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#which begs the question: why does he wear the arm brace. is it solely for joint support?
camgirlkaminari · 1 year
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several thoughts about the new years 2023 sketch that i CANNOT stop having:
he's getting hornier. he's been getting hornier on main the closer we get to the end of the series. everyone scroll his twitter back to 2021 and you will see there is an abrupt spike in horny art around august of that year. horny on main about literally all his own ocs and unapologetic about it
horikoshi has DEFINITELY been looking at all the bunnyboi deku fanart over the last 8 years
the previous two points lead me to conclude that the fandom has been picking up what he's putting down this whole time. shameless deku supremacy bunnyboi deku supremacy etc etc
also thinking maybe deku's steel toed thigh highs were an aesthetic choice and not entirely necessary for support reasons. thotty deku supremacy etc
hori really fleshes out his characters with these sketches it seems very clear to me that ochaco was bribed with free food for this event & kirishima didn't have to be bribed with ANYTHING he's just happy to be here, very on brand
thanks bud i WASNT thinking about their balls but NOW i am
that being said: release the balls cut horikoshi. i KNOW you have a secret balls-in drawing. im a 'do-it-for-the-bit' artist, i know theres a secret bit art folder i just KNOW it
and you KNOW he also did a bunnyboi katsuki sketch. hes a freaque he simply would not let that go undrawn
do you guys think katsuki feels left out. do you think he's mad he missed the memo. where are his eyes pointed, mirko? or ochaco? is he jealous. does he have fomo
katsuki adhd king
it is SO funny of hori to make mirko have to wear clothes while the rest of them wear her costume. so cruel. so inhumane. get dressed idiot
shouto said 👁️👄👁️ as usual absolute comedy king
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purkinje-effect · 3 years
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Asking for Trouble
Cait gets a terrible first impression of Melancholy, my Sole.
This blurb has sat in my drafts for a few years now, and I decided to polish it up and finish the thought. Not sure if the encounter will be canon to Anatomy, but it’s here nonetheless. (For those curious to timeline placement, we’ll say this is roughly after the Park Street Station stuff in Fourth Instar, and sometime after his falling out with Mac.)
TWs: Heavy angst, injury and death, drug use and alcohol, explicit description of drug side effects, and violence-baiting.
Cross-posted on AO3 here if you’d rather. Likes, comments, kudos, etc. are all greatly, greatly appreciated.
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Someone at the Dugout Inn had mentioned this place. ‘Choly had come here with a vague recollection that the Combat Zone had once paraded skin. It only served to live up to its name now without any innuendo. Observing a little violence could be cathartic, too, and damn, if he couldn’t use some catharsis after his myriad missteps in Goodneighbor. All his life a spectator, vicarious in every regard.
He belonged here far before Goodneighbor or Diamond City, regardless of looking the part. Who could say a quavering, grey little man wearing a white three piece suit over head-to-toe leather orthotic braces didn’t fit right in among these earthly, physical misfits? He certainly couldn’t see any hackneyed political messes or territory wars erupting here: only people blowing off steam any way they could find it.
He couldn’t entirely say he minded that Angel’s compulsive cleaning habits almost always nettled the Hister Handy into picking up after social locations like this burlesque theater which now showcased cage fights. The possibility any of these raiders might hack it almost avoided him altogether, since he seemed like the only one with a Pip-Boy with which to do so. Such a worry would stick with him long-term after what he’d seen the Rust Devils do to Lowell.
His mind sang praises that Angel had allowed him to resume adding alkaloids to his meal replacement beverage, the Melancholia. Hubeine gave him negligible trouble compared to other options.
The fight unfolding before him was the billed spectacle for the night: for one hour, plus implicit encores, Cait would take down any body foolish enough to step foot into the cage to fistfight her unarmed. He swirled at some bourbon in a shot glass, from his bar seat to one side of the stage. His cataract eyes raised as he watched her continue through the athletic redhead’s performance. Somehow she managed restraint just shy of lethal blows, despite her precision and brute force. Any composure belied the depth of her murderous and bottomless rage. Glassy and lugubrious, he followed her bared teeth and retracted lips, her unblinking eyes, her adrenaline-wired and overworked musculature, her leaden instinctual footwork.
Despite having knocked out seven opponents in twenty minutes already, she wore more of their blood than they did.
