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stargazer-balladeer · 4 years

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Them with a Shy S/o [Persona 5]

anon: Hello! Congratulations on your Followers! I wanted to ask if you can write the "Them with a shy s/o" for the Persona 5 cast as well? Thanks!!

Characters Included: Akira Kurusu, Ryuji Sakamoto, Ann Takamaki, Yusuke Kitagawa, Makoto Niijima, Haru Okumura, Futaba Sakura & Goro Akechi

Note: A lot of you guys like Persona 5 huh? Oh well, I can see why :) Hope ya’ll enjoy this!

Reader’s Gender: Neutral

Warning: none

Akira Kurusu

This guy? He'll find it cute— no, scratch that. ADORABLE that his s/o's shy. He'll be all over them when he laid eyes on them, they better be prepared >:)

We all know this guy's a tease, right? And you are NO exception to this. Actually, you had it worse.

Because you are shy, he'll find every reaction of yours cute and always seem to tease you about it, until you were pretty much the twin of an apple -_-

But he knows his limit, of course. If he sees that it's either making you uncomfortable or hurt by what he's doing, he'll stop.

When you two first meet, it's you avoiding him and him pouting as you ran away. Pretty much a cat-and-rat chase, which the Phantom Thieves find funny, watching their leader chasing his s/o.

The reason why you're running? You heard the rumors and thought it was true. Not wanting to be his next victim, you ran whenever he's near you.

He only managed to talk to you (without you running away) when Ann drag you over to Akira, the group have had enough of this shenanigans.

You two hang-out in either LeBlanc or outside, but mostly in LeBlanc though. You two just chilling while drinking coffee (or tea, or whatever beverages you prefer) and just talk.

He'll find it hilarious if he finds out you're talkative, he might tease you about it but other than that, made no comment about it. He loves your voice so it's a bonus for him :D

How he ask you out? He asks you in a straightforward manner while you were drinking, which made you successfully chock. You two panic for a bit before you answered him yes, with a bit of embarrassment ofc.

Ryuji Sakamoto

He might not at all notice you, srry. Unless you're either friends with his friends (or his friends pointing at you) or you're a victim of Kamoshida. Yeah. That's the only way for him to only notice you.

He might not really care about you much but when he notices you everywhere he goes, he suddenly cared about you.

Like Akira, he finds your shy trait cute and find it hilarious when he finds out you're talkative. But he also LOVES hearing your voice so its a plus for him.

I don’t see Ryuji as a tease though, he might be as shy as you are! Which frustrates the group when Ryuji is being his Tsundere self. Like you would go up to him and he will either freeze or go away from you, that is, IF he realizes his feelings for you.

But he finds every reaction of yours cute but he wouldn’t admit it.

How you two meet? The first bulletin pls. If you’re friends with one of his friends, namely Ann, she would basically drag you over to meet him and the rest. If you’re a victim, chances are you appeared as a Shadow in Kamoshida’s Palace.

He would find your shy self indifferent really, he already has seen that reaction of yours everywhere he goes (his delinquent self and all). But he might get to know you if you two were (force) to be together or left alone, he finds silence uncomfortable afterall.

You two will be often seen hanging out during and after school, probably in front of a store or the arcade. Akira (with Morgana) and Ann will also join in but not all the time, so its basically you and Ryuji.

How he ask you out? Very hesitant, shy and in-denial. It might take some time, and his friends pushing, for him to ask you out. But when he does confess, you could hardly understand what he was trying to tell you. Him stuttering while blushing while still acting cool, yeah, you were hella confuse.

But when you DO understand, you’ll blush and nod, too shy to say anything (much to Ryuji’s relief and dismay).

Ann Takamaki

This girl’s basically gushes about how adorable you were and spoils you rotten, much to your embarrassment. You two definitely met by her approaching you and just start talking.

If she sees you were uncomfortable with her, she would keep her distance. Other than that, she’ll be stuck with you. Good luck with that.

She’s so energetic that she would drag you to places where you’ve never been before.

She’ll be the one who orders for the both of you if you are uncomfortable doing so, she really doesn’t mind.

She might tease you a bit, just to get a reaction out of you. But if she sees you were getting hurt or uncomfortable by her teasing, she’ll stop. This woman respects your privacy to a whole new level -_-

Like I said, Ann drags you places to places. You two are hardly ever seen in one place really, except for school, LeBlanc and that store that sells sweets.

She doesn’t really mind your shy self really, but when she finds out you’re chatty, you two will be talking non-stop. Your topics will keep bouncing from one to another, till there is nothing left to say (which would probably never happen since you two always seem to find something to talk about).

How does she confess her undying love to you? She does it in a cliche way, this girl lives for cliches :) She does it by giving you 3 red roses, which means “I love you”. Whether you know or not about flower language, she wouldn’t tell you at once. She’ll wait until you figure it out.

If you don’t know, either search in Google or ask someone (Siri?). You should probably go to Haru or Makoto for this.

If you already knew or just figured it out, you would immediately go to Ann and say your answer to her. Pls say yes ;-;

Yusuke Kitagawa

This boi doesn’t really care about your shy personality, no, he finds it endearing. You somehow managed to caught his artistic eyes. Don’t get me started with this poor boi. He doesn’t know how to approach you! So he did it the only way he knows how, following you around.

Ofc, this has an opposite effect than what Yusuke wanted. This made him creepy and stalker for you, so you keep running away while him chasing you. You even thought he was a kidnapper or a thief (not literally tho COUGH COUGH).

The group finds it amusing (Mommy Makoto sighing in the background) as they watch the scene unfold. But as the days go by, they were kinda worried and concerned about the two of you. So they decided to take matters in their own hands.

They managed to get you and Yusuke in the same room together. They even instructed Yusuke to not be weird. Yusuke, being confused, decided to follow their orders.

The two of you managed to have a civil conversation about sunsets of all things. Ofc, you were still wary around him but you soon found yourself being comfortable around him.

Yusuke isn’t a tease at all, actually, he’s more oblivious than you even! Yusuke doesn’t really understand the concept about love but is willing to learn about it.

(PS: Pls also feed this bby boi ;-; he needs it DESPERATELY)

You and Yusuke can be found either in a art gallery or his house. It’s also either watching him paint, listening to him rant or being his muse. It might be boring to others but you always found yourself enjoying his peculiar self.

He doesn’t mind if you’re talkative really. He likes to listen to you whenever you talk about something, he also finds this trait of yours endearing.

How he ask you out? Pls don’t ask ;-;. This boi doesn’t even know his feelings towards you, which was VERY obvious to everyone, heck, even you! You, being your shy self, is very hesitant to confess to him. WHAT IF HE DOESN’T LIKE ME? -_- <-- my reaction

It take everyone to explain to him his feelings. You might need to wait a bit long for him to finally realize his feelings. But when he does, he’ll immediately confess to you. This boi doesn’t know how to be embarrassed unfortunately ;-;

Makoto Niijima

This girl would notice you if you were in the Student Council or classmates with her or a victim of someone’s Palace. Other than that, you’re pretty much a background character for her.

You always thought she was intimidating so you avoid her as much as you could. When Makoto notices you avoiding her, she would be hurt ofc. Did she do something to you that she doesn’t know of? You can be sure that Makoto would rack her mind for DAYS, trying to recall what made you avoid her so much.

If she couldn’t find out about it, be sure that she’ll approach you the following day. Managing to corner you, which is unintentional for her part. She would ask you the question and when you answered honestly (you can’t lie to her), she would be confuse.

But ever since then, she would make an effort in becoming friends with you. She’s not bothered by your shy self, she finds it cute though :)

If she finds out you’re talkative, she’ll be surprised about it but it was warmly welcomed, especially during her time in being President. During her signing papers, you would talk to her about your day and some unrelated topics. She doesn’t mind at all, she finds your voice soothing.

Pls give this girl a rest ;-; she works wayyyy too hard.

You two can be found hanging out in LeBlanc or either houses. You two can be drinking coffee (or whatever beverages you prefer) and just chat with one another.

How does she confess? It might also take some time since she wants to make sure that what she’s feeling is true. Bc I can see her as the person who likes someone, it’s already that person that they want to marry and spend their whole life together.

But when she is sure about it, she would take it slow and confess to you. She’s patient so she watches as you fumble your words up. She’ll be overjoyed that you accept her feelings though.

Yay! Happy mommy Makoto :D

Haru Okumura

She already notices you wayyy before you notice her. She notices your shy self and talkative self, she finds it adorable though. I’m gonna bet that she will be the one who approaches you first and strike a conversation with you.

You couldn’t afford to run away from her, she’s too precious! TwT So you decided to converse with her also and find yourself enjoying her presence much.

Her aura around her gives out a soothing one, it easily attracts someone to her. It could be a weapon or defense, not sure. But one thing is for sure, you’re hook at once.

She might tease you here and there, but she’s rather passive. She enjoys cuddling and holding hands with you, even before you two started to date. She’s touch-starved ;-;

She is the kind of person who listens to other people talking. She wouldn’t dare to interrupt you while you are talking about something you are passionate about.

You two are never in the same place, like Ann. You two can be found everywhere, since I like to think that Haru likes to explore new areas. But she’s not gonna drag you around if you don’t like it. She would DEFINTELY stay with you at home, cuddling with you in the couch.

Haru might seem shy at first, but don’t be fooled! When she finds out she has feelings for you, she would straight-in confess her feelings to you. It might involve a bouquet or two :)

Pls say yes ;-; this bby deserve da world :)

Futaba Sakura

She doesn’t know you at all, unless you are either a part of the Phantom Thieves or a friend of her friends. Though she wouldn’t meet you either in that, so you best believe that you are a member of this outcast group or else you wouldn’t meet this hacker girl.

She can relate to you so much, although hers is much more of anxiety than shyness. She can still relate to you. You two might not talk at all, unless someone forces them to talk each other (i.e: mommy Makoto or daddy Akira :3 I don’t ship them tho).

You two instantly click though, much to everyone’s relief and dismay. You can bet that Futaba would drag you in her shenanigans, better be prepared :)

SHE LOVES THAT YOU TWO CAN TALK ENDLESSLY :D

Where you two can be seen? In her room. She never leaves her room unless necessary. So you two hang-out there, hope you don’t mind. You two play video games together or her teaching you how to hack.

She isn’t much into touchy-feely things but she would welcome a hug or cuddles. She’s more touch-starved than Haru unfortunately ;-;

How she asks you out? Simple. She doesn’t. And the worst thing, you don’t either. So you two can be friends for so long until either one of you confess.

So you better toughen up if you want her to be your girlfriend >:) This girl would surely say yes if you (stutter your) confess(ion).

Goro Akechi

This boi is almost like Akira in so many ways, except for the fact that he handle his situation in a much different way. This two bois can be best bros if they want to -_-

Anyway, back to hc.

You two would meet during his school days or outside. He recognizes you as the shy girl in his class. He might scare you away though, since you can’t handle his fangirls or his charming looks, much to his confusion.

He tries talking to you but you always manage to find a loop-hole, much to his dismay. He managed to talk to you when you two were (coincidentally) riding the train.

That’s the start of the bittersweet friendship you two have.

Much like Akira, he WILL tease you to get reaction from you, he finds this adorable. He would leave teasing kisses around your faces and leave a lingering kiss on your lips, leaving you wanting more. He’s such a tease -3-

But he’ll stop if he sees you embarrassed or hurt, he’ll kiss your entire face in apology. At the end, you are as red as a Cherry.

You two can be seen either in either your home or in LeBlanc or anywhere private, since he has a fanbase. He would rather for the two of you to be at home or at LeBlanc since it really provides privacy.

His work schedule is all over the place, so be sure to always be prepared whenever Akechi wants to hang-out with you.

It’s also a plus if you can cook pancakes for him :) You get his approval

How he asks you out? In the most basic way, asking you if you are available tomorrow to eat dinner or watch movie. SAY YES PLS :)

(He’s internally panicking ofc)

BTW, be sure to be prepared when he breaks up with you at the end. You know what I mean :)

[x] Main Page || [x] Persona 5 Page

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the-writing-rat · 3 years

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Rats Short Stories (2) Sea Weathered Spirits

synopsis: a curious store clerk follows a peculiar customer and learns about the past of his hometown, and the reason for the customers mysterious shopping habits

story under the break

I was restocking the shelves when I saw him. The old man that lives on the hill between the docks. I don't know why we call him that, and not just "the hermit" after all, that's what he is. He stays in that old house on top of that hill except for once a month when he walks down the hill, comes to this shop, and buys a barrel of rum, a tin of tea, and a sack of sugar. I don't know what he does with them every month, as that's a lot of everything for just one month's supply. Unless he spends all day drunk and then drinking tea with lots of sugar every day. I know I'd have to be drunk all the time to live at the top of that hill never seeing anyone except for once a month. He never speaks to anyone either, to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard him speak. Not even to order his things. The shop owner just sets aside his things every time we get a shipment in, so we always have it ready for him. I opened the door as he walked up, he nodded to me. Then he set the money on the counter, I don't bother to count it anymore, it's always the exact amount, no more no less. I handed him his things and then he left. But then I did something I've never done before. I followed him.

"Sir! Sir!" I shouted after him.

The old man turned to me, a confused look on his face.

"Can I help you carry your things?"

The old man shrugged the barrel of rum to the ground and gestured to it.

I hoisted it off the ground and struggled to get it onto my back the way the old man carried it. Once I got it I followed the old man's lead up the hill, leaving the tiered streets of the little coastal town behind us and onto a well-worn dirt path that meandered up the side of the hill. Once the ships in the harbor were tiny specks in the distance, the old man spoke for the first time. His voice was deep and rough, like an old tree.

"Thank you for helping me. These old bones aren't built for this anymore."

"No problem sir"

"Though I suspect you didn't only want to help me"

"No ulterior motives here sir."

And at that moment, the road came to an end and the man's house revealed itself. It was small, old, and surprisingly sturdy looking.

"There" the old man pointed over my shoulder and I turned to see the edge of the hill. And below, I could see everything. To the left, the town, the harbor, and to the right, the old town, and the small docks floating in the water. It was two separate worlds, connected by a shared shore and the vast ocean that stretched as far as the eye can see.

"I can't believe I've never seen this before" I muttered.

"It sure is a sight," the old man said. He pulled a chair from his porch and set it next to me. He took a seat, and his intelligent eyes reflected the sun in the distance with a gleam of nostalgia.

"Shall we...crack open your barrel of rum?" I asked, unsure of what to do now that I was up here.

"Oh no, that's not for me. I don't drink." The old man replied. It was my turn to look puzzled.

"You buy a barrel of rum every month, and you don't drink?"

"No, I haven't drunk a drop of liquor since I was 17"

"If you don't mind me asking, then who's it for? The rum. I know no one else ever comes up here."

"Well, it's for- no it's better to not worry your young mind with such things"

"No, please, sir, tell me"

"If I tell you, do you swear not to tell another soul?"

"...yes sir"

"Well then. Let me take you back to when I was a young boy of 16. When I was young we lived right down there" he pointed to the ruins of the old town to our right. "All the boys around my age, save for Arthur Chaff, were in my band of friends. Arthur was rude and believed he was better than everyone, so we didn't associate with him. But that's unimportant. What was important was my friend Phillip. The thing about Philip is he inherited his father's ship when his father died. We were 14 when Phillips's father passed, but when we were 16 Phillip finally got the courage to step onto the ship for the first time. All of my friends were excited to climb the rigging and unfurl the sails, all but me of course. See, I've always had a fear of the sea. The shallows are fine, but out there, on the open ocean, nothing to tether you but the planks of wood beneath your feet? That's something that frightens me more than anything. And it's that fear that kept me from going that day and resigned me to my fate of buying those supplies every month."

"What happened?"

"Hush, I'm getting there. One day, Phillip and my friends decided they were going to take that ship, and go whale catching. The lot of them decided that they were going to be whalers. 'We're going to catch a whale' Phillip told me one day. 'We'll be back in a month for more supplies, or with a whale in tow. We're counting on you to get us our supplies when we get back' and they left. But that day, that cursed day, a storm rolled in, and it destroyed everything. That's the reason the town moved, you know? Because of the storm. When Phillip and my friends left the harbor, it was just barely raining, you'd get a stronger rain from a watering can. But as I climbed the hill to watch my friends sail away, the sky got darker, and the rain got heavier so that by the time I reached this very ridge, my clothes were soaked and I was more digging through the mud than climbing. So I did what any young, wet lad would do, I went inside. I was in the middle of changing my clothes when there came a knock on my door. It was my neighbor from down the hill and all of her children. 'Help us' she said. 'The wind, the rain, it's tearing the town apart' and with a glance out my window, I confirmed her story to be true. The waves were the tallest I've ever seen, and the wind was blowing the trees sideways. I let her and her children in, and every other townsperson who made their way to my door. At the height of the storm, there was nowhere to sit in the entire house, not even the floor. There were people from the cellar to the top floor of the house. And the storm stayed for days, the wind shaking the walls of the house, the rain finding any crack in the walls or ceiling it could. And when it was over, the people were left to find what was left of their belongings, and to bury what dead we could find. We didn't let the children near the shore for a long while after that, for fear that one of them could find a body. I wasn't sure that my friends had made it out of the storm in time or not, but they returned in a month, so I assumed they did. I brought them their sugar, and tea, and rum, they asked me if I wanted to join them, I declined, and they left again. The problem with that was the next week, I received a letter from Phillips mother's sister, who lived on an island 2 weeks journey from here. She said that Phillips ship and all of my friends washed up on the shore after the storm, only identifiable by the little book Phillip kept in his jacket, with all of his logs in it. The book I gave him as a gift the day he decided to step onto that boat. She was writing me to ask if I would find the other boys' mothers and tell them about their sons, and to ask whether to bury their bodies for us or if we would like for her to send them here. So I did my duty, and informed each of their mothers, save for Phillip's, as she had perished in the storm as well. They lived right at the shore, so I imagine she was one of the first to go. Once all the mothers were told, I wrote her back, and picked up a bottle for the first time. Stricken with grief over the death of my friends, I drunk like a fish. While the rest of the town was busy rebuilding, I was busy drinking myself into a stupor. And my problem got worse when they returned. Yes, the ship, and all my friends, alive and well, asking for their supplies. I tried to ignore them, but they wouldn't go away. They called for me again and again, for days, until I gave in. I brought them their supplies, they asked if I would like to join them, and when I declined, they left. At first, I was rejoicing! I was so happy I went around telling everyone that they didn't die, and I had just seen them, but no one listens to the mumblings of an unbathed drunkard, especially when they're busy grieving and rebuilding. And they returned the next month, and the month after that, and the one after that. Every month they returned and every month my drinking got worse. It was only when I realized that the entire town had moved, that I stopped drinking. I swore off the liquor, and only bought the barrel of rum to give to my friends. But at that point my image, the town's opinion of me was so tarnished, it made it impossible to walk through the streets of the new town without getting stares and mumbled judgement. At that point I was at my lowest. I was without my vice, and without my community. Things were difficult. And it was at that point, an unexpected hand reached to me. None other than Arthur Chaff, that rude boy from my youth, came to help pull me out of the hole I was stuck in. Apparently, that storm changed him, and he made a little shop to sell groceries and supplies to sailors. He listened to me, and most importantly, he believed me. And he helped me out. He set aside my supplies so I would have them every time Phillip returned, and to his death, he was a great friend. His family wouldn't let me at his funeral, but his son, who inherited the shop from him 5 years ago, told me he would still help me the way his father did, even if he didn't quite understand it. And so once a month, I make my way into town, I get Phillips crew their supplies, and I leave."

