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charlesoberonn · 4 years

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I stand in my armor on the precipie of Hell’s Mouth. The flames, both red and white, surround me. The three other crystals are all set in their places across the other corners of the gaping abyss. I heave and push the final crystal into place.

Light erupts from its core, and bursts out in the form of three concentrated beams that travel across the vast distances and towards the other crystals. Similar beams now burst out from the rest of them and form a square with an X over the abyss.

Then all four crystals shatter, and the entire cavern is filled with light. The flames are extinguished all at once and a torrent of glowing orbs flows out of the mouth of hell and floats up into the air.

I squint my eyes as the orbs form a humanoid being in the air. Tens of meters tall, with six arms and four massive wings. The angel is adorned in an armor not dissimilar to my own, but glowing, and brand new, as opposed to my ancient set. And much larger of course.

“I am Venn-El. The Angel at the End of Time.” it bellows at me, its voice echoing through the cavern, and transmitting directly into my mind, all at once.

“Why have you awakened me?” it flies down so that its incomprehensible and massive face stares at me. “I am not to awaken until the end of all things, when I am to rebuild a new universe from the ashes of this one.”

“Um, I wanted to switch rooms.” I tell him back.

He floats still above me, silent, for a solid ten seconds. “What?”

“I lived in an inn with three other dudes. I wanted to switch rooms with Bradon because the central heating doesn’t reach my room and it’s gonna be winter soon.”

Venn-El pauses again. Then it drifts back into its original location. “What does that have to do with me?”

“I need a feather from one of your wings.”

“What? What for?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I have literally all the time in the universe.”

“You sure? It’s kinda stupid.” I take off my helmet and rub at the back of my head.

“Now you have piqued my interest mortal. You must tell me.”

“Okay...” I sigh. “You asked for it.”

“So I asked Bradon if I could switch rooms with him and he obviously said no. So I asked him what he wanted in return for the switch. He said I needed to do some chores for him, so I did them, but after that he was like “lol thanks” and then refused to switch rooms.”

“God, what a dick.” Venn-El comments. It seems comfortable leaning back into thin air, as though sitting in a chair.

“I know, right?” I lean back against a rock. “So anyway...” I continue “I eventually realized that my bro Jackmire technically owns the deed for the inn so he could force Bradon to be true to his word. And Jackmire agreed, but he’d have to get the local constable to sign the order confirming Jackmire as head of the house first. So I had to go to the police to get the constable.”

“Sounds like a beaurocratic mess. I would’ve just vaporized Bradon.”

“Trust me, if I could’ve, I would’ve.”

“Please continue.”

“Okay, so I went down to town to get the constable, but they were busy at the police station because three bandits were hiding in the nearby hillsides causing trouble and the constable was out of town chasing them. They told me they could give me temporary authority as a deputy to go look for him if I helped them with the paperwork. I’m pretty sure that was some bullshit.”

“I don’t have much concept for the way the mortal realm works but it sounds like it.”

“But I did it anyway, got my badge, and went out to the hillside to look for the constable. Only to be nearly immediately attacked by some low-level monsters and chased back to town. So I got to the local blacksmith and asked him to borrow an armor and sword.”

“This armor and sword? Pretty impressive for a small town blacksmith.”

“What? Nah. I upgraded these like 15 times since then.” I tap my Godslayer sword against my Legendary Hero’s armor. “So anyway, blacksmith agreed to just give me the sword if I pretended to be a suitor for his daughter because she’s been very lonely and he thought she needed some love.”

“Kinda manipulative, but also sweet.”

“Long story short, halfway through my fake date, I find out the girl didn’t need a suitor, she was actually gay. I later gave her the address for this other lesbian I’ll meet later, but for then I just bid her ado, and went on my way to the hillsides to look for the constable. Killing the monsters was difficult, but I got pretty good at it after a few hours.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Um, last week? Maybe two weeks. I lost the sense of time ever since my trip to the ancient past.”

“What?”

“But I’m getting ahead of myself. I made it to where the bandits were and found the constable dying. I beat the bandits (broke my sword in the process) and in his dying words, the constable told me that I had to protect the town. I told him I’m too busy and then he died.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Exactly. So that was a literally dead end. My only other hope to get the deed verified is the other signature, which was the constable’s old boss who has since retired.”

“So the adventure continues.”

“I got back to town and told the secretary in the police station that the constable is dead. She tells me I’m the new constable. That’s cool and all but I can’t verify the deed since I’m not the one who signed it. I ask where the old guy who co-signed it is and they tell me he’s retired in the Imperial Capital. I also tell the blacksmith that I broke his sword and try to return him his armor but he says I can keep it and even upgrades my stuff to be better. Which is super sweet.”

“Sounds like a solid dude.”

“So anyway, I gotta leave for the capital but I also can’t leave the town without a constable, so I gotta find a replacement. It needs to be somebody strong and reliable, and luckily for me, there was a tournament in the next town over. And I’m thinking surely somebody is gonna be there who’s good to be a constable. So I take the dead constable’s horse and some donated supplies from the locals and I ride there. It’s pretty close by so it doesn’t take too much before I reach there, and the tournament is about to start.”

“Ooh, a tournament arc!”

“Yeah. So anyway, I find the perfect match. Her name is Kroshna and she’s the champion of the village and the daughter of their constable, so she’s got all the experience necessary. I ask her to go be constable in the next town over and she says yes, but on the condition that I beat her in the tournament. So off I go signing up to the tournament so I could face and later beat a lady three times my size and years more experienced than me.”

“How did you do that?”

“Well, it wasn’t easy, but I’m getting ahead of myse-” suddenly the entire abyss begins cracking up and rumbling. It then begins to close.

“Shit.” I say. “Looks like the planetary alignment is over.”

“Fuck. But it was just getting interesting.” Venn-El says. “How did the story go? How did you beat her? What happened when you went to the capital?”

“We’ve got no time, dude. Can I please just get the feather?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.” the angel plucks a single feather out of one of its wings. Another one instantly grows in its place.

“I hope this helps you in your quest.”

“Thanks.”

“Please come back next alignment and finish the story because I’m dying to know.”

“Oh yeah, for sure, man. I’ll cya next time!”

The ground then sucks Venn-El back into the abyss in the form of orbs of light, and then closes completely, swallowing everything up in sight. I use my teleportation rock to get out of the cavern before it collapses on me. I then put the feather in my pouch and pull out a to-do list.

I cross out the feather from the list. Only 304 more steps to go.

I sigh and call for my skeleton steed. This is gonna be a long journey.

#long post #charles writes #writing

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makomori · 4 years

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ONE | NEW TERRITORY (Brand New Story)

USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI x OC

Nishimura Yua has to take her nephew to his first rep practice with the Tohoku Tigers at Shiratorizawa Academy. Ushijima Wakatoshi is filling in for the assistant coach on said team.

She’s recovering from a nasty breakup and he’s reeling from a stunning finals loss against the Jackals.

Yua’s drawn to his composure and honesty.

Wakatoshi finds her warmth and tenacity intriguing.

It’s the start of a Brand New Story; can they heal from past hurts and endure new challenges in order to help each other trust and love again?

Length: 2.4k words

It's been nearly a month since the Schweiden Adlers lost to the MSBY Black Jackals in the V.League finals. Wakatoshi is reflecting on his performance when he receives an interesting proposal from his old coach.

Much love to @chuckhansen for encouraging my chicken little ass to post this. After 24601 years, I finally finished a chapter! And it’s about your favourite opposite lefty, Ushijima Wakatoshi! I absolutely ADORE him, and I’ve been running with this idea since March. The title is from Exile Generation’s song, “Brand New Story”. I highly recommend checking it out b/c it’s an amazing BOP.

This is eventually going to be a multi-chapter, Ushiwaka x OC fic b/c our Super Ace deserves all the love in the world! This is definitely a rough draft, and I welcome constructive feedback or any reactions! I’m catching up with the manga, so I’ll be making changes along the way. I hope you enjoy reading b/c I had so much fun writing it. 🥰🥺

Wakatoshi’s morning jog was hard. Physically, he could have easily run for another ten kilometers, but his mind kept pulling him back to the safety and warmth of his unmade bed. Annoyed that a steady and peaceful rhythm was out of his reach, he grudgingly circled back to his complex. But by the time he made it up the steps to his apartment, he was breathing hard.

Looks like he needed more rest after all.

Before going in, Wakatoshi took note of the nearly empty bowls of kibble and water beside his front door. He needed to refill them soon. There were several stray cats in the neighbourhood, and he always tried to feed as many as he could while he was home. They gravitated to him when he first moved in, which he thought odd because he didn’t have any experience with cats, or any animals, as a child. He enjoyed their company, though, as they were independent and showed affection once a bond was formed. He wasn’t the easiest person to interact with, so he appreciated the simplicity of his relationship with them.

Sighing, he unzipped his sweater and tossed it absently on the dark green counter top. The apartment was bigger than initially wanted, but his mother insisted that he’d regret it if he chose something smaller. She said that it was always good to have extra room in case people came over. He wanted to tell her that he wouldn’t have much time to entertain considering he would be on the road for games. However, when he realized the extra space would mean that she would always be comfortable during visits, he quickly put an offer in for the apartment.

The troublesome feeling of guilt tugged at him as he thought of his mother. He hadn’t spoken to her in a few weeks. Not since the Adlers loss to the Jackals in the V.League finals. Actually, he needed to touch base with several people in addition to her. Leaning against the counter, he thumbed through his phone until his messages popped up.

20 unread texts stared at him earnestly. The latest one was from Kageyama.

We should practice soon. Let me know when you’re free.

No apologies or words of comfort. He appreciated that. It seemed that Kageyama had already cut his losses and was getting ready for next season. He only knew of a few people that bounced back that quickly; Kageyama’s stubbornness and adaptability was an invaluable asset on the court.

The next message was from Romero.

Hey, Lefty. Drinks on me next time.

Wakatoshi wasn’t a huge drinker, but he enjoyed spending time with Romero. He was supportive and sociable, traits that he hoped would come easier to him one day.

Tendou was next.

Don’t get too down, Toshi-kun! I’ll buy you all the Hayashi rice you want the next time I’m in Sendai.

That made him chuckle. Tendou must be really worried about him if he was willing to take a break from his chocolatier apprenticeship just go out for dinner in their hometown.

The rest of the messages were of a similar nature. Sympathies and offers to hang out when he was available. People were genuinely concerned for him, and he was grateful. He hoped he didn’t worry his them too much with his lack of response.

Normally, he responded to any messages immediately, but he wanted a bit of peace after a long season. A month, however, was pushing it. After downing a glass of orange juice, he decided to respond to them methodically after a short nap and a hot shower. He flopped ungracefully on the couch and stretched his long legs out, calves protesting slightly at the movement.

Wakatoshi closed his eyes and hoped sleep would come, but his thoughts were pulled back to the final set against the Jackals. Everyone knew the match would be a close one. The players on both teams were talented, competitive, and exceedingly stubborn. The Adlers had been the champions for the last three years, but the Jackals were eager to claim that title for themselves. Once the team found out who their opponents were, they prepared to play hard through all five sets.

Because the Jackals would do the same.

Wakatoshi was more than excited for the match, as he always relished the chance to play the best of his contemporaries. He was especially looking forward to paying Hinata back for snatching his last chance to go to the Spring Tournament seven years ago. Wakatoshi couldn’t wait to test the redhead’s newfound skills against his own. They had both evolved into formidable players since their last encounter.

But the Jackals still surprised him, despite having played them twice during the regular season. He had spent hours analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, and overall playing style. The Adlers were deadly in their precision and technical prowess, but the Jackals matched that with their unpredictability and tenacity. Miya’s charisma leant itself well to his unconventional spikers. Bokuto, Sakusa, and Hinata were the personification of baseless confidence and relentless determination. Wakatoshi’s most disliked traits.

The Adlers won the first two sets: 25-22 and 25-23.

The coaching staff was fairly confident that they team would take the final set and the match itself, with his, Houshiumi’s, and Romero’s spikes at textbook perfection. But Wakatoshi knew better. From across the court, he felt the energy shift in the Jackals’ team huddle. He could tell Hinata was rallying his team with some choice words; Bokuto was getting worked up, along with Sakusa. They weren’t going out quietly, and frankly, Wakatoshi would’ve been disappointed if they didn’t put up a fight.

The Jackals took the next two sets: 28-26 and 25-23.

Like most players Wakatoshi didn’t like being pushed to the fifth set, as switching courts halfway could effectively kill any hard-earned momentum. He scored the first few points of the set, connecting with Kageyama’s tosses like he always did. But a feeling a dread crept to the front of his mind once he felt that shift of energy again.

It started with Hinata and quickly spread to the rest of his team. The time he spent with Oikawa in Brazil had changed him. He was faster, smarter, and even more fearless than the first time they played. Wakatoshi had to stop himself from admiring his skill and presence. Miya had a grin on his face every time he set to the redhead. Few setters had the chance to work with a wing spiker like Hinata.

The Jackals disrupted the flow of the game with two hard volleys to the back corners of the court on the second hit. The placement confused the back-line players because the ball’s trajectory was on that razor-thin line of in and out. Indecision cost them two crucial points. Then, Sakusa forced him to dig for a few a tips that were just outside of his reach.

And shockingly, he was forced to tip when he realized that he couldn’t power his way through an impenetrable three-man block. It was sloppy and picked up with ease by the libero. This was new territory for him, and he normally wouldn’t have minded, but the unforgiving pace of the fifth set didn’t allow him enough time to adjust to their tactics.

The Jackals won the final set. 25-23. Hinata’s final kill blasted through a hole through his, Sokolov’s, and Romero’s outstretched arms.

Wakatoshi had never been one to dwell on the past, but he couldn’t help but remember his final loss against Karasuno seven years ago. He looked over at Hinata, who was currently dog-piled under his teammates and coaching staff. Their celebration was drowned out by the roaring and unruly crowd, shocked at the defeat of the defending champions.

The little redhead managed to best him again.

No. He was the Little Giant now.

Wakatoshi was still recovering from the outcome when Romero gently nudged his shoulder and said it was time to line up. The man’s darkly stubbled face was sweaty and flushed, probably not unlike his own. But he gave him a solid thump on his back and complimented his spikes before walking past, and it was all Wakatoshi could do to hold his head up high and line up with the rest of the team.

That was a month ago, he thought angrily, resting his forearm over his eyes. The pressure was somewhat comforting. Move on. He hated that he was still dwelling on this loss. That wasn’t like him. He felt out of place for the last month, unsure of how to process his feelings. He hated that even more. Why? He was already a champion, so why was this loss different? Was it because he failed in his duty as the Adlers’ Ace?

Or was it because Hinata beat him again?

His last coherent thought before he finally drifted off to sleep was a fierce promise that he would continue to push forward and improve.

No matter what stood in his way.

Riiiiing. Riiiiing. Riiiiing. Riiiiiii—

Wakatoshi turned over, causing the phone on his chest to fall face down onto the floor. The loud thud brought him back to reality. He rubbed his eyes gently with the heel of his hand. How long had he slept? And who was calling him? He briefly considered ignoring the call, but then remembered his decision to reach out to people again. Might as well start now. But by the time he reached his phone, the ringing had stopped. His brow furrowed when he saw the name pop up for the missed call.

SAITOU-SENSEI.

Curious, Wakatoshi sat up and pressed the call button.

“Hello?”

“Saitou-sensei, it’s Wakatoshi-kun. I’m sorry I missed your call.” He smiled when the warm, familiar voice echoed in his ear.

“Oh, not to worry! I’m sure you wanted some peace and quiet after a busy season.”

“Yes,” he stated, leaning back on the plush cushions. “It’s good to be home.”

The excitement in his coach’s voice was instant. “Ah, I was hoping you’d say that! I know it’s last minute, but would you be interested in helping me coach a middle school rep team on Saturday?”

“Coach?” He echoed. Saturday was two days away.

“Just for this Saturday,” his sensei clarified. “My assistant is sick and having an extra pair of hands at practice is never a bad thing.”

Wakatoshi nodded in agreement. Having two coaches was always a benefit to the players. He learned as much from Saitou-sensei as he did Washijiou-sensei during his time at Shiratorizawa. “Where are you holding practice?”

He could hear the smile in sensei’s voice. “Home court. Shiratorizawa Academy. It’s from 1 to 4 in the afternoon.”

Wakatoshi’s eyes widened. He was going to already going to say yes because it was Saitou-sensei asking, but that solidified his decision. “If it’s acceptable, I’d like to be there at 11 to warm up. I haven’t played in a month.” He paused and tried to think of another way to help. “I can set the net up as well.”

“That would be great because I don’t have a manager yet.” Sensei sounded relieved. “I was planning on coming early and doing it myself, but I’m in Tokyo until Saturday morning.”

Wakatoshi shook his head. It wouldn’t take long for sensei’s young team to realize how lucky they were to have him as a coach. He was always willing to do everything to ensure everyone would have a good experience. “Please leave it to me.”

“You’re still reliable as ever, Wakatoshi-kun. I’ll take you out for dinner as a thank you.”

Wakatoshi’s ears grew hot. He never expected anything in return for helping. “T-that’s not necessary, sensei,” he murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. “This is the least I can do for the years you spent coaching me.”

“Ah, now you’re embarrassing me!” Sensei’s laugh was infectious. “It was a joy to help you grow into the player you are now. You played a hell of a game last month.”

Wakatoshi’s fingers tightened over his phone. Did he really play his absolute best? If he did, it still wasn’t enough to win against Hinata and—

“Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

Sensei’s steady voice effectively cut through Wakatoshi’s negative thoughts and insecurities. “I know you hate losing.” The smile returned to his tone. “But when you do, there’s no shame in losing to the best of them. It just happened to be the Jackals that day.”

Wakatoshi swallowed the lump forming in his throat. He didn’t realize how much he needed to be reassured that losing didn’t mean he was inadequate or lacking. He was just used to shouldering the burdens and pressure that came with being a top player. Not to mention the high expectations he set for himself. But that left no room for failure, and it was exhausting.

“Besides, you love playing more than you hate losing, right?” His sensei sounded hopeful, imploring. “I’m sure you’ll feel better once you get back on the court.”

Wakatoshi’s eyes widened. His love for volleyball was lost in the wake of self-pity. Suddenly, Saturday couldn’t come fast enough. He missed practicing until his arms and hands were red. He missed the satisfaction of hearing the ball land in the opponent’s court after a spike or a tip. And he missed growing and learning with his teammates.

“I-I’m looking forward to it,” Wakatoshi said softly. “Thank you, Saitou-sensei.” He still wasn’t the best at expressing his feelings, but he knew that sensei understood him enough to understand that he was grateful for the words of encouragement.

“Hey, now! You’re a coach now too, Ushijima-sensei. Get used to it. You’ll be hearing it a lot from the players on Saturday.”

Wakatoshi frowned. He was only filling in and didn’t deserve that distinction. “But it’s only for the day—”

His sensei laughed again. “Well, that still counts! I’ll see you on Saturday.”

“Goodbye, sensei.”

Wakatoshi placed his phone on the coffee table. The heaviness he felt in his chest throughout the last month was gone. Instead, he felt restless. Just like all the other times he took on a new challenge. It had been a long time since he trained anyone. Perhaps he could show these young players that falling short of a goal wasn’t the end of the world. And having a solid support system was essential to growing as an individual and as a player. After embracing his newfound insights, a smile threatened split his face in two.

He was definitely getting into it.

#mywriting #ushijima wakatoshi #wakatoshi ushijima #ushiwaka #ushijima x oc #ushiwaka x oc #hqfic #hqfics #ushijima fics #ushiwaka fics #userairika #ALSO I CAN'T BELIEVE HQ IS OVER #I'M WRITING THIS FIC TO COPE HAHAHA #wakatoshi x oc #chuckhansen

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fyrapartnersearch · 3 years

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Get ready to form voltron!

