#after i drafted this i actually came up with a longer form one that's more faithful to the inspiration so maybe i'll do that someday. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

toomanystoriessolittletime · 1 year

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Remember me

Summary: You haven't been able to reach Jack since he left for a business trip, making you worried. Having no other way to contact him, you decide to drive to Statesman, unprepared to find him walking out of the building perfectly fine. You question your relationship, asking yourself if he would just ghost you after so many years of friendship until a Cowboy finds you crying in your car, and tells you everything about Statesman. And what happened to Jack.

Pairing: Agent Jack Whiskey Daniels x fem. reader

Wordcount: 2.5k

Rating: G

Warnings: memory loss, Friends to lovers, little angst, some fluff

A/N: This has been sitting in my drafts since December. Hope you like it (cause I'm not sure I do lol)

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“When will you be back?” you listened to his steady heartbeat, your ear on his chest.

His arms were around you, cuddled under the warm covers of his king sized bed.

“A week. Tops,” he hummed and you felt him kiss the top of your head. You smiled, pressing your lips to his chest.

“I’ll miss you,” you mumbled.

“You won’t even notice I’m gone, sugarplum.”

“Hello, This is Jack. Leave a message after the…”

You sighed, ending the call. Again. It’s been almost three weeks.

Three weeks in which you hadn’t seen or talked to Jack. He usually finds a way to let you know, if his job takes longer.

You did not know exactly what he was doing, but you had your suspicions. He was often gone for weeks, not being able to contact you.

Which was a surprise when you first learned about it, being under the impression that he was the CEO of a whiskey distillery.

“One day I’m gonna tell you everything about it, sugarplum,” he used to say. And for whatever reason you trusted him that he would. Even way before you both finally realised that your friendship was way more than that.

You hadn’t been together for a long time.

But you had known Jack for years.

The little coffee shop you owned apparently lay on the way to his work and he started stopping by almost six years ago when he moved to a little town just outside of the city.

You would always remember the first time he stepped into your little café.

You had seen your fair share of cowboys throughout the years but Jack? Deep down you just knew he would be trouble.

You just did not know if in a good or in a bad way.

He had ordered a plain black coffee and a muffin for breakfast.

“Surprise me, Sugarplum,” he’d smirked at you when you asked him what kind of muffin he wanted. And yeah, that southern charm was trouble from the first day.

After that he came in every single day on his way to work. You’d only learn that he sometimes stopped by in the afternoon too much later, one of your employees telling you that he seemed a little disappointed when he did not see you.

He had only asked for your actual name almost half a year later.

The friendship that had formed between the two of you always lingered on the line to becoming something more.

It started with him inviting you to go out to the farmers market out of town one saturday.

Then you invited him for a home cooked dinner which quickly became a weekly Thursday night thing.

You started spending time at his farm outside of town too. He had beautiful horses, some cows and chickens.

He taught you how to ride and care for the horses.

You would have thought he had a dog too, but instead he had two cats called King and Queen.

Two very cute fluffy white cats who followed him wherever he went once he got home.

They loved to sleep on top of Jack when you had movie night. There might be a folder of pictures in your phone just of him with the cats.

It would take more than five years of friendship until one drunken night left you sleeping in his bed, waking up the next morning in his arms, his lips brushing over the back of your neck, asking is this okay to which you only nodded while he kissed himself down your neck until you turned in his arms so he could kiss your lips for the first time.

He took you out for your first date that very same night.

You had talked to each other every single day in the last months, even when he had to get away. You practically had moved into his house, leaving your apartment in the city just for the occasional nights when you were too tired to drive back to his place after work.

Or you stayed there when Jack was gone. His house feeling way too big and empty without him.

But earlier today you had been at his place, finding it as deserted as it had been the last weeks.

You had no idea how to contact him outside of his phone number. You did not have any information on contacting his family or friends. The latter only being two men you had met briefly throughout the years.

What you did know however was where he worked.

You took a deep breath, exhaling through your mouth as you looked at yourself in the mirror as you got ready for work.

You missed him.

You loved him.

Maybe it was time to drive to Statesman across town to finally get some answers.

You had been staring at the entrance for an hour.

You hadn’t planned on staring at the entrance for an hour.

You were about to get out of your car and demand answers but then you saw him walk out of the door.

Jack.

He was smiling as he talked to another man, one of his friends you had met whose name you had already forgotten, before you saw him climb into his Bronco and speed off.

Why was he ignoring your calls?

Why didn’t he let you know that he was alive and well?

A constant stream of questions seemed to go through your head, only stopped when someone knocked on your car window.

You blinked your eyes before you let the window down, an older man, another cowboy, looking at you.

“Evening Ma’am. I noticed that you have been waiting here for a while and I was wondering if you need any help?” he asked.

You sighed.

“Yes… No. Sorry. I’ll… I’ll leave,” you mumbled, still confused.

“Are you okay?” he asked and you huffed a laugh.

“Just asking myself if my boyfriend decided to ghost me on purpose. He’s working here, you know? Haven’t seen him in almost a month, haven’t talked to him, but I just saw him walk out of those doors, looking perfectly fine to me.”

You were rambling.

“I haven’t even told him that I love him. I think he loved me though. We’ve known each other for a long time. Used to flirt shamelessly with me every day when getting a coffee.”

“Now hold on there for a minute there,” the Cowboy said and your lips pressed shut, looking at the man.

“You don’t happen to be talking about a tall Cowboy with a preference for banana strawberry muffins from that little café across town?” he asked you.

“I bake the muffins myself,” you whispered, looking at him.

The man sighed.

“Jack didn’t tell me he finally got his head out of his ass and made a move on you. You might wanna come inside with me? I think you deserve some answers.”

You were staring again.

This time not at the entrance of Statesman, but at the door of Jack’s Farmhouse.

The house that had become a home to you more than your own apartment was.

Agent Champagne, Champ for friends, had explained to you that while Statesman was still a distillery, it always was a front for a secret organisation.

And Jack was one of its Agents. One of the best apparently.

Something had happened on his last mission and the short explanation was that he had come back from the dead and might have lost more memories than the agency first thought.

Champ had encouraged you to drive out and visit Jack. He’d apparently been talking about stopping by the next morning at the café. He had only been released from the medical wing today.

He didn’t almost die, he had been dead.

For almost three hours before they could bring him back.

You took a deep breath before you got out of your car, walking the familiar path towards his house. Out of habit you reached for the key he gave to you to unlock the door, stopping with a head shake before you brought your hand up to knock on his door.

The time it took before you heard footsteps behind the door seemed like hours, giving you time to school your face into a neutral expression when the door opened, revealing Jack standing in front of you, dressed in dark sweatpants and a faded Game of Thrones shirt. Your shirt.

His face lit up when he saw you.

“Sugarplum, I wasn’t expecting you,” he said with a smile and you felt tears welling up in your eyes, as you smiled at him.

“Hi Jack,” you whispered as you looked up at him and as if it was pure instinct he opened his arms for you as you took a step towards him, his strong arms wrapping around your body as he kissed the top of your head.

“I missed you so much,” you mumbled into his shirt, feeling his arm tighten around you.

“Are you sure, you’re okay sugar?” he asked and you took a deep breath before you looked up at him, finding his eyes looking down at you with concern.

“I think we need to talk,” you said quietly. He frowned, but nodded, before he released you to close the door.

King and Queen were sitting on either side of you as you sat on the sofa, waiting for Jack to come back from the kitchen. He’d offered to make tea and you had agreed, using the time to gather your thoughts.

King was climbing into your lap as Jack came from the kitchen, your favourite mug, the one he had bought you only a couple weeks ago in his hand, your favourite tea in it.

He set the mug down on the coffee table before he sat down on the couch next to you.

“These two usually hate people,” he hummed, his hand stroking over the fur of Queen who meowed before she laid down in between the two of you.

“I’m not just any people,” you smiled a little and Jack smiled back.

“No you’re not,” he said warmly.

“How was your work trip?” you asked and if he was taken aback by your question he did not show it.

“Longer than expected but okay in the end. I’m actually gonna stay for a while now. Got some time off,” he explained and you nodded.

“Did I tell you about leaving town?” he frowned in the next moment.

“You did,” you whispered, your hand stroking King on your lap who was puring by now.

“Jack, what’s the last thing you remember? About me?” you asked.

He seemed confused before he took a deep breath.

“I… I think the last time I saw you you were cooking in my kitchen? Some roast that burnt…” he murmured.

You nodded.

“Okay. That was… almost three months ago. It was your birthday. And I promised to make your favourite dish,” you said as you carefully took the mug of tea to drink some.

He looked at you as if trying to figure you out.

“We watched Star Trek after and you told me how you hated the new ones,” you continued, but he just kept looking at you.

“I… I don’t remember?” he said and you closed your eyes, releasing a deep breath.

“Jack, I talked to Champ today. And he… he told me what happened to you,” you whispered, sucking your bottom lip in.

“Why would he do that?” he asked.

“Because usually when something happens to an Agent on the job their family or spouse is informed. But we… you hadn’t told anyone. About us yet.”

“Us?” he asked, looking at you.

“We’re… We’re together. Or we have been until you had to leave for your last job? I’m not really sure what we are now. I mean you can’t remember me…”

“I do remember you. I just… this is…”

“A lot. I know,” you sighed, fighting down the tears as you looked at him.

“We both… Really? I finally told you how I felt?” he asked after a while and you huffed a laugh.

“Not really. We were both drunk and I woke up in your bed…. we kissed the first time tight then in your bed,” you explained and he nodded.

“I was wondering whose clothes were in my wardrobe,” he said with a huff and you nodded.

“I… you actually asked me to move in with you before you left.”

He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

“And you had no idea what happened these last weeks. I’m so sorry,” he reached over, squeezing your hand.

“You’re very relaxed for someone who just got told he has a girlfriend he can’t remember.”

He chuckled.

“Let’s just say, worse things have happened on the job.”

“Gee thanks,” you rolled your eyes with a smile and he grinned.

You sighed.

“Well, I’m just gonna grab some stuff and leave you alone,” you gently put King from your lap, standing up.

“Why?” Jack asked, also standing up.

“Because you can’t remember me, Jackson,” you smiled sadly.

He shook his head.

“I do remember you. I remember everything about you. Just not… the most important part. The part where I finally got you in my life like I’ve wanted for a long time,” he whispered, taking a step closer towards you.

You sighed.

“What if you help me remember?”

“What are you proposing?”

“They… They use triggers when getting someone back. They always use a picture of my late wife that usually gets my brain back in the right lane. And it worked to some extent.”

“Just not for me,” you could not help the tears escaping your eyes now and Jack came even closer, his hands framing your face, as he wiped your tears away.

“I knew something was missing. I just did not know what,” he whispered. You closed your eyes.

“I know that I’m in love with you though,” he said and you gasped, opening your eyes.

“I have been since the day I took you out to the farmers market. When I saw you in that beautiful dress I’m sure my heart stopped.”

“Jack,” you smiled through your tears.

“So you see, I do remember you. I remember everything about you. I just don’t remember finally being with you.”

“You haven’t even told me you loved me yet,” you whispered and he groaned.

“Pre Memory loss Jack was a real dumbass,” he grinned and you chuckled.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

“Yes,” you breathed and then his lips were on yours. And it was if no time had passed, your arms wrapping around his broad back as you melted against him, his lips moving on yours, his moustache tickling you, making you grin against his lips.

“I love you sugarplum,” he whispered against your lips and you smiled.

“I love you too, Jack.”

#my fic #jack Daniels x fem. reader #jack daniels #Pedro pascal #jack whiskey daniels #agent whiskey #fanfiction #fanfic #fan fiction

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helladirections · 2 years

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Camp Out - Under Summer Skies Deleted Scene

Author: @helladirections Pairing: Harry x YN Word Count: 2k Contains: Smut

MASTERLIST | PATREON | UNDER SUMMER SKIES | USS TAG | WRITING TAG

Summary: Harry and YN’s cabins go for the campout in tents, but they’re much more concerned with keeping each other warm than supervising campers. This is relatively unedited. I originally wrote this in one of the drafts of this fic but decided to take it out. It was supposed to take place after they got together but before the final smut scene.

Preview:

He kissed her then, gently and carefully, much like he had the very first time their lips touched. She sighed into it, bringing her hands up and around his body to feel his warmth close to her. “We should get into the tent,” Harry mumbled against her lips. Y/N whined. “Not done with you yet, though.” “Never said I was done with you either. But can’t do what I wanna do out here, now can I?”

Read below or on AO3 or Wattpad

But trouble came for them in the form of the campout.

It started out like normal - they hiked to site with the campers, taking up the back of the pack to make sure no one got left behind. Y/N remembered her water bottle this time and Harry had filled it for her, but he still had to remind her to stop walking and take a drink every now and then. They were far enough back from the campers and the campout staff that they could have their own conversation without really bothering anybody. And their conversation was completely tame too - mostly talking about TV shows that they really missed watching but had almost no access to because they were at camp.

The campers didn’t complain too much on the hike, and they participated in the team building activities when they got to the site. The biggest complainer before dinner actually wasn’t a camper, but was Harry.

“‘M so hungry,” he whined.

Y/N looked around for a moment before standing on her toes to whisper in his ear. “Could just eat me.”

After dinner they sang around the campfire as the sun started to go down and the staff made smores for all the kids (who weren’t allowed that close to the fire, no matter how much they complained). Harry even brought out his guitar and led some songs as they snacked.

Most of the kids even went to bed without too much of a struggle. They were in gender separated tents on opposite ends of the campsite, and even though Y/N’s campers had been giggling for weeks about how they would get to see the cute boys around bed time, none of them really seemed to try anything.

Y/N, Harry, Sarah, and Niall stayed up a little longer. Still sitting around the campfire, Harry finally felt it was safe enough to put his arm around Y/N. She melted into his side like she always did, resting her head on his shoulder. When she shivered (even though she was wearing a coat), he rubbed his hand up and down her arm to try and warm her up. The conversation was casual and easy, and Y/N was really genuinely enjoying herself.

There were two staff tents, and no official rules on who was supposed to sleep where. So it made sense that when Sarah and Niall wanted to go to bed early, they would set themselves up in the same tent. They took the one closest to the campers since they were mostly already sleeping.

And then it was just Y/N and Harry.

Sitting around the fire with him was nice. They looked up at the stars together and talked about the universe. Its size is infinite, there’s billions of people in this world, and somehow they had found each other as children. The odds of that happening were so low, and yet that’s exactly what happened. Y/N felt like the luckiest person on the planet.

“So glad you’re in my universe,” Harry whispered to her like a secret.

Y/N couldn't help but smile, a soft blush spreading across her face that luckily he couldn’t see because of the campfire in front of them.

“Me too.”

He kissed her then, gently and carefully, much like he had the very first time their lips touched. She sighed into it, bringing her hands up and around his body to feel his warmth close to her.

“We should get into the tent,” Harry mumbled against her lips.

Y/N whined. “Not done with you yet, though.”

“Never said I was done with you either. But can’t do what I wanna do out here, now can I?”

Giggling, she followed his lead into the last tent, furthest from all the campers and other staff. It wasn’t big, but big enough for two people and their small backpacks. The camp provided sleeping bags were already set up for them on the cold, hard ground.

Immediately she took off her sweatshirt, rolling it up and placing it near the top of her sleeping bag to use as a pillow. Harry followed suit and they began getting ready for bed, changing into the pajamas they had brought with them. Y/N’s pants and shirt were thin, which was great for hot nights in a cabin that had no air circulation but was really inconvenient for a night in a cold tent.

“Love that shirt on you,” Harry admitted.

Y/N completely ignored his comment. “Come close to me, I’m cold.” She grabbed Harry by his shoulder, noticing then that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Put on a shirt, H. You’re gonna get so cold... Geez, when did I start taking care of you.”

“Not planning on putting more clothes on right now, sweetheart,” he teased with a smile.

