#creation battery ran out while making this

[chiqelatasblog]

In the Middle of the Night🌙

-> Ao3 link is here.

-> Part Two is here.

Pairings : Bi-Han/ Sub-Zero x You, Kuai Liang/ Scorpion x You, Tomas Vrbada/ Smoke x You

Tropes : Slavery, Past Sexual Abuse, Canon-Typical Violance, Emotional Hurt Comfort, Strangers to Lovers, True Love, Foursome, F/M/M/M, Dark Magic, Eventual Smut

Summary : After a mission gone wrong, Bi-Han, Kuai Liang, and Tomas find themselves sealed inside a book as love slaves. Whoever discovers the book and utters the incantations within will not only become its owner but also the master of the Lin Kuei’s three deadliest assassins.

For you, grappling with the weight of a solitary life and enduring a particularly rough day, stumbling upon this mysterious book was an unforeseen twist. As you bring the book home, unaware of its contents or the events that led to its creation, the ensuing chain of events will shatter the tranquility of your world, forever altering the course of your life.

Title and work inspired by the “Elley Duhe-Middle Of The Night” song

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CHAPTER ONE : (READER)

You were enduring one of the worst days of your life.

Your alarm didn’t sound in the morning because you were too fatigued to remember to charge your phone the night before. With its poor battery life, it ran out quickly. Living forty-five minutes away from the city center, you should have caught the subway at least an hour ago to make it to work on time. Despite the pressing need for money, uncertainty loomed as you grappled with the inevitability of firing. The job, despite its dreadful conditions and an insufferable boss, stood as your best opportunity in months - too valuable to risk losing.

Although you had graduated from college with a commendable degree, the job market proved bleaker than anticipated. Your once-bright dreams faded as the harsh reality of post-graduation life set in. Most desirable positions demanded experience, yet securing experience required entry into these very positions. While a diploma opened a few doors, the conditions were often as harsh as modern-day servitude, albeit with insurance and a predictable late salary.

Your current role as a programmer at a gaming company offered no respite. Long hours in front of the screen left your eyes bloodshot, encircled by dark rings, and your neck perpetually aching. Despite the hardships, a promise to your distant family fueled your determination to stand on your own. Abandoning everything and returning home was not an option after coming this far. You had shed too many tears to surrender now, enduring the suffocating loneliness of solitary dinners in your cramped kitchen as you pursued your dreams.

Thus, with a reminder of your purpose, you hurriedly left your apartment. Despite the packed subway and the frenzied rush, you managed to trim your commute from fifteen minutes to a mere seven and a half. Yet, upon arrival, your efforts were futile. Summoned to your boss’s office, you were promptly instructed to collect your belongings and leave the company, denied even the opportunity to provide an explanation.

You were keenly aware of the disdain your boss and coworkers held for you; it was an open secret. They resembled vultures, poised to oust you at any moment. As the lone rookie, you were perceived as nothing more than a liability. Despite your efforts to avoid seeking their assistance by tackling most tasks independently, being in your first year of the profession meant there were occasions when you needed guidance or support. Yet, camaraderie was a foreign concept in this office. Compared to other workplaces, the only semblance of unity stemmed from shared breaks and lunches.

A part of you felt relief at the prospect of bidding farewell to a workplace where you found no joy. However, the dominant part, fueled by anxiety, fretted over how you would cover rent and expenses. Although you had a modest emergency fund tucked away, it would only sustain you for about a month. Urgency gnawed at you as you roamed the streets with a cardboard box containing your few office belongings, scouring for job advertisements. Picky was a luxury you couldn’t afford; you were prepared to take on any role, even as a barista or waitress, until you secured a position closer to your aspirations. Survival necessitated prioritizing money above all else.

As the day wore on, you lost track of time. With the setting sun casting a dim glow and street lamps flickering to life, tiny raindrops began to graze your cheeks and nose, soon escalating into a downpour. Despite the onslaught, you mustered the strength to suppress the curses threatening to spill forth. Rushing back to the subway, you braved the rain without an umbrella or proper clothes, mindful of the looming threat of illness. With no funds to spare for hospital bills or medication, resuming your job hunt from the shelter of your laptop seemed the safer option.

Arriving at the subway, drenched from head to toe, you collapsed onto the nearest available seat, your legs barely able to support you. With a heavy sigh, you closed your eyes, feeling the weight of the day’s exhaustion bearing down on your body. The simple act of sitting down was a luxury, a stark reminder of just how fatigued and stressed you had become over the course of the day. You rubbed your weary legs in an attempt to generate some warmth, soothing the cramps and chasing away the chill brought on by the rain.

As the subway doors slid open with a ding, a wave of commuters flooded in, filling the once-empty seats around you. Seizing the opportunity to rest your eyes until reaching home, you leaned back against the seat with the cardboard box resting on your lap. Tired, cold, and hungry, the numbing effect of the rain provided a brief respite from the stress, deserving of a well-earned nap.

When the ache in your neck became unbearable, you reluctantly opened your eyes, realizing that your stop was approaching. Glancing down, you noticed a book lying on the seat beside you, as your grip on the box was dangerously close to slipping from your grasp. Picking it up, you scanned the faces around you, expecting someone to claim the book or acknowledge its presence, but no one seemed to react. Confirmation dawned upon you, the book had been left behind, seemingly forgotten by its owner.

Although the book appeared hefty, its weathered cover hinted at years of use and handling. Despite its age, it felt surprisingly light in your hands, its once vibrant hues faded to muted tones. Adorned with a pale gold cover devoid of any text on the back, the book bore the scars of countless readings and journeys. Turning the book over to avoid catching your tired reflection on its worn and shiny surface, your lips parted in mild surprise. Three striking male figures graced the cover, their details rendered with such realism that they almost seemed tangible, despite the signs of wear and tear. Your finger traced over the hyper-realistic features with impulsive curiosity, only to retract abruptly as if scalded, suddenly aware of your surroundings.

As a sweet ache pulsed between your thighs, you found yourself unexpectedly aroused by a mere image, prompting you to shift uncomfortably in an attempt to quell the throbbing sensation. It had been quite a while since you last shared intimate moments with someone, but even that didn’t entirely account for the sudden surge of desire sparked by a simple picture. Stirring memories long buried within you, igniting a hunger you hadn't realized existed until now.

A blush warmed your cheeks as you examined the figures once more. The trio bore the semblance of warriors or assassins, albeit clad in scant attire. The man on the left possessed a sun-kissed tan, his muscular frame adorned with a large scorpion tattoo on his left arm. His black hair was artfully swept across his face, his golden mask veiling a stern gaze as he brandished a flaming kunai, its rope end poised for action.

Your attention shifted to the figure at the center, whose face remained partially obscured by a silvery black mask. Despite the concealment, a strange sense of familiarity emanated from his features, mirroring those of his companion. His complexion was pale, revealing blue-green veins beneath the surface, while his dark eyes emanated cold, dominating arrogance. Black hair, tied in a low bun with a few tufts escaping to frame his strong features. Massive biceps framed his imposing stature as he wielded a sword of ice, poised to strike with lethal precision.

In stark contrast, the figure on the right differed greatly from his counterparts. Towering slightly above them, he bore little resemblance to an Asian individual, exuding a distinctly European air. His skin was also light, and he wore a grey-colored mask covering half of his face. A thin, light grey smoke emanated from his body. His short gray hair and softer gray-blue eyes lent him a gentler appearance, juxtaposed by the lethal aura exuded by the carambite adorning his finger. Despite his softer features, his lethal prowess was undeniable.

As you scrutinized the cover, a perplexing question lingered: why would the illustrator depict warriors in such a manner if not for a romantic context? Their barely dressed and provocative poses hinted at a fantasy narrative, reinforced only by the presence of their weapons. Without them, the figures might have appeared more akin to love slaves than skilled warriors. “An intriguing choice,” you murmured to yourself, pondering the illustrator’s intentions behind such a depiction.

As you opened the book to look at the chipped pages, curiosity piqued about the contents within, you suddenly realized that your stop had arrived. Hastily tucking the book into your box, you sprang to your feet with a muttered exclamation.

“Oh, shoot!” With a swift maneuver, you barely managed to slip through the closing doors of the crowded subway. Amidst the post-work rush, the mingled scents of sweat and cigarettes engulfed you as you navigated through the throng. Minutes later, emerging from the subway, you drew a deep breath, filling your lungs with the scent of rain-soaked earth.

Your journey to home passed in a blur, your body moving on autopilot along familiar streets and corners. Before you knew it, you stood before your fifth-floor apartment, a small abode consisting of two rooms and an American kitchen. Its most prized feature was the balcony, a sanctuary where you relished summer evenings, savoring the view with a glass of wine by candlelight.

When you arrived home, it was already nine o’clock in the evening. Leaving the box in your hand at the entrance of the door, you went straight into the shower to wash away the fatigue and grime of the day, and to replenish the warmth your drenched body had lost. You lingered under the hot water until it thoroughly enveloped your body, and finally, when the steam filled the small bathroom and you felt like you might faint from the heat, you emerged, clad in your well-worn and hardened bathrobe, with a towel wrapped around your head.

Pouring the last remnants of the red wine you opened days ago into a glass, you placed it in the microwave to heat up the leftover Chinese food you ordered a day ago. As you waited for your meal to warm, your gaze wandered to the box in the corner, reigniting your curiosity about the mysterious book. Crossing the room in a few strides, you retrieved the book and placed it on the kitchen island, settling into your chair with wine and warmed food. “I’ll worry about unemployment later,” you declared, raising your glass in a toast. “Today was stressful enough, and I definitely deserve this wine.” With a sip of wine and a mouthful of noodles, you flipped open the book’s cover with your free hand, eager to have a look at what it held.

‘’What…?” You stared at the glossy golden pages, brows furrowed in confusion, surprised to find them empty. “What kind of book is this? I don’t understand the purpose.” you muttered in disbelief. The worn-out appearance of the book added to your confusion, making you question whether something had happened before it was finished.

As you reached the middle of the book, a shocking revelation left you speechless. Lines, equivalent to about a paragraph, materialized on the previously blank pages before your eyes, causing your entire body to freeze in shock. Tremors coursed through you, as if jolted by electricity, and you grasped desperately for reality, unsure if what you were witnessing was a dream. Gasping for breath, you struggled to comprehend the surreal sight before you.

“I haven’t even had that much wine—I just took a sip.” you mumbled, your voice strained with the effort to contain your rising panic. “I’ve seen enough movies to know where this is going. I’m not reading whatever’s written here,” you declared, the thin timbre of your voice betraying your attempt to stifle a scream.

You closed the cover of the book hard and attempted to get up from your chair, but found yourself unable to move. It was as if an unseen force held you in place. The cover of the book opened again, and as the pages flickered before your eyes, the one you had just turned to was laid out in front of you once more, sending shivers of fear down your spine.

“Read it,” a demanding male voice echoed in your mind, freezing you in terror. Despite your frantic desire to flee, you remained immobilized, unable to move a muscle.

“I-I was just curious about what it says. I didn’t mean any harm,” you pleaded weakly, few tears streaming down your cheeks due to the immense fear you felt at the moment. Another voice, speaking in a foreign tongue filled the air, his tone scolding but directed elsewhere, not at you.

“We won’t harm you, master,” another voice reassured, offering a glimmer of hope amidst the fear.

“Say the words aloud, and we will serve you,” urged yet another voice, prompting a realization of the three distinct voices corresponding to the figures depicted on the book’s cover.

“W-What the…! Are they…”

“Yes, that’s us you see on the cover. We’ve been trapped in this book for a long time. You have to say the words to get us out of here,” one of the voices explained.

“You’re talking as if I had a choice,” you replied in a timid, low voice.

“Read the words, woman,” another voice commanded. It was the coldest and harshest of them all. Despite lacking a physical form, his dominant aura was unmistakable in the way he emphasized his words. His voice resonated with a deep, chilling tone, unlike anything you had ever heard before. You attempted to steady yourself, swallowing hard and clenching your trembling hands into fists on your legs.

“How do I know you won’t hurt me? Each of you had a weapon on the cover; it’s clear you’re some kind of warriors.”

“We are bound to the master of the book,” another voice interjected, his tone notably more welcoming and kind than the others. “We cannot harm you.”

“God, I must be losing my mind. I’m talking to a book,” you muttered, glancing at the pages with audible trepidation. Fear and panic constricted your throat, rendering you speechless.

“This is no illusion—it is the truth,” the same younger voice asserted after a brief silence. “Read what is written, master, and we shall pledge our service to you.”

“I-I’m not anyone’s master. Don’t call me that; this situation is already too surreal for me,” you protested weakly.

“As you wish, master,” came the compliant response.

“You won’t hurt me, will you? I’m too young to die; I haven’t even begun to fulfill my dreams…” you pleaded, your words abruptly cut off by a snarl. If not for the invisible force holding you down, you might have leaped in fear.

“Read these damn sentences!” the voice commanded, his tone harsh.

“Bi-Han, don’t frighten her!” another voice intervened.

“Fine, fine, I’ll read it!” Tears continued to trickle down your cheeks as you began to recite the words aloud, hoping to end the ordeal. And as you prayed to the god or whatever deity might be watching over you, you couldn’t shake the dread that you might be leading yourself to your own demise. “Rise, my servants, from the depths of slumber and bind yourselves to me with your souls, revealing your names. Embrace your new purpose ensnared by passion.’’

As you finished speaking, a powerful gust of wind whipped through the room, causing the towel around your shoulders to unravel and fall. Soon after, you heard the voices of three men speaking in unison, their words echoing loudly.

‘’We rise, Bi-Han, Kuai Liang, and Tomas of the Lin Kuei, bound to your will, for in your presence, we find solace and purpose. We protect and we please, however you see right, however you seem fit. We’re your slaves, and you’re our master, surrendered to your every command, body and soul.’’

With a surge of energy, the wind intensified, knocking over the glass on the counter, spilling wine onto the robe and floor. The glass shattered at your feet, scattering shards across the kitchen. A brilliant light emanated from the book, forcing you to shut your eyes against its intensity.

Then, as suddenly as it began, everything fell silent and still. The wind vanished as if it had never been, and the light that had filled the room dimmed into darkness. Summoning the courage to open your eyes, you were met with the sight of three imposing, completely naked men standing a short distance away.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” You attempted to gather your thoughts, tearing your gaze away from the men to focus on the scattered glass on the kitchen floor. “There are three naked men in my living room. And—and they emerged from the book? I must be losing my mind. I really must be losing my mind.”

As the words tumbled from your lips, sounding like utter madness to your own ears, you tried to take deep breaths to calm yourself. But when you attempted to rise from your seat, your numbed feet betrayed you, causing you to stumble and fall to the ground. The impact sent a jolt of pain through your knees and feet as shards of glass embedded themselves into your flesh, stealing the breath from your lungs.

“Shh, it’s okay. Calm down, you’re only hurting yourself,” came a gentle voice.

Your gaze was drawn to a towering, bronzed figure looming over you, his powerful physique making you feel small and vulnerable. Sensing your escalating panic, he gently cupped your face in his large hands, the touch of his calloused fingers both rough and tender. With each contact, warmth spread through your body in soothing waves.

“Look at me. Take deep breaths and exhale, just like I do,” he instructed in a soothing tone.

“I can’t,” your voice broken with fear.

“Of course you can. Follow my lead, I’ll show you,” he reassured. As you turned your gaze to his face, you were met with a pair of slanted light brown eyes, framed by long black eyelashes. His gaze exuded warmth and understanding, matching the sensitivity of his touch. “Breathe with me. Now.”

As your brain somehow focused on his instructions, you found yourself synchronizing your breaths with the mighty man before you. With each inhale and exhale, you felt a wave of calm wash over you, dissipating the last shreds of your strength. He effortlessly supported you, preventing you from collapsing to the floor, his touch gentle yet firm. Despite the pain throbbing in your flesh and the warmth of blood trickling down your skin, you remained in a state of confusion and fear, unable to muster the will to move from his grasp.

“Tomas, find something to clean the wound,” commanded the one with the authoritative voice, resonating with incredible depth. The man who held you gently lowered himself onto one of the double seats in the living room, maintaining his firm grasp on you. A faint warmth spread across your face, but you remained ensnared in his hold, feeling as if your mouth were filled with dry cotton.

Your gaze shifted to the man cradling you, his expression clouded with concern as his amber eyes scrutinized you closely as if he feared you might suffer another attack. Despite his gray hair, you were taken aback when a youthful visage suddenly filled your vision. The man was tall and imposing, his large build casting a formidable shadow over you. Feeling intimidated between these two towering figures, a timid whimper escaped your lips as your body instinctively recoiled, yearning to escape despite its weakened state.

“Calm down, master. We won’t hurt you. Let me tend to your wounds; you’ve cut your knees and feet badly. I can ease your pain,” reassured the silver-haired man, his voice carrying a surprisingly gentle tone given his imposing stature. As you swallowed and tried to shift again, a cold sound from across the room froze you in place.

“If you move again, I’ll—” began the menacing voice.

“Bi-Han, enough! She’s already frightened, no need to add to it.” Intervened the man holding you, his voice commanding authority. Though Bi-Han’s threat remained unfinished, its effect lingered, rendering you motionless, afraid to even breathe. As the silver-haired man tended to your wounds while taking advantage of your stillness, the man holding you attempted to comfort you with gentle pats, drawing soothing circles on your back.

Gritting your teeth against the pain as the glass shards were removed, you fought the urge to appear weak and helpless in their eyes. Though you couldn’t see yourself from their perspective, a sense of self-consciousness gnawed at you. In an attempt to shift your focus from the pain, the man holding you soflty interjected, “I am Kuai Liang,” he introduced. “May we know your name?

Struggling to articulate your name through clenched teeth, you managed to utter it in one breath. A faint smile graced Kuai Liang’s face. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, (y/n).”

“Speak for yourself,” growled Bi-Han from across the living room. “Just another fucking master we’re bound to serve.’’

‘‘I thought you wanted to get out of the book.’’

Kuai Liang’s sharp retort silenced Bi-Han, prompting Tomas, who was tending to your wounds, to interject. “And so am I, Tomas. Thank you for calling us into your service.” he said with a small smile that seemed forced, his dull greyish blue eyes lacking genuine emotion. As he carefully tended to your wounds and wrapped them in bandages, a sense of unease washed over you, causing you to squirm away from Kuai Liang’s grasp and retreat to the corner of the seat, eyeing the three men with a mix of confusion and discomfort.

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” you croaked, avoiding their look as your gaze involuntarily dropped to their lower parts for a second before you could prevent it, your cheeks burned with embarrassment. “And please cover up your bottoms. You can use the cushions.”

Complying with your request, all three men concealed their private parts with cushions. Tomas took a seat in the opposite double seat, while Bi-Han settled into the single seat. Despite your small apartment being already cramped, the presence of the three burly men made the space feel even more claustrophobic.

“Where would you like us to start?”

“From the beginning,” you replied, addressing Kuai Liang. “Who are you? How did you end up in that book? And why are you here now… Please, tell me everything from the beginning so that I can understand.”

“We are members of a clan called Lin Kuei, known for training assassins, and we are brothers,” he began. “Bi-Han is the eldest, serving as the grandmaster of our clan in the past. I, on the other hand, am the middle one, and Tomas and I served as his second-in-commands.’’

The revelation that they were assassins drained the color from your face, confirming your suspicions from the book cover. A shiver ran down your spine as you realized the chilling reality of being in the presence of trained killers.

“Many years ago, we encountered a demon named Quan Chi on a mission. As you can imagine, the mission went awry, and he sealed us inside this book. Whoever owns the book and says the words becomes our master, and we are compelled to fulfill their wishes and desires.”

Even if you sensed that the information was being presented with some omissions, you refrained from voicing your suspicions. They were strangers to you, and you to them, so expecting complete transparency without trust seemed unreasonable. While you had the authority as their master to demand the truth, approaching the situation in this manner didn’t sit well with you—it didn’t feel right, nor did it feel humane.

