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bestiesenpai · 3 years

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firsts with itadori yuji

I hope you don’t mind I’m kind of running with this idea and adding more than you asked lol I just...i don’t know it butters my biscuit. Also gender neutral reader~

First meeting:

It’s at his old school

You’re in his class, but you never talk to each other! Itadori is shy with you, believe it or not! He wants to say something but whenever he thinks about going up to you, whether you’re alone or with a group, his stomach twists in knots

Luckily though, you’re also in a club that ends right when he goes to the hospital to see his grandpa, so he’ll walk a little slower to see you coming out of your club room talking and laughing with your friends and he’ll imagine what it must be like to be in a club with you

Will not ask you to join his club tho, shy shy shy he is

It’s only when it’s raining and, yes you guessed it correctly folks, you don’t have an umbrella!

Itadori Yuji has a few options here lads, what do we think he’ll pick?

Option one: be a cool guy and slide right up to you with his umbrella already open in his hands and tell you that he’ll walk you home

Option two: ask politely if you’d like to walk under his umbrella together to your house and maybe stop at a convenience store along the way for a candy?

Option three: be a cool guy(again) and just put the umbrella in your hands and tell you to use it and he walks out into the rain with only his hood on, enticing you to run out to him and say that you two can share an umbrella!

What option do you think he’s chosen?

Now was Yujis chance. You were alone, standing just inside the school entryway rocking back and forth on your heels, a little pout on your lips at seeing the downpour. It had only just started raining, it was clear weather all week, so this rain is more than just a little unexpected.

Gripping his umbrella tightly in his hands, Yuji walks up to you, intent on asking if you want to share his. He’d be more than happy to walk you home, his grandpa would be happy to hear that he walked his crush home instead of ‘wasting his time’ coming to the hospital.

“H-hey!” Yuji’s voice goes higher than he intended when he drops his umbrella and kicks it forward as he walks, launching it at your feet and making you jump a little and turn around. His face erupts in a fiery blush when you pick it up and look at him quizzically.

“Here you go.” You say, holding it out for him to take. Yuji shakes his head almost violently, much to your confusion. “Uhm, Itadori, what are you trying to say?”

You know his name. Oh fuck, you know his name and here he is making a fool of himself.

“I-I- no, take my umbrella.” His brain is in critical overdrive. He truly might pass out. “Take my umbrella! I have my hood, and I’m not going very far! Just to the hospital, to see my grandpa! They’ll probably have an umbrella there I can borrow if it’s still raining!” He really, honestly, truly didn’t mean to say all that, but the words came out like vomit.

“Oh, that’s nice, thank you so much!” Your smile warms his heart but does nothing to calm him down. “But I’m-”

“(Y/N)!” One of your friends shouts from down the hall, and they quickly round the corner with their own umbrella in their hands.

“Hey!”

“I got my umbrella from the classroom, let's go home now!” Your friend quickly notices Yuji. “Hi Itadori, what’s up?”

“He offered me his umbrella. Thanks again, Itadori!” Grabbing his hand, you put the umbrella back in his possession.

“Uh- yeah! You- welcome! Welcome!” Yuji stutters out, waving dumbly back at you as you wave at him and leave the school with a cute little smile on your cheeks.

Yuji was never going to wash his hand again.

First hangout:

This one happens as a going away party for himself after he’s accepted into his new school

He wants to say goodbye to his clubmates, and somehow word got out and a few classmates are coming as well - even you!

Everyone got him a little cake and you’ve all signed a going away card, and Yuji hones in on your message, a cute swirly one written in a glitter gel pen with a heart by his name

Afterschool in the classroom, you all decide to play games and stuff, and that’s when he gets to be close to you

“(Y/N), Itadori, you’re up next!” Somehow a tournament style game has started of who can hold their breath the longest. Standing face to face at the front of the room, you give him a big thumbs up.

“You’re probably going to win, Itadori, I’m bad at this kind of thing.” You laugh.

“Let’s see.” Is all he can say as a reply. You’d talked a bit more after your first meeting, but he could never get more than a few words out at a time.

“Go!” Sucking in deep breaths, you stare at each other with puffed out cheeks. You’re already struggling, fighting back laughter and clapping a hand over your mouth. Yuji thinks he might lose just from seeing how cute you are in front of him.

“Ahhh!” You lose, just like you said you would. Dizzy from lack of air, you stumble forward into him, laughing and gripping the front of his jacket. “Told you!” His hand lands on your shoulder and Yuji is sure he could pass away happy right now.

“Yeah, you are pretty bad.” Yuji laughs, finally breaking his nervous shell around you the more you laugh and pat him on the arm.

After this game, you form a team and play with a ball, help each other with cards, and you even paint his nails in a pretty polish you’d brought from home. At the end, Yuji is still too nervous to ask for your number, so this is the last time you see each other.

First confession:

It’s been two years since then, he’s a third year now and Yuji still thinks about you. He still checks in with his old school friends from time to time and asks about you, and he follows you on Instagram and sees the things you post and how much you’ve changed over the years

He’s not content living this way, only seeing and hearing about you like this, but it’s been two years since you last saw each other and you weren’t exactly close before you left, so he couldn’t just slide into your DM’s

And in the past two years he’s changed. A lot. Not only has he been swamped with his new life, he also has a whole nother soul inside of him that quickly learned of his long lost crush and teased him about it nonstop

But on a free day in the city with Nobara, he’s quite literally buzzing - you’re in the same area. He saw you post last night about going to a certain cafe and all he had to do was ask Nobara if she wanted to go to the city and she said yes immediately.

And now he’s standing in front of said cafe, and he can see you inside. Surprisingly you’re alone, and his fingers itch to go in and ‘casually’ bump into you

Nobara knows of his crush on you as well, and as soon as she spots you she’s pushing Yuji through the door, and of course they cause a fucking scene

“Get in the fucking cafe!” Nobara is shouting not so quietly. There’s people walking past them, looking confused, and Yuji could literally die right now, especially when he makes eye contact with you.

He gives up then, letting himself get pushed into the cafe. He expects Nobara to follow after him but she’s running down the street cackling evilly. Yuji has no other option than to go in and order a drink, albeit shamefully.

“H-hi. Is this seat taken?” He asks you. You’d been watching him ever since you saw him with a big smile barely concealed by your hand.

“Of course not, Itadori.” You giggle.

God, he’s missed you.

Sitting down across from you, Yuji takes a quick sip of his drink to soothe his suddenly parched throat. Sukuna knows better than to pop out in public, but that still doesn’t stop Yuji from putting a hand over one of the marks below his eyes, just in case.

“How have you been (Y/N)?” He tries to say casually, but his voice warbles and Sukuna chuckles quietly for only him to hear.

“I’ve been good! It’s been so long, Itadori, I’ve missed you!” You pout, a wicked sight for his heart, and you reach across the table to pat Yuji on the arm. “I’ve been wanting to message you on Instagram for forever now but I’ve been too nervous you wouldn’t really remember me!”

“You have?” Yuji gasped dramatically, and he could hear not only you but Sukuna laughing at him.

“Yeah! I’m actually really surprised to see you here, I thought you went to a school out in another prefecture.”

“N-no! I’m still in Tokyo!”

“Really, we should totally hang out sometime!”

“Yes!” This couldn’t be going any better for Yuji. There’s a pause in conversation where you both take a sip of your drinks.

“So, was that your girlfriend pushing you into the cafe?”

“What?!” Yuji nearly shouts, almost spitting out his drink. “G-girlfriend?!” His cheeks blush lightly, and he shakes his head. “No. No way, she is not my girlfriend. She’s my classmate.”

“That’s good to hear, actually.” Now is your turn to be embarrassed, and a bashful smile spreads on your cheeks. “Because I’ve always kind of liked you.”

What.

“What?!” This time Yuji does shout, Sukuna is definitely laughing at him and teasing him, and you’re nodding in confirmation. “Oh my god.” Running a hand through his hair, Yuji doesn’t even have to think about his next words. “I like you too! A lot!”

“Really?” Your brow raises.

“Yes! Ever since first year. I’ve had a-” was he really about to say this? “A massive crush on you.” He realizes what he’s said is a little heavier than what you said. A massive crush is much different than kind of liking someone, but he can’t help it. And Sukuna is quick to point out the difference in his head as well.

“Then we really have to hang out!” Yuji laughs, relieved you feel the same way.

“It’s a date.” He says and delights in the way you share a cheeky smile.

“Definitely a date.”

First date:

Yuji never thought he’d ever have the opportunity to go on a date with you, at least not in this lifetime

You exchange numbers at the cafe and as soon as Yuji gets back to the dorms he’s texting you, asking if you got home okay and to let him know when you’re free

That first text is a gateway drug because now he can’t stop texting you all the time, even when he’s in class or should be training

He’s staying up far too late to message you but no one can stop him

When your schedules finally align again, you both settle on going to a ramen shop close by his old school

6pm. That’s the time you agreed to meet up. So why was Yuji already down the block from the restaurant at 5:15?

“God you’re so desperate!” Sukuna laughed as Yuji sat in an empty park waiting for time to go by.

“I know, I know.” He groaned back, tilting his head back and squeezing his eyes together. “I was so nervous about being late I didn’t even think!”

“Ya know, when I had my own body, I used to go on dates all the time! Women flocked to me, I was a god!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Slapping a hand over the mouth that had appeared, Yuji rolled his eyes. “I’m not like you, we know this.”

“I was hoping I’d be rubbing off on you, kid, but it seems not.” Sukuna sighed in disappointment. When 6pm finally came, Yuji all but ran to the restaurant. He was still ten minutes early, and when you came strolling up the nervous jitters he had increased.

“Hi!” You looked so cute, Yuji could pass out.

“H-hey.” He waved stupidly, and then stumbled to open the door for you. Quickly grabbing a table, he was paying more attention to you than the menu.

“What’re you gonna get? I can’t decide!” You whined, slapping your menu against the table.

“Oh uhm, maybe this one?” Pointing at the first thing he saw that looked mildly interesting, he watched you nod your head and hum. “Or maybe this.” Looking at the menu properly, Yuji pointed at something he’d actually get.

“Ooooh, I wanna get that too! If you get it, will you let me try some?” Your face lit up and you bit your lip, eyes darting between things on the menu.

“Of course!” Yuji nodded without any hesitation.

“Yay! I just can’t decide, everything looks so good!”

“It does!” As he laughed and kept looking at things on the menu with you, Yuji finally let himself relax a little bit. You made great conversation, asking about his new and how he’d been, how he got those scars under his eyes and what his new school was like.

Yuji had never had so much fun talking with someone before, and when the date came to a close, he could nearly cry. He wanted to be with you all the time, see you more often and build more memories together. The thought of going back to his old school even came back.

“I’ll walk you to the station.” He said instead, pushing away all the thoughts in his head.

“Thanks.” You were side by side walking down the block, and Yuji was beginning to find it more and more coincidental that your hand kept bumping into his. He could feel you looking at him from the corner of your eye, and he knew he had to make the leap.

Slipping his hand into yours, he wound your fingers together and squeezed. Both of your palms were kind of sweaty and neither of you looked at each other, but you squeezed his hand back and held it tightly until you got to the station and your train arrived.

First kiss:

After the first date, Yuji is hooked

Any chance the two of you have to be together, he takes even if it means shirking his responsibilities a little bit(Fushiguro is upset but who can stop love?)

You go get ice cream together, go to the arcade, the movies, the park, you even meet Nobara and Fushiguro on a chance day

You do all these things together, but Yuji still hasn’t kissed you!

He wants to, so so bad, but he just can’t, he’d die of embarrazzment if he fucked up and like hit you in the head or something

But sometimes, as nike said, you just gotta do it

It’s raining again, just like when you first spoke to each other. A torrential downpour, but this time you didn’t have a friend coming with their umbrella to the front of the school to share with you. Yuji was coming to your school after your club to pick you up for an impromptu date.

“Hey!” You shouted, braving the rain and meeting him halfway when you spotted him coming up. Hugging him tightly, you shivered from the wind whipping through the air.

“Hi.” Slipping your bag from around your shoulders, Yuji slung it over his shoulder. His arm settled on your waist, holding you close and making sure you were completely covered. Walking so close together like this made him happy, and he almost pressed a kiss to your head.

“Yuji.” You said as you were walking, stopping by a low river lined with trees.

“Hm?” He still couldn’t get over the fact that you were now saying his first name. The both of you stopped walking and you stepped back a little from him, wringing your hands nervously.

“We’ve been going out for a while now and…” Biting your lip nervously, you couldn’t meet his eyes and looked out at the trees being pelted with water. “And I was wondering if you uh- if you wanted to be my boyfriend?”

Oh shit. Yuji was so shocked, he nearly dropped the umbrella.

“B-boyfriend?” He squeaked, his cheeks spreading in a bashful smile. “I’d love to.”

“Really?” Letting out a relieved sigh, you clasped a hand over your heart. “That’s good! I was so nervous.” The way you were looking at him, Yuji knew this was the perfect time to kiss you.

“C-can I kiss you?” His question made your eyes widen, and silently you nodded your head.

Sliding his foot forward on the wet pavement, Yuji faltered a few inches from your mouth, suddenly nervous. He had never kissed anyone before, and what if he was horrible at it and you hated it?

He didn’t have any time to keep thinking about it though, because you closed the gap and kissed him. Dropping his umbrella in shock, Yuji’s eyes widened and he kissed you back, grabbing your shoulder to steady himself.

It was a sweet and innocent first kiss, soft and gentle for the inexperience shared between you. It didn’t even last that long, but it was the most memorable moment of Yuji's life.

“How was that?” He asked when he pulled away. The two of you were getting absolutely soaked with the rain and it dripped down his face into his eyes and mouth.

“Great.” You giggled shyly, putting a hand on your face to hide yourself. Yuji laughed as well and gave your cheek a kiss before picking up the fallen umbrella.

“You wanna go to that ramen shop?” Yuji whispered close to your ear, adjusting your bag on his shoulder.

“Sure.” Turning to him, your eyes dropped to his lips and you gave him a quick peck, breaking out into a fit of giggles again. Beginning to walk down the street, if anyone saw the two of you, they would immediately know what young love looked liked, as it was perfectly plastered on both of your faces.

#jujutsu kaisen #itadori yuji #yuji itadori x reader #jujutsu kaisen headcanons #jujutsu kaisen fluff #jujutsu kaisen scenarios #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #jujutsu kaisen imagines

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not-playable-character · 3 years

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Edit: new link https://archiveofourown.org/works/32099263

ITS DONE!!!! Finally, the RE8 meets RE7 fic is finished and posted! so for everyone wondering and if you didn't figure it out already. The image I posted earlier is the seating arrangement of the gang as they play the game. As always its posted on AO3 and under the cut. I hope you enjoy @ibest14 I never actually played RE7 but I watched a walkthrough to write this.

It was a normal Saturday afternoon when the Winters family got a very strange package. It was addressed to the whole family and had no return address.

“What the heck is this?” Rose wondered aloud carrying the small package inside, “Hey mom! Did you order something online?”

“Not that I remember, why?” Mia asked curious why her daughter was asking about the mail, “Who is it addressed to? Maybe your dad ordered something.” She went and stood next to Rose to look at the package.

“Hmm, I think we should wait for dad to get home to open it, I mean it is addressed to all of us.” Mia agreed with her daughter and went to continue making dinner.

Ethan got home a few hours later and was greeted by his daughter with a warm hug, “Haha, hey there kid how was your day?” He asked returning the hug and picking Rose up.

“It was good! We got a weird package in the mail, mom and I decided to wait for you before opening it.” Rose said leading him into the kitchen after he put her down.

“Welcome home, Hon! How was work?” Mia asked kissing Ethan on the cheek.

“Ugh, Williams was an absolute pain again. He somehow unplugged all of his equipment and disconnected his computer from the ethernet cable again.” Ethan complained sitting down at the dinner table next to Rose. “Chris somehow changed his computer to Arabic and Sal’s computer was changed to have wingdings as the default language and it bricked the whole thing, he said it was an accident, but I think it was one of the dicks that keep harassing him. I told Chris and he’s looking into it.” Ethan picked up the package and looked at the outside.

“Ugh why can’t these douchebags see that Sal is way better than them. Probably just jealous of him.” Rose said frustrated at the harassment her uncle was receiving.

“We should invite him over for dinner sometime, lift his spirits some!” Mia suggested placing a glass of juice down for Ethan. He agreed and thanked her for the juice.

Ethan handed the package back to Rose who tore into the packaging. Inside was a video game box, “Resident Evil? Isn’t that a game from the nineties?” Rose asked confused.

Ethan leaned over to get a better look, “Yeah it is, I played almost all of them, but I’ve never seen that one. It looks like its supposed to be the seventh one, but they only made six that I know of.” Ethan became confused taking the box from Rose studying it, it strangely didn’t have a back cover.

“Weird, maybe they are rebooting the series, but why wouldn’t there be a lot of news about it?” Rose asked. Ethan’s face lit up at the possibility of a reboot of his favorite childhood series.

“Man, I hope so, I always loved Craig Bluemarsh and Leo C. Harrison. They were the best! The whole M.O.O.N.S squad from Badger City. Special Ops turned paranormal investigators was the twist of the decade! And the whole thing with Egbert Walberk and how he possessed himself with countless demons to become basically a god.” Ethan sighs as he reminisces.

“You clearly have bad taste honey because Julie Easter was the best character in the series. The ace of the M.O.O.N.S squad, the one that Walberk kidnapped to force demons into her with a mind control amulet. Oh, and don’t forget Chloe Bluemarsh, college kid turned aid worker for those affected by the demons.” Mia added as she chopped vegetables for dinner.

“Ahh yes, how could I forget! Anyway, this looks like a cheap bootleg or fake. Probably just a prank from Dani or Angie.” Ethan said tossing the case further on the table looking upset.

“Aw man…. That’s lame dad.” Rose says dramatically throwing herself over the back of the chair. “I’m keeping it anyway; the box looks cool.”

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A month after the whole package incident, Rose bursts into the house beaming. “Dad, Uncle Chris just told me that we are having a meeting with the whole gang! We should totally bring that janky game we got and show it off!”

“Whoa, slow down Rose! You’re gonna hurt yourself running around like that.” Ethan says watching his daughter bounce in place. “Why do you think we should bring that thing anyway? I doubt there will be anytime to just sit around and play a game, if it’s even real.” Rose rolls her eyes at him.

“Dad, I’m sure Uncle Chris can pull some strings so we can have a little get together. We never get to see each other all at once!” Rose states, putting on her best puppy dog eyes, “Don’t you want to see the gang, Dad. It would be so much fun. You know how much I miss them all.” She begs.

Ethan can physically feel his resolve crumbling at his begging daughter, always caving into her once she pulls out the puppy eyes, “Fine, I’ll talk with Chris and we can bring the game with us, but you are responsible for the PlayStation and if it gets damaged or broken you have to buy the new one.” He says in his dad voice, trying to be stern. Rose squeals and jumps into his arms hugging him.

“You’re the best dad ever!” She says running off to prepare for their long weekend at Blue Umbrella.

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“Ok, is everyone comfy, I’m about to start the game!” Rose said excitedly setting up the PS4 in the Blue Umbrella lounge room. Everyone was present, Rose even convinced Miranda and Elena to join them after Milena was put to bed.

“I am unsure of what we are even doing sweet thing.” Alcina said settling into her chair near Donna.

“Well, I’m gonna play this weird game I got, maybe Dani can take over if I get tired. We are just gonna check it out, if its good, Great! If not, we can make fun of how bad it is!” Rose explained sitting down on the couch wedged between Daniela, Angie, and Heisenberg with Bela and Cassandra on the floor in front of them. Alcina wasn’t convinced that it would be fun, but she couldn’t deny Rose’s request considering how excited she looked. She sighed and pulled out her reading glasses seeing the small text on the screen.

“Psh, what are you a grandma?” Heisenberg teased. Alcina growled at him.

“Oh, please grow up you child.” She replied trying to de-escalate the situation knowing Rose and her daughters hated when they argued.

“I see making your head bigger didn’t help your eyesight.” He continued to tease sensing her anger.

“I grew proportionally you ignoramus, becoming larger would not fix my farsightedness.” She growled out becoming angrier.

“Guys….” Rose said sadly at the two arguing. Heisenberg immediately stopped his next sentence and turned to give Rose a side hug.

“Sorry kiddo, I forgot you hate it when we fight. I’ll stop, I promise.” He says sincerely as Alcina nods looking guilty, Rose smiles accepting their apologies.

“No more sappiness get to the action I’m getting bored!” Angie cried out from Daniela’s lap. Rose rolls her eyes at the doll’s bratty attitude and begins the game.

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The game begins with a very familiar video to Ethan and Mia and the sight of Mia recording her warning message on the ship.

“What the…. How is this happening? It showed the recording from my eyes, but I never recorded that…” Mia says stunned.

The next scene starts with the sound of a phone ringing and the overhead video of a car driving down a highway. Ethan begins to speak to and unknown man in the voice over explaining how he was contacted by Mia and that she wants him to come and get her.

“This has to be a sick prank! How did these people get that phone call!” Ethan shouts getting more and more upset as the clip plays. Mia places a hand on his arm to comfort him.

“Maybe there will be an explanation later. There has to be….” Mia says trying to calm Ethan.

Rose pauses the game as it shifts to Ethan’s perspective in the car, “We don’t have to keep playing if this is making you guys uncomfortable.” She says to her parents.

Ethan takes a deep breath, “No, no… it’s fine, you were really excited for this. I was just shocked. I’m okay to keep going, as long as you are okay too Mia.” She nods in agreement with her husband clearly rattled but pushing through. Rose nods continuing the game as she walks Ethan through the thick Louisiana swamp towards the Baker house.

The first obstacle they encounter is a locked gate. She moves him down a path leading to a trashed car with camera equipment scattered around it. Looking in they find a scrip proposal for Sewer Gators Ep. 17.

They then come across a broken gate with a sign that says, “Accept Her Gift”, “Oh yeah definitely just walk through that incredibly ominous gate into the disgusting swamp.” Heisenberg says gesturing towards the screen, “I’d just say, ‘sorry lady I’m not that desperate for a wife’ and dip.”

“He has a point dad, I mean really its been three years. Just move on.” Rose says to her father.

Ethan blushes, “Hey you can’t judge a man in love. I had to know what happened.”

“Nah man, just accept the death bro. Totally not worth it.” Daniela says interjecting.

“I’m right her you know.” Mia says scolding them. Rose giggles and continues on. They come across the remains of a fire with Mia’s purse laying there. They then enter the Guest house finding it to be disgusting and in disrepair.

“God, I forgot how gross this place was.” Ethan says wrinkling his nose.

Rose looks around the living room area, finding a hidden chain that opens a hidden room they go through. Exploring further leads them into a flooded basement they are forced to crawl through.

“Oh, please Ethan, I know you are insanely stubborn but the corpse in the flooded basement should have been an indicator to leave immediately.” Alcina says as the dead body floats up in front of them.

“Ok, Ok I get it I’m a crazy person for going on, but can we please stop commenting on it. I’m aware of the insanity.” Ethan replies as Rose comes up into a basement room with a jail cell containing Mia as well as other information on people who were listed as turned or dead. They pick up the bolt cutters and break open Mia’s cell. While they are being reunited Mia acts strangely warning him of the dangers and of Daddy.

“Pft, seriously? Daddy?” Dani snickers at Mia.

“Don’t start. I was possessed by a child obsessed with family.” Mia says glaring at Dani.

Rose follows Mia through the basement where she and Ethan stop to talk about the last three years.

“Come on! This is a life or death situation, get a move on!” Cassandra yells out at the screen.

Rose continues to creep through the basement following Mia as Ethan learning more about her capture as they walk. They come across a living room type area where Mia starts to act strangely, talking about family and when Ethan leaves, they hear her crash through the wall revealing a staircase to the house. They move through the house looking for Mia. They hear crashing coming from the stairs they came from and return to find Mia on all fours crawling up the stairs. She attacks Ethan looking monstrous as she throws him back up with superhuman strength. She then attacks him with a knife stabbing him through the hand. After a struggle she regains control rambling about a strange her as she slams her head against the wall.

“Jesus man, that is hard core…” Heisenberg says in awe. Mia grimaces at the memory. Rose continues on wandering before they are attacked by Mia once again. They fight her off with an axe. “Ethan, my friend, you always have to double check that your enemy is dead. She is definitely gonna get up again, classic horror trope.” Heisenberg says wisely.

“Karl, this actually happened. I wasn’t thinking about ‘horror tropes’. I was focusing on surviving.” Ethan says to him.

“Also, of course I’m going to get up, I’m sitting right here. I’m clearly not dead.” Mia says exasperated.

Rose moves on with the game ignoring them and answers the phone that had begun to ring. “Dad why did you answer the phone? Just leave.” She says as Zoe gives her warning to Ethan. “Oh yeah let’s listen to the random phone lady and not just break a window.” She says rolling her eyes.

They move on solving the puzzle for the stairs catching a glimpse of the not at all dead Mia. Replacing the fuse, they are jumped by Mia again who attacks him with a screwdriver pinning him to the wall before chopping his had off with a chainsaw.

“My god man! How did you keep going!” Sal exclaims looking at Ethan who just shrugs.

They find a pistol in one of the rooms and use it to take care of the attacking Mia as she rants crazily. Finally taking her down, they are ambushed by Jack Baker who punches him in the face.

