ve never heard before.
“—Generally, I would even say ‘almost always,’ when a mage summons a monster like this, we summon them as a kind of familiar to fight for us, but, that’s not the only way they can be summoned. You’ve of course heard stories of hauntings before—cursed places, or objects. Things attached to a location, or grudge: those are much much harder to control—sometimes impossible—but, they’re much harder to get rid of too. Cutting them down won’t work—or, well, I guess eventually it would probably have to, at least for a while, but if they’re ritually tied to the area, unless that bond itself is broken, they’ll keep regenerating. Usually this wouldn’t be as big a problem for us, but it looks like those weapons Mercury was using on the crowd—while highly irresponsible, and probably prototypes—are some kind of…research weapon to supply incredibly high doses of magical energy through physical contact, to keep those things regenerating far, far faster than something like it should—it’s probably what they were using Kotarou as an energy source for.”
Me?
It's…a horrifying thought, that all of these monsters, are running around with pieces of my…essence? Or life force. I…I still don’t completely understand what’s going on, but any part of it fills me with rage. I was being used as some kind of catalyst, then? L-Like a human sacrifice. And for what? To make an army of ghosts frenzy? All the things they—
I think a little too hard about the things I have experienced so recently, and have to shut my eyes to try and push them back. I can’t. I don’t have time to try to work through any of them!
It’s enough to make me choke, just almost thinking about it, and with my eyes shut, for a second I’m terrified I’m back. I open my eyes again, trying to get a hold of myself, and I feel something touch my hand, and jerk away on instinct.
My master is looking back at me with surprise, and I see her hand frozen where mine just was.
Oh, I think, overwhelmed by shame at that. I open my mouth to apologize, but she smiles at me like she already knows and doesn’t mind, before I can make a sound, and then she’s back to focusing on what the man on the coms is saying.
Carefully, I make myself relax, and try to do the same.
“It’s terrible, used like they did here—impractical, uncontrollable. But used like…well, like a magical bomb almost—dropped into the middle of enemy territory, this kind of thing would be incredibly effective. And if you could replenish energy with long-range missiles, essentially…A-Anyway, none of that’s important right now. Just—the situation has changed.”
“Meaning?” prompts another voice I haven’t heard before.
“Meaning, we’ve been doing everything we can to keep back the tide already, but this is worse than we thought. Think about it. Any story of a haunting you’ve ever heard. How bad, and how hard to stop that is. Any of these things, even one, if it gets lose? Summoned tied to the area, and charged up on magical energy, it’ll take a priest banishing it to really get rid of the thing, and even what should be a fairly powerless ghost could rack up a body count out of a horror story by the end of the night. We cannot let any of these things get past us.”
“Well, I understand,” comes the first voice I do know—the American cowboy, and for some reason, I feel huge relief at something familiar. I guess that’s foolish, but… “But we’re already doin’ all we can, and they ain’t stayin’ dead! I dunno how much more we can do ya for, and even with all of us here, there’s like three hundred of these damn things, and eight of us! We ain’t in any danger of goin’ down, but you got any idea how hard it is even for eight heroic spirits to wrangle three-hundred angry monsters?
He's joking a little, even in this situation, so I think he must be very good under pressure. That’s reassuring to know. I-I like him.
“The best thing would be to try to keep them contained long enough to make a banishing circle around them—I-if I was there I’d—!”
“ — I can make something like that,” comes a new voice again, playful almost, and also very sure. I – well I assumed it’d be the caster, with magic knowledge, but he’s actually pretty close to us, and I look over and I can see he’s not the one talking.
“David, excellent,” comes the first voice, heavy with relief, “Does anyone else know—?”
“—A little,” says someone else I haven’t heard before, but I’m looking right at the lancer and saber when he speaks, and I see the lancer’s lips moving, so it must be him.
“I can,” I say automatically, and Ritsuka looks at me in surprise, then beams and pushes a button on the coms and holds it out to me. “I-I can,” I say again.
“Fuuma Kotarou?” checks the first speaker.
“Yes,” I reply, thinking fast, “And, I-I can get everyone into one spot, too, but I think…I think it would take any of us, even as fast as we are, too long to put down any kind of good seals in the middle of them.”
“He has a point,” says the one identified as ‘David,’ “Especially since anyone doing that won’t be able to help hold the tide back. Too many are over the fence now — as soon as we break formation, there are going to be a few getting through the holes we have to hunt down. Do we have a plan for that?”
I hear the first man curse to himself, and frantic scratching of pen against paper. I wonder who he is. Ritsuka didn’t mention him. But, now is probably not the time to ask.
Think. Focus. How to get…
“I think I can do it.” Another new voice. Ritsuka looks towards the lancer and saber when she hears it, though, so I do too, and sure enough, it’s the man in red speaking. “How long do you need?”
“’Do it’?” echoes the fist man, “Do which part-?”
“You need all of them to not move far, while someone sets a banishing seal,” replies the red saber—or—I thought he was. He’s fighting with swords. But, as I watch, he leaps back into the air and summons a bow, and fires off eight shots into the crowd, knocking a score of ghouls back. “My phantasm is a reality marble. If the assassin can get them all together for even a second, I can release it without picking any of you up, and move them all out of the way inside it, give you time to make a trap, and then drop them back in.”
“But can you keep them from going too far apart inside the marble?” asks the lancer dubiously, cutting through a wraith and then flinging his spear through the nearest four zombies and ripping it back out.
“Yes,” says the…archer? in annoyance, “But not this many for very long without some slipping through. How long do you need?”
“That’s perfect!” says the first man, ecstatic, “How long—David, Cu Chulainn, Kotarou—is—”
“I could do what I need in about a minute,” says David.
“Sure,” agrees the lancer, and I nod, then, realizing no one can see me, flush and add:
“Yes, that works for me too.”
“I can’t banish things, but I know traps,” says one of the three I haven’t heard yet, “I can make it very hard for anything we don’t get immediately to get back up again.”
“I can do that too!” calls another, and I see the caster speaking.
“But will you really be okay alone? With…three-hundred monsters?” asks Ritsuka, and I look and again see such genuine worry on her face. I forget to think for a second, lost in the impossibility of that to understand.
“You could take Salieri,” suggests the first man.
“No,” calls the caster, blasting a handful of zombies back as he does, “He can’t go anywhere without me! I suppose I could go too, though,” he adds with great disappointment.
“No, I’ll go,” says Ritsuka, “You said they’ll be drawn to me, right?” she adds, looking at me, “Because I’m a living human. If things go wrong, I can be bait to move them back where they go inside the marble, and if things go really wrong, I can use a spell to help.”
“…Are you sure?” asks the red archer.
She nods. Like I did, and then also seems to remember no one can hear that. “Yes. We don’t have to fight and win, just run away for sixty seconds. Y-You can carry me, right?”
“Yes,” comes the answer, and the red archer aparates and appears next to us.
“Let me come too,” comes the cowboy’s voice, “I can’t do much here, but I could help in there.”
I hear his revolver fire four more times, and then he appears by us too, skidding to stop by the taller archer, who glances at him, and gives a nod.
“Okay. Be careful,” comes the first man’s voice, “Everyone know what they have to do?” We’re given a second to disagree, and no one does. “Alright. Go.”
Ritsuka takes back her earpiece and gives me a hopeful nod, then the red archer picks her up and gives me a nod too.
“You can support two noble phantasms?” I check worriedly, feeling foolish for not having asked before, but Ritsuka just gives me a very sure nod.
“Are you okay to use one though? So fast?” she checks.
“Yes,” I affirm, heartrate speeding up.
“Then let’s do it,” says the red archer.
Alright.
I let out a breath and turn and survey the scene.
The last few monsters are still back by the building, but that shouldn’t be hard. Only a hanful of them now. The rest are still almost completely contained by the spirits fighting them, even without Billy the Kid and the red archer.
I raise two fingers and fold the rest of my hand into a fist, focusing. I feel for my link to my master, and draw on the magical energy there, feel it coursing through me. I am ready. I need to be. And I let myself feel all the things I’ve been working not to; the pain, the hate, the rage, the confusion. I let it mix in my blood and boil, shut my eyes and taste it. Focus on the blood, on the kin who have past, tied to it. Feel for their spirits, and open my eyes again with a surge of mana around me.
“All hands, assemble!” I shout, and I feel them. Fuuma clan ninja, hearing my call, fragments of spirits from beyond the grave clinging to duty with pride, “It is our fate to shake order to its foundations! Cast the mold of chaos! Immortal Chaos Brigade!”
With the scream, they come to me. Two-hundred Fuuma clan ninja, summoned like darkness itself, and casting everything around us into bitch black shadow.
No words, no signals needed. I have clarity in my head for an instant, for the first time since waking here. We in that moment are of one mind, them and me. Some run for the stragglers, the others towards the waiting mob of foes, and with us, we brings a hurricane of fire. It burns in our footfalls, the only light in this hell we create, shrieking like a phantom itself, and driving all in its path back. We close in as one, chaos incarnate, the monsters falling back in the face of the flame, the blades, the darkness. The utter frenzy of the onslaught. Until they are in a little ball, pressed tight, the unfortunate few on the outside caught by the flames we send, screeching as they burn.
“Now!” I call, and I see the red archer leap like a burst of flame himself, landing right in front of the flames, lit by them like a fiend himself, and he stretches a hand out so his fingertips almost reach it.
“I am the bone of my sword.” His voice is calm, and hard when he speaks. Not the way I am accustomed to hearing someone call out the name of the mark their life left on history. There is something about it that catches me, even through my own focus.
“Steel is my body, and fire is my blood. I have created over a thousand blades. Not choosing the battlefield. Never yielding, never never knowing victory, never amassing anything. The bearer lies here alone, forging iron in a hill of swords. Yet, these hands will never hold anything. So, as I pray: Unlimited Blade Works.”
There is a flash of energy like the weight of a thousand lifetimes carved away to merciless nothing in an instant, and they are gone—all of them. My fire with them, and I let my kin vanish, staring for just a moment at where they all were. For just that last instant, I could see light like clockwork when he spoke, and it has filled me with a feeling I don’t know.
But, there is no time.
Someone calls ‘now!’ and we are all moving then.
I dash forward like the rest, my mind a ticking clock. Barely thinking, just moving. Just trying. I summon a staff, and carve a circle, running as fast as I can. I meet the lancer halfway, doing the same, and we break, a completed circle between us, him leaping from one part of the circle to another, carving runes, me across it, adding cross-strokes to the shape, sigils inside. Fast. Come on. Cleanse, break, return. I carve in words, forming talismans, things I know by heart.
Thirty seconds.
I am vaguely aware of the caster behind me, bursts of mana. The archer who said he laid traps hurrying past the rest of us to leave wires and pressure plates and poisons where it won’t break the lines of our seals. Of the man with a staff who must be David. He has already finished whatever else he had to do, and is sitting at the far side of the circle from me, the side by the waiting city we’re trying to protect, and he begins to play kind sort of harp. It is perhaps the most spectacular music I-I have ever heard. Not in a showy way, but, it feels like...waking from a long rest, or holding your mother—cool water in a desert. I feel a little of the confusion that has been working so hard to bury me since I was rescued lift, and I wonder what on earth he is? A-A caster as well?
But, no time. No time. Focus. Ten seconds. The lancer finishes, and kneels by a rune—ready to activate it by hand, I realize. I carve the last of my own sigils, and leap back to the side of the circle nearest the building, and bite my thumb, running the blood through the last mark I left, and then placing my palm down as well, ready.
Four seconds.
The caster has fallen back, on the left side now, and he mimics my gesture and lets out a breath.
Two.
The archer leaps back as well, near David, and readies an arrow in his crossbow.
One.
We get five seconds more than we needed, and then there is a flash in the air, and they’re all back at once, and I flood every bit of energy in me into the circle.
Vaguely, I am aware of the cowboy and the red archer leaping back to safety with the girl who saved me, and then there is an explosion of light around us as we all activate our traps at once.
“Return!” I shout, and the outline of my seal lights up red around me, and shrieks fill the air. There is a bright blue flash starting with the lancer, and then ripping around the circle like a spark through gunpowder. The music from David exponentially increases in volume, and a white glow saturates the air, and snaps, taking things with it. I feel a sharp pang in my gut, but I push it away and focus. I will not fail now. I will not fail a master who saved me the way she did. I know I can do this. Come on. Come on! We can! We’re so close! Hang on. Purple and green explosions go off as physical bodies trigger the traps the archer left, and I feel energy rip from my body as things try to fight back, and then it’s over, and I am left staring at a circle of ash, and eight or so struggling revenants clinging to life.
W-We did it!
The lancer and the heroic spirit who has been staying by the caster go after them with a vengeance, and I try to stand up and help too, but I collapse the moment I try.
I-I’m—I’m out—?!?
I am surprised, but I’m surprised too late. I try to catch myself, and land painfully on a forearm. My ears vaguely register the sounds of violence past me as the last monsters are cut down, but I can barely see my own fingers suddenly.
N-No. No, please. I-I can’t be vanishing, right? I-I thought.
I hold up a hand and try to see, but my vision is so blurry, I can’t tell.
Something calls my name, and I feel a hand on my shoulder. Look up and make out what I think is the cowboy above me.
“You okay?” I hear with ringing ears. He seems so far away.
“Kotarou?”
It’s…my master this time. I see her run up beside him and kneel too.
“Hey—hang on!”
A-Am I dying, then?
There are more people around me, voices, but I can’t see or hear so well. W-What? I…must have...d-done something...wrong…I…
“I-I’m…s…” My vision is…s-swimming. I… “…s-sorry, Master…”
Then I don’t remember any more.
But, there is not real pain when darkness takes me this time. A part of me is expecting, waiting for my head to be cut, but there is only still and calm and quiet in the waiting blackness. It is so different that I could break. And I think…I-I think it must have all been very worth it, whatever happens now. Right? Even if I go back to the throne and forget it all. Because. Because I-I can be proud of that. It was impossible, but someone came and saved me when I was too far gone, s-still, and...and I was able to do what she asked me to, even with so little left. s-so...I...I think it...it’s okay, this time, even if that’s all I get. I am...glad. But the gladness itself is too blindingly bright, and I have no more strength, even for thoughts.
#The Kid (fic)#The Kid#fate go fic#fgo au#fate au fic#fate fic#Fuuma Kotarou#Ritsuka Fujimaru#Cu Chulainn#Archer Emiya#Antonio Salieri#Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart#Billy the Kid
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HI STEPH! How has your December been?
Hey Lovely *HUGS*
LOL do you want the "Tumblr happy place" version or the "might be a bit depressing" version??
Tumblr-mask version: It's been alright. We've got some snow now, and it feels a bit more Christmassy. Glad I'm on holidays and just enjoying the time off :)
Real life version: We've got some snow now, and I hate snow. And life's been a bit of a gong show for the past month or so. (cw below cut, medical, retail frustration, and depression mentions)
TL;DR: It's December. Hopefully the new year looks a bit more promising <3
As you all know, this kind of all started back when my job was very uncertain. I had a bit of a brief break when I got my raise and talked with the chief of staff. Few weeks, maybe, then just the desire to have a holiday started to kick in because I realized how EXHAUSTED I was.
