#the newest ones are even more so and there's hardly a peep

[cainite-bite]

one of my most favorite pet peeves is when someone talks about an old edgy game and is like "its a shame because you couldn't just make that nowdays it would NEVER have been allowed its a shame how we've fallen" but like you get to look at them in comparison to things we have now that are actively even more grusome than ever. People say manhunt couldn't be released today because its too brutal but then the last of us has some extra brutal executions too, and don't even get me started on how the MK series is nowadays. "they would have to censor the story so heavily today so im glad [blank] came out years ago" they say, as some weren't already censored to tone it down- a perfect example of that is always going to be Twisted Metal Black where they changed up Raven's, Dollface's, Agent Stone's, Preacher's, John Doe's story to simmer them all down and lighten the blow, expunging certain levels ambient sounds because the implications of domestic violence, and the changing of No-face's surgical cutscene to make it not as explicitly nasty and meanwhile modern games have been actively stepping it up to be even worse.

"Games are just too prudish nowdays we couldnt even get another ghostly desires LOL" and meanwhile the front page to steam is literally littered with hentai games. that do not hide the lewd and raunchy screenshots. sometimes its a freshly creampied pussy in your face. yeah that. Im sorry but there's so much god damn porn games that are available to buy and some of it is mainstream even (Huniepop for instance).

Back in the day NightTrap was rated as an Adult game. Now? It's T for teen because how tame it kinda is. We're not as prudish or pearlclutchy on literally any of these points as we used to be and thank fucking god for that- but literally take off the nostolgia goggles cause its fuckin blinding you sweetie

#i remember the panic that came out about games like doom and how violent they were #so many hackles were raised and it was so scandalous #the newest ones are even more so and there's hardly a peep #gta was certainly contreversial back in its day but especially 3 set off shit like you would not believe but 5 actively pushes way past it #and there's less about it now- ffs the hot coffee made it back into the remasters by accident #and despite knowing that there was even less of a hubub this time of round for San andreas than back then #literally so few care about that now #but even CoD is getting more graphic than it and so many other games are too #gta just doesnt have its oomph anymore #and i wanna say that's a good thing because there's more artistic freedom with that #but we can't just be so deluded as to pretend we've not gotten heavier about all of this #because we have and it really shows #none of the old contreversial series seem near as bad now when half of everything is rivaling it #ballad of gay tony showed dick and everyone was so up in arms about it #in numbers we couldnt even see for Outlast Whistleblower for seeing a man's dick chopped off and him split open to make a birthing statue #and that is so fucking wild??

[mytheoristavenue]

OP Usopp x Perv!Reader 🍋- ISpy

Summary: Your newest bad habit mixes your feelings about how moral your desires are, but not enough to stop.

Warnings: fem!reader, perv!reader, perv!usopp, masturbation, peeping, dirty talk, heavy praise

You had to stop doing this before you got yourself into trouble. Not only was it wrong from a rule book stand point, but it was morally wrong too! But you had been doing it too long and now it was a habit. Several nights a week now, you would sneak around the ship until you found the door to Usopp's factory before pressing your ear to it to see if it was a good time.

When it wasn't you might hear the sounds of lead scribbling on parchment or fingers rummaging through bins of bolts, but when it was good- God. When the time was right, you could be blessed with squelching, airy sighs, and the most disgusting dialogue. Needless to say, tonight was one of the later.

You sank to your knees, lip sucked between your teeth and one eye screwed shut to peer through the keyhole of the door. You could hardly see anything, only a shadow casted from the light of a single bedside candle, burning lowly, threatening to be extinguished from exhaustion. From what you could make out, the shadow was shaking, a single angle of it jumping back and forth- no doubt the elbow of a soon to be very sore arm. 'Perfect,' you thought to yourself, letting your hand wander down to your thighs before your fingers dug even further beyond.

"F-Fuck..." a voice called from within the room. "Feel so fucking good..." You trembled with arousal at the thought of his words being a result of your ministrations; your hand creating the gushy noise that echoed in your head for days every time you heard it.

"I know it does, sweet boy," you whispered back, tone shaky and barely audible as your digits slithered around and prodded you- a result of your poor position. "You like when I stroke your pretty cock?"

"Y-Yes!" Usopp's voice cracked, making you freeze in place. Had he possibly heard you? You relaxed as he continued, reassuring that he was not, in fact answering your rhetorical. "Yes, yes, yes. Right there, feels good..."

"Good boy..." you cooed to yourself, finally resorting to dropping off your knees in favor of sitting flat on the floor, sacrificing your chance to possibly catch a glimpse of his perfect ochre skin. Now, you leaned your back against the door so you could still plant an ear against it, but stretch your hips and prop your legs up just right. You sighed, once again lowering your hand between them, this time fully sliding your panties and shorts to the side and immediately plunging a digit into your core with a light gasp. "U-Usopp, wait-!" you sigh, conjuring up the image of him ramming himself into you without warning in your mind. Inserting a second finger, you let your head fall onto your shoulder momentarily as you face began to tingle with overwhelm. "Y-You're so big..."

"Yeah, baby," his voice called again from the other side of the door, more gruff this time- almost frustrated, but you could still hear the grin playing on his lips. "Just c'mere and let this fat cock stretch that little hole." You weren't sure if you'd been entirely lucid that last time, thinking it possible that your fantasies were beginning to leak into the awake world. Regardless, you didn't care. His words made your insides twist in a way that so wonderfully complimented the bullying you were doing to your cervix. "Ah- yeah, just like that baby. Shit-! Just ride this fuckin' cock!"

You were beginning to feel sweat accumulate on your forheld as you slapped your hand over your mouth to subdue the lewd racket that begged to spill out. "Y-Yes, daddy..." You whispered against your palm, having revoked your speaking privileges, lest someone might find you out. "Love riding your pretty cock, Usopp- please fuck me! Please, please, please..."

"Shit, baby-" he sighed, the sound of squelching getting louder and increasing tempo leading you to believe that he was close, had you been paying enough attention. "Gonna fill that pretty pussy 'til it drips."

"Want all your cum!" you replied desperately, three fingers ravaging your core while the digits of the opposite hand lifted your shirt up to your collar bone to knead your doughy breasts. "Fill me up, Usopp!" You shrieked, your hand falling lax with knuckles knocking the floor.

"Ahh, (Y/N), Goddamnit, just take this fuckin' cum, pretty girl." He groaned simultaneously. Suddenly, upon faintly hearing his name from the hallway, he froze before shooting up. You however, were too entranced and unable to discern real from fake, to notice that the noise on his side had ceased, not even when the door unlocked and swung open.

You had long since morphed into a position that locked you into a self sustaining stability, so you couldn't be bothered by the lack of the door that had once supported you. Unbeknownst to you, the object of your latest obsession now stood behind you, looming over and watching it astonishment as you dug a climax out of your abused hole. He couldn't help but instinctually thrust his hips in the air ever so slightly in your direction- never even enough to make contact with your hair, but it was seeing you unravel that really did him in.

You came to a messy, obnoxious end, nearly sobbing his name and with slick thighs- a result of the cream that leaked from your core. The scene sent him over the edge, creating a reaction that he'd never experienced before. As you fell back, your posture unlocking and laying you out on the wooden floor, you were brought back to semi-consciousness with the dripping of a warm, thick fluid onto your cheek, and then forehead, followed by your nose. Just as your eyes fluttered open, a fat glob landed directly on your left one, congealing in your long lashes, while ropes came down to decorate your hair and throat.

"I-I'm sorry..." Usopp whined from above, hands crumbled into fists and shyly pressed against the lower half of his face. "I-It just happened, I didn't even touch it! I-I-!" Suddenly, the shame from accidentally finishing on your face melted away and was replaced by suspicion.

"W-Wait...were you spying on me?"

Taglist:

@imamonsterfucker-sorry, @killmewithafanfic, @elii0, @starblazer124, @lilpumpkinpastie

#one peice #op smut #op x reader #one piece smut #one piece x reader #god usopp #god usopp x reader #usopp smut #usopp lemon #usopp x reader #perv!usopp

[goldenlaquer]

REQUESTS OPEK??!?!?!;&@, I JUST WOKE UO IM NOT REAUD UM UN UHH UM

may i request Gintoki with a gn reader who just LOVES to spoil him and make him food but at some point just. stops and doesnt say why and while gintoki doesnt want to sound like "hey wheres my food☹️" he is lowkey wondering if they are mad at him and does a bunch of stuff to try make it up to them. rither like cooking himself or spending more time with them yknow?

but in reality its just that money got tight for a bit and they were embarrassed to say they were spending so much on gin lmao

sorry if thats like all over the place! love you lots professor💚

The way you always come as soon as I open requests, It's like you're in my walls 🥺🚓

Sakata Gintoki Headcanons:

Majority of his life, Gintoki been used to going without comforts, some way or the other. Warm clothes. Fresh underwear. Food. Good food, especially. And it ain't been all so bad since he started the Yorozuya. You can always catch a meal from behind Snack Otose's bar before the old lady catches you by the ear and tosses you out like a dirty mongrel. You can always dip your head in the fountain at the local park to gulp down some cold water. You can always get your 14-year old coworker to stand in a corner and beg for some spare change for your strawberry parfait at your favorite cheap family-style joint.

Point is, you put a street urchin anywhere, and he finds a way to survive.

Theoretically.

So what actually does him in is meals, hot meals, three times a day, seven days a week. The dining table these days is actually creaking, heavily set with the weight of those little side dishes. Side dishes. Gintoki now is getting choices with his meals. And after a delicious meal, then comes dessert. Not just any dessert— strawberry parfait. A tall glass dish filled brim with his favorite sweet, pushed under his nose with a sweeter kiss to his temple before you're happily clearing the rest of the dishes to the sink.

Gintoki has gained ten pounds since loving you.

Until he's suddenly back to square one, ten pounds lighter, back to three-way chopstick fights over every rotten grain of rice, back to scavenging in Sadaharu's dog feed bag, back to harassing Otose's rice cooker, back to swishing fountain water through his teeth to line his never-quite-satisfied stomach.

It's not his first rodeo, but this time, hitting the ground is harder than he remembers.

It's not about the food. In the past few days, you haven't even been looking at him in the eyes, while ladling a fourth of the food that you usually serve into his chipped bowl. Have barely peeped a few words, except murmured thank you for the meal's before quietly eating your portion, smaller than everyone else's. You've kissed him less, hugged him less. The Yorozuya doesn't carry your scent anymore, you're hardly there.

You're ignoring him, he's concluded. Gintoki knows, knows he's pissed you off because Sakata Gintoki always pisses everyone off at some point. You're sick of a lazy, no-good guy like him, he knows it. He knows it.

Fuck, he hasn't missed any anniversaries. On your third month together, he pissed your name in the snow in front of the Yorozuya! If that isn't the most ardent declaration of love, he doesn't know what is! On your birthday, he gave you a DIY, a lovely sculpture! And told you to use it when he's gone! And his performance in bed— no, that definitely can't be it. He puts his back into it! His dicking is flawless. S-tier!

Shinpachi suggests gifting you the newest Otsuu-chan CD. An advice expected of a cherry boy, damn him.

Kagura is more helpful— she's seen it all before. Papi always swallowed his pride and kneeled in the dirt and begged.

And so, Gintoki kneels in the dirt and begs.

And he says something not worth repeating. Blah blah blah blah I miss you blah blah blah blah don't leave blah blah blah blah You don't have to do anything blah blah blah blah just stay blah blah blah blah I love you or whatever blah blah blah blah.

And you're wrapping your arms around his prostrated head, maybe in tears, saying something like money was running short, you were out looking for a job that's why you weren't at the Yorozuya more often, and something like you were embarrassed to face him— which is the most ridiculous bullshit he's ever heard because look at him while he's wiping your tears away with a rough hand, you idiot— you're dating the sorriest, the poorest bastard in Edo! Getcher ass home so we can eat dinner.

And dinner that night— even with four pairs of chopsticks and one paw fighting over the last shriveled dog kibble— has never tasted better.

Happily ever afterrrr

#gintama #gintama headcanons #gintama fanfiction #gintama imagines #sakata gintoki #answered ask #im so sorry if this sucks pure ahhhh bc im stretching my sore writing skills after a while

[minuy600]

The Arcade Games of 1980 #2: Navarone

Huh. Namco making the curious decision to base a game on a 1950s novel called 'The Guns of Navarone'. Now there's a twist I didn't see comin'.

This game is one of the newest to make a return in playable form, coming into play thanks to the Arcade Archives release in no earlier than March this year. It's very cool and I hope more super obscure releases like these will come back one day. Space Firebird, your time will come.

Now whether this game is actually good is questionable. This is an extreme case of a fish out of water. One of the first games to be based on a novel? Check. New gameplay type sorta? Check. Exceptionally dated design even compared to Namco's prior titles on this engine? Double check.

OK, well, Navarone isn't alone in that. Anyone remember the joys of SOS? The worst shoot 'em up ever that also featured a stripping lady during the game's 'coffee breaks'? This one's errr, a cut above that thankfully.

You start with a cluttered playfield full of bombs and obstacles, playing as a little battleship on the sides of the screen. Your task is simply to clear out all the nasty sh*t on what I think is a beach. There's a skull in the middle for some reason too! He has his defense mechanism that shoots at ya from different points of the field. Detonate enough bombs and you can shoot the skull itself for bonus points. Aaaaaaand that's Navarone. All of it.

This game never changes. It's the same layout over and over, no subtle changes other than the predictable increase in speed as time goes on. No reason to keep playing, and that's by far it's biggest downfall. You wouldn't know how sorely lacking it lacks that single feature. If you're so inclined to maw down on a high score, then the speed also peaks at around the same time as ALL those other games I discussed before (sans Moon Cresta).

Sorry guys, this one is plenty of fun to play and listen to, so it still gets a pass by all means. If only they bothered to give it lasting appeal, then we'd have a little underrated classic on our hands. Alas!

The Verdict

Graphics (5): The colors look nice, but they are given to very basic shapes vaguely resembling underwater ammo. The skull in the middle with an eyepatch on seems completely out of left field and looks dehydrated. As Vinny Vinesauce would say, this title is very gormless. It hardly even has a proper attract screen. Not miserable, just weak.

Sound (7): Nothing I haven't heard before in the other 'Namco Warp & Warp' engined game i've played so far, Cutie Q. The explosion noises are new to the engine and sound GOOD, it's just that that too ain't exactly crazy anymore. Most games that let you blow something up nailed the satisfaction already. Nevertheless, 'pleasant and quirky' are what come up in my head here.

Fun Factor (7): I liked it while it lasted. Once you get a rhythm down, you got all those bombs exploding one after another and taking out extra debris with it. Avoiding the defense mechanism is a fair challenge I think? It keeps you on your toes, I believe you get eliminated if you stay in one place for too long too. A sound little gameplay loop, emphasis on little, emphasis on loop.

Longevity (4): Hah. No. For high score purists on Arcade Archives only. There's some determined peeps out there, i'm kinda one of them, and kinda not at the same time. The charts are dominated by Japanese players, shows all you need to know of this game's impact overseas.

In Conclusion

#retro gaming #minuy600 #review #arcade #1980 #namco #sona #navarone

[papirouge]

Ugh, believe me, i was also cringing at many of the comments on those threads. Supposedly, theres this trend of redhead characters being changed to being black, like Annie, Starfire, Mary Jane, or April from the ninja turtles.

Oh, and speaking of such, they were also whining because april is gonna be black in a new TMNT movie... She already was in the newest cartoon, but they wanted her to go back to being white. Also, whining about her being fat and unattractive. We're talking about a kid here, since shes younger in this incarnation, so why even care if shes hot 😭 I bet half these dudes dont even care about TMNT... To be fair, the TMNT fans did raise some hell when shredder was gonna be white in a movie, since hes originally japanese, but i doubt they're even the same ppl.

The little mermaid thing is just very sad. I feel specially bad for the actress, specially after finding out shes just 19! I hope shes just ignoring the comments, because some people can be really cruel. Even some latinos were against the decision - i think theyre quite divided, but many were making racist memes and all. I guess we cant always relay in 'poc solidarity' or whatever.

Another good point you raise is how the japanese and many other east asian countries don't care about the white race or sees them as equal (once a friend of mine actually got targeted when she went to Korea). Also, I remember reading somewhere that the japanese public liked the appearence of younger white people, basically pre-puberty, but disliked the adults, specially the men as they lose the 'soft features' from infancy.

And youre right, i really shouldnt be visiting these places: they only make me sad or angry. I dont know why sometimes i cant help but hateread those threads. When people are behind a screen, they really can spew the most vile shit thats on their minds. Like they always say, just dont read the comment section...

As I already said: every single person remotely bothered by the skin color, sexual orientation, gender or attractiveness of FICTIONAL CHARACTERS is way too old to watch/play whatever show or video game they are from. Period.

That being said, I think there's a psyop of Black characters being shoved into random thing to get White simpletons mad and seethe about White erasure. Of course, they'll never bother looking into WHO produce those show or pick these Black artists to be featured in them..... Whites need to sort between each other their obsession to use POC as props for their agendas.

Black people never bothered about The Little Mermaid or TMNT like that....sure, this (positive) representation is great and that's why the community got hyped (and let's be honest, seeing some Whites seething fueled even more fire bc one thing we Black ppl be good at is being petty lol) but to act like Black people/wokistan are actively trying to erase White people, heterosexuality, masculinity or whatever is ridiculous. Again: they have to go after the higher-ups responsible of those casting choice (not Twitter randos) - and chances are they arent Black, non-straight or female¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Taking a peep at top companies CEO entirely debunks the oppression complex narrative of antiwoke acting like the statuquo was under attack.... It's not. They just want to play the victim - while pretending to fight wokistan victim culture 🙄

Halle is perfect to play a mermaid. She had those slightly alienish features (her eyes are quite far apart lo') but still conventionally pretty. I can hardly think of any actress having the same energy. Maybe Ana Taylor Joy, but she's now botched and is an anachan which may sparks controversy if she ever gets casted in a Disney production....

And I'm absolutely not surprised to see Latinos hating lmao Latinos are huuuuge negrophobe and I'm side eyeing them so bad whenever they try to leverage their non Whiteness calling White "gringos" when they are themselves pale and are descendants of European colonizers in south America 💀 I mean look Argentinians priding themselves "not looking like a Disney movie" (= not visible Blacks in their population).....those people Looooove aligning themselves with White whenever it comes to diss Black people. Therefore Black people are extremely distrustful of Latinos anyway ; we see how they treat they darkskined citizens

POC solidarity is a myth. Unmelanated non-Whites hate actual people of COLOR, and all races look down on Black Africans...That's why I'm foremost defending MY people.

