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#vaporized murder
imagionationstation · 4 months
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Who Gave Him A License To Kill
Some Fugitoids spend hours trying to off themselves and others make themselves into weapons of instant death. AND HE LOOKS SO INNOCENT WHILE DOING SO THAT IT BARELY PASSES MY RADAR
The variety in these different universes of TMNT is GREAT
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the-scooby-gang · 5 months
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Miguel: Every Spiderman follows the cannon. There are no deviations. There are no exceptions.
Spidergang with no dead uncles, their friend Gwen is fine, Sheriff Bronson didn't die saving a kid, etc. because four super powered teens and one super dog can cover a lot of bases and help each other better than one dude helping New York alone with only Daredevil and Deadpool sometimes: Yall hear sumn?
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As was absolutely completely predictable, self-immolation is experiencing a bit of a renaissance now
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firecoloredwater · 1 year
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Anyway I want to see Madara blame Tobirama for murdering Izuna and Tobirama, who must be INCREDIBLY at the end of his rope, snap back that
1: it wasn’t murder.  Tobirama was a soldier at war who did what soldiers do at war, which is fight as hard as they can to protect themselves and their allies.  It’s not murder just because Tobirama happened to win.
2: if anyone murdered Izuna, it was Madara.  Because Madara knew.  He knew that shinobi die at war; he knew that his brothers, specifically, die while at war with the Senju, specifically.  He even knew that Tobirama specifically was strong enough to be a threat to Izuna.  If Madara wanted Izuna to live, he had the option to pursue peace, and end the war to protect Izuna.
But he didn’t.
Madara let the war continue and he kept bringing Izuna into battle to fight Tobirama.
And that’s why Izuna died.
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rillette · 1 year
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say i want to start green lantern comics - where would i start? is there a timeline? where can you read all the lantern corps lore?
So generally you'd want to pick a lantern and go from there! Here's a reading guide for most of the main lanterns! For Hal specifically I would read Emerald Dawn parts 1 and 2 first, and then read his 70s run starting with Hard Traveling Heroes to get the best idea of his character.
As for lore, that's where it gets tricky lol! There's a lot of lantern corps lore added with rebirth, so everything that has to do with other corps, is going to be found there. Green Lantern (1960) Annuals, and GL corps Quarterly are collections of oneshots that focus on random corps members, but I'd recommend reading some of the mainline run first just to get a gist of the worldbuilding. There's also Tales of the GL corps which gives a good rundown of basic GL lore!
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Day 144 and I'm getting super satisfied with the hilt guard, but somehow it's making the blade look duller and now I want to redo it and brighten it up XD I think it's the lack of that bright yellow, so it should be quick and simple and clean hehe to correct
I'll see about adding the rose vine and dragon later, for right now I need to go to bed on time-ish for once XD
#the great artscapade of 2022#bobbi's being weird again#art#my art#kingdom hearts fanart#keyblade design#*dj hand slide* mike (working title)#I succeeded in going to bed on time ish once and it turned out pretty okay#OH ALSO UNRELATED TO ANYTHING but me telling tales in the tags has become tradition and who am I to break it?#I mean besides the creator of these posts#they're my posts I can do what I want#ANYWAY I somehow managed to have a dream I could remember a detail of this morning#I don't remember ALL the details of course bc dreams be dreams#so in my dream the government would just like assign you with a task you have to complete every day#and if you don't complete the task you get straight up murdered from orbit by lazers#not the jewish space lazers those aren't real#think like if Elon Musk ever watched the movie Real Genius and went ''I want to make stealth jet orbit lazers''#so I was trying to do my task and Ignis was trying to do his task#and I failed at whatever my task was and Ignis had to watch as I got vaporized#and the dream ended with Iggy lamenting and all like#''now I see her in the stars; and stardust is in everything''#and like I can tell my dream meant to superimpose glittery sparkly purple dust over an image that was supposed to be me#but instead it was an anthropomorphic alpaca with rams horns and a bowtie????#dunno what that dream means other than ''don't drink caffeine before bed it does weird shit to ya braaaaiiiiinnnnn'' XD#(tmi time ahoy but uh for whatever reason Iggy's task was to make love to me?? and my task was to get off on it????? wtf dream government)#(why are all my super weird wtf dreams sex dreams)#(I'm still reeling to this day eight years later about that one time Howl and Agent Ward tried to seduce me so they could turn a rhino into#a RYNO so they could break into Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory. no idea what that was about either)#(anyway I'm off to do the sleepy sleeps here's hoping i have a dream that makes sense??? wish me luck XD)#(it might have been less than 8 years idk anymore. it was like 2014? ... oh my lanta that was 8 years ago)
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mintmia · 1 year
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Tamahome goes absolutely super sayan.
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ry3breadl0rd · 8 months
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some titles uncle rick deprived us of
”I Fall To My Death (Again)” for the fall into tartarus
“I Get Mugged by Monsters” that one chapter where leo’s tool belt gets stolen
“Jason Meets his Brother” hercules chapter
“I Obtain A Death Ray” the sphere thing
“Leo Makes a Great First Impression” when he blows up new rome
“I Scare Some Pirates With An Unofficial Sponsorship” that chapter where percy scares off the pirates with diet coke
“A Spider Hates My Mom” annabeth at any point with arachne ngl
“Scrawny Is The New Sizzling Hot” leo+hazel with narcissus
“We Get Slapped to New York” zeus smacking the argo ll to new york
“Nyx Gives Us A Tour” when they convince nyx to not murder them immediately by pretending they’re tourists
“My Evil Great-Grand Mother Wakes Up” self explanatory i hope
“Hazel Orders A Horse From Amazon” hazel meets arion
“I Get Blasted Out Of This World” leo goes to ogygia
“Fleecy Does Us A Solid” when they meet iris
“I Tame A Dragon” leo with argo
“I Vaporize Some Old Ladies” first chapter of son
“I Give My Dad Some Decor Tips” nico and hades conversation
“Piper Talks Her Boyfriend To Life” when piper charm speaks jason back to life
“I Play Roulette With A Blind Man” when percy drinks the gorgons blood
“Piper Sees Dead People (In Her Knife)” i might be remembering wrong but it’s that one where they try to trick piper by showing her how her friends were doing in her knife, like trying to convince her they were all dead
“We Use Adidas To Summon A Goddess” nike chapter
“Mudman, Hazel, and Frank Get Brunch” when they get to alaska
“I Learn The Power Of Positivity” percy and misery
“We Meet A Cool Girl (Literally)” khione chapter
“I’m Leo. You Killed My Mother. It’s My Turn” based on the funny comment:) it’s for when leo blows up gaea
“My Nosebleed Wakes Up My Great-Grandma” when gaea wakes up
“Mr. D Hates Ballet” when he helps percy and jason against the twin giants
“Frank Gets A Blast To The Past” when hazel shares her past with him
“Frank Sets Himself On Fire” with the firewood and freeing thatanos
“I Got A Girlfriend?” jason first chapter
”Why Did It Have To Be Poison?” that chapter with polybotes
“Jason Becomes The Oldest Demigod!” old man jason
“Game Night Goes Too Far” war games in son
“The World Hates Us, Literally” hoh when they’re low key attacked by like everything
“We Traumatize Frank” when percabeth gets caught together
“Lions, and Tigers, and Frank, Oh My!” when frank unlocks his shapeshifting stuff
“I Aquire a Misfortune Cookie” i might be delulu but didn’t nemesis omfg i knew that why did i put nike give leo a fortune cookie to open if he needed help?? but price would not be fun
“The Law is On My Side For Once” percy and terminus vs polybotes
“Being A Dumb Blonde Has Its Perks” annabeth when she drops the knife that one chapter
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goron-king-darunia · 2 years
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IRL Achievement GET: Last Resort: "So it's come to this?" Use vinegar and an old broom to clean the fruit fly corpses off the shower walls.