Even though she was shivering, a heat ran across the apples of her cheeks. And she knew this time that Harry could see it in the light of the lantern they had left on.

“Don’t be embarrassed baby,” he said softly, lifting his hand to rest on her cheek and keep her gaze focused on him. “Gonna make you feel good, I promise.”

She nodded her head. “But it’s so cold. Can we... Can we at least get under the sleeping bags?”

Harry laughed then, giving in to her request. While she waited on the side of the tent, he carefully unzipped both sleeping bags all the way, spreading them out so one had the inside facing up and one had the inside facing down. He lifted up the top one and she happily crawled in. He followed her, turning on his side and wrapping his body around hers, fully encasing her with his arms.

“Warm enough now?” he whispered.

“Mhmm...”

“Good. Because you might be dealing with some cold air when I...”

His sentence drifted off as he lowered the hand that had been resting on her stomach. It traveled slowly, finding the top of her sleep pants. He dragged one finger back and forth across the seam until she was wiggling, just dying for him to do something. Teasingly, he dipped his finger tips inside to find she wasn’t wearing any panties, only to remove them just as quickly.

But when they were interrupted by the sound of a camper laughing about something in the distance, they knew they were in some trouble.

“Gotta be quiet for me, ok? Can you do that?”

“Yes,” she answered through a heavy breath.

“Good girl, keep being good for me,” he encouraged.

His hand dipped back down underneath the waistband of her pants, and he used his leverage on her body to roll her onto her back. With one hand at work, the other arm was supporting his body against the bumpy ground beneath them. From that angle she felt so seen, even though it was dark out. There was no hiding from his prying eyes, not that she felt like she had to anymore anyway.

His fingers got to work, much in the same way they had been working the past several days. He knew what she liked most at this point, and he used that to his advantage. He knew the speed to rub her clit and how to reach her g-spot. He knew when to take a little break and when to go faster. And he knew just how to take her to the edge and then bring her back down again.

“Open your eyes for me, love” he whispered.

She followed his request and found him staring right back at her. His usually bright green eyes, reminiscent of a bottle of rosemary, were blown out by his pupils and relegated to a small sliver.

“Y’got stars in your eyes,” he told her.

Y/N wasn’t sure what that meant, but it felt sweet.

“You know, I don’t think I ever need to go stargazing with you again,” he said, not stopping his ministrations down below.

“You... you... what? Why n-not?” she stammered out between soft pants.

“Can just look into your eyes instead,” he said with a shrug, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

And Y/N wanted to tease him for that answer, she really did. She wanted to shove him away and make fun of him for how much of a sap he was being. Rub his flimsy metaphor in his face and laugh it off. But she couldn’t. Not when he was hard at work making her feel so good and she could barely get any real words out.

At one point she actually tried to say something, opened her mouth and everything. But she quickly realized that if she said anything at all she was going to scream it and they couldn’t have campers and staff waking up to those kinds of noises, so she closed her mouth again instead.

“Feels good?” he asked.

She nodded her head.

“Too good to speak?”

Another nod.

“Good. Means I’m doing my job right... you feel like letting out some noise?”

“Yes,” she whispered, desperately.

“Well you better muffle yourself with that pillow then because I’m not stopping any time soon,” he reminded her.

And it wasn’t fair, not really. Not when his voice was deep with arousal and his face was so close to hers and his words came out in a way that made her feel like mashed potatoes. Not when she knew he loved to hear her noises because it meant he was doing a good job. Not when he was deliberately teasing her with his fingers, somehow managing to give her too much and not enough at the exact same time. None of it was fair at all.

So to level the playing field, Y/N reached over to Harry’s bare stomach. His muscles were tense and hard and his skin was warm. She let her fingers lightly trail over his butterfly tattoo, tracing the delicate outline. His hand never stopped working, but she heard his breath catch in his throat.

When she pushed his shorts beneath his hips, she found his cock hard and aching. He hissed at the first touch. She grasped the base first appreciating his girth. And although she had seen his dick several times over the last few days, they were always in a rush so she never really got to appreciate it. She knew it was big, and pretty, but touching it under the sleeping bag where she couldn’t see it gave her a whole new appreciation.

Using only her hand, Y/N stroked him up and down, giving attention to his tip and playing with his balls. She let her palm dance over the head as he started leaking precum, and heard his gasps as she continued to play with him. His jaw was clenched and he was practically growling in her ear, his forearm so tense the veins were popping out as he thrust his fingers inside of her.

“Babe,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m...fuck I’m gonna cum.”

“Not yet... me first then... fuck... then I’ll swallow so we don’t a m-mess.”

Harry groaned in response before adjusting his hand so the heel of his palm rubbed on her clit as his fingers worked inside of her. She could feel herself clenching around him, the knot in her stomach getting tighter, her eyes squeezing closed. He was good at what he was doing - really good.

Her grip on him loosened before she warned him, “I’m close... Harry...”

“Come on baby, let go. You’re doing such a good job... almost there...” he encouraged her.

He had been whispering in her ear, but when he stopped and bit down on her earlobe, that’s when she lost it. Her entire body went stiff as her muscles clenched, there was white behind her eyes, and her mouth flew open though she was able to keep any sound from coming out. She could hardly even breath.

His movements worked her through her high until she was too sensitive and started wiggling her hips away from him.

“Was so good Harry.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah... now let’s take care of you.”

She sat up on her knees, the unzipped sleeping bag still around her shoulders like a cape to keep her warm. Finding her place between his legs, Y/N leaned down and took him into her mouth. She used her tongue to circle around the head, swiping over the slit just to feel his thighs tighten beneath her grasp. She took him as deep as she could, his tip hitting the back of her throat making Harry groan in response.

She could tell he was close. Bobbing her head up and down, she used one hand to stroke the part of his cock she couldn’t reach with her mouth and the other to play with his balls. He started making little noises above her, clearly trying to keep himself quiet but struggling.

He gave her a short warning before he finished, but she wasn’t prepared for how much cum there would be. It shot down the back of her throat in ropes as she continued to milk him for all he was worth.

When he was done and the last little dribbles had landed on her tongue, she took a second to appreciate the taste in her mouth. And maybe all the other guys she had been with ate really badly or maybe her brain was playing tricks on her because she liked Harry so much, but she could swear that it actually tasted good for once.

When she told him as much, his smile reappeared on his exhausted face.

“Good, glad you like it. You’ll be getting a lot more of it, if I have anything to say about it.”

She giggled at that before adjusting the open sleeping bag like a blanket over herself and resting her head on Harry’s chest. Her hand rested on his stomach, and his lay on her shoulder and in her hair, keeping her close. They were in old sleeping bags, in a tattered tent, on cold hard ground, but Y/N could swear she never slept so well in her life.

MASTERLIST | PATREON | UNDER SUMMER SKIES | USS TAG | WRITING TAG

#uss #writing #yo

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theblueskyphoenix · 1 year

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Hi and welcome to a huge backlog of sketches and concept art I’ve have on the computer for awhile that I decided to finally post in one big sketch dump.

So I have fun little thing known as Court of the King where each of the protagonists get to interact with each other through magic reasons. In this said thing, most of the protagonists have grown up and some even have families. With all this in mind, let’s get on with explaining Fusion King Judai.

Judai at this point in his life has been able to move on from what happened during the events of GX. Took a bit of soul searching and therapy but he’s a lot happier now and is content with himself. So much so, he’s now actually teaching others how to duel at his own little set up known as the Duel Lodge. A place for others like him that are Duel Spirit sensitive or are kind of out casts. All are welcome at his humble abode.

Another thing he has worked out is his relationship with Yubel. The two are pretty chill with each other and are a pretty good team now. Yubel can even shift forms now at will. Comes in handy with not scaring people off, and blending in better. Bottom line, Yubel is more chill now and only really starts to get unhinged if you try to harm Judai or his family.

Speaking of, another thing Judai has got going for him is his family. After his long journey of soul searching, Judai returned to reunite with his friends to mend some fences... and with Asuka in particular, rekindle a relationship. Which eventually bloomed into a proper romance to eventually marrying her. Leading to them have their two sons, Kichiro Yuki and Raiden Yuki.

As far as Judai is concerned, his life going pretty good for him. He went through a lot but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

And that’s basically all there is to it for Fusion King. Now as for what we see here.

Concept art for his final draft and initial draft as Fusion King. First try I wasn’t too pleased with. Felt it wasn’t really flowing all the well design wise. So tried again and well, much happier with him having a longer coat. A nice blend of Supreme King and his old school jacket. Really wanted to show how he basically came to terms with everything.

Supreme King slight redesign. Nothing major just minor tweaks. Mainly changing the helmet design and re-arranging some of the spikes. Judai can actually take this form if he wishes but it’s rare that he does.

Asuka concept art. Blend of her look from ARC-V and her GX design. She’s a teacher at the academy so gotta look the part.

We got the Yuki boys, Kichiro and Raiden. Both are adorable and precious. Kichiro has his dad’s old jacket and wears it proudly. Raiden isn’t really looking to duel, he’s more into soccer so hence the soccer get up. He’s still a good boy.

Spooky, who is Kichiro’s Duel Spirit companion. He’s a spooky moth kuribo and he wants candy!

Yubel’s different forms. As stated above Yubel has chilled out so it has allowed some new abilities to come through. Especially for not scaring the boys. (Which Yubel is uber protect of.)

Judai, Yubel and Pharaoh while they were still traveling. (Back before I redesigned Judai so we have the old design of Fusion King.)

Johan, Cho and Hayato as adults. Johan also did some traveling like Judai but has since settled down and is a pro-duelist. (He has a family of his own to tend too.) Cho and Hayato both work for Industrial Illusion. Cho making model kits of monsters and Hayato being a lead artist of duel monster cards.

Line of the Yuki family all together, ages and heights included.

And to close out, a sweet little doodle of Judai holding a baby Kichiro.

And that’s it. =D Hope you all enjoy.

Now I need to work on my other info dumps for this Court of the Kings thing.

Stay tuned.

#Court of the Kings #Fusion King #Judai Yuki #Asuka Tenjoin #Fiance Shipping #Kichiro Yuki #Raiden Yuki #Yubel #Supreme King #Johan Andersen #Cho Marufuji #Hayato Maeda #Yu-Gi-Oh GX #Yu-Gi-Oh!#YGO GX

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blackthorn-legion-irl · 8 months

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ongoing arc thing: Mall Santas Save The World aka Holiday Semi-Hiatus (plural server post link) (some day i will actually improve this post) (i have it in drafts even)

mod info:

age 27 / she/her pronouns / autism/adhd/anxiety And More™

RP blogs followed from this account

non-RP blogs followed from @demifiendcruithne

jack frost sideblog: @unidentified-flying-heeho

boundaries: apply to all legion members + sideblogs

if sending IC hate that could be taken as OOC, please put an OOC note saying it's IC

flirting/suggestiveness OK but pre-warning that relationships/other situations won't be happening with other OCs. i allow it because it's Funny (especially if i don't understand it either lol)

magic anons/pelipper mail Encouraged, but i have a firewall IC to block things i don't want to deal with / delay things i currently can't

while i'll generally be low-stakes, i'm happy to participate in higher-stakes things in a support role, just ask :) this will most likely be in hacking skills (or reverse demon summoning for worlds that are ok with that)

Super Temporary Links to the pokeirl plural server post (ooc post) (ic post)

low(-mid?)-stakes RP with an outsider's view of rotomblr. the Legion's world is vaguely based on SMT Devil Survivor 2 mechanically, and historically there was a japanese empire instead of a roman empire so england has more japanese influences, notably using yen (and macca when demons are involved)

the Legion is an ever-shifting group of people moving in and out of one apartment due to capitalism being a heck. Known Residents of the Legion: Human: Blackthorn Legion - she/her, ace/aro - the primary poster, accountholder, the one actually renting the apartment the Legion live in. has a bad habit of revealing that she knows people's history if they're in a game she played. snarky but has a soft spot. slightly a wanted hacker but don't worry about that. yes her surname is Legion she changed it to heck with genji overwatch. her sibling/good twin is Literally madeline celeste (no her last name is not celeste) Simon - he/him, masc-leaning bi - the butt monkey castlevania stan. came up with the legion name. Blackthorn's most tolerable apartmentmate. often the voice of reason except when it comes to wall chicken. has a boring horsesona and is salty about it. TWC - any pronouns - joined as The Wiggles Cultist (<(:0)OOoo>) but changes what the initials stand for pretty often. or basically every post at this point. They Speak In All Capitalised Words Legion Resident - any other human resident.

Non-Human: Aeros - pronouns unknown - air elemental who is generally either trapped in a vacuum cleaner or chasing people (aka simon) around. Aeros' location is unknown after being sent to pokemart manglement and released somewhere Bonk - they/he - a Beldum who true to their name can and will headbonk people as a main form of communication. trained service mon :) Nickit - he/him - a Nickit slightly longer than average, who is white with black accents and green markings on their face. (art source) naive and nods off a lot, can talk to humans, name currently unknown. has gmax meowth/furret/(hisuian?) zorua ancestry (source | longcat trace) Dr. Slushy - he/him - a Jack Frost. he's in the pokeworld now but he may still send messages through here for convenience Ghost - a ghost who's basically hanging out here possessing random people. name and pronouns vary based on host body

Associates: free to ask about, may not appear much Angy - weird stripey floating dude who gave Blackthorn the base for the MVSP. knows Something about world administration. Pixie of Amala - the Uberpixie who helped Demi-fiend (aka Sir Not Currently Appearing In This Universe He's Just Vibing)

any posts without a --blackthorn or whoever don't have who posted them defined; either it doesn't matter or i forgor. assume blackthorn but may get retconned any brackets like (simon: something) are a cut-in from someone else. ooc is marked with // or ooc: or both

The MVRS.py: stands for 'MultiVersal Reverse Summoning', pronounced 'movers'. Blackthorn's method of accessing rotumblr, which she's hacked to Try and send items through. it isn't the most reliable - anything she sends with it may get... altered at receiver's will. it's a py file because python my beloved

IC: Blackthorn and Simon

//drawn by @yewwantstobattle <;3 /platonic

Blackthorn Legion - 27 - she/her (gender sucks. i just use what i'm used to) - autism/adhd/fibromyalgia - ace/aro - picrews

i live in an apartment with like 20-30 other people. any stupid comments it's probably them. or the demon internet cafe i've basically set up at this point my place is basically just. for people to come get back on their feet. why is capitalism making /me/ the best option.

if you're reading this i probably freaked you out by knowing something i 'shouldn't'. see, my universe turned a bunch of events from other worlds into games and other media, so i know more history of your world than i do mine. so that's fun

yes my surname is legally* legion. yes i changed it to heck with someone *in the sense that it's what the authorities/most wanted list etc. know me by. birth identity doesn't exist any more and civilian identity is under the radar

---

Simon. bi (masc-leaning) he/him. too old to have a boring horsesona are you kidding me--- picrews i guess.

okay it's basically out at this point - hecker - YES i used to have a crush on blackthorn that is Not why i am here we are still friends and honestly i prefer guys these days anyway.

i somehow get the feeling that angy is trolling me. doesn't he have anything better to do?

