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agent-cupcake · 3 years

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So happy you but up the headcanons! All of them are gems and I love them so much. Rereading the Dimitri and Felix rivalry hc made me want to ask for claude and yuri rivalry, but dark of course because both of these boys are sane and logical and would move on if they both caught feelings for you and weren't attached to you by a dark obession lol.

Sorry, I know you asked for love rivalry but I simply could not help myself and got a little carried away with seeing the so-called rivalry to his inevitable conclusion :3c

~Not that it’s probably necessary, but I had to consider the timeline for this. A rivalry between them wouldn’t fit in the events of the game because of Claude’s ambition, but he leaves the country in most endings. My solutions would be to have Claude split his time between Fódlan and Almyra as a politically active prince such as in his solo ending or to propose that Yuri would spend a lot of time in Almyra. Reasons for this could be that he went in aid of his good friend and military commander Balthus (Yuri would make for an awfully good royally sanctioned spy) or that he’s abusing the newfound system of open-market international trade for his criminal enterprise. Either way, Claude is powerful Almyran royalty and Yuri is a shady figure of the underworld. Not too unlike a story I’ve written, but this is separate from that. None of this really matters, ultimately, but whatever I like to think of how this would work out.

~Both men are powerful and ambitious. Both of them are emotionally isolated despite (or because of) their positions. They’re friends, or at least on friendly terms so there’d be a lot of overlap in social circles. And, really, they are quite similar so it’s plausible that they’d go for the same type.

~I’ve since changed my stance on reasons why Claude might develop a fixation on someone. He is concerned with the intrinsic value of a person. He values the thoughts, feelings, and especially the perception of people he is close with. Claude is also a loner, a fundamentally lonesome person who wishes to be seen and loved on his own merits despite the guard he puts up and the social games he plays. Not to say I entirely retcon my previous opinion, but I focused too hard on the idea that he would need to dehumanize you by zeroing in on utilitarian usefulness rather than be driven to darker feelings by his fear of being alone and need to find a connection.

~This all goes for Yuri too, although it’s easier for me to imagine Yuri getting his authentic feelings twisted up and dark. Yuri’s circumstances were somewhat similar to Claude’s, except that he was shown genuine affection by his mother and the old man. Therefore, he knows what it is to lose that. He learned early on what it is to have people die because of him, to shoulder the burden of guilt that comes with such profound loss. Yuri’s scarred by a brutal, painful upbringing where “love” was a commodity to be traded in for favors (even by his mother) and genuine, honest relationships became nearly impossible to comprehend. If he met you and developed those true, affectionate feelings, if he found a so-called light in the darkness, maybe it’d make sense that he’d do everything he could to keep it from losing it.

~Their similarities in this instance would work out for this scenario. Somebody useful to them, somebody authentic enough to appeal to their deeply ingrained sense of loneliness, somebody clever or interesting or fun… There’s a lot of reasons they could develop unhealthy feelings for you born out of an innocently platonic friendship.

~And it would have to be platonic on both counts. Yuri and Claude are too self-aware for them to make a move if you made a choice early on. Or, I don’t think it’d become as big of a production because they wouldn’t have emotionally invested so much in you. Leading them both on unintentionally just by having a normal human friendship is kinda sad but also kinda funny.

~They’d know that you were close with the other. Of course they would. Maybe it would hurt, but neither would express that feeling to you. Claude would ask pointed (but not direct) questions about your feelings and dazzle you with grand overtures. Yuri would work the seductive and sweet angle, trying to win your heart the old fashioned way. But, you know, with more uncomfortable subtext and innuendo.

~Something that has not changed is my opinion that Claude would be obsessive about his darker feelings. Not on a consistent, all the time basis, but more like a hobby. A puzzle he couldn’t solve, an itch he couldn’t quite scratch. He’d search for all of the pieces of you in the hopes that the final picture would allow him to understand his increasingly dangerous feelings. Claude’s not stupid, he’s really self aware. Enough to feel guilt, enough to recognize that what he’s doing isn’t right, and enough to justify himself out of the responsibility of doing amoral things for the right reasons.

~Yuri, on the other hand, wouldn’t be so… aggressive about it. He’d want you to come to him, to return to him again and again to prove to himself that what he feels isn’t wrong, to ingratiate himself into your life in a way that validated everything he felt for you and put you on more equal footing. He’d internalize everything a lot more, feel a lot of guilt about the intensity of his feelings, but he’d find ways to keep you close. Or, for you to keep him close.

~Don’t get me wrong, though, you wouldn’t get so much of a glimpse of this weaker, more vulnerable Yuri. He’d go the opposite direction of his guilt or doubt, wearing an impenetrable smiling, sarcastic, playful mask. My main point is that I see him as being more emotionally wrecked by having these dark feelings due to his self hatred. I also think Yuri would be more generally sensitive to unhealthy romance dynamics, especially if it became physical at all.

~In an interestingly twisted way, Yuri hypocritically recognizing Claude’s behavior as being dangerous would encourage him to be more proactive about his own feelings and feel less guilty about doing so. Being the protective type rather than the obsessive really just fits Yuri so much better, although I see it as one ultimately leading to the other.

~It’s not about winning. They’d be competing, clearly battling against each other for you in a way that would not only be creepily objectifying, but also emotionally strenuous, but they’d keep on insisting that it wouldn’t be about winning. They’d just want you to be happy, to be safe. They both would just want what’s best for you. And what is best for you? Just ask them.

~Claude’s argument: Yuri’s lifestyle is dangerous. He’s a good guy, Claude really does trust him, buuuuut he’s not exactly the type of man you’d be safe with, you know?

~Yuri’s argument: Claude’s not treating you right. He’s obviously manipulating you, how could you possibly miss that? You deserve better, don’t you agree?

~But in the same breath they’d both insist that if you didn’t want to be with them romantically, that would be fine. They both, truly and unselfishly, would just want you to be happy. Just want to stay close with you. Veeeeeery unselfishly.

~Their interactions with each other would be amazingly fake and aloof. Making small talk and smiling all the while vying for your attention in a nearly juvenile tug-of-war. Still, I don’t think, even through all of this, that they’d dislike each other. It’s not about winning, right? It’s not a game, right?

~Okay, so, I know the whole thing with scenarios like this is an inability to face rejection, but if you were to chose Yuri over Claude or vice versa, that’s where it would end. Committing yourself to one of them still wouldn’t work out super well because that’s the nature of giving into such dark and unhealthy feelings, but it would no longer be a rivalry.

~Let me propose, then, that you would eventually reject both of them. At first, the whole thing would have been so fun and so nice. Getting all of this attention from two powerful and attractive guys would be exciting. You’d feel so lucky, they’re both charming and friendly and kind. But then things would have gotten more intense and there’s this weird love triangle that is incredibly trite and uncomfortable and you wouldn’t have wanted to hurt either of them so it’s better to just leave it, right?

~Yuri would be more likely to use his personal feelings as a tactic of manipulation, I think. Worse, he probably wouldn’t see it that way. He knows, he truly knows, how dangerous and terrible the world could be and he’d do anything to shield you from it and his feelings would reflect that. Granted, if he felt you weren’t getting it, I don’t think Yuri would exactly be above veiled threats or bludgeoning you with fear tactics and even a dash of shame for how you’d played with both their hearts.

~Claude would do his best to convince you that you didn’t actually want to go. You didn’t have to chose either of them, but you couldn’t leave, either. That was way too dramatic. Besides… wasn’t it a little selfish? This was where you were needed, he relied on you. He trusted you. Sure, Claude’s a visionary, but what does that vision matter if the one who he shares his dreams with is gone?

~Maybe that wouldn’t work, though. Long term, it probably wouldn’t. I mentioned before that they wouldn’t hate each other, so if it came down to actually losing you, why not work together?

~Love triangles are for chumps, invest in a horribly unhealthy three person dynamic with possible kidnap and very overt tones of mental and emotional manipulation.

~That would solve all the the problems, wouldn’t it? Why would you try and leave them after they made so many compromises for you? Really, would you be that ungrateful and callous? They would both care about you so much, love you, even. Yuri and Claude would be trying to make it work despite the fact that it came down to essentially a tie in this bizarre game, why couldn’t you do your part? Landing such attractive and powerful guys, having them lay their hearts at your feet, you’d have to be a really terrible and selfish person to reject that. Not that you’d be given a lot of choice, but the devils in the details and if you fought them on this, it probably wouldn’t end up very pretty for you.

~Not saying either of them would hurt you. Physically, I mean. Probably.

~In some ways, the compromise would make the guilt easier for them to bear. The fact that they were also being forced to deal with something they wouldn’t necessarily want to would be a leveling ground for them to justify any of your unhappiness with the situation. Like, it was all an equal amount of compromise to make things work for all three of you.

~Claude would know how much Yuri meant to you and feel like the fact that he hadn’t taken that away from you absolved him of a lot of the responsibility of the other things he’d taken from you. Plus, Claude’s a distracted guy who’d lose track of things sometimes, always getting caught up in whatever project he was working on at the time, so he’d know that you wouldn’t be lonely during those times.

~Yuri would see Claude as being, in many ways, a better person than him. More out of a horrible sense of self perception than fact. So Yuri could have his piece of you with the recognition that Claude was there to balance the worst parts of himself and make you happy in ways this dark, twisty version of Yuri might not think he could.

~I don’t think that either Yuri or Claude would ever truly get along because of how similar they are and the fact that they both kinda lost to the other but I also don’t think that would be a huge issue. Their verbal sparring would be entertaining, honestly.

#claude von riegan #fe claude #yuri leclerc #fe yuri #yandere #yandere headcanons #claude von riegan headcanons #yuri leclerc headcanons #fire emblem three houses #fe3h #headcanons #i am trash garbage :)#yuri is so emo i hope it makes sense why

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tsuki-chibi · 3 years

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Ladrien June Day 7 - Squall: Sleeping Beauty

This story is a sequel to my Marinette March, Adrinette April, and Marichat May stories; I highly recommend reading those first.

You can also read this story on AO3: Squall

---

Adrien broke into a run as soon as he was outside the bakery. He didn’t know what Bridgette would do when she came back and found both him and her phone gone, but he didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity to find out. Only once he was a few blocks away from the bakery did he stop and duck into an alley, panting for breath.

“Did you seriously just steal her phone?” Trixx asked, bursting out of Adrien’s pocket.

“I – well…” Adrien looked down at the phone in his hands. It was a model he wasn’t familiar with. A wave of guilt and shame flooded through him. Bridgette and Alice had been so nice to him. Much nicer than they had to be.

“And you didn’t even pay for your coffee!” Trixx said, looking unnecessarily delighted by this.

“Wait, what? Oh my god. You’re right.” Adrien facepalmed with a groan, realizing that Trixx was entirely correct. He had paid for his food before eating it, but Bridgette had brought him the coffee. The thought of leaving some money behind to cover the cost of it hadn’t even occurred to him.

And it wasn’t like he could go back now.

Bridgette had surely noticed that her phone was missing. If Adrien went back, she would definitely ask him about it. The odds of someone else having taken the phone were pretty slim; she would naturally blame him for the theft. Even if he did go back and managed to somehow convince her that he hadn’t stolen her phone, he’d need to come up with a plausible explanation for why he’d left when he had without paying in the first place.

“Ugh, I am just a horrible person,” Adrien said, slumping back against the alley wall.

Trixx giggled. “Wow, you’re not at all what I expected. You’re much sweeter than Plagg’s usual kittens.”

“Eh?” Adrien looked at the kwami in surprise. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“A willingness to use the power of destruction usually requires a certain sort of temperament,” Trixx said with a shrug. “You must be made of strong stuff to be so sweet but still be able to wield the Black Cat miraculous.”

Adrien didn’t know what to say to that.

He had never thought to ask Plagg about previous users of the Black Cat miraculous.

Well, maybe that wasn’t quite true.

For some reason, Plagg didn’t like talking about his past. Adrien did his best to respect that. That sometimes meant that his conversations with Plagg were limited to things like cheese and Ladybug, but Adrien didn’t mind that. Plagg was always there when Adrien needed him, and that mattered more to Adrien then anything else possibly could.

“No wonder Plagg likes you so much,” Trixx added, smiling at him. “I’m only teasing, Adrien. Stealing that phone was a necessity. It’s so you can look up the miraculous holders, right?”

Adrien nodded, feeling a bit better that Trixx understood the theft had a purpose, and said, “Exactly. I needed a quick way to get more information about them. Then I can decide how I’m going to try to approach them.” He also wanted to do a little research into the reputation of the miraculous holders. What Bridgette had said wasn’t promising, but he was hoping there was more to it then that.

He unlocked Bridgette’s phone again and found himself staring down at the recipe. It was for some kind of cake, and he realized that she had probably set her phone to not need a password while she was baking. That was lucky for him, at least. He minimized the recipe to her home screen and smiled.

She had set her home screen to have a picture of three Disney princesses: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Ariel. The artwork was very good, and he wondered if maybe she had drawn it. If she had, she was a very good artist. It was tempting to take a quick peek through her pictures to see if there was more artwork, but Adrien refrained. He might be a thief, but he wasn’t a snoop.

He would need to figure out some way to get her phone back to her before he left, he thought. Maybe he could drop it off outside the bakery, or Trixx could phase inside after hours and leave it in the kitchen. He could leave some money too. That might make up a little bit for the inconvenience he had caused poor Bridgette.

“Alright, let’s see what I can find,” Adrien muttered, leaning more heavily against the wall as he opened up the browser – again, one that he had never heard of before.

But at least Google seemed to be the same no matter what universe he was in.

#miraculous ladybug #adrien agreste #trixx #alternate universe #ladrienjune2021 #storm verse #squall

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betweengenesisfrogs · 4 years

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The Triumph of the Marginalia

Marginalia, n.:

1 : notes or embellishments in the margins (as in a book)

2 : nonessential items

-Troll OED

Is it just me, or is Nepeta and Equius’s arc the most slept-upon piece of brilliance in all of Homestuck?

A brilliance, might I add, that culminates in possibly the most triumphant, fulfilling emotional moment in the entire work:

https://www.homestuck.com/story/7928

*stands back and beholds its majesty while from the background comes the sound of James Roach brutally murdering ska*

No, but actually, I mean this 100% unironically, and by the end of this post, I think you’ll agree with me.

By now, I think we all understand the Act 6 double metaphor: the series of temporal loops and universes that Lord English commands is paralleled with, and in fact totally identical to, the narrative of Homestuck. Our characters’ lives exist within this context. They struggle to escape it, and are defined both by it and by the rejection of it.

Enter Nepeta.

The metaphorical meaning of Nepeta in Homestuck is irrelevance, and that’s why she’s the most relevant character in any discussion.

Nepeta was one of the characters killed off during the Murderstuck arc. Hussie argued that she was perfect for this role. In fact, I believe he said something like “Nepeta is sweet, but if you look up the dictionary definition of ‘expendable character,’ you’ll see a picture of Nepeta playing with a ball of yarn and looking very cute.” She’s an endearing combination of shipper girl and apex predator, but not one of your Vriskas or Terezis in being a driver of the plot. Hussie, it seems, created her just to round out the troll cast. He described one of his purposes in Murderstuck as being to axe some of the less necessary trolls to reduce the scope of his character list.

Except that didn’t really happen, did it?

Like a cat with nine lives, Nepeta just keeps coming back.

Equius is another addition to the troll cast who gets pushed away from the main action. He was a character-writing challenge: how do you make someone who’s gross, uncomfortable, and racist kind of likable anyway? I’d argue Hussie succeeded, in large part because of Equius’s relationship with Nepeta. By the time you finish with Hivebent, you’ll probably have a little fondness for their moraillegiance. And if that doesn’t do it, the conversation that serves as their swansong in Equius: Seek the Highblood will tear your heartstrings to shreds.

Because Equius dies, tragically clownmurdered. There was, at the time, some stink over this from Equius fans. Would he have really let himself be killed so easily? Hussie countered: yes, and it was the most in-character thing he could have done. He died doing what he loved: being asphyxiated erotically and horrifically by a superior. Truly, there could be no more fitting end to his character than that.

And yet.

No sooner did Hussie complete his self-appointed story cleanup challenge than he immediately began to undo his own work. It’s almost as if, in declaring his intention to own those who preferred more characters to narrative economy, he immediately had to own himself??

By the time we get even a little way into Act 6, we’re deep in the dreambubble landscape, meeting dead characters left and right. And who should show up there but Equius and Nepeta? Equius attempting to get it on with a bunch of Aradias, who dump him. And Nepeta, living out her romantic dreams as a representative of a timeline where she got together with Karkat. They both appear as symbols of this deadness, this irrelevance. Except that that brings them back into the story, into the spotlight – the opposite of where they’re supposed to be!

Like many bits of commentary, Hussie continues to incorporate the metaphor Nepeta=Irrelevance into Homestuck. Karkat’s remark on their journey that he would love to meet “FIFTY FUCKING NEPETAS” and embark on “NEPETAQUEST” alludes to formspring remarks to the effect that, no, Homestuck was not going to have much time for the minor characters. Except it clearly did.

