#also I don’t leave scrolling here feeling homicidal with rage | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

desidarling123 · 3 years

Text

FATWS Episode 4: A Definitive* Rank Ordering of Most Interesting Character Arcs, from Yours Truly

(*And by definitive I mean completely subjective, but yanno.)

IF YOU HAVEN'T FIGURED IT OUT BY NOW: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR FATWS. SCROLL AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT EM.

Now let's get into it:

1. John Walker

Let me start by saying -- the near-universal John Walker hate from fandom has always been largely undeserved, and that's a hill I'll die on. It comes out of, I think, a visceral sort of need to slot him into an easily understood black-or-white binary when, truthfully, he is neither, and I think this episode was the BEST example of that. The sheer range he exhibits in such a short time -- a handful of character moments and action sequences in the larger fifty minute episode -- serve to humanize him in a way that's messy and intense and very, very real.

Because MAN. Whether you were already sympathetic to John's plight or not, the death of his partner, Lemar Hoskins, is viscerally disturbing. There's no other way to put it. FATWS has not shied away from some pretty crazy onscreen kills, but this one was arguably the worst in how brutally mundane it was. Lemar was in the wrong place at the wrong time -- a man fighting amongst a whole room of super soldiers. He never stood a chance -- and yet, he still jumped in harm's way to save his best friend, a man in whom he saw indisputable goodness, even when the man could not see it himself. There's an obvious Steve/Bucky parallel here, but with a much darker and more realistic twist -- not all of us, after all, can be lucky enough to receive super strength that could save our lives. Lemar was always a regular mortal -- and for that transgression, he pays the ultimate price.

And then. What happens after. Oh. My. God. I felt Walker's rage and hopelessness through the screen. The death of that Flag Smasher -- at the hands of Captain America, no less, a man he'd admitted to admiring as a child not ten minutes earlier -- was brilliantly executed.

With the final shot of the townspeople recording the brutal murder it becomes overwhelmingly clear -- we are witnessing the tragic fall of a man who was, for all his previous missteps, trying to be a hero. But John's moral compass just died a meaningless, horrible death -- and without him by his side, Walker has become a man unhinged.

2. Bucky Barnes and Ayo

I debated putting this one at number two because I'd argue there were some weird elements to the writing choices made (more on that in a sec), but, nevertheless. Bucky and Ayo get slot #2.

That flashback to Wakanda got me excited, but I didn't expect my heart to get shattered almost right away. Oh. My. God. His interactions with Ayo BROKE ME. There's so much nuance in a scene that’s incredibly well-acted by both Sebastian and Florence — you see both of them in a moment that is incredibly pivotal for the former’s character, and we see the latter reacting with sympathy, strength, and enormous grace. I had expected a scene like this to be with Shuri (given that we last saw her with Bucky in the post credits of Black Panther) but, given the context of what was being performed (a final test of the trigger words) having Ayo there made a lot of sense. She could take him down if need be — but as the scene so wonderfully shows, thankfully, she doesn’t have to. Instead, she’s there to let him know that for the first time in almost a century, he’s free again.

Now, let’s get into some of the unevenness. I had hoped, at the end of the last episode, that Bucky had at least informed the Dora Milaje of his liaison with Zemo — that, perhaps, it had been Bucky’s intent to hand him over all along. Alas, that was not the case — Bucky, it seems, had broken Zemo out with little thought to — or perhaps simply silent acceptance of — the consequences that would come with it.

This is the part, again, where the writing felt a bit weak. We know from the opening shots of the episode that Bucky cares enormously for Ayo — they’re not simply soldiers in arms, but they’ve shared a moment of immense vulnerability together. We ALSO know that he cares enormously for T’Challa, for Shuri, and for Wakanda as a country (see Infinity War, where he says “I love this place” in reference to his new home).

So that begs the question — why? Why did he betray them in that way, besides sheer desperation for a lead? And it’s not one, I’d argue, that we are given a satisfying answer to. Bucky has been reckless to an alarming degree in the last few episodes, but not informing Wakanda of his intention to liaise with the man who killed their king feels like a MAJOR tactical oversight. Is he willing to burn everything down to win this battle against the Flag Smashers? Are these his self destructive tendencies kicking in? OR, is he just truly so blinded by his emotions surrounding his past that he’s willing to throw away what could very well be his future? Only time will tell. But I hope he’ll do right by Ayo and Wakanda, as he clearly has a LOT to make up for.

3. Baron Helmut Zemo

God. I love Zemo’s psychotic, problematic ass. Say what you want, but the man is the most efficient of them all and he isn't a super soldier or an Avenger. Over and over, he shows that he's truly smarter than them and always has been.

He doesn't get personal. He doesn’t get distracted. He knows exactly what his goal is, and he executes on it. Mans didn’t hesitate to unload several bullets into Karli, and as soon as he figured out what the vials were, he destroyed all except one. Like I said, the most efficient person on the team. Has arguably done more to forward the cause against the Flag Smashers/continued existence of super soldiers than anyone else and it’s only been a few days. Between that, his god-awful dancing skills and him shooting the eugenicist scientist without so much as a blink of an eye, I think he's a man after my own heart. I’m almost sad to see him get what’s coming for him come next episode. (Because y’all, he did still kill King T’Chaka, and there’s no way the Dora leave here without taking him out on a silver platter and an apple stuffed in his mouth). But again, let’s see how that pans out.