In every mannerism, he recognized his enlisted in her. He stopped sipping at his liquor and threw the glass back, only to refill it.
Cait danced with the eighth opponent for about a minute before things escalated. The burly, hairy man pulled a switchblade on her, and managed to gouge her in the arm. In the physical sense, it didn’t faze her. In the mental sense, it had shattered the sanctity of her performance. She roared at him and lunged to sink her teeth into his face.
The crowd exploded. Her ghoul manager stepped in and attempted to stop the match-up, but he knew better than to get between her and the fool. She refused first aid, intent to fuck the guy up. The man kept his distance from her, knife still drawn, clutching at his gushing cheek. she voiced her displeasure to her manager, and he seemed to walk away and leave her again to her opponent... Only to bring her a baseball bat. A bloodied grin ripped across her face as she choked up on it like a familiar friend.
‘Choly smiled quaintly, head askew. The ghoul knew that the crowd demanded results--and more importantly, he knew that the crowd needed to see the consequences of forsaking what little honor they agreed upon in this dive.
She slugged him in the head. As he fell over, she proceeded to beat the shit out of him. The resultant din deafened much how ‘Choly might imagine Fenway Park during the World Series. Not that baseball had been his druthers. God, he wished that had been him on the receiving end. Between her hair, her leather corset, and the carnage, red was so very much her color. Head to toe, she was rage incarnate.
No one wanted to challenge her after that, especially not if they had to step around the bloody mess she’d splattered across the stage.
Time blurred a bit in ‘Choly’s shot glass. The next he looked up, he realized the champion sat beside him to drown herself in a fifth of vodka straight from the bottle. He straightened as coolly as he could, shifting to watch her. He adjusted his half-moon glasses, but could otherwise not obfuscate his alarm. He couldn’t leave alone the familiarity of the untethered ferocity with which she carried herself.
“Forgive me if this is forward of me, but I will get you any chems you want, if you will swear off cyclomorphine. The Psycho.”
“Bull shit,” came a potent Irish twang. She slammed down the bottle. Beneath the indignity in her glower, a tinge of fear felt more like the pressure of desperation. “You suggestin’ I couldn’t possibly fight as well as I do, weren’t I doped up? Your stupid mug hasn’t been here before. I’d remember. Who the hell do you think you are, to go around insultin’ the talent?”
His heart begged hot for her to retaliate. His gloved fingers tapped gingerly at the barely varnished countertop.
“I mean it. Name it. Med-X. Calmex. Anything but Psycho. I’ll even get dirty and brew you the most potent Jet you’ve ever had, if what you really need is escapism and not a low. CM isn’t a chem. It’s a death sentence. And... even if that��s the desired end result, that’s just about as gruesome and painful as it gets.”
She swiveled on the bar stool, resting both hands squarely on her spread knees. Her dead gaze bored through him.
“The fuck do you care so much about this wild theory of yours? You go around cold readin’ everybody’s vices tryin’ to hock your snake oil? Some salesman you are. You’ve got the Charisma of a Mirelurk egg that’s been in the sun.”
He raised his hands in defense, and then said what he meant sooner than meaning what he said.
“I’m not trying to sell you anything. I keep trying to offer solutions to the people I’ve hurt with my life choices, fix the damage rather than enterprise on it. Please let me get you chasing a different devil. Anything but that.”
“You’ve never met me in your life, and I don’t know your name or face from a Molerat in the floorboards. Don’t you try and bullshit me into believing you’re capable of fixing what ails me--and don’t you dare try to take credit for anyone that’s wronged me.”
“I’m the reason Psycho exists in the quantities it does in the Commonwealth. So yes, your pain IS my fault, at least part--”
His jaw seared. ‘Choly found himself sprawled in the floor. He felt around for his glasses, and as they returned to his face, he smiled up at her imploringly from where she stood over him. She cracked her knuckles sourly.
“I don’t have time for this nonsense. Tryin’ t’say I’m the one’s got a chem problem. What color is the sky for you? Forget you.”
Her hard exterior began to show signs of crumblign, in a series of stifled tics, most noticeably a corner of her mouth and the same ear. He could only begin to speculate to what exactly it was she’d taken exception, but he had to keep her attention, hold her contempt. Charm had never come naturally to him, so instead he had to sound the part of insisting at all costs that he was right.