Why couldn’t the narrative let the meowrails go? Was it that despite the economy of Murderstuck, something was still incomplete? After all, one of Equius’s charms was that he appeared to be growing into a less repressed, kinder person. In Seek the Highblood, we see him letting his guard down enough to roleplay with Nepeta for a change. Their love for each other: wasn’t that ultimately what could redeem Equius in our eyes? So his dying and thus failing to protect her–isn’t that something that should be addressed?

You could imagine many a Nepeta and Equius fan saying this to Hussie back in 2011.

But Hussie was already saying it to himself.

The duo come roaring back into the story in the Trickster mode arc, mid Act 6, thanks to Gamzee’s ridiculous resurrections. True, Nepeta is still reduced as part of Fefeta, the character formed from killed-off girls who never speaks onscreen. But doesn’t using that fact as a running gag kind of draw our attention to it? Doesn’t the fact that Fefeta talks to Roxy constantly offscreen inform us that once we get outside the frame of the narrative, Nepeta has a rich inner life and countless stories to tell?

And it’s here that Equius gets something he never got in his original “arc:” the chance to apologize to Nepeta. You’d be forgiven for missing it since there’s so much else going on at the time, but he does, while fused with AR. Here’s what you’d miss, though: he’s grown as a person in the afterlife. He’s come to regret that moment of weakness, where his fetish kept him from protecting his moirail. Impossible as it seems, he’s continuing his character arc.

The scene ends with Fefeta exploding (she’s also, after all, dealing with Eridan), but it leaves us with a tantalizing question:

Will Nepeta forgive Equius? Is there even a plausible time and space in that story when she could respond to his words?

Do you see what’s happening here? Instead of being erased, Nepeta and Equius are starting to slip the bounds of the story that killed them. They leap in and out of the frame, half-mythical figures. Marginalized, they write their own stories in the margins. They exist in complete defiance of the original logic of Homestuck.

Lord English is an alt-Author figure, a dark, brutal reflection of narrative control and narrative necessity. His world, in which horrible choices are necessary, in which the alpha timeline is a ticking clock leading inexorably to his manifestation, is one that beats down people not deemed important enough by his narrative. Which makes it identical to the one we’re reading. Throw all the unnecessary characters in the trash. Kill them off, if it suits my purposes. The world doesn’t need Nepeta.

Which is precisely why it does. Because isn’t defying Lord English the entire point? Isn’t it what Homestuck reveals as truly heroic?

What might Nepeta be capable of?

Let’s talk about two other victims of English’s forces of marginalization. Davesprite might be the most quintessential example. He teaches us what the alpha timeline is and how it works, by going back to fix a doomed timeline and submitting to being doomed himself. Except he merges with a bird and avoids that fate. Okay, but he clearly gets killed off fighting Jack in Jade: Enter. Except he comes back and hangs out with Jadesprite. Okay, but he dies in the planetsplode in the Retcon. Nope, he comes back from that, too. Huh. He keeps slipping the fate decreed for him by – who else? Lord English.

But it’s a struggle, clearly. He’s caught up in various cycles of guilt and shame. Over being “not the real Dave.” Over his feeling that he has to be a hero in the sense Bro demanded he be. Hussie describes Davesprite as fitting the “way of the unbroken sword:” his experiences have led him to believe in being strong and capable at the expense of all else, in contrast with the other Dave, whose belief in Bros’ toxic ideas is beginning to slip – the “way of the broken sword.” And where did Bro get his toxic ideas from? At least in part, the whispering voice of the soul of Lord English.

Now we turn to Dirk. Like Dave, Dirk has a marginalized, “less important” splinter self but it’s more of a pressing concern. AR shows Dirk’s darker side: exhibiting manipulative tendencies that human Dirk is trying to move away from. He’s also a copy removed from humanity, who feels an understandable amount of disillusionment about being removed from physical existence and his own identity. But as much as Dirk may splinter, like his dumb anime sword, he never breaks. What this means in the symbolic language of Homestuck is that Dirk lives fully, instinctually, in the way of the sword. He believe in a world of hard choices, masculine heroism, and necessity. Ultimately, this, too, is part of what makes Bro so harmful to Dave. In AR and Davesprite, we have a strange parallel: two splinter selves, both of whom are enmeshed in the logic of LE.

Except AR, unlike Davesprite…kind of is LE.

What is Lord English composed of? Well, there’s Caliborn, the most unrepentant shithead of all time. There’s Gamzee, embodiment of horrifying clownery. And then there’s AR, a version of Dirk even more removed from the person he wants to be.

And…Equius?

Allow me a moment to get really indulgent and take a big puff on my Homestuck scholar’s pipe.

The metaphorical meaning of Equius in Homestuck is: sort of growing out of being a creepy racist.

Or maybe let’s say: the opportunity to do that. We said that Equius was on the verge of being redeemed (even had been, in the eyes of many readers). What does it mean to stick him in with Lord English’s souls? It means two things:

1) Equius is a product of his society, which was shaped by Doc Scratch, aka by Lord English, both of whom are kind of him, but Scratch picks up on his traits especially. This is a recognition of that fact: the part of him that sucks is, itself, Lord English in a dizzying loop.

2) Equius’s story is a tragedy. It is the story of a kid who started to escape his society’s tendencies, but was sucked back in by the evil force behind them.

Although…maybe that’s not the whole story.

Because both Equius and AR aren’t really that bad. AR’s pretty understandable, and by no means beyond the possibility of goodness. And the combination of the two? Honestly, pretty harmless. They counter each other’s worst tendencies by devolving into a weird goofball. In fact, AR even says he wants to do something heroic: to sacrifice himself for something really important. He does, kind of, mustering a last-ditch robohorse assault on Caliborn. But at the same time, this is the substance of his tragedy. A hero whose defeat of a great evil forces him to become the substance of that evil. Which could not be a more fitting summary of how these characters function in their story.

But maybe that’s still not the whole story.

Enter Davepeta.

At first glance, the creation of Davepeta seems like Hussie’s most batshit troll move yet. I feel pretty confident in saying that even those who predicted either of these characters returning didn’t see that one coming. However, a few pages of Davepeta’s presence reveals a fundamental truth:

Davepeta is fucking amazing.

In them, Davesprite’s depressive moods are buoyed up by Nepeta’s upbeat optimism. Nepeta’s reclusive shyness is balanced by Dave’s tendency toward brash banter. Both of them gain confidence from being the new person they are. They quickly let go of ideas inherited from the world that kept them from self-knowledge and happiness. Dave, his toxic masculinity; Nepeta, her fear.

A great point I’ve seen made is how much Jasprose and Davepeta resemble fantasy selves for Rose and Dave: indulgent, technicolor manifestations of people they could be if they let go of inhibitions and limitations. But I think Davepeta is the most unambiguously positive of the two.

The metaphorical meaning of Davepeta in Homestuck?

Growth.

Not giving a fuck about what the world thinks. The world, aka Lord English. Because Lord English could never have predicted that his machinations would also spawn a confident, powerful fusion of two beings he had discarded as totally irrelevant.

They’re also a multicolored non-binary furry, so that’s even more points in the pissing off shitheads column.

They are someone Lord English never conceived of, never could have conceived of, but which lay as potential within his domain all along.

And if Lord English is a reflection of the author, of what Hussie feels one has to destroy or sacrifice, than Davepeta is an indulgence existing in defiance of all that.

And this makes Davepeta the most powerful person of all.

They are the light at the end of the tunnel. They are the person you could be, if you could get past your mental shackles and just grow. It may not be possible to ever get there as a mortal human, may only be for a godlike sprite, but striving to be like them matters, is purpose and fulfilment enough.

And they love ARquius.

Nepeta believed in Equius, believed he could grow, and was growing. So as much as ARquius traps himself in a Lord English loop of his own making – grown, perhaps, out of Dirk’s belief that there should be a loop, that importance is admirable—Davepeta pulls from him, in his last scene, his finest qualities. His love.

Equius asks forgiveness again, and this time, Nepeta’s able to give it. Davepeta easily accepts ARquius’s apology, an apology which never could have existed within the confines of a normal narrative. A reconciliation that both of them fought for by defying their narrative, by existing outside it. By being not the trolls who lived and died, but their broader, conceptual selves, who exist beyond lifetimes. Beyond the comic page. And they consummate that reconciliation with that most cherished and loving of gestures:

A hug.

And even as this is Equius and Nepeta’s reconciliation, it’s also Dirk and Dave’s. Which, I should mention, is also taking place, simultaneously and circumstantially simultaneously, just below. It’s a more difficult one, certainly, especially as filtered through the splinters of Davesprite and AR. Here forgiveness is not quite the right word. But – knowledge, and recognition, and a kind of peace. It’s Davesprite’s chance to reunite with the part of his brother he loved, while also being a person who’s grown beyond him. And it’s AR’s chance to be loved.

Oh, sure, the art is ridiculous, the pose absurd. But that’s what makes it sublime.

I mean, what did you think that Sbahj comic was really about?

A boy distancing himself from his feelings through irony, never acknowledging that the story he’s telling is about two bros who desperately want to hug each other, but don’t know how.

Here’s the hug.

I want to dip into Epilogues territory for a moment, but it’s territory which is fairly well implied by Davepeta’s statements and role in Collide. The Meat Epilogue, I think, only illuminates what was already there.

Lord English is uniquely vulnerable to Davepeta.

And why shouldn’t he be? They, like so much else in Homestuck, are a consequence of his actions spiraling far beyond his control. But it’s more than that. Davepeta is finally able to lay the unbroken sword to rest by following the “prophecy” about Dave defeating Lord English. On the one hand, that’s kind of what happened. But it’s also completely different from what English intended, antithetical to his desires and goals. Which makes the victory all the sweeter. But at the end of the day, Davepeta doesn’t fight for the reasons Davesprite did. They’re free of that, now. Instead, they fight from a place of genuine compassion. Because Davesprite, like Dave, knows the true meaning of being a hero: caring about one’s friends.

But the most important thing about Davepeta is that they know Lord English, on a level that perhaps neither he nor they recognize. Both AR and Equius are in there, and both are capable of redemption. It’s only Gamzee and Caliborn who are truly beyond it.

How does Davepeta defeat Lord English?

With a hug.

They wrap their claws around him, and carry him into the sun like a piece of garbage. It’s an aggressive hold, but it’s also effectively an embrace.

And I have to wonder: in those final moments, did they sense a connection there? Did Equius and Dirk stir somewhere within Lord English? Did they give him a moment’s pause? Resist him? Make it just the tiniest bit easier for Davepeta to do their work?

If so, then that, too, is heroism.

At the very least, it’s circumstantially simultaneous with the hug we see in Act 6, and so it carries the same message:

Redemption.

Not for the shitheads, but for those who wanted to be better.

And if this isn’t enough, there’s a third reconciliation here, too: between author and reader, or to put it in other terms, author and character.

If Lord English is a shadow of the author, what part of the author can be redeemed? Maybe not the destructive, antagonistic urges. But the part that plans and designs and philosophizes as Dirk does. That part of Hussie wanted Davepeta to be there, to strike that final blow, and made it happen.

Because, when you get right down to it, as much as Hussie pretends to be antagonistic toward his readers and the characters they enjoy, it’s the fans, the shippers, the furries, those whose hearts go out to a cute, shy cat girl that he most celebrates.

Hussie fucking loves Nepeta.

Nepeta and Equius are, sneakily, the best characters in Homestuck, because they understand its fundamental message: that to succeed in Homestuck is to defy Homestuck. They defy everything it throws at them, and somehow, improbably, come out on top.

All of this is there on that page, a whole edifice of storytelling culminating in that singular, grand, supremely indulgent expression, a feast of looping leitmotif and color and imagery and meme and sound. It’s all there, if you know where to look.

Nepeta and Equius love each other, and that’s pretty fucking great.

See? I told you.

<> Ari

#nepeta #equius #davepeta #homestuck analysis #arquius #meowrails #davesprite #hal #trying to get out ahead of hussie's commentary for a change #happy 4/13 :33 #<3 #stay tuned #feast of homestuck 2020

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llama-lord · 4 years

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My Full Personal Interpretation of Chara

It’s my view that Chara was severely abused during their time on the surface, and began to view crying as weakness because of it. I'm not sure if Chara was actually trying to commit suicide, but I think they had suicidal tendencies, showing little concern for their own life. Undertale's intro shows Chara tripping instead of jumping, but it also shows them clearly seeing the hole and approaching it beforehand. Given that the injuries Chara sustained from the fall were far from fatal, as they were able to walk with Asriel's assistance, their cry for help could've been out of pain and/or survival instinct, rather than a genuine desire to live.

Pre-death Chara hated Humanity, but there was always a look of hope in their eyes (in the neutral ending where Asgore commits suicide, he tells Frisk “I'm reminded of the human that fell here long ago... You have the same feeling of hope in your eyes”), they loved Monsterkind, they loved Toriel and Asgore (while it’s possible that Toriel knitted the Mr. Dad Guy Sweater for Asgore, I think it’s more likely that it was Chara. “Mr. Dad Guy” is an awkward name, one that sounds like a middle ground between “Mr. Dreemurr” and “Dad”), and they loved Asriel more than anything. However, while Chara was capable of and showed genuine love and kindness to the Dreemurrs, sharing countless tender moments with them, they could be a bully sometimes. Although Chara never physically hurt Asriel, they frequently shamed and sometimes mocked Asriel for crying (mirroring their own treatment on the surface), and liked to playfully toy with his emotions from time to time. With no other friends and due to his own insecurities, Asriel looked up to Chara and came to idolize them. That said, while Chara's and Asriel's relationship was unhealthy, I doubt it was ever intentionally abusive until the plan came forth. Had Chara been made fully aware of how much damage they were doing to Asriel, I think they would've been horrified.

EDIT: I view the mindset that "big kids don't cry" as being picked up by Chara on the surface due to mistreatment. They shamed Asriel for crying under the distorted belief that they were toughening him up.

While I think Toriel and Asgore were decent parents, they never noticed Chara's darker tendencies, nor did they ever ask them questions about their life on the surface. When Asgore told Chara that they were "the future of Humans and Monsters" (I highly doubt Chara’s deathbed was the only time Asgore said this, given the weight of the title, and his bad habit of placing enormous responsibilities onto the shoulders of young children, seeing how he gave Frisk, a child no older than 12, the duty to "seek the truth" of the Prophecy so they can free everyone in the alternate Neutral Route where he commits suicide), his intent was to refer to Chara as living proof that the two species could coexist. However, Chara took it the wrong way, believing it now meant that they were responsible for everyone, giving them a complex, putting pressure on them as one of the Royal Children.

EDIT: I placed too much blame on Asgore in my initial write-up. It’s far more likely that Chara developed a complex from living with Monsters, and that being called "The Future of Humans and Monsters" was simply the icing on the cake.

EDIT: I think Toriel and Asgore may have recognized signs of abuse in Char, or just felt that something was off about them, but I doubt either of them realized how bad their issues were.

Poisoning Asgore was a genuine accident. I don’t believe Chara "laughed the pain away" nor laughed sadistically. There is a recurring theme of characters laughing and joking in stressful moments (Snowdrake's Father when he talks about his son ran away after his mother disappeared, Snowdrake's Mother during her fight in the True Lab, Mettaton NEO, Undyne when Frisk is beating her to death in the Neutral Route, Toriel when you oneshot her in the Genocide Route or betrayal kill her, Asriel when you hug him, Asgore when he kills himself in the alternate neutral ending, and Migospel, especially Migospel, as his entire theme is him putting up a happy facade to hide his pain). The only times we ever see sadistic laughter in Undertale are from Asriel, who is soulless, and Chara in the Genocide Route, which I don’t believe is an accurate reflection of the person they were in life. So, while I doubt that Chara felt particularly terrible over accidentally poisoning Asgore, I believe their laughter was relatively dry, hollow, and empty.

EDIT: I think Chara freaked out when Asgore got sick, but calmed down after realizing that he wouldn't die. There was still some guilt, but most of it left at that point.

Due to a combination of Chara shaming him for his tears in the past, and his own idolization of them, Asriel now looked down on crying, and saw Chara's (relatively) calm reaction as preferable to his, saying "I should have laughed it off, like you did".

Then came the plan. I think Chara was motivated by both revenge and a wish to free Monsterkind. Chara chose to commit suicide rather than kill the Dreemurrs for their Boss Monster SOULs. I've seen people theorize that Chara picking death of buttercups was self-punishment for what they did to Asgore. I'm neutral on this theory, but I'll acknowledge that there are far less painful ways to die that would've still appeared accidental. And in this moment, yes, Chara was intentionally manipulative (which is abusive). They belittled Asriel's emotions and played up his desire to be a hero by telling him that he could free everyone. When Chara discovered their shared control with Asriel after their SOUL was absorbed, they resolved to walk to the village themselves. When the villagers attacked, Chara tried to kill them all, and that's when he resisted. Asriel had just enough control to walk back to the Throne Room, where he died.