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Apple to EU: “Go fuck yourself”
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma
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There's a strain of anti-anti-monopolist that insists that they're not pro-monopoly – they're just realists who understand that global gigacorporations are too big to fail, too big to jail, and that governments can't hope to rein them in. Trying to regulate a tech giant, they say, is like trying to regulate the weather.
This ploy is cousins with Jay Rosen's idea of "savvying," defined as: "dismissing valid questions with the insider's, 'and this surprises you?'"
https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/344825874362810369?lang=en
In both cases, an apologist for corruption masquerades as a pragmatist who understands the ways of the world, unlike you, a pathetic dreamer who foolishly hopes for a better world. In both cases, the apologist provides cover for corruption, painting it as an inevitability, not a choice. "Don't hate the player. Hate the game."
The reason this foolish nonsense flies is that we are living in an age of rampant corruption and utter impunity. Companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder. Governments really do ignore horrible crimes by the rich and powerful, and fumble what rare, few enforcement efforts they assay.
Take the GDPR, Europe's landmark privacy law. The GDPR establishes strict limitations of data-collection and processing, and provides for brutal penalties for companies that violate its rules. The immediate impact of the GDPR was a mass-extinction event for Europe's data-brokerages and surveillance advertising companies, all of which were in obvious violation of the GDPR's rules.
But there was a curious pattern to GDPR enforcement: while smaller, EU-based companies were swiftly shuttered by its provisions, the US-based giants that conduct the most brazen, wide-ranging, illegal surveillance escaped unscathed for years and years, continuing to spy on Europeans.
One (erroneous) way to look at this is as a "compliance moat" story. In that story, GDPR requires a bunch of expensive systems that only gigantic companies like Facebook and Google can afford. These compliance costs are a "capital moat" – a way to exclude smaller companies from functioning in the market. Thus, the GDPR acted as an anticompetitive wrecking ball, clearing the field for the largest companies, who get to operate without having to contend with smaller companies nipping at their heels:
https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/27/another-report-shows-gdpr-benefited-google-facebook-hurt-everyone-else/
This is wrong.
Oh, compliance moats are definitely real – think of the calls for AI companies to license their training data. AI companies can easily do this – they'll just buy training data from giant media companies – the very same companies that hope to use models to replace creative workers with algorithms. Create a new copyright over training data won't eliminate AI – it'll just confine AI to the largest, best capitalized companies, who will gladly provide tools to corporations hoping to fire their workforces:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids
But just because some regulations can be compliance moats, that doesn't mean that all regulations are compliance moats. And just because some regulations are vigorously applied to small companies while leaving larger firms unscathed, it doesn't follow that the regulation in question is a compliance moat.
A harder look at what happened with the GDPR reveals a completely different dynamic at work. The reason the GDPR vaporized small surveillance companies and left the big companies untouched had nothing to do with compliance costs. The Big Tech companies don't comply with the GDPR – they just get away with violating the GDPR.
How do they get away with it? They fly Irish flags of convenience. Decades ago, Ireland started dabbling with offering tax-havens to the wealthy and mobile – they invented the duty-free store:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty-free_shop#1947%E2%80%931990:_duty_free_establishment
Capturing pennies from the wealthy by helping them avoid fortunes they owed in taxes elsewhere was terribly seductive. In the years that followed, Ireland began aggressively courting the wealthy on an industrial scale, offering corporations the chance to duck their obligations to their host countries by flying an Irish flag of convenience.
There are other countries who've tried this gambit – the "treasure islands" of the Caribbean, the English channel, and elsewhere – but Ireland is part of the EU. In the global competition to help the rich to get richer, Ireland had a killer advantage: access to the EU, the common market, and 500m affluent potential customers. The Caymans can hide your money for you, and there's a few super-luxe stores and art-galleries in George Town where you can spend it, but it's no Champs Elysees or Ku-Damm.
But when you're competing with other countries for the pennies of trillion-dollar tax-dodgers, any wins can be turned into a loss in an instant. After all, any corporation that is footloose enough to establish a Potemkin Headquarters in Dublin and fly the trídhathach can easily up sticks and open another Big Store HQ in some other haven that offers it a sweeter deal.
This has created a global race to the bottom among tax-havens to also serve as regulatory havens – and there's a made-in-the-EU version that sees Ireland, Malta, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands competing to see who can offer the most impunity for the worst crimes to the most awful corporations in the world.
And that's why Google and Facebook haven't been extinguished by the GDPR while their rivals were. It's not compliance moats – it's impunity. Once a corporation attains a certain scale, it has the excess capital to spend on phony relocations that let it hop from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, chasing the loosest slots on the strip. Ireland is a made town, where the cops are all on the take, and two thirds of the data commissioner's rulings are eventually overturned by the federal court:
https://www.iccl.ie/digital-data/iccl-2023-gdpr-report/
This is a problem among many federations, not just the EU. The US has its onshore-offshore tax- and regulation-havens (Delaware, South Dakota, Texas, etc), and so does Canada (Alberta), and some Swiss cantons are, frankly, batshit:
https://lenews.ch/2017/11/25/swiss-fact-some-swiss-women-had-to-wait-until-1991-to-vote/
None of this is to condemn federations outright. Federations are (potentially) good! But federalism has a vulnerability: the autonomy of the federated states means that they can be played against each other by national or transnational entities, like corporations. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to regulate powerful entities within a federation – but it means that federal regulation needs to account for the risk of jurisdiction-shopping.
Enter the Digital Markets Act, a new Big Tech specific law that, among other things, bans monopoly app stores and payment processing, through which companies like Apple and Google have levied a 30% tax on the entire app market, while arrogating to themselves the right to decide which software their customers may run on their own devices:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax
Apple has responded to this regulation with a gesture of contempt so naked and broad that it beggars belief. As Proton describes, Apple's DMA plan is the very definition of malicious compliance:
https://proton.me/blog/apple-dma-compliance-plan-trap
Recall that the DMA is intended to curtail monopoly software distribution through app stores and mobile platforms' insistence on using their payment processors, whose fees are sky-high. The law is intended to extinguish developer agreements that ban software creators from informing customers that they can get a better deal by initiating payments elsewhere, or by getting a service through the web instead of via an app.
In response, Apple, has instituted a junk fee it calls the "Core Technology Fee": EUR0.50/install for every installation over 1m. As Proton writes, as apps grow more popular, using third-party payment systems will grow less attractive. Apple has offered discounts on its eye-watering payment processing fees to a mere 20% for the first payment and 13% for renewals. Compare this with the normal – and far, far too high – payment processing fees the rest of the industry charges, which run 2-5%. On top of all this, Apple has lied about these new discounted rates, hiding a 3% "processing" fee in its headline figures.
As Proton explains, paying 17% fees and EUR0.50 for each subscriber's renewal makes most software businesses into money-losers. The only way to keep them afloat is to use Apple's old, default payment system. That choice is made more attractive by Apple's inclusion of a "scare screen" that warns you that demons will rend your soul for all eternity if you try to use an alternative payment scheme.
Apple defends this scare screen by saying that it will protect users from the intrinsic unreliability of third-party processors, but as Proton points out, there are plenty of giant corporations who get to use their own payment processors with their iOS apps, because Apple decided they were too big to fuck with. Somehow, Apple can let its customers spend money Uber, McDonald's, Airbnb, Doordash and Amazon without terrorizing them about existential security risks – but not mom-and-pop software vendors or publishers who don't want to hand 30% of their income over to a three-trillion-dollar company.