"...when does Phillip's crew arrive?" I asked, speaking for the first time in hours.

"Phillip should be arriving tonight, and this time, I think I will change my answer to his question, and really see if the ocean is something I should be afraid of." The old man smiled and returned his gaze to the horizon.

#short story #ghost stories #the wellerman #sea shanties #my work #My writing #writing #writer #original writing #writeblr #writeblr community

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imagine-loki · 4 years

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The Slutty Webs one Weaves

Title : The Slutty Webs one Weaves

Chapter NO. 4 of 10?

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki’s Asgardian wife learns women write fanfiction about him on a trip to Midgard. She’s edgy for the duration and lets him have it when they get back.

Author: lokilover9

Rating: M

Notes: Hello everyone. I will get to writing another chapter of Irked, but for now, here’s a mini crack fic. Should be good for a laugh or two.

That afternoon and throughout the evening, Brianna stayed in her room with Loki. He appeared once to make her a sandwich, assured everyone she was fine and returned to her without another word. At around midnight, he sauntered into the living room looking exasperated.

"She's sleeping. In the bed this time."

"Why hadn't she before?" Asked Pepper.

His fists clenched. "A fear of rats obtained on the streets. Which I assume happened during her traveling to meet me."

"You can't blame yourself for that."

Loki went to the kitchen, retrieved some expensive Scotch from a cupboard above the fridge and started chugging it. "Yes I can, Virginia. She knew I was her Father before coming."

"What?" Everyone joined him around the island. "How?"

"Her Mother kept a diary." He held up the Scotch. "And us magically inclined are astute at finding hidden treasure."

"Must be hereditary." Kidded Stark. "Little Warrior's a master tater tot thief."

"Fuck. She thought I'd abandoned her."

"Harsh, bro. Even I know you're incapable of that."

"Still impersonating a Prince, are you?"

"I'm serious." Said Thor. "Obviously you forgot that termination spell on someone. If it wasn't a woman from the dumpster night, then who?"

"It was."

"Huh? You had sex with a woman in a dumpster?" Asked Stark.

"He woke in one naked after tossed into it by three."

"You had sex with 'three' women in a dumpster?"

"No, I was drugged first. Hence the waking?"

"And razzed me about doing the same in a seniors tub?"

Pepper frowned. "You had sex with a senior in her tub? What the hell, Tony?"

Loki rubbed his brow. 'I'm surrounded by fucking lunatics.'

"Virginia, no! Remember my best friend Mike? His grandmother…"

"Which one was it?" Thor quietly asked.

"The sword swallowing wench."

"You sure?"

"Brianna described her perfectly and showed me a matching, heart shaped birthmark beneath her collarbone."

Tony continued… "Now Loopy, also known as Sasquatch..."

"I thought you couldn't remember anything after..."

Loki's patience ran out and he banged the bottle down. "I DON'T REMEMBER! Which means she rode me until the fireworks went off because apparently my dick stays erect while I'm unconscious! How the bloody hell I'll convince Astrid of this saga is beyond me!"

"Aren't you more worried of convincing Mother?"

"I don't talk to Mother about my dick Thor and hope you don't either."

"Uh, guys? Lady present. Change the subject, please?"

"With pleasure. Brianna's been alone for almost three months. Fending for herself on a realm where her own kind are willing to sell her off to the highest bidder. That's why her Mother, whose name I will not repeat, Claudia and Hannah, all took turns that night to see who'd strike gold. They were hoping she would inherit some of my powers.Thank the fucking norns two failed!"

"Oh my god." Pepper solemnly whispered.

"Stop shouting. You'll wake her."

Loki pensively stared at Thor. "I've silenced her room. Ironic how every realm thinks Frost Giants monsters. Call it a sixth sense, but I recently felt compelled to learn the Jotun language and began studying their history. For millenniums, they thrived in a predominantly wealthy, civilized and disciplined, family oriented culture. Just like Asgardians. Laufey's greed for power changed all that."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Brianna knows."

The older God responded curtly. "You told her she's a Frost Giant?"

The second Stark had revealed her ice capade, Loki knew she was his and conjured a back up plan to protect her. Testing Thor was part of it. If he couldn't accept her, Odin definitely wouldn't. Especially once learning of her true identity. 'Thanks for your honesty, brother. Now to put that plan into action.' "Brianna is six years old. She's lived in constant fear of those who should have loved her and of herself, because she didn't understand her powers, or where they stemmed from. I will not betray her by lying about her heritage, nor permit she lives ashamed of it. Certainly you understand?" He then addressed Tony. "Excuse me. I need some air."

Stark got the hint and knew where he'd be. "Who's Laufey?" He asked uncle oaf.

"Jotunheim's last King."

"What happened to him?"

"He was murdered."

"Nice." He quickly winked at Pepper. "Stay here and mind Little Warrior? I think Snowflake could use a friend." He joined Loki outside, sitting against the glass on his landing deck. "You okay?"

"Besides overly tempted to murder three sluts? Of course."

"Please don't?"

"Only for my Daughter's sake."

"What else was in the diary?"

"Brianna and I spoke about many things. Some I'll tell you, some I won't."

"Why?"

"We agreed it best. You've done everything to protect her and we want to return the favor."

"I can protect myself."

"Not from yourself, should I reveal too much.

"Spoiled sports."

"I thank you again for watching over one of my own and for keeping your promise to Brianna. She praised you both a lot. Calls you uncle Cootyoodles."

Stark proudly grinned. “She's an amazing kid, but I'm happy you came. If not, Pepper and I planned to ask Thor to take her."

"To Asgard?"

"Where else? We can't protect her from the bad guys. She'd either become a lab rat or be used as a weapon, here. Her Mother is a perfect example of such intentions. Evil bitch."

"Indeed, yet not the mastermind. Hannah was. Brianna was secretly born in the same house she was conceived in and never registered as a citizen. Most recently, they were living in a house in the countryside in State. One a carpenter and the other an electrician, they'd constructed her a hidden, sound proof, room in the basement and that was her existence. Always fed and clothed, but comforted only by her Mother, who snuck her out from time to time. Yet never outside the house and at every opportunity, taught her how to use the computer. They'd resided in two other States the same way. Forever keeping Brianna hidden from society, waiting for a sign she had powers. She cleverly hid them and eventually braved sneaking out alone when they weren't around. Always careful to conceal her tracks while learning all she could of your world through the internet. Until one day, she was mistaken when Hannah sauntered out of bed late and became enraged by her presence. They reinforced her rooms security and although Brianna knew it bypassable, she was terrified to try after the arguing started. It continued for days, often vicious sounding, but she couldn't decipher the words. The worst of it ended with a distant scream on the grounds and panicked footsteps amidst the house. That night, Hannah went to her with a look of insanity, tossing bags of nonperishable food into her room and threatening her harm if she ever came out without permission again. When Brianna heard nothing for days, she bravely disobeyed and carefully scoured every room for money. That's how she encountered the diary and learned about me. Research lead her to you and she mapped out a plan."

"I knew she was brave, but that's extraordinary." Said Tony. "How did she escape?"

"Easily. They never returned."

"They just..vanished?"

"Apparently. When food ran low, Brianna rode her bike to a neighbors, hid herself in the back of his pick up truck and hitched a ride into the nearest city."

"Shit. Does she know what they did?"

"No explicit details were written, but imagine a six year old seeking the word sex on dictionary.com to learn how she was created. The plot began when Hannah saw me leaving their local grocery store and followed me to my hotel. From there, I was stalked until they discovered my favorite hangout."

Stark imagined suiting up on the bitches. "Now I'm tempted to murder three sluts. Poor Little Warrior. What a shitty life she lead. Can I ask where she came from?"

"No, but it took her three weeks to reach you with the help of homeless people."

"What?"

"Two in particular who by the grace of Valhalla, were kind enough to protect her along the way. Neither knew where she was headed and kept her presence secret. All in exchange for food, clothes and periodic shelter. One a teen she sent home to her family, the other an older woman, who claimed to have none. Brianna bid her goodbye near the Lincoln bridge and from there, traveled alone for two days."

"Holy fuck. I still can't believe she made it here alive."

"The child's a genius." 'Who already knows how to make herself invisible.' Thought Loki. He silently recalled the day he'd scared the shit out of some maids with half his face, upper torso and one leg invisible. He was on his way to Frigga after failing to rectify the problem. 'Norns. Only a task that took me until adulthood to master.'

"True, but I gotta know. How did she get into my Tower?"

The God merely arched his brows.

"Nevermind. Like Father, like Daughter. What now?"

"We leave for Asgard tomorrow afternoon. Brianna can't wait. Presuming having new parents 'and' living on a new realm might've induced her reluctance, I've convinced her it's a months visit."

"She's never coming back?"

"As an adult maybe. Beforehand could be risky. Please play along?"

"I will, but she'll hate me for it."

"She'll think you didn't know. I'll take the heat."

"What about Thor?"

"He can't know until morning. Then he won't run ahead and announce it, grandstanding in the name of preparing everyone."

"He'd do that?"

"He might. Brianna is my daughter. My responsibility. I'll not have my wife learning of her through him."

"Don't blame ya."

"There's something else he can't know. I shielded us from Heimdalls sight's the moment we landed to keep anyone from tracing Brianna back to you and Pepper. You're my friends and if they decide to look for her, I won't have your lives torn apart again because of me."

Tony was so humbled and astonished by everything, he never thought to ask why Thor couldn't know this information, or how these women knew Loki's powers were so extensive. "Thanks, man."

"I'll do all the headhunting on my next trip back. For now, the sluts can stew not knowing where Brianna is."

"Serves them right. Too bad we won't witness their panic."

Loki inwardly snickered. 'I might.'

"Why did Brianna sleep so long after making all that ice?"

"Extensive use by one so new to their powers is exhausting. I've seen it before."

"There are more like you on Asgard?"

"Only a handful of us are Gods. Yet many posses lesser powers they are schooled to perfect. As adults, they are encouraged to join our military."

"And if they don't?"

"It is not enforced, Tony. They are allowed to exist freely."

"Oh. Why was she so angry we touched her stuff?"

"She wants to tell you tomorrow."

"Okay. You mentioned a Claudia and Hannah. What was her Mother's name?"

"Brianna's about to disappear and you're still snooping, knowing jail time could loom in the future?"

"Can't an earthling be curious? Liiike..of how extensive Brianna's powers are?"

"Classified."

Stark rolled his eyes. "Should I just not bother asking anything else?"

"I can stargaze while tuning you out."

"Fine. Wanna know some fun facts about your Daughter?"

"Sure."

"She grows on ya real quick."

"I know."

"Loves vampires and zombies. Plays a mean game of Mario Kart, is a mathematical, geographical and weird animal whiz. Knows what an Emperor Tamarin is. They look like a Teddy bear, raccoon, monkey combination, with a wild west moustache. Gets a kick out of quizzing Jarvis and laughs her ass off when he fucks up."

Loki smirked.

"Loves motown music…"

"'Motown?'"

"Come on, really?" Tony motioned movements of the Supremes. "Stop! In the name of love, before you break my heart… No? How about this one?" He imitated Stevie Wonder, grooving at his piano. "...Signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours!"

"You aren't my type." Teased Loki. "Nor am I familiar with that genre of music."

"Your loss, our gain. She also loves having stories read to her at bedtime and dancing. Tried teaching me how to moonwalk and I failed. Epically."

"Did she laugh her ass off at that too?"

"Yep. We'll miss her. A lot."

"I'll never let her forget you, Tony."

They started for the elevator.

"I hope not and that whole date rape thing? Be the victim male or female, the culprits deserve major jail time."

Familiar with Starks habit of finding amusement in the worst of circumstances, Loki sensed a punchline. "And?"

"Alter that part to your benefit in the future. Like you slipped and hit your head. A guys dick staying hard while he's unconscious? Great story to tell your grandson's around the campfire one day."

"Eh he he he. Maybe I will."

Loki settled into bed and conjured an ancient, Jotun text. He opened it to a marked page and silently re-read a prophecy he'd recently discovered. One written by a beloved seer of his ancestors;

'Gifted by the Norns, a child will be born on a foreign realm to a veiled, Jotun King and Mother of ignoble blood. A sorcerer by birth, he is destined to protect, guide and teach his sorceress daughter to cultivate and master her powers. For she will make history as a savior to the nine realms. Destined to unite them in battles against evil. A Queen who shall reign above kings. Jotunheim's Goddess of Ice.'

It vanished, replaced by Asgardian writing paper and a fancy pen as he thought of his wife. Her antics often drove people to drink, including himself, yet they loved each other madly. It was her bright blue eyes, perpetually cheery personality and spontaneity that first attracted him. A welcome change from the drudgery of structured royal life, but ultimately her sincere heart. She adored him, flaws included. And shite did she give good head. The only lover out of hundreds to pop his cork on the first try. Now, after their last conversation it saddened him to write this.

'Dear Astrid; Forgive me as I have a shocking confession to make. Foremost, I have no relationship of any kind with the woman involved and knew nothing of this until it was brought to my attention. It seems my carnal activities on Midgard have induced more than smutty fanfiction. I have a daughter, my lovely. A little girl who stole my heart with her smile. As you did. I would not recover from losing you, but owe her a chance. To breathe her realms air. Count its stars. Feel the sun and rain on her face. For myself to be the adult so she can be the child. I need time to earn her trust and hope we bond. I know it's a lot to ask, but wait for me? Give 'us' a fighting chance? Consider it at least?

Your adoring husband, Loki.'

He sealed it in an envelope and affectionately whispered to Brianna. "Our adventure begins, Og Min Lille."

Og Min Lille ~ My Little One in Norwegian

#loki #others #submission #Submitted fic #lokilover9 #chapter 3 #the slutty webs we weave

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moczothe1st · 6 years

Text

Let’s Play Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War - Part 3 : Isn’t it Ayronic?

Part 2

Welcome back to Let’s Play Fire Emblem IV: The Name is Very Long. When we left off, we were in Evans Castle, preparing to fight back a terribly dangerous and exciting attack on our way of life! So you know what that means… time to learn about new gameplay mechanics whoo!

Welcome to the castle screen, wherein you start every chapter except the first one. In here we can have characters visit the local town, wait to heal up, assign them to guard the castle, and obviously decide who will be in the army you sortie for each map. There’s no character limit, so you can send everyone; and unless they end up totally shitty and useless (ALEC AND NOISH) you might as well, honestly.

Let’s start off by visiting the village.

As you can see, there are six options when in the castle town, and you’ll be needing about four of them.

Blacksmith: Repairs your weapons and staves for money. The better the weapon, the more it costs, but characters with good weapons have the easiest time making money because…

Arena: Fight in gladiator matches to earn experience points and money. Only characters that can fight, obviously; those who don’t have an offensive weapon to bring in need not apply. There are seven fights to go through in each chapter, each harder than the one before it, and honestly there are some characters who simply cannot make it through them all, period (ALEC AND NOISH). But you should always try to get everyone as far as they can for the extra EXP and the sweet, sweet money.

Also, it can be save scummed. See, Genealogy is super huge, so it lets you save the game at the start of every turn, as long as none of your characters have spent their turn. Using the arena does not count as using a turn. So there’s nothing stopping you from saving and reloading after victories until you get favorable RNG in terms of winning battles and gaining levels. But that would be morally wrong. Bwhahahaha.

Pawnbroker: Buys and sells weapons/items. Because characters cannot trade weapons to each other, because this game was designed by the Devil, the only way to move an item from one character to another is to have them sell it to the Pawnbroker and then buy it back with a different person.

Augury: Look up what units are approaching a Romance with each other, and how many kills a unit has. Interesting, but not super useful since your control over Romances are fairly limited (if two characters are showing up as ready to romance here, then you have to be very lucky to stop it), and knowing how many kills they’ve gotten is neat but doesn’t actually help anything.

Supply: Store items you don’t have room for. Really aren’t enough items in the game to bother with this, because if a character doesn’t have room to hold something, they should probably sell it to someone who can put it to use.

Armory: Sells a limited supply of new weapons for better prices than the pawn shop, but you can’t sell your own things to them and their supply is limited. Restocks occasionally throughout the campaign, so check it every chapter. To start:

Nothing great, but I have Finn buy the Javelin to give him a distance option, upgrade Lex to a Steel Axe (but do not sell his Iron Axe! It’s important later, seriously!) and have Arden buy the Slim Sword to help his accuracy a little. I also go to the Pawnshop, and sell Sigurd’s Steel Sword to let Alec buy it. Now it’s time to cheese the shit out of properly and politely face the Arena. It’s super tedious to both do and watch, so I’ll do the basics first and then proceed to do it off-screen with everyone.