For God’s sake, the idea of being anyone’s master was abhorrent. The twenty-first century had arrived, and the notion of a master-slave relationship had long since vanished. It felt nauseating and profoundly unsettling.

“I am not your master. I can’t—I can’t be. No.” You attempted to stand up in panic, desperate to escape the situation, but your injuries held you back. Kuai Liang gently grabbed your arm, urging you to calm down.

“Calm down (y/n), your wounds are very fresh. You’ll make them bleed again.” You clung to his wrist, pleading with your eyes for assistance.

“Is there no way to set you free? I can’t accept this. This is—this is against humanity!”

With your words, a deep silence enveloped the room. As you observed their stunned reactions, it became evident that this sentiment was new to them. Your heart ached at the thought of witnessing these powerful men stripped of their freedom. Despite your fear, the realization knotted your stomach. They appeared intimidating and deadly, yet the severity of their situation suggested that past experiences had shattered them and stripped away their dignity. You couldn’t fathom how long they had endured as slaves within the confines of the book, but the outcome seemed all too predictable, casting a somber shadow over the room.

“Set us free?” Tomas’s voice echoed with longing, his desire palpable.

“Such a thing is possible, isn’t it? If you tell me what I should do I—”

“Why would you do that? What do you want from us in return?” Bi-Han’s voice sliced through your words, sharp and menacing. You fought to maintain your composure, avoiding freezing in your spot as his icy demeanor chilled the room. As your agitated gaze shifted to his pale, muscular arms, you were astonished to see a thin layer of ice extending from his hands. Were they truly made of ice?

“As I said just now, I can’t be anyone’s master, it’s in defiance of human ethics. If there’s any way I can help you, I’d like to do it. I don’t want anything in return except for this situation to end as soon as possible, I’m sure you want the same.”

“Do you expect us to believe that you are just a fairy godmother?” Bi-Han’s mocking half smile sent waves of unease through you. “You are not convincing at all, woman. Favors are done with an expectation of something in return.’’

“Favors are done for nothing; you don’t expect anything in return. That’s why it’s called a favor.” Emboldened by a hint of defiance, you met Bi-Han’s stern gaze head-on. “I can understand why you don’t trust me after what you’ve been through—”

‘’Don’t you dare,” Bi-Han shot up from his seat, his movement swift as a shadow. Suddenly, he was close enough for his breath, cold as winter air, to brush against your face. “Don’t try to empathize with what we went through. Do you think you know us now just because you’ve learned a few things?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend,” you said quickly.

“Brother, please sit down. If you talk like that, we won’t get anywhere.” Kuai Liang intervened, putting one arm between you and Bi-Han. Bi-Han glared at you intensely, his eyes slanted like those of a predator, then he took a deep breath. Watching the mist of his cold breath in the air, everything still felt like an endless dream—or nightmare. When he finally returned to his seat, Kuai Liang’s gaze turned to you.

“Thank you for offering to help, but unfortunately, we don’t know how to undo this dark magic.”

You ventured a suggestion that you hoped wouldn’t sound foolish. “We could try burning the book. I’ve seen it work in some movies.”

“We’ve tried that,” Tomas chimed in, joining Kuai Liang. “Several times. Whatever we’ve done, the book has never been destroyed. It’s protected by some kind of magic, just as it protects its master from us.”

“You spoke as if you had tested the last part before.”

In response, silence enveloped the room. Despite your efforts to stave off panic, the realization that they were assassins and the precariousness of your situation made you feel threatened.

“We have tried to kill several masters before,” Kuai Liang admitted frankly. “But there’s some kind of seal that protects them—you can think of it as a shield. It renders any attack ineffective. That’s why we were telling the truth when we said we wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Of course, if things were different, it wouldn’t mean you wouldn’t try,” you said, averting your gaze and clasping your hands in your lap. Another solution came to mind, prompting you to straighten your shoulders and take a deep breath before continuing.

‘’ If I can’t set you free, then you’re free to do as you please, go where you want. You don’t have to be stuck here.” you offered.

“You won’t give us orders? Isn’t there something you want us to do?” Tomas asked, surprised.

“No, as long as you don’t start killing people, you’re free to do whatever you want.”

“We’re not mindless killers,” said Bi-Han harshly, sounding offended that you would even think of them in that way. Kuai Liang interjected, softening his brother’s tone.

“We serve a noble purpose. We were, until we were sealed in the book… Our clan has been dedicated to protecting Earthrealm from dangers for centuries,” he explained, his gaze softening slightly as he made eye contact with you. “Thank you for the opportunity you’ve given us, but we can’t be away from you for more than a few hours. We have to get back here, to you.”

Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “How so? Why? Do I have to say something else?”

“No, it’s part of the magic. It was designed to prevent us from escaping. When we’re away from our master—you, and this period becomes longer, we become weaker and weaker.”

“So at the end of the day… God, what cruel magic this is,” Gulping, you scanned all three men with a heavy heart. It must have been torture for them to endure this existence. Even as you spoke, your heart ached with empathy, imagining what they had been subjected to. Anger and sadness gripped your body as you contemplated their plight. “Is there anything else I can do for you? My house isn’t too big, but I want you to be comfortable during your stay here.”

It was Bi-Han who responded, his narrowed gaze resembling two thin lines, as if he were dissecting your sincerity. You couldn’t help but feel a pang as you tried to discern whether he believed you. While you understood his skepticism, winning their trust seemed like a daunting task.

“You can start by finding us clothes.”

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[cyncerity]

HEY! IM BACK!!

I know i said like,, three drawings,,,, it may be more than that,,,,,

anyway, here’s the first one!!

i finished this forever ago, it’s for the Flubber AU!! I’ve kind of at this point reworked most of the story, and I don’t know how much i’ve talked about Sam and Fundy in this au! Feel free to check the flubber au hashtag if you forget any of this au, cause it’s been a while since I talked about it. I’m gonna ramble under the cut cause i know myself and i know it’s gonna get long-

Ok, so, Quackity didn’t build Fundy, but he did build Sam. Fundy was stolen from given as a “gift” from another less moral but richer inventor/businessman named Wilbur Soot. He’s a local celebrity because, unlike Quackity, when he makes something new he sells it to the public. This wouldn’t be a bad thing if it weren’t for that fact that half of his things have trackers and spy equipment and whatever, and he has no qualms with stealing other people’s things (ideas, money, etc) to get himself on top. He steals a lot of Quackity’s ideas, and tries to flirt with him to make up for it, and Quackity can’t tell if he’s genuinely flirting or not. Needless to say, Q hates him.

Fundy:

Fundy was one of Wil’s first inventions, which is why he is less “competent” and more old-fashioned than his other creations (i tried to make i him kind of steampunk-y), and was just meant to be a little wind-up toy/small robotic butler, but Wil accidentally gave him ai advanced enough to make him a person. Fundy tried to explain that he was a person, but since Wil had never seen a robot with a personality, he dismissed him. Wil’s treatment towards him got so bad that eventually Fundy just ran away. However, like I mentioned before, he’s a wind up “toy,” meaning that he depends on people. He ended up getting stuck out in the rain in front of Q’s garage, where he was found by the human the next morning.

When Quackity wound him up, thankfully the rain didn’t damage much about Fundy as a person. His wiring was a bit fried tho. Fundy explained everything and Q, who hadn’t liked Wilbur already but hated him now, believed every word Fundy said. He fixed him up and upgraded him so that he ran on a rechargeable battery and didn’t need to be wound up, making him finally independent. However, Wilbur, like so many other things of his, had stuck cameras and mics in Fundy, so Q removed those, too.

When Wilbur saw the feed from before the spy equipment could be ripped out, he was infuriated. He had refused to believe that Fundy was sentient, and the price was that now Fundy could tell Q everything about his operations at the Soot factory. So Wil went to take him back, telling Quackity that Fundy was important to him, as his first successful attempt at human-like ai (despite the fact that it had been an accident), and went off about how Fundy was “like a son to him.” Q listened to about 10 minutes of it before watching Fundy, who was sitting just out of Wil’s perspective. He looked terrified. Q cut Wilbur off and told him to leave before he called the cops, and Fundy has been loyal to Quackity since.

Sam:

Quackity was really inspired by Fundy. He had never seen human-like ai before, and with every passing day living with Fundy made him want to test it more himself. That’s where Sam came in.

Quackity works tirelessly for months to figure out what Wilbur did to give Fundy his spark of life, and just can’t figure it out. No matter what he does, it never seems to be working, and he’s frustrated and angry and just really close to giving up. Fundy even says that Q can take him apart and put him back together to see if there’s some piece or something Sam needs, but Quackity refuses for obvious reasons. Fundy had already seen enough hell with Wilbur.

Eventually, after 5 or 6 months, Q relents and gives up. He can’t do it, he doesn’t know what he could be missing at this point. He goes back to his basement lab to turn Sam off one final time and scrap him but realizes that his computer is playing a youtube video, one about electronics and advanced code. Huh. He doesn’t remember putting that on. He wakes up Fundy, but, to his surprise, Fundy didn’t do it either. They both start to look around for an intruder or anything that could have set it off. Hell, maybe it was Quackity’s cat Tiger, who knows, but Q could have sworn she was up on his bed a few minutes ago. That’s when Fundy uncovers a pile of what looks like a few other Sam prototypes.

…Expect Quackity didn’t make prototypes for Sam.

That’s when Sam stops them both.

Quacktity is utterly dumbfounded when Sam begins to explain that he has actually been sapient for weeks and just didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t know exactly how he was alive, but he quickly learned how to infiltrate the computer that Q had been plugging him into, and from there just other technology. He also learned a bit about Quackity this way, and realized that Q had a lot to do and little time to do it, hacking into security cams and seeing Wilbur walking around him house like the creepy mf he is, Tiger knocking things down in the kitchen, him struggling to grade his student’s assignments from his day job, and reading his messages with Sapnap and seeing how concerned his boyfriend was. (Quackity honestly didn’t realize how stressed he really was until he heard all this)

So, Sam had started to build more of himself to help out, having learned from youtube videos from the computer he was plugged into. He had plans for more, but so far he was working on a security bot and a worker/help bot, dubbed Warden and Sam-Nook.

Quackity was obviously a bit annoyed that he didn’t know, but Sam said he didn’t want to introduce himself until he was done with the two others.

And when Sam was finally done, he became a huge help around the house. He was the voice of reason Quackity never had, making sure he ate, slept, and did things on time. Sam-Nook helps cook whenever he can, and makes sure to tidy up and play with Tiger when Quackity doesnt have time to. And Quackity had a lot of fun hooking Warden up to the sprinklers in his yard and watching Wilbur get drenched by them next time he came around. He even goes back to his day job at the university, though he still doesn’t talk to Sapnap or Karl yet.

Even if Sam is the only one that actually talks and has a proper personality (unless he shifts his consciousness into one of the other bots, which he only really does in emergencies), all three of the Sam bots are a huge help, and Quackity knows how lucky he is to have them.

#flubber au #feel free to ask about more characters!! #there are some more that i didn’t mention >:) #aka Wilbur is the one corrupt professor man #and therefore has lackeys that try to spy on Q too #technically i already listed them if you look in the hashtag but shhhhh #ignore that #cyncerity #mcyt g/t #mcyt gt #cyn art #technically Fundy’s counterpart would be the flying robot but i hate her so i changed Fundy completely #and Sam’s would be the worker robot but now he has a personality #Charlie’s is obvious #No Sapnap and Karl do not know about the robots #they think Quackity does a bit of science in his spare time #they haven’t seen his basement of mad scientist things #also Fundy is 1 ft tall and Sam is 2’5 ft tall #Q is about 5’6 ft tall

[officersnickers]

𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕻𝖗𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖘𝖊𝖉 𝕹𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕴𝖓𝖐𝖙𝖔𝖇𝖊𝖗 𝕯𝖆𝖞 18: 𝕹𝖊𝖈𝖐𝖑𝖆𝖈𝖊

“The truth lies in the eye of the beholder”

#this redraw is eh #nothing special #creation battery ran out while making this #the promised neverland #tpn #ynn #yakusoku no neverland #tpn emma #the promised neverland emma #ynn emma #yakusoku no neverland emma #emma #inktober #inktober 2020 #my art #Snickers draws

[beanieman]

Alishin Fantasy AU: Shin Is An Inventor And Alice Is A Thief

- Shin is a hired inventor for the royal Chidouin family. While he’s not the biggest fan of the family themselves, they pay him very well for the things he creates. Shin makes a little bit of everything, but he mostly dabbles in making security measures for the kingdom as the king is very paranoid for some unknown reasons. 

- Alice is a thief with a far darker past than it would seem at first glance. He was forced to flee the kingdom of Naro after accidentally killing the prince Sou Hiyori in an accident. Alice had to leave his sister behind when he ran, and now he wants to find a way to contact her without putting them both in jeopardy. When Alice hears of an inventor in the neighboring kingdom of Asu that can create anything, he sets out to steal one of his inventions that could help him contact Reko. 

- Alice decides to wait until night, sneak in, grab what he needs, and get out. This plan is foiled almost immediately when Shin decides to work the night shift and catches Alice in the act. 

- Shin feels his soul leave his body when he sees a massive strange man standing in the middle of his work shop. Alice is equally panicked, worried that Shin will report him to the kingdom and he’ll have no choice but to go on the run again. Alice being Alice decides the best way to go about this is tell Shin his entire life story and hope he’ll be sympathetic. 

- Shin does feel compassion when he hears Alice’s tale. Having a younger sister himself he couldn’t imagine being separated from her. And while he’s not ready to admit it to Alice, Shin was childhood friends with Sou Hiyori and knows how awful he can be. Combining all these factors, Shin lets Alice hunker down in his workshop and agrees to not tell anyone about his presence. 

Continued Undercut 

- In exchange for letting Alice stay for free, Shin has him help out in the workshop. They find quickly that Alice doesn’t have a natural talent for inventing like Shin does. He’s clumsy and tends to break more creations than finish them. This leads them to having a conversation about what Alice is good at, and to Shin’s surprise Alice’s answer is singing.    

- Shin jokes that Alice could sing while he works as a background noises, and for a moment Alice thinks he’s serious and sings a song from his home kingdom. Shin finds himself entranced by Alice’s voice, and quickly realizes that even if he was serious he wouldn’t have been able to focus on work over Alice’s voice. Shin quickly informs Alice that he was just joking, but admits to liking his voice. 

- With Alice living in the workshop, Shin starts to realize how lonely he felt by himself in such an empty building. Alice’s company is a good change of pace that Shin welcomes. Shin’s surprises himself that he doesn’t get tired of Alice being around despite being an introvert with a low social battery. 

- Shin comes to realize that Alice is a part of his day. They get up and eat breakfast together, they stay together chatting while Shin works, Shin will stay afterhours to continue talking to Alice, before begrudgingly leaving the workshop to get some sleep. Repeat routine. It becomes hard for Shin to imagine a time where Alice wasn’t there. 

- Alice gets caught inevitably for his murder. He tries to steal from a girl who dropped her cat keychain on the street, and learns the hard way that “the girl” is Sara the kingdoms princess. Sara recognizes him as being a wanted man, and quickly turns him in in fear for the kingdoms safety. 

- Shin tries to not care that Alice is gone, but he finds himself feeling empty in the newfound uncomfortable silence. Shin goes begging to Sara, who he has rivalry with, to let Alice free and admits a tiny bit about his dynamic with Sou. While he at first denies knowing Alice well, he eventually caves and admits he’s been harboring a fugitive in his workshop for months and tells Sara that Alice isn’t a threat as he’s never hurt him.

- Sara is to stunned to speak for a moment, but eventually regains her composure enough to yell at Shin for harboring a fugitive. However Sara does acknowledge that Shin’s a very skittish person who probably wouldn’t have helped someone dangerous. Plus this the first time Shin has opened up to her, and Sara the ever collector of friends would be happy to have another one.

- Sara agrees to pull a few strings and get Alice out in exchange for Shin working on some personal projects for her, like creating a robotic dog to give to her best friend. Shin agrees to keep Alice out of jail.  

- Alice is more than happy to be saved from prison, and as a thank you offers to take Shin on a date. Which Alice was planning to do before being put in jail anyways. 

#YTTD #Your Turn To Die #Shin Tsukimi #alice yabusame #alishin

[frostahesmegabite]

Kira does whittling in her spare time - small statues, jewelry, that sort of thing. What she could use is something to burn patterns into the wood, but very small. Like the size of a small pen, to get the more intricate designs. Gold is always an issue, so she'd be wondering if he would accept part of the pay in goods she makes (she also cooks) or odd jobs.

[ Megahes doesn't tend to accept work in payment of goods, primarily cause from there it's a slippery slope on endentured servitude, especially when value of work provided coupled with greed can cause complications, but he'd definitely take payment in the way of food and/or even accepting a gift where his soon-to-be made tool for Kira is given back! :D ] Megahes stops at the workbench in his office and looks at the work order bin attached to the wall. He picks up the first order and he hums, looking around. "Odd, why's this in here? Any'a them mooks..." He pauses and shakes his head. "Ya know what. I'mma make tha shit outta this instead'a it bein some traditional wood engraving pen." He nods and proceeds to head into the Engineering Bay where he begins to prepare a bin with various needed wires, casings and assorted bits of shaped metal along with pins, screws and circuitry. A few of the goblins greet him with simple head nods or near whispered hello's as he makes his way about to acquire what he needs. A few hours later, he steps away from the workbench with a light sheen of sweat due to the welding and soldering that was done but what he had before him would put a smile on any jeweler or crafters face, or at least so he thought. He turns and moves to his desk to write up a note to explain his creation. "I know you probably expected something simple, but since this ended up on my workstation, I decided to be a little bit extra with your creation. I will be sending you an working kit with various Wood Etching Pen Heads and gauged Soldering Cobalt Heads along with some precious spun metals to put to use in etching wood or jewelry. Now, do be warned, Cobalt has an insanely hot melting point and I would recommend protective lenses when working with metal on metal, just in case of flashes or light or the stray or random spark so you don't risk eye damage. I'll also include these with the kit and they'll be adjustable size wise to make sure they fit!" He pauses and looks back at the kit before he continues writing. "Now, this assembly has your Etching Pen and then a detachable power assembly kit. When the Power Box isn't connected to it, your pen will run off of a liquid mana crystal battery where the circuitry can be set to two custom temperature settings, this way you can use your favorite or 'go-to' temperatures when or if you need to travel a lot. The assembly kit however can both recharge your etching pen as well as allow you to change the temperature selections you imprinted onto it before hand while also using a much broader spectrum of temperatures. If and when you do manage to drain the assembly kit of its inherently larger Liquid Mana Battery's charge, you can remove the battery pack and pour out the no longer charged liquid and replace it with fresh mana potion, strength of the potion is indicative of how much charge you'll be applying of course." He stops and rubs at his hand, giving it a moment before he goes to finish the letter. "I hope this not only covers what you need it for currently but also any potential uses in the future that you may not have ran into currently as well. Megahes Frostbite "The Metal Miser" " Once done, he tucks the letter along into an envelope along with some drawn up diagrams and instructions on how to work everything, just in case, as well as a hand drawn instruction panel of how to empty and refill the Liquid Mana Battery. He hums, taking the newly created tools and puts them into a Starwood Box lined with Stainless Steel and various mounts to hold the pen, kit and the spun filaments along with a small portion of Flux, just in case it was needed too. He heads outside and lays the box into the 'Outgoing Deliveries' ben along with the work order stamped to its top so it can be sent to the proper person. [ Thanks for the Prompt @kiraspringdale! Hope it's everything Kira needs and/or wanted! :D ]

#Megahes #RP Prompt #ic response #Goblin

[sepublic]

Kipo’s Final Season

           Well, it was a journey you guys.

           Inevitably it’s bittersweet, because while it WAS a happy ending… You know. It’s an ending! Phenomenal final season, final trio of seasons, the show really wrapped itself up, but I’m empty that it’s gone now!

