#really i just wandered around a wiki for a while and had a Realization

[downtroddendeity]

Things I did today:

got really mad at Kazuma Kaneko for being good at his job

#gameblogging #i guess? #really i just wandered around a wiki for a while and had a Realization

[waterfrontcomplex]

yanqing abundance + origin thoughts/theory

so, i was doing whatever and a thought came to me (story spoilers also there's a lot of text)

i took a look around the loufu and realized something; all of the people had essentially every hair color except blonde. the only exceptions are people not native to the loufu, such as luocha.

yk. the one who happens to be ON THE PATH OF ABUNDANCE

and who else has blonde hair?

YANQING.

yanqing's origins are relatively unknown, all we know is that jing yuan found him somewhere and decided to take him in for whatever reason. in yanqing's character story, it says that it's recorded in the military annals of the cloud knights how jing yuan discovered him, but not where.

yanqing mentions in his character introduction how he was RAISED BY THE GENERAL SINCE BIRTH which... like. what. ok thats actually crazy bc either

1) jing yuan took him from his parents when he was like a day old or something

2) he was given to jing yuan (although, this is unlikely considering it was mentioned jing yuan 'discovered' him)

3) jing yuan lied for whatever reason (to protect him)

4) jing yuan indeed found him when he was born, possibly from a fruit of the ambrosial arbor

in the pic above, yanqing says 'but as you know, children aren't grown on trees." is this foreshadowing? or just straight up dropping a hint that his 'birth' was not a natural one?

the ambrosial arbor was inactive for approx. 2579 years before the sedition of imbibitor lunae. after that, the seals on the arbor were weakened. i haven't exactly worked out the specifics yet, but since bailu was created around 700~ years before canon and is still a little kid, and dan heng was presumably an adult/teen when exiled, my guess is that if yanqing has the lifespan/growth rate of a xianzhou native, he would've been born sometime in between den heng's hatching and bailu's hatching, a little closer towards bailu's. but what could've happened during that time? please hear me out the next part is kinda crazy

my guess is that during the tampering of the transmutation arcanum to revive baiheng (and presumably to allow other species to become vidyadhara, although the wiki gave no source... i'll trust it for now), dan feng and yingxing fucked up and created yanqing in a fruit of the arbor, while during the transmutation arcanum ritual, bc dan feng previously fucked with it, it failed and created bailu (and separated his powers between dan heng and bailu)

now, this seems... really out there. how the fuck would yanqing and bailu, a presumably xianzhou native/humanoid and a vidyadhara, be created from the remains of a foxian? i'll start with yanqing. it was stated that after baiheng's death, only a few drops of blood and a tuft of her hair remained. dan feng and yingxing created yanqing in a fruit of the arbor (like some sort of hatching rebirth... but a fruit) using either the blood or hair (most likely blood) of baiheng. it was a somewhat failed attempt at reviving baiheng. yes, it created life from her remains, but it was not her (think how dan heng ≠ dan feng, and also how vidyadhara can be different genders than their previous incarnation). during the time he was in the fruit, it dyed his hair and eyes blonde/gold, and also created the ring around yanqing's eyes (his is unique, the other characters' eye rings if they have them are a lighter color while his is dark, yes ik silver wolf has it too but her's is different).

before bailu's hatching and after subduing jingliu, jing yuan eventually came across the fruit yanqing was being held in, or found him wandering about, probably recognized the blonde/gold as the effects of the abundance, and took him in because dude he's not going to kill a literal baby (even if he could). he knew it would be dangerous to give him to a regular family, so he took him in and trained him himself

for more info abt yanqing's connection to the vidyadhara, i suggest checking out this post by astralexpressarchives.

although he is not baiheng, he did take on aspects of baiheng's personality, such as her free will and even laughing/giggling while in battle. he also enjoys flying (although with his swords and not starskiffs) and even has eyelashes similar to her's. and, just like her, yanqing's missions would often be dangerous, but he would come out relatively unscathed.

now, about bailu. dan heng says she was created after dan feng's ritual failed. if you take a look at bailu, she strongly resembles baiheng, and even starts with the same 'bai'.

same hair, same eyes, similar eyelashes, she even has a similar eye ring to yanqing. there's not too much to say here. while yanqing got baiheng's personality and fighting spirit, bailu got her appearance. now, why did this happen? im thinking its because of dan feng's meddling with the transmutation arcanum. because of that, yanqing was born, but it was 'incomplete'. so while yanqing got one part of baiheng, bailu got the other. yanqing was made on purpose, while bailu was somewhat of an accident. maybe some of baiheng's 'life' from yanqing's creation was still there when bailu was created? idk

the funny thing is, their paths are like... the complete opposite. yanqing follows the hunt (although he was born of the abundance) and bailu follows the abundance (although she was presumably supposed to follow the destruction or hunt).

theory tldr; dan feng and yingxing fucked up and created yanqing and bailu out of baiheng's remains

this is a yanqing post, time to get back to yanqing. hooray! i took a closer look at yanqing's outfit, and noticed numerous leaf/plant symbols.

...which are closely associated with the abundance. especially the gold leaves.

this further solidifies my belief that yanqing has something to do with the abundance.

jesus christ that is. a wall of text. pls tell me ur thoughts on this whole thing, i took like 2 1/2 hours to write it and its 2:40 am so sorry if it doesn't make sense i just need to put these thoughts somewhere

#yanqing #bailu #jing yuan #baiheng #dan feng #yingxing #hsr yanqing #hsr bailu #hsr jing yuan #hsr baiheng #hsr dan feng #hsr yingxing #hsr #honkai star rail #honkai star rail theory #hsr theory #theory #fan theory #baby's first theory #abundance #yanqing abundance theory #or something #hsr spoilers #im so normal about this game #so normal #sososo normal #pls share ur thoughts in the comments/tags xo #ambrosial arbor #luocha #honorary luocha mention

[blackjackkent]

All right, we know where Bhaal's temple is, so it is time to FLATTEN ORIN LIKE A PANCAKE. >:| We're heading back to the sewers, and on to the temple where once Caden fought Sarevok.

This dude is wandering around in the entry hall of the Murder Tribunal:

I can't interact with him but he's wandering around grumbling about the Lord of Murder. I had to do some googling - this is Ffion Goldgrind's son, the one I assumed had been replaced by a doppelganger. Apparently he just went down the Bhaalist rabbit hole instead, so I'm guessing he killed his mom. Apparently we could have run into him in a couple different places as part of the "Solve the Murders" questline (which I guess is shut down now that we've faced the tribunal), or if we had taken the evil route here, we would have had to fight him as a "professional rival" (according to the wiki).

Interesting. Let's get the hell out of here.

Back into the sewers from the Basilisk Gate, and following the quest icon, we're going way the fuck off to the north in an area of the sewers we haven't been yet. We run almost immediately into a couple of "Night Blades" and a "Death's Head of Bhaal," who are busy taking potshots at a camp of innocent refugees nearby, but all of whom are not happy to see us and immediately turn their attention to Hector instead.

"What's this? A heretic in our midst? Your death in the Dread Lord's name!"

I actually stumbled past these guys earlier in the sewers but then backed up when I realized it might trigger Orin's wrath early; at the time, though, they didn't actively get angry (presumably because we were still on some level allied with Orin because Gortash was still alive). Now, however, they're ready to jump. I'm assuming this is because Orin knows we killed Sarevok and is Not Happy.

...I hope killing Sarevok didn't get Lae'zel killed. :(

Not a difficult fight but does seem to indicate we're going in the right direction.

While searching for the path northward, I land in a place called "Heapside Barracks Cells" which appears to be a prison managed by the Flaming Fist. It's not what I'm looking for but I'll take a look around in the interest of thoroughness.

Surprisingly, the Fist didn't seem to mind me being there. So I set Hector into sneak mode and robbed them blind of anything useful and enjoyed the satisfying sight of the dead Steel Watcher lying on the floor.

Pretty much the only interesting stuff here is a bunch of documents in a back office, most of which deal with the rise of the Bhaalist cult in the city. There's a note from Devella indicating she requested more resources from the Fist to look into the situation and was denied. Florrick's sentence to death and information about the Stone Lord are also here, which thankfully are no longer relevant but would presumably have been alternate entrances into those quests. Also some notes about the rise of the Absolute, and a message from Ravengard (post-tadpole) ordering a complete lockdown of the Upper City.

There's definitely some documents here indicating the presence of decent Flaming Fist, also:

Hard to say if any such people remain in the force, though, or if they've all been tadpoled into submission.

A fun little note locked in a chest:

XD Yes he really is a [REDACTED]. Jury is out on whether [REDACTED] was [REDACTED] although I'm guessing she died fully human.

The Emperor is still a bit of a mystery to me. He does a very good job of pulling my heartstrings, but there are also definitely plenty of documents around reminding that mind flayers are capable of incredibly manipulative behavior so who knows. Maybe I am not immune to squid propaganda. I want to believe he's telling the truth about Stelmane but who knows.

Probably not a very relevant sidetrack but I always appreciate some lore flavor. :D

#bjk plays baldur's gate 3 #hector carlisle #very document-heavy liveblogging night tonight #i think i'm probably going to leave actually confronting orin for Saturday but going to at least try to get to the temple tonight

[cringecompanionapologist]

Black Guardian Trilogy Headcanon: What Did the Doctor Know?

But the confrontation with the Guardians at the end of Enlightenment, the Doctor acts as if he already knows everything about Turlough’s deal with the Black Guardian, even though we never see anyone directly explain it to him. By the time the secret is out, he already knows. So, when did that happen?

I think that by the end of Mawdryn Undead, he knew most of it, though I don’t think he knew that Turlough had been specifically sent to kill him.

Turlough makes it clear to the Doctor that he doesn’t really belong on Earth in 1983. He’s not what he seems. The Doctor pays attention to that.

Then, the Doctor sees the crystal. He reacts as if he discovered something significant, but I originally wasn’t sure he knew that it was specifically related to the Black Guardian.

So, I searched through the Black Guardian’s appearances on the TARDIS wiki. Thanks to audios and novels, the Doctor has stories that take place between The Armageddon Factor and Mawdryn Undead where he deals with the Black Guardian. In the VMA novel The Well-Mannered War, he actually deals with a guy who made a deal with the Black Guardian. The Doctor discovers a crystal just like the one Turlough has, which is apparently made of some weird material, so it’s distinctive and out of the ordinary. 

By Mawdryn Undead, the Doctor definitely would’ve known what that crystal was an what it meant. However, the guy in The Well-Mannered War wasn’t sent to kill the Doctor, just to trap him. When Five sees the crystal in Mawdryn Undead, his immediate concern is for the TARDIS. He first saw Turlough having somehow wandered into the TARDIS earlier. The most logical conclusion would be that the Black Guardian is after the TARDIS, trying to trap the Doctor again.

So, the Doctor knows that Turlough is an agent of the Black Guardian, but he doesn’t know that he’s been sent to kill him. He didn’t notice the rock murder thing.

The main reason people think the Doctor was unaware of the Black Guardian stuff is because “If the Doctor knew Turlough was working for the Black Guardian, why’d he take him on as a companion and insist to Nyssa and Tegan that he was alright?”. I think it’s the combination of not knowing what Turlough’s mission actually was and realizing that bringing Turlough with him might actually cause a problem for the Black Guardian’s plan.

The Doctor knows that Turlough is in the wrong place and/or time. If Turlough is stuck in the wrong place and/or time, the thing he’d want the most would be to escape 1983 Earth. The Doctor could guess that that’s what the Black Guardian offered him. The Black Guardian’s agent in The Well-Mannered War was an artist motivated by fame. Turlough is motivated by desperation, which though not a “good” motivation, is a better motivation than fame. This meant that Turlough himself probably wasn’t a bad person. The Doctor actually seemed to take a liking to him almost immediately, so there’s also that.

But, not only is what Turlough wants something pretty reasonable, it’s something the Doctor can give him. He wants to leave Earth. Fine. The Doctor can take him away from Earth. Turlough now has what he wants, the thing he made the deal with the Black Guardian to get. He no longer needs what the Black Guardian offered him. He has no reason to want to work for him anymore. Taking Turlough as a companion takes away some of the control the Black Guardian has over him.

So, the Doctor decides to Turlough with him and see what happens, basically. He doesn’t tell Nyssa and Tegan what he’s doing, because he doesn’t want them involved. The Doctor is the Black Guardian’s target, but if he had to go through his companions to get to him, he would.

This actually comes up in the novelization of Terminus. On Terminus, the Black Guardian is pissed that Turlough isn’t trying to find and kill the Doctor. Turlough says that he can’t do anything while Tegan’s around and he’s stuck with her. The Black Guardian tells him to kill Tegan. To Turlough’s credit, he makes no attempt to follow this order and tries to avoid screaming too loudly when the Black Guardian punishes him, so Tegan won’t hear, see the crystal, know too much, and die for it. 

So, yeah, it’s better if the other companions stay away from the Black Guardian stuff. The Doctor really should’ve told them that, but the Fifth Doctor hates explaining anything. Maybe not the best move on his part.

Anyway, Turlough’s second attempt to kill the Doctor (after the rock) is by sabotaging the TARDIS. This could also be interpreted as an attempt to strand the Doctor, not kill him, so the Doctor still probably doesn’t know that Turlough is the Least Deadly Assassin Ever yet. But, he does find Turlough on the floor in the TARDIS after the Black Guardian did something to him to punish him for his failure. It’s not quite clear what was going on there.

This is part of an interesting pattern. The Doctor never catches Turlough trying to kill him, but he catches the aftermath of Turlough being punished for failing to kill him twice. After the end of Terminus, there’s also the time in Enlightenment. The Black Guardian chokes Turlough and throws him to the ground. The Doctor and Tegan find him on the floor and he claims he just fell. This really doesn’t hold up, since Tegan can see bruises on his neck. While the Terminus incident was a bit confusing, this time it is blatantly clear that someone attacked Turlough and he’s covering for him. From this, the Black Guardian comes across as more of a threat to Turlough than to the Doctor. This is why the Doctor isn’t upset with Turlough at all. He’d been punished more than enough.

Turlough doesn’t attempt to kill the Doctor again after the sabotage incident. There’s also that “I’ll never serve you again!” line before Turlough jumps off the Eternal Ship in Space. The Doctor doesn’t react to this line at all, because he already knows who Turlough is addressing. Turlough is already at least trying to resist the Black Guardian. That means all the Doctor has to do is be supportive and wait for the problem to solve itself. The Guardian give Turlough a chance to choose to do the right thing and escape the deal he made and he does. The Doctor knew he could do it. The deal wasn’t doing anything good for him outside of offering him something the Doctor could just give him without asking for anything in return.

In the aftermath, Tegan still doesn’t quite get what happened and doesn’t understand why the Doctor could forgive Turlough so easily. At some point during the events of Enlightenment, the Doctor figured out that Turlough had been sent to kill him, but he didn’t care. He knew he wouldn’t go through with it. Besides, the Doctor saw what Turlough went through failing/resisting the Black Guardian. By taking away Turlough’s motivation that got him to make the deal in the first place, the Doctor could be partially responsible for the failure/resistance, so he even has reason to feel guilty about what Turlough went through and want to make it up to him. He still doesn’t explain anything to Tegan because seriously, the Fifth Doctor Hates Explaining Anything.

