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sarahjtv · 3 years

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BNHA Chapter 310 Spoiler Thoughts: “The First and Second Holders”

Some fan translations are out and it’s time to flex some thoughts out again! I couldn’t do them last night because I didn’t have all the scan images with me and I didn’t want to jump the gun with only text descriptions. Anyway, this was mainly an exposition chapter that properly introduces us to the second and third OFA Holders, especially the 2nd and what his relationship to the 1st is. This might not be as long as others “Spoiler Thoughts” I’ve written, but let’s see:

First off, we have a colored cover page by Horikoshi-sensei himself! It’s a solo page featuring Vigilante Deku and he looks badass! Deku looks ready to kick ass and take names. And, his Mid-Gauntlet is colored red like a lot of us thought and it adds to the theory that Melissa Shield did create it like she did with Deku’s Full-Gauntlet back in Two Heroes.

The chapter starts in a dark and rainy night. A large woman (she’s like maybe 10ft tall; she’s taller than All Might who I think is 7ft) with a mutant-type quirk who’s getting attacked by some civilians because they think she’s a villain. Deku jumps in to stop the attacks and the woman explains that she was just trying to go to one of the evacuation centers at a hero school. Deku is kind enough to give her her umbrella back and reassure her that things will be ok.

I gotta say that this whole situation is scarily close to real life right now. I don’t like getting too political, but we live in a scary world where discrimination is, unfortunately, alive and well... If you are a POC, you can be attacked from anywhere with the only reason being that “you’re a danger because of the skin you were born with”. It’s horrific, it’s disgusting, and it’s been around for a long time. Even in the BNHA universe, there used to be cults solely dedicated to discriminating against mutant-type people (we learned this back in the My Villain Academia Arc). So, like in the real world, this problem has risen again. Thankfully, there are people like Deku and All Might who are more than willing to help someone in need regardless of who they are. BNHA hits too close to home sometimes.

Anyway, going back to the BNHA story. Before All Might leaves to help the woman in his Batmobile, he hands Deku some Pork Katsu in a cute bento box wrapped in a bunny cloth! Deku is visibly happy and thanks All Might for the meal. This is so cute! I’m so glad to see that All Might is making sure that Deku is being properly taken care of. Boy needs to eat if he’s going to save the world. I’m also glad that Deku can still show signs of happiness despite, well, everything. I swear, if All Might doesn’t legally adopt Deku as his son by the time this series is over, I’m going to jump into this manga and force him to sign those documents myself.

The next panel shows Deku standing on what looks like Tokyo’s famous Sky Tree (or Sky Egg if we’re going off what Vigilantes showed us). He’s back to talking to the OFA Holders like they’re angels on his shoulders. Banjo talks about how it’s like the world’s reverted back in time when things were worse and Deku responds that if he doesn’t use all of OFA’s power, he’ll never be able to defeat Shigaraki and AFO. I know we’re in the final act, so Deku’s gotta get to 100% fast if he wants to win this war. Last we checked, he was at 45%, but he might be at a higher percentage now since he’s unlocked En’s Smokescreen. Also, Deku’s looking more and more like Batman each chapter and I gotta say that it really suits him.

Back to the Vestige Dream back when Deku was still in a coma after the war. The 1st Holder begs the 2nd and 3rd to corporate with him so that they can provide their power to Deku. The 1st calls the 2nd and 3rd “My Heroes” which causes some awkward silence lol. Neither one is responding, so Banjo breaks the silence by suggesting that Deku learn everyone’s Quirks so that he’ll get used to them once he starts using them. We learn why the 2nd and 3rd are the 1st’s heroes soon, but it’s actually a good idea for Deku to learn about all these different Quirks while he’s sleeping so that he’ll get a good idea on how to execute them when he wakes up. It’s kind of a way of training for Deku just without actually using the Quirks themselves.

The 3rd Holder (the one with the spiky ponytail and headband) starts to talk. He says that the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd came from the “Harshest era of history”. It was a time where AFO ruled all and peaked in power and control. He was going to take over the whole world if the first 3 Holders didn’t step in to stop him. My guess is that after AFO was defeated for the first time, society started to calm down and become more or less the world we knew before the War Arc. So, things weren’t as bad during the 4th Holder’s era and so forth. This would explain why Shinomori was able to hide in the forest for so long without being detected.

And now the big part of the chapter: the 2nd Holder. Who does in fact look A LOT like Bakugo. Big difference is that he has a massive scar across his face. I am aware of the whole “time travel” theory that people have going on with Bakugo and this dude, but I’m not on that train. Instead, I think that the 2nd Holder is one of Bakugo’s ancestors. Like, a really, really-great-grandfather. Horikoshi doesn’t just design his characters for no reason. The fact that the 2nd user looks so much like Bakugo, has a costume similar to Bakugo’s, and that future panels in this chapter straight up parallel that iconic scene with young Bakugo and Deku in the river only add fuel to this fire. Unless Horikoshi says otherwise, this is the theory I’m sticking to: this “Ancestor” theory.

And we know of the 1st user’s real name now too, which is Yoichi! If Horikoshi is keeping up with the “numbers in names” theme, then I’m positive that Yochi has the kanji for “One” somewhere in it. And, if we’re going to believe AFO at all, then that means that the 1st user’s full name is Yoichi Shigaraki. We don’t know AFO’s full name yet. But, again, AFO could be lying with his last name, so I’m taking this one with a grain of salt.

Back to the 2nd Holder, he tells Yoichi that a lot of lives were sacrificed in order to stop AFO back then. He believes that there is only victory or defeat in battle; that there’s no hope of saving their archenemy. He has doubt about putting his faith in Deku because of this. Given how the 3rd Holder still has his back turned too, I’m lead to believe that he also thinks Deku is crazy for wanting to save Shigaraki. I don’t exactly blame them. Really, none of us know if Deku will be successful in saving Shigaraki. He might have to kill him in the end. I think they should offer Deku help, but I don’t blame them for being at least a little skeptical.

But, Yoichi reminds the 2nd and 3rd users that they saved Yoichi back when AFO locked him up to die. They found Yoichi with the intention to kill him it seems, but the 2nd Holder showed sympathy for Yoichi and lent him a helping hand despite Yoichi being AFO’s little brother. This is the parallel panel I was talking about. Yoichi is kneeling down on the floor and the 2nd user is standing up extending his hand to help Yoichi. I don’t even need to look back in the manga to know what inspired this. Hell, I don’t even need to tell you! We all know what Horikoshi was doing when he drew and wrote this.

Yoichi convinces him that he should believe in Deku as Yoichi does think Deku will save the day. If the 2nd user didn’t extend his hand to help Yoichi, OFA wouldn’t have begun. I think that the trust between these two is ultimately the reason why the 2nd user finally agreed to help Deku; the same with the 3rd user too. And, kind of a tangent, but I really like how Horikoshi draws Yoichi and the 2nd user’s hands as they’re reaching for each other. Horikoshi has always been really good with drawing hands like they’re facial expressions (something my ass could never do 😭) and this one shows kindness and empathy. It’s almost like what would’ve happened if Bakugo accepted Deku’s hand for help when they were young instead of letting his pride and ego get in the way. Oh, the parallels!

Finally, the 2nd user speaks in present day telling Deku that they’re going full speed ahead now. My guess is that Deku’s going to have to improve on OFA and the rest of his Quirks quickly in order to find and beat the LoV. We are in the Final Act after all. The chapter ends at a good place if we want to switch to the UA kids, which is honestly what I’m hoping for. Again, I love Deku and his Vigilante adventures, but I miss the rest of the kids. The new BNHA Exhibition in Japan apparently has a giant drawing of the main class, All Might, Aizawa, and Shinso in his new hero costume! Which tells me that 1. Shinso probably took Deku’s place in the class for the time being, and 2. We’re definitely going to see the other kids again. I��m hoping soon. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if Horikoshi decided to continue focusing on Deku’s Vigilanteism and have him practice with he 2nd and 3rd Holder’s Quirks now that they’re working with him. We’ll just have to see.

So, that’s it! Solid chapter overall. I’m glad we finally got to see the 3rd and 2nd Holder’s faces. I think the “Kirishima is the 3rd Holder” theroy has been debunked at this point, but I’m still on the “2nd Holder is Bakugo’s ancestor” train. The similarities and parallels are too strong for me to deny it. Horikoshi-sensei, please confirm or deny soon 🙏. We are getting break next week for Golden Week BTW! All of Shonen Jump is actually, so no One Piece or JJK either (I’m not sure about Jump+, so we might still be getting some Spy X Family for example). So, basically all our favorite mangakas are getting a well-deserved break as they should! I hope they enjoy their vacation! Waiting’s going to suck tho, I’m ngl about that... Oh well, I’m willing to take the sacrifice if it means having healthy mangka. Thankfully, we still have the anime and the new exhibition to tide us over until then.

Edit: OR NOT SINCE THE EXHIBITION IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED BECAUSE OF A CERTAIN PANDEMIC GOING NUTS IN JAPAN AFTER ONLY BEING OPEN FOR 2 DAYS 😭

Edit: I went back to re-read the chapter and I completely missed the date for the next chapter (chapter 311) which is set to release on May 9th! So, we’re actually getting a 2 week break instead. Damn... Sucks for us, but it’s good for mangaka to get breaks when they can especially considering their absolutely insane schedule.

Me reading this chapter:

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amostheartman · 4 years

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The Hero’s Bond final update

Hey everyone, it’s me Amos.

Okay, So…. Here's the deal…

I’ve got some bad news, and It's about the comic.

I'm pretty sure you can guess what's coming next, but don’t worry there is some good in here just hear me out.

It's been something I have struggled with for a while now and I had to finally sit myself down to think things over and I’ve come to this decision.

I’m no longer working on the hero’s bond comic.

It's been a long time coming and I thought I could beat the odds and power through. But I simply can’t work on it enough to finish it within a reasonable amount of time anymore. And even if I took my time to finish it, it still would take way too long.

When I first started it, it was just line art with gradient fill coloring and I had all kinds of time and ideas. It was a lot of fun and it felt like I was really going somewhere with it.