EDIT: I doubt Chara was lying to Asriel when they told him that they only wanted 6 SOULs. Chara had no way of knowing of whether they’d even be conscious, let alone share control with Asriel, after they died. That, and going back to their village would’ve re-opened old wounds, which leads me to believe that their attempt to destroy it was an impulsive act fueled by a power trip, not a pre-planned one.

I doubt post-death Chara is entirely soulless, because they would need a way to manifest themselves. However, Chara’s dialogue at the end of the Genocide Route implies that something happened to their SOUL, saying that “My 'human soul’...My ‘determination’...They were not mine, but YOURS.” While Asriel’s SOUL was completely destroyed, Chara’s SOUL shattered into fragments. At least one of these fragments latched onto Frisk's SOUL after they fell, due to the amount of determination that Frisk had, and their shared SOUL trait.

Fast forward to Frisk's fall. I'll state my main points here. I fully believe the narrator theory, but disagree with the possession theory almost entirely (more on that soon).

If you do not believe the narrator theory, you can skip the bolded passage below.

While Chara does not make a physical appearance in True Pacifist Route, I think they become a better person from it. Chara realizes that they were wrong, that Asriel was right, and that not all Humans are bad. And while Chara doesn't save Asriel or your friends, they give you a push in the end, saying "you can SAVE something else".

Asriel's admission that "Chara wasn't really the greatest person" rings true. Chara was far from perfect. However, I see this statement less as him actually condemning Chara, and more as him taking them off the pedestal he’d placed them on, and realizing that they weren’t a good role model. When Asriel addresses “Chara” after the True Pacifist Route, he has low expectations for them, saying "You’ve probably heard this a hundred times already, haven’t you…?", when he asks them not to reset. However, the fact that he was willing to even make an appeal to begin with, saying "Take a deep breath. There's nothing left to worry about", shows that, despite everything, he still has hope, even though it’s not much, that Chara will do the right thing.

(On another note, the fact that you returned in the first place, after Asriel asked you not to, after he said that he couldn’t come back, after you were EXPLICITLY told that the game would end after you left the Underground, doesn’t speak well of your intentions. Flowey’s expectations for Chara weren’t very high to begin with, but I believe that your return further lowered them. It serves as proof to him that maybe Chara hasn’t learned anything from this.)

Then there's the Genocide Route. Yes, the player not only starts, but is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the Genocide Route. No, I don't believe Frisk is possessed, at all, not until we are very close to the end. Until that point, Chara simply provides a Monster counts for us, and Frisk's more aggressive personality is simply a reflection of our actions. With Chara's SOUL fragmented, severely restricting their ability to feel love and compassion (they might benefit from Frisk's SOUL), there's hardly anything left to restrain their worst traits. Once we kill all 20 Monsters in the Ruins, feeding a desire for power, Chara is on board with us. Their dialogue changes from less joking and increasingly apathetic (“Not worth talking to”, “Forgettable”), with a trace of violent overtones (“Where are the knives”), to outright sadistic as we progress (laughing at the RG 01/02).

EDIT: Judging from the dialogue for the stove after killing Toriel and the dialogue for killing dogs in a Neutral Run, I think Chara may (at least initially) have shame for what they are witnessing in the Genocide Route. However the thrill of gaining power ultimately overrides it. It’s essentially a guilty pleasure.

EDIT: Looking back, while Chara doesn’t actually kill anyone before Sans, it’s plausible that they helped us deal more damage in certain fights. A possible reason why we deal so much damage to Toriel in the Genocide Route is that Chara lashed out. Flowey has feelings of abandonment associated with Toriel (”She'll find another kid, and instantly forget about you. You'll NEVER see her again.”). Given that Toriel refers to Frisk as “my child”, and Chara’s final pre-death memory was of their betrayal, Chara could’ve felt betrayed by her, even though she was a decent parent.

I doubt Asriel’s “recognition” of Chara in the Genocide Route is an accurate reflection of what they were like in life. There is ample evidence to conclude that, not only did Asriel genuinely think that Frisk was Chara in EVERY route, but also that he held onto this delusion the ENTIRE time. Furthermore, there are multiple inconsistencies with the interpretation that Asriel will only quickly conclude that Frisk is Chara in the Genocide Route, and takes much more time to do so in the True Pacifist Route:

1. Omega Flowey toys with Frisk in the Neutral Route, despite seemingly wanting their SOUL.

2. Flowey’s dialogue for sparing Asgore in an aborted Genocide Run directly contradicts the notion that he thinks Chara would only be cruel.

3. Omega Flowey saw the name of Frisk’s SAVE file right before the fight, which alone should’ve been enough evidence to make him think that they are Chara.

4. Flowey’s spare dialogue doesn’t change in an aborted Genocide Run, directly contradicting the notion that he doesn’t think Chara would care about anyone else, as he still threatens to kill “everyone they love”.

Here’s something to consider:

Given how long it took for Flowey to go insane, he is likely aware that Chara will not necessarily be as violent as he is. By giving him evidence for him to conclude that they actually are (killing everyone in the Ruins), Flowey gains enough confidence to drop his charade.

Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence that Flowey thinks that Frisk is Chara in every route is his reaction to being spared in a Neutral Run. He should not be confused by the concept of mercy, as he has undoubtedly been shown mercy himself many times during his own resets.

In other words, it’s not that Flowey can’t understand the concept of mercy itself, it’s that he can’t understand why this person specifically would show him mercy. Although Flowey is aware that Chara may not necessarily be as violent as he is, this scenario is different. If there was ANY time to have a kill-or-be-killed mindset, this was it. Flowey gave us every possible reason he could for us to kill him, and sparing him is the strongest challenge to his delusion that Frisk is Chara. He simply cannot understand why “Chara”, who tried to kill the villagers when he refused, would show him mercy after what he said and did.

Asriel makes three colossal mistakes in the Genocide Route. First, he talks as if he's equal to Chara in strength, that he could kill them if he wanted to, saying "Creatures like us wouldn't hesitate to kill each other if we got in each other's way", making them turn on him (I see this line as serving as proof to Chara that Asriel hadn’t learned anything from the village incident). Asriel flees to the Throne Room. We fight Sans, with Chara making the final attack for us. We confront Asgore, who Chara attacks for us. This is where Asriel makes his 2nd mistake, destroying Asgore's SOUL, trapping us in the Underground. His final and fatal mistake is when he begs for his life instead of hiding in the ground. The Chara who Asriel begs for mercy from is, for the most part, soulless; they cannot and do not feel any love or compassion for him anymore. Asriel neglected his own belief that Chara was soulless, when he told them "No... you're empty inside, just like me". Asriel has given Chara plenty of reasons to be angry, and with nothing left to hold that anger back, Chara proceeds to hack him to pieces. This is when Chara finally makes a physical appearance. While there are plenty of other Monsters left in the Underground, murdering the person they loved the most in life is the point of no return for them. This is important because I don't believe that Chara would've intentionally killed Asriel prior to their death, even at their absolute worst, even if he betrayed them. But here? Chara sees killing Asriel as the elimination of the one person who always held them back, and the final step to abandoning their humanity and ridding themselves of the emotions that they now believe only ever hurt them. They've found a better partner, us, one who will always give them what they want. With their goal to achieve power in this world accomplished, Chara believes that its existence no longer serves a purpose, and asks us to erase it. And if we refuse, they think it's hilarious, that we believe we have a choice here. When Chara says "SINCE WHEN WERE YOU THE ONE IN CONTROL?", it doesn't mean they were possessing Frisk, nor does it mean that we never had in control. We controlled Frisk, we had countless chances to abandon this path, but we pushed all the way to the end. Chara has been betrayed before, and was caught completely off-guard. But this time, they came prepared. If their partner tries to turn their back on them like Asriel did, they'll override their decision, because they have final say, and they WILL get what they want.

EDIT: I’m on the fence on whether Chara actually hesitated to kill Flowey. I will say that, unlike with Asgore, they were willing to hear him out at the very least.

As far as the Soulless Pacifist Route goes, I fully believe that Chara kills your friends. However, this is not done out of malice. If Chara genuinely wanted your friends dead for good, they would’ve kept the world erased. This is simply a demonstration of power by Chara, to show that they are the one in control.

Other thoughts:

Despite Asriel’s betrayal, Chara doesn’t seem to hold any strong feelings of hatred or bitterness for him outside of the Genocide Route, and until the “Creatures like us...” line, given how there's no push to kill him in an aborted Genocide Run.

Everything after this point are mostly unsubstantiated headcanons and beliefs of mine. Feel free to continue reading if you are interested.

In my opinion, Asriel’s trauma is often underestimated in fan portrayals. While he has healed to some extent from the True Pacifist Route, taking Chara off the pedestal he once placed them on, his sense of self-worth is still in dire need of repair. How intentional the trauma inflicted on him was is simply a reflection on the perpetrator. It is irrelevant in measuring the damage.

I don’t think Chara is completely fixed by the True Pacifist Route? While Chara has certainly learned something from observing our actions, they still have plenty of work to do on themselves. However, while they can’t change what they did, with Frisk’s help, I think they can try to make up for it by becoming a better person.

While Chara is inherently in a better position than Asriel after the True Pacifist Route (Chara benefits from Frisk’s SOUL and fragments of their own SOUL, while Asriel is completely soulless) I think Asriel will be much easier to help. While Asriel could easily get his form restored by SOUL donations from 7 generous dying Humans, I doubt Chara will ever be able their own body again. The absolute best case scenario I see for Post-Pacifist Chara is them peacefully body-sharing with a consenting Frisk.

Asriel is not obligated to forgive Chara, or (while I doubt he’d be this bitter) even talk to them ever again. That said, Asgore and Toriel owe Chara a lengthy talk. Chara is responsible for their own actions, and their circumstances do not excuse them, but, while they failed themselves, Asgore and Toriel failed them too. This talk can be one for understanding, and, hopefully, reconciliation.

I strongly dislike the concept of killing off Chara under the guise of “setting them free”. It does not heal Asriel’s trauma, nor does it accomplish anything else.

#undertale #chara #asriel #flowey #asgore #toriel #frisk

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lemonadesoda · 4 years

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I’m going to behind-the-scenes about my fanfic because I’m so so grouchy about something work-related and I want to meta about my own process.

Just going to jot down the general rules, characterizations, and headcanons I abide by when I’m writing Hide and Seek:

Hat Kid is not Steven Universe. This is the most important rule. The burden is never on her to fix the problems of the adults. She’s not a therapist. Over the course of the story, all of them learn how to talk to each other about their problems, and sometimes, because of her own bad experiences, she attempts to fix other people’s problems, but these never go well, because she often fundamentally misunderstands what the problem is (usually because she thinks it’s her responsibility/fault). She often asks questions about and longs to understand emotional situations, but you aren’t supposed to see her offering coherent solutions to those problems or proposing useful, healthy coping techniques. If she does, it’s an authorial error.

Snatcher and Moonjumper come from the same base personality template of the Prince but Moonjumper got a subscription to Headspace and they read Brene Brown. Like metaphorically though.

Moonjumper probably seems really well-adjusted, and in a lot of ways, they are. It’s kind of harder to write about their problems just by nature of relativity--Snatcher’s issues will eclipse them in nearly every scene. It’s more to do with the fact that they don’t repress their emotions, so when they do have big emotions, it doesn’t overwhelm them and they have a greater degree of control over their behavior, which makes them seem really composed. The chaos is all internal.

Snatcher, from the very beginning of the story, is already sort of soft on Hat Kid, because I headcanon that by Your Contract Has Expired in canon, he already is taking it easy on her, in his convoluted, self-defeating sort of way that allows him plausible deniability about caring even a little about her.

Related, a large portion of early story revisions involved making sure I got his interactions with her just right. He can be somewhat mean/irritating toward her, but there is always a line I had to make sure he never crossed, even accidentally. If he hurt her feelings genuinely like in chapter 3, I exacted an emotional cost from him, one that carried over into her motivations in chapter 8 and continued to bite him long after he had his internal change of heart. I wanted to make sure it was never a matter of her tolerating him being a total asshat and being generally unpleasant to be around, even as a tsundere type character. I view and write the Death Wishes as the two of them kind of just playing around. They’re dangerous because he’s fucking irresponsible, and that costs him too. But he always had to be more rewarding to hang out with than he was aggravating or I would have her just walk away from the situation.

Snatcher. Hah. He’s ridiculous. There’s so much going on in this dude’s head. The hardest part about writing him is peeling the layers back at just the right pace. Chapter 10 is a major turning point in terms of how he expresses himself, but it’s not meant to come off as a complete 180 of his personality compared to the earlier chapters. The main difference is that he’s made the choice here to stop denying expression of the genuine care for Hat Kid that’s been there the entire time. He’s no longer trying to beat it down.

Shame is his dominant Problem Feeling, and related to that, Guilt. The destruction of all of Subcon weighs very heavily on him and is part of the reason he stays tethered to the forest, never moving on. Being out of control of a situation is a very bad feeling for him, and the power that comes from taking souls and causing fear has been a sort of high that he finds comforting, but all of that is motivated by his shame over feeling like he was responsible for a lot of people dying, and he failed all of them. When he realizes he cares about Hat Kid, a part of him resists it specifically because he believes he no longer deserves to have that kind of happiness, both because of his perceived original failures with Subcon, and also because of his willing descent into monsterhood. I come in and bulldoze all of his preconceived notions, and it’s incredibly stressful for his character and extremely satisfying for me the author.

Hat Kid’s problem feelings are all products of neglect and isolation. She either forces herself not to assume being wanted, and if someone explicitly tells her they want her around, this has to be reinforced on multiple occasions. Or she assumes she must serve a purpose in a relationship, that she either has to solve problems or provide some degree of utility, hence why the contracts were a point of confusion for her in terms of where she actually stood with Snatcher and how he really felt toward her as a person. It takes her a while to realize that she can just exist and be loved just for existing.

I think I’ll stop there before it gets too long but I’m feeling less irritable now and also approaching the point where I start referencing things that I’ve written but haven’t released yet.

#ahit hide and seek #ahit #meta

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cartoonsrulemylife · 3 years

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OCD-based hyper-responsibility . my mental illness.

I'm getting vulnerable

Hyper responsibility involves feeling responsible for others all of the time. It is an involuntary urge to avoid disasters – all day long. This urge consumes your mind every minute of every day.

Ex You see a nail on the floor,

so you pick it up before someone accidentally steps on it. You pick it up not just for yourself, but also for anyone else who could step on it. You feel like it is your responsibility to look out for everyone – to ensure that everyone is safe. If someone was injured because of that nail, the guilt would eat you alive because you left it there.

Because you were the first person to see the nail – protecting others has become YOUR responsibility. So, if you don’t pick up the nail and someone steps on it – it is YOUR fault. YOU saw the danger and did nothing.

So, ultimately, hyper-responsibility involves feeling overwhelmingly responsible for someone else’s thoughts, beliefs, actions, safety, and happiness. Hyper-responsibility feels like it is your responsibility to solve all the ills of the world, and if something happens on your watch, it is your fault, even if you played no role in it. Hyper-responsibility is often termed a “savior complex” because of the need or urge to “save” others from impending danger.

You truly believe that if you do not act immediately, you will be blamed when someone gets hurt. What if the nail becomes so deeply lodged in the person’s foot that he or she needs surgery to remove it? Or, what if the person doesn’t feel the nail in his or her foot, causing an infection and leading to gangrene?

This is called hyper-responsibility and it is common in people with OCD.

Those scenarios most likely will not happen, however, the mere thought of it terrifies you, triggering extreme anxiety. You quickly pick up the nail and place it on the kitchen counter.

Crisis averted.

Of course, the world will not shatter if you don’t pick up the nail, because most likely if you don’t pick it up the next person will. But, in the mind of someone with OCD, a tragedy will occur if you don’t do something (like pick up the nail).

OCD-based hyper-responsibility involves feeling responsible for others all of the time. It is an involuntary urge to avoid disasters – all day long. This urge consumes your mind every minute of every day.

OCD fears permeate your mind until you remove the stimulus (the nail). To you, the danger feels real, even if it’s not entirely realistic or plausible. You become obsessed with the fear then the anxiety rushes in and the only way to calm your nerves is to engage in compulsions (ritualistic behaviors).

Although hyper-responsibility is more prevalent in people with OCD, we all experience forms of it from time-to-time. For instance, most of us would pick up a nail, if we saw it to prevent injuries. This is instinctual. Most people would also feel some degree of guilt and shame if they did not do something to prevent someone from getting hurt. But, this is especially true if you struggle with OCD.

People with OCD perform ritualistic behaviors to try to ease their stress and anxiety and avoid feeling guilty for their feelings. Unfortunately, this reprieve only lasts a short time. Once, these individuals are exposed to one of their OCD triggers, the cycle of obsessions and compulsions repeat. And, yes, the feeling of hyper-responsibility can return with a vengeance.