Yeah, there's this misconception of thinking that bc they dye their hair blonde and wear color contact, East Asian want to 'look White'. i think they definitely fancy the diversity of White ppl's phenotype such as the eye and hair color, but for pretty much all the rest, they cater to their own specific beauty standards (especially when it comes to bone structure and face proportion). White people tend to favor sharper bone structure while Asian are all about rounder and softer ones. I don't think Asians look up White people face structure (that make them look older and faster). This contrast was really striking with Kotakoti stunts in japanese magazines where she looked so out of place : despite her dolly blonde hair and blue eyes, she still had those strong adult Westerner features which were so different from her japanese pals' 🥴 (more soft and rounder)

East Asian beauty culture is hysterical though, and even though Asian men have softer features than Western men, their obsession with 'softness' compels them to look more soft than they naturally are. Ultimately men regardless of their race are men ; if Asian men were naturally looking like soft potatoes they wouldn't need to resort to all these procedures to look like that🥴 Men with square jawline botching themselves to have egg face shape is a crime against humanity btw. (square jawline are beautiful on both sex imo♥️)

And the internet isn't a safe space for Black women. There was a stat showing that Black women were more at risk of online harassment compared to any other demographics..... Social medias (especially Twitter) literally feed off your anger (for engagement), so thread lightly. That's why Tumblr is my favorite social media ; it's mostly an image board, and my dash is only curated with what I choose to see.

#answered

[rosiehunterwolf]

@fabro-de-omres HOLD UP BESTIE, I GOT ONE LAST FIC FOR YOUR LIST-

Star-Ninja!

Prompts: Siblings and Competition

Word Count: 5,884

Characters: The ninja

Timeline: Snapshots throughout the series

Trigger Warnings: None

Summary: What happens when the loveable gremlin the ninja adopted off of the streets introduces them to Starfarer comics?

Chaos ensues, of course.

Read on FFN.net

Read on Ao3

Tumblr work under the cut

“Take that! And that! Oh, yeah-” Jay leaped to his feet, grinning. “Die, lava zombies, die!”

Level complete. The words flashed across the screen, and Jay whooped. Only one more level and he would beat Zane’s high score.

“You could’ve beaten it faster if you had taken out the little guys first.”

Jay whipped around to see the little wispy-haired kid draped over the arm of the couch, staring at the TV screen with a glazed, listless look in his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Jay snapped.

“I’m borrrred,” he whined, kicking his legs against the couch. “Can I play with you?”

“No.”

“Can I use the training course?”

“No, you’re not a ninja.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“It’s not our job to entertain you, kid.”

“I didn’t ask to be kidnapped by you,” Lloyd snapped.

Jay felt his face flush. “So you’d rather still be with the Serpentine?”

“Well no, I just wanna have a choice!”

Jay stared at him for a moment. I don’t know his whole story. He’s a kid who’s been dealt a bad hand in life. He exhaled slowly. “Look, Lloyd, you’re just a kid. I know it’s hard for you to understand- but you’ve caused a lot of trouble. The Serpentine are dangerous, and you don’t know enough to deal with them. You just gotta trust us, okay?”

Lloyd sighed dramatically, sliding off of the couch and onto the floor. “Yeah, whatever.”

Jay rolled his eyes. “Can’t you find something to do for a little while? Please? I’ll talk with Sensei about what we’re going to do with you as soon as he gets back.”

To his surprise, Lloyd actually left him alone, and Jay turned back to his game. He knew it wasn’t a very responsible move, but he had never agreed to babysit the kid. Besides, they were going hunting for Serpentine again tomorrow, so it would likely be Jay’s last chance to have some downtime for an entire week.

By the time Jay had finally beaten the top score, his fingers were sore from playing. Flopping onto the couch, he glanced up at the clock. It had been an hour since he had sent Lloyd off, and he hadn’t heard so much as a peep from the kid.

Jay had only known him for a couple of days, but already that seemed like suspicious behavior.

He headed into the storage room that Sensei had scrapped together into a makeshift bedroom for his nephew. Lloyd was sprawled across his mattress, reading a book.

I guess he’s not up to anything. I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge him. Jay turned to leave before stopping suddenly and whirling back around.

“Hey!” he yanked the book out of Lloyd’s hands. “Is this a Starfarer comic? Have you been snooping around in my room?”

“No! I haven’t touched your stupid stuff. Figures, the one time I actually didn’t do anything wrong, you blame me.”

“Have you not heard of The Boy who Cried Wolf?” “What?”

“Nevermind.” Jay examined the comic. It was an old edition, but not one he owned. Besides, the cover was wrinkled and there were dog ears on several pages. Jay would never treat his comics so harshly. “If it’s not mine, then whose is it?”

“It’s mine. Is it so hard to believe that I don’t steal everything?’

“No, I mean, you like Starfarer?”

“Of cou- I, uh, I mean, Starfarer’s for babies, ha. I’m only reading this because it’s the only book I have and you wouldn’t give me anything else to do.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I guess I’ll have to go enjoy my Starfarer comic collection on my own, then. Since it’s too babyish for big kids like you.”

“Your what?” Lloyd was suddenly sticking to him like a barnacle. “You collect Starfarer comics?”

“Not just comics.” He grinned as he watched Lloyd’s eyes widen. “Movies, posters, action figures- you name it.”

“No way! Can I see? Please, please? Just for a second-” Jay put a hand on his shoulder, holding him back. “Hang on, kiddo. I thought Starfarer was for babies?”

Lloyd shifted on his feet. “Well, I didn’t really mean that, I just- I was just testing you!”

Jay raised an eyebrow, smothering a laugh. “Uh huh. If you’re such a master, why aren’t you reading the new comics?”

Lloyd looked down, shuffling his feet. “I… this is the newest one I have. We didn’t really get many opportunities to buy what we wanted at Darkley’s. Especially not a book about superheroes. Because we were super busy being evil and stuff, heh.”

Jay felt his heart twist. Am I really pitying Lloyd Garmadon right now just because of some comics?

Although, when he looked at Lloyd now, he didn’t see the annoying, mischievous son of a villain. He saw a wide-eyed, naive kid looking at Jay with such hope that it was hard not to feel a strong urge to protect him from the burdens of the world.

Jay crouched down next to him. “Y’know what? I’ll show you my newer comics. You can even keep some, if you like.”

“Really? You’re not messing with me?”

“As long as you promise not to treat them like that.” Jay gestured towards the wrinkled comic. “Seriously, dude, you better go wash your grubby little hands before I even let you within five feet of my stuff.”

Jay didn’t think he’d ever seen Lloyd be in such a hurry to do anything.

---

“What’s this do?”

Nya snatched Lloyd’s hand away from the control panel. “Don’t touch that!”

“But what about-”

“Or that! Just-” She took a deep breath, running her fingers through her hair. “Don’t touch anything unless I specifically tell you to, okay?”

“Well, then what am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, find something. I’m not here to babysit you, Lloyd, I’m managing the comms. It’s important to make sure we stay in touch with the guys when they are on their mission.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” he huffed. “Why couldn’t they take me with them? I am a ninja now. I could’ve bashed in some Serpentine heads!”

Nya glanced at him, glaring defiantly in his oversized gi. “I’d hardly call you a ninja, squirt. You haven’t even grown into that gi yet.”

“Yes, I have! See, it fits me perfectly!”

“...Lloyd, those pant legs almost completely cover your shoes.”

“They do not! Uncle Wu said I was a ninja.”

“A ninja in training, at best,” Nya corrected.

“What’s the use of being the green ninja if I don’t get anything fun out of it?”

“One day, green machine. You just have to be patient.”

He groaned loudly, flopping onto the chair. “I hate being patient.”

“No! You? Impatient? Who would’ve guessed?”

“Can’t you at least show me how to turn on the alarms?”

“No. Alarms are for emergencies only.”

“It is an emergency! I’m going to die of boredom!”

“Fine,” Nya relented. “What do I have to do to get you to leave me alone- and stay out of trouble? Can I rent you a movie?”

“Ooh, can I watch Zombies: Back for Revenge? Or Ghost Story? Or Dawn of Destruction?”

“Nope, nope, and nope. Too scary, too mature, too violent. Pick something more family-friendly, Lloyd.”

He pouted. “Kai got to watch those movies.”

“Yeah, well, Kai’s older than you and is responsible for his own actions. If you watch those, you’ll be up all night with nightmares and Sensei will never trust me again.”

“I won’t have nightmares! He’ll never know! Please, Nya.”

“No. End of discussion. Pick something else or nothing at all. Remember, it’s my money paying for the movie here. What about those… space wars movies you love?”

“It’s Starfarer,” Lloyd snapped, although his expression looked considerably lighter. “There’s one I haven’t seen yet…”

After Lloyd showed her the movie and she paid for it, Nya turned back to the control panel and checked for messages from the guys. Still nothing.

She really hated when they left her in the dark like that.

There were sounds of explosions from behind her, and a cheer from Lloyd- she glanced over her shoulder to see him grinning gleefully at the screen as the main characters blew something up. She shook her head- what was it with young boys and explosions?- but she couldn’t stop a smile from creeping onto her face. Glancing over at the comms, she double-checked that no one had said anything.

The guys obviously weren’t taking the effort to communicate with her. It wouldn’t hurt to take a quick break.

Sitting down next to Lloyd, she focused her attention on the movie. It seemed nonsensical and boring at first, but after a bit, Lloyd started explaining things to her, and, to her surprise, she found herself happy to listen. As it got later, his talking slowed, and at some point- Nya couldn’t quite identify when- Lloyd was leaning against her side, snuggling with their shared blanket.

Nya watched him carefully. She hadn’t cuddled with anyone like this since she had been younger, with Kai- but then, she had been the younger one, the one being protected. Now, she was experiencing what she imagined Kai must’ve felt, and despite how annoying he could be, Nya felt a strong urge to pull him close and never let him go.

She understood their reluctance to let Lloyd fight fully now. She didn’t want to ever send him off into battle, especially not the Final Battle.

How could this sweet, stubborn little wisp of a child be the green ninja?

Many hours and three movies later, Nya was afraid to even look at the clock. Rubbing Lloyd’s head, she murmured, “It’s way past your bedtime, kiddo.”

“‘m not tired,'” he mumbled in an obviously tired voice.

“I already let you stay up way later than you should be.”

“Just one more movie!” “Lloyd! These things are two hours long!”

“I promise I’ll go right to bed after!”

“That’s what you said after the last one.”

“Well, I really mean it this time.”

“No way.”

“Please?” Lloyd suddenly looked a lot more nervous, twisting his hands together. “Just… just until we hear something. From the ninja.”

“Oh, Lloyd.” She put a hand on his back. “It’s okay. They’re okay. Most likely, they just forgot to report back. They do that all the time.”

“But we don’t know that.”

“...Yeah. You’re right. We don’t.”

“Is it always this scary? Waiting for them to talk to you, not knowing what’s going on?”

Nya nodded slowly. “Yeah, a lot of the time it is, bud. But eventually, you learn to trust them. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t worry about their safety, but I know they are strong and capable and can take care of themselves.” Lloyd nodded. “That makes sense.”

He still didn’t look quite content with her answer, though. Nya leaned in, murmuring to him.

“Tell you what. What if we watch half of one more movie?”

Man, she was turning into such a disgustingly gross softie for this kid so fast, wasn’t she.

But the wide, genuine smile that split across his face made it worth it.

---

Kai stood in front of the long expanse of bookshelves, stacked with dozens and dozens of comics.

“Excuse me,” Kai gestured to the nearest bookstore employee, and he walked over. “Which part is the Starfarer section?”

The employee blinked at him. “You’re already in it. This entire wall is Starfarer.”

Kai gawked at the wall in utter amazement. There had to be at least a hundred books there. How were these many Starfarer comics even possible?

“Which one is the best one?” he asked the employee.

The man pushed his glasses up his nose, looking increasingly annoyed with Kai’s lack of Starfarer knowledge. “That’s hardly a straightforward question. Starfarer is our most popular franchise, they’re all popular. It’s impossible to pick one book. If you’re looking for our most popular selling comics of all time, that would be volumes 1, 32, 45, and 79. As for comics trending right now, that, of course, would be the most recent ones, 273 through 282. Although volume 13 has seen a sudden influx in readership. If you are looking for those with the best ratings-”

How do I say, ‘which comic is best for my little brother who was just aged up several years, without warning, and I want to help him regain his sense of childhood?’

Deciding this wasn’t going to be helpful, Kai gently dismissed the employee and began looking on his own. He tried to pick out ones with interesting covers, but ended up throwing many of them back after skimming the summaries on the back.

That wasn’t working very well either, and Kai was just about to throw the towel in and grab some random comics and hope for the best- or worse, call Jay and ask for help- when he decided to open one comic to skim it.

This quickly turned into a mistake, because before Kai knew it, five minutes had turned into an hour, and he had completely finished the comic. One comic turned into two, then five. He only was able to yank himself from his reading when he got a text from Zane asking where he was and that dinner was going to be ready soon.

Gathering up a large handful of the comics he had liked, Kai headed back towards the Bounty on his motorbike.

He found Lloyd on his bed, staring up at the ceiling with earbuds in. He pulled them out when he saw Kai, his gaze darting curiously towards the stack of comics.

“I got you these,” Kai said, setting them down next to him. “I know things are… different now, with you being older, but you’re always going to be my little brother. And I wanted you to know that just because you’re physically older doesn’t mean you have to stop doing the things you love. So if you still want to make doodles for our fridge, or make your food into shapes on your plate, or read Starfarer comics, no one’s going to judge you.”

Lloyd picked up a comic, slowly leafing through it. He was quiet for so long that Kai began to worry that he had completely messed something up. But when he finally spoke, he simply said, “You read it.”

“I… what?”

A smile spread across Lloyd’s face. “You read these before you bought them. Didn’t you?”

Kai spluttered. “I- what? That doesn’t make any sense! You have no proof!”

“The pages are creased over here. You always crease back the pages when you have a book. And there’s a slight depression here that shows the presence of fingers. Too big to be Jay’s or Nya’s, and too small to be Zane’s or Cole’s.”

Kai blinked at him. “You pay way too much attention to people, don’t you?”

“Hey, I paid attention during training, y’know!”

“More than we give you credit for, apparently.”

“I just can’t believe I spent all those months trying to pressure you to read Starfarer and you suddenly pick it up when I’m not even forcing you.”

“Shut up.” Kai shoved him gently. “It was a one-time thing. I was only doing it so I could find a comic you would like,”

“Yeah, so it makes sense you would look at them for five hours.”

“How did you- I mean, I didn’t go to the bookstore right away! I was doing other things! I only went there a few minutes before I came home!”

“Oh, yeah?” Lloyd raised an eyebrow. “What ‘other things?’”

“Uh, very important ninja business, like, um… patrol?”

“Cole returned from patrol two hours ago.”

“Well, this was a super-secret different patrol that Cole doesn’t even know about.”

“Really. Does Sensei know?”

“Nope. Just me.”

Lloyd elbowed him playfully. “You’re gonna have to watch all the movies with me now, y’know.”

“No way. Aren’t there like, fifty of those?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“No, thanks.”

“You have to! It’s part of the experience. Wait until I tell Jay you’re into it now.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You bet I would!” Lloyd looked over at the pile of comics again, examining them more closely. “Nice, these are some good ones. Which ones did you read?”

“Um. The ones I bought?”

Lloyd looked up at him, his grin fading. “But like… not just these, right? You read others? In between them?”

“No… is this supposed to be some sort of poke at me being a slow reader-”

“No! I just can’t believe you read them in this order! Seriously, you couldn’t have gotten it any more wrong! You’ve ruined the whole series for yourself!”

“Oh, that’s such a shame, guess you better not tell Jay, then-”

“Oh, no way, you’re still getting into the fandom. We’re going to fix this. Come look at my comics. We’re going to read them together, and I’m gonna show you how to do it right.”

“Oh, is that Zane calling for dinner-”

“Nice try,” Lloyd smirked. “But you’ve entered the Starfarer fandom now. You’re in it, good and deep. There’s no coming back from this, Kai.”

“Glad to see your psychotic gremlin tendencies weren’t lost in the tea,” Kai grumbled. “Probably the one thing I could’ve gone without.”

---

“Are you out of your mind? The movie adaptions of Starfarer are way better.”

“Okay, there is clearly no hope left for you, Lloyd. The show is far superior to any of the movies.”

“Are you kidding? The budget for the show was so much lower! They just used a bunch of cheap, corny special effects, the movies were much smoother!”

“Visuals aren’t the most important thing, Lloyd. The show had a smaller storyboard team, meaning their ideas were more consistent and developed. The plot is overall much more in-depth in the show, and the extended time also gives them more space to do what they want.”

“It also leaves a lot of space for pointless filler! The movies are more direct. Every scene is important. Whereas I can name half a dozen episodes from the show- and that’s just on the top of my head- that were completely useless and would not change the plot at all if discarded.”

“You’re insane, every filler episode had importance! Some just showed it in smaller ways than others.”

“They could’ve fit the minor details into the other episodes!”

“Yeah, but filler is nice sometimes. Getting some more chill episodes between all the action is good.”

“No way, they’re boring and ruin the pacing. The movies have you on the edge of your seat throughout the whole thing.”

Zane sighed, glancing over at Jay and Lloyd. Their argument was getting increasingly more physical, with each boy attempting to tower over the other- not an easy task, considering they were both short.

“Can you two please be quiet? Or at least take this somewhere else? I’m trying to watch the news to make sure there aren’t any danger reports in Ninjago City.”

Jay suddenly whirled on him. “Zane! That’s it!”

“...What’s it?”

“Zane should decide! Which is better? The Starfarer movies, or the show?” Turning to Lloyd, he added, “Since he’s a nindroid, he’ll be the least biased of all of us.”

“One problem,” Lloyd said. “Zane hasn’t watched either.”

“Well, then, he’ll have to watch them,” Jay shrugged.

Zane glanced back and forth between them. “You want me to watch twenty-seven movies. And all seven seasons of the TV show. Just to help you win a disagreement.”

“It’s actually eight seasons,” Lloyd corrected.

“Exactly!” Jay beamed. “You’ll do great. Get back to us when you’ve watched them all and have formed an opinion. The sooner the better, so that I can prove Lloyd wrong as quickly as possible.”

“Hey! If anything, I’m going to prove you wrong!” “No way! The show-”

“Okay, okay, I’ll do it!” Zane stood up suddenly, putting his hands between them before another argument could break out. “Just stop fighting. Please.”

“You got yourself a deal,” Jay winked.

Two weeks and over a hundred hours of content later, Jay and Lloyd were staring at him expectantly over the dinner table.

“Well? What’s the verdict?”

Zane blinked at them with glassy eyes. “They were both very good. I enjoyed them. However, I feel like I never want to watch a minute of Starfarer ever again.”

“Seriously?” Lloyd fumed. “We waited all this time for him to not even properly answer the question?”

“Who cares about the question?” Cole grumbled. “Zane was so tired from watching your guys’ dumb Starfarer stuff, he messed up the gumbo.” Cole drew a spoon listlessly through the stew. “This is my favorite meal. I’m never forgiving you guys for messing it up.”

“Starfarer isn’t stupid,” Jay and Lloyd cried at once. They blinked at each other, surprised, and Kai and Nya laughed.

“I think that’s the first thing they’ve agreed on all week,” Nya grinned.

“It won’t last,” Kai murmured to her as the green and blue ninja set on Cole for his statement on Starfarer. “I give them two days to find something else to bicker about.”

---

“Hurry, Nya, he’s almost at the navigation!”

“I’m trying!” Nya bit her lip, an iron grip on her video game controller. “He’s sabotaged the security system!”

“No-”

Game over flashed across the screen, and Jay leaped to his feet, cheering. Nya rolled her eyes, tossing down her controller, while Zane, Lloyd, and Kai watched with disappointment.

“I can’t believe he won again,” Kai huffed. “How is he still undefeated? We’ve been playing this game for weeks.”