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glitchyred · 1 year

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Hi so Baby Hotline (aka the Bad Egg/PokeSpe Horror fic for those who have been following me longer) has gotten a lot more attention/praise than I was expecting LMFAO but people are starting to ask how the Bad Egg works. I did have a lore dump about it in the rough draft (it was written in the format of an email a researcher was writing) but ultimately scrapped it because it felt too clunky and I also realized that even if I offhandedly mentioned Gold surviving people still might not think he would've like recovered, so I decided to stick with Silver's POV through the ending

HOWEVER since people are interested here's a giant infodump about some of the lore I came up with, warning it will be long and also include gross alien anatomy/parasite stuff as well as descriptions of dead animals (pokemon), and of course massive warning for Horror. Viewer discretion advised and all that

So the first question on a lot people's minds is probably "where did they come from", which uhh. Doesn't really have an answer! Silver's assessment of the situation, "someone somewhere is fucking with something" is about as clear as it gets. These things are being created because something is going horribly wrong and the universe might be collapsing a little tiny bit. The Bad Eggs are hardly the only sign of this that exists (if I write sequels you'll see what I mean) but they are the most immediately alarming because they 1. Are very good at killing things and 2. Reproduce quickly. Who exactly is causing their appearance is a story for another day (aka I haven't gotten there yet LMAO)

... okay, so fair warning in advance, you will really need suspension of disbelief on this one. It's hard making glitch Pokémon "make sense" when glitches are pretty much just code not being able to make sense of itself. Additionally this will probably be pretty "why you shouldn't explain The Horrors"-y but I think the implications of this thing are terrifying enough on their own for it to be okay to ruin the reader's imagination a bit. It's all optional info anyways

Initially, as mentioned in the fic, these seemed to only affect wild egg-laying Pokémon, and began to randomly pop up throughout Japan, with the most condensed populations in Hoenn and Kanto. Bird-like Pokémon in these areas were seemingly dropping like flies and locals would report living specimens acting strangely, like they were disoriented or hallucinating. Dead ones would be found with wounds littering their legs and undersides with a majority of their blood drained.

It took researchers a while to figure out what was happening here, for a variety of reasons. Mainly, nobody really thought to check if the eggs Themselves were you know. Blood-sucking parasites because who would think that initially. They just seemed like duds, and researchers were chalking everything up to some other form of undiscovered parasite that they couldn't find any evidence of. It wasn't until someone (with alarming difficulty) managed to cut one of the "dud" eggs in half (after noticing they couldnt be cracked), revealing the whole thing to be a living organism with a stomach where the baby should be, that scientists went "Oh. Oh no."

While scientists were figuring that out, they figured they had no reason to worry about this happening to capitve-bred Eggs. "Eggs" (capital E) aren't the same thing as "eggs". While there's a lot of scientific theories about them, the best explanation anyone has for how they actually work is Johto myths about them being literal gifts from gods delivered by Celebi which is. Amusingly enough probably accurate, because it's Pokémon. So when Elm's colleague found an unhatchable Egg and one of the people working with it fell ill after staying with it a few days, nobody had any reason to assume it was much more than a coincidence. And then the events of Baby Hotline happened.

As for how these things work, their anatomy is very . Alien JDJQJDJ

They're very, very overly literal versions of the term "brood parasite" (a bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds species, leaving them to feed its chick(s)). They pretend to be eggs (or Eggs) to feed on a host's blood so they can reproduce. For the first day or so a Bad Egg is in a nest, it puts out a pheromone that makes it incredibly appealing to nearby Pokémon. This usually makes the mother of the brood pay special attention to it, but can also cause egg-eating Pokémon to fall victim to its bullshit. Once the egg has chosen a host and fed for the first time, it shifts gears into the opposite - it willingly repulses other Pokémon away, preventing anything else from attempting to harm its now-vulnerable host. (This doesn't work out great for Eggy because a Trainer's Pokémon tend to you know. Defend them from things they find threatening)

Bad Eggs are capable of breaking and manipulating their own shell, which is significantly thicker than an actual Egg's. Using Struggle, their only move, they can slice small wounds into their host's skin. On and under the surface of their shells is a thin layer of toxin they basically inject into their host's body during this process - on the surface, its pretty much Just an anticoagulant with some muscle relaxing properties, making feeding easier and keeping the host complacent, and it's even fairly mild. However, it stays in the host's body for a good while, meaning repeated feedings inject more and more of this stuff in them, eventually resulting in more side effects - excessive fatigue, headaches, nausea, and eventually delirium and hallucinations. Victims usually don't actually die from blood loss alone, but from the compounded effects of the venom along with eventual dehydration/starvation.

Once the shell is fully broken, it reveals what's functionally its "mouth" - it looks exactly like the shell and takes up the whole "body", but instead of hard and smooth, it's soft and absorbent. Underneath that layer is the egg's very gross alien anatomy; to skim over that, it's got some very primitive vocal chords it uses to (somewhat poorly) imitate the sounds of a baby bird, and some muscles for rocking itself more effectively. All three of those layers are extremely difficult to cause physically damage to and heal quickly if any harm is successfully enacted. The rest of its body from there is just Stomach. It feeds as much as it can until it's host dies, so it's stomach can actually expand if necessary (hence it endlessly getting heavier). It can regrow the shell at any time to maintain appearances, but usually stops doing this by the time the host is too far gone to care.

Fortunately for their victims, if the host at any point gets dragged away from the Egg for extended periods of time, the Egg is basically powerless and the host can usually recover. Physically, anyway, because they're probably Super traumatized after that experience.

I've mentioned a few times that these things reproduce. The problem is that nobody knows how this happens, given nobody has seen actual evidence of it happening, just that it Does. Shortly after the host dies or leaves, the Egg goes dormant for about half an hour before suddenly returning to the state it was in before it ever had a host. It's stomach empties completely, and about a week later, with little more warning, there's more reports of Bad Eggs and dead birds - and given that when Elm returns to confiscate and dispose of Eggy it seems like the reproduction process already occurred, there's... probably going to be some dead Humans in the not-too-far future , too.

And thats about it on the Bad Egg lore like comment and subscribe happy November 1st I'm focusing on other things nowJDJQJSJWJJE

#putting this on this blog for Horror even though i advetised the fic on main lmao #btw while you cant relaly stab them or anything they are susceptible to Burning to theyre usually disposed of by being burned alive #unauthorized fucking thing blow it up NOW #txt #horror tw #gore tw #blood tw #parasite tw #dead animal tw #fuck it eggy gets a tag on the pokepasga blog #bad egg

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skylermadness · 6 months

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Something To Be Proud Of (Ragh Barkrock TF/PMC)

(Original Date of Upload: May 4, 2022)

Original Description:

A work written in collaboration with two friends of mine. This TF also comes with a sequence drawn by ArticulatedArtisan. He also drew the art that is used as the picture in the cover. The sequence can be viewed here: DeviantArt / FurAffinity Another Dimension 20 TF, and one that has been a few months in the making. Ragh is a really great guy and honestly needed TF into him- so we're here to provide! Admittedly I dealt more with the drafting, so all of this is written by my friend as they handled editing. I've never really done a second-person POV TF before, but I feel like I could go all in and try writing one myself some day. It'll just take some work- I'm also really happy as to how Artisan's sequence came out. It is so good! Just about everything about it feels perfect. Overall, I'm glad that he was a part of this!

You drew in a deep breath, steeling yourself, and pushed open the door.

It didn’t stop the wave of high school sport odor from assaulting your nose with enough force to make the tacklers jealous, but you managed to keep from gagging. You really wished you were used to this already, being the team’s waterboy and all.

Waterboy, Coach’s assistant, whatever- all it meant was that you had to suffer all the drawbacks, like staying after school for practice and having to deal with the gunk and smell of the football team locker room, and none of the benefits- such as, well, being on the team. The coach just put you to work, setting up the equipment for practice, getting fresh towels and water to be ready on hand, and just about anything else Coach or the players needed, but were apparently too wrapped up to handle themselves.

To Coach’s credit, you didn’t think it was necessarily intentional on his part to put you through all this suffering with no perceived payoff. Back when you first approached him in his office near the beginning of the year, you had wanted to ask about joining the football team yourself. You’d long looked upon these cool, hot jocks around school, joking and jostling each other around, and wanted to play with them, or have an excuse to hang out with them at the very least- maybe you could even be one of the Boys someday, if you did.

But Coach had taken one look at you, with your scrawny, somewhat shorter than average form, and completely misinterpreted your approach as you volunteering for the assistant duties. And here you were now, having never moved from the position, because you never had the gut to correct him.

It wasn’t great- but it could have been worse, surely. You probably wouldn’t have been actually good on the team, anyway.

You did try your best to make the most of it, though. Being often in relatively close proximity with the jocks and players on the team, and using it as an excuse to talk to them or hang out, was sort of what you had been after the whole time- so you took the opportunities to say hi, and talk to them on occasion longer than a question or two relating to what mess you had to take care of next. Your assistant work more often than not actually cut you off from being able to stay talking for long and kept you busy, regrettably. Even when you did find the time to hang out for a little while, your heart sank, as the Boys were certainly friendly to you- but you never felt it reached the point where you felt you could call it you being friends.

The raucous sounds of laughter and football practice and buddies and bros being bros in the distance cut quiet in an instant as the door leading back outside swung closed behind you, and you stepped further in.

You were out on a mission, once again: one of the players, a tall, dark haired one that you wanted to talk with for longer, had forgotten his playing gloves somewhere, presumably left back in the locker room. Coach wouldn’t allow him to let up his reps to go grab them, so he needed to ask you- and did sound apologetic, very clearly aware that it was something he could go do himself. It didn’t force down the light disappointment of being cut off from talking to and getting to know one of the Boys better for longer, but you did appreciate the sentiment.

You made to breathe in and retched a little, very quickly wishing you had not let out that breath of fresh-ish outside air so carelessly. Sure, the Boys were generally nice to you and plenty of fun to hang around when you got the chance to, but you couldn’t say you were a fan of their… low-standard sanitary practices. Loose football gear left strewn about the room, over the benches and on the floor. Shoes and socks that anyone could recognize came from an extremely active high school athlete left out on the floor as well, their ripe odors wafting throughout the stale locker room air. Empty bottles of awful 3-in-1 shampoo littered around the showers, collecting near the shower drains, having long since been used or touched.

Your stomach roiled again at the smell. At least you had somehow convinced them to put their dirty laundry away in the communal bin on their own.

You hurried around the locker room, eager to find the gloves and escape back into fresh air as soon as you could. It was taking longer than you were hoping for, there was so much gear left sitting around to sift through- where were all the gloves? Half the players out there weren’t even in full gear, surely there’d be at least a few unused pairs that the Boy in need could at least borrow for the day…

Frustration was beginning to set in. The smell was probably starting to get to you. You were considering calling it quits and apologizing to the Boy back outside for it, when you spotted them- a pair of gloves, haphazardly tossed onto the end of one of the benches. You hastily snatched them up and turned to hurry back out, having had enough of the locker room stink for now.

Your eyes fell on your prize as you walked quickly, relief suddenly giving way to curiosity as you peered a little more closely at them. These gloves were a hardy brown, made of tough, thick cloth with the sleeves extending past where the wrists would usually end, instead running further up along the forearm than typically. The gloves were HUGE, too- you usually weren’t paying attention to the size of most players’ hands, but you could swear it felt like these gloves in particular could fit three of your own hands inside just one of them, and have space left over to spare. Over the palms and where the knuckleheads would be, were layers upon thick layers of wrappings- having likely once been white, but by now have long since faded and worn out to gray from frequent, rough use.

Were these… really the gloves that player was talking about? You really couldn’t find any other gloves in the entire locker room, so they had to have been if the Boy was sure he left them in there. But then again- these didn’t look like football gloves in the slightest, and didn’t even have the team’s colors. They almost looked like they were instead gloves for shoving, pummeling, or crushing opponents in melee combat.

Your vision swam as you blinked away from the sudden thought, feeling a bit dizzy. You were close to further questioning where the thought came from, before you toppled into something and tripped, landing embarrassingly splayed on the ground. Gathering yourself up and looking around to survey the damages, you groaned. Your worst fears had come back to haunt you- you had knocked into the community laundry bin hard enough to leave dirty, smelly athletic clothes strewn all over the floor in front of you.

And it was your job to pick it all up.

You were reminded of the great pains you had taken to avoid having to handle the laundry by the intense, pungent odor wafting up from the scattered pile. You quickly swallowed the bile in your throat before it could rise any further, and grimaced.

There was no way in hell you were touching any of it with your bare hands.

Scooting backward, you clenched a hand and felt rough fabric brush against it. You almost ripped your hand away in the fear that you had already touched something from this awful mess, before you realized it was just the pair of huge gloves you had come in for.

Glancing down at the gloves, an idea came to mind- one that you immediately felt guilty for thinking of. You could use the Boy’s gloves to pick up all the laundry, that was an option… but then again, you wouldn’t wish this smell on anyone- especially something the player would be wearing as soon as it was returned. The odor would be sure to linger on the gloves, and you weren’t keen on giving him a reason to dislike you.

Although, since the smell came from the laundry bin, which in turn came from the players themselves, maybe they wouldn’t notice if you used these gloves for this, just for a little while…? Nodding slowly, having successfully convinced yourself, you stood up and reached for the gloves.

This act of handling player gear wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary for you- but something about holding them with the intent to wear them had you shivering a little. Not to be weird about it- but just before you put them on, you felt a sudden sense of… proximity? Like wearing these gloves brought you and the football players closer together, somehow.

And in a sense, it was, you laughed to yourself as you slipped the gloves on. This really was the first and probably only chance you’d ever get of seeing what being a jock would feel like.

You felt a bit silly for being surprised when the gloves didn’t fit, once you had them on. Your hands were pretty average in size, while the tough-fabric gloves were big enough to completely dwarf your hands when you wore them. Your fingers weren’t long enough for the tips to reach the end of the gloves, and the palms were too broad for your hands to really fit your fingers into each respective holes- you ended up constantly bunching up the palms of the gloves in your hands to really get a real grip in order to hold anything with them.

You withheld a sigh. The huge gloves were a bit annoying and uncomfortable to use, but they’d get the job done.

You crouched down to get to work picking up the dirty laundry- and were almost immediately assaulted by that disgusting odor again. Athlete sweat and untreated B.O. mixed together in one atrocious concoction of stench, having left to fester in the laundry bin all week. You swore under your breath at the unrelenting attacks on your nose- but you steeled your resolve, and proceeded with picking up the clothing and putting them back in the bin.

As you’d anticipated, the gloves felt awkward and cumbersome, the most efficient method of picking up the laundry really just consisting of you smashing your gloved hands together around a clump of clothes like the world’s worst sandwich, and depositing it into the now upright bin. You found your frustration dissipating, however, after a moment or two of picking up the mess- the need to constantly hold onto the gloves felt less and less, and you found yourself letting go of the bunches you had been gripping and letting them hang on your hands loosely. It only clicked when you tried smashing another clump of clothes between two gloved closed fists, and paused for an embarrasing three seconds, dumbfounded by the sensation of the motion, and why exactly it felt weird. You had the hang of these gloves now. Your face heated up a little, feeling a bit silly that you’d been picking up the clothes so strangely when you could have just picked them up and grabbed them with your gloved hands normally. The gloves didn’t feel like masses of rough cloth covering your hands, they just felt like gloves- why had you been so weird about it?

Despite the worn gloves starting to feel a bit tight on your hands, you shook yourself a little to focus and pick up the pace. Now that that weird mental block keeping you from acting normal had cleared, you started picking up larger piles of laundry to put away, some so big your arms burned and threatened to buckle under the weight. You really weren’t expecting a workout when you came in looking for the gloves, but damn if you weren’t getting one right then and there.

You made to reach for a jockstrap that you thought for a moment was too far away- your arms burned- and you picked it up, without any trouble. You dropped it on top of the newest colossal load you had gathered, carrying and depositing it all into the bin without any noticeable strain on your arms. You stretched your arms high above your head as a quick rest, finding the feeling of stretching your muscles particularly pleasurable in that moment for a reason you could not pin down, and took a sniff. It was getting easier to breathe, the smell feeling less noticeable than before.

But it wasn’t gone, and it was still BAD- you could swear it was actually clouding your vision, what with the tint of green your skin had taken when you looked down at your arms. Yeugh, better get this over with quick.