I recently went though a pain in the ass experience with my car's manufacturer regarding a small repair on my car that was only supposed to be a one day thing and turned into nearly 3 weeks of me not having a car and them refusing to give me a rental because I don't have an "extended warranty" even though I'm still covered under a warranty. Because of the kind of person I am, this spiralled me into a nightmare scenario of me stressing about not having a car three weeks before Christmas, fighting with the dealership to give me SOME sort of compensation (and failing) and them not being able to tell me when I get my car back – I wanted it back before my Christmas break this week because I prefer to go out during the work week when it's less busy. Anyway, coincidence or not, the missing part MYSTERIOUSLY arrived two days after I escalated my situation with the head office telling them their customer service was shit (in a nicer way, of course, LOL), so I at least have it back now. But not an experience I would wish on my worst enemy, it was THAT stressful.
Leading up to Christmas, work was insane. We're short-staffed and just... no one was "feeling it" this year. We're all tired and we all just want holidays. I took off three extra days since I still had time to book off, so my holidays started sooner than everyone else, and I am so glad I did it. I'm not looking at anything work-related for the next two weeks, thanks.
I don't like winter at all where I live (it's always gloomy and wet; rarely any sun at all), and it feels like my brain is rotting from all the Christmas shit being shoved down my throat. There, I said it. I don't like Christmas, haven't since my dad passed away 2 weeks after Christmas over a dozen years ago. I like the aesthetics of it – the lights, the decorations, the hot cocoa and fancy drinks – but it's TOO MUCH for TOO LONG, and by the time Christmas is here I am DONE. I'm TIRED of people being SHOCKED that I don't like Christmas... ugh. PLUS my seasonal depression spikes badly at Christmas because all people seem to do is like to remind me how alone I am. Like thanks, appreciate it. UGH. The only thing I like about Christmas is that my work gives us 2 weeks every year between Christmas and New Year, and I spend most of that alone watching movies, drinking cocoa or playing video games. It's wonderful. I hear about everyone in my extended family having to visit all these people on Christmas day and I'm like LOL I'm in my jammies watching the Avengers, thanks, you keep that stress.
Christmas is EXTRA kinda poopy this year because one of my closest extended family members found out they have throat cancer at the beginning of November. They're in chemo right now and in good spirits, so I'm trying to stay positive about it, but it's hard to not think about, you know?
Discovering a lot about myself in therapy, and it's mentally draining. That's all I'm comfortable sharing right now.
I'm just all around TIRED and LONELY and feel like no one cares about me, y'know? I feel like I'm never going to be anyone who accomplished something worthwhile (and before y'all say it, my BRAIN LOGICALLY KNOWS THIS IS ALL FALSE, but my wires get crossed and the depression sinks in instead with the intrusive thoughts – My therapist finds it fascinating that I have this kind of awareness and she's trying to find a way to work around it). Some days are worse than others, especially in the winter in this city going on month 2 of no sunshine, UGGGHHH. Having moods that change with the weather REALLY fucking sucks.
AND I've been looking again at getting a cat, but I think I might have to once again put it on the back-burner, because my phone is finally crapping out (it's an iPhone 6S Plus, so it's OOOOOOOLLDD by today's standards) with the camera jittering and the battery barely lasting 4 hours in standby mode, so I might have to get a new one sooner than later. AND I also want to re-look at getting a mortgage again so I'm ready when the housing market inevitably crashes and I can get a condo cheaper than 500K :/ My rent is still cheaper right now because I'm so grandfathered in that I'm paying under 1000$ right now for rent, so staying where I am is the SMART thing, but I'm miserable because the space is too small now. ANYWAY, money. Can't get a cat right now AGAIN because of money. Ugh. I'm not broke by any means, I just.......... am so annoyed my single-person groceries have gone from 50$ a week to 150$ a week, and I HATE HATE HATE it. It's ridiculous. Finally get a raise but I can never catch a break, it seems :/ It's not Avacado Toast, Karen, it's the whole damned economy.
So yeah, that's basically it. I don't talk about myself that much here because I am a fairly private person. I don't like bothering people with my problems because I always feel like a burden. Sometimes, though, I just wish I had a human person I could visit regularly to chat with (that I don't have to pay for, LOL), is all. AND my blog is my happy place, so I try to keep it positive where I can.
Hope you're having a good month, and I hope the holidays treat you well <3
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I like venting here because there are fewer eyes on my tumblr posts than my secret vent twitter, so it feels like I can speak my mind while hiding in plain sight
Whew boy I am not feeling good this week. Nor was I the week before. For once, the chronic pain actually feels like a distraction. Kind of. Still sucks to not have full use of my arm.
I’m at that impasse where I know a grippy sock vacation won’t help, nor will talk into to anybody I personally know, like my husband. I know it’s very cliche for brainfucked people to say that they don’t want to be a burden, and even morso for their loved ones to step in and say ‘oh no, you’re never a burden/you’re worth it/whatever’, but I mean it. I may be self-absorbed but I’m not completely disconnected from reality. People wear their emotions plain as day. I can taste the change in the air. How the mood drops, even among your closest friends. I’m not one of those babby mental healthers who cry for help to anyone who will listen regardless of whether or not they asked. I keep it to myself. Not exactly inside, since I believe I’m an extrovert at heart, but to my people. So if I don’t have them, I really don’t have anybody. And thus, I really don’t have anybody.
I’m not bitter about it. Honesty. No sarcasm. Just like the survival instinct hardwired into our bodies, it’s something I know I can only overcome by repeated exposure. I don’t try to guilt people either. If someone shows you themselves, take them for who they are - not who you wish they were. Humans are both communal and selfish by nature. Most of the time, reaching out in a self-satisfying action. They want to feel like a good person, or maybe they have a job to satisfy. Either way, it’s for them. If they really worry for you, it’s because they worry about the role you fill in their lives - not exactly you as a person. It’s why people stay in bad relationships for as long as they do. Maintaining something shit is easier than starting over from scratch.
I don’t even want to burden him with this shit. This morning he told me that I wasn’t a burden, but I know he’s just saying that because he has to.
I believe even my psych is getting tired of me. And no, I’m not projecting onto him. Our last meeting was brief, and he sounded exasperated. A far cry from the almost annoyingly . Reminds me of the psychs I saw in the military. Rapid-fire speech, cutting you off every other sentence. They shove a written prescription in you fist then push you out the door. Like I said, I’m not bitter about it. I just find it humorous how I managed to test yet another professional’s patience.
He gave me this number for the AH behavioral health hotline, which its really just a local crisis hotline. I’ve called them -once- in the eight or so years I’ve been seeking services from this agency and it was a total bust. I honestly don’t know why I or they even bother. I have a bit of a hair-trigger temper when I’m in a sour mood. 9/10 it ends with me going off on whoever’s on the other end of the line then hanging up. I fuckin hate it here.
I’ve said time and time again that I do not want to ‘talk to’ someone. I never want to ‘talk’ to someone. The fuck are they doing to say? WTF will ‘taking to’ someone even accomplish at this point? They’ll just feed me the same platitudes they always do then 5150 me if I say anything close to how I actually feel. It’s a lose-lose situation.
I have enough insight and self awareness to realize that I’m going through something above my pay grade, but I really don’t feel like having my shoelaces taken away while some bored nurse pretends to babysit me for 24 hours. I can’t be bothered with the forced group, or the forced meals, condescending staff, enforced bedtimes or lack of distraction. That shit makes me feel crazier than the outside world does.
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Goodbye Twitter
I’ve been on twitter longer than tumblr, since I was a teenager. The activism and news reporting you would receive from it was one of a kind. Real time updates during natural disasters and world changing events. Reality couldn’t be hidden from the world because of that. I remember staying up all night to see if a tsunami would strike Hawaii the same way it hit Japan (which I always watched happen live sadly). I remember watching the Ferguson protests. Its amazing I have the ability to call them protests and not riots because they broke the news themselves as it happened (I would of never knew cops snuck into protests and pretended to be looters and rioters to make protests violent without twitter). We are losing an amazing information source for current events as they happen because some rich idiot opened his mouth and shit all over the the public. Twitter allowed us a newfound way to experience humanity and sadly its going to slowly die at the hands of another rich person trying to stop you from making fun of them on the internet. I wish I was rich enough that I could get a divorce and distort the entire free world to my liking because of my own paper thin insecurities.
I’ll always remember Twitter from all the friends I made and lost, history I witnessed, and the truth it secured for people who weren’t filthy rich enough to afford there own staff of personal lawyers. I find it impossible to imagine a world without twitter were Ferguson, BLM, and the aftermath of Hurricanes isn’t reported on openly and or honestly. The amount of people lost to the great spinning wheel of profit. We would never know about unionizing Starbucks or cops killing so many innocent people. It just wouldn’t be news we would be allowed to here about. There is no law that they have to tell us about these things and even less laws about how truthful the things they already tell us need to be. When billionaires are in charge of your news suddenly everything they do is good for the environment and they pay a fair share of taxes. And all there half baked ideas suddenly become for the betterment of humankind and require public funding to be successful.
I wouldn’t be a writer today if it wasn’t for twitter. I lost my original twitter account because of personal reasons but I started recently beginning the process of reconnecting with decade old mutuals. Now sadly I won’t be able to make those reconnections because of it. Luckily I forced myself back onto Discord (very long story). I haven’t joined a Discord but I have a strong social connection with 2 good friends of mine still on Discord.
I tipped my feet slightly into the waters of NBA bloggers and fans on twitter for a short bit and any connections I made are now unrecoverable. So many small or grassroots level enterprises will be now ungrowable without twitter. Twitter was like a kick starter for the social acknowledgement of something. It was a way to connect to people who had all the same interest as you in something and creatives made great fucking use of it. The world has lost one of its biggest sources of information and personal connections because some rich guy didn’t like mean tweets about himself. And in a poorly executed planned assault on the company of Twitter this man has accidentally bought the company in an attempt to ruin it. Wow.
Wow.
Just fucking wow.
TLDR:
You mite see me on here a lot more one day. I rant a lot but I have always tried to keep it in areas where ranting is a little more acceptable and not an attack on the community. For every little 3-4 post mental breakdown on here its always been a 20+ tweet rant explosion of sadness on twitter.
I’ll be seeing you all more I guess.
P.S Keep on fighting the good fight Tumblr. You’ve been doing great and I know you can do better.
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teacher!levi and teacher!reader headcanons please 🥺
author note :: i expected for this to be better but idk,,, um, you know maybe it’s just me who wishes i executed it better but i wrote this at 3am that’s my excuse. ANYWAY I HOPE U ENJOY ANON :-))) i know it’s not headcanons but here!! also my ask box is always open to feel free to drop by !!
word count :: 5.4k (after i had to severely cut the word count down because my tumblr wouldn’t let me post the longer version with more detail,,,,)
honestly you’ve never fit in well with the math teachers in particular but you’re still amicable with most
however, there’s one unbearable member of the group that happens to want to play jump rope with your patience constantly
and that person just so happens to be mr ackerman
every single staff meeting the both of you sit furthest away from each other whilst silently exchanging bitter glares
maybe it’s his stony disposition or his unrealistically harsh grading system that makes him seem so off putting to you.
or perhaps it’s your soft and gentle approach to teaching that drives him up a wall
but to make matters simple, the two of you have never got along. nearly everything he says you disagree with and nearly everything you say he has to rebuke.
every outlandish suggestion of his at meetings is met with firm disapproval from you and every time you bring up wanting to provide the children with more time for extracurricular activities he sneers in annoyance
today he’s proposing a plan to set exams as soon as possible
???
you wonder if he’s even thinking with his head attached to his neck because it’ll be impossible for the children to handle all of the content in the form of an exam paper so soon
the workload he’s been pushing onto his math class has become far too ridiculous for your liking and you want to put an end to the man’s reign of terror
it just so happens your classes are scheduled in the blocks next to each other meaning he always sees your students an hour before you do
it’s got to the point where your pupils trudge into english class completely EXHAUSTED
the other day a boy fainted because of lack of sleep and now mr ackerman has the audacity to put forward the exam dates???
“we need to instill these children with discipline. taking them by surprise will give them a much needed reality check.”
you groan at his speech and raise a hand
“may i interject?”
professor ackerman’s tongue pokes at the inside of his cheek the irritation is painted on his face but he nods although he seems reluctant
“these children do not need standardized exams to-”
“would you like for me to completely scrap exams from the curriculum?” without even allowing for you to present your argument he has to cut you off with a mocking grin
“levi, i think-”
“that's mr ackerman to you.”
his blunt correction has you rolling your eyes because YES!! you understand the two of you aren’t exactly the best of friends but he doesn’t even want to be on a first name basis with a colleague of two years??
his pettiness has your blood boiling in searing displeasure
“you have to stop going so hard on these children.”
he’s shuffling through some paperwork not even batting an eye in your direction.
“personally, we aren’t hard enough but of course the english teacher has trouble understanding that.”
the jab he makes at your job only causes the anger inside of you to bubble up again
why does teaching english have ANYTHING to do with this???
“you teach math yet you can’t calculate the reasoning behind your subpar love life. do not insult english.”
personal insults are your favourite to throw at him because he always gets so riled up
and actually for once you have the answer to a math question.
the reason why his love life is so uneventful has to be because of this :
his personality + his obnoxious humour + his looks = a good looking but undatable man
his jaw clenches and the grip he has on the stack of papers in his hands strengthens
ok,, that is kinda hot but that is not relevant at all
you’re able to make out miss ral one of the other math teachers make a move to speak and god you fight the urge to punch her every day because she’s always gushing about mr ackerman
seeing as you don’t want to punch her or anyone for that matter you turn to give her a “if you speak right now i swear to god i will lose my shit” look
she gets the memo incredibly quickly because her mouth closes shut immediately
mr ackerman takes a sip out of the cup of black tea next to him. “i would appreciate if you just sat back and let me do what’s best.”
“children fainting in my lesson is not what’s best.” your rebuttal catches him off guard and he seems more than a little surprised
“wait- fainted??”
you eyes flick over to mr zacharias, you had told him to pass the message on but the way he’s sheepishly looking at the floor avoiding your eyes clearly tells you all you have to know
“looks like someone forgot to pass the message onto you but the other day falco fainted in english.”
“is he- is he okay?? did he say why?”
eyebrows raising you’re quite surprised to see any sort of reaction from him let alone concern
“he stayed up all night completing your homework.”
lips pressing together into a fine line it almost looks as if he’s guilty
“i’ll talk to him about it later.” his voice is back to its usually plain tone and any trace of his previous worry has been masked.
an awkward silence follows. he coughs choosing to not continue the discussion about exams.
principal smith takes the hint and moves on to discuss planned school trips
HOORAH victory!!!
yet another day where you’ve saved your students
“who is fallacy and why are they pathetic?” a few snorts and giggles are heard around the class and you force yourself to laugh at falco's miserable attempt at a joke
you’ve noticed falco’s been cracking more jokes around his new seat mate gabi.
she’s small but feisty always willing to debate and she’s really a joy to teach although she can get a little bit aggressive with the others at times
honestly it’s quite obvious that falco has a fat crush on her. well, actually it’s been obvious from the moment she step foot into your class
and... you couldn’t just ignore the way falco looked at her could you?? and there was an empty space next to him too sooooo, what harm would there be in placing the two together?
it seems as if your attempt at getting the both of them to talk has worked. gabi and falco compete desperately for the top position in the class and are two of the best students you’ve had in a while
also after the day falco fainted in class gabi has been noticeably nicer. things like asking if he’s drank water or how much he’s slept
you have a small inkling that she may like him back
and the budding romance is adorable to you because you too once had childhood crushes
it feels rather nostalgic to see the two interact
but today you notice the two aren’t in
in fact, you notice half of the class isn’t?