4. Sam Wilson

WHAT are the writers doing to Sam, I swear to God? We didn't get too much introspection into where his head's at during this episode, and when we did the treatment felt uneven at best. I think, in trying to have him create a rapport with Karli, the writers have created some areas of commonality that didn’t always translate as they’d like. It was also weird to see Sam swinging from the well-earned cynicism of the previous two episodes to the sort of wide-eyed optimism Steve used to portray. Perhaps that was simply to try and show Karli an alternative, but as the episode showed, she clearly wasn't buying (though, in Sam’s defense, he came pretty close).

Something about Sam’s characterization in this episode didn’t really do it for me — I would argue episode one and two were both stronger in that regard. Nevertheless, I’m hopeful that they’ll correct it in the next one.

5. Karli Morgenthau

Her treatment is arguably the worst of them all. She is young, yeah, but she oscillates at an alarming rate between spouting class discourse that, by this episode, feels largely derivative (like someone scrolled on Twitter and put a bunch of keywords together in hopes of evoking an emotional audience response) and homicidal tendencies that show a brutal yet fundamentally messy underpinning. Unlike Zemo, she is still too easily confounded, and that will come to bite her in the ass sooner rather than later. (See: The Power Broker)

Perhaps I'm meant to be rooting for her on some degree but I really can't -- she's cruel and sloppy, which I cannot forgive.

Oh, and she killed Lemar Hoskins and threatened Sarah Wilson. Yikes.

Overall Episode Takeaway: A lot of shocking moments and great acting beats for everyone involved (arguably some of the best of the series thus far), but the weakness of the writing does crop up in parts. Whether they'll be corrected for going forward is to be determined...

UP NEXT: Meta pieces for Sam, Bucky, John, and Zemo all in the works!

#fatws #tfatws #sam wilson #bucky barnes #john walker #fatws spoilers #tfatws spoilers #tfatws meta #karli morgenthau

29 notes · View notes

chemicalmagecraft · 3 years

Text

Foresight is 20/20 Chapter 12

Chikage

I axe kicked a giant rock in half. That was fun. I also found floating around not with demon sage cores but with glittery red fairy wings made from demon sage chakra to be enjoyable as well. Because I was pure chakra, I was actually a lot better at handling natural energy than weak, inferior carbon-based lifeforms and could absorb more without any kind of negative effects. Sure, there was some instability if I went too high, but it was nowhere near as bad as the side effects on a human, and I could expel the excess pretty easily. "Dang," Kouki said from where he was sitting on another rock. I turned to face m-him. "So I guess you're just default a lot stronger than me. Makes sense, you're basically a mini biju." I could tell through our connection that he was a little off about how he couldn't access the red chakra that was now me, but that was mostly overshadowed by his marvel over the potential of Demon Shadow Clone Jutsu, the jutsu that created me. He fidgeted a bit, causing his arm to mutate slightly, red scales forming instead of the frog limbs that comes from using toad oil as a medium. "Dangit." The demon sage cores orbiting him sucked all of the natural energy out of him, setting him back to square one.

I grinned and "sat" on the air in front of him. "You having trouble, bro?" Kouki had decided that with the extra control granted to him whenever we were separate, combined with the fact that he couldn't fall back on red chakra without me, that he should finally learn how to make sage chakra the right way.

He glared at me. "You know as well as I do that this isn't easy to do properly."

I grinned and started telekinetically messing with a leaf using my sage aura. "Do I really?" I spontaneously combusted it.

"Haha." He closed his eyes and stuck his tongue out in concentration.

"Right," I said. "Imma go see what else I can do." I melted into the ground, merging the energy that made up my body with the shadows of the grass. It turned out that, while I couldn't move fast at all when projecting myself as a shadow that didn't already exist, whenever I entered a real shadow, I could move... well, I didn't know how fast exactly because I hadn't gotten around to figuring out how to calculate that, but at the very least it was fast enough that it looked like teleportation even when Kouki pulled a little trick with the Shoraigan to slow down the "footage."

So yeah, I got to the the trees pretty dang fast. I flew out of the shadows in my "biju form," which was really just me as a fox with fur the color of my clothes with the exception of a "mane" the same color as my hair, and sliced a tree in half with my claws. I opened my mouth, compressing red and blue chakra in a way that just felt... right. Even with sage mode it was small and a little draining, but it was still a biju dama. I launched it at a tree, obliterating it into smoking mulch. I sighed at the relatively small AOE, but then grinned about the fact that I just made a biju dama. Unfortunately, my victory was cut short by Kouki calling for me to come back through our telepathic link. That meant it was time for our experiment, which he wanted to be whole for just in case something went wrong. I shrugged. "Guess it's for the best," I thought to myself. "Was probably going to just throw around dama 'til I ran out of chakra." I melted into the shadows and zipped off to Kouki.

kukukuku~

I sighed as I felt Chikage returning to me. It was reassuring to have my red chakra back, even if I didn't really use it that much. Still, I suppose I did have the demon gems to fall back on, on account of how my connection to other sources of my own red chakra was uninterrupted. I crossed my arms behind my back and turned around, my eyes closed. "Finally," I said. "A project months in the making, about to be fulfilled. I'm assuming you're here to watch, eh, Tenko?"

Ai laughed. "That's a lot less intimidating if we know you can sense us, kid." I sighed and opened my eyes. "And wasn't it only one month?"

