After the dust cleared, it was dead silent. The air was thick with moisture from the dark clouds looming above them all. Someone, probably Raphael, yelled out something Two didn't quite process, his ears still ringing as his vision slowly cleared.
A faint blue glow flickered in the near distance, not too far from where Two was slumped on the ground. More muffled shouts rang out as Two attempted to collect himself, staggering to his feet and trudging over to the source of-
No.
Just the image alone was enough to bring Two collapsing back to his knees. Stupid, he thought.
"H-hey..." One's weak voice just barely got through to Two, snapping him right out of his thoughts.
He stared down at the dimming blue glow, watching it flicker and fade in and out. How the hell are you still here, breathing?
His thoughts became flooded in his head, even more so as he felt his arms cradle his brother's near-lifeless body.
"Did we win?"
Two felt his jaw clench at One's question, feeling frighteningly close to grinding his teeth until they were flat.
Did we win?
The question echoed in Two’s head, as if that would better help him process this moment. In any other instance, he would have deflected and scoffed at such an empty, meaningless question. Did it matter? he thought as he titled his head up, looking around briefly at the wasteland that surrounded them. It was over, that much was apparent.
"Yes,” he huffed, looking down at his brother in his arms as he continued, “Now, shut it and save your strength. Your heart-"
"I know," One croaked out in between a few sputtering breaths, interrupting Two in more ways than one. Two tried to ignore the cast-off of blood coming from his brother's mouth, despising the sickening feeling settling in his stomach as it hit his chin. One smiled weakly up at his brother, his eyes dull and unfocused.
How dare you, Two thought to himself.
His eyes flickered from One's exposed heart, bleeding out and hardly beating, and back to his brother’s face. His brother looked beaten, bloody...broken. It wasn't a look he saw from him often, if at all. It was that damn smile that he watched waver as One's heart beat softer and softer. What cruel irony, Two couldn't help but think, a metaphorical expression brought to life by his stupid, thoughtless, idiotic brother.
Two could still fix this. Even as he held his brother tighter against his own plastron and felt his shirt get soaked by the horrid mix of blood and empyrean; he thought to himself how he'd be the one to fix this.
There was no other choice left.
“Good…” One let out the softest of chuckles, “…we…we can s-start over.”
Something in Two’s own chest faltered, even just briefly. It was enough to shut out the feeling of One’s pathetic coughs and wheezes against him. He watched how One's eyes dulled further, his gaze wandering away from Two's face.
Starting over? That wasn’t ever an option, not one that Two had ever weighed in his mind. He wasn’t sure if that was even an option now. After everything he had done, everything he sacrificed, worked for…his brother still wanted to burn it, bury everything down and out of Two’s reach. One wanted this win, he wanted the impossible.
“Impossible…” Two muttered under his breath.
He heard yet another faint chuckle. And then the dense silence that followed.
I haven’t been on Tumblr as much recently, but I am absolutely OBSESSED with @buggachat ‘s Bakery Enemies AU. I absolutely love it, even though each new update causes me pain on Adrien’s behalf. This poor boy needs a hug 💜
all i want is for them to spiderman kiss, but with gwen upside down 🌻 image ID below, detailed ID in alt :)
Begin Image ID, done by artist. A digital drawing of Miles and Gwen from Across The Spiderverse. They are both drawn from the waist up and in side profile, wearing their spider suits, but without the masks. Miles is on the left, standing with his hands in his pockets. He has warm brown skin, and a dark brown afro with flat sides. His suit is black, with a red spider on the front in graffiti style. He is making eye contact with Gwen, who is hanging from the top of the drawing on the right side. Gwen has light skin and blonde hair, which is tied in a small ponytail that hangs down; she also has an undercut. Her suit is black and white, with a white hood that hangs down and hugs the back of her head. Her arms are pulled forward in front of her, as if holding onto web to hang from. The sleeves of her suit and inside of her hood are bright pink, with blue web designs. Gwen looks at Miles with a flirtatious smirk and raised eyebrow, and Miles smiles back at her softly in return. They are both blushing slightly. The background is bright yellow and blue, with different-styled sunflowers drawn behind each of them. End ID.
bro i swear ara might be one of my Favorite characters she makes me so sad but i also like girly get a grip 😭 i love the way u write everbody especially sokka because hes so different but still has his yk quirks and tbh when ppl write him romantically they kinda leave it out
heres ara cuz i am this 🤏🏻 Close to just giving her a playlist since shes so ..woman. yk what i mean??
anyway i kinda Imagine her cut to be simliar to zuko and very uneven cuz bro Zhao will not acutally give a fuck to at least make it nice
this is just a fall from grace even tho its Basically the best thing right now since shes away from all that crazy shit
OMG ITS THE GIRL! The one & only Ara!!! I love how you did a before and after, girl thought she had her shit handled! Only to have her shit handed to her. She has serious sad girl energy but you’re so right she needs to handle it haha.
Thank you so much for this I am squealing with joy you’re amazing!!!