“See I told you that you should have moved faster, now ‘Daddy’ caught you.” Cass says as Ethan falls over and is stomped on by Jack. They see him being dragged and Mia being carried by Jack, the scene changes to Ethan strapped to a chair with Zoe staples his hand back on. He finally fully awakes to a disgusting family dinner with the whole Baker family.

“Ugh, I miss Momma’s cooking so much.” Mia says reminiscing happily. Everyone stares at her as they see the disgusting meal on the table in game. She blushes, “Before she went fully crazy, she was an amazing cook. Her gumbo was to die for, oh and Daddy’s fried chicken, mmm.” She explains to them. No one seems convinced as the scene continues with Lucas throwing food at him and Marguerite tries to get Ethan to eat, and Jack cuts off Lucas’ hand. Jack comes over and forces the rancid food into Ethan’s face as Marguerite rants and leaves angrily, Jack then cuts Ethan’s face before being interrupted by the doorbell. They escape and flee through the house trying to find an exit. They find a key and are chased by Jack before escaping to the crawlspace.

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They explore the house before a police officer tries to ask Ethan questions.

“Man, that officer is kind of a dick…” Heisenberg says realizing how rude and unprofessional the officer is.

“He was a massive dick.” Ethan says frustrated at the memory of their interactions. They make the way to the garage to meet the rude officer who refuses to take the situation seriously which leads to his death and Ethan’s continued entrapment. “See, massive dick, we could have escaped, but noooo.” He says.

Rose nods in agreement as she avoids Jack in the garage and tries to defeat him with the car. The car crashes and catches fire revealing an on fire Jack who is knocked down by the resulting explosion. They collect the items in the room before climbing up the revealed ladder. Jack stops Ethan and shoots himself in the head with Ethan’s gun.

“I’ll say it again, he ain’t dead. He’s coming back sooner or later.” Heisenberg says again.

“Yeah, no shit Sherlock. This game’s been full of tropes so far.” Cassandra responds to him rolling her eyes.

Rose continues on solving puzzles and making their way through the labyrinthine house avoiding the obviously not dead Jack and the molded that are scattered around the house. They see Jack mumbling to himself about being “her” and talking about how he is going to kill Ethan.

“God he’s so cool.” Dani says as he leaves the room getting looks from the others, “What? He’s a cool villain.”

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The fight with Jack was a bit of a struggle for Rose, but she made it through with Heisenberg, Dani, and Cass cheering her on.

When he finally exploded, both Heisenberg and Dani called out in joy, “Now that’s how you kill a villain!” Heisenberg shouted out with a laugh and high fived Dani over Rose’s head. As they make their way through the house again completing puzzles and finding Grandma in random places.

“She is the one who caused all this.” Alcina says pointing at Grandma. Ethan and Mia looks shocked.

“How did you know that?” Mia asks. Alcina scoffs as if it is obvious.

“She hasn’t had the focus at all, yet she appears at random seemingly following Ethan, who we know is the next victim in mind. She is clearly Eveline.” She says smugly to everyone’s shocked faces.

Rose moved on ignoring the gloating. She came across a trailer in the yard, exploring it revealed that it was Zoe’s home containing some useful items that she ignored moving to leave as the phone rang. Zoe explained about the mold and how to progress.

“Why are you so trusting of this woman, you don’t know her, and she has admitted that she is a part of the family trying to kill you?” Bela asked turning to face Ethan. He opened his mouth to answer but nothing came out, he paused thinking and shrugged. Bela rolled her eyes at him, “Typical man thing.” She mumbled out returning to her original position.

They move on to the old house and Marguerite just as Zoe instructed. Coming across baby dolls strung up from the rafters of the bridge. “Whoever made those should be killed.” Donna said quietly. Everyone looked at her confused. “The look like such poor quality dolls, anyone who cares would never let them fall apart so easily. Cheap plastic is the worst fate a doll can experience.” She explains confident.

“You aren’t upset at the fact that they are strung up, just that they suck?” Rose asks her.

“Of course, you can do what you like with them, but the craft must be respected. These cheap factory made ones are a disgrace.” Donna explains upset at the virtual dolls. Rose mumbles an ok before moving on into the bug infested old house. They make their way through the house avoiding mutant bugs and solving puzzles.

“Gotta say girls, these things really remind me of you three.” Heisenberg says as Rose burns her way through the nests of bugs.

“How dare you compare my girls to these disgusting things! They are clearly superior in every way.” Alcina says angrily defending her girls.

“Thank you, mother, but he has a bit of a point.” Bela says to her mother with Cassandra nodding in agreement.

“Momma has a point though too! We are better than those things!” Dani says beaming at her mother. Cass mumbles suck up under her breath and is smacked by Dani.

Soon after they find Mia in game again, she explains her amnesia and is taken away by Lucas. Not being able to help they continue on through the house again. Eventually they are found by Marguerite who begins to stalk them through the house attacking them with her swarm of insects, insane rants, and vulgar obscenities.

“This lady is something else…” Heisenberg says cringing at Marguerite.

“For once we agree on something Karl.” Alcina agrees cringing as well. The others nod in agreement with them.

They make their way through a secret passageway revealed by the spider shadow puzzle. The wall space was infested which had everyone cringing at the writhing masses of centipedes. They collect the crank and the crow key and try to enter Marguerite’s room before she throws him down the stairs and through the floor. After a short encounter, she falls into the hole and melts into black goo. They collect information on the D series pieces and Zoe calls again, and she mentions they only need the arm piece as she has the D series head. They return to the hole to see the goo gone and a long spindly arm take the lantern needed to progress. They follow the monstrosity to well in front of the old house returning to Zoe’s trailer. They return to a new section of the old house where they are attacked by a mutated spider like Marguerite.

They run around the house, avoiding her swarms and attacks while burning her with the flamethrower and peppering her with shotgun shots to the disgusting nest on her lower half.

“I take it back; you girls are way more similar to the bug lady.” Heisenberg says once she finally dies. Alcina slaps the back of his head and growls at him.

“Momma can we mutate like that too!” Dani says excitedly as Bela and Cass cringe.

“Absolutely not. Do not even think about trying.” Alcina scolds while Heisenberg and Rose chuckle at them.

“Why would anyone want to have a gross bug vagina?” Cassandra turns around asking her sister.

Dani shrugs, “I don’t know, I just think it would be neat.” Rose shoves the controller into Dani’s hands and takes Angie from her.

“No more bug talk, you play, I’m getting tired.” Rose says stretching.

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They find their way into Eveline’s secret room and collect the arm. They go to meet Zoe in her trailer only to find that no one is there. They answer a call from Lucas where he tells Ethan that he has both Zoe and Mia, and that Ethan needs to play his game to save them and get the head. They make their way back to the main house’s dissection room where they pull the snake key out of the dead deputy’s neck hole. Lucas’ voice come out through a speaker explaining they need to find two keycards so they can meet.

“Ohhh, I love this guy! I’m getting so many ideas for new games, hehehe!” Angie says excitedly bouncing in Rose’s lap. Donna glares at the doll chastising her through their mental link. Angie pouts at the scolding.

They make their way through the increasingly molded main house solving Lucas’ puzzles and dodging the molded shambling around. They find the blue keycard and make their way down into a secret room containing the red keycard. Lucas calls again at the phone in the main hall, leading Ethan to a party in the barn.

They enter the barn to thumping music and glowing paint under a black light. They come across a room with a television showing Lucas ranting and waving the D series head around, ranting about how he doesn’t want to give up his gift and that they can only get the serum from him before the television explodes. They make their way through the barn avoiding trip mines and coming up to a locked gate with a passcode. Lucas makes an appearance taunting Ethan and giving him incorrect passwords before a trap springs and a secret door opens up.

They wind through the barn avoiding the traps and taking out the molded arriving at Lucas’ arena where they fight off a giant molded. After the fight they find the correct passcode to enter the birthday room. They solve his puzzles and escape through the hole created by the dynamite. They see a television with Zoe and Mia, Zoe explains where they are before Lucas cuts the camera to himself ranting about nothing. They collect the D series head and leave the barn making their way to Zoe and Mia. They release Zoe and Mia before collecting the completed serum. Just after they are ambushed by a fully mutated Jack.

“Wait he isn’t dead?! I can’t believe I didn’t call it!” Heisenberg calls out as Dani fights Jack.

After a long grueling fight, taking out Jacks many swollen eyes and using one of the two serums to calcify him at Zoe’s request. Walking down the pier they are faced with a choice to cure either Zoe or Mia.

“Well clearly we are supposed to cure mom. Its what dad did in real life.” Rose says.

“True, I did. I did feel bad though, Chris ended up saving Zoe and her uncle, so it all ended up good.” Ethan says.

“Yeah, sure choosing Mia is what really happened but what if we chose Zoe?” Dani asks hovering over Zoe in game.

“No! We can do it later right now we are choosing mom.” Rose says sternly.

“Fiiiiinnnnnee.” Dani whines out giving Mia the serum. They take the raft down the river listening to Ethan and Mia talk about the situation before they come across the wrecked boat Mia and Eveline arrived on. They are attacked by the mold, and they switch to Mia’s perspective as they hear Eveline speak to her through their mental connection.

“Well, this is going to be interesting, I’ve never seen this before.” Ethan says as they move into the ship. They find an unconscious Ethan who is taken by the mold deeper into the ship. They move through the mold infested ship as Mia, getting flashbacks as they move on. They follow the phantom Eveline to a room containing a television where they watch a video tape that blends into them playing through the situation leading to the crash of the ship and the infection of the Baker family.

They see Mia’s partner Alan who explains he is the reason Eveline escaped he explains that she needs to fix his mess and they begin to track Eveline through the ship. They finally come across Eveline in the engine room before she runs off again. They find Alan again in the room next to the one where they started the video tape. As he explains that Eveline is deteriorating, he insults her, and she overtakes him with the mold. The mold then spreads to Mia infecting her. They then see Mia recording the warning video from the beginning of the game. The section ends with Mia being blown off the ship and floating unconscious in the water, before returning to the present with Mia and the Phantom Eveline talking. Making their way to the bridge they use the surveillance cameras to find Ethan trapped in mold in the engine room. On the way there they are impeded by the phantom Eveline and the remaining molded.

As Mia finds Ethan, the perspective swaps back to Ethan’s mind as he speaks to a sane Jack. He explains that Eveline is the cause of all the murders and kidnappings. He says that they were infected when He rescued her from the crashed tanker. Jack also explains that stopping Eveline will stop the mold. Before Ethan awakens to Eveline and Mia arguing. Mia rips him free from the mold prison and gives him the tissue sample before locking him out of the engine room urging him to kill Eveline. They continue through the bayou to a salt mine near the Baker house. They hear a military broadcast explaining a team was sent in to take down Eveline. They traverse the salt mines finding an underground lab with information on Eveline and the E series mold. They use Eveline’s tissue samples to make the E- Necrotoxin that is used to kill her permanently. As they exit the mine, Ethan sees flashes of Eveline as she sends the molded to kill him. They exit the mine into the original room Ethan found Mia in where he has a vision of Mia panicking. He continues to see visions of Mia’s attack on him and Eveline controlling her. They stab Eveline with the serum, and she reveals her true form as Grandma before melting away and mutating into a large monstrosity.

As Dani fights the massive face of Eveline, Miranda mumbles to herself, “Absolutely fascinating. How she responds to different stimuli and the delayed injection of the Necrotoxin.” Rose and Dani scream forgetting that Miranda was sitting behind them.

“Jesus Christ! What is wrong with you! You scared the living hell out of us!” Rose yells at her turning to face Miranda who has a notebook open in her lap. “What are you even doing?”

Miranda blushes at being caught, “I was taking notes on how E-001 reacted and how the family responded to the infection. It is incredibly fascinating that the whole Baker family mutated without becoming one of the shambling molded.”

“Trust me she was about to run off and work more before I stopped her.” Elena interjects into Miranda’s rambling. “Don’t worry, I won’t let her work on the Eveline project outside of simply watching videos.” Miranda’s blush deepens and she looks embarrassed at being called out by her lab assistant.

“Good, no more mind control children allowed.” Dani says rudely turning back to the screen continuing the final fight.

Ethan is thrown from the house and sees helicopters arriving at the house as he is attacked by Eveline. He uses an unknown gun to shoot Eveline calcifying and crumbling her finally. After the battle, Ethan and Mia are rescued by Chris. The final shots of the game are Ethan speaking over clips of marshlands and the reveal of the Blue Umbrella helicopter.

“Well that certainly was something….” Ethan says as the credits roll. Mia wide eyed and shocked nods in agreement.

“So, all that actually happened?” Rose asks her parents, they both nod. “Ok well that doesn’t explain how the heck this got made or why we were sent it or by who!” Rose rants.

“Who cares, it was awesome!” Dani exclaims high fiving Angie who cheers with her.

“Can we leave now? My back is beginning to hurt.” Bela complains standing up and stretching.

Rose boos her, “Fine be boring. What did everyone else think?” She asks everyone left in the room.

“Amazing! Fantastic! Ten out of ten!” Dani exclaims clinging onto Rose.

“It was interesting, very cinematic. A bit tropey at times but it works in its favor. Especially since this technically happened. The villains were enjoyable and empathetic at the same time.” Heisenberg critiques.

“Yeah, whatever it was fine.” Cass says getting up and leaving the room.

“I had quite a nice time, I’m glad you suggested this, Rose.” Alcina says picking up the sleeping Donna. “I’m sure Donna will apologize for falling asleep tomorrow morning. Have a good night.” She kisses the top of Rose and Dani’s heads and leave the room.

“It was quite informative, thank you for inviting me, Rose. I truly appreciate it. Now I must go and review my notes.” Miranda says looking at her notebook as she slowly leaves the room.

“We are actually going to bed, but thanks for inviting us, Rose. We’ll have to do it again soon!” Elena says grabbing Miranda’s arm and taking her notebook.

“I think your mom and I have some talking to do, but you guys have a good night sweetie.” Ethan says getting up before kissing Rose on the head.

“Yeah, outside of the horrifying content of this ‘game’ it was fun. Have a good night honey.” Mia says following her husband to their room.

“Alright seems like the party is dying down and someone has to get Sal to his room. Seems like he and Donna can’t stay up late like us cool kids.” Heisenberg laughs out shaking Sal awake. Sal stands up groggily and leans ion Heisenberg as they leave to their respective rooms.

“Lame everyone left. You want to stay up or are you hitting the sack too?” Dani asks Rose.

“I think I’m going to bed too. I have a lot to think about.” Rose says hugging Dani, “See you in the morning Dan.” Dani decides to follow Rose and they head to bed.

In his assigned quarters, the Duke watches the group scatter to their rooms for bed, “I’m glad they enjoyed my little gift. Hopefully, it answers some questions for them.” The Duke says to himself chuckling.

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bluealmondpie · 4 years

Text

haikyuu!boyfriends~

and i am back with the pretty setter squad! it took me a long time to decide which character and then after that i had to fumble over how corrupted or innocent i wanted him to be. i ended up choosing innocent bc fluff. maybe i'll write the not so safe for work(?) stuff another time. (^_^;)

bf!tobio-chan

* shy boi. head empty only volleyball so is understandably confused about his reactions to you.

* what are these new feelings? he just has no clue. what even is love? does he even know what romance is??? what is a date?

* wants to spend time with you but doesn't know how to say it... awkward bean he is

* probably asks if u wanna play volleyball with him HAHAHAHA will want to teach you also. u know how mika got pissed at daishou? same feels

* hinata best wingman tbh

* hinata and sugawara best wingmen. first two to notice the feelings and totally helped set you guys up with lots of *wink wink hint hint* (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧ (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

* anyway when he finally realises he likes u he is a red, blubbering mess.

* what is a date? 可以吃的吗? (is it something to eat?) LOLOLOL

* anyway hinata at least got the point through to him that he should bring u to eat during a date and so..... he brought you two to a speciality milk shop smh

* ok the yogurts were good give him some credit

* anyway most of your dates r either food dates or wanna-come-watch-game-tape-with-me type of dates omg this boy. just what even is love only volleyball

* u will b bored. mika/daishou vibes

* travels around a lot for pro vb matches so be prepared for late night video calls and super early good morning texts (who tf wakes up at 430am kags pls. just bc hinata wakes up at 5am, u don't need to one up him for everything)

* he doesn't really care if u come to his matches or not. bc you will both end up watching the game tape at his apartment. it's not a choice he will watch it with or without u

* he will obsess over the details and replay all the bits he wants to see. will nudge u or narrate the good points and the bad points. minimally just nod in response

* not especially cuddly but when you're watching game tape tgt he likes it when you sit between his legs

* like will set his chin on your head and just watch the match and b engrossed it in while drinking milk (STILL? baby you're old enough to do power curry advertisements). he'll be really quiet tho (focused!!)

* basically u are a giant pillow when he is watching tv. occasionally will even hook his legs around u to pull u closer to him to hug.

* you don't actually have to watch the tv with him, he doesn't mind if you just do whatever as long as u stay his warm pillow

* if he is sleepy he will move his head to rest on your shoulder and snuggle his face into the crook of your neck. that's a sign to turn off the tv or pause the tape and move so he will actually go to bed

* he is ticklish. if u feel like u need attention u can tickle him and immediately he will react

* he is ticklish AND competitive, so u have to b prepared for revenge and a tickle battle to the death

* n e way other than that i don't really see much skinship in your relationship like he is not fond of PDA and not fond of anything more than handholding and if he can avoid it he will

* he does like to hold you by the waist. or ruffle your hair. but only in private

* fav place to kiss you? top of your head, or temple

* fav place to be kissed? if he's not expecting it he gets shy no matter where so go for it (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

* has no idea what romance is, do u actually think he knows how to resolve arguments between u two? NO

* will ask hinata for help. bless his soul, hinata is best bro hinata gives him actually good advice!! unfortunately kags cannot replicate the ways of the sunshine child and so he has to look for someone else

* will never ask tsukki. tsukishima will also not answer, anyway.

* yamaguchi, lovely sweet baby, will give him good advice and even help to pick out flowers actually it was yachi who picked over his shoulder ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) what r these two up to

* yams will become his relationship advisor

* pls give yams lots of soggy fries as reward for saving your relationship

* when you're sick he will turn to suga for help bc suga is mom bc suga is domestic god and will make some porridge or soup for him to bring to u. all hail suga the kitchen god

* suga has given kags the recipe once but after the other first years had to rescue him from the resulting fire he never touched a stove again

*******

requests are open! (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

masterlist here (♡-♡)

*******

ah yes. i've been caught up in life recently and so have not had the time to post or write but i do have a long captains crack fic i've been working on LOL. it's very long. save me. i've also been really swamped at work recently so i just can't deal with life and any free time i get i will take a nap. my therapist does not approve but yet here we are with my poor self control and lack of motivation to get better. in other news i went to see the psychiatrist today for my meds and there was a cute med student who was asking the usual questions and i just blanked half the time cos he was cute

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#hq!!#haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu x reader #kageyama tobio #karasuno #haikyuu boyfriends #kageyama #hinata shouyo #hinata shoyo #sugawara kitchen god #kageyama x reader #kageyama tobio x reader

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outerbonks · 4 years

Text

complicated - jj maybank

Thanks for all the love on my last post, I really appreciate it ♡ let me know what you think of this one and if you think I should make more parts :)

Summary: You're a kook and JJ doesn't like you at all. That's what he wants everyone to believe anyway.

Word count: +2K

Warning (s): swearing, drinking

Masterlist ♡

Music pumped through the boneyard as you danced around with your friends, being a kook, you tried to avoid being on the pogue side of the island as much as possible, but keggers in the boneyard were impossible to pass up.

For the past fifteen minutes you'd been lost in the music, dancing and singing, admittedly buzzed from all of the cheap beer you'd drank throughout the night.

"Y/n! You came!" A voice called from behind you and you whipped around to see your friend Kie smiling brightly at you.

Giving her a big hug and returning her smile you nodded, "Yeah, great party!"

Kie was a sweetheart, you'd met her in school after her falling out with Sarah Cameron in the ninth grade, she was a breath of fresh air compared to some of the other snobs that attended the private high school and you both got along like a house on fire.

There was one issue with hanging out with her outside of school though. That issue was that her friends hated you- well, not all of them, only one of them actually, but he really really really didn't like you.

JJ Maybank has been a dick to you ever since he first met you. You don't remember doing anything to have pissed the hotheaded boy off but you never let his hostility fly.

Whenever he had something to quip at you, you had something just as snarky to throw back in his face. He didn't know anything about you yet felt the need to run his mouth about you as if he knew all of your deepest darkest secrets, when in reality the boy probably didn't even know your middle name.

At the beginning of your little rivalry with JJ, you had tried to be the bigger person and show him that you weren't like the other kooks. Of course he was having none of it.

So when Kie grabbed your hand and exclaimed, "Come sit with me and my friends!" Your stomach dropped and even in your tipsy state you knew that it wasn't a good idea.

"I dunno, Kie. I don't wanna fight with anyone tonight…" You trailed off with a pout, you'd had a shitty week at work and tonight was supposed to allow you to unwind and not be stressed out by a boy who hated you for reasons you didn't even know.

"Look, I'll handle JJ if he says anything okay? Just please come on, John B said he missed you." Kie pleaded with you, a triumphant 'yes' exiting her mouth when you sighed in defeat and began walking with her in the direction of her friends.

When you got to the boys who were all sat on logs, John B perked up, the tall boy immediately standing up to greet you with a hug.

"I haven't seen you in forever! Why haven't you been hanging out?" John B asked you with a concerned face, holding you at arms length.

"We've been super swamped at work, lots of new people coming in for the summer so I picked up a few extra shifts to help out." You explained to him but turned your face in the direction where the scoff had just come from.

"As if you need any more money than you already get from mommy and daddy." JJ grumbled sarcastically, looking to get a rise out of you.

You meant what you said to Kie earlier about not wanting to get in a fight, you were too tired.

"It's volunteer work, actually." You muttered bitterly before taking a seat between Kie and John B.

Most of your weekends and now weekdays since school ended for summer were spent volunteering at the old folks home on figure eight. It wasn't too stressful, you get paired up with an old person and you keep them company for the day, play board games and do things for them. It doesn't sound so bad, is exactly what you were thinking when you applied for it, but the hours were long and the nurses that worked there were assholes.

You'd dealt with enough snarky douche bags this week, you didn't want to have to deal with the blond boy too. You'd be using energy you just didn't have.

Luckily the conversation moved on quickly and you were all laughing at something Pope said.

"Do you want another beer?" John B asked you, standing up.

"No thanks. I think I've had enough." You giggled up at him and he nodded his head in agreement with a smile before heading to the keg.

Once he left, JJ wasted no time in stealing his seat and plopping down beside you.

You let out an irritated sigh but didn't say anything, you knew what was about to happen.

"Want a hit?" He asked, showing you the joint he'd rolled. You couldn't help but look at him in confusion, him offering you anything other than a snide remark was uncharacteristic.

"I guess." You responded unsurely, only to get a click of his tongue in return, "Damn sucks you don't have a joint then."

In all fairness you should've seen it coming. Rolling your eyes you turned your face away from him as he lit up the weed.

While you were ignoring JJ and enjoying a conversation with Pope and Kie you were interrupted by a Touron who tapped you on the shoulder.

"Hey." You couldn't lie, the boy standing in front of you with a shy smile on his face was gorgeous.

You smiled brightly, looking up at him from your spot, "Hi there."

JJ watched with narrow eyes as the guy rubbed the back of his neck nervously, "I was wondering if maybe you'd want to dance with me for a bit?"

Before you could even respond, JJ threw an arm around your shoulder casually and looked at the poor boy dead in the eyes, "No. She doesn't."

It was your turn to narrow your eyes as the boy scurried away.

"What the fuck?" You seethed at JJ, knocking his hand off your shoulder and turning to face him.

The boy in question shrugged his shoulders innocently, "Didn't think you wanted to dance."

"How the hell would you know what I want? You don't even know me." The words were laced in venom and it was clear that you'd finally had enough, not allowing the blue eyed boy to get a word in as you exploded.

"I get it, ok? You hate me and that's fine. But don't for a second pretend to know what I'm about because you don't know shit about me." Your jaw was clenched and you delivered your words through gritted teeth, poking his chest roughly as you spoke.

JJ scoffed out a laugh, grabbing your wrist to stop your relentless poking, "I know exactly what you're about, princess."

Looking at him with pursed lips you snatched your wrist from his grasp and crossed your arms over chest, "Tell me." The demand came out stone cold and JJ's face was covered in confusion, "What?"

"Tell me what I'm about." The boy stared at you in bewilderment before cocking his head to the side and nodding, "Alright."

JJ cleared his throat before he started rattling off reasons as to why he hated you, "You're just like every other kook on this island, a spoiled brat who gets everything handed to you."

Shaking your head at his answer you leaned closer to him with a glare that made a chill run up his spine.

"No no no. We all know what a kook is JJ, no I want you to tell me what I'm about. C'mon, what's my biggest fear?" You pushed at his chest again, enjoying how he swallowed thickly and stayed quiet.

"What age was I when it all started going wrong? Why can't I wear dresses to parties? Huh?" The boy kept quiet, he didn't have an answer to any of your questions and the point you were making started to dawn on him.

"Come on! Since you know everything about what I'm about you must know the answers."

JJ let out an aggravated huff and threw his hands up in defeat, "Well I don't, alright?" He shouted defensively.

