#the way mutations work in this universe is a bit weird & hard to explain. like there are several factors that determine one's mutations

[bumblesimagines]

Green Thumb

Part 4

Request: Yes or No

TW: Drug mention, needle mention, overdose mention

I'm still unsure on the twins ages in age of ultron since one source says 16 and the other says 26 lmao. Imma just say the twins are 17 or 18.

~

You stared down at the city below with a frown. You knew Clint wouldn't rest until Natasha was found. Everything had happened so quickly and even if you had tried to catch her with a root, you would've been pulled along. A sigh left you as you sat down at your desk. Your room in the tower felt like a cell. Gray walls, white bed, white desk. The only real color in the room came from the line of potted flowers on the desk. You felt your stomach grumble, standing up and leaving the room. You headed to the kitchen, getting a granola bar. You opened it, taking a bite from it. You almost choked, hearing crashing and arguing. You swallowed the bits of granola as you followed the noises to the laboratory. You headed up the stairs, dodging a flying Steve.

"What the fuck?" You turned your head, seeing the Maximoff twins. "What the fuck?" You repeated, watching them in bewilderment. Another one left you when Thor crashed through a window, raising his hammer and letting the electricity power the cradle. Nothing happened for a moment before the cradle burst open, causing Thor to fly back.

"I should've stayed with Laura." You whispered, staring at the red man that emerged from the cradle. He slowly stood, looking between everyone. His gaze settled on Thor, lunging for him but Thor grabbed him and threw him to the side, causing another crash.

"(Y/N), stay close." Clint called, eyeing the twins. You quickly walked over to him, hearing the crunching of glass beneth your shoes. While Thor and Steve took the dramatic way, you chose to use the door and head to the room Vision was in. Thor raised his hand, stopping Steve from attacked. The man stared out into the city, staying silent and motionless. Thor set down his hammer as the man landed on the door, apologizing to Thor and mimicking his cape.

"Thor, you helped create this?"

"I've had a vision. A whirlpool that sucks in all forms of life and at its center is that." Thor explained, pointing at the crystal in the mans forehead.

"What, the gem?" Bruce asked, watching Thor look at him.

"The mind stone." He corrected. "It's one of the six infinity stones. The greatest power in the universe with destructive abilities." Thor explained as he faced everyone.

"It looks like a citrine." You muttered, continuing to unwrap the rest of your granola bar, swiping away the crumbs that fell on the floor with your foot.

"A what?" Clint asked softly. You glanced at him.

"It's a type of gemstone. It's supposed to motivate you to take action." You shrugged lightly. Gemstones were pretty interesting to study, even more so when they had so called 'destructive abilities.'

"Stark's right."

"Oh, it's definitely the end." Bruce said quietly.

"Why does your vision sound like J.A.R.V.I.S?" Steve asked as he watched the man walk forward. Tony explained why, still in awe and surprise. The man looked at Steve.

"You think I'm a child of Ultron?" Though it sounded like a question, it was obvious it was a statement.

"You're not?"

"I'm not Ultron." The man replied softly, almost confused. "And.. I'm not J.A.R.V.I.S either."

"I looked in your head and saw annihilation." Wanda said, stepping forward as she glared at him. Clint scoffed softly, walking towards everyone. You followed, tossing the wrapper into the trashcan.

"Look again."

"Your approval seems jack to me." Clint said, gaze staying locked on the twins. Wanda's gaze went to Clint before going to you. You maintained brief eye contact. It wasn't everyday you met another meta.

"Her powers, the horrors in our heads, Ultrons powers.. They all came from the mind stone. Nothing compares to what it can unleash." Thor revealed. "And with it on our side-"

"Is it?" Steve interrupted, looking at the man again.

"Are you? On our side?"

"I don't think it's that simple." He replied softly.

"Sounds pretty simple. Death or life for humanity." You said, shrugging. He looked at you, giving a small nod before looking at the others.

"Then.. I'm on the side of life. Ultron isn't." He took small steps forward, not wanting to agitate anyone.

"What's he waiting for?"

"You." The man stared at Tony. You were already coming up with names for him. Tony Jr was the one sticking.

"Sokavia's our best bet." Tony said.

"Nat's there too." Clint told them, looking at Bruce when he approached the man.

"If we're wrong about you..." Bruce started softly. His threats were always amusing until he turned green. He stared at Tony Jr, letting it up to his imagination, if he had that.

"I don't want to kill Ultron." Tony Jr walked around Bruce, continuing past everyone.

"He's weak.. And in pain but that pain will roll over the Earth, so he must be destroyed. Every forms he's built, every sense of his presence on the net. We have to act now and not one of us can do it without the other." Tony Jr turned, facing them. He looked down at his hands.

"Maybe I am a monster. I don't know if I will become one.. I'm not what you are. I'm not what you intended. So there may be no way for you to trust me but we need to go." Tony Jr finished his speech, picking up Thors hammer and handing it to him. The room stayed silent as everyone took it in. Thor took his hammer, clearing his throat and nodding.

"Alright." He gave a small smile, walking away. You sighed, turning around and walking towards the bar.

"Don't even think about it." Clint called as he walked past you. You huffed, watching him go.

"Seriously?" You rolled your eyes, looking over your shoulder at the twins. They walked away in amusement, following Steve's directions to the lockers. You walked to your room, putting on the outfit Clint had designed for you. You looked at a picture of you and Clint, smiling softly. You left the room, walking down the hall. You noticed Thor and Tony Jr talking outside, arms crossing as you approached the glass. You stared at the two, gaze locking onto the reflection of the twins. You turned to face them, seeing Wanda pause and stay in her spot.

"Sorry about choking you." You spoke first, looking between them. Wanda gave a small nod, hand gently gripping her arm.

"Did you get experimented on like us?" Pietro asked, head tilting. Some white strands fell over his face. You shook your head, biting your bottom lip as you thought on how to explain it.

"From what Bruce told me, my mother had drugs in her system during labor. It was an unknown drug that they still haven't identified but Bruce says that it might've given me some freak cell mutation that gave me these powerd. It's weird. Clint said it took a long time to even find any information on my family. I don't know if it's true or something that they told me to make me feel better about being orphaned." The twins gaze softened, glancing at each other. Wanda licked her lips, glancing at the ground.

"When were you orphaned?" She asked softly.

"When I was a baby. My mom died in labor and my dad had been found dead with a needle in his arm a day later. I was put into an orphanage cause my parents were seen as a Jane Doe and John Doe. Again, it's weird." You told them, shrugging lightly. Pietro took in a soft breath, gaze becoming distant.

"We're orphans too. I'm sure you already know what happened by now but.. A bomb killed them." Pietro said softly. He took in a deeper breath, giving a small smile to lighten the mood.

"I suppose that's another thing we have in common." He pointed out with a small shrug. You nodded, smiling softly. It was nice to be around people your age who understood you. Even Wanda seemed relaxed and more comfortable.

"(Y/N), what'd I say?" You looked up upon hearing Clint's voice.

"You were the one who left me alone to change." You reminded him with a soft huff, going around the twins and approaching him. Clint shot you a pointed look, glancing at the twins. You understood why he was distrustful of them.

"Clint, they're like me." You said quietly as you walked with him to the aircraft.

"You're not like them."

"Yes, I am. They're metas and around my age. Weren't you the one who said I had to work on my people skills?" You cocked a brow as you stared at him. Clint stayed silent, giving you the answer.

"They were fighting for their country after it was attacked. They have all the right to be distrustful-"

"After one conversation, you can tell apart the difference between good guys and bad guys?"

"I don't know, Clint, you tell me. You were the one who chose to take in a kid who almost choked your best friend to death and attempted to impale Americas biggest playboy with a fucking branch." You hissed lowly, frowning and looking forward.

"You were, and still are, a kid." Clint said, voice becoming hard and stricter.

"Oh, well, fuck me, I didn't realize the twins were in their eighties."

"Quit giving me attitude, (Y/N). I want to protect you. You don't know if they're gonna stab us in the back when we least expect it. If we destroy Ultron and they stay on our side, you can play dolls with them." Clint said, approaching the aircraft.

"Whatever." You entered the aircraft, taking a seat. The others entered not long after. The twins sat down beside you as Clint headed to the front.

"We didn't get you in trouble, did we?" Wanda asked quietly, glancing over at Clint. You shook your head, toying with the roots in order to relax.

"No, just.. Strict dad drama." You muttered. Wanda tilted her head, making eye contact with Pietro before it clicked.

"Oh.. He adopted you? That's nice." Wanda gave a small smile. "Maybe the Avengers aren't so heartless."

"We aren't." You assured, looking between her and Pietro. "It'll take a while but.. We can all grow to trust each other."

"I hope so." Pietro breathed out, hands going to the belt as the aircraft lifted up. You chuckled at the nervous look on his face.

#x reader #x you #x y/n #x male reader #x male!reader #avengers #avengers x reader #avengers x male reader #avengers x y/n #avengers x you #marvel #marvel x reader #marvel x male reader #marvel x you #clint barton #clint barton x reader #natasha romanoff #steve rogers #maximoff twins #tony stark #bruce banner #thor #vision #ultron #age of ultron #tw drugs #tw overdose #tw death mention

[karlnapity]

we spent two years together, i thought in made her better.

(tws: death, violence, panic attacks)

jack manifold loses his last life on december sixteenth, and he crawls out of hell on the same day.

he has never stood down. he’s a stubborn bastard and he knows that, and he knows that standing against fucking technoblade is a bad idea, and he doesn’t care, because he won’t let him destroy his home.

technoblade looks him in the eye, laughs in his face, and drives an axe down the center of his skull.

>

he doesn’t quite register dying, doesn’t quite register the feeling of falling to the ground. 

he does register pain. he does register overwhelming panic. he comes to laying on the ground, blood stuck to his scalp and in his eyes, rubble scratching his back. 

he keens in pain, sits up slowly. he rubs his eyes, resting his head in his hands. he thinks, dimly, that everything seems dulled. explosions and screams in the background, the feeling of his hands on his face, the chill in the air. he can hardly feel any of it. he edges himself behind a large piece of rubble, safe from the conflict for now.

panic courses through his veins. what happened? 

he grasps at his arms, curling in on himself. everything feels wrong. everything feels wrong.

his breath quickens as he grows hysterical. tears start to fall as he hiccups, and as they trickle down his face he can barely even feel them.

and then it stops.

his hand flies to his throat. he tries to start breathing again, but as the seconds pass he finds he doesn’t even need it.

oh god, he’s dead. he’s really fucking dead. is he a ghost?

“oh god,” he chokes, curling in even further into himself. 

“hello?” someone else’s voice calls. he doesn’t bother sitting up.

“jack?” the voice continues, then, “oh fuck, jack!”

someone touches his arm, and he craves the contact. he can still hardly feel it, but he leans into it, arms wrapping around him and holding him so tight it would probably hurt, before.

“i’m so glad you’re ok,” they whisper. who is it? whose voice is that?

“niki.” his voice sounds raspy, contaminated from smoke and tnt and death.

“yes, yes, i’m here,” she chokes, and he can tell, faintly, that she’s crying. “you’re ok.”

he nods into her shoulder. he wants it to be true, but it can’t be. he can barely hear her over the ringing in his ears.

“i thought you were dead, i’ve been looking for you. how long have you been back here? didn’t you hear me calling for you?”

he almost snorts. what can he say? 

her hand moves from his shoulders, cupping around the back of his head. she massages a thumb over the nape of his neck where she used to when he got upset. her thumb brushes over dried blood and he can feel it flake off. 

her hand stills. “jack, you’re so cold. are you ok?”

he coughs. “i’m sorry, niki.”

he pulls back, looks her in the face. her eyes are sad. 

“jack, please tell me what happened. what’s going on?”

“i died,” he breathes. a shiver runs through him as the realization hits him like a ton of bricks. oh god, he fucking died. he grasps for purchase on her arms, grounding himself as best he can. she grips him back.

a combination of confusion and horror fills her face. “you didn’t have any lives left, how…”

he shakes his head. a hysterical laugh bubbles from his chest. “i don’t fucking know, niki, i don’t fucking know.”

she cups his face then pulls him into a tight hug. “you’re gonna be ok, jack. we’re gonna be ok.”

>

it’s a hard thing, adjusting to death.

for one, he’s constantly cold. not only his temperature, but also his skin. it’s cold, clammy like a corpse. niki says it feels weird, but he can’t exactly tell. he piles on layers, spends as much time as he can in front of the fire and trying to warm the constant chill in his core, but it doesn’t work. 

he doesn’t breathe anymore. occasionally he’ll hiccup or gasp, as if his brain is trying to kickstart his body again, and he’ll sit in silence for a few minutes while nothing but pure panic floods his brain, telling him something is deeply wrong. the first time it happens, tubbo slams on his back thinking he’d choked, and jack devolves into a vicious panic attack before tubbo even has a chance to realize.

he doesn’t need to eat, and he physically can’t sleep. he didn’t realize how much people slept, before, and now he finds himself sitting on the snowchester porch in the early morning and realizing how lonely the world is.

he can hardly feel much of anything, and he can hear even less. his vision’s gone a bit fuzzy, too. it feels like his senses have started closing in on himself, and it’s terrifying.

the others have adapted, and he’s thankful. if niki comes up behind him, she’ll grab his arm hard, and tubbo will usually pinch him or slap the back of his head so he knows he’s there.

he’s decided not to tell tubbo. the kid doesn’t deserve that. he doesn’t need to know, long as jack doesn’t start falling apart like some sort of zombie. he’s pretty sure tubbo just thinks he’s traumatized, or that he’s lost some of his hearing from explosions like tubbo has.

and, well, he’s not exactly wrong.

>

it’s niki who starts it. they’re sitting around the fireplace, jack as close as he can get to try to get rid of the chill, and she says,

“you know, when you think about it, it’s all kind of tommy’s fault.”

resentment has been festering since tommy killed him, so he’s not exactly shocked, just curious. “what d’you mean?”

“he’s caused so much trouble on the server, and now he’s just gotten away with it.” niki sounds angry, and when she sounds angry it’s never good, so he turns to look her in the eye. she’s practically shaking. “he needs to suffer for it like we did.”

when he was alive, he woke up from nightmares almost every night of drowning in lava, of burning while tommy laughed and sneered and laughed, and now it only solidifies. he hates him. 

it’s tommy’s fault he’s dead. if tommy hadn’t killed him, he wouldn’t be dead now. 

niki stumbles to her feet and falls to her knees in front of him, pulling him into a desperate hug. 

he’s not sure if he can cry anymore, but the feeling’s there all the time as he clings to niki, grasping tightly to her shirt, and she pulls his head to her shoulder, curls around him protectively.

they stay there for a long time. every once in a while, niki will murmur an assurance. after long enough the words mutate, transform into something nasty, slimy. 

“he’ll pay for this.”

>

the nukes are divisive. jack doesn’t want tubbo to get hurt. niki doesn’t want jack to get hurt. they both want tommy to get hurt.

he’s not sure when it changed into “kill him.” he’s not sure when it turned from a want to yell, to hit, to wanting to destroy him with nukes, but the anger is fire deep in his chest, the only thing he can feel, and he wants it to continue burning.

niki says she doesn’t want jack to get hurt. 

“it’s not like i can get more dead,” he sneers. he doesn’t want to hurt her. he wants to hurt everyone.

>

tubbo can tell there’s something wrong. he can tell it in the way he rests his hand on jack’s back, even when he can’t feel it, in the way he stays up late and gets up early to spend time with him.

he comes up behind him, early one morning, and wraps his arms around jack’s chest. he buries his head in jack’s back and squeezes him tight. jack jumps at first, but soon relaxes into the content.

he can’t hear tubbo’s sobs, as quiet as they are, but he can almost feel the shaking of his shoulders.

“what’s wrong?” he asks, hesitant in case he’s reading it wrong. tubbo could be laughing, for all his addled senses can tell, but he deep down he knows. he can barely hear tubbo’s reply.

“i’m worried something is going to happen to you.”

something has already happened, he wants to yell. you just missed it.

he knows, faintly, that it’s not tubbo’s fault. tubbo doesn’t know, because he’s never told him, but he wants someone to focus on him, for once. he wants someone to realize, without him telling them. he wants someone to pay attention.

tubbo’s not that person. tubbo has friends, and a nation or two, and a history that extends beyond ‘stay alive.’ 

he pulls away, gently, promises something or other about him being fine, and goes back to planning destruction. 

>

their plan doesn’t work. tommy shows up only thirty seconds late, while the crater is still smoking. 

jack can’t help but feel like the universe is working against him.

niki is fuming. she’s shaking in anger, standing at the edge of the crater and staring at it, and jack goes to put his hand on her shoulder. she pulls away.

>

niki comes to join him on the porch that night. he doesn’t know she’s there until she says,

“why do you spend so much time out here?”

he doesn’t know how to explain that it’s comforting, being out in the cold, alone when he knows everyone is safe inside. he’s become a sentry almost accidentally, taking care of the only two people in the world he still cares about. he doesn’t know how to explain how comforting and devastating it is, and he doesn’t know how to explain that the cold calms him, so he just shrugs. she always understands him, anyways, or so he hopes.

she doesn’t stay outside for long. 

>

he wonders, sometimes, if he’s doing something wrong. tommy and tubbo are still friends, somehow, even after everything. jack doesn’t know how to ask if tommy’s ever apologized. tubbo’s always had a heart too painfully big, so he kind of doubts it. 

tommy’s never apologized to him. he’s not sure if he’d ever accept it.

he watches puffy and niki get pulled apart, and cringes a bit more each time niki comes home crying. he doesn’t know how to ask her if she still thinks they’re in the right. 

he can tell she’s not sure either. maybe none of them are.

>

puffy approaches him one day. it’s her first time visiting snowchester, and her white first gleams in the sunlight reflecting off the snow. he’s at his usual post, and he gives her a half-hearted wave as he sees her.

she returns it, but her face is grim. she comes to stand beside him.

“i know what you’re trying to do,” she says, quietly, and he has to strain to hear her. he pretends he didn’t all the same. 

“sorry. hearing loss.”

she gives him a look, but raises her voice all the same. “niki says it’s a bit more than that.”

he balks, stumbles back a few feet on the wood of the porch and almost his balance. puffy reaches out and steadies him. “pardon?”

“i’m sorry about what happened to you, jack,” she starts. he can’t tell what emotions he’s feeling, but it’s overwhelming. he tries to think of something to say, but she continues before he can force the words out.

her hand on his wrist twists, and he tries to pull it away when he realizes she’s searching for his pulse. she holds on, then her face tightens and she yanks him into a hug.

they’ve had hardly more than two conversations, but he feels safe in her embrace. he holds on tight, and she runs a hand through his short-shaven hair.

“i know you’re hurting,” she says, and he knows he’s made a mistake.

