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queen-of-deans-booty · 2 years

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Bitten: Part Two

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1.8k

Warnings: canon angst and violence

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. Any and all comments on these are appreciated.

The film cuts back to the abandoned house with Kate on the sofa, filming the two guys.

"So, the FBI is here. Your neighbor got murdered, but you're totally cool," Kate said.

"No. It's not that I'm cool. It's just that, like... I mean, then it's good that the FBI are here, right?" Brian said, not finishing a single thought.

"Hey, baby. Listen," Michael interrupted.

He plugged in his iPod into a docking station, playing "What's the Matter" by Milo Greene.

"Oh. It's pretty. What is it?"

"It's the song that was playing when we first met," he grinned.

"Aww. You are so disgustingly sweet."

Michael leaned down and kissed her tenderly, but the moment was short lived.

"You ready?" Brian asked from the background.

"Yeah. I got to go," Michael said to Kate.

"What? So, you just foam the runway with our song and then you got to head out the door?"

"I promised I'd help him test the new cameras."

"Don't give me that shit. I know you two idiots are gonna go shoot cutscenes for 'Jackass'."

"Come on. We both know he has nobody else to do this with. Rain check."

"Whatever. You're dead to me."

Kate and Michael kissed once more before he left with Brian. The film cuts to the college campus at night. Michael and Brian were filming near a football field, and they're just goofing off at this point. Michale was filming Brian who is climbing a tree.

"Dude, this tree is awesome. Maybe I could--maybe I could... get upside down and--"

"No, no, I said do something cool. Not stupid."

"Can you get--can you see me? Is this cool?" Brian hung upside down in a goofy way. "'Cause, man, it feels pretty cool."

"It's like "Dumb & Dumber 3," Michael joked.

"Wait, dude, dude, dude, dude," Brian panicked, pointing somewhere behind Michael.

The camera turns and you, Sam, and Dean were standing there next to the Impala. It's clear you didn't know Michael and Brian were there otherwise you wouldn't have had this conversation right here.

"It's those FBI guys."

"Help me down this tree. Help me out of the tree," Brian whispered.

Michael helped his friend out of the tree, and the both of them hid while secretly recording you.

"Oh, alright. Well, thank you, guys, very much for your help. You're free to go," Dean said to a couple of kids.

You were questioning them about the latest murder, but they didn't know anything that was helpful.

"There is not a case here," Sam shook his head.

"There is a case here. You're rusty. We just got to dig a little deeper."

"Is it just me or are you getting a workplace-romance vibe from those two?" Michael whispered to his friend.

Sam and Dean in real life give the laptop screen a bitch face, and you just laugh at his comment.

"You two do act like a more married couple than Dean and I are."

You turn your attention back to the screen, and your smile is lost when you realize what's about to happen next.

"Why don't we figure this out at a diner. I need food."

"You just ate," Dean said.

"I need food," you growled, flashing your eyes blue at him.

What can you say? It's the pregnancy. You thought no one saw it, but the two friends saw it and captured it on camera.

"Fine, we'll get food."

You three left the area, and Brian and Michael stared at each other in horror.

"I think we just saw a demon."

"Dude, let's get out of here!"

The two boys left the area and headed toward the football field, spotting a couple making out by the bleachers.

"Come here, come here. Look, look, look, look, look, look," Michael said, already forgetting you and your demon eyes.

"What?"

The camera is focused on the couple, and you recognize the male as Scott from earlier.

"D-bags mating in the wild."

Michael and Brian get closer, and that's when you realize the couple isn't just kissing. Scott is kissing the girl, but she clearly doesn't want this. She was trying to push him away from her, and on the third try, she was successful.

"Stop!"

"Hey!"

"Oh, ho, ho. Strike three," Michael said loud enough to capture Scott's attention. "You're a dick."

"What's your problem?!"

"This is gonna look great on YouTube."

Scott had enough of this and started running toward the pair, and Michael and Brian booked it in separate ways. Scott can't run after both of them at the same time, so he chose to run after Brian while Michael hid in the bushes. He didn't want Scott to get his friend, so he waited until Scott was far enough ahead of him before jumping into action.

"Hey, Brian, Brian! Meet me at Scott's mother's house!" Scott heard this and turned, running after Michael instead. "Oh shit."

The more Michael ran, the more his camera glitched. Michael led Scott into the woods by the football field. The camera cuts to the same scene, but in night vision. Michael was hiding, but Scott was nowhere to be found.

"Thanks for a great night out, Bri," Michael sighed.

Scott was clearly not coming, so he decided he wanted to leave. He got up, but stopped when he heard a low growl come from the trees.

"Hello? Hello? Scott, cut it out, man!" The growling got worse, and Michael was terrified. "Oh, God. Oh, God."

He tried to climb a tree to get away from whatever wanted to hurt him, but he fell to the ground. There was more growling, and Michael screamed as he was taken by what you assume is the werewolf. Michael's screams are terrifying, but it doesn't stop there.

The film cuts out immediately to Brian who was searching through the woods for his friend. He is also in night vision.

"Hey, Michael. You can come out now, dude. Scott looked for us for a while but bailed." He searched for his friend but only saw his camera on the ground. "Mike?" There was heavy breathing in the background, and Brian found his friend on the ground. "Dude. Oh, my God. Dude. Michael. You okay, man?"

"I'm okay," he groaned.

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I don't know."

The camera paused on a wound that's on Michael's shoulder. He's been bitten by the werewolf. Judging based on the bodies you found and the fact that one of them was Scott, that Michael turned. The werewolf who bit him didn't kill him and decided to make another of his kind.

"Oh, God."

The film cuts back to the house where Brian was carrying Michael in.

"Kate!" Brian yelled, bringing Michael to the couch.

"Oh, my God! Baby!" she panicked, rushing over to him and making sure her boyfriend is going to be okay.

"What is it? Is it bad? Brian. Kate. Is it bad?" Michael asked, freaking out because they are freaking out.

"Call for help! Bring a first aid kit!" Brian said.

"Okay," Kate cried, opting to go for the phone first.

Brian pulled Michael's shirt back to show Kate the bite, but frowned when the wound was gone. All that's left was blood to show that a wound was there, but no broken skin to prove it.

"The bite--the bite's gone."

"911 what's your emergency?" dispatch said over the phone.

"Did--did you dicks just punk me?" Kate gasped, hanging up on the police.

"It's completely gone."

"Baby, it's okay. Hey, hey, hey. Honey, it's okay. It's okay. Babe," Kate comforted Michael who was clearly in pain.

The film cuts to the next day, and Brian and Kate were at the table talking while Michael was sleeping on the couch next to them.

"The doctor said he's gonna be fine. You heard him. Literally not a scratch on the kid," Brian assured her.

"If anything happens to Michael, I-I don't know what I would do."

"It's okay."

Michael awoke from the couch, not alerting the couple at the table. He walked to the kitchen and opened the door, but instead of being normal, he ripped the door off the handles, scaring Brian and Kate.

"Did you just pull that off?" Brian gasped.

The film cuts to Michale showing off his new strength, using Kate as a dumb bell. He was holding her over his head, laughing.

"Whoa. Whoa," Kate laughed.

"Okay. Okay, okay. Now one-handed," Brian said.

Michael did as he was told, only holding Kate with one hand above his head. She giggled and shrieked, scared that she was going to fall. Michael dropped her in his arms and kissed her, happy with his new powers.

"He doesn't even know what he has. Poor kid," you sigh.

The film cuts to Brian using the desktop, trying to figure out why Michael is the way he is now.

"Maybe you got bit by an alien. That would explain the FBI," Kate theorized.

"Or maybe a mutant bit you," Brian said.

"Am I a superhero now?"

The film cuts to later that night and Brian was setting up a bunch of cameras around the house in different angles, probably to capture anything weird that Michael might do.

"What are you doing?" Kate asked.

"What do you think I'm doing? I finally found my movie."

"What? Michael? Michael is not your movie. We don't even know what happened to him."

"Exactly. I'm gonna get Michael's origin story on-camera."

The film cuts to Michael and Brian sitting at the kitchen table, eating some breakfast. Well, Michael was eating, but Brian was just staring at him.

"You're kind of creeping me out, man. Seriously, nothing superheroic to see here. Just a delicious bagel."

"Hey, man, I have this idea. It's gonna sound really weird, but don't laugh, okay?"

"No promises."

"I, um... I really want to be able to do what you do. So I-I think maybe we could go back out there and get that thing to bite me, and then we could both be superheroes."

"Stop! What? Are you serious?" Michael gasped.

"Michael, you can't keep this to yourself."

"Keep what to myself? We don't even know what this thing is. Why the hell would you want it?"

"Michael... I don't--I don't want to be Piggy anymore, man," he said sadly.

"You're not a pig, man. Brian, listen to me. There's nothing wrong with you. You've just got to figure out what it is you want and go after it. I'm telling you--you don't want this."

"Right, because I don't want to be super-strong or have a prayer of getting any ass this year or... Please, please," Brian begged.

"No!"

You have a feeling that Brian won't let this one go.

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lavenderchamomiletea13 · 2 years

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Kazuha x Tomo - Angst

(This will have a slightly different storyline than the game's cutscene that has to do with the shogun, but just in case, don't read this if you haven't completed the Inazuma quests!)

Kazuha was frozen in place as he saw the first crash of lightning at the shoguns palace. A bead of sweat dribbled down the side of his face as he realized... Tomo had gone to challenge her...

"No... Damn it!" Kazuha spung into action, racing forward as fast as he could, using his anemo abilities to hop over guards and innocent bystanders he'd crashed through the gates as... the Shoguns blade cut down his friends... no... his lovers life.

It was as if Kazuha was the one dying... his whole life with Tomo flashed before his eyes... His gentle smile, the way he laughed, how he'd always sit and listen to whatever music Kazuha was interested in...

How he was afraid of storms and would come seek comfort from Kazuha... how using his own electro vision scared him...

Tears sprung up in the rebels eyes as his body hit the ground. His body moved before he could think, the short male rushing forward and grabbing ahold of Tomo's vision mid air. He made eye contact with the Shogun, her unimpressed gaze unchanging despite the murderous rage in his eyes... but... he ran.

Kazuha ran as fast and as far as he could, fighting back the tears as his friends vision sliced into his hand... he'd collapsed at the docs... just in time for Captain Beidou to spot him and pull him aboard.

All of that led to now... to this moment..! He'd been nursed back to health for this moment...

The travelers back was turned, and the Shogun was about the strike them down from behind. Kazuha felt a familiar pain in his chest... and his body moved before he could think.

"This... This is for Tomo!" He shouted, the vision on his belt sparking furiously as he brandished his sword against the Shoguns, blocking her strike, tears slipping down his cheeks. "You won't take another one of my friends! Bastard!"

Yet... true to her word, she struck twice.

Pain blossomed in Kazuha's stomach, both visions flickering, still he gripped his sword, standing firm between the Shogun and the Traveler. His stomach felt warm... his vision was blurry... but he stepped forward.

"Your... your reign of terror... it's over..! No one else.. is going to... is going to die at your hands..!" Kazuha stepped forward, the Traveler and other rebels trying to rush to his aid... but his sword dropped... and his body fell...

"Pests like you, should die with one strike..." The Shogun said simply as Kazuha landed... in Tomo's arms...? Tomo's face was blurred... but it was him.

Kazuha could tell by the way he tilted his head that he was smiling at him... the pain was gone... but he felt so cold... he steadied himself and looked around... Until he saw his body...

"Wh-What the... Tomo I... did I..?"

"No, not quite my friend.." Tomo whispered, though Kazuha could hear him clear as day.

"Tomo I.. what do I do.. please... I don't know.. what to do-" Kazuha started before Tomo reached out, grabbing his shoulder.

"Kazuha... you need to wake up..."

"What..?"

"You need to wake up.. please.."

Kazuha gasped as he sat up, pain rushing through his body and causing him to turn away, dry heaving into a trash pail beside his bed. The Traveler and Beidou were at his side, tears pricking up in Beidou's eyes.

"You little shit! Do you know how fucking worried I was..! Please... Don't do that ever again.." Beidou was sniffling as she gently pulled Kazuha in for a hug... The male having a splitting headache.

"What.. where am I..? What happened..?"

"You're in the Kujou headquarters... The Traveler reconciled with the Shogun, and... I simply couldn't leave any injured to die." Kujou Sara said simply as she entered the room, a wet rag in her hand that she soon placed on Kazuha's forehead. "You're lucky I got to you when I had... you were hardly breathing... Honestly, I think the shogun spared you, her blade usually cuts deeper." Kazuha slapped Kujou's hand away from him, a bitter look on his face.

"I'm well aware."

"Oh... I see, I apologize. I hope your loved one found piece. I'm deeply sorry for the Shogun's actions." Kujou bowed her head a little, Kazuha clenching his fists. He wanted to cry, scream at the shogunate scum in front of him... but.. he eventually sighed, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He had loose pants on and no shirt, simply wraps around his stitched up wound.

"You, Kujou Sara, are going to accompany me to my friends grave. Where are my things?" Kazuha spoke calmly, the tengu warrior nodding her head and fetching his items, even handing him the two visions, both wrapped in cloth to keep them safe.

"Kazu... I can come with you if.." Beidou trails off before Kazuha manages a gentle smile as he looks at her.

"No... I'll be okay. We should get the Alcor ready... I don't want to stay around much longer anyway.. I'll only be a bit.." He promised before he forced himself up out of bed, having to hold his stomach. He looked over at Kujou Sara who was ever stoic.

Without a word shared between them, they walked out and went on their way. It didn't take very long before they finally made it... a sword stuck into the ground... the only marking of Tomo's grave.

Kazuha was frozen for a moment, his hands shaking, the light haired male gripping his dead lovers vision. Finally, he stepped forward, falling to his knees in front of it.

"Tomo... Thank you... for lending me your strength... I saved the Traveler... I... I know I couldn't save you... but... Now, I don't feel as guilty... So... So thank you..." Kazuha managed before he set the vision propped up against the sword.

Kujou had said nothing for quite a while, at least, not until Kazuha wiped his eyes and stood up, starting to walk away. She walked forward, setting a Dendrobium on his grave. She got down on one knee and bowed her head.

"I deeply apologize for the circumstances of your death, Tomo. You didn't die in vain... You helped end the vision hunt decree and we are all very thankful." When she was done speaking she stood up, her face once against stoic as she escorted Kazuha to Ritou.

They went in silence, and shared no goodbyes as she helped him onto the Alcor. Neither looking back at each other, almost as if it was an unspoken rule not to.

Kazuha knew he had no home here, not without Tomo... and Kujou knew that too.

Heya! Don’t forget to follow for more! I try to post daily! If you hop into my asks and request something from one of the fandoms I’m in (masterlist on my pinned post!) I might try and get around to it!

#genshin #kazutomo #angst #genshin angst #genshinfanfic #tomo genshin impact #kazuha kaedehara

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sittingoverheredreaming · 3 years

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I have a lot of thoughts on how Age of Calamity could have worked better for me, but one thought I’ve had since the Demo that only got stronger after completing the game is the idea of putting Impa in Terrako’s role, because I’m just not fond of a robot changing everything instead of a character we know and love.

The game still opens with the original timeline calamity, but after the first shots of the castle the focus moves to Blatchery Plain, where the final battle is taking place. Impa watches from near Kakariko Village, where she and other Sheikah, are stationed to defend their home. She wants to run and help her princess, but is held back. You know this is how it was foretold, you know this is how it has to be, someone, possibly Purah, reminds her. (You cannot take the idea that the Sheikah as a whole had some knowledge that the events of BotW would happen in order for Ganon to be defeated from me). And so she waits, until Zelda’s powers awaken, until Link is taken to the shrine of resurrection and her princess approaches her to ask her to guide him when he wakes, her princess, who has lost so much, tells her that she is going to fight Ganon alone for as long as it takes. And as Zelda walks away, Impa breaks, she can’t let her suffer like this, she opens a time portal and jumps to before it all unravelled.