But with each passing year and all the things that have utterly derailed the comics progress it became clear that fully finishing this was never in the cards.

I did a lot of bending for this comic. Like way more than I reasonably should have.

I’ve stayed up whole nights working on it, worked entire weekends on it, fought past the crashes that destroyed 2 hours of work every other day, heck I even called in sick to work a few times to work on it, all of that so I could painstakingly upload it to tumblers dash on my slow shotty wi-fi.

All of it was because I wanted to.

And for a while it felt like it was worth it.

To get my ideas out into the world and show support for a series I love with people who feel the same. Seeing you guys love the comic was an amazing feeling and all I wanted to do was work harder on the next one and 1-up myself.

And if things had worked out like I planned, it totally would have been one massively fun project. But like most things, life gets in the way.

In the span of this comic I’ve been through 4 different jobs and some very soso online work.

As fun as it was to do the comic it wasn’t putting gas in my car or food on the table and it was drawing a lot of my focus. Even with my efforts to justify the time spent on working on it nothing was really coming of it.

I couldn’t work on the comic at work and I couldn't stay up all night anymore so my options were limited.

But I still wanted to do it, so I forced myself to do it every chance I got.

I started a patron, I gave myself hard deadlines, I reused assets, cut corners, made myself give you guys updates to keep me striving for something to show for it.

But I had to face facts, I simply didn’t have the time and couldn’t make the time for it anymore.

And so it eventually devolved into this.

I never wanted it to end like this, and it stinks that I have to tell you this way. But I honestly don’t know how else to put it.

I’m sorry I let you down.

So where does that leave us?

Well for one I’m surely not leaving you on a mid story cliffhanger. I’ve read enough online comics to know how much it sucks to have a story left unfinished with complete radio silence from the creator.

I plan on making a video or posting rough panels here detailing how the story would have played out and ultimately ended.

I would have posted the entire script, but that is unfortunately forever locked away in my flash drive that not even the professionals can crack and retyping it from memory would take forever.

You deserve better and I wish I was able to give it to you. You guys have been nothing but great to me and for that I simply can’t express my gratitude enough.

Thank you for everything.

Also, to the people who signed up and supported my Patrion you guys went above and beyond for me and that's something I simply can’t forget or thank you enough for. I honestly didn’t think anyone would sign up but you guys did and to this day I’m still floored by it.

But seeing how I've given you next to nothing back it doesn't feel right to just let things sit.

I’m still not entirely sure how Patron operates but I want to refund you your money. I feel awful for not delivering anything worthy of value and it doesn't feel right to simply take it.

So please message me so we can set something up.

It was fun while it lasted guys.

I’ll still be around, and I’ll still do little mini comics and art stuff. But this project of mine is pretty much over.

Just know that it was you guys that kept me going this whole time.

Thank you.

Thank you for all the messages

Thank you for all the encouragement

Thank you for all of the support

Thank you for all of your kind words

Thank you for being you.

I got this comic further than I had ever hoped it would actually go because of you.

Thank you for everything :)

- Amos

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patchwork-panda · 4 years

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If A Moment Is All We Are (Ch.1)

This is the Dazai x OC/”reader” with bits of Kunikida x OC/”reader” fic I created.

I’m just gonna post the entire text of first chapter below the cut bc even tho it’s at zero hits, I still feel there’s people out there who might want to read it...

OC is based off “The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, the basis for the movie “Arrival” w Amy Adams.

Shout-out to @discoten for Beta-ing this first part :)

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Pale gold. Rose red. Dusky purple.

My eyes traveled from one brightly colored glass panel to the next, finally landing upon the deep azure blue of the Virgin Mary’s veil. I kept my eyes trained on her face, trying to stay focused on the massive stained-glass windows, the beautiful art shining all around me, anything to pretend I was at this gallery under different circumstances. Shafts of colored light as bright as shattered gemstones danced across the floor in the late afternoon sun, flitting over the black-clad bodies of the two men who lay prone nearby, their silent forms looking unnaturally still against the vibrant carpet.

I swallowed uneasily, a familiar sort of nausea creeping up from the pit of my stomach as I watched the dark pool of liquid around them grow wider and wider, the smell of iron heavy in the air...

Squeezing my eyes shut momentarily, I wrenched my attention away from them, trying to go back to staring at the windows but found myself looking once again into a pair of steel-gray eyes. There, at the entrance of the gallery, standing so still he may was well be a statue himself, was the young man who’d slain the two security guards lying on the floor nearby. With his pale face, stark-white cravat, and torn black overcoat, he reminded me of a vampire, or maybe even a god of death—his very image called to mind a painting of the Grim Reaper I’d passed on my way into this room. If only I had heeded the warning...

If I had, then maybe I wouldn’t be staring into a pair of piercing red eyes right now—the eyes of a shadowy monster attached to the back of this man’s cloak. As if sensing my thoughts, the demonic creature bared its dagger-like fangs and growled, its bloody, gaping maw stretching wide.

I kept my hands in the air. My cold, sweaty palms trembled on either side of my face as I returned my attention to the stained-glass windows around me. I’d had my hands in the air for so long that my arms were getting tired but I couldn’t drop them—I didn’t want to think about what would happen next if I did. Then the headlines tomorrow would read: “Attack at the South Pier Art Gallery. Three dead: two curators and one visitor.” In perhaps a day or two, they’d identify my corpse as “Kusunoki Kyou, aged twenty, a college drop-out and local shut-in.” They wouldn’t be able to get a hold of my parents; they were overseas and I hadn’t seen the rest of my family in so long, I wasn’t even sure if they were still in Chiba any more. Maybe the reporters would interview one or two of my former classmates... But would they even be able to find anybody who still wanted to talk about me after I shut myself away so abruptly?

“Hey, how have you been? Akutagawa-kun?” the man behind me called out brightly, the lilting tenor of his voice jarring, given our current situation.

I kind of figured he was crazy from the moment we met, but not this crazy.

What kind of man tries to play catch up with a friend (acquaintance? I honestly had no idea how they knew each other) while holding a gun to somebody’s head—my head? Even though I couldn’t turn around to see his face, I could picture his cheerful smile, the twinkle in his intelligent brown eyes, the layers of bandages wrapped around his neck. I could practically hear the gears in his head turning behind me as he watched Akutagawa and calculated his next move, the tone of his voice giving absolutely nothing away.

There was a tiny click—the sound of the safety being shut off—and I grimaced as I felt the metallic chill of the handgun’s muzzle pressing more firmly against the back of my head. Akutagawa immediately shot a dirty glance over my head at the person holding me hostage. He spat out a single name:

“Dazai-san.”

I went back to staring at the windows.

I really shouldn’t have left my apartment this morning.

***

Ramen.

Instant ramen was the reason I decided to venture out of my glorified broom closet for the first time in probably weeks. Had I known that the craving for convenience store food would lead to my being shot to death in six hours’ time, I would’ve ignored the growling of my stomach and taken my chances with starving at home instead.

Maybe.

I’d stayed up far too late the night before binge-watching the latest season of a new anime I’d picked up and my best guess for when I’d finally fallen asleep at my computer was probably around three in the morning. When I finally woke up (sometime around noon), I had Pocky crumbs in my hair, my pajamas were sticking unpleasantly to my skin and my stomach was grumbling from the lack of real food in who knows how long. Unfortunately, my pantry was empty, so I did what any normal person in my situation would do: put off going outside for another couple hours by picking another anime to watch. I only realized I really needed to get going when I finally reached into my giant bag of snacks and found it empty.

Dread building in the pit of my stomach at the mere thought of going outside, I threw off the pink bunny pajamas that I hadn’t changed out of in a while and tossed them on the growing pile of clothes on the floor. I hadn’t done the laundry in weeks and it was anyone’s guess which pile was “clean” and which was “dirty” (I’d lost track of which was which days ago). However, I didn’t have a real need to distinguish between the two until today... I stepped into the bathroom, walking right past the tiny cracked mirror above the sink without really looking into it and pulled the shower curtain closed. I knew what I would see: a greasy, dead-eyed otaku version of the creepy girl from The Ring, with long black hair and reddish-brown eyes, only instead of a haunted child, I’d see an adult who failed to get her life together after just two years of moving out of her relatives’ house.

Half an hour later, I’d dressed myself in an old pair of jeans and a large sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of a magical girl anime and was desperately fishing around in my kitchen drawer for the thing I needed most: a pair of gloves. I hadn’t needed to go outside in so long that I’d forgotten to stock up on nitrile gloves and it was with an enormous amount of relief that I finally retrieved an old pair at the bottom of the drawer.

I was too tired and hungry to notice the small hole in one of the gloves when I pulled them on, nor did I notice when I put on my face mask and tied up my hair. Honestly, I was just lucky the torn one didn’t rip completely away from my hand when I was putting on my shoes but maybe it would’ve been better if it did. Maybe then I wouldn’t have ended up at the art gallery...

But I wasn’t thinking about my gloves when I prepared for my short trip; I was thinking about food. After all, it was supposed to be a quick trip, just a short walk through the hallway and down the street to the nearest convenience store, then back. It honestly might not have been so bad if everything that happened after hadn’t gone so horribly wrong.

The first thing that went wrong happened the moment I stepped out of the building. Blinded by the sudden appearance of sunlight, I smacked right into an old lady walking in front of my building and immediately fell on my butt.

“Oh my, Kyou-chan!”

I groaned as I slowly got back to my feet.

“Is that you, Kyou-chan? Nobody’s seen you in weeks; it’s been so quiet on your end of the floor that we thought maybe you moved out!”

“No, I’m still here, Yamazaki-san,” I replied, recognizing the woman’s face before her voice.

Mrs. Yamazaki lived on the same floor as me and was kind of a busybody, but a caring one. The evening I’d first moved into the building, she’d knocked on my door around dinner time and asked if I knew how to play Mah-Jong. One of her friends had canceled on their group last minute and they’d needed a fourth. I’d declined as politely as I could but was still somehow dragged out of my room by the boisterous old woman and forcibly socialized over a cup of hot genmai-cha. I’d meant to return the favor by dropping by with some kind of snack in hand but never got around to it.