“--Fine, you don’t want to quit. That’s a choice, too. I’ll make however much Psycho you want. You want to go out like that, I can help you with that. But I want you to know just exactly what that death looks like. Abscessed injection sites. Your gums and cuticles bleed. Your tear ducts bleed. It weakens all your capillaries, the tiniest blood vessels in your body. Internal bleeding. Organ deterioration. The numbness doesn’t turn off the pain--it only makes it so you don’t care. Is the anger easier than the hurt? If that’s how you want to go out, I’m not in any position to question it. But you might as well have an expert supplying you with it.”
Rather than help him up, she bore a heel down on his right hand. With an anxious chuckle, he winced, but welcomed being pinned in place. She glared down at him, seething. She didn’t want to hear another word from him, but she had to. Something about him surely sounded more deranged than intoxicated, and it threatened to haunt her.
“Do you know why cyclomorphine exists?” he continued, breath stuttering all the while. “Do you know what it is? Of course not. It was a prewar chemical--I can’t even comfortably endear it a chem--that the military developed so its soldiers no longer felt injury or fatigue. They endeavored to engineer soldiers who wouldn’t quit when hurt, even fatally. And it was only one of a dozen projects of its kind, to exploit the different aspects of human limits. Nothing human came from refining Psycho. It destroys something fundamental to a sense of humanity. The perfect formula didn’t concern itself with whether the patient came back in one piece, or alive at all. The Deenwood Project wasn’t poetic, wasn’t artistic, didn’t make a single beautiful thing. The fact that CM fell into paramilitary use after my tenure ended with the Army... and the fact it now as a result flows freely throughout the country as holdovers from... from the police attempting to keep the peace through intense and consistent violence... The fact is, I’m one of the chemists responsible for cyclomorphine’s end product. Responsible for it being one of the devices of America’s victory at Anchorage... So yes, yes I am. Responsible for what ails you. You’re civilian collateral of the United States Army.”
Her posture shifted slowly from anger to bitterness. She ground her heel into his palm. He pretended the token of her grief got through the reinforced officer’s glove.
“It’s not my place to question the source of your pain, and it’s not my place to insist that I be the one to take it away. I simply know that no matter how great the pain you’re in... Psycho dissolves parts of you, every time you use it to numb you. It begins physically, then advances to spiritually. It robs you of who you are.”
“That’s just the thing. I can’t handle bein’ me. This is the only part I’m fit to play. Besides, Tommy only cares if his juggernaut brings in the caps. I’m beholden to a contract. And the way I see it, you’re tryin’ to come between a man and his money, pokin’ around where your nose doesn’t belong! You’re lucky we’re out here and not in the cage, creep. Either I’m paid to beat your arse, or you’re askin’ to get blackballed.”
He sighed dreamily up at her, almost regretting that she let up on his hand. She drew her fists when his hand went to the lining pocket of his vest, but he chuckled producing a sack of caps.
“I thought you’d never ask. I admire one who rests their agency in someone else’s hands--or pockets, as it were. Surely, this is to the tune of you doing the honors. Add a black eye to the busted jaw. Tack on whatever you like. Ladies’ choice.”
She snatched the sack from him, frowning incredulously.
“What kind of sick flirting game is this? You tryin’ to buy me into bed? I know I’m easy on the eyes, but this isn’t a brothel these days, in case your damaged brain can’t tell the difference.”
He knew he wouldn’t be getting back the sack, but at least he’d tricked her into accepting some fleck of reparations from him.
“How many caps would it take to break your contract? To get you out of here?”
A broken sarcastic laugh crackled out of her. He’d long since surpassed overstepping, having moved on to stepping on toes.
“You’re insane if you think I’d ever want to leave the Combat Zone, especially not on the arm of the likes of you. I’ve got everything I could want here--except right now, not a place without you. You’re the one who needs to lay off the chems. Get your stupid brain-damaged arse out of here before I ask Tommy what I can do with you.”
He whistled for Angel, then retrieved his cane to stand.
“I suppose if you won’t let me help you, obliging you is the least I can do.”
With his Handy by his side, the two left without further question.
On his walk back to Hotel Rexford, he accepted that he’d probably never know the answer, but still he wondered if he had the same or opposite trouble as Cait: Were the two chasing a perpetual numbness, or were they chasing the futility of trying to feel anything again, at any cost?
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