           It’s why I held off on watching the final season… My heart wasn’t ready to let go yet. And sure, if the third season were suddenly to get a BUNCH of ratings, we might get those additional motives that Radfor Sechrist hinted at the possibility of! But I’m still sad because the main journey is gone, and the cast, as we’ve gotten to know them, have left!

           Not entirely, but still! I will have to say that Kipo, Benson, Wolf, Mandu, and Troy are ROCKING all of their new looks! I love that Kipo looks more like her dad Lio, too! Speaking of which, I really enjoyed seeing Dave and Lio get along unintentionally… It was AMAZING to see Song return, and I just…

           I’m SAY, you know! I’m sad to see it all go. It really felt a final farewell to all of the cast and world we love… We got to see the return of various characters, including Fun Gus, of all people- Love the way his and Emilia’s arcs sort of tied together! And I love the symbolism of Emilia losing herself, as the idea of her becoming the very thing she swore to destroy… Those are great stories to me, haunting and chilling!

           LOVE how this year has been bringing us Gay Proms! First Grom, then Prahm! Prahm was great… I love Doag, though I feel sorry for her because of that NAME… But good for you Hoag, you’re a father and you let those paternal instincts override any fear, paranoia, and prejudice you may have had! Sure the warning didn’t come through in time, but at least you tried! Good for you…

           Also, I know Asher and Dahlia had a minimal presence, but I ENJOYED every last second of them we got, even as background characters! I loved the way the arc progressed, the stories behind Mutes and Humans getting along… It all felt so organic and natural, you know? And HUGO…!

           I’m not over his death. The worst part was that he DID redeem himself and fully change, so… It wasn’t like one of those Redemption-equals-Death cop outs! Hugo had already gotten his redemption. The crew really just wrote that for the sake of stomping on our hearts, huh? WELL THEY DID… Rest in peace, you funky mandrill! His arc was particularly brilliant and naturally-flowing, I love that final callback to his mess with Aurum… Hugo was just being that moody, temperamental older brother who’s a teen and insists he’s not going through a phase- But he loves his little sister and will humor her!

           I miss him already… And I LOVE his interactions with Wolf, as siblings by proxy of Kipo, but also their shared cynicism and trauma as I speculated about! Hugo making a blanket-cloak for Wolf, to replace the old one she had, which represented her trauma and past… I hadn’t even considered it, but it’s right! The way Hugo and Wolf’s arcs together to take out Emilia, only for Greta of all people to make a final point… It was amazing! Superb, brilliant, it was EXACTLY what I wanted to see and MORE! How we had this powerful and meaningful growth for the two of them as siblings in their own right, without necessarily having to rely on fighting… Just quiet moments!

           And Kipo… I love you Kipo! I was afraid the show might give us an arc of Kipo being ‘cured’ and having to struggle with no longer being part-mute, even if she were to eventually get that back… And they didn’t! They let Kipo be Kipo! I love her nature as a girl of two worlds, and how she brings both worlds together into one seamless creation! And her DNA gives me hope of a vaccine being made…

           I’m still sad over the deaths of Yumyan, Margot, Rupert, Camille, Brad, Billions, etc.! Remember the fallen… I was REALLY wishing the show would have them brought back to their old minds, and while still having them around in spirit sort of helped (as they were basically senile after the ‘cure’)… COME ON, this show has already been so bright and optimistic and hopeful in many other regards! Is it too much to ask that the ‘cure’ gets reverted, that they recover their old minds! It’s really messed up particularly with Margot and Rupert, as they were KIDS… Rupert was just being held hostage, and Margot DID make the effort to change her mind, just like Hoag she didn’t expect Emilia to be ahead of her! Maybe if we get that hypothetical sequel film with Wolf, MAYBE we could have Margot brought back… Or at least go over Wolf’s thoughts of Margot technically betraying her, but to save Rupert, and ultimately doing the right thing- Only to die! I wish we got to discuss that.

           Interesting that they never go about the origins of Mutes, but honestly… Not too important to me? The exact cause wasn’t a big deal to me, what matters is that it happened and now it’s here! Speaking of which, I LOVED the Dave episode… Controversial opinion, I think he’s a great character! I love how the show confirmed he was there as far back as THE beginning, and he was just… VIBING the entire time, over a fan! What DID happen to the fan, I wonder? Imagine if it got destroyed- Or even better, if it just ran out of battery! The implication that the fan somehow was able to run for two centuries, but still ran out of energy… Lol.

           THAT episode was a masterpiece of morbid humor, what with the idea of this one loser being THAT caught over a fan, Dave being responsible for skyscraper ridge… And that bit of Daves getting KILLED, but it’s never explained and then just sort of glossed over- It’s arguably amongst the pinnacle of morbid humor! The kind that just happens, and because it’s left unexplained it’s just BETTER, more horrifying, whilst funnier… And Benson! Like I said, the background, unspoken, but obvious implication that the Daves and Fanatics (is that what those humans called themselves?) slaughtered each other until one was left. YIKES… But it was still so brilliantly done and conveyed, it really is the epitome of dark humor to me!

           Benson got his kiss! He got his kiss with Troy! And now they’re running a restaurant together, Cappuccino gave them a SIX star review… But please don’t call them potato noodles. They’re fries. I can overlook anything, but NOT that! But now I crave that hypothetical sequel film that Radford Sechrist hinted at… Gimme gimme, please! Mostly I just want closure on those Mutes who got ‘cured’, I know it’s immature, but please bring them back!

           All in all, this was just… BRILLIANT! It was GOOD, and it makes me even sadder because I found myself so happy to see these characters progress, like with Zane, or Greta… Wolf letting go of her cloak, she’s so PRECIOUS I love her so much, and I love how Hugo was like an older brother to her and I miss him already! I love Kipo, I love Benson and Dave’s backstory, I love Troy, Asher, and Dahlia… I want MORE, please! I feel like I’m not yet ready to let go. And maybe I don’t necessarily have to, but still…

           And it’s absolutely wild to me, because this all happened within a year. It’s been a journey, huh? Once it was as simple as getting back to her old home… And while Kipo lost that, she made a new, better one! And I love that, but I’m also going to miss it- Because it feels that just as we got it back, we left! Well, I can always return in my own way, but for now…

           THANK YOU, to everyone who worked on this show! I’m going to miss Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts! It was utterly brilliant, and I’m glad you got to tell the story you wanted! Here’s hoping you get to indulge in the world of Kipo maybe one last, or two, times!

#kipo #kipo and the age of wonderbeasts #kataow #kipo oak #kipo wolf #kataow wolf #kipo hugo #kataow hugo #scarlemagne #kipo benson #kataow benson #kipo troy #kataow troy #kipo dave #kataow dave

[fadedflame]

Ghosts in the Machine Day 15

Detroit: Become Human Prompt Challenge from @connor-sent-by-cyberlife

Day fifteen-Creator

Words-1389

Part two: Connor and Hank look for help.

Part 1

Ao3 or

Connor couldn’t help but be amazed that Markus had been able to get Elijah Kamski himself to take a look at him. He still doubted that anything could be done about his dying battery, but if anyone had a chance at finding a solution, it would be their creator.

He stepped out of the car as soon as it was safely parked. Hank followed soon after.

The man had hovered protectively ever since he knew about Connor’s impending shutdown, even to the point of losing sleep. He’d stay with him in the living room, far too late for a proper sleep schedule, as though he were afraid he would disappear if he took his eyes off of him too long. It wasn’t good for Hank’s health, that was for sure.

With Hank’s hand on his back, they made their way to the door.

Chloe answered with a smile. “Lieutenant Anderson, Connor, it’s good to see you again,” she told them. She gestured for them to enter, standing to the side to make room. “I’m sorry it isn’t under more pleasant circumstances.”

“Thank you,” Connor responded. “It is good to see you again as well.” He wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to apologize for their previous meeting or not. He had almost shot her after all. But, she didn’t seem bothered by it now, so he decided to keep quiet, no sense bringing up memories that were unpleasant for both of them.

Chloe led them through the house, taking a different door than the one that would lead to the pool room Connor would recognize. Instead they passed by multiple rooms and hallways more suited for an art gallery than a home. They arrived at a set of steel double doors that looked out of place among the rest.

“Entry door, lab. Unlock please,” she said to whatever security microphone was listening. “Authorization: Chloe.”

Connor’s systems automatically logged the voice command for future reference as they followed her through the newly opened doors. The lab was pretty much what Connor would have expected. Anything that would be used for android creation or repair was there, but while CyberLife would have separate departments for various stages, everything here was in the one room. Overall it was easier to access and more efficient this way, at least while working in small scale.

Elijah Kamski himself stood near the center of the room. He was fiddling with a machine, likely calibrating it. A spike of anxiety ran through Connor as he remembered the last time they met.

“Elijah,” Chloe called. “Our guests are here.”

“Yes, of course,” he responded, not looking up from his work. “Right on time, good.” He wiped his hands on his pant leg, before looking up. As he was now, it was hard to believe he was the same Elijah Kamski from three months ago. His silk robe was replaced with a t-shirt depicting an obscure movie from long before he was born, his jeans were streaked with grease, and a pair of glasses perched on his nose. Overall, not the public image of one of the world’s wealthiest men.

Hank’s hand pressed more firmly into his back as though sensing Connor’s anxiousness. “You can fix him, right?” He asked, getting right to the point.

Elijah adjusted his glasses with a slight frown. “I agreed to try, I never promised success,” he said, unhelpfully.

“The hell is that supposed to mean? I thought you were some kind of genius?”

“Hank!” Connor warned, but went largely ignored.

Kamski rolled his eyes. “Is it really wise to insult someone who is doing you a favor,” he scolded. “I never make promises I can’t keep. An android’s battery is tricky, a lot can go wrong.”

Connor could feel Hank shaking, whether it was from stress or anger, he wasn’t sure. “What’s so tricky about it?” He wanted to know. “Just pull out the bad one and switch it out for a new one.”

Elijah pulled the glasses from his face to pinch at the bridge of his nose, as though Hank’s mere presence was giving him a headache. “It’s nowhere near that simple,” he tried to explain. “The battery is rooted to the entirety of an android’s system. When it dies, so does the android. To remove it means the body is without power. Completely. Without a battery to support the programs, even if it’s only removed or interrupted for a moment, the android’s system will be wiped.”

Connor instinctively moved closer to Hank. He knew all of this, but hearing it, having the bleakness of his situation confirmed, was another matter entirely. Hank’s arm shifted to be around his shoulders. “So, what?” Hank asked. “There’s nothing you can do? Why the hell did we even come here then?”

“I never promised results, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try,” Elijah said, returning the glasses to his face. “In theory, if we can hook him up to an external power source, we can bypass the battery long enough to exchange it.”

He wasn’t particularly comfortable with the sound of that and it must have shown. Hank’s hold on him tightened and he gave his shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “Ok, fuck, ok,” Hank said.

“It’s not hopeless,” Connor offered, trying not to let the fear he felt leak into his voice. He knew bypassing his battery would be difficult if not impossible, not to mention the risk of a short was high.

Hank turned to him, apparently deducing that he needed some encouragement despite his efforts to mask his hesitance. “You’re right, kid. You’re gonna be fine,” he told him. “We’ll get you all set up with a new battery. You’re gonna be fine and I'll be right here with you the whole time.”

“Uh,” Kamski interrupted. “Actually, no. No you won’t be.”

Connor’s anxiety skyrocketed again and he knew it showed on his LED. “The fuck do you mean?” Hank demanded.

“I need complete concentration while I work,” he said. “That means I can’t have you here. You need to leave.”

“Fuck that, I’m not going anywhere!”

“If you want me to work on him, yes you are,” Kamski countered.

Hank opened his mouth, ready to start shouting, but Connor put a hand on his arm. “It’s ok, Hank,” he said, although anyone could tell it wasn’t. “I’ll be ok. Mr. Kamski is right, he needs to be able to focus if there’s any chance to pull this off.”

It looked like there were a number of things Hank wanted to say. He chewed on each of them, sampling them, tasting them until settling on relenting. “Ok,” he said to Connor, pulling him into a tight hug. Connor tried to convince himself it wouldn’t be his last. “Ok, kid. I trust you. If you’re ok with this…”

It wasn’t like he had another choice. “I am,” he lied.

Hank pulled away and Connor suspected he also feared this would be their final interaction. “I love you, kid. I’ll see you soon.”

“I...love you too, Hank,” it was the first time either of them had spoken the words out loud. He hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

Connor watched as Chloe led him away and the door locked behind them. He was alone with his creator. “Come on,” Kamski directed, more gently than he expected. He led him to the metal table that was statistically likely to be his death bed.

“I’m going to put you into stasis, it will take less power that way,” he said, and Connor just nodded. Either he would wake up or he wouldn’t, there was nothing else to say on the matter. He began hooking up various wires to his system, notifications accompanied each. “I know the chances aren’t good,” he told him. “But I’ll do what I can. I’ll try to get you back to your Lieutenant.”

There was an honesty to his voice that Connor hadn’t anticipated. The eyes behind the glasses were gentle and comforting, not the cold and analytical ones he had seen on his first visit. “Thank you,” Connor said and he found himself relaxing as his body slipped into stasis.

Kamski’s face was the last thing he saw before darkness took him. A smile on his face full of nothing but affection for one of his creations.

#dbh hank #dbh connor #dbh elijah kamski #detroit become human #d:bh #dbh prompt challenge #dbhghostsinthemachine #dbh fanfic

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Trust No One: Aaravos as Plague

This is a messy and convoluted and branching set of headcanons and theories so I’m going to keep it to bullet points as much as possible. But if you ever want to know more about something on here, just ask!  My thanks to @kotikala​ for brainstorming with me for a few hours one night last week (and for making the gif below). It was a whole ride, and we had crazy amounts of fun.

It all started when I got to looking, yet again, at these two pix:

1000 years ago, the Sunfire and Moonshadow rulers held their own staffs

but 300 years ago, they had diversified into warrior and wizard

in the first pic, Aaravos’s eyes are glowing

in the second, the two staffbearer elves’ eyes are glowing

glowing eyes means using big magic

Aaravos’s eyes glowed when he was controlling Viren

so what’s he up to in the pic? Controlling someone else?

is that even Aaravos or do we just see his spooky astral form while he’s actually possessing some other poor elf there, like he did with the Sunfire mage at the Sunforge?

Theory: Aaravos hacks people with his magic. He’s is a hacker, and he can spread his influence from person to person this way, like a plague.

It’s what he did with the elves after Xadia was split.

It’s what he’s doing with Viren.

He’s going to keep using the same tricks.

It’s what Viren was trying to copy with a dark magic workaround.

And it’s what Aaravos is doing to others in the show already.

It’s what he did with the elves after Xadia was split

The most terrifying thing about Aaravos isn’t his powers. It’s that you never know who Aaravos is, so you don’t even know when his powers are being used. Who can you trust, when more than one person around you might be Aaravos, or Aaravos-manipulated?

Basically: TRUST NO ONE (ghhhh I love shows like this so much)

Aaravos sent a caterpillar to Viren because a worm is a type of virus

Dark Callum was an attempt to hack Callum’s mind while he was sick, and he was only saved because of Harrow’s influence on him

the plan to split Xadia interfered with Aaravos’s own plans, so he set about foiling the elves by hacking them and puppeting and/or impersonating them, and then making important decisions of state in disguise, by manipulation, and by creating an environment of isolation and mistrust

at some point, the elves finally realized what Aaravos was doing and had to band together to stop him

enter the Sunfires and the Moonshadows, defenders of the border and the peace, such as it was

the book pages involving Aaravos all show Sun, Moon, and Stars on them, but no other identifiable primal symbols

so what did they discover? Aaravos can turn into other people, using their primal magic, in perfect copies of them. The elves had no way to tell which among them were the OG elves and which were Aaravos

It’s what he’s doing with Viren

the pod that’s growing at the end of S3/in TTM has a black-eyed Viren inside it--eyes black like Aaravos. Yet the Viren we saw Claudia resurrect has normal skin. Maybe Aaravos stole Viren’s magic--and his gray skin with it--and plans to impersonate him, while Claudia resurrected Viren’s corpse using enough vitality to restore him to his original appearance after Aaravos pulled his magic out. Each of them only intended for there to be one Viren, but now there are two, because Claudia took a shortcut

the pod is the final step in copying a person, but it starts with the blood ritual, and the caterpillar needs primal magic to grow (see: Viren getting irradiated by the Sun staff and spitting out a much larger caterpillar than he swallowed)

that means it would be a lot easier to grow elves than humans, because they already have primal magic in them, and they’re in Xadia which is also full of primal magic. Aaravos had to lure Viren to Xadia to get the caterpillar to grow

not knowing who to trust among the ruling elven leaders changed things up

the elves split their rule, from having a single ruler who also wielded the primal stone staff to having two. 700 years after Xadia was divided, the Moonshadows are led by a mage and an assassin, and the Sunfires have a queen and a mage. That way, if one of them gets podded or possessed by Aaravos, they can’t make unilateral decisions and use their power or magic to create chaos

but not everyone Aaravos manipulates has to be a ruler. If he can whisper in a baker’s ear, or a servant’s, or a certain soldier at just the right time, that person can do the influencing on rulership for him. There are always myriad targets for Aaravos to choose from. How can the elves possibly protect their people?

cue the Sunfires and Moonshadows again, as basically the Order of the Phoenix--oh hey, Phoe-Phoe!

we saw what Queen Khessa did with the Sunforge, using it to attempt Viren’s murder. She’s probably killed other humans this way over the years. We see the device as cruel and the practice as racist.

but once upon a time (and this is what gives this theory some actual weight for me) the Sunforge could have been a tool of detection in a world of lies and deceit

the Sun arcanum is about revealing truth, just like Viren’s true face was revealed

300+ years ago, Queen Aditi used the Sunforge to test her fellow elves for truth or Aaravos-level deception. Any false pod elven pretenders who were placed in its scorching beam would be destroyed, while true elves who had not touched dark magic would not be harmed

the Sunforge was one of the only ways the elves could truly trust each other: they all had to submit to the bodyscan, just like in Among Us.

maybe the Moonshadow elves had to turn a bit KGB in this part of the story, using their stealth to sneak in and drag people out of bed in the night to take them to the Sunforge by dawn so they could be tested by Aditi

possibly Moonshadows were sent on pod hunts back in the day, to take out creepy pod people who weren’t finished growing--or who had become nothing but batteries for Aaravos’s schemes--a dark mercy either way, but very Moonshadow

but if the Sunforge was a detection device, the Wonderwall was a prevention device. A firewall, run on Moon power

Nyx said that the Wonderwall keeps out soulfangs and husks. Each of those is an unnatural creation: either too much soul or too little. Either way, the Wonderwall seems to let living things pass only if they have one soul and one body (that match, if it can detect that)

Aaravos couldn’t step in there inside another elf without getting burnt out of them

the oasis isn’t just a safe haven from the desert, it’s a safe haven from uncertainty and mistrust, the one place Moonshadows know they can trust someone to be who they seem, possibly used as a meeting spot to plan Aaravos’s capture, and maybe even execute it

Aaravos had to take Aditi out somehow - she ran the Sunforge and it was ruining his plans. The way he destroyed Khessa looked like he was burning her Sun magic out of her, and that’s super karmic not only because she was trying to kill Viren that way, but if that’s how Aditi ran the Sunforge the last time he knew her

He’s going to keep using the same tricks

the first place that Aaravos took Viren in Xadia was back to the Sunforge, to disable it. Now the Viren body he’s growing in his pod cannot be detected in the usual way, and he can go about doing whatever he wants. Except that Claudia totally resurrected OG Viren, so... Claudia actually becoming a problem for Aaravos? Hmm.