So, I rambled quite a bit there.

TLDR: The Doctor knew that Turlough was working for the Black Guardian before he’d even become a companion, as well as what the Black Guardian offered Turlough, but he didn’t know exactly what Turlough had been sent to do and probably saw the Black Guardian Trilogy as him rescuing Turlough from the Black Guardian, whatever the deal was.

#fifth doctor #Vislor Turlough #this ramble was not checked for grammatical errors #the doctor definitely saw turlough and said i can fix him #i'm sorry i had to use a gareth roberts novel for evidence here #i know about gareth roberts #mawdryn undead #terminus #enlightenment #the well-mannered war #five doesn't explain shit

[ecdysis-apotheosis]

i’d love to hear about the lore too tbh HAHA. i never got far enough in the game for it and i am not usually a wiki reader typa guy.

(also for the record i was planning on buying it beforehand but then you started posting about it around the same time and i was like oh! divine timing. add to cart.)

(that's completely fair tbh, i've been there)

oh sweet!! this i know how to talk about. since this is on a kin blog, i'm just going to preface this by saying that i'm talking purely about the in-game lore and not any canon-divergences i might have in my own personal timelines, as much as it might bother me to put them aside

and i realized about halfway through writing this post that i'm mostly talking about the events leading up to the game and not what actually happens during it because that's what i'm most familiar with (because that's the part i was there for lmao) but w/e let's get into it

tw for child death, self-harm, and suicide

welcome to the city, the last known remaining bastion of humanity, which is divided into 26 wings, large and powerful conglomerates, and the head, its central government. it's a corporate dystopian nightmare where essentially everyone is corrupt, nihilistic, and out for themselves.

enter carmen, a one-of-a-kind altruistic and compassionate woman who shines like the sun and believes that she can fix what's broken about the city by reigniting the extinguished light in people's souls through a project she calls "the seed of light". she rallies a small group of people (ayin, benjamin, elijah, gabriel, giovanni, michelle, kali, and daniel) to join her and rescues two children (enoch and lisa) from the backstreets (dangerous and lower-class places) of a wing along the way.

their main experiments were with cogito, an unstable chemical substance extracted from humans' minds. a major step they soon had to take in their research was to test cogito on a human. carmen was the most compatible candidate, but enoch volunteers himself, despite lisa really not wanting him to. after much deliberation, carmen agrees and approves of the experiment.

it does not go well, and he does not survive.

lisa snaps at carmen and tells her that she should've been the one to die rather than enoch, and carmen completely shatters. she loses her spark and falls into a deep depression, barely smiling or talking anymore and often wandering aimlessly around the facility laughing and crying. the others continue to work, but their morale suffers.

eventually, she tries to kill herself, slitting her wrists in a bathtub. ayin finds her first, alive but unconscious. his first priority is their project, and he knows that she could be just what they needed to continue their research, so he removes her nervous system and places it in a reservoir so he can use it to produce more cogito for more experiments. she is implied to be more or less fully alive and conscious in this state.

the project continues under ayin's leadership, but things aren't the same without carmen there, and he can't lead in the same way she could; but he is determined to finish what she started, and unlike her, he doesn't care who has to get hurt.

almost everyone working on the project then dies:

elijah wants to help with the cogito experiments, but ayin won't let her because he doesn't think she's ready yet. she gets her hands on untreated cogito not meant for human use and uses it on herself. she slowly and painfully dies and ayin watches while she begs him to kill her and put her out of her misery

gabriel, upon finding out about elijah's death, becomes obsessive and paranoid about safety regulations, not wanting to have any part of his body exposed to open air for risk of "contamination" and scratching himself harshly, which eventually leads to his death despite the efforts of the other employees

giovanni agrees to being experimented on with cogito because ayin tells him that it could potentially be used to save carmen, leading to his mental decline and death

michelle finds herself unable to stay silent about what's happening here and tells the head, the government of the city. they send a woman named garion to deal with the situation, who kills both lisa and daniel. kali faces garion in battle to protect the others, leaving kali dead and garion badly injured. ayin tortures her for information on how he could make their lab into a wing. michelle commits suicide after learning what happened in the facility

with only himself and benjamin left, ayin orchestrates a war known as the smoke war with the help of a few other wings to take down the current l corp and create lobotomy corporation in its place. he violates one of the rules of the city, the ai ethics amendment, to create angela, a robot meant to assist him with finishing the project. he models her after carmen, but after realizing she is nothing like carmen at all, he refuses to interact with her in any way or even look at her. benjamin does what he can to try to support her.

ayin, still determined to finish the project, takes the remains of his coworkers, puts them in mechanical bodies, suppresses their memories, and gives them new names, creating the sephirah; elijah is malkuth, gabriel is yesod, giovanni is netzach, michelle is hod, lisa and enoch are tiphereth a and b respectively, kali is gebura, daniel is chesed, and garion is binah.

he forms a contract with t corp to create time loops with new managers in the hopes that one will eventually be able to finish the project. benjamin senses that ayin is coming to a point of no return and tries to warn him about how this could go wrong, but angela kills him before he can, turning him into the sephirot hokma, though he manages to implement a few messages into the loops as a failsafe and warning for new managers.

in the end, ayin is alone, with everyone he once worked with dead and the weight of carmen's expectations and the project on his shoulders. he tries to kill himself, but is stopped, and decides to give up in his own way, transferring his memories into a data system so they can be implanted into new managers who come to the facility.

to make her more easily able to deal with emergency situations, angela was programmed to process time a hundred times slower than humans do, and as she withstands millennia of suffering and horror throughout the loops, she becomes cold and ruthless, nothing at all like the person she was once meant to embody.

#leif muses #leif answers #sorry it's been like a week since you sent this my brain was Not in an ask answering mood #i might've missed a few things or not explained some of it as well as i could have but i think it's pretty good #turning reblogs off since this is on my kin blog

[jaehyunfirstlove]

Pairing: classmate!jaehyun x webcam model!f.reader

Genre: smut (18+ only)

Warnings: unprotected sex, fingering, cum play, exhibitionism

Word count: 2.2k

A/N: requested by a lovely anon, hope you like it, and sorry it took so long!

*Disclaimer: I am not well-versed in webcam shows and did my research through wiki so I hope it makes sense :)

“Y/N, you wanna come out for a drink with us tonight?”

The class had just finished and you were packing up your things when Yuna came by to ask you if you wanted to go out with them.

“Sorry guys, I gotta start on that paper tonight.”

“Aw come on, it’s Friday night!” Yuna pouted, but you just shook your head.

“You know me, if I don’t start something right away I’ll procrastinate and wait till the last minute,” you shrugged. Out of the corner of your eye you noticed Jaehyun, the guy you’d been crushing on, standing amongst your group of friends. You pulled Yuna closer to you.

“Is Jaehyun going?” you whispered into her ear.

“Uh-huh,” she nodded, a shit-eating grin spreading across her face. “Now you wanna come along, don’t you?”

You were torn. You absolutely would’ve loved the chance to get to know Jaehyun better since you never had a chance during class, and outside of it you were too busy with your studies and your cam shows. But Friday nights were your biggest nights, and if you didn’t stream tonight you’d lose out on a huge payday.

“Ugh, I can’t,” you reluctantly declined, “I’m sorry, guys.”

Yuna just shrugged. “Yeah, you’ll be sorry alright.” She turned around, hooking her arm through Jaehyun’s and pulling him away. She turned back to look at you and smiled innocently, while you just gave her the finger before walking away.

---

“Well, that’s all for tonight everyone, thanks for coming by.”

You saluted the camera and blew a kiss, your signature goodbye, as the last messages in the chat came in wishing you a good night and thanking you for the show. You couldn’t help but notice that one of your favorite viewers, peachyvalentine77, hadn’t joined at all that night. He was one of your best tippers, one of your sweetest and most polite customers, and he almost never missed a show.

You went into the bathroom to get yourself cleaned up, but your mind wandered to Jaehyun, wondering what he was doing while out with your friends. You knew Yuna had just been teasing you by linking arms with him, it was her way of trying to persuade you and on any other day it would have worked. As it was, you’d made a killing tonight, all of the money you made paying for the astronomical fees your college was charging you. If it weren’t for your cam shows, you wouldn’t have been able to afford to go to college in the first place.

Sighing to yourself, you went about thinking what Jaehyun must be like, if he was as sweet as he seemed, while you decided to paint your nails a vivid blue. You wondered mindlessly if Jaehyun liked blue, if he maybe thought your hands were pretty, or most importantly, what he might think if he found out you were a cam girl.

---

Saturday nights were your next busiest nights, and you were pleased to see peachyvalentine77 sign on like he normally did.

Pv77: hi gorgeous

Me: oh you’re here! Missed you yesterday

Pv77: sorry had plans

Pv77: missed you though

He sent more messages throughout the show like he always did, praising you and showering you with compliments. He also tipped really well, as usual, right up until the show ended.

Pv77: i’ll see you again soon gorgeous

Pv77: and i love your nails btw

Pv77: blue is my fav color :)

You smiled at his message, happy to have impressed him.

---

The following Monday you were exhausted in class, your friends thinking you were studying too hard but really it was too many late night cam shows. You noticed Jaehyun looking at you curiously, and you figured you must have looked really bad for him to notice. He kept glancing at you during class, and oddly enough, kept staring at your fingers. When class was over, you were packing up your stuff slowly, your energy lagging, when he came up to you.

“Hey, Y/N,” he greeted you, and you were slightly shocked that he knew your name, but you figured Yuna had probably told him.

“Hi, Jaehyun,” you answered, somewhat shyly because he was looking at you quite intensely.

“Can I… ask you a question?” he was hesitant in how he asked, but his eyes felt like they were boring into your face.

“Sure,” you answered, wondering what he was going to ask you, and feeling very self-conscious with the way he was looking at you.

“By the way,” he started casually, pointing to your nails, “blue is my favorite color.”

You could feel the heat rise in your cheeks, as his gaze slowly went from your nails to your face. You knew then you were caught, and you looked at each other in shocked surprise.

“You’re… peachyvalentine77?” you whispered, your hand going up to your mouth.

“And you’re Y/N-cam?” the look of shock on his face slowly changed as his suspicion was confirmed, a wide smile spreading that made his dimples extra deep. “Oh wow, I can’t believe it.”

Mortification quickly took over, as you realized you had just been found out, by your crush no less. You couldn’t have him spreading this news, especially to your friend group.

“Oh my god, Jaehyun, you can’t tell anyone about this!” you started to plead with him, putting your hands together in a supplicating gesture.

He looked at you quizzically, before a slow smile spread across his face. “Absolutely, my lips are sealed.” He made the motion of zipping up his lips but not before he looked at you with a sly grin. “But…”

“But what?” you didn’t like where this was going, the look on his face starting to alarm you.

“But my silence comes at a price.”

You knew it, you knew it was too good to be true, your good fortune had run out and now you were going to be blackmailed, by the one guy you were hoping to date. You were too busy calculating how many more shows you had to do to be able to pay him when you realized he was looking at you expectantly.

“Okay, what’s your price,” you sighed, willing to pay anything to have your secret kept.

“Well, I was actually thinking of something that would benefit both of us,” he began, and he really got your attention then. You looked at him to see if he was playing with you, but he had a pretty sincere, if a little mischievous, look on his face.

“And what’s that?” you asked suspiciously.

He leaned in closer, and at that distance you could see the gold specks amongst the brown of his irises, and smell the heady scent of his cologne. “How about we do a show… together.”

You blinked a few times, unsure if you heard him correctly, but he was still regarding you questioningly. “Are you serious, Jaehyun? Don’t joke about this stuff.”

He looked taken aback. “Of course I’m serious. I think we should do a show together.”

“Like have sex? On camera?” you clarified, and he nodded, smiling at your realization. You thought about it, while looking at his gorgeous face, and all of a sudden you were thinking about how he would feel inside you and just like that your pussy made your decision for you.

“Okay, I’m in.”

---

Jaehyun came over on a Friday night, easily your busiest night, and therefore he figured you’d make a killing if you had sex on camera. He showed up at your place looking, and smelling, absolutely delicious, and you almost wanted to jump his bones right then and there and forget about the cam show altogether. But he was perfectly professional, helping you set up the camera and lighting to get everything just right.

“Ready?” you asked, when there was nothing left to do but start the show. You couldn’t help but be nervous, since it was your first time having sex on camera, and your first time having sex with Jaehyun. He noticed your apprehension, taking your hand and squeezing it reassuringly.

“I’m ready,” he responded, looking you in the eye, “I got you, okay? Anytime you want to stop, just squeeze my hand, okay?” He squeezed your hand to demonstrate what you should do, and you nodded, grateful for his understanding.

“Okay, here we go.” You started the camera, and did your customary greeting. You noticed people logging into the chat, and once you had a good number going you made your announcement.

“Everyone, today is a special show, since we have a special guest.” You held out your hand, and Jaehyun joined you, the camera set up so your faces wouldn’t be shown. “This is my friend, we’ll call him Jay.”

The chat lit up, and tips started to pour in, no doubt in anticipation of what was to come. You and Jaehyun shared surprised yet satisfied looks.

“I’m sure you’ve all guessed what’s going to happen today, so let’s get to it.” You led Jaehyun to the bed, and positioned yourselves so that the camera wouldn’t capture your faces.

“Are you ready?” he whispered in your ear, while rubbing your sides gently with his hands. His touch ignited something in you, and you nodded, biting your lip as you got into position. “I’ll go slow.”

You were wearing crotchless panties, so all he had to do was reach down between your legs, rubbing your pussy with his fingers. He groaned when he found you wet, and the sound just made you want him more, your hands coming up to grip his arms as he fingered you.

“Mmm,” you moaned, already losing yourself to his touch. You noticed the prominent bulge in his Calvin Kleins, so you rubbed him over the fabric, eliciting more beautiful sounds from his mouth. 

“Oh god, Jay, I need you inside me right now.” You had wanted to go slow, you had meant to go slow, but he was driving you crazy with how sexy he was. You took a glance at the screen and saw the tips still pouring in.

“Are you sure?” he whispered, “I was thinking we should drag this out.”

“I can’t,” you responded honestly, “I just really want you to fuck me right now.”

His eyes grew dark at your admission, and he removed his fingers from you, pulling his boxers down and pumping his cock as he stared down at you. You bit your lip as you watched him, everything in slow motion as he knelt between your legs and placed the tip of his cock at your entrance. You took a moment to look over at the monitor, tips lighting up the screen, as his cock parted you. 

Your mouth opened in a wordless scream, back arching off the bed as he entered you, his size not something your body was accustomed to. You grasped at the sheets, as he inched slowly inside you, his face intense as he watched your reaction.