“where are the others?” your question sends a jolt through one of your present students but he stays silent choosing to pretend to clean his glasses as a distraction
crossing your arms over your chest you walk over towards his desk
“udo, you can tell me what it is.”
“professor ackerman said not to tell.” udo looks petrified and you’re just kinda wondering what in the hell is going on
lucky for you his resolve is thin and he quickly cracks under pressure
“okay. you can’t say i told.”
nodding in agreement he looks around making sure no one else hears what exactly it is he’s about to disclose
“he’s kept some people back to talk to them about something top secret. i don’t know what but he asked for the students who like you.”
at that you feel a little bitter because if he asked for the student who liked you why on earth is half the class still here??
but oh well, you guess you can’t please them all
“oh no, no, no. you’ve got it wrong. we all wanted to stay but he didn’t let us.”
udo looks genuine so you let it slide
either way it doesn’t really matter as long as the majority prefer you over that sick and twisted math teacher you’re alright
“he does know he’s cut into my class time right?”
“falco told him that and he whispered something about how you’re bothersome.”
you???? bothersome???
WHEN HE’S THE ONE BOTHERING EVERYONE?/!:£:!/)
you don’t even look back as you walk out frankly furious at what’s happened
english is important
ACTUALLY!!!
ENGLISH > MATH
you will stand by that till the day you die
your knuckle meets with the wooden surface of your sworn enemy’s classroom door and almost automatically you’re able to hear the shuffle of chairs and padding of numerous footsteps approach
the door swings open and you step aside to allow your missing students to pass through
they look nervous but one look at your reassuring smile lets them ease up and relax
“well.” a voice behind you snaps “look who paid me a visit.”
“we’re talking about this later.”
you try your best to sound serious but you don’t know if you pull it off as well as he does because he just ends up giving you a disappointed sort of look
“y/n. stick to being the good cop it suits you better.”
“we are not on first name basis. you said it yourself.” is your narrowed comeback
finally turning to face him you’re surprised when your eyes travel to the triangle of space behind him and you’re able to get a peek of what looks to be a list of books on his whiteboard
pride and prejudice
wuthering heights
jane eyre
ville-
before you’re able to read the rest he moves in front of your line of vision
he’s got quite the selection but,, when did he of all the people on this planet start showing any interest in literature?
“the books on the board what’s that about?”
your inquiry flies over his head and he shuts the door behind him completely
his face doesn’t move and if it does it only shows the slightest hint of confusion
“what books are you talking about?” he replies and don’t know why your knees feel a little weak when he looks you straight in the eyes
snap.
out.
of.
it.
“i saw books on the board.”
“you saw wrong.” he barks back and he’s getting agitated now
maybe you did imagine it...
and you have to get back to teach your class so okay fair enough you’ll let it go because you do know you have a habit of daydreaming randomly
however that doesn’t stop you from giving him another skeptical look before you leave because there is NO WAY you imagined it, but it is you and it really could be a possibility
the click clack of your heels against the floor sound out as you remove yourself from the conversation
you assume he’s returned to his classroom
that’s why it catches you by surprise when you hear a hesitant voice behind you
“there were no books on the board.”
you don’t know why he has to tell you that again because it only makes himself look all the more suspicious
“but if they were a list of book recommendations then what would you recommend i read?”
the question is peculiar coming from him
are you in an alternate universe?
is this a dream?
are you talking to a clone?
a robot?
because this can NOT be the same man you’ve been working with for two years
maybe he’s having a change of heart?
but that sounds unlikely
maybe he’s planning to read the book and somehow with that big brain of his formulate a calculation to score it a measly two out of ten
yeah. that sounds more likely.
nevertheless, you still want to give him a recommendation, maybe he’ll find out he’s into books this way
“you should totally check out pride and prejudice :-)”
for once you’re smiling at him and he doesn’t know what to do because the change is sudden but he doesn’t say a word after that
instead he retreats into his classroom
god.
now you’re sure he’s just asked to form a stupid calculation or whatever the hell it is math teachers do.
“he likes you.” hange has a shit eating grin on their face and you can’t help but narrow your eyes and sigh in exasperation
no he does not like you but you don’t try to correct hange because you know they’re firm in their stupid belief
“would you ever date him?” hange fiddles with the last of their potato salad absentmindedly waiting on your reply
the question literally has you choking on your lunch
“i would rather fight for survival in the wilderness. thank you for asking.”
“oh come on... he’s got a thing for you. you read romance novels all the time you should be able to tell he does.”
“yeah and that thing he has for me is wanting to shove my head onto a pitchfork. you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.” shoving a piece of pasta into your mouth you sigh dreamily at the taste. it serves as a momentary distraction
you get one lunch break and you are not!!!! in the mood to talk about him whilst you’re on that break
he’s attractive
and you have to admit he looks handsome in his crisp white button up and pristine black suit AND his cologne is really...
okay, you are digressing from the point
none of what you just said means anything!!!
at surface level he seems like a catch but it’s what’s on the inside that matters and he said he finds english stupid
that’s more than enough of a reason to dislike the guy?
he thinks stuff like the pythagorean theorem and y = mx+c are entertaining
y = mx+c ??? over literature???
you read books to teach and you read books for your own enjoyment
it would be a complete travesty if you had a crush on a book hater
and levi ackerman most certainly can be classed as a book hater.
a pessimistic book hater if the specifics are needed
“OH! SORRY Y/N GOTTA BLAST MOB’S OVER THERE!!!!!”
you don’t even get the chance to say goodbye because hange makes an eager run towards moblit
hange and moblit are inseparable, both are the shared heads of the science department and since he’s been off on sick leave recently you understand why hange’s rushed off to greet him
you wish you had a teacher friend like that but the sad truth is you’re pretty much a lone wolf. the other english teachers are wrinkly old pickles and talk about antiques or quiz shows :-(
“this seat free?”
no way.
it’s not him
it can't be
what does he even want??
“um, well yeah it is free b-.”
“good.” he takes the seat without you even inviting him and now you’re stuck in an awkward situation you didn’t even expect to be in today
you're about to burst into tears because is it too much to ask for a peaceful lunch period???
mr ackerman clears his throat and places a book in the center of the table. “pride and prejudice although not my cup of tea was... mildly enjoyable.”
wait...
is this him...
admitting defeat!??
HELLLOOOOO
you are over the moon right now because you know he really had to have enjoyed it a lot and is simply choosing to withhold that information for his own reputation
“i’m happy to hear you took a liking to it.” you’re munching away at your pasta a little more upbeat now
“okay but the start of the book assuming all single men want a wife? no, all i want is a good night’s rest for once. also mrs bennet needs to calm down, elizabeth can marry who the hell she wa-”
“someone’s a little passionate aren’t they?” you giggle into your glass of water and you catch mr ackerman frowning
“i liked it okay.”
“i thought you said it was only mildly enjoyable just now?” grinning and looking at him through your lashes his cheeks become red
you guess he’s angry or something but that’s the usual with him
“yeah, whatever. i just wanted to play fair and apologise.”
“apologise?” oh wow, now your interest has really peaked because never in the past two years has he apologised to ANYONE
not even principal smith for the one time he flipped out and nearly cursed at a mouthy student at parent's evening
grimacing a little before he does it he finally speaks again.
“english is important. i’m sorry.”
your lips tug up into a bright smile
well???
this is a great interaction??
an apology coming out of levi ackerman of all people
“apology accepted! i’m glad to know you liked the book but now that we’re a tad bit friendlier with each other i wanted to ask for a favour.” your eyes gleam and he swears he can see specks of shining stars in them
“...okay, it depends.”
he’s warming up to you so he considers it
“please don’t cut into my lesson time levi.” his name slips out of your mouth but it’s so natural you don’t even care to correct yourself
“i’m sorry about that too y/n.” your name now ventures out of his mouth too as it tests the waters
wordlessly the two of you agree to first name basis
BUT more important matters are at hand such as how he’s issued you yet another apology?
this is satire surely
because why is he so willing all of a sudden...?
well, that's the power of pride and prejudice, wow you’re really thanking the heavens for blessing this world with jane austen’s existence
jane austen. a woman capable of remarkable things, she's even managed to make an unmoving book hater somehow become a lover
poking at your tuna pasta you and levi are now quiet.
“soooooo, any opinions on mr wickham?” you ask the question hoping to initiate a longer conversation than before
and luckily for you your attempt works
SUCCESS!!
levi pinches the bridge of his nose and the creases on his forehead show he clearly isn't particularly fond of wickham
“don’t get me started he’s so indescribably annoying?”
ok, ok, ok
you don’t even know how it happens but you and levi really hit it off
weeks have passed and you and him have even become lunch buddies
it was so shocking to moblit at first that he dropped his lunch on the floor when he saw you and levi enthusiastically exchanging words
then again, two mr wickham haters are bound to get along
you’re seriously wondering how the two of you ever survived as mortal enemies
yeah, you still disagree a lot but you’re getting there!!
sometimes he helps you out when your computer stops running and in exchange you’re willing to offer him book recommendations
he swears he doesn't want any recommendations from you but you know he enjoys it
yesterday he got microsoft excel out and showed you how useful it really was and you went :O because you never really understood the need for it at all
you’re a little bit of a granny when it comes to tech...
and just today at lunch you recommended he checks some plays out but his nose wrinkled at the mention of shakespeare so the both of you went through a long list of dramas and eventually you were able to interest him in j.b. priestely's an inspector calls
another victory for you!!
anyway, right now the two of you are sitting inside of the staff room seeing as it's that time of the month again.
time for the monthly staff meeting
it's the first one you've had since you and levi became friends and you're worried the both of you will be back at it butting heads
wait, are you friends?
well, you wouldn't mind if that were the case but to be honest you would like to be a little bit more than friends mayb-
no!!! no!!! no!!! stupid thought!!! you retract that statement immediately
no you do not want to be more than friends with levi ackerman, yes he's lovely to a degree but you are not going to elaborate on why it's a terrible idea to fancy him
okay wait, let's elaborate for the sake of elaborating
he's surprisingly charming and wittier than you thought he would be. the fun conversations are making your days now and to be honest it is nice to have someone to spend lunch with (hange usually skips out on lunch all together to tinker in the science labs and set up experiments)
wait... weren't you suppose to explain why you don't want to get with him?
you're an idiot and you don't notice how dumb you really are until everyone just kinda gawks at the both of you because it's so odd seeing you in the same room let alone within a three feet radius of each other.
fuck, you completely forgot you and levi sat at opposite ends of the room
principal smith enters and even he looks visibly shocked at the change in seats but he doesn't mention it and you're grateful he doesn't because you didn't purposefully sit here it just happened on accident
erwin turns in your direction and smiles
"would you like to start off with your proposition for extracurriculars?"
nodding your head you begin passionately.
"well, i'd like to say i don't think we offer the children enough. we have spare funding so why not open another club? cooking perhaps? i understand many of you may not understand the importance of teaching them how to cook but-"
"do you have an obsession for setting these children up for failure?" tensing up you notice it's levi who's spoke and he doesn't sound remotely happy
blinking once and then twice he realizes his tone isn't the best and he mutters an apology "sorry, go ahead i'll add in when you're done."
whispers travel through the room straight away
"did he just say sorry?"
"actually why are those two sitting together?"
"do you think they're you know...?"
miss ral who's sat a little further away is the next person to disagree with you
"i understand the intention but would it not be better to let them have extra math lessons?"
"oh, so you can get a pay rise?" the comeback you make is aggressive and dripping in displeasure
she sits up face burning up
"no- no- absolutely not i take pleasure in teaching all of my classes." flustered and trying to hide her nerves she takes a sip out of her water bottle
you want to pour all of the water out onto that ginger hair of hers
the reason why her interjection is getting on your nerves is due to the fact you overheard her and another one of the math teachers plan to bring this specific point up
and you are well aware that her reasoning behind it has nothing to do with the children
she couldn't care less about them
"do not make me repeat what you and mr bozado were chit chatting about earlier today."
the threat is enough to silence her and just when you think you've handled the situation levi has to give his input
"let's ignore petra's motivations and talk about how teaching these kids how to cook means nothing if they have no tradable skills to offer in the real world." levi's not looking at you. he's either too annoyed or too preoccupied with his thought process
at that moment you feel naive, you thought maybe he would try to understand your opinion seeing as he's been spending so much time with you as of recent but that looks to not be the case
murmurs of agreement fill the room at his statement and you feel pathetic
it's practically the entire room against you now
genuinely how is it these people can manage to be such spoiled sports about everything?
"recently, i asked all of my classes to write an essay about school stress. maybe you won't understand my views because you haven't read their pieces but they need a fucking break." the expletive flies out of your mouth without warning and you flush in embarrassment
that
was
not
professional.
"oh god, i'm sorry i got worked up i shouldn't hav-" fumbling over all of your words you feel even more mortified
the principal raises his hand signalling you stop and you clamp your mouth shut. you're in huge trouble that's for sure
but,,, in spite of the clear difference in opinion between you and the other teachers, soft and well spoken principal smith says the unthinkable
"i have the final say and i believe you are coming from a good place after reading your student's work. how would you feel about running the new cooking club?"
scanning his face for a second you can tell his question is legitimate and the wave of relief that washes over you has never felt better than ever
sighing contently you agree and as the topic of conversation shifts to something else entirely you sense your heart rate picking up
you feel like you're back to square one with levi.
it's yet another day where you’ve saved your students and you should be feeling overjoyed but if anything you feel a little deflated
you wish he would have come around and understood but you can't teach and old dog new tricks
again, the feeling of disappointment wears you down
two weeks have passed since then and your favourite time of year has come. it’s spring term meaning MACBETH
the english curriculum includes plays and it just so happens that today is your first lesson covering shakespeare
and you LOVE shakespeare
something about all the intricate foreshadowing always has you excited
but some children are missing
and it’s way too many to blame on sickness
so you wait for a few minutes but it's consistently radio silent
the last time this happened the culprit had been levi and he promised to never cut into your lesson time
but you could count on him to break his promise after the fiasco that was the monthly meeting
is he back to hating you and hating literature?
well, that's his loss if that's the case!! and no!! you will not upset yourself over the loss of the budding friendship
sighing you get to your feet making a beeline to the door but gabi and falco rush to stop you
awkward chuckles activated they wave their hands to get your attention “OH NO, they’ll only be five minutes!!” their sentence comes out as one big blur of words but you manage to understand them
now you’re doubtful because you know falco and gabi would usually ignore you and allow you to walk out
giving them a knowing glance the pair look between each other
their eyes are clearly communicating and asking if it’s alright to tell you
“i promise i won’t be mad.” you sigh
perhaps if you reassure them they’ll be more likely to spill the beans
“it’s not that you... i don't know. you might be upset.” gabi isn't one to care much for other's feelings so you're slightly anxious even though you shouldn't be
but you’re a tough nut to crack. so, absolutely not. you are not going to upset yourself over whatever it is
“i won’t be hurt. i’ve suffered through reading some of the most emotional classics to ever exist.” hitting your chest with your fist you wince a little because you hit yourself a little too hard
falco’s seems to be too shy to come out with it so gabi takes the lead as she normally does
“some students were talking badly about you so mr ackerman kept them behind to have a talk.”
oh.
yeah, actually you are a teeny weeny bit disheartened because you think you’re nice to all of your pupils but it’s nothing too bad, not everyone will like you
“if that’s all i’ll go get them. thank you for letting me know.” giving them two thumbs up you leave the class immediately
levi is probably scolding them to hell and back
not because he cares for you but because he hates disrespect in general
as you’re nearing the open door of his classroom you hear something you never thought would emerge from levi’s room
“final question. why does mr darcy say he doesn’t want to dance with elizabeth at first?” oh yeah, that’s levi’s voice for sure
an english question?
is he quizzing them on pride and prejudice?
you wait hoping your students don't fail you and are able to provide the correct answer.