“I thought you were supposed to be good at this, Lloyd,” Nya grumbled. “You’re the Starfarer expert. You’ve got so many hours logged on here.”

“I’d like to point out that I’ve gotten closer to beating him than any of you have,” he snapped. “The last time I was only seconds away from winning.”

“Yeah, well, close isn’t good enough,” Kai said. “We need to beat him. Otherwise, it will get to his head.”

“Clearly none of us are going to be winning any time soon,” Nya groaned.

“There is someone who hasn’t played against him yet,” Zane mused. “Someone who has a track record of beating Jay’s top scores in games.”

Five gazes drifted towards the chair on the other side of the room. Cole looked up from his book when he realized the others were looking at him. “What do you want this time?”

“You gotta beat Jay in Starfarer: Alien Invasion 3,” Lloyd insisted, at his side immediately. “He’s undefeated. You know how unbearable he gets when he’s cocky.”

Cole blinked slowly up at them. “I don’t know the first thing about Starfarer.”

“I can teach you,” Lloyd begged. “Just do it. Please. Since when have you passed up an opportunity to beat Jay in something?”

Jay grinned. “Admit it, guys, I’ve defeated you. There’s no way Cole will ever win against me.”

Cole stood up abruptly. “Oh yeah? We’ll see about that. Lloyd, give me that controller. Jay’s about to get a serving of humility.”

For what appeared to be just another mundane rendition of a classic monster-fighter game, it surprised Cole to find it was actually much more complex and engaging.

It would’ve actually been really fun, had Jay not been so ridiculously goated at the game.

“What? Your character is invulnerable to the imperial sludge? How is that fair?”

Jay scoffed. “If you had read the Aliens Strike Back arc of Starfarer comics, you would’ve known that.”

“This totally isn’t fair. You have a bunch of background knowledge on Starfarer that I don’t.”

“It’s not our fault you’re the only one who hasn’t read or watched any Starfarer,” Lloyd said.

“Oh no,” Cole groaned. “You guys are dragging me into this too, aren’t you?”

---

“Where’s my copy of issue 117 of Starfarer?”

Jay looked up from the counter, where he was munching on crackers. “Like I would know, Lloyd. It’s not my responsibility to keep track of where you put your stuff.”

“I know exactly where I put it. But it’s gone now! I left it on my nightstand last night, right next to my bed. I haven’t touched it since.”

“Well, evidently, you have, since it’s not there now.”

“No, I didn’t touch it! Someone must’ve moved it!”

“And? I don’t see how this is my problem.”

“Everyone knows you’re the biggest Starfarer fanboy on the team apart from me, and I happen to be aware that you don’t own that particular comic.”

“I didn’t steal your comic, Lloyd.”

“Oh yeah? Then what happened to it?”

“Don’t ask me!” “You know that’s my favorite issue, Jay.”

“So? You think I’d take it just to spite you?”

“I think you’d-”

He cut off as Kai meandered into the kitchen, eating crackers and reading a comic.

Lloyd’s eyes widened. “Hey! That’s my missing comic!”

Kai glanced up at him. “You said I could borrow it.” “I did not! And give it to me, before you get cracker crumbs all over it!”

Kai rolled his eyes as Lloyd snatched it from him. “Alright, fine, take your dumb comic.”

Jay crossed his arms. “I think you owe me an apology, Lloyd.”

Lloyd stuck his tongue out at him, and Jay returned the gesture.

“Hey!” They turned to see Nya strolling into the room behind Kai, elbowing her brother sharply. “You said I could have that comic once you finished it.”

“Seriously, Kai? You can’t go around giving my comic to people without asking.”

“I wasn’t going to give it to her! She’s lying!” “Excuse me? You literally just said that like ten minutes ago-”

Zane and Cole joined them not long after, glancing around. “Guys! What’s with all the racket?”

“Kai promised me his Starfarer comic after he was done-”

“It’s not Kai’s, it’s mine! And he took it from me without asking and just auctioned it off to Nya!” “I didn’t auction off anything, it’s not like she paid me for it. Although, that's honestly not a bad idea…”

“What is this, a monopoly?” Jay asked. “We’re not paying for comics we already own, that’s dumb.”

“Yeah,” Lloyd agreed, “especially when they were mine in the first place.”

“Liar! Most of them were mine!” Jay insisted. “I should get dominion over my own comics!”

“Just because you own the most doesn’t mean you own all of them,” Lloyd countered. “You may have more comics by sheer number, but I have more rare comics than you and, overall, my comics have a higher value.”

“I’m sick of you two always deciding everything about Starfarer,” Cole said. “Why can’t one of us regulate the comics?”

“Whoever gets control over the comics is just going to have bias and distribute them to their advantage.”

“I think I would be the most responsible man for the job-”

“Stop lying to yourself, dirtclod, I’d obviously be better-”

“Better than Kai, yeah, if you’re trying to set the bar low.”

“Excuse me?”

“Guys,” Lloyd interrupted, slamming his fists down on the table. “There’s only one solution to settle this. We have a competition. Winner gets control over the Starfarer comics for… let’s say, the next six months.”

Kai cracked his knuckles, grinning. “You had me at competition.”

---

“When you said, ‘competition,’ somehow I was expecting something a little more grandiose than this.”

The ninja had gathered around the kitchen table, glancing down at the box Lloyd had dropped there. Starfarer: Galaxy Wars, it read.

“Yeah, Lloyd,” Cole agreed. “A board game? Seriously?”

“Not just any board game. The most popular, most difficult, most fun game out there. It is truly for the Starfarer master. Part roleplay, part strategy, part trivia- it puts your Starfarer knowledge to the test. That way, we know whoever wins this didn’t just get the win out of chance, but actually deserves it.”

Nya raised an eyebrow. “I mean, I guess. But you better not be an expert at this game.”

Lloyd shook his head. “I’ve only played it a few times, I promise.”

“Okay then,” Kai said. “May the best ninja win.”

As usual, that lasted about five minutes until they were all yelling at each other.

“Oh, come on!” Cole threw down his card. “I got stuck in the Imperial Sludge Swamp again?”

“Ha!” Jay leaned forward, moving his piece across the board, jumping over Cole’s pawn. “Next time you know to pick a character with better environmental perks.”

“Cole’s character is more well-rounded, though,” Zane pointed out. “If you are unable to gather enough energy before the end, it is likely the aliens will take you out.”

“Quit your yapping and let me take my turn.” Kai snatched the dice from Jay’s hand and tossed them- landing a perfect 12.

“You’re cheating!” Nya snapped. “That’s the third turn in a row you’ve rolled higher than a ten. Are you using weighted dice or something?”

“He’s using the exact same dice I just used, Nya.”

“It’s called skill,” Kai scoffed. “Maybe someday, you can be as good as me.”

“Rolling dice is completely based on chance! If the best skill you can boast is being able to roll high numbers, I think I’m doing pretty well.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see how useless it is once I win this thing and get total control over all the Starfarer comics.”

“Fat chance,” Nya huffed as Kai moved his piece.

“Oh, look at that, I found a pile of scrap metal! I get to roll again!”

“Are. You. Kidding me!”

“Wait,” Zane put a hand on Nya’s shoulder. “He’s right by the alien spaceship. If he gets an 11 or less, he’ll be on their turf and they’ll shoot him down, kidnap him, or confront him, depending on his stats. The only way he could possibly get through this without negative consequences is by rolling a 12.”

“There’s no way he’ll do it again,” Cole agreed. “Nya, this is your chance to overtake him.”

“Let’s see.” Kai grabbed the two dice and shook up his hands. He shook and shook, stopped to blow on the dice, then shook some more-

“Just roll the stupid dice,” Cole snapped.

Kai dropped the dice, and time seemed to move in slow motion. Lloyd held his breath, leaning forward-

And watched as the dice rolled one six, then another.

A perfect roll.

“Cheating!” Nya cried. “Cheating, I tell you! There’s no way this is possible.”

“We can’t let him win,” Jay groaned. “He won’t share any comics with us.” “Not true! I’ll let Lloyd have one.”

“Only one?” “That’s better than none at all,” Jay snapped. “At least he’s giving you something.”

“He’s not going to be giving me anything, because he’s not going to win.”

Kai grinned, gesturing at the dice. “Sure, be my guest. See if you can beat me.”

Lloyd rolled, earning a seven.

Jay hissed between his teeth. “Tough luck, green bean- you get injured and robbed by aliens.”

“Actually,” Lloyd said, slipping a card from his pile and slamming it down on the middle of the table. “I don’t, because I play this special ability card, allowing me to pick the number of spaces I travel. I choose 10, landing myself on the abandoned spacecraft. Then I use my character’s high level mechanics skills and use this card-” he slammed down another card that showed scrap metal reserves- “to instantly fix the ship. Then I spend my energy points to get another turn, use the gas from my generator to fuel the ship, and then am able to fly the ship back to the base and restore the artifacts. According to the manual, it would take three days from my location, and Kai, the closest, would take five days in his slower spacecraft, meaning it is impossible for anyone to beat me back, and I win the game.”

For a moment, they were silent, gaping at him.

“How?” Cole murmured. “Dude, how did you do that?”

“He just crossed half the board in one turn,” Kai spluttered. “And I was about to win! That shouldn’t even be possible!”

“How many moves were you planning ahead?” Zane shook his head. “Your strategy appears to be far more complex than any of us were anticipating for this kind of game.”

“I knew something was up when he kept stashing his ability cards,” Jay groaned. “We were all using ours, but he hardly used any- he was saving them up to use them all in a big power move and catch us off guard, the little rascal!”

“You liar,” Nya hissed. “You said you only played this game a few times! This was way too complicated of a plan for a novice player.”

“Technically, that’s true,” Lloyd grinned. “I have only played a few times. But I never said how long I played for each time.”

“You conniving little gremlin.”

“Now, Nya,” Lloyd scolded in a sagely voice, barely able to suppress his laughter, “I’d be careful how you speak to me from now on. If you’re rude, I may not give you any Starfarer.”

“Yeah, this is going to get old, very quickly.”

“I can’t believe it,” Jay sighed. “You never share comics with us.”

Lloyd gawked at him. “Are you kidding? It’s because of my sharing that you guys are even into Starfarer in the first place! Jay was the only one who knew about it before I came, but even he didn’t tell anyone else he was a fanboy and kept stuff hidden in boxes. When I showed interest, do you remember how excited you got? You took everything out, just for me.”

Zane shook his head, smiling. “I still can’t believe you got me to binge the entire series.”

“Or how I spent hours investing in that game and tracking down all that information in the comics just to beat Jay’s high score? Which I crushed, by the way.”

Jay scowled. “For the last time, you beat me by five points! You didn’t crush anyone.”

Cole scoffed. “Someone’s just jealous. If it weren’t for Lloyd, I would’ve never beat you.”

“You showed us all something we love, huh, squirt?” Kai ruffled his hair, and Lloyd pulled away, like usual, but grinned at him, bumping his shoulder gently.

“Remember when you used to get all upset at me for slacking off and reading Starfarer comics during training?”

Kai reddened. “That was different! We were preparing you for the Final Battle, there was a lot to be done.”

“Hypocrites,” Lloyd whispered, giggling as he ducked a swing from Kai.

“Well, what are you going to do now, ‘master of the comics?’” Jay asked. “Hoard all the books to yourself? Read in front of us to taunt us?” “Tempting,” Lloyd said, “but I think first, I want to play another round of the Starfarer board game.”

Cole blinked. “Lloyd, it’s seven pm. And this took us like five hours to get through the first time.”

The ninja blinked at each other.

“Oh, it’s on!”

#ninjago #ninbingo #my fic #rosie writes #lloyd garmadon #jay walker #ninjago kai #ninjago nya #ninjago cole #ninjago zane #ahhh this is my last bingo fic! #its been so fun thank you all! #I'm especially grateful for Fabro :) #without this event we might've never been anything more than just acquaintances :) #im so glad we're friends now #luv u bestie #thanks for being so supportive and for hosting this event! #thanks for reading! #reblogs and comments greatly appreciated!

[seymour-butz-stuff]

On the heels of a full-network panic over the theory that President Joe Biden was going to be sending authorities to your house to curtail your meat intake, because reasons, the new Fox panic is over a claim that the government is providing migrant children books, and not just any books—the government is providing migrants with a children's book authored by Vice President Kamala Harris.

This claim, of course, quickly began making the usual Republican rounds. The Biden administration is "forcing taxpayers to buy Kamala Harris's book" to "give to those illegal immigrants," cries fascist Republican lackey Ronna McDaniel. Fellow lackey Sean Spicer expressed outrage over the press making "barely a peep" over the (completely fake) story. And so on.

Yeah, it's fake. A total fraud. As with the Meat Police story, it appears to have been invented by a conservative rag so desperate for outrage fuel they were willing to overlook a bit of creative fraud in their reporting. As with the Meat Police story, Fox News immediately latched on and started their own trademark frothing on the issue. Still fake, though.

The Washington Post's Salvador Rizzo takes this one on, and the newest new hoax appears to have been birthed when Long Beach, California, organized a book and toy drive for the up to 1,000 migrant children to be temporarily housed at an "emergency intake" center at the Long Beach Convention Center. The community responded, because at least in California people try not to be complete f--king monsters to detained migrant children. One, as in apparently o-n-e, of the books taken in during that toy drive was a copy of Harris' 2019 children's book, "Superheroes are Everywhere."

The New York Post ran with a picture of that book propped up against a backpack, using it to claim that the books were being provided in "welcome kits" for new child arrivals. Fox News used the same picture and claimed the same thing. From there, Republican lackeys extrapolated that ah ha, no doubt the Biden team is forcing the government to buy untold thousands of these books to line vice presidential pockets, since that is exactly the sort of brazenly corrupt move Dear Leader Donald Trump did all the time, draining government and donor coffers via everything from golf cart rentals to Trump-branded bottled water purchases—and these same party nitwits eagerly defended each one of these scams as part of Dear Leader's divine grifting rights.

But none of it happened. One book of unknown origin was donated in a community book drive. All the rest of the story, every last bit, was invented.

Just as the fabricated Meat Police story (and you are not going to be able to keep me from saying that phrase for some time, let me tell you) was conspicuously born from fascist projections of what sort of things they might do if given all-encompassing government powers, Children’s Bookgate has a few lessons of its own to teach us.

To the Trump allied, it seems perfectly within the bounds of reason that a nefarious non-Republican government might seek to impose strict new laws on how much meat you can shove in your grease-dribbling meat hole during any given year, because authoritarian Republicanism is all about imposing such laws. Myriad Republican laws demand mandatory medical procedures be done on women seeking abortion; even more set strict rules on what doctors and patients are allowed to discuss in any context where pregnancy is concerned. Corporate employers are given the legal rights to dictate medical choices of employees. It is a given that military force ought to be used to put down anti-violence protests. You may face jail time if you share water with a would-be voter waiting outside in the heat to vote. It was genuinely proposed that when the "wrong" party won during an American presidential election, the ballots be seized by military force and the military be dispatched to rerun new elections in the states with vote totals that Spray Tan Hitler objected to.

On Monday, Fox News white nationalist Tucker Carlson urged his viewers to challenge those wearing masks during the ongoing pandemic as "aggressors” and demand they remove them. He told conservatives to "call the police immediately" and "contact Child Protective Services" if they see a child wearing a mask in public.

So yes, to a crowd regularly proposing martial law while threatening to string up governors who restrict bar and restaurant seating capacities—a crowd encouraged to demand law enforcement response if Americans around them dare wear anti-pandemic masks—the idea that their enemies might similarly use the power of government to patrol their kitchens hardly seems far-fetched. Authoritarians are always quick to imagine what authoritarianism might be used for, if it is not harnessed instead to oppress citizens correctly.

Children’s Book Pandemonium, however, is a hoax of a different nature. Republican National Committee Head Ronna McDaniel, Republican pundits, and the Rupert Murdoch-owned hurricane of bullshit have a current strategic need to push such a story. It was just two weeks ago that a Washington Post exposé yet again revealed a new bulk-buying scam in which the National Republican Congressional Committee spent almost $400,000 in donor money on bulk purchases of Rep. Dan Crenshaw's book, part of over $1 million on Republican bulk purchases that used donor money to drive books from Crenshaw and Sen. Ted Cruz up the ranks of top sellers lists—and, of course, funneling that donor money directly into Crenshaw and Cruz's pockets via the resulting royalties. (In at least the Cruz case, it looks to be illegal.)

McDaniel's Republican National Committee itself spent over $300,000 on bulk purchases of Uday Trump's weird, weird attempt at a book, goosing its sales numbers in the same fashion.

What's that, McDaniel now tweets? Somebody might be buying books in bulk for suspicious purposes?

Yeah, I'm not sure there's ever going to be a much more brazen example of the Hey Quick Look Over There strategy of scandal-dodging. McDaniel is very concerned about this new hoax, which coincidentally was produced exactly when it would be most useful to deflect from a true bout of Republican crookedness of similar premise. It is in fact uncanny how many Republican-pushed news hoaxes seem to borrow directly from factual Republican scandals.

No, the gubbermint is not currently buying Vice Leader's books to line political pockets. It is a hoax. During all the past times when something like that was happening, mind you, McDaniel, Fox News, the New York Post, and every Republican lawmaker were all bleating that it was perfectly reasonable grifting that Dear Leader, his entourage, and his hangers-on have every right to engage in. But this time it ain't true.

After being fact-checked into humiliated oblivion, the New York Post has now removed the story. After scamming their audience with yet another day's helping of fraudulent nonsense, Fox News walked back the lie—then immediately promoted it again, a tactic they have often used to both admit hoax and continue to stoke outrage based on the same hoax.

Tomorrow it will be something else. Sean Hannity hasn't been heard from for a while: It's probably his turn to pipe up with something. Perhaps he will claim that non-Republicans are threatening to call Child Protective Services when they see unmasked children; that does sound like the sort of thing that would frighten his audience terribly. Truly, are there no bounds to what fascism's enemies will do when given free rein inside fascist imaginations?

#meat police #faux news

[granny-griffin]

tumbling forward we spin on 4/4

“I'm an accidental fish.”

[hey you! read Part One first]

[also Part Two and Part Three]

[ok now you can read this]

They came to Tomorrow at an awkward time.

They landed on the west side of the island in a bog, which was difficult. From there, Timothy led them eastward, which meant they had to walk uphill. Avariya was breathless—but she couldn't tell if it was from the exercise or the flight. The brightness had been hot up there, without the clouds and the smoke in the way. It was hard to breathe in the sky. There was too much air. The wind caught in her mouth and choked her throat and filled her up with laughing. She'd been on a rollercoaster before—it was like that in the way a recipe is like an apple pie. She could acknowledge the technical similarity, but it wasn't the same.

They passed scattered ruins. A crumbling wall crowned the top of the hill. They came around it to a space where a gate must have hung at one point—and Death-Shade immediately drew his wing over them, shoving them to the ground in the process. Avariya would have been indignant—she had mud all over her knees—if not for the funny feeling in her spine. Something wasn't right.

In a moment, the scales on the underside of Death-Shade's wing shifted to reveal the courtyard beyond. Avariya gasped—it was like looking through a pane of glass. Yet somehow she knew that anyone looking towards them from the other side would only see the empty slope they had just crested.

It was a good thing, since the courtyard was filled with hundreds of dragons.

