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jjyusmile · 3 years

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- #14&15: BANGCHAN from prompt list

requested by: @moonbaescribbles

the world spins on its axis every day. and there were only a few moments where your world was turned upside down. it turned anti clockwise, it span so quickly you wanted to get off... but you didn’t.

the first time was a moment you can never forget. it the first time you saw him. an ordinary day, to say the least, rushing passed your coworkers to get to the lockers after the bus broke down on your route to work. light droplets of sweat formed at the nape of your neck.

“late again,” minho quirked. a scowl sent his way and a slight shove as you fixed your uniform before entering the shop floor.

distracted, you were messing with your apron as you approached the order station. yet to enter customer service mode, you muttered a small ‘how can I help?’ that was barely audible. it was a cough that sounded like the clearing of someone’s throat that brought you to reality.

this moment.

clad in sweats, a grey beanie covering his wavy locks, peaks of blonde peaking out in light flicks. a guitar strapped to his back. you were drawn in within seconds. his eyes were mesmerising, following your every move as you fiddled with the knot that you had wrapped behind your back.

your eyes met his and you knew you couldn’t turn back from this moment. a sheepish smile was met with a small chuckle that fell from his lips. you were cute.

“hi.. sorry! what can i get you today?” stumbling over your words? not your usual behaviour.

“i’ll take an iced americano please, just black.”

“like your soul?-” the joke wasn’t as funny as you’d hoped it would be. a shake of his head. but, you weren’t mistaken. his eyes glistened when your face morphed in embarrassment, crinkling along with his nose... was that a nervous chuckle?

“can I get a name for your order?” your sharpie wavered in the air, waiting with expectant eyes as his own attempted to memorise your features. the way your lips dipped into a curve at the peak of your cupid’s bow. the light freckles that grazed your nose.

another smile. “it’s chris.”

a snigger sounded beside you followed by a full groan. min had deserved that smack.

you didn’t do well with people. you never opened your heart for anyone. the only person you ever let get close enough to see the flicker of light in your eyes was minho. until now.

over a year had gone by. he came back every evening since the moment he laid eyes on you. it wasn’t long until he noticed a pattern.

monday’s were the quietest - those were the nights he came by earlier so he could spend hours talking to you about anything. anything and everything.

tuesdays were the evenings you had to dip out for an hour, your tutor fixed an hour a week where you could ask them questions about your assignments. your boss let you take an extra 30 minute break on tuesdays as long as you came in earlier on saturdays.

you didn’t work on wednesday or thursday evenings. he hated that. not for you - he loved that you had time to focus on yourself instead of deciphering the difference between a dry latte and a wet cappuccino (he always claimed it was one of life’s unanswerable questions). but it meant he had to wait two whole days to see you again.

friday nights you were open late but rarely busy. those were the nights you both slipped an extra shot into your drinks so you could stay up until the sun rose together. after about a year those americanos changed to a bottle of wine - he called it fine dining.

saturdays were the nights he couldn’t come by. he always had a gig with his friends. it got to the point where you changed your saturday shift to a thursday so you could attend. he always made sure you were front row, sporting his favourite sweatshirt, the sleeves pushed up to your elbows as you screamed your little head off.

and sunday evenings were your favourites because you could people watch. the bell of the door chimed often as families wandered in looking for a late night pick me up before the monday morning rush. sundays were the days you allowed him behind the bar. you both stood, bent over the counter top with your chin rested on your palm. his friend, felix, spent every sunday morning baking and chris always brought some for you to try. those were the evenings you gave in to light touches of his fingers against your own.

eventually, you would leave work together and return to your apartment. the sentiment never wore off though. being able to bring you home filled his chest with warmth. meeting you at that coffee shop was the greatest thing that ever happened to him.

until the day he found out his group were offered a contract by a hot-shot company in korea. twelve hours from you.

nearing two years, you felt ashamed to hate the idea of him leaving. pride ran through your veins every time he got up on stage; he was born to be up there. but the thought of losing him to it... that was unbearable.

your smile didn’t meet your eyes as the words “that’s amazing” fell from your lips and your arms tightened around his waist. he knew this. he knew it would be a shock to you. but he never expected the light that once burned in your irises at his every move would be snuffed by his news.

your fingers fell from his as you muttered that you had to go to work. this moment made you realise exactly why you didn’t open up to people so easily. as happy as you were that he was achieving his dream, it felt like wasted years... happy memories clouded by the stench of loneliness and the forgotten. you knew you were being selfish... but he made you feel whole. and the thought of that being taken away scared you, almost as much as the thought of losing him.

you pushed away the thought and, inevitably, pushed him away too. you immersed yourself in your work and eventually locked your phone in your bedside table to stop the ringing. so that he would stop ringing. if you ignored the problem, it would go away.

he was giving you space. he knew where you were, he always did. but he knew that even seeing his face would halt you into reality once more. both of you. he was leaving tomorrow - he had to see you once more even if it meant the end.

he peered through the glass to catch a glimpse of your smile, attempting to make out the silhouettes through the steamed windows of the shop, with flickers of customers clouding his vision. what he didn’t expect to see was his replacement.

your tear stained face buried into your friends chest. leaning against the same counter that his memories drew with smiles and laughter. now morphed into pain. you were going to be fine after all. he knew minho would look after you; his longing gazes and desire to please you told him he would make a good replacement. you didn’t need him anymore - you both had to find your happiness. and he was gone.

the glitch in the story is where your world finally begins to spin once more. it once stood motionless, uneventful mixes of waking up, going to work, finishing homework and sleeping. repeat five times a week. the two days that you had to yourself were buried into your pillow with no desire to bring yourself out of the wallowing state.

but two years has passed. you were almost back on track. you had graduated and decided it was time for you to move on with your life. you were going to travel the world, but right now you had chosen to settle down, in your own little coffee shop. Blessings.

truthfully, glimpses of him were met in most guys you encountered. those with messy blonde hair. those that looked like they could pour their soul into their lyrics. those whos smile lit up the room... but it was never blinding like his.

some nights you completely lost all sense of being. you heard his voice on the radio in the cafe. it sent you into a pit of sorrow each time, a numbness drowning you. how could you move on completely if he’s still here?

some nights... your finger hovered over his name hesitantly until you fell into despair as the tone rang in your ear twice... twice because he no longer had that number. it still went to voicemail.

“hi, you’ve reached chris! i must be busy, i guess... beep, yeah? don’t forget the beep!”

a dull ache formed in the pit of your stomach. his cheery voice evoked a sob that physically racked your body forward. a minute had passed before you gained the courage to speak into the void...

“you left me. you left and you didn’t say a word.”

you said the same words every time. each time a different meaning.

how could you leave me? you’re a dick for leaving me. you said you would never leave me. was I not good enough for you to stay?

but the truth was.. you forgave him a long time ago. he followed his dream. you were still hurt but you knew he wasn’t completely to blame. pushing someone away when the going gets tough was your forté. the numbness remained but it didn’t stop you from reaching out to the slither of light that breached the end of your tunnel.

the final turn was the most unexpected of all. it was a saturday. since you had opened up your new shop, serving coffee on the saturday evening had become your favourite pastime. teenagers waltzed in for an hour or so before they headed out for a party just to get their caffeine fix.

even in your own place, you had become accustomed to the sound of his voice that flooded the radio to the love song that threatened to break you into pieces.. but it didn’t. your body went numb but your heart flew as the low buzz of the customers meshed seamlessly with his velvet lyrics.

you’ve persevered until now.

what’s your worry? trust me,

blessings waiting for you.

despite the hurt, his words a source of comfort. as they always were. he poured his heart into his work and you admired that the most. his words and his voice made you believe him, were there blessings waiting to you?

distracted, you almost missed the chiming of the door. hurriedly, you shot back to the counter.

autopilot.

“hi, what can i get you today?” your eyes trailed from the till until they landed on the customer.

a very familiar face, followed by jisung and changbin. the face that you saw on all the billboards, the one that had teenagers screaming over when he popped up on the tv.

what is he doing here? here of all places? you couldn’t tell if your thought was laced with hurt or disbelief. or both.

the sharp pain in your chest began to sooth as your eyes trailed down to his hand. a scribble of black ink that had smudged across his palm. you could faintly make out the address of your cafe along with the minho’s number scattered in block characters. he had contacted minho, he had found you the only way he knew how.

in his hands were suitcases clad with luggage tags that told you they hadn’t been out of the air long. a flash of a memory flooded your mind.

you giggled as his fingers trailed up the curve of your waist. you were lying in bed on a sunday morning after a gig, noses brushing, hair tousled and your legs intertwined.

“hey,” he grabbed your attention. you hummed in response, your eyes still following the path of his fingertips.

“if we ever have to leave each other-” he started. “for any reason. promise that if I ever have to go, from the moment I come back, you will be the first one I see no matter what.”

you raised your eyebrow questioningly. his previous movements had sent you into a sleepy haze. but his eyes were sincere which made you nod your head without a thought. looking closer, they were clouded with a fear that only the two of you could understand. one that feared losing the other.

he leaned forward to rest his lips against your forehead as your eyes fluttered closed, “i’d go to the end of the earth just to see you again.”

heart thumping in your chest, a sharp intake of breath, and your eyes shot to his piercing ones.

“my usual?”

it was like an ignition had been lit for the first time in two years. it was like all numbness washed away the moment his eyes crinkled in a shy smile. it was like you had found the blessing he promised as he sung through your speakers every day since he left.

#kpopscape #stray kids #bang chan #bang chris #stray kids bang chan #stray kids chan #stray kids chan imagines #skz chan #skz bang chan #skz angst #stray kids angst

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transpoettryinghisbest · 4 years

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Mission Complete 2

(Set three years after the first one. AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Tag" is my name for the main character. It's short for protagonist.)

The air vent fell to the ground with a loud clatter, and Monty gave a frustrated sigh.

“Do you mind?” he declared, not looking up from his comic book.

Carla emerged from behind where the vent had been, hopping down onto the ground after it. “Monty? What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Come on, you know me. I've almost finished the map of this place.” It wasn't a physical map, more of a series of memorised routes for getting around the school. She'd had one for every school she'd been to before and this one was no exception. “So…?”

“Well I was trying to read my comic book.”

She peered over his shoulder out of curiosity. “Oh yeah? It any good?”

Monty sighed again and pulled another comic book out of the pocket on the back of his wheelchair and tossed it to Carla, all without looking up. “That's the first in the series. You can borrow it if it'll shut you up.”

But before Carla could offer a word of appreciation, there was a thump as the door slammed open and Carla quickly threw the comic away from her - she'd sooner be found dead than seen reading that nerdy crap.

“Monty!” It was Tag.

“What now? Can everyone just leave me in peac-”

“It's your sister.”

This finally drew his attention. “Penny?”

Tag was accompanied by Buggs, who had Penny slung over his shoulder in a fireman's lift.

“What happened?” Monty demanded.

“I don't know, we were talking and she just collapsed in a bunch of pain. She wouldn't tell me anything, just kept saying 'get Monty, get Monty'.”

Buggs gently laid her down on the table. Her eyes were screwed shut, her teeth gritted and every muscle in her body was tensed as she writhed around slightly making pained noises.

“Penny, if you can hear me, tell me what's wrong.”

“...Monty?”

“I'm right here. Talk to me.”

“Help. It hurts…”

“Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

Monty looked from Tag to Buggs in the hopes of finding any new information that may help him, but Buggs just just threw up his hands.

“Hey, don't look at me, I'm just the delivery boy,” he said. “The kid couldn't exactly carry her himself.” Tag thanked him and he waved his hands dismissively “Nah, no worries.”

“So can you fix her, Monty?” Carla asked.

“I don't even know what's wrong with her! How am I supposed to…”

He cut himself off. He wouldn't let Penny get scared thinking he couldn't help her. Monty would just have to figure it out. Penny was in the foetal position with one arm across her stomach and the other clutching the back of her neck. She wasn't capable of speaking very much, though she could communicate on a very simple level.

“Did it happen gradually or instantly?” Monty asked.

“Instantly,” Tag replied. “Almost. After a few seconds she was just…” He mimed her lying on the ground.

Monty had a suspicion of what it might be, but there was a drawback.

He pulled the others aside so that they were out of Penny's earshot. “I can't operate on her like this, she needs anaesthetic.”

“She needs what?”

“Sleeping gas. She can't be conscious during the operation or else…a number of things could happen.”

“What, you don't have that?” Buggs said. “I thought you were the guy who had everything. Always prepared.”

“I'm not a doctor, I'm a mechanic. I'm not used to working on things that…can move and talk and stuff.”

“Well you can't do nothing!” Carla declared.

“What's going on?” Penny called from across the room. “Monty?”

As he wheeled himself back over to the table, he could hide his worries from her but couldn't disguise the concerned expression on his face.

“We'll have to get a teacher to-”

“No.” Tag was cut off by Monty, who wouldn't even entertain that idea.

Because the teacher would have to send Penny to a hospital where dozens of doctors and surgeons would try to fix the little cyborg girl. Word could be out about her secret to the masses and before they knew it, she'd be known worldwide. 'The freaky robot girl'. She'd never be able to live like that.

And what if the doctors couldn't understand how her body worked? What if their lack of expertise in mechanics just damaged her more as they tried to fix her?

“She's my sister. I can fix her,” Monty said, simply.

None dared to disagree with him.

“Buggs, keep watch at the door,” Monty instructed. “If anyone shows up, get rid of them.”

“Sure, Boss.”

“I guess we'll have to hold her down while you operate?” Tag suggested.

“That won't work, it'll only freak her out more,” Monty replied. “She needs to be properly sedated or the whole process could get messed up.”

Carla sighed. “Look, there's an obvious easy solution to this.”

“Obviously there isn't or I would've realised it by now.”

“Well maybe you're not as smart as you think you are.”

Monty suppressed an angry outburst and instead glared at her. “Fine!” he almost yelled. “If you have a quick fix then use it.”

Penny opened her eyes slightly to see what was going on and saw Carla coming towards her.

“Carla? Why is everyone arguing?”

“It's fine, don't worry. Your brother's just being a pain.”

“But he can fix you. And he will,” Tag clarified.

“Of course I will.”

“So just stay still for a second,” Carla said, taking Penny's head in both hands. “And before you know it, you'll be all fixed up.”

With one swift motion Carla slammed Penny's head into the desk. She didn't make a sound, her eyes simply flickering as she fell unconscious, but Monty and Tag both cried out in surprise.

“Carla what the hell did you do?”

“You needed her unconscious. She's unconscious. You're welcome.”

“You could've given her brain damage!”

“Oh please. She'll be fine.”

“I'll kill you for that!”

“Uh, Monty?” Tag said, cautiously.

“What?”

“We might be against the clock, here. If you need to operate before Penny wakes up, I mean.”

Realisation set in and melted Monty's rage to a mellow annoyance.

“I won't let anyone out so you can still beat her up when you're done with Penny,” Buggs called from the other side of the room, blocking the doorway.

“Charming,” Carla commented. “I'm sticking around anyway. You never know when you're actually going to need me.”

Monty exhaled angrily and without another word, moved back to Penny and inspected her. Once he was assured that her head was fine, he lifted her shirt up to the bottom of her ribs and found the source of the problem, just as he'd suspected. He sucked in air through his teeth in a gesture of uncomfortable sympathy.

“What is it?” Tag asked.

He tried to look, but Monty gestured for him to stay where he was. “You might not want to look.”

“Do you know what's wrong with her?”

“She's had a growth spurt.”

Carla made a confused face. “That's it? She sounded like she was dying!”

“Yeah,” Tag put in. “Growing pains can hurt but not that much.”

“Well your bodies aren't made of metal,” Monty pointed out. “When the biological parts of her grow, the metal parts don't. So they dig into the skin.”

“And that's what caused all of that pain?”

“Yes.”

“Can you fix her?”

“You know I can. I just need…” He reached into the pocket on the back of his wheelchair and brought out a file. “Here we go.”

The next hour or so, Monty spent peeling back parts of Penny's skin and filing the metal plates until they fitted neatly once again. It wasn't the most enjoyable job, but Monty never complained. He'd do anything for his sister.

It was weird to think that it'd been only three years since the last time he'd done something like this. Penny had needed tweaks and updates in the past, but the only real big operation Monty had done on her was when Tag and the twins had begged him to bring her back to life. Her mother had blown her head off to get her out of the way, insisting that she'd fix her later. But 'later' never came as Penny's mother died the same day, and Monty was left in charge of bringing Penny back. Shortly after that, Penny was adopted into Monty's family, and while having an android for a sister was…interesting in more ways than one, Monty had grown to really care about her - more than anyone had seen him care about anyone else. And Penny adored her brother. The one who'd saved her. He knew he could do so again.

A little while later, Penny began to stir as she awakened. She made a mumbling sound, then her eyes flickered open.

“Penny, don't move,” Monty insisted. “I'm not finished and I need you to be very still.”

“Okay,” she mumbled.

Monty called Tag over.

“What, he's your new assistant now?” Carla said. “Have I been downgraded?”

“Yes.”

She rolled her eyes. “I'm heartbroken.”

Monty ignored her. “Kid, can you hold her down? Gently. Just make sure she doesn't move.”

Penny had been rolled over onto one side, so Tag held her in place by her shoulder while Monty continued to work on the panel located on the back of her neck. Penny put up no resistance to any of this - she trusted them and was still dazed from being knocked out.

“Did Carla hit my head into the desk?” she mumbled, eyes shut and trying to stay as still as possible.

“Don't worry about it,” Monty replied, simply. “I'm almost done and then everything will be fine. It'll be over.”

He flipped the panel shut and she gave an inhuman jolt as if struck by a (very small) lightning bolt. Then Monty backed off and let Penny sit up by herself.