The short sleeves of your t-shirt were already feeling tight, but that sensation had spread to your neck- and, hell, now that you were thinking of it it was everywhere else, too. It was probably the fatigue setting in, but with every breath you drew in the shirt felt smaller, like you’d put on a size medium you thought you could fit it that day but after the barest physical strain showed exactly how constricting it actually was and how dumb you were for thinking it could fit you.

A surge of power erupted from your solid, heavy core and rushed up to your burgeoning pecs pressing so desperately against your shirt, and you fought the sudden urge to wrestle it off of your body. This was the players’ locker room, not yours, and you didn’t have an extra change of clothes here to fall back on if you tore this shirt.

Another embarrassing five seconds passed before you realized something was wrong with that thought. Since when had you ever been worried about tearing your shirt? You wiped your sweating forehead with a gloved hand, and the sense of rough fabric dragging along your skin gave you pause. You brought your hands to your face to look closely, and saw two gloves fitting perfectly, if a bit tightly, on two massive, powerful, meaty mitts in the shape of hands.

It took you a moment to realize, but these were not the hands you had walked into this locker room with.

You looked down at your body, your brain working overtime trying its best to grasp the situation. You felt around your neck with your huge hands, and felt a short, thick, solid trunk of muscle there, which matched your deeper sounding breathing, you realized. Your scrawny chest and torso were expanding as you watched, the pecs and musculature growing and filling out first, before fat filled in after, greatly softening your pecs and pushing your stomach out into a solid, firm gut. You gave it the smallest of pokes, just to tell if it was real, and your shirt jumped at the chance to survive a moment longer by riding it up, letting your gut touch the open air. The sensations were there, of course, it was there and real and huge- and the skin was the same green as your thick, powerful arms, and deepening in hue by the second. You almost fell over, when your new gut shifted your center of gravity, but you managed to catch yourself and widen your stance accordingly. The things that felt right for your new body felt… really different from what you were used to. But… it was still your body, right?

You bent down over the remaining laundry, getting back to work- something that you didn’t have to think too hard about, and that was something you needed. Your poor brain felt sluggish, too tired to really understand the changes as they continued. You picked up more dirty clothes, now almost completely oblivious to the lingering smell that you vaguely remembered was still there. You distantly registered the sound of your shirt finally tearing from the strain, and the itch of chest hair pushing out in a smattering across your chest and down your gut. Just a few more rounds, you were sure you’d be finished… with the laundry. Finished with the laundry.

The lump in your throat grew larger, and your ragged breaths sounded even deeper- even gutteral, a little. Something about your face was tingling, changing, as the changes rose even further up your body. Your head split into a headache from how fast you wanted it to go, you didn’t want to be left behind with everything happening so much. You realized all of a sudden that your face was wrong and out of place it was hurting your brain because of it- then your skull shifted, the bone thickening and squaring off into something tough and not really human, but your lower jaw pushed forward and locked into place and everything felt right again. It felt good, and it really felt good too when two of your lower teeth grew longer and sharper, into the proud tusks of a young adult half-orc poking out of your mouth.

The ground grew further away from you as your brain struggled to work things out. Some things were starting to make more sense, and some things were making less and less sense to you- so much so that it hurt to try to think of them now with everything else happening. Instead of trying to think about why it was all happening and why it was- or wasn’t- possible, you focused instead on your legs, as they were up next. They grew longer and thicker, powerful logs of mass you’d forged yourself from pouring countless hours on the Bloodrush field, to be able to carry the mountain of mass and meat you were wherever you needed to go. Even despite the splitting pain cracking your head, you couldn’t help the surge of pride or keep yourself from grinning like an idiot at the thought.

Your shorts were barely holding together, looking so small and much shorter on your legs than before, but why? Gears chugged along in your brain and it made the connection- right, your legs were growing, weren’t they? A bit dizzliy, your brain kept flip-flopping between watching the changes in excitement and accepting your new normal. You felt a thrill heave in your throat at feeling your now-tiny shorts ride up your legs and the seat of your pants filling out and pushing up against the shorts, like a bike tire you’d pumped too quickly and was about to pop. Everything was different, but you weren’t scared.

Why would you be scared? These changes were amazing.

Why would you be scared? This was just your body, nothing new- but still fuckin’ great.

You heaved another mountain of dirty clothes into the bin, and clapped your huge gloved hands together once, eyeing the remaining stragglers. One more round.

Each step you take feels like pounding, stomping on the floor without meaning to. Your footsteps sound heavy, and your feet feel way too tight to feel good. Like you put on the wrong size shoes, these ones way too small… which would be something your dumb fuckin’ ass would mix up, wouldn’t it? Putting on the wrong shoes and not realizing through the whole school day… your powerful lungs let out a gusty disappointed sigh. Typical.

Your tiny, wrong shoes seemed to think so, too- and with a shrrrrp of cloth, your heavy green feet finally had space to breathe. You tried to kick as much of it off your feet as you can, and turn back to the laundry- y’know, channeling your shit into something productive instead of wasting time being fucking useless.

Your stomach turned as you bent down to scoop the rest up. It’s… hard not to feel like that, like an idiot who could never get your act together. Struggling in school, making all these dumb decisions, always blowing your top and letting your rage get the better of you… it’s no wonder you could never make the… make the team…

You stood back up, and the surge of something throughout your body followed by the loud SHRRRRPing of shirt and shorts got you out of your head. You tripped backwards into the line of lockers behind you in surprise, distantly feeling the dented metal under your arms. Your brain registered the tight pressure disappear and what was left of your clothes hanging off your powerful frame, and finally began to catch up with your body.

You started to realize and finally understand, just so much has changed about you- and while it’s hard to put them together, all the pieces were there.

The reason you were wobbling and feeling so unsteady on your feet was because your center of gravity was different from what you were used to. The reason you dented the lockers this badly from punching and elbowing them when you tripped was because you didn’t know your own strength- literally. The reason why your clothes fucking hurt so much and were too fucking small wasn’t because you wore small clothes and put on tiny shoes this morning like a dumbass- because you’re not dumb, yeah you know you’re not smart like the wizards or artificers or whatever, but you’re not dumb- it’s because your body is different! You put on smaller clothes that morning because you were smaller!

Your thick brow furrowed and your face scrunched up as you mulled it over, as you became more and more sure in yourself. You rubbed your chin with a gloved hand, feeling the coarse stubble smattered across your chin, while you were lost in thought- unflinching despite the rank odor clinging to the gloves after handling dirty sports laundry for like, gotta be more than ten rounds by now. Honestly, you were losing track.

"Wait- shit, I need to get changed." You blurted out the thought as it bubbled up in your mind, without bothering to think about it first- like the gap between your thoughts and your tusked mouth was getting smaller.

As soon as that clicked, you felt fabric rustling and moving as it stretched to wrap around your much larger body, covering everything up. The bulging and straining shorts grew down your legs and darkened to blue and hardened into weathered denim, not without its scuffs and tears but still a good, solid pair of jeans. Finally the right size and not feeling like your legs were being choked out, a belt slithered around your waist to complete the look.

Your socks and shoes repaired themselves too- the fabric of your socks worn and holey, standing no chance against your massive orc feet, and your shoes concealing the rest of it from view, cutting off the stench suddenly wafting up from them, too.

You involuntarily wrinkled your nose, but it honestly didn't smell that bad. Not really any of this did, anymore.

Your shoes finished off with a splash of red that quickly weathered and darkened from wear- whatever Mending spell was fixing your clothes didn't seem to be able to fix that part of it, turned out. But you didn’t mind, you began to smirk a little as you waggled your now warm feet in a good 17 and a half size pair of sneakers. A perfect fit, for the pair of stompers you’re packin’.

But the main event was just getting started- you rolled your broad shoulders and thick, muscled neck in anticipation. You could feel it, your brain following the patterns as it sensed the scraps that used to be your shirt shiftin' around, and making the connections. Your shirt was next.

The cloth rushed around your body, turning stiff and thick as it repaired itself into a shirt sized much, much larger than the size medium tee you had on that morning. The sleeves stretched long and smoothed out into soft white that felt good on your bare arms underneath, topping off with striped cuffs hugging your wrists and sneaking inside the sleeves of your gloves. You couldn't help the smirk of satisfaction cross your face as you flexed, feeling even these large sleeves strain to contain the solid blocks of jockish muscle and mass your arms had pumped out.

Your eyes followed the middle of your shirt split as buttons popped out into view, suddenly becoming the things holding your shirt together over your bulky chest and gut. The shirt neck pushed up further over your skin- well, more jacket neck than shirt, really. And that meant it made sense that the soft, striped thing around your neck was probably a collar, jackets had those.

A rich red color washed over the rest of your jacket, over your torso, filling out between the white stripes on your wrists and collar. A bright red that your heart leapt in pride for, even though you didn't recognize it yet- or at least, your head didn't. Your body processing things and acting on them faster than your brain could was becoming a habit, at this point.

But even at its snail's pace, it was still chugging along- and the pieces were coming together into something that had you excited. With a duly stretched out tank top appearing just underneath, you were wearing a letterman jacket- just like the kind the jocks wore. Laying a hand on your letterman and feeling the hard, solid mass bulging underneath, it wasn't hard to put two and two… er, maybe one and one together, and realize- you'd fit right in with the team, and maybe Coach would finally take you seriously about wanting to make the Bloodrush team. A brown letter "A" stitched itself onto your letterman's breast, like the jacket itself was in full support.

You didn't think that the team you wanted to join started with an A- or your school, either- but you brain managed to squeeze out the name "Aguefort", and your body relaxed, as if that explained everything. Your chest swelled up again, almost overwhelmed with the pride and team spirit just thinking that name filled you with.

You squeezed your eyes shut and shook your head. Augh, gods, you really needed to let your brain catch up again. The idea that your tiny fit had just changed into something larger and tougher and more comfortable, was fucking with your mind. Like, you never had the smarts to really get into casting classes, but this wasn't even something you had thought someone could do with magic. Man, maybe you should try taking a spellcasting class or something, see if you could pick anything up before the school year ended- that is, if magic was… real… wait, that didn't sound right…

You let out a deep, involuntary grunt as a headache pounded through your skull, just behind your eyes, and threatened to knock you off balance. You managed to steady yourself in time, quickly grabbing onto things for support, and your gaze fell onto your gloved hand.

Once stable, you brought a massive mitt of a hand in front of your face. You snapped it shut into a huge, meaty fist, feeling the powerful grip in your long, thick fingers, and the tough material wrapped around it tight, and then relaxed your hand. The gloves fit perfectly. Everything fit perfectly.

Everything fit perfectly on your body- holy shit, this was your body now, wasn't it? Your head jerked around, trying to get the best view of the huge orcish form you had found yourself in as you could. No way the Boys on the team wouldn't be jealous as FUCK of your sick gains. And damn, didn't you agree. There was this Pride pushing up in your chest, too- like you deserved a bod with this power and magnitude. Like after all the hard work you put into getting here, training and working out and putting on mass like crazy, there was no way you were going to get a body different from the one you wanted- this one.

But even as proud of yourself you were, and how pumped and ready to RUMBLE you knew this body was, it…

Your spirits fell. It still didn't feel like you were one of them. One of the Boys, the Jocks, even with your new varsity jacket, or your huge, jockish body. You weren't part of the team, you were just the… the, uh… well, you just worked there. Picking up nasty laundry. And there was a sinking feeling, that a part of you knew to be true, that told you that's the way it'd always be, wouldn't it.

You looked over to the stuffed laundry bin, having finished picking everything up, but you couldn't bring yourself to feel happy about it. You sat down on the bench with a gusty sigh, and looked down at your open hands again, huge and strong enough to crush rocks.

All that potential, gone to waste from not being put to use on the team, just felt so crushing.

You'd be fuckin' great at it, too, you were sure.

Your fists tighten, open palms snapped shut into that powerful grip. YEAH you'd be fuckin' great at it, you could probably take every game home by yourself if you had to, even without the rest of the team you'd be playing with backing you up! What was Coach thinking, not letting what had the potential be a star Bloodrush player onto the team? Was he out of his MIND?

You were onto something, it hit you. You stood up from the bench, creaking in relief as your weight lifted off of it, and you began to pace back and forth to give your brain the time it needed to catch up, almost knocking over the laundry bin again. Why wouldn't Coach just let you join? Your face twisted as frustration and borderline rage bubbled up, trying to push past the ache in your head and think a complete sentence for once. Fuck, this train of thought hurt so much it was almost worse than biting glass on accident again.

In an instant, your head snapped to attention and your eyes darted around the room, suddenly remembering the danger at hand. Glass could be anywhere, and you wouldn't even know if you were about to bite some- it was literally invisible! Your gloved mitt of a hand clapped over your mouth just to be safe, your orcish nose having almost fully tuned out the musky laundry smell the gloves still carried.

Your eyes landed on the locker room mirror. That had glass in it- at least, uh, you were pretty sure it did- but it was stuck to the wall, so it was probably fine. Mirror glass was probably different from regular glass, anyway, since it wasn't invisible.

You nodded to yourself, relaxing and feeling safer, when your eyes caught on your own reflection next.

You slowly stepped over to the mirror, the tension of danger all but forgotten as you took in the half-orc standing there, facing you. Now that it was allowed to work on its own time, your brain was finally starting to catch up with your earlier thoughts- just in time for the final changes to make their way up your face.

You wanted more than anything to join the team, and were probably one of the students at the Adventuring Academy most equipped to be really, REALLY good at it.

You lowered your gloved hand away from your mouth to reveal it growing, bulking even further, squaring off into a strong, masculine jaw, skin as green as the field turf, with two thick, orcish tusks jutting up proudly from your lower jaw.

Coach would be crazy to not let someone join the team if he thought they could help them win and play better, and Coach wasn't that crazy. Evil alignment didn't mean crazy, obviously.

Your eyes clouded over and the colors went inverse as your vision adjusted to naturally see in darkness better, white piercing pupils in pits of black sclera. Your nose and ears grew in turn, ears a bit longer and tapering off into points, and nose wider to fit your orcish face better.

But even though Coach was Evil- better than the last coach, anyway, Pit Fiend evil didn't turn your stomach as much as abusive homophobic evil did- he wouldn't force someone into playing for the team if they didn't want to. He was nice like that, you knew.

And then your hair, from the roots up was darkening to a deep, dark green, so dark it was almost black. It swept back into a wilder, slightly unkempt hairstyle over thicker looking side fades, like you'd let it grow out a little after a while without a haircut.

That meant Coach must not have known how much you wanted to play, even though it was obvious how good you'd be for the team. But why, then? How the hell could he not know? Something wasn't adding up, you realized.

You took in the tough, proud face of the half orc reflecting back at you in the mirror. It was solid and imposing, but there was a softness to your expression, too- like it was getting more comfortable in wearing things that weren't a scowl or a snarl contorted in rage. The muscles and fat set in your massive jaw rolled at the even the smallest movement, and the whole jaw was sent shifting from the tiny clenches you made with your mouth as you thought. It was still hard to believe that this all only just happened, and you were so different a few rounds ago. The thought of a scrawnier human figure with a much thinner frame floated past behind your now dark orcish eyes, and all at once it hit you.

Coach didn't know you wanted to play because you never told him you did!

You clapped a gloved hand to your forehead in understanding as your brain finally made the connection. You remembered first visiting Coach back when you looked like a human, and you hadn't had the nuts to tell him you wanted to join the team- and THAT'S why you'd been stuck as the waterboy ever since!

Sizing up the massive, half-orc jock reflecting back at you, already wearing the team's varsity jacket, you couldn't help your face splitting into a grinning smirk. That version of yourself felt so far away from you now, as the confidence of a half-orc AND a jock- who was not only centered and assured of who he was, but deeply and unwaveringly PROUD of who he was as a whole person- surged through you, your heart thrumming and shocking your back upright into better posture, only adding to your height even more. Looking how you did, with the huge new body and all, you wouldn't have trouble getting Coach to let you join the team now, that's for fuckin' sure. You even got a letterman of your own already, too! You turn around with your head craned to get a good look at the back of your letterman in the mirror. It'd be easier to just take it off and look at it there- but nah, no way you're taking this thing off anytime soon.