The fear of danger, harm, or death infiltrates your mind (obsessions), so you spend most of your day extinguishing “small fires” (averting disasters). It’s time-consuming and exhausting, yet, you feel it is YOUR responsibility alone to prevent these tragedies. Taking responsibility for yourself and others becomes the sole focus of your life. It is an insistent urge to protect everyone from devastation, however, what actually happens is you end up devastating your own life.

hyper-responsibility involves feeling overwhelmingly responsible for someone else’s thoughts, beliefs, actions, safety, and happiness. Hyper-responsibility feels like it is your responsibility to solve all the ills of the world, and if something happens on your watch, it is your fault, even if you played no role in it. Hyper-responsibility is often termed a “savior complex” because of the need or urge to “save” others from impending danger.

What is the Relationship Between OCD and Hyper-Responsibility?

Doubt and fear are the main hallmarks of OCD. But, this isn’t your normal everyday fear and doubt – when you have OCD, it’s more intense and persistent. For people with OCD, hyper-responsibly involves incapacitating and paralyzing fear and doubt. And, the only way to stop these intrusive thoughts (obsessions) is to “remedy” or “fix” the situation (compulsions). It is an urge to solve any problem that crosses your mind – or path. It’s assuming responsibility for others – on steroids.

It feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, because you’ve become a real-life superhero – preventing disasters and saving lives. This hyper-responsibility impacts every area of your life, because when a problem pops up, you feel the need to resolve it. If you don’t act or you try and fail, guilt and shame sit in – even if it was an impossible feat. Should you feel guilty and ashamed? No, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling that way.

Hyper-responsibility threatens to take over your entire life, controlling your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Understand that people with OCD are fearful and doubtful of almost everything

Is it possible to end this never-ending hyper-responsibility cycle? Yes.

You can stop feeling like you’re responsible for the world, but it will not be simple or easy. It involves confronting your fears and guilt and fighting your urge to “fix” the person or situation. Understand that this urge to “fix” every possible problem is a compulsion. So, if you can change the way you perceive (see) a situation, the urge to perform actions to “remedy” the ills of the world will lessen and hopefully, go away altogether. But, it will take work and help from a qualified mental health specialist (i.e. counselor, therapist, or psychologist).

Imagine what you can do once the obsessions and compulsions are gone. You’ll have more time to engage in the things that actually bring you joy. You’ll also have the ability to really help others by volunteering at domestic violence, animal, or homelessness shelter, helping a friend work through personal, social, or work issues, spending time with the elderly, donating your time to a charity, etc. There is so much good you can do once you get your OCD under control.

You can’t make the world a better place until you realize that you are not solely responsible for everyone’s safety and happiness.

https://impulsetherapy.com/hyper-responsibility-ocd-what-does-it-all-mean/

This is my life/ mind everyday and I hate it. I lose hours to it i changed a diet once for it that went badly. I just want the bad feelings to go away

My thing.. As a kid i tapped Jesus pic three times bec if i didn't my parents would die

I would have bad thoughts or curse out ny folks in my head felt guilty and wrote em to my parents.

As s young adult i wanted to tell store people i ate grapes as a kid without paying for em or chocolate mints from a cracker barrel or a cop about checking out a abandoned house. Any small crime the itch to tell was loud

It got worse

My thing for a while was china has concentration camps and child labor don't buy from china don't buy from stores that sell stuff from china or feel bad when you do because that means you support child labor. Don't buy from companies that profit from child labor . This was impossible its like every store and every company at some point. I stopped using crayola for like a year they're toys are from china

Farming industry has abuse issues my brain just buy meat from stores you trust only eat meat from stores you trust. ended after a gallbladder attack

Now its about the pedo guy from ren x stimpy i have to know everything he worked on and his workers to never watch anything from em .

or how do i know if any cartoon is clean and made by good people maybe everyone sucks you don't know you need to know.

My brain is all about wanting to know or wanting to tell others the negative bullshit i know or I'm human garbage if i don't it's an itch but telling people never ever helps in the end

. some days its manageable others is not and when my ocd fixation leaves it opens a new one every time.

It just it sucks I'm so stressed

#ocd

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laufire · 4 years

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The 100 7x01

I spoiled myself to hell and back before watching the episode (that’s how I’m planning to watch this entire season, ngl), and I was a little skeptical about certain things I’d seen in the tags. Namely people going about Raven “making up” to Clarke, apologizing to her for s6, being “dragged” by Murphy or whatever. After watching the episode? I’m ASTONISHED at how little is enough for some stans LMFAO. Raven didn’t do any of those things?? The “I’m sorry” was about putting her foot in her mouth by saying “mothers and daughters” in front of Clarke, being friendly with her was about sharing grief and managing Sanctum’s problem and never framed as “making up for her behavior” (there was ZERO condemnation about Raven in s6), Murphy’s “Miss Morality” was immediately counteracted by her answer... It was literally a bone thrown their way after all their complaints so they’d interpret it as they wanted to and shut up, and it was a terrible bone at that. Seeing it made me feel better about the supposed ~spoilers about Raven’s s7 plot tbh. That even things that can be interpreted as they are doing are going to come across differently on screen.

Once that’s out of the way: I loved the rest of Raven’s part in the episode, with her telling Memori to step up as Primes to get Sanctum under control, bragging about it, going around strateging about their compound, BEING RIGHT ABOUT SHEIDHEDA, casually joking about A.L.I.E., etc. And god, I have missed her classic look so, so much. I was mesmerized by her this whole episode. That James Wonkru/Skaikru dude competed for Most Relatable Character on the show when he saw her and said “thank god!” xDD

Speaking off, Memori as con-artists/Fake Gods was amazing LMAO. Especially Emori doing research by reading Kaylee’s journal! My girl. LOL at her joy about living in a palace (shame Clarke had to screw that up lol). And look, if Sanctum is going to be weirded out about two supposed gods committing “incest”, they should’ve read the fine print in their “cult followers” contract, okay xD. I’m not all there with Murphy’s “guilt” plot (it’s just repetitive and masturbatory af), so I hope he gets something else to do soon. Preferably while getting eye-liner back, just sayin’ (after watching a couple of Richard Harmon’s scenes in Van Helsing I’ve decided that styling department should go to The 100 and dress him up all the time, btw).

The “Bellamy disappears and Echo & co go after him” was a very small plot within the episode. I loved Echo’s part --I’ve seen how people are interpreting her hallucination and rolling my eyes, but I liked it. Here for Echo shooting Roan as a placeholder for her insecurities xD. She also proved once again what a great strategist she is (figuring out the mysterious attackers non-lethal intentions and how to neutralize them, overcoming the hallucination, etc.) and how things would just be better with her leading, just saying :P (I really hope the “without someone to follow, who are you?” line is leading up to that). I’m also very glad that Russell destroyed Priya’s drive right away --that ought to kill that godawful “theory”, right?? LOL.

I don’t know how I feel about Hope yet (other than being bored af by how often this name pops up ugh) but there were a few moments where I could see Diyoza in her (now I want McCreary xDD). I want either confirmed or plausible Diyoza/Octavia out of this co-parenting storyline, btw xD. And I already liked Gabriel just fine from last season, but seeing him in the middle of an attack, in what seemed to be immediate danger to his life, and still focused on how ~fascinating the anomaly is was hilarious and made me like him even more. I like those types okay xD. I now want him and Raven to talk about the anomaly & weird science (oh look, new rarepair the fandom might annoy me convenience shipping smh).

Another highlight (and contestant to most relatable character) was Indra avoiding awkward family talk by focusing on her soup xD. She was gr10 this episode. Please @ show give Adina Porter more material this season.

I’ve seen speculation about Clarke and Gaia getting together and I don’t know how I feel about it. I definitely see where the speculation comes from, between the co-parenting Madi, Clarke being so grateful to her, the ~lingering soft looks, Clarke explicitly dismissing Clarke/Lexa in front of her (“seems like another world”)... And on the one hand, it’d be SUCH a calculated strike from the writers part that I am almost in awe of it. OTOH... I like Gaia xD. I don’t want her to become Clarke’s supporting partner, especially with all the implications that might come from it. On a third hand, by pursuing Gaia, Clarke would show the best taste she’s had so far in the show LMAO (I’m not counting Niylah here, because Clarke never deigned to treat her as anything but a safety net, lbr).

Is this show really saying that Clarke never asked Madi about her bio-parents LMFAO. Between this and the shock collar, Madi really drew the short straw, huh? At least she now has a cute dog and comfy clothes.

So Sheidheda is now in Russell’s body (kinky. Especially with him feeling the need to mention he prefers the current over the original one lol). Okay. Was he airdropped on him?? LMAO. Honestly I only care about this in so far as I can keep calling the character Something Something Chris Argent and because I like the actor xD. Anyway, he’s probably going to have a field day, between how easy it was for him to fool Clarke and how a sizeable part of Sanctum will go to the end of the Earth for “him”.

I hate how stereotypically Eligius’ prisoners are written tbh. In any case, they’re right: if they’re building the compound, they better get to be a part of it, just saying (the implications about prison labor in all this storyline back from s5 itself that the show is likely just going to ignore smh).

“Who knew putting a broken society back together would be hard work”. Like I always say with Sanctum-cult related nonsense: where’s Blodreina when you need her xDD. Next episode is called “The Garden” and the synopsis references “Hope’s mysterious past”, so hopefully it’ll be about Diyoza and Octavia. It seems they got scenes from early on for the promo so it’s probably where the “WHY AREN’T WE ENOUGH?” romantic-coded as fuck line comes from LOL. BTW, the Hope & Octavia hallucination? Gave me so many Aurora-Octavia feels omg.

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elliemarchetti · 4 years

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Our First Comforting Kiss

Previous parts

Words: 1778

Hermione ran as fast as she could. When Harry and Ron had returned earlier than expected from Quidditch practice and told her that they had to suspend them because Fred, George and Katie were in the infirmary, she hadn’t even let them finish the sentence and hurried to the large door of knurled glass. She had thrown it open with ardor, and perhaps a little too dramatically, with Madam Pomfrey’s extreme indignation, but she had no time for her complaints, so she apologized and ran her eyes over the beds, all empty except for one, on which Katie Bell sat with her back resting on three large white pillows, still wearing her uniform soaked in blood. Next to her, one on each side, were Angelina and Alicia, and all three were watching her.

“I told them to shut up…” muttered the Gryffindor Quidditch team captain, but it was evident that her interest pleased all three: since this school year began, they never had the chance to spend much time together and Hermione missed her friends just as much as they seemed to miss her.

“Can I know what happened?” she asked, taking a chair for herself. She could’ve also set on a nearby bed since she wasn't going to stay long but she knew Madam Pomfrey hated it and she had no intention of getting everyone thrown out just because she wanted to save about ten seconds.

“Our boyfriends happened!” Angelina exclaimed, exasperated. “You know they’re testing the cure for one of their jokes, right? Ron inadvertently hit Katie and her nose started to bleed so Fred gave what he thought was the antidote for their bloody whatever but he must’ve gave her the wrong thing since the situation got worse and they had to bring her here.”

From the expression of pure horror on Hermione’s face, Katie had to understand she was about to murder her boyfriend since she hurriedly told her that it stopped quickly once she told Madam Pomfrey what happened.

“Things like this happens a lot when you play Quidditch,” she explained “and now I’m just tired, but it’s normal after losing all that blood.”

"I should have sent you to the infirmary earlier..." murmured Angelina, but Katie took her hand, as to say everything was fine. It was evident that guilt was weighing on her friend more than she wanted to admit and Hermione wasn’t sure she was cut to be captain but she didn’t said it aloud.

“What matters is you’re feeling better but don’t worry, Fred and George will no longer be able to sell that sort of things,” she said resolutely, taking her leave, and as fast as she entered the infirmary she left in search of her boyfriend. She was really angry and the more she didn’t find him the more she had the distinct impression he was avoiding her, frightened by her anger, but she was sure that after what had happened he would’ve understood and would’ve stopped, at least with that article.

“Can I know where your brother is?” asked Hermione to George, when she found him and Lee Jordan in the Common Room. They winced, they mustn’t have heard her coming, even if she felt like she made a lot of noise while wandering like an avenging ghost, frizzy hair, burning eyes and everything else, through the whole school. Even if George wanted to give her the answer, something he was hiding caught her attention more. Quick as lightning, she snatched the pills from his hand. They were purple, soggy, more like gelatin capsules in which a purple liquid spun inside, wrapping on itself in swirls of different color intensities.

“You’re doing more of this crap after what happened today?” she snapped, and a couple of first-year students ran away, leaving the three of them alone, although she was sure that a small audience would soon gather: she knew there was betting on when she was going to lose her temper on this issue and at the moment she was getting very close to it, so much so that she was close to throwing their labors into the flames that crackled cheerfully and unsuspectingly in the fireplace but she stopped just in time, remembering the faces the twins made when Mrs. Weasley did the exact same thing. She too, just like them, hated her for not understanding them, for continuing to compare them to their "best" brothers all the time, for making them feel like failures when it took dedication and talent to create those things, it didn't matter how dangerous they seemed at first, so, before she could transform into what she most deeply, even against her own will, despised, she took a long and deep breath and waited for George to give her a plausible answer.

"After what happened to Katie we felt guilty, so we tried to fix the mixture, to show her we didn’t meant any harm and we’re capable of doing something good, and Fred, as always, wanted to try the new dosage first. The antidote worked but after a couple of minutes he turned pale and he said he felt weak, so he went to the infirmary.”

Anger returned, perhaps even more than before, but this time it wasn't only toward the twins: the wizarding world had a lot of merits and she wouldn’t have been able to list them all even if she had wanted to, but it also had countless defects, many of which were based on the fact that magic could control things whose functioning wasn’t understood, and this was because nobody ad Hogwarts, or at any other wizarding school, as she learned the previous year, had any basis on Muggle subjects such as science or medicine since it was considered less important because magic would solve everything, until they reached the point where it couldn’t, and by now the understanding of matters that weren’t purely magical was too distant to be able to fill the void without having to completely review an entire system. She would change things, she was sure she could, but first she had to solve that hitch.

“And you haven’t accompanied him? Do you realize how dangerous what you’re doing can be? Among the Muggles there are people who have to graduate and constantly keep studying to decide how much tranexamic acid put in pills for anti-hemorrhagic therapies and you just try it on yourself, and I could even accept it, if only you were properly informed. Do you know your hematocrit level? If it’s too high and he took an exaggerated antidote he could have a cerebral hemorrhage, and even if his values were normal and you altered it too suddenly, he may have thrombi running in his veins right now. Do you know what they cause? Obviously you don't know, because you are only children and in this damned place those who are only children face death every year but it’s considered a shame to have just one basic anatomy manual in the library!” she shouted. She didn’t care if someone heard her, and if they wanted to repeat what she said to Umbridge, let them did it: she had managed so silence her once but she was in class and she was in a position of power while here, among people her age, the advantage was hers.

"Make these things disappear by my return, or I swear you will be expelled because of me and I don't care how much your mother's heart would break," she hissed, giving George back the pills she had in her hand to then turn her back on them and going out of the portrait hole with a growing sense of panic in her chest. The truth was she had tried to look for him in all the places where she had expected him to be but the castle was huge and he could’ve been anywhere, so she had nothing left but a localization spell. She didn’t like to violate other people’s privacy like that and normally, if he simply had wanted to avoid her, she would’ve let him do it, at least for a while, to let him macerate in his guilt, but now the situation was more serious and she had no time to lose in petty fights: once she had ascertained he was fine and if he wanted her to, she would go away. The spell wasn’t simple and she needed something that belonged to him, which fortunately she always carried with her: the first letter he had written to her, the one with which he had first invited her to the Quidditch World Cup. It seemed like a century had passed from their almost first kiss, and many things had changed, but even if it seemed impossible, it was only a little more than a year ago. She took the parchment, folded in four, out of her pocked and pronounced the spell that made it hover midair and began to advance, at first slower, then faster and faster, so much so that Hermione almost struggled to keep up with it. She walked briskly for a while, in a corridor she never saw, until the letter suddenly stopped in front of a wall and with a last tremor it fell to the ground. Technically it meant that she had found what she was looking for but it couldn’t be since not only nobody was there but she was in front of the literal nothing! A cry of frustration escaped her lips and she was ready to go straight to the library, to check if she had done everything right, when Fred’s voice called her in a partly perplexed, partly worried tone. He looked so tired that all the anger and the question disappeared, replaced only by relief that he was alive and well and she felt warm tears prick her eyes when he held her in his arms.

“What’s up?” he asked, but there were so many things she wanted to tell him that she shook her head and kissed him lightly. At first he returned, but then he leaned his forehead on hers and repeated the question, so she quickly summarized the events.

“I was really afraid,” she conclude, sniffling.

“I could never leave you, not knowing I’m leaving you here to cry my loss,” he replied with a half-smile, and then kissed her again, this time longer, and despite the joke, he put the same meaning in every comforting gesture, from cupping her face to stroking her hair, and there was no need for words for her to understand that he had no intention of making her worry again.