Apple has also reserved the right to cancel any alternative app store and nuke it from Apple customers' devices without warning, reason or liability. Those app stores also have to post a one-million euro line of credit in order to be considered for iOS. Given these terms, it's obvious that no one is going to offer a third-party app store for iOS and if they did, no one would list their apps in it.
The fuckery goes on and on. If an app developer opts into third-party payments, they can't use Apple's payment processing too – so any users who are scared off by the scare screen have no way to pay the app's creators. And once an app creator opts into third party payments, they can never go back – the decision is permanent.
Apple also reserves the right to change all of these policies later, for the worse ("I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further" -D. Vader). They have warned developers that they might change the API for reporting external sales and revoke developers' right to use alternative app stores at its discretion, with no penalties if that screws the developer.
Apple's contempt extends beyond app marketplaces. The DMA also obliges Apple to open its platform to third party browsers and browser engines. Every browser on iOS is actually just Safari wrapped in a cosmetic skin, because Apple bans third-party browser-engines:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax
But, as Mozilla puts it, Apple's plan for this is "as painful as possible":
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24052067/mozilla-apple-ios-browser-rules-firefox
For one thing, Apple will only allow European customers to run alternative browser engines. That means that Firefox will have to "build and maintain two separate browser implementations — a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear."
(One wonders how Apple will treat Americans living in the EU, whose Apple accounts still have US billing addresses – these people will still be entitled to the browser choice that Apple is grudgingly extending to Europeans.)
All of this sends a strong signal that Apple is planning to run the same playbook with the DMA that Google and Facebook used on the GDPR: ignore the law, use lawyerly bullshit to chaff regulators, and hope that European federalism has sufficiently deep cracks that it can hide in them when the enforcers come to call.
But Apple is about to get a nasty shock. For one thing, the DMA allows wronged parties to start their search for justice in the European federal court system – bypassing the Irish regulators and courts. For another, there is a global movement to check corporate power, and because the tech companies do the same kinds of fuckery in every territory, regulators are able to collaborate across borders to take them down.
Take Apple's app store monopoly. The best reference on this is the report published by the UK Competition and Markets Authority's Digital Markets Unit:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf
The devastating case that the DMU report was key to crafting the DMA – but it also inspired a US law aimed at forcing app markets open:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2710
And a Japanese enforcement action:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies
And action in South Korea:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-considers-505-mln-fine-against-google-apple-over-app-market-practices-2023-10-06/
These enforcers gather for annual meetings – I spoke at one in London, convened by the Competition and Markets Authority – where they compare notes, form coalitions, and plan strategy:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077
This is where the savvying breaks down. Yes, Apple is big enough to run circles around Japan, or South Korea, or the UK. But when those countries join forces with the EU, the USA and other countries that are fed up to the eyeballs with Apple's bullshit, the company is in serious danger.
It's true that Apple has convinced a bunch of its customers that buying a phone from a multi-trillion-dollar corporation makes you a member of an oppressed religious minority:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones
Some of those self-avowed members of the "Cult of Mac" are willing to take the company's pronouncements at face value and will dutifully repeat Apple's claims to be "protecting" its customers. But even that credulity has its breaking point – Apple can only poison the well so many times before people stop drinking from it. Remember when the company announced a miraculous reversal to its war on right to repair, later revealed to be a bald-faced lie?
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently
Or when Apple claimed to be protecting phone users' privacy, which was also a lie?
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar
The savvy will see Apple lying (again) and say, "this surprises you?" No, it doesn't surprise me, but it pisses me off – and I'm not the only one, and Apple's insulting lies are getting less effective by the day.
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Image: Alex Popovkin, Bahia, Brazil from Brazil (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annelid_worm,_Atlantic_forest,_northern_littoral_of_Bahia,_Brazil_%2816107326533%29.jpg
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CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
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dollsuguru · 2 months
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Hello! You can totally ignore if this isn’t up your alley but you could write something about suguru watching reader from afar while they grieve him for leaving? Either it’s super sad or twisted cause he feels happy that you love him enough to grieve him
I also could send in nsfw requests if you want those too
“the choiceless grief that drove him underground.”
contents: f!reader, mentions of guilt, stalking, & mass murder. both characters express grief in different ways. bit of callous/twisted suguru, a nod to his dacryphilia as well. mainly angsty but i guess at the core of it… it’s sweet? w.c: ~ 1.4k
a/n: rem, i owe you my life & then some! :’) thank you SO much for the concept idea! <3 i love delving into the twisted/not-so pretty parts of suguru so i hope you enjoy! :D
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the premise of the situation is quite… haunting.
to mourn a friend, (‘a lover’ — his voice gently admonishes from the back of your mind), who isn’t dead.
he still roams around the aether — akin to a ghost. and here you are, grieving a corporeal phantom of your past.
both you and suguru have a penchant for nostalgia, him moreso than you. it’s why he’s here now at the foothills of mount mushiro, camouflaging himself into the shadows of the night, depleting his own cursed energy so there’s not a single trace of him left. he stands there in a vantage point hidden behind massive japanese oak trees, a lonely specter peering wistfully at his dearly beloved.
ex-beloved, rather, he should say.
it was of his own volition anyways.
your lack of cursed energy leaves a bitter taste in his mouth when he remembers why he despises you so. the healed x-shaped scar on his chest burns and he wants to give you a matching one on your heart, as a reminder. you’re worse than a curse, he forces himself to seethe. heavenly restriction, huh? nothing heavenly about you…
a sick part of suguru wants to finally see you shatter — to watch someone as powerful as you break down and wail with such unbridled anguish, to hear your sorrowful screams pierce through the night sky like a gunshot wound to the head. something about imagining the way your tears would stick to your lashes makes his heart beat unbearably fast from within his ribcage. from sadness or intrigue, he doesn’t quite know…
he just selfishly craves to be the cause of it. to have you drown in tears of melancholy & be sundered by it like a tsunami of eerie desolation — to be plagued with devotion and corruption. just like him.
he wants you to get on your hands and knees and prostrate yourself to him — to lower yourself at his feet.
beneath him.
where you should be.
to apologize for being you. to apologize for coming into his life. to apologize for making him fall in love. to apologize for being his greatest curse. his greatest regret.
(regret for loving you or regret for leaving you… he’s not sure, yet. he’ll decide when he’s of more sound mind.)
yet all he gets is… just you… sitting there. expressionless.
suguru huffs quietly, his low-lidded gaze is heavy with fatigue and slight boredom. his soft exhales turn into smoky vapor in front of him, evaporating within seconds. he tediously redirects his amber irises back at you, observing you like a science experiment, scrutinizing your every move… only if you had done something, of course.
he notes that your stony face betrays no emotions, your body is rigid as if in living rigor-mortis. he surmises that the only thing that differentiates you from the zen statues around you is the gentle wisps of your hair across your face courtesy of the cold wind, crisp due to the night air.
before he realizes it, suguru’s fingers involuntarily twitch.
muscle memory.