They were scattered across the ruins of whatever town had once grown up inside the walls— perched on crumbling roofs and towers or nestled into patches of grass that peeped up through the cobblestones. All of them faced a silver dragon that sat on the edge of the courtyard before them.

Avariya and the others sat in perfect silence as, one by one, the dragons came up to the courtyard and spoke to all the rest. It was a rather orderly gathering, but even Avariya, who didn't understand a word of it, could feel the tension in the air. It seemed to her that at any moment the smallest thing could set them off into chaos. She had to keep reminding herself to breathe.

"The silver one is called Ghost," Timothy whispered, "He's in charge of this council."

"What are they talking about?" Avariya whispered back.

"Us," he responded, "The humans, I mean. They thought we were gone. That's why they woke up. Now they're trying to decide what to do. Some of them think they should go back to the sea for another thousand years and wait for all of us to die off on our own. Others don't want to sleep any more. They want to live again, humans or not. And then...a lot of them think...they think that this is all a trick. That the humans pretended to leave in order to draw them out and destroy them. They want to strike us down before we have a chance to carry out whatever plan we might have."

"The ships left a year ago," she responded, "They think we would wait this long if we meant to attack? They'd better not, we'd never stand against them."

"Dragons live a long time. A year is pretty short for them. And a lot of them just woke up."

"Timothy—remember why I came with you?"

He nodded. "You're here to remind me to—"

Avariya grabbed his arm and dragged him out from under Death-Shade's wing and through the gate. Timothy was too startled to offer any resistance—and so was everyone else. They made it all the way to the courtyard where the silver dragon sat.

Then the sky was eclipsed by a gaping maw. Avariya shrieked and drew her sword. The mouth drew back, and she realized that there was only a slightly large grey-blue dragon standing in front of her. She must have interrupted his speech.

"Wait—wait no!" she cried, throwing her sword down on the ground. It clattered across the cobblestones. Most of the dragons were still frozen in the shock of the moment, but the silver dragon—that's right, his name was Ghost—stood and crept towards them. He looked over at the sword for a moment, then up at Avariya and Timothy.

"We—we come in peace!" Avariya continued, "Timothy, you— "

"qlweijoewrhjkvcnmasdaoiwqemklxmlxzs!" Timothy yelled.

Ghost stopped where he was, but Avariya couldn't tell if it was because of Timothy's translation or because Death-Shade had just materialized behind them.

Avariya cleared her throat. "We're here to speak for humanity." She nodded towards Timothy.

He turned to face her. "What does your name mean?"

Avariya scrunched up her brow. "What does that have to do with anything?" she whispered, "We're in a bit of a situation!"

"Dragon names always mean something," Timothy explained, "I have to know what your name means so that I can introduce you."

"Just make something up," Avariya said.

Timothy shook his head. "They'll find out later and think we're rude. We need to not be offensive. Tell me—quick, before I lose their attention!"

Suddenly, Avariya's mind was in another place—a world that had long ago been destroyed. Once upon a time, sitting on a ragged couch as the rain drummed against the windowpane behind them, her mother had told her the story of her birth.

Her parents hadn't intended to have a child. Because of her, Da proposed and Mum moved to England. And with the move and the wedding and the pregnancy, the two of them never sat down to figure out a name.

It was in the hospital, immediately after she was born, that her parents realized their predicament. But in their exhaustion, they both drew a total blank. They sat in dead silence for a moment, trying to come up with anything remotely passable for a child's name, and in the quiet they heard Mum's Mum, Avariya's Ukranian grandmother, whispering quietly to herself as she held her newest grandchild in her arms.

"Avariya," she crooned, "My tiny, perfect Avariya."

Her parents picked the name immediately. It was only afterwards that they discovered what it meant.

"Accident," Avariya said, finding herself back in the present, "Avariya Haddock. I'm an accidental fish."

Timothy looked away from the crouching dragons, suddenly distracted from the possibility of their imminent death. "What was that?"

"I'm an accidental—"

"No, I heard you," Timothy said, "I just mean—"

"Oh come on," Avariya groaned, "You make fun of my hair, and now you have to make fun of my name? Right now?"

"That's not what I—"

"Just translate it!"

Timothy spun around and said something to Ghost. For a moment he didn't reply. The crowd of dragons around them fidgeted and whispered amongst themselves. Then Ghost responded to Timothy. They had a short interchange, and when Avariya couldn't stand the tension any more, Timothy turned to speak to her.

"Ghost is going to allow you to speak to the council," he said, "I'll need you to pause every so often so that I can translate for you."

"I—okay, I can do that," Avariya said, "Tell them—tell Ghost that I'm thankful for his kindness."

"I already did," Timothy said, "Just start talking—I can make you sound polite."

"Oh. Thanks."

She looked up at the surrounding crowd of dragons. Everything was quiet. Everyone was looking at her. The wind was howling lonely through the ruined town. She took a deep breath.

"You are half right," she said, "Many of my kind have left this planet. We were ready, but not all the way. We couldn't take everybody.

"So the strongest and the smartest and the richest of us went—because they could. They left the others behind.

"I was one of the strong ones. I could have left, but I didn't. I couldn't leave the other's. That's—it's evil!

"It's evil to ignore what other people need just to get what you want. And a world where safety is bought through evil isn't worth living in.

"I've heard the old stories. Timothy's been telling me some. Once a boy stood here with the power to destroy dragons forever and save humanity and he didn't use it.

"Dragons live a long time. I know that you remember this. Now we are reversed—will you deny us the same mercy?"

When Timothy finished the final translation there was silence for a moment. Then the dragons started whispering again—the whispers grew to full fledged voices—and now the council was in danger of dissolving into complete chaos.

"I will speak!" someone called out over the din, "You asked me to—you have all been asking and—and I am ready now."

Avariya gasped. It was a dragon's voice—speaking it's own language. She could hear the harsh syllables with her own ears. But something was whispering over that, into the back of her mind, telling her what the words meant.

She could see the speaker now. He was smaller than Death-Shade but bigger than Avariya, and he was green—at least, he might have been before he had been covered over in barnacles. She could just make out the color through the creases in the crustaceans. Without waiting for Ghost to approve his request, he walked straight into the middle of the courtyard and began to speak. Nobody moved to stop him.

"Once I did everything in confidence," the barnacled dragon began, "but now that I am a little older my eyes see clearer and I'm hardly sure of anything."

Without warning, he looked down into Avariya's eyes. She had never looked into the eyes of a dragon before. It made her feel a little sick, but somehow she couldn't turn away.

"Girl," the dragon continued, "when I look at you, I see your life, and your father's life, and your father's father's life, all the way back to your ancestors in the past, when the world was young and I flew for the first time. It is always the same! When evil rises, good rises to stop it, and evil rises to stop that. We are like fall and spring, rising and falling and tumbling forward we spin on—and I am not sure who will end on top, or if it will ever end at all—but one thing I know. I would rather die fighting for a good world than live in an evil one."

He turned back to the crowds. "You are dismissed for now—come back tomorrow after you have thought over these things."

They were all still at first. Then, one by one, they stood and began to take off into the sky. Avariya released a breath she didn't know she had been holding. This had all been her idea, but she had still been half sure that they were going to get eaten in the process. The barnacle dragon approached them and struck up a conversation with Death-Shade, but she was too relieved to pay attention to it.

"That green one—he has teeth now," Timothy said nervously.

Avariya raised an eyebrow, "Did he not before?"

Just then, the barnacled dragon turned to her. "You, the accidental one—walk with me for a moment."

"He wants you to go with him," Timothy said, apparently unaware that Avariya had understood, "I think you should. He's one of Death-Shade's friends, he won't hurt you. And you wouldn't know this, but he spoke in your favor before the council just now."

Avariya nodded her assent, but she stopped to pick up her sword before she left. The two of them walked up to the edge of the ruins where the cliff face fell into the sea.

"Why did everyone listen to you," Avariya blurted.

"I'm a sea dragon," the barnacled dragon said, "I have their respect."

"How come I can understand you?"

"I'm a sea dragon. I'm telepathic."

Avariya crossed her arms, but it was more from the cold than frustration. "This is confusing."

"It confuses me," the dragon said, "I'm thousands of years old, but I wasn't aging for most of it. I only woke from hibernation a few days ago. However, that's beside the point—I'm very interested in you, small one. Where did you get that sword—"

"Death-Shade wanted to know that too," she interrupted.

"How did you know we had gathered here?" he continued, "And most of all, what is your plan? What are you going to do next?"

Avariya shrugged. "Wait and find out if the dragons are going to kill us all? I don't even know how I got here, much less where I'm going now. Have any suggestions?"

The dragon turned to look out at the horizon. "Girl with a name I once loved," he murmured, "you will always have a home with me."

The End

#httyd books #httyd books fanfiction #tumbling forward we spin on #my fanworks

[elara-moon]

Title: Happy Together (BingQiu Week 2019 Day One)

Author: Elara_Moon

Rating: T

Warnings: Implied temporary character death, referenced underage

Summary: BingQiu week 2019 day one: Reincarnation. Across lifetimes, across worlds, it’s always them. And they’re always, always together.

AO3 Link

Shen Yuan’s first thought, upon realizing that he’d died, was, oh, no, he’s going to be furious. His husband had never handled it well when Shen Yuan died first. Even knowing that they would meet again in the next life, that sticky man could never bear to be apart for long.

It had been a long time since it started, so long that Shen Yuan could hardly remember the beginning. That very first life. He was a scholar, he thought, and his husband was a soldier. Wait, no, maybe that one came later. Perhaps he had been a baker, and his husband a carpenter. Or maybe they were both farmers…?

At this point, Shen Yuan could hardly remember a time before he and his husband had known each other. There had been so many lifetimes where they knew each other already.

Shen Yuan’s second thought was pure confusion, because he was… lying down? In a bed? That… wasn’t usually how these things went. Also, he couldn’t remember his newest life at all?

Usually, and by usually, Shen Yuan meant ‘the past hundred plus times’, Shen Yuan and his husband regained their memories of each other (and their past lives) when they met. Before that, they were still themselves, but not quite the same version as the one with hundreds of years of combined lifetime memories. It was the only reason they usually didn’t meet until adulthood -- if his husband remembered Shen Yuan from the beginning, he’d surely go looking for him as soon as possible.

But… he obviously hadn’t just met his husband? Unless his husband was a doctor this time, something had happened to Shen Yuan, and his husband had been called in…?

Which didn’t explain the lack of memories of this lifetime.

And then a mechanical voice spoke practically in Shen Yuan’s ear.

An hour later, Shen Yuan had realized that he was apparently in a fictional universe now, and Yue Qingyuan had left. This, fortunately, left plenty of opportunity for Shen Yuan to panic without worrying about acting normal.

Because! This wasn’t how it worked at all! This had never happened before! What the **** was going on, why did he have an annoying System now, and where was his husband?

He knew what a transmigrator was, of course. He’d read books about it before. But he and his husband had never quite fallen into any category that anybody else had ever invented, and Shen Yuan had become quite accustomed to thinking that their strange reincarnation thing was completely different from fictional sorts of strange reincarnation things.

Now the more common kind of strange reincarnation thing had been forced upon him, and Shen Yuan was not happy.

He couldn’t just ignore his new circumstances -- impending doom at the hands of Luo Binghe, the protagonist of Proud Demon Immortal Way, though. Hopefully, nothing strange had happened with his and his husband’s connection (because the thought of never seeing him again hurt in a way Shen Yuan didn’t want to acknowledge). And so, in the meantime, Shen Yuan -- or rather, Shen Qingqiu, would just have to try not to die.

So he went about planning ways to Not Get Killed like the original cannon fodder scum villain had. The System’s irritating warnings against acting OOC made that harder, but it was fine! Shen Qingqiu could handle this!

Shen Qingqiu sent Ming Fan to fetch Luo Binghe and waited for the bringer of his doom to arrive.

Luo Binghe looked pitiful when he slunk his way in, head down, and he immediately fell to his knees.

“Shizun,” he murmured.

No! Protagonist, don’t kneel! Shen Qingqiu could feel his eventual fate getting worse for every bit of subservience he forced out of Luo Binghe.

“No need,” Shen Qingqiu said to get him to stand.

Luo Binghe glanced up, then, looking at Shen Qingqiu for the first time since he’d entered. His eyes went blank for a moment. He let out a sharp gasp. Shen Qingqiu barely kept from doing the same -- Luo Binghe looked terrible, his face all bruised up, obviously having been beaten.

“A-Yuan?” Luo Binghe said.

A name that nobody in this world could know.

Shen Qingqiu startled. His fan fell to the floor with a clatter. “Baiyue?” he said -- his husband’s name from their previous life.

Luo Binghe -- Baiyue -- Shen Yuan’s husband -- jumped up with a delighted laugh and leapt forward, colliding hard with Shen Qingqiu and almost knocking him over. He only hesitated briefly at the height difference before he began pawing at Shen Qingqiu, dragging him down to try to kiss him.

Nope!

Shen Qingqiu pulled away, fleeing several steps out of Luo Binghe’s reach.

Nope, nope, nope, sorry. His husband (equivalent age to him) or not, Luo Binghe was currently a child! He couldn’t be any older than fifteen! Shen Qingqiu could not kiss that. Nope.

Luo Binghe looked heartbroken. “A-Yuan? What’s wrong?” he said, looking tearfully at Shen Qingqiu.

“Look at yourself!” Shen Qingqiu hissed. “You’re -- you’re a teenager!”

Luo Binghe did indeed look down at himself. He frowned, dissatisfied. “That’s true… We’ve never been so far apart in age before, have we? And this isn’t the first time we’ve met.”

He looked back up, the beginnings of hurt glimmered in his eyes. Shen Qingqiu remembered how terribly the original goods had treated Luo Binghe in the book… Surely that was what Luo Binghe was thinking of now.

“It wasn’t me before,” he said hurriedly. “For some reason, I only just ended up in this body.”

“Oh.” Luo Binghe’s expression cleared immediately.

Agh! This man! So trusting -- when it came to Shen Qingqiu, anyway.

The situation struck Shen Qingqiu, then. He was in a novel (and not even a good one), and his husband was the protagonist. That was good, right? Except the protagonist’s life kind of sucked, actually, and like hell was Shen Qingqiu going to let his husband have a harem of women. Not that the man he’d known for years would want a harem of women. How would this affect the story? Wouldn’t that be really bad? The System had seemed to expect things to go relatively according to the original…

Speaking of which, Shen Qingqiu had definitely been acting out of character just then, but the System hadn’t made a peep.

“A-Yuan? What are you thinking?” Luo Binghe said just as Shen Qingqiu was preparing to poke at the System.

He knew full well Shen Qingqiu’s habit of falling into his thoughts and getting distracted, of course. Still, his words brought up a different concern.

“It’s Shen Qingqiu now,” he said automatically, because Luo Binghe couldn’t keep calling him by his old name. “Wait, ****, you can’t just start calling me by my name!”

Luo Binghe nodded. His lips twitched up mischievously. Shen Qingqiu eyed the expression warily.

“Of course. It should be ‘Shizun’, right?” Luo Binghe said innocently. Fake innocence! This man knew exactly what he was saying!

Shen Qingqiu blanched at the very thought of it. His husband calling him ‘Shizun’! It was enough to send shivers down his spine, and not the good kind. But, it was, actually, how Luo Binghe was supposed to refer to Shen Qingqiu…

For the sake of his emotional state, Shen Qingqiu put that aside for the moment. “Anyway, you know where we are, right?” he said.

Luo Binghe sobered up.

“‘Luo Binghe’, that was the name of the main character of the webnovel you were reading, wasn’t it?” he said.

Really! Less than ten minutes (of having his memories), and he’d already figured it out? And he wasn’t even the one who’d read the book. Shen Qingqiu tried to be annoyed, and failed.

“Yes. I think… we might really be in the world of that novel,” Shen Qingqiu said. “I’m not sure how, or why.”

“Then we’ll figure it out,” Luo Binghe said. “Together.”

Shen Qingqiu smiled. He really was relieved that his husband was here, too. “Together,” he agreed.

Wait.

Where were Luo Binghe’s eyes looking?

“So, husband… Are you sure I can’t have a kiss?” Luo Binghe said, staring directly at Shen Qingqiu’s lips and slinking closer.

“I’m very sure!” Shen Qingqiu said, backing away.

He’d dropped his fan earlier, but there were several more on a table nearby. Shen Qingqiu grabbed one, opening it in front of his face defensively. Luo Binghe stared right through it as though it wasn’t there.

“Not even one?” Luo Binghe’s eyes were filling with tears. Unfortunately for him, he was physically a child and the effect only made it less likely that Shen Qingqiu would kiss him.

“Not even one! You’re like twelve!”

“I’m fourteen, and it’s been years since I saw you,” Luo Binghe said. “I’ve been all alone for so many years, just waiting to see my love again.”

Shen Qingqiu wasn’t budging. Luo Binghe was always like this. “And now you’ve seen me. You’ve waited fourteen years for a kiss, you can wait five more,” he said mercilessly.

Luo Binghe looked like he might really start crying.

#BingQiuWeek2019 #day one #scum villain #the scum villain's self-saving system #fanfiction #I wrote a thing #long post

[marshmallow-phd]

Classroom Disruptions

Request:  anon: MY GOD I THIRST. Can you please do a Lay from EXO tidbit, where you're a teacher in China from the states and go to a meet-and-greet, and he's smitten? 💘🎀💘🎀

A/N: Here you go, nonie! I changed it up a little. I hope you don’t mind!

Genre: fluff

Pairing: Yixing x Reader

**

The entire school was in an uproar. It was nearly impossible to keep the kids at a normal, inside volume as they chatted away about the visitors that were coming today. As a rural school, the children were hardly ever exposed to treats like this and it was making them even rowdier than usual.

You, on the other hand, were only partially excited. The crew of Go Fighting was bringing in the stars to interact with the children and sit through a lower level English class for an episode of the odd variety show. And you were one of the lucky teachers they picked to be featured. From your point of view, it was a catch twenty-two.

On one hand, you were a closet fan of Yixing’s. You loved his music and had even seen a few of his films. He was amazingly talented and the idea of seeing him in person went from a small wish you never really indulged in to actually coming to fruition by pure luck. But the teacher part of you was not looking forward to the disruption the cameras and film crew would cause. This was going to be a free day for the children that you didn’t want to occur. You couldn’t expect them to absorb any of the information when celebrities were sitting just a few feet away and you didn’t want any of them to fall behind.

Just as you were gathering up your materials to start the lesson, a knock came at the opened door.

“Excuse me?”

Every head in the classroom, including yours, turned to investigate the intruder. Many sighs of disappointment could be heard when it was discovered that it was just an ordinary person. By the way he was dressed, he was a producer on the show. His English was heavily accented, but clear and understandable.

You walked up to him, wondering if the time was really now. “Yes?”

“The stars are almost here,” he informed you. “Can you pause the lesson until then?”

Well, that was… frustrating. You only had a limited amount of time with the children and this was heavily cutting into it. But you didn’t really have a choice. You turned to Mei, who acted as your interpreter, and she nodded in agreement. The grin on her face was the biggest you’d ever seen it. She was just as excited as the children, doing nothing to hide it.

“Sure,” you agreed, nodding lazily. “How much longer will they be?”

In perfect timing, the producer’s cell peeped in his pocket. He took it out and glanced at the message. “Now.”