Even with the added effort of having to read words backwards like that in the mirror, your heart leapt in pride and already knew what the big block letters spelled over the piercing gaze of a snarling owlbear.

"BARKROCK."

Your heart already knew, deep down, but now your brain clicked, too. That was- that was your last name. Your last name, Barkrock! Well- it wasn't before, but like- it felt good to hear it. And it definitely fit the kind of person you were now, and maybe it'd be good to sort of start over again with the Coach anyway, too? You weren't sure how you'd explain it all anyway, so just pretending you were a totally different person would be easier, even though you were still the same but you'd just changed a little. Well, a lot.

So yeah, you'll keep the name, no sweat. You could probably pass as a foreign exchange student, probably.

You turned away from the reflection, and headed out the locker room door back outside to the field. You were PUMPED again and ready to go, feeling it in every part of your body- first steps into the new life laid out ahead of you.

It was a beautiful, clear day with a few clouds about, and you almost didn't realize how different the field and bleachers looked from how they used to, with how familiar everything felt to you at the same time. It was a bit hard to remember what colors the uniforms of the teams on the field had been before, but the red and white they sported now- just like your letterman- felt right, y'know?

You spotted the team on the field, and were about to call them over and ask them where Coach was- you had a lot to talk about- when one of them spotted you first and waved you over.

"RAGH, my guy! Where you been, dude?"

The gap between your thoughts and your mouth was too small to realize the jock had just called you by a name you were pretty sure wasn't yours before you were already hustling over, grinning like an idiot, huge tusks out and proud for all to see.

"I'm comin', dude, I'm comin'!"

And you hustled down the field to meet him and all the others, the fat and muscle of your beefy body bouncing up and down in a way that felt so real, so right, so familiar as muscle memory of your favorite sport seared its way into your body. You were a Bloodrush player, through and through- your heart knew that, your head knew that, and now your body knew that, too, which sealed the deal.

FUCK that felt good.

The other players had headed to the benches, taking a quick water break before heading back out to practice. You saw the other players already had their waters and everything, and THAT got you grinning to yourself. You'd never be stuck as Coach's assistant again- at least, not in the way you used to. The faces of the other jocks lighting up when you arrived, and the growing familiarity you had with each of their faces and then names and then who they were and what they liked, told you that.

You were also pretty sure that some of the Boys here had changed too, like you did, with pointed ears or flaming hair or fuller beards where you didn't expect, but you didn't care about that, didn't you. This was the team you knew, and that was what mattered.

The player who called you over clapped you on the back, getting your head in the game with a jump.

"Jeez, Ragh, you took your time," he laughed, elbowing you in the ribs, sending something fluttering in your chest- something that you knew what it was but you decided you were fine with not following- for now, at least. You were at practice, not prom. "Your gloves that hard to find? Dude, we need you for practice!"

You glanced down at your rough, worn gloves that’d been with you for ages. You could barely remember what that player who sent you in to grab them in the first place looked like, and looking around at your team and best friends at the Academy, you didn’t recognize anyone that might have used to be him among the humanoids there… almost like he was never there at all. Your head was starting to hurt again- feeling sluggish like it was running on empty when you tried to think about it further, and you made a decision.

You held the memory close for a moment, of that nameless player who gave you this chance thanks to his gloves- your gloves- thanked it, and then let it go. Your head felt clearer in an instant, and you shook away the headache, feeling yourself settle back into being comfortable with your friends.

“Sorry dude, knocked over the laundry bin in there and had to clean up. And fuck, dude, I swear- it took me like, what, 15 rounds to pick it all up. There was so. much. shit in there.”

Everything fell into place so easily, the rhythm you had with your friends felt so natural, it really did feel like you’d known these guys and played on the same Bloodrush team for years at this point- which, as far as everyone else was aware, you had. And damn, when you weren’t thinking too hard about how different everything was, it just about had you convinced, too.

“And honestly? Dude-dude-dude-dude, dudes, can I be real with you?” You directed it to the rest of the team, this time. “Y’all fuckin’ smell, dude.”

A firbolg teammate in the back called out, “It’s just the musk, dude-”

“Dude, no, I know the musk. I know the musk, dude, and that laundry bin was like- BAD, dude, even for me. Holy shit. Like, take a fuckin’ shower, guys!”

Sitting back, laughing and joking with your team for the rest of the water break- you were one of the Boys, one of the jocks.

Just like you’d always wanted.

Just like you’d always been.

Your head wanted to pick one of those over the other to be right so bad, but your heart knew they were both true.

You stood up, stretching. “Alright, back to practice. I got the scrimmage drills.”

That confidence, that pride you exuded that kicked your teammates into gear stirred in you something fierce- and hot damn if you weren't fierce- but it also felt like the most natural thing in the world. That sort of authority came with you being the most senior member on the team- even though you weren't the team captain or QB, you knew all the drills, all the exercises, probably even better than Coach did, so you could pretty much run practice on your own when Coach Gorthalax got stuck in a ruby again or something. Getting held back a year or two was crushing back then, but did have its good side, you guessed. You were so familiar with the Bloodrush training stuff from playing year after year, you could probably become a Coach yourself eventually, if you didn't land a job as a star Bloodrush player or bodyguard or something.

It took for when your teammates lined up for the scrimmage play for it to really hit you- you realized the future you had ahead of you. Before, you'd just been a scrawny human without real friends who could never speak your mind, and now you were a huge half-orc jock who had a team of friends and was proud of who you were. That went to the Aguefort Adventuring Academy, too- training teens and high schoolers in magical or fighting stuff to become adventurers and heroes, or at least learn whatever the fuck Principal Aguefort wanted them to take out of all this- a far cry from the boring ass school you used to go to. You had career options you'd never even heard of lined up ahead of you since you're close to graduating.

Fuck, you're close to graduating, too, huh… yeah, that was right, ever since that adventuring party of bad kids you became friends with invited you on a quest and finished it with them, you were on your way to graduation. Fuck, dude, that was something you hadn't though about for a long while, afraid you'd just get pulled back again. Getting through all your identity junk thanks to the school's guidance counselor Jawbone probably helped with that, too, being honest.

More and more memories of being Ragh Barkrock, the half-orc jock who got your whole life turned around after getting your ass handed to you by the Bad Kids and then meeting with Jawbone to work your personal shit out kept filling your head in that moment- and honestly, you couldn't think of anything you wanted more in that moment. You felt solid, grounded. You knew for sure in your big, thumping, orc heart, of who you wanted to- no, who you were PROUD to be.

The Bloodrush captain called the play, clear and sharp that cut through your mind like a greataxe through warm cheese, and your body instinctively sprang into action alongside your friends, your teammates. You grit your tusks and teeth, and called up that white hot feeling- in an instant your head, heart, and body finally all in sync. Not so much thinking of anything, or even really being able to think anything other than being laser focused on the play at hand that you knew by heart.

You thundered forward, letting loose a snarl and calling up that white-hot rage as you charged the poor humanoid player opposite to you, squeezing the last few thoughts through your head before going blank.

Your name is Ragh Barkrock, and you're damn proud of that.

#character tf #species tf #orc tf #transformation #muscle growth tf #weight gain tf #tf

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kleenex-tissues · 1 year

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Yours Truly (6)

AO3 here

Ch. 6: An Emotional Rollercoaster in the Form of One Girl

“He waits three weeks to respond to you, and this is what you get?,” yelled Alya. She threw herself up from the bench and pointed at the laptop before her. “Nuh uh! We are not doing this!”

Adrien and Nino nodded along in agreement, hurling their own insults at the computer screen. They ranted about the laughable attempt of an email displayed across it.

“Has this guy ever talked to another person before? Like, I know it said he likes animals, but I didn’t think that meant he had only ever interacted with animals,” Nino said, poking fun at the sender’s social ineptitude.

Alya wrinkled her face further in annoyance. “Yeah, this is just pathetic. Right, Mari?”

Marinette didn’t reply.

“Uh, Marinette?”

They finally noticed the grin overtaking their friend’s face. She was giddy, practically bouncing in her seat at the notion of what should be considered an awful email. She looked up at Alya, grabbed her hand, and stood up to begin twirling her friend around in a poorly coordinated dance.

She laughed wildly, “Did you see? His name is Damian. He actually responded. Alya, I did it! I broke through to him!”

The two girls moved in sloppy circles with weird arm tugging and half-jumps, but Marinette was smiling and Alya didn’t know what to do. Despite her confusion, she let her best friend lead her around. When it came to Marinette’s smile, it seemed to make everyone around her forget what they were doing and be encased in her warmth. Even Adrien and Nino had stopped rambling, watching the girl with small smiles of their own.

“This is the best day ever!”

–

Marinette paced her room, up the ladder to her bed, then to her roof, all the way back down for a few laps. She could feel the sweat gathering at the nape of her neck, and her hands wrung at each other nervously. Tikki could sense the nervous energy radiating from her, and she knew if she didn’t return her chosen to peace soon, Hawkmoth would pick up on it.

Said girl was mumbling, fast and incoherent. She wasn’t making much sense, but Tikki knew it originated from the email she received today.

While initially excited to finally hear back from her pen pal, Marinette had slowly spiraled back into a panic the longer the day drug on. How did she reply now? Things were so much easier to say when he hadn’t been reading the emails, let alone responding to them. He was an avenue for ranting and rambling about whatever happened to be on her mind, letting her practice her English in the same hand. He was faceless, and no one was supposed to actually exist behind Redbird. But suddenly, here she was, thinking of how to draft an email to a man – a very REAL man – named Damian, in response.

Never mind how rude he had initially spoken, anyways. That was something she could deal with. After all, she had managed to befriend her own childhood bully, Chloe, so this manner of speaking was barely relevant in the grand scheme of it all.

The problem lay in the fact that she was now held responsible for whatever she will (and has!!!) told him. She had lots of friends, sure, and she was no stranger to being the one to initiate the friendship. But something about this felt different and new and scary.

“Marinette, you have to breathe!”

Ah, yes, breathing. She had stopped doing that, hadn’t she? Her lungs burned in response to the sudden influx of oxygen, which it seemed to have been lacking for longer than she realized. What was she thinking about again? The thought escaped her as her vision faded out for a moment, readjusting to normal bodily processing.

She took the opportunity to sit down on the chaise that had appeared beside her. When did she get here? Last she remembered, she was on her balcony, but now the latch was shut and here she happened to be.

Tikki flew into her vision, saying something to her, but her hearing was still taking its time to come back. Tikki’s words sounded like nothing more than tv static.

Marinette just needed a moment. Then, the cold sweat on her back would dry and the ringing in her ears would finally go away. She vaguely felt something touching her face and hands, but she couldn’t do much in response.

Here it was: the consequences of forcing herself to push down her worries in favor of being happy. Marinette knew she couldn’t be perfect all the time. She just wished her body could pick some other reaction to feeling negativity. This was becoming less and less ideal each time it happened.

She opened her eyes to look ahead of her. Tikki’s voice was finally beginning to fade into life, whispering, “Breathe with me, okay? Everything is going to be alright.”

The other kwamis were huddling around her, as well, saying their own words of encouragement. It wasn’t her first panic attack and certainly not the last, so they knew the routine. No one enjoyed it, especially Marinette, but they stuck with her every time, nonetheless.

After a few minutes of breathing slow and deep, Marinette was able to regain focus on the world around her. She was in her room. She was wearing the same clothes she had returned home in. Her hair was still tied on top of her head. Tikki was with her. Everything was normal. She was safe.

Tikki, knowing that Marinette was finally calming down, sat on her thigh and rubbed soothing circles through the fabric. She opened her mouth to quietly say, “I’m here. We’re all here. Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”

Marinette smiled softly in return, a little light returning to her eyes. “I know. Thank you, guys.”

The kwamis all moved closer to hold her, their number making up for their small size. They stayed there until they knew she was ready.

Once she had taken the time to relax her tense body, Marinette began moving towards the desk holding her computer. She knew her fear had been unfounded, but she couldn’t help the lingering worry over the response she needed to draft for Damian.

Marinette had been writing to him like a diary, not a person. How could she come back from that? What if when they actually begin talking to each other, he doesn’t like her?

She sat at the desk, preparing herself to type. Tikki held her hand from her new place on the desk, and she turned to see those soulful eyes looking at her. Tikki was old with a chasm of wisdom inside her, and she was here with Marinette. She knew, with her wise friend beside her, she couldn’t go too wrong.

To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Subject: A New Challenger Approaches?

Hello, Damian!

I’m pleasantly surprised to finally know that there is a real person behind my digital diary. I hope I didn’t bombard you with too many emails, but actually, I really don’t.

Who signs up for pen pal and then ghosts them?

You should definitely tell me about that.

And I want pictures of your animals as an apology. Preferably, the cuter the better.

(also please don’t spill my secrets. I think I’ll die of embarrassment)

Au Revoir, Mari :)

#maribat #maridami #daminette #damian wayne #marinette dupain cheng #miraculous ladybug #batman #batfam #bat family #wolfish-writes #mlb x dcu

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appalamutte · 1 year

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drafted up a rough nhl bitty idea over the summer that i’ve worked on here and there, and honestly i can’t stop thinking about the fictional baltimore team i created for that fic

Luca DiPietro, a Baltimore native, filed an application for starting a franchise in the city when rumors were floating around that Buffalo was in the process of obtaining its own. He’d been a long-time lover of the sport, growing up skating with neighborhood kids and taking his own family up to New York to see the Rangers every once in a while. It was a dream to have a team right there in the city, though, and DiPietro fought with the NHL for months for them to agree to tack a third expansion team on with Buffalo and Vancouver.

In the end, it paid off. 1970 saw the addition of three new teams: the Buffalo Sabres, the Vancouver Canucks, and the Baltimore Nationals, raising the total count of teams from twelve to fifteen.

The Nationals quickly grew in popularity in the area. No longer did fans have to travel to Philadelphia to see a game. Tickets all but sold out for the first-ever home opener in the 1970-1971 season, and they continued to sell out all throughout the season and onward. The team wasn’t good or anything, barely more than a bunch of rookies, but they were spirited and passionate and young.

In the 1971-1972 season, the Nationals handed a massive upset over the Canadiens—the previous Stanley Cup Champions—in the first round of playoffs, shocking the league all over. The stadium was bleeding black and gold (team colors based on George Calvert’s family crest, who was the founder of the Maryland colony), and even though the Nationals were kicked out by the Rangers in the next round, the city celebrated for weeks. It was one of the first times an expansion team delivered such a massive and unexpected victory, especially in the playoffs. The momentum of that win carried well into the next season, leading the Nationals once again to the second round of playoffs.

In 1974, the NHL expanded into Washington, D.C. with the Washington Capitals, which immediately started turning heads. Talk went around about a rivalry forming, given the two cities’ close proximity and the fact the Nationals fanbase was effectively halved and given to the Capitals.

Though nothing came about (then). The teams actually liked each other, at least in terms of sports and fandoms. When the Capitals first traveled up to Baltimore and played the Nationals, the stadium was a bright mix of black and gold and red and white and blue. Both sides cheered when the other side scored, because both teams had fans on both sides.

Then the name change was forced in 1975. The league argued that it was confusing to have the Capitals and the Nationals so close together, and despite Baltimore having the name first, it only made sense for Washington to keep the patriotic name.

So over the summer, Baltimore had to rebrand. They were changed from the Nationals to the Harbors, they changed their colors to black, red, and white, their head coach at the time retired and so they had to change coaches. It all left a sour taste in Baltimore’s mouth, especially when the team recorded one of their worst seasons in 1975-1976, second only to their inaugural 1970-1971 season.

Some speculate this is where the Baltimore/Washington rivalry began. Others speculate it was when Washington beat Baltimore in every single game they played against one another in 1976-1977. A few say it started when Washington fans virtually destroyed the lobby of the arena after Baltimore knocked them out of the playoffs in 1979.