“ummm... she’s not pretty enough!!”
levi hums “you answered all five questions right. do you all know why?”
you can’t see the children’s faces but they have to be confused if there’s no immediate response
he grunts in agitation “because your english teacher works hard to teach you every single day. have some respect because that teacher of yours is one in a million.”
taking your bottom lip in between your teeth you fight the urge to smile
“do you know how at every single staff meeting there’s only ever one teacher fighting for you all and what you want. i can assure you that teacher isn’t me, but i believe you can all guess who i'm talking about.”
your heart does a back flip in your chest and you feel jittery but in that really fuzzy good way
like that super duper fuzzy and hazy good way
he’s really very sweet for saying all of this and you're now smiling like an idiot
one pupil takes a chance to make amends “we’re sorry mr ackerman.”
but before levi can give them a response you clap your hands together and walk in unannounced
“apology accepted, now if you want to all be forgiven forever please return to class and answer the questions on the board!” directing them to the door with your hands you make sure they're conscious fo the fact you aren't mad at them
still, never have you seen them so eager to run off to analyze macbeth. you guess levi's deathly stare is the cause for it
holding back a laugh you clear your throat after the last student leaves
“thank you levi :-)”
it’s quiet for a second and you think to ask him about what has been gnawing at your mind
“you didn’t have to do that. you disagreed with me before so... why did you?”
“i say this at every meeting and you never listen but children need to be disciplined.” his unchangeable tone is unwelcoming
again it’s awkwardly silent and you sorta regret even coming over to see what was going on because now you and levi are just having an uncomfortable staring contest
then he scratches the back of his neck and heaves a heavy breath
“it may also be because i really fucking like you, but i look like an idiot saying that when we’ve been at each other's necks for two years.”
oh.
the sudden and brutally honest confession has the wind knocked out of you, you’re stunned
and then you get hit by it too. the realization hits you like rain hits umbrellas on stormy days. you like him too.
you like him for his witty sense of humour, his pure honesty and his hatred for mr wickham only serves as a bonus
yes, you have your differences. many of them. but you like him
he’s no longer a book hater and so by default you can fancy him. he goes against none of your guidelines essentially
you like him, he likes you back?’//’.;
[SCREAMS]
“well, what do you say? will you be this mr darcy's elizabeth bennet?” hearing the cheesy pickup line from him of all people has the butterflies in your stomach exploding in delight
“you sound weird, where's the grumpy math teacher from before?" now you and him are simply shamelessly flirting but HEY!! you have no complaints at all
he scoffs at your sarcastic question
"do you want the equation for a two dimensional heart on a graph beca-"
"can i just kiss you?"
wOWIE are you being bold today y/n???
thankfully you don't have to wait for his answer. levi’s right hand pulls your face in and he slams his lips against yours. he gives your waist a squeeze and you hold him tighter by the neck in response. he has a way of somehow making it all feel gentle and relaxed in the same breath
and... you know what? maybe you should have recommended pride and prejudice to him earlier
but oh well.
what matters the most right now is that you're kissing your mr darcy!!
and he’s kissing his elizabeth bennet
:-)
#levi#levi ackerman#aot#snk#attack on titan#attack on titan levi#levi x reader#levi x y/n#levi headcanons#levi drabbles#levi scenario#teacher levi#levi fanfiction#aot fanfiction#leviiattacks#attack on titan x reader#levi fluff#modern levi#modern levi ackerman
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About moderating and banning content on AO3!
Okay so! I haven’t had the spoons to do this for a while but I cracked and ranted about it on twitter which is... not... conducive to long rants, so!
This is a h u g e discussion part of the l o n g history that led to the creation of AO3, which older, more informed, and more articulate people have talked about at length and can be found around if you look (I reblog some of it in my AO3 and fandom history tags for the curious). So I won’t go into that here, nor into the practical reasons why it’s not even possible to put that system in place anyway.
Arbitrarily, or the purpose of this post, because it’s the biggest topic I’ve seen brought up lately, I’ll be talking about fic depicting underage characters in se*ual situations, but honestly I could hold the exact same conversation on literally any controversial content.
This is about why you, specifically, if you are a content creator and especially if you are marginalised and especially if you are queer and especially especially if you are sensitive to fiction depicting certain things... do not, actually, want a banning system on AO3.
What? Of course we do. There’s a lot of p*do shit on AO3 and p*do shit is gross. No one should condone that, wtf? It would be easy to do — just periodically delete the entire Underage tag!
What will happen if that is done is that people will re-upload and continue to write it, they’ll just stop tagging and you will run into it with zero warning nor ability to filter it out. Again, this is not a theoretical — we know this is what happens. When I was a teen, adult content (all adult content) was not allowed on FF.NET; it was everywhere regardless, and without tags. The exact same thing happened on tumblr when adult content was banned as well. It’s not a matter of “staff not handling it well” — it just doesn’t work.
To keep safe the people who need to be able to exclude that tag, that tag needs to exist and be used.
Well, shucks. A reporting system then?
A reporting system would operate in one of two ways:
-an algorithm, which would delete a lot of stuff we wouldn’t want it to delete.
-humans, which is... the bigger problem.
An algorithm sounds great. We do want it to delete everything.
Okay. What about the daddy k*nk fics between consenting adult characters? What about the fics featuring characters that are children in the canon but are adults in the fic? What about the fics about teenagers exploring their se*uality together, written by adults about the experiences they remember having or wish they could have had? What about the thousands of SasuNaru and Drarry and other shounen and YA fics that will get written, by teens or by people who remember being teens? What about the se*ually explicit fic written by teens who are se*ually active in real life? What about the fics about CSA as trauma, about healing from it? What about the fics written by survivors of CSA to cope about their trauma? What about the fics that clearly show that it’s evil and traumatic? What about the super dark, harrowing, but beautiful and artistic that I’m glad I read even though it fucked me up for days? What about the ones that were really shitty but also horribly hot?
Well, some of these are still not okay, but maybe some might be. It depends on how it’s written. We’ll have humans moderating content and deciding, then.
Okay.
The thing is, I don’t know which of the things I just listed were okay for you to be depicted in fiction and which were too much. Odds are I don’t agree with you. Odds are if I asked 10 people randomly picked off the street, not everyone would agree.
Odds are, even if AO3 arbitrarily decided on which of those are allowed and which are not, you would not agree with their choice, and you would still be unhappy with the decision. (Or you would be happy, but your friends wouldn’t.)
Odds are, different AO3 content moderators might not agree on whether a given fic qualifies or not — is it artistic enough? Does it show enough that these actions are evil and wrong? Can the author prove they’re a teenager? Can the author prove they are a CSA victim? Can the author prove that this is to help them cope with their trauma? The author seem to be functioning alright, they mustn’t really be traumatised!
You know what I mean! There’s absolute, objectively gross shit out there that is not artistic and should not be published.
I agree that there’s vile stuff out there that makes me sick and that I think is very clearly just ped*philic trash. But there is no way to, 1) stop those from getting published anyway, 2) take those down and preserve the safety of everything else.
If we start forbidding some things, there’s two ways to go about it.
One single, clear, arbitrary rule — for instance, absolutely no adult content featuring characters under 18 (leaving aside the fact that this would not even work for the reason cited above). So we lose all the stuff from teenagers, all the coming of age stories about adolescence, all the stuff from CSA survivors; people who need to write it can’t publish it anymore, and people who need to read it can’t anymore either (and as a cool bonus, they’re told it’s wrong and made to feel bad about it). Depending on whether the rules applies to characters that are under 18 in the canon, we lose entire fandoms.
Or, subjective moderation by humans, according to what they estimate to be gross.
Let’s assume all moderators can agree on what’s gross or not.
If there is a system in place to ban some underage works because “gross shit”, then that means other gross stuff can be taken down on account of being gross and harmful.
Yeah! Gross stuff should be taken down! Come on, surely everyone agrees on what’s gross and harmful.
Ah.
But the problem is.
Here is a list of things I have seen — with my eyes seen — called harmful to be depicted in fiction:
Murder
Non-con
Inc*st
Cannibalism
Torture
Self-harm
Mental illness
Drugs
Racism
K*nk
Non-negotiated k*nk, but healthy k*nk is ok
Spanking k*nk
BDSM where the woman is a bottom, but woman top is ok
Healthy depictions of BDSM
Unhealthy depictions of BDSM
Queer people doing bad things
Abusive relationships
Rival/Enemies to lovers
Redemption stories
A happy relationship between a 17 yo and an 18 yo
A happy relationship between a 20 yo and a 60 yo
A happy relationship between a boss and their employee, or a college teacher and a student
A happy relationship between a 14 yo boy and an older teenage boy, because that’s reminiscent of older men preying on younger gay boys IRL
Se*ual content featuring a character whose age is unclear in canon and some people headcanon them as being underage, some as being a young adult
Loving, consensual fluff between characters that are evil villains, because it romanticises them and their actions
Dark content shipping female characters
Fluffy content shipping female characters, because it’s misogynistic to act like lesbians are only soft all the time
Consensual s*x featuring a canonically asexual character, because it implies that all aces can and should still have se*
Fics about the same canonically asexual character hating s*x, because that erases the experience of s*x-positive aces
Shipping a character who is perceived by some fans as queer-coded with a character of a different s*x
The tendency to ship a black character with white characters
Fluffy drunk s*x, because that’s not actually consensual
Sleep s*x, because that’s not actually consensual
Trans characters not experiencing dysphoria, because that idealises the trans experience
Consensual s*x between adults that are not married
LGBT+ content, because kids shouldn’t see that.
I guarantee you: you, I, and 10 random people plucked from the street will not agree on what, in that list, is and isn’t okay to publish and consume fiction of.
So why should your taste be the one followed? Why should it be the taste of mods you don’t know? Why should anyone get to dictate? What if the mods think your OTP is gross and your NOTP is fine?
This is the slippery slope argument.
Yes, it is the slippery slope argument. Because we know it happens. Because we’ve been there, because I’ve seen it happen myself twice already and I’m not even thirty. Because we know people do complain loudly about all of these things.
And because the second there is a banning system in place, assholes will use the system to abuse it and get stuff they just don’t like taken down using the “it is gross” argument, and one day you’ll wake up and the beautiful fic that helped you come to terms with your abuse/trauma/identity/orientation/k*nk for feet will be taken down and wonderful vulnerable creative people will have been harassed out of fandom because they argued with 1 person who didn’t like their foot k*nk fic that happened to also feature, for instance, a CSA trauma backstory.
Again: not exaggerating. Not theoretical. It happens, we know it happens, AO3 was created literally because it happens.
I still fucking hate that stuff.
That is completely fine and normal. No one likes everything. Me too! Most of the dark stuff is niche and the creators know only few people will like it the same way they do.
(For the record, I get grossed out and triggered by fics about an asexual character who does not like s*x having s*x with their partner to make them happy. Deep in my gut everything screams that that’s fucked up, terrifying and harmful, how can people write that. But I recognise that there are people who love and need that, and I leave those people and their content alone.
OTOH, I read a lot of otherwise dark shit and I enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed, say, Hannibal, in the same way some people enjoy true crime documentaries, horror movies or r*pe fantasy k*nk. It helps me explore stuff that I like to see in fiction, in a safe, controlled way. I’m also asexual, 90% s*x-repulsed IRL, and, obviously, I would never abuse a child. For that matter, I wouldn’t kill and eat people, either, nor would I do 90% of the tamer k*nky stuff I read.
Of course, Hannibal was fucked up and lots of people probably think Hannibal was gross and should not have been aired — but as exemplified by the fact that it was created, aired and watched, lots of people thought it was fine, interesting and even fun to watch.)
You can and should curate your experience and protect yourself. The AO3 website now allows you to exclude certain tags, and people have developed tools to help with that such as plugins that save your filters or hide fics that contain certain words.
But no, it isn’t going to, and it shouldn’t, get banned.
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Never Put Off Until Tomorrow
Prompts: Chores and Video Games
Word Count: 4,850
Characters: The squad + Pixal
Timeline: between seasons 11 and 12
Trigger Warnings: None
Summary: …what can be done today, yada, yada, yada, we all know the saying. So do the ninja- when Master Wu is drilling it into their heads every minute of every day, it’s kind of hard to forget.
Naturally, it only takes them a week (and the biggest new video game in Ninjago) to do so.
Read on FFN.net
Read on Ao3
Tumblr work under the cut
“Get that gun out of his hand! Without it, he’ll be defenseless and we can take him down easily!”
“I’m trying, Jay!” Lloyd said through gritted teeth. “One wrong move and he’ll get me with that thing!”
“Use your powers!” Jay raised his sword and dove at the enemy, forcing him to turn and face him. As their swords clashed with a loud clang of metal, Jay quickly pulled back as Lloyd shot a blast of power at the attacker, who promptly collapsed to the ground.
“Alright! Way to go, green ma- look out!”
Lloyd shrieked as someone suddenly jumped on him from behind, skewering a sword through his skull. The green ninja fell to the ground and vanished in a puff of smoke.
The ninja blinked at the scene before them, speechless.
Jay suddenly let out a whoop, leaning over to high-five Kai. “Way to go, bro! You’re so good at this game!”
“He came out of nowhere,” Lloyd huffed, tossing his control to the ground. “He didn’t even give me a chance to fight back.”
Kai reclined, putting his hands behind his head. “Work smarter, not harder, green machine.”
Lloyd scowled, and Nya shot him a sympathetic glance. “Hey, Lloyd, you lasted a whole ten minutes longer than last time! You’ve drastically improved.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Kai winked. “Even Jay couldn’t beat me, I wouldn’t expect you to.”
Cole shook his head. “Dude, you’re unchecked! We’ve only had this game for a week and already, you’re insane. Let’s just say I’m very glad you’re on our team.”
“I’ll say,” Zane agreed. “The Critical Conquest Gaming Tournament is going to have some of the best gamers in Ninjago. You’re good, Kai- we all are- but we all need to be at the top of our game if we want a chance at winning.”
“We got this, guys,” Nya assured. “We’ve fought off serpentine, ghosts, the Overlord, Oni- winning a city-wide video game tournament should be a piece of cake.”
“Speaking of cake-”
“No cake,” Jay snapped at Cole. “Not until we’ve won this thing. I need you to practice.”
“Dude, chill, I’ve been practicing!”
“Then can you show me your double twist dash-melee maneuver?”