I shrugged. "Felt like more. Might just have been from that one part where they read my journal..." I held my hands out in front of me and the giant scroll I'd taken to sealing as much demon Sage chakra into as possible once I'd filled the demon sage seal on my body, the Scroll of the Demon Sage, appeared floating in front of me through a summoning instead of a sealing on account of how its power meant I couldn't seal it in my inventory scrolls and actually keep anything else in it as well. "This is it. What might be the second most powerful thing in Konoha." The scroll unfurled slightly, revealing a seal tag that as of then contained most of its power. Uzumaki are really good at handling stupid levels of energy, okay? At least I'd also managed to complete my first mini biju dama paper bomb... "Are you ready to receive this power?" I asked Ai.

"Is this really necessary?" Tenko asked, worried.

"No," Ai and I both said at the same time.

"But really, what's the point of amassing an insane amount of dangerously powerful chakra if you don't infuse as much as possible into the best known person for taking in stupid amounts of chakra just to see what happens?" I elaborated.

Ai nodded and gingerly took the demon sage seal tag from its place in the scroll. "Right, so I'm guessing you have somewhere you want me to stand?"

I slung the scroll on my back and pointed over to an area I'd prepared in advance. "There. I've already set up four cores with orders to use the Four Violet Flames Formation should anything go wrong." A nice thing about having multiple potent sources of chakra at my total command, I'd found, was the fact that I could potentially use collaboration nin- or genjutsu without actually having to collaborate with anyone.

Tenko sighed. "That's not reassuring."

Before Tenko could actually object, Ai slapped the tag on her chest. "Toolatealreadyusedit!" She quickly shouted. The red lines of the seal tag began to glow orangey-gold, then started to spread to cover her entire body in a thick chakra cloak. She laughed maniacally, floating into the air as nine tail-like chains made of the same chakra sprouted from her backside. The chains spread to curl around the entire training ground, a red, domed barrier coming into existence at the edges. I don't know if she meant to or not, but her barrier materialized just before the shinobi that I'd had posted nearby via Sandaime just in case of a worst-case scenario, cutting them off.

"Kouki-kun, what did you do to my wife?" Tenko asked worriedly.

I grinned. "'Wife?' So did either of you finally pop the question?"

She flinched, then blushed. "I... haven't yet... I do have the ring, though."

I shrugged. "Hope for the best with you two. And by the way, I'm sure it'll go over fine." Ai's maniacal laughter grew louder, causing me to turn my attention back to her. She put her hands in front of her, as if she was holding an invisible ball. Oh. "A thought occurs to me," I said, making sure to keep my voice calm.

"That doesn't sound good..." As if on cue, Ai started to slowly form a disconcertingly familiar-looking chakra ball in between her hands. In addition to that, countless streaks of energy began to slowly form in the air, gravitating to the epicenter. That epicenter being a modified biju dama.

"So there was this one clan with a Kekkei Genkai that allowed them to passively accumulate natural energy and then use that to mutate themselves. Because they didn't work for it, though, the natural energy caused them to become uncontrollable, entering homicidal rages. Because of that, they were almost completely wiped out." At that point, I started to feel a slight tug on my chakra, though I was able to resist it.

"So what you're saying is..."

"She's drunk on power, yeah. Whoops."

"How, exactly, did you not notice that'd happen with your eyes?"

"Figured out a way to make sure that nothing bad enough I can't fix it will happen while still not spoiling me on what happens. Use exclusively that for my experiments now," I explained. I noticed a bit of chakra chain straying near me and had an idea. "Hang on, let me fix this." I tried to grab the chain with a chakra thread, but it was just sucked in, so I aborted almost immediately and just lunged at it. It was starting to get to the point where I needed to have my demon gems actively cling to me to make sure they weren't sucked in. That would be bad. Thankfully, I managed to grab the chain and my theory was right. Just like how Kurama still held some link to my red chakra and Kaguya still had some link to his chakra, I could feel my connection to the chakra in the modified Adamantine Sealing Chain. I grabbed it with both hands, wrapped one side around my arm, then tugged the two sides in opposite directions.

With a bit of willpower applied, one link snapped and got spaghettified by the still-growing ball of impending doom, leaving me with a really long chain of chakra that I could control wrapped around my arm. "Right, let's hope this works or Konoha probably becomes partially made of smoking crater," I said, glad that I'd picked one of the farthest training grounds from Konoha proper, then pulled a leaf out of Ai's new book and sucked the chain into my body, making sure to strip enough natural energy off of it that I didn't become a glittery garden statue. "Oooh," I grunted, then sucked in a breath. I noticed that with one chain down, the chakra-sucking had slowed back down, though I knew it was going to pick back up if I didn't do anything.

"Are you okay?" Tenko asked.

"Yeah, just a bit of a rush," I said. "Sorry. Well, here goes..." I concentrated on the chakra that I'd absorbed. After a few seconds, I was able to form two purple chains of chakra that emerged from my sleeves. I drew on the power I'd stolen from Ai to lengthen the chains significantly, taking the shortest possible paths I could to intersect her chains with my own. Once I'd gotten all of her chains, I tugged on the chakra in them, converting Ai's golden chains to my purple chains. The effect cascaded, eating away at all of her chains until her chains were fully turned, making the barrier fall and stopping the suction effect fully. I jerked my arm, causing nine chains to sprout from Ai's arms and wrap around the biju dama. I started retracting the chains back into my body, removing almost every last trace of demon sage chakra from Ai's body. Thankfully, she didn't fall on her face, as she was able to recover almost immediately and shoot some now non-glowing yellow chains into the ground and lower herself down gently.