Step 1: Enter the arena and pick a weapon to use.

Step 2: Be told who your enemy will be, so if they’re not a good match for the weapon you picked you might as well just quit, go back, and pick a different one if you can.

Step 3: Kick ass. All battles in the arena are to the finish; units will just keep attacking like in normal battles until one is defeated. Don’t worry if you lose; you don’t die, it will just leave your unit back in the castle with 1HP. Conversely, if they win, they’re healed to full.

Step 4: Get money! Each tier gives you a 500 more than the tier before it, so winning all of them is a pretty hefty payday.

Now, let’s do this. See you in sixty years.

Sigurd: 7 wins, gained two levels. +2 HP, +1 Skill, +1 Strength, +1 Speed, +1 Luck

Quan: 7 Wins, gained three levels. +2 HP, +1 Skill, +1 Strength, + 1 Luck, +2 Defense

Arden: 5 wins, gained one level. +1 HP +1 Speed

Noish: 3 wins, gained one level. +1 Speed +1 Defense

Lex: Five wins, gained three levels. +2 HP, +2 Luck, +3 Defense

Azel: 3 wins, gained one level. +1 HP, +1 Skill, +1 Speed, +1 Magic, +1 Luck

Ethlyn: 3 wins, gained one level. +1 Skill, +1 Strength, +1 Luck, +1 Defense

Alec: 3 wins, gained one level. +1 HP, +1 Resistance

Finn: 4 Wins, gained one level. +1 HP, +1 Skill, +1 Speed

Midir: 5 wins, gained two crappy levels. +2 HP, +1 Skill

Not… great. I was hoping more people would be able to win, but tier four is a super fast sword guy that tripped a lot of people up, and tier six is a stupid fast wind mage that tended to crush the people who made it past him. Only Sigurd and Quan were badass enough to finish the whole thing. I’ll try again with some of them near the end of the chapter, after they’ve gained some levels in the field.

That done, let’s head right on out, and meet the Verdane invasion. I assume they’re still coming, even though we spent ten million years in the arena.

So here we go. Three enemy castles, one neutral castle at Nordion, and our home base in Evans. There are also three villages; one directly south of Evans, one to the south-central portion of the map near the second enemy castle, Marpha, and one directly to the west of that. All of them just give out money and lore info, so if you miss one it isn’t a huge loss, but we’ll try to get them all anyway. And of course, before we do anything else, checking the menu screen…

Shows Quan and Finn have a conversation to have. We send them out of the castle to chat.

Quan: Thank you, Finn.

Finn: Even so, I am but a page… It honors me to have your confidence, but I doubt I’ll be much use to you.

Quan: Is that so? In that case, what better time than now for a spot of hands-on training? Draw, Finn!

Finn: Yes, sir!

This conversation gives Finn a permanent +1 to Strength, Skill, and Defense, and now you start to see why he is better than Alec and Noish. This is not the last time Quan or Ethlyn just randomly gives him an awesome present; apparently the Lenster Royal Family are great bosses. We deploy the rest of the army, move them as far toward Genoa as they can travel, and end our turn. No enemies are close enough to reach us or to reach any of the villages, so the enemy phase goes by quickly, and…

(Oh, hey, story is happening. You might remember Prince Jamke from the chapter start cutscene. He is handsome, young, and not smirking like a jackass, so you probably guessed he was the good prince. Well, you weren’t wrong.)

Jamke: You need to get as far away as you can before Gandolf finds out!

Aideen: Pardon me, Prince Jamke, but are you not joining us?

Jamke: No. I won’t stand for my brothers’ vile ways, but I won’t just betray my father, either. I’m going back to the capital. I’m going to try, one more time, to convince my father.

Aideen: You’re right… we must do all we can to end this war as soon as possible. Prince Jamke, I would sooner not burden you alone, but you are our only hope to persuade King Batur to end this.

(Oh good, the obnoxious child character is joining the cast. I really love how everything needs to have one of those.)

(Jamke, you’re okay in my book.)

Jamke: If Aideen hadn’t insisted on letting you go too, you’d still be sitting in chains. Now, what did you promise to do?

Dew: I know, I know. I promised Aideen too. I’m washin’ my hands of thievin’ from now on. Can I go now?

Jamke: I’ll take your word for it. Now, go already!

(Jamke heads back to Verdane Castle, and we zoom in to Marpha to see Bandana Rapist learning his life has gone wrong.)

Gandolf: Gah! Damn my rat of a brother! Boys! We’re taking the wench and the brat back! If they put up a fight, kill ‘em if you have to!

Well, on the down side, we got an entire second army heading our way now. That’s not ideal. But hey, two new characters! Let’s check ‘em out.

First, Aideen, the team’s first Priest. Her class can’t fight at all until they promote, and she has no abilities at all, so she’s not gonna be super good for dealing with this army that’s right next to her. But hey, she’ll be wonderful when we get her home, because she’s a much better healer than Ethlyn. Her magic is higher, and her Mend staff is better than Ethlyn’s Heal staff on top of that; I might have them trade out later, but for now they can stick where they are. In addition, her speed, luck, and resistance are all solid, so she can do a very good job of tanking against mage units when we run into some. She does have Minor Ullur Blood, but can’t get the greatest benefit from it because the weapon it empowers is Bows, which can’t use. It does improve her HP Growths by +20% and her Luck growths by +30%. She can also have a conversation with Ethlyn that will get her a gift. They did grow up next door to each other, after all.

And… then there’s Dew. He’s… I just hate him so much. As you can see, he is a melee unit despite having Strength and Defense that are total garbage. His Speed and Luck are excellent, so he’ll dodge well, and he’s level 1 so he’ll grow quickly, but at this point in the game he will break like cheap glass under any attack at all.

That said, he’s not worthless, and in fact is very useful if leveled up. He comes with three abilities that are all quite excellent: Steal, which lets him take the gold from any enemy he lands a hit on; Sol, which has a chance of causing any damage he causes to heal him; and Bargain, which cuts the prices in half for him when shopping at stores. Plus, as a Thief, he is the only class that can give his gold to any other unit, where most units can only give gold to their own Lover. So you see, his primary role in the army for the foreseeable future will be to rob the shit out of axe dudes who can’t hit him, and then give that money to people who are useful. Then, with luck, he will gain a few levels while doing this and his reasonably good growths will give him the stats to actually contribute to the army.

TL;DR, I hate Dew but I’mma use him anyway because he’s actually not a bad unit, despite having a very slow start. I just hate him anyway because I’m a miserable child-hating bastard.

I have Aideen run away, and have Dew camp out on the village nearby. He basically can’t be hit by the axe units of Verdane as long as he’s standing on a defensive terrain of some sort, and while he won’t kill anything, he can at least chip away and steal some gold.

Back to the main army, we move south to start the attack on Kinbaith’s army. He himself isn’t anything special, and his army is mostly crap despite his two Leadership Stars buffing them, but he’s a pain in the ass for one specific reason:

Note that little bag icon next to his Hand Axe? That symbolizes an item which will drop when the enemy is killed, ending up in the inventory of whoever kills them. Now since units cannot trade items because of the dark influence of Satan Who Is the Devil, this means you preferably want any unit with a drop item to be killed by someone who can put it to good use right away. This is annoying from the very get go and never stops being annoying. This is actually one of the less terrible ones; the only person who can use the Hand Axe at all is Lex, so we want Lex to kill Kinbaith if at all possible. At least Lex can fight, so that ain’t too bad. Time to rock!

First, the unit going for the nearby village gets to meet Sigurd.

I don’t think he enjoyed the meeting. It’s okay, neither did I, that level was pretty crap. Everyone else has been put onto a forest to let Kinbaith’s idiot squad crash against us like waves upon the sand. Let’s watch.

I would like to thank my kids for their expert dodging. Don’t know how Noish pulled it off, since he has been playing the game like he has a magnet in his face, but hey. Only one person took a hit, and two kills. And Dew is so guaranteed to dodge the enemy didn’t even take a swing at him. Wimps. I start off my turn by having Aideen run away, and letting him take a shot of his own.

God, look at that shit damage. Everything about you is bad, Dew. Thanks for the money, though. Other characters take their shots at the units Noish weakened in his bout of random matrix dodging. Azel, Quan, Noish, and Sigurd all get kills of weakened enemies, but only one person gains a level on this turn…

And he’s starting to scare me. Just… who is this guy. I’ve never had Finn turn out this good, never. He’s going from ‘pretty okay’ to ‘endgame tier’ with surprising speed. I’m not complaining, exactly, but I’m starting to worry if he’s sucking the power out of everyone else to fuel his demonic rise.

Um… end turn, I guess. We broke the back of Kinbaith’s army and the rest are set to charge a giant wall of metal once again. That should be funny.

… Unless Alec ruins this for me. Don’t ruin this for me, Alec.

… Why would he go after Midir? The one person who could counter him?

Guys. There’s a whole other army of people who can’t fight back against you.

I shouldn’t be having to give you tactical advice!

… You know, I mean, I shouldn’t complain, this was pretty great for me. But it’s almost frustrating to see it happening.

The enemy phase ends when the little army near Dew takes on swing at him; the commander has a small shot to connect, and tries. It doesn’t work.

This may take awhile. I have him attack and rob another random axe dude, and then go back up to the main army and rock shit out. Arden! Kill!

I’m almost relieved that wasn’t amazing. It feels more normal. FINN! KILL!

BEHOLD MY POWER! NOISH! FAIL ME!

We’ve grown so amazing that even Noish can’t fail us anymore! Bwhahahahahaahahha… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! SIGURD, TEACH KINBAITH TO FEAR ME!

LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEXXXXXX!

HAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *cough cough* I’m… sorry. I mean. I’m not used to things lining up so beautifully on this run, so I went a little mad with power. That was just… that was goddamn textbook. And Lex even gained a perfect level to cap it off and… what’s happening. Is this joy? I’m feeling joy. *sigh* It’s nice. It won’t last, but it’s nice.

Two enemies left. Azel walks up and eats the archer….

*sniff* I may cry. One guy left and three people to four people to hit him with. Just to be safe, I run Ethlyn in to heal Alec, then feed the last kill to him and Midir.

Midir takes a hit, just to make me unhappy after his perfect performance, but he gets the kill. I’ll allow it. End. Turn.

… Yeah, before we do anything with Ayra, we need to get people down there to help Dew. He has a 6% chance to die and I don’t trust those odds. Ethlyn heals up Midir, and then takes the nearby village.

(Well, I have good news for you, then.)

Woman who wasn’t paying attention: Barely a month goes by without him settin’ his army on us. It’s terrifyin’! King Batur, his father, used to do such a fine job of keeping him check. I can hardly imagine what’s goin’ on… anyway, glad you stopped by!

Great conversationalist, that one. Run, run, run to the southwest, my minions! Go and save the annoying child character!

Who is, to be fair, not doing super bad. Would have liked some strength there, but I can live with more speed. Lower that 6% chance to die until I can get some friends your way.

Back with the main army, Aideen has finally reached the team. I have her and Midir chat setting them up to one day have beautiful romance.

Midir: I’m so sorry I failed to protect you. Please, forgive me…

Aideen: The important part is that you’re safe as well, Midir. Please, don’t worry about it. You gave your all to protect me, and I couldn’t thank you enough for that, even if you didn’t succeed. For now, I’d like you to remain with Sigurd. He could use your strength.

(Ordinarily I would challenge that assumption, but in this case she’s actually not wrong. Midir has been rocking out this run.)

Midir: Certainly, Milady. He’s done so much for me, for you, and for all of Jungby. I’ll do all I can to return his kindness.

That done, we have Aideen heal his ouchies and move the army down another run toward Dew. We’re coming, little dude! Slowly are we coming!

Right after we have more conversations!

Aideen: Please accept my apologies. I’ve put the people of Chalphy through nothing but danger…

Sigurd: Don’t worry about it. Everyone will be glad to know you’re safe. You’ve nothing to worry about anymore. The road back to Jungby is secure for you, when you’re ready.

Aideen: No, I wish to remain here. Injuries are inevitable in war. As a humble servant of the gods, it is my duty to stay here and aid the wounded.

Sigurd: Say… Aideen, as I recall, you declined to pursue a knighthood and instead joined the clergy. Am I right? I shouldn’t be surprised, knowing how easily people warm to you, and you them. I’d do well to learn from your example!

Aideen: Thank you, Lord Sigurd, but that isn’t entirely true. Initially, I sought priesthood in a bid to help me find my sister. Even now, I still believe this is the answer I seek.

Sigurd: You mean Bridget… I’d heard she went missing as a child. So all this time, Aideen, you’ve been praying for her sake, haven’t you?

Aideen: Yes. I know we’ll meet someday. No matter what happens, I must give her this: her sacred birthright, the bow Yewfelle!

… … … I am suddenly very much looking forward to meeting Bridget, oh yes. The army moves southwest again, Quan and Alec stopping in range of Verdane’s second army, and Ethlyn stopping next to Aideen. One more conversation to have…

Aideen: It’s difficult to convey my thanks, but please, take this staff. I think you’ll have more use for it than me.

Ethlyn: Is this… a Return staff?! Oh, thank you, Aideen! I’ll put it to good use to help us all.

Yes, thank you, Aideen! The Return staff let’s Ethlyn warp a unit back to our home base from anywhere on the map, which is very helpful if unexpected enemies appear or you just want to get a new unit home to run the Arena. Even better, it gives Ethlyn roughly triple the experience of healing someone, so it helps her levels shoot up much faster. All in all, a great new toy.

With that, we move Alec and Quan into range of the enemy, and end our turn. Let’s see how this goes.

… Not great. Alec dodges, but Quan takes two hits despite being parked on a forest. My own dumb fault, I forgot to unequip his Javelin. Luckily, nobody else can get to him, and the rest of the team is near enough to help on our next turn. Rest of the team! Help!

Well… Lex helps, anyway. Alec reminds us he’s here to disappoint, taking a shot that puts his health in the danger zone. I have him run back to Aideen, and move Quan to save himself, as he was always destined to do.

With that out of the way, he runs back to his wife for a kiss and hot cocoa, while Sigurd runs forward to assassinate the enemy commander.

… Almost. Dew lightly pokes another gentleman, and… *sigh*… I might have screwed up. They have 0% chance to hit Dew, so... End turn…

Yeah, picture this exact scene six times as Sigurd steals all the experience for himself. Dammit, did not think this through.

…. I mean… I totally planned this. Yeah. All part of my master scheme.

The only exceptions to the remorseless one-sided slaughter are one guy who goes up to hit Lex… and misses… and the Commander, who takes another shot at Dew… and misses. When my turn comes around again, I have Midir execute Lex’s attacker. He levels…

And you know, forget Aideen, I want to marry Midir at this point. Finn runs down to Javelin the second-to-last soldier, who is attacking the village Dew was sheltering in. Ethlyn runs down to join them, giving the commander another target; I’d like Dew to get the kill, but on the way there I want him to have 100% perfect health just to be safe. She levels up from healing the little bastard.

… What is with you this run, honey? You’re letting your husband and brother down. Still, we have things mostly under control, so…

Well fuck you too, buddy. And worse, the commander I wanted Dew to kill foils my scheme and takes a shot at Finn instead.

So Finn is wounded, badly. Reinforcements are coming. Time to run! Ethlyn heals Finn and they both make a break for it. I leave just Dew, sitting on a tree, as a distraction. Without that commander, nothing can hit him, so he’ll be a perfect roadblock as long as he stays on defensive terrain. It’s time for the rest of the team to go… *twitch*… go… try to recruit Ayra. You might think with Kinbaith dead she’d be friendly. This is not true. And getting near her is incredibly risky for one. Big. Reason.

Astra is a venerable Fire Emblem special ability, and Ayra is (unless I’m mistaken) the first user of it, back when it was really broken. Later versions have those five strikes do half damage, but Ayra’s is just five normally-powered strikes in a row. If she hits you with that, pretty much any unit will die. And if they don’t die, they might kill her, because she’s not very durable. So I need someone she can’t Astra and who definitely won’t be able to kill her, to act as a distraction…. Huh…

Hahahaha, no. Maybe if you hadn’t spent this whole game being a sack of garbage and had gotten some good levels, but as you are now she won’t even need Astra to kick your ass. Get back in the corner, Alec. We will be using Finn, who will run from her when she gets close. Run like a coward. End turn!

I realize it doesn’t look like it, but I’m totally winning this map.

Finn gets close enough to Ayra to set her off. The idea is to have her run after him around the forest while Sigurd runs in, kills all her little buddies, and takes the castle. Once Shanan is free, then she can be reasoned with. Sigurd is ready, Finn is close enough… I think… and a few helpful units are near enough to draw a little pressure off Dew while we work. End turn…

Shit her little handaxe bros came out after us first! This could go badly. This… this could be bad. Please don’t be bad, game, please…

…………. I mean… I planned this. Yeah.

Did not plan that though. Azel is supposed to be support but he could die here and ruin my happy accident cunning plan with Finn if he gets attacked and hit again.

Oh God bless you, you beautiful caped madman.

…. Here she comes. I heal Azel, move the rest of the army away from Ayra, and… and pray, mostly. Go after Finn. Go after Finn you evil bitch. Please. Please, he set you off.

Meanwhile, Verdane’s army pulls some stupid stuff. Most of them go after Lex, who levels from it, but Azel gets a few as well and also gains.

Tolerable, if not the raw perfection I’m used to this chapter. Noish gets some ‘love’ and levels up too, but I didn’t screencap that because he got literally nothing. No points. In anything. I hate him so much.