The next step should be the oasis then, since it’s specifically meant to keep out Aaravos’s puppets (a term used in the art book, and possibly meant literally as well as figuratively). He should be looking for a way to bring it down, which means more Moonshadows and Nyx

since we haven’t seen pod Viren hatch yet, I’m not sure whether Aaravos needs the original alive as a tether for his copy, or if he discards them like he did the Sun mage. Maybe he did want Claudia to resurrect Viren after all because he needs his life force to power pod VIren. Or maybe he was genuinely done with Viren because he had all the power he needed (ahaha Viren quote) to grow his own Viren, and it can live on its own now

It’s what Viren was trying to copy with a dark magic workaround

remember when the creators said in an interview about Harrow that yes, he’s dead, but that we would see him again?

maybe Viren was trying his darnedest to make that happen in S1

yes I’m back on my Dadbird bullshit okay, it’s a really fun theory, bless whoever came up with that one

here’s the new hot take: Viren did swap Pip and Harrow’s souls via the soulfang, and once he had Runaan imprisoned, he did indeed plan for the elf to “walk out of here” once he cooperated...as Harrow

in the novelization of S1, Viren used a black candle to aid in transferring Runaan into the coin, whereas the red candles are used for making smoky creatures come to life

in the show, there was a black candle in the dungeon cell on the table

That bowl of ash could be Harrow’s ashes, his DNA basically, Viren never throws anything away, too pragmatic

the second that Runaan gave up the goods on the mirror’s secrets, Viren would’ve “repaid his wise counsel” in a different way than he did for Lain and Tiadrin: by using Harrow’s ashes and the black soul-transfer candle to scoop Runaan’s soul out of his body, morph it into Harrow’s form using his DNA imprint from the ash, and then fetch Pip from the cage to put Harrow’s soul back in a body that looked exactly like his old one. Runaan’s body would’ve walked out of that cell, but it wouldn’t have looked like him anymore, and he wouldn’t have been inside it

looking at that mirror and knowing he was being watched by an elf who’d crawled inside other people and ridden them around Xadia must’ve been so freaking creepy, especially to a Moonshadow, no wonder Runaan got skeeved and called it worse than death--and he barely avoided the same fate himself, even if neither he nor Viren knew the connection

And this whole plan of hopping bodies and souls? It’s the dark magic version of what Aaravos does with his pod people, just like the coining spell is a dark magic version of how Aaravos is trapped

It’s what Aaravos is doing to others in the show already

once you realize that a character has the ability to flawlessly imitate other characters, all bets are off on who’s who

that goes for anyone else Aaravos might already be talking to in caterpillar form or possessing astrally, since he probably can’t make pods of people in Katolis due to a lack of primal magic

I started wondering if there was another poor person Aaravos was already puppeting in the background, and I found one: Saleer

in S2E1, Councilman Saleer advocates against retaliation in a council meeting and Viren isn’t pleased

what do you do with those who defy you to your face? You persuade them to join your side

in S3E1, Ezran’s banther just up and growls at Saleer, as if it can sense that something’s off about him, hmmm animal instincts

Saleer is the last to bend the knee to King Ezran

later in the same episode, Saleer reacts differently than everyone else to some surprising news, seeming to murmur about it toward his own right ear

at some point I think Wormavos bit Saleer, and he’s been puppeted by Aaravos ever since, just like the Sun mage was--except that Aaravos is keeping Saleer alive because he’s not done with him yet. This is extra scary because it means Aaravos could be controlling Viren, Saleer, and the Sun mage all at the same time, or be able to switch at will amongst them, a la Horde Prime or Ultron

Saleer orchestrates Viren’s release from the moment he hears that Rayla and Callum are taking the egg back to the Dragon Queen, but our eyes are usually on Viren so we don’t really notice that he initiates everything including working the crowd

basically every time other people are shocked, Saleer isn’t

when Viren does the Hearts of Cinder spell, Saleer moves to stand on his right to avoid getting bespelled

then back to back shots show that Aaravos replaces Saleer on Viren’s right. Even though Aaravos has 4 inches on Viren in height, he’s shown shorter than Viren

since the HoC spell takes place after the Sun mage’s possession and death, it seems Aaravos’s sudden appearance is a direct hint that Aaravos is currently possessing Saleer’s body like he did the Sun mage, and by inference has been for some time, what with all the calm collectedness and the smirking he’s been doing most of the season

Saleer survives the final battle unscathed and is arrested without anyone knowing of his connection to Aaravos or his extra connection to Viren. This raises the question: what will Saleer’s fate be in S4 and onward? Will he die mysteriously, abandoned now that he’s of no use? Will Aaravos keep using him to cause chaos in Katolis? Will anyone figure out that he is/was a puppet?

I sure hope Jonathan Holmes is having fun voicing his complicated messy evil guy with Jason Simpson! The boys deserve to have fun at work.

the fandom is contractually owed one (1) conversation between Barius and Runaan as balance now, I don’t make the rules

So, to sum up

Wormavos functions just like a worm virus, establishing itself in a host and then seeking out additional systems to infect via bite, and everyone that gets bitten becomes an at-will vessel for Aaravos to use, expanding his system exponentially

it’s impossible to tell who is under his control without extraordinarily powerful primal magic tests, which he’s disabling

he’s already spreading and no one knows he’s even there yet. Saleer might not be the only character Aaravos is operating, and we might not know who he gets a hold of in the future until it’s too late

in short, trust no one, and fix the Sunforge asap.

#tdp meta #tdp theory #aaravos is ultron #or maybe horde prime #aaravos #viren #saleer #tdp #tdp headcanons #through the moon spoilers #through the moon #book one: moon #runaan #harrow #primal magic #dark magic #hackervos #worm virus is literal #xadia

[votederpycausemufins]

hey, this is a hermit!tommy fic. let’s get him back in here... at some point. oh! this is also chapter 15!

@petrichormeraki and @helleborusangel

Blacklist check. Attempting Entry: TheseusMC. Assigned roles: Helscraft Member, NSMP Member. Banned roles: None. Allowing Entry.

Theseus was surprised to see how undamaged the spawn area was. Even the surrounding land didn’t look that bad. He figured it was because it wasn’t in Hels. That was fine. The fact that it seemed calmer here meant this would be easy.

From his inventory, Theseus grabbed his mask and axe. He pulled his handkerchief up over his nose and then put his mask on, letting a single brown eye stay visible. He then held the axe so it rested on his shoulder before walking. Nightmare never stayed in one place, so this Dream person would likely be the same. 

No matter, he would probably find him eventually, or the admin would get curious and come to him. Either way, he would find him. So Theseus started walking.

Blacklist check. Attempting Entry: EvilXisuma. Assigned roles: Helscraft Member, Hacker, Admin. Banned roles: None. Allowing Entry.

Xannes spawned in and looked around. The place was a little bit of a mess, but it wasn’t all that bad. It wasn’t like you were a step in the wrong direction away from being set on fire. Immediately he activated his present commands. The sky turned dark and started storming, lighting striking everywhere. Then he randomized a player and spawned in a mob, causing Xannes to get three messages sent to his helmet’s communicator.

JackManifold was blown up by creeper

<JackManifold> WHAT

<JackManifold> I WAS IN THE NETHER

Xannes chuckled before activating another command.

<CaptainPuffy> My stuff is suddenly just all gone

<CaptainPuffy> My inventory got wiped

And now how about a teleport or two?

Quackity fell from a high place

Ranboo suffocated in a block

He set up a few more commands and programmed it so they would play on loop while he went looking for the kids. He mostly ignored the messages coming in, instead focusing on trying to get the locations of the bots, but for whatever reason, something was stopping that. “Console? Who uses a console these days? They’re so… inefficient and clunky. Anyone who can get to it can use it. Hmm, though I suppose that would make things easier for me.”

The hels admin punched another command into his helmet and found the coordinates for the Console. He would teleport, but they often had tp protection or traps around them. Sometimes both. Plus Xannes had no clue what the nearby area would look like. So instead, he set his player-mode to creative and started heading off in that direction.

As he got closer to the location, Xannes looked at the ground below. It was covered with some sort of red… thing that seemed to be taking over the land. It honestly reminded him of the nylium war from a number of months ago. Obviously he couldn’t be sure how close it was to that, not having any experience with this particular problem. Plus, he wasn’t the admin, so he didn’t need to deal with it.

Xannes reached the coordinates and then paused. There was nothing here. Had he gotten them wrong? No, they were right. Even the y coordinate, so it wasn’t underground. But the console wasn’t here at all. It was just… missing. He ran the command again just to be absolutely sure that these were the coordinates. 

The command calculated the answer, and then gave him new coordinates. Great, it had given him the wrong place. Xannes rolled his eyes before really reading the new numbers. It wasn’t too terribly far from here, so Xannes adjusted and started towards the correct location. But then it wasn’t there either!

A third attempt of the command and a third set of coordinates. This time Xannes took the time to put himself into spectator mode to give himself the extra speed. But even then, there was nothing. “This doesn’t make any sense!” He turned back to creative mode, nearly trapping himself in some blocks. “It’s a console! You can’t just carry them around with you! Unless this is something helping with the protection. That could be in. Leading me off on a wild goose chase so I can’t find it and give up. Well, it won’t stop me that easily!”

He started off back towards spawn, flying over any of that red stuff covering the ground. It started out with him just needing to jump over or hover for a second to avoid it, but as Xannes continued, it just covered more and more until he couldn’t take it anymore and went to see what the source was.

After a bit of travel, it seemed like Xannes was almost there. He could barely see an entrance, but the stuff, it looked like plants, were half covering it. He pulled out a weapon to try and cut the plants, only to move back when he ended up taking damage. “Alright… what is this? I should be fine in this player-mode.” He tried again to get the same result. He then spawned in some lit TNT and watched as the plants exploded leaving charred remains. Xannes went through the now clear opening and started going down the staircase that had been behind it, when it started getting significantly darker. Turning back around, he watched as the plants repaired themselves, pulling back together until they looked undamaged.

Xannes stared at the reformed plants for a few minutes before racing down the stairs. This was really unnatural. It was even to the point where he was considering just baling and saying it was a lost cause. As he attempted to dodge any plants hanging from the walls and ceiling, he instead managed to hit a tripwire and suddenly parts of the walls were moving in and out. The admin growled and stood in place for a second, before just using the commands to get rid of the moving blocks and continue to descend the steps.

He had almost reached the bottom when Xannes realized he could hear people talking. And it didn’t sound distressed, more like a run of the mill conversation. That probably meant whoever it was had been down here for a long time, or didn’t realize they could get out.

Finally, the stairs opened up into a room that attacked his eyes with red. The plants were covering the place, vines all over the floor and hanging down from the ceiling. The walls and floors were also made of netherbrick, crimson wood and red carpets further saturating the place with red. Xannes pulled out his sword to use as a stick to push vines out of the way. It took a bit of hopping about, but finally he was able to see the source of the voices. 

There were a number of people surrounding a table. Using his helmet’s functions, he was able to get a better read on them. There was a demon, a cat hybrid, and two humans, one of them wearing some sort of mask. There seemed to possibly be other people, but none that he could get a good read on from all of the vines. Xannes moved a bit to get another look. Indeed there were more people, but one of them caught his attention most of all. It was Jrum.

Grumbot kept walking, getting closer to his- its charger. He- It was low on battery so he- it needed to plug back in. More of the infective plants were in the way, so a flint and steel was used to burn a path. Grumbot continued to light fires, ignoring the damage it took from walking through them. It was fine. The scorching could be cleaned if that was what was wanted. Perhaps it would not. Like the denting and the crack in its monitor.

Finally it arrived at the house. It ignored the dusty bed and instead stood next to the charger, staying in place as its battery filled. Now that it was charging, it could work. Weather was set to clear, unnatural mob spawning was turned off, teleporting was disabled, and more was done after that. It attempted to track the source of the issues, but only managed to find it was due to a hacker. That much was obvious from the start.

More programs started running before Grumbot realized what today was. Perhaps that was the source of the issues. A report was sent to the admin, giving him more details. An order came back and the robot continued to assess the issue, told to continue until he arrived. 

It took time for the admin to appear, but he did indeed. Except he was dressed slightly differently. And there was an absence of admin powers for the world. There were indeed admin powers present on this person, but it was not the correct source.

The person stood staring, axe held in their hands. It was a material the robot was unfamiliar with. There was no such item listed in this world. Then they spoke. “You’re a robot.”

“Correct.” Grumbot answered in a fully monotone voice, confirming the sentence.

“How long have you been like that?”

“Since my creation.”

The person sighed. “Alright, well this should still work.” They moved and grabbed the robot by the antenna, but it didn’t want to be moved and pulled out a netherite sword, stabbing the person with it. “Fuck! It would be better if you didn’t fight back.”

“I am not to be removed from this place.”

“And why’s that?” The person asked, rolling their eyes.

“I have been ordered to stay here and wait for the admin.”

There was silence before the person spoke again. “But the admin is Dream.”

“Correct.”

“Aren’t you Dream?”

“Incorrect.”

“Then where is he?”

Tommy cursed as he nearly flew into yet another bee. Sure, walking would mean he didn’t suddenly launch himself face first into one of the fuzzy mobs, but it would also take forever to get back, and he needed to be in the shopping district yesterday. He would have loved to just send a message and get an emergency teleport, but when all his things had been taken in the first place, his comm had been included.

When he finally reached the end of the tunnel to the upside down, Tommy took just a second to breathe before using another rocket to fly to the shopping district portal. Fortunately nothing dangerous was around, so he was able to take a second break at the foot of the portal before stepping through. Being able to see a regular overworld was great, especially since it was home, but there was one last thing he needed to do. Tommy took a deep breath, and then screamed at the top of his lungs.

The moment Tommy started yelling, he started counting the seconds. He was able to keep screaming for about twelve seconds before he needed to breathe, then seven seconds after that, he was tackled to the ground by Grian.

“TOMMY WHAT’S WRONG?!”

“Ow! Not right in my fucking ear, bitch!” Tommy shoved Grian off of him. “And I needed to do something to get your fucking attention.”

“Why didn’t you just-”

“Message you? Can’t. Comm got stolen. Speaking of which, I didn’t come back here with you!”

“What? But you were here with us until a few minutes ago.”

“Wasn’t me. I’ve been stuck with your hels!version. Meanwhile mine’s been the one here!”

“Oh no! Tommy I’m so sorry we didn’t realize!”

“Don’t worry G, ‘s fine. Bitch got his Phil to trap me in prison for a bit, but I’m out now. Now where the fuck is he?”

Grian pulled out his comm. “Shoot, he left just before EX did.”

“And those are connected… why?”

“My best guess is he went to your old server like EX. He’s after the bots.”

“Why aren’t you in there instead?”

Grian’s feathers ruffled. “Because I can’t get in there. We’ve tested everyone at this point. We’re all blacklisted from the place. Even when I use my Watcher powers which shouldn’t be possible!”

“Wait, everyone?”

“Yes! Phil, Techno and Tubbo couldn’t get in,” Grian quickly gestured to them, then himself. “I couldn’t, Mumbo definitely couldn’t. Same with Xisuma, Cub and Scar, Joe, heck, even Jellie couldn’t get in! It seemed EX was able to, and so was your duplicate, but that’s it.”

“Well, I just got here, what if I went?”

“No! I may have been having this conversation without you before, but I do not want you going there if you don’t have to.”

“If I can go as backup, I should.” Tommy crossed his arms.

“Tommy, I don’t really think that’s a good idea.” Tubbo spoke up. “I mean, I know you want to help and all, but that other guy seems to be dealing with it, and the server’s really changed since you were there last.”

“It’s still better than nothing! I know mostly what’s going on while Xannes has no fucking clue. And if you don’t, I can just call Mumza.”

Phil shook his head. “Do you even know how to do that?”

“Pretty much. I’m guessing it’s mostly the same. I’m just hoping she’s not a piece of shit like you were.”

“She’s not! Wait hey!”

“I meant the other you! But you weren’t the best guy yourself.”

“Tommy please don’t go.” Grian pleaded, taking Tommy’s hand. “You said you never wanted to go back.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I assumed one day you’d be able to get over there and grab Tubbo and maybe Ranboo. Possibly Big Q as well. Now you can’t get in and I might be able to. Why are you so against me going in there?!”

“BECAUSE I’M SICK OF LOSING MY FAMILY!” Grian shouted, unintentionally enhancing his voice with Watcher magic. I spent around eighteen years of my life making and losing family at every turn. The people I grew up with, the family I built, the people in Evo. I finally got to Hermitcraft and I started making a new family even though I know I’m going to lose it again! I haven’t been here that long! And then you showed up, and I was able to fix the bots, and I found NPG again, and then I found the family I lost. And now it’s falling apart again. I just want to hold on as long as I can before I lose even more.”

Tommy didn’t say anything as Grian shouted, slowly dissolving into tears. He just let his older brother shout at him and hug his and anything else he wanted to do. He could feel his shirt getting soaked from tears, but he didn’t care. He just softly spoke back. “Grian, I spent my life living in your shadow. I acted enough like you that Dad, Wil and Techno weren’t a fan of it. I got to the SMP and tried making friends, but they sort of fell apart, even a little bit with Tubbo and the whole exile thing. Then I got to hang with you and your kids and became part of the family before we even knew I was that from the start. Life fucking sucks sometimes, but I push through it cause that’s all I’ve really been able to do. And man, I don’t want to lose them either. Sure I’m their uncle, but they’re kinda also like my siblings. I want to go help them.”

Grian still looked conflicted, but then he sighed. “Okay… but you’re going to take this.” And suddenly a sort of communicator Tommy hadn’t seen appeared in Grian’s hand. “This was… a friend of mine’s. It was made to work in just about any situation. You’re going to send me messages any chance you get. If I don’t have one within five minutes, I’m going to use the doomsday option.”

“I’m sorry, the what?!”

“You said you were stuck in prison and hanging out with my double. You’re not there now, so I assume he isn’t either.” Tommy didn’t say anything, he just rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. “That’s what I thought. Look, if I can’t get in there with Watcher powers alone, I may have to get his help. If he were still trapped, I wouldn’t consider it on the risk that he would stay freed, but if he’s out, not like that’s a risk anymore.”

“He sort of seems like the person who would completely destroy the SMP.”

“And that’s why it’s called the doomsday option.”

Tommy just nodded and took the comm. “Alright then, let’s see if I can get in.”

Grian used his watcher powers again, and sent him to the SMP. He wasn’t stopped by any blacklist, and he arrived at the other side, still with all his gear.

Blacklist check. Attempting Entry: Tommyinnit. Assigned roles: Family Member, Uncle, Hermitcraft Member, DSMP Member Banned roles: Family Member, Uncle, Hermitcraft Member. 

Exceptions check. Exceptions List found: Second_List_Exceptions. Name found. Allowing Entry.

#hermit!tommy au #hermit!tommy #hels!tommy #evil xisuma #jrumbot #the blood vines #grumbot #tommyinnit #grian #watcher!grian #grian xelqua #avian!Grian #philza #tubbo #techno is technically there too

[whywishesarehorses]

Inside the Famous—and Deadly—Omak Stampede

This article was written by Allison Williams, published in the August 2017 issue of Seattle Met, and reformatted here for your enjoyment.

This one is text heavy and long, so it is hidden under a read more.

Thursday

Eighteen horses form an imperfect line on a hot August night, their 18 jockeys clad in jeans. Here on a sandy bluff in the small town of Omak, four hours east of Seattle and several worlds away, riders and spectators alike move with nervous energy, anxious for the race to start. One jockey wears a helmet topped with a pink mohawk, another with a GoPro camera. One horse, sponsored by a local marijuana dispensary, sports painted pot leaves on its rump. Wispy white eagle feathers hang from others, emblems of the Native American heritage the men share.

A summer carnival glows below, neon outlines of rides called the Orbiter and the Fireball, metal towers that came into town on tractor trailers. Farther into the Okanogan Highlands, a casino twinkles alone on Indian Reservation land. It’s August 11, 2016, and even an hour past sunset the air holds onto most of the heat from the 90-degree day.