Cole blinked at him. “My what?”
“That’s what I thought. Here, let me show you. We’ll try until you’ve got it down.”
“Who put you in charge?”
“You did. Literally. You guys chose me to be the team captain for the competition.”
“Whatever.”
“Lloyd, come here, so he has someone to practice on.”
“Why me?”
“Because you need to work on your stealth. Kai got that jump on you surprisingly easily. You’re a good fighter, Lloyd, but fighting doesn’t matter if your enemy kills you before you have the chance. Practice your stealth and dodging on Cole.”
“Ready to get your butt kicked, bud?” Cole reached his hands out, cracking his knuckles before picking up the controller.
“Ha! You wish. The only one who will be getting their butt kicked is-”
The sharp rapping of something against the floor interrupted him, and they turned to see Master Wu standing behind them, his gaze disapproving as he clutched his staff firmly in hand.
“Students, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Uhh, practicing for the Critical Conquest tournament?” Nya said. “I thought that was pretty obvious!”
Wu glared at her. “I know what you’re doing. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut all this short. The six of you have many chores to do.”
“Chores?” they cried in unison.
“The past week since you bought that game, you have done nothing but sit around on that couch and play it. In all that time, your chores have piled up. Now, I’m cutting you off. They need to be done, now.”
“But Master!” Jay pleaded. “The tournament starts in only a few hours!”
Master Wu smirked. “Well, I guess you better be fast, then.”
---
The ninja stared down at the alarmingly long list Master Wu had given them, no one speaking a word for nearly a solid minute.
“Why,” Kai groaned, “did we ever put all of these off?”
“Why didn’t Master Wu just let us wait one more day to do the chores?” Jay complained. “The tournament would be all over then!”
“Well, he didn’t,” Cole said. “So there’s no use in complaining. We might as well get started.”
“Alright, guys, if we’re going to get through all of this before the tournament starts, we’re gonna have to divide and conquer,” Nya said. “Let’s see. Zane, Lloyd, you guys take the kitchen. Jay, Cole, you can check the vehicles to make sure they’re operating properly- wait, scratch that, Cole doesn’t know shit about mechanics. Besides, putting you two alone together is never a good idea.”
“Hey!”
“Zane, you go with Jay on the machines. Cole, you’re with Lloyd. Kai and I will work outside on raking and fixing the training course.”
“Hey, no fair, you just gave yourself the easiest job!” Cole grumbled.
“I’ll inform you that raking leaves is very mundane!”
“Yeah!” Kai snapped. “Especially when it’s cold out like this. I’m gonna freeze my fingers off!”
“You’re the fire ninja, you’ll figure something out,” Nya snapped. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“Hey, Cole? You think this is so easy? We can trade places! You wanna trade places?”
“Actually, I’ve decided to be nice and let you take this one.”
Kai glared at him. “You’re only saying that because you know I hate it!”
Cole leaned back against the table, smirking. “Maybe.”
“Come on, Kai, we’re going.” Nya grabbed his hand and yanked him out the door.
“I guess we better get working,” Cole sighed. “Jay, Zane, you guys need a copy of your tasks?”
Zane shook his head. “I’ve got the list committed to memory. And there’s a lot to do, so we better go.”
As they left the room, Cole turned to Lloyd. “Put a check mark or something by the things the others are doing, so we can see what’s left for us.”
Lloyd made little marks next to the tasks, his pencil slowing as it reached the end. His frown deepened. “I swear, this list is getting longer. Some of these are just ridiculous! Polish the counters? Clean out the oven? Dust the tops of the cabinets? Who does these things?”
“Normal people, Lloyd. It’s not my fault that we’re so busy saving the city that you’ve never done anything more than the most basic chores in your life.”
“I’ve done chores!”
“Darkley’s doesn’t count, bud. I bet the only thing you did there was clean spiders out of your bed.”
“They were fire ants,” Lloyd grumbled.
Cole turned on him with wide eyes. “What?”
Lloyd stiffened, suddenly seeming to realize what he had just said. “Uh… I mean… don’t tell Kai, okay?”
Cole stared at him for a moment, before sighing. “I’ll let it go, this once. But only because you’ve had a lot worse things than fire ants since then. Those kids are jerks, though.”
“I know.”
“... They really did that?”
“Yes, Cole! Do I need to show the scars to prove it?”
“No! I was just- you know what, forget I even said anything. Let’s get to work. First up, doing the dishes.” They turned towards the sink, where dozens of dirty plates and cups had accumulated.
“Seriously? Doesn’t anyone ever clean off their dishes after eating?”
Cole shot him a look. “Name one time you did that.”
“Okay, so never, but we’re ninja, not dishwashers! What do you expect?”
“Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today, Lloyd.”
Lloyd groaned. “I can’t believe I’m missing Critical Conquest for this.”
---
“Jay! You’re supposed to be repairing the sentry cannons on the Land Bounty!”
“Chill out, Zane, I’ll get to it in a minute-”
Zane suddenly snatched the remote control out of his hand. “Jay! We’re never going to finish in time for the tournament if you don’t focus! Stop playing with toys!”
“It’s not a toy!” He gestured towards the small remote-controlled robot. “This thing is going to be a major distraction! It could make it or break it for us in battle!”
Zane eyed the robot skeptically. “This. Distract our enemies?”
“Well, I was going to make it into a smoke bomb, but someone kept pestering me!”
“Look, Jay, this isn’t the time to work on your inventions. You can do that later. Right now, you need to fix the sentries.”
“I already looked at the sentries,” he whined. “They were completely fried in our last adventure. I have to rewire the whole thing.”
Zane blinked at him. “Isn’t… that kind of your job?”
“Yeah, well, it’s hard work! I don’t want to do it! I’ll take any other chore on your list.”
“Well, someone needs to do it, and you’re the only one who knows how.”
“Not true! Why don’t you ask Pixal?”
He gestured towards the nindriod, who was tinkering with what appeared to be a small metal box.
“Pixal,” he called, walking over to her, “do you know how to rewire the sentries?”
“Yes, but I know for a fact that Jay does, too. I’m not doing it for you.”
“Aww, come on, Pix,” Jay groaned. “Why don’t you have to do anything while the rest of us are all working our butts off?”
She glanced wryly at Jay’s little robot, who was waving cheerfully at her. “I wouldn’t exactly call it that. But I’m not helping because I already did all my chores while the rest of you were playing video games.”
Jay went pink in the face, and even Zane felt himself avoiding Pixal’s gaze.
“Critical Conquest is very important,” Jay muttered.
“More important than making sure all our weapons are operational? Or restocking the medbay?”
“We can do those things any time! The competition is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!”
“Actually, there is another one next month-”
“Shut up, Zane. With our luck, we’ll probably be fighting evil nindroids or will be locked inside a different realm by that point, anyway.”
“I’m not helping you,” Pixal sniffed. “So I don’t know why you’re still here.”
Not taking Pixal’s… not-so-subtle hints, Jay leaned in towards her. “Whatcha workin’ on?”
Pixal eyed him warily. “... It’s a jetpack. I wanted to make something more compact in case I was in a situation where I couldn’t use the Samurai X suit.”
“That’s cool! Although, it might work better if you recalibrated the engines to-”
“Jay,” Pixal said sharply. “I know what I’m doing. Please go work on your chores.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled. “No one ever lets me have any fun.”
Zane shook his head, wandering over to the Earth Driller where he was working on replacing the paneling that had been damaged in the Oni incident.
He couldn’t have been doing so for more than fifteen minutes when the sound of a small explosion interrupted him.
Zane jerked to his feet, dashing over to where the sound had come from.
Jay had jumped back from Pixal’s jetpack, which was now black and smoking.
Of course it was.
“What happened?”
Jay scratched his head nervously. “Well, you see… I really didn’t want to work on those sentries, so when I noticed Pixal stepping out of the room for a moment…”
Zane sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Are you alright?”
Jay grinned. “Right as rain. Not even a scar like last time!”
“Okay, that’s good, now I feel less bad for saying this- what were you thinking?”
“I couldn’t help myself, Zane! She calibrated it all wrong!”
“Well, evidently, you were the one who did it wrong, seeing as it exploded within five minutes of you getting your hands on it.”
Jay jumped nearly a foot in the air. “Pixal! You’re back! Ah… um, I’m really sorry about your jetpack, I was only trying to…”
Pixal marched forward, snatching it off the floor. “It doesn’t matter, it’s done now.”
“I can fix it-”
“You’ve done quite enough,” Pixal snapped. “Why don’t you just go finish your chores now?”
“But-”
Pixal held up the burnt jetpack, shaking it lightly. “You owe me.”
“Fine,” Jay groaned. “I’ll rewire the stupid sentries.”
---
“If I have to rake one more pile of leaves, something is going to end up on fire.”
“Well, luckily for you, that was the last of them.” Nya set down her rake, rubbing her hands together. “Now we just have to dispose of the leaf bags.”
She and Kai glanced over towards the towering pile of leaf bags, and Kai groaned.
“It’s going to take forever to throw these all away!”
“Kai, the dumpster is just on the other side of the Monastery wall!”
“Yeah, but we can only carry a few bags at a time, and we’re going to have to make so many trips!”
“Well, unless you’ve got a better idea, we don’t have a choice.”
Kai paused, his eyes lighting up. “Wait-”
“No, Kai, we are not burning the leaves.”
“I wasn’t going to say that! Although… it’s not a half-bad idea…”
“Kai!”
“Okay, okay, no burning! What I was going to say was, why don’t we just toss the bags over the wall and into the dumpster?”
Nya frowned. “We’d miss half of them and then have to go over there anyway and pick them all up.”
“No, we could do it like in Critical Conquest! Remember? The ground-bash move? This is just like that!”
“Kai, that’s just a video game. This is real life!”
“Yeah, but wouldn’t it still work?”
Nya frowned, stepping forward and eyeing up the roof of the Monastery. “I suppose if we got the right angle… we’d have to make sure an ample amount of newtons were applied with each hit to reach the correct velocity… and of course we’d have to take into consideration factors like density and wind acceleration per second and its tendency to carry-”
“Okay, okay, enough with your science-y nerd stuff!”
“It’s just basic physics, Kai. I mean, there are a lot of external factors to consider that wouldn’t be present in a lab setting, although I still think it would be quite simple-”
“Would it work or not?” Kai interrupted. “Yes or no, I want a one-word answer.”
“Yes. We just need to get the proper positioning-”
“Can I be the one bashing the bags?”
Nya sighed. “Only if you do exactly as I tell you-”
“Whoooooo!” Kai cried, running off to grab the rake as he swung it around fiercely. “Who’s ready to bash some leaf bags?”
“Kai! I said to do exactly as I say-”
---
Despite Nya’s initial trepidations, the process did not end up being a total disaster, and they actually ended up getting the chore done decently quickly. Now all they had left to do was to test and recalibrate the training course.
Nya glanced down at her watch. Only an hour and a half until the tournament started. Her chances of getting extra practice on those tricky combos were looking slimmer by the second. Hopefully, Kai’s mastery of the game, Jay’s high skill levels, and Cole’s advanced items and power-ups would be enough to help them beat-
“Nya!” Kai shrieked. “I said, turn it off!”
Nya snapped out of her thoughts, glancing up at her brother, who had been knocked to the ground by a whirring training dummy. “Oh, shit!” She spun towards the controls and shut them down, jogging over to Kai. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so, I just-” Kai reached for her extended hand, pulling back with a sharp cry as they made contact.
“What?”
“My hand,” he grimaced. “It hurts like hell.”
---
“You can’t throw out the Eggo Waffles!” Lloyd insisted, grabbing at the box in Cole’s hands
“Lloyd, they expired three days ago.”
“So what, they’re still edible.”
“They’re going.” Cole gave the box a strong tug, jerking it out of Lloyd’s hands and dropping it in the garbage. Lloyd huffed, crossing his arms.
“Kai would’ve let me keep them.”
“No, he wouldn’t have, because he doesn’t want you to get food poisoning.”
Lloyd paused for a moment, before amending, “Jay would’ve let me keep them.”
Cole sighed. “Yeah, and then you guys would’ve eaten them, and we would’ve ended up with two sick ninja.”
“I wouldn’t get sick! I have these super cool powers that protect me-”
“We don’t have any proof of that. We still don’t know exactly what your powers do.”
“Which means we can’t rule that out yet!”
Cole rubbed his head. “Out of all the people I could’ve gotten stuck cleaning out the freezer with… it had to be you. The one who gets emotionally attached to frozen waffles.”
“I am not emotionally attached-”
“Are you kidding me? He can’t play with this on! This thing is stiff, it seriously restricts his movement!”
“It’s not a question, Jay, he needs to keep it on!”
“Is it actually that bad, though? Couldn’t he skip it for one game?”
“Not unless you want it to get worse!”
Cole and Lloyd exchanged a glance and stepped out into the hallway, where the other four ninja were gathered.
“What’s going on?”
Zane opened his mouth to speak. “There was-”
“Kai!” Lloyd interrupted suddenly, darting over to him. “What happened to your hand?”
Cole blinked, realizing for the first time that Kai had a swathe of bandages wrapped around his hand.
Kai yelped in pain as Lloyd touched it, and the green ninja recoiled, his eyes widening in guilt. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry!”
Nya rolled her eyes. “Don’t apologize, Lloyd, he’s fine. He’s just being a big baby about all of this.”
“Am not. It hurts!”
Zane stifled a sigh. “Kai, it is only a bad pulled muscle. Apart from being painful and needing plenty of rest, it’s nothing serious.”
“Well, you don’t know what it feels like,” Kai snapped. “It’s a lot worse than ‘nothing serious.’”
“I scanned you. I am quite certain my diagnosis is correct.”
Nya snickered, and Kai shot her a look. “Shut up, you. You’re the one who did this to me.”
“You’re the one who wasn’t paying attention!”
“Yeah, well, you’re the one who was supposed to be-”
“Guys!” Jay cried. “Can’t you see we have more pressing matters at hand? Severe injury or not, Kai can’t play Critical Conquest like this. And he’s our best player!”
“Alright,” Lloyd said. “So we don’t have our best player anymore. That’s bad. But Jay’s still a beast! And Cole, and Nya, and everyone except me, basically-”
“He could be the worst player in all of existence and it still wouldn’t matter,” Cole pointed out. “We need six players to compete or they will disqualify us.”
“But if Kai can’t play, we have no one else! There are no backups!” Nya huffed, turning on Jay. “You’re our team captain! Why didn’t you prepare any backups?”
“Because we know no one else! We live in an isolated monastery at the top of the tallest mountain for miles, what did you expect? Besides, I wasn’t anticipating this to happen!”
Zane frowned. “Well, if Kai can’t play, and we have no backup, then our only choice is to drop out-”
“Wait!” Jay cried suddenly. “I think I might have an idea of someone.”
---
“Please please please please-”
Pixal raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you really think begging is going to change my mind?”
“Please, Pixal, we need a sixth player, and you’re the only person I can think of!”
“Why would I help you after you blew up my jetpack?”
Kai gaped at him. “You what?”
Jay fought back the heat spreading across his face. “That’s not important right now! Pixal, I promise I’ll fix it, just please compete with us!”
Pixal frowned at him, which wasn’t the most reassuring answer.
“C’mon Pix- I’ll do anything.”
