Tumgik
#kidding but like ugh why
theoldkyokodied · 1 year
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One wedding and three funerals
Background paintings under the cut
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#tomgreg#succession#tom wambsgans#greg hirsch#shiv roy#roman roy#kendall roy#yeah no im not tagging everyone thats too much#this is me going 'how much implications themes and symbolism can i fit in one painting'#yes i gave rose shivs haircolor. if we ever find out how she looks like and its not like this im just gonna pass away i guess#but yeah i hope yall connect the dots#i put waaay too much thought and work into this. i was googling pictures of all the actors as kids just for reference (sigh)#honestly kinda wanted to make tom and greg link pinkies as like. a pinkie promise. but that was too hard to draw in this angle#at least not without obstructing the view of the ring which is important to see so ya#my fave is actually the tomshiv wedding pic i went off with that. i love them... they should have run away to become sheep farmers fr fr#anyway im so glad im done with this UGH!! finally i can draw smth else without being like oh noooo i need to finish this#i see a lot of you wondering why there is no portrait of logan but one of ewan#it's bc the placement of the painting represent their standing. logans portray would not hang next to the stairs#his present portrait hangs at the end of it. all the way up at the top. alone and withering away#basically the picture you see underneath ewan to the right? its where toms parents would be. the right side of the wall is tom and gregs#and the left one is the roy siblings theirs. since they grew up rich rich. and tom and greg didn't#but ya thats why ewan hangs here and logan does not :)
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drdemonprince · 3 months
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people who are obsessed with passing are gonna be the death of our community i swear
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rithmeres · 3 months
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bait / hook / line / sinker
#the hunger games#finnick odair#thg#the hunger games fanart#this was a very very weird painting for me.#like i have painted decapitated heads and severed arms and shattered ribs and guts falling out and gallons of blood#and not once have i ever looked up from my work and been disgusted or disturbed by what i’ve painted#but the first day i was working on this one i looked at it and just felt so sick i had to get up and take a shower to get away from it#HE WAS 14 WTF WTF WTF WTF#that is a baby. that is a little kid. turned into a killer and paraded around like a novelty and used like a toy.#but on the whole i am very satisfied with this propaganda piece it's just as beautiful and unsettling as i wanted it to be#ugh my mind. nothing in the composition is overt but all the implications are there#not just the capitol's sexualization and brutalization of children but the fetishization of the districts' labor as well#as my good friend and mutual theworldiswhispering said.#'the hard labor you do is not safe from being romanticized by the people who benefit from it at your expense'#and i think about that every day#wherefore art thou#thg reread#why he so smooth.. just like a shark#[katniss voice] mfs took all my body hair cant have shit in the capitol#i just know tumblr's gonna crunch the quality of these images but i worked on a canvas 4 times larger than the usual size#so a lot of the detail gets lost when i post it. oh well. click for quality i guess#his expression changes when you're far away#far away he looks kind of vacant#close up he's smiling. like the photographer wanted a specific cocky emotion from him and it was there#but when you zoom out there's just a thousand yard stare#i did think about turning these into prints or actual posters but um. i don't think i should do that
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kittyandco · 2 months
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does anyone else get so upset when you think about all the things that happened to your f/o... all the things they went through? all the things they haven't healed from? the pain that they may still be enduring? how you can do your best to help them but you can't protect them from everything. so you just love them the ways they needed before, how they deserved. and you see them happy because they finally accept, at least in some ways, that they do deserve it. they deserve love like all beings do
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nounaarts · 9 months
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"Macaque, you're you! The real you!"
"The only me!"
So let it be known I love Sonicc >:)
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tobias-hankel · 9 months
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Unsub: I'm going to kill him!
Spencer: Not again 🙄
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alicesbread · 2 months
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I really need to write a fic where Glinda sees Dorothy and goes "yup. You're my child now." And then after a torturing slowburn her and the wicked witch get together so Dorothy has aunt Em and Uncle Henry at home, and whenever she goes to Oz she has her witch lesbian moms waiting for her.