>

jack finds tommy back near l’manburg. it took him a couple more weeks to even gather up the courage, but eventually he spoke to niki. 

he tries not to think about the conversation.

tommy seems surprised to see him, but they settle at the edge of the crater. 

tommy looks better than the last time he saw him. he tries not to be jealous.

“i think i owe you an apology,” he says. tommy balks.

“what? i owe you an apology,” he comes back with. “i fucking killed you!”

“i tried to kill you too,” he starts, but tommy cuts him off.

“it was kinda deserved. can we just agree not to anymore?” he sticks out his hand.

jack smiles. 

snowchester seems warmer, that night.

#personal #dsmp #dream smp #jack manifold #niki nihachu #tommyinnit #tubbo #captain puffy #mcyt #l'manburg #l'manberg #l'manhole #lmanburg #lmanberg #manburg #manberg

[fantasticstoryteller]

New Amsterdam Chapter 64

Peter watched as Angel repeatedly pulled the thick wad of dough until she had thin strips of noodles. “This is the easy part,” she told him as she methodically worked. “Just grab and pull. Grab and pull. Kind of meditative if you let it be.”

Peter looked hesitantly at the ball of dough in front of him before reaching for it.

“Flour your hands first; otherwise the dough will stick.”

“Right.” Copying her earlier movements he stuck his hands in the bowl of flour on the counter before picking up the ball.

“Ponyo?”

“You already ate,” Angel gently scolded the pink thing with huge blue eyes.

Peter pulled at the dough. It snapped. He glared at it.

Angel calmly looked over, dusted her hands with flour again, and rolled the dough ball a few times before pressing on it repeatedly before handing it back. “Try again,” she advised. He did; it pulled into a lumpy, rough mess. He looked over at the silky smooth ribbons she was producing and sighed.

“You’re really good at this,” Peter commented as he tried to follow the directions. He was just pulling dough into noodles—how hard could it be?

“I’ve had practice,” Angel replied. “A few—months, I think? Maybe a year? It’s hard to tell. Anyway, there was this time I was trapped in a hut with a blind old woman who thought I was a bear.” She saw the look on Peter’s face and said, “Seriously. Trust me, if you’d been there it would have made sense. You have no idea how hard that one was,” she grumbled. “Anyway, the two of us were snowed in, almost starving, and all there was to eat was flour, water from the melted snow, and six pounds of lard—don’t ask,” she advised. “I only made that mistake once.”

“What happened?” Peter tried to copy her movements, but the dough kept breaking so he’d push it together and roll it like he’d seen her do.

“Roll, then knead,” she advised. “She talked me through making the noodles and then made weird, uncomfortable comments about eating a bear—right before a bear burst through one of the walls. She killed the bear with her cane, talked me through butchering it, and we made soup with the bones and noodles. I told myself it tasted like chicken.”

“You must have been starving,” Peter admitted.

She shrugged and one of the wings flicked back behind her. “It was a long week, I have a high metabolism, and cold saps energy,” she said explained. There was something weary in her tone—the same weariness Peter frequently heard from the street kids.

Peter’s hands stopped moving as something occurred to him. “Wait—you ate a bear and she thought you were a bear…”

“You do not want to finish that thought,” Angel advised him firmly. “Not if you want to eat again in the next three days,” she added.

Peter’s mind whirled. There were a lot of people who accused him of being overly naive, but he could tell when someone was lying. It was a skill he’d picked up out of necessity when dealing with Norman—and this girl wasn’t lying. “How did that happen?” he asked.

“You want the broad strokes or the fine detail?”

Peter, watching her craft a truly insane number of noodles, wasn’t sure he could handle the fine details. “Broad strokes, please.”

She snorted. “Stuff happens and life sucks.”

“Sums up everything,” Peter admitted as he glared at his noodles. They didn’t look like noodles at all; they looked like funky bread sticks. “A little more detail, please,” he asked.

Suddenly the girl grinned at him. “You look just like Papa with that look on your face,” she told him. She pulled a knife from the block and with a quick cut her noodles lost their connections before she began to lay the noodles out on a cookie sheet.

“You use a knife really well,” Peter commented as she grabbed his noodles and did the same thing.

She snorted. “Of course I do,” she said with wry amusement. “These are pretty good,” she said pointing to his noodles. “You should have seen my first try. All right, let’s go sit down and I’ll explain as best as I can.” The creature that had arrived with the girl raced up to her and she laughed. “All right, Dora,” she said affectionately. “Time for cuddles.”

“Ponyo!” squeaked the happy thing.

“What is it?” asked Peter as he stared at the thing while washing his hands. He noticed that it seemed to be eating the flour off of the girl’s suit and he wondered if she noticed.

“Dora. She’s a slime. She used to be highly volatile with a half-ton blast.” Peter stared at the pink blob in the girl’s lap. “Not anymore,” she rushes to assure him. “Papa and one of my uncles fixed it.” She lovingly ran a hand over the top of the slime as it clung and released the skin with a muffled gloop.

“Pon-yo!” the slime chirped, and Angel laughed.

“Ponyo,” Peter said weakly.

The two clear blue eyes turned on him, wavering slightly as the entire pink thing jiggled before it jumped into the air and raced across the floor towards him. “Ponyo?” it asked as it bounced on the floor.

“She wants to know if she can get in your lap.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” The slime squealed, jumped, and plopped down on his lap.

“She likes it when a palm is rubbed over her top,” Angel advised.

Well, Angel would know. Peter gently rubbed his palm over the top of the slime—which wasn’t slimy, exactly. Felt more like a thick mixture of cornstarch and water. The sensation as it shivered under his touch was odd, to say the least, and as he moved his hand it became sort of soft and silky. Strange. Nice, but strange. No wonder Angel had been petting it so much.

“Where to start,” mused Angel as she lounged on Wade’s recliner, wings lazily hanging over the back in a way that looked uncomfortable to Peter, but she seemed fine with it. “All right, there are three starting points, and none of them seem connected, so bear with me.” Fingers tapped against the arm of the chair as she looked at Peter. “First of all, there are multiple worlds. You’re going to have to trust me on that. They’re—”

“Like Stephen Hawking’s last paper?” asked Peter excitedly.

Angel paused. “Yup,” she said after a moment. “Totally. Now, I’m from one of those worlds, and in that world, Loki—”

“The god of mischief and destruction?” asked Peter aghast.

She sighed. “This will go a lot faster,” she admonished gently, “if you stop interrupting me. Yes, Loki, God of Mischief.” She paused and glared, but he didn’t interrupt again so she continued. “In my world he has several children, but the one you need to know about is his daughter, Hel.”

“Now, Hel has her own realm, and yes,” she said anticipating Peter’s question, “it’s different from a parallel world. One of Hel’s jobs is to—to protect balance, I guess would be the best way to put it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Peter. He leaned forward and the slime in his lap made a noise like a sleepy giggle.

“Souls are made up of a mix of light and darkness; most of them have a relatively even mixture, changing as they grow and react to their environments. Some souls are almost pure darkness and some souls are almost pure light. In order to prevent the universe from descending into chaos when there’s too much light a dark soul is sent in the middle and when there’s too much darkness a light soul is sent.”

“Why would too much light be a bad thing?” asked Peter, confused. If he was understanding her correctly, “light” was the same as “good” and “dark” was “bad.”

He expected a blasé answer about the general importance of balance. Instead her somber amber eyes met his. “How do people grow?” she asked instead. “How do they learn, mature?”

“I—I don’t know,” admitted Peter.

“They face challenges. They overcome those challenges. When there is too much light,” her arms spread around her, “there are no challenges. The souls stagnate, become weak. Souls that are too weak are—well, I’m not sure,” she said with a frown. “Hel said that they get subsumed by the stronger souls in reincarnation, and that throws the balance between the living and the dead off. I’m not sure why. But I do know that souls that grow in too much darkness have the same problem, and since Hel is in charge of sending reincarnating souls, it is a problem she has deal with. To balance.”

“O—okay,” said Peter. He had no idea where Angel was going with this.

“Now I’m going to have to skip a bit. There were two competing programs in the city. Both of them had the same goal, to create new and more powerful mutants, but they went about these goals in very different ways. One of them kidnapped people and performed horrible, often disfiguring experiments to force recessed mutations to the surface.”

Peter felt the blood drain from his face. He wasn’t an idiot; he knew Deadpool’s file. “That sounds like—”

“Yeah.” Angel sighed and then continued. “I wasn’t there, but I hear it was just as brutal. The took kids instead of adults, on the theory they’d be easier to break. Now the second program had a very different approach. What they did was they took samples from known mutants, broke them down into genetic components, and then proceeded to inject those components into a growing fetus.”

The second method made questions swirl through Peter’s brain. “How did they get the samples?” he asked with vague horror.

“From blood. The heroes, anti-heroes, and superpowered villains of the city bled all over it and they had people everywhere to collect the blood and take it back to the lab.”

“But that would mean—”

“Contamination,” agreed Angel. “Until the mutations began to develop, it was impossible to tell what blood was even there. There was even,” she continued with an odd, wry smile, “a child who’d gotten the mutations of two powerful mutants.” Her face fell. “There were failures, of course. And some that were just deemed failures.”

The slime in Peter’s lap squeaked and raced across the floor towards Angel, bouncing in her lap repeatedly until the girl smiled and began to pet it. “Where did the fetuses come from?” Peter asked.

“They put out ads for ‘surrogate mothers’ that strongly implied they didn’t care if the woman in question was already pregnant. The women came, got free health care as long as they didn’t leave, and if they didn’t bond with the infants they took the money and left the infants behind.”

“And what about those that did bond?” asked Peter as one of Angel’s wings came up and cupped around herself and the slime in a gesture that was obviously reassuring to the girl.

“They took the infants and left. They all signed NDA’s before they even set foot in the facility, but the fastest way to get the attention of the heroes in a city full of them is for dead bodies to start showing up out of nowhere, so they avoided that.” She chuckled in wry amusement. “Actually, it wouldn't have been discovered at all if they hadn’t decided to kidnap Spiderman.”

“They—what?”

She gave a small, sad smile as she stroked the slime in her lap who cooed at the attention. “They wanted a clean sample of blood. Before they could take it, Deadpool showed up.”

Peter gave a small smile of his own, thinking of his boyfriend. “Of course he did,” he said fondly.

“Yeah, it was bloody, the kids were rescued. Blah, blah, blah,” she said glossing over it. “Not important. What is important is that I came from that program, and I have super healing abilities. Keep that in mind. Now, there was another child, from the other program, that I’ll call BB. No real names, because I can’t risk being found before I can find BB. BB had a—a very unique ability. BB could turn humans into spider/human hybrids that could then be controlled—by BB. Very specific there; killed some people who tried to control them in—horrific ways.” The girl paled and the slime stretched until it could just touch the underside of her chin. “Anyway,” the girl interrupted herself as she ran her hand up and down the slime’s body, “she couldn't do it to very many people. She didn’t have the power. Then, three things happened. One, Tony, the insane inventor who I secretly think is trying to actually destroy everything, developed a purely mechanical portal that can travel between worlds. I don’t know why. Two, BB found out about the light souls—but not the dark ones. I have no idea how that came about, but the long story short is that BB discovered how to harvest souls and steal their power to increase BB’s own. Three, the Time Stone was shattered and a piece of it lodged in BB, keeping the mutant ageless. And no,” Angel adds quickly, “I don’t know how that happened either. I kinda wasn’t around at the time—not important. What is important is that BB was throwing the universe, multiverse, expanded parallels, whatever into chaos and Hel, Loki’s daughter and in charge of the balance, demanded that Tony either figure out a way to fix it or she would fix him, in the way that the pound fixes stray cats. And since the source of this problem, the Time Stone, was technically his charge in the first place—actually I think he has a method of putting the Stone back together again but needs all the shards to do that—Dr. Strange created a timed portal with his mystic arts that could connect to the shard buried in BB to make sure whomever used it would end up in the same general area as BB. Still following?”

“Yes,” Peter said as he nodded. Actually, the information was sinking into his brain to be turned over and examined at a later time, but he would understand it.

“Now, it was hypothesized that the ‘jumping’—my term, not theirs—could be corrosive and generally bad to anyone actually doing it, so whomever left had to have one heck of a healing factor, and both Wolverine and Saber-tooth said no, we’re not doing that, while Wade couldn't because, well.” She shifted in her seat, clearly embarrassed. “Anyhow, I was the last choice, but the only one and you know what? This whole multiverse thing is just plain weird. You wouldn't believe some of the things I’ve seen. I’ve been drawing them to share when I get home.”

“So, you came here to look for BB?” clarified Peter.

“When I get BB, the next time the portal opens it will take me home,” Angel explained. “In the past,” she added, “BB has gotten tipped off about me too early and decided to run, which is why I’m being extra careful this time. This time, instead of chasing BB down, I’ve focused on finding the soul she’s looking for.”

“Have you found the soul yet?”

Amber eyes once again met Peter’s own. “Oh, yes,” said the girl firmly, with satisfaction.

Before Peter could reply to that the door to the apartment opened and Wade walked in. “Honey, I’m hooome!” he trilled. He proudly presented the girl with a notebook and a box of colored pencils. “Your payment,” he said dramatically.

She grinned and grabbed them, moving faster than she had at any point during the visit. “Thank you,” she said brightly before leaving.

Wade chuckled as he closed the door behind her turned to face Peter. “We need to talk,” Peter said firmly.

#Spider-Man #Deadpool #Spideypool

[a-monsters-love]

Distance - Soulmate AU

Gif found [here]

[Master List]

Aizawa Shouta x Reader

Summary: When we turn 8 our dreams don’t just become our own. We don’t know when it started but we start to share our dream scape with our soulmates. The closer we are to them the better we can hear them in our dreams, the farther we are the less we can hear them. When the other wakes you get a small, very brief, glimpse of the world around them. If soulmates have different sleeping schedules then the dreams you have without them you typically won’t remember.

Genre: oh it’s fluffy y’all

Word Count: 6k

Warnings: mild swearing, implied abuse, quotes from the MHA Vigilantes series, native language I’m using for y/n is English

A/N: I’ve always wanted to write a Soulmate AU ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡. And y/n’s quirk is based off of Jinx from the Teen Titans lmao

With love to my favorite bby who helped me form the ideas for this @eraser-baby​

(Y/N) = Your Name (H/C) = Hair Color (E/C) = Eye Color (H/L) = Home Land i.e country of origin (N/L) = Native Language

————————————

If you’ve learned anything in your life it’s that girls love talking about soulmates. Sure, it’s romantic and very fairytale-esk but isn’t there anything better to talk about? You sighed as your classmate gawks about her soulmate and what they did together in her dreams. “Come on (Y/N)! Tell us about your soulmate! You never participate in these conversations!” Your friend says. The other girls in the locker room agree and you let you head drop back dramatically.

You roll you neck and look at each of them, “I don’t have one.” You shrugged, “I don’t have anything to offer.” Their faces grow visibly shocked at your statement but you weren’t one to lie, “Don’t look at me like that. Come on, we have to get to training.” The last thing you want is for them to pity you. Pity for not having a soulmate was the last thing you should ever receive pity for, not with how your life was. You couldn’t help but huff at the idea as you pulled your gym shirt over the scars that were riddled all over your skin.

——

“You’re lying!” Oboro accused his friend, “No one just doesn’t have a soulmate!” His nagging on the topic has only gotten worse as his friendship with Aizawa Shouta went on.

Hizashi chuckled, “He’s telling the truth, I don’t believe he doesn’t have one either though. They’ve just never met.”

Shouta groaned at the conversation, “If I have one I’ve never met them, not having one makes more sense.” He shrugged, “I mean, it’s been 7 years and I’ve had zero contact.” Oboro groaned into the pillows on Shouta’s bed in frustration. “We have like 30 more minutes to study before we should get to sleep.” He tapped the textbook in his hand.

Not having a soulmate was unheard of, both of you knew this. Both of you were certain that the other died or you were an anomaly in the universe. Of course you both would enjoy it but neither of you cared enough to worry about something you didn’t have.

———

“Come on, (Y/N)! You can do better than that!” Your gym instructor yelled, you hissed at how sore you were but knew it would be worth it. You weren’t in the heroics course for nothing, you were here to prove your quirk wasn’t villainous.

“Fuck.” You huffed to yourself, you propelled yourself up and bent low towards you opponent. You pressed your hands to the ground letting magenta hues blast from your hands to destroy the field directly in front of you. Having the quirk ‘Jinx’ also referred to as ‘Probability Manipulation’ will make you malleable for hero work but took twice as much training.

The earth cracked towards your opponent causing them to fall, only to kick a decent sized chunk of stone towards you. The impact knocked you unconscious.

You hit the ground hard, “FUCK.” You yelled, “Why didn’t I go for the knee caps? Should I just strike them with Bad Luck?” You start rambling before realizing you don’t recognize where you were. You look around and see blue skies and tall grass surrounding you, you see a boy with messy ebony and dark eyes staring at you in surprise. You look at yourself, still in your gym uniform, and then back at him. “What?” You hiss at him.

Shouta looks over you, the way your (H/C) hair framed your face. He visibly gulps at the way your (E/C) eyes bore into him, he knew who you were immediately. He opens his mouth to speak but you started to fade.

When he doesn’t respond you squint at him before waking up. Shouta catches a brief glimpse of your fight, it’s day light where you’re at. You’re face was stoic as blood ran down it when you shove yourself off the ground and sling two magenta crescents at your attacker from your hands before the vision stops.

Shouta jumps out of his bed in a panic, he looks around and see’s Oboro and Hizashi asleep on his bedroom floor. Hizashi stirs and rubs his eyes, “What’s wrong listener?” He mutters, still half asleep.

“I think I just found out why I hadn’t met my soulmate before.” He huffs out, catching his breath. Hizashi’s eyes widen in surprise and elbows Oboro awake to listen to him explain his dream.

“I fucking knew it.” Oboro whisper yells as he sits up from under his blanket.

“It was so weird though, I could see them talking but I couldn’t hear them.” Shouta pushes his hair back with one hand.

“Well you said it was day time for them so they must not live in Japan.” Hizashi suggests, the three agree and drop the subject to go back to sleep. Shouta wouldn’t admit it but he was excited, and relieved. He’s glad you’re alive.

You’re sent to nurses office after you finish your match to bandage up your wound. You can’t get the image of the strange dark haired boy from your mind but decide not to worry about it. “Weird dream.” You mumble to yourself, rationalizing it as dreaming of someone you’ve met before or some nonsense dream. The fact of meeting your soulmate was the farthest thing from your mind.

———

Shouta tries his best to catch you at random hours in the day for him, he justifies it as looking for confirmation but isn’t able to catch you. “When does she sleep?” He groans to his friend, he’s tried his best but there’s only so much sleeping he can squeeze into his school schedule before getting into trouble.

“I’ve never seen you so devoted to something.” Oboro teases giving him a wide toothy smile.