So as a detco fan for uhhh about four years now, I had this thought about how... ordinary Shinichi is in detco universe where Japan had a bunch of genius teens and adults. Beika alone have Shinichi and Yuusaku, Sera and Mary, Amuro, Akai, Jodie, then we have those in other part of Japan like Heiji and Heizo, Kaito, Hakuba, and other competent officers outside of TMPD. Hundreds of new chapters in detco, everytime new characters were introduced, most of them were more intelligent than the average people. I've come to wonder why Shinichi was such a Big Deal. Why he's the Great Detective and saviour of the police? Lots of other people could have achieve that title, so does Shinichi only got there first because he's a detective nerd? The one who cannot get enough of deducing things? The one who have connection to police and thus can squeeze their way into most investigations?
Then I had this new thing in my life that is quite familiar to detective work (seriously they have all these cases and interrogation stuff going on) . At first I was excited to dive into it because it really is a similar setting to detco minus the crimes and murder, but then.... I got tired of it. I got bored, and most of the time came up blank even with all the clues in front of me because I'm so tired of it. There's also the fact that there is sooo many cases coming in and every one of them is different and certainly does not follow the textbook rules. There's also the knowledge that if we got to the wrong conclusion we will literally ruin someone's life and... Isn't that the most depressing thought? Everyone's pressuring you and you cannot fault them because it is a big responsibility.
So I guess now I understand why detco can have hundreds of geniuses but only one Heisei Holmes. Only one Kudou Shinichi. Because he's the one who put his heart into it. The one who have passion for the one truth. The one that got his ass kicked by that very same passion yet still pick himself up and continue to pursue his goal to put all criminals behind bars. The one that knows full well of the weight of his words and thus put so much care into it. The one that truly cares about every single person around him instead of seeing them as mere pieces in a puzzle (at least for this one, he learn it throughout the journey).
Most of the brilliant characters in DC can be a good and competent detective. Some of them already are. Most of them have kind hearts and don't want random people to be wrongfully accused. But intelligence and kindness alone are not enough to be a great detective because it's not just about piecing together puzzle or solving a code. You still have to interrogate people that don't want to be interrogated, talk to people with emotions ranging from devastated to murderous, with a certain time limit or else the evidences will disappear either naturally or planned. Isn't it stressful? Top it with the whole being-in-the-same-room-with-a-murderer... It's certainly hard to find anyone that will happily put themselves in those situations because if I were to be the smartest person in the world I sure would find better things to do.
Alright I’ve thought about it a bit, let’s rant about just how horrifying the curse Simon was afflicted with would be! Consider this like a part one of sorts for Simon’s Quest analysis stuff cause I could talk about this one game for hours on end—
I’m gonna put a cut here because warning ⚠️ descriptions of decay, gorey stuff, disease, and some pretty bad mental effects. Stay safe guys, don’t read further if you can’t handle those topics!
I’ve seen multiple different descriptions of it from different media and manuals, but, just from this little line alone, this is already a pretty awful fate for the guy. High emphasis on the word decay. That in itself can imply a lot of different things, sometimes all at once. And keep in mind too, he’s had this over the course of 7 years. Simon is probably already an absolute wreck from this wayyyyy before the game even starts.
First of all, getting hit on the back is a bad spot for any kind of infection or spreading disease (closest irl counterpart). That’s awfully close to a lot of vital things you don’t want something spreading to including the spine, lungs, heart, etc etc. Especially for deeper cuts because we’re talking Dracula level injury here, not like a paper cut or something. Hell, too deep of a hit on the back might cause some nerve damage, not to the extent of paralysis in his case, but general chronic pain from a wound that won’t heal properly is uhhh… not great. :( I’ve also seen some media say that the curse causes wounds to not heal, bleeding, the American manual even mentions it effecting the soul, awful stuff. I generally like to think “Bloody Tears” is referring to Simon tbh.
Another thing, with afflictions that cause decay generally the smaller appendages start getting hit hard with it first. It’s the same way for a lot of other conditions; fingers, toes, earlobes, anything protruding like that because the body considers them lowest priority in a survival situation like that and it wouldn’t kill you to lose them. Necrosis especially has things start turning ruddy colors, blacken, and start forming holes in the layers of skin (@ @ ;). Obviously this alone is excruciating. Poor dude has to walk for days on end like that…
And slowly deteriorating could also imply some form of wasting. Fats usually go first, then muscle, which is also very not good when you’ve gotta beat the clock to survive. Scary thing is that the brain is like 60% fats and not immune to any of this whoops—
Something I don’t really see anyone consider very often when talking about the curse (not that I’ve seen many people talk about this 💀) is how absolutely mentally fucked up Simon would be from it. Just the terror of knowing you’re slowly rotting to death would be enough to drive most people into some kind of despair or panic, but seeing and feeling all the gruesome details of it is even worse. Being in constant pain and stress isn’t good for anyone, especially someone who is already weakened from illness. But the sheer mental deterioration this guy would be having from the decay itself oh my god (0_o ). Looking up widespread brain shrinkage like that and uh some of the early signs are already stuff like seizures and extreme headaches. Add the fact that he doesn’t really sleep much for upwards of 7 days and it’d be an absolute miracle if this guy wasn’t hallucinating and/or completely hysterical by this point among other things. I mean, no wonder so much of this game is running around lost and confused, not only are people lying to his face, Simon is probably just barely keeping his shit together the whole time.
So just imagine for a second all of these things combined. No wonder people were terrified of him, he probably genuinely looked like a corpse. Eeeee yikes yikes ouch, poor guy :’’’’’(.
Anyway, Konami where is my horror focused Simon’s Quest remake you cowards—