“Can you take my cock?” he asked, voice husky, and you could only nod, “you’re so fucking tight, but your pussy is taking me so well.”

His dirty talk was heightening your arousal, and you couldn’t help but squeeze him, the walls of your pussy contracting around his cock. He hissed at the feeling, before he bottomed out with one hard thrust.

You screamed, clutching to the sheets as he started to pound into you, grunting with each thrust.

“You like it, baby?” he groaned, “show everyone how much you like my cock.”

You moaned and thrashed, the pleasure he was giving you sending you into a frenzy. “Oh, oh fuck, yes, yes, your cock feels so good inside me.” You had a vague notion that you were probably blabbering, but the way he was rutting into you was making you crazy.

“Jay! Oh my god, yes! Just like that, fuck me just like that,” you went on, grabbing onto his back now and digging your nails in as he fucked you, the bed shaking from his harsh thrusts.

“You’re so good for me, baby, your pussy was made for me,” he cooed, reaching down to squeeze your breasts over the lace of your bra. You moaned when he pulled the fabric down and pinched your nipple, moaned louder when he tugged lightly on the hardened bud. “So good,” he whispered, ducking his head down quickly so he could suck on your nipple, making sure his face couldn’t be seen on camera.

You moaned even louder when he tugged at your nipple lightly with his teeth, all while pounding into you at an insane pace.

“Jay, you’re gonna make me come,” you moaned, your entire body tingling as you felt your orgasm build up.

“You’re gonna come for me, come all over my cock,” he growled, rubbing at your clit now with his thumb. It was enough, sending you crashing, your limbs convulsing as you came, pussy pulsing around him. He groaned deep within his chest, then pulled out when you were done, pumping his cum all over your stomach.

You’d almost forgotten about the camera, wanting to just pull him down and kiss him until he was breathless, but you suddenly remembered, sparing a look at the screen. The tips were continuing to pour in, and you couldn’t help but smile up at him.

“So your idea worked,” you whispered at him, and he smiled at you.

“Told you it would,” he responded, winking at you before he leaned over and shut the camera off, leaning down to capture your lips in his.

#jaehyun imagines #jaehyun x reader #jaehyun smut #nct imagines #nct smut

[mysterystarz]

the romance checklist:

summary: a chance meeting with kageyama has you striking up a bet to see if one of you could fall in love with the other before the year was up. cue the romance checklist, a piece of paper that molded your fate and his.

pairing: kageyama tobio x g!n reader

word count: 3.2k

genres + themes: literally pure fluff, reader is a first-year karasuno student, reader is also kind of a romantic

warnings: none

a/n: so this is my first time writing for kageyama and i know he's probably pretty out of character, so my apologies!! this was inspired off some headcannons i wrote for one of my irl friends, and this wiki-how article which i used to structure the actual checklist! to all my lovely kags simps, this is for you <3 (also to all the people who hate angst, you lucked out bc i was about to add an angst part but got lazy)

You had never thought a trip to the vending machine could be so eventful.

It had been lunch break, and you found yourself wandering towards the machine, money in hand as your eyes trailed the snacks. It had become routine to sneak away during lunch hours for this, enjoying the fresh autumn breeze as you bought your snacks. It had always given you time to think and the time to recompose yourself when you didn’t have a clue what to do.

Usually it also provided you with time alone.

That wasn’t the case today though. Standing in front of the vending machines was Kageyama Tobio, frantically pushing the button for milk with a grumpy sort of scowl on his face. From the distance you stood, you could make out his height and the way he tapped his foot continuously, as if he didn’t have the time to wait for the milk to be dispensed from the spot.

Strolling up to the spot, you stood silently next to him, watching the way he retrieved the milk from the slot wordlessly as he walked away, not even a glance in your direction.

You knew full well who he was. In fact, you could barely walk through the halls of school without hearing a murmur about the prodigy setter and his closed off ways. The girls found him intriguing from afar, and while they never dared to approach him, they all wanted to.

You hadn’t really understood what they saw in him. He was average...if not below that in academics, and he seemed to dedicate most of his time to volleyball, not caring much for other people. He didn’t seem to have many friends, and was almost always grumpy.

All of this should’ve been reason enough to avoid him, and yet you couldn’t help but be intrigued. There was something about him that was different. You just needed to find out what that was.

The next day came around, and sure enough, he stood at the machine again, toe-tapping as his milk was dispensed from the slot. This time his eyes scanned the courtyard as if he was seeking something before they finally landed on you.

You weren’t prepared for the full impact of his gaze. It was calculated and pointed, with some sort of intent that was expressed in every inch of those dark blue eyes. You weren’t put off by it.

In fact, it was charming in its own way.

“Are you looking for something Kageyama?” You asked as you walked towards him, pulling a few yen out of your pocket. “You’re staring.”

“I’m not.” He deadpanned, his eyes still trained on you as you selected a snack from the machine’s buttons. “I see you everywhere. Who are you?”

You hadn’t expected that. You knew he was observant...when it came to volleyball specifically, but never realized how it translated anywhere else. “I’m Y/L/N Y/N.”

You weren’t sure what else to say to him. Gently grabbing your snack, you politely nodded at him before leaving him behind, the thoughts rapidly accumulating in your brain. Did he notice you the entire time? Why did he ask? Did he know something? Was he planning to use you as some example to the other girls who wanted to know him?

You wish you had an answer.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t think of any.

It had been two weeks since you had met Kageyama by the vending machines. It had now become routine to expect him there during your lunch breaks, milk box in hand as he regarded your very presence with something that felt a whole lot like curiosity. Every now and then he’d offer commentary on the mundane happenings of Karasuno, or ask about you, but you weren’t sure how you could hold a conversation with just these things.

“Kageyama.” You nodded, strolling towards the machine as you always did. He whipped around almost immediately, offering a solemn nod in return, clutching his milk box.

“Y/L/N.” He murmured, taking a sip of his box.

“Have you ever thought about love?” You found yourself asking, internally screaming at the word choice. Great, now he was going to think that you were some crazy person.

“I think so…?.” Was what he offered in response. His features seemed to soften at this question though as he scrunched his brows in thought. “What type of love?”

You raised a brow at him in question. “Kageyama...what type of love are you talking about?”

“Well...I love volleyball and milk.” He shrugged. “That counts.”

“That...wasn’t the type I was referring to.” You said, suppressing the laughter that bubbled into your chest. “I was talking about the other kind.”

“The other kind is stupid.” Kageyama replied instantaneously. “There’s nothing special to it.”

You felt confusion seep into your system before you quieted it, letting your mind wander. With Kageyama’s status, you assumed that he’d at least thought of the concept at least once, although it seemed that he’d never even pondered the idea altogether!

“You’d have to feel it to come to that conclusion,” you countered, “Have you?”

“No,” he scoffed, “It’s still stupid.”

“Why?” You asked, feeling the curiosity surface. “Any specific reason?”

“Why would anyone want to dedicate all their time to another person?” Kageyama asked straight back, his gaze unwavering. “I just don’t see the point.”

You stared back at him, feeling the challenge bubble in your veins. “I bet...I can make you fall in love with someone by the end of the school year.”

At that moment, the boy in front of you looked thoroughly surprised, throwing his empty milk box at the garbage can nearby. He seemed speechless to some extent, as if he wasn’t able to process the words that had just left your mouth.

“And what happens if you can’t?” He asked, hesitantly bringing his gaze to your face. “What then?”

“I’ll buy you milk for a whole month.” You placed your hands on your hip as you kept your glare firm. “I stick to that.”

“Okay then,” he sighed, “Game on.”

With a shake of your hands, you cemented your fate.

You would win that bet. That much was certain.

“What’s this Y/L/N?” Kageyama asked, pointing at the piece of paper you held at him. “How are you going to win a bet with this?”

The two of them stood in the courtyard of Karasuno, the fresh autumn breeze rippling the paper you held in your hand. It had been a good day so far, and Kageyama had surprisingly stuck to his resolve, meeting you at the vending machine when he could’ve easily avoided you.

It was always more fun to challenge a competent opponent.

“This is the romance checklist.” You grinned proudly. “This has all the things we need to get you to fall in love.”

“How is it fair if you don’t do the checklist’s things too?”

“Well, that’s why I’m doing them with you.” You responded, already anticipating these types of questions. “I drafted the checklist off of the things I’ve observed over the years that should totally lead to feelings of love!”

“Whatever.” Kageyama said, his blue eyes scanning the paper’s contents. “How do you plan to do this?”

“We follow the steps.” You nodded. “Since I’m doing this with you, it’ll be foolproof.”

“Y/L/N...what if we competed against each other?” He mumbled. “We follow the checklist and use it against each other. Whoever falls in love first loses.”

“Do you really want to risk that?” You smirked, “That’s a bold move you’re making.”

Kageyama stood up straighter at this, the challenge burning deep in his eyes. “I’m going to win, so it won’t be an issue.”

“Suit yourself,” you grinned. “I’ll be winning this anyways.”

He simply smirked as he looked down at the paper, the promise of a challenge fresh and bright between them.

STEP ONE: MEET SOMEONE

After a long time, you had finally gotten some free time away from schoolwork and the obligations that pinned you down. It was a rare occurrence with the amount of pressure that the college prep class placed on you, and you intended to make the most of it.

You found yourself on the pathway of a cafe you used to frequent in the summer with your friends. It had always been a place to collect your thoughts and let your worries float away with every sip of one of the immaculately crafted beverages that they offered there. You felt your lips twitch in an involuntary smile at the memories.

“Y/L/N?” You heard a voice call out, a shocking contrast to the normal chattering you heard within the shop. Looking up, you were met with Kageyama’s eyes, narrowed and confused as you sat at the table frozen. “What are you here for?”

“It's a break for me,” you shrugged, “I come here all the time. I haven’t seen you here before.”

“They have good drinks,” Kageyama replied bluntly. A few beats of silence passed between them, with neither of them knowing what to add to the conversation.

“You can sit down with me.” You offered, gesturing to the empty seat across from you. “The more the merrier.”

He didn’t question this as he slid into the seat, fingers drumming on the table as he looked at the window. From your point of view, it was almost picturesque the way he managed to appear. His blue eyes were focused on the trees outside, and his posture was ever so casual and relaxed as he sat there, as if he had no other care in the world.

It was unfair how model-like he managed to appear, even despite the fact he wasn’t trying.

Ah. Perhaps this is what the girls at school noticed.

Once the drinks arrived at your table, the two of them drank in comfortable silence, admiring the flavors on their tongues as their surroundings continued on as normal. You didn’t feel the need to contribute anything to the silence, finding it calming in its own right.

“So Kageyama, are you feeling anything yet?” You teased, setting down your half-empty cup.

“No.” He admitted, setting down his drink as well. “I am supposed to?”

“Well technically no, but it’d be good if you did.” You chuckled, finding amusement in the cluelessness of his ways. “Step one of the romance checklist: meet somebody.”

“We already met though.” He countered, “How does this count as anything?”

“Well, we just encountered each other out of nowhere.” You smiled, “That counts as a meeting in my book.”

He wrapped his mind around this information, nodding solemnly. “I guess so then. I still don’t feel anything.”

“Neither do I.” You said, willing the slight butterflies in your stomach to subside. It was really nothing. This was simply a chance meeting, nothing more than luck and fate that had you encounter each other today of all days.

You shouldn’t have been affected this quickly. You felt far too warm, far too...fuzzy, for a meeting of chance. It was simply far too intimate.

Well, it seemed that Kageyama had gotten the one upon you at this stage.

You’d beat him next time. You knew you would.

STEP TWO: FLIRT

“You look good today Kags,” you smirked, feeling a sense of satisfaction creep up in your veins at his flushed cheeks,

Over the course of the weeks spent together, you had been able to learn more about the mysterious boy in front of you and had even formed a friendship of sorts. For starters, he was flustered very easily, which is why you decided to make your move so early in the morning.

“I look like how I do every day, dumbass!” He growled, the red deepening in his cheeks when you merely winked in response.

Ah yes. He tended to insult those he befriended. That was yet another endearing thing about the boy in front of you.

“No, something is different today,” you commented, “Did you do something with your hair?”

“No,” he frowned, the flush never subsiding from his cheeks. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m just saying genuine things you know.” You laughed, punching his shoulder casually. “Besides, I think I’m succeeding so far.”

“Succeeding? This is that stupid checklist again, isn’t it?” He sighed. “Step two: flirting. What is the point of this again?”

“It’s to show interest.” You remarked. “Besides, if you want me to fall for you, you’re going to at least have to act like you’re interested in me. I know it’s working on you so far.”

“No it’s not!” He yelled, although the defense was half-hearted. You knew he was merely putting up a front. You could tell it from his body posture alone.

You had the upper hand right now.

You waved him goodbye as you entered the Karasuno grounds, climbing the stairs to reach your class as he walked in the opposite direction. Even if you had the upper hand right now, you knew that you had to be on-guard the rest of the day.

If there was one thing you knew very well in the time you had spent with Kageyama, it was that he was extremely competitive. There was no way he’d ever go down without a fierce fight, especially when a month’s worth of milk was on the line.

You had been absolutely right to doubt him.

When lunchtime rolled around, he stood at the vending machine like he always did, leaning against it casually as he waited for you, his focus placed on the entrance.

The first thing you noticed was how calm he was. There was none of his usual frantic energy or the practiced insults that you threw back at one another. He simply stood there, content, as he watched you make your entrance.

The second thing you noticed was how an unconscious smile crept onto his face when you waved at him and slipped away the minute your eyes darted to his mouth. He sipped his milk casually, although you knew that internally, he was definitely scheming.

He could be a gremlin if left untapped.

You were about to purchase your snack in silence, thinking about all the ways he could win against you when you felt his hand on your shoulder. Turning around, you saw him holding out a container of your favorite snack, handing it to you wordlessly.

What?

“I thought I would get it today,” he shrugged, taking a sip of his milk. “You’ve bought me milk sometimes. It’s only fair.”

He didn’t consider it much of a big deal, but you felt your heart begin to accelerate in its pace at the thoughts that came flying into your head.

He had paid attention to your favorite snack? He had actually cared about when you bought him milk?

He noticed all of this?

“You...have a nice smile.” He mumbled, a flush rising onto his cheeks once again. You felt yourself fluster a bit at the compliment, not used to hearing it that often.

“Uhhh thanks.” You exhaled, not knowing how to respond to such an out-of-the-blue remark. “Your smile looks a lot like the Cheshire cat you know.”

For a moment his face was contorted into an expression of horror before he laughed a bit, the low chuckles sending heat straight to your cheeks.

Damn it. His laugh was adorable.

It was a low chiming sound, but it still managed to uplift your spirits in the brief time that you heard it. It was absolutely perfect.

You’d like to hear it again if you could.

A small smile was on his face as he looked to the ground, thinking about something while you took the time to really look at him. Behind the stone exterior, was someone talented, clueless, and amusing in every way you could possibly imagine.

You noticed how his posture mirrored yours, and the way how he smiled when your eyes finally met his own.

Damn it! He got the one-up on you. Again.