The first battle of Hyrule Field happens largely the same as in game, except everyone is surprised to see Impa there, rather than at the research lab or in Kakariko. No one more so than Zelda, who comments that it has been years since Impa has visited her. For a split second it’s clear how deeply sad about it they both are, but Impa quickly fakes a smile and says she’s missed her and it seemed like a great time for a visit. Later the King seems mighty unhappy about it, but reluctantly agrees to Zelda’s request to have Impa accompany her to approach the Champions. (Maybe Link doesn’t even get to go with her yet, and there are some parallel missions about him proving himself, and/or he happens to already be there for one or two of the battles, it’s easy to put him in Zora’s Domain with Mipha, but it also makes more sense to leave him out of the Gerudo Town mission).

At the end of the chapter, it’s revealed that the Yiga Clan and Astor have taken the opportunity to capture the original Impa from this timeline, having noticed the time travel using their own ancient technology and figuring out that the presence of the other Impa means no one will notice if the original is missing. Kohga interrogates her for information, but Astor states there may be a better use for her, and then the scene cuts to black.

That’s all we see of that Impa for a while, the story progresses much the same as it did originally (maybe with a little more adherence to BotW canon and some more character stuff, but that’s not my point here), with Impa inserting herself into every situation she can and trying to steer events away from the original timeline. Unfortunately, part of that is encouraging everyone to drop their use of Sheikah technology, which eventually leads to a fight with Zelda because You sound just like father! Is this why you came back? Just to be his puppet? And she says she doesn’t want Impa coming around her anymore, and she’ll be going to the Spring of Wisdom the next day without her. Impa panics but cannot change her mind, and when she tries to run after her Link blocks her way.

The next cutscene is at night in Zelda’s bedroom, where she tosses and turns unable to sleep. She then hears a noise outside, which turns out to be Impa, sneaking in through her window. She apologises, and says she was wrong, and claims Purah and Robbie have made a discovery that could change everything, Zelda should come see it now before her father can stop them. Zelda agress, relieved to have something other than the pressure of the coming day to focus on and follows behind Impa as she leads her out. Unseen by Zelda, Impa’s eyes flash with Malice-- she is this timeline’s Impa, controlled by Astor.

The next day, Zelda is nowhere to be found. The king is barely keeping composure, Link is being kind of a dumbass in where he looks for her for a little levity (is she behind this curtain? Is she under this table?), the champions, who have come to escort her too, are very uneasy and Impa is all but having a breakdown because she feels this is definitely her fault, and this is when it comes out that she time traveled from the future and the Calamity is going to erupt that very day. Then the search for Zelda gets really frantic, and eventually someone raises the question of wait, if you’re from the future, where’s the Impa that was originally here? They put together that the two disappearances are likely related and decide that the likely most fruitful course of action is to raid the Yiga hideout.

And so they go, and of course it’s a trap, the Calamity erupts while they are all occupied fighting Yiga lackeys (Kohga, Sooga, and Astor are conspicuously absent). Impa urges the Champions not to go to the Divine Beasts, but then the other Impa starts insisting that one is an imposter, that one tricked her and Zelda into being captured, and the Champions begin to falter. Why had she come from the future and only said so now? Was that some tall tale spun to keep them there while Hyrule fell? Why should they abandon the only hope of Hyrule winning this war? They are all in agreement, Link grabs a hold of Zelda and they depart, he and Zelda for the castle, the Champions to their Beasts, all the while Impa yells after them that they can’t win.

And then, once they’re gone, the other Impa begins to fight, Malice coursing through her, strengthened by the Calamity. It’s a playable up to a point, when Impa begs her to remember Zelda, to remember the point of everything, and there’s a quick set of flashbacks to them playing together as children, Impa defending Zelda from Bokoblins, them tinkering with Sheikah tech as young teens, and then just a series of quick flashes of Zelda’s face. The Malice disperses, the timeline’s original Impa quakes in fear of what she might have done, but resolves to change the outcome of the Calamity. Impa says they may not be able to do it alone, and they nod resolutely before the scene cuts.

The new Champions are brought from the future, much the same as before (but they’re enough to defeat the blights on their own without another character). The Impas rush to the castle, where Astor is waiting. Zelda is inside, he says, and soon she’ll die there. It was foretold.

That triggers another flashback. A fortune teller, younger than Astor, dressed suitably for an audience with the king, but unmistakably the same man, whispering to King Rohm those same words. You! screams the time traveling Impa. You caused all this!

They begin to fight, two against one, and Astor asks Can’t you of all people understand? How much have they asked of us, only to cast us out when we become inconvenient? What has our loyalty ever eared us?

Cut to King Rohm in the past, telling a child Impa that she must protect Zelda with her life. Cut again to him with a young teen Impa that Zelda can’t be distracted with any frivolous studies or games, and Impa is not to see her anymore.

In the present, both Impas appear to falter for a moment. Astor smiles and opens his hands to them. They look to each other, and nod.

And then completely obliterate him.

They make their way to Zelda and Link in the Sanctum, where Ganon’s power has converged for an endless assault on the hero. He’s protected Zelda, but he’s wearing down. For a moment it looks like the Impas are too late, but then the Divine Beasts strike! Maybe here there’s a mission for each of the Beasts complete with some cutscenes of each Champion pair.

Then, as Ganon is weakened, Link strikes again and again. Zelda despairs because even now, her sealing power will not awaken. The time traveling Impa tells her she knows she can do it, she’s seen her.

You have? Zelda asks, hope in her eyes for the first time since the Calamity started.

And then Ganon summons his strength to strike at Impa. She falls, badly injured, and Zelda and the other Impa run to her side while Link batters Ganon further.

Princess, Impa says with faltering breath. Your power has always been in your heart. I wish I had defied fate sooner.

Her eyes close, and Zelda lets out an anguished scream for her old friend. Her power explodes outward from her, the bow of light materializes and the final fight is played as her, taking Calamity Ganon head on.

She is victorious, but it is, it seems, a bittersweet victory. She emerges from the castle somber, Link trailing her, one Impa carrying the other.

But Age of Calamity is a triumph story, and Mipha has healing powers.

Impa comes too and has an emotional reunion, and then the new Champions agree it’s time for them to return to their own time. Goodbyes are had-- Sidon is particularly lingering, though he won’t say why-- and they all step into a portal Impa makes.

But then it doesn’t close.

Impa realizes that she has to return as well. She argues I fixed it! I belong here! But it is unmoving. She turns heavy hearted to say her goodbyes. The Impa that belongs there promises she’ll be at Zelda’s side from now on. Link nods. The Champions say their bit, and then she finds she doesn’t know what to say to Zelda, and ends up pulling her into a tight hug and then running through the portal without another word.

She finds herself back in her half-destroyed word, the bright sun of a peaceful Hyrule replaced with the dark clouds of the Calamity. Impa’s shoulders slump.

But then a portal opens up, and a letter flutters down, on stationary clearly marking it as from the Royal Family. Impa catches hold of it and smiles, a little piece of the victory she fought for now in her hands.

#age of calamity #age of calamity spoilers #impa #god this turned out long

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fistsoflightning · 4 years

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6: for you the flowers bloom

prompt: free day ⮞ vernalization || masterpost || other fills || ao3 mirror

word count: 2224

Even if spring meets summer only once a year, A’dewah will keep coming back to Doma just to see Haruki smile. (Or; some flowers need the cold to bloom in spring.)

Post 5.3 MSQ; contains spoilers for after the last (scion-related) cutscene!! This got... incredibly gay. And soft. Thank you @to-the-voiceless for reaching through your computer screen and whacking me into writing fluff, and also for letting me steal Haruki yet again >:3

The dawn on the day Krile let A’dewah more than five steps out of the Dawn’s Respite came with a steady peace, Revenant’s Toll not yet awake to greet the rising sun in its unfiltered brilliance. Mor Dhona’s usual smog of corrupted aether hadn’t come back in nearly a week, now, and the air had been all the better for it, a summer breeze sweet on the horizon as A’dewah had taken in the emptiness of the Toll. He’d even made it all the way to the rooftop garden before his quiet view of the Singing Shards, glimmering like Zaya’s aquamarines in the daybreak, was interrupted—and not even by someone finding him.

In the pocket of the coat Lunya and Syhrwyda had practically smothered him in when he’d asked to step out of the Rising Stones, the light ring of a linkpearl catches his attention, singing of river water and spring. Warmth, among the morning chill, overly familiar.

His heart leaps into his throat. No, it couldn’t be, he’d forgot the linkpearl somewhere in Sweetsieve when he’d caught wind of Thancred’s collapse—

When he finally fishes the linkpearl from his pocket to find the same earring he’d resigned himself to never seeing again, A’dewah makes a mental note to thank Lunya when he has the chance to; she must have found it in her final journey across Norvrandt, G’raha in tow… sort of.

Either way, it’s simply another debt he figures he owes to her.

He scrambles to thumb the connection on, nearly fumbling and dropping the earring off the side of the Stones when his fingers stiffen and lock, barely lucky enough for the pearl to simply drop into the palm of his hand instead of down three flights of stairs.

“Hey,” Haruki’s voice rings clear—clearer than it did all the way from the First, at any rate—almost muted in comparison to his usual cheery tone, exhaustion seeping in where Dewah would usually find refreshing cheer. Rustling leaves fill the quiet lull between his words, “Hope it’s not too early, where you are?”

He huffs; since that one call back in the Pendants, he hadn’t stayed up that early, and he wasn’t about to break that streak while he was still recovering, the dull, empty ache of missing aether enough to keep him bedridden most of the time.

“Isn’t it later than you usually call in Doma?” Dewah tries to do the math in his head, but Haruki’s almost loopy shhh is enough for him to get his answer. “I mean… not too early? The sun’s still rising over Mor Dhona.”

That seems to wake Haruki up enough, a second wind to his voice as he excitedly asks dozens of questions—when did you get back, how are you feeling, did Hanami manage to get that tailfeather from Suzaku to you—and he tends to the garden while he talks; somehow, he gets from their newest Scions’ return (“L-look, it’s not—! G’raha still has his archer muscles, you know I get flustered!” “Mmm, maybe I’ll pick up archery…” “Please don’t for my own sanity’s sake.” ) to the rumors of a shark infestation at Costa del Sol having something to do with this year’s Moonfire Faire while Haruki drowsily comments here and there.

“Dewah,” Haruki mumbles, after Dewah’s finished recounting just how horrified Duscha and Syhrwyda were when Tataru came in with that odd-smelling bread, and he can faintly hear a muffled yawn. “When d’you think you’ll come back home and visit? I wanna—” Haruki pauses, and Dewah can hardly hear the groan he makes when he stretches over the thrum of his own damned heartbeat. “—wanna hold you again. Miss seeing you flustered.”

For a moment, Dewah’s heart stays stuck in his throat, somehow still unused to being wanted so earnestly even by Haruki, who would want probably want him to come home even if he’d didn’t come out all the same after the events on the First. Who had been so happy to see A’dewah in the House of the Fierce after years of nothing, even as horribly bent out of shape as he was over the stress of coming back to Yanxia with all of his allies’ eyes on him; who had been there when he’d been at his worst, who had loved him even when he had chosen to keep him an arm’s length away—

“Soon,” A’dewah promises, even while he thinks of how his aether had weakened from returning the part of his soul that, apparently, was Zaya’s, and of how he’d been destabilizing at around the same rate as Thancred had despite being called around the time of Urianger and Y’shtola. His free hand brushes over the petals of an iris, just about ready to bloom. “And this time, I won’t run away out of the blue.”

Haruki stifles a laugh—in his pillow, or sleeve, probably; A’dewah can hear fabric rustling about on Haruki’s end. “Yeah, because you’ll, hopefully, be stuck in a hug for as long as I can manage.”

A’dewah’s following laugh, echoing off the walls of the Rising Stones, is the first sound that brings Revenant’s Toll to life as dawn gives way to another bright day.

…

Two weeks after, A’dewah makes a very inadvisable choice for the sake of his heart.

After scarfing down about two and a half slices of Archon loaf—ew, gods, how did the other Scions eat this in Sharlayan daily, is this why Syhrwyda is so adamant about her cooking, is this why Duscha fed his slice of loaf the other day to Miloh—he practically wheedles Krile into letting him teleport, briefly peeking into the infirmary to grab his satchel and is almost out of the Rising Stones when—

“A’dewah Tia,” Hanami says, her voice sending chills down A’dewah’s back even though it really shouldn’t, by this point in time. “Where are you going.”

“A-ah, well…” He stammers, hands reaching to fiddle with the leather strap of his bag even as he (somehow) keeps his head held high, a bubbling nervousness in the pit of his stomach even though he finds no reason to feel ashamed.

There is no reason to lie, either, he thinks, even if it will send her on his trail eventually, when Krile realizes what he has done for love.

“Home.”

He turns tail the moment Hanami’s brow furrows—he might have a burst of bravery, but there is no way he can handle her coldfire stare—already two steps out the door when he hears an almost exasperated sigh from Hanami—but no footsteps following after him, thank the Matron for that. A’dewah might really have fainted, then, regardless of the ether Krile made him drink earlier.

When he finally steps up to the aetheryte, it’s easier than ever to find the tailwind that leads him home and let it sweep him away.

…

The Doman Enclave is nearly the same as he remembers it, if not more festive; perhaps for a hanabi festival, considering the bright lanterns and stalls lining the streets that A’dewah did not remember being there before, vendors carrying crates of vibrant goods and patterned fabrics. He passes by Alianne, giving a light greeting before practically stumbling away to prevent her asking after his health, and then several of the children from the Doman Adventurer’s Guild rush past him, paper lanterns in hand and excitedly chattering.

He’s not sure he’s ever seen the Enclave more alive than now.

In his daze, he nearly runs into two Au’ra—both much shorter than him, even compared to Hanami or Zaya—and he nearly brushes it off with a quick apology before he catches just who he’d bumped into next.

“K-Kotone!?” He sputters; even though he’d known he’d be coming back to Doma he hadn’t quite expected her to be around, a loss of words for why he might be here, so soon after arriving home from the First. Honoka levels him with a sharpened glare—presumably relating to the origami knife (of which he’d nearly given himself a very large papercut on the edge of) he’d received from the post moogle after the entire debacle with G’raha’s new appearance and A’dewah’s very unwanted reaction—but Kotone’s shy smile never falters as she urges her sister to continue walking. For a moment, he expects some sort of verbal flaying, so uncharacteristic of his fellow wallflower, but why else would she make Honoka go before her—

But instead of asking anything of him, of why did you leave so quickly so long ago or did you know you nearly broke his heart she simply looks over her shoulder to the One Garden, letting Dewah’s gaze follow to a flash of teal walking past, bright in the afternoon sun.

“The morning glories you brought us,” she says, her voice a quiet autumn wind. “He’s taken to caring for them, when he can.”

Thank you, he mouths as Kotone smiles sweetly at him, walking briskly to catch up to her sister as he almost sprints to the One Garden before rethinking himself and merely speed walking instead. His heart beats in time with his steps, singing with anticipation as he turns the corner and sees that familiar, horrible peacock teal.

(He’d heard from thinly veiled conversations, back before he was taken away to the First on accident, about how Haruki had stopped keeping up with his usually strenuous ritual of horribly bright hair dye after he’d left; he remembers just how guilty he’d felt, and how scared he was of ever showing his face back in the Doman Enclave afterwards. He’d been so adamant on not even letting his roots show for a week, so for it to be noticable….)