A “whoooop!” erupts from the gathered crowd as the animals sidestep and bob their heads behind the chalk starting line. His race number bright across his chest, 18-year-old Scott Abrahamson eyes the sandy dirt in front of the line, groomed like a golf course sand trap. His long bubblegum-pink sleeves mean he’s easy to spot even in the shadows where floodlights don’t reach, and his helmet blinks with battery-operated toy devil horns. He’s surrounded by both champions—Loren Marchand with seven titles, Tyler Peasley with three—and nervous high schoolers in their first race.

At the crack of a gun, the horses charge. Their riders lean forward as hooves pound the sandy flat, at least for the first hundred feet. The crowd cheers as soon as the pistol sounds, cries and hoots blossoming into the dark.

Then 18 horses go off a cliff.

The riders shift in their saddles as their mounts fly down an incline steeper than a ski jump. The best jockeys, the veterans, barely lean back coming off the hill, reins clasped in the left hand and riding crops in the right. Others grasp a bar they’ve rigged on the back of their saddles they call the “oh shit handle.”

The spectators’ cries reach full pitch when the pack is halfway to the waterway at the base of the hill, a thick ribbon of black that flows left to right. The horses plunge into the inky Okanogan River en masse, hooves hitting the shallow bottom, and all but one charge across to the opposite bank. The stadium on the far side is lit up like a Friday-night football game, floodlights bright atop red, white, and blue bleachers, and Scott and his hot-pink sleeves emerge first in the dirt oval, just 45 seconds into the race. As they cross the finish line, Peasley is right on his tail.

Fifteen horses follow, minus the one that tumbled in the river. A crew attends to the downed horse from the deck of a small drift boat; while the stadium roars, a veterinarian surveys the animal and notes that it’s already gone, likely drowned.

Back atop the hill, Colville tribal elders watch through binoculars before one spots something in the sandy dirt, an eagle feather dislodged by the chaos. They circle the downed quill, addressing the spirit it represents, the eagle that travels in both worlds, before one of the elders lifts the feather to return it to its owner.

This is the World Famous Suicide Race.

There will be four races total during Omak Stampede, always the second weekend in August. Each race awards five points to the first-place finisher, four to the second, and so on; the overall winner clinches the King of the Hill title on Sunday, and $40,000 in prize money is distributed. It’s the highlight of this Central Washington town’s year, a tradition that draws thousands of spectators—and animal-rights protesters.

Omak straddles the border of the Colville Reservation, home of almost every racer, horse owner, and trainer. The contest is a rite of passage, they say, a proving ground for men—and even a few women—coming of age more than a century after actual horseback warfare. Beyond the turgid flow of the Okanogan River through town, the reservation sprawls over 1.4 million acres of highlands, brittle with brown grass in late summer. There the Native American communities are plagued by poverty and unemployment.

If the Suicide Race was a small-town Friday-night football game, teenaged Scott Abrahamson would be its star quarterback. He’s an ace student, focused and polite, with technical internships and honor rolls to his name, but this weekend he’s a jockey with a King of the Hill title to defend. All eyes are on him.

Friday

He gets sick before every big race. “Everything hits me and my body,” Scott says. “I can barely walk.” His cousin calls it good luck; Scotty puking means they’re going to do well.

In the hours before Friday’s race, the second of four, Scott’s prepping in the triangular Owners and Jockey’s paddock in the middle of the fairgrounds. By 5pm, Omak veterinarian Jai Tuttle holds court at one end of the dusty enclosure, near standing fans that muster a little manufactured breeze. As they wait to parade their horses for Doc Tuttle, owners angle water hoses over the animals’ backs.

Everyone older than Scott calls him Scotty. This year’s printed program, in the roster of winners dating back to 1935, calls him that. After he won in 2015, he became small-town famous, no longer just the good kid who excelled at basketball and wrestling. People holler, “Go Scotty” at him all weekend.

His father was famous too. That’s what happens when you win the Suicide Race; Leroy Abrahamson took the title in 2002, but was best known for his prowess in the Indian Relay, a more widespread style of racing where one jockey hops from horse to horse. Leroy, Scott has heard, would flit from one mount to the next with only a single foot brushing the ground.

Scott doesn’t remember his first time in a saddle but assumes it was before he could walk, though he largely gave it up in elementary school, when his parents split. His father was the horse guy; his mother was all about school. So he became a standout student in Coulee Dam, a reservation town in the shadow of the 50-story hydroelectric giant. When his father died in 2009, he was drawn back to horses.

“I’m sorta doing all this for him,” Scott says, hesitant. His mother wasn’t wild about the racing, but he didn’t falter at school, scoring an engineering internship with the Bureau of Reclamation. Slight and muscular, his five-foot-nine stature is too tall for a throughbred jockey but about average for this race. His hair is short and straight, spiking around his head like a halo, and he likes to hide his eyes behind sunglasses.

The summer he was 16, after his sophomore year of high school, Scott entered his first Suicide Race. Atop a small gelding named Kinky, he fell as they crested the top of the hill on the Thursday race, flipping over the horse’s shoulder. On Friday the pair wrecked in the water.

“I flipped over and everybody ran me over,” he says. “Everyone says it happens so fast, but when I was in it, it was like slow motion.” Finally, on Saturday, they made it through the entire race, galloping past the finish line in the stadium. Then Sunday the pair wrecked again.

A new horse was in order. His trainer, George Marchand, is a giant within the Suicide Race world and holder of three titles. He’d lost his own father at 14 and rode against Leroy Abrahamson 15 years ago, so he guided Scott, this time to a nighttime ride on a quarter horse–thoroughbred mix named Eagle Boy. The butterscotch-colored gelding was only about five years younger than the rider.

“It was pitch black and dusty,” remembers Scott. The hills of the reservation are dotted with brush and ponderosa pine, but he could make out little from his saddle. They were on top of a hill, he knew that, and that George had taken off.

He gave Eagle Boy his head as they sped over the uneven terrain. “We were jumping trees and dodging trees,” recalls Scott, but they moved as a unit. “I was like dang—he trusts me.” Matching horse to rider is alchemy.

In 2015, in his second year racing and only 17 years old, Scott on Eagle Boy tied for first overall with six-time victor Loren Marchand, George’s nephew. With a wide grin stretched across his face, the rising high school senior played rock-paper-scissors with his cochamp for a King of the Hill prize bridle.

The name World Famous Suicide Race might be a bit of hyperbole, but the race is nothing if not infamous. It emerged in scrappy Omak where a Great Depression population boom—all the way to 2,500 souls—launched an annual rodeo in 1933. As publicity chairman, furniture store owner Claire Pentz proposed a dramatic steeplechase to draw spectators, inspired by mountain races across the reservation at Keller, where riders charged a dry channel in the Sanpoil River. He knew how to sell it: He gave his 1935 creation a catchy name.

The World Famous Suicide Race ran every summer, the marquee event at the four-day Omak Stampede rodeo. Dynasties were born when the inaugural race’s third-place finisher, Alex Dick, won regularly through 1965. There have been seven Marchand riders over the years, six Abrahamsons, nearly a dozen named Pakootas. The unofficial motto, one that appears on winners’ belt buckles, is “Wimps Need Not Apply.”

The 210-foot hill, most say, is a 62-degree slope. Or it’s 54.7 degrees, as measured by a race official in 1993. Others say it’s more like 30. Regardless, it’s terrifying. From the top, the hill feels as steep as a hard ski run; a black diamond, but not a double black. Scrambling up on foot, you might use your hands.

The stampede and race remain intertwined, but in 1999 the Colville Tribes boycotted to protest a change to their camping space on the fairgrounds. The Stampede lost attendance and revenue, and the following year a deal was struck: The tribes got more control over the race organization, and the encampment got its park space.

Family ties bind many of the owners, trainers, and jockeys, and while a few aren’t Native American at all, they’re the exception. This is the biggest sporting event in the region, the Super Bowl of north-central Washington. “This is the only time we get to play cowboys and Indians,” jokes one organizer, Ernie Williams.

Doc Tuttle is fairly new to the race gig, but between her ease with fidgety horses and no-nonsense demeanor, the veterinarian exudes authority. One by one she clears the horses for Friday’s race, directing owners to walk each thousand-pound animal in a figure eight as her eyes stay trained on forelegs and haunches, scrutinizing for swollen tendons or joints.

No one can pretend the Suicide Race isn’t controversial. As early as 1939, the protests started; Humane Society president Glen McLeod succeeded in canceling a mountain race in nearby Hunters, then traveled to Omak and Keller hoping to do the same. “Why, even the riders call it a ‘suicide race,’ ” McLeod told The Seattle Daily Times before a similar trip in 1941.

Animal rights groups started keeping a tally of dead horses in 1983, with one count now at 22. “The reality is that the race is viewed as part of the Omak Stampede rodeo, and rodeos are protected under state law,” says Seattle Humane Society spokesman Dan Paul, but points out that rapid shifts in public sentiment swiftly made SeaWorld orca shows and circus elephant acts extinct.

People for Ethical Treatment of Animals has run letter-writing campaigns. In 1993, the Northwest’s PAWS, or Progressive Animal Welfare Society, tried a more robust tactic, filing a lawsuit that alleged organizers harm horses for profit, but a Superior Court judge threw out the case. In 1996, a PAWS member sued the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office and the rodeo for roughing him up when he videotaped a horse being euthanized; the suit settled for $64,500.

For the organizers, the response is simple: The race is merely an extension of their horse-infused culture. Every rider points out that they ride similar hills during wild-horse roundups and cattle work.

Horses have to pass three checks before they’re allowed entry into the race: the vet examination, a swim test, and what’s called a hill test, where horses must round the top of Suicide Hill without hesitation.

Tuttle isn’t from the reservation; she isn’t originally from Omak. But even as an outsider, the one who has to put horses down if they’re hurt, she doesn’t think it’s inhumane.

“These guys use horses that love it,” she says; the horses are bred to it and run steep hills regularly on the remote corners of the reservation. She rarely has to disqualify a horse because owners who spot lameness usually scratch. “It does hold a real special place in the Native culture. It does.” And that horse Thursday night that likely drowned? She considers it. “He was doing what he loved and he had a quick and honorable death.”

Friday night’s race is classic and clean; no bad wrecks. As always, the riders reach the starting line by crossing the river on the Highway 97 bridge, closed to traffic. Hooves clomp on the asphalt as the parade passes a road sign that reads, “Tribal Code Laws Apply.” There are no rules to apply in the Suicide Race once the gun is fired; riders can whip each other, pull each other’s reins. No helmets required. No wimps.

The results echo the previous night: Scott Abrahamson and Eagle Boy come in first, Tyler Peasley on Spade in second. When Scott wins, he raises his right hand above his head, palm out, fingers outstretched. His father’s gesture.

Scott was only four when Leroy won the Suicide Race. “Everyone said he was one of the greats,” he says. “It’s kinda hard to fill his shoes.” Instead he fills his horns. He wears Leroy’s blinking red devil headpiece, the kind of bauble most 18-year-olds would don at a Halloween party.

Scott’s idols were the riders who won in the late 2000s, including the 30-year-old three-time champion who came in second to him during this weekend’s first two races. As a kid he’d run down hills playing at Suicide Race, imaginary whip flying, yelling, “I’m Tyler Peasley!” After his 2015 win, Scott noticed something: “The kids run around saying they’re me.”

It’s after 10pm when the racehorses have completed their cooldown laps and have been loaded into trailers for the ride home. Scott accompanies George Marchand to Omak Lake, 15 miles out of town, to let Eagle Boy soak before bed.

Saturday

Saturday night’s Suicide Race is the biggest. The 7,700-seat arena is packed, and lines form at every fun house and stomach-destroying ride in the carnival outside. Booths hawk curly fries, cotton candy, and foot-longs, though the longest lines are reliably at a taco truck.

But that’s not the whole Omak Stampede. On the east side of the arena, a mirror festival, maybe even larger: the Indian Encampment. Rows of teepees surround a round pavilion for dancing and drum performances, with RVs and tents beyond that. Spectators bring their own camp chairs to supplement the few bleachers. Booths sell jewelry, T-shirts, and dream catchers, and while some of the food is the same—nothing is as universal as curly fries—more signs are handwritten, and many vend Indian tacos and huckleberry lemonade.

Before the rodeo begins, the arena’s industrial speakers blast pop country songs over every acre. The festivities begin with a series of anthems and processions, recognizing the neighboring nations of Canada and the Colville Tribes. During the ride-in, dozens of rodeo queens from around the West shoot into the center oval on horseback, one by one, decked in every shade of sparkle.

The announcer introduces each event, then banters with the rodeo clown when things get slow or a bull rider needs a moment to limp off the dirt. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association produces the classic rodeo events, ones with more white riders than Native: bull riding, steer wrestling, team roping, barrel racing. Specialty acts bridge the competitive sports: trick riders and one blonde woman who does a kind of partner dance with an unbridled palomino horse to the blaring sounds of a country song called “Free.” It ends with the horse placing its blond head in her lap.

The Suicide Race is the final blockbuster event. Spectators wade up to their knees into the Okanogan River just upstream of the race crossing, bare feet on slimy rocks. Signs still note that video recording is prohibited, but they’re roundly ignored in the age of cell phones.

Despite the shocking name, the only rider death since anyone’s kept close records was one who drowned on his way to the starting line—though there are plenty of close calls. In 2002, the year Leroy Abrahamson took home the title, racer Naomie Peasley took a tumble so bad she fractured her skull. She recovered, but not before flatlining twice in the medic helicopter.

In its anti–Suicide Race materials, PAWS airs a common criticism of the race: its authenticity. “Organizers currently contend that the Suicide Race has roots in Native American tradition but, in fact, an Anglo conceived the race as a publicity stunt,” reads its statement. Detractors hang on that detail, its origins with furniture salesman Claire Pentz.

To riders and trainers, though, Pentz is irrelevant, and they point to the deep roots of horse culture. For Scott, the point of the race is clear: “Showing that a young man is becoming a warrior, becoming a man.”

The race, the encampment—it’s the tribes’ biggest invitation into their world. “There’s more that people don’t see behind these walls, about Indian life...sweat lodges, medicine,” adds Aaron Carden, a retired racer who now teaches Native language on the reservation. Of the borders around that world, he says, “It’s not our fence to keep people out. It’s the fence white men built to keep us out of the area they took.”

The race wasn’t the only thing “created” by a white man; the very invention of a Colville Tribes unit is recent. Long before that, before statehood, before Manifest Destiny, before Lewis and Clark white-privileged their way across the American West, the Okanogan Highlands tribes lived nomadic lives, picking berries and drawing salmon from the massive Columbia River. And racing horses.

First came the incorporation of Washington Territory, then a series of executive orders begun by president Ulysses S. Grant that roped several tribes into three million acres between the Methow Valley and the Columbia River. Others were elbowed into the reservation, linking bands that once stretched from the dusty plains of Washington to the mountains of British Columbia. One chief invited a famous Indian leader, Chief Joseph, and his Nez Perce followers in 1885. With his band, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation—a patchwork assembly that had no single language or traditional commonality—reached their current 12-tribe size.

Over 125 years the tribes faced what so many other American Indians did—children forced into boarding schools, languages squashed. The federal government forced a cheap buyback of 1.5 million acres, lands still lamented as the lost “North Half.” The Grand Coulee Dam, erected in 1942, blocked spawning salmon with its 550-foot concrete walls; Colville tribal members mourned the loss of Kettle Falls, a historic fishing spot, with a Ceremony of Tears before it was submerged by the dam’s backup.

In the 1960s, the tribes toyed with termination, dissolving the reservation altogether and splitting the lands among its 5,000 members. Reservations had been terminated by the government before, but the Colvilles were the only ones to dare seriously consider it themselves, an unprecedented move of self-governance. Congressional hearings were held but the measure never passed, so the Colville Reservation endured.

The Suicide Race is a separate world from suicide itself, a public health crisis for the Colvilles. Whether spurred by pervasive poverty—reservation unemployment topped 50 percent in 2010—or rampant substance abuse, the suicide rate ballooned to 20 times the national average in 2006. “After that we were in a panic on what we need to do and could do,” says tribal staffer Olivia Wynecoop. Tribal leadership declared a state of emergency, and Wynecoop helped secure grants for education and designating “natural helpers” to be on call for suicide emergencies.

Scott positions Eagle Boy at the western end of the starting line for the Saturday-night race. This isn’t like the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby; horses pace and turn, and the antsy palomino next to him does a sideways prance before the starter pistol goes off. Scott is angry, though later he says he can’t remember why. Trash talk and psych-outs are regular along the starting line, older jockeys trying to ruffle the young ones still gathering their courage.

But three years and one win into the Suicide Race, Scott can ignore the chatter. He and Eagle Boy are still until the gun sounds, then fast to the crest of the hill. Aaron Carden still remembers the feeling 25 years after his first win: “You’re actually flying in the sky. Nobody can take that away from you.”

There’s a commotion, a cloud of dust to Scott’s left, but he’s well in front of the pack as they hit the water. Two strides into the dark water, Eagle Boy stumbles, flinging Scott into the river. His blinking red devil horns disappear under the white churn created by horses on either side. They’re both okay but don’t log a finish.

What Scott couldn’t see was what happened on the top of the hill, to the very first rider off the break. Tyler Peasley, whom Scott idolized as a kid, and who’d placed at Scott’s heels the past two nights, darted off the top of the hill like a raptor after its prey. Peasley’s a little taller than Scott, broader shouldered, and he rides to win. His mount, Spade, got so much air he tucked his back legs underneath him and simply sailed for the first 30 feet of the downward slope.

They were serene in that moment, flying, until Spade’s hooves finally hit the tilted ground again; Peasley pitched over Spade’s front left shoulder before the horse executed a tight somersault. The jockey disappeared under the hooves of the horses behind him and the crowd made a collective, guttural gasp. Peasley’s body didn’t come to a stop until he reached the bottom of the hill.

Sunday

The final race is also the only daytime race of the weekend; for the first time since the trials and runoff races held before the stampede, they’ll be rushing the hill in full daylight.

The mood in the O&J paddock is subdued, but word is going around that Peasley is stable at a nearby hospital. News will later spread that his injuries included a broken pelvis, hip, and ribs, and the racing community fundraises to support his care and gas money for his family to visit him.

Remarkably, Tyler’s horse, Spade, is unhurt from the tumble, ready to race again. His owner lights a bundle of sage and says a few words over the horse before a new jockey takes the saddle.

For the final time in 2016, Scott follows the parade to the top of Suicide Hill. His jeans have a gaping hole in the knee—real wear from hard riding, not a fashion statement—and his wraparound sunglasses are ’80s big. No devil horns for the daytime race, but, as ever, his name is the one most shouted by the crowds: “Come on Scotty,” over and over.

With 10 points already earned, Scott only needs to place to secure the title. Owner and trainer Marchand tells him not to go all out, and when the gun fires, he doesn’t. He holds back his whip, lets Eagle Boy run the race without extra urging. It’s the smart move, the calculated move, no doubt informed by the disastrous night before. But Scott comes to regret holding back.

Not because it doesn’t work. Scott and Eagle Boy place second, netting four more points and easily clinching his first solo all-around title. But for Scott, the kind of driven athlete who hates to give a single inch, playing it safe feels wrong. Now with two titles to his name, only three years in, he says he’ll ride “until I get broken down and can’t do it no more.”

Three days later, Scott will depart his Coulee Dam home and drive five hours to start his freshman year at Washington State University. As an engineering student he will pull a 3.8 GPA his first semester and a 3.9 the second; he’s lined up two years of scholarships so far and hopes he’ll be able to extend to the full undergrad four.

Scott won’t brag about his Suicide win at college, but he’ll drive home every fall weekend for Indian Relay races, another sport that mixes horsemanship with a touch of anarchy. Around the reservation, he doesn’t have to brag about being King of the Hill; everyone already knows. “He’s the Steph Curry of the Suicide Race,” one tribal member says. “Loren and Tyler are the Lebrons.”