STEP THREE: GO ON THRILLING DATES

“Tobio! Let’s go on this one!” You yelled as you dragged him towards the large rollercoaster that caught your eye.

It was a beautiful Saturday with the most perfect weather. Sunny skies met a fresh breeze as you dragged Kageyama around the amusement park you had insisted on going to together. He kept with your quick pace as you went from ride to ride, never once letting go of his hand.

If anything, you were more confused why he didn’t comment on the fact that you had been holding hands that long. Rather he silently followed you from ride to ride, occasionally commenting on how small it looked for them.

From where you stood, the rollercoaster looked positively incredible with the multiple loops and drops in its track. This certainly fit the bill for thrilling. Maybe Kageyama could finally agree to ride this one.

“Y/N, do we really have to do this one?” He asked, his gaze not tearing away from the ride. “Doesn’t it look a bit too small for us?”

“Well if it’s too small, then we can still ride it as a joyride, don’t you think?” You grinned as you shoved him into the line of the coaster. Soon enough, it was your turn as you were ushered into the seats while the employees strapped you and Kageyama into the rollercoaster.

The wait was excruciating, with every second that passed sending a wave of anticipation and adrenaline through your system. Looking to your side, you saw Kageyama’s face, which was composed, even though his fingers drummed rapidly on the bar.

Was he nervous?

Hesitantly, you reached to clasp your hands together, relishing in the feeling of your palm on his as the rollercoaster suddenly began moving, bringing you up the tall lift hill.

“Tobio, are you okay?” You questioned as you neared the top, the grip he had on your hand tightening ever so slightly.

“I’m fine!” He yelled, just as the roller coaster fell over the lift hill, sending them into a plummeting drop.

You felt the exhilarating feeling of soaring as the ride propelled you forward, shouts of glee leaving your mouth ever so often. On the other hand, all you heard from Kageyama was the occasional shout of horror when they encountered yet another drop on the track, the grip he had on your hand deathly tight.

“Tobio! You’re afraid of rollercoasters?!” You shouted as you were guided into a loop.

“No I’m not!” He shouted back, shutting his eyes when he was finally upright again. “They just make me feel like I’m about to die!” When he opened his eyes, they first found yours in a look that was both petrified and fond. “I think I lost the bet!”

“You did what?!” You yelled as the wind rippled in your ears again.

“The bet Y/N! I think I’m in love with you!” He yelled. “I thought I should tell you before we die!”

You felt your heart soar at the words that had just been exchanged, a testament to the budding feelings you had felt for months around him.

“We’re not going to die.” You sighed as the ride finally slowed, feeling exhilarated as you smiled at him. “I love you too.”

Stepping off the rollercoaster, Kageyama was more silent than anything, red flush adorning his cheeks as you massaged soothing circles onto his hand. “We both lost it in the end.” You laughed.

“I think it was worth it,” he chuckled, the beautiful chime, showing you that he meant every word.

©mysterystarz all rights reserved, please do not plagiarize, translate, or modify my fics in any way even if credited

taglist (bold cannot be tagged): @moi-bunni @kousukii @littlecatfairy @iwasunshine @kawaii-angelanne @haikyuutothetop @dearkousei @catchmewiddershins @perqabeth @sunarinluvr @elektrosonix @milktyama

reblogs are very appreciated <3

#nova scribbles <3 #kageyama x reader #hq kageyama #hihqnetwork #kageyama fluff #tobio headcanons #tobio scenarios #kegayama tobio #tobio x reader #tobio x y/n #kageyama x y/n #reader x haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu scenarios #haikyu imagines #haikyuu #tobio fluff

[post-modern-prometheus]

So I was thinking a lot about the world before Logan went back in time, and I was also thinking a lot about Luna Maximoff, and I came up with this.

Before Logan goes back in time, Crystal and Peter meet sometime while he’s on the run from the government (probably for being a mutant and the son of Magneto.) They get married and have Luna, and for a while, everything is nice. But of course, all good things come to an end eventually. Especially with the Maximoff family, bc they have really shitty luck.

When Luna is four, Peter dies. And not long after, Crystal gets killed protecting her daughter from sentinels. Erik, while devastated at the loss of his only son and daughter-in-law, takes Luna in and raises her the best he can considering the circumstances. But things are getting worse and worse for mutants, so eventually the plan to send Logan back in time is made, and they put it into motion.

It works, and the timeline is fixed a few months before Luna turns nine. But because of the changes Logan made, Peter and Crystal don’t meet at the right time (or at all) and Luna is not born in the new timeline.

And yet, by some weird twist of fate, she ends up there anyway.

One moment, Luna is hiding in her room as things go to shit around her, and the next, she is waking up in a random field without a single soul in sight. Confused, she starts walking. And eventually, she comes across a town. Luna then finds a newspaper and learns that it’s 1983, a little over a month after En Sabah Nur was defeated.

Luna, despite being only eight years old, connects the dots pretty quickly and realizes that Logan must have fixed the timeline, and somehow, she was transported into this new one. Then Luna realizes that her parents must be alive if that’s the case, and she gets excited briefly before realizing they probably arent together yet (and might not ever be). That and they won’t remember having a daughter.

The idea of this hurts, but the fact that they weren’t dead makes up for it. And despite the really weird and difficult situation she found herself in, Luna is a Maximoff, which means she’s a survivor. She steals some food, water, and a few pairs of new clothes and spends a few days wandering the streets of the town she found herself in, kind of just relishing in her new freedom.

But her new life is lonely. Super lonely. And she misses her family — especially her grandfather, who she was rarely away from since her parent’s deaths. And yet, no matter how tempting it is to go searching for them, she knows they probably wouldn’t believe her if she told them who she was. So she stays alone, even if it hurts sometimes.

Things don’t stay that way, though. Because, as I mentioned before, the Maximoff family doesn’t have the best of luck. So of course, shit goes wrong for Luna.

Essentially what happens is that, while hanging out in a park, Luna sees a group of police officers chasing a woman who is obviously a mutant. They shoot at the woman, and before Luna can stop to think about it, she’s using her powers to take control of the officer’s minds, which allows the woman to escape unharmed. (I checked the wiki, she can actually do this)

But what Luna isn’t aware of is that one of the policemen had been working for a group of people who captured and experimented on mutants. And as soon as they’re free from her mind control, goes to report what happened to their boss. They find out about Luna and, intrigued by her abilities, track her down and capture her. And since Luna is a child with powers she’s not in complete control of, they overpower her easily.

Luna spends months in a facility created by the anti-mutant group. And soon, the scientists experimenting on her find out about her relation to Magneto. They also find out about her being part inhuman, and seeing as the existence of inhumans have yet to be revealed in this timeline, the discovery makes them even more intrigued by her, and so she’s experimented on a lot more than other mutants in the place.

Right as Luna loses almost all hope of getting out, the x men find out about the facility and break into it to free the mutants captured inside. Erik is the one who comes across Luna hiding in the corner of her cell and is quick to free her. But as soon as she sees his face, Luna bursts into tears and barrels into him, not caring if he has no recollection of her. Bc she missed her grandfather goddammit.

Erik is confused about the crying child hugging him, but he brushes it off and assumes that she’s just emotional about being freed. So he picks her up and brings her to where the x men are putting all the freed mutants, except when he tries to put her down, she sort of just... doesn’t let go? She just clings to him.

The x men are a mix of confused, worried, and amused when they see a tired looking Erik holding a small crying child, but they brush it off and bring everyone back to the school. After all, they aren’t exactly unfamiliar with mutants being emotional after being freed, nor are they unfamiliar with comforting the mutant children who they find, so they don’t think much of Luna’s behavior.

But then they reach the school and Luna still will not let go of Erik.

Literally no one can get her to let go. Not even Jean or Charles can do anything bc Luna has an immunity to telepaths. And no one is all that willing to force her away from Erik either, bc they still don’t know what her powers are and they don’t want to cause any distress to Luna in case she lashes out with them.

In the end, Peter is the one who gets her to let go.

The thing is, he doesn’t even mean to. All he does is limp into the room to say hello and ask how the mission went (bc he’s still recovering from having his leg broken by En Sabah Nur.) But as soon as he opens his mouth to speak, there’s suddenly a small blonde child barreling into him with enough force to knock him to the ground. This just further confuses everyone.

But even though Peter has no idea who this kid is, the sight of her crying causes his heart to break as his parental instincts go haywire, telling him to protect and comfort this random child. So, no matter how much these new and sudden instincts confuse him, he hugs Luna. And it feels... strangely right?

(I’m sorry I just wanted more Luna content)

something something dadneto something something history repeats itself something something-

nah bc this. and now i cant stop thinking about how peter trying to tell erik could parallel with luna trying to tell peter-

#luna maximoff #peter maximoff #erik lensherr #dadneto

[fanfiction-funtime]

IM SORRY IVE BEEN SLACKING ON HYPING YOU UP

Anyway I’m reading through the Things ™ and wow

Can I request something? There’s an idea I’ve been pondering for a bit. You know already who I’ll ask for, I’m guessing.

What if the reader fell for Xiao in Genshin, in a state where they constantly daydream about him. Rather than working on scenarios and scenes, it happens in real time.

Meanwhile, in another universe, Xiao in a modern setting has fallen for a Genshin character- the reader. He daydreams about them in the same manner.

To the reader, their Xiao is a guardian yaksha, Golden adeptus, and doombane itself.

To Xiao, his (y/n) is something just as exalted. I tend to use a seelie, since they’re an immortal race of ancient and now weak gods.

What they both don’t know is that they’re actually meeting in those daydreams. It’s not just imagination and the longing for company, but an actual relationship with another person.

Bonus points if it’s some sort of soulmate au and they physically can’t find each other and eventually realize it.

I’ve never told anyone about this before, and I’m excited to see what you do with it! I might work with it one day, just not yet.

(Hoo boy, this will be tough, but I'm sure I can do it! Xiao might be a bit ooc as I'm getting his personality from wiki and fanon, as well as modern au [hopefully] gives him less trauma and a slightly different personality.)

(Also, I can't do sad endings. So a bit of deus ex OC at the 3rd part)

---------------------------

Your game

---------------------------

Your pov: the dream eater of your dreams

---------------------------

You are (y/n)(l/n), and you are in the saddest love story this side of the lake.

Ever since you saw him in that first quest you were in love!

You were just a teen though, so it wasn't real right? After all, your red string wasn't connected to the screen.

Well, your string isn't connected to anything...

Y-your just a late bloomer though right?

(Ten years later)

Your now in your twenties and you still love Xiao!

He permeates your thoughts like how lovers do, you feel an inexplicable hurt in your chest similar to what many describe feeling when they see their soulmate prior to their string appearing, not to mention whenever you aren't busy you feel like you're...slipping...in...in and...

[Daydream]

It was happening again.

It was like a daydream but more...real.

Like a lucid dream.

You saw your string, just like so many other times, and you followed it.

You ran and ran, turquoise clouds parting and making paths for you to find him.

Him..

You ran and ran, glad that atleast in some way your delusions can give you some semblance of true love.

You saw the..wait..that's not the inn.

Well it is the inn, but more modern. And there was a school next to it, and a small village not far away.

Another of thing was that you were in some kind of yellow armor, it reminded you of those baby geovisnaps from genshin impact(that are absolutely BULL-)

You went into the elevator, which seemed more ancient than usual.

And when you reached the balcony, you saw him. But he was different.

Instead of the Yaksha you usually saw, you were greeted by an equally shocked man in a martial arts gi. But it was him.

But different.

You reached out, and he did the same.

And you touched

---------------------------

Xiao's pov: the midsummer knight of his dreams

---------------------------

(Clarifying: in this version Liyue is based on European mythology and aesthetic while Mondstadt is based on Chinese. So you are a fae hunting knight rather than a demon hunting yaksha)

Xiao had always been reserved, but what happened to him as a kid drew him further into his shell.

Abusive parents, accidentally giving his sister trauma induced amnesia, he felt the weight of his actions like atlas feels the world on his shoulders.

Luckily, two people took him and his sister QiQi in: QiQi's doctor Baizhu, and Xiao's therapist(and Baizhu's husband) Morax.

It was difficult to come out, even after Xiao stopped feeling so at fault. So he mostly stayed in his room and played video games.

That is until he met you.

Well met is the wrong word here.

He saw your character in his world's version of genshin impact: tribunal eruption

The way you used your weapon, the way your armor shined in the night as you rode to his wanderer. The smile you gave as he handed you (favourite food).

But most of all, the way you used fighting styles from so many martial arts and hand to hand combat techniques.

From irish kickboxing to karate, from assassination arts in ancient history of japan to systema.

It awoken two things in him: first was his want to learn martial arts and make his own.

The second was his love for you.

But don't worry, your physical attributes only drew him in. Your personality made him stay.

Years went on, he became a martial arts instructor for his own style, and moved into an apartment near a small village.

He started teaching at a school nearby, he even gets a discount on rent for giving free lessons to the owner's sons, Ivan and Viktor.

He's also convinced those two have a crush on him but it's pointless.

After all, he was a dream eater, a common group of people who have a strange ability to find their soulmate.

Specifically, the ability to have "lucid daydreams" where they meet their soulmate.

But he must be defective. After all his soulmate kept appearing as...well you. As a knight that would meet him on the balcony every night.

He assumed maybe it was your voice actor or designer, but neither of them have had the lucid daydreams.

He began thinking he'd never find his soulmate

Until one daydream...

He was on the balcony again, like a prince awaiting his knight to rescue him.

But it was different.

The apartment complex he lived in now looked much smaller, as did the tree it was built around, and the building looked far more ancient in design yet so much younger in age.

And the village and school nearby aren't there anymore.

Oddest change of all is that his gi he was wearing just a second ago is now similar to the outfit warn by the mondstadt demon slayer Corps

And when you arrived at the balcony, he noticed a red string, one that connected your heart to his. But you weren't wearing your armor, you were wearing casual, modern clothes.

He knew it was stupid, after all you can't touch your soulmate in the daydreams. But he felt compelled to....to reach out and..

You touched him.

---------------------------

nothing never comes between you, and nobody helps you get together

---------------------------

(3rd person pov)

He really did find it annoying, how often mortals would find themselves in the wrong dimension, especially when it's because the writer wants drama. And now he's written in to solve the problem.

Ah well, it's his job.

(2nd person pov)

You didn't know how to feel. You were touching Xiao...and you weren't waking up. Was this...real?

"You... you're real...different but....still the person I love...." Xiao seemed to be equally in a trance at the prospect

"yeah...so are you..."

The armor you wore melted away, and you cant see it but Xiao's fictional clothes melted from him as well. You were both equally real, in your own reality.

But you knew it couldn't last.

"When the daydream ends, I wont be able to see you anymore," Xiao said with a sea of tears in his eyes, "We've actually met now...and now...now the dreams will end."

You lean into him, "then let's make this dream the best one we've ever had."

Your about to kiss when-

"Terribly sorry about this!" A childlike voice called, "you know, interrupting your moment and all that. See for the sake of narrative, you both were put in separate universes. And it's my job to give you a happy ending."