A light tap on Haruki’s shoulder has him curiously turning around, though, breaking his gentle but distant stare into the garden pond. “Hi,” A’dewah says like he hasn’t just shown up after a good year and at least two tall tales worth of adventures, smiling when Haruki’s expression shifts to that of shock, then of barely concealed joy.

“Hey,” Haruki replies, failing to swallow his smile before it brightens into a grin that Dewah never wants to see fall again. “Didn’t think you’d be back so soon.”

“I teleported here as soon as Krile cleared me to teleport—to Limsa Lominsa,” he confesses, bringing a hand up and scratching nervously at the back of his neck. Not the most well-thought out of his plans, now that he thinks about it. “B-but I think Hanami is going to be coming after me soon; she caught me leaving and if Krile asks she’ll probably, er, rat me out, and they’ll probably drag me back to get an earful—”

“But you’re here now. I think,” he says, reaching his hand out to gently brush at A’dewah’s torn ear, touch just soft and familiar enough that he snaps out of his worrying with ease. “that matters more than Hana-chan probably coming to kick your ass.” A’dewah snickers; he’s probably right, anyhow, and just maybe if Hanami does come knocking he can gently toss Haruki under the bus for how he refuses to call Hanami anything else but the nickname she hates when talking to him.

Haruki walks over to the railing of the bridge, after a moment, and pats the railing next to him; a seat so that Dewah isn’t craning his neck up all the time, probably, like he used to offer the last time he was here. Always somewhere sunsoaked and low to the ground, even when he’d taken Dewah on a trip across Yanxia, because for all his excitement when they were younger he’d always noticed just how he’d balked at heights.

Instead of taking a seat, he quietly pulls a flower out from his bag and holds it out to Haruki when he walks over.

“One of the flowers someone planted in Mor Dhona,” he explains, after a moment of stunned silence, idly fiddling with one of the flower’s leaves. “I didn’t have the time to, er, stop by my garden, so no brightlilies, but this was already in the Stones’ garden and—uh.”

A’dewah stutters to a stop when Haruki pries the iris from his hands, gently twining his creaky, stiff fingers into his own. Purple, unfortunately, isn’t Haruki’s color—it’s always been Munehise’s, actually, and Dewah’s not quite sure what is Haruki’s, too used to seeing him in eye-searingly bright teal to think of anything else—but he smiles fondly at the iris anyways, sunlight skipping across his scales and turning them pure white.

“Sunshine, it’s perfect.” Haruki leans over, lightly kissing his forehead; cool against A’dewah’s flush that could rival the summer heat at this point. “Thank you.”

And A’dewah doesn’t know what he could say to that, spring’s warmth blooming in his chest as everything he’s wanted to say in his one (four?) year absence bubbles up at once, so instead he steps forward and pulls him into a hug instead, sighing a summer breeze full of promise and withheld adoration into Haruki’s arms. The Doman sunlight seeps into the dark leather of his coat comfortably around the cooler touch of Haruki’s hands splayed across his back, and A’dewah could melt if his bones weren’t complaining.

Of course, he thinks, letting his fingers curl into the fabric of Haruki’s shirt as he finds himself lovingly trapped in Haruki’s embrace. What else would I have done?

#ffxiv #my writing #tales from the blue #ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2020 #a'dewah tia #haruki #s: sitting in a persimmon tree #hanami #kotone #okay this word was fucking Weird but it bonked me cyan and carmela with 'dewah time' vibes so here i am sdgnsdfnsdf #also im Exhausted. this might look incoherent in some parts NDNGSNDNF #5.3 spoilers #patch 5.3 spoilers #patch 5.3 #elie's ffxivwrite2020 #but only slightly

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clubmudkip · 4 years

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The final moments of Mixer - What happens at the end of all things?

There weren’t a lot of people online for Mixer’s final moments, and I feel like this should be documented somewhere. So here it is: what it was like to watch interactive livestreaming platform Mixer exhale its very last breath.

It was announced that Mixer would be shut down on July 22nd, 2020. So hundreds of users gathered to watch the few final streams. In the minutes leading up to 12:00 midnight PST, users watched a purple and orange confetti graphic fall from the banner at the top of the site, covering streams and chats in small circles. A celebration of the end, we waited for the clock to roll over. What does the End look like? What happens when a website ceases to exist? We all wanted to find out.

For the final hours I watched Mixer user Magiccake62 (now on Twitch under the same name!) stream her usual creative art stream; on this night she chose to make clay figures to celebrate the release of indie game Ooblets. From her hands sprang small birds, mushrooms, and frogs; all collectible creatures from the game. Finally she said, “What are they gonna do, BAN me?” and streamed a movie from her childhood. Fortunately for Maggiccake62, no copyright strikes were received, and she was able to continue until the movie’s end.

Midnight came, and then went. And it was uneventful. We were all still here. Streams were still running. I was confused, so I did what every person born into the Age of the Internet would do. I googled it. I found one single source. (https://dotesports.com/streaming/news/mixer-shutdown-reportedly-set-for-july-23-after-marketing-error) Gaming news website DotEsports was the only reporter of... a marketing error? Despite all official sources listing the 22nd as the true shutdown time, DotEsports insists the true shutdown to be 11am PST on the 23rd. Honestly, this is so on brand for Mixer, you wonderful garbage website.

So we laughed and shrugged, some of us kept streaming, but most of us went to bed.

I needed to see the End. What does it feel like when our provider provides no more? Where do you go when you are kicked out of your home? How often does a community simply cease to exist?

I set my alarm early. I woke up at 8:45 PST. Only a few streamers were active. Most were bots running pre-recorded content; facecams saying “Thank you and remember to follow me on Twitch.tv!”. Of the few active users, I saw gamers playing Miinecraft, Fortnite, and various first person shooters that I’m not familiar with. I saw one dude streaming porn (because what are they gonna do, BAN him?). Someone was doing a radio show entitled “Mixer’s Funeral” which featured a looping gif of Gibby from iCarly playing a trumpet in front of a coffin, accompanied by various ‘80’s popular music titles. At 9:00am PST Halo Infinite was announced; many users livestreamed their reaction to the title.

Around 10:00am PST I stumbled upon a co-stream hosted by users DigiDuncan, Gambiy23, and DB05 (all can be found on Twitch under those same names). Each streamer did their own thing; Gambiy23 streamed sitcom King of Queens right from Netflix (because what are they gonna... you know the rest), DigiDuncan scrolled through Mixer watching bits and pieces of others’ final streams, and DB05 watched Youtube poops. On a Discord call together, they wanted to stream until the very end. So this is where I stayed, tuning in and out of chat, laughing along at the long-forgotten sitcom. I got cozy, and waited.

At around 10:40am PST, Gambiy23 received a copyright strike from Mixer and was banned, ceasing the King of Queens stream. I guess even at the End of all things, there are still rules.

[First Screenshot] Knowing that the end was near, DB05 began playing a cutscene of the moon falling to the earth from Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. The building music made my heart pound. At 10:54am PST, Mixer pushed notifications reading “So long, and thanks for all the fish :)”, a quote mentioned before the planet Earth is demolished in order to make way for the hyperspace bypass, featured in the book series Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy written by Douglas Adams. When I hear this quote, I think of it as a goodbye to the universe itself; an acknowledgement of the many wonders one has experienced in their life; one last expression of gratuity for the world they inhabited and the gifts they received from it. It was fitting. Mixer, unafraid, gazed into the void and shouted a final “thank you”. At the same time as the push notifications, MixerBots spammed chats with emojis of goldfish, prompting users to do the same. We sent to chats our final “i love you’s”, “thank you’s”, sent emojis and encouragements, “goodbye’s” and “goodnight’s”. DigiDuncan scrolled through the front page of Mixer, and we watched the streams start to blink out, leaving a blue Mixer “X” logo in their place. The confetti showers returned. The site began to lag. Finally, the clock struck 11:00am PST.

And the moon fell.

For a few seconds, the streamers laughed. “Is that it?”, “Is it over?” DB05’s moon had fallen, and the cutscene continued to play. A brilliant flash of white, and Link awakens in the past. The streamers look on, “We’re still he-” Silence cut them off.

The voices of 10 million users, silenced in an instant.

I think we expect the End to be deafening, chaotic, and frightening. Like an Action/disaster movie, filled with explosions and screams and panic. But instead the End was peaceful. Quiet. Almost comforting. It was like sitting atop a hill in the morning before the birds start to sing, watching the sun rise over the horizon. Alone, yet serene.

[Second Screenshot/Third Screenshot] Almost immediately, I realized I could still click around the site. The confetti continued to fall. At 11:12am PST, I returned to the userpage of my friend. All the streams had ended, but the content was still there. User’s “About Me” pages were still active, along with all of their clips, previously recorded streams, and other things like “Stream rules”. I was able to watch the tail end of Magiccake62’s stream from the previous night. I scrolled through Mixer’s homepage, clicking on names to read their bios and watch the stored video clips. It felt like wandering through a neighborhood evacuated before a storm; no time to bring your possessions with you. Houses left unlocked, devoid of life and frozen in time.

[Fourth Screenshot] by 11:13am PST Chats still remained active as long as you did not navigate away from the page. I continued to talk with some of the users that had been watching the stream. Just a few remaining voices, alone in this huge, empty city.

[Fifth screenshot/Sixth Screenshot] As I continued to look through the abandoned homes, I caught the tail end of DMacAttack12’s pre-recorded finale stream from the previous night. He was playing indie game Celeste: Farewell. The main character, upon reaching the top of the mountain, experiences a dream where she sees a long dead friend. She apologizes to the friend for not attending the funeral, and the friend laughs. “The Funeral wasn’t for me. It was for all of you, stuck living on without me,” she chortled. The main character awakens from her dream, and takes the time to reconnect with her friends in the present. Perhaps Mixer’s last day was always meant to be that; not a goodbye, but a way to reconnect with each other.

[Seventh Screenshot] At 11:30am PST, the majority of the streams’ “offline” screencaps had vanished. Chats continued to function, but you could not join new ones. Trying to visit a new stream would result in the chat section loading forever. The voices were dwindling. As far as I could tell, it was just myself and DigiDuncan. We talked about the future and exchanged Twitch handles, and thanked each other for being here - at least we could watch this noiseless sunrise together. We wondered if we were truly alone, if anyone could hear us. We wondered how long this would last. How long did the two of us have, in the End?

[Eighth Screenshot] At 11:38am PST, chat function disconnected. I could no longer send messages to my new friend. Error messages began popping up in place of streams. DigiDuncan told me they were using chat via OBS, a client that helps you set up and organize your stream (I was just using in browser), so their world was completely different from the one that I was experiencing. I worried about DigiDuncan. I was forced out, and I don’t know if they were left to experience the End alone.

[Ninth Screenshot] At 12:10pm PST, All mixer URLs began returning this error message. The End was no longer a void, but a brilliant blinding white light. But as quickly as it came, it vanished.

[Tenth Screenshot] I returned to the Mixer homepage at 12:11pm PST to find it completely empty, but still stylized with the Mixer logo and signature blue backgrounds. The booming voice of the error message notifies me that something has gone wrong as the homes filled with memories I had been visiting vanish around me, leaving endless winding pavement streets and empty grass lots in their wake. What was once a bustling community was now nothing at all. Any presence of the people who once lived here, their culture, their love and their stories, had simply evaporated into the sunrise. With no other words or pictures to advertise streams, everything is quiet. It is peaceful. It is the End.

[Eleventh Screenshot] By 12:16pm PST, all Mixer URLs displayed a graphic of a blue robot with hearts for eyes. This continues to be the case at the time of posting. With no users and no staff, Mixer itself is Alone, yet serene. In this graphic, at the End of all things, Mixer sighs a final “thank you” to the diaspora.

Goodnight Mixer. So long and thanks for all the fun :)

#mixer #twitch

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glowyjellyfish · 4 years

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Some more thoughts from mid-chapter 13 to mid-chapter 16 I think, a bit before the board meeting. Spoilers for ff7r through that point, spoilers for the entire OG:

-how is wedge still alive. I’m happy but baffled. He’s a good boy and I don’t want to be hurt again as I don’t expect him to survive the game. Right now I think that as soon as he wakes up or opens his mouth the watchers will realize he’s there and go kill him. I have also considered a far more hurty option that cannot happen, that he lives up until Elmyra and Marlene get kidnapped and dies trying to protect them, which would make Reeve’s entire plan way more shitty than it already is, and would be very hurtful to me personally. Reeve and Wedge are both good boys who like cats! I don’t want this to happen but I can’t ignore it now that I’ve thought of it! (I first wrote this before going to the Shinra Building annnnnnd now I’m really concerned that my fears are justified.)

-my favorites are still the parts where you control Aerith, especially in Wall Market where she was put in control purely so Cloud could have a moment to himself to react to something, but I severely underestimated just how great controlling Barret outside battles could be, mowing down crates and barriers in a Shinra facility. He was having the time of his life and so was I. It also has me really psyched that every character will have their controllable moments over the course of however many games, each with their own interaction with the environment. Will Vincent do huge floaty jumps and get up to platforms even Cloud can’t reach? Will Yuffie do ninja parkour? Will Cait Sith dismount his moogle and go through tight spaces? I can’t even think of a thing for Red but just imagine controlling him, think of how he moves, it’ll be amazing

-cloud having flashbacks in the lab was perfection. I also cheerfully decided that the cut from inside the lab just after that with Barret picking up Wedge to outside the hole wasn’t just due to technical limitations of not wanting to animate Barret carrying Wedge and backtracking through the whole damn place and coming up with a way out, but was in fact because we were in control of Cloud again and to protect himself from those flashbacks he disassociated hard.

-I find it really interesting to consider what cloud believes his backstory to be right now, and what Tifa thinks it is. Cloud thinks he left home at 14, joined soldier, made first class, went back to nibelheim for a mission with Sephiroth who was his buddy, watched Sephiroth completely melt down and go insane and destroy the town, confronted Sephiroth and then hrmph mmm uhhh he survived and Sephiroth didn’t so obviously he killed Sephiroth, and then maybe he was in a tube briefly in the aftermath but he escaped somehow and he’s been a merc ever since! While Tifa thinks he left home and joined soldier, made first class but never came back to nibelheim, and quit Shinra for reasons he hasn’t told her yet but she probably suspects it was when he learned what happened to Nibelheim, and then became a merc.

-oddly, I liked Leslie more before his tragic backstory was revealed. He’s still pretty cool for a new character, I just liked it better when he was enigmatically vaguely opposed to the pervy horribleness that went on behind the doors, rather than having a reason for it.

after entering the Shinra building:

-playing as tifa was also magical

-I found the Shinra museum hilarious and was half expecting there to be some sort of Sephiroth shrine in there. Reeve is the only one who took it seriously!

-also NEW REEVE SCENE! He’s overworked and he has an assistant. Both of which where obvious but were cool to see!

-speaking of which… okay, for the longest time I thought maybe Reeve was coerced or forced into spying. Then his first appearance in a trailer came along, and I leapt to the conclusion that he thought up with the spying plan all on his own because he’s just trying to prove that avalanche can be dealt with without throwing a city at them and killing thousands of innocents. Now, between the Cait Sith scene and this little bitty new scene, I’m kind of wondering if he just… sends Cait Sith to join avalanche on purpose and completely straight. With little more spying planned than “maybe keep an eye on them”. And perhaps then we bring in Tseng and a little blackmail/coercion—like, the Turks find out what he’s doing and are like “great, you can give us updates on what they’re doing. or we can tell the president that you’re a traitor.” I’m really excited to keep seeing more of him, and cannot wait for his whole arc!

-Hojo is horrifying. Omg so gross, don’t talk to Aerith about harvesting her mother’s body for science! WTF man. How is he immediately worse than old “these animals are on the brink of extinction” OG Hojo? I mean, I haven’t gotten up to that part yet, he will probably keep piling the vileness on. Man, I feel sorry for Sephiroth.