“I don’t know, Jay-”
“We’ll do all your chores for the next month.”
“What?”
“We will?”
“Jay, what the heck! We never agreed to that!”
Pixal smiled at him. “I would’ve accepted it if you offered a week, but that’s very generous of you.”
The others shot him smoldering glares, and Jay groaned. “It doesn’t matter, we don’t have time for this.” Glancing down at his phone, he sucked in his breath. “We’ve only got an hour until the tournament! Zane, can you teach Pixal how to play?”
Zane blinked at him. “In an hour?”
“Just cover the basics. We don’t have time for perfection. Just teach her as much as you can before the tournament starts.”
“Alright, I’ll see what I can do.”
As soon as they were out of the room, Jay wheeled around, moaning. “We are so hooped! She doesn’t know how to play! Kai, how could you be careless enough to injure yourself?”
“Oh, sure, blame the victim!” Kai snapped. “Would it kill you to show a little sympathy to your injured teammate?”
“You pulled a muscle, you baby!” Nya groaned. “Pixal’s a fast learner, hopefully, she’ll get the hang of it.”
“Fast learner or not, nothing can beat hours of experience,” Lloyd said. “Let’s just hope the other contestants aren’t as good.”
---
“These dudes are insane!”
Jay continued to scroll through the queued-up players, examining their stats, his jaw dropping. “How much have these people been grinding?”
“So much for an easy win,” Lloyd grumbled.
Zane and Pixal walked into the room, holding their controllers. “I think I’ve done everything I can with Pixal. The competition starts in five minutes, I suggest we get ready.”
“Alright.” Jay turned towards Pixal as Zane worked on setting up the game. “We’re going to need your help, but since you don’t have experience, I think the best move is to have you stay behind us and play defense.”
Pixal smirked. “I’ll do my best.”
“Guys, we have to queue up!”
“Are the headsets working?”
“They’re ready, what about the controllers? All charged?”
“We really shouldn’t be checking these kinds of things literally three minutes before the tournament, but yes, they are.”
“Hurry, guys! It’s about to start!”
Zane blinked at the screen. “Jay… you named our team the Fast Chickens?”
“It’s a good name!”
The others groaned, and Jay glared at them. “We’ll see who’s complaining when we win this thing!”
Jay fidgeted through most of the opening speeches from the hosts of the competition as they went over rules and procedures. And, after what simultaneously felt like both a million years later and only the blink of an eye, the game was finally starting. They got lucky with their spawn point, and after a few minutes, were able to collect some good resources and get a good start. Cole, Zane, and Nya were able to take down some of the weaker groups before they collected supplies while Jay and the others continued collecting and building up defenses.
Checking the score count, he could see there were already twenty teams down in various parts of the map, and he knew his team had been responsible for felling three of them. Jay couldn’t stop himself from smiling. It seemed like nothing could be going better.
That is, until they suffered a major blow on the southwestern flank of their territory against a high-level team- the CrownViolets, they called themselves. (Which was nowhere near as cool sounding as the Fast Chickens, Jay totally wasn’t insecure about that at all.) After a fierce fight that ended up costing them several lives- and robbing Zane of his last, taking him out of the game- they realized they couldn’t win this fight and backed down, sacrificing a sizeable chunk of their turf.
While still monitoring that boundary, they decided to primarily focus on expanding in the other direction. Their tactic seemed to be working well, and although the CrownViolets kept on encroaching on them from the boundary, the other teams weren’t backing down, and although none managed to defeat the rival team, they were certainly taking their tolls on them. Jay hoped that the other teams would eventually take the Violets out for them, although he had to admit that would be extremely lucky.
They were getting down to the last few teams in the tournament. When the top ten were remaining, special, more deadly weapons were hidden around, and with them, teams began to fight back harder. The Fast Chickens held their own, but by the time they were down to two teams remaining- them and the CrownViolets- both Jay and Lloyd had been killed and eliminated. Only Cole, Nya, and Pixal remained. The CrownViolets still had four players left, but they were weak. If the ninja were strategic enough, they could still win this.
But Pixal was a major hindrance. She had been plenty good at holding back and defending them, but now, with so few left, she was going to have to start playing a more active role. If only Kai had still been there.
“Alright, they’re somewhere around here.” Nya’s character pulled up her radar. “There seems to be two of them right up ahead-”
“Alright, Pixal.” Jay leaned over her shoulder, coaching her. “You’re going to have to start getting offensive. Nya says there’s only two, so there shouldn’t be a problem, but there could be an ambush, or these two could have higher health. We don’t want to take any chances. While Nya and Cole rush them, you should stay back and shoot at them with your launchers. Your character has good accuracy scores.”
There was a flash of purple, and muffled shouting, and Nya froze. “There they are! Let’s get them, guys!”
The three plunged into the fight, and although it was a tough battle, their opponents were relatively low on health, and they ended up eliminating the two CrownViolets- unfortunately, with the loss of Nya before doing so.
“It’s just the two of us left, Pixal,” Cole said, “but there’s also only two of them, as well. We can do this. Just stick close to me. They’re around here somewhere.”
“And that somewhere is here!” Pixal shrieked suddenly, whirling around.
Cole’s eyes widened. “One of their teammates must’ve sent out a distress signal before they died!” He grappled for his weapon, but in his haste, his grip was sloppy.
Pixal, however, barely hesitated, diving at their opponent and attacking in a flurry of blows. Jay’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head as she performed a complex combo it had taken him a full day to learn.
Zane smiled at all their gaping mouths. “I told you to have faith in her.”
Cole was evidently shocked too, and within a few moments, he was dead- although not before delivering a nearly fatal blow to his opponent. Pixal quickly finished him off before turning to face the last remaining player.
“Be careful, Pix,” Jay warned. “She still has pretty high health. Don’t get cocky, or take dumb risks.”
“Dumb risks are your thing,” Pixal corrected, not even batting an eye as she darted past her opponent, slashing her with her sword.
The CrownViolet wasn’t giving up, though. She pushed back, throwing down a smoke bomb and suddenly pushing Pixal down from behind. Pixal rolled out of the way, missing her sword by inches, and sprung up, taking the moment of surprise to her advantage to knock her opponent down. As the rival started crawling away, Pixal’s character took a potion, powering up a special move. The opponent knocked her down as she was waiting to power up, but before she could get a good attack in, Pixal was ready and was blasting her a beam of light.
The girl’s avatar fell to the ground, dead.
There was a beat of silence, then their living room erupted in cheers.
“Pixal! You did it! You won the game for us!”
“I can’t believe it! We actually won! Without Kai!”
“Hey,” Kai yelped. “That didn’t sound like it was meant to be a compliment.”
“What do you mean,” Lloyd said. “That was totally a super nice thing I just said about you.”
Kai narrowed his eyes. “A bit backhanded, don’t you think?”
“Guys, none of that is important!” Cole cried. “We won! Out of all the gamers in the city! We actually won!”
“But I have to know,” Jay insisted. “How did you get so good at the game?”
Pixal shrugged. “I guess you pick up a thing or two watching your team play a game obsessively for the past week.”
Jay blinked. “You’ve been watching us?”
She scowled. “I’ve been doing the chores in here, lightning brain! Repairs, laundry, picking up after you- you’ve just been too obsessed by your game to even notice me!”
“Oh, really? Uh, that’s my bad…”
“Speaking of which, you promised to do my chores, and I’m looking forward to a nice, relaxing evening off.”
“Did I?” Jay laughed nervously. “Hey, did I ever mention that the tournament winners get a cash prize-”
Pixal handed him a mop. “Nice try. Although I still expect my fair share of the earnings by the end of the week. Good luck.” The ninja just gazed at her in horror, and she laughed.
“You’re going to need it.”
#ninjago#ninbingo#my fic#rosie writes#jay walker#ninjago kai#ninjago cole#ninjago zane#lloyd garmadon#ninjago nya#pixal borg#LOOKIE HERE#IT'S FLUFF#SEE FABRO??!?!#I TOLD YOU I COULD WRITE HAPPY STUFF#i mean i may be an angst queen but even I have to give our babies a break sometimes#and i do love writing hijinks and shenanigans so#here are some!#thanks for reading!#reblogs and comments greatly appreciated!
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HOSTIS, Chapter I: Primi Foederis, The First Meeting
Member: Lee Hyunjae (tbz)
Genre (by chapter): angst, drama, comedy featuring doctor hyunjae
Category: Short Novel/ Long Series (because i’m expecting to invest quite a lot of effort into this)
A/N: YEET back with another short novel idk how long this one is going to run. i’m already predicting it’s going to be longer than chaebol juyeon because i have alot of ideas waiting to come out in this one, let’s see if i butcher it LOL. this is the first piece of work i’m posting on tumblr that isn’t part of my playlist feels collection because i don’t think i’ll be able to find a track that fits every chapter well like i’ve been doing for my playlist feels collection. any-o-how, hopefully this is gonna go well... and i’ll see you on the other side ;)
“i’ve invested so much time and effort to make sure i will never have to see you again...”
“but i must’ve done something unforgivable in my past life for fate to put us in the same place,”
“...even after a decade.”
the amygdala helps coordinate responses to things in one’s environment, especially those that trigger an emotional response.
this structure plays an important role in anger.
the rapid, minimal, and evaluative processing of the emotional significance of the sensory data is done when the data passes through the amygdala in its travel from the sensory organs along certain neural pathways towards the limbic forebrain.
emotion caused by discrimination of stimulus features, thoughts, or memories however, occurs when its information is relayed from the thalamus to the neocortex.
based on some statistical analysis, some doctors have suggested that the tendency for anger may be genetic.
but that’s not the case for you.
usually, you’d run your thoughts through your head before you spat them out, but the sight of him was enough to make you want to regurgitate your breakfast.
“you have to be shitting me.”
not one pinch of regret shows in your words, and all you could do was stare in utter disbelief at the man standing right opposite you. the department head had a clipboard in his hand as he flipped through it, only pausing when he heard your cold, yet frustrated tone buried in your expression.
“oh,” he releases the sheets of paper in his hand and places the clipboard down on the table he was leaning on. “so you know each other.”
the gleaming sunlight was shining into the room behind the man standing directly opposite you, and the department head was resting his rear against the edge of the desk between the two of you.
the years of hard work finished themselves as certificates and plaques of achievements that hung on the wall behind him, and from the corner of your eye, you could almost see your own enraged facial expression in the reflection off the awards.
“well, that makes things a lot easier for me, but i am still obligated to facilitate a proper introduction -- meeting -- or whatever the two of you want to call it,” the glasses on his nose would’ve fallen off if he didn’t push them back up his nose bridge.
your eyes were darting back and forth between the department head and the last person you’d ever want to see, or even have within your reach. your jaw was locked and your temples were so tight, you could feel a vein slowly exposing itself on your forehead.
“y/n, this is doctor lee hyunjae, and the both of you will be my mentees for the next two weeks.”
i know his fucking name--
“so until those two weeks are up, i wouldn’t expect anything less than the two of you following me around like little puppies,”
puppies? just call us dogs and that’ll already be half the truth.
“and after that, there’ll be a high chance that you’ll both need work on a research project with the research department--”
“‘research department’?” you blurt out rudely, but the department head doesn’t look like he could care less.
“did i say that wrong?” he raises an indifferent brow at you, arms crossed over his chest while he pulls his shoulder blades backwards.
there was no way you would’ve complained about med school being so difficult if you knew this day was coming. the energy required to contain your desire to punch lee hyunjae in the nose and ram your knee into his groin was enough to drain you in that very moment.
you would’ve passed out if you weren’t standing in the department head’s office.
“i agree it’s not like the hospital to put two young doctors to work on a research project, but the work the both of you did in your respective schools were a little difficult for the research department to ignore.”
‘respective schools’...
the silence becomes deafening, and the department head starts to smack his lips awkwardly loudly. “so if you have no further questions for now, i’d like you to fill up some administrative forms for the hospital to finalise, and then i’ll see you in the cafeteria for lunch at twelve,” he pulls out some sheets of paper from the clipboard and hands it to the two of you after slotting them into clear files.
“after lunch, i’ll give you one more tour around the hospital and a more detailed orientation of the north wing where the research department is... and the east wing where the neurology department is, which the two of you would be officially attached to and on document.”
you skim through the documents in the file, and your eyes naturally travel back up to look at your mentor.
“so if there are no further questions, you may go.”
both you and lucifer bow to your mentor, and he waits for the both of you to leave the office before he returns to his huge leather seat.
you let yourself out the door, not bothering to hold it open for your colleague. the grip on the clear file was tightening every second and you don’t realise you were on the verge of crumpling the contents of it. every muscle and feature on your face were compressed in itself, but luckily it doesn’t catch the attention of passing hospital staff and patients walking along the hall way.
the reflection off the frame of the lift tells you that your lips were white from the airtight closure, and you jab the lift button like you hated it.
“just so you know, i’m not fond of the idea of being stuck with you for an indefinite amount of time either.”
“ha,” you scoff, watching him stand a safe distance behind you in the reflection. “i must be so lucky for you to be able to read my expression and distaste... especially with how hard i tried to hide it.”
he snorts behind you, and the air hits the hair of your ponytail.
“you’ve never been able to hide your feelings anyway,”
this piece of--
“so it would be such an honor to even see you try.”
your eye twitches and your lips pucker in rage at the smug tone in his voice. you turn on one heel and raise the file, ready to swing it into his face.
“you--”
he grabs your wrist, waiting for your strength in your forearm to dissipate. you begin to writhe your way out of his grip with pursed lips, and he drops it like it wasn’t attached to you.
you take a step back towards the lift and mindlessly pat down your white coat, glaring at him with eyes you wish had daggers.
“nice to know your temper hasn’t changed.”
“i have a designated type of temper when it comes to you, not because i have anger management issues.”
the lift arrives and the doors open to reveal an empty space, pouring a bucket full of agony and scorn over your head when the realisation of being stuck with lee hyunjae for an indefinite amount of time sinks into your neurons.
just being around lee hyunjae was so difficult to swallow.
if you weren’t in a hospital with patients who had an actual reason to throw up, you would’ve done it in plain sight.
if you knew there were no laws to sentence you to death for murder, you would’ve stabbed him in the eye.
if you weren’t a doctor who took a pledge to only save lives just under a week ago, you would’ve poisoned him with some godforsaken virus mankind has found a way to contain.
you would’ve enjoyed lunch and the tour of the hospital, despite it being your third time wandering around the compound, if it weren’t for the fact that the last person you wanted to see was standing right next to you the entire duration.
becoming a doctor was nothing short of prestige and honour for your family, especially when you’ve come from a long line of neurosurgeons and relatives who would’ve spent more time inhaling the scent of a certain hospital than their own homes.
it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it was in your blood to follow in everybody else’s footsteps; your parents would’ve probably freaked out and started worrying that you were someone’s secret illegitimate child if you didn’t become one.
“you must be y/n,” the doctor who had white hair and a wrinkly forehead had to be peeled and shoved off the seat by your mentor for him to get up and greet you.
“this is doctor kim, head of research for neurology,” your mentor introduces as doctor kim shakes your hand.
“and you must be lee hyunjae,” he shakes lucifer’s hand.
‘petty’ was a word nobody usually associated you with, but you busked in the little sprinkle of glory and smugness when you see lee hyunjae’s lips twitch in disgust when he shakes the hand that just touched yours.