The second weekend of August 2017 is already on everyone’s calendar. Scott will be back on Eagle Boy, who he now half owns with George Marchand—a 49 percent share. He now has a streak to defend. By early June, high winter snows have melted to fill the Okanogan River, and ecologists are warning of water flows two or three times normal. Scott guesses that, with the river this high, it’ll be too deep for the horses to simply wade across during the Suicide Race; they’ll have to swim for the first time since, he believes, 2002. The year his father won it all.

But on Sunday night in August 2016, after the King of the Hill awards and the pictures, he’s just a high school kid again. He wanders the Indian Encampment with friends, waits in line for fry bread.

Under the pavilion, dancers spin and step, decked in elaborate feathered headdresses and beaded robes. Some have numbers pinned to their costumes, like marathon runners, to compete. In a drum tent, the songs are a steady thrum of chants and cries, indecipherable to the visitors who stand awkwardly outside the rows of seated tribal members who are at once both audience and participant.

Picture this: a quiet mountain lake, bordered by rocky hills dotted with ponderosa pine. In daytime Omak Lake is seven miles of brilliant turquoise, but now, at night, it’s a black mirror. Two men drive a horse trailer to its shore, unloading an unsaddled Eagle Boy.

It’s one of George Marchand’s secrets to success; the lake minerals soothe the bumps and scrapes along the horse’s legs. In the midst of the annual Perseid meteor shower, the uncloudy Okanogan skies are perfect for spotting streaks of celestial light, but the men don’t look up as they dissect the day’s race.

Scott holds Eagle Boy’s halter from a dock while the horse wades into the water, breaking the lake’s calm. The water hasn’t yet cooled from baking under another 90-plus degree day, and the hills that round the lake keep the night air still. They’ve survived another madcap contest together, earned another W. They’re back on the reservation, back home. In the silence the only sound is the lapping of the lake water against a horse.

#horse racing #rodeo #native american #indian #horseblr #horse news #mine #omak stampede #the world famous suicide race

[razieltwelve]

Beach House (Final Rose)

The lawnmower’s startup sequence engaged shortly after midnight. His processors cycled through several streams of incoming data effortlessly to narrow down the reason for his awakening. 

There.

His creator had posted drones around the perimeter of the beach house they were renting for their holiday. Those same drones had detected movement outside of the established norms. He took a handful of cycles to peruse the data and request further information.

The drones possessed more advanced sensors, but activating those might alert any intruders to their discovery. Instead, he relied on their passive sensor sweeps. The intruders were using advanced stealth technology, which had all but hidden their presence.

What they hadn’t accounted for was some of the local wildlife detecting them and responding accordingly. It was that wildlife that the drones had detected. The lawnmower issued and order, a passive sonar sweep at frequencies inaudible to both humans and Faunus.

The sonar sweep came back positive. Multiple intruders detected in an attack pattern designed to breach the beach house. A passive thermal scan revealed nothing. The lawnmower gave the mental equivalent of a frown. Thermal camouflage combined with visual camouflage. An Aura sweep would definitely be detected, so he withheld that order.

Instead, he alerted his creator and Thomas, the robotic polar bear that the kids had built. 

His creator was at his side in moments. Her fox ears twitched as she kept her Aura calm and steady. 

“I don’t know who leaked the location of our holiday, but we can worry about that after we deal with these guys.”

His creator’s wife joined them.

“I’ll go outside with Thomas and the lawnmower. Can you start trapping the inside. If they get past us...”

“I’ll be ready for them. They won’t get the kids.” His creator’s expression was devoid of its usual cheer. “I’ll give control over the rest of the drones to the lawnmower. Have Thomas go out first. He’ll draw their attention. If they’re smart enough to get this close, they’ll have a plan for you. Be careful. Once I’ve got this place trapped and shielded, I’ll lend support.”

“All right.”

His creator’s wife patted his chassis. “You’re with me.”

“Hey.” His creator gave him a sharp look. “Weapons free. No prisoners. Total war.”

The lawnmower processed the words. They were a very specific sequence, one that authorised him to do whatever he deemed necessary to safeguard his creator and her family. His weaponry was usually heavily limited to minimise property damage and permanent injury. Not anymore.

X     X     X

The lawnmower cut communications with Thomas. The robotic polar bear had already been briefed on the plan. Any further communication might be picked up if their opponents had sufficiently advanced scanners. Normally, the lawnmower made quite a bit of noise when moving around, but he had activated his stealth protocol.

A silencing field combined with multi-spectrum camouflage allowed him to get out of the house and into the garden without being detected. Of course, he doubted his stealth would last once the fight started. When the battle began, his opponents would undoubtedly abandon any attempt at stealth, which meant they would activate all of their sensory abilities to the maximum. Even his creator’s stealth protocols wouldn’t be able to completely conceal him.

It was a pity too that most of the drones he had access to on this trip were not suited for heavy combat. They had stunners and shields, but little in the way of heavy firepower. Oh well. He’d make do. Organics could be surprising fragile. The prongs on a stunner might not sharp enough to kill, but they could easily blind, and electric shocks at opportune moments could easily lead to openings he could exploit.

Not far off, Thomas lay in wait. With his heavily reinforced chassis and exterior built of energy- and force-absorbing materials, the robotic polar bear was ideally suited to draw enemy fire. Still, the lawnmower felt a stir of unease. His friend was sturdy, but their enemy would not have come here without proper preparations.

As his processor counted down the seconds until the operation commenced, he ran another passive sonar sweep. He fed the data to Thomas and overlaid it with his visual feed. Yes. If he looked closely enough, there were minute distortions in the air that matched the general locations of the objects the sonar sweep had picked up.

Three.

Two.

One.

Zero.

X     X     X

Thomas roared, a handful of powerful speakers built into his frame unleashing a torrent of hideously loud noise pitched at frequencies designed to deafen or disable Faunus and humans alike. At the same time, the drones floating in the air unleashed powerful sensor sweeps designed to overwhelm their opponents’ camouflage. When that failed to reveal them, the drones fired their stunners. Powerful currents of electricity surged down the cables attached to the stunners, revealing their foes.

Several dozen White Fang elites. 

Thomas charged forward and was greeted with a hell storm of fire. Heavy calibre slugs designed to tear through armoured Grimm and punch through reinforced concrete slammed into him. His inbuilt shields flared to fend off the assault only to fail a moment later beneath the sheer volume of fire. He staggered momentarily and then pressed on as the storm of gunfire ripped holes in his exterior and clanked off the reinforced interior casing that protected his most important components.

He closed in on his first opponent and swiped with one claw. With strength at least an order of magnitude greater than any bear, his blow smashed right through the Aura of his first opponent and ripped them in half. Panels along his side opened up and unleashed a salvo of buckshot into the White Fang around him. To his disappointment only two thirds of the weapons were able to successfully fire. He had already taken considerable damage.

Yet he was not concerned. Alone, he would have been picked off. His opponents outnumbered him, and his scanners indicated significant amounts of Aura in all of them. However, he was not alone.

X     X     X

The lawnmower catalogued the damage Thomas had already sustained with a mental frown. His friend had already taken serious damage despite his durability. Their opponents had come equipped for a war. Well, he would give them one.

He trundled up to the closest White Fang member and activated his primary close-combat weapon.

The shotgun was a much-loved close quarters weapon. He was equipped with twin automatic shotguns, each with a maximum firing rate of 300 rounds per minute. Rather than standard shells, he used tungsten tipped, fire-Dust composite shells. The tungsten would allow the heavy shell to punch through most body armour. However, upon impact, the fire-Dust that made up the bulk of the round would then be crushed against the tungsten tip resulting in immediate sublimation.

This in turn guaranteed a complete transfer of momentum from the shot to the target along with the creation of a literal cloud of molten material inside the target. In organics, this typically resulted in a successful centre mass hit simply evaporating the torso.

His opponent had impressive Aura reserves, several hundred times that of a civilian. In the span of three seconds, the lawnmower hit him a total of thirty of the tungsten, fire-Dust shells. His Aura withstood the dirty twenty-seven of the impacts before cracking. The three subsequent hits erased his torso and sent his limbs tumbling away.

Yet even before those limbs hit the ground, the lawnmower was already deploying more of his weapon systems. Nets flashed out. Aura could protect from explosions and gunshots, but nets could still be effective. However, instead of the usual shock the nets were designed to deliver, he upped the voltage by a factor of a hundred. That should be enough to incapacitate those he’d managed to hit. Once that occurred, it was easy to pour shotgun slugs into them until they ceased to be relevant.

In front of him, Thomas continued his assault, lashing out with mad abandon as missile pods in his back opened to fire their lethal cargo: clusters of mini-missiles designed to first overwhelm an opponent’s Aura before creating clouds of shrapnel that would shred flesh and pierce through body armour.

One of the White Fang managed to draw a bead on him, and the lawnmower braced for impact. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded against his side followed by several punishing impacts from anti-materiel weaponry. His shields, more substantial than Thomas’s, were able to bear the brunt of the impact whilst his smaller size allowed for more concentrated armour. Even so, a number of warning came up, and he devoted some of his systems to repair while ejecting one of his batteries.

The battery had overloaded due to the damage done to his shields. Tossing the useless battery aside, he had one of the drones rush to deliver him another as he diverted any additional power he had to his shields.

Someone leapt at him with a spear held high, and he took a trio of cycles to aim before shooting an electrified harpoon. His creator had originally intended it to be used to catch and stop vehicles, but it worked well enough to knock his opponent back. The angry flare of Aura informed him that his opponent was still combat capable, and he turned his twin automatic shotguns toward the White Fang member.

The night was lit up with the roar of his firepower, and his opponent staggered back under the barrage. They dodged in a desperate attempt to get clear, and he activated his tractor beam. He usually used it to manipulate tools or move bunches of leaves around. It wasn’t designed to stop someone with the Aura signature of an A Tier hunter, but it didn’t have to. It managed to trip them over, and his twin shotgun were able to lock on. His opponent did not survive the ensuing barrage.

The lawnmower directed some of the drones to ram themselves into the weaker members of the assault. He detonated the drones in the faces of the White Fang members. Most survived, but they were still blinded. In their moments of weakness, the lawnmower calmly fired a salvo of his own mini-missiles. Unable to dodge, many of them were killed outright in the ensuing explosions. Others staggered into the traps his creator had prepared earlier. Claymores might be relatively primitive, but they were incredibly effective against opponents without enough Aura to protect them. He had the drones handle the rest. Picking up a heavy rock and bashing someone over the head was hardly an efficient way of doing things, but the drones could do it well enough to opponents who were barely mobile and lacking in Aura.

Every now and then, his and Thomas’s attacks were joined by flashes of Aura as his creator’s wife discretely eliminated unsuspecting members of the White Fang with her Aura constructs. Good. She was keeping herself largely concealed. In the chaos it was doubtful that anyone would notice her attacks, so she should still be able to catch the most powerful members of the White Fang attack team off guard.

X     X     X

Thomas noted the damage he’d sustained. Two of his limbs were barely operational, and he was relying more on his inertial manipulators to move. However, he was still a large, heavy machine, which meant simply ramming his opponents was a completely viable option.

Most of them were already running low on Aura as his barrage of mini-missiles had been able to catch the majority. Furthermore, the lawnmower was laying down a hellish storm of fire with his shotguns. Hitting a target at long-range with the shotguns would have been difficult even for the lawnmower’s advanced fire control systems, but this was a phone booth fight with the majority of their opponents no further than fifteen feet away. The chaos also made it easy for their creator’s wife to strike without giving herself a way. A razor-thin Aura construct to the heart would be impossible for most organics to notice in the midst of the battle. Likewise, a noose tightening to slice a throat open would be easy to miss with explosions, gunfire, and lasers everywhere.

As a sword stabbed into his side and glanced off the reinforced armour around his power source, Thomas twisted and bashed his barely working front right limb into his attacker’s skull. His attacker flopped to the ground, and he took a split-second to gauge the distance before dropping several canisters of gas onto the ground.

With their full Auras, his opponents would simply have been able to ignore them. Running low, however, the poison gas stood a decent chance of working. Of course, he and the lawnmower would be fine. There was a flash of light. Good. The lawnmower was using his lasers. Lasers weren’t all that useful against a skilled and powerful opponent with their full Aura, but against someone without Aura, they could easily disable or kill.

Thomas lumbered forward, swatting aside on White Fang after another as they tried to shake off the effects of the gas. A few tried to get around him and the lawnmower only to come apart in clouds of gore as the lawnmower triggered the mines his creator had laid earlier in the day. 

As another White Fang faltered, only to be crushed beneath his bulk, Thomas considered the battle. They were doing well -

BOOM.

X     X     X

The lawnmower used his tractor beam to slow Thomas’s flight to a manageable level. The robotic polar bear slammed into a tree. One of his limbs broke off, and his chassis gave an ominous creak. Almost all of the White Fang were down, but the two that were left had made short work of the rest of the drones and had devastated the impromptu defences his creator had set up.

The lawnmower braced himself for battle. Both of the targets were at least S Tier with Aura signatures measured in tens of thousands the capacity of normal civilians. Simply put, he was not equipped for battle of this level. Nevertheless, he would continue to do his best.

He unleashed his shotguns again, only to have them dodged. Scowling, he switched to lasers. They were far faster but less able to do damage. The attacks were ignored, and he found himself crushed into the ground as his shields flared to halt an attack that would have turned a typical truck into a tin can. The pressure on his shields increased, and the ground gave way beneath him. This was enough force to reduce a house to kindling, and it was only increasing.

The other high-level White Fang headed for the house. The lawnmower bit back a curse. He was currently unable to intervene. Thomas shambled back onto his feet and fired a salvo of bullets that were dodged with contemptuous ease.

The lawnmower gave the mental equivalent of a sneer.

The would-be assassins were getting overconfident.

There was a reason his creator’s wife had yet to intervene.

X     X     X

Lumina had to fight the urge to wade into battle as the beach house’s defences were destroyed and both Thomas and the lawnmower found themselves on the receiving end of beat downs. Thomas was barely functional, and the lawnmower was only still in one piece thanks to the absurdly strong shields Vanille had given him.

But there was a reason for this.

In battle between S Tier individuals and higher, the first blow could often be the decisive one since people with that kind of power could generally warp combat in their favour so heavily that regaining the initiative became impossible.

As one of the assassins ran toward the house, Lumina readied her attack. It was a monomolecular ribbon of Aura reinforced with a full twenty percent of her total Aura reserves. Her target continued to rush forward, and Lumina struck. In a split-second, the ribbon wrapped around the White Fang member.

There was a brilliant flash as her opponent’s Aura flared to try to protect them, but Lumina gestured sharply. The ribbon tightened. Had the ribbon been wider, the Aura in it would not have been as densely concentrated. Her opponent, who was certainly skilled and powerful, had already instinctive deployed a dense, full-body protective shell of Aura.

It was actually more Aura than Lumina had put into the ribbon, which meant her opponent had some very impressive Aura reserves in their own right. But Lumina’s Aura was concentrated over a far smaller area. The result? Her Aura ribbon sliced through her opponent’s protective shell in a quarter of a second before tightening around them.

Lumina didn’t hesitate. She let the ribbon tighten completely, and her opponent fell to the ground in pieces.

With her opponent dead, Lumina turned her attention back to the lawnmower. His shields had finally given way, and his battered form flew threw the air. She used a sliver of her Aura to form a net to catch him. Despite the damage he’d taken, he continued to shell away with his shotguns and lasers. He even fired a few nets.

Her last opponent dodged all of the projectiles with ease. They were good. Very good. Just then, her communicator blinked. It was a signal from Vanille. Lumina took a step forward and gestured. Swords and spears of Aura rained down on her opponent.

Stifling pressure formed and then erupted outward - some form of air or gravity manipulation - and she leapt back to avoid the worst of the blast. Instinctively, she formed a sphere around herself, and just in time as her enemy launched a barrage of projectiles at her at super sonic speeds.

Lumina replied in kind only for her projectiles to be batted aside. Interesting. Why had her opponent dodged the lawnmower’s attacks? Was it to conserve power for fighting against her?

Lumina shook her head. She could worry about that later. Right now, she needed to keep her opponent occupied. She unleashed another barrage and then created a monomolecular net. Her opponent must have seen what had happened earlier, and they threw themselves clear.

Which was exactly what Vanille was waiting for.

X     X     X

Vanille took a split-second to check her aim. Having a binding rod that could transform into a rail gun was great.

X      X      X

Lumina bit back a smirk as her opponent’s Aura flared. A projectile slammed into her at roughly thirty times the speed of sound. The impact sent out a shockwave that would have knocked any normal person over, and the explosion that followed courtesy of the projectile’s exotic payload lit up the whole night.

Extending her senses, Lumina was only faintly surprised that her opponent was still alive. However, their Aura reserves were far lower than they had been. As her enemy struggled to get their bearings back, Lumina rained more Aura constructs down on her. They fought to fend off the assault, but Lumina wasn’t done. A tiny, incredibly thin snare formed and tangled around her opponent’s right ankle. She tightened it, and her opponent’s foot came off. They screamed, and their focuse wavered. A split-second later they went down, impaled by dozens of Aura constructed. Lumina beheaded them just to be sure.

“Any other threats?” she asked the lawnmower.

X      X      X

The lawnmower scanned the area. There was no point hiding anymore. His powerful active scanners swept over the surrounding terrain. There were no more remaining targets. However, just to be sure, he dispatched the few remaining drones into a defensive formation and had them run their own scans.

That done, he trundled toward Thomas. The polar bear was badly damaged, to the point that he could no longer move under his own power. The lawnmower stopped at his side and began repairs. They would have to acquire new components to get him fully operational again, but he should be able to fix Thomas up enough for the robotic polar bear to control his own movement again. Thankfully, his most important components had survived serious damage.

X      X      X

Author’s Notes

One of the best shots the White Fang had at Vanille. The attack team consisted of two S Tier or higher hunters, several A Tier or higher and everyone else was B Tier. However, Thomas is exceptionally tough, and the lawnmower was designed with anti-hunter combat in mind. The attack team was also put together with Lumina and Vanille in mind. They were not prepared for Thomas, the lawnmower, and a garden that had been trapped. Even without Thomas and the lawnmower, Lumina and Vanille could have won, but it would have been a tricky fight. 

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here or on Audible here.

#final rose #fanfiction #lumina #oerba dia vanille #lawnmower #thomas

[asian-hero]

we all agree on how momo is a mom friend, so what if she had a s/o who was more of a dad friend? like, they constantly make really bad jokes, are protective, helps with more things that’s needed, checks up on people even if they don’t want it (lookin at bakugou and tokoyami), thanks! ❤️

A/N: ❤️ anon, you have some of the best ideas, I love you so much

Have some hcs of dad friend!reader who tells shit jokes and is protective as hell

To the entirety of class 1-A, Yaoyorozu Momo was someone they felt could put anyone at ease.  She was often the one that everyone came to if they ever had a problem, or if they were feeling down and just needed someone to talk to, without fear of being judged

She was also incredibly selfless, and would do absolutely anything for her friends. For example, whenever Kaminari would short circuit himself, she’d be sure to be right next to him, making sure that he didn’t bump into anything, or hurt himself while he wasn’t in control. When the girls went out to a cute little cafe by the campus, and noticed that Uraraka didn’t get that much to eat because of her budget, she “accidentally” ordered too much food, and asked if the girl wanted the rest of her’s. If anyone in the class was cold, and didn’t bring a jacket or blanket, she’d use her creation quirk to make one, and then lightly scold them that they should be taking better care of themselves, and if anyone had minor injuries, like paper cuts and scrapes from tripping over something, you better believe that she would be there in an instant, a first aid kit in her hand

It was obvious that she would be deemed the “mom friend” of class 1-A, and everyone in the class would absolutely die for her. Even Bakugou, who, though he’d always deny it, truly appreciated her considerate nature

So, since she was the mom of class 1-A, it only made sense that, the ONE person that made her fall harder than anyone else, was you, a person with the personality of a dad who went on vacation to the Bermuda with his five kids

If Momo was the one who was there to comfort the class whenever they needed someone to listen to them, you were the one they came to if they ever needed a laugh, or if they needed you to do something for them

For example, there was a time when Kouda came running to you one day, pure terror written all over his face. Once you saw him, you immediately jumped to your feet, getting ready to fight whoever the hell was bothering your lovely friend. However, the problem was actually much less terrifying, and instead he ran to you to ask if you could get rid of the spider that was in the corner of his room. So, like the dad that you are, you follow behind him, and once the eight legged fiend is pointed out, you merely grab a water bottle and trap it in there, and then letting it outside. After that day, you are the certified bug catcher, and Kouda is forever in your debt, even though you tell him it’s fine

You’re also the one that everyone calls on if something is broken, or if they can’t do it themselves, because they know that you’ll be able to fix it. Jirou’s tuner is broken? Well, it was, until you took it from her hands and tinkered with it a bit, and just as soon as it broke was it fixed. Tokoyami’s weird globe light thing was broken? Well, with a few smacks and a change of the batteries, it was as good as new! Basically, there was no need to call a handy man as long as you were there

There was also another time when you noticed that the rest of the class was all huddled in the common room. Well, all of them except for a rather pissed off looking Todoroki, who was currently in the kitchen, staring menacingly at his drink. He came back to the dorms after a conversation with his father, and it was clear to see that it wasn’t a pleasant “family talk”

With a look from Momo, you walked over to him, standing close enough where he could tell that you were there, but far enough that you weren’t invading his space. For a while, you didn’t say anything, instead offering him your company, but after a few more minutes, you broke the silence: “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I was attacked by 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9?”