Obligatory warning for a long post ahead: Whilst I know this post may be intimidating to some people. please do not let it put you off from reaching out to me :) “I say vol and you say tron! Vol…..” “Eh.... voltron?” “We’ll work on it.” Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing well and that you’ve been able to stay safe and healthy during the pandemic (and that the easing of some restrictions depending on where you are has not negatively affected you). After binge watching legendary defender on netflix I’ve had the undying and uncontrollable urge to do a voltron rp. Now I bet you’re all wondering what I want and if you’re going to get to do some shipping.......we’ll I guess you’re just going to have to read on and find out. I’m looking for literate rper’s only. That means people who write in third person past tense, can give me at the very least one well thought out and fleshed paragraph (as well as be willing to write more when the situation calls for it) and has a decent grasp on their spelling, grammar and punctuation. I will not yell at you for the occasional bout of typonese but one liners, one worders, poorly written responses and lazy writing in general will not keep me around. If I can’t read what you’ve written and you’re not willing to put some effort in or correct it then there’s no point in me sticking around. I also require rper’s who’ve actually watched voltron whether it be legendary defender, defender of the universe or voltron force. If you’re someone whose a stickler for canon accuracy then I’m probably not the rper for you. When I rp in a fandom setting I treat it a bit like a base as in there’s rules to follow but I don’t have to follow them as if I’m reading the show script. To put it simply I value creativity and ideas that allow a different take on the characters and what could’ve happened. I only rp male alien or alien hybrid characters and they’re premade but flexible in how they’re written. I do not have pictures nor do I desire to spend endless hours of time to find a face claim of a creature that isn’t the typical different coloured humanoids you see in voltron. I have descriptions and that’s it. I do not care if your character is made up on the spot or if you prefer to rp as a canon character. Shippers......I’m sorry but I will not rp a canon character as anything other than a side. I do not rp them as mains so if you were looking for some sheith or klance I’m sorry to disappoint you. That being said you are free to play as any canon character you desire or an oc as I’m open to oc x oc pairings or oc x canon pairings (you being the canon character) and I do either MxM or FxM pairings. Romance and non fade to black smut will both occur in the rp but it must be slow burn. I do not do fast paced love at first sight as it’s just not something that holds my interest. No sub dom dynamics, switch dynamics only and please no characters whose entire personality is just one emotion or one trait they have. Guys.....please don’t call my aliens furries or whatever. I don’t rp generic spray painted humans and we’re rping in a world full of wacky and crazy aliens that have fur,scales,tails,multiple arms, etc so I find it Incredibly annoying to have a label forced on my character like it’s a bad thing. Alien means something not from earth, if a human was to be born on altea or daibazzal, it’d be considered an alien despite probably being a hundred percent human. If your view and comfort zone is restricted to aliens that look like an altean and nothing else then you needn’t not message me. I’m not going to make you rp with me if this is a dealbreaker so if you don’t heed this warning then you do not be rude after pulling a shocked pikachu. Be mature about it if you realise it’s a deal breaker rather than just blocking or suddenly deciding you no longer want to talk to me and that you’ll just ignore me till I unfriend you. DO NOT COME TO ME SAYING OR ASKING YOU WANNA DO A SHEITH RP/ DO YOU RP AS THESE CANON CHARACTERS! I cannot stress this enough. I don’t know how I can make it any clearer that I do not do canon character mains nor do I do rp’s solely for the purpose of shipping said rp characters. As I’ve said before, if you wanna play a canon character go ahead but I will not rp a canon character as anything other than a side. My oc’s are my mains. You and your characters must be 18+. I’m in my twenties and will not rp with a minor, especially since I have mature and adult themes in my rp’s that I do not want to get into trouble for Rping them with someone whose underaged. Underaged characters are just........a big no for the sole fact that my characters are adults and that i do not feel uncomfortable playing against underaged characters. You must be able to give me one or more responses a day. If it’s been two weeks since the last response and you’ve mysteriously disappeared then I’m not going to stick around for the day you decide to answer me. I do not like having my time wasted for any reason. My time zone is the eastern Australian time zone but I’m available and awake at odd hours so time zones aren’t too big of an issue for me. Remember that I’m looking for a long term partner, someone to carry an rp with for more than just a few days or a week and someone to write multiple stories with. I have tonnes of ideas and head cannons for the rp but I’m open to brainstorming and ideas. We can mix and match ideas till we get something we both like. I want this to be a shared job, don’t expect me to be the one to carry everything just cause I’m the one supplying the idea. Down below I’ve decided to list a couple of ideas that I have: New school defenders: the paladins of voltron have been defending the universe for years. Many stories of their countless victories, battles and struggles are something that every parent who was alive during the war told their children. Once the main three were taken out (haggar, lotor and zarkon) the paladins settled down to teaching the garrisons new generation of cadets. The new change in curriculum was welcome for many as well as a new change in ship style. To make sure that peace could be maintained in every quadrant of every galaxy the paladins of voltron has trained the cadets to fly animal styled space ships like the lions. The animal ship a pilot was assigned depended on their personality, strengths, weaknesses, how well they worked in a team and their style of fighting and piloting skills. The importance of team bonding was something the paladins basically preached. When news of the return of an old foe forces the paladins to return to their jobs as voltrons warriors and they suddenly disappear many write them off as dead or perhaps in distress. None of the superiors are interested to find out..... so who will? Lotor’s reign: It was unbelievable. It couldn’t be true. It had to not be true. Voltron taken down by lotor, son of the mighty emperor zarkon himself, and the paladins were now working for him without question as his top generals?! When the news had first hit many people had panicked whilst countless others had been slain for daring to believe and protest that it was all just some lie made up by the half galran prince who was now an emperor like his father before him. Princess Allura herself was locked away in an unknown location after refusing the cruel man’s hand in marriage so she is no help for what is now a lost hope. Lotor’s reign had well and truly begun all those years ago and it was holding steady. People had forgotten long ago that even in complete and utter darkness….one can always find a speck of light that burns bright no anger how small. Mirror mirror: For many years people believed the galra were a race of cruel, vicious, animalistic thinking beings whose only goal was to destroy and conquer words. No one would’ve ever believed that it was the peacekeeping alteans that had been working to plot the galaxy’s downfall. Voltron, belonged to the galrans, they’d been the ones who’d built it after all despite letting alfor pilot voltron’s right arm. When the king had been turned down on his idea to share the mighty robotic war machine he simply built his own. Five dragons that formed dracotron were what the alteans used as their voltron and weapon to conquer the galaxies. Emperor zarkon, under the advice of Haggar the witch, was one of the few world leaders who managed to get his people to safety. Ever since watching the great kingdoms that he’d known for almost ten thousand years fall under the alteans greed and obsession for power over peace, he prayed for miracle in whatever form he could get it in. When two young stragglers end up stranded on the galra’s second home world, the cards of fate are laid according to haggar, much to everyone else’s confusion. What could two lost souls possibly do to bring back what was lost to the alteans? Gamora’s guns: The guns of Gamora was a rebel group with the goal of foiling any plans of the altean empress allura. Led by the brave commander Sven and his somewhat neurotic sidekick Slav, the gun’s were spread far across the galaxy in little pockets of altean dominated space to keep tabs on the empires schemes and try their best to counteract them. The new recruits were aliens and humans from far and wide working together hand in hand to try and prevent a reign of terror from truly taking over. When plans for creating a super weapon fall on the ears of a trusted source, the newest batch of recruits are sent to locate, find and bring back the blueprints. Of course, such things are easier said than done. The chosen: Keith.lance.hunk.shiro (or Sven, depends on whether you want this to follow a legendary defender type story arc or one of the older series). Allura. Pidge. These were names that belonged to the universe's greatest heroes. Legends beyond all compare. They were champions of the universe and paladins of the mightiest robotic warrior to have ever been built: voltron. The great robot and the lions that formed it were well over ten thousand years old…..sadly for the paladins, they knew that they wouldn’t live to or beyond the great age their lions and oldest enemies had. The galaxy garrison had worked extra hard on ensuring that the next generation of pilots would be suitable candidates for the possibility of becoming voltron’s future paladins. Each paladin chose a student whom they felt like would be the most suitable to take their place and trained them with the knowledge that they were not the ones who had the final decision as to who flew who…..or even if they’d fly at all. What happens when one student fails and is rejected by not one but all the lions? What becomes of them and what is their place on team voltron? What happens to the rest of the team? Only time will tell, according to coran, such a thing has never happened before…...but what happens if it does? From all walks of life to the universe's greatest heroes: Shouldn’t have to explain this one too much. Forget the show paladins, bring your oc’s or next gens onto the table and let them take the stage! Before we reach the end of the post, here are some important reminders: 1: NO REACHING OUT TO ME ASKING FOR A CANON CHARACTER SHIPPING RP! I DO NOT DOUBLE SO DO NOT ASK! 2: DONT MESSAGE ME IF YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH NOT VERY HUMANOID ALIENS! 3: NO GARY STU’S OR MARY SUES! GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS A PERSONALITY THAT ISN’T JUST ONE EMOTION OR TRAIT ONLY! For those who’ve read this thoroughly thank you and congratulations! If you’re at all interested please send me a request via one of the contacts below that says who you wanna be, which lion or paladin you think you’d most likely to be if you were in voltron, which idea you liked (or one of your own) and the numbers 123 to confirm you’ve read everything. My discord: tiberionsunsconqourer#6187 My telegram: Tiberionwars My hangouts: [email protected] Hope to write some awesome stories! Will accept requests as long as this ad is up.

#oc rp #multiple paragraph #long term #literate #action #au #fandom #original #post apocalyptic #scifi #submission

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corkcitylibraries · 3 years

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Ireland Reads | 10 BorrowBox Picks for Children and Young Adult Readers

by Jordan McCarthy

The Ireland Reads day offers the perfect opportunity for every kind of reader to celebrate the magical gift of reading. Regular readers, new readers and those who are about to rediscover the wonders and joys of reading, can enrich their lives during a time when our daily routines need it more than ever.

While our libraries may be closed, the online resource, BorrowBox, is one of the real gems being offered by libraries during lockdown. More and more readers are using the platform which has thousands upon thousands of wonderful eAudiobooks and eBooks.

And better yet, this online service, like all the others offered by Cork City Libraries, is free to all library members. If you haven’t yet joined, you can do this for free at www.librariesireland.ie/join-your-library.

Whatever we choose to read or listen to this month, we know that we are nourishing our health and wellbeing in doing so. The possibilities a good book – or magazine, comic, newspaper or whatever you choose to read - can bring to our lives are endless.

“If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” – J.K. Rowling’

Below are ten of the top picks currently available on the Children’s and Young Adult section of BorrowBox. Like all great kids’ books, they will prove gripping and engaging for many adult readers, too.

So, squeeze in a read this month. You can find out more about the Ireland Reads initiative by visiting irelandreads.ie. And don’t forget to pledge your reading time!

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds - Young Adult

(Available on eBook and eAudiobook)

‘‘Now

I’m wishing I would’ve

laughed more

at his dumb jokes

because the day

before yesterday,

Shawn was shot

and killed.’’

This remarkable Y.A. thriller is set over the course of 60 seconds. Written in lyrical, verse-like prose, it tells the tale of a revenge-seeking William, whose brother has been shot dead.

But when Will sets out to get his revenge, some ghosts from his past appear in the elevator on his way down to the ground floor. Will he go ahead with his murderous plan?

There’s a sense of urgency in this fast-paced novel, though he soon realises; it is a ‘long way down’ from the 8th to the ground floor.

Hero On A Bicycle by Shirley Hughes – Children (10+)

(Available on eBook and eAudiobook)

‘‘He stopped and slung his bicycle against a nearby wall to get his breath back and consider the situation. At that moment someone came up silently behind him and clapped a strong hand over his mouth.’’

Set in Florence, Italy during World War II, this is historical fiction at its finest. The Allies are closing in on Nazi-occupied Florence and 14 year-old Paolo has been taking secret bike rides late every night to beat the boredom of life under curfew. He misses his dad – an anti-Fascist who is in hiding - and rues the fact that he is too young to join the military.

However, when Paolo receives a frightening message on his way home from one of his late-night treks, he suddenly becomes involved in the thick of the action. Can he become the hero during his hometown’s greatest time of need?

This is an excellent novel, which captures one family’s struggles during war.

Not suitable for younger children, some upsetting themes.

Zom-B; Underground by Darren Shan – Young Adult

(eAudiobook)

‘‘Can you hold on to your humanity when you're a monster....’’

This fantasy-horror, dystopian novel by the ‘Master of Horror’ is book two in the Zom-B series.

B Smith is the main protagonist in this story, which is set during a zombie apocalypse. When she wakes up in a laboratory-style military camp, ‘B’ learns that she has become ‘Zom-B’.

Can she meet the demands of her captors or is she doomed?

Will she be a monster forever?

The Dog Who Lost His Bark by Eoin Colfer – Children

(eAudiobook)

‘‘In his short doggy life, Oz has suffered at the hands of BAD PEOPLE. Somewhere out there, he believes, is an AWESOME BOY – his BOY. Maybe when they find each other he will learn to BARK again ...’’

Patrick comes from a very musical family and he has wanted a pet dog for a very long time. When he rescues an abandoned puppy on his summer holidays, he calls him Oz, and so begins a strong friendship between a boy and a dog – at least that’s what we hope!

Oz is a nervous little creature and he can’t bark, or at least he doesn’t bark when he moves to his new home. Will he ever bark again? Maybe the musical family will be able to get him barking again!

This heart-warming children’s tale, from the creator of the Artemis Fowl series, shows how important music can be in the healing process.

Rugby Spirit by Gerard Siggins - Children

(eAudiobook)

‘‘A new school, a new sport, an old mystery ... the first instalment in Gerard Siggins’ beloved and bestselling Rugby Spirit series.’’

Eoin Madden is the grandson of a legendary Irish rugby player. When he starts a new school in Dublin, leaving behind his GAA playing days in Tipperary, his rugby adventure begins.

In Casterock College, rugby is everything! But Eoin has never even held a rugby ball before. And the bully, Richie Duffy, is making his life even more difficult. Can Eoin make an impact in his very first season on a school rugby team?

This is one for fans of sport and fiction. It provides lots of insight into the game of rugby, too.

Once by Morris Gleitzman – Children

(Available on eBook and eAudiobook)

‘‘Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house.

Once I made a Nazi with toothache laugh.

My name is Felix.

This is my story.’’

Once is the first book in Morris Gleitzman’s Felix and Zelda series. Set during the Second World War, this novel is a tale of hope, friendship and survival.

Felix is in a Catholic orphanage in Poland in 1942. The son of Jewish booksellers, he fears that the Nazi’s are burning Jewish books and believes that his parents’ store could be next.

The young Jewish boy departs the orphanage, longing to find his mum and dad, and to warn them about the Nazis. Felix soon discovers that his hometown has changed utterly. A race for survival ensues.

Not suitable for younger, some upsetting themes

Sabrina; Season Of the Witch by Sarah Rees-Brennan – Young Adult

(eAudiobook)

‘‘To be a witch is to kiss the moon.’’

Inspired by the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, this fantasy novel is a prequel to that Netflix series. It is the story of what went before the "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" show.

Sabrina is half-mortal, half-witch. Before she turns 16, and becomes full-powered, she realises how scared she is of joining the dark side and leaving her mortal life behind.

Can she discard her boyfriend Harvey, and her other mortal friends? This is her origin story; a spooky adventure for fans of the Sabrina series.

Ultimate Football Heroes; Rashford by M & T Oldfield - Children

(Available on eBook and eAudiobook)

‘‘When the referee blew his whistle, Marcus started his well-practiced penalty routine:

Four little shuffles to the left,

then short steps forward to try to fool the keeper, and then BANG!’’

The Ultimate Football Heroes series is a biographical story of the life of a star footballer. It charts the rise of some of world football’s biggest names, from the playground to the pitch.

Marcus Rashford is one of the most exciting players in the English Premier League. The Manchester United star has been one of the standout stories over the last year, with his campaign to keep free school meals available for children in the UK.

In Rashford, we learn about the life of Marcus – from when he would watch Man Utd playing on TV as a baby, to scoring important Champions League goals for the Red Devils.

A fast-paced story, full of action, it is one for all the family to enjoy. Others in the series include Kane and Delli Alli, which are available on BorrowBox.

Slam! You’re Gonna Wanna Hear This by Nikita Gill – Young Adult

(eBook)

‘‘Poetry is the language of Fire, Fury and Freedom,’’ says Nikita Gill.

Slam! is a collection of poems performed at ‘slams’, or spoken word competitions. It features established and emerging voices, with themes such as home, kin, protest and desire among those in the collection.

Slam! highlights the importance of poetry for the times we live in. It provides an ideal introduction into modern poetry and is a terrific publication.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien – Children

(Available on eBook and eAudiobook)

‘‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.’’

J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic fantasy novel is the prequel to his Lord of the Rings saga. Tolkien wrote the story for his own children before it was published into a worldwide bestseller. First published over 80 years ago, it continues to be enjoyed by young and old.

This otherworldly tale features the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who has been recruited as a burglar by Gandalf for an epic quest. Expect trolls, goblins, dwarves, elves, giant spiders, and the dragon, Smaug, as Bilbo and the gang make their way across Middle Earth in search of treasure.

#corkcitylibraries #irelandreads #squeezeinaread

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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FEATURE: 7 Times Anime Busted Out Pro-Wrestling Moves

If you watch enough anime, you’ll begin to see that a lot of shows like to reference professional wrestling by having characters utilize various moves on one another. Sometimes, that will make sense within the context of the show, but other times, it might seem a little random. Regardless, it’s always a fun time when an anime decides to add in a touch of pro-wrestling into an episode. Two years ago, I wrote about six wild suplexes that were featured in a variety of anime, so let’s take a look at seven other instances where anime decided it needed a flair of pro-wrestling.

Naruto Shippuden - Liger Bomb

There’s something amazing about the Raikage using pro-wrestling moves as a way to fight against people using wild and ridiculous jutsu. There’s the intense double lariat he does with Bee against the clone of Kisame, and then him pulling out a Liger Bomb against Sasuke. This utilization is somewhat strange because it’s technically not the same Liger Bomb that Jushin Thunder Liger uses in real life (it’s more in line with a Batista Bomb/sit-out powerbomb in terms of powerbomb variations), but also creates a reference within a reference.

Does the Raikage using this maneuver mean that Jushin Liger the wrestler also exists in some form in Naruto or is it Jushin Liger the manga by Go Nagai? Maybe it’s both, similar to how things happened in our reality? Now that’s a non-canon arc I’d be interested in seeing! Either way, the Raikage’s Liger Bomb is incredibly effective since not only does he cover himself in lightning, it’s a move that no one else had survived until Sasuke had to pull out one of his big techniques just to make sure it didn’t kill him.

The God of High School - Stunner

Seeing the most popular move from the US boom period of wrestling being done in an anime is still a wild sight. You know it’s a great move when it’s utilized in the opening as well. Mah Miseon utilizes pro-wrestling as her martial art in the confines of the tournament, which is the best. Perhaps my favorite bit about her character is when she goes up against Yoo Mira and tells Mira that using a weapon on her would be ineffective because she’s used to being hit by those kinds of items thanks to being a pro-wrestler and taking bumps regularly. That’s just brilliant!

Mah Miseon’s version of the stunner is exactly what you’d picture if you ever saw Stone Cold Steve Austin do the move. She sets it up with a kick to the gut and grabs her opponent's head and sits down, jamming their jaw into her shoulder. It was effective enough to help her move onto the preliminaries, but maybe she should’ve pulled it off in her fight with Yoo Mira. Who knows, maybe that could’ve been the path to victory instead of defeat.