#first kiss series #fremione #hermione granger #fred weasley #george weasley #harry potter #ron weasley #angelina johnson #katie bell #alicia spinnet #lee jordan #georgelina

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hyperionswrath--archived · 4 years

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@onepartbrave

If there was one thing that had finally gotten through Squall’s head that night, it was that Seifer genuinely seemed not angry with him. Despite the fiasco the previous night, despite the unwarranted trip down memory lane, despite his frosty nature that had only warmed due to inhaling too much drink. The blond was still amicable, considerate and bizarrely accepting of all Squall’s current problems and flaws digging out of the technical woodwork. Yeah, he’d just been called a constant pain in the ass but the tone infusing the words suggested nothing but camaraderie backing them. No vexation. No resentment. Just… comity.

Those facts eased a huge chunk of Squall’s stress away. Shoulders sagging slightly from the sudden weightless feel of being almost tension free, he pondered on what that implied next. Would they become friends, if only for the drunken night? Even if they weren’t, his unspoken trust in Seifer was starting to show. Considering over the last month alone, he’d allowed none to come near him, let alone take his hand. Here the man had held his numerous times and Squall hadn’t even decked him for touching—

No. Nope, we’re not going there. It was an accident, don’t overthink this for Hyne’s sake.

Eyebrows lowering into yet another frown, this time directed at his inner thoughts, Squall successfully banished them to the recesses of his mind and concentrated on the now. Like—how close the blond was. Sitting next to him, he predicted if he shifted his left knee a smidgen, it’d bump Seifer’s. Why was he so close? When had he gotten so? Had he really been so deep in thought he completely missed what occurred in reality?

Swallowing down what felt like a knot of trepidation forming in his throat, it feeling less ‘bad’ anxious and more ‘puzzled’ anxious, the entire night was becoming a far cry from the picture he’d had in mind. Previously, he thought they’d drink, eat, sass each other and retire to not see one another again. Now… they were still here, still hanging out, and had plans for tomorrow. I—I’m… Unable to finish the thought, he relaxed back against the rear of the seat, frown softening.

Should he feel uncomfortable? It wasn’t like they hadn’t had close proximity before; sparring ensured that, but this was different, new. New worried him but for a reason that consistently eluded him. True clarity was becoming a drawn-out battle and he’d always been better at the quick-paced, adrenaline fuelled altercations instead of a marathon skirmish. Sighing softly, he allowed his head to loll back against the squishy, warm backrest. …That shouldn’t be warm since they’d vacated their seat. Not daring to turn his head obviously, while Seifer made short work of ordering their water and some bread, he flicked a sneaky glance behind him—to see the blond’s arm present. Almost… around him?

Wha…?

Comprehension fleeting, Squall’s head turned to face forward and, with dawning realisation of horror, felt his face heighten a few degrees in natural warmth. He was blushing like a goddamned idiot and there was no way Seifer’s perceptive glare wouldn’t pick up on it. Shit. What’d I do? Do I leave? Move? Shove him away? Stay still and pretend I don’t know? Fuck—

Inherent ranting cut short by Seifer’s slurred baritone registering. Embarrassingly, clouded grey-blues shot up to try and meet vibrant greens. His mission failed as Seifer was busy thanking the waitress and looking all weird in the dim lighting and— Oh my god, I will stab myself if it makes me stop thinking.

“I—what?” he asked feebly, missing the man’s question entirely as his whirlwind of a mind had been occupied. With him. Ugh. “The… bread? Wa’ that it? S’good lookin’.”

Zipping an imaginary line over his dumb mouth, Squall sat slightly more forward and reached for the aforementioned bread. Breaking a piece off, he guided it to his mouth and took a generous bite out of it. Instant gratification overcame his tastebuds and (finally) his conscience silenced to appreciate the tasty morsel. Swallowing the bite after chewing, he quietly confessed, “Damn, t’is good,” before resuming his previous task, albeit with more enthusiasm.

When finished that portion, Squall grabbed a whole other small loaf to nibble on, mindful there was enough left for Seifer. His worries were amiss as many more little loaves remained. Satisfied with his finding, he shimmied back in his seat, and, in his blissful state of mind of not worrying, all caution was thrown to the wind. Reclining back as he went, he instinctively pressed closer to the searing warmth on his left side, relaxing honestly for the first time in weeks. While he worked on consuming his latest bready goodness, he observed the pub settings with muted interest, wholly uncaring he was essentially using Seifer as a leaning post.

…Warm.

Truth be told, there was an ever-burning fury somewhere deep inside of the tall blond, constantly burning and eating away at him. It had been there his whole life but had started blazing higher, burning fiercer during and after the war. Yet it wasn't directed at Squall. Not anymore, at least. While he had been the Sorceresses Knight, there was wrath in his every fiber, not his own entirely, clouding his mind and judgment. After the war, there had been seething anger about the fact that Squall had not only bested him inside the Lunatic Pandora, but also left him there to die. But that grudge wasn't upheld for long, for once he was able to reflect on everything that had transpired, the act seemed more than plausible. There hadn't been much humanity left in him when the witch pulled his strings and made him believe sacrificing Rinoa would be the right thing to do. The only right thing.

So, no, he harbored no ill feelings for the man anymore who in his mind had far more reason and justification to hate him instead. But so far, except for their first encounter the night before, there seemed to be no ill-feeling at all between them and it felt both odd and relieving. Seifer had carried the shame, guilt and self-loathing with him for so many years, he would have never expected to be treated as friendly as he had been, all things considered. Sure, Squall was still his old self in some ways, but there were also other sides to him he had allowed the blond to see and for all that he knew, they were good changes.

What exactly all of this between them meant, he dared not think about. Granted, he had always been a man of action first, thoughts second, and right now he was willing to just let things happen as they did, not question anything. And if they never saw each other again after tonight (well, there were already plans in place for the next day though), then so be it. Still, a small voice in the back of his head dared to hope that this was a way to redeem himself, if only a little. Maybe that, too, was the reason he felt so protective of the younger one?

Happily chewing on his spoil, namely the goodness that was the potato wedges, thoughtful eyes following the retreating waitress, he only paused when he felt a slight bump against his right arm, making him glance to the side. The look on Squall's face was enough to make the tall blond chuckle lightly, pulling in his lower lip to bite on it though unable to completely wipe the grin from his face. He'd be a liar if he'd claim he didn't push the boundaries between them right now, and much against his better judgment too. What about the whole 'I can never touch him' vow he had taken? But then again, the reaction this small brush of head against arm had caused was entertaining enough to throw at least part of that determination out the window. After all, he was still the smug shit of the town, right?

Even more intriguing, however, was the observation he now made. Squall blushed. And not just a bit. Most interesting. He'd probably be pushing his luck by now but before he could even stop himself, his hand had shifted just so, allowing his thumb to briefly flick over the now heated skin of Squall's neck, brushing at the soft brown strands there. Dangerous as this game may be, he had to admit it thrilled him, and whatever was able to do that to him usually flicked the switch of being reasonable (well, as much as he was able to, anyway), and just go all in. And right now, he was most curious what kind of reactions he could provoke and, most importantly, how much deeper this blush could get.

Apparently, it was enough to distract the brunet from what he had asked, flustering the guy enough to give some entirely unrelated answer which only served to tug on Seifer's lips more, creating a lopsided smirk. "Very." he hummed in agreement, not even sparing the damn bread one single glance. Willing to let his teasing of an entirely different kind go for the time being, he busied himself with his water, glad for the chance to help to mellow his drunken state a little. He wanted his attention on full alert right now. Also, Squall was well advised to eat that much bread to help him along with the amount of alcohol in his system. It wouldn't magically sober him up but at least help a little, which had been the plan when he ordered it. On top of that, for some reason watching the other eat had some kind of fascinating appeal all of a sudden?

Emptying his glass, he placed it back on the table, releasing Squall from his observing stare as he leaned forward to snatch his own small loaf, chewing slowly while he mulled over the entirely unexpected development of events right there. More so even when he felt the smaller body sink against him, leaning on him. Looking down at the brown tuft of hair he hummed, half astonished, half content because he'd be damned if this hadn't been one of his ultimate teenage fantasies. Well, among others, but he'd be content to have this to remember in the future. Lingering in his position, his arm on the backrest still, he swallowed hard against a lump in his throat. Not the kind he had noticed a while ago when dark memories started rushing in. This was different. Better. "You good?", he heard himself murmur and only then noticed that somehow, he had leaned down, the tip of his nose not far away from brown hair, close enough that he could breathe the other in. Shit, what exactly was he even thinking here? Was he thinking at all?

#onepartbrave #.me while typing: seifer NO #.him: seifer YES #.there you have it #.you set him loose #.have fun with what you did #. xDD ahhhhh~

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agent-cupcake · 5 years

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Hello my little snickernut could you pls write something for Claude c:

I can’t give you the moon sweet Snickernut but I can give you Claude, and really, he’s all that matters

Unlike certain people who eyed Claude with distrust out of suspicion regarding the validity of his title, or those who doubted him for something as silly as being different, you had no real ill will towards the mysterious Riegan heir.

Not really.

It was normal to feel curious about such a secretive and interesting person, right? Claude was an enigma, one you had found yourself swept up in. Not because you cared too particularly about his character one way or another, but because it was a mystery. Not to mention the fact that you were nosy, had found yourself some extra free time, and he was behaving particularly suspiciously as of late. Still, you felt it was important to assert that you were not following him with nefarious intent. No, you were a scholar, always in the search of answers. Or something along those lines.

Besides, if Claude hadn’t wanted to be followed, he shouldn’t have looked so sneaky when he followed the professor up to the second floor. It was like he was begging you to see what he was up to.

The sweeping halls of the second floor were mostly quiet and empty, the grand doors to the archbishop’s chambers shut tight. You tread lightly as you approached the corner you had watched Claude disappear around, your ears straining for any stray footsteps or voices. Peeking around it, all you saw was an empty corridor with a dead end. Except for the door, covertly placed and painted so as to not disrupt the clean appearance of the walls.

A supply closet? Unless Claude had been taking magic lessons you were unaware of, that was the only place he could be hiding. Still, why would he be hiding? You approached the door warily, considering all of the things he could be doing. Some of them were more plausible than others. Unthinkingly, you reached out to grasp the handle, as if to test it.

The door didn’t have a lock.

You had a bad feeling deep in your gut. This wasn’t a great idea.

Unfortunately, you didn’t possess enough self control to leave your curiosity unfulfilled. You had to know what Claude was doing, and there was one simple way to find out. Just to satiate your curiosity a little.

So you opened the door as quietly as you could, peering into the tiny crack of an opening. It was a closet, like you thought. Cleaning supplies and other junk filled the small, dusty space. Although it was dark, enough light came in from a grated panel on the back wall for you to see the most interesting aspect of the otherwise inconspicuous closet. That is, a uniformed back, belonging to someone standing on a stool. If the messy hair weren’t enough, the golden cape thrown across his shoulder was all you needed to identify who it was. Claude was facing the wall, baffling you completely until you heard a voice coming from the vent-like opening he was eye level with, the one that allowed in enough light for you to see him in the first place.

Archbishop Rhea’s voice.

Suddenly, it all made sense. His behavior, his sneaking, this closet. Her chamber was on the other side of the wall Claude was looking through. The chamber in which the professor had disappeared into only minutes before he followed. He was spying on their private meeting.

From your position, you couldn’t make out what was being said exactly, only that it was definitely Rhea and Seteth’s voices. If you wanted to hear them clearly, you would have had to get up to where Claude was standing, but that would clue him into your own spying ways.

It was best to retreat and consider what to do with this revelation.

Ideally, at least, that would have been the best option.

Unfortunately, you didn’t account for that being the moment the meeting ended, nor did you react before Claude became aware that he was being watched. Tension shifted in the dusty air, his head whipping around to find you peeking through the crack in the door.

And, graceful under pressure as ever, you slammed it shut.

Loudly.

With as much reverb as the monastery was capable of.

“Huh? What was that?” Seteth’s voice was sharp, coming from just around the corner where the chamber doors were. His voice was loud, but his footsteps were louder. “I thought I had cleared-”

The closet door reopened, and you didn’t hesitate in throwing yourself at the confused guy who stood inside, ignoring Claude’s disgruntled confusion. Seteth’s voice dulled when you pulled the door shut as quietly as possible.

“What are you doing here?” Claude asked in a stage whisper. While you didn’t have a very good answer to that, you did know for a fact that you were both going to get caught unless one of you suddenly learned Warp. But you’d never been much for magic, and Claude’s best trick was managing to disappear when he had an unfavorable chore schedule.

That left only one thing.

Improvisation.

“I’m really sorry about this,” you whispered apologetically, steeling yourself for what you intended to do.

Claude’s ‘Excuse me?’ was cut off almost entirely by the way you grabbed the front of his uniform, pulling him down so you could put your lips on his. It was awkward, the angle wrong and causing you to land on the side of his mouth. But it wasn’t a real kiss, so it wasn’t like you had the luxury of embarrassment. Instead you brought your hands up to messy his hair, not that it really needed it, tilting your head and gasping as if caught in the very height of pleasure. To your infinite relief, Claude played along after only a moment of stiffness.

It wasn’t a real kiss. When you ran your tongue along his bottom lip, it was to fill the role. When he responded by biting your lip, the zing of heat in your stomach and genuine groan was from a feeling of surprise, not pleasure. It wasn’t a real kiss. But it wasn’t a bad one, either.

The door opened, ending the short lived spell. Still, you didn’t break away from Claude. If anything, you knew you were overacting it. Luckily, so was he. Although you hadn’t risked looking yet, you could feel Seteth’s awkwardness at the display. He cleared his throat loudly twice before you finally responded, feigning confused bleariness before acting in faux panic, pushing Claude away with a nearly violent shove and wiping your mouth quickly, regarding Seteth with wide eyes and panting breath. Hopefully, your guilt would read as shame.

“Come out of there,” Seteth demanded, opening the door wide enough for the both of you to enter the hall. You suppressed the feeling of relief that he shut the door without further investigation into the closet’s unique qualities. It wasn’t as if you had been the one spying, and it seemed like you were going to be in a lot of trouble anyway. Burned again by your pursuit of knowledge. The world was truly unfair.

“What is the meaning of this?” Seteth asked, crossing his arms. He was mad. Very mad.

“We… We were studying and I accidentally spilled some ink, so Claude offered to help me find something to clean it up with,” you said. A quick lie, and not your best, but it was all you could think of. Besides, it fit in with the theme of being a girl dumb enough to get caught kissing a boy in a supply closet. Not that you could really claim intellectual superiority at this point.

“Unfortunately, it was kinda hard to find anything in that dark. Guess we got a little mixed up,” Claude added. If you weren’t terrified of Seteth, you might have laughed at that.

“I see,” Seteth said, unamused. “Finding you here would have nothing to do with the private meeting between the professor, Archbishop, and I, would it?”

“Why would it?” you asked, relaxing your face against the wide eyed believe me expression you knew would give you away.

“Sorry, we might have been a little distracted,” Claude said. “I’m sure you know how it goes, Seteth. Young love and all that. Er… You were young once, weren’t you?”

Seteth’s jaw tightened.

“This type of inappropriate conduct is unacceptable,” he said. “If I see the two of you engaging in such public depravity again in the future, I’ll have no choice but to discipline you.”

“Technically, we weren’t in public,” Claude said. He wasn’t helping.

“Unfortunately I am too busy today, so I’ll allow you to go with a warning,” Seteth continued, as if he hadn’t heard Claude. “Consider yourself lucky.”

He stepped aside, motioning you through. Not having to be told twice, you rushed to comply, making your way towards the main hall and stairwell. As you passed, you couldn’t help but notice that Rhea’s chambers were open. Luckily, the professor was nowhere to be seen, the last thing you wanted was that disapproving stare.

“One last thing,” Seteth called before you began your way down the steps and out of his sight. “I’d like to note that I’m very disappointed in you for behaving in such a manner. You would do well to think more carefully about how you conduct yourself in the future. I recommend you pray to the Goddess for forgiveness and guidance.”

Although you weren’t necessarily at fault for the sin he was accusing you of, Seteth still had the wonderful knack to make you feel guilty. You supposed the subdued and awkward nod you managed in response was in-character, at least.

“And you Claude…” Seteth’s piercing green eyes switched to the man behind you. “Tread carefully.” Taking those unnerving words to mean that was all, you gratefully began your descent down the steps to the ground floor.

“Sheesh, ominous much?” Claude grumbled, taking the steps right behind you.

No kidding. The man scared you almost as much as the Death Knight did, at least the worst thing the Death Knight could do was kill you. In an offhand manner, you deeply feared for anybody who would one day fall in love with Flayn.

That frantic thought left you once your feet reached the bottom of the stairs and you were free. Relatively safe, you allowed yourself to deflate a bit. The forced calm you had managed to keep up in the moment fled, leaving your shoulders to slouch and lungs to empty of all the air you’d been holding. Your companion didn’t seem to need the same moment of reprieve after nearly being caught, endlessly casual in posture and expression.