"I have no idea what just happened, but I'm assuming it worked because I can make chains out of my chakra now," she said.

I nodded, concentrating on the ball of dangerously explosive chakra I was slowly reeling in. "Tenko, I need you to take the scroll off of my back and open it up a bit." She did as I asked, holding the scroll up so I could easily access it. I slowly put my hands on the scroll, converting the chain into the seal. The chain, no longer attached to my body, continued to reel in the demon sage chakra. As it did that, I placed my hand on the chain, removing the impurities the chakra gained from being in Ai's system. I greedily absorbed those bits of chakra. As I suspected, my body accepted it as readily as it did Shukaku's chakra.

"What exactly happened there?" one of the shinobi asked now that they'd arrived.

"Science," I answered.

"What were we even supposed to do about that?"

I shrugged. "Sorry, I didn't expect that to happen. I just figured Ai wouldn't have very good control of her chains at first. Turns out that that much sage chakra means going crazy, though."

"So I'm guessing I shouldn't use that seal for a super mode?" Ai asked after walking over to us. I swiped the empty tag that still stuck to her.

"No, if I segment it to lower the dosage, then it both becomes multi-use and lets you keep your sanity, at the tradeoff of power, obviously. Just make sure to use it for emergencies only. And while we're at it, I should be able to eventually teach you how to enter proper sage mode, which you could do any time with just a few minutes to charge up." I looked back up to survey the mostly concerned, but with one happy, faces looking at me. "I'd say that this little experiment has been a success."

kukukuku~

Yeah, I got chewed out by my dad. In hindsight, though, I really couldn't blame him. Thankfully, I was able to get off with just a tongue-lashing and promising to make absolutely sure to test out anything that could theoretically have a large blast radius by making a gem take it far away from Konoha and remote detonate it or just not do it at all. To be honest, though, I was bracing myself for a grounding, so I was actually fine with that. And he even organized a lesson on nature transformation for me. After giving me another lecture, this time on not doing things that could potentially destroy my hands or other parts of my body unless absolutely necessary. And so there I was, leaning on the wall of the Hyuuga compound courtyard. I'd made sure that there was a chain of shadows that Chikage could use to get away from me because I knew Kakashi was going to use that one chakra paper thing on me and I didn't want to have any interference from her/my power, yet still have her accessible once we started the lesson in earnest. "Sup," I said when Kakashi arrived.

"So you want to learn how to use nature transformation?" he asked.

I shrugged and licked my lips. "I already know how to use wind, but I'd like to learn at least the basics of the others."

"Right, learning it now if you have the chakra for it is actually probably a good idea." He pulled out a piece of paper. "I doubt you can do much with it at the moment, but at the very least, you'll be able to practice until you're ready for the big stuff." He used the paper, crinkling it. "This paper is made to test one's elemental affinity. Channel a light amount of chakra onto it and it'll react in different ways depending on what your primary affinity is. Mine's lightning, so the paper became wrinkled." He gave me a second piece of paper. "You try."

I complied, channeling a bit of my chakra into the paper. "Well what a coincidence," I said, referring to the fact that my paper was now as crumpled as his was. "We have the same element, don't we?"

"Yes, that's what that means. I suppose we'll start with the lightning exercises, then?"

I called Chikage back, and she reentered me without Kakashi even seeming to notice. For whatever reason, her chakra signature was muted whenever she was inside a shadow, and she could easily suppress her signature even more and spread herself out to lower the density of her chakra in the shadows, so the only way he would've noticed was when we joined or if his Sharingan was out. It would've been the perfect ability for stealth if not for the fact that she couldn't bring anything with her, and I was already trying to think of ways around that one little weakness. Well, there was also the little snag of how she needed shadows, but really, where aren't there shadows?

"Let's start this lightshow, then," I said with a smile.

kukukuku~

And now for something completely different.

A rabbit bounded across a field near End Valley. It did not know what its destination was, just that something was... calling to it. It stopped by the roots of a great tree and began to sniff at the ground. Whatever it was looking for, it was there. It found it after a few minutes of searching. A small red stone, barely a flake, that glowed with some unearthly light. Now that it could see it, the rabbit's every instinct screamed to get away, that this stone was a predator, but it couldn't stop itself. Its body wasn't its own anymore. The now-terrified rabbit tried to fight back with all its might as its head came closer to the gem, but to no avail. The stone already had a hold over it, it just needed to touch it and it would be over. A spectre of death seemed to emerge from the jewel of death, ready to embrace the rabbit. When the rabbit's head was close enough, the stone lifted from the ground and adhered to its forehead. The rabbit screamed as a foreign presence entered its body, burning away its very soul to make room for something else.

I grinned a rabbitty grin and hopped around a bit, testing out my new rabbity body. It was a shame that I could only gain a proper body by stealing it from a living creature, but what can you do? I sniffed at the ground with my new nose. The rabbit's sense of smell was different from my original's, but when I took over the rabbit's brain I gained complete access to all its memories, so I was able to adjust soon enough. Plus I noticed that I could understand rabbits now. I sent a telepathic message back to Kouki and Chikage.

"You find a body?" they asked.

"Yup. Rabbit. Surprisingly good chakra affinity, despite being wild," I replied.

"Cool. Right, you should probably act natural for at least a month, to build up plausible deniability." they instructed. "Then you can start doing supernatural stuff. Cannibalize the body and continue your mission."