-I am really bad at using the stagger mechanic. That and mastering all the magic Materia is all I have left to do for Chadley.

-it’s interesting that they already have Sephiroth gliding through the building. I assume this is more for a bit of a confrontation with cloud when they see Jenova, as seen in the trailer, than for “Sephiroth is gonna kill President Shinra ASAP”, but who even knows at this point.

-I like how they made Mayor domino more serious while still maintaining his ridiculousness!

-OH and sneaking up the emergency stairs was GOLD. I’m not sure if there were mechanics to it that I missed, but I just ran Cloud up the stairs like normal and he gradually got slower and slower and by the end he was just trudging up the stairs it was amazing.

-and I’m slightly bummed that Barret didn’t say anything about a golden shiny wire of hope, but whatever.

-not sure yet what to make of the huge flash-forward in the video but dang that was a pretty cutscene

#ff7r spoilers #ff7r #ff7 spoilers

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ckm-writes · 5 years

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#Dissonance #triple treble #fanfic #Bechloe #Chaubrey #Mitchsen

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xaldinini · 5 years

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(( Thanks to @theeverbloomingdarkness for this idea. My own bs kh3 theory story nonsense:

-Opening cutscene is of Radiant Garden where we see Lea trying to get into the castle. Ienzo greets him but he looks tired and worn. The two rush back up to where Aeleus is standing protectively over Dilan’s unconscious form but Even is missing.

-Second opening if is young eraqus and young xehanort playing chess. They allude to the ending.

-Tutorial mode is with them actually. We learn that xehanort isn’t his actual name, but rather a nickname a friend of his had given him. That friend being eraqus.

-We start with Sora, Donald, and Goofy appearing in Olympus. They get word that Herc and Co were seen near the mountain since the Colosseum is closed. They make their way over to the mountain and Hades watches from afar. Mal and Pete show up looking for a box. (cutscene stuff here) Hades doesn’t know anything about it. Mal and Pete go to the next world to look for it.

-S, D, and G make their way to the mountain but oh no there are the titans going at it. They don’t know why but they just start fighting because big bad dudes = gotta fight. They make their way up the mountain where Herc and Zeus are doing cool stuff and fighting.

-Someone mentions Old Master Nort at some point.

-S, D, and G head out to a familiar world because Heartless showed up again and they don’t know why.

-Cut to a scene of Lea and Kairi training. Kairi is tried and worn out from the session because she’s not used to it. But she doesn’t give up because she’s delightfully stubborn like that.

-Cut to Riku and Mickey in Realm of Darkness. We now play as Riku in search of something in the Realm.

-They show up at the beach and fight a swarm of Heartless. The battle cuts short and Aqua shows up. She’s slowly turning into a Darkling (from khux) and they snap her out of it via a fight with a final combo with Mickey.

-Aqua has darkness released from her and she’s knocked out for a bit finally getting a chance to SLEEP for a moment.

-Sora and co arrive at Radiant Garden only to have Ienzo there because Lea is gone training on a different world. Sora is disappointed because he wanted to see Kairi. Ienzo gives him the phone and tells him it’s how to communicate with people. We get a glimpse of a group of dark hooded figures again. Ienzo warns Sora about the org and recounts the kidnapping of Even and how they were defenseless and that’s why Lea had to come back.

-Sora actually uses the power to go into Dilan’s sleeping form and reawakens him.

-We get some new spell upgrade or get the dream eater summon here.

-Lea and Kairi cutscene on the hill top where Kairi reveals new outfit. The two actually end up talking about Roxas and Namine. Lea has some memories of another girl but can’t place who or when it was. But he knows there was another girl at some point. Kairi offers her hand to him and some magic something or another happens and the MEMORIES come back to him of Xion and he cries.

-Or they keep talking about Roxas and Lea feels bad at what a jerk he was to him. He cries either way.

-We cut back to Sora who has found a new world of probably Arendel because we need Larxene to show up and explain the new princess of heart things. We do the story line of that world. What we end up learning is of the new princesses of heart things. We are confused as to WHY and WHO but we are going with it anyways. We get a new ride to summon out of this one.

-Cutscene of Lea and Kairi working hard again. Kairi is now kicking Lea’s ass.

-Switch back to Riku and Mickey with Aqua now waking up finally. She’s confused and dazed but she recognizes Mickey and nearly breaks out in tears seeing him again. She and Riku have a quiet moment of her remembering who he is and we get a flash back to when she met him and Sora as kids. Mickey and Riku explains what is happening out in the real world and the three agree to go back.

-Back to Sora who goes through several other worlds looking for these new princesses but can’t seem to determine if any of the girls he finds will work with whatever is needed.

-Marluxia is met in Tangled World

-Vanitas is met in Monster’s Inc World

-Young Nort is met in Toy Story World

-Luxord is met in Pirates World

-Xigbar is met in Big Hero 6 World ALTHOUGH Xaldin could be the alternate here. He’s with that Riku we saw in the trailer with the golden eyes. If it’s supposed to be Data Riku it make sense for him to be there. BUT if it’s Repliku from Castle Oblivion it ALSO makes sense for him to be there because science.

-I actually have a theory on this Riku tho. I don’t believe it is either Riku mentioned above but rather Xion implanted with one or both Riku memories in her. It is exceptionally similar to how she had Sora’s memories in her which made her look like Sora/Ven but now she has the Rikus that make her look like him. The reason she HAS Riku this time around is because they found Vexen’s notes on her and with him back as a Nort he just picked up where he left off and boom Xion is back. And they put Riku in her this time because he’s a master and junk BUT he was the closest to becoming a Nort in KH1. Thus the better choice.

-After about three worlds being explored and completed we will get a cut scene of Ienzo trying to get in contact with Sora but Sora’s out of range or some shit like that. Ienzo feels alone with Aeleus watching over Dilan and he can’t figure out the computer system to get it working again.

-Ansem the Wise shows up again, it’s more of a memory than him ACTUALLY being there. But as soon as Ienzo realizes this the ghost of his touch still lingers as does the words that he spoke to him resonates in his head. He figures out the password to get the computers working again.

-Sora explores more worlds. Meets more people. We get to see some sort of reference to Marvel or Star Wars BUT NO ACTUAL WORLD. We gain more summons and magic as per world per usual.

-The grinding world is still Olympus but now you fight against teams of Heartless that the other gods put together for shits and giggles. It’s actually a lot of fun because you get fun items that will eventually make the ultimate keyblade.

-Random cutscenes of Riku, Mickey, and Aqua making it back to Yen Sid’s tower and Aqua getting some DESERVED rest.

-Another cutscene of Lea and Kairi having another friend moment. But Lea now remembers Xion. Saix actually crashes one of their lessons just for intimidation purposes. He’s accompanied by Xemnas or Xigbar. They don’t attack, just talk. They leave when Lea attempts to attack in a rage but comes up too short to do anything. They both train harder.

-A sprinkling of cutscenes of known Norts showing them talking to other Norts in cryptic messages about the overall plan. Lots of sass for Lar and Mar.

-One cutscene of TerraNort fighting his own armor is actually from the past. It’s a flashback of when they had first clashed about two years prior to the current events happening. It’s there to confuse everyone on the timeline. We see it because someone is talking to some one else and that is the memory that is brought up.

-Jumping back to Mal and Pete, they actually are seen in about a quarter of the worlds Sora and co are in. She is stopping to talk to the big bads and seeing if they know where the box has been. She makes enemies and allies all the while but none take her too seriously. She’s probably the main reason one of the worlds is in the game because Sora follows her and Pete to that one.

-The world they end up in the box is there. Luxord shows up also looking for said box. There is a three way fight over the box. The contents still aren’t revealed.

-The fight is over but a cut scene happens where Mal looks like she’s about to get away but is struck down once and for all by a hooded black cloaked figure. This figure ends up be Luxu who is working with Luxord. The two of them gather the box and disappear into a portal before Sora can stop them. Pete is sent running for his own life.

-Sora will eventually make his way over to Twilight Town because Ienzo made some sort of connection to the mansion. We meet up with Hayner, Pence, and Olette which makes Sora think about Roxas again. We will get a heartwarming moment of Roxas and Sora talking inside of Sora when he focuses on him.

-They go into the mansion and Sora gets into a pod for “testing purposes”

-THIS ACTUALLY TRIGGERS SOMETHING because since he was in that pod before it shocks him into remember CO and Roxas is LAUNCHED into the driver seat of Sora’s body. THUS making it easier to access Ven.

-With Sora deep deep deep down into his consciousness now, he’s able to reach Ven but he doesn’t know it’s Ven. We are now going into a mirror-esque world of Sora and Ven’s heart inside of Sora as Sora in the pod is actually Roxas getting a chance to have a body once more. But Roxas is just sort of using this time to just have some him quiet time and figure out how to get his own body.

-Sorry, back to Sora and Ven. Sora starts chasing after this blond haired kid who he keeps calling Roxas over and over again to get him to stop running away but when he thinks he’s about to get close there is an invisible wall in his way. This gives us timed missions to get things or some sort mini mission led by Chirithy. When these missions are done this wakes up Ven inside of him.

-With Ven awake this triggers Ven’s memories of what happened of when he was a dandelion. Seeing Chirithy is what makes it happen. However it only comes back in bits and pieces. There are holes in Ven’s memory where he can’t seem to form a full memory of what happened so far back in his past. But he does remember Aqua and Terra.

-Ven does remember the unions and how there were five masters. He does remember their names and that there were five others before them. This is in the form of broken flashbacks of KHUX cutscenes now in hd beauty.

-Cue a very confused Sora.

-Sora wakes up and can control his own body again. He explains what happened but is still confused. Now he can hear Roxas and Ven in his head. At all times. It weirds him out.

-It turns out that Ansem Seeker of Darkness and Xemnas were waiting on something like this to happen to attack. They had been needing the use of the pods but because of DiZ they couldn’t get into the mansion. With the power going back to the pods, they can finally use them again. They disappear.

-This sends Sora back onto his mission. He goes out to one more world that actually has a lot of plot important points and reveals the final xehanort or something like that. This sends him towards the Keyblade Graveyard.

-We actually get a cutscene where everyone else is told to go to the Keyblade Graveyard.

-When S, D, and G arrive so do the others. Before they can even get intros out or meet up in the same place, the massive attack happens. Ven sees Aqua through Sora’s eyes and he is drawn to go to her but Sora keeps fighting. Roxas sees Lea through Sora’s eyes and he’s drawn to him but Sora keeps fighting. The two inside of him get frustrated enough to BREAK FREE and we get a strange bright flash of light that now has the three of them in separate bodies ready to fight.

-Once the fight is done there are short reunions that will break the viewer’s heart. It’s short because Old Coot Nort is now in full power with all of his Darknesses at the ready. As it turns out they didn’t need the new princesses of light. It was just to get Sora to get the other two out of his body, but they needed more time.

-Old Nort Coot is in full power BECAUSE OF THE BOX. The box had the Master of Master’s body or heart or SOMETHING related to him which is why Luxu was so shocked. Now when Sora and the others first get to the KG, we see Luxu in the distance talking to MX in the distance. We don’t know what they are saying but we can see the box is with them and they both open it. Before we can see what is actually in the box, the twelve other Org members block our view and we fight.

-A giant epic battle happens.

-Xehanort is finally, FINALLY, defeated. He goes into Kingdom Hearts. All of his Norts fade with him. Some random few stay behind, their bodies reverting back to what they were before the Nort had taken them over. They have another chance of life.

-Terra is finally released. We get our wayfinder trio reunion.

-Happiness doesn’t last. Since Terra had been stuck in the dark for so long he actually starts to fade on his own. The armor that is still waiting for him, comes for him. His soul is finally reunited. He can rest now. As he is about to fade we see Eraqus standing in the glow of Kingdom Hearts’ rays. He’s smiling. He welcomes Terra to him with open arms. Terra falls to his knees in forgiveness and Eraqus pulls him into a hug. Ven and Aqua join in on this. The light fades and Ven and Aqua are hugging each other now.

-Braig is there with Isa. Both still scarred and unconscious. Riku and Sora have the option to go in and help them. But only one. They choose Isa. Going into the Realm of Dreams, they awaken the sleeping heart of a child Isa and return him to Lea.

-Seeing the reunion with Isa and Lea, Roxas doesn’t know what to do. Namine and Xion project themselves next to him and gives him and each other a smile. Roxas can’t see them, but senses two people next to him and he feels good.

-Mickey, Donald, and Goofy hug it out. Happy to be back with one another.

-Sora, Riku, and Kairi finally have a proper reunion. The three have a group hug which leads to compliments to Kairi on her technique and how great she was. Riku teases that she will surpass Sora in becoming a master sooner.

-With Xehanort finally defeated, the groups return to their own homes with promises to keep in touch.

-Sora finally goes home and has dinner with his mother.

ROLL CREDITS

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

During the credits we see:

-Sora, Riku, and Kairi training on Destiny Islands together

-Braig and Even being brought back to Radiant Garden and being laid up in bed while he appears to be sleeping.

-Radiant Garden itself looking beautiful and more complete with fountains.

-The Restoration Committee congratulating itself.

-Various worlds with their happy ever afters.

-Ven and Aqua returning to the Land of Departure to its original state.

-We see Mickey and Minnie reuniting. Daisy and Donald holding hands. Goofy chuckling on the side as he pulls out a picture of Max at college.

-Chip and Dale keep doing their thing. They actually end up opening up a transportation special for Sora and the gang for the other worlds.

-Pete is seen running around lost somewhere between the worlds in a gummi ship of his own, only to have Chip and Dale pull up next to him like cops. He is brought back to disney castle where he works as a janitor.

-Aeleus, Ienzo, and Dilan finally finished cleaning the castle and opening it up to the rest of the town. They’ve also made a memorial for Even.

-The other recompleted Norts (Lux, Mar, Lar...) all returning to their own worlds, confused and dazed. Or their own timelines......

-Braig and Even waking up in RG, very confused and very weak.

-Sora and Ienzo on the phone with one another with plans on what seems to be another body extraction notes with Namine written on one of the pages.

-Lea, Roxas, and Isa all sitting and eating ice cream together. Lea in the middle.

-One last final cut scene of young Eraqus and young Xehanort playing chess in their time line. The keyblade on the wall disappears.

RANDOM OTHER HEADCANONS

-Kairi refuses to eat and sea salt ice cream with Lea until waaaaaaaaaay later in their training because she doesn’t trust him. She does mention wanting to share some with her boys.

-Xigbar is actually seen in like half of the worlds talking to the other Norts. He just sort of floats around from each world checking on each Nort that is there because he can. The others either find it annoying or actually enjoy having him stop by.

-We will get the other Somebody names in a journal entry.

-Pinocchio comes back for some reason.

-If the Data Riku/.Repliku/Xion Nort doesn’t work out, it ends up being Xaldin. Because that’s the only way I will personally accept that Riku looking Nort to be there. And Xaldin ends up being the final Nort because of another kidnapping that they do at RG. It’s after the second one that Ienzo feels alone and gets that screen time with Ansem the Wise.

-I’m really hoping it ends up being Xaldin.

-The Radiant Garden Restoration Committee is still important, but they are just working on the town more than anything in this game. We will see more of the town being built up and being restored to what it looked like in BBS.

-Sephiroth is still a boss fight somewhere in the game. But he’ll be in another world like Twilight Town for no reason.

-In the Keyblade Graveyard you the player have to fight all of the Norts at some point. They might cut the battle short with another Keyblader coming in and picking up the fight where you left off, but it will be close to that cliffside fight with the FF characters in KH2.

-Kairi will yell at Larxene and Marluxia at some point “This is for Namine!”