A sudden panic came over the producer and he started shoving you back towards your desk. “Act normally. Normally.”

It was a hard task to not roll your eyes. You flipped right into teacher mode, writing out the short little story that was to be used in today’s lesson on the whiteboard. For a few moments, the children were quiet, the only sounds from them shifting in their seats and playing with their utensils on the desks. Then the excited whispers and gasps erupted just as you finished underlining that last important word.

As calm and uninterested you had tried to appear, it was hard to keep up that facade when you turned towards the door.

Followed by a plethora of cameras were three members of Go Fighting’s main cast. Show Lou walked in first, waving to the excited young audience before giving you a small bow. Wang Xun came in next, looking around the classroom like he’d just boarded an alien ship. The last to enter, receiving the biggest applause and greeting, was Zhang Yixing.

Teacher mode. You needed to stay in teacher mode no matter how handsome your newest temporary pupil was.

Then he smiled at you, flashing that dimple. If he kept that up, you’d be a goner by the end of the hour. Someone help you.  

As the three celebrities took their seats among the empty desks, they introduced themselves to their new classmates. In the corner of your eyes, you saw the producer urging you to start. Didn’t he know that this was a school, not a studio set?

Inhaling deeply, you took your normal spot in front of the desk.

“Good morning, everyone.” You tried to keep your eyes scanning the room instead of settling on the one person you really wanted to make eye contact with.

“Good morning,” the children replied back along with the celebrities. It was amusing to hear suddenly hear the deeper voices mixed in with the usual greeting. The chuckle just couldn’t be held back from your lips.

“I have a fun story for you today,” you announced as you rounded the desk back to the board. As you pointed to each word, you read aloud slowly, “‘When my sister got married, she wore my mother's wedding dress. The day she tried it on, the gown fit her perfectly and Mother started to cry. ‘You're not losing a daughter,’ I reminded her, putting my arm around her. ‘You're gaining a son.’ ‘Oh, forget about that!’ she said with a sob. ‘I used to fit into that dress.’”

The few in the room who understood the joke giggled, including some of the crew.

“Now,” you pointed to the first underlined word, “who can tell me the meaning of the word ‘gown’?”

Before Mei even had a chance to translate for the children, a very excited voice answered, “Dress!”

Recognizing the voice, you bit back a grin that would have been too big and slowly turned around.

Yixing was sitting in his desk, waiting patiently to be told that he was correct. It stunned you how innocent his face could be. If it weren’t for his height, he could almost fit in with the other grade schoolers. Very different than how he was on stage.

You lifted your hand and scolded playfully, “You’re supposed to raise your hand before answering. You don’t want to be a bad influence on the other students, do you?”

“Oh, sorry!” he apologized bashfully, showing that dang dimple again. The children were giggling at him while Show Lou was half bent in laughter.

“But yes,” you continued on, “it does mean dress. A dress for a special occasion. Can everyone say ‘dress’?”

The chorus echoed the word back carefully.

You finished out the lesson, going over the rest of the underlined words. There were a few times the Go Fighting cast got the meanings wrong, but you suspected that it was more for laughs and editing purposes.

At the end, there was still about fifteen minutes left of class time before the children could go outside to play. You didn’t really have anything else planned, so you had to think on your feet. The only thing that came to mind was either going to completely humiliate you or make everyone’s day. You were hoping for the latter.

“Does everyone know what a sheep is?” you asked slyly.

Yixing immediately perked up at the word while everyone else replied, “Yes!”

“One of the best ways to learn a new language is through songs,” you went on. “Mr. Zhang, would you like to explain the meaning of some of your English lyrics to the class?”

Letting out his signature giggle, Yixing stood up and walked his way up to the board. And you. It would be a miracle if the cameras didn’t capture your cheeks heating up.

“May I?” he asked with his hand outstretched. It took you much longer than it should have for you to realize that he was asking for the marker so he could write on the whiteboard.

As you opted to sit back and be no help whatsoever, it took a bit of time for Yixing to explain what exactly “Be careful sheep in the neighborhood” meant to a classroom of eight-year-olds, but he eventually got through it. Every so often he would shoot a sideways glance your direction and you tried to keep the giggling to a minimum.

All too soon, the hour was up and the camera men packed up to follow the children to the playground where the cast members were to participate in a few different sports against the students. Relieved that the ordeal was over and you could somewhat get your nervous system back down to normal, you waved goodbye to your students and watched them walk out the door.

When you thought the classroom was empty, you turned your back to the door and began to clear off the board in order to get it ready for the next class.

“Excuse me.”

You paused. It couldn’t be….

It was.

Yixing was still standing there, just a few feet away. Everyone else was gone, Mei included. You were alone. With Zhang Yixing.

“Thank you for the lesson today,” he said once you’d turned to face him fully. His accent was cute, but his English skills fascinated you. The poor boy had difficulty with Korean, but English seemed to be just fine.

“Thank you,” you blushed. Someone save you before you accidentally said something stupid.

One of the crewmen stuck his head back into the classroom and quickly spoke to Yixing in Mandarin before disappearing again.

“I have to go,” Yixing translated. He almost seemed disappointed, but could he be? It was just... you. “It was nice to meet you.”

Unable to hold it back anymore, you smiled brightly at him, getting the dimpled smile in return. “And you.”

He walked out of the classroom and you watched his back until he disappeared down the hall.

When you woke up the next morning, the events of the previous day seemed like one elaborate dream. You sighed heavily before getting out of bed, dressing for the day. Everything seemed normal until you walked into the classroom.

Sitting there on your desk was a fresh bouquet of red roses, fully bloomed and velvet soft to the touch, in a crystal clear vase. No one else was present in the classroom. A card rested among flowers. On it was a short note. You recognized the handwriting right away, having seen it just yesterday.

Meeting you was nice, but can I get to know you more? May I have dinner with you on Saturday?

The card wasn’t signed, but there was a number at the bottom. Zhang Yixing had actually asked you out to dinner.

How could you ever refuse?

#exo fanfiction #exo fanfic #exo scenarios #exo imagines #yixing x reader #zhang yixing #lay #fluff #kpop #cpop

[dehvastation]

The Escape Room Part 1 (With @V_Bloodletter)

V: I was off patrol tonight and doing my diligence behind the wall of monitors. It seemed relatively quiet out. At the moment I hadn’t seen any things that go bump in the night. I was itching to get into something tonight, fuck anything. My boredom was at an all time high and nothing good came from me being inactive. I was randomly searching out areas through the helpful eye of Caldwell electronic eyes. Tapping into the city’s system had been too easy, especially in this day and time. Either way, I had access to everything Caldwell did. My fingers slid over the pad, scrolling through various alley ways. Nothing was out of order, the streets as per usual had your pedestrians that preferred the dark and your drunks stumbling down the sidewalks and of course there was your common back alley fucks going on. Absently I realized I was humming a beat and just when I was trying to figure out exactly what song it was, the phone line to the Brotherhood broke my concentration. Usually I let the Doggen at the Manse filter through the calls but yeah, I needed a distraction so here I was listening to the voice mails. ‘IT WONT STOP...THE FLOOR…….EVERYWHEREEE… PLEASEE HELP US!’ And that was what greeted my extremely fucking sensitive eardrums as soon as the recordings started. I sit up, grabbed the only info that was left behind which was the number, the call was too short for the trace to pick up. But that was cool because in under sixty I had the address where the phone was presently at, pulled up. I might have gotten a little excited when I quickly realized that for some odd as fuck reason I couldn’t bring the location up on my monitors. Now now now, I was just going on about how I had full access into the city street cameras and here I am now, unable to see anything surrounding the address where the phone is. I was on my feet and checking to see who was inhouse and not on patrol and lucky Dehv got the drawl. I shot a text to Mr. Suave “Yo, meet me at the location I’m pinging to your GPS now. V.” I wasted no time and gearing up and dematting.

Dehv: ~ I’d just settled in for the day when the door sounded like it was about to be broken down. The knocking was so loud that the fists would happily come through the wood without much persuasion. Qhuinn and I had frozen in the bed, hardly daring to breath in case they heard us. Not that it changed anything. Qhuinn had been marched off to the Mansion with barely a couple of hours until sunrise and that had left me at a loose end. I demated home and crashed around the place before my phone peeped. I felt my heart jump as I rushed to dig it out of my pocket on the hopes that it was Qhuinn. I felt disappointment flash through me when I saw it wasn’t Qhuinn, but my smile was still huge when I saw that it was Vishous. Though it quickly turned to a frown when I realised that he wanted me to meet him somewhere asap. Was he insane? It was almost daylight outside. We’d barely make it there and back before we were scrabbling to try and find shelter away from the death rays. I arched a brow and contemplated for about half a minute before shooting back a thumbs up. I quickly changed into a pair of jeans, proper boots and a heavy jumper over a lighter long sleeved tee. I shoved phone and keys into my pocket and then checked my phone, frowning even harder when I saw that it appeared to be in the middle of an industrial estate of some kind. What the actual hell was V thinking wanting me to meet him out there. I had to hope that he was just picking something up and needed an extra pair of hands. I didn’t mind if he wanted to take me back to the mansion afterwards to wait out the daylight. It meant that I could be there when Qhuinn finally got done with whatever he was needed for, and it meant that I could ensure Vishous was home in one piece while also catching up with the guy. I tried not to go overboard to talk to the Brothers when they were training us. Not that Vishous did, he just lurked now and again. I didn’t want to be different to the other trainees, and being wtih Qhuinn already meant I stood out. But with the amount of time it took to train and learn in the field and sleep around that I barely saw any of them. It would be good to see the male and possibly we could crash with his favourite poison and a good film while the sun did its thing.

Once I was sure that my place was locked up tight, I took a slow breath and dematted to the coordinates that Vishous had given me. I landed in a small enclosed area that was probably once a bus stop across from a run down looking building. I instantly settled my hand against the knife I’d had the foresight to hide under my arm before stepping into the flickering streetlight. “Vishous, you get here yet?” ~

V: While I was waiting for Dehv, I patrolled the area, checking out for any obvious signs of issues. At the present time there wasn’t anything that stood out. Not sure what I expected to find but absolutely nothing at all, was not it. Okay yes I didn’t think whoever was causing the disturbance was going to leave me a bloody trail to the crime scene. Although it would have been mighty helpful if they did, ya know, considering how damn close the rays of sun busting out were. But no such luck was laid at my feet this time. The location had been closed down twelve years ago, since then it had been bought and sold a few times and the newest owners had procured it about five years before. Public records fed me that info but as to the company that was holding the lease on the land now, I came up against walls. I would have delve more in depth but Dehv’s voice cut into my scrolling for info. I stepped out of the shadows, entering the barely illuminated area he was now occupying. “Evening, Dehv. Long story short, a 911 call came into the Brotherhood and I was able to trace the phones location to here.” I blew out a breath and glanced at the concrete structure that definitely had seen its better days before and my shoulders came up in a shrug as I turned my attention back to the male. “Let’s do a clean sweep, retrieve any bodies, alive or dead or remove any threats, whichever the case may be and then get the fuck out of dodge. True?” It my head it sounded like a simple enough job but my gut reaction to the place was not completely on board with that assessment. “Usually with the size of this place, I would say let’s split up and cut the time in half, but yeah this time around let’s stick together and see if anything goes bump in the night.” I moved out of the dim lighting and headed towards the entrance. “It use to be an auto parts factory and then after that it was transformed into a tire treading company and they leased out the upper floors. But that all seized years ago and it’s been abandoned since. Once one business started to close down around here, others followed soon and it seemed it has been deemed the ghost yard of factories.” I stopped at the double door entrance and cast Dehv a rakish smile. “If we find a ghost, I am for fucking real going to figure out how to keep it.” Chuckling low key, I turned back to the task at hand and what do you know, the doors were not even locked. Big surprise, not. “No wondering off, I haven’t had time to go over the blueprints and there is no fucking telling how many reconstructions have been done under each new owner.”

Dehv: ~ I turned at the sound of the voice behind me, my entire body telling me that I should just tell V where to stick it rather than go anywhere close to checking out the place. “That sounds like a solid lead. But I guess if they called and had to hang up fast, that would make sense. Though you’d think we’d see something.” I swept my arms in a circle, gesturing at the area that was quieter than I’d ever heard. I’d been to a lot of places growing up in the human world, and rarely to never was it basically silent. Normally there was birds, wind in trees, the hum of electricity as it moved through the wires. It was basically like a dead spot here. It was not normal and it was giving me the creeps. “You get signal here?” I tapped at my phone and tried to send a message, though nothing happened. I was glad I’d managed to let Qhuinn know that I was with V, and the coordinates he’d given me. Though he’d been stuck with Wrath all day, at least we’d have something to talk about when he got back. We’d started checking in on each other when the shit had hit the fan and we’d been pulled away every night to patrol or train or any other number of things. I liked it, and it made me feel a little safer for when the sun went down. Right now though I knew we only had a matter of time before the sun came up and trapped us inside one of these places.

I followed on after V as he made his way towards what was obviously the main entrance to the huge building that seemed to be shrouded in darkness. Even more so than the rest of the place. I snorted at his instructions and jokes, my lips twitching in amusement. “We see a ghost, you’re welcome to it. I’ll try not to scream like a pansy.” I grinned and pulled a gun out of its little holder at my back, keeping it trained on the floor while I stood behind Vishous, knowing that I wasn’t any good if I was nervous or uncertain. The plan to get in and get out was a good one, and it was something that we needed to do fast, without distractions. I nodded along and then chuckled. “You mean you weren’t 100% prepared when you came here. You’re slacking. If I walk into a room with no exit, I’m going to blame you.” I winked and then nodded towards the doors that separated us from whatever horrors were inside. I swallowed hard and rolled my shoulders. I’d been with the Brotherhood long enough to see my fair share of weird and horrible. I’d fought a few of my own horrors. But this was unknown, something neither one of us were prepared for, and I just had to hope I didn’t embarrass myself and throw up all over another Brothers boots. “Ready when you are. I’ve got your back, and I can follow instructions. Check it out, pull out bodies whether they are dead or alive and then get back to the Mansion before the sun comes up.” I nodded again and stepped in closer, thankful that my eyes weren’t bothered by the dark as the doors opened. It was pitch black inside, no light at all, had I been human I’d have been walking in blind. As it was I could see a wall ahead of me, and a corridor to the right. “Looks like we’ve only got one way in, one way out. Lead the way.” ~

V: I didn’t say anything back to Dehv after we walked inside and saw at first the simple layout. My brows drew down and I scanned the vacant lobby for anything. Not exactly the setup that I expected but that thought lasted about as long as it took to blink. Because with the next breath all hell broke loose and I had no fucking time to react. Doors slammed lock, walls that weren’t there before, were suddenly dropped in place and the corridor vanished with one of those spontaneous walls. My head was spinning in every direction as I heard all the strategic mechanisms clicking into place and then it was total quiet except for the sound of our own breathing. “What the actual fuck.” I had a blade in hand and cautiously approached one of the new walls that was decorated as if we had been yanked right back to the fifties. “We are gonna go with staying extremely in close proximity, Dehv.” I ran my leather covered hand across the hideous mustard yellow wallpaper, seaking out any kind of hidden lever, button or what the fuck ever might send this shit back to where it came from. But nothing, I fingered and rubbed all over that damn wall as if I was going to bend it over and fuck it next. I looked over my shoulder at Dehv. “We might have a small issue here.” That was putting it fucking mildly. It was as if we were in lockdown in one of those cheesy as fuck escape rooms. This shit was done with some severe elaborateness and more importantly, made to lock us in with no obvious way out. “I hope you like figuring puzzles out at a breakneck speed while killing what the fuck ever set this shit up because it looks like we might be a tad fucked.” And then those words were followed up but a stream of curses when I tried to demat and not a fucking thing happened.

Dehv: ~ I followed V as he moved slowly into the space. It wasn’t big, and I instinctively moved towards the one way deeper into the huge building. I’d barely taken more than a couple of steps when the noise rose in the building until even if V had spoken I was unsure I’d even hear it. I stepped backwards to put my back to the wall as I watched and waited for whatever was making the noise to appear. The wall disappearing from behind me made me stagger, and with effort I kept myself on my feet and the gun in my hand. “Fuck it. What is happening?” I spun on the spot and watched as walls appeared that hadn’t been there before, and others disappeared. No longer was there a space with an obvious corridor into the building. We now had a box of a room with apparently no exits. I felt my chest tighten at the thought of being trapped. This really was not the time for a panic attack. I heard V comment about sticking in close proximity, and my body complied with the request before my brain caught up. I moved in to cover as much of the room as I could while Vishous checked out the walls. I blinked slowly, eyes scanning the space, though it was just four walls and not much else. I focused on keeping my breathing even and my thoughts away from the fact we were about to be stuck in a tiny space for all eternity. “Small? Yeah, I would say that was the understatement of the century.” I turned in a small circle, eyes darting up and down as well as along the walls. I watched Vishous work his fingers across the wall in an attempt to find something that might help us. Then I blinked a few times and moved further into the middle of the room, there was something faint on the floor. It was glowing just enough that I could see it, and I was glad that I wasn’t a human in this place, no way would it be visible to them. “I have no experience with puzzles, but I do design for a living, so hopefully I can pick things apart and put them back together. Tad fucked is yet another understatement, Vishous. We have less than an hour until the sun comes up. So we either work to get out in an hour, or we’re going to have to fight to stay IN here for the rest of the day. I’m not sure which is worse.” I tipped my head and walked in a circle around the weird glowing markings on the floor. No matter which way I went, I couldn’t figure out what it was trying to tell me. “Found anything on the wall? This floor things isn’t really telling me much……oh no, wait, it’s maybe an arrow, but some of the paint has worn away completely.” I crouched and ran my fingers along the faint line. “You think that phone call was some poor humans who are stuck in this place, or a way to lure us here?” I followed the weird point of the arrow with my eyes to the wall, then up to the ceiling. Squinting once again at what looked like cut outs in the ceiling. Though it was higher than either one of us could reach or jump to. I couldn’t quite figure out why the lines seemed to line up with the glowing mark on the floor. “We’re completely fucked!” ~

V: “This was definitely a set up. By who is the question, because this is way fucking more elaborate than those pale fuckers get credit for.” My eyes narrowed and I drew in a series of breaths because this lock down thing was a head fuck. I wasn’t going to voice that out loud. The facts of the matter, was any kind of confinement was not going to go easy on me. If it was just me here, I’d burn this fucker down around me and take my chances on if I made it out or not. But it wasn’t just me, I had actually for once followed Wrath’s laws about doubly up on patrols or any Brotherhood business. I’ll blame the King for this shit. I blew out a breath and went about searching for any damn thing. I was coming up empty handed. No matter where I looked, felt or checked out, not a fucking thing. And then luck shined down on us, or as the case was, it shined up from a place in the false floor that Dehv found. I followed his line of site up the wall and onto the ceiling where markings are etched in place. “Alright, Dehv…” My face already had a smirk on it even before I spoke. “I’ll hoist you up and you see what those marks do or don’t do.” I closed the distance between us, which in this enclosed space it didn’t take long before I was right in front of the male and directly under the markings. My diamond eyes bore into Dehv’s and my tone was dry as fuck. “After this night, no talks of me giving you a piggyback ride. True.” I ended that with a teasing smirk before I turned around and crouched down.