“How do you feel?”

“Kind of sore.” She instinctively rubbed the parts of her body that'd been operated on. “But better. Am I all fixed now?”

“For the time being. I may have to do this again in future whenever your next growth spurt is. We'll see.”

“Until then, you'll have to find something that'll knock her out if needed,” Tag said.

“I'll see if Felix has anything semi-legal I can use.”

“Thank you, Monty,” Penny said. “You've saved me again.”

“Don't get all sentimental on me now, it's all in a day's work.”

“Nice,” Carla declared, sarcastically. “Maybe one day he'll admit that he cares about you, Penny. I'm not going to hold my breath.”

She got up and headed towards the door.

“I'm glad things worked out okay,” Buggs clarified. Ever since Penny had left behind her life of being the principle's rat and became one of them, Buggs left his hard feelings for her behind as well. “Let me know if you ever need my help with anything again.”

“And let me know if you need my help,” Carla put in. “So that I can reject you.”

“I'll bear that in mind,” Monty declared.

The bell rang and life resumed back to normal.

#kindergarten 2 #kindergarten game #kindergarten #kindergarten buggs #kindergarten protagonist #kindergarten penny #kindergarten monty #kindergarten carla #kindergarten fanfic #mission complete

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fandom-meanderer · 5 years

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Okay, so I absolutely love your writing! I was wondering if you'd be willing to do a FE3H request? It can be any route, but probably alluding to post time skip. The reader is interested in Sylvain, but she catches him being blushy and stumbling over himself when he's talking to Ingrid/another female student. Felix, who likes(loves) reader, as she can actually hold her own in training, wonders why she likes him anyway, low-key jealous. How it's ended is up to you. Keep up the fantastic work! 💝ty

Oooh.

Oooh boy.

This. This is good.

Let’s get cracking.

The clash of metal filled the air, blades crossing at every possible second. You knew you had to focus, you’re in war for pete’s sake, but your mind just kept drifting for fractions of a second and you would create an opening that Felix worked himself into. Finally, Felix deals the final blow and knocks your sword out of your hand.

“You’re distracted,” he grunts.

“Am I?” You smirk, you immediately roundhouse him. “If this was an actual battle, you’d be out of commission, Felix,” you tease. Felix clicks his tongue and pushes himself off of the floor.

“You’ve got a point, I can’t be careless,” he says. You glance outside of the door and Felix follows your gaze. “Thinking about that idiot again?”

“No!” You shout. “Yes…” you mumble.

“I honestly don’t know what you see in him,” Felix grumbles. “We’re in war. You should be focusing on your training.”

“What do you mean? I just bested you, did I not?”

“That’s hardly relevant!”

“Yeah, yeah,” you roll your eyes. “I think I’m going to tell him tomorrow.”

“Nothing good will come out of that, I promise you.”

“Like you’d know,” you shoot him a disapproving glare.

To say you’ve fallen head over heels for Sylvain is a bit of an understatement. I mean, who wouldn’t fall for his charming good looks? Especially after these five years, you could tell that he has matured since his school days. It doesn’t help that you two have grown quite close as well, what with Professor Byleth always insisting that the two of you work together on the battlefield. You’ve come to love his charming personality. And some will deep down inside is telling you he felt the same.

“I’m gonna call it a night. I take it that you’ll stay here for another hour or so?”

“Yes. Unlike you, I care about surviving.”

“Of course,” you sigh. Felix picks up his sword again and begins to practice his combat arts, signaling an end to the conversation. Taking another huff, you walk out into the crisp night air.

“Sylvain this, Sylvain that,” Felix buries his sword into the training dummy. “Gods above. Why must you be so dense?!” He completely decapitates the dummy and throws his sword to the ground.

Now, on Felix’s end, he found himself to be completely smitten by you. Who knew he was into women who could totally beat his ass if they wanted to? Imagine the rage that boiled in him when you first mentioned his childhood friend. And after what you said to him just a few moments ago? He’s about to lose you forever, and he never even had the chance.

“Why do I even feel this way?” He scolded himself. Still, his eyes lingered on the door for another moment longer.

Right as you are about to make your way into the dormitories, you notice the candle light coming from your old classroom. Your first thought was of Professor Byleth, he had been working late nights for a while now, it wouldn’t hurt to check on him, right? As you neared the classroom, thats when you heard familiar voices.

“Hey, Ingrid. How are you- I mean, what are you- Are you… you know… off to train again?” Sylvain stumbles over his words. You stop yourself right as you’re about to reach the door, standing behind the wall. You felt yourself about to have a slight breakdown, what a silly thought.

“No, not right now, I was on my way to the dorms,” Ingrid says. “You’re being weird. Have you always been this weird, and I have never noticed?” Ingrid asks with a light tone.

‘Of course it would be Ingrid,’ races through your mind.

“No. I’m pretty sure. I don’t think so. By the by, have you, ya know, fallen for anybody recently?”

‘Oh gods, here is comes.’

“Don’t be ridiculous. What are you even bumbling on about?”

“Well, everyone’s talking about how you got really, uh, pretty. Just, you know, all of a sudden.”

Yup, there it was. Heart, are you okay in there?

You couldn’t even listen to their conversation anymore. You held onto your heart and ran off, careful to not be heard in the night. You found yourself in the training grounds again, this time empty. Felix must have left.

Good for him. He won’t see you having your mental breakdown.

You pick up your sword and dash at the training dummy, delivering blow upon blow.

“Stupid Sylvain! You and your dirty tricks! Making me fall for you! And then tossing me away! Why did I allow myself to be led on by you, you idiot!” You shout. Finally your sword slices one of the dummy’s arms off, and you feel your arms fall.

“So, you finally agree with me,” Felix says behind you. You freeze. Without moving, you speak up.

“How long have you been here?”

“Since I saw you walk in, I figured you left something so I came to see what it was.”

“Gods above…” you curse. You pick up your sword and walk towards the exit, keeping your gaze on the floor because Goddess be damned if you let Felix see you cry. He’d never let you live it down, and for some reason, that coming from him just hit differently. Just as you were about to cross him, he holds his arm out, stopping you in your tracks. “What, Felix? Going to tell me ‘I told you so’?”

“Not exactly,” he spins you around and pushes you against the pillar, one arm keeping you from the exit. His eyes stared into yours.

“What?” You look to the ground, making another feeble attempt to hide your red eyes. He cups your cheek and pushes you to look at him.

“I guess that idiot was good for one thing,” he musters out. He leans in and you know exactly what’s coming next.

“Which is?”

“Ugh, you’re too dense.” He stops just inches away from your face and lifts his arm, making a move to leave, but you grab his shirt and stop him.

“Wait just a second,” you growl. You stand on the tips of his toes and press a quick kiss. You pull back and quickly walk around him. It was like an instant connection was formed and, something that had to be held back in your subconscious had surfaced itself. Just as you were just a foot away from the door, Felix steps in front of you.

“If you’re going to start something, own up to it and finish it,” he says before capturing your lips once more, but with a different feel than when you were testing the waters. This time, it felt right.

So this is what the first kiss alluded to, it was never Sylvain, it had to have been him.

After a not so short session, you were one hundred percent shocked when you and Felix walked out of the training grounds and you saw the damned sun in the sky. The two of you ran into Sylvain on your way to the dorms.

“Wow! You two looked tired,” Sylvain points out. “Were you training all night?”

“Something like that,” Felix glances to the side and scoffs.

“You two are absolute monsters,” Sylvain grimaces. “I’ll catch up with you guys later,” he says, walking off toward the other direction. Felix looks at you, a bit of small anxiety welling up in him.

“Fuck Sylvain.”

“That’s right,” Felix gives you a wild smirk as the two of you share a quick fist bump. “Wait. No.”

“Shit, you’re right,” realization quickly dawned on your face, but you replaced it with your iconic confidence and corrected yourself, “fuck you.”

“That’s better.”

—

Kinda wanna write an alternative version to this with Felix’s POV, should I?

Edit (9/13/2019) Felix’s POV is up! [Read it Here]!

#Fire Emblem #Fire Emblem Three Houses #sylvain jose gautier #felix hugo fraldarius #ingrid brandl galatea #feth #fe3h #fe3h sylvain #fe3h felix #fe3h ingrid #felix x reader #request

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dandelionflower · 5 years

Text

Magic AU

Chapter 5

When Felix entered his home, he was greeted by a shoe flying at his face.

“Think fast!”

He caught the shoe and tossed it back to his mother. “Hello, Mom. Might I ask why you threw your shoe at me?”

She laughed and slipped on her shoe while spinning in her office chair. “Checking your reflexes; Cataclysm needs to be sharp when another villain comes.”

“Wha- wai- Cataclysm?” He stuttered. “How did you know?”

“I’m your mother, Felix. Also, you wore the clothes you left home with.” She started rifling through her desk. “Speaking of, I designed costumes for you both.” She pulled out two ribbons. “You know how to use these.”

Bridgette Culpa was a jewelry and shoe designer, a proud partner of the Agreste brand. She had the ability of transferring her designs into ribbons that, when tied to the model, would transform what they were wearing into the ribbon’s design. When the ribbons were untied, the design turned back to the clothes the model was previously wearing.

Bridgette was one of the most valued employees of the Agreste brand because of her ability to get photo shoots done without the need to physically make the clothes and take up time.

Her ability did come with a drawback, the ribbons were still visible. Usually, during photo shoots, the ribbons would be tied under the clothes, usually on ankles, wrists, or waists.

And Bridgette was giving Felix two ribbons, one black and another a sandy brown. He stuck the brown one in his pocket as he tied the black one onto his wrist.

His grey hoodie shifted and smoothed into a black hoodie with a white trim on the ends of the sleeves and the bottom. The trim had thin silver stitching, giving it a star like appearance.

His pants were form fitting and black with a thin silver strip spiraling up each of his legs. He was wearing boots with a white tounge and black laces.

Looking at his hands, he noticed fingerless gloves with a white star on each knuckle.

His mother squealed. “Look at the back!”

The back had a large crescent moon with a shooting star. The trail of the star was “Cataclysm” in silver cursive.

He pulled off the ribbon, rubbing his thumb over the white embroidery. “Thank you, mom, it’s perfect.”

“Good, I just hope your partner likes hers.”

“I’m sure she will. I’ll be in my room working on homework.”

“Alright, but tell me when you’re done, we’re going to the Dupain-Cheng’s for dinner. I need to talk to them about letting you stay at their house until Nathalie can pick you up while I’m away.”

“How is Aunt Nathalie anyway? I haven’t seen much of her.”

“Same old same old. I’m not sure if she’s living with Gabriel or…”

“Well, it will be nice to see her.”

“I’m sure it will.” Bridgette’s lips pursed and she looked away. “Now, go do your homework so I can gossip with Sabine.”

“Of course.”

——————

After Felix finished his homework, a self assigned essay, he began to fiddle with the pin Lucky Charm gave him, thinking about his class.

It was pandemonium when he returned from defeating Ivan again, but it was beautiful. Glass shattering everywhere, random tornados and earthquakes, even the odd desk turned to demon. It was inspiring to see all of his peers so excited about a Cursed role model that wasn’t known for taming their abilities, but embracing them.

It was… miraculous to see abilities that had been dampened for years finally come to light. Felix, at the prompting of the others, even allowed his bad luck come through. Several students tripped instantly and the class cheered.

The teacher on the other hand, wasn’t as excited as the rest of them. She kept trying and trying to maintain peace, but to no avail.

His finger slipped and he tapped the spot on his pin that turned it to a yo-yo. It fumbled in his hands before he finally got a good grip.

He tossed it up gently and it instantly shot forward, wrapping itself around the light fixture. He tugged it sharply and it came back, the light where it was supposed to be.

I’m going to need some time to figure this out. But, before he could give another attempt, his mother poked her head through the door.

“Time to go! The drivers parked up front and ready to go, so put away your yo-yo and come on.”

“This driver wouldn’t happen to be Kevin, would it?” Felix asked innocently as he clipped his pin back onto his hoodie.

Kevin was Bridgette’s usual chauffeur. His ability was essentially GPS. He always knew the quickest route with the least traffic. This made him one of the most desirable personal drivers in Paris. Certainly the most desirable for Bridgette.

Her brow furrowed and she laughed. “Kevin? Of course not…”

“Mother, I know you and Kevin have… something going on. Please stop undermining my intelligence by pretending you don’t. If there is any concern on either of your parts about my feelings on the topic, I am completely fine.”

She sighed and slumped against the door frame. “Oh, thank goodness. Because we were planning on having a date tomorrow and I know you would have noticed.”

“That I would.” He picked up his bag and followed his mother out the door.

Kevin nearly leapt from the seat. “Hey Bridge- I mean hello Ms. Culpa. Hello Felix.”

“Kevin, calm down.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “He knows, he’s cool with it.”

“Oh, great.” Felix could practically see the relief. “Now what?” Isn’t something supposed to change during this kind of thing?”

Felix patted Kevin’s arm and slipped into the car. “Nothing you don’t want to, Kevin. It’s your relationship with my mother that matters, not your relationship with me.”

“Okay…” Kevin turned to Bridgette and mouthed, “How is he so smart?”

She shrugged and gave the man a kiss on the cheek as she slipped into the seat next to Felix, who had pulled out a book of poems. “By the way, Felix, Gabriel needs new teen models. Do you think you could…”

“Of course. When would I start?”

“The week I start my trip. You’d be working with a boy your age, Adrien Agreste.”

“Yes, that name sounds familiar. I believe he is in Marinette’s class.”

“Here we are.” Kevin parked the car by the bakery and opened the door. “The Dupain-Cheng bakery.”

Felix came out first, thanking Kevin and jamming his book back into his bag.

The minute he entered the bakery, Marinette tackled him to the floor.

“Felix! I really need your help, opinions! Designs! Help.”

“I’ll help you, Nette. But maybe we should get off of the floor of your parents’ business?”

“Right.” She leapt off of him and brushed herself off. “Sorry.”

Felix noticed something new in her hair. “A hair clip? Doesn’t exactly match your other clothes.”

“I’m not taking fashion advise from you, Mr. ‘I wear the same ratty old hoodie over a dress shirt and vest.’ And you seem to have a new accessory yourself.” She spared a glance at his pin.

“Guilty,” he laughed, “but you’re the one who wants me to look at your designs.”

“You’re right.” Her brow furrowed. “Let’s just play Ultimate Mecha Strike Three, I’ll show you the designs later.”

“Fine by me.”

————————

“So, what does everyone here think about Lucky Charm and Cataclysm?” Tom asked innocently.

Felix choked on his water. “Umm, my class certainly seems to like Cataclysm. My teacher significantly less, however.”

“Yeah, my class really likes Lucky Charm, shes all they talk about. But I think she’s overrated, Cataclysm is the one with all the brains.” Marinette piped in.

“So you’re a Cataclysm fan, then?” Bridgette asked with a knowing smile.

Felix felt his cheeks burn.

“Yeah, I guess so. It’s just really inspiring how he doesn’t let the negative interpretations of his abilities weigh him down.”

“Hmmm.” Bridgette smirked at Felix, who was trying his hardest to disappear. “Interesting.”

“I’m sure it is, Bridgette.” Sabine mentioned. “But I was wondering how Felix felt about Lucky Charm.” Her smirk mirrored his mother’s.

“I think that she is a selfless hero and truly a role model for the Blessed. A picture perfect hero.”

“Gah!” Marinette toppled out of her chair before Sabine could speak.

“Um, Felix?” Tom asked. “Why don’t you take Marinette upstairs to lay down?”

Felix nodded and began to help Marinette up, throwing one of her arms over his shoulder.

“You alright?” He asked as he laid her on the chaise. “That was quite the fall.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. You get used to it after the first dozen times.”

She groaned and Felix almost felt the words on his tounge. Did you really mean what you said about Cataclysm?

Just as he was about to ask, his phone blared.

“You seriously don’t have it on vibrate?” Marinette laughed. “Get with the times.”

“Oh hush! This is clearly senseless babble from a concussed girl.” He growled as he pulled out his phone.

Mom: Better get ready there’s another villain.

“Oh, ah, I have to go…” he glanced at Marinette who was looking at her phone.

“Oh, okay. I have something to do anyway.”

Felix could tell she wasn’t paying attention, but he left anyway, slipping off his ring and swapping it for the mask in his pocket. After pulling on the mask, he tied his ribbon on his wrist he pressed his pin, just before it was transformed like the rest of his clothes.

He opened the window and threw his yo-yo. He gave the string a long yank and began soaring through the air, following the sound of screaming.

…………

The rest

@thewingting

@drama-queen-supreme

#magic au #felinette #felix culpa #ml felix #marinette dupain cheng #ml marinette #miraculous ladybug #ml #ml bridgette #ml sabine #sabine cheng #ml tom #tom dupain #oc kevin

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ncfan-1 · 4 years

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So, a little while ago I did a “try out less trodden class paths” run of Three Houses. It was a Blue Lions run, since I both wanted to revisit that path for fic writing purposes, and because it was the base house that had the largest number of students I wanted to try out different classes on.

The results, as you can imagine, were mixed.

Caspar made for such a good Swordmaster that I took him to the endgame with me, and while I was surprised by this at first, when I thought about it a little more, it didn’t surprise me nearly as much. Caspar may not have a proficiency in swords, but his growths lend themselves well to sword-wielding classes, especially once you reclass him to a sword-wielding class and you get those modifiers to his growth rates. I had made him a Hero in my Silver Snow run purely because I wanted to get his sword rank high enough to wield the rapier so he could take down the Death Knight in his and Mercedes’s paralogue, and he was good with swords in that one, too. Asides from him, Felix and Mercedes were both excellent Bow Knights, filling different niches--Felix with his high strength and speed hit like a truck, and Mercedes with a magic bow absolutely decimated low res units, and even middling res units as well.