Giving him a fake smile and nodding you stood up, towering over him now.

"Right. Because you don't fucking know me. So stop acting like you do when you've never even bothered to get to know me." You spat at him before storming away.

Kie and Pope watched with dissatisfied looks on their faces, "Man, you suck do you know that?" Kie sighed out as she watched you get smaller and smaller.

"Also you do know Y/n is like the sweetest person on the planet right?" John B chimed in, returning from the keg.

"Why do you hate her?" Pope asked, tilting his head in confusion, JJ not liking you had just been something they all accepted and never questioned.

JJ shrugged, chugging his drink and tossing the cup to the side, "She's a kook."

Kie scoffed this time, "Yeah and? Everyone else loves her. I don't get why you always have to make her feel bad, she tried really hard to get along with you."

JJ's feeling towards you were complicated, the rudeness between the two of you had admittedly started off as just banter and when he realized he'd been enjoying the back and forth a little too much he needed to regain his distance. No way in hell could he fall for a kook princess, even if you were one of the nicest people he'd ever met.

He's never felt bad about the remarks he threw you or arguments he caused because you always gave as good as you got. It pissed him off because it only made him admire you more. He didn't notice it was taking a lasting effect on you until your little outburst.

To top things off, Kie, Pope and John B were always gushing about how much fun you were to hang out with and how they wanted to hang out with you more often, truth be told he'd love to see you hanging around more but his pride just would not allow him to get close to you.

"Look, if it would make you all chill out I will go and I will propose a truce so you can all go back to macking on Y/n in peace." The boy offered and was met with a chorus of thank yous from his friends.

He had to jog up the beach until he eventually found you sitting on the sand, close to the shore line with a bottle of water, attempting to sober up before you went home.

"Hey, princess." JJ said, voice flat as he sat down beside you on the cold sand.

You glanced at him briefly and sighed, "I'm not up for a round two."

The boy shook his head, staring out at the ocean thoughtfully, "That's not why I'm here."

Furrowing your brows you turned your face toward his, "Then why are you here?"

He ran his fingers through his hair then met your eyes, "I'm sorry that I'm an asshole."

He never usually apologized, but then again, you never usually snapped either so you were both full of surprises tonight.

"I'm not sorry for snapping at you. You deserved it." You replied softly, returning your gaze to the water in front of you.

JJ let out an airy laugh, nodding in agreement.

"I don't hate you by the way." He confessed quietly.

"Then why are you so mean all the time?" You asked in return.

Instead of answering your question he posed a new one to you, "Do you wanna know what I'm about?"

You nodded, determined to get to the bottom of the boy beside you.

"I'm about keeping people at a distance. I do that by being an asshole. I'm about caring too much about my reputation to let myself be nice to you." To let myself fall for you. He wanted to say, but he couldn't put all of his cards on the table like that.

Nodding in understanding you let out a weak, "Pogues vs kooks… right." You knew for a fact that if you were considered one of the pogues JJ would've never had an issue with you.

"Right." The boy confirmed with yet another nod of his head.

A silence settled over you both before JJ stood up, dusting himself off, "Come hang out with us this weekend. The others want you to be there."

Giving him a weak smile and a nod you watched as he walked away. That boy would never fail to confuse you.

You just hoped that now that he told you he didn't hate you, that maybe he'd start acting like it.

Part 2

#jj maybank x reader #jj maybank #jj outer banks #outer banks x reader

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currywaifu · 4 years

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𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: mutuals 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩: miyoshi kazunari/reader 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: sfw 𝐰𝐜: 1.9k words, 2 images

𝐚𝐧: me? back w/ fluff? it’s expected at this point! his speech is hard for me to replicate, but I rly do love Kazunari so I hope I did this scenario justice! I, uh, got too excited at the prospect of “insta mutuals” oops~ hope you don’t mind the additional media TT

The Insta notification that popped up on the top of your screen distracted you from the game you were playing. Normally you’d flick the notif away, but as soon as you realised what it was about, you rushed to finish the rest of the stage.

You and Kazunari have been Insta Mutuals for nearly a year now, ever since he hit you with a follow and you proceeded to stalk his readily-available socials.

The two of you had been liking and commenting on each others’ posts for weeks on end, starting off with you praising his most recent graphic design work to him sending a paragraph of heart emojis on the most recent fan art you drew.

Somewhere in between following each others’ spam accounts to tagging each other on Insta story games, he finally slid into your DMs and the rest was history. Sort of.

You knew what people said about online dating, or even just long distance relationships in general, but try as you might it was hard not to fall for Kazunari.

The more you talked to him, the less he stayed as your “funny artist mutual” and soon enough he progressed into the “still funny but also really sweet and cute artist online friend, 10/10 would date if asked” category.

You didn’t bother stifling your laugh as you looked at the message he sent you, immediately liking his selfie before saving it on your phone.

Okay, no. He can’t just hit you with an “I do wanna meet u already” and then take it back but not fully commit to it!

You waited for him to respond through text, but instead got hit by your ringtone blaring loudly at such an ungodly hour. At the sight of your contact nickname for him, you eagerly answered his call. You rushed to get the first word in, him doing the same unbeknownst to you.

“Kazu-“

“Babe, I-“

The both of you paused, his eventual laughter easing up your tension as you let out a giggle of your own. You mentally told yourself not to be so nervous— Kazunari and you would have this conversation eventually anyway; besides, it wasn’t as if you didn’t want to see him in person. It was quite the opposite, actually. You just figured that conversations like this needed to happen in call, at least.

“Shoot, should probs shut up so Mukkun doesn’t wake up,” Kazunari commented, his voice volume already lowered, “do you wanna go first?” He asked.

“Yeah,” you replied with resolve. You gathered up your thoughts, formulating the next set of sentences that would leave your mouth, before ultimately deciding on one question. “I just need to know first… how serious were you about meeting up irl?”

“I mean, that wasn’t what I meant when I sent the message? But like, it’s still valid, you know?” he paused, but when you didn’t say anything he decided to continue, “it’s not the first time I’ve thought about meeting you. I think about it a lot, actually.”

It was a bit of a shame the two of you chose to voice call instead of video call. You would’ve loved to see your boyfriend’s face just about now, though you supposed it wouldn’t be a good idea to have a heart attack a quarter to 4 in the morning.

Plus, you weren’t sure you could handle him teasing and throwing compliments at you due to your clearly visible elation, if the upwards stretch of your lips was anything to go by.

“Babe? You still there? Did you pass out, or…” In reality it had only been a few seconds, but still you didn’t want to leave him hanging. Not when the two of you were talking about something that meant taking the next step in your relationship.

“I’m still here, Kazu,” you reassured him. Your voice shook slightly, a sliver of your excitement slipping through the cracks. “I’m the same. Like, no lie I was shocked we brought it up like this, but, um… I’m ready, and if you’re ready, too, I want to meet up with you.”

“Wait, wait, wait— hol’ up! So we’re finally going—“ he laughed for the second time tonight, a fuzzy-wuzzy warmth escaping as its sound equivalent. “Wahh! Of course I’m ready! Can’t wait to finally see what a cutie you are irl♪ Hngg, how am I supposed to sleep now? I’m too hyped up!”

You rolled your eyes, despite understanding exactly how he felt. His infectious cheerfulness amplified the blossoming commotion occurring inside your brain. Despite not making any official plans yet, the prospect of finally meeting up had you frenzied.

Still, one of you had to be at least slightly responsible. While you wouldn’t claim to know his daily schedule, if Veludo Arts was anything like your university, he should be as swamped with workload as you were. Actually, maybe that was the reason he was up so late? That’s how it was for you, anyway excluding the fact that you took a break to stamina clear.

“It’s nearly 4 am… do you wanna continue planning this tomorrow? Err, rather, in a couple hours? After our lectures end, maybe?” You asked, though by the tiny whine Kazunari let out you had a feeling he wasn’t going to agree so quickly.

“Ehh? Why don’t we do it now? I have so many ideas about where we could go, and what we could do… oh! I could introduce you to everyone in Mankai! I’m sure they’d love-“

“I’d love to meet them too,” you cut him off, tone as firm as you could manage at this time, “and I want to hear your ideas, really, but I just know if I let you keep talking the sun will rise before we’ve even decided on a date.”

You chuckled as Kazunari let out a sound of protest, though you had a feeling he knew you weren’t wrong about your assessment. “Zuzu~ Let’s go to sleep now, okay?”

His phone microphone picked up on an audible gasp. “Ehh, how come you rarely call me Zuzu? It’s cute when you say it!”

“Because it sounds like a nickname you’d give to a Pokemon!”

“Uwu, maybe I’ll get Itarun to lend me a copy? Then I’ll catch the cutest Pokemon and name it after you~” you nearly groaned at how fluffy he was being. Seriously, he was distracting you from your agenda of going to sleep!

“Kazu! Stop flirting with me at 4 am or we might not fall asleep!”

Though you couldn’t see him, you were 200% sure he had a wide grin plastered on his face right now. “Me? Using tactics to get you to keep talking with me? Never,” he claimed, professing his false innocence.

“Well, I’m not falling for it! I may not be able to physically tuck you in bed right now, but I can in spirit!”

“Oh!? Then can you give me a goodnight kiss in spirit, too?”

At this point, you were sure that even with just a poke on the cheek you’d be able to feel the heat beginning to envelop your face.

As Kazunari finished laughing, you let the quiet lull of the night seep in the conversation for a few moments before gently breaking it.

“I’d rather give you a kiss irl, though.”

And just like that, you claimed victory over the game he started. With how Kazunari sputtered, a part of you worried that he’d disturb his roommate’s slumber. Still, an even bigger part of you was smug to have him speechless for that much of a duration.

“Babeeeee,” he drawled, “you’re so, so, so unfair… I, like, really want to hold you tight right now…” he murmured, the rustle of his bedsheets discernible through the call. You found yourself nestling onto your bed, too, snuggling up to a soft pillow.

“Soon,” you suddenly yawned, your tiredness seeming to have settled in the comfier you got on the bed. “We’ll have a lot of time to plan tomorrow and the days after, yeah?”

Kazunari let out a hum in agreement, a comfortable silence following suit.

“Kazu?” You muttered quietly, careful not to disturb your peaceful atmosphere.

“Yeah?”

“I love you. Good night,” you said, heart aflutter as you heard his response.

“I love you, too, cutie~ sweet dreams♪” he said in an unbelievably soft tone, before ending the call.

After quickly connecting your phone to a charger, you fell back atop your bed and hugged your pillow tight, already anticipating the day you’d be able to hold Kazunari in your arms, and you in his.

…

Morning come, you hastily prepared for class as you always did. You fell into your usual routine— as soon as you were out of the bathroom, you selected an outfit and went over the things you needed to bring to uni today.

You stopped for a minute; taking a quick selfie to post on your story and emphasise your exhaustion to your close friends, before making yourself some breakfast. Within less than 5 minutes, your phone pinged— a recorded message from one of your favourite people this early in the morning.

"Mornin' piko☆ You're looking cute as always today♪”

There was no way you would admit to how many times you replayed it to Kazunari, but even so it was a good way to keep you positive for the rest of the day.

You don’t remember Veludo Way being this rowdy, though it was hard to trust your memory when it’s probably been years since you’ve last visited. Somehow, it was not tough to imagine Kazunari walking around and performing here— the liveliness of the streets difficult to not associate with one of the liveliest people you knew.

While the original plan was to meet up at a cute and trendy cafe you saw all over people’s SNS, the two of you agreed to meet up somewhere less crowded and more meaningful to him— the theatre which he’d performed at multiple times in the past.

As you saw the building from a distance, you wondered when you’d be able to see him on stage, too.

A shout of your name pulled you out of your thoughts, and you couldn’t help yourself from running over to meet up faster with the figure that was jumping and waving around in your direction.

Had you any sense left, you probably would have told him that you didn’t want him embarrassing himself in public, but in reality it was quite apparent that you were just as excited to finally see him in person.

“Kazunari!” you can’t help the little shriek you let out as you finally embrace him, only joyous laughter and each others’ names escaping the both of your lips. When you finally got a good look at Kazunari, you nearly wanted to bury yourself into his shirt again.

Everything still seemed so unbelievable. That this was real. That it was finally happening. It almost felt like the dreams you’ve had of this moment many times before.

“How are you so beautiful in person, too?! It’s totes like I’m falling in love with you again♪” Kazunari exclaimed, squeezing you one more time before finally settling on holding hands with you. “Ahh! I super, duper love you!”

Except it wasn’t. There was nothing imaginary about his warmth, and the way his words made you feel, and the beaming sunshine of a smile he aimed at you.

“I love you, too!”

want to order again?

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snowdice · 4 years

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Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 22]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. Chapters 3-8 and what I have of Chapter 9 are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

The hope is to work on this for quite a bit today. Please come keep me company with asks if you feel so inclined.

Chapter 6

“Really, Khalid,” Janus said, storming into his boss’s office. “A yellow?” It had been about a week since the 1920s incident, and his incident report had finally been cleared. Sure, it wasn’t a red or a black and he wasn’t facing any reprimand, but it should have been a green.

She looked up at him, clearly unconcerned. “There was an incident,” she said. “You handled it well, but there was one. Therefore, yellow.”

“It wasn’t a time travel incident! It was a rouge time traveler.”

“Janus, you helped me make these rules,” she said impatiently.

“Which is why I know this is bullshit,” he snapped.

She rolled her eyes. “If it was anyone else, you would agree with me. While you didn’t go against protocol and had no time related incidents, the fact of the matter is, you were still distracted by this ‘rouge time traveler,’ didn’t complete your mission, and were arrested.”

“He was good,” Janus said. “You can’t fault me for that. He also could be dangerous and you’re busy handing out yellows instead of working to track him down.”

She raised an eyebrow. “We are working on tracking him down,” she said. “We have done an analysis on the mask and found fibers dating to the 2010s and some DNA. Though it isn’t exactly a high priority.”

“We have no idea who he is or what he’s planning to do. Why is that not a high priority thing?”

“At the moment?” she asked. “Because we have reports of a time bomb being activated.”

“What?” Janus asked sitting up. “When?”

“New Years Eve going into the year 3,000 in Brazil,” she said. “Which you’d know about if you’d bothered to check your integration port this morning before storming into my office.”

“It’s my mission?” Janus asked.

“The incident investigation is over and your active again despite the dreaded yellow,” she said, clearly making fun of him a bit. “So, yes, and it’s a high priority mission, so I’ll be running it.”

“Who all is going?” he asked.

“Other than the two of us, Remus, Lena, and Fred,” she told him. “We leave in three hours, so, you might want to run off to Rhi before Fred gets to her and ties her up for an hour on details.”

Janus nodded and got to his feet. He turned back at the door. “I still don’t deserve the yellow,” he hissed.

She waved him off. “I’ll see you in a few hours, Picani.”

He ground his teeth a bit about the dismissal of his worries, but his resentment was slightly soothed by the fact that she’d assigned him to go on such a high priority mission and with only senior agents.

He took the advice and grabbed Remus from the office, noting Lena hadn’t been able to wrangle Fred yet as she was still at her desk, and they both headed off to see Rhi.

A few hours later, they were all in decontamination together, decked out in truly god-awful costumes. The turn of the third millennia had been a wild event, and the best way to fit in was to look like you’d grabbed something from every century in recorded human history, dyed it in neon paint, and rolled around in a vat of glitter.

Remus had opted to stick his head in a vat of thick glow in the dark green paint that costuming had offered them, and it wasn’t even going to be slightly disruptive to their covertness. It was so caked on that Janus couldn’t even recognize him.

In fact, costuming had frowned when Janus had insisted he not get his hair dyed and instead wore a bowler hat. They had required him to have flowers made out of glitter on it.

There were five people waiting for them when they landed 6 hours before the turn of the millennia. Three were touchdown agents, including Remy, and two were on location tech support. Usually it would be overkill to have that many people there just for support even with five agents in the field, but today the TPI needed to be cautious because they were planning on instituting a time lock.

Time bombs were dangerous things that would ripple through time if not contained. Even if it did end up going off (killing everyone in its reach), the time lock would serve to prevent most damage outside of the city and, more importantly, the year it was planted.

Janus had only been in two time locks before, and he was one of the most senior agents in the TPI, outranked only by the founder: Lia Khalid. Time locks were designed to keep all time linear in a certain fixed time and geographical area as well as prevent any time travel in and out. Once it was engaged, all forms of time travel would not work for the duration, bar the pin device. Khalid was already switching out her regular timepiece with the slightly bigger one that was designed to support the time lock.

There was a failsafe back at the TPI that could be engaged in an emergency, which was why tech support was here, but other than that, the only thing that could break the time lock was that timepiece, and it would break the moment the time lock ended.

As soon as it was on Khalid’s wrist, she looked up at them all. “Our information says the time bomb was planted in the costume of one of the ‘Millennium Birds’ who are the organizers of the different events,” she said. Janus had seen a photo of the identical costumes in the mission details. They were all robe like garments with giant fans of feathers coming from the neck that coalesced in a peak a foot above their head to hold a fake bird egg. At least they’d be easy to find. “There are 25 of them throughout the city. We need to find each of them. So, we don’t double count, you’ll need to subtly,” her eyes touched on Remus, “scan each one you find for the bomb and tag them with a tracker if it’s not on them. You can view the already tagged ones, as well as the rest of us on your timepiece even once the time lock is engaged. When you find the bomb, call it in.”

They all nodded, and Khalid looked over at one of the techies. She nodded at her and then the techie flipped a couple of switches. “Three, two, one,” the techie said. There was a slight shift in the air that most people would disregard, but Janus as a seasoned time traveler could feel the change even before his wrist buzzed. He glanced at his timepiece to see it had a big red ‘X’ across its display. He tapped it and was still able to bring up the map of the city with 10 green dots on it all clustered together in their current location.

After that, he tested the scanner on his timepiece that he would use to search for the bomb, just to make sure the time lock hadn’t messed anything up with his equipment. He glanced up to see everyone else was doing the same.

“Keep in contact,” Khalid said before everyone split up. Janus and Remus started by going North while Fredrick and Darlene were to go South. Khalid was a floater who would tag any Birds she saw but was mostly there for backup and orders.

Janus and Remus stepped into the chaos of New Years Eve before the turn of the third millennia. The streets were already swamped with people and it would only be getting worse the later it go.

“Where should we start?” Remus asked.

“Let’s go all the way North to the games area,” Janus said. “We can work our way back here.”

“Okay!” Remus said. “I wonder if they have those fun little genetically modified goldfish as prizes. I’ve always wanted to eat one and see if I end up getting whatever design was on the fish on my body.”

Janus gave him a disgusted look.

“What?! People eat fish all the time!”

Janus shook his head. “We’re not playing the games anyway. We have work to do. Important work.”

“Boo,” Remus replied. Janus chose to ignore him as he spotted one of the Millenia Birds letting people into the gaming area.

They walked over towards the entrance. Janus got in range first and moved to subtly scan the Millenia Bird, Remus doing the same the next moment. After a second, Janus’s timepiece buzzed and lit up red, meaning the bomb was within range. “Well, that was easy,” he said. “It was on the first one we found.”

“Uh…” Remus said. “Jan.” When Janus looked, he was holding up his wrist to show his green lit time piece.

“What?” Janus asked. He quickly moved to rescan the Millenia Bird, and his timepiece came up green as well. Which, meant the bomb was not in range, even though the Millenia Bird had not moved. “But…” He and Remus’s eyes met, and they quickly both started turning in a circle to look at the crowd around him. No one looked like they’d just stolen a time bomb off the Millennial Bird, but then Janus’s eyes caught on a man. He blended in perfectly to his surroundings. He was wearing the disgusting garb of the times, a large light blue piece that bubbled near his hips, and had most of his skin covered in rainbow neon paints. Yet, something about him, the curl of his hair or the way he moved, drew Janus’s eyes to him. He recognized the man immediately even in a completely different dressing style. Yet, what cinched it was the moment Janus’s eyes met his and they seemed to sparkle slightly in the afternoon sun. The next moment, the person Janus knew as Pat, turned to disappear into the crowd.

Chapter 7

“Him,” was the only thing Janus said before taking off after the figure who had just disappeared into the game area.

“What?” Remus’s voice followed after him. “Janus! What?!”

Janus did not pause, just continuing to run after Pat, hopping over two barricades as a shortcut. Janus cursed when he lost sight of the man for just a moment near the prize table filled with colorful goldfish, but he was able to spot him once again walking into one of the tents. Janus blasted into the tent. It was a game where they raced rats, and when Janus entered, Pat was cooing at one of them.

“Who’s a tiny little squishy precious baby?” he was asking one of them, wiggling his pointer finger at it.

“You,” Janus growled stepping up to him.

He turned and tilted his head at Janus with a frown. “Um, me?” he asked, pointing to his chest, all sorts of innocent, but Janus could see a spot of hidden amusement in his eyes.

“Where is it?”

His eyebrows drew together, but it was an act. It was clearly an act! “Where is what?”

“The…” he glanced around them at the people surrounding them. “Thing you just took.”

“I didn’t take anything,” Pat said with a frown.

“Oh, no,” Janus said. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fooling me twice is not an option.”

“I’m sorry sir,” Pat said. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bull. Shit.”

Just then, Remus jogged into the tent. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s him,” Janus said pointing. “He took it. He has it.”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patton said. He looked over to Remus with a confused frown.

Remus looked at Janus. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Janus said. “It’s him. It has to be him. He’s the mask guy.”

Remus squinted at Pat. “He is?”

“Whoever you think I am, I’m not. I haven’t worn a mask all night. I just did the face paint,” he pointed to his cheeks.

Remus raised his wrist and his timepiece lit up green. He looked at Janus.

“I lost sight of him for five seconds. He must have stashed it somewhere,” Janus said. He turned on Pat. “Where did you put it?”

“…Are you,” Pat asked, his eyes going back and forth between Janus and Remus, “… the police?”

“We are, actually,” Khalid said as she stepped into the tent. Remus must have called her. She inserted herself between Janus and Pat. “Agent Khalid,” she said, offering a hand with a smile. Pat looked at it in surprise and then smiled back hesitantly as he took it. “Apologizes, one of the big game prizes was stolen by someone matching your description. Would you mind coming down to security for questioning? Just to clear it up.”

“Oh,” Patton said, hesitant. Janus expected him to refuse outright, but then he said. “Uh, sure.”

“Thank you very much, Mr…”

“Jonas,” Pat told her earnestly. “Do I need to be handcuffed?”

“No,” Khalid said. Janus frowned at her, but she ignored him. “It’s just a talk for now.” She gestured to the tent entrance. “Come with us.”

He did without argument, and Remus and Janus followed behind the both of them. Khalid did not lead them back to the base, but to a little spot that said “security” near the center of the event. Remy was already there waiting for them at a desk.

“Remy, would you please take Mr. Jonas to go sit down?” she asked.

“Sure, boss,” Remy said, standing up. He led Pat away.

Khalid turned to Janus and Remus once they were out of earshot. “What is going on?”

“It’s the mask man,” Janus said, “the one from 1923, and my scanner said the time bomb was on the Millenia Bird outside the games entrance, but then it was gone the next second, and I saw him, and then he ran away.”

“So, does he have it on him?”

“No. I lost sight of him, and he must have stored it somewhere, but I know he took it.”

10264

“He’s the man from 1923?” she asked.

“Yes! Remus, that’s him, right? You recognize him.”

“Well,” Remus said thoughtfully. “He was in a mask, and it was dark in the room with the necklace. Other than that, I only really saw his back, and he was wearing pants. Mr. Jonas is wearing a dress, so I can’t really tell if their asses match.”

“Okay, but I was with him for hours. I swear it’s him, and I swear he took it,” Janus just about shouted.

“We’ll question him,” Khalid placated, “and Fred and Lena will keep looking in the meantime.”

“He knows where it is,” Janus insisted. “I swear.”

“Okay,” Khalid said, before leaving to follow where Remy and Pat had gone. She stopped Janus with a hand on his shoulder. “I think Remus and I will do the interrogation.” He opened his mouth to argue. “You know the most about him, so observe from the sidelines and see if he makes any mistakes that indicate you’re right.”

“That’s just to placate me and you know it.”

“Observation’s over there,” she said pointing.

He got a thumbs up from Remus as he walked by, and Janus glared at his back before walking off to the indicated location.

He watched as Remus and Khalid entered the room, and Remy left it. Remy joined him in the observation room after leaving and leaned against the wall.

Pat was sitting at a table and watched Remus and Khalid with that same rubbish placid confusion that he had before. “So,” Khalid said, “Mr. Jonas.”

“You can call me Nick,” Pat interrupted.

“Lia,” Khalid replied. He smiled at her happily. “So, are you enjoying your day?” she asked.

“I am!” he replied. “It’s a big day. You only get to see the turn of a millennia once in your life.”

“Ah, yes,” Khalid said. “Doing anything special for it?”

“Um, not really,” he said. “Other than the party. I’m going to meet up with my roommates after dinner. Kevin doesn’t like this sort of thing, and Joe couldn’t come.”

“Your roommates,” Khalid said, considering him. “Do you live around here?”

“Uh huh,” Pat replied.

“Do you have any ID?”

“I do, want me to get it?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

Pat unzipped one of the bubbles on his waist and handed her a chip. “Remus, would you mind going out and getting the ID scanner?” she asked, even though her timepiece would be able to read it.

“Ah, shit,” Remy said. “Props. What do those things even look like?”