On my turn, we’re in a very precarious situation. Ayra is in a position where she could chase Finn, Quan, or Sigurd, and I can’t be sure who she’ll go for. Meanwhile, the army itself is outnumbered by Verdane. This is turning into a shitshow, so my first priority even above Ayra is to thin the enemy’s numbers. Alec and Azel start by getting kills and…

… Huh. It finally happened. Even Alec doesn’t want to be associated with Noish anymore. Damn. Dew plinks away at the enemy yet again, gaining his second level.

Maybe Noish’s role in the army is to inspire everyone else to not be like him? I know it sounds like I’m joking, but everyone else on the team scores a kill without being damaged.

Meanwhile, Quan, Finn, and Sigurd are all still in Ayra’s range. Two are parked on forests with spears to give them weapon advantage. One is not. This will be… ugly.

Please, game. Show some mercy.

The enemy phase goes perfectly fine for most of it. Nobody levels, but nobody dies and that’s a fair damn trade in my book.

And then Ayra goes for Finn.

Come on Finn…

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF, FINN…

*sigh* Astra.

Reset! I figured I’d lose at least one to her, but still. Frustration.

Restarting from the beginning of the turn, things proceed identically up to that point. Dew gets a slightly different level because I send him a different unit, changing the RNG of his level; a point of Speed instead of a point of Defense, not really a fair trade for him, but otherwise it’s the same.

This time, with Sigurd and co, I have them not kill Ayra’s buddies, and instead have them run like terrified children. Sigurd toward the castle, Quan and Finn away. Maybe this will work.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Okay. For now, we just need to have Quan and Finn up there stay out of her range at all costs, while Sigurd goes and besieges the castle by himself. That is much more realistic than fighting Ayra. Trust me.

Game is saved, and I win. Eventually. I start my turn with Aideen healing, and unlike Ethlyn she knows how we do here.

Welcome to the team, Ms. Of Jungby. I’m very pleased to see you here. From here, I have the team rush out to meet Verdane head on, kicking ass, taking names, and nobody levels up except Alec.

Eh, still better than Noish!

Now, this was super risky and I might very well regret it. But, unless I’m wrong there’s just not enough of them left to really kill anyone; pretty much everyone is full health and they’re guarding each other’s back in a big way. Hopefully I’m not wrong.

If I am wrong, well, I did just save. Two resets is not bad.

Quan and Finn run away like frightened children, and Sigurd goes to storm the castle. Nothing much happens, though; the castle guard has tons of health, but can’t hit Sigurd because hand-axes are inaccurate against swords. Then he immediately kills himself rushing against Siggy again on the enemy phase. Now all we need is for the main army to live!

… Ethlyn, if you fuck this up for me, I swear.

Thankfully, the others all go for Dew and miss him, so we’re pretty set. All that’s left of Verdane’s army on the map is two archers, two axe dudes, and Ayra. And soon, not even that. Sigurd wrecks axe-dude number one, levels,

I’ll take it. And while we’re on the subject, I will also take the castle!

Sigurd: What’s the matter? Why are you silent? I want to know why you were held here.

Shanan: You’re not one of Kinbaith’s lot… are you?

Sigurd: We’ve dealt with Kinbaith. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.

Shanan: Oh! So Ayra doesn’t have to keep fighting! My Aunt Ayra was forced to fight ‘cause Kinbaith had me! Please! You’ve got to help her!

Sigurd: That swordswoman. Huh. I thought there was something amiss about her… Very well! I’ll let her know that you’re safe. Now, what’s your name?

Shanan: Shanan. I’m Shanan, the prince of Isaach…

(OH. Um. Well. Awkward.)

Sigurd: Isaach’s prince, you say… I can barely begin to imagine what you’ve been through, Shanan. For now, though, you’re welcome to stay with our army. Don’t worry. One day, you’ll make it home. I’ll do all I can to ensure that.

(Awwwwwwwwwww, Sigurd, you big old softie.)

Oifey: Pardon me, sire, but we’re currently at war with Isaach. If we’re going to harbor its prince, shouldn’t we inform the king?

Sigurd: He’s a child, Oifey. That war has nothing to do with him. I’ll find a way to get him home safely, but for now, we need to look after him.

Oifey: Understood, sire. … Just as I thought. Lord Sigurd really is such a kind man…

Well, we got the castle, and with that the worst part of the map is over, so I believe it’s time to call this update. Next week, we chat with Ayra, finally get to feed Gandolf his own bandana, experience some delicious plot development, and see perhaps the most pathetic romance in gaming. Look forward to it!

Total Resets: 1. Better than I was expecting, honestly!

#Let's Play #Let's Play FE4 #Let's Play Fire Emblem 4 #Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War #Fire Emblem 4 #Let's Play Genealogy of the Holy War #my writing #He's doing... FINNomenal

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the-firebird69 · 3 years

Text

You're the same problem with Brad today thought he was the balls and that he was doing things and helping he's going to be some construction guy for us cuz he like had to sit there and do the skit like he's doing well assembling the building also he started laughing this is going to suck yeah you're making people to kill you a lot more angry at you so I'm sitting there pissed off I hear you and he's going yeah but damn I do about going after us he said yabba dabba do so I went out there to where he was with a group and I grabbed him personally and I said the clock stopped you don't have to go to work and I nailed him and his head came off and he's dead gone took his head in his body and we stepped into the pyramid we got away with it and he's a goner he's not big enough okay that's the story. I don't like you Brad I don't have to write what you say they don't have to say anything they don't want to it's a fun time talking about the stores and shops going in and somebody helping out because it's good PR cuz when we come in here and sell stuff we're not ripping anyone off we're not selling anybody something that's substandard or dangerous or rigged it all works perfectly we don't want your name or you like this painting our product because that's what we've got that's really good we can't allow you to build any of our buildings what you're working any of them or have you seen near them you're a scourge on society you realize that you and yours are so freaking annoying and nasty and that your blobs of people who just smooches and you cannot assemble the house of ours and it's very simple I could myself by myself I can easily put one together with Ken and Justin it would be a no-brainer they've done it before I've done it before Ken's done it before and you've done nothing before because you can't remember it because of your brain doesn't allow you to I don't find any use for you either neither does the max and you're in my face all the time and I'm telling you to get out and you won't so I'm going to make you get out of my face

So our son says all that and I say this I don't want to hear that you're relating anything to the past ever because you're for us I don't want to hear any of it if you are I'm going after you whenever you try all you really but really you are a huge a****** to him huge I mean have you ever heard what you say you come in you bother him you threaten him you leave that's what friends are for huh but this guy does I know something else now you little sister here wants to say something none of you people care how we feel why the f*** would we why would we you know you're right about I understand something you know the truth why wouldn't we you're out there with it on your sleeve coming out of your mouth coming out your ass coming out your pores and you don't try but this guy tries a lot less than you do and you don't care about it enough now that other people and Brian is a complete loser and Dead Man by the way oh he's dead everyone's way on Sunday he's always going to be dead now this is the rebellion I have supporting me Tommy F this is the most frustrating spot to me and in history that much like they should they go around and take with you until you're mad at me and everyone else

Zues Hera

Thor Freya

You're an outrage Lily but Brad is a complete undeniable terrorist and he's off and on and it's lame it doesn't do much for him what you people do here is just rad he's stuck in in a bed of rats it's disgusting I went around today and ask what are you doing today what are you going with things how well things going nobody answers it all he says well you know he says I really don't want to be here this is not my cup of tea I don't belong here I don't like this lifestyle I went out I want some of my money I don't have to have a ton I have tons of money nobody let me have it there's people a bunch of pigs their head up their ass and that's what I see you don't know anything about what you're doing and put him here cuz he had nowhere to go his mom was on the war path against him cuz she went really sick she was sick he a message just trying to poison him and stuff they kind of pulled me out of there and then this a****** is poisoning me worse than she was but she wasn't really poisoning me but this a****** Jason is Jamie chomo he's a little s**** attacking me you must have catacombs below they got threats all over the place Toyota town on him he's saying shut up the whole time it didn't work he ended up dead this place is ruined because he's doing the stupid mental health and all this other dog s*** I tell you what it's the most frustrating situation I've ever seen you not letting him out of there threatening constantly people should get rid of you and they are.

Tommy f

It's a matter of fact everybody is so mad at these retarded idiots especially after today's show because they don't want us here they do the stupid little act that says they helped us get here and it's so impetuous and so much like swine everyone is starting to kill you people because you're stupid f**** along with everything else it is you Pennsylvania every aspect to you is so disgustingly repulsive to them that they're killing you for almost anything that you do and you got yourself here we're thankful for that I'm putting on an order to get rid of every single one of your retards here in town right now Tommy favino is too I can't stand you anymore you try and pressure him with everything there is what kind of idiot would do that to a person there's no reason for doing it you don't get anything

Thor Freya

So now you're going to be this a****** on the stoop riding everybody and getting your own granddaddy shot in the head and thinking it's me cuz you're stupid as hell and you're going around saying stuff about me all the time because you're an idiotic pig now I don't care about you you little s*** you're going to make you learn and you shouldn't mess with me and we're going to take you to Isle of Dr Moro and stuff you into primates cuz that's what you are you sound like when you smell like one you think like one you've got grudge matches like primates do go back and do things hundreds of times and someone does say like once he's doing things out of logic I need to get you back by doing things you're doing to him most of the time is to see what it is or to say I see that like you do it just doesn't he doesn't rub it in to grind it just puts there and says whatever enjoy there's reasons for it he says to be because I have to heat them up and light them up too and that's what most of it is he says and I think so but it is cuz he just has blabbing his ass off like he just stole all his money out of his account you willing to do that stupid s*** to him to lose all your money and die and I'm not this is ridiculous you little kids little girls you act like little girls all the time we have to exterminate you and that's why and he says of course who wants to live with these people who are not adults who promote the destruction of the human race out of ignorance

Tommy f

We're going to war with you little s**** we're going to clear you out everybody that has half a brain is going to kill you he's right about something we don't need the distraction now we need to get rid of you and you're going after The Offspring like crazy you find out where some of them are and all of you sitting on top of them dying and you're reviving them just like we need keep the keep up the good work

Thor Freya

I thank you for my life my friend this is horrible these idiots are so dumb they can't tell where to look for anything ever and need everyone to tell him and remind them where things are they're horribly stupid and dangerous because they're so dumb I remember you crying for help out this guy is poisoning me someone has to kill his ass until he's completely gone I need them all wiped out right now so everybody got to it I called everybody over and over I said get down there now he's back started wiping him out and he's back and wiping him out his back he's running around shooting you blaming Brian to ride everyone should know that

Hera

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codezeta-liveblog-blog · 6 years

Text

Bonds 1.5 - Malicious Coffee Break

I’d expected a homey ‘small town’ coffee shop for Jacob’s Bell, but Laird guided me to a franchise instead. A small crowd had gathered within, teenagers done with the day of classes and adults done with work. Taking shelter from the cold.

Not gonna lie, I kinda expected to skip the coffee gathering for some reason, glad to be directly back into it again.

I didn’t miss the sheer number of eyes that fell on me when I entered with the local chief of police.

I'm thinking, since this also happened way back in 1.1 that people know of Rose and her family. Maybe they know of the same types of rumors that Blake spread around with his two favorite cousins.

“Hi Laird,” one of the twenty-somethings behind the over-lacquered wood counter said. A narrow guy with an apron and a flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows.

“Hi James.”

A middle aged woman, lines in her face worn deep, otherwise fairly well dressed, asked, “Who’s this? Bringing someone in for the wedding?”

One of two blonde teenagers at a table by the line said, “He’s not one of ours, and there aren’t any Behaim sorts with that hair.”

I'm wondering if this one talking is one of the family of blondes that were sitting in that table with Laird back in the visions. I do remember them talking about a wedding. Reinforcing their families strength and hold through marital bonds, most likely. Blake's hair would be different enough to pin him down as one of Rose's maybe, and this teen seem to be maybe pressing to publicly confirm that for everyone around.

I touched my hair. Wavy and dirty blond, in contrast to the straight blond hair these girls sported.

I could connect the dots. Blonde girls… they might have been among the ones I saw while tossing and turning in bed, before waking up to all this.

“Wedding is a few months away,” Laird said. “As for who he is…”

He turned to me. Letting me make my own introductions.

“I’m Blake Thorburn. One of Rose’s grandkids.”

There wasn’t any shock or surprise, no outcry nor any particular reaction. I could see people shifting their weight. The middle aged woman folded her arms, legs set apart. A few people who’d been idly looking my way were staring now.

“Something’s happened to his cousin, Molly Walker,” Laird said. “The RCMP are looking into it.”

“The Walker girl is dead?” James asked.

“Murder?” one of the blondes asked.

“She was savaged by something in the glade behind the box store. There were bites, claw marks, as well as evidence of tools being used. We’ll know more when the coroner gets back to us tonight.”

Tools?

How will bites with clawing and biting be so easily discarded by police? Maybe the case wont be dropped as promptly, unless Laird pushes for it being a murder followed by some animal coming around and eating the body. That depends a lot on the state of the body though which:

“Oh my gosh,” a heavyset man at the far end of the counter said, going white.

“It was murder then?” the older of the blonde girls asked.

I wasn’t sure what color I was going, but I could feel a sick feeling in my chest. The smells of the coffee were getting more intense. Too intense.

I’d known she’d been mauled. I’d known she’d been attacked, and that she’d been scared, but this was the worst bit of all. Tools? How did one use tools?

“Do you need to step into the washroom?” Laird asked.

“No,” I said. “But give me a second.”

“Someone was murdered? In Jacob’s Bell?” the heavy man asked.

Man is it even okay for a policeman to just openly talk about cases like this, just "Hey guys, how's afternoon coffee going? Did you know this girl got super killed in the woods yesterday?? It look super brutal you guys wouldn't believe, I almost barfed right on the evidence, anyways this is Blake, he is the victim's cousin, how's family buddy?"

“We don’t know if it was intended as a murder” Laird said. “At the very least, she was attacked, and she did die that same night, possibly from the cold or blood loss. For the time being, it’s a good idea to stay safe, don’t stay out too late, and tune into tonight’s news. I’ll be giving an announcement to fill everyone in.”

“And him?” the blonde girl asked.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of doubt about why someone might have gone after Ms. Walker,” Laird said. “Others might come after him. We were having a discussion regarding his safety, and we might talk about the house as well.”

“Are you selling it?” the employee behind the counter asked.

“Good Christ, James,” the middle aged woman said. “His cousin just died, and you’re asking about that?”

“Everyone’s going to ask,” James said. “People are in debt, and once that house sells, property values-”

Well people being in debt is their own goddamned fault isnt it James? Shut up and go play your... what year is it? 2013? Go play your PS3 (maybe PS4 depending on the month) and ask your mother how to be polite, since you seem to have forgotten all about it.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” she said. “I’m saying it isn’t the time.”

James frowned. “Can I get you something, Laird?”

“Coffee, black.”

James had it ready in seconds. “Blake, was it? You want anything?”

“No, thank you,” I said. I still felt a little ill. Tools had been used? What did that even mean? Knives, scalpels? Or hammers and saws?

Or magical Tools maybe?

Laird reached for his wallet, to pay, and James refused him. The ease with which Laird accepted that suggested it was a regular thing.

“Corner booth?” Laird asked me. I nodded.

The booth in the corner situated us away from any people. Laird was in the lead, and he took the seat that placed his back to the corner, which meant I had my back to the rest of the room. I sat down, hands clasped together in front of me for warmth, breaking the grip only long enough to turn around the napkin dispenser, so the reflective surface wasn’t facing the wall.

Rose wasn’t there.

Oh no. Is it this place? Because I cant really remember her being able to just leave.

Laird opened and closed his pocket watch. I could see the interior, a backing that had enough openings to reveal the complicated inner workings. The entire thing looked like it was made of gold and ivory.

He’d grabbed three little paper packets of sugar, and tore two open. I watched as he tore them open, then emptied them. They missed his drink entirely, forming a little dune onto the table, with grains dancing across the slick, not-quite washed surface.

He moved his cup, placing it onto the pile, and sliding it across the table. When he lifted it, the sugar was left in a crescent shape where it had been dragged by the underside of the cup. He emptied the remaining packet, a smaller pile in the center of the crescent, and then three lines, fanning outward, on the other side. The edge of the paper packet helped give the three lines form.

Almost half of a typical ‘sun’, as a child might draw it, with the rays fanning outward, and a dot in the middle.

I could see the blonde girls turning in unison, glancing at Laird.

“A signal?” I asked. My heart was pounding. I had no idea what this meant.

“Just the opposite. Keep an eye on the people.”

Man, magical rituals out in the open is not something I was expecting to be honest haha. Just like how open on the subject the guy has been, I was just theorizing things would be rarer to see and just generally done in secrecy. Not that I didnt notice that this probably is either freezing time for everyone around or casting some "ignore-me" spell on them, but more the fact that they doing it in a coffee table out in the open in the middle of day is not a scene I would have pictured in this setting!

I did. Twenty or thirty seconds passed, enough time that I almost spoke up. Then people stood up. The occupied booth nearest us emptied. A group of people entered the shop, and situated themselves at the far end.

“That should provide a bit of privacy,” Laird said. He sipped his coffee. “We tend to learn a few tricks, because it’s expedient. This one is a bit of shamanism. Many of the circles here and there will look down on someone for dabbling. It’s dangerous, and it leads to more mistakes. It’s better, many say, to specialize, do one thing well. The Duchamp family there seems to hold to this idea. The Behaim family doesn’t.””

“And my grandmother? I know she had an area of expertise, but the library is pretty comprehensive.”

“I think your observations are apt. She may well have been a rare talent, helped by a generous heaping of time. I chose to work, to have this be a definitive part of my life. There were periods I was more serious about it, points where it faded into the background, and I raised a family. I suspect your grandmother made it her life. I find it impressive, if I leave the particulars aside.”

“Hard to imagine her like that.”

“I imagine you have questions. About her, about all of this.”

“Lots. Very few I’m comfortable asking.”

“You don’t want to show how little you know, perhaps. I wouldn’t worry. Most of us were novices in the beginning.”