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Normal
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That's not who he might like the problem here, Hoagie...
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frobby · 2 months
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thinking about how xanxus's mom named him xanxus cuz it has X for vongola 10th...... girl idk how to tell you this but XX is 20
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bugeyedfreaks · 4 months
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I have acquired the official story about the OTP of OTPs and you can read it HERE! 😆 The book is honestly very wholesome and cute, for some reason they call Junior "Tiny," and the story is filled with iconic sisterly sass and teasing. It's adorable, I love it.
Also...
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get urself a man with one brain cell that only thinks about u 😩
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just-bendy · 7 months
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[ The original post I wanted to make with the screenshots. ]
(( I was informed that I'm being impersonated on Discord.
Thanks to @discobowser for sharing these screenshots with me.
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This is NOT me. This is a shameless impersonator and art thief. I would never join discords and tell people that I own just-bendy ( or talk like that... "bet" ... what?? and who the hell is king kirbo ) And I don't make alt accounts, what would I need that for? I'm still using the one I made back in 2017, and I wouldn't make one especially just for just-bendy.
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If you see this user or any user impersonating me in a server, just ban them, no need to harass or attack. I am currently not in any active servers, or any Bendy ones, and I don't plan on joining any, so if anyone starts saying that they are the "real just-bendy" then please know that is a lie. If I could report this person, then I would, but I'm not sure how to do that. Thanks for reading. ))
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s3curitybotvess · 4 months
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Kid Ritz fanart lol
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anti-spop · 4 months
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this might sound harsh but honestly i think nate (and i guess crew-ra overall) is completely irresponsible for reinforcing the idea that abuse and bullying are okay because "they hit you because they like you". in a FUCKING KIDS SHOW. spop is teaching wrong ideas about romance and friendship to younger audiences, which is so infuriating because they still make it clear that shadow weaver is bad (which is correct) but they don't apply the same thing to catra who does similar if not worse things than SW does.
like i bet this show would've been a lot more harmful if i watched it when i was much younger. it would make me believe that abuse and bullying are okay because my abusers/bullies have tragic backstories that automatically excuse them, so i would be the one in the wrong.
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yugiohz · 6 months
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this is the gay ninja who unwound his body to fix bakugo’s petty heart I cannot believe this happened my silly academia is well and alive
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starwarsshippings · 7 months
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sometimes i wish ahsoka's togruta qualities weren't toned down. like imagine her with sharp teeth and all she eats is raw meet and she has long sharp nails and black eyes (similar to shaak ti in the pt)
instead she's cute and ''kid friendly'' like i want to see her crawling up the walls at 3am and hissing at strangers and all sorts of crazy shit
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ikemenomegas · 1 year
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in light of gojo's unsealing, ive thought about diff cute scenarios
gojo being the type of person to get his mate's phone and snap hundreds of pictures of his face
this would probably never happen given gojo's privacy when it comes to his marriage but in a different world i can see this happening Gojo naming his alpha as "mochi seller' on his phone and Itadori seeing the message pop out from the lock screen and accidentally somewhat outing gojo's rs when he asks him in front of the other students why the mochi seller sent an ily message
the tender moments where gojo lets his infinity down or lets his alpha inside his infinity and he gets to relish in the warmth of their skin
the sappy things gojo's alpha has to sometimes do whenever gojo gets too rowdy and they need to placate him for whatever reason (re: alpha reading a map together with nanami scenario)
gojo sending his alpha a picture of two rocks by the sidewalk with the caption: 'us'
gojo asking his alpha if they would still love him if he was a worm and the alpha saying: "no<33"
Awww! These were really cute anon! Very happy ending which I feel like we're going to need a lot of in the coming weeks...