As Remy scrambled to find something that would pass for an ID reader so “Nick” didn’t get suspicious of Khalid using her timepiece, Janus watched the two alone in the room like a hawk.

“I see you’re wearing a dress inspired by the 2770s,” Khalid noted, as Remus came to stand next to him.

“Yeah!” Pat replied. “Joe made it for me. He’s really good at fashion design!”

“Can I see?” she asked.

With a happy smile, he reached over the table to let her get a look of the sleeves. Janus saw her subtly scan the fabric, probably to make sure it was from the 2990s and not actually from the 2770s. Considering she didn’t mention it, Janus assumed it checked out.

Remy came back with some sort of device then and handed it to Remus who saluted and wandered back into the interrogation room. Khalid pretended to scan the ID in her hand. She handed it back to him without comment. “So, you said you live with your roommates: Joe and Kevin?” she asked.

“Yep!” he replied. “We’re practically like brothers.”

“Would you mind calling them?”

“Erm,” he titled his head like he was confused by the question. “Well, like I said, Joe is a bit busy, but I could definitely call Kevin.

“Here,” Khalid said, “use my phone.”

“I have my own,” he said with a frown.

“Humor me,” she requested.

“Uh, okay,” Pat agreed. He took the offered 2999 phone and dialed a number on it. Khalid reached over to put it on speaker.

“Hello?” a voice asked after a few seconds.

“Um, hey Kevin, it’s Nick.”

There was a sigh on the other end. “Hello Nick, is something wrong? Why are you calling me from someone else’s phone?”

“I’m fine, I think.” He looked up at Khalid. “Why am I calling him exactly?”

“Hello, I’m Officer Khalid,” Khalid said. “I just wanted to confirm that you are Nick Jonas’s roommate, and he does live in Manaus.”

“Yes, we live together with our other roommate,” the man replied flippantly. “Officer? Is something wrong?”

“I believe there was just a case of mistaken identity,” Khalid said.

“Bullshit there was!” Janus hissed, though she could not hear him.

“No need to worry,” Khalid continued.

“I’m good Kevin,” Pat said.

“Are you absolutely sure?” Kevin asked.

“Don’t be Paranoid, Kevin. I’ll see you Tonight for the New Years Celebration. You know I Live to Party.”

“I am hanging up now,” Kevin said.

“No! Comeback.” The line went dead. Pat handed the device back to Khalid.

She took it and smiled at him. “Give us just a couple of minutes,” she requested. He nodded easily, and she and Remus exited the interrogation room. “I… think we’re done here,” Khalid said.

“No, he’s lying,” Janus insisted, and got a dubious look in return. “I know he is! Remus!”

“The alibi is pretty solid…” Remus said, “and he doesn’t have the bomb on him.”

“Oh, come on,” Janus said. “You can’t say there is nothing fishy going on here.”

Khalid and Remus shared a look. “Janus,” Khalid said. “I respect your intuition. It is usually very good, but you have been a bit intense about the man from the 1920s, and I think that may be blinding you a bit...”

“I am not imagining this!” Janus said. “That’s him and he took it.”

“You only met him once while he was wearing a mask,” Khalid pointed out with a frown, “and you didn’t see him take the bomb, did you?”

“No, but he looked at me and I knew,” Janus argued. They both gave him a skeptical look. “Oh, come on!”

“You know that’s a little weak, Jan,” Remus said.

“Let me talk to him,” Janus requested. “Just give me five minutes to talk with him.”

Khalid raised one eyebrow. “Fine,” she agreed. “You have five minutes, but after that, you have to let it go. We can’t waste any more time.”

Chapter 8

Pat looked up as Janus stepped into the interrogation room. “Hi,” he said with an innocent smile that could cut steal.

Janus didn’t say a word as he took a seat; he just watched him intently. He leaned slightly over the table and steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “So, your name is Nick this time?” Janus asked.

“Nicholas Jonas,” he said. “Always has been.”

“Stop it,” Janus said.

“Stop what?”

“Cut the crap. I know.”

Pat leaned forward, mirroring Janus as he leaned closer, interlocking his fingers and laying his chin on top of his knuckles. “What did you say your name was again?” he asked, pleasantly.

“Janus,” Janus replied.

“No, I’m Jonas,” he said, pointing to his chest.

“Not Jonas,” Janus spat. “Janus.”

“Um,” Pat said, eyes alight with amusement. The bastard. “Those are the same words.”

“No, they’re not. It’s Janus. J-A-N-U.-S.”

“Well, that’s confusing,” Pat said with a frown, but his nose was crinkling. “It’s close to my name. You should go by a nickname instead.”

“What?” Janus said. “No.”

Pat hummed. “How about Love Bug?”

“What! No!” Janus sputtered, almost flipping the table, as Pat winked at him.

“BB Good?”

“What does that even mean?!”

“Mandy.”

“No!”

“Okay, okay, how about Macy Misa.”

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Janus stared at him for a moment. “Fine. Whatever. What was I even talking about?”

“Hmm. I Believe we were talking about my name and how you think it’s not my name.”

“Right,” Janus said. “So, Nick. That was your roommate, Kevin on the phone, right? He seemed a bit unhappy with you. Any reason?”

“Nah, we’re Cool” said Pat. “That’s Just the Way We Roll.”

“Not because you’re messing up a mission right now?”

Pat’s eyes crinkled together. “A mission?” he parroted. “I’m not messing up a mission.”

“Oh, really?” Janus growled. “Because you’ve been captured by the TPI, and I know who you are and what you’ve been doing.”

“I have no idea what the TPI is,” he claimed.

“Yes, you do!” Janus said, standing up. “You obviously do! Or you wouldn’t be playing this game!”

“Game?” Pat asked. “Macy I ask you what you’re talking about.”

“This is all just a game to you isn’t it!” Janus said, slamming his hands down on the table in front of them.

“Whoa,” Pat said, putting his hands up. “Calm down. Your face is getting all red. You must be Burnin’ Up.”

“I’m not sure what, but something about what you just said pisses me off.”

“And that is five minutes,” Khalid said, bursting into the room. He felt a tug on the back of his shirt and glared back at Remus who was putting his own body between Janus and Pat.

“There was no way that was five minutes,” Janus growled.

“It was five minutes,” Khalid gritted out. “Remus, get him out of here.”

“Come on Jay,” Remus said, dragging him back towards the door.

“Remus, I swear to god.”

“Just chill, Janus,” Remus said, slamming the door closed behind them.

Janus shrugged him off. “You chill!” he snapped. “He’s playing you all for the fool.”

“Wow, Macy,” Remy drawled like an asshole. “I’ve never seen you so fired up.”

“Oh, my gosh. No one is going to believe me, and he’s going to get away with this.”

“You’re not really helping your case, babe,” Remy said.

Remus grabbed him by the shoulders again. “Here, let’s go get some water.”

“I don’t want water,” he said even as he let Remus lead him to another room to get a glass of water.

“Look,” Remus said. “I know the Mask Guy thing really sucked, but you have to look at the facts.

“I am looking at the facts,” Janus insisted, “and the facts are, he’s fucking with me.”

“You don’t know what mask guy looks like,” Remus said. “You didn’t see Nick take the time bomb, he has an ID from this time period and a roommate in this time he called on the phone, and he legitimately seems to not know what any of us are talking about.”

“Did you even listen to our conversation?” Janus asked. “He was screwing with me the entire time!”

“Janus…” Remus said.

“What?” Janus said, narrowing his eyes at Remus’s tone.

“I know you recently had a bad experience, but not everyone who flirts with you is doing it out of evil.”

Janus’s mouth hung open for a few seconds. “That’s what you got out of our conversation?”

“He called you Love Bug.”

Janus felt his face heat a bit at the reminder. “That’s not… I. I’m stealing your cat and then never speaking to you again.”

Remus laughed. “Ah,” he said. “Young lust.”

Janus elbowed him roughly in the side. “No!”

“Yes!” he crooned, pleased.

“You are the worst partner,” Janus hissed. “When I’m right you owe me 10 loafs of your fresh bread.”

“Branching out from poptarts?” Remus asked.

Janus shook his head. He still wasn’t happy about the state of things, but he could feel himself cooling down a bit.

Khalid came out of the integration room after a few minutes, leaving Pat with Remy. “What was that?” she asked him.

“He got under my skin,” Janus said.

“We’ll talk about it later,” she said. “For now, we’re letting him go and then going back to looking for the bomb like we’re meant to be.”

“Fine,” Janus relented. “Just do me the favor of tagging him before he leaves. Just that. I beg of you.”

“Sure,” she agreed. “If it will calm you down.”

He nodded.

“Then, let’s go,” she said. When they met back up with Remy and Pat, he saw Khalid make the subtle gesture that would tag Pat like they would have for the Millennium Birds. Pat sent him what could pass as a sweet smile if Janus didn’t know better. Then, they walked him outside, leaving Remy on clean-up duty for the make-shift security office.

“So, I’m free to go?” Pat asked. His bemused expression edged far too much on the side of amused verses confused for Janus’s taste.

“You are,” Khalid said. “Have fun at the festivities.”

His hands went flapping about. “Oh, you too!” he said. “Well, I guess you’re working, but you can have fun anyway, I’m sure.”

“We’ll do our best,” she said.

He gave her a blinding smile and reached forward to shake her hand enthusiastically. Janus rolled his eyes and looked up at the heavens. “It was nice to meet you!” he said, “and you too, Remus!” He turned to meet Janus’s eyes. “Macy Misa.”

Janus pressed his lips together.

Then, Pat turned and walked away.

“Well, now that we’re done with that,” Khalid said, turning to them. “We have only a few more hours before midnight and we really need to find the time bomb.

“Oh,” Pat called. He’d paused a few yards away and turned back to them. “Thanks for letting me go so easily by the way,” he said, “and just in the Nick,” he winked, “of time too.” Janus narrowed his eyes at him. He smiled back. “Wrist check,” he said holding up his arm to show off the timepiece there. Khalid immediately looked down at her own wrist just to see that the one timepiece that could move through the time lock was no longer there. Pat made a gesture and disappeared.

All three of them stared at the spot he’d been for a long moment.

Janus was the one to speak first. “I want. The yellow. To be erased. From my record.”

Chapter 9

Khalid immediately called everyone back to base.

“What happened?” asked Fred when he and Lena arrived. The tech people were already scrambling to get through to the TPI and get the time lock broken from the outside.

“Remus, Remy, and Khalid got played by Pat or whatever his name is. It certainly isn’t Nick. He was just setting up a joke,” Janus told him.

“Stop being smug,” Remy said. “It’s not a good look for you.”

“Pat is…?” Lena asked.

“They guy who fucked me over in 1923,” Janus said, “and is currently in the middle of fucking us all over because he stole the pin timepiece, and by extrapolation, probably the time bomb too.”

“It will be fine,” said Khalid, “because what he doesn’t know is that timepiece has a tracker on it. Wherever and whenever he went, we’ll have his coordinates.”

“Speaking of,” one of the techies said. “It’s about to break. You might want to hold onto something.” Janus grabbed for a support beam next to him as the techie put a device on the ground in the center of the base. It blinked once, twice, and on the third blink the ground rumbled. There were sounds of panicked yelps outside. The fail safe for the time lock was not nearly as gentle as ending it correctly.

Everything settled after a few moments, and they all straightened themselves out. Janus’s timepiece buzzed to indicate it was now functioning normally. Khalid had returned her usual timepiece to her wrist and now used it to open a display they could all see. “The pin timepiece’s closest time/space coordinates are…” she trailed off. “Right outside?” She frowned. “That’s strange. Why would he still be here?” She turned to march outside, following the coordinates to a trash can. She pulled the pin timepiece out and stared at it. “Fuck,” she said.

“What just happened?” Remy asked.

“He ticked us,” Janus said. “Again.”

“He was stuck in the time lock,” Khalid said. “That’s why he got our attention. He couldn’t leave with the time bomb unless he had the pin timepiece or we broke the time lock. Apparently, he’s smart enough to know that if he took the pin timepiece away from here, we’d probably be able to find him, but he knew we’d break the lock as soon as the pin went missing. So, he must have stashed his own timepiece and went back in time within the time lock to grab it while we were distracted with the past version of him. As soon as the time lock went down, I imagine he left.”

“Probably with the time bomb,” Janus said.

“Probably with the time bomb,” she confirmed.

And everyone knew the only thing worse than a time bomb was a time bomb you didn’t know the location of.

They evacuated after that, of course, and time locked the location once they were out just in case they were wrong, but midnight 3000 struck without thousands of people dying in Brazil, so the time bomb had defiantly been removed from then.

The, they initiated a time travel lockdown for all nonessentials, not willing to let random history students get caught up in an explosion if Pat decided to set the thing off somewhere.

Then, it was a matter of figuring out everything they could about ‘Pat.’ First, they checked the tracker data as Khalid had tagged him with one of the Millennium Bird trackers. It wouldn’t work outside of the zone they’d set up that day, but the record would show his behavior during the time lock after he’d escaped with the pin timepiece.

There had been many little green dots on the map that day as Fred and Lena had actually been doing the job they’d set out to do, but most of those were running around in the south. There had been one green dot, however, that appeared suddenly in the game area about 10 minutes before the time bomb had been stolen.

They could see Janus’s yellow dot almost brush his when he’d been chasing the earlier Pat down, around when he’d lost him briefly. The earlier Pat must have all but handed it off to his future self.

“He doubled back,” Remus commented when they watched the recorded data. It was a ballsy move and one that most people balked at, because there were inherent dangers any time you interacted with yourself from a different point in the timestream. It was ripe for paradoxes. It made everyone at the agency even more worried, because if he was willing to risk that, then what else was he willing to do?

Because of the lockdown of all nonessential time travel, people working for the TPI were not allowed to go home for the night. They were allowed to pick up anyone or anything dependent on them for care like kids and pets if there wasn’t someone in their home time to care for them, but other than that, they were unfortunately all sleeping in their offices for the foreseeable future.

“You are the only tolerable one,” Janus told the cat who upon being let loose in the office by Remus, immediately jumped on Janus’s lap.

“I have literally done nothing to you,” Lena said, but then added. “Yet.”

“You exist. In my space.”

“Can’t we just all get along?” asked Fred. “It’s only been an hour past when we’d usually go home. I went and grabbed milk and I have my giant thing of different flavored hot chocolate under my desk. We can try them all and vote on which is better.”

“Fuck your hot chocolate, Fred,” Janus growled, having been one of the three who had chipped in to buy it for him on his last birthday.

“Don’t go after Fred, jackass,” Lena spat.

“He’s just testy because his boyfriend escaped,” Remus contributed.

Janus’s lips turned down into a frown and he cupped Diesel Fuel’s face. “We agree we’re eating him first, right?” he asked her.

She purred her agreement.

“I’d have it no other way,” Remus replied.

“There is plenty of food,” Fred said, sounding stressed. “In fact, I was thinking we should all chip in on ordering take-out soon. “What does everyone like on pizza?”

“This is not a slumber party, Fred,” Janus pointed out.

“Shut it,” Lena snapped and turned to Fred. “I’m fine with almost everything, except…”

“Bananas and tuna salad!” Remus interrupted.

“…whatever Remus is about to say.”

Janus rolled his eyes as that started a debate about whether or not fruit and/or fish belonged on pizza. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, which was when there was a knock on the door.

He froze when he heard the familiar voice. “Hello, hello,” said Emile, cheerfully. Janus looked up to see Emile standing at the open office door. Shit. Apparently, the man had decided to give up on sending lackeys to come fetch him and had decided to track him down himself when Janus couldn’t even escape without breaking a time lockdown. They met eyes briefly and Janus could see irritation if not anger in his eyes despite his otherwise cheerful expression and tone.

“Janus,” he said when he’d gotten their attention. “I’d like to have dinner with you.” The word choice told Janus everything he needed to know. Usually Emile was careful with how he said things to make sure people knew they had a choice. Typically he’d say something like, “I was wondering if you’d have time to have dinner with me tonight,” or “I’m about to go get food, would you like to come?” Today, there was no choice in the statement.

Janus still dried to dodge anyway. “Uh,” he said. “We were actually about to order pizza.”

“Go ahead,” said Fred kindly. Janus wanted to strangle him. “We can order pizza with olives if you’re not here.”

“I…” said Janus. “Guess, I’ll be going with you.”

“Great!” Emile said. “Let’s go.”

“Oh,” Janus said. “Uh, now?”

“Now,” Emile said a bit of uncharacteristic steel to his tone.

Well, Janus was screwed. He swallowed his nervousness and got to his feet, taking Diesel Fuel with him. He turned to hand her off to Remus with a plea in his eye, but he just got an eyebrow raise in return. Traitor.

Then, he followed Emile out of the office door. “What would you like to eat?” asked Emile.

“Uh,” Janus said. “I don’t know. You asked me to eat, don’t you have any ideas?”

“I don’t actually,” Emile replied. Right.

“…Noddle Bar?” Janus threw out the nearest restaurant he knew.

“The one noodle restaurant? Sure,” Emile answered simply. They walked side by side out of the front doors of the TPI building. Janus actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken these stairs. He usually used his timepiece to get in and out.

The noodle bar was only moderately busy at this time. They were quickly able to find a table near the back and Emile pulled his menu up in front of him. Emile hummed as he flipped through the different displays. “What are you having?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Janus said, only then pulling up the menu himself, but still not quite looking at it.

“What about the fortune noodles,” Emile suggested.

Janus shook his head. “I don’t like those,” he said.

Emile glanced at him through the menu displays. “You used to.” Fortune noodles were a bit cheekily named. They didn’t actually indicate anything about your future. They were just supposed to taste like what you wanted from your future. A grad student might experience a feeling like they’d just aced a paper. A child that they got to stay up an hour later that night. Janus had liked the experience when he was younger, but in recent years, he’d begun to taste the underlying chemicals in the dish until that’s all he could.

“Well,” Emile said lightly, eyes on his menu. “That makes me even more worried for your mental health than I already was because of the almost three years of you avoiding talking to me.”

“No small talk, huh?” Janus asked.

“Forgive me,” Emile said, eyes now focused on Janus, and tone much darker. “How has your life been since I last saw your face 5 months ago during a business meeting and you refused to look me in the eye? Anything interesting happen? Shave your head and let it all regrow? Develop an allergy to peanuts? Join a convent and take an oath of silence that you only just broke today?”

“No,” said Janus quietly into the table.

“Great,” Emile said clipped. “Small talk over. Order your food.” Janus reached up blindly to select the first thing that came up on the food and drink menu as Emile punched something into his own and both menu displays disappeared, meaning there was nothing between their faces anymore. “You know, I was willing to give you a year,” Emile said. “I was willing to let you deal with it on your own because I thought eventually, you’d come talk to me about it, but apparently I was mistaken. The next year, I thought maybe you thought I didn’t want to talk to you, so I subtly made myself available, and you never took me up on the offer. I thought maybe I was just not being clear, and I should make my desire to talk to you more explicit, but as you have been routinely, clearly avoiding me at every single turn, I’ve decided I’ve had enough. So, let’s lay it all on the table. Is it me or do you need help?”

Janus closed his eyes. “It’s not you.”

“Then you need help,” Emile concluded.

Janus shook his head.

“Yes,” Emile snapped. “Whatever this is has gone on far too long.”

Janus stood up and slammed his hand down on the table. “And it’s going to keep going on!” he said. The food popped up at that moment. It appeared Janus had ordered lasagna and bubble tea, and Emile had ordered something with spaghetti and a fizzy drink.

“So, you’re just planning to go on being miserable then?” Emile asked, and Janus wasn’t sure if it was worse or better that he didn’t sound angry anymore.

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Janus slapped his hand down on the “To Go” button and his dinner was insta-wrapped by the table. “Yes,” he said.

“What exactly do you think you’re paying penance for, Janus?” Emile asked.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Janus said, paying for both of their meals with his fingerprint.

“That’s a cop out and you know it,” Emile said. “All you’d have to do is talk to me. Or even just talk to someone else. Please.”

“Just…” Janus said, grabbing his bag of food to avoid looking at him. “Just, leave me be.” He walked out of the noodle shop without another word.

Chapter 10

“And I thought Remus was going to be the most disgusting roommate in this equation,” Lena grumbled. Janus and Lena were apparently the earlier risers in the group as Fred was still curled up around a pillow and Remus was sprawled out under his desk.

Janus flipped her off.

“Protein infused Poptarts and caffeinated orange juice for breakfast?” she asked. “Just eat an energy bar and have a cup of coffee like a normal person.”

He took another pointed bite of his Poptart.

“You’re a horrible roommate. This is why they gave us different partners.”

“Yeah, well you snore, asshole,” Janus said after finishing off his meal.

“I’d tell you to go eat shit, but you already did that once this morning.”

A pillow flew across the room and somehow managed to hit the both of them. “S’op fighting,” Fred mumbled. “It’s sleep time.”

“It’s morning Fred,” Lena said.

“No,” Fred mumbled.

Janus ignored them, turning back to his integration port to continue to keep plugging in phrases of interest, but he kept getting nothing.

“What are you doing?” Lena asked after a few moments of him huffing at his screen reader.

“Trying to do anything that may change our current living arrangements.”

She puffed out an amused breath. “Can I help?”

“Can you see any connection between these words and phrases?” he asked, pulling away his screen reader and tapping at the words he’d typed out.

“Paranoid, tonight, I live to party, comeback, love Bug, BB good, Mandy, Macy Misa, I believe, cool, that’s just the way we roll, burnin’ up,” she said. “What are these?”

“They’re things Pat said when we interrogated that struck me funny,” Janus explained. “I feel like he was saying something more than what he said.”

“Hmm,” she said. “PTI for the first three?”

“Maybe,” Janus agreed, “but what about the rest of it? I feel like I’m missing something.”

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“Millennia,” Remus mumbled from under his desk. Janus hadn’t been aware he was awake. “He said something something about it being the only time he could see the change of the millennia.” He turned his head to look at Janus. “Considering he’s a time traveler, that’s definitely a weird thing to say.”

“Millennia,” Janus contemplated. “A different turn of the millennia. Oh no.”

“What?” Lena asked.

Janus sighed, and rubbed his temple. “I know someone who studied the 1700-2200s.”

“Isn’t that good?”

“No,” Janus groaned, “because now I have to go talk to him.” He stood with a sigh and then paused. “How do I even get to Silver Mountains University without my timepiece?”

Luckily Sliver Mountains ended up only being about an hour away from the TPI by time adherent travel, but considering Janus was used to his travel being instantaneous, it was an aggravating trip. He had to show ID and be buzzed up to the fourth floor since it was usually locked to everyone not traveling by timepiece or who worked in the office.

The receptionist was the same man as before. “I’m here to speak to Professor Eran,” Janus said.

The receptionist nodded. “He mentioned you asked to meet him but didn’t know when you’d arrive. He’ll be done teaching his class in about 5 minutes. You can wait over there.”

Janus nodded and sat, waiting for time to slowly tick by. Virgil arrived after a few minutes, lugging a giant bag with him. He caught sight of Janus and wordlessly jerked his head towards the hallway. Janus followed him.

“What’s in the bag?” Janus asked.

“Early 21st century cell phones,” Virgil said, dropping it on his desk. “I let my students mess around with them for their lab.”

“I see,” Janus said.

“What did you need?” Virgil asked. “You said it was official business.”

“You’ve heard about the lockdown, I presume,” Janus said.

“Yeah, it really screws up my research schedule for the summer,” Virgil said.

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“Do you know why the lockdown was instituted?” Janus asked. Virgil shook his head, so Janus explained briefly that they had been trying to find a timebomb on the eve of the year 3000, but it had been swiped by a free agent time traveler. “Some of the things seemed to be references to things that I couldn’t place, and I was wondering if you would recognize any.”

“Shoot,” Virgil requested, seeming intrigued by the prospect.

“Okay,” Janus said. “First, the alias he was using was Nick Jonas.” A weird expression crossed Virgil’s face immediately and Janus paused.

“You said the year 3000?” Virgil asked.

“Er. Yes.”

“Nick Jonas. Year 3000,” Virgil repeated with a snort. “Were Joe and Kevin a part of this too?”

Janus blinked. “Yes, how did you know that?”

“Yo-you’re going to have,” his sentence was broken by a giggle, and actual full-fledged giggle, “have to give me a minute.” With that, he sort of listed to the side and seemed to purposefully fall off his chair onto the floor under his desk.

Janus blinked and when he didn’t surface after a moment, he stood up to lean over the desk and look down at him. Virgil had his arm thrown over his beat red face, as he shook from what Janus thought was suppressed laughter.

“What?” Janus asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Just…” Virgil said, sobbing through his laughter. “Just tell me the things he said.”

“Er, mostly he just had weird inflections on words and phrases. There was ‘paranoid, tonight, I live to party, comeback…’”

“Wait, stop,” Virgil said. “Let me guess a few. That’s Just the Way We Roll, Burnin’ Up, Sucker.”

“The first two were, but not the last one.”

Virgil laughed. “Maybe the last one was just implied.”

Janus frowned down. “What are you talking about? What does this all mean?”

Virgil pulled himself out from under his desk and grabbed his bag of phones. He dug through it for a few seconds before pulling one out and handing it to Janus. “I have a lab for my students where they get preloaded phones from the early 21st century and are supposed to guess the demographics of the person who owns it. This one is an iPhone 3 meant to belong to a pre-teen to teenage girl from the year 2009. Look under music artists starting with the letter ‘J.’”