On the other end of the spectrum, while neither Ferdinand, Sylvain, nor Leonie were bad at being Holy Knights, per se, and Ferdinand is one of only two units who I think actually looks good in the Holy Knight armor (suits his personality and aesthetic pretty well, I think), I will likely not class them into Holy Knights again. Ferdinand is fine as a Paladin--plenty of the advanced classes are fine as endgame classes, and Paladin is definitely one of them--or a Wyvern Lord, Leonie is so much better as a Bow Knight, and maybe one day I’ll find a class Sylvain actually excels at, because he’s been kinda meh as a Dark Knight for me (Not as meh as poor Lorenz, though). And nowadays, I’ve had Dorothea as a Gremory, a Mortal Savant, and in this playthrough a Swordmaster, and I don’t think I’m ever going to make her into anything but a Gremory, ever again.

But by far, the two stars of this run were Falcon Knight Marianne and Gremory Ingrid.

Classing Marianne away from a magic-wielding class is, I think, probably not the most unconventional thing I could have done, especially since I sent her down the Pegasus line. I think that with every student unit in this game, there are a couple--sometimes up to three or four--different paths that are optimal to send them down, in different ways. For Marianne, you could make her a Swordmaster or a Paladin, and those classes would suit her pretty well thanks to her magic-based Combat Arts. You could level up her Reason Magic and make her a Gremory.

The master class I think the game pushes you hardest towards with Marianne is Holy Knight. On a purely visuals-based level, she is the only unit in the game besides Ferdinand whom I think the armor in that class looks good on, thanks to her color palette making the armor white with gold accents, and the cape a dark blue, which to be honest is exactly what I think of when I think holy knight. More seriously, given her proficiencies in Faith, Swords, Riding, Flying, and that her budding talent is in Lances, the game is pushing you towards mixed attacker with Marianne, and speaking as someone who made her a Holy Knight in every run she played but this one, Marianne excels as a mixed attacker.

She really feels like the only unit in the whole game that the Holy Knight class was really made for. As I said above, Ferdinand, Sylvain, and Leonie weren’t great at it, and designated healer units that I’ve classed into Holy Knight in the past (aka Linhardt and Mercedes) excelled much more as a Bishop or as a Gremory. Marianne, on the other hand, kicks so much ass as a Holy Knight that it isn’t even funny. Out of all the designated healers, I would say that her spell list is the most attack-oriented, because even Manuela only has two attack Faith spells, while Marianne has three. Marianne is one of only three characters in the base game to get two magic-based Combat Arts (the others being Ingrid and Edelgard), which means that even with less spell charges, she’s not in trouble because she has Soulblade and Frozen Lance to fall back on. Her Crest increases damage output on physical attacks. Also, her bloodline’s Relic, Blutgang, is a magic sword that deals magic-based damage; if that isn’t the devs telling us it’s alright to make Marianne a physical class or a mixed attacker if we want to, I don’t know what is. And five Physic uses isn’t that big of a loss, especially since if you’re doing any recruiting at all Marianne is probably not your only Physic user--hell, if you’re playing as female Byleth, you can get a Physic user for free (And just because I don’t think Sylvain is that great of a Dark Knight doesn’t mean I don’t think the game isn’t pushing him towards that).

With all that said, it’s not hard to see how Falcon Knight is the other master class I think the game is pushing Marianne towards. She has all the proficiencies required to get there with plenty of chapters to spare, and even with her low strength growths, high magic plus Soulblade and Frozen Lance means she’s not without recourse for dealing loads of damage. And in my experience, Marianne’s performance as a Falcon Knight was similar to her performance as a Holy Knight, minus being able to wield magic and plus gaining a ton of speed. She was good. She excelled at this.

Ingrid, on the other hand, I wasn’t as confident about going in. Ingrid, I feel, is being pushed by the game first to become a Falcon Knight, and if not a Falcon Knight, then a Paladin. Her growths favor these classes, and her base speed growths are so high that the massive speed penalty that comes with the Paladin class isn’t likely to affect her too much. Incidentally, Ingrid’s proficiencies are almost identical to Marianne’s; the only difference is that she’s neutral in Faith, rather than proficient. She is very much being pushed towards physical classes, rather than magical classes or mixed attacker classes.

But when you look at it, Ingrid has the potential to become a great mixed attacker. Her base growths in strength and magic are the same. Like Marianne, she learns two magic-based Combat Arts, Hexblade and Frozen Lance, though she gets them much later on. Marianne gets Soulblade at C+ in Swords, and Frozen Lance is your reward for unlocking her budding talent; Ingrid, on the other hand, doesn’t get her magic-based Arts until she’s at A in Swords and Lances, almost as if she’s not intended to be dealing magic-based damage until she’s reached an advanced class (More on that later). Her Reason list is almost identical to Marianne’s--both learn Blizzard, Thoron, and Fimbulvetr, which are all spells with high Critical Hit chances, and Marianne only learns one spell in excess of Ingrid’s list, Cutting Gale. From Faith, Ingrid learns Physic, which is a good utility spell, and Seraphim, the monster-killing spell, which makes me think that Falcon Knights were originally meant to be geared towards killing monsters like they were in Echoes, since Ingrid is the only unit in the game being pushed hard towards this class, and she just happens to learn a spell that’s super-effective against monsters.

So Ingrid does have potential as a magic-wielding unit. Sure, she’s hands down the best unit in the game to make into a Falcon Knight (tried it out on Hilda this time, and let me just say: Falcon Knight!Hilda is Wyvern Lord!Hilda Lite; it’s okay, but it feels like a watered down version of Wyvern Lord!Hilda), but she’s got potential as a mage, too. But I was still a little nervous, because while her base magic growth is the same as her base strength growth, both are on the low side, and just judging from what I’ve heard, it’s rare to get an Ingrid who’s been strength-blessed by the RNG gods. Even with class boosts to her growths, there was still a very real chance she’d get screwed on her magic stats.

As you can see above, she did not get magic-screwed. At all.

Yes, this is after I fed her some magic stat boosters, but do you want to know what it was before I did that? 43. She got to 43 magic all by her lonesome, without any help from any Spirit Dusts or any Premium Magic Herbs, and she was fantastic. She was critting left and right, no one could hit her, she could still double Assassins despite no longer being in a class that boosted her speed growths, and she was overall my biggest, most unexpected success story from this run.

Now, let’s talk DLC.

As most of you probably know, the next wave of DLC coming out--can’t remember if it’s in the free wave or the paid wave--includes several new classes. Do you want to guess what one of them is? If the rumors are true, one of the new classes we’re getting is Dark Flier.

Previously, I mentioned that I really wanted to make Flayn a Dark Flier if I ever got the opportunity. Her proficiency in Faith, budding talent in Reason, and the fact that she comes with high enough skill bases in Lances and Flying to be immediately reclassed to Pegasus Knight makes me think that the pegasus line was the route we were being pushed towards with her, if we decided Bishop or Gremory wasn’t for us (And speaking as someone who’s made Flayn a Falcon Knight three runs running, she’s amazing as a pegasus unit). The fact that she’s such a potent magic user made me wish we’d get Dark Flier as a class, back when we still didn’t know what the future held in terms of DLC.

Well, nowadays, I still want to make Flayn a Dark Flier. Wanting to make her a Dark Flier is probably the biggest reason my first run after the DLC drops isn’t going to be a Crimson Flower run. But seeing how well Marianne does as a flying unit, how well Ingrid does as a magic unit, and just how much potential both have as mixed attackers, I really want to try them both out as Dark Fliers, too.

I just hope the DLC classes don’t require super-rare seals like Dark Mage and Dark Bishop. That would suck.

#Fire Emblem Three Houses #Fe16 #Meta #Ingrid Fe16 #Marianne Fe16

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gascon-en-exil · 5 years

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FE16 Blue Lions Liveblogging

Chapters 5-6. A fair amount of story progress - I just hope the tense music used from searching the monastery on the latter chapter doesn’t stick around. It doesn’t set a great mood for wondering around and talking to everybody and rooting through their stuff.’

I like how each student gets their own dormitory room, which are individualized via little touches. They’re also not split up by house, but rather between nobles and commoners and...nobles who wanted a ground floor room? There’s a few of those. Like Bernadetta, who came out of hers for the first time in Chapter 6.

The monthly tournaments are a good way to pick up decent forges for free, but I don’t like how nerve-wracking they get toward the end since your entrant’s HP doesn’t replenish after each bout. I’ve also been getting some good use out of choir practice, and sometimes the dining hall features for motivation and small boosts to stats. Getting training from the staff is another matter, but then I’m not focusing much on Byleth’s growth.

Beast fights certainly feel different from anything else in the series. I’ve done two so far, the story one with Sylvain’s brother and one against a giant bird. I assume later fights will make it harder to keep them stunlocked until they die.

I missed out on the Death Knight’s Dark Seal again because I still don’t have a thief, but then I remembered that I have no male casters anyway. Does dark mage offer anything that mage doesn’t, apart from Miasma? It hardly seems worth it for the trouble of getting a special seal.

I do however have a handful of units in intermediate classes, so I’m getting to play around with Canto on Sylvain and Ingrid and Ashe’s increased bow range. Unlike in FE10 the accuracy drop from using bows at longer range is actually noticeable in almost all fights. Dismounting meanwhile feels a bit clunkier than in FE5, but that might be a way of discouraging you from using it too frequently. Dedue gets to show some skin as a brawler, which I’ve read is a better option than brigand for characters with iffy SPD. His axe rank is still great regardless. As for the casters, I wonder if spells learned as class skills remain after the unit changes to something else. I’ll find out when Annette promotes again since she doesn’t learn Fire inherently.

I don’t like how it’s not explained why Dimitri is unavailable for the Chapter 6 story battle. I know why Edelgard wouldn’t be there for the Eagles (benefits of spoiling yourself on everything first), but there’s no reason given for Dimitri, or I assume Claude, to miss it.

@mwritesink said that Gilbert’s C support is pre-timeskip only, so I’ve been looking for every opportunity to recruit him so I can start working on that sweet, sweet incredibly buried-in-flat-subtext S rank with a guy who looks like he’d need about a tumbler of Cialis to get it up. Hey, my eyes are very clearly elsewhere when it comes to the M/M content on this route.

And speaking of that...my first paralogue involved Dedue returning to Duscur to mediate a rebellion situation. I know you can temporarily recruit characters from other houses for their related paralogues, but it wouldn’t surprise me if your first one always comes from your own house. The shipping content was sweet as ever, but the map itself was a convoluted mess with a bunch of narrow paths and aggressive NPCs stealing half the kills. Not great - would have been better had Ingrid been a pegasus knight first.

On supports, a bunch of the B ranks I’ve gotten are shown in red. Means that they can’t grow anymore until after the timeskip, I’m guessing.

Story/Character observations

Sylvain reminds me of Lex in how offhanded he appears to be about killing his own brother. I wasn’t expected that coming from someone so ambivalent about crests and what having one means for him.

There’s an Eastern church too, but they’re said to not be very influential because they also have to answer to the Alliance. I wonder if that will come up again....

Felix’s father shows up but hasn’t done much of note yet. They do explain decently how Miklan’s actions have affected his territory, but it still seems a bit random. Dedue’s observation that Rodrigue visited Dimitri several times after Dimitri’s father was killed doesn’t really smack of a developed surrogate father/son relationship, nor does their behavior around each other.

Gautier territory sounds like the North from GoT, only (slightly) more French.

I’ve barely talked about Flayn. I know exactly who and what she and Seteth are (and Rhea knows too, right?), and I can sort of piece together how she ties into the Flame Emperor’s plan with regard to Monica, but I don’t have much to say about her otherwise. That might change since I think she’s going to be playable now.

Onto supports, Dedue/Felix is as violent as expected (so much for a threeway), Mercedes/Annette is shippy right from their C and only becomes more so, Mercedes/Felix also pulls the “you’re like my sibling” bit and will eventually resolve itself in sex, Ashe/Felix looks to be setting up Felix for the really close friends *nudge nudge wink wink* with the king scenario, and Ashe/Ingrid oddly sidesteps the sexism Ingrid faces, positing that the reason she can’t be a knight isn’t because she’s a woman but because she’s the only heir to a crest. Cyril needs to calm down in general, but he’s less over the top than some past FE workaholics. Dimitri runs away from women and needs Sylvain to bail him out, and meanwhile knight NPCs are spreading dirty rumors about how, ahem, close he is to a man of Duscur. Mercedes almost kills Dimitri and gets into some genuinely interesting comparative theology with Dedue, and Anna randomly shows up in one of the supports I don’t remember too well (Ashe/Annette, maybe?).

Side note: I am personally annoyed that, as of right now, whoever’s been writing up the TVTropes* page for the Three Houses casts has deemed Dimitri, Felix, and Sylvain Ambiguously Bi for their paired endings amongst each other...but has said nothing about Dimitri/Dedue. Hmph.

*Never the most reliable source for anything, but I’m feeling petty.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Spoilers

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sage-nebula · 5 years

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Thoughts so Far

So I’ve just hit the timeskip in my Golden Deer playthrough (which is my second playthrough overall, my first being a Black Eagle Strike Force playthrough), and so I thought I’d post some thoughts, especially since I’m feeling kind of disgruntled at the moment and feeling disgruntled seems to be the best way to get me to lay thoughts to paper nowadays. This is going under a cut, both because of spoilers, and because it’s going to be long.

I can’t remember if I made a long post when I finished my initial playthrough or not, and I haven’t been using a very concrete tag for posts about it regardless (gone are the days when I’d liveblog every little thing, I guess, particularly since I got so absorbed into this game so quickly---I’ve put 85+ hours into it already, and it’s only been a little over two weeks!), so it wouldn’t be that easy for me to check. But needless to say, I’ve fallen head over heels for this game, and I absolutely loved my initial playthrough and the Black Eagles House (minus Caspar and kind of Hubert). Edelgard and her route have garnered the most Discourse™ in fandom, from what I can tell, for both legitimate reasons and not, but while I did have some personal issues with Edelgard toward the end of part one (and kind of leading into part two, though I learned to let it go), I have to say that overall I loved her and I feel that her overall objectives---dismantling the oppressive Church of Seiros, dismantling the nobility system and establishing a meritocracy, and ultimately abdicating the throne to a worthy successor once she was done because she never actually wanted power, she just wanted to change a world that was domineering and hurting people and knew she needed power to do it---were just. She could have gone about it in a better way, maybe---but then again, it’s very easy to say that violent revolution isn’t necessary from a comfortable seat where you’re not actually forced to make that decision, versus when you live in a throes of a world that has not only existed this way for thousands of years with any hint of rebellion quickly executed by the church without a trial (as we see in game with characters such as Lonato and the Western Church soldiers), but also saw your siblings tortured and murdered before your very eyes, with you yourself being the sole survivor of that torture. Rhea showed time and again that she was not willing to negotiate with anyone who breathed a word against the church. Edelgard merely announcing that she was going to take the Crest Stones from the Holy Tomb had Rhea calling for her head, not only in the Black Eagles route, but in the Golden Deer route as well. If there is to be no negotiation, then the only choices are to let the world continue as it has been---which, considering what Edelgard has personally seen and how we know so many others in the game have suffered, is not an option---or to meet force with force, which is what Edelgard chose to do. Her path was not perfect, no---but considering Rhea is one who is willing to send children into battle to execute a man without a trial (children which could include that man’s own adoptive son, if you’re playing Blue Lions or otherwise request mission assistance from Ashe) as a way to show them why they should never raise a weapon against a church, I can’t see any other way to unseat Rhea and stop further injustices from being carried out. It’s not perfect, but life isn’t always, and I for one think it’s kind of refreshing to see a JRPG acknowledge that for once, rather than have everything wrapped up in a neat bow like Awakening did (much as I love Awakening, it went way too far with the happy ending nonsense).

. . . And that was an absurdly long paragraph that really got away from me. Apologies.

Anyway, as I was saying, I love Edelgard and her route. Apart from Sylvain (who was free), Ashe (who was adorable), and Mercedes (who I got to supplement losing Flayn), I didn’t really recruit anyone, and as a result I got to know the Black Eagles very well (aside from Caspar, whom I ditched early on because a.) he kept dying, b.) his voice was annoying, and c.) I wanted to focus on my other students). I’ve only played two Houses so far, but as it stands I’m just really very attached to the Black Eagles . . . and only like about half of the Golden Deer.

To be fair to them, the Golden Deer have had kind of an uphill battle. Unlike last time, I got to work recruiting people early; I scooped up Sylvain immediately because, again, he was free, and I used Renown to boost the Support ranks of Bernadetta, Petra, and Linhardt so I could get them immediately as well. I also used Renown to boost up my sword skill to nab Felix, since the fact that he has four support ranks with Sylvain piqued my interest and I wanted to see what all that was about. So from the get-go, I didn’t have much reason to pay attention to characters like Ignatz (who was replaced by Bernadetta), Lorenz (who was replaced by Linhardt), Raphael (who was replaced by Sylvain and Felix), or Leonie (who was replaced by Petra). But even if I did have reason to pay attention to them, mmhhh . . .

Well, okay. Let me do a brief rundown of each student from the Black Eagles and Golden Deer (including House Leaders) and how I feel about them, real quick.