When you both looked, you saw a child made of bone climbing into reality from some kind of hole.

"Now just wait a moment aaannnd-"

The turquoise clouds cleared, and the world rippled into a conjoined reality between genshin impact and tribunal eruption.

"Welcome to your dream world, enjoy eternal love!" The child said as he crawled back into the hole and it closed.

When he was gone, you both observed the world around you: a beautiful mix of aesthetics surrounded you, and both your armor and his adeptus clothing were on you both.

You gazed into eachother's eyes.

He placed one hand on your cheek while another held your hand, "I'm not good with speaking..speaking my emotions..but I....maybe my actions can do that for me..."

You felt your red string radiate with the warmth of love, likewise Xiao felt his daydreams dissipate like a haze leaving his mind.

You grab his hand and place your free hand on his cheek, mirroring his love, as you always have.

"Xiao...your very existence tells me all I need to hear.."

You both leaned in, and kissed.

Two lovers, in a dream made reality,

A paradise for all eternity.

---------------------------

I feel it kinda fell apart with the deus ex, but I think I scraped it back together in the end!

I hope it's good enough for what you envisioned buddy, I tried my best!

(Also I think you deserve something just as good as what happens to the reader insert in this fic, story)

(Tagging: @golden-wingseos (this is the writing blog for someone you told to tag you), and @storytravelled (just to keep the idea of tagging in mind))

#i will explain some choices in a reblog #genshin impact fanfiction #genshin #genshin impact #xiao #genshin xiao #xiao x reader

[a-dragons-journal]

Personal Songs

(crossposted from the Fictionfolk Dreamwidth)

So, yesterday's prompt about music got me wanting to write actual Na'vi lyrics to the Iknimaya song, which got me researching Na'vi music to see if there's overarching patterns re: rhythm and rhyme I should adhere to, which sent me on a wiki rabbithole because there's a lot more canon on that than I'd realized, which led to me stumbling into the article on personal songs. Quoth the article:

Na'vi express their innermost feelings through quiet improvisational singing (way), usually when alone in the midst of the forest. Both men and women perform this genre, usually when wandering by themselves, and often as appreciation of the beauty of their world. Eywa, the Hometree, and mates are the most common audience for this type of musical expression. These songs may take the form of a slow, mournful, undulating melody with very little variation in pitch, or a livelier sort of warbling. Some Na'vi sing using words to express their sentiments; others leave the sentiment to be expressed through their melodies.

Me: ...So I definitely do that, and have been doing that for years; is this a normal thing people do, or should I be rethinking my "this hearthome is a purely psychological acquired-later-in-life thing" theory

Personal songs are definitely a thing I do, though not super often - but how often am I wandering outside alone for more than two minutes at a stretch, really? I've sung to myself while spreading grass seed in the pasture, while walking around in summer eating raspberries in our yard, and just while standing under the moon or in the rain enjoying the beauty of it - to me it's part hymn to the gods, part hymn to the world and its spirits, and part just personal emotional expression. Usually I don't use words, but I have sung at least one in Na'vi, again before ever knowing this is A Thing in Avatar canon - definitely I was using it as language practice, but isn't it interesting that the mood for that struck me while humming a personal song?

Genuinely I'm not sure how to react to this new information; certainly there's a level of just "hey, neat" about it, but I also have a kind of "...well that's a mildly disconcerting coincidence in the light of my hearthome connection to this world" reaction on some level. I had just fully accepted that that hearthome connection was purely psychological, too, acquired later in life, and now there's this funny little coincidence that's going to poke at me about it.

But it is just one coincidence, which I try not to put too much stock in. I'll have to focus on the comfort part of it - the part that says, isn't it neat that you have this connection to something in your hearthome's canon, without even realizing it? The Na'vi are only one part of Pandora, but they're the part that we have by far the most information about - to a degree that's sometimes frustrating to me, honestly, even as it's completely understandable coming from a fandom perspective - and they are a part of it, of Eywa, as integrated with Eywa'eveng as any other, so it's not so bad to have them as the biggest anchor point for me to connect to.

For now, I suppose I'll just keep singing to myself and my world and my gods. There may not be an Eywa here, but there is a beautifully interconnected world nonetheless. Eywa ngahu, ma frapo // Eywa (go) with you, everyone.

#fictionfolk #hearthome #rani talks #listen if nobody else is gonna write experience essays about hearthomes then i guess i'll have to do it myself #journaling

[majimemegoro]

So this is copy pasted from a google doc I wrote it all down in last night. Uh to preface it’s been awhile since I played y5 and my focus wasn’t really on the mountain stuff when I did so I cross referenced the wiki and what I remembered from your stuff mostly for a lot of this so i might have forgotten some things. Also this is basically a rough timeline of how the concept i think could play out from backstory to y5, likely with tweaks bc I think a few points are a tad weak currently, so some stuff I think would be interesting to go into is mostly glossed over. Anyways enjoy my thought dump.

So idea, with real magic and actual mythical creatures and ghost and stuff being actually real in the yakuza games,

why not werebear og Okudera?

Werebear Yama-Orochi Okudera even

So something funky happens on a yakuza job, and okudera finds himself suddenly a werebear. While somehow keeping the bear part specifically under wraps, he starts poking his nose into a bunch of stuff he shouldn’t be trying to as to find answers, and ends up expelled from the yakuza in response to all his really weird behavior and actions.

Okudera then ends up at the mountain village somehow, maybe to get away from tons of people to minimize risk or hoping a more traditional place might have the answers he seeks. They probably don’t, but he sticks around because there’s plenty of space to transform and wander as a bear for a while without much risk. (He has no control as a bear as you can guess)

Some time passes and the transformation gets harder to control, Okudera is out for longer times, and his control on pushing back the actual transformation window sometimes doesn’t work as well as it used to but Okudera doesn’t think too much of it at the time.

Sato shows up sometime and Okudera rescues him, and gets pretty attached in the process, even though he has a good idea why Sato had shown up in the first place. They have a good time for awhile, but Okudera finally realizes that the bear thing is becoming increasingly hard to control especially with the level of suppressing he’s been doing so that Sato doesn’t find out, and he can’t slip out for a few days here and there anymore- the last time he did he ended up in bear form for most of a week, and Sato thought Okudera had actually wisened up to him and booked it before Okudera finally made it back to the cabin, the relief of his friend target being back was the only reason Okudera got away with it at all.

Following that incident Okudera realizes he’s probably out of time for dealing with the bear thing- it’s just something he instinctively knows is at the end of his control now, and decides to do something about it while he still has a chance.

So he tells Sato he’s going out to hunt Yama-Orochi, and heads out.

Sato follows later of course, he doesn’t want to miss the opportunity to kill Okudera, after such a close call, plus clearly he’d stalled too long already.

They have their confrontation, where Okudera realizes that Sato has gotten too attached to kill him which would be great if the whole bear thing wasn’t looming over them. So he tells Sato about the werebear thing, and to take his name and get a second chance at life where Okudera can’t, and to say he was killed by the bear instead.

Sato obviously thinks he’s talking nonsense.

Until the high emotions trigger the transformation and Okudera transforms into a bear, which stuns Sato who’s unable to even shoot at the bear as it runs away into the forest.

Sato takes the whole situation and everything into mind as he holes up in the cabin before deciding to take Okudera’s words as a dying message, and thus take his identity.

Sato puts off hunting down Yama-Oroshi for a bit though because despite the whole bear thing he’s still working through the fact it was once his friend. Which catches up to him when a year later Yama-Oroshi’s gotten more aggressive and the town is attacked by the bear because of stuff the villagers were doing. The newly dubbed Okudera steps in to deal with that because hearing your past friend who is now a bear came really close to eating people (and possibly now is resorting to eating stray people in general) makes him sick. And OG Okudera instilled good environmental and hunting values into him so the whole thing just rubs him the wrong way.

Stuff mostly continues like normal from there, but now Sato’s trying to hunt down Yama-Oroshi because he wants to put his friend to rest- as he regrets not doing so that day, but he hides it under other reasons when others ask.

After several near misses and being still unable to kill Yama-Orochi even when face to face through the events of y5, Sato comes to terms with the fact that he can’t kill the bear, and after reveals from the villagers, and a somewhat truthful reveal (no werebear stuff mentioned) from Sato himself, he decides to instead treat the bear as if it was simply one of the rest of the wildlife maybe he could get over the loss then. Because if he is truly getting a second chance at life from all of this then OG Okudera should as well, even if he is a bear now- especially bc of that even, since OG Okudera didn’t get the chance to truly atone for his own yakuza shit due to the whole bear thing.

Another reason for Sato wanting to stick around the village following everything and not go back to prison like he’d originally planned is because he wanted to keep an eye out for Yama-Orochi and the village to make sure neither got hurt, like having to scare off the bear or such.

(Perhaps with time and things calming down on the mountain OG Okudera somehow turns back, or perhaps Sato never sees Yama-Orochi ever again who knows)

ANON. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING I ACTUALY LOVE THIS SO MUCH. AAAAAA. IT WORKS SO WELL

#AaaaaAAAAAAAAAA #okudera #sato kiyoshi #yakuza 5 #frozen roar #yakuza kiryu #hunting village #yama-oroshi #IVE BEEN HAVING A REALLY BAD TIME AND THIS IS. REALLY A GODSEND. #THANK YOU

[h2bakugou]

hey, i wasn't sure if you were taking requests, so if you aren't, it's ok to ignore this !!! i was thinking about a bakugou one, where his crush or s/o has a quirk like akutagawa's rashomon (stray dogs). since it's dark and offensive, people may be scared of her, so she's constantly hiding her true self and whole capacity thinking she can prove herself as hero like that. maybe her realization can come in a battle? it was too long, I'm sorry !!! have a nice day ☃️ anon

a/n: hi love! i love this request!! i started bungo stray dogs but never got the chance to finish it, i should get back on that, it was really good lol. i’m using the wiki a bit to help out with the quirk!

summary: with a quirk that seems villainous to others, you’re worried your career as a hero might be doomed unless you keep it all hidden. bakugou’s yet to see you at your full strength, but he will soon.

key: (y/n) - your name / (f/n) - first name / (l/n) - last name / (e/c) - eye color / (h/c) - hair color / Rashōmon - your quirk

warnings: fluff, swearing, a bit of angst

wordcount: 1k

»»————-　★　————-««

»»————-　★　————-««

You’d hid the full power of your quirk for as long as you could remember. Every hope and dream of becoming a hero with ‘a quirk like yours’ had crumbled. Yet here you were, a single thread of passion filled inside your heart to be a hero.

To at least prove to those who doubted you, that you could do it. That you could be a hero and save people.

Bakugou had noticed from the start that you were strong. Your otherwise weak performance was clearly a front for something. You were hiding something. Your true ability, the extent of your power. But why?

He couldn’t figure out why you hid your true strength. Someone like you, who seemed to excel in class and do well in all the fields, yet when it came to training, you were standoffish and shy. You’d much rather train by yourself than with the class.

And you were reserved when it came to one on one sparring. Bakugou had seen this first hand.

You were, by no means, using your quirk at full capacity. He was able to take you down in no time, yet you’d managed to score pretty high in the entrance exams. So how on Earth were you so bad at fighting?

It wasn’t until the entire class was being threatened by villains. 

Class 1-A had a knack for finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time constantly. Whether it be plain ol’ bad luck, or maybe a curse bestowed upon them by one of the villains, they never got a break.

Bakugou was busy holding off a few of the stronger guys, but his eyes would wander over to you. He could tell you were holding back, and it was making him angrier by the second.

Once he’d finished off the group attacking him, he darted over to you, landing an explosive punch on the man attacking you.

“You really think you can be a hero if all you do if half-ass everything?” Bakugou yelled, his crimson eyes burning holes into you.

“What?” You groaned, wiping sweat from your forehead.

"Stop fucking around. You’re stronger than you let on, and we’re fixing to get fucking killed if you don’t start taking this serious.” Bakugou sent out another explosion toward an approaching villain.

“I am taking this seriously-”

“No the fuck you’re not!” Bakugou yelled.

You stood still, your eyes widening. His words penetrated through the wall you had built up for years. Trying to protect yourself, to protect those around you.

The walls that you now saw. And the more you looked at them, the more you could see how you hadn’t put them up at all. In fact, you’d say those walls had been up long before the walls you had managed to put up. The grey-colored bricks stacked in front of you only made it about halfway up your body while there stood a towering wall in front of it.

Moss covered, cracked bricks stared back at you.

A large crack shot across the center of the wall, dust and debris falling around it, the wall tumbling down before you. It felt so surreal.

And in that moment, you stopped holding back. You let out the full strength of your quirk, unleashing the power you’d been holding back for the sake of the people who had deemed you villainous.

You charged at full speed toward the leader of the villain group that was attacking your class.

“Rashōmon!” You shouted, calling upon your quirk, unleashing an attack that would shield you from the various attacks they were throwing at you.

In another attack, you waved your right arm, causing spikes to come up from the ground, impaling a few members in the legs, causing them to stop, it was brutal, but not near enough to kill them. They’d definitely feel it in the morning though.

And for your final attack, you went in, straight for the leader, dozens of spider-web like strings, seemingly razor sharp, came charging toward the leader, cutting into his skin and capturing him.

“Holy shit.” Bakugou muttered, the rest of the class watching as you took the villain down.

It didn’t take long for the police and reinforcements to show up, and then it was escorting everyone injured or not to the hospital to get checked up.

“I didn’t know she could do that!”

“Yeah, that was totally unexpected.” 

Kaminari and Mina chatted among their friends, waiting for the news on how you were doing. You had startled Mr. Aizawa, so there was a reason for him to want to talk to you privately and make sure you were okay.

But what your classmates didn’t expect was for you to run out of your room right into the arms of Bakugou.

Even he was surprised.

“Thank you.” You hugged him tightly, his arms wrapped around you while his cheeks flushed from embarrassment. Pushing away his pride for just a few seconds, he embraced you.

Pulling you into an empty room, he shut the door behind him and stared at you.

“We’re training from now on.”

“W-what why?” You looked up at the blonde as he glared out of the hospital room window.

"Because, you’re strong, and I think you’ve got what it takes to take me on in a fight.”

You stood silently, a new feeling bubbling inside of you. The feeling of worth, of need. A feeling for more of Bakugou. It was rushed, but something you’d wanted to do for a while now.

Tugging him down to your height, you gripped at the fabric of his shirt, pressing his lips to yours, connecting the two of you in a kiss.

Bakugou’s lips were rough compared to your soft ones. But the difference made it that much better. Your grip released on his shirt as you relaxed into the kiss, Bakugou’s hand holding the small of your back as he leaned into it.

He was a stranger to affection, and would’ve denied any feelings before he came to terms with them. But here he was, kissing the girl he’d developed a crush on.

“I’ll work with you on one condition.” You pulled away, his breath ghosting over your lips.

“You have to be my boyfriend.”

“Deal.”