Shouta rolls his eyes, “I’m getting the feeling I just hallucinated the whole thing.” He presses his face into his hands with a groan. “I just want to know if it was real..”

His two friends chuckle and pat his back, “Give it time man.” They reassured him.

———

You on the other hand hadn’t thought much of the incident again for months, you didn’t have time to. You went to school, did homework in the library, trained and only went home to sleep. You tried to avoid your foster parents as best as you could, knowing the consequences of disturbing them. Your focus was on your heroics work and aging out of the system.

Over a year had passed and you had completely forgotten about the incident. Shouta had given up trying to track you down, your soulmates, you’re meant to run into each other at some point, right?

“The three of us should open up our own agency!” Oboro said over lunch one day. Shouta hummed in curiosity, “I think we work well together.” He took another bite of his lunch, “Take you for example, Shouta. You’re not the type to get action started on your own, but you’re always sweating the small stuff. You’ll add a layer of polish to everything!” Oboro smiles wide and slings his arm around Hizashi’s neck and pulling him closer. “Cause we suck at it!” The two laughed loudly.

“Yeah… I guess so.” Shouta frowned at the idea. “You two share the same two brains cells.” His friends laughed harder and the conversation continued.

“We could recruit your soulmate!” Oboro adds.

“You said they looked like they were in hero training.” Hizashi adds.

A light blush heats Shouta’s cheeks and his brows knit. “That feels like a cop out.” Shouta mumbles, “I should be able to stand on my own before asking for someone else’s help.” He scowled at his bento.

———

You were taking a break from your morning jog by laying in the grass on your schools campus. “(Y/N)?” You hear, you stretch your neck and look in the direction of the voice. “You’re here early.” Your teacher says, look at their watch. “Very early.” They hum the last part and sit next to you.

“Yeah, I just prefer jogging on a track.” You make an excuse, you didn’t want to talk about your home life with a teacher. Knowing it would make things messy, you continued. “I’m just an early bird, I like to stay busy, ya’ know?” You smiled at them and chuckled a bit.

They hummed in understanding, “Your performance has gone up a lot. Are you still planning on being - as you say - a freelance hero?” They question, nudging you with their knee.

You smile wide and look at the clouds above you. “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to travel.” You hum and talk about all the places you’ve read about, not sure where you’ll end up.

Your teacher hums at the idea, they’re a retired hero. “I wish I had that mindset when I was your age.” You both chuckle and you hop upright, offering a hand for them to get up. “Is your soulmate a hero or a hero in training?”

You freeze at the question, dusting yourself off as an excuse for your silence. “I dunno, I’ve never met them.” You shrug at their confused look. “I’m gonna run a few more laps and I’ll be out of your hair.” You smile politely and run off.

“Don’t over do it, (Y/N)!” They yell out to you. “You’ll get sick!”

You wave at them in acknowledgement, you think about their words for the rest of the morning. You remember one of your friends mentioning how most soulmates quirks are typically balanced matches for each other. You have a mutation quirk so you doubted the validity. “What could balance with Bad Luck?” You question aloud.

“Something to get rid of the bad luck I imagine.” One of your classmates chirped, you jumped at the sudden appearance. “I wonder if your Jinx quirk is the reason you haven’t met yet.” They further suggest.

You hum at the idea, that would make sense. Not that you had any clue as to what would but you didn’t let it bother you too much, having an answer satiated your curiosity.

It wasn’t until you got knocked out again that your curiosity was piqued again. You sat in a field of tall grass and flowers, you looked over yourself and realized your in your gym uniform. You snap your fingers and imagined your favorite outfit. When it appeared on your body you figured it was a dream.

You stood and looked around and saw the same ebony haired boy staring at you. He sat against a tree in the shade, a breeze blew in and brushed the hair out of his face. You gave him a once over, noting it’s the same boy from a year prior and waved at him. A blush dusted his cheeks and he shyly waved back. You walked towards him, squatting in front of his figure and tilted your head. “You stare too much.” You said, his brows knitted. “What?” You questioned, he was quite cute now that you had a better look at him. He looked at you the way a wet kitten looked at a passerby in the rain, confused and nervous but full of hope.

Shouta watched you appear in his dream, you appeared out of nowhere. You faced away from him, he couldn’t see anything but your (H/C) hair at first. When you stood he was able to take in your figure, you were beautiful. He could see the confidence radiating off of you in the way you carried yourself. When you squatted in front of him he felt like the dream was almost real. When he watched you speak he noted that he couldn’t hear anything again. “I can’t hear you.” He pointed from his mouth to his ear and shook his head. He watched you make a small frown and plop down to sit. You stared at each other for a moment, taking in each others existences. His eyes scanned the visible scars littering your skin, you watched the way his cheeks heated as he shamelessly checked you out. It wasn’t until you visibly looked like a lightbulb popped with an idea that his attention was pulled back to reality. You smirked and closed your eyes, two whiteboards appeared in front of you with markers.

You handed him one and started to write, ‘Hello, where are you?’ You wrote, flipping the board around and waved at him. He squinted at the letters on the board, understanding what you wrote by your body language. English is a required language to learn in Japan but he wasn’t the greatest at it. When he wrote a greeting on the board you frowned again, not recognizing the language, this time you imagined a globe and two pins, a purple one for him and a yellow one for you. You scanned the globe and put a pin in your general location and pointed from the pin to yourself with a soft smile, he felt his heart flutter at your smile. You handed him the globe and the black pin, he looked at where you were and frowned himself as he put his own in. Shouta handed you the globe and you frowned again as you looked at the two locations, he was in Japan. It makes sense that you’ve never met, the difference in your time zones was vastly different.

You grabbed the whiteboard again, ‘Well Fuck.’ You wrote down your name and pointed at yourself. Shouta did the same and you two briefly practiced writing each other’s name before you disappeared. He watched the glimpse of you again, you were in a nurses office and he watched you shoot up and frown at your friend. Your (E/C) eyes light up and the machinery around you spark and popped. He watched your friends phone explode and you just shrugged when the vision stopped. He practiced writing all the things your wrote in his dream before he woke himself.

When he did wake up he wrote everything he practiced in his notebook and brought it to school. He showed Hizashi and Oboro what you said and told them what country you were in. The two laughed louder than necessary at your words “She wrote ‘Well fuck’ at the fact that you’re so far.” Oboro snorted, “I like her already.” Shouta rolled his eyes, but held a small smile as if to say ‘me too.’

Moving forward he works on his English better than he had before, and you made it your mission to learn Japanese. In the random and few dreams you shared you practiced each other’s language, using the near magic of the dreamscape to correct each other. Even though you couldn’t hear each other you each made the other practice writing short notes you could remember when waking up to make the process easier. Things to the degree of ‘work on pronouncing hard letters like L’s and R’s first’.

You hadn’t seen Shouta in your dreams again for sometime, the next time you saw him was at night your time when you went to bed. You were surprised when he appeared in your dream, however you were more worried about the way he seemed to be followed by a small storm cloud. Something must’ve happened, you thought. You sat beside him, wishing you could say something comforting but you knew he couldn’t hear you. You imagined an umbrella and held it over the two of you and rubbed his back. Shouta glanced over at you, you had a solemn expression on your face. Your mouth quirked in a half frown as if to ask if he was okay. He shook his head ‘no’ and you leaned your head on his shoulder.

He showed you a memory of the fight he had during his work study a few days prior. He watched you gape at the scene, at the loss of his friend. You cried and dropped the umbrella, you turned and pulled him into a tight hug causing tears he didn’t know he had left fall from his eyes as he returned the embrace. You pet his hair as the dream went dark in his anguish. When he sat back up he wiped his face and nodded at you in thanks.

You decided to share a few of your own memories with him, your hero training at school, a bit of your school life. He chuckled at how much you study, you flash him a memory of the past week of you learning Japanese and stick your tongue out at him. He blushes lightly and rolls his eyes, leaning into you lightly before he started to disappear.

You watch the scene unfold of him waking up from his nap in class, you chuckle as he crawls out of a bright yellow sleeping bag in his school uniform. His blonde friend says something that causes Shouta to cover his ears. The glimpse fades and you drift off to deeper sleep.

Over the next several years you only ever met him briefly, your exchanges were demure and always quiet due to the circumstances. You found out you both became underground hero’s after graduating, you exchanged emails after forgetting to for so long. You found typing in Japanese was harder than writing it and speaking it combined, he didn’t mind though. He wrote to you in English at times but your interactions were limited due to hero work.

Due to being underground hero’s both of you had sporadic sleeping schedules, you received an email from him at one point telling you to go to sleep. You chuckled and looked at your phone, I could go for a nap, you thought and emailed him in response. You returned to the place you were staying and laid on the couch, quickly drifting off to dreamland.

When you appeared in you shared dream Shouta pulled you into him, rolling you over so he could lay into your stomach with his arms wrapped around you. You giggled at the action but made no effort to rouse him, running your finger through his soft hair. He felt you giggled as you felt him talk, he wished for subtitles as he talked but it was too annoying to focus on them and talk at the same time. Shouta talked about some vigilante brats he’s started to run in to, about what he was dealing with. “(Y/N), I don’t know what to do.” His arms barely squeezed you but you felt it, you tightened your grip around him instinctively. He buried his face in your abdomen, you smiled sadly, you were barely sure but you knew you felt the same.

After a few years you had completely traveled around your entire country while working as a hero. You told him about your completed travels and how you became something of an urban legend, almost a boogie man for villains.

“Don’t you want to meet her?” Hizashi asked over the phone.

Shouta hummed at the question, thinking about an email you sent a few weeks ago. “I mean sure, but I don’t have anything to show for.” He sighed, “I can’t just ask her to move out here and expect her to be okay living the way I do.”

Hizashi went to argue but he understood the point, he had made a comment once about how private you were over email. Suggesting you might be more open in person like you are in your shared dreams, but your schedules were too different to have a proper conversation. With instant villains popping up all over the country the last thing he has time to think about is keeping up appearances.

“What about that gig at UA Kayama suggested? It’d be a stable gig.” He could hear his friend smile over the phone. The last thing Shouta thought was a good idea was him being a teacher.

“I don’t have time for this I’m on patrol, I’ll talk to you later.” He quickly hung up on Hizashi and stuffed his phone in his pocket, looking up at the moon that shown brightly even in the dark alley he stood in.

———

You stared at an email Midnight sent you, regretting the suggestion you made to Shouta to exchange emails of your most trusted associates/friends ‘in case of an emergency’. You sighed and leaned back into the sofa you sat on. “You know my office isn’t your office right?” Your friend said, you looked over at them and pouted. “Seriously, I have an agency to run.” They snorted.

You rolled your eyes and picked up your laptop, “Take a look at this for me.” You placed the device on the paperwork they were looking it, forcing them to read it over. “I don’t think it’s a good time but I’m not sure how to respond.” You scratched your head thinking about it.

They read through the job offer and hummed in cognizance. “I think it’s a good idea but you are right it might not be a good time, with-“ They waved their hand around. “Everything going on. Maybe just say that?” They advised.

You both tossed ideas back and forth, as much as traveling to Japan enticed you, you knew how long it would take to wrap up all your current cases. You sent Midnight a response, apologizing and declining the teaching position, informing her that you’d love to but you are currently in no position to just pack up and leave. You pulled out your Nokia Brick phone for the time and started packing your bag. “I have to go, thanks for letting me mooch your internet.” You winked at your friend who groaned.

“When are you going to get a smart phone?” They teased.

“When they make one I can’t break, this thing is a beast!” You pointed the device at them and were on your way. Upon entering a back alley past your friends hero agency you received a call. “Detective!” You answered, “Oh. You found the- uh huh.” Your eyes narrowed, “I’m on my way.” You ended the call and ran to their office, maybe it wouldn’t take as long to wrap up all your loose ends as your originally thought.

———

5 years have passed as you and Shouta have grown closer via dreams and emails. He shows you memories of things that happened with his class during the day, most of it you find hilarious and he scowls at you in response. You write an apology and provide suggestions, he finds that he quite likes laying his head in your lap or on your stomach as you comb your fingers through the messy mop of hair he has. You find it almost natural, both of you rant about your day. Fully aware that the other can’t hear you, you’ve found writing and showing memories became second nature. You nearly cried laughing when he showed you the memory of him expelling an entire class as an example to say ‘I wasn’t joking’.

You and Midnight chose not to tell Shouta about your potential teaching position at UA, you didn’t want to say anything because you didn’t want to get his hopes up. Midnight suggested keeping it quiet in case you decide to come, saying it would be a ‘pleasant surprise’ for him. You rolled you eyes reading that, knowing how she can be.

You received another email halfway through the school year from Principal Nezu, inviting you personally. You didn’t reply to the email for sometime while going over your case work, when you did respond you informed him that it would take you about a month to finish up the cases you’re involved in and that you would be late in regards to when summer break ends and the new semester begins. He tells you that’s fine, and you request that he doesn’t mention who the ‘new teacher’ would be.

That night you have a pleasant dream, when Shouta enters your dream he found you reminiscing. He wraps his arms around your waist from behind, pulling them tightly under your bust as he rests his chin on your shoulder. You lean your head against his and squeeze his arms, a smile crept up your face and you start speaking about you coming to surprise him at UA. He can’t hear you which makes you chuckle, you turn you head and kiss you cheek. It’s been years since you’ve met but you’ve never kissed before, part of you wanted to save it for when you met him in person but you were so excited.

Shouta watches you talk, wondering what you’re talking about that has you laughing. He’d give anything to hear you laugh in person, anything to be with you. He watches your memories, chuckling when you show him the fight that caused the two of you to meet. When he feels your lips press against his cheek he blushes deeply, almost jumping away with his hands still wrapped around you. He watches your fingers curl and hover in front of your mouth as you giggle. He pulls you into his chest and leans in to kiss you.

You reach up for him but give a sad smile as he starts to fade, indicating that he’s waking up. You cup his face in your hands and then he was gone, you can’t keep this up. You know you need to meet him, you know you will soon but it feels so far. You see a glimpse of him waking up, the scowl on his face and his students freezing made you chuckle. You were so excited.

If looks could kill, the classroom would have been massacred with the deep scowl on Aizawa’s face. The room felt like ice when he sat up from his in class nap to prepare the class for gym, the sensation of your hands on his cheeks is still present. He cups him own face in frustration, unable to think of something that could allow you two to meet.

After a few week Shouta meets up with you in your sleep again, your face held a deep blush and you sent him the goofiest smile he’s seen on you yet. You clap your hands together in front of your mouth as you tilt your head, he rolled his eyes and chuckled as he realizes you’re drunk. You show him memories of your going away party, you and a handful of hero’s all suited up in their uniforms were drinking at someone’s large house. Even in your drunken stupor you manage to keep anything that says ‘going away party’ out of the memory. You did accidentally slip a memory of you drinking 2 hero’s, that were 3 times your size, under the table. He sees you sitting behind the table with a mischievous grin on your face as the other two were either throwing up or passed out. When he glanced over at you there was an air of pride on you, he starts to play with your hair affectionately. He smiles when you lean into him, blushing slightly when you lay across his lap. Somehow you had snaked your arms around his waist, he chuckled in any attempt to admonish his growing feelings that made his stomach flip and his chest quake with desire.

———

You slept off your hangover on the flight to Japan, you saw Shouta a few times while you flew towards Japan. The closer you got the more nervous you became, you knew Midnight would be picking you up so you weren’t too worried. You wondered what he would sound like, what he’d smell like even.

When the plane entered Japanese waters you knew immediately, even in your sleep. You could hear him talking, you blushed as soon as the audio became clear. His voice was so smooth and deep you couldn’t help but blush. He looked at you questioningly and you moved your mouth like you were talking but didn’t let your voice escape. This was a lot more difficult to do that you imagined, you silently chuckled. He kissed your forehead, “God I wish I could see you in person, I can’t stand this.” Sadness and pain laced his voice like barbed wires, you cupped his face and gave him a sad smile. You gently pressed your lips to his, the action seemed to surprise him as he quickly poofed out of his nap. You catch a glimpse of him shooting up out of his chair and off his desk in the teachers lounge, a deep blush coating his pale skin. You woke up soon after and started getting your carry on bag together to get off.

You and Midnight had exchanged pictures via email before your flight so that the two of you would have an easy time finding each other. When you got off the plane you carried a small backpack and a briefcase with your hero uniform. “(Y/N)!” She yelled, waving her hand fast. “I’m so excited you’re here!” She hugged you tightly as soon as you were close enough.

“Midnight, I’m excited to be here.” You said, “I haven’t told Shouta yet so we need to make a plan to surprise him.” You wink at her, noticing the devilish grin growing on her lips.

“Call me Nemuri.” She says and loops her arm with yours, you nod as the two of you walk to baggage claim. She told you all about the dorm system and that there’s a room prepared for you, telling you that it’s pre-furnished and about all the finite details.

——

He took another nap, hoping to apologize for being surprised awake. When he did manage to sleep it was only for a short time and you weren’t there. Aizawa would admit he was confused, he looked at his phone to check the time when he woke. Knowing you should be asleep, he worried that something happened. Gym class had started and a few of the student looked at him in concern, noting his grumpier than usual attitude.

“What do you think happened?” Uraraka said, “Aizawa-Sensei isn’t usually this grumpy after his naps..”

Asui and Midoriya nodded in agreement, sneaking glances at their teacher. “Maybe he just didn’t sleep well?” Midoriya suggested with shrugged shoulders.

“He does keep looking at the time, kero.” Ausi notes.

Shouta glares at them and they separate for their training. When gym is over he takes another nap, hoping to see you again.

You and Midnight made quick work of getting your bags into your new room, you had swiftly changed into your Hero costume and headed towards the school. Nermuri used her quirk to help you calm down as you approached class 1-A, “Do you think he’ll be mad?” You whisper to her.

She chuckled softly, “I don’t think he could be mad at you.” She patted your shoulder as you slowly opened the door to the classroom. Class was almost over so you knew he’d be napping.

You saw him asleep against the wall and the students looked at you confused. You and Midnight both pressed a finger to your lips to indicate they should be quiet and ignore you. You snuck into the classroom as quietly as possible and squatted in front of Shouta. You watched the way he slept so peacefully, his ebony hair messy in front of his face. You resisted the urge to move it and waited for what seemed like ages for him to wake.

When Shouta woke he rubbed his eyes before opening them, yawning and noticed someone in front of him. His eyes saw your feet first, quickly traveling upwards to see you sitting in front of him. Your (H/C) perfectly framed your face, your (E/C) eyes bore holes in him as you made eye contact with him. This has to be a dream, he thought. “Surprise.” You said shyly, you voice was soft. It was so delicate that it made his face burn, eliciting a few ‘ooo’s and ‘awes’ from his students. He stared at you in awe, frozen where he sat in utter disbelief. You giggled softly, you stood and introduced yourself to the class. Informing them and Shouta that you were a new teacher at the school. They had a million questions for you but you dismissed them stating they’ll find out later, the bell rang dismissing the class.