Edelgard: Obviously, I love her, as I’ve already said. She’s a complex, strong character---not just in what she’s able to do in battle or how she’s able to lead, but in how she’s written. When playing her route and getting to know her, you come to see her vulnerabilities---and I think in that sense I benefited from playing her route first, so I could get to know that side of her before seeing the side of her that’s a warlord trying to change a world that desperately needs to change, but doesn’t want to. Edelgard’s vision is one of sweeping, systemic change; it’s not something that can happen overnight, or easily, or without sacrifices, particularly when some (e.g. Rhea, Dimitri) insist on calling for heads and blood splatter and refuse to surrender no matter what. But it’s change that’s rooted in the concrete, change that says, “I don’t care whether you like it or not, this is what’s best for all those who have been suffering until now, and you’re going to do it whether you like it or not.” That sort of demanding attitude can be bad, but considering Edelgard immediately takes action against corrupt nobles, dismantles the church that dominated EVERYONE in reality even if they claimed not to on the surface, and established a meritocracy, we can see in this instance that she truly was looking out for those who were disenfranchised, hurt, and suffering under the way things were. Certainly, there were things she could have done better (not working with her uncle would be a great start), but considering the situation she was in, I can also see why she made the choices she did. (Also, Hubert is a terrible influence, so.)

Hubert: SPEAKING OF . . . I have a love / hate relationship with Hubert, in that I like him as a character and what he adds to the story (especially with regards to Edelgard’s personal story), but mmmmmboy do I dislike him as a person. His ridiculous habit of threatening everyone for so much as looking at Edelgard wrong aside (when Shamir called him out on being unstable and told him to be careful who he threatened, I cheered), the fact that he says time and again that he will go and do heinous things behind Edelgard’s back in her name really pissed me off. Hubert is what’s known as a Poisonous Friend; though he does genuinely want to help Edelgard, his refusal to actually consider what she wants and what her values are regardless of what he, selfishly, believes to be in her best interests means that he very easily becomes the exact sort of person Edelgard despises. And while you could say that’s fine so long as she doesn’t find out (because that way she wouldn’t need to imprison him), what if others do, hm? How would that make her look, for everyone to know that her very own advisor and retainer was the exact same sort of person as Prime Minister Aegir, or her own uncle? I wanted to punch Hubert in the face so very badly. It’s a shame I was never able.

Bernadetta: MY SWEET AND PRECIOUS DAUGHTER . . . I LOVE HER SO MUCH . . . While I will admit that some of her supports with various characters got a bit repetitive and annoying because Bernadetta refused to listen to anyone and thus would continue into hysterics without reason, at the same time I can’t help but love this anxious little recluse (and want to murder both of her parents, but her father especially, given that they’re the very reason Bernadetta is so reclusive and prone to panic as she is---she’s traumatized!). Not only do I love her personality and design, but she is an absolute MONSTER on the battlefield. Part of the reason I insisted on recruiting her immediately in my Golden Deer playthrough is because Bernadetta slaughters pretty much everyone she comes across, without fail. Her and Petra both. But seriously though, her parents are awful and I wish I could adopt her.

Petra: YET ANOTHER DESTROYER OF WORLDS, AND THE ULTIMATE ASSASSIN. In both of my runs thus far I’ve classed Petra as a thief and then assassin, and honestly I can’t ever imagine classing her as anything else. She crits on practically every single strike, and she’s quick enough to get to chests I actually try to get to (some I skip on purpose because they’re too much of a pain lol). Personality-wise I also love her, though I wish her grasp on the Fodlan language had improved over the five year timeskip, instead of staying exactly the same. It would have been a subtle way to show some growth for her.

Dorothea: I like Dorothea, but I’m actually not as in love with her as most of the fandom. When I started playing I actually assumed I’d marry either her or Edelgard on my first run, but not only did Dorothea’s first support come across as very off-putting to me (I’ve had bad experiences with people who are desperate to be in a romantic relationship at all costs in the past, no matter the reason for it), but I actually found her to be kind of . . . annoying after the time skip. Whenever I selected her in battle she said, “More fighting” with a heavy sigh, and most of her win quotes (e.g. “Only thorns left on this rose”) felt very melodramatic. Which, I mean, she’s an opera singer, and I’m not expecting her to enjoy war, but it just grated on my nerves after a while. No one wanted to fight, but no one else complained about it as constantly as Dorothea did. That said, I do like a lot of her supports and how, well, supportive she is of (most of) the others, and she was a good mage as well, so I don’t dislike her. I’m just not as crazy about her as others are.

Ferdinand: OTOH, my opinion of Ferdinand is the opposite of my opinion on Dorothea. While I started off not liking him at all because of his insistence that he was superior to Edelgard (especially when he was so fragile at first? bruh), his character development was truly great. He was a true noble gentleman by the end, truly caring about doing his best for his people and Edelgard both. Many of his supports---particularly those with Petra and Dorothea---were very sweet as well. I truly came to enjoy Ferdinand immensely.

Linhardt: THIS BOY, I LOVE THIS BOY. At first I was not too impressed with the “just want to sleep, leave me alone” shtick, but aside from that being as relatable as Bernadetta always wanting to be left alone, I came to love how direct he is, how blunt he is, how clever and witty he is, as well as how great of a healer he is (make him a Holy Knight and he can destroy everything as well as heal it---and he knows Warp, too!). He’s one of my top favorite students, for sure. Love this boy.

Caspar: On the other hand, as I think I mentioned above, Caspar . . . got ditched fairly quickly. His voice is annoying, and on top of that he had low defense without enough damage input (or movement squares) to justify it. I already had an axe user with Edelgard, and so it made more sense to just bench him early on and be done with it. As a result, I don’t have much to say about him. Didn’t have many supports, never really talked to him outside class. Sorry Caspar, but you were just a very low priority for me.

And with the Black Eagles rounded up, let’s move on to . . .

Claude: I love this boy a WHOLE LOT as well, but I’m also not feeling much of an . . . attachment? between Claude and Byleth. I think it’s because Claude takes so long to open up, and he (understandably) wants to know about Byleth’s past before he’ll share any of his own. But even when he starts to open up, his words about how he feels as if his meeting with Byleth was fate and how they’re more than a friend to him feel kind of hollow since we haven’t had emotional moments before that to build it up (unlike how we had in Edelgard’s C and C+ Supports). The fact that his reaction to Byleth returning was less emotional than Edelgard’s contributes to that too, I think. On the other hand, I love how much he knows about Byleth even before the timeskip---way more than Edelgard knows even by the end of her route---as well as how he did have genuine consolation for Byleth after Jeralt’s death, which was one of my issues with Edelgard (SHE OFFERED MORE CONSOLATION ON THE GOLDEN DEER ROUTE THOUGH, WHAT EVEN---). I also just love, love, love everything about his personality. He reminds me a lot of Marco from Animorphs, albeit more idealistic and optimistic, and so I just can’t help but adore him. (More on his idealistic approach in a bit.)

Hilda: Honestly, I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand Hilda, but boy was I wrong. Yes, she’s a bit self-centered and definitely lazy and takes advantage of others---but she also encourages her less confident Housemates to be stronger (in a way that’s actually encouraging, at that), doesn’t take kindly to others not getting what’s owed to them, is honest, and DOES pull her weight when she needs to. On top of which she is a total TANK, and I can’t help but love dainty-looking female characters who can just steamroll and sweep through enemies with giant axes, haha. Hilda’s a fave, and it kills me that she can’t be recruited to Black Eagles at any point ever.

Lysithea: Another fave, and someone I’m recruiting IMMEDIATELY when I play the other routes. She’s by far the best black mage I’ve encountered, and the fact that she has white magic to go along with it (making her a shoo-in for the Master class Gremory) makes her fantastic on the battlefield, even if her defense is a little fragile. And while her “OMG I’M NOT A KID >:(” thing can get kind of annoying at times, at the same time the reason for why she’s desperate to grown up does make sense, and I love her overall attitude.

Marianne: Like Dorothea’s attitude post-timeskip, Marianne started to wear on me after a while. I do like her okay, but her constant “I’m cursed” and “leave me here to die” and “I am going to apologize for breathing now” --- even if there’s an understandable reason --- got to be a bit Much after awhile. She seems a bit better post-timeskip, which is nice, but mmmm, my nerves still feel just a bit frayed.

Raphael: Honestly, I usually skip past his dialogue, because it’s either about Muscles or Food or Both. I’m wondering if this is something that was done to him in the localization, to make him the Comic Relief character, but either way I don’t find this archetype funny at all. He could have been a big dude who likes working out with more to him---and maybe he does have more to him, in his supports, but I have no need for him in battle and thus haven’t seen those, particularly since I don’t feel like talking to him out of battle since he’s just a walking Fat/Muscle Trope joke. Disappointing, but is what it is, I guess.

Leonie: THE MOST. ANNOYING. ISTG. I don’t think I would mind Leonie so much if she didn’t act so antagonistically toward Byleth / so possessive of Jeralt, but her constant prattling about how she’s “Captain Jeralt’s first and best apprentice” and how she’ll have HER revenge for his death and etc etc --- sis you knew him for, what, a couple weeks? TEN YEARS AGO??? Holy shit, it’s a wonder Jeralt even remembers her name, much less taking her on as his apprentice when he’s got the kid he raised from infancy right there. Considering that both her C and B supports have her yelling at Byleth for ~not appreciating Jeralt enough~ just makes it worse. It’s a shame, because she could have been a supportive pseudo-sibling for Byleth, but instead she just comes across as annoying as all get-out. Needless to say, she’s perma-benched.

Ignatz: I really don’t have too much to say about him, because he’s another that was benched pretty much immediately and didn’t give me reasons outside of battle to un-bench him. As in, he never offered anything particularly interesting in cutscenes, or out of cutscenes, his design wasn’t appealing, etc etc. I don’t dislike him, but I don’t like him, either. I actually forget he exists most of the time.

Lorenz: His design is unappealing, his attitude is insufferable (worse than Ferdinand EVER was---at least Ferdinand started supporting Edelgard by the time of the timeskip, whereas Lorenz can’t even do that for Claude!), and his C support reveals that he’s an incel. Like I don’t think there’s much more that needs to be said about how little care I have for this dude.

So as you can see, even setting aside my biases, the Golden Deer just . . . don’t click for me, for the most part. If I could poach anyone I liked to other Houses, I would definitely take Claude, Hilda, and Lysithea, and leave the rest. (Well, except Marianne; she’d be useful as a secondary healer, since I don’t like Mercedes’ voice and Flayn is too loyal to the church.) And as a result, I really, really miss my Black Eagle Strike Force route.

But do you know what makes me miss that route even more than the students?

The stance on the church.

Listen: I figured that playing the Golden Deer route wouldn’t mean tearing down the Church of Seiros the way that playing the Black Eagle Strike Force route does, but the fact that you’re still siding so heavily with the church and that Byleth is apparently super concerned about Rhea / actually likes her in this route just disgusts me. Listen again: I’ve never liked Rhea. Admittedly when I very first started playing I thought that she was probably another Emmeryn type, but the moment she said that she wanted to send the students to kill Lonato because she wanted to show them “what would happen to those who raised a blade to the church” she went on my Red Flag list, and everything that happened in the Holy Tomb after just cemented that for me. For all that people love to call Edelgard a tyrant, the real tyrant in this game is Rhea. Those who speak out against the church aren’t given a shot at a fair trial or a chance to surrender. In both the Black Eagles route and the Golden Deer route her immediate reaction to Edelgard turning on her is to call for Edelgard’s death in the most brutal way possible, ranting and raving about how Edelgard’s “sins” will never be forgiven “even if she bathes in flames and her blood soaks the earth for eternity” or whatever it was. And while she puts on a nice face toward Byleth provided Byleth doesn’t also turn on her (at which point she immediately flips on Byleth and starts calling her a “worthless failure” and “filthy thief” and whatever else), keep in mind that’s only because she thinks that Sothis will use Byleth’s body as a puppet vessel. She doesn’t view Byleth as a person, she views Byleth as a thing, a means to an end, something which even Seteth points out is “questionable” (though it’s much worse than that). True, you can work very hard and get an S Rank with Rhea (though why anyone would want to I have no idea), but that doesn’t change her general attitude throughout the game if you choose not to go that route. It doesn’t change how she treats other people, even if she does eventually see Byleth as their own person. Rhea is a tyrant, and rather than being their own sovereign nations, it’s more accurate to say that Faerghus, Adrestia, and the Alliance are states / colonies of the Church of Seiros. The fact that Garreg Mach is at the center of all three territories is not a coincidence. That those who speak out against the church are assassinated / executed without trial and without hesitation is just another instrument of their tyranny. And you can even see Rhea’s manipulations with other characters, as well. Cyril was taken in as a child, and raised to worship the ground Rhea walks on; Rhea took Shamir in when she had nowhere else to go, making Shamir feel indebted to her; Rhea saved Jeralt’s life (and granted him immortality) so that he would serve her as a Knight of Seiros, and so on and so forth. And should any of them turn against her, she immediately wants their heads on pikes. No doubt she would have killed Jeralt in an instant had she the opportunity to get Byleth away from him before he left the monastary all those years ago (/had he tried to leave the monastary with Byleth again). That’s just the type of person she is.

So the fact that Byleth in this route seems to genuinely like Rhea---enough to risk their life for her---disgusts me. It goes completely against how I feel. I not only hate the Church of Seiros, but I hate Rhea most of all. (Though I also hold quite a bit of contempt for Catherine, given how gleeful she is about killing others.) Claude knows that Rhea was up to some shady bullshit in the past concerning Byleth’s history, but he’s still placing faith in the church (mostly for his own gain, which I get, but still). It really, really bothers me. I already knew ahead of time that the Blue Lions route would be church heavy given that the Church of Seiros openly owns Faerghus, but I didn’t expect that from the Alliance as well, and it makes me feel queasy. I might have to cleanse my palate with another Black Lions Strike Force run again after this. (And if the Blue Lions is even more church-centric than this? Ugh. I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it.)

All of this said, it kind of makes me want to write a fic that combines the Black Eagle Strike Force route with the Golden Deer route---one where Claude joins with Edelgard and Byleth pre-timeskip, and continues working with them after. Bringing Claude and Edelgard together would be difficult, but not impossible, I think, considering that Claude feels no loyalty to the Church of Seiros and wants to know the truth behind everything more than anything (and has a pretty open mind, at that). Perhaps, with the three of them working together, they could even save Dimitri later on down the line as well . . . well, it’d be something to consider, anyway.

That said, this post is long enough as it is, and I still need to shower and then get to sleep. Better leave it off here. :P

#fire emblem: three houses

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calliecat93 · 5 years

Text

RvB17 Episode 4 Review: Breaching the Torus

Fun fact: a torus is a shape that looks like... well a donut. Yeah, the episode title is literally ‘Breaching Donut’. Well with a title like that, I expect only wholesome things form an episode that picks up right after Genkins screws over Donut and Wash’s plans! Leaving the universe certain to be wiped out by the evil time God AI... algorithm... whatever! Let's just jump in already!

Overview

We begin where we left off, Chrovos is gloating as her prison continues to fracture. But she doesn't get far in her evil gloating as Wash essentially tells her to shut the fuck up before heading for the Everwhen. Yeah, with the Time Gun out, getting the guys to realize what's wrong is really the only viable option. Wash immediately regrets this since he has no idea what to do along the Everwhen, but Donut explains it to him and gets him to focus on a memory that they're both in. Three guesses on which one Wash picks, and the first two don't count!

Yeah... Donut gets shot. Again. This time with Wash feeling bad and apologizing before going a few seconds back and stopping himself from pulling the trigger. This is the greatest running gag ever. Of all time. Anyways, the two talk about what to do next while poor Simmons is just confused by everything happening. They ultimately decide that they need to go back to a strong memory where Genkins is likely to go to. But Donut points out that they need to cause as little damage to the timeline as possible and keep things on track... so naturally, Wash shoots him to keep S7's finale intact. Poor Donut.

The two go back to S13 in a moment that I can't remember if it actually happened or not. It's before Felix and Locus went to activate The Purge and got a beatdown from the Freelancer duo. Wash is in the middle of a motivational speech when past him and Donut possess themselves. Wash tries to get Donut to explain... but after accidentally spouting and entendre, he knows he's not going to be believed and has Wash do it. Wash proceeds to try and convince the guys not necessarily about Chrovos, but that they're experiencing deja vu and that something much greater is about to wash over them (that pun was not intentional BTW). But it's okay, because they win the fight that they're about to go into, and they keep winning again and again. For now, they need to forget the Purge. They need to forget Chorus. They need to focus on what's about to come and trust Wash at his word.

It's a very well done speech and performed very well by Shannon McCormick, as always. It seems to work as the guys, while confused, all agree to follow Wash... until Genkins, whose possessing Epsilon, twists it around. He essentially makes it look like Wash is having a shell-shocked veteran moment, which Carolina agrees with and is very much concerned. This causes Wash to give a sharp 'Of course you wouldn't believe me, Carolina" in a very clear venomous tone. Even Tucker and Grif are shocked by it. Wash does catch himself, but Carolina is confused on why Wash would talk to her like that and 'Epsilon' suggests that he go take a walk. Wash does do, Donut chasing after him.

So yeah... they came close, but the attempt was not great. Wash, however, is not up for hearing Donut point this out, his anger at Carolina lying to him about his brain damage now back at full force. Donut points out that technically, he no longer has it since she saved him. That doesn't exactly make Wash any less pissed, but Donut keeps going. He points out that despite knowing the risk, Carolina still decided to try and save Wash because she cared about him. She was on the verge of tears when she brought it up... which Donut had left by then so him saying that he had been there makes no sense, but with time fucked up, I'll let it slide. Anyways, Wash realizes how angry he really got and just how much baggage about everything he's got. Right now though, they need to focus on the matter at hand, so time to go to another memory.