“Wo-ow,” Claude said, drawing out the word, already on the move. Seemingly without a care in the world, he put his arms up and folded them behind his head as he left the hall towards the classroom block, moving without any of the jittery excess of nerves you still had. “I didn’t think you had it in you, but that was really great.”

You flushed at hearing the almost-praise. It had a duel edge, his surprise that someone like you would be capable of lying like that feeling both approving and condescending. Still, there was no point in dwelling on it. It was better than the anger you undoubtedly deserved, at least.

Not knowing what else to do, you hurried to catch up beside Claude as the two of you entered the late day sunshine and mostly empty lawn area outside the homeroom building. There were some students scattered about, but they paid you no mind.

“Don’t mention it,” you responded as normally as you could, not wanting to lose your cool in front of Claude. Or anyone, for that matter. Unfortunately, your body didn’t get the memo, and adrenaline was already catching up to your pounding heart, making your fingers tremble slightly and your movements a bit stilted. It took effort on your part to not look up at the second story windows, to keep your gait normal as the two of you walked.

“No, really,” Claude said, tipping his head towards you so you could see the devious twist of a smirk on his lips, “Your technique is fantastic. Do you practice?”

“Practice?” you asked, frowning. What did he mean by technique? Was there a special way to lie you were unaware of?

“Yeah, like with a pillow or something?”

His expression did nothing to clear your confusion. Baffled, you had no response.

“Unless you have a secret boyfriend you didn’t tell any of us about. I guess that would explain it. You young’un’s are moving so fast these days.”

Oh.

Embarrassed displeasure made you wince as you finally understood what he was talking about. In all of the excitement, you’d nearly forgotten about that. Or, at least, you could have put off remembering kissing him until you were alone.

“I’ll take that expression as a yes.” He paused, eyes twinkling mischievously despite the fairly serious tone. “Oh… Is he gonna be jealous? I mean, it was a pretty passionate kiss.”

“Claude.”

“Still, I wouldn’t want to become a rift in the relationship. I can let this mystery man know under no uncertain terms that it was a kiss with a noble, non-romantic cause.”

“Claude.”

“Oh, and don’t worry. I won’t mention your uncanny ability to evoke deeply stirring emotions with just a mere touch… Or that thing you did with your tongue-”

“Claude!” you finally cried, cutting him off with a voice just a touch too loud. It made other people look at you, stopped at the pillar outside the Golden Deer classroom. “First of all, you’re barely a month older than me. Second, it.. It was just pretend. I couldn’t think of anything else,” you told him, trying to save face as best you could, looking away from his grin with hot cheeks and a heart pounding for a reason entirely different than intimidating old men. Intimidating young men, this time. And regret.

“Sure, sure,” Claude agreed easily. “A pretty convenient excuse if you ask me. But, you know that you didn’t have to go through all the trouble of setting up a situation like that, you could have just asked. Or maybe you like the excitement of danger…”

“I don’t suppose I can ask you to just forget that it happened?” you interrupted him to ask. “As repayment for saving you in the first place.”

“Need I remind you that it was your fault I needed saving in the first place?” Claude responded, “I’m afraid I’ll never be able to forget a kiss like that, although I’m sure it suits both of us to not mention what happened to anybody else, wouldn’t you say?” His expression was more serious with that question, imparting something far more solid than the teasing. Of course he wouldn’t want anybody to know that he was spying on the Archbishop’s private meetings.

“That’s true,” you agreed slowly. He grinned.

“See? It all works out.”

“That’s.. Well, fine, I guess.” You knew there was no point in arguing further. Besides, he had reminded you of something far more important than your embarrassment. Still, you hesitated, just for a moment. Curiosity had burned you before. As in, only minutes ago. Unfortunately, impulse control was clearly not your strong suit. “Why were you spying on them to begin with?”

Tension followed your question, as did silence. Claude looked at you in a far different way than before, his eyes piercing and calculating. The stark difference between his easy smile and this serious look was enough to give you whiplash.

Ultimately, however, he was saved.

“Claude?” a familiar voice suddenly broke through the air. “There you are! We have work duty today. Geez, you’re such a slacker!” Hilda, rounding the corner with her twintails swinging and skirt swishing, stomped towards the both of you. Other students practically dove out of her way and, for a second, you were sure you saw a trace of fear in Claude’s expression too. Everyone cowered before Hilda’s outraged fury, it was honestly impressive to see. But you didn’t blame them.

“Sorry, I got a little distracted-” he began to explain, his serious mood completely dropped in favor of the lighter persona you knew well.

“That’s no excuse!” Hilda stopped in front of him with a final stomp, hands on her hips and wearing an expression that promised a storm. That vanished when, for a second, she turned towards you with a smile and sweet voice, “Hello! Sorry, I’ll just be stealing him for a bit, I hope that’s okay.”

“Stealing me…” Claude repeated doubtfully. His eyes flicked towards you, and you could see the moment he realized that she was giving him an out. That moment was quickly followed by his jumping head on into the charade, “Right! We’re on sky watch, I believe? Very important stuff. Sorry to leave so abruptly, but I’m afraid it really just can’t be avoided.”

“That’s right,” Hilda agreed, nodding seriously.

“It really is a shame, though,” Claude said regretfully, the tone at odds with the sparkling mischief in his eyes. “I really enjoyed our time together. What we shared was… Well, I wouldn’t want to embarrass you by mentioning it in front of our friend here. Suffice to say, I’d love to pick up where we left off some time. Preferably in a place where we won’t get caught again, eh?” Claude capped off his implication-laiden question with a wink, just to add insult to injury.

The message was received, both in your hot cheeks and Hilda’s dropped jaw. He smiled a self satisfied smile and brushed past Hilda.

“Now let’s go, I wouldn’t want to keep the skies waiting.”

“Sure…” Hilda said, her eyes unabashedly fixed on you as his words processed in her mind. The idea of trying to convince her that Claude was making it out to be something it wasn’t crossed your mind, but you knew that would only further incriminate you. After a moment too long, she snapped out of it and tore her gaze away, rushing after him with a call for him to wait for her.

They left you rooted to the spot, cheeks burning in embarrassment and anger, fists clenched at your side as you blustered with emotion, and dumbfounded by everything that had just happened. The more pressing and important matters regarding his spying habits and lying to Seteth somehow seemed unimportant compared to this new problem, or at least a lot more manageable. Whatever Hilda thought, soon the whole academy would probably think it, too.

And Claude couldn’t leave it at just that, either. No, before he turned the corner and disappeared from your vision altogether, he looked back at you with a wink and a smile, blowing you a cheeky kiss as a final farewell.

It made your lips burn.

Maybe you felt a little bit of that oh-so popular ill will towards the infamous Riegan heir, now. Regrettably, your curiosity had only gotten worse as a result.

#fe claude #claude x reader #claude von riegan x reader #fe claude x reader #my writing #fire emblem three houses #FE3H #w o o f

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s-j-ace · 5 years

Text

New Plan!

Characters: Shuichi Saihara, Ouma Kokichi

Words: 9,119

Summary:

Kokichi Ouma, leader of the mysterious group of thieves that go only by DICE, is going through the motions of orchestrating their biggest heist ever when an unexpected bump in the road changes everything. That bump in the road is a detective and his name is Shuichi Saihara.

Essentially the events of That’s the Thing About Airplanes from Kokichi’s POV

Read on AO3

Kokichi Ouma was ready to be bored out of his mind for the next eight hours as he boarded the flight behind his motley crew. He was trying to keep himself busy by being generally exasperated with them. They were supposed to be posing as different family units or strangers that didn’t know one another, but King was supposed to be Rook’s uncle and they were touching each other’s butts while handing the lady their boarding passes. Bishop and Hearts were practically leaning on each other like they were tired or whatever, but they were supposed to be total strangers. Maybe they could be rewritten as half siblings or a whirlwind romance or something? Ugh whatever.

Kokichi would normally kick their asses about this, but he’d already anticipated their horrid 2 AM acting skills. The lady taking boarding passes was a plant. Jack had wriggled herself in as a flight attendant three days ago. She was currently taking boarding passes because of an understaffing issue. An issue that may or may not have been of natural causes...

Anyway, she’d get on the flight and smuggle the tea on board. The heist plan didn’t really involve the plane at all, so this was kind of unnecessary, but god would he want that half-way to Paris hot tea party. Besides, he wasn’t really one to leave much to chance when it came to scheming. Although that characteristic was more out of habit than any sort of innate perfectionistic tendencies. He was a king of thinking on the fly, but nowadays he rarely ran amok in that court because he just so happened to also be just as much of a genius at premeditated mischief.

It was a good thing Jack had volunteered herself for the plant job. He’d call her the most competent of DICE at 2 AM if she hadn’t drawn a dick on his boarding pass while checking it.

“Wow, it’s almost like you’ve actually seen one, you virgin loser.” He had told her as he tucked the pass into his hoodie pocket.

She smiled at him like he had complimented her handwriting or something inane like that. “Thanks! I’ve been working on my portraits. My boss is a real inspiration in my art you know…”

“I’d love to meet him someday,” Kokichi replied congenially, “He sounds handsome and brilliant and like he should always be listened to.”

She gave a thoughtful humm, “Actually he’s kind of a prick.” She blew a raspberry at him.

He frowned. “Well that’s rude,” he commented with an offended tone, “And out of character.” He shifted to an angrier persona. "Do you want to ruin everything?" Maybe it wasn’t entirely persona, he was a little tired too after all.

“Relax boss,” Jack said, looking at the screen in front of her with all the boarding information, “It says here you’re the last passenger.”

To be honest Kokichi’s concern-o-meter for this heist was in the negatives. He was pretty much bored by how well thought out this plan was, but he felt like he had to make a point and he was rarely ever honest besides.

Kokichi huffed moodily. “Yeah sure, but what if that detective from the smithsonian, like, stole the security camera footage from this airport or something totally plausible like that.”

He was kind of planning this conversation out a couple steps ahead. He did that sometimes, when he was bored. She’d refute him by calling the detective a goody-two-shoes or something and he’d say something about caution and she’d dismiss him and then something would pop up later where he could say ‘I told you so’ and re-establish his authority. The same happened when Ace wanted to prove how buff he was by lifting the mammoth bones from the Smithsonian. They'd had to stash it insecurely and the police got to it before they could come back for it later. That was a big ‘I told you so’ moment and as a result no one questioned him on his plans for the Louvre this time around.

Weirdly enough, his conversation forecast did not come to pass this time around.

Jack frowned, looking at the screen. “Hey, what was that guy’s name again? The guy from the Smithsonian.”

Kokichi frowned. “What, the mammoth?”

“No, like, the detective.”

Kokichi squinted at her. He was an evil mastermind, he could recall the exact angle of every laser scanner in the Louvre, of course he could remember the name of some guy. Shuichi Saihara. The novice detective whose dumb friend had tripped that allarm the night of the Smithsonian heist. They’d only had three minutes to get out with the picture frames and hide the mammoth because of him. The detective had showed up at a couple heists and had gotten in the paper, but honestly the mammoth thing was a bit of a fluke. They really hadn’t had a lot of time to stash it. Overall not a big deal.

Which was why it was weird that happy-go-lucky Jack of all people was bringing him up.

“What about him?”

“He’s, like, on the flight I think.”

She showed him the screen and sure enough, Shuichi Saihara was sitting in economy class by the emergency exits. Well, it didn’t really say that on the screen, but given his seat number Kokichi could triangulate it from the diagram of the plane he had memorized. Not that he had really needed to that, but… wait… what if he did need to...

A light bulb went on in Kokichi’s head. In cartoons lightbulbs were just a little blink that meant a switch had flipped for a single eureka moment, but for Kokichi it was more like the real life current of electricity as all of the steps of a brand new heist plan tripped over each other to course through his mind. He forgot to be bored for a second as his brain was lit up with a new scheme and all the possible scenarios that could accompany it.

He had been missing this.

Something... unexpected.

Something... exciting.

Something... unnecessarily convoluted!

Jack took one look at his carefully not grinning face and groaned with exasperation. “Awww boss you ain’t changing the plan again are ya? You already wrote us like a 100 page novel about the first one…”

“Eh, fuck that plan.” Kokichi said doing some mental calculations, “Get me ten parachutes and see if Clubs has extra sleeping drugs I want you to put them in the passengers’ drinks. The strong stuff. Direct Queen towards the rooftop diagrams I shoved in his carry on. Tell me when it gets to be around 1:34 AM Paris time.”

She looked at him with annoyance at the sudden deluge of tasks. “Oh yeah, sure thing. And what are you going to do?”

He gave her his biggest, bestest, shit-eating-est grin. “Be myself, of course.”

Then he turned and boarded the plane, imagining and relishing in the weirded out look she was definitely giving him.

When he got to the entryway of the plane from the boarding hallway, he came upon Rook gossiping with one of the flight attendants. Kokichi heard something about a wedding and a honeymoon before Rook spotted him and excused themselves to find their seat.

“Good evening, sir.” The flight attendant said, still clearly coming off of the social high of talking about his personal happiness. Kokichi decided to slam him down from it, hard.

“It will now that I’m finally on the same damn plane as my husband.” He gave his best impression of a disgruntled everyman, which meant it was a great impression because his best was always great.

“R-right.” Ah yes, the security of making someone else feel socially awkward. Kokichi would make a great playground bully, that’s for sure. At least he was self aware. And putting his talents to good use! Bullying pseudo-law-enforcement was 100% valid according to all levels of morality.

As he walked down the aisle he noticed the rest of DICE ahead of him chattering like sparrows as they moved to the back of the plane. Originally they had planned to keep a low profile and have a pre-heist tea party before touching down in Paris, but now…

Kokichi spotted him, sure enough right by the emergency exits. He looked dead tired and about to doze off, so Kokichi took a second to make some quick observations he hadn’t gotten the chance to get on the night of the Smithsonian heist. The guy had this very detective-esque trench coat with lots of pockets, which was a shame because it meant that if Kokichi decided to pickpocket him he’d have trouble figuring out where his wallet was. Something that didn’t really fit Kokichi’s imaginings of a stereotypical detective, however was that the guy was around his own age in the mid twenties and didn’t seem like the grizzled gumshoe type at all. In fact he was kind of anti-grizzled. He had a boring pretty boy face like a model or something and instead of the full beard and square jaw Kokichi had half imagined any time the word “detective” came up in his mind’s eye he had eyeliner accentuating the only hair on his face and a very breakable looking face. Ok that was a very play ground bully thing to think. Except young people weren’t really as fun to bully as old people because they actually might be poor or emotionally insecure or something, which always made Kokichi feel a semblance of an emotion akin to guilt. But this guy was flying to Paris in the summer season and had been in America a couple weeks before, so fuck him basically. Didn’t he have a job or something?

Oh shit the guy was looking at him, how long had he been doing that?

Don't panic, analyze then act.

He seemed freaked. Probably because Kokichi had been staring at him for a couple seconds now.

He put on a menacingly friendly grin and slipped into the seat next to the detective. Not the one in front of him, or one of the ones in his completely empty row, or even the aisle seat, literally the one right next to him. He put his elbow on the armrest the detective had so kindly pulled down for him.

The guy still looked super freaked out, so Kokichi tried to shift his grin to the more congenial side of menacing.

“Hey, aren't you Shuichi Saihara?” He asked, extending his hand. He thought about coming up with a pseudonym but was too busy being delighted by the absolute terror on the detective’s face. “I'm your biiiggest fan.”

The guy shook his hand like it was the lever for his very own personal electric chair. Dramatic much?

It seemed to freak him out so Kokichi decided to run with the ‘biggest fan’ thread, chattering on, “I read aaall about that thing with the hairy elephant and the stupid ugly criminal you've been tracking.”

He would keep talking about the ironic impudence of this imaginary criminal but it really seemed like Saihara was having a dissociative episode while he was talking.

He frowned. That was kind of boring. “Hey are you like deaf or something?” That would be kind of extra boring because then Kokichi would be trying to bully a deaf dude and that would be lame. “Hey. Heyyyy. Earth to Shuichi Saihara.” Maybe he could thread some truth in here. “Geez I didn't expect you to be this boring in person…”

That seemed to get him.

Saihara shook his head like he was getting the dust out and stuttered out an "I-I-I'm sorry, what?"

Well maybe he had the soul of an old man, if not the looks of one, Kokichi thought to himself as he blithered on. “Have you been ignoring me? Not a very nice way to treat your biggest fans." He crossed his arms. "I, like, totally hate when heroes don't live up to your expectations."

Guy still looked half asleep… Maybe a change of scenery was in order…

Kokichi noticed the chatty flight attendant from earlier coming down the aisle. It was time to act on his earlier framework...

He said something like “You can make it up to me,” but honestly even he wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying anymore. That was the only warning he gave before reaching over the detective to break his chair. If he had stopped to think about it, he might have thought it was awkward, but it wasn’t like he had to care about what this guy thought. He was going to leave him on the plane and probably never see him again.

Kokichi held himself back from giggling when the detective toppled over backwards.

“Oh no!” He feigned surprise, “How could this happen?”

"What happens to be the problem here gentlemen?" The flight attendant asked right on cue.