Dehv: ~ I nodded at Vishous’ assessment. It would appear that the phone call was a way to lure us here, but was the person in charge of this weird ass game human or vampire? If they were vampire, why were they targeting the brotherhood, without picking a specific target. If it was human, was it by chance they got us, or was it someone who knew our secret and was deliberately playing with us? I checked my watch and saw that we’d been wandering around and looking for clues for nearly 45 minutes. We were not getting out of here before the sun came up. I opened my mouth to tell Vishous that when he came up beside me. Those intelligent eyes of his looking over the weird shape on the ceiling, and I hoped like hell he’d see something I couldn’t. The smirk didn’t bode well, and I felt my jaw fall open when he suggested that I get up on his back. Two 6 and a half foot plus males doing piggy back rides was not exactly how I’d seen my day going. But I’d learned a lot when I was training, and the first thing was that usually you had to think outside of the box if you wanted to get anywhere. I turned to look at the Brother beside me and met his gaze, nodding grimly as I tried not to laugh at the entire prospect. “No talks at all, unless of course it’s to tease you where you can’t kill me.” I winked, trying to lighten the mood before I moved around behind Vishous. “I am not sure I’ve ever done this before, so apologies if there’s a bit of a false start.” I cleared my throat and then placed both hands on Vishous’ shoulders, using them as a spring board to try and jump high enough to get my legs wrapped around his waist. At least then he could hold my feet and help me get higher if I needed to. The additional height gave me enough leverage to feel across the ceiling and poke gingerly at the little shapes in the blacked out surface. I pressed at one, and felt it give under the pressure, “They seem to open, though I’ve no idea why. Hold on.” I took a slow breath, willing my heart rate to go down as I talked myself into poking my fingers into the space without knowing what was beyond the little flap of metal. “If they take my fingers, I’m blaming you.” I snorted and looked down briefly to the male who was taking all my weight and holding me steady before shoving my fingers past the barrier and into the ceiling. I felt around for a minute, hitting what felt like a little box with a hole in the top. I gently poked until I felt the box tip. I indistinctly tried to stop it, jerking Vishous below me as I did. “Shit, sorry. Hang on.” I felt something under the bottom of the box and I pressed my finger to it, pain instantly shooting through the nerves with enough force to make me pull my hand back. My body jerked and I stuck my finger in my mouth to stem the flow, numbing around the digit “Feels like boxes with gems under them. The gems fit in the holes and then the boxes go upside down to connect the whole thing. All without being able to see a fucking thing. The little stone thingies are sharp and I am not entirely sure I won’t lose a finger doing this. If you want a break, warn me before you drop me so I don’t leave a finger behind.” I snorted and shook out my hand before sticking it back through the ceiling to try and work the little, stupid fucking puzzle out. ~

V: All I could say is I was glad as fuck that noone was around to see this display. I mean here we were, warriors giving piggyback rides. After this night I will just black this shit out of my mind and pretend it never happened. The problem with that was, I needed to make sure there was an ‘After tonight’. It was clear as fuck that whoever arranged this elaborate setup, had at least some brain cells. So far, I was slightly impressed. I mean yes, Dehv and I were the rats inside of this maze but still, it was hard not to give props where props were due. Even if the detailed trap was mostly devised to end our lives. I was a sick bastard like. I huffed out a breath and snorted when Dehv situated himself on my back and I locked my arms around his legs and glanced up periodically to see how things were progressing. Every minute felt like an hour. I was keeping the rage locked down. The one thing that would always fuck me up is having my freedom taking away, in any form, bondage or that of a prison. I blew out another breath, focused my diamond eyes on the wall before me, using it as a focal point. I was already devising ways to tear our captors apart in my mind. Taking my time seemed like a good a place to start as any. As a matter a fact, I think I will draw it out for however long it takes Dehv and I to get our asses out of this fucked up place. I just about missed what all he was saying as I was too caught up within my own head devising death techniques. “I’m used to taking the blame. Just get that fucker to open because it is not that noticeable yet but…” The ground shifted only slightly when Dehv yanked his hand free and I inhaled the slight scent of his punctured finger. I was pretty fucking positive that if he didn’t get that fucking puzzel figured out within minutes if not seconds, that the floor would do a lot more than barely shift. “I don’t want any kind of break. I’m pretty sure if you don’t get that unlatched up there, this ground is going to open up and swallow us whole...Literally. No pressure though man.” I looked up at the large as fuck male attached to my back and gave a smirk.

Dehv: ~ I could feel the blood slowly dripping from my fingers as I fiddled around with the tiny boxes. I had to feel for the little gem they hid, then try and figure out which box that went with before slotting into the right groove. Each time I touched the smooth gem thing, it’s sharp edges cut into the pads of my fingertips. I was going as fast as I could. Though Vishous was pretty stoic as males went, when he sounded like he did, I hurried. That smirk was there to reassure, or that is how I was going to take it, and I really didn’t want to go through the damn floor. Each time I tried to lock them in place I’d slip off the wood because of the blood. They never got a chance to heal before another was opened up. They weren’t even big slices, but they strung and hindered how hard I was able to push at each of the little locking mechanisms. I was not at all sure Vishous was going to toss me on my ass at any moment, with each shift causing me to grip a little tighter to the opening in the ceiling, which only meant more of my hands were cut open. I was glad that I was wearing a long sleeved shirt, it meant the blood trickled down to my wrists and then soaked into the material. Saving me from messing up the floor. After what seemed like an age I clicked in the last piece. I signed heavily and then jerked backwards so quickly that I managed to dislodge myself from Vishous and land with a loud thud on the floor. It took me a minute of gasping like a fish out of water to convince my lungs to inflate again, when they did I was up and on my feet. Eyes squinted to dispel the blindness and try and figure out what was happening. After another minute I realised that the windows on the main doors we’d come through had been blacked out, and they were now very much not. Letting in a stream of sunlight that slanted across the room like two death rays. I reached out to check Vishous was still with me, unsteady on my feet as I looked around for the escape. I spun and saw it behind me. “Thank fuck. Keep watching those doors and move with me.” I kept a hand on Vishous’ shoulder as we’d been taught in training, watching where I was going while trusting him to have my back. As I moved into the next room I had to blink slowly to get my eyes to focus again. “Holy shit.” I’d just passed the threshold of the room when I felt something snap against my ankle. I had a split second to tighten my grip on the Brother at my back before I threw myself forward and to the ground. “MOVE”.

I landed with another thump, wincing at the awkward ankle against my already bruised hip. The minute I did, my eyes started stinging again at the sudden brightness. I turned away and waited until the room started to dim again before trying my luck to look back towards the door. A shaft of light shone stark and unyielding across the doorway, which was now also closed. No way were we going back that way. And I had no choice but to slowly sit up and look around the place. The noise from the machines drowned out my thoughts. In any other circumstance I’d be like a kid in a candy store, but instead I just felt dread settle in my gut. “This shit isn’t made for humans is it? We’ve stumbled onto something specifically designed for our kind. Is it just me, or is that worrying?” ~

V: Time went from feeling like each sixty seconds that passed by, felt more like they lasted five minutes or more, to suddenly things were happening way to quick and I barely had time to catch my breath. I had been standing there, trying to keep my feet rooted in place while Dehv worked his magic on the puzzle hidden from sight in the ceiling. Then in the blink of an eye he was dislodged from my back and I was stumbling around, trying not to land on my ass which I was not too successful at. I knew the male had managed to slice himself up pretty good, I could easily smell his lifes blood in the air. But there was absolutely no time to dwell on anything because once the puzzle was solved, all things started to move and re-adjust in the makeshift room. It was pitch black and then there was light but fuckkkkk was it the wrong kind of illumination that we needed right now. My internal clock had already been screaming at me that the big ball of sun in the sky was approaching, so I knew we had missed our window to bail out of here at a decent time. Now the point was to survive this fucked up maze and hunker down until it was safe to travel outside again. I got up off my ass and followed the male out of the first escape room, keeping close as fuck to him but the second I heard that one word shouted from Dehv, I did just as he said. I moved without thinking, nose diving pretty much over his shoulder and eating the ground as I face planted and the once opening was now sealed up as if it had never been there. I rolled over onto my back, taking a moment to take full stock of myself before calling out to the warrior. “Thanks for the heads up, Dehv. Now tell me, what did you break?” I came up on my knees and closed the distance between us. “Yes, you hit that assumption on the fucking nose. This place is evidently designed to take out vamps and not humans.” On the tale end of those words the semi dark space we were in came to life as if someone had flipped a switch on. Lights of all colors flashed on and off, coming from various signs hanging on the walls and that was nothing of all the noises and blaring special effects that was bouncing off of each arcade game and pinball machine. If you were and eighties kid, then this place would be right up your alley, from the pacman game to the hair metal music pinging from the surround sound system setup in the room. “I really fucking hate games.”

Dehv: ~ I blinked again and let my eyes run around the room slowly. It really could have just been picked up and transported from one of those little seaside arcades. It had everything, from the pinball machines to the little air hockey tables and more. They were all crammed in together, and each one seemed to be numbered. I shook out my hands again, happy to see that they weren’t bleeding any more, and that the cuts weren’t as pronounced as they had been. Thank fuck for faster healing. Now if only the blood would work on my damn shoulder and hip I’d be a happy camper. I looked at Vishous, showing him my hands so that he could see I was fine. “Nothing broken, but I landed hard on my shoulder and hip. Nothing a little blood once we’re out of here won’t fix. I can move, so that’s all that we need to be worried about.” I moved to my knees as well and then stood, holding out my palm to help the Brother up if he would allow it. “It is for sure, the sunlight over all the entrances and exists tell that story. I wonder how many have gone through here, and when whoever designed it decided to involve the Brotherhood. Fucking dumb ass move on their part.” I snorted and then winced, “This place has been bleached to within an inch of its life. I’m guessing that means at some point there’s been blood spilt in this room. Watch your back.” I turned in a slow circle, not bothering to look for cameras or wires, I knew that Vishous could do that without thinking, and far more easily than I could do it. Instead I tried to see past the sunlight at the door into the other room. It was impossible though, the shaft of light was concentrated and fucking bright. Instead I moved slowly around the room, fingers drifting over each of the machines without clicking anything. The metal music that was blaring was really starting to wind me up, and I found my body practically vibrating with uncertainty. “I’m not bad at them, but they don’t look like they’re rigged. Can you see anything I’m missing? This air hockey table is set up for one player though, which is weird.” I exhaled hard and then stepped up to the pacman machine, rolling my shoulders I gave a quick glance over my shoulder to Vishous and then reached up to press the button to start it, swearing loudly at the electric shock that was delivered to my finger. “Fuck! Well that doesn’t look good if these aren’t even wired properly. They didn’t have you around to get it all sorted.” I shook out my hand again and then used the various buttons to move my little munching man around the screen. I realised quickly that the game was set up so that the levels were melded into one. The game got faster and faster until I was inevitably consumed by ghosts. The minute the GAME OVER came up on the screen another shock was delivered. Forcing my fingers into a fist with the power that zapped up my arm and constricted every muscle. It took every ouch of control to successfully pull away without breaking the various buttons as I scraped my fingers off the panel. I couldn’t speak, instead just curling in on myself while cradling my arm, breath coming in harsh pants while I tried to get myself back under control. ~ #TheEscapeRoomPt1

[thebirdyboiler]

Gravesbeaks Week Day 3 Drabble!

Today’s prompt is protective/jealous! Like yesterday, I wanna give an art shout out to this piece. It was good inspiration, and I need more Mark climbing all over Falcon in my life! I’m humbled by the positive reception to my drabble yesterday and I hope I don’t disappoint with what I’ve got for today! Drabble under the cut! 

Irritatingly loud pop music seemed to blast in every direction. Strobe lights flashed all around and made it difficult for Graves to get his bearings. The smell of alcohol was thick in the air, like a damp fog. The falcon had never been to a club before, and this experience only made him determined never to set foot in one again! "Gnngh..." He grumbled, reaching for the shoulder of his employer and boyfriend. The parrot was in the middle of a selfie with a pair of hens Graves had never seen before in his life. The young women exchanged their peep handles for tagging purposes and went about their clubbing with large smiles on their faces. 

Beaks turned to regard his bodyguard. "Heey, Gravesy! Sheesh, if you wanted in on some selfie action, you shoulda told me! All I got was your hand!" He wrapped an arm around the other affectionately. Any other time it'd be nice but between being on the job and the awful onslaught of noise and lights all around... Falcon frowned to himself and removed the arm.

"Actually, I was hoping we could leave... I'm beginning to get a headache-"

"Whaaat? Cut this party early and just leave?!" Mark scoffed and leaned against the taller man. Waving a hand in the air dismissively, he grinned up at Graves. "That'd be bad for my image! I'd go from cool guy Mark Beaks to lame nerd Mark who reads books at home! C'mon, maybe you just need a drink or two, you know? To take the edge off! This is supposed to be fun, and you're making it very not fun." His fingers danced their way along Falcon's beak, giving him a little poke to emphasis his words. 

Ignoring the urge to nip his boyfriend's fingers, Falcon grimaced. "I don't want a drink. This place probably serves the cheap scotch! Can't we just go home-"

"Ah-bap-bap! Let's stick a pin in it, big guy!" Miming the gesture of literally sticking a pin in the air, Mark gestured to the newest group of fans waiting eagerly for a selfie. "I gotta have some face time with my people! We'll talk about this later, 'kay?" And just like that, the parrot was snapping pictures with the crowd. 

Sighing lowly, Falcon made his way to the bar and slid onto one of the cleaner stools. His hand massaged a temple, by now the throbbing in his brain seemed to be timed exactly with the bass drops of the music. Eventually it got to the point that Graves had to use both hands, continuing to rub when something touched his shoulder. 

Reacting fast, Graves raised an arm in a judo chop that was about to strike whoever had touched him! There was a startled yelp, and a duck narrowly avoided getting struck upside the face. "Whoa dude!"

Falcon's eyes performed a reconnaissance of the young man who'd touched him. A rainbow tank top, a pair of black shorts, and a skinnier physique. Hm. Probably just a harmless clubber. No threat at all. "Sorry about that. Reflexes." Arm by his side once more, he turned to fully face the timid duck. "Do you need this chair?”

"N-no, no, sorry dude." Taking a deep breath, the duck relaxed when it was clear Graves wasn't going to beat him up. "I just noticed you sitting here all by yourself. And a guy in a suit in a club...kinda stands out." The comment made the falcon a bit self conscious, rubbing the back of his neck. "Hey, it's cool! I kinda like it. It's very...handsome."

"Oh." Such a compliment from someone who wasn’t Mark felt...awkward. Graves was hardly a stranger to being hit on, but he was in a committed relationship now! 

"I'm Duncan. If you're not waiting for anybody...maybe I can keep you company? Buy you a drink?" Duncan smiled shyly, brushing his feathered bangs out of his eyes. 

"I'm actually here with someone, they're rather busy and we'll be leaving soon anyway." The duck seemed friendly enough, but Falcon would rather nip this right in the bud. Nothing wrong with a stern but gentle refusal.

"Maybe we could exchange numbers or something-?"

"HISSSSSSS!" Before Duncan could hand over his digits, a weight suddenly launched onto Graves from behind and began to hiss like an irritated snake! The bodyguard nearly flipped the offender off of his back before he caught Mark's bright yellow eyes. His pupils were narrowed into small dots, and his arms wrapped tightly around Graves' neck. His legs, the same but around his waist. 

"Oh my gosh! Mark Beaks?!" Duncan gasped, immediately starstruck.

Graves became quickly embarrassed by this turn of events. "Mr. Beaks, please control yourself." This seemed to be the wrong thing to say, as the parrot's grip only tightened. Not that it was painful for the muscular bird, but it was certainly alarming. Mark was always so mellow and worried about his image. And now here he was, gripping onto Graves as if he might fade away! 

"Mr. Beaks, can I have a selfie? My friends won't believe I actually met you-!" 

When offered the phone, Mark merely slapped it out of Duncan's hands. The phone fell down onto the floor with a clatter. Duncan stared, mouth agape as if he only just realized that the CEO was upset with him. 

"Get lost, loser!" Mark screeched with a seething glare. By now the crowd around them was beginning to take notice of the parrot's histrionics. Falcon spared only a small glance at the duck that had started all of this before he darted for the exit. Camera flashes followed them out, likely getting little else but a shot of their backs as they left.

As shameful as their exit had been, Falcon was relieved to have peace at last. No loud music, and the streetlamps above were amazingly consistent. It had taken several blocks for the parrot to relax. He had settled into holding the other as if he were giving a piggy back ride. Mark's grip slacked and he could feel the parrot's beak was pressed against his neck. Graves decided to take the scenic route back to Beaks' mansion, it was longer but they likely needed the time in order to talk. Though he refused to say a thing, just waiting for the parrot to say something. 

"Gravesy, you love me, right?" Finally he spoke, though it wasn't exactly what Graves had been expecting to hear. His voice was muffled and a bit strained. 

"What?" Graves glanced over a shoulder, but couldn't find the parrot's eyes as they were buried in the falcon's feathers. "Of course I do. If I didn't, I would have thrown you off by now."

"But...but you were talking to that guy. He was totally hitting on you and you didn't even punch him!" Despite how upset the parrot sounded, the falcon couldn't hold back a soft chuckle. "Don't laugh, it's not funny!" He returned to gripping Graves' jacket as if it were a lifeline. 

"Mark, I can decide for myself when punching is necessary. The duck was being friendly. If he made me uncomfortable or crossed a line, I would have 'punched him in the face', as you so crudely put it." The assurance didn't seem to lighten the parrot's mood at all. Frowning to himself, Graves aimed their path for a nearby bench. Once close, he grabbed hold of Mark's arms and slowly pried him off. Eventually he had the other by the nape of his cardigan, and the falcon set him down upon the wooden bench gently.

"Hmph!" Turning his face away like a petulant child, Mark continued to pout even as Falcon joined him on the bench. 

This must be serious...he hadn't even seen the other reach for his phone since they'd left the club! With a deep frown set upon his beak, Graves reached for the parrot's hand and gave it a squeeze. "Mark...talk to me. Don't you trust me?" Was this what this was? A trust thing? 

The question earned Falcon a peek from Mark. "I trust you, Gravesy, but I don't trust that guy! Or...anyone, really! Don't you know how irresistible you are?" Was the younger man being serious or just trying to stroke Falcon's ego to make him drop it? Either way, it made the older man smirk. 

"I can handle guys like him. I may be irresistible, but I can handle myself!" Two could play this game of stroking the egos. Reaching out, Graves pulled the parrot into his lap easily. Aside from a soft gasp, Mark remained quiet. Graves cupped the smaller bird's chin and tilted his face up so they were eye to eye. "Don't you know I'm all your's?"

Finally, he seemed to be getting somewhere. Mark's eyes widened before he surged forward and wrapped his arms around Graves' neck firmly. Their beaks pressed together in a passionate kiss as Mark's fingers began to roam and caress Falcon's feathers. In return, he moved to support the parrot's back, deepening the kiss, Mark’s elated trilling vibrated against the falcon’s chest. The sensation was familiar and welcome.

When their beaks parted, the two were starry-eyed. Mark recovered first, a large grin stretching across his beak. "Okay Graves, you're off the hook~! Make up selfie!" He pressed their cheeks together as he took a commemorative picture to show to all of his followers. Falcon rolled his eyes at the display, inwardly relieved.