(the same fingers have brushed against the plush of your cheek, caressed your hair & gently moved the strands away from your face. soft finger-pads outlined your lips gently, the shape of your cupid’s bow committed to memory. suguru figured the name was quite apt… he found himself wholly enraptured & in love.
hit by eros’ arrow the very moment he laid eyes on you — his lighthouse. his demise.)
a slight sniffle breaks suguru out of his reverie. he snaps his head back up at you, pierced brows furrowed and bright ochre eyes wide. he ignores the pang in his chest, his shock overtaking his senses leaving him paralyzed.
are you…?
your reddened eyes flit towards the foliage where suguru hides behind, and you softly rasp out a tired sigh. your lack of words are far more frigid than the midnight air, causing an ice cold shiver to run through suguru’s spine.
forcing the constriction in his throat back down, he exhales shakily, in a state of utter shock.
right.
heightened senses. superhuman physical capabilities. you always knew where suguru was before he ever knew where you were. a relationship of mutual indulgence — you pretend you don’t see him, and he pretends that you don’t know where he is at all times. as if you haven’t memorized his scent, his mannerisms, his soul. as if you couldn’t recognize him through physical vibrations alone.
just pretend you don’t see me now… indulge me one last time… please.
muscle memory.
you look away.
you focus your gaze towards the skyline of bountiful forest green trees, impeccable eyesight zeroing in on a tree with a heart carved around both his and your initials upon the espresso bark. the same tree where you had rested your head on suguru’s lap while he read his favorite books to you. the same tree where you had both shared your first kiss. the same tree where you had found out from a dear friend that suguru had murdered a whole village — some bullshit about him wanting to create a world with no curses. no non-sorcerers. no you.
you once playfully joked to suguru that you loved him more than he loved you. you remember the way his fists clenched at his sides, the furrow in his brow coupled with the immediate narrowing of his eyes, along with the slight snarl in his lip and voice pierced your soul as he resolutely scolded you — no one could ever love as deeply, as passionately, as genuinely as he loves you.
loved, rather, you should say.
what a fuckin’ liar.
in a blink of an eye, you disappear.
like a ghost.
you leave suguru alone to his own futile devices. he figures it’s fair, to indulge you one last time too, allowing you the ‘last laugh’, though he knows there’s no victors in this sick game that’s being played. he’s walked away from you before, it’s only fitting you do the same to him now.
his feet drag him to where you were hunched over before, his brain unable to catch up to what his body is doing. something glints in the moonlight, there in your stead, atop the plush green grass.
he crouches down, picking up the small photograph. the faded polaroid feels far heavier in his hand than he would think. a delicious shiver runs down suguru’s spine when he realizes his fingertips are touching where yours have touched. the bitterness that found its way in his mouth in the beginning washes away, leaving only a sickly sweet flavor that surrounds his mouth like pillowy cotton candy.
it’s one he hasn’t seen. you must’ve kept this with you all this time, he muses.
a photo, a candid, of him.
the pink sakura petals offered up a beautiful backdrop after a mission you two took in kyoto. back then, his smile was genuine & unbelievably wide — pearly whites on display, his pierced cherry red lips matched the camellia red blush that painted his cheeks — no doubt from your flirtatious comments of his beauty. his eyes were squinted, a photo you took of him while mid-laugh. he pushed his bangs aside while speaking to you, wanting to give you his full attention. the promise ring on his finger glinted in the sunlight along with the silver hairpin you gifted him moments before you took the photo, its amethyst gem dangling above his bun. a beacon of light.
a sign of devotion, of unending love. a promise.
suguru’s heart feels a bit heavier than he would like it to, yet the soft smile that graces his features is the most genuine form of adoration he’s exhibited since his defection. inundated with grief, you still held on to him.
an anchor of your past. a plague of your present. a welcoming calamity of your future.
“you still love me too, huh?” he softly whispers into the night, a sad smile on his face.
he gazes up at the moon. it looks quite beautiful tonight. he silently hopes you’re staring at it too.
thinking of him the same way he’s thinking of you.
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tofics · 4 months
Text
Out Of This World
Chapter 1
Masterlist
Pairing: Elijah Mikaelson x fem!Reader x Dean Winchester
Summary: You and the Mikaelsons are fighting a powerful witch that's trying to take over New Orleans. The only solution: banishment to another universe. However, the spell goes... wrong, and it's not the witch that ends up in another universe, but you. - At the same time, over a thousand miles away in a bunker in Lebanon, Kansas, an alarm goes off: a rift has opened up. The Winchesters and their angel partners in crime decide to investigate. What will they find when they get to New Orleans?
Word count: 4949 words
Warnings: cursing, violence, murder, mention of blood, allusions of panic attacks.
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You skidded around the corner, barely missing a stack of cardboard boxes by an inch. You jumped around it, almost flying past the pile. Your blood was rushing in your ears, your heart almost jumping out of your chest, pumping the adrenaline through your body. Behind you, you heard the evil snicker of your persecutor, hard on your heels. Before you knew it, you reached a wall that cut off your path abruptly. A dead end. You were cornered.
Slowly, you turned around. There she was, a sneer cutting across her face. Despite the few feet between you, you could see the glint in her dark eyes. Again, the witch laughed triumphantly.
"Really? An evil laugh for an evil witch? How terribly cliché," you pressed out between two wheezes. There was a sharp stitch on your right side. Running had never been your thing anyway. You leaned down and rested your hands on your knees while trying to catch your breath. Once this is over, you really have to get into better shape, you told yourself.
The witch was still sneering at you, taking her sweet time to make a move on you. You could imagine that she was enjoying this thoroughly. What started as a challenge for power, trying to dethrone Niklaus and his siblings as rulers of the French Quarter, had resulted in a bloody, messy, magical war. For months, she had been threatening the Mikaelsons and everyone that stood by them. Where threats didn't work, death followed. Quite a few of the Mikaelson's closest followers and allies had lost their lives to the woman in front of you, and yet, you were sure to rank high on her win list: as Elijah's girlfriend, she'd probably enjoy your death a lot more than any of her previous kills. This particular death would strike them hard. Shake them to the core. Possibly - hopefully - destabilize them to a point where they'd fall apart from within and she could easily pluck them apart, one by one, until all of the siblings where gone.
"Not even a true Mikaelson, and yet you're just as snarky as the rest of them. What an obnoxious trait. So full of yourself, all of you. It's a disease. But, not to worry. I'll have that cured in no time," the witch quipped back at you, with so much sweetness in her voice that it made you gag.
"Who's full of herself now?" you muttered to yourself. The sorceress in front of you tsk-ed at you and got into casting stance. She reached into her cloak and brought a fistful of something to her mouth before blowing into her closed fist. Black dust spewed out from between her fingers and hung in the air in front of her like black glitter. You straightened at the sight of her palms turning towards you, the first few words of a spell that was sure to bring you death (and a painful one at that) slowly meandering out from between her lips like a snake, inching itself towards its victim relentlessly.
Okay, feel free to intervene any second now, you thought, trying not to glance around for the rescue that you knew was coming. This plan had been weeks in the making and you weren't about to foil it by giving anything away by accident. Soft dark clouds, looking like droplets of black ink in water were forming around you, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Your eyes began to water as the dark vapor drifted closer and started to engulf you. It stung in your nose, giving off a terrible sulfur stench. You tried your best not to inhale it, but soon you were completely enveloped in the black mist. The first breath burned a straight trail down into your lungs and set them on fire. You began to cough, grasping at your throat, slowly choking on the dark magic the witch was blanketing you with.
Your lungs felt like they were on fire, both from the growing lack of oxygen and the vapor that was eating itself into you. Your legs started to give out underneath you and you fell to your knees as you gasped for air.
Any... second... now... you thought, every word feeling heavy in your brain, as if every word weighed a ton. Just as your vision started to flicker and blur, you registered movement out of the corner of your eye. Something whisked past you from behind you at top speed. You heard an "oomph", followed by the sound of a body being smacked to the ground. Almost instantaneously, the black vapor that surrounded you fizzled away and fresh air finally streamed into your lungs.
You wheezed and sputtered, now on your hands and knees as snot dripped out of your mouth and mixed with your tears and spit on the ground. You were relieved to finally be breathing oxygen again, your lungs however still felt like they were on fire and your throat was about as dry as sand paper.