»»————-　★　————-««

masterlist

#bakugou #bakugo #katsuki #katsuki bakugou #katsuki bakugo #bakugou katsuki #bakugo katsuki #bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #katsuki x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugo katsuki x reader #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #mha #bnha #my hero academia x reader #boku no hero academia x reader #mha x reader #bnha x reader

[greyias]

Time to go Full Gravedrog

Hey guys. You know what we haven’t done in a while? That’s right! Put on our tinfoil hats, get tangled up in an entire spool of red string, and do a ridiculous deep dive on lore and make up wild insane theories about the upcoming story drop!

That’s right we’ve got some--

First up. If you haven’t watched it already, here’s the trailer for the 6.2 story drop, specifically for the storyline we’ll be doing our deep dive on, Echoes of Oblivion.

Are you pumped? I’M PUMPED. Let’s do this!

Okay, so there’s a lot to unpack here, and I’m going to state outright, that the chances of this being on the money like Gravedrog is... well. I’ve got no lottery numbers for you this time around. I can’t believe no one took me up on that offer.  There’s always the possibility the storyline has absolutely nothing to do with any previously established lore, and they create something wholly new. And hey, if that’s the case, this is just free fanfic fodder for the masses.

But Charles did mention, I believe on the forums(?), that he’s seen one person guess what’s going on. The real question is... WHO GUESSED IT. HMM.

So I’ve been wanting to actually do a post on this a while, at least since Arcann’s voice actor accidentally made the slip up about Thexan being in this story drop. A large part of this theory/discovery goes to the lovely @confettininjabean​​, who found this piece of lore when we were getting tangled up in red string back in the Gravedrog days, pre-Nathema Conspiracy. Let’s just say, there was a... certain interaction on Twitter that had us thinking this had something to do with NC, and when it didn’t pan out we were like “Oh, weird, guess that wasn’t on the right track” and forgot about it.

Well, sort of. Because we were like, “that really seemed significant considering”, but hey, sometimes you hit upon a Gravedrog, sometimes you think Indo Zal is an evil mastermind playing 4D chess. In other words, when it comes to red string theories, you win some. You lose some.

Anyway. I forget why, but I went perusing on Wookieepedia a few months ago, looking back up this sort of obscure piece of lore for some reason. And something about it was.... FAMILIAR.

The article in question: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Thought_bomb

May I direct your attention, to this part:

Hey. Where have I heard that before?

Aw. Aw shit. Well I mean, that can’t be right though, right? Because it’s Satele and a bunch of Jedi/like-minded Force users that are being possessed right? And besides this is an an ancient Sith ritual thought to be created by... 

Oh.

Oh wait.

But that’s a plague right? Not the same thing as a thought bomb. I mean it’s not like anyone in SWTOR has dealt with a Force plague--

Oh. huh. But you might say, “But Grey, that plague was invented by Terrak Morrhage, not Vitiate.” And you would be right! What I can’t seem to find confirmation of, thus far, is exactly when Terrak Morrhage lived, but by me and Jayde’s current reckoning, it seems like he may have been around possibly during the Great Hyperspace War, the end of which Vitiate used in his mad grab for immortality and power, manipulating what was probably a majority of the remaining Sith Lords into his brand spanking new ritual that he just needed a little help with.

Okay, and this is where we leave lore land, and enter into speculation land. I, um, just got sidetracked on Jedipedia (I’ll get to that), trying to find a codex entry regarding Vitiate I know I’ve read but I lost at some point. So, we’re going off memory here, but I’m fairly certain it’s stated in canon somewhere that prior to his ascension, Vitiate was obsessed with Sith alchemy and ancient Sith rituals. So if Morrhage pre-dated him, or was a peer, it’s possible Vitiate was able to learn about his plague, and adapt it to some of his other experiments.

Okay, back to the thought bomb for a moment. Full disclosure, I haven’t read the Darth Bane novels, so I’m going off of Wookiepeedia here instead of the source material (which is always a dicey affair), it says Bane adapted the thought bomb from notes on the ritual Vitiate performed. So, it’s possible the thought bomb is not a 100% Vitiate original, just a bastardization of it. But it’s interesting that the ritual itself gathers up and shreds the Force essence/soul of everyone in its path. Well, I mean, horrifying. But in this theory’s perspective, interesting in that when Vitiate used Zildrog as part of his ritual--where did all of the Force go exactly?

Because as you wander around Nathema, you hear the tortured whispers of every soul obliterated during that ritual.

This is talked about a little in the Revan novel, and it’s been a few years since I read it so I’m kind of going off memory again, but he basically created a void in the Force there. And remember... in the KOTET chapter we went to Nathema, he was actually visibly afraid a few times. Hmm... now why would that be? Was it Vaylin he was afraid of? Was it something else?

If memory serves, there wasn’t an actual explosion like as described with the thought bomb--because he wasn’t using the ritual as a weapon. He was using it to gather power, to shuffle off this mortal coil and live eternal as an annoying spirit who you just can’t quite squash out no matter how many mind mazes you build to keep him locked up. So, and again, this is speculation land, but all of that swirling Force and dead energy had to go somewhere right? I mean, Zildrog had his snack and went omnomnom, but where did the Force power go? And why was there a Void that constantly pulled at him and sapped away his power on Nathema?

Is it because the Force didn’t explode? Is it because he bound it up in his old disgusting decaying old man flesh? And the only reason he was alive because he basically made himself a little flesh horcrux that was destroyed at the exact moment we sent him off to the Void that he feared so much?

Hmm. Interesting.

Wait. Wait a second... I think there was something else he mentioned. Now, what was it?

You know, I had always assumed he was talking about Gravedrog being unleashed, since the whole reason he went to Zakuul was likely to find the Gravestone so he could pair it with Zildrog back on Nathema, and enact his galaxy-wide extinction event.

And maybe he was.

Or was he talking about his failsafe.

The one he knew would happen if someone destroyed his old, withered, icky body?

So... if the ritual/plague is some take on the thought bomb, and it infects any Force user like some prescient, who could have realized this is what 2020 held in store for us pandemic that spread rapidly and consumed everyone who touched it, until it made manifest what was once just thought...

Is the whole entire point of this to bring Valky back from the dead? Or is it just his last revenge? And what on earth would that last revenge be? Well... and just hear me out. Say there was this guy. Kind of an asshole. And he had this whole schtick about killing every single living thing in the galaxy and liked to consume whole planets in a single gulp just for funsies. Wouldn’t it be so funny if he, say, in the unlikely event he possessed some Outlander who happened to go “get out and get a job loser!” and booted him off to the beyond, and at the same time his old indentured servant and that chick he once possessed found his horcrux and destroyed that, wouldn’t it be a kick if that somehow kicked off a plague that consumed every single Force user in the entire galaxy until it had enough power and then exploded and completely wiped out all life in the galaxy, so that if the asshole who’s name totally isn’t Valkorion couldn’t live forever then neither could any. single. thing. in. the. galaxy.

I mean, that or it’s just a ploy to get him into one final boss fight.

But i dunno... I kind of just found the entire cast list of who’s in the Echoes of Oblivion storyline (warning, major spoilers and datamining on that link, and yes, that’s what distracted me on Jedipedia) and I’m kind of thinking. Having to keep the entire galaxy from being consumed by a sociopath’s final revenge kind of sounds like a pretty epic finale, don’t you?

And hey, if not. Free fanfic idea for anyone who wants it.

Oh yeah, also predicting the following:

We’re going on another mindscape adventure like in KOTET Chapter 9, but it’s Satele’s mind we’re in

It’s not actually Valkorion/Vitiate/Tenebrae, but a remnant/essence of him that’s made manifest by the ritual. Also he needs a combo nickname because I’m tired of having to pick one of three names. I shall call you Valkiatebrae. It’s a beautiful name. I know he’ll love it.

Vaylin and Thexan who we see in the trailer are probably also manifestations conjured by the quasi- Valkiatebrae

We’re going to Ossus? Or Ossus in Satele’s mind?

The Knight and crew missed a few of the death cult back in the storyline, and that’s who was either watching Tenebrae’s body, or who hijacked Satele’s ship OR they have some part in the ritual (perhaps the part to physically manifest  Valkiatebrae). We see them in the trailer above.

Regardless if any single one of these predictions is right I’m going to die of feels

Because I think Satele and Theron may have a scene together????? OMG

I’m screaming again

I’ll stop now

I’m sorry Charles I hope I didn’t do it to you again I couldn’t help myself, but hey at least I kept it in this long

EDITED TO ADD: Okay guys, I’ve been looking more at Jedipedia. I think I can safely hazard a guess that a LOT of fans of different characters are going to be super happy with this update. Just saying.

#the return of spoilers grey #swtor spoilers #spoilers and speculation #swtor 6.2 spoilers #swtor 6.2 #honestly there's a lot more #but i've been thinking about this for so long #i know i've forgotten to include half of it #and i haven't had time to find all of my source #but here you go guys! #one last hurrah #and i even found a way to shoehorn gravedrog in there for you!

[redhoodssweetheart]

Love Languages (BatFam Version)

Genre: Fluff

Relationship: No Romantic Relations

Requested: Yes (REQUESTS ARE CLOSED)

Word Count: 2.2K

Warnings: None

Description: Dick learns about the love languages and shares them with the others in his family.

A/N: The Reader version should be out tomorrow.

Dick had always been a loveable person.  He was open and carrying to those around him.  And recently he had been learning about the five languages of love.  He had come across them by accident when he had been surfing the web.  He had been on a Wiki deep dive when he had come across the article.

From there his interest in the subject grew and he decided that he was going to use the five languages of love on his family.  This is how it went.

Quality Time

The first was the easiest to achieve.  Living in the mansion with everyone meant that there was a lot of time to spend together.  Dick had gone to Alfred and said he wanted to help make a family dinner for everyone.  Alfred had been surprised at first wondering what had brought this one, but he agreed.

Dick then told the others that that coming Friday was a family dinner and there were no exceptions.  They all had to show up.  There had been a few grumbles about dinner, but nothing to major.  They mainly seemed intrigued by this idea.

Friday came and Dick and Alfred spent the majority of the afternoon preparing the meal.  Occasionally someone would come in and see what was happening.  Damian snickered when he saw Dick’s “Kiss the cook” apron with the cartoon chef on it.  Dick paid no mind to Damian’s gentle teasing.

Alfred then showed Dick how to properly make rolls like the family seemed to enjoy the most.  He coached him on how to keep an eye on them so that they wouldn’t burn.  Dick listened intently to everything that Alfred told him and prepared the rolls accordingly.

Once dinner was in the oven and there wasn’t much else that could be done at the moment Alfred showed Dick how to properly set the table.  Bruce was already in there reading the evening paper when he heard Alfred’s gentle tone and saw Dick following along, his gaze fixed on what Alfred was showing him.  Bruce briefly wondered what this was about and why Dick seemed to take such an interest in this now.

Soon the timers were going off and Alfred and Dick set to arranging the food on platters and plates just so.  The two men carried the plates and platters out on a cart and Dick was happy to see that everyone had showed up.  Tim sat on Bruce’s left at the head of the table, Damian on the right, Jason by Tim, and Dick would be by Damian.

Alfred went to leave, but Dick stopped him, “Stay and eat with us Alfred, you’re a part of this family too.”

Alfred smiled fondly at Dick and promised that he would be back momentarily.  He returned and sat beside Jason.  Dick had made sure that everyone had put their phones on silent and put them in a basket outside the dining room.  He wanted them all to talk without the distractions of everyday life.  The only phone allowed at the table was the one that Commissioner Gordon called in case of an emergency.

Overall Dick was happy with how the evening had gone and was pleasantly surprised when they all even offered to help with the dishes.  Damian dried while Alfred washed.  Dick and the others were in charge of putting the dishes away.  When the job was done Bruce suggested that they do this more often and Dick was happy that this had been a success.

Gifts

Seeing the katana had been a complete accident.  Dick hadn’t thought anything of it at first and then he remembered that Damian was collecting antique katanas.  He had a nice collection started in his room that he wouldn’t let anyone touch.  Jason had tried and nearly lost his hand.  From that point on the others merely admired them from afar, too afraid to incur the wrath of Damian Wayne.

The glint of the steel is what first drew Dick’s attention to the sword in the window.  Realizing what he had just stumbled across he went in to talk to the shop owner about acquiring it.  The store owner was a nice older gentleman who had just put the katana up for sale the day prior.  “I’ve had a lot of interest in this sword,” he told Dick as he began carefully boxing the katana up.  “Young gentlemen come in here from time to time when I put up katanas and other various antique weaponry.  None of them ever had even to buy them.  Except this one gentleman.  He’s a teenager, and he’s always pursuing this shop, he likes the katanas the best.”

A light bulb went off over Dick’s head, “Is his name Damian Wayne?”

“Yes!  You know Mr. Wayne?”  The man asked.

Dick chuckled, “That’s who this sword is for.  He’s collecting them, and I happened to see this and thought that it would be a good gift for him.”

“Well I certainly think he’ll like it,” the old man said.  “Have a wonderful day, Mr. Grayson.”

Dick headed back to the manor after that encounter to get the surprise ready for Damian once he got home from school.  Jason was in the living room when Dick came in and arched an eyebrow at the long, mysterious box that he was carrying.

“And what pray tell is in the box?”

“A surprise and none of your business,” he told Jason as he grabbed some shiny Christmas wrapping paper (they had nothing else according to Alfred), and began the infuriating process of wrapping the box.  

Jason sat back and watched Dick struggle and ultimately lose to the Santa covered wrapping paper.  Tim wandered in with a cup of coffee in hand and paused when he saw Dick struggling on the floor.  “Jesus, did I forget Christmas?”

Jason leaned his head back to look at Tim, “Tim, it’s July.”

Tim blinked, “Then why on earth is Grayson wrapping something up in Santa covered wrapping paper?”

Dick threw up his hands, “Because Alfred said this was all we had!”

“Grayson, there’s literally an entire closet filled with different wrapping papers,” Tim informed him before sipping from his still steaming mug.

“Alfred!”  Dick got up and went storming through the house to find Alfred and ask him why on earth he gave him the Christmas paper.

Damian stepped into the room, his school bag slung over one shoulder, “What’s Grayson shouting about now?”

“He got someone a gift and Alfred gave him Christmas paper to wrap it with,” Jason said.

“Come to think of it, I think that’s the paper that Bruce hates.  He says the Santa’s are too creepy,” Tim said as he moved closer to inspect it.  It was, in fact, the paper that Bruce hated.  The Santa smiles looked a little too demonic and put Tim in mind of the Joker’s smile.  “Alfred has been trying to use it up as much as possible lately, and probably gave it to Dick hoping to use the rest of it up.”

Dick came back into the room and noticed that Damian had now joined them.  “Damian!”  He hurried over to his half wrapped box and held it out to the younger boy, “This is for you.”

“Me?”  Damian eyed the box as he took it.  “Why me?”

Dick shrugged, “I saw it today and thought of you, so I bought it.”

“Well open it!”  Jason said impatiently as he waited for Damian to tear into it.