(Also I ran with it but why is their name "mochi seller" haha)
[Ao3 link for those who prefer chapters]
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⬖ Photomaton
"Device storage insufficient, please move or delete files to make room?" you read, nonplussed.
Nobara sighed. "Sensei, I showed you how to do that weeks ago."
"I did do it." You frowned, opening up your files. Why were there so many pictures...
Nobara rolled her eyes at you and beat a hasty retreat when your hand went to your mouth as your face went warm.
There were rows and rows of photos, none of which you had taken.
Most of them were selfies, but some of them were obviously the result of Satoru propping the phone up and attempting to pose for the camera.
He must have been swiping your phone every time you left it sitting out or went to sleep. He didn't rest much, but there were so many, more probably than you'd been able to take in the last five years.
There wasn't much thought for such things when you only saw one another a handful of days every month. The focus had gone to managing the present, not on taking pictures. You'd only really thought to regret it after that terrible Halloween, when you worried you'd never see him again.
Some of the photos framed Satoru inside one of your homes. Others were almost ugly shots, taken way too close, or blurred with motion artifact. There were pictures of him haloed in the night glow of streetlights or washed out in the halogen light of a konbini. There were those made grainy with low light and some that took your breath away because he was nice looking.
Furtively, you looked up but were alone and you silently thanked your student's exasperated impatience. A few of the photos showed just too much skin to be exactly proper.
You thumbed down. The pictures were a story all their own revealing some of what Satoru did when alone and you savored the honesty. You had to keep apart from one another for so long.
The last thing in the camera roll was a video.
It opened with the shuffling sounds and the wobbling display of someone walking. Satoru wound around furniture in the darkened interior of your apartment.
"I'm home. You're asleep right now," he said lowly, "probably won't be later. I don't know how most people can sleep so much." He spoke half to himself, the deep night laying over his words like velvet.
There was the sound of the door to the little balcony opening and then the faint tinkle of the glass bells hanging from the eaves.
"Must be nice," he mused, "you get to miss a lot."
The image on the screen steadied as he rested your phone on the rail. The familiar view of the city resolved as faint golden starbursts of light. The rustling of Satoru's clothing faded until all you could hear was the faint rush of night wind and his breathing.
The video went on for over a quarter of an hour. You scrolled your fingers across the screen. He didn't move, the picture stayed the same. You leaned against a wall and listened to the last few moments, your heartbeat low and slow, your breath in sync with his from some time both here and long ago.
Satoru spoke, amused over the night-sounds:
"Don't delete this. I'll know."
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⬖ Daifuku
"Good job," Gojo congratulated his dust-stained students as the veil fell.
Maki and Toge glared while Yuuji gave him a tired thumbs up from where he was laying on the ground.
"Dinner is on me tonight." Gojo ignored their halfhearted grumbling. "Decide where you want to go."
He anticipated a larger than normal ding to his wallet, but they'd earned it (and it wasn't as though he couldn't afford it). Beating this curse was no minor feat and it had been a particularly crafty one, which was why Gojo had gone with them just in case.
The students made noises of acknowledgement with varying levels of anticipation, but to no one's surprise, Yuuji was the first to roll over and dig around for his phone.
He tapped the screen and groaned.
"Sensei, mine's dead. Can I use yours?"
Gojo unlocked it and passed it over without a thought. He wasn't particularly hungry, the kids could figure this out without his interference for once.
"Um, Gojo-sensei?"
"Hm?"
"Why is a "mochi seller" reminding you to stop at the pharmacy and sending you heart emojis?"
With uncanny synchrony, Maki and Toge's heads turned to look at their teacher.
The phone in Yuuji's hand buzzed faintly.
"I love you?" he read, sounding alarmed.
Toge's eyes went a bit wide but a grin that curled a bit too much at the edges and showed teeth took over Maki's face.
"Text back," she said, scrambling to her feet.
With all her quickness, she swooped in and snatched the phone when Yuuji hesitated.