I sent a scoff through our link. "I know what to do, I have all your memories."

"Stop being so sarcastic, you're not supposed to be me."

"Right."

"By the way, did you pick out a name?"

I gave a small rabbit grin. "Of course. If my first body after my 'resurrection' is to be that of a rabbit's, then why shouldn't my name be Usagi?"

"Cool. You'd better give at least one 'name of the moon' speech though."

"Certainly. I would never pass up such an opportunity." It may have purely been within my mind, but I was already preparing my cover by practicing my new mannerisms, at the very least those dealing with how I spoke.

"Right, I'ma get back to this stupid leaf, you go do your rabbit thing. Rabbit." I hopped around a bit, searching for some food. A deep cover assignment. It was going to be marvelous.

kukukuku~

I growled as I passed my chakra through the leaf. No matter what I did, it just wasn't getting wet!

"Did you try turning it off and turning it back on again?" Chikage asked me as she floated over me.

I rolled my eyes, cut off the flow, then let my chakra flow over the leaf like water once more. "Don't think that helped."

"Dude it's been a day," she said. "You're not Naruto, you don't have an army of clones to poorly manage yet still somehow get your thing done. Just take a deep breath, accept that this is going to take some time, and do the other three exercises that you actually did make some headway in. You don't have Tsunade-levels of control when we're unfused yet."

I stared at her for a second. "How are you taking this better than me?" I asked.

"I mean, two heads are better than one. I have the perspective that you're being a lil dummy."

I stopped trying to wet the leaf and started trying to set it aflame instead. Because I already had experience doing it with and as Chikage, it started to smoke after a few seconds. I removed my thumb, seeing a smoldering thumbprint on it. Chikage picked it up, then it just disintegrated. "Showoff," I griped.

#naruto #naruto fanfiction #fanfiction #Foresight is 20/20 #F20 CH12

3 notes · View notes

byamylaurens · 3 years

Text

Abandoned Words: Aphelion Ch 1

What is it? A sci fi novella that isn’t quite sure if it’s a murder mystery or a romance. Right now it’s an ugly chimera 😉

Status: Fully drafted twice over.

Why I Abandoned It: Because a dear friend pointed out that it was an ugly genre chimera and I didn’t have the objectivity, emotional bandwidth, or writer skills to figure out how to fix it at the time.

Will This Ever Be Resurrected? Yes, definitely. It’s on the cards for yet another draft at some point in the next few years. The chapters that you’ll be see here, though, won’t make it to the final cut: the story will start a little bit later on.

Interesting Titbit: This story is set in my Witch Blue universe, the one with the personality-based magic where your skills are based on your Myer-Briggs personality type. There’s a middle-grade sci fi adventure novel called Moon Shot with all the backstory, and the main Witch Blue series is something I’ll write eventually, because I love it.

I swore I’d never fall apart over anything again when Jesse walked out on me. But as I strode down the Memorial Walk where the list of officers who’d fallen in the line of duty stretched out too far in front of me, I could feel the cracks in my facade. Four weeks. That was how long my partner Fillion had been missing for, and it was beginning to feel a lot like Jesse.

Not that I’d been romantically involved with Fillion. We’d talked about it once, back in the beginning, but we’d decided mutually that it would make things too awkward at work, and I don’t think he’d ever been really serious about it anyway. But I’d worked with him every work day for the last five years, and four weeks felt a lot like abandonment.

Hopefully today would be the day that saw a breakthrough in the investigation.

I lingered at the end of Memorial Walk, fingertips trailing over the burnished copper of the wall where the list of names ended. One day, I presumed, my name would be there. I could only hope that Fillion’s wouldn’t be. I gave a frowny sort of smile, took one last look at the wall, and headed back to my office. Lunch was over, and if I’d managed to time things right, the search I’d been running on Fillion’s financial history should be just about ready.

Sure enough, as I walked into my tiny office, the computer dinged. Right on time. I allowed myself a moment of satisfaction at a job competently handled, and swivelled the chair around so I could plunk onto it sideways. I scooted across to the computer and, half-slouching at the desk, keyed in my password and brought up the search results. Nothing, nothing, and a whole bunch of nothing. My jaw tightened and I forced myself to relax it, massaging the tight joint idly with one hand as I scrolled further through the results.

Nothing, nothing, more nothing… Wait. I backed up a little and a thrill of adrenalin surged through me. Eight weeks ago, Fillion had been accepted for a new credit card.

Heart pounding, lip between my teeth, I flicked over into the financial records program, keyed in the credit card number and hit search. The wheel of death whirled away on the screen. “Come on,” I muttered, drumming my fingers on the desk. “Come on.”

The search results appeared: a financial statement for the card for the last two months. Only two purchases were listed. I hit refresh just to be sure, but still only two purchases showed up. I shifted in my chair, leaning closer to the screen.

Two purchases. Adrenalin surged again. The first purchase was innocuous, [something actually important here]. But the second? The second purchase was the gold I’d been digging for. Fillion had bought a one-way ticket to the Haifley Cluster through All-Cover Agency Travel, and it had been scheduled to depart twenty-eight days ago. Fillion had disappeared twenty-nine days ago.

Fingers trembling, I took a screenshot and set it to print, hit print on the original records, and just for safekeeping emailed the screenshot to myself and Connor, my hacker bestie who contracted out to the police department. This was going straight to Captain Cavan.