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Confused, Janus scrolled through the old style phone, finding the music app and opening it easily. Upon getting to the ‘J’s, he immediately paused on an artist called the ‘Jonas Brothers.’ He clicked on it and read a few of the song titles. They weren’t all there, but…

“That rat bastard,” Janus said.

“Scroll to the bottom,” Virgil said. Janus did and found a song titled ‘Year 3000.’

“You’re kidding me.”

“Click on it,” Virgil requested.

Janus did, listening to the fairly standard pop like intro from the time period. It wasn’t until he got to the lyrics saying, ‘He told me he built a time machine’ that he cursed, understanding exactly what Pat had been doing. When the singer a few lines latter proclaimed that his neighbor said ‘I’ve been to the year 3000’ he almost smashed the artifact to pieces right then and there.

“I have no idea who this guy is,” Virgil said, “but he’s a comedic genius.”

Chapter 11

Khalid caught him on his way back into the TPI building. “I heard you went to Silver Mountains to follow up on a lead,” she said.

“Yeah, but it was garbage,” he seethed. “All I learned was ‘Pat’ knows early 2000s popular culture and likes to fuck with us.”

She hummed. “I’d still like a report about whatever you found. Who knows what we might end up getting from seemingly inconsequential data.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Anyway,” she continued. “I have a mission for you.”

“We’re on lockdown,” Janus pointed out with a frown.

“For nonessentials,” she said. “This is essential.”

“What happened?” Janus asked.

“We picked up a small time distortion in France 2027. At the moment, it is small enough not to cause any disruptions, but it is slowly growing, and we don’t know what caused it. Usually we’d just send surveillance agents at this stage, but considering what’s going on, I think it would be best to send a field agent. And it would just be you, because we don’t want to send too many people out at once.”

“Is this related to the time bomb?” Janus asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “At the very least, it’s not it being set off as it was in 2999, but if it’s been altered for some other purpose…”

“I’ll go,” Janus said.

“I’ll send over the mission directive to everyone who needs it. You’ll go in around 3 hours.”

He nodded. “I’ll be ready,” he agreed.

In less then 3 hours, he was dressed for 2027 France and in decontamination. “Well,” he said out loud when he was given the all clear sign, “I hope I don’t explode.” He selected the coordinates on the timepiece and the next moment he was in a small alleyway in the city of Montpellier, France in 2027.

It was a little bit warm, but not stifling even in the mid-afternoon and he could faintly smell the sea on the breeze.

After a moment to get his bearings, Janus made his way out of the alleyway and onto a small street. The street was lined with restaurants and shops as people went about their daily lives. He carefully integrated himself into the crowd and began weaving his way through them. He needed to find the source of the distortion but doing a quick scan with his timepiece told him there wasn’t any sign of it yet. He’d have to wait for it to act up.

For now, he decided to get slightly away from people by heading towards the river. He found a park that had benches along water.

As he walked towards the river, he noticed a man on the bench, angled slightly away from Janus and looking out at the water. He immediately recognized the man. “You!” he exclaimed.

Pat’s head shot around to look at him, and he gave a slight head tilt. Then, he smiled, amused. “You are not the person I’m here for,” he said.

“Well, I am now,” Janus snapped. “Where’s the time bomb?”

“Time bomb?” Pat asked, eyebrows drawing together, but amusement on his lips. “Oh sweetie, the time bomb happened a long time ago for me.”

“What?” Janus asked.

“Oh, you’re just a baby,” Pat laughed. “Don’t you get it yet? The two of us are out of sync timeline wise. You’ve been apparently running around with a much younger version of me, but all of that happened quite a while ago for me. Don’t worry though, it gets better.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The time bomb has been long deactivated. Here,” he reached into his pocket and tossed him something. Janus caught it on instinct. “Proof. Don’t worry, we took all of the dangerous bits out years ago from my perspective.” It was the core of a time bomb, the time bomb Pat had stolen if he was to be believed. “You can tell your people it’s safe to remove the lockdown.”

Janus curled his fingers around it. “I don’t get it.”

Something on Pat’s wrist beeped and he looked at it curiously before he stood from the bench, “and I don’t have time to explain it.”

Janus jerked forward to grab his wrist. “Don’t you dare.”

Pat reached up to pat his face. “Don’t worry honey, you’ll be seeing me later.” He twisted his wrist and a small electric current sparked between them. Janus jerked his hand away, and Patton smiled at him. “Or… earlier.” He winked, and then he was gone.

Janus cursed, but he didn’t have more than a moment to be angry because in the next second there was a yelp, and something landed on top of him. He was bowled over into a tangle of limbs and pained noises.

“Oh my god, we need to figure out the height thing,” a familiar voice groaned, just as Janus managed to pull himself away. Pat blinked up at him and his eyes narrowed. “You,” he hissed.

“…What?”

Pat jumped to his feet, leaving Janus on the ground in front of him. “What are you doing here?” he spat, his tone much different then the one he’d been using a moment earlier. His hair was longer than it had been before, and if Janus looked closely, he did seem like he was a couple of years younger suddenly. Out of sync timelines. I’ll see you earlier. Holy shit.

He was suddenly very glad he’d been forced to let the other Pat (the older Pat?) go, else they’d have a whole thing on their hands.

“What are you doing here?” was Janus’s retort as he stood up and dusted himself off.

“It’s none of your business,” Pat told him.

“It is my business,” Janus said, “because for all I know, you are the cause of the time distortions I’m after. Considering that I doubt you have a license for that,” he waved at the odd looking timepiece of Pat’s wrist, “it’s very possible.”

“What are you?” Pat asked, “the time police.”

“Yes.”

Pat dared to roll his eyes, but then he tilted his head slightly. “Time distortions?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s why I’m here.”

He still had a confused frown on his face. Did… did he not know what a time distortion was?

Just then there was a sudden flash of lightening through the sky despite the absolutely lack of clouds. He and Pat both looked up.

“Is that the time distortion?” Pat asked.

“It’s probably the beginning of it,” Janus said.

“That doesn’t look good,” Pat said as he squinted at the sky.

“Just wait,” Janus answered grimly. He looked at Pat. “Usually I’d arrest you on the spot,” he said, “but I’m alone for this one, and that is far more important at the moment. So, have a nice day doing whatever bullshit you are doing.” He glanced at his timepiece.

Janus turned to walk away from him.

“Wait!” Pat exclaimed, and Janus turned back to him to see that his eyes were wide. Janus raised an eyebrow. “So, this time distortion thing is dangerous, right?”

“Depending on the severity, it could cause time to fracture around this place and time, basically erasing it from existence and killing everyone in it.”

“Well, in that case, I should go with you. To help.”

Janus looked him up and down. “You… have no idea what’s happening, do you? You’re an amateur.”

“I’m not,” he claimed. “I just. Pooling resources. You know?”

Janus sighed. “Well, you going around mucking about this time period without knowing what you’re doing could just exasperate the situation, so fine, you can tag along.”

“I know what I’m doing,” he grumbled even as he rushed to Janus’s side at the permission.

“Sure,” Janus said with an eyeroll. He guessed he was a babysitter now. “I believe you.”

Chapter 12

There was something off about his readings. Clearly the time distortion was starting to pull at this place with the way the weather was flickering between storming and sunny, but he still couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact location of the source of it. He could, however, get that it must be somewhere on this side of the river more into the downtown area, so that’s the way he was walking, Pat close on his heels.

“What’s your name, by the way?” he asked.

Janus shot him a glare. “Elvis Presley,” he said.

Pat frowned, clearly knowing who that was. “There’s no reason to be mean.”

“You did it to me first.”

“…Introduced myself as a famous musician?” he asked. Janus didn’t respond, and after a moment, Pat laughed lightly. “You really don’t understand time travel, do you?”

“Oh, yeah,” Janus said. “Name the three types of time distortions.”

“Just because I don’t know the names of things doesn’t mean I don’t understand them.” He stuck out his tongue. Janus was dealing with an actual toddler. “Unlike you who has a bunch of fancy words, but just caused a time loop.”

Janus scoffed. “I did not just cause a time loop.”

“Maybe not a big one,” Patton agreed, “but you did.”

Janus raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never introduced myself to you with a musician’s name, but now you’ve told me that I will. So, at some point in the future I will have to, thereby making you think to say that now. Time loop.”

“That’s not… that doesn’t count.”

“Does too,” Pat claimed. “Like I have said once before and you may or may not have heard me say before, anything you do to me to get back at me for something I haven’t done yet, just causes whatever that is to happen in the first place.”

“But you’re still going to do it.”

“Then take it up with future me. I haven’t done anything to you.” Then he paused and sighed. “…Which I guess means you’ve done nothing to me.” He seemed to mull this concept over for a long moment. “Well you were a bit crabby about me not knowing what a time distortion was, but I can forgive you for that.”

“And I’m supposed to forgive you?”

“Like I said,” Pat said. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

“You also haven’t done anything to endear yourself to me either,” Janus grumbled.

“Hmm,” Pat said. “Fine.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “You’re obviously not having much luck finding whatever you’re looking for. Tell me what it is and I’ll help.”

Janus squinted at what was in his hand. “Is that… an iPhone 5?”

“No!” he said. “It’s super-secret time travel tech disguised as an iPhone 5!”

“We’re in 2027,” Janus said. “Not a great disguise. Those things have been obsolete for a decade.”

“Well I’ll keep in mind to have my tech disguised as phones from the right year next time,” Pat said, sticking out his tongue. “Now what are we looking for?”

“If my timepiece can’t find it, I’m certain yours can’t.”

Pat rolled his eyes and tapped on the device’s screen a couple of times. “I’m going to guess it’s that,” he said proudly.

Janus leaned over to look at the screen. “Are you using google maps?” he sputtered.

“It integrates time relevant data like traffic conditions and local weather warnings with time travel technology,” Pat explained. “Something seems to be going on in a museum a couple of blocks that way.”

“I…” Janus said. That was actually a really good idea, usually unnecessary with scouts observing that data beforehand, and Janus wasn’t sure how good the accuracy would be considering whatever was taking it into account was automated, but still a good idea. “Well, I guess since we have no other leads, we can check it out.”

Pat looked far too proud for having only used a piece of tech that hadn’t even been confirmed as accurate. “Then, let’s go,” he said right as a chilly wind started to pick up and a couple of snowflakes began to fall around them. “Before that gets worse…”

Janus let Pat lead with his iPhone. Janus’s timepiece still wasn’t picking up a clear signal for some reason, but it seemed to point in the same general direction as Pat’s. Strangely though, as they got closer to their destination, the signal started to get fuzzier. Pat’s tech seemed unaffected leading them closer to the museum.

When they got to the museum, Janus stopped. “What?” Pat asked. He was shivering slightly in the cold and holding his arms around himself.

“My timepiece stopped working completely,” he said.

“I’m assuming that’s weird?” Pat said.

“It is,” Janus confirmed, turning to squint at him suspiciously. “How do I know you’re not the one doing it?”

“If I was doing it, wouldn’t I have just knocked it out from the get go?” Pat questioned.

Janus pursed his lips. “I don’t know,” he said. “Would you have? Maybe it’s a trick.”

Pat’s eyes narrowed a bit on him. “Think what you want, but I’m freezing. Come in with me if you want.”

#study break stories #not writing

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uh-drarry · 3 years

Text

Day 4 - Reindeer Games

On the fourth day of Christmas... This is from the wonderful list posted by @remus-john-lupin ! Thank you so much to @bisexualronaldweasley for beta-ing despite being super busy! You da best!

These are within the universe of my other content, but you do not have to read those to understand these. Also, I won’t be making them all within the same time period if that makes sense, they’ll take place in different years. This one takes place when the boys are around 20 years old, they’ve been dating for about two years. Happy December and Happy Holidays!

Remus, in true Remus fashion, was up and going well before Sirius. Remus was happy to let him sleep though, and he didn’t mind finishing the packing and getting the car ready by himself. But twenty minutes before it was time to leave, Sirius was still fast asleep.

“Baby. Darling. Hot stuff. Love. Snookums. Spicy meatball! Fy nghariad! Sirius!”

Finally jerking awake, Sirius popped his head out from under the blankets and gave Remus a quizzical glare. “What the hell, babe?”

“We wanted to leave in about fifteen minutes. I thought I should wake the sleeping beauty. The car is all packed, you just need to get dressed.”

Sirius groaned and buried his face back in his pillow before rolling over, getting out of bed, and grabbing Remus. He was pulled into a hug, and Sirius kissed his nose before walking off to their bathroom.

Thirty minutes into their five hour drive, Sirius was already complaining about how they should have taken the train.

Remus just shrugged. “Well, it’s too late now. But we get to jam to our music, and we don’t have to be mindful of people around us.”

“Can we stop at McDonald’s for breakfast, at least?” Sirius asked with a pout.

Remus chuckled. “Sure, babe.”

Sirius pumped his fist in the air. “Yes!”

“Are you looking forward to spending Christmas with my parents?” Remus asked, a bit nervous. Sirius had never spent more than a day with his parents and now they were staying in their home for the whole week.

“Of course! I love Hope and Lyall.”

“You’re not upset about leaving the Potters?”

Sirius grabbed Remus’s hand and kissed his knuckles. “Nope. Sure, I’ll miss them a bit, but we’re going there when we come back. Plus, you don’t get to see your parents enough as it is.”

Remus just smiled back at him.

McDonald’s had perhaps been a mistake. Sirius had ordered a sugary coffee, and now he was bouncing in his seat from the high.

“Do I need to pull over at the next rest stop and let you out to run around? Like I would do for a puppy?”

“Oh my god, babe! Can we get a puppy when we go home?” Sirius shouted back, still bouncing in his seat.

“Our flat doesn’t allow dogs, you know this.”

Soon enough, Sirius had crashed and fell asleep against the car door. Remus chuckled at his ridiculous boyfriend, and turned on some piano covers of his favorite Christmas music.

After a few more hours of driving, stopping occasionally to stretch their legs, Remus saw the sign for Wales. “Croeso i Wales!”

Sirius looked at him like he’d sprouted another head. “Er, can you repeat that?”

“Croeso i Wales. Welcome to Wales!”

“How do I always forget that you know Welsh?”

Remus soon left the main road, prompting a puzzled glance from Sirius. They still had at least another hour until they would arrive at Remus’s parents house in Holyhead.

“Where are we going?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Remus replied with a mischievous smile.

“Have you brought me to the swamps to kill me? Have the last two years just been one big ruse and you’re really a murderer? Well, it was good while it lasted. Can we make out one last time before you get rid of me?”

“Oh my god, Sirius, I’m not going to kill you. I love you entirely too much to be rid of you yet.” “Yet. Mhm, I heard that. I’m watching you, Mr. Lupin.”

Remus laughed, and turned down a long driveway. Eventually, they got to where Remus was taking them.

“This is a reindeer farm!” Remus announced, laughing at the way Sirius’s face immediately filled with excitement.

“Do we get to pet the reindeer?”

Remus nodded. Sirius bolted out of the car and up to the ticket counter, bouncing on his toes as he paid for their day passes.

“Sirius! I was going to pay for those!”

“Nope! You’ve already driven this whole way, and found this place. I’m paying!”

The whole farm felt magical. The reindeer were out grazing in their pen, picturesque against the backdrop of snow.

They found the reindeer petting area soon after arriving. Sirius looked so in love with them that Remus didn’t think he’d be able to drag Sirius to his parents’ house without bringing one with them. Which meant, when they finally made their way to the gift shop, Remus bought Sirius a stuffed reindeer. Sirius squealed when Remus handed it over, hugging it tight with a bright smile on his face.

“I love it, Re, thank you.”

Remus smiled back at him, “I’ve got one more surprise, and then we should probably get back on the road.”

“Really? What is it?”

Remus grabbed Sirius by the hand and walked him out of the shop and over to a pavilion where there was a sleigh with reindeer in front, ready to take them on a ride.

Sirius gasped. “Oh my god, Remus.”

“Yeah? Wanna go for a ride?”

“Yes!”

They climbed into the sleigh and the driver handed them a fluffy blanket to put over their laps. Remus pulled Sirius flush to his side and put his arm around him, snuggling them up together.

“This has been really fun, Re. Thank you for taking me here. I think reindeer are my new favorite animal.”

Remus chuckled, “Of course. I thought it was something you’d like. We’ll have to make this a regular stop when we visit my parents. The real question, though, is what are you going to name this guy?” Remus asked, patting the stuffed reindeer that was sitting on their laps.

“I was thinking a Welsh name would be good, got any suggestions?”

“I like Ffion, what do you think?”

Sirius smiled up at Remus and put a hand on his cheek. “It’s perfect, thank you.”

Remus leaned in for a kiss, and they stayed cuddled together for the rest of the ride.

Masterlist <- more ficmas found in my masterlist

(Fy nghariad means ‘My love’ according to Google, I do not speak Welsh, I apologize if any of it is wrong.)

#wolfstar #Remus Lupin #Sirius Black #Sirius Lupin #ficmas #wolfstar ficmas #wolfstar fic #wolfstar fanfiction #harry potter au

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slashingdisneypasta · 4 years

Text

Horror Villains / Misc x Reader || Drabbles

Plot: You accidentally summon Beetlejuice because he convinced you that he could help you with your Slasher problem, but he becomes an even worse problem. So, you need your Slasher to help you exterminate him, instead.

Includes: Chucky / Charles Lee Ray and Freddy Krueger

Warnings: It’s got nasty gremlin man in it (Meaning, gross language, dirty jokes and such), and also Slashers (Meaning, gore, swearing, course and suggestive language). Groping (Himself)

Notes:

Okay, those of you who were with me at MainstreamBaddies; You remember that post I wrote about some rando killer trying to get the reader, so reader goes to the Slasher that’s also trying to kill them for help?

Well this is basically that but with (Movie) Beetlejuice as the rando.