I could feel the guilt curling in the pit of my stomach as I took in her tiny form, her smiling face but all I could do was smile weakly as she remarked on how malnourished I looked and how long my hair had grown since she’d last seen me. Then she spotted the tote bag in my hand.

“Kyou-chan! Are you going shopping?”

“Not really, just getting some ramen at the convenience store.”

Mrs. Yamazaki’s eyes widened.

“Is that all you’ve been eating these days?” she asked, sounding concerned.

“N-no. I’ve had...”

I thought back to my box of strawberry Pocky.

“...Other things.”

She frowned.

“That won’t do,” she declared.

Without waiting for me to respond, she grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the nearest crosswalk.

“Yamazaki-san!” I tried to wrench my arm out of her grip but she was surprisingly strong for her age. Or maybe—I cringed—maybe I’d just become extremely weak after months of being a shut-in and not getting any proper exercise. Drawing commissions hardly worked the arms.

“This isn’t the way to the convenience store! Yamazaki-san!!”

Before long, we were inside an actual grocery, Mrs. Yamazaki chatting away merrily as she pulled vegetables off the shelves and tucked them away into her own basket (I’d run into her just as she was about to go anyway). Occasionally, she’d grab something green and leafy and stick it into the basket she’d forced into my hands, and she kept doing it until she’d buried the thick layer of ramen and junk food that lay at the bottom of the bag. When she was satisfied with the composition of my groceries, she nodded approvingly and hurried me towards the cash registers.

“There now,” she laughed once we were outside and I was carrying a very heavy bag of things I hadn’t actually intended to buy. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

She stepped off the sidewalk and two things happened very quickly: one, a truck ran a red light, barreling towards her as she attempted to cross the street, and two, as I dropped my groceries and rushed forward to save her, my right glove caught on something sticking out of my bag and finally ripped.

“Yamazaki-san!”

I reached out—my fingers stretched towards her.

“Look out!!”

Several onlookers screamed as I seized Mrs. Yamazaki by the back of her jacket and yanked her back. We fell to the ground, crashing down onto the sidewalk just as the truck sped through the intersection, honking madly as it flew by. Somebody behind us was yelling for the cops, several people had taken out their cell phones and as one of the grocery store employees rushed over to help us up, I felt an odd stinging sensation in my right hand.

I looked down and saw that my right glove had been completely shredded. Though I still had coverage on most of my fingers, much of the pale blue nitrile was hanging off my right hand in thin, ragged tatters and there were several long scratches on the palm of my hand from where I’d scraped it against the sidewalk when I fell.

The store employee, a stout, middle-aged man with bulky arms, helped a very shaken Mrs. Yamazaki to her feet, and though I could feel her trembling as she clung to me, I tried to shift my posture as she leaned on me. I couldn’t let her touch any part of my bare hand.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” the man from the store asked.

“Y-yes, I’m fine,” Mrs. Yamazaki answered, her voice quavering as she looked up at the man and then at me.

Tears sprang to her eyes and before I could stop her, she got down on her knees and bowed deeply, touching her forehead to the ground in gratitude.

“Y-Yamazaki-san?”

“Thank you!” she whispered, her voice cracking. “You saved my life, Kyou-chan!”

“Yamazaki-san, please,” I dropped to my knees as well and tried to help her up. “You don’t need to do that. Please, get up.”

As the store employee and I raised Mrs. Yamazaki to her feet, she chuckled, her eyes wide with wonder as she looked at me.

“And to think, if I hadn’t met you on your way out this morning, I might be...”

She shook her head slowly and I exchanged a worried glance with the man who’d come to help.

“I don’t know where I would be if you weren’t here, Kyou-chan,” Mrs. Yamazaki breathed. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

Though she seemed to be completely fine, with no broken bones or serious injuries, she continued to cling to me, and I felt her grip on my arm tighten as the employee informed her the police were on their way and we may want to stay to give a statement. Panic slowly rose in my chest as I felt my uncovered wrist coming out of my sleeve but as I carefully began to extricate myself from Mrs. Yamazaki’s grip, she suddenly turned to me and looked me up and down. She gasped.

“Oh, Kyou-chan!”

Her eyes had fallen upon my scratched palm.

“You’re bleeding!”

I yanked my hand away.

“I’m fine, ma’am.”

“Let me see it,” she demanded, grabbing my wrist. “I insist.”

As the store employee ran inside to get some band-aids, Mrs. Yamazaki gently picked up the edges of the ripped nitrile, pulling it away from my bloody, scratched-up palm, oblivious to my attempts to get away. As the glove gradually peeled away from my hand, I felt the warmth of her wrinkled skin brush against my fingers.

And then it happened.

The sound of canned laughter echoes throughout the room. Flickering green and white light casts odd shadows upon the walls. The cat-shaped clock above the television reads half past eleven in the middle of the night but there is another sound that is audible over the muffled noises from the TV. It beats in time with the clock and it sounds like something dripping, something liquid and warm.

Tick.

T i ck.

The clock cat’s eyes shine with unnatural green light— light reflected from the television screen. They are blank , open, and staring, just like the eyes of the woman draped oddly over the side of the television set, her eyes wide with fear and shock.

Mrs. Yamazaki clutches at her chest. Blood dribbles thickly from between her fingers, her breath comes in wheezes and gurgled gasps as she slumps further and further down the side of her TV set. She leaves a bloody hand print on the side panel and falls to the ground.

Someone is laughing.

I am laughing.

The sound is deep, unfamiliar. There is a large, bloody kitchen knife held fast in my fingers, which are thick and hairy. I move my arm to check the wound Mrs. Yamazaki had inflicted on me and I see the vivid tattoo of a monstrous green snake, its fangs sinking deeply into a cracked human skull.

The television returns to its regularly scheduled programming. A time stamp appears in the upper right hand corner...

I came to, to the sound of somebody calling my name and immediately let out a sharp hiss of pain. While I was out, I had dropped to my knees, scuffing my jeans, and I could feel the thin skin over my kneecaps bruising horribly against the concrete sidewalk. Thankfully, that was all but my hands were shaking and I had a massive headache. Looking alarmed, Mrs. Yamazaki, not a single knife wound visible on her body, held my hand in both of hers with a troubled expression on her face. She had been the one calling me.

“Oh my goodness! Are you alright, Kyou-chan? You’re as white as a sheet.”

I immediately ripped my hand away and stuffed it into my pocket, just as the store employee returned with bandages. As he stuck out his hand to give me the bandages, I took a step back, shrinking away from the two of them.

“I’m fine.”

I stuffed my hand deeper into my pocket, ignoring the stickiness of the drying blood.

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Yamazaki asked, worry clouding her voice.

“I SAID I’M FINE!!”

That came out way louder than I’d meant it to. The people around me looked startled. I could hear the whispers. My Ability, “The Story of Your Life,” the curse of seeing visions of the future of those I touched, had manifested at the worst possible moment. I picked my bag off the sidewalk and ran.

#bungou stray dogs #bungou sd #dazai x oc #dazai x reader #kunikida x reader #kunikida x oc

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jamesbucksiclebarnes · 5 years

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Rating: Mature - Mentions of Violence, Mentions of Attempted Rape

Chapter List: [1] | [2] | [3] | [4] | [5] | [6] | [7] | [8]

[AO3 Link] | [Fic Page]

SERIES SUMMARY:

"Not human. She was not human. They all knew it. Could almost feel it, but couldn't make sense of it. That was why they were afraid. Not because of what she used to be Before. But because of what she was now."

Having found herself serving as the right-hand to the Governor for too long, Synnove le Jacques does her best to make things right with the people of the Prison. Stuck beside her partner in crime, her irritatingly obnoxious and hideously problematic best friend, Merle, she does her best to fight back against the monster she has let the Governor become.

CHAPTER TITLE: The Head.

Rick, Michonne and Carl left early that morning.

Merle and I were awoken in order to open the gate as they passed through in one of the cars from the courtyard. I was not a morning person, but I let the rude awakening slide by without complaint, taking my anger out on the two biters that tried to slink in through the open gate while Merle struggled to close it.

After we’d made sure it was secure, we began to make our way inside.

“You know they get us to do this ‘cause of that one damn sniper,” Merle remarked. “Can’t risk none of their people out here, but you and me? Free game.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye as we crossed the courtyard. “Stop complaining. We got four walls and a roof, all of which come refreshingly megalomaniac free.”

Merle grunted, not entirely committing to his agreement.

“Besides. You got your brother.” I reached out to pull open the wire gate, stepping into the frame and turning to face Merle before he could enter. “Don’t fuck that up. He doesn’t deserve it.”

Merle cocked a brow. “Lookin’ out for my brother now, are ya?”

“You need him more than he needs you,” I stated in response. “Don’t act like you don’t know that. All you have to do is not be an asshole every five minutes. Get me?”

He chewed on the inside of his lower hip, contorting his face into a scowl as he looked down at me. I didn’t budge until he nodded, tossing his hands up with a begrudging “Fine!”, moving past me once I’d stepped to the side and marching up the stairs to the entrance.

I followed behind, catching the door as he tried to slam it, full force, into my face. The suddenness of my catch made the door vibrate on its hinges, drawing the attention of those inside. By all logic, I shouldn’t have probably been able to catch that door as easily as I’d made it seem, with the amount of force that had been behind it. I just hoped none of them noticed.

Daryl, Hershel and Beth were the only ones up and about. Beth was holding the baby, bouncing her softly as she held a bottle to her lips. She glanced shyly up, watching as Merle marched down the stairs and toward the cellblock, not looking back. Daryl watched him, too, before looking up curiously at me. Hershel began to hobble toward the cellblock, as if he intended to try and talk to the irritatingly stubborn man that had run off to sulk.

I shook my head, waiting for the door to stop shaking before stepping through the frame and closing it softly behind me.

Daryl’s gaze remained on me as I climbed down the stairs. He rose to his feet once I’d reached the ground, gesturing with one hand toward the cellblock.

“The hell was that?”

“I told him not to be an asshole,” I answered honestly, giving the younger Dixon a shrug. “He didn’t like it. Now, he’s going to go off and sulk like a child for about an hour, and then he’ll come back and we will continue our day as if nothing at all happened. It’s like clockwork.”