-Kairi and Namine actually talk a lot to each other but we will never see it on screen, it only gets alluded to.

-Sora seems like he’s going to fade into the darkness at least three times throughout the game. But it’s all just to be able to pull Roxas and/or Ven out from inside of him.

-I’m slightly weighing on the idea that Luxu and Luxord might be the same person. But I’m not convinced on the idea myself. Therefore they have separate endings.

-Cid and Merlin still argue about magic vs technology is in there somewhere I’m sure. It’s gotta happen at least once.

-The Winnie the Pooh world is meant for minigames. However you will need to reach a certain score with it in order to get the secret ending that shows something in relation to Sora, Riku, and Kairi all sharing a paopu fruit at the same time.

-I really want the secret ending to be the three of them sitting on their island with a paopu fruit in Sora’s hand. He’s sitting between the two of them and he breaks it into three parts and hands off pieces to the two of them. They all smile at each other and eat it at the same time.

-Worlds I can confirm to be in the game: Olympus, Twilight Town, Radiant Garden, BH6, Tangled, Frozen, Pirates, Keyblade Graveyard, Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Dream Realm....

-Other possible worlds that they could put in that would tie in with the theme that is searching for something/someone and fighting an inner darkness: Treasure Planet, Brave, Lion King 2, Princess and the Frog, Lilo and Stitch, Robin Hood, Pocahontas, Moana, Elena.... If we want something on time travel we’d end up with Cinderella 3.

-If there is a Star Wars world it would be with the Clone Wars TV show that they have. And if there is a Marvel world it would be in association with Thor or Captain America.

-Riku will just constantly be teasing Sora and Kairi about their fighting styles every time they are together.

NOW I’m done. I’m pretty sure I’m missing SOMETHING important that I can’t remember...... but that’s my headcanon and how I think kh3 is going to go. ))

#ooc #khtheory #headcanon #dear lort i did this in three hours #got to over 3500+ words #it's a lot of random shit and i don't anticipate most of this being right #but here's a good start #pretty sure i missed something..... like really sure....#theeverbloomingdarkness #sorry to anyone on mobile that this screws over #long post #also sorry for the shitty tagging system that is going to put this in a lot of unnecessary tags

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years

Text

The French Mistake

I’d hate to disappoint kiralamouse.

The first plan that occurred to Steve was the self-sacrificing wanker one – he could crash the Leviathan. That would probably kill them all, but it would take the queen with them…

That wasn’t what they were trying to accomplish here, though. Their whole purpose was to get back home alive. There was self-sacrificing, and then there was self-defeating.

Suddenly something moved on the console. The screen Steve had been using to navigate shrank into a corner, and another open popped up. This was the point of view of one of the remaining soldiers, and it was looking at a tablet, being held up by a terrified NASA employee.

The image was of Ochoa, standing in front of a metal door that Steve recognized as the same type in the tunnels of the Houston underground. She was still filthy and sweaty, but she had washed her face and was standing up tall, with Colleen and Kevin on each side of her.

“This is Ellen Ochoa, director of the Johnson Space Center,” she said, “and I have a message for you, visitors from space. You said we have no heroes, but you made two big mistakes. The first was assuming we can’t make our own wormholes. It just so happens that Dr. Kevin Farinas here is one of the world’s experts.” Next to her, Kevin held up her drawing of the inner workings of her wormhole machine. They did look very technical and impressive. “You may have some of the Avengers,” Ochoa went on, “but we have the rest!”

The metal door behind her rolled up, and a group of figures stepped out. They were brilliantly backlit and at first it wasn’t possible to see anything but their silhouettes, but those were in themselves familiar. The stuntmen representing Steve, Thor, and Natasha were not there, but Elizabeth Olsen was, and Jeremy Renner, and Colonel Rhodes, whose actor’s name Steve hadn’t caught. Spiderman was there – that must be Donny – and Sebastian Stan, dressed as Bucky complete with a special sleeve to represent his mechanical arm, and Pietro, who must have arrived late but there he was, alive and whole. And finally, Bob Downey, dressed in a tailored suit and red sunglasses that were perfectly Tony Stark. He stepped up beside Ochoa and took the glasses off.

“That second mistake she mentioned?” he said. “That was assuming we wouldn’t come for our team-mates. Avengers,” he turned and pointed at the others. “Assemble!”

With that, the video was over.

It would never work, Steve thought. Even with the re-write, the Chi’Tauri would know now that it was a bluff, a distraction. Just for a split second, however, the queen stopped, staring at the screen and trying to figure out what importance to attach to it.

A split second was all Natasha needed. She kicked out and hit the pink gem on the queen’s belt. The force field protecting her flickered and died. Loki grabbed the end of the staff weapon the queen had taken from him, its shaft still in her hand, and set it off. The bolt went right through her arm, severing it at the shoulder. She shrieked and dropped Thor and Natasha, and Loki jammed the muzzle end of the weapon into the bloody stump and fired again, directly into the queen’s flesh. This shot went right through her and out the other side, spattering Thor with blue-black gore, and the queen collapsed. Steve had to dive out of the way to avoid her massive body coming down on top of him. Natasha rolled under the console and curled up, preparing to be crushed.

The corpse hit the console, slid a bit, and pushed against the control stick. The Leviathan rolled over and went into a dive.

Steve dragged himself upright again and tried to push her off. Thor, on the other side, attempted to pull. Natasha, trapped under the edge of the console, joined Steve in pushing, and after a moment Loki dropped the staff weapon and did as well.

“You cannot blame me for breaking this!” Thor said.

“Don’t you two dare start!” Natasha ordered.

Warnings blared all around them as they dropped, but the queen’s body was literally dead weight, and it refused to move. Steve could barely believe this was happening. He felt as if he were outside himself, watching this all go on in slow motion from a million miles away. They couldn’t have survived everything so far, from the movie set to ruining their alternates’ lives and careers to fighting the Chi’Tauri, only to die in a stupid, stupid accident only moments after they’d won.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the screen with the starfield on it. There was an icon in the corner like a pulsating circle, spinning end over end. They had nothing to lose now – no harm in experimenting. He reached up and touched the icon.

It shrank to a point and vanished, and there was a flash of light. A blue sizzle passed through the cockpit of the Leviathan, bringing with it a prickling sensation and a metallic taste in the mouth, and then suddenly they were weightless.

Zero gravity was not a sensation Steve had felt before, and it was a deeply disorienting one. His gut told him he was falling, but the air around him was perfectly still. Loki, who’d still been pushing on the queen, was thrust backwards by his own efforts and set spinning in the air. Thor, pulling from the other side, could no longer keep his feet on the ground, and grabbed the queen’s arm to keep from floating away. Natasha squirmed out from under the console and hung there in midair, waving away globs of dark blue blood that were now floating freely.

“I think I just activated the wormhole,” Steve told her.

“Oh, really?” she asked, her face perfectly, sarcastically neutral.

“Yes,” Steve said. “As a matter of fact.”

The star map screen had now grown larger, to take the place of the front view. Steve couldn’t identify any of the stars they were seeing, but he wondered…

“Do you think we’re back in our own universe?” he asked.

“We’re certainly not back in our own bodies,” Loki observed.

Like the rest of them, the body of the queen was now floating gently, leaving the controls once again accessible. Steve took the column and flew the Leviathan in a wide arc, hoping for a look at what was behind them. He was out of the habit of formal prayer, but in the back of his mind he was murmuring please, God, please… please let him find himself looking down at Earth. His own Earth, where he was, or had once been, Captain America.

Stars rolled by.

Steve’s hopes sank slowly. It looked like there was nothing out here… just the black void in all directions. Then he realized that stars were winking out in one part of the view, and back in a moment later… there was an object there. Multiple objects. Multiple big, dark, symmetrical objects, floating out there in space.

The Leviathan’s computer recognized them. Outlines appeared on the screen of giant ships with smaller companions, and Steve realized they were looking at an entire armada. There were at least six of the big vessels and too many of the small ones to properly count… and here were Steve and the others with their one relatively tiny ship, in bodies that had barely survived four Chi’Tauri. Who knew how many thousands more were waiting for them out here.

Stark had said that he’d seen what was coming on the other side of the wormhole over New York. Was this it? No wonder the man was scared to death. Scared enough to do anything, even try to use the Mind Stone, if he thought it might save the world from this.

“Steve,” said Natasha, her voice calm but wavering very slightly, “whatever you just did, I think it would be a good idea if you did it again backwards.”

“What if we crash into the ground?” asked Steve.

“Then I guess we crash into the ground,” said Nat.

He reached for the circle icon, which had reappeared in the corner of the screen, but then suddenly the starfield flicked back to being a side image rather than a focus, and a different screen took its place. This one was for communication, and it showed another Chi’Tauri queen even more ornately armored than the last one, draped with metallic cloth and, Steve realized a moment later, much, much bigger. The tips of staves were visible on either side of her, and the tops of guards’ heads that barely came up to her waist. She was nearly twenty feet tall.

Steve and Natasha, Loki and Thor all pulled themselves off to the sides or ducked under the edge of the console, hoping they would not be seen. Perhaps they were not, but there was nowhere to hide the dead body of the smaller queen. It was plainly visible, floating inertly along with its own severed arm.

Other screens lit up, and Steve heard noises as machinery came to life. The bigger queen vanished again and the star map returned, but this time it had a blinking crosshair on an outer corner of the nearest mother ship. For a moment they seemed to be standing still, and then Steve saw a few more stars vanish behind the outlines. They were moving towards the armada.

The group exchanged some glances. They were all injured to various degrees, beaten and bruised and exhausted. Nobody felt capable of another fight.

Loki reached out and retrieved the staff weapon, which was floating nearby. He checked it, and then nodded. “Still has a charge,” he said.

“Thor,” said Natasha. “Let’s get some more weapons.”

“I’ll see if I can disengage the autopilot again,” said Steve.

He’d done that before just by pushing hard enough on the steering column, so he tried it again. It was much more difficult now. In the lack of gravity he couldn’t push against the floor, so when he tried to rotate the controls he ended up rotating himself. He had to tuck his knees under the edge of the console for leverage, and then pushed as hard as he could, but it did nothing. The mother ship had control and was not going to relinquish it.

Thor and Natasha returned, and Nat handed Steve a plasma rifle. It was, as Loki had discovered on the ground, surprisingly heavy. If Steve had been fighting humans, he would have wanted to use it as a club rather than a gun. His arm was just barely long enough to reach the firing mechanism inside, and he understood why Loki had found it so awkward to aim.

“Where’s that force field switch?” asked Nat.

“Here.” Loki showed it to her, on the bottom of the device. “Just remember that it will not fire with the field activated.”

“Got it,” said Nat.

The mother ship was looming very large in the viewscreen now, like the Death Star dwarfing the Millennium Falcon. Steve wondered how big it was. It had to be at least the size of Manhattan. If one of these had come through to Earth, SHIELD’s helicarriers would have looked like mosquitos buzzing around it.

“My friends,” said Thor, “it will be an honour to die by your sides.”

“I would have counted it a greater honour not to have died at all,” Loki observed.

“Same,” said Nat.

Distant sounds echoed through the structure of the Leviathan as it docked. Steve heard metal scrape on metal, clicks and thumps of things sliding into place, and then with a final dull, reverberating clang, the gravity came back on. The queen’s body hit the cockpit floor with a sound like dropping an enormous leather coat, and Steve squeaked as he came down on his bad ankle, but quickly silenced himself again. Everybody double-checked their weapons, and Steve observed that he was proud of them – all of them, including Loki. They had no fight left in them, but they were going to keep fighting anyway.

Something below them rumbled. It must have been a door open. Perhaps it was the Leviathan’s mouth.

Heavy, leathery footsteps were heard, very loud now that the motion of the Leviathan had ceased. The ladders creaked.

The first soldier poked its head through the entrance on Steve’s left. Natasha took aim and shot it in the face. It dropped out of sight again, with a series of cries and thumps that suggested it had fallen on top of several of its fellows. A second soldier popped up on the right. Loki blasted it with the staff weapon.

The Chi’Tauri were not stupid, though – the next ones that appeared had their force fields on. That meant they couldn’t shoot, but they also couldn’t be shot, and Steve and the others would have to take them on hand-to-hand. Thor tried Steve’s move from the foyer at the Johnson Space Center, throwing himself at a Chi’Tauri’s legs to knock it down. This worked, but the next alien behind it grabbed him and held him off the floor by one leg. Loki slashed with the staff weapon’s bladed end and stabbed one Chi’Tauri in the belly, but another one wrested it from his hands with ease.

It didn’t take long, just a few desperate, panicky, painful seconds. None of them were capable of putting up a decent fight in their current state. Steve, too, was lifted off the ground. His captor snarled at him, and Steve could only hope that wherever he was now, Chris Evans would forgive him.

#fanfic #steve rogers #natasha romanov

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voidchill · 7 years

Photo

In 9:18 Dragon, a 6 year old human is found in the Kocari Wilds. Her demonstration of magic grants her a one-way ticket to Kinloch Hold.

These events would hardly stand out if not for two facts: 1) She knows she's trapped in a video game. 2) She was 26 years old, the last she checked.

The upside: 12 years should be more than enough time to come up with a plan to survive the impending Blight. (She hopes)

[Note: This story is also on AO3]

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

Warnings for body shaming.

[9:18 Dragon] [Helena: 6 years old – Thedas | 26 years old – Earth]

Mom stands in front of the stove in a pair of short shorts and a hoodie, her platinum hair swept up into a bun on the very top of her head with a red scrunchie. She dishes up her signature Hamburger Helper with a side of mashed potatoes and peas.

Helena counts only four plates. Sometimes she wonders if Mom actually eats.

“She got more mashed potatoes than me,” Abby whines once Mom divvies up the plates.

“No, I didn’t,” Rebecca sneers back. “You already ate half of yours cuz you’re fat.”

Alex chortles at the end of the table, shaking with mirth from his slim arms up to his light brown bowl cut.

Helena watches from across the table as Abby’s eyes well with tears.

“Shut up,” Abby demands, glaring from under her own messier bowl cut.

“Fatty, fatty, boom-buh-latti,” Alex singsongs.

With a war cry, Abby brings a meaty fist down on Alex’s bony left shoulder.

Alex stops laughing.

“Don’t touch me,” he snarls, shoving Abby.

Abby’s eyes widen in panic, her hands grasping onto the end of the table to keep her chair upright.

“Knock it off,” Mom scolds as she steps between them, her long, bony fingers curling around each of their arms.

“She started it,” Alex hisses, jerking against her grip.

“I don’t care who started it, I’m finishing it.”

“Can I have more mashed potatoes?” Rebecca asks, her tone almost as bright as her long blonde hair.

Helena notes the smug curl to her lips as Mom releases their younger siblings to take her plate.

“But I asked first,” Abby points out.

“I know, hold on,” Mom says, scooping another dollop onto Rebecca’s plate.

Abby pouts.

Helena looks down at her own plate. Mom gave her one of the chipped ones, but at least she left out those soggy noodles. Plain hamburger gravy poured on a scoop of mashed potatoes—just the way she likes it. Well, almost. She grimaces at the small pile of peas encroaching on her mashed potatoes and nudges them away with her fork.

“You better be eating those peas.”

Helena glances up to find Mom frowning down at her from the other side of the table.

“I love peas,” Rebecca announces from Mom’s left, tilting her chin up as she sucks a scoop off of her spoon.

“Me too,” Abby adds from her right.

Alex fumes, glaring down at his plate as he rubs the arm Mom grabbed.

“I don’t,” Helena mutters down at her plate.

“They’re good for you,” Mom says.

“They’re gross,” Helena insists, poking one. She grimaces at the green ooze on the end of her fork.