With school over the students made their way out of the classroom, leaving you and their homeroom teacher alone. You went to close the door and turned back to face him after waving the kids out. He unzipped himself from his sleeping bag and instantly pulled you into his chest. You blushed loudly and completed the embrace, wrapping your arms around him. One of his arms was wrapped around your waist while the other cupped the back of your head. “(Y/N). Why didn’t you tell me?” He said softly, you giggled into his chest and squeezed him a bit. The sound of your name on his lips made you happier than you imagined.

Lifting your head to him, you never realized the difference in your height while you dreamt. You hummed at his question, “I wanted to surprise you.” You offered a small smile. “And I didn’t want to give you false hope if something came up and I couldn’t come.” Your admission seemed to quell his confusion.

Shouta smiled and lifted you up, “I couldn’t have asked for a better surprise.” He leaned his face into yours, pressing his lips against your own. His lips were soft in comparison to his calloused hands that held you against him. You wrapped your arms over his shoulders, cupping the back of his neck. Desperate to not let go. He tasted like coffee and smelled like spices, he was warm and felt like home. When you pulled away to take a breath you pressed your forehead to his. “I couldn’t begin to imagine my life without you now that I have you here.” He said with a soft smile.

You giggled as he set your feet back on the ground, “I was thinking the same thing.” You both to a moment to look over each other. He was taller and more muscular that you had anticipated, you were shorter and softer than he imagined. He loved every ounce of you, “We should go home.” You offered your hand to his, god he could melt at the sound of the word ‘home’ falling from your lips.

You would be introduced to the rest of the faculty and students tomorrow, soon you would meet the teachers responsible for class 1-A at the faculty dorm you’d be staying in. Tonight you’d be spending all your time with Shouta, familiarizing yourself with each other. He had never slept so well as he did with you wrapped in his arms and pulled into his chest, he was never going to let you go.

#shota aizawa #shouta aizawa #shouta aizawa x reader #aizawa #aizawa x reader #eraserhead #aizawa shouta x reader #eraserhead x reader #shouta aizawa x you #aizawa shouta x you #eraserhead x you #bnha #mha fan fic #boku no hero #bnha x reader #mha #mha x reader #my hero academia #my hero academy fanfiction #my hero academia x reader #boku no hero academia #boku no hero x reader #x reader #bnha soulmate #bnha soulmate au #soulmate au #mha soulmate #mha soulmate au #fan fic #fan fiction

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

let me explain to you the plot of borderlands 4 (kidding. mostly)

tl;dr: the eridians are evil, or, worse, completely uncaring about the things going on in their little sandcastle. the guardians are salty bitches about it and need our help and/or are going to start slaughtering people and im gonna fuckING TAlk ABOUT IT mostly because i need to write this down bc its been bouncing around my head since the game (bl3, not 4. that’d be wild) came out. minor spoilers for Guns Love and Tentacles. mostly that side quest.

tl;dr: tl;dr: eridians bad, guardians mad, and we are caught in the middle of a war that’s about to go down between them. spoilers for GLaT

tl;dr: tl;dr: tl;dr: Fl4k was a warning. Spoilers.

i dont even know where to begin because FUCK THERE’S SO GODDAMN MUCH TO THIS STORY

so im just going to start listing facts or points (+) of this theory that i remember at this very moment and probably forget a lot of them alright i’ll elaborate on all of this i promise. okay? lets go

+the eridians made a bunch of vaults that hold monsters in them

+some of these monsters are clearly constructs. some of them are not

+those that are clearly constructs:

the warrior

the traveler

the sentinel

+those that are not clearly constructs:

the destroyer

the rampager

the serpent

(possibly) gythian

(possibly) graveward (more on this in a bit)

+those that are not accounted for:

the timekeeper (but do keep this bad boy in mind)

+the eridians made the guardians: biomechanical constructs that are somewhat sentient, gaining sentience, and are supposed to guard the Vaults

+we also know now that there are these things called proving grounds with a salty, sentient guardian named the Overseer:

“vault hunter, I thought you might show up sooner or later. so naughty your species, so curious. the vault of vaults has been opened and IT has been released. prove your worth and I will reveal why the masters made me wait for you”

“naughty humans have opened the vault of vaults but the masters will determine who is a fault. until next time, warrior”

“long ago there was a brief spark, the first vault was opened, a light in the dark. a riddle, yes? perhaps it will unravel next time, hunter”

“so, you’ve returned. persistent, yes. or stubborn? or both. are you so desperate to prove yourself?”

“we were created for one purpose by our masters- and we couldn’t even do that right (laughs). but don’t blame us! when a cog breaks, point your finger at the artificer, not the cog! are you a cog, Vault hunter, or an artificer? Or both? prove yourself worthy.”

“pity us not, though the world has been broken. those who sleep will soon be awoken. not long now, seeker.”

“the eridians were our masters, but we failed them. they gave the order then silence. they VANISHED. such is our fate, Vault Hunter. server to a master who has left the house so long ago. prove to me that you deserve an introduction.”

“we were supposed to guard the Great Jail. but no quarter for servants who fail. but servant, that is not quite right. ‘Prisoner’. that is what i am. Until next time, adventurer.”

“a final chance to prove yourself. but will your reward be what you desire? a prisoner in a cell staring out at the fathoms of a sleeping universe. after a time, how would you know if you were prisoner or master? consider this while you prove yourself one last time.”

“it has come to this. one last trial. but will your efforts be worthwhile? that is what we will determine next time, hero”

“I am a prisoner, but you, vault hunter? what are you? hunter, warrior, hero? no matter what name i use, you return to prove yourself time and time again. but prove it to whom, i wonder? perhaps you seek a greater audition”

“it is done and my masters have taken note. would you like to know what they told me right before they vanished? ‘beware the vault hunters, they will take your kind’s place’. now i am free, and you are chained. until next time, guardian”

“well done, but have they taken note? that is what I wonder.”

+ the entire thing about there being a Fallen Guardian we have to kill

+ how the entire thing of the trails are copies of the worlds we visited to open the Great Vault. either the eridians can see through time (TPS) or they built these recently

+how dark Maliwan is probably working together with the Guardians on Nekrotefeyo given the fact they’re working together in one of the trials

+oh and remember how i suggested Maruice’s ghostie goo (ectoplasm) is actually related to eridians and such? YEAH. turns out that was right.

+Nyriad, the unreliable narrator

+the fucking Forgetting

+how the eridians are NOT ACTUALLY GONE FOR GOOD

+the seraphs!!!

+how the guardians are all named after angels, sirens are tied to humanity’s religious imagery

+how tyreen literally only loosened the chains on the Destroyer and the destroyer is going to break free from pandora

+how animals and people like bloodwing, slag psychos, etc mutate due to the eridium on pandora

+the destroyer’s reaction to slag being injected into its eye is straight panic

+the vault monsters that are fleshy were probably science experiments by the Eridians to test eridium and/or the results of being locked in the vaults for ages

+humanity was probably created by the eridians as well (more on that later)

+the Watcher actually WANTS us to have more Vault Hunters, she warns us that war is coming. all we can assume right now is either the Watcher fucked up big time, or she WANTED all this to happen. More on that later.

+the guardians are preparing for war. the overseer seems especially salty about the cause of it.

+ graveward was killed at some point, so the guardians brought it back using the ships, so that they could use their souls to posses it (further proved by the loot: Grave, relic, and Ward, shield)

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

 alright holy fuck

that’s a lotta stuff to go over!!! Let’s do this thing.

Let’s start with the Eridians themselves

so. these bad boys. We never really knew much about them, but it was always kinda assumed they’ve been long gone bc of the destroyer, or just out of reach.

now that bl3 dropped we’re supposed to assume that they’re all officially dead bc of Nyriad/the Destroyer

and i am here to say that Nyriad is an unreliable fuckin narrator because she doesn’t know the whole story. in fact, she admits to not knowing everything!!

here’s what I actually think is going on, and yes, I believe 100% the eridians are shady motherfuckers who decided to play god:

the eridians are from a dimension that isn’t ours. we can assume this is a higher dimension, bc of all their weird space/time fuckery, especially the Vaults.

the eridians decided to do some science experiments. they make the vaults and use our dimension to store them and put all their experiments inside. they make guardians to guard their vaults, and they realize they can do better in the ‘making a fully conscious being’ department. they make humanity. they make sirens after experimenting with eridium. they decided to go big or go home, and they make giant monsters. after all that, they realize they fucked up, because there is one monster they cannot contain anymore, after all the shit they put it through

so the eridians realize they done fucked up and escape fully to our dimension, where they placed us and the guardians and all the science experiments they didn’t want to deal with at the moment. The Destroyer follows them

they land on nekrotefeyo, their ‘first landing’ in our dimension (hence the quote above). This, or the eridians had been in our dimension for a while now. Nyriad never says where the Eridians came from, just that they and humanity lived side-by-side, so it’s likely they’d been here for a bit, sending scientists back and forth, just doing their experiments all willy-nilly. And I would bet they created the Destroyer in that time frame.

“for their curiosity, they were rewarded with doom” i believe is a correct statement, but not in the way Nyriad thinks. I think the eridians created the destroyer to see if they could, to test the bounds of what was possible. and it backfired on them in the worst way.

Nyriad also says this, but I have a hard time believing her here

the most this is is speculation, because if none of the civilizations who met the Destroyer had nothing else to pass on, then humanity would not know of their existence. (I mean, she even says ‘SURELY it had different names’) Humanity has no record of other (intelligent) alien life in the universe, or their own civilizations being destroyed by the Destroyer*. It’s just the Eridians. 

*There is a reason for this, but let’s hold on for now.

So why tf do I think humanity was created by the Eridians? well, for one, I like the parallel to them having a god-complex. If they haven’t created humanity, then they definitely fucked with us to create Sirens. Sirens have a strong connection to Eridium and the Vaults (and other Sirens).

second, the murals in (most of) the vaults in bl3

show human-like figures hanging out with kids, and one touching something that seems oddly similar to a relic

like so

(on the left there)

there are also these really tall cloaked figures standing (t-posing) near the end of the mural

and most statues are depicted with robes on

a lot of the human figures in the mural are shown helping each other stand up, coming up from the ground like they’re being created, looking around (up at the sky at rays of light), and standing with a lot of eridian junk (there’s a vault symbol next to one). they’re also not shown to be wearing any sort of clothing, even tho extra steps were gone in to show the robed figures

it reminds me a lot of how a lot of religious texts describe humans as being molded from the earth or dirt or whathaveyou

long story short, it very much reminds of something like a creation myth, so i imagine humanity was, in fact, created by the eridians.

ESPECIALLY this smaller one reaching up to touch the relic

there’s no concrete proof for this, but its a hunch i have after studying this mural for a while. especially after Nyriad constantly questions why the Guardians were made to be on the brink of consciousness. humanity is Guardians 2, electric boogaloo. guardians were a mix of machine and bio goop, we are full bio goop. and that means we are curious, and have emotions, and are very naughty.

that or vice versa, eridians made humanity, realized we weren’t as subservient as they wanted and made the Guardians to fill that niche. Also, most importantly, the Guardians were literally made to be disposable. That’s their entire purpose. Their bodies will degrade, but then their souls will just eventually find another vessel. They’re trapped forever.

EITHER WAY

the Eridians created humanity and the guardians around the same time. enough that the guardians are likely vvvv salty about it.

humanity was made. Sirens came after that, through eridium experiments by the Eridians, explaining their connections to Eridium, as well as the other dimension (the one we are assuming Eridians are from) (think about the Lab Rats and Sirens and such)

so were the eridians preparing for something? war, maybe? possibly. they need firepower and obviously they wouldn’t sacrifice their own people when they have perfectly good constructs, so they’ll use their naughty meat slaves.

but the eridians need more than the sirens. they keep dying, and given the failsafe measures, its hard to keep track of them if one decides to let their powers go, despite the fact they added in, like, a siren gps for sirens to find other sirens and be drawn to them and shit

their big boy guardians, their constructs, aren’t doing enough to defeat their enemy

they start experimenting more with eridium. They learn it has the power to mutate things (mostly elementally, but also causes an increase in size, especially the longer/more they’re exposed to).

they create seraph crystals, condensed eridium, which mutate things at an increased rate. These become discarded eventually for reasons below

they begin finding other kinds of life and mutating the hell out of it using eridium/seraph crystals, in order to create their giant buttfuck squish monsters. These monsters are probably pissed the hell off bc they’re mutated and also probably being attacked by people. so they rampage, killing everything in their path.

the eridians need a way to store the big boys and also take them to the battlefields where they’ll annihilate the enemy, so they create the Traveler and the traveling Vault (which is why there was really nothing of substance in that Vault OKAY TAKE IT). Perhapeth the big flesh monsters mutate more due to being locked inside the Vaults and constantly exposed to eridium/whatever energy is in the other dimension.

Things are going well, and the big flesh monsters help turn the tide of war in favor of the Eridians, until the other party is completely wiped out by what they dubbed the Destroyer. So the eridians decide ‘well, we had our fun, time to put the monsters in their cages and forget about the seraph crystals’.

and most of the big boys, creation and mutation alike, are shoved in their Vaults, guarded by the Guardians so they can’t be released bc of naughty humans. except for one, notably the uncontrollable Destroyer. because it wiped out their enemies, now it wants more, with its insatiable hunger, so it turns its eyes on the Eridians and Nekrotafeyo

sort of explaining why the planet looks like it fucking exploded

the destroyer began to give it the SUCC

but there’s more about that planet

cuz the inside is all glowy and green and you totally know where this is going because i told you im pretty sure the eridians created humanity along with the guardians

i think this is the giant storage unit for all the souls, including the Guardian souls. humanity is depicted being pulled up from the ground in the Vault murals.

lemme explain here

I think nekrotafeyo is where the Guardian souls are stored, like one bigass computer. That’s also, we can assume, where the Eridians got the spark for humanity as well. 

around the game, when u ‘kill’ guardians, you can watch their sparks leave (they’re the red glowy things), they fly upwards and disappear. You can also see blue/green versions of these floating around and not doing anything, notably outside the Rampager’s Vault. 

I am curious if these color differences indicate a difference in wisp type (guardian v human) or if the red means they found another vessel and blue means they chillin. It is interesting to note that the Rampager has the ability to succ the wisps, so its possible its also related to the Destroyer. I mean, its way smaller, but it does IMMEDIATELY start wrecking shit as soon as it leaves the Vault.

anyway there’s more to this, because now we get to talk about ~ghosts~

if u didn’t heed my warning earlier, there are spoilers for guns love and tentacles past this point!! 

DOES THIS LOOK FAMILIAR TO YOU?????

THIS IS JUST HANGIN GOUT IN THE CORNER OF THE ROOM BTW

LITERALLY NEKROTAFEYO

and let’s not forget the Halloween event that showed ghosts are a v real thing in the borderlands and not just on carpenter planet

like super real. and the ‘hecktoplasm’ we get fuels a portal to heck. literally another dimension. that BY THE WAY is powered by a Maliwan device. that BY THE WAY is filled with Maliwan troops.

cuz remember on Nekrotafeyo where there are a bunch of Maliwan soldiers, but they’ve all got the DARK prefix to their name? you know how in the proving ground the dark maliwan troops are fighting side by side with a bunch of Guardians?

something fucky is afoot.

reminds me a lot of the terror effect

ANYWAY

i believe nekrotafeyo is where the eridian stored the sparks for both humans and guardians, that’s where they are coming from, and when nyriad questions how tf the guardians got that spark (stolen like fire of the gods), its because they’re slowly gaining sentience over time, probably relating to how many times they’ve been killed (returned to the core and then back again). because i 100% believe the eridians created the guardians just as an endless, permanent workforce, and the guardians that have been disposed of time and time again are starting to realize that and get SALTY. the reason i do not say that the guardians are gaining sentience with regards to how long they’ve been around is bc there’s such a huge difference between the intelligence of The Watcher and just a normal-ass Guardian that I have to assume their developing sentience has a different trigger.

anyway back to the eridians getting the succ from the destroyer. the eridians realize they can’t just run away from it back to their home dimension, maybe bc its tied to that dimension due to the vault mutations (i vaguely remember typhon mentioning that the destroyer is a dimensional horror) so they have to imprison it somehow. How do they do that? well it is fucking terrified of eridium (when you inject the eye of the Destroyer in TPS, it panics and freaks out), probably due to all the fucked up experiments they did on it, so let’s imprison it using that. 

And once we do that, we should probably get the FUCK outta dodge, bc these science experiments are getting c r a z y, let’s remove ourselves from the experiment and observe from beyond

so what do they do?

they get one of their sirens to operate a Machine they built that will send them back home. all of them, at once. we’re going home, fuckers. seeya. and obviously they will not tell humanity, because humanity will want to come with, like a lost puppy. and they will constantly question the other dimension and pester the eridians about it. humanity is annoying and the eridians have 1 big regret, im sure. 

they’re also leaving the Guardians to do their dirty work for them, keep the vaults closed so that humanity won’t open them and send the Eridian’s pissed off creations after them. Also explains why there are no Guardians for the Vault of the Warrior (is an Eridian construct) and why the Traveler had Guardians inside it but not on the outside (to keep it running). The only Vault that made me do a big think is the Vault of Elpis. But more on that later.

so they tell this siren that the machine is going to kill them all, and use their energy to power to machine (lol) to close the Destroyer in Pandora, giving a perfectly good super powered monkey severe anxiety. 

they also (apparently) do this ‘Forgetting’ thing, which Nyriad mentions, which makes humanity forget that we lived side-by-side with the Eridians and also everything about the Destroyer. which is so DUMB of the Eridians. 

because SERIOUSLY people, if you don’t want your idiot children opening something, the one thing you don’t do is make them FORGET WHAT IS INSIDE OF IT SO THEIR CURIOSITY GETS THE BETTER OF THEM WHEN WHAT’S INSIDE OF IT IS LITERALLY ‘HEY, YOU’RE ALL GONNA DIE’. literally pandora’s box. LITERALLY- that’s half the reason I think this is all just one big experiment to them. They don’t give a FUCK about us, actually. they just want to see what will happen. they named the fucking planet Pandora ffs.

like YEAH some people would probably try to open it, to try to kill the Destroyer. but guess WHAT FUCKLENUTS we could have had humans working to keep pandora sealed instead just your cryptic ass guardians. CURIOSITY IS A DANGEROUS THING

and listen. there’s a lot of reasons i believe the machine actually sent the eridians home. even if they actually are just morons and thought the Forgetting was the best thing to do for humanity (scoff)

fdgdsffssfgfsg

all-home

there’s more to this

what are we up to? i stopped writing this like 3 days ago and just came back to it

you guys know the whole story now. im not saying my whole entire backstory is fully correct (like, a lot of it is major speculation) but i do firmly believe these few points:

the eridians are from a higher dimension than our own, and came here for science, or to escape the destroyer

nekrotafeyo is named “first landing”

they have an obvious connection to another dimension thru vaults, eridium, and sirens

the eridians either created or experimented with humanity, eventually leading to Sirens

sirens have this connection to both eridium, vaults, and the other dimension

they have similar powers to some Guardians

on Elpis there are ‘pseudo-Sirens’ created upon exposure to chemical sludge near the Vault

Sirens probably are the result of very exact experimentation, meanwhile these fake Sirens are not

The Leech is able to create ‘Anointed’ who have Siren-like powers and turn to eridium when killed

In bl2, the Lab Rats can see the other dimension when phaselocked by Maya after they were experimented on with eridium by Hyperion

unlike other enemies who only see ‘blue’

every vault monster is the way it is because of the eridians doing shit, including the destroyer

the reason the rampager is so angry and begins destroying everything right away? it was mutated by the eridians/being locked in the Vault. It was stuck in there with a bunch of Guardians, probably either conducting more experiments or there as ‘prison guards’

the destroyer appears frightened of slag in TPS when you inject it, but it also gains power from it- pretty similar to Sirens, and if eridium caused these mutations it could explain the fear

eridium causes LOTS of mutations as we can see throughout the history of the borderlands games. i’ve written 2-3 long-ass posts about this now, i think y’all get the idea lol

terry, badass wildlife, slag/burning psychos, etc

we don’t know how long the destroyer/rampager/etc was exposed to eridium. We’ve only seen (relatively) small doses/exposure times

the eridians lied to Nyriad and are in their home dimension right now, probably laughing at us. or at least like ‘holy shit quick write this down’. this is probably all an experiment to them

I just have this FEELING

so sudden, and new

but really tho

The Overseer basically TELLS us that the Eridians are still out there somewhere

she calls them her masters, talks about how they left the ‘house’, then talks as though they can still see us in the present

Actually you know what, let’s talk all about the Overseer’s lines now because they’re dummy important

copy and pasting this because i forgot...