I snatched up the printouts, gave my empty chair a twirl because I could, and grinned as I walked out the door.

I floated down the hallway, lost in daydreams of what it would be like to follow Fillion to the Haifley Cluster, landing on one of the exotic space stations only to discover him there waiting for me. I knew you’d find me, he said in my imagination as I conveniently waved aside the matter of why he’d left in the first place. I’d convince him to come back to Giape M, even though it was a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere (population less than one mill), and Cavan would finally be able to give me that promotion he’d been promising, because my psych evals would, this time, be totally stellar.

I placed a palm against Captain Cavan’s door and took a deep breath. I knocked.

“Come in.”

I pushed the door half open and stuck my head around it. “Hey boss, just me.”

He smiled, aiming for welcoming no doubt but instead falling just short of outright homicidal, which was his usual expression. “Lexi. What’s up?”

Forcing myself to walk sedately, I entered an office not a whole lot larger than mine and crossed it to place the printouts on his desk. “Fillion booked a ticket.”

Cavan’s eyebrows shot up, lost under a steel grey fringe of hair. “To where?”

“Somewhere in the Haifley Cluster,” I said. “Through All-Cover Agency Travel,” I said, leaning over to double check the name on the printout.

“All-Cover? You sure?”

I nodded. “Yup. Why’sat?”

“Because it’s a stupid name for a travel agency, that’s why,” he said, scowling.

I smirked. “Agreed.”

Cavan briefly skimmed the pages I’d given him, then glanced up. “What do you want?”

I took a deep breath. This was it. “Permission to subpoena records from All-Cover,” I said. “Then permission to book my own ticket once I know where he’s gone.”

Cavan sighed and hunched to rub at his forehead with three fingers. “Lexi, you know I can’t approve that.”

I stared fixedly at the back wall, pulse hammering. “With all due respect, sir, if you can’t, then no one can.”

He shot me a pointed look. “Maybe that’s exactly the point.”

“But sir,” I said, breaking my stiff-backed posture and appealing to him over his desk. “I could find him. I know I could. I just need a couple of weeks, not long, just a bit of time there and I’ll track him down, I swear it—“

“That’s enough, Sergeant Clarke.” He said it quietly, but there was a weight to the words that suggested that if I didn’t obey them, they would sweep inexorably down and smother me.

I bit down what I’d been going to say and straightened, staring at the wall again. “Sir.”

“Alexis, you’ve done good work here. I didn’t think anybody was going to find a lead on this one, and especially not when he’s been missing so long now. You’ve done good,” he reiterated, before offering the printouts back to me.

My eyebrows twitched down. “But?”

“Lexi,” he said softly. “I can’t spare you. Not right now with the jingos going wild and the Tama Wilde expected to hit town any day now. And after that there’s the presidential candidacy tour, and then the Coetzee Games. I’m sorry. This one’s out of our hands, and we just don’t have the resources to chase it. I’m declaring the case closed.”

“What?” Immediately I inhaled sharply, wishing I could retract my screech. “Sorry,” I added as my hands bunched at my sides. I fixed my eyes on the opposite wall again. “But with all due respect, sir, I’ve just handed you the first solid lead we’ve had on this case since it opened twenty-nine days ago. You’re not going to do anything with that?”

“Sergeant, we have no time and fewer resources,” he snapped. “The case is closed and that’s final, and you can accept it or you can leave and conduct your manhunt on your own time. Do you understand?” he said, clipping the words like bullets from the gun.

Rigid, I nodded. “Yes, sir!” I clicked my heels together and raged. How could he do this? To me, obviously, but also to Fillion. Fillion had been one of his top detectives, a jewel in the crown of the Giape M police force, and he was gone, and no one but me seemed to care.

Cavan sighed, softening a little. “Lexi. If he bought his own ticket, then he left of his own volition, and there’s precious little any of us can do. I know I don’t have to explain the concept of jurisdiction to you again, you’re one of my top officers. Just… Let this one go, okay? It’ll be easier for everyone.”

Bite your tongue, I told myself viciously. Bite your tongue!

Cavan sighed again. “Dismissed. Go take a lunch break.”

“I just had—“

“Take another lunch break!” He glared at me and waved his hand. “Dismissed!”

Bite your tongue. Bite your tongue. I headed to the door, grabbed it behind me, and paused. “With all due respect, sir, this is the worst decision you’ve ever made.” I slammed the door behind me, took two steps down the corridor, and stopped with my back against the wall to keep me from falling. I shook all over—with anxiety, with fear, and with rage.

Read chapter 2.

Why Ambition Isn't Evil, and Neither Is Slytherin

Made It Monday + SANCTUARY 3 RELEASE DATE

A Fox Of Storms And Starlight Release Day 🙂

This content is for Patrons only, it's not locked for you because you are an Administrator

Abandoned Words: Aphelion Ch 1 was originally published on Amy Laurens

#Amy Laurens #Amy Laurens Patreon #Aphelion #Australian author Amy #best short science fiction stories #ByAmyLaurens Patreon #Canberra writer Amy #Patreon #sci fi short stories #short read #Witch Blue

0 notes

chemicalmagecraft · 5 years

Text

I Would Totally Kick Jiraiya’s Butt Chapter 12

A/N: Just in case you didn't read the A/N from the last chapter, anytime any version of Kouki that isn't Kouki Prime has the spotlight, like the next scene, it will be noted before the scene begins to clarify.