The phone buzzed once more.
"I'll be home by 8:30, probably," she read.
Gojo took advantage of Maki's triumphant look to slip the device from her grip.
"I knew it!" she pointed at him. "I knew you were hiding something."
"Grown ups hide lots of things," he replied blithely. He was confident none of the students could tell that moment had been more like someone walking over his grave.
It was not as though he intended to hide his relationship with you. Hide implied shame, concealment on the other hand had been security and was harder to let go of. There would come a moment when the kids prised the truth from him. He was not about to have that moment with his kids now, or hopefully ever, because they accidentally read his texts out loud.
Maki reached for his phone and he easily tipped out of her way, walking off and heading towards a neighborhood he knew (and the students did not) had a lot of very good restaurants.
He was silently very thankful when the implied threat of no food at all distracted the students. Or at least had Yuuji barreling past Maki and kindly dropping the matter in favor of promising to "only look at the map this time, was there a good katsudon place nearby?"
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⬖ Goose Down
Satoru spotted you hunched over a rail with your umbrella open overhead, held in the crook of your elbow.
He could tell from the set of your shoulders that the summer sun was getting to you, despite the cursed tool taking a majority of the pressure off.
Your energy was butter yellow and burnt red and lithium pink, mixing slowly around your body as you slowly cycled power into the umbrella and the short sword held loosely in your hands.
Satoru ducked around a corner and took a peak at your face. Your eyes were closed.
Smirking quietly to himself, he crept around, Infinity a barrier between himself and the world. For just a little longer...
You jumped when he dropped it, nearly dropping your sword and automatically holding the umbrella high enough for him to fit under it.
"Hah-"
"Speechless?"
You gaped at him, mouth hanging open.
He nodded as if you'd just confirmed it. "This is what they don't tell you about marriage. Making someone's heart race is important even after the wedding. We'll probably be together forever at this rate."
You mouth closed and then went a little wobbly.
"It's hot," you finally said, miserably. "And it's too sunny."
He couldn't hold back his laughter as he stepped closer and folded himself around you. Your scent tingled pleasantly in his nose and your skin was warm from both heat and light, like a sun-warmed blanket.
"Oh," you said faintly, "you're cool," and you all but melted against him.
"You could just go inside," Satoru said. "I sent the students off on an adventure. We wouldn't be bothered."
"That sounds nice," you murmured, but didn't make any move away from him.
He didn't either. He didn't feel much like letting go yet.
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⬖ Orange Kazoo
Sometimes, you reminded yourself through your already strained patience, Satoru just needed to be left alone to make noise.
For a moment, you considered begging him for just a little peace, but you knew he was doing this for your benefit. Shibata Kin was a difficult pill to swallow.
"I never expected anyone to send Six Eyes to join us."
It was the weakest and most recent of Shibata's barbs. The oily way he said it and the implication that anyone would dare to subordinate Satoru to this boot licker rankled.
Satoru crinkled the package extra loud on a bit of melon bread and smiled. "I was in the neighborhood."
He took a bite, chewed and swallowed while you flipped through the mission report on a clipboard.
You sighed, exhaling your worry, and handed it back. "Let's go then. It looks like all the victims disappeared from the same place so we should start there."
That place was a building that straddled a moderately busy subway station and stacked part of a shopping mall, a cluster of private clinics, and a cram school all on top of each other.
Satoru trailed behind through the store, stopping at kiosks and chatting with saleswomen, picking up and putting down objects.
You could feel Shibata's irritation transform into something far less internal as he turned to you.
"He's like a child," he remarked coolly. "Sure we shouldn't just ditch him? The curse doesn't sound that hard to deal with since I've got you."
When you ignored him, he kept talking.
"He shouldn't even be here," the man drawled.
You shrugged. "Well he is."
Shibata sourly appeared to swallow whatever else he wanted to say. You turned around to see where Satoru had gone to. The thought of being stuck with the bitter other sorcerer was worse than waiting for them to pick their bickering back up.