Love Live! Sunshine!! - Crossface Chicken Wing

Yoshiko at various points throughout Love Live! Sunshine!! will put other members of Aqours into an abdominal stretch which she’s effectively dubbed “Fallen Dragon Phoenix Hold.” In Season 2, Riko begins an unlikely friendship with Yoshiko, which sees some of Yoshiko’s fallen angel schtick rub off on her. We see this when Riko applies a crossface chicken wing on Yoshiko and calls it, “Silent Cherry Blossom Nightmare.”

The crossface chicken wing has been a staple in pro-wrestling for many years and became popular in 1994 when Bob Backlund utilized it as his finishing move in his heel run to capture the WWF Championship ten years after his last reign as champion. The move is also utilized today by multiple-time WWE Women’s Champion, Asuka, who redubbed it the Asuka Lock. What makes this utilization in Love Live! Sunshine!! humorous is there really isn’t any other indication that pro-wrestling exists in this universe. This makes me want to see a school idol group that acts like pro-wrestlers, or does pro-wrestling on the side, similarly to the idol wrestlers in Tiger Mask W. However, idols and wrestling being combined isn’t something that’s too surprising since back in the early '90s, companies like All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling were trying to do something similar by having certain wrestlers also do singing performances at shows as well.

Naruto - Canadian Destroyer

Earlier we discussed when Sasuke was on the receiving end of a pro-wrestling move, but over 200 episodes before that, he was giving one out. In the midst of the Chunin Exams, Sasuke is able to grab a disguised Orochimaru, flip in midair, and then hit a devastating piledriver. Given that the episode this was featured in aired in 2003, this was just about when Petey Williams was beginning to popularize his front-flip piledriver known as a Canadian Destroyer. It’s certainly not like nowadays where it’s become a much more common move in pro-wrestling, so seeing it this early in Naruto is a bit shocking.

Now, some people might say this is supposed to be just a regular piledriver, but Sasuke clearly is able to turn Orochimaru’s body 180 degrees to land in a piledriver position, so it totally counts. There was probably some old-timer ninja that got in a huff about Sasuke using it, but he shouldn’t listen to them. I still find it wildly entertaining that in the midst of this big fight early in Naruto, one of Sasuke’s key moves is a piledriver. Given the danger associated with that move, it’s smart since he’s able to smash Orochimaru’s head from quite a big drop. That should be an incredibly devastating maneuver. Too bad Orochimaru is a slithery one and won’t be put down that easily.

Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- - Dragon Suplex

Hey, wait a minute. I was told this was a dragon suplex! Okay, yes, that is a dragon, and it is getting suplexed. I think we’ve been bamboozled here. In all seriousness, seeing a dragon get suplexed is such a bizarre sight, but a great one. I don’t even think you could utilize an actual dragon suplex — a move invented by Tatsumi Fujinami and currently utilized by Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kenny Omega — because how are you going to lock up a dragon to perform the move? They’d just slip out easily, and then you’d be in some serious trouble! Plus, even being able to use a normal vertical suplex on a dragon would be difficult since they’re so bottom-heavy, meaning you’d really have to use some strength to lift them up and slam them. So, while this is just a regular suplex, it’s still pretty impressive, and maybe one day we’ll get to see an actual dragon take a dragon suplex.

Ahiru no Sora - Shining Wizard

Guys in a sports club performing pro-wrestling moves on each other just makes the most sense, especially when you have a group of dudes like the basketball club in Ahiru no Sora. A group of mostly former delinquents who are used to having some knockdown, drag-out fights. Although, I don’t know if I would consider utilizing a Shining Wizard — a strike where you step off an opponent’s knee and slam your knee into their face — in an actual fight.

The move created by Keiji Mutoh/The Great Muta that’s now used by basically everyone in pro-wrestling is fun to see used in a scuffle between brothers Chiaki and Momoharu early on in the series. Everyone that sees it gets really excited when Chiaki pulls it off as well, and he does so quite effectively. Since we see later on that those two would constantly get into fights growing up, this means the two of them throwing out pro-wrestling moves at one another is probably a common occurrence. The one downside to this is that using a Shining Wizard in an actual basketball game would be a very terrible idea and not something you’d want to try.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure - Argentine Backbreaker

Apparently Rubber Soul was really into pro-wrestling when he disguised himself as Kakyoin to try and take down a thief. That poor thief didn’t know what was about to happen when he got put into an Argentine Backbreaker Rack — otherwise known as the Torture Rack — to, well, torture the thief. It’s kind of surprising there’s not more random pro-wrestling moves in JoJo given the ridiculous nature of the series and that fact that everyone looks like pro-wrestlers from the 1980s.

In the world of JoJo though, this move looks absolutely devastating because it looks like Rubber Soul is about to snap this thief’s spine in two just by the amount of torque and pressure he’s putting on his body. That’s probably what would’ve happened if it weren’t for Jotaro coming over to be like, “Hey dude what are you doing?!” Since this is the episode where this imposter Kakyoin does some very weird stuff, it’s safe to say that pro-wrestling is responsible for the famous meme of Kakyoin getting very into licking a cherry.

This is but a small sample size of various instances where an anime has thrown in some pro-wrestling to shake things up, and I’m sure this will be by no means the last time it happens. As long as pro-wrestling remains popular in Japan and around the world, you’re certain to see at least one of your favorite characters pull off some wild and ridiculous wrestling move. The more that happens, the happier I’ll be, so let’s hope we get to see more pro-wrestling integrated into anime in each upcoming season.

What are some other instances of pro-wrestling in anime that you believe deserve a shout out? Let us know down in the comments below!

Jared Clemons is a writer and podcaster for Seasonal Anime Checkup where he can be found always wanting to talk about Love Live! Sunshine!! or whatever else he's into at the moment. He can be found on Twitter @ragbag.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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roleplayfinder · 4 years

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Let’s voltron!

“I say vol and you say tron! Vol…..”

“Eh…. voltron?”

“We’ll work on it.”

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing well and that you’ve been able to stay safe and healthy during the pandemic (and that the easing of some restrictions depending on where you are has not negatively affected you). After binge watching legendary defender on netflix I’ve had the undying and uncontrollable urge to do a voltron rp. Now I bet you’re all wondering what I want and if you’re going to get to do some shipping…….we’ll I guess you’re just going to have to read on and find out.

I’m looking for literate rper’s only. That means people who write in third person past tense, can give me at the very least one well thought out and fleshed paragraph (as well as be willing to write more when the situation calls for it) and has a decent grasp on their spelling, grammar and punctuation. I will not yell at you for the occasional bout of typonese but one liners, one worders, poorly written responses and lazy writing in general will not keep me around. If I can’t read what you’ve written and you’re not willing to put some effort in or correct it then there’s no point in me sticking around. I also require rper’s who’ve actually watched voltron whether it be legendary defender, defender of the universe or voltron force. If you’re someone whose a stickler for canon accuracy then I’m probably not the rper for you. When I rp in a fandom setting I treat it a bit like a base as in there’s rules to follow but I don’t have to follow them as if I’m reading the show script. To put it simply I value creativity and ideas that allow a different take on the characters and what could’ve happened.

I only rp male alien or alien hybrid characters and they’re premade but flexible in how they’re written. I do not have pictures nor do I desire to spend endless hours of time to find a face claim of a creature that isn’t the typical different coloured humanoids you see in voltron. I have descriptions and that’s it. I do not care if your character is made up on the spot or if you prefer to rp as a canon character. Shippers……I’m sorry but I will not rp a canon character as anything other than a side, I do not rp them as mains so if you were looking for some sheith or klance I’m sorry to disappoint you. That being said you are free to play as any canon character you desire or an oc as I’m open to oc x oc pairings or oc x canon pairings (you being the canon character) and I do either MxM or FxM pairings. Romance and non fade to black smut will both occur in the rp but it must be slow burn. I do not do fast paced love at first sight as it’s just not something that holds my interest. No sub dom dynamics, switch dynamics only and please no characters whose entire personality is just one emotion or one trait they have.

Guys…..please don’t call my aliens furries or whatever. I don’t rp generic spray painted humans and we’re rping in a world full of wacky and crazy aliens that have fur,scales,tails,multiple arms, etc so I find it Incredibly annoying to have a label forced on my character like it’s a bad thing. Alien means something not from earth, if a human was to be born on altea or daibazzal, it’d be considered an alien despite probably being a hundred percent human. If your view and comfort zone is restricted to aliens that look like an altean and nothing else then you needn’t not message me. I’m not going to make you rp with me if this is a dealbreaker so if you don’t heed this warning then you do not be rude after pulling a shocked pikachu. Be mature about it if you realise it’s a deal breaker rather than just blocking or suddenly deciding you no longer want to talk to me and that you’ll just ignore me till I unfriend you.

DO NOT COME TO ME SAYING OR ASKING YOU WANNA DO A SHEITH RP/ DO YOU RP AS THESE CANON CHARACTERS! I cannot stress this enough. I don’t know how I can make it any clearer that I do not do canon character mains nor do I do rp’s solely for the purpose of shipping said rp characters. As I’ve said before, if you wanna play a canon character go ahead but I will not rp a canon character as anything other than a side. My oc’s are my mains.

You and your characters must be 18+. I’m in my twenties and will not rp with a minor, especially since I have mature and adult themes in my rp’s that I do not want to get into trouble for Rping them with someone whose underaged. Underaged characters are just……..a big no for the sole fact that my characters are adults and that i do not feel uncomfortable playing against underaged characters.

You must be able to give me one or more responses a day. If it’s been two weeks since the last response and you’ve mysteriously disappeared then I’m not going to stick around for the day you decide to answer me. I do not like having my time wasted for any reason. My time zone is the eastern Australian time zone but I’m available and awake at odd hours so time zones aren’t too big of an issue for me. Remember that I’m looking for a long term partner, someone to carry an rp with for more than just a few days or a week and someone to write multiple stories with.

I have tonnes of ideas and head cannons for the rp but I’m open to brainstorming and ideas. We can mix and match ideas till we get something we both like. I want this to be a shared job, don’t expect me to be the one to carry everything just cause I’m the one supplying the idea. Down below I’ve decided to list a couple of ideas that I have:

New school defenders:

the paladins of voltron have been defending the universe for years. Many stories of their countless victories, battles and struggles are something that every parent who was alive during the war told their children. Once the main three were taken out (haggar, lotor and zarkon) the paladins settled down to teaching the garrisons new generation of cadets. The new change in curriculum was welcome for many as well as a new change in ship style. To make sure that peace could be maintained in every quadrant of every galaxy the paladins of voltron has trained the cadets to fly animal styled space ships like the lions. The animal ship a pilot was assigned depended on their personality, strengths, weaknesses, how well they worked in a team and their style of fighting and piloting skills. The importance of team bonding was something the paladins basically preached. When news of the return of an old foe forces the paladins to return to their jobs as voltrons warriors and they suddenly disappear many write them off as dead or perhaps in distress. None of the superiors are interested to find out….. so who will?

Lotor’s reign:

It was unbelievable. It couldn’t be true. It had to not be true. Voltron taken down by lotor, son of the mighty emperor zarkon himself, and the paladins were now working for him without question as his top generals?! When the news had first hit many people had panicked whilst countless others had been slain for daring to believe and protest that it was all just some lie made up by the half galran prince who was now an emperor like his father before him. Princess Allura herself was locked away in an unknown location after refusing the cruel man’s hand in marriage so she is no help for what is now a lost hope. Lotor’s reign had well and truly begun all those years ago and it was holding steady. People had forgotten long ago that even in complete and utter darkness….one can always find a speck of light that burns bright no anger how small.

Mirror mirror:

For many years people believed the galra were a race of cruel, vicious, animalistic thinking beings whose only goal was to destroy and conquer words. No one would’ve ever believed that it was the peacekeeping alteans that had been working to plot the galaxy’s downfall. Voltron, belonged to the galrans, they’d been the ones who’d built it after all despite letting alfor pilot voltron’s right arm. When the king had been turned down on his idea to share the mighty robotic war machine he simply built his own. Five dragons that formed dracotron were what the alteans used as their voltron and weapon to conquer the galaxies. Emperor zarkon, under the advice of Haggar the witch, was one of the few world leaders who managed to get his people to safety. Ever since watching the great kingdoms that he’d known for almost ten thousand years fall under the alteans greed and obsession for power over peace, he prayed for miracle in whatever form he could get it in. When two young stragglers end up stranded on the galra’s second home world, the cards of fate are laid according to haggar, much to everyone else’s confusion. What could two lost souls possibly do to bring back what was lost to the alteans?

Gamora’s guns:

The guns of Gamora was a rebel group with the goal of foiling any plans of the altean empress allura. Led by the brave commander Sven and his somewhat neurotic sidekick Slav, the gun’s were spread far across the galaxy in little pockets of altean dominated space to keep tabs on the empires schemes and try their best to counteract them. The new recruits were aliens and humans from far and wide working together hand in hand to try and prevent a reign of terror from truly taking over. When plans for creating a super weapon fall on the ears of a trusted source, the newest batch of recruits are sent to locate, find and bring back the blueprints. Of course, such things are easier said than done.

The chosen:

Keith.lance.hunk.shiro (or Sven, depends on whether you want this to follow a legendary defender type story arc or one of the older series). Allura. Pidge. These were names that belonged to the universe’s greatest heroes. Legends beyond all compare. They were champions of the universe and paladins of the mightiest robotic warrior to have ever been built: voltron. The great robot and the lions that formed it were well over ten thousand years old…..sadly for the paladins, they knew that they wouldn’t live to or beyond the great age their lions and oldest enemies had. The galaxy garrison had worked extra hard on ensuring that the next generation of pilots would be suitable candidates for the possibility of becoming voltron’s future paladins. Each paladin chose a student whom they felt like would be the most suitable to take their place and trained them with the knowledge that they were not the ones who had the final decision as to who flew who…..or even if they’d fly at all. What happens when one student fails and is rejected by not one but all the lions? What becomes of them and what is their place on team voltron? What happens to the rest of the team? Only time will tell, according to coran, such a thing has never happened before……but what happens if it does?

From all walks of life to the universe’s greatest heroes:

Shouldn’t have to explain this one too much. Forget the show paladins, bring your oc’s or next gens onto the table and let them take the stage!

Before we reach the end of the post, here are some important reminders:

1: NO REACHING OUT TO ME ASKING FOR A CANON CHARACTER SHIPPING RP! I DO NOT DOUBLE SO DO NOT ASK!

2: DONT MESSAGE ME IF YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH NOT VERY HUMANOID ALIENS!

3: NO GARY STU’S OR MARY SUES! GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS A PERSONALITY THAT ISN’T JUST ONE EMOTION OR TRAIT ONLY!

For those who’ve read this thoroughly thank you and congratulations! If you’re at all interested please send me a request via one of my contacts that says who you wanna be, which lion or paladin you think you’d most likely to be if you were in voltron, which idea you liked (or one of your own) and the numbers 123.

My discord: tiberionsunsconqourer#6187 My hangouts and email: lleo [email protected] My telegram: Tiberionwars

Hope to write some awesome stories!

Will accept requests as long as this ad is up.

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lizhly-writes · 4 years

Text

just your kind of dream

1/2 the first chapter of one of my main three WIPs, thousand year vow. You can see a little more information on this here.

Dessi runs her fingers over the embroidery with a frown.

The images sewn into the fabric are terribly familiar. Cypress for despair, the sword and flames for massacre, the wheel for the cycle of suffering, the border of chains for the pact unbroken.

This is the story of the Bane and the Traitor-Children. It’s the first story every child of Scrit hears, a history elaborated and enforced at least once a week at the creaking schoolhouse a stone’s throw away from her home. The teacher, grim-faced as she told them how the Bane turned the children who would become His champions, coaxed them to view Him as someone dearly beloved instead of a soulless abomination, until They willingly knelt and pledged Him Their loyalty.

“And on the summer solstice, the Bane sent the Children to the destiny He had decided for Them. On that day, He declared…?”

Dessi remembers shivering in the cold, standing with her back ramrod-straight, chin raised high, and her voice mixed with all the other children as they chorused, “The greatest invention of mankind is unquestioning faith.”

“Very good.”

“Never forget,” warned the elders. “Never forget,” snapped the teachers. “Never forget,” whispered the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and near-every face in the village.

And so the children of Scrit never do. The story is ground so deeply into their bones that even beaten, bruised, half-dead, they’d be able to tell it without even the slightest hitch in memory.

Dessi straightens and sets the finely-stitched blanket to the side. It’s beautifully done, every detail carefully rendered in vibrant colors. Here lies the problem: it shouldn’t exist. None of this should.

All around her are familiar walls, familiar pictures, her ma’s pottery neatly shelved away, a sprig of her da’s favorite flowers sitting in a bowl of water, herbs hanging from the rafters. There’s a particularly crooked bundle of boneset hanging above her, just where she left it, and none of this can possibly be real.

This is her old home. That’s unmistakable. But it went up in flames with the rest of Scrit seven years ago. She’d watched it burn down to the ground herself.

Now it’s here and whole and decidedly not covered in soot or blood. She’s dreamt of the way things used to be, but this is like a suspiciously tame fever-dream. All is silent and calm and utterly unnatural. She’d had a big family, each room warmed with the heat of each breath and the sound of gossip and chatter. The house had never gone quiet, not really. No matter how late it got, there’d always be at least one person up - her da, picking out herbs by the light of the moon, or Aedda checking the hearthfire, or Rilli fiddling with some private project. Sometimes even Dessi herself, staring at the ceiling until lulled to sleep by the whispers of her older siblings.

Now it’s so quiet that a single footstep practically echo through the air. Even her head is silent. Dessi hasn’t had that kind of peace since —

She stops, stands perfectly still.

She has had a dead god’s whispers and screams and thoughts flashing through her mind ever since she was ten years old. He’s never left her. Especially not in these dreams, the ones that show how things used to be. He’s drawn to the slow burn of anger at the injustice of life. Whenever he catches even the slightest hint of her own bitterness, he whispers about how things should be made right.

And he’s not here.

A sharp gesture, and her knives freeze into being in her hands. Lord Takastos might be as good as dead, but he is still a god. There is no natural phenomenon or mortal being that can keep him so quietly out of her mind. The only entity that can do such a thing is another god, and there is only one god she knows that would lock her head down like this.

This is not just a dream.

“Desima.”

Dessi spins violently on her heel. It’s a reflex to send her knives flying toward the intruder, and she’s got another set lined up against her fingers before she realizes exactly who she’s looking at.

She swallows dryly. “Da.”

Her aim will never be good as Willa’s, but that doesn’t stop it from being good. The proof of it is staring at her right between her father’s bright blue eyes.

The tilt of head is a little wrong, the curve of his mouth sharper than she remembers, but who exactly this is supposed to be is unmistakable. “Da,” Dessi repeats.

She can almost feel the temperature drop.

There’s a faint frown on his face. He looks vaguely disappointed, like all she’d done was brought home substandard markings in calligraphy. “Well, that’s not polite, is it?” Da says, his voice perfectly calm, as if he didn’t have a frozen knife dug deep in his brow and buried in his torso. He nonchalantly yanks the ice out of his ribs, and Dessi gets the pleasure of watching blood dribble down his side.

Not again. Not again, no never again not again not again not again -

She and her brothers and sisters had tripped over their da when they’d stumbled out of their burning house, all blistered skin and bones. He’d been face-down in the dirt, and they’d been able to see the hole that’d been torn through his back to the ground below.

Dessi clamps a hand over her mouth. There’s a soft part of her she’d long thought she’d excised whispering that she’s a traitor, a kinslayer, nothing more than shit smeared on the ground. It’s making something sour and cold well up in her stomach, claw its way up her throat. Half-melted snow mixed with tiny icicles mixed with bile, prickling and bloody and foul on her tongue.

This isn’t real. She knows that, but if it was — if it was —

Her da would’ve died again, and it would’ve been all her fault.

Da clicks his tongue. “What would your ma say, ah? I bet Lilli wouldn’t’ve been too pleased.”