“Most?” I asked.

“Most. We have a local exception, even. Others almost assuredly exist. It is generally a bad habit to use absolutes, even outside of certain circles. None, all, every, always, and so on.”

“Right,” I said.

Specifically shamanism huh? So there is different TYPES of supernatural abilities one can dab on I presume. I wonder what specifies which. Shamanism are rituals more targetted to animals but mainly humans arent they? Imma go research when I can.

“You’re in a dangerous situation, Blake. The natural inclination is to be the cornered rat, to lash out, biting, in a frenzy. One would understand if you wanted to throw caution to the wind and fight us.”

“Hypothetically speaking,” I said, “Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

He raised his heavy eyebrows. “Besides the obvious?”

“Besides the obvious.”

“Do you know the reason we discourage people from owning guns?”

“Guns are dangerous,” I said. A glance to the side indicated that some more people had come in. A group of kids started to drift towards the empty tables near us, then changed their minds and headed for the door. Taking their coffee and snacks to go instead of sitting in.

“Well, we’re talking about dangerous things. Guns are more dangerous when in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to use them. Not to whoever poses a threat to them, but to themselves and to their loved ones. It’s much the same here.”

“If I’m going to die anyways,” I said, “What’s the harm in self defense?”

“An attacker can take your gun from you. The idea is the same here. When we work, we’re dealing with outside parties. If they don’t succeed in their tasks, your opposition can make a better offer, or simply frustrate them to the point that whatever you sent comes back at you, angry and blaming you for the failure.”

I nodded slowly.

He gestured down at the diagram in sugar. “This idea recurs in any dealing with Others. Always, there is a risk. Here, I make a meager food offering, create a sign to indicate what I want, and draw from the reputation I maintain with local community spirits. A bonus of my position. The spirits play along, because they know it keeps people safer and helps to keep the community safe, and because they know I’ll make a better offering later, a habit I’ve established. The end result? They turn people away before they sit nearby, and we can talk without fear of eavesdroppers.”

Very interesting. When status is so important as it seems to have a say in the occurances of the Other community, I wonder how does one start off and if we will be seeing Blake climb the rungs in any sort of way or if he'll receive something powerful thrust upon him that he can use, at an obvious or not so obvious cost.

“And these benign spirits can turn on you.”

“Always a concern, with any Other. If something goes wrong, if I allow too many people to go out into the cold instead of sitting here and someone gets hurt, or if the business starts to suffer here due to a lack of customers, my credit with these same spirits might become strained, and they might take issue. At the very least, I’d get less free coffees. At worst, I might find events conspiring to take my position from me, or I might even get drawn and quartered in the streets.”

Is this implying that Others own the coffee shop, that they interfere for him to get freebies or do the Others just for some reason care about the maintained status and equilibrium in the town? I hope we meet other Others soon in this arc. Hehe silly sentence.

More grotesque imagery. It made me think of Molly’s fate.

I leaned back. “Wouldn’t practitioners be making those sorts of mistakes more often?”

“It happens from time to time. A handful of occurrences a year, for a given area. But these things are rarely sudden, and they can take a variety of forms. As it’s rarely a single monumental mistake, errors like this tend to cause a long series of events that can be tied together, telling very plausible stories. Building racism or intolerance in a sub-community, peaking in a mob assault. A high-risk investor’s accounts bottom out all at once, causing financial ruin. You’d be surprised at what’s believable, when looked at from outside, or how easy it is to let this happen. One can unknowingly offend one subset of Others while trying to please another, or spend too much credit and overdraw their accounts.”

I nodded. “And the… bigger events? We were just talking about the equivalent of nukes.”

“Most areas are stable. A lord or lords sit in power, well situated, unlikely to change more than once every fifty to a hundred years, if that. In smaller areas, things are typically enforced within the community, and it’s too much effort for too little gain, to cross too many lines and take such risks. The only places where you’re liable to see anything dramatic are places that are on the brink of great change, or places undergoing that change… places where people see an opportunity to seize greater status or better positions. That change helps to hide things.”

So just like in Worm, everything is stable and working as intended, until it just isn't and everything is chaos from there. I doubt we'll be seeing things in this stable picture Laird is portraying for much longer, power gaps and all that, just like the one we are in right now, since grandma's death.

“Like a girl being beaten and tortured in the woods might be explained away as a side effect of the Hillsglade House dispute,” I said. My tone was a bit harder than I’d intended. Though we were out of earshot, I could see the blonde girls glance my way.

“Yes,” Laird said, just as calm as he’d been before. “Getting around to your question, things that are hard to explain away tend to end in people disappearing, rather than bodies being found. The locals will then clean up, and they will be upset with the culprit for the inconvenience and the risk.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

“I want you to trust me, Blake. We may be enemies, but that doesn’t preclude trust and respect, much less an open dialogue.”

I glanced again at the metal side of the napkin dispenser. Rose was still absent.

Oh, it might be something either Laird or the two girls did, to prohibit whatever type of Other Rose is to manifest? Hm... seems a bit off. If he wanted Blake to trust him like it feels he is trying to do, then he has no reason to do something like this. The girls... I feel like they are respecting some boundaries here, not intervening.

Laird finished off his coffee, then set it down on the table. He opened his pocket watch, then closed it.

“I take it that’s your implement,” I said.

“And my familiar,” he said. “After a fashion.”

He opened the pocketwatch to show me. As before, I saw the openings that revealed the inner workings.

After two seconds, however, other hands slipped out from beneath the hour, minute and second hands. One went backwards, while the other went slow. He rested the end of the pocketwatch on the table, and I could feel the steady tick of it being transmitted across the surface, akin to the beating of a heart.

“Implements can be familiars?” I asked.

“Unconventional, but a police dog was off the table, and I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life dealing with any Other that would need to take such a large and inconvenient mortal form. Not that this one is so weak.”

“So… it’s talking to you?”

“It can, but just now it was doing me the service of telling me the time. I can’t take too long, I’m expecting a call from the coroner and a meeting with Macguin,” he said. “We might have some room for conversation before I go, but first I’m going to need to top up my coffee. Can I get you anything?”

I shook my head.

“I was thinking we could talk about a deal. Something to keep things safe and calm for everyone involved. If we went that route, I could protect you and buy you time to find a way out, if one exists. Maybe ruminate on that, so we can jump straight into the conversation at the first opportunity.”

“Sure,” I said.

He stood from his chair, empty cup in hand.

I turned in my seat to watch Laird join the line. With the crude little diagram in sugar, there was a bit of a crowd at the other end of the coffee shop, with people gathering and waiting for their coffees at the one end of the counter, the general line, people finding seats and people coming and going. Twenty or so people in all, but still a good number.

Still have to get on with those books to truly get what is up, what are the limitations, how can they be both and how does that work.

“I don’t trust him,” Rose said, the words distorted.

I glanced at the dispenser. Sure enough, I could see her blurry reflection. I murmured my reply, “I don’t either.”

Word had apparently gotten around. People were glancing my way, gathering around Laird. I withdrew my cell phone from my pocket and raised it to my ear. I’d get enough stares without talking to myself.

Rose said, “I went to go get the little black book. Dramatis Personae. I’ve got others in a grocery bag. I didn’t like how incomplete our knowledge was, so I did more digging. Behaim’s Circle, a gender-neutral term for covens, specializes in chronomancy, with a secondary focus in augury.”

I could recall reading that, but I’d been skimming, to see where the real threats were, and my focus had been on Essentials. “Chrono… time?”

“And omens.”

“Explains the pocketwatch,” I replied.

Yes it does. Also, nice to have confirmatoon that Rose can jump around her mirrors. Maybe only the ones she's been to before. Or did she have to physically walk in her version of the world up to the mirror in the library? The lawyer could see Rose, but will Laird be able to? Does Blake even have a reflection when Rose isn't there. I'm going to go with no on that one.

“The little black book says that grandmother thought the watch was a zeitgeist. Not in the pop culture term, either. A literal zeitgeist, a spirit of time. Those are his tools, the means he uses, so if he’s going to try something, it’s going to work in a way related to them. Both concretely and abstractly.”

“Keep going,” I said.

“With implements, the shape it takes is an indicator in how the practitioner works. A wand is very direct, pointing to things, aimed at specifics. A staff is more dramatic, cumbersome. A fan might be more personal, an accessory, directing things inward. Pens are focused on labels and premeditation.”

“It’s symbolic,” I said. I watched Laird order his coffee. “Abstract. I can work with that. I’ve spent enough time around artists, I think I can do ass-pull interpretations.”

Wildbow doing word play and playing with meanings behind representations, then tying that back together to the characters it is all related to, and all of this playing an actual important role in the story? YES. D-licious.

“A watch. It’s less direct than the objects Essentials gave as examples. It doesn’t suggest anything particular.”

“It’s a… way of seeing how the world works on a fundamental level. For someone who does the omen thing, I can sort of understand that.”

“Right. But what’s he pulling here, if he’s pulling anything?”

“He might be getting more information out of us than we’re getting. Which I wouldn’t mind.”

“I’ve got an ugly feeling,” Rose said. “Like he’s playing us. You know?”

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t take my eyes off Laird. “It doesn’t feel like it’s just a little bit of information gathering.”

“No,” Rose said, very much on the same page with me. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Something else, then,” I said. “Time… I’m thinking about what he could pull on that front, but I’m not coming up with anything time related. We don’t have any major appointments… no.”

I saw the blonde girls get up, and I tensed. I couldn’t say what I was tensing up to do, but I wanted to be ready for anything.

Maybe the watch just "tells him" things. Maybe he is spying on the conversarion right now. Blake doesnt have much knowledge to share, but I dont doubt there is something deeper going on. This setting reminds me a lot of Hunter x Hunter's Greed Island arc, where the characters, despite being strong, are completely outmatched at the beggining for simply not knowing how the videogame they are transported to mechanicaly works, so they just get tagged by an in-game spell right at the start thinking its some deadly threat when it was just an in-game tracker someone put on them to steal their shit later.

They glanced my way, unsmiling, before stopping to talk to Laird for a second and then leaving. Not long enough to plot something.

“He has other tricks up his sleeve,” Rose said. “Having a focus doesn’t mean you can’t do something else.”

“He said he dabbled in a variety of things,” I said. “But there’s too much we don’t know on that front, I’d go crazy trying to figure it out.”

“There aren’t many options,” Rose said. “We don’t know much.”

Pocketwatch, familiar, implement. Who was he, how did he operate?

A keeper of the peace, a police officer, a family man invested in community. He was a figure, a pillar in the community.

I looked down at the pattern in sugar.

“What are you thinking?” Rose asked.

“I was thinking he could use those spirits from before to make these people lynch me.”

“Could he?”

He assured his protection. Right here, right now? No. Later? Maybe possible for the list of things he told us can be done by Others.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But… it doesn’t fit. I mean, yes, he sort of lured me here. But… he seems too orderly.”

“It could be a mask,” she said. “A deception.”

“It could be,” I said. “Except the watch is orderly. Overcomplicated, maybe, but it’s orderly. For a personal icon of who he is, for a badge, it doesn’t fit that the guy holding that item in particular would turn around and incite a riot.”

“True,” Rose said.

I could see Laird at the station at the far end of the counter, getting sugar packets, no doubt. People had mobbed him, with questions about the murder, the house, and me, no doubt.

I spoke my thoughts aloud. “A badge. It’s a really nice watch. Maybe there’s more to it? Nuances? It’s old fashioned, which ties into the whole ‘mucking with time’ idea. It’s beautiful, attention getting, a status symbol.”

“Okay,” Rose said. “How does that affect how he applies his magic?”

I glanced down at the diagram in sugar.

“Influencing crowds, people, and perceptions,” I said. I stood from my seat. “With time at the heart of it, as his primary focus?”

“If I read something like that in one of the books,” Rose said, “I’d buy it.”

Hm, I still don't see how that all ties back with time itself as a concept. Time implies change, maybe movement, so maybe it is more linked with time in that venue.

I crossed the room to reunite with Laird. I had to make my way through the local flavor. Girls in ugg boots with vests and backpacks, no doubt commuters from Toronto colleges; too many flannel shirts; a couple of truckers in baseball caps who were blithely ignorant to the fact that the headwear was ill suited to the season; and some middle-aged women who looked like they’d smoked far too much.

“Hey!” Barista James called out.

I turned.

“Do me a favor?” he asked. He jerked a thumb towards the door. “Maybe clear out?”

Ah, the hostility that Molly had alluded to. “Clear out?”

“Get going. I’m going to kick everyone else out soonish, but those guys are actually buying stuff.”

I still felt lost, and it didn’t help that I was splitting my attention between James and my search for Laird in the crowd. “Kick everyone out?”

“Closing,” he said.

I was no longer searching for Laird. With that one word, he had my attention. Very carefully, I said, “Early to close.”

“Small town,” he answered. “Eight’s late enough.”

Eight.

My eyes searched the crowd. The college girls, the truckers. An entirely different group from before.

I’d just lost four or five hours.

Laird was nowhere to be seen.

He’d stranded me.

Nope, okay, its literal time, yeah. Nice power though, in a strategic setting like this, being able to make people waste time is really good.

I pulled my hat and scarf from my pockets and had them on before I was out the door, taking long strides.

The light outside the window was a streetlight, not daylight. As I glanced up at it, it seemed to decrease in intensity. Almost as if it were apologizing for the deception, or as if the light was one of the last things to catch up with the new status quo. It was night.

It wasn’t a jump. It was a blurring. Me, the other people, environment and all other things sort of sliding along to a new time at their own paces. No comment was made that I’d been at the coffee shop for four or five hours.

The snow crunched under my feet.

I had questions. He’d promised this wasn’t a trap, but… what had his wording been?

Could I even worry about that right now? If he’d lied, it was on his head. Either way, this was my situation to deal with.

People here and there were on the street. A man, smoking, staring at me the entire time I walked down the length of one block. A woman sitting on the porch, doing the same.

Cold looks.

Were any of them Others? Practitioners?

I felt the hollowness of an empty stomach, despite the anxiety. My mouth was dry. Was my body belatedly catching up with me, in terms of the lost hours?

A man, bundled up in winter clothes with hat, scarf, jacket, slacks and boots all in black stood in the middle of the sidewalk, at the end of the block. His eyes were fixed on the snowbank in front of him, his breath fogging with the slow, steady breathing.

He didn’t move at my approach. Unnerved, I crossed the street, triple checking for cars.

“It smells like a rose,” a man announced, “It’s as beautiful as a rose. I dare say it’s as fragile as a rose, once you get past the thorns. But is it really our Rose?”

I turned.

Three twenty-somethings, if I went by appearances, were approaching me from behind. I might have been off. Each had alcohol in brown bags.

I recognized one of them from the vision. He was the one speaking, his arms thrown out to either side, for the drama of it.

“Padraic,” I said. The one who had been with the girl in the checkered scarf.

An Other.

“I prefer Patrick in polite company,” Padraic said. “Good grief, little rose, where are your thorns? You’re defenseless.”

They kept walking, not slowing as they drew closer to me. I backed away a step, then another.

Behind Padraic was a beautiful, willowy young woman in a long black coat and a man with a very fine bone structure on his face, his fine brown hair expertly styled, shining with the snowflakes that had gently alighted on it.

I might not have given them a second glance, except their faces weren’t flushed with the cold.

“This rose has no eyes, which is only natural, but it’s usually sharper,” Padraic said. I had to back away a step. “It has been cast away. Denuded.”

My instincts were screaming at me to act. The problem was that they were telling me to do things that would make this go very, very badly.

The vision people seem to be really converging on his, just like how Laird said they would now that there is a power gap. As much as I dont think these people will physically assault him, nothing stops them from pulling another trick like Laird did. Sad to say but the only thing to do is sit and listen until you are back home.

When the woman spoke, her voice was almost more musical for her drunkenness, rapt in her fascination, “There’s a vulnerability, isn’t there? Like seeing a king without his clothes. A movie actress howls in fear, nothing held back. A chieftain begs like a craven coward.”

“The beauty of a thing with all the protections stripped away,” Patrick said. He pulled off his hat, holding it to his chest, as if in mourning. His bright red hair was cut to a length just above a buzz-cut, carefully cultivated ringlets framing his face.

“Except the skin,” the other man whispered.

“Beautiful, beautiful,” the woman said. “So fragile. Won’t you dance with us?”

She reached out, and her smile was a timid one. All the scarier because of how obviously calculated it was.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” I said. I slapped her hand away.

The realization of just how bad that one kneejerk reaction was settled in so quickly I suspected I’d seen it coming.

But I didn’t like being touched.

Oh we got this beat again. I’m expecting a disheartening moment of reveal when this is explained right after or in-between Blake doing questionable things. No? Too Taylor? The focus here doesn’t seem to be that, so maybe a moment of extreme, what, weakness or inability to defend himself right when he is angriest or scariest.

“I’ve been rebuked,” she said. The back of her hand found her forehead, face turning skyward. Her playfulness belied the glitter of anger in her eyes, when she glanced down at me to gauge my reaction.

“The rose is usually better at the verbal jousting,” Patrick said. He swayed a little, then caught himself with a hand on the woman’s shoulder. She reached up to lay her hand across his, as if it were all choreographed, an act. “It’s brutish to fall back on physical violence.”

“It’s almost insulting, to see a creature that so resembles us, acting so basely,” the woman said.

“It is, isn’t it, Ev? An affront.”

His male companion stepped around me, alighting briefly on a snowbank that my foot would have plunged into, before coming to a stop just behind my left shoulder.

When I looked, Patrick was to my right, back to the wall.

“But moods do shift so dramatically from generation to generation,” Patrick finished. “It adds a liveliness to the proceedings, breaks the patterns we so easily fall into. It’s why we love you, my rose.”

I wanted to cut in, to speak, but I wasn’t sure what to say. The confusion of being cast five hours into the future wasn’t helping, nor was being surrounded. It was all I could do to avoid a repeat performance that would get them really offended.