Tim produced a knife and handed it over to Damian so he could cut the tap.  When he opened it his eyes widened and he pulled the katana out of its resting place.  “It’s stunning,” he said reverently.  Glancing at Dick he asked, “Why?”

Dick shrugged, “You’ve been collecting them and I figured this would be a nice addition to your collection.”

Damian gently set it back into the box, “Thank you Grayson, that was… thoughtful of you.”  Then he turned on his heel and hurried off to his room.

“Hey why didn’t you get us anything,” Jason said.

Dick rolled his eyes, “Maybe I’ll get something for you later, but right now stop being greedy.”  With that, he headed out of the room.

Acts of Service

Alfred was constantly doing things for the others.  He took care of them.  He stitched them up when they came home with bullet and knife wounds.  He was always a constant in their lives, and he never complained about things.  They took him for granted most of the time.

Dick hadn’t ever really thought about it when he was younger or even now.  He just knew that Alfred was there and he took care of them.

Today however while Alfred was out getting groceries and taking Damian to school Dick set to work.

There were still dishes that needed to be cleaned and put away and some of the chores that Alfred usually did.  Dick cleaned the dishes and put things away first, he then went to the basement where the laundry was located and began a load of laundry.  When that was going he headed back upstairs to vacuum the entryway of the manor.

Alfred was shocked when he arrived home to see the kitchen was clean. He could have sworn he had left some dishes in the sink and in the dishwasher.  He made his way through the manor and saw Dick with a pair of headphones in vacuuming the floor singing along to some rock song that Alfred wasn’t familiar with.

He slipped away before Dick could notice him and found Bruce in his study looking over some paperwork.  “Have you noticed something off about Master Dick lately, sir?”

Bruce looked up from what he was doing and gave Alfred a quizzical look.  “What do you mean by off?  I’ll admit my boys aren’t the most normal group out there, but I don’t see anything wrong with them.”

“Well he’s doing my chores sir, and not to mention he bought Master Damian a katana, and insists that we do family night.  It’s just a little suspect.”

Bruce thought back to what he had witnessed from Dick lately, he would admit that he hadn’t paid much attention to him or even considered anything being off.  “I’ll keep an eye on him Alfred, maybe he’s just bored and needs something to do.”

Alfred was still concerned, but left the matter alone.

Words of Affirmation

The last of the love languages was words of affirmation.  Over the past week Dick had been putting into action all five.  He knew the others were probably a little confused by his new found affection, but it made him happy.  Alfred looked a little less strained, Damian looked happy with his newest katana, and family dinners were a success.

All that was left were the words of affirmation.  He was trying to think of good ways to do this.  He told Damian good job when training with him and he began mastering new skills; he told Jason that he liked his new haircut when he had gotten home; he thanked Alfred for the wonderful meals; and he told Tim that he was glad he was watching their backs from the cave most nights.

The last person he had to say something too was Bruce.

It was late one evening, the sky was cloudy and rainy and Dick and the others were doing their own thing.  Bruce was in the library reading when Dick approached him, his hands behind his back.

Bruce looked up from the book when he felt Dick’s presence beside him.  “What can I help you with, Dick?”

Dick took a seat across from Bruce and leaned forward, “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this… but thank you for taking me in after my parents died.  That was a really rough period for me and it was nice having someone who understood what I was going through.  So thank you.”

Bruce closed his book and studied Dick for a moment, “Dick is something wrong?”

Dick’s eyes widened and he shook his head, “No!  Why would something be wrong?”

“The others and I have noticed you’ve been doing little things here and there.  One day you did Alfred’s chores, the next you wanted us to all have a family dinner, buying Damian that katana.  I’m just wondering what’s going on.”

“It’s nothing serious, Bruce,” Dick quickly said.  “It’s just I read about love language and I thought that I should show you all how much I care for you.  You’re my family and I love you all, so I just wanted to give back I guess.”

Bruce was pleasantly surprised to hear this.  “Well, thank you for telling me this Dick.  I try my best for you all, and sometimes I feel slightly overwhelmed or like I’m not doing the best I can.  And Dick, I hope you know how highly I think of you, how proud I am.  I’ve enjoyed having you in my life along with the others.”

Dick smiled and stood, “I should probably go tell Alfred that there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m sure he was the one that brought this up to you.”

“He was,” Bruce confirmed.  “Have a good evening, Dick.”

“You too, Bruce.”

Dick stepped out of the library and went in search of Alfred who was having his evening tea.  He explained what he had just told Bruce and Alfred seemed very relieved that there wasn’t anything wrong with Dick.  When Dick went to leave Alfred asked Dick if he would like to stay for some tea to which he agreed.

#Dick Grayson #Dick Grayson fluff #Dick Grayson fanfic #Dick Grayson fanfiction #Damian Wayne #Bruce Wayne #Jason Todd #Tim Drake #DC Comics #DC Comics fanfic #DC Comics fanfiction #DC Comics fluff #Requested

[thethoughtsfromthreeam]

Monument Woman

Pairing: Marcus Pike x OC (Rosemary Carter)

Warnings: None

A/N: God, I have been wanting to finish this story for weeks, but once we got out of quarantine, I lost all ambition to write.  So, I’m glad I finally have enough of a cushion to get part 1 out to you guys.  I won’t be following my old posting schedule, but I hope I don’t go so far between posts that you all forget about me!

Reminder: I ain’t ever seen Pedro Pascal in FUCK ALL, I’m just coming up with this as I go along, using imdb.com, wiki, and 84,000 tabs I got open to plan out this shit.  I also write soft versions of his characters so if you’re craving asshole vibes, I ain’t got any but my own to offer.

Tag List:

@zeldasayer , @romanticgumchewer, @beskars , @coolmaybelateruniverse , @the-feckless-wonder , @pascalisthepunkest , @mandoandyodito , @randomness501 , @fioccodineveautunnale  , @ahopelessromanticwritersworld [please message me to be added or subtracted]

Part 1 – And So We Begin 

“Thank you for calling Fort Jamison Historical Museum, this is Rosemary. How can I help you?”  The jaunty-sounding phrase rolled off her tongue automatically with little thought behind it until she heard the wizened chuckle on the other end.

“Do you always answer your cell phone like that?”  She pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned as Robert Lancaster’s chuckle morphed into a hearty laugh.  She couldn’t help but giggle along as she dropped her pencil and took off her glasses, setting them on the desk in front of her.

“You know, sometimes I do, especially when I’m not paying attention.” Rosemary leaned back into her chair, propping her feet up on the desk.  Her free hand dropped down to fondle Banana’s ears as the dog snoozed next to her.  “What’s up, Robert?”

“I’m doing some spring cleaning at the house and shop.  I got quite a few boxes accumulated, including stuff I’d like to donate to the museum.  When do you think you can come down to look through them?  I don’t expect you to take them all, but there are a couple of items I want you to specifically have.”  His voice sounded muffled over the phone as he bent down to toss another book into the Friends of the Library box.

“It’s a little slow this week,” she started as she checked the calendar on her wall.  “Looks like I can come as early as tomorrow.  So, if that works for you, I’ll bring the paperwork with me and we can just get it all done at once.”

“Oh, great!  I was hoping you could come soon.  It’s been a while since we had time to visit.”  His smile was evident in his voice.  “Can you do the paperwork on the computer?”

“Sure, we have the fillable PDFs.”

“Even better.  Just bring your laptop and we’ll work on it as we go through everything.  We can connect to the printer here and then you don’t have to worry about doing any of this at the office.  By the way, do you think you’ll have time for lunch?”

“Robert, you know I always have time for you.”  She smiled.  They had been friends for ten years by that point and he never failed to ask the lunch or dinner question and she never failed to make time for him.  Robert had been her first friend when she arrived in Michigan and the long-running friendship between the perpetual bachelor and the bold curator was stuff of area legend.  

There had been speculation of a May-December romance between the two, but Robert saw the younger woman as the daughter he never had and on her part Rosemary saw Robert as the father figure she lost when her grandfather passed away.

“Want to do Phil’s or Coral Gables?”  She smiled.  Just as their dates were always guaranteed, she knew that their location was as well. But it was habit to ask and it never felt right if she didn’t.

“Why do you even ask the question?  You know it’s supposed to be nice tomorrow, Coral Gables’ patio all the way.”  The two chatted a bit longer before they hung up, returning to the rest of their respective duties.  Rosemary sat up and Banana whined when she stopped petting him.  Spoiled dog.

“Sorry, Baba.  Work calls.” She stood up from her desk and wandered down the hall to the director’s office, knowing Helen was at her desk.  The third floor of the museum was workspace for the staff and despite working there for so many years, Rosemary never failed to draw an appreciative breath at the stunning sight of the Kalamazoo River.

As she ambled down the hall, Banana’s nails clicked on the tile floor, hinting that she wasn’t alone on her journey.  She smiled as she waved her hand and the dog rushed to her side.  The two slowly walked to the director’s office, warming themselves in the afternoon sun that poured through the windows.

Rosemary heard the muttering first as she rounded the corner and entered the office.  The stout woman was hunched over her laptop, her salt and pepper pixie cut sticking up everywhere.  Whatever she was working on, it was stressing her out.  Helen always pulled at her short strands when she was concentrating hard.

Smiling, Helen’s head jerked up as Rosemary knocked on the door.  The older woman waved her curator into the office and leaned back.  As she stretched, both women could hear a series of loud pops and they started to giggle.

“Ugh, I am getting too old to sit like this.  I need a massage.”  Helen groaned as yet another loud pop emitted from her shoulder.  As Banana scooched under the desk to get scritches from Helen, Rosemary plopped down in one of the armchairs and it creaked in complaint. “Do you have to sit so hard? Those are collection pieces, you know.”

“Not anymore.  I deaccessioned them last week into the decorative collection.  Donor approved, mind you.  So, we can sit in these however we want.”  Rosemary grinned as she threw a leg over the arm of the ornate chair.  For being so ugly, it was comfortable and not for the first time, she wondered if she could move them to her office without Helen noticing.

“That may be, but it’s not like we have money to fix something you broke because you were being too careless.”  Helen raised her eyebrow and Rosemary sat back up in the chair like normal, having the courtesy to look chagrined.  The director sat back.

“So, what do you need?  Are you still having issues with that Gaylord order?”

“Naw, I talked to them last week, they shipped it out yesterday. Finally.”  She rolled her eyes.  “Robert Lancaster called me just a bit ago, wanting to donate some items to the museum.  I got the time, so I’ll head to Saugatuck tomorrow to handle it.”

“Well, I know Robert is quite the collector, but do you think there are things we’ll want?  I’m hard pressed to start accepting any old thing again after we finally got the collections cleared up and decluttered.  I know he’s a long-time supporter of the museum, but I don’t know if I can take another ugly piece of furniture with a smile.”  Rosemary laughed at the comment.

“To his credit, he said there were things we probably wouldn’t want, and I doubt he’ll be sad if I said no to some things.  I certainly want to see what books he’s got for us.  We have a few things in the library that probably need to be rotated out into archives for their own protection.

“Besides, I am not going to pass up a chance to swoop in and yank the rug out from underneath Saugatuck.  You know that.  Watching Fred get mad that I got the leg up on him adds ten years to my life.” Rosemary rubbed her hands gleefully, a glint of mischief in her eyes.

“You really hate him, don’t you?”  Helen laughed.  Lake Michigan History Center was a charming coastal museum, but everyone agreed their curator was a bit odd.  Rosemary took an instant dislike to the man when she came on Fort Jamison’s staff and over the years, their dislike turned into a mutual hatred.  Like her friendship with Robert, everyone knew Fred was Rosemary’s mortal enemy and vice versa.

“God, yes!  Helen, he’s a dick and greedy as hell.  I don’t trust him any further than I can toss his skinny ass. I am still pissed over the diary!  Mrs. Greenwich assured me that we were getting it and he slithered into the village last year and took it!”  Rosemary’s voice got louder.  “THAT DAMN DIARY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SAUGATUCK, LET ALONE MENTIONS IT!”

Helen laughed harder while raising her hands in surrender and her curator stopped herself before she got too carried away.  Rosemary cleared her throat and drew a deep breath.  Ugh, he always managed to get her riled up even when he wasn’t around.  Damn Fred.

“Sorry, sorry.  I shouldn’t let him get me so mad, but god.  I hate him so much!  So, if Robert Lancaster’s got something that would make Fred die with envy, then by god, I’m gonna bring it home.”

“Alright.  I trust you as usual.  But since you’re here, I want to go over a couple of things with you for this grant so I can get it out Friday.”

The two women moved on to other things and fell into discussion about the future of projects for the museum and how to fund them.

---***---

“Cripes.”

The word was accompanied by a deep groan.  Agent Marcus Pike sat back in his chair to rub his eyes for the third time in less than an hour.  Some intern had dumped four boxes of case files in his office and was coming back with four more.  And the intern was certain there was another half dozen.

When three art pieces were stolen in Canada last year, Pike had been notified as a courtesy from his Canadian counterparts. ��Which in and of itself wasn’t unusual, but the notes from the agents there stood out to Pike and he realized that the details match another case he had worked on earlier in the year.  And further digging uncovered almost three dozen cases dating back almost thirty years that carried all the hallmarks of this most recent one.  And more importantly – they were all still open.

He had taken his concerns and theories to the Art Squad chief, Agent Maria Luisa Armand, and with her blessing, assembled a crew to explore these cold cases. Maybe with new technology and eyes, they’d get the lead to solve them all.

The dull throbbing behind his eyes seemed to get worse and he leaned further back in his chair, trying to do some breathing exercises to reduce the pressure.  He let his eyes go unfocused, letting the colored light reflected on his ceiling go blurry.  The stained glass propped up in his office window had been a bit of an indulgence for him, but Pike never regretted the purchase and, in that moment, the colored streaks help bring some sense of zen that he needed.

A knock on his door forced him out of his zone and he sat up to see his partner, Brenda Carmichael, waiting at the door.  He smiled when he saw her and she returned the gesture, coming in to sit in one of the chairs.  The two had been partners for six years and together they had solved dozens of cases and thwarted twice as much.

“Do we have a plan, Carmichael?”

“Yep.  Someone is coming to get these boxes and take them to Conference D, which I commandeered.”

“How did you do that?”

“Threatened to tell Harrison’s wife that he was spending big cash on that escort he’s seeing.”

“Ouch, a little low, don’t you think?”  Pike laughed.

“God no.  Harrison doesn’t ever play nice, so you can’t do it with him.”  She waived her hand and laughed, her tightly coiled hair bouncing as if it was laughing, too.  “Anyway, three junior agents are on the job currently preparing to create the timeline and pulling all the files.  Two more are working to create point of contact lists for witnesses and such. And finally, I think Armand is putting on the coffee.”

“So where does that leave you and me?”  He didn’t think he’d get such a big crew to do this.  Must be a slow day in other departments.  “I want Fitzbender on the NSAF search and follow up, though, before I forget. 

“That’s fine.  And we supervise.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it for now. Until we have more material to work with.  So up off your duff and let’s get going.”