No, Lilaea of Niwe wouldn’t have appreciated one of her children greeting their father with a knife to the head, and she wouldn’t have liked blood on the floorboards. Too much of a pain to scrub out, she said. Dessi remembers her ma good-naturedly scolding one of her older sisters when she came back from a hunt. Rilli hadn’t drained her quarry properly, and she’d left faint tracks when she made her way through the door. She’d needed more practice to learn not to make a mess, her ma had said.

But, see, Dessi remembers her mother screaming, gutteral with rage and pain and fear. She remembers the temperature dropping and spears of ice following her mother’s sharp, violent gestures, rushing towards her unexpected guests to make them bleed. Her ma had fought before They made her a corpse on her own clean floors. She would’ve done the same when dealing with imposters like this.

Dessi straightens her spine. “You don’t get to say her name like that,” Dessi hisses, lifting her chin high.

Lilli instead of Lilaea, a shortened form that says I care, I love, you are beloved, I am yours and you are mine. It shouldn’t be said so nice and easy like it belongs by the mouth of the thing wearing her da’s face.

“Dessi?” says her da’s voice, sounding lost and hurt. “What d’you mean?”

That’s not her da. This isn’t a dream. This is not how things are.

There is a god here that finds suffering funny.

Dessi remembers standing in the clear early morning, listening to the teacher reciting their history. “Our people cried out: why? Who? What god have we offended? What god has wrought destruction on us all?”

And He, the great and terrible divine appeared, shining before them, and He said: I have ten thousand names, and before this world ends, I will claim thousands more. But you may call me —

She balls her hands into fists, feels the thin skin of ice forming over them crack. “Lord Tessera,” she says tightly.

There is a singular, shining moment where she could be wrong. All is silent, and it’s her da standing there, his brows furrowed in confusion and blood trickling from the knife in his forehead, and this could all just be a figment of her own imagination.

Then his face stretches into a grin. It’s one she sees in her nightmares. Too wide to be human, jaw unhinged to accommodate too many, too sharp teeth. “Well met,” the Bane says, and the sound of it almost makes her step back. She can still hear her da’s voice, but it’s muffled and reverberating, thousands of echoes layered over each other and ringing in her head. “Greetings, Desima of Niwe.”

He shifts, ever so slightly, in her vision, into something more insubstantial, something a little less real. Is He a little more bright? Is He a little less memorable? Does His image burn and melt in her mind?

It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she’s right and by the Three, she wishes she wasn’t.

#tyv #my writing #writeblr #everything #mine #camp nanowrimo 2019

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

Video

youtube

JUICE WRLD FT. FUTURE - FINE CHINA

[2.90]

Don't look to us to clean up this mess...

Katie Gill: Bad points: this song is bizarrely short and the chorus makes up a solid 75 per cent of it. This means we get to hear Juice WRLD happily sing about how he'll kill his girl and hit us with some blatant transphobia over and over again. Good points: Future's verse is so friggen stupid that it somehow manages to be completely amazing while also being completely dumb. [2]

Ryo Miyauchi: The chorus just gets worse and worse. Thousand-dollar price tag is a backhanded compliment coming from a rapper who got Future on his side, and the only time I've ever really noticed fine china plates is when they break. You'd think Juice WRLD threatening to murder his love if she decides to break up is terrifying, but then he brushes it off as some kind of cute joke, sliding in "oh, did I just say that out loud" like a violently vengeful Urkel. His affections feel repulsively sour after that, no matter how sweet he coaxes it with melody. [4]

Will Rivitz: Chief among the endless churn of hip-hop thinkpieces are #takes about the glorification of putatively negative concepts in popular rap songs. It remains endlessly popular because of the endless variation within how artists portray contentious things as well as how listeners react to those portrayals. One can present everything from drug usage to interpersonal relationships constructively and incisively or harmfully and lazily, even within the same song, which makes the spin cycle of reactions continually compelling though the overarching genre remains the same. Here, Juice WRLD and Future, caterwauling transphobia and possessive psychological abuse, justify the most negative of these critiques. Extra minus points for Juice WRLD unintentionally arguing in support of using euphemisms for "vagina" instead of the word itself; his mealy-mouthing of those three syllables makes my skin crawl. [2]

Crystal Leww: The pervasive narrative in mainstream rap media is that Lil Uzi Vert is music for the youths that olds can rock with because (1) the melodies popped, (2) the song structures are good, and (3) his lyrical musings about depression were relatable, even surprisingly elegant. This narrative has been largely written by olds, unsurprisingly, and the olds do not seem to have a similar amount of generosity for Juice WRLD, despite their similar styles. This is largely driven by a disdain for unfortunate lines like "so if she leaves, I'mma kill her, oh, she'll die," which like, yes -- in this hip hop hellscape that is now straight up turning someone as hateful and repugnant as XXXTentacion into a martyr -- it's very bad! On the other hand, I cannot bring myself to be patronizing about this -- this is music clearly not made for me, the melodies pop, and you cannot tell me there's a funnier line in a Hot 100 song this year than "Shorty like a ten thousand plate, FINE CHINA." [7]

Taylor Alatorre: Juice WRLD is pretty good at writing chorus melodies. He's even better at writing parodies of Juice WRLD lyrics. He gets by on his willingness to take advantage of the fact that nobody knows what level of irony anyone is on anymore. So he says he's going to kill this girl if she leaves him, which is bad, but it's so over-the-top that he can't possibly be serious, so it's fine, but he's still putting the idea out there, which is bad, but he admits he shouldn't be saying it out loud, so it's self-aware. After going through this cycle of contortions, you're left with the realization that, however benign or toxic, it's just not that interesting. I briefly held out hope that one of the lyrics was "pussy-hatted vagina," which would've at least shown a sort of reactionary political awareness, but no, it's just gender-based reaction. Future sounds so comparatively mature that one has to wonder why he signed on to this project in the first place; is it trend-hopping to hop on a trend that you had a large part in creating? [4]

Anthony Easton: Oh, it's transphobic as hell, and the line about killing her is a third rail of toxic masculinity, and the lake line is cribbed from Cardi B's much better "Bodak Yellow," but I'm oddly charmed by the idea of a pussy like Spode, and Future sells the whole mess. [3]

Andy Hutchins: I do not think Juice WRLD should be allowed to have any communication with women. But it is good to see that Future still knows his planets despite his favorite one not technically being one! [2]

Thomas Inskeep: "If she leaves I'mma kill her," Juice WRLD says, and unfortunately, I believe the asshole. Future, what are you thinking? [0]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The only vaguely commendable thing about "Fine China" is Wheezy's production, which does its jaunty best to prevent you from paying attention to what the rappers it carries are actually saying. On that front, Juice WRLD continues his pursuit of the perfect balance between reprehensible and boring while Future seems resigned to the latter. [0]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: It's easy to get a sense of rap's quick cycling of all-stars when you work in a high school. Three years ago, some of my students were excited about Young Thug. The freshmen this year? They don't know who he is, but they all love Lil Baby. Last year, one student called Kevin Gates a "respectable old head." This year, the new kids only really know him as the dude who collaborated with NBA YoungBoy. If there's a single rapper right now who all my students are into -- from freshmen to seniors -- it's Juice WRLD. He makes miserablist rap that's quasi-similar to Future's previous music, but he doesn't really rap; dude just makes 2000s emo with a rap veneer, the latter informing his music as the drug-fueled histrionics it is. Kids are here for the Juice, so the end result is a sing-songy tune that finds Future's Auto-Tune warbles supporting the simplistic hook-as-everything modus operandi that defines virtually all of Juice's music. It's fine; his best music is always his most harrowing, his most depressing. But that sort of begs the question: why are critics less eager to champion Juice WRLD than Lil Peep or Lil Uzi Vert? Does something have to be objectively more sad in order to justify any questionable lyrics? Why is sadness always measured in the most obvious ways? Whatever the case, Juice WRLD will likely be forgotten in a few years time, a random blip in a line of artists who provided youth with a sense of angst-ridden release. "Fine China" won't be remembered as one of his best songs because it's decidedly not sad. Juice WRLD won't end up on any critics' lists because he's not sad enough. That's a good thing, right? [5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Juice WRLD #Future #rap #hip hop #music #music review #writing

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sansvirtuosity · 6 years

Note

lonashipping and #7 for the kiss meme? :3c

I’m dying this ended up so much longer than I expected please kill me. This is the first thing I wrote in like a month, and it’s also extremely unedited (or even proofread because I’m so damn tired) so if it’s nonsense, I’m sorry. If it’s not utter garbage when I wake up, I’m posting this shit to AO3. You’re a goddess for requesting this, Pixel. You got so many words from me. Like blood from a stone.

Lonashipping, #7: “A kiss to shut them up.” from this post. Recommended listening: All-Nighter by Bad Bad Hats.

Rating: T, characters are older than in canon (16+) because I still can’t reasonably believe that ten-year-olds are going around and cockfighting dragons and no one is stopping them.

Moon was Alola’s first Champion. Just the thought alone was surreal. Even now, at the party thrown in her honor, she still forgets to respond to the title. But she was sure the role would grow on her, just as her strange group of friends did. Everything in Alola had a way of sticking to you.

Champion, huh?

It wasn’t something she’d set out to become when she left Kanto. She just wanted something to do. And now look at her. She almost felt like a fraud, like at any moment everyone would realize she was just a bored kid who likes pokemon, and not some great Champion.

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket, and she seized the opportunity to excuse herself from her current group of admirers to check the message.

‘Unknown Number: [Image attached]’

Well. If that wasn’t a virus, she was the Queen of Kalos. She moved to delete the message, but another came through just as her thumb hovered over the ‘Erase’ button.

‘If you hurry, you can still catch him ;) - W’

Him who? And ‘W’?

Now she had to know.

The number had an Alolan area code, after all. Maybe it was fine. And the possibility that someone got her number from Hau or Kukui without her knowledge was extremely high. Those two never understood discretion a day in their lives.

She opened the image, steeling herself for the possibility that she’d need to get a new phone after her curiosity killed her current one. But thankfully, the image was completely innocent; a screenshot of a boarding pass.

They definitely had the wrong number.

At least, that’s what Moon kept telling herself as her curiosity continued to get the better of her and she zoomed in on the passenger information. It’s not a breach of privacy if it has nothing to do with her, right? She’ll just delete it and move on.

But it turns out, as it always does in Alola, that it has everything to do with her.

Several realizations hit her at once as she numbly read through the entirety of the boarding pass to Kanto, which she learned belonged to Gladion:

Firstly: She hadn’t seen Gladion all night. It was strange. Or so it should’ve been. He called her the night before to congratulate her on her win, and she thought that meant he’d be coming into Iki Town to celebrate with her. But she was very, painfully wrong.

Secondly: The W made sense, and she quickly added the number to her contacts for convenience; It could only be Wicke. She probably acted as Gladion’s proxy to buy a ticket out of the region to begin with. There was no way Lusamine would’ve let him leave on his own, but Wicke always trusted Gladion implicitly. Wicke apparently trusted Moon, too. Enough to send her potentially security-compromising information.

Thirdly, and to her, most importantly: She hadn’t even considered that Gladion could just up and leave without telling anyone, despite knowing full well how he’d left Aether on his own years ago. It frustrated her to no end to think that she would’ve been completely blindsided by this if Wicke hadn’t messaged her.

She silently thanked Wicke for the heads-up, not bothering to text her back. She needed to catch Gladion, and fast.

Moon shoved her phone into her pocket and surreptitiously tried to skirt her way around the crowd of party-goers and avoid as much attention as possible.

How could he? She thought. He didn’t care about me or Hau enough to say goodbye? Did Lillie even know? Was he just going to sneak off into the night like some jilted lover?

It was nonsense. She wasn’t going to have any of it.

Anger began to bubble up beneath her skin and she reflexively clenched her fists. She shoved them into her pockets with unnecessary force, and to her added annoyance, the movement caught someone’s eye.

“Moon, where are ya goin’? Party’s that way,” Hau laughed and clapped her hard on the shoulder. That is, until he saw the dark look on her face and backed off, peeling his hand away with deliberate slowness. “Yikes. I’m not going to ask; I’m too young to die. But if you want to talk about it…?”

Moon continued to walk, and Hau warily hovered just out of her reach, very obviously itching to reach out to her. Moon felt her lip twitch into a smile despite herself, and she sighed. She couldn’t even pretend to be upset if she wanted to. Not with Hau around.

“Can you do me a huge favor?” she asked, throwing him an apologetic look and feeling guilty when she noticed Hau’s body visibly relax.

“Always. Anything.” He said seriously, nodding to himself.

“If anyone asks, I’m in the bathroom.”

“You’re going somewhere?” he raised an eyebrow, but when she didn’t respond, he dropped it. “Alright, I won’t ask. You do your thing. Just come back soon; it’s your party, after all. If you don’t come back in an hour, I’m eating the entire buffet table and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“Table and all?”

“Of course.”

Moon laughed despite the ever-growing pit of anxiety in her stomach and pulled Hau into a crushing hug. He coughed, and repeatedly tapped her shoulder-blade with the flat of his palm like a wrestler desperately trying to end his match. Moon took pity on him and let him go, fluidly sidestepping him to continue on out of Iki Town.

She absently put her hand up in a final wave, in case Hau was still watching her go.

Moon escaped the party with minimal interference and prayed that she wouldn’t be missed.

She had no idea how long she’d be out. At best, she hoped she could give Gladion a quick verbal ass-kicking and convince him to stay. But the worst-case scenario was, she realized with a growing restlessness that made her break out into a full sprint, she might have already missed him. He might already be on his way to Kanto, and too far away to reach.

She cursed herself for not checking the departure time on the boarding pass, but Wicke did say that she still had time, didn’t she? And Moon knew Wicke would never be so malicious as to give her false hope.

She made it to the marina in record time, feeling grateful for the consistent exercise that she got over the course of her Island Challenge.

She scanned the docks with a desperate eye, keeping every moored boat in a mental tally as she calculated her chances of seeing Gladion and actually convincing him to stay. She honestly didn’t know him as well as she’d like to, and this proved it. What were her odds, exactly?

Taking a deep breath to steel her resolve, Moon entered the building and stepped into the waiting room. Immediately her eyes caught a shock of blonde hair, and she rushed towards him. He was sitting in one of the rows of uncomfortable plastic chairs, bent over his phone which he turned around in his hands with obvious anxious energy. Wicke saw Moon before Gladion did, and she gave Moon a bolstering smile as she nudged Gladion to get his attention. Moon froze just outside the row of chairs, a painful shyness coming over her in waves.

What was she thinking, coming here?

Gladion caught and followed Wicke’s gaze, and when he saw Moon standing there, he launched himself out of his seat, dropping his phone in the process. His knees hit the chair in front of him with a painful-sounding plastic crack, but he didn’t react. He was too busy searching for an escape route. He turned around to try and push past Wicke, but she put her arm out to stop him. With no other option, he finally turned towards Moon, but refused to look her in the eye. She couldn’t tell if it was guilt or stubborn pride that kept him from looking at her.

The sight helped Moon remember her anger.

“Outside.” She said, hoping she just imagined the way her voice wavered.

He pushed past her, not waiting for her to step aside. Wicke sent Moon an apologetic look, and Moon mouthed a ‘thank you’ in return. She had no idea what she was going to say to Gladion, but just knowing she had Wicke’s support gave her the push she needed to follow him out of the building anyways. She didn’t have the time to compose her thoughts; she just needed to go. She had to talk to him.

Gladion was already at the end of the dock when she finally stepped outside. He was leaning on the guardrails that just barely separated them from the dark waves below, his chin tilted upwards in defiance, daring her to say something.

So she did.

“Where do you think you’re going? What is all of this about?” without giving him time to respond, she came closer. She gestured vaguely, opening and closing her fists in both anger and anxiety, overtaken with a sudden need to simply move. “Why didn’t you say anything? You were just going to leave without telling anyone? How do you think Hau would’ve felt? Did you think about him at all? Or-“

Or me, she wanted to say.

Instead, she let out a frustrated sigh that sounded more like a growl.

Gladion took that as a cue to defend himself, and he pushed off the railing to step even closer to her. He was only an arm’s length away now, and Moon could see the way his hands trembled with nothing to occupy them.

“It’s for training-“ he began, but Moon cut him off.

“Training? Glad, you can train here. You’re friends with some of the strongest trainers on the island.” Moon heard her own desperation in her voice now; she couldn’t deny it was there, even though it annoyed her to no end. “I’m the Champion, too. There’s no one better-“

“That’s exactly the problem!” he raked his hands through his hair in frustration, sending his strangely-styled bangs into further disarray. He half-turned around, ready to pace, but stopped himself and whipped back to Moon, his brows drawn in a tight grimace.

Moon didn’t give him a chance to clarify his words, stepping closer and staring him down. He didn’t back away. She could feel his breath on her face now, hot and quick. Overwhelmed, she almost snarled, “So, in order to satisfy some sort of personal inferiority complex of yours, you’d rather just leave Alola completely than accept any kind of help from-“

Moon found whatever words she’d had on her lips were swallowed entirely by a mouth not her own.

Gladion’s arms wrapped tightly around her waist for a brief moment before he pulled away from her, refusing to give Moon even a second to digest what just happened. As quickly as it came, the warmth of his body was gone, and she almost ached to feel it again.

She could still feel the ghost of his lips on hers, and she shivered at the realization of what just happened.

“I’m coming back.” He said, breathless, his face flushed a damning red. “I’m definitely coming back, so stop.”

They stood in a heavy silence, the white noise of the waves rushing against the docks were nothing in the face of their sudden outburst of emotion. Moon couldn’t say anything at all, though she desperately wanted to. She had so many questions, but she couldn’t find the words.

“Can you just,” he started, and cleared his throat when the words came out rougher than intended, “can you see me off when I leave?” his eyes fell to the ground in-between them and fixed themselves there as though it were the most interesting sight in the world. “I’m bad at this. Not the leaving itself, but… leaving others behind. I didn’t mean for things to get like this, Moon, believe me.” she shivered again at his casual use of her name, but let him finish: “It’s always easier if I just skip saying ‘goodbye’ altogether.”

“Yeah,” She nodded, still a little breathless, “Yeah, okay; I’ll see you off.” He looked up at her, a hopeful glimmer in his eyes. Or perhaps it was a trick of the light reflecting off of the windows behind her, she couldn’t tell. “I’ll be right here, so make sure you look back.”

“You’d better prepare yourself. Once I’m finished in Kanto, I’m coming for you.” Moon didn’t have to wonder if he realized that his words could have a double meaning, because immediately he added, all in a rush, “So, uh, make sure you keep that Champion’s throne warm for me, alright? It won’t be the same earning it from someone else.”

She couldn’t help it; she laughed.

And just as she promised, she was there when his ship left, joined by Wicke, and more surprisingly, Lusamine, on the docks. Moon waved his way until the ship disappeared below the horizon.

He’d be back, but she had no intention of losing to him when he returned. She’d fully embrace her new role as Champion, and, at the very least, make Gladion’s trip worthwhile.

Just as she began her long walk back to the party, her phone vibrated with a new message:

‘If you were still wondering,

I figured Kanto was my best bet for training

because the strongest trainer I know grew up there.’

#my fic #Lonashipping #Mahinashipping #Gladion x Moon #Pokemon fanfic #W for Wicke? More like W for Wingman #you can see the clear boundary where I finally started to hit my stride and write like a normal human being #like I think that's when the coffee finally hit me #and now it's like 6am so IT'S TIME FOR BED #SURE HOPE THIS GETS POSTED WITH THE PROPER FORMATTING THIS TIME TUMBLR #pixel-sylveon

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jakkosisle · 6 years

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The Battle For Lordaeron: Part I - Battleplans

War horns echoed through Orgrimmar for the umpteenth time, summoning every able-bodied champion, adventurer, hero, mercenary, or miscellaneous within earshot to Grommash Hold. An ocean away, the Undercity was under attack. In retaliation for the burning of Teldrassil, a massive Alliance fleet had landed on Lordaeron’s northern shores, deadset on dethroning the Banshee Queen once and for all. Thus, Sylvanas is calling on every champion of the Horde to rush to the Undercity’s defense, for it is not only her seat of power and a crucial Horde foothold in the Eastern Kingdoms, it is the home to the Forsaken - a pillar of the Horde for years.