Saihara was looking pretty dubious but also not that talkative so Kokichi thought about the right words to spin this.

Distract. You’re the threat here, Kokichi.

"What's the problem? You're asking me what the problem is?" He shifted his tone to that of a white soccer mom used to getting what she wants. "The problem, good sir, is that this Rusty bucket of bolts you call an airplane just tried to give my husband a concussion! I could sue for this, you know."

The flight attendant broke easy.

"I'm so, so sorry sir." He quibbled. "Here, we'll make it up to you. It's a long flight and we don't have many guests so I can upgrade you both to first class with no additional charge."

Kokichi gave a rather hearty harrumph. Not bad as far as harrumphs go.

"You better. Or my lawyer will be hearing about this."

Hah. If Kokichi tried to talk to a lawyer he’d probably get arrested. Small claims lawyers were like cops but with even less spine and more capitalistic tendencies in his book.

The flight attendant didn’t seem to care about the rot of society, though, and tarried forth to first class. Saihara hadn’t quite caught on yet, so Kokichi grabbed his arm. For some reason he didn’t expect the detective to be so draggable. Detectives just didn’t seem that way. Like they could be dragged, but Saihara seemed too tired and confused to not be dragged. Thrilling! Boring. Okay okay don’t get ahead of the horses here. Horses? Uh.

First class was more Kokichi’s style. He let Saihara shuffle into the window seat so he’d be able to keep a look out for Jack’s signals in the aisle.

"Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you." The flight attendant said as Kokichi sat down.

Ugh it’s like he actually cared about his job or something. Being in customer service must be insufferable.

Kokichi didn’t actually want to harrass this asshole when there was a perfectly good fake cop right next to him, so he replied with an apologetic smile, “Of course. Ah, I'm so rry for causing so much trouble, it's just the honeymoon you see and everything just has to be perfect, you know?”

"No, it's quite alright, I understand completely." The flight attendant seemed to relax a little, “I went through the same trouble with my husband. Really let me know if I can help you at all.”

Droll. “Thanks sooo much!" he intoned gratefully. He turned to Saihara who still looked like he was in shock. "Wasn't he just the nicest Shuichi?"

Saihara blinked at him. "... If you had enough money to hire a lawyer that could sue an airline so frivolously then you would've already been in first class."

Hey! That sounded like something a detective would say!

"I'm just stingy." Hah. Beat that logic. Nice one Kokichi.

Saihara squinted like he was about to bless Ouma with another brilliant deduction.

"... Did you sit next to me so you could convince that gay flight attendant to put you in first class?"

Wow!!! He was thinking!!! He was totally wrong but at least he was trying.

"I can't believe you figured it out!" Kokichi did his best impression of a widow revealing a dark secret on prime time television. "It's true…Detective Saihara I was lying about being married to you the whole time. I thought you knew..."

"Wha- of course I knew that!" Saihara sputtered.

"Oh! How can you ever forgive me?" The flight attendant was definitely out of range by now so this seemed like a good time for some melodramatic tears. "Waah!"

"H-hey! Stop that." Wow what a bad detective. Is that how you comfort people? Sad.

Kokichi was about to weep even more for the loss of chivalry when the asshole shoved something at him. Was that… a handkerchief? This guy just had a handkerchief? Is that not something that only people in movies do?

Weird.

Kokichi snatched it from him, exclaiming, “"Oh wow! What a gentlemanly thing to do!"

He proceeded to make his most grotesque snot noises imaginable.

“A-are you alright?” The detective stuttered out.

Kokichi pondered a couple iterations of “no, and it’s your fault” before deciding that was boring and saying “Perfectly fine.” He flicked out the handkerchief and held it a bit to make sure Shuichi noticed it was clean before tucking it in his pockets. “Just a liar is all.”

"A-a liar?"

Kokichi frowned at him. "No, where did you hear that?" He made an expression of disgust. “Ick, I hate liars after all.” He put on his manic pixie dream girl sees a light bulb for a first time look. “That's why I'm such a big fan of yours, Shuichi.”

"I-is that so?" Ah, the panic of a person unprepared for social interaction at two am was a sight for sore eyes. “Um.” Or maybe it said nothing of Ouma’s own skill that this guy was an awkward glob. "Y-you seem to know my name, but, uh, what's yours?"

A question! An inquiry! One for which Kokichi had the perfect answer....

"Kaito Momota."

“What.”

Wow! What a flat tone Saihara had! Almost like he didn’t believe him or something absurd like that.

Kokichi waved his hands dismissively. "I know, I know, isn't that the name of your friend who was in the paper? That's why I read it, by the way," he said matter of factly. "Because we have the same name."

Ugh, he was adding too much supporting detail. That’s something bad liars do and he wasn’t a bad liar. He was the best liar. Accept no substitutions. Unless they were really good at lying about being a substitution… then they would probably be the best liar…

Ok whatever ranking of liar he was it was probably good enough to fool-

"... I-is that another lie?"

Ah fuck.

"Neeheehee… ya caught me." Best to bail early on this kind of thing. "If you guess my real name by the end of the flight I'll give you a prize!"

"Like Rumplestiltskin?"

Really? Was his own charade getting that cartoonish already?

“Aww man. You guessed it the first try. That's no fun.” Logically this was boring but he was doing okay as far as airplanes went. "I guess now you'll just have to guess my second, less cool, real name instead."

As great as he was at being evasive in all situations why was the subject not changed by now.

"... Honestly I'd much rather be sleeping through this flight." The detective rubbed his face, and Kokichi noticed the darker shades of his eyelids weren’t all eyeliner. He must have business. Something that was keeping him up at night.

Kokichi determined some short term goals for this conversation. Find out why the detective was going to Paris was primary among them. That information would narrow down his field of options for how to spend the rest of the flight.

Kokichi scoffed. “Why would anyone get on a flight to Paris at 2 AM if they weren't prepared to be up all night?" He shifted back into the fanboy thread, "Oh! Oh! Oh! I bet you've got another case you're hot on the trail of, huh Mr. Detective?”

Saihara seemed to hesitate. “Uh, sort of.”

Kokichi thought he was going to say something more but after a few seconds of silence, it was clear he needed further prompting.

"What kind of answer is that?" His words seemed to surprise the Detective, which was a bit silly considering that they had been having a conversation, where words being exchanged should be the norm. "How can you only sort of be solving a mystery?" Kokichi lied through his teeth. "You know, I just so happen to also be a world class detective."

“Really? Saihara’s skeptical and unassertive response was less of a question in this conversation and more of a way to measure how gullible he was.

"Yes, really!" Kokichi replied, storming ahead, "And as a real life detective I just so happen to know that when you're working a case you work it with 100% of yourself!"

Saihara made this weird, soft sound. It took Kokichi a moment's consideration to realize it was supposed to be a laugh because it sounded not at all like the howling cackles growing up with DICE had familiarized him with.

"I guess you're kind of right about that…” He fidgeted with the edges of his coat. “There's, uh, this case that I've been looking into for a long time now and I guess I have really been putting 100% of myself into it. My friends think I'm going a little crazy…"

Ooh, that was something.

“Your friends? Like that purple haired guy who was in the paper? The one with the dumb name?”

Considering the nitwit Saihara had been romping around the Smithsonian with, the detective must really be off the deep end on this case to be considered looney by his friends.

Kokichi was predicting a silly story that he could use to justify to DICE his choice to sit next to the detective the whole flight beyond satiating this little whim of his for a taste of the unexpected. He imagined them laughing about the detective from the smithsonian who thought the Eiffel tower was a secret spaceship or something as Kokichi explained how he just had to stick around to make fun of him.

Oh shit the detective was saying something.

"-him and one other friend think I'm making this thing about the Louvre up… and maybe I am a little crazy."

… The Louvre, huh?

Kokichi scrutinized the detective. He couldn’t mean… “The Louvre? Like, someone's gonna steal the Mona Lisa?"

"Uh, no." The detective looked away as if mildly embarrassed. "I think, uh, someone's going to take the plumbing from the renovated bathrooms…"

Kokichi’s brain registered two things about Shuichi Saihara at the same time. One: he was a real detective. Not a hopeless buffoon of a gumshoe like the ones you saw in video games about dystopian court systems and gay lawyers. He had made a real life deduction and had done so accurately. He was on a case. The second thing he realised was that Shuichi Saihara was a direct threat to his entire operation.

People usually categorize threats as something to induce fear. Some would describe the fear as “bone chilling.”

When Kokichi registered a threat his toes got cold. Not because he was scared or something dumb like that, but because his blood suddenly had a better place to be.

Kokichi’s brain raced with possibilities, brand new scenarios and personas that he could put on. Like he had been sitting at a boring ass company play only to realize that the curtains were rising to reveal a dramatic opera where he was the star. Ok, Kokichi wasn’t exactly a poet laureate when it came to analogies, but he was excited okay?

Kokichi shuffled the deck of options and picked a card.

"Wow. You must be really smart to have figured that out." Ok, good thought to start with praise. He has a low self esteem. "You know…" Kokichi leaned in. Shuichi leaned away. Good. Make him uncomfortable by getting in his bubble.

Now, just for fun, lie wildly.

"I just so happen to be the leader of a secret organization with about 10,000 members. We rule the world from the shadows. I think we could use a detective like you."

Shuichi obviously didn’t believe him, which was, to his credit, absolutely fair. “That- that has to be a lie. There is no possible way for such an organization to exist.”

Sad detective, falling for the classic hiding in plain sight maneuver. Disguise the truth of DICE in an unbelievable lie and he doesn’t believe any of it.

"And here I was thinking you were particularly clever." And, twist. "Seeing as you've refused to join my organization… it seems I'll have to kill you."

Oh man that really seemed to frazzle the good detective. What, had he never gotten a death threat before? Typical. It would be funny to see his expression if Kokichi were to just stab him right now. Except ew because blood and also ending human life. Yikes. Weird train of thought.

"But I'll let you leave this flight with your life if you can beat me in a game."

That seemed to calm the detective down a bit, like he realized Kokichi was just joking. It’d be funny when Kokichi pulled out the knife later. Ah, ah, ah, no spoilers.

"How about Russian Roulette with a full barrel?"

Shuichi sputtered, "This is a plane, you don't have a gun!"

Kokichi considered the ‘my ruse has been discovered….’ line again before he realized he’d used it like twice now and tossed it aside for: "Oh that's right, left it on my tchotchke shelf, silly me. Well I guess if you just want to beg like a dog and then split your guts open that would be acceptable."

Wow ok a little harsh there. Kokichi’s single brain cell devoted to tact whispered. What? No. No filter. Fuck you brain trying to conform to social conventions, shut the fuck up and stay out of my personality.

"Um, no that would kill me."

"Damn, nothing gets past you… Hmm… Ok, how about…" Kokichi reached into the pocket he usually left his Yu-Gi-Oh deck in. "A shadow game!"

He held up the cards only to realize they were actually just a normal playing deck. Oh yeah, he left his deck at home because he thought Rook might steal his blue eyes while he slept on the plane. Shit. Oh well, playing cards could be fun too.

"It's time to du-du-du-du-du-du-du-duel!"

Shuichi blinked. "A...duel? Shadow Game...?"

"Hmhmhm... Yes, the loser's soul will get sent to the Shadow Realm…" he shuffled them so that Shuichi and him would draw the same cards, "We each pull one card from this deck, and whoever has the largest number wins!"

Shuichi looked rather befuddled but Kokichi kept going full steam ahead.

This wasn’t really a game of chance anyhow. That wasn’t the point. The game had two motives, the first being to gauge Shuichi’s reactions to different scenarios, the second being to build up Kokichi himself as someone intimidating and mysterious. The card game wasn’t extremely telling, but the ensuing bout of rock paper scissors was.

Kokichi was keeping pretty busy predicting what Shuichi was going to pick next in order to make it a tie, but Shuichi didn’t protest at all to the mindless repetitive game it must have been for him. He was either easily impressed by rock paper scissors or just too awkward to tell Kokichi to fuck off.

Apparently the guy sitting in the row in front of them had no qualms about such things. He hit the back of his seat and grumbled “Oh my God shut up already.”

A bunch of weirdly indignant thoughts ran through Kokichi’s head.

Wow! Rude asshole! Mind your own fucking business! Get some damn headphones!

Shuichi looked like being told he was annoyed by a random asshole was his equivalent of seeing a ghost as he muttered out some inane apology.

Not that he cared about how this guy felt, but him suddenly clamming up just wasn’t very fun at all.

Just when he was making headway too…

… Maybe it was time to get rid of the distractions.

"Gosh Shuichi you really were being just too loud. You're like the loudest person I've ever met."

Shuichi looked at him like he was crazy which Kokichi appreciated for a millisecond before raising his voice to say, “Ugh that game was getting boring though, and no one won so it's probably time for something else.” He leaned over the aisle, noticing that Jack was standing in the aisle at the back of the plane chit chatting with Spades as Queen stole pretzel packets from the snack cart.

"Hey,” he called, “When's drink service?"

The three DICE members under his scrutiny froze like they had been caught doing something they shouldn’t be. They were probably gossiping about him again. Great.

Jack got her bearings fairly quickly, pushing the drink cart up the aisle. "Coming right up~" She trilled cheerfully.

As she passed by to start service at the front of the plane, Kokichi noticed a little green vial tucked into Jack’s sleeve. Most likely the sleep drug Kokichi had requested before he got on the plane. Hmm. He wanted to get rid of the distractions, but he wasn’t exactly sure distractions included Shuichi anymore. The flight was still pretty long and Kokichi knew he’d be bored out of his mind forever if he didn’t get through this whole game gambit with the detective.

Another spur of the moment change of plans was in order and it hit Kokichi with yet another wave of excitement.

"Hey, Shuichi!” He exclaimed, “We should have a tea party!"

Shuichi gave him another look. “A tea party? I don't think they ha-”

Kokichi didn’t have the patience not to speedrun Shuichi’s disbelief.

“Well oooobviously you wouldn't know anything about it.” He interrupted. “I'm the leader of a super secret organization after all, so of course I know about the super secret drink menu available on all air planes.

Shuichi frowned. "But they couldn't bring anything to-”

He stopped listening. Something something blah blah blah doubt doubt doubt.

Kokichi shook his head dismissively, getting ready to set up an I told you so moment.

“Just watch.”

When Jack rolled up with the drink cart she made a hand signal that told Kokichi things were going well on DICE’s end of things. "And what would you fine sirs like to drink?" She asked in a register slightly higher than usual. Jack was being smarter than Kokichi about this and had basically contoured all of her distinctive facial traits away, so Kokichi wouldn’t have to worry about Shuichi tracking her down from this interaction.

"A cup of hot green tea."

Pretty much the only reason he was going along with this impulsive plan of his was that the only person who would get any heat for it if things was south was him. He wouldn’t put DICE’s livelihoods in danger for a whim such as this.

"Sure thing!"

Was this even a whim anymore?

"And what about you?"

Of course it was.

"Shuichi here will have the same thing."

If it wasn’t then it would have to be something else.

And if it were something else, then Kokichi wouldn’t know what it was.

He couldn’t afford to be that stupid.

"Of course.” Jack smiled almost a little too fakely. “Anything added in like sugar or cream?"

She was obviously double checking that Kokichi didn’t want this bastard drugged.

"No, we're both taking it plain today."

"Oh, really? Alright then."

She poured the tea.

“"I hear you two are on a honeymoon? That's so lovely. Can I see the rings?”

Kokichi usually appreciated that Jack was quick to catch on to things, but she was bordering on insubordination at this point.

"You know what I hear?” Time to play real housewives of DICE with this gossip again. “That lonely flight attendants should realize they're sad and nosey losers who should keep their noses out of happy people's business."

Aw shit she was going to think he was flustered and covering up something wasn’t she.

"Teehee~ Yes sir! Enjoy the flight." Yeah she totally was on to him

Wait no because to be on to him she would have to be right and she wasn’t so there.

Oh shit wait Shuichi was still here. Looking extremely awkward and unsure if he was also supposed to start bitching at flight attendants like it was common etiquette or something.

"That was all code you know.” He brushed it off. “Super secret organization stuff. You probably wouldn't understand."

"Uh, yeah." He said, "I probably wouldn't."

Wow this guy was funny. Kokichi was moderately glad he wasn’t in a drug induced coma right now. Moderately glad was pretty good for an airplane vis a vis emotional stability.

"Neeheehee…” He let himself laugh a little. “Drink the tea Shuichi, I've got to pull you into a false sense of security before your final trial."

Shuichi frowned. "I feel like by pointing out that you're trying to lull me into a false sense of security you have essentially not done so."

"See, but because you feel that way it means I have succeeded in lulling you."

Shuichi frowned again, but seemed to see no logic in arguing. He decided to take a sip of his tea instead. Kokichi noticed the asshole in the chair in front of him was asleep. So was the guy in the seat across from his, and the woman in front of that guy was dozing too. Everyone else had a drink and would be soon to follow.

Everyone except for…

“So how do you like the tea, Shuichi?” Ouma asked.