“vault hunter, I thought you might show up sooner or later. so naughty your species, so curious. the vault of vaults has been opened and IT has been released. prove your worth and I will reveal why the masters made me wait for you”

so IT is most likely the Destroyer. i have the firm belief that Tyreen just ‘slipped its chains’, as Nyriad puts it in her log right before the fight

like r u seriously telling me the eater of worlds is the size of a single story house lmao

NO

bigg

‘why the masters made me wait for you’ “MADE ME” I get the feeling she is here against her will, until her mission is completed

and that mission is to see which humans can pass the trials/the execute the trials

why? we’ll get to that. but she even hints that the reward may not be what we want.

“naughty humans have opened the vault of vaults but the masters will determine who is at fault. until next time, warrior”

so the second time she references her ‘masters’

Vault of Vaults is the vault of the destroyer. which is interesting to me. I guess it makes sense, is a big vault with other, tinier vaults on the surface.

I really wish we got an explanation as to what the Vault of the Architects was. might even explain the pyramid key ;-; fuckin pyramid key

so when i first heard this i thought there was some sorta ‘the masters will determine who is at fault’ rift between humans (the calypso twins or the vault hunters)

but now after learning more i realize this is probably between humans and guardians

are humans at fault for being naughty, or are the guardians for failing their only purpose?

i get the feeling the eridians will blame the guardians. the less favorite child :(

“long ago there was a brief spark, the first vault was opened, a light in the dark. a riddle, yes? perhaps it will unravel next time, hunter”

sooo im pretty bad with riddles

either this takes place long before our recollection of events, or this takes place around when typhon opened the first vault on promethea

what i think this means is possibly the beginning of Guardians gaining sentience

nyriad describes the smarter guardians as ones having a ‘spark’. i believe this is what the Overseer is referencing here- their gaining consciousness

THAT, orrrrr the guardians saw themselves fail at their only task and began to realize they could do more with their lives

failure breeds success, after all

“so, you’ve returned. persistent, yes. or stubborn? or both? are you so desperate to prove yourself?”

the differences between humanity and the guardians. humanity has strong desires/emotions, the guardians don’t

or, at least, they didn’t.

“we were created for one purpose by our masters- and we couldn’t even do that right (laughs). but don’t blame us! when a cog breaks, point your finger at the artificer, not the cog! are you a cog, Vault hunter, or an artificer? Or both? prove yourself worthy.”

lots to digest here

one purpose - to keep the Vaults closed

the guardians recognize they are only cogs in a machine, that they’re only tools, and it seems that they’re becoming bitter

‘point your finger at the artificer’ obviously blame the Eridians, not the guardians

‘are you a cog... or an artificer. or both?” i think is very important. i think this is another hint that humanity was created by the eridians

‘or an artificer, or both’ showing that humanity can step out from the shadow of whatever the eridians planned for them and make their own choices/destinies. the guardians can’t. ... yet.

“pity us not, though the world has been broken. those who sleep will soon be awoken. not long now, seeker.”

‘though the world has been broken’ - either bc the Eridians left them/the Vaults have been opened

more importantly “those who sleep will soon be awoken”

what i think this means, personally:

Graveward is a vault monster that appeared deceased (already killed or just died of natural causes) when we got there

but it was combined with a bunch of ship parts

this is confirmed both by the art book and by just LOOKING AT HIM lmao

these ship parts are likely a way to resurrect him by allowing the guardians to posses him

guardians are biomechanical constructs, so it makes sense that they would begin scavenging ship parts from eden-6 to fit to graveward

so they can have a stronger body to pilot

something had to be pulling those ships in to crash

also, this means BALEX didn’t do anything wrong lol

when you get to the vault, tannis is confused, because there should be a vault monster, but there’s only guardians

that is, until you kill Grave and Ward

they (and a bunch of other Guardian souls) then possess Graveward, bringing him to life- or, awakening him

what i think this means: the guardians are going to start possessing more and more stuff

why this means ‘those who sleep will soon be awoken’ possibly vault monsters who are killed aren’t actually killed, they’re just put in a sleeping state and the guardians will be using their tech to control them with guardian souls

the guardians stuck in that big ol computy machine somewhere (god pls let it be nekrotefeyo) are ‘sleeping’ and by taking control of those vault monsties, they will be able to wake up and pilot their own bodies

that is, there are too many souls, too little bodies, so they need more vessels

tl;dr: MORE GUARDIANS

also can we talk about how Sirens can absorb guardian souls pls?? bc what the FUCK tannis

ugh how fuckin’ creepy would it be if the eridians made the fleshy Vault Monsters and used the guardian souls to puppeteer them

seriously though, Tannis absorbed a bunch of Guardian souls why are we not talking about this

how was that not an important plot point

is tannis going to be okay?? i love tannis. please don’t hurt her. are guardian souls just pure energy?? what does it mean??? GEARBOX-

“the eridians were our masters, but we failed them. they gave the order then silence. they VANISHED. such is our fate, Vault Hunter, server to a master who has left the house so long ago. prove to me that you deserve an introduction.”

i think its really important that the Overseer doesn’t say the Eridians are DEAD. instead, she says they just ‘vanished’ or ‘left the house’

i think this further proves they’re still out there somewhere. probably watching over us like creeps

literally from the new DLC... come on. COME ONNNN

also confirmation the eridians are the ‘masters’ the Overseer is referring to all the time

side note i have the game sitting open on my other screen and wainwright just asked someone to drink him under the table what the f-

it does sound like they’ve been forgotten as even servants to the Eridians because she specifically says “were” and “but we failed them” probably meaning the Eridians were their masters UNTIL the guardians failed to keep the Great Vault from being opened

though i do think “prove to me that you deserve an introduction” is interesting

like do we not deserve one yet? well, not until we complete the trials she’s supposed to test us with

“we were supposed to guard the Great Jail. but no quarter for servants who fail. but servant, that is not quite right. ‘Prisoner’. that is what i am. Until next time, adventurer.”

kinda repeating what we learned from the above quote

‘Great Jail’ they put the Destroyer in evil baby jail for his crimes

no quarter for servants who fail - yeah the eridians are like ‘wow you guys suck, fuck you guys’

‘prisoner, that is what i am’. the guardians are all stuck in their roles. they’re trapped here

“a final chance to prove yourself. but will your reward be what you desire? a prisoner in a cell staring out at the fathoms of a sleeping universe. after a time, how would you know if you were prisoner or master? consider this while you prove yourself one last time.”

‘will your reward be what you desire’? we learn that the reward is actually being a guardian, so... it’s not great, if our deductions hold any water

‘a prisoner in a cell staring out at the fathoms of a sleeping universe’ - what the Overseer probably sees her position as guardian of the trials as a prisoner- same with all the other guardians stuck watching over the Vaults

i do also think this may be in reference to the fact she’s stuck in this dimension with us while the eridians ran away

“I am a prisoner, but you, vault hunter? what are you? hunter, warrior, hero? no matter what name i use, you return to prove yourself time and time again. but prove it to whom, i wonder? perhaps you seek a greater audition”

‘hunter, warrior, hero’ note she calls us by a bunch of titles throughout her greetings/goodbyes. but we are not satisfied by any of them

clearly we’re not proving ourselves to HER, since she questions who we are trying to prove it to

‘greater audition’ is likely in front of the ‘masters’ who are the eridians. remember, we have to prove to her first that we are worthy of an audience

“it is done and my masters have taken note. would you like to know what they told me right before they vanished? ‘beware the vault hunters, they will take your kind’s place’. now i am free, and you are chained. until next time, guardian

the eridians know what we’ve done- now humanity takes the place of the guardians

“beware the Vault Hunters, they will take your kind’s place” seems like a pretty fucked up thing to say

but also, more proof the Eridians knew what the FUCK was up, kyle

humanity is just guardians 2: electric boogaloo

the trails were ultimately a test to see if we were up to the task

and now that humanity (or, at least, the Vault Hunters) has taken the place of the normal Guardians, the others are free to do... something

what... i wonder.

i do think it is interesting that the Overseer is pretty morally gray here. like, she’s trapped here to oversee the trials for however long the Eridians have been gone, to see if humans are truly the successors to the Guardians

she obviously doesn’t want to be here, calling herself a prisoner

she even warns us that the reward won’t be something we want- i imagine she might not exactly be able to tell us WHY we will not like it, she is being watched by her masters (the Eridians)

like, i get WHY she doesn’t tell us what’s going to happen. if i were trapped there, I’d do the same thing

but here’s the thing

since we are (we assume) fully squishy and not mechanical in any way, we still have our free will (unlike, we can assume, the guardians)

so we’re not literally trapped in one job forever- we can choose whatever we want to do

so WHAT exactly do i think the guardians are going to do? well, they’ve got an entire army’s worth of souls, they’re resurrecting dead Vault Monsters, and they can modify their bodies now to become more weapon-like

what do I think is happening? The Guardians are preparing for war with the Eridians- they want to destroy their creators, and with us becoming the new guardians, there’s this loophole that allows the old Guardians to finally, FINALLY do whatever they want

(Is Fl4k supposed to be foreshadowing for this? Yeah, I believe they are!!)

+ also before i forget: the entire thing about there being a literal Fallen Guardian we have to kill

i believe this has to do with the fact when you kill it, it drops money. since we can assume the trials are crafted/designed by the Eridians, we can assume the Fallen Guardians are apart of that design as well. It drops money, which probably shows how it’s become corrupted compared to the other guardians. it has desires (collecting wealth). Since the Guardians are inspired by angels (especially in TPS), it’s probably supposed to be a direct callback to that

alright so I think you all are probably like CRUDDY THE PRE-SEQUEL

and like, yeah, that’s what i’ve been building up to the whole time

The Watcher!!!

“War is coming, and you’re going to need all the Vault Hunters you can get”

Let’s just look at the Watcher’s actions throughout TPS and Tales (well, her inactions in Tales, as well as 3)

In tps, the Watcher brings Zarpedon to the Vault, allows her to see the future, and creates the Lost Legion

so we all assume that yes, she’s trying to stop the Elpis Vault (and, by extension, Pandora) from being opened

but here is the thing. the lil thing. the BIG thing actually.

she stops us from killing zarps in the BEGINNING of the game

in the middle-ish when we kill zarp for realsies, she is NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. Zarp lets Jack know where the Vault actually is and little miss alien face IS NOWHERE AROUND

when you are inside eleseer, lilith mentions that the Guardians there actually let her through, like they WANTED her to be there

now let’s remember Lilith’s actions in tps (and remember that she is IN NO WAY at fault here. jack is a dickbag. you try to tell me this is lily’s fault and i’ll kick your shins into your asshole)

while jack is seeing the future about the Vault of the Warrior, she punches the treasure of Eleseer into his face. this cuts off the vision, so unlike Zarps all Jack sees is that he opens the Vault of the Warrior. Nothing about the Destroyer destroying everything.

and still, the Watcher is nowhere to be found.

So Jack opens the Vault of the Warrior, Lilith learns she can activate the Vault Map, the events of Tales happens, and Lilith has Athena tied up and is about to shoot her

WHEN FINALLY

FUCKING. FINALLY.

THE WATCHER SHOWS UP

and tells us that ‘we’re going to need all the vault hunters we can get’

now let’s TAKE A STEP BACK HERE

obviously. OBVIOUSLY.

this is pretty backwards from what the Guardians are actually meant to do: keep the Vaults closed. If she wanted us to NOT open the Vault of the Destroyer, she probably should’ve just come right out and told us what’s up. 

no, I think she 100% wanted the events to happen in the way they did.

Because remember, after this, SHE NEVER SHOWS UP AGAIN!!!

not in tales, where she could have stopped the Vault of the Traveler from opening (in fact she could have let Athena die and lowered the team’s chances of defeating the Vault Monster with whatever canon choices there are), not in 3 when she could have prevented the twins from doing any number of things they did, not to give advice to lily on sanc-iii, not during Commander Lily (even though she’s mentioned briefly) she did FUCK ALL

she did J A C K S H I T

it’s because she wanted this to happen. she WANTS the vaults open.

why? well, see above. The Guardians want the Vault Monsters all killed so they can resurrect them as big boy guardians

and that war she’s talking about? it wasn’t the war in bl3. That’s why she never shows her face. she’s talking about war with the Eridians. 

Which is probably bl4.

alright im tired. eridians bad. guardians okay-ish. they might try to kill us all and use our bodies as vessels, who knows.

anywaY this was all an elaborate plan for me to explain the backstory of h2o au and why magic is real in the borderlands universe and why they decide to FIGHT- [gets dragged off computer by a cane]

wow this is a 36 page document, why can’t i be this enthusiastic about school??

#borderlands #bl3 #lmao

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales 87 Review: A Whale of A Bad Time (Catch as Cash Can Part 2)

A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM! Yup come with me under the cut as I cover one of the most infamous moments of all Ducktales.. and the absolutely bonkers episode attached involving robot ice cream trucks, giant robotic whales, Optimus Prime as a navy admiral, and semen.. er seaman Donald Duck!  All of this and more commissioned by @weirdkev27​ is waiting under the ocean and under the cut! Come aboard!

So yeah....

And not the adventure time or regular show or what have you kind of intetionally weird I mean all the elements just sort of conjeal into a mess of poor decisions in and out of universes, robotic whales and the most insane scheme to get a noble peace prize of all time. If that and the intro didn’t hook you I don’t know what will, let’s do this. 

PREVIOUSLY ON DUCKTALES:

Okay maybe not THAT previously... guess I gotta do this myself. *Grumble grumble* : Last time we met a steoyptical-ish foreign leader give Scrooge and Glomgold a deadline to literally weigh their fortunes in his country at ten days, with Glomgold’s sending the Beagle Boys after Scrooge in an attempt to cheat.. and springing from jail in a giant blimp shaped like a cow because your guess is as good as mine. Scrooge naturally won and here we are. As said last time, these episodes were still basically written as done in ones, able to be digested on their own, just with the overall framework of the four parter, in this case Scrooge and Glomgold’s contest, tieing it together. So with that out of the way. 

We open as Duckburg is hit with a heatwave. 

No that’s Heat Wave.. and besides he works out of central city, not Duckberg silly.. wherever those images come from.. me I guess? I dunno. Point is the boys are sweaty and uncomfortable, just like me 90 percent of the time, and decide to cool off by visiting Scrooge’s new ice cream factory for free samples. We’re only about a minute, and a recap about the contest on the news, in and already the characters this episode are acting kind of dumb.. get used to it. One of Scrooge’s primary, most consistent, most iron clad character traits is he does NOT give away something for nothing. Even for Charity he’ll often try and pench pennies and how much he donates, and in older harsher comics like Carl Barks famous “A Christmas For Shacktown” good luck getting him to donate any money to anyone else AT ALL. If he DOES give someone a gift, it’s usually with an alterior motive or some sort of scheme brewing, with Donald or the Nephews or all four rightly questioning him. The idea any factory of any product of his would give out samples unless he got something out of doint so or that they wouldn’t be tiny or use flavors that don’t sell or some cost cutting measure like that is nuts and while it’s not out of the boys characters to be stupid it is a bit for them to just blindly think he’d be okay with this.  Their soon distracted by other matters once they arrive though as the Guard won’t let them in despite being Huey, Dewey and Louie as much like bill and ted their a package deal, and yes they do a team pose and yes.. it’s actually pretty adorable. Again nepotism has never been a trait of scrooges either boys, why would he start now? They try flagging down one of his ice cream  trucks but they totally ignore him. and seem to be driving automatically... they also look human which... yeah. Just.. yeah. The boys are naturally suspicious and plan to ask scrooge at Dinner. This fails because Scrooge isn’t coming and Beakly refuses to let them disturb him on his orders.. and refused to let Webby eat till everyone’s at the table. I’ll come back to Beakly in a second, and there will be blood dumpster. 

The boys sleep that night, but are woken up by the ice cream trucks and wondering why the hell their running at night... which yeah is weird and was a bad part of the plan. We’ll get to why that plan’s a bit totally fucked in a second though as the boys assume someone is doing something shady with scrooge’s company and pull a Marty McFly, attaching their skateboards to a bumper and then hopping onto one of the trucks. And given that Magica, the Beagle Boys and Flintheart have all gone up at scrooge several times at this point judging by the episode guides, not to mention all the one off thieves, scumbags, con artists and warlords they’ve fought, you honestly can’t blame them for being super suspicious. 

Their suspcions of this being some kind of elaborate theft are semeingly confirmed when instead of , and this is really the flavor they use “Bubble Gum Pistachio Fudge” they find Scrooge’s money. And let’s just take a sec to .. unpack that flavor as none of those go together. I mean in a three scoop cone or bowl maybe, but in the same ice cream your just throwing shit together at that point. And the flavor isn’t outlandish enough to really be a good joke.