When he finally turned to look at you, you could tell that there was a bit of curiosity behind those anger filled eyes, so you continued: “Yeah, the odds were against me”

It took him a second before he got it, and when he did, you could hear him try to cover his laughter with a cough, turning his head away from you as he told you to knock it off. Did you listen? Of course not, there was a smile that needed to be brought to light, so you continued: “What’s brown and sticky?”

He refused to respond to you, so you prodded him, poking him in the arm until he finally snapped and asked you “what?” With a shit eating grin you spoke: “a stick”

You continued to make horrendous jokes that like until he finally cracked, giggles tumbling out of his lips, and all of a sudden the tense air had dissipated, and your classmates had filed back into the kitchen, talking as if nothing had happened

While Momo absolutely adores you for being so light hearted and endearing, she can’t help but hate the fact that you’re so protective. Not because you come off as overbearing or anything like that, but because you often end up putting the needs of others over yourself. 

One day, while you were on a practice team together, learning what to do for recovery missions, you noticed one part of the set was about to break off, and in the heat of the moment, rather than yelling at her to run away, you instead pushed her out of the way, and allowed yourself to get hit instead.

It wasn’t anything serious, and luckily you were fine, but she certainly gave you a scolding when she met up with you in the infirmary. 

Along with this, Momo does appreciate the fact that you find it in your day to check up with everyone in your class, even if it’s inconvenient for you. One time, when Bakugou was sick, and wasn’t able to attend class that day, you decided that you’d take notes for the both of you, and collect any homework passed out that day for him. Once the day was over, you headed straight for the dorms, and before you even went to his room, you whipped up a quick soup, knowing that the boy probably didn’t get up at all to take care of himself. So, with a bowl of soup in one hand, and his assignments and your notes in the other, you marched yourself to his room, kicking the door to make your presence known. Out came a very sick and very annoyed Bakugou, who wanted to know why you were there. When you told him that you brought some things for him, he grumbled out something about not needing your help, let alone anyone elses. Before he could slam the door in your face, you shoved your foot in between the frame, and gave him the driest look you could muster: “Listen, I get that your ego won’t let anyone else help you because you think it makes you ‘weak,’ but you need to take care of yourself, and it’s clear that you aren’t. So, here’s the deal, either you let me help, or I’m gonna go grab Momo and tell her how difficult you’re being, and we both know for sure that she’s not gonna let you off the hook”

After that spiel, he let you in with little to no complaints, knowing very well of how scary Momo could be when she was called over, especially when someone wasn’t taking care of themselves

The entire class also knows just how grossly cute the two of you can be. Momo could be sitting in the common room, engrossed in a conversation with someone, when you walk in, mentioning something about heading out to grab some groceries for the class, before leaning over the couch and capturing her lips in a sweet kiss, and then leaving as if nothing happened. Or, Momo could be chastising you about doing something reckless while a few of your friends are watching from the corner, wondering what the outcome would be, and then you’d just grab one of her hands, pressing a kiss to her knuckles and then placing it on your heart, telling her that you’re sorry that you worried her, but hey, you’re still alive. It’s so precious that the entire class can’t find it in themselves to tell you to knock it off, but they still find it kind of gross, just how in love you two are

Really, everyone in the class thinks that you’re relationship just, makes sense. You two balance each other out, and in all honesty, they couldn’t imagine the two of you with someone different

#bnha #mha #bnha x reader #mha x reader #bnha imagines #mha imagines #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #yaoyorozu momo #momo x reader #yaoyorozu x reader #yaoyorozu momo x reader #momo yaoyorozu x reader #momo yaoyorozu

[neojeno]

I really wouldn't mind you aiding me with some tutorials love

giffing tutorial/resources

hi anon! sorry it took me so long to answer. i figured this might be helpful for others out there who have asked me similar questions, so i’ve compiled a pretty comprehensive list of tutorials/resources. idk about others but when i was new to giffing, it took me a lot of painful effort to go around and look for resources, so i’m putting it all here to make it a little easier!

i download videos using 4k video downloader. it will download very good quality 1080p videos in .mp4 format. if you’re downloading a 4k video, make sure to change the setting option to .mkv so that you get 4k and not 1080p—for obvious reasons since you want the highest quality.

i rely on kpopexciting to get .ts files — which are basically raw, very high quality video files for live performances. they are much less grainy than .mp4 versions of live performances—which are the ones you’ll see uploaded to youtube. i’ve found that 4k videos (in .mkv) are just as good quality as .ts, but obviously you will rarely see live performances in 4k, so get .ts when you can!! you can also try to find .ts files on twitter, but you may have to do a lot of digging. i wish i could recommend you twitter accounts, but the ones i used to go to have been very inactive/taken down all their drives :( but this website is really nice and updated frequently so i would recommend it!

vapoursynth links + download. the reason you would use vapoursynth is to resize your gif, while maintaining the optimal quality of the gif. if you gif without vapoursynth (.ie only using photoshop), it will still be fine, but the image quality may be grainier. also, you will definitely need vapoursynth to gif .ts files —more will be explained in the tutorial i’ve linked below. i would recommend that you have a high processing/lots of ram/newer desktop or laptop to use vapoursynth so that 1, your computer isn’t fried and 2, your vapoursynth process will go a lot faster. i am using a 2017 macbook pro for all my work, and it runs pretty well, but my laptop still gets pretty hot so just make sure you’re not running a million things in the background while using adobe products and vapoursynth lol. i used a pretty old and beat up 2011 model macbook air back then, and i will say that yes vapoursynth worked and ran on it, but it took much longer, and basically fried the laptop’s battery (aka i had to get the battery changed twice and the laptop would die randomly) but issok it was a school borrowed laptop so i didn’t feel too bad lol. im just saying this as a precaution, to preserve the health of your electronic devices!! but don’t be afraid to use vapoursynth! you should still try it at least once.

thank you to @realstraykids for this super detailed, really nice tutorial! it includes how and where to download videos, how to gif using vapoursynth, using photoshop, comparisons, coloring, and pretty much all you need to know. 10/10 would recommend

thank you to @dreamcolouring for this lifesaver!!! the best and easiest way to blur out unwanted captions/objects in your gifs. i recommend doing this step after converting your frames to video timeline and before you do sharpening and coloring. another tip i’ll add is to feather the selection you’ve made right before you click on “add vector mask” —this will make sense once you’ve read through the tutorial. feathering it will make the blurred spot less noticeable and more subtle.

i use this generator to create gradient colored captions! copy and paste your text, then select the colors you want. generate the code, and copy it. change the settings of the text editor on your post to HTML. paste the code, preview, and voila! add elements <blockquote>,<b>,<i>, etc as needed. see more on colored captions in this tutorial by @kylos​ --i believe op mentioned a different and better color generator but for some reason it won’t work for me :( hopefully it works for u! basically same idea as the previous generator i mentioned.

my own mini tutorial/workflow process of making gifs. this includes working with a .ts file, vapoursynth, photoshop, coloring, watermarking, etc. and a few of my own tips below:

if you are working with an .mp4, you do not have to make any changes to the preprocessor/denoise filters/sharpening in the resizing part of vapoursynth—it doesn’t make that big of a difference if you do. but if you are working with a .ts file, definitely do make those changes,, that’s the whole reason you have vapoursynth. with an .mp4, i like to use vapoursynth to just resize, but i don’t add any additional settings. i use smart sharpen in photoshop to sharpen it, which is pretty good on it’s own (at least in photoshop 2020!).

my rule of thumb is to do add .02 seconds when i am setting frame delay. so if when you first import the frames, they are at 0.04 seconds, i usually change them to 0.06. of course, this is my personal taste—you can make all your gifs faster or slower depending on how you want em to look.

if you are on a mac, you can screen record by pressing Command+Shift+5 (it’s a shortcut to quicktime screen recording). I only screen record for things like the beyond live concert or other live streamed events. the image quality of the screen recording, in my experience, is actually pretty good. when you gif the screen recording however, you may notice that it adds extra frames that you don’t need. by that i mean duplicate frames. you could keep the duplicate frames but that just means the size of your gif is going to be much bigger (keep in mind the limit is 8mb). in order to remove those duplicates, my only solution has been to remove them manually (by holding Command while selecting), or when you are importing the video to frames, select the option to “limit to every 2 frames”—but this method will be less precise and still not as good as manually removing frames. if you remove the duplicate frames, this means you will need to set the frame delay even slower, to make up for lost frames. in my experience, fps(frames per second) and frame delay work in conjunction. so for example, if i delete every other frame because they are duplicates,  but the starting frame delay is 0.02, i am now going to change it to something like 0.05 (so i added 0.03 seconds rather than my usual 0.02). if the duration length and the image dimensions of the gif are short/small, feel free to keep the duplicate frames in—i only delete duplicate frames in order to keep my gif under the 8mb limit. then, if you keep the duplicate frames in, continue with your standard frame delay preferences.  now that i’m writing this im realizing this might not make a lot of sense lol.. but don’t worry about it for now and if you run into trouble w screen recorded gifs then you can come back to this for reference. again, this is only my experience recording on a mac—it may be a lot different if you use a screen recording program or are on a pc.

i don’t really use .psd templates because i like to give every gif/gifset it’s own unique coloring—so i remake the coloring every time, but if you get into a rhythm it’s pretty easy. there are a lot of nice coloring tutorials out there, too! my personal coloring adjustments in order: levels, exposure, color balance, selective color (if needed), vibrance, photo filter (if needed), color lookup (i use 2strip most often and i put it on ‘color’ blending mode). don’t forget to adjust the opacities and fills of the ‘color lookup’ adjustment layer in case it’s too strong. go back to correct each adjustment layer as needed. then, when you’re done and satisfied, group all those layers, copy the group (you can do an easy command+c), and paste it onto the next gif you’re working on for easy workflow.

if for some reason you can’t see the frames when you import your layers/video, it’s likely because your ‘timeline’ window isn’t showing up. just go to the window menu on photoshop, go to the bottom and you’ll see ‘timeline.’ make sure it has a check next to it.

i recommend watermarking your gifs because a lot of people like to repost tings these days 😠 - so make sure u got your brand on it! i keep my watermark saved to my ‘libraries’ in photoshop so it’s ready when i need it. i use the blending mode ‘overlay’ and adjust the opacity, but if you don’t want to do that you can also add a stroke/shadow to your watermark/do all sorts.

tag #nctinc for your nct creations and #jenonet for your jeno creations!!

here’s my own mini tutorial (well not much of a tutorial ig more like a work process vid?): took about ten minutes including the time to search and download the video (but i didn’t record that part i trust yall know how to do that), vapoursynth, and exporting. i hope this helps somewhat! feel free to ask more questions whenever :)

keep in mind that giffing takes a lot of patience, energy, and experience—so don’t worry if it takes you a bit to figure things out or if your gifs don’t turn out the way you want them to the first time around. we all start at the same place and all run into problems. i know giffing can sound intimidating and seem like a lot of work, but i promise, once you get into a routine, giffing is going to happen in minutes—and you’ll get beautiful gifs. have fun! 😊

#anon #answered #tut #tuts #giffing tutorial #should i make a tut/resources post on gfx? not rly sure if gfx can be taught.. it's like a lottt about personal style imo lol #hope this helps! #not just for anon but for anyone

[booknearth]

falsehood of memories. 

< ARC 1 SPECIFIC >    it was his own choice to cross the sea so young. To run away from his home and venture to a land where many say mythics go to die. He wanted to play hero - wanted to be something more than just a pacifist that hid underneath the sands. He had gotten passage over the sea by a merchant ship, full of mythics and humans, working in tandem. Some young, some old. All the same they all did work to be there on that ship. 

Yet it was when they made it to the port that things went array. He had ventured from the ship to simply see some of the town, figure out his way around. But he hadn’t the chance. There was never a chance. Men in armor had grappled him before he could call a spell to his aid - the feeling of his magic being cut off from him sending this boy into a panic before a heavy hit to the back of his head silenced his screams for help. 

And then... He was destined to be a child soldier for the KNiGHTly empire. At first, they simply used him as a battery. His constant magic flow making him a great asset for the magic tech that was revived from days unknown and brought to life once again. The hissing of these mechanical creations scaring the boy who had only been used to nature and the wilds his whole life. 

Then. It got worse. Torture. Day in and day out. Trying to shape his obedience. To make him a dog of the military. To kill other mythics. He showed prowess after all, showed skills unknown by the many. Spells that they had never seen. 

Yet there was a day he disobeyed. He broke out of line. He snarled at his commanders and the true self called out to fight back. 

It was that day he was strapped down, unable to fight back with his magic cut off from him. And his eye taken from him. 

It was that day, the boy planned his escape.  

He had unknown aid for when he finally took the chance. A small little sparrow, watching his every move, watching his back as he took the chance to break away, breaking the silencer that was upon him, causing hellfire to rain. As he ran, the memories grew quiet, repressed, dark. Locked under a key that was thrown to the ocean. 

And this little sparrow guided him to his true fate. All the while he foolishly believed he had started his journey from that point, as if the years of being branded and attempts of being tamed by man never had happened. 

It was better that way. 

#c. there's more than you know | canons #v. from the sea over | arc 1

[kassies-take]

Kane Vs Luthor

SuperBat^2 (Kara/Kate) all earths have merged so Batwomans Gotham and Supergirls National City exist on the same earth (Star City also exists next to NC as does Central City so Kate gets a Costume from Cisco and Kara gets a device from him so she can become more human when she needs to) Kate and Lena end up in a battle of wits while trying to take over CatCo. Humour/Serious/Romance/NSFW

A/n: I don’t know how this gonna go down but thank you for giving me the opportunity to try something new. I also don’t know what you mean by take over Catco? Did you want the two CEOs to try to buy Catco for Kara? Ooh ideas just popped into my head!

Warnings:

SuperBat^2, Supercorp, (Insert ship name for Lena and Kate)

Word Count: 1966

Kara had hope. She is the Paragon of Hope after all. After Crisis she desperately wanted to have a certain Luthor by her side again. Back when flowers filled her office, back when brunch was a weekly thing, back when she could’ve shared her secret, back when they were best friends. But the Luthor, the Luthor wanted nothing to do with the Super after her betrayal and hurt.

Kate, Paragon of Courage. Batwoman had the courage to come out as a lesbian to all of Gotham, and confront her past. All with a bit of help from the Girl of Steel, now it was her turn to repay the favor.

A knock interrupted Kara’s staring contest with the refrigerator. She lowered her glasses and looked towards the door. A benefit to having x-ray vision, no peep hole needed.

“Kate?” Kara walked towards the door. “What are you doing here?” She moved out of the way to let the brunette in.

“We spent the beginning of crisis looking for the Paragon of Courage together, and the later half stuck in the Vanishing Point together. You have the same face of lost hope, when you video called for Batwoman’s coming out, like the one then. Thought I come by and check on you.”

“W-What about Gotham?”

“The Crows have Alice, Gotham can last a few days without the bat. It lasted three years before. And if the city really needs Batwoman, the World’s Finest would be there.” Kate opened Kara’s fridge for a beer and walked towards the blonde on the couch. “So.”

“What?” Kara grabbed the remaining potstickers from her coffee table and began to stuff her mouth trying to avoid the elephant in the room.

“What has made the Girl of Steel lose a bit of hope?” Kate asked while pointing the bottle top at Kara before she grabbed the bottleneck to open the beer with her bat-a-rang.

“Lex is running the D.E.O now and the whole world thinks he’s this... hero.”

“Lex Luthor a major dick huh,” Kate sat down next to Kara.

“You have no idea. I want to know what he’s up to.”

“Well we know Lex Luthor is a psychopathic lunatic, who wants to take over the world,” Kate took a sip.

“I know that, but...”

“What is his plan?”

The two sat quietly in Kara’s loft trying to think of ideas of Lex’s plan. That was until Kate spotted a picture in Kara’s open journal.

“Who is this?” Kate teased as she held up the photo of Kara and Lena.

“Lena, she was my best friend.”

“Was?”

“She’s Lex’s sister. But she’s not like him or the rest of the family, she’s good. Before Crisis I betrayed her, kept the biggest secret from her. Lex told her. She had a mission to make sure no one could hurt each other again, because I had hurt her when everyone in her life had already done so. She told me, all those times I checked in on her at her office, during brunch, game night and each one of those times she told me about her Achilles heel. And now, now she’s got her wish that I experience the same thing she has. She wouldn’t even look at me now, and she’s working with Lex.”

“Were you two close?”

“When I was around her I didn’t have to feel like I had to be Supergirl. I was normal, and I didn’t have to worry about the weight of the world on my shoulders.”

“Like she’s the only one who truly knows you, and not your alter ego. Yeah I know how you feel.”

“Luke?”

“Ex-girlfriend actually. Sophie Moore which gives me the impression that she is more than a friend to you.”

“She’s my best friend, she’s my family.”

Kate froze and stared, eyebrows furrowed at the oblivious girl in front of her.

“I appreciate you coming here, Kate. I don’t mean to kick you out but I have work in the morning and Andrea would not be happy if I’m late.”

“Tomorrow is a Saturday, you could help me on my suit though.”

“You brought your suit here?” 

“Well no, but Cisco said my suit ‘is too last crisis’” Kate used quotations as she said it.

“Huh maybe Cisco could help me with something.”

“You already have an upgrade on your suit, did you want another one?”

“Oh no, a gadget actually or something you know to help me feel more human. To be Kara Danvers and not Kara Zor-El or Supergirl.”

“Like forever?”

“Just when I want to be.”

The World’s Finest Duo entered Star Labs greeted with hugs and shouts. The shouts were mainly by Cisco, he was excited to show off the new bat suit.

“Ta-da!” Cisco pulled off the white sheet in the main corridor.

Barry had his arms crossed, as Caitlyn and Iris turned their heads to the side, Kara’s eyebrows creased together with her mouth slightly open, and Kate was the only one with courage to speak the truth.

“What’s the difference between this and my old suit.”

Cisco gasped in mock hurt. “Excuse me, your old suit may have Kevlar armor, damage recording, night vision lenses, and a defibrillator. But this! This baby can fly!”

The suit began to levitate as Cisco gushed at his own creation.

“And what if it runs out of battery?” Kate asked. “I wouldn’t want to fall out of the sky.”

“I’m glad you asked,” Cisco pointed to Kate before he tapped something on his tablet. “Kinetic storage! Everytime you move in the suit it charges it AND BAM nanotechnology! You can get to scenes quicker!”