He waved a stuffed cat in sunglasses at you and nodded eager agreement when you pointed out a cute little sparrow holding an umbrella on a shelf behind him. Sometimes, it was best to just humor Satoru and play along.
When you turned back, Shibata Kin was gone.
Since you were all concealing your residuals from the curse you expected was in the building, you had no idea where he went.
You looked over your shoulder. Satoru was gone too.
Well.
You tapped your fingers over your pocket and then decided to let them go. Satoru always seemed to know where to find you and Shibata had called you here as backup. You should probably go kill what you were looking for before it nibbled on him.
Many fewer curses than you expected lingered in the shopping mall. They were bizarre places with as many secret passageways as an ancient castle. Away from the popular shops and crowds, it quickly grew quiet and the bright gleam of displays gave way to more neglected halls.
On your way, you passed a small bank of capsule machines. You crouched down, and smiled faintly to yourself. Abandoned in the furthest reach of the shopping mall, almost near to where a service entrance lead to another stretch of winding halls and tunnels, the items here were both ancient (by city standards) and ridiculous.
Packages of candy that still held their shine but were likely far past their expiration date sat beside tiny figurines of a frog-shaped toddler in a little red hat. You grimaced back at those and moved on.
Near the end of the row was a machine that sold tiny musical instruments, plastic and paper and probably terrible sounding, but it wasn't expired food or frog children. You stuck a few coins into the slot and turned the dial.
An acid green ball spat out from the slot.
You picked at the latches on its side while you found your way further and further into the little used corridors.
There was a flash of something, like a burst of camera illumination from behind a door on your right.
You slipped through it, pulling your blade free from its sheath at the small of your back, and emerged into a tunnel that looked to be connecting to the nearby subway station. Not far ahead, the darkened path split into two.
You flipped the sword around so its blunt edge rested against your forearm and sprinted, dashing across the intersection.
A blur of motion came at you. As it grazed by, you snatched at that movement and sprang into the air, high enough to crouch on the ceiling of the tunnel.
The curse was a near perfect twin of the one a little ways down the way the attack had come, which should have maybe been your first hint. The one that had come at you was grinning, its face a rictus mockery of a theater mask.
They both sat, crouched like toads. You feinted toward the one that had come towards you, and at the last minute flew down to the other, its mouth bent in a painted looking frown.
It backed up in surprise, but not far enough and your blade nicked through the face, which was hard like dense wood. The air around your other hand shimmered in heat, as you struck for the thing's cavernous eyes.
It emitted a furious, scolding gurgle that almost reminded you of some of the window teachers from high school, and swallowed the burst of heat before it could crackled around it into full flame.
You hardly had time to reinforce your body with cursed energy before you were blasted from two directions, letting the momentum carry you and trying to wrap the more opposing forces and the roaring sound of displaced air into your own cursed energy. But something about it resisted you, and you were unable to absorb as much of the attack as you usually would.
A racking shiver radiated through your body right before you were caught by a broad hand on your back.
"Hi," Satoru said sweetly.
"Hi," you panted, automatic, eyes still fixed on the curse.
"What's going on?"
You looked up at him with incredulity.
Hoisted in his other arm was the limp body of your other companion.
Satoru's head cocked to the side, curious as he looked at the curse.
"I don't know yet. I hit it and then--" the mask of the frowning curse was ash blasted and the notch from your first strike still there, but it was not as damaged as expected.
You regained your footing and stood upright.
"If I give it another go I think I can figure it out."
He tilted his head.
You sized up the two curses waiting outside the reach of Satoru's infinity.
"Oh." You reached into your pocket and handed him the green orb.
"What's this?"
"Dunno," you said with a faint smile. "I got it for you."
"Aww, you shouldn't have."
Maybe not. Satoru thinks gachapon are funny, you should show him the line of machines if you get out of here the same way you come in, then he can choose something himself. You still have a few coins on you.