And... back to the S7 finale! This time it's Donut's fault, haha! They soon manage to get to when Lopez was shot, but before Donut. As Simmons frets over Lopez, Wash and Donut walk off to talk about what to do now. They realize that Epsilon had indeed been possessed by Genkins at that point, so plain convincing isn't going to work. But... Donut realizes something. He didn't necessarily convince Wash of anything, he just got him to believe in something that was impossible for him to have known. That is the key. Everyone has deja vu. They know that something is wrong, just not what. They need something to shock them into remembering. They need to see something that they shouldn't know about but recognize anyways. Simmons walks over, still confused and pretty much going 'WTF?!' to Wash for shooting Lopez. But this gets Wash to realize something... at this point, Simmons had only met him maybe a year ago. But what if he showed up when he wasn't supposed to? Like, say... during the Blood Gulch Chronicles? If he did, and the guys recognized him despite not knowing him at that point, it may be just the shock that they need to snap back to normal.

With the new plan, Donut and Wash jump forward to Blood Gulch. Donut arrives at the canyon... but Wash isn't there. Which of course he wouldn't be, this was before any of the BGC met him. Problem is that Donut doesn't know where he sent him. We cut to Wash, standing at a beached area. He tries to figure out where and when he currently is when a voice comes over the radio. A Lee Eddy voice... and there's no accent, so no it's not Chrovos. In other words... it's 479er calling from Command to find out where Wash is. Or, specifically, where Recovery One is. My friends, welcome back to Recovery One.

Review

This episode was short, clocking in at nine minutes, but man it was SO GOOD! I've been very curious about how this Wash and Donut dynamic would go. They haven't exactly had many interactions outside the S7 finale, and we all know how that went. But God... it is SUCH a good dynamic. They're both dorky morons, so there's that going for them. Donut's a little goofier and cheerful, Wash is more serious but still capable of his lighter moments. They really played off of each other well, both listening to each other and figuring out step by step their next course of action. It's funny, it moves things forward, and really sells this newfound comradery really well. Very well done~

Not only do the two characters play off each other well, but we got plenty of character development stuff. Donut's clearly still frustrated about not being listened to, especially when everyone goes and listens to Wash easily. Wash still has a TON of baggage towards Carolina and how she lied to him. He can't repress that, as we saw with the pure venom he directed at her even though she doesn't remember any of those events. And his hesitance when Donut brings up that they're going to have to save her after the guys... it hurt. I mean we all know that Wash will ultimately do it, but the fact that he hesitated because of how hurt Carolina made him feel... damn man. When Carolina gets her memory back, it is gonna hurt. And even with his own issues, Donut still tried to help Wash through his, which displays a lot of emotional maturity on his part. It's been really great to see more of Donut's character, and his and Wash's talk really shows how great they both are

There's plenty of feelsy moments, but also plenty of funny ones. S7's finale becoming a running gag is frekain' hilarious. Donut essentially resigning himself to his fate, Wash feeling guilty every single time, Simmons freaking out and just being confused by everything going on around him. Seriously, he's gonna be SO pissed when he comes to and realizes how many times he had to relive that moment. Also, Kimball's clear confusion when Wash gives his speech, haha! You can just feel the awkwardness emitting off of her. Lindsay only had like... two short lines, but God she nailed the mood. It was a great balance of hilarious and feelsy without feeling rushed or forced in. Jason has done such a great job with the writing, and this episode really shows his talents I feel.

What's also good is that so far, every episode has advanced the plot in some way. As much as I love S16 and will defend it from the more vicious hate it gets... yeah the pacing had issues. It had things happening, but it took far too long for Joe to get to anything truly impactful. I can see why he went that route, but it still made it kind of annoying that whenever it looked like we were getting to a plot point, it sidetracked to something else. I guess that he learned that when he plotted the season (or it's Jason's own doing) because every episode has moved things along swimmingly. There's very little padding or filler. We get to something, have a nice little time with it, and move to the next thing. Here we had a nice romp of the new S7 running gag, had Wash make an attempt with saving the guys, get a little character development for both him and Donut, and onto the next plot point. It's going fast, but it never feels rushed. Like... I'm starting to get why they may have gone with a 12 episode count because if that cut down on padding and needing to stretch things out to hit that count, it would hurt it more than help it.

So now we come to what's coming up next. First, we now know the next plan: have Wash arrive at Blood Gulch and shock the guys into remembering since they shouldn't know Wash yet, but if they recognize him it'll do what Donut did to Wash in Episode 3. The only problem is... well, Wash wasn't at Blood Gulch during Blood Gulch. So hopefully Donut picked a point before everyone got transferred out, haha... anyways. So yeah... looks like Wash is about to relive Recovery One. Which leaves a TON of open possibilities. He has the chance to save certain people and correct any mistakes. Which means dealing with his lingering guilt and pain over everything. But he also has a mission: to save his current team. Which may mean having to abandon Recovery One which is not only going to cause plenty of problems with the Freelancers but having to abandon his old friends to save his current ones... yeah that is going to hurt. Considering that Miles 'I'm going to have Pyrrha die in the most heartbreaking way possible in RWBY' Luna is writing the next episode... yeah... prepare your graves, everyone.

So here's what I think is going to happen. Either at the end of next week's episode or in Episode 6, Wash will arrive in Blood Gulch and whoever is all still there will snap back to normal. The second half of the season will focus on both getting everyone left back to normal and on how to stop Chrovos before she breaks out and Genkins before he makes anything worst. And we still have plenty of feels material with Donut still being frustrated, Wash and Carolina's issues, and for conflicts that haven't come up in awhile... well... Grif still needs to know about Huggins. Boy is THAT ONE gonna be fun, haha... but yeah! I could be wrong, but I can't see them stretching out the memory stuff much longer, so the halfway point seems like a good place to get the majority out of it. We'll see.

Final Thoughts

This season has been great so far. Great Wash and Donut dynamic, a great blend of funny moments and character development, wasting no time in getting the plot moving, it's been such a fun ride. And with the ending, we have plenty more to look forward to. This is easily becoming a great season, and it hopefully just keeps getting better and better. Great episode and now, if you all will excuse me, it's time to prepare my grave for when Miles utterly breaks us all next week! Yay!!!

#rvb #rvb17 #rvb spoilers #rvb reviews #callie reviews

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wizardessheart-sideb · 5 years

Video

youtube

In today’s episode we talk about Vincent’s sequel and maybe getting Joel’s soon-ish.

As per usual, the video is hardsubbed in English, but here’s a full transcript under the cut

HEWWO!

Hello everyone, welcome to Royal Magic Academy Radio, a podcast about Wizardess Heart. I’m your host, Mari. I’ve finally emerged from my haze that came with Fire Emblem: Three Houses coming out and now that I’m like 60 hours into that game, it’s time to focus on my other emotional support game *laughs*. But in all seriousness. So some housekeeping things: I’m going to make this podcast biweekly so episodes are a bit longer and I’ve got more time to prepare for them. I’m also wanting to branch back into my older interests as well as make more otome content, so this podcast being biweekly will also give me more time to work on those other projects. But yeah, that’s it. So without further ado, let’s get started.

GAMING NEWS

In gaming news, a new star collection event debuted. The Pit of Curiosities is circus-themed, and yes, Caesar’s in it, which I have to admit made me nervous laugh when I first saw it because. You know. Apparently he’s not re-traumatized though, so it’s fine. I’m saying apparently because I haven’t read it. To be honest, I haven’t read any of the stories because I’m just really not feeling this line-up. I also don’t have a huge nostalgic soft spot for circuses and fairs like a lot of people do, so I guess that’s also feeding into my apathy for this event. My mom never let me on rides at the fair and I was never really into the carnival games or food so I just. Never went that often and never developed a love for fairs or circuses.

The Seasonal Slot: Blue Ocean is back, and it’s running until September which is a blessing considering it has a lot of items and it’s 1,000 Romance Points per spin. I wasn’t playing when this slot first came out so I’m glad I have a chance to play it.

Before I say a quick word about Joel, I want to give a heads up that the sequels mechanic is a little different now from when it first debuted. You have to spend at least one story ticket on the dude’s main story in order to read the sequel, and thank you to tumblr user einhornaufzuchtstation for the tip about only spending one ticket, and also I’m sorry if I just butched your url. But yeah, you can’t go straight into the sequel anymore.

And finally, Joel’s early bird is being reran! It’s not a super long period, but it’s something.

FUTURE EVENTS/SPECULATION

So let’s talk about Joel for a moment in a more speculative way. If we all recall, Joel was number 1 on the sequel poll results Solmare did back in December. I’m kinda thinking this rerun may mean we’ll be getting the sequels fairly soon, or at least we’ll be getting Joel’s soon. I calculated the average time between a route’s rerun and the sequel release day, and it’s an average of 32 days, meaning theoretically, we could have Joel’s sequel around September 1. However, I wouldn’t hold my breath for it. Solmare’s been inconsistent because, remember, they reran Elias and then hurriedly reran Vincent and didn’t release Elias’ sequel for another couple months. But I do think this is a sign that the next batch of sequels is coming soon. I mean, we are going to get them eventually.

FANDOM HISTORY

It’s time for Fandom History! Originally for this segment, I was gonna talk about Klaus 2 Electric Boogaloo, but since we potentially have the sequels coming up, I think it’d be fun to talk about the sequels and the mystery of what the hell happened with Vincent’s sequel. So I guess we’re really molding Fandom History with Wizcourse, Fandom Chat, and Theory Time.

The year is 2018. Klaus and Yukiya’s sequels have been released and we’ve had reruns of Klaus, Elias, Yukiya, and Vincent’s main routes. We know there’s a sequel on the way and most people think it’s Elias’ since his main route was reran literally right after Klaus’ back in October 2017. And since we’d already gotten Klaus and Yukiya’s sequels, the fandom figured he was next. But we were in for a rude awakening.

Ultimately, we figured out Vincent’s sequel was being released first and the Tumblr fandom wasn’t exactly happy. A lot of people were confused how Vincent ranked in the top 5 anyway, but it felt like Solmare was skipping over Elias, which yeah, they kinda were. If we’d gotten the sequels in main route rerun order, we would’ve gotten Elias’ sequel before Yukiya’s, but obviously that didn’t happen. People were kind of lukewarm to Veincent’s sequel.

But then something happened that surprised everyone. There was an actual, real leak of Vincent’s sequel CGs on Tumblr. Now, our fandom uses the word “leak” as a blanket word sometimes, but when I mean leak, I really do mean it was a leak. All the CGs were posted before his sequel was released. And unfortunately, I can’t find this original post. I’ve searched for it before and I still can’t find any trace of it.

And as you can imagine, a lot of people were shocked that one, this happened, and two, to see Tsukasa Kuze in these CGs. A lot of people, myself included, who weren’t going to play Vincent’s sequel, were now going to play it for Tsukasa. And tbh that’s something I hear a lot that people who played his sequel either actually like Vincent or they played it for Tsukasa. So when his sequel dropped, people flocked to it and. Well.

I can say with certainty that no one was expecting Vincent’s sequel to be like that. It’s still considered one of the worst sequels, if not the worst and one of the worst routes in the game. The plot was all over the place, it felt rushed, and it wasn’t a satisfying read. Also they took away my precious baby boy from me AGAIN so that didn’t make me happy. But anyway, it was a hot mess and people were curious as to why.

Klaus’ sequel wasn’t perfect, the deus ex machina in it was a bit on the nose, but it was still a fun read and satisfying. Yukiya’s sequel was quite literally amazing and incredibly well-done and it still holds up today. So for Vincent’s sequel to flop so badly was a huge shock. So naturally we did what any fandom does in times like this: try and think of a reason why this happened.

There’s the possibility Solmare was just trying to do too many ideas at once and they got caught up in it. You have the Philosopher’s stone drama, Devi, Tsukasa, Vincent’s job at the ministry, the school trip, the wedding planning. There was a LOT packed into Vincent’s sequel.

There’s also the possibility that Vincent’s sequel wasn’t supposed to drop so early, but something happened with development and it got pushed forward and as a result, was rushed and the writers weren’t able to fully develop the story.

In the end, we’re never really going to know what happened with Vincent’s sequel, but it’s definitely going to be a memorable part of our fandom history.

DARLING OF THE MONTH

It’s that time again! It’s time to crown another Darling of the Month! Now, I was originally going to wait to showcase this dude and have him be our December Darling, but it’s 4am and I’m feeling self-indulgent so this month’s darling is Sigurd! Anyone who comments about pasta will be BLOCKED and REPORTED! Sigurd is a sweetheart and a flirt and and all-around great guy. He’s also a good tutor and very nice to look at. Not to mention he’s so encouraging. Sigurd’s honest-to-God boyfriend material. Congrats Sigurd on being bumped up like a whole bunch of months! Next episode will have a route review.

BYE BYE!

That’ll do it for us this week! Next time we’re doing the call and response I PROMISE, I won’t forget to put the prompt on Tumblr this time. And with that, it’s time for me to return to Fodlan and my new video game husbands Dimitri and Felix. This is Mari, signing off.

#wizardess heart #shall we date wizardess heart #shall we date wizardess #wizardess heart+#rmar

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cheeseeatingtrashmonster · 5 years

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Who Said That Every Wish Chapter 14: Mom, Meet Wayzz

The first non-hero is brought in on the secret. We get Nino's perspective on a few past events.

<< First | < Previous | Next > Read on AO3

On the roof of the hospital, Carapace's transformation fell. He waited for Chat, leaning on the roof access door.

"You didn't have to wait," Felix said, detransforming.

"Ah, actually I did," Nino said. "Someone took the crutches I left out here to get me to the wheelchair I left at the bottom of the stairs. Also, if my physical therapist asks, I did none of this and never even looked at a set of stairs without her knowledge and permission."

The two boys found an awkward but fairly stable way to get Nino to his wheelchair and then they made their way back to Nino's room.

"Just so you know, mom's pissed you went missing," Melanie said to her brother, sans greeting, when she saw him in the hall. "Hey, Felix."

"It's like two in the morning," Nino said. "Why are you all here?"

"A nurse checked on you and you were gone and he called mom." Melanie glanced between Nino and Felix for a moment. "I told her it was probably something like this. Go, make your bullshit excuses," she gestured towards Nino's room. "I'll take Chris home so you can be yelled at in privacy."

A few yards from the room, Nino held up a hand to stop Felix.

“What?” Felix asked, glancing at the door and then at Nino.

“What if I told her?”

“Told who what?” Felix asked. There were too many secrets to choose from.

“Y'know,” Nino said, glancing around the deserted hall. He held up his left wrist and miraculous.

“Oh… have you talked to Buggy about it?”

“That's kinda what those team meetings you wouldn't go to were about,” Nino said. “The rest of us think it's time we came out to our loved ones. At least, the ones we think can handle it, like our parents and maybe Mel and Nath, if you want. Even Nathalie's on board, we were just waiting for you. Adrien wanted all of us to present the idea to you together, but oh well. What do you think?"

"Overall, I think it’s time. But she's your mother, so that’s your decision," Felix said. "Do you want me to go with you?"

"I want you here whenever I can have you," Nino said, much too serious for the late hour.

Felix ducked his head, annoyed that he felt bashful. Nino gestured towards the door and he resumed pushing the chair to the room.

"Nino," Mrs. Lahiffe said on a sigh. "I spend all day working with runaways, I don't want to come home to them."

"I didn't run away," Nino said.

"I did," Felix said. Mrs. Lahiffe and Nino both glared at him. The tech who had been helping with the search for Nino helped him from the chair to the bed and left.

"Felix, I need to have a conversation with my son," Mrs. Lahiffe said. "It's also the middle of the night and you should be at home. Why are you out and about in your pajamas?"

"He's staying. Mom, sit," Nino said, patting the side of his bed. Felix came to stand on the other side of the bed, not sure if he was supposed to (allowed to?) hold Nino's hand. Nino solved this by grabbing blindly for Felix until their hands met.

"If this is about you two dating, can it wait until morning?" Mrs. Lahiffe asked.

"It's not about that. I'm just gonna say it, okay?" Nino glanced at Felix for strength, then turned back to his mother. "I'm Carapace, mom. That's how I got hurt."

Mrs. Lahiffe sighed, frustrated. "Felix, maybe you should go so I can explain to my son the difference between appropriate and inappropriate jokes."

"He's serious," Felix said. "I'm Chat Noir. You already know Gabr- my father was Hawkmoth. I told Nino when I found out Hawkmoth’s identity and he went and tried to take him down himself."

"I wasn't going to phrase it like that," Nino muttered.

Mrs. Lahiffe shook her head. "Nino, do you... actually this explains a lot."

"Like what?" Nino asked.

"Why you sneak out. Your secret crush that I always suspected was Chat Noir. That you keep disappearing during akuma battles even though I know you're not with Alya filming them like you claim. And you're exactly the kind of person who would try to fight Hawkmoth alone."

"You suspected my crush was Chat Noir and still insisted I invite him over all the time?"

"Absolutely. I could tell that boy had troubles at home. I was hoping a few home cooked meals and the sight of a healthy family dynamic might give him some stability in his life." She paused, eyes flicking to Felix for a moment before returning to Nino. "My second guess was Felix, with the same hope."

"Both Chat Noirs need it," Nino said.

"Right, there's two of you. Are there secretly two of all of you? Who's the other Chat Noir?"

"Adrien shares with Felix, the rest of us are just us."

She muttered "of course" under her breath.

"So, that's my news," Nino said. "I say we all get a good night's sleep and regroup tomorrow."

"Nice try," Mrs. Lahiffe said, raising an eyebrow. "Where were you tonight, why is Felix in his pajamas, what happened the night Felix 'ran away', and who else knows about all this superhero stuff?"

The boys exchanged a look.

"She's your mother," Felix said. "I'm just here."