“I’m sorry for that,” I said, looking the woman in the eyes. “It was crude. I regret it.”

“Then will you let me touch you?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

She pouted a little. “You’re afraid. That’s okay. You’re so small, so fragile. A petal adrift in the wind, that will soon dry up and do nothing more than feed the bugs and return to the earth. I can fix that. Give you life, like you’ve never imagined it. All of the best things you could ever experience, in tastes, touches, music and song.”

“It’s like cheating,” Patrick said. “We both know there’s nothing good waiting for you at the end, my rose, not while your bloodline has this weight pulling it down. You and your children and your children’s children, all down the line, there’s only one place you can go. But we can give you the paradise you and yours are denied. Two, three centuries. Sublime things, everything you thought you might enjoy, and everything you never even considered. There’ll be so little left of you when it’s all done that it won’t even matter where you’re going.”

“I can flense your skin,” the other man said. “But without pain. The movement of air as someone enters the room will have you arching your back, whimpering in anticipation.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline,” I said. I couldn’t hide the tremor in my voice. I felt more than a little backed against a wall, here. It wasn’t just being surrounded.

# At first I thought Paedric/patrick was inhabitting multiple people, but these all seem quite different. Maybe they are ones that have accepted this same offer, or just the same type of Other. Favoring the latter.

Patrick wasted no time in seizing on that weakness. “Are you sure? No more fear, no concerns. If you’re worried about the bloodline, I’m sure we could round up someone to make it happen, allowing you to do your duty. You can be as specific as you like, whatever your preferences in body, hair, personality. Keller here might even enjoy hunting them down.”

Keller. The male companion, almost avian in features, with the bone structure, the gaze.

Somehow, it was easy to imagine him as a hunter.

“We can even make the birth painless. An exercise in joy, rather than pain, without blood or sweat or tears,” Ev said. “Something beautiful that could be the centerpiece for a party. Architecture and dances and music, all around one singular event, with a moment of crescendo-”

“This rose is male,” Keller said. “Men don’t give birth.”

“Male?” Ev asked. She gave me a closer look.

Oh, haha, I thought she was offering something weirder.

I was pretty sure no humans had made that mistake since I was five or so.

Patrick, for his part, mused, “I forgot that detail. I’m sure we could make it happen. Do you want to try, my rose?”

I took advantage of the momentary confusion to cut in, “I have other obligations.”

“Well,” Patrick said. He shifted position, coming damn close to brushing up against me. “That leaves us with a problem. You’ve offended Ev, and decorum demands that things be made right. If you won’t accept our invitation, then how will this be resolved?”

“It’s all right,” Ev said. She wobbled a bit, and then stepped to one side to lean against the wall. She took another drink from the bottle. “I’ll settle for him giving me his apologies. Perhaps a kiss on the cheek?”

My heart thudded in my chest.

A kiss? Was there a trap here?

“No.”

It wasn’t my voice.

Rose.

All three of the strangers backed away from the wall, until they could see the window where Rose was reflected. With the curtains drawn, the streetlights reflected her well in the glass of the window.

“Ah,” Patrick said. He glanced between us. “I like this.”

“We can’t take your deal, Essylt. I hope we can arrange something else,” Rose said.

“We can, we can. But first, I must insist…” Patrick hopped up onto the four-inch window sill, taking a knee, somehow without falling or touching the glass. He reached through the glass and put a hand on the back of Rose’s neck, then drew her forward, his head passing into the window to plant the lightest of kisses on her forehead.

He hopped down, giving me a plain view of a very startled Rose.

Rose to the rescue, and yeah, that happened. Established now, at least Others and maybe practitioners too can see her. But WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT ABOUT.

Ev, or Essylt as Rose had called her, looked between Rose and I with a somewhat drunken amusement, her movements languid.

“Whatever happened?” Patrick asked. “Now we have two roses, but they’re so vulnerable. Thornless.”

“It makes you just want to break them,” Ev said. “So you can have those last beautiful moments all to yourself.”

“And a mess,” Rose said.

“Messes can be cleaned up,” Ev said. “Memories are forever, and forever is a very long time.”

“Hear hear,” Patrick said. He, Ev and Keller each tipped their bottles back to drink. Patrick licked the corner of his mouth.

“The breaking will have to wait,” Rose said. “Until we’ve resolved this issue of Blake’s manners. I’m afraid he can’t give you his apologies. It’s too high a price. If he needed to make amends to someone else in the future, what would he do?”

“But that’s half the fun,” Ev said. “Watching the dance that follows the exchange.”

“We’re in an awkward spot,” Rose said. “We didn’t intend to be out after dark, but Laird Behaim pulled a trick on us. He promised us his protection while we were in his presence, and then he disappeared on us, and turned the hands on the clock forward.”

“A rose is safe in the company of other mortals, and a rose is safe in daylight, but a rose with both is safest, and a rose without bereft,” Patrick said. He drank a bit more.

“I don’t think we’re safe even in crowds and daylight combined,” Rose said. “It’s a bad time.”

“An eventful time,” Patrick said. “A shame. We’ll have to leave.”

“Will you?” Rose asked. “There’s still a topic of us needing to make amends. What if we promised something? Not a deal, but to consider a deal, at some point in the future? It leaves the door open to your staying.”

Patrick seemed to be oblivious to the question, as if he hadn’t heard, but I couldn’t help but notice how still the other two were.

“The problem with that,” Patrick said, “Is my merry little band here is forbidden to make deals.”

Oh?

“You were dealing with Maggie Holt,” I said. “Weren’t you?”

“That,” he said, raising a finger. He let his arm drop, “Wasn’t one of the things you saw. I’m positive.”

“But?” I asked.

“But yes, Little Maggie and I, we were breaking rules, my lovely rose.”

“You could break rules with us, too,” my counterpart said. “If you took our offer, and if we considered your offer and found it sensible. We’ll even throw in a promise to keep your secret.”

“That is a deal I’ll take, then,” he said. “You aren’t awake, so I’ll take you at your word. Disappoint, and I’m sure we’ll find a suitable punishment.”

“We’ll endeavor not to give you a reason,” Rose said.

“Then I’ll take the debt this Blake owes my Ev, and make it my own.”

“I can think of ways to make you pay that,” Ev said. “Fox hunting?”

Patrick made a face, but he didn’t respond. Ev smiled again, a shy smile that rang false.

YES. Rose using that sweet knowledge, clearly showing the advantage one can have with the knowledge on these groups and how this system sort of works.

“Carry on, then, little roses,” Patrick said, as Ev brushed her hand over his short red hair “We’ll be in touch.”

I turned to go, feet crunching in the snow. Rose was to my left, reflected in the windows where the lights weren’t on.

It took me five or ten minutes to get my heartbeat under control.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m glad to do something,” Rose replied.

“Damn it, just how much reading have you done?”

“None, for them. I had a minute to read their entries in the little black book, but I was winging it.”

“Good winging.”

“I hope so,” Rose said.

We rounded the corner, and the house was in sight.

Another person’s footsteps fell alongside my own, as I approached the crosswalk. He stopped when I stopped.

I looked and I saw Laird.

“You bastard,” I said.

“Oh, I’m a little bit of a bastard,” Laird admitted.

I clenched my fist.

“I’m also a cop. I did agree to escort you home, though I didn’t say from where. It’s your choice, whether you want me to escort you back and leave you alone, or escort you back and then haul you to the police station. It’s not, for your information, a safe haven.”

I stuck my hands in my pockets.

“Then why didn’t you arrest me?” I asked, my voice still hard with anger. “If you wanted to leave me hanging out to dry, for Others to pick off?”

“Because I was telling the truth. I was interested in learning more about who you were. Whether you were someone who could become dangerous or if you were someone I could trust to be passive for as long as we needed you to. It may come down to picking you off until we get one of the young ones. Roxanne, I believe? Twelve? Or even your little sister Ivy, if Roxanne is uncooperative.”

I had an entire mental picture of Laird from when he first showed up, that was changing a bit in a good way, got a little smudge when he timeswapped Blake, aaaaand that just went poof with that last quote. I have a really bad history, and thanks to that, a really REALLY small tolerance to people being used. "Oh I was just testing how much I overpower you, so that I can overpower you later, since theres nothing you can do about it"

“And the talk of a peace treaty?”

“I never promised anything concrete, I only expressed an interest.”

“Saying you’d trust your daughters to someone like you, if positions were reversed?”

“To someone as strong as me. If positions were reversed, I wouldn’t know any better than you did, by definition. I double checked beforehand.”

“And the promise about there being no tricks?”

“I said it wasn’t a trick. Which it wasn’t, at the time. I came up with the one while we were talking.”

Why wasn’t Paige in this position? She’d love this quibbling over semantics, if nothing else.

What if I attacked him right here? What if I denied him the chance to escort me back & fulfill his oath? Would he be forsworn? Would he lose his power?

He opened his watch, then closed it. His breath fogged heavy around him as he sighed.

“You have protectors,” he cut in. “The exiled prince, Padraic.”

“I didn’t ask for protection.”

“It would be fleeting, whatever the case,” Laird said. “They’re distractible.”

I didn’t want to engage him in conversation, but curiosity niggled at me.

“Faerie?” I guessed, eyes straight forward.

“Once upon a time, they would have fallen under that label. I think they’ve dallied in the very courts that have exiled them now, as a matter of fact. They even have some of the same tricks. But classifying Others is a dangerous thing. Better to call them what they are.”

“Which is?”

“Men and women who are desperate to entertain themselves over the course of a very long, long time,” he said. “They get bored as easily as you or me.”

Probably wouldn't lose his power. I guess for the sake of not repeating myself I'll just state that I'll probably love every single synthax loopholes the characters, and thus the author himself, uses throughout this story. And I guess I didnt comment on it, but I die notice that they all were drunk, and that probably is almost their default state if thats how they go "do business" or whatever they were even there to do.

We reached the gates, and started treading up the driveway to the house. We were silent up until I reached the door.

“If it helps,” Laird said, “The reason I decided to have you walk most of the way back alone was because I suspect you could be dangerous.”

“Yet you make yourself my enemy by tricking me.”

“I would say that I am, along with my circle, the least of your worries. I’m sworn to do no direct harm to others, and I won’t. My family is interested in securing our position, and we’re thus interested in having you, or one of you, secure in this house, until the North End Sorcerer is unseated. You can’t afford to have your back turned to the others while you deal with me. I’m also best equipped to deal with the sorts of things you might send after me, if you deign to go that route. I’ve been preparing against Rose for my entire life.”

“And now you walk away, after this? We’re supposed to be civil?”

“In your position, knowing what I know, I would,” he said. “I would also make haste and awaken sooner than later.”

I managed to hide my shock.

He tapped his eye. “We can see things at work, once we awaken. Tell your companion I said hi. There’s no need to hide. Council meeting is in two days. For three hours prior and three hours after, there is a ceasefire. I hope to see you then.”

Oh man I love the "meet all the villains early on" moments like these. Why are they so good?? I mean, they dont simply satisfy a need the story has to establish stuff, for me they are just pleasing to watch, sometimes more than once on my alone time. The start of, if I’m remembering correctly, Arc 5 of Worm (aka the point where I started taking fucking notes). The opening sequence for Dark Soul 1 and 3 (fuck DS 2), the gathering council of any villains in every fiction ever. So good that we are getting this early. I suspect Blake is going to get some threats, BUT I am most interested in what each villain has to say about each other more than anything. Oh and maybe a friendly face of two? Because I doubt our entire cast of supporting characters are just going to be Blake and not-so-Blake for more than maybe two Arcs, tops.

I stepped into the house, then slammed the door.

Rose was waiting in the living room. “Hey. We came out of it okay.”

“Not okay enough,” I said. “That could have gone far worse.”

I kicked the footstool over. It crashed against the grill that protected the fireplace, making a very dramatic sound.

“You can’t get so angry,” she said. “Be calm, we approach this with strategy and a level head.”

Oh man does this book seem to need a silly counter for how many times this one thing happens in it. And this one thing being Blake gettING ANGRY.

“No,” I said. I grabbed one of the books from the coffee table. “Anger is good.”

“Good?”

“It keeps us moving. You read the book on implements, I’ll read up on familiars when I’m done Essentials.”

“Okay,” she said.

The quiet outrage kept me reading through the night.

Angry. Gets. Shit. Done. Guys go watch American Gods. Neil Gaiman knows how to write a serious comedy with a bunch of innuendos in it that hint to a bunch of stuff, if that makes sense to you. Also I need to use more memes of it in here like: “Anubis: "In life you believed in nothing. So you will go to nothing. There will be darkness." A real piece of human garbage: "And peace?" Anubis: *stares for just a bit* "There will be darkness." *walks away*”

#CodeZeta liveblogs #pact #PactArc1 #Pact1.5

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mutantsrisingrpg · 4 years

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Congratulations DEAN! You’ve been accepted as ARIEL.

The themes of illusion and manipulation and perception are certainly not lost in your app, Dean, and how central they are to Lenox is just so, so well written it feels like I could easily fall under the spell of one of his illusions. You’ve shown that this world and these powers don’t always harden those affected, and that spark of whimsy in Lenox really brings him to a new life. Even a simple headcanon as selling placebo drugs and using his powers to create the high gives me such a confidence in who Lenox is as a person, and I can’t wait to see his shenanigans.

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

NAME/ALIAS: Dean

PRONOUNS: She/her

AGE: 22

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: GMT, i’m fairly active bean and am always here to plot

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Lenox Syed GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cismale, he/him

DETAILS & ANALYSIS: This is where you show us who the character is to you! The format of this doesn’t matter, whether it’s in bullet points or in para form, and can be as long as you’d like it to be. Feel free to get creative!

Lenox as a boy’s name is of Scottish and Gaelic origin, and the meaning of Lenox is “with many elm trees”.

Syed or Sayyid or Sayed (Arabic and Urdu: سيدعلی) is a family of Syeds in South Asia, notably India and Pakistan. Syeds are the direct descendants of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.

Lenox is lost in his own fantasy world. Creating so many illusions for people each day that he has became lost in one of his own. With a lack of attention through his childhood, he craves the limelight and approval of everyone around him and will do pretty much anything to get it, even if it’s false or trickery.

He’s so painstakingly constructed, he’s his own work of art. Each detail of his personality and appearance delicately manipulated into something strikingly beautiful. Someone you can look at with awe just by the way they talk or move. It’s almost hard to realise there’s another man beneath the mask, someone raw and damaged. Like a bird with a broken wing.

BIO:

Tw: Drug mention

His mother is just fifteen when she gives birth to him, swaddled in a blue blanket and passed immediately to the arms of a doctor; she never held him, never looked at his freshly reddened face as his cries wailed down the corridors. It’s not because of his mutation, not because his birth family couldn’t bare to raise a being burdened with powers. She was a child herself, naivety leaving adoption as the only logical decision.

A foster home decides to take him in, raising him from infancy without any awareness of any abnormality. It’s where he stays for the first nine years of his life, a cosy house in Oregon that housed five other children. But the dormancy of his powers didn’t stay concealed forever. It started with his foster siblings sleepwalking, Lenox’s dreams imprinting on them accidentally as they’d trample through the house enthralled by the vivid illusions of his fantasy worlds. Then it began intertwining into everyday life, emotional outbursts of temper alluding unsafe situations like fire or monsters that hid under the bed. Games became near impossible to differentiate between make believe and reality from the second he joined in.

“You’re unsafe,” it’s a comment he’d gladly wear as a badge of honour once he’d matured. But to the little boy being dragged away from his foster family, betrayed by his caregivers and turned in for research, the words grazed his skin like stinging nettles.

The four plain walls of the room only further ignite an overly active imagination, a tool that was dangerous to have with a power like his own. The eleven years he spends there does the opposite of what society would have hoped, boredom allows for focus and practice, it sharpens his talents and he’s able to put them to good use. By the end of his stay the doctors had favoured him among the rest, because he wills it so. They go easy on him, carefully placed illusions write false notes on his reports. Detailed and intricate enough so that he doesn’t get caught out, handwriting remarkably identical to each nurse or scientist that take their turn testing on him. He starts to admire the way it feels, too chaotic to be part of society and embedded with more potential than anyone could have known.

It’s when that potential reaches a point where imagination can no longer be imprisoned by those four walls that he decided enough was enough. The process of discharging himself was a meticulous operation. Theatrically staged and miraculously timed with an annual cell collecting test. Before he can be sedated he’s enticed the nurses into an imaginary induced coma, deep enough into his intoxication that he can use the poisoned needle on them. The theater only has the two women on the floor when the doctor enters, sly projections manipulating each person he’d bumped into on his way to the exit into that same sleep, a psychedelic world of kaleidoscope landscapes and stained glass colours, once awakening they would never see this boy again.

“You’re unsafe,” the same words, just a different context. An ally ushers him to leave Oregon and head to Chicago. A place where policies were loosened and his own kind somewhat tolerated.

The new city put Lenox’s own fresh start in full swing.

Fragile reality was a vehicle for his reinvention, so easily malleable that to change it was simpler and more natural to him than breathing. He’s masterful in the way it’s applied, diminishing a past life of shame and grit in place of high strung worth and superiority. He’d created himself with utter royalty, his own nobility evident by the way in which he moved, regally eloquent and unmistakably celestial to anyone who crossed his path.

He builds his career on the sins he knows other’s desire. Selling crushed up aspirin as a party drug in the underbelly of the city’s night clubbing scene, using his power to make it seem as if it were the legitimate stuff and not something that cost him a couple bucks from the convenience store across the street. Lenox could make them see whatever he wanted, turn their evenings into a production of his own design and leave with none of the being any wiser. It’s how Benjamin Granger catches word of him, a supposed mutant that was living life as if he were a king. He’s the first person to ever acknowledge his capability, strikes him up an offer he couldn’t refuse. Drawn like a moth to a flame after the minor suggestion of power and the infatuation that he was finally wanted by someone and to belong to something.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

Chance Matthews: He’s the face he can’t erase from his mind, the curve of his lips engraved in deep fixations when he couldn’t fall asleep on a Sunday night. Perhaps it’s the fact that he shouldn’t do it that makes it more enticing, a lust to ignite underlying passion to unearth exactly what they had both been burying.