"Perfect. Now, how about we head on home, hm?" Those seemed to be the magic words, as Beaks pocketed his phone with a firm nod. He dislodged himself from Falcon's lap and reached his hand out for Graves to grab. With a bit of effort, the parrot helped his boyfriend up off of the bench. Walking hand in hand, Mark leaned into Graves as he mentally calculated ways to track down Duncan's social media profile and ruin him.

#gravesbeaks #gravesbeaks week #gravesbeaksweek #my drabbles

[myfearless-love]

A Trip to Your Heart

Summary:  Emma Swan is forging a devious plan to save the sanity of her best friend, Mary Margaret, or at least to stop her form quoting those stupid swashbuckling pirate tales. The core of her plan is to hunt down and neutralize the internet famous writer, dashingpiratecaptain aka Killian Jones. But soon her ideas go down the drain, because she certainly hasn’t counted on developing feelings for the man whose entire writing career she is about to destroy.

Rating: M

Word count: ~8.2k

Also on: FF.net and AO3

A/N: I’m so excited to finally share this little story with all of you!! It’s my first time participating in something like this so I’m hoping you’ll like the fic I created for this wonderful event. A huge thanks to @captainswanbigbang for organizing all of this and bringing us fans all together!

A big ass thanks to my my beta @1handedpiratewithadrinkingprob for helping me throughout creating this story and making sure that what I wrote is actually making sense and is presentable for all of you to read!

And an enormous thanks to @katie-dub who created ths kick-ass and beautiful art for my fic! Check out her art HERE And if you’re there, check out her other works because she’s super talented!

A Trip to Your Heart

Why is it that people always want the things they don't actually need?

This is the million dollar question Emma is pondering on as she sits down on one of the beach chairs with a rum-based cocktail in hand, christened as Salty Dog for some reason. She feasts her eyes on the open water and endless white sand as the wind is playing with the ends of her hair and the salt water is gently spraying her face – it's something she's absolutely not used to in the crowded and hectic city of New York.

She's aware that people must be giving her strange looks as they pass by her and she can hardly blame them. Her attire practically screams she's not really dressed for the beach: the frame of her big, red sunglasses almost cut a hole through her straw hat, her upper body is wrapped in a thin yellow blouse (its shade is so vivid that Emma is sure the material would glow in the dark) and her long legs are covered with a long, black summer skirt. The largest surface on her skin that remains uncovered are her feet, and not intentionally. She fell asleep on the ferry here, and in her hurry to get off the vessel she forgot to put her sandals back on.

Walking all the way here on the hot pavement and sand was quite a pain in the ass but what could she have done? She wanted her drink more.

Despite her looks, her brain is functioning quite well, but as it happens, she needs to make a certain someone believe otherwise. This person is called dashingpiratecaptain and she's been working on hunting him down for over a year now.

She's incredibly annoyed it took her this long to finally find him, considering she does this for a living on a daily basis.

The first time dashingpiratecaptain, or in short, KJ (as he usually signs his thank you comments) appeared on her radar was last June. He is considered a veteran writer in the world of online writing and his stories are a favorite of her best friend. Such original works emerged from his keyboard like The Crimson Flag, Isle of the Black Sand, Give No Quarter. If the titles and his username didn't make it clear, he specializes in pirate stories spiced with black humor.

Like really bloody pirate stories.

Mary Margaret is completely hooked on them. After a while, she just started vomiting quotes from his works, even during breakfast, which very nearly made Emma climb the walls of their shared apartment in annoyance and exasperation.

(She really can't wait for her brother to finally pop the question and have the flat all to herself).

Now imagine a twenty-something woman with a pixie haircut as she jabs her fork into her scrambled eggs and shouts "Avast ye, landlubbers! 'Tis cackle fruit is for me liking!"

Of course, Emma's first thought was to find a shrink as soon as possible (and the second to look up what the hell Mary Margaret said).

Her acquaintance, Archie Hopper, who is actually a therapist, said that there's nothing wrong with the brunette – her fanaticism, while a little intense, is still normal. Emma would beg to differ though, and she doesn't really want to imagine then what counts as 'not-normal' in Hopper's dictionary.

So the whole parade with the stupid pirate stories and references just went on. Just before the end of summer and the start of their last year in college, Emma's least favorite writer published his newest creation named 'Honor Among Thieves' which is about a brunette bandit woman who tries to seek passage on a pirate ship to escape being hanged by the authorities.

Let's just say that Mary Margaret felt a strong connection with this character pretty quickly. By November, almost her entire wardrobe was replaced with white (it's the character's favorite color apparently) and medieval looking clothes, and she all but stopped hanging out with others (except with her boyfriend and Emma obviously).

Nice words, threatening, stealing her laptop – none of that worked.

Emma felt like her friend was slowly withdrawing from reality, the only thing she wanted to talk about were these stupid swashbuckling tales.

So Emma decided she needed to single-handedly remove the source of the problem – alias dashingpiratecaptain.

But how?

First, know your enemy. The most effective way of getting close to a writer, she suspected, is through his works. So she read. A lot.

KJ got one or two brownie points from her – she found his jokes original, the mood of the stories were enjoyably twisted, the ratings were fairly correct.

In truth, there was not much she could hold against him except what he did to her best friend. But that alone demanded retribution.

In the next step, she started adding comments to a few of his chapters, then after a bunch of praise, she decided it was time to bring in the big guns and composed a fan letter to him.

But soon their exchanging of emails turned into a regular thing. In the end, she found herself quite frequently enjoying their correspondence.

And what had she found out?

The following things in a nutshell:

He graduated in Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism (she didn't even know they teach these kinds of things).

He was born in a small town in England and moved to the States a few years ago (he didn't specify the reason).

He wanted to take tourists on his ship and sail the high seas but an accident (again, he didn't specify) had thrown a wrench in his plans.

He has an older brother.

He's the proud owner of three dogs - adopted from three different places (how admirable).

Besides writing, he likes hiking and playing his guitar.

The question then arises; what did he manage to learn about her in turn?

Well, only the fact that she is completely nuts.

In the midst of midterms and getting her degree in Criminal Justice, she didn't have the energy to keep up with all of her lies. So, she fed him a different tale each time. Eventually, she got tired of it and went absolutely bananas.

She thinks he enjoyed it.

Because why else would he continue to reply to her emails and agree to meet with her?

That is why she's spending her downtime under the burning sun and among an endless number of squealing children running free whilst trying to enjoy her alcoholic beverage. Apparently, KJ (or one of his relatives) owns a vacation home near this beach and he's currently spending the last days of July here with his brother and sister-in-law.

And so on impulse, Emma thought she could visit him. Because crazy people are supposed to be spontaneous, aren't they?

Her phone shows ten o'clock - exactly when their little 'date' is supposed to happen. For guidance, she described her huge sunglasses and glow-in-the-dark blouse. He said he would wear his favorite leather jacket - probably no one would be stupid enough to run around the beach in that kind of clothing except him.

She peeps around.

She has the image of the leather jacket in her mind down to its every thread, but the rest is shrouded in mystery. She hasn't the faintest idea of how he looks. Usually, she pictures him somewhere between Calico Jack and Jack Sparrow, with tanned skin and scars, maybe even with a parrot on his shoulder.

As she continues to wait for her target, she wills the last remaining ice cube from the bottom of her glass and pops it in her mouth.

"Warriorprincess?" a deep voice echoes behind her suddenly.

She throws her head back on the chair, and the straw hat she's been wearing flops down to the sand. A pair of insanely gorgeous blue eyes are blinking down at her, and she has to do a double take. She's so stunned that it takes her half a minute to realize that this freakishly good-looking man just called her by her own username.

Warriorprincess.

It sounded quite catchy when she first thought of it.

She leans her head back a little more to take a better look at the notorious dashingpiratecaptain, but the movement causes the ice cube in her mouth to slide backward on her tongue. She quickly turns on her side, gasping and choking, trying to overcome her shortness of breath. After she succeeds, she pushes herself up and accepts his hand when he gives it to her to help her stand up from the beach chair.

And that's when she realizes his other hand, covered in something that looks a lot like a black glove. Which is odd, because his right hand is bare, except a ring on his thumb.

Then she remembers something he wrote in one of his letters - a sailing accident.

Oh.

So, that must be a prosthesis.

"You okay, lass?"

She nods, embarrassed, both at almost choking on a stupid ice cube and because she was practically ogling his fake hand.

If he noticed, he doesn't comment.

"Killian Jones," he introduces himself instead.

She can barely force back the groan that is threatening to escape her mouth. It's not enough that he's freaking handsome with his perfectly disheveled midnight hair and dark scruff along his sharp jawline, he, of course, has to have an accent like that.

And she didn't even mention the glorious chest hair peeking out of his half unbuttoned shirt.

She forces a crazy smile onto her face. "Anna Clarke," Her favorite but unfortunately very much deceased tutor in the foster home probably doesn't mind if she borrows her name for a few hours. Taking on the personality of the woman who she always thought was dancing on the verge of craziness but was the friendliest and gentlest human being she met in her life was probably what Emma needs right now to pull off this entire scheme.

He removes his sweaty hand from hers. "I'll soon perish in this jacket…" he explains, adorably scratching a spot behind his ear and gracefully shrugs the leather off.

For a brief moment, she thinks he's going to get rid of his dark blue shirt too, mentally preparing for that eyegasm she's just sure she will be getting - but he only pops two more buttons.

He snatches her stuff from the sand and nods toward the buffets and other booths along the beach. "Shall we go?"

Although she doesn't have any clue where he's taking her, she follows as quickly as possible. She thinks she can actually hear her feet sizzling atop the hot sand and pavement as they reach the stores and stands selling souvenirs and other useless things.

Killian comes to a halt beside her. "Where are your shoes?"

"I have none. I'm experimenting with the hippie lifestyle."

"And how's that working out for you so far?"

"Pretty great."

He watches her with amusement in his eyes as she shifts from one foot to the other. Eventually, the heat gets unbearable and she's forced to flee into the coolness of a nearby store.

Killian marches after her and targets the sandal collection in the middle of the place.

"I'm good without shoes," she insists, pulling him back by the elbow before he can pick up a footwear.

She's about to sabotage his online writing career, she doesn't need the additional guilt in the mix.

"Then what will it be? Should I carry you on my back?" he gives her a once-over and in a low and teasing tone he adds: "Though, a herniotomy might be a tad more expensive than a new pair of sandals."

She huffs and snatches off her sunglasses, giving him her best fake death-glare. "Hah, I'll have you know I'm as light as a feather."

She's really tempted to call his bluff though, she would really like to test out his back muscles.

God, it has been far too long since she got laid. It makes her mind quite one-sided and distracts her from her main task and the reason she's actually here.

"The cheapest, then?" he bargains, pointing at a green one with an ugly ribbon on top. It's really repulsive and not at all her style, but his intense blue gaze and the fact that she very much prefers to have skin on the bottom of her feet decides for her.

She fishes out her wallet and completes her purchase so quick that even The Flash would get jealous, just so it wouldn't even cross Killian's mind to buy it for her.

Somehow she knows he would.

He only shakes his head and smiles as she slips her now empty purse back to its previous place. Her life, consisting of constantly running away and living on the streets had taught her to be thrifty, which means, beyond her travel cost she gave herself a $10 limit.

Looks like now she has to reach that five o'clock train, or else she can walk all the way back to her apartment.

She walks silently beside him and notices a deep frown across his forehead as he probably broods over something. They're strolling through the walkway alongside the beach. On their left, a multitude of vacation homes and a huge forest stretches out. The air is mixed with the scent of pine and the ocean and Emma inhales, closing her eyes in the process.

Only to open them when her stomach decides to play the sound of a dying whale. She feels her face heat up.

"Are you hungry?" Killian asks, a child-like enthusiasm hiding in his voice.

"You could say that." Clearly, that one grilled cheese she had in the morning wasn't enough to get her through the day.

"My sister-in-law likes to play Martha Stewart and usually makes enough food to feed an entire army, even if it's just the three of us now," he informs her, rambling. "They already know about you, so ah, they insisted I invite you… if you want that is." He finds that same spot behind his ear and Emma thinks it's a sure sign of his nervousness.

But his invitation kind of leaves her like a living statue, probably looking very much like the figure from the painting called The Scream. He watches her reaction and lets out a hearty laugh.

She doesn't join him in his fun.

Horror is taking residence on her face. Emma only prepared to spend a few hours with him alone - emphasis on alone. During that time she would somehow get her hands on his phone, delete all of his stories in secret, and change his password for good measure. She already knew he was kind of a lazy shit when it comes to his phone, always using the "remember me" function - and besides, it's his fetish to answer every critic as soon as humanly possible, so he checks each story on his phone twice a day.

Her plan would've been perfect. But she didn't count in the brother and in-law. How the hell is she supposed to screw over a great guy while his family is around?

He puts a tentative but encouraging hand on her shoulder. "Relax, love, they won't eat you alive."

Mary Margaret - she reminds herself. Her best friend's common sense and social life are on the table.

She will deal with her conscience later.

To keep her gloomy thoughts at bay, she inquires about the menu.

"Tomato soup, the good old Spaghetti Carbonara and ice cream for desserts," her stomach gives an appreciative gurgle at that line-up. "I wasn't sure about that particular type of pasta though because up until last month you were vegetarian," he considers. Fortunately for Emma, her sunglasses and hat are able to somewhat cover her grimace. Where the hell did these brilliant ideas of hers come from? "But last week you shared your experience about a new diner and their heavenly Buffalo wings, so…"

She flashes him a cryptic and maniacal smile. She thinks he's satisfied with her answer.

They come to a halt before a lovely, two-story house. On the other side of the fence, there are three dogs, currently playing the "who can bark louder" game. The smallest is a Bichon Bolognese, its fur all white like the snow, the middle - quite the chubby thing - is a light brown terrier of some sort (or so Emma guesses, not that she knows much about dogs, though, but one of her foster families had a similar looking one). And the last one - the biggest - is a three-legged mixed breed with beautiful dark fur. Killian mentioned that this one is the closest to his heart and now she can see why.

While Killian slips through the entrance to try and tame the wild beasts, Emma attempts to match the names with the dogs from his emails. She remembers rolling her eyes when she got to know what they are called - he clearly loves Peter Pan too.

She crouches down and the pudgy one tries to reach her with its tongue through the bars, wagging its tail in the process. "Jolly?" she guesses.

Its mate, the one that looks like a living cotton candy, goes absolutely ballistic by her presence, pacing anxiously up and down in front of her. "Smee?" At that. the dog stops and leaps, bouncing off the fence as it prevents the wild thing from attacking her.

"Smee!" Killian scolds, and the dog cowers at his commanding tone. Emma can actually imagine him as the persona he so likes to write about in his stories, the dashing pirate captain standing on the deck of his ship in all black ordering his crew around.

She shakes her head. Now is not the time for fantasies.

The other two mutts seem friendly enough - Roger, the black one, even glares at her with loving doe eyes. Emma decides to venture inside, and to her relief, none of them bite into her ankles.

"You were right. They didn't eat me alive," she nods.

"Yet. The worst is yet to come, love."

He lays his hand on the small of her back lightly as he guides her further on to the house. She can see a nicely set table on the veranda peeking through the many plants and flowers decorating the front of the house.

It looks quite cozy.

She takes a deep breath and starts taking off her accessories.

As she reaches up to remove her hat, her one size too small blouse rides up slightly at the movement, exposing a sliver of skin by her hip bones. Killian's attention is immediately drawn to the bared area.

"Stairs," she warns him.

But it's too late.

He trips, and in order to not land face first on the ground, he somehow leaps to the table and grabs onto it, pushing it away a good half meters in the process.

Emma looks up and there's a man, probably in his late thirties, standing in the doorway, shaking his head. From his expression, Emma assumes he's been standing there since the beginning of Killian's little stunt. "Now, now, little brother. I don't remember asking you to redecorate. That table was exactly in the right place."

Emma can see as two red spots appear on Killian's cheeks as he finds that spot behind his ear with his finger. "I'm going to help Elsa…" he grumbles and stumbles into the house.

Emma and the man shares an amused and conspiratorial glance. He puts down a bowl full of soup next to the vase on the table and shakes hands with her. "Liam Jones."

"Anna Clarke," she continues to promote her dead tutor's name further with her ever-growing shame. Lying to only Killian didn't seem like such a serious crime, but doing it to his family is another thing. "Thank you for the invitation and sorry for barging in on your vacation."

"Nonsense!" his blue eyes, a deeper shade than Killian's, are glowing with warmth and a smile stretches onto his face, peppered with light brown scruff. "My git of a brother was practically counting down the days and it's always good to see a fresh face around the house," The words leave his mouth like a jingling serenity, accent very much the same as his brother's, and she immediately feels welcome.

It certainly is a first.

From inside, light rock music starts to filter through. Liam whirls around just as Killian appears by the doorstep again and waves a black phone in front of his face. "Your mate, Robin, was calling you."

And suddenly like thunderbolt, the sight of the dark device reminds her of the reason for her visit: to remove all of KJ's writing from the cyberspace and change his password.

The thought sends a wave of nausea through her. She doesn't even realize as Liam's wife approaches her. "Are you alright?"

"Of course!" she almost yells, forcing a huge smile onto her face. She quickly thrusts out her hand. "I'm Anna Clarke."

"Elsa Arendelle-Jones," she gives Emma a smile and suddenly Elsa has her in a firm and friendly hug. Emma is so stunned that at first, she doesn't know what to do, but then her arms tentatively snake around the woman's shoulder. The gentle squeeze ended with the other woman's thorough examination of Emma's attire. "I like your style."

Emma feels a strong need of correcting her – not hers, it's Anna Clarke's, her evil and crazy side.

"My dearest sister-in-law," Killian growls beside them, though there's no heat behind his words. "Can you do me a favor and stop harassing our guest?"

Elsa elbows him in the ribs gently and Killian lets out a laugh. She really likes his deep melodic laugh, Emma decides, while the two continues to bicker like little siblings.

"Now," Liam claps his hands together. "Let's eat," he practically shoves her towards his brother and he graciously pulls out the chair for her next to him. "Eat as much as you like," he urges. "Don't be shy!"

Liam only seems satisfied when her plate is full to the brim with all kinds of food (Elsa really overdid herself). He's such a mother hen, Emma thinks. And also, the fact that she hasn't had a good home cooked meal since she could remember is probably written all over her face.

When the dessert is served, she draws whipped cream circles vigorously on her plate until the strawberry ice cream is completely lost under the white colored foam. Killian is quietly chuckling next to her and when his knee accidentally bumps with hers under the table, her hand jolts at the sudden body contact and a small amount of whipped cream lands on his face.

"Oops," she puts her hand theatrically to her mouth. Killian blinks at her in surprise and his family lets out a laugh simultaneously.

After his face is clean again and declares that he intends to get even with her, the topic of their conversation drifts to everyday life, especially where it concerns her. She would even enjoy the special attention if she wasn't burdened with forging lies upon lies. They are half-lies, in fact. She's really attending a university in New York, but instead of dorms, she's renting a decent apartment with her best friend. And although she did want to study law and become a lawyer, her scholarship was only enough to go through with criminal justice instead.

Emma is more and more certain that she must be one of the best at being undercover, if her current situation is any indication.

Or not.