THERE WAS MEANT TO BE MORE CHARACTERS!! But its late and I wanna slep ^^ Hopefully I’ll do Ghostface and Jason tomorrow!

~~~

THE START / ‘Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice’

“So… “Worrying my bottom lip, I look from the wall where I can think properly to the small, ‘fun size’ version of ‘Beetlejuice’ who’s looking expectantly at me. Excited even.

Although I guess that’s a given. If I was that small and had the possibility sitting right in front of me, of growing back to full size, and full power again, I’d be jazzed too. But, still, there’s something very off about this guy, and it isn’t just the fact that he’s the size of maybe 2 thumbs snapped off at the knuckle and taped one on top of the other. He’s very enthusiastic.

In a Gollum-Swamp Monster-Chick Hicks kind of way.

“’So’, what? I don’t have all day baaaaaay – well, I do have all day. I got nowhere to be – not many fun joints for a guy to go to at this size, amiright? Yeah, but, that’s not the point! Do you wanna get rida’ your lil’ problem or not? Eh?” Beetlejuice is practically vibrating, like an alarm clock and I have the most impulsive urge to call his name three times just to stop it.

Luckily, I have impulse control.

“Of course, I do. I… “Eyeing him pointedly, I start wringing my hands. “I just don’t want to create a new problem, in its place.”

He rolls his dark, feral racoon-panda eyes, muttering something lightning quick to himself before throwing out his arms and yelling. “BABE! I promise ya, really, sweetheart. Baby-lemon pie-dumpling-doll-dollar-sugar-tea, I’m just gonna fix your problem! All I want in the world right now is t’ cum-plete our deal! Get rida’ your Slasher, and be on my way! Unless theirs somethin’ else you ask of me, eh? When I’m back to my normal size? You know, I’m big in all the right places sugar tit- “

I took a deep, necessary breath in when he started on the ‘something else’ and now have the required breath to drown out the last words. “Oooookay!! I wont need that.” I say quickly, as a statement. He licks his lips. “But, um… Are you sure you can get rid of them?” ‘Them’. The bane of my existence right now. The co-star in the horror movie of my life. That them.

“Trust me, babe-sickle. It’ll be sinch.” For a moment, he looks absolutely calm. No vibrating, no yelling, no talking really fast. And it hits its intended mark – my assurances. Okay.

“Alright.” I wring my hands one last time, then clap them and step back from the town diorama that Beetlejuice is roaming in. I cross my arms, then drop them to my sides and look around, then finally back at the impatient ghost… who’s doing squats. Good grief, how much energy is in this guy? “Beetlejuice.”

He gasps, jumps up to his feet, nearly falling over because his weight landed wrong and then rubs his hands together. “Here we go!”

“Beetlejuice.”

“Oh. You do it right, babe.”

Oh my god, here we go. Hopefully this can’t make my situation any worse- I mean, I am being targeted by a killer. What are the odds that this goofball of a ghost could ruin my life anymore? “Beetlejuice.”

“PRESTO!”

Human! Chucky / Charles Lee Ray – Chucky’s POV:

I figure this is going to be a pain, when a screech tears from the ugly old house before I even get in. Confused, and more then frustrated because this spells out nothing but problems for me for when I get in, instead of the nice peaceful kill I was intending to enjoy, I open the screen door -bitch didn’t even lock the front door, it’s like she wants me to kill her,- and rush up the stairs to where the sound came from. “Hold on, I’m not there yet!!”

What the hell is going on?!

“Look, in my professional experience, the screamin’ doesn’t start til the killer takes out a knife, sometimes even before but not before I even get into the house, lady. The audacity of you, here- “

What am I looking at here?

In front of my eyes, my fucking eyes, stands of course Y/N, my victim. And some kind of zebra - one that’s been dead and left out in the swamp for a fuck-long time. He’s got crazy eyes if I’ve ever seen them, and have you seen mine? That’s saying something. Who is this joker? In my coat, I grip the gun I keep just in case strangulation goes awry, but don’t bring it out just yet. Not until this guy reveals his cards, first.

The guy’s eyes flicker in smug amusement from my face, to my gun pocket -evidently, he realises something’s up. Can’t blame the guy, damnit, -, then whips right around, leaving his back wide open for me and my weapon, to my facepalming victim. I smirk at her. “I take it that’s the guy you want rid of, toots?”

“Uh… yeah… “She looks adorable and awkward. The guy lets go of her waist, which he was holding close to his body as she leaned away before, when I walked in and he literally, and I’ve never seen any person do this before, halted in his tracks. Stopped breathing, stopped shifting, it even seemed like the history around him stopped for that ‘caught’ moment. And I swear I heard the sound of record music abruptly being turned off come from his mouth.

And for some odd reason, I get the feeling he’s not human. Can’t conjure a reason why, though.

I should be saying this shit out loud, I’m wasted on myself.

Figuring this guy’s been hired to get rid of me, I take out my gun. “Okay, you’re gonna have to catch me up on what’s happening... Oh, no? Well, okay.”

BAM!

A bullet flies across the room and sticks into the freak’s chest, and that is the end of things going my way.

Because the force of the bullet somehow sends him slamming across the room and through a wall in the back. His body goes ‘poot’ down two stories outside and theirs a silence that doesn’t last long enough for either Y/N or I to digest what just fucking happened before the bastard’s grotty fucking hand spiders up my spine from behind. I wriggle out of his reach immediately on impact, because it’s like a real fucking spider, and whip around, waiving my gun- which is useless now, of course.

Games are over.

The guy looks over at Y/N and grins, throwing his arms out in a ‘ta da!’ way. She winces and just narrows her eyes in a glare. “What’d you think of that, sweet cheeks? I got a flare for the dramatic, you know? Ssssexy! Eh?” When she sticks her tongue out at him, for lack of any words to respond to that with I guess -I mean, I, can think of some choice words for the guy, but she’s clearly not as creatively gifted in the art of insult as I have been told I am. But, a tongue out works, - he grins the most fucking horny grin I’ve ever seen and clutches his sack. Her jaw drops.

“Where the ever-loving fuck did you pick crazy pants up from??” I ask, looking accusingly at Y/N. She chews on the inside of her cheeks and looks even more awkward then before.

“Truce?” She asks, instead of answering my question. I’m genuinely curious.

I roll my eyes. “Ughh, fine.”

“Oh well that won’t do,” The guy speaks up again, looking between us and letting his Johnson go, thank god. The boys have to breath! “Baby girl, blossom, light of my FUCKING DEATH! You wound me. riGHT IN THE HEART! Let me show you, sweetgums, why that was a bad idea.”

Her eyes widen, and I suddenly feel real unsafe. “How about you don’t- “

“Watch this!”

He turns to me, makes some overdramatic hand gestures, throwing his back out in the process and momentarily acting like he’s out of order.

Then he whips back into action and shoots me with finger guns,

And then suddenly everything around me looks 4 times bigger then before. Oh, well, its that or… I’m closer to the ground.

Because I’m a fucking doll again.

I slowly look up from the little black baby shoes and the edges of the godamn jean jumpsuit, to the infected condom in black and white grease paint. “… You son-of-a-bitch.”

He chuckles and turns to Y/N, and gives her finger guns too, but the only other thing that happens this time is he winks at her. “Now, baby! Time to get hitched!”

“What?!” She shrieks.

Freddy Krueger – Freddy’s POV:

“I’m going to die of boredom before this bitch catches winks. I’m gonna pummel her with the counting sheep she clearly needs when she gets here.” The corners of my mouth lift up from the deep scowl I was wearing before, at the idea. It has merit.

Behind me the fine folks of Pompeii run for their lives and a red and green striped Vesuvius explodes molten lava over their little town when I remember it’s been 2 days since she’s fallen asleep. Or found some fucking Hypnocil. Or killed herself. Who knows, really. I have a… deadly effect on women.

But damn, it would be a bummer if she killed herself. I was having fun with her. I had plans.

Have, have. I have plans. I won’t give up hope yet.

An hour, or who knows how long later -time is a human construct and doesn’t exist in the dream plain, - , I’m lying on the ground watching Psycho play in the sky when that familiar tingle rushes through me, telling me someone’s entered my world.

I’m just getting up and brushing myself off, taking my damn time like she left me to wait -besides, I can turn back time and make it seem like I appeared instantaneously if I want to. Time’s a construct, remember? And this is my world. I’m just doing this for me, to make me feel better, - when she comes out of fucking nowhere and nearly knocks me over. Im-ee-diate-ly I open my mouth to ask her why she’s so eager, but she beats me to the punch, causing me sadness.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

Hold on, I definitely think there’s something off here. Don’t I make the fucking demands?! “Bitch- ”

“Wake!”

“-I haven’t done anything to you yet.”

“Up!”

“Goddamn!”

What is going on here!?

“I’ll do anything you want, just please. Wake me up!” Her eyes are deadly serious, and I can’t help the greedy smile I get at her submissive idea. What could have made her this way? I laugh.

“Ohhh, I’ll think it over. Tempting offer, though~” She lets out a growl and let’s go of me in pure frustration, looks around quickly for something and then lays eyes on my glove. She picks it up, and my eyes widen in surprise at what she does next.

The blade slices through the skin in her upper arm before I can take any control of the situation, and a nauseous feeling suddenly rolls me and she whimpers from the pain of slicing herself open, as the world goes blurry around us and she wakes up- of course, still holding my glove, which is attached to me, so I go with her.

“Fucking he- “

Much quicker than you think it will be, we both turn up back in the fucking reality. She hops up immediately and flies across the room to a first aid box.

I’m just assuming, I mean. Because I don’t make any move to leave the bed at all and just close my eyes and groan, and resist the urge to cry.

I hate this placceeeeeeeeee.

“BABES, YOU’RE BACK!”

Now I resist the urge to scream and phase out of existence, because a man just appeared on the bed with me and called me his babes. Instead, I slowly turn my head to him and sinisterly narrow my eyes- and hope he doesn’t notice my distress from a second ago.

I’m starting to understand why Y/N was so intent on getting back here. If this guy, a dung beetle with… oh, god. Clearly, some kind of terrible illness if that smell indicates anything, was hanging around me while I slept, I’d be… slightly bothered too. If only for the stink!

He squints, and while he does, his hair flickers through the various colours in the rainbow, confused. “Sweetbottom, theirs something different about you. Did you get contacts?”

As a knee jerk reaction, I stab him in the gut with my blades. “Stranger danger, bitch!”

My panic dissolves into glee as I jerk the knives upwards… just to turn back into panic when he starts tearing all the way in half from my stab wound up to the top of his head with minimal effort from me. I gulp, and retreat from him to where Y/N is, taping her bandages securely around her arm. I gesture to the freak who’s padded onto the floor and is zipping himself back together in front of my eyeballs. “… the fuck is that?”

“That’s Beetlejuice, he’s a ghost=

“With the most, baby.” ‘Beetlejuice’ stands up straight and rests his hands on his hips, chest puffed out and winks at Y/N.

“-What do we do?” She asks, looking with wide eyes at me.

What does she think I am? The Fairy Godmother of the dead?? I’m no godmoth-

… I could use this. A slow grin spreads across my mouth. “First, you go over there and distract him.”

For a split second she looks like she’s actually going to go with it, then looks with furrowed, unimpressed eyebrows at me. ‘Beetlejuice’ makes grabby hands at us, and she starts to look more panicked by the second. “And what will you do??”

I yank the bedroom door open. “Run!!”

#Keatlejuice #Beetlejuice #Chucky #Charles Lee Ray #Freddy Krueger #Drabbles #Scenarios #Part 1 #Horror / Misc Drabbles || Part 1 #Beetlejuice x Reader #Keatlejuice x Reader #Chucky x Reader #Charles Lee Ray x Reader #Freddy Krueger x Reader

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red-i-mean-blue · 4 years

Text

A:TLA romantic ships part 1

yes, no one asked for my opinions, yes I will give them anyway, yes because I have decided making a bunch of meaningless decisions and arguing for them will improve my mental state, yes I watched the show all in one very sleep deprived go and i’m not interested in rewatching it so yes I have absolutely no sources, yes this is a really long grammatical nightmare because I don’ t know how to be succinct and i use way more words than necessary at any opportunity because if my point doesn’ t come across exactly like i intend it will greatly upset me, no I have not yet watched Korra or read the comics because i’m tired now let’s do this.

includes Kataang, Zutara, Jetkara, Jinko, Maiko, Sukka, Taang, Tokka, Toko Ty Lokka, Tyzula, Yukka bc these were on the Avatar wiki ship list, part two will go into gay ships more

from 0 I despise people who ship this immediately to 10 I will read absolutely anything with this, I love it and could draw it for hours on how much I think the relationship would be good and how happy it makes me

Kataang (looks like a comic book sound effect so plus points)

very clearly built up over the series

cute kid crushes also ngl did not know katara was 14 and not older 12 or 13 so didn’t care about age when watching

now I know she’s 14 and he’s 12 it’s a little weird but still

haters say katara was just the avatar’s trophy girl, as if aang didnt kiss the ground she walked on and wouldnt stop telling anyone how amazing she is. Katara was the first face he saw from the new world and they immediately became friends. she was so excited to meet another bender, he clearly is trying to impress her and it is working, he listens to her about bending and offers to take her to the other side of the world to master water, TELL ME at this moment she is not ride or die and she doesn’t even know he’s the avatar, he lets her feel like a kid again, which is a feeling she’s forgotten after years of being a mother to sokka and the children. he literally sweeps her off her feet to save her from the fire nations ship i-. rewatched boy in the iceberg and hoo boy had canon not messed it up, this ship could have been legendary

hard to imagine older them working out what with the whole last airbender, preserve air nomad culture, let’s travel the world bc nomadic lifestyle, what’s marriage i’m a monk without biological family values vs last southern waterbender, preserve southern water tribe culture, I believe in the power of family and am ridiculously dedicated to my tribe, let me go home to my father and tribe shtick, but I don’t care for after the show finishes much except for following the gang fix the world so I don’t really care about the marriage issue

canon was good until that Mess in season 3, WHY did he kiss her after that speech, wish they talked that out properly, wish he learned letting go of her to open the 7th chakra was the only right decision, wish the ending was a little more vague in ships and just left things open but yk whatever

that finale kiss was sweet, they hugged foremost as friends, no blushing, and then got the fuzzies, that moment standing alone? a+ but without any talking about what happened on ember island, a little unsatisfying

overall, fine ship, not my favourite nor do I actively ship it, but I see a kataang moment, i’m like, sweet so I give it a 6

Zutara (apparently fans are zutarians which looks like an alien race, plus points)

latter half of the show had quite a lot of Zutara potential, but idk about Zutara actual

katara was so ready to drop his ass, no way at the start

there is only one dynamic between them in which I can see Zutara working and that is as in the Stalking Zuko by emletish series where katara is so distrusting over zuko she takes to stalking him to make sure he isn’t doing anything to hurt Aang or about to betray them (her) again but he is just such a sweet dork who keeps trying to apologise to her even while she’s apologising to him for being a bitch that she can’t help but start to trust him, i’m a third into the third book in the series not stalking firelord zuko and I am thriving and tbh this is the only situation where I accept zutara, read the series I love it

age gap is weird, I know it’s the same difference between kataang but they made a point of zuko being older in the show also he’s so much taller and I don’t like 16 year old boys with 14 year old girlfriends in real life and so would katara because jet

katara has a bad experience with bad boy sword weilders (jet) but I guess you could see it as the start of her type idk

they are both the moms of the Gaang. sokka is the fun dad.

there is a parallel between their families, with the leader of their people dad, mom who left the picture when they were young, an older brother who is not a prodigy at/can’ t bend their respective element so they become proficient at swords instead, prodigy at bending younger sister with a violent streak. this is why I see zutara as potentially a really close friendship, almost siblings, but not a romance because to me katara is a little too like azula for comfort...

tbh I think a lot of folk shipped it because ooh fire boy and water girl (not the game) that’ s perfect, and bam army of zutarians

overall, kind of weird but ok and good grounds for humour so I give it a 4

Jetkara (bad ship name, why would you like this, minus points)

Jet is bad. yes Katara really liked him, yes he was definitely her first kiss and she would definitely consider him her first boyfriend but they would not define it because it’s easier to manipulate someone when it’s unclear what your relationship is and Jet is bad, with his weird fricking eyebrows and not even real swords those hook swords

Not wasting my time, 2

Jinko (cool name, reminds me of Hong Jinkyung, plus points)

short but so sweet. not the first thing people remember from watching the tales of ba sing se (brb going to rewatch and cry) but really cute, so here’s a running commentary

his first thought was she knew they were fire nation rather than a pretty girl sat in a teashop giving him looks because she had a crush omg

that honest surprise when his uncle suggested she liked her and then she walked up and asked him on a date, adorable

anyone who looked at that god-awful hairstyle and still thought he looked cute has it bad also aww that hair ruffle and the little grab onto his arm

he’s pushing his food around and she’s trying out ice breaker questions and recieving one word responses he has no idea what he’s doing

“she is not my GIRLFRIEND” he’s not over Mai, clearly but he still is trying his best to be a good date even if he’s terrible at making conversation

anyone who sat through that date and the bad lying and the stilted conversation and still thought he was cute has it bad

he is So Bad At Lying he just told the truth very vaguely and then bam travelling circus

jin so knows the two are fire nation, the whole date she just politely ignores the clear lies and doesn’t react to the obvious firebending, what an icon we love jin

honestly I was really expecting the show to reveal that jin knew he was a firebender if not from the start then from the lights but eh I guess she can keep a secret, good for her

HE KISSED HER BACK BEFORE REALISING A RELATIONSHIP COULD NEVER GO WELL AND HE MAY HAVE ANGSTILY STORMED OFF BUT HE ADMITTED IT WAS A NICE TIME TO HIS UNCLE

that being said I can’t see anything more happening but this date but omg imagine fire lord zuko coming back to visit and they become friends I-

overwhelming support for pre-date jin flirting to an oblivious zuko and the date Jinko, 8

Maiko (name would be a good name for a cat idk why)

childhood sweethearts before the banishment i think

she crushed because he saved her hair from getting burnt by tackling her into a fountain? adorable

I love mai she’s so funny but I think not the best match for zuko? he has a lot of trauma to get over and she doesn’t seem like the let all your feelings out and let’s talk about it until you feel better kind of person. it was deeply ingrained in her to keep all of her feelings and emotions strongly hidden because she got what she wanted from her politician parents so long as she was quiet, well-mannered, and perfectly behaved according to avatar wiki so I get why she’s that way, until I was 11 I was that way too all the time, I understand freezing your face so you don’t look afraid or upset or angry and risk annoying adults, but I don’t think that that would fit zuko with his social ineptness

they literally broke up twice but are just assumed back together? she just surprised him and said they were back together and I think he forgot she existed

the deadpan firelady and the fire lord would be hilarious together tho she got the ruthlessness he lacks

post coronation I can see it happening, 6 but under Kataang

Sukka (terrible name lmao)

the cutest, sokka very excitedly says “Suki!! :DDD” every time he sees her

she didn’t give him the time of day until HE changed, incredible

just the best canon ship, the two nonbenders in the Gaang but very clearly shown to be important key members.

suki is sneaky and badass, rivalling zuko for position on the team as the sneaky badass one (they tie and bond over being sneaky and badass)

sokka is a great dad, he is the dad of the Gaang and he clearly loves suki and suki loves him back

sokka ships are ELITE, 9

Taang (a delicious orange drink mix that reminds me of home, nostalgia)

foreshadowing from the swamp where someone aang loved in the future really made me think taang was endgame yk

opposite elements ideology that I guess is what zutarians like also leaves everyone in the gang dating a Gaang member if zutara happens

actually the same age but not much else going for it

best friends, 4 but under Zutara

Tokka (great name of a small pet fight me)

sokka ships are elite, childhood crush turned adult strong friendship

I really like seeing the rough, tough, greatest earthbender in the world have a crush, adorable

sokka is a great friend and his and toph’s canon relationship is so sweet, I wouldn’t change it

toph was fully going to give sokka a kiss on the cheek for saving her life i’m melting

age difference is too weird for a romance he’s like 16 or 17 by the end I think and she’s 12

best friends, 10 as a relationship in the show, 2, but in their 20s after the show... 4 but under Taang

Toko (very forgettable name but both characters have 4 letters so I guess it’s hard to come up with something memorable but every time I read it as Toph because same shape ish so minus points for being annoying)

even weirder age gap than Tokka

not many moments that could be considered romantic?

toph first accepted zuko despite him burning her feet, how she sees, which was big and they resolved problems between them quickly

toph clinging to his arm and asking for a life changing field trip caused him to blush, but I see that as him being like oh someone wants to spend time with me?? she’s hugging me??? what is this

convenient ship for kataangers because the Gaang could be paired off as Kataang, Sukka, Toko

her crush on sokka seemed to go away or calm down when he showed up and she punched him and teased him a lot, her way of bonding

similar strict teaching styles and bonding over secret identities as Blue Spirit and Blind Bandit and parental issues and being the children of important families who made them run away to enjoy not having anything to do with politics and being nobility with impaired vision who have never stepped into a kitchen in their lives and being used to servants and then being on the run

I really see them as siblings with her helping him relax from his duties as fire lord because you already know this boy’s sense of honour is going to make him work tirelessly to fix the world and him helping her relax from the whole i’m not a fragile, weak little blind girl, i’m the greatest earthbender in the world shtick and reminding her she can be both a blind 12 year old girl and the most powerful earthbender in the world, she can accept help without being weak or lesser than anyone, people want to help because they care not that they pity you

best friends 10, relationship in show 1, after show 3

Ty Lokka (I don’t like this name looks like a place but can think of nothing better)

yeah I guess ty lee’s obvious flirting is grounds for a ship but in every interaction he’s involved with someone else and doesn’t seem to like her as a person

do they even interact while on the same side?

friendly aquaintances at best, don’ t understand, 2 but above Jetkara

Tyzula (don’t like this name, like a mineral water?)

canon I don’t care it is canonically a possessive relationship

azula’s only genuine apology goes to ty lee after hurting her feelings

Azula clearly loves ty lee, her betrayal sends her mad

after a lot of therapy for azula and apologies, maybe a healthy relationship could form after the show, 8 above Jinko

Yukka (looks like a childish insult, surely someone could have thought of a better name)

Sokka’s love for Yue stays with him for the rest of his life, she was the first person to die in front of him and he sees the moon as her facing the earth

love this forbidden lovers content, sokka ships stay elite

Sokka and Yue spend as much time together as possible with secret midnight dates flirting (“you wanna do an...activity together?”) Sokka’s reaction to Yue’s engagement shows that he wants to have a serious relationship with her, and also he thinks Hahn is a bad person for Yue, which he is.

Yue dying devastated him and he never falls out of love with Yue. her last words “[she] will always be with him” are true. swamp visions show Yue as one of the most important people in his life like a season or so after he last saw her. he wouldn’t kiss suki in front of the moon, and cries when Yue appears on stage, ignoring Suki. he talks about the moon as if it is directly Princess Yue in that cactus juice scene.

she died in his arms oh my god don’t look i crying, he feels personally responsible and guilty

yue was great even though she was the indigenous or black girl with light hair and eyes character and I wish she could have helped aang in the spirit world

despite her arranged engagement she clearly really likes sokka even though she knows nothing can happen, 9

Kataang, Zutara, Jetkara, Jinko, Maiko, Sukka, Taang, Tokka, Toko, Ty Lokka, Tyzula, Yukka

#kataang #zutara #jinko #maiko #sukka #taang #toko #tokka #tyzula #yukka #my ramblings

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mjonesing · 4 years

Note

Hello :) 6 for the new ask game, please!!

Guys I’m not even kidding, this is the PERFECT song for Peter post FFH. Every single lyric. It’s phenomenal.

So I’m technically cheating on this one? I could never do with this topic what so many incredible people have managed in actually thought out, planned fics. So this instead is a scene I wrote after seeing FFH for my own sanity, and was going to be part of a fic on reunions I’ll never finish. So I’m posting it here instead!

I'm just trying to find a way to make it back home

“I've got this image engraved in my mind,

Of a life that I had in a whole different time.

It still breathes and lives at the end of the road.

I've seen mountains and valleys through my missing days,

But I never once parted with how you begged me to stay.

I will run down that long hard and treacherous road to get home.”

It's 8am on the morning of her 19th birthday, and she's just finished a breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes. The humidity is already sticking to her skin but the forecast has promised a storm tonight, and she walks into her tiny, shitty student bedroom with the intention of lying directly under the fan her mother had sent until she can see the dark clouds through her pristine window.

Instead of this, however, there's a delicate shrill from her bedside table.

She jolts to attention and detours to her bed. "Yes, Arthur?"

Between her discarded glasses and the novelty lamp sits a piece of technology probably worth more than the complex she resides in - a strange concoction of Stark and Wakandan tech that's disguised as the kind of cat figurine her Grandma used to collect. It had been a point of serious contention that she eventually named Arthur, for lack of a term for the personalised A.I. that lurks inside.

The cat's eyes light up a vivid blue. "Michelle, someone is approaching your residence. What would you like me to do?"

She's supposed to be blissfully home alone for the next few weeks as her roommates have gone home or away for the beginning of summer break, so she's immediately suspicious.

"Pull up current footage," she requests.

The hologram flickers to show the hallway outside her apartment, a figure dressed in black taking the last few steps to her door. A hood hides their face, but she knows Arthur would have alerted her to any kind of weaponry. Something pulls her forward, tugging the worn cotton of the shirt that drapes over her.

She runs a hand through her hair, stops herself from trying to fluff it out.

"Any idea who it is?" she asks quietly as she makes her way out of the room.

"Negative. All defining features are currently hidden," Arthur informs her. She nods to herself, grabbing the cup of tea that's still brewing from the kitchen island. It's not much of a weapon, but the hot water should be disarming enough should the need arise. Arthur can take care of the rest.

She opens the door and her mug slips out of her hand, only to be caught without a drop spilt.

It's been three years since she's seen his face. His hair is longer, curling around his ears and sweeping across his forehead. There's a telling red mark across the curve of his jaw of an injury not quite healed, and some fine lines around his eyes. His clothes swamp him in a way that must be unbearable in this heat.

They watch each other, both too cautious to move, until she finally finds the courage to splutter, "Peter?"

"Hey," he exhales, dark eyes taking her in. She supposes she must seem as different as he does. Her hair is shorter, a little sleeker, brushing her shoulders as she shakes her head in disbelief. The oversized shirt swamps her figure enough to cover her, but her legs are bare, and his gaze gets stuck there for a moment before returning to her face, a hopeless optimism shining back at her.

"You weren't answering your phone," he explains without her asking.

"It kept buzzing at me, so I turned it off and threw it in the laundry pile."

"Oh sure. How annoying, all those people wishing you a happy birthday."

"If they really knew me, they'd know not to bother me until noon at the earliest."

He doesn't even glance over his shoulder; just tilts his head to the side. "I can come back later, if you'd rather…"

She sighs loudly, leaning against the door with her arms crossed. "No, it's fine. No point you making that long a journey twice - on the condition that you're hiding a really cool gift behind your back right now. Preferably heavy and bound."

He pulls a face. "Not exactly. I didn't know what you wanted so -"

"You know what I wanted."

He pulls his hand away from his back and it's empty. She pouts and he steps aside, revealing a suitcase. "Ta-da!"

She presses her lips together. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Last time you said that and then -"

"It's over, MJ. I'm here. For good." Then he grins, and it takes her breath away. "Actually, this is only phase one of the surprise. See, the suitcase is empty - it's for you. Hopefully you'll fill it, and you'll ditch this town and run away with me - come home with me. May has requested your presence for the celebration of my return - and your birth, of course."

She almost vibrates out of her skin but she keeps her expression schooled, inspecting her chipped nails.

"Also I haven't surprised Ned yet, and I thought you'd like to film that."

Unable to stop herself perking up at that, she grins wickedly and fiddles with the bottom hem of her shirt. "How long do we have?"

"Twenty minutes until the next train. Two hours for the one after that," he says to her legs.

"Good. I can be packed in fifteen minutes." She grabs his hand and pulls him into the apartment. "Let's waste some time."

Spotify Shuffle Game - Send me a number!

#i have edited this scebe so much since i wrote it but i love the concept too much to not post it somewhere #prompted #my fics #asks #spideychelle #otp: i'm not obsessed with him #pparker #mjones #spiderman

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the-yellowturtle · 3 years

Text

The Curious Case of Master Katara (Pt.1)

Rating: T

Relationships: Minor Katara/Zuko, Minor Katara/Yue, Katara & Toph, Katara & Sokka, Katara & Zuko, Katara & Korra

Summary: In the sixth year of Fire Lord Zuko’s reign, Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe is assassinated. (OR: Katara Becomes the Painted Lady!AU)

CW: some cussing, mentions of violence, brief mention of the the desecration of a corpse, misogyny and Katara slander

Special thanks to @levitatingbiscuits for the beta :3

AO3 Link

An extremely popular saying in the Western Earth Continent, to save the Fire Lord and Avatar in your past life, means that an individual is extremely skilled or fortunate in some way; so much so that the only way a person could have earned such a splendid life was by living a virtuous past one.

The phrase references Master Katara’s actions during the final year of the Hundred Year War, in which she saved the lives of Fire Lord Zuko and Avatar Aang. Although initially not common knowledge in the immediate years after the war, Fire Lord Zuko and Avatar Aang would go on to confirm multiple times that Master Katara saved both of them with her healing abilities. Strangely enough, it was Princess Azula, Fire Lord Zuko’s younger sister, that landed both of these mortal injuries.