I slid into one of the nearby seats, resting my forearms atop the cool metal table with a sigh. Daryl hovered for a moment on the other side, chewing his lip the same way his brother did when he was indecisive. After a moment, he slid into the seat opposite mine.

Beth seemed to take that as her cue to leave the room.

“How long you two –“

“About eight months,” I answered before Daryl could even asked, a slow smile spreading across my face. “Martinez and I found him when we were out in Atlanta on a run. He tried to rob us.”

A snorted chuckle escaped Daryl. “’Course he did.”

“A one-handed man – half-dead from blood loss, mind you – leaps out from an alleyway, covered in biter guts, waving this little toothpick of a knife at us and making demands.” I giggled softly. “Almost shot the crazy fucker on sight.”

Daryl’s lips were curled up into a slight grin as he looked at me from across the table, nodding along to my story. “What made you take him in?”

“I’ve never had a dog before,” I remarked with a smirk, which made him laugh.

He had a nice laugh, actually. A nice smile, too. It wasn’t harsh or cruel, like his brothers often was.

“Honestly?” I asked after a moment. “I don’t really know. It wasn’t until after I’d kicked his ass that I even suggested it. Martinez thought I’d lost my damn mind. But we needed more people. More, uh… hands. For building and gardening, you know.”

I really had tried to avoid that joke. Honestly, I had.

Daryl, thankfully, was still at the stage in which he found it more amusing than annoying, which was a nice change.

“So, we scraped his ass off the sidewalk and took him back,” I continued. “Fixed him up. Gave him that metallic nightmare on his arm and asked him to join the guard. He was all for it, of course. Until the Governor paired him up with Sean.” I let out another soft chuckle, shaking my head at the memories that swirled on the edge of my mind. “First day? Broke his partners nose. Trashed one of the garden beds. Lost his gun amongst the tomatoes.”

Both Daryl and I laughed, trying to remain as quiet as we could. Most of the others were still asleep.

“The hell’d you keep him around for?” Daryl asked after a minute.

I looked off into the distance, reminiscing with a small smile. “Sean was one of our best fighters. Used to be in competitions and the like, you know, Before. You had of asked me a few days earlier who I’d put a bet on? Wouldn’t have been Merle same-amount-of-brain-cells-as-hands Dixon, I can tell you that. But he kicked his ass good.” I nodded. “The Governor wanted to keep him around, but he also wanted him under control. So, he put him with me.”

“Why you?” Daryl asked.

I looked back at him to see his light-hearted look replaced by a more sombre one. His eyes searched my face for a long moment and I immediately knew he was digging for information, just like Rick had asked him to. I looked at him evenly across the table as I debated with myself.

Should I tell them? Perhaps the knowledge of what I truly was would be helpful, aid them in their decisions going forward. I didn’t like the idea of keeping it a secret, mostly because that implied I’d need to figure out a way to keep it from them without being able to lie. If I were going to be staying with them, living alongside them, perhaps they deserved to know.

However… Rick had been a cop once. A sheriff. Our professions were practically polar opposites. The assassin and the police officer? There was no way in hell he’d trust me if he found out. No way he’d let me stay. And if I went, what was the likelihood that Merle went right along with me? Where would that leave Daryl? Abandoned once again?

No. No, I couldn’t tell them. Not yet.

“I don’t take his shit and I can kick his ass,” I answered after a long moment, letting a small smile pull at the corners of my lips. “And he leant that the hard way.”

Daryl studied me for another moment before dropping his gaze, a red tint lighting the pale skin of his cheeks. “That why everyone back there’s afraid of ya?”

I cocked a brow, but he couldn’t see it with his gaze fixed on his fingers where they rested atop the table in front of him. “Yes and no.”

He licked his lips and took a deep breath before looking back up at me. It was almost as if he were struggling to meet my eyes. Like he had to force himself to hold my gaze. “What’s that supposed mean?”

“There are layered reasons as to why some people – not all – back home are… unnerved by me,” I answered with a frown.

“Like what?”

I sighed through my nose, smiling ruefully. He wasn’t going to give this up, was he? “Fine,” I breathed. “Since you’re so set on digging for an explanation, let me give you this. Once upon a time, before Woodbury became what it is today, when there were no more than twenty of us, I did something that many considered to be… kind of fucked up.”

I met his gaze evenly.

“There were these three guys,” I continued. “One of them had a hate boner for me so hard it could shatter rock and the other two would have followed him down a river made entirely of shit if he’d asked nicely enough. Now, the one with the hate boner? He’d been with the Governor and I since the beginning, too, and he had always looked at me like I was… untrustworthy. Worrisome. Dangerous. You name it. Don’t know if it was a race thing, a woman thing, an alpha male thing, or – fuck, I don’t know – maybe he hated my tattoos? Either way, doesn’t matter. The point is, he and his buddies wanted me gone and once we started bringing more people in, and I started getting along with those people, started getting respect… My God, it drove him nuts.” I shook my head with a humourless chuckle, looking out toward the window. “They waited until it was my turn on the night shift. We patrolled the walls a lot more frequently back then – mostly because we’d had no idea how to actually build them at the beginning and some of the panels were, you know… prone to being knocked over. Anyway, it was my turn for the walk-around. I was alone, walking the usual path – didn’t really think I had a reason not to.”

I paused a moment, glancing back down at Daryl, who was now watching me with an intense gaze, jaw clenched. My expression lightened slightly, lips pulling up gently in the corners in a soft smirk.

“I think you see where this is going,” I stated. “Three men. One woman, alone in the dead of night. Doesn’t usually end in a pretty picture, does it?”

Daryl’s mouth opened and closed a few times as if he were struggling to find something to say. I shook my head and sighed.

“They didn’t.”

The tenseness of Daryl’s shoulders loosened almost immediately. He dropped his head a little, letting out a quite sigh of relief.

“They tried to,” I added after a moment, which made Daryl’s gaze snap back up to me. “But it’s going to take more than three idiots walking with down a concrete alleyway with hard sole shoes to take me down.”

“You heard ‘em,” Daryl guessed, his voice hoarse.

I nodded. “Like a fucking stampede of moronic inbreds.”

“What’d you do?”

“What do you think I did?”

We looked at each other over the table for a long moment as he tried to inspect every inch of my expression. I let him, waiting for his response, knowing full well he had likely already guessed.

“You killed ‘em,” he answered.

“Only one,” I corrected. It had been months and I still remembered the feel of his nails biting into my hips as he tried hold me still enough to cut off my jeans. Every now and then, I would feel them upon me like a phantom itch and would have to brush the palm of my hands across my skin just to be sure there was nothing there.

I averted my gaze from Daryl’s, looking slightly over his shoulder with a tight frown. “I wasn’t gentle about it, either. Left his body in pieces. Took his head off and put it beside his two friends faces like a fucked-up jack-o’-lantern alarm clock.” Another pause, this time only so I could take a deep breath in an attempt to calm my racing mind. “That was before we knew we all had the virus. That people would turn without being bit. You can imagine the shock when his head started… you know, growling at me.” I shuddered. “I think that’s where Phil got the idea for his trophy room. From me.”

Daryl remained silent as I glanced down at the table, feeling the slightest heat of shame colour my cheeks.

“The other two,” I continued, “I’d just knocked out. But when they woke up with Marcus’s head right in front of their faces, they ranted and raved to everyone they could, telling them I was the Devil incarnate. And, once everyone heard about the body… the head… Well, it was hard to convince them otherwise.”

Daryl was watching me with an odd expression on his face, as if he partially understood why I’d done it but was just as equally disturbed by how I’d gone about it.

I finally met his eyes again and gave him a hapless shrug. “Once more people started coming in, it became more of a, uh… urban legend type thing. Some people believed, some thought it was an exaggeration of some old incident no one really cared to remember anymore. Others just outright thought it was bullshit – that we’d made it up to make me look more intimidating.”

It was understandable reasoning. I may have been covered in tattoos, with a lean and well-muscled physique, but I wasn’t exactly what one would picture when they thought “Devil incarnate”. I knew I wasn’t difficult to look at. With white-blonde hair, icy blue eyes paired with my dark skin, I had this otherworldly, sharp kind of beauty that most found just as unnerving as they did enticing. Not to mention the pointed ears. I’d explained them away by remarking on the common practice of body-modification. People took one look at my tattoos and brought the idea I’d be into that kind of thing quite easily. Despite that, however, I still only stood at just over five-seven and was actually rather good natured on a normal day. My sense of humour and generosity helped ease some of my bad reputation, until all that was left of it was a covert whisper of caution between neighbours, a warning not to get on my “bad side”.

We both sat in silence for a long moment as he mulled over the rest, looking down at the table with a perplexed expression. I slid to the side, so I was straddling the chair, and leant sideways against the edge of the table as I looked up at the stream of sunlight coming in through the window. Birds were chirping nearby, barely loud enough to be heard over the moans of the dead in the field, but I could still make them out. My breathing began to slow as I focused on the sound, letting my mind and body relax for a long few minutes. Sometime during my explanation, my heartbeat had begun to race. I don’t know if it had been nerves or just the memory of what had happened, but I needed a moment to let it slow down.

Thankfully, Daryl took an exceedingly long time to run through his own thoughts. By the time I think he had finally figured out what he wanted to say, the sound of movement by the cellblock door made him close his mouth and tighten his shoulders.

Merle had returned.

The rest of the day was mostly uneventful.

Which, in hindsight, was probably a good thing. Merle, Daryl, and I spent most of it outside, sitting behind the wooden pallets they’d pushed up against the wire fence of the second-floor walkway, scopes trained on the tree line. Not much was said between us. Merle was still grumpy and Daryl, I guessed, didn’t usually talk much anyway.

They were a stark contrast, those two, yet somehow more alike than I think either of them cared to admit.

My favourite likeness of theirs was the way they scrunched up their noses when they were in deep thought. It made Merle look like that one Muppet that’s always in the theatre box, and Daryl… Well, it just made him look adorable and that’s all I’ll say on that.

Around lunchtime, Carol came outside carrying two tins of peaches. She handed both to Daryl with a soft smile before heading back inside. I watched her go curiously. Something about her was just… interesting to me. Didn’t know what, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling there was more to her wiry frame than met the eye.