The line outside Grommash Hold was long. Everyone had a different reason for answering the warchief’s call. Some were genuinely loyal to Sylvanas, seeing her as worthy of the mantle. Others were loyal to the Forsaken, if not Sylvanas herself - the Forsaken had proven their commitment to the Horde time and time again, so many viewed it as only honorable to return the favor. And some were just happy to finally have an excuse to do away with all this “greater good” nonsense and just smash some Alliance skulls.

It was in this line that Jakko, Spritzie and Soozee Boomsprocket found themselves standing. Being champions of the Horde themselves (seems like the word “champion” has a loose definition these days), they too answered the call.

“Still can’t believe this is actually happening.” the goblin-raised troll druid (yeah, it’s a long story) muttered to himself as he looked up and down the line of Horde volunteers, which seemed to extend all the way into the Drag. “First Teldrassil burns down, now this.”

“You sound surprised that Alliance and Horde are fighting again.” Soozee observed.

“Well yeah, but usually it’s just a glorified slapfight over resources in some box canyon in the middle of nowhere, or somethin’ stupid like that.” Jakko explained. “But this? A capital city burns down and another one is under a massive attack? Shit hasn’t gotten this bad since the Siege of Orgrimmar.”

“Worse, actually.” Soozee replied matter-of-factly. “After the Siege, the Alliance allowed us to keep our city. I doubt they’re going to show us that kindness a second time.”

Jakko scoffed. “Fuck, man. We didn’t even wait for the Legion’s corpses to get cold before we started going at each other’s throats again. Then again, I should’ve seen this comin’, with Queen Bitch as our warchief.” Jakko commented.

“Hey!” said a Forsaken in front of the siblings. “Show a little respect to your warchief, dog!”

“Bite me, deader!” Jakko snarled. The Forsaken stomped over to the troll, but a tauren stepped in.

“Alright, break it up!” he said. “Save it for the Alliance.” With that, tenuous order returned to the line.

“Hey Jakko - if you hate Sylvanas so much, why you even in this line?” Spritzie asked. “I mean, technically, everyone here is a volunteer. You don’t really HAVE to rush to Lordaeron’s defense, yanno.”

“I’m not stupid, Spritz.” Jakko replied. “I know I’ve got a dog in this fight. If the Horde goes down, we go down.” He was at the Siege, all those years ago. He remembered Varian’s promise - that if the Horde failed to uphold honor, the Alliance would end them. After Teldrassil, he had no doubt that Anduin was planning to make good on his father’s promise.

He smirked at his baby sister. “Besides, you’re goin’. And someone’s gotta watch your back.”

A few years ago, Spritzie would’ve smiled at that. But not this time. She gave Jakko an oddly neutral look, then turned her eyes back toward the front of the line, barely even acknowledging the troll. Spritzie had been like this for a while now, ever since the Legion War started. She’d grown more distant, more prone to running off on her own, rather than faithfully stick by Jakko’s side like she used to. He wondered if it had something to do with Rikko’s death. He remembered that it hit her hard.

Slowly but surely, the line would move forward. Each volunteer champion was quickly assessed for battle readiness before being let through the portal to Undercity. The three siblings were well-equipped for battle. Jakko was wearing his usual leather gear, decorated with tiger’s claws and teeth, his two druidic swords strapped to his back. He sat atop his hippogryph, Stoneheart, who stoically kept its eyes facing forward.

Spritzie was dressed in her tight mail gear (which showed way too much skin in Jakko’s opinion) and was carrying her shotgun that she’d been using since Argus, as well as a small army of beasts, which took up a large portion of the line, much to the chagrin of other Horde champions in the line. The largest of which was her jade cloud serpent, Spritzie Jr., who she raised herself from an egg during her time in Pandaria.

Finally, Soozee was dressed in her signature “Void Suit”, and armed with a dagger/taser/thingy strapped to her belt as well as her void detector. She sat in the driver’s seat of a large mech that she had dubbed “The Void Buster.” Yet another product of her mad experiments with the Void. Speaking of which…

“You sure you’re gonna need that void detector, Soo?” Jakko asked. “Don’t see how much good it’ll do in the middle of a battle.”

“If certain rumors are to be believed, then trust me, this detector will DEFINITELY come in handy.” Soozee cryptically replied.

Jakko sighed as the line moved, Grommash Hold getting closer and closer. He didn’t really know how this day was going to end, but he knew one thing for sure - he wasn’t going to let anything happen to his sisters.

The first thing that Marbelma noticed was the smoke, which hit her nostrils like a steam tank. Tirisfal’s shoreline defenses fell quickly, and it was easy to see why - the beach was littered with black, smoking craters, as was much of the land further inland. As the Alliance landing force marched towards Brill, she looked up to Roniaar, her adopted uncle (yeah, it’s a long story), who was riding by her side.

“So, we came here to liberate Lordaeron, yes?” he asked.

“Aye.” Marbelma replied. A nearby farmhouse, ruined by bombardment, suddenly collapsed into a massive pile of bricks and wood.

“Then why does it look like we’re destroying Lordaeron more than anything?” the draenei asked.

“Lordaeron was destroyed a long time ago.” Marbelma argued. “It’s a rotten old house that needs to be torn down before we can build something new.”

“Hm.” Roniaar hummed. Tygoon, the wind drake he rode, huffed as it made its away across the ruined land, anxious from something brewing in the air. Marbelma’s hippogryph, Cinderwing, ruffled its feathers, scattering embers to the wind, as it got nervous. All of the mounts knew that battle was drawing near.

They eventually arrived in Brill. The Forsaken Town was almost entirely bombed out, the landing force having made a command post out of the town’s ruins. The statue of Sylvanas Windrunner that once stood proudly in the town square was now in pieces all over the ground. “We move out in twenty!” a worgen commander cried out. The group split up to make their final, last-minute preparations. Marbelma and Roniaar spotted a familiar face in the crowd, standing near a table filled with weapons, rations and other supplies, and directed their mounts towards him.

“Hey kids.” the void elf greeted as his two fellow Servitors approached. He was dressed in purple leather armor, bone-like spikes mounted on his shoulder pads and the lower half of his face obscured by a mask made from shal’dorei silk - a souvenir from his time on the Broken Isles, no doubt. Strapped to his belt was a pair of evil-looking daggers - straight edged with tips at the end, making the blades effective at both stabbing and chopping. But what really made the blades unnerving was they constantly exuded a strange, purple mist.

“Tendalel.” Marbelma curtly agreed. “How did the recon mission go?”

“Not great.” Tendalel said as he spilled out the contents of a sack on the table - the severed head of a night elf. “I tried to tell him. I told him ‘Look, buddy, I used to be a blood elf, I used to make business trips to the Undercity every other weekend, so I KNOW FOR A FACT that the Apothecarium is THIS WAY.’ But no, he told me to shut up, called me a void-addled abomination, and then lead the entire team into the Magic Quarter where Horde reinforcements were portaling in by the hundreds, and got himself decapitated by a big angry orc.”

He picked up the severed head and looked into its dead eyes. “You see what happens? You see what happens when you don’t listen to your good friend Ten?”

“Wow. Guess you could say he lost his head in there.” Roniaar quipped.

“Roniaar, a man died.” Marbelma deadpanned.

“Basically, that operation is officially FUBAR.” Tendalel said as he casually tossed the head over his shoulder. “Undercity is crawling with Horde now. Sending anymore SI:7 down there would be suicide.”

“Were you at least able to sabotage anything?” Marbelma asked.

The rogue shrugged. “I smashed a few important-looking bottles on my way out, but that’s about it.”

“So it seems we’ll have to win this fight on the surface, then.” Roniaar concluded. “Storm the ruins of Capital City.”

“What about the sewers?” Marbelma asked. “Can’t we get into the Undercity that way? It’s how Varian got in last time the Alliance was here.”

“No dice.” Tendalel said. “The Forsaken collapsed the entrance to the sewer tunnel long before we even got here. It would take days to dig through all that. Days we don’t have.” he turned and pointed to the Ruins of Lordaeron. “Everything that’s gonna happen today is gonna happen within THOSE walls.”

The void elf then walked away. He climbed atop his sable ruin strider, a purple talbuk courtesy of the Argussian Reach. “Where are you goin’?” Marbelma asked.

“Debriefing and hopefully heading back home - SI:7’s done all it can do for this battle. Good luck, kids! You’re gonna need it!” Tendalel called before he snapped the reins and the talbuk trotted forward.

“Take care of yourself, Shadestep.” Marbelma said. “It’s what you’re good at.”

“I’m VERY good at it, thank you for noticing!” Tendalel replied, choosing to take the insult as a complement as the talbuk disappeared into the crowd.

Marbelma turned her angry gaze to the ruins of Lordaeron City, where the Horde was holed up. She then looked around and watched as the Alliance constructed siege towers, tuned up the steam tanks, and sharpened their blades. She heard her shaman companion sigh. “After Pandaria, I had hoped that Alliance and Horde would never again clash like this.” he opined.

“The peace was never destined to last.” Marbelma opined right back. “Don’t let your feelings cloud your judgement, Roniaar.”

“My feelings aren’t-“

“Bullshit.” Marbelma cussed. “I know about your old orc girlfriend.”

Roniaar looked at Marbelma, shocked. “How did-“

“Rhyliaandra told me a while back.” Marbelma said.

Roniaar grimaced at the dwarf. “You don’t know the whole story.”

“You and some Shadowmoon shaman start shaggin’ back when you were a Rangari, she disappears one day, and the Horde start their war with the draenei not long after.” Marbelma said. “I miss anything?”

Roniaar had no response. He just turned his gaze to the gates to the Undercity. “Aw, what’s wrong? Afraid ye might have to fight yer old girlfriend today?” Marbelma taunted.

“She’s gone.” Roniaar darkly replied. “I’ve looked. In Kalimdor, in Outland, no one knows what happened to her since those dark days. She probably died a long time ago.”

Roniaar turned his gaze back on Marbelma and gave her a withering look that surprised her. All her life, she had known Roniaar as nothing but happy-go-lucky, so the sight of him angry like this was…unnerving. “Do not mistake my lamentations for hesitation…or weakness.”

With that, he puled the reins on his drake, and the two parted ways for the moment. Marbelma scoffed. “Whatever.” Roniaar’s problem was that he was an idealist - someone who still believed, despite all the atrocities that happened, that peace could still exist between Alliance and Horde.

Daelin Proudmoore said it best. Peace is like a dream. Beautiful. Ephemeral. Unobtainable.

And eventually, you gotta wake the hell up.

One portal jump later, the Boomsprockets found themselves in the Undercity. They were immediately hit by the stench of death - not the regular, slightly undeath that was the Undercity’s usual scent, but rather fresh death. The death of the living. The floors were stained with freshly-spilled blood. “They already got into the Undercity?” Jakko asked.

“SI:7 did.” one of the death guards replied. “The majority of them have already been routed. Undercity is secure for now, but the bulk of the Alliance forces are still above us.”

“They’ve taken Brill.” another death guard added. “They’ll be moving on the city soon.”

“Damn…” Jakko breathed. They were really walking into the heat of battle here.

The Boomsprockets stood in a crowd of Horde volunteers in the magic quarter, champions who answered the Dark Lady’s call, and were separated into different battle groups. A Forsaken death knight stood before the assembled group.

“Greetings.” he began, his death charger huffing. “I am Commander Johriah Lawrence. On behalf of the Dark Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, I thank you all for coming in the Forsaken’s hour of need. Your bravery today will neither go forgotten or unrewarded.”

He dismounted and motioned for a pair of death guards to bring over a table. He placed a map on the table, a map of the Ruins of Lordaeron and the surrounding Tirisfal Glades, the Boomsprockets realized as they gathered around for a closer look.

“Alright.” Commander Lawrence began. “You’ll all be on the first line of defense. Here, in front of the main gate. You’ll be meeting the Alliance head-on.” he said, pointing to the spot on the map. Several Horde soldiers smiled and chuckled at the notion of spilling human blood. “Should the line fall, you’ll withdraw back into the city.”

“Won’t the Alliance pursue us?” one tauren archer, Highmountain judging by his antlers, asked.

“That’s what the blight’s for.” Lawrence answered. “We’ll bombard the Alliance lines with blight to cover your retreat. We won’t have enough gas masks to go around though, so we strongly advise keeping your faces covered once we start blighting the area.”

An agonized scream echoed through the halls of the Undercity. “What was that?” a nightborne warmage asked.

“Just another SI:7 that got caught, pay no mind to it.” Lawrence casually answered. “Now, the hope is that the blight alone will deter the Alliance enough to call off their siege, but in the unlikely event they somehow get past the blight, we’re looking at two possibilities.”

He gestured to the entire northern wall. “First scenario, they try to break through the main gate, seeking the most direct route to the Banshee Queen’s throne. This would be foolish of them, of course, because the palace gardens is where the bulk of our forces will be gathering. More likely, they’ll seek to punch a hole in the walls on either side of the gate, entering into either the west or the east sides of the city. In either case, they would have to pass through here…”

He pointed to a large open space on the south side of the ruins. “The Southern Courtyard. Should the Alliance breach our defenses, that will be our first rally point. That is where we will make our stand.”

“And if we get overwhelmed there?” Spritzie asked, speaking up for the first time since the Boomsprockets arrived.

“Same as the front line - we fall back, blighting the area as we go.” Lawrence answered. He pointed to the fountain area, just in front of the Lordaereon Palace. “Second rally point here.”

“And then?” Jakko asked.

“…I don’t know.” Lawrence said. “All I was told was that we’re to wait there for further orders.”

“Which is code for ‘you’re fucked, good luck.’” Jakko huffed. This notion generated a few worried murmurs among the other Horde soldiers present. “This plan is bullshit.”

“Hey.” replied an offended tauren.

“You know what I mean!” Jakko snapped. “With all these back-up plans, it almost sounds like Sylvanas is EXPECTIN’ us to lose!”

“Fair point.” Lawrence said. “Change of plans, everyone. We’re all going to abandon our numerous contingencies and defensible positions and instead charge head-first into the waiting jaws of the invading forces all at once. Nothing could go wrong.” The death knight’s roasting earned some chuckles and even a few laughs at Jakko’s expense, which left the druid fuming.

“In all seriousness, I will concede that this battle plan is a risky one.” Lawrence said once the laughter died down. “Should the line fall, which it hopefully won’t, we would have to blight the area surrounding the city, effectively trapping ourselves. And if they somehow make it past the blight, which they hopefully won’t, our plan would then be to essentially invite the Alliance into our midst. A lot can go wrong. All of that said, we do have one advantage.”

Dramatic pause. “We are the Horde.” he simply said. Those words were enough to elicit an eruption of cheers from the unit. Nodding with satisfaction, Lawrence rolled up the map. “You all know where the elevators are. Make for the palace garden and wait for your cues there. For the Horde.”

“FOR THE HORDE!”

As the crowd of Horde began making for the center ring where the elevators were, they passed several Alliance corpses on the way. Jakko pulled on Stoneheart’s reigns as he noticed the nature of one of the corpses. The purple skin and long ears made it obvious that she was a night elf, but what really surprised him was her garb - long robes made of wood and leather. She was a druid.

A druid much like him. She was even a feral druid like he was, judging by the daggers still clutched in her hands.

Lawrence trotted up to Jakko’s side and nodded to the corpse. “Friend of yours?” he asked. Apparently, he could tell that Jakko was a druid.

“…Maybe.” Jakko replied. The night elf didn’t really look that familiar, but it was entirely possible that, just a year prior, they were fighting side-by-side against the Legion.

“Well, I hope you don’t have any other night elf friends. We can’t have you hesitating today.” the death knight said. “The Burning Legion is defeated and the truce is over. It’s back to basics.”

“…Guess so” Jakko said as the commander walked off. He considered the corpse for only a few more seconds before following the rest of the crowd.

He was able to catch up with his two sisters and board the same elevator as them. They soon emerged into the courtyard of Lordaeron, the harsh sunlight above nearly blinding them after they were underground just a little too long. The courtyard teemed with activity, crawling with Horde soldiers and mercenaries of every race and creed.

And off to the side, on top of a ledge, Jakko caught a glimpse of them. The leaders of the Horde. Saurfang, Bloodhoof, Theron, all surrounding the ‘Warchief’ Sylvanas, most likely discussing where to best place their defenses.

Jakko was skeptical of Sylvanas, to say the least. He’d been skeptical of her since the Cataclysm, when she first started raising her army of undead. Why Vol’jin used his dying breath to name HER of all people his successor was still one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Horde. Something about a vision from the spirits.

It made him wonder if maybe the Drakkari had the right idea - eating their gods and all.

Off on the other side of the courtyard was a mechanical monstrosity. It vaguely resembled a Horde Demolisher, but was much bigger, much more heavily armored, and seemed to somehow exude power. Jakko knew that power almost immediately - enough to make him pull his reigns on his hippogryph and stop. He had been in Silithus long enough to know that power very well.

“Is there azerite in that thing?” Jakko asked.

“Yes. You can feel the power from here, can’t you?” Johriah asked in turn. “It’s a prototype - a war machine unlike any that has come before. And according to the engineers, it’s just a small taste of what we can do with azerite…”

Something on the side of the war machine sparked and exploded, sending the goblins crewing the machine into a tizzy. One of them tried to put out a blue fire with a fire extinguisher. “Behold, the future of war.” Jakko deadpanned.

“…Growing pains.” was the only excuse Johriah could offer. “Are there any engineers among-“

The death knight didn’t even finish his sentence before Soozee hopped out of her mech and stomped over to the war machine. “You idiots! You misaligned the internal circuitry! Haven’t you ever worked on a demolisher before?!”

The goblins all shrugged. Soozee groaned and immediately started barking orders, which the other goblins took to following. “Ah, I see she’s on top of things.” Johriah observed. “The Dark Lady wants the war machine ready for combat within the hour!” he shouted. Soozee gave him a silent thumbs up before going back to work.

Jakko remembered how Soozee used to be before the Twilight Highlands - how she had once been a tough-talking engineer and leader of a tank crew. It was rare to catch a glimpse of the old Soozee like this. Even better, working on the war machine should keep Soozee off the front lines - at least for now.

“Joe!” cried a female voice. Jakko looked and saw a female Forsaken wearing leather gear and goggles came running over to the death knight. “I haven’t seen you since Stormheim! Good to see ya!”

“Ah, Dread-Rider Cullen. Likewise.” the death knight replied. “Any updates from the Alliance?”

“Nothing yet.” Cullen replied. “Outside of the occasional scout, they’re all still in Brill.”

“Curious. Thought they would’ve made their move by now.”

“That’s the good news - it doesn’t look like they’re ready to begin their siege yet, so we’ve still got time to set up our defenses.”

“And the bad?”

“We spotted more ships landing on the northern shore - hundreds of Alliance soldiers are still funneling in. When they finally decide to hit us, it’s gonna hurt.”

“So that’s why they haven’t attacked yet. They’re STILL gathering strength…” Johriah opined. “Can’t be helped. At least we still have home field advantage.”

Cullen looked over Lawrence’s group of volunteers. “I see some of your guys have flying mounts. We’re about to make a bombing run on Brill - don’t suppose you’d be willing to spare a few flyers?”

“Of course, my lady.” the death knight said with a bow.

“Aw, you’re still a charmer, Joe.” Cullen replied with a raspy chuckle.

“Horde!” Johriah Lawrence barked. “The good lady is requesting volunteers with flying mounts to join in her bombing run. Who among you will join her?”