However, it is mainly thanks to Master Toph Beifong that this saying became commonplace. While teaching metalbending, Master Beifong was known to ask particularly arrogant students, “Do you think you saved the Fire Lord and Avatar?” Often hearing this remark, Master Beifong’s pupils soon began to compliment one another by saying that an individual “must have saved the Fire Lord and Avatar” to be so skilled in the bending discipline. When these students finished their metalbending training they would go on to further spread the saying throughout what was then known as the Earth Kingdom.

-The Origins of Common Earth Phrases

Toph knows who she is. She is the Greatest Earthbender in the World. She is the inventor of seismic sense, truth seeing, and metalbending. She is the teacher of the Avatar, and one of the people responsible for ending the Hundred Year War. She is a Beifong, but she has carved out her own destiny and chosen her own family.

Toph knows who she is and she is proud of that person, but it’s not until Aang comes to her one day after her metalbending class that a part of her wishes that she was only the second best earthbender in the world. She could keep metal bending and seismic sense, but truth seeing? She didn’t need that anymore; she didn’t want it.

“Toph, Katara… she… she’s missing.” True.

“What are you talking about, twinkletoes? What do you mean, she’s missing?” Toph can barely feel his heartbeat over the ringing in her ears.

“There was an attack. We don’t know what happened to her…. We can’t find her.” True.

“You need to come with me to the Fire Nation, the rest of us are gathering and trying to find out what happened.” True.

In the beginning, she is eager to help. This is her friend, and she’s probably out there waiting for them to find her. Toph can also totally hold it over Katara when she has to rescue her like a damsel in distress. Besides, she can’t sit around in the palace waiting for good news. Zuko isn’t allowed to go out there, but there is nothing stopping her. Toph volunteers her services without a question. She will be the investigative bureau’s lie detector; she is the only person in the world with this skill. They will get to the bottom of this in no time.

They don’t.

“She was purifying the water when all of a sudden she was struck by an arrow.” True.

“No, it was two arrows!” True.

“Arrows? I’m not sure… I didn’t really see anything. It looked like she just fell over… maybe she just tripped or something?” True.

“One minute she was there and the next minute she wasn’t!” True.

“She had to have been there! I even found the necklace she was wearing in the water!” True.

“It was the strangest thing. She got shot and then before my very own eyes she disappeared. She just vanished into thin air.” True.

“Vanished? Her body? You think you’re all so mighty bowing down to the usurper, but then you trust gossip from the rabble. She didn’t disappear. One of the higher-ups brought the body back to the headquarters. Saw it with my very own eyes. Blue robes and everything.” True.

“Yeah, I saw the corpse, too. We had a feast to celebrate killing one of the war heroes.” True.

“It wasn’t the waterbender. It was some random peasant girl he came across on the way back.” True.

“Where is the waterbender? Beats me, probably only the Spirits know now.” True.

“I don’t know where she is! I shot her twice, she fell back in the water, and then she was gone! I blinked and she was gone!” True.

“Why? Why did I do it? Because it was easy. You all think you’re so great, but she went down without a fight, that pathetic bi—”

Toph is given the day off after she pummels the perpetrator through the wall.

Eventually, they find all the hideouts and headquarters of the New Ozai Society. They find the leaders, their secret stash of funds and a list of their supporters. They find the body of the farmer girl the assassin happened across during his escape, and return her to her family for a proper burial.

They never find Katara.

In the past, Toph treated truth-seeing like a fun party trick; a way she could make her friends squirm. Now? She’s tired. She doesn’t want to know that Zuko is lying when he agrees that it wasn’t his fault. She doesn’t want to know that Sokka thinks Katara being alive is an unlikely possibility. She doesn’t want to know that Suki has doubts when she suggests that Katara’s reported injuries would have resulted in a quick death.

She doesn’t want to see what people believe to be the truth anymore.

Some semblance of closure finally comes to the group when Aang returns from his journey to the Spirit World.

“Sokka was right. She’s with Yue,” he states, “She’s a spirit now… the Painted Lady.” True.

Toph doesn’t know how to react to that statement. She knows Aang believes what he said to be the truth, but a part of Toph wants to scream. Stop using the flowery language, Twinkletoes! With Yue, with the Spirits, is a Spirit, dead; they’re all the fucking same! It doesn’t matter if she’s having a grand ole time with the Moon! It doesn’t matter if she’s some type of Spirit now! She’s gone! She’s not coming back!

For once in her life, Toph Beifong doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing. She hugs the others, visits the South Pole for the first time, and offers a shoulder to cry on. However, the tears don’t come for her. Not yet, at least. Maybe she’s tougher than she thought. Maybe that’s a lie. Maybe she’s just in denial.

Maybe it’s real, though. Maybe Katara really is gone forever. Letting the entire world mourn her doesn’t seem in character for Miss I-Will-Never-Ever-Turn-My-Back-on-People-Who-Need-Me. Because Toph really needs her right now, and she’s still nowhere to be found.

___

At first Toph doesn’t talk about it. She says her bit at the South Pole, and then Katara and all things relating to Katara are locked away, never to be prodded again. She��s a busy person, being the inventor of metalbending and all, and she doesn’t need to rehash her feelings over and over again for any curious passerby. Besides, isn’t this what Katara would want? For them to get on with their lives?

So with the resolve of a saber-tooth moose lion, Toph decides to “get on with her life” and resume her position as the Greatest Earthbender in the World.

Her plan quickly falls to shambles when she attends a play with her metalbending students as a reward for their progress in the discipline. She had thought the night out would provide her with some content to tease the rest of the gang about during their upcoming Ember Island trip. Oh, how wrong she was. Toph at twelve would have found the play hilarious, but Toph in her twenties, with a better understanding of the world, was furious. She was not sure how they managed it, but somehow a post-war Earth Kingdom production managed to treat Katara with less dignity than Fire Nation war propaganda.

Reduced to the ‘Water Tribe Girl,’ the role blatantly reflecting Katara was egregious in every manner. Throughout the play, when Water Tribe Girl wasn’t crying out for someone to save her, she was seducing the two main protagonists —the Fire Lord and the Avatar— thus causing a rift in their friendship. After a brutal onscreen death where a local hunter mistook her for game and accidentally shot her, the Fire Lord and Avatar rejoiced, for they were finally free of her wicked temptations.

Despite using the Beifong name to promptly end the playwright’s career, she soon learned the production was not particularly unique. Once she started looking, there was a plethora of plays, stories, artwork, and rumors that seemed to thrive off of smearing Katara’s name. The better ones would portray her as the supportive love interest, the Avatar’s Girl, the cheerleader that had no skills of her own to offer. In the worst, she was an immoral temptress threatening to wreck the balance of the world, or a parable for children to learn about the dangers of not planning ahead.

Toph had fucking had it the day she overheard her students using “tearbend” to mock one another. She couldn’t track down the creators of every shit opinion and piece of art, but she could directly influence the opinions of the people around her. She was never going to give them a rendition of her eulogy all those years ago nor was she going to let them see all the precious moments they shared, but she could tell them the truth. A version of the truth, anyway.

“Katara was the only person in the world that could claim to be a Master of all three waterbending styles: Northern, Southern, and Foggy Swamp.”

“Katara successfully traversed the Si Wong Desert with only a single pouch of water.”

“Katara was such a badass in the North that they decided to start training women in martial waterbending.”

“At the age of fourteen, Katara led a prison uprising that freed hundreds of earthbenders.”

“During Sozin’s Comet, Katara defeated Princess Azula and saved Fire Lord Zuko’s life in under three minutes.”

“Using only scrolls and secondhand accounts, Katara successfully revitalized Southern Waterbending.”

It got easier for Toph to talk about her as time went on. She was neither an artist nor a poet, but she could do this. She could get it into her pupils’ heads that while she may be the Greatest Earthbender in the World, Katara was the Greatest Waterbender, and that they better not forget it. The statue she had metalbent of them together that stood outside in the school’s courtyard was sure to remind them if they slipped for even a moment.

___

For the majority of her life, Toph spent her summers the same way. Once the students were out on their summer break, she would first visit the Fire Nation, then Kyoshi Island, followed by the Southern Air Temple, and finally the Southern Water Tribe. She would often see her family throughout the year, but it was important to set aside a time where it was guaranteed. It was a tradition, and not even the daunting task of traveling with a newborn could stop her from following it. Toph was extremely grateful, however, once Lin was old enough to be an eager participant.

It’s only when she’s starting to get up there in decades that she adds a new stop to her route. About a day’s journey by foot from her bending school in Yu Dao, there’s a harbor town situated near a waterfall. It is here that one of the Earth Kingdom’s first shrines dedicated to the Painted Lady was constructed. After tales of a civilian ship avoiding disaster by being guided to the eye of the storm by a veiled woman had spread throughout the Western Coast, the Spirit had boomed in popularity. It was now a common practice before setting sail for people to visit the shrine with offerings to pray for a safe journey. The Painted Lady had come to be seen as the guardian of clear skies and smooth waters in the Western Earth Kingdom.

Although it was never going to be the same as seeing her in person, Toph had found herself adding the shrine as the last leg of her summer vacation. Once arriving in town, she would use the ingredients she had purchased in the Southern Water Tribe and the knowledge Gran Gran had shared with her decades ago, to prepare a pot of stewed sea prunes. After her hard work, she would carry it with her up the steps to the Painted Lady’s shrine to present as an offering.

Most people would donate money for the maintenance of the shrine or light incense when praying to the Painted Lady. However, Toph wasn’t begging a Spirit for any favors; she was visiting the dead. Gaoling may no longer be her home, but some of the traditions were still ingrained into her. In the Southern Earth Kingdom, you present your loved ones with food, and Katara’s favorite most definitely was her grandmother’s sea prunes.

Toph has never encountered the Painted Lady in all of her years visiting the shrine, not that she ever really expected to. However, sometimes after she’s done wiping her eyes, she swears that her aching joints feel a bit lighter.

“‘Till next year, Sugar Queen,” is how she always concludes her visits. If sometimes she hears a “Thank you” in the wind, then that’s between Katara and her.

#zutara #yuetara #katara #toph #katoph #mine #katara & toph

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north-texas-madhatter · 4 years

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Uncertain: That’s no deer my wife whispered…

As I listened intently peering off into the dark forest I told my wife, “It’s out there, it hasn’t left” She and the kids got up as we heard a twig snap. “Get the kids and get in the cabin”, I quietly whispered as I grabbed the shotgun from the trunk. I knew it was watching us, in the dark, maybe just as scared as I was – or maybe not.

Our family loves to travel and the more unusual the place the better. We love cabins and nature and beautiful back roads, lakes and forest. It was a cool crisp morning and we were loading up the car for another adventure. Don’t forget to put on some deodorant my wife reminds me, my daughter had complained that Papa David was kinda stinky. Which is true, I am a stinky smelly man and unfortunately for her she sits behind me in the backseat when we travel. “I will smell like roses”, I replied as I loaded the cooler of snacks with an assortment of drinks careful to put it equally in reach of all family members.

I was rummaging around in the garage trying to find all the items I had put on my trip list. The smell of moldy tarps, dust and an old bike tube hanging off a rack as I shuffled things back and forth. “I really need to organize this better” I thought to myself. Finally laying on the garage floor before me were, flashlights, medical kits, an assortment of fire starters, lanterns, two way radios, and an old box of shotgun shells that I had brought out from the house. I did a quick review of the list I had made the night before and checked off all the items but one. The shotgun. I didn’t like leaving anything like that just laying around.

The kids packed their backpacks with who knows what, some Go Fish and Old Maid card games were stuffed in the side pockets and the iPad’s fully charged for those moments where my wife and I would like to have a conversation without interruption. You parents know what I mean.

“What about Stella?” the kids asked. I had made sure to find lodgings that allowed pets so I said she is going with us. Stella had been sitting on her carpet anxiously watching us pack the car and, as if to know what I had said, began wagging her tail gleefully running back and forth to the door.

All packed up, everyone in the car, doors checked, thermo nuclear alarm system set, we began to back out of the driveway. “Oh wait!” I forgot something. Everyone letting out a sigh. Just like my parents when we would leave for our trans America trips, my dad would pull in and out of the driveway six times before we could finally depart. Turning off the alarm and unlocking all the doors I retrieved a large shotgun from the safe and walked back to the car checking it before placing it carefully in the trunk.

Off we go! And the kids yelled yay! immediately asking for their iPads. Our destination this time is a little town on the Caddo Lake called Uncertain. But we were in no hurry to get there as plenty of back wood roads were ahead of us.

Leaving the Dallas city limits always brings a sigh of relief, like escaping some kind of urban restraints. There is a Buccee’s ahead but I turn the car onto highway 80 heading through Terrell and then after a quick driving tour of a few historical neighborhoods we are headed out into the countryside.

“Look a tank!” the kids yelled. Small towns often have war relics as a showpiece for their local VFW’s (Veteran’s of Foreign Wars) which are like a club house for military service men and women to get together and have a drink, socialize or even hold events such as weddings or parties. We pulled into the parking lot and the kids ran toward the tank and a large caliber cannon. “Watch for snakes!” was the usual call out we made but it was cold enough that there were probably none around.

I hobbled over to the edge of a tank putting my hand on the corner to hold myself up. A car wreck and later a fall off an H post on our ranch years ago had left my back in a mess and driving takes its toll if I don’t stop and move around. As I stood there the kids climbed all over the tank turret and I could smell engine grease that must have been in this machine since WW2. Our mini-dachshund bounced over the grass fighting the leash my wife held tightly. An elderly couple emerged from one of the doors in the VFW and waved. I could see USS something written on the old man’s hat with a silhouette of a battleship. He reminded me of my grandfather who fought in the war. His white wavy hair, reading a newspaper. As a child I would sneak up and thump it and he would pretend to get up for a chase. After a brief break we yelled for the kids to get down and dust off as we all piled back in the car and headed on down the road.

My favorite thing to do is put in a destination on Google Maps and then pick all the different routes that will prevent me from merging onto a highway because highways are the enemy when it comes to adventure. You miss so much when you fly down a road at 70 plus mph. The orange, yellow and red leaves become a blur, the smell of the sweet pine needle lost in the soot of the diesel trucks. Give me the backroads, the curve of her body, the gentle sway of her hair. The dips, the hills, the smooth mirror like surface of the lake meeting the sky. Lazy fishing boats, their lines cast toward the setting sun.

It’s getting dark now as we roll into Jefferson, the sun’s rays beam through the magnolia trees and New Orleans styled patios. Porch lights dot the neighborhoods and a train can be heard rumbling on the tracks just outside of town, as we catch glimpses of the red blinking of the sentries through the dirty glass windows of vacant row houses.

For those of you unfamiliar with Jefferson. It is a unique Texas, town sitting in the shadow of Caddo Lake it was once a Texas port for steamboats arriving by way of the Mississippi and Red Rivers. The town is steeped in New Orleans styled architecture. Many goods and services were brought by paddleboat to the town from the coastal city and as with many towns of those times they had stories of hauntings. In fact Jefferson is home to one of the most haunted hotels in America, the towns namesake, The Jefferson Hotel. You can imagine the gas lamps flickering as a ghostly figure stands in the doorway. There is an old train car permanently stationed across the street and we release the kids to stretch their legs as we take a peak at the old hotel and adjacent coach car.

No offense to the paranormal enthusiasts but I have never been much of a believer in the other worldly but I do try to keep an open mind. Nevertheless, the whole town had a kind of creepy vibe at this time of day and there was this almost damp deathly smell as a light mist encroached on the lattice worked streets from the nearby swamps.

It was at this moment that I heard something. It was distant, like a low howl almost just outside of human hearing. I can’t quite explain it but though barely discernable it was not of the norm I would expect from the usual town and surrounding forest noises, but it demanded to be noticed if only subconsciously. “Did you hear that?” I asked my wife “Hear what?” she replied and I as quickly dismissed it to have been just some slight synaptic misunderstanding.

We drove around town for another half hour looking at all the beautiful old homes, brick streets and the docking area where paddleboats once delivered handlebar mustached men and parasol carrying ladies to horse drawn carriages idly standing by while French perfume fragrances purchased in the Big Easy filled the air.

Leaving Jefferson, Polk Street took us through the Big Cypress Bayou. Our surroundings were changing, Spanish moss was hanging from the trees now and I knew our cabin was not much farther away. We decided to take a slight detour and drive through Caddo Lake State Park. We giggled at the sign, Learn How to Survive Like a Sasquatch. And we noted all the wildlife, deer, birds and though we probably would not see any, alligator that live in this eco-system we had arrived to. The road then became darker, swamp waters came right up to the edge on both sides, the lake was up and we had entered a watery world that was quite foreign to us. In fact, we heard that the town was called Uncertain because when the lake floods no one is certain the town is still there.

It is small and looks like something out of a Stephen King novel. There is a short main street with a sundry of cabins anywhere from a mere shack to homes on stilts. There it is! Caddo Lake Cabins, just on the corner of Bois D Arc and Cypress Drive. There were two cabins side by side and ours was the larger with a screened in porch with the back of it to the forest and swamps. A stone throw away was Taylor Island which you would never know it was an island since the road extended to a dead end there. Fishing camps lined the edge and the smell of fish and beer filled the air.

“There’s a golf cart!”, the kids yelled. “Can we drive it!” Not tonight, it’s too dark and we need to get everything inside.

What we didn’t know is how ready we would be to leave…

The cabin was beautiful! It was very clean and had everything we needed. The screened porch overlooking the forest was a favorite for our dog Stella who incessantly sniffed the air. The cabin had a fresh cut wood and coffee smell to it as my wife opened the bag of black coffee grounds left by the owners for us to enjoy during our morning cup of joe. Outside we could hear owls hooting to one another and frogs serenading the cool crisp night as we brought in all our items for the stay. Blankies, stuffed animals, backpacks spilling open onto the bed as our kids claimed their living quarters. We couldn’t believe we had found such a wonderful place for such a reasonable price.

After unloading our gear and goodies we took a quick drive around town. It was eerily quiet, “They roll up the carpet early around these parts”, I said aloud. We could see yellow bulbs glowing behind closed curtains in the small cabins and homes up and down Cypress Drive, the main street of town. We caught glimpses of the moonlight reflecting off the bayou just beyond the cottages at the waters edge. “I hear they filmed parts of Universal Soldier and some swamp monster movie near here”, I said as the occupants of the car peered out the window. A few bumps in the road and we stopped short of a boat ramp leading into the lake. We sat there for a moment, next to us was a covered marina with little Jon Boats bobbing up and down, we could hear a dog barking off in the distance. “Well that’s it for this town”, I said. “Let’s head back and get some rest so we can get an early start tomorrow.” We had plans for the next day to drive into Louisiana and see where Bonnie and Clyde met their end at the hands of Frank Hamer and local law enforcement and to possibly explore a very unusual area that I had found while researching our trip on Google Maps.

My wife and I laid in bed, it was close to 11pm and after talking about the trip and our plans for the next day we began to drift off to sleep. Suddenly the night was split open as an extremely loud air horn blasted. “What the Hell is that!” I jumped up out of bed and ran to the window. It sounded as if a train might drive right through the cabin! Looking out the window I could only see night. There were no headlights, no trains or trucks – nothing. Just the echo of the loud piercing horn fading into the forest. My wife walking back to bed after checking on the kids asked, “What do you think that was all about?” “I don’t know but I didn’t see any train tracks that close to us.” “It was almost like it was to scare something away or sounded as a warning.” The odd thing was no one was coming out of their dwellings to check out the mysterious sound. It was accepted as a normal occurrence it seemed. It set me on edge but I finally fell into an uneasy sleep.

The next morning we opened the bag of coffee grounds and my wife walked out onto the porch handing me a fresh mug with steam rising from it. I never really liked coffee until I married my wife and now it is so nice when we can just sit and talk between sips of the black stuff. The kids were still asleep and Stella sniffed around the edges of the porch. “Something must have come close last night, she seems really curious”, my wife pointed out. Stella was really picking up on a scent near the screen door. “Maybe she needs a restroom break” as my wife went off to retrieve the harness and leash.

Stella pulled hard at the leash. She is never like this, usually just sniffing and stopping and then sniffing some more before finally answering to the call of nature but this time she strained at the end of the leash. My wife looked back at me as Stella pulled her across the lawn toward the woods behind the cabin. She is onto something. Maybe a deer? She growled but then after a moment retreated back to the cabin managing a tinkle on the way. We didn’t think much of it and knew that being surrounded by nature and forest there was bound to be some curious creatures lurking about.

After breakfast we all jumped in the car and headed out. Fishermen were already making their way into the bayou, wisps of smoke from their engines lazily floating across the water. There was a slight mist to the morning air and everything was damp from the night fog that the sun now began to burn through. The smell of eggs and bacon filled our noses as the town began its slow start to the day. After a bumpy drive through town, we turned onto a smooth black top road heading toward Louisiana. Shortly down the road we arrived to a small town named Karnack, it looked very run down but “This is where Lady Bird Johnson grew up” I exclaimed, no one in the car knew who that was so I explained that she was the First Lady and wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. She is responsible for the beautification of our Texas Highways and for the seeding of the wildflowers and bluebonnets we see along the roadsides in the Spring. Her husband, LBJ, is responsible for The Grasslands we enjoy having our campfires at, not far from our hometown of Denton.

The air had an acrid smell to it and we could see large gates that led into the vast forested area I had seen on Google Maps. It looked like there had been a large town there once with roads crisscrossing one another in an organized grid with streets called 4th Street, Avenue C, 59th and Starr Ranch Road. Structures could still be seen peeking out behind the forest.

“Hey guys!” that is where we will explore later if we have time on our way back. We were very excited and off we went!

It didn’t seem long before we pulled under the overhang of the Horseshoe Casino. My wife and son walked in just to take a look while my daughter stayed behind with me. From the car I could see the beautiful chandelier that hung over the lobby. Many times, I had walked underneath it with my dad as we arrived for games of Black Jack while sitting on the banks of The Red River in Bossier City. There is some obscure law that I still don’t quite understand, where as long as the casino is on or over the Red River it is allowed to operate. The hotel, restaurants and parking areas can be on land but the games of chance themselves had to be over the rivers muddy red water. This is accomplished by river boat or barge permanently docked and anchored with vast poles that allow the casino to move up or down depending on the rivers height and water flow.

Shreveport was on the West side of the river and Bossier City on the East side. I had to laugh when I saw a Pipes Emporium on “Stoner” Avenue. Though I do not partake in the herbage myself I have been in my share of head shops, they sell the best incense, and the irony was not lost on me by the name of the street. By the way they don’t like it when you ask for a bong, they want you to call it by its legal name, a water pipe. Though they are technically the same thing and no difference to those visiting Pipes Emporium on Stoner for all their smoke shop needs.

Barksdale Air Force Base was to our left now and we could see war planes sitting idly on the tarmac. We headed back into the forested roads of Louisiana. An hour later and a vacant road would find us in front of one of America’s most notorious landmarks. The location where the famous outlaw couple, Bonnie & Clyde, were dispatched. One could almost smell the gun powder as Frank Hamer and his posse laid in wait raining down a wall of bullets onto the unsuspecting duo. An informant had tipped off Frank and his group of law men that they would be travelling on that road and a trap was set. The friend turned snitch pretended to be broken down on the side of the road and as Bonnie and Clyde slowed their car to assist, they were gunned down leaving their car peppered with holes and their limp bodies slumped in the car.

There are several cars claiming to be the famous death wagon. One is at Whiskey Pete’s Hotel and Casino in Primm, Nevada and another, not far from Dallas, owned by a little known body shop in Gunter, Texas. My son and I have seen it and it looks as real as any car shot full of holes would look sans the blood and other gore.

After finishing our visit to the markers that commemorated the death of the outlaws while praising the men who made it happen, we turned back out onto the road. A rusty colored pickup whizzed by startling me as I had grown accustomed to the lack of vehicular traffic in this area of backwoods LA. With the tires throwing some gravel behind us we were back on the blacktop making a circle around to the highway that would take us toward our temporary home back in the town of Uncertain but not before at least one last adventure to end the day with…

We passed through the gates, they weren’t like the gates at the State Parks we were accustomed to visiting. These looked a bit more foreboding. A small building was on our right that I imagine served as a visitor’s center. There was not a soul around. The town of Karnack was just behind us as we drove on down the road. I could hear the tires passing through bits of loose asphalt. The whole place seemed to be a maze of roads separated by tall pine trees. Here and there we could catch a glimpse of concrete structures long fallen out of use. It gave me an uneasy feeling like we were not supposed to be there. But what was eerie was that it was so quiet. I heard few if any birds. No other persons or wildlife was in the park. The streets were named as if it were a bustling downtown metropolis but nothing much was to be seen except for the stately conifers that surrounded us. It reminded me of that scene out of The Shining where the boy is being chased through a labyrinth. Except there was no snow and no deranged lunatic chasing us, at least none that we saw.

Driving on we were amazed at how large this place was, it was more than a Nature Preserve and we would run into road after road that would have barriers or warning signs that the road was off limits. We finally found the Starr Ranch Road that led us to the edge of Rag Island and a lonely boat launch. Here there was another structure, more welcoming. It looked like something that might be used for family gatherings and was screened in to protect guests from the swarms of mosquitoes that I am sure inhabited these areas in the summertime. We jumped out and the kids threw rocks into the water nearby. The Cypress Trees were beautiful, one of my favorite trees. My wife found an internet connection and we looked up the area that we were in. It was the Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Once home to the Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant. That explains all those little buildings. It was part of an 8,493 acre facility that once produced dynamite, 393,000,000 pounds of it during World War II. It was also a super fund site for all the chemicals that were still present in the soil. “Uh, kids put down those rocks and don’t stir up the dust” I quickly told them. Lead and mercury was still being found in some of the areas and a large compound fence ran along the perimeter of the entire plant. It was sprawling to say the least and with good reason, two in fact. One to help prevent an enemy bombing run from destroying the entire operation and to prevent an errant accident from killing everyone in sight. A rail system helped connect the different parts of the plant delivering the product as it was developed to other areas for assembly. Things like this fascinate me. It is a dark part of history, the entire location was set aside for one purpose and one purpose only, to kill as many people as possible and at that time to kill Nazi Germans. But National Wildlife Refuge makes it sound much more appealing for today’s visitors, just don’t drink the water – or play in the sand or expect to see much wildlife.

It took a while to get back to the main road. The GPS was on the blink because we were pretty remote but after a few wrong turns we made a right and we were headed back out the gates, which made much more sense now.

Everyone’s stomach was beginning to grumble, and it wasn’t long before we arrived back in Uncertain. My wife asked what we should do for dinner and I told her that I had heard of a good fish place that wasn’t too far from the cabin. I could really use a Fried Shrimp Po Boy right now and the kids really wanted some Calamari, if it were available. It was evening and it would be dark soon. A few people were stirring about while we drove back through town but things looked like they were beginning to button up. “Can I go with you Papa David?” my daughter asked. I said sure. My wife and son decided that they would stay behind and get a fire going in the fire ring just outside the cabin. So I left them the axe as my daughter and I jumped in the car.

We arrived at The RiverBend Restaurant which was up on stilts and I slowly climbed the stairs as my daughter ran up the ramp ahead of me. The drive had done a number on my back and I was paying for it now. Holding the door for me I gave my girl a hug and told her to, “stay close”. We ordered take out and it wasn’t long before two bags of great smelling seafood were sitting on the counter for the taking. It was hard not to help ourselves to the appetizers but out of politeness, on my daughters’ part, we managed to get back to the cabin only eating a few fries.