Daryl used his bowie knife to open one of the cans and tipped it towards me with a nod.

“Here,” he grunted.

I tentatively put my fingers in and pulled out a soggy piece of peach, popping it into my mouth before returning my gaze to the trees.

Daryl pulled out one with his free hand and tilted his head back, dropping the peach down into his opened mouth.

“Oh, thanks, brother,” Merle remarked. “How kind of you to offer.” He reached out and snatched the can from Daryl’s grasp, tipping the entire thing into his mouth. Well, he tried to. More peach went onto his shirt than down his throat before Daryl had the chance to snatch the can back.

“The hells wrong with you?” he yelled. “That’s all we damn got!”

“What? I was hungry,” Merle responded though a mouthful, using his able hand to pick pieces of fallen peach from his shirt. “You know what I’m like when I’m hungry.”

“Yeah. An asshole.”

“That much different than your everyday self?” I asked, my head still turned toward the field.

“Like you can talk,” Merle spat. “Little Miss McMurder.”

I turned my head slowly to give him a challenging look. “You know, I’ve always meant to ask if you and Martinez had to sit down and brainstorm that one out, or if it came to you naturally, like your unbridled affinity for turning your mouth into an asshole at a moment’s notice, spitting out nothing but shit?” Twisting my body more in his direction, I gave him a mock look of shock. “Oh, my God. Is that your superpower? Are you Asshole Mouth Man?”

“Ah, shut up,” Merle grumbled. “You ain’t funny.”

“Funnier than you,” I snapped back.

“Ain’t hard,” Daryl remarked.

I glanced over at him with a smile to find a grin already pulling at the corners of his lips. When our gazes met, he held mine for barely more than a second before averting his eyes, cheeks growing red.

Merle reached out for the other can of peaches, which Daryl snatched out of his grasp and held it to his chest, protectively.

“You ain’t gettin’ no more after that,” Daryl growled.

“Bullshit I ain’t,” Merle snapped back. “Hand ‘em over, little brother.”

I watched the two of them begin to basically wrestle for the can, a brow cocked in muted amusement. Is this what actual brothers were supposed to be like? I was unsure whether I was jealous or relieved that I was estranged from my brothers, that they were barely more than strangers to me. In fact, I’d only ever met two out of the six brothers I supposedly had. Usually, I tried not to think about them, focusing instead on the man I called brother yet shared no blood with. Sterling. He was the son of my – second – adoptive father and had always treated me like his baby sister, even when neither of us had actually known of his relation to Alister.

The memory of Sterling made my heart begin to ache and the slight smile that had been on my lips as I watched the two brothers wrestling for a can of damn peaches began to fade.

Remnants of distant memories began to cloud my mind as I turned away from the two men and looked back out over the field, seeing without seeing. It had been so long since I’d last seen Sterling. We’d had a stupid argument that had ended with me slamming the door on him. He hadn’t wanted me to take another contract so soon after the last one, worried that I was burying myself in my job instead of actually dealing with my problems. Instead of dealing with the grief of losing my baby sister. And I’d known he was right, which, of course, had made me angry. Cue the yelling match and door slamming.

That was how I’d left things with the man I called brother. God, it hurt to think about. I’d known the second those bombs had dropped on Atlanta that New York had likely suffered a similar fate. I didn’t doubt Sterling and our father had had the sense to get out of the city before it reached that point and I trusted that both men were likely still alive, somewhere out there. If I could survive out here, they certainly could. After all, Sterling’s father, Alister, had been the one that had taught me almost everything I knew.

Somehow, through my rambling thoughts and over the ruckus coming from the two men behind me, I heard the car coming. My head jerked in the direction of the field. It was much too early for Rick and the others to be on their way back. I felt my entire body go into high alert as I peered through the gaps in the pallet, through the holes in the fence, to the edge of the tree line where the road began.

“Guys,” I said, not turning around.

They didn’t hear me.

“Oi! Assholes!” I yelled.

That got their attention. Daryl was lying on his back, one arm extended, fist clenched at the front of Merle’s shirt, the other, still holding the peaches, was thrown over his face. Merle hovered over him, his sharp metal arm behind his back while the other was latched onto the edge of Daryl’s leather vest. Their heads turned in my direction.

I jerked my thumb out towards the road. “We might have a problem.”

The two men pushed one another away, scrambling across the concrete to sit beside me and peer through the slit in the wooden pallet at the road. I did the same.

It was an old blue Camaro, making its way leisurely down the road outside the prison, a white flag tied to the tip of the antenna. Even from this distance, I could just make out the features of the man behind the wheel.

“It’s Sean,” I whispered, turning to glance at Merle.

He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “I don’t like this.”

I felt Daryl’s shoulder brush mine and looked at him, watching his eyes narrow at the approaching vehicle as it began to make its way up the path through the biter infested field. Reaching out, I gently tapped his upper arm. “You two stay here. I’ll go.”

“No,” Daryl argued.

“I know him,” I replied evenly. “And he knows me. I’ll be able to tell if he’s spinning bullshit. Besides, better I get shot than you.”

He opened his mouth to argue again but I was already standing, making my way over to the door. I heard Merle tell him to relax, that I had a handle on it, but I could still sense Daryl’s unease. Whether it was because he didn’t trust me, or because he didn’t like the situation as a whole, I didn’t know. I didn’t stick around to ask.

Carol, Hershel, and Glenn all gave me curious looks as I made my way through the main section of the cellblock. Maggie, who had been standing guard by the wire gate that lead out to the courtyard, glanced at me as I stepped through the cellblock door.

“Know him?” she asked.

I came to a stop beside her and nodded. “Well enough.”

We both stood in silence for a moment, watching the blue Camaro come to a halt by the closed wire gate. Biters began to claw at the car, scratching at the windows while Sean merely gazed apathetically out the front window, eyes locked on the two of us.

“If I get shot,” I whispered to her lightly, leaning sideways so I was close enough to covertly unclip the keys from her belt without her knowing. “Tell Merle I’ve always thought he’d look much better with a mullet.”

Maggie blinked at me, somewhat surprised by my odd remark, and watched me as I began to make my way across the courtyard with a confused look on her face. I heard her shocked intake of breath when she noticed I’d snatched the keys from her belt loop, but she did nothing to stop me.

Sean’s gaze remained locked on me as I approached, too. He and I were friendly enough usually, though I could see the betrayal and contempt behind his eyes the closer I got to the gate.

When I reached the chained edge of the wire gate, I came to a standstill, looking out through the diamond-shaped gaps, through the front window of the Camaro, at Sean. My gaze narrowed as it scanned the inside of the car, as best I could from this angle. I didn’t reach down and grab the chain until I was absolutely certain he was alone.

The gate scraped against the concrete as I pulled it open, barely far enough for him to get the car through. One of the biters got caught by the side mirror and was dragged inside along with him. I slid the gate closed before I dealt with it, using one of the two knives Rick had been comfortable enough to give me.

Once that was dealt with, I leant up against the driver’s side door and bent over, gazing through the tinted window at Sean’s passive expression.

Slowly, without breaking eye contact, he manually wound down the window.

“What is it, mate?” I asked, keeping my tone as light and non-confrontational as I could.

“The Governor sent me,” Sean answered, and I immediately felt my shoulders tense. “I’m not here to make trouble, just pass on a message.”

I surveyed his expression, which was as blank as it always was, and looked into his eyes, trying to gage the seriousness of the situation. Was this the kind of message that involved a bullet to my face? No. He didn’t look nervous enough for that. In fact, he looked kind of bored. As if he had better things to do than play a passive game of Chinese Whispers.

“Go on, then,” I said carefully.

“He wants to meet,” he told me. “Wants a sit down with Rick.”

I snorted. “Does he now?”

Sean nodded once. “He’s set the place and time. All Rick’s gotta do is show up.” He reached down into the centre console and pulled out a torn off piece of a map. There was a message scrawled across the back of it, and I recognised the handwriting instantly. It was from Philip.

“Meet at noon. Bring no more than three men. We’ll discuss our options.”

I shook my head, staring down at the note with furrowed brows for another moment before meeting Sean’s gaze. “We both know this is bullshit, right?”

Sean shrugged. “Is what it is.”

“He’s gonna kill the guy.”

Sean’s green eyes grew slightly more intense, narrowing into slits. “So what?”

“So?” I echoed. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

“He shot up our home,” Sean hissed back with more vigour than I’d seen from him in a long time. “Let a bunch of biters in! We lost seven people.”

I blinked, taking a slight step back in surprise. That was news to me. Something cold settled in the pit of my stomach as I stepped back up to the driver’s side window, looking down at him with more intensity than before. “Who?”

“Lucy and Will,” Sean responded quickly, voice slightly shaken. “Amber. Conner. Juan and Marie.”

I could feel the sharp point of sorrow begin to pierce the inside of my throat. They had been good people. Good, innocent people. I swallowed back against the rising grief, taking a deep breath and forcing my expression to remain neutral. “That’s six,” was all I said.

Sean nodded. His eyes were locked on me so intensely I was almost disturbed. I didn’t understand why until a moment later, when he opened his mouth and told me the seventh name. He’d been waiting for my reaction. He wanted to see how hard it would hit me.

“Jasmine.”

It was like a punch to the gut. The amount of effort it took to remain standing, to stop myself from squeezing the joint where the side-mirror met the body of the car so hard I’d snap it right off, was almost enough to make me pass out. My throat tightened, chest constricting, mouth twitching ever so slightly into a frown. But I kept myself together. Secured that assassin’s mask of neutrality across my face.

“Was it quick?” I asked, the slight tremor in my voice betraying my emotion.

Sean scowled. “Biter tore off most of the flesh on her shoulder. By the time we found her, she already had the fever. Her mom made her ride it out and didn’t get the head ‘till after she Turned.”

Fucking Christ. That poor kid. That poor, innocent, kind-hearted kid. She’d been no older than Carl.

I took a long, deep breath to steady myself. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” Sean spat before jerking his head toward the prison. “It was them. They let them in.”

“Sean…” I started, but he cut me off.