It started somehow and it grew to be the most brutal rivalry in the entire league, arguably out of all the major four leagues on the continent. It was deep seeded and vicious. It was stronger than the Canadiens/Maple Leafs rivalry, the Pens/Flyers rivalry, the Rangers/Islanders rivalry.

Where Capitals/Harbors games used to be friendly and collective, they were now hostile and rough. Players fought easily, more often, the ice was chippy, the fans were combative and dirty. In 1985, a man wearing a Harbors jersey in Washington was pushed around by a group of Capitals fans, ending in a fight that left two arrested and three with injuries bad enough to be hospitalized for the night. In 1987, a couple of Harbors fans harassed a family wearing Capitals jerseys to the point that the franchise was sued for not having proper security, as the family felt their lives were in danger for the entirety of the first period (they ended up leaving during intermission).

In 1991, the league had to step in and threaten both franchises of being disbanded if they couldn’t control the fans. No one knew how to do so, so it ended up that between 1991-1995, the teams didn’t play each other unless they were in neutral territory (usually Philadelphia).

The rivalry did eventually die down throughout the 90s, though even to this day games are stiff and tense.

In 1997, the Harbors had their third and final name change due to a change of ownership. Luca DiPietro had to sell the franchise to a businessman from out west because his health was deteriorating and he wasn’t sure how much longer he had. For a few months, it was unsure whether or not the Harbors were to even stay in Baltimore at all; however, the new owner—a tech entrepreneur from Seattle—relocated to Maryland and changed the franchise to the Baltimore Crabbers, in honor of Maryland’s history in crabbing.

Fans were hesitant and vocal about their disappointment, though in 1999 Baltimore won it’s first ever Stanley Cup in franchise history, beating the Dallas Stars in game six, and suddenly everyone thought the new brand and name was lucky.

Especially when the Crabbers won the Cup again in 2000, and 2004. Out of nowhere and in the matter of five seasons, the team went from a bottom 16 team to a solid playoffs contestant and serious contender for the cup. This was in no part only thanks to the new leadership, but also to the roster’s multiple heavy hitters: Anthony Bagshaw, a center from Mississauga who averaged roughly 55 goals a season at his prime; Gordey Sokolov, a winger from St. Petersburg, Russia who scored more PPG than anyone else in the league in both 1999 and 2000; Matthew Quinn, a goalie from Rochester who still holds the record for most shutouts in franchise history to this day; and Henri Bourassa, a defenseman from Quebec City who won the James Norris Memorial Trophy four years straight from 2001-2004.

The four were close, but that wasn’t always the case.

Quinn was the first on the roster in 1994 and had only one season as a rookie before the starting goalie retired due to injury. He was immediately promoted to starting goalie, even when Baltimore secured a trade for Minnesota’s starting goalie, because his SV% was beyond-good (better than Minneosta’s) and his young age was only a bonus. He floundered though, missing saves left and right, letting pucks seemingly slide right in. This was all only exasperated when Bagshaw joined the team that same season.

Quinn and Bagshaw both played in the OHL and were rivals. Like, they hated each other. Both on rivaling teams in the OHL, both at the top of their respective teams. When the two were on the ice together it was noticeable—tangible, even—that there was bad blood between them. Bagshaw hated Quinn because Quinn was a pain in the ass to score on, and Quinn hated Bagshaw because when he was able to score, he was such a “goddamn arrogant fucking asshole” about it.

It was a cruel trick of fate the two ended up on the same team. (Not me shipping my own original characters when they don’t even end up together in canon my mind.)

Their bad blood was noticeable even on NHL ice, even when they were on the same team. They worked out their differences though, mainly due to the veterans forcing them to room together on roadies all season long and sit beside each other every single time the team ate out. Eventually, they became friends, maybe even best friends, realizing that both were good players and the hatred didn’t make sense when they weren’t competing against one another anymore. They continued to room together the season after that, and after that. Quinn introduced Bagshaw to his future-wife when they were playing in Buffalo (she was a childhood friend of Quinn’s), and Bagshaw was the one who practically took care of Quinn when he broke his shoulder and missed out on half of the 2002-2003 season.

Then Sokolov came along in 1996, drafted straight from Russia, and instantly there was on-ice chemistry between him and Bagshaw. Their line just clicked in a rare way and they were able to be the best-performing line in the entire league within two seasons. No matter who the other winger was, Bagshaw and Sokolov would dominate the ice and the puck together. Coupled that with Quinn’s goaltending and the Crabbers were a force to be reckoned with.

Bourassa joined the team in 1998 from the QMJHL. He was a quiet kid with a meek personality, tall and broad and taking up space against his will, though when he was on the ice he was a mastermind of receiving turnovers and shifting play out of their defensive zone. He was also a hell of a checker and, funnily enough, hated fighting despite his critical body hits. Bagshaw immediately took him under his wing, therefore pulling Bourassa into the group with Quinn and Sokolov (against his will again, though he never regretted it once he got to know them).

They were dubbed by fans—and later, the media—as the Fantastic Four (corny, I know). They were inseparable and unstoppable, always together on and off the ice, leading Baltimore to the cup all three times and being the faces of the franchise for the eleven years they were together. They were in each other’s weddings, celebrated holidays together, took a trip to Hawaii together with their families in the 2005 off season. They were even up there as one of the longest-tenured quartet of players for a single franchise, all until Sokolov was unexpectedly traded to the Kings in 2009.

With that, everything changed. After Sokolov, Bourassa—the youngest of the four—suffered a career-ending injury to his knee in a playoff game against New Jersey in 2012 and retired that summer. Bagshaw played his final season in 2014-2015, retiring to pursue a career in broadcasting. Quinn was the first to join the team and the last to leave it, retiring just a season later due to his age and wanting to finally have time with his family. Sokolov retired right after the 2017-2018 season, marking the complete end to their era.

It was a heartbreaking time for Crabber fans, seeing the greats move on, though that didn’t change much for the team. The Crabbers were still up there as one of the elites, maybe not serious contenders for the cup but still solid playoff teams.

Luca DiPietro, the starter of it all, died in 2000, and the following year the Crabbers started construction on a brand new arena in his honor. It sits right off the Baltimore Harbor and is named after him—the Luca DiPietro Dome, dubbed by fans as the “DiPi-Dome” and sometimes also as “Harbor View.”

The Crabbers progressed all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2017, the year right after Quinn retired (and the season right before Bitty joins), being beaten by the Penguins. It’s the furthest they’ve made it since their 2004 Cup win, and it’s with the most promising roster of players since the Fantastic Four’s prime days. The media has a field day with the headlines, the fans apply pressure for them to win it in 2018, the players feel the effect of it all in a more grueling and demanding off-season training.

Where is Bitty in all this? He starts playing competitive, full-contact hockey much earlier on with the Atlanta Fire, he goes to Samwell on a full-ride scholarship (though Jack doesn’t go, so they haven’t met yet), and he leads the Wellies to winning the Frozen Four in both his junior and senior years. The Crabbers scout him all throughout his sophomore and junior years, offer him a two-year contract effective as soon as he graduates, and sign him in the spring of 2016.

He joins the roster in the fall of 2017, right in the thick of the pressure for the Crabbers to win the Stanley Cup again, and falls right in with a whole new group of players (more to come on that later).

#this is literally just 2k words of my fictional nhl team’s lore #but i'm like very attached to it and the history and the team #this is also a love letter to the Quinniebag shippers. i just know they would’ve ruled the online hockey fandom in the 2000s #lmao i don’t even know what to tag this as though #omgcp? since it's for an omgcp fic?#my writing #nhl bitty au #there we go

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yunoteru4ever · 2 years

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How Sakae Esuno developed the concepts behind Mirai Nikki/Future Diary, Yukiteru Amano, and Yuno Gasai

When you look through Sakae Esuno’s various interviews with numerous European outlets throughout the mid-2010s, there’s an obvious repeated pattern. Nearly every one asks him how he came up with the concept for Mirai Nikki.

It’s a natural question, but what’s interesting is how his answers aren’t standardized. With different websites, he talks about different parts of the early development process. So when you add together the various web interviews in Spanish and Italian and Portuguese (and even a couple in Japanese), you can actually build a pretty detailed picture of how it came together.

This was the very first page of the very first chapter of Mirai Nikki in January 2006.

First, some backstory: Esuno started drawing manga artwork at 14-15 years old. He talks about how he was paritcularly inspired by Rumiko Takahashi’s works. During his time in university, while studying Fine Arts, he became an assistant to Leiji Matsumoto. Matsumoto taught him how to hone his craft, and after six years of working with Esuno, Matsumoto approached Kadokawa and introduced Esuno to them. That’s how Sakae Esuno got the chance to develop his first monthly series, which was Hanako and the Terror of Allegory.

And when that series ended, the process of developing his follow-up began.

1) Hanako and the Terror of Allegory wrapped up after just four collected volumes due to a lower-than-desired readership. Nevertheless, his editor at Kadokawa Ace magazine gave Esuno another chance to develop his own manga.

The editor offered the following suggestions:

Suspense seems like the best genre for you

Instead of an episodic work, how about something where a central protagonist repeatedly clashes against his opponent?

Maybe you could center it around a kidnapping?

From there, Esuno says he began to watch some suspense-based television and movies as a form of research. Watching stories that focused on kidnappings led him to decide that a kidnapping-focused plot wasn’t suitable for a monthly manga series, because that would mean the protagonist’s main opponent would obviously be the kidnapper. And that, in turn, would mean there’d be just one protagonist and one opponent repeatedly facing off, which he decided would rapidly get either boring or frustrating.

Instead, Esuno figured it’d be more interesting and exciting if the protagonist had to clash with a variety of different opponents, each showdown lasting for a short cycle.

I wonder if Sakae Esuno watched this movie during his studies... ?

Esuno estimated that even if he had to end the manga within four volumes due to low interest as with Hanako, he could still have the protagonist confront as many as 10-12 opponents within that time if he kept each cycle of conflict tight. In some cases, he figured he could have the protagonist encounter multiple opponents simultaneously to create a chaotic multi-way battle that would also speed the narrative along. (He would later draft general outlines of the story for both this abbreviated narrative AND his hoped-for longer version where he could flesh the characters and scenarios out over the course of years.) But now he needed a scenario in which 10-12 people would be battling. What are they going to fight over?

2) At this same time, there was a noticeable change happening in the culture around him. Esuno had been thinking a lot about how everywhere he went, he saw more and more people carrying and looking at their cell phone. They had expanded from use among businesspeople to young adults to college students and then to teenagers. Japanese society was starting to expect people to always be available for communication via the increasing rise of “smartphones.” (Keep in mind that it was 2005 at the time; the ubiquity of everyone using their phones to read the Internet, play games, or text one another was still a pretty new thing.)

Bask in some of the finest smartphone technology of 2005!

Esuno’s interest in this developing trend made him wonder if he could tap into it by centering the drama about cell phones. Could they all be trying to get a particularly amazing phone, or maybe using their phones against one another somehow? Maybe there would be a special feature to these phones that would make them extra-desirable and extra-powerful — something that they could leverage in their showdowns. But what would be the most useful feature to provide dramatic conflict?

There’s a little bit of a gap in knowledge here: We don’t know exactly how Esuno came up with the notion of the cell phone offering future sight. That’s a step in the development that he hasn’t talked about. But obviously, he eventually settled on the idea that the “Diary”/“Notes” feature common to mid-2000s would contain future information. Those notes would now be something that the character possessing character would actually write later, allowing them to peer into their own future activities. Esuno says this particularly suited his interest in writing “clashes” that weren’t necessarily physical battles but instead were focused on the combatants having to outwit and outmaneuver each other. If everyone only has a limited perspective of the future, they can each try to use their own knowledge to their advantage while moving within the others’ blind spots.

4) Creating tension from this scenario meant he had to define the end goal and/or some stakes. Esuno say he was always interested in exploring controversial topics (even though he tends to feel personally uncomfortable when it comes time to draw them). All the same, he wanted to examine the darkest elements of human nature — our most self-centered and violent urges as well as what drives those things. It made sense to him, then, that the characters would have to be fighting for something that they’d be willing to do anything to achieve. And if the phones were going to tell the future, doesn’t that already imply something supernatural is happening? So he figured, why not make the competition center around a battle for those supernatural powers?

If the competitors were going to win god-like abilities, they’d probably be willing to go to ANY length. And actually, if the being who bestows the future sight abilities is already so powerful, he figured it would make sense that said being would think little of the cost of human life. This is how he landed upon the idea of creating an actual god who was offering up his own throne. And all the competitors had to do to attain it was the absolute worst possible things to one another. Esuno liked how this let him also introduce elements of ancient religions and comment a bit on how our presumptions around religion can drive further violence.

5) Even while Esuno was working on the above details of the scenario for the series, he’d simultaneously been thinking about his central protagonist. That aspect came to him a lot more easily than the scenario did, actually. For years, he’d been playing with the idea of basing a protagonist on his own experiences as a teenager — that is, focusing the story on a young guy who was lonely and withdrawn. He wanted to see a protagonist who would be the opposite of a typical shōnen hero — still a teenager, sure, but someone who’d show very reasonable fear in the face of violence and be clearly traumatized about what they were being forced into. In other words, he wanted to make the most realistic teenage protagonist he’d seen in a shōnen publication.

And to make this protag sympathetic to the audience, it followed that he needed to be the most morally grounded of the competitors. He would be the person LEAST interested in killing other people, of course. The power of being a god didn’t make our hero want to kill anyone OR want to risk his own life. Even though he’d always been something of a nobody, he still had pride that he wasn’t a murderer. But as the story went on, Esuno knew that his protagonist had to shift from being reactive to being proactive. Eventually, there was going to be no other choice left for him.

The personality he envisioned for who would eventually become Yukiteru Amano naturally led to Esuno giving his protagonist’s future diary a defining quirk: Yuki observed everyone around him (usually without being directly involved with them), because whether he realized it or not, he was lonely. Therefore, it stood to reason that his future diary would tell him about everyone else around him, but it wouldn’t really speak about HIM. The logic being that since Yuki was hiding from his loneliness, he wasn’t prone to introspection. He preferred to distract himself from the things that brought him down, so he focuses his gaze outward. From this starting point, Esuno would eventually come up with the notion that all of the different competitors’ diaries could be different types or offer different focal areas of information.

6) Sakae Esuno wanted his protagonist to have someone to speak with and bounce dialogue off of, and it made sense to him that this deuteragonist might be a girl, because to Esuno, that introduced an inherent potential for romantic/sexual tension. He figured the most fun thing to do would be to make the secondary protagonist as much of an opposite to his primary protag as possible, because doing this would both generate interesting disagreements between them and also offer up potential for an “opposites attract” scenario. So if Yuki was quiet and isolated from his peers, she’d be assertive/outspoken and popular. If Yuki wanted to avoid the violent battles, she’d run headfirst into them, often being the aggressor. Yuki was usually going to be on defense, so his female partner would spend more time on offense.

So why would she even be involved in all this? Well, obviously, she’d have to be one of the competitors. Making the hero’s partner someone who has every reason to kill him increased the tension between them and the suspense. But then, why DOESN’T she just kill him?

It was while he was fleshing out the notion of the two leads being opposites that Esuno realized: If the boy’s diary was going to let him know everything about his surroundings and other people around him, but never himself… what if HER diary filled in the gap by giving her information only about Yuki’s future? Because these future diaries were giving the competitors a view into the future of the notes they ALREADY were taking, though, this idea would mean that even before the competition began, the female lead was regularly writing down notes in her phone about the male protagonist. In other words, having a diary focused on Yuki meant she had to be a stalker — which Sakae Esuno loved from the moment it came to him.