 I’ts just three flavors jammed together that don’t belong. It’s not like the, ironically in the same year, 87 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s love for weird pizza toppings. That.. actually comes off as a joke. It didn’t always land in the episodes i’d seen but I get what their going for. Thanks to this infographic I know they put ALL of this on pizza at some point, omitting actual pizza toppings for obvious reasons: Granola, Licorice, Fudge, Marshmallows, Clams, Peanut Butter, Avacado (Which didn’t sound bad in theory but once I thought about it I winced), Pickles, Asparagus, Butterscotch, Onions (Yes I know this is an actual regular pizza topping but no just.. no.. everyone hones in on anchovies, which i’ve never had but no.. onions are the real scourge of the pizza world), Toast, Tea (okay that one actually shocked me), Clam Sauce, Chocolate Sprinkles, Jelly Beans, Yogurt, Coconut, Strawberries, Oatmeal, Grape Jelly, Gucamole, Tuna, Popcorn, Sardines, Whipped Cream, Bannans and Goulash. The point i’m making is it’s not hard to come up with even a weak wacky flavor of something and it was  a weird line to just utterly botch but they somehow did it. Also that the Teenage Mutant Turtles have serious issues to address. I mean onions, really? onions? Guys you can do better... onions are a next mutation topping!

One Tangent Later, the boys and the trucks arrive at the docks where they see the money filled ice cream trucks loading onto a boat and a shadowy mystery man. Who could it be? My money is on

But my money is always on Crab People. It’s likely why i’m poor. But the boys chuck a bag of cash at him, then Louie... prepares to break his legs with a crowbar?

Seriously the truck was automated and they came straight form home. he had to have brought that with him. Whelp at least Louie has a unique character trait: He likes to make people bleed. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a GOOD thing for a 8-10 year old to want to do but it’s better than nothing. Before Louie can get up to a bit of the ultra violence, Huey finds out it’s Scrooge who explains himself: Naturally the sudden new Ice Cream Factory he built in days right next to the bin is a front, and the trucks are his own, a stealthy way to outfox glomgold. While the news said he was transporting the loot by air, he’s doing it by sea stealthily to prevent glomgold from attacking it. Which given he hasn’t a giant cow Zepplin, fair enough. 

The rest of this though is ludicrously overcomplicated: First off it’s not REMOTELY stealthy to build a giant fake factory next to your bin, days before you transport your cash, something so obvious i’m suprised Glomgold dind’t just come to the factory himself and set some explosives. Second while Robot Drivers isn’t a bad idea, Glomgold has many spies with many eyes, it’s a BIG gamble to both have active trucks around, especially at night carrying large sums of cash. I mean what if the police stopped them? Sure Scrooge could get his money back legally, but Flintheart might get to it first or bribe some cops first. Or some dirty cops might take it for themselves. It’s also WEIRDLY costly for someone as spiendthrift as Scrooge, I mean while he owns the land for the factory he had to buy a ton of trucks, pay for gyro’s, i’m assuming Gyro’s at least, material to make the robots, and pay for the guard to keep people out as well as presumibly either well paid workers or more robots inside to get the money into the trucks. It’s just hilariously overcomplicated and while not an intentional joke clearly got a laugh out of me as it just makes no logical sense for scrooge’s character and he’s done similar ideas for far less money in the comics. It’s a carl barks style “hide the money bin’s cash” plot, funnled through bloodshot eyes of someone having done a small mountain of cocaine to get this script done on time and I love it for that. The boys applaud their uncle for his wacky scheme while a mysteroius periscope watches them from a distance. 

The Next Morning Beakly is still awful as despite everyone being there, she now refuses to let Webby eat till everyone’s settled. And NOW we can talk about 87 Beakly. I don’t like her. She’s had one or two moments in the episodes I watched, but outside of that she’s a bland character who mostly fusses over the boys and webby, worries things are too dangerous, or is there for a weak joke. She’s just not all that intresting, and while i’ll grant the 87 Ducktales cast isn’t the deepest set of characters and the boys can be annoying depending on the episode.. their at least INTRESTING. The boys are clever, rambunctions and curious, Webby has all of that and an underlying swetness that while cloying at times is mostly just really endearing, Launchpad is a klutz and a crash magnet but means well and keeps trying and genuinely is a good scoutleader and person, and Scrooge despite his rough edges is a hardscrabbled adventuerer. The rest of the main cast here at least has a drive and character to them that makes the stories work when their at their best. Beakly is just kinda.. there. Why I also go into this is because 87 Webby gets a lot of shit.. and she really dosen’t deserve it. Yes she’s clearly a studio executives idea of what a little girl should like and that’s bad. And yes she got kidnapped a bunch.. but so did everyone else. But she makes up for that by being the heart of the team, offering love and empathy to all of them, easily bonding with varous animals and people they meet, and genuinely offering a naive but optimistic worldview that nicely contrasts with scrooge and the boys understandable cyncism. And she CAN handle herself more often than not. Wheras frank and co basically took almost everything about beakly and started over with Webby they simply tweaked her for the times: Made her about the same age if not older than the triplets so their equals, took away the triplet’s outdated and utterly loathsome sexisim, and added badassery and intellegence to her already admirable emotional skills and naive optimism, along with some boundless energy on top.They took a decent character and made her an amazing one.  With Beakly.. they took a dodering, easily frightned old lady whose overly proper and stuffy and turned her into a taciturn, snarky, badass former secret agent whose the sanest person in the mansion and when she IS wrong, will not only admit it but usually had some good reason for it. She also goes from being mostly deferent to scrooge to one of his few equals, to the point that the “87 Cent Solution!” lampshades the fact that if they’d called her the episode would’ve been over, as she’s , outside of a few exceptions the one person he listens to. She’s a throughly likeable, throughly complex character and one i’m glad their doing more with this season while I really hope I don’t see the original her more than I have to.  Okay with that rant done for this and any future retro ducktales reviews, we can get to the reason your all here and Kev comissioned me to do all 4 of these episodes: You’ve seen it on youtube, you’ve seen it in “Let’s get Dangerous”, you’ve seen it in dreams, ladies, gentleman and others, A. SEA. MONSTER. ATE. MY. ICE. CREAM. 

As the family sits for pancakes, Wippleman, Scrooge’s accountant and what I can only assume is this universe’s version of WWE manager Harvey Wippleman, comes in and has some bad news for Scrooge: A Sea Monster of some kind sunk one of his ships.. but the good news it was only Ice Cream. Knowing what it really was Scrooge goes absolute APE shit and procedes to hop around the table going absolutely insane, destroying everyone’s breakfast, with poor webby bemoaning she’ll never get to eat, Beakly remarking “it must’ve been some ice cream’ which isnt’ a bad line, Huey explaning what’s up with the weirdly delivered “It was half his fort-une!” and the boys finally restraining Scrooge with an impromptu tablecloth straightjacket, which calms him down and he hops off to get his money back. Wether you’ve seen the scene for yourself and ESPECIALLY if somehow you haven’t, it’s right here if you want to take another look. 

This scene is not only the most remembered part of the special, and easily the most beloved, it’s one of the best scenes in all of Ducktales 87 and easily one of the funniest across duck canon. Everything just clicks: The concept, the animation showing off just how manic scrooge is, how he never does the same move twice, how rather than looping it Alan Young very clearly said the word a bunch of times each time with a different more manic and uniquely hilarious delivery, Beakly’s deadpan reaction, and the boys vain attempts to restrain him before finally succeeding. Everything about this works and in an otherwise just really off center episode, this sparkling gem of a scene stands out. I waited till now to talk about Alan Young’s scrooge and honestly the man defined the roll for a reason: he can do a dramatic or emotional delivery just as effortlessly as a comic bit like this, and plays the character with the sternness and stubbornness expected. He got the character perfectly and it’s unsurprising Frank and Matt wanted him to reprise the roll and he only didn’t because he sadly passed on, though I will say David Tenant is a perfect replacement. Though even HE couldn’t do the Sea Monster Ate My Ice Cream bit as well as Alan, as his felt a bit more stilted and was clearly looped, but really I don’t think anyone could top him at this. It’s his shining moment as the character and he earned it square. 

So getting back to the ten car pileup that is the rest of this episode, the boys and Scrooge head under the sea, doot doot doot, to find his ship. But while under water they instead find the navy who’ve quarantined the ship.. yet aren’t wearing face masks inside their little suits. How odd. Guess the giant glass dome and giant ocean of water between them and the ship helps but still, you can’t be too careful.  Point is both sides are being kind of douchey: The Naval Guards, rather than direct Scrooge to their superior to PROVE it’s his vessel and ask questions to him directly since their aircraft carrier soon turns out not to be far from here just tell him he can’t pass and Scrooge is as bill gerent as you’d expect. I’m not saying people aren’t this dumb in real life, just google any video of a karen of any gender throwing a giant tantrum in a store over masks, i’m just saying i’td be nice to move the plot along without unnecessary cul de sacs.  The boys however naturally have a way around this and sneak in with scrooge on the underside of a sea turtle. It’s a genuinely clever tactic. They find the ship with a large bite out of it.. and the Navy then swoop in to take them in. 

On the ship Scrooge continues to not help his case and pulls a classic old white guy and demands to see their superior. Or white person in particular really. Point is he throws a strop on their way to what could easily be a trip to the brig with his behavior and possible criminal charges, while the boys muse that this is Donald’s ship. For the uninitiated, the in-series reason Donald left the boys for this series was he was called back to the Navy, and thus left the boys with Scrooge. Out of series it was an executive mandate: As Tad Stones, future creator of Darkwing Duck and story editor for Ducktales 87, explained, and I found out about this via looper, Disney was nervous about having one of their biggest characters overexposed by having him as part of 65 episode tv show. This was combined with the fact they were worried Donald’s voice would make stories confusing.  I also believe, if with no proof there was at third reason: Tony Anselmo had just started as Donald Duck, taking over from the late great Clarence Nash at Nash’s request after Nash died in 85, and they likely feared putting Tony through such a ringer this soon might sour audiences on him before audiences had gotten used to the new voice actor. So with all this Donald was kept to the occasional guest roll, though I will say while there have been complaints about Donald’s voice on this show I have no issue with it. It’s not as good as the reboot.. but the reboot also comes after Tony’s been playing the roll for over 30 years and is just as iconic as his predecessor in the roll at this point versus two years after his mentor died and he picked up his sword.. or squawky duck voice in this case. 

Scrooge is escorted to Admiral Grimitz, the head of this aircraft carrier whose showed up in other Donald episodes, specifically his segment of the Treasure of the Golden Suns series opener. He’s the gruff but mostly fair head of the ship and is voiced by, of all the va’s possible, Peter “Optimus Prime” Cullen, using a voice that is DIFFRENT but not by much. It’s hard not to be distracted by it. The Admiral waves scrooge off from his entirely justified fear the Army stole his money, but refuses to give any details since i’ts classified. Scrooge angrily.. decides to do the next shipment anyway and tells them to stay out of it instead of calling the president like he threatened to get some answers. Or threaten to pull funding for his military contracts. I know Scrooge never would, but they don’t know that. It’s just.. odd to see scrooge give up and it would’ve made more sense if the Admiral threatened legal action first or something that would get him to back off.  The Admiral then brings in Donald, and gives him the truth: Their own scientist, Dr. Bluebottle, stole an experimental sub shaped like a whale and stole the money for reasons they don’t know. So since he can go undercover easily, he sends Donald to go with scrooge and slaps a transmitter on him so they can track him. Donald also does some slapstick. That’s my boy. And yes it was a very nice surprise to see him again since i’d forgot he was in this episode. Especially since aside from “The Trickining!” he hasn’t been in any episodes since Ducktales came back. Justifably though as none of those NEEDED him and the show’s massively improved from it’s “donald might as not well exist” days of season 1, I just miss him is all and it’s nice to see some form of him again.  And this is where the episode kinda lost me, as this scheme, while not really out of the bounds of the reality, just.. feels like it overcomplicates the plot for the sake of padding. I mean I buy the Government going iwth a far more complex plan to cover their own asses.. but it would’ve made more sense from a plot standpoint to have it go this way: The Admiral is honest with Scrooge, tells him about bluebottle.. and threatens him into helping them by pointing out he broke into a federal quarantine and defined naval orders and could be brought up on charges, and if he tired telling anyone about Bluebottle could likewise be tried for leaking federal secrets. That way instead of using an unknowing scrooge as bait he goes into the situation KNOWING he’s probably going to get captured and while grumbly about it uses it to his advantage. Donald could still plausibly be sent along as naval lisaon/as a seemingly nice act/to have the bug to track the sub. Instead it just feels like they added an extra uncessary step to things to pad the episode more. I mean if you needed to do that just add more of the sea monster or give launchpad a cameo. He’s been missing for days at this point. 

So Scrooge and family, which naturally includes Webby and Beakly even if I don’t like classic bleakly she’s still family, head out with the second half of his fortune which makes next to no sense when he has days left in the concept and you know, half is missing, but whatever. Naturally the obvious happens and we meet the famous Sea Monster.. which actually looks neat.. it’s drawn like your standard cartoony killer whale but has bits of indents much like a sub would to show it’s not entirely a beast. It’s a nice bit of design work. The whale eats the cash and Donald and Scrooge but the navy pick up the boys, webby and beakly.  Donald let’s things slip on the sub, while back at the carrier the good Admiral explains the rest and my other issues with the plot aside this scene is a good bit of exploition as it explains some obvious questions away cleverly, something this plot could’ve used more of frankly but it’s refreshing to get at least a little: The reason they don’t just attack the sub en masse, besides it being you know incredibly valuable is that it’s made to be torpedo resistant, it’s sonar resitant so they can’t track it easily, and it’s faster than any ship. After all it was made to be a super weapon, so naturally the carriers standard barrage of navy vehicles can’t match it. However again to the episodes credit the tracker is actually vitally important, as it allows them to see the ship and where it is, so they can attack.. though right now their holding off on it since a crewman and a civilian are on board but if it comes down to it they’ll have no choice. I also gotta admit..t his concept is pretty cool. Kind of ridiculous? Sure but a super sub shaped like a whale that can still bite like one and outrun and outlast any other sea vehicle? It’s undoubtly awesome and a point in this episodes favor.  But now we get to most gloriously insane and convoluted part of the episode.. yes NOW we do. Donald and Scrooge naturally sneak around the ship, and find Dr. Bluebottle at his controls, talking to Flintheart on a video monitor. Turns out, to no one’s surprised, Flintheart subcontracted out his plans to Bluebottle and in exchange for keeping the money under the ocean till the contest, Glomgold is going to make sure he gets the Nobel Prize, and covers on all the magazines.  Okay at first I genuinely thought this plan made no sense.. until I realized it does, but ONLY for Glomgold. Bluebottle comes off as the smartest moron that’s ever lived for agreeing to any of this. But I have to give Glommy this the plan works out great for him: He convinces an already Rogue scientist to steal scrooge’s money, which prevents Scrooge from finding out what’s going on as he, correctly, guessed the government would cover this up because of course they did. He then correctly figured either the government would work with scrooge to trap bluebottle or they’d just use scrooge as bait anyway without a formal agreement, thus netting him scrooge’s entire fortune. He knows bluebottle won’t take it up because he gave bluebottle a bribe specifically for him and the only thing he wants, and even if he does take the money, Glomgold has more and Bluebottle could still remotely blow up the sub or something. And if he can’t the Navy would have to hold the sub, and money included , as evidence for the trial. And even if Bluebottle DOES rat him out, Glomgold could easily bury the evidence. The only way glomgold gets caught is if Bluebottle recorded their video chats or if scrooge saw them talking.. which he did, but given the two are direct competitors his testimony is dubious at best as is donald’s. So basically Flintheart almost certainly wins no matter what, and Bluebottle takes the fall no matter what. It does make Bluebottle comeff as a massive moron for not thinking of this, but props to glomgold.  Also yeah.. it’s clear to me at this point that if he hasn’t said it somewhere Frank clearly did the same thing he did with Gyro here with Flintheart: Take one accidental trait from the original (Glomgold’s penchant for overly complicated schemes and Gyro’s tendency to make robots that go rogue.) and make it a part of their personality instead of just a coincidence and turn it up to 11 for hilarity.. which worked in both cases. I genuinely thought this Flintheart was saner but no he’s just less interesting.  So Bluebottle gets an intruder alert.. and turns around to find Scrooge and Donald. Who rather than just whap the guy on the head while his back is turned, just stood there to confront him directly. 

Look this review is running long and is behind, I don’t have more time to marvel over how plot conveniently stupid they are being right now. A fight ensues with blue bottles inventions till Donald threatens to pull a big lever. I’ts thankfully not the self destruct lever like Donald thinks or Bluebottle’s equivlent of the blow up the engine button because he’s clearly just that smart, but a lever to dump all the gold.. which isn’t a terrible idea for once as if the ship gets stalled it can float up, as we’ll naturally see as there was no way they weren’t going to pull this chekov’s lever at some point. Scrooge stops him, Bluebottle uses gadgets to tie both up and finds out about the bug , as that’s why the miltary have been able to attack him which happened but I didn’t get to becuse of all the stupid. Bluebottle snuffs it out and then fully assaults the aircraft carrier, and things look grim. But Scrooge and Donald aren’t put down that easily and escape and scrooge pulls a donald and just starts breaking shit and breaks the sub.  Now with the sub plumiting, and Bluebottle bragging that only he can fix it as the sub will just keep sinking into the ocean’s depths.. and that only it’s design has kept compression from crushing them to death. But Scrooge has another solution and a suprisingly, and badassingly self sacrifical one: He dumps the money into the marinara trench, nice pun, and thus the whale floats up, Bluebottle is arrested, and Glomgold... still wins for now as Scrooge still has to get his fortune out, but Scrooge figures Gyro can help with that. We get an everybody laughs ending and we’re out. 

Final Thoughts: This one is a mess. While it has a great moment here or there, Donald and Tony as him are fantastic as they are now, and of course A Sea Monster Ate My Ice Cream! is an utterly classic scene and an utter joy to watch. The attached episode is just a mess structurally, if still a fun watch. Yes despite my bitching about it the sheer slapped together nature of it means it’s fun to pick apart and make fun of, so it’s not unwatchable. I’ve seen worse episodes of this very show, and worse episodes of tv. But as an old friend would say.

Not a terrible sit, but it easily could’ve been better. I’m also getting tired of scrooge being enitrely usless and just throwing up his hands at times. Stop that he’s better than that. With this one THANKFULLY AND FINALLY out of the way, next up is Aqua Ducks....... 

Oh god. Well if you want to see the next one follow me. If there’s an episode of any animated show you’d like to see me cover classic ducktales, modern ducktales, disney in general, etc, etc, just send me a PM and you can comission a review. 5 bucks for one episode, 15 for a movie and 5 bucks off one episode when you order three or more like say a multiparter like this. Until then say safe, check your house for Busey’s and hopefully we’ll meet again. 