“if you’re working on research, then you will report to doctor kim--”
“i’ve seen both your reports and research work and they are phenomenal--”
“uh, doctor kim--”
“how did oxford manage to come up with this set of data?” he literally sweeps his bony, wrinkled hands across the table, looking for something you assume he took from lucifer’s application portfolio.
“doctor--”
“and how did harvard even think about this link? it’s so mind-boggling, i must admit i haven’t really wrapped my head around it--”
“doctor kim!”
the sharp call startles you, and everybody else in the office turns to provide the group of you their attention.
“sorry,” your mentor raises his hand and gives a small apologetic bow. “doctor kim,” he gently removes the items the old research doctor has grasped in his hands and places them elsewhere on the table.
you note that though doctor kim does not look a day older than sixty, he must’ve been losing his brain cells and composure from all the research he’s been doing.
“the two of them will be officially placed in the neurology department under me, but do you remember that email you sent to me about wanting them to join your team?”
“of course! what do you treat me as?” the elder man frowns and pulls off his glasses, fists resting on his hips and looking up at your mentor.
the sight lifts your spirits a little, and you momentarily forget that lucifer was standing right next to you.
“uh-- okay, well, all you gotta do is drop me an email about one week prior to whenever you need them, but for these two weeks they are still going to be trainees mentored by me, you follow?”
the elder man squints at him with eyes that scream ‘i’m not an idiot’, and your mentor takes the cue.
“after the two weeks are up, just drop them an email one week prior to when you need them and you can cc them to me. they may be bright lights in the dark but it might not necessarily guide the right people.”
“will you shut your trap--” the elder doctor picks up a thick file and rams it into your mentor’s head. your eyes widen in shock, hand flying up to your mouth to hide your surprise at the sudden attack. lucifer stands by and crosses his arms over his chest, a light smile appearing over his lips.
“with enough honing and experience, they can go a long way,” he drops the file back onto his table. “you didn’t start here with as much potential as these kids do.”
“okay!” your mentor exclaims, turning around and waving the two of you away from the office space. “if that’s all doctor kim, we’re going to take our leave!”
“you better not let those kids think i’m a crazy old man!” he waves the thick file at all of you, and you give him a little wave while your mentor ushers the both of you out of the office space.
a laugh escapes your nostrils, and your mentor looks down at you with a look of embarrassment while the three of you return to the lift lobby.
“are you two close?” lucifer asks, pressing the button on the lift panel.
“he was my mentor when i first came here as a trainee, so he’s been looking after me since then, even after i stopped being his mentee.”
“oh,” you nod. “that’s nice.”
“well, he is getting on with age,” the lift arrives and he pauses while the hospital staff exit. someone in the crowd greets him.
you and lucifer follow him inside, and he presses the button of the floor that connects the north wing to the east wing.
“so it’s only a matter of time before he retires. i don’t want the hospital to be the last place he’s in and i don’t want the last time he was seen... alive... to be him burying his nose in his research papers. he doesn’t have his own family so he’s either alone at home or in the office and working until someone chases him home.”
“hasn’t the hospital or... i don’t know... you, talked to him about retiring?”
the lift doors open, and you notice the pause in the air.
lucifer’s question struck a chord somewhere, and your mentor was showing it.
“both the hospital and i have talked to him about it, but it’s not easy leaving a place you love working in...”
a pause.
“or at least a place you’ve been working it for more than forty years.”
he brings the both of you to the neurology department and returns the two of you to your neighbouring offices after he concludes the orientation and tour.
the scent of the hospital would’ve been nauseating for some people, patients especially. but there was something about the way the place smelled that convinced you becoming a doctor was worth the effort and hard work.
the way the air smelled like medicine and iv disinfectant made you hopeful for patients, the obligation for every surface to be spick and span never failed to satiate your need for hygiene.
you were finally in a place you wanted to be.
the only downfall was that you were going to be stuck with lucifer for how long, you don’t even know.
“so that concludes the tours and orientation. i hope it was adequate and even if it wasn’t, don’t hesitate to drop by my office and ask me anything you deem important enough to ask. otherwise you can just email me,” he slides his hands into his coat pockets.
the two of you bow, ready to admire his back leaving the two of you before you could roll your eyes at each other.
but he doesn’t leave.
“but before i go,” he raises a single pointer in the air, his other hand still in the pocket. “i’d like the both of you to know that the hospital has no space for... a lack of professionalism.”
you bite down on your bottom lip, slightly embarrassed.
lucifer wasn’t going to let this go.
“everybody has their differences, so i hope while the two of you have yours, it won’t affect your work here. the two of you are promising, and doctor kim wasn’t lying when he said the two of you have more potential than me when i first joined the hospital. with enough experience, the both of you could reach heights even i can only dream of.”
“oh, you flatter us,” lucifer provides a humble chuckle and waves it off.
fake ass.
“i give credit where it’s due,” he returns his hand to the pocket. “so don’t prove me wrong.”
he doesn’t wait for either of you to respond before he walks off. the atmosphere hanging between the two of you was so still, so cold, so frozen, you were almost afraid that if you moved first, he was going to burst into some maniacal laughter.
you suck in a deep breath, your eyes fluttering shut as the cold air sours your nose. the inhalation causes a sharp ache in your chest, not that it bothered you.
“if he says that we both have potential, then i guess that puts us on the same pedestal.”
light seeps in through your lids and you watch the other hospital staff walk in and out of the office, his words running into your ear canals and sinking into the flesh of your brain.
your hear lucifer turn around, and the pens in his pockets click against each other upon his movement. your eyes fixate on a clock on the wall opposite you and beyond some smaller cubicles. the red, digital numbers hanging right between the two lifts glaring at you like a demon’s eyes.
you hear the door of his office click and the friction of the rubber on the bottom of the glass door brushes against the carpeted floor.
“you know,”
you sense the stoppage in his movements upon hearing the sudden words leaving your lips.
“i’ve invested so much time and effort to make sure i will never have to see you again...”
a smile of pain and despair pulls the corners of your lips up your cheek, and you turn your head enough to see him in the corner of your eye.
“but i must’ve done something unforgivable in my past life for fate to put us in the same place.”
you turn back and look at the clock, everyone’s movements within your field of vision slowing down.
“...even after a decade.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 2: Antiquum Fabulum
#timetohajima#lee hyunjae#hyunjae#the boyz#the boyz hyunjae#doctor hyunjae#angst#drama#comedy#what#timetohajima hostis
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ok ok i'm done gifmaking for now, which means it's debrief time! this fht felt very chaotic in comparison to others but frankly i think it's just a combination of the pandemic and the fact that i've forgotten the details of the other tournaments jgkfkgddf
obviously ryoyu is a legend and more than deserved the tournament win (i swear to god karl will get it one day!!!!!! ONE DAY!!!!!) - it's kind of a shame that he couldn't become the first double grand slam winner, but also who can begrudge dani huber his first win!!!
i'm slightly depressed about the viability of my "karl geiger for 21/22 overall winner" agenda now, although he's only something like 56 points behind; also, i wish that halvor had been a bit more consistent in the first part of the season so that we could have a proper three way battle for the overall!
lovro was absolutely awesome and i'm so sad about his fall ruining his chances of a fht podium! also, michi and manu have randomly started fucking killing it (i... didn't even notice that manu was in the world cup until bischofshofen dkfgjdfkg) and i hope that michi gets to keep a spot in the world cup team for now.
i'm beginning to get properly stressed out about olympic team selections now - there's a lot of tough choices to be made for loads of the teams (germany and austria in particular have too many strong jumpers), and then even once they've picked five to take, they'll have to narrow it down to four for the competitions and i just know that i'm going to be distressed no matter who does or doesn't make the cut. (also, do you remember the drama on tumblr when stephan and markus were being considered for the last place in the german team for the individual competitions in pyeongchang jkfjgkdfg everyone wanted markus to DIE)
also, holy shit, i can't believe we have to do it all again this weekend! i'm fucking exhausted, so i can't imagine how the jumpers are feeling (although maybe they want the extra competition practice before the olympics?). i'm kind of glad that the sapporo competitions were cancelled - obviously it sucks for people in japan that they won't get that competition, but i feel like the last thing all the athletes (not to mention technical staff!) need is to fly all the way out to asia for a weekend, come back to compete for two more weekends, and then head out to beijing.
(the secret other reason i need a break is that every morning for the past 10 days my dad has asked me what my plans for the day are and i have been forced to mumble "uhhh there's ski jumping on" while he laughs at me and i CAN'T TELL HIM THERE'S EVEN MORE ON THIS WEEKEND)
i have to mentally prepare myself to answere these im sorry it took so long
i literally have no more words about ryouyu it would have been TOO GOOD if he did another grand slam and honestly huber winning was so unexpected but also so overdue??? the pure happiness and the fact that it happened at home (giving me some stephan in willingen vibes) AND THE INTERVIEWS HE DID !!!
i can sense your karl geiger manifesting will come true, remember when pero was always second behind sevi and the next season pero won everything? yeah that
also i feel kinda bad for the germans because they really wanted him to win 20 years after sven's grand slam and on the 70th foru hills but maybe they were making too much pressure?? insert another rant about media here
and yes for lovro, although he seemed really chill about it in the interviews and he kept repeating that his goal was to make all 8 jumps BOY YOU WERE 3RD IN THE OVERALL so i don't think he is even a little bit disappointed but i can see great future for him
AND HOW DARE YOU MENTION OLYMPIC GAMES TO ME like i don't think about it everyday since november ahhhhhh
the decision is gonna be so stressful but i trust horngacher (more than i trusted schuster at that point) to chose the right 5 guys (pain) and then 4 for the team (more pain) and i also keep reminding myself that its JUST the olymoic games that only happen every FOUR YEARS (i really wanted to write a reasonable argument why i should not worry who goes but i can't find it) (also wouldnt it be iconic to go to your 4th olympic games at age 26???)
AND YES i remember that how could i forget??? i was checking the training results and every time sephan jumped good but schuster still didn't chose him for the competition my heart broke a little and at the team comp i was this close to going there myself and hiding markus somewhere just so he would get ONE chance (poor fannis was at the olympic games too and he did not compete once and i did not want that happening to stephan)
we need to stop with competitions during the week, i can't get anything done because my self restraint is not THAT good to miss 4hills which makes me spend 3 hours watching these guys jump - unhealthy
by the way the only day i could watch it without feeling guilty bc i was sick in bed it was cancelled!!
if it makes you feel any better the embarrassement about watching ski jumping for the 10th consequitive day is mutual
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I’ll Be Your Light (In The Darkest Night) <KUNTEN>
Genre: Hurt/Comfort (Fluff w/ Light Angst)
Pairings: Kunten (Qian Kun x Ten Lee)
Word Count: 1,936
Warnings: Light Angst (not much but like kun gets yelled at a lot)
Synopsis: Kun is an amazing leader for wayv. He’s levelheaded, smart, observant, and he knows how to make sure the boys are taken care of. But sometimes leaders have to make tough decisions for the good of their members, even if they can’t see the benefit. OR Kun is upset and Ten is there for him.
A/N: Uh hi this is my first fanfic on tumblr!! :DD My awesome friend sophie (@chicksung) encouraged me to try posting one so here I am. Hope it’s at least an enjoyable read :))) Tell me what you think in the comments or by reblogging! Also I thought a cute little thing to do at the end of each of my kunten fics would be to include a random kunten photo, since they seem to be few and far between (@ Kun and Ten POST A SELFIE TOGETHER COWARDS). So look for that at the bottom of the post! Enjoy lovely readers!!
AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29409582
“You’ve got to be kidding me!!!”
Each of the 7 boys flinched hard at their dance instructor’s exclamation, their hearts beating wildly in their chests.
“Seriously what is WRONG with you guys?? That’s the 10th time we’ve gone over that section and you STILL can’t get it right!”
“I think we’re all really tired ge,” Kun interjects, voice calm and collected as always. “Maybe we should call it a night and try again tomorrow.”
The teacher seems to grow angrier from that comment. “We are not done until each of you can do the choreography flawlessly. Go get some water and I better see you back and ready to dance in no more than 10 minutes!!” Kun can do nothing but nod and usher his members into the hall. As they step over the threshold, each boy all but collapse onto the floor, completely drained of energy and courage.
Kun sinks down the wall whilst holding in a groan of pain. The teachers had been really harsh that day, yelling at them and making them work extra hard. Kun wishes he could just go home and cuddle with his boyfriend.
As if sensing Kun’s unease, the aforementioned boyfriend sat next to him and offered him a sip of water which he gladly accepted. Ten intertwined their hands and squeezed Kun encouragingly.
“I don’t think I can take much more of this, my legs feel like Jello.” Hendery comments, breaking the silence of the room.
“I know, the staff have been really crude today,” Lucas responds, his usually wide and wondrous eyes are dulled, which isn’t lost on Kun. His stomach clenches as he looks around at his members. It’s painful seeing them so despondent. Each pair of eyes sporting large bags and shoulders all hunched and tense. The boys stare back at him with expressions so colorless it makes Kun want to cry. Winwin taps him on the shoulder suddenly.
“Kun-ge you have to tell the teacher we can’t go on, I can barely feel my legs.” Winwin’s eyes brim with tears as he speaks and Kun wants so badly to wipe them away. He grabs the back of Winwin’s head and guides it to his shoulder in comfort. Being tired as shit himself, Kun would love nothing more then to tell the teacher to let them go, but he knows he can’t. If he so much as looks at the teacher the wrong way he’ll get them all punished. It makes him feel terrible, not being able to take care of his members the way he needs to. With a heavy heart he brings the boys to their feet, offering them the most encouraging smile he can muster.
“It’s only another half an hour guys, we’ll get through this I promise.”
Needless to say the practice continues to go downhill from there.
The short break did not make the teacher any less cruel. He continues to scream, degrade, and cuss out the members. The words he spews sting each boy to the core. Kun only watches as brows crease infinitely tighter and stray tears are wiped in secret.
Kun doesn’t realize how deep in his thoughts he is until he trips over his foot sending him to the floor. His eyes remain closed as he hears the music switch off and the feeling of doom rises in his chest.
“Oh my god Kun this is RIDICULOUS!! Why can’t you guys get this?? It’s so simple!! Stop slacking and focus!!” Kun reluctantly stands up and faces the teacher with the most level expression he can.
“I’m sorry ge, I’ll do better from now on.”
“You better. It’s bad enough that I have to deal with Xiaojun’s weak form, I don’t need any more challenges today.” Kun is taken aback by the comment. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Xiaojun curl into himself almost as if trying to disappear, and it fills him with rage. Fire spreads from the tips of his fingers all the way to his toes. His hands ball into fists as he struggles to maintain his calm demeanor. He can handle the insults thrown his way, but something about this one comment set him off. Poor Xiaojun is struggling enough with his own confidence and Kun knows things like this really get to him. He doesn’t want to let this teacher continue to talk shit about the people he cares for. His members stare at him almost expectantly as he glares daggers into the back of the staffs’ heads. Checking his watch, he realizes that there’s 5 minutes left of rehearsal and reality sinks in slowly.