“No, I ain’t here to listen to your excuses. You got your message. Tell Rick if he wants to sort this shit out, we’ll be waitin’. Now open that damn gate.”

I looked down at him as he straightened in his seat, staring steadily out the front window. A muscle in his jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth. Trying to apologise would only be pushing my luck at that point, and I knew it. So, I took a deep breath and nodded.

“Alright,” I said, turning toward the gate.

Once he was gone, I remained standing by the fence, watching his car disappearing into the distance for a few minutes. Maggie approached me slowly and reached up to put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “You alright?”

I ignored the question, lifting the keys in one hand and offering them back to her. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

She just let out a soft breath through her nose before taking them back, clipping them securely onto her belt loop. Without another word, she turned back toward her post.

I remained standing there for another moment, trying to piece my thoughts together, to sort through the roller-coaster of emotions warring inside me. Swallowing back against the sharp sensation in my throat, I turned around and began to make my way back to the cellblock.

#twd #the walking dead #twd fanfic #twd fan fic #twd fanfiction #the walking dead fanfic #the walking dead fan fic #the walking dead fanfiction #daryl dixon #merle dixon #carol peletier #synnove le jacques #maggie greene #maggie rhee #the monsters among us #fanfic #fanfiction #tw: rape

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makeste · 5 years

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BnHA Chapter 211: Jane, Stop This Crazy Thing

Previously on BnHA: The fifth and final joint training battle began with Team DekuRakaMinaTa VS Team MonoShinYanaYuiShou. (There’s probably a better way to combine those last five names. Maybe it’s time to retire this joke.) Anyways, All Might answered a phone call from Gran Torino and went to go chat with him about OFA, probably thinking to himself that surely he wouldn’t miss much in just the next five minutes or so! So while he was doing that, Shouda, Yanagi, and Kodai attacked Ochako, Mina, and Mineta with a bunch of huge flying objects. And Monoma confronted Deku and started taunting him, first trying to goad him into revealing his friends’ location, and then trying to bait him by snidely accusing his boyfriend of being the one who caused the demise of the Symbol of Peace. Fucking ouch. He almost baited me with that one tbh. Anyway, that really pissed Deku off, but because he’s a smart kid he still didn’t respond and instead went to blast Monoma with his air gun attack. Except that all of a sudden some weird fucking shit started happening and Deku’s right hand basically exploded with black lightning. Ah, well, you know. Just One for All things.

Today on BnHA: Flashback!Monoma (from like five minutes ago) bonds with Shinsou over having quirks that don’t necessarily make one think “hero!” at first glance. He asks Shinsou how he goaded Deku into opening his mouth back at the sports festival, and Shinsou says he insulted his classmates. Monoma is all “!” and we then cut back to the present, where Deku is all “NNNNNGHHHH” and scary black tendrils are lancing out from his arm every which way trying to either capture Monoma or flat out kill him (who can say). At first everyone is all “Midoriya fucking powered himself up again?” not realizing that for once it was unintentional and he has no control over it. Once Deku starts screaming at everyone to run away -- and the “new technique” starts ripping apart the entire fucking stage -- it kinda starts to sink in, though. All Might tells Aizawa they need to end the match, and meanwhile Ochako floats herself up and latches on to Deku and then calls out to Shinsou for help. Probably because she’s learned her lesson about waiting on the teachers to ever do anything, sob.

(As always, all comments not marked with an ETA are my mostly-unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’m caught up with the manga now at chapter 224, so any ETAs will reflect that.)

LOOOOOOOOL

so we’re opening chapter 211 in exactly the way that everyone was expecting! with a fucking Monoma flashback lmao

whoever was telling him that, they’re really fucking stupid by the way. Monoma legit has one of the best quirks in the game. all it means is he would work best on a team, that’s all

so he’s bonding with Shinsou (this is a flashback, obviously, so that first panel was a flashback-within-a-flashback) over them both having quirks that people looked down on

look at that, Shinsou. even fucking Monoma adopted you

oh my god hold up. do I ship it?? ...lol I’m not sure

lol well Shinsou is saying “that doesn’t make me happy” in response to Monoma declaring they were the same type. so now I know they can banter, and so the answer is yes, I do in fact ship it. this is not a thing I was expecting to happen in this arc. Shinsou I’ve gone from you being in the background every so often popping up to remind us you exist, to me having adopted you and shipping you with at least two people, one of whom is the kid who in the previous chapter was like “hey you know that thing that Bakugou secretly harbors horrible guilt over? let me just go and get in his boyfriend’s face and be all ‘yeah it totally was his fault.’” man. life sure is funny

and apparently this little weasel did it on Shinsou’s advice!

LMAO Monoma this is the role you were born to play. all you have to do to succeed is insult class 1-A omg. can you do it? it’s gonna be so fucking hard for you, so out of character. you’ll have to dig down deep

anyway so I’m not sure if this is Monoma or Shinsou monologuing here (though I’m leaning toward Monoma because he’s responsible for 8 out of 10 monologues in general when he’s around) (ETA: yeah it’s Monoma), but either way it’s an interesting speech

ahh, and now we’re back in the present!

ahhhhhhhhh

goddamn it Horikoshi. I have no idea whose thoughts these are. whatever, I’ll have to figure it out and come back to reanalyze it later

(ETA: so hey, now that we’ve caught up to this point, I finally have access to the Viz translations again! their translation makes a lot more sense, and makes it clear this is just a continuation of Monoma’s speech. here:

I appreciate the deeper look into Monoma’s psyche, but I don’t know if I buy into this argument that his quirk forces him to act unheroically. Shinsou’s quirk is a different story perhaps, but there’s nothing about the copy quirk that necessitates unscrupulous conduct in order to win the day. it just so happens that he is very good at goading others, and it only makes sense to use that to his advantage when he can. like, it’s a respectable strategy, if one that doesn’t necessarily win you a lot of friends.

I for one don’t feel like he needs to justify himself; it’s a battle, and you gotta do what you gotta do to try and give yourself the edge, especially when you’re up against the fucking main character. but anyway, maybe he feels a little guilty deep down and has to rationalize it like this. or maybe he’s just trying to bond with Shinsou and be all “yeah I get you man, you don’t have a choice, it’s rough.” or maybe a little of column A and a little of column B, who knows. anyways.)

in the meantime, check out Monoma and Shinsou’s confused and slightly apprehensive expressions! “did Midoriya’s arm just fucking explode”

apologies to everyone reading this liveblog for getting myself spoiled btw. I probably robbed you guys of a delightful time of watching me freak the fuck out and thinking Deku had lost control of OFA again and was gonna blow his arm off or some fucking shit. but instead I’m just fucking excited because this little shrubbery of a boy is about to level the fuck up and he doesn’t even know it yet

you can see why alternate universe me would have been so concerned. it looks like he’s having a heart attack and being sucked into the void. it looks like Miroku’s kazaana from Inuyasha. oh my god

Monoma my respect for you just increased tenfold. look at you keeping your cool while not having the slightest fucking clue what’s going on

(ETA: actually this reminds me a lot of Katsuki facing the League of Villains and running his mouth at them and appearing confident but all the while having that one bead of sweat visible the entire time. Monoma has a lot more in common with him than he may think.

...in fact, I would totally read an AU where Monoma does more successfully in the cavalry battle and makes it into the tournament and consequently ends up drawing the League’s attention instead of Katsuki -- because he does do a very decent villain impression, this one -- and as a result he’s the one who gets taken. featuring a bonus rescue attempt led by Tetsutetsu and Kendou, and a Kamino arc that strangely enough ends up playing out very similarly to the one we actually got, in the end. anyways. it’s an interesting What If to think about.)

oh hey I just noticed the chapter title is “successor” and FUCK YEAHHHH are we gonna get the spoiler in this chapter? cuz then I can go back to not being spoiled again, so that’ll be nice

oh SHIT

“RUN” IS GOOD ADVICE MONOMA, I’D FUCKING LISTEN TO HIM?!

NOW IT REALLY LOOKS LIKE THE KAZAANA. except blasting black lightning shit out instead of sucking shit in

wow this is fucking amazing. I love the potential for future battles, given how powerful it seems to be and yet how he appears to have no fucking clue how to control it and so it consequently becomes a double-edged sword putting himself and his comrades at risk. it’s a lot like Eri’s power in that sense

also Deku is making some amazing faces in this chapter and I feel like we should be appreciative

Monoma is not doing a half-bad job of dodging this maniac who is trying to fucking kill him

jesus christ. maybe next time we don’t insult his boyfriend, Monoma

now he’s turning to call Shinsou and he looks pretty rattled tbh

but you know who doesn’t look rattled, like at all?

I burst out laughing in real life oh my god. they’re just like “...must be Tuesday”

I mean, this kid went from breaking all his bones to suddenly having super agility to being super strong without breaking his bones to using fucking wind attacks. they probably have no idea what his quirk is at this point and so they’re just assuming this is just another natural evolution

and the thing is, they’re not wrong

oh shit now Deku’s fucking flying toward Shinsou

have him brainwash you and command you to turn it off then!

also, I wasn’t sure with the previous chapter but now I am sure that they definitely do have sound (by “they” I mean the teachers and other students watching, that is), because they were able to follow all that stuff with Shinsou’s voice changer in the first match. so they can hear Deku saying that he doesn’t have control. so what I’m saying here is the teachers should definitely be calling this match off immediately

but will they? well, it’s U.A. so I think we all know the answer to that. it ain’t over till somebody croaks

jesus now we’re cutting to the scene from a distance and this shit is even crazier than I thought

TEACHERS ARE YOU GOING TO DO ANYTHING? NO? OKAY

TEACHERS, DEKU HAS LOST CONTROL OF HIS QUIRK AND IS SMASHING THE TRAINING STAGE APART AND TRYING TO KILL FRIEND AND FOE ALIKE. ARE YOU GOING TO PUT A STOP TO THIS FIGHT? NO? OKAY

ALL MIGHT, YOUR BELOVED PROTEGE AND ADOPTED SON IS FLYING AROUND UNCONTROLLABLY AND DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO STOP. ARE YOU GOING TO -- you know what. just, never mind

oh shit

ffff Aizawa looking at him like “what’s this now? ‘stop’?”