"Fine, but that means I'm telling it my way," Nino warned. Felix rolled his eyes but didn't voice any objections. "I went to get Felix back tonight," Nino said. "I'm aware you think that's a stupid thing to do, but when I'm transformed, the suit makes up for any injuries, although it does take a toll on my kwami. So, I flew to-"

"Kwami?"

"Oh, yeah!" Nino said, looking around the room. "Wayzz, come meet my mom, officially."

Wayzz popped up with a deep nod in Mrs. Lahiffe's direction. "Nice to meet you. I am Wayzz, the Turtle Kwami."

"Your turtle talks... and flies," Mrs. Lahiffe whispered, her eyes following Wayzz as the kwami lowered himself to Nino's shoulder.

"Master, if I could have some kale?" Wayzz asked.

"Right," Nino said, looking around the room. "Felix, you mind? The lunch box over there."

There was a pink lunch box with "Marinette Dupain-Cheng" written in wobbly permanent marker on the handle. It contained a couple ice packs, kale, cheese, and cookies. Felix readied a paper towel as a makeshift plate and brought it to Wayzz while Nino took his mom through "Miraculous Magic 101".

"Anyway, Felix was being ridiculous and was sulking so I went to try and get him to forgive me for the whole 'attacking Hawkmoth single-handedly and almost dying' thing. It turned into a fight, which turned into another fight a few minutes later, and then we came back here."

Felix cleared his throat. "That's not how I would-"

"You agreed to let me tell it," Nino said, turning a challenging eye on him. "Unless you have significant parts of the story to add, I'm telling it."

Felix had never loved him more than in that moment.

"Let's see, what else..." Nino muttered. "Oh, yeah, so, Felix running away. He figured out his old man was his sworn enemy because our lives are some weird Shakespearean drama, and found Carapace- me- on his patrol route. He was kinda falling apart and asked to come home with me, and since my mother raised me to take in strays, we went home and revealed our identities. I got the story out of him, fed him hot chocolate and popcorn, and when he fell asleep, I snuck out, tried to fight Hawkmoth, and landed on Marinette's balcony. Thankfully, she's Ladybug and was able to get me to the hospital."

Mrs. Lahiffe sighed. "You snuck your crush into the house, revealed your superhero identity without any planning or forethought, and then, as the newest member of Team Superhero, went by yourself to fight a supervillain that has been around since you were in middle school."

"Am I, like, perma-grounded?"

"I have no idea," Mrs. Lahiffe said, rubbing the heel of her hand into her forehead. "I did, in fact, teach you to take in strays. And I didn't notice that you were sneaking out frequently enough to be a superhero so that one's definitely on me. And facing Hawkmoth alone was idiotic, but brave." She put a hand on the side of his face. "I'm mad, and none of those were the right choice or the wise choice, but they were still good choices. It's something we can work on together."

Felix was starting to feel bits of his brain falling asleep while he stood there. He was following the conversation as best he could, but not everything was processing. As important as he knew this moment was, he really just needed sleep.

"What about the others? Who knows about this stuff? What's going on with the un-retired Paon that took down Hawkmoth?"

Nino explained about Marinette and Nathalie and Fu while Felix concentrated on not falling asleep standing up.

A hand suddenly brushed Felix's arm. "You doing okay?" Mrs. Lahiffe asked.

"Fine," he said, blinking a few times. Had he actually fallen asleep for a second there?

"Nino, scootch over so Felix can sleep while we talk," she said, shifting to a chair so they would have room.

"No, I'm fine," Felix said, taking a step away. Nino tugged on his hand.

"Plagg's not going to let you transform and try to get to Nathalie's at this hour, dude. Stop being weird and get over here."

"Don't argue, we Lahiffes are stubborn," Mrs. Lahiffe said.

Felix considered arguing anyway, but the second he took to consider this was long enough for him to close his eyes again, and this time he jerked awake.

"You don't mind?" he asked Mrs. Lahiffe as he slowly lowered himself to sit on the very edge of the bed.

"I'd mind more if you fell asleep, fell down, and injured yourself."

"Just go to sleep," Nino said, yanking Felix towards himself.

Felix yelped and pulled back. "I'll hurt you."

"No, you won't. Go to sleep."

Despite his protests, Felix fell asleep within seconds of his head hitting Nino's shoulder.

"You really care about him," Mrs. Lahiffe said, smiling at the soft expression on her son's face.

"He loves me," Nino said, grinning at his mother.

"It took me a while to see it, but he does, and I'm glad," she said.

"I think he's a little scared of you," Nino said, looking over as Felix shifted in his sleep.

"Fear is probably all he knows right now," Mrs. Lahiffe said. "We'll fix that."

"Except Mel," Nino said.

"Except Mel," she agreed. "She likes to be feared."

#miraculous ladybug #nelix #nino lahiffe #felix agreste #mama lahiffe #wayzz #Who Said That Every Wish #Take Me Home #my writing #it's a lil short #but it ends where i wanted it to #happy tuesday!

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smalltowndetective · 3 years

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2, 10, 28 for the oc ask please? 💕

Am I about to do these for all of my detectives? Yes :)

Thank you for the ask! I love getting them from you! ❤

Questions Link here

2- Is your OC picky about food? What kinds of foods do they like and dislike? What do they consider a comfort or “safe” food?

10. Who’s the first person your OC goes to to talk about something that made them happy? Sad? Angry?

28. What’s your favorite thing about this OC?

(And I’m going to put all of this under the cut because I can’t shut up about my detectives haha. Really, I wrote some essays under this)

2- Is your OC picky about food? What kinds of foods do they like and dislike? What do they consider a comfort or “safe” food?

Thea Holland (Felix)- I don’t Thea is overly picky about food at all, really. But she is not a risk taker by any means, so I do see her being a little hesitant about trying anything too out there, but with friends especially, I can see her giving it a shot. For foods that she likes, Thea is a vegetarian, but I do see her liking veggie lasagna and other things similar. And for dislikes, she is really not a fan of mushrooms in any way haha. But for comfort food, I’m probably going to go with homemade pizza. It is something that I think Thea and Tina would have made together over the course of their friendship, so I think it really means a lot to her.

Pearl Reid (Nate)- In complete opposite to Thea, Pearl is very much a risk taker, the wilder the better (Poor Nate haha) So, she is not picky at all, and it does not take much for her to try new things. For food that she likes, since I do Wayhaven being a seaside town, I think she does really like seafood, crab cakes specifically. There is not much that she dislikes really when it comes to food, at least nothing that comes to mind off the top of my head. But with comfort food, Pearl absolutely loves to bake. She’ll bake just about anything, but one thing that she loves to bake is crepes. (Her and Haley are such good friends because of this) She likes being able to make people smile, and this is her way of doing so.

Natasha Trexler (Adam)- You thought Thea wasn’t a risk taker? Natasha is even worse. In fact, I don’t think she eats steak from anything else besides well done because of it. Natasha likes her routine, her normalcy, and she does not like when that is ruined, and that kind of bleeds over to the food as well. Natasha is not the best cook, but she knows how to, to avoid eating out every single night. For food that she likes, beef bourguignon comes to mind, and it is something that she will make for herself. And due to her overall pickiness, she isn’t a fan of a whole list of food, but oysters top that list for sure. But for comfort food, she does like sweets very much, but she does sometimes indulge in a shortbread.

Mariana “Mari” Gonzales (Mason)- Mari is very much “we got one life” kind of person, so she does not let any experience pass by her. Thus, not very picky either (though she does have some pretty specific comfort food) For food that she likes, since Mari’s father is from Spain, paella valenciana tops pretty high on the list of something that she definitely likes. And while this is not technically food, Mari is not a fan of wine at all, preferring beer or whisky over it. For comfort food, however, panellets come to mind. There are something that she makes sometimes, even with not normally cooking at home, and it is quite special to her.

10. Who’s the first person your OC goes to to talk about something that made them happy? Sad? Angry?

Thea- Okay, the fact that Thea is going to anyone at all is a big thing, because she normally assumes that other people don’t want to hear about herself. (She has several sad backstory reasons for this) As open as she is, and as much as she wears her heart on her sleeve, she’s still pretty hesitant about herself. But you bet, especially that her and Felix are dating, she’ll probably start slowly coming to him for everything on her mind. It’ll be a bit slow at first, but she’ll slowly start to let herself open up to him. But even if Felix is the first person she’d turn to, who’s the next? And I still can’t decide who to make her best friend in Unit Bravo, but for some reason, for things that make her happy, I could see her going to Mason? Who would probably not seem that thrilled on the outside, but I do think that Thea coming to him of all people in the first place means a lot to him. Now, for sadness, as close as she is to her mother, she doesn’t want to bother her with her own feelings especially, so she’d probably shy away from telling her. I do see her going to Nate, since how much of a good listener that he is. But, Thea is incredibly preceptive, even if that is not obvious when meeting her, and she can tell when Nate is deflecting and holding something back himself. It almost makes her feel closer to him it that way, because they both tend to do the same thing. For anger, I would really like to meet the person who can make Thea angry, because woah, that’s kind of impressive. Thea didn’t even get mad at Adam at all in Book 1, and even is kind to Bobby, even if he (truthfully) doesn’t deserve it. Anger is not the first emotion that she goes to in any situation, so who would she go to? Hard to say, but most likely Felix.

Pearl- Pearl appears pretty open, but she’s not overly so with some parts of herself. Nate does make her want to show those parts of herself with him, while also noticing his own walls, and part of her hopes that by sharing those parts, he’ll feel comfortable enough one day to talk about them with her. But when she is happy? Pearl is super close to Verda, being science pals, so I could see her going to him first when anything goes right in her life. He takes her sarcasm in stride, and she is very appreciative of that. Felix would probably be a close second, especially if she is excited about something, because she knows that’ll be just as excited with her right back. Sad? The obvious choice would be Nate, for several reasons, and even though Pearl has never had anyone just willing to talk to her ever, but around him, she finds in hard to keep with her snarky nature in order to avoid answering questions. If something is troubling her, instead of locking it inside to hope that it would disappear eventually, she actually has the desire to talk about it, her normal stubborn nature falling away. Now, anger? Pearl doesn’t explode when she gets angry, normally getting very short, her sarcastic comments at full force. But something that always surprises me when I play her route is that she always ends up being best friends with Adam? Somehow? Even with how much she makes fun of him at every opportunity? If she was truly angry, I do see her going to him, since I think he can probably understand the best for some reason?

Natasha- Natasha is also pretty guarded as well, but more obviously then Thea and Pearl (Her highest stat is stoic for a reason) It is rare to get a long answer out of her out of anything she is feeling, and almost grown numb to everything around her after her breakup with Bobby. His betrayal deeply affected her, even if she would never show it openly. (And she know has to deep with the sudden rush of feelings that she never thought she would have again) If something makes her happy, though she won’t show it much on her face, a small smile the only hint to her actual feelings, she has this desire to tell Adam, though she’s not exactly sure why. And even if he flounders his response, not sure what to do with her telling him this, she lets that all go, knowing it won’t likely be much different if he had come to her with the same thing. To sadness? Honestly, for some reason, I’m heavily leaning Felix. She might not outwardly laugh at his jokes, rolling her eyes at most of them, but they would mean a lot to them anyway. I don’t think you even have to tell Felix how you are feeling, he just kind of seems to know, and Natasha kind of needs that, because she’s not going to reach out to anyone otherwise. And now anger? If you make her angry, it’s very much a calm beneath a storm, since the most you’ll see on the outside in a sharply raised eyebrow, but inside, she’ll be steaming. She would likely not go to anyone in this situation, but if someone came and asked her about it (thinking Nate specifically in this scenario), depending on just how frustrated she is, she might have share a little about what’s going on in her head.

Mari- In most situations, Mari believes in talking about it surprisingly (the only exception is romantic feelings, something she didn’t even realize she could have) Once she realizes her romantic feelings for Mason, she almost becomes hesitant to talk about anything with him, second guessing all of her actions, something that she is definitely not used to with anyone else. When something makes her happy? Straight to Tina, without a doubt. The two of them are extremely close, almost like sisters in a sense, and when anything goes right, she is the first person that she turns to. Second place to that would be Nate, surprisingly to her. Though we do not know how the Mason admitting feelings thing will work just yet, or the best friend routes, I do like to think that Mari would go to him when she’s staring to accept that she might actually have feelings herself. (At the moment, I have Nate as her best friend in Unit Bravo) Now sad? Would probably try to cover up with humor, since letting people see a more vulnerable part of her scares her, but a kind word goes a long way with her, and she might say more then she expected to. So honestly, probably Felix. She’s more of an open book then she realizes sometimes, even if she shuts that book quite quickly in more then a few occasions. Anger? Mari would never dream of hiding it, and it is quite obvious when she is. And even if I know that she would probably not like this answer, she’d likely go to Mason. Even though she is not fully aware of it, being around him calms her, and she would crave that, but like I said, still not fully aware.

28. What’s your favorite thing about this OC?

Thea- I love writing Thea so much, so it is kind of hard to pick. She is incredibly special to me, if that wasn’t obvious haha. One thing that I do love about her is her desire to love strongly, unconditionally, wearing all her heart on her sleeve, even though she might get herself hurt in the end. She’s been hurt so many times, people either not sharing the depthless of her feelings, and lying and saying that they did, or falling for people who had no desire to have anything serious with her. This all deeply affects her of course, but she never lets her stop herself from doing this the next time. She wants to love and be loved so bad, and for someone to choose her for who she is, not someone they want her to be. But, on a slightly happier note (or not, depending on your view of it), Thea always sees the best in people, even if they perhaps do not deserve to be viewed that way (Bobby comes to mind. It’s the reason I can’t do a Bobby route with her, because I know that she would let him in, and the whole kiss thing would happen, and she’d be way too shocked to move. Regret would eat herself up, and I don’t want to do that to her. So, Douglas instead) Now, as far as her relationship with Felix goes, I love it so much. Thea had no idea just how lonely she was before Felix, and now, she doesn’t feel that way anymore, and that means a lot to her. She’s found out that she is sure she wants to spend forever with (even though she is still having doubts becoming a vampire), and that’s just really sweet to me. But yeah, that’s a few things, but I do love writing her for a lot of these reasons.

Pearl- Pearl is a bit a wisecracker, and it allows me to explore my stupid sense of humor while writing her haha. But seriously, I do love like her sarcastic, stubborn self, who would normally deflect on she was actually feeling, finding someone who makes her feel that she doesn’t have to be that way anymore. There’s just something so sweet about that, and I really like it. And while she is not as much as a hopeless romantic as Thea is, she is one in her own right, and while she did believe in soulmates, she never thought it would happen to her, something that she getting more and more sure that Nate is. She may be stubborn, but when she’s in love, she has no trouble admitting it and going after it if the other person wants to do so. A bit of random trivia about her as well, even though science/technology is her highest skill, her apartment is in the vintage style, something that surprised Nate greatly when he first found out. But even with her skill, she believes that her surroundings do not have to look like her work, and she has a constant distance put between work and her personal life. Which is something that I admire, since I often struggle with that.

Natasha- Natasha is closed off, guarded, and yet, there is always something about her, something that I believe Adam saw during their first meeting in the office. She might seem apathetic, but when she cares about something, she’ll make sure it reaches the end. She has not let herself feel love for so long after what happened with Bobby, and to find that with Adam was a bit of a whirlwind for her. One thing that I love about the two of them is these two stubborn people, who had long gone numb to feeling anything, finding with each other, and slowly realizing that is okay to feel how they feel to each other. Will either of them ever be openly affectionate? Probably not. But they are such a interesting bond to me, something that I don’t see a ton with other A detectives, and I can’t wait for the both of them to get over their denial and finally say something haha. Another thing that I do like her is her desire for simplicity. She does not feel like everything has to be big and grand, small gestures speaking just as loud, and I really like that. :)

Mari- To be honest, Mari is the complete opposite from me by design, because I wanted to pick interactions that I wouldn’t normally pick. She was the one, that when I first started to write, was the most hesitant the write (Mason as well), but I’ve really grown to like her. She has completely different views on the world then my other detectives, and the only detective that I have that took the promotion negatively. She did not want to be a detective at all, and that is a really interesting dynamic to write. But, I do love her desire to find a found family. She has the worst relationship with her Rebecca (though, that is starting to heal), and exploring just how that’s improving is really interesting to me. Now, on to the romance with her. Mari has the fear of being vulnerable, and she knows that giving a part of herself to someone is just asking to get hurt. Which is wild to her that she feels this pull to Mason, after believing for so long that she could not feel these feelings toward anyway. She’s pushing them away from now, but I like the two of them finding romantic love for the first time with each other.

And honestly, if you’ve reached the end of my rambling, you deserve a medal. You’re amazing, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day! ❤

#the wayhaven chronicles #wayhaven chronicles #twc #ask game #oc questions #detective thea holland #detective pearl reid #detective mariana gonzales #detective natasha trexler

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thezolblade · 6 years

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Ship Meme! Tagged by @the-cryptographer ~

1) Ultimate Otps:

Which of them have ‘ultimate’ qualities...? GS Isaac/Alex would be kind of an ‘ultimate power’ ship, if they got a plot with twists and turns and character development and reasons to cooperate. I’d expect that more from fic than canon - so many other canons have lots of epic slow burn adventure fics for hero/villain-or-antivillain ships. But so far in GS, for those two, I’ve mostly found (good) crackfic, or non-shippy ‘they fight to the death and Isaac wins and marries Mia’ stuff that doesn’t treat them with even as much nuance as the canon.