“That’s so cool!” Kara smiled.

“Come on let’s try this baby out!” Cisco drummed his hands against the shoulder of the suit. “Barry has the ring, Kara has the glasses, J’onn with his shape shifting, and you, you get a necklace!”

“A necklace? Really Cisco?” Iris shrugged.

“Yeah yeah it’s all Black Pantery, not that origin-“

“I was hoping for more of a pizzazz,” Iris waved her hands in the air, displaying jazz hands.

“Okay, I see how it is. You try improving a suit that was already impressive.” Cisco sassed.

Ralph walked in moments later. “Oh hey, love the new suit Cisco, I’ve got info on our meta.”

“Thank you! At least someone has an eye for beauty.”

“Alright, Ralph and I will check it out.” A gust of wind blew around the corridor.

Cisco asked Kate for her birthstone necklace and placed some emitter on the back of it. “When you need the suit it’ll know.”

The suit slowly appeared on Kate’s body as the whole room now found it impressive.

“And for my favorite Kryptonian.” Cisco held out a bracelet.

“Is this blue Kryptonite?” Kara asked.

“So based on our existing world history, not only does blue K not affect you like Bazzaro, it can also suppress Kryptonian powers. When you whip off your glasses for your suit to materialize, the lead lined glasses would engulf the blue K letting you become Super. Superbat 2.0. Try them on, and see how it works.”

“So you want Kara to punch me while I fly away.”

“Okay when you put it like that, it makes it sound less interesting.”

Kara and Kate thanked Cisco after their test run. Things went back to normal, well as normal is it can get with the World’s Finest, for the next eight weeks. Andrea decided to focus more on Obsidian North than on Catco, therefore selling it with two potential buyers. Lena Luthor and Kate Kane. 

Ms. Kane and Ms. Luthor continuously went back and forth without giving Ms. Rojas the ability to jump in and agree or disagree with the two other billionaires in the room. 

“Okay, I’m going to go to the editorial meeting. You ladies should figure this out between the two of you before you come to me of who is buying and at what price. I don’t even care if it is less than what I bought it for, just get Catco out of my hands.”

“1 billion,” Lena crossed her arms in and leaned against her chair. 

“Is that how much you’re willing to pay for Catco?” Kate asked. 

“I don’t care about how much money I pay for it as long as I can make Kara happy.”

“So you are buying Catco for it’s Pulitzer prize winning reporter.” 

Lena was confused, as far as she knew Kara Danvers never got a Pulitzer prize, not since the multiverse was changed. So how could this insignificant real estate, tattoo covered asshole from Gotham know about what wasn’t even possible. 

“The lines on your forehead indicate that you are confused. That or you are just getting old,” Kate smirked. “And to answer your old lady confusion, Kara and I saved the multiverse, along with that no good brother of yours. Which you still work with despite the reality of his psychotic mind.” 

“Working with Lex was the only way I could keep an eye on him without causing any suspicions and to protect Superfriends from his ultimate plan.” 

“Yet your plan was to sit around while he did awful things?”

“What more could I have done? Sleep around with someone while being in love with someone else?” Lena called out Kate. 

It was Kate’s turn to be speechless. 

“Don’t think I don’t know Ms.Kane. You have all these tattoos to show you don’t care and is a player but deep down you really care for someone.”

“I could say the same for you Ms. Luthor. It is not all that surprising that you brought up sleeping with someone else and loving someone while we talk about Kara. That every time you are in a room with Kara, your eyes subtly move towards her arms or how you unconsciously bite your lip.”

“What goes on in my mind about Kara has nothing to do with this.”

“It takes one to know one, Luthor. I’m just stating the facts.” 

The room fell into silence for the first time since the younger Kane and the younger Luthor walked into the office. That was until a happy, beaming Golden Retriever walked into the room.

“Kate! You’re here!” Kara ran to give her a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“Andrea is selling Catco, wanted to see my chance of getting it. But it seems I have competition.” Kara followed Kate’s line of sight and noticed Lena. 

“Lena! You’re here!” Kara ran towards Lena before she hesitated to give her a hug.  Before the whole betrayal there would’ve been no hesitation but now, now she didn’t know what the right thing to do was. 

“I am, and when I buy it back. You will be editor in chief.” 

“No need to kiss ass, Luthor. We are both trying to buy Catco for the same reason.”

“What is that reason?” Kara smiled.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear Kara. You’re the one with super hearing.” Lena whispered dangerously close to Kara’s ear.

“I-uh. I got a. I got a device from Cisco. He made something for me so I wouldn’t constantly need to control my strength and be human like you guys.” 

“Well feel free to use all your strength with me.” Lena bit Kara’s earlobe before she walked away. 

“I’ll tell Andrea, I’m buying then?”

“Oh sweetheart, I’m not going to make it that easy.” 

“Kate please save me.” Kara was redder than a tomato.

“I think you should follow her.” 

“You’re right. I’ll go do that.”

Andrea walked in the moment Kara left. “So it turns out Lena is buying Catco?”

“Huh what, okay,” Kate did not realize she agreed to Lena buying Catco. She was confused with how that whole thing played out. 

#supercorp #superbat^2 #kate kane x lena luthor #kara danvers #kate kane #lena luthor #barry allen #iris west allen #caitlin snow #cisco ramon #ralph dibny #andrea rojas #supergirl #supergirl imagines #supergirl imagine #batwoman #batwoman imagines #batwoman imagine #arrowverse

[fsketchart]

A Second Chance - Chapter 3

I'm so sorry for the wait but here's a summary of the sections.

[Advertisement Voice]

WELCOME! Over here to the left we have a heartfelt battle between Evillustrator and a group of rebels. Will Marc's feelings for Nathaniel get in the way, or will he get the job done?

On the right here, we have the latest new Batman vs Superman argument that just came in. It's a limited addition and includes a bonus Wonder Women add on to the set.

Now, we just recently added a new product onto the shelves, including a misunderstanding, panic, and an argument that is an partner set to the previous.

Let's see if first impressions really do stick.

Au Created by @ozmav​

NOTES : 

Thank you so much for the lovely feedback, I truly do appreciate all of the love and support this fic has gotten so far, it absolutely blows my mind that I've gotten so much feedback from this. This chapter in particular is almost 3000 words, sorry if it's a bit long. It was definitely longer than I was intending it to be, but I think it turned out for the best. Also, apologies if there are any errors in here. I'll be going back in later to double check and proofread it. If you catch any errors grammatically, feel free to let me know!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Please...Nathaniel don’t do this.  I know you have to be in there!” Marc cried, hands trembling as his knees felt numb.

“That’s Evillustrator to you.  What we had was nice Marc, but if you truly cared you would want me to be happy.  I finally feel at peace, I can draw to my hearts content and every piece become a reality.  If you truly cared, you wouldn’t be trying to stop me right now,” Evillustrator said.

“I know you, Nathaniel, better than I know myself.  I know that you’ll regret what you’ve done, please come with us and give me your pen.  Then, after ladybug gets here, the damage you’ve caused can be reversed, and we can go back to-”

“Go back to what?  When you and your class gets to be happy while I sit in silence in my class?  While I get harassed and bullied, constantly put in your shadow while you’re basking in attention?  The spotlight will soak you up.  Every creation I make is made with so much passion and time, yet nothing ever competes with yours.  Every word I say means nothing in comparison to people like Marinette!  Lila and Hawkmoth have helped me realize this, and you will pay for what you’ve done,” Evillustrator yelled, grabbing his pen and quickly drawing roughly on his board.

His sketching was rushed and rough, as he quickly drew harsh lines, forming many, many stick figures.  Each stick figure slowly stood up , and soon there was an army, each one immediately charging.

Max quickly slammed his laptop shut and moved it aside on the ground, abandoning his bag.  

Aurore on the other hand, immediately started fighting back, her umbrella dueling as both a shield and a sword.  Marc quickly wore off the shock and started grabbing his keys in his hand and began slashing wildly at the stick figures, but to no avail.  Max, however had a different approach.

“Look, at his tablet.  It’s flashing red, it must be running out of battery so he’s drawing messier and faster,” Max said, pointing to Evillustrator.

“Why is that?  He didn’t have that issue before!” Aurore yelled, as she extended her umbrella to block the overhead stick figures, jumping down upon her.

“Hawkmoth must be running out of energy.  If the tablet is shutting down, then I’m guessing he’s too busy to save the stick figures.  We need to make him use all the rest of the battery without saving the stick figure drawing.  If the tablet shuts down, then hopefully the drawings won’t be saved, and they’ll disappear!” Marc yelled, as he attacked the stick figure jumping behind from Max.

Aurore exchanged a look between the two boys before yelling, “Guys!  It’s okay!  I can handle myself over here!”

Evillustrator immediately began to draw more complicated figures.  Gotcha right where I want you!  If I can just get a few more drawings out, they’ll be right where I want them!  Evillustrator schemed.

Aurore however, quickly dodged all their attacks, and began to run wildly while using her umbrella as a shield in front of her, pushing all the other stick figures in front of her out of the way as she charged on through.

Evillustrator began to get more and more frustrated, as he drew more and more.  Eventually, Marc and Max joined in, causing distractions from all over the place.  As time went on, Evillustrator began to get more and more furious, until one point, he was fed up.  He quickly drew out a sword and soon it formed at the feet of one of his stick figures, as it charged for Aurore.  That’ll teach her, no more Mr.Nice GuyTM.  He thought grimly.

Marc, however, was horrified and immediately ran to Aurore.  Marc began to profusely fight the figure but as time went on, his footing got lazier until eventually Marc was knocked on the ground as Aurore was holding off more stick figures.

The stick figure wasted no time in charging forth, extending their sword and raising it above their head.

Nathaniel’s eyes widened as he tried to scream, yet his voice was silenced.  He began trying to erase the stick figures, but lost track of which stick figure was which and who had the sword.

I’m so sorry I failed you, Nathaniel.  Please forgive me.  Marc said, giving up and welcoming death’s embrace.  He closed his eyes and waited.

Yet it never came.

All at once, all of the stick figures began to glitch out and became distorted, and right before the faceless stick figure’s sword came down, a mere inch away from Marc’s eyes, it too froze.  Soon afterwards, each stick figure disappeared, and so did the sword.

Using Evillustrator’s frozen shock to his advantage, Max leaped up and snatched the pen away from him, and Aurore slammed it into two.  Immediately, Evillustrator’s costume dropped as he de-transformed.  Nathaniel stood there, horrified as he took in the site around him, as saw the smashed pen and dead drawing tablet beside him.  He eyes watered as he began to quietly sob, his nose becoming stuffy and his face becoming red.  His shoulders and hands shook as Marc slowly stepped towards him.

“I-I’m so sorry...I’ve d-done horrible horrible things.  I sw-swear I never meant any of it,” he said, as he hiccuped and sniffled.  He then let out a pained sob as Marc immediately embraced him, resting Nathaniel’s head on his shoulder.  Aurore strangled the butterfly in her hands as Max grabbed his previously empty computer case as they shoved it inside.  Aurore and Max began to laugh and cry out of relief as they collapsed in relief on the ground.

“It’s alright, Nathaniel.  I know that wasn’t you just there, and you’re okay now, you’re safe.  I promise you that,” Marc said, brushing away his tears.

“But I let Hawkmoth take advantage of me!  I let him take control!  The things I’ve done are unforgivable-”

“You were manipulated, taken advantage of, and used.  But dwelling on it won’t fix it.  What will help fix is taking Hawkmoth and Mayura down, along with the other villains that are coming to Paris.  Please, Nathaniel we need you.  I need you,” Marc spoke softly.  For a moment, there was silence until...

“I’ll join you,” Nathaniel spoke at last.

~~~~~~~~~~~~(⌐■_■)~~~~~~~~~~~~

“-we are living in constant fear, and the heroes have been fighting non-stop since the war began.  Please, we are begging you!.......send help.”

Bruce paused before sighing.  “Was that all of them?” he asked, trying to analyze and break down the information.

“Sure is.  As I said, these claims are getting barbaric.  Anyone can hire an animation studio and editor to make these silly edits, but there hasn’t been any documentation of actual property damage, and look at the Eiffel tower!  It’s being destroyed in every one of these and yet it’s ‘magically’ rebuilt in the next video.  Not to mention, some girl on a teenager’s blog is trying to present herself as a Mary Sue, she’s delusional and stuck in a fantasy to claim that she’s best friends with a superheroes and celebrities.  This has got to be some online joke or trend-”

“But where would these teenagers get the budgets from?  What about the news articles written by adults?” Bruce challenged.

“You can’t seriously think these could be real.  Ladybug and Chat Noir?  Really?  No one’s super powers could reverse the broken arms of people, the ill and the sick, and repair city damage in one fell swoop.  Or better yet, destroy the Eiffel tower with one touch.  It’s CGI, probably funded by those adults too,” Clark countered.

“What about super strength, flight, speed, laser vision?” Bruce argued.

“Supposedly all you have to do to beat these villains is break the options, like a photograph.  So threatening, just terrifying right?” Clark challenged.

“Your weakness if a rock.  A rock.  Is it so far fetched that these could maybe be real?  The Miraculous, Ladybug, Chat Noir, they could easily be real or fake.  We need to do more investigation than this,” Bruce concluded.

“Did someone say the miraculous?” Diana said, freezing in her spot by the doorway.

“Oh wow, looks someone uses the door like a normal person...COUGH COUGH BRUCE COUGH COUGH…”

Diana gave him a stern glare.

“We were just going over video feeds of the current condition of Paris.  Villains like the Joker, Harley Quinn, and Ivy have all been spotted in Paris,” Bruce said, tuning out Clark.

“No, before that you said there was a black cat and ladybug Miraculous?” Diana said, with wide eyes.

“Yes, there were supposedly reports of two...young adults I think?  They were dressed up as vigilantes and were supposedly fighting crime, why do you ask?  Have you heard of them?” Bruce asked.

“Heard of them?  Why my mother grew up telling me stories about her days as the super heroine Ladybug!  Her tales were my bedtime stories for years!” she retold, with a fond look in her eyes.

“Your mother?  That girl looked nothing like Hippolyta, are you sure you’re not mixing it up with something else?” Bruce asked.

“I’m quite sure, after all my mother gave up being Ladybug a long time ago.  The Ladybug Miraculous doesn’t just have a sworn duty to one place, but to the rest of the world.  My mother couldn’t travel to the rest of the world while looking after the amazons, and thus entrusted the miraculous to one of the Guardians,” she spoke.

“Who was is this Guardian?  The Black Cat guy?” Clark questioned.

“Oh heavens no, the Guardians were much much older than that boy is.  These superheroes are powered by an object called the Miraculous, granting each user immense power.  The Guardians are meant to protect these Miraculous, but after the incident at one of the temples...only one of them is still left...but anyways, the Ladybug and Chat Noir Miraculous are extremely powerful, the strongest Miraculous actually,” she explained, while walking over to the video files.

“What do these Miraculous do?” asked Bruce.

“And again, how does that explain the damage to the city?” Clark added.

“Each Miraculous has a different ability; time travel, teleportation, complete destruction, and creation, you name it.  Each Miraculous has a unique ability, that they can only use once.  The Ladybug Miraculous represents luck and has the ability to reverse any Miraculous caused damage.  Buildings, broken bones, illness, you name it.  The only thing the Miraculous of creation and luck can’t reverse is death, for death lies in the hands of the counter partner, the Black Cat,” Wonder Woman said, as she sped up the videos and glimpsed through them.

“The Black Cat represents death and misfortune, and with a simple touch of a hand, entire buildings can collapse and fade to nothing within a second.  If you’re unprotected with a Miraculous suit, the Black Cat’s abilities can kill you in less than a second, and Ladybug won’t be able to reverse that damage.  Each Miraculous, when new, can only use their abilities once in a battle, but as they grow more experienced, can get more abilities or quirks for each battle,” Wonder Woman finished.

“So the reason there is undocumented damage is due to the Ladybug woman?” Bruce finally asked, while side glancing at Clark.

“Precisely, meaning these claims may very well be legitimate.  However, there still isn’t much seen with Gotham’s villains, there are barely any sightings,” Diana added.

“Any lead is still good enough for me,” Bruce said, already getting ready to leave for Paris, and booking an appointment on his phone.  However, he stopped when he looked down to see his phone exploding with phone calls and texts from Alfred.  This of course sent Bruce into a panic, Alfred knew he was going to be out in the suit, and to not call unless there were emergencies.

Quickly, Bruce dialed Alfred back while rushing out the window door.  Immediately, Alfred picked up.

“We are going to have a visitor.  I will be preparing the guest bedroom.  Please arrive immediately, it has to do with the condition of Paris.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~(⌐■_■)~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’ll be right, Marinette.  I must go and prepare your room.  Would you like me to prepare you some tea?” Alfred asked, while grabbing her backpack.  He beckoned to the Miracle Box, but Marinette shook her head.  She shook her head, taking the box and placing it in her lap.

“I’ll be alright, you’ve done so much for me already.  I will never be able to repay you for your kindness,” she responded.  Alfred nodded.  As he was about to leave, he got a phone call from Master Bruce.

“Wait right here, I’ll be back soon.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~(⌐■_■)~~~~~~~~~~~~

Each day was worse than the last.  There were no known leads about the Joker’s whereabouts, and Damian was getting impatient and pent up.  With nowhere else to put his energy, he took Titus out for a run.

Damian knew the Joker was planning something, and it was driving him nuts.  As they strolled around the city, Titus could tell his heart just wasn’t in it and abruptly pulled on his shirt, nearly causing him to fall over.

“What is it, Titus?” Damian asked, before taking notice of the sky.  His father would surely be home by now.  He sighed before changing course, and making his way back home.

When he reached the doorstep, he realized the light was on in the spare bedroom. Strange.  He thought.  Father rarely allows guests over, and always gives them a heads up to be more cautious.

He shrugged as he made his way over to the door.  Suddenly, Titus made a run for it inside and bolted inside towards the living room.

Damian stood up alarmed, ready to attack and dashed around the corner towards the living room.

On the couch, sat a small girl clutching a box.  Her hair was a dreadful mess, and her clothes looked tattered and worn out.  She fidgeting on the couch as she looked around and glanced out the window.

Titus ran over and started barking and trying to grab at and bite the strange box.  He could sense something was strange about the girl, something he wasn’t familiar with and it sent him into a frizzy.  It sent the short girl into a frenzy and she instantly grabbed at the box and made a dash for it.  She leaped over the couch and knocked over the lamp next to it.  She looked panicked but was quickly stopped before she reached the door.

She collided with Damian and fell onto the ground with Titus catching up and barking in her ears as she lie on the ground, shaking in fear.  Her eyes were teary and unfocused, almost lost in the moment.  The Miracle Box shook, and the sounds of jewels and valuables sliding around were heard from inside the box. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had attempted to break into the Wayne Manor to steal its valuables, and Damian was sure it wouldn’t be the last.  Titus’s ears were flattened, his tail between his legs, as his eyes were filled with fear and concern.  Damian’s heart clenched at the sight of Titus looking so scared, before his look hardened into a cold glare at the stranger.

“WHO ARE YOU AND HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?” Damian demanded, already posed to attack.  When she didn’t respond, he tried to grab the box while Titus was still barking in her ear, fearful of the stranger.

She froze for only a moment before slamming her elbow into his chin and quickly sidestepping him.  Damian charged, startling her enough to drop the box, hearing her call out :

“TIKKI SP-”

Alfred burst into the room stunning the both of them and separated the two immediately.  Damian was about to lunge before Alfred grabbed him from behind and forcefully pulled him off, and then swiftly grabbed the box and placed it into Marinette’s hands.  He grabbed Damian by the shirt and tugged on Titus’s leash, dragging them both outside of the room.

Tag List :

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Let me know if I missed anyone and let me know if you wanna be added to the tag list, and which tag list you wanna be added on.  (If you want ALL Maribat content, or just this fic updates.)

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