kukukuku~

Chikage

I axe kicked a giant rock in half. That was fun. I also found floating around not with demon sage cores but with glittery fairy wings made from demon sage chakra to be enjoyable as well. Because I was pure chakra, I was actually a lot better at handling natural energy than weak, inferior carbon-based lifeforms and could absorb more without any kind of negative effects. Sure, there was some instability if I went too high, but it was nowhere near as bad as the side effects on a human. "Dang," Kouki said from where he was sitting on another rock. I turned to face m-him. "So I guess you're just default a lot stronger than me. Makes sense, you're basically a mini bijū." I could tell through our connection that he was a little off about how he couldn't access the red chakra that was now me, but that was mostly overshadowed by his marvel over the potential of the jutsu. He fidgeted a bit, causing his arm to mutate slightly, red scales instead of the frog limbs that comes from using toad oil as a medium. "Dangit." The demon sage cores orbiting him sucked all of the natural energy out of him, setting him back to square one.

He glared at me. "You know as well as I do that this isn't easy to do properly."

I grinned and started telekinetically messing with a leaf using my sage aura. "Do I really?" I spontaneously combusted it.

"Haha." He closed his eyes and stuck his tongue out in concentration.

"Right," I said. "Imma go see what else I can do." I melted into the ground, traveling through the shadows of the grass. It turned out that, while I couldn't move fast at all when projecting myself as a shadow that didn't already exist, whenever I entered a real shadow, I could move... well, I didn't know how fast exactly because I hadn't gotten around to figuring out how to calculate that, but at the very least it was fast enough that it looked like teleportation even when Kouki pulled a little trick with the Shōraigan to slow down the "footage."

So yeah, I got to the the trees pretty dang fast. I flew out of the shadows in my bijū form, which was really just me as a fox with fur the color of my clothes with the exception of a "mane" the same color as my hair, and sliced a tree in half with my claws. I opened my mouth, compressing red and blue chakra in a way that just felt... right. Even with sage mode it was small and a little draining, but it was still a bijū dama. I launched it at a tree, obliterating it into smoking mulch. I sighed at the relatively small AOE, but then grinned about the fact that I just made a bijū dama. Unfortunately, my victory was cut short by Kouki calling for me to come back through our telepathic link. That meant it was time for our experiment, which he wanted to be whole for just in case something went wrong. I shrugged. "Guess it's for the best," I thought to myself. "Was probably going to just throw around dama 'til I ran out of chakra." I melted into the shadows and zipped off to Kouki.

kukukuku~

I sighed as I felt Chikage returning to me. It was reassuring to have my red chakra back, even if I didn't really use it that much. Still, I suppose I did have the sage cores to fall back on, on account of how my telepathy to other sources of my own red chakra was uninterrupted. I crossed my arms behind my back and turned around, my eyes closed. "Finally," I said. "A project months in the making, about to be fulfilled. I'm assuming you're here to watch, eh, Tenko?"

Ai laughed. "That's a lot less intimidating if we know you can sense us, kid." I sighed and opened my eyes. "And wasn't it only one month?"

I shrugged. "Felt like more. Might just have been from that one part where they read my journal..." I held my hands out in front of me and the giant scroll I'd taken to sealing as much DSC into as possible once I'd filled the demon sage seal on my body, the Scroll of the Demon Sage, appeared floating in front of me through a summoning instead of a sealing on account of how its power meant I couldn't seal it in my inventory scrolls and actually keep anything else in it as well. "This is it. What might be the second most powerful thing in Konoha." The scroll unfurled slightly, revealing a seal tag that as of then contained most of its power. Uzumaki are really good at handling stupid levels of energy, okay? At least I'd also managed to complete my first mini bijū dama paper bomb... "Are you ready to receive this power?" I asked Ai.

"Is this really necessary?" Tenko asked, worried.

"No," Ai and I both said at the same time.

Ai nodded and gingerly took the demon sage seal tag from its place in the scroll. "Right, so I'm guessing you have somewhere you want me to stand?"

I slung the scroll on my back and pointed over to an area I'd prepared in advance. "There. I've already set up four cores with orders to use the Four Violet Flames Formation should anything go wrong." A nice thing about having multiple potent sources of chakra at my total command, I'd found, was the fact that I could use collaboration nin- or genjutsu without actually having to collaborate with anyone.

Tenko sighed. "That's not reassuring."

"Kouki-kun, what did you do to my wife?" Tenko asked worriedly.

I grinned. "'Wife?' So did either of you finally pop the question?"

She flinched, then blushed. "I... haven't yet... I do have a ring, though."

"So what you're saying is..."

"She's drunk on power, yeah. Whoops."

"How, exactly, did you not notice that'd happen with your eyes?"

Just like how Kurama still held some link to my red chakra and Kaguya still had some link to his chakra, I could feel my connection to the chakra in the modified Adamantine Sealing Chain. I grabbed it with both hands, wrapped one side around my arm, then tugged the two sides in opposite directions. With a bit of willpower applied, one link snapped and got spaghettified by the still-growing ball of impending doom, leaving me with a really long chain of chakra that I could control wrapped around my arm. "Right, let's hope this works or Konoha probably becomes partially made of smoking crater," I said, glad that I'd picked one of the farthest training grounds from Konoha proper, then pulled a leaf out of Ai's new book and sucked the chain into my body, making sure to strip enough natural energy off of it that I didn't become a glittery garden statue. "Oooh," I grunted, then sucked in a breath. I noticed that with one chain down, the chakra-sucking had slowed back down, though I knew it was going to pick back up if I didn't do anything.