While you were catching your breath, a lot of action was happening in front of you. Klaus had tackled the witch to the ground and Elijah had shackled her, rendering her immobilized. He grabbed her by her collar and dragged her up against the left wall of the alley. Meanwhile, Freya came out from behind the boxes you had almost run into, hands up and feverishly mumbling, casting the incantation that was supposed to free you all of the witch's evil.
You felt a hand on your back first, and then you were lifted to your feet. Hayley was on your left and Jackson was to your right; both of them had an arm slipped through yours to hold you steady. They shot you concerned looks as you were still struggling for breath. You weakly smiled back as a gesture of I'm okay, don't worry about me.
Freya continued casting in front of you. Her voice grew louder and stronger with each word. Despite clearly being outnumbered, the evil sorceress laughed, seemingly amused by Freya's casting.
"Silence." Elijah's eyes were dark with fury as he ordered the witch to quiet, but her laugh just turned shrill before Klaus struck her across the face. Her laugh briefly sputtered as she sunk down, forced to her knees by the force of the blow. Blood dripped from her split lip and smeared across her teeth. It turned her sneer into a bloody grimace.
"You're making a grave mistake, Niklaus Mikaelson."
Now it was Niklaus' turn to laugh.
"I doubt it, Athea." He bend down on one knee in front of her. "On the contrary, actually. You know, I've got my fair share of enemies in this town. But even they have agreed that we must rid this beautiful city of this plague." Niklaus grabbed Athea by the jaw and locked it in place so she was eye to eye with him. "Now, since we cannot seem to kill you - a very annoying obstacle, I must say - we had to find a different way to get rid of you, didn't we."
Freya started to stumble, the weight of the casting taking its toll on her. Immediately, Elijah was by her side and put a hand on her shoulder. It steadied her in more than just one way. She was reaching the pinnacle of the incantation and needed her brothers' power to cast the final piece of it.
"Klaus? Less talking, more killing?!" Hayley called out from next to you. Klaus smiled in return and got back on his feet to join his brother at Freya's side.
"Right you are, little wolf. I so wish we could drag this out, but alas, time is of the essence. Farewell, Athea. You will not plague this world ever again." Klaus put his hand on Freya's open shoulder with a content smile on his face.
Freya started on the last few sentences of the spell. The air in the alley started to flicker like heat over pavement on a hot day. The hair on the back of your neck started to stand up as you felt a buzzing sensation all around you, as if someone had charged the air with electricity.
Then, Freya spoke the final words. For a moment, everything in your vision seemed to sharpen. It was eerily quiet.
Then, a massive beam of light erupted from all around you, turning the world into nothing but a bright white.
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Over a thousand miles away from New Orleans, in a bunker in Lebanon, Kansas, an alarm went off. The buzzing sound vibrated through the entire place, accompanied by the red flashes of warning lights.
"Oh, what now," Dean Winchester growled. He had just begun to sort through his equipment that he'd need for the next few hours: a whole day of working on the cars in the garage of the bunker. Throw in some beers and some rock music, and you had Dean's favorite kind of day off. They'd just come back from a hunt the day before and he had been looking forward to fixing what needed fixing and mending what needed mending. He went into auto-mode when working on a car; it took his mind off things and allowed him to relax.
Dean put the wrench down that he was holding and wiped his hands on the cloth stuck in his waistline. He sighed. "Can't get one damn day of peace around here," he mumbled to himself and left the garage to head to the war room.
When he arrived, he found his brother Sam and both the angels Castiel and Jack already gathered around the map table. As he approached it, he could make out a blinking light at the south of the United States.
"What is it?" Dean peered at the speckle of light blinking feverishly on the map. Sam answered him. "It's... a rift." He looked around at the men gathered the table before he scratched his neck. "I guess the update does work. This is the first one to pop up since we tweaked the settings. At least the first one to be registered."
"Where is it?" Jack, the younger of the angels chimed in. He leaned forward to get a better look at the map. "From what I can tell... New Orleans." Sam replied after checking a few parameters. There were a few seconds of silence between the men before Dean cleared his throat. "Alright." He rubbed a hand over his face as if trying to wipe the exhaustion away that was written all over it, but to no avail. He looked exhausted and worn down. "Guess we have no choice but to check it out. Cas, get your things, we're leaving in thirty. Sam, you stay here with Jack and keep an eye on the table, 'case few more of these turn up. We'll call you if we need back up." Sam nodded and sat down to check through the table's settings while Jack slowly sunk into the chair next to him. There was a hint of disappointment in the young angel's eyes, but he didn't disagree with Dean. He knew that the older Winchester didn't fully trust him and that he had to keep his head down to earn that trust back.
Castiel and Dean left the war room in direction of their respective rooms to gather their belongings for the trip. Once they were out of earshot, Castiel leaned over to Dean. "What do you think this means?" Dean shook his head in response. "I've got no idea, but it can't be good."
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The explosion of light faded just as quickly as it had started. Your eyes took a moment to adjust. Black spots danced in your field of vision and there was a penetrating ringing sound in your ears. You moaned and held your head as you stumbled around while your body tried to recover. Slowly, the ringing faded away to a barely noticeable hum and your vision cleared up too.
Once you could clearly see, you stood up straight. Your brain took a moment to register what your subconscious had picked up on within nano-seconds: something was wrong. Where just a moment ago Elijah, Freya and Klaus had stood, there was no one. Hayley and Jackson were gone from your side as well. Even the witch wasn't there. Athea's disappearance was somewhat comforting - after all, that had been the goal all along - but your stomach churned at the sight of the empty spots where your family and friends should have been.
Did the spell transport all of them? you wondered while temporarily frozen in place. It was like your body had to catch up to what your brain was processing. A slow sensation of panic crept up your spine and filled your limbs with an unpleasant tingling sensation. This hadn't been part of the plan. They weren't all supposed to disappear. Just Athea. "Okay, breathe," you told yourself and forced yourself to follow your own order. You took a few deep breaths and unclenched the fists that your hands had formed into, stretching out your fingers a couple of times before you quickly shook your shoulders loose. You can figure this out.
For a lack of a better option, you head towards the entrance of the alley. Perhaps they got thrown back by the power of the spell, you mused. After all, you'd been further away from Athea and the siblings. That didn't explain Hayley and Jackson's disappearance, but you figured you had to start somewhere.
Your legs were still a bit wobbly, presumably from both the near-death experience of choking on magical vapor as well as being light-bombed. You took it slow, taking your time with each step until you were sure that you wouldn't keel over. The extra time it cost you to reach the entry of the alleyway gave you plenty opportunity to inspect your surroundings for any clues about where your people might have disappeared to. You looked around for any signs of foul play while the never-ending feeling that something, something just wasn't right nagged at you. Something was off.
That's when it hit you.
Your stomach lurched as you reached the entrance of the alley where you'd carried out your big plan and you realized what exactly was wrong. There had been spray paint on the wall behind where Klaus had tackled Athea to the floor. Nothing groundbreaking, just a tag someone had quickly sprayed on the bricks. Now, however, the wall was bare. It was still the same old brick wall, covered in specks of dirt here and there, but there was no spray paint on it. The stack of boxes that you'd almost knocked over was also missing. It should have been to your left, but it wasn't. In fact, there wasn't a single card-box in sight. The alleyway wasn't exactly 'clean', but it wasn't nearly as packed with litter and trash as it had been just a few moments ago.
"No... no, no, no, no." Your whisper grew more panicked with each syllable. The faint humming sound in your ears picked back up as your blood began to rush through your body again. Panic rose in your chest and tightened its grip until you felt like you couldn't breathe, oxygen be damned.
The spell had worked. They had successfully sent someone to an alternate universe, just like they had planned. It just wasn't Athea who'd been transported from one universe to another.
It was you.