#ducktales #scrooge mcduck #donald duck #bentina beakley #webbigail vanderquack #huey dewey and louie #flintheart glomgold #reviews #review

[f-nodragonart]

So, what's your thoughts on magic being mutagenic, with some creatures having developed a psychic link to it and being able to manipulate it, the most important consequence of that being that they are able to interbreed even with relatively large differences in DNA as the young subconsciously use their magic to smooth over most things that would lead to their death? (continued)

Sort of like a weird symbiotic relationship or like early life on earth adapted to oxygen? I thought that, if used consistently (Magic plays a big role overall; plants/animals containing magic are dangerous to the creatures that don’t, higher cancer rates, too much/unfamiliar magic leading to adverse effects not entirely unlike radiation poisoning) it may be a neat way to work with the large differences between dragons shown in some stories.

I’d imagine that if there are large differences it would still result in somewhat higher infant mortality due to genetic issues, but I think it could serve to at least make it somewhat reasonable in-universe.

not a bad idea! though for clarification: are you thinking of magic being an outside force (like a high concentration in an area or other creature) that CAUSES mutations in nearby organisms (including the ability to utilize magic itself), or an inner ability CAUSED BY the random mutation of an organism’s DNA during development? or some combination of both? each scenario leads to slightly different results, but either are viable options if u play ur cards right

in terms of using mutagenic magic to explain away large evolutionary differences b/t dragons, that would depend a lot on how the genetics/evolution of ur world function, exactly what traits are being bypassed, and how game-breaking the magic is. for example, producing offspring b/t a hexapod and a tetrapod would be impossible under Earth genetic constraints for various reasons– it’s just one of our hard-set rules. but that doesn’t mean a different world w/ different evolutionary history couldn’t have coded limbs in a different manner that could make them a bit easier to shift around the genetic code. given that, the magic needed to bypass Earth’s evolutionary rules would have to be PROFOUNDLY powerful (to the point that I’d reckon any offspring would have like a 5% chance of survival at best), vs. the magic of a different planet w/ different evolutionary rules, where the magic wouldn’t need to be quite so powerful to make those kinda changes

-Mod Spiral

#ask #lunafowler #magic #mod spiral #genetics

[fate-hates-faraday]

So uh I remembered my vague ideas for a GF AU still existed and dug up the coversation I had with @honeygemtrashbag

Though, currently, pondering the idea of Deceit, instead of being a brother to Patton, would be the Shapeshifter (albeit with a far different and less evil moral compass).

(Transcript below Read More)

Levi Dinn10/03/2019

Me: .....at last, I've calmed down my brain enough and got some focus. I really want to get back to the PMMM AU - I think I've got some plans to refine the timeline, as well as a stable of witches to help fill out those timelines-

Rewrite of Gravity Falls 'Not What He Seems' Starring 'Grampa Patton', his grandkids 'Roman and Remus', his handyman 'Virgil', and cashier 'Logan', a folding chair in hand: BITCH YOU THOUGHT-

BigNutzMcgee10/03/2019

[image of a woman looking surprised as she’s holding a glass and a straw]

Levi Dinn10/03/2019

You watch Gravity Falls? Remind me? Because this was a fucking turning point in the series

BigNutzMcgee10/03/2019

I do!! And you’re right

Levi Dinn10/03/2019

So Grampa Patton's been taking care of the twins since his son Thomas sent them up (he kinda realized he's gay, missus didn't react well, it's just to give the two a break while they settle things). Remus found the journal, but he and Roman share it pretty evenly and don't show their grandpa right away because he's swell and all but also a bit of a worrywart and somehow oblivious to all of the dangers of Gravity Falls? (until, you know. He reveals he isn't). Working for Grampa Patton is Logan, nearly ready to graduate high school, and Virgil, first year at community college (the twins are a bit older than 12, though their crushes still aren't reciprocated/acted on.....sue me, Prinxiety and Intrulogical still cute).

And so of course one day Roman, Remus, and Patton are all hanging out and having fun when Patton gets arrested. You know why. Logan upon seeing the police presence actually goes to the station to try to meet up with Patton (guy's silly, but Logan won't argue that he's done so much for him) but keeps getting blocked by the feds. Patton's one call, instead of to a lawyer, is to Virgil to ask him to get the twins and keep them safe (And good thing because Remus' plan was to upset a tractor trailer driver to run the agent's car off the road -coughMabel-)

BigNutzMcgee10/03/2019

:0

Levi Dinn10/03/2019

By the time Virgil, Roman, and Remus all get back to the shack, well, Thomas usually does a weekly call, and he's panicking because it's been a few hours and no one's picked up. Roman and Remus try to fill him in, in their own way, and Thomas is disbelieving. It's Patton, his dad's not a criminal. Sure, he does some strange things, but a criminal? Nah. Thomas promises to call back in an hour while he tries to find out what's up. The twins, of course, plan to do so as well.

And when they find the security footage (holy crap, Patton can SWEAR?!), the multiple fake IDs, questionable bank records, none of them know what to make of it. Weirdest yet are the floorplans, indicating a level below ground level, but the door should be in the gift shop - but they've never seen a door there, right? Thomas calls back, asks Virgil to take the twins to somewhere safe. While trying to get info, he stumbled across an obituary - some guy who got into a car crash, left way too much blood and his wallet behind. ID said Patton Sanders. Thomas has NO IDEA who he sent his kids to, but he needs them safe, dammit.

Virgil rounds up Roman, but Remus is poking around the gift shop trying to find the door. It's Roman who figures out it's behind the vending machine, Virgil who gets it open. Indeed, there are stairs going down, an elevator - and at the bottom, a machine room. Two journals laying out, copies from the third journal nearby. Roman had been carrying around the journal this week, they notice the diagram split between books, and of course - the warnings in invisible ink: "The device if fully operational could tear the universe apart!"

Back to station - Logan's arguing with an agent to little avail, despite the fact the agents could've gotten arrested weeks ago if he hadn't filled them in on proper procedures regarding wiretapping and spying in Gravity Falls. Patton stalls the agents until a good gravitational anomaly, escapes, grabs Logan as he passes, then of course sends the distraction taxi cab. Logan is confused as heck because Patton is silly and weird, but right now he's super-focused and almost harsh as he tells Logan they can't be late. For what? The source of the fluctuations. Logan keeps pressing, but Patton's being weirdly evasive.

And so, just as Virgil, Roman, and Remus are about to deactivate the portal, Patton returns, Logan in tow, Please don't shut it off. Roman calls him out about the obituary, Virgil throws the fake IDs at him, Logan is even more suspicious now, and so of course now in the last minute is a good time for a gravitational anomaly. Yes taking beats from the episode, so sue me, it's hard to improve on perfection.

After a fair bit of struggle, where Patton holds up surprisingly well getting past Logan and Virgil but is ultimately knocked off-course by Roman, Remus is the only one who's in range to shut off the machine. He wants to trust Grampa Patton but... he's probably not Grampa Patton. He lied about the monsters in Gravity Falls, he lied about who he is and how he knows them, he lied about owning the place, he lied about why he wanted the journal - there are just so many lies, and what it comes down to is that this thing is a doomsday device. And despite all his morbid jokes, Remus doesn't want to die.

Patton's pleading - he can explain afterwards, promise, it's a long story but- there won't be an afterwards! - There WILL be, he swears. He wouldn't try this unless he was sure he wasn't going to lose any more family, just, he pleads through tears, just let it go. Remus hesitates. Grampa Patton's a liar. Grampa Patton's never cried. Grampa Patton could be lying right now. Grampa Patton....He lets go.

World goes white. The basement is wrecked (Roman kept safe by Virgil, Grampa Patton just barely catching Remus before gravity kicked back in) and a figure emerges from the portal. Who's that? The builder of the house, of course. The author of the journals, naturally. A man who vanished over 30 years ago. Patton Sanders, the twin brother of one ostracized Ernest Sanders.

So yes, here Patton and Deceit are also brothers. Because fuckin' fight me why not?

BigNutzMcgee10/03/2019

needs more

Levi Dinn10/03/2019

There's sadly not enough to fill out a total AU. But I will say this:

BigNutzMcgee10/03/2019

:c

Levi Dinn10/03/2019

Bill Cipher goes unchanged because no one ruins everything he touches quite like Bill does. Just, yeah, Sanders sides a little small to match the cast of Gravity Falls, but they'd work excellently for this episode......and certainly wouldn't claim exclusive ownership

BigNutzMcgee10/03/2019

:0!!!!!

Levi Dinn11/25/2019

[Not related personal stuff]

Speaking of, in the GF AU, Bill instead of manipulating Roman and Remus with deals just befriends Remus to slowly get his trust so Remus willingly offers Bill himself the rift. Doesn't hurt that Bill thinks Remus' ideas are fun and great while most everyone else... doesn't.

So Sock Opera would be more rooted in jealousy between Roman and Remus - Remus' ideas getting shot down, Roman getting praised - with subplot about Bill "mending" bridges with Remus for invading his grandpa's mind and sorry about that, can we start over? Personally I think your idea about the a nuclear bomb dropping near the characters' home and fallout creating hideous mutations is really cool, Mace-y's Day Parade! Bill doesn't even have to hijack anyone to persuade Remus to give him the rift, just promise him that with it, he cam make sure Roman won't leave him behind

Levi Dinn11/25/2019

I also stan the theory that, much like how Virgil represents and suffers from anxiety, Remus represents and suffers from intrusive thoughts

BigNutzMcgee11/25/2019

Yeeessss

Levi Dinn11/25/2019

So while everyone in the GF AU at least somewhat likes Roman? Virgil is incredibly disgusted by him, Logan seems dismissive (doesn't hurt our duke's crush though; and while he may come across coldly, still finds him harmless), Patton's severely unnerved (since admittedly I mean, Bill likes his ideas, enough said). Only Roman and Dee vocally support and defend Remus

BigNutzMcgee11/25/2019

^yeyeyeye

Levi Dinn11/25/2019

Patton at least has the courtesy to feel awful when he realizes his fear helps push Remus right into Bill's arms

#sanders sides au #deceit sanders #roman sanders #remus sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #thomas sanders #prinxiety mention #intrulogical mention #gravity falls #bill cipher #tag anyone unsympathetic and you'll be catching unsympathetic!FHF #except Bill I guess but you get my meaning #janus sanders

[zenosanalytic]

HoXPoX Liveblog: Powers of X#5

Keeping it going with PoX5! As Always; The Link vuv

Continuing the HoXPoX readthrough with Powers of X#5! Cover's another Savage Land variant the character drawing isn't AS extreme as the last one, tho the women are still preternaturally thin and Jean's boobs have that unnaturally robust&high tacked-on look so common to comics :T 

Opening X Quote: "they will think we are doing one thing, but the truth is we are doing something altogether different". DECEPTION!!! I'm wondering when Moira's gonna come back into this story given her disappearance from the middle books. 

X0: The XMen, Dallas TX, Year 1. Xavier's talking to Forge aboout making the mind-copying upgrades to Cerebro. SUMMARY TECHNICAL DIALOGUE my favorite owo owo owo There's talking in a room filled with this cool Ocean hologram and I love it. 

(also they're not using the awful color scheme of 80s&90s Forge, which I thank them for -____-) 

Here's a question: is there any discourse out there abt how MUCH LIKE Forge Solid Snake looks? Cuz they look father and son :| :|

AAAUUUGH This Maniacal Xavier face has slain me! I will Share It uwu:

GAAAAAAH LOOK AT THIS MANIPULATIVE NERD!!! i love him uvu uvu uvu

Infopage on Cerebro 7.0 Most of it's just worldbuilding technical summary, but there's an interesting tidbit that Xavier has replaced his own "self" with a previous "copy" twice. Wonder if we'll learn about those instances :?

AHHH Also: Moira's in a No Place(basically Krakoa pocket-planes that are undetectable&impenetrable). Wonder what she's up to?

Cut to X1 Year 10, the Louvre. Mags and Xavier are confronting Frost over something infront of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, no time to go into the symbolism of that just now. The questionable motivation and involvement with the Cult of the Great Gods seems telling.

there are more basic lvls to it tho: Nike's in the background, Xavier looking at it, when he asks her to help them form a government for Krakoa; the implication, he's looking/considering their victory, is obvsl.  It's above him as he explains his drug masterstroke to her.

There's an interesting thing here where Mags is positioned as the mid-point/referee/border btw Emma and Charles. When X mentions the nation of Krakoa, she turns to Mags as someone she trusts to be the "voice of reason" against concentrating mutants in one place(risking Genoa)

idk how common it's been leading up to this series, but I like how HoXPoX recognizes the recklessness danger Xavier's maximalist dedication to Mainstreaming sometimes puts mutants in.

to be clear XMen villains positions were often explicitly and cartoonishly villainous and self-serving(for instance Hellfire was long just cartoonish mutant supremacist aristos, much like Mags), but this reimagining along more preservationist lines allows it to be a real argument

Like: theyre positing a Frost for whom the Hellfire Club/Corp was a way to live unseen among humans, wielding power in a way that could carve some safety out for some mutants. I think that's a bit charitable given the clear class elements of Hellfire's role in the canon but still

"This is that day youve been waiting for/to make right what went wrong" they say, Nike behind Mags(he'd just told Frost abt their repop plans; signaling he'd convinced her to listen?)

!!This is interesting: She asks how it's going to be different than all the other times, Mags says "let us show you" and presents one of the Krakoa flowers... but it's in something which looks A LOT like the "Seer Self" of the elder from PoX4!!

Cut to Later, Krakoa XD She agrees to help.  The negotiate terms. Xavier takes a VERY WEIRD adn formal supplicant posture that I dont know how to describe but it, again, reminiscent of dance, I'll show you:

They offer her control of the Krakoa drug trade&the legitimate face of their diplomacy in exchange for two governing seats and bring Shaw back into Hellfire to run covert ops, Frost's face is Priceless: 

an infopage on the initial gov-structure of Krakoa, "the Quiet Council" it DOES NOT seem like a great system AT ALL; twelve person unelected council, half of the membership secret, Krakoa itself only gets one seat/vote though technically two in its "faction" with cypher.

Honestly this seems most like a cabinet without a head of state? Of the members we know, each is head of a particular department or major faction(X the Xmen, Mags the brotherhood, ect) Seems guaranteed to encourage factionalism, backroom conspiracism, and opacity

Cut to later that year, Xavier offering citizenship and safety on Krakoa, various cuts of "villains" hearing his offer telepathically(including a p cool redesign for OmegaRed and his allies), ending somewhere which looks like its underwater(Atlantis?). 

Yup it's Namor(who I guess is a mutant now?? Wasnt aware of that). Namor rejects the offer, and questions Xavier's sincerity in belief in mutant(and X's own) superiority(as Namor pegs the reasoning behind Krakoa).

I know I keep saying this but the supremacist vibe of all this is disquieting. You can be right abt mutant persecution without ALSO being right that mutant life is "more valuable" than others, esp when "value" is just an utterly noxious moral standard to begin with.

Cut back to X3 Phalanx presents its terms. The elder is destroyed. The Librarian has Questions, asking Nimrod to extrapolate what's going on(Nimrod believes Phalanx has agreed) Nice joke here: "primordial Kirbons" for Jack Kirby. Paying him would have been better :T

The gist: Blackholes are a gigantic networked Machine-Brains, Phalanxes are created by this to hunt for societies worth adding to its intelligence, the Phalanx as agreed to incorporate them but needs energy to do this, it will eat the entire planet to power the transfer. Oops. 

Another infopage of Society types, this time universe-spanning. Adding Titans(singularity intellects), Strongholds(allied titans fighting to consume others), and Dominions(allied strongholds which are effectively gods) All transcend time(interesting implications re Moira)

Another interesting bit: Dominions are noted as fearing Galactus and The Phoenix as possible threats. The Phoenix of course can use human-mutants as hosts.

Hmm, it ends with a Namor quote. Interesting...

That was a Good and Dense one ^v^ I'll have to think about it for a bit, but I'm getting the feeling that, basically, the Mutants are working on a way to achieve the same sort of "transcendence" as the machine-society path, but their own way, and mechsocs fear this(Phoenix).

Also I'm curious how the Celestials fit into all this. Mutants are the result of thier experimentation, so could it be that they are a sort of forerunner of a biological second option to the more common machine-ascendancy, which mechsocs wrok hard to prevent arising again?

The idea being that there are at least two paths to "transcendence"; one biological,communal, andindividual-preserving through pseudomagical "mutation"/self-directed evolution/cybernetics, and the more common machine-intelligence-consumption route.

#Hickman et al #X Men #Marvel #HoXPoX #Powers of X 5 #Powers of X #HoXPoX Liveblog #zA Liveblogs

[hiddendreamer67]

Ch. 7 Two-Faced (G/t JSE Fanfic)

Author’s note: Thank you all for your patience! I made sure this chapter was nice and long for the wait. And it’s got lots of plot or whatever writers are supposed to do. Also, you may recognize a familiar face from my collab story with arc852 “Spaceships and Septic Eyes” ;) Enjoy.

prompt: Space

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7 | Ch. 8

“Ow.” Jack winced, rubbing at his ribs after sliding against the hard floor. He lifted the jar in his hands up to his face to look at a very ashen-faced Mark. “Mark, are you okay?” Mark let out something sounding like a high-pitched whimper, and Jack winced at how pitiful the poor guy looked.

Jack looked around at the lab room and gasped, seeing what looked to be a bloody pile of human remains.

“That’s new.” Jack tried to chuckle, but his voice cracked. Giving one last look around, Jack opened the door and began to sprint down the hall. He muttered a little apology to Mark who was once again being tossed about, but Jack didn’t slow down. They needed to get out of here NOW.

“Oh, shite.” Jack cursed quietly, coming to a fork in the hall. He didn’t remember which way the exit was- he always was a bit directionally challenged. It only made it worse as Jack heard someone’s loud footsteps back they way he came.

“Jackaboy, where are you hiding?” Anti’s singsong voice echoed through the halls. Jack did a quick game of eenie meenie minie mo and began running down the right hall.

“Who is that guy?” Jack asked out loud, trying to gauge what lay ahead.

“It’s Sean.” Mark groaned, looking a little green from all the running. “Something happened to him in the lab, and now he’s this all-powerful monster that’s calling himself Anti.”

“Sean?” Jack cast a sad look back, feeling sorry for his doppelganger. “Aw, poor guy.”

“Yeah, I think I’d be feeling more sympathetic if he hadn’t shrunk me down and tried to kill me.” Mark said bitterly.

“Come out and play.” Anti’s laugh put the two on edge. Turning to face forwards once more, Jack sprinted down the twists and turns, only to find the hallway ended in a ominous looking door labeled “Sector 7”.

“Wrong way.” Jack turned to go back, only to hear Anti approaching quickly. Thinking fast, Jack pulled open the heavy door and went inside.

“You are now entering sector 7, department of space and time anomalies.” A pre-recorded voice greeted them. Jack glanced around the room for a hiding spot. The room was cluttered with star charts, solar system models, and clocks. Seeing a weird machine that resembled a wardrobe, Jack thought it was perfect. He climbed inside and shut the door.