Mom’s frown deepens, her wrinkles sinking further, almost as if someone carved them there.

“I don’t care if you like them or not. They’re good for you,” she repeats in that tone that makes Helena’s shoulders hunch, “and you’re not leaving this table until you eat them.”

Helena glares down at her plate. She can’t eat them, she’ll throw up. Why does she have to choke these stupid peas down? Why didn’t Mom make more of an effort? Why didn’t she find vegetables that Helena could eat? If Mom had exposed Helena to different vegetables then, she could—

Helena blinks, dropping her fork.

“I don’t have to eat this,” she realizes, staring at her hands, her fingers slim but long.

Too long for this script.

Another fork clangs onto one of the plates across from her.

“Excuse me?” Mom hisses. “You will eat every single pea on that plate or—”

Helena raises her head. The seats around the table are empty.

“No, I really fucking won’t.”

Mom gasps.

“What did you just say?”

“Fuck, fuckety, fuck fuck,” Helena replies in a jaunty tune, pushing back her chair.

“You—sit back down and finish your dinner,” Mom demands. “Now.”

“Screw you—you’re not my real mom.” Helena laughs, looking down at her, even if only by an inch or so. “Besides, even if you were, I still wouldn’t have to eat shit.”

The Thing pretending to be her mom jerks closer, its body thinning as it stretches taller, and Helena wants to laugh. Their height difference had always been near negligible—just that inch or so. The Thing could double its size, but it couldn’t shove Helena back down onto small hands and clumsy legs. Not now.

The Thing stops growing after half a foot and strides through the table between them, the illusion warping around its form as its face cracks.

The Thing hisses, “You little—”

“This isn’t real,” Helena points out, triumphant even as her heart thunders in her chest.

A bright flash of light fills the room and Helena shields her eyes, staggering back. When she drops her arm, she finds both the light and her old kitchen gone, along with whatever had worn the guise of her mother. A path bracketed by rocks extends before her, the world a wash of green and a vacuous darkness.

“’And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you,’” Helena murmurs, turning in place with wide eyes.

“Where did you find that?” a voice asks from behind her.

Helena jumps and whips around, catching a glimpse of gold and purple before the world tilts and she smacks into stone.

“Ow,” she hisses, blinking bleary eyes around her.

A faint, flickering light illuminates the stone walls of the infirmary. She leans against the cot behind her and reaches to untangle the blanket around her legs, pausing when she sees her childlike hands.

Not like, she corrects, shoulders falling.

…

Helena steps into Irving's office, hands clenched in the fabric of her robes to keep from tripping. Her gaze sweeps across the bookshelves, but she resists the urge to investigate further. Based on her playthroughs of Inquisition, she knows the likelihood of finding any texts written with the English alphabet is low.

And isn't that a Harrowing thought—a bibliophile unable to read.

"Do you have an interest in books?" Irving's voice snaps Helena's gaze to the opposite side of the room, watching the man stride forward and sift through some papers on his desk.

Once again, she strains under the desire for honesty. Who knows what age children learn to read in this world? Her answer might betray her in some way.

Irving turns around and Helena shrugs, her lips twisting.

“You will have plenty of time to familiarize yourself in the coming months,” Irving comments as he meanders passed her. He raises a hand to the bookcase and plucks out a slim book. “You might even discover an appreciation for them.”

Helena pictures her bookcases at home, the shelves warping under the weight of her collection.

Irving opens the book to a page with a few drawings and offers it to Helena. Her shoulders slump, but she keeps her hands gentle as she studies the strange symbols scribed across the yellowed paper.

“What does it say?” she asks, gaze caught on a sketch of a young woman surrounded by some kind of force field.

“I’ve found this book to be quite helpful as an introductory text. This page,” Irving taps on the sketch of the young woman, “describes just one of the many ways your gifts can be harnessed to protect you.”

A slew of responses rise to the forefront of her thoughts, but fracture before reaching her mouth.

“Oh,” Helena murmurs instead of contributing, gaze shifting to the swirling dark figures pressing against the woman’s barrier.

“The common term for this spell is ‘Mind Blast,’” Irving says, with a note of amused exasperation, “though it’s far more complex than such a name would suggest. The bash of a warrior’s shield cannot compare to this spell’s concussive force or ‘blast.’”

Helena glances up at Irving, noting the rehearsed quality of his words that spoke of past arguments.

“It’s a wave of pure will drawn from deep within the caster,” Irving explains. “To use it to stagger an opponent is to overpower their own force of will, even if only for a moment.”

“Will you teach me?” Helena wonders, voice small.

Irving smiles.

“You will learn that and more, child. Here at the Circle, we are dedicated to educating our apprentices in the arcane arts, so that they may hone their craft and prepare themselves for the difficulties ahead.”

Helena closes the book.

“You mean demons?”

Something in Irving’s smile or his eyes shifts, and Helena recalls that cutscene she watched on YouTube once upon a time, wherein he urged both Amell and Surana to trick Jowan.

“Yes, demons are but one difficulty you will face.”

Helena restrains herself from scoffing at that.

No kidding.

“Tell me, child, can you remember your first use of magic? What led you into the Wilds?”

Helena remembers blinking in something deeper than darkness, something absent and void, ears so clogged with that void that even her thoughts grew muffled under the panic, throat scraped raw from—screaming? Was she screaming?

She remembers her life on Earth. Her family, her friends. She can visualize her bedroom with all its clutter and knickknacks.

She tries to recall what led to that moment of silent cacophony and finds only absence.

The last thing she did, the last person she spoke to—all swallowed in that void.

And then the templars.

“No,” Helena admits. She shifts in place, tapping her thumb against the book. “Do you know how the templars found me?”

Irving sighs, though not unkindly.

“Do not trouble yourself. I am certain you will recover those memories in time.” Irving extends a hand and Helena returns the book, trying not to frown. “In the meantime, let us focus on getting you settled.”

Helena wants to insist Irving give her a real answer, but in the end she just nods, trailing after him. He leads her into the hallway and she works to keep her steps measured, grimacing at the thought of meeting anyone else.

#Don't Panic | Plan It #modern girl in thedas #modern character in thedas #misssnazzy writes

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that-sso-raven · 7 years

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another fake questline. i came up with this idea a couple of weeks ago, when i was listening to detektivbyrån - monster a lot

its an origin story for the teleporting hens

will probably be in 2 parts because i think itll be. a little long

i’m not very good at coming up with names, so we’ll call the two main characters of this story A and B.

when at long last we have access to nova alexandria, it’s eerily empty. (i don’t remember much about nova alexandria from its brief mentions in the archeology quests, so im guessing this is going to be very inaccurate).

you find a live chicken, a bizarre spot of life in an otherwise lifeless place. it vanishes mysteriously in a puff of feathers when you approach it - and as you’re watching, rematerializes several feet away, closer to the entrance of the library. if you follow it in, it will be waiting for you by a bookshelf, staring intently at one of the volumes. when you pull out the book (a study on interdimensional theory), you find a folded note in its pages. it seems to be a series of scrawls, indicating a small puzzle - moving a vase, and then rearranging some books, and then pushing a bookshelf a little to the right. when you go ahead and carry out these actions, a panel slides open on the floor, and unravels a spiral staircase into the dark depths below.

you can turn and talk to the chicken again, but all it will offer you is a perplexed “cluck?” you decide to go down and see what’s going on; you descend the staircase, and the chicken follows. if you stop, the chicken stops. if you resume walking, it will go with you.

you walk for a while. once you reach the bottom of the staircase, you are pulled into a cutscene: the chicken rushes ahead of you, hops onto a desk, and yanks on a rope hanging from the ceiling. the room is immediately flooded with illumination from what looks like several lanterns. in the sudden light, you are pulled back into a memory.

but it’s not your memory.

you suppose you’re living it vicariously, in a vision granted to you by your moon powers.

you see someone sitting with your back to you at the desk in front of you. it’s a brief flash, and you can’t clearly discern much, but you think you see a chicken perched on the desk. the person is writing furiously in a journal; the desk is covered in all kinds of odd blueprints and calculations and alchemical ingredients.

there’s the sound (and accompanying dialogue box) of someone calling their name - “A?” - distant, upstairs - and the person stops, and turns to look over their shoulder. slowly, they close the book, sliding their quill between its pages to mark where they left off, and then open up a drawer to the right on the desk and place the book inside. they close the drawer, and then get up to answer. your vision ends.

when you return to yourself, you notice that the room is more or less in the same layout as it was in your vision. some things have been shifted around, and a few cobwebs have emerged, but apart from the details and the disarray not much has changed.

there aren’t any blueprints on the desk anymore: the desktop has been cleared off, save for a strange device (a stand with several joints that ends in a metal hoop) and a couple of neatly stacked, old-looking tomes. and your newly acquired chicken companion.

you open the drawer on the desk, to the right, and find the journal.

the quill-bookmark remains. on the page - still unwritten - there is a letter in stark black ink. it’s incomplete; it seems that for whatever reason, the person that was writing in it never had a chance to finish, or simply forgot to. the letter states that the person in question has left to go seek B in the “world where there were stars”, and advises the reader to not worry, or attempt to follow. going between worlds, they state, is a dangerous, unpredictable affair. the letter seems to be ambiguously addressed to some loved one; it’s signed “A”

there is an unfinished postscript that reads “P.S. thank you very much for t”

the rest of the journal before the message seems like nothing but blank pages. there is, however, a brief message on its inside cover that reads:

“This journal belongs to A.”

you decide to pocket it. it may contain more information about just what went on down here, if you can figure out how to make the invisible content of the first several pages not invisible.

you thumb through the books on the desk to get some more context, or in the very least to see if there are any more notes to open secret passageways. the books have titles such as “Searching for Star-place” and “Traversing Between Unaligned Worlds”, all by an author named B. the excerpts you choose to read refer to what B calls “starplace” (for lack of a better name), an alternate realm where time does not pass, or even, they say, exist.

B wanted to see this world.

finding nothing else of note in the books, you bring the journal back to Elizabeth to see if she knows anything about it. she expresses surprise that you’ve found something from A, an extremely famous magician/researcher. much of her work still circulates, & generates new conversations to this day. one day she disappeared without a trace - but that was a long, long, long time ago.

she says that she thinks the first few pages of the journal are in some kind of invisible ink - not your typical kind, either; A was crafty.

Elizabeth suspects that this particular ink she used can only be temporarily revealed by dousing the words with Aideen’s tears (the dew that gathers on the flowers in the forest, not the literal tears of the goddess). you gather some for her, and then the two of you sit down together and very carefully gloss over the first few pages with the tears. it doesn’t yield any results for the most part, but an image does emerge on the first page - a fleeting diagram, that fades as soon as the dew on the paper dries. Elizabeth gets separate piece of paper and a pencil ready, and then asks you to reapply Aideen’s tears to the page: before the image dissipates, she makes a quick but accurate sketch of it, for future convenience.

Elizabeth says she has no idea what that means, but it looks a little like a layout of a room.

she mentions that A’s gone through great pains to keep the contents of this journal a secret, though, and while she’s certainly curious, she warns you not to be too disappointed of your search leads nowhere. this piece of the puzzle seems more like A left it for herself as a self-reminder than it is an intentional clue for future adventurers, and it might be something that only A can understand.

in nova alexandria, you find a side-tower in the library that resembles the picture you have. there’s a rectangular rug on the floor, and you enter the room to the left. turning to your left as you enter the room, you find a curving section of wall; you fiddle with some stone bricks, and are able to get a hidden compartment to slide open, giving you access to three storage crates.

in the middle crate, you find A’s old diary. this one is written in regular ink. A’s entries are few and concise, but she writes at great length about B - that she thinks B is “very special”, and that she hopes B will succeed in her research around the starplace. after a time, she writes excitedly that B seems to have cracked it; there may be a few steps left before B can safely travel there, but A is so happy for her.

you realize that they were in love.

A talks, too, about the various antics of a chicken she found and rescued from a pack of dogs. she jokes that this chicken is now her best friend.

in a sudden tonal shift, the last entry eludes to the fact that something terrible has happened, that something in the research backfired on B, acted on her prematurely (several weeks before B was going to wrap up her final preparations) and B’s vanished. A doesn’t even know where. she has no idea what to do.

you also find, in the same crate, a large, flat, circular crystal. when you pick it up, you begin to have another flashback --

you see A at her desk. the crystal - now recognizable as a lens - glints in the light. it’s locked in the device on her desk, which is now a fully intact thing that looks just like a magnifying glass. her journal, blank-paged, is spread before her, but she reaches and adjusts the device so the lens is right over the page.

you return.

the chicken isn’t in the secret basement study anymore when you go back there. you lost track of that little guy.

you fit the lens into the device on the desk and tug the rope hanging from the ceiling to turn on the light. when you adjust the device just right, the light refracts through it and spills onto the pages of the journal, and the words begin to unravel into visibility right before your eyes.

you understand why this one is written in invisible ink. not only did A include her personal thoughts + accounts, she’s also put a great deal of research material and speculation on interdimensional traversal. this is something she considers far too risky for herself in its early stages, let alone someone who might stumble across it and try and use it for the wrong reason.

A reveals that her relationship with B was kept covert, but they spent a great deal of time together. A was so grateful to have her in her life. to have had. she doesn’t think she knows how to let go. she worries that B was searching for starplace as a final destination point - she knows that B went through a great deal of sadness in her life, and often spoke of starplace as a place that would be “without pain, without anything”. this is what A fears - that a prolonged existence there will swallow a person, and take away everything that makes B herself, and that, more permanently than death, B will cease to exist.

it’s been a year, and she’s looking for ways to contact starplace under the wild hope that maybe somehow the malfunctioning of the machine that B had been preparing for a portal might have brought her there. she knows that it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s all she can do.

A mentions her chicken a few times. she says that while humans or horses are large and consist of much more matter to transfer between realms, something as small as a chicken could probably pass through with much less effort, while she’s still developing the technology.

she knows that the portal-machine B tried to make was too fallible, and is therefore searching for something less variable, more directly managed by its user.

she wants to see if she can make a chicken that can teleport.

after about a year of working on the technology, A is beginning to feel helpless.

B could be anywhere, she says. even if she can send something through there’s a chance that it might go nowhere. B could be in starplace, or the realm of the ghosts, or pandoria. this is nothing more than blind hope.

but she finds that, under a certain alignment of the moon and stars that occurs once a year, the space between the worlds is the thinnest. if she can capture and distill the celestial light of that arrangement, and then imbue a host with it, the host might gain the ability to walk between worlds by bending reality around them.

she decides that this is a wild course of action that she’s almost certainly going to take.

A loves her chicken very much, and wouldn’t allow harm to come to it if she could prevent it. she anguishes for a while over an upcoming trial, but ultimately decides that her setup should be safe.

after a couple of mishap trials, where the chicken typically skips short distances but seems to be going nowhere, the chicken disappears for a day, and then returns.

A affixes a gadget to its leg that records the energies of its surroundings. in a few more trials she determines that the energy readings of the place that the chicken has been visiting are consistent with those of starplace (she also notices patterns of brief visits to other realms).

the journal ends, where A writes that she plans on writing a letter for the chicken to deliver to starplace. she has to know if B is in there, and if she’s ok.

(end of part 1)

#sso #star stable online #long post ?/

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shannaraisles · 7 years

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Set In Darkness

Chapter: 43 Author name: ShannaraIsles Rating: M Warnings: Canon-typical violence and threat Summary: She’s a Modern Girl in Thedas, but it isn’t what she wanted. There’s a scary dose of reality as soon as she arrives. It isn’t her story. People get hurt here; people die here, and there’s no option to reload if you make a bad decision. So what’s stopping her from plunging head first into the Void at the drop of a hat?

Senior Moment

"They arrive daily, from every settlement in the region ..."