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Elijah experienced the finale of their plan take place on various levels. He heard Freya cast the last piece of the incantation. He felt it, too, the energy that flowed through his and his brothers arm into Freya, their conduct for the spell. Once his sister spoke the final words he felt a massive tug on his lifeforce, taking a piece so big that if he wasn't immortal, he was sure he wouldn't have survived it. They had known that the spell they had found was ancient, dark magic. The scripture had made vague points about how costly it was, but they had been sure that with his and Klaus' energy combined, they'd be able to supply Freya with all the mana that was required for the incantation to work. Still, the final piece of the cut into him with a kind of force that he'd never experienced before. It forced him to his knees and weakened his senses all at once.
Elijah didn't know if his vision blurred or if it was the air around him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Klaus go down as well. Almost the same second the energy was sucked out of him, he felt it in the air around him, charged and ready to explode at the slightest spark. He moaned, unable to move. His hand was stuck to his sister's shoulder through her magic. It felt like it had fused to Freya and they were now linked together for eternity, hand to shoulder and shoulder to hand. The energy around him grew denser and pressed on him, it trickled over his skin and left sizzling trails.
Elijah's muscles spasmed under the electric force and he groaned. A buzzing sound had built in the back of his head and was now stretching toward his frontal lobe, where it pressed against the bone of his skull from the inside. He thought his head might explode until suddenly, everything became very still, like the quiet before a storm. It lasted for about a nano-second until the energy that had condensed around him blew up and drenched the world in light until all he could see was white.
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When he came to, Elijah was on the ground. Pieces of pebble were piercing through his skin where it had become exposed from his suit shifting. The buzzing sound had given away to a ringing in his ears and the growing pressure on his skull was gone. Instead it was replaced by a booming hammering sensation that sent rhythmic thrills of pain through his head. He groaned and shifted his weight so he could sit up. His eyes were still sensitive to the light and he had to partially shield them so that he could see anything, despite the light in the alley having returned to normal.
He first saw Freya. She was down on her hands and knees, shaking and panting. Next to her was Niklaus, who seemed to be recovering from the same ordeal as Elijah; the spell had knocked him out flat as well.
Elijah's gaze drifted forward. He felt the area under his eyes trickle as anger shot through him. There, hunched against the wall, lay Athea. She seemed to have been knocked back into the bricks by the force of the spell as blood was running down from the back of her head. Elijah smelled it, but it wasn't the reason for his vamp face to come to the surface. It was his anger, mixed with frustration. Clearly, the spell had worked. They'd paid the price for sure. He couldn't be killed, but he felt like he was just about as close to dying as he could be as an immortal.
So why was she still here? What had gone wrong?
He rose to his feet, fueled by anger, frustration and worry. Athea may temporarily be blacked out, but she would soon come to and he knew what she'd do then. He staggered over to the witch and grabbed her by the hair to pull her close. He was tempted to rip into her throat right then and there, to watch her lifeforce spill out of her and form a puddle beneath her useless body. But he knew it was no use. The Mikaelsons had learned soon enough that Athea had set herself up good and made sure that she couldn't be killed. Not for long, anyway. She always came back.
Elijah snarled and pushed her head back, appalled by the woman in front of him. She'd caused him and his family so much pain over the last few months and he wanted to see her pay for it. This spell had been their last hope. He had no idea what he was going to do now. How he was going to protect his family, or Hayley. How he was going to protect you.
"What... what happened?" Freya coughed behind him and crawled over to them.
"It didn't work! That's what happened!" Klaus shouted, his voice full of fury. His brother had always had a temper, but this time, Elijah felt it was justified.
"It did work, Klaus. You felt it. The spell worked. I don't understand why she's still here." Freya crawled closer to inspect Athea's unconscious body.
"Clearly, it bloody didn't! This was all for nothing!" Klaus' rage was boiling and he took it out on the wall in front of him. His fist left a cracked imprint on the bricks.
"Niklaus," Elijah warned. Niklaus' anger may have been justified, but there was no time for antics. They had to come up with a plan and they had to do it now.
"Elijah?" Hayley's voice was tinged with fear. He began to turn around to console her. "It's alright, Hayley, we'll find a w-" He abruptly stopped when he spotted the gap between Hayley and Jackson. Both of them were still standing as if they'd just been holding you up a second ago, each of them with a raised arm that had been looped through yours. Elijah got up and walked over to them as if in trance.
"Where's Y/N?" he asked. Neither Hayley nor Jackson answered him. They had no answer. Elijah rolled his sleeves up as if getting ready for battle. It was a subconscious move, a displacement activity. He felt the gnawing feeling of panic set in in his stomach.
"Hayley. Where's Y/N?" he repeated in a calm, quiet demeanor. His auto-pilot was taking over. Hayley looked at him and he saw the shock and fear in her eyes. "She... Elijah, she disappeared..." she whispered as tears welled in her eyes.
Elijah stumbled back as if her words had struck him in the face.
"No... no..." Freya was coming up behind him and stared at the spot between the two wolfs where you had been standing just a few moments ago. "But... that's impossible! It's not possible! The spell was customized to Athea, not Y/N!"
"Freya." Although Elijah said her name like a statement, the unspoken question hung in the air. His sister turned to look at him. Fear and confusion were battling for dominance on her face. "Elijah, I don't know what happened. It's not possible. None of the words I said even remotely referred to Y/N. I have no idea how..." She trailed off. Then laughter came from behind them.
"You fools! I told you you were making a grave mistake! Ha ha ha!" Athea cackled as they turned around to her. Blood was still running from her mouth and her face appeared sunken in, with dark circles forming under her eyes. She continued to laugh while she occasionally sputtered and coughed up more blood.
Klaus was the first to react. He whooshed over to her side and grabbed her by the scalp. "What did you do, you useless bitch?" he snarled at her, but Athea just kept on laughing.
"Did you really think I was going to walk into your trap like that?" Athea sneered at Klaus as a red line trickled from her mouth. Again she coughed and spat out more blood.
"No... how...?" Freya's eyes widened in shock as she registered the meaning behind Athea's words. She'd known all along what they had been up to and had somehow... what? Manipulated the spell? "A spell of this character can't be manipulated! She doesn't have the power! I needed you two to even try to pull it off and even then we weren't sure it was gonna work. There's no way she could have altered it on her own." Freya was thinking out loud while she paced around.
"Then how did she do it? Did she have help?" Jackson's rusty voice cut in. He looked around as if he anticipated a line of enemies to come out of hiding at any second and attack them.
"I don't think so. A circle to back her up would have needed to be massive and they'd have needed to be physically attached to her, like Klaus and Elijah touched me. No, she..." Again, Freya trailed off and hesitated for a moment, then she quickly walked over to Athea.
Their enemy witch looked worse by the second. Her skin had taken on a greyish tone and the circles under her eyes had turned a dark purple. Her face, however, still had a stoic, defiant expression all over it. Freya knelt in front of her and grabbed the sorceress by the shoulder. "How did you do it? How did you hijack the spell? That's the only way you could've done it!" she shouted and shook the woman in front of her. The commotion caused Athea to cough again and blood splattered across her chest. She gave Freya a crimson red smile. "Wouldn't you like to know, Freya Mikaelson."
Klaus wrapped a hand around Athea's throat and squeezed slightly. "Tell us what you did, or I'll rip your head off right here and now." His fingers pressed into her throat with more force now, visibly obstructing the witch's airflow. She gasped for air but still... smiled. "Don't waste your strength on me, Niklaus. My time has come anyway." She gasped and coughed again before she continued. "I knew what you had planned and I knew I didn't have enough power to stop the spell. I knew my time in this world was coming to an end, but I wasn't going to go without a fight." She wheezed and the air in her lungs rattled and blubbered. "What did you do!" Klaus shook her by the throat as his voice echoed through the alleyway.