You flew at the grinning curse, both hands on the hilt of your blade, cursed energy flashing into a point a good six inches out from where the metal itself ended.
You held, crystalizing your own movement for a moment and stared deep into the thing's empty eyes.
It twitched, and then its arm moved and you slashed downward, intending to cleave the limb away.
The blade hit, you knew it did. You were able to dodge the attack you anticipated from the smiling curse. The frowning curse in front of you struck back, almost at the same time.
You pulled on some of the reserved momentum you'd held back in your initial strike and barely twisted out of the way.
You lifted the gleeful cackles of the twinned curses from the air and tried to twist them into a crackling rope of flame to surround the grinning one again. As you had expected, the damage did not seem to completely take and you were forced to duck when a bolt of heat tried to sear your back, culminating in another blast that shook the tunnel and thew you once more.
"That's enough."
Satoru appeared at your side again, pulling you back behind the shield of his power when the curse's retaliation threatened to cut through you.
"This one's a bad match for your technique," he murmured thoughtfully.
"Is it reflecting through the faces?" you asked, catching your breath.
He hummed.
Absently, you realized you could scent the sharp, fresh smell of citrus on his breath - the smell of the biting orange flavored candy you'd shared with him on the train ride here.
"If it reflects yours too--" you trailed off. What you did was firmly in the realm of the "real" and Satoru's abilities were not. If this curse were to reflect back blue, or red, or heaven forbid purple... well you'd never seen or asked up until if Satoru could stop his own techniques. It seemed a tactical oversight in this moment.
Satoru stepped forward.
"Stabilize him," he instructed flatly. He'd tossed Shibata Kin's still body where he had been standing barely a minute before.
The curses had moved closer and pressed together, beginning to meld into one another before your eyes. The damage you had already done was fading further.
You knelt at Shibata's side, shaking back your sleeves. "You know this is going to poison him."
You carefully set two fingers underneath his right collarbone, and three a few ribs below his heart on the left and focused in on the flickers of electricity that powered a human body.
"Oh well." Satoru's grin was a baring of teeth. "He'll get over it better than being dead."
You could sense the arrhythmic flutter of Kin's heart, like the popping scatter of an overloaded lamp, like a fractured version of that flash you had sensed earlier.
"You know he was trying to set you up right?" Satoru asked as he batted away an experimental chunk of rubble the curse tossed his way with a flick of his wrist. The stone was aimed right for the face of the smiling curse and even as it hit, it seemed to bounce back, hitting Satoru's shield and falling to the ground.
You sparked a bit of your energy to pure electricity, sending it jumping from one side of Shibata Kin's chest to the other.
"It crossed my mind," you admitted, murmuring as you concentrated. "But I didn't pursue the thought."
Satoru snorted. Yes, alright it was more likely you'd decided thinking about it too hard was going to distract you from the mission but you were here anyway.
You counted the pulse of electricity between your fingers to your own heartbeat until Kin's matched, or at least matched better than before.
When you pulled your hands away, Satoru cracked his knuckles. It looked like he was going to go in for physical attacks.
"You might need to manage the tunnel," he said.
Yet another reason this was a bad match up, not just for you but for him. Satoru did best in wide open spaces where he had room to move and didn't need to worry too much about collateral damage. Dropping a ton of rock on your heads and collapsing the buildings above sounded like a thing that could happen.
You had barely pressed your hands to the ground when Satoru was off like a shot.
The curse wasn't that strong - a high end second grade or low level first grade at best given that it wasn't itself attacking to provoke a response - but it split into those two halves of itself and reformed again as needed to minimize the impacts Satoru rained upon it or flank him.
Limitless lay against his skin between each strike so he remained unmarked, but the cavernous space still rocked with noise and dust shook from the gaps between tiles. You steadied it best you could, absorbing the oscillations and dampening the noise.