Pike smiled as he pulled himself out of his chair, grabbing his jacket and gesturing to Carmichael to leave first.  If they could solve these cases, it would be the biggest win in the Art Squad’s recent history and Pike really wanted to bring those pieces home where they belonged.

---***----

“Robert, you know I love you, but you have some ugly stuff here.” Rosemary’s nose wrinkled at the stuffed monkey with murderous eyes staring at her from a box.  The only place that creepy thing was going was in the garbage.  She moved on to another open box, pawing through the items that were housed there, pulling out a couple of potentials.

“Yeah, well no accounting for taste, I guess.”  Robert groaned as he leaned over and pulled open another box. He thought he had labelled all of them for the museum, but he realized three of them got mixed up in the junk pile. “God, how did I miss all these boxes. I’m sorry Rosie, I am usually better organized.”

“It’s not a problem, Robert.”  Rosemary walked over with the contents of yet another box, a bounce in her step as she realized she snagged a two-hundred-year-old map of the area that Fred would have murdered her to get for himself.  Her grin was almost feral at the idea that she one upped the old bastard. “Hey, question.”

“What?”  Robert had moved on to a small box on his desk that had a post-it with Rosemary’s name on it.

“What’s with all the cleaning and giving away all of a sudden?  The house wasn’t like this when I visited two months ago.”  She wiped the sweat off her brow and turned to look at him.  He was quiet and she took a moment to really look at him.

She knew from long talks that Robert had been living in the Saugatuck area since the 1990s.  He had come from Chicago, declaring he needed a slower pace and his bookstore was a welcomed addition to the downtown area.  He was highly philanthropic to causes he loved, like the Fort Jamison museum.

After her Pops passed away several years ago, she seemed to lean even more into Robert to fill the empty void and he did so gladly.  As she watched him shuffle about, she grew concerned because he looked more frail than usual.  The man had always been on the thin side, but he looked scarily thin and a thought skittered through her mind that sent a wave of sadness through her.

“Robert, are you sick?”  There was no hiding the sadness in Rosemary’s voice.  When he stopped and hesitated, she didn’t need a verbal answer from him. She walked over from where she was standing and placed her hand on his shoulder, turning him around.  “Robert.”

He bowed his head and wrapped his arms around the younger woman as tight as he could, and she did the same.  He began to cry on her shoulder, and it startled her, causing tears to form in her eyes.  She silently rubbed his back in comforting circles as sobs wracked Robert’s body. They stood there a long time before he quieted down, but even then, Rosemary refused to let him go, hugging him close to her.

He was her friend and she loved him dearly, so if he were dying, it would devastate her.  Robert made a move to pull back and she reluctantly let him go but held onto his arms with her hands to keep him close.  His red-rimmed eyes crushed the broken pieces of her heart.  He sighed.

“Rosie.”  He took a deep breath.  “I met with my doctor last week and I have stage four pancreatic cancer.  He only gave me a few months to live.”

“Oh Robert.”  The tears started up again and she threw her arms around him.  They cried together a second time and the sadness enveloped them. As she held him close, her tears made her voice rough.  “That’s what spurred this on, isn’t it?”

“Yes.  But you’re the only one to know right now.  I didn’t want to tell anyone else until you knew.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Well, for starters, this hug is pretty good.”  He chuckled a little bit.  “And get some of this stuff out of my house.  And then just be my friend until the end.”

“Always.”  She pulled back to look at him.  “But it will be a cold day in hell before that ugly ass monkey comes with me.”

The tension and sadness were broken, letting them laugh a bit through their tears.  They stepped apart and let themselves smile at each other.

“Let’s get lunch and come back to this stuff later.  It’s too nice of a day to miss out on the patio.”

#Agent Marcus Pike #marcus pike x reader #marcus pike x oc #Pedro Pascal #pedro pascal x reader #fanfic #the mentalist

[multisfabulis]

Love’s Descent into Madness

Coronation (Chapter 1/3)

Word Count: 2622

Here’s a Kagepro fic just in time for Kagepro Day! I know it may seem weird that I’m posting another thing within the span of a week but I really wanted to get this out in time for the 15th so I rushed. I like to think the quality is still good but I rushed to get this done and posted in time.

This is the result of a long-running headcanon of mine that I'm finally deciding to expand upon. This is a headcanon that had formulated around the time "In a Day's" was making the rounds because "new character, who dis" and I was spitballing to my friend on Twitter and that's how it came to be.

I should express that this is working off information I remember from MCA and information I found on the Wiki. I only own the manga up to Vol.6 and am only halfway through the second novel so I'm not expecting any of the things I brought up in this to be canon. This is mainly me using the information I found and either making it fit for this fic or using my own understandings of it to make it fit.

Read on AO3 | Read on DA | Support me on Ko-fi!

     The snake opened their eyes. They were in a dark forest, the sounds of bugs chirping and leaves rustling all around them. They were surrounded by tall blades of grass that, if they coiled up their body, they could break through the canopy they gave. They did just that and that’s when they saw her.

     She was a young child from what they could tell. She had long, jet black hair that fell around her in curls with only a red ribbon tying it all back. The black dress she wore had rips and tears in it, revealing very pale skin underneath. She had scales similar to their own on her cheeks but what drew their attention were her eyes. They were a bright crimson so striking, they couldn’t look elsewhere. Her eyes were filled with awe and curiosity, as if she couldn’t believe what was right in front of her.

     Before they could do anything else, her lips curled into a grin and she said excitedly, “I can’t believe it, I did it!”

     She leaned forward and picked them up gently. They were small enough to fit in her cupped hands, even uncoiled. They felt…safe, protected. Nothing could harm them as long as they stayed in the palms of her hands.

     “Can you understand me?” she asked.

     They tilted their head in confusion. It wasn’t that they couldn’t understand her or didn’t understand the question. She was the one who created them so why wouldn’t they be able to understand her?

     “You can understand me!” She giggled, bringing them closer to rub her cheek against them. “Your name is Saeru and we’ll have a great time together.”

     Was this why they existed? To be with their master for however long she needed? Was that their purpose? Whatever it may be, they would stay with her for as long as she wanted.

     They flicked their tongue over her scaled cheek several times. There wasn’t much they could do to express affection so this was the best they could think of. She giggled again and pulled them away. They felt a warmth fill their being when they saw the sweet smile she had on her face.

     “We’ll be together forever.”

     They traveled from forest to forest, experiencing the many things the world had to offer. The rain would fall hard and Saeru would take shelter in Master’s hair or under her dress, waiting it out until it was dry again. They’d bask in the sunlight whenever it was warm or nuzzle into Master whenever it was cold. It was an exciting start to their life and they were glad to enjoy it with Master.

     Then there was the matter of humans. They weren’t stupid to know Master was different from them. She didn’t look anything like them and humans couldn’t create living beings out of sheer will. Master told them humans didn’t live forever and they needed things like food and water to survive. That only told them the truth of what they already knew: Master was better than the humans. Despite that, however, they feared her and treated her horribly.

     They would call her names and threaten her before chasing her out of their villages, improvised weapons at the ready. They’d never see the tears filling her eyes, hear her voice quaver as she tried to fight the urge to cry. Not like Saeru did. She’d always pretend to be strong for them but they knew better.

     It hurt them to see Master like that and not be able to comfort her. There was only so much a snake like them could do. They didn’t have special powers like her, they couldn’t change her into something else to fit in with the humans. All they could do was remind her that they were there for her. If the humans refused to accept her, then they could make a world where only the two of them would live in.

     After more encounters with them, Master had the idea to create more snakes. They could help her more than Saeru could and they were fine with this. She brought into the world several snakes, each one possessing a unique ability. Her wishes were the reason they existed and their purpose was to protect her from the humans. She said it was also to give Saeru “siblings” so they wouldn’t be so lonely. They didn’t argue against this but they could never be lonely if she was there.

     They were less than impressed with their siblings. While they served their purpose well, that was all they did. They didn’t comfort Master in her times of need or make her happy or do anything. They just sat there, motionless, dormant until their time came only to return to that state once she no longer had use for them. Couldn’t they do more for her instead of being useless?

     Yet…maybe it was better they were useless. They had been Master’s confidant for so long that they didn’t want to give that up. What could their siblings do that they couldn’t? They could give her all she needed and more. All their siblings were good for were their abilities. If the time ever came where she was safe from the humans, they would be rendered dead weight. They hoped that time would come soon so they and Master could go back to those days it was only them.

     The humans fled after Master scared them off. She was once again driven out of a village and had to use their siblings to defend herself. Saeru could tell she was tired, not just from this encounter, but from all the things the humans have done to her. The harsh rejection still pushed her to tears and their presence was starting to lose the sense of comfort it brought her.

     They noticed a little girl dropping something as she ran away. It was a small, brown rabbit plush. Its ears were in tatters, stuffing was spilling out of every orifice, and one of its button eyes was missing. Maybe if they gave this to Master, it would make her smile for the first time in a while. Whenever they took refuge in a nearby forest, rabbits would always come up to her but scurry off before she could try to pet them. She could pet the plush whenever she wanted.

     They slithered over to the fallen plush. How would they be able to carry this? They had no hands or arms to pick it up and it’d take forever to lift it on their back. There was their mouth to speak of… They sunk their fangs into the rabbit’s soft head and attempted to drag the plush to Master.

     Her eyes widened in surprise once she saw it. They were exhausted from hauling it all the way to where she resided in the forest. They sat there, wondering what she would say as she knelt down in front of them.

     “You…got this for me?” she asked, her voice on the verge of cracking.

     Flicks of the tongue were their response. She picked it up with them still on it and held it close to her chest. They didn’t need to see the tears streaming down her cheeks to know she appreciated the gift. The strange warmth from when they first met wrapped itself around their heart as they heard the words of gratitude she whispered into the quiet dusky air.

     They wanted more of that. They wanted Master to look only at them, to speak only to them, give all her attention to them. They wanted to make her happy, happy in the way those lowly humans couldn’t provide for her. They began to think of other methods in which to make her happy. There was only so many gifts they could give her before they ran out so that wasn’t a viable option. What could they give to her that the humans absolutely couldn’t?

     They found their answer when she entered a village one day. Master remembered to use the sibling with the concealing ability before she went in, checking off a much needed precaution. They had been observing the humans she passed by as she wandered around when they realized something. They were wrong when they thought Master and humans had nothing in common. They both had the ability to talk, an ability Saeru didn’t have. At least, not yet, anyway.

     If they learned how to talk, would that make her happy? Would she no longer feel the need to connect with beings who feared her very existence? Would she realize the only one she’d need was them? That thought alone was more than enough for them to start learning.

     At every opportunity that had arisen, they’d slip out and study the humans in their natural environment. They'd hear their annoying voices drone on and on, listen carefully to the tones, inflections, and whatever else they could use. It took them a long time to shape their mouth to form the words, to manipulate their voice to say the syllables but they did it. It was nowhere near the level Master and the humans were on but it should be decent enough.

     Was it even appropriate to call her Master anymore? They had been struggling with what to refer to her as after a day of observation led them to a discovery. They were watching a parent and child together and the child called his parent “mother”. The whole display reminded them of the relationship between them and Master. Humans created other humans so was it the same thing for Master and snakes? Maybe it would be more fitting to call her Mother than Master.

     Their chance finally came one morning. Master had woken up early, as she always did, and was ready to start her day. They had just gotten back from their usual practice session when she asked them:

     “Shall we set off, Saeru?”

     Their voice sounded weak and frail and their answer came barely above a whisper as they replied, “Yes, Mother.”

     Her body went stiff, as if she couldn’t believe what she just heard. It was quiet between them but the silence was deafening. Was this a bad idea? Did they do something they weren’t allowed to? They wished she would say anything already instead of leaving them in suspense.

     “Did you…make that noise?” she asked, kneeling down to their level.

     “Yes, Mother,” they answered, louder and with more strength in their voice.

     “You…can talk now?”

     “Yes, Mother, I learned for you.”

     She covered her mouth with her hands, shocked. Why would she be so surprised by this? All they did was put in the effort necessary to learn and their work paid off. They did this so she would stop giving those pathetic humans chance after squandered chance to accept her. They would do anything for her.

     Dropping her hands to reveal a grin beaming with pride, she picked them up and happily said, “You learned to talk! Oh, I’m so proud of you, Saeru!”

     She rubbed her cheek against them with all the affection she could give. They made Mother so happy, she was proud of them. Ah, so that’s what the warm feeling filling their being was. It was what made them so determined to see her smile, to have her lavish them with attention. It was love. They loved Mother. They loved her so, so much. They loved her.

     Oh, yes, Master was no longer her name. It was Mother. It felt oh so right.

     Then tragedy struck. Mother was walking along the sides of a well-traveled road when a group of humans ambushed her. They chased her into a corner and, with nowhere to run, she had to fend them off. She turned them all to stone and watched them crumble to the ground in pieces. Despite her quick reflexes, they still drew blood, which was unforgivable.

     How dare they hurt Mother. Did they know nothing of the powers she held, how incomparably weak they are? It is only by her grace the rest of their pitiful and lowly race could live. If it were up to Saeru, every last one of them would die a horrific death. ‘Tis a befitting fate for creatures as wretched as them.

     Mother stood in the middle of the bloodless carnage, her fists clenched in anger and tears rolling down her cheeks. She had had enough. Humans couldn’t be reasoned with anymore. If they refused to accept her, if they refused to see how powerful she was and give her the respect she rightfully deserved, then there was no point in trying to fit in with them now.

     “I want no more of this. If they don’t want me, then I don’t want them. I’ll find a home where only me and my snakes will live, where no humans will ever hurt me again,” she declared, wiping away the angry tears.

     So they ventured deep into the nearest forest, to a place where not even the sound of bugs could be heard. It may be a lonely life to live but if it protected Mother from any harm that come her way, then so be it. She only needed them, no one else. A world where only the two of them lived in was finally here.

     Saeru had many adventures during their time in the forest. They had taken up hunting as a means to escape boredom and it turned out to contain the most fun they’ve ever had. It wasn’t for a trifling matter such as survival. It was for the thrill of the hunt, the high they felt when chasing their prey, the knowledge that they were stronger than the tiny woodland creatures that dared cross their path. It was so gratifying to see the light fade from their eyes as they strangled the life out of them. If only they had that strength to eliminate the human race…

     Years passed and the two’s bond deepened. Mother matured and she grew cold, harsh but her love for her snakes remained. Saeru’s tongue became like silver the more they developed their voice and was starting to discover the art of manipulation and the advantages it could reap. Of course, it was only against their prey and their siblings on occasion but never Mother. Her love and trust in them was too precious to even consider breaking.

     They spent their time in isolation. Saeru treasured the days they spent with Mother, despite the repetition of their routine day in and day out for many, many years. They were content to live out those samey days for forever.

     That was, until a human man came upon them one day. They never knew that day would change their life and things between them and Mother would never be the same again.

#airi's writing #snake of clearing eyes #azami #fanfiction #kagerou project #canon divergence