Several Horde volunteers stepped forward, sporting mounts ranging from wyverns to drakes to cloud serpents.

Like the one Spritzie was riding, as she was one of those who volunteered. “Spritz, what are you doing?” Jakko asked.

“Volunteering for the bombing run.” Spritzie asked. “Duh.”

“You’re gonna be a target out there!” Jakko hissed. “You think the Alliance don’t have AA guns?”

“I was gonna be a target today no matter what.” Spritzie replied. “Come on, Jakko - if I can handle the Burning Legion, I’m pretty sure I can handle a bunch of drunk dwarves.”

Jakko growled in frustration with his sister’s inability to properly calculate the risks. He stepped forward, volunteering for the bombing run as well. Someone had to watch Spritzie’s back up there.

“Alrighty, looks like you’re all under MY command now!” Cullen shouted as she whistled for her bat. “Don’t worry, Joe. I’ll bring most of them back in one piece.”

Once Cullen hopped aboard her bat, she flew up to one of the higher towers of Lordaeron City, the volunteer bombers flying close behind. There, combat engineers, again mostly goblins, were attaching bombs to flying mounts, some of them being less than cooperative. A Forsaken engineer began affixing the bombs to Jakko’s hippogryph, about a half-dozen or so iron balls with pull-pins. “Alright, to drop the bombs you just pull this-“

“I know how bombs work, pal.” Jakko said. Having been raised by goblins, Jakko knew explosives far more intimately than most trolls. “Surprised these are just regular bombs though - ain’t we using blight?”

The engineer scoffed. “Damn apothecaries are being stingy with the stuff. Says they need it for one of their ‘contingency plans.’ So you’ll be bombing the Alliance the old fashioned way.”

“Works for me.” Jakko said. He trusted good old seaforium more than the green stuff any day of the week.

“Alright - once we’re all geared up, we’re gonna make a bombing run over Brill!” Cullen called out. “The Alliance have been spotted building siege towers, so aim for those!”

Spritzie’s cloud serpent was now laden with bombs, along with Jakko’s hippogryph. “Okay, everybody ready? One, two, three, for the Horde!”

“FOR THE HORDE!”

With that, the riders poured out of the tower like a nightmare, making a beeline for Brill.

#Jakko #Marbelma #Spritzie #Roniaar #Soozee #Tendalel #World of Warcraft #Wyrmrest Accord

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kisstheprincessofpurewhite · 6 years

Text

After My Father’s Funeral Chapter 1

Summary: Funerals can be stressful, but so can weddings--especially with a family as effed up as theirs. Unfortunately for Leia, she has both to attend in one go. So much for repression. Modern AU

Pairings: Leia/Han, Mara/Luke, Jyn/Cassian, Leia&Han&Luke&Mara&Cassian&Jyn, Uncle Owen/Aunt Beru

Chapter summary: Let the past die, bury it if you have to.

Chapter pairings: Mara/Luke, Jyn/Cassian, Past!Leia/Cassian, Luke&Leia&Mara

A/N: Based on the idea that it would be really traumatizing to be a Skywalker in the modern day. See Ao3 and FFN versions for full authors notes.

If Leia had learned anything from her albeit limited experience traveling, it was that bureaucracy was a bitch. “Bureaucracy is a lawyer’s best friend, Miss Organa,” her boss, Akbar, had told her. “These people, they try so hard to cover every little crack and crevice, but it’s our job to find where they were wrong.” Today, in-line at the airport, Leia was fairly certain it was the whole idea that was wrong with bureaucracy. After her ticket failed to work, she had to wait in-line to speak with a representative, having already spoken with two other employees and a supervisor. It was as if the universe was preventing her from going home, which she desperately wanted to take as a sign to switch her flight to someplace with tropical beaches. She was even considering Canto Bight, when it was her turn in line.

“Thank you for flying Rebel Air. How can I help you, ma’am?” The smiling woman said.

“Yes, hello, I have a last-minute booking to Naboo, and my tick-“

“We have a policy on exchanging flights for last-minute bookings, ma’am. I’m sorry.” The response was tired, rehearsed, as if countless people had tried to weasel out of the policy of the company.

She sighed inwardly, bidding the dream of the casino goodbye. “I don’t want to exchange, I want to get on my plane, my ticket won’t check me in.”

“How odd, may I see your ticket and some ID, please.” Leia handed both over, and the woman scanned it. “Naboo, huh?”

Leia was not in the mood for smalltalk. “Yep.” The airport had to be the worst place for small talk.

“What brings you there? Big racing down there, I hear.”

“Yeah, yeah, I grew up there. I’m going for family stuff, you know. A funeral and then a wedding.” The representative nodded and smiled knowingly. How ironic, there’s no way she could’ve known.

The computer made a noise, not a good one either, and the rep made a face, and tried again. “Hmmm,” she said. “Odd, let me get my supervisor.”

Leia groaned and laid her face on the counter. She hated to leave her fate in the hands of strangers, without any agency as to getting anywhere. After a few moments, she huffed, trying not to lose her temper. She wasn’t in a hurry per se, but also wasn’t in the mood to spend any more time than she had to with airport employees.

The rep appeared with another employee. “I’m sorry about that Ms. Organa, here’s a new ticket for you, should work now,” the (presumed) supervisor told her, scanning the ticket. There was a happy sounding beep, and she took her ticket with a thanks.

She checked her bags, and sat down at her gate. The tv above the gate was on; she immediately regretted glancing at it.

“…the noted activist, and so-called ‘Champion of Free Speech’ Anakin Skywalker has died. The 65-year old had been battling lung cancer for nearly a decade before passing away at his home in Naboo on Friday. Skywalker first rose to fame as a leader of the Imperialists under the name ‘Vader.’ But Skywalker had moved away from the group in recent years—even calling it a ‘cult’ in one noted interview—to support pro-environmentalist groups. His family asks to make any donations to…”

“Quite the enigma, that man.” The voice made Leia jump, and she looked over to see a man sitting next to her looking at the TV. He saw that she had looked over and continued. “I read his book ‘Anti-anti-‘, and let me say—“ She immediately got up, took her carry-on bag, and moved to sit on the opposite side of the seating area with her back to the stranger. If the man was at all offended by her behavior, she neither knew nor cared.Skywalker certainly had a way of ruining everything, even the flight to his funeral.

The Naboo airport held one of her most treasured memories: when she had parted with her brother, Luke, for the first time since what she had dubbed the Ruling. They who had spent a majority of their formative years apart, only to be reunited at 16 through the worst of all circumstances, left each other for the first time since then in a tearful goodbye at the airport four years ago. At the time, she knew she wouldn’t miss the city, her old college, or even her (recently) ex-boyfriend, but she hated leaving her twin after trying so hard to stay together.

So today it was only fitting that it be Luke’s face to greet her at the gate. Their embrace was tight and full of longing, she hadn’t seen her brother since before they had turned 25. Leia turned and greeted the woman beside Luke with her own tender embrace and a kiss on the cheek.

“Mara, you look so well,” Leia said, gripping her soon-to-be sister-in-law’s forearms.

“Thank you, as do you as always. Thank you for coming sooner than we’d originally talked about, I’m sorry if it spoiled any of your plans.” She blew her red hair out of her face, smiling broadly.

“Well, if they were spoiled it’s how ol’ dad would’ve wanted it,” Leia released Mara and heading towards baggage claim.

“Now, Leia-“ Luke’s voice was a warning, one that she wasn’t about to heed.

“‘Now, Leia’” Leia mockingly repeated. “I promise to keep my comments to myself during the wake and the funeral, but I make no such guarantees about anywhere else.”

She couldn’t hear Luke’s sigh, but she knew it was there. They picked up her bag, and hopped into Luke’s old truck.

“When’re you going to get a new car?” Leia asked. “The windows still roll down.”

“Luke had said something about the end of days, but that is in contention,” Mara joked from the backseat.

Luke only smiled. Leia knew that he wasn’t bothered at all at Mara’s comment, or even at her’s towards Skywalker. Her brother had the most positive temperament of anyone she’d ever met; she resented him just a little for that.

“I hope you don’t mind staying with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru,” Luke said as they crossed over Amidala bridge. The bridge connected the inner city and the boroughs of Naboo, a passion project of their late mother’s. They had named it after her, a symbol of how much she had been universally loved in her local community.

“Of course not,” Leia stated, only lying a little bit. It was difficult to pin blame on anyone for the unpleasantness that had framed the last ten years of her life. Luke was definitely not a candidate, and therefore should not have to suffer her contention. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were contenders as well as her own dear parents. The only person who Leia could surely, 100%, be blamed was Anakin Skywalker. And blame him she did.

They pulled into the drive-way of the Lars’ Farm, and all three each rolled out of the hot car—Luke’s air conditioning had quit sometime in college. Her Uncle and Aunt greeted her warmly, showing her to the guest room, which had, at one time, been Luke’s room. After the Ruling, Leia had sat with Luke in this very room and imagined their lives together growing up as they might have been. The faces of those who would raise them were blurry, but so many of the memories she’d constructed had felt so real, it was bittersweet to think of her childhood without him. Now the walls were bare of Luke’s Ahch-To and X-wing posters and the room certainly smelled better.

She was debating between living out of her suitcase or unpacking when Luke came in with his hands in his pockets and a peculiar smile on his face. Leia knew that look, as she knew every look--every movement even--of her brother’s. Choice words were about to be said, and she was sure she wasn’t going to like them.

“A bit different from when we were 18,” Luke commented.

“Certainly smells better.” That got a chuckle, but it didn’t really reach his eyes.

“Leia…” She sighed, and crossed her arms. “I’ve never been able to tell you what to do-

“Nor will you ever.”

“-but could you at least keep your comments about dad, our dad, to a minimum? Or at least confine them to just between us?”

“Mara knows perfectly well what I think about your father, no sense in hiding from her.” She tried not to be exclamatory, only firm, in her distinction of “your.”

Luke was not having said distinction. “He was your father too.” His tone was matter-of-fact, not loud.

“No, he wasn’t. A father is there for you, a father teaches you how to ride a bike and playfully threatens your prom date. Anakin Skywalker was not my father.”

Luke sighed, exasperated. “What more could he have done to redeem himself to you?”

Leia rolled her eyes. “Well, there’s no use asking that question now as there isn’t anything more he could do. He’s dead.”

“I know that, but what could he have done?”

“Not be a racist? Not inspire god-knows how many to kill? Not left our mother to die? Taken care of us after she died? Oh, and when he didn’t do all those things, how about not putting the fact that we are related to him in the goddamn public record? You know how many opportunities I’ve lost because of him? All a potential connection need do is google my name and right there is ‘daughter of noted activist Anakin Skywalker.’” She stood from the bed, ready to defend her viewpoint in the impending argument.

“You think I haven’t had doors closed in my face too? You really think you’re the only one to suffer?” They weren’t yelling, Luke never yelled. But his voice was firm and contentious.

“No, but you still defend him, he ruined our lives!” Leia didn’t understand how Luke could see the events of the past and come to any other conclusion.

“What would you have done, Leia? If you were in his shoes, what would you have done?” He had always seen the world through their results: Skywalker had brought them back together as brother and sister so ergo Skywalker was good.

“How can you continue to defend him? He’s ruined your wedding!” There were tears in her eyes now, threatening to fall.

“By dying? It’s not like he could choose when-“

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Luke sighed, and she felt the tension drop. Their argument would not escalate further. “Mara and I already live together, and we have the rest of our lives, the wedding is just a day.”

“One of the only days in your life where you have all of your loved ones together in one room.”

Luke shrugged. “Maybe you’re right, maybe he was comforted by the idea that everyone was going to be here anyway.”

Leia bit back her comment, knowing it was no use to argue with him. She sat back down, her temper deflated. Luke kneeled on the bed beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“You have every right to be angry, and I hope one day you decide to let it go. Either way, I’m glad you’re here.” Leia bit back the tears until Luke embraced her and she let them fall, silently crying into his arms.

“Luke, Aunt Beru wants to know-“ Mara said, poking her head into the room. “Oh, sorry. Is everything alright?”

Leia nodded and wiped her face as Luke rubbed her back. “Yeah, it's just a lot, you know, to be back here, in this room. We tried weed in here, one time, did Luke tell you?” Luke was right, there was no use dragging Mara into her trauma.

Luke didn’t seem phased that she had lied about what was going on, and groaned. “Never again, I will never understand the appeal.” The three of them laughed and Leia fingered the duvet cover. She tried to tell herself it was only the jet-lag and airport that had made her so upset.

The Wake was the next day, and flew by before Leia even noticed. Both the funeral and visitation were closed events, invitation only, with enforcers hired to keep any unwanted company out. There was a slight mix-up that involved a Senator from Scarif but was soon sorted out without much hassle. Overall, the night was full of people wishing both her brother and her well. Though the stream of mourners was steady, there couldn’t have been more than a few dozen. Mara had mentioned something about the event conflicting with the races, and Leia laughed to herself that not even her father’s funeral could compete with this town’s obsession with racing. Most of the guests were also wedding guests, and promised to be there in a little over two weeks under much lighter circumstances.

“I hope they all RSPV’d, otherwise it's going to be terribly awkward to turn them away,” Luke said to Mara and Leia during a small break between mourners.

“‘Sorry great-aunt Myla, I know you said you’d be here two weeks ago, but that was then and this was now,’” Mara mimed Luke turning away elderly potential wedding guests. The three all cracked a smile and greeted another couple, Anakin’s former editor and his wife.

They had chosen a closed casket for both events. Still, Leia couldn’t help but glance at the casket every so often with a sick desire to set her eyes on Skywalker one more time. To see if he was really dead? Would she find joy in knowing he’d finally gotten what he’d deserved: a slow death, probably most of it in pain? She snapped her head away and shook her head. Pretty soon, she’d turn out like him: evil.

The funeral was the Friday after. In front of the mirror, Leia was hoping no one would notice that she’d worn the same black dress to both the wake and the funeral. She only had maybe two black dresses to begin with—white was more her color. And, even then, she’d had to pack for nearly a month and could only take so much with her. Besides, she was grieving, right? Who expected someone to be en vogue while in mourning? To finish the outfit, she wore big, dark glasses so that—hopefully—no one saw her rolling her eyes during the ceremony.

The temple was surrounded by natural beauty, flowering trees and even a waterfall. She was sure Luke had picked out this place. Another receiving line, more mourners. After a dozen or so, she was stifling a yawn and excused herself to get some water.

It was on her way down the hall that she ran into someone she had not expected to, and, from the look on his face, he had not expected her either.

“Cassian?” She said, removing her glasses.

“Leia, its good to see you again.” They awkwardly stood in the hallway. Cassian was with a very pretty woman their age, with big blue eyes and somewhat of a European face. If the rumors from Luke were true, then this must be...

“Leia, this is my fiancé, Jyn Erso. Jyn, this is…an old friend, Leia Organa. We went to school together.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Leia said, smiling and extending her hand.

“Ditto.” So she was English. “Sorry about your loss.” She shook Leia’s hand. It shouldn’t feel weird, should it? To meet your ex’s fiancé. She tried to smile and push it out of her mind.

“Thank you both for coming, but, in truth, I had not expected you to be here.”

“It was more for your brother and Mara-“

“And you, of course,” Jyn interjected.

“Of course. You and Luke and Mara, we came to support you. How are you doing?” She couldn’t make out his tone, and therefore if he was referring to her life in general, the funeral, or the wedding. She said as much. Cassian chuckled and Jyn even cracked a smile. “All three, I guess.”

She addressed each in sequence. “Fine, ehh, and fine.”

“We should get together and catch up, the fo- five of us,” Cassian said.

“We’re having a party tomorrow night to celebrate the wedding,” Jyn said. “You’re invited, of course.”

“Well then, of course I’ll come,” Leia assured. The three of them started back towards the entrance where her brother and Mara were waiting.

“And we’ll have to meet, and catch up,” Cassian reminded.

“Yes, catching up, let’s. It was nice seeing you both, I’ll see you in there, and maybe after. Definitely tomorrow.” Leia talked as they walked. She took her place next to Luke as Mara kissed the cheek of some tall scruffy-looking guy. Leia figured he was probably one of her family as she had never seen him before, but thoughts of the man were quickly put out of her mind.

“Cassian! Jyn!” Luke said, shaking the hand of the two, Mara embraced them both.

“It’s great that you’re both here, we’ll see you tomorrow.” Mara told them and Leia nodded, already turning to the next person in line.

The funeral went by also without a hitch, though Leia had her fair share of eye-rolling and snorts—the latter of which she masked as sobs with the help of an acquired tissue. The speaker carefully skidded over Skywalker’s debatable crimes against humanity by simply referring to them as “dark times.” Leia had to pretend to blow her nose to contain the scoff from that one.

Soon enough they were wheeling the casket up the aisle and headed to the cemetery. Only close friends and family were attending, no more than ten or so people. Luke and Mara rode in Leia’s rental rather than Luke’s truck. They were right in the front behind the hearse.

“I don’t think I ever thanked you for coming early, Leia,” Luke said, and Mara rubbed his arm.

“No need, I wish I could’ve come sooner and helped out with any affairs that needed to be tended to.”

Luke shrugged. “There wasn’t much to sort, he knew it was the end and had already planned with money set aside. He was in the hospital for the last year, didn’t even have a house or many personal items. No, all he-“ Luke must’ve known that she wouldn’t’ve cared if Skywalker had wanted her at his funeral or not, and amended his statement. “All I wanted was for you to be here.”

“Then I’d do it again, one-hundred times over. Anything for my baby brother.”

Luke smiled. “I’m the oldest.”

“Are not.”

“Are to.”

“I can dig up the pictures of the birth certificates again, if you insist.”

Luke seemed to shrug. “Pictures can be doctored, unlike your attitude.”

That made Leia laugh out loud as they pulled into the cemetery, the loud bell proclaiming their purpose for visiting.

There was a small ceremony at the tomb-site, the speaker inviting anyone to come and say something. Luke gave a small speech, as did a few others, but Leia hardly noticed. She was looking over the rise to the group of men wearing all black who seemed to be staring at them. They had shaved heads. One raised a sign over his head that read: “Long-live the Emperor.” That was enough for Leia.

“Excuse me,” she said quite suddenly as she got up and to the enforcer who’d come with them, directing his attention to the intruders. He quickly spoke on a walkie-talkie, making his way in the direction Leia had pointed.

The group noticed the man heading towards them, and some started to run away. Most stayed put.

“Hold fast, brothers!” one yelled so that even the dead could hear. “They can’t stop our free speech!”

“We aren’t the government, you fucking dickhead! It's a private ceremony, and you’re intruding! Go be a waste of oxygen somewhere else, you ignorant, servile scum!” Leia shouted back.

“It’s you who are the scum! Not giving this great man a proper burial as he outlined in his 1986 manifesto!”

“Tell that to executor of his fucking estate with a will from circa 2014! Leave us to mourn in peace, and let the past die before I kill it myself!” Leia’s throat was hoarse, but she would gladly out-shout a symphony to keep skinheads away from Skywalker’s burial. Not for the sanctity of Skywalker’s grave or anything like that, instead for the sake of peace for those she loved.

“You hear that, she’s threatening me!”

By now the enforcer had caught up to them, and most of the group had fled. But the person conversing with her across the cemetery had to be restrained and escorted out. Leia sat down and with a nod, the speaker continued as if not missing a beat. No one seemed too surprised something like this would happen. All Leia could think was it figured that Skywalker could even ruin his own burial.

They lowered the casket and began burying it. As they did this, Leia made her way over to a different plot, placing the bouquet she had brought with her on the tombstone: “Here lies ORGANA Bail and Breha, loving wife, husband, parents, and friends. May the force be with us all.”

“Hi,” Leia whispered. “It’s been a minute.”

The wind whispered over the peaceful place.

“Wish you were both here, I think about you every day.”

She laid on her back, head on the flat stone as though it were a pillow, and imagined herself there, forever.