Shuichi was drinking that hot leaf juice like a pro who didn’t even feel the burn. He made a contemplative expression.

“It’s pretty good as far as tea goes.” He shrugged. “I’m more of a coffee guy.”

Kokichi felt a little offended on the behalf of DICE’s custom blend as well as all of the classy tea drinkers in the world. He shook his head

"Fff, what are you, a cop or something? Next you’ll be telling me you like donuts more than cupcakes."

Shuichi made a weird face before looking away.

"Holy shit," Kokichi said. This was the perfect time to both change the subject and do a little investigating of his own. " Are you a cop? Like a really funny undercover cop who decided to pretend to be someone with the exact same job?"

"Uh, no, that's not it."

Was it something about the donuts then or- wait no that was stupid it was obviously the cop thing.

Shuichi was looking out the window now. "I, uh, did used to be a force detective."

"Huh," Kokichi remarked, trying to peek around at Shuichi's face, "Were you fired or something? You must've been pretty bad to get fired from some backwater police station."

"No that's not it." He seemed to be leaning into some sort of memory, "I quit actually…"

Ugh, who gave this fucking loser the right to be interesting. It was totally unfair.

Kokichi kept digging, "Man why wouldn't you want to be a cop. Clearly the most respectable public service someone can provide for their country…" but that was totally a lie. Cops suck.

Shuichi frowned. "I, uh, kind of disagree with that." He was pulling at his fingers like he was trying to stretch them like taffy. "I met a lot of people on the force who really did care about making the community better, but I feel like the existence of law enforcement is really a symptom of larger societal problems, and that the structure of power doesn't work to reduce crime or violence but instead works increase it by giving a group of privileged individuals the power to instill generational trauma in communities."

Uh… huh. Kokichi took a moment to process that because he had never thought about “cops = bad” beyond their innate fuddy duddy inclinations to stop him specifically from doing whatever the hell he wanted. What the fuck? Did this guy actually have, like, opinions??? And legitimate reasons for them??? Who gave him the right??? How could Kokichi hear more of them???

Pff wait he was probably some rich kid who took maybe one social justice class in college and became a stooge of the state anyway. Maybe he was, like, a real policeman's embittered assistant or something.

"That's lame." He lied, "cops are the cops, do you want folks to be murdering people left and right all the time??? I bet you've never even met a criminal." Hehe that one was a bit ironic, he'd laugh about it later.

Shuichi furrowed his brow at him, "Well, I have… I was a homicide detective, actually. I've arrested murderers in person many times..."

What???? Is this what talking to all strangers for extended periods of time was like? You found out they actually had lives? And cool careers? That they made their livings in murder?

Nah, Shuichi was probably an exception. You don't meet an anti cop homicide detective everyday after all…

Kokichi decided he was being too endeared so he planned out a new branch of conversation that would hopefully make Shuichi squeamish, or at least unnerved.

He put on his best enthusiasm face. "Tell me about a murder! Tell me, tell me, tell me!"

Shuichi blinked at him, surprised at his sudden shift in mood. "Uh, alright then…" he said.

Shuichi started to go into detail about a case he had solved his first year on the force. Some guy turned up dead in a public pool and everyone else had basically given up on the case. Shuichi was describing how he figured it out through deductions and use of specific forensic techniques, and to be honest he wasn't exactly a master of suspense. Kokichi was able to deduce the murderer from the details Shuichi chose to include. No, none of that was why he was completely mesmerized with Shuichi while he talked.

Hearing about the things that Shuichi did to get to the evidence in the first place was… impressive???

No that couldn’t be right.

Maybe it was just weird to see a mousey guy like him get as jazzed up as Kokichi about solving murders, and not even in a weird or vaguely creepy way. He just seemed like… Kokichi hadn't thought about it in a long time but when he was a kid he read a shit ton of mystery manga, where the heroes were detectives. He had since then moved on to more sophisticated literature such as airplane diagrams and police radio transcripts, but Shuichi reminded him of those detectives instead of the old fuddy duddies with which he had begun to associate the profession. He was just kind of… cool. Yeah that was the word for it. Cool. Like he was always going to get around to the right answer no matter what. Yeah, he had that abstract "coolness" factor that had drawn Kokichi to protagonists as a kid.

Kokichi wanted to steal it from him. Break his composure, become the center of the stage in this narrative. Yet, at the same time he suddenly dreaded his own inevitable heel turn. This was something rare, he decided, getting to talk one on one with Shuichi like this. It would probably never happen again.

So Kokichi listened. He teased, interjected, and prompted superfluous explanations, but he listened.

And Shuichi talked. He talked about murder most foul, crooked cops, elusive evidence, and the friends he made along the way. Shit straight out of a manga that Kokichi was spending his Saturday morning hyper-fixating on.

The conversation only ended when Shuichi had to get up to use the toilet. A stark reminder that manga wasn’t real and in meatspace human beings had to shit every now and then. Kokichi watched him go and felt a little sad. Like he knew whatever it was worth, the moment had passed. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and now all he had was to dissect it over and over again in his head until it became mangled beyond recognition...

Yeah yeah ok, world's tiniest violin, scattered ashes, ceremonial boat burning, yadda yadda.

Kokichi had a heist to pull off, no time for any of this silly stuff. He dismissed whatever weird feelings were bubbling in his chest and decided to go with the more practical inspiration that struck him. He took a couple seconds to plan out his grand exit. He decided to leave Shuichi a note and justified to himself that heists had been getting boring lately and as a proper game master he should give Shuichi a hint. Hmm were his initials too much? It might seem like…

Well he didn't really know what it seemed like, which was weird because he was a genius. Was he actually trying to figure out how Shuichi would react to this? He hadn't really thought about what Shuichi's opinion of him had been because he had only started thinking of Shuichi as an actual person halfway through the flight. That was the thing about being in a close knit organization, he always thought about DICE as an extension of himself and everyone else as some sort of nebulous other he had to predict the movements of. Sometimes he forgot that if you spent a lot of time talking to some stranger you find out they have brains and lives and stuff.

Speaking of things that probably have brains and lives and stuff, things seemed to be going good with DICE. Jack had signaled him that she told everyone about the plan when she came by to collect trash.

Of course, he and Shuichi were the only ones she took trash from. Everyone else was fast asleep, all according to plan. Kokichi had written some last minute details on a napkin he had put in the trash bag, so they all knew they were dropping soon.

They were also all probably gossiping about him. He supposed that's what he got for ditching them to sit with a detective dressed in black like a sexy motorcycle. Wow that was terrible where did his brain even get that line and how could he use it to make Shuichi freak out. Probably pretty easily...

Except if everything went according to plan maybe he wouldn't have the chance. Not like this. He imagined himself yelling the comment at Shuichi from the safety of a getaway chopper, like in the movies…

Ok his note was basically done now. Oh hmm. This actually seemed kind of desperate, the note. It kind of screamed "track me down to the end of the world please" like some sort of piss baby cry for help.

Aw shit. He was thinking about what Shuichi thought about him again...

Speak of the devil and he shall appear but Kokichi was already here and hadn't talked about himself in a bit, so Shuichi showed up instead. His hands were wet which meant he washed them and goddammit it was insufferable how tolerable this guy was. Did he have no weaknesses besides being generally awkward and also being someone who used to be a cop? Ugh wait the latter was kind of cool too. Insufferable.

Well you know what they say, if you can't beat em plan to jump off an airplane because you did beat them they just don't know it yet.

Kokichi decided their final trial together deserved some dramatic build up, so he bowed to Shuichi as he got up to let him sit back down.

"Welcome, combatants." He illustriated, "Take your seat and prepare for the final trial."

Shuichi gave him a wary look as he slid back into his seat.

"What is it this time?" he asked.

Kokichi considered pulling out the crying on that one, but got too excited about how Shuichi would react to his pulling out the knife instead. Thusly he reprimanded the detective’s lack of enthusiasm with a single tsk.

“You could stand to be a little more concerned mister detective, it’s your life on the line after all.”

Shuichi gave him a dubious look, like he trusted airport security and general societal norms to keep him from being murdered.

Kokichi wanted to tear down the walls of that trust.

He pulled out the knife.

Shuichi’s reaction was instantaneous. He practically jumped away from Kokichi in his seat. Weirdly enough... that just made Kokichi realize they had been sitting pretty close before...

How did that happen?

Eh no time for that.

“Is that a knife?” Shuichi yelped, “How did you get a knife on the plane?”

It was weird how Shuichi stuttered about everything except things that were actually dangerous. Well maybe Kokichi having a knife wasn’t really dangerous, but Shuichi didn’t know that and here he was saying complete words. Sentences and all. And yet it still had the streak of incredulity running through it that shot through to Kokichi’s head faster than his own signature panta-redbull blend.

“Oh, a villain's got his ways.” He said in a way that he thought was pretty cool and mysterious.

Shuichi still seemed to be panicking a bit and Kokichi was getting a little tired of that so he brushed past it.

“Now this game's pretty easy to understand, but you gotta be skilled,” he explained matter of factly, “I'll go first to show you how it's done.”

When some other kids had showed him this game when he was an even tinier bastard they had started off slow and slowly sped up. But he was still kind of leaning into the shock factor, and going slow was lame. He started stabbing the table through his fingers at a breakneck pace.

“H-hey!” Shuichi exclaimed (oh so now he stutters), “You're gonna hurt yourself doing that!”

“Pff, as if I would.”

The thing about this game is that it required rhythm, and rhythm required predictable repetition, and being predictable was the antithesis to everything that brought him joy in life.

He sped up.

“Here it's really easy.”

He went even faster.

The knife went *thuck thuck thuck* as it massacred the table.

When you did something the same way for a long time it gave you time to think about things. It didn’t really give you anything specific to think about, though, so Kokichi always felt like he was wasting time.

The knife went *thkthkthk* between his fingers.

He wanted to consider next steps. How long he would do this for and what would he do if Shuichi lost the game… Instead he started thinking about when he learned the game. He remembered he had picked it up from some of the older kids at one of the homes. The only other thing he remembered about them was one time they had stood by a rose bush with him, tearing off thorns and pushing them into their fingertips. Kokichi had done it and remembered that it didn’t feel like anything at all.

*Schlick*

Your fingers are full of blood vessels and nerves, but if you push down to the cartilage-

Oh wait.

“Agh!” Shuichi exclaimed from beside him, “You’re bleeding!”

Kokichi was bleeding.

He was looking at his hand. His knife had nicked a millimeter of skin on the inner side of his ring finger, just at the junction between the tip of his finger and the second part of the ligament. It occurred to him that he was in pain.

“Ow,” He said on instinct. Or maybe he thought it in his head. It didn’t matter because he was busy also thinking about how Shuichi had just grabbed his wrist and pulled it over to him.

The detective placed Kokichi’s hand in his lap like a sandwich he was saving for later while he ruffled through his coat pockets. He drew out a bandaid and lifted Kokichi’s hand again. His fingers were longer than Kokichi’s, and they felt sort of cold, like his blood had better places to be than his fingertips. They were very, very gentle as they wrapped a bandage around the bleeding finger. Almost like Shuichi cared or something.

The detective’s greyish green eyes flickered up to him and Kokichi realized Shuichi had really long eyelashes. “You really ought to be more careful.” He said in his soft way.

Kokichi was honestly having more emotions than were necessary about this, so he focused on the annoyance.

Man, good at figuring things out, is interesting, has opinions, and actually cares about other people? Was this guy even a real person??? That seemed like too many character traits. Geez Shuichi, why did mom let you have all of the attractive personality qualities?

Did he say attractive? He meant annoying.

Shuichi squinted at him. His eye lashes weren’t that long, he was wearing eyeliner. Kokichi had already noticed that. He just had to start thinking coherent thoughts again.

“What is it? Are you alright?”

Yeah, for sure.

Shuichi was still holding his hand and Kokichi decided it was time to not be touching another person again, so he quickly whipped it away. He tried to settle into a boastful kind of hands behind the head pose, but worried that the effect was lost by the sudden squirming of emotions in his gut.

"Geez," Kokichi said petulantly, "I can't believe you actually beat me."

He stomped everything down. It was time for action not... not whatever this was.

Shuichi blinked at him in confusion. "Beat you? But I didn't even play…"

"Doesn't matter." Kokichi shifted to a new pose where he leaned his arm on the rest in between them and propped his head up, positioned for his next steps. "The rules were if I cut myself I lose, and I lost."

“...Although, it doesn't matter if you join my organization or not anymore, Shuichi."

Shuichi looked at him in confusion and Kokichi found it kind of frustrating that he didn’t know which aspect of this that Shuichi was contemplating.

“Uh, it doesn’t?”

Very eloquent, Shuichi, that clears things up.

"Nope." Kokichi moved a bit so that both elbows rested on the arm rest and propped his head up closer to Shuichi’s. "Because I've already done something much more important than winning."

As Kokichi leaned in Shuichi leaned back. Shuichi was staring pretty intensely at his eyes which made this the perfect opportunity. Kokichi’s hands went lightly down to Shuichi’s waist, where he put the detective’s seat belt into a dreadknot.

“W-what's that?” The detective stammered, no doubt as alarmed by the proximity as Kokichi had anticipated.

Kokichi hadn’t really anticipated what he would say next though.

He went with, “I've stolen your heart.” He felt a millennia of DICE movie nights spent making fun of romantic comedies crash against his soul and decided to change the genre before he embarrassed himself. “Because I'm a thief you know?”

He was practically breathing in Shuichi’s ear by now, which made this next part a little hard. He unbuckled his seatbelt. Then, in a fluid motion Kokichi’s hands went behind his head as he arched to place them on the aisle armrest. He did a handstand for an instant on the arm rest before landing his feet across the aisle on to some poor bastard’s tray table.

When he came up for air he observed that he had knocked a cup over and that Shuichi had just noticed his own seat belt malfunction. The detective’s look of dawning realization felt like a standing ovation.

"Hmmm, I really should kill you, now that you've seen my face," and maybe he would if DICE were that kind of organization. It was kind of troubling that the police would get sketches, and the gang would probably harrang him about it. But eh, what can you do.

Certainly not murder. You can’t just murder people. That’d be dumb. Boring even.

Kokichi hopped down from the tray table and grabbed his heist bag. It would’ve been bad to forget that, he considered as he pulled out his mask, Louvre cameras are a lot more reliable than a half asleep detective’s recount.

Said detective was certainly fully awake now, looking at Kokichi in an utterly gobsmacked manner. Kokichi felt like he was sinking his teeth into the stem of a rose thrown from the audience.

"... But I think that'd be a waste, don't you?" Maybe the trouble was what he was looking for, after all. He wondered if they would fingerprint the arm rests when the plane touched down. They wouldn’t find any matches in any criminal database, so it didn’t matter much to him. He put on his gloves anyway before tossing Shuichi the note he had written.

No time for second drafts. He thought as he started walking down the aisle.

“Somebody! Stop him!” Shuichi yelled from behind him. It was so manga detective that Kokichi wanted to scream.

The rest of DICE was already getting up with their parachutes on, and a few turned towards Shuichi’s call. Thank goodness they were wearing their masks because he wasn’t sure if Shuichi could still see down the aisle or not. He might’ve seen Jack’s face, but she had been wearing a lot of makeup so it was probably fine.

She certainly didn’t seem concerned. She was checking the knots the only actual flight attendant on the plane was trussed up in.

Ace, always a little over eager, wrenched open the emergency exit as Kokichi was still putting his parachute on. He felt the drastic change of air pressure in those spaces you feel it in your skull and stomach. He hadn’t realized how warm the inside of the plane was until the cold air sucked it out.

He used convenient zippers to close up his hoodie pockets, knife included, and buckled up the rest of the parachute’s straps.

He looked back, just once. Shuichi was peering out at him in the aisle. He looked like his world was ending and Kokichi reveled in the power of that. That he was just that important to this detective.

The curtains are about to drop but there are still people screaming in the balconies.

He smiled.

The encore wasn’t up to him.

“So long, Mr. Detective!" He got to the window. "Better luck next time.”

Kokichi jumped back first out of the plane and the walls and the aisles and the lights of the plane slipped out of view through the emergency exit one by one.

And he fell.

He fell and flipped over to take in the view of Paris below. The city of lights indeed. It was beautiful, he supposed.

He fell, letting himself enjoy the breeze a bit before reaching terminal velocity.

He didn't though.

Enjoy it.

It felt like getting on a fucking awesome roller coaster except it’s also your every day ride to your job at some dead end minimum wage desk.

It was… boring. Routine.

Just victory, just the Louvre, just air.

Even as the other members of DICE whooped and hollered on their descent, Kokichi realized the fun part of the heist was already over. The whole heist was over.

He could predict it all.

He would deploy his parachute, he would float down to the Louvre, and he would orchestrate a perfect heist.

But Kokichi Ouma realized then that he would never stopped falling.

#saiouma #oumasai #shuichi saihara #kokichi ouma #fanfiction #Phantom Thief AU #ouff yall im gay and probably have adhd so that's my excuse for going absolutely feral on this #first time writing ouma so hope yall like it #writing

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