"Are you okay?" Tenko asked.

"Yeah, just a bit of a rush," I said. "Sorry. Well, here goes..." I concentrated on the chakra that I'd absorbed. After a few seconds, I was able to form two purple chains of chakra that emerged from my sleeves. I drew on the power I'd stolen from Ai to lengthen the chains significantly, taking the shortest possible paths I could to intersect her chains with my own. Once I'd gotten all of her chains, I tugged on the chakra in them, converting Ai's golden chains to my purple chains. The effect cascaded, eating away at all of her chains until her chains were fully turned, making the barrier fall and stopping the suction effect fully. I jerked my arm, causing nine chains to sprout from Ai's arms and wrap around the bijū dama. I started retracting the chains back into my body, removing almost every last trace of demon sage chakra from Ai's body. Thankfully, she didn't fall on her face, as she was able to recover almost immediately and shoot some now non-glowing yellow chains into the ground and lower herself down gently.

"I have no idea what just happened, but I'm assuming it worked because I can make chains out of my chakra now," she said.

"What exactly happened there?" one of the shinobi asked now that they'd arrived.

"Science," I answered.

"What were we even supposed to do about that?"

I shrugged. "Sorry, I didn't expect that to happen. I just figured Ai wouldn't have very good control of her chains at first. Turns out that that much sage chakra means going crazy, though."

"So I'm guessing I shouldn't use that seal for a super mode?" Ai asked after walking over to us. I swiped the empty tag that still stuck to her.

kukukuku~

And so there I was, leaning on the wall of the Hyūga compound courtyard. I'd made sure that there was a chain of shadows that Chikage could use to get away from me because I knew Kakashi was going to use that one chakra paper thing on me and I didn't want to have any interference from her/my power, yet still have her accesible once we started the lesson in earnest. "Sup," I said when Kakashi arrived.

"So you want to learn how to use nature transformation?" he asked.

I shrugged and licked my lips. "I already know how to use wind, but I'd like to learn at least the basics of the others."

I complied, channeling a bit of my chakra into the paper. "Well what a coincidence," I said, referring to the fact that my paper was now as crumpled as his was. "We have the same element, don't we?"

"Yes, that's what that means. I suppose we'll start with the lightning exercises, then?"

I called Chikage back, and she reentered me without Kakashi even seeming to notice. For whatever reason, her chakra signature was muted whenever she was inside a shadow, and she could easily suppress her signature even more, so the only way he would've noticed was when we joined or if his Sharingan was out. It would've been the perfect ability for stealth if not for the fact that she couldn't bring anything with her, and I was already trying to think of ways around that one little weakness. Well, there was also the little snag of how she needed shadows, but really, where aren't there shadows?

"Let's start this lightshow, then," I said with a smile.

kukukuku~

And now for something completely different.

A rabbit bounded across a field near End Valley. It did not know what its destination was, just that something was... calling to it. It stopped by the roots of a great tree and began to sniff at the ground. Whatever it was looking for, it was there. It found it after a few minutes of searching. A small red stone, barely a flake, that glowed with some unearthly light. Now hat it could see it, the rabbit's every instinct screamed to get away, that this stone was a predator, but it couldn't stop itself. Its body wasn't its own anymore. The now-terrified rabbit tried to fight back with all its might as its head came closer to the gem, but to no avail. The stone already had a hold over it, it just needed to touch it and it would be over. A spectre of death seemed to emerge from the jewel of death, ready to embrace the rabbit. When the rabbit's head was close enough, the stone lifted from the ground and adhered to its forehead. The rabbit screamed as a foreign presence entered its body, burning away its very soul to make room for something else.

I grinned a rabbitty grin and hopped around a bit, testing out my new rabbit body. It was a shame that I could only gain a proper body by stealing it from a living creature, but what can you do? I sniffed at the ground with my new nose. The rabbit's sense of smell was different from my original's, but when I took over the rabbit's brain I gained complete access to all its memories, so I was able to adjust soon enough. Plus I noticed that I could understand rabbits now. I sent a telepathic message back to Kouki and Chikage.

"You find a body?" they asked.

"Yup. Rabbit. Surprisingly good chakra affinity, despite being wild," I replied.

I sent a scoff through our link. "I know what to do, I have all your memories."

"Stop being so sarcastic, you're not supposed to be me."

"Right."

"By the way, did you pick out a name?"

I gave a small rabbit grin. "Of course. If my first body after my 'resurrection' is to be that of a rabbit's, then why shouldn't my name be Usagi?"

"Cool. You'd better give at least one 'name of the moon' speech though."

"Right, I'ma get back to this stupid leaf, you go do your rabbit thing. Rabbit." I hopped around a bit, searching for some food. A deep cover assignment. It was going to be marvelous.

kukukuku~

I growled as I passed my chakra through the leaf. No matter what I did, it just wasn't getting wet!

"Did you try turning it off and turning it back on again?" Chikage asked me as she floated over me.

I rolled my eyes, cut off the flow, then let my chakra flow over the leaf like water once more. "Don't think that helped."

I stared at her for a second. "How are you taking this better than me?" I asked.

"I mean, two heads are better than one. I have the perspective that you're being a lil dummy."

#I Would Totally Kick Jiraiya's Butt #fanfiction #IWTKJB CH12 #naruto #naruto fanfiction

1 note · View note