(ETA: Aizawa. Aizawa listen to me. I need you to look me in the eye and tell me honestly -- if All Might hadn’t said anything, would you have just fucking stood there until everyone fucking died? would you have done anything?? how much more of your problem child hupping all around the stage with this bucking bronco of a quirk screaming “STOP!! STOP!!” would you have calmly observed before it occurred to you to fucking do your job. tell me. be honest. listen, I love and respect you, dude, but sometimes you make me a little concerned.)

god I am loving this so much. this is not at all how I expected this last match to go

ahhhhhh noooooo

he’s scared! he says it hurts! oh shit I’m sorry Deku I didn’t know it was hurting you ah fuck

though that makes sense, because it’s blasting out of your right fucking arm, though, because it’s always that fucking arm, isn’t it. and whatever this new quirk is, it’s at 100% just like OFA was when you first activated it. and we all know that pretty much all quirks can do a lot of damage to the user if used at full capacity for too long

there’s another panel of Ochako staring in horror. there’s been a lot of those. is it just to show her concern, or is she planning something to help him (I have no idea what she could do though), or is she taking mental notes here and this means she’ll be hounding him with questions about his quirk after this and will eventually learn about OFA too?

(ETA: thankfully no one other than Shouto thinks to ask, and Shouto accepts the weakest of excuses without hesitation because this is the densest and most trusting group of kids to ever walk the earth. Deku your secret is safe for life. all he has to do is just shrug his shoulders every damn time. “fucking quirks, though. wild.”)

ahhh now we’re really getting into Deku’s POV and he’s freaking out bad flkajlkj

no baby no don’t cry it’ll be all right

fuck. he’s scared and he’s frustrated because everything was finally starting to go so well and he was finally getting the hang of things and on his way to being a reliable hero, and now this stupid fucking quirk is out of control again and it’s like nothing he ever experienced before, and it hurts and he has no idea what to do and he might hurt other people and fucking shit, someone help him!!

AHHHH

ONE FOR ALL YOU BETTER LISTEN TO HIM!!

is he crying blood??!

(ETA: sure looks like it. jesus Deku you’re dramatic as fuck.)

okay WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING

OH MY GOD

OCHAKO

girl when I said I had no idea what you could do to help him, that’s because I didn’t think you’d be crazy enough to fucking float yourself right at him when he’s losing it like this

goddamn that’s a ballsy fucking move though, shit

oh shit!

brainwash him and get control of him and then she can float him down to safety! yes!! do it!!

MY GIRL OCHAKO SAVING THE DAY AND MY BOY SHINSOU BEING BRAVE IN THE CLUTCH AND SAVING DEKU AS WELL AND HOPEFULLY GETTING INTO CLASS A FOR HIS EFFORTS. OH SHIT. THIS IS AMAZING. DOES THIS ARC HAVE HATERS?? I CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHY IT WOULD OH SHIT I FUCKING LOVE ALL OF THIS

Shinsou looks like a deer in fucking headlights by the way. like someone just caught him doing something super embarrassing. haha I love it

oh my god I’m gonna go read the next one

#bnha #boku no hero academia #monoma neito #shinsou hitoshi #midoriya izuku #uraraka ochako #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #so let's talk about that monoma-is-kidnapped au #tetsu obviously fills in for the role of kirishima #and kendou can take momo's place #or hell momo can still be there given that she's the only one who would have been able to make the tracker #and awase can come too because yeah #and let's just assume class a are the ones knocked out by the gas and class b is mostly okay in this timeline #so let's see now #honenuki joins the rescue squad because he's a ride or die #and manga too because he's a powerhouse and they need him #and maybe pony but at this point the squad is getting crowded now lol #anyway so they all track monoma down and then instead of deku's famous 'fly overhead and kacchan grabs on' plan #something something honenuki traps the villains in quicksand #and manga makes another wall similar to what he did in this arc #separating monoma from the villains #and pony flies him out of there to safety #so I guess there's really no need for awase #or tetsu for that matter #(but he's the heart of the team though)#(and kendou is the one who came up with the plan)#idk #lots of ways this could play out

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chippokenabokura · 5 years

Photo

World Trigger - Volume 19 Extras Part 4/4

From Hiatus to Return

Thank you very much for buying World Trigger volume 19. World Trigger entered a long-term hiatus between the 2016 50th Issue of Weekly Shounen Jump and the 2018 47th Issue (according to Wikipedia), and during that time I received a lot of encouragement and letters worrying over me from the fans, so I thought I would explain the course of events from hiatus to return to transfer here.

The reason for the hiatus is because I damaged my neck, but in the first place I believe it was due to how I recklessly took on too much work (besides the weekly manuscript) without considering my capacity, and then not being able to properly cut corners (conserve energy) on those subsidiary jobs.

After I damaged my neck, for a time I was given a week’s rest every 4 to 5 issues to deal with it, but the symptoms gradually grew worse. A high quality pain penetrated through the painkillers and spread from my neck to my back and head, there were more times when I couldn’t get up, manuscripts were delayed, and the result was that I entered a dark downward spiral where I had to push myself even further, drinking energy drinks every 2 hours to force my body to move in the style of a doping enemy from a sports manga to do my work. Perhaps because of that, I was becoming more and more worn down mentally, my eyes were spinning and in the end I was having trouble speaking.

Sensing my evil aura, my editor put a stop to it, and it was decided I would go on an indefinite hiatus.

According to my manager, it seems I have a habit of acting cool in front of my editor, and there were several times when I would say ‘I. Can. Do. It. Somehow. Probably.’ Even though I was kind of on the verge of death. So if my editor hadn’t stopped me here then there was the chance it could have gotten even worse. Nice work, editor.

For about a month after starting the hiatus, I pretty much lived on my back. From the 2nd month, I was able to get up for about 4, 5 hours a day, and from the 3rd month I could move around for about half a day.

Because I became unable to ride inside anything after damaging my neck (I would get dizzy after about 15 minutes from the pain in my neck), it was about 6 months into the hiatus that I could be properly looked at in a hospital.

I went to several different hospitals, but all the doctors said the same things: ‘if you continue the treatment and keep resting, you will keep getting better’, ‘for now, it’s important not to push yourself in the future. If yo push yourself you will of course get worse’, ‘it’s an occupational disease, the kind that follows you for life, so if you can I recommend you transfer to a job that’s easier on your neck’. Telling my editor left us feeling pretty down: ‘I can’t really imagine weekly serialisation that won’t make you push yourself…’ ‘Yeah…’.

I couldn’t keep making trouble for Jump, and it would soon be 1 year into the hiatus, it may be impossible to restart serialisation…

As I thought that, one day, I heard from my editor: ‘Ashihara-san, how do you feel about transferring?’

According to him, the problem with weekly serialisation is its killer schedule that doesn’t allow for ‘resting for a day because you’re really not feeling well’. If it’s the web-based ‘Jump+’, each work can be given its own deadline, so you can serialise at whatever pace you’d like. Besides that, transferring to a monthly magazine would also allow a certain amount of adjustment on the number of pages to be drawn that month. Since the worst case scenario would be ‘pushing myself too hard I had to stop writing World Trigger’, so it might be better to match how I’m feeling and draw at a pace of ‘I can manage this’. Well, it wasn’t something to be decided immediately, so if I could just consider this an option…

The more I heard, the better it sounded, and it was something I was very grateful for. But it worried me, considering my social standing as a trash author who had been on hiatus for close to a year.

I was quite attached to Jump, and ‘doing my best at the best magazine in Japan’ was also my motivation, so I was conflicted on what it would be like if I left Jump. But there was the fundamental problem of how many more years it would take me to recover enough to serialise weekly, and whether I could even recover to that extent in the first place, and furthermore I wanted to allow all the readers who still haven’t forgotten World Trigger even after over a year to read the continuation as soon as possible, so in the end I asked my editor to request a transfer.

‘If you request it, I will do my best to allow you to transfer to where you want’, I was told, so I discussed where to transfer with my manager.

Personally, I was still hung up on the paper medium, and due to the reasons of even I knowing about the works serialised in it and that it’s easy to buy it from places like convenience stores, I requested ‘Jump SQ’. Both Jump and SQ editorial departments went to great efforts, and a lot happened after as well, until the transfer was decided. I was able to safely restart serialisation.

I would like to once again thank the editorial department of Weekly Shounen Jump, the editorial department of Jump SQ, my editors from both departments, and all the readers who encouraged me even during the hiatus. Thank you very much.

Since the chapter I restart serialisation on (chapter 165) is the first in about 2 years, for an instant I considered whether to start it in a special way, but I felt it would seem unnatural when it’s made into a manga volume, so I deliberately went ahead as normal.

From now on, the pace would slow down from when it was a weekly serialisation, but I think I will be able to put out a manga volume at regular intervals. My neck currently have recovered to the point that I can live normally, but I have been told by the SQ editorial department that I am ‘strictly prohibited from pushing myself’, so if the published pages decrease, I would be grateful if you can consider it as ‘playing it safe this month’.

Also, since I want to repay Jump SQ for picking up ‘World Trigger’, if you have the time and a bit more than 600 yen a month, I would be very happy if you can subscribe to Jump SQ. If you are already subscribed, I look forward to your readership.

I will do my best.

~Ashihara Daisuke

As the last part of the extras from volume 19, I also want to take this chance to mention some of the edits made from the magazine version. There were no plot-relevant changes this time, mostly some minor differences in clothing patterns etc. (and now that we know the clothes in the magazine isn’t always decided by Ashihara and he would change it if he thinks it’s necessary, I wonder if he has headcanons for everyone’s fashion choices as well).

But one funny change I want to point out is this from ch162:

Reiji wasn’t wearing a seatbelt in the magazine, and I guess Ashihara didn’t want him to break the law lol

The other kind of major change (in my perspective at least) are these radar panels from ch165 and ch167:

Both of these radars now show LOW, matching Yuzuru’s HIGH in ch171. Showing us that radar is capable of showing whether someone is above or below you, though that’s still not very helpful in an urban environment as the top panel shows.