"I hijacked the spell," Athea replied hoarsely and gave another of her bloody smiles. There was a sense of triumph in voice. "But how?" Freya implored. She had no idea how a spell of this character could be manipulated, let alone hijacked. Unless... Athea cackled. "A good witch never reveal's all her secrets. Isn't that what the mortals say?" Klaus tightened his grip on Athea's throat and pushed her up the wall. Her entire weight was now on Klaus' grip around her neck; her feet dangled a few inches above the ground. "There's nothing good about you, you old crone," he growled. "Enough chitchat. Tell us what you did, or I'll rip you apart limb by limb, no matter how many times it takes until you sing." The witch didn't reply. She gasped for air, but her hands didn't claw at Klaus' hand like any other person might've done. Below them, Freya knelt down and inspected the ground. She soon found what she was looking for and rubbed a pinch of the black powder between her fingers.
"Klaus." The hybrid didn't relent his grip on Athea's throat, so Freya started again. "Klaus, it's no use. She's dying anyway." "Whatever do you mean?" Elijah approached the three of them from behind. Hayley and Jackson followed on his heel. "Just what I said. She's dying." His sister held out her hand to him and showed him the black stains. "When I was still with Daliah, she once told me about the myth about the fruit of the tree of life. Supposedly you could use its dried remnants to redirect any spell or curse thrown at you with ease, but no one had found a fruit in centuries. It was presumed to have gone extinct." Freya gestured over to Athea as she continued. "I have no idea how she got one... but this is what she must have used to redirect the spell to Y/N."
"Okay, great, that's one question answered. But why is she dying? I thought she couldn't die?" Hayley defensively crossed her arms in front of her chest. "She can't, not in a traditional way. But this spell is so old and so powerful, it overwrites any other spell. It becomes the default setting. Any power that she invested into enchantments to secure her life must have been redirected into our incantation, to uphold her end of the bargain, so to say. She traded Y/N for herself. Even if she only hijacked the spell and didn't try to counter it, it must have cost massive amounts of mana." The Mikaelson witch paused and briefly looked down. "So much, in fact, that all of her previous enchantments weren't enough. So she's paying with her life."
"Aren't you a clever little witch. It's a pity Dahlia lost control over you. We could have benefited from a clever one like y-" Athea was abruptly cut off when Elijah zoomed over to her and ripped off her head. It fell to the ground with a soft thump and rolled a couple of times before coming to a halt a few feet away from its previous body.
"Freya," Elijah said as he got his handkerchief out and cleaned a few bloody stains from his hand. "Tell me you know how to bring Y/N back, now that you've discovered the reason for this... mishap." The threat in his voice wasn't meant for his sister. He'd stared at the bodiless head on the ground as he had spoken.
"That's just it, brother. I have no idea."
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A/N: It's here! I'm so excited! 🥳 This was so much fun to write and I can't wait to get started on the next chapter. This one got kind of long, but I felt that that was necessary to set the whole story up properly. The next chapter(s) might not be as long 😅 Depending on how much time I can find in the next days it should be up by next week.
Continue reading here: Chapter 2
Feedback is greatly appreciated! Let me know if you'd like to be added to the taglist ☺️
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@vicmc624 @foreverrandomwritings
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natalievoncatte · 1 year
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Nothing has ever hit Lena like this.
She’s been abducted by aliens. She was almost shotgun married to an alien. Her ex was eaten by nanobots in front of her. She’s been tried to a chair while her brother tried to murder the world’s most beloved hero, and nearly vaporized by a man with a radioactive chunk of another planet for a heart.
Not to mention the mundane stuff. The L-Corp logo in the lobby almost crushing her. Bombs, bullets, blades, being thrown off a balcony, thrown off a roof, left to die in a plane crash.
Almost killed when her brother sent drones to shoot down her helicopter and a golden vision of inhuman beauty came from the sky to save her life.
Of course, that golden vision had tarnished, turned brass. She could be bossy, sanctimonious, paranoid, prone to snapping at Lena one moment… then making her knees weak the next.
Because sometimes, Supergirl wasn’t bossy, sanctimonious, or paranoid. Sometimes she was all dashing grace, with a profoundly frustrating tendency to scoop Lena into her arms and carry her there with surpassing tenderness, as though she were the most precious treasure the alien had ever seen.
Poor Lena’s heart had suffered terribly through all that, yet never skipped a beat.
It skipped now.
Kara looked up from her burger, apropos of nothing. Or, that’s what Lena would have thought a moment ago, before she recognized that scar.
The world spun crazily. Lena grasped the sides of her seat for dear life while alarms and sirens blared in every direction. Smoke coughed noisily from the remains of the turbines that had powered her chopper’s rotor blades. As the world seemed to grow weightless, Lena finally accepted what was happening- the chopper was going to crash. She was going to die.
And then there was a wind.
No, not a wind. A blur of motion, a red and blue streak cutting through the brilliant afternoon light and then a stomach-churning lurch as the falling aircraft just stopped, gently floating to a safe landing on the roof.
With a squeak of tearing metal, she was there. A goddess in primary colors, soft waves of golden hair framing her devastatingly lovely face as she checked the pilot and then turned those arresting blue eyes to Lena and then asked-
“Are you okay? Lena?”
With trembling hands, Lena reached up. Kara froze, a thousand emotions flashing on her face, fear flickering in the oceans of her eyes. They both paused, testing the moment. This was it. They had their choices: Lena could stop, make some excuse. Kara could flinch and offer some gee golly shucks reason to move out of reach and dissemble her way out of it. They could decide not to do this.
Lena did not stop, and Kara did not move. The frames of Kara’s glasses were surprisingly heavy in her grasp as she softly tugged them free and set them aside. Lena raises a hand to Kara’s cheek, ever hesitant quiver of her palm a question. She closed the gap between them on the couch and brought her other arm back up, circling Kara in something that was somehow more intimate than a hug. He best friend sat stone still as Lena worked loose the band that held her hair.
Golden locks spilled about her shoulders, and Lena gasped. She caressed her hand up Kara’s shockingly soft cheek and touched the scar lightly with her thumb.
Lena felt the tears trembling in her own eyes as Kara’s welled with her own. The moment had come; the river was crossed, the decision made.
And yet in this moment there was another one, at once simpler and more profound. Lena’s lip trembled. Anger welled in her chest, burning hot and bright.
It’s not a great question for a Luthor to ask someone in my family.
It twisted in her like venom, burning at her insides, trying to eat through her from the inside out. The fury rose until she thought she’d be sick, and then…
Kara Danvers believes in you.
Take me instead!
I can’t hold both! You have to jump!
I will always protect you.
“It’s you,” Lena whispered. “It’s always been you.”
Before she knew what was happening, Kara drew her forward with surpassing tenderness. Hands that could crack marble gently guided Lena’s weight into Kara’s lap. What had not been meant as an embrace became one, and Lena made her choice.
It was her.
It had always been her.
Noticing small details about them (physically)
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cuprohastes · 1 year
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See strange new worlds... and go for a walk
So there you are, your little Xenobiological survey, and of course, your assigned Human, who's there to pick stuff up and do human-related things.
You've heard about these creatures. They're from some weird hell world where there are ice deserts on the poles, one of which has land under it, the other is apparently just a continental-sized block of ice, and then around the middle, it gets hot enough to make you re-read the report.
And these creatures apparently will happily live there and every 3 Tictar, the climate switches from cold enough to freeze water to warm enough to evaporate it all into enormous clouds which apparently build up a static charge and just float around randomly vaporizing stuff.
Wack.
And then one of your self-driving Sintral all terrain vehicles gets a little too much I in its AI and wanders off, of course with all the gear loaded up and... how do you even deal with that?