“Practicing?” A voice said and she cracked her eye open to see her brother, his tie untied, and dirt on his pants.

She nodded and closed her eyes. She heard the grass rustling as he lay next to her.

“Do you wanna be buried here?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, it’s so peaceful. You’ll be next to me, right?”

“Of course. I’ll even do you one better and split a coffin with you. Save us a lot of money.” With the private ceremony and unlisted grave, there was hardly any money left for the two of them. Leia had felt bad for Luke what with the wedding three weeks away, and had refused what small amount was left for her, insisting he take it.

Leia laughed. “Go out of this life the way we came in?”

Luke also laughed. “I didn’t even think of it that way.”

“Hey, at least we’ll be together. I never wanna not be together, in one way or another.”

Luke sighed in agreement, and took her hand. They stared at the sky together, watching the clouds.

“You two should move to Coruscant, there’s a ton of writing jobs there. And it's not too far from Ahch-To, which I know you love.”

“We’ve talked about it.”

“You should do it.”

“We’ll see.” Luke was silent for another moment. “We should be getting back.”

Leia sighed and got up. “Any more appearances until the wedding?”

Luke looked pensive for a moment as he got up. “Well there’s Cassian and Jyn’s party tomorrow, and our party that we’re throwing and-“

“Ok, ok, I guess I’ll have to always be on my best behavior.” They started walking towards the cars.

“Thanks for getting after those guys,” Luke said after a moment of walking.

“It was my pleasure, I assure you.”

“Never thought you’d defend dad’s right to have some peace.”

“I was thinking mostly about how much I didn’t want to see you try to have a calm discussion with the skin-head before he reset your clock.”

“I could’ve taken them.”

“Sure.”

They reached the cars where most everyone had left, Mara was waiting by the car.

“There you two are, I was beginning to wonder if you’d fallen into an open grave or something,” she said.

“At least then we’d leave this life the way we came in,” Luke joked.

“Gross, you know, there is such a thing as too close, you two.”

“It was Leia’s joke!” Luke said as he claimed the front seat.

They started driving back Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s, stopping to get a late lunch.

“You met Jyn, right?” Mara asked from the backseat. Leia nodded.

“Yeah, she and Cassian seem cute together.”

“He’s great. She’s my maid of honor.” Leia nodded. “She seems really nice, kinda quiet. But nice.” “Well, we’ve been through a lot, the two of us. I’d like if you two got along. I know there’s some history between you and Cassian, but-” Leia shook her head emphatically. “There won’t be a problem, I swear.” “You’ll have to meet my best man,” Luke piped up.

“Speaking of someone she might have a problem with,” Mara muttered.

Luke looked over his shoulder at her, but Leia didn’t catch it. He ignored Mara’s comment otherwise. “He’ll be at the party tomorrow.” Leia hummed in agreement. “Try not to kill him, will you? Or at least wait to kill him until after the wedding.”

“I make no such guarantees,” Leia quipped, getting a small laugh. “But I promise to at least try to leave him in one piece for the pictures.” She racked her brain and trying to remember if Luke had said something previously about this guy. Did Luke even mention him at all? He kept up with such a strange crowd since dating Mara, who knew a lot of people in the racing scene. Leia groaned internally, praying to god he wasn’t one of those stuck-up racing types.

6 notes · View notes

jamesv-t · 4 years

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Crowdsourcing my runs

Over the last few weeks, I've hit a bit of a creative slump with regards to my running. In the absence of parkrun and the social aspect therein, I've been doing the same routes and getting bored of it. I decided to shake things up a bit and ask my friends on social media to choose for me. A soft launch on Twitter using a carefully selected series of polls (to prevent people telling me to run a marathon in 20 minutes) kicked things off.

Manipulating polls to get the results I wanted

The week after, I tried Instagram, giving followers who cared enough to interact with my stories the choice of a fast and flat run, or hills (hills hills). Unsurprisingly they picked the hills, with a follow-up question seeing 2/3rds choose hill repeats over one big hill in a poorly worded question. Due to wanting a beer on a Saturday night, I elected to do these the morning after watching the film/war-crime Cats, but on the bright side after three 2km reps up a steep hill my hangover was gone! With a nice 2k to get there warming me up (and down afterwards), and the hill being a kilometre high, it was a great route to discover for the future.

So, with a bit of success from these, I opened things up to user submissions. Knowing that they'd probably send me on a route that includes Land's End, John O'Groats, Mordor, Atlantis and Venus, I kept things simple and asked for music submissions. The rules included one track per person, and outlawed any repeats. I also pledged to listen in the order of submission to avoid any suggestions I was adjusting the playlist to make it easier on me. I also privately promised to run for the entire length of the playlist - had I admitted this, I could pinpoint exactly who would submit the longest song they could find just for a laugh (and one of them couched their suggestion with "the longest version of this song you can find", proving me right).

I was nervous about it, especially knowing what the second song was, and only familiar with about a quarter of the songs submitted. How would they fare as running songs? How would they hold up as songs at all? How far would I have to run? Where is the love? Do they know it's Christmas? D'ya know what I mean?

1. MØL - Bruma

Straight in with something new, a shoegazey metal band from Denmark! If the two coffees to start the day hadn't woken me up already, this definitely would have done. I really liked it, it reminded me of Arch Enemy and I'm going to check out more of their work later this week.

Song: 8/10

Suitability as a running soundtrack: 10/10

2. Crazy Frog - Axel F

And the first of the troll submissions. (To be fair, with the amount of shots I've taken at Swindon Town on Twitter, I deserved it.) This started as a "grit your teeth and pray for it to end" song but the steady beat and 80s synths really helped me click into my pace - it's just a shame about the ringtone championing amphibian singing all over it!

Song: 3/10

Running: 8/10 (I'll add the original to my regular running playlists)

3. Bastille - Joy

Any song after the preceding one would be a blessing, but this just clicked with me. Maybe it was seeing the sun breaking through the clouds above the piers, maybe it was just the general pleasantness of the song, but it definitely uplifted my spirits ahead of what could turn out to be a gruelling run.

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

4. Bill Withers - Lovely Day

And another nice song. A steady beat, a song that moves along at a fair clip, it was a surprise that I found it so easy to run to but I'm pleased it was added. I don't know that it would've clicked quite as much if it had been chucking it down but it really was a lovely day for running!

Song: 10/10

Running: 7/10

5. Vidiots - Dog Rap

I was nervous about this song to start with. I had absolutely no idea what to expect and was slightly scared of what I would have to listen to. Luckily, within about 10 seconds I realised it was exactly the sort of rap parody you'd see on SNL or an episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and I had a great time with it! I did have trouble keeping my cadence to it, unfortunately.

Song: 7/10

Running: 6/10

6. Turbowolf - Domino

I won't lie, I was half hoping that this would be a metal cover of a Jessie J song. It wasn't, but that wasn't much of a detriment - just three minutes of full on rock 'n' roll, and another band I'll check out more of later!

Song: 9/10

Running: 8/10

7. Rammstein - Deutschland

Finally, a familiar song! I've run to this track before, and it's not the only one of theirs that I've run to, so I could relax into the run a bit easier. I really should remember that my mask blocks infection but not my voice, as I think I scared other runners by singing along.

Song: 10/10

Running: 9/10

8. Das Sound Machine - World Championship Finale

And from a German band to a faux-German group, performing a mash-up of Fall Out Boy and DJ Khaled. While I didn't enjoy the Pitch Perfect movies as much as people expected, this was a clever combination of two songs I was vaguely familiar with, didn't overstay its welcome, and even raised a smile!

Song: 7/10

Running: 5/10

9. Brothers Osborne - It Ain't My Fault

Again, more expectations of pop song covers dashed, but even though this isn't a countrified Zara Larsson song it still rocked! A good steady beat, it reminded me of a train but that may have been because I was running next to a railway line! Another pleasant discovery. I realised at this point that this was also probably the most different male vocalists I'd listened to in succession in years.

Song: 9/10

Running: 7/10

10. HUNGER - Light It Up

Knowing the musical overlap I have with Elise, I was surprised to hear a(nother) male vocalist on this track. It was great despite that, the song reminded me of a third act heroic run in a teen movie, which really boosted my serotonin.

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

11. Prince - When Doves Cry

The first of three submissions from the same person, and reluctantly the only one I could keep. It's to my shame that I forget how good a musician Prince was, and this was a welcome reprise. It soundtracked the portion of my run along the western arm of Brighton Marina, and reminded me of that beautiful moment when two people called Milhouse finally meet.

Song: 10/10

Running: 9/10

12. BLACKPINK - BOOMBAYAH

I'm glad I stuck to my guns regarding not using shuffle, as it lead to this colourful trend - mix black and pink and you get purple, the previous artist's signature colour! Another familiar song, another relaxing segment of the run, by this point along the foot of the cliffs towards Saltdean. By now I was confident of being able to run to pretty much any song - alternating between music and podcasts over the last few years had broken me out of old habits of needing fast paced songs to keep me going. I could just settle in and enjoy the mix of English and Korean!

Song: 9/10

Running: 9/10

13. P!nk - Raise Your Glass

It is a fault of my own that I associate too many songs with the TV show Glee. I noticed it working my way through Van Halen's discography the other week; I noticed it here as well. I mostly put that out of my mind after the first verse, focusing on P!nk's snarky asides that didn't make it into the sanitised, TV friendly version. It also made me realise that I really should listen to her more!

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

14. Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto - The Girl From Ipanema

This was the first song that genuinely threw me off my pace. I stumbled and said (probably too loudly, I'm sure that people overheard) "what the fuck is this?!" when the French jazz came on. Over five minutes long, I felt myself slowing, and willing it to end. My colleague's attempt to throw me off worked - I'm just glad she didn't choose Ed Sheeran!

Song: 2/10

Running: 0/10

15. A Flock Of Seagulls - I Ran (So Far Away)

(This worked really well, but the plan for using the gif came to me within seconds of the intro and I couldn't not do it)

Song: 9/10

Running: 8/10

16. The Walkmen - The Rat

By this point I had hit the turn around point and was heading back towards town, along the undulating clifftop. It was also the penultimate song that I had no idea about, and another surprise! Chock full of driving drums, it reminded me (to no detriment) of The Bravery's An Honest Mistake, and I was pleased to find out later that the two songs were released within six months of each other! Another song that'll find its way onto my regular running playlists in the future.

Song: 8/10

Running: 10/10

17. Chemical Brothers - Galvanize

I could've sworn when I was listening to this song that it had been used on an advert, or TV show, perhaps as part of an exercise montage - but Wikipedia is remaining mute on the subject. Regardless, it made me feel like I was in one, so this is going on the playlist from now on. You might say it...galvanised...me into running faster!

Song: 8/10

Running: 10/10

18. Russ Abbot - Atmosphere

The final song on this list that I knew nothing about - and within seconds I was convinced it was a hastily written song to cash in on the popularity of Agadoo. According to Google this was written by Joy Division, but I'm certain that's incorrect. Spotify credits the singer, and it's really not good. I'm just glad it had some semblance of pace to it so it didn't drag!

Song: 1/10

Running: 1/10

19. Britney Spears - Toxic

About ten years ago the branch of German budget supermarket Aldi in Canterbury closed down, and the cramped site was taken over by upmarket supermarket Waitrose. The sudden increase in quality is a perfect metaphor for the vast uptick in quality between the last song and this. The Grammy award winning track is the musical equivalent of doping - listening to it makes you run faster, lighter, easier and happier.

Song: 10/10

Running: 11/10

20. Faithless - Insomnia

This was a song I was convinced I knew, but two-thirds of the way into the song it still wasn't ringing any bells...until the bells kicked in and I recognised the bit played on Invicta FM on the car rides to school all those years ago. Another great song to run to, soundtracking my run along Marine Parade back to the pier.

Song: 9/10

Running: 8/10

21. Garbage - Temptation Waits

The opening track on the first proper album I ever owned, and the third track on the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" original soundtrack album...this is very possibly one of my most listened to songs, ever. A slow burner, it explodes on the listener partway through - and I guess knowing I only had ten minutes left of my run helped boost my motivation too!

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

22. Focus - Hocus Pocus (live at the Rainbow)

This was submitted with the caveat of "hopefully a 15 minute live version". The longest one I could find was "only" eight and a half minutes, but the yodelling and guitars sped me to a fast finish on Hove Lawns. I really need to give the studio version another listen!

Song: 8/10

Running: 9/10

Had I just been listening to podcasts, I probably would've called it a day at 10 or 12k. I tucked another 6k under my belt (two more pints in my beer total), covered a more interesting route, and good lord are my legs feeling it now!

via Blogger https://ift.tt/3lZmYpy

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fyrapartnersearch · 4 years

Text

Let’s voltron!

“I say vol and you say tron! Vol…..”

“Eh…. voltron?”

“We’ll work on it.”

New school defenders:

Lotor’s reign:

Mirror mirror:

Gamora’s guns:

The chosen:

Before we reach the end of the post, here are some important reminders:

1: NO REACHING OUT TO ME ASKING FOR A CANON CHARACTER SHIPPING RP! I DO NOT DOUBLE SO DO NOT ASK!

2: DONT MESSAGE ME IF YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH NOT VERY HUMANOID ALIENS!

3: NO GARY STU’S OR MARY SUES! GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS A PERSONALITY THAT ISN’T JUST ONE EMOTION OR TRAIT ONLY!

For those who’ve read this thoroughly thank you and congratulations! If you’re at all interested please send me a message and add me on my discord, telegram, email or hangouts (contact info below).

My discord: tiberionsunsconqourer#6187

My telegram: Tiberionwars

My email/hangouts: [email protected]

Hope to write some awesome stories!

#oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #long term #literate #action #adventure #au #drama angst #fandom #romance #scifi #submission #voltron #voltron rp #discord #telegram #email

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halcyonkrp · 6 years

Photo

WHO’S THAT LEADER ?

coming from nishiyodogawa, osaka, japan and settling into the saha district here in busan as a gym leader, he’s here to participate in the league, giving out legacy badges to those that succeed! can you guess who this geumjeong gym leader is?

IT’S SAKURA TATSUYA !

ADDITIONAL POKEMON

dragonite, altaria, noivern, fraxure, dratini, teddiursa, eevee, metang, mimikyu, houndoom

POKEDEX ENTRY

six years old. he’s always been fond of pokémon, his parents can see it in the way his eyes light up every time he’s playing with one. his mother protests that he’s too young to play with some of the pokémon they have, but his father stays silent, a warm smile on his face as he watches his son play with the dragonair.

the renowned scientist looks over at his wife, a mischievous smile on his face.

immediately, she’s shaking her head in disapproval.

“not yet, kino.”

however, his smile doesn’t disappear as he turns back to the direction of his son and his dragonair playing.

“tatsuya! come here!”

immediately, the young boy turns around and runs to his father, the sleek pokémon following close behind. as soon as his son reaches him, the man is kneeling down, reaching into his pocket before he feels a hand on his arm, signalling to stop.

“he’s ready, mitsuki. he can handle it.”

tatsuya watches with curious eyes, silent as he waits in anticipation. his mother retracts her arm, beginning to kneel as well. his father brings his hand out again, a shiny pokéball in his palm with a weird little symbol on the front. the young boy’s eyes light up, a smile immediately on his face as if he knew. his finger presses the button in the middle, watching as a gible appears.

“kino!”

he doesn’t do anything, despite the obvious worry in his wife’s voice. as far as mitsuki remembered from what her husband told her, this oddly colored gible was a rescue, scared yet unpredictable all the same. the pokémon hides behind the scientist, whom the young gible knows as his only ally.

before the professor could say anything, the young boy holds his hand out, a gentle smile on his face as he inches closer.

“i’m a friend, i won’t hurt you.”

after a few minutes of more coaxing, the two were happily playing together in the field as if they’ve been friends for years.

ten years old. he doesn’t quite believe his ears when his parents tell him they’re moving. his gible continues eating like nothing’s wrong, but he feels like his world is imploding. his mother tells him he’s exaggerating, but his father tells him he has every right to feel upset. the doctor tells the both of them that he’ll get over it once he realizes how much he likes it, but the young boy isn’t too convinced.

his father had been tasked to help a research team gather information on a new species of pokémon, and who would he be to turn down the project? his wife was immediately supportive, even if it meant leaving her own work behind and possibly starting anew.

( luckily for her, one of south korea’s hospitals in busan would be happy to have her. )

tatsuya on the other hand, feels like he’s leaving his entire life behind. he’s young, and he doesn’t understand that there’s more to life outside of the city he calls home.

well— he knew, but who would ever want to leave a place they’re so happy in?

after the dinner, he went straight to his room to further mull over the news. they were to move a few months after his eleventh birthday this year, starting anew in a completely new country. his father was going to start teaching him the language in coming days just so he’s not too uncomfortable when they begin living there.

he hears a knock on his door, but he doesn’t have time to react before his father stepped inside, not that he’d say to leave. the young boy watches as his father sits beside him on the floor, the same warm smile he gave him five years ago when he gifted him with who tatsuya considers his best friend.

he repeats the movements of that day, reaching into his pocket and fetching another pokéball.

“for you.”

tatsuya carefully takes it into his hands, curiosity in his eyes as he wondered what pokémon it could be. he almost presses the button, but his father stops him.

“i know change is weird, but i hope it’ll be easier for you with another familiar face taking care of you.”

the scientist pauses, patting his son’s head affectionately.

“i hope you and dragonair become lifelong friends, tatsuya.”

twelve years old. he doesn’t see his father very often, but he’s happy just being with his mother. she does her best to take care of him well, being a little too protective than what he prefers. she has every right to be afraid, especially since he has some heart-palpitating encounters every now and then in the forest behind his parents’ villa.

his parents aren’t around a lot, his mother being busy at the hospital just a district over and his father being who knows where, travelling to different places that he can’t keep up with.

he isn’t alone in his home, but considering how much they take care of themselves, it often feels like they don’t live with parents. he wonders why they all can’t be together— he’s only ever granted that during holidays, or once in a blue moon.

tatsuya begins catching more pokémon and begins training them more to occupy his time in between school and sleep. the neighbors say he has potential to be the champion, but he knows he has a long way to go.

although his family has felt small for a while, he’s happy to watch it grow with the more pokémon he befriends. he grows alongside his pokémon, bonding and taking care of who he can.

he’s so happy, he’s forgotten about how right his mother had been about moving.

fifteen years old. he eavesdrops has his mother speaks quietly on the phone, making sure to hide whenever she turns to check if someone’s watching. at first he’s suspicious, anxious to know what his mother is trying to keep a secret.

then he sees a tear slip down her face.

he doesn’t remember ever seeing that happen before.

even after she hangs up the phone, she cries to herself and he can’t help but watch— if he went up to her now, his cover would’ve been blown and she’d know. whatever it was, she’d tell in due time.

however, he doesn’t end up waiting more than ten minutes. he and his sister are called to the living room, his mother noticeably slower in her movements as she calmly tells them to sit down. his nerves are bundling up in his stomach, and he’s quite scared to hear what she needs to say.

she only mutters two words, the only words he needed to hear before storming out of the villa and taking to the skies.