It did not take long for the frowning curse to realize what you were doing and send the smiling one racing for you. With one hand on the ground and one on your sword, brimming with unspent potential, you raised the point.
"Nah ah." This seemed at once to you and the monster charging your way. Satoru appeared in its path and bodily kicked it away.
It did not take long after for the twinned curses to be dispatched. Although the only reason you weren't holding your breath is because you were gritting your teeth with the effort of holding the ground together and trying not to shake apart yourself.
Satoru in motion, in a fight, particularly when physical constraint demanded more of his ingenuity, was always a sight to behold.
He came back to you looking unfairly dewy post exertion, with his hair in a sort of windswept disarray, the fabric around his shoulders bunched up. He shrugged out the wrinkles and dusted off his hands.
Your briefly pressed a hand to his knee after you steadied the last tremor from the ground.
"Thank you."
Satoru tapped his forefinger twice against your temple as he walked by. "A feedback loop between you and that thing would have been very messy."
You stood up, swaying slightly.
Even though Satoru would have happily dragged Shibata to the exit point, you insisted on tugging him upright and at least moving him through the air to a place where the three of you could safely rest and call a car.
You had settled him against a wall and were calling Akari when he finally stirred.
"What happened?" Shibata asked weakly.
You turned around to look at him and from Shibata Kin's tepid expression and the sound of shifting cloth behind you, you assumed Satoru must have copied your movement.
Still, you gave him a faint smile and couched down beside him. He didn't have the strength to move away as you grabbed his wrist and felt his pulse. It was thready, but he'd be good enough to get the rest of the way above ground until an actual doctor could take a look at hime.
"We're all alive," you explained unnecessarily.
Shibata Kin's eyes moved from your face to over your shoulder. Sweat beaded his brow and upper lip.
From behind you came a buzzing hum, somewhat approximating a sad tuba. Waa wa wa waaaaaaaa, it trailed off.
Satoru had a the wide end of a grape purple kazoo held between his teeth, his sunglasses already exchanged for the bandages he'd had wrapped around his eyes.
Only just in time, you ducked your face into your shoulder and hid a smile.
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⬖ Pet rock
You were walking down some quiet residential street, trying to match the map to the trail of the curse you were tracking. It was not very intelligent, but it had a pernicious little ability to draw other curses to it under the banner of a powerful command. You'd been swatting third and fourth grades out of the air as you chased it, trying to wear down its arsenal.
It wasn't a terribly good strategy however and the thing had been winding its way through side streets to buy time. If you could get in closer, you could chop away at more of its train of screaming fears, maybe get a head start on the main peril. Thus the attempt at navigating and figuring out its destination so you could cut it off.
At least Hirano-san would be happy. Maybe. Culling curses required balance; they were their own little ecosystem. As long as the things aren't eating anyone, a certain amount of apex predators in an area could be a deterrent, like the old practice of putting powerful relics out like roach traps. Have the inevitable critters fight and eat one another rather than their human hosts.
A notification popped up over the map, and then another after it.
You felt your shoulders drop as you recentered yourself with a faint smile.
At your hotel later that night, you recalled that Satoru had sent you a message. You fell onto the bed, wrapped up in the hotel bathrobe.
It was... nice, knowing that someone was waiting at home for you. Or if not at home, he was still busy as ever, out there in the world somewhere, thinking of you. Weirdly normal.
The message was a picture. You blinked up at it. Two little rocks and a flower growing out of a crack in the pavement to shade over them.
>> ?
Almost immediately you saw three dots appear.
<< it's us!
Is it? you thought skeptically, looking at the picture again.
The dots again.
<< You don't think so :(?
Your phone was buzzing in your hand before you had even a moment to answer.
It startled you enough to drop the phone.
Owww
"You took so long to answer. This is photography, are you discouraging my new passion? It could go on a greeting card."
The word salad was meaningless and silly, weightless.