The familiar line of dialogue caught Rory's attention. She glanced up from her notes, unable to keep herself from smiling as she saw Cassandra and Kaaras standing nearby, watching the newest arrivals greeting those who milled about in the lower courtyard. Come to think of it, there were more people in evidence all of a sudden. Not that Skyhold didn't have a surprisingly large population already, but usually everyone was busy at some task or other. It was slightly strange to see so many just loitering, but then, why wouldn't they? Today was the day the Inquisitor would be named and invested. Everyone wanted to be the first to know who their new leader would be.

Ever since the news had been spread that an Inquisitor had been chosen, the subject had been on everyone's lips. It was a way to pass the time as they worked, the debate going back and forth as centuries of neglect and disrepair slowly began to clear away under determined hands. They'd taken possession of the fortress two weeks ago, and already the place was beginning to resemble the home base she remembered from the game. Most people were still living in tents, both here and in the city below, the courtyards crowded with canvas walls. There were injured still to care to - mostly soldiers who had taken damage while clearing out the spiders - but far fewer of them than she had expected. Some were dying, and she was hoping for an unexpected cure; others just needed care to rally and recover. And if, as had happened on occasion, she went to a dying man or woman only to find their throat neatly split, it didn't alarm her. She knew Cole was lurking around here, drawn by the pain and his need to help.

"Last chance to place your bet, Ror," the familiar cadence of Rylen's Starkhaven brogue drew her attention. She looked up to find her friend grinning down at her.

"And I maintain it's not gambling when we all know who it's going to be, anyway," she pointed out with a smile, setting her notes aside to stand with him. There was definitely a crowd forming now. She nudged Rylen teasingly. "What I really want is to know is this ... when are you going to ask her?"

The captain actually blushed, glancing away with a secretive smile. "Tonight," he told her quietly. "I called in a few favors. I want it to be perfect."

"You silly sod." She laughed affectionately. "It'll be perfect no matter how you do it. Because it's you, and she loves you, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Aye, but she's a noble, Rory," he countered, nervous and uncertain. "I've no way to offer her the life she's used to."

"The life she's used to is the one she's been living for the last six months," Rory reminded him pointedly, glancing up as a murmur from the crowd around them heralded the arrival of Leliana on the parapet, bearing the sword of the Inquisitor. "A life with you, no matter the hardship."

"I can't give her the luxuries she deserves," he fretted, shaking his head with a frown.

"You're not listening," she chuckled, rolling her eyes at her friend.

"No, I'm not," he agreed, his inked face creasing in a sheepish smile. "But don't stop telling me I'm a silly sod. It helps."

Rory snorted with laughter, any chance to answer lost as first Cassandra, then Kaaras, came into view. A series of cutscenes that lasted about ten minutes on the computer, and had actually taken closer to a month in reality, were about to reach their culmination in the acceptance of a Qunari as the leader of the Inquisition. It was a satisfying moment in the game - at least, she thought it was; it had been a very long time since she'd even seen a computer - but after all this time, all this work; after all the prejudice and violence and plain stupidity he had faced, it was a privilege to watch as Kaaras Adaar accepted the honor and responsibility he was offered. To be one of many who cheered with true enthusiasm to celebrate him as their Inquisitor.

"So," Rylen said as the crowd dispersed around them in the aftermath of the investiture, "d'you really think I've a chance? Truthfully now."

Her face aching from her own smiling cheers, Rory turned to her friend with honest eyes. "I wouldn't be encouraging you if I didn't," she assured him with absolute certainty. "Just be yourself, Ry. That's the man she loves, not some mask you might put on to impress her."

"It's disgusting how you always speak sense when it comes to my relationship," he informed her fondly. "And give up no details about your own."

"It's a gift," she drawled, bending to catch her notes before a gust of wind could scatter them all over the yard. "You'd better scoot before she comes by, or you're going to blurt."

"Aye," he agreed, flashing her a warm grin. "Make a wish for me tonight, Ror. I need all the help I can get."

"Anything for you, captain."

He chucked her cheek gently as he turned away, leaving her smiling to herself as she sat back down in the afternoon sunlight to concentrate on her writing. It was still cold - still winter - but somehow the sun beat down warmer on Skyhold. She had no idea why; it could be a consequence of the altitude, or it could be magic. Whichever it was, she wasn't complaining. A little warmth after too many days spent freezing was more than welcome. Summer might not be so pleasant, but she'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

So Rylen was going to propose to Evy. About time. Rory had done her level best to plant the idea and encourage him; it was rather exciting to know he was going through with it. She was in no doubt as to what Evy's answer would be, and despite the younger woman's sometimes retiring nature, she also knew her friend would fight tooth and nail to make sure no one took Rylen away from her. It was truly lovely to see their relationship progressing ... but it made her wonder a little about her own. She loved Cullen - hell, she'd been halfway there before any of this had happened - and for the first time in her life, she had no doubts about whether the man she loved, loved her. But where did they go from here? She still had no idea if this was really real, and even if it was, should she be making a life with him? She might disappear at any moment. What would that do to him? A loss like that might set him back years, but it would be salvageable if she was only his lover. Wouldn't it? Wherever she might end up, her worry was all for Cullen. But if she had the choice ... This was home now. He was her home. She'd give anything to stay.

The sound of a throat clearing got her attention as a shadow fell across her lap. She lifted her head to find Roderick waiting patiently for her acknowledgement.

"Chancellor," she greeted him politely. "How can I help you?"

"I believe the more appropriate question is, how may I help you?" he countered, taking her invitation to sit with gratitude. The wound he had taken in Haven was almost healed, but he needed time to rebuild his strength and fitness. "I have been granted a position within the Inquisition. The commander believes my talents are best suited to logistics."

That did make sense. For years before the Conclave, Roderick Asignon's life had revolved around calm and order, the organizing of the Divine's day-to-day. They had a quartermaster to procure equipment and supplies, but what happened to all that when it was delivered to the Inquisition, especially if it was not specifically military? Putting a man who clearly excelled at keeping things moving smoothly in charge of such things seemed like a very good idea. Rory felt a swell of pride in Cullen for thinking of it.

"I'm pleased you've changed your mind about us," she said discreetly. "About Kaaras."

"I was wrong," the cleric said simply in reply. "I will apologize to the Her - the Inquisitor, when I can. But for now, I am gathering information on the needs of the fortress and the city. As you have been named officially as the senior healer, it is to be assumed that you know what you are lacking."

"Just about everything, to be honest," Rory told him with candid resignation, ignoring the comment on her promotion. She hadn't wanted it, but no one would let her argue about it. "Our limited resources are running low already. I can make you a list, if you'd like."

"That would be most useful." Roderick nodded as he spoke, evidently approving of her suggestion. "I understand that you and a small staff will be remaining in the fortress. Do you keep contact with the healers in the city?"

She snorted wryly. "I don't have much choice - they send me daily reports," she admitted in a rueful tone. "Whatever I put on the list is needed down there, as well."

"Then you are able to put together an order that will cover the needs of both the fortress and the city?" he queried, impressed when she nodded confidently. "You are more organized than I had given you credit for, healer."

Uncertain whether that was a veiled insult or not, she ignored it. "Even if we had all the resources, what we desperately need are apothecaries and alchemists," she confessed worriedly. "We're capable of making the potions ourselves, of course, but it takes us away from our patients."

"I see." The chancellor frowned, his expression pensive. "I did not realize we were lacking such a vital asset."

"In Haven, we only had Adan and his assistant," Rory said, her eyes clouding as she remembered the alchemist's terrible death - a death he had suffered because his instinct had been to save her. "They ... they didn't make it."

"Let mine be the last sacrifice," he intoned softly, giving her a moment to compose herself before he spoke again. "We shall honor their loss with lives well-lived, healer. I will speak with Lady Montilyet about extending an invitation to the guilds. If you could put together a list of the supplies you need, I will liaise with the new quartermaster on your behalf."

"You could always buy direct from a reputable businessman."

Rory frowned as she looked at the source of that uninvited interjection. Seggrit had come out of Haven without a scratch on him, despite having been rescued from a burning building. And despite owing his life to Kaaras, he was still calling her friend an oxman behind his back, a man very much at home with racial slurs and the ways he could use them to best effect. Not only that, but she could have sworn he was following her around as they settled into Skyhold, always within earshot of her as she worked, always at the edge of her eye-line. The only time she didn't see him was when she curled up in her bedroll at night, and she had a sneaking suspicion that was because Cullen was invariably at her side.

Roderick gave him a cold look. "Such as you, I suppose?" he asked archly. "A man who listens blatantly to words not meant for him is hardly reputable. And you are no longer a recognized supplier to the Inquisition. We now have access to honest traders."

Seggrit flushed angrily, but held his tongue, casting an ugly glare at Rory as he stalked away. She shifted uncomfortably. She couldn't have said exactly why, but that man's presence was distinctly unwelcome to her. She didn't feel safe when he was around. At her side, the chancellor snorted at the merchant's retreat.

"What an odious toad of a man," he muttered, rising carefully to his feet. "I will return tomorrow for that list, healer. I trust that gives you enough time?"

"Plenty, chancellor, thank you."

"Well, then ..." he nodded to her animated in his pursuit of order. "Walk in the Maker's light."

Well, that was ... interesting. Rory glanced down at her notes, and groaned suddenly at the sheer amount of paperwork she had to do. Leliana wanted the names of the entire complement of healers and nurses; Cullen wanted a full accounting of the injured and their expected recovery times; Josephine was eager to know when they would be able to hold clinic for their visitors again; these notes needed to be written up and filed; and now she had a stock-list to compile as well. Good gods ... I'm not just sleeping with Cullen.

I'm turning into him.

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sleepymarmot · 7 years

Text

MEA liveblog #8

I finished it! I’m free!

Multiplayer

Hell yeah level 9/10 rank I asari adept -- full extraction and top score on a silver APEX mission with bonus to combos! Against outlaws, but still. And I got an outlaw badge for it!

Yoo, two human female vanguard cards! And my Charger is now at X!

Looked up my statistics:

Dialogue:

Interrupts: 11

Casual: 151

Emotional: 187

Logical: 206

Professional: 187

Kills:

Kett: 983

Outlaws: 857

Remnant: 520

Wildlife: 377

Holy shit, the Pathfinder killed almost as many former Initiative members as the Initiative's enemies...

Melee: 276

Assault rifle: 60

Pistol: 135

Shotgun: 100

Sniper rifle: 59

Biotic: 679

Combat? Force?: 0

Tech: 316

Jump: 5

Construct: 35 (wow)

Combos: 777

Hello patch 1.05

Why did they remove the priming icon from Throw? Does it not prime anymore?!

Good news: Throw still primes. Idk why they removed the button. Like misinforming their players?

Bad news: the game is super laggy. Did I set my graphics too high?

The fusion mod perk is still broken!

No, I don't have a new email, SAM! I got one from Peebee, very cute but referring to I don't know what.

Multiplayer

Kroguard level 7/rank I successfully extracted from Silver!

Maxed out Avenger and Katana, goodbyeeeee

Singleplayer

Fuck, I opened all my reward boxes and then realized the game loaded the autosave with the still-bugged fusion mod support :( Goodbye all my rewards ughh

I lowered the graphics to default but the game still keeps stuttering... I don't understand

Peebee on Voeld: "I should have dressed warmer" Sigh, once again game writers blame their sexist costume designs on female characters who have to wear them...

Finally I got to hear PB&J's conversations about asari reproduction myself...

SAM asked me about my romance and I picked the sappy option because it was the safest...

Journey to Meridian

I don't like how the patch changed my Ryder's face. The lips are too narrow and round now.

Damn, I should have taken Jaal. I knew the spoiler though. Want to know what from? A freaking side romance video I clicked because I was sure something so inconsequential wouldn't have spoilers. Ha!

Peebee says something like "They created life but the Archon wants to destroy it!!" in the most melodramatic tone. Ugh! The tendency to say overly sweet things like this is the worst part of her character.

Ha, screw you ascendant! I'm a bit offended that my rifle doesn't one-shot his orb. Ah well, I'm not wearing any weapon damage bonuses...

Oh, a Destroyer and a Fiend are fighting each other? Good, I'm not going to get involved.

The Destroyer won and came for us but had the decency to open up its chest as it turned to face us lol

I'm overusing Bio-converter + Life Support like hell on this mission lol... Too many bosses

lol nullifiers im not scared of you

Why is my mouth so small! It's bothering me.

Tempest

Lexi doesn't want to talk to me lol. Can't interact with her

Jaal's door is closed, I knew he'd have a lot to say

Well this conversation was saccharine. Jaal are you a positivity machine?!

Don't you "love" how you can go through the entire game not knowing that Gil is gay?! There's even a dialogue option about him "loving" Jill! This entire dialogue tree is a mess. At least everyone on tumblr has ranted about that so I don't have a lot to add. But even if you (try to) set the homophobia aside it's a mess. He talks about fathering a friend's child and you can't even be surprised because usually only romantic couples start families? And you can't even disapprove really, the most negative thing is "it's crazy" said in an awed, surprised tone of voice.

Cora I took you to Meridian and you have nothing to say?

More forum threads! And a shitload of emails!

Aw, Liam is such a good vivid character -- both the conversation and the email are great. I love his email attachments. I mean I'm still angry at him about the stupid, irresponsible, dangerous shit he did in his personal storyline, but he's definitely the most engaging of the male starter companions in ME.

Here's the Movie Night continuation, I was starting to worry it was broken...

The ship's doctor asks me to buy some booze on the Citad--the Nexus, why does it sound so familiar

Let's appreciate the fact that the "golden worlds" are not just inhabited -- they were created for someone other than us! The Initiative has even fewer rights to them than initially thought.

I'm glad Bioware sped up the galaxy map (not surprising after that kind of outrage) but the stupid and vertigo-inducing camera turns and pans are still there.

Btw I preferred my own more abstract interpretation of the Scourge as the Chaos to the Remnant's Order. Now they look even more mundane. As if the mystery and awe didn't already evaporate after about the second vault because they're all the same thing with slightly different puzzles!

Nexus

What?! I don't get to actually play with Drack, Kesh and Vorn?! What's the point then?

Keri where are you? I can hear your voice but it's coming from nowhere.

Oh my god I can see Kandros's purple tongue through the hole between his jaws(?)

Tempest

Well at least I could get Gil a date!

Am I like... supposed to give a shit about Jaal? I mean Ryder is getting all emotional no matter what I choose and I'm sitting here like "idc". And I don't want to bash such a nice person, it feels mean to dislike someone for doing nothing wrong, but that's the problem, he's so bland. From the promotional videos I assumed that Peebee would be the irritating designated best friend/love interest like Liara, but it's mostly Jaal.

Tempest again -- after a week-long break

Why couldn't Bioware add a "take all rewards" button? Why do I have to spend 10 minutes clicking “space”?

Ah yes, Bioware's trademark mashing naked dolls together! When Peebee's eyes flashed black it was pretty creepy.

Movie Night requires one more step... After the main mission, then.

Great, another galaxy map fetch quest -_-

Yoo finally the point of no return!

The final mission

Fine, I'll take you Jaal for plot relevance, though I'll probably miss Cora's Shield Boost...

Playing as my twin is cool, but why is he underpowered? Trying to kill a single mook with no powers and that tiny pistol was torture...

Where's Peebee? On the bridge?

Why open the equipment screen but not let me change the squad? It made sense to take the Science Team PB&J to the Meridian, but not to take back an ark! It makes no sense! I'm on my ship with everyone, but can't choose a new team?

Ah, so it was a romantic goodbye with the LI, and I didn't have to choose the "schmaltzy" version to make it more personal? Damn.

Ughh, so much lag... It's not fun to fight when fps falls below 10 sometimes.