By the time they are finished with the whole three-course meal and Killian showed her around the house, she is all fidgety – all the lies she created has piled up inside her and every time she recalls them, guilt cuts through her like a sharp blade.

She starts chanting her best friend's name in her head, willing her determination to find its way back to her.

It doesn't work, goddamnit.

Her stomach shrinks with fear – her resolve is nowhere to be found.

What the freaking hell is she doing here?

She's jolted out of her thoughts by a light touch on her forearm. A soft smile is dancing at the corner of Killian's lips as he looks at her and all she wants to do is fling herself into his arms and confess her sins.

"Did you bring swimming suit?" he inquires and she nods. "Then let's go back to the beach!"

After she stutters her gratitude for the invitation to his brother and sister-in-law, Killian links their arms and drags her out of the house.

All the way to the seashore she's studying her blood red toenails as Killian walks beside her silently, his hand occasionally brushing hers in the process.

She doesn't mind the close proximity.

She's gradually becoming very aware of how much she's grown to like him, way before they met a few hours ago; and in parallel, a recognition takes root in her – she's in a hopeless situation. Her brilliant 'Operation: Save Mary Margaret's sanity' project is officially doomed as well as any kind of fantasy about Killian.

In the end, the only one she double-crossed is herself.

Congratulation, Emma, you did it!

She's hoping she can blame all of this on the nuisances and headaches that her graduation had caused her. Until then, if Emma can't get out of this game victoriously, Anna Clarke can still have some fun, right?

Killian turns his impossibly blue gaze on her, and when he notices her grin, he breathes out in relief. "I was beginning to be afraid my family has upset you with something."

"Of course not," she protests. "But if you don't mind I'm gonna go and change." With a graceful movement, she seizes her bag from his hold (he had insisted on carrying it for her, and while she typically wouldn't like this, she couldn't resist his intense gaze and the I'm a gentleman, love dripping from his lips) and slips in the nearest dressing room.

After a while, Killian emerges from the men's room and fuck, she's absolutely certain that happy trail goes beyond his waistline. They're trying to disguise their mutual ogling by doing mundane tasks in the process; Killian by neatly folding his clothes and Emma by searching for something in her bag. With a raised eyebrow, she removes a sponge ball from under her water bottle and holds it up to him.

His eyes brighten and the sight knocks the wind out of her lungs. Again. The contrast of his blue eyes and the darkness of his hair are in perfect harmony.

As she takes all of him in, she realizes he removed his prosthetic hand and even with the scars and angry marks at the end of his wrist he's still a freaking walking-talking genetic wonder. He glances back at her sheepishly when he notices where her gaze has wandered to, but when he doesn't find disdain or revolt or whatever he's assuming on her expression, he visibly relaxes and takes off towards the water faster than superhuman Usain Bolt. He dives into the sea when he's at knee depth, and laughing at his antics, Emma drops her bag into the sand and joins him. The salty water hits her heated skin and she doesn't even care that she forgot to apply sunscreen. It wouldn't be the first time she has to deal with a little sunburn.

"Baywatching to the deep water?" he offers and she approves his suggestion.

The scene, where she gallops forward in slow motion fits perfectly into her 'nutty as fruitcake' profile. They glance at each other occasionally and mouth silent and overly articulated words to each other. The people in their area are trying to avoid them and all the splashing water they're leaving in their wake - except the children. Emma reads something like this from their expressions: So we'll behave exactly like we do now when we're adults, only dumber and no one will scold us for it? Yay!

The deep water, in this case, reaches a little above Killian's navel and for Emma, the surface grazes her breasts. They're backing away from each other unhurriedly and she holds the ball in her hand ready to throw. Killian estimates the distance between and takes a couple more steps backward. He clearly thinks he can outwit her with a few more added feet.

"Let it fly, love!"

She swings her arm and the ball lands with a splash directly in front of him. He stares at her skeptically as if sensing some trickery in the air. "You've been working on this all summer, haven't you?" It's his turn to toss the ball, but he somehow miscalculates the gap between them and his fling turns out too short.

"And you clearly haven't been working out all summer, have you?" she taunts.

He purses his lips into a thin line; his man pride demands retribution. The next throw isn't directed at her, but rather at another freaking continent. She snorts resignedly because really, she can barely see that damn ball now it flew so far away. "Are you serious?"

"You were doubting my competence."

"What competence?"

"You seriously wound me, love," he feigns offense. She waves in a sign of surrender and dives in the water.

The last time she pulled off such a distance in freestyle swimming was probably in grade school, so it's not really a surprise when her urge to brag is overcome by weariness as she reaches her target.

But she decides, no matter how stupid it would seem, that she will inch back on her feet. She lowers her legs and sinks immediately. She thrashes until she's below surface again and attempts to scramble forward. Then a horrible thought flashes through her mind - what if one of her limbs starts cramping?

She only had to wish it.

Her calf twitches with a dull ache as if this is the first time it's used after months. Her brain is suddenly clouded by sheer panic.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. - she repeats to herself over and over again. The land doesn't seem to be getting any closer, her toes are groping for the ground in vain. It's like the sea is tugging her inwards, right into its belly. She can already envision with vivid clarity the news article about her death: Deceased young woman was masquerading as somebody else; her friends are standing astonished by her double life.

She's flailing without any consideration or co-ordination - her only goal is to somehow remain above surface and get air into her lungs.

"Anna, it's alright!" Killian's voice is coming from afar, even though she senses he's somewhere close to her. She continues to thrash uncontrollably.

"Clarke!" he shouts. She doesn't fully realize what is happening; she's busy fighting for survival. She clings desperately to the first solid thing her hands can reach. And at some point, freaking finally, her feet burrow into sand again. Her traitor of a calf starting to regain consciousness again.

"Bloody hell," he puffs out. She's still clinging to his neck like her life depends on it, and fuck, it was. His wet raven black hair is bundled with her blonde curls, creating an exquisite contrast. She untangles herself from his body, quite reluctantly, she might add.

He turns his gaze at her and their eyes lock. After a few silent moments of staring at the other, they both let out a laugh at the situation and can't seem to stop for several moments. When their amusement subsides, they straighten and look into each other's eyes. She swallows at the intensity of his gaze, but is unable to glance away. She holds her breath as his hand reaches under her wet hair below her ear, his thumb caresses lightly on her cheek.

His eyes search hers, silently asking for permission and she should pull away and run back to the beach and then to New York, but because she's a weak idiot, she stays. He leans into her, his lips drawing near and hers open in anticipation. He stops inches away, his blue eyes drift down to her mouth as though he's savoring the moment. Her heart beats faster than ever when he finally presses his lips to hers in a long kiss. It's gentle and slow first, she feels her hands begin to slide up his naked chest and encircle around his neck as the kiss begins to grow heavy. She exhales through her nose when his hand slips off her cheek and tightens around her waist. She doesn't want this moment to end. Her entire body has been taken over by the overwhelming feeling of relief (because she finally got a taste of those luscious lips), combined with a good deal of panic (because she likes him and she should be deleting his stories and getting the hell out of dodge) and lust (for obvious reasons).

But soon her tense nerves begin to relax and her troubling thoughts are melting away, their surroundings disappear, leaving only her and Killian.

This feels true. And good. And right.

She draws her tongue over his teeth and swallows his groan of pleasure as they slid closer to each other, no visible gap between them. She's about to get completely lost in him when a bunch of shrieking kids run by them, spattering their bodies with a great amount of salty water, breaking their moment.

(Stupid summer camps).

As they part, she sees his eyes sparkle and lips curve up into a gleeful smile and she can't help but smile back. As her heart calms down and starts beating at a normal speed again, she contemplates him. His hair is a complete mop of mess atop his head, locks of hair clinging to his forehead and his cheeks are slightly red from joy and the hot summer weather. All of this and the last couple of minutes don't even remotely fit into the notion she formed about him based on his writings. He looks so young and innocent.

She voices her thoughts to him too.

"Writing helps to let off some steam," he explains. "Otherwise I wouldn't be such a gentleman," he winks and she doesn't argue. She couldn't really find a fault in his manners since they met.

At the same time, an incredible idea strikes her - if they find him an alternative solution for managing stress and tension, then maybe… "Have you ever thought about athletics? Maybe running?"

"It wouldn't work," he dashes her hopes. "It would only tire me in the long run, thus making me more tense. Who the bloody hell loves being sweaty all the time and waking up the next day with muscle strains?" She couldn't agree more, if she's being completely honest. Besides running after jerks who skip their bail, she's lazing on her couch with a bag of chips all day, watching Jeopardy and screaming at her TV.

Forget it. She sighs to herself. A day late and a dollar short. Water under the bridge. She's full of idioms now for her stupid situation because she screwed up. It's time to face the music.

"I saw a park nearby. Let's walk there," she suggests after they make their way back to the beach.

Killian pulls on his shirt and Emma does the same with her flashy yellow blouse. He watches her with worried eyes, one eyebrow high on his forehead. "Are you sure? It sounds quite dangerous. You could trip on a pebble, or catch some disease from the birds there. You could bump your knee against a bench," he lists. "Based on previous events, I say you would do better in a meadow with nothing but a water bottle."

She presents him her best poker face. "I could get an allergic attack from the flowers," she argues. "Or choke on the water, as you saw earlier."

He looked on with no change of expression. "Aye, you are right. There's danger lurking out there at every corner."

"It's hanging over me," she agrees. "But lucky for me, you're here to get my back," she inches closer to him. She laces their fingers together and he gives her a brilliant smile.

On their way, they're discussing which one of them has the most embarrassing and downright weird stories under their belts. In Killian's anecdote, he, his brother and Elsa went to a restaurant one evening to celebrate the couple's engagement. A bearded, slightly chubby old man ate his dinner at the neighboring table and was peeping at them every now and then. Elsa and his brother paid no mind to him, only Killian noticed it; the man made his flesh crawl with his creepy glances. But after paying the bill, he left and Killian thanked his lucky stars.

"Half an hour later we, too, finished our meals. We were walking down the streets peacefully and when we turned at the corner he was there. The guy was just standing there, one of his hands fumbling for something in his pocket," he goes silent, intentionally increasing the tension, like the great storyteller he is.

"Gun? Knife?" she urges.

"Oh, no. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter," her face turns into a disappointed grimace. "When we got closer he smirked and spoke up for the first time. I'd wished he would have shot me instead."

"What did he say?"

Killian temporarily holds off the storytelling when they get to the cocktail bar because the girl behind the counter is shouting at them loudly. "Wait!" she yells. "You left this here!"

When they pass the stand, he continues his tale. "He said: Killian Jones! How you've grown!" he glances at her with a gloomy look.

In the background, the cocktail Girl is yelling out a name. "Emma! Emma Swan!"

Emma glances back over her shoulder, the bartender is waving a black card holder at her.

Killian reaches the end of his story. "He was my P.E. teacher in grade school. Every year he tried to fail me."

Emma freezes, her eyes are on the cocktail girl's hand, more precisely on her papers she is holding. I.D., Social Security card, etc. The girl can't really bring it to Emma, at least five customers are waiting in line to get a drink, one of them drumming his fingers on the counter impatiently.

"Anna?" Killian asks, puzzled.

"Emma!" the girl yells again, now happy that Emma finally noticed her.

Emma swallows hard and trudges towards the beach bar, only mumbling "My papers," at Killian's still confused expression.

She walks back to him with bowed head and a racing heart, the plastic card holder almost breaks in her vice-like grip.

Killian asks the dreaded question. "What the bloody hell was that?"

My march to eternal humiliation, my journey through shattered plans, Anna Clarke's last mission - she would have answered, but no sound comes out of her mouth. She needs to make a grandiose gesture. Something honest. She awkwardly extends her arm, like she's introducing herself for the first time.

She watches her slightly shaking fingers, the seconds tick by slowly, her embarrassment growing like weed. Then her gaze falls to his long fingers as they encircle her hand. She snaps her head up in disbelief. An army of emotions are battling on his handsome face: forgiveness sits at the corners of his lips, puzzlement rests on his forehead and hurt is swimming in his eyes.

Since her vocal cords decided to not work, he is forced to take the first step. "Killian Jones, still."

"Emma Swan, now."

The ceremony is extremely awkward. Killian runs his hand through his half wet hair and slumps on the edge of the bench nearest to them. Emma sits down on the other end.

"I was aware that you lied about plenty of things in your emails," he watches the sea with slumped shoulders. "Not that it bothered me that much. It wasn't your lies that I loved, but the way you presented them. After a while I just sensed when you were being truthful," he pauses. Shrieking children and chatting parents sound in the background. The gleeful noises are driving her crazy. "Or at least I thought I sensed it," his voice goes at least an octave deeper and he turns to her with a scowl on his face. "Why did you do this?"

She confesses to him the real reasons. It can't really make her seem worse in his eyes than it already is. "My best friend went completely nuts, because of your stories. I thought if they were gone, everything will be alright with her again."

He gives her a condescending glance. "Have you never thought about talking with her and trying to understanding her?"

Oh yeah, it did occur to her. Unfortunately for her, a few weeks too late. But it wasn't Killian that made her realize this. By the time they met she was already aware where she took the wrong turn.

This whole thing wasn't in the interest of Mary Margaret for a while now. She was led by her curiosity and adventurousness. She orchestrated a play for herself and without his knowledge, Emma forced Killian to play a role in it.

Why? Because she liked the character that she created: the heroic best friend, the witty pen pal, the dorky Anna Clarke.

But really, why is it that people always want the things they don't actually need?

She's mulling over this question yet again while fiddling with the hem of her ridiculous yellow blouse, the salty summer breeze hitting her face lightly.

Killian asked for some time, said he needed to sort his head out. He promised he would be back in an hour and they agreed to meet at their original meeting point. Her phone shows that she's quite ahead of time. She places her ugly sandals on the beach chair she occupied just a few hours ago and attaches a piece of paper between its straps with her goodbye scribbled on it: Thank you for everything. And I'm sorry. For everything. - Emma

That is the extent of her lyrical talent.

She's reflecting on the day's events for two hours as she waits for her ferry, and as the vessel arrives to take her back to the mainland, she realizes there's nothing to think over.

She screwed up.

End of story.

She was so caught up in her mission to fix her best friend that she didn't realize there's nothing to fix. Emma saw an opportunity in her best friend's obsession; an opportunity to break free of her monotonous life and be someone else. Someone who is spontaneous and trusting, who is the complete opposite of her. She wanted an adventure and now she got it: she was so far gone in her play that she hurt two people in the process without even realizing it: Mary Margaret, who did nothing wrong but love a few pirate stories, and Killian, who only wrote said pirate stories.

Emma made herself the villain in this tale.

She's learned from her mistake (or at least she hopes so) and as soon as she gets home she's going to squeeze the life out of Mary Margaret - metaphorically, of course, because she'll give her best friend the biggest of hugs. They will have a girls night and talk about what is really going on in her head. It will be great.

But there's hardly anything she can do to make it up to Killian. She owes him another apology in case her note doesn't get to him, but her options end here. She's not even sure if he will even open her emails, let alone answer them.

The farther she gets from the beach, the gloomier her mood becomes; a feeling of sad resignation takes over her. She pulls her legs up on the seat and flips through her card folder in boredom. Stupid papers; they were all against her today.

And at the top of everything, a damned mosquito is about to have a feast on her elbow. She strikes down hard and her green folder flies away, sliding on the dirty floor until the black hole underneath a seat swallows it up. She squats down to try and fish it out, but her fingers touch something completely different: the straps of a faux leather sandal.

She lets out a laugh and ceremoniously buckles her previously lost shoes back on her feet. She regards them as a sign from above. As if it was life's way to say that "She's wrong, the fates are on her side".

She grabs her notebook and a pen from her bag and writes her very first (and probably last) short novel about how much of a moron she has been. She finishes just as she arrives back home, the two-hour train ride goes by in a blur.

She types it into her laptop as soon as she arrives at her apartment, publishes it under the name 'Warriorprincess' and waits for the miracle.

After only a week, she gets it.

"Emma!" Mary Margaret bursts into her room, balancing her laptop in one hand. "You wrote this, didn't you?" she shows her the "masterpiece" of Warriorprincess.

"Yes," Emma admits.

"I can't believe it!" she jumps up and down like a kid on a sugar high, her voice several octaves higher than normal. "You're highlighted! You're among the recommended writers! Just under KJ's story! Oh my God!" she places her laptop down on her nightstand and starts pacing in front of the bed in pure ecstasy. "Do you know how much I love you?"

"What?" she's taken aback.

"My friends will die of envy if I tell them what a crazy genius my best friend and future sister-in-law is. You're even friends with KJ!"

Emma buries the urge to correct her on that, instead, she focuses on the first part of her sentence. "Your friends?" she repeats.

"From the site."

Since her little adventure, she's been fighting to restore their friendship to the way it was before Killian's stories, and now Warriorprincess had reached that breakthrough.

She steps closer to Mary Margaret. "Will you tell me about them?"

And words are flowing out of the brunette's mouth, because Emma is finally there to listen to them without judging her favorite stories and claiming her best friend went insane. Mary Margaret doesn't have any mental diseases, she proves to be a thousand times healthier than Emma and furthermore, she doesn't lack in friends or rationality. The only thing she's short of is the tolerance for boring people and, sadly, her colleagues at the preschool are included in this category.

Emma's best friend inhabits the large group of misunderstood artists and dreamers. Case closed.

"I'm happy we could talk this through," Emma grins at her when Mary Margaret is out of breath from talking for thirty minutes straight.

"Me too," she smiles at Emma. "So the next time KJ posts a story, you won't call our provider and have them shut off the internet, will you?"

"Don't worry. I'd probably break my own arms first before I would do that."

Mary Margaret appreciated her lame joke, she's still swimming in the waves of hyperactivity. She hugs Emma and grabs her laptop from the nightstand, clicking and typing in it a few times.

"Kj didn't write a comment on your story," she reports. "But someone else did," she turns the device toward Emma so she can look at the screen. She starts reading the review and when she gets to the middle she snatches the laptop from Mary Margaret's possession.

Dear Warriorprincess,

Stylistically, there is still room for improvement, and I advise you read the story over again; you left a few typos in it.

Moving to the content of the story: the heroine's motivations are absurd, as well as her actions. The storyline, partly as a result of this, is messy. Also, I could not take delight in the emotional background you have outlined. If your main character is inspired by a real human, I suggest she visit a specialist.

You did not let the male character's story to properly unfold, although I saw a great amount of potential in him. And huge competence. In addition, I missed the further demonstration of the characters' external features. Why did you not mention the heroine's big, aquamarine eyes and her shapely legs?

The ending is simply terrible.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. Congratulations on being highlighted!

P.S.: Would you be interested in exchanging some letters, which could help me fill your head with nonsense and turn your head? Then we could perhaps meet in person. I would introduce myself under a fake name, bewitch you even more, get caught red handed and vanish into thin air – of course, I would leave a dramatic goodbye note behind. So what do you say, love? I can tell you from experience, it works quite well.

Above her shoulder, Mary Margaret is trying to make out the name of the user. "Warriorcaptain...Do you know each other?"

"Not enough. But we can remedy that right away," Emma grins and clicks on the sign in button.

fin.

#cslb #captain swan little bang #cs ff #cs fic #captain swan #one shot #cs oneshot #ouat #ouat ff #ouat fic #once upon a time #Emma x Killian #emma swan #killian jones #captain hook