By making her have a fixation on the protagonist, Esuno believed he could generate even more conflict between them AND give Yuki an obvious downside to the team-up. Up until this point, the female lead was both popular and a skilled fighter. But now she also had a major flaw — one that made her simultaneously very useful to Yuki while also being potentially dangerous to him.

Esuno sketching Yuno and Yuki at Lucca Comics in Italy, 2012.

Esuno would later expand on the notion of Yuki and Yuno as opposites when he got deeper into making his outline. He imagined Yukiteru’s parents to be absent from his life most of the time, further driving home his isolation. So in turn, he decided that Yuno’s parents were too involved in hers. Yuki’s parents barely knew what was going on with him, but they were at least nice to him, and they helped provide him with his strong moral compass. (This would be later narrowed down to be mostly thanks to his mother.) Therefore, in keeping with the notion of Yuno being the counterpoint to him, Yuno’s parents would be micro-managing her life and abusing her.

.............and that’s about all we know at this point. It’s interesting to me that Sakae Esuno formed the killing game and future diaries before he ever defined the relationship between Yuki and Yuno, because that relationship is the thing that would ultimately become the central focus of the work.

I wish we had some insight into how Esuno came up with Uryuu Minene or Aru Akise, too. But hey, maybe someday that’ll come up if he ever does more interviews on the record. Unfortunately, I can’t find any interviews with Sakae Esuno since the time when he was still actively making Big Order! He’s written and completed a whole other series since then, but he doesn’t seem to have done any press for it or for his current ongoing manga. Here’s hoping he gets a chance to talk more about his process one day.

Sources for the information in here: Deculture.es, Nanoda.com, Koi-nya.net, Lucca Comics, Koukyouzen.com, Ramenparados.com, Natalie.mu, Animanga.es, Sumikai.com ... and I think I lost another one too, but that’s most of it

#sakae esuno #mirai nikki #future diary #the future diary #long post #longreads #mirai nikki essay #yukiteru amano #yuno gasai #survival game #manga

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the-widow-sisters · 2 years

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Elevators Are Never a Good Thing

Summary: When Yelena is heading out to go get Fanny so they can go with Natasha to the dog park, she ends up on the elevator with Darcy Lewis and Kate Bishop. However, little does she know that what should be a brief elevator ride together is about to turn into a much longer ordeal than she had bargained for.

Word Count: 5981

A/N: This one was super fun to write, and I’ve actually had this one in my drafts for a while 😂 I just had to finish up my last fic before I posted this one because this one chronologically came after it.

I hope y’all enjoy! 🥰💖

Yelena wasted no time in hurrying over to the elevator, feeling a happiness filling her heart as she thought of the day ahead of her.

Natasha had been doing paperwork all day, and Yelena had finally managed to harass her into taking a break. Natasha had told Yelena that if she went home and got Fanny, Natasha would go with them to the dog park and they could spend some time together. Yelena, for one, was extremely excited and pleased with the prospect because she really was looking forward to some one-on-one time with her big sister.

Yelena headed into the elevator, pressing the button for the ground floor as she fiddled with her vest, more than eager to draw Natasha away from her work. She honestly had wanted to just snuggle with her, but going and playing at the dog park would also be fun because she was already planning how she would tackle Natasha and throw her onto the ground so that she and Fanny could get her.

However, to her surprise, the elevator’s descent was interrupted as it stopped, and she looked up from her vest at the doors as she very surprisedly took in the sight of Darcy Lewis.

She was terribly shocked as she stared at her for a moment, and Darcy looked largely unsurprised as she offered her a bit of a smile and entered the elevator. Yelena had truly thought that Darcy had left for good and that they would not see her after that small period of time that she spent there at the compound when Thor brought her there after she had been kicked out of her apartment.

So, knowing that she had to cover up this surprise, Yelena made the decision to approach the situation as she always did whenever she was uncomfortable or anything less than perfectly prepared.

“Oh, joy, what are you doing here? Back for another round of fun?” Yelena questioned, making sure that her tone communicated nothing but the most unhappiness with the girl’s presence, and Darcy raised an eyebrow as she stood not too far from Yelena. Truthfully, Yelena was not really unhappy to see her, but she was more shocked and not about to let Darcy see a more vulnerable side of her.

“You didn’t hear? When I stayed here for those few days, Mr. Stark decided that I could help him out with research and tech and stuff, so he offered me a place here. So, it took me a little while to get all of my stuff together, and here I am now,” Darcy explained breezily, and Yelena groaned, shaking her head.

At least now she had some answers. However, she was not about to let up on Darcy now. Not after all the sarcasm that Darcy had thrown on her the last time that she saw her. Darcy could perfectly hold her own against Yelena’s humor.

“Delightful news,” Yelena replied drily, and Darcy just ignored her largely as she smiled a little but did not bother replying.

Yelena could not help but feel a little irritation at the fact that Darcy was so hard to crack. However, she did have to admit, it was nice to see someone that was not afraid of her and that had no problem giving it back to her. It was like her sort-of friendship with Carol, which was also built on some form of respect on Yelena’s part because Carol was not intimidated by her either.

There was a weird silence between them for a few moments, and Yelena was quiet as she tried to think of something to say to fill it. It was making her uneasy for some reason.

Of course, elevators themselves regardless of the company had a tendency to make her uneasy. Elevators in the Red Room were never a good thing because it always led to a visit to Dreykov’s office. And that was never a good thing for the girls ordered to come up there because there were only two outcomes.

The elevator came to a pause, and the doors then opened to reveal another annoyance in her life.

Kate Bishop.

Yelena almost groaned aloud. However, she was in some strange way thankful to see the girl. At least there was someone that she knew and could make some manner of conversation with. And at least she did sort of like the kid.

As soon as Kate saw her, she grinned goofily, and Yelena could not help a small twinge of fondness for the dumb kid. She was good, and Yelena knew that she meant well. She just liked to aggravate her and give her a hard time because it was how she showed affection with people that were not her sister.

Plus, Kate could be really fun to mess with anyway.

“Hi, Yelena! What are you up to?” Kate asked cheerily as she came in and stood next to Yelena on the opposite side of Darcy, and Yelena just huffed as she debated whether she was going to make some sarcastic remark or not.

Yelena ultimately decided she would not. After all, Darcy was there, and Yelena did not particularly want another quip about if Darcy were a psychology major and how she would analyze Yelena’s behavior. After all, that was what she pulled when they met.

“Heading back to my house to get Fanny. Natasha and I are going to the dog park after she finishes up her paperwork,” Yelena informed Kate, and Kate suddenly looked extremely interested as she grinned, and Yelena almost immediately regretted letting that information slip.

“Ooh, awesome! Can I come with you guys? Lucky could use a good run,” Kate stated, and Yelena groaned before shrugging finally. She did not particularly want Kate to accompany her and Natasha, but she really did not have a good answer for why the girl should not. Well, unless she was just going to say that she wanted one-on-one time with her sister, and she really did not want to give Darcy a leg-up in figuring her out.

“Fine,” Yelena permitted, and Kate nodded excitedly. Yelena stared straight ahead at the elevator doors, wishing that it would hurry up and get to the bottom. For some reason, it seemed as if it were moving slower than usual, and it unsettled her a little.

Kate and Darcy stayed quiet on either side of her, and Yelena started to open her mouth to say something when the elevator suddenly shuddered and came to an abrupt stop.

Yelena just froze for a solid moment, trying to decipher precisely what had happened.

“What just happened?” Kate questioned as she immediately moved closer to Yelena, and Yelena felt a small bit of protectiveness and slight sympathy coming over her despite the fact that she was not about to welcome Kate clinging to her or something ridiculous like that.

After all, she viewed Kate in a manner that was sort of similar to how she saw Peter. She was by no means a little sister to her, but she saw her as a young kid that needed some manner of protection. She knew Kate saw her as some sort of big sister or mentor figure, and while she was not entirely pleased with that, she was willing to let it slide at least a little. As long as the kid gave Yelena her space when it came to Natasha and gave them time for just the two of them, she would be happy.

Of course, Yelena had mostly come to the conclusion that she would be okay with some time for Kate and Natasha to be together because she got so much attention and praise from Natasha when she allowed it. And she would do absolutely anything to make Natasha happy.

Besides, Natasha usually spent a lot of one-on-one time with her, and as much as Yelena hated to find gratification in it, after Natasha had to choose between her and Kate in that life-or-death situation not too long ago, Yelena knew that she came first.

She would never be completely over the jealousy, and she would never allow Kate to unexpectedly and uninvitedly intrude on their cuddle time or just any of their time together without serious repercussions, but Yelena knew that she was most important now. Even if it had made Natasha feel horribly guilty after the entire thing had gone down.

“Well, it appears that the elevator’s gone out,” Darcy declared matter-of-factly, and Yelena just scoffed as she tried to keep down her own fear that was sparked from her past. Kate glanced over at Darcy for a short moment.

“Congratulations, Velma, you solved that mystery,” Yelena retorted, and Darcy just raised her eyebrows as she clicked her tongue and shook her head. Kate’s eyes went wide as she took in Yelena’s response, and Yelena almost felt like laughing at the goofy look on her face.

“Wow. Are you always this hostile all the time?” Darcy asked, sounding almost disappointed, and Yelena immediately knew where this was leading.

“No. No, I’m heading you off right now. Don’t even start trying to psycho-evaluate or whatever they call that on me like last time,” Yelena warned, pointing at her, and Kate looked between the both of them with complete confusion.

“Oh, you guys know each other?” Kate asked curiously, and Yelena huffed.

“Unfortunately. Me and Velma met a while back when she stayed here for a few days because she got kicked out of her apartment. How’d you miss that, Sherlock?” Yelena questioned, and Kate just raised her hands somewhat defensively.

“Look, it was a busy week for me. Clint and I were training heavily.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, if you mean going on some stupid therapy-oriented road-trip BS in the mountains as training heavily, then sure,” Yelena responded, and Kate shook her head swiftly.

“Look, it wasn’t just us, and it was very much a hard-training session! Steve came and several other people!”

“Sure. Sounds like a glorified vacation to me,” Yelena responded, and Darcy raised an eyebrow as she looked between them.

“And I definitely assume you two know each other. You look like me and my sister when we used to fight,” Darcy pointed out, and Yelena immediately bristled. There was only one person she would ever accept as her sister. It was the only person she needed.

“We are not sisters,” Yelena emphasized, and Kate shuffled somewhat uncomfortably as she shrugged noncommittally.

“Well, I mean… objectively… like… we could be. Like you’re the teasing middle child, and Natasha’s kind of like the protective, wise oldest… Like on Brother Bear,” Kate pointed out with an awkward grin, and Yelena just rolled her eyes heavily.

“We are not like Brother Bear. You would be the youngest one on there, and I know for a fact that you are not nearly cool enough to turn into a bear,” Yelena shot back as she stepped back and started to examine the inside of the elevator. She knew it did not have a hatch at the top, and she was honestly not terribly impressed with Stark for his choice in elevator design.

“I’m Kate, by the way. You’re Velma?” Kate questioned jovially, seemingly completely unbothered by Yelena’s comment. Yelena could not help but snort, very happy with the fact that Kate had called Darcy by Yelena’s nickname even if it was unintentional on Kate’s part.

“No, it’s Darcy. Yelena just started calling me that because she thinks I’m a genius like Velma from the Scooby gang,” Darcy declared in a manner that was far too pleased with herself.

“No, I think you’re a nerd like Velma from the Scooby gang. Get it right,” Yelena informed her, still trying to see if there were any well-hidden hatches she might have missed.

“Oh, wow, you’ve already gotten a nickname? That means she likes you,” Kate commented completely unhelpfully, and Yelena narrowed her eyes at the kid. Kate had a far too wide smirk on her face, and Yelena pointed at her.

“Remember, Kate Bishop, you’re locked in here with me. Not the other way around,” Yelena informed her, and she headed over to inspect the elevator doors.

Unfortunately, there was absolutely no way she was going to be able to get those elevator doors open. However, she was more than willing to try if only not to be trapped inside this elevator with these two morons. She might have told Kate she was locked in there with Yelena, but Yelena secretly was beginning to almost feel like she was locked in with these bozos.

“But it’s very nice to meet you, Darcy,” Kate told her with a smile, and Darcy nodded back to her. Yelena reached out, starting to try to open the elevator doors as she pried at them. The two behind her were so invested in their conversation that they did not even notice.

“It’s very nice to meet you, too,” Darcy expressed with a smile.

“So how did you end up here? You were kicked out of your apartment?” Kate asked, tilting her head, and Darcy shrugged simply.

“Yeah. Thor told me I could stay here for a few days, and during that time, Mr. Stark offered me a job since he found out about my specialty in tech,” Darcy told her, and Kate’s eyes widened in recognition as she looked far too interested for Yelena’s good.

“You know Thor?” Kate asked, and Darcy nodded emphatically.

“Oh, yeah. Me and him go way back. I mean… We’re practically like this,” Darcy told her, crossing her fingers over each other, and Kate nodded, deeply invested as Yelena groaned, very much unhappy with this situation and the direction it was going.

“Ugh,” Yelena complained aloud, deeply unhappy with the direction that this conversation was headed.

“Oh, gosh, I totally get what you mean. I mean, me and Clint Barton are just like that, too,” Kate nodded emphatically, and Yelena raised an eyebrow as she looked back at the both of them.

“I think you’re both delusional,” Yelena declared bluntly, and Kate seemed somewhat offended. However, Darcy just eyed her calmly with that expression that told Yelena that she thought she knew something, and Yelena narrowed her eyes, not pleased with the look on her face.

“Well, me and Thor are like practically best friends. I mean… Like since whatever it was happened between him and my friend Jane, I think there’s been a spark between us,” Darcy proclaimed, and Yelena’s eyes widened in horror as she stared at the elevator doors. She did not want to hear or be part of any piece of this conversation. At all.

“My gosh, you’re so lucky,” Kate whined, no doubt thinking of Clint, and Yelena was almost ready to start beating her head against the elevator doors. At least she would have a chance of knocking herself out and keeping herself from having to hear all their disgusting, revolting boy-talk.

“I know… Have you seen his muscles? He’s built like a brick crap house,” Darcy told her, and Kate nodded eagerly.

Yelena swiftly checked all of her pockets and stuff as she tried to look for a phone or some manner of SOS to get her out of this horrible situation. She swiftly realized that she had very stupidly left her phone upstairs with Natasha, and she barely resisted the urge to smack her head against the door and knock herself out. It would be favorable to having to stay awake with these weirdos.

“I see your Thor and I raise you Clint Barton. I mean, that tattoo sleeve is so freaking hot, and I mean… Just look at this picture,” Kate suddenly spoke, and Yelena whipped her head around swiftly at the mention of looking at a picture. She swiftly spotted the phone in Kate’s hand, and she stopped as she just glared at the two for a moment.

“Oh, wow,” Darcy stated, her eyes somewhat wide. “I mean… He’s pretty good-looking… But like… Why’s he in a man diaper?”

“It was a magic trick gone wrong when we were having a talent show one time, and he was a volunteer. Girl, you wouldn’t believe how fast I snapped that picture,” Kate laughed somewhat nervously, and Yelena just narrowed her eyes even more as she turned so that she was facing the both of them entirely.

“Excuse me? Chicken party?” Yelena asked, and both of the two looked at her strangely.

“Hen party?” Kate suggested after just a moment, and Yelena immediately felt just a little embarrassment at her mishap. Besides, nobody besides Natasha was allowed to correct her on the manner in which she said things.

“Don’t correct me, Kate Bishop,” Yelena pointed at her sternly.

“Am I correct in understanding that you had a phone this entire time and you didn’t think to bring it out until you wanted to look at pictures of your Barton? Even when I’m over here trying to pry the doors open and figure out some way out?” Yelena asked firmly, and Kate just smiled somewhat sheepishly as she shrugged. Darcy smiled easily as she reached in her pocket and held up a smartphone.