"I dropped you on my nose," you said, eyes closed as you rubbed the spot the corner of your case had hit.
"Were you that surprised by it?"
A pause.
"It's cute." The notion of it and the fact that he'd sent it to you was cute.
"It is cute right?" His voice was bright but not overly loud through the phone, for which you were grateful, already settling into warmth. "The flower is poisonous too."
You curled up on your side and held the phone close. Maybe he'd get lucky and you would find something cute to send back to him.
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⬖ Puddle jumping
a/n: You have no idea how much googling I had to do to figure out what the prompt meant. I am not on the tick-tock app lol or, I've found, a fan of this meme... the implication that girlfriends ask useless questions as a rule seems sort of meh. So I mostly kept to my original response to this which was "i don't know what that is and honestly probably neither does alpha"
Satoru was herding you down the sidewalk, occasionally listing one way or the other to get you out of the way of other pedestrians. Sometimes he did it for the simple fascination of how you swayed along by him like you were on a tether. Even while you eyes were all but fixed skyward, you stayed roughly the same distance from him.
It was the first day of sun after days of rain and also one of the first days he had off with you in so many apart. He had been too restless the day before, back off a bad mission that had more to do with the desperate unpredictability of people than the intrinsic darkness of curses. You had not resisted him when he drew you out, stifled by the low clouds and humidity and longing for openness. Even with Infinity blocking the rain, it had felt like being closed in again.
Relieved of their burden, the clouds had gone from iron grey to diaphanous white and pealed up and away in swaths like billowing curtains. This is what you were watching - their retreat from the earth. They had come so low they wrapped around skyscrapers and telephone poles on their back to their usual place.
Satoru watched the drowned earth. You had cut through a tree lined walk. The rich soil was churned and muddy and the long bodies of worms that had been washed out or crawled up were strewn about.
Your and Satoru's steps made no mark as he stretched Infinity over and around the two of you. Neither of you tread upon those blind, waterlogged creatures.
Satoru stepped behind you to allow a cluster of high schoolers to pass and hid a faint wrinkle of his nose as they squealed and ran by, realizing they were stepping on some of the remains.
Your umbrella was folded and carried at your side, and you tilted your head back at him, looking a little sun-drunk. He smiled at you. He could see the reflection of the sky in your gaze.
He adopted a pout, snickering internally as you immediately seemed to regain some awareness and a wary anticipation entered your expression.
"Would you still like me if I was a worm?" he asked.
You blinked at him. "Is this one of those things you learned from the kids?"
He slouched a bit, crowding into your space. "Would you still love me if I was a worm," he wheedled.
"Are you turning into a worm?" you asked, slightly panicked, hand going to his arm as though to check if he was going as wet and floppy as the poor things on the ground.
"I'm going to turn into one if you don't answer my question."
The last of the distracted fog lifted from your eyes as you shook yourself. You took his hand and pulled him close to let another couple pass you on the walk. They inclined their head in thanks.
There was no rush to get where you were going and you tugged him along a smaller path that cut under a row of thick-branched trees so you could walk side by side unimpeded.
"I still liked you when you were a semi-sentient six sided die," you pointed out, smiling slightly.
"It's not the same," he whined a bit, drawing out the words in a sing-song fashion.
"Isn't it? I'm not sure a die eight kilometers under the ocean is more useful than a worm."
"Hmph."
"Although I really hope the worm thing is hypothetical."
"Why?"
"Because with our luck that would mean I'm a worm too."
Satoru huffed a faint sound of amusement. "Nooo. You'd still be some kind of bird." He patted your back. "Don't worry I'll make sure to crawl out late so you can still be in time to eat me all up."
"... Are you propositioning me or telling me to hurry up?"
"Walk faster or I'll step on the backs of your shoes."
You did. The two of you walked faster and faster until you were all but chasing one another out of the park, laughing lightly as you dodged the spots of wet on the ground.
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