Jordan Rojas: Jordan is somewhat of a curiosity for Lenox to unpick. A closed book that is intriguing because of their close association together. Always keen to show his worth, to prove himself to those around him, perhaps it’s a dangerous combination should Jordan utilise the other’s naivety in combination of his powers in the way that Benjamin does.

Jack Mizuno: He likes that he can get so deep into their head, that he can have full control of a world that wasn’t Jack’s domain. It’s all to do with power and annoyance, a deep craving to see exactly how far he can push people before they hit their breaking point. Even then, it’s fun to flip that breaking point into a place of pure bliss and drop it again just when his subject is at ease. He’s like a lab rat, someone he tries his tricks on before taking them to the main show.

EXTRA:

https://stereotypicalcancerwrites.tumblr.com/tagged/ch:%20lenox%20syed

(tba, watch this space I legit SPAM my character tags hard)

Lenox spends a lot of his spare time writing and doodling. It’s all extremely sketchy, there’s never any sort of final draft. It helps his imagination, which is a much exercised tool in his life.

He is probably more invested in mental health than most. Meditation and yoga being a crucial part of his daily routine after a bowl full of sugar packed cereal.

He’s naive and eager to please anyone that might create a bond with him, he craves companionship after never really understanding it due to the absence of it in his life.

Lenox works as a part-time playwright, using his illusions to improve the production of his stories and only ever receiving the best reviews from critics.

He also works as a drug dealer, never selling legitimate stuff but using over the counter medicines with the combination of his powers to masquerade as the real stuff.

He has an unruly sweet tooth. He keeps lollipops in his back pocket and will order dessert off a menu at a restaurant instead of a main meal. His favourite thing on the planet is warm cookie dough and ice cream.

He listens exclusively to Grunge music. Celebrity Skin by Hole is his absolute jam and he only ever sings Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet is his go to karaoke song.

Lenox is openly proud of his sexuality as a homosexual, though he’ll flirt with anyone and anything for the fun of it.

He prefers tea over coffee.

He’s a bit of a poetry dork, he collects first edition poetry books and his most prized possession is a first edition of Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg.

He’s very judgemental of how others present themselves and will tell you if your new shirt is ugly.

Lenox lives in a small apartment, anyone that enters he’s carefully to make them see it as 3 times bigger than it actually is with far more light.

He has a fear of heights.

ANYTHING ELSE: Did you have any questions or any changes you wanted to discuss with us beforehand?

Nope all good!!!

#accepted #accepted: ariel

0 notes

bolbianddolanhouse · 5 years

Text

BNHA self insert AU

Nani the heck is this? Read here!

Chapter 22: Back to School Boogaloo

School starts in 4 days and the agent dorms are near completion with the promised upgrades. At this point, my birthday is 2 weeks away! I saw my schedule for the 1st term and it’s just like how I wanted it.

“Palma-san! Are we going to be desk neighbors again?” asked Kirishima as I was braiding Asui’s hair in the commons room.

“Not sure, with the addition of Shinso, I might get moved somewhere else” I finish the braid and grabbed a hair tie “besides, I won’t be in the class all of term one.”

“Why Palma-san?” Asui turned her head to see my face “and which class, kero”

“I’m going to be in your Strategy and Communications class” I fluffed out her braid “since I passed a third year level Statistics and Strategy class, I get to skip the strategy half of that class and go straight in communications in 2nd term.”

“You have to tutor me!” Kirishima begged “I’m going to suffer big time if I don’t get all the help I can get.”

“It’s not a problem, I can tutor and clarify anything in that subject” I hand Asui her brush and mirror “it does get tricky and meticulous.”

“I can’t wait to see where you’ll be sitting!” exclaimed Asui “it’s always fun when you’re in the class kero.”

I head to my room and pack some of my equipment that I won’t be using anytime before my move in. Most of my packing is done in secret so I don’t raise suspicions. I get my shoebox of letters that I’ve kept and I look at my birthday ones for the nostalgia. Looking at the heart shaped ones reminded me that Valentines day is the week after my birthday. I think about what I’m going to do for Valentines day now that I’m in this weird spot of I think I have feelings for Iida and Shinso is being very forward with his advances and I’m not pushing them away. I make a plan, since I am already going to be in the other dorm, I’ll make Iida a small berry tart and see how he responds to the special gift. If he gets the hint and confesses, great! If he tells me he’s gay, also great! If he outwardly rejects me, thats ok! “Well thats all the situations I can think of” I say to myself “I guess I should look up a tart recipe.”

-Night Before the 1st day back-

“Hey Palma-san” slid Midoriya in my open door shyly “not to add more stress but can you sew the buttons on my blazer and blouse?”

“You too?! What do you boys do to your uniforms that make the buttons pop off or loosen?” I groaned as I finish sewing the buttons back on Shoji’s shirt “I can but it’s 50 yen per button.”

“Here’s 500 yen exactly” he took his money out of the breast pocket of the blazer.

“THATS ALL THE BUTTONS ON THE SHIRT AND BLAZER!” I yelled as I did the backwards math on that total “next time, either don’t burst out of your uniforms or sew the buttons on yourselves.” I got to work on his buttons along with 3 other’s uniforms. I made 1,500 yen that night and think to myself yo, this might be the start of selling my services and baking for Valentines day will be my big cash grab.

-1st day of 2nd year-

Homeroom: Announcements and overview on the curriculum for the year. Got to see all of our new things in the workshops and our dedicated gym.

Understudy credit with Mic: I got to help him in 2nd year english for the B-class hero course. Everyone was struck in fear when they saw that I was the assistant because they know how through I am to do things and that I issue punishments. Monoma doesn’t come up to talk to me like everyone else did but he was glancing at me from his desk.

Math 2: Number hell, thats it. At least Mimi is in my class and it’s with other intel students.

Vehicles and Mechanics: A new course where we train with different vehicles and gear we might use in the field. Part of the course is to tinker and fix some of the gear in certain situations. I’ve never seen Jin so in his element.

Strats and Comm: Last class of the day but since I come in next term, I just take the time to go around campus to see what I can occupy my time with. I still have yet to figure it out.

I slowly walk down the hall on the way back to the intel wing to walk to the dorms with Mimi and Jin. Every time I heard somebody walking in the same hall as me, I noticed that I reflexively get on guard. Stupid Mirio and his friends making me into a paranoid mess! I get to the intel wing with 10 minutes left until dismissal, not enough time to do anything but just sit and wait in the hall. When class let out, Jin had some questions to ask the teacher and it took up another 20 minutes.

“About time baby boi” Mimi teased “trying to avoid your duties back at the dorms eh?”

“What’s going on at the dorms?” I asked, feeling a little excluded from all the activities.

“I’m on dinner duties” groaned Jin “It sucks ass because there’s 2 more people to feed and cooking small scale isn’t cutting it out for me.”

“Oh frick that does kinda suck” I put my hand on his shoulder “no worries when I come around! I can cook for a small army of 20 with ease.”

“I’m literally counting down the days until you move in!” Mimi squealed “ALSO! What do you want to do on your birthday? It lands on a Saturday.”

“I want to do something chaotic! But I don’t know what” I responded with excitement “I just don’t want to stay in and have cake, I’ve been doing that for 16 years.”

“Wait, oh shit thats right! You turned 16 the day you attended that hero class” Jin remembered “you had the cookies and everything.”

“Funny thing, I wanted to say it when the teacher stepped out but the red-haired boy was staring me down hard” I flashed back to that day “I got scared and didn’t say it was my birthday but that I made them so I can share with my new ‘friends’. So everyone just thought I was just a very nice foreigner.”

“WAIT CHAOTIC IDEA!” Jin jumped as he yelled “what if on your birthday, we go in our drag personas and do some hood rat shit?”

“I’m game to bring back Takeshi.”

“Shid, Suka has been dying to make a come back.”

“Then it’s settled! Deez, Takeshi and Suka on some hood shit for Ita’s birthday!”

When I got to the dorms, I saw everyone and I realized I didn’t see them at all at school and it was a bit shocking.

“How was your day Palma-san?” asked Uraraka from the ceiling “we missed you in class!”

“My day went pretty standard” I took my shoes off “I don’t know what to do to occupy the time where I’m supposed to be in your class.”

“I heard from Kendo that you’re Mic-sensei’s understudy for their english class” Momo said as she walked in the room “How was the B class?”

“Oh they’re a bit scared that I’m in the class, they think I’m going to tell them to give me 20 push ups per mistake.” I take a look at the weekly duties and I see that I’m on dinner duties the day before my birthday “Oh that’s cool, I get to chef it up in the kitchen on that Friday.”

“What’s so special about the 6th of February?” asked Uraraka coming down from the ceiling.

“Oh, you’ll see” I winked “I have so many special things planned.”

I go about the rest of my day and pack a few more things.

-Thursday, 2 more days until move out-

“Palma-san!” whined Kaminari and Kirishima “help us with our strategy homework, please!”

I was playing video games in the commons room in my fuzzy pants when they blocked the TV with their bullshit. “Depends, do you have something for me in return?”

“I have 2,000 yen and a quad of dark chocolate truffles.” Kirishima presents the items and elbows Kaminari.

“Uhh I have 1,000 yen and this unused gift card for the arcade.” Kaminari dug through his pockets.

“Deal, what can I help you with?” I took the payment and helped them with their homework. I later promoted my baking services to everyone else and got pre-order almost immediately. I finish packing my things for Saturday and it felt so good that I was going where I belong.

-Friday, In English 2-

“...pass up your quiz and Miss Palma will pass back your graded assignments from last week.” Mic said as I zipped around to pass back a stack of work.

“Oof I didn’t do as well as I thought I did on that assignment” cringed Tetsutetsu as their own grade “oi Monoma, how did you do on your paper?”

“None of your business you oaf” Monoma scoffed.

“That’s code for he didn’t do well either” I said as I gave Kendo their work back.

“Oh Palma-san! Mind if I talk to you real quick in the hall about something?” Tetsutetsu blurted out before I turned my attention to something else.

“Um sure” we waited until class ended to head to the hall “what’s up?”

“I have 2 things to ask of you” he took a deep breath “one, what is the name of your brown haired classmate? the one in the intelligence program.”

“Brown hair?- OH you mean Yuka!” I get suspicious that he asks for her name.

“Cool, ok the second thing, can you maybe” he gets embarrassed “can you, like, introduce me to them? I’ve had a crush on her since the sports festival but I want to get to know her better and maybe go out with her.”

“Oh thats so sweet Tetsu!” I get a little teary eyed “hmm, I mean if you want to talk to her in a non-school environment, on the 13th my class is hosting a party at our dorms. I can get you in BUT you have to abide our rules to avoid getting kicked out.”

“I’ve never been to a dorm party” he thought about it for a bit “ok, I’m in!”

“Cool, remember, 13th at 7pm. Come alone to the 3rd floor of the intel dorms, just say your name and you’ll be let in.”

I teleport off to my next class but Monoma was spying on the entire thing “Humph, why do you get invited to the party and I don’t” Monoma was getting booty tickled “I am much cooler than you and should be invited to all the school parties!”

“Oh I didn’t see you there, I just want to get closer to her classmate” he puts up his guard “I didn’t even know they were having a party.”

I teleport to the store right after school to pick up a few things for dinner and get things started. I make Barbacoa with rice and beans and 2 types of salsa. I make do with the tortillas that I bought and served them warmed.

“Palma-san! This looks so authentic” screamed everyone when they saw me plate.

“Its almost like....I’m Hispanic” I sassed back “well dig in everyone, also the green salsa is the spiciest, fair warning.”

I saw everyone eating and talking while I cleaned up, it reminded me of my family during the holidays. I missed them so, not so much these crackheads when I move in the morning.

“What’s the special occasion Palma-san?” asked Sero, breaking me out of my thought “this is something you’d cook back home for the holidays right? So what are we celebrating?”

“Oh well, you caught me” I giggled as I took off my apron “Today is February 6th, and tomorrow is my birthday! But I never celebrate my birthday on the actual day.”

Everyone stopped eating, they could not believe what I just said. “Why? It’s a birthday! You should be partying up!” spoke up Kirishima.

“I know but every year, on my birthday, something bad or really weird happens” I start to recall the past “like on my 15th, somebody picked a fight with my best friend at school. Oh and my 16th, I felt unwelcomed in your class and Tenya made me cry during lunch.”

“WE MET YOU ON YOUR BIRTHDAY AND YOU DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING?!” squawked Tokoyami “were those cookies you gave us so we could celebrate your birthday?”

I nodded in embarrassment, Iida stood up and bowed profusely “I am extremely sorry I ruined your birthday it was all my fault!”

“Woah woah! Tenya it wasn’t all your fault” I waved my hands to make him stop “My coffee that day didn’t turn out good and I accidentally kicked Jin in the arm in weapons.”

“So you just celebrate the day before just so you have a good day before whatever happens tomorrow won’t really ruin what you already celebrated” Kaminari pieced it together “thats a genius move, but this there cake?”

“Oh god no! Cake on birthdays trigger me” I shudder “it’s tradition to get your face slammed in the cake in my culture and I don’t want to get frosting in my nose, so no cake, just a nice peaceful meal that will lead into a relaxing evening.”

We finished up dinner and I take a shower but it seems like everyone was in the bathroom too. At this point everyone was used to me being wrapped in my towels to hide my girl body so it was routine when I stepped out of the shower. But this time my towel caught on something and the towel that covered my body fell off in front of all the boys. I have never craved death in my entire life because I could feel everyone’s eyes on me.

“H-h-here Ita” Iida stuttered as he took off the towel off his head and looked away to give it to me “let me just-”

“Not a step closer” I put my hand out to stop him “y’all been waiting to see a body, here it is!” I said with violent energy “look at it! Look at all of my flab, body hair and shelf ass.” I made my way to the door “get outta my way, before I smack you with my saggy titties.”

They all flinched when I slammed the door “I mean, they weren’t that saggy” spoke up Mineta.

“You’re disgusting Mineta, this is why she called you baby carrot dick” Shoji scolded.

I calmed down a bit when I remembered that I was moving in the morning. I get a knock at my door an hour later.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Tokoyami”

“Oh uhh is it cool if I just-” I teleported outside my door, just so he doesn’t see my boxes “hehe whats up?”

“Um I just wanted to make it up to you after all...that” he signaled to his room.

“Oh I see~” I look around to see if anybody was looking or passing the hallway “take me away Toko~”. We spend the night together like we usually do and it made me feel a whole lot better. In the morning, I had to teleport out to my room and get everything ready to yeet over via portal. The plan was to get Jin to portal everything over for a discreet and quick move from one dorm to the other. Once everything was portaled over, I took out my door plaque and did a quick sweep of the room for the next person. While I was putting things away in my new dorm, everyone in the other dorm was bustling about.

“Iida-kun! You made pancakes?” Mina exclaimed “are they for who I think it is?”

“It you were thinking of Palma-san, then yes, they are for her” he plated the pancakes “I also made coffee, all for her to enjoy on her very normal and pleasant, birthday.” He knocks on her door “Ita, come out, we have a something special for you.” No answer, Iida checks the time, it’s 9:50am “Ita? Are you ok in there? It’s a little late for you to stay in.”

“Maybe she’s still embarrassed about last night?” spoke up Koda.

“She seemed fine when we were having conversation last night” Tokoyami recalled “let me try-” he saw that my name plaque was gone “Wait, something’s off!” he opened the door and saw that the room was completely empty of anything remotely her.

“How? We just saw her last night!” Iida yelled trying to make sense of everything “there is no way she could’ve moved all her things out in one night! Even with her quirk!”

“Wow, February 7th is cursed” said Mineta peeking in “then where could’ve Palma-san gone with all her stuff?”

Meanwhile, I finish moving in and put my name plaque in it’s holder. “Ahh dorm sweet dorm!”

“Yo! I made waffles and bacon” yelled Yuka from the kitchen “coffee’s done brewing too! Come get yall’s food.”

We all gather around to eat and it felt nice that I can say all my dumb stuff and not get scolded or be taken too seriously.

“Palma-san, how did you manage with all that hero shit in the dorms?” asked Hansai “I mean, being the only agent there and everyone is thrown in for a loop anytime you want to do something, it had to be tiring.”

“Oof it was” I said stopping mid-sip of my coffee “our personalities clashed too and I just dealt with it one day at a time because they’re just a mess. I bet they’re looking for me right now because I didn’t bust out of my room for coffee at real coffee hour.”

“You didn’t tell them?” Yuka said shocked.

“I told a few of them I’m going to my proper dorms 2nd year but not the day” I calmly said “also, in case they bust in here, tell them I went a mini adventure.”

After, I did my routine things, did homework until lunch and transformed myself into Takeshi. I had to put on make up for Deez and Suka just sat there and watched. We looked like biological men and woman, ready for chaos.

“Ok yall, voice changers on!” I said as I flipped mine to the proper setting.

“But first!” Mimi said running to the fridge and taking out some shot glasses full of something “jello shots! for babygirl’s 17th birthday!”

“Aww you guys! I’m getting soft!” I blushed as everyone sang happy birthday to me and we downed jello shots and made our way to downtown. “Yall wanna hit up the arcade? I got this gift card with 3,500 yen on it.”

“Bitch thats like 20 rounds on DDR!” Mimi exclaimed “I’m down but the arcade isn’t poppin yet, maybe in like another hour.”

“Oh! lets go to the candy store so I can act out and maybe pick a fight with some dude that touches my butt.” Jin said, really living his fantasy in his frilly dress and wig.

“I’m down to play punk boyfriend” I turn to Mimi “lets go tell them to respect women.” We go to the candy store and ,of course, some dude from school tries to get with Deez and I swoop in for the fight. “Oi! Is this boy bothering you babe~”

“Takeshi! that brute put his hands on me when all I want is the chocolate eggs” Jin does his dramatics.