Not that I mind mudshipping - my ultimate GS polyship would be something like Isaac/Mia/Felix/Alex(/Veriti/The Ice Queen), with interesting dynamics between every two characters in that set of four (and Mia/Veriti), even with some of the bonds possibly being platonic. Though when I’ve written long plotfic it’s very easily gotten platonic/ambivalent/angsty bc it tends so much towards drama, and conflict may drive plots (hence its abundance in plotbunnies), but I find it hard to headcanon characters getting past hurts and grudges very easily; I want to see them make the effort, but it feels like they’d need a lot of time and personal growth to get there, and I might not even figure how well they do until I’m almost 100K words in. And in some very angsty verses there’s no chance. I want to read other people’s adventure fic too, with fun ideas that manage heel-face turns or antihero plots in a slightly lighter way...

PMMM Madoka/Homura is another ‘ultimate power’ ship, if they can get to a point where Godoka and Homucifer can deal with each other as equals again, both with full knowledge of everything that’s happened and the resolve to truly save themselves, each other, and the rest of the universe. :o

Utena/Anthy is quite an ‘ultimate reality’ ship, when they find their revolution.

2) A ship you’ll always 💜??

The Harvest Moon fan in me is going ‘purple heart? that’s not a very high level of affection??’ ...but taking it as an emoji for ‘love’... without repeating anything above, pokemon Green/Red is always nostalgic (gameverse Ash/Gary, the names get a little confusing as there are localisation differences and I like the old manga and anime too but haven’t watched/read anything recent in those canons).

GS Imilshipping, too, in fic verses where they had a close bond. FE Lucia/Ilyana, I wish they had epilogue content after their support, still mean to write out a plotbunny for them sometime. Soren/Ike, of course, and Tibarn/Reyson.

ToS Lloyd/Colette/Sheena/Zelos, again with strong bonds between all of the pairs in that foursome. They did so much to help each other find hope by striving to save and trust each other, creating a new kind of salvation together.

Skies of Arcadia Fina/Aika/Vyse, Vyse/Ramirez, and Ramirez/Galcian. Never found much fanstuff for it, but it caught the imagination.

3) Current obsessions??

Lots of MadoHomu vibes after getting a oneshot written for them. Confident!Madoka makes both of them happy when they’re not dying; it’s a shame she doesn’t get much screentime as her confident and cheerful self, since so much of her time as a magical girl passes offscreen. Even while she was more unsure during the series, she demonstrated her desire to protect her friends, and Homura commented time and time again on her kindness - she loves her for it, and when she discourages it anyway, it’s because she’s come to believe that it’ll be the death of her. If they were truly safe, they could support each other so well - it could be a world away from the desperation that marked the end of Rebellion, when neither of them are at all okay. :s

Also getting quite into darkfic plotbunnies, and I know ‘darkship’ is a term in some cases for character dynamics fulfilling their worst potential, descending into violence and destruction that at least one character Does Not Want, but in the verses of those plotbunnies I guess they still fit the label of antiships better than ships.

4) A ship you never thought you’d like??

Uh, a lot of the stuff on the gs kink meme caught me by surprise, when rarepairs got suggested and the fills or plotbunnies got interesting - Alex/Ivan, Eoleo/Rief, Alex/Amiti (in a BAD IDEA way). And on lj/tumblr, Mia/Sheba was pleasant surprise too. Not that I ever had any preconceptions about disliking ships, they just hadn’t occurred to me.

In FF7, I don’t think I expected to see compelling Cloud/Seph or Zack/Seph at first, all those years ago, but I quickly found that there are a lot of good AUs and darkfic. Especially when they’re alongside other good ships like Cloud/Zack, Aerith/Zack, Aerith/Cloud, Aerith/Tifa, Tifa/Cloud etc.

5) A ship you used to like but don’t anymore:

Uh idk exactly. I used to read a lot of Buffy fic by ship to find characters whose dynamics were interesting in the show, but iirc I ended up skimming any content that was really ‘shippy’ to get to the plot and jokes and emotional bonding over real stuff, not random physical attraction, and nowadays I don’t think I’d bother skimming so much stuff just bc I hoped it’d be interesting and wanted to keep giving it a chance.

6) A ship that should be canon??

Well some that are very strongly implied but not explicitly stated feel like ‘yep that’s canon’ but could maybe use some more in-universe and author confirmation when not everyone seems to agree - Ike/Soren, Utena/Anthy in some versions of canon, etc.

7) A canon ship you hate???

I like to hate the way darkships go sometimes, but that’s what makes them an interesting story, going ‘noo’ about characters’ bad decisions, though that usually only works if they had better potential that they’re falling short of, not necessarily in a romantic sense... Can’t think of many cases where that happens in canon. Uh I think most explicitly canon relationships are either one option among many routes (and I get tired of support grinding), or I’m a bit indifferent, or if I dislike how it’s done I’d still start playing devil’s advocate and wondering how it could have been done differently if I spend any time considering it.

Oh in FE Awakening I kinda hated how Virion’s flirting in the main plot cutscenes was creepy and painted him as a bad joke, but his supports are much better and some of them are great - how do you explain liking his ships when he has such a bad start (and such bad English voice acting)? I also hated the way the player character’s support options didn’t all show up until endgame, so I missed them the first time and had to replay and wait until then to support grind, and then it all got repetitive grinding the same dlc maps so many times over just for such short supports, and the endgame marriage candidates that were most interesting (bc how the hell could the game make that work, with a head of state or a former enemy??) ended up with really rushed and unconvincing relationship development, and the child recruitment maps were hellishly difficult at that point in the endgame, and all in all it got a bit un-fun and not worth the effort. :/

8) A ship you shipped for years??

Most of the above. Also stuff like Saiyuki Sanzo/Goku, GS Alex/Felix or /Saturos, Jenna/Sheba, Karis/Sveta, Pokemon Misty/Erika, FE Florina/Lyndis, and, uh, probably stuff that I’m forgetting right now.

9) A ship everyone 😍 but you don’t care for?

...Was there anything? Some of the cliche stuff bugs me, but I’d usually think ‘what about writing the dynamic this way and maybe adding poly?’

10) Favorite rare pair???

Mm what's rare? Any gs Alex!ships at this point...

Edit: I forgot to tag anyone, so. If meme time sounds like fun, @sazandorable, @meganekkomeguca, @droory, or anyone who feels like it?

#meme

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twowish · 6 years

Text

Chapter 2: R-da-1st

“Why not get your own car?” Felix asks after they’d been awkwardly driving in silence for a while.

Noelle’s hands stop their motions. After wracking her brain for suitable things to talk about and coming up empty, she’d gotten out some yellow yarn and a hook to crochet. “What, for taking the auspices?” This had become her prefered way to refer to her plan.

“Well, yeah,” he says, looking at her over Claude. The raccoon is sound asleep draped over the right side of Felix’s chair, his furry head resting on his shoulder. “Wouldn’t it be easier to drive yourself? Just saying.”

She lowers the yarn. “Driving’s not far behind flying in my book.” And despite aunt Darcy’s encouragement, she’d steadfastly refused to get behind the wheel. “Besides, the city had plenty of public transportation.”

“So then a bus? Train?”

These were, of course, all things she’d thought of and considered. “I didn’t want to do a bunch of switching around or waiting on trains or bus routes. And the fewer people I have to explain this all to, the better.” Not to mention the less crowded an area, the easier she could hear and communicate. People in general felt like a challenge she wanted to keep to a minimum if she could. It wasn’t so much that she felt shy, she just knew that some found her and her habits (like her folder of endless notes) odd.

“And I guess a plane was outta the question, huh?” Felix continues.

“Completely. This was the best solution I came to.” She looks at him curiously. “Are you trying to get out of this?”

“No, no, just wondering.”

If she’s honest, she’s grateful for Felix’s eventual willingness to drive her, but it’s also hard not to wonder what’s led to that willingness. She’d been looking for someone desperate, and she seemingly found him. What exactly was his deal?

Noelle starts to crochet again when Felix’s phone rings. A song blares out from where the device is still in the cradle. Claude stirs to life. “Ooh baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooh heaven is a place on earth,” Belinda Carlisle croons. The caller ID on the screen simply reads “NOPE.”

Felix fumbles in a panic with the phone, ripping it from the cradle and hitting the ignore button. He sets it back down when NOPE calls again, setting off another chorus of Heaven is a Place on Earth.

Another ignore, another call, one more ignore, and then silence. Felix sighs and returns the phone to the cradle.

“Belinda Carlisle?” Noelle asks, remembering the reviews she’d read.

“Yeah, well, they used it in my favorite episode of… nevermind,” he trails off.

Noelle involuntarily flinches at the last word. She’d been told “nevermind” or “forget it” countless times when she’d asked people to repeat themselves. True, Felix hadn’t used the word that way, but it still conjures an old frustration within her.

“Who’s NOPE?” she asks.

“Look, maybe questions should cost extra.”

Noelle brings the yarn and hook back up in front of her. “This road trip’s going to get awful boring with that attitude.”

“Fine. We’ll trade off questions one at a time. You can go first. Just don’t ask about NOPE.”

His resistance only makes her more curious, but she doesn’t push it. She focuses on the project in front of her as she asks, “What’s with the raccoon?”

Felix glances at Claude, who’s drifting off back to sleep on his shoulder. “I used to sort of work at a vet clinic. Never finished vet school, but because I could talk to animals, I was useful to have around. They had a raccoon that had been at the clinic for his whole life - that was Claude. His mother was killed when he was a cub, and he got so used to people that he couldn’t be released. He’s small, too, for an adult raccoon, which probably wouldn’t help in the wild. But that place? It - it wasn’t great. At all. So one day I left and I took Claude with me.”

Noelle pauses her work. “What do you mean ‘it wasn’t great?’” What could have been so bad that he would kidnap a raccoon?

“Hey, hey, it’s my turn for the questioning. What are you making?”

“This?” Noelle says, holding up the yellow object slowly coming together. “Not sure yet. Think your woodland creature will wear a sweater?”

“You’re gonna put a sweater on a raccoon?”

“It’s getting cold!”

Felix looks incredulous. “He’s got a sweater! He grew it.”

“So ask him if he likes layering.”

“Hey,” Felix bobs his shoulder up and down, waking Claude again. “You wanna wear people clothes? She’s making you something.”

Claude sits up groggily, rubbing at his face with tiny raccoon hands before carefully climbing down from his perch to the space between the seats. He looks from Noelle to her hands, watching her work. He chitters back to Felix.

“Well, looks like you’ve got a willing model,” Felix tells her. “He likes the color.”

“Me too,” she says, smiling at Claude. “It’s my favorite.” She remembers watching him argue with Felix inside the car as she stood outside. If he was what changed Felix’s mind about driving her, then this sweater was a thank you.

He turns his head at her and watches her work.

Claude was a surprise, but she’s warming up to him. Plus, the more accepting she is of him, the more Felix seems to chat. He’s clearly very attached to his strange pet.

“So what was so bad about the clinic?” she asks.

“I- I got a little something I didn’t ask for when I got my wish.” There’s a pause, like he’s considering how much he should really tell her. “I don’t just talk to animals; I can also feel their pain.”

When a wish is granted, there’s always a chance of a particular drawback accompanying it. Some are more severe than others, and some lucky few have no negative effects at all. Noelle became very familiar with what could await her with flying: insect wings require vigilant cleaning to function properly, bird wings have seasonal molts that can be painful and itchy, levitation could be involuntary, and on and on it goes. Talking to animals was not that unusual a gift, but this side effect was not one she’d heard of.

Felix continues. “And let me tell you, they sure used that to their advantage, even when they didn’t need to… Anyway, some of the staff were pretty annoyed with Claude. I think growing up in a clinic made him particular about things. He likes to be clean, and he’s a picky eater- well, except for marshmallows. Someone must have got frustrated with him and hurt him. He wouldn’t tell me what happened, but I could feel it; was like someone kicked me in the ribs.” His hand covers his left side for a moment.

“I asked around, but no one was gonna tell me anything. A lot of them didn’t want me there and they weren’t afraid to show it. There was a lot of fuss over me being a dropout. Things kept happening with Claude - minor injuries that he wouldn’t explain and no one knew anything about - then one day I caught it.”

Noelle listens carefully as Claude lays his head on her lap.

“He - one of the vets - thought everyone was gone, but I was still there cleaning up a mess a dachshund left and he didn’t see me when I stopped in the doorway. He’d tried to give Claude kibble, but he’d spilled it on the floor. Instead of getting new food, he just kinda swept it up into a bowl, and that? Even I knew that wouldn’t fly for Claude. There was no way he was eating food that had touched the floor.

“He pushed the bowl to Claude, and Claude pushed it back. The vet got mad, threw the bowl, and it hit Claude right in the face. I felt it too - nearly screamed. The vet went to leave, I hid, and when he was gone, I grabbed Claude and we got the hell out of there. That was a couple years ago.” He reaches into a pocket to hand Claude another marshmallow. “Been trying to do the rideshare thing ever since.”

Noelle isn’t sure what to say. What could she say? She can’t imagine anyone willingly being cruel to the creature seated between them, even with her ambivalence towards raccoons. “That’s… pretty awful.”

“Yeah, it was.” Felix taps on the steering wheel in a nervous way. “They weren’t all bad though. Couple of the other vets were decent, and there were always hilarious things happening. One time somebody brought in their boyfriend, Mothman, because they weren’t sure he could go to a regular hospital.”

“Are you serious?” Noelle laughs, grateful that he’s lightened the mood after such a serious story.

Felix grins, “I swear it’s true. Okay, okay, my turn.” He scratches at his chin. “Is this - is this alright? Like, for hearing? I’m not sure what, uh-”

She can tell he’s trying to broach the subject as carefully as possible - most people did. “The car’s quiet, and you’re to my left, so I can hear you fine. Just don’t put the music on if we’re talking.”

“Gotcha. … Anything else I should know?”

Noelle thinks for a moment, hands still continuing to work on the sweater. “When you can, talk to me face to face so I can try to lipread in noisier places. And when I ask you to repeat something, just repeat.”

“Alright.” They’re both silent for a moment, before Felix says, “Your turn.”

She considers the things he’s told her so far. “Why didn’t you finish vet school.”

“Oh, uh, there was just a lot going on and there was - it was just too much at the time. I figured I’d go back someday, but, well, here we are.”

“I didn’t finish school either.”

“No?”

“Nope, I was too preoccupied with this. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do anyway. I was just going for a general studies degree.” She thinks back to how disappointed her aunt was when she quit. There’s so much she’s put on hold for this trip.

Felix clears his throat. “Speaking of, what are we after in Spokane? An ‘auspice?’ That what you called it?”

“Thought you didn’t believe me.”

“I’m not saying I do, but as long as we’re driving there anyway, I’d like to know what mcguffin we’re chasing.”

Noelle sets aside the little yellow sweater. “It’s a tennis racket. I bought it off someone online who collects them. It belonged Samantha Cole, an Augur who was apparently fond of tennis.”

“And how do you know it’s the real deal?”

“I don’t, at least not entirely, but it looks legit and matched up to pictures I’d found of Samantha with it. The woman I talked to was knowledgeable and seemed almost hesitant to sell it. She was afraid of it getting damaged, so she wouldn’t ship it to me. I’m meeting her at a cafe in Spokane to pick it up.”

“Well,” says Felix, readjusting the seat belt fastened across him. “Here’s hoping it’s-”

“What, not a racket racket?” There is only one kind of joke Noelle is partial to: wordplay, especially if it’s terrible.

“You know, you saying that just made this drive twice as long.”

______

But, puns did not extend the drive, and now they sit, waiting at a tiny cafe called Lochness Latte. They chose a table in the back corner away from the noise of the entrance, and watch for Noelle’s contact to arrive.

A waiter comes by; a man with large, leathery bat wings and Noelle becomes laser focused on the tiny menu in her hands. She won’t meet his gaze, even as she orders hot cocoa.

Felix watches her hand the menu to the bat-winged waiter without looking at him, but says nothing. He’s seated across from her where she can clearly see his face.

In addition to the settings on her hearing aid, Noelle relies on a few different observations for conversation when not in a space like an enclosed car. There is lipreading, but sometimes missed words could also be found in body language or certain facial expressions - like how people have a tendency to raise their eyebrows while asking a question.

It’s exactly what Felix is doing now as he asks, "Who are we waiting on?”

“All I know is a username: ‘R-da-1st.’ I guess just watch for someone walking in with a very old tennis racket.”

R-da-1st had been suspicious of her when they first started messaging one another - she didn’t seem to want Samantha Cole’s racket to go to just anyone. Noelle had no interest in tennis, but she knew Augurs, so she earned R-da-1st’s trust in their conversations about Samantha.

“You don’t have a name?”

Noelle shrugs. “She wouldn’t give it. Just someone who collects tennis memorabilia, I think.” This particular auspice had been the easiest to find since R-da-1st just happened to list it online. She wouldn’t get so lucky with the rest. She could have dug more into who was selling it and how it got there, but with with other objects to track down and someone willingly giving this one up, she turned her sights on more difficult pursuits.

“Well,” Felix says, “Guess we’re on racket watch.”

Then the waiting begins.

Their drinks come and Felix and Claude have an argument over whether Claude can have the marshmallows from Noelle’s hot cocoa. They reach a compromise where Claude is ordered some granola with chocolate-free marshmallows on the side. Though, this doesn’t stop the raccoon from eyeing Noelle’s cup as he sits in his own chair with a booster seat.

Noelle and Felix sit and idly browse their phones while nursing warm drinks, glancing at the cafe door each time it opens.

Felix’s phone rings again, suddenly flooding the cafe with Belinda Carlisle - NOPE calling once more. He hastily ignores it.

Noelle’s own phone vibrates with a text message - Aunt Darcy asking how she is. She keeps the conversation simple and mentions nothing of “taking the auspices.” She doesn’t want her to worry or try to convince her to stop.

They watch and wait, but the appointed time for meeting with R-da-1st comes and goes with no one in the cafe carrying in a tennis racket.