Pulling up into the gravel drive we opened the car doors to the sweet smell of pine wood smoke. The sun was going down quickly behind the swampy forest and rays of light were playfully dancing between the trees. My wife took the food inside for plating as I sat down next to the warm fire. “Did you start this?” I asked my son. “Yes and I cut most of the wood too!” My wife soon came out with all the food and handed each of us a plate. I stuck a hush puppie in one of the small tubs of butter and swirled it around, the pickled tomatoes were next in line for a tasting. Finally finishing the Po Boy and everyone filled on some of the best calamari we have had, either because it was really that good or we were just that hungry.

Filled and happy we sat listening to the fire crackle with pops here and there as the small pockets of resin would catch to the fire. Stella was in my arms and quite content as she had sneaked a few pieces of scraps from the meal.

Then it happened.

Stella’s hair bristled and stood straight up on the back of her neck. She had this low treacherous growl that I had never heard her make before. I quickly held her tight as not to allow her to launch herself into the inky night. She was staring down the road toward Taylor Island. Something was moving slowly off to the left of the road. I could just barely see a dark figure. I thought it might be a fisherman or someone who had a few drinks but the left of the road was swamp, so it didn’t make much sense why someone would be walking through the muck. I could barely make out the silhouette but could see it was larger than your normal average man. It was gone in an instant, disappearing into the darkness.

“Shhhhh…” “Listen” my wife quietly spoke.

Not less that 50 feet from us was the edge of the woods. The closest trees illuminated by the orange flames of our fire. I could hear it. “What is it?”, my wife asked in a voice so quiet I could barely hear her question. We both knew this was not a typical woodland creature or bunny rabbit. It sounded huge! And this was not a forest that one could easily navigate. It was filled with briars, an old barbed wire fence, swamps and decaying logs laying all around ready to trip the ill prepared.

“It’s, its… yes. It’s definitely on two feet” my wife said. We both tried to imagine the size and dimensions of this unwelcome visitor that was coming way to close for our comfort. “Are you sure?” Could it be a deer, I quietly mouthed as both our children, our dog and each of us squinting our eyes as if that could give us super human vision. My son was mid swing with the axe frozen in his stance. “Put the axe down behind the tree” I told him. I didn’t want a mishap. He laid it down out of the way and moved over toward his sister and momma. It had stopped for a moment but now to my horror it was closer, we could hear it walking through a small creek not that far off into the woods. It stopped just short of walking into our field of vision. We sat there for what felt like an eternity not quite certain what to do.

That’s no deer my wife whisperered…

“Lock the door” I quietly shouted as I raised the butt of the gun up to my shoulder. I positioned myself just beyond the fire leaning up against the back of a tree. “Who’s out there?”, I shouted. “Who are you and what do you want?” I spoke as the frost of my breath spilled out onto the night.

Silence… we stood there for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. I listened straining to hear anything, breathing, footsteps, a voice, even a heart beating but the only one I could hear was mine.

Oh my God. It sounded like a thousand trumpeters accompanied by a chorus of a thousand more angry elephants. But it wasn’t coming from in front of me. It was coming from beyond where our dog Stella had first been ready to attack. A twig snapped and then the large beast ran through the woods at a speed so fast it was inhuman, I am not saying that it seemed inhuman – I am telling you it was not human. And it was not like anything else I had ever heard. Running full sprint it ran toward the sound, splashing through the swamp. PEOPLE CANNOT POSSIBLY RUN THIS WAY! I thought to myself. I followed it with my gun, my finger feathering the trigger. I hurt, I hurt all over. The blood was ripping through my veins at lightning speed. I knew whatever this thing was if it were to get to me it was big enough to rip me to pieces and the only thing between me and it was a shotgun slug and my poor aim.

But then it was gone. I could hear it splashing off through the swamps until it was no more.

I threw open the door, my eyes wide, letting out a few expletives that I had to explain to our children not to repeat.

“Did you see it, did you SEE it!!!” my wife exclaimed. “No but I heard it” we all did. And then came the realization.

“Honey – there is only one way out for those things”, I said. “The direction they headed - it’s a dead end.”

A bead of sweat began to slide down the ice-cold beer glass I had sitting in front of me. My friend by the same name placed it there enticing me to continue with my story. David was an old friend I had recently reconnected with. We met when I first started riding motorcycles years back. He has a quick smile with a thin but muscular frame and the kind of rugged weathered look of a man who had done real work and become wise during hard times. I would often drop by his house and watch him tinker with different motorcycle parts on his work bench in the evenings.

David now leaned back in his chair, one hand casually on the arm of a steel wire patio chair while taking a sip of beer with the other. He and I both had given up sport bikes but found we shared an enjoyment in kayaking. He was an avid fisherman and a relatively new but informed convert to the world of cryptozoology due to more than one experience that he had in the North Texas area. One of the events not far from where we sat now.

“So then what happened?” David said with a spark of interest in his eye…

Well we wanted to leave, I will tell you that! My wife said load the car but I said “Hell no! I’m not going back out there with those things running about.” I believe I had a convincing argument that we were better inside with a gun than running back and forth to the car in the dark. But I still wasn’t sure what it was. I was still in the mindset that it might be a common animal to the area, possibly a black bear? I had heard that there had been a bear sighting north of the area but much farther north than would allow for the excuse of a chance encounter. I grabbed my phone, connected to the WiFi and started searching Google for bear sightings in the area. As I scrolled through the listings the word Sasquatch caught my eye. I found nothing that convinced me that there were bears near us but finding an article of two young ladies sighting a beast run in front of their car headlights caused me to let out an audible gasp. “What, what did you find?” my wife asked. I looked at the location of the sighting and then pulled up Google Maps. “Oh Holy Hell!” I blurted out. My wife was becoming a little annoyed now. “What did you find!” – There have been apparently Big Foot sightings less than a quarter mile from our cabin, several of them. Also, whatever it was seemed to have an intelligence that a bear doesn’t exhibit to my knowledge. We both would normally laugh at anyone mentioning Big Foot encounters, waiving it off as a few beers too many or a highly imaginative mind. But it was looking more and more like we had just joined the Yeti Club ourselves. But why were they behind our cabin we wondered. There had to be a reason they were venturing so close.

I pulled up Google Maps. I am not a hunter myself, but I understand success is greater when one knows where the animal is coming from and where it is going and finding the trail it travels. I would think even Big Foot would move with a purpose and be a creature of habit. Just up the road, between our cabin and the location where the young women had their sighting, was a trail that ended at the asphalt. Tracing it back it went deep into an old growth forest. I can understand why Sasquatch would want to avoid walking down the side of a road but why would they be cutting behind our cabin?

Just then, we could see some lights from a car moving slowly down the road. It pulled off to the side, and as if it sighted something, sped off and left town! “Well that’s not good.” I said aloud. “They are making their way through the woods back to the trail” I guessed. Looking at Taylor Island it suddenly became clear to me. “Honey, I got it!” “They were going out for dinner” Look here… There were a row of cabins dotting the shore along the bayou, all of them fishing cabins. And what do fisherman do at the end of the day? Clean the fish and throw the scraps in the garbage. Our furry friends were cutting behind our cabins hoping to quietly make their way to their meals, undetected through the woods and swamp. The smell of our fish dinner earlier may have given one of them pause to investigate. The other calling out when their dinner date fell behind. “I wonder if there is a dating app for Yeti’s”, we laughed.

But it was still a reach. I am a skeptic and a person of science. I must see it to believe it and so far, I really had not seen anything. I had a hypothesis but no hard evidence, as is the case with many of these encounters.

David was now leaning in closer. A slightly buzzed college girl bumped our table as she and her friends passed by. The beers sloshed and she put her hand on David apologizing “I am soooo sorry”. We smiled, we were two older guys hanging out at a college bar, mainly because the beer was cheap but David had become a favorite of the establishment. The bartenders knew his drink, girls and guys would walk over and say hello and introduce their friends saying, “This is David” as if he was the Godfather of Fry Street. I was amongst royalty, I laughed. But he does have this charm about him that makes you feel, important and it seemed we had much in common besides just our name.

That night would be our last night in Uncertain, my wife and I laid with one eye open. The kids were tucked away and sleeping soundly but I kept the gun close and double checked all the window and door locks, as if a Yeti is going to bother with a doorknob or window latch. The names are interchangeable, Sasquatch, Yeti, Big Foot, Big Fluffy Fur Ball. One in the same to me. I would call it a friend if it shared its beer. But it appeared that they really didn’t want anything more to do with us than we did with them. They moved quietly through the forest, even in the moonlight they were still too camouflaged to be seen. Anything moving through those woods would have to have thick fur or hair and as it was, we could only see a few feet into the abyss. Miles and miles of forest and swamp only interrupted by an occasional thin dark ribbon of road. I wanted to see them, I wanted to know if they were real but did I really? It would possibly drive me mad.

Looking at David he asked, “So do you believe?” “Well”, I said “I am still a little skeptical but I am more of a believer now than I was before” He looked at me excitedly as if he wanted to tell me something that had been on his chest. “I don’t tell too many people this anymore but…” David leaned back in his chair, took a drink of his beer and his expression changed to one of seriousness as he said, “I had an experience myself not far from here, where Clear Creek meets the Trinity River on the edge of town”

David and I met years ago when I first started riding sport bikes. I had started on a small Ninja 250 and on my first evening in the parking lot of Mack Park Apartments had thrown the bike in the air by popping the clutch too soon. I held on for dear life and rode that bike like it was a bucking bronco. It was three days before I worked up enough courage to get back on it. Then one evening I managed to drive it to Fry Street. I pulled up in front of a local bar and grill called Cool Beans. David was there and asked me how I liked the bike, possibly sensing that I was still a greenhorn and having chicken strips on my tires, a sport bike term meaning that I had not leaned enough into turns to scuff the sides. Some seasoned riders would not even ride with you if you had chicken strips because you were likely to panic and cause an accident. But David is one of the coolest, most laid-back guys I know and always willing to help someone out.

After a burger and finishing off his drink David said, “Come on – Let’s go, I am going to teach you a few things” We jumped on our bikes and I followed him to a parking lot on the north edge of town called Stonehill Center. I followed him around the parking lot and imitated his moves. Cutting too sharp would cause me almost to fall and I soon learned by giving it a little more gas and leaning into the turn I had much more control of the bike. David slowed his bike and I pulled up beside him, his bike sounded like a beast and he now yelled over it saying, “I think you are ready for something a little more fun!” I followed him out of the parking lot and turned to the right. We then launched into what he called the twisties. The sharp turns that go up and over and then down and around the 288 overpass at I35. He would be two twisties ahead of me and have to slow his ride for me to catch up but I was getting the hang of it. I learned the art of counter steering and leaning low while giving the bike more gas so that it would do all the work while navigating the turns with more speed.

David now leaned toward me, the beer nearly knocking over as he grabbed it with an almost unnatural speed. “Listen, people don’t take me that seriously when I tell them about my encounter, but you seem to understand better than most” David said, now with a slightly wilder look in his eyes. He went on to tell me his story. He had been scoping out a fishing spot not far from the Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center just outside of Denton. It had rained the night before, a light cloud of fog still hung over the valley as he trudged through the mud with his fishing gear in tow. Then he noticed something strange, footprints. These were larger than your average human footprint and did not have the defining indention of the arch. They were more blocked and wider, almost padded looking. Like my experience, seeing a Sasquatch was really not on his mind as he walked along with the tracks. What was curious was why would anyone be barefoot this far out in a creek that might have an errant piece of glass or sharp stone. The tracks looked fresh and then suddenly veered off to the left up an embankment and into the woods. Standing there wondering how anyone would want to venture into a remote area and barefoot off a path was beyond him. Then he realized he was not alone. A noise in the distance caught his attention. He heard a thud, then another, then a loud crack as if a large branch had been snapped in half. Whatever was in the woods with him was now striking the side of a tree with the branch obviously trying to scare him off. I asked him, “How close were you to the Trinity?” “Not far at all” he replied. “What did you do?” I excitedly said. I could see he was still somewhat shaken just discussing the event. “Well, honestly, I was terrified being alone in the woods with something that could snap large branches, I left as fast as I could!” he said nervously.

As with many encounters, it happens quickly and is an assault on the senses as you become very aware that you may be in danger. Your sight, hearing, reasoning all seems heightened but so is your fear, as adrenaline courses through your body. Psychologists call this a fight or flight response as your brain tries to figure out whether you are in immediate danger and should fight off your attacker or whether you can escape your assailant and run to safety. Police Officers know this as “adrenaline dump” that they try to fight off so that it does not impair their judgement leading to success or tragedy when dealing with dangerous situations. In this case, David made the right decision by leaving the area but, much like my own event, he had an overwhelming curiosity. We would return to look for more footprints after a rain but finding nothing but baby wild pig hoof prints, we decided the mother hog was more a threat than any Yeti. Funny how he picked me, a slow, broken backed friend over others. Maybe it is true – you don’t have to run fast just faster than the slowest guy.

I would later read about a possible sighting called the pecan creek monster that was spotted by some kids in Denton near a wooded area. It upset the town so much that they launched a search team that found nothing. There have been other events along the greenbelt near Denton where kayakers hauling their kayaks around a raft of river logs would stumble across large tracks, much like what David had described. But no story was more convincing than the one I would hear from a water treatment worker while researching Clear Creek for kayaking. And his story helps put together some of the pieces as why these things are so often encountered near bodies of water and their clever methods for obtaining a free meal.

I poured over the maps following the long slivers of silver that were the creeks and water ways of Denton County. The two kayaks hanging in our garage longed to be sitting in water. I also love taking our kids creek walking. But before touching the water I want to know where it comes from. In some cases, we have found beautiful streams of clear water to be outflows from local sewage plants. It is treated but who wants to swim, wade or kayak in that! Clear Creek is no exception.

The headwaters of Clear Creek start in Montague County not far from St, Jo Texas once called Head of Elm. There is a lot of history here. Not far away Outlaw Nancy Hill was hung on Denton Creek. Belle Starr, Sam Bass, Jesse James and The Younger Gang all roamed these hills and a town of frontier men and women were scalped alive and killed by Indians where remnants of the ghost town still stand to this day. The Chisholm and Butterfield Stagecoach Trails also crisscross in the fields now occupied by barbed wire and grazing cattle.

Now I looked for all the water crossings, bridges, natural outcroppings. I squinted to see strainers where trees had fallen across the creek becoming a hazard to the lone kayaker. Much like the author of a favorite book of mine, Goodbye to a River, I wanted to know the history of the land my river would take me through. The souls that had walked here before me that had caressed her hills and valleys and lived off her fertile soil.

In my quest to know more I spoke with Fish and Game Wardens and eventually a man who oversaw the a nearby Waste Water Treatment Plant. I had been told that there were a couple of instances where sewage had flowed into Clear Creek but that millions of dollars had been spent updating the facilities. I asked him if he was concerned at all about the water quality. He told me that he lived on Clear Creek and he fishes the creek all the time, in fact he has trotlines that he tends, and his family frequently eats the fish they catch. It was convincing but finding where the inflow was at Ranger Branch, a creek that dumped into Clear Creek, I decided that anything farther up was safe as safe can be and this is where I would find the most enjoyment in water activities free from pee water.

We were just about to hang up when I asked him, “Doesn’t Clear Creek run into the Trinity?” He replied, “Yes it does, it runs through the Nature Center and connects just on the other side, we used to fish there”. With this I could not help but to gleefully ask him, “So, have you ever experienced anything unusual there?” This question was met with a long pause from an otherwise vocal man. “What exactly do you mean by unusual?” he finally replied.

The tone of the conversation changed as he told me that he hadn’t made a lot of talk about it in a long time. “We fished that area a lot when we were younger and before the greenbelt trail was cut through for joggers and cyclists.” He went on to explain how he and two other friends had gone as far as they could by pickup bouncing over fields and through washes to where they would disembark grabbing fishing poles and a cooler to hopefully keep the catch of the night. Still rubbing their eyes from the dust, they set off toward their destination. It was there a whirlpool would form during spring floods that would carve out a large hole where many fish would congregate. This is the place my friend David had been in search of when he had his encounter.

“It was late, maybe two in the morning, maybe three…” His voice becoming more ominous. “We had a pretty good haul and were just about to call it a night when suddenly we heard a crashing noise coming through the woods on the other side of the river.” he said as I held the receiver closer to my ear and adjusted the volume to high. “It was loud and it sounded big but it wasn’t a deer or a pig, it sounded taller, like it was running full sprint -- on two feet” I was almost incredulous at how similar his description was to my families own encounter and the one that my friend David had described. “It was running straight towards us but then suddenly, as if it knew we were there, veered off to the right and went upriver.”

“What did you do?”, I excitedly asked.

“We sat there, we didn’t even talk to each other we were so quiet listening for it” “It was scary but at least it was on the other side of the river” his voice said through some slight static on the phone. “Then we heard a splash and to our terror it swam across the river and that is when we knew we were really up shit creek!” (pun intended; cause well you know)

“We were terrified, whatever it was, it made it’s way down toward us through the woods and then just stopped.” He paused for a moment as if the memory of the event was almost too much for him. Me, on the other hand, I was on pins and needles. “What then?” I asked. “It was watching us, we couldn’t see it but we knew it was just standing there in the woods and it was larger than any of us – we got the Hell out of there, we even left the cooler behind full of fish.” “Whatever that SOB thing was got a belly full that night on our dime, that’s for sure!”

“People think I am crazy when I tell this story, so I just stopped telling it” His voice, a traitor, as it gave up his shaken nerves. “They are smart, and they are out there… you just won’t see them.”

About once every week or two after the kids go to sleep and my wife settles on the couch to watch a favorite show I go for a drive. It’s 30 minutes to the bend in the road that brings me closest to where our furry friend might be. I sit quietly listening, the familiar click click click as I load my .45 Single Action Colt, setting it beside me just in case a possible encounter becomes more than a fishing trip. Greeted by fireflies and the usual chilled mist the river bottoms bring, I drive slowly to the dead end where I always wonder whose land it might be. Then on back to home… I want to believe because it is so intriguing but other than a few hogs moving close to the road to give me a quick doubletake I am left with more questions than answers. But then, as it happens with everything you search for, I saw something I can’t take back. A glimpse but it was just enough.

I was still interested in finding a location for an easy put-in for kayaking the upper Clear Creek. Pouring over online maps I realized just how few places there are to access and enjoy our waterways. Most of the creeks and rivers pass through private land. Many may be navigable legally but getting to them without trespassing is another thing. One must then find and visit the few bridges that may pass over the waterway and a lot are difficult to get a kayak to, either because they are high cliffs or covered in poison ivy, trees, thickets and briar or the access is blocked by barbed wire or no trespassing signs that are debatable since it is a roadway easement.

I found several bridges I wanted to check out and I asked my son if he wanted to go. He had been on his technology and a drive with his dad would be a good break from the screen time that had consumed all his Saturday morning. So, we jumped in the car and I punched in the coordinates on the digital map.

I had not driven these backroads before and was glad to find a new place to explore. Texas is amazing for the change of scenery that can be found with just a few turns and twists in the road. Coming over a hill we looked out over the vast rolling plains of North Texas. A slight haze was settled over the prairies and I could see for miles and miles. Traveling the one lane roads were my favorite way to get away from the hustle and bustle of town. Except for an old dusty pickup squeaking by us, we seemed to be the only ones in the area. We arrived at the first bridge and we peered over the edges looking down on the pristine waters of Clear Creek. Being native to Texas, I have become accustomed to muddy creek waters and lakes, a mystery to what laid beneath. But this creek in many areas had a white sandy bottom that helped filter the water as it ran through its valleys. Little wavy sand dune looking structures could be seen just beneath the shimmering waters and fish darted here and there somehow aware of our presence, looking for a place to hide. I was excited to see a USGS water flow measuring device, which meant I could look it up online to find the best time to kayak based on the current flow rate. But I was disheartened to see a raft of debris on either side of a steep slope which would make it difficult to traverse with a kayak. It could be done but I was looking to find that one sweet spot to easily slide my kayak in across the sands and a safe place off road to park.

After throwing a few rocks and a few yells to check for an echo, my son and I loaded back into the car driving off the blacktop onto the gravel road. Around a corner we saw an old abandoned frontier looking home that must have been there for over one hundred years. Very little was back in this area but the gravel road looked to be used by a few ranchers tending to their cattle. We were looking for the end of the road where we thought there might be access to a bend in the creek. On the map we could see the road narrow and looking overgrown but ending at the waters edge. With the gravel clicking beneath our tires and the sound of cicadas all around we could smell the creek and the vegetation in the valley. Fresh cut grass filled the air and the sound of a lawn mower could be heard just ahead. We rolled to a stop at a gate with a big red sign that said No Trespassing. To the right of us was a log home and an older man who now cut the gas to his mower as he walked our way. He had a curious look in his eye and his skin had a leathered appearance from all the sun that he had seen while bailing hay in the fields above. “What ya’ll looking for?”, he said as he spat on the ground. “Well we are just taking a country drive and trying to find an easy way to Clear Creek”, I said with a kind of questioning nod towards the gate ahead. He spat again and said that was once a way to Clear Creek but the bridge washed out many years ago and the land was now owned and private. I told him I understood but before I could say anything else, he started coming closer to the car. I could see the butt of a gun sticking out of his pocket and as I smiled I slowly and quietly placed my hand on the 10mm Springfield that was tucked away just inside my door, but my son was between us and it was not an ideal situation for a shootout if things went raw.

He put his hand on the top of the car and squatted down a little looking at me with a squint in his eye. “We don’t get many people this far back” “In fact I haven’t seen a stranger in quite a while” he said as I now imagined this was going to end somewhere between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance. “Well God finds angels amongst the forgotten” I replied, which caught him off guard a bit. He stood up and smiled as he turned back toward his mower. Waving us off as he walked, he said something peculiar “Ya’ll be careful on that creek” and then he pulled the cord and the mower turned over on the first try. I was impressed with his stature for a man his age, obviously hard work had left him in better shape than most who retire in those golden years.

We turned the car around and went on back down the road that we came. The frontier home made sense, as it stood on land that had probably been in the old man’s family for years, possibly at or before the formation of Texas. We were now back on the black top when I noticed a small trail that I had not seen on our first passing. Just before the bridge I could see where the grass had been laid down. It was getting close to dark and the suns cap was just now resting at the edge of the fields. The cicadas had quieted, and I thought I would take one more look before we headed back home. “Stay in the car, I won’t be but just a minute” I told my son as I stepped out.

Walking up to the concrete railing I put my hand on the dusty side. The fish had not seen me this time and I could just barely make out their outlines in the water. But something felt different. There was a slight smell beyond the usual humid vegetation and earthy aromas. It didn’t quite stink but it was rather unpleasant. Suddenly the wind picked up just as it does before a front comes through. The dust from the bridge was swept into my left eye and I yelled back at my son to roll up the car windows as I poured some water from my water bottle to nurse it. Before he could get his window up we could hear a noise in the woods. It sounded like something cracking. I was thinking possibly a tree limb was about to come down from the sudden high winds. But as I wiped the water from my eyes, I could see the smaller trees that grow along the banks parting. “Papa David, what was that?” my son yelled. “Nothing son, don’t get out of the car --- stay in the car!” I looked further down the bank and could see something moving quickly through the bushes and trees, throwing them aside. It was dark now, but I thought I could see patches of brown hair but then it stopped and quickly turned. I saw an eye, just the eye through a mass of vegetation and shadows. It looked at me and for that moment, I understood. This was a creature with intelligence. It stood there and then as quickly turned away melting into the forest and then the all too familiar splashing of a creature with two feet running. The memory of our encounter at Uncertain came back to me but this time I was more curious than scared. But my son was with me and I could not take any risks. Driving slowly by the fresh trail I felt more like I had interrupted someone’s fishing rather than having an actual encounter with a terrifying beast, in fact, maybe the beast that was so terrifying was actual me.

I heard the phone vibrate on the nightstand, I grabbed it and thumbed in the pass code after the facial recognition failed, probably because it wasn’t used to my face without a beard.

It was my friend David; I had texted him and asked him how his trip to Colorado had been. He was now in town drinking with some local cowboys and I could just imagine his easy laugh as he listened to their stories and shared a few of his own. The subject would come around to fishing, which is one of the great American pass times, especially in the mountain towns. Jokingly, I wrote him “Any squatches?” and now I stared at the screen as the text popped up “Got surrounded…”

David had gone to Colorado in search of the Golden Trout but had lucked out on the six lakes he had visited. However, one of the lakes was quite remote. He had driven off-road as far as his 4x4 could take him and parked it. Then throwing his gear on his back and securing his Sig he headed out on foot toward a destination with no trail. Hiking several miles through the forest he could see through the trees, the waters of Golden Lake. After setting his gear down where he would spend the night, he decided to wet a hook as he cast his line. To David fishing is not just an excuse for a beer and a bobber but an art form. He is a true fisherman, a hunter, willing to go further to find his prey. There is something primordial about catching and eating a fish. It is what sustained the earliest humans and allowed us to travel over large distances by creeks and rivers that are the veins of this great land. A good fishing spot is coveted by the fisherman and is often a carefully guarded secret to maintain one’s connection of self with nature, absent of interruption.

Now, as David explained, in digital format, he had just gotten back to camp and started a fire when he heard a knock in the woods, the same as before during his encounter on Clear Creek. He listened, everything in the forest that far out is crisp and clear. There is no other noise pollution such as highway sounds and the constant buzz of city life. It is just you, the wind and whatever that stirs in the darkness.

He sat there crouching; his ear cocked to one side as he stoked the fire prepping for an evening’s meal. And then another one! Closer this time but too the East of camp, where the other one had been across the lake to the North. This was not just a coincidental limb falling, it was intentional. He sat motionless, alone and miles from any civilization. I asked him what he did then? He wrote back, “I was terrified!” “There was no trail to this lake, I should have known better”, he admitted. I asked him if there was any way it could have been a bear, but he said that there was a third knock to the West of camp and it appeared that they were either communicating or trying to scare him. He decided that there was nothing he could do and was resolved to make dinner, build the fire higher and keep his Sig close but out of sight. His lacking in aggressive posturing is what he believes may have saved him. “So will you go back?” I asked him. “Not alone” I took this as a possible invitation to a Sasquatch hunt to be considered for later.

Now, I sit in my car with the windows down, a thud from a small branch landing on the roof of my SUV startles me as I listen to the night sound of distant howls trumpeting. If you ask me if I believe in Sasquatch I will flash you a slight smile and tell you that I am Uncertain. But what I am certain of, is that at the end of this road that I am parked, sits one of the scariest abandoned houses I have ever seen. And that might be the making of a story for another time… [The End]

Uncertain Video: https://youtu.be/Toi4b6zzbkA

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