Kun, having been cursed with “holding the braincell” (as Hendery lovingly puts it), knows that if he goes off on the teacher it’ll only hurt his members more. God only knows what’d happen to them if the staff report them as “difficult to work with” or anything. As much as the members want him to assert their needs, they have to know that he stays silent to protect them. So he reluctantly bites his tongue and just continues to dance for 5 long, agonizing, scream-filled minutes.
⏳
The ride back to the dorms is unusually quiet. All the members seemingly too upset or too tired to speak. Ten rests his sleepy head on Kun’s shoulder in a form of comfort that’s only half effective. Kun watches as Hendery holds a shaken Xiaojun and whispers affirmations into his hair. He sees Winwin and Yangyang cuddle up to Lucas trying to get as much sleep as they can in the uncomfortable position. Knots of guilt and sadness begin to form in Kun’s stomach. He attempts to focus on Ten’s heartbeat against his side, but he’s never able to drift off.
Once they get home everything explodes.
“How could you let him do that ge?? Shit talk us like that?? You should’ve said something.” Yangyang cries out, emotional and desperate. The tears they’d all been holding in spilling over in the tense atmosphere. Kun stares back in bewilderment, unable to form a coherent response, and Yangyang is not having it.
“LOOK WHAT HE DID TO POOR XIAOJUN!! HOW COULD YOU LET HIM JUST DO THAT????”
“It’s not Kun’s responsibility to cuss out teachers baby.” Ten interjects, trying to calm the two.
“But he could’ve said something. He’s our leader, he should look out for us.” Hendery pipes up, his tone even but a slight bite lies in his words. Kun’s really trying not to cry now. He should’ve been there for them. He was so stupid to stay quiet, they neeeded him, and he’d failed them.
“I-I’m sorry,” Kun mutters. He keeps his eyes glued to the floor.
“You should be.” Yangyang spits out, before turning on his heels and stomping to his room, slamming the door closed.
“Guys, there’s no use placing blame right now. It’s really late, we should all get to bed.” Lucas shoots a small smile in Kun’s direction before shooing Hendery and Xiaojun into their room. Kun walks shakily to his own room, not bothering to get changed. He sits on his bed and buries his head in his knees, focusing on his shallow breaths.
He felt like the worst friend on the planet. His members had been suffering and all he could do was watch. Some leader, he never should’ve debuted. He’s so worthless, so stupid, so-
“Kunnie?”
Ten’s silky voice cuts through Kun’s thoughts like a knife.
“Kun can I come in?”
Kun makes no motion to look up or get the door, only letting out a noise of confirmation before he hears the doorknob turn.
“Oh darling,” And all it takes is that one pet name for Kun to shatter like glass. His body shakes with each silent sob, all the emotions from today come pouring out. Ten sits patiently, never forcing Kun or rushing him. He’s too perfect Kun thinks. I don’t deserve him follows soon after only making him sob harder. Ten’s hands find their way into Kun’s hair, massaging his scalp assuringly. Several minutes later, Kun’s breathing has evened out until only occasional sniffles remain. He looks up at his boyfriend reluctantly, finding only care and worry in his brown eyes. Ten’s expression melts into a fond smile, pressing a kiss to Kun’s temple before getting up and moving to the dresser. Kun’s gaze follows him, puzzled, until the younger boy turns back to him with pajamas and a large sweatshirt. Ten motions for Kun to lift his arms and begins undressing him. Once Kun is comfortable in his pajamas, Ten sits back down on the bed.
“Care to tell me what's going on in that pretty little head of yours?” Kun can’t help the slight heat that spreads across his cheeks. Even though they’ve been dating for 3 months now, Ten still manages to fluster Kun with ease. It’s just one of his many annoying charms.
“Nothing,” Kun lies, not convincing Ten for a second.
“Come on Kun, knowing you, I’d be more worried if you WEREN’T overthinking this,” Ten giggles melodically making Kun’s stomach flip slightly. “I’m not gonna judge you sweetheart, I swear.” Kun looks down and fidgets with his sleeves.
“It’s just…” he begins, “I feel like a shit leader. Like I wasn’t even able to protect you guys from our own staff! I just think I should’ve... done better.”
“You saying something would only make the situation worse, and we all know that.” Ten smiles lightly. “You can’t actually blame yourself for this Kun, look at me.” Ten presses his forehead against Kun’s and their gazes meet.
“You have to know they didn’t mean that,” Ten’s eyes scan Kun’s, “You didn’t do anything wrong bub, they’re just tired and upset.” Kun nods understandingly, but is obviously still uneasy. Ten quickly notices this and presses his lips to Kun’s. Their eyes flutter shut as each of them get lost in the feeling of each other. Ten’s lips work as if he’s trying to erase all traces of doubt and worry from his boyfriend’s mind. To be honest, it’s kinda working. When they break apart for air Kun can’t wipe the smile off his face. Ten, wearing an equally dopey smile, reaches up to wipe the saliva from Kun’s lips tenderly. He looks into Kun’s eyes with intent as he delivers his next statement.
“You. are. not. always. to. blame.” He boops his nose with each word for emphasis. “You did what you thought was best for the group, as any good leader does. You are so kind and considerate darling, the members love you so so much, you are the perfect leader for WayV.” Kun’s face feels like splitting from the size of the smile he’s wearing now.
“I love you so much.” Ten giggles and pecks Kun’s lips once more.
“I love you too, my handsome baby. Now get over here and sleep with me. We’ve had a long day.” And who’s Kun to refuse such an offer?
⏳
The next morning, Kun watches as Yangyang shuffles into the kitchen looking considerably more rested and also considerably more guilty. He pauses eating his breakfast to look up at the young boy.
“I’m really sorry Kun-ge, I didn’t mean to get so angry last night. And I definitely didn’t mean any of the things I said.” He genuinely admits. Kun only smiles.
“It’s ok Yangyang, I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.” Yangyang’s shoulders relax at that.
“Thank goodness. I feel really bad about it.”
“No need. All is forgiven.”
“So does this mean you’ll make me pancakes?”
“You little-”
KUNTEN PIC OF THE DAY:
#kpop#qian kun#ten lee#chittaphon leechaiyapornkul#li yongqin#kpop fanfiction#kpop fluff#kpop angst#nct fanfiction#wayv fanfiction#nct fluff#nct angst#wayv#wayv fluff#wayv angst#kunten#kunten fanfiction#wayv kun#kun wayv#nct kun#nct ten#ten nct#kun nct#nct 2020
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Can I just say that Habs “fans” who act like Carey Price’s contract is somehow patient zero of all this team’s problems drive me absolutely fucking insane? Seriously. Buckle up. This is about to be a rant.
Now. First things first. Is it ideal that the $10 million goalie is currently uh, not doing very good? Fucking NO! I am disappointed as shit with that and I don’t like seeing him struggle. I know he can be better. He has to be better. Obviously.
However. That being said.
Do I think it’s an incredibly stupid look to spend several tweets complaining about all the issues Habs defence have been having, and then also griping that they haven’t started Jake Allen enough for how he’s performing, only to then for some inexplicable reason state that the FIRST THING, the first thing that needs to be dealt with after the new coaching staff have had ONE GAME (and zero practices) to work on things, is somehow “well, the ten million dollar man in net is weighing them down, that contract has gotta go!”?
Yes! That’s stupid!!
I think that’s a very ice cold small-brain take, and not just because Price is my favourite of favourites for as long as I’ve been a hockey fan! I have reasons, dammit!! I put THOUGHT into this!!
Here, dear ppl of Habs twitter who will never read this, are some reasons why this narrative you’re concocting is dumb, and why management/coaching are unlikely to think of trying to ditch Price mid-season to fix the current problems:
1: Time. It has been one (1) game under Ducharme. He has been able to run zero (0) full practices on off days with the team. We just changed up a major piece on the Habs chess board — why don’t you give it a minute to see what fresh eyes and minds can do with this roster before you decide we are fucked? This season is fast-moving, sure, but there is time for us to ride out some little bumps here and still make a playoff spot in this Canadian division. Have patience. Do you remember what patience is? Dom is a new head coach, not a wish-granting fairy godmother. Chill. Do you remember chill?
(rest of this under a cut because I actually LIKE Habs Tumblr, and I want to be nice to you all by not making you scroll past all of it if you don’t want to)
2: Jake Allen exists. There are a couple of things I like for what this means for the Habs. Firstly, for basically the first time in his NHL career, we are not in a situation where if Carey Price is in a slump, we have to go “Ah, shit, so now our options are let his stats tank while he tries to get the groove back in net, OR throw whoever the poor backup is out there to get murdered while we plummet through the standings.... 😬” We don’t have that problem right now, because the backup is... actually good? Oh my god, the backup is actually good! Thank fuck! We’re not doomed. If I’m Ducharme, I put Allen in net for a few consecutive starts to put a solid backstop behind all my fun experiments I’m probably planning with the skating roster (to catch their slip-ups, while also giving Carey lots of time and rest with which to work hard on sorting out whatever his issue is along with the goalie coaches).
2b: Jake Allen exists and is competition. Hell, if I’m Ducharme, maybe I even play a little hardball and say “Look, Carey, I don’t want you to be an expensive benchwarmer, but if things don’t pick up soon I am going to start whoever is doing best and you will have to compete for that net.” Related to my last point, when was the last time Carey Price had to push himself to compete for net time against anything other than his own injuries, and wasn’t simply always the default starter? Has that EVER been a thing? Honestly as much as I love the idea of him being The Goalie for the Habs, I also kinda like this idea a lot because I think it could really push him to a higher standard of performance. Maybe that kind of high-pressure situation (given how much he thrives in the pressure-cooker of the playoffs) could be what he NEEDS in order to Be Carey Price again. Worst comes to worst, he doesn’t respond to that challenge, and I am very sad but the Habs have a good goalie in net anyway, because Hallelujah, Jake Allen exists! God, isn’t it nice to have Jake Allen? Bless him.
3: Money. Guys, this league is so broke right now. Seriously. Seriously. Nobody has any fucking money. The Habs probably have more money than most teams, and that does not help when it comes to offloading large contracts. Trades are a NIGHTMARE both because of the flat cap but also because travel is complicated (especially cross-border) but also nobody wants to trade within their division if possible because all your games are against them. Who in the name of fuck do you think is jumping at the idea of taking the $10 million per through 20-lots-and-lots-of-years-from-now contract of a goalie who is currently struggling, impressive past record aside? What kind of astral plane of fantasy hockey are you on to think there’s a trade out there for that within this season. Shut up. And no, don’t bring up the expansion draft, this post is a rebuttal SPECIFICALLY to the people who think that Price and his contract are the biggest problem that needs to be dealt with RIGHT NOW and first on the list of ways to immediately remedy the team’s struggles.
4: Spite. Specifically to piss you off, bud. You personally.
5: Knowing how to troubleshoot properly. Fellas, if my computer is running slowly and freezing up a lot, do I immediately decide the first step to fixing it is to crack open the chassis, remove the hard drive, and try to sell that hard drive to someone to see if I can enough money back to somehow get a better hard drive for less? No, dipshit. That’s not how troubleshooting a complex system works works. It’s the same with hockey teams. Ah, my star goalie is not performing great. This situation is deeply less than ideal. If you’re actually good at troubleshooting, the first thing you do is not “WELL. I GUESS WE’LL HAVE TO THROW THE WHOLE GOALIE OUT. HE’S TOAST.” The first thing you do, if you’re a smart coach, is you say “Okay, what are my defence doing in front of him? What are they doing to reduce the amount and quality of our opponents’ scoring chances? Oh. Oh, they’re taking a lot of penalties, and... oh, uh, some of this is very not great. Yikes.” And then you start your work by trying to make the defence actually work instead of running the same Pairs That Everyone Is Very Much Over And Tired Of, because your goalie is actually supposed to be your Last Line of Defence. And maybe during that time you give more starts to Goalie Who Is Absolutely Slaying It, so that when you start trying new D-pairs and they inevitably have some mistakes, it doesn’t immediately turn into an Oh God Holy Fuck moment every time, because that last line of defence backstopping them is solid. The reason you need to deal with defense first is because a) You know you have a reliable goalie (Allen) in your pocket right now if you need him. What you don’t have is a whole-ass proven and tested and practiced Backup D-Core you can swap into the roster in front of your goalies to make their lives easier. Fix your defense and it WILL improve your goalies, even marginally. Defrag the hard drive before you ask why it’s not working. and b) If you need to go looking for any new D-men to solve the issues, those are WAY easier and cheaper to find than top-tier goalies, and you always want to start any troubleshooting process with trying the simplest solutions first to hopefully save time and money. The better that D-core is, the less it fucks your team over if the goalie isn’t feeling themselves, because the D is going to stop more of those pucks before they ever even become the goalie’s problem. FIX. DEFENCE. FIRST. Then try to train your goalie back into top form. THEN explore your other options.
6: The vicious cycle. Guys. We literally do this once every year or second year. EVERY time Carey Price has a slump, this fanbase gets into a tizzy like the Bell Centre is burning down and he was the one with the matches. And what ALWAYS happens literally within the year, every single time? He gets his mojo back like he did last summer in the bubble and goes on a heater and everybody goes “JESUS PRICE!!!! 🙌” and is ready to name their firstborn kid after him. Until eventually that performance becomes unsustainable, and he becomes mortal again, and suddenly he’s The Real Problem With This Franchise once again. I know he’s the guy they chose to build the team around instead of a superstar forward, but oh my god folks. You’d think he was the only player on the team. Guys, I feel like fucking Sisyphus pushing a blue blanc et rouge boulder up Mont Royal once a year with this shit. This man’s entire career has been a constant seesaw narrative between “Carey Price is our saviour!” and “Carey Price should be exiled to Nome!!!!” from parts of this fanbase, I swear. Look, slumps suck, but for once we are actually lucky enough to be in a position where this team, for the first time in YEARS, does not solelylive or die by the inscrutable magical cycles of Carey Price’s goalie powers — because when he has to step back and work to get back into his groove, there is FINALLY a SECOND GUY who is GREAT. Honestly, given that the state of this team for so long has been “they will go as far as Carey Price can take them” and he has put in a pretty fucking decent job of it despite all of the team’s other struggles, I feel like it is owed it to the guy to be like “Okay, well, we have somebody else solid to fill the net right now, and a chance to really figure out our defence and special teams with this new coach. Why don’t you take a step back and work your ass off at trying to get back into the form I know you can still perform at, and we’ll go from there?”
Anyway. Some parts of this fanbase have been waiting for a fresh excuse to claim Price is overrated, washed-up, and to blame for all of this team’s flaws and ills ever since he signed that contract, if not since the start of his NHL career. Just unreal how nasty some of this fanbase is willing to be about a player who is ON. YOUR. TEAM.
Am I saying he is beyond critique of his play and can do no wrong and his contract is perfect? No! I want this team to have the best goaltending it can get, and I want them to kick ass and take names. The difference is, I still believe Carey Price is a part of that winning formula, and I also think Twitter is overflowing with idiots who just repeat what everybody else says. He’s still a better goalie than your ass would be if I stuck you out there to stop shots from Mark Schieffle, for crap’s sake.
“The first thing that has to go is Carey Price’s contract 🤪”. Shut the fuck up. You are actively making other people stupider by talking. Go eat sand. Good day.
#It’s Time For My Opinion#I put so much time into this I hope it’s coherent lol#habs#Carey price#montreal canadiens#long post
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