The final fight is so badly designed. Apparently I have to hold ground at the quest marker position, but it's not explained clearly, and the circle doesn't appear until you're almost done. I jumped into the abyss several times because the quest marker was hanging over it.

Ah yes, Meridian, home for the humanity. Despite the fact it was clearly built for the Angara... Ugh!!

I don't get it. We're selecting a representative of whom? The entire cluster? The Nexus? It's bullshit.

Oh, this wheel is confusing. So each candidate is assigned to a "tone", when I first click it it's a question, if I click for the second time it confirms the selection.

Hmm, my first choice was the Moshae, but maybe Morda?

Went with the Moshae. Thankfully, Ryder said exactly what I wanted to say! Haha, Addison: "That's the point, you colonial wad"

This human woman got a name from Quarian godparents?? That's a thing? Okay.

I don't understand how Ryder could use the Remnant without SAM. Has SAM changed her brain enough that it's now superhuman even without SAM's active involvement?

Oooh, interesting email. I haven't thought of angaran reincarnation as a designed feature to carry extra information in DNA. So they can be genetic hard drives -- again, like the kett? This has got to mean something. And angara "remembering" how to use the Meridian, or being sleeper agents? I demand a big storyline in the sequel about this!

Um. Using the Remnant involves not just a connection, but moving your consciousness into them? Okaaaay. That doesn't sound ominous at all. This entire terminal is like a sequel teaser...

Yeah Jaal, I can't stop joking because everyone is being so sugary sweet and I can't bear it anymore

The Moshae doesn't sound too excited about her new job... :(

The Quarian-Volus-Elcor-Hanar arc! Yoo! Sequel or DLC?

"Seeing you in cahoots makes me all misty" I don't know which is worse, the line itself or the delivery...

Aw, the science team are all in the same lab! ...With the dancers. What?

Tempest

Peebee sent an email saying she wants to explore the galaxy "with or without me". Aw.

Okay, I'm tired, let's leave The World is Waiting and Movie Night for tomorrow.

Watched alternate dialogue choices on Youtube.

I chose the casual option to rally the fleet, but logical is good too. But I think that after watching her brother being kidnapped and tortured, Ryder doesn't have the patience to be inspirational...

The emotional option as you walk out victorious is addressed to your LI! And Peebee's reply made me laugh and clap: "And now they all know you're mine!" And they walk away hand in hand. Aw.

Can’t find logical and professional options for the goodbye with Peebee before the final mission :( Not a fan of emotional and casual.

Oh. I thought Habitat-7 would have something more than one cutscene...

My edition of the Movie Night glitch: Ryder was simply invisible. Peebee was embracing thin air. So much for romance.

The funniest thing, tbh, was that Ryder leveled up when the scene ended.

Aaaaand now I'm free! 92%, 97,5 hours. I still have some sidequests to do, but let's leave them until later.

#mass effect #mea spoilers #blah blah blah

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years

Text

The French Mistake

Part 1/? - A Visitor Part 2/? - The Kulturhistorisk Museum Heist Part 3/? - Cutscene Part 4/? - The Marvel Cinematic Universe Part 5/? - Breathless Part 6/? - Escape at Last Part 7/? - Fox in Socks Part 8/? - Things Go Wrong Part 9/? - Downey and Out Part 10/? - Road Trip Part 11/? - Temptation Part 12/? - An Awful Reunion Part 13/? - Unreality Intrudes Part 14/? - A Call for Help Part 15/? - Loki’s Guests Part 16/? - Stan Lee Cameo Part 17/? - Reassessment Part 18/? - Midnight Invasion Part 19/? - Elevator Fight Part 20/? - Courage Part 21/? - Unwelcome Back Part 22/? - Darkest Hour Part 23/? - They Are Here Part 24/? - The Jet Propulsion Laboratory Part 25/? - Word of God Part 26/? - Avengers Assembled Part 27/? - The Houston Underground Part 28/? - Houston has a Problem Part 29/? - Onward and Upward Part 30/? - The Chi’Tauri Queen Part 31/? - Through the Wormhole Part 32/? - Prisoners Part 33/? - Arm’s Length Part 34/? - A Moment’s Respite Part 35/? - Ravagers to the Rescue Part 36/? - What Happened to Hiddleston Part 37/? - Haven Part 38/? - Steve Has a Terrible Idea Part 39/? - Can’t Be Choosers Part 40/? - Stan Lee Cameo Redux Part 41/? - Shipjacking Part 42/? - The Gauntlet Thrown Part 43/? - The Queen’s Chamber Part 44/? - The Guardians Part 45/? - The Nest

Not just puppies, she’s got babies. Amazing how things manage to keep getting worse.

I’m gonna finish this fic because I’ve come this far, but honestly it stopped being what I wanted it to be a long time ago, so I don’t think I’ll put it on AO3. Once it’s done I need to get on with Natalie Jones and the War of the Necromancers.

The guardian hit the pillar again, and the rib Thor was clinging to was torn free of the ceiling. Its upper end swung down, and Steve had to reach out and grab the back of Thor’s shirt to keep him from falling. Evans’ body was muscular but holding the weight of a large man while also keeping himself from falling was a strain.

A moment later, the rib Natasha was holding broke at the other end. It bent where it attached to the ceiling, and she was left clinging to the end of it as she dangled just inches above the jaws of the guardians. There was a groaning sound from above.

From somewhere at the far end of the room, or perhaps in the chamber beyond, was a loud crash. Steve still couldn’t tell what was going on, but he could taste stinging bile in the back of his throat, and knew he was almost certainly going to die here. He wondered if anybody on Earth would miss him. Would Stark wonder what had become of him, or just be glad he was gone? Would Sharon grieve for him as Peggy had done? Who would tell Bucky, when he finally came out of cryo, what had happened, and what would there be to tell him?

One more blow was too much for the pillar to take. The glass came free of the metal housing, fell on the floor, and smashed. The tesseract bounced out and rolled away, and one of the guardians took off after it like a cat chasing a toy ball. The other two remained where they were, waiting for their prey to fall into their mouths. Steve and Thor were now both dangling from a single attachment point fifty feet above the floor, but for whatever reason it as Nat’s rib that broke first, and she dropped towards the snarling alien creatures.

The only thing Steve could think of to do was to let go also, and hope she could get away while they were focused on him – but that would only delay them a little bit, he would have to drop Thor to do it, and it wouldn’t do any of them any good in the long run. And yet…

From the other end of the room there was a flash of brilliant light.

Steve looked up at it, trying to figure out what it was – and so did the guardians. By the time they’d turned, however, it had faded, leaving everybody in the dark as the afterimage danced on their retinas. That cleared a moment later, and Steve saw that there was now a globe of dim light there. IN the middle of it was Hiddleston, now on his feet and dressed in Loki’s Asgardian garb of black and green leather with golden greaves and helmet. He strode towards them, his hands held out on each side, the light around him getting brighter. Had he figured out how to use Loki’s magic?

Then the world flashed before Steve’s eyes, and he found himself lying on his back with the Chi’Tauri queen towering over him.

There was a lot of information to take in stride in a very short time. Steve was flat on his back on the floor, and he could feel a variety of scrapes and bruises but he felt more awake and alert than he had in days. Natasha was astride him, using one of the fishhook weapons to block the one the queen was trying to rip him open with. And Thor was clinging to the armor on the queen’s shoulder.

They were back in their own bodies – Loki must have found the strength to switch back with Hiddleston and had then done the rest of them, as he’d promised. And despite the fact that this situation was absolutely desperate, Steve’s first thought was for the four actors. They were now trapped in that room with the tesseract and its ferocious guardians, with no idea what they were doing.

The queen lifted her weapon to try again, and Natasha, thinking fast, caught the hook on it with her own and was lifted off her feet. Nat had been worried about Johansson being the one who got stabbed because of a lack of training, but it seemed she had actually saved Evans’ life. Hopefully he’d live long enough to return the favour. With her weight off him, Steve sprang to his feet to fight.

Two sentinels came at him. Steve looked around, spied a decorative boss on the wall next to the closed doors of the tesseract chamber, and ripped it down to use as a shield. Weapons fire from the sentinels bounced off it, so they ran to attack him at closer range. He caught the edge of the shield on one fishhook and threw its holder over the railing to the floor. Then he slid through the legs of the other and hit it with his shield at the base of the spine, damaging some important cybernetics. The alien screamed and crumbled.

No wonder Hemsworth had looked like he was having a good time – Steve had completely forgotten how much fun it was to have super powers. When he’d first gotten the serum, when he’d been using it for nothing more than to lift motorcycles and do tricks for adoring crowds, there’d been a period when he’d absolutely loved it. He’d lived most of his life unable to do anything and now it suddenly seemed like there was nothing he couldn’t do. Despite the deathly serious circumstances, he felt the same thing now. It was good to be back.

With the sentinels taken care of, he turned around and found that the queen had hopped back down to ground level, with Thor and Natasha still clinging to her. They would be trying to find, or to make, that chink in the armor they needed. Steve ought to join them, but he realized that the doors of the tesseract room were right behind him. Did he have time to open them and see if the actors were okay? Loki had his magic, but would he be exhausted again after using it? Would he care enough to save the humans, or would he take the tesseract and run?

There probably wasn’t time. The Watcher had said they were saving the universe… and yet, these weren’t random strangers. These were people Steve and the others had already promised to make things right for. Johansson had a husband and daughter she would want to see again. Evans had parents, and Hemsworth a wife and children. Hiddleston must have family, too, though they hadn’t had a chance to meet them, and all these people had friends and neighbours and lives. Hayley Atwell and Bob Downey and Donny Glover would all want to see their friends again. Leaving them to die was simply not an option.

Steve lifted a leg to kick the door down.

It didn’t budge.

He tried banging on it with a fist. “Hello!” he called out. “Guys? Loki? Can you hear me?”

There was no reply, and then he heard the scream.

It didn’t come from inside the room, it was from below the balcony. For a moment Steve was worried it was Natasha, but when he looked he realized it was somebody else he’d completely forgotten about. Musa had joined in the fight, too, but she was now on the floor in a pool of yellow goo, with one leg badly broken. The queen was looming over her, ignoring Thor and Natasha banging on her armor for now, ready to strike again and rid herself of at least one of these annoying smaller creatures.

Steve vaulted over the railing and landed next to her, but he was already having doubts. There was fluid – it resembled the banana-flavoured antibiotics the SHIELD people had made him take once, after he was accidentally exposed to a bioweapon, but he supposed it had to be the equivalent of blood – all over the floor, so much of it, it didn’t seem like she could possibly survive. Even so, she was dragging herself backwards with her arms, while the queen prepared to slice at her again.

Steve jumped between them and brought up his makeshift shield. It didn’t shed impacts the way the familiar vibranium one would have. It was the wrong shape and made of the wrong material, so he got a painful jolt to the shoulder, but was able to deflect the blow to the side. He looked down at Musa, and she rolled over to have better leverage as she crawled away, leaving a trail of slime behind her. After a few yards, the remains of her broken leg came away entirely, and were left behind.

The queen threw aside the sentinel weapon she’d been using, and instead pulled something out of a scabbard on her thigh. It was a knife as long as Steve was tall, with a serrated edge designed to tear flesh at the same time as cutting it. It was probably a ceremonial weapon, but it could certainly kill. Steve wound up and threw his makeshift shield at the queen’s face, where it bounced off her helmet and embedded itself in the ceiling, then ran for the other end of the room. If he could just make her chase him instead of Musa, who was still crawling towards the Leviathan.

In the middle of the room, so far ignored, was what must have bee the queen’s nest – an enormous heap of cushions in various shapes and sizes, but all of them at least the size of human beings. When Steve got up close, he found that these were made of the same metallic cloth the queen herself was wearing, and there were bones among them – he moved one cushion aside and found a battered skull that looked like it belonged to something similar to the guardians. Before he’d had time to properly deal with that, the skull fell over, and underneath it was a larva.

It was about five feet long and two feet across, translucent white with veins visible under the skin, six stumpy legs and six bulbous eyes above a dribbling, lipless mouth. For a moment all Steve could do was stand and stare at it in shock – it had never occurred to him that having a queen meant that the Chi’Tauri might go through a larval stage. This could hardly be anything else, though, and the fact that it was sleeping in the queen’s nest suggested it might be a juvenile version of her, a thing that would grow up to command a ship and a hive of her own.

Behind him, he heard the queen shriek. She began scrambling across the floor towards him.

The pile of cushions heaved and a second larva popped up, then a third. Despite their blobby appearance they were heavy and deceptively strong, and they quickly piled on top of Steve, weighting his chest down and nearly suffocating him with the pillows. Drool dripped onto his face and chest as their little mouths opened and shut, exposing tongues covered with tiny, glassy spines. One of them licked Steve’s right arm, and he felt intense pain as it scraped a layer of skin away. They were, he realized, planning to eat him alive.

One tore the shield out of his hands and tried to nibble on it, then threw it aside when it realized it wasn’t edible. Another ripped at his shirt, tearing it off to get at the flesh underneath. As a fourth and then a fifth larva joined them, he got a glimpse through the mass of blubbery bodies and saw the adult queen looming over him, raising her serrated knife.

The larva moved aside so their mother could kill their meal for them, but Steve grabbed one by the legs and as the knife came down, he held the creature over him to intercept the blow. The knife speared the larva, which let out a high-pitched, grating scream that made every hair on Steve’s body stand on end, and went right through it. The tip of the blade stopped only an inch or so shy of his nose. The other larvae, terrified, burrowed back into the heap of cushions.

The queen raised the knife again with the larva still stuck on it. She looked at it, turning it over to inspect as the creature’s legs and mouth twitched, then let it drop to the floor, threw her head back, and screamed. The sound rolled around the room like a thunderclap, shaking the bones and making the broken glass on the floor dance. When the queen looked down at Steve again, her eyes had turned dull red. She’d been angry earlier. Now she was furious.

Steve fought his way out of the mess of pillows, climbed over the fallen larva, and ran.

The queen was right behind him. A Sentinel who was in her way got stepped on and died with a crunch. Furniture was crushed and curtains and pillars torn down. Steve ran for the door at the far end of the room, the one he’d resisted the urge to zip through on the dinghy. It was closed, of course, but Steve wasn’t looking for an escape. He was looking for a place to try a trick he’d seen in a music video: he ran straight up the wall as far as he could before gravity got the better of him, then did a flip to land on his feet again.

He’d intended to land on the queen’s arm or leg, to join Thor and Natasha in creating that chink, but instead the queen batted him right out of the air. He went flying and crashed into the wall, taking out one of the pillars that supported the balcony and hitting his head, hard.

That was something he’d had to learn about the serum once before, too, by having a truck dropped on him – Steve’s body was only almost indestructible.

He’d no sooner managed to get to his feet when the queen grabbed him again, and began beating him against the floor as the Hulk had once done with Loki. This was too fast and too violent for him to do anything about it. Blow after blow passed through him, until his ears were ringing and he felt like his bones were rattling around loose inside a bag of skin. He was only dimly aware of Thor plunging one of the fishhook weapons into a joint of the queen’s gauntlet to make her let go, and then carrying him away to a side room.

Thor must have figured out some of the technology in the room, because the door began to close, but then the queen got a hand in and wrenched it back open.

“Why didn’t you zap her?” Natasha demanded.

“I cannot!” Thor said. “I don’t know how to make the lightning without Mjolnir! Hemsworth never told me!”

If he hadn’t known it would hurt, Steve would have laughed out loud. Maybe it was because his brain was bruised, but in that moment it seemed hilarious to think that by switching them back to their own bodies, Loki had actually ruined the plan and doomed them all. It was so gloriously ironic, Steve had to wonder if Loki had done it on purpose.

#fanfic #steve rogers #natasha romanov

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