Mimi and I take it outside as Jin gets and pays for our candy. “Respect women you scum!” Mimi said before tossing the guy in the trash.

“Heh good one Suka! Oh babe you ready to go?” I said to Jin skipping up to us.

“Yea! I got your favorite~ sour cherries and gummy worms. And for Suka, a surprise bag of candy.”

“Oh boy!” Mimi said getting their candy “fighting bitches makes me wanna eat something sweet!”

We walk around a bit then go to the arcade at it’s peak so we can pick more fights. We’re having a nice time, then Jin freezes in place “Okay, don’t look behind you Ita but it’s the red head and his boyf.”

Mimi looks “Confirmed, and they’re not alone. There’s one broccoli, thermostat, a robot, dumb pikachu and office depot.”

“Oh geez, but I kinda want to know what they’re doing here” I try not to look behind me.

“Chaotic and spicy, but what if we start shit with them?” Jin told us while hopping.

“Fuck it, lets start some shit.” I said as we walk near them, like we didn’t see them.

“Come on Iida-kun, cheer up” Midoriya said tugging at his arm “Palma-san always returns after a while, maybe she wanted to be away from us for the weekend?”

“I suppose, but I remember her telling me she likes coming here to play DDR and I wanted to take her here today” He sighed “I was going to give her one nice birthday for the one I ruined.”

“What were you planning on doing with her?” asked Todoroki.

“Well, I planned to give her that pancake breakfast, then take her to a spa so she can get pampered, then shopping at the mall to buy her anything she wants, maybe eat somewhere she wanted, maybe a movie” he takes out a list from his pocket “basically spend the whole day together until nightfall, where I was going to take her to our secret spot and kiss her and just pour my heart out.”

“Sounds like you know how to treat a lady” said Jin before anyone else had a chance to say anything “sorry, couldn’t help but overhear.”

“Hey I remember you!” Kaminari perked up “you’re T’boone’s girlfriend, and I see you’re” he put his arm around Jin “all alone, but don’t worry! I’m here to treat you right.”

A hand stretches and backhands Kaminari “You can’t treat another man’s lady” Mimi and I walk closer “Now paws off or paws up!”

He takes his arm off Jin “Takeshi! Sorry I ran off like that” he jumps at the sight of me “they were talking about that one girl you were going to replace.”

“That curly haired, big assed girl?” Mimi said trying not to laugh “She’s such a babe! I wouldn’t mind letting her body slamming me in ring if you know what I mean hehe.”

I try to hold it together “Anyways, what about her?”

“She’s gone, dorm empty and everything” Kirishima elbowed Iida “and this guy isn’t talking it too well.”

“Was she your girlfriend or som?”

“No! But she’s a really good friend and it’s her birthday today” Iida looks at me, making me nervous “hm, why is it the last time she disappeared without a trace, you appear?”

“Just coincidence! But if you want to find her” I bring Jin forward “my girl here has the quirk soul search, she can find anybody by tapping in on a soul level.”

Jin played along “Yup! Now tell me, which one of yous is the closest to her?” they all point to Iida “okay, now I’m going to tap into your soul to find hers.” He puts his hands on Iida’s temples “Let’s see, curly hair, curly hai- OH I FOUND HER! And she’s alive and well with 2 other people, a thin boy and a tall muscular girl. They are in...downtown! And... uh Takeshi can you-”

“I got you babe” I put my hand on his back “energy at your disposal.”

“Thanks babe, okay, so in downtown they just left the bubble tea shop and they’re going to the pizza place...oh I don’t know if this is an important clue but the curly haired girl said ‘after dinner, Im gonna space out at the tree.’ does that mean anything?”

“I know where that is! What a relief that she’s okay!” he breathed out “that pizza place is all the way across this block, I have to go find her!” He gets up and thanks Deez and runs off.

“Wow, does that girl know he’s into her?” asked Jin to the others, just to get a reaction.

“I don’t know anymore” Midoriya sighed “they spend time together, he’s overprotective of her and she shares her secrets with him. I feel like he’s scared that he’s going to ruin their friendship or thinks that he’s not her type.”

“But we all feel like they belong together” Kirishima gets mushy “you can tell from the way they talk to each other and how they spend time alone together.”

There’s that talk again I thought but I still don’t believe them “Well, I hope today is the day then” I said to change the subject back to what we were going to do “anyways, my girl and homeboy here were gonna play 20 rounds of DDR, wanna join?”

“20 ROUNDS OF DDR?!” Kaminari spat out his drink “you gotta be the master of the light up tiles to have stamina like that!”

We did 15 rounds before we got hungry and headed to the dorms. Mimi, Jin and I pretended to head to the train station to get out of sight to portal to the dorms. I remembered that Iida was probably still looking for me and I quickly de-dragged back to myself and headed to the tree. Sure enough, he was there and still in his street clothes.

“Tenya?” I said like I was surprised he was there “what are you doing here, alone?”

“ITA?!” he jumped at the sound of my voice “I um, I thought maybe I’d run into you here.” I made my way up to where he was “I wanted to spend the day with you today.”

“Oh? why?” I asked even though I already know why.

“Because, I wanted to give you a good birthday” he pulled the list out of his pocket to show me “I had a whole day planned for us but then I came to your room this morning to it being empty like you were never there.” he looked at my face “where did you go?”

“I told you, I moved to the proper dorms” I said pointing to my new dorm window “I had a decent birthday, I moved very early in the morning with Jin’s portals and went out with my squad to downtown.”

“It must of slipped my mind” he scratched his head trying to remember “but I’m glad you’re safe, I thought we all finally pushed you over the edge with what happened the night before.”

“Ehh, I’m over all that, it was bound to happen” I shrugged “I don’t know how all this could’ve been prevented with a text.”

Iida’s eyes widened, then he covered his face “How could I forget that?! I went on a wild goose chase trying to find you!” he started laughing “I guess I really do think I’m fastest thing here, you should’ve seen me zip around downtown...”

He told me the events of the arcade and where he went to find me and how he figured I’d eventually come here. All the while, I felt the feelings come back and that I should express them. But not now, Valentines day will be the day I do my indisputable gesture of my feelings that’s culturally correct. But DAMN the urge to kiss him is strong right now.

“Wow thats crazy” I played along.

“Yeah....so why end your day here?”

“Well its a ritual of mine, or more like, my dad’s and mine” I say as I point up at the stars “every year on my birthday, as far as I can remember, my dad would try to comfort me from a long day of nothing going right. He’d put me on his lap and we’d look up at the stars, he’d tell me that when I was born, it was on a very clear and starry night. So when he held me on that first night as my mom slept, he sat with me at the window, stargazing and pouring all his hopes and dreams on how he hoped I’d grow up to be.” I sigh and leaned back “its one of the few things I looked forward to every year, but last year made me feel like I was missing a part of myself. It just didn’t feel the same without my dad, so I cried as I looked at the stars from my bedroom window. My wish was to have the next one a little more bearable and to feel less lonely.”

“Did it come true?”

“Well considering I’m not crying, my day went well and you’re here” I turned my head to him “I’d say my wish was fulfilled.”

We sat there in silence as we stargazed. He caught a glance at me, I was smiling and my face read sincere and calm. She’s at ease he thought maybe this move was a good thing. We said our good nights and he went to bed thinking about how her life is going to improve now that she’s where she belongs.

“Iida-kun! Did you see her last night?” ask Todoroki at the table, it was 9am the next day.

“Yea, she was there” Iida said pouring himself juice “it totally slipped my mind, but she told me that she moved to her proper dorms early yesterday morning” he sat at the table with the others “so she’s our neighbor now.”

“How can something so important slip your mind?” Sero said, trying to make sense of it “I guess it doesn’t matter now, the mornings are going to be so quiet without her.”

Meanwhile in the intel dorms, all of us were singing to Wannabe by Spice Girls while waiting for breakfast. It was just the beginning of all the great things that was going to accompany me that year, and there was nothing that was going to stop....I kinda wish it would’ve tho.

-End Chapter 22-

#bnha #mha #self insert au #not canon #chapter 22 #will update regularly #ask me anything

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samanthasroberts · 6 years

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12 more things in Fallout 4 they don’t tell you, but advanced players need to know

More tips on how to survive in the radioactive wasteland, including how to fight Legendary enemies, hide goodies and carry more stuff

Fallout 4s rich and varied landscape is built for lackadaisical roaming the player characters nicknamed the Wanderer for a reason. The experience isnt about just racing through the main questline or finding the best gear, but assembling your own story from all of Bethesdas tiny interlocking parts.

The Commonwealth is a harsh mistress, however, so we could all use some help and none other than our grizzled survivor Corbyn has heeded your call. Weve already covered the 12 key tips for beginners, so now its time for some more advanced instruction. Lets really get those Super Mutants quaking in their boots.

1. VATS tricks

Fallout 4s Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (VATS) mechanic slows time down to a crawl, and allows you to target specific body parts of enemies and displaying the chance of hitting them in a percentage. This is all many players use it for but there are several kinks to the way VATS operates that can make all the difference in a tight spot.

Our Fallout 4 character Corbyn is probably overdoing it by Crit-ing a bloodbug. Photograph: Bethesda

The obvious ones first: use VATS when your guns empty and, for the AP cost of that shot, youll get both the shot and a free reload. Critical hits build up over time in VATS and can then be stored until you want to use them yes these do great damage, but much more importantly theyre guaranteed to hit even if your normal shot only has a 1% chance. This is useful but in fights against enemies with specific weak points, such as the fusion core on power armour, save that Crit and zoom into VATS the second their model turns sideways 1% chance is all you need for the shot that ends the fight.

Crits are also useful for taking out the combat inhibitors on the back of mechanical enemies.

But it doesnt end there! One of the most useful functions of VATS is that your aim will be centred on any enemy you shot at after youve exited VATS. Think of this as at least one free shot and, thanks to the shonky enemy AI, usually many more if theyre still alive after using VATS, just spam that trigger.

2. Fraggle Rock!

Messed up that grenade toss? Always throwing it just a second too late as the Raiders scarper? Worry ye not my wasteland friend, for there are two magnificent tricks to frags that will turn your throwing arm into the envy of Shane Warne.

First one is obvious when you think about it: a well-placed bullet will prematurely detonate your grenade. Hit the VATS button as soon as you throw and youll find you can target the grenade, though depending on its location your shot chance will be different (this is another great opportunity for using the guarantee of a Crit.) And boom no more legs for your luckless foes.

As you can see, no enemies have yet noticed my explosive presence. Timing grenades is especially useful against crowds of weaker enemies.

The second trick, however, is even sneakier. A glitch in Fallout 4s way of slowing down game time during VATS means that, if your grenade has landed and you then target and shoot an enemy using VATS, the grenade will explode during the VATS shots. That is, you dont need to target the grenade at all if its in the right place, just target the enemy in VATS and it will explode near-instantaneously.

3. Getting legless

This one can be a lifesaver for when youre just out on a relaxing stroll and run into a randomly generated tough-as-nails Legendary enemy. Many of these enemies, after taking roughly half damage, will mutate into a tougher form and regain their lost health. What a joke.

This is how I like my Legendary enemies legless and toothless. Now cough up that loot! Photograph: Bethesda

The one thing that doesnt regenerate, however, is limb damage. When fighting Fallout 4s normal enemies you dont really need to target limbs so much so its easy to forget about this tactic, but it is absolutely the core part of my strategy against Legendaries. If its a Legendary Super Mutant, where were worried about their weapon, focus on the arms if they mutate, youve crippled the arm by that point and their accuracys dived. If its a Legendary Ghoul, blow off the legs, and then the mutated second stage can only look up in abject apology as you line up the combat shotgun.

4. Radical Stags

The greatest enemy in Fallout 4, the bane of every player, the most despicable sentence in the Commonwealth: Youre carrying too much and cant run!

God I hate it. There are several common workarounds: load up your companion, use the Solo Wanderer/Dogmeat glitch and so on. But when youre stuck in a lovely loot zone and just need that bit extra to get outdoors and fast-travel home, you want Grilled Radstag.

OK it doesnt LOOK very appetising, but when your other options are mole rats or Spam …

You see Radstags everywhere, usually in groups of two or three. Make a rule of slaughtering these defenceless creatures, and grilling them up at a cooking station because it adds +25 carry weight. Eat that and youll feel the benefit for an hour, but why not wash it down with a bottle of alcohol (+10 carry weight) and have an extra 35 on your weight limit. Because no trinket should be left behind.

5. Sleep well

What do you mean you never sleep? True, you dont really need to but occasionally a nice rest is just whats needed to heal up and see the sun again. One aspect of sleeping that is possible to overlook, however, is where the bed is.

If you really want to maximise XP gain, do this before handing in quests youve already completed. Photograph: Bethesda

Sleep in a bed that you own (in a settlement for example), or rent a room for the night and your character not only heals but gains a Well Rested bonus that gives 10% extra XP for eight in-game hours.

6. Sticky business

You could write a whole article about Fallout 4s crafting system, but one thing everyone needs more of is adhesive. Luckily theres a simple solution waiting in the cookery pot: have your settlements farm corn, mutfruit and tatos for subsistence. Perfectly respectable foods, but you can use these stores to pick the bottom option at a cooking stove and make Vegetable Starch each one worth a whopping five adhesive.

Vegetable starch goes into your junk inventory, so always remember to transfer it to storage before taking off.

7. Pick up named junk

This ones simple to the point of obvious: youll sometimes come across otherwise standard loot that has a modifier in the name, for example Rich Stantons beer. This means it is an exceptional beer for an exceptional man or, in other words, a key item for a quest you havent yet picked up. So pick it up and, down the road, youll be able to hand in that quest immediately.

The jazzy Hubris Comics office has plenty of interesting stuff, and make sure you take a close look at the props.

You may not actually make it through youor birthday if you eat this revolting morsel. However, it has a special name which means it could well be part of a later quest. Grab that sucker.

8. Hazmat and Hat

Two items of clothing I keep on me permanently are a Hazmat suit and a hat that grants +3 Charisma. The utility of the first is obvious: everywhere in Fallout 4 is more or less radioactive, and youll find some nasty spots. Its not convenient to fetch Power Armour for every little cubbyhole, so a Hazmat suit just always makes life easier.

Among the games weather effects are radiation storms which, if they catch you in the open, can be trouble but not with the humble Hazmat. Photograph: Bethesda

Hazmats are around theres one on sale in Diamond City but this is where I stumbled across mine relatively early on. Photograph: Bethesda

The hat I combine with some Grape Mentats (make at any cooking station) for when I need to sell a lot of gear or buy something big. Why not get your moneys worth?

9. Use it, dont lose it

Advice from bitter experience: dont just jump into the water willy nilly while wearing power armour. It sinks and, while most bodies of water in the game have a way out, some of them dont and youll have to abandon it there. Also, dont ever get rid of a companion wearing power armour by sending them back to a settlement my snazzy Flames set is still out there somewhere.

You can repair damaged power armour with steel but even without it the basic frame provides some protection and the suits usual abilities.

Finally, dont get out of it in a non-settlement area without removing the fusion core. Even if you cant see any enemies. Theres nothing so humiliating as getting out to stretch your legs, waking up a nest of raiders, and watching open-mouthed as they hijack your beautiful suit.

10. Mystery Meat

OK, I said I wouldnt be too specific but this is too good to pass up. On the far east of the Commonwealth (shown in the image) you can find Longneck Lukowskis cannery. On entering youll see a short exchange between two characters and can then offer to help with a pest problem in the building.

Looks delicious though, as ever in Bethesdas post-apocalyptic worlds, no-ones cleaned up for 200 years.

This kicks off a short-but-sweet mission, but the reason its great to visit here is that theres an office at the top of the building containing both the Barter bobblehead which permanently decreases buying prices by 5% and an issue of Tales of A Junktown Jerky Vendor, which applies its own discount depending on how many copies you have. Basically youre walking out of there after a 10-minute mission with everything in the Commonwealth 10% cheaper.

This is where youll find Longneck Lukowskis cannery, an essential visit for the savvy scavenger.

Bonus points: in the final confrontation, you can make your opponent surrender if you get them low enough, and make a very … interesting choice. Oh, and do apply the earlier tips about Legendaries and frags when youre exploring. Wouldnt want to end up in a can now, would we?

11. Give them a Minute, man

The Minutemen are rather worthy and dull sorts, all about helping out ones neighbour and looking out for each other. Blah blah blah, point me to the bad guys right?

Some people like Preston, but he constantly moans when youre hoovering up junk so I think hes a circle button. Photograph: Bethesda

The Castles replaced Sanctuary as my main settlement, because a half-destroyed castle looks cooler than half-destroyed bungalows.

Me too. But its worth zooming through the early Minutemen quests, which are all very easy, just to reach the point where you re-take a location called the Castle. First of all, when youre doing the quests beforehand, take Preston as your companion because completing each one depends on reporting back to him.

Take the Castle, go off and do something else, and soon enough someone will turn up looking for you. Go to see her and within 10 minutes youll bag a Fat Man portable nuke launcher, an absolute ton of ammo and a great armour set, and unlock artillery positions for every settlement.

12. And … smile

Though Ive loved much of my time with Fallout 4, it is a game filled with bugs and glitches that can on occasion really ruin your day. Ive lost hours of progress through annoying problems with the save system, seen my companions fly into the sky and disappear, even failed a mission because of an NPC that decided to walk to the bottom of a lake.

But its worth remembering that, for all the frustrations it brings, the janky side of Bethesda games can have real charm too. Use Corbyns tips wisely, comrades, and enjoy these dancing Mirelurks.

12 things in Fallout 4 they dont tell you but you really need to know

Fallout 4 review spectacular, messy and familiar

Fallout 4: the first 10 things to do in the apocalyptic wasteland

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/12/07/12-more-things-in-fallout-4-they-dont-tell-you-but-advanced-players-need-to-know/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/12-more-things-in-fallout-4-they-dont-tell-you-but-advanced-players-need-to-know/

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