Felix yawns. “Where’s your gal, huh?”

“I’m not sure.” Noelle checks her exchange with R-da-1st on her phone. Maybe she’d gotten the time wrong? But no, her contact really had just not shown up. Maybe R-da-1st is late?

She sends another message, but there’s no response.

Meanwhile Felix and Claude bat a balled up napkin back and forth to each other.

She watches a few Quasar videos to bring the unease she’s feeling down. She’s watched and rewatched so many that galaxy print itself feels like a comfort. Where did he get all those shirts? They almost never repeat.

“Quasar?” Felix asks when he hears the voice from her phone.

She nods. “You a fan?”

“For sure.” He smiles.

“You think he’s an Augur?” She was always curious to hear people’s response to that question.

Felix looks surprised for a moment, his eyes widening. Did he not know that was one of the most popular fan theories about Quasar? He scratches at his chin. “I dunno. It’s possible, I guess,” he says and goes back to Claude and their makeshift ball.

____

Now it’s growing dark outside. Noelle resumes crocheting while Felix has leaned back in his chair, head resting against a wall, asleep. Claude’s curled up in a furry gray circle on his chest, nearly blending in with his jacket.

The waiter returns. Noelle sees his wings out of the corner of her eye and her jaw clenches. She feels bad for how rude she must seem - she certainly doesn’t want to offend the waiter - but her reactions feel involuntary.

He says something quietly, obviously trying not to wake her table companion, and Noelle doesn’t catch it. She glances at Felix but he’s still passed out, Claude rising and falling with his breathing.

Noelle lowers the yarn in her hands and forces herself to make eye contact. The waiter seems apprehensive of her and she feels a pang of guilt. Perhaps she had offended him. His name tag reads “Steve.” She focuses on his face and ignores his wings. “What did you say?”

“Are you waiting for someone?” he asks again, his tone uneasy.

“We were supposed to meet someone here a while ago,” she tells him, hands fidgeting with the crochet hook, “but I guess she’s not coming.”

“Mind if I ask who? Maybe it’s a regular.”

“I only know her username.”

Steve moves a hand in a circular motion - an indication to say it anyway.

“R-da-1st?”

Steve’s face suddenly becomes all smiles. “Rita!”

Felix jumps, waking and sending Claude sprawling onto the table. “Is she here?!”

The waiter seems unfazed. He pulls out a chair and sits with them, his features alight with interest. “Rita Cardoso! She always meets her buyers here! Been selling off some of her collection recently. Took that loss pretty hard and quit for awhile I guess. Wonder if she’s done for good.”

“Loss?” Noelle asks.

“Done with what?” Felix says as Claude climbs up to his shoulder.

Steve looks at each of them, and his wings give a perplexed quiver. “Don’t you know who Rita Cardoso is?”

“Rita Cardoso,” Felix repeats. “Something about that sounds familiar.”

Noelle shakes her head.

Steve jumps to his feet, the chair behind him clacking to the ground. To Noelle’s horror his wings spread behind him as he crouches down, bringing two hands together to hold an invisible tennis racket. “Rita Cardoso!” he yells, throwing an imaginary ball in the air and swinging. “The unbeatable first lady of tennis!”

“Right!” Recognition registers on Felix’s face. “That’s where I’ve heard her name before! Rita’s a tennis star!”

“Love-fifteen!” Steve points at Felix.

______

Per Steve’s directions, they’re driving down a long wooded road outside Spokane to the mansion of Rita Cardoso, former tennis star and holder Samantha Cole’s auspice. Noelle feels a little odd about just showing up at this woman’s house, but she lets her pure determination to find the racket shove that aside. Maybe Rita had forgotten? Maybe this would be more convenient for her even?

Felix seems to share her concern. “Hope she don’t mind us turning up on her doorstep.”

“Well,” Noelle says. “We came all the way out here. We can’t not try, right?”

“I suppose, but, uh, there’s probably a reason she’s got her place in the middle of nowhere.”

And probably also a reason why she meets people at the cafe instead.

Noelle frowns. This was definitely not her best plan. “Let’s just see what it looks like and we’ll figure it out from there.”

While they drive, Noelle researches what she can about Rita on her phone. There are many photos of a woman in a white skirt and red top, with a long, full, brown ponytail bouncing along behind her. She’s muscular, tall, and formidable. She looks every bit the tennis prodigy the internet claims her to be. She tries searching several different ways, but can’t find any mention of what Rita’s wish had been.

Rita seemed to have a successful career with win after win, but something happened: She unexpectedly lost to a relative newcomer and disappeared from the tennis world. Many articles wonder when or if she would make her return. Some even questioned where she was now, claiming she was in hiding from her defeat.

The more she reads, the more she hesitates. If what she’s found is any indication, Rita doesn't want company. But what’s the alternative? Lose this auspice? No, she has to at least see what they’re up against.

There’s a break in the trees as Felix turns onto a long driveway.

He slams on the breaks.

They’re stopped in front of a huge mansion, but something is most definitely wrong. It’s covered in something fuzzy and mottled green, white, and gray colors. It’s spread over the entire building like a blanket, long strings and sheets of it stretching to the ground. It’s so well encased that it’s hard to make out what the mansion’s proper shape should be.

“Is that… mold?” Noelle says.

They drive closer, and stop outside the doors. Both get out of the car and gawk at the impossible in front of them. There’s no lights on inside and no one around. It looks forbidding and abandoned. The night air is chilly and the mansion is giving off a mildewy smell. Wind rustles some of the mold coats, making the surface of the building look like it’s undulating.

“Guess that explains why she wasn’t at the cafe,” Felix says as Claude perches on his shoulder, a disgusted look on his furry face.

“Hope she’s home.” Noelle mumbles, still in awe of the mansion.

She ducks back inside the car to grab the pocket watch, afraid to leave the one auspice she has behind.

They walk towards the mansion, inspecting it. Claude gives an anxious chitter.

“What? Nah, we’re not going inside,” Felix tells him. “Right?” He looks at Noelle.

She considers this. Was she willing to go inside? “Let’s start with knocking on the door first.”

They stand on the massive porch, and Noelle looks for any open areas not mold-covered to knock on.

There’s the sound of squealing tires behind them.

A black car is speeding down the driveway, white writing along the side of it. It’s windows are tinted so dark that they can’t see anything inside. It screeches to a halt in front of the mansion right beside Felix’s car.

Now that it’s stopped, Noelle makes out the words “Mold Busters” on the car along with a phone number and the slogan, “If you’ve got mold and mildew, we’ll help you bid it adieu.”

She and Felix exchange glances.

A man emerges dressed completely in black and wearing sunglasses despite the darkness around him. Across the front of his shirt in a curvy font that looks befitting of a tattoo shop is “Moldinator” in white letters. A black cap with the company name tops his head and a bulky utility belt is strapped to him.

“Oh no, no, no, I don’t think so!” he says, stomping his way up the porch to them. “This is my job. Who sent you?”

“Whoa, what are you talking about?” Felix says, holding his hands defensively in front of him.

The man in black points up at the mansion. “You see this? This, is Moldinator’s territory! You hear? I’ve got this.”

“Moldinator?” Felix asks. Claude growls.

The man jabs a finger at his own chest. “That’s right! That’s me, and I’ll be busting this mold on my own. I don’t know who sent you, but you can leave now that a real mold professional has arrived.”

“We don’t want to do anything with the mold,” Noelle tells him, bewildered at what another strange turn this is taking. “We were just looking for the owner.”

Moldinator’s demeanor changes. He crosses his arms and puts a hand to his chin, pensive. “Ah, yeah, the fungus witch. That’s gonna be a time.”

“Fungus witch?” she asks him.

“Lady who owns this mess!” He sounds exasperated with them. “Always knew that wasn’t gonna end well.”

Another exchange of looks between her and Felix.

“Guess that was the wish she got,” Felix shrugs.

Why would a tennis star wish to be a fungus witch? Noelle makes a mental note to add Rita to the data in her folder if she gets a chance. Maybe Moldinator too.

Moldinator pulls out a child’s water gun from the utility belt around his waist. “Well, if you’re not a competitor, I guess you can stay. Might need the help anyway.” He sprays whatever’s in the squirt gun onto the door handle, and an overwhelming chemical smell fills the air on the porch.

The mold covering the handle deteriorates and recedes.

“What, we’re breaking and entering now?” Felix says warily. There’s nervous chitters from Claude as he stands on his shoulders and places his hands on Felix’s head, eyeing Noelle.

Noelle freezes, mind filling with questions. How far was she willing to go for this auspice? Should they really be doing this? But, why had Rita not met them at the cafe? Why does the mansion look like this?

“What if there’s something wrong?” she says, unable to keep the last questions silent. “What if Rita or someone in there needs help?”

Moldinator hitches his pants up by his belt. “And that’s why Moldinator’s here.”

Felix scowls. “But the door might not even be-”

Moldinator turns the handle and the door opens with a loud, ominous creek.

He shines a light inside, looking around and making a “hmmm” noise, before fishing in one of the many pockets of the belt. He takes out three surgical masks, one black and two white. He hands the white ones to each of them, saving the black one for himself. “Just in case,” he says placing the mask over his nose and mouth. “Spores.” He walks cautiously inside.

Noelle sighs, knowing the masks will make lipreading impossible. She stares after Moldinator, hesitating. This auspice was supposed to be so easy to get and now? Now she’s facing a moldy mansion and a fungus witch. She thinks about how close her 25th birthday is; it’s like a ticking time bomb. She’s got to try. Noelle turns to Felix, pulling her mask onto her face, careful not to disrupt the hearing aid. “I’m going in.”

Felix frowns at the mask in his hand, and Noelle wonders if it reminds him of his time at the vet clinic.

“You don’t - you don’t have to go,” she tells him.

He looks up at her and is silent, thinking. Then he starts to put the strings of the mask over his ears. “Eh, what’s a little mold, right?”

Noelle gives him an appreciative smile, though the mask hides it.

Claude’s grip increases around Felix’s head. Felix pries at his paws, trying to loosen them. “He doesn’t wanna touch the mold.”

“That makes two of us,” Noelle says gingerly stepping over the threshold.

They follow Moldinator inside the fungus infested home.

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#chapter 2 #chapter two

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thenadialbright-blog · 7 years

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chatzy | thanks, utah

date: 06/05/2017 characters: Brent, Nadia, and Avery description: The Ares children experience a slightly very unfortunate hiccup on their quest.

Nadia pushes her hat out of her eyes, failing at her attempts to nap, and sits up. "Please tell me we're out of Wyoming by now."

Avery "You asked that like 20 minutes ago, it's still a no," she replied, sending a quick text back to Mikey on her phone before going back to her drawing she was working on.

Nadia mutters, "I hate Wyoming.”

Brent squinted past the sunlight at the sign ahead. "One more hour. I think."

Avery "You know you guys didn't have to do this," Avery said, probably for the hundredth time since the trip began. "I would've bit the bullet and done it."

Brent "I would've never let you go on your own," Brent said, looking at her through the rearview mirror. "You're stuck with me no matter what."

Nadia waves her hand, "Ditto."

Avery sighed. "Why the hell did I have to go? Was that what it was like with your quest?" she questioned Brent.

Brent shrugs. "Ares said he picked the two of us specifically, but he probably just did that because he knew we were on bad terms and he thought it would be fun, or whatever." He glances back to his sister. "I bet anything he was just being an asshole because he felt like it. Don't think too hard about it. We'll be done soon enough."

Nadia "He just likes picking on all of us." Her next words are purposely a little louder than need be, as if he could hear, "Because he's an asshole."

Avery "I don't know what going on a quest means, does it mean it's getting bad again or it's just Ares being an asshole," she said.

Nadia "Technically they're a thing that's supposed to happen often. So it doesn't mean anything's getting bad. They're just annoying."

Avery sighed and went back to her drawing. "Well, it sucks."

Brent "It does," he said, turning up the radio. He drives in relative silence for a while, eventually making it into Utah. "We're close to where Wyatt and I crashed," he mused, looking at a directional for the Great Salt Lake "We can stop and get some food in Salt Lake, if you two want."

Avery "As long as there's something gluten free, I'm in," she replied.

Nadia "As long as you don't drive us into the lake, I'm also in." She smiles.

Brent rolls his eyes, cracking a small smile. "I think I can make that happen," he said, pulling off the highway.

Avery "Can we take a road trip one of these days, non-God related?" Avery asked, popping her head in between the seats. "We could get Wyatt and Mikey and Macey and Jacob and Rae in on it too. Staring at that package fuckin' bums me out and totally ruins this whole driving across the country vibe. I never got a real road trip in my life, I want that."

Nadia thinks about it. "I think Macey and Rae would like, bicker the entire time, but besides that it could be fun?"

Brent "I don't think they'd...." He pauses. "Well... You're right. It sounds fun, though. Maybe the three of us can take a slightly more scenic way back."

Avery "Yeah, but it's not like we'll leave them in a room alone, oh my Gods, would Macey kill me if I left her in a room alone with Rae?" Avery smiled jokingly. "But taking the more scenic way back sounds nice, some what sibling road trip, that sounds okay I guess."

Nadia "I mean? I don't think she'd kill you, they'd just probably see who could out-annoy the other?" She nodded along with Brent's idea, "I'm cool with the scenic route back, too."

Brent "Great. Anything is better than driving through cornfields for twelve hours."

Nadia "TRUE."

Avery "I feel like I'm in like that Children of the Corn movie. Granted I've never seen that movie, I'm just guessing it's a scary movie about children in a cornfield."

Brent drives through the city for a bit until he finds someplace promising. He parks and immediately steps out of the car, stretching.

Nadia stretches her arms over her head and hops out of the car, turning her baseball hat around so she can see. "So, this is what Utah looks like."

Avery got out from the car, stretching a little also before throwing her hair up in a messy bun. "You know, I thought it would look different than this."

Brent laughs as he walks to the restaurant. "What were you expecting?"

Avery "I thought it was going to be more dull," she replied with a shrug.

Nadia squints at the restaurant and the parking lot, "Um, is this place even open? We'r like the only car here..." She jogs ahead of them to check the hours listed on the door.

Brent is about to follow Nadia when he hears something behind him. He turns but sees nothing, but his hand hovers to the hidden sword in his pocket as he checks the other side of the car.

Avery "It's like 4pm," she says. "What restaurant closes that early?"

Brent doesn't find anything on the other side of the van, either. He hesitates, then starts to walk back around when a blinding pain spreads from his abdomen through his entire body. He gasps and crumples to the ground, stars in his eyes.

Nadia whips around when she hears a thud and sprints back over to Brent, "What happened?"

Avery is closest to Brent, and she barely has enough time to process a thought before she's running toward him. Her hand on a dagger. "Brent, what's wrong?"

Brent grabs one of their sleeves and holds on tightly, squeezing his eyes shut. He tries to say something but only succeeds in making a pained noise as he writhes on the ground.

Avery gripped her dagger a little harder, surveying around them, taking deep breaths as she walks a few steps from Brent, her heart pounding.

Nadia reaches down and puts a hand on his arm, "Avery, help me sit him up."

Avery returns to Brent and helps her sister with him, biting her lip anxiously. "What's the hell is happening?"

Nadia "I don't know, but I'm guessing something bad. Probably monster related. Be ready."

Brent goes still as the pain suddenly subsides, gulping for air. "Fuck," he whispered, pushing himself up. "Fuck."

Avery is there to help Brent. "Are you okay?" she questioned, quietly, her dagger still in hand.

Felix appears out of thin air behind the three. "Hiii," he chimes, waving his hand. He grabs Brent by the shoulders, and in the same instant, disappears with him. The car, at the same time, vanishes, leaving Nadia and Avery alone.

Nadia has no idea what just happened and spins around approximately three times in shock.

Avery eyes widened. "What the fuck just happened?" she asked letting out a shaky breath. "Was that just...? Am I having a nightmare?"

Nadia stares where the car was, as if it's gonna reappear somehow. When it doesn't she presses a hand to her forehead, "Fuck! Fuck, fuck." She pulls her phone out of her pocket, "I'm calling camp right now."

Avery’s hands shake, staring at the spot where Brent was sitting. She takes out her phone, fumbling with it, tears welling up in her eyes trying to attempt to call Brent, hoping somehow that would magically make him show up. "He took him, He took Brent, Nadia," she rambled out, trying to type in the right number on her phone. "This can't be happening. What are we going to do? Shit, this is my fault, I should've went on this stupid thing alone."

Nadia walks over to Avery and puts her hands on her shoulders, taking in a deep breath, "Okay, Aves, I need you to stay calm. The first rule of a quest is to stay cool, even during shit like this. We're gonna call Chiron and get back to camp as soon as possible. And then we're gonna go rescue Brent."

Avery "How the fuck are we going to get back, the fucking car is gone," she said, not staying calm, she could stay calm but the moment her siblings were in trouble was when Avery lost it. "Half our weapons were in there, the package was in there, our things were in there."

Nadia does her best to keep her chill and not snap. She pulls her phone from her pocket and gently lets go of Avery's shoulders, "We're demigods, Chiron has connections exactly for this kind of an emergency. Let’s just call camp, and then head to a store and see what we can do about supplies."

Avery nodded slightly, taking a hard gulp. "Okay, okay," she agreed, looking from Nadia to the spot where the car and her brother once was, before looking at her phone, hoping this was just a horrible another nightmare like the ones she used to get after the war ended and she'd wake up soon enough to find everyone safe.

Nadia gives her a little smile. "Good, I'm gonna call camp. Do you wanna like, Google nearby stores around here?"

Avery nodded. "Sure," she responded quietly, doing as she was told by Nadia, struggling to type it in her phone with trembling hands.

#prophschatzy #c: brent #c: avery

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