“he’s gone.”

eighteen years old. later that same night, he finds out it happened on the job. the pokémon held in the research lab’s captivity had grown enraged and caught them off guard, leaving no survivors in what can only be deemed an accident.

back then, when he thought of his father he only felt anger.

he didn’t deserve that.

it was a thought that echoed in his head a lot back then, and even now he still thinks the same. his father was a good man, and he did what he could to protect everyone he could. he was patient, loving and intelligent, and he wished more of the world could see that.

tatsuya has grown up a bit since that time. now he looks back on his father and just hopes he’s proud of how far he’s come since the days where he played with his parents’ pokémon, trying to not get on gible’s bad side.

gone are the days when they spent time together as a family, laughing and playing like they had forever.

they are separated now. his sister now lives in another district, his mother lives nearer to the hospital, but he stayed in their villa. he lives with his many pokémon and the neighbors often see him training in the forest behind the house for the league.

he remembered how they said he has potential to challenge the league.

he looks up at the sky, a smile on his face as he stares longingly for a moment.

he will beat the league; he will make his father smile.

twenty-one years old. in 2014, sakura tatsuya challenged the league for the very first time at eighteen years old.

so he didn’t beat the elite tournament, but it’s enough for him that even made it as far as he did considering not everyone can manage the same.

he felt proud.

after that year, he spent a lot of time training hard with his pokémon in between university. he studied nursing, following his mother’s lead so he care for his own pokémon without constantly having to head to a center in case something happened. he’s someone who’s usually careful, but you never know what happens when it comes to battles.

after graduation, he saw an opportunity to further show his skills— it was something he never really imagined himself doing, but it’s something that excites him anyway.

after signing up, the actual process of getting the job was a lot more rigorous than he imagined. there were a few times when he thought he’d fail, not make it at all, but in the end he ended up being the triumphant, a new title tied to his name.

congratulations to sakura tatsuya, the new gym leader of the geumjeong gym!

currently. battling is a way of healing.

there is still a percentage of him that is grieving; it’s the part of him that he chooses to ignore for the better of his state of mind. most of his days he’s confident in himself, but he falters, unsure of where he stands.

some people don’t think it’s good to battle with pokémon, but he thinks it’s something good. being able to bond through trusting each other to take care of one another on a battlefield generates a feeling of exhilaration that he can’t quite explain.

his life had changed a lot within the past year, which was a little overwhelming to say the least. his mother left her job at the hospital, now running a daycare, breeding & adoption center in the dongnae district where he just casually adopts and raises the pokémon that aren’t adopted within a year.

what can he say— he has a soft spot for baby pokémon, and it’s always fun to have a variety of different pokémon to learn about and train, right?

even though he has a solid team for 2018, it’s never too early to train more dragons for the following years roster.

2018 is less than a month, and a bunch of feelings are coursing through his veins all at once knowing that the new season is to begin. his oddly colored garchomp and his dragonite approach him at the same time, looking down at him without a sound.

he sighs.

“it’s be fine.”

they aren’t convinced. he tries again.

“i’m fine.”

they aren’t budging. his dragonite turns around, leaning down— he knows that this means. he takes out garchomp’s pokéball, pressing the button as he watches the taller creature dematerialize before his eyes and disappear into the sphere. he kisses it in thanks, before placing it in his pocket and climbing atop his dragonite’s back.

without a warning, they take off.

the wind is running through his hair, chilling him a bit as they begin to circle the city.

the city looks so small from this height, different lights flashing in the night with the city noise playing in the background. his problems feel so small, practically miniscule as they soar through the night sky.

he’s closer to his father, and that thought alone calms him.

maybe everything will be just fine.

#hc.entry #hc.nakamoto yuta #hc.gym leader

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dotshiiki · 7 years

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CoL, chpt 8

I am so sorry I wanted to post this morning but my supervisor asked to change tomorrow’s morning meeting to today and I was instead scrambling to get everything in order for that and yeah, back to doing this while I’m having lunch, oh wells.

VIII: WILL

As their borrowed Ford Mondeo wound its way south, Will wondered what he'd gotten himself into.

It wasn't his first road trip. He'd taken many as a kid with his mom, back when she still did music tours. Most recently, he'd gone cross-country in Leo Valdez's camper-dragon from New York to New Rome. In terms of size and reliability, the car Annabeth had borrowed off her dad fell somewhere in between Naomi Solace's tiny Chevy (old and beat up, but incredibly dependable) and Leo's spacious but insane contraption (prone to—literally—flaming temper tantrums). It was one of those solid suburban models, great for a college professor and his family of five. Maybe a bit on the squeezy side with three grown boys in the back seat. It was just as well the Roman demigods had stayed behind. If Frank Zhang had been in the group, Will didn't think they would have fit.

Anyway, the car wasn't the problem.

It hadn't been so bad when Annabeth had been at the wheel, but then she'd traded with Thalia—who drove like a maniac, weaving in and out of traffic like an F1 driver negotiating a race track. Sure, they were in a hurry, but a little caution probably wouldn't be amiss.

On Will's left, Nico grumbled, 'I don't see why Jules Albert couldn't have driven us. At least he used to be an actual race car driver.'

'I heard that,' Thalia said.

Will considered Nico's zombie driver. He'd only encountered the dude once, but he remembered two things about him. One, the guy was really steady at the wheel. Two, you could smell his rotting corpse all the way from Olympus.

That might not have been such a great idea on a six-hour car ride.

'Well, I guess it would've been a bit of a squeeze with five of us as passengers instead of four,' he pointed out instead. 'You wouldn't wanna be squashed up all the way to L.A.'

'I don't want to die on the way to L.A., either,' Nico muttered. 'I could have shadow travelled.'

Will rolled his eyes. 'With all five of us? We've talked about this, Death Boy. Unless you've learned how to transport large groups on your own without dissolving into shadow, we're doing this the long way.'

Nico glared at him, though Will wasn't sure if it was targeted at his use of the hated nickname or the aspersions he'd cast on Nico's abilities.

Probably both. Not that Will cared. Nico was cute when he got mad.

On Will's other side, Percy had been staring out of the window with his chin propped on his hand, gazing at the sunset over the Californian mountains. Now he turned to watch them, his eyes darting between Will and Nico as he followed their exchange.

'Who's Jules Albert?' he asked.

'Long story,' Nico said.

'It's a long trip,' Thalia called back. 'You may as well spill.'

Will zoned out as Nico told them the story of his undead ex-F1 champion chauffeur. It was one of those tales that always made Will curious about the different parenting styles of the gods. You wouldn't imagine the Lord of the Underworld to be a concerned—albeit behind-the-times—parent, but there you had it.

Will's dad, on the other hand, was pretty much the opposite. Apollo was nothing if not current. You probably didn't get to be the god of music and poetry and that sort of stuff if you couldn't keep up on what was trending. On the parenting front, though, his record was more flaky: fickle with bestowing gifts (unlike Nico and his inheritance of a full spectrum of Underworldly powers, being an Apollo kid was like a lottery for godly skill) and attention (Apollo wasn't always great about remembering who his children were, let alone communicating with them). Though he'd been better since his enforced stint as a mortal. He'd even sent Will a birthday card when he turned eighteen, which might have been a first for any godly parent. The quest Apollo had recently undertaken must have given him a new appreciation for the trials his children went through.

Was about to go through, in Will's case.

In Tartarus.

What had he been thinking, volunteering for this quest? It wasn't like he had a ton of experience with this sort of thing. Sure, he'd played his part in two wars, but he wasn't one of the front runners for the dangerous quests. He wasn't Annabeth, leading a team of demigods on a heroic air/sea voyage. He wasn't Thalia, who'd basically signed her life away to hunt monsters for Artemis.

He wasn't Percy, hero of the Battle of Manhattan, saviour of Olympus twice over, a demigod with credentials longer than most minor gods, whom even Will's own father respected (and Apollo didn't hold that many people in high regard).

Percy, who couldn't remember why everyone admired him.

Thanks to a potion Will had administered—yeah, okay, it was to save his life—and maybe screwed up so that he was now dying slowly from an empousa's curse.

Annabeth blamed herself, but Will knew some of it had to fall on him, too. He was the healer, after all.

That was why he was here.

If Will were the jealous sort, he might have been concerned that Nico was with them, too. Will was fully aware of the crush Nico had once had on Percy. (Not that Will could blame him. He'd be lying if he said he'd never had at least one dream about those brilliant green eyes and roguish smile.) But jealousy wasn't really Will's style. He preferred to think of it as Nico accompanying him, helping him atone for his mistake.

Besides, Will was the one who had volunteered them both. It wasn't entirely selfish. There had been something in Nico's face that morning, a flicker of the shadow that never quite left his boyfriend's soul. Nico never spoke much about his time in Tartarus—not to Will, not to anybody. All Will knew was that Nico had been there at some point during the war, and judging from certain hints he'd picked up from Hazel and Reyna over the years, it hadn't been a walk in the park. But everyone seemed to think Nico had just shrugged it off and moved on by now.

Except recovery from a traumatic experience wasn't quite so straightforward. People often thought healing was always about getting better, but Will knew that there was always a part before, where you had to get worse. The same way a fever raged through the body to expel the germs inside, you often needed a psychological unravelling to dislodge a trauma. Will had seen it happen to Percy and Annabeth in the fall after the Giant War. He'd watched them go through the painful process of falling apart and coming back together.

Nico, on the other hand, seemed to have buried his time in Tartarus deep inside himself. Maybe his friends couldn't see it. But Will wasn't Camp Half-Blood's best healer in a century for nothing.

And that morning, Will had sensed Nico's need to tackle his demons, to face whatever he had encountered head on and beat it this time. He needed to return to Tartarus, whether he knew it or not. And Will would be damned if he let Nico do it without him.

Although he'd be lying if he said he wasn't scared shitless about what they might face down there.

To calm his nerves, he ran over the provisions he'd packed for their journey: nectar and ambrosia, naturally, but also all the specialised healing supplies he could get his hands on. A jar of Lemnian mud. A tincture of Moly. And of course, Gatorade, because Nico was bound to try something stupid at some point with his Death Boy powers.

It was nearly midnight by the time they pulled into West Hollywood, a time that seemed eerily apt for approaching the Underworld. The dark didn't seem to faze Annabeth, who navigated Thalia expertly through the winding streets.

'It was dark, too, the last time we were here,' she said, shrugging.

'That was what, ten years ago?' Thalia said. 'Your memory's insane!' Then she abruptly clamped her mouth shut. In the rear-view mirror, Will saw her biting her lip in consternation.

Annabeth frowned out the window as they passed the only shopfront still lit up, a crooked neon sign flashing 'CRUSTY'S WATERBED PALACE' over its door. 'Some things don't change much.'

Thalia pulled up by the kerbside of a black marble building with tall glass doors. Golden letters above them screamed 'DOA RECORDING STUDIOS.'

'We're here,' Annabeth said. She opened her door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The others hopped out as well. There was a sign on the building door that said:

VALET PARKING AVAILABLE CARS NOW ACCEPTED AS COLLATERAL

'What does it mean, collateral?' Percy asked.

'Payment for passage, probably,' Annabeth said. 'Though I'd like to get the car back to my dad eventually if possible.'

'We already blew up his car once,' Thalia said. 'What's another?'

Annabeth sighed. 'Let's just go.'

Inside the building, the hallways were lit with lava lamps shaped like ancient torches. Rows of plastic fold-up chairs lined the walls, all filled with dismal-faced people who looked like they might not be entirely solid. Bluegrass music belted out from a speaker box in the corner of the ceiling.

At the end of the hallway was the most ostentatious desk Will had ever seen. Made of polished mahogany and embedded with blood-red jewels, it stretched in front of a plain silver elevator with a single button: down. In an ornate armchair behind the desk lounged a man in an expensive Italian suit. He was kind of handsome, a bit like Nico, with his olive skin and finely chiselled features.

'Group of five?' he said. His accent was vaguely European. 'What was it, a car accident?' He pulled out an iPhone and brought up an app. 'No alerts from Thanatos. How many times do I have to tell Death to update me when he makes a delivery?' He swiped across the screen to a time display. 'Never mind—you'll have to wait. I have a crossing scheduled now.'

He shoved the phone back in his suit pocket. 'Tickets for crossing thirteen-oh-eight-one!' he announced to the room at large. Then he turned back to the five of them. 'Have your fare ready when I get back. Prices are on the chart.'

He indicated a sign on the wall, where a list of fare prices and timings were printed:

Standard passage—1 drachma; wait time: 10 years Expedited passage—10 drachma; wait time: 5 years

Shorter wait times by negotiation only. All bribes accepted.

Check PlutoXE for latest exchange rates.

Children over 12 pay full fare.

A bunch of ghostly people shuffled forward, tickets in hand. Most of them were pretty old, but Will thought he spotted at least one young face that looked vaguely familiar. Before the group could get to the lift, Nico stepped between them and the Italian-suit man.

'Hello, Charon,' he said, crossing his arms.

Charon did a double-take. 'Oh, it's you. Don't you have better ways of visiting your father than clogging up my ferry?' He looked suspiciously at Will, Annabeth, Percy, and Thalia. 'And which part of the no-living-allowed rule don't you understand, kid?'

When Nico still didn't answer, Charon said, 'Fine. They better pay up, though.'

Nico tapped his finger on the expensive mahogany desk and gave Charon a pointed look. 'Who helped you argue for your last pay raise with my dad?'

Charon sighed and shook his head. 'Okay, okay. This lot isn't going to be happy to be bumped, though. Celebrities,' he grumbled. 'Always so demanding.'

With a jolt, Will recognised the familiar-looking kid as an actor who'd OD'ed last summer. And some of the older faces in the group had that vague, seen-them-on-TV-but-can't-name-them feel of TV personalities from his mom's generation.

Charon sent the actor kid and four other spirits back to the waiting line, silencing their complaints with a threat to bump them further down the list if they gave him any more lip.

'And don't even think of changing the music channel when I'm gone,' he warned.

They filed into the lift with Charon and the rest of the celebrity group. As soon as the doors closed, they found themselves descending in the darkness, landing with a splash on the surface of a black river. When his eyes adjusted, Will saw that they were in a cavern lit by gemstones studded in the volcanic rock. The lift had expanded into a barge, which Charon poled towards a shore of black sand. He let them off on the beach at the bottom of a rising path that led up towards a foggy grey meadow.

'My next annual review is in a month,' he said to Nico.

'I'll keep it in mind.'

They hiked up the path with the other souls. At the top, they entered an enormous screening area like the kind you saw at airport security: a long winding line marked out by post-and-rope barriers, except the posts looked like they were made from femurs and the ropes from sinew. The end of the line split into ten security checkpoints, all manned by ghouls in pale green uniforms. They were frisking the spirits that passed through the metal detectors, except at a smaller, separate line on the end marked 'EZ DEATH', where the spirits passed unmolested.

'They've…upgraded,' Annabeth noted.

'Luckily for us,' Nico said. 'Come on.'

He led them to the other side of the rope-barrier line, where a roped-off channel had been marked out 'SECURITY PERSONNEL ONLY'. Nico lifted the barrier and they all ducked under it. The nearest security ghoul turned to them, but when he saw Nico, he gave a sharp salute and returned to his duties.

As they got closer to the entrance marked WELCOME TO EREBUS, Percy yelped and stepped back, treading painfully on Will's toes. A moment later, Will saw what had startled him and nearly jumped out of his skin himself. An enormous three-headed Rottweiler had appeared out of nowhere, so big that it spanned the entire row of checkpoints.

'Cerberus,' Annabeth said.

Three heads leaned towards her, their tongues lolling out. Will ducked to avoid being splattered by monster dog drool.

Cerberus's tail wagged. One of the heads barked. It was deafening, but it sounded…joyous. Another dog head made a low, pleading sort of whine.

'He…does he remember me?' Annabeth said in amazement.

Nico shrugged. 'Possibly.' He raised his hand to scratch Cerberus's left head. The dog was so big, it was unlikely that Nico's small hand could have made any difference, but Cerberus seemed to be pleased by the attention nonetheless. Annabeth copied him on Cerberus's right head. The middle one whined and gave Will a hopeful sort of look.

Will hesitated. Pat the monster guardian of the Underworld? Well, sure, why not. In some weird way, it was kind of like visiting his boyfriend's home and meeting his pet dog.

After passing Cerberus, they followed Nico through a gigantic field filled with glassy-eyed spirits. These parted naturally before Nico, leaving them an open path to walk through, but closed the gap behind them once they passed.

'Is anyone else as freaked out as me?' Percy whispered.

Will nodded. It was like being in a crowded room at an insane asylum: every spirit chattering away to itself with no apparent awareness of anyone else.

'Well, it's not the first time we've been here,' Thalia said.

'Don't tell me.' Percy sounded resigned. 'I've been through this before and I just don't remember.' He turned to Will. 'I would've thought this wouldn't be your first time, though.'

'What makes you think that?'

'You're dating Death Boy here, aren't you?'

'Don't call me that,' Nico said sharply, shooting Will a look that said plainly, This is all your fault.

'We haven't actually done the meet-the-parents thing,' Will said.

'Sure we have,' Nico said. 'I've met yours.'

Just as he said this, they reached the gates of a magnificent palace built of glittering obsidian. It was silhouetted against a backdrop of craggy volcanic mountains. Its grounds stretched across the Fields of Asphodel to reach the edge of the only bright spot in the gloom: a gated community surrounding a tropical island. A low parapet made a ring around the palace grounds, marking out the sector of the Underworld that was Hades's personal territory.

Standing at the edge of it, Will was reminded of the first time he had brought Nico home to Schoharie and they'd stood in front of his mom's tiny house. Nico had given him a terrified look, like a caged animal about to be led to slaughter. 'Are you sure about this?' he'd asked.

'Relax—it's just my mom,' Will had reassured him. 'She'll like you.'

Looking at the black obsidian palace, he imagined the situation in reverse. It didn't match, though. You could fit ten of Will's houses into the courtyard of this palace. And Hades wasn't just Nico's dad. What demigod wouldn't have a healthy amount of respect, if not fear, for the Lord of the Dead?

Then again, that kind of applied ot all the gods. And Nico had met Apollo, though the fact that the god had been a mortal kid barely a year older than Will himself at the time probably reduced the intimidation factor.

Nico seemed to sense what Will was thinking. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. 'Maybe I should invite you over to stay. See how you like meeting my parents. Fair's fair, right?'

'Ha ha.'

'Seriously, I do have a room there.'

'Let me guess, decorated with skulls and stuff?' Will said dryly.

'How did you guess?' Nico shrugged. 'My dad thought it was funny. I think. Hard to be sure, with him.'

'Guys,' Thalia said, 'back to the quest? You can get past the meet-the-parents hurdle when we make it back. If we make it back.'

Annabeth pointed to a path leading off to the right of the palace gates. 'That way, isn't it?'

'That would be the shortcut, yet,' Nico said, his face sober again. The shadow of Tartarus flickered across him again. He looked like he had more to say about the route, but he just pressed his lips together and started down the path.

It led into a dim tunnel that smelt of earth and minerals and something else that Will couldn't quite put his finger on. It reminded him of the smell of ancient magic, the way the soil of Lemnos, with its healing properties, gave off a different scent from commonplace mud. The tunnel narrowed and sloped downwards. The air took on a chilly, metallic quality. Will could smell iron in the walls now, like they were made from the blood-soaked earth of a battlefield or the stones of a sacrificial altar.

They emerged into a dark cavern. The path beneath them sloped steeply towards a sharp drop-off: a cliff overlooking a pitch-black chasm. The whole cavern churned with a deep, coercive magic. It snaked out of the chasm and wound itself around Will, a compelling force drawing him to the edge like it was a magnet and Will a hapless steel nail.

'Do you guys feel that?' he whispered.

Annabeth shivered. 'It's Tartarus. The pull—once it latches on, you can't break free of it.'

'Like running from a black hole.' Nico's voice was hollow and echoey in the cavern. He stared down into the chasm and then turned to Will. The dim glow of the stalactites cast eerie shadows across his pale face. A thousand nightmares played in his eyes.

Will reached for his hand, although he wasn't sure if it was to offer Nico some comfort or take some for himself. Nico's fingers were trembling and even colder than usual.

'Well,' Thalia said, 'we do want to go in now, so…'

As if an unspoken signal had passed among all of them, they reached for each other's hands at the same time. And then, linked in a tight circle, they jumped.

A/N: I realise the layout of DOA recording studios is not quite in keeping with the canon description in Lightning Thief, but where’s the fun in repeating the books? Let’s just say Charon redecorated a little. All those pay raises must have gone somewhere, right?

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