“Oh, yeah, I have one, too, if you want to use it,” Darcy told her, and Yelena barely resisted the urge to growl under her breath. She reached out quickly, snatching Kate’s phone instead of Darcy’s. She was more comfortable with Kate, and she also knew that Natasha would recognize Kate’s number far more easily than Darcy’s.

Yelena then proceeded to head to Kate’s calling option, and she immediately found herself slightly irked that Natasha was on speed dial. She quickly tapped it, though, and started calling her sister.

“Hey, shchenok, what’s up?” Natasha answered the phone quickly, her voice loving as she spoke to her. Yelena felt her heart warming even if the words had not been intended for her.

“Hey, it’s me,” Yelena greeted, and Natasha furrowed her brow a little.

“Yelena?” Natasha questioned, and Yelena could hear the definitive confusion.

“Yeah, I left my phone up there with you,” Yelena replied, answering Natasha’s unspoken question, and Natasha hummed in understanding.

“Okay. You need me to meet you and bring it to you?” Natasha asked, and Yelena shook her head.

“No… But I do need you,” Yelena expressed, and Yelena could almost feel Natasha’s change in demeanor from relatively easy to exceedingly concerned.

“What do you need me to do? Where are you?” Natasha inquired, and Yelena thought she could hear Natasha starting to get up from her desk as something rustled a little.

Yelena felt her heart swelling with Natasha’s immediate worry and how she was instantly willing to do anything to protect her or help her with anything that could be wrong. Her sister truly was the best.

“I’m currently trapped in the elevator with Darcy Lewis and Kate Bishop,” Yelena answered, and she could feel Kate and Darcy’s eyes on her.

“I thought you said we were trapped in here with you?” Darcy astutely and far too quickly pointed out, and Yelena just waved her away.

“Shut up, I’m talking to my sister,” Yelena shot back, and Darcy just raised an eyebrow, largely unphased by Yelena’s snippiness. Yelena ignored her as she centered her attentions on the person on the other end of the phone.

She immediately heard sounds of muffled laughter, and Yelena narrowed her eyes.

“Eto ne smeshno!”1 Yelena helplessly replied, ensuring her words were in Russian so that Darcy and Kate could not understand what she was saying. After all, she did not want them to know that Natasha was on their side and found Yelena’s current plight to be hilarious.

“I don’t know, it’s pretty funny to me,” Natasha chuckled, and Yelena just narrowed her eyes.

“Just go down there and fix it already,” Yelena told her unhappily, and Natasha uttered her agreement, still laughing. Yelena grumbled under her breath.

“I perestan'te smeyat'sya,”2 Yelena commanded, and she could practically feel Natasha’s grin. As much as it made her happy to see Natasha happy, she was having a hard time with enjoying Natasha’s blatant laughter at her expense.

“Hey… Seriously, I’m already headed down there, okay? Are you going to be alright in there with them or do you need to stay on the phone with me?” Natasha asked softly, and Yelena knew that the redhead knew about her slight fear of elevators and the closed spaces that they brought when they broke down. Yelena usually was always with Natasha when going on elevators and the elevator had never broken down before, so it was somewhat scary for her right now. She found herself immensely thankful that her sister knew her so well.

“Ya v poryadke. Tebe ne nuzhno bespokoit'sya obo mne. Prosto… Ne teryayte vremeni,”3 Yelena told her, her voice gentle as she addressed her older sister, and Natasha hummed in acknowledgement.

Once they finally ended the call, Yelena just groaned, sinking down against the wall into the floor as she rubbed at her head and grasped Kate’s phone in her hand. She was doing her best to avoid thinking of the fact that she was stuck in an elevator, and she was trying her hardest to keep down the fear and instead focus on her surroundings even if it was Kate and Darcy that she had to pay attention to. She soon felt someone sink down not too far from her, and she felt a tentative poke to her knee. Yelena reopened her eyes, looking over at who had dared mess with her.

Unsurprisingly, it was Kate, and she was looking at Yelena with a slight smile of uncertainty as she pointed to the phone.

“Umm… Can I have my phone back?” Kate asked, and Yelena rolled her eyes heavily before handing the phone over to her.

“Thank you,” Kate expressed, and Yelena immediately noted that the girl started to pull up TikTok. Yelena closed her eyes, determined to remain perfectly still and hopefully trick the two morons into thinking she was asleep so they would not force her to interact.

She could feel Darcy sliding down to sit next to Kate, and she felt dread coming upon her as the blasted TikToks started, and the both of them presumably were watching whatever came up on Kate’s feed.

Before long, however, it quickly became clear that Yelena was not going to be able to pretend to sleep. Not when Darcy and Kate started singing something together that was playing on the app.

“My money don’t jiggle jiggle, it folds. I like to see you wiggle wiggle, for sure. Make me wanna dribble dribble, you know. Riding in my fiat, you really have to see it,” Kate and Darcy both sang together, and Kate laughed a little as Yelena grit her teeth, trying not to outwardly react to them in hopes that they would realize she was supposedly almost asleep.

“You watch TikTok?” Darcy asked, and Yelena could feel Kate shifting in place with her excitement.

“Yeah, I love it! It’s literally my favorite app,” Kate excitedly replied. Yelena just repositioned slightly in an attempt to bring their attention to her so they would see what was happening or what Yelena was trying to trick them into thinking was happening.

There was a long silence of them scrolling through TikToks, and Yelena was beginning to think that maybe they had gotten the message. However, that idea was quickly disproven.

“Oh, my gosh, I hate these kinds of TikToks,” Kate lamented suddenly, and they were silent for a moment as a terribly sad and depressing song played. Yelena could not deny that she did feel some curiosity about what the video was about.

However, she quickly ran out of patience with this ridiculousness when they started up with some annoying song that they were far too into for their own good, the uncoordinated combination of their voices immediately got under Yelena’s skin.

“In a minute, Imma need a, sentimental, man or woman, to pump me up—”

“Look, dodo duet, if you two don’t stop singing every single song that comes on there, I’m about to pump you two up,” Yelena declared, opening her eyes to glare at them finally. Darcy looked far too pleased, and Kate just looked some mix between sheepish and utterly amused.

“Do you even know what that means?” Darcy asked, and Yelena scoffed.

“Do you?” Yelena challenged. The truth was that Yelena honestly did not really know what it meant either, but she was going to challenge Darcy anyway and redirect the attention from her own lack of knowledge.

“Not really,” Darcy replied, and Yelena reveled in the slight hint of confusion in her tone. She had finally managed to get one over on the quick-witted woman.

“There. See, that’s why you don’t sing Lizard songs. They don’t make sense,” Yelena grumbled, and Darcy huffed. Yelena leaned up and narrowed her eyes at her, trying to figure out what was so funny before Kate finally ventured to question her.

“You mean Lizzo?” Kate asked uncertainly.

“I told you to stop correcting me, Kate Bishop,” Yelena shot back at her before leaning back. She closed her eyes and tried to resume her fake sleeping so that they might leave her alone. Of course, she was beginning to think that there was not even a slight chance of that happening.

She just remained still, and before long, their voices resounded once again not too far from her.

“Hey, since we’re going to be here for a while, wanna play truth or dare?” Kate asked, and Yelena groaned.

“Do you just have to have something to occupy your mind twenty-four seven?” Yelena asked, her eyes opening as she looked over at them. They were completely ignoring her in favor of starting their dumb game and Yelena narrowed her eyes wordlessly.

“Okay…. Truth or dare,” Kate questioned Darcy, and Darcy pursed her lips for a moment, thinking.

“Truth,” Darcy picked finally.

“Do you have posters of Thor?” Kate immediately asked, and Yelena could hear the hope in her voice. Kate hummed somewhat skeptically.

“No,” Darcy replied easily, and Yelena could detect immediately that she was actually being truthful. However, she did not say anything, and she allowed Kate to question her.

“Absolute truth?” Kate questioned, and Darcy nodded.

“Yeah. I mean, only because I can’t find posters that really manage to capture the real thing, y’know? Plus, I’m kind of too old for that kind of thing,” Darcy told her simply, and Kate immediately nodded wholeheartedly.

“Totally get that. Honestly, same,” Kate agreed, and Yelena raised an eyebrow, knowing that Kate was full of it, but going to let the opportunity pass by for now.

“Truth or dare?” Darcy asked, and Kate thought for a moment before quickly answering truth.

“Do you have posters of Clint?” Darcy questioned, and Kate looked a little taken off-guard.

“No—”

“Oh, Velma, that’s not a question of does she, it’s a matter of how many,” Yelena interjected, this time resolving not to miss the opportunity to straighten this score out. Especially since Kate had been getting cocky with her while they were in this deathtrap and Darcy had been rubbing off on her a little.

“Look, I only have them because I haven’t had a chance to take them down! Plus, it was like a formative moment in my childhood and they’re there for old times’ sake, okay?” Kate defended herself adamantly, and Yelena just grinned widely, much too pleased with herself.

“Sure,” Yelena unconvincingly agreed. However, she resolved not to ruin Kate’s reputation too badly. After all, she did not know nor entirely trust Darcy enough to do that to Kate. She did not want Darcy to do anything to hurt Kate.

Even though she herself honestly sort of was beginning to feel like hurting the two of them even though she knew she could not realistically do it.

“Truth or dare, Yelena?” Kate asked, and Yelena raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not playing,” Yelena replied simply.

Even if she wanted to play the game, she knew better than to play with those two. They were no doubt plotting to team up together for Yelena’s demise, and if they were not planning, they would no doubt come to the conclusion to do so in the midst of their questioning.

“If you contribute to someone else’s answer, you’re required by law to participate,” Darcy immediately combatted her answer, and Yelena shifted her gaze to Kate. Kate just shrugged, grinning widely, and Yelena huffed, knowing she was not really going to get out of this unless she started threatening bodily harm.

And that was beginning to become a very tempting possibility.

Yelena contemplated her choices, not loving the options. However, she definitely did not particularly want to answer something truth-oriented because Kate knew her far too well and could definitely ask the sorts of questions that would make her uncomfortable.

“Dare,” Yelena finally told Kate simply.

“I dare you to say at least one nice thing about every female person you know,” Kate told her, and Yelena’s eyes widened as she gaped at the kid.

Kate grinned, very much pleased with herself. Yelena had no idea how she managed to somehow combine truth with a dare, and she suddenly found herself beginning to wonder what was taking Natasha so long and why she could not hurry it up a little with fixing the elevator.

“Seriously?”

“Go ahead,” Kate grinned, and Yelena groaned deeply, dragging the sound out for a while before finally starting with the easiest one.

“Natasha is my world and the person that I love most,” Yelena simply stated, not loving having to state her feelings but the words being perfectly heartfelt as she thought of her sister. Natasha truly was her world, and she truly did complete her in every way. Natasha was everything to her.

Yelena was quiet for a moment afterward, dreading the people upcoming on her list.

“Keep going,” Darcy urged, and Yelena groaned, deeply displeased with this situation.

“Ugh… Katie-Bear, you’re a nice, good kid,” Yelena expressed, already almost feeling like she would positively die from having to say all these things. Yelena never expressed her emotions in front of anyone except her sister and Peter on very rare occasions. She might be more inclined to do this if it were only her and Kate, but Darcy was making this even harder for her.

“Aww, thank you,” Kate expressed, positively pleased as could be with the compliment. Yelena let out a deep breath, deeply displeased with the entire thing.

“Ugh…”

“Who’s next?” Darcy asked, and Yelena furrowed her brow, stopping for a moment. She thought she heard something, but she could not be entirely sure because Darcy had been talking when it had sounded off.

She unhappily moved on to the next person she could think of that was higher up on her list of female people that she knew.

“Fine… Carol’s powers are pretty cool, and she’s got a good sense of humor,” Yelena admitted, feeling the epitome of displeased at the moment.

Yelena opened her mouth to start to compliment someone else, and she suddenly froze as she definitely heard a noise.

The floor started to heat up not too far from them, and suddenly a hand burst through the bottom of the elevator. Yelena’s eyes widened, and she gaped at the hole as suddenly the floor of the elevator surrounding the hand melted widely enough to allow a person to break through.

To her shock, the woman that she had just been complimenting popped her head up through the hole, resting her arms on the floor as she looked at the three with a raised eyebrow and a slight smirk.

“Y’know, I think you’ve got a pretty nice sense of humor, too, short-stack,” Carol greeted with a giant grin. Yelena was somewhere between being ridiculously relieved at Carol’s appearance, and immensely humiliated at the fact that Carol had obviously overheard what she said about her while also exposing her nickname for Yelena.

“Finally somebody shows up to save us. Took you guys long enough, Boomer,” Yelena grumbled, completely skipping over Carol’s compliment and Carol’s nickname for her. After all, she definitely did not want to admit that she actually was somewhat pleased with Carol’s words and that they did actually mean something to her.

“Wow… What is it with you people and nicknames?” Darcy muttered under her breath, and Kate just excitedly glanced between the other three.

“Alright, c’mon, let’s get you guys out of here. Who’s first?” Carol asked, and Yelena immediately moved over to her.

“Me.”

“Aww, if you wanted a hug that much, you could’ve just asked,” Carol pointed out as she opened her arm and levitated in place, her body lighting up as her long hair flowed along behind her. Yelena just let out a short bark of laughter.

“Ha. Look, the sooner I can get out of here, the sooner I don’t have to look at you three’s ugly mugs,” Yelena declared, calling upon her knowledge of movies to pull out the vernacular from her repertoire. Kate made some noise that sounded almost offended, and Carol just shook her head.

“I know you love me,” Carol winningly declared, and Yelena just rolled her eyes before lowering herself into the hole next to her and grabbing her around the shoulders. A tingling went through the entirety of her body that felt something like electrocution. However, it was not nearly as painful, and it simply felt weird.

“Whatever, Sunny, just do your thing,” Yelena told her, and Carol easily descended as she moved down the elevator shaft. She quickly approached a hole in the wall where she had broken through a pair of doors.

As soon as they moved through the hole, Natasha ran over to her, grabbing her arm as Carol gently deposited her onto the floor. Natasha quickly ran her hands over Yelena’s shoulders and arms, and she then repositioned her hands to rest on Yelena’s waist.

Yelena let out a deep breath, and Natasha met her eyes questioningly. Yelena knew she was wordlessly asking her if she was okay mentally by searching her physically. Yelena nodded to her easily to answer her, and Natasha nodded a little, leaning in and pressing a kiss to Yelena’s nose.

“Elevator wasn’t a problem?” Natasha questioned, clarifying her questioning a little further with actual words.

“No, I’m okay,” Yelena assured her, and Natasha nodded gently, accepting her answer.

At that moment, Carol suddenly came down with Kate. The brunette was clinging onto her far too tightly, her legs wrapped around her waist. When Carol finally landed, she raised an eyebrow, looking at the younger girl grabbing onto her.

“You can let go now, kid. You’re not going to fall to your death in an elevator shaft today,” Carol deadpanned, and Kate quickly hopped off of her, chuckling somewhat awkwardly.

“Sorry.”

“Nah, don’t be. You’re good. I just had to take the opportunity to use that good sense of humor Yelena says I have,” Carol pointed out with a huge smirk before heading back up to get Darcy.

“It was a dare! I only said that because I was dared!!!” Yelena yelled after her, and Kate hummed in reply, sounding unconvinced.

“But the dare was for you to compliment people and tell the truth, soo,” Kate trailed off, and Yelena immediately turned to look at her.

“Don’t push me, Kate Bishop,” Yelena warned, and Natasha raised an eyebrow as she suddenly looked rather interested.

“What’s she talking about?” Natasha questioned curiously.

“Nothing,” Yelena replied immediately, and Natasha just huffed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she pulled her close. Yelena leaned her head against her shoulder and closed her eyes.

One thing was for sure. Elevators were never good things.

(1) “It’s not funny!”

(2) “And stop laughing!”

(3) “I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me. Just... don't waste time.”

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