An earlier Q&A has said that elevation can’t be displayed on radar, so either this is the first time we’ve had a retcon, radar got beefed up without it being noted in story (yet), an operator added that through process of elimination, there’s some other reason, or Ashihara just forgot. Since this is World Trigger, any of these are possible.

As always, credit goes to this wonderful site that records all changes from magazine to manga volume. Please check here if you want to know about all the minor changes as well.

In conclusion, for all of you who wanted to know about the specific details of Ashihara’s illness, here it is.

#world trigger #volume 19 extras

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the-rovarians · 5 years

Text

Some Information on Rovarians

- Basic Appearance/Anatomy - *They look like the Spirit/Opportunity rovers, except for the following differences.

Average height-around six feet tall

Average weight-around 500 to 600 pounds

Two robotic humanoid arms with five-fingered hands

Midsection below the shoulders is thicker and slightly darker in color

Females have lighter-colored solar panels than males

Two pairs of eyes

One set of eyes (the bigger ones) sees like we do. The “regular” eyes. The smaller ones see in infrared

The four camera eyes are what create facial expression, with shutters and apertures.

Their voices are synthesized, but still sound completely human, making it harder for others to write them off as just robots. They're beyond that, they're people

The solar panels can fold and unfold at their owner's will, allowing parents to carry the youngest ones on their backs

- “Reproduction” (Growing the Species) -

The actual Rovarian is a combination of the parents’ programming and code, which is what contains the personality, the “soul” (do not try it with Earth computers, it won’t work. They have special alien computers that do literally nothing else but this.)

Rovarian "sex" is just two people putting code into a computer.

The new code is generated by randomly selecting parts from each parent's code. These are NOT "designer babies".

Although traits are randomly selected, this doesn't mean the child could end up with an extra arm or missing eyes or anything.

The new child's code is then sent to special replicators that produce the frame, program it with the child's new code and activated.

The child “grows” as their code and programming evolves and matures.

They start out as little Sojourner models, as their programming isn’t yet complex enough to handle a big adult body.

They stay that way from “birth” to early toddler age (about 1 or 2 years for humans) then transition to a miniature version of the adult body.

The old frame is then reused for another child, or is recycled for its resources (yeah, these guys are way smarter with their resources than a lot of today’s humans)

They continue through gradually larger versions of this frame until they’re in the adult one, which on average is somewhere around 6 feet tall (of course there are 5 and 7 foot area outliers.)

When a Rovarian dies, their frame is either recycled (for another Rovarian or for resources) or buried, depending on the wishes of the family and/or the deceased person's last requests.

This is the way historical figures are remembered. They are interned either beneath or inside their respective monuments.

- General Society Roles -

Once they reach adulthood, they’ve been schooled and educated in all the stuff that everyone needs to know.

About a Martian year (1.88 Earth years) after the transition to the adult frame, they either take on a profession as a civilian, enter the government in some way, or join the Rovarian equivalent of Starfleet (some choose to join Starfleet itself) where they eventually get posted to a ship and captain, such as Captain Kiali of the Rovarian flagship Artax.

They generally choose their names from stars (Admiral Sirius), constellations (soldiers Centaurus and Crux), or other astronomical bodies (Ensign Messier, ambassador Lady Carina).

Metal bands worn on the upper arm indicate rank, department, and specialty. Some may also have an insignia for a specific ship on their rank band.

One does not need to be in government, military, or fleet to have department and specialty bands. For example, general practice doctors will have Medical department bands, surgeons will have Medical department bands and Surgery specialty bands

- Historical Events and Achievements -

The last of a dying race found the twins (Spirit and Opportunity), and, knowing they were going to die, decided to save the rovers, giving them their own life force, as well as their own technological knowledge of how to use resources they had stored on Mars. Very little is known about this race, except Spirit and Opportunity’s hazy memories of them. Rovarian historians suspect they purposefully erased all records of themselves, though why is unclear.

The Rovarians claimed Mars as their homeworld and an evolved Spirit and Opportunity as their co-leaders.

Before official First Contact, a human military-esque group of xenophobic extremists planning to wipe them out before they could “invade and enslave us” (which never crossed their minds) ambushed a landing party with the twins (Spirit and Opportunity), who came back to visit the place and people who made them.

The twins were the only survivors, and the group stole their ship, using it to lure others to Earth, where cells of the group waited.

The Rovarian crews were overwhelmed and slaughtered, and the ships used to wage a short but bloody war on the Rovarians, with battles fought on both planets (Earth and Mars), and in space.

At one point, NASA’s Reconnaissance Orbiter took pictures of a Martian plain littered with fallen Rovarian warriors, as well as their living friends and family searching for their bodies.

Some humans did side with them, and the conflict, while essentially ending in a draw, led to Earth working with them instead of against, as it was made clear they have no desire or reason to invade us.

Opportunity was severely, almost fatally wounded in one of the war’s battles, but the JPL rover teams turned the lab into a makeshift OR and were able to save him (after figuring out how to airlift/transport him safely and without further injuring him)

JPL was on the Rovarians’ side from the start of the war, since they already kinda felt like the rovers were more than machines,

They're the ones who got the rest of NASA to take the Rovarians' side, which helped turn the tide of the war, since the extremists then had a harder time communicating with their space and Mars forces,

NASA was in charge of almost everything space, and almost nothing got to or through space without them knowing it.

Add to that NASA also gained access to Rovarian tech, which enabled them to make it even MORE difficult for the extremists to function by cutting off communication completely.

As a result, the stolen ships had no warning and no time to prepare before a Rovarian fleet showed up to apprehend them.

An important feat of theirs: Massive magnetic field generators at the poles, so they could give Mars an M-class atmosphere. This makes trade and diplomatic matters much easier, since most species require such an atmosphere.

Having advanced alien tech, they were able to pick up on pretty much everything we were doing. And I mean EVERYTHING. That’s why the Rigel filter (named for its inventor) was created. It blocked out all the offensive (to a Rovarian) communications humans send. (it’s basically a spam filter (that actually works) on steroids

- Social Customs, Beliefs, and Daily Life -

Water and food are replicated as needed for visitors.

Farming is kind of a waste, as the whole species feeds off of solar energy (which, thanks to advances in Rovarian medicine and science, can be stored in much larger amounts in the same size battery)

There are artificial solar energy generators for emergencies.

The Rovarians actually find the human obsession with sex/sexuality/female bodies to be super weird and a little disturbing/off-putting

It's actually HUGELY insulting to make sexual comments to them.

Relationships are based on feelings for the other person.

They actually think the sex obsession is what holds humans back from advancing more quickly.

They avoided money. They do more of a large scale barter system, and everybody contributes to the society in various ways.

They have stores of other species' currency, but it's only used for trade with said species.

This way, nobody ends up in poverty and there's no 1 percent elite.

Even healthcare is given based on how urgent your need is. (the field of regular psychology is still needed. These are people, not just programs, and people always need regular psychology)

The system works smoothly, and crime is mainly just thievery and vandalism (because every species is going to have born criminals.)

Stuff like murder, which is very rare, is obviously still a crime, as is most of the major stuff ( dealing in illegal contraband, scams, espionage, etc.)

Things like racing shuttlecraft around planets are common activities anyone could do.

- Rovarian Stardate System -

The first two digits of the stardate indicate the century

The second two indicate the exact year (Earth year*)

The third two are the Earth month

The decimal point number is the exact day.

For example, this stardate, 215004.05, translates to April 5, 2050, in the 21st century.

They use Earth time because Mars time is only practical for those actually on Mars. For those on ships, it doesn’t make much sense. (this is just a cryptic way of saying that I am too hopeless at math to convert everything to Mars time. There’s lots of decimals involved in that.)

- Arts -

Music

No wind instruments

Non-electronic music consists of strings, percussion, and vocals (singing)

They do also play electronic music (think Daft Punk, Basshunter, or any other techno artist)

The overall style can range from sounding like Celtic or New Age to sounding like techno or dance music, or anything in between. It depends on who’s playing.

Architecture

Very futuristic, but with sharp, boxy design and edges

Lots of metals and glass for materials, very clean and shiny

No stairs, it’s all ramps or lifts (elevators)

Some buildings, usually those with huge crowds moving through, such as the spaceport, have moving sidewalks and moving ramps (Rovarian version of an escalator.

Cities have very tall buildings, thanks to the planet’s lower gravity making it easier to lift materials up to those heights.

Many buildings (especially the tallest ones) are designed to light up at night, some having patterns of color change or light movement

A plaque inside the main entrance of the building credits the architect, as well as everyone who helped construct it

Sculpture

As with architecture, metals are the primary material used

Depending on the artist, the piece can be something ethereal-looking, something futuristic, or something inspired by Earth art styles

There are many installment pieces, especially in cities. These can be inside buildings or out in parks and other public areas.

A plaque or sign placed with the piece credits the artist and anyone who helped construct it.

For smaller sculptures, a signature from the artist can be found directly on the piece itself

Visual Art

There are Rovarians who draw and paint, both traditionally and digitally

Many digital artists like to animate their work

They may also include an animated version of their signature

Traditional painters, along with ordinary paints, will also use metallic and/or glowing paints in their work

Like traditional Earth artists, they sign their paintings. The same is true for Rovarian drawing artists.

Some Rovarians practice textile arts such as weaving fabric, as this is a commodity that can be good for trading with other species

Other media for Rovarian visual artists include, but are not limited to: holograms, fiber-optics, LEDs, found items (for “upcycling”)

Theatre/Dance

Yes, these do exist for Rovarians

The first ever live production was a retelling of the twins’ story through dance, with singers and musicians providing the music

Costumes are typically very elaborate and eyecatching, unless the production calls for more subtlety.

Dance style is usually smooth, flowing, and graceful, though it can also be sharp, snappy, and energetic.

Literature

Very similar to Earth literature, except that the genre of erotica does not exist

Some writers will collaborate with an artist to create a graphic novel or a holo-novel

FINALLY got the information on these guys up.

Photos courtesy of @nasa , myself (the craptastic drawing), and an artist whose name I couldn’t find, but I know it’s someone awesome because of that Opportunity painting

#sci-fi #aliens #original species #rovarian #nasaAU #mars rover

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