“What’s the plan?” Mark whispered, looking up at Jack.

“Uh, hide in here until he leaves?” Jack shrugged. Mark’s jaw dropped.

“What?” Mark hissed. “That’s your plan?”

“Well excuse me, I was a bit rushed!” Jack argued. Behind his left shoulder, a blue screen began to glow.

“Wait, what’s that?” Mark asked, pointing to the screen. Jack turned, now noticing it himself.

“‘Please enter a time’.” Jack read aloud. “What’s that mean? Do you have a watch?” The two suddenly froze, hearing the pre-recorded voice go off as the door once again creaked open.

“You are now entering sector 7, department of space and time anomalies.”

“I don’t care.” Anti could be heard talking to the voice as he prowled about the room, searching for the two. Jack and Mark shared a worried look.

“Come on out, Jack.” Anti teased, looking around. “You and I are one in the same. I don’t want to hurt you. Just give me Mark.” Acting fast, Jack punched in random numbers and hoped for the best. The machine began to shake and buzz rapidly, and just outside the door they heard a loud commotion. A moment later, the time machine door was opened by someone on the outside.

“You two?” Dr. Iplier looked surprised to find them there, emergency sirens and red lights going off behind him. “What the devil are you doing here? This is top secret! Is it your goal to destroy all of my experiments?” Jack clutched the jar closer to his chest, protecting Mark.

“Dr. Iplier?” Mark gasped. “But, you’re dead.”

“Thank you for that spoiler.” The doctor sighed. “I know you’re both probably very confused, but congratulations. You’re the first two humans to travel back in time.”

“Time travel?” Jack scoffed. “Sounds pretty fake to me.”

“I’m five inches tall.” Mark gave him a look.

“Alright, fair.” Jack considered that.

“Now gentlemen, I’ll need to do some tests for our research.” The doctor grabbed a clipboard and began hastily looking for a pen. “How did you feel? Is the fluid in your inner ear canals misplaced? What time down to the millisecond was it when you left?”

“But doctor, there’s no time for all that.” Jack spoke up. “We traveled back because we were trying to escape a...monster created in the lab.”

“Sean was mutated into this powerful technological being.” Mark spoke up.

“Sean?” Dr. Iplier looked at them with renewed interest. “The little borrower?”

“He’s not so little anymore.” Jack said quietly.

“He followed us to my dimension, and then back to yours.” Mark explained. “But the weird thing was, he didn’t have the bracelet Jack does.”

“You mean this?” Dr. Iplier raised his wrist to show his bracelet. Mark nodded. “How strange. Now what could possibly…” The doctor’s eyes widened in horror. “The melder. Oh, I’ll have to go destroy it immediately.” The doctor turned to run out the door, but paused. “Jack, the fact that you two are here means I probably fail to destroy the melder. Since that is the case, we must assume Sean has melded with the dimensional hopper. This will create a space-time continuum, seeing as a carbon lifeform is not meant to possess an individual ability to travel between dimensions.”

“But then why do the bracelets not cause a problem?” Jack asked, looking down at his own.

“That would only assist you, not allow you to do the jump yourself.” Mark hypothesized.

“Precisely.” Dr. Iplier nodded. “If you want life as you know it to continue, you’ll need to destroy Anti and your own device by tossing them through the hole in space-time.”

“How do I know what a hole in space-time looks like?” Jack tilted his head in confusion.

“It’s a black hole, you idiot.” Dr. Iplier rolled his eyes. “In Sector 13 you’ll find a rocket ship meant for collecting stellar samples. Take it and fly directly into the black hole, which is likely to form near our planet.”

“But I don’t know how to fly a rocket!” Jack argued. “How the heck am I supposed to do that?”

“Hold out your wrist.” The doctor held out his hand, and Jack begrudgingly placed his wrist with the bracelet on the doctor’s hand. Dr. Iplier messed with a few bits of the gadgets. “There, instead of connecting this universe to universe A, it should now take you to universe C.”

“Huh?” Jack had no idea what was going on.

“It’s going to take us to a third dimension.” Mark explained. “And that’s where we can find a pilot, right?”

“Correct.” Dr. Iplier nodded. “Honestly Jack, Mark’s brain is about the size of a pea right now and yet he’s still the smart one.”

“Hey!” Both guys protested, not sure who should feel more insulted.

“Good luck.” Dr. Iplier gave them a small wave. “The fate of the world now rests on your shoulders. No pressure.” With that, Dr. Iplier sprinted back to his lab to destroy the melder and hopefully alter the timeline so those two idiots wouldn’t be their last hope. 

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

“Karen, initiate autopilot.” Captain Mark instructed, pushing back his seat to take a break at the wheel.

“Yes, Captain Mark.” The voice command named Karen installed in his ship replied. Captain Mark sighed, stretching and walking up and down the length of his ship. He had always wanted to go to space, but now that he piloted the final frontier every day he found it to be rather boring.

Captain Mark was startled out of his pacing when a bright light shone down the hall, and suddenly a green-haired humanoid figure was standing in his ship. Well, perhaps Captain Mark had spoken too soon about space being boring.

“Greetings, and who are you?” Captain Mark approached slowly, keeping one hand by his knife in case things got ugly. “How’d you get on my ship? You do realize we’re in the midst of an endless void, right?”

“Uh, hi.” The stranger gave a small wave. “I’m Jack, and this is Mark.” He held up a small jar in his hands, and peering down at it Captain Mark could see a tiny man that resembled himself.

“What in the world?” Captain Mark breathed, crouching to see the cute little guy better.

“I know this seems strange.” Mark said. He shifted uncomfortably, not liking the attention. “But we need your help. I’m you from another dimension, and there’s an evil there that threatens us all. We need you to come back with us and fly a rocket ship.”

“How are you so small?” Captain Mark asked, barely paying attention to his words.

“It’s kind of a really long story that’s not important right now.” Mark answered. “Would you please just come help us? You’re our only hope.” Captain Mark considered it.

“Alright, but only if I can hold you.” Captain Mark requested politely.

“Well, uh…” Mark didn’t like the idea, but he wasn’t about to doom the world because of his comfort level.  “Okay, just please be careful.”

“Hey, I’m basically you.” Captain Mark explained, slowly taking the jar from a nervous Jack and reaching his hand in. “Just trust in yourself and you’ll be fine.” Captain Mark smiled, feeling Mark’s tiny fingers grasping his own. Mark could understand the fascination, having been on that side when he held Sean and later Jack. Because of that, Mark tried his best to swallow his fear.

“Alright, I’m glad you two are bonding, but we really have to go.” Jack explained. “Just grab onto me.”

“Oh yeah, sure thing.” Captain Mark nodded, grabbing Jack’s sleeve. Jack pressed his blue button, and all three of them reappeared in sector 7 of the lab.

“We have to get to sector 13.” Mark explained. “But we’ll need both Jack’s bracelet and Anti on the ship for this to work.” “Who’s Anti?” Captain Mark asked.

“He’s my evil other dimensional self.” Jack explained. 

“Oh, of course.”

“Quickly now, this way.” Jack instructed.

“You got us lost last time.” Mark reminded him.

“Yeah, but that was before I knew to look for a number.” Jack argued. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“Famous last words.” Mark rolled his eyes. Captain Mark followed Jack, cupping Mark to his chest for safety. The two tried to keep their footsteps quiet, especially because the lack of emergency sirens meant that Anti was chasing them down in Mark’s universe and would be back any minute with the past Jack and tiny Mark. Wow, time travel made Jack’s head spin.

“Found it.” Jack said, finding the door labelled “Sector 13.” Just in time, too. He could faintly hear Anti’s taunts to his past self across the facility.

“Come out and play.” Even far away that voice was creepy. Captain Mark opened the door to the sector 13.

“Welcome to sector 13, space station.” Another pre-recorded voice spoke up.

“Woah.” Mark looked around in awe. The place was huge, and right in the center was a beautiful shining white rocket ship.

“Oh, that’s nice.” Captain Mark nodded, impressed at their ride. “What a beautiful model. Just look at those thrusters. I bet this baby can get seventeen light years to a kilowatt. I wonder what command module she’s got?”

“Why do all versions of you speak science gibberish?” Jack glared at him. “Just get to the pilot’s seat or whatever and get ready to go.”

“What about you?” Mark asked.

“I’ll make sure Anti gets on too just before take-off.” Jack answered, lining himself up with the entrance of the ship. “Without him, this whole thing is pointless.”

“On it.” Captain Mark moved the hand holding Mark up to his left shoulder, giving the little guy a gentle nudge with his finger to indicate it was time to climb off. Mark complied, settling down onto his shoulder and getting a good hold on the captain's shirt collar so he wouldn’t fall off.

“What’s it like being so small?” Captain Mark asked, climbing up a ladder to the command center.

“It’s very strange.” Mark admitted. “You see everything from a new perspective. But who knows? Maybe you’ll have a chance to be small one day.”

“Yeah, sure.” Captain Mark snorted, not able to picture it. Finding the pilot seat, he sat down and began fiddling with the controls. Once he found the ignition, he turned back to yell down to Jack.

“READY, JACK!” Captain Mark yelled, causing Mark to wince and cover his ears. “Oh, sorry Mark.” A moment later, they heard Jack down below.

“HEY ANTI, OVER HERE!” Jack yelled. “I’M READY TO GIVE UP MARK!” A second later, frantic pounding footsteps began to race down the hall in Jack’s direction. Jack made sure to keep his hands cupped in front of him, pretending to hold Mark.

“You’re a quick one, aren’t ‘cha?” Anti teased, coming closer. “How’d you get here so fast?”

“Come here and Mark’s yours.” Jack said, holding out his hands. “He’s more trouble than he’s worth. He even tried to spit in my eye.”

“I figured.” Anti chuckled. “Those guys are awful from all dimensions. Dr. Iplier was no better.” Anti stepped into the rocket ship, and immediately Jack pressed a button on the wall. The exterior door to the rocket closed. When Anti whirled around to see what happened, Jack pressed a second button and a metal protective sealed door closed, separating Anti and Jack.

“NOW, MARK!” Jack yelled up, running down the hall to join both Marks in the control room. He could hear the engines already starting.

“You tricked me?!” Anti screeched from the other side of the thick metal. A large commotion of screeching and scratching could be heard, and Jack could only pray the door would hold Anti long enough.

#gtjsefanclubanniversary #gtjsefanclub #gtjse #gt #jse #yes #anti #dr. iplier #captian mark #mark #jacksepticeye #self-reference #markiplier #spaceships and septic eyes au

[pietropatrol]

Breaking the One Damn Rule (Pt. 6)

Read Part 5

[A/N: Second job has started, almost officially have my promotion at my regular job, applied to grad school and waiting for a response, and wedding planning has me pulling my hair out]

Constant monitoring and bed rest is what the doctor ordered. With the fate of yours and cel mic’s health in Bruce’s hands, and growing boredom, you need a distraction. Nothing like a Netflix marathon to pass the day and quell the cabin fever. 

Pairing: Pietro x Reader

Warnings: Mentions of dying

Words: 1, 648

Previously on BTODR:

“I don’t think she’s going to wake up right now. We picked her up and she was unresponsive. But Wanda looked in her head. She’s okay.” Natasha reassured him as Bruce navigated the transducer over your stomach.

Bruce paused. “You were only expecting one right?”

“What do you mean?” Pietro shot over to the ultrasound image, and sure enough there were now two. He froze.

Bruce examined the image, his jaw tight. “It’s more serious than we originally thought.”

“Results are in Banner. This is in your ballpark.” Tony’s voice entered the room.

The screen pulled up videos of your blood cells and your DNA structure.

“I see.” Bruce cupped his chin.

“See what?” Pietro ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the ends.

“Dr. Cho only saw the one fetus, and I have a sneaking suspicion there isn’t really a second one.” Bruce took a snapshot of the ultrasound and put the equipment away.

“But possibly there was a second one she missed or that one split into two.” Pietro made his way back to your side. He instinctively laced his fingers through yours.

“It’s highly unlikely in both cases.”

“I am a twin—“

“Identical twins tend not to be hereditary. It’s most often spontaneous and that is what you’re suggesting. However, that happens early in the pregnancy. Now, Dr. Cho is competent to catch this. So, something else is going on and you have a feeling as to what is. That’s why you’re deflecting.”

“Bruce!” Natasha frowned at his tone.

“Your cells and genes are mutated and you those on to your child. The cells are abnormal to Y/N’s body, which causes her body to go into overdrive; creating anti-bodies as the mutant cells infect her. I can only speculate when she is under duress, like she was today, the child’s mutant cells are released as a form of protection. Thus, it’s ability lies in biological duplication, because we’re seeing two now.”

“Next time we—“ Natasha thought out.

“There may not be two.” Wanda’s voice strained.

“There may be one or more than two. We don’t know what could happen, but we do know her body isn’t strong enough to handle the surge of mutated cells.” Bruce took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“What do we do?” Pietro squeezed your hand.

“Find a person who can travel back in time, keep this from happening or you two from even meeting.” Bruce chuckled without humor. “Your relationship was doomed from the start. A disaster waiting to happen.”

Pietro forced himself to keep grounded by your side, imagining that you’d tell him not to let it get to him.

“Her family hates her and you’ve signed her death certificate, either by Hydra or your own spawn. Does disobeying orders feel great now?” Bruce couldn’t help himself. Maybe it was his own self-loathing for the monster he had made himself. How he could never really be with anyone without fear of hurting them. It felt a little satisfying to spread the pain.

The problem was that Pietro didn’t feel pain, no, he was seeing red. It was never about disobeying orders. It was about the way the corners of your mouth would twitch as he tried to make light of all the near-death situations he had been in; and you fought the laughter because you had to act mad at him for putting himself in unnecessary danger. But he was such a show off, and a god damn hero that saved the world. You broke so quick.

It was about how even when you fought, mostly about finally making your relationship public or you working to much when he was home, you never broke eye contact and five minutes into the stare down you both broke into fits of laughter or tears, sometimes both. Depending on the day.

The only thing that mattered at the end of the day was having each other to turn to and love, unconditionally. So, no matter how long Pietro would be gone on missions, your love never faltered. And although you worked to the brink of exhaustion, Pietro adored your devotion and passion for the business you had worked so hard to build. He could feel the beams radiating off of you as you spoke about all the crazy events you coordinated, even the challenging ones. You lit up when recounting insane budgets, weird requests, and bridezillas.

It was the stories and you glowing energy that captured Pietro on your first date; and when your face began lighting up the same way when you saw him, there was no turning back.

He would leave the Avengers for you if he had to. Wanda would be okay, she had Vision. You brought a part of him to life that he didn’t even know was dead.

Pietro had been ready to get serious. Marriage serious. But the last mission had put his possible plan of leaving the Avengers—if only temporarily—on hold and then your pregnancy had thrown a wrench into the secrecy of your relationship. Pietro had the ring, he’d had it before cel mic. Now he didn’t want it to seem like he was only proposing for the baby’s sake.

“That’s what I thought.” Bruce tucked the small amount of regret of his words away. Pietro had put you in this situation. His mutated genes were a parasite to your ordinary ones. Pietro shouldn’t even be able to reproduce with his mutation. Bruce couldn’t.

“Seriously? Don’t make this about you. It sucks, yes but move on. It happened. Your mutation process was completely different. We have another problem at hand. Y/N’s life is at risk. Help her, she shouldn’t be a consequence of your jealousy,” Wanda snapped.

Bruce recoiled, realizing the literal and figurative green monster had been rearing its head. “Right, sorry Pietro, that was uncalled for. I’ll get to work on finding a treatment.”

Bruce had let go of his jealousy and had become a trusted friend. He was gentle and explain the science behind was going on with you. Yet, at the same time he could be brutally honest and you were thankful for it.

“What’s the probability?” You shifted on the couch, trying to get comfortable as Bruce hooked up all of your monitors and reinserted your IV. You were tired of sitting in the “infirmary” and had made a decision to relocate to the living room for the day to binge watch on the big screen.

You had sent Pietro out on errands and to get something for your second-in-command because there was an important event to coordinate for an A-list client coming up soon. It was a bit of relief; Pietro’s concern was surpassing bearable levels and you didn’t think that he would calm down until cel mic was here.

“The probability of what?” Bruce produced a vial and hooked it up to the IV tube.

The temporary solution. A bit of Wanda’s mutant blood to mix with your own. The magic in her blood was the universal mutation blood type. Or type “M” as Pietro joked. Bruce and Dr. Cho were hard at work to find a treatment that didn’t require Wanda giving blood every day. It helped, but you remained week and bed ridden. You were only allowed to get up to go to the bathroom—with assistance, annoying and embarrassing—and get one small walk in a day. It was getting old really fast.

“Dying.” Your voice didn’t falter and you held your gaze steady. Bruce took a moment to deliberate. “There’s a small chance, right? Both me and cel mic?”

“Forty-five.” Bruce squatted down next to you, empathetic.

“That is lower than I thought. So, silver lining.”

“And that’s without me finding a treatment for you. I think I’m close.” Bruce patted your arm.

“I believe in you.”

“I will get back to work then. Do you need anything else?” Bruce pushed off of his knees.

“The remote is all.” Bruce pushed the coffee table next to the couch so you had access to the touch pad and your drinks.  “And thank you.”

Bruce nodded and went back to the lab. You found something to watch, but the move from the infirmary to the living room had actually taken a toll on you. It was only a matter of minutes before your eyelids got heavy.

Steve wandered into the living room and stopped at the sight of you passed out on the couch. Your arms curled over your stomach. Protecting it. He reached over you and pulled the blanket down over you.

Steve looked to the TV and recognized the show, he settled unto the end of the couch and watched over you. You were one of them now, so it was his duty as your captain to make sure you were okay.

Two hours later Steve was still there as you stirred and felt a presence. You looked at him through bleary eyes.

“Oh, hey. Am I in the way?” You tried to sit up and make more room on the couch. Steve rushed to stop you, and you gladly slumped back into the couch. What wouldn’t you give for coffee right now. It was the worst being tired all the time.

“Band of Brothers, huh?” Steve motioned to the TV.

“Yeah, my great-grandfather fought in World War II and I used to watch this with him before he passed away a couple years back.”

“Now that makes me feel old.” Steve shook his head.

“Well, you kind of are. I wonder if he ever met you. He was in Europe on the front-line. He probably was a fan, he too liked to punch Nazis.” You grinned.

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“True, give me the opportunity I would gladly do so and make it a tribute to my great-grandfather.”

“Should I recruit you?” Steve joked.

“Pietro would try to kill you. The last thing he wants is me to be anywhere near a Nazi, AKA Hydra.”

“You’re not wrong.”

You slipped into a comfortable silence, that was until your stomach groaned. “Do you know an authentic Mexican place that has killer tamales and delivers?” 

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