It's a wild planet. There are things out there, they have teeth! And Claws! you know -- You saw the human belly rubbing one of the predators, and you're kind of still wondering how that happened.
So now you need to go get the autonomous vehicle back, and of course you're taking the Human. You're a good runner, if anything large and hungry leaps out, your plan is to run faster than the human.
Everyone agrees that there's a 50% chance the Human will just outright murder it, 30% chance they'll hug it and ask it who's a good boy, and Xosh in Maint says there's a 5-10% chance they'll settle down and start a family. The other 10% you'd feel really guilty about.
What nobody told you is that this Human is going to show up with a truly massive pack strapped to it's back, and then proceed to walk. And Walk. And Walk.
There is no reason this thing should be able to do this. It just keeps walking. It's not even tired. It's got a ridiculous hat on and it's singing and it won't stop talking.
"It's been two [hours]!" you say. Walking for 2 hours on your world is considered pretty impressive.
The Human jsut shrugs and says "Yeah?" - but no it's been two [hours] - you're starting to stagger. You know you can run faster than this thing but apparently, if it wanted to it'd just keep strolling after you as you dashed away and then when you stopped to pant it'd just mosey on up.
You start to realise that this is why everyone's got anxiety about this thing turning feral. You can't run from it. It'd just keep coming after you. You couldn't sleep, or rest, it'd just keep coming like some horrific death snail.
And that's when you realise the Vehicle is hunting you. The tracks you're following curve and meet up with the tracks that have your hoofprints and the human's weird mutant leg-hand coverings. It's following you.
The human of course thinks this is fascinating.
You decide to go back but now the vehicle is in front of you, waiting. Horrified you realise it's watching you with LIDAR and SONAR, and Chu-Wave resonance.
You run. You drop everything and you run. Let the vehicle pick the slower target - If you can climb a rock, maybe you can hide. Maybe you can survive.
Your lungs are raw from panting, and you're trying to call the survey camp. You turn around and look down.
The human and the vehicle are facing off. The Human is... talking to it.
OK well that's weird.
Now the human is climbing in... Into a rogue AI vehicle? Will it even let them back out?
The vehicle trundles off, turns, comes back, and circles the rock, making slow, comfortable passes. It's tracking you.
The sun starts to sink and you realise that you're alone out here. Help is not coming.
Then the vehicle stops and the door opens. The Human hops out and just ambles up. Ho hum, just a normal day on a wild planet with a rogue AI and some sort of unceasing predator who seems to treat this all as jolly good fun.
"You can come down." they say. Because that would be the sane thing to do. Yes let's all stand in front of te very heavy, very fast possibly killer vehicle with the insane brain.
"We had a chat - The car, uh well it's got a name now, Herby, it just wanted to follow its programming to transport things. It's quite worried about you." the Human says.
Say what now?
"Yeah it uh, well it got bored I suppose because it wasn't being taken out. So it went to do a topological survey of places it'd never been. Once it realised we were following it kind of panicked because it knows you can't walk long distances comfortably, and it wants to uh... well drive you around so it'll feel better?"
This is way too much. You can barely move. Your muscles are full of anxiety toxins and quivering from over-use. You can barely move now.
The human climbs up the rock with ease, picks you up and puts you in the car. The air conditioning and filtering! Ah! No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than Sintral Air!
And now the Human and the car are chatting to each other. Apparently, the agreement is to take the long way back, and a promise to go out more often. You're too tired to care.
You're more or less OK with this until the Human starts to teach the car to sing...
---
Because @marlynnofmany asked why there weren't any stories about humans being persistence predators for great justice, or AI vehicles that weren't evil and I thought "ooh writing prompt"l
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Danny was weak. Amity had been destroyed because of his failure to act and it had hit his obsession hard. The other ghosts jumped on him exploiting his moment of weakness and while he was able to defeat them he was left with very little power left.
He was dying.
Again.
Danny had to choke back a sob. He was alone, scared, and in pain in an unfamiliar dimension in an unfamiliar city that had a smell bad enough to make raccoons turn thier noses away. He needed to find a way to feed his obsession and fast.
It was at that moment a very obviously drugged and hurt Red Robin came falling out of the sky and landed with a thud before him and promptly passed out.
Danny could work with this.
Dragging the other teen as far as he could (which wasn't far in the halfas sorry state) he settled down with the supposed hero on the front step of a boarded up store and rested the guys head in Dannys lap. Taking a deep breath he pulled out one of his parents weapons that he had personally modified. A laser gun that if turned up to the highest setting would be a death ray and at the lowest would be powerful enough to blast someone down a few city blocks. Anyone who tries anything would be in for a world of pain.
Unfortunately there were a lot of people who saw the downed bird being protected by a frail kid with what looked like a toy gun and came walking up with crowbars and bats, intending to get revenge only to find out that it was very much not a toy.
The most annoying ones were these wierd people who Just. Would. Not. Give. Up.
The one with a blue bird on his chest had almost convinced him that he was the heros friend, up until he let slip that his brother, Red Hood had tried to murder him. He got blasted away after that.
Red Hood didn't even get down from the rooftop before Danny blasted him. He had so much bad ghost vibes that Danny could feel exactly where he was even five miles away. Hood didn't understand why he couldn't sneak up on this kid.
Batman gets the "on sight" treatment and Danny is convinced he's a supervillian.
The Joker gets vaporized in front of the batfam, whose jaws are on the floor, except for Jason who's cheering. (Jason later throws a party) Everyone who has a bat logo on them gets blasted. No one can get close and nothing they do can get the kid away. Its only when Robin appears before the kid that Danny visibly relaxes. When Robin asks how he knew he was Red Robins ally Danny pointed out the matching colors.
Robin did not understand the logic behind it but was happy to get the civilian that had been giving them so much grief to a hospital and drag RR to the med Bay to see why he hadn't woken up yet. But no, it was not meant to be. Danny revealed he was not human and that his injuries were more severe than they first appeared, which said a lot because his white shirt looked mostly brownish red at this point.
Anyway, Danny was a supernatural entity who protected people and fed off of them, creating a mutually beneficial situation. The people he protected turned on him seeking knowledge about his biology via the "science and a knife" method and he barely escaped. Danny is so weak now that if he let's Red Robin go Danny would quickly die, but if he doesn't let Red Robin go, he won't wake up. So naturally Danny is too terrified of dying to let RR go and as a consequence Tim is getting the best sleep of his life
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rococo-crow · 6 months
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I have some uncharitable feelings toward Mizrak despite being a huge fan of whatever the fuck's going on between him and Olrox-- but my god, is he a fascinating contradiction. Perhaps the *only* guilt-impervious catholic. I wanna smush him on a glass slide and study him under a microscope.
He is just *AGHAST* at the mere suggestion of his abbot potentially breaking his vows like 17 years ago. Fully getting the vapors over it... when he himself hopped off a literal vampire's dick like 20 minutes before that meeting.
Turns traitor, rightfully, against his abbot because him sacrificing his daughter is apparently the thing that's a bridge too far for some reason (at least he got there in his own time.) and fights his own comrades with the EXACT degree of self-righteousness he had doing the same infernal, peasant murdering blasphemy alongside them til just a few minutes earlier.
Calls the guy he's banging, and who saved his happy ass several times that evening, a SOULLESS ANIMAL because he'd maybe like him not to dive back in and get impaled immediately.
I hope we get more of his worldview next season because I'm frankly intrigued as to what makes him tick. (Also I hope he fucking apologizes because good god...) Idk, I think if he were real scientists should centrifuge his blood and distill out whatever's wrong with him and inject it into people who suffer